it would be difficult—­perhaps it would be impossible—­to prove conclusively that none of these things ever took place.  The facts upon which Mrs. Macdonald lays so much stress—­the mutilations, the additions, the instructing notes, the proved inaccuracy of the story the manuscripts tell—­these facts, no doubt, may be explained by Mrs. Macdonald’s theories; but there are other facts—­no less important, and no less certain—­which are in direct contradiction to Mrs. Macdonald’s view, and over which she passes as lightly as she can.  Putting aside the question of the Memoires, we know nothing of Diderot which would lead us to entertain for a moment the supposition that he was a dishonourable and badhearted man; we do know that his writings bear the imprint of a singularly candid, noble, and fearless mind; we do know that he devoted his life, unflinchingly and unsparingly, to a great cause.  We know less of Grimm; but it is at least certain that he was the intimate friend of Diderot, and of many more of the distinguished men of the time.  Is all this evidence to be put on one side as of no account?  Are we to dismiss it, as Mrs. Macdonald dismisses it, as merely ‘psychological’?  Surely Diderot’s reputation as an honest man is as much a fact as his notes in the draft of the Memoires.  It is quite true that his reputation may have been ill-founded, that d’Alembert, and Turgot, and Hume may have been deluded, or may have been bribed, into admitting him to their friendship; but is it not clear that we ought not to believe any such hypotheses as these until we have before us such convincing proof of Diderot’s guilt that we must believe them?  Mrs. Macdonald declares that she has produced such proof; and she points triumphantly to her garbled and concocted manuscripts.  If there is indeed no explanation of these garblings and concoctions other than that which Mrs. Macdonald puts forward—­that they were the outcome of a false and malicious conspiracy to blast the reputation of Rousseau—­then we must admit that she is right, and that all our general ‘psychological’ considerations as to Diderot’s reputation in the world must be disregarded.  But, before we come to this conclusion, how careful must we be to examine every other possible explanation of Mrs. Macdonald’s facts, how rigorously must we sift her own explanation of them, how eagerly must we seize upon every loophole of escape!

It is, I believe, possible to explain the condition of the d’Epinay manuscript without having recourse to the iconoclastic theory of Mrs. Macdonald.  To explain everything, indeed, would be out of the question, owing to our insufficient data, and the extreme complexity of the events; all that we can hope to do is to suggest an explanation which will account for the most important of the known facts.  Not the least interesting of Mrs. Macdonald’s discoveries went to show that the Memoires, so far from being historically accurate, were in reality