the Café Procope

Les Éleuthéromanes

J'en atteste les temps; j'en appelle à tout âge; I of them attest the times; I of them appeal to all age; I display the times; I appeal to the age Jamais au public avantage Never to the public advantages The public never has the advantage L'homme n'a franchement sacrifié ses droits; The man not has clearly sacrificed his rights; Certainly, mankind has not sacrificed his rights; S'il osait de son cœur n'écouter que la voix, If he dared of his heart not to hear but that the voice, If mankind dared but to listen to the voice of his heart, Changeant tout à coup de langage, changing all at a blow of language, changing suddenly the language, Il nous dirait, comme l'hôte des bois: He to us would say, as the host of the woods: He would say to us, as he would to the animals of the woods: La nature n'a fait ni serviteur ni maître; The nature not has made neither servant nor master; Nature created neither servant nor master; Je ne veux ni donner ni recevoir de lois. I not see neither to give nor receive of law. I seek neither to rule nor to serve. Et ses mains ourdiraient les entrailles du prêtre, And his hands would weave the entrails of the priest, And his hands would weave the entrails of the priest, Au défaut d'un cordon pour étrangler les rois. To the lack of a cord for to strangle the kings. For the lack of a cord with which to strangle kings. Without the original text and the interlinear text, one has as my approximate translation of Diderot: I display the times; I appeal to the age The public is never advantaged Certainly, mankind has not sacrificed his rights; If mankind dared but to listen to the voice of his heart, changing suddenly the language, He would say to us, as he would to the animals of the woods: Nature created neither servant nor master; I seek neither to rule nor to serve. And his hands would weave the entrails of the priest, For the lack of a cord with which to strangle kings. A similar sentiment is attributed to Jean Meslier (1664–1729), but, as of yet, I have no citation for it: "Je voudrais, et ce sera le dernier et le plus ardent de mes souhaits, je voudrais que le dernier des rois fût étranglé avec les boyaux du dernier prêtre."

In 1755, French writer and philosopher Denis Diderot warned:As long as the centuries continue to unfold, the number of books will grow continu-ally, and one can predict that a time will come when it will be almost as difficult to learn anything from books as from the direct study of the whole universe. It will be almost as convenient to search for some bit of truth concealed in nature as it will be to find it hidden away in an immense multitude of bound volumes. When that time comes, a project, until then neglected because the need for it was not felt, will have to be undertaken.91 That project, for Diderot and his Enlightenment confreres, was the first encyclopedia.

In the relatively early years of the Web, the mass of content wassmall enough that a group of people at Yahoo could organize it bycategory, in something like a digital version of the map of humanknowledge created by the French Encyclopedists.