ousseau had brought forth fruit.

We should, however, be false to our critical principle, if we did not
recognise the historical effect of a speculation scientifically
valueless. There has been no attempt to palliate either the
shallowness or the practical mischievousness of the Social Contract.
But there is another side to its influence. It was the match which
kindled revolutionary fire in generous breasts throughout Europe. Not
in France merely, but in Germany as well, its phrases became the
language of all who aspired after freedom. Schiller spoke of Rousseau
as one who "converted Christians into human beings," and the _Robbers_
(1778) is as if it had been directly inspired by the doctrine that
usurped sovereignty restores men to their natural rights. Smaller men
in the violent movement which seized all the youth of Germany at that
time, followed the same lead, if they happened to have any feeling
about the political condition of their enslaved countries.

There was alike in France and Germany a craving for a return to nature
among the whole of the young generation.[271] The Social Contract
supplied a dialect for this longing on one side, just as the Emilius
supplied it on another. Such parts in it as people did not understand
or did not like, they left out. They did not perceive its direction
towards that "perfect Hobbism," which the author declared to be the
only practical alternative to a democracy so austere as to be
intolerable. They grasped phrases about the sovereignty of the people,
the freedom for which nature had destined man, the slavery to which
tyrants and oppressors had brought him. Above all they were struck by
the patriotism which shines so brightly in every page, like the fire
on the altar of one of those ancient cities which had inspired the
writer's ideal.

Yet there is a marked difference in the channels along which
Rousseau's influence moved in the two countries. In France it was
drawn eventually into the sphere of direct politics. In Germany it
inspired not a great political movement, but an immense literary
revival. In France, as we have already said, the patriotic flame
seemed extinct. The ruinous disorder of the whole social system made
the old love of country resemble love for a phantom, and so much of
patriotic speech as survived was profoundly hollow. Even a man like
Turgot was not so much a patriot as a passionate lover of improvement,
and with the whole school of which this great spir