218 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ments of ancient art in the domain of poetry? The triumph of the 

 moderns then turned men's faces in other directions, and whether 

 literary art should henceforward advance or decline, it must at least 

 strike root in a newer soil. 



The inroads of sensibility into French literature, as exemplified 

 in Marivaux and Prevost in the thirties, followed swiftly by the 

 rank and file, also wrought havoc in -the old classical method, though 

 this fact may not without further reflection be conceded. But in 

 the broad realm of psychological observation, where classic art had 

 reigned supreme, the influx of a certain morbid sensibility strangely 

 warped the mental vision of the observer. Diderot, a veritable sinner 

 himself in this respect, admits as much in an unguarded moment: 

 " L'homme sensible est trop abandonne a la merci de son diaphragme 

 . . . pour etre un prof ond observateur et consequemment un sublime 

 imitateur de la nature." Every one knows Voltaire's naive statement 

 which bears condemnatory evidence to the bluntness of his psychol- 

 ogy. " La nature est partout la meme." And is it not, we ask, this 

 enigmatical typical man, out of space and out of time, for whom the 

 chimerical theories of universal perfectibility were soon to be woven ? 



It is incontestably true, then, that the character of human ob- 

 servation undergoes a sensible alteration in the course of the century, 

 and that whereas the individual man had been heretofore studied 

 inasmuch as he was in himself of typical value, henceforward not 

 man the individual will be the object of study, but the observation 

 of human relations will usurp the field, and psychological analysis 

 will yield to social investigation. 



I would add a word or two by way of conclusion to illustrate how 

 the encyclopedists in their propaganda, aided in part by the coinci- 

 dent influence of Rousseau, established ideals of thought and conduct 

 which were in the most violent contrast to the ideals cherished in the 

 preceding century. Of course, we readily understand that the 

 encyclopedists threw to the four corners of heaven the outworn 

 respect of religious and political tradition. Furthermore, we may 

 ask ourselves what it is which in a sense makes Moliere and La Fon- 

 taine isolated in their century; and the answer will not be far to 

 seek when we realize that these two alone of all their fellows urged 

 the suspected authority of instinct as a sufficient guide for conduct. 

 Yet how far were not even these bolder spirits from the natural man 

 of Rousseau or of Diderot? 



The views of the two centuries concerning the authority of reason 

 seem at first sight to coincide, yet, while bearing Boileau in mind, we 

 can confidently assert that the doctrine of the sovereignty of reason 

 was not established as a principle of thought until the culminating 

 years of the eighteenth century. Pascal's " taisez-vous raison im- 



