‘In his diatribe for the classical spirit and the primary truths of reason and philosophy which direct literary education of all kinds, Taine comes to use words similar to those of the adversaries of ancient literature,[183] of the general ideas which are inseparable from them, and of disinterested culture even. The only object would then be to prepare persons for an empirical world,[184] people taught to know the world as it is, and trained to make it continue as it now is. However, the school laws are too recent for one to be able decently to blame them for the evils of the age, and make them the cause of the hatred and scorn poured on society by those who are bored, enervate and out of their class. However, even if it were true that the comparison between the general principles of reason, morality and beauty, and empirical life engendered more disgust with the realities than it has done in the past, it would be a sad paradox to ask that this danger should be averted by banishing from education all elevated views and all idealism.’ (Renouvier, _Philosophie analytique de l’Histoire_, tome iv, p. 541.) Note M (Page 95) _This cult brings out a silliness of mind which to me seems wholly an acquisition of the nineteenth century._ This silliness of mind assumes another form, i.e. the belief (rigidly formulated by Maurras) that in politics you can find laws of cause and effect as certainly valid as those of weight or electricity. (‘Politics are a _science_.’) This is the superstition of science, held to be competent in all domains, including that of morality; a superstition which, I repeat, is an acquisition of the nineteenth century. It remains to discover whether those who brandish this doctrine believe in it or whether they simply want to give the prestige of a scientific appearance to the passions of their hearts, which they perfectly well know are nothing but passions. It is to be noted that the dogma that history is obedient to scientific laws is preached especially by partisans of arbitrary authority. This is quite natural, since it eliminates the two realities they most hate, i.e. human liberty and the historical action of the individual. Note N (Page 98) _Our age has seen priests of the mind teaching that the gregarious is the praiseworthy form of thought, and that independent thought is contemptible._ Note that what is new in this crusade against individualism (the great apostle of which is M. Maurras) is not the recognition that ‘the individual is only an abstraction’, that to a great extent, he is formed by his race, his surroundings, his nation, a thousand things which are not himself. The novelty is the cult for this servitude, the order given to mankind to submit entirely to it, the contempt shown for any attempt to get free from it. Once again this is the cult (so strange in French thinkers) for the _inevitable_ part of the human being, the hatred for its free part.