y 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.

H. A. Taine, Paris 1881.

*****

BOOK FIRST. THE JACOBINS.

CHAPTER I. THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE NEW POLITICAL ORGAN.

In this disorganized society, in which the passions of the people are
the sole real force, authority belongs to the party that understands
how to flatter and take advantage of these. As the legal government can
neither repress nor gratify them, an illegal government arises which
sanctions, excites, and directs these passions. While the former
totters and falls to pieces, the latter grows stronger and improves its
organization, until, becoming legal in its turn, it takes the other's
place.

I.--Principle of the revolutionary party.

Its applications.

As a justification of these popular outbreaks and assaults, we discover
at the outset a theory, which is neither improvised, added to, nor
superficial, but now firmly fixed in the public mind. It has for a
long time been nourished by philosophical discussions. It is a sort of
enduring, long-lived root out of which the new constitutional tree has
arisen. It is the dogma of popular sovereignty.--Literally interpreted,
it means that the government is merely an inferior clerk or
servant.[1101] We, the people, have established the government; and ever
since, as well as before its organization, we are its masters. Between
it and us no infinite or long lasting "contract". "None which cannot be
done away with by mutual consent or through the unfaithfulness of one
of the two parties." Whatever it may be, or provide for, we are nowise
bound by it; it depends wholly on us. We remain free to "modify,
restrict, and resume as we please the power of which we have made it