PREFACE.

ries and the modest notoriety of a name that most
French people still ignore today hardly
compensate for this injustice of fate.

How did it happen that, in our land, in the year 52
BCE, patriotism—a sentiment so pure
and almost sacred—found itself an obstacle to
the realization of something just as pure and
just as sacred: the progress of peoplesThe author is reflecting a common 19th-century view that Roman conquest, though brutal, brought "civilization" and "progress" to Gaul. along the path
of civilization?

There lies one of those contradictions with
which psychology teems, and which
so often make agreement impossible
between two equally intelligent and sin-
cere men when each considers
a different aspect of the same question. When,
fifty years ago, I sat on the benches
of the college, the philosophy professor spoke
of antinomiesFrom the Greek antinomia, meaning a contradiction between two laws or logical principles that both seem true.; this Greek word
which dates back to classical antiquity was
found to be beautiful and new, but today,
at the end of half a century, it appears a bit
dated. More recently, wanting to explain how
this or that good-faith adversary had, on
certain questions, opinions that seemed
to contradict one another, philosophers have said