find a partial solution to each question of reform," gradually
discovering laws and establishing the general conditions that render
possible or impossible any given project. When constituted and then
developed, reorganized, respected and applied to human affairs, the
sciences of humanity may become a new instrument of power and
civilization, and, just as the natural sciences have taught us to
derive profit from physical forces, they may teach us to benefit by
moral forces. M. Taine believed that the French were very well
qualified for this order of study: if any other people possess
superior mental faculties in respect of memory or a better knowledge
of philology, he thought we had in our favor a superiority of the
psychological sense.

Except for such beneficial generalities which may provide general
hygienic guidelines, could M. Taine have suggested immediate remedies?
It is scarcely probable. In any even, he was not a partisan for hasty
decentralization. When, under the influence of a bad system, an
organization has contracted a vice that reaches its vital organs, the
following treatment nearly becomes mandatory;[6] in any event, no
sudden modification of it must be thought of; all that can be done is
to lessen its pernicious effect by resorting to make-shift or short
term measures. Taking advantage of unforeseen circumstances, using
great circumspection, noting favorable symptoms that had impressed him
- for example a certain new birth of the spirit of association under
the Third Republic - leaving to political authorities the care "of
adjusting means" to the diversity and mobility of things, we may
believe that M. Taine would have confined himself to indicating in
what sense we could, with prudence, lay our course. To do this, it
sufficed for him to sum up his diagnosis and lay down the conditions
of duration and progress. In a matter of such vital import nobody can