The ordinary philosophers who meditate too much, or rather who meditate to wrong purpose, are as surly and arrogant to all the world as great people are to those whom they do not think their equals; they flee men, and men avoid them.

But our philosopher who knows how to divide himself between retreat and the commerce of men is full of humanity.

_Civil society is, so to say, a divinity for him on the earth_; he honours it by his probity, by an exact attention to his duties, and by a sincere desire not to be a useless or an embarrassing member of it.

The sage has the leaven of order and rule; he is full of the ideas connected with the good of civil society.

What experience shows us every day is that the more reason and light people have, the better fitted they are and the more to be relied on for the common intercourse of life."[182] The transition is startling from this conception of Philosopher as a very high kind of man of the world, to the definition of Philosophy as "the science of possibles qua possibles." Diderot's own reflection comes back to us, _Combien cette maudite metaphysique fait des fous!_[183] We are abruptly plunged from a Baconian into a Leibnitzian atmosphere.