philosophy, noble contemplation and pure speculation, abandoning works
already projected, he gave himself up to the technical study of law,
political economy and administrative history; if, for twenty years, he
secluded himself and devoted himself to his task - at what a cost of
prolonged effort, with what a strain his mental faculties, with what
weariness and often with what dissatisfaction! - if he shortened his
life, it was to discharge what he deemed a duty to that suffering
France which he loved with tender and silent passion, the duty of
aiding in her cure by establishing the general diagnosis which a
philosopher-historian was warranted in presenting after a profound
study of its vital constitution. The examination finished, he felt
that he had a right to offer the diagnosis. Not that his modesty
permitted him to foretell the future or to dictate reforms. When his
opinion was asked in relation to any reform he generally declined
giving it. "I am merely a consulting physician," he would reply; "I do
not possess sufficient details on that particular question - I am not
sufficiently familiar with circumstances which vary from day to day."
In effect, according to him, there is no general principle from which
one can deduce a series of reforms. On the contrary, his first
recommendation would have been not to try to find simple solutions in
political and social matters, but to proceed by experiments, according
to temperaments, and accepting the irregular and the incomplete. - One
becomes resigned to this course by a study of history and by acquiring
"the sense of surrounding facts and developments." Here do we find the
general remedy for the destructive effects produced by the brusque
progress of science, and she herself furnishes this remedy, when, from
the hasty and the theoretical, she becomes experimental and builds on
the observation of facts and their relations. "Through psychological
narration, through the analysis of psychological conditions which have
produced, maintained, or modified this or that institution, we may