Essai sur les mœurs, page 91, note

Page 112. — 1. Diderot (1713-84), a brilliant but very uneven improvisatore in thought and style, a writer of universal curiosity and attainments. His chief labor was the undermining of dogma by the criteria of reason and of science. In the latter field he even adumbrated Darwinism. His chief work was the voluminous Encyclopédie, permeated by the most dissolvent rationalism. His most brilliant work is the Neveu de Rameau, a sparkling dialogue in which a vagabond of genius eloquently expounds his cynical philosophy. Cf. also pages 164^'.

2. Laclos — Louvet, three inferior eighteenth-century novelists of the fleshly school.

3. Mme de Staël ( 1766-18 17), literary critic and no velist. Her works présent an unusual combination of intense sentiment with lucid and many-sided intelligence, a turn for gênerai ideas, and an utter freedom from préjudice. It is true she moved in the most cosmopolitan and varied intellectual society ever open to awoman, — and most of her dominant ideas hint of a primary masculine influence. In her de V Allemagne she drew the attention of France to German letters and thought, and contributed largely to introduce thenewspirit of innovation and romanticism. She is hardly at her best in her novels {Delphine and Corinne). She can paint only herself, and her style is indiffèrent ; she discusses, not without power, the position and limitations of woman in modem society.

4. Mercier, a foui sentimentalist ; his taies and poems — such as Les Palmiers, ou le Triomphe de Vamour conjugal — are now wholly forgotten.

5. Mme Cottin, a romantic young lady who wrote several novels that had an immense vogue about 1800.

Page 113. — 1. pamphlets, abusive publications.

2. idéologie ("science of ideas"), a word invented in 1796 by Destutt de Tracy, a. French philosopher proceeding from Locke (page 96, note 1) and Condillac (page 95, note 1). In its more restricted sensé the term is used to designate a philosophy founded on sensation.

Page 114. — i. Helvétius, an eighteenth-century philosophe. In his de V Esprit ne founds virtue on self-interest.

2. Volney (1757-1820), traveller, writer, and philosophe. He is best remembered for his anti-Christian and very rhetorical Ruines.

3. Sieyès (1 748-1 836), a statesman somewhat given to systematic theorizing. He played an active rôle in the Révolution and a rather ornamental one in Napoleon's day.

4. Cabanis (1757-1808), a distinguished médical authority, who, applying Condillac's method, treated psychologie phenomena from a physiological standpoint.

5. Bacon (1 561-1626), the profound thinker, great writer, and vénal statesman.

" The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind." {Pope.)

He was the great apostle of the inductive philosophy, of that purely expérimental approach toward knowledge which we now call the sciëntific method.

6. Cartésiens (or cartésiens), disciples of Descartes (page 88, note 2.)