=The Two Epochs in the Eighteenth Century.=--But this revolt of the eighteenth century from absolutism in politics, religion, and thought, falls naturally into two parts. During the first half of the century the movement was directed against repression in theology and intellect, and during the second half against repression in politics and the rights of man. The former tendency appears in the rationalism and skepticism of such men as Voltaire and, the ‘encyclopedists,’ while the latter becomes evident chiefly in the emotionalism and ‘naturalism’ of Rousseau. Although these aspects of the revolutionary movement somewhat overlapped each other and had certain features in common, they should be clearly distinguished. The one prepared the way for the other by seeking to destroy existing abuses, especially of the Church, by the application of reason, but it gave no ear to the claims of the masses, and sought merely to replace the traditionalism of the clergy and monarch with the tyranny of an intellectual few. In distinction to this rule of ‘reason,’ ‘naturalism’ declared that the intellect could not always be trusted as the proper monitor, but that conduct could better be guided by the emotions as the true expression of nature. It opposed the control of intellectual aristocracy and demanded rights for the common man. [Sidenote: Championed reason against traditions,] [Sidenote: and undertook to transplant English scientific movement.] =Voltaire and the Encyclopedists.=--The rationalistic and scientific tendency was chiefly developed by Diderot, Voltaire, Condillac, D’Alembert, and others interested in the production of the French _Encyclopédie_. Of all these ‘encyclopedists’ the most keen and brilliant was Voltaire (1694-1778), who may well serve as the type of the whole movement. With matchless wit and literary skill, in a remarkable range of poems, epistles, epigrams, and other writings, he championed reason against the traditional institutions of State and Church. His chief object of attack was the powerful Roman Catholic Church, which seemed to him to stand seriously in the way of all liberty, individuality, and progress, and the slogan with which he often closed his letters was,--“crush the infamous thing.” The Protestant beliefs he likewise condemned as hysterical and irrational. While an exile in England, as the result of a quarrel with a member of the nobility, he became acquainted with the work of Newton, Harvey, Bacon, Locke, and others (see pp. 164 f.), and undertook to transplant the English scientific movement to France, and make it the basis of a new régime in society, religion, and education. [Sidenote: New theories of education.] [Sidenote: Degenerated into skepticism and license.]