” I never cease admiring the French Enlightenment; all in all I consider it the peak of human history, greater even than Periclean Greece, or Augustan Rome, or Medicean Italy. Never had men thought so bravely, spoken so brilliantly, or lifted themselves to a greater height of culture and courtesy. “Alas!” said Louis XVI, standing in his Temple prison before the books of Voltaire and Rousseau, “these are the men that have destroyed France.” Yes, they had destroyed one France, but they had liberated another, not to speak of freeing America through their disciples, Washington, Franklin, and
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