as supported because it was established. They
would suffer no innovation, not even in philosophy. Anything progressive
was abhorred as much as anything destructive. When Fenelon said, "I
love my family better than myself, my country better than my family, and
the human race better than my country," he gave utterance to a sentiment
which was revolutionary in its tendency. When he declared in his
"Telemaque" what were the duties of kings,--that they reigned for the
benefit of their subjects rather than for themselves,--he undermined the
throne which he openly supported. It was the liberal spirit which
animated Fenelon, as well as the innovations to which his opinions
logically led, which arrayed against him the king who admired him, the
woman who had supported him, and the bishop who was jealous of him.
Although he charmed everybody with whom he associated by the angelic
sweetness of his disposition, his refined courtesies of manner, and his
sparkling but inoffensive wit,--a born courtier as well as philosopher,
the most interesting and accomplished man of his generation,--still,
neither Bossuet nor Madame de Maintenon nor the King could tolerate his
teachings, so pregnant were they with innovations; and he was exiled to
his bishopric. Madame de Maintenon, who once delighted in Fenelon,
learned to detest him as much as Bossuet did, when the logical tendency
of his writings was seen. She would rivet the chains of slavery on the
human intellect as well as on the devotees of Rome or the courtiers of
the King, while Fenelon would have emancipated the race itself in the
fervor and sincerity of his boundless love.

This hostility to Fenelon was not caused entirely by the political
improvements he would have introduced, but because his all-embracing
toleration sought to protect the sentimental pantheism which Madame
Guyon inculcated in her maxims of disinterested love and voluntary
passivity of the soul towards God, in opposition to that rationalistic
pantheism which Spinoza defended, and into which he had inexorably
pushed with unexampled logic the deductions of Malebranche. The men who
finally overturned the fabric of despotism which Richelieu constructed
were the philosophers. The clear but narrow intellect of the King and
his wife instinctively saw in them the natural enemies of the throne;
and hence they were frowned upon, if not openly persecuted.

We are forced therefore to admit that the intolerance of Madame de
Mainten