nd it did so in the only way in which power of that
kind can be exerted either wisely or effectually. The miracle of a
divine revelation, of grace, of the mass, began to wear a different look
in men's eyes, as they learned more of the physical processes of the
universe. We should describe the work of the Encyclopaedia as being to
make its readers lose their interest, rather than their belief, in
mysteries. This is the normal process of theological dissolution. It
unfolded a vast number of scientific conceptions in all branches of
human activity, a surprising series of acquisitions, a vivid panorama of
victories won by the ingenuity and travail of man. A contemplation of
the wonders that man had wrought for himself, replaced meditation on the
wonders that were alleged to have been wrought by the gods. The latter
were not so much denied by the plain reader, as they were gradually left
out of sight and forgotten. Nobody now cares to disprove Jupiter and
Juno, Satyrs and Hamadryads.

Diderot constantly insists on the propriety, the importance, the
indispensableness of keeping the provinces of science and philosophy
apart from the province of theology. This separation is much sought in
our own day as a means of saving theology. Diderot designed it to save
philosophy. He felt that the distinct recognition of positive thought as
supreme within the widest limits then covered by it, would ultimately
lead to the banishment of theological thought to a region of its own,
too distant and too infertile for men to weary themselves in pursuit of
it. His conception was to supplant the old ways of thinking and the old
objects of intellectual interest by new ones. He trusted to the
intrinsic fitness and value of the new knowledge and new views of human
life, to displace the old. This marks him for a constructive thinker. He
replaced barren theological interests that had outlived their time, by
all those great groups of living and fruitful interests which glow and
sparkle in the volumes of the Encyclopaedia. Here was the effective
damage that the Encyclopaedia inflicted on the church as the organ of a
stationary superstition. Some of the articles remind us on what a
strange borderland France stood in those days, between debasing
credulity and wholesome light. We are so sensible of the new air that
breathes impalpably over the book, that when the old theological fancies
appear for form's sake, and are solemnly marshalled in orthodox state,