Note 556 — Chapter III
Reading edition
Ibid., pp. 54 et seq. Barruel represents the Encyclopedists as arguing that force could not be employed until there had first been a revolution in all religious ideas; hence L’Encyclopédie, with all its insinuating doubts, its artful cross-references, its veiled impiety, was planned to give the first great impulse in that direction. Thus the old forms of thought would perish “as it were, by inanition;” later, the laying of the axe to the altar would not be hazardous.