exposition of the degrees by which it had been slowly reared. The
Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopaedia, of which by far the greater
and more valuable portion was written by D'Alembert, contains a fine
survey of the progress of science, thought, and letters since the
revival of learning. It is a generous canonisation of the great heroes
of secular knowledge. It is rapid, but the contributions of Bacon,
Descartes, Newton, Locke, Leibnitz are thrown into a series that
penetrates the reader's mind with the idea of ordered growth and
measured progress. This excited a vivid hopefulness of interest, which
insensibly but most effectually pressed the sterile propositions of
dogmatic theology into a dim and squalid background. Nor was this all.
The Preliminary Discourse and the host of articles marshalled behind it,
showed that the triumphs of knowledge and true opinion had all been
gained on two conditions. The first of these conditions was a firm
disregard of authority; the second was an abstention from the premature
concoction of system. The reign of ignorance and prejudice was made
inveterate by deference to tradition: the reign of truth was hindered by
the artificial boundary-marks set mischievously deep by the authors of
systems. As the whole spirit of theology is both essentially
authoritative and essentially systematic, this disparagement was full of
tolerably direct significance. It told in another way. The Sorbonne, the
universities, the doctors, had identified orthodoxy with Cartesianism.
"It is hard to believe," says D'Alembert in 1750, "that it is only
within the last thirty years that people have even begun to renounce
Cartesianism." He might have added that one of the most powerful of his
contemporaries, Montesquieu himself, remained a rigid Cartesian to the
end of his days. "Our nation," he says, "singularly eager as it is for
novelties in all matters of taste, is in matters of science extremely
attached to old opinions." This remark remains true of France to the
present hour, and it would be an interesting digression, did time allow,
to consider its significance. France can at all events count one master
innovator, the founder of Cartesianism himself. D'Alembert points out
that the disciples violate the first maxims of their chief. He describes
the hypothesis of vortices and the doctrine of innate ideas as no longer
tenable, and even as ridiculous; but do not let us forget, he says with
a fine movement of ca