the state of that society." It was his aim to seek out in the novel,
in poetry, in the arts since 1820, that is to say in all works that
throw light on the various and successive kinds of the reigning ideal
- in philosophy, in religion, in industry, in all branches of French
action and thought - the signs of the psychological tendencies of
modern Frenchman in this or that social condition. What would this
book have been? M. Taine had sketched it out so far back, he had
abandoned it for so long a time and never alluded to it, that nothing
remains by which we can form any idea of it. But, in this undertaking
demanding so much science, so much intuition, so much experience of
accurate observation, of general views and precise generalization - in
this vast study requiring such profound knowledge, not alone of France
but of societies offering points of comparison with her, we may be
certain that the author of Notes sur Paris, Notes sur l'Angleterre, of
the Ancien Régime, the critic accustomed to interpret civilizations,
literature and works of art, the thinker, in fine, who, to prepare
himself for the greatest tasks he undertook, traveled five times over
France, studying its life with the eyes of an artist, in the light of
history and of psychology, ever preceding his philosophic study with
visual investigation, would have been equal to the task.[5]

Already for several years, M. Taine, aware that his time was short,
had narrowed the limits of the work he was engaged upon. But what his
work lost in breadth and in richness of detail it would have gained in
depth and in power. All his master ideas would have been found in it,
foreshortened and concentrated. Always seeking in this or that group
of them what he called his generators, intellectual and moral as well
as political, he would have described all those which explain the
French group. Unfortunately, here again the elements are wanting which
allow one to foreshadow what this final analysis and last construction