than to
feeling. He wanted to free the understanding and extend knowledge. He
set up reason as a goddess, and left it to another man to point the way
to a social revolution.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau it was who led men to consider the possibility of
a State in which all citizens {165} should be free and equal. He
suffered banishment and much hardship for the bold schemes he
presented. The Parlement of Paris was ruthless when the two
books--_Emile_ and the _Social Contract_--were published in 1762.

Rousseau, a writer of humble origin, had been the close student of
Voltaire since his mind had first formed into a definite individuality.
He had been poor and almost starving many times, had followed the
occupations of engraver and music-copier, and had treated with
ingratitude several kindly patrons. Like Voltaire, too, he journeyed
over Europe, finding refuge in Geneva, whence came his father's family.
He was a man of sordid life and without morality; but he was true to
his life's purpose, and toiled at uncongenial tasks rather than write
at other bidding than that of his own soul.

Rousseau's play _Le Devin du Village_ had a court success that brought
him into favour with gay ladies. Many a beauty found it difficult to
tear herself away from the perusal of his strangely romantic novel _La
Nouvelle Heloise_, which preached a return to Nature, so long neglected
by the artificial age of Paris. All conventions should be thrown off
that man might attain the purity which God had originally intended.
Kings there should not be to deprive their subjects of all liberty, nor
nobles who claimed the earth, which was the inheritance of God's
creatures.

At first, this theory of return to Nature pleased the ruling classes.
The young King and Queen were well-meaning and kindly to the people.
Louis XVI went among the poor and did something to alleviate the misery
that he saw. Marie Antoinette gave up {166} the extravagant career of
fashion and spent happy hours in the rustic village of Trianon. Nobles
and maids of honour played at rusticity, unconscious of the deadly
blows that Jean-Jacques had aimed at them in the writings which
appealed so strongly to their sentiment. There was a new belief in
humanity which sent the Duchess out early in the morning to give bread
to the poor, even if at evening she danced at a court which was
supported in luxury by their miseries. The poet might congratulate
himself on the sensation caused