"Montaigne said long ago: "Were I not to follow the straight road for its straightness, I should follow it for having found by experience that in the… - Alexis de Tocqueville

Our contemporaries are constantly wracked by two warring passions: they feel the need to be led and the desire to remain free. Unable to destroy either of these contrary instincts, they seek to satisfy both at once. They imagine a single, omnipotent, tutelary power, but one that is elected by the citizens. They combine centralization with popular sovereignty. This gives them some respite. They console themselves for being treated as wards by imagining that they have chosen their own protectors. Each individual allows himself to be clapped in chains because that the other end of the chain is held not by a man or a class but by the people themselves.

Our life is like to dice, which ever fall
In varying combinations; no one form
Has man's existence, but 'tis full of change.

In the midst of the apparent diversity of human affairs, a certain number of primary facts may be discovered, from which all others are derived.