w was the only one under which the multitudes beneath could
place themselves. For millions of men, for hundreds of generations,
the only one access to divine things was along their path. They
pronounced the unique word, heroic or tender, enthusiastic or
tranquillising; the only word that, around them and after them, the
heart and the intelligence would consent to hearken to; the only one
adapted to the deep-growing wants, the long-gathered aspirations,
the hereditary faculties, a whole moral and mental structure,--here
to that of the Hindu or the Mongol, there to that of the Semite or
the European, in our Europe to that of the German, the Latin, or the
Slav; in such a way that its very contradictions, instead of
condemning it, were exactly what justified it, since its diversity
produced its adaptation, and its adaptation produced its benefits'
(p. 272).

It is extraordinary that a thinker who could so clearly discern the
secret of the great spiritual movements of human history, should
fail to perceive that the same law governs and explains all the
minor movements in which wide communities have been suddenly
agitated by the word of a teacher. It is well--as no one would be
more likely to contend than myself, who have attempted the task--to
demonstrate the contradictions, the superficiality, the
inadequateness, of the teaching of Rousseau, Voltaire, or Diderot.
But it is well also, and in a historical student it is not only
well, but the very pith and marrow of criticism, to search for that
'adaptation,' to use M. Taine's very proper expression, which gave
to the word of these teachers its mighty power and far-spreading
acceptance. Is it not as true of Rousseau and Voltaire, acting in a
small society, as it is of Buddha or Mahomet acting on vast groups
of races, that 'leur point de vue etait le seul auquel les
multitudes echelonnees au dessous d'eux pouvaient se mettre?' Did
not they too seize, 'by a happy stroke of circumstance,' exactly
those traits in the social union, in the resources of human nature,
in its deep-seated aspirations, which their generation was in a
condition to comprehend,--liberty, equality, fraternity, progress,
justice, tolerance?

M. Taine shows, as so many others have shown before him, that the
Social Contract, when held up in the light of true political science,
is very poor stuff. Undoubtedly it is so. And Quintilian--an
accomplished and ingenious Taine of the first century--would have
thoug