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- "The public morals, corrupted as they were from the high to the lower classes of society, abjured the aid of the clergy: in the dissolution of all the principles of justice and morality, nought remained unconsumed, save the consuming power itself — wit, which now not as a creative, but as a destroying spirit, brooded over the abyss. The literati, who had formerly gone to court, now, after having there finished their schooling, turned to the people and preached to them another doctrine — of the God who resided in matter, of the Heaven to be found in the senses, of morality that consisted in cunning, and of the felicity that voluptuous indulgence afforded; and that all beside was the vain deception and jugglery of priests, whether at court or in the Church. That warm genial view of the Middle Age, which, in the same way as antiquity gave life to mountains, springs, and trees, looked on the state in all its members and parts as a thing endued with vitality, and procured for them, as so many essential personalities, love and attachment; that warm ennobling view had long since passed away. In room of this, the doctrine of political materialism had descended from the high to the lower regions of society, and for warm life had substituted cold abstractions, cyphers, and rigid geometrical forms, which cut sharply into private life; and for such dead abstractions it was impossible to feel affection. The portion of the nobility that sank into degeneracy at court, incurred the contempt of the people. The better part, who residing on their estates, still cultivated many ancient virtues, were, as holding extensive landed possessions in the face of grinding poverty, objects of hatred; and their consideration was undermined by the arrogance and ever increasing wealth of the monied class. Thus all bonds were relaxed, in proportion as the inward expansion of all relations increased. Authority sometimes, with a good-natured imprudence, assisted in the destruction; sometimes terrified, struggled against it in impotent opposition, by means of her police and bastilles, and then again sent her armies over the Atlantic, in order to visit in America the school of freedom. Thus all was prepared for the stroke; and when the same want of money, which through the indulgencies had led to the Reformation, necessitated the convocation of the three estates, the Revolution broke out." (en)
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