Reveries of the Solitary Walker (Fletcher, Routledge)

history, and marvels of the secret designs of Providence, this question: why Christianity has never achieved a fixed classical Standard of taste, values, learning, archite€ture, and social etiquette, such as was granted in China to the apparently weaker system of Confucianism, in Egypt to the Amon-Ra and Osiris religion, in India to Hinduism, in Japan and Ceylon to Buddhism. Perhaps it was because Jesus believed, far more than any classicist can believe, in liberty. But the last classic period of Christianity, the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, had begun to break down in France from the time Rousseau started to write. The REVERIES OF A SOLITARY feudal and still more the craft-guilt system of the Middle Ages were unable through rottenness to support society. One of the firs aéts of the States-General convoked in 1789 was the abolition of the tradesguild system and its privileges, but long before that date the sytem of the farmers-general, the system of drafted and forced labour (such as had built Versailles) had to be called upon to prevent uprisings and deal with unemployment.…