Of course, he honestly refers his readers to these sources of wider information.[181] All that we can say of the articles on the history of philosophy is that the series is very complete; that Diderot used his matter with intelligence and the spirit of criticism, and that he often throws in luminous remarks and far-reaching suggestions of his own.  This was all that the purpose of his book required.  To imitate the laborious literary search of Bayle or of Brucker, and to attempt to compile an independent history of philosophy, would have been to sacrifice the Encyclopaedia as a whole, to the superfluous perfection of a minor part.  There is only one imperative condition in such a case, namely, that the writer should pass the accepted material through his own mind before reproducing it.  With this condition it was impossible for a man of Diderot’s indefatigable energy of spirit, not as a rule to comply.

But this rule too had exceptions.  There were cases in which he reproduced, as any mere bookmaker might have done, the thought of his authority, without an attempt to make it his own.  Of the confusion and inequalities in which Diderot was landed by this method of mingling the thoughts of other people with his own, there is a curious example in the two articles on Philosopher and Philosophy.  In the first we have an essentially social and practical description of what the philosopher should be; in the second we have a definition of philosophy, which takes us into the regions most remote from what is social and practical.  We soar to the airiest heights of verbal analysis and pure formalism.  Nothing can be better, so far as it goes, than the picture of the philosopher.  Diderot begins by contrasting him with the crowd of people, and clever people, who insist on passing judgment all day long.  “They ignore the scope and limits of the human mind; they think it capable of knowing everything; hence they think it a disgrace not to pronounce judgment, and imagine that intelligence consists in that and nothing else.  The philosopher believes that it consists in judging rightly.  He is better pleased with himself when he has suspended his faculty of coming to a conclusion, than if he had come to a conclusion without the proper grounds.  He prefers to brilliancy the pains of rightly distinguishing his ideas, of finding their true extent and exact connection.  He is never so attached to a system as not to feel all the force of the objections to it.  Most men are so strongly given over to their opinions that they do not take any trouble to make out those of others.  The philosopher, on the other hand, understands what he rejects, with the same breadth and the same accuracy as he understands what he adopts.”  Then Diderot turns characteristically from the intellectual to the social side.  “Our philosopher does not count himself an exile in the world; he does not suppose himself in an enemy’s country; he would fain find pleasure with others, and to find it he must give it; he is a worthy man