The Encyclopaedia, it has been said, was no peaceful storehouse in which scholars and thinkers of all kinds could survey the riches they had acquired; it was a gigantic siege-engine and armoury of weapons of attack.[125] This is only true in a limited sense of one part of the work, and that not the most important part.

Such a judgment is only possible for one who has not studied the book itself, or else who is ignorant of the social requirements of France at the time.

We shall show this presently in detail.

Meanwhile it is enough to make two observations.

The implements which the circumstances of the time made it necessary to use as weapons of attack, were equally fitted for the acquisition in a happier season of those treasures of thought and knowledge which are the object of disinterested research.