years before its consummation. That change had also a constructive side.
If one of its elements was hate, another and more important element was
hope. This constructive and reforming spirit which made its way in the
intelligence of the leading men in France from 1750 to 1789, was
represented in the encyclopaedic confederation, and embodied in their
forty folios. And, to return to our first point, it was directly and
inseparably associated with the philosophy of Bacon and Locke. What is
the connection between their speculations and a vehement and energetic
spirit of social reform? We have no space here to do more than barely
hint the line of answer.

The broad features of the speculative revolution of which the
Encyclopaedia was the outcome, lie on the surface of its pages and cannot
be mistaken. The transition from Descartes to Newton meant the definite
substitution of observation for hypothesis. The exaltation of Bacon
meant the advance from supernatural explanations to explanations from
experience. The acceptance and development of the Lockian psychology
meant the reference of our ideas to bodily sensations, and led men by
what they thought a tolerably direct path to the identification of mind
with functions of matter. We need not here discuss the philosophical
truth or adequateness of these ways of considering the origin and nature
of knowledge, or the composition of human character. All that now
concerns us is to mark their tendency. That tendency clearly is to expel
Magic as the decisive influence among us, in favour of ordered relations
of cause and effect, only to be discovered by intelligent search. The
universe began to be more directly conceived as a group of phenomena
that are capable of rational and connected explanation. Then, the wider
the area of law, the greater is man's consciousness of his power of
controlling forces, and securing the results that he desires. Objective
interests and their conditions acquire an increasing preponderance in
his mind. On the other hand, as the limits of science expand, so do the
limits of nescience become more definite. The more we know of the
universal order, the more are we persuaded, however gradually and
insensibly, that certain matters which men believed themselves to know
outside of this phenomenal order, are in truth inaccessible by those
instruments of experience and observation to which we are indebted for
other knowledge. Hence, a natural inclination to devote ou