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 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;[5106] 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 impr