aven
will have to assimilate an enormous mass of heterogeneous elements, but
its operation will be effectual.

Here the genius interrupts his prophecy and exclaims, turning toward the
west, "The cry of liberty uttered on the farther shores of the Atlantic
has reached to the old continent." A prodigious movement is then visible
to their eyes in a country at the extremity of the Mediterranean;
tyrants are overthrown, legislators elected, a code of laws is drafted
on the principles of equality, liberty, and justice. The liberated
nation is attacked by neighbouring tyrants, but her legislators propose
to the other peoples to hold a general assembly, representing the whole
world, and weigh every religious system in the balance. The proceedings
of this congress follow, and the book breaks off incomplete.

It is not an arresting book; to a reader of the present day it is
positively tedious; but it suited contemporary taste, and, appearing
when France was confident that her Revolution would renovate the earth,
it appealed to the hopes and sentiments of the movement. It made no
contribution to the doctrine of Progress, but it undoubtedly helped to
popularise it.

CHAPTER XI. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION: CONDORCET

I.

The authority which the advanced thinkers of France gained among the
middle classes during the third quarter of the eighteenth century was
promoted by the influence of fashion. The new ideas of philosophers,
rationalists, and men of science had interested the nobles and higher
classes of society for two generations, and were a common subject of
discussion in the most distinguished salons. Voltaire's intimacy with
Frederick the Great, the relations of d'Alembert and Diderot with the
Empress Catherine, conferred on these men of letters, and on the ideas
for which they stood, a prestige which carried great weight with the
bourgeoisie. Humbler people, too, were as amenable as the great to
the seduction of theories which supplied simple keys to the universe
[Footnote: Taine said of the Contrat Social that it reduces political
science to the strict application of an elementary axiom which renders
all study unnecessary (La Revolution, vol. i. c. iv. Sec. iii.).] and
assumed that everybody was capable of judging for himself on the most
difficult problems. As well as the Encyclopaedia, the works of nearly
all the leading thinkers were written for the general public not merely
for philosophers. The policy of the Governme