ciently important, as I thought, to occupy my entire attention. I
was anxious to study and describe, in their parallel development and
reciprocal action, the various elements of our French society, the Roman
world, the Barbarians, the Christian Church, the Feudal System, the
Papacy, Chivalry, Monarchy, the Commonalty, the Third Estate, and
Reform. I desired not only to satisfy the scientific or philosophic
curiosity of the public, but to accomplish a double end, real and
practical. I proposed to demonstrate that the efforts of our time to
establish a system of equal and legal justice in society, and also of
political guarantees and liberties in the State, were neither new nor
extraordinary,--that in the course of her history, more or less
obscurely or unfortunately, France had at several intervals embraced
this design, and that the generation of 1789, grasping it with
enthusiasm, had committed both good and evil,--good, in resuming the
glorious attempt of their ancestors,--evil in attributing to themselves
the invention and the honour, and in believing that they were called
upon to create, through their own ideas and wishes, a world entirely
new. Thus, while promoting the interests of existing society, I was
desirous of bringing back amongst us a sentiment of justice and sympathy
for our early recollections and ancient customs; for that old French
social system which had lived actively and gloriously for fifteen
centuries, to accumulate the inheritance of civilization which we have
gathered. It is a lamentable mistake, and a great indication of
weakness, in a nation, to forget and despise the past. It may in a
revolutionary crisis rise up against old and defective institutions; but
when this work of destruction is accomplished, if it still continues to
treat its history with contempt, if it persuades itself that it has
completely broken with the secular elements of its civilization, it is
not a new state of society which it can then form, it is the disorder of
revolution that it perpetuates. When the generation who possess their
country for a moment, indulge in the absurd arrogance of believing that
it belongs to them, and them alone; and that the past, in face of the
present, is death opposed to life; when they reject thus the sovereignty
of tradition and the ties which mutually connect successive races, they
deny the distinction and pre-eminent characteristic of human nature, its
honour and elevated destiny; and the peo