estiny has fallen, on the
education that they have received, on the strength of their desire to
achieve distinction, and finally on the greatness and fecundity of the
ideas which they happen to make the object of their meditations.[131]

[131] _Disc._ iii.

Here again it would be easy to show how many qualifications are needed
to rectify this egregious overstatement of propositions that in
themselves contain the germ of a wholesome doctrine. Diderot pointed out
some of the principal causes of Helvetius's errors, summing them up
thus: "The whole of this third discourse seems to imply a false
calculation, into which the author has failed to introduce all the
elements that have a right to be there, and to estimate the elements
that are there at their right value. He has not seen the insurmountable
barrier that separates a man destined by nature for a given function,
from a man who only brings to that function industry, interest, and
attention."[132] In a work published after his death (1774), and
entitled _De l'Homme_, Helvetius re-stated at greater length, and with a
variety of new illustrations, this exaggerated position. Diderot wrote
an elaborate series of minute notes in refutation of it, taking each
chapter point by point, and his notes are full of acute and vigorous
criticism.[133] Every reader will perceive the kind of answers to which
the proposition that character is independent of organisation lies open.
Yet here, as in his paradox about self-love, Helvetius was looking, and
looking, moreover, in the right direction, for a rational principle of
moral judgment, moral education, and moral improvement. Of the two
propositions, though equally erroneous in theory, it was certainly less
mischievous in practice to pronounce education and institutions to be
stronger than original predisposition than to pronounce organisation to
be stronger than education and institutions. It was all-important at
that moment in France to draw people's attention to the influence of
institutions on character; to do that was both to give one of the best
reasons for a reform in French institutions, and also to point to the
spirit in which such a reform should be undertaken. If Helvetius had
contented himself with saying that, whatever may be the force of
organisation in exceptional natures, yet in persons of average
organisation these predispositions are capable of being indefinitely
modified by education, by laws, and by institutions,