How does a great human science arise? How is the national culture being reformatted? The author focuses on the formation of “historical and philological sciences” as a special constellation of disciplines, the struggle for the scientific teaching of humanities, which has widely unfolded in France since the 1860s. The discussion was about which sphere humanitarian knowledge should belong to - the sphere of literature or the sphere of science. In 19th-century France, this process encountered a powerful obstacle, consisting of a whole set of institutional barriers and traditional stereotypes of thinking and behavior. In fact, the entire structure of French culture prevented the transformation of humanitarian knowledge into a rigorous science. For decades and decades, what the heroes of this book did and preached was perceived by some of their contemporaries as deeply un-French, and moreover, anti-French activities. But it was she who brought France world fame in the 20th century.