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an unequal division of riches and the disadvantages of excessive appropriation. On the other hand, its ideal of an individualist democracy is constantly threatened by the constitution of a plutocracy.

Opportunism is eminently patriotic. The Collectivity France is enough for it; there it limits its ideal. The problem of which " men should never speak, but of which they should ever think," is the problem of the frontier. Between the three risks, Opportunism has chosen ; it has thrown itself with absolute conviction and ardent faith towards the patriotic risk. Why deny it? At the bottom of Opportunism lies Nationalism. Gambetta said, on May 9th, 1872, to the Alsatian delegates: "The Republican feeling is an essentially national feeling. . . . Those things which we must reject are those equivocal things which have taken the taste away from the national sentiment."

Anticlericalism and tolerance, democracy and plutocracy, civicism and Nationalism, such are the antitheses included in the system and among which the prudence of statesmen must seek the rule of Equilibrium and Progress.

The history of the third Republic, of the " Representative Republic" in France during the twentyfive years which completed the century, is but the development of the drama of which the principles are here laid down.

Opportunism, taught by the brutal lessons of the war and the Commune, tends towards greatness through equilibrium and measure. For twenty years at least, its voice was the guide of France.

It has had this honour, in a time of faintness and uncertainty, of representing a conception, somewhat

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short perhaps, but sufficient, of collective and individual life. Opportunism is a method, and therefore a philosophy. It is related to Cartesian precepts, and notably to the second rule. To divide each difficulty in as many parts as would be possible and necessary in order the better to solve them."

It came forth ready armed from the soul of the nation. It had within it a living portion of this soul, and, assuredly, was not unworthy of the heavy task which fell upon it, when, on the morrow of the catastrophe, it assumed the responsibility of the future.

The future! This thought was ever present in the mind of its founders. They gave Credit to Time. They thought that, later on, things would be bettered, corrected, revised, but that sufficient unto the day was the task thereof, and that the Better must be given up not to jeopardise the Good. A prudent disposition, in which some faith was hidden. This faith rested on the future generations. They were counted upon; they would be ready, not taken by surprise. They would be shaped according to the ideal, of which a glimpse was to be seen. But, together with restored resources, Liberty must be left for them. Through them, France might again be great.

Thence the different process applied to the two problems: Education for the future, a Constitution for the present.

Men could be content with a little if much was to come later. For the education of future generations, the preparation of democracy, of the Sovereign, no sacrifice was too costly. It is through education that France was to raise up the double heritage, the two unities, that of the Fatherland and that of the

doctrine. France and Science, such is the motto. Education, a public, lay, national Education, such is the supreme hope, the supreme thought.

Hear Gambetta again. He said, still in 1872, "This land must be rebuilt, its customs renovated, the evil which is the cause of all our ills, ignorance, must be made to disappear; there is but one remedy, the education of all. . . . We have been beaten by adversaries who had on their side foresight, discipline, and science. We must rid ourselves of the past; we must rebuild France. . . . What I ask is that Science should come away from books, libraries, academies and institutes; I ask that those who possess it should give it to those who are in need of it; I want Science to come down to the public places, to reach the humblest schools; we must resolutely know and put into practice the higher truths of Science and Reason."

This programme was placed under the invocation of Auguste Comte. Gambetta propagated with the authority of his voice, the precepts of Positive Philosophy, which, in fact, hovers above the whole generation.1

The Constitutional work demanded more immediate realisations and more rapid decisions. It was imminent at the moment when the Duc de Broglie left power, after seeing the chances of a monarchical restoration perish in his hands, and the

1 The undertaking of popular teaching, and, in more general terms, of national education, does not properly belong to Opportunism, and we have no desire to ignore the efforts of Mgr. Dupanloup, or of Jules Simon. But it is Opportunism which ends in realisations. We will, moreover, expound the question of Education à propos of the great debates which so often took place in Parliamentary Assemblies.

influence of the middle classes becoming exhausted.

The majority of the National Assembly was delivered without a compass to the caprice of events, or rather to tenacious and wily pressure from those who had formed the intention of snatching a Republican vote from this monarchical assembly. The debates were about to open which, logically and inevitably, ended in that vote.

The past of this ancient land, its recent disasters, its hopes blossoming again, a long elaboration aided by science, stimulated by conviction and enthusiasm, a certain tumult in the nation itself rising to claim its rights and dues-everything weighed down on these sittings when an Assembly, tossed between its convictions and its necessities, was in quest of a solution. The forces were equal: none could say which would carry the day. It was only through concessions and compromises that this conflict could come to an end, for such was the fashion of the time. The whole epoch is, as it were, summed up in the constitution of 1875, a work of compromise and equilibrium if ever there was one.

After a long and anxious search, it combined and associated rival elements, instead of separating them. National, durable by its very wisdom, it found its law in the moderating principle which the profound genius of Pascal discerned as the base of all human order: "The multitude which is not reduced to unity is confusion; the unity which depends not on the multitude is tyranny.

END OF VOL. II.

A

About, Edmond-

INDEX

Editorship of the XIXme Siècle,
621

Political beliefs of the Masses,
Effect on, of the War of
1870, 544 note

Administration in France-In-
grained habit of sub-
mission to the Adminis-
tration a check on
Democracy, 558, 559
Admiralty-Appointment of Adm.
de Dompierre d'Hornoy,

23

Agriculture after 1870-

Improved Methods-Intensive

Culture, etc., 533

Nature's Benevolence-Har-

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Garnier-Balny Expedition-
Capture of Hanoi, Death
of Garnier and Balny in
pursuit of Tai-ping Allies
of Annamite Mandarins,
451, 452

Disavowal of Expedition by

Duc de Broglie's Go-
vernment, 452, 453

Philastre Treaty-Protectorate
established without Au-
thority or Strength,

453
Annuities-Development since 1870,
541

Anthropology-Foundation of An-
thropological Society by
Broca, etc., 655

Architecture after 1870-

Domination of the Engineer—
Fortification of the
Frontier, etc., 627, 628
Paris, Architectural Recon-
struction of-Work of M.
Alphand, etc., 628, 629,
630

3 A

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