society was the law of the individual, whence sprang his duties in every relation of life, and whence sprang his rights also. For the only rights of which antiquity knew, were the rights of the citizen of any abstract rights of humanity it knew nothing. Christianity changed all that by proclaiming another and a higher source of duty in the Divine Nature and the filial relation of man to

it. This we may confidently affirm to be the primary, the essential dogma upon which it rests; and M. Renan is well warranted when he declares "l'idée de Jésus. . fut l'idée la plus révolutionnaire qui soit jamais éclose dans un cerveau humain."* It was this idea which wrought slowly and imperfectly for imperfection is the universal law of life -the greatest social revolution the world has ever seen; which freed the consciences of men from the yoke of Cæsarism, which raised woman from her degradation, as the sport of man's caprice, to moral and spiritual equality with him; which struck the fetters from the slave; which made of the rich the stewards of the poor. For it was by speaking to the sovereign, to the man, to the master, to the rich, of the duties attaching to them as spiritual and responsible beings, that all this was accomplished. The public order which gradually arose throughout Europe, on the ruins of the Roman Empire, was a vast hierarchy of duties. Doubtless, in countless instances, they were grudgingly performed, or bru

*Vie de Jésus, p. 125.

tally violated. But they were everywhere undoubtingly regarded as the divinely imposed laws of life; no more to be chosen by men or women, Savonarola reminds the fugitive Romola, than birthplace, or father, or mother can be chosen, although we may choose to forsake them. And these duties were conceived of as the source and the measure of human rights. It is indeed strictly true to say that the only right of man then recognised as inalienable and imprescriptible, was the right to do what he ought; and in the secure possession of this right, human liberty was held to reside. This old world view is well expressed by Milton. "The whole freedom of man, consists either in spiritual or civil liberty. As for spiritual, who can be at rest, who can enjoy anything in this world with contentment, who hath not liberty to serve God and to save his own soul? . The other part of our freedom consists in the civil rights and advancements of every person according to his merit;"* such civil rights, such advancements, being his due, as enabling him more fully and completely to use the talents entrusted to him by the "Great Taskmaster."

It is this notion of divinely-appointed, all-pervading duty, as the paramount law of life, which especially distinguishes the Middle Ages, and which is the source of all that is highest in them, and in particular of their liberties. Absolute monarchy, the all-absorbing, unrestrained despotism of Roman

*Ready Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth,

Imperialism, had no place among their political conceptions. The monarch was everywhere bound by pacts, solemnly recognised and sworn to, as a condition of his unction and coronation, and was hemmed in, on all sides, by free institutions; by the Universal Church, "the Christian Republic," as it was called; by universities, corporations, brotherhoods, monastic orders; by franchises and privileges of all kinds, which, in a greater or less degree, existed all over Europe. The Renaissance, which considered in its merely political aspect, was a mere plagiarism of antiquity, rehabilitated the idea of Pagan Cæsarism; and that idea, under one form or another, soon spread throughout the greater part of Europe. In France, especially, the doctrine of the omnipotence of the State, fostered by a servile clergy, attained proportions, little if at all inferior to those prevailing in the antique world; and the will of the Grand Monarque-"transcendent king of gluttonous flunkies," if ever ruler deserved that description-became in practice the standard of religious obligation. In the emphatic language of Sainte-Beuve: "Sous Louis XIV. le culte du monarque était devenu une démence universellement acceptée qui étonne encore par son excès." The sovereign was again "a present Deity," and the obligation of passive obedience to him was well nigh the only obligation really believed in. It was natural that the august idea of duty, thus prostituted, and made a mere instrument of political

slavery, should fall into discredit. It was not unnatural in an age when the great theistic conception brought into the world by Christianity had lost its hold over the intellect of France-the most profoundly irreligious age the world has ever seen, perhaps that the men who in 1789 composed the National Assembly should have sought another foundation whereon to rear the public order, to the construction of which they addressed themselves without the slightest misgiving as to their competency for the enterprise.

That foundation they obtained, as they thought, in the idea of certain political rights, sacred, imprescriptible, inalienable, attaching to man by virtue of his human nature. Ascertain these, said the Revolutionary legislators, and you may forthwith make the constitution and bring back the Golden Age. The world is out of joint: it is full of wrong and violence; and "the sole causes of public misfortunes and of the corruption of governments are ignorance, forgetfulness, or contempt of the rights of man."* Let us therefore solemnly expound these rights, "in order that the claims of the citizens, being founded, in future, on simple and incontestable principles, may always tend to the maintenance of the Constitution and the general

* Preamble to The Declaration of the Rights of the Man and the Citizen.

happiness." Accordingly they proceeded to set forth their Declaration of the abstract rights of humanity. This is the corner-stone, elect, precious, upon which they sought to rear the new political edifice, having first, as was necessary, made a clean sweep of existing institutions. I shall first consider their method, and then their application of it.

Their method has been happily described by Quinet as "social geometry, a kind of political mathematics," up to that time confined to the realms of speculation. They afford the first instance recorded in history of a number of men sitting down and saying, "Go to: let us reconstruct society on à priori principles "a gigantic task indeed, for which their qualifications were of the slenderest. Perhaps we should be well warranted in saying that the only two men of conspicuous ability found among them were Mirabeau and Talleyrand. The great majority were disciples of Rousseau, with no knowledge of men, or of affairs, or of anything beyond the dreams and speculations of their master; and may be said, as Aristotle said of the Sophists, to have professed political philosophy without in the least knowing what it is or wherewithal it is concerned. A few gaudy phrases, a few specious formulas, a few abstract ideas, an illimitable selfconfidence, and an ebullient enthusiasm were their equipment for the work of recreating society. The statesman, trained in the practice of public affairs

Ibid.