As the secrets of the universe unfolded, and as men learned how clear and simple were the laws of physical nature, they determined that there must be other laws of nature, equally clear and simple, to explain society and politics; and finding this theory lamentably contradicted by the confusion of institutions and abuses round them, they began to assail those institutions and abuses with the audacity which science gives. Law and religion in their actual forms were so corrupt that the shocked imagination of these dreamers fell back upon ideals of natural religion and natural law. Far aloof themselves from actual politics, untrained by that wisdom of many voices which free political discussion bestows, dissatisfied with their own political customs, but disdaining to study thoroughly the political customs of others and the origin of all, they proceeded to formulate, by the aid of pure reason, theories which would satisfy their newly roused emotions, and fit in with some apparently more simple and scientific formula of life. All those for whom politics in practice were a sealed book, took refuge in these politics of the imagination, and the political world in France found itself presently divided into two camps, one consisting of those who governed, the other of those who discoursed, the latter perpetually establishing principles, which the former perpetually broke. A society devoted to letters and to conversation embraced and disseminated the speculative literature of the age, and thus the great literary men of the eighteenth century became in France what politicians sometimes strive to be in happier lands, the fountains of political inspiration, and the real leaders of public thought.