It endured for a limited time, if we measure by the
life of the race; it endured for an unlimited time if we measure by the
lives of the men who were born and died while it endured.
"But that disorder, cruel and fierce and stupid, which endured because it
sometimes masked itself as order, did at last pass away. Here and there
one of the strong overpowered the rest; then the strong became fewer and
fewer, and in their turn they all yielded to a supreme lord, and
throughout the land there was one rule, as it was called then, or one
misrule, as we should call it now. This rule, or this misrule, continued
for ages more; and again, in the immortality of the race, men toiled and
struggled, and died without the hope of better things.
"Then the time came when the long nightmare was burst with the vision of a
future in which all men were the law, and not one man, or any less number
of men than all.
"The poor dumb beast of humanity rose, and the throne tumbled, and the
sceptre was broken, and the crown rolled away into that darkness of the
past. We thought that heaven had descended to us, and that liberty,
equality, and fraternity were ours.
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