each one of whom finds a continual necessity for a crowd of
notions, to the formation of which he must remain a stranger,
and which he cannot admit but on the faith of others. By what
monstrous exception can this elementary condition of all
society be banished from that total association of mankind,
where the point of view which the individual takes, is most
widely separated from that point of view which the collective
interest requires, and where each member is the least capable,
whether by nature or position, to form a just appreciation of
these general rules, indispensable to the good direction of his
personal activity. Whatever intellectual development we may
suppose possible, in the mass of men it is evident, that social
order will remain always necessarily incompatible with the
permanent liberty left to each, to throw back every day into
endless discussion the first principles even of society....

"The dogma of _equality_ is the most essential and the most
influential after that which I have just examined, and is,
besides, in necessary relation to the principle of the
unrestricted liberty of judgment; for this last indirectly
leads to the conclusion of an equality of the most fundamental
character--an equality of intelligence. In its bearing on the
ancient system, it has happily promoted the development of
modern civilization, by presiding over the final dissolution of
the old social classification. But this function constitutes
the sole progressive destination of this energetic dogma, which
tends in its turn to prevent every just reorganization, since
its destructive activity is blindly directed against the basis
of every new classification. For, whatever that basis may be,
it cannot be reconciled with a pretended equality, which, to