themes of our European
morality.[2213] Through the former the individual recognizes duties from
which nothing can exempt him; through the latter, he claims rights of
which nothing can deprive him: our civilization has vegetated from these
two roots, and still vegetates. Consider the depth and the extent of
the historical soil in which they penetrate, and you may judge of their
vigor. Consider the height and unlimited growth of the trees which they
nourish, and you may judge of their healthiness. Everywhere else, one
or other having failed, in China, in the Roman Empire, in Islam, the sap
has dried downward and the tree has become stunted, or has fallen.... It
is the modern man, who is neither Chinese, nor antique, nor Moslem,
nor Negro, nor savage, the man formed by Christian education and taking
refuge in his conscience as in a sanctuary, the man formed by feudal
education and entrenched behind his honor as in a fortress, whose
sanctuary and stronghold the new social contract bids him surrender.

Now, in this democracy founded on the preponderance of numbers, into
whose hands am I required to make this surrender?--Theoretically, to the
community, that is to say, to a crowd in which an anonymous impulse
is the substitute for individual judgment; in which action becomes
impersonal because it is collective; in which nobody acknowledges
responsibility; in which I am borne along like a grain of sand in a
whirlwind; in which all sorts of outrages are condoned beforehand for
reasons of state: practically, to the plurality of voices counted by
heads, to a majority which, over-excited by the struggle for mastery,
will abuse its victory and wrong the minority to which I may belong;
to a provisional majority which, sooner or later, will be replaced by
another, so that if I am to-day oppressor I am sure of being
oppressed to-morrow; still more particularly, to six or seven hundred
representatives, among who I am called upon to choose but one. To elect
this unique mandatory I have but one vote among ten thousand; and in
helping to elect him I am only the ten-thousandth; I do not even count
for a ten-thousandth in electing the others. And it is these six or
seven hundred strangers to me to who I give full power to decide for
me--note the expression full power--which means unlimited power, not
alone over my possessions and life, but, again, over my conscience, with
all its powers combined; that is to say, with powers much more extens