Education: The Voice

Thumbing through the first volumes of the big new encyclopedia one evening at the Trianon, France's King Louis XV showed frank bewilderment. His ministers had told him that the work was subversive, and the King had duly ordered its confiscation. But—as Voltaire tells the story—the King read all about the rights of the crown and promptly began to question his own decision. "Upon my word," cried His Majesty to Madame de Pompadour, "I can't tell why they spoke so ill of this book."

There was plenty of reason for the King's ministers to speak ill of the book. It was edited by fiery Philosopher-Dramatist Denis Diderot, and he had made it a good deal more than a compilation of all the knowledge that was available at the middle of the 18th century. To many a Frenchman it became the voice of Reason itself—a major intellectual weapon of the Revolution, one of the brightest ornaments of the Enlightenment, the foundation stone of the new secularism. Though Frenchmen have long since ceased to read it, they have never ceased to revere it. Last week they were expressing their reverence officially.

"Turning Point." To honor the sooth anniversary of the publication of Volume I of Diderot's Encyclopedic, France has embarked on a year-long series of celebrations. The Archives Nationales de France have published an exact reproduction of Diderot's prospectus. The Bibliotheque Nationale has put on a massive exhibition of his original manuscripts and illustrations. Meanwhile,the Sorbonne has commissioned six monographs on various aspects of the work; and the Ministry of

Education is toying with the idea of backing a film based on Diderot's life. The ministry has also decreed that schools must place special emphasis on the encyclopedia in 1952. Cried Minister Andre Marie: "This work, by the spirit in which it was undertaken . . . marks the turning point in ideas which ushered in our modern times."

Intolerance & Anagrams. The ushering began in 1745, when a Paris printer named André François Le Breton hired the impecunious Diderot to work on a modest two-volume encyclopedia. Diderot soon expanded the project, decided to "assemble the knowledge scattered over the surface of the earth . . ." Before he was through, he had persuaded some of the best brains in Europe to help him.

D'Alembert wrote on mathematics, Turgot on economics, Quesnay on agriculture, Buffon on nature, Rousseau on music, and Montesquieu on taste. Diderot himself wrote on everything from intolerance and Spinoza to anagrams and onomancy—the "science" of telling a man's fortune by the letters in his name. He treated topics that intellectuals had been apt to ignore before. He spent hours studying iron foundries and gunpowder mills at first hand, imported workers from the factories of Lyons to help him with an article on the velvet trade.