d moderation." Alas, when we
turn to the article on _Regie_, the promise is unfulfilled, and a dozen
meagre lines disappoint the seeker. But eight years of storm had passed,
and many a beneficent intention had been wrecked. The announcement at
least shows us the aim and spirit of the original scheme.

Of the line of argument taken in the Encyclopaedia as to Toleration we
need say nothing. The Encyclopaedists were the most ardent propagators of
the modern principles of tolerance. No one has to be reminded that this
was something more than an abstract discussion among the doctors of
social philosophy, in a country where youths were broken on the wheel
for levity in face of an ecclesiastical procession, where nearly every
considerable man of the century had been either banished or imprisoned
for daring to use his mind, and which had been half ruined by the great
proscription of Protestants more than once renewed. The article
_Tolerance_ was greatly admired in its day, and it is an eloquent and
earnest reproduction of the pleas of Locke. One rather curious feature
in it is the reproduction of the passage from the Social Contract, in
which Rousseau explains the right of the magistrate to banish any
citizen who has not got religion enough to make him do his duties, and
who will not make a profession of civil faith. The writer of the article
interprets this as implying that "atheists in particular, who remove
from the powerful the only rein, and from the weak their only hope,"
have no right to claim toleration. This is an unexpected stroke in a
work that is vulgarly supposed to be a violent manifesto on behalf of
atheism.[172]

Diderot himself in an earlier article (_Intolerance_) had treated the
subject with more trenchant energy. He does not argue his points
systematically, but launches a series of maxims, as with set teeth,
clenched hands, and a brow like a thundercloud. He hails the oppressors
of his life, the priests and the parliaments, with a pungency that is
exhilarating, and winds up with a description of the intolerant as one
who forgets that a man is his fellow, and for holding a different
opinion, treats him like a ravening brute; as one who sacrifices the
spirit and precepts of his religion to his pride; as the rash fool who
thinks that the arch can only be upheld by his hands; as a man who is
generally without religion, and to whom it comes easier to have zeal
than morals. Every page of the Encyclopaedia was, in