[30] Never was there any thing more contemptible than the physical and mechanical positions in Diderot's great work, the _Systeme de la Nature_, (Barruel affirms, that he was the author, and got 100 pistoles for the copy, from the person who related the story to him,) that long ago found that Diderot had assisted Robinet to make a book out of his Masonic Oration, which I mentioned in page 41. Robinet trusted to Diderot's knowledge in natural philosophy. But the Junto were ashamed of the book _De la Nature_. Diderot seems to have, after this, read Dr. Hartley's book, and has greatly refined on the crude system of Robinet. But after all, the _Systeme de la Nature_ is contemptible, if it be considered as pretending to what is received as science by a mechanical philosopher. It is not by the wisdom nor by the profound knowledge which these writers display, that they have acquired celebrity, a fame which has been so pernicious. It is by fine writing, by works addressed to the imagination and to the affections, by excellent dramas, by affecting moral essays, full of expressions of the greatest respect for virtue, the most tender benevolence, and the highest sentiments of honour and dignity.--By these means they fascinate all readers; they gain the esteem of the worthy, who imagine them sincere, and their pernicious doctrines are thus spread abroad, and steal into the minds of the dissolute, the licentious, and the unwary. But I am writing to Britons, who are considered by our neighbours on the Continent as a nation of philosophers--to the countrymen of Bacon, of Locke, of Newton--who are not to be wheedled like children, but must be reasoned with as men.--Voltaire, who decides without hesitation on the character of the most distant nations in the most remote antiquity, did not know us: he came among us, in the beginning of his career, with the highest expectations of our support, and hoped to make his fortune by his Pucelle d'Orleans. It was rejected with disdain--but we published his Henriade for him: and, notwithstanding his repeated disappointments of the same kind, he durst not offend his countrymen by slandering us, but joined in the profound respect paid by all to British science.--Our writers, whether on natural or moral science, are still regarded as standard classics, and are studied with care. Lord Verulam is acknowledged by every man of science to have given the first just description of true philosophy, pointed out its objects, and ascertained its mode of procedure--And Newton is equally allowed to have evinced the propriety of the Baconian precepts by his unequalled success, _suâ Mathesi facem preferente_.--The most celebrated philosophers on the Continent are those who have completed by demonstration the wonderful guesses of his penetrating genius. Bailli, or Condorcet, (I forget which,) struck with the inconceivable reaches of Newton's thoughts, breaks out, in the words of Lucretius,