A prodigious work undertaken drop everything, after the defeat of 1870 to 1871, in order to diagnose the cause of our national decay. Taine pinpoints the most distant but the most persistent causes of our weakness: passion of the great principles inapplicable because disconnected from any concrete analysis of reality; centralization and against his party, the weakness of civil society; alternating desperate in our history, between periods of anarchy and authoritarian backlashes. It is probably the first French historian to take seriously the economy, to address the state budget, the level of life of different social classes. this was a remarkable intelligence. Considered the most eminent minds of his time, he was excluded, throughout the period of the Empire, academic positions which he was entitled, for his refusal to bow to the official philosophy - the "spiritualism" demonstrating a freedom of spirit that truly breaks out in his Origins. If you want to understand why your country is wrong for 300 years, read Taine §
