1789 so
different from the France of 1715. [Footnote: The general views which
governed the work may be gathered from d'Alembert's introductory
discourse and from Diderot's article Encyclopedie. An interesting sketch
of the principal contributors will be found in Morley's Diderot, i.
chap. v. Another modern study of the Encyclopaedic movement is the
monograph of L. Ducros, Les Encyclopidistes (1900). Helvetius has
recently been the subject of a study by Albert Keim (Helvetius, sa vie
et son oeuvre, 1907). Among other works which help the study of the
speculations of this age from various points of view may be mentioned:
Marius Roustan, Les Philosophes et la societe francaise au xviii
siecle(1906); Espinas, La Philosophie sociale du xviii siecle et la
Revolution (1898); Lichtenberger, Le Socialisme au xviii siecle(1895).
I have not mentioned in the text Boullanger (1722-1758), who contributed
to the Encyclopaedia the article on Political Economy (which has nothing
to do with economics but treats of ancient theocracies); the emphasis
laid on his views on progress by Buchez (op. cit. i. III sqq.) is
quite excessive.] It was the organised section of a vast propaganda,
speculative and practical, carried on by men of the most various
views, most of whom were associated directly with it. As has well been
observed, it did for the rationalism of the eighteenth century in France
much what the Fortnightly Review, under the editorship of Mr. Morley
(from 1868 to 1882) did for that of the nineteenth in England, as an
organ for the penetrating criticism of traditional beliefs. If Diderot,
who directed the Encyclopaedia with the assistance of d'Alembert the
mathematician, had lived a hundred years later he would probably have
edited a journal.

We saw that the "solidarity" of the sciences was one of the conceptions
associated with the theory of intellectual progress, and that the
popularisation of knowledge was another. Both these conceptions
inspired the Encyclopaedia, which was to gather up and concentrate
the illumination of the modern age. It was to establish the lines of
communication among all departments, "to enclose in the unity of a
system the infinitely various branches of knowledge." And it was to be a
library of popular instruction. But it was also intended to be an organ
of propaganda. In the history of the intellectual revolution it is
in some ways the successor of the Dictionary of Bayle, which,
two generations before,