``The French Revolution,'' he wrote, ``was a political revolution which operated in the manner of and assumed something of the aspect of a religious revolution. See by what regular and characteristic traits it finally resembled the latter: not only did it spread itself far and wide like a religious revolution, but, like the latter, it spread itself by means of preaching and propaganda. A political revolution which inspires proselytes, which is preached as passionately to foreigners as it is accomplished at home: consider what a novel spectacle was this.'' The religious side of the Revolution being granted, the accompanying fury and devastation are easily explained. History shows us that such are always the accompaniments of the birth of religions. The Revolution was therefore certain to provoke the violence and intolerance the triumphant deities demand from their adepts. It overturned all Europe for twenty years, ruined France, caused the death of millions of men, and cost the country several invasions: but it is as a rule only at the cost of such catastrophes that a people can change its beliefs. Although the mystic element is always the foundation of beliefs, certain affective and rational elements are quickly added thereto. A belief thus serves to group sentiments and passions and interests which belong to the affective domain. Reason then envelops the whole, seeking to justify events in which, however, it played no part whatever. At the moment of the Revolution every one, according to his aspirations, dressed the new belief in a different rational vesture. The peoples saw in it only the suppression of the religious and political despotisms and hierarchies under which they had so often suffered. Writers like Goethe and thinkers like Kant imagined that they saw in it the triumph of reason. Foreigners like Humboldt came to France ``to breathe the air of liberty and to assist at the obsequies of despotism.'' These intellectual illusions did not last long. The evolution of the drama soon revealed the true foundations of the dream. 2. Dissolution of the Ancien Regime. The assembling of the States General. Before they are realised in action, revolutions are sketched out in men's thoughts. Prepared by the causes already studied, the French Revolution commenced in reality with the reign of Louis XVI. More discontented and censorious every day, the middle classes added claim to claim. Everybody was calling for reform. Louis XVI. thoroughly understood the utility of reform, but he was too weak to impose it on the clergy and the nobility. He could not even retain his reforming ministers, Malesherbes and Turgot. What with famines and increased taxation, the poverty of all classes increased, and the huge pensions drawn by the Court formed a shocking contrast to the general distress.