Abstract

Excerpt from Early Philosophical Works: Translated and Edited by Margaret Jourdain A Complete survey of the life and works of Diderot - whom Voltaire called Pantophile - is not attempted here, for the list of the topics he handled would be a very long one, including as it does various departments of art and science and speculation. The Letter on the Blind (the most interesting of his early works), however, shows him in two lights - as a free-thinker and as one of the long succession of thinkers who prepared the way for the theory of; evolution. The agitation caused by Diderot and his circle about the theory of transformism, it has been said, must have largely contributed to awaken the attention of Erasmus Darwin in England and Lamarck in France to the necessity of throwing more positive light on that great issue. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.