y, stimulate men with extraordinary
force[3320] and become one of the great incentives of will and action.
Henceforth, government and administration are to become difficult
matters; the forms and plans of the old social architecture are no
longer applicable; like construction is not possible with materials of a
different kind, whether with stable or unstable materials, with men
who do not dream of quitting their condition or with men who think of
nothing but that.

In effect, whatever vacancy may occur, each aspirant thinks himself fit
for it, and only one of the aspirants can obtain it. Accordingly some
rule of preference must be adopted outside of the opinion that each
candidate entertains of himself. Accordingly, at a very early date, one
was established, and there could be no better one, namely, that, among
the competitors for the place, the most competent to fill it should be
chosen. Unfortunately, the judge, ordinary, extraordinary and supreme,
instituted to decide in this case, was the plurality of male, adult
Frenchmen, counted by heads, that is to say a collective being in which
the small intelligent, elite body is drowned in the great rude mass;
of all juries, the most incompetent, the easiest duped and misled,
the least able to comprehend the questions laid before it and the
consequences of its answer; the worst informed, the most inattentive,
the most blinded by preconceived sympathies or antipathies, the most
willingly absent, a mere flock of enlisted sheep always robbed or
cheated out of their vote, and whose verdict, forced or simulated,
depended on politicians beforehand, above and below, through the
clubs as well as through the revolutionary government, the latter,
consequently, maneuvering in such a way as to impose itself along with
their favorites on the choice of the French people. Between 1792 and
1799, the republican official staff just described is thus obtained.--It
is only in the army where the daily and keen sense of a common physical
and mortal danger ends in dictating the choice of the best, and raises
tried merit to the highest rank; and yet it must be noted that Jacobin
infatuation bore down as rigorously on the army as elsewhere and on
two occasions: at the outset through the election of a superior
officer conferred on subordinates, which handed rank over to the noisy
disputants and intemperate intriguers of the mess-room; and again
during the Reign of Terror, and even later,[3321] in the