Note 2 — Chapter I · THE SUBJECT MATTER

Similarly De Tocqueville begins L'ancien régime et la révolution with "Les Français ont fait...." (Avant-Propos, 2e éd. p. 5), and makes the successors of the Revolutionists "les mêmes Français" (p. 12). Soon he makes the Revolution an entity (p. 35). Compare with Taine's passage the programme of the first number of Le Play's La Réforme Sociale, 1881 (cited by H. Higgs, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Boston, July, 1890, p. 418), which might almost have been written by Taine. In the case of Le Play the ideal of a quasi-patriarchal order, very stable and very fixed, led to an attitude resembling at points that of Taine. It is easy to see how the natural recoil from political turmoil has, since the French Revolution, developed successive schools such as those of Saint Simon, Comte, and Le Play, all aiming at stability and order, all seeking to elbow out the cosmic force of Change. In Taine's case the result was an acceptance of Spencer's "administrative nihilism."