ave written on Liberty just as he wrote on Jesus Christ or the
Bible. He cannot have said what he thought, but only what the persons in
authority required him to pretend to think. We may he sure that a letter
to an intimate would be more likely to contain his real opinion than an
article published in the Encyclopaedia. That such mystifications are
odious, are shameful, are almost too degrading a price to pay for the
gains of such a work, we may all readily enough admit. All that we can
do is to note so flagrant a case, as a striking example of the common
artifices of the time. One other point we may note. The fervour and
dexterity with which Diderot made what he knew to be the worse appear
the better cause, make a still more striking example of his astonishing
dramatic power of throwing himself, as dialectician, casuist, sophist,
into a false and illusive part.

Turning from the philosophical to the political or social group of
articles, we find little to add to what has been said in the previous
section. One of the most excellent essays in this group is that on
Luxury. Diderot opens ingeniously with a list of the propositions that
state the supposed evils of luxury, and under each proposition he places
the most striking case that he can find in history of its falseness. He
goes through the same process with the propositions asserting the gains
of luxury to society. Having thus effectually disposed of any wholesale
way of dealing with the subject, he proceeds to make a number of
observations on the gains and drawbacks of luxury; these are full of
sense and freedom from commonplace. Such articles as _Pouvoir,
Souverain, Autorite_, do little more than tell over again the old
unhistoric story about a society surrendering a portion of its sovereign
power to some individual or dynasty to hold in trust. It is worth
remarking how little democratic were Diderot and his school in any
Jacobinical, or anarchic, or even more respectable modern sense. There
is in Diderot's contributions many a firm and manly plea for the
self-respect of the common people, but not more than once or twice is
there a syllable of the disorder which smoulders under the pages of
Rousseau. Thus: "When the dwellers among the fields are well treated,
the number of proprietors insensibly grows greater, the extreme distance
and the vile dependence of poor on rich grow less; hence the people have
courage, force of soul, and strength of body; they love their coun