Taine irritated the elite of the 3rd French republic as well as everyone who believed in the popular democracy based on one person one vote.  You can understand when you read the following preface which was 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 and just like other animals form herds — it being a matter of course that they too should herd together with those of their kind owing to their natural weakness — it is a necessary consequence that the man who excels in bodily strength and in courage will lead and rule over the rest.  We observe and should regard as a most genuine work of nature this very phenomenon in the case of the other animals which act purely by instinct and among who the strongest are always indisputable the masters — I speak of bulls, boars, cocks, and the like.  It is probable then that at the beginning men lived thus, herding together like animals and following the lead of the strongest and bravest, the ruler’s strength being here the sole limit to his power and the name we should give his rule being monarchy.

But when in time feelings of sociability and companionship begin to grow in such gatherings of men, then kingship has truck root; and the notions of goodness, justice, and their opposites begin to arise in men.