[94] Mounier’s book, published at Tübingen in 1801, is entitled ‘Influence attribué aux Philosophes, aux Francs-maçons et aux Illuminés sur la Révolution.’ [95] This was the view taken by the Abbé Barruel in his book on Jacobinism. In 4 vols. [96] ‘Memoirs of Henry Steffens.’ Breslau: 1840. Steffens was born in 1775, at Stavagner, in Norway. CHAPTER II. HOW THIS VAGUE PERTURBATION OF THE HUMAN MIND SUDDENLY BECAME IN FRANCE A POSITIVE PASSION, AND WHAT FORM THIS PASSION AT FIRST ASSUMED. In the year 1787 this vague perturbation of the human mind, which I have just described, and which had for some time past been agitating the whole of Europe without any precise direction, suddenly became in France an active passion directed to a positive object. But, strange to say, this object was not that which the French Revolution was to attain: and the men who were first and most keenly affected by this new passion were precisely those whom the Revolution was to devour. At first, indeed, it was not so much the equality of rights as political freedom which was looked for; and the Frenchmen who were first moved themselves, and who set society in motion, belonged not to the lower but to the highest order. Before it sunk down to the people, this new-born detestation of absolute and arbitrary power burst forth amongst the nobles, the clergy, the magistracy, the most privileged of the middle classes,--those in short who, coming nearest in the State to the master, had more than others the means of resisting him and the hope of sharing his power. But why was the hatred of despotism the first symptom? Was it not because in this state of general dissatisfaction, the common ground on which it was most easy to agree was that of war against a political power, which either oppressed every one alike or supported that by which every one was oppressed; and because the noble and the rich found in liberty the only mode of expressing this dissatisfaction, which they felt more than any other class?