A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume...

160 “Scheinbar bekämpft er Maupertuis desswegen, aber im geheimen stimmt er ihm bei”(Rosenkranz, i, 144). ↑

161 It should be noted that by Condillac’s avowal he was much aided by his friend Mdlle. Ferrand. ↑

162 Cp. Réthoré, Condillac, ou l’empirisme et le rationalisme, 1864, ch. i. ↑

163 Lange, ii, 27, 29; Soury, pp. 603–44. ↑

164 Soury, pp. 596–600; Lange, ii, 27. ↑

165 Oddly enough he became ultimately press censor! He lived till 1820, dying at Rennes at the age of 85. ↑

166 This may best be translated Treatise on the Mind. The English translation of 1759 (rep. 1807) is entitled De l’Esprit: or, Essays on the Mind, etc. ↑

167Correspondance, ii, 262. ↑

168Id. p. 263. ↑

169Id. p. 293. ↑

170 At the time the pietists declared that Diderot had collaborated in De l’Esprit. This was denied by Grimm, who affirmed that Diderot and Helvétius were little acquainted, and rarely met; but his Secretary, Meister, wrote in 1786 that the finest pages in the book were Diderot’s. Id. p. 294, note. In his sketch À la mémoire de Diderot (1786, app. to Naigeon’s Mémoires, 1821, p. 425, note), Meister speaks of a number of “belles pages,” but does not particularize. ↑

171De l’Esprit, Disc, iii, ch. 30. ↑

172 Cp. Morley’s criticism. Diderot, ed. 1884, pp. 331–32. ↑

173 Beccaria’s Letter to Morellet, cited in ch. i of J. A. Farrer’s ed. of the Crimes and Punishments, p. 6. It is noteworthy that the partial reform effected earlier in England by Oglethorpe, on behalf of imprisoned debtors (1730–32), belongs to the time of propagandist deism there. ↑

174 Morley, Diderot, p. 329. ↑

175 Lettre à d’Alembert, 9 janvier, 1773. ↑

176 Cp. Rosenkranz, Vorbericht, p. vi. ↑

177 Cp. Morley, Diderot, ed. 1834, p. 32. ↑

178E.g. § 21. ↑

179 A police agent seized the MS. in Diderot’s library, and Diderot could not get it back. Malesherbes, the censor, kept it safe for him! ↑

180 According to Naigeon (Mémoires, 1821, p. 131), three months and ten days. ↑

181 The Lettre purports, like so many other books of that and the next generation, to be published “A Londres.” ↑

182 Diderot’s daughter, in her memoir of him, speaks of his imprisonment in the Bastille as brought about through the resentment of a lady of whom he had spoken slightingly; and her husband left a statement in MS. to the same effect (printed at the end of the Mémoires by Naigeon). The lady is named as Madame Dupré de Saint-Maur, a mistress of the King, and the offence is said to have been committed in the story entitled Le Pigeon blanc. Howsoever this may have been, the prosecution was quite in the spirit of the period, and the earlier Pensées were made part of the case against him. See Delort, Hist. de la détention des philosophes, 1829, ii, 208–16. M. de Vandeul-Diderot testifies that the Marquis Du Chatelet, Governor of Vincennes, treated his prisoner very kindly. Buckle (1-vol. ed. p. 425) does not seem to have fully read the Lettre, which he describes as merely discussing the differentiation of thought and sensation among the blind. ↑

183 His friend Meister (À la mémoire de Diderot, 1786, app. to Naigeon’s Mémoires de Diderot, 1821, p. 424) writes as if Diderot had written the whole Apologie “in a few days.” The third part, a reply to the pastoral of the Bishop of Auxerre, appeared separately as a Suite to the others. ↑

184Apologie, as cited, 2e partie, p. 87 sq. ↑

185Observations sur l’instruction pastorale de Mons. l’Évêque d’Auxerre, Berlin, 1752, p. 17. ↑

186Id. p. 102 sq. ↑

187 Cp. Morley, Diderot, pp. 98–99. ↑

188 Carlyle, Frederick, bk. xviii, ch. ix, end. ↑

189 D’Argenson, Mémoires, iv, 188. ↑

190 Carlyle, as cited. ↑

191 “Quelle abominable homme!” he writes to Mdlle. Voland (15 juillet, 1759); and Lord Morley pronounces de Prades a rascal (Diderot, p. 98). Carlyle is inarticulate with disgust—but as much against the original heresy as against the treason to Frederick. As to that, Thiébault was convinced that de Prades was innocent and calumniated. Everybody at court, he declares, held the same view. Mes Souvenirs de vingt ans de séjour à Berlin, 2e édit. 1805, v, 402–404. ↑

192 It is not clear how these are to be distinguished from the mutilations of the later volumes by his treacherous publisher Le Breton. Of this treachery the details are given by Grimm, Corr. litt. ed. 1829. vii, 144 sq. ↑

193 Buckle’s account of him (1-vol. ed. p. 426) as “burning with hatred against his persecutors” after his imprisonment is overdrawn. He was a poor hater. ↑

194 Madame Diderot, says her daughter, was very upright as well as very religious, but her temper, “éternellement grondeur, faisait de notre intérieur un enfer, dont mon père était l’ange consolateur” (Letter to Meister, in Notice pref. to Lettres Inédites de Mme. de Staël à Henri Meister, 1903, p. 62). ↑

195 “Hélas! disait mon excellent grand-père, j’ai deux fils: l’un sera sûrement un saint, et je crains bien que l’autre ne soit damné; mais je ne puis vivre avec le saint, et je suis très heureux du temps que je passe avec le damné” (Letter of Mme. de Vandeul, last cited). Freethinker as he was, his fellow-townsmen officially requested in 1780 to be allowed to pay for a portrait of him for public exhibition, and the bronze bust he sent them was placed in the hôtel de ville (MS. of M. de Vandeul-Diderot, as cited). ↑

196 Madame de Vandeul states that this story was motived by the case of Diderot’s sister, who died mad at the age of 27 or 28 (Letter above cited; Rosenkranz, i, 9). ↑

197 Lettre de Voltaire à D’Alembert, 27 août, 1774. ↑

198 Lettre de 2 décembre, 1757. ↑

199Œuvres posthumes de D’Alembert, 1799, i, 240. ↑