THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

VOLTAIRE 187
sensitive to the class distinctions which met him at every turn, demanded
a leveling; and when the Revolution fell into the hands of his followers.
Marat and Robespierre, equality had its turn, and liberty was guillotined.
Voltaire was sceptical of Utopias to be fashioned by human legislators
who would create a brand new world out of their imaginations. Society is
a growth in time, not a syllogism in logic; and when the past is put out
through the door it comes in at the window. The problem is to show
precisely by what changes we can diminish misery and injustice in the
world in \vhich we actually live. 108 In the "Historical Eulogy of Reason,"
at the accession of Louis
Truth, the daughter of Reason, voices her joy
XVI, and her expectation of great reforms; to which Reason replies:
"My daughter, you know well that I too desire these things,, and more.
But all this requires time and thought. I am always happy when, amid
many disappointments, I obtain some of the amelioration I longed for."
Yet Voltaire too rejoiced when Turgot came to power, and wrote: "We
are in the golden age up to our necks I" 109 now would come the reforms
he had advocated : juries, abolition of the tithe, an exemption of the poor
from all taxes, etc. And had he not written that famous letter?
Everything that I see appears to be throwing broadcast the seed of a revolution
which must some day inevitably come, but which I shall not have the
pleasure of witnessing. The French always come late to things, but they do
come at last. Light extends so from neighbor to neighbor, that there will be
a splendid outburst on the first occasion; and then there will be a rare commotion!
The young are fortunate; they will see fine
110
things.
Yet he did not quite realize what was happening about him; and he
never for a moment supposed that in this "splendid outburst" all France
would accept enthusiastically the philosophy of this queer Jean Jacques
Rousseau who, from Geneva and Paris, was thrilling the world with sentimental
romances and revolutionary pamphlets. The complex soul of France
seemed to have divided itself into these two men, so different and yet sc
French. Nietzsche speaks of "la gay a scienza, the light feet, wit, fire, grace,
strong logic, arrogant intellectuality, the dance of the stars" surely he
was thinking of Voltaire. Now beside Voltaire put Rousseau: all heat and
fantasy, a man with noble and jejune visions, the idol of la bourgeoise
gentile-femme, announcing like Pascal that the heart has its reasons which
the head can never understand.
In these two men we see again the old clash between intellect and
instinct. Voltaire believed in reason always: "we can, by speech and pen,
make men more enlightened and better." 111 Rousseau had little faith in
reason; he desired action; the risks of revolution did not frighten him;
he relied on the sentiment of brotherhood to re-unite the social elements
Tellissier, 283. ""In Sainte-Beuve, i, 234-
^Correspondence, April 2, 1764. m Selected Works, 62.