The men who during the eighteenth century defended the cause of tolerance rarely belonged to any particular denomination. For the sake of personal convenience they sometimes went through certain outward motions of religious conformity which kept the gendarmes away from their writing desks. But as far as their inner life was concerned, they might just as well have lived in Athens in the fourth century B.C. or in China in the days of Confucius. They were often most regrettably lacking in a certain reverence for various things which most of their contemporaries held in great respect and which they themselves regarded as harmless but childish survivals of a bygone day. They took little stock in that ancient national history which the western world, for some curious reason, had picked out from among all Babylonian and Assyrian and Egyptian and Hittite and Chaldean records and had accepted as a guide-book of morals and customs. But true disciples of their great master, Socrates, they listened only to the inner voice of their own conscience and regardless of consequences, they lived fearlessly in a world that had long since been surrendered to the timid. CHAPTER XXVII THE INTOLERANCE OF REVOLUTION The ancient edifice of official glory and unofficial misery known as the Kingdom of France came crashing down on a memorable evening in the month of August of the year of grace 1789. On that hot and sultry night, after a week of increasing emotional fury, the National Assembly worked itself into a veritable orgy of brotherly love. Until in a moment of intense excitement the privileged classes surrendered all those ancient rights and prerogatives which it had taken them three centuries to acquire and as plain citizens declared themselves in favor of those theoretical rights of man which henceforth would be the foundation-stone for all further attempts at popular self-government. As far as France was concerned, this meant the end of the feudal system. An aristocracy which is actually composed of the “aristoi,” of the best of the most enterprising elements of society, which boldly assumes leadership and shapes the destinies of the common country, has a chance to survive. A nobility which voluntarily retires from active service and contents itself with ornamental clerical jobs in diverse departments of government is only fit to drink tea on Fifth Avenue or run restaurants on Second. The old France therefore was dead. Whether for better or for worse, I do not know. But it was dead and with it there passed away that most outrageous form of an invisible government which the Church, ever since the days of Richelieu, had been able to impose upon the anointed descendants of Saint Louis. Verily, now as never before, mankind was given a chance. Of the enthusiasm which at that period filled the hearts and souls of all honest men and women, it is needless to speak. The millennium was close at hand, yea, it had come.