they are the pretended proofs,
instead of stopping to reason on each of these proofs where common sense
is lost, we should be right to say to him:--Your principle is contrary
to common sense; from a principle in which common sense is lost, nothing
can issue in which common sense is to be found again."

The passage sounds unpleasantly like an appeal to the crowd in a matter
of science, which is as the sin against the Holy Ghost in these high
concerns. What Diderot meant, probably, was to charge Spinosa with
inventing a conception of substance which has no relation to objective
experience; and further with giving fantastic answers to questions that
were in themselves never worth asking, because the answers must always
involve a violent wrench of the terms of experience into the sphere
transcending experience, and because, moreover, they can never be
verified. Whether he meant this or something else, and whether he would
have been right or wrong in such an intention, we may admit that it
would have been more satisfactory if in dealing with such a master-type
of the metaphysical method as Spinosa, so acute a positive critic as
Diderot had taken more pains to give to his objections the utmost
breadth of which they were capable.[186]

The article on Leibnitz has less original matter in it than that on
Spinosa. The various speculations of that great and energetic intellect
in metaphysic, logic, natural theology, natural law, are merely drawn
out in a long table of succinct propositions, while the account of the
life and character of Leibnitz is simply taken from the excellent
_eloge_ which had been published upon him by Fontenelle in 1716.
Fontenelle's narrative is reproduced in a generous spirit of admiration
and respect for a genius that was like Diderot's own in encyclopaedic
variety of interest, while it was so far superior to Diderot's in
concentration, in subtlety, in precision, in power of construction. If
there could exist over our heads, says Diderot, a species of beings who
could observe our works as we watch those of creatures at our feet, with
what surprise would such beings have seen those four marvellous insects,
Bayle, Descartes, Leibnitz, and Newton. And he then draws up a little
calendar of the famous men, out of whom we must choose the name to be
placed at the very head of the human race. The list contains, besides
Julian the Apostate--who was inserted, we may presume, merely by way of
playful insult to the