e-page of my work,
"Prolem sine matre creatam."

It was liberty at the same time as justice that Montesquieu sought and
claimed in his profound researches into the laws which have from time
immemorial governed mankind; that new instinctive idea of natural rights,
those new yearnings which were beginning to dawn in all hearts, remained
as yet, for the most part, upon the surface of their minds and of their
lives; what was demanded at that time in France was liberty to speak and
write rather than to act and govern. Montesquieu, on the contrary, went
to the bottom of things, and, despite the natural moderation of his mind,
he propounded theories so perilous for absolute power that he dared not
have his book printed at Paris, and brought it out in Geneva; its success
was immense; before his death, Montesquieu saw twenty-one French editions
published, and translations in all the languages of Europe. "Mankind had
lost its titledeeds," says Voltaire; "Montesquieu recovered and restored
them."

The intense labor, the immense courses of reading, to which Montesquieu
had devoted himself, had exhausted his strength. "I am overcome with
weariness," he wrote in 1747; "I propose to rest myself for the remainder
of my days." "I have done," he said to M. Suard; "I have burned all my
powder, all my candles have gone out." "I had conceived the design of
giving greater breadth and depth to certain parts of my _Esprit;_ I have
become incapable of it; my reading has weakened my eyes, and it seems to
me that what light I have left is but the dawn of the day when they will
close forever."

Montesquieu was at Paris, ill and sad at heart, in spite of his habitual
serenity; notwithstanding the scoffs he had admitted into his _Lettres
persanes,_ he had always preserved some respect for religion; he
considered it a necessary item in the order of societies; in his soul and
on his own private account he hoped and desired rather than believed.
"Though the immortality of the soul were an error," he had said, "I
should be sorry not to believe it; I confess that I am not so humble as
the atheists. I know not what they think, but as for me I would not
truck the notion of my immortality for that of an ephemeral happiness.
There is for me a charm in believing myself to be immortal like God
himself. Independently of revealed ideas, metaphysical ideas give me, as
regards my eternal happiness, strong hopes which I should not like to
give up." As he