before the great explosion.
This is the last and greatest lesson of the revolution: it is impossible
to abolish the mores and to replace them by new ones rationally
invented. To change a monarchy into a republic is trifling. Individuals
and classes can be guillotined. Institutions can be overturned. Religion
can be abolished or put out of fashion. The mores are in the habits of
the people, and are needed and practiced every day. The revolutionists
ordered changes in the social ritual, and they brought about a disuse of
"monsieur" and "madame." All their innovations in the ritual have fallen
into disuse, and the old fashions have returned, in obedience to common
sense. The new classes have not enjoyed their victory over the old as to
courtesy, social comity, and civil good-fellowship. They have abandoned
it, and have recognized the fact that the old aristocracy had well
solved all matters of this kind. As wealth has increased and artisans
and peasants have gained new powers of production and acquisition, they
have learned to laugh at the civil philosophy and enthusiasm of the
eighteenth-century philosophers, and have ordered their lives, as far as
possible or convenient, on the old aristocratic models. Sansculottism
is inconsistent with respect for productive labor, or with the
accumulation of wealth. No one who can earn great wages or who possesses
wealth will, out of zeal for philosophical doctrines, prefer to live in
squalor and want. The relation of modern mores to new feelings in
respect to labor and trade, and to the accumulation of wealth, are to be
easily perceived from the course of modern revolutions.

+167. Ruling classes.+ +Special privileges.+ +Corruption of the mores.+
In every societal system or order there must be a ruling class or
classes; in other words, a class gets control of any society and
determines its political form or system. The ruling class, therefore,
has the power. Will it not use the power to divert social effort to its
own service and gain? It must be expected to do so, unless it is checked
by institutions which call into action opposing interests and forces.
There is no class which can be trusted to rule society with due justice
to all, not abusing its power for its own interest. The task of
constitutional government is to devise institutions which shall come
into play at the critical periods to prevent the abusive control of the
powers of a state by the controlling classes in it. The ruli