ajority.--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 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