34 



INTRODUCTION. 



15. 



1750 to 1850. 

 The age of 

 encyclopse- 

 die treat- 

 ment of 

 learninsr. 



all these modern aspirations. A history of this thought 

 will be a definition of Thought itself. 



Much has been done in the course of this century to 

 prepare for an undertaking such as the one before me. It 

 will be well to review shortly this special side of modern 

 literature. We have indeed passed out of what may be 

 called the age of encyclopcfidic treatment of learning the 

 hundred years from the middle of the last to the middle 

 of the present century.^ The plan of such an arrangement 

 of knowledge belongs to an earlier period, the period im- 

 mediately succeeding the birth of modern science. Lord 

 Bacon was the father of it, but neither he nor the most 

 encyclopsedic intellect of modern times, Leibniz, did much 

 to realise the idea, and it was reserved for the genius and 

 the labours of Diderot and d'Alembert ^ in France, in the 



^ " Encyclopsedia nomeu hodie 

 frequentius auditur quam alias." 

 Gessner iu Gottinger Lections- Kata- 

 log for 1756. 



^ Diderot's " Prospectus" to the 

 ' Encyclopedia ' appeared 1750 ; the 

 first volume appeared 1751 with the 

 celebrated " Discours j^r^liminaire " 

 of d'Alembert and a reprint of the 

 " Prospectus." The complete title 

 was ' Encyclop^die ou dictionnaire 

 raisonne des sciences, des arts et 

 metiers, par une society de gens de 

 lettres, mis en ordre et publie par 

 Diderot et d'Alembert.' The prin- 

 ciples which guided the editors, 

 and the object of the work, are ex- 

 plained, with repeated references to 

 Lord Bacon, in this introduction, 

 as well as in the article " Encyclo- 

 pedic," in the fifth volume (1755), 

 which was written by Diderot, and 

 occupied 28 pages. See also Did- 

 erot's ' Pensees sur I'interpretation 

 de la Nature,' published anony- 

 mously in 1754. 



Copious details about the history, 

 the reception, and the influence of 

 the ' Encyclopedie ' are to be found 

 in the correspondence and memoirs 

 of Grimm, d'Alembert, and Vol- 

 taire, Madame d'Epinay, the Abb^ 

 Morellet, and many others. They 

 are combined into a concise nari'a- 

 tive, giving all the important facts, 

 in Rosenkranz's 'Leben uud Werke 

 Diderots,' 2 vols., Leipzig, 1866, 

 and in John Morley's 'Diderot.' 



It is interesting to note how the 

 idea of the unifying and life-giving 

 influence of thought was as familiar 

 to Diderot as it is to us : " Si Ton 

 bannit I'homme ou I'etre -pensant 

 et contemplateur de dessus la sur- 

 face de la terre ; ce spectacle path^- 

 tique et sublime de la nature n'est 

 plus qu'une sc^ne triste et muette. 

 L'univers se tait ; le silence et la 

 nuit s'en emparent. Tout se change 

 en une vaste solitude, oh. les pheno- 

 menes inobserves se passent d'une 

 maniere obscure et sourde. . . . 



