acquired definite notions on Church and State, never
seriously examined under what conditions religion may
be established or disestablished, endowed or disendowed,
never even knew whether there exists any general solution, or any principle by which problems of that kind are
decided. This defect of knowledge became a fact of
importance at a turning-point in the Revolution. The
theory of the relations between states and churches is
bound up with the theory of Toleration, and on that
subject the eighteenth century scarcely rose above an
intermittent, embarrassed, and unscientific view. For
religious liberty is composed of the properties both of
religion and of liberty, and one of its factors never became
an object of disinterested observation among actual leaders
of opinion. They preferred the argument of doubt to the
argument of certitude, and sought to defeat intolerance by
casting out revelation as they had defeated the persecution
of witches by casting out the devil. There remained a
flaw in their liberalism, for liberty apart from belief is
liberty with a good deal of the substance taken out of it.
The problem is less complicated and the solution less
radical and less profound. Already, then, there were
writers who held somewhat superficially the conviction,
which Tocqueville made a corner-stone, that nations that
have not the self-governing force of religion within them
are unprepared for freedom.
The early notions of reform moved on French lines, striving to utilise the existing form of society, to employ the parliamentary aristocracy, to revive the States-General and the provincial assemblies. But the scheme of standing on the ancient ways, and raising a new France on the substructure of the old, brought out the fact that whatever growth of institutions there once had been had been stunted and stood still. If the mediaeval polity had been fitted to prosper, its fruit must be gathered from other countries, where the early notions had been pursued far ahead. The first thing to do was to cultivate the foreign example; and with that what we call the eighteenth century began. The English superiority, proclaimed first by Voltaire, was
