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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: so perpetuate itself. But the same moral reason which would make
such a caste dangerous--indeed, fatal to the liberty and development
of mankind, makes it happily impossible. Crimes and follies are
certain, after a few generations, to weaken the powers of any human
caste; and unless it supplements its own weakness by mingling again
with the common stock of humanity, it must sink under that weakness,
as the ancient noblesse sank by its own vice. Of course there were
exceptions. The French Revolution brought those exceptions out into
strong light; and like every day of judgment, divided between the
good and the evil. But it lies not in exceptions to save a caste,
or an institution; and a few Richelieus, Liancourts, Rochefoucaulds,
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