Excerpt from The Encyclopedia
Entry on the "Encyclopedia" by Diderot

From the Collaborative Translation Project of The Encyclopedia at the University of Michigan.

[ . . . ]

What an encyclopedia should do is supplement the execution of this project, extended not only to the various objects of our academies, but to every branch of human knowledge: an opus that can only be carried out by a society of men of letters and artists, dispersed, each concerned with his own division, and joined together only by the general interest of humankind, and by a feeling of mutual beneficence.

I say a society of men of letters and artists in order to assemble every talent. I will have them dispersed, because there is no existing society from which one can draw all the knowledge that is needed, and because, if you wanted the project to be forever in the making and never completed, you could do no better than to create such a society. Each society has its assemblies, the assemblies are separated by intervals of time, they last only a few hours, part of that time is lost in discussions, and the simplest objects occupy months on end; whence it will transpire, as one of the Forty was saying, who deploys more wit in conversation than many authors in their writings, that when the twelve volumes of the Encyclopédie have all been published we will still be on the first letter of our dictionary; whereas, he added, if those working on it held encyclopedic sessions, as we hold academic sessions, we would reach the end of our opus while they were still on the first letter of theirs; and he was right.

I add, men joined together only by the general interest of humankind, and by a feeling of mutual beneficence, because these being the most excellent motivations that can prompt men of good will to action, they are also the most durable. You can take pride personally in what you are doing; you stirs yourself up; you undertake for your colleague and friend what no one would attempt for any other consideration; and I dare to say, based on experience, that the outcome of these attempts is certain. The Encyclopédie has assembled its materials in a rather short time. It is not base interest that has united and hastened the authors; they have seen their efforts abetted by most of the men of letters from whom they had reason to expect some assistance; and they have been deterred in their labors only by those who had not the necessary talent to contribute a single good page to them. [ . . . ]