itions during the Ancient Regime.

The need of success.--Initiation and conditions of promotion
under the old monarchy.--Effect on minds.--Ambitions are
limited.--The external outlets open to them.

To make one's way, get ahead, and succeed in the world is now the
dominant thought in the minds of men. Before 1789, this thought had
not acquired sovereign control in their minds; it found that there were
rival ideas to contend with, and it had only half-developed itself; its
roots had not sunk down deep enough to monopolize the activity of the
imagination, to absorb the will and possess the mind entirely; and the
reason is that it lacked both air and victuals. Promotion, under the old
monarchy, was slow, and in the first place, because the monarchy was old
and because in every order which is not new each new generation finds
that every office is filled, and next, because, in this old order
founded on tradition and heredity, future vacancies were supplied long
beforehand. The great social staircase led to several stories; each man
could ascend every step of his own flight, but he could not mount above
it; the landing reached, he found closed doors and nearly insurmountable
barriers. The story above was reserved to its own inhabitants; they
occupied it now and were still to occupy it in time to come; the
inevitable successors of the titular possessor were seen around him
on each step, his equals, peers and neighbors, one or the other often
designated by name as his legal heir, the purchaser of his survivorship.
In those days, not only was the individual himself considered, his
merits and his services, but likewise his family and ancestry, his state
and condition, the society he entered into, the "salon" he maintained,
his fortune and his followers; these antecedents and surroundings
composed the quality of the personage; without this requisite quality,
he could not go beyond the landing-place. Strictly speaking, a personage
born on the upper steps of one story might sometimes succeed in mounting
the lowest steps of the next story, but there he stopped. In short, it
was always considered by those on the lower story that the upper story
was inaccessible and, moreover, uninhabitable.

Accordingly, most of the public offices, in the finances, in the
administration, in the judiciary, in the parliaments, in the army,
at court, were private property as is now the case with the places of
advocates, notaries and brok