corporal or sergeant. Even under the most liberal system, that in which
the highest grades are accessible to all, for every five or six men who
take the lead or command others, one hundred thousand must follow or be
commanded. This makes it vain to tell every conscript that he carriers
a marshal's baton in his sack, when, nine hundred and ninety-nine times
out of a thousand, he discovers too late, on rummaging his sack, that
the baton is not there.--It is not surprising that he is tempted to kick
against social barriers within which, willing or not, he is enrolled,
and which predestine him to subordination. It is not surprising that on
emerging from traditional influences he should accept a theory, which
subjects these arrangements to his judgment and gives him authority over
his superiors. And all the more because there is no doctrine more
simple and better adapted to his inexperience, it is the only one he can
comprehend and manage off-hand. Hence it is that young men on leaving
college, especially those who have their way to make in the world, are
more or less Jacobin,--it is a disorder of growing up.[1109]--In well
organized communities this ailment is beneficial, and soon cured.
The public establishment being substantial and carefully guarded,
malcontents soon discover that they have not enough strength to pull it
down, and that on contending with its guardians they gain nothing but
blows. After some grumbling, they too enter at one or the other of its
doors, find a place for themselves, and enjoy its advantages or become
reconciled to their lot. Finally, either through imitation, or habit,
or calculation, they willingly form part of that garrison which, in
protecting public interests, protects their own private interests
as well. Generally, after ten years have gone by, the young man has
obtained his rank in the file, where he advances step by step in his own
compartment, which he no longer thinks of tearing to pieces, and under
the eye of a policeman who he no longer thinks of condemning. He even
sometimes thinks that policeman and compartment are useful to him.
Should he consider the millions of individuals who are trying to mount
the social ladder, each striving to get ahead of the other, it may dawn
upon him that the worst of calamities would be a lack of barriers and of
guardians.

Here the worm-eaten barriers have cracked all at once, their easy-going,
timid, incapable guardians having allowed things to tak