Hence, if we should succeed in finding ours, it will only be through a study of ourselves, while the more we understand exactly what we are, the more certainly shall we distinguish what best suits us.
We ought, therefore, to reverse the ordinary methods, and form some conception of the nation before formulating its constitution.

Doubtless the first operation is much more tedious and difficult than the second.
How much time, how much study, how many observations rectified one by the other, how many researches in the past and the present, over all the domains of thought and of action, what manifold and age-long labors before we can obtain an accurate and complete idea of a great people.

A people which has lived a people's age, and which still lives! But it is the only way to avoid the unsound construction based on a meaningless planning.

I promised myself that, for my own part, if I should some day undertake to form a political opinion, it would be only after having studied France.
What is contemporary France?
To answer this question we must know how this France is formed, or, what is still better, to act as spectator at its formation.

At the end of the last century (in 1789), like a molting insect, it underwent a metamorphosis.