Alpha Book

Yet Voltaire is
unquestionably the intellectual dictator of Europe. His genius for
satire and his fearless attacks on long-standing abuses have made him
hated, and feared, and admired. He has given tone and character to the
Old Regime.
[Sidenote: Diderot and the Encyclopedists]
Voltaire was not alone in the work of spreading discontent. Less famous
but hardly less brilliant or versatile, was Denis Diderot (1713-1784).
His great achievement was the editing of the _Encyclopedia_. The
gathering of all human knowledge into one set of volumes--an
encyclopedia--had been for generations a favorite idea in Europe.
Diderot associated with himself the most distinguished mathematicians,
astronomers, scientists, and philosophers of the time in the
compilation of a work which in seventeen volumes [Footnote: Not
counting pictorial supplements.] undertook to summarize the latest
findings of the scholarship of the age. Over four thousand copies had
been subscribed when the _Encyclopedia_ appeared in 1765.


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