The Ancient Regime

A military staff on furlough for a century and more, around a commander-in-chief who gives fashionable entertainment, is the principle and summary of the habits of society under...

Similar circumstances have led other aristocracies in Europe to nearly similar ways and habits. There also the monarchy has given birth to the court and the court to a refined s...

Let us consider the first one, local government. There are countries at the gates of France in which feudal subjection, more burdensome than in France, seems lighter because, in...

This public has yet to be made willing to be convinced and to be won over; belief occurs only when there is a disposition to believe, and, in the success of books, its share is...

OUT of the scientific acquisitions thus set forth, elaborated by the spirit we have just described, is born a doctrine, seemingly a revelation, and which, under this title, was...

Useless in the canton, they might have been useful at the Center of the State, and, without taking part in the local government, they might have served in the general government...

Several similar theories have in the past traversed the imagination of men, and similar theories are likely do so again. In all ages and in all countries, it sufficed that man's...

Let us closely examine the extortions he has to endure, which are very great, much beyond any that we can imagine. Economists had long prepared the budget of a farm and shown by...

The new philosophy, confined to a select circle, had long served as a mere luxury for refined society. Merchants, manufacturers, shopkeepers, lawyers, attorneys, physicians, act...

This grand and magnificent system of new truths resembles a tower of which the first story, quickly finished, at once becomes accessible to the public. The public ascends the st...

"Certain savage-looking animals, male and female, are seen in the country, black, livid and sunburned, and attached to the soil which they dig and grub with invincible stubbornn...

Consider future society as it appears at this moment to our legislators in their study, and bear in mind that it will soon appear under the same aspect to the legislators of the...

These two forces, radical dogma and brute force, are the successors and executors of the Ancient regime, and, on contemplating the way in which this regime engendered, brought f...

The privileged classes number about 270,000 persons, comprising of the nobility, 140,000 and of the clergy 130,000.[1201] This makes from 25,000 to 30,000 noble families; 23,000...

To comprehend their actions we ought now to look into the condition of their minds, to know the current train of their ideas, their mode of thinking. But is it really essential...

On seeing a man with a somewhat feeble constitution, but healthy in appearance and of steady habits, greedily swallow some new kind of cordial and then suddenly fall to the grou...

Mere pleasure, in the long run, ceases to gratify, and however agreeable this drawing room life may be, it ends in a certain hollowness. Something is lacking without any one bei...

Taine's description and analysis of events in France between 1750 and 1870 are, as you will see colorful, lucid, and sometimes intense. His style might today appear dated since...

In 1789 three classes of persons, the Clergy, the Nobles and the King, occupied the most prominent position in the State with all the advantages pertaining thereto namely, autho...

Against universal sedition where is force?--The measures and dispositions which govern the 150,000 men who maintain order are the same as those ruling the 26 millions people sub...

Why should we fetch Taine's work up from its dusty box in the basement of the national library? First of all because his realistic views of our human nature, of our civilization...

[Footnote 3334: "Confessions," part 2, IX. 361. "I was so weary of drawing-rooms, of jets of water, of bowers, of flower-beds and of those that showed them to me; I was so overw...

[Footnote 3421: Ibidem I. 9. "The State in relation to its members is master of all their possessions according to the social compact. . . possessors are considered as depositar...