human
group--father, mother, brothers, sisters, wife, children, friends,
neighbors:--_the Family_.

_Collective Duties_,--that is to say, devotions, even to the sacrifice
of myself, even to death, to the progress, the well-being, the
preservation, the amelioration of this great human family, of which my
family, and my country, are only parts; and of which I myself am only
a miserable and vanishing fraction, a leaf of a summer, which
vegetates and withers on a branch of the immense trunk of the human
race:--_Society_.

Let us speak to-day only of these last duties,--because, now we are
occupied with politics alone.

V.

God, when one believes in Him as you and I do, imposes then on man a
duty towards the society of which he makes a part. You admit it, do
you not?

Then follow, and analyze with me this society. Of whom, and how, is it
composed?

It is composed, at the same time, of strong and weak, conquerors and
conquered, victors and vanquished, oppressors and oppressed, masters
and slaves, nobles and serfs, of citizens and bondmen or subjects
disinherited and enslaved, considered as living furniture, as tools
and laughing-stocks to their fellow-men, as were the Blacks in our
colonies before the Republic.

Thanks to the increase of general reason, to the light of philosophy,
to the inspiration of Christianity, to the progress of the idea of
justice, of charity, and of fraternity, in laws, manners, and
religion, society in America, in Europe, and in France, especially
since the Revolution, has broken down all these barriers, all these
denominations of caste, all these injurious distinctions among men.
Society is composed only of various conditions, professions,
functions, and ways of life, among those who form what we call a
Nation; of proprietors of the soil, and proprietors of houses; of
investments, of handicrafts, of merchants, of manufacturers, of
farmers; of day-laborers becoming farmers, manufacturers, merchants,
or possessors of houses or capital, in their turn; of the rich, of
those in easy circumstances, of the poor, of workmen with their
hands, workmen with their minds; of day-laborers, of those in need, of
a small number of men enjoying considerable acquired or inherited
wealth, of others of a smaller fortune painfully increased and
improved, of others with property only sufficient for their needs;
there are some, finally, without any personal possession but their
hands, and gleaning for