It has not yet entered upon an independent life of its own and received a distinct label, though it is already a vital force.
In reviewing the influences which were forming a new public opinion during the forty years before the Revolution, it is convenient for the present purpose to group together the thinkers (including Voltaire) associated with the Encyclopaedia, who represented a critical and consciously aggressive force against traditional theories and existing institutions.

The constructive thinker Rousseau was not less aggressive, but he stands apart and opposed, by his hostility to modern civilisation.

Thirdly, we must distinguish the school of Economists, also reformers and optimists, but of more conservative temper than the typical Encyclopaedists.
2.
The Encyclopaedia (1751-1765) has rightly been pronounced the central work of the rationalistic movement which made the France of 1789 so different from the France of 1715.

[Footnote: The general views which governed the work may be gathered from d'Alembert's introductory discourse and from Diderot's article Encyclopedie.

An interesting sketch of the principal contributors will be found in Morley's Diderot, i.
chap.v.Another modern study of the Encyclopaedic movement is the monograph of L.Ducros, Les Encyclopidistes (1900).