Page 2003 - les-miserables

neither father nor mother, Feuilly; you adopted humanity
for your mother and right for your father. You are about
to die, that is to say to triumph, here. Citizens, whatever
happens to-day, through our defeat as well as through our
victory, it is a revolution that we are about to create. As con-
flagrations light up a whole city, so revolutions illuminate
the whole human race. And what is the revolution that we
shall cause? I have just told you, the Revolution of the True.
From a political point of view, there is but a single princi-
ple; the sovereignty of man over himself. This sovereignty
of myself over myself is called Liberty. Where two or three
of these sovereignties are combined, the state begins. But
in that association there is no abdication. Each sovereign-
ty concedes a certain quantity of itself, for the purpose of
forming the common right. This quantity is the same for all
of us. This identity of concession which each makes to all, is
called Equality. Common right is nothing else than the pro-
tection of all beaming on the right of each. This protection
of all over each is called Fraternity. The point of intersection
of all these assembled sovereignties is called society. This
intersection being a junction, this point is a knot. Hence
what is called the social bond. Some say social contract;
which is the same thing, the word contract being etymo-
logically formed with the idea of a bond. Let us come to an
understanding about equality; for, if liberty is the summit,
equality is the base. Equality, citizens, is not wholly a sur-
face vegetation, a society of great blades of grass and tiny
oaks; a proximity of jealousies which render each other null
and void; legally speaking, it is all aptitudes possessed of the

2003