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The article considers the posterity of Hippolyte Taine from an institutional angle. It looks back at the collective tribute paid to him between 1906 and 1908, in the context of an eloquence contest organized by the Académie française. After having exposed the institutional stakes of the contest and traced the profile of the candidates, we try to measure the part of the respectively political and disciplinary dimensions in the manuscripts received by the Academy. Exactly contemporary with a violent controversy on the Origins of contemporary France, the competition could not avoid a political reflection on the Tainian heritage. But the eloquence award mas looking for a consensus. As a result, most candidates insist more on the necessary disciplinary updating of a work that they consider both fundamental and dated. The emergence of specialties disqualifies the totalizing ambition of the Tainian project, and the trial of the method turns into the intellectual assessment of a generation.