get at the endings of all. The noblest and most fruitful work of
the human intelligence is to make a clean sweep of every enforced
idea--of advantages or meanings--and to go right through appearances in
search of the eternal bases. Thus you will clearly see the moral law
at the beginning of all things, and the conception of justice and
equality will appear to you beautiful as daylight.

Strong in that supreme simplicity, you shall say: I am the people of
the peoples; therefore I am the King of Kings, and I will that
sovereignty flows everywhere from me, since I am might and right. I
want no more despots, confessed or otherwise, great or little; I know,
and I want no more. The incomplete liberation of 1789 was attacked by
the Kings. Complete liberation will attack the Kings.

But Kings are not exclusively the uniformed ones among the trumpery
wares of the courts. Assuredly, the nations who have a King have more
tradition and subjection than the others. But there are countries
where no man can get up and say, "My people, my army," nations which
only experience the continuation of the kingly tradition in more
peaceful intensity. There are others with the great figures of
democratic leaders; but as long as the entirety of things is not
overthrown--always the entirety, the sacred entirety--these men cannot
achieve the impossible, and sooner or later their too-beautiful
inclinations will be isolated and misunderstood. In the formidable
urgency of progress, what do the proportions matter to you of the
elements which make up the old order of things in the world? All the
governors cling fatally together among themselves, and more solidly
than you think, through the old machine of chancelleries, ministries,
diplomacy, and the ceremonials with gilded swords; and when they are
bent on making war for themselves there is an unquenchable likeness
between them all, of which you want no more. Break the chain; suppress
all privileges, and say at last, "Let, there be equality."

One man is as good as another. That means that no man carries within
himself any privilege which puts him above the universal law. It means
an equality in principle, and that does not invalidate the legitimacy
of the differences due to work, to talent, and to moral sense. The
leveling only affects the rights of the citizen; and not the man as a
whole. You do not create the living being; you do not fashion the
living clay, as God did in the Bible;