It is like some tree of a unique species whose trunk, thickened by age, preserves in its annual rings and in its knots, branches, and curvatures, the deposits which its sap has made and the imprint of the innumerable seasons through which it has passed.
Using the philosophic definition, so vague and trite, to such an organism, is only a puerile label teaching us nothing .-- And all the more because extreme diversities and inequalities show themselves on this exceedingly elaborate and complicated background,--those of age, education, faith, class and fortune; and these must be taken into account, for these contribute to the formation of interests, passions, and dispositions.

To take only the most important of these, it is clear that, according to the average of human life,[2211] one-half of the population is composed of children, and, besides this, one-half of the adults are women.

In every twenty inhabitants eighteen are Catholic, of whom sixteen are believers, at least through habit and tradition.
Twenty-five out of twenty-six millions of Frenchmen cannot read, one million at the most being able to do so; and in political matters only five or six hundred are competent.

As to the condition of each class, its ideas, its sentiments, its kind and degree of culture, we should have to devote a large volume to a mere sketch of them.
There is still another feature and the most important of all.

These men who are so different from each other are far from being independent, or from contracting together for the first time.