obinism, but the
Catholicism of the Restoration. Thus he did more than any one else at
once to give direction to the first episodes of revolution, and force to
the first episode of reaction.

There are some teachers whose distinction is neither correct thought,
nor an eye for the exigencies of practical organisation, but simply
depth and fervour of the moral sentiment, bringing with it the
indefinable gift of touching many hearts with love of virtue and the
things of the spirit. The Christian organisations which saved western
society from dissolution owe all to St. Paul, Hildebrand, Luther,
Calvin; but the spiritual life of the west during all these generations
has burnt with the pure flame first lighted by the sublime mystic of the
Galilean hills. Aristotle acquired for men much knowledge and many
instruments for gaining more; but it is Plato, his master, who moves the
soul with love of truth and enthusiasm for excellence. There is peril in
all such leaders of souls, inasmuch as they incline men to substitute
warmth for light, and to be content with aspiration where they need
direction. Yet no movement goes far which does not count one of them in
the number of its chiefs. Rousseau took this place among those who
prepared the first act of that revolutionary drama, whose fifth act is
still dark to us.

At the heart of the Revolution, like a torrid stream flowing
undiscernible amid the waters of a tumbling sea, is a new way of
understanding life. The social changes desired by the various assailants
of the old order are only the expression of a deeper change in moral
idea, and the drift of the new moral idea is to make life simpler. This
in a sense is at the bottom of all great religious and moral movements,
and the Revolution emphatically belongs to the latter class. Like such
movements in the breast of the individual, those which stir an epoch
have their principle in the same craving for disentanglement of life.
This impulse to shake off intricacies is the mark of revolutionary
generations, and it was the starting-point of all Rousseau's mental
habits, and of the work in which they expressed themselves. His mind
moved outwards from this centre, and hence the fact that he dealt
principally with government and education, the two great agencies which,
in an old civilisation with a thousand roots and feelers, surround
external life and internal character with complexity. Simplification of
religion by clearing away the over