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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: or rather crushed--by their own circumstances, by public opinion,
and by the wants of five senses, common to all alike.
But when M. de Tocqueville attributes this curious fact to the
circumstances of their political state--to that "government of one
man which in the end has the inevitable effect of rendering all men
alike, and all mutually indifferent to their common fate"--we must
differ, even from him: for facts prove the impotence of that, or of
any other circumstance, in altering the hearts and souls of men, in
producing in them anything but a mere superficial and temporary
resemblance.
For all the while there was, among these very French, here and there
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