"THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA."
We have seen that the church had an irreconcilable enemy in Voltaire;
that the government of France had found a critic of weight and
importance in Montesquieu; that the Economists had attacked the
financial organization of the country. But the assaults of the
Philosophic school were not leveled at the religious and civil
administration alone. The very foundations of French thought, slowly
laid through previous ages, were made in the reign of Louis XV. the
subject of examination, and by a very dogmatic set of thinkers were
pronounced to be valueless. Nor were men left at a loss for something to
put in the place of what was thus destroyed. The teachings of Locke,
explained and amplified by Condillac and many others, obtained an
authority which was but feebly disputed. The laws against free speech
and free printing, intended for the defense of the old doctrines,
deterred no one from expressing radical opinions. Only persons of
conservative and law-abiding temperament, the natural defenders of
things existing, were restrained by legal and ecclesiastical terrors.
The champions of the old modes of thought stood like mediaeval men at
arms before a discharge of artillery, prevented from rushing on the guns
of the enemy by the weight of the armor that protected them no longer.
The new philosophy, stimulated and hardly impeded by feeble attempts at
persecution, was therefore able to overrun the intellectual life of the
nation, until it found its most formidable opponent in one who was half
its ally, and who had sprung from its midst, the mighty heretic,
Rousseau.
The most voluminous work of the Philosophers is the "Encyclopaedia," a
book of great importance in the history of the human mind. The
conception of its originators was not a new one. The attempt to bring
human knowledge into a system, and to set it forth in a series of folio
volumes, had been made before. The endeavor is one which can never meet
with complete success, yet which should sometimes be made in a
philosophic spirit. The universe is too vast and too varied to be
successfully classified and described by one man, or under the
supervision of one editor. But the attempt may bring to light some
relation of things hitherto unnoticed, and the task is one of practical
utility.
The great French "Encyclopaedia" may claim two immediate progenitors.
The first is found in the works of Lord Bacon, where there is a
"Description of a Natural and Experimental History, such as may serve
for the foundation of a true philosophy," with a "Catalogue of
particular histories by titles." The second is Chambers's Cyclopaedia,
first published in 1727, a translation of which Diderot was engaged to
edit by the publisher Le Breton. Diderot, who freely acknowledges his
obligation to Bacon, makes light of that to Chambers, saying in his
prospectus that the latter owed much to French sources, that his work is
not the basis of the one proposed, that many of the articles have been
rewritten, and almost all the others corrected and altered. There is no
doubt that the whole plan of the "Encyclopaedia" was much enlarged by
Denis Diderot himself.[Footnote: Bacon, iv. 251, 265. Morley,
_Diderot_, i., 116. Diderot, _Oeuvres_, xiii. 6, 8. "If we
come out successfully we shall be principally indebted to Chancellor
Bacon, who laid out the plan of a universal dictionary of sciences and
arts _at a time when there were, so to speak, neither sciences nor
arts_."]
This eminent man was born at Langres in 1713, the son of a worthy
cutler. He was educated by the Jesuits, and on his refusal to enter
either of the learned professions of law or medicine, was set adrift by
his father,--who hoped that a little hardship would bring him to
reason,--and found himself in Paris with no resource but the precarious
one of letters. Diderot lived from hand to mouth for a time, sleeping
sometimes in a garret of his own, sometimes on the floor of a friend's
room. Once he got a place of tutor to the children of a financier, but
could not bear the life of confinement, and soon threw up his
appointment and returned to freedom. When any friend of his father
turned up on a visit to the town, he would borrow, and the old cutler at
Langres would grumble and repay. Gradually the young author rose above
want. He became one of the first literary men of his day and one of the
most brilliant talkers, rich in ideas, overflowing in language, subtle
without obscurity, suggestive, and satisfying; yet always retaining a
certain shyness, and "able to say anything, but good-morning." Yet he
was soon carried away by the excitement of conversation and of
discussion. He had a trick of tapping his interlocutor on the knee, by
way of giving point to his remarks, and the Empress Catharine II. of
Russia complained that he mauled her black and blue by the use of this
familiar gesture, so that she had to put a table between herself and him
for protection. Diderot was fond of the young, and especially of
struggling authors. To them his purse and his literary assistance were
freely given. He was delighted when a writer came to consult him on his
work. If the subject were interesting he would recognize its
capabilities at a glance. As the author read, Diderot's imagination
would fill in all deficiencies, construct new scenes in the tragedy, new
incidents, new characters in the tale. To him all these beauties would
seem to belong to the work itself, and his friends would be astonished,
after hearing him praise some new book, to find in it but few of the
good things which he had quoted from it.
Diderot's good nature was boundless. One morning a young man, quite
unknown to him, came with a manuscript, and begged him to read and
correct it. He prepared to comply with the request on the spot. The
paper, when opened, turned out to be a satire on himself and his
writings.
"Sir," said Diderot to the young man, "I do not know you; I can never
have offended you. Will you tell me the motive which has impelled you to
make me read a libel for the first time in my life? I generally throw
such things into the waste-paper basket."
"I am starving. I hoped that you would give me a few crowns not to print
it."
Instead of flying into a passion, Diderot simply remarked: "You would
not be the first author that ever was bought off; but you can do better
with this stuff. The brother of the Duke of Orleans is in retreat at
Saint Genevieve. He is religious; he hates me. Dedicate your satire to
him; have it bound with his arms on the cover; carry it to him yourself
some fine morning, and he will help you."
"But I don't know the prince; and I don't see how I can write the
dedicatory epistle."
"Sit down; I'll do it for you."
And Diderot writes the dedication, and gives it to the young man, who
carries the libel to the prince, receives a present of twenty-five
louis, and comes back after a few days to thank Diderot, who advises him
to find a more decent means of living.
The people whom the great writer helped were not always so polite. One
day he was seeing to the door a young man who had deceived him, and to
whom, after discovering it, he had given both assistance and advice.
"Monsieur Diderot," said the swindler, "do you know natural history?"
"A little; I can distinguish an aloe from a head of lettuce, and a
pigeon from a humming-bird."
"Do you know the formica leo?"
"No."
"It is a very clever little insect. It digs a hole in the ground, shaped
like a funnel. It covers the surface with fine, light sand. It attracts
silly insects and gets them to tumble in. It seizes them, sucks them
dry, and then says: `Monsieur Diderot, I have the honor to wish you
good-morning.'" Whereupon the young man ran downstairs, leaving the
philosopher in fits of laughter.[Footnote: Morley, Diderot and the
Encyclopaedists. Scherer, Diderot, passim. Morrellet, i. 29. Marmontel,
ii. 313. Mémoire sur Diderot, par Mme. de Vandeul, sa fille (a charming
sketch only 64 pages long) in Diderot, Mémoires, Corresp., etc., vol.
i.]
As a writer, the great fault of Diderot is one not common in France. He
is verbose. As we read his productions, even the cleverest, we feel that
the same thing could have been better said in fewer words. There is also
a lack of arrangement. Diderot would never take time to plan his books
before writing them. But these faults, although probably fatal to the
permanent fame of an author, are less injurious to his immediate success
than might be expected. A large part of the public does not dislike a
copious admixture of water in its intellectual drink. And Diderot
reconciles the reader to his excessive flow of words by the
effervescence of his enthusiasm. It is because his mind is overfull of
his subject that the sentences burst forth so copiously.
The first writing of Diderot that need engage our attention is his
"Letter on the Blind," published in 1749. This letter deals with the
question, how far congenital deprivation of one of the senses, and
especially blindness, would modify the conceptions of the person
affected; how far the ideas of one born blind would differ from the
ideas of those who can see. The bearing of this question on Locke's
theory that all our ideas are derived from sensation and reflection is
obvious. Diderot, in a manner quite characteristic of him, took pains to
examine the cases of persons who had actually been blind and had
recovered their sight, and where these failed him, supplied their places
by inventions of his own.[Footnote: Condorcet says of Diderot, "faisant
toujours aimer la verité, même lorsqu'entraîné par son imagination il
avait le malheur de la méconnaître." D'Alembert, _Oeuvres_, i. 79
(_Éloge par Condorcet_). There is a great deal in this remark.
Unless we can enter into the state of mind of men who tell great lies
from a genuine love of abstract truth, we shall never understand the
French Philosophers of the 18th century.]
Diderot's principal witness is Nicholas Saunderson, a blind man with a
talent for mathematics, who between 1711 and 1739 was a professor at the
University of Cambridge. Diderot quotes at some length the atheistic
opinions of Saunderson, giving as his authority the Life of the latter
by "Dr. Inchlif." No such book ever existed, and the opinions are the
product of Diderot's own reasoning. When an author treats us in this way
our confidence in his facts is hopelessly lost. His reasons, however,
remain, and the most striking of these, in the "Letter on the Blind," is
the answer given to one who attempts to prove the existence of God by
pointing out the order found in nature, whence an intelligent Creator is
presumed. In answer to this, the dying Saunderson is made to say: "Let
me believe... that if we were to go back to the birth of things and of
times, and if we should feel matter move and chaos arrange itself, we
should meet a multitude of shapeless beings, instead of a few beings
that were well organized.... I can maintain that these had no stomach,
and those no intestines; that some, to which their stomach, palate, and
teeth seemed to promise duration, have ceased to exist from some vice of
the heart or the lungs; that the abortions were successively destroyed;
that all the faulty combinations of matter have disappeared, and that
only those have survived whose mechanism implied no important
contradiction, and which could live by themselves and perpetuate their
species."[Footnote: Diderot, i. 328.] The step from the idea here
conveyed to that of the struggle for existence and of the survival of
the most fit is not a very long one.
For his "Letter on the Blind," Diderot was imprisoned at Vincennes. The
real cause of this punishment is said to have been a slight allusion in
the "Letter" to the mistress of a minister of state. But this may not
have been the only cause. There occurred about this time one of those
temporary seasons of severity which are necessary under all governments
to meet occasional outbursts of crime, but to which weak and corrupt
governments are liable with capricious frequency. Diderot sturdily
denied the authorship of the "Letter," lying as thoroughly as he had
done in that piece of writing itself, when he invented the name of
Inchlif and forged the ideas of Saunderson. This time there was more
excuse for his untruth; for the disclosure of his printer's name might
have sent that unfortunate man to prison or to the galleys. The
imprisonment of Diderot himself, at first severe, was soon lightened at
the instance of Voltaire's mistress, Madame du Châtelet. Diderot was
allowed to see his friends, and even to wander about the park of
Vincennes on parole. After three months of captivity he was released by
the influence of the booksellers interested in the "Encyclopaedia."
[Footnote: Morley, _Diderot_, i. 105.]
The first volume of that great work was in preparation. Diderot, whose
untiring energy was unequal to the task of editing the whole, and who
was, moreover, insufficiently trained for the work in some branches, and
notably in mathematics, gathered about him a band of workers which
increased as time went on, until it included a great number of
remarkable men. First in importance to the enterprise, acting with
Diderot on equal terms, was D'Alembert, an almost typical example of the
gentle scholar, who refused one brilliant position after another to
devote himself to mathematics and to literature. Next, perhaps, should
be mentioned the Chevalier de Jaucourt, a man of encyclopaedic learning,
who helped in the preparation of the book with patient enthusiasm,
reading, dictating, and working with three or four secretaries for
thirteen or fourteen hours a day. Montesquieu, whose end was
approaching, left behind him an unfinished article on Taste. Voltaire
not only sent in contributions of his own, but constantly gave
encouragement and advice, as became the recognized head of the
Philosophic school. Rousseau, whose literary reputation had recently
been made by his "Discourses," contributed articles on music for a time;
but subsequently chose to quarrel with the Encyclopaedists, whose minds
worked very differently from his. Turgot wrote several papers on
economic subjects, and in the latter part of the work, Haller, the
physiologist, and Condorcet were engaged.
The publication of the "Encyclopaedia" lasted many years, and met with
many vicissitudes. The first volume appeared in 1751, the second in
January, 1752. The book immediately excited the antagonism of the church
and of conservative Frenchmen generally. On the 12th of February, 1752,
the two volumes were suppressed by an edict of the Council, as
containing maxims contrary to royal authority and to religion. The edict
forbade their being reprinted and their being delivered to such
subscribers as had not already received their copies. The continuation
of the work, however, was not forbidden. It was believed at the time
that the administration took this step in order to silence the Jesuits,
to please the Archbishop of Paris, and perhaps to be beforehand with the
Parliament, which might have taken severer measures. It was also
intimated that certain booksellers, jealous of the success of the
undertaking, were exerting influence on the authorities. All these
enemies of the "Encyclopaedia" were not content with their first
triumph. A few days after the appearance of the edict, the manuscripts
and plates were seized by the police. They were restored to the editors
three months later. The work was one in the performance of which many
Frenchmen took pride. It is said that the Jesuits had tried to continue
it, but had failed even to decipher the papers that had been taken from
Diderot. The attack of the archbishop, who had fulminated against the
great book in an episcopal charge, had served the purpose of an
advertisement; such was the wisdom and consistency of the repressive
police of that age.
From 1753 to 1757 the publication went on without interruption, one
volume appearing every year. Seven volumes had now been published,
bringing the work to the end of the letter G. The subscription list,
originally consisting of less than two thousand names, had nearly
doubled. But the forces of conservatism rallied. In 1758 appeared
Helvetius's book "De l'Esprit," of which an account will be given in the
next chapter, and which shocked the feelings of many persons, even of
the Philosophic school. Few things could, indeed, have made the
Philosophers more unpopular than the publication by one of their own
party of a very readable book, in which the attempt was made to push
their favorite ideas to their last conclusions. This is a process which
few abstract theories can bear, for the limitations of any statement are
in fact essential parts of it. But human laziness so loves formulas, so
hates distinctions, that extreme and unmodified expressions are seized
with avidity by injudicious friends and exulting foes.
The feeling of indignation awakened in the public by the doctrines of
Helvetius gave opportunity to the opponents of the "Encyclopaedia." That
work was denounced to the Parliament of Paris, together with the book
"De l'Esprit." The learned court promptly condemned the latter to the
flames. The great compilation, on the other hand, of which the volume of
Helvetius was said to be a mere abridgment, was submitted to nine
commissioners for examination, and further publication was suspended
until they should report. While proceedings before the Parliament were
still pending, the Council of State intervened, and the "Encyclopaedia"
was arbitrarily interdicted, its privilege taken away, the sale of the
volumes already printed, and the printing of any more, alike forbidden.
It is characteristic of the condition of things existing under the weak
and vacillating government of Louis XV, that the interdict pronounced
against the "Encyclopaedia" did not stop its printing. The editor and
the publishers determined to prepare in private the ten volumes that
were still unmade, and to launch them on the world at one time. To this
work Diderot turned with boundless energy. D'Alembert, however, was
discouraged, and retired from the undertaking. For six years Diderot
labored on, never safe from interference on the part of the government,
and managing a great enterprise, with its staff of contributors and its
scores of workmen, while constantly liable to arrest and imprisonment.
Diderot worked indefatigably also with his pen; writing articles on all
sorts of subjects,--philosophy, arts, trades, and manufactures. To learn
how things were made he visited workshops and handled tools, baffled at
times by the jealousy and distrust of the workmen, who were afraid of
his disclosing their secret processes, or of his giving information to
the tax-gatherer.
The sharpest blow was yet to fall. The "Encyclopaedia" was issued by an
association of publishers which paid Diderot a moderate salary for his
services. Of these publishers one, named Le Breton, was the chief. He is
said to have been a dull man, incapable of understanding any work of
literature. It was his maxim that literary men labor for glory, and
publishers for pay, and consequently he divided the income of the
"Encyclopaedia" into two parts, giving to Diderot the glory, the danger,
and the persecution, and reserving the money for himself and his
partners. From his position in Paris he felt sure of being able to
foresee any new order launched against the "Encyclopaedia" while the
printing was in progress, and of providing against it. But the time of
publication was likely to be marked by a new storm. Under these
circumstances Le Breton resorted to a trick. After Diderot had read the
last proof of every sheet, the publisher and his foreman secretly took
it in hand, erased and cut out all that seemed rash or calculated to
excite the anger of religious or conservative people, and thus reduced
many of the principal articles to fragments. Then, to make the wrong
irremediable, they burned the manuscripts, and quietly proceeded with
the printing. This process would seem to have been continued for more
than a year. One day in 1764, when the time of publication was drawing
near, Diderot, having occasion to consult an article under the letter S,
found it badly mutilated. Puzzled at first, he presently recognized the
nature of the trick that had been played him. He turned to various parts
of the book, to his own articles and to those of other writers, and
found in many places the marks of the outrage. Diderot was in despair.
His first thought was to throw up the undertaking and to announce the
fraud to the public. The injury that would have been done to Le Breton's
innocent partners, the danger of publishing the fact that the
"Encyclopaedia" was still in process of printing,--a fact of which the
officers of the government had only personal and not official
knowledge,--determined him to go on with the publication. It may be that
Le Breton's changes had been less extensive than Diderot, in his first
excitement on making the discovery, had been led to believe. In
examining the "Encyclopaedia" no alteration of tone is observable
between the first seven and the subsequent volumes; and Grimm, to whom
we owe the story, acknowledges that none of the authors engaged with
Diderot in the work complained or even noticed that their articles had
been altered.
In 1765 the ten volumes which completed the alphabet (making seventeen
of this part of the work) were delivered to the subscribers. As a
precautionary measure, those for foreign countries were sent out first,
then those for the provinces, and lastly those for Paris. The eleven
volumes of plates were not published until 1772. A supplement of four
volumes of text and one of plates appeared in 1776 and 1777, and three
years later a table of contents in two volumes.[Footnote: Several
volumes of the original edition have the imprint of Neufchatel, and the
supplement has that of Amsterdam, although all were actually printed in
Paris. The _Encyclopaedia_ was reprinted as a whole at Geneva and
at Lausanne. Editions also appeared at Leghorn and at Lucca; besides
volumes of selections and abbreviations. Morley, _Diderot_, i. 169.
For the _Encyclopaedia_, see Morley, _Diderot_, _passim._
Soberer, _Diderot_; the correspondence of D'Alembert and Voltaire
in the works of the latter. Diderot, _Mémoires_, i. 431 (Nov. 10,
1760). Grimm, vii. 44, and especially ix. 203-217, an excellent article.
Barbier, v. 159, 169; vii. 125, 138, 141; also in the work itself the
word _Encyclopédie_ in vol. v. Mr. Morley thinks that the article
_Genève_, in vol. vii. of the _Encyclopaedia_, especially
excited the church and the Parliament to desire its suppression. The
same article drew from Rousseau his letter to D'Alembert on the theatre
at Geneva, which marks the separation between Rousseau and the
Philosophers. But in the _Discours préliminaire_ D'Alembert had
attacked Rousseau's _First Discourse_. For the excitement caused at
Geneva by the article, see Voltaire, lvii. 438 (Voltaire to D'Alembert,
Jan. 8, 1758). It is perhaps superfluous to remark that Grimm's account
of the character and ideas of Le Breton, which has been followed above,
is probably not unbiased.]
What was the great book whose history was so full of vicissitudes? Why
did the French government, the church, and the literary world so excite
themselves about a dictionary? The "Encyclopaedia" had in fact two
functions; it was a repository of information and a polemical writing.
Condorcet has thus stated the purpose of the book. Diderot, he says,
"intended to bring together in a dictionary all that had been discovered
in the sciences, what was known of the productions of the globe, the
details of the arts which men have invented, the principles of morals,
those of legislation, the laws which govern society, the metaphysics of
language and the rules of grammar, the analysis of our faculties, and
even the history of our opinions."[Footnote: D'Alembert,
_Oeuvres_, i. 79 (_Éloge par Condorcet_).] So comprehensive a
scheme was not without danger to those classes which claimed an
exclusive right to direct men's minds. As for the double nature of the
book, we have the words of two of the men most concerned in its
preparation. First there is an anecdote by Voltaire, certainly
inaccurate, probably quite imaginary, but setting forth most clearly one
cause of the interest which the "Encyclopaedia" excited.
"A servant of Louis XV. has told me that one day when the king his
master was supping at Trianon with a small party, the conversation
turned on shooting and then on gunpowder. Somebody said that the best
powder was made of equal parts of saltpetre, sulphur, and charcoal. The
Duke of La Vallière, better informed, maintained that for cannon the
proper proportion was one part of sulphur, one of charcoal, and five of
well-filtered, well-evaporated, and well-crystallized saltpetre.
"`It is absurd,' said the Duke of Nivernois, `that we should amuse
ourselves every day with killing partridges in the park of Versailles,
and sometimes with killing men or getting ourselves killed on the
frontier, and not know exactly what we kill with.'
"`Alas! we are in the same state about all things in the world,'
answered Madame de Pompadour. `I don't know of what the rouge is
composed that I put on my cheeks, and I should be much puzzled to say
how my stockings are made.'
"`It is a pity,' then said the Duke of La Vallière, `that His Majesty
should have confiscated our encyclopaedic dictionaries, which cost us a
hundred pistoles apiece. We should soon find in them the answers to all
our questions.'
"The king justified his confiscation. He had been warned that the
twenty-one volumes in folio, that were to be found on all the ladies'
dressing-tables, were the most dangerous thing in the world for the
French monarchy; and he wished to see for himself if that were true
before he allowed the book to be read. After supper he sent for a copy,
by three servants of his bed-chamber, each of whom brought in seven
volumes, with a good deal of difficulty.
"They saw, in the article on gunpowder, that the Duke of La Vallière
was right. Madame de Pompadour soon learned the difference between the
old-fashioned Spanish rouge, with which the ladies of Madrid colored
their cheeks, and the rouge of the ladies of Paris. She learned that
the Greek and Roman ladies were painted with the purple that came from
the murex, and consequently that our scarlet was the purple of the
ancients; that there was more saffron in the Spanish rouge and more
cochineal in the French.
"She saw how her stockings were made on the loom, and the machine used
for the purpose filled her with astonishment. `Oh, what a fine book,
sir!' she cried. `Have you confiscated this store-house of all useful
things in order to own it alone, and to be the only wise man in your
kingdom?'
"They all threw themselves upon the volumes, like the daughters of
Lycomedes on the jewels of Ulysses. Each found at once whatever he
sought. Those that had lawsuits on hand were surprised to find the
decision of their cases. The king read all the rights of his crown.
'But, really,' said he, `I don't know why they spoke so ill of this
book.'
"`Do you not see, sir,' said the Duke of Nivernois, `that it is because
it is very good? People do not attack poor and flat things of any kind.
When the women try to make a new-comer appear ridiculous, she is sure to
be prettier than they are.'
"All this time they were turning over the pages, and the Count of C----
said aloud, `Sir, you are too happy that men should have been found in
your reign able to know all the arts and to transmit them to posterity.
Everything is here, from the way of making a pin to that of casting and
of aiming your cannon; from the infinitesimal to the infinite. Thank God
for having given birth in your kingdom to men who have thus served the
whole world. Other nations are obliged to buy the "Encyclopaedia," or to
imitate it. Take all I have, if you like, but give me back my
"Encyclopaedia."'
"`But they say,' rejoined the king, `that this necessary and admirable
work has many faults.'
"`Sir,' replied the Count of C----, `at your supper there were two
ragouts that were failures. We did not eat them, but we had a very good
supper. Would you have had the whole of it thrown out of the window on
account of those two ragouts?' The king felt the force of this
reasoning, each one took back his book, and it was a happy day.
"But Envy and Ignorance did not consider themselves beaten; those two
immortal sisters kept up their cries, their cabals, their persecutions.
Ignorance is very learned in that way.
"What happened? Foreigners bought out four editions of this French work
which was proscribed in France, and made about eighteen hundred thousand
dollars.
"Frenchmen, try hereafter to understand your own interests."[Footnote:
This story is printed among "Faceties." Morley points out that Mme. de
Pompadour died before the volumes containing "Poudre" and "Rouge" were
published. Voltaire, xlviii. 57.]
We see by this anecdote, written probably to puff the book, that the
"Encyclopaedia" was recommended for the same advantages which have since
given value to scores of similar works. No other collection of general
information so large and so useful was then in existence. Elaborate
descriptions of mechanism abound in it, and are illustrated by beautiful
plates. We see before us the simple beginnings of the great
manufacturing movement of modern times. There are articles on looms, on
cabinet work, on jewelry, side by side with all that the science of that
day could teach of anatomy, medicine, and natural history. Nor were more
frivolous subjects forgotten. Nine plates are given to billiards and
tennis. Choregraphy, or the art of expressing the figures of the dance
on paper, occupies six pages of text and two of illustrations, with the
remark that it is one of the arts of which the ancients were ignorant,
or which they have not transmitted to us. There is a proposal for a new
and universal language, based of course on French; and we are reminded
by an article on Alcahest, a mysterious drug of the alchemists, to which
two columns and a half are devoted, that the eighteenth century was
nearer to the Middle Ages than the nineteenth. It was an idea of the
compilers of the "Encyclopaedia" that if ever civilization should be
destroyed mankind might turn to their volumes to learn to restore it.
[Footnote: History and geography are almost passed over in the
Encyclopaedia, while the arts and sciences are fully treated. The
contempt for history, as the tale of human errors, was common among the
Philosophers.]
Yet all this mere learning was not what came nearest to the heart of
Diderot and his fellow-workers. In a moment of excitement, when smarting
from the excisions of the publisher Le Breton, he was able to write that
the success of the book was owing in no degree to ordinary, sensible,
and common things; that perhaps there were not two men in the world who
had taken the trouble to read in it a line of history, geography,
mathematics, or even of the arts; and that what all sought in the
"Encyclopaedia" was the firm and bold philosophy of some of its writers.
[Footnote: When in a cooler mood Diderot boasts that there are people
who have read the book through. See the word _Encyclopédie_, vol.
v.]
This philosophy appears in the Preliminary Discourse by D'Alembert; it
comes up again time after time throughout the volumes. The metaphysics
are founded chiefly on those of Locke, who "may be said to have created
metaphysics as Newton created physics," by reducing them to "what in
fact they should be, the experimental physics of the soul." Beyond this
there is little unity of opinion, although much agreement of spirit. We
have articles on government and on taxation, liberally conceived, but
not agreeing as to actual measures. We have a prejudice in favor of
democracy, as the ideal form of government, and the worship of
theoretical equality, but contempt for the populace, "which discerns
nothing;" the reduction of religion to the sentiments of morality and
benevolence, and great dislike for its ministers and especially for the
members of monastic orders; the belief in the Legislator, in natural
laws and liberties, including the inalienable right of every man to
dispose of his own person and property and to do all things that the
laws allow; faith in the Philosopher, a man governed entirely by reason
as the Christian is governed by grace. To him, Truth is not a mistress
corrupting his imagination. He knows how to distinguish what is true,
what is false, what is doubtful, and he glories in being willing to
remain undetermined when he has not the material for judgment. The
Philosopher understands as well the doctrines that he rejects as those
that he adopts. His spirit brings everything to its true principles. The
nations will be happy when kings are Philosophers, or when Philosophers
are kings.
There was no uniformity of execution in the "Encyclopaedia." The editors
were not free to reject all that they did not approve. They had to
consider the feelings of their writers, and sometimes, no doubt, to
print a poor article by a valued hand. There were many long
dissertations where short articles would have been more to the purpose.
Diderot was not the man to repress the natural tendency of contributors
to wordiness. Then official censors and possible prosecutors had to be
considered. "Doubtless," says D'Alembert to Voltaire, in reply to the
latter's remonstrances, "doubtless we have bad articles on theology and
metaphysics; but with theological censors and a privilege, I defy you to
make them better. There are other articles less conspicuous where all is
repaired. Time will enable people to distinguish what we thought from
what we have said." ... "It is certain," he says in another place, "that
several of our workers have put in worthless things, and sometimes
declamation; but it is still more certain that I have not had it in my
power to alter this state of things. I flatter myself that the same
judgment will not be passed on what several of our authors and I myself
have furnished for this work, which apparently will go down to posterity
as a monument of what we would and what we could not do." On the whole
the chief of the Philosophers was satisfied. "Oh, how sorry I am," he
exclaims, "to see so much paste among your fine diamonds; but you shed
your lustre on the paste."[Footnote: Correspondence of Voltaire and
D'Alembert (A. to V., July 21, 1757; Jan. 11, 1758; V. to A., Dec. 29,
1757). Voltaire, lvii. 296, 444, 421.]