granted that the level of thought and feeling was a low one universally;
as if the highest moods of every era necessarily clothed themselves in
religious forms. The truth is that, working in such natures as
Condorcet's, the principles of the eighteenth century, its homage to
reason and rational methods, its exaltation of the happiness of men, not
excluding their material wellbeing, into the highest place, its passion
for justice and law, its large illumination, all engendered a fervour as
truly religious as that of Catholicism or of Calvinism at their best,
while its sentiment was infinitely less interested and personal. The
passage just quoted is as little mechanical, as little material, as the
most rapturous ejaculations of the Christian saints and confessors. Read
in connection with the circumstances of its composition, it may show
that the eighteenth century was able at any rate to inspire its sons
with a faith that could rob death of its sting and the grave of its
victory, as effectually as if it had rested on a mystery instead of on
reason, and been supported by the sanctions of eternal pain and eternal
bliss, instead of moving from a confident devotion to humanity.

FOOTNOTES:

[30] _Declaration de l'Assemblee Nationale_, 29 Dec. 1791. _Oeuv._ xii.
25.

[31] 13th August 1792. _Oeuv._ x. 547.

[32] _Ib._ x. 560.

[33] 19th August. _Ib._ x. 565.

[34] _Opinion sur le Jugement de Louis XVI._ Nov. 1792 _Oeuv._ xii.
267-303.

[35] 19th Jan. 1793. _Oeuv._ xii. 311.

[36] See M. Edgar Quinet's remarks on this achievement. _La Revolution_,
ii. 110.

[37] _Oeuv._ xii. 333, 417. M. Louis Blanc has contrasted the principles
laid down as the basis of this project with Robespierre's rival
Declaration of the Rights of Man, printing the two side by side in
parallel columns. '_Les voila donc face a face, apres leur commune
victoire sur le principe d'autorite, ces deux principes d'individualisme
et de fraternite, entre lesquels, aujourd'hui meme, le monde balance,
invinciblement emu! D'un cote la philosophie du rationalisme pur, qui
divise; d'un autre cote la philosophie du sentiment, qui rapproche et
reunit. Ici Voltaire et Condorcet, la J. J. Rousseau et Robespierre._'
_Hist. de la Revol. Fran._ bk. ix. ch. v.

[38] _Extrait du Moniteur._ _Oeuv._ xii. 677.

[39] The Abbe Morellet, in his narrative of the death of Condorcet
(_Memoires_, c. xxiv.), says that he died of poison, a mixture of
stramonium and opium. He