The Story of Mankind [127]
no better than the beasts of the
fields. It is not a pleasant picture, but it is not exaggerated.
There was, however, another side to the so-called ``Ancien
Regime'' which we must keep in mind.
A wealthy middle class, closely connected with the nobility
(by the usual process of the rich banker's daughter marrying
the poor baron's son) and a court composed of all the most
entertaining people of France, had brought the polite art of
graceful living to its highest development. As the best brains
of the country were not allowed to occupy themselves with
questions of political economics, they spent their idle hours
upon the discussion of abstract ideas.
As fashions in modes of thought and personal behaviour
are quite as likely to run to extremes as fashion in dress, it
was natural that the most artificial society of that day should
take a tremendous interest in what they considered ``the simple
life.'' The king and the queen, the absolute and unquestioned
proprietors of this country galled France, together with all its
colonies and dependencies, went to live in funny little country
houses all dressed up as milk-maids and stable-boys and played
at being shepherds in a happy vale of ancient Hellas. Around
them, their courtiers danced attendance, their court-musicians
composed lovely minuets, their court barbers devised more
and more elaborate and costly headgear, until from sheer boredom
and lack of real jobs, this whole artificial world of Versailles
(the great show place which Louis XIV had built far
away from his noisy and restless city) talked of nothing but
those subjects which were furthest removed from their own
lives, just as a man who is starving will talk of nothing except
food.
When Voltaire, the courageous old philosopher, playwright,
historian and novelist, and the great enemy of all
religious and political tyranny, began to throw his bombs of
criticism at everything connected with the Established Order
of Things, the whole French world applauded him and his
theatrical pieces played to standing room only. When Jean
Jacques Rousseau waxed sentimental about primitive man
and gave his contemporaries delightful descriptions of the
happiness of the original inhabitants of this planet, (about
whom he knew as little as he did about the children, upon whose
education he was the recognised authority,) all France read
his ``Social Contract'' and this society in which the king and
the state were one, wept bitter tears when they heard Rousseau's
appeal for a return to the blessed days when the real
sovereignty had lain in the hands of the people and when the
king had been merely the servant of his people.
When Montesquieu published his ``Persian Letters'' in
which two distinguished Persian travellers turn the whole existing
society of France topsy-turvy and poke fun at everything
from the king down to the lowest of his six hundred
pastry cooks, the book immediately went through four
editions and assured the writer thousands of readers for his
famous discussion of the ``Spirit of the Laws'' in which the
noble Baron compared the excellent English system with the
backward system of France and advocated instead of an absolute
monarchy the establishment of a state in which the Executive,
the Legislative and the Judicial powers should be in
separate hands and should work independently of each other.
When Lebreton, the Parisian book-seller, announced that
Messieurs Diderot, d'Alembert, Turgot and a score of other
distinguished writers were going to publish an Encyclopaedia
which was to contain ``all the new ideas and the new science
and the new knowledge,'' the response from the side of the
public was most satisfactory, and when after twenty-two years
the last of the twenty-eight volumes had been finished, the
somewhat belated interference of the police could not repress
the enthusiasm with which French society received this
fields. It is not a pleasant picture, but it is not exaggerated.
There was, however, another side to the so-called ``Ancien
Regime'' which we must keep in mind.
A wealthy middle class, closely connected with the nobility
(by the usual process of the rich banker's daughter marrying
the poor baron's son) and a court composed of all the most
entertaining people of France, had brought the polite art of
graceful living to its highest development. As the best brains
of the country were not allowed to occupy themselves with
questions of political economics, they spent their idle hours
upon the discussion of abstract ideas.
As fashions in modes of thought and personal behaviour
are quite as likely to run to extremes as fashion in dress, it
was natural that the most artificial society of that day should
take a tremendous interest in what they considered ``the simple
life.'' The king and the queen, the absolute and unquestioned
proprietors of this country galled France, together with all its
colonies and dependencies, went to live in funny little country
houses all dressed up as milk-maids and stable-boys and played
at being shepherds in a happy vale of ancient Hellas. Around
them, their courtiers danced attendance, their court-musicians
composed lovely minuets, their court barbers devised more
and more elaborate and costly headgear, until from sheer boredom
and lack of real jobs, this whole artificial world of Versailles
(the great show place which Louis XIV had built far
away from his noisy and restless city) talked of nothing but
those subjects which were furthest removed from their own
lives, just as a man who is starving will talk of nothing except
food.
When Voltaire, the courageous old philosopher, playwright,
historian and novelist, and the great enemy of all
religious and political tyranny, began to throw his bombs of
criticism at everything connected with the Established Order
of Things, the whole French world applauded him and his
theatrical pieces played to standing room only. When Jean
Jacques Rousseau waxed sentimental about primitive man
and gave his contemporaries delightful descriptions of the
happiness of the original inhabitants of this planet, (about
whom he knew as little as he did about the children, upon whose
education he was the recognised authority,) all France read
his ``Social Contract'' and this society in which the king and
the state were one, wept bitter tears when they heard Rousseau's
appeal for a return to the blessed days when the real
sovereignty had lain in the hands of the people and when the
king had been merely the servant of his people.
When Montesquieu published his ``Persian Letters'' in
which two distinguished Persian travellers turn the whole existing
society of France topsy-turvy and poke fun at everything
from the king down to the lowest of his six hundred
pastry cooks, the book immediately went through four
editions and assured the writer thousands of readers for his
famous discussion of the ``Spirit of the Laws'' in which the
noble Baron compared the excellent English system with the
backward system of France and advocated instead of an absolute
monarchy the establishment of a state in which the Executive,
the Legislative and the Judicial powers should be in
separate hands and should work independently of each other.
When Lebreton, the Parisian book-seller, announced that
Messieurs Diderot, d'Alembert, Turgot and a score of other
distinguished writers were going to publish an Encyclopaedia
which was to contain ``all the new ideas and the new science
and the new knowledge,'' the response from the side of the
public was most satisfactory, and when after twenty-two years
the last of the twenty-eight volumes had been finished, the
somewhat belated interference of the police could not repress
the enthusiasm with which French society received this