ans, as patriotism cannot absolve a man from his duty to
mankind. Therefore no war can be just, unless a war to which we are
compelled in the sole cause of freedom. Fenelon wished that France
should surrender the ill-gotten conquests of which she was so proud,
and especially that she should withdraw from Spain. He declared that
the Spaniards were degenerate and imbecile, but that nothing could
make that right which was contrary to the balance of power and the
security of nations. Holland seemed to him the hope of Europe, and he
thought the allies justified in excluding the French dynasty from
Spain for the same reason that no claim of law could have made it
right that Philip II. should occupy England. He hoped that his country
would be thoroughly humbled, for he dreaded the effects of success on
the temperament of the victorious French. He deemed it only fair that
Lewis should be compelled to dethrone his grandson with his own guilty
hand.

In the judgment of Fenelon, power is poison; and as kings are nearly
always bad, they ought not to govern, but only to execute the law. For
it is the mark of barbarians to obey precedent and custom. Civilised
society must be regulated by a solid code. Nothing but a constitution
can avert arbitrary power. The despotism of Lewis XIV. renders him
odious and contemptible, and is the cause of all the evils which the
country suffers. If the governing power which rightfully belonged to
the nation was restored, it would save itself by its own exertion; but
absolute authority irreparably saps its foundations, and is bringing
on a revolution by which it will not be moderated, but utterly
destroyed. Although Fenelon has no wish to sacrifice either the
monarchy or the aristocracy, he betrays sympathy with several
tendencies of the movement which he foresaw with so much alarm. He
admits the state of nature, and thinks civil society not the primitive
condition of man, but a result of the passage from savage life to
husbandry. He would transfer the duties of government to local and
central assemblies; and he demands entire freedom of trade, and
education provided by law, because children belong to the State first
and to the family afterwards. He does not resign the hope of making
men good by act of parliament, and his belief in public institutions
as a means of moulding individual character brings him nearly into
touch with a distant future.

He is the Platonic founder of revolutionary thinking.