Encyclopaedia, while the arts and sciences are fully treated. The
contempt for history, as the tale of human errors, was common among the
Philosophers.]

Yet all this mere learning was not what came nearest to the heart of
Diderot and his fellow-workers. In a moment of excitement, when smarting
from the excisions of the publisher Le Breton, he was able to write that
the success of the book was owing in no degree to ordinary, sensible,
and common things; that perhaps there were not two men in the world who
had taken the trouble to read in it a line of history, geography,
mathematics, or even of the arts; and that what all sought in the
"Encyclopaedia" was the firm and bold philosophy of some of its writers.
[Footnote: When in a cooler mood Diderot boasts that there are people
who have read the book through. See the word _Encyclopedie_, vol.
v.]

This philosophy appears in the Preliminary Discourse by D'Alembert; it
comes up again time after time throughout the volumes. The metaphysics
are founded chiefly on those of Locke, who "may be said to have created
metaphysics as Newton created physics," by reducing them to "what in
fact they should be, the experimental physics of the soul." Beyond this
there is little unity of opinion, although much agreement of spirit. We
have articles on government and on taxation, liberally conceived, but
not agreeing as to actual measures. We have a prejudice in favor of
democracy, as the ideal form of government, and the worship of
theoretical equality, but contempt for the populace, "which discerns
nothing;" the reduction of religion to the sentiments of morality and
benevolence, and great dislike for its ministers and especially for the
members of monastic orders; the belief in the Legislator, in natural
laws and liberties, including the inalienable right of every man to