[The Origins of Contemporary France<br> Volume 6 (of 6) by Hippolyte A. Taine]@TWC D-Link book
The Origins of Contemporary France
Volume 6 (of 6)

CHAPTER I
42/52

SR.)] [Footnote 6144: "Statut sur l'administration, l'ensignement et la police de l'Ecole normale," March 30, 1810, title II, articles 20-23.] [Footnote 6145: Taine entered in L'Ecole Normale in October 1848, first in his year, having written an essay in philosophy (in Latin) with the title: Si animus cum corpore extinguitur, quid sit Deus?
Quid homo?
Quid societas?
Quid philosophia?
(If the soul dies with the body what happens to God?
Man?
Society?
Philosophy ?) And an essay in French imagining that he was Voltaire writing to his English friend Cedeville pretending to give his impressions on England.

When he had arrived on 30 October 1848 Taine wrote to Cornelis de Witt: "Here I am in the convent and prisoner for three years." (SR.)] [Footnote 6146: I note, however, that the Ecole Normale Superior produced Taine, and it seemed to have had the same effect upon him as by boarding school and its similar regime upon me, namely of making me informed and rebellious.

I have also noted that the most uninteresting and smug young people I have met have followed school systems like that of the United States where no great effort is demanded but the peer pressure helps to produce ignorant, self-satisfied students.

(SR.)] [Footnote 6147: Villemain, "Souvenirs contemporaines," vol.I., 137-156.
("Une visite a l'Ecole normale en 1812," Napoleon's own words to M.de Narbonne.) "Tacitus is a dissatisfied senator, an Auteuil grumbler, who revenges himself, pen in hand, in his cabinet.

His is the spite of the aristocrat and philosopher both at once....


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