It made anthropomorphism and the absolute the very base and spring alike of individual and of social life.

No growth was possible until this speculative base had been transformed.

Hence the profound significance of what looks like a mere discussion of one of the minor problems of metaphysics.

Diderot was not the first to discover Relativity, nor did he establish it; but it was he who introduced it into the literature of his country at the moment when circumstances were ripe for it.
Condillac, as we have said, had published his first work, the Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge, three years before (1746).

This was a simple and undeveloped rendering of the doctrine of Locke, that the ultimate source of our notions lies in impressions made upon the senses, shaped and combined by reflection.