It must be admitted that no consistent and definite language is adhered to from beginning to end.  D’Alembert’s prophecy that time would disclose to people what the writers really thought, behind what fear of the censorship compelled them to say, is only partially fulfilled.

The idea of miracle is sapped not by direct arguments, but by the indirect influences of science, and the exposition of the successes of scientific method.  It was here that the Encyclopaedia exerted really destructive power, and it did so in the only way in which power of that kind can be exerted either wisely or effectually.  The miracle of a divine revelation, of grace, of the mass, began to wear a different look in men’s eyes, as they learned more of the physical processes of the universe.  We should describe the work of the Encyclopaedia as being to make its readers lose their interest, rather than their belief, in mysteries.  This is the normal process of theological dissolution.  It unfolded a vast number of scientific conceptions in all branches of human activity, a surprising series of acquisitions, a vivid panorama of victories won by the ingenuity and travail of man.  A contemplation of the wonders that man had wrought for himself, replaced meditation on the wonders that were alleged to have been wrought by the gods.  The latter were not so much denied by the plain reader, as they were gradually left out of sight and forgotten.  Nobody now cares to disprove Jupiter and Juno, Satyrs and Hamadryads.

Diderot constantly insists on the propriety, the importance, the indispensableness of keeping the provinces of science and philosophy apart from the province of theology.  This separation is much sought in our own day as a means of saving theology.  Diderot designed it to save philosophy.  He felt that the distinct recognition of positive thought as supreme within the widest limits then covered by it, would ultimately lead to the banishment of theological thought to a region of its own, too distant and too infertile for men to weary themselves in pursuit of it.  His conception was to supplant the old ways of thinking and the old objects of intellectual interest by new ones.  He trusted to the intrinsic fitness and value of the new knowledge and new views of human life, to displace the old.  This marks him for a constructive thinker.  He replaced barren theological interests that had outlived their time, by all those great groups of living and fruitful interests which glow and sparkle in the volumes of the Encyclopaedia.  Here was the effective damage that the Encyclopaedia inflicted on the church as the organ of a stationary superstition.  Some of the articles remind us on what a strange borderland France stood in those days, between debasing credulity and wholesome light.  We are so sensible of the new air that breathes impalpably over the book, that when the old theological fancies appear for form’s sake, and are solemnly marshalled in orthodox state, the contrast and the incongruity are so marked that one is amused by what looks like a subtle irony, mocking the censor under his very eyes.  Who can help smiling at the grave question, Adam, le premier de tous les hommes, a-t-il ete philosophe? Such disputes as whether it is proper to baptize abortions, ceased to interest a public that had begun to educate itself by discussions on the virtue of Inoculation.