We force mothers to take their daughters to the meetings of popular clubs.

We oblige women to parade in companies, and march in procession at republican festivals; we invade the family and select the most beautiful to be draped as antique goddesses, and publicly promenaded on a chariot; we sometimes even designate those among the rich who must wed patriots[2118]: there is no reason why marriage, which is the most important of all services, should not be put in requisition like the others .-- Accordingly, we enter families, we carry of the child, we subject him to a civic education.

We are schoolmasters, philanthropists, theologians, and moralists.

We impose by force our religion and our ritual, our morality and our social customs.

We lord it over private lives and consciences; we dictate ideas, we scrutinize and punish secret inclinations, we tax, imprison and guillotine not only the evil-disposed, but again "the indifferent, the moderate and the egoists."[2119] Over and above his visible acts we dictate to the individual his ideas and his deepest feelings; we prescribe to him his affections as well as his beliefs, and, according to a preconceived type, we refashion his intellect, his conscience and his sensibilities.
III.