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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: which appears at first sight to militate against my belief--a
chapter "showing that France was the country in which men had become
most alike."
"The men," he says, "of that time, especially those belonging to the
upper and middle ranks of society, who alone were at all
conspicuous, were all exactly alike."
And it must be allowed, that if this were true of the upper and
middle classes, it must have been still more true of the mass of the
lowest population, who, being most animal, are always most moulded--
or rather crushed--by their own circumstances, by public opinion,
and by the wants of five senses, common to all alike.
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