[1] Œuv., v. 289.

[2] v. 295, 296.

[3] Œuv., v. 342.

[4] Boethius.

[5] See, however, above, vol. i. p. 274.

[6] Œuv., ii. 249.

[7] See Nordhoff’s Communistic Societies of the United States (London: Murray, 1875), pp. 259-293. This grave and most instructive book shows how modifiable are some of those facts of existing human character which are vulgarly deemed to be ultimate and ineradicable.

[8] Œuv., ii. 243.

[9] Hettner’s Literaturgeschichte, i. 462.

[10] The Eloge de Richardson is in Diderot’s Works, v. 212-227.

[11] The belle Âme was the origin of the schÖne Seele that has played such a part in German literature and life. The reader will find a history of the expression in an appendix to Dr. Erich Schmidt’s study. Richardson, Rousseau, und Goethe (Jena, 1875).

[12] La Religieuse. Œuv., v. 110.

[13] Sterne’s Letters, May 23, 1765.

[14] Nov. 12, 1767.

[15] E.g. Le Voyageur Sentimental of Vernes (Grimm, Corr. Lit., xiii. 227).

[16] Quoted in Rosenkranz, ii. 326.

[17] vi. 221, 222.

[18] Essays, iv. 303. (Ed. 1869.)

[19] E.g. Watelet’s poem, Sur l’Art de Peindre, 1760; Le Mierre’s Sur la Peinture, 1769; Marsy’s Pictura Carmen, 1736. See Diderot’s works, xiii. 17, etc.

[20] Œuv., iii. 486. Guhrauer, ii. 15. Also BlÜmner’s admirable edition of the LaocÖon, p. 173.

[21] xiii. 33.

[22] Grimm, Corr. Lit., iv. 136. In another place in the same work either Grimm or Diderot makes a remark about Batteux, which is worth remembering in our own age of official vindications of orthodoxy. The abbÉ had written a book about first causes. “I venture to observe moreover to M. l’abbÉ Batteux that when in this world a man has put on the dress of any sort of harlequin, red or black, with a pair of bands or a frill, he ought to give up once for all every kind of philosophic discussion, because it is impossible for him to speak according to his faith and his conscience; and a writer of bad faith is all the more odious, as nothing compelled him to break silence.” Ib. vi. 120.

[23] Lettres FamiliÈres, i. 174. (Ed. 1869.)

[24] Dupaty’s Lettres sur l’Italie, No. 40. In talking of Rome, he complains in a very Diderotian spirit of the want of le beau moral. “On ne trouve ici dans les moeurs ni des hommes privÉs ni des hommes publics, cette moralitÉ, cette biensÉance, dont les moeurs franÇoises sont pleines. Le beau moral est absolument inconnu. Or, c’est pour atteindre À ce beau moral dans tous les genres que la sensibilitÉ est la plus tourmentÉe; qu’elle est en proie aux contentions de l’esprit, aux Émulations de l’Âme ... qu’elle pare avec tant de raffinement et de peine, les Écrits, les discours, les passions, enfin toute la vie publique et privÉe.”

[25] x. 514, n.

[26] xi. 241.

[27] Goncourt’s L’Art au 18iÈme SiÈcle, i.

[28] Goncourt’s Art au 18iÈme SiÈcle, i. 213.

[29] Taine’s Ancien RÉgime, p. 186.

[30] “Si tous les tableaux de martyrs que nos grands peintres ont si sublimement peints, passaient À une postÉritÉ reculÉe, pour qui nous prendrait-elle? Pour des bÊtes fÉroces ou des anthropophages.”—Diderot’s PensÉes sur la Peinture.

[31] x. 143.

[32] x. 343.

[33] No. 260 of the French School.

[34] x. 151-156. Dr. Waagen pronounces this picture to be as truly an expression of das NationalfranzÖsiche as Wilkie’s paintings are of das Englische. See his Kunstwerke und KÜnstler in Paris, p. 675.

[35] x. 208.

[36] x. 177.

[37] xii. 8, 79.

[38] xi. 149.

[39] See Reynolds’s Twelfth Discourse, p. 106.

[40] x. 102.

[41] xi. 296. For the CallirrhoË, see x. 397.

[42] x. 121.

[43] Voyage en Italie, 230. Voyage en Espagne, 330. See the same critic’s AbÉcÉdaire du Salon de 1861.

[44] xi. 309.

[45] xi. 294.

[46] xi. 102.

[47] x. 342. He says elsewhere of Greuze (xviii. 247) that he is un excellent artiste, mais une bien mauvaise tÉte.

[48] Quoted in Diderot’s Œuv., v. 460, n.

[49] E.g. Œuv., xi. 258.

[50] xi. 74.

[51] x. 115.

[52] x. 125.

[53] xi. 98-149.

[54] E.g. xi. 223.

[55] x. 481, 462.

[56] x. 467. For a more respectful view of the antique, and of Winckelmann’s position, see Salon de 1765, x. 418.

[57] Diderot’s Versuch Über die Malerei. Goethe’s Werke, xxv. 309, etc.

[58] And of course on occasion did actually find. See xi. 101. Sir Joshua Reynolds, who was too sincere a lover of his art not to be above mere patriotic prejudice, describes the condition of things. “I have heard painters acknowledge that they could do better without nature than with her, or, as they expressed themselves, it only put them out. Our neighbours, the French, are much in this practice of extempore invention, and their dexterity is such as even to excite admiration, if not envy; but how rarely can this praise be given to their finished pictures!” Twelfth Discourse, p. 105.

[59] x. 124, 125.

[60] Œuv., x.

[61] It is to be observed also that he shows true perspicacity in connecting the difficulty of transforming a poetic into a pictorial description, with the kindred difficulty of translating a finished poem in one language into another language. See also xi. 107.

[62] Lessing appears to have been directly led to this by Aristotle. See Gotschlich’s Lessing’s Aristotelische Studien, p. 120.

[63] Œuv., i. 382, 403.

[64] Œuv., xi. 328.

[65] Salon de 1761; Œuv., v. 140.

[66] Memoirs of Princess Dashkoff (vol. ii.). By Mrs. Bradford, an English companion and friend of the Princess. (London, 1840.) See Diderot’s account of her, Œuv., xvii. 487. Compare Horace Walpole’s Letters, v. 266.

[67] Œuv., xviii. 239.

[68] Grimm, Cor. Lit., xv. 18. Diderot, xviii. 251.

[69] Œuv., xix. 250.

[70] Œuv., xviii. 365, 471.

[71] SÉgur’s Mem., ii. 230.

[72] The Imperial Historical Society are publishing a Recueil GÉnÉral of documents, many of which shed an interesting light on Catherine’s intercourse with the men of letters. In the Archives of the House of Woronzow (especially vol. xii.), amid much of what for our purpose is chaff, are a few grains of what is interesting. M. Rambaud, the author of the learned work on the Greek Empire in the Tenth Century, gave interesting selections from these sources in two articles in the Revue des deux Mondes for February and April, 1877. Besides what is to be gathered from such well-known authorities as William Tooke, SÉgur, Dashkoff, there are many interesting pages in the memoirs of that attractive and interesting person, the Prince de Ligne. The passages from English and French despatches I have taken from an anonymous but authentic work published at Berlin in 1858, La Cour de la Russie il y a cent ans: 1725-83: extraits des dÉpÊches des Ambassadeurs anglais et franÇais. Catherine’s own Memoirs, published in London in 1859 by Alexander Herzen, are perhaps too doubtful.

[73] MÉm. du Prince de Ligne, p. 101.

[74] SÉgur, 219.

[75] To the Prince de Ligne.

[76] Rambaud, p. 573.

[77] See M. Mouy’s Introduction to her Correspondence with Stanislas.

[78] Corresp. ComplÈte de Mdme. du Deffand, i. 115. (Ed. 1877.) June, 1767.

[79] November 1, 1773.

[80] November 1766.

[81] December 22, 1766.

[82] Corresp., pp. 135, 144, etc.

[83] Satire I. sur les caractÈres, etc. Œuv., vi. 313.

[84] Œuv., xx. 58.

[85] SÉgur, iii. 34.

[86] Mouy’s Corresp. du roi Stanislas, p. 501.

[87] MÉmoire Historique, printed in vol. i. of the new edition (1877) of the Correspondence of Grimm and Diderot, by M. Maurice Tourneux.

[88] D’Alembert au Roi de Prusse. Feb. 14, 1774.

[89] Briefe aus seinen auslÄndischen Reisen, iii. 217-233. (Leipsic, 1780—a German translation from the Swedish.)

[90] xvii. 449.

[91] George Forster’s Ansichten vom Niederrhein, etc. ii. 396 (1790).

[92] Jonckbloet’s Gesch. d. Niederland. Lit. (German trans.) ii. 502, etc.

[93] Œuv. Phil. de Fr. Hemsterhuys, iii. 141. (Ed. Meyboom.)

[94] Forster, ii. 398. Galiani, Corresp. ii. 189.

[95] Œuv., xix. 342.

[96] Dr. Katerkamp’s DenkwÜrdigkeiten aus dem Leben der Furstinn Amalie von Gallitzin, p. 45.

[97] Barbier, vii. 137.

[98] Œuv., xii. 301.

[99] Ib. ii. 267-274.

[100] Ib. ii. 795.

[101] Œuv., ii. 795-798.

[102] See Jal’s Dict. Crit., p. 676. There is a comparison in L’Esprit, which we may assume to have been due to family reminiscence: “Like those Physicians who, in their jealousy of the discovery of the emetic, abused the credulity of a few prelates, to excommunicate a remedy of which the service is so prompt and so salutary,” etc.—ii. 23.

[103] Hume, however, tells a story to the effect that HelvÉtius tried to dissuade Montesquieu from publishing his great book, as being altogether unworthy of his previous reputation.

[104] Barbier v. 57.

[105] Morellet, i. 71.

[106] Marmontel, ii, 116.

[107] Voyage À Bourbonne. Œuv., xvii. 344.

[108] Burton’s Hume, ii. 464.

[109] Morellet, i. 141. A peculiarly graphic account of Madame HelvÉtius in her later years is to be found in Mrs. Adam’s Letters, quoted in Parton’s Life of Franklin, ii. 429.

[110] Œuv., xix. 187.

[111] Corresp., iv. 119.

[112] Walpole’s Corresp., iv. 217.

[113] Burton, ii. 57.

[114] Œuv. de Mdme. Roland, i. 108.

[115] “To that book [L’Esprit], Mr. Bentham has often been heard to say, he stood indebted for no small portion of the zeal and ardour with which he advocated his happiness-producing theory. It was from thence he took encouragement ... it was there he learned to persevere,” etc. etc.—Deontology, i. 296.

[116] Disc. ii. chap. xvii.

[117] Ib. ii. 6.

[118] Disc. ii. 17.

[119] Ib. ii. chap. xxiii.

[120] Ib. ii. 1, note (b).

[121] TraitÉ de LÉgislation, i. 243.

[122] Disc. ii. 5.

[123] Disc. ii. 15.

[124] See Diderot’s truer version, Œuv., ii. 482.

[125] Disc. iv. 13, etc.

[126] Œuv., ii. 270.

[127] Disc. ii. 24.

[128] As Mr. Henry Sidgwick has put this:—“Even the indefatigable patience and inexhaustible ingenuity of Bentham will hardly succeed in defeating the sinister conspiracy of self-preferences. In fact, unless a little more sociality is allowed to an average human being, the problem of combining these egoists into an organisation for promoting their common happiness, is like the old task of making ropes of sand. The difficulty that Hobbes vainly tried to settle summarily by absolute despotism, is hardly to be overcome by the democratic artifices of his more inventive successor.”

[129] Disc. ii. 13.

[130] Disc. ii. 24.

[131] Disc. iii.

[132] Œuv. ii. 271.

[133] Ib. ii. 275-456.

[134] Political Justice, bk. i. chap. iv.—“The characters of men originate in their external circumstances.”

[135] Disc. ii. 10.

[136] Œuv., xvii. 329.

[137] Ib. ii. 398.

[138] Corresp. de Galiani, i. 142.

[139] Wahrheit und Dichtung, bk. xi.

[140] See the article Dieu in the Dict. Philosophique.

[141] Voltaire’s Corr., Nov. 1, 1770.

[142] July 27, 1770.

[143] Lange’s Gesch. d. Materialismus, i. 369; where the author shows how entirely Voltaire failed to touch Holbach’s position as to the meaning of Order in the universe.

[144] Œuv., v. 296, 303, etc.

[145] Nouvelle HÉloise, IV. xii.

[146] Nouvelle HÉloise, V. v.

[147] See Lange, i. 85.

[148] Syst. de la Nat., I. xvi.

[149] Syst. de la Nat., I. xiv., xvi., etc. etc.

[150] Dict. Phil., s. v. Dieu, § 4.

[151] Holbach confesses his obligation on this head to Toland’s Letters to Serena (1704).

[152] Almost the very words of this passage are to be found in Diderot. See above, vol. i. p. 237.

[153] Ch. xi.

[154] This is not original in Holbach. Diderot’s article on Suicide in the EncyclopÆdia (Œuv., xvii. 235) contains the usual arguments of the Church against suicide, with some casuistic illustrations, but it also contains an account of Dr. Donne’s vindication of Suicide, called Bia-thanatos, 1651, in which these remarks of Holbach occur verbatim. Hallam found Donne’s book so dull and pedantic that he declares no one would be induced to kill himself by reading such a book unless he were threatened with another volume.

[155] Hume’s suppressed Essay on Suicide (see the edition by Mr. Green and Mr. Grose, 1875, vol. ii. 405) is a much more exhaustive argument than Holbach’s, though the language of the two pieces is sometimes curiously alike. Rousseau in this, as in so many other moralities—marriage, for instance—was on the side of the Church, only allowing suicide where a man happens to be stricken by a painful and incurable disease. See the two famous letters in the New HeloÏsa, Pt. iii. 21, 22.

[156] Taine’s Ancien RÉgime, p. 287.

[157] The Biographie Universelle, followed by the EncyclopÆdia Britannica, tells a story of Raynal visiting the House of Commons; the Speaker, says the writer, learning that he was in the gallery, “suspended the discussion until a distinguished place had been found for the French philosopher.” This must be set down as a myth. The journals have been searched, and there is no official confirmation of the statement, improbable enough on the face of it.

[158] Morellet, i. 221.

[159] Walpole’s Corresp., vi. 147 and 445.

[160] HÉdouin by name.

[161] Ch. xxi.

[162] Works, xii. 189 (edition of 1822).

[163] Book v. § 31.

[164] ThiÉbault, iii. 172; where there is a long and most disparaging account of Raynal, by no means incredible, though we must remember that a competent judge has pronounced ThiÉbault to be “stupid, incorrect, and the prey of stupidities.”

[165] SÉnac de Meilhan, 123.

[166] Book i. § 7. Robertson works out this reflection in his Historical Disquisition concerning Ancient India, iv. § 8.

[167] Voyage d’un Philosophe, etc.; a work published in 1768, and in great vogue for some time, partly because it furnished material for the speculations of Raynal, HelvÉtius, and the rest. See De l’Homme, II. xiii., etc. Grimm, v. 450.

[168] Book xvii.

[169] Jefferson, quoted in Parton’s Life of Franklin, ii. 418.

[170] Walpole’s Letters, v. 421.

[171] Book xv. of the Esprit des Lois.

[172] Book xi. § 30.

[173] Hamel’s Robespierre i. 456-458.

[174] ElÉmens de Physiologie, Œuv., ix. 428.

[175] Corresp., ii. 180.

[176] Œuv., i. 54

[177] Letter to Mdlle. Voland, Sept. 23, 1762. xix. 136, 137.

[178] The dedication of the RÈgnes de Claude et de NÉron to Naigeon, iii. 9.

[179] Diderot’s Leben, ii. 357.

[180] See Mr. Brewer’s preface to Roger Bacon, p. 73.; Montaigne’s chapter Des Livres, and the Defense de SÉnÈque et de Plutarque.; Let. Pers., 33.

[181] Essai sur le MÉrite et la Vertu. Œuv., i. 118, note.

[182] The first edition (1778) was entitled Essai sur la Vie de SÉnÈque le philosophe, sur ses Écrits, et sur le rÈgne de Claude et de NÉron. In the second edition (1782) this was changed into Essai sur les rÈgnes de Claude et de NÉron, et sur la vie et les Écrits de SÉnÈque.

[183] Above, vol. ii. chap. i.

[184] iii. 110, 111.

[185] Grimm, Corr. Lit., xi. 77.

[186] Œuv., iii. 57.

[187] Dec. 8, 1776.

[188] MÉtra’s Corresp. SecrÈte, vi. 292.

[189] See Diderot’s Œuv., xix. 465, note.

[190] The Biographie Universelle, after giving 1738 as the date of Naigeon’s birth, absurdly attributes to him the article on Âme in the EncyclopÆdia, which was published in 1752, when Naigeon was fourteen years old.

[191] Memoirs of Sir Samuel Romilly, i. 63, 179, etc.

[192] See above, vol. i. p. 362.

[193] Petites Lettres sur de Grands Philosophes, ii.

[194] Œuv. de Palissot, i. 445. iv. 244.

[195] Le Satyrique, iii. p. 84. note.

[196] MÉtra, vi. 128.

[197] See for abundant matter of the same kind, M. Rocquain’s L’Esprit RÉvolutionnaire avant la RÉvolution, bk. x. pp. 382, 390, etc.

[198] Montesquieu more sensibly had given the Church not more than five hundred years to live. Let. Pers., 117. One hundred and fifty of them have already passed.

[199] Grimm died in 1807, Holbach in 1789, Catherine in 1796, and Frederick in 1786.

[200] See Œuv., xix. 317, 326.

[201] Œuv., vi. 442, where Diderot gives a sketch of this interesting man.

[202] “Is it not possible that the virtuous and moderate proposal to strangle the last Jesuit in the bowels of the last Jansenist might do something towards reconciling matters?”—Voltaire to HelvÉtius, May 11, 1761.

[203] Les Eleutheromanes, ou les Furieux de la LibertÉ. Œuv., ix. 16.

[204] It is a curious illustration of the carelessness with which the so-called negative school have been treated, that so conscientious a writer as M. Henri Martin (Hist. de France, xvi. 146) should have taxed Diderot, among other sinister maxims, with this, that “the public punishment of a king changes the spirit of a nation for ever.” Now the words occur in a collection of observations on government, which Diderot wrote on the margin of his copy of Tacitus, and which are entitled Principes de Politique des Souverains (1775). Some of the most pungent maxims are obviously intended for irony on the military and Machiavellian policy of Frederick the Great, while others on the policy of the Roman emperors are shrewd and sagacious. The maxim from which M. Martin quotes is the 147th, and in it the sombre words of his quotation follow this:—“Let the people never see royal blood flow for any cause whatever. The public punishment of a king,” etc.! See Œuv., ii. 486.

[205] MÉm. sur la Vie et les Ouvrages de Diderot, p. 412.

[206] Grimm, Corr. Lit., xi. 120.

[207] As to the precise drift of Maupertuis’s theme, see Lange, Gesch. d. Materialismus, i. 413, n. 37. Also Rosenkranz, i. 134.

[208] In 1765 Grimm describes the principle of Leibnitz and Maupertuis as “gaining on us on every side.”—Corr. Lit., iv. 186.

[209] Palissot, in the Philosophers, concocted some very strained satire on the too pompous opening of the Interpretation of Nature. Act I. sc. 2.

[210] Comte’s System of Positive Polity, i. 380, etc. English translation, 1875.

[211] By F. Sclopis, quoted in M. Vian’s Hist. de Montesquieu, p. 51.

[212] Œuv., ii. 12, 13, § 6. See the same idea in the EncyclopÆdia, above, vol. i. pp. 225-227.

[213] Œuv., ii.

[214] Gesch. d. Materialismus, i. 309, 310, etc.

[215] Œuv., ii. 176.

[216] Œuv., iii. 490.

[217] Ib. iii. 469-471.

[218] Œuv., iii. 473.

[219] Ib. ii. 505-528.

[220] Above, vol. ii. p. 104.

[221] xix. 200.

[222] xviii. 94.

[223] xviii. pp. 113 and 100.

[224] Vol. v. pp. 457-468.

[225] These little china images of gods, with nodding heads, were then a fashionable toy in Paris.

[226] A famous dancing-master of the time.