Here we may notice that the Revolution was not a simple and therefore solid movement.  It was complex and contained the seeds of discord which lurk in many-sided and militant creeds.  The theories of its intellectual champions were as diverse as the motives which spurred on their followers to the attack on the outworn abuses of the age.

Discontent and faith were the ultimate motive powers of the Revolution.  Faith prepared the Revolution and discontent accomplished it.  Idealists who, in varied planes of thought, preached the doctrine of human perfectibility, succeeded in slowly permeating the dull toiling masses of France with hope.  Omitting here any notice of philosophic speculation as such, we may briefly notice the teachings of three writers whose influence on revolutionary politics was to be definite and practical.  These were Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau.  The first was by no means a revolutionist, for he decided in favour of a mixed form of government, like that of England, which guaranteed the State against the dangers of autocracy, oligarchy, and mob-rule.  Only by a ricochet did he assail the French monarchy.  But he re-awakened critical inquiry; and any inquiry was certain to sap the base of the ancien regime in France.  Montesquieu’s teaching inspired the group of moderate reformers who in 1789 desired to re-fashion the institutions of France on the model of those of England.  But popular sentiment speedily swept past these Anglophils towards the more attractive aims set forth by Voltaire.

This keen thinker subjected the privileged classes, especially the titled clergy, to a searching fire of philosophic bombs and barbed witticisms.  Never was there a more dazzling succession of literary triumphs over a tottering system.  The satirized classes winced and laughed, and the intellect of France was conquered, for the Revolution.  Thenceforth it was impossible that peasants who were nominally free should toil to satisfy the exacting needs of the State, and to support the brilliant bevy of nobles who flitted gaily round the monarch at Versailles.  The young King Louis XVI., it is true, carried through several reforms, but he had not enough strength of will to abolish the absurd immunities from taxation which freed the nobles and titled clergy from the burdens of the State.  Thus, down to 1789, the middle classes and peasants bore nearly all the weight of taxation, while the peasants were also encumbered by feudal dues and tolls.  These were the crying grievances which united in a solid phalanx both thinkers and practical men, and thereby gave an immense impetus to the levelling doctrines of Rousseau.