away Revelation to a child who should beat its nurse. The same figure would serve just as well to describe the thanklessness of Belief to the Disbelief which has purged and exalted it. One of the most striking features of the revolution wrought by Voltaire is that it was the one great revolt in history which contained no element of asceticism, and achieved all its victories without resort to an instrument so potent, inflexible, and easy, but so gravely dangerous. Such revolts are always reactions against surrounding corruption and darkness. They are the energetic protests of the purer capacities and aspirations of human nature; and as is the inevitable consequence of vehement action of this sort, they seem for a while to insist on nothing less than the extirpation of those antagonistic parts which are seen to have brought life into such debasement. With this stern anger and resolve in their hearts, men have no mind to refine, explain, or moderate, and they are forced by one of the strangest instincts of our constitution into some system of mortification, which may seem to clear the soul of the taint of surrounding grossness. In such exalted mood, there is no refuge but in withdrawal from the common life into recesses of private conscience, and in severest purification of all desires. There are not many types of good men even in the least ascetic or least reactionary epochs, to whom this mood, and its passion for simplicity, self-applied rigour, minute discipline, firm regulation, and veritable continence of life, do not now and again recur, in the midst of days that march normally on a more spacious and expansive theory. There was, however, no tinge of ascetic principle in Voltairism. Pascal had remarked that relaxed opinions are naturally so pleasing to men, that it is wonderful they should ever be displeasing. To which Voltaire had thus retorted: ‘On the contrary, does not experience prove that influence over men’s minds is only gained by offering them the difficult, nay the impossible, to perform or believe? Offer only things that are reasonable, and all the world will answer, We knew as much as that. But enjoin things that are hard, impracticable; paint the deity as ever armed with the thunder; make blood run before the altars; and you will win the multitude’s ear, and everybody will say of you, He must be right, or he would not so boldly proclaim things so marvellous.’[5] Voltaire’s ascendency sprung from no appeal to those parts of human nature in which ascetic practice has its foundation. On the contrary, full exercise and play for every part was the key of all his teaching, direct and indirect. He had not Greek serenity and composure of spirit, but he had Greek exultation in every known form of intellectual activity, and this audacious curiosity he made general.