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Updated: June 16, 2025
The eighteenth century was a great age, an age of strong and brave men, and he was a fit companion for its strongest and bravest. By his writings and his personal influence he was a great centre of light to his generation. During his later years he was quite as much the head and leader of the intellectual radicals in England, as Voltaire was of the philosophes of France.
He did not accept the theories of his friends, which he believed would "cause the bankruptcy of knowledge, of pleasure, and of the human intellect." "Messieurs les philosophes, you go too fast," he said. "I begin by saying that if I were pope I would put you in the Inquisition, and if I were king of France, into the Bastille."
Our veteran humorist told us long ago in his whimsical way that the importance of the Acts of the French Philosophes recorded in whole acres of typography is fast exhausting itself, that the famed Encyclopædical Tree has borne no fruit, and that Diderot the great has contracted into Diderot the easily measurable.
That afternoon the ladies entertained a good many of their compatriots more than was usual for them to receive at one time; and the drawing-room on the ground floor of a large house on the Boulevard des Philosophes was very much crowded. I outstayed everybody; and when I rose Miss Haldin stood up too. I took her hand and was moved to revert to that morning's conversation in the street.
Their women are the first in the world in everything but beauty; sensible, agreeable, and infinitely informed. The philosophes, except Buffon, are solemn, arrogant, dictatorial coxcombs I need not say superlatively disagreeable. The rest are amazingly ignorant in general, and void of all conversation but the routine with women.
Arnold our public schools. And so with the rest of the philosophes. That there were charlatans among them, vain men, pretentious men, profligate men, selfish, self-seeking, and hypocritical men, who doubts? Among what class of men were there not such in those evil days? In what class of men are there not such now, in spite of all social and moral improvement?
Of these original spirits who helped to bring life out of death, and the modern world out of the decay of the mediaeval world, the French philosophes and encyclopaedists are, of course, the most notorious. They confessed, for the most part, that their original inspiration had come from England.
On the night of his election he went to Lord Saxingham's; but what there happened deserves another chapter. "Je connois des princes du sang, des princes etrangers, des grands seigneurs, des ministres d'etat, des magistrats, et des philosophes qui fileroient pour l'amour de vous. En pouvez-vous demander davantage?"* Lettres de Madame de Sevigne
Crozet moralizes on the malignant and unprovoked treachery of these savages. He pours out his contempt on the Parisian philosophes who idealized primitive man and natural virtue. For his part he would rather meet a lion or a tiger, for then he would know what to do! But there is another side to the story. The memory of the Wi-Wi, "the bloody tribe of Marion," lingered long in the Bay of Islands.
"In the first volume of the 'Histoire de la Detention des Philosophes et des Gens de Lettres a la Bastille, etc., we find the following passage:
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