I have again to regret the dissatisfaction I foresee this work will cause to many of my countrymen. My excuse is, that almost all of them, more fortunate than myself, have political principles which serve them in forming their judgments of the past. I had none; if indeed, I had any motive in undertaking this work, it was to seek for political principles. Thus far I have attained to scarcely 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. Paris 1881. NOTES: [Footnote 0001: Page XLVI of the Introduction to the Edition by Robert Lafont in 1986 by "Les Origines de la France Contemporaine".] [Footnote 0002: From "HISTORIES", BOOK VI. 3. 3-4. 1 FROM LOEB'S CLASSICAL LIBRARY, HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS.] THE ANCIENT REGIME PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR: ON POLITICAL IGNORANCE AND WISDOM.