An imperceptible fraction may, in certain cases, constitute an enormity.  Again, the value of a standard, not the specific or numerical value which is an invariable basis, but the relative or moral value, must be deduced from the importance of the medium to which it applies.  For instance:  Five hundred men constitute a very good army in the midst of a peaceful population; and this handful of soldiers exerts, indeed, more moral power than the multitudes restrained under their government.  A smile coming from the lips of a sovereign leaves in the soul that it penetrates a far deeper trace than all the demonstrations of a common or vulgar crowd.  The traveler, detained by the winter in the polar regions, finds that he is warm and takes pleasure in the discovery, though at the time the thermometer marks 10 degrees below zero.

The atmosphere of a cave that we find warm in winter seems to us, without being modified in the least, of an icy coldness in summer.

The large quantity of alcohol that laboring people consume would ruin the health of less strongly constituted persons.

To conclude, then, these examples prove beyond dispute that one can only appreciate the importance of an act when he takes into account the nature of its agents, and that without these considerations he will be obliged to give up immediately all serious estimation of these manifestations.

Here I touch, it seems to me, a law of harmony, a curious law that I wish to examine incidentally.  I shall, then, occupy myself with the objections that may, perhaps, be opposed even yet to the thermometric system of the shoulder

Episode VII.

The foregoing study has, as it seems, established an important fact, namely, that among the various classes of men which make up society there is no common standard of measure.  It, therefore, appears impossible, at first sight, to establish a harmonious scale of relations between so many various circles.

However, if these circles, whatever their differences may be, were specified and sufficiently known; if I could, for example, judge a priori of the style and mode of activity adapted to each class of society; in a word, if it were possible for me to characterize each of its classes dynamically, should I not succeed in ascertaining a proportionate gamut or scale among them, and thereby should I not be enabled securely to apply the principles established above?

Let us say, to begin with, that if each social sphere affects a determinate character in the intensity of its passional evolutions, it has, in consequence, its special gamut; then, as many spheres as there are, so many gamuts must there be.  Now, all these gamuts taken together must form a scale of proportion in virtue of which they may be characterized.  That is obvious.  But the difficulty is to prove the mode or first tonality of these gamuts.  How are we to set to work?

I cut short, for the clearness of my demonstrations, the recital of the events through which I have been obliged to pass before realizing even my earliest observations.  I shall set forth, plainly and simply, the final result of my studies; and it will be seen, in spite of the many difficulties that may arise, with what absolute certainty the principles I have established can be applied.