the law is necessary but inequality, for what is most wanted is an
elevated elite who know the law: not a good government seeking the
happiness of its subjects, but a dignified and overawing government
getting its subjects to obey: not a good law, but a comprehensive
law binding all life to one routine. Later are the ages of freedom;
first are the ages of servitude. In 1789, when the great men of the
Constituent Assembly looked on the long past, they hardly saw
anything in it which could be praised, or admired, or imitated: all
seemed a blunder--a complex error to be got rid of as soon as might
be. But that error had made themselves. On their very physical
organisation the hereditary mark of old times was fixed; their
brains were hardened and their nerves were steadied by the
transmitted results of tedious usages. The ages of monotony had
their use, for they trained men for ages when they need not be
monotonous.

IV.

But even yet we have not realised the full benefit of those early
polities and those early laws. They not only 'bound up' men in
groups, not only impressed on men a certain set of common usages,
but often, at least in an indirect way, suggested, if I may use the
expression, national character.

We cannot yet explain--I am sure, at least, I cannot attempt to
explain--all the singular phenomena of national character: how
completely and perfectly they seem to be at first framed; how
slowly, how gradually they can alone be altered, if they can be
altered at all. But there is one analogous fact which may help us to
see, at least dimly, how such phenomena are caused. There is a