Perhaps the most important of these popular thinkers was Marcus Tullius Cicero - no great philosopher, but a graceful and effective man of letters.
The French Revolution seemed to many earnest thinkers the one great outcry of modern times for the liberty of thought and action which is the eternal heritage of every human being.
This theory has advanced from the position of a disparaged heresy to acceptance by leading thinkers.
Whatever one may think of the cogency of such arguments, it seems safe to conclude that thinkers, who dislike constructive idealism, but accept time and space as boundless given quanta, reach in that way the thought of infinity, and if they are theists, necessarily connect their theism with reflexions on the nature of Time and Space.
A recollection of the manifold forms which religious life and thought have taken in Christendom or in Islam, and the passions which are so easily engendered among opposing sects, will prevent a one-sided estimate of the religious standpoints which the writings betray; and to the recognition that they represent lofty ideals it must be added that the great prophets, like all great thinkers, were in advance of their age.
