In the previous century, when the social system that deprived the soul of its liberty seemed irrefragable, the Rosicrucians had resignedly considered contentment to be the philosopher’s stone. But now when the whole structure was toppling, it was necessary to interpret afresh, and in terms more in accordance with occult principles, the secret of perfection. To the mystics of the eighteenth century the “philosophical egg” by means of which the tyranny of throne and altar was to be transmuted into the gold of absolute liberty was the Revolution.
And the crass credulity and superstition of the age was the crucible in which they sought it.
IV
Nothing is more curious than to note the manner in which these descendants of the old alchemists, pioneers at one and the same time of modern Occultism and modern Socialism, while engaged in shadowing, so to speak, the unbelief of their century, conspired to put an end to the old régime.
In spite of the disasters that dimmed the glory of the last years of Louis XIV’s long reign, the immense prestige that France had acquired in le grand siècle remained unchallenged. Intellectually the influence of France under his successors was so supreme that the decay of French civilization in the eighteenth century may be regarded as a sort of mirror in which the process of the disintegration of European society generally is reflected. Already as early as 1704, eleven years before the death of Louis XIV, when authority still seemed to be everywhere dominant, Leibnitz detected “all the signs of the general Revolution with which Europe is menaced.” With the passing of Louis XIV respect, the chief stronghold of feudalism, surrendered to the cynicism of the Regency. In that insane Saturnalia chains were snapped, traditions shattered, old and worn-out conventions trampled under-foot. The Regency was but the Revolution in miniature.
The orgy of licence passed in its turn, as the gloomy and bigoted hypocrisy of which it was the natural reaction, had passed before it. But the calm of the exquisite refinement that took its place was only superficial. Freedom conceived in the revels of the Regency yearned to be born. To assist at this accouchement was the aim of all the philosophical midwifery of the age. In 1734 Voltaire, physician-in-ordinary to the century, declared “action to be the chief object of mankind.” But as freedom of action is impossible without freedom of thought Vauvenargues next demanded in clarion tones that “God should be freed.” The idea of “freeing God” in order to free man was an inspiration, and Vauvenargues’ magnificent phrase became the tocsin of the philosophers.
But the chief effect of the Regency upon France, and thus indirectly upon Europe, had been to “free unbelief.” Authority, which had feared faith when alive and despised it when dead, crawled into the shell from which the snail of belief had departed and displayed the same predatory and brutal instincts as the intolerant religion in whose iron carapace it dwelt. To dislodge it was the first step towards “freeing God”; and all sorts and conditions of athletes entered the arena to battle with prejudice and injustice. In France, where the contest was destined to be decided, the Bastille or banishment was the punishment that brute authority awarded those who dared to defy it. But to crush the rebellion of intelligence against stupidity was impossible. The efforts of the philosophers were reinforced by sovereigns imbued with the spirit of the century. With Frederick the Great a race of benevolent despots sprang into existence, who dazzled by the refulgence of the philosophical light they so much admired did not perceive till too late that in igniting their torches at its flame they were helping to kindle a conflagration destined to destroy the system that would deprive them of the absolute freedom they enjoyed, and to a limited share of which they were willing to admit the nations they ruled.
Nor for that matter did the philosophers themselves. To them as well as to their princely disciples “to free God” was another name for religious toleration. That was the revolution for which the Encyclopedists worked, and which Frederick the Great and the sovereigns who shared his enlightened opinions desired. Nothing was further from their intention than that it should take the form in which it eventually came. It is impossible to believe that the Revolution which demanded the heads of a Lavoisier and a Bailly would have spared those of a Voltaire or a Rousseau. Least of all would the stupid mob that watched the victims doomed to the guillotine “spit into the basket,” as it termed in ferocious jest the fall of the heads beneath the axe, have made any distinction between the virtuous and innocent Louis XVI and Joseph II, or the Empress Catherine, had it been possible to arraign them likewise at the bar of the Revolutionary Tribunal. The gratitude of the people is even less to be depended on than that of princes. But God was not to be “freed” in a day. Seventy-five years elapsed between Freedom’s conception in the Regency and birth in the Revolution.
During this long pregnancy the century which was to die in child-bed developed an extraordinary appetite for the supernatural. To the materialistic philosophy that analyzed and sought to control the process of decay which by the middle of the century had become visible, even to one so indifferent to “signs of the times” as Louis XV, the cult of the supernatural was an element unworthy of serious consideration. But though long ignored the time was to come when it obtained from the torch-bearers of reason a questionable and dangerous patronage. It was on the eve of the birth of Freedom that “the century of Voltaire,” as Henri Martin expresses it, “extended its hand to the occultists of the middle ages.”
Between Voltaire and cabalistic evocations, between the scepticism of the Encyclopedists and the mysticism of Swedenborg who would believe there could be any affiliation? Yet the transition was natural enough. The philosophers in their abuse of analysis had too persistently sacrificed sentiment to reason. Imagination, which Louis Blanc has called the intoxication of intelligence, had begun to doubt everything by the middle of the century. Reaction was inevitable. The sneers of Voltaire were succeeded by the tears of Rousseau. The age of sensibility followed the age of unbelief. This was the hour for which a despised occultism had waited. It alone had a clear and definite conception of the Revolution. Patronized by philosophy, which vacillated between sentiment and reason, it imbued it finally with its own revolutionary ideas. The extent of their ascendency may be gauged by the declaration of Condorcet, “that volcano covered with snow,” as he has been called, “that society must have as its object the amelioration, physical, intellectual and moral of the most numerous and poorest class.” In his desire to escape from materialism the philosopher trained in the school of Voltaire had but taken the road to perfection along which the mystics were leading France and Europe.