Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 9, 2025
As his sole belief, he retained a vague philosophy composed of all the ideas of the encyclopedists of the last century; and he regarded religion as a moral sanction of the law, the one and the other having been invented by men to regulate social relations.
His instincts were not mistaken, for what the Encyclopedists had been to the Revolution of 1789, the new school of thought in Germany would be to that of 1848. So from his point of view he was wise in excluding philosophy from the universities and permitting it to be taught only by ecclesiastics.
After this, of course, the tradition is taken up by the universities, and it is only when, with the thirteenth century, there came the complete development of the university spirit, that encyclopedias reached their modern expression. Three great encyclopedists, Vincent of Beauvais, Thomas of Cantimprato, and Bartholomæus Anglicus, are the most famous.
In the first place, he had just completed the destruction of the Jesuits, and this was entitling him to no small thanks and praises from encyclopedists. The simplicity of comte d'Aranda indemnified us in some degree for the haughty superciliousness of his predecessor.
But, in this limited circle of speculative reason and of pure literary forms, it excelled; writings and how to write furnished the ordinary entertainment of polite society; every idea uttered by a thinker caused excitement in the drawing-room: the talent and style of authors were shaped by its taste; it was in the drawing-rooms that Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, d'Alembert, the Encyclopedists, great and little, Beaumarchais, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Champfort, and Rivarol, involuntarily sought listeners and found them, not merely admirers and entertainers, but friends, protectors, patrons, benefactors and followers.
But for the ruck of humanity, what can they do but enjoy life, after their lights?" If all the most noxious opinions of Voltaire, and the rest of the Encyclopedists, had been expressed in one sentence, Miss Granger could not have looked more horrified than she did on hearing this careless remark of Mr. Fairfax's.
The triumph of Rameau was of the briefest. Scarcely had his magnificent lyric tragedies established themselves when the Guerre des bouffons broke out, and popular taste, under the direction of Jean Jacques Rousseau and the other Encyclopedists, discovered the light Italian music of the day more "natural" and infinitely preferable to the severe and noble forms of the greatest of French composers.
I read him French books of the last century, the memoirs of Saint Simon, of Mably, Renal, Helvetius, Voltaire's correspondence, the encyclopedists, of course without understanding a word, even when, with a smile and a grimace, he ordered me, 'relire ce dernier paragraphe, qui est bien remarquable! Ivan Matveitch was completely a Frenchman.
The encyclopedists, Diderot at their head; the physiocrates, Turgot at their head; the philosophers, Voltaire at their head; the Utopians, Rousseau at their head, these are four sacred legions. Humanity's immense advance towards the light is due to them. They are the four vanguards of the human race, marching towards the four cardinal points of progress.
Henceforward there can spring up no new sects, because the general belief has been shaken, that no one feels inclined to occupy himself with difference of sentiment upon some of the articles. The Encyclopedists, under pretence of enlightening mankind, are sapping the foundations of religion.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking