The Ancien Regime | Page 8

its immense results. It is noteworthy, that when Voltaire tries to
persuade people, in a certain famous passage, that philosophers do not
care to trouble the world--of the ten names to whom he does honour,
seven names are English. "It is," he says, "neither Montaigne, nor
Locke, nor Boyle, nor Spinoza, nor Hobbes, nor Lord Shaftesbury, nor
Mr. Collins, nor Mr. Toland, nor Fludd, nor Baker, who have carried
the torch of discord into their countries." It is worth notice, that not
only are the majority of these names English, but that they belong not
to the latter but to the former half of the eighteenth century; and indeed,
to the latter half of the seventeenth.
So it was with that Inductive Physical Science, which helped more than
all to break up the superstitions of the Ancien Regime, and to set man
face to face with the facts of the universe. From England, towards the
end of the seventeenth century, it was promulgated by such men as
Newton, Boyle, Sydenham, Ray, and the first founders of our Royal
Society.

In England, too, arose the great religious movements of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries--and especially that of a body which I can
never mention without most deep respect--the Society of Friends. At a
time when the greater part of the Continent was sunk in spiritual sleep,
these men were reasserting doctrines concerning man, and his relation
to his Creator, which, whether or not all believe them (as I believe them)
to be founded on eternal fact, all must confess to have been of
incalculable benefit to the cause of humanity and civilisation.
From England, finally, about the middle of the eighteenth century, went
forth--promulgated by English noblemen--that freemasonry which
seems to have been the true parent of all the secret societies of Europe.
Of this curious question, more hereafter. But enough has been said to
show that England, instead of falling, at any period, into the stagnation
of the Ancien Regime, was, from the middle of the seventeenth century,
in a state of intellectual growth and ferment which communicated itself
finally to the continental nations. This is the special honour of England;
universally confessed at the time. It was to England that the
slowly-awakening nations looked, as the source of all which was noble,
true, and free, in the dawning future.
It will be seen, from what I have said, that I consider the Ancien
Regime to begin in the seventeenth century. I should date its
commencement--as far as that of anything so vague, unsystematic,
indeed anarchic, can be defined--from the end of the Thirty Years' War,
and the peace of Westphalia in 1648.
For by that time the mighty spiritual struggles and fierce religious
animosities of the preceding century had worn themselves out. And, as
always happens, to a period of earnest excitement had succeeded one of
weariness, disgust, half-unbelief in the many questions for which so
much blood had been shed. No man had come out of the battle with
altogether clean hands; some not without changing sides more than
once. The war had ended as one, not of nations, not even of zealots, but
of mercenaries. The body of Europe had been pulled in pieces between
them all; and the poor soul thereof--as was to be expected--had fled out
through the gaping wounds. Life, mere existence, was the most

pressing need. If men could--in the old prophet's words--find the life of
their hand, they were content. High and low only asked to be let live.
The poor asked it-- slaughtered on a hundred battle-fields, burnt out of
house and home: vast tracts of the centre of Europe were lying desert;
the population was diminished for several generations. The trading
classes, ruined by the long war, only asked to be let live, and make a
little money. The nobility, too, only asked to be let live. They had lost,
in the long struggle, not only often lands and power, but their ablest
and bravest men; and a weaker and meaner generation was left behind,
to do the governing of the world. Let them live, and keep what they had.
If signs of vigour still appeared in France, in the wars of Louis XIV.
they were feverish, factitious, temporary-- soon, as the event proved, to
droop into the general exhaustion. If wars were still to be waged they
were to be wars of succession, wars of diplomacy; not wars of principle,
waged for the mightiest invisible interests of man. The exhaustion was
general; and to it we must attribute alike the changes and the
conservatism of the Ancien Regime. To it is owing that growth of a
centralising despotism, and of arbitrary regal power, which M. de
Tocqueville has set forth in a book which I shall have occasion often to
quote.