The sublime meditations of Malebranche and Descartes were less calculated to shake materialism than a single observation of Malpighi's.

If this dangerous hypothesis is tottering in our days, it is to experimental physics that such a result is due.

It is only in the works of Newton, of Muschenbroek, of Hartzoeker, and of Nieuwentit, that people have found satisfactory proofs of the existence of a being of sovereign intelligence.

Thanks to the works of these great men, the world is no longer a god; it is a machine with its cords, its pulleys, its springs, its weights."[32] In other words, Diderot had as yet not made his way beyond the halting-place which has been the favourite goal of English physicists from Newton down to Faraday.[33] Consistent materialism had not yet established itself in his mind.

Meanwhile he laid about him with his common sense, just as Voltaire did, though Diderot has more weightiness of manner.