Saint-Simon, so far as the influence of his contemporaries was concerned, might have been living in the Middle Ages or the moon.  At a time when Voltaire’s fame was ringing through Europe, he refers to him incidentally as an insignificant scribbler, and misspells his name.  But the combination of such abilities and such aloofness was a singular exception, becoming, indeed, more extraordinary and improbable every day.  For now the movement which had begun in the early years of the century was entering upon a new phase.  The change came during the decade 1750-60, when, on the one hand, it had become obvious that all the worst features of the old regime were to be perpetuated indefinitely under the incompetent government of Louis XV, and when, on the other hand, the generation which had been brought up under the influence of Montesquieu and Voltaire came to maturity.  A host of new writers, eager, positive, and resolute, burst upon the public, determined to expose to the uttermost the evils of the existing system, and, if possible, to end them.  Henceforward, until the meeting of the States-General closed the period of discussion and began that of action, the movement towards reform dominated French literature, gathering in intensity as it progressed, and assuming at last the proportions and characteristics of a great organized campaign.

The ideals which animated the new writers—­the Philosophes, as they came to be called—­may be summed up in two words:  Reason and Humanity.  They were the heirs of that splendid spirit which had arisen in Europe at the Renaissance, which had filled Columbus when he sailed for the New World, Copernicus when he discovered the motion of the earth, and Luther when he nailed his propositions to the church door at Wittenberg.  They wished to dispel the dark mass of prejudice, superstition, ignorance and folly by the clear rays of knowledge and truth; and to employ the forces of society towards the benefit of all mankind.  They found in France an incompetent administration, a financial system at once futile and unjust, a barbarous judicial procedure, a blind spirit of religious intolerance—­they found the traces of tyranny, caste-privilege and corruption in every branch of public life; and they found that these enormous evils were the result less of viciousness than of stupidity, less of the deliberate malice of kings or ministers than of a long, ingrained tradition of narrow-mindedness and inhumanity in the principles of government.  Their great object, therefore, was to produce, by means of their writings, such an awakening of public opinion as would cause an immense transformation in the whole spirit of national life.  With the actual processes of political change, with the practical details of political machinery, very few of them concerned themselves.  Some of them—­such as the illustrious Turgot—­believed that the best way of reaching the desired improvement was through the agency of a benevolent despotism; others—­such