to desire to regenerate everything from top to bottom—in short, in his full recognition of the principle of historical heredity. It follows from all this that the Napoleonic régime may be looked upon as an experiment, showing clearly the enormous part played by conservation throughout the greatest revolutions.
Indeed, I think that the principle of conservation might even be extended to things military, and the armies of the Revolution and the Empire may be shown to be an extension of former institutions. In any case, it is very curious that Napoleon should have made no essential innovations in military equipment, and that it should have been the fire-arms of the Old Régime which so greatly contributed to securing the victories of the revolutionary troops. It was only under the Restoration that the artillery was improved.
The ease with which the Revolution and the Empire succeeded in radically transforming the country while still retaining such a large number of the acquisitions of the past, is bound up with a fact to which our historians have not always called attention, and which Taine does not seem to have noticed: industrial production was making great progress, and this progress was such that, towards 1780, everybody believed in the dogma of the indefinite progress of mankind.[1] This dogma, which was to exercise so great an influence on modern thought, would be a bizarre and inexplicable paradox if it were not considered as bound up with economic progress and with the feeling of absolute confidence which this economic progress engendered. The wars of the Revolution and of the Empire only stimulated this feeling still further, not only because they were glorious, but also because they caused a great deal of money to enter the country,
- ↑ Tocqueville, L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution, pp. 254–262, and Mélanges, p. 62. Cf. chapter IV. iv. of my study on Les Illusions du Progrès.
