Man, as is well said, lives by faith; each generation has its own faith, more or less; and laughs at the faith of its predecessor,--most unwisely. Grant indeed that this faith in the Social Contract belongs to the stranger sorts; that an unborn generation may very wisely, if not laugh, yet stare at it, and piously consider. For, alas, what is Contrat? If all men were such that a mere spoken or sworn Contract would bind them, all men were then true men, and Government a superfluity. Not what thou and I have promised to each other, but what the balance of our forces can make us perform to each other: that, in so sinful a world as ours, is the thing to be counted on. But above all, a People and a Sovereign promising to one another; as if a whole People, changing from generation to generation, nay from hour to hour, could ever by any method be made to speak or promise; and to speak mere solecisms: 'We, be the Heavens witness, which Heavens however do no miracles now; we, everchanging Millions, will allow thee, changeful Unit, to force us or govern us!' The world has perhaps seen few faiths comparable to that.

--Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution (1837), First Volume, Part II, Book I, Chapter VII