XXIX. No 1778. out of the inner temple of the mind, kept guard at CHAP. its portal to bar the entry to every belief that had not first obtained a passport from himself. one ever applied the theory of Descartes with rigid inflexibility; a man can as little move without the weight of the superincumbent atmosphere, as escape altogether the opinions of the age in which he sees the light; but the theory was there, and it rescued philosophy from bondage to monkish theology, forbade to the church all inquisition into private opinion, and gave to reason, and not to civil magistrates, the maintenance of truth. The nations that learned their lessons of liberty from Luther and Calvin went forward in their natural development, and suffered their institutions to grow and to shape themselves according to the increasing public intelligence. The nations that learned their lessons of liberty from Descartes were led to question everything, and by creative power renew society through the destruction of the past. The spirit of liberty in all Protestant countries was marked by moderation. The German Lessing, the antitype of Luther, said to his countrymen: "Don't put out the candles till day breaks." Out of Calvinistic Protestantism rose in that day four great teachers of four great nationalities, America, Great Britain, Germany, and France. Edwards, Reid, Kant, and Rousseau were all imbued with religiosity, and all except the last, who spoiled his doctrine by dreamy indolence, were expositors of the active powers of man. All these in political science, Kant most exactly of all, were the counterpart of America, which was conducting a revolution on the highest principles of freedom CHAP. with such circumspection that it seemed to be only XXIX. a war against innovation. On the other hand, free 1778. thought in France, as pure in its source as free thought in America, became speculative and skeptical and impassioned. This modern Prometheus, as it broke its chains, started up with a sentiment of revenge against the ecclesiastical terrorism which for centuries had sequestered the rights of mind. Inquiry took up with zeal every question in science, politics, and morals. Free thought paid homage to the "majesty of nature," investigated the origin of species, analyzed the air we breathe, pursued the discoveries of Columbus and Copernicus, mapped the skies, explored the oceans and measured the earth, revived ancient learning, revelled in the philosophy of Greece, which, untrammelled by national theology, went forth to seek the reason of things, nursed the republican sentiment by study of the history of Athens and Rome, spoke words for liberty on the stage, and adapted the round of learning to the common understanding. Now it translated and scattered abroad the writings of Americans and the new American constitutions; and the proud intellect of France was in a maze, Turgot and Condorcet melted with admiration and sympathy as they read the organic laws in which the unpretending husbandmen of a new continent had introduced into the world of real life the ideas that for them dwelt only in hope. All influences that favored freedom of mind conspired together. Anti-prelatical puritanism was embraced by anti-prelatical skepticism. The exile Calvin was welcomed home as he returned by way of New England and the states where Huguenots One XXIX. and Presbyterians prevailed. The lineage of Calvin CHAP. and the lineage of Descartes met together. One great current of vigorous living opinion, which 1778. there was no power in France capable of resisting, swept through society, driving all the clouds in the sky in one direction. Ministers and the king and the nation were hurried along together. The wave of free thought broke as it rolled against the Pyrenees. The Bourbon of France was compelled into an alliance with America; the Bourbon of Spain, disturbed only by the remonstrances of De Aranda, his ambassador in Paris, was left to pursue a strictly national policy. The Spanish people did not share the passion and enthusiasm of the French, for they had not had the training of the French. In France there was no Inquisition; in Spain the king would have submitted his own son to its tribunal. For the French soldier Descartes, the emancipator of thought, Spain had the soldier Loyola to organize repression; for the proud Corneille, so full of republican fire, Spain had the monkish Calderon. There no poet like Molière unfrocked hypocrisy. Not only had Spain no Calvin, no Voltaire, no Rousseau; she had no Pascal to mock at casuistry; no prelate to instruct her princes in the rights of the people like Fénelon, or defend her church against Rome, or teach the equality of all men before God like Bossuet; no controversies through the press like those with the Huguenots; no edict of toleration like that of Nantes. A richly endowed church always leans to Arminianism and justification by works; and it was so in Spain, where the spiritual instincts of man, which are the life of CHAP. freedom, had been trodden under foot, and almsXXIX. giving to professed mendicants usurped the place of 1778. charity. Natural science in its progress gently strips from religion the follies of superstition, and purifies and spiritualizes faith; in Spain it was dreaded as of kin to the Islam; and as the material world was driven from its rightful place among the objects of study, it avenged itself by overlaying religion. The idea was lost in the symbol; to the wooden or metal cross was imputed the worth of inward piety; religious feeling was cherished by magnificent ceremonies to delight the senses; penitence in this world made atonement by using the hair shirt, the scourge, and maceration; the immortal soul was thought to be purged by material flames; the merciless Inquisition wrapped the cimeter of the prophet in the folds of the gospel, kept spies over opinion in every house by the confessional, and quelled unbelief by the dungeon, the torture, and the stake. Free thought was rooted out in the struggle for homogeneousness. Nothing was left in Spain that could tolerate Protestantism, least of all the stern Protestantism of America; nothing congenial to free thought, least of all to free thought as it was in France. France was all alive with the restless spirit of inquiry; the country beyond the Pyrenees was still benumbed by superstition and priestcraft and tyranny over mind, and the church through its organization maintained a stagnant calm. As there was no union between the French mind and the Spanish mind, between the French people and the Spanish people, the union of the governments was simply XXIX. the result of the family compact, which the engage- CHAP. ment between France and the United States without the assent of Spain violated and annulled. More- 1778. over, the self-love of the Catholic king was touched, that his nephew should have formed a treaty with America without waiting for his advice. Besides, the independence of colonies was an example that might divest his crown of its possessions in both parts of America; and the danger was greatly enhanced by the establishment of republicanism on the borders of his transatlantic provinces, where he dreaded it as more surely fatal than all the power of Great Britain. The king of France, whilst he declared his wish to make no conquest whatever in the war, held out to the king of Spain, with the consent of the United States, the acquisition of Florida; but Florida had not power to allure Charles the Third, or his ministry, which was a truly Spanish ministry and wished to pursue a truly Spanish policy. There was indeed one word which, if pronounced, would be a spell potent enough to alter their decision, a word that calls the blood into the cheek of a Spaniard as an insult to his pride, a brand of inferiority on his nation. That word was Gibraltar. Meantime, the king of Spain declared that he would not then, nor in the future, enter into the quarrel of France and England; that he wished to close his life in tranquillity, and valued peace too highly to sacrifice it to the interests or opinions of another. So the flags of France and the United States went together into the field against Great Britain, unsupported by any other government, yet with the good |