As for the curious particularities that he recorded from Mademoiselle de La Chaux and that he documented in his writing, I will add only a single fact - that he omitted through forgetfulness and that was worthy of being conserved - that this so tender, so passionate, so interesting by her extreme sensibility and by her misfortunes, above all so worthy of a better fate, had also been friends with D´Alembert and the Abbot de Condillac. She was in a position to hear and assess the works of these two philosophers. She had even given the latter, who´s Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge she had read, the very wise advice of returning to his first thoughts, and, if I may use the expression, to begin at the beginning, i.e., the reject with Hobbes the absurd hypothesis of a distinction between two substances in man. I dare say that this very philosophical view, this sole idea of Mademoiselle de La Chaux suggests more breadth, depth and accuracy in her mind that the whole of Condillac´s metaphysics, in which there is in effect a radical and destructive vice that affects the entire system, and yields more or less vague and uncertain results. One sees that Mademoiselle de La Chaux sensed this; and one regrets that Condillac, more docile to the judicious advice of this enlightened woman with uncommon insight, did not follow the route that she pointed him towards. He would not have scattered so many errors over the one he decided upon, and upon which one can only run astray, as happens daily to those that take him as their guide. See, on this philosopher, the preliminary reflections that serve as an introduction to his article, in the METHODICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA, Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Philosophy, t. II, and what I have again in my Historical and Philosophical Memoires on the life and work of Diderot. (N.)
[3] Antoine de Ricouart, count of Hérouville, born in Paris in 1713, is the author of Treatise on the Legions, which carries the name of the marshal of Saxony [4], Paris, 1757. He furnished the authors of the Encyclopédie with some curious dissertations. It was hoped that they be sent to the minister under Louis XV, but an unequal marriage excluded it. He died in 1782. (BR.)
[4] Only in the first three editions. The work had been first printed on a copy communicated to the marshal and was found in his papers.
[5] Montucla was only thirty years old when he published his History of Mathematics, Paris, 1758. It was reviewed and finished by Lalande, Paris, 1799-1802. (Br.)
[6] See t. 1, p. 399.
[7] Le Camus (Antoine), who left behind other memories of charity.
We owe to him a large number of works of literature and of medicine. We will here cite only: The Medicine of the Mind, Paris, 1753. Strategy for Wiping Out Smallpox, 1767. Practical Medicine Made Simpler, More Reliable and More Methodical, 1769. Numerous memoirs on different subjects of medicine. Abdéker, or the Art of Conserving Beauty, 1754-1756. Love and Friendship, comedy, 1763. The Pastoral Romance of Daphnis and Chloe, translated from Longus´ Greek by Amyot, with a double translation, Paris, 1757. This new translation by Le Camus is still worth reading after the one just published by M. Courier in Sainte-Pélagie, where he was detained for a work commissioned by the estate of Chambord. Paris, 1821. (BR.)
[8] Gardeil died on April 19, 1808, at the age of 82. We have from him a Translation of Hippocrates´ Medical Works, from the Greek text according to the Foës edition, Toulouse, 1801. (Br.)—He Practiced in Montpellier.