Again, in these two contiguous groups, which merge into each other, those must be left out who, absorbed in their daily occupations or professions, have no time or thought to give to public matters, who have reached a fair position in the social hierarchy and are not disposed to run risks, almost all of them well-established, steady-going, mature, married folks who have sown their wild oats and whom experience in life has rendered distrustful of themselves and of theories.

Overweening conceit is, most of the time, only average in the average human being, so speculative ideas will with most people only obtain a loose, transient and feeble hold.

Moreover, in this society which, for many centuries consists of people accustomed to being ruled, the hereditary spirit is bourgeois that is to say, used to discipline, fond of order, peaceable and even timid .-- There remains a minority, a very small one,[1201] innovating and restless.

This consisted, on the one hand, of people who were discontented with their calling or profession, because they were of secondary or subaltern rank in it.[1202] Some were debutantes not fully employed and others aspirants for careers not yet entered upon.

Then, on the other hand, there were the men of unstable character and all those who were uprooted by the immense upheaval of things: in the Church, through the suppression of convents and through schism; in the judiciary, in the administration, in the financial departments, in the army, and in various private and public careers, through the reorganization of institutions, through the novelty of fresh resources and occupations, and through the disturbance caused by the changed relationships of patrons and clients.