Diderot and the Encyclopaedists Volume I Part 13

[Footnote 29: "Es ist nicht gleichgultig ob eine Folge grosser Gedanken in frischer Ursprunglichkeit auf die Zeitgenossen wirkt, oder ob sie zu einer Mixtur mit reichlichem Zusatz uberlieferter Vorurtheile verarbeitet ist. Ebensowenig ist est gleichgultig welcher Stimmung, welchem Zustande der Geister eine neue Lehre begegnet. Man darf aber kuhn behaupten, das fur die volle durchfuhrung der von Newton angebahnten Weltanschauung weder eine gunstigere Naturanlage, noch eine gunstigere 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 superst.i.tion and inconsistency. The a.s.sumption 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, etc.)]

[Footnote 37: See on this, Lange, ii. 308.]

[Footnote 38: _De la Suffisance de la Religion Naturelle_, -- 5.]

[Footnote 39: It is well to remember that torture was not abolished in France until the Revolution. A Catholic writer makes the following judicious remark: "We cannot study the eighteenth century without being struck by the immoral consequences that inevitably followed for the population of Paris from the frequency and the hideous details of criminal executions. In reading the journals of the time, we are amazed at the place taken in popular life by the scenes of the Greve. It was the theatre of the day. The gibbet and the wheel did their work almost periodically, and people looked on while poor wretches writhed in slow agony all day long. Sometimes the programme was varied by decapitation and even by the stake. Torture had its legends and its heroes--the everyday talk of the generation which, having begun by seeing Damiens torn by red-hot pincers, was to end by rending Foulon limb from limb."

(Carne, _Monarchie francaise au 18ieme Siecle_, p. 493.)]

[Footnote 40: _Lettres sur les Anglais_, xxiii.]

[Footnote 41: _Essai sur le Merite_, I. ii. -- 3. _Oeue.,_ i. 33.]

[Footnote 42: "Shaftesbury is one of the most important apparitions of the eighteenth century. All the greatest spirits of that time, not only in England, but also Leibnitz, Voltaire, Diderot, Lessing, Mendelssohn, Wieland, and Herder, drew the strongest nourishment from him." (Hettner, _Literaturgeschichte des 18ten Jahrhunderts: ler Theil_. 188.) See also Lange's _Gesch. des Materialismus,_ i. 306, etc. An excellent account of Shaftesbury is given by Mr. Leslie Stephen, in his _Essays on Free-thinking and Plain-speaking_.]

[Footnote 43: _Oeuv_., i. xlvi.]

[Footnote 44: Jobez, _France sous Louis XV_., ii. 373. There were, in 1725, 24,000 houses, 20,000 carriages, and 120,000 horses. (Martin's _Hist, de France_, xv. 116.)]

[Footnote 45: The records of Paris in this century contain more than one ill.u.s.tration of the turbulence of this odious army of lackeys. Barbier, i. 118. For the way in which their insolence was fostered, see Saint-Simon, xii. 354, etc. The number of lackeys retained seems to have been extraordinarily great in proportion to the total of annual expenditure, and this is a curious point in the manners of the time. See Voltaire, _Dict. Phil_, -- v. economie Domestique (liv. 182).]

[Footnote 46: Duclos, _Mem. secrets sur le Regne de Louis XV., iii 306.]

[Footnote 47: _Oeuv_., xix. 91.]

[Footnote 48: _Ib_. p. 130.]

[Footnote 49: _Prom, du Sceptique. Oeuv_., i. 229.]

[Footnote 50: "If there is a G.o.d, he is infinitely incomprehensible, since, being without parts or limits, he has no relation to us: we are therefore incapable of knowing what he is, or if he is. That being so, who shall venture to undertake the solution of the question? Not we, at any rate, who have no relation to him." _Pensees_, II. iii. 1.]

[Footnote 51: P. 182.]

[Footnote 52: P. 223.]

[Footnote 53: Barbazan's _Fabliaux et Contes_, iii. 409 (ed. 1808). The learned Barbazan's first edition was published in 1756, and so Diderot may well have heard some of the contents of the work then in progress.]

[Footnote 54: Naigeon.]

[Footnote 55: In my _Rousseau_, p. 243 (new ed.)]

[Footnote 56: _Voltaire_, p. 149 (new ed., Globe 8vo).]

[Footnote 57: Joubert.]

[Footnote 58: Hettner, _Literaiurgeschichte des 18ten Jahrhunderts_, ii.

301.]

[Footnote 59: _Oeuv._, ii. 260, etc.]

[Footnote 60: _Oeuv._, ii. 258, 259. _De l'Essai sur les Femmes, par Thomas_. See Grimm's _Corr. Lit._, vii. 451, where the book is disparaged; and viii. 1, where Diderot's view of it is given. Thomas (1732-85) belonged to the philosophical party, but not to the militant section of it. He was a serious and orderly person in his life, and enjoyed the closest friends.h.i.+p with Madame Necker. His enthusiasm for virtue, justice, and freedom, expressed with much magniloquence, made him an idol in the respectable circle which Madame Necker gathered round her. He has been justly, though perhaps harshly, described as a "valetudinarian Grandison." (Albert's _Lit. Francaise au 18ieme Siecle_, p. 423.)]

[Footnote 61: _Elemens de la Philosophie de Newton_, Pt. II. ch. vii.

Berkeley himself only refers once to Cheselden's case: _Theory of Vision vindicated_, -- 71. Professor Fraser, in his important edition of Berkeley's works (i. 444), reproduces from the _Philosophical Transactions_ the original account of the operation, which is unfortunately much less clear and definite than Voltaire's emphasised version would make it, though its purport is distinct enough.]

[Footnote 62: _Essai sur l'Origine des Connaissances humaines_, I. -- 6.]

[Footnote 63: _Let. sur les Aveugles_, 323, 324. Condorcet attaches a higher value to Cheselden's operation. _Oeuv._, ii. 121.]

[Footnote 64: Dr. M'Cosh _(Exam. of J. S. Mill's Philosophy_, p. 163) quotes what seems to be the best reported case, by a Dr. Franz, of Leipsic; and Prof. Fraser, in the appendix to Berkeley (_loc. cit._), quotes another good case by Mr. Nunnely. See also Mill's _Exam. of Hamilton_, p. 288 (3d ed.)]

[Footnote 65: _Confessions_, II, vii.]

[Footnote 66: Darwin, _The Expression of the Emotions in Men and Animals_, c. xiii. p. 312, and also pp. 335-337. This fact, so far as it goes, seems to make against the theory of transmitted sentiments.]

[Footnote 67: Locke answered that the man would not distinguish the cube from the sphere, until he had identified by actual touch the source of his former tactual impression with the object making a given visual impression. Condillac, while making just objections to the terms in which Molyneux propounded the question, answered it different from Locke. Diderot expresses his own opinion thus: "I think that when the eyes of the born-blind are opened for the first time to the light, he will perceive nothing at all; that some time will be necessary for his eye to make experiments for itself; but that it will make these experiments itself, and in its own way, and without the help of touch."

This is in harmony with the modern doctrine, that there is an inherited apt.i.tude of structure (in the eye, for instance), but that experience is an essential condition to the development and perfecting of this apt.i.tude.]

[Footnote 68: A very intelligent English translation of the _Letter on the Blind_ was published in 1773. For some reason or other, Diderot is described on the t.i.tle-page as Physician to His most Christian Majesty.]

[Footnote 69: _Oeuv_., i. 308.]

[Footnote 70: Pp. 309, 310.]

[Footnote 71: P. 311.]

[Footnote 72: _Corr._, June 1749.]

[Footnote 73: See _Critical Miscellanies: First Series_.]

[Footnote 74: Diderot to Voltaire, 1749. _Oeuv_., xix. 421.]

[Footnote 75: Diderot to Voltaire, 1749. _Oeuv_., xix. 421.]

[Footnote 76: P. 294.]