Let, then, these silly aristocrats abolish mercantile societies and insurance companies, which are founded by prudence for mutual assistance.

For all these social facts, so spontaneous and free from all levelling intentions, are the legitimate fruits of the instinct of equality.
When the legislator makes a law, properly speaking he does not MAKE it,--he does not CREATE it: he DESCRIBES it.

In legislating upon the moral, civil, and political relations of citizens, he does not express an arbitrary notion: he states the general idea,--the higher principle which governs the matter which he is considering; in a word, he is the proclaimer, not the inventor, of the law.

So, when two or more men form among themselves, by synallagmatic contract, an industrial or an insurance association, they recognize that their interests, formerly isolated by a false spirit of selfishness and independence, are firmly connected by their inner natures, and by the mutuality of their relations.

They do not really bind themselves by an act of their private will: they swear to conform henceforth to a previously existing social law hitherto disregarded by them.