The aim of the preceding chapters was simply to illuminate the subject and lay the groundwork for an answer to the question that I posed at the outset: What was the true purpose of the Revolution? What, in the end, was its intrinsic character? Why exactly did it occur? What did it do?

The purpose of the Revolution was not, as some have thought, to break religion's grip on human beliefs. It was, in spite of appearances, essentially a social and political revolution. In contrast to other, similar institutions, its effect was not to perpetuate disorder, somehow to make it stable, or, to borrow a phrase from one of its principal adversaries, to “impose method” on anarchy. Rather, it tended to increase the power and prerogatives of public authority. It was not obliged, as others have supposed, to change the character of our civilization or halt its progress or even modify in any essential way any of the fundamental laws underlying our western societies. When we isolate the Revolution from all the contingencies that momentarily altered its aspect in various times and places and consider it only as it was in itself, we see clearly that its sole effect was to abolish the political institutions, usually called feudal, that had for centuries reigned unopposed in most of the nations of Europe, and to replace them with a simpler and more uniform social and political order based on equality of conditions.