- ing all these defects, however, Voltaire's influence in
opening men's minds, showing up what was false, sham, and hypocritical, was quite immeasurable. He had, too, the great virtue of humanity. This is not just sentimental kindness and empty sympathy, but, as John Morley expresses it, "Humanity armed, aggressive, and alert; never slumbering and never wearying; moving like an ancient hero, over the land to slay monsters, is the rarest of virtues, and Voltaire is one of its master types."
A great upheaval was not far off, and gradually the way was being prepared for a better day in France and in Europe. Another man was at work, Jean Jacques Rousseau, whom Voltaire knew, but did not like. While Voltaire was appealing to the minds of the thoughtful, Rousseau was reading the hearts of the people and stirring their imagination. The age was one of extreme corruption, frivolity, and luxury on one side, and poverty, degradation, and misery on the other: an age of bad laws, stale traditions, and reckless cruelty. Voltaire and his friends were sowing the seeds of revolt. The people, only half-conscious, were being driven, as they so easily can be in any country where they are kept ignorant, partly by circumstances, partly by weak men, and partly by an atrocious social system, into the precipice of disaster.
The crash came in the great French Revolution, the greatest convulsion through which any country has
