the religious idea that explains and sustains it, what a disturbance
in the secular system formed by the co-ordination and mutual
adaptation of laws, customs, morality, and institutions! What a
rupture of the inward equilibrium which maintains man passive and
tranquil! The consequent mental agitation will lead to agitation,
impulsion, ambitions, lassitude, despondency, and disorder in all the
sentiments which had thus far maintained every species of society, the
family, the commune, the Church, free association and the State! -
Now, along with the immediate effects of science on the intellectual
habits of men consider the effects of its application to their
material condition; at first, their increased well-being, their power
increased, then the rupture of the ties that bind them to their
birthplace, the concentration of masses of workmen in the towns to
which they are attracted by great and rapid industrial development,
the influx of new ideas, of every species of information, the gradual
decline of the old hereditary prejudices of caste and parish which act
automatically as instincts, and are useful as instincts to the small
groups in which the individual is born and in which he lives. How
could such a profound change in the condition of humanity fail to
undermine everywhere the order of things which group men together? Why
should not the new milieu at once attack all ancient forms of society?
For, at the moment of its establishment, there exists in Europe a
general form of society manifest through features in common; a
monarchy - hereditary royalty, dynastic but frequently limited, at
least in fact, - a privileged nobility performing military service as
a special function, a clergy organized as a Church, proprietary and
more or less privileged, local or special bodies also proprietary -
provinces, communes, universities, brotherhoods, corporations - laws
and customs which base the family on paternal authority, perpetuating
it on the natal soil and by social rank; in brief, institutions which