These opinions were by no means novel; for three thousand years they had unceasingly traversed the imaginations of mankind, though without being able to stamp themselves there. How came they at last to take possession of the minds of all the writers of this period? Why, instead of progressing no farther than the heads of a few philosophers, as had frequently been the case, had they at last reached the masses, and assumed the strength and the fervour of a political passion to such a degree, that general and abstract theories upon the nature of society became daily topics of conversation, and even inflamed the imaginations of women, and of the peasantry? How was it that literary men, possessing neither rank, nor honours, nor fortune, nor responsibility, nor power, became, in fact, the principal political men of the day, and even the only political men, inasmuch as whilst others held the reins of government, they alone grasped its authority? A few words may suffice to show what an extraordinary and terrible influence these circumstances, which apparently belong only to the history of French literature, exercised upon the Revolution, and even upon the present condition of France. It was not by chance that the philosophers of the eighteenth century thus coincided in entertaining notions so opposed to those which still served as bases to the society of their time: these ideas had been naturally suggested to them by the aspect of the society which they had all before their eyes. The sight of so many unjust or absurd privileges, the burden of which was more and more felt whilst their cause was less and less understood, urged, or rather precipitated, the minds of one and all towards the idea of the natural equality of man’s condition. Whilst they looked upon so many strange and irregular institutions, born of other times, which no one had attempted either to bring into harmony with each other or to adapt to modern wants, and which appeared likely to perpetuate their existence though they had lost their worth, they learned to abhor what was ancient and traditional, and naturally became desirous of re-constructing the social edifice of their day upon an entirely new plan--a plan which each one traced solely by the light of his reason.[70]