w special savants, belief and obedience
will always be unthinking, while Reason would wrongfully resent the
leadership of prejudice in human affairs, since, to lead, it must itself
become prejudiced.

III. Reason At War With Illusion.

The classic intellect incapable of accepting this point of
view.--The past and present usefulness of tradition are
misunderstood.--Reason undertakes to set them aside.

Unfortunately, in the eighteenth century, reason was classic; not only
the aptitude but the documents which enable it to comprehend tradition
were absent. In the first place, there was no knowledge of history;
learning was, due to its dullness and tediousness, refused; learned
compilations, vast collections of extracts and the slow work of
criticism were held in disdain. Voltaire made fun of the Benedictines.
Montesquieu, to ensure the acceptance of his "Esprit des lois," indulged
in wit about laws. Reynal, to give an impetus to his history of commerce
in the Indies, welded to it the declamation of Diderot. The Abbe
Barthelemy covered over the realities of Greek manners and customs with
his literary varnish. Science was expected to be either epigrammatic or
oratorical; crude or technical details would have been objectionable to
a public composed of people of the good society; correctness of style
therefore drove out or falsified those small significant facts
which give a peculiar sense and their original relief to ancient
personalities.--Even if writers had dared to note them, their sense and
bearing would not have been understood. The sympathetic imagination did
not exist[3309]; people were incapable of going out of themselves,
of betaking themselves to distant points of view, of conjecturing
the peculiar and violent states of the human brain, the decisive and
fruitful moment during which it gives birth to a vigorous creation,
a religion destined to rule, a state that is sure to endure. The
imagination of Man is limited to personal experiences, and where in
their experience, could individuals in this society have found the
material which would have allowed them to imagine the convulsions of a
delivery? How could minds, as polished and as amiable as these, fully
adopt the sentiments of an apostle, of a monk, of a barbarian or feudal
founder; see these in the milieu which explains and justifies them;
picture to themselves the surrounding crowd, at first souls in despair
and haunted by mystic dreams,