ul shapes to his
eye; he was the seer whose wild enthusiasm caught the oracles from
an inner shrine. A predictive power appears in his Letter on the
Blind, where he imagines the blind taught to read by touch; and
nineteenth-century hypotheses gleam dimly in his random guess at
variability in organisms, and at survival of those best adapted to
their environment.

Diderot's monumental work, 'L'Encyclopedie,' dates from the middle of
the century. It was his own vast enlargement of Ephraim Chambers's
Cyclopaedia of 1727, of which a bookseller had demanded a revision
in French. D'Alembert was secured as his colleague, and in 1751 the
first volume appeared. The list of contributors includes most of
the great contemporary names in French literature. From these,
Diderot and D'Alembert gathered the inner group known as the French
Encyclopaedists, to whose writings has been ascribed a general tendency
to destroy religion and to reconstitute society. The authorities
interfered repeatedly, with threats and prohibitions of the
publication; but the science of government included the science of
connivance for an adequate consideration, and the great work went
forward. Its danger lurked in its principles; for Diderot dealt but
little in the cheap flattery which the modern demagogue addresses to
the populace. D'Alembert, wearied by ten years of persecution, retired
in 1759, leaving the indefatigable Diderot to struggle alone through
seven years, composing and revising hundreds of articles, correcting
proofs, supervising the unrivaled illustrations of the mechanic arts,
while quieting the opposition of the authorities.

The Encyclopaedia under Diderot followed no one philosophic path.
Indeed, there are no signs that he ever gave any consideration to
either the intellectual or the ethical force of consistency. His
writing indicates his utter carelessness both as to the direction and
as to the pace of his thought. He had an abiding conviction that
Christianity was partly delusion and largely priestcraft, and was
maintained chiefly for upholding iniquitous privilege. His antagonism
was developed primarily from his emotions and sympathies rather than
from his intellect; hence it sometimes swerved, drawing perilously
near to formal orthodoxy. Moreover, this vivacious philosopher
sometimes rambled into practical advice, and easily effervesced
into fervid moralizings of the sentimental and almost tearful sort.
His immense natural capacity fo