actually placed in front of "The Revolution" volume II. Since it
clarifies Taine's aims and justifications, I have moved and placed it
below.

Not long before his death Taine, sensing that his wisdom and deep
insights into human nature and events, no longer interested the élite,
remarked to a friend that "the scientific truth about the human animal
is perhaps unacceptable except for a very few".[1] Now, 100 years
later, after a century of ideological wars between ambitious men, I am
afraid that the situation remains unchanged. Mankind remains reluctant
to face the realities of our uncontrolled existence! A few men begin,
however, to share my misgivings about the future of a system which has
completely given up the respect for wisdom and experience preferring a
system of elaborate human rights and new morals. There is reason to
recall Macchiavelli's words:

"In times of difficulty men of merit are sought after, but in easy
times it is not men of merit, but such as have riches and powerful
relations, that are most in favor."

And let me to quote the Greek historian Polybius' observations[2]
about the cyclic evolution of the Greek city states:

". . . What then are the beginnings I speak of and what is the
first origin of political societies? When owing to floods, famines,
failure of crops or other such causes there occurs such a destruction
of the human race as tradition tells us has more than once happened,
and as we must believe will often happen again, all arts and crafts
perishing at the same time, when in the course of time, when springing
from the survivors as from seeds men have again increased in numbers