The French Revolution | Page 6

and German Protestantism opened a pioneer track, remained a sealed book
for them. In his Letters on the English, published in 1734, Voltaire dwells less on
constitutional than on religious questions. Liberty of conscience is what he struggles for,
and he discerns not only that it is more prudent to attack the Church than the State but
that it is more essential; religion is at the root of the monarchical system even if the 18th
century ruler is apt to forget it. And the Church gives Voltaire ample opportunity for
attack. The bishops and court abbés are often enough {18} sceptics and libertines, though
every once in a while they turn and deal a furious blow to maintain the prestige and
discipline of their ancient corporation. And when, for a few blasphemous words, they
send a boy like the Chevalier de La Barre to the scaffold, to be mutilated and killed,
Voltaire's voice rings out with the full reverberation of outraged humanity and
civilization: Ecrasez l'infâme! He believed that the Revolution, which he like so many
others foresaw, would begin by an attack on the priests. It was the natural error of a
thinker, a man of letters, concerned more with ideas than facts, with theology than
economics.
Above 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 Armée, 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 Suprême. It was this Supreme
Being of Rousseau that was to become the official deity of France during the last days of
the Reign of Terror.
An influence of a slightly different sort to that exercised by these writers was that of the
theatre. The century had seen the rise of the middle-class man, and his attempts at self
expression. The coffee-house and the Freemason's lodge gave facilities for conversation,
discussion, opinion; and the increasing number of gazettes supplied these circles with
information as to the course of political events. But the gazettes themselves might not
venture into the danger-marked field of opinion, and for the fast growing public,
especially in the {21} city of Paris, there was no opportunity for comment or criticism on
the events of the day. In a tentative way the theatre proved itself a possible medium. In
1730, Voltaire produced his tragedy Brutus. It fell flat because of the lines
. . . et je porte en mon coeur La liberté gravée et les rois en horreur.
The audience was too loyal to Bourbonism to accept these sentiments; there were loud
murmurs; and Brutus had to be withdrawn. As late as 1766, a play on the subject of
William Tell was given to an empty house; no one would go to see a