The French Revolution rang the death knell not only for a form of society, but also for a way of feeling and of living; and it is still not clear as yet what did we gain from the changes. Benjamin Constant was one of the first to draw up this dark diagnosis. "We no longer know how to love, neither to believe, nor to want. As a result, Heaven no longer offers hope, the earth dignity, the heart refuge." But is it enough to deplore it? Constant does not think so, and having become the first French thinker of democracy, he undertakes to seek remedies to the problem: a political framework that guarantees the dignity of the individual without dissolving the social bond; a religion stripped of its oppressive forms; a love finding the place which is due to values, higher than "all the thrones of the earth."