required; legal, economical, and historical inquiries made; the peculiarities of individuals and peoples, of the epoch and stage of culture, must have been known; the not merely personal but collective functions of human nature in their bases and action investigated: for only when all this had been accomplished could it be asserted that the organism of the State and its laws had been dealt with after the manner of a genuine naturalist, and that we were now in a condition to judge of single actualities according to these laws. How came it that in the France of the eighteenth century the very opposite occurred--that politicians, stimulated by young natural science, should from the very first turn their backs upon the inductive method, and evolve the future State rationalistically, according to a few abstract principles? Taine convincingly shows the reason of this: it was chiefly the influence of fashionable society upon literature which led to this fatal tendency. The highest circles in Paris and Versailles, in their brilliant but idle existence, were, as we have seen, as intent upon mental as sensual excitement, and therefore prepared to open their doors to every littérateur who could satisfy this demand. Now, owing to the actual structure of society in France, the writer who did not choose merely to devote himself to a few professional subjects had no other public than this distinguished class. They and they alone were in a position to secure him praise, honours, and a certain income, therefore it was most natural that the writer should conform to requirements upon the satisfaction of which his literary career was so absolutely dependent. We have now to inquire what were the characteristics of the prevalent tone of thought among the highest class. First a horror of all thoroughness, all enduring and laborious perseverance, all deep earnestness and spiritual recollection. For all this was the very opposite of enjoyment and diversion, it was a falling into the deadly sin of tediousness. It was desirable, indeed, to have much and varied knowledge, but rapidly and lightly, by vivid and pungent discussion, to reach the quintessence of the most interesting points and conclusions. Consequently the author's productions became restless, many-sided, and superficial. The mass of information in every department of knowledge which Voltaire, for instance, had at his disposal was immense; but the working out and application of it were strongly hasty, aphoristic, and frivolous. To this was added the dislike the public of the time had to any individual peculiarity, its tendency to force all personalities into one conventional form--an effort equally fatal to poetic creation and to the historical sense. For such men as these the world was comprehended in what they called the great world; they had lost the power of imagining that there was or ever had been an existence outside of it and absolutely unlike it; or if in any particular case the astounding fact