ropositions 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 civil