Élie Halévy

Abstract

NOWHERE IN HIS WORK DOES ÉLIE HALÉVY SHOW THAT HE felt any particular preference for those whom man hold to be his predecessors or masters. He refers at Length to Montesquieu at the beginning of his third volume on England in 1815, but indirectly, through his English interpreters, especially Blackstone. Blackstone interpreted the British constitution in the light of the interpretation which Montesquieu gave it in l'Esprit des Lois. In so doing he yielded to the force of French logic and falsified the analysis of reality. As French logic is unable to understand the British procedure, and imposed upon the English a stylized representation of their own practice, this paradoxical exercise was greatly to the taste of Halévy, an historian who always enjoyed the paradoxes of history, and who understood so well the native genius of both peoples.