CHAPTER V

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

The eighteenth century in France began with Louis XIV and ended with the

Revolution. It is the period which bridges the gulf between autocracy

and self-government, between Roman Catholicism and toleration, between

the classical spirit and the spirit of the Romantic Revival. It is thus

of immense importance in the history not only of France, but of the

civilized world. And from the point of view of literature it is also

peculiarly interesting. The vast political and social changes which it

inaugurated were the result of a corresponding movement in the current

of ideas; and this movement was begun, developed, and brought to a

triumphant conclusion by a series of great French writers, who

deliberately put their literary abilities to the service of the causes

which they had at heart. Thus the literature of the epoch offers a

singular contrast to that of the preceding one. While the masterpieces

of the _Grand Siècle_ served no ulterior purpose, coming into being and

into immortality simply as works of beauty and art, those of the

eighteenth century were works of propaganda, appealing with a practical

purpose to the age in which they were written--works whose value does

not depend solely upon artistic considerations. The former were static,

the latter dynamic. As the century progressed, the tendency deepened;

and the literature of the age, taken as a whole, presents a spectacle of

thrilling dramatic interest, in which the forces of change, at first

insignificant, gradually gather in volume, and at last, accumulated into

overwhelming power, carry all before them. In pure literature, the

writers of the eighteenth century achieved, indeed, many triumphs; but

their great, their peculiar, triumphs were in the domain of thought.

The movement had already begun before the death of Louis. The evils at

which La Bruyère had shuddered had filled the attention of more

practical minds. Among these the most remarkable was FÉNELON, Archbishop

of Cambray, who combined great boldness of political thought with the

graces of a charming and pellucid style. In several writings, among

which was the famous _Télémaque_--a book written for the edification of

the young Duc de Bourgogne, the heir to the French throne--Fénelon gave

expression to the growing reaction against the rigid autocracy of the

government, and enunciated the revolutionary doctrine that a monarch

existed for no other purpose than the good of his people. The Duc de

Bourgogne was converted to the mild, beneficent, and open-minded views

of his tutor; and it is possible that if he had lived a series of

judicious reforms might have prevented the cataclysm at the close of the

century. But in one important respect the mind of Fénelon was not in

accord with the lines on which French thought was to develop for the

next eighty years. Though he was among the first to advocate religious

toleration, he was an ardent, even a mystical, Roman Catholic. Now one

of the chief characteristics of the coming age was its scepticism--its

elevation of the secular as opposed to the religious elements in

society, and its utter lack of sympathy with all forms of mystical

devotion. Signs of this spirit also had appeared before the end of

Louis's reign. As early as 1687--within a year of the Revocation of the

Edict of Nantes--FONTENELLE, the nephew of Corneille, in his _Histoire

des Oracles_, attacked the miraculous basis of Christianity under the

pretence of exposing the religious credulity of the ancient Greeks and

Romans. In its mingling of the sprightly and the erudite, and in the

subdued irony of its apparent submission to orthodoxy, this little book

forestalled a method of controversy which came into great vogue at a

later date. But a more important work, published at the very end of the

seventeenth century, was the _Dictionary_ of BAYLE, in which, amid an

enormous mass of learning poured out over a multitude of heterogeneous

subjects, the most absolute religious scepticism is expressed with

unmistakable emphasis and unceasing reiteration. The book is an

extremely unwieldy one--very large and very discursive, and quite devoid

of style; but its influence was immense; and during the long combat of

the eighteenth century it was used as a kind of armoury, supplying many

of their sharpest weapons to the writers of the time.

It was not, however, until a few years after the death of the great king

that a volume appeared which contained a complete expression of the new

spirit, in all its aspects. In the _Lettres Persanes_ of MONTESQUIEU

(published 1721) may be discerned the germs of the whole thought of the

eighteenth century in France. The scheme of this charming and remarkable

book was not original: some Eastern travellers were supposed to arrive

in Paris, and to describe, in a correspondence with their countrymen in

Persia, the principal features of life in the French capital. But the

uses to which Montesquieu put this borrowed plot were all his own. He

made it the base for a searching attack on the whole system of the

government of Louis XIV. The corruption of the Court, the privileges of

the nobles, the maladministration of the finances, the stupidities and

barbarisms of the old autocratic régime--these are the topics to which

he is perpetually drawing his reader's attention. But he does more than

this: his criticism is not merely particular, it is general; he points

out the necessarily fatal effects of all despotisms, and he indicates

his own conception of what a good constitution should be. All these

discussions are animated by a purely secular spirit. He views religion

from an outside standpoint; he regards it rather as one of the functions

of administration than as an inner spiritual force. As for all the

varieties of fanaticism and intolerance, he abhors them utterly.

It might be supposed that a book containing such original and

far-reaching theories was a solid substantial volume, hard to master and

laborious to read. The precise opposite is the case. Montesquieu has

dished up his serious doctrines into a spicy story, full of epigrams and

light topical allusions, and romantic adventures, and fancy visions of

the East. Montesquieu was a magistrate; yet he ventured to indulge here

and there in reflections of dubious propriety, and to throw over the

whole of his book an airy veil of voluptuous intrigue. All this is

highly typical of the literature of the age which was now beginning. The

serious, formal tone of the classical writers was abandoned, and was

replaced by a gay, unemphatic, pithy manner, in which some grains of

light-hearted licentiousness usually gave a flavour to the wit. The

change was partly due to the shifting of the centre of society from the

elaborate and spectacular world of Versailles to the more intimate

atmosphere of the drawing-rooms of Paris. With the death of the old

king the ceremonial life of the Court fell into the background; and the

spirits of the time flew off into frivolity with a sense of freedom and

relief. But there was another influence at work. Paradoxical as it may

sound, it was the very seriousness of the new writers which was the real

cause of their lack of decorum. Their great object was to be read--and

by the largest possible number of readers; the old select circle of

literary connoisseurs no longer satisfied them; they were eager to

preach their doctrines to a wider public--to the brilliant, inquisitive,

and increasingly powerful public of the capital. And with this public no

book had a chance of success unless it was of the kind that could be run

through rapidly, pleasantly, on a sofa, between dinner and the opera,

and would furnish the material for spicy anecdotes and good talk. Like

the jesters of the Middle Ages, the philosophers of the eighteenth

century found in the use of pranks and buffoonery the best way of

telling the truth.

Until about the middle of the century, Montesquieu was the dominating

figure in French thought. His second book--_Considérations sur la

Grandeur et la Décadence des Romains_--is an exceedingly able work, in

which a series of interesting and occasionally profound historical

reflections are expressed in a style of great brilliance and

incisiveness. Here Montesquieu definitely freed history from the

medieval fetters which it had worn even in the days of Bossuet, and

considered the development of events from a purely secular point of

view, as the result of natural causes. But his greatest work, over which

he spent the greater part of his life, and on which his reputation must

finally rest, was _L'Esprit des Lois_ (published in 1748). The

discussion of this celebrated book falls outside the domain of

literature, and belongs rather to the history of political thought. It

is enough to say that here all Montesquieu's qualities--his power of

generalization, his freedom from prejudice, his rationalism, his love of

liberty and hatred of fanaticism, his pointed, epigrammatic

style--appear in their most characteristic form. Perhaps the chief fault

of the book is that it is too brilliant. When Madame du Deffand said

that its title should have been _De l'Esprit sur les Lois_ she put her

finger on its weak spot. Montesquieu's generalizations are always bold,

always original, always fine; unfortunately, they are too often unsound

into the bargain. The fluid elusive facts slip through his neat

sentences like water in a sieve. His treatment of the English

constitution affords an illustration of this. One of the first

foreigners to recognize the importance and to study the nature of

English institutions, Montesquieu nevertheless failed to give an

accurate account of them. He believed that he had found in them a signal

instance of his favourite theory of the beneficial effects produced by

the separation of the three powers of government--the judicial, the

legislative, and the executive; but he was wrong. In England, as a

matter of fact, the powers of the legislative and the executive were

intertwined. This particular error has had a curious history.

Montesquieu's great reputation led to his view of the constitution of

England being widely accepted as the true one; as such it was adopted by

the American leaders after the War of Independence; and its influence is

plainly visible in the present constitution of the United States. Such

is the strange power of good writing over the affairs of men!

At about the same time as the publication of the _Lettres Persanes_,

there appeared upon the scene in Paris a young man whose reputation was

eventually destined far to outshine that of Montesquieu himself. This

young man was François Arouet, known to the world as VOLTAIRE. Curiously

enough, however, the work upon which Voltaire's reputation was

originally built up has now sunk into almost complete oblivion. It was

as a poet, and particularly as a tragic poet, that he won his fame; and

it was primarily as a poet that

he

continued to be known to his contemporaries during the first sixty years

of his life (1694-1754). But to-day his poetry--the serious part of it,

at least,--is never read, and his tragedies--except for an occasional

revival--are never acted. As a dramatist Voltaire is negligible for the

very reasons that made him so successful in his own day. It was not his

object to write great drama, but to please his audience: he did please

them; and, naturally enough, he has not pleased posterity. His plays are

melodramas--the melodramas of a very clever man with a great command of

language, an acute eye for stage-effect, and a consummate knowledge of

the situations and sentiments which would go down with his Parisian

public. They are especially remarkable for their wretched psychology. It

seems well-nigh incredible that Voltaire's pasteboard imitations of

humanity should ever have held a place side by side with the profound

presentments of Racine; yet so it was, and Voltaire was acclaimed as the

equal--or possibly the triumphant rival--of his predecessor. All through

the eighteenth century this singular absence of psychological insight

may be observed.

The verse of the plays is hardly better than the character-drawing. It

is sometimes good rhetoric; it is never poetry. The same may be said of

_La Henriade_, the National Epic which placed Voltaire, in the eyes of

his admiring countrymen, far above Milton and Dante, and, at least, on a

level with Virgil and Homer. The true gifts displayed in this unreadable

work were not poetical at all, but historical. The notes and

dissertations appended to it showed that Voltaire possessed a real grasp

of the principles of historical method--principles which he put to a

better use a few years later in his brilliant narrative, based on

original research, of the life of Charles XII.

During this earlier period of his activity Voltaire seems to have been

trying--half unconsciously, perhaps--to discover and to express the

fundamental quality of his genius. What was that quality? Was he first

and foremost a dramatist, or an epic poet, or a writer of light verse,

or an historian, or even perhaps a novelist? In all these directions he

was working successfully--yet without absolute success. For, in fact, at

bottom, he was none of these things: the true nature of his spirit was

not revealed in them. When the revelation did come, it came as the

result of an accident. At the age of thirty he was obliged, owing to a

quarrel with a powerful nobleman, to leave France and take up his

residence in England. The three years that he passed there had an

immense effect upon his life. In those days England was very little

known to Frenchmen; the barrier which had arisen during the long war

between the two peoples was only just beginning to be broken down; and

when Voltaire arrived, it was almost in the spirit of a discoverer. What

he found filled him with astonishment and admiration. Here, in every

department of life, were to be seen all the blessings so conspicuously

absent in France. Here were wealth, prosperity, a contented people, a

cultivated nobility, a mild and just administration, and a bursting

energy which manifested itself in a multitude of ways--in literature, in

commerce, in politics, in scientific thought. And all this had come into

existence in a nation which had curbed the power of the monarchy, done

away with priestcraft, established the liberty of the Press, set its

face against every kind of bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and, through

the means of free institutions, taken up the task of governing itself.

The inference was obvious: in France also, like causes would lead to

like results. When he was allowed to return to his own country, Voltaire

published the outcome of his observations and reflections in his

_Lettres Philosophiques_, where for the first time his genius displayed

itself in its essential form. The book contains an account of England as

Voltaire saw it, from the social rather than from the political point of

view. English life is described in its actuality, detailed, vivid, and

various; we are shown Quakers and members of Parliament, merchants and

philosophers; we come in for the burial of Sir Isaac Newton; we go to a

performance of _Julius Caesar_; inoculation is explained to us; we are

given elaborate discussions of English literature and English science,

of the speculations of Bolingbroke and the theories of Locke. The

Letters may still be read with pleasure and instruction; they are

written in a delightful style, running over with humour and wit,

revealing here and there remarkable powers of narrative, and impregnated

through and through with a wonderful mingling of gaiety, irony, and

common sense. They are journalism of genius; but they are something more

besides. They are informed with a high purpose, and a genuine love of

humanity and the truth. The French authorities soon recognized this;

they perceived that every page contained a cutting indictment of their

system of government; and they adopted their usual method in such a

case. The sale of the book was absolutely prohibited throughout France,

and a copy of it solemnly burnt by the common hangman.

It was only gradually that the new views, of which Montesquieu and

Voltaire were the principal exponents, spread their way among the

public; and during the first half of the century many writers remained

quite unaffected by them. Two of these--resembling each other in this

fact alone, that they stood altogether outside the movement of

contemporary thought--deserve our special attention.

The mantle of Racine was generally supposed to have fallen on to the

shoulders of Voltaire--it had not: if it had fallen on to anyone's

shoulders it was on to those of MARIVAUX. No doubt it had become

diminished in the transit. Marivaux was not a great tragic writer; he

was not a poet; he worked on a much smaller scale, and with far less

significant material. But he was a true dramatist, a subtle

psychologist, and an artist pure and simple. His comedies, too, move

according to the same laws as the tragedies of Racine; they preserve the

same finished symmetry of design, and leave upon the mind the same sense

of unity and grace. But they are slight, etherealized, fantastic; they

are Racine, as it were, by moonlight. All Marivaux's dramas pass in a

world of his own invention--a world curiously compounded of imagination

and reality. At first sight one can see nothing there but a kind of

conventional fantasy, playing charmingly round impossible situations

and queer delightful personages, who would vanish in a moment into thin

air at the slightest contact with actual flesh and blood. But if

Marivaux had been simply fantastic and nothing more, his achievement

would have been insignificant; his great merit lies in his exquisite

instinct for psychological truth. His plays are like Watteau's pictures,

which, for all the unreality of their atmosphere, produce their effect

owing to a mass of accurate observation and a profound sense of the

realities of life. His characters, like Watteau's, seem to possess, not

quite reality itself, but the very quintessence of rarefied reality--the

distilled fragrance of all that is most refined, delicate and enchanting

in the human spirit. His Aramintes, his Silvias, his Lucidors are purged

of the grossnesses of existence; their minds and their hearts are

miraculously one; in their conversations the subtleties of

metaphysicians are blended with the airy clarities of birds. _Le Jeu de

l'Amour et du Hasard_ is perhaps the most perfect example of his work.

Here the lady changes places with her waiting-maid, while the lover

changes places with his valet, and, in this impossible framework of

symmetrical complications, the whole action spins itself out. The beauty

of the little piece depends upon the infinitely delicate art which

depicts each charmingly absurd, minute transition in the process of

delusion, misunderstanding, bewilderment, and explanation, with all the

varieties of their interactions and shimmering personal shades. It would

be difficult to find a more exquisite example of tender and

discriminating fidelity to the loveliest qualities in human nature than

the scene in which Silvia realizes at last that she is in love--and with

whom. 'Ah! je vois clair dans mon coeur!' she exclaims at the supreme

moment; and the words might stand as the epitome of the art of

Marivaux. Through all the superfine convolutions of his fancies and his

coquetries he never loses sight for a moment of the clear truth of the

heart.

While Marivaux, to use Voltaire's phrase for him, was 'weighing nothings

in scales of gossamer', a writer of a very different calibre was engaged

upon one of the most forcible, one of the most actual, and one of the

hugest compositions that has ever come from pen of man. The DUC DE

SAINT-SIMON had spent his youth and middle life in the thick of the

Court during the closing years of Louis XIV and the succeeding period of

the Regency; and he occupied his old age with the compilation of his

_Mémoires_. This great book offers so many points of striking contrast

with the mass of French literature that it falls into a category of its

own; no other work of the same outstanding merit can quite be compared

to it; for it was the product of what has always been, in France, an

extremely rare phenomenon--an amateur in literature who was also a

genius. Saint-Simon was so far from being a professional man of letters

that he would have been shocked to hear himself described as a man of

letters at all; indeed, it might be said with justice that his only

profession was that of a duke. It was as a duke--or, more correctly, as

a _Duc et Pair_--that, in his own eyes at any rate, he lived and moved

and had his being. It was round his position as a duke that the whole of

his active existence had revolved; it was with the consciousness of his

dukedom dominating his mind that he sat down in his retirement to write

his memoirs. It might seem that no book produced in such circumstances

and by such a man could possibly be valuable or interesting. But,

fortunately for the world, the merit of books does not depend upon the

enlightenment of authors. Saint-Simon was a man of small intellect, with

medieval ideas as to the structure of society, with an absurd belief in

the fundamental importance of the minutest class distinctions, and with

an obsession for dukedoms almost amounting to mania: but he had in

addition an incredibly passionate temperament combined with an

unparalleled power of observation; and these two qualities have made his

book immortal.

Besides the intrinsic merits of the work, it has the additional

advantage of being concerned with an age which, of enthralling interest

on its own account, also happened to be particularly suited to the

capacities of the writer. If Saint-Simon had lived at any other time,

his memoirs would have been admirable, no doubt, but they would have

lacked the crowning excellence which they actually possess. As it was, a

happy stroke of fortune placed him in the one position where he could

exercise to the full his extraordinary powers: never, before or since,

has there been so much to observe; never, before or since, so miraculous

an observer. For, at Versailles, in the last years of Louis, Saint-Simon

had before him, under his very eyes as a daily and hourly spectacle, the

whole accumulated energy of France in all its manifestations; that was

what he saw; and that, by the magic of his pen, is what he makes us see.

Through the endless succession of his pages the enormous panorama

unrolls itself, magnificent, palpitating, alive. What La Bruyère saw

with the spiritual gaze of a moralist rushed upon the vision of

Saint-Simon in all the colour, the detail, the intensity, the frenzy, of

actual fact. He makes no comments, no reflections--or, if he does, they

are ridiculous; he only sees and feels. Thus, though in the profundity

of his judgement he falls so infinitely below La Bruyère, in his

character-drawing he soars as high above him. His innumerable portraits

are unsurpassed in literature. They spring into his pages bursting with

life--individual, convincing, complete, and as various as humanity

itself. He excels in that most difficult art of presenting the outward

characteristics of persons, calling up before the imagination not only

the details of their physical appearance, but the more recondite effects

of their manner and their bearing, so that, when he has finished, one

almost feels that one has met the man. But his excellence does not stop

there. It is upon the inward creature that he expends his most lavish

care--upon the soul that sits behind the eyelids, upon the purpose and

the passion that linger in a gesture or betray themselves in a word. The

joy that he takes in such descriptions soon infects the reader, who

finds before long that he is being carried away by the ardour of the

chase, and that at last he seizes upon the quivering quarry with all the

excitement and all the fury of Saint-Simon himself. Though it would,

indeed, be a mistake to suppose that Saint-Simon was always furious--the

wonderful portraits of the Duchesse de Bourgogne and the Prince de Conti

are in themselves sufficient to disprove that--yet there can be no doubt

that his hatreds exceeded his loves, and that, in his character-drawing,

he was, as it were, more at home when he detested. Then the victim is

indeed dissected with a loving hand; then the details of incrimination

pour out in a multitudinous stream; then the indefatigable brush of the

master darkens the deepest shadows and throws the most glaring

deformities into still bolder relief; then disgust, horror, pity, and

ridicule finish the work which scorn and indignation had begun. Nor, in

spite of the virulence of his method, do his portraits ever sink to the

level of caricatures. His most malevolent exaggerations are yet so

realistic that they carry conviction. When he had fashioned to his

liking his terrific images--his Vendôme, his Noailles, his

Pontchartrain, his Duchesse de Berry, and a hundred more--he never

forgot, in the extremity of his ferocity, to commit the last insult, and

to breathe into their nostrils the fatal breath of life.

And it is not simply in detached portraits that Saint-Simon's

descriptive powers show themselves; they are no less remarkable in the

evocation of crowded and elaborate scenes. He is a master of movement;

he can make great groups of persons flow and dispose themselves and

disperse again; he can produce the effect of a multitude under the

dominion of some common agitation, the waves of excitement spreading in

widening circles, amid the conflicting currents of curiosity and

suspicion, fear and hope. He is assiduous in his descriptions of the

details of places, and invariably heightens the effect of his emotional

climaxes by his dramatic management of the physical _décor._ Thus his

readers get to know the Versailles of that age as if they had lived in

it; they are familiar with the great rooms and the long gallery; they

can tell the way to the king's bedchamber, or wait by the mysterious

door of Madame de Maintenon; or remember which prince had rooms opening

out on to the Terrace near the Orangery, and which great family had

apartments in the new wing. More than this, Saint-Simon has the art of

conjuring up--often in a phrase or two--those curious intimate visions

which seem to reveal the very soul of a place. How much more one knows

about the extraordinary palace--how one feels the very pulse of the

machine--when Saint-Simon has shown one in a flash a door opening, on a

sudden, at dead of night, in an unlighted corridor, and the haughty Duc

d'Harcourt stepping out among a blaze of torches, to vanish again, as

swiftly as he had come, into the mysterious darkness!--Or when one has

seen, amid the cold and snow of a cruel winter, the white faces of the

courtiers pressed against the window-panes of the palace, as the

messengers ride in from the seat of war with their dreadful catalogues

of disasters and deaths!

Saint-Simon's style is the precise counterpart of his matter. It is

coloured and vital to the highest degree. It is the style of a writer

who does not care how many solecisms he commits--how disordered his

sentences may be, how incorrect his grammar, how forced or undignified

his expressions--so long as he can put on to paper in black and white

the passionate vision that is in his mind. The result is something

unique in French literature. If Saint-Simon had tried to write with

academic correctness--and even if he had succeeded--he certainly would

have spoilt his book. Fortunately, academic correctness did not interest

him, while the exact delineament of his observations did. He is not

afraid of using colloquialisms which every critic of the time would have

shuddered at, and which, by their raciness and flavour, add enormously

to his effects. His writing is also extremely metaphorical; technical

terms are thrown in helter-skelter whenever the meaning would benefit;

and the boldest constructions at every turn are suddenly brought into

being. In describing the subtle spiritual sympathy which existed

between Fénelon and Madame de Guyon he strikes out the unforgettable

phrase--'leur sublime s'amalgama', which in its compression, its

singularity, its vividness, reminds one rather of an English Elizabethan

than a French writer of the eighteenth century. The vast movement of his

sentences is particularly characteristic. Clause follows clause, image

is piled upon image, the words hurry out upon one another's heels in

clusters, until the construction melts away under the burning pressure

of the excitement, to reform as best it may while the agitated period

still expands in endless ramifications. His book is like a tropical

forest--luxuriant, bewildering, enormous--with the gayest humming-birds

among the branches, and the vilest monsters in the entangled grass.

Saint-Simon, so far as the influence of his contemporaries was

concerned, might have been living in the Middle Ages or the moon. At a

time when Voltaire's fame was ringing through Europe, he refers to him

incidentally as an insignificant scribbler, and misspells his name. But

the combination of such abilities and such aloofness was a singular

exception, becoming, indeed, more extraordinary and improbable every

day. For now the movement which had begun in the early years of the

century was entering upon a new phase. The change came during the decade

1750-60, when, on the one hand, it had become obvious that all the worst

features of the old regime were to be perpetuated indefinitely under the

incompetent government of Louis XV, and when, on the other hand, the

generation which had been brought up under the influence of Montesquieu

and Voltaire came to maturity. A host of new writers, eager, positive,

and resolute, burst upon the public, determined to expose to the

uttermost the evils of the existing system, and, if possible, to end

them. Henceforward, until the meeting of the States-General closed the

period of discussion and began that of action, the movement towards

reform dominated French literature, gathering in intensity as it

progressed, and assuming at last the proportions and characteristics of

a great organized campaign.

The ideals which animated the new writers--the _Philosophes_, as they

came to be called--may be summed up in two words: Reason and Humanity.

They were the heirs of that splendid spirit which had arisen in Europe

at the Renaissance, which had filled Columbus when he sailed for the New

World, Copernicus when he discovered the motion of the earth, and Luther

when he nailed his propositions to the church door at Wittenberg. They

wished to dispel the dark mass of prejudice, superstition, ignorance and

folly by the clear rays of knowledge and truth; and to employ the forces

of society towards the benefit of all mankind. They found in France an

incompetent administration, a financial system at once futile and

unjust, a barbarous judicial procedure, a blind spirit of religious

intolerance--they found the traces of tyranny, caste-privilege and

corruption in every branch of public life; and they found that these

enormous evils were the result less of viciousness than of stupidity,

less of the deliberate malice of kings or ministers than of a long,

ingrained tradition of narrow-mindedness and inhumanity in the

principles of government. Their great object, therefore, was to produce,

by means of their writings, such an awakening of public opinion as

would cause an immense transformation in the whole spirit of national

life. With the actual processes of political change, with the practical

details of political machinery, very few of them concerned themselves.

Some of them--such as the illustrious Turgot--believed that the best way

of reaching the desired improvement was through the agency of a

benevolent despotism; others--such as Rousseau--had in view an

elaborate, _a priori_, ideal system of government; but these were

exceptions, and the majority of the _Philosophes_ ignored politics

proper altogether. This was a great misfortune; but it was inevitable.

The beneficent changes which had been introduced so effectively and with

such comparative ease into the government of England had been brought

about by men of affairs; in France the men of affairs were merely the

helpless tools of an autocratic machine, and the changes had to owe

their origin to men uninstructed in affairs--to men of letters. Reform

had to come from the outside, instead of from within; and reform of that

kind spells revolution. Yet, even here, there were compensating

advantages. The changes in England had been, for the most part,

accomplished in a tinkering, unspeculative, hole-and-corner spirit;

those in France were the result of the widest appeal to first

principles, of an attempt, at any rate, to solve the fundamental

problems of society, of a noble and comprehensive conception of the

duties and destiny of man. This was the achievement of the

_Philosophes_. They spread far and wide, not only through France, but

through the whole civilized world, a multitude of searching

interrogations on the most vital subjects; they propounded vast

theories, they awoke new enthusiasms, and uplifted new ideals. In two

directions particularly their influence has been enormous. By their

insistence on the right of free opinion and on the paramount necessity

of free speculation, untrammelled by the fetters of orthodoxy and

tradition, they established once for all as the common property of the

human race that scientific spirit which has had such an immense effect

on modern civilization, and whose full import we are still only just

beginning to understand. And, owing mainly to their efforts also, the

spirit of humanity has come to be an abiding influence in the world. It

was they who, by their relentless exposure of the abuses of the French

judicial system--the scandal of arbitrary imprisonment, the futile

barbarism of torture, the medieval abominations of the penal

code--finally instilled into public opinion a hatred of cruelty and

injustice in all their forms; it was they who denounced the horrors of

the slave-trade; it was they who unceasingly lamented the awful evils of

war. So far as the actual content of their thought was concerned, they

were not great originators. The germs of their most fruitful theories

they found elsewhere--chiefly among the thinkers of England; and, when

they attempted original thinking on their own account, though they were

bold and ingenious, they were apt also to be crude. In some

sciences--political economy, for instance, and psychology--they led the

way, but attained to no lasting achievement. They suffered from the same

faults as Montesquieu in his _Esprit des Lois_. In their love of pure

reason, they relied too often on the swift processes of argument for the

solution of difficult problems, and omitted that patient investigation

of premises upon which the validity of all argument depends. They were

too fond of systems, and those neatly constructed logical theories into

which everything may be fitted admirably--except the facts. In addition,

the lack of psychological insight which was so common in the eighteenth

century tended to narrow their sympathies; and in particular they failed

to realize the beauty and significance of religious and mystical states

of mind. These defects eventually produced a reaction against their

teaching--a reaction during which the true value of their work was for a

time obscured. For that value is not to be looked for in the enunciation

of certain definite doctrines, but in something much wider and more

profound. The _Philosophes_ were important not so much for the answers

which they gave as for the questions which they asked; their real

originality lay not in their thought, but in their spirit. They were the

first great popularizers. Other men before them had thought more

accurately and more deeply; they were the first to fling the light of

thought wide through the world, to appeal, not to the scholar and the

specialist, but to the ordinary man and woman, and to proclaim the

glories of civilization as the heritage of all humanity. Above all, they

instilled a new spirit into the speculations of men--the spirit of hope.

They believed ardently in the fundamental goodness of mankind, and they

looked forward into the future with the certain expectation of the

ultimate triumph of what was best. Though in some directions their

sympathies were limited, their love of humanity was a profound and

genuine feeling which moved them to a boundless enthusiasm. Though their

faith in creeds was small, their faith in mankind was great. The spirit

which filled them was well shown when, during the darkest days of the

Terror, the noble Condorcet, in the hiding-place from which he came

forth only to die, wrote his historical _Sketch of the Progress of the

Human Mind_, with its final chapter foretelling the future triumphs of

reason, and asserting the unlimited perfectibility of man.

The energies of the _Philosophes_ were given a centre and a

rallying-point by the great undertaking of the _Encyclopaedia_, the

publication of which covered a period of thirty years (1751-80). The

object of this colossal work, which contained a survey of human activity

in all its branches--political, scientific, artistic, philosophical,

commercial--was to record in a permanent and concentrated form the

advance of civilization. A multitude of writers contributed to it, of

varying merit and of various opinions, but all animated by the new

belief in reason and humanity. The ponderous volumes are not great

literature; their importance lies in the place which they fill in the

progress of thought, and in their immense influence in the propagation

of the new spirit. In spite of its bulk the book was extremely

successful; edition after edition was printed; the desire to know and to

think began to permeate through all the grades of society. Nor was it

only in France that these effects were visible; the prestige of French

literature and French manners carried the teaching of the _Philosophes_

all over Europe; great princes and ministers--Frederick in Prussia,

Catherine in Russia, Pombal in Portugal--eagerly joined the swelling

current; enlightenment was abroad in the world.

The _Encyclopaedia_ would never have come into existence without the

genius, the energy, and the enthusiasm of one man--DIDEROT. In him the

spirit of the age found its most typical expression. He was indeed _the

Philosophe_--more completely than all the rest universal, brilliant,

inquisitive, sceptical, generous, hopeful, and humane. It was he who

originated the _Encyclopaedia_, who, in company with Dalembert,

undertook its editorship, and who, eventually alone, accomplished the

herculean task of bringing the great production, in spite of obstacle

after obstacle--in spite of government prohibitions, lack of funds,

desertions, treacheries, and the mischances of thirty years--to a

triumphant conclusion. This was the work of his life; and it was work

which, by its very nature, could leave--except for that long row of

neglected volumes--no lasting memorial. But the superabundant spirit of

Diderot was not content with that: in the intervals of this stupendous

labour, which would have exhausted to their last fibre the energies of a

lesser man, he found time not only to pour out a constant flow of

writing in a multitude of miscellaneous forms--in dramas, in art

criticism, in philosophical essays, and in a voluminous

correspondence--but also to create on the sly as it were, and without a

thought of publication, two or three finished masterpieces which can

never be forgotten. Of these, the most important is _Le Neveu de

Rameau_, where Diderot's whole soul gushes out in one clear, strong,

sparkling jet of incomparable prose. In the sheer enchantment of its

vitality this wonderful little book has certainly never been surpassed.

It enthrals the reader as completely as the most exciting romance, or

the talk of some irresistibly brilliant _raconteur_. Indeed, the

writing, with its ease, its vigour, its colour, and its rapidity, might

almost be taken for what, in fact, it purports to be--conversation put

into print, were it not for the magical perfection of its form. Never

did a style combine more absolutely the movement of life with the

serenity of art. Every sentence is exciting, and every sentence is

beautiful. The book must have been composed quickly, without effort,

almost off-hand; but the mind that composed it was the mind of a master,

who, even as he revelled in the joyous manifestation of his genius,

preserved, with an instinctive power, the master's control. In truth,

beneath the gay galaxies of scintillating thoughts that strew the pages,

one can discern the firm, warm, broad substance of Diderot's very self,

underlying and supporting all. That is the real subject of a book which

seems to have taken all subjects for its province--from the origin of

music to the purpose of the universe; and the central figure--the queer,

delightful, Bohemian Rameau, evoked for us with such a marvellous

distinctness--is in fact no more than the reed with many stops through

which Diderot is blowing. Of all his countrymen, he comes nearest, in

spirit and in manner, to the great Curé of Meudon. The rich, exuberant,

intoxicating tones of Rabelais vibrate in his voice. He has--not all,

for no son of man will ever again have that; but he has _some_ of

Rabelais' stupendous breadth, and he has yet more of Rabelais' enormous

optimism. His complete materialism--his disbelief in any Providence or

any immortality--instead of depressing him, seems rather to have given

fresh buoyancy to his spirit; if this life on earth were all, that only

served, in his eyes, to redouble the intensity of its value. And his

enthusiasm inspired him with a philanthropy unknown to Rabelais--an

active benevolence that never tired. For indeed he was, above all else,

a man of his own age: a man who could think subtly and work nobly as

well as write splendidly; who could weep as well as laugh. He is,

perhaps, a smaller figure than Rabelais; but he is much nearer to

ourselves. And, when we have come to the end of his generous pages, the

final impression that is left with us is of a man whom we cannot choose

but love.

Besides Diderot, the band of the _Philosophes_ included many famous

names. There was the brilliant and witty mathematician, Dalembert; there

was the grave and noble statesman, Turgot; there was the psychologist,

Condillac; there was the light, good-humoured Marmontel; there was the

penetrating and ill-fated Condorcet. Helvétius and D'Holbach plunged

boldly into ethics and metaphysics; while, a little apart, in learned

repose, Buffon advanced the purest interests of science by his

researches in Natural History. As every year passed there were new

accessions to this great array of writers, who waged their war against

ignorance and prejudice with an ever-increasing fury. A war indeed it

was. On one side were all the forces of intellect; on the other was all

the mass of entrenched and powerful dullness. In reply to the brisk fire

of the _Philosophes_--argument, derision, learning, wit--the authorities

in State and Church opposed the more serious artillery of censorships,

suppressions, imprisonments, and exiles. There was hardly an eminent

writer in Paris who was unacquainted with the inside of the Conciergerie

or the Bastille. It was only natural, therefore, that the struggle

should have become a highly embittered one, and that at times, in the

heat of it, the party whose watchword was a hatred of fanaticism should

have grown itself fanatical. But it was clear that the powers of

reaction were steadily losing ground; they could only assert themselves

spasmodically; their hold upon public opinion was slipping away. Thus

the efforts of the band of writers in Paris seemed about to be crowned

with success. But this result had not been achieved by their efforts

alone. In the midst of the conflict they had received the aid of a

powerful auxiliary, who had thrown himself with the utmost vigour into

the struggle, and, far as he was from the centre of operations, had

assumed supreme command.

It was Voltaire. This great man had now entered upon the final, and by

far the most important, period of his astonishing career. It is a

curious fact that if Voltaire had died at the age of sixty he would now

only be remembered as a writer of talent and versatility, who had given

conspicuous evidence, in one or two works, of a liberal and brilliant

intelligence, but who had enjoyed a reputation in his own age, as a poet

and dramatist, infinitely beyond his deserts. He entered upon the really

significant period of his activity at an age when most men have already

sought repose. Nor was this all; for, by a singular stroke of fortune,

his existence was prolonged far beyond the common span; so that, in

spite of the late hour of its beginning, the most fruitful and important

epoch of his life extended over a quarter of a century (1754-78). That

he ever entered upon this last period of his career seems in itself to

have depended as much on accident as his fateful residence in England.

After the publication of the _Lettres Philosophiques_, he had done very

little to fulfil the promise of that work. He had retired to the country

house of Madame du Châtelet, where he had devoted himself to science,

play-writing, and the preparation of a universal history. His reputation

had increased; for it was in these years that he produced his most

popular tragedies--_Zaïre, Mérope, Alzire_, and _Mahomet_--while a

correspondence carried on in the most affectionate terms with Frederick

the Great yet further added to his prestige; but his essential genius

still remained quiescent. Then at last Madame du Châtelet died and

Voltaire took the great step of his life. At the invitation of Frederick

he left France, and went to live as a pensioner of the Prussian king in

the palace at Potsdam. But his stay there did not last long. It seemed

as if the two most remarkable men in Europe liked each other so well

that they could not remain apart--and so ill that they could not remain

together. After a year or two, there was the inevitable explosion.

Voltaire fled from Prussia, giving to the world before he did so one of

the most amusing _jeux d'esprit_ ever written--the celebrated _Diatribe

du Docteur Akakia_--and, after some hesitation, settled down near the

Lake of Geneva. A few years later he moved into the _château_ of Ferney,

which became henceforward his permanent abode.

Voltaire was now sixty years of age. His position was an enviable one.

His reputation was very great, and he had amassed a considerable

fortune, which not only assured him complete independence, but enabled

him to live in his domains on the large and lavish scale of a country

magnate. His residence at Ferney, just on the border of French

territory, put him beyond the reach of government interference, while he

was yet not too far distant to be out of touch with the capital. Thus

the opportunity had at last come for the full display of his powers. And

those powers were indeed extraordinary. His character was composed of a

strange amalgam of all the most contradictory elements in human nature,

and it would be difficult to name a single virtue or a single vice which

he did not possess. He was the most egotistical of mortals, and the

most disinterested; he was graspingly avaricious, and profusely

generous; he was treacherous, mischievous, frivolous, and mean, yet he

was a firm friend and a true benefactor, yet he was profoundly serious

and inspired by the noblest enthusiasms. Nature had carried these

contradictions even into his physical constitution. His health was so

bad that he seemed to pass his whole life on the brink of the grave;

nevertheless his vitality has probably never been surpassed in the

history of the world. Here, indeed, was the one characteristic which

never deserted him: he was always active with an insatiable activity; it

was always safe to say of him that, whatever else he was, he was not at

rest. His long, gaunt body, frantically gesticulating, his skull-like

face, with its mobile features twisted into an eternal grin, its

piercing eyes sparkling and darting--all this suggested the appearance

of a corpse galvanized into an incredible animation. But in truth it was

no dead ghost that inhabited this strange tenement, but the fierce and

powerful spirit of an intensely living man.

Some signs had already appeared of the form which his activity was now

about to take. During his residence in Prussia he had completed his

historical _Essai sur les Moeurs_, which passed over in rapid review the

whole development of humanity, and closed with a brilliant sketch of the

age of Louis XIV. This work was highly original in many ways. It was the

first history which attempted to describe the march of civilization in

its broadest aspects, which included a consideration of the great

Eastern peoples, which dealt rather with the progress of the arts and

the sciences than with the details of politics and wars. But its chief

importance lay in the fact that it was in reality, under its historical

trappings, a work of propaganda. It was a counterblast to Bossuet's

_Histoire Universelle_. That book had shown the world's history as a

part of the providential order--a grand unfolding of design. Voltaire's

view was very different. To him, as to Montesquieu, natural causes alone

were operative in history; but this was not all; in his eyes there was

one influence which, from the earliest ages, had continually retarded

the progress of humanity, and that influence was religious belief. Thus

his book, though far more brilliant and far more modern than that of

Bossuet, was nevertheless almost equally biased. It was history with a

thesis, and the gibe of Montesquieu was justifiable. 'Voltaire,' he

said, 'writes history to glorify his own convent, like any Benedictine

monk.' Voltaire's 'convent' was the philosophical school in Paris; and

his desire to glorify it was soon to appear in other directions.

The _Essai sur les Moeurs_ is an exceedingly amusing narrative, but it

is a long and learned work filling several volumes, and the fruit of

many years of research. Voltaire was determined henceforward to distil

its spirit into more compendious and popular forms. He had no more time

for elaborate dissertations; he must reach the public by quicker and

surer ways. Accordingly there now began to pour into Paris a flood of

short light booklets--essays, plays, poems, romances, letters, tracts--a

multitude of writings infinitely varied in form and scope, but all

equally irresistible and all equally bearing the unmistakable signs of

their origin at Ferney. Voltaire's inimitable style had at last found a

medium in which it could display itself in all its charm and all its

brilliance. The pointed, cutting, mocking sentences laugh and dance

through his pages like light-toed, prick-eared elves. Once seen, and

there is no help for it--one must follow, into whatever dangerous and

unknown regions those magic imps may lead. The pamphlets were of course

forbidden, but without effect; they were sold in thousands, and new

cargoes, somehow or other, were always slipping across the frontier from

Holland or Geneva. Whenever a particularly outrageous one appeared,

Voltaire wrote off to all his friends to assure them that he knew

nothing whatever of the production, that it was probably a translation

from the work of an English clergyman, and that, in short, everyone

would immediately see from the style alone that it was--_not_ his. An

endless series of absurd pseudonyms intensified the farce. Oh no!

Voltaire was certainly not the author of this scandalous book. How could

he be? Did not the title-page plainly show that it was the work of Frère

Cucufin, or the uncle of Abbé Bazin, or the Comte de Boulainvilliers, or

the Emperor of China? And so the game proceeded; and so all France

laughed; and so all France read.

Two forms of this light literature Voltaire made especially his own. He

brought the Dialogue to perfection; for the form suited him exactly,

with its opportunities for the rapid exposition of contrary doctrines,

for the humorous stultification of opponents, and for witty repartee.

Into this mould he has poured some of his finest materials; and in such

pieces as _Le Dîner du Comte de Boulainvilliers_ and _Frère Rigolet et

l'Empereur de la Chine_ one finds the concentrated essence of his whole

work. Equally effective and equally characteristic is the _Dictionnaire

Philosophique_, which contains a great number of very short

miscellaneous articles arranged in alphabetical order. This plan gave

Voltaire complete freedom both in the choice of subjects and in their

manipulation; as the spirit seized him he could fly out into a page of

sarcasm or speculation or criticism or buffoonery, and such liberty was

precisely to his taste; so that the book which had first appeared as a

pocket dictionary--'ce diable de portatif', he calls it in a letter

proving quite conclusively that _he_, at any rate, was not responsible

for the wretched thing--were there not Hebrew quotations in it? and who

could accuse him of knowing Hebrew?--had swollen to six volumes before

he died.

The subjects of these writings were very various. Ostensibly, at least,

they were by no means limited to matters of controversy. Some were

successful tragedies, others were pieces of criticism, others were

historical essays, others were frivolous short stories, or _vers de

société_. But, in all of them, somewhere or other, the cloven hoof was

bound to show itself at last. Whatever disguises he might assume,

Voltaire in reality was always writing for his 'convent'; he was

pressing forward, at every possible opportunity, the great movement

against the old régime. His attack covers a wide ground. The abuses of

the financial system, the defects in the administration of justice, the

futility of the restraints upon trade--upon these and a hundred similar

subjects he poured out an incessant torrent of gay, penetrating,

frivolous and remorseless words. But there was one theme to which he was

perpetually recurring, which forms the subject for his bitterest jests,

and which, in fact, dominates the whole of his work, 'Écrasez l'infame!'

was his constant exclamation; and the 'infamous thing' which he wished

to see stamped underfoot was nothing less than religion. The

extraordinary fury of his attack on religion has, in the eyes of many,

imprinted an indelible stigma upon his name; but the true nature of his

position in this matter has often been misunderstood, and deserves some

examination.

Voltaire was a profoundly irreligious man. In this he resembled the

majority of his contemporaries; but he carried the quality perhaps to a

further pitch than any man of his age. For, with him, it was not merely

the purely religious and mystical feelings that were absent; he lacked

all sympathy with those vague, brooding, emotional states of mind which

go to create the highest forms of poetry, music, and art, and which are

called forth into such a moving intensity by the beauties of Nature.

These things Voltaire did not understand; he did not even perceive them;

for him, in fact, they did not exist; and the notion that men could be

influenced by them, genuinely and deeply, he considered to be so absurd

as hardly to need discussion. This was certainly a great weakness in

him--a great limitation of spirit. It has vitiated a large part of his

writings; and it has done more than that--it has obscured, to many of

his readers, the real nature and the real value of his work. For,

combined with this inability to comprehend some of the noblest parts of

man's nature, Voltaire possessed other qualities of high importance

which went far to compensate for his defects. If he was blind to some

truths, he perceived others with wonderful clearness; if his sympathies

in some directions were atrophied, in others they were sensitive to an

extraordinary degree. In the light of these considerations his attitude

towards religion becomes easier to understand. All the highest elements

of religion--the ardent devotion, the individual ecstasy, the sense of

communion with the divine--these things he simply ignored. But,

unfortunately, in his day there was a side of religion which, with his

piercing clear-sightedness, he could not ignore. The spirit of

fanaticism was still lingering in France; it was the spirit which had

burst out on the Eve of St. Bartholomew, and had dictated the fatal

Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In every branch of life its influence

was active, infusing prejudice, bitterness, and strife; but its effects

were especially terrible in the administration of justice. It so

happened that while Voltaire was at Ferney some glaring instances of

this dreadful fact came to light. A young Protestant named Calas

committed suicide in Toulouse, and, owing to the blind zealotry of the

magistrates of the town, his father, completely innocent, was found

guilty of his murder and broken on the wheel. Shortly afterwards,

another Protestant, Sirven, was condemned in similar circumstances, but

escaped to Ferney. A few years later, two youths of seventeen were

convicted at Abbeville for making some profane jokes. Both were

condemned to have their tongues torn out and to be decapitated; one

managed to escape, the other was executed. That such things could happen

in eighteenth-century France seems incredible; but happen they did, and

who knows how many more of a like atrocity? The fact that these three

came to light at all was owing to Voltaire himself. But for his

penetration, his courage, and his skill, the terrible murder of Calas

would to this day have remained unknown, and the dreadful affair of

Abbeville would have been forgotten in a month. Different men respond

most readily to different stimuli: the spectacle of cruelty and

injustice bit like a lash into the nerves of Voltaire, and plunged him

into an agony of horror. He resolved never to rest until he had not only

obtained reparation for these particular acts of injustice, but had

rooted out for ever from men's minds the superstitious bigotry which

made them possible. It was to attain this end that he attacked with such

persistence and such violence all religion and all priestcraft in

general, and, in particular, the orthodox dogmas of the Roman Catholic

Church. It became the great object of his life to convince public

opinion that those dogmas were both ridiculous and contemptible in

themselves, and abominable in their results. In this we may think him

right or we may think him wrong; our judgement will depend upon the

nature of our own opinions. But, whatever our opinions, we cannot think

him wicked; for we cannot doubt that the one dominating motive in all

that he wrote upon the subject of religion was a passionate desire for

the welfare of mankind.

Voltaire's philosophical views were curious. While he entirely discarded

the miraculous from his system, he nevertheless believed in a Deity--a

supreme First Cause of all the phenomena of the universe. Yet, when he

looked round upon the world as it was, the evil and the misery in it

were what seized his attention and appalled his mind. The optimism of so

many of his contemporaries appeared to him a shallow crude doctrine

unrelated to the facts of existence, and it was to give expression to

this view that he composed the most famous of all his works--_Candide_.

This book, outwardly a romance of the most flippant kind, contains in

reality the essence of Voltaire's maturest reflections upon human life.

It is a singular fact that a book which must often have been read simply

for the sake of its wit and its impropriety should nevertheless be one

of the bitterest and most melancholy that was ever written. But it is a

safe rule to make, that Voltaire's meaning is deep in proportion to the

lightness of his writing--that it is when he is most in earnest that he

grins most. And, in _Candide_, the brilliance and the seriousness alike

reach their climax. The book is a catalogue of all the woes, all the

misfortunes, all the degradations, and all the horrors that can afflict

humanity; and throughout it Voltaire's grin is never for a moment

relaxed. As catastrophe follows catastrophe, and disaster succeeds

disaster, not only does he laugh himself consumedly, but he makes his

reader laugh no less; and it is only when the book is finished that the

true meaning of it is borne in upon the mind. Then it is that the

scintillating pages begin to exercise their grim unforgettable effect;

and the pettiness and misery of man seem to borrow a new intensity from

the relentless laughter of Voltaire.

But perhaps the most wonderful thing about _Candide_ is that it

contains, after all, something more than mere pessimism--it contains a

positive doctrine as well. Voltaire's common sense withers the Ideal;

but it remains common sense. 'Il faut cultiver notre jardin' is his

final word--one of the very few pieces of practical wisdom ever uttered

by a philosopher.

Voltaire's style reaches the summit of its perfection in _Candide_; but

it is perfect in all that he wrote. His prose is the final embodiment of

the most characteristic qualities of the French genius. If all that that

great nation had ever done or thought were abolished from the world,

except a single sentence of Voltaire's, the essence of their achievement

would have survived. His writing brings to a culmination the tradition

that Pascal had inaugurated in his _Lettres Provinciales_: clarity,

simplicity and wit--these supreme qualities it possesses in an

unequalled degree. But these qualities, pushed to an extreme, have also

their disadvantages. Voltaire's style is narrow; it is like a

rapier--all point; with such neatness, such lightness, the sweeping

blade of Pascal has become an impossibility. Compared to the measured

march of Bossuet's sentences, Voltaire's sprightly periods remind one

almost of a pirouette. But the pirouette is Voltaire's--executed with

all the grace, all the ease, all the latent strength of a consummate

dancer; it would be folly to complain; yet it was clear that a reaction

was bound to follow--and a salutary reaction. Signs of it were already

visible in the colour and passion of Diderot's writing; but it was not

until the nineteenth century that the great change came.

Nowhere is the excellence of Voltaire's style more conspicuous than in

his Correspondence, which forms so large and important a portion of his

work. A more delightful and a more indefatigable letter-writer never

lived. The number of his published letters exceeds ten thousand; how

many more he may actually have written one hardly ventures to imagine,

for the great majority of those that have survived date only from the

last thirty years of his long life. The collection is invaluable alike

for the light which it throws upon Voltaire's career and character, and

for the extent to which it reflects the manners, sentiments, and thought

of the age. For Voltaire corresponded with all Europe. His reputation,

already vast before he settled at Ferney, rose after that date to a

well-nigh incredible height. No man had wielded such an influence since

the days when Bernard of Clairvaux dictated the conduct of popes and

princes from his monastic cell. But, since then, the wheel had indeed

come full circle! The very antithesis of the Middle Ages was personified

in the strange old creature who in his lordly retreat by the Lake of

Geneva alternately coquetted with empresses, received the homage of

statesmen and philosophers, domineered over literature in all its

branches, and laughed Mother Church to scorn. As the years advanced,

Voltaire's industry, which had always been astonishing, continually

increased. As if his intellectual interests were not enough to occupy

him, he took to commercial enterprise, developed the resources of his

estates, and started a successful colony of watchmakers at Ferney. Every

day he worked for long hours at his desk, spinning his ceaseless web of

tracts, letters, tragedies, and farces. In the evening he would

discharge the functions of a munificent host, entertain the whole

neighbourhood with balls and suppers, and take part in one of his own

tragedies on the stage of his private theatre. Then a veritable frenzy

would seize upon him; shutting himself up in his room for days together,

he would devote every particle of his terrific energies to the

concoction of some devastating dialogue, or some insidious piece of

profanation for his _Dictionnaire Philosophique_. At length his fragile

form would sink exhausted--he would be dying--he would be dead; and next

morning he would be up again as brisk as ever, directing the cutting of

the crops.

One day, quite suddenly, he appeared in Paris, which he had not visited

for nearly thirty years. His arrival was the signal for one of the most

extraordinary manifestations of enthusiasm that the world has ever

seen. For some weeks he reigned in the capital, visible and glorious,

the undisputed lord of the civilized universe. The climax came when he

appeared in a box at the Théâtre Français, to witness a performance of

the latest of his tragedies, and the whole house rose as one man to

greet him. His triumph seemed to be something more than the mere

personal triumph of a frail old mortal; it seemed to be the triumph of

all that was noblest in the aspirations of the human race. But the

fatigue and excitement of those weeks proved too much even for Voltaire

in the full flush of his eighty-fourth year. An overdose of opium

completed what Nature had begun; and the amazing being rested at last.

French literature during the latter half of the eighteenth century was

rich in striking personalities. It might have been expected that an age

which had produced both Diderot and Voltaire would hardly be able to

boast of yet another star of equal magnitude. But, in JEAN-JACQUES

ROUSSEAU, there appeared a man in some ways even more remarkable than

either of his great contemporaries. The peculiar distinction of Rousseau

was his originality. Neither Voltaire nor Diderot possessed this quality

in a supreme degree. Voltaire, indeed, can only claim to be original by

virtue of his overwhelming common sense, which enabled him to see

clearly what others could only see confusedly, to strike without fear

where others were only willing to wound; but the whole bulk of his

thought really rested on the same foundation as that which supported the

ordinary conceptions of the average man of the day. Diderot was a far

bolder, a far more speculative thinker; but yet, though he led the very

van of the age, he was always in it; his originality was never more than

a development--though it was often an extreme development--of the ideas

that lay around him. Rousseau's originality went infinitely further than

this. He neither represented his age, nor led it; he opposed it. His

outlook upon the world was truly revolutionary. In his eyes, the reforms

which his contemporaries were so busy introducing into society were

worse than useless--the mere patching of an edifice which would never be

fit to live in. He believed that it was necessary to start altogether

afresh. And what makes him so singularly interesting a figure is that,

in more than one sense, he was right. It _was_ necessary to start

afresh; and the new world which was to spring from the old one was to

embody, in a multitude of ways, the visions of Rousseau. He was a

prophet, with the strange inspiration of a prophet--and the dishonour in

his own country.

But inspiration and dishonour are not the only characteristics of

prophets: as a rule, they are also highly confused in the delivery of

their prophecies; and Rousseau was no exception. In his writings, the

true gist of his meaning seems to be only partially revealed; and it is

clear that he himself was never really aware of the fundamental notions

that lay at the back of his thought. Hence nothing can be easier than to

pull his work to pieces, and to demonstrate beyond a doubt that it is

full of fallacies, inconsistencies, and absurdities. It is very easy to

point out that the _Control Social_ is a miserable piece of

logic-chopping, to pour scorn on the stilted sentiment and distorted

morality of _La Nouvelle Héloïse_, and finally to draw a cutting

comparison between Rousseau's preaching and his practice, as it stands

revealed in the _Confessions_--the lover of independence who never

earned his own living, the apostle of equality who was a snob, and the

educationist who left his children in the Foundling Hospital. All this

has often been done, and no doubt will often be done again; but it is

futile. Rousseau lives, and will live, a vast and penetrating influence,

in spite of all his critics. There is something in him that eludes their

foot-rules. It is so difficult to take the measure of a soul!

Difficult, indeed; for, if we examine the doctrine that seems to be

Rousseau's fundamental one--that, at least, on which he himself lays

most stress--here, too, we shall find a mass of error. Rousseau was

perpetually advocating the return to Nature. All the great evils from

which humanity suffers are, he declared, the outcome of civilization;

the ideal man is the primitive man--the untutored Indian, innocent,

chaste, brave, who adores the Creator of the universe in simplicity, and

passes his life in virtuous harmony with the purposes of Nature. If we

cannot hope to reach quite that height of excellence, let us at least

try to get as near it as we can. So far from pressing on the work of

civilization, with the _Philosophes_, let us try to forget that we are

civilized and be natural instead. This was the burden of Rousseau's

teaching, and it was founded on a complete misconception of the facts.

The noble Indian was a myth. The more we find out about primitive man,

the more certain it becomes that, so far from being the ideal creature

of Rousseau's imagination, he was in reality a savage whose whole life

was dominated, on the one hand by the mere brute necessities of

existence, and on the other by a complicated and revolting system of

superstitions. Nature is neither simple nor good; and all history shows

that the necessary condition for the production of any of the really

valuable things of life is the control of Nature by man--in fact,

civilization. So far, therefore, the _Philosophes_ were right; if the

Golden Age was to have any place at all in the story of humanity, it

must be, not at the beginning, but the end.

But Rousseau was not, at bottom, concerned with the truth of any

historical theory at all. It was only because he hated the present that

he idealized the past. His primitive Golden Age was an imaginary refuge

from the actual world of the eighteenth century. What he detested and

condemned in that world was in reality not civilization, but the

conventionality of civilization--the restrictions upon the free play of

the human spirit which seemed to be inherent in civilized life. The

strange feeling of revolt that surged up within him when he contemplated

the drawing-rooms of Paris, with their brilliance and their philosophy,

their intellect and their culture, arose from a profounder cause than a

false historical theory, or a defective logical system, or a mean

personal jealousy and morbid pride. All these elements, no doubt,

entered into his feeling--for Rousseau was a very far from perfect human

being; but the ultimate source was beyond and below them--in his

instinctive, overmastering perception of the importance and the dignity

of the individual soul. It was in this perception that Rousseau's great

originality lay. His revolt was a spiritual revolt. In the Middle Ages

the immense significance of the human spirit had been realized, but it

had been inextricably involved in a mass of theological superstition.

The eighteenth century, on the other hand, had achieved the great

conception of a secular system of society; but, in doing so, it had left

out of account the spiritual nature of man, who was regarded simply as a

rational animal in an organized social group. Rousseau was the first to

unite the two views, to revive the medieval theory of the soul without

its theological trappings, and to believe--half unconsciously, perhaps,

and yet with a profound conviction--that the individual, now, on this

earth, and in himself, was the most important thing in the world.

This belief, no doubt, would have arisen in Europe, in some way or

other, if Rousseau had never lived; but it was he who clothed it with

the splendour of genius, and, by the passion of his utterance, sowed it

far and wide in the hearts of men. In two directions his influence was

enormous. His glowing conception of individual dignity and individual

rights as adhering, not to a privileged few, but to the whole mass of

humanity, seized upon the imagination of France, supplied a new and

potent stimulus to the movement towards political change, and produced a

deep effect upon the development of the Revolution. But it is in

literature, and those emotions of real life which find their natural

outlet in literature, that the influence of Rousseau's spirit may be

most clearly seen.

It is often lightly stated that the eighteenth century was an

unemotional age. What, it is asked, could be more frigid than the poetry

of Pope? Or more devoid of true feeling than the mockery of Voltaire?

But such a view is a very superficial one; and it is generally held by

persons who have never given more than a hasty glance at the works they

are so ready to condemn. It is certainly true that at first sight Pope's

couplets appear to be cold and mechanical; but if we look more closely

we shall soon find that these apparently monotonous verses have been

made the vehicle for some of the most passionate feelings of disgust and

animosity that ever agitated a human breast. As for Voltaire, we have

already seen that to infer lack of feeling from his epigrams and

laughter would be as foolish as to infer that a white-hot bar of molten

steel lacked heat because it was not red. The accusation is untenable;

the age that produced--to consider French literature alone--a Voltaire,

a Diderot, and a Saint-Simon cannot be called an age without emotion.

Yet it is clear that, in the matter of emotion, a distinction of some

sort does exist between that age and this. The distinction lies not so

much in the emotion itself as in the _attitude towards_ emotion, adopted

by the men of those days and by ourselves. In the eighteenth century men

were passionate--intensely passionate; but they were passionate almost

unconsciously, in a direct unreflective way. If anyone had asked

Voltaire to analyse his feelings accurately, he would have replied that

he had other things to think about; the notion of paying careful

attention to mere feelings would have seemed to him ridiculous. And,

when Saint-Simon sat down to write his Memoirs, it never occurred to him

for a moment to give any real account of what, in all the highly

personal transactions that he describes, he intimately felt. He tells us

nothing of his private life; he mentions his wife once, and almost

apologizes for doing so; really, could a gentleman--a duke--dwell upon

such matters, and preserve his self-respect? But, to us, it is precisely

such matters that form the pivot of a personality--the index of a soul.

A man's feelings are his very self, and it is around them that all that

is noblest and profoundest in our literature seems naturally to centre.

A great novelist is one who can penetrate and describe the feelings of

others; a great poet is one who can invest his own with beauty and

proclaim them to the world. We have come to set a value upon

introspection which was quite unknown in the eighteenth

century--unknown, that is, until Rousseau, in the most valuable and

characteristic of his works--his _Confessions_--started the vast current

in literature and in sentiment which is still flowing to-day. The

_Confessions_ is the detailed, intimate, complete history of a soul. It

describes Rousseau's life, from its beginning until its maturity, from

the most personal point of view, with no disguises or reticences of any

kind. It is written with great art. Rousseau's style, like his matter,

foreshadows the future; his periods are cast in a looser, larger, more

oratorical mould than those of his contemporaries; his sentences are

less fiery and excitable; though he can be witty when he wishes, he is

never frivolous; and a tone of earnest intimate passion lingers in his

faultless rhythms. With his great powers of expression he combined a

wonderful aptitude for the perception of the subtlest shades of feeling

and of mood. He was sensitive to an extraordinary degree--with the

sensitiveness of a proud, shy nature, unhardened by the commerce of the

world. There is, indeed, an unpleasant side to his _Confessions_.

Rousseau, like most explorers, became obsessed by his own discoveries;

he pushed the introspective method to its farthest limits; the sanctity

of the individual seemed to him not only to dignify the slightest

idiosyncrasies of temperament and character, but also, in some sort of

way, to justify what was positively bad. Thus his book contains the

germs of that Byronic egotism which later became the fashion all over

Europe. It is also, in parts, a morbid book. Rousseau was not content

to extenuate nothing; his failings got upon his nerves; and, while he

was ready to dilate upon them himself with an infinite wealth of detail,

the slightest hint of a reflection on his conduct from any other person

filled him with an agony and a rage which, at the end of his life,

developed into madness. To strict moralists, therefore, and to purists

in good taste, the _Confessions_ will always be unpalatable. More

indulgent readers will find in those pages the traces of a spirit which,

with all its faults, its errors, its diseases, deserves something more

than pity--deserves almost love. At any rate, it is a spirit singularly

akin to our own. Out of the far-off, sharp, eager, unpoetical,

unpsychological eighteenth century, it speaks to us in the familiar

accents of inward contemplation, of brooding reminiscence, of

subtly-shifting temperament, of quiet melancholy, of visionary joy.

Rousseau, one feels, was the only man of his age who ever wanted to be

alone. He understood that luxury: understood the fascination of silence,

and the loveliness of dreams. He understood, too, the exquisite

suggestions of Nature, and he never wrote more beautifully than when he

was describing the gentle process of her influences on the solitary

human soul. He understood simplicity: the charm of little happinesses,

the sweetness of ordinary affections, the beauty of a country face. The

paradox is strange; how was it that it should have been left to the

morbid, tortured, half-crazy egoist of the _Confessions_ to lead the way

to such spiritual delicacies, such innocent delights?

The paradox was too strange for Rousseau's contemporaries. They could

not understand him. His works were highly popular; he was received into

the most brilliant circles in Paris; he made friends with the most

eminent men of the day; and then ensued misunderstandings, accusations,

quarrels, and at last complete disaster. Rousseau vanished from society,

driven out, according to his account, by the treacheries of his friends;

the victim, according to their account, of his own petty jealousies and

morbid suspicions. At every point in the quarrel, his friends, and such

great and honest men as Diderot and Hume were among them, seem to have

been in the right; but it seems no less clear that they were too anxious

to proclaim and emphasize the faults of a poor, unfortunate, demented

man. We can hardly blame them; for, in their eyes, Rousseau appeared as

a kind of mad dog--a pest to society, deserving of no quarter. They did

not realize--they _could_ not--that beneath the meanness and the frenzy

that were so obvious to them was the soul of a poet and a seer. The

wretched man wandered for long in Switzerland, in Germany, in England,

pursued by the ever-deepening shadows of his maniacal suspicions. At

last he returned to France, to end his life, after years of lingering

misery, in obscurity and despair.

Rousseau and Voltaire both died in 1778--hardly more than ten years

before the commencement of the Revolution. Into that last decade of the

old régime there seemed to be concentrated all the ardour, all the hope,

all the excitement, all the brilliance of the preceding century. Had not

Reason and Humanity triumphed at last? Triumphed, at any rate, in

spirit; for who was not converted? All that remained now was the final,

quick, easy turn which would put into action the words of the

philosophers and make this earth a paradise. And still new visions kept

opening out before the eyes of enthusiasts--strange speculations and

wondrous possibilities. The march of mind seemed so rapid that the most

advanced thinkers of yesterday were already out of date. 'Voltaire est

bigot: il est déiste,' exclaimed one of the wits of Paris, and the

sentiment expressed the general feeling of untrammelled mental freedom

and swift progression which was seething all over the country. It was at

this moment that the production of BEAUMARCHAIS' brilliant comedy, _Le

Mariage de Figaro_, electrified the intellectual public of Versailles

and the capital. In that play the old régime was presented, not in the

dark colours of satire, but under the sparkling light of frivolity,

gaiety, and idleness--a vision of endless intrigue and vapid love-making

among the antiquated remains of feudal privileges and social caste. In

this fairyland one being alone has reality--Figaro, the restless,

fiendishly clever, nondescript valet, sprung from no one knows where,

destined to no one knows what, but gradually emerging a strange and

sinister profile among the laughter and the flowers. 'What have you

done, Monsieur le Comte,' he bursts out at last to his master, 'to

deserve all these advantages?--I know. _Vous vous êtes donné la peine de

naître_!' In that sentence one can hear--far off, but distinct--the

flash and snap of the guillotine. To those happy listeners, though, no

such sound was audible. Their speculations went another way. All was

roseate, all was charming as the coaches dashed through the narrow

streets of Paris, carrying their finely-powdered ladies and gentlemen,

in silks and jewels, to the assemblies of the night. Within, the candles

sparkled, and the diamonds, and the eyes of the company, sitting round

in gilded delicate chairs. And then there was supper, and the Marquise

was witty, and the Comte was sententious, while yet newer vistas opened

of yet happier worlds, dancing on endlessly through the floods of

conversation and champagne.