much about Taine and his works


PREFACE By André Chevrillon.

"To treat of the Church, the School, and the Family, describe the
modern milieu and note the facilities and obstacles which a society
like our own encounters in this milieu, such was the program of the
last[1] section of the "Origins of Contemporary France." The preceding
volume is a continuation of the first part of this program; after the
commune and the department, after local societies, the author was to
study moral and intellectual bodies in France as organized by
Napoleon. This study completed, this last step taken, he was about to
reach the summit. He was about to view France as a whole, to
comprehend it no longer through a detail of its organs, in a state of
formation, but its actual existence; no longer isolated, but plunged,
along with other occidental nations, into the modern milieu,
experiencing with them the effects of one general cause which changed
the physical and intellectual condition of men; which dissolved
sentiments formerly grouping them together, more or less capable at
length of adapting themselves to new circumstances and of organizing
according to a new type suited to the coming age that now opens before
us.

Only a part of this last volume was written, that which relates to
the Church and to public instruction. Death intervened and suddenly
arrested the pen. M. Taine, at this moment, was about completing his
analysis of subordinate societies in France. - For those who have
followed him thus far it is already clear that the great defect of the
French community is the fragmentation of the individuals, who