Few peoples have succeeded in effecting a just equilibrium
between these two contrary qualities of stability and
malleability. The Romans in antiquity and the English in modern
times may be cited among those who have best attained it.

The peoples whose mind is most fixed and established often effect
the most violent revolutions. Not having succeeded in evolving
progressively, in adapting themselves to changes of environment,
they are forced to adapt themselves violently when such
adaptation becomes indispensable.

Stability is only acquired very slowly. The history of a race is
above all the story of its long efforts to establish its mind.
So long as it has not succeeded it forms a horde of barbarians
without cohesion and strength. After the invasions of the end of
the Roman Empire France took several centuries to form a national
soul.

She finally achieved one; but in the course of centuries this
soul finally became too rigid. With a little more malleability,
the ancient monarchy would have been slowly transformed as it was
elsewhere, and we should have avoided, together with the
Revolution and its consequences, the heavy task of remaking a
national soul.

The preceding considerations show us the part of race in the
genesis of revolutions, and explain why the same revolutions will
produce such different effects in different countries; why, for
example, the ideas of the French Revolution, welcomed with