te_, it is true, we find Hobbes's view of the relations between
the civil and temporal powers tolerably effectively combated, but even
here Diderot hardly does more than arm himself with the weapons of
Locke.

Of course, he honestly refers his readers to these sources of wider
information.[181] All that we can say of the articles on the history of
philosophy is that the series is very complete; that Diderot used his
matter with intelligence and the spirit of criticism, and that he often
throws in luminous remarks and far-reaching suggestions of his own. This
was all that the purpose of his book required. To imitate the laborious
literary search of Bayle or of Brucker, and to attempt to compile an
independent history of philosophy, would have been to sacrifice the
Encyclopaedia as a whole, to the superfluous perfection of a minor part.
There is only one imperative condition in such a case, namely, that the
writer should pass the accepted material through his own mind before
reproducing it. With this condition it was impossible for a man of
Diderot's indefatigable energy of spirit, not as a rule to comply.

But this rule too had exceptions. There were cases in which he
reproduced, as any mere bookmaker might have done, the thought of his
authority, without an attempt to make it his own. Of the confusion and
inequalities in which Diderot was landed by this method of mingling the
thoughts of other people with his own, there is a curious example in the
two articles on Philosopher and Philosophy. In the first we have an
essentially social and practical description of what the philosopher
should be; in the second we have a definition of philosophy, which takes
us into the regions most remote from what is social and practical. We
soar to the airiest heights of verbal analysis and pure formalism.
Nothing can be better, so far as it goes, than the picture of the
philosopher. Diderot begins by contrasting him with the crowd of people,
and clever people, who insist on passing judgment all day long. "They
ignore the scope and limits of the human mind; they think it capable of
knowing everything; hence they think it a disgrace not to pronounce
judgment, and imagine that intelligence consists in that and nothing
else. The philosopher believes that it consists in judging rightly. He
is better pleased with himself when he has suspended his faculty of
coming to a conclusion, than if he had come to a conclusion without the
proper grounds