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.
Andre Chevrillon Menthon, St-Bernard, October, 1893..