Rousseau was a man of small learning but great insight. Originating almost nothing, he set forth the ideas of others with incisive distinctness, often modifying them to their hurt, but giving to the form in which he wrote them an air of seductive practicability and reality which alone threw them into the sphere of action. Examining Europe at large, he found its social and political institutions so hardened and so unresponsive that he declared it incapable of movement without an antecedent general crash and breaking up. No laws, he reasoned, could be made because there were no means by which the general will could express itself, such was the rigidity of absolutism and feudalism. The splendid studies of Montesquieu, which revealed to the French the eternal truths underlying the constitutional changes in England, had enlightened and captivated the best minds of his country, but they were too serious, too cold, too dry to move the quick, bright temperament of the people at large. This was the work of Rousseau. Consummate in his literary power, he laid the ax at the root of the tree in his fierce attack on the prevailing education, sought a new basis for government in his peculiar modification of the contract theory, and constructed a substitute system of sentimental morals to supplant the old authoritative one which was believed to underlie all the prevalent iniquities in religion, politics, and society. His entire structure lacked a foundation either in history or in reason. But the popular fancy was fascinated. The whole flimsy furniture in the chambers of the general mind vanished. New emotions, new purposes, new sanctions appeared in its stead. There was a sad lack of ethical definitions, an over-zealous iconoclasm as to religion, but there were many high conceptions of regenerating society, of liberty, of brotherhood, of equality. The influence of this movement was literally ubiquitous; it was felt wherever men read or thought or talked, and were connected, however remotely, with the great central movement of civilization.