modern ideas disturb in every direction, the first effect of which is,
while developing the spirit of doubt and investigation, to break down
subordination to the king, to the gentleman, to the noble, and, in
general, to dissolve society founded on heredity. Such phenomena are
already observable everywhere, the ruin of feeble corporations by the
state, its constant tendency to interference, to the absorption of
every special service and the descent of power into the hands of a
numerical majority. - What plan, then, governs these societies in the
way of reorganization, and, since they all belong to a common type,
what are the common resources and difficulties of adaptation? On what
lines must the metamorphosis be effected in order to arrive at a
viable creations? And, abandoning the general problem in order to
return to contemporary France, grown up and organized under our own
eyes, how does the great modern event affect it? How does "this common
factor combine with special factors, permanent and temporary," belong
to our system? With the French, whose hereditary spirit and character
are easily defined, in this society founded on Napoleonic institutions
moved by our "administrative mechanism," what are the peculiar
tendencies of a leveling democracy which seeks immediate
establishment? Among the maladies which are special with us - feeble
birth-rate, political instability, absence of local life, slow
industrial and commercial development, despondency and pessimism - can
an aptitude for transformation which we do not possess be
distinguished in the sense demanded by the new milieu ? The knowledge
we have of our origins, of our psychology, of our present
constitution, of our circumstances, what hopes are warranted?

M. Taine could not have replied to all these questions. If, twenty
years ago, on the morrow after our disasters, just as we once more set
about a new organization, putting aside literature, art, and