Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The World's Best Essays, From the Earliest Period to the Present Time, Vol. 8
Now, what were the ruling ideas in the period immediately preceding the revolution? What were the doctrines that hovered over its cradle? What was it that inspired and baptized its de velopment and the various parties that promoted it? Did they go beyond the confines of the age of the individual and his rights? Did they initiate the age of duty; and of association, the only means of fulfilling duty?
Three men, Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, comprehended the whole intellectual movement of the eighteenth century, and exercised a visible and predominant in?uence on the develop ment of the Revolution; Montesquieu, on the ideas of the Con stituent Assembly; Rousseau, on the men of the Convention; Voltaire, on the beginnings of the movement and certain general tendencies that reappear intermittently to recall his name, and the indefatigable war he waged for fifty years against the tradi tions of the Church and the caprice of despotism.
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