e all things, Voltaire stood out as a realist, in the modern sense
of the word, and if he detested the Church it was largely because it
represented untruth. He did not deflect opinion to the same extent as
his great contemporary Rousseau, but he represented it more; and of the
men of the Revolution, it was Robespierre, who reigned less than four
months, who stood for Rousseau, while Bonaparte, who reigned fourteen
years, was the true Voltairian.

Just at the side of Voltaire stood the Encyclopedists, led by Diderot
and d'Alembert. The {19} great work of reference which they issued
penetrated into every intellectual circle, not only of France but of
Europe, and brought with it the doctrines of materialism and atheism.
However much they might be saturated with the ideas of Church and State
in the Roman-Bourbon form, many of its readers became unconsciously
shaken in their fundamental beliefs, and ready to question, to
criticize and, when the edifice began to tremble, to accept the
Revolution and the doctrine of the rights of the common man.

Voltaire, Diderot, d'Alembert, were at heart essentially aristocrats;
for them the common man was an untrustworthy brute of low instincts,
and their revolution would have meant the displacement of an
aristocracy of the sword by an aristocracy of the intellect. Rousseau
stood for the opposite view. To him it was only despotism that
degraded man. Remove the evil conditions and the common man would
quickly display his inherent goodness and amiability; tenderness to our
fellows, or fraternity, was therefore the distinctive trait of manhood.
The irrepressible exuberance of Rousseau's kindliness overflowed from
his novels and essays into a great stream of fashionable sensibility.
During the years of {20} terrific stress that followed, during the
butcheries of the guillotine and of the Grande Armee, it was the vogue
to be soft-hearted, and even such a fire eater as Murat would pour
libations of tears over his friends' waistcoats at the slightest
provocation. In his _Contrat Social_ Rousseau postulated the essential
equality of the governor and the governed. But his sentimental
attitude towards man involved a corresponding one towards the Deity;
unable to accept Catholicism or even Christianity, he sought refuge
from atheism in the arms of the _Etre Supreme_. It was this Supreme
Being of Rousseau that was to become the official deity of France
during the last days of the Reign of Ter