mselves need explanation, and for this we have
again to fall back upon this inevitable human nature. The French
Revolution was directed along a certain line, because human nature was
so and so.

One of two things. Either human nature is, as Morelly thought,
invariable, and then it explains nothing in history, which shows us
constant variations in the relations of man to society; or it does vary
according to the circumstances in which men live, and then, far from
being the _cause_, it is itself the _effect_ of historical evolution.
The French Materialists knew well enough that man is the product of his
social surroundings. "Man is all education," said Helvetius. This would
lead one to suppose that Helvetius must have abandoned the human nature
point of view in order to study the laws of the evolution of the
environment that fashion human nature, giving to socialised man such or
such an "education." And indeed Helvetius did make some efforts in this
direction. But not he, nor his contemporaries, nor the Socialists of the
first half of our century, nor any representatives of science of the
same period, succeeded in discovering a new point of view that should
permit the study of the evolution of the social environment; the cause
of the historical "education" of man, the cause of the changes which
occur in his "nature." They were thus forced back upon the human nature
point of view as the only one that seemed to supply them with a fairly
solid basis for their scientific investigations. But since human nature
in its turn varied, it became indispensable to make abstraction from its
variations, and to seek in nature only stable properties, fundamental
properties preserved in spite of all changes of its secondary
properties. And in the end all that these speculations resulted in was a
meagre abstraction, like that of the philosophers, _e.g._, "man is a
sentient and reasonable being," which seemed all the more precious a
discovery in that it left plenty of room for every gratuitous
hypothesis, and every fantastical conclusion.

A Guizot had no need to seek for the best of social organisations for a
perfect legislation. He was perfectly satisfied with the existing ones.
And assuredly the most powerful argument he could have advanced to
defend them from the attacks of the malcontents would still have been
human nature, which he would have said renders every serious change in
the social and political constitution of France impossib