Yet none even of these had been passed over.[168] The importance given to physical science and the practical arts, in the Encyclopaedia, is the sign and exemplification of two elements of the great modern transition.

It marks both a social and an intellectual revolution.

We see in it, first, the distinct association with pacific labour, of honour and a kind of glory, such as had hitherto been reserved for knights and friars, for war and asceticism, for fighting and praying.
It is the definite recognition of the basis of a new society.

If the nobles and the churchmen could only have understood, as clearly as Diderot and D'Alembert understood, the irresistible forces that were making against the maintenance of the worn-out system, all the worst of the evils attending the great political changes of the last decade of the century would have been avoided.

That the nobles and churchmen would not see this, was the fatality of the Revolution.