It was the Utopia of government; but by this Rousseau led further astray.

To impel the people to passion there must be some slight illusion mingled with the truth; reality alone was too chilling to fanaticise the human mind; it is only roused to enthusiasm by things something out of nature.

What is termed the ideal is the attraction and force of religions, which always aspire higher than they mount; this is how fanaticism is produced, that delirium of virtue.

Rousseau was the ideal of politics, as Fenelon was the ideal of Christianity.
Voltaire had the genius of criticism, that power of raillery which withers all it overthrows.

He had made human nature laugh at itself, had felled it low in order to raise it, had laid bare before it all errors, prejudices, iniquities, and crimes of ignorance; he had urged it to rebellion against consecrated ideas, not by the ideal but by sheer contempt.