[XKR]∎ Libro The Ancient Regime (Classic Reprint) Hippolyte Taine 9781330032503 Books

The Ancient Regime (Classic Reprint) Hippolyte Taine 9781330032503 Books

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Excerpt from The Ancient Regime

In 1849, being twenty-one years of age, and an elector, I was very much puzzled, for I had to vote for fifteen or twenty deputies, and, moreover, according to French custom, I had not only to determine what candidate I would vote for, but what theory I should adopt. I had to choose between a royalist or a republican, a democrat or a conservative, a socialist or a bonapartist; as I was neither one nor the other, nor even anything, I often envied those around me who were so fortunate as to have arrived at definite conclusions. After listening to various doctrines, it seemed to me that I was laboring under some mental defect. The motives that influenced others did not influence me. I could not comprehend how, in political matters, a man should be governed by his preferences. My affirmative friends planned a constitution the same as a house, according to the latest, simplest, and most complete notion of it, and many were offered for acceptance - the mansion of a marquis, the house of a common citizen, the tenement of a laborer, the barracks of a soldier, the philanstery of a socialist, and even the camp of savages. Each claimed that his was "the true habitation for man, the only one in which a sensible person could live." I was not satisfied with such reasons, for I did not regard personal tastes as authoritative. It seemed to me that a house should not be built for the architect alone, nor for itself, but for the owner who was to occupy it.

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