Considering the period at which this article was written, we are astonished less by its vagueness and incompleteness than by its bravery and generosity. The dissolute despotism of Louis the Fifteenth poisoned France. The antechambers of the King were thronged by selfish nobles and fawning courtiers. The councils of Government were controlled by royal mistresses. The King, only a few years before, in defiance of Equality,--but in entire harmony with the conduct of the School Committee in Boston,--founded a military school _for nobles only_, carrying into education the distinction of Caste. At such a period the Encyclopedia did well in uttering important and effective truth. The _sentiment_ of Equality was fully declared. Nor should we be disappointed, that, at this early day, even the boldest philosophers did not adequately perceive, or, if they perceived, did not dare to utter, our axiom of liberty. Thus it is with all moral and political ideas. First appearing as a sentiment, they awake a noble impulse, filling the soul with generous sympathy, and encouraging to congenial effort. Slowly recognized, they finally pass into a formula, to be acted upon, to be applied, to be defended in the concerns of life, as principles. Almost contemporaneously with this article in the Encyclopedia our attention is arrested by a poor solitary, of humble extraction, born at Geneva, in Switzerland, of irregular education and life, a wanderer from his birthplace, enjoying a temporary home in France,--Jean Jacques Rousseau. Of audacious genius, setting at nought received opinions, he rushed into notoriety by an eccentric essay "On the Origin of the Inequality among Men," where he sustained the irrational paradox, that men are happier in a state of Nature than under the laws of Civilization. At a later day appeared his famous work on "The Social Contract." In both the sentiment of Equality is invoked against abuses of society, and language is employed tending far beyond Equality in Civil and Political Rights. The conspicuous position since awarded to the speculations of Rousseau, and their influence in diffusing this sentiment, would make this sketch imperfect without allusion to him; but he taught men to feel rather than to know, and his words have more of inspiration than of precision. The French Revolution was at hand. That great outbreak for enfranchisement was the expression of this sentiment. Here it received distinct and authoritative enunciation. In the Constitutions of Government successively adopted, amid the throes of bloody struggle, the equality of men was constantly proclaimed. Kings, nobles, and all distinctions of birth, passed away before this mighty and triumphant truth.