psychological sense. Except for such beneficial generalities which may provide general hygienic guidelines, could M. Taine have suggested immediate remedies? It is scarcely probable. In any even, he was not a partisan for hasty decentralization. When, under the influence of a bad system, an organization has contracted a vice that reaches its vital organs, the following treatment nearly becomes mandatory;[5106] in any event, no sudden modification of it must be thought of; all that can be done is to lessen its pernicious effect by resorting to make-shift or short term measures. Taking advantage of unforeseen circumstances, using great circumspection, noting favorable symptoms that had impressed him--for example a certain new birth of the spirit of association under the Third Republic--leaving to political authorities the care "of adjusting means" to the diversity and mobility of things, we may believe that M. Taine would have confined himself to indicating in what sense we could, with prudence, lay our course. To do this, it sufficed for him to sum up his diagnosis and lay down the conditions of duration and progress. In a matter of such vital import nobody can speak for him. Accordingly, if the conclusion is not written, whoever knows how to read his thought may divine it. The work, such as it is, is finished; it already contains his ideas in full; the intelligent eye has only to follow them and to note their consequences and combination. André Chevrillon Menthon, St-Bernard, October, 1893. BOOK FIFTH. THE CHURCH. CHAPTER I. MORAL INSTITUTIONS I. Napoleon's Objectives. Centralization and moral institutions--Object of the State in absorbing Churches.--Their influence on civil society.