He was one of the shrewdest and most vigorous intelligences of the time, being in the front rank of men of the second order.

His quality was coarse, but this was only the effect of a thoroughly penetrating and masculine understanding.

His articles in the Encyclopaedia (_Declamation des Anciens_, _Etiquette_, etc.) are not very remarkable; but the reflections on conduct which he styled _Considerations sur les Moeurs de ce Siecle_ (1750), though rather hard in tone, abound in an acuteness, a breadth, a soundness of perception that entitle the book to the rare distinction, among the writings of moralists and social observers, of still being worth reading.

Morellet wrote upon some of the subjects of theology, and his contributions are remarkable as being the chief examples in the record of the encyclopaedic body of a distinctly and deliberately historic treatment of religion.

"I let people see," he wrote many years after, "that in such a collection as the Encyclopaedia we ought to treat the history and experience of the dogmas and discipline of the Christian, exactly like those of the religion of Brahma or Mahomet."[114] This sage and philosophic principle enabled him to write the article, Fils de Dieu (vol.vi.), without sliding into Arian, Nestorian, Socinian, or other heretical view on that fantastic theme.