The Eve of the French Revolution Part 13

Manufactures, according to Quesnay, do no more than pay the wages and expenses of the workmen engaged in them. But agriculture not only pays wages and expenses, but produces a surplus, which is the revenue of the land. He divides the nation into three cla.s.ses: (1) the productive, which cultivates the soil; (2) the proprietary, which includes the sovereign, the land-owners, and those who live by t.i.thes, in other words the n.o.bility and the clergy; and (3) the sterile, which embraces all men who labor otherwise than in agriculture, and whose expenses are paid by the productive and proprietary cla.s.ses. Therefore he argues that taxes should be based directly on the net product of real estate, and not on wages nor on chattels. In other words, all taxes should be levied directly on the income derived from land, and indirect taxation in every shape should be abolished.

Liberty of agriculture, liberty of commerce! "Let every man be free to cultivate in his field such crops as his interest, his means, the nature of the ground may suggest as rendering the greatest possible return." "Let complete liberty of commerce be maintained; for the regulation of commerce, both internal and external, which is most safe, most accurate, most profitable to the nation, consists in full liberty of compet.i.tion." These doctrines of Quesnay, joined with the ideas of property and security, form the basis of the modern school of individualism. [Footnote: Lavergne, _Les economistes,_ 105. Quesnay, _Oeuvres,_ 233, 306, 331 _(Maximes du gouvernement economique d'un royaume agricole Maxime,_ iii. v. xiii. xxv.). Turgot, iv. 305.

Bois-Guillebert appears to have been the princ.i.p.al precursor of the Physiocrats. Horn, _L'economie politique avant les Physiocrates, pa.s.sim;[Greek physis] = nature,[Greek kratos] = power.]

The body of doctrines long known as "political economy," (for the words seem now to be used in a larger sense), bore the mark of their origin in the eighteenth century. Here, as elsewhere, it was the belief of Frenchmen of that age that the application of a few simple rules derived from natural laws would solve the difficulties of a complicated subject.

The principles of political economy were conceived as forming "a true science, which does not yield to geometry itself in the conviction which it carries to the soul, and which certainly surpa.s.ses all others in its object, since that is the greatest well-being, the greatest prosperity of the human race upon the earth."[Footnote: 2. Abbe Beaudeau, quoted in Lavergne, _Les economistes,_ 179.] Quesnay and Gournay founded branches of the economic school. The latter, who printed nothing, is chiefly known through the encomiums of Turgot. Gournay was a merchant, and recognized that commerce and manufactures are hardly less advantageous to a state than agriculture. This is the chief difference of his teaching from that of Quesnay. Gournay is the author of the famous maxim: _Laissez faire; laissez pa.s.ser;_ and his whole system depended on the idea "that in general every man knows his own interest better than another man to whom that interest is entirely indifferent;" and that "hence, when the interest of individuals is exactly the same as the general interest, the best thing to do is to leave every man to do as he likes."[Footnote: Turgot, iii. 336 (_eloge de M. de Gournay_).]

The best known member of the economic school in France was Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, born in Paris on the 10th of May, 1727, of a family belonging to the higher middle cla.s.s. His father was _prevost des marchands_, or chief magistrate of the city. Young Turgot was at first educated for the ecclesiastical life, and indeed pursued his studies in that direction until a bishopric seemed close at hand. But he felt no vocation to enter the priesthood. Turgot was too much the child of his century to be content to put his great powers into the harness of the Roman Church; he was, as he told his friends who remonstrated with him on abandoning his brilliant prospects, too honest a man to wear a mask all his life.

At the age of twenty-four, Turgot turned finally from the study of divinity to that of law and administration. He was rapidly promoted to the place of a _matre des requetes_, a member of the lowest board of the royal council, and nine years later he became intendant of the district of Limoges. It was the poorest in France, but Turgot soon became so much interested in its welfare that he refused to exchange it for a richer one. In spite of years of dearth and of the extraordinary measures of relief which they made necessary, he went energetically to work at all manner of permanent reforms. He effected improvements in the apportionment and levy of the taille. He abolished the onerous _corvee_. He diminished the terror of compulsory service in the militia, by permitting the engagement of subst.i.tutes. He encouraged agriculture by distributing seeds and offering prizes for the destruction of wolves, which were still numerous in his district, and he waged a successful war on a moth that was ravaging the wheat crop. He a.s.sisted in the introduction of the manufacture of pottery, still one of the leading industries of Limoges. His reports are among the most valuable material in existence for the study of the condition of old France.

Soon after the accession of Louis XVI., Turgot was called to the ministry, first, for a very short time, as secretary of the navy, and then as Controller of the Finances. Two courses were open to the new minister. Malesherbes, his close adherent, standing in high official position, urged him to summon the Estates General, or at least the Provincial Estates, and rule const.i.tutionally. Such action would have been a great, a serious innovation, but it was not on this ground that Turgot opposed it. Like most of the economists of his day, he believed at once in freedom and in despotism. "The republican const.i.tution of England," he had said, "sets obstacles in the way of the reform of certain abuses." Turgot had a plan for the benefit of mankind. None but a despot could carry it out for him. France and the world were to be set right; and it would take absolute power to compel them into the best course.

The new Controller of the Finances could not afford to wait. "You accuse me of too great haste," he said to a friend, "and you forget that in my family we die of the gout at fifty." But this haste, combined with his awkward and haughty manners, proved the cause of his ruin. The courtiers, whose perquisites were in danger, were disgusted at his simplicity and economy. Although he was the friend of absolute government, he was accused of republican austerity. And his measures were not more popular than his manners. The harvest of 1774 had been bad, and famine was in the land. Turgot met the situation by declaring commerce in grain free throughout the kingdom. The harvest was again bad in 1775, and riots broke out, for the common people had it firmly in their minds that the price of bread was fixed by the government. Turgot put down disturbances with a high hand, and persevered in his measures. He abolished the _corvee_ on roads and public works throughout France. In truth it would have been better to modify and regulate it, for in poor countries many men had rather work on the roads than pay for them, but such considerations as this were foreign to his mind. He, moreover, abolished the trade-guilds (_jurandes_), which possessed the monopoly of most kinds of manufactures and trades, saying that G.o.d, in giving man needs and making labor his necessary resource, had made the right to work the property of every man, and that this property is the most sacred and inalienable of all.[Footnote: Turgot, viii. 330. Yet the monopolies in certain trades, as those of apothecaries, jewelers, printers, and booksellers, were retained, probably because their strict regulation and supervision was considered necessary. The guilds were reestablished, with modifications, on the fall of Turgot.

_Encyclopedie methodique, Commerce_, ii. 760, 790.] But Turgot's ideal of freedom was entirely industrial and commercial, and not at all political or social. He forbade all a.s.sociations or a.s.semblies of masters or workmen, holding that the faculty granted to artisans of the same trade to meet and join in one body is a source of evil. Under Turgot's system, the individual workman would not have escaped the tyranny of the masters' guild only to fall under that of the trades-union; but one of the most essential privileges of a freeman would have been denied him. Individual liberty to work, and political liberty to combine, have not yet been made perfectly to coincide.

The innovations thus introduced were great; the interests threatened were powerful. The Parliament of Paris rallied to the defense of vested rights. It refused to register the edicts issued to enforce the minister's innovations.

The king held a bed of justice and forced their registration; but his weak nature was tiring of the struggle. Turgot was unpopular on all sides, and Louis never supported a truly unpopular minister. "Only M.

Turgot and I love the people," he cried, in his impotent despair; and then he gave way. Malesherbes, the princ.i.p.al supporter in the royal council of the Controller General of the Finances, was the first to go.

Thereupon Turgot wrote the king a long and harsh letter, blaming him for Malesherbes's resignation. "Do not forget, sir," said he, "that it was weakness which put the head of Charles I. on the block; it was weakness which formed the League under Henry III., which made crowned slaves of Louis XIII. and of the present king of Portugal; it was weakness which caused all the misfortunes of the late reign." Kings to whom such language as this can be used are not strong enough to bear it. Turgot was dismissed twelve days after sending the letter.[Footnote: May 12, 1776. Lavergne, _les economistes_, 219. Turgot, iii. 335; viii.

273, 330. Bailly, ii. 210.]

The financial situation of France was undoubtedly serious. The cause of this was far less the amount of the debt, or the excess of expenditure over revenue, than the total demoralization of the public service. The annual deficit at the accession of Louis XVI. is variously stated at from twenty to forty million livres a year.[Footnote: From four to eight million dollars.] Such a deficiency would have nothing very appalling for a strong minister of finance, supported by a determined sovereign, and could have been overcome by economy alone. The expenses of the court were not less than thirty millions. Turgot proposed to reduce them by five millions immediately and by nine millions more in the course of a few years. Twenty-eight millions were spent in pensions, and it requires but a superficial knowledge of the state of France to a.s.sure us that many of these were bestowed without sufficient reason.

[Footnote: Stourm sets the pensions at thirty-two millions, and thinks that the improper ones did not exceed six or seven millions, ii. 134.]

Important reductions might have been made in the expenditures of most of the departments without impairing their efficiency. But to have done this many interests would have had to be disturbed, many hards.h.i.+ps inflicted. Amiable persons, living without labor at the public cost, would have been deprived of their revenues. Other agreeable and influential men and women would have had to live without pleasant things which they had been brought up to expect. The good-nature of the king made him shrink from inflicting pain. He would approve of the best plans of economy, he would promise his minister of finance to adhere to them, he would depart from them secretly at the solicitation of his wife or of his courtiers. The poor man wanted "to make his people happy," and he could not bear to see those of his people who came nearest to him discontented. The successor of Turgot was a mere courtier, not even personally honest, whose career was fortunately cut short by death within a few months of his nomination.

The war of the American Revolution was drawing near, and old Maurepas, the prime minister, felt the need of a competent man to take charge of the finances. A name was suggested to him,--that of Necker, a successful banker. But Necker was a Protestant, a Swiss, a n.o.body. The t.i.tle of Controller was too high for him, so a new post was created, and he was made Director-General of the Finances, coming into office in October, 1776.

It has been the fate of Necker to excite strong enthusiasm and violent objurgation; but in fact he was little more than commonplace. An ambitious man, he wanted to make a reputation, to build up the royal credit, to found a national debt, like that of England. Did he really believe that such a debt would pay its own interest, without additional taxes, or did he rely on economy of expenditure and good administration, not only to balance the ordinary accounts, but to cover the interest of the war-loans which he was obliged to contract? How far did his cheerful manifestoes deceive himself? What might he not really have accomplished if the royal support had been anything more solid than a s.h.i.+fting quicksand? These questions cannot be answered satisfactorily. Neither Necker, nor anybody else, knew exactly what the government owed, or what it borrowed. The loans contracted by Necker himself are believed to have amounted to five hundred and thirty million livres. Of this sum it is thought that about two hundred millions were employed in covering the annual deficit for five years, and that three hundred and thirty millions were spent for the extraordinary demands of the war. The money was raised chiefly by state lotteries and by the sale of life annuities, although many other means also were employed.

The royal lottery had been a favorite device earlier in the century. As practiced by Necker and some of his predecessors it combined the features of gambling and of investment. Every ticket, in addition to its chance of drawing a prize, was in itself a pecuniary obligation of the government, either carrying perpetual interest at four per cent., or to be repaid at its full price in seven or nine years without interest. The prizes were sums of money or annuities. Thus the ticket-holder did not lose his whole stake, and ran the chance of winning a fortune. But the operation was not brilliant for the government.

Nor was the sale of annuities more judiciously managed. Here, as in the lotteries, Necker copied old models, without making any improvements of importance. No account was taken of the age of the annuitants, but incomes were sold at a fixed rate of ten per cent, of the capital deposited for one life, nine per cent, for two lives, eight and a half for three, eight for four. The bankers and financiers of the day were shrewd enough to profit by this arrangement.

They bought up the obligations, and named healthy children as the annuitants. The chance of life of these selected persons was more than fifty years, and as the children were usually chosen at about the age of seven, the treasury would be called on to pay its annuities for an average term of between forty and forty-five years. As the current rate of interest on good security was about six per cent, the operation was not a very promising one for the state.

In spite of all these blunders Necker was liked by the nation. He recognized the need of economy and honestly tried to reduce expenses. He succeeded in cutting off a little of the extravagance of the court and in simplifying the collection of the revenue. He tried to establish provincial a.s.semblies and to equalize the incidence of the salt-tax. And above all, in order to sustain the royal credit, he took the country into his confidence to some extent, and prophesied pleasant things. But he did not stop there. The national accounts had long been considered a government secret; Necker resolved to publish them to the world. His famous "Compte rendu au roi" appeared in February, 1781. The portrait of the author, excellently engraved on copper, stares complacently from the frontispiece, above an allegorical picture, where we can make out Justice and Abundance, while Avarice appears to bring her treasures, and a lady in high, powdered hair, and no visible clothing, gazes astonished from the background. The contents of the report are not such as we are in the habit of expecting in financial doc.u.ments, but are rhetorical and self-complacent. The ordinary revenues of the country are said to exceed the expenditures by ten million livres. As a matter of fact, no such surplus existed, but Necker was an optimist by temperament, and was moreover anxious to bolster credit. The nation was delighted, but Maurepas and the court were shocked. The cupidity of the courtiers was painted in the account in glowing language. Such a publication was dangerous in itself, and the economical measures already taken, with those announced as to follow, threatened many interests. Even the old prime minister trembled for his personal power. Necker had obtained the removal from office of one of the adherents of Maurepas, while the latter was kept in Paris by the gout. So the usual machinery of detraction was put in motion. Letters, pamphlets, and epigrams flew about. While the larger part of the public was singing Necker's praises, the smaller and more influential inner circle was conspiring against him. He might yet have prevailed but for an act of imprudence. Although the most conspicuous and popular man in the kingdom, he had hitherto been excluded from the Council of State. He now asked to be admitted to it. Louis XVI., whose Catholicism was his strongest conviction, replied that Necker, as a Protestant, was inadmissible by law. Thereupon the latter offered to resign his place as Director of the Finances, and the king, by the advice of Maurepas, accepted his resignation.[Footnote: Gomel, _pa.s.sim._]

From this time all real chance of the extrication of Louis XVI. from his financial difficulties, without a radical change of government, disappeared forever. The controllers that succeeded Necker only plunged deeper and deeper into debt and deficit. It is needless to follow them in their flounderings. A long experience of the vacillation of the government both as to persons and as to systems had discouraged the hopes of conscientious patriotism, and strengthened the opposition to reform of all those who were interested in abuses. From the well-meaning king, if left to his own ways, nothing more could be hoped. Pecuniary embarra.s.sment, with Louis, as with many less important people, was quite as much a symptom of weakness as a result of unmerited misfortune.

CHAPTER XVI.

"THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA."

We have seen that the church had an irreconcilable enemy in Voltaire; that the government of France had found a critic of weight and importance in Montesquieu; that the Economists had attacked the financial organization of the country. But the a.s.saults of the Philosophic school were not leveled at the religious and civil administration alone. The very foundations of French thought, slowly laid through previous ages, were made in the reign of Louis XV. the subject of examination, and by a very dogmatic set of thinkers were p.r.o.nounced to be valueless. Nor were men left at a loss for something to put in the place of what was thus destroyed. The teachings of Locke, explained and amplified by Condillac and many others, obtained an authority which was but feebly disputed. The laws against free speech and free printing, intended for the defense of the old doctrines, deterred no one from expressing radical opinions. Only persons of conservative and law-abiding temperament, the natural defenders of things existing, were restrained by legal and ecclesiastical terrors.

The champions of the old modes of thought stood like mediaeval men at arms before a discharge of artillery, prevented from rus.h.i.+ng on the guns of the enemy by the weight of the armor that protected them no longer.

The new philosophy, stimulated and hardly impeded by feeble attempts at persecution, was therefore able to overrun the intellectual life of the nation, until it found its most formidable opponent in one who was half its ally, and who had sprung from its midst, the mighty heretic, Rousseau.

The most voluminous work of the Philosophers is the "Encyclopaedia," a book of great importance in the history of the human mind. The conception of its originators was not a new one. The attempt to bring human knowledge into a system, and to set it forth in a series of folio volumes, had been made before. The endeavor is one which can never meet with complete success, yet which should sometimes be made in a philosophic spirit. The universe is too vast and too varied to be successfully cla.s.sified and described by one man, or under the supervision of one editor. But the attempt may bring to light some relation of things. .h.i.therto unnoticed, and the task is one of practical utility.

The great French "Encyclopaedia" may claim two immediate progenitors.

The first is found in the works of Lord Bacon, where there is a "Description of a Natural and Experimental History, such as may serve for the foundation of a true philosophy," with a "Catalogue of particular histories by t.i.tles." The second is Chambers's Cyclopaedia, first published in 1727, a translation of which Diderot was engaged to edit by the publisher Le Breton. Diderot, who freely acknowledges his obligation to Bacon, makes light of that to Chambers, saying in his prospectus that the latter owed much to French sources, that his work is not the basis of the one proposed, that many of the articles have been rewritten, and almost all the others corrected and altered. There is no doubt that the whole plan of the "Encyclopaedia" was much enlarged by Denis Diderot himself.[Footnote: Bacon, iv. 251, 265. Morley, _Diderot_, i., 116. Diderot, _Oeuvres_, xiii. 6, 8. "If we come out successfully we shall be princ.i.p.ally indebted to Chancellor Bacon, who laid out the plan of a universal dictionary of sciences and arts _at a time when there were, so to speak, neither sciences nor arts_."]

This eminent man was born at Langres in 1713, the son of a worthy cutler. He was educated by the Jesuits, and on his refusal to enter either of the learned professions of law or medicine, was set adrift by his father,--who hoped that a little hards.h.i.+p would bring him to reason,--and found himself in Paris with no resource but the precarious one of letters. Diderot lived from hand to mouth for a time, sleeping sometimes in a garret of his own, sometimes on the floor of a friend's room. Once he got a place of tutor to the children of a financier, but could not bear the life of confinement, and soon threw up his appointment and returned to freedom. When any friend of his father turned up on a visit to the town, he would borrow, and the old cutler at Langres would grumble and repay. Gradually the young author rose above want. He became one of the first literary men of his day and one of the most brilliant talkers, rich in ideas, overflowing in language, subtle without obscurity, suggestive, and satisfying; yet always retaining a certain shyness, and "able to say anything, but good-morning." Yet he was soon carried away by the excitement of conversation and of discussion. He had a trick of tapping his interlocutor on the knee, by way of giving point to his remarks, and the Empress Catharine II. of Russia complained that he mauled her black and blue by the use of this familiar gesture, so that she had to put a table between herself and him for protection. Diderot was fond of the young, and especially of struggling authors. To them his purse and his literary a.s.sistance were freely given. He was delighted when a writer came to consult him on his work. If the subject were interesting he would recognize its capabilities at a glance. As the author read, Diderot's imagination would fill in all deficiencies, construct new scenes in the tragedy, new incidents, new characters in the tale. To him all these beauties would seem to belong to the work itself, and his friends would be astonished, after hearing him praise some new book, to find in it but few of the good things which he had quoted from it.

Diderot's good nature was boundless. One morning a young man, quite unknown to him, came with a ma.n.u.script, and begged him to read and correct it. He prepared to comply with the request on the spot. The paper, when opened, turned out to be a satire on himself and his writings.

"Sir," said Diderot to the young man, "I do not know you; I can never have offended you. Will you tell me the motive which has impelled you to make me read a libel for the first time in my life? I generally throw such things into the waste-paper basket."

"I am starving. I hoped that you would give me a few crowns not to print it."

Instead of flying into a pa.s.sion, Diderot simply remarked: "You would not be the first author that ever was bought off; but you can do better with this stuff. The brother of the Duke of Orleans is in retreat at Saint Genevieve. He is religious; he hates me. Dedicate your satire to him; have it bound with his arms on the cover; carry it to him yourself some fine morning, and he will help you."

"But I don't know the prince; and I don't see how I can write the dedicatory epistle."

"Sit down; I'll do it for you."

And Diderot writes the dedication, and gives it to the young man, who carries the libel to the prince, receives a present of twenty-five louis, and comes back after a few days to thank Diderot, who advises him to find a more decent means of living.

The people whom the great writer helped were not always so polite. One day he was seeing to the door a young man who had deceived him, and to whom, after discovering it, he had given both a.s.sistance and advice.

"Monsieur Diderot," said the swindler, "do you know natural history?"

"A little; I can distinguish an aloe from a head of lettuce, and a pigeon from a humming-bird."

"Do you know the formica leo?"

"No."

"It is a very clever little insect. It digs a hole in the ground, shaped like a funnel. It covers the surface with fine, light sand. It attracts silly insects and gets them to tumble in. It seizes them, sucks them dry, and then says: `Monsieur Diderot, I have the honor to wish you good-morning.'" Whereupon the young man ran downstairs, leaving the philosopher in fits of laughter.[Footnote: Morley, Diderot and the Encyclopaedists. Scherer, Diderot, pa.s.sim. Morrellet, i. 29. Marmontel, ii. 313. Memoire sur Diderot, par Mme. de Vandeul, sa fille (a charming sketch only 64 pages long) in Diderot, Memoires, Corresp., etc., vol.

i.]

As a writer, the great fault of Diderot is one not common in France. He is verbose. As we read his productions, even the cleverest, we feel that the same thing could have been better said in fewer words. There is also a lack of arrangement. Diderot would never take time to plan his books before writing them. But these faults, although probably fatal to the permanent fame of an author, are less injurious to his immediate success than might be expected. A large part of the public does not dislike a copious admixture of water in its intellectual drink. And Diderot reconciles the reader to his excessive flow of words by the effervescence of his enthusiasm. It is because his mind is overfull of his subject that the sentences burst forth so copiously.

The first writing of Diderot that need engage our attention is his "Letter on the Blind," published in 1749. This letter deals with the question, how far congenital deprivation of one of the senses, and especially blindness, would modify the conceptions of the person affected; how far the ideas of one born blind would differ from the ideas of those who can see. The bearing of this question on Locke's theory that all our ideas are derived from sensation and reflection is obvious. Diderot, in a manner quite characteristic of him, took pains to examine the cases of persons who had actually been blind and had recovered their sight, and where these failed him, supplied their places by inventions of his own.[Footnote: Condorcet says of Diderot, "faisant toujours aimer la verite, meme lorsqu'entrane par son imagination il avait le malheur de la meconnatre." D'Alembert, _Oeuvres_, i. 79 (_eloge par Condorcet_). There is a great deal in this remark.

Unless we can enter into the state of mind of men who tell great lies from a genuine love of abstract truth, we shall never understand the French Philosophers of the 18th century.]

Diderot's princ.i.p.al witness is Nicholas Saunderson, a blind man with a talent for mathematics, who between 1711 and 1739 was a professor at the University of Cambridge. Diderot quotes at some length the atheistic opinions of Saunderson, giving as his authority the Life of the latter by "Dr. Inchlif." No such book ever existed, and the opinions are the product of Diderot's own reasoning. When an author treats us in this way our confidence in his facts is hopelessly lost. His reasons, however, remain, and the most striking of these, in the "Letter on the Blind," is the answer given to one who attempts to prove the existence of G.o.d by pointing out the order found in nature, whence an intelligent Creator is presumed. In answer to this, the dying Saunderson is made to say: "Let me believe... that if we were to go back to the birth of things and of times, and if we should feel matter move and chaos arrange itself, we should meet a mult.i.tude of shapeless beings, instead of a few beings that were well organized.... I can maintain that these had no stomach, and those no intestines; that some, to which their stomach, palate, and teeth seemed to promise duration, have ceased to exist from some vice of the heart or the lungs; that the abortions were successively destroyed; that all the faulty combinations of matter have disappeared, and that only those have survived whose mechanism implied no important contradiction, and which could live by themselves and perpetuate their species."[Footnote: Diderot, i. 328.] The step from the idea here conveyed to that of the struggle for existence and of the survival of the most fit is not a very long one.

For his "Letter on the Blind," Diderot was imprisoned at Vincennes. The real cause of this punishment is said to have been a slight allusion in the "Letter" to the mistress of a minister of state. But this may not have been the only cause. There occurred about this time one of those temporary seasons of severity which are necessary under all governments to meet occasional outbursts of crime, but to which weak and corrupt governments are liable with capricious frequency. Diderot st.u.r.dily denied the authors.h.i.+p of the "Letter," lying as thoroughly as he had done in that piece of writing itself, when he invented the name of Inchlif and forged the ideas of Saunderson. This time there was more excuse for his untruth; for the disclosure of his printer's name might have sent that unfortunate man to prison or to the galleys. The imprisonment of Diderot himself, at first severe, was soon lightened at the instance of Voltaire's mistress, Madame du Chatelet. Diderot was allowed to see his friends, and even to wander about the park of Vincennes on parole. After three months of captivity he was released by the influence of the booksellers interested in the "Encyclopaedia."

[Footnote: Morley, _Diderot_, i. 105.]

The first volume of that great work was in preparation. Diderot, whose untiring energy was unequal to the task of editing the whole, and who was, moreover, insufficiently trained for the work in some branches, and notably in mathematics, gathered about him a band of workers which increased as time went on, until it included a great number of remarkable men. First in importance to the enterprise, acting with Diderot on equal terms, was D'Alembert, an almost typical example of the gentle scholar, who refused one brilliant position after another to devote himself to mathematics and to literature. Next, perhaps, should be mentioned the Chevalier de Jaucourt, a man of encyclopaedic learning, who helped in the preparation of the book with patient enthusiasm, reading, dictating, and working with three or four secretaries for thirteen or fourteen hours a day. Montesquieu, whose end was approaching, left behind him an unfinished article on Taste. Voltaire not only sent in contributions of his own, but constantly gave encouragement and advice, as became the recognized head of the Philosophic school. Rousseau, whose literary reputation had recently been made by his "Discourses," contributed articles on music for a time; but subsequently chose to quarrel with the Encyclopaedists, whose minds worked very differently from his. Turgot wrote several papers on economic subjects, and in the latter part of the work, Haller, the physiologist, and Condorcet were engaged.