Voltaire himself was a sceptic. Behind him followed men who denied belief in a personal God and the immortality of the soul. Diderot (1713–1784) and D’Alembert (1717–1783), with indefatigable energy published the ‘Encyclopædia,’ or dictionary of universal knowledge, inculcating, at least indirectly, atheistical opinions, and designed, by the destruction of ignorance and superstition, to undermine the whole fabric of Christian theology. Before the end of his long life, in 1778, Voltaire was the most eminent man in France, and sceptical and atheistical opinions were commonly held and openly professed by men and women of the upper and middle classes. The triumph of the new philosophy was not, indeed, due merely to the powers of irony or the reasoning of its advocates. The scandalous abuses within the Church had prepared the way for its reception. The attacked had no efficient weapon with which to repel their assailants. The Church was without reforming energy or proselytising zeal. On the arm of the State she could not rely for support with the same confidence as in former times. The government was incapable of stamping out the new movement, nor was it prepared seriously to make the attempt. The official class, which came out of the middle class, was, like all others, permeated with the new ideas. The occasional arrest of authors and printers, and seizure of types and presses, did but increase the virulence of the attack, and made the forbidden books more eagerly sought after. The clergy were the more open to attack because they were interested in the maintenance of privileges and abuses which inflicted cruel wrongs on the working classes, while the new philosophy aimed at destroying whatever stood in the way of material progress and the happiness of the masses. In opposition to the Church’s doctrine of the natural depravity of human nature, its adherents taught that man is born good, and that wrong-doing is the result of ignorance; inculcated the importance of educating all classes, and refused to recognise limits to the improvement of which both individuals and the race are capable. Often accompanied by a sensual view of life, which accorded with the profligacy common amongst the upper classes at the time, this high opinion of human nature developed a respect for man as man, regardless of social position, race, or creed, and a passionate hatred of inequalities founded on such distinctions. ♦Economists.♦ A school of political economists, starting from the theory that all men originally had equal rights, and every man liberty to employ his time, his hands, and his brains according to his own advantage, demonstrated the principles of free trade, and declared entire liberty of agriculture, entire liberty of commerce and industry, entire liberty of the press to be the true foundations of national prosperity. Appealing to abstract principles of justice, humanity and right, Voltairians and Economists