rule; consequently, it has been
regarded as synonymous with "disorder."]

[Footnote 31: If such ideas are ever forced into the minds of the
people, it will be by representative government and the tyranny of
talkers. Once science, thought, and speech were characterized by the
same expression. To designate a thoughtful and a learned man, they said,
"a man quick to speak and powerful in discourse." For a long time,
speech has been abstractly distinguished from science and reason.
Gradually, this abstraction is becoming realized, as the logicians say,
in society; so that we have to-day savants of many kinds who talk but
little, and TALKERS who are not even savants in the science of speech.
Thus a philosopher is no longer a savant: he is a talker. Legislators
and poets were once profound and sublime characters: now they are
talkers. A talker is a sonorous bell, whom the least shock suffices to
set in perpetual motion. With the talker, the flow of speech is always
directly proportional to the poverty of thought. Talkers govern the
world; they stun us, they bore us, they worry us, they suck our blood,
and laugh at us. As for the savants, they keep silence: if they wish to
say a word, they are cut short. Let them write.]

[Footnote 32: _libertas, librare, libratio, libra_,--liberty, to
liberate, libration, balance (pound),--words which have a common
derivation. Liberty is the balance of rights and duties. To make a man
free is to balance him with others,--that is, to put him or their
level.]

[Footnote 33: In a monthly publication, the first number of which has
just appeared under the name of "L'Egalitaire," self-sacrifice is laid
down as a principle of equality. This is a confusion of ideas. Self-
sacrifice, taken alone, is the last degree of inequality. To seek
equality in self-sacrifice is to confess that equality is against
nature. Equality must be based upon justice, upon strict right, upon the
principles invoked by the proprietor himself; otherwise it will never
exist. Self-sacrifice is superior to justice; but it cannot be imposed
as law, because it is of such a nature as to admit of no reward. It is,
indeed, desirable that everybody shall recognize the necessity of self-
sacrifice, and the idea of "L'Egalitaire" is an excellent example.
Unfortunately, it can have no effect. What would you reply, indeed, to a
man who should say to you, "I do not want to sacrifice myself"? Is he to
be compelled to do so? When self-sacr