Enlightenment, and while they were so little bound to traditional institutions that the growth in individualism would be constitutional, the situation in France was exactly opposite. (1) In France the church and the political institutions had become inelastic bodies under Louis XIV. They had reached the limit of their development. So deeply rooted in absolutism and special privileges were they that they were not open to innovation or reform. During the reign of Louis XV the only question was, which would be crushed――the new individualism or the old institutions. No compromise was possible. The institutions, having survived their usefulness, gave way. (2) In the next place the French church and state had for many years been identified with oppression and tyranny, while the English people had within a century gained many needed reforms by beheading one king and forcing out another. Consequently the English government of the eighteenth century was identified with the liberty of the individual. In England political and religious speculation followed and did not precede political reforms. In France the opposite was true. To the mind of the French people the church represented only superstition, and the state only profligacy and tyranny. The more they seemed to support each other in one social structure, the more rapid, virulent, and excessive would naturally be the reaction against both when once individualism got a footing. The result was that while in England the Enlightenment always remained critical and negative, in France it became an obstinate and positive dogmatism. Behind French criticism was developing a philosophical creed. The French Enlightenment was a social cause and a self-sustaining idea. The French philosophers of the eighteenth century, on the whole, were not superior men intellectually, for they were inclined to make the small look large and the large great. But although their perspective was inaccurate, they had an enthusiastic faith in progress and humanity. =The English Influence in France.= Louis XIV and his two predecessors had made Paris the intellectual centre of Europe, and up to 1690 it had no rival. The French language had taken its place beside the Latin as the language of science. The circle of scientists existing just before and at the beginning of Louis XIV’s reign had its equal nowhere in Europe. We remember how Hobbes found Euclid in Paris, Locke spent four years at or near Paris, Leibnitz gained there all his mathematical erudition and training. During the seventeenth century Paris was the centre of scholastic influence, and this is seen directly or indirectly in the writings of all seventeenth century philosophers. The English had taken their cue from the French; but on the other hand, it is doubtful if as late as the death of Louis there were a half dozen Frenchmen that knew the English language.