They have not merely the character of the old Napoleon,
but the old Napoleon himself-caricatured as he needs must appear in the
middle of the nineteenth century.
The social revolution of the nineteenth century can not draw its poetry
from the past, it can draw that only from the future. It cannot start
upon its work before it has stricken off all superstition concerning
the past. Former revolutions require historic reminiscences in order
to intoxicate themselves with their own issues. The revolution of the
nineteenth century must let the dead bury their dead in order to reach
its issue. With the former, the phrase surpasses the substance; with
this one, the substance surpasses the phrase.
The February revolution was a surprisal; old society was taken unawares;
and the people proclaimed this political stroke a great historic act
whereby the new era was opened. On the 2d of December, the February
revolution is jockeyed by the trick of a false player, and what is seer
to be overthrown is no longer the monarchy, but the liberal concessions
which had been wrung from it by centuries of struggles.
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