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Updated: May 28, 2025
Buffon was asked one day. "Five," answered he at once: " Newton, Bacon, Leibnitz, Montesquieu, and myself." This self-appreciation, fostered by the homage of his contemporaries, which showed itself in Buffon undisguisedly with an air of ingenuous satisfaction, had poisoned a life already extinguished ten years before amidst the bitterest agonies.
Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road. Montesquieu says that the Scythians rent their slaves' eyes, so that they might be less distracted while they were churning their butter; that is just how the inquisition functions, and in the land where this monster reigns almost everybody is blind.
He truly predicts that "his discoveries would be verified in succeeding ages," and prefers his own glory to the possession of the electorate of Saxony. It was this solitary majesty, this futurity of their genius, which hovered over the sleepless pillow of Bacon, of Newton, and of Montesquieu; of Ben Jonson, of Milton, and Corneille; and of Michael Angelo.
But the presents which were received with profound reverence by the Baron of the Holy Sepulchre in the eleventh century, and which had not wholly lost their value even in the seventeenth century, appeared inexpressibly ridiculous to a generation which read Montesquieu and Voltaire. Frederic wrote sarcastic verses on the gifts, the giver, and the receiver.
It was not long before the philosophers were applying the scientists' notions to social conditions. "Is this reasonable?" they asked, or, "Is that rational?" Montesquieu insisted that divine-right monarchy is unreasonable. Voltaire poked fun at the Church and the clergy for being irrational. Rousseau claimed that class inequalities have no basis in reason.
The evils of this system were beyond belief." Montesquieu might have added: Christianity destroyed the emperors but it saved the people. It opened to the barbarians the palaces of Constantinople, but it opened the doors of cottages to the ministering angels of Christ. It had much to do with the great ones of earth.
To appear the friend of a man when in reality we are no longer so, is to reserve to ourselves the means of doing him an injury by surprising honest men into an error. I recollected that when the illustrious Montesquieu broke with Father de Tournemine, he immediately said to everybody: "Listen neither to Father Tournemine nor myself, when we speak of each other, for we are no longer friends."
I would be plain, positive, peremptory as short as pie-crust as concise as Tacitus or Montesquieu. It was early when I called, and the General was dressing; but I pleaded urgent business, and was shown at once into his bed-room by an old negro valet, who remained in attendance during my visit.
But none, except those who are profoundly studied, can comprehend the elaborate contrivance of a fabric fitted to unite private and public liberty with public force, with order, with peace, with justice, and, above all, with the institutions formed for bestowing permanence and stability, through ages, upon this invaluable whole. Place, for instance, before your eyes such a man as Montesquieu.
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