modern geography. He furnished such articles as, _Deluge, Corvee, Societe_
for the Encyclopedia and wrote several large and extremely learned books,
among them _Recherches sur l'origine du Despotisme oriental_ and
_Antiquite devoilee_. He died from overwork at the age of thirty-seven.

Boulanger's ideas on philosophy, mythology, anthropology and history
are of extraordinary interest today. Diderot relates his saying--"Que
si la philosophie avait trouve tant d'obstacles parmi nous c'etait
qu'on avait commence par ou il aurait fallu finir, par des maximes
abstraites, des raisonnemens generaux, des reflexions subtiles qui
ont revolte par leur etrangete et leur hardiesse et qu'on aurait
admises sans peine si elles avaient ete precedees de l'histoire des
faits." He carried over this inductive method into realm of history,
which he thought had been approached from the wrong side, i.e., the
metaphysical, "par consulter les lumieres de la raison" (p. 8). He
continues, "j'ai pense qu'il devait y avoir quelques circonstances
_particulieres_. Un fait et non une speculation metaphysique m'a
toujours semble devoir etre et tribut naturel et necessaire de
l'histoire." Curiously enough the central fact in history appeared
to Boulanger to be the deluge, and on the basis of it he attempted to
interpret the _Kulturgeschichte_ of humanity. It is a bit unfortunate
that he took the deluge quite as literally as he did; his idea, however,
is obviously the influence of environmental pressure on the changing
beliefs and practices of mankind. Under the spell of this new point
of view, he writes, "Ce qu'on appelle l'histoire n'en est que la partie
la plus ingrate, la plus uniforme, la plus inutile, quoi qu'elle soit
la plus connue. La veritable histoire est couverte par le voile des
temps" (p. 7). Boulanger however was not to be daunted and on the
firm foundation of the fact of some ancient and universal catastrophe,
as recorded on the surface of the earth and in human mythology, he