Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/98

84 time and the names of the days and the months, differed completely from the old methods of computing time, it set apart new days for holidays, arranged a new style of dress, in short, it built up an entirely new world, in which there was no room for even remembrance of the former historical evolution—and yet, what did it all amount to in the end? Clothing and speech could be altered, but the brain could not be kneaded over again. The Jews born in Egypt were not fitted to colonize Canaan. The inbred habits of centuries had more control over the French, than the laws, although they were sustained by the guillotine, When Mme. Dubarry passed in front of citizen Sanson on the bloody platform she said: "Excuse me, Mr. Executioner." After the close of the Reign of Terror, the men who had amassed millions by plunder and theft, taking advantage of the confiscation of the emigrés' property, and of the other opportunities which came in their way, these men acquired an influence, and were paid an outward respect, which only required the titles of nobility that Napoleon soon gave them, to be in all points an exact imitation of the ancient aristocracy, and hardly had the throes of the earthquake of the revolution subsided, than the structure of society rose up again like Aladdin's palace, with a few new beams and foundation stones, but in its general outline and architectural plan, a duplicate of the old, and as mediaeval as before. Nothing is accomplished by disturbing part of the ancient arrangement of things and leaving the remainder intact. The execution of the inoffensive king, Louis XVI, was an objectless crime, if the French people intended to retain their former conceptions of the universe, with faith in a Supreme Being and an all ruling Providence, reverence for the Bible and a ceremonial worship. An exclusively political revolution, changing merely the form of the government from monarchical to