[83] This man, through the nature of things,
imposed himself on the attention, confidence, and deference of his
peers, and, because he was their natural representative, he was their
legal representative.
Upon the whole, if, in this old society, the pressure was unequally
distributed, if the general equilibrium was unstable, if the upper
parts bore down too heavily on the lower ones, the sorting, at least,
which goes on in every civilized State, constantly separating the
wheat from the chaff, went on tolerably well; except at the center and
at the Court, where the winnowing machine had worked haphazard and,
frequently, in an opposite sense for a century, the separation
proceeded regularly, undoubtedly slower, but, perhaps, more equitably
than in our contemporary democracy. The chance that a notable by
right could become a notable de facto was then much greater: it was
less difficult, and the inclination to found, maintain and perpetuate
a family or a business was much stronger; people looked more often
beyond themselves; the eyes naturally turned outside the narrow circle
of one's personality, looking backward as well as beyond this present
life. The (later) institution of an equal partition of property, the
(later) system of obligatory partition and the rule of partition in
kind, with other prescriptions of the (new) civil code, did not split
up an heritage and ruin the home.
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