by their entreaties, pressed me to engage with Neaulme, who had given
them the first sheets of my work; that they had afterwards found means to
stop the printing of it by Duchesne, and perhaps to get possession of the
manuscript to make such alterations in it as they should think proper,
that after my death they might publish it disguised in their own manner.
I had always perceived, notwithstanding the wheedling of Father Berthier,
that the Jesuits did not like me, not only as an Encyclopedist, but
because all my principles were more in opposition to their maxims and
influence than the incredulity of my colleagues, since atheistical and
devout fanaticism, approaching each other by their common enmity to
toleration, may become united; a proof of which is seen in China, and in
the cabal against myself; whereas religion, both reasonable and moral,
taking away all power over the conscience, deprives those who assume that
power of every resource. I knew the chancellor was a great friend to the
Jesuits, and I had my fears less the son, intimidated by the father,
should find himself under the necessity of abandoning the work he had
protected. I besides imagined that I perceived this to be the case in
the chicanery employed against me relative to the first two volumes, in
which alterations were required for reasons of which I could not feel the
force; whilst the other two volumes were known to contain things of such
a nature as, had the censor objected to them in the manner he did to the
passages he thought exceptionable in the others, would have required
their being entirely written over again. I also understood, and M. de
Malesherbes himself told me of it, that the Abbe de Grave, whom he had
charged with the inspection of this edition, was another partisan of the
Jesuits. I saw nothing but Jesuits, without considering that, upon the
point of being suppressed, and wholly taken up in making their defence,
they had something which interested them much more than the cavillings
relative to a work in which they were not in question. I am wrong,
however, in saying this did not occur to me; for I really thought of it,