ABSTRACT
European history, despite the abundance of its cultural creations, had time and again been witness to serious derailments, since in all too many cases the person or institution of the ruler had determined the life of the individual. In America, by contrast, the Social Contract applied to great and small alike. It was the individual, in theory as in practice, who seized the initiative in shaping society and in ordering individual and collective affairs. A less gifted individual would have seen, in place of an archaic culture and stirring humanity, a heap of repulsive customs and dirt. Yet the story is preserved in written material, above all in letters to and from personalities who, each in his own way, dealt with the peasant world in different countries and cultures. The essay "La Miseria" may have delivered the initial spark to the exchanges; yet it is remarkable that the author of that essay is an expert in neither sociology nor anthropology.
