of your
fellow-creatures--by the force of things, the law of inequality,
that odious law, those odious combinations, the thought of which
poisons my sweetest domestic joys and revolts me against myself at
every moment. I can only find consolation in vowing to go on
writing as long as I have a breath of life left in me, against the
infamous maxim, "_Chacun chez soi, chacun pour soi_." Since all I
can do is to make this protest, make it I shall, in every key.

Her republican friends in Berry had founded in 1844 a local journal for
the spread of liberal ideas--such as Lamartine at the time was
supporting at Macon. Madame Sand readily contributed her services to a
cause where she labored for the enlightenment of the masses on all
subjects--truth, justice, religion, liberty, fraternity, duties, and
rights. The government of Louis Philippe, so long as such utterances
attacked no definite institution, allowed an almost illimitable freedom
in expression of opinion. The result was that thought had advanced so
far ahead of action that social philosophers had grown to argue as
though practical obstacles had no existence--to be rudely reminded of
their consequence, when brought to the front in 1848, and acting
somewhat too much as if on that supposition.

It is impossible not to make concerning Madame Sand, the reflection made
on other foremost workers in the same cause of organic social
reform--namely, that her character and her instincts were in curious
opposition to her ideas. What was said by Madame d'Agoult of Louis Blanc
applies with even greater force to George Sand: "The sentiment of
personality was never stronger than in this opposer of individualism,
communist theories had for their champion one most unfit to be absorbed
into the community." For no length of time was the idea of "communism"
accepted, and never was it advocated by her except in the most
restricted sense. The land-hunger, or rather land-greed, of the small
proprietors in her neighborhood had, it is true, given her a certain
disgust for these contested possessions. But from the preference of a
small child for a garden of its own however small, to another's however
large, she characteristically infers the instinct of property as a law
of nature it were preposterous to disallow, and furthermore she lays
down as an axiom that, "in treating the communistic idea it is necessary
first to distinguish what is essential in liberty