Mallet du Pan grounds his charge against Diderot almost solely on "those incendiary diatribes intercalated in the Histoire philosophique des deux Indes which dishonour that work, and which Raynal, in his latter days, excised with horror from a new edition which he was preparing." But supposing the passages in question to be all Diderot's [1184]--which is far from certain--they are to be saddled with responsibility for the Reign of Terror only on the principle that it was more provocative in the days of tyranny to denounce than to exercise it. To this complexion Mallet du Pan came, with the anti-Revolutionists in general; but to-day we can recognize in the whole process of reasoning a reductio ad absurdum. The school in question came in all seriousness to ascribe the evils of the Revolution to everything and everybody save the men and classes whose misgovernment made the Revolution inevitable.
Some of the philosophers, it is true, themselves gave colour to the view that they were the makers of the Revolution, as when D'Alembert said to Romilly that "philosophy" had produced in his time that change in the popular mind which exhibited itself in the indifference with which they received the news of the birth of the dauphin. [1185] The error is none the less plain. The philosophes had done nothing to promote anti-monarchism among the common people, who did not read. [1186] It was the whole political and social evolution of two generations that had wrought the change; and the people were still for the most part believing Catholics. Frederick the Great was probably within the mark when in 1769 he privately reminded the more optimistic philosophers that their entire French public did not number above 200,000 persons. The people of Paris, who played the chief part in precipitating the Revolution, were spontaneously mutinous and disorderly, but were certainly not in any considerable number unbelievers. "While Voltaire dechristianized a portion of polite society the people remained very pious, even at Paris. In 1766 Louis XV, so unpopular, was acclaimed because he knelt, on the Pont Neuf, before the Holy Sacrament." [1187]