and brought the new ideas, the new habit of enquiry and analysis, the new fearlessness of social comment, and the new humanitarian zeal, to investigating political and economic phenomena, to preparing the way for practical reform. The glory of the Encyclopaedists lies not in their contempt for things holy, but in their hatred of things unjust, in their denunciation of the trade in slaves, of the inequalities of taxation, of the corruption of justice, of the wastefulness of wars, in their dreams of social progress, in their sympathy with the rising empire of industry, which was beginning to transform the world. Posterity is more familiar with the defects than with the virtues of this strange episode in human thought. Its ideals were disfigured by many faults--by unreality, political ignorance, dangerous license, violent extremes. In its anxiety to escape from conventions, it relaxed necessary codes. It made impiety obstreperous. It hastily adopted a belief in the perfectibility of man, to fill the niche where once had rested a belief in the perfection of God. In place of the traditions and systems which it uprooted, it taught its followers to look for guidance to their own instincts, and to vague aspirations after imaginary systems of natural law. It planted in the French people an inextinguishable desire to abolish everything which reminded it of the past, however much they might suffer in the attempt. Its teaching seemed to discourage the impulses of virtue, and to offer no satisfaction for the spiritual needs of man. Helvetius' famous treatise _De l'Esprit_ laid down, amid much shallow commonplace, the depressing doctrine that self-interest dictates both the conduct and the views of men, and that the attainment of pleasure is their only final aim. Holbach's not less famous _Système de la Nature_ touched the climax of a century of philosophical commotion, in its passionate indictment of the vices of kings and the slavery of men, in its direct demand for revolution, in its remorseless rejection of every form of faith, in its insistence upon atheism and materialism as the only true philosophy of life. 'Religious and political errors,' cried Holbach, 'have changed the universe into a valley of tears.'