The Encyclopédie published in 1751 and suppressed in 1759,was the major achievement of the French Enlightenment. The  aim of it’s compilers, in Diderot’s words, was to “change the common way of thinking” through the expansion of knowledge and the development of critical modes of thought. It’s spirit has been described as ‘Hamiltonianism plus the Bill of Rights’ and, because of its impact on promoting the revolutionary agenda, it has been called the Trojan Horse of the ancien regime.

Day laborer:     manual worker paid by the day. People like this make up the majority of the nation and their fate is what a good government should mainly have in mind. If the day laborer is poor, then the nation itself is poor.

Dessert:     the last course brought to the table. This course is called the  fruit  in great houses, and by those who want to imitate them, so that although dessert is a more appropriate and general word to designate the last course of a meal, since other things than fruit are served, dessert is today only a bourgeois term….The Romans’ desserts  offered no less diversity and magnificence than their other courses, and were much more spectacular. Towards the end of the Republic, women left the table when the dessert was served, since it sometimes ended with performances that modesty still did not allow the finer sex to witness. But when morals were entirely corrupted, women no longer knew either duty or rules of decency; all became equal.

Education:     is the care one takes of feeding, bringing up and instructing children; thus education has as goals, 1) the health and good constitution of the body; 2) what regards the rectitude and the instruction of the mind; 3) manners, that is the conduct of life, and social qualities. Children who come into the world, must form one day the society in which they will live. Their education is thus the most interesting subject, 1) for themselves, whom education must fashion such that they will be useful to that society, obtain its esteem, and find in it their well-being; 2) for their families, whom they must support and honor; 3) for the state itself, which must reap the fruits of the good education that the citizens that compose it receive….If every kind of education were imparted with enlightenment and perseverance, the motherland would be well constituted, well governed, and protected from the insults of its neighbors.

English language:     The English language is less pure, less clear, and less correct than the French language, but is richer, more epic and more energetic.

Fanaticism:     is blind and passionate zeal born of superstitious opinions, causing people to commit ridiculous, unjust, and cruel actions, not only without any shame or remorse, but even with a kind of joy and comfort. fanaticism , therefore, is only superstition put into practice. The particular causes of fanaticism are to be found: (1) In the nature of dogmas. If they are contrary to reason, they overthrow sound judgment and subject everything to imagination whose abuses are the greatest of all evils….2. In atrocious morals….3. In the confusion of duties….4. In the use of slander as a form of punishment, because the loss of one’s reputation produces a considerable amount of actual harm as a consequence….5. In the intolerance of one religion in regard to others, or of one sect among several of the same religion, because all hands join forces against the common enemy. Even neutrality is no longer possible when such a powerful group wants to make its authority felt; and whoever is not for it is against it….6. In persecution, which arises essentially from intolerance.

Idiot:     someone in whom a natural deficiency in the organs used for understanding is so great that he is unable to combine any idea, so that his condition seems, from this point of view, more limited than an animal’s. The difference between the idiot and the imbecile, it seems to me, is that people are born idiots , but become imbeciles.

Jew:     This religion, the author of the Persian Letters [Montesquieu] says, is an old trunk that has produced two branches, Christianity and Islam, which have covered the earth; or rather, he adds, she is a mother of two girls who have crushed her with a thousand plagues. But whatever bad treatment she has received from them, she never ceases to glory in having given birth to them. By means of both of them she embraces the world, while her venerable age embraces all times….When one considers the horrors that the Jews have experienced since J[esus] C[hrist], the carnage that they suffered under certain Roman emperors, and the slaughters that were repeated against them so many times in all the Christian states, one is astonished that this people still survives; yet not only does it survive, but according to appearances it is no less numerous today than it was long ago in the land of Canaan….In a word, one cannot express how this nation has been played with in every place from one century to the other. They had their goods confiscated when they accepted Christianity; and they were burned when they did not want to accept it….Since that time princes have opened their eyes to their own interests and treated the Jews with greater moderation. They have sensed, in some parts of the north and south, that they could not do without their help. But, without speaking of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Holland and England, which are animated by the noblest principles, have accorded them every possible mild treatment under the invariable protection of their governments. Thus dispersed in our day with the greatest security they have ever had in every country in Europe where commerce reigns, they have become instruments by means of which the most distant nations can converse and correspond together. They have become like the pegs and nails that one uses in a great building, and which are necessary to join all of its parts. There is regret in Spain for having expelled them, as well as in France for having persecuted subjects whose belief differed in a few points from that of the prince.

Machiavellianism:     an abhorrent type of politics that can be described in two words – the art of tyranny – whose principles were propagated in the works of the Florentine, Machiavelli….Few works have caused such a stir as the treatise on the prince: it is here that he teaches sovereigns to spurn religion, the rules of justice, the inviolability of pacts and all that is sacred, when it in one’s interest to do so. The fifteenth and twenty-fifth chapters could be entitled ‘circumstances where it is suitable for the prince to be a villain…Lord Chancellor Bacon made no mistake when he said: this man teaches tyrants nothing; they are well aware of what they have to do, but he informs the common people of what they have to fear.

Man:     There are only two true sources of wealth: man and the land. Man is worth nothing without the land, and land yields nothing without man. The true worth of man lies in numbers; the more numerous a society is, the more powerful it will be in times of peace and the more formidable in times of war. This is why a sovereign should give serious attention to increasing the number of his subjects. The greater their number, the more merchants, workers, and soldiers he will have….It is not sufficient, however, for a state to have many men; they must be industrious and healthy. Men will be healthy if their standards of morality are high and if they can easily become and remain affluent. Men will be industrious if they are free. The lack of commercial freedom can result, in a given province, in affluence that can become an evil as terrible as poverty. In such a case the nation is being subjected to the worst possible government. Our children will be our men; a country, therefore, must take care of its children. This means that special attention must be given to fathers, mothers, and nurses. The five thousand children who are abandoned each year in Paris could be a seedbed for soldiers, sailors, and tillers of the soil.

Natural Law:     Law of nature, or natural law; in its most extended sense, refers to certain principles inspired only by nature that are common to men and to animals: on this law are based the union of male and female, the procreation of children and concern for their education, the love of liberty, the conservation of one’s own person, and the effort each man makes to defend himself when attacked by others. But it is an abuse of the term natural law to use it to refer to the impulses that govern the behavior of animals; for they have not the use of reason and are therefore incapable of perceiving any law or justice. More frequently, we mean by natural law certain rules of justice and equity, which natural reason alone has established among men, or to put it better, which God has engraved in our hearts. Such are the fundamental precepts of law and of all justice: to live honestly, to offend no one, and to render unto every man what belongs to him. From these general precepts are derived many other particular rules, which nature alone, that is to say reason and equity, suggests to men….The means of discerning what is just or unjust, or what is commanded by the natural law [la loi naturelle], are 1. an instinct, or a kind of internal feeling that inclines us toward certain actions or away from them; 2. reason, which verifies our instinct; it develops principles, and deduces consequences from them; 3. the will of God which, when known to man, becomes his supreme rule. Man cannot acquire a knowledge of the natural laws [les lois naturelles] unless he examines his nature, his temperament or constitution, and his condition.

Quakers:     it is the odious nickname given by some to a peaceful sect whose religious doctrine was time and again mocked and whose morality eventually forced respect. As regards its dogmas and even more so its behavior, it is utterly unlike the 16th century German Anabaptists who were a repulsive bunch of rustic and ferocious men who carried their fanaticism as far as human nature can go when abandoned to its passions….you can always brand Quakers as fanatics, they will still be highly respectable ones. I cannot help declaring that in my opinion they are a great people, full of virtue, industriousness, intelligence, and wisdom. They are the people driven by the most comprehensive principle of benevolence who ever appeared on the face of the earth. Their charity extends to the whole human race and they deny to no one the divine mercy of the gods. They publicly acknowledge that everyone is entitled to freedom. They disapprove of taxes but ungrudgingly pay them. Finally they very well could be the only Christian sect whose members constantly act according to their principles.

Salt, Tax on:     An imposition in France that was formerly called the gabelle, an article that can readily be consulted; but as the modern author of the Considerations on Finance has said, a good citizen would not know how to handle the sad reflections which this tax casts into his heart….Humanity would shudder while reading the list of all the tortures ordered in regard to this tax from its establishment….Finally, if the arbitrary taille did not exist, the tax on salt would perhaps be the most pernicious one imaginable. Consequently all specialists of economics and the most intelligent ministers of finance have regarded the replacement of these impositions as the most useful operation for the relief of the people and the increase of public revenue. Diverse expedients have been proposed, but none up to the present has seemed to be sufficiently reliable.