in intellectual achievements, we have not advanced equally in
morals. It is true that among those classes who have no wants that
cannot be easily supplied, and among whom public opinion has great
influence, the rights of others are fully respected. It is true, also,
that we have vastly extended the sphere of those rights, and include
within them all the brotherhood of man. But it is not too much to say,
that the mass of our populations have not at all advanced beyond the
savage code of morals, and have in many cases sunk below it."
Wallace's _Malay Archipelago_, vol. ii. pp. 460-461.

[195] So too Bougainville, a brother of the navigator, said in 1760,
"For an attentive observer who sees nothing in events of the utmost
diversity of appearance but the natural effects of a certain number of
causes differently combined, Greece is the universe in small, and the
history of Greece an excellent epitome of universal history." (Quoted
in Egger's _Hellenisme en France_, ii. 272.) The revolutionists of the
next generation, who used to appeal so unseasonably to the ancients,
were only following a literary fashion set by their fathers.

[196] _Doutes sur l'Ordre Naturel_; _Oeuv._, xi. 80. (Ed. 1794, 1795.)

[197] _La Legislation_, I. i.

[198] _Ibid._

[199] It is not within our province to examine the vexed question
whether the Convention was fundamentally socialist, and not merely
political. That socialist ideas were afloat in the minds of some
members, one can hardly doubt. See Von Sybel's _Hist. of the French
Revolution_, Bk. II. ch. iv., on one side, and Quinet's _La
Revolution_, ii. 90-107, on the other.

[200] _Economie Politique_, pp. 41, 53, etc.

CHAPTER VI.

PARIS.

I.

By what subtle process did Rousseau, whose ideal had been a summer life
among all the softnesses of sweet gardens and dappled orchards, turn
into panegyrist of the harsh austerity of old Cato and grim Brutus's
civic devotion? The amiability of eighteenth century France--and France
was amiable in spite of the atrocities of White Penitents at Toulouse,
and black Jansenists at Paris, and the men and women who dealt in
_lettres-de-cachet_ at Versailles--was revolted by the name of the cruel
patriot who slew his son for the honour of discipline.[201] How came
Rousseau of all men, the great humanitarian of his time, to rise to the
height of these unlovely rigours?

The answer is that he was a citizen of Geneva transplanted. He had been
br