[Delivered at the Royal Institution, London, 1867.]
These Lectures are meant to be comments on the state of France before the French Revolution.To English society, past or present, I do not refer.For reasons which I have set forth at length in an introductory discourse, there never was any Ancien Regime in England.
Therefore, when the Stuarts tried to establish in England a system which might have led to a political condition like that of the Continent, all classes combined and exterminated them; while the course of English society went on as before.
On the contrary, England was the mother of every movement which undermined, and at last destroyed, the Ancien Regime.
From England went forth those political theories which, transmitted from America to France, became the principles of the French Revolution.From England went forth the philosophy of Locke, with all its immense results.It is noteworthy, that when Voltaire tries to persuade people, in a certain famous passage, that philosophers do not care to trouble the world--of the ten names to whom he does honour, seven names are English."It is," he says, "neither Montaigne, nor Locke, nor Boyle, nor Spinoza, nor Hobbes, nor Lord Shaftesbury, nor Mr.Collins, nor Mr.Toland, nor Fludd, nor Baker, who have carried the torch of discord into their countries." It is worth notice, that not only are the majority of these names English, but that they belong not to the latter but to the former half of the eighteenth century; and indeed, to the latter half of the seventeenth.
So it was with that Inductive Physical Science, which helped more than all to break up the superstitions of the Ancien Regime, and to set man face to face with the facts of the universe.From England, towards the end of the seventeenth century, it was promulgated by such men as Newton, Boyle, Sydenham, Ray, and the first founders of our Royal Society.
In England, too, arose the great religious movements of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--and especially that of a body which I can never mention without most deep respect--the Society of Friends.At a time when the greater part of the Continent was sunk in spiritual sleep, these men were reasserting doctrines concerning man, and his relation to his Creator, which, whether or not all believe them (as I believe them) to be founded on eternal fact, all must confess to have been of incalculable benefit to the cause of humanity and civilisation.
From England, finally, about the middle of the eighteenth century, went forth--promulgated by English noblemen--that freemasonry which seems to have been the true parent of all the secret societies of Europe.Of this curious question, more hereafter.But enough has been said to show that England, instead of falling, at any period, into the stagnation of the Ancien Regime, was, from the middle of the seventeenth century, in a state of intellectual growth and ferment which communicated itself finally to the continental nations.This is the special honour of England; universally confessed at the time.It was to England that the slowly-awakening nations looked, as the source of all which was noble, true, and free, in the dawning future.
It will be seen, from what I have said, that I consider the Ancien Regime to begin in the seventeenth century.I should date its commencement--as far as that of anything so vague, unsystematic, indeed anarchic, can be defined--from the end of the Thirty Years'
War, and the peace of Westphalia in 1648.
For by that time the mighty spiritual struggles and fierce religious animosities of the preceding century had worn themselves out.And, as always happens, to a period of earnest excitement had succeeded one of weariness, disgust, half-unbelief in the many questions for which so much blood had been shed.No man had come out of the battle with altogether clean hands; some not without changing sides more than once.The war had ended as one, not of nations, not even of zealots, but of mercenaries.The body of Europe had been pulled in pieces between them all; and the poor soul thereof--as was to be expected--had fled out through the gaping wounds.Life, mere existence, was the most pressing need.If men could--in the old prophet's words--find the life of their hand, they were content.
High and low only asked to be let live.The poor asked it--slaughtered on a hundred battle-fields, burnt out of house and home: