the ancient system, they constitute a provisional state,
necessary to the introduction of a new political organization.

"By a necessity as evident as it is deplorable, a necessity
inherent in our feeble nature, the transition from one social
system to another can never be direct and continuous; it
supposes always, during some generations at least, a sort of
interregnum, more or less anarchical, whose character and
duration depend on the importance and extent of the renovation
to be effected. (While the old system remains standing, though
undermined, the public reason cannot become familiarized with a
class of ideas entirely opposed to it.) In this necessity we
see the legitimate source of the present _doctrine critique_--a
source which at once explains the indispensable services it has
hitherto rendered, and also the essential obstacles it now
opposes to the final reorganization of modern societies....

"Under whatever aspect we regard it, the general spirit of the
metaphysic revolutionary system consists in erecting into a
normal and permanent state a necessarily exceptional and
transitory condition. By a direct and total subversion of
political notions, the most fundamental, it represents
government as being, by its nature, the necessary enemy of
society, against which it sedulously places itself in a
constant state of suspicion and watchfulness; it is disposed
incessantly to restrain more and more its sphere of activity,
in order to prevent its encroachments, and tends finally to
leave it no other than the simple functions of general police,
without any essential participation in the supreme direction of
the action of the collective body or of its social development.