commercial--was to record in a permanent and concentrated form the
advance of civilization. A multitude of writers contributed to it, of
varying merit and of various opinions, but all animated by the new
belief in reason and humanity. The ponderous volumes are not great
literature; their importance lies in the place which they fill in the
progress of thought, and in their immense influence in the propagation
of the new spirit. In spite of its bulk the book was extremely
successful; edition after edition was printed; the desire to know and to
think began to permeate through all the grades of society. Nor was it
only in France that these effects were visible; the prestige of French
literature and French manners carried the teaching of the _Philosophes_
all over Europe; great princes and ministers--Frederick in Prussia,
Catherine in Russia, Pombal in Portugal--eagerly joined the swelling
current; enlightenment was abroad in the world.

The _Encyclopaedia_ would never have come into existence without the
genius, the energy, and the enthusiasm of one man--DIDEROT. In him the
spirit of the age found its most typical expression. He was indeed _the
Philosophe_--more completely than all the rest universal, brilliant,
inquisitive, sceptical, generous, hopeful, and humane. It was he who
originated the _Encyclopaedia_, who, in company with Dalembert,
undertook its editorship, and who, eventually alone, accomplished the
herculean task of bringing the great production, in spite of obstacle
after obstacle--in spite of government prohibitions, lack of funds,
desertions, treacheries, and the mischances of thirty years--to a
triumphant conclusion. This was the work of his life; and it was work
which, by its very nature, could leave--except for that long row of
neglected volumes--no lasting memorial. But the superabundant spirit of
Diderot was not content with that: in the intervals of this stupendous
labour, which would have exhausted to their last fibre the energies of a