1867
[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.
