various epochs and over
different spaces of the globe have given to men working answers to the
questions that their leading spirits were moved to put to themselves and
to the iron universe around them? We constantly feel how near Diderot is
to the point of view that would have brought light. We feel how very
nearly ready he was to see the mental experiences of the race in east
and west, not as superstition, degradation, grovelling error, but as
aspects of intellectual effort and aspiration richly worthy of human
interest and scientific consideration, and in their aim as well as in
their substance all of one piece with the newest science and the last
voices of religious or anti-religious development. Diderot was the one
member of the party of Philosophers who was capable of grasping such a
thought. If this guiding idea of the unity of the intellectual history
of man, and the organic integrity of thought, had happily come into
Diderot's mind, we should have had an Encyclopaedia indeed; a survey and
representation of all the questions and answers of the world, such as
would in itself have suggested what questions are best worth putting,
and at the same time have furnished its own answers.

For this the moment was not yet. An urgent social task lay before France
and before Europe; it could not be postponed until the thinkers had
worked out a scheme of philosophic completeness. The thinkers did not
seriously make any effort after this completeness. The Encyclopaedia was
the most serious attempt, and it did not wholly fail. As I replace in my
shelves this mountain of volumes, "dusky and huge, enlarging on the
sight," I have a presentiment that their pages will seldom again be
disturbed by me or by others. They served a great purpose a hundred
years ago. They are now a monumental ruin, clothed with all the profuse
associations of history. It is no Ozymandias of Egypt, king of kings,
whose wrecked shape of stone and sterile memories we contemplate. We
think rather of the gray and crumbling walls of an ancient stronghold
reared by the endeavour of stout hands and faithful, whence in its own
day and generation a band once went forth against barbarous hordes, to
strike a blow for humanity and truth.

CHAPTER VI.

SOCIAL LIFE (1759-1770).

Any one must be ignorant of the facts who supposes that the men of the
eighteenth century who did not believe in God, and were as little
continent as King David, were therefore no bet