As for the influence of Montaigne on the modes of thought of after times, and especially of his countrymen, it can scarcely be over estimated. He is the literary progenitor of the most famous French writers of the humanitarian eighteenth century. The most eminent of them, Voltaire, perhaps, most resembles him, but naturally the style of the eighteenth century philosopher is more concise and incisive, and his opinions are more pronounced. “Both,” says a French critic, “laugh at the human species; but the laughter of Voltaire is more bitter; his railleries are more terrible. Both, nevertheless, breathe the love of humanity. That of Voltaire is more ardent, more courageous, more unwearied. The hatred of both of them for charlatanism and hypocrisy is well known. Their morality has for its first principle benevolence towards others, without distinction of country, of manners, or of religious beliefs; warning us not to think that we alone hold the deposit of justice and of truth. It transports our soul, by contempt of mortal things and by enthusiasm for great truths.” It is to be lamented that the countrymen of Montaigne and of Voltaire have not profited to a larger extent by their humanitarian teaching and tendencies. In reference to the almost incredible atrocities of war, and especially of civil war, Montaigne protests:-- “Scarcely could I persuade myself, before I had seen it with my own eyes, that there could be souls so ferocious as for the simple pleasure of murder to be ready to perpetrate it; to hack and dismember the limbs of others; to ransack their invention to discover unheard-of tortures and new kinds of deaths--and that without the incentive of enmity or of profit--with the mere view of enjoying the pleasant spectacle of pitiable actions and movements, of groans and lamentations, of a man dying in agony. For this is the climax to which cruelty can attain--‘for a man without anger, without fear, to kill another merely to witness his sufferings.’ “For my part I have never been able to see, without displeasure, an innocent and defenceless animal, from whom we receive no offence or harm, pursued and slaughtered. And when a deer, as commonly happens, finding herself without breath and strength, without other resource, throws herself down and surrenders, as it were, to her pursuers, begging for mercy by her tears, ‘Questuque cruentus Atque imploranti similis.’[110] This has always appeared to me a very displeasing spectacle. I seldom, or never, take an animal alive whom I do not restore to the fields. Pythagoras was in the habit of buying their victims from the fowlers and fishermen for the same purpose. ‘Primâque a cæde ferarum Incaluisse puto maculatum sanguine ferrum.’[111]