the manufacturer to manufacture, the trader
to trade, even to his own detriment, because, if he works at a loss, the
public profits, and every good citizen ought to prefer public profit to
his own profit.[2116] In effect, let his office be what it will, he
is an employee of the community; therefore, the community may not only
prescribe task-work to him, but select his task; it need not consult
him in the matter, for he has no right to refuse. Hence it is that we
appoint or maintain people in spite of themselves, in the magistracy,
in the army and in every other species of employment. In vain may they
excuse themselves or try get out of the way; they must remain or
become generals, judges, mayors, national agents, town councilors,
commissioners of public welfare or administration,[2117] even against
their will. Too bad for them if the responsibility is expensive or
dangerous, if they have no time for leisure, if they do not feel
themselves qualified for it, if the rank or services seems to them to
lead to a prison or the guillotine; when they declare that the work is
forced labor we reply that they liable to work for the State.--Such is,
henceforth, the condition of all Frenchmen, and likewise of all French
women. We force mothers to take their daughters to the meetings of
popular clubs. We oblige women to parade in companies, and march in
procession at republican festivals; we invade the family and select
the most beautiful to be draped as antique goddesses, and publicly
promenaded on a chariot; we sometimes even designate those among the
rich who must wed patriots[2118]: there is no reason why marriage, which
is the most important of all services, should not be put in requisition
like the others.--Accordingly, we enter families, we carry of the
child, we subject him to a civic education. We are schoolmasters,
philanthropists, theologians, and moralists. We impose by force our
religion and our ritual, our morality and our social customs. We lord it
over private lives and consciences; we dictate ideas, we scrutinize and
punish secret inclinations, we tax, imprison and guillotine not only
the evil-disposed, but again "the indifferent, the moderate and the
egoists."[2119] Over and above his visible acts we dictate to the
individual his ideas and his deepest feelings; we prescribe to him his
affections as well as his beliefs, and, according to a preconceived
type, we refashion his intellect, his conscience and his sensibiliti