A. The Immaculate Conception of the Individual

            In its liberal and individualistic phase, the Revolution taught that man is endowed with an infallible reason, a strong will, and orderly passions. Hence the concept of a human order in which the individual-supposedly a perfect being-was everything and the State nothing, or almost nothing, a necessary evil .. . provisionally necessary, perhaps. It was the period when it was thought that ignorance was the only cause of errors and crimes, that the way to close prisons was to open schools. The immaculate conception of the individual was the basic dogma of these illusions.

            The liberal's great weapon against the potential predominance of the State and the formation of cliques that might remove him from the direction of public affairs was political freedom and universal suffrage.