ame slowly into pale outline.

There is no reason to think that Voltaire ever saw this gaunt and
tremendous spectacle. Rousseau was its first voice. Since him the
reorganization of the relations of men has never faded from the sight
either of statesmen or philosophers, with vision keen enough to admit to
their eyes even what they dreaded and execrated in their hearts.
Voltaire's task was different and preparatory. It was to make popular
the genius and authority of reason. The foundations of the social fabric
were in such a condition that the touch of reason was fatal to the whole
structure, which instantly began to crumble. Authority and use oppose a
steadfast and invincible resistance to reason, so long as the
institutions which they protect are of fair practicable service to a
society. But after the death of Louis XIV, not only the grace and pomp,
but also the social utility of spiritual and political absolutism,
passed obviously away. Spiritual absolutism was unable to maintain even
a decent semblance of unity and theological order. Political absolutism
by its material costliness, its augmenting tendency to repress the
application of individual energy and thought to public concerns, and its
pursuit of a policy in Europe which was futile and essentially
meaningless as to its ends, and disastrous and incapable in its choice
of means, was rapidly exhausting the resources of national well-being
and viciously severing the very tap-root of national life. To bring
reason into an atmosphere so charged was, as the old figure goes, to
admit air to the chamber of the mummy. And reason was exactly what
Voltaire brought; too narrow, if we will, too contentious, too derisive,
too unmitigatedly reasonable, but still reason. And who shall measure
the consequence of this difference in the history of two great nations:
that in France absolutism in church and state fell before the sinewy
genius of stark reason, while in England it fell before a respect for
social convenience, protesting against monopolies, benevolences,
ship-money? that in France speculation had penetrated over the whole
field of social inquiry, before a single step had been taken toward
application, while in England social principles were applied before
they received any kind of speculative vindication? that in France the
first effective enemy of the principles of despotism was Voltaire, poet,
philosopher, historian, critic; in England, a band of homely squires?

Vol