re again we have a limitation of the
sovereignty of the nation. The child does not belong to his father. If
this were so, at the threshold of each home the sovereignty of the
people would be arrested, which means that it would cease to exist
anywhere. The child, like the man, belongs to the people. He belongs to
it, in the sense that he must not be a member of an association which
might dare to think differently from the people, or perhaps even harbour
ideas in contradiction to the thought of the people. It would indeed be
dangerous to leave our future citizens for twenty years outside the
national thought, which is the same thing as being outside the
community. Imagine five or six bees brought up apart, outside the laws,
regulations, and constitution of the hive; imagine further that of these
groups of bees there were several hundreds in the hive. The result would
be the destruction of the hive.

It is _above all things_ in the family that the sovereignty of the
people ought to prevail. It ought above all things to refuse to
recognise the association of the family, and to wage war against it
wherever it finds it. It should leave to parents the right of embracing
their children, but nothing more. The right to educate them in ideas
perhaps contrary to those of their parents belongs to the people, which,
here as well as elsewhere, perhaps even more than elsewhere for the
interests at stake are more important, must be absolutely sovereign.

This, then, is what the schoolmaster, with a relentless logic which
appears to me to be irresistible, deduces from the principle of the
national sovereignty.

From the principle of equality he deduces another point. "All men are
equal by nature and before the law." That is to say, if there were
justice, all men ought to have been equal by nature, and further, if
there is to be justice, all men ought to be equal before the law.

Very obviously, however, all men are not equal before the law, and they
are not equal by nature. Very well then, we must make them so.

They are not equal before the law. They appear to be so, but they are
not. The rich man, even supposing that the magistrates are perfectly and
strictly honest, by reason of the fact that he can remunerate the best
solicitors, advocates, and witnesses, by reason further of the fact that
he intimidates by his influence all those who could appear against him,
is not in every respect the equal of the poor man before the law.

E