encyclopedies

Updated: May 24, 2025

Napoleon lived in an age when God was no longer believed; the meaning of all Silence, Latency, was thought to be Nonentity: he had to begin not out of the Puritan Bible, but out of poor Sceptical Encyclopedies. This was the length the man carried it. Meritorious to get so far.

Thomas Carlyle - On Heroes and Hero Worship and the Heroic in History