That men are born equal is still a doctrine openly derided;
that they are born free is not accepted without much nullifying
limitation; that they are born in brotherhood is less readily denied.
These three, the revolutionary words, liberty, equality, fraternity, are
the substance of democracy, if the matter be well considered, and all
else is but consequence.
It might seem singular that man should ever have found out this creed,
as that physical life could invent the brain, since the struggle for
existence in primitive and early times was so adverse to it, and rested
on a selfish and aggrandizing principle, in states as well as between
races. In most parts of the world the first true governments were
tyrannies, patriarchal or despotic; and where liberty was indigenous, it
was confined to the race-blood. Aristotle speaks of slavery without
repugnance save in Greeks, and serfdom was incorporated in the northern
tribes as soon as they began to be socially organized. Some have alleged
that religious equality was an Oriental idea, and borrowed from the
relation of subjects to an Asiatic despot, which paved the way for it;
some attribute civil equality to the Roman law; some find the germ of
both in Stoical morals.
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