Note 1148 — Chapter VII · (continued 2)

The remarks which Thomas made upon Descartes in 1765, in an éloge crowned by the Academy, illustrate the opinions which, in the latter half of the eighteenth century, were becoming rapidly diffused in France. See the passage beginning ‘O préjugés! ô ridicule fierté des places et du rang!’ &c. Œuvres de Descartes, vol. i. p. 74. Certainly no one would have used such language, on such an occasion, thirty years earlier. So, too, the Count de Ségur says of the younger nobles before the Revolution, ‘nous préférions un mot d'éloges de D'Alembert, de Diderot, à la faveur la plus signalée d'un prince.’ Mém. de Ségur, vol. i. p. 142: see also vol. ii. p. 46.