Teacher.—Thus is the observance of our duty the general condition on which we can alone be worthy of happiness. To be worthy of happiness and to do one’s duty is one and the same thing.
APPENDIX[175] TO CHAPTER VIII.
THE UNION OF CLASSES.
A subject which has attracted much attention, and which is often referred to in conversation, in books, in political assemblies, is the various classes of society; there are upper and lower classes, and between these two, a middle class. We speak of laboring classes, poor classes, rich classes. These are expressions which it were desirable should disappear. They relate to ancient customs, ancient facts, and in the present state of society correspond no longer to situations now all clearly defined. They are vestiges which last long after the facts to which they corresponded have disappeared, and which retained are often followed by grave consequences. They give rise to misunderstanding, false ideas, sentiments more or less blameworthy. I should like to show that in the present state of society, there are no longer any classes, that there are only men, individuals. The word classes, in a strict sense, can be applied only to a state of society where social and natural advantages are conferred by the law to certain men at the expense of others; where some can procure these advantages whilst others never can; where the public burden weighs on a certain class, on a certain number of men, whilst the others are entirely free from it, and this, I repeat, by the sanction of law, and by social organization.
This state of things has existed, with more or less differences and notably great changes, in all past centuries. Its lowest degree is, for example, that where it is impossible for certain men to procure to themselves the goods desired by all, where they can never own any kind of property, however small, where they are themselves considered property; where, instead of being allowed to sell and buy, they are themselves sold and bought, themselves reduced to an object of commerce. This state is that called slavery.
Slavery, in its strict sense, is the state where man is the property of other men, is a thing; where he is bought and sold, and where his work does not belong to him, but to his master.
This state of things existed through all antiquity. Society, with the ancients, was divided into two great classes (the term is here perfectly in its place), classes very unequal in numbers, where the more numerous were the property of the least numerous. The citizens, as they were called, or freemen, who constituted a part of the State, the Republic, had no need of working to make a living, because they owned living instruments of work—men.
This state of things, you well know, did not only exist in antiquity; it was perpetuated till our days, and it is not very long since it still existed in some of the greatest societies of the world. We may consider it at present as wholly done away with.