It was the first effective introduction into France of these great and fundamental principles; that all knowledge is relative to our intelligence, that thought is not the measure of existence, nor the conceivableness of a proposition the test of its truth, and that our experience is not the limit to the possibilities of things.

That is an impatient criticism which dismisses the French philosophers with some light word as radically shallow and impotent.

Diderot grasped the doctrine of Relativity in some of the most important and far-reaching of all its bearings.

The fact that he and his allies used the doctrine as a weapon of combat against the standing organisation, is exactly what makes their history worth writing about.

The standing organisation was the antagonistic doctrine incarnate.