ABSTRACT
Like Aristotle, Tocqueville mentions what we now call the failure of empathy between rulers and ruled. In France this failure occurred during the very time that the ruling class heaped ashes on its own collective head over injustices perpetrated on the subject classes. This chapter discusses the tenacious demand for equality and liberty, and it briefly alludes to the search of Frenchmen for “the man of genius destined at once to carry on and to abolish the Revolution.” Tocqueville synthesizes a variety of phenomena. His synthesis has a dynamic, evolutionary quality. Social institutions change and get out of whack with people’s increasingly equalitarian values. It was in times of scarcity that it almost seemed as though the authorities were aiming less at providing relief for the poor than fuel for their passions. Wishing to encourage the rich to show more generosity, an Intendant denounced the lack of human feeling and any sense of justice on the part of landowners.
