Chapter 1: About the Spirit of the Legislator

I say it, and it seems to me that I have made this work only to prove it: the spirit of moderation must be that of the legislator; the political good, like the moral good, is only found between two extremes. Here is an example.

The forms of justice are necessary for liberty. But their number could be so great that it would obstruct the goals that the laws themselves would have established: processes could have no end; the ownership of property could remain indeterminate; they could give one party the property of another without inquiry, or they could ruin both of them in the process of inquiry.

The citizens could lose their liberty and their safety, the complainants would no longer have the means to convince, and neither would the accused have the means to defend themselves.

Chapter 2: Continuing the Same Subject

Cecilius in Aulus-Gellius (a), discussing the Law of the Twelve Tables, which allowed the creditor to cut the insolvent debtor into morsels, justifies it by its very atrocity, which prevented that folk might borrow beyond their means (b). The cruelest laws, then, will be the best? The good will be the extreme, and all the relations of things will be destroyed?

Chapter 3: The Laws Which Seem to Distance Themselves from the Legislator's Aims Are Often Conformed to Them

Solon's law, which outlawed everyone who took no part in a sedition, seemed most extraordinary: but it's necessary to notice the circumstances in which Greece found itself in that era. It was divided into very small States: it was to be feared that in a republic stirred by civil dissensions, the most prudent folk might shelter themselves and lest things by that would be borne to an extremity.

In seditions that occurred in those petty states, the mass of the city entered the quarrel, or made it. In our large monarchies factions are formed by few folk, and the people would want to live uninvolved. In that case, it is natural to return the seditious into the mass of the citizens, not the mass of the citizens to the seditious: in the other case, it is necessary to unite the small number of wise and tranquil folk with the seditious: thus it is that the fermentation of one spirit can be halted by a single drop of another.

Kehbuma Langmia has given us a penetrating look into his thinking about the complex issue of race in modern Western society. This is not an easy subject, and every corner has its own threats of derailment from the highway of truth about human nature. I have read his text and arrived at several conclusions that might assist the reader's reflection. As Nah Dove and I pointed out in our book, Being Human Being: Transforming the Race Discourse, the history of race, as Langmia notes, is long and enmeshed in the political and cultural era in which it started and evolved. Starting with the classification system introduced by the Vedas as the varnas of Indian and being augmented by the monotheistic exclusionary religions of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, the idea of those who were inside and those who were outside took hold of the human population and has wreaked havoc for centuries. How one detaches from the wiry fingers of an all-encompassing monster such as race, given the fact that the evangelists of the ideology of white racial domination have not slept for a long time, is the ultimate quest of the questions raised by Kehbuma Langmia.

While I am struck by Langmia's candor, his directness, and his enthusiasm to present his ideas, one sees evidence that the work could be more nuanced, but then we would have missed the point of the author in creating and developing the work along lines that would shake the reader. To that end, I will be the first to admit that I am indeed awakened to the fact that we have rarely thought in terms that are introduced in this book. It is full of verve, energy, and insight.

Clearly, Langmia's book seeks to problematize the questions of race, domination, patriarchy, and racial rankings. At the very dawn of classification in the varna system of India when Hindu religion enshrined distinctions between people, largely based on complexion, humans who assumed a sense of superiority over others had to make castes that locked those of “lesser” value in their roles in perpetuity. This was as early as the establishment of the Vedas and may have been around 2200 BCE. Thus, Langmia's work is exploratory in the field of conceptual reorientation.

Chapter 1: About Civil Slavery

Slavery, properly speaking, is the establishment of a right which renders one man so much subject to another man that the latter is the absolute master of the former's life and property. It is not good by its nature. It is useful neither for the master nor for the slave, because, in the case of the latter, he is unable to achieve anything through virtue and, in the case of the former, he contracts from his slaves all sorts of bad habits which imperceptibly habituate him to fail in all the moral virtues, as he becomes proud, hasty, severe, angry, sensuous, and cruel.

In despotic countries, where one is already subjected to political slavery, civil slavery is more tolerable than elsewhere. There, each person must be sufficiently content to have his subsistence and life. Thus, the slave's condition is hardly more burdensome than the subject's condition.

But, under monarchical government, in which it is of sovereign importance neither to humble nor to cheapen human nature, there must not be any slaves. Under democracy, in which everybody is equal, and under aristocracy, in which the laws ought to strive that everybody be as equal as the government's nature may permit, slaves are contrary to the constitution's spirit. They serve only to impart to citizens an authority and luxury which they ought not to have.

Chapter 2: An Origin of the Right of Slavery Among the Roman Jurisconsults

One would never believe that it was pity which had established slavery, and that, to that end it pursued three approaches (a).

The law of nations intended that prisoners would be slaves, in order that one might not kill them. Roman civil law permitted debtors, whose creditors were able to mistreat them, to sell themselves. And natural law intended that the children, whom a slave father could no longer feed, would be in slavery like their father.

These reasons of the jurisconsults are not thoughtful. [1] It is false that it were allowed to kill in war, apart from the case of necessity. But, from the moment that one man has enslaved another one is unable to say that he would have been under the necessity to kill him, since he did not do so.

Chapter 1: General Idea of This Book

The corruption of each government almost always begins with that of the principles.

Chapter 2: About the Corruption of the Principle of Democracy

The principle of democracy becomes corrupt not only when some lose the spirit of equality, but also when some assume the spirit of extreme equality, and each person wishes to be equal to them that he chose to command him. For then, the people, being unable to endure even the power which they entrust, intend to do everything [by] themselves, to deliberate for the senate, to enforce for the magistrates, and to dispossess all the judges.

There can no longer be virtue in the republic. The people intend to perform the magistrates’ functions; therefore, they no longer respect them. The senate's deliberations no longer have weight; therefore, they no longer show regard for the senators and, consequently, for the elderly. Now if folk do not have respect for the elderly, neither will they have any for fathers. Husbands no more deserve deference, nor master further submission. Everyone will come to love this libertinism. The bother of commanding will fatigue, like that of obeying. Women, children, and slaves will be submissive to none. There will be no more morals, no more love of order, in sum no more virtue.

One sees in Xenophon's Symposium a most naive portrait of a republic in which the people have abused equality. Each symposiast in turn gives the reason why he is happy. “I am happy,” Charmides said, “because of my poverty. When I was rich, I was forced to pay court to villifiers, knowing full well that I was more in a position to receive evil from them than to do them any. The republic always demanded some new sum from me; I was unable to escape. Since I became poor I have acquired authority. No one threatens me; I threaten others. I can leave them or stay with them. Already the rich rise from their places and yield to my step. I am a king; I was a slave. I paid tribute to the republic; today it feeds me. I no longer fear to lose; I expect to acquire.”290

The people fall into this misfortune when they in whom the people confide, intending to hide their own corruption, seek to corrupt the people.

Examining the question of the laws of nature within Montesquieu requires that one review the familiar arguments concerning what Montesquieu himself owes to the writers on natural law, the list of whom is sufficiently long: Spinoza, Hobbes, Descartes, Locke, “the atheists,” the “apriorists,” or indeed Newton.116 Putting aside these subtle inquiries, it seems to us possible to make a Newtonian Montesquieu through a means both shorter and more certain. There exists between a supposed minor essay by Montesquieu, “Essay Concerning the Natural Laws and the Distinction between Justice and Injustice,” and the ideas of Newton, such as they appeared in the essay, “Concerning Gravity and the Balance of Fluids,” such a close relationship that the two deserve to be treated as if resulting from a single hand. This is to say that defining the central idea of Newton is, in effect, equivalent to defining the basis of the reasonings of Montesquieu. But there, we run up against a problem: the essay by Montesquieu might not be his at all, at least if one clings to the judgment of the modern authors who are most listened to.117 Certainly, one finds within Montesquieu the same lesson in Book One of The Spirit of the Laws, where Montesquieu affirms that man is like all other natural bodies, “following the relations of mass and velocity.” Nevertheless, the affirmations of this book are less precise than those of the “Essay Concerning the Natural Laws,” and what is more, we do not encounter any reason to cling to the authority of the authors, since there exists otherwise the means to establish the paternity of Montesquieu for this essay. Thus, we offer here a summary sketch of the Newtonian principle from which Montesquieu has derived a republicanism completely modern although natural. Following that, we define the general principle governing the origins and the end of societies, and finally, we explain how one arrives at attributing with probability the “Essay” and its ideas to Montesquieu.

Newton rejected Descartes's idea of one simple, mechanical motion, where self-movement was an illusion and the philosophical motion nothing more than a transfer or exchange of bodies, one for one. Moreover, he rejected the idea that space and extension are the same thing, which the res extensa assumes.

Chapter 1: An Idea for This Book

It is not sufficient to have discussed political liberty in its relationship to the constitution. It is necessary to show it in the relationship it has with the citizen.

I have said that, in the first case, it is created by a certain distribution of the three powers. But, in the second, it is necessary to examine it under another aspect. It consists of the safety—or, at least of the opinion one holds about his safety.

It will possibly occur that the constitution will be free, while the citizen will not. The citizen will possibly be free, while the constitution will not. In these cases, the constitution will be free in right but not in fact, and the citizen will be free in fact but not in right.

It is only the arrangement of the laws, and even of the fundamental laws, that creates liberty in relationship to the constitution. But in relation to the citizen, morals, manners, and received examples can cause it to arise. And certain civil laws encourage it, as we are going to see in the present book.

Further, in most states, liberty being more hobbled, shocked, or overthrown than the constitution requires, it is good to talk about the particular laws which, in each constitution, are able to assist or injure the principle of liberty to which each of them may be susceptible. Chapter 2: About the Citizen's Liberty

Philosophical liberty consists of the exercise of one's will, or at least (if it is necessary to speak in every system) of the opinion which one has that he is exercising his will. Political liberty consists of safety, or at least of the opinion one holds about his safety.

That safety is never attacked more than in public or private accusations. Therefore, it is upon the goodness of the criminal laws that the citizen's liberty mainly depends.

The criminal laws were not perfected all at once. Even in the places where they have most sought liberty, they have not always found it. Aristotle (a) tells us that, at Cumae, the accuser's relatives were able to be witnesses. Under the Roman kings, the law was so imperfect that Servius Tullus declared the sentence against Ancus Martius’ children, [who] were charged with having assassinated his father-in-law, the king (b).

Chapter 1: Difference Between the Government's Nature and Its Principle

After having examined what are the laws relative to the nature of each government, it is necessary to see those which are relative to its principle.

There is this difference (a) between the government's nature and its principle: its nature is that which makes it be such and such; its principle that which makes it act. The one is its particular structure and the other the human passions which cause it to move.

Now, the laws ought to be no less relative to each government's principle than to its nature. Therefore it is necessary to look for this principle. That is what I am going to do in the present book.

Chapter 2: About the Principle of the Different Governments

I have said that the nature of republican government is that there the body of the people or of certain families would have sovereign authority. That of monarchical government is that the prince would have sovereign authority but would exercise it in accord with established laws. That of despotic government is that a single person would govern according to his will and caprice. I need nothing more to discover their principles. They derive naturally from their natures. I will start with republican government, and I will speak first of the democratic.

Chapter 3: About the Principle of Democracy

Not much probity is required to allow a monarchical government or a despotic government to maintain or sustain itself. The strength of the laws in one, the constantly upraised arm of the prince in the other regulate or restrain everything. But, in a popular state a further resource is necessary; that is, VIRTUE.

What I say is confirmed by the whole body of history and is most conformable to the nature of things. For it is clear that, in a monarchy, where he who makes the laws regards himself as above the laws, one requires less virtue than in a popular state, where he who causes the laws to be enforced feels that he is subject to them himself, and that he will bear the weight of them.

It is also clear that the monarch who, by bad advice or by negligence, ceases to cause the execution of the laws, can easily repair the evil.

Because Montesquieu concluded Book 11 by invoking the comprehensive meaning of police or politeia it were well to pause in this analysis to consider just what the making of a politeia might look like in Montesquieu's theory. James Madison famously argued that Montesquieu could not be taken as a guide in shaping a republic, inasmuch as he had never created or, for that matter, experienced life under a republic.34 Moreover, in Federalist 47 Madison deflected attention from Montesquieu's arguments in EL 11.6 to consult the model itself, England. One inquires, accordingly, whether Montesquieu really does suffice as theory of constitution making, providing a comprehensive account of a way of life. In answer to that inquiry, we will scan briefly the experience in the United States, and then turn to the books (12–19) of Spirit of the Laws that lay out the terms responding to the question of whether constitution making is possible.

Returning to the separation of powers, therefore, we see a context in which it can acquire a functional meaning. None serves the purpose better than the implementation of a regime of separation of powers and balances and checks in the United States. Although the classical statement of the meaning and operation of those principles is found in The Federalist Papers (1788), certain aspects of the initiation of the government, and especially George Washington's understanding, serve best to establish the context we need.

The U.S. Constitution mandates that the executive branch will seek the “advice and consent” of the Senate to treaties with foreign powers. Thus, Washington as president once determined to “advise and consult” with the Senate on a treaty matter involving negotiations with Indian tribes. Accompanied by his secretary of war, Henry Knox, the president presented himself before the Senate while the clerk read out the main points that concerned Washington—thus seeking a point-by-point constitutional “advice and consent.” Following this dramatic entrance, Washington was ushered out of the chamber and cooled his heels outside while what was later to become known as the “world's greatest deliberative body” debated how to proceed.

Realizing he had made a mistake that could limit the power and authority of future presidents, the president turned on his heels and left the building—never to return personally before the Senate for such purposes.

Chapter 1: About the Education Laws

Education laws are the first that we receive. And inasmuch as they prepare us to be citizens, each individual family ought to be governed on the model of the great family which comprises them all.

If the people in general have a principle, the parts which compose the people, that is, the families, will also have the principle. Education laws, therefore, will be different in each species of government. In monarchies they will have honor as their object; in republics, virtue; in despotism, fear.

Chapter 2: About Education in Monarchies

It is not in the public institutions where folk instruct the youths that, in a monarchy, one receives the main education. It is when one enters the world that education, in a manner of speaking, begins. There is the school of what they call honor, that universal master which must guide us everywhere.

That is where one sees and always hears three things said: that it is necessary to place in virtues a certain nobility, in morals a certain frankness, and in manners a certain politeness.

The virtues that are shown to us there are always less what one owes to others than that which one owes to himself. They are not so much what draw us towards our fellow citizens as that which distinguishes us from them.

There one does not judge men's deeds as good, but as beautiful; not as just, but as great; not as reasonable, but as extraordinary.

From the moment honor can discover something of nobility in a monarchy, it is either the judge that legitimates or the sophist that justifies it.

Honor permits gallantry whenever it is connected with sentiments of the heart or the idea of conquest; and that is the true reason why morals are never so pure in a monarchy as in republican governments.

Honor allows for ruse whenever it is connected with the idea of greatness of mind or the greatness of public business, such as in politics, in which finesse gives no offense.

Honor prohibits adulation only when adulation is separated from the idea of a great fortune and is only connected with the sense of its own baseness.

With respect to morals I have said that monarchical education must provide a certain frankness. Therefore one desires truth in conversations there.

Chapter 1: About the Sentiment for Religion

The pious man and the atheist always speak of religion. The one speaks of what he loves, while the other speaks of what he fears.

Chapter 2: About the Motive of Attachment for the Differing Religions

The differing religions of the world do not give to them that profess them equal motives for attachment to them. That depends much on the manner in which they correspond with men's ways of thinking and feeling.

We are extremely inclined toward idolatry, while nevertheless we are not strongly to idolatrous religions. We are scarcely inclined to spiritual ideas, while nevertheless we are much attached to the religions that cause us to adore a spiritual being. That is a happy [fortunate] sentiment which derives, partly, from the satisfaction that we discover in ourselves having been intelligent enough to have chosen a religion which draws the divinity from the humiliation in which others had placed it. We consider idolatry as the religion of vulgar peoples and the religion that has a spiritual being as its object as that of enlightened peoples.

When, along with the idea of a supreme spiritual being, which constitutes the dogma, we are able also to connect the sensible ideas which figure in worship, that gives us a great attachment to the religion. For the motives we happen to be speaking about are found connected with our natural penchants for sensible things. Thus, the Catholics, who have more of that kind of worship than the protestants; they are more unshakably attached to their religion than are the Protestants to theirs, and more zealous for its propagation.

When the people of Ephesus had learned that the church fathers had decided that folk could call the virgin “mother of god,” they were transported with joy. They kissed the hands of the bishops; they grasped their knees; everything resounded with acclamations. (a)

When an intellectual religion also gives us the idea of a selection made by the divinity, and of a distinction between them that profess it and them that do not profess it, that greatly attaches us to that religion.

If the map of Africa is not redrawn by the African Union, Africa will never be “free”. If this is not done, any discussion relating to the African Renaissance is merely hogwash. The ghosts of King Leopold of Belgium and his European cohorts, who spread the map of Africa on a table in Berlin in 1884 to divide the territories among themselves as if they were sharing a cake, is still haunting the African people and all people of African descent till date. There were no Africans present at this meeting. It was a deliberate attempt to ignore them, as they were not even considered for a “guess pass” at the meeting. That ghosts have followed all Black people as a shadow as they navigate and will continue to navigate the slippery slope of being human, or better yet, “sub-human” in the perceptual lenses of their imperialists. It was not only the map of the continent that was on fire in Berlin, but the people also living on this mother continent were not considered citizens; they were apes, i.e., semi-humans. True enough, after the broken mirrored independence of most artificial African countries, there were some attempts to right the wrongs of the Berlin 1884–1885 decision. Countries like Upper Volta changed their names to Burkina Faso; Rhodesia to Zimbabwe; the Gold Coast to Ghana, etc., but that has not seemingly translated into anything close to Africanization of the mindset of their citizens till date (Ngugi, 2009, Rabaka, 2010, Nyamnjoh, 2012, Asante, 2015). This exercise has all been seen as putting lipstick on the pig's nose. The main African powerful “house”, the African Union, an offshoot of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), has no plans for the Africanization of the entire continent (Langmia, 2016, Marah, 2017). Molefi Kete Asante is reputed to have said that African nations decided to seek individual nationhood on the wrong lines (Asante, 2007 a &b). This is because they failed to follow in the footsteps of Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana who, in 1957 when Ghana became one of the few African nations to gain independence from British colonial rule said that his country’s independence would be meaningless unless it is tied with independence of the African continent to what he referred to as the United States of Africa”.

Chapter 1: How Republics Provide for Their Safety

If a republic is small, it is destroyed by a foreign force. If it is large, it destroys itself by an internal vice.

This double inconvenience equally infects democracies and aristocracies, whether they be good or bad. The evil is in the thing itself. There is not one measure that might cure it.

Thus, there is every appearance that men, in the end, would have been obliged to live under the government of a single person if they had not conceived a form of constitution that has all the internal advantages of republican government and the external strength of monarchical government. I am speaking of the federal republic.

This form of government is a convention by which several political bodies agree to become the citizens of a larger state that they intend to form. It is a society of societies, which form a new one by it (and) which may enlarge itself through any new associates that unite with it.

It was these associations that caused the body of Greece to flourish for such a long time. By means of them Romans attacked the universe, and, alone by means of them, the universe defended itself against the Romans. And, when Rome had attained the full measure of its greatness, it was by means of these associations across the Danube and the Rhine, associations that fright caused to be formed, that the barbarians were able to resist Rome.

It is from this that Holland (a), Germany, and the Swiss Leagues are considered in Europe as eternal republics.

In other times associations of towns were more necessary than they are today. A powerless city ran greater risks. Conquest caused it to lose not only the executive and legislative authority, like today, but also all that there is of property among men. (b)

This kind of republic, capable of resisting external force, is able to preserve itself in its largeness without becoming corrupt internally. The form of this society prevents every inconvenience.

He who would wish to usurp could hardly receive equal credit in all the confederated states. If he made himself too powerful in one, it would alarm all the others. If he subjugated a part, that which were yet free could resist him with forces independent of the ones he had usurped and overcome him before he had succeeded in establishing himself.

Chapter 1: About Offensive Force

Offensive force is ruled by the law of nations, which is the political law of nations considered in the relationship they have with one another.

Chapter 2: About War

The life of states is like that of men. The latter have the right to kill, in the case of natural defense. The former have the right to make war for the sake of their own preservation.

In the case of natural defense, I have a right to kill. For my life is to me as the life of him that attacks me is to him. Similarly, a state wages war because its preservation is just, like every other preservation.

Among citizens the right of natural defense does not entail the necessity of attack. Rather than to attack, they require only to recur to tribunals. Therefore, they may not exercise the right of this defense, except in the momentary circumstance in which one were lost if he awaited the help of the laws. But, among societies, the right of natural defense sometimes entails the necessity to attack, whenever one people sees that a longer peace could place another people in position to destroy them and that attack, at that moment, is the only means of preventing that destruction.

It follows from this that small societies more often have the right to wage war than large ones, for they are more often in the circumstance of fearing to be destroyed.

The right of war, therefore, derives from necessity and from rigid justice. If they who direct the conscience or the councils of princes do not hold by this, all is lost. And when one bases himself on arbitrary principles of glory, seemliness, and utility, waves of blood will flood the earth.

Above all let none speak about the prince's glory; his glory would be his pride; it is a passion and not a legitimate right.

It is true that the reputation of his power could increase his state's forces; but the reputation of his justice would similarly increase it.

Chapter 3: About the Right of Conquest

From the right of war derives the right of conquest, which is its consequence. The right of conquest, therefore, must follow the spirit of the right of war.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused physical and psycho-mental torture around the world for the last few years. Africa, unlike other continents that witnessed devastating consequences resulting in thousands and millions of deaths, went rather unscathed, disproving all medical prognoses for a tsunami of death toll that was waiting to cripple the continent because of its lack of advanced health facilities. The death toll that Africa suffered in the grueling hands of COVID-19 was minimal compared to the United States, Asia, and Europe (Maeda & Nkengasong, 2021., Anjorin, Abioye, Asowata, Soipe, Kazeem, Adesanya, & Omotayo, 2021). There have been speculations as to why Black people in Africa were spared. But the truth is that most of the traditional healing methods, coupled with warm weather on the continent, boosted the chances of people from getting infected. But the effect this disease had on the other Black people in the Diaspora was devastating (Reyes, 2020).

The Black person finds herself or himself in a quandary, unable to make sense of what COVID-19 is all about and unable to influence decisions taken by Western-advanced countries. This was demonstrated in the number vaccine hesitancy both in Africa and among Blacks in the Daispora (Khubchandani & Macias 2021., Afolabi & Ilesanmi 2021). The Black ancestry looks on waiting to abide by those decisions by its former slave and colonial masters. The Black person is helpless. In China, where the virus “supposedly” originated, Black people were being brutalized and left homeless and told to return to Africa because it appeared to the Chinese that Africans in their country had imported the virus to China (Xu, Sun, Cao, Fan, Pan, Yao, & Li 2021). In the United States of America, the proportion of Black people that have died from counteracting the virus has doubled when compared to that of the White population because they suffer from underline health problems like diabetes, heart disease, lung cancers, and are heavily deficient in vitamin D that helps with building one's immune systems (Cyrus, Clarke, Hadley, Bursac, Trepka, Devieux & Wagner 2020). Since they are the frontline workers because they cannot afford to stay at home and be paid like white-collar job income earners, they have become targets because they are essential workers providing for the rest of America.

One finds in Montesquieu's masterpiece, Voltaire (or a pseudo-Voltaire) apocryphally said, “plus d’esprit que d’esprit.” I fail to document the very apothegm. However, what Voltaire did say suffices to establish credibility for the attribution. For he did, indeed, say that Esprit des lois manifested greater “esprit” than “raison.” In doing so, Voltaire identified the single, most important dimension of Spirit of the Laws that any commentary must account for and which, heretofore, none whatever has done. Voltaire, easily the most comprehensive among the commentariat, indicates as much in his magisterial production, Essai sur les moeurs et l’esprit des nations (1756). For in that work, and in contrast to his exhaustively critical Commentaire on Montesquieu's work, he elaborates at great length the alternative account of universal history and manners that he would have wished Montesquieu to provide. In the course of that account, he speaks continually of the “esprit,” in fact some 475 times, using the term in nearly all of the multitude of acceptations consistently referenced in French dictionaries. That induces us to inquire why he seemed so consistently to imply the fairly remote acceptation, “wit” or “cleverness,” to Montesquieu's use of the term in the title of Montesquieu's seminal work.

The purpose of the present review is neither to develop a philological analysis of Esprit des lois nor, for that matter, a review of the by-now legion commentaries on the work. Rather I want to focus attention on gaining access to the “spirit” of Montesquieu by focusing intently on the initial signpost he provided to reveal his “spirit” in the very first word (the preposition aside), not only of the title but, in consequence, of the entire work. The tradition has consistently carried the English translation “spirit” to the word without pausing to account for the acceptation to be accorded it. That habit was manifest already in the mid-eighteenth century, and therefore prior to the age of unquestioning assumption that, by spirit, Montesquieu meant something akin to Hegelian Geist or the late eighteenth-century innovation, ideology, and its subsequent partner, “world view.” That assumption is unwarranted. For the very structure of the title—the singular spirit of the plural laws— conveys an acceptation in tension with the idea of a single, pervading collective conformation that is suggested by the notion of a “spirit of the people.”