: The French Revolution - Volume 2 by Rom Svend Annotator Taine Hippolyte Durand John Translator - France History Revolution 1789-1799

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Annotator: Svend Rom

Translator: John Durand, 1880

THE ORIGINS OF CONTEMPORARY FRANCE, VOLUME 3

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, VOLUME 2

by Hippolyte A. Taine

Transcriber's Note: The numbering of Volumes, Books, Chapters and Sections are as in the French not the American edition. Annotations by the transcriber are initialled SR.

Svend Rom, April 2000.

PREFACE

In this volume, as in those preceding it and in those to come, there will be found only the history of Public Authorities. Others will write that of diplomacy, of war, of the finances, of the Church; my subject is a limited one. To my great regret, however, this new part fills an entire volume; and the last part, on the revolutionary government, will be as long.

I have again to regret the dissatisfaction I foresee this work will cause to many of my countrymen. My excuse is, that almost all of them, more fortunate than myself, have political principles which serve them in forming their judgments of the past. I had none; if indeed, I had any motive in undertaking this work, it was to seek for political principles. Thus far I have attained to scarcely more than one; and this is so simple that will seem puerile, and that I hardly dare express it. Nevertheless I have adhered to it, and in what the reader is about to peruse my judgments are all derived from that; its truth is the measure of theirs. It consists wholly in this observation: that

HUMAN SOCIETY, ESPECIALLY A MODERN SOCIETY, IS A VAST AND COMPLICATED THING.

Hence the difficulty in knowing and comprehending it. For the same reason it is not easy to handle the subject well. It follows that a cultivated mind is much better able to do this than an uncultivated mind, and a man specially qualified than one who is not. From these two last truths flow many other consequences, which, if the reader deigns to reflect on them, he will have no trouble in defining.

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