of the tribe.

As nothing is complicated and systematized among them, the political
system must be extremely simple, and based entirely on the family.
And family ideas being as absolute as they are simple, the political
system also becomes absolute and lasting; without improving, it is
true, but also without the constant changes which bring misery
with revolution to thoughtful, reflective, and systematic nations.
What a frightful amount of misfortunes has not logic, as it is
called, brought upon the French! It was in the name of logical
and metaphysical principles that the fabric of society was destroyed
a hundred years ago, to make room for what was then called a more
rationally-constituted edifice; but the new building is not yet
finished, and God only knows when it will be!

The few axioms lying at the base of the Celtic mind with respect
to government are much preferable, because much more conducive
to stability, and consequently to peace and order, whatever may
have been the local agitation and temporary feuds and divisions.
Hence we see the permanence of the supreme authority resting in
one family among the Celts through so many ages, in spite of
continual wrangling for that supreme power. Hence the permanence
of territorial limits in spite of lasting feuds, although territory
was not invested in any particular inheriting family, but in a
purely moral being called the clan or sept.

As for the moral and social feelings in those tribes, they are
not drawn coldly from the mind, and sternly imposed by the external
law, in the form of axioms and enactments, as was the case chiefly
in Sparta, and as is still the case in the Chinese Empire to-day;