otnote 26: See Barbier's Journal, iv. 166.]

[Footnote 27: The book was among those found in the possession of the
unfortunate La Barre.]

[Footnote 28: Honegger's _Kritische Geschichte der franzoesischen
Cultureinfluesse in den letzten Jahrhunderten_, pp. 267-273.]

[Footnote 29: "Es ist nicht gleichgueltig ob eine Folge grosser Gedanken
in frischer Urspruenglichkeit auf die Zeitgenossen wirkt, oder ob sie zu
einer Mixtur mit reichlichem Zusatz ueberlieferter Vorurtheile
verarbeitet ist. Ebensowenig ist est gleichgueltig welcher Stimmung,
welchem Zustande der Geister eine neue Lehre begegnet. Man darf aber
kuehn behaupten, das fuer die volle durchfuehrung der von Newton
angebahnten Weltanschauung weder eine guenstigere Naturanlage, noch eine
guenstigere Stimmung getroffen werden konnte, als die der Franzosen im
18. Jahrhundert." (Lange's _Gesch. d. Materialismus_, i. 303.) But the
writer, like most historians of opinion, does not dwell sufficiently on
the co-operation of external social conditions with the progress of
logical inference.]

[Footnote 30: See Montgeron's _La Verite des Miracles de M. de Paris
demontree_ (1737)--an interesting contribution to the pathology of the
human mind.]

[Footnote 31: Barbier, 168, 244, etc.]

[Footnote 32: _Pensees Philosophiques_, xviii.]

[Footnote 33: On this, see Lange, i. 294.]

[Footnote 34: _Pensees Philosophiques. Oeuv._, i. 128, 129.]

[Footnote 35: _Oeuv._, xix. 87. Grimm, Supp. 148.]

[Footnote 36: Volney, in a book that was famous in its day, _Les Ruines,
ou Meditation sur les revolutions des empires_ (1791), resorted to a
slight difference of method. Instead of leaving the pretensions of the
various creeds to cancel one another, he invented a rather striking
scene, in which the priests of each creed are made to listen to the
professions of their rival, and then inveigh against his superstition
and inconsistency. The assumption on which Diderot's argument rests is,
that as so many different creeds all make the same exclusive claim, the
claim is equally false throughout. Volney's argument turns more directly
on the merits, and implies that all religions are equally morbid or
pathological products, because they all lead to conduct condemned by
their own most characteristic maxims. Volney's concrete presentation of
comparative religion was highly effective for destructive purposes,
though it would now be justly thought inadequate. (See _Oeuv. de
Volney_, i. 109,