"Vico had described his achievement as an explanation of 'the formation of human law' and an indication of 'the specific phase and the regular process by which the customs which gave rise to law originally came into being: religions, languages, denominations, commerce, orders, empires, laws, arms, judgments, punishments, wars, peace, alliances.'" (Part 1, Chapter 1, pg. 7)

"The leaders were to find themselves undone by their own internal contradictions between the new and the old - as Michelet, before making his stand, had found himself between his royal patrons and his revolutionary tradition. Michelet was himself the child of that period of paradoxes; and he was to become par excellence the historian of the perplexed personalities and political anomalies peculia4r to an age or social change. This idea of contradictions inside a social system, which is to play, as we shall see, such a prominent role in later social-economic...