ssments, no
luxurious courts, no infidel writings, and no discontented
people,--then Louis XVI. might have reigned at Versailles, as
Louis XV. had done before him. But the accumulated grievances of two
centuries called imperatively for redress, and nothing short of a
revolution could have removed them.

Now, what were those evils and those circumstances which, of
necessity, produced the most violent revolutionary storm in the annals
of the world? The causes of the French revolution may be generalized
under five heads: First, the influence of the writings of infidel
philosophers; second, the diffusion of the ideas of popular rights;
third, the burdens of the people, which made these abstract ideas of
right a mockery; fourth, the absurd infatuation of the court and
nobles; fifth, the derangement of the finances, which clogged the
wheels of government, and led to the assembling of the States General.
There were also other causes: but the above mentioned are the most
prominent.

[Sidenote: Helvetius--Voltaire.]

Of those philosophers whose writings contributed to produce this
revolution, there were four who exerted a remarkable influence. These
were Helvetius, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot.

Helvetius was a man of station and wealth, and published, in 1758, a
book, in which he carried out the principles of Condillac and of other
philosophers of the sensational, or, as it is sometimes called, the
sensuous school. He boldly advocated a system of undisguised
selfishness. He maintained that man owed his superiority over the
lower animals to the superior organization of the body. Proceeding
from this point, he asserted, further, that every faculty and emotion
are derived from sensation; that all minds are originally equal; that
pleasure is the only good, and self-interest the only ground of
morality. The materialism of Helvetius was the mere revival of pagan
Epicurianism; but it was popular, and his work, called _De l'Esprit_,
made a great sensation. It was congenial with the taste of a court and
a generation that tolerated Madame de Pompadour. But the Parliament of
Paris condemned it, and pronounced it derogatory to human nature,
inasmuch as it confined our faculties to animal sensibility, and
destroyed the distinctions between virtue and vice.

His fame was eclipsed by the brilliant career of Voltaire, who
exercised a greater influence on his age than any other man. He is the
great apostle of French infidelity, and th