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Taine, Hippolyte, 1828-1893

"The French Revolution - Volume 3"


Now as we have seen,[151] two of these plans square with this
theory, one anarchical and the other despotic; naturally, the
master adopts the latter, and, like a practical man, he builds
according to that theory a substantial edifice, with sand and lime,
habitable and well suited to its purposes. All the masses of the
great work-civil code, university, Concordat, prefectoral and
centralized administration-all the details of its arrangement and
distribution of places, tend to one general effect, which is the
omnipotence of the State, the omnipresence of the government, the
abolition of local and private initiative, the suppression of
voluntary free association, the gradual dispersion of small
spontaneous groupings, the preventive ban of prolonged hereditary
works, the extinction of sentiments by which the individual lives
beyond himself in the past or in the future. Never were finer
barracks constructed, more symmetrical and more decorative in aspect,
more satisfactory to superficial views, more acceptable to vulgar good
sense, more suited to narrow egoism, better kept and cleaner, better
adapted to the discipline of the average and low elements of human
nature, and better adapted to dispersing or perverting the superior
elements of human nature.


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