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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Diderot and the Encyclop�dists (Vol 1 of 2)
+by John Morley
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Diderot and the Encyclop�dists (Vol 1 of 2)
+
+Author: John Morley
+
+Release Date: February 18, 2005 [EBook #15098]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DIDEROT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Paul Murray, LN Yaddanapudi, Leonard Johnson and the PG
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+DIDEROT
+
+AND
+
+THE ENCYCLOP�DISTS
+
+
+BY JOHN MORLEY
+
+
+VOL. I.
+
+
+LONDON
+
+MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
+
+NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+
+1905
+
+
+
+
+_First published elsewhere_
+
+_New Edition 1886. Reprinted 1891, 1897, 1905_
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The present work closes a series of studies on the literary preparation
+for the French Revolution. It differs from the companion volumes on
+Voltaire and Rousseau, in being much more fully descriptive. In the case
+of those two famous writers, every educated reader knows more or less of
+their performances. Of Diderot and his circle, such knowledge cannot be
+taken for granted, and I have therefore thought it best to occupy a
+considerable space, which I hope that those who do me the honour to read
+these pages will not find excessive, with what is little more than
+transcript or analysis. Such a method will at least enable the reader to
+see what those ideas really were, which the social and economic
+condition of France on the eve of the convulsion made so welcome to men.
+The shortcomings of the encyclop�dic group are obvious enough. They have
+lately been emphasised in the ingenious and one-sided exaggerations of
+that brilliant man of letters, Mr. Taine. The social significance and
+the positive quality of much of their writing is more easily missed, and
+this side of their work it has been one of my principal objects, alike
+in the case of Voltaire, of Rousseau, and of Diderot, to bring into the
+prominence that it deserves in the history of opinion.
+
+The edition of Diderot's works to which the references are made, is that
+in twenty volumes by the late Mr. Ass�zat and Mr. Maurice Tourneux. The
+only other serious book on Diderot with which I am acquainted is
+Rosenkranz's valuable _Diderot's Leben_, published in 1866, and
+abounding in full and patient knowledge. Of the numerous criticisms on
+Diderot by Raumer, Arndt, Hettner, Damiron, Bersot, and above all by Mr.
+Carlyle, I need not make more particular mention.
+
+_May, 1878._
+
+
+NOTE.
+
+     Since the following pages were printed, an American
+     correspondent writes to me with reference to the dialogue
+     between Franklin and Raynal, mentioned on page 218, Vol.
+     II.:--"I have now before me Volume IV. of the _American Law
+     Journal_, printed at Philadelphia in the year 1813, and at
+     page 458 find in full, 'The Speech of Miss Polly Baker,
+     delivered before a court of judicature in _Connecticut_, where
+     she was prosecuted.'" Raynal, therefore, would have been right
+     if instead of Massachusetts he had said Connecticut; and
+     either Franklin told an untruth, or else Silas Deane.
+
+     _September, 1878._
+
+
+
+
+          CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
+
+
+          CHAPTER I.
+          PRELIMINARY.
+
+          The Church in the middle of the century
+          New phase in the revolt
+          The Encyclop�dia, its symbol
+          End of the reaction against the Encyclop�dia
+          Diderot's position in the movement
+
+
+          CHAPTER II.
+          YOUTH.
+
+          Birth and birthplace (1713)
+          His family
+          Men of letters in Paris
+          Diderot joins their company
+          His life in Paris: his friendly character
+          Stories of his good-nature
+          His tolerance for social reprobates
+          His literary struggles
+          Marriage (1743)
+
+
+          CHAPTER III.
+          EARLY WRITINGS.
+
+          Diderot's mismanagement of his own talents
+          Apart from this, a great talker rather than a great writer
+          A man of the Socratic type
+          Hack-work for the booksellers
+          The Philosophical Thoughts (1746)
+          Shaftesbury's influence
+          Scope of the Philosophical Thoughts
+          On the Sufficiency of Natural Religion (1747)
+          Explanation of the attraction of Natural Religion
+          Police supervision over men of letters
+          Two pictures of the literary hack
+          Seizure of the Sceptic's Walk (1747)
+          Its drift
+          A volume of stories (1748)
+          Diderot's view of the fate and character of women
+
+
+          CHAPTER IV.
+          THE NEW PHILOSOPHY.
+
+          Voltaire's account of Cheselden's operation
+          Diderot publishes the Letter on the Blind (1749)
+          Its significance
+          Condillac and Diderot
+          Account of the Letter on the Blind
+          The pith of it, an application of Relativity to the conception
+              of God
+          Saunderson of Cambridge
+          Argument assigned to him
+          Curious anticipation of a famous modern hypothesis
+          Voltaire's criticism
+          Effect of Diderot's philosophic position on the system
+              of the Church
+          Not merely a dispute in metaphysics
+          Illustration of Diderot's practical originality
+          Points of literary interest
+          The Letter on Deaf Mutes (1751)
+          Condillac's Statue
+          Diderot imprisoned at Vincennes (1749)
+          Rousseau's visit to him
+          Breach with Madame de Puisieux
+          Diderot released from captivity
+
+
+          CHAPTER V.
+          THE ENCYCLOP�DIA.
+          (1) ITS HISTORY.
+
+          Previous examples of the Encyclop�dic idea
+          True parentage of Diderot's Encyclop�dia
+          Origin of the undertaking
+          Co-operation of D'Alembert: his history and character
+          Diderot and D'Alembert on the function of literature
+          Presiding characteristic of the Encyclop�dia
+          Its more eminent contributors
+          The unsought volunteers
+          Voltaire's share in it
+          Its compliance with reigning prejudice
+          Its aim, not literature but life
+          Publication of first and second volumes (1751-52)
+          Affair of De Prades
+          Diderot's vindication of him (1752)
+          Marks rupture between the Philosophers and the Jansenists
+          Royal decree suppressing first two volumes (1752)
+          Failure of the Jesuits to carry on the work
+          Four more volumes published
+          The seventh volume (1757)
+          Arouses violent hostility
+          The storm made fiercer by Helv�tius's _L'Esprit_
+          Proceedings against the Encyclop�dia
+          Their significance
+          They also mark singular reaction within the school of
+              Illumination
+          Retirement of D'Alembert
+          Diderot continues the work alone for seven years
+          His harassing mortifications
+          The Encyclop�dia at Versailles
+          Reproduction and imitations
+          Diderot's payment
+
+          (2) GENERAL CONTENTS.
+
+          Transformation of a speculative into a social attack
+          Circumstances of practical opportuneness
+          Broad features of Encyclop�dic revolution
+          Positive spirit of the Encyclop�dia
+          Why we call it the organ of a political work
+          Articles on Agriculture
+          On the _Gabelle_ and the _Taille_
+          On Privilege
+          On the _Corve�e_
+          On the Militia
+          On Endowments, Fairs, and Industrial Guilds
+          On Game and the Chase
+          Enthusiasm for the details of industry
+          Meaning of the importance assigned to industry and science
+          Intellectual side of the change
+          Attitude of the Encyclop�dia to religion
+          Diderot's intention under this head
+          How far the scheme fulfilled his intention
+          The Preliminary Discourse
+          Recognition of the value of discussion
+          And of toleration
+
+          (3) DIDEROT'S CONTRIBUTIONS.
+
+          Their immense confusion
+          Constant insinuation of sound doctrines
+          And of practical suggestions
+          Diderot not always above literary trifling
+          No taste for barren erudition
+          On Montaigne and Bayle
+          Occasional bursts of moralising
+          Varying attitude as to theology
+          The practical arts
+          Second-hand sources
+          Inconsistencies
+          Treatment of metaphysics
+          On Spinosa
+          On Leibnitz
+          On Liberty
+          Astonishing self-contradiction
+          Political articles
+          On the mechanism of government
+          Anticipation of Cobdenic ideas
+          Conclusion
+
+
+          CHAPTER VI.
+          SOCIAL LIFE (1759-1770).
+
+          Diderot's relations with Madame Voland
+          His letters to her
+          His Regrets on My Old Dressing-gown
+          Domestic discomfort
+          His indomitable industry
+          Life at Grandval
+          Meditations on human existence
+          Interest in the casuistry of human feeling
+          Various sayings
+          A point in rhetoric
+          Holbach's impressions of England
+          Two cases of conscience
+          A story of human wickedness
+          Method and Genius: an Apologue
+          Conversation
+          Annihilation
+          Characteristic of the century
+          Diderot's inexhaustible friendliness
+          The Abb� Monnier
+          Mademoiselle Jodin
+          Landois
+          Rousseau
+          Grimm
+          Diderot's money affairs
+          Succour rendered by Catherine of Russia
+          French booksellers in the eighteenth century
+          Dialogue between Diderot and D'Alembert
+          English opinion on Diderot's circle
+
+
+          CHAPTER VII.
+          THE STAGE.
+
+          In what sense Diderot the greatest genius of the century
+          Mark of his theory of the drama
+          Diderot's influence on Lessing
+          His play, _The Natural Son_ (1757)
+          Its quality illustrated
+          His sense of the importance of pantomime
+          The dialogues appended to _The Natural Son_
+          His second play, _The Father of the Family_ (1758)
+          One radical error of his dramatic doctrine
+          Modest opinion of his own experiments
+          His admiration for Terence
+          Diderot translates Moore's _Gamester_
+          On Shakespeare
+          The Paradox on the Player
+          Account of Garrick
+          On the truth of the stage
+          His condemnation of the French classic stage
+          The foundations of dramatic art
+          Diderot claims to have created a new kind of drama
+          No Diderotian school
+          Why the Encyclop�dists could not replace the classic
+              drama
+          The great drama of the eighteenth century
+
+
+          CHAPTER VIII.
+          "RAMEAU'S NEPHEW."
+
+          The mood that inspired this composition
+          History of the text
+          Various accounts of the design of _Rameau's Nephew_
+          Juvenal's Parasite
+          Lucian
+          Diderot's picture of his original
+          Not without imaginative strokes
+          More than a literary diversion
+          Sarcasms on Palissot
+          The musical controversy
+
+
+
+
+DIDEROT.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+PRELIMINARY.
+
+
+There was a moment in the last century when the Gallican church hoped
+for a return of internal union and prosperity. This brief era of hope
+coincided almost exactly with the middle of the century. Voltaire was in
+exile at Berlin. The author of the Persian Letters and the Spirit of
+Laws was old and near his end. Rousseau was copying music in a garret.
+The Encyclop�dia was looked for, but only as a literary project of some
+associated booksellers. The Jansenists, who had been so many in number
+and so firm in spirit five-and-twenty years earlier, had now sunk to a
+small minority of the French clergy. The great ecclesiastical body at
+length offered an unbroken front to its rivals, the great judicial
+bodies. A patriotic minister was indeed audacious enough to propose a
+tax upon ecclesiastical property, but the Church fought the battle and
+won. Troops had just been despatched to hunt and scatter the Protestants
+of the desert, and bigots exulted in the thought of pastors swinging on
+gibbets, and heretical congregations fleeing for their lives before the
+fire of orthodox musketry. The house of Austria had been forced to
+suffer spoliation at the hands of the infidel Frederick, but all the
+world was well aware that the haughty and devout Empress-Queen would
+seize a speedy opportunity of taking a crushing vengeance; France would
+this time be on the side of righteousness and truth. For the moment a
+churchman might be pardoned if he thought that superstition, ignorance,
+abusive privilege, and cruelty were on the eve of the smoothest and most
+triumphant days that they had known since the Reformation.
+
+We now know how illusory this sanguine anticipation was destined to
+prove, and how promptly. In little more than forty years after the
+triumphant enforcement of the odious system of confessional
+certificates, then the crowning event of ecclesiastical supremacy, Paris
+saw the Feast of the Supreme Being, and the adoration of the Goddess of
+Reason. The Church had scarcely begun to dream before she was rudely and
+peremptorily awakened. She found herself confronted by the most
+energetic, hardy, and successful assailants whom the spirit of progress
+ever inspired. Compared with the new attack, Jansenism was no more than
+a trifling episode in a family quarrel. Thomists and Molinists became as
+good as confederates, and Quietism barely seemed a heresy. In every age,
+even in the very depth of the times of faith, there had arisen
+disturbers of the intellectual peace. Almost each century after the
+resettlement of Europe by Charlemagne had procured some individual, or
+some little group, who had ventured to question this or that article of
+the ecclesiastical creed, to whom broken glimpses of new truth had come,
+and who had borne witness against the error or inconsistency or
+inadequateness of old ways of thinking. The questions which presented
+themselves to the acuter minds of a hundred years ago, were present to
+the acuter minds who lived hundreds of years before that. The more
+deeply we penetrate into the history of opinion, the more strongly are
+we tempted to believe that in the great matters of speculation no
+question is altogether new, and hardly any answer is altogether new. But
+the Church had known how to deal with intellectual insurgents, from
+Abelard in the twelfth century down to Giordano Bruno and Vanini in the
+seventeenth. They were isolated; they were for the most part submissive;
+and if they were not, the arm of the Church was very long and her grasp
+mortal. And all these meritorious precursors were made weak by one
+cardinal defect, for which no gifts of intellectual acuteness could
+compensate. They had the scientific idea, but they lacked the social
+idea. They could have set opinion right about the efficacy of the
+syllogism, and the virtue of entities and quiddities. They could have
+taught Europe earlier than the Church allowed it to learn that the sun
+does not go round the earth, and that it is the earth which goes round
+the sun. But they were wholly unfitted to deal with the prodigious
+difficulties of moral and social direction. This function, so
+immeasurably more important than the mere discovery of any number of
+physical relations, it was the glory of the Church to have discharged
+for some centuries with as much success as the conditions permitted. We
+are told indeed by writers ignorant alike of human history and human
+nature, that only physical science can improve the social condition of
+man. The common sense of the world always rejects this gross fallacy.
+The acquiescence for so many centuries in the power of the great
+directing organisation of Western Europe, notwithstanding its
+intellectual inadequateness, was the decisive expression of that
+rejection.
+
+After the middle of the last century the insurrection against the
+pretensions of the Church and against the doctrines of Christianity was
+marked in one of its most important phases by a new and most significant
+feature. In this phase it was animated at once by the scientific idea
+and by the social idea. It was an advance both in knowledge and in moral
+motive. It rested on a conception which was crude and imperfect enough,
+but which was still almost, like the great ecclesiastical conception
+itself, a conception of life as a whole. Morality, positive law, social
+order, economics, the nature and limits of human knowledge, the
+constitution of the physical universe, had one by one disengaged
+themselves from theological explanations. The final philosophical
+movement of the century in France, which was represented by Diderot,
+now tended to a new social synthesis resting on a purely positive basis.
+If this movement had only added to its other contents the historic idea,
+its destination would have been effectually reached. As it was, its
+leaders surveyed the entire field with as much accuracy and with as wide
+a range as their instruments allowed, and they scattered over the world
+a set of ideas which at once entered into energetic rivalry with the
+ancient scheme of authority. The great symbol of this new
+comprehensiveness in the insurrection was the Encyclop�dia.
+
+The Encyclop�dia was virtually a protest against the old organisation,
+no less than against the old doctrine. Broadly stated, the great central
+moral of it all was this: that human nature is good, that the world is
+capable of being made a desirable abiding-place, and that the evil of
+the world is the fruit of bad education and bad institutions. This
+cheerful doctrine now strikes on the ear as a commonplace and a truism.
+A hundred years ago in France it was a wonderful gospel, and the
+beginning of a new dispensation. It was the great counter-principle to
+asceticism in life and morals, to formalism in art, to absolutism in the
+social ordering, to obscurantism in thought. Every social improvement
+since has been the outcome of that doctrine in one form or another. The
+conviction that the character and lot of man are indefinitely modifiable
+for good, was the indispensable antecedent to any general and energetic
+endeavour to modify the conditions that surround him. The omnipotence
+of early instruction, of laws, of the method of social order, over the
+infinitely plastic impulses of the human creature--this was the maxim
+which brought men of such widely different temperament and leanings to
+the common enterprise. Everybody can see what wide and deep-reaching
+bearings such a doctrine possessed; how it raised all the questions
+connected with psychology and the formation of character; how it went
+down to the very foundation of morals; into what fresh and unwelcome
+sunlight it brought the articles of the old theology; with what new
+importance it clothed all the relations of real knowledge and the
+practical arts; what intense interest it lent to every detail of
+economics and legislation and government.
+
+The deadly chagrin with which churchmen saw the encyclopedic fabric
+rising was very natural. The teaching of the Church paints man as fallen
+and depraved. The new secular knowledge clashed at a thousand points,
+alike in letter and in spirit, with the old sacred lore. Even where it
+did not clash, its vitality of interest and attraction drove the older
+lore into neglected shade. To stir men's vivid curiosity and hope about
+the earth was to make their care much less absorbing about the kingdom
+of heaven. To awaken in them the spirit of social improvement was ruin
+to the most scandalous and crying social abuse then existing. The old
+spiritual power had lost its instinct, once so keen and effective, of
+wise direction. Instead of being the guide and corrector of the organs
+of the temporal power, it was the worst of their accomplices. The
+Encyclop�dia was an informal, transitory, and provisional organisation
+of the new spiritual power. The school of which it was the great
+expounder achieved a supreme control over opinion by the only title to
+which control belongs: a more penetrating eye for social exigencies and
+for the means of satisfying them.
+
+Our veteran humorist told us long ago in his whimsical way that the
+importance of the Acts of the French Philosophes recorded in whole acres
+of typography is fast exhausting itself, that the famed Encyclop�dical
+Tree has borne no fruit, and that Diderot the great has contracted into
+Diderot the easily measurable. The humoristic method is a potent
+instrument for working such contractions and expansions at will. The
+greatest of men are measurable enough, if you choose to set up a
+standard that is half transcendental and half cynical. A saner and more
+patient criticism measures the conspicuous figures of the past
+differently. It seeks their relations to the great forward movements of
+the world, and asks to what quarter of the heavens their faces were set,
+whether towards the east where the new light dawns, or towards the west
+after the old light has sunk irrevocably down. Above all, a saner
+criticism bids us remember that pioneers in the progressive way are
+rare, their lives rude and sorely tried, and their services to mankind
+beyond price. "Diderot is Diderot," wrote one greater than Carlyle: "a
+peculiar individuality; whoever holds him or his doings cheaply is a
+Philistine, and the name of them is legion. Men know neither from God,
+nor from Nature, nor from their fellows, how to receive with gratitude
+what is valuable beyond appraisement" (_Goethe_). An intense
+Philistinism underlay the great spiritual reaction that followed the
+Revolution, and not even such of its apostles as Wordsworth and Carlyle
+wholly escaped the taint.
+
+Forty years ago, when Carlyle wrote, it might really seem to a
+prejudiced observer as if the encyclop�dic tree had borne no fruit. Even
+then, and even when the critic happened to be a devotee of the sterile
+transcendentalism then in vogue, one might have expected some
+recognition of the fact that the seed of all the great improvements
+bestowed on France by the Revolution, in spite of the woful evils which
+followed in its train, had been sown by the Encyclop�dists. But now that
+the last vapours of the transcendental reaction are clearing away, we
+see that the movement initiated by the Encyclop�dia is again in full
+progress. Materialistic solutions in the science of man, humanitarian
+ends in legislation, naturalism in art, active faith in the
+improvableness of institutions--all these are once more the marks of
+speculation and the guiding ideas of practical energy. The philosophical
+parenthesis is at an end. The interruption of eighty years counts for no
+more than the twinkling of an eye in the history of the transformation
+of the basis of thought. And the interruption has for the present come
+to a close. Europe again sees the old enemies face to face; the Church,
+and a Social Philosophy slowly labouring to build her foundations in
+positive science. It cannot be other than interesting to examine the
+aims, the instruments, and the degree of success of those who a century
+ago saw most comprehensively how profound and far-reaching a
+metamorphosis awaited the thought of the Western world. We shall do this
+most properly in connection with Diderot.
+
+Whether we accept or question Comte's strong description of Diderot as
+the greatest genius of the eighteenth century, it is at least undeniable
+that he was the one member of the great party of illumination with a
+real title to the name of thinker. Voltaire and Rousseau were the heads
+of two important schools, and each of them set deep and unmistakable
+marks both on the opinion and the events of the century. It would not be
+difficult to show that their influence was wider than that of the
+philosopher who discerned the inadequateness of both. But Rousseau was
+moved by passion and sentiment; Voltaire was only the master of a
+brilliant and penetrating rationalism. Diderot alone of this famous trio
+had in his mind the idea of scientific method; alone showed any feeling
+for a doctrine, and for large organic and constructive conceptions. He
+had the rare faculty of true philosophic meditation. Though immeasurably
+inferior both to Voltaire and Rousseau in gifts of literary expression,
+he was as far their superior in breadth and reality of artistic
+principle. He was the originator of a natural, realistic, and
+sympathetic school of literary criticism. He aspired to impose new forms
+upon the drama. Both in imaginative creation and in criticism, his work
+was a constant appeal from the artificial conventions of the classic
+schools to the actualities of common life. The same spirit united with
+the tendency of his philosophy to place him among the very few men who
+have been great and genuine observers of human nature and human
+existence. So singular and widely active a genius may well interest us,
+even apart from the important place that he holds in the history of
+literature and opinion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+YOUTH.
+
+
+Denis Diderot was born at Langres in 1713, being thus a few months
+younger than Rousseau (1712), nearly twenty years younger than Voltaire
+(1694), nearly two years younger than Hume (1711), and eleven years
+older than Kant (1724). His stock was ancient and of good repute. The
+family had been engaged in the great local industry, the manufacture of
+cutlery, for no less than two centuries in direct line. Diderot liked to
+dwell on the historic prowess of his town, from the days of Julius
+C�sar and the old Lingones and Sabinus, down to the time of the Great
+Monarch. With the taste of his generation for tracing moral qualities to
+a climatic source, he explained a certain vivacity and mobility in the
+people of his district by the great frequency and violence of its
+atmospheric changes from hot to cold, from calm to storm, from rain to
+sunshine. "Thus they learn from earliest infancy to turn to every wind.
+The man of Langres has a head on his shoulders like the weathercock at
+the top of the church spire. It is never fixed at one point; if it
+returns to the point it has left, it is not to stop there. With an
+amazing rapidity in their movements, their desires, their plans, their
+fancies, their ideas, they are cumbrous in speech. For myself, I belong
+to my country side." This was thoroughly true. He inherited all the
+versatility of his compatriots, all their swift impetuosity, and
+something of their want of dexterity in expression.
+
+His father was one of the bravest, most upright, most patient, most
+sensible of men. Diderot never ceased to regret that the old man's
+portrait had not been taken with his apron on, his spectacles pushed up,
+and a hand on the grinder's wheel. After his death, none of his
+neighbours could speak of him to his son without tears in their eyes.
+Diderot, wild and irregular as were his earlier days, had always a true
+affection for his father. "One of the sweetest moments of my life," he
+once said, "was more than thirty years ago, and I remember it as if it
+were yesterday, when my father saw me coming home from school, my arms
+laden with the prizes I had carried off, and my shoulders burdened with
+the wreaths they had given me, which were too big for my brow and had
+slipped over my head. As soon as he caught sight of me some way off, he
+threw down his work, hurried to the door to meet me, and fell a-weeping.
+It is a fine sight--a grave and sterling man melted to tears."[1] Of his
+mother we know less. He had a sister, who seems to have possessed the
+rough material of his own qualities. He describes her as "lively,
+active, cheerful, decided, prompt to take offence, slow to come round
+again, without much care for present or future, never willing to be
+imposed on by people or circumstance; free in her ways, still more free
+in her talk; she is a sort of Diogenes in petticoats.... She is the most
+original and the most strongly-marked creature I know; she is goodness
+itself, but with a peculiar physiognomy."[2] His only brother showed
+some of the same native stuff, but of thinner and sourer quality. He
+became an abb� and a saint, peevish, umbrageous, and as excessively
+devout as his more famous brother was excessively the opposite. "He
+would have been a good friend and a good brother," wrote Diderot, "if
+religion had not bidden him trample under foot such poor weaknesses as
+these. He is a good Christian, who proves to me every minute of the day
+how much better it would be to be a good man. He shows that what they
+call evangelical perfection is only the mischievous art of stifling
+nature, which would most likely have spoken as lustily in him as in
+me."[3]
+
+Diderot, like so many others of the eighteenth-century reformers, was a
+pupil of the Jesuits. An ardent, impetuous, over-genial temperament was
+the cause of frequent irregularities in conduct. But his quick and
+active understanding overcame all obstacles. His teachers, ever wisely
+on the alert for superior capacity, hoped to enlist his talents in the
+Order. Either they or he planned his escape from home, but his father
+got to hear of it. "My grandfather," says Diderot's daughter, "kept the
+profoundest silence, but as he went off to bed took with him the keys of
+the yard door." When he heard his son going downstairs, he presented
+himself before him, and asked whither he was bound at twelve o'clock at
+night. "To Paris," replied the youth, "where I am to join the Jesuits."
+"That will not be to-night; but your wishes shall be fulfilled. First
+let us have our sleep." The next morning his father took two places in
+the coach, and carried him to Paris to the Coll�ge d'Harcourt. He made
+all the arrangements, and wished his son good-bye. But the good man
+loved the boy too dearly to leave him without being quite at ease how he
+would fare; he had the patience to remain a whole fortnight, killing the
+time and half dead of weariness in an inn, without ever seeing the one
+object of his stay. At the end of the fortnight he went to the college,
+and Diderot used many a time to say that such a mark of tenderness and
+goodness would have made him go to the other end of the world if his
+father had required it. "My friend," said his father, "I am come to see
+if you are well, if you are satisfied with your superiors, with your
+food, with your companions, and with yourself. If you are not well or
+not happy, we will go back together to your mother. If you had rather
+stay where you are, I am come to give you a word, to embrace you, and to
+leave you my blessing." The boy declared he was perfectly happy; and the
+principal pronounced him an excellent scholar, though already promising
+to be a troublesome one.[4]
+
+After a couple of years the young Diderot, like other sons of Adam, had
+to think of earning his bread. The usual struggle followed between
+youthful genius and old prudence. His father, who was a man of
+substance, gave him his choice between medicine and law. Law he refused
+because he did not choose to spend his days in doing other people's
+business; and medicine, because he had no turn for killing. His father
+resolutely declined to let him have more money on these terms, and
+Diderot was thrown on his wits.
+
+The man of letters shortly before the middle of the century was as much
+an outcast and a beggar in Paris as he was in London. Voltaire, Gray,
+and Richardson were perhaps the only three conspicuous writers of the
+time, who had never known what it was to want a meal or to go without a
+shirt. But then none of the three depended on his pen for his
+livelihood. Every other man of that day whose writings have delighted
+and instructed the world since, had begun his career, and more than one
+of them continued and ended it, as a drudge and a vagabond. Fielding and
+Collins, Goldsmith and Johnson, in England; Goldoni in Italy;
+Vauvenargues, Marmontel, Rousseau, in France; Winckelmann and Lessing in
+Germany, had all alike been doubtful of dinner, and trembled about a
+night's lodging. They all knew the life of mean hazard, sorry shift,
+and petty expedient again and again renewed. It is sorrowful to think
+how many of the compositions of that time that do most to soothe and
+elevate some of the best hours of our lives, were written by men with
+aching hearts, in the midst of haggard perplexities. The man of letters,
+as distinguished alike from the old-fashioned scholar and the systematic
+thinker, now first became a distinctly marked type. Macaulay has
+contrasted the misery of the Grub Street hack of Johnson's time, with
+the honours accorded to men like Prior and Addison at an earlier date,
+and the solid sums paid by booksellers to the authors of our own day.
+But these brilliant passages hardly go lower than the surface of the
+great change. Its significance lay quite apart from the prices paid for
+books. The all-important fact about the men of letters in France was
+that they constituted a new order, that their rise signified the
+transfer of the spiritual power from ecclesiastical hands, and that,
+while they were the organs of a new function, they associated it with a
+new substitute for doctrine. These men were not only the pupils of the
+Jesuits; they were also their immediate successors as the teachers, the
+guides, and the directors of society. For two hundred years the
+followers of Ignatius had taken the intellectual and moral control of
+Catholic communities out of the failing hands of the Popes and the
+secular clergy. Their own hour had now struck. The rationalistic
+historian has seldom done justice to the services which this great
+Order rendered to European civilisation. The immorality of many of their
+maxims, their too frequent connivance at political wrong for the sake of
+power, their inflexible malice against opponents, and the cupidity and
+obstructiveness of the years of their decrepitude, have blinded us to
+the many meritorious pages of the Jesuit chronicle. Even men like
+Diderot and Voltaire, whose lives were for years made bitter by Jesuit
+machinations, gave many signs that they recognised the aid which had
+been rendered by their old masters to the cultivation and enlightenment
+of Europe. It was from the Jesuit fathers that the men of letters whom
+they trained, acquired that practical and social habit of mind which
+made the world and its daily interests so real to them. It was perhaps
+also his Jesuit preceptors whom the man of letters had to blame for a
+certain want of rigour and exactitude on the side of morality.
+
+What was this new order which thus struggled into existence, which so
+speedily made itself felt, and at length so completely succeeded in
+seizing the lapsed inheritance of the old spiritual organisation? Who is
+this man of letters? A satirist may easily describe him in epigrams of
+cheap irony; the pedant of the colleges may see in him a frivolous and
+shallow profaner of the mysteries of learning; the intellectual coxcomb
+who nurses his own dainty wits in critical sterility, despises him as
+Sir Piercie Shafton would have despised Lord Lindsay of the Byres. This
+notwithstanding, the man of letters has his work to do in the critical
+period of social transition. He is to be distinguished from the great
+systematic thinker, as well as from the great imaginative creator. He is
+borne on the wings neither of a broad philosophic conception nor of a
+lofty poetic conception. He is only the propagator of portions of such a
+conception, and of the minor ideas which they suggest. Unlike the Jesuit
+father whom he replaced, he has no organic doctrine, no historic
+tradition, no effective discipline, and no definite, comprehensive,
+far-reaching, concentrated aim. The characteristic of his activity is
+dispersiveness. Its distinction is to popularise such detached ideas as
+society is in a condition to assimilate; to interest men in these ideas
+by dressing them up in varied forms of the literary art; to guide men
+through them by judging, empirically and unconnectedly, each case of
+conduct, of policy, or of new opinion as it arises. We have no wish to
+exalt the office. On the contrary, I accept the maxim of that deep
+observer who warned us that "the mania for isolation is the plague of
+the human throng, and to be strong we must march together. You only
+obtain anything by developing the spirit of discipline among men."[5]
+
+But there are ages of criticism when discipline is impossible, and the
+evils of isolation are less than the evils of rash and premature
+organisation. Fontenelle was the first and in some respects the greatest
+type of this important class. He was sceptical, learned, ingenious,
+eloquent. He stretched hands (1657-1757) from the famous quarrel between
+Ancients and Moderns down to the Encyclop�dia, and from Bossuet and
+Corneille down to Jean Jacques and Diderot. When he was born, the man of
+letters did not exist. When he died, the man of letters was the most
+conspicuous personage in France. But when Diderot first began to roam
+about the streets of Paris, this enormous change was not yet complete.
+
+For some ten years (1734-1744) Diderot's history is the old tale of
+hardship and chance; of fine constancy and excellent faith, not wholly
+free from an occasional stroke of rascality. For a time he earned a
+little money by teaching. If the pupil happened to be quick and docile,
+he grudged no labour, and was content with any fee or none. If the pupil
+happened to be dull, Diderot never came again, and preferred going
+supperless to bed. His employers paid him as they chose, in shirts, in a
+chair or a table, in books, in money, and sometimes they never paid him
+at all. The prodigious exuberance of his nature inspired him with a
+sovereign indifference to material details. From the beginning he
+belonged to those to whom it comes by nature to count life more than
+meat, and the body than raiment. The outward things of existence were
+to him really outward. They never vexed or absorbed his days and nights,
+nor overcame his vigorous constitutional instinct for the true
+proportions of external circumstance. He was of the humour of the old
+philosopher who, when he heard that all his worldly goods had been lost
+in a shipwreck, only made for answer, _Jubet me fortuna expeditius
+philosophari_. Once he had the good hap to be appointed tutor to the
+sons of a man of wealth. He performed his duties zealously, he was well
+housed and well fed, and he gave the fullest satisfaction to his
+employer. At the end of three months the mechanical toil had grown
+unbearable to him. The father of his pupils offered him any terms if he
+would remain. "Look at me, sir," replied the tutor; "my face is as
+yellow as a lemon. I am making men of your children, but each day I am
+becoming a child with them. I am a thousand times too rich and too
+comfortable in your house; leave it I must. What I want is not to live
+better, but to avoid dying." Again he plunged from comfort into the life
+of the garret. If he met any old friend from Langres, he borrowed, and
+the honest father repaid the loan. His mother's savings were brought to
+him by a faithful creature who had long served in their house, and who
+now more than once trudged all the way from home on this errand, and
+added her own humble earnings to the little stock. Many a time the hours
+went very slowly for the necessitous man. One Shrove Tuesday he rose in
+the morning, and found his pockets empty even of so much as a
+halfpenny. His friends had not invited him to join their squalid
+Bohemian revels. Hunger and thoughts of old Shrovetide merriment and
+feasting in the far-off home made work impossible. He hastened out of
+doors and walked about all day visiting such public sights as were open
+to the penniless. When he returned to his garret at night, his landlady
+found him in a swoon, and with the compassion of a good soul she forced
+him to share her supper. "That day," Diderot used to tell his children
+in later years, "I promised myself that if ever happier times should
+come, and ever I should have anything, I would never refuse help to any
+living creature, nor ever condemn him to the misery of such a day as
+that."[6] And the real interest of the story lies in the fact that no
+oath was ever more faithfully kept. There is no greater test of the
+essential richness of a man's nature than that this squalid adversity,
+not of the sentimental introspective kind but hard and grinding, and not
+even kept in countenance by respectability, fails to make him a savage
+or a miser or a misanthrope.
+
+Diderot had his bitter moments. He knew the gloom and despondency that
+have their inevitable hour in every solitary and unordered life. But the
+fits did not last. They left no sour sediment, and this is the sign of
+health in temperament, provided it be not due to mere callousness. From
+that horrible quality Diderot assuredly was the furthest removed of any
+one of his time. Now and always he walked with a certain large
+carelessness of spirit. He measured life with a roving and liberal eye.
+Circumstance and conventions, the words under which men hide things, the
+oracles of common acceptance, the infinitely diversified properties of
+human character, the many complexities of our conduct and destiny--all
+these he watched playing freely around him, and he felt no haste to
+compress his experience into maxims and system. He was absolutely
+uncramped by any of the formal mannerisms of the spirit. He was wholly
+uncorrupted by the affectation of culture with which the great Goethe
+infected part of the world a generation later. His own life was never
+made the centre of the world. Self-development and self-idealisation as
+ends in themselves would have struck Diderot as effeminate drolleries.
+The daily and hourly interrogation of experience for the sake of
+building up the fabric of his own character in this wise or that, would
+have been incomprehensible and a little odious to him in theory, and
+impossible as a matter of practice. In the midst of all the hardships of
+his younger time, as afterwards in the midst of crushing Herculean
+taskwork, he was saved from moral ruin by the inexhaustible geniality
+and expansiveness of his affections. Nor did he narrow their play by
+looking only to the external forms of human relation. To Diderot it came
+easily to act on a principle which most of us only accept in words: he
+looked not to what people said, nor even to what they did, but wholly
+to what they were.
+
+Those whom he had once found reason to love and esteem might do him many
+an ill turn, without any fear of estranging him. Any one can measure
+character by conduct. It is a harder thing to be willing, in cases that
+touch our own interests, to interpret conduct by previous knowledge of
+character. His father, for instance, might easily have spared money
+enough to save him from the harassing privations of Bohemian life in
+Paris. A less full-blooded and generous person than Diderot would have
+resented the stoutness of the old man's persistency. Diderot on the
+contrary felt and delighted to feel, that this conflict of wills was a
+mere accident which left undisturbed the reality of old love. "The first
+few years of my life in Paris," he once told an acquaintance, "had been
+rather irregular; my behaviour was enough to irritate my father, without
+there being any need to make it worse by exaggeration. Still calumny was
+not wanting. People told him--well what did they not tell him? An
+opportunity for going to see him presented itself. I did not give it two
+thoughts. I set out full of confidence in his goodness. I thought that
+he would see me, that I should throw myself into his arms, that we
+should both of us shed tears, and that all would be forgotten. I thought
+rightly."[7] We may be sure of a stoutness of native stuff in any stock
+where so much tenacity united with such fine confidence on one side,
+and such generous love on the other. It is a commonplace how much waste
+would be avoided in human life if men would more freely allow their
+vision to pierce in this way through the distorting veils of egoism, to
+the reality of sentiment and motive and relationship.
+
+Throughout his life Diderot was blessed with that divine gift of pity,
+which one that has it could hardly be willing to barter for the
+understanding of an Aristotle. Nor was it of the sentimental type proper
+for fine ladies. One of his friends had an aversion for women with
+child. "What monstrous sentiment!" Diderot wrote; "for my part, that
+condition has always touched me. I cannot see a woman of the common
+people so, without a tender commiseration."[8] And Diderot had delicacy
+and respect in his pity. He tells a story in one of his letters of a
+poor woman who had suffered some wrong from a priest; she had not money
+enough to resort to law, until a friend of Diderot took her part. The
+suit was gained; but when the moment came for execution, the priest had
+vanished with all his goods. The woman came to thank her protector, and
+to regret the loss he had suffered. "As she chatted, she pulled a shabby
+snuff-box out of her pocket, and gathered up with the tip of her finger
+what little snuff remained at the bottom: her benefactor says to her
+'Ah, ah! you have no more snuff; give me your box, and I will fill it.'
+He took the box and put into it a couple of louis, which he covered up
+with snuff. Now there's an action thoroughly to my taste, and to yours
+too! Give, but, if you can, spare to the poor the shame of holding out a
+hand."[9] And the important thing, as we have said, is that Diderot was
+as good as his sentiment. Unlike most of the fine talkers of that day,
+to him these homely and considerate emotions were the most real part of
+life. Nobody in the world was ever more eager to give succour to others,
+nor more careless of his own ease.
+
+One singular story of Diderot's heedlessness about himself has often
+been told before, but we shall be none the worse in an egoistic world
+for hearing it told again. There came to him one morning a young man,
+bringing a manuscript in his hand. He begged Diderot to do him the
+favour of reading it, and to make any remarks he might think useful on
+the margin. Diderot found it to be a bitter satire upon his own person
+and writings. On the young man's return, Diderot asked him his grounds
+for making such an attack. "I am without bread," the satirist answered,
+"and I hoped you might perhaps give me a few crowns not to print it."
+Diderot at once forgot everything in pity for the starving scribbler. "I
+will tell you a way of making more than that by it. The brother of the
+Duke of Orleans is one of the pious, and he hates me. Dedicate your
+satire to him, get it bound with his arms on the cover; take it to him
+some fine morning, and you will certainly get assistance from him."
+"But I don't know the prince, and the dedicatory epistle embarrasses
+me." "Sit down," said Diderot, "and I will write one for you." The
+dedication was written, the author carried it to the prince, and
+received a handsome fee.[10]
+
+Marmontel assures us that never was Diderot seen to such advantage as
+when an author consulted him about a work. "You should have seen him,"
+he says, "take hold of the subject, pierce to the bottom of it, and at a
+single glance discover of what riches and of what beauty it was
+susceptible. If he saw that the author missed the right track, instead
+of listening to the reading, he at once worked up in his head all that
+the author had left crude and imperfect. Was it a play, he threw new
+scenes into it, new incidents, new strokes of character; and thinking
+that he had actually heard all that he had dreamed, he extolled to the
+skies the work that had just been read to him, and in which, when it saw
+the light, we found hardly anything that he had quoted from it.... He
+who was one of the most enlightened men of the century, was also one of
+the most amiable; and in everything that touched moral goodness, when he
+spoke of it freely, I cannot express the charm of his eloquence. His
+whole soul was in his eyes and on his lips; never did a countenance
+better depict the goodness of the heart."[11] Morellet is equally loud
+in praise, not only of Diderot's conversation, its brilliance, its
+vivacity, its fertility, its suggestiveness, its sincerity, but also
+his facility and indulgence to all who sought him, and of the
+sympathetic readiness with which he gave the very best of himself to
+others.[12]
+
+It is needless to say that such a temper was constantly abused.
+Three-fourths of Diderot's life were reckoned by his family to have been
+given up to people who had need of his purse, his knowledge, or his good
+offices. His daughter compares his library to a shop crowded by a
+succession of customers, but the customers took whatever wares they
+sought, not by purchase, but by way of free gift. Luckily for Diderot,
+he was thus generous by temperament, and not because he expected
+gratitude. Any necessitous knave with the gift of tears and the mask of
+sensibility could dupe and prey upon him. In one case he had taken a
+great deal of trouble for one of these needy and importunate clients;
+had given him money and advice, and had devoted much time to serve him.
+At the end of their last interview Diderot escorts his departing friend
+to the head of the staircase. The grateful client then asks him whether
+he knows natural history. "Well, not much," Diderot replies; "I know an
+aloe from a lettuce, and a pigeon from a humming-bird." "Do you know
+about the _Formica leo?_ No? Well, it is a little insect that is
+wonderfully industrious; it hollows out in the ground a hole shaped like
+a funnel, it covers the surface with a light fine sand, it attracts
+other insects, it takes them, it sucks them dry, and then it says to
+them, 'M. Diderot, I have the honour to wish you good day.'"[13]
+
+Yet insolence and ingratitude made no difference to Diderot. His ear
+always remained as open to every tale of distress, his sensibility
+always as quickly touched, his time, money, and service always as
+profusely bestowed. I know not whether to say that this was made more,
+or that it was made less, of a virtue by his excess of tolerance for
+social castaways and reprobates. Our rough mode of branding a man as bad
+revolted him. The common appetite for constituting ourselves public
+prosecutors for the universe, was to him one of the worst of human
+weaknesses. "You know," he used to say, "all the impetuosity of the
+passions; you have weighed all circumstance in your everlasting balance;
+you pass sentence on the goodness or the badness of creatures; you set
+up rewards and penalties among matters which have no proportion nor
+relation with one another. Are you sure that you have never committed
+wrong acts, for which you pardoned yourselves because their object was
+so slight, though at bottom they implied more wickedness than a crime
+prompted by misery or fury? Even magistrates, supported by experience,
+by the law, by conventions which force them sometimes to give judgment
+against the testimony of their own conscience, still tremble as they
+pronounce the doom of the accused. And since when has it been lawful for
+the same person to be at once judge and informer?"[14]
+
+Such reasoned leniency is the noblest of traits in a man. "I am more
+affected," he said, in words of which better men that Diderot might
+often be reminded, "by the charms of virtue than by the deformity of
+vice. I turn mildly away from the bad, and I fly to embrace the good. If
+there is in a work, in a character, in a painting, in a statue, a single
+fine bit, then on that my eyes fasten; I see only that: that is all I
+remember; the rest is as good as forgotten."[15]
+
+This is the secret of a rare and admirable temperament. It carried
+Diderot well through the trial and ordeal of the ragged apprenticeship
+of letters. What to other men comes by culture, came to him by inborn
+force and natural capaciousness. We do not know in what way Diderot
+trained and nourished his understanding. The annotations to his
+translation of Shaftesbury, as well as his earliest original pieces,
+show that he had read Montaigne and Pascal, and not only read but
+meditated on them with an independent mind. They show also that he had
+been impressed by the Civitas Dei of Augustine, and had at least dipped
+into Terence and Horace, Cicero and Tacitus. His subsequent writings
+prove that, like the other men of letters of his day, he found in our
+own literature the chief external stimulant to thought. Above all, he
+was impressed by the magnificent ideas of the illustrious Bacon, and
+these ideas were the direct source of the great undertaking of Diderot's
+life. He is said to have read little and to have meditated much--the
+right process for the few men of his potent stamp. The work which he had
+to do for bread was of the kind that crushes anything short of the
+strongest faculty. He composed sermons. A missionary once ordered
+half-a-dozen of them for consumption in the Portuguese colonies, and
+paid him fifty crowns apiece, which Diderot counted far from the worst
+bargain of his life. All this was beggarly toil for a man of genius, but
+Diderot never took the trouble to think of himself as a man of genius,
+and was quite content with life as it came. If he found himself
+absolutely without food and without pence, he began moodily to think of
+abandoning his books and his pen, and of complying with the wishes of
+his father. A line of Homer, an idea from the Principia, an interesting
+problem in algebra or geometry, was enough to restore the eternally
+invincible spell of knowledge. And no sooner was this commanding
+interest touched, than the cloud of uncomfortable circumstance vanished
+from before the sun, and calm and serenity filled his spirit.
+
+Montesquieu used to declare that he had never known a chagrin which half
+an hour of a book was not able to dispel. Diderot had the same fortunate
+temper.
+
+Yet Diderot was not essentially a man of books. He never fell into the
+characteristic weakness of the follower of letters, by treating books as
+ends in themselves, or placing literature before life. Character,
+passion, circumstance, the real tragi-comedy, not its printed shadow
+and image, engrossed him. He was in this respect more of the temper of
+Rousseau, than he was like Voltaire or Fontenelle. "Abstraction made,"
+he used to say, "of my existence and of the happiness of my fellows,
+what does the rest of nature matter to me?" Yet, as we see, nobody that
+ever lived was more interested in knowledge. His biographer and disciple
+remarked the contrast in him between his ardent impetuous disposition
+and enthusiasm, and his spirit of close unwearied observation. _Faire le
+bien, conna�tre le vrai_, was his formula for the perfect life, and
+defined the only distinction that he cared to recognise between one man
+and another. And the only motive he ever admitted as reasonable for
+seeking truth, was as a means of doing good. So strong was his sense of
+practical life, in the midst of incessant theorising.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the moment when he had most difficulty in procuring a little bread
+each day for himself, Diderot conceived a violent passion for a
+seamstress, Antoinnette Champion by name, who happened to live in his
+neighbourhood. He instantly became importunate for marriage. The mother
+long protested with prudent vigour against a young man of such
+headstrong impetuosity, who did nothing and who had nothing, save the
+art of making speeches that turned her daughter's head. At length the
+young man's golden tongue won the mother as it had won the daughter. It
+was agreed that his wishes should be crowned, if he could procure the
+consent of his family. Diderot fared eagerly and with a sanguine heart
+to Langres. His father supposed that he had seen the evil of his ways,
+and was come at last to continue the honest tradition of their name.
+When the son disclosed the object of his visit, he was treated as a
+madman and threatened with malediction. Without a word of remonstrance
+he started back one day for Paris. Madame Champion warned him that his
+project must now be for ever at an end. Such unflinching resoluteness is
+often the last preliminary before surrender. Diderot fell ill. The two
+women could not bear to think of him lying sick in a room no better than
+a dog-kennel, without broths and tisanes, lonely and sorrowful. They
+hastened to nurse him, and when he got well, what he thought the great
+object of his life was reached. He and his adored were married
+(1743).[16] As has been said, "Choice in marriage is a great match of
+cajolery between purpose and invisible hazard: deep criticism of a game
+of pure chance is time wasted." In Diderot's case destiny was hostile.
+
+His wife was over thirty. She was dutiful, sage, and pious. She had
+plenty of that devotion which in small things women so seldom lack.
+While her husband went to dine out, she remained at home to dine and
+sup on dry bread, and was pleased to think that the next day she would
+double the little ordinary for him. Coffee was too dear to be a
+household luxury, so every day she handed him a few halfpence to have
+his cup, and to watch the chess-players at the Caf� de la R�gence. When
+after a year or two she went to make her peace with her father-in-law at
+Langres, she wound her way round the old man's heart by her affectionate
+caresses, her respect, her ready industry in the household, her piety,
+her simplicity. It is, however, unfortunately possible for even the best
+women to manifest their goodness, their prudence, their devotion, in
+forms that exasperate. Perhaps it was so here. Diderot at fifty was an
+orderly and steadfast person, but at thirty the blood of vagabondage was
+still hot within him. He needed in his companion a robust patience, to
+match his own too robust activity. One may suppose that if Mirabeau had
+married Hannah More, the union would have turned out ill, and Diderot's
+marriage was unluckily of such a type. His wife's narrow pieties and
+homely solicitudes fretted him. He had not learned to count the cost of
+deranging the fragile sympathy of the hearth. While his wife was away on
+her visit to his family, he formed a connection with a woman (Madame
+Puisieux) who seems to have been as bad and selfish as his wife was the
+opposite. She was the authoress of some literary pieces, which the world
+willingly and speedily let die; but even very moderate pretensions to
+_bel-esprit_ may have seemed wonderfully refreshing to a man wearied to
+death by the illiterate stupidity of his daily companion.[17] This
+lasted some three or four years down to 1749. As we shall see, he
+discovered the infidelity of his mistress and broke with her. But by
+this time his wife's virtues seem to have gone a little sour, as
+disregarded prudence and thwarted piety are so apt to do. It was too
+late now to knit up again the ravelled threads of domestic concord.
+During a second absence of his wife in Champagne (1754), he formed a new
+attachment to the daughter of a financier's widow (Mdlle. Voland). This
+lasted to the end of the lady's days (1783 or 1784).
+
+There is probably nothing very profitable to be said about all this
+domestic disorder. We do not know enough of the circumstances to be sure
+of allotting censure in exact and rightful measure. We have to remember
+that such irregularities were in the manners of the time. To connect
+them by way of effect with the new opinions in religion, would be as
+impertinent as to trace the immoralities of Dubois or Lewis the
+Fifteenth or the Cardinal de Rohan to the old opinions.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+EARLY WRITINGS.
+
+
+La Rochefoucauld, expressing a commonplace with the penetrative
+terseness that made him a master of the apophthegm, pronounced it "not
+to be enough to have great qualities: a man must have the economy of
+them." Or, as another writer says: "Empire in this world belongs not so
+much to wits, to talents, and to industry, as to a certain skilful
+economy and to the continual management that a man has the art of
+applying to all his other gifts."[18] Notwithstanding the peril that
+haunts superlative propositions, we are inclined to say that Diderot is
+the most striking illustration of this that the history of letters or
+speculation has to furnish. If there are many who have missed the mark
+which they or kindly intimates thought them certain of attaining, this
+is mostly not for want of economy, but for want of the great qualities
+which were imputed to them by mistake. To be mediocre, to be sterile, to
+be futile, are the three fatal endings of many superbly announced
+potentialities. Such an end nearly always comes of exaggerated faculty,
+rather than of bad administration of natural gifts. In Diderot were
+splendid talents. It was the art of prudent stewardship that lay beyond
+his reach. Hence this singular fact, that he perhaps alone in literature
+has left a name of almost the first eminence, and impressed his
+greatness upon men of the strongest and most different intelligence, and
+yet never produced a masterpiece; many a fine page, as Marmontel said,
+but no one fine work.
+
+No man that ever wrote was more wholly free from that unquiet
+self-consciousness which too often makes literary genius pitiful or
+odious in the flesh. He put on no airs of pretended resignation to
+inferior production, with bursting hints of the vast superiorities that
+unfriendly circumstance locked up within him. Yet on one occasion, and
+only on one, so far as evidence remains, he indulged a natural regret.
+"And so," he wrote when revising the last sheets of the Encyclop�dia
+(July 25, 1765), "in eight or ten days I shall see the end of an
+undertaking that has occupied me for twenty years; that has not made my
+fortune by a long way; that has exposed me many a time to the risk of
+having to quit my country or lose my freedom; and that has consumed a
+life that I might have made both more useful and more glorious. The
+sacrifice of talent to need would be less common, if it were only a
+question of self. One could easily resolve rather to drink water and eat
+dry crusts and follow the bidding of one's genius in a garret. But for a
+woman and for children, what can one not resolve? If I sought to make
+myself of some account in their eyes, I would not say--I have worked
+thirty years for you: I would say--I have for you renounced for thirty
+years the vocation of my nature; I have preferred to renounce my tastes
+in doing what was useful for you, instead of what was agreeable to
+myself. That is your real obligation to me, and of that you never
+think."[19]
+
+It is a question, nevertheless, whether Diderot would have achieved
+masterpieces, even if the pressure of housekeeping had never driven him
+to seek bread where he could find it. Indeed it is hardly a question.
+His genius was spacious and original, but it was too dispersive, too
+facile of diversion, too little disciplined, for the prolonged effort of
+combination which is indispensable to the greater constructions whether
+of philosophy or art. The excellent talent of economy and administration
+had been denied him; that thrift of faculty, which accumulates store and
+force for concentrated occasions. He was not encyclop�dic by accident,
+nor merely from external necessity. The quality of rapid movement,
+impetuous fancy, versatile idea, which he traced to the climate of his
+birthplace, marked him from the first for an encyclop�dic or some such
+task. His interest was nearly as promptly and vehemently kindled in one
+subject as in another; he was always boldly tentative, always fresh and
+vigorous in suggestion, always instant in search. But this multiplicity
+of active excitements--and with Diderot every interest rose to the
+warmth of excitement--was even more hostile to masterpieces than were
+the exigencies of a livelihood. It was not unpardonable in a moment of
+exhaustion and chagrin to fancy that he had offered up the treasures of
+his genius to the dull gods of the hearth. But if he had been childless
+and unwedded, the result would have been the same. He is the munificent
+prodigal of letters, always believing his substance inexhaustible, never
+placing a limit to his fancies nor a bound to his outlay. "It is not
+they who rob me of my life," he wrote; "it is I who give it to them. And
+what can I do better than accord a portion of it to him who esteems me
+enough to solicit such a gift? I shall get no praise for it, 'tis true,
+either now while I am here, nor when I shall exist no longer; but I
+shall esteem myself for it, and people will love me all the better for
+it. 'Tis no bad exchange, that of benevolence, against a celebrity that
+one does not always win, and that nobody wins without a drawback. I have
+never once regretted the time that I have given to others; I can
+scarcely say as much for; the time that I have used for myself."[20]
+Remembering how uniformly men of letters take themselves somewhat too
+seriously, we may be sorry that this unique figure among them, who was
+in other respects constituted to be so considerable and so effective,
+did not take himself seriously enough.
+
+Apart from his moral inaptitude for the monumental achievements of
+authorship, Diderot was endowed with the gifts of the talker rather than
+with those of the writer. Like Dr. Johnson, he was a great converser
+rather than the author of great books. If we turn to his writings, we
+are at some loss to understand the secret of his reputation. They are
+too often declamatory, ill-compacted, broken by frequent apostrophes,
+ungainly, dislocated, and rambling. He has been described by a
+consummate judge as the most German of all the French. And his style is
+deeply marked by that want of feeling for the exquisite, that dulness of
+edge, that bluntness of stroke, which is the common note of all German
+literature, save a little of the very highest. In conversation we do not
+insist on constant precision of phrase, nor on elaborate sustension of
+argument. Apostrophe is made natural by the semi-dramatic quality of the
+situation. Even vehement hyperbole, which is nearly always a
+disfigurement in written prose, may become impressive or delightful,
+when it harmonises with the voice, the glance, the gesture of a fervid
+and exuberant converser. Hence Diderot's personality invested his talk,
+as happened in the case of Johnson and of Coleridge, with an imposing
+interest and a power of inspiration which we should never comprehend
+from the mere perusal of his writings.
+
+His admirers declared his head to be the ideal head of an Aristotle or a
+Plato. His brow was wide, lofty, open, gently rounded. The arch of the
+eyebrow was full of delicacy; the nose of masculine beauty; the
+habitual expression of the eyes kindly and sympathetic, but as he grew
+heated in talk, they sparkled like fire; the curves of the mouth bespoke
+an interesting mixture of finesse, grace, and geniality. His bearing was
+nonchalant enough, but there was naturally in the carriage of his head,
+especially when he talked with action, much dignity, energy, and
+nobleness. It seemed as if enthusiasm were the natural condition for his
+voice, for his spirit, for every feature. He was only truly Diderot when
+his thoughts had transported him beyond himself. His ideas were stronger
+than himself; they swept him along without the power either to stay or
+to guide their movement. "When I recall Diderot," wrote one of his
+friends, "the immense variety of his ideas, the amazing multiplicity of
+his knowledge, the rapid flight, the warmth, the impetuous tumult of his
+imagination, all the charm and all the disorder of his conversation, I
+venture to liken his character to nature herself, exactly as he used to
+conceive her--rich, fertile, abounding in germs of every sort, gentle
+and fierce, simple and majestic, worthy and sublime, but without any
+dominating principle, without a master and without a God."[21] Gr�try,
+the musical composer, declares that Diderot was one of the rare men who
+had the art of blowing the spark of genius into flame; the first
+impulses stirred by his glowing imagination were of inspiration
+divine.[22]
+
+Marmontel warns us that he who only knows Diderot in his writings, does
+not know him at all. We should have listened to his persuasive
+eloquence, and seen his face aglow with the fire of enthusiasm. It was
+when he grew animated in talk, and let all the abundance of his ideas
+flow freely from the source, that he became truly ravishing. In his
+writings, says Marmontel with obvious truth, he never had the art of
+forming a whole, and this was because that first process of arranging
+everything in its place was too slow and too tiresome for him. The want
+of ensemble vanished in the free and varied course of conversation.[23]
+
+We have to remember then that Diderot was in this respect of the
+Socratic type, though he was unlike Socrates, in being the disseminator
+of positive and constructive ideas. His personality exerted a decisive
+force and influence. In reading the testimony of his friends, we think
+of the young Aristides saying to Socrates: "I always made progress
+whenever I was in your neighbourhood, even if I were only in the same
+house, without being in the same room; but my advancement was greater if
+I were in the same room with you, and greater still if I could keep my
+eyes fixed upon you."[24] It has been well said that Diderot, like
+Socrates, had about him a something d�monic. He was possessed, and so
+had the first secret of possessing others. But then to reach excellence
+in literature, one must also have self-possession; a double current of
+impulse and deliberation; a free stream of ideas spontaneously obeying a
+sense or order, harmony, and form. Eloquence in the informal discourse
+of the parlour or the country walk did not mean in Diderot's case the
+empty fluency and nugatory emphasis of the ordinary talker of
+reputation. It must have been both pregnant and copious; declamatory in
+form, but fresh and substantial in matter; excursive in arrangement, but
+forcible and pointed in intention. No doubt, if he was a sage, he was
+sometimes a sage in a frenzy. He would wind up a peroration by dashing
+his nightcap passionately against the wall, by way of clencher to the
+argument. Yet this impetuosity, this turn for declamation, did not
+hinder his talk from being directly instructive. Younger men of the most
+various type, from Morellet down to Joubert, men quite competent to
+detect mere bombast or ardent vagueness, were held captive by the
+cogency of his understanding. His writings have none of this compulsion.
+We see the flame, but through a veil of interfused smoke. The expression
+is not obscure, but it is awkward; not exactly prolix, but heavy,
+overcharged, and opaque. We miss the vivid precision and the high
+spirits of Voltaire, the glow and the brooding sonorousness of Rousseau,
+the pomp of Buffon. To Diderot we go not for charm of style, but for a
+store of fertile ideas, for some striking studies of human life, and for
+a vigorous and singular personality.
+
+Diderot's knowledge of our language now did him good service. One of
+the details of the method by which he taught himself English is curious.
+Instead of using an Anglo-French dictionary, he always used one in
+Anglo-Latin. The sense of a Latin or Greek word, he said, is better
+established, more surely fixed, more definite, less liable to capricious
+peculiarities of convention, than the vernacular words which the whim or
+ignorance of the lexicographer may choose. The reader composes his own
+vocabulary, and gains both correctness and energy.[25] However this may
+be, his knowledge of English was more accurate than is possessed by most
+French writers of our own day. Diderot's first work for the booksellers
+after his marriage seems to have been a translation in three volumes of
+Stanyan's History of Greece. For this, to the amazement of his wife, he
+got a hundred crowns. About the same time (1745) he published Principles
+of Moral Philosophy, or an Essay of Mr. S. on Merit and Virtue. The
+initial stands for Shaftesbury, and the book translated was his Inquiry
+concerning Virtue and Merit.
+
+Towards the same time, again, Diderot probably made acquaintance with
+Madame de Puisieux, of whom it has been said with too patent humour that
+she was without either the virtue or the merit on which her admirer had
+just been declaiming. We are told that it was her need of money which
+inspired him with his first original work. As his daughter's memoir,
+from which the tale comes, is swarming with blunders, this may not be
+more true than some of her other statements. All that we know of
+Diderot's sense and sincerity entitles him to the benefit of the doubt.
+The Philosophical Thoughts (1746) are a continuation of the vein of the
+annotations on the Essay. He is said to have thrown these reflections
+together between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Nor is there anything
+incredible in such rapid production, when we remember the sweeping
+impetuosity with which he flung himself into all that he undertook. The
+Thoughts are evidently the fruits of long meditation, and the literary
+arrangement of them may well have been an easy task. They are a robuster
+development of the scepticism which was the less important side of
+Shaftesbury. The parliament of Paris ordered the book to be burnt along
+with some others (July 7, 1746), partly because they were heterodox,
+partly because the practice of publishing books without official leave
+was gaining an unprecedented height of license.[26] This was Diderot's
+first experience of that hand of authority, which was for thirty years
+to surround him with mortification and torment. But the disapproval of
+authority did not check the circulation or influence of the Thoughts.
+They were translated into German and Italian, and were honoured by a
+shower of hostile criticism. In France they were often reprinted, and
+even in our own day they are said not wholly to have lost their vogue
+as a short manual of scepticism.[27]
+
+The historians of literature too often write as if a book were the cause
+or the controlling force of controversies in which it is really only a
+symbol, or a proclamation of feelings already in men's minds. We should
+never occupy ourselves in tracing the thread of a set of opinions,
+without trying to recognise the movement of living men and concrete
+circumstance that accompanied and caused the progress of thought. In
+watching how the beacon-fire flamed from height to height--
+
+    [Greek: phaos de t�lepompon ouk �naineto
+    phroura, prosaithrizousa pompimonphloga--]
+
+we should not forget that its source and reference lie in action, in the
+motion and stirring of confused hosts and multitudes of men. A book,
+after all, is only the mouthpiece of its author, and the author being
+human is moved and drawn by the events that occur under his eye. It was
+not merely because Bacon and Hobbes and Locke had written certain books,
+that Voltaire and Diderot became free-thinkers and assailed the church.
+"So long," it has been said, "as a Bossuet, a F�nelon, an Arnauld, a
+Nicole, were alive, Bayle made few proselytes; the elevation of Dubois
+and its consequences multiplied unbelievers and indifferents."[28]
+
+The force of speculative literature always hangs on practical
+opportuneness. The economic evils of monasticism, the increasing
+flagrancy and grossness of superstition, the aggressive factiousness of
+the ecclesiastics, the cruelty of bigoted tribunals--these things
+disgusted and wearied the more enlightened spirits, and the English
+philosophy only held out an inspiring intellectual alternative.[29]
+
+Nor was it accident that drew Diderot's attention to Shaftesbury, rather
+than to any other of our writers. That author's essay on Enthusiasm had
+been suggested by the extravagances of the French prophets, poor
+fanatics from the Cevennes, who had fled to London after the revocation
+of the edict of Nantes, and whose paroxysms of religious hysteria at
+length brought them into trouble with the authorities (1707). Paris saw
+an outbreak of the same kind of ecstasy, though on a much more
+formidable scale, among the Jansenist fanatics, from 1727 down to 1758,
+or later. Some of the best attested miracles in the whole history of the
+supernatural were wrought at the tomb of the Jansenist deacon,
+Paris.[30] The works of faith exalted multitudes into convulsive
+transports; men and women underwent the most cruel tortures, in the hope
+of securing a descent upon them of the divine grace. The sober citizen,
+whose journal is so useful a guide to domestic events in France from the
+Regency to the Peace of 1763, tells us the effect of this hideous
+revival upon public sentiment. People began to see, he says, what they
+were to think of the miracles of antiquity. The more they went into
+these matters, whether miracles or prophecies, the more obscurity they
+discovered in the one, the more doubt about the other. Who could tell
+that they had not been accredited and established in remote times with
+as little foundation as what was then passing under men's very eyes?
+Just in the same way, the violent and prolonged debates, the intrigue,
+the tergiversation, which attended the acceptance of the famous Bull
+Unigenitus, taught shrewd observers how it is that religions establish
+themselves. They also taught how little respect is due in our minds and
+consciences to the great points which the universal church claims to
+have decided.[31]
+
+These are the circumstances which explain the rude and vigorous
+scepticism of Diderot's first performances. And they explain the
+influence of Shaftesbury over him. Neither Diderot nor his
+contemporaries were ready at once to plunge into the broader and firmer
+negation to which they afterwards committed themselves. No doubt some of
+the politeness which he shows to Christianity, both in the notes to his
+translation of Shaftesbury, and in his own Philosophic Thoughts, is no
+more than an ironical deference to established prejudices. The notes to
+the Essay on Merit and Virtue show that Diderot, like all the other
+French revolters against established prejudice, had been deeply
+influenced by the shrewd-witted Montaigne. But the ardour of the
+disciple pressed objections home with a trenchancy that is very unlike
+the sage distillations of the master. It was from Shaftesbury, however,
+that he borrowed common sense as a philosophic principle. Shaftesbury
+had indirectly drawn it from Locke, and through Hutcheson it became the
+source and sponsor of the Scottish philosophy of that century. This was
+a weapon exactly adapted for dealing with a theology that was
+discredited in the eyes of all cool observers by the hysterical
+extravagances of one set of religionists, and the factious pretensions
+of their rivals. And no other weapon was at hand. The historic or
+critical method of investigation was impossible, for the age did not
+possess the requisite learning. The indirect attack from the side of
+physical science was equally impossible. The bearing of Newton's great
+discovery on the current conceptions of the Creator and the supposed
+system of the divine government, was not yet fully realised. The other
+scientific ideas which have since made the old hypothesis less credible,
+were not at that time even conceived.
+
+Diderot did indeed perceive even so early as this that the controversy
+was passing from the metaphysicians to the physicists. Though he for the
+moment misinterpreted the ultimate direction of the effect of
+experimental discovery, he discerned its potency in the field of
+theological discussion. "It is not from the hands of the metaphysician,"
+he said, "that atheism has received the weightiest strokes. The sublime
+meditations of Malebranche and Descartes were less calculated to shake
+materialism than a single observation of Malpighi's. If this dangerous
+hypothesis is tottering in our days, it is to experimental physics that
+such a result is due. It is only in the works of Newton, of
+Muschenbroek, of Hartzoeker, and of Nieuwentit, that people have found
+satisfactory proofs of the existence of a being of sovereign
+intelligence. Thanks to the works of these great men, the world is no
+longer a god; it is a machine with its cords, its pulleys, its springs,
+its weights."[32] In other words, Diderot had as yet not made his way
+beyond the halting-place which has been the favourite goal of English
+physicists from Newton down to Faraday.[33] Consistent materialism had
+not yet established itself in his mind. Meanwhile he laid about him with
+his common sense, just as Voltaire did, though Diderot has more
+weightiness of manner. If his use of the weapon cannot be regarded as a
+decisive settlement of the true issues, we have to remember that he
+himself became aware in a very short time of its inadequateness, and
+proceeded to the discussion, as we shall presently see, from another
+side.
+
+The scope of the Philosophical Thoughts, and the attitude of Diderot's
+mind when they were written, may be shown in a few brief passages. The
+opening words point to the significance of the new time in one
+direction, and they are the key-note to Diderot's whole character.
+"People are for ever declaiming against the passions; they set down to
+them all the pains that man endures, and quite forget that they are also
+the source of all his pleasures. It is regarded as an affront to reason
+if one dares to say a word in favour of its rivals. Yet it is only
+passions, and strong passions, that can raise the soul to great things.
+Sober passions produce only the commonplace. Deadened passions degrade
+men of extraordinary quality. Constraint annihilates the greatness and
+energy of nature. See that tree; 'tis to the luxury of its branches that
+you owe the freshness and the wide-spreading breadth of its shade, which
+you may enjoy till winter comes to despoil it of its leafy tresses. An
+end to all excellence in poetry, in painting, in music, as soon as
+superstition has once wrought upon human temperament the effect of old
+age! It is the very climax of madness to propose to oneself the ruin of
+the passions. A fine design truly in your pietist, to torment himself
+like a convict in order to desire nothing, love nothing, feel nothing;
+and he would end by becoming a true monster, if he were to succeed!"[34]
+Many years afterwards he wrote in the same sense to Madame Voland. "I
+have ever been the apologist of strong passions; they alone move me.
+Whether they inspire me with admiration or horror, I feel vehemently. If
+atrocious deeds that dishonour our nature are due to them, it is by them
+also that we are borne to the marvellous endeavour that elevates it. The
+man of mediocre passion lives and dies like the brute." And so forth,
+until the writer is carried to the perplexing position that "if we were
+bound to choose between Racine, a bad husband, a bad father, a false
+friend, and a sublime poet, and Racine, good father, good husband, good
+friend, and dull worthy man, I hold to the first. Of Racine, the bad
+man, what remains? Nothing. Of Racine, the man of genius? The work is
+eternal."[35] Without attempting to solve this problem in casuistry, we
+recognise Diderot's mood, and the hatred with which it would be sure to
+inspire him for the starved and mutilated passions of the Christian
+type. The humility, chastity, obedience, indolent solitude, which had
+for centuries been glorified by the Church, were monstrous to this
+vehement and energetic spirit. The church had placed heroism in
+effacement. Diderot, borne to the other extreme, left out even
+discipline. To turn from his maxims on the foundation of conduct, to his
+maxims on opinion. As we have said, his attitude is that of the
+sceptic:--
+
+What has never been put in question, has not been proved. What people
+have not examined without prepossessions, they have not examined
+thoroughly. Scepticism is the touchstone. (� 31.)
+
+Incredulity is sometimes the vice of a fool, and credulity the defect of
+a man of intelligence. The latter sees far into the immensity of the
+Possible; the former scarcely sees anything possible beyond the Actual.
+Perhaps this is what produces the timidity of the one, and the temerity
+of the other.
+
+A demi-scepticism is the mark of a feeble understanding. It reveals a
+pusillanimous reasoner, who suffers himself to be alarmed by
+consequences; a superstitious creature, who thinks he is honouring God
+by the fetters which he imposes on his reason; a kind of unbeliever who
+is afraid of unmasking himself to himself. For if truth has nothing to
+lose by examination, as is the demi-sceptic's conviction, what does he
+think in the bottom of his heart of those privileged notions which he
+fears to sound, and which are placed in one of the recesses of his
+brain, as in a sanctuary to which he dares not draw nigh? (� 34.)
+
+Scepticism does not suit everybody. It supposes profound and impartial
+examination. He who doubts because he does not know the grounds of
+credibility, is no better than an ignoramus. The true sceptic has
+counted and weighed the reasons. But it is no light matter to weigh
+arguments. Who of us knows their value with any nicety? Every mind has
+its own telescope. An objection that disappears in your eyes, is a
+colossus in mine: you find an argument trivial that to me is
+overwhelming.... If then it is so difficult to weigh reasons, and if
+there are no questions which have not two sides, and nearly always in
+equal measure, how come we to decide with such rapidity? (� 24.)
+
+When the pious cry out against scepticism, it seems to me that they do
+not understand their own interest, or else that they are inconsistent.
+If it is certain that a true faith to be embraced, and a false faith to
+be abandoned, need only to be thoroughly known, then surely it must be
+highly desirable that universal doubt should spread over the surface of
+the earth, and that all nations should consent to have the truth of
+their religions examined. Our missionaries would find a good half of
+their work done for them. (� 36.)
+
+One thing to be remembered is that Diderot, like Vauvenargues, Voltaire,
+Condorcet, always had Pascal in his mind when dealing with apologetics.
+They all recognised in him a thinker with a love of truth, as
+distinguished from the mere priest, Catholic, Anglican, Brahman, or
+another. "Pascal," says Diderot, "was upright, but he was timid and
+inclined to credulity. An elegant writer and a profound reasoner, he
+would doubtless have enlightened the world, if Providence had not
+abandoned him to people who sacrificed his talents to their own
+antipathies. How much to be regretted, that he did not leave to the
+theologians of his time the task of settling their own differences; that
+he did not give himself up to the search for truth, without reserve and
+without the fear of offending God by using all the intelligence that God
+had given him. How much to be regretted that he took for masters men who
+were not worthy to be his disciples, and was foolish enough to think
+Arnauld, De Sacy, and Nicole, better men than himself." (� 14.) The
+Philosophic Thoughts are designed for an answer in form to the more
+famous Thoughts of this champion of popular theology. The first of the
+following extracts, for instance, recalls a memorable illustration of
+Pascal's sublime pessimism. A few passages will illustrate sufficiently
+the line of argument which led the foremost men at the opening of the
+philosophic revolution to reject the pretensions of Christianity:--
+
+What voices! what cries! what groans! Who is it that has shut up in
+dungeons all these piteous souls? What crimes have the poor wretches
+committed? Who condemns them to such torments? _The God whom they have
+offended_. Who then is this God? _A God full of goodness_. But would a
+God full of goodness take delight in bathing himself in tears? If
+criminals had to calm the furies of a tyrant, what would they do
+more?... There are people of whom we ought not to say that they fear
+God, but that they are horribly afraid of him.... Judging from the
+picture they paint of the Supreme Being, from his wrath, from the rigour
+of his vengeance, from certain comparisons expressive of the ratio
+between those whom he leaves to perish and those to whom he deigns to
+stretch out a hand, the most upright soul would be tempted to wish that
+such a being did not exist. (�� 7-9.)
+
+You present to an unbeliever a volume of writings of which you claim to
+show him the divinity. But, before going into your proofs, he will be
+sure to put some questions about your collection. Has it always been the
+same? Why is it less ample now than it was some centuries ago? By what
+right have they banished this work or that, which another sect reveres,
+and preserved this or that, which the other has repudiated?... You only
+answer all these difficulties by the avowal that the first foundations
+of the faith are purely human; that the choice between the manuscripts,
+the restoration of passages, finally the collection, has been made
+according to rules of criticism. Well, I do not refuse to concede to the
+divinity of the sacred books a degree of faith proportioned to the
+certainty of these rules. (� 59.)
+
+People agree that it is of the last importance to employ none but solid
+arguments for the defence of a creed. Yet they would gladly persecute
+those who attempt to cry down the bad arguments. What then, is it not
+enough to be a Christian? Am I also to be one upon wrong grounds? (�57.)
+
+The less probability a fact has, the more does the testimony of history
+lose its weight. I should have no difficulty in believing a single
+honest man who should tell me that the king had just won a complete
+victory over the allies. But if all Paris were to assure me that a dead
+man had come to life again, I should not believe a word of it. That a
+historian should impose upon us, or that a whole people should be
+mistaken--there is no miracle in that. (�46.)
+
+What is God? A question that we put to children, and that philosophers
+have much trouble to answer. We know the age at which a child ought to
+learn to read, to sing, to dance, to begin Latin or geometry. It is only
+in religion that you take no account of his capacity. He scarcely hears
+what you say, before he is asked, What is God? It is at the same
+instant, from the same lips, that he learns that there are ghosts,
+goblins, were-wolves--and a God. (�25.)
+
+The diversity of religious opinions has led the deists to invent an
+argument that is perhaps more singular than sound. Cicero, having to
+prove that the Romans were the most warlike people in the world,
+adroitly draws this conclusion from the lips of their rivals. Gauls, to
+whom if to any, do you yield the palm for courage? To the Romans.
+Parthians, after you, who are the bravest of men? The Romans. Africans,
+whom would you fear, if you were to fear any? The Romans. Let us
+interrogate the religionists in this fashion, say the deists. Chinese,
+what religion would be the best, if your own were not the best?
+Naturalism. Mussulmans, what faith would you embrace, if you abjured
+Mahomet? Naturalism. Christians, what is the true religion, if it be not
+Christianity? Judaism. But you, O Jews, what is the true religion, if
+Judaism be false? Naturalism. Now those, continues Cicero, to whom the
+second place is awarded by unanimous consent, and who do not in turn
+concede the first place to any--it is those who incontestably deserve
+that place. (�62.)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In all this we notice one constant characteristic of the eighteenth
+century controversy about revealed religion. The assailant demands of
+the defender an answer to all the intellectual or logical objections
+that could possibly be raised by one who had never been a Christian, and
+who refused to become a Christian until these objections could be met.
+No account is taken of the mental conditions by which a creed is
+engendered and limited; nor of the train of historic circumstance which
+prepares men to receive it. The modern apologist escapes by explaining
+religion; the apologist of a hundred years ago was required to prove it.
+The end of such a method was inevitably a negation. The objective
+propositions of a creed with supernatural pretensions can never be
+demonstrated from natural or rationalistic premisses. And if they could
+be so demonstrated, it would only be on grounds that are equally good
+for some other creeds with the same pretensions. The sceptic was left
+triumphantly weighing one revealed system against another in an equal
+balance.[36]
+
+The position of the writer of the Philosophical Thoughts is distinctly
+theistic. Yet there is at least one striking passage to show how
+forcibly some of the arguments on the other side impressed him. "I
+open," says Diderot, "the pages of a celebrated professor, and I
+read--'Atheists, I concede to you that movement is essential to matter;
+what conclusion do you draw from that? That the world results from the
+fortuitous concourse of atoms? You might as well say that Homer's Iliad,
+or Voltaire's Henriade, is a result of the fortuitous concourse of
+written characters.' Now for my part, I should be very sorry to use that
+reasoning to an atheist; the comparison would give him a very easy game
+to play. According to the laws of the analysis of chances, he would say
+to me, I ought not to be surprised that a thing comes to pass when it is
+possible, and the difficulty of the event is compensated by the number
+of throws. There is a certain number of throws in which I would safely
+back myself to bring 100,000 sixes at once with 100,000 dice. Whatever
+the definite number of the letters with which I am invited fortuitously
+to produce the Iliad, there is a certain definite number of throws which
+would make the proposal advantageous for me; nay, my advantage would be
+infinite if the quantity of throws accorded to me were infinite. Now,
+you grant to me that matter exists from all eternity, and that movement
+is essential to it. In return for this concession, I will suppose with
+you that the world has no limits; that the multitude of atoms is
+infinite, and that this order, which astonishes you, nowhere contradicts
+itself. Well, from these reciprocal admissions there follows nothing
+else unless it be this, that the possibility of engendering the universe
+fortuitously is very small, but that the number of throws is infinite,
+or in other words, that _the difficulty of the event is more than
+sufficiently compensated by the multitude of the throws. Therefore, if
+anything ought to be repugnant to reason, it is the supposition
+that,--matter being in motion from all eternity, and there being perhaps
+in the infinite number of possible combinations an infinite number of
+admirable arrangements,--none of these admirable arrangements would have
+been met with, out of the infinite multitude of all those which_ matter
+successively took on. Therefore the mind ought to be more astonished at
+the hypothetical duration of chaos."_[37] (� 21.)
+
+In a short continuation of the Philosophical Thoughts entitled On the
+Sufficiency of Natural Religion, Diderot took the next step, and turned
+towards that faith which the votaries of each creed allow to be the best
+after their own. Even here he is still in the atmosphere of negation. He
+desires no more than to show that revealed religion confers no
+advantages which are not already secured by natural religion. "The
+revealed law contains no moral precept which I do not find recommended
+and practised under the law of nature; therefore it has taught us
+nothing new upon morality. The revealed law has brought us no new truth;
+for what is a truth but a proposition referring to an object, conceived
+in terms which present clear ideas to me, and the connection of which
+with one another is intelligible to me? Now revealed religion has
+introduced no such propositions to us. What it has added to the natural
+law consists of five or six propositions which are not a whit more
+intelligible to me than if they were expressed in ancient Carthaginian,
+inasmuch as the ideas represented by the terms, and the connection among
+these ideas, escape me entirely."[38]
+
+There is no sign in this piece that Diderot had examined the positive
+grounds of natural religion, or that he was ready with any adequate
+answer to the argument which Butler had brought forward in the previous
+decade of the century. We do not see that he is aware as yet of there
+being as valid objections on his own sceptical principles to the alleged
+data of naturalistic deism, as to the pretensions of a supernatural
+religion. He was content with Shaftesbury's position.
+
+Shaftesbury's influence on Diderot was permanent. It did not long remain
+so full and entire as it was now in the sphere of religious belief, but
+the traces of it never disappeared from his notions on morals and art.
+Shaftesbury's cheerfulness and geniality in philosophising were
+thoroughly sympathetic to Diderot. The optimistic harmony which the
+English philosopher, coming after Leibnitz, assumed as the
+starting-point of his ethical and religious ideas, was not only highly
+congenial to Diderot's sanguine temperament; it was a most attractive
+way of escape from the disorderly and confused theological wilderness of
+sin, asceticism, miracle, and the other monkeries. This naturalistic
+religion may seem a very unsafe and comfortless halting-place to us. But
+to men who heard of religion only in connection with the Bull Unigenitus
+and confessional certificates, with some act of intolerance or cruelty,
+with futile disputes about grace and the Five Propositions, the
+naturalism which Shaftesbury taught in prose and Pope versified was like
+the dawn after the foulness of night. Those who wished to soften the
+inhuman rigour of the criminal procedure of the time[39] used to appeal
+from customary ordinances and written laws to the law natural. The law
+natural was announced to have preceded any law of human devising. In the
+same way, those who wished to disperse the darkness of unintelligible
+dogmas and degraded ecclesiastical usages, appealed to the simplicity,
+light, and purity of that natural religion which was supposed to have
+been overlaid and depraved by the special superstitions of the different
+communities of the world.
+
+"Pope's Essay on Man," wrote Voltaire after his return from England
+(1728), "seems to me the finest didactic poem, the most useful, the most
+sublime, that was ever written in any tongue. 'Tis true the whole
+substance of it is to be found in Shaftesbury's Characteristics, and I
+do not know why Pope gives all the honour of it to Bolingbroke, without
+saying a word of the celebrated Shaftesbury, the pupil of Locke."[40]
+The ground of this enthusiastic appreciation of the English naturalism
+was not merely that it made morality independent of religion, which
+Shaftesbury took great pains to do. It also identified religion with all
+that is beautiful and harmonious in the universal scheme. It surrounded
+the new faith with a pure and lofty poetry, that enabled it to confront
+the old on more than equal terms of dignity and elevation. Shaftesbury,
+and Diderot after him, ennobled human nature by placing the principle of
+virtue, the sense of goodness, within the breast of man. Diderot held to
+this idea throughout, as we shall see. That he did so explains a kind of
+phraseology about virtue and morality in his letters to Madame Voland
+and elsewhere, which would otherwise sound disagreeably like cant.
+Finally, Shaftesbury's peculiar attribution of beauty to morality, his
+reference of ethical matters to a kind of taste, the tolerably equal
+importance attributed by him to a sense of beauty and to the moral
+sense, all impressed Diderot with a mark that was not effaced. In the
+text of the Inquiry the author pronounces it a childish affectation in
+the eyes of any man who weighs things maturely to deny that there is in
+moral beings, just as in corporeal objects, a true and essential beauty,
+a real sublime. The eagerness with which Diderot seized on this idea
+from the first, is shown in the declamatory foot-note which he here
+appends to his original.[41] It was the source, by a process of
+inverted application, of that ethical colouring in his criticisms on art
+which made them so new and so interesting, because it carried �sthetic
+beyond technicalities, and associated it with the real impulses and
+circumstances of human life.[42]
+
+One of Diderot's writings composed about our present date (1747), the
+Promenade du Sceptique, did not see the light until after his death. His
+daughter tells us that a police agent came one day to the house, and
+proceeded to search the author's room. He found a manuscript, said,
+"Good, that is what I am looking for," thrust it into his pocket, and
+went away. Diderot did his best to recover his piece, but never
+succeeded.[43] A copy of it came into the hands of Naigeon, and it seems
+to have been retained by Malesherbes, the director of the press, out of
+goodwill to the author. If it had been printed, it would certainly have
+cost him a sojourn in Vincennes.
+
+We have at first some difficulty in realising how he police could know
+the contents of an obscure author's desk. For one thing we have to
+remember that Paris, though it had been enormously increased in the days
+of Law and the System (1719-20), was still of a comparatively manageable
+size. In 1720, though the population of the whole realm was only
+fourteen or fifteen millions, that of Paris had reached no less a figure
+than a million and a half. After the explosion of the System, its
+artificial expansion naturally came to an end. By the middle of the
+century the highest estimate of the population does not make it much
+more than eight hundred thousand.[44] This, unlike the socially
+unwholesome and monstrous agglomerations of Paris or London in our own
+time, was a population over which police supervision might be made
+tolerably effective. It was more like a very large provincial town.
+Again, the inhabitants were marked off into groups or worlds with a
+definiteness that is now no longer possible. One-fifth of the
+population, for instance, consisted of domestic servants.[45] There were
+between twenty-eight and thirty thousand professional beggars.[46] The
+legal circle was large, and was deeply engrossed by its own interests
+and troubles. The world of authorship, though extremely noisy and
+profoundly important, still made only a small group. One effect of a
+censorship is to produce much gossip and whispering about suspected
+productions before they see the light, and these whispers let the police
+into as many secrets as they choose to know.
+
+In Diderot's case, his unsuspecting good-nature to all comers made his
+affairs accessible enough. His house was the resort of all the starving
+hacks in Paris, and he has left us more than one graphic picture of the
+literary drudge of that time. He writes, for instance, about a poor
+devil to whom he had given a manuscript to copy. "The time for which he
+had promised it to me expired, and as my man did not appear, I became
+uneasy, and started in search of him. I found him in a hole about as big
+as my fist, almost pitch-dark, without the smallest scrap of curtain or
+hanging to cover the nakedness of his walls, a couple of straw-bottomed
+chairs, a truckle-bed with a quilt riddled by the moths, a box in the
+corner of the chimney and rags of every sort stuck upon it, a small tin
+lamp to which a bottle served as support, and on a shelf some dozen
+first-rate books. I sat talking there for three-quarters of an hour. My
+man was as bare as a worm, lean, black, dry, but perfectly serene. He
+said nothing, but munched his crust of bread with good appetite, and
+bestowed a caress from time to time on his beloved, on the miserable
+bedstead that took up two-thirds of his room. If I had never learnt
+before that happiness resides in the soul, my Epictetus of Hyacinth
+Street would have taught it me right thoroughly."[47]
+
+The history of one of these ragged clients is to our point. "Among
+those," he wrote to Madame Voland,[48] "whom chance and misery sent to
+my address was one Gl�nat, who knew mathematics, wrote a good hand, and
+was in want of bread. I did all I could to extricate him from his
+embarrassments. I went begging for customers for him on every side. If
+he came at meal-times, I would not let him go; if he lacked shoes, I
+gave him them; now and then I slipped a shilling into his hands as well.
+he had the air of the worthiest man in the world, and he even bore his
+neediness with a certain gaiety that used to amuse me. I was fond of
+chatting with him; he seemed to set little store by fortune, fame, and
+most of the other things that charm or dazzle us in life. Seven or eight
+days ago Damilaville wrote to send this man to him, for one of his
+friends who had a manuscript for him to copy. I send him; the manuscript
+is entrusted to him--a work on religion and government. I do not know
+how it came about, but that manuscript is now in the hands of the
+lieutenant of police. Damilaville gives me word of this. I hasten to my
+friend Gl�nat, to warn him to count no more upon me. 'And why am I not
+to count upon you?' 'Because you are a marked man. The police have their
+eyes upon you and 'tis impossible to send work to you.' 'But, my dear
+sir, there's no risk, so long as you entrust nothing reprehensible to my
+hands. The police only come here when they scent game. I cannot tell how
+they do it, but they are never mistaken.' 'Ah well, I at any rate know
+how it is, and you have let me see much more in the matter than I
+ever expected to learn from you,' and with that I turn my back on my
+rascal." Diderot having occasion to visit the lieutenant of police,
+introduced the matter, and could not withhold an energetic remonstrance
+against such an odious abuse of a man's kindness of heart, as the
+introduction of spies to his fireside. M. de Sartine laughed and Diderot
+took his leave, vowing that all the wretches who should come to him for
+the future, with cuffs dirty and torn, with holes in their stockings and
+holes in their shoes, with hair all unkempt, in shabby overcoats with
+many rents, or scanty black suits with starting seams, with all the
+tones and looks of distressed worth, would henceforth seem to him no
+better than police emissaries and scoundrels set to spy on him. The vow,
+we may be sure, was soon forgotten, but the story shows how seriously in
+one respect the man of letters in France was worse off than his brother
+in England.
+
+The world would have suffered no irreparable loss if the police had
+thrown the Sceptic's Walk into the fire. It is an allegory designed to
+contrast the life of religion, the life of philosophy, and the life of
+sensual pleasure. Of all forms of composition, an allegory most depends
+for its success upon the rapidity of the writer's eye for new
+felicities. Accuracy, verisimilitude, sustention, count for nothing in
+comparison with imaginative adroitness and variety. Bunyan had such an
+eye, and so, with infinitely more vivacity, had Voltaire. Diderot had
+not the deep sincerity or realism of conviction of the one; nor had he
+the inimitable power of throwing himself into a fancy, that was
+possessed by the other. He was the least agile, the least felicitous,
+the least ready, of composers. His allegory of the avenue of thorns, the
+avenue of chestnut-trees, and the avenue of flowers, is an allegory,
+unskilful, obvious, poor, and not any more amusing than if it's matter
+had been set forth without any attempt at fanciful decoration. The
+blinded saints among the thorns, and the voluptuous sinners among the
+flowers, are rather mechanical figures. The translation into the dialect
+required by the allegorical situation, of a sceptic's aversion for gross
+superstition on the one hand, and for gross hedonism on the other, is
+forced and wooden. The most interesting of the three sections is the
+second, containing a discussion in which the respective parts are taken
+by a deist, a pantheist, a subjective idealist, a sceptic, and an
+atheist. The allegory falls into the background, and we have a plain
+statement of some of the objections that may be made by the sceptical
+atheist both to revelation and to natural religion. A starry sky calls
+forth the usual glorification of the maker of so much beauty. "That is
+all imagination," rejoins the atheist. "It is mere presumption. We have
+before us an unknown machine, on which certain observations have been
+made. Ignorant people who have only examined a single wheel of it, of
+which they hardly know more than a tooth or two, form conjectures upon
+the way in which their cogs fit in with a hundred thousand other wheels.
+And then to finish like artisans, they label the work with the name of
+it's author."
+
+The defender justifies this by the argument from a repeater-watch, of
+which Paley and others have made so much use. We at once ascribe the
+structure and movement of a repeater-watch to intelligent creation.
+"No--things are not equal," says the atheist. "You are comparing a
+finished work, whose origin and manufacture we know, to an infinite
+piece of complexity, whose beginnings, whose present condition, and
+whose end are all alike unknown, and about whose author you have nothing
+better than guesses."
+
+But does not its structure announce an author? "No; you do not see who
+nor what he is. Who told you that the order you admire here belies
+itself nowhere else? Are you allowed to conclude from a point in space
+to infinite space? You pile a vast piece of ground with earth-heaps
+thrown here or there by chance, but among which the worm and the ant
+find convenient dwelling-places enough. What would you think of these
+insects, if, reasoning after your fashion, they fell into raptures over
+the intelligence of the gardener who had arranged all these materials so
+delightfully for their convenience?"[49]
+
+In this rudimentary form the chief speaker presses some of the
+objections to optimistic deism from the point of view of the fixed
+limitations, the inevitable relativity, of human knowledge. This kind of
+objection had been more pithily expressed by Pascal long before, in the
+famous article of his Thoughts, on the difficulty of demonstrating the
+existence of a deity by light of nature.[50] Diderot's argument does not
+extend to dogmatic denial. It only shows that the deist is exposed to an
+attack from the same sceptical armoury from which he had drawn his own
+weapons for attacking revelation. It is impossible to tell how far
+Diderot went at this moment. The trenchancy with which his atheist urges
+his reasoning, proves that the writer was fully alive to its force. On
+the other hand, the atheist is left in the midst of a catastrophe. On
+his return home, he finds his children murdered, his house pillaged, and
+his wife carried off. And we are told that he could not complain on his
+own principles.
+
+If the absence of witnesses allowed the robber to commit his crime with
+impunity, why should he not? Again, there is a passage in which the
+writer seems to be speaking his own opinions. An interlocutor maintains
+the importance of keeping the people in bondage to certain prejudices.
+"What prejudices? If a man once admits the existence of a God, the
+reality of moral good and evil, the immortality of the soul, future
+rewards and punishments, what need has he of prejudices? Supposing him
+initiated in all the mysteries of transubstantiation, consubstantiation,
+the Trinity, hypostatical union, predestination, incarnation, and the
+rest, will he be any the better citizen?"[51]
+
+In truth, Diderot's mind was at this time floating in an atmosphere of
+rationalistic negation, and the moral of his piece, as he hints, points
+first to the extravagance of Catholicism, next to the vanity of the
+pleasures of the world, and lastly, to the unfathomable uncertainty of
+philosophy. Still, we may discern a significant leaning towards the
+theory of the eternity of matter, which has arranged itself and assumed
+variety of form by virtue of its inherent quality of motion.[52]
+
+It is a characteristic and displeasing mark of the time that Diderot in
+the midst of these serious speculations, should have set himself (1748)
+to the composition of a story in the kind which the author of the _Sofa_
+had made highly popular. The mechanism of this deplorable piece is more
+grossly disgusting--I mean �sthetically, not morally--than anything to
+be found elsewhere in the too voluminous library of impure literature.
+The idea would seem to have been borrowed from one of the old
+Fabliaux.[53] But what is tolerable in the quaint and _na�f_ verse of
+the twelfth or thirteenth century, becomes shocking when deliberately
+rendered by a grave man into bald unblushing prose of the eighteenth.
+The humour, the rich sparkle, the wit, the merry _gaillardise_, have all
+vanished; we are left with the vapid dregs of an obscene anachronism.
+Mr. Carlyle, who knows how to be manly in these matters, and affects
+none of the hypocritical airs of our conventional criticism, yet has not
+more energetically than truly pronounced this "the beastliest of all
+past, present, or future dull novels." As "the next mortal creature,
+even a Reviewer, again compelled to glance into that book," I have felt
+the propriety of our humorist's injunction to such a one, "to bathe
+himself in running water, put on change of raiment, and be unclean until
+the even." Diderot himself, as might have been expected, soon had the
+grace to repent him of this shameful book, and could never hear it
+mentioned without a very lively embarrassment.[54]
+
+As I have said before,[55] it was such books as this, as Cr�billon's
+novels, as Duclos's Confessions du Comte X., and the dissoluteness of
+manners indicated by them, which invested Rousseau's New Helo�sa
+(1761) with its delightful and irresistible fascinations. Having
+pointed out elsewhere the significance of the licentiousness from
+which the philosophic party did not escape untainted,[56] I need not
+here do more than make two short remarks. First, the corruption which
+had seized the court after the death of Lewis XIV. in the course of a
+few years had reached the middle class in the town. The loosening of
+social fibre, caused by the insenate speculation at the time of Law,
+no doubt furthered the spread of demoralisation. Second, the reaction
+against the Church involved among its other elements a passionate
+contempt for all asceticism. This happened to fall in with the
+general relaxation of morals that followed Lewis's gloomy rigour.
+Consequently even men of pure life, like Condorcet, carried the
+theoretical protest against asceticism so far as to vindicate the
+practical immorality of the time. This is one of those enormous
+drawbacks that people seldom take into account when they are
+enumerating the blessings of superstition. Medi�val superstition had
+produced some advantages, but now came the set-off. Durable morality
+had been associated with a transitory religious faith. The faith fell
+into intellectual discredit, and sexual morality shared its decline
+for a short season. This must always be the natural consequence of
+building sound ethics on the shifting sands and rotting foundations
+of theology.
+
+Such literature as these tales of Diderot's, was the mirror both of the
+ordinary practical sentiment and the philosophic theory. A nation pays
+dearly for one of those outbreaks, when they happen to stamp themselves
+in a literary form that endures. There are those who hold that Louvet's
+Faublas is to this day a powerful agent in the depravation of the youth
+of France. Diderot, however, had not the most characteristic virtues of
+French writing; he was no master in the art of the _na�f_, nor in
+delicate malice, nor in sprightly cynicism. His book, consequently, has
+not lived, and we need not waste more words upon it. _Chaque esprit a sa
+lie_, wrote one who for a while had sat at Diderot's feet;[57] and we
+may dismiss this tale as the lees of Diderot's strong, careless,
+sensualised understanding. He was afterwards the author of a work, La
+Religieuse, on which the superficial critic may easily pour out the
+vials of affected wrath. There, however, he was executing a profound
+pathological study in a serious spirit. If the subject is horrible, we
+have to blame the composition of human character, or the mischievousness
+of a human institution. La Religieuse is no continuation of the vein of
+defilement which began and ended with the story of 1748--a story which
+is one among so many illustrations of Guizot's saying about the
+eighteenth century, that it was the most tempting and seductive of all
+centuries, for it promised full satisfaction at once to all the
+greatnesses of humanity and to all its weaknesses. Hettner quotes a
+passage from the minor writings of Niebuhr, in which the historian
+compares Diderot with Petronius, as having both of them been honest and
+well-intentioned men, who in shameless times were carried towards
+cynicism by their deep contempt for the prevailing vice. "If Diderot
+were alive now," says Niebuhr, "and if Petronius had only lived in the
+fourth instead of the third century, then the painting of obscenity
+would have been odious to them, and the inducement to it infinitely
+smaller."[58] There is no trace in Diderot of this deep contempt for the
+viciousness of his time. All that can be said is that he did not escape
+it in his earlier years, in spite of the natural wholesomeness and
+rectitude of his character.
+
+It is worthy of remark that the dissoluteness of the middle portion of
+the century was not associated with the cynical and contemptuous view
+about women that usually goes with relaxed morality. There was a more or
+less distinct consciousness of a truth which has ever since grown into
+clearer prominence with the advance of thought since the Revolution. It
+is that the sphere and destiny of women are among the three or four
+foremost questions in social improvement. This is now perceived on all
+sides, profound as are the differences of opinion upon the proper
+solution of the problem. A hundred years ago this perception was vague
+and indefinite, but there was an unmistakable apprehension that the
+Catholic ideal of womanhood was no more adequate to the facts of life,
+than Catholic views about science, or property, or labour, or political
+order and authority.
+
+Diderot has left some curious and striking reflections upon the fate and
+character of women. He gives no signs of feeling after social
+reorganisation; he only speaks as one brooding in uneasy meditation over
+a very mournful perplexity. There is no sentimentalising, after the
+fashion of Jean Jacques. He does not neglect the plain physical facts,
+about which it is so difficult in an age of morbid reserve to speak with
+freedom, yet about which it is fatal to be silent. He indulged in none
+of those mischievous flatteries of women, which satisfy narrow
+observers, or coxcombs, or the uxorious. "Never forget," he said, "that
+for lack of reflection and principles, nothing penetrates down to a
+certain profoundness of conviction in the understanding of women. The
+ideas of justice, virtue, vice, goodness, badness, float on the surface
+of their souls. They have preserved self-love and personal interest with
+all the energy of nature. Although more civilized than we are outwardly,
+they have remained true savages inwardly.... It is in the passion of
+love, the access of jealousy, the transports of maternal tenderness, the
+instants of superstition, the way in which they show epidemic and
+popular notions, that women amaze us; fair as the seraphin of Klopstock,
+terrible as the fiends of Milton.... The distractions of a busy and
+contentious life break up our passions. A woman, on the contrary, broods
+over her passions; they are a fixed point on which her idleness or the
+frivolity of her duties holds her attention fast.... Impenetrable in
+dissimulation, cruel in vengeance, tenacious in their designs, without
+scruples about the means of success, animated by a deep and secret
+hatred against the despotism of man--it seems as if there were among
+them a sort of league, such as exists among the priests of all
+nations.... The symbol of women in general is that of the Apocalypse, on
+the front of which is inscribed _Mystery_.... If we have more reason
+than women have, they have far more instinct than we have."[59] All this
+was said in no bitterness, but in the spirit of the strong observer.
+
+Cynical bitterness is as misplaced as frivolous adulation. Diderot had a
+deep pity for women. Their physical weaknesses moved him to compassion.
+To these are added the burden of their maternal function, and the burden
+of unequal laws. "The moment which shall deliver the girl from
+subjection to her parents is come; her imagination opens to a future
+thronged by chim�ras; her heart swims in secret delight. Rejoice while
+thou canst, luckless creature! Time would have weakened the tyranny that
+thou hast left; time will strengthen the tyranny that awaits thee. They
+choose a husband for her. She becomes a mother. It is in anguish, at the
+peril of their lives, at the cost of their charms, often to the damage
+of their health, that they give birth to their little ones. The organs
+that mark their sex are subject to two incurable maladies. There is,
+perhaps, no joy comparable to that of the mother as she looks on her
+first-born; but the moment is dearly bought. Time advances, beauty
+passes; there come the years of neglect, of spleen, of weariness. 'Tis
+in pain that Nature disposes them for maternity; in pain and illness,
+dangerous and prolonged, she brings maternity to its close. What is a
+woman after that? Neglected by her husband, left by her children, a
+nullity in society, then piety becomes her one and last resource. In
+nearly every part of the world, the cruelty of the civil laws against
+women is added to the cruelty of Nature. They have been treated like
+weak-minded children. There is no sort of vexation which, among
+civilised peoples, man cannot inflict upon woman with impunity."[60]
+
+The thought went no further, in Diderot's mind, than this pathetic
+ejaculation. He left it to the next generation, to Condorcet and others,
+to attack the problem practically; effectively to assert the true theory
+that we must look to social emancipation in women, and moral discipline
+in men, to redress the physical disadvantages. Meanwhile Diderot
+deserves credit for treating the position and character of women in a
+civilised society with a sense of reality; and for throwing aside those
+faded gallantries of poetic and literary convention, that screen a broad
+and dolorous gulf.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE NEW PHILOSOPHY.
+
+
+It is a common prejudice to treat Voltaire as if he had done nothing
+save write the Pucelle and mock at Habakkuk. Every serious and
+instructed student knows better. Voltaire's popularisation of the
+philosophy of Newton (1738) was a stimulus of the greatest importance to
+new thought in France. In a chapter of this work he had explained with
+his usual matchless terseness and lucidity Berkeley's theory of vision.
+The principle of this theory is, as every one knows, that figures,
+magnitudes, situations, distances, are not sensations but inferences;
+they are not the immediate revelations of sight, but the products of
+association and intellectual construction; they are not directly judged
+by vision, but by imagination and experience. If this be so, neither
+situation, nor distance, nor magnitude, nor figure, would be at once
+discerned by one born blind, supposing him suddenly to receive sight.
+Voltaire then describes the results of the operation performed by
+Cheselden (1728) on a lad who had been blind from his birth. This
+experiment was believed to confirm all that Locke and Berkeley had
+foreseen, for it was long before the patient could distinguish objects
+by size, distance, or shape.[61] Condillac had renewed the interest
+which Voltaire had first kindled in the subject, by referring to
+Cheselden's experiment in his first work, which was published in
+1746.[62]
+
+It happened that in 1748 R�aumur couched the eyes of a girl who had been
+born blind. Diderot sought to be admitted to the operation, but the
+favour was denied him, and he expressed his resentment in terms which,
+as we shall see, cost him very dear. As he could not witness the
+experiment, he began to meditate upon the subject, and the result was
+the _Letter on the Blind for the Use of those who See_. published in
+1749--the date, it may be observed in passing, of another very important
+work in the development of materialistic speculation, David Hartley's
+_Observations on man, his frame, his duty, and his expectations_.
+Diderot's real disappointment at not being admitted to the operation was
+slight. In a vigorous passage he shows the difficulties in the way of
+conducting such an experiment under the conditions necessary to make it
+conclusive. To prepare the born-blind to answer philosophical
+interrogatories truly, and then to put these interrogatories rightly,
+would have been a feat, he declares, not unworthy of the united talents
+of Newton, Descartes, Locke, and Leibnitz. Unless the patient were
+placed in such conditions as this, Diderot thinks there would be more
+profit in questioning a blind person of good sense, than in the answers
+of an uneducated person receiving sight for the first time under
+abnormal and bewildering circumstances.[63] In this he was undoubtedly
+right. If the experiment could be prepared under the delicate conditions
+proper to make it demonstrative evidence, it would be final. But the
+experiment had certainly not been so prepared in his time, and probably
+never will be.[64]
+
+Read in the light of the rich and elaborate speculative literature which
+England is producing in our own day, Diderot's once famous Letter on the
+Blind seems both crude and loose in its thinking. Yet considering the
+state of philosophy in France at the time of its appearance, we are
+struck by the acuteness, the good sense, and the originality of many of
+its positions. It was the first effective introduction into France of
+these great and fundamental principles; that all knowledge is relative
+to our intelligence, that thought is not the measure of existence, nor
+the conceivableness of a proposition the test of its truth, and that our
+experience is not the limit to the possibilities of things. That is an
+impatient criticism which dismisses the French philosophers with some
+light word as radically shallow and impotent. Diderot grasped the
+doctrine of Relativity in some of the most important and far-reaching of
+all its bearings. The fact that he and his allies used the doctrine as a
+weapon of combat against the standing organisation, is exactly what
+makes their history worth writing about. The standing organisation was
+the antagonistic doctrine incarnate. It made anthropomorphism and the
+absolute the very base and spring alike of individual and of social
+life. No growth was possible until this speculative base had been
+transformed. Hence the profound significance of what looks like a mere
+discussion of one of the minor problems of metaphysics. Diderot was not
+the first to discover Relativity, nor did he establish it; but it was he
+who introduced it into the literature of his country at the moment when
+circumstances were ripe for it.
+
+Condillac, as we have said, had published his first work, the Essay on
+the Origin of Human Knowledge, three years before (1746). This was a
+simple and undeveloped rendering of the doctrine of Locke, that the
+ultimate source of our notions lies in impressions made upon the senses,
+shaped and combined by reflection. It was not until 1754 that Condillac
+published his more celebrated treatise on the Sensations, in which he
+advanced a stride beyond Locke, and instead of tracing our notions to
+the double source of sensation and reflection, maintained that
+reflection itself is nothing but sensation "differently transformed." In
+the first book, again, he had disputed Berkeley's theory of vision: in
+the second, he gave a reasoned adhesion to it. Now Diderot and Condillac
+had first been brought together by Rousseau, when all three were needy
+wanderers about the streets of Paris. They used to dine together once a
+week at a tavern, and it was Diderot who persuaded a bookseller to give
+Condillac a hundred crowns for his first manuscript. "The Paris
+booksellers," says Rousseau, "are very arrogant and harsh to beginners;
+and metaphysics, then extremely little in fashion, did not offer a very
+particularly attractive subject."[65] The constant intercourse between
+Diderot and Condillac in the interval between the two works of the great
+apostle of Sensationalism, may well account for the remarkable
+development in doctrine. This is one of the many examples of the share
+of Diderot's energetic and stimulating intelligence, in directing and
+nourishing the movement of the time, its errors and precipitancies
+included. On the other hand, the share of Condillac in providing a text
+for Diderot's first considerable performance, is equally evident.
+
+The Letter on the Blind is an inquiry how far a modification of the five
+senses, such as the congenital absence of one of them, would involve a
+corresponding modification of the ordinary notions acquired by men who
+are normally endowed in their capacity for sensation. It considers the
+Intellect in a case where it is deprived of one of the senses. The
+writer opens with an account of a visit made by himself and some friends
+to a man born blind at Puisaux, a place seventy miles from Paris. They
+asked him in what way he thought of the eyes. "They are an organ on
+which the air produces the same effect as my stick upon my hand." A
+mirror he described "as a machine which sets things in relief away from
+themselves, if they are properly placed in relation to it." This
+conception had formed itself in his mind in the following way. The blind
+man only knows objects by touch. He is aware, on the testimony of
+others, that we know objects by sight as he knows them by touch; he can
+form no other notion. He is aware, again, that a man cannot see his own
+face, though he can touch it. Sight, then, he concludes, is a sort of
+touch, which only extends to objects different from our own visage, and
+remote from us. Now touch only conveys to him the idea of relief. A
+mirror, therefore, must be a machine which sets us in relief out of
+ourselves. How many philosophers, cries Diderot, have employed less
+subtlety to reach notions just as untrue?
+
+The born-blind had a memory for sound in a surprising degree, and
+countenances do not present more diversity to us than he observed in
+voices. The voice has for such persons an infinite number of delicate
+shades that escape us, because we have not the same reason for
+attention that the blind have. The help that our senses lend to one
+another, is an obstacle to their perfection.
+
+The blind man said he should have been tempted to regard persons endowed
+with sight as superior intelligences, if he had not found out a hundred
+times how inferior we are in other respects. How do we know--Diderot
+reflects upon this--that all the animals do not reason in the same way,
+and look upon themselves as our equals or superiors, notwithstanding our
+more complex and efficient intelligence? They may accord to us a reason
+with which we should still have much need of their instinct while they
+claim to be endowed with an instinct which enables them to do very well
+without our reason.
+
+When asked whether he should be glad to have sight, the born-blind
+replied that, apart from curiosity, he would be just as well pleased to
+have long arms: his hands would tell him what is going on in the moon,
+better than our eyes or telescopes; and the eyes cease to see earlier
+than the hands lose the sense of touch. It would therefore be just as
+good to perfect in him the organ that he had, as to confer upon him
+another which he had not. This is untrue. No conceivable perfection of
+touch would reveal phenomena of light, and the longest arms must leave
+those phenomena undisclosed.
+
+After recounting various other peculiarities of thought, Diderot notices
+that the blind man attaches slight importance to the sense of shame. He
+would hardly understand the utility of clothes, for instance, except as
+a protection against cold. He frankly told his philosophising visitors
+that he could not see why one part of the body should be covered rather
+than another. "I have never doubted," says Diderot, "that the state of
+our organs and senses has much influence both on our metaphysics and our
+morality." This, I may observe, does not in the least show that in a
+society of human beings, not blind, but endowed with vision, the sense
+of physical shame is a mere prejudice of which philosophy will rid us.
+The fact that a blind man discerns no ill in nakedness, has no bearing
+on the value or naturalness of shame among people with eyes. And
+moreover, the fact that delicacy or shame is not a universal human
+impulse, but is established, and its scope defined, by a varying
+etiquette, does not in the least affect the utility or wisdom of such an
+artificial establishment and definition. The grounds of delicacy, though
+connected with the senses, are fixed by considerations that spring from
+the social reason. It seems to be true, as Diderot says, that the
+born-blind are at first without physical delicacy; because delicacy has
+its root in the consciousness that we are observed, while the born-blind
+are not conscious that they are observed. It is found that one of the
+most important parts of their education is to impress this knowledge
+upon them.[66]
+
+But the artificiality of a moral acquisition is obviously no test of
+its worth, nor of the reasons for preserving it. Diderot exclaims, "Ah,
+madam, how different is the morality of a blind man from ours; and how
+the morality of the deaf would differ from that of the blind; and if a
+being should have a sense more than we have, how wofully imperfect would
+he find our morality!" This is plainly a crude and erroneous way of
+illustrating the important truth of the strict relativity of ethical
+standards and maxims. Diderot speaks as if they were relative simply and
+solely to our five wits, and would vary with them only. Everybody now
+has learnt that morality depends not merely on the five wits, but on the
+mental constitution within, and on the social conditions without. It is
+to these rather than to the number of our senses, that moral ideas are
+relative.
+
+Passing over various other remarks, we come to those pages in the Letter
+which apply the principle of relativity to the master-conception of God.
+Diderot's argument on this point naturally drew keener attention than
+the more disinterestedly scientific parts of his contribution. People
+were not strongly agitated by the question whether a blind man who had
+learned to distinguish a sphere from a cube by touch, would instantly
+identify each of them if he received sight.[67]
+
+The question whether a blind man has as good reasons for believing in
+the existence of a God as a man with sight can find, was of more vivid
+interest. As a matter of fact, Diderot's treatment of the narrower
+question (pp. 324, etc.) is more closely coherent than his treatment of
+the wider one, for the simple reason that the special limitation of
+experience in the born-blind cannot fairly be made to yield any decisive
+evidence on the great, the insoluble enigma.
+
+Here, as in the other part of his essay, Diderot followed the method of
+interrogating the blind themselves. In this instance, he turned to the
+most extraordinary example in history, of intellectual mastery and
+scientific penetration in one who practically belonged to the class of
+the born-blind; and this too in dealing with subjects where sight might
+be thought most indispensable. From 1711 to 1739 one of the professors
+of mathematics at Cambridge was Nicholas Saunderson, who had lost his
+sight before he was twelve months old. He was a man of striking mental
+vigour, an original and efficient teacher, and the author of a book upon
+algebra which was considered meritorious in its day. His knowledge of
+optics was highly remarkable. He had distinct ideas of perspective, of
+the projections of the sphere, and of the forms assumed by plane or
+solid figures in certain positions. For performing computations he
+devised a machine of great ingenuity, which also served the purpose,
+with certain modifications, of representing geometrical diagrams. In
+religion he was a sceptic or something more, and in his last hours
+Diderot supposes him to have engaged in a discussion with a minister of
+religion, upon the arguments for the existence of a deity drawn from
+final causes. This discussion Diderot professes to reproduce, and he
+makes Saunderson discourse with much eloquence and some pathos.
+
+By one of those mystifications which make the French polemical
+literature of the eighteenth century the despair of bibliographers,
+Diderot cites as his authority a _Life of Saunderson_, by Dr. Inchlif.
+He sets forth the title with great circumstantiality, but no such book
+exists or ever did exist. The Royal Society of London, however, took the
+jest of fathering atheism on one of its members in bad part, and Diderot
+was systematically excluded from the honour of admission to that learned
+body, as he was excluded all his life from the French Academy.
+
+The reasoning which Diderot puts into the professor's mouth is at first
+a fervid enlargement of the text, that the argument drawn from the
+wonders of nature is very weak evidence for blind men. Our power of
+creating new objects, so to speak, by means of a little mirror, is far
+more incomprehensible to them, than the stars which they have been
+condemned never to behold. The luminous ball that moves from east to
+west through the heavens, is a less astonishing thing to them than the
+fire on the hearth which they can lessen or augment at pleasure.[68]
+"Why talk to me," says Saunderson, "of all that fine spectacle which has
+never been made for me? I have been condemned to pass my life in
+darkness; and you cite marvels that I cannot understand, and that are
+only evidence for you and for those who see as you do. If you want me to
+believe in God, you must make me touch him." The minister replied that
+the sense of touch ought to be enough to reveal the divinity to him in
+the admirable mechanism of his organs. To this, Saunderson:--"I repeat,
+all that is not as fine for me as it is for you. But the animal
+mechanism, even were it as perfect as you pretend, and as I daresay it
+is--what has it in common with a Being of sovereign intelligence? If it
+fills you with astonishment, that is perhaps because you are in the
+habit of treating as a prodigy anything that strikes you as being beyond
+your own strength. I have been myself so often an object of admiration
+for you, that I have a poor opinion of what surprises you. I have
+attracted people from all parts of England, who could not conceive by
+what means I could work at geometry. Well, you must agree that such
+persons had not very exact notions about the possibility of things. Is a
+phenomenon in our notions beyond the power of man? Then we instantly
+say--_'Tis the handiwork of a God_. Nothing short of that can content
+our vanity. Why can we not contrive to throw into our talk less pride
+and more philosophy? If nature offers us some knot that is hard to
+untie, let us leave it for what it is; do not let us employ for cutting
+it the hand of a Being, who then immediately becomes in turn a new knot
+for us, and a knot harder to untie than the first. An Indian tells you
+that our globe is suspended in the air on the back of an elephant. And
+the elephant! It stands on a tortoise. And the tortoise? what sustains
+that?... You pity the Indian: and yet one might very well say to you as
+to him--Mr. Holmes, my good friend, confess your ignorance, and spare me
+elephant and tortoise."[69]
+
+The minister very naturally then falls back upon good authority, and
+asks Saunderson to take the word of Newton, Clarke, and Leibnitz. The
+blind man answers that though the actual state of the universe may be
+the illustration of a marvellous and admirable order, still Newton,
+Clarke, and Leibnitz must leave him freedom of opinion as to its earlier
+states. And then he foreshadows in a really singular and remarkable way
+that theory which is believed to be the great triumph of scientific
+discovery, and which is certainly the great stimulus to speculation, in
+our own time. As to anterior states "you have no witnesses to confront
+with me, and your eyes give you no help. Imagine, if you choose, that
+the order which strikes you so profoundly has subsisted from the
+beginning. But leave me free to think that it has done no such thing,
+and that if we went back to the birth of things and scenes, and
+perceived matter in motion and chaos slowly disentangling itself, we
+should come across a whole multitude of shapeless creatures, instead of
+a very few creatures highly organised. If I have no objection to make to
+what you say about the present condition of things, I may at least
+question you as to their past condition. I may at least ask of you, for
+example, who told you--you and Leibnitz and Clarke and Newton--that in
+the first instances of the formation of animals, some were not without
+heads and others without feet? I may maintain that these had no
+stomachs, and those no intestines; that some to whom a stomach, a
+palate, and teeth seemed to promise permanence, came to an end through
+some fault of heart or lungs; that the monsters annihilated one another
+in succession, that all the faulty (_vicieuses_) combinations of matter
+disappeared, and that _those only survived whose mechanism implied no
+important mis-adaptation_ (contradiction), _and who had the power of
+supporting and perpetuating themselves_.
+
+"On this hypothesis, if the first man had happened to have his larynx
+closed, or had not found suitable food, or had been defective in the
+parts of generation, or had failed to find a mate, then what would have
+become of the human race? It would have been still enfolded in the
+general depuration of the universe; and that arrogant being who calls
+himself Man, dissolved and scattered among the molecules of matter,
+would perhaps have remained for all time hidden in the number of mere
+possibilities.
+
+"If shapeless creatures had never existed, you would not fail to insist
+that none will ever appear, and that I am throwing myself headlong into
+chimerical hypotheses. But the order is not even now so perfect, but
+that monstrous products appear from time to time."[70]
+
+We have here a distinct enough conception, though in an exceedingly
+undigested shape, first, of incessant Variability in organisms as an
+actual circumstance, which we may see exemplified in its extreme form in
+the monstrous deviations of structure that occur from time to time
+before our own eyes; second, of Adaptation to environment as the
+determining condition of Survival among the forms that present
+themselves. Even as a bald and unsustained guess, this was an effective
+side-blow at the doctrine of final causes--a doctrine, as has been often
+remarked, which does not survive, in any given set of phenomena, the
+reduction of these phenomena to terms of matter and motion.
+
+"I conjecture then," continues Saunderson, enlarging the idea of the
+possibilities of matter and motion, "that in the beginning when matter
+in fermentation gradually brought our universe bursting into being,
+blind creatures like myself were very common. But why should I not
+believe of worlds what I believe of animals? How many worlds, mutilated
+and imperfect, were peradventure dispersed, then re-formed, and are
+again dispersing at each moment of time in those far-off spaces which I
+cannot touch and you cannot behold, but where motion combines and will
+continue to combine masses of matter, until they have chanced on some
+arrangement in which they may finally persevere! O philosophers,
+transport yourselves with me on to the confines of the universe, beyond
+the point where I feel, and you see, organised beings; gaze over that
+new ocean, and seek across its lawless, aimless heavings some vestiges
+of that intelligent Being whose wisdom strikes you with such wonder
+here!
+
+"What is this world? A complex whole, subject to endless revolutions.
+All these revolutions show a continual tendency to destruction; a swift
+succession of beings who follow one another, press forward, and vanish;
+a fleeting symmetry; the order of a moment. I reproached you just now
+with estimating the perfection of things by your own capacity; and I
+might accuse you here of measuring its duration by the length of your
+own days. You judge of the continuous existence of the world, as an
+ephemeral insect might judge of yours. The world is eternal for you, as
+you are eternal to the being that lives but for one instant. Yet the
+insect is the more reasonable of the two. For what a prodigious
+succession of ephemeral generations attests your eternity! What an
+immeasurable tradition! Yet shall we all pass away, without the
+possibility of assigning either the real extension that we filled in
+space, or the precise time that we shall have endured. Time, matter,
+space--all, it may be, are no more than a point."[71]
+
+Diderot sent a copy of his work to Voltaire. The poet replied with his
+usual playful politeness, but declared his dissent from Saunderson, "who
+denied God, because he happened to have been born blind."[72] More
+pretentious, and infinitely less acute critics than Voltaire, have fixed
+on the same point in the argument and met it by the same answer; namely,
+that, blind as he was, Saunderson ought to have recognised an
+intelligent Being who had provided him with so many substitutes for
+sight; he ought to have inferred a skilful demiurgus from those ordered
+relations in the universe, which Thought, independently of Vision, might
+well have disclosed to him. In truth, this is not the centre of the
+whole argument. When Saunderson implies that he could only admit a God
+on condition that he could touch him, he makes a single sense the
+channel of all possible ideas, and the arbiter of all reasoned
+combinations of ideas. This is absurd, and Diderot, as we have seen,
+rapidly passed away from that to the real strength of the position. All
+the rest of the contention against final causes would have come just as
+fitly from the lips of a man with vision, as from Saunderson. The
+hypothetical inference of a deity from the marvels of adaptation to be
+found in the universe is unjustified, among other reasons, because it
+ignores or leaves unexplained the marvels of mis-adaptation in the
+universe. It makes absolute through eternity a hypothesis which can at
+its best only be true relatively--not merely to the number of our
+senses, but--to a few partially chosen phenomena of our own little day.
+It explains a few striking facts; it leaves wholly unexplained a far
+greater number of equally striking facts, even if it be not directly
+contradicted by them. It is the invention of an imaginary agency to
+account for the scanty successes of creation, and an attribution to that
+agency of the kind of motives that might have animated a benevolent
+European living in the eighteenth century. It leaves wholly unaccounted
+for the prodigious host of monstrous or imperfect organisms, and the
+appalling law of merciless and incessant destruction.
+
+To us this is the familiar discussion of the day. But let us return to
+the starting-point of this chapter. In France a hundred and twenty years
+ago it was the first opening of a decisive breach in the walls that had
+sheltered the men of Western Europe against outer desolation for some
+fifteen centuries or more. The completeness of Catholicism, as a
+self-containing system of life and thought, is now harder for
+Protestants or Sceptics to realise, than any other fact in the whole
+history of human society. Catholicism was not only an institution, nor
+only a religious faith; it was also a philosophy and a systematised
+theory of the universe. The Church during its best age directed the
+moral relations of individual men, and attempted, more or less
+successfully, to humanise the relations of communities. It satisfied or
+stimulated the affections by its exaltation of the Virgin Mary as a
+supreme object of worship; it nourished the imagination on polytheistic
+legends of saints and martyrs; it stirred the religious emotions by
+touching and impressive rites; it surrounded its members with emblems of
+a special and invincible protection. Catholicism, we have again and
+again to repeat, claimed to deal with life as a whole, and to leave no
+province of nature, no faculty of man, no need of intelligence or
+spirit, uncomprehended. But we must not forget that, though this
+prodigious system had its root in the affections and sympathies of human
+nature, it was also fenced round by a theory of metaphysic. It rested
+upon authority and tradition, but it also sought an expression in an
+intellectual philosophy of things. The essence of this philosophy was to
+make man the final cause of the universe. Its interpretation of the
+world was absolute; its conception of the Creator was absolute; its
+account of our intellectual impressions, of our moral rules, of our
+spiritual ideals, made them all absolute. Now Diderot, when he wrote the
+Letter on the Blind, perceived that mere rationalistic attacks upon the
+sacred books, upon the miracles, upon the moral types, of Catholicism,
+could only be partially effective for destruction, and could have no
+effect at all in replacing the old ways of thinking by others of more
+solid truth. The attack must begin in philosophy. The first fruitful
+process must consist in shifting the point of view, in enlarging the
+range of the facts to be considered, in pressing the relativity of our
+ideas, in freeing ourselves from the tyranny of anthropomorphism.
+
+Hobbes's witty definition of the papacy as the ghost of the old Roman
+Empire sitting enthroned on the grave thereof, may tempt us to forget
+the all-important truth that the basis of the power of the ghost was
+essentially different from that of the dissolved body. The Empire was a
+political organisation, resting on military force. The Church was a
+social organisation, made vital by a conviction. The greatest fact in
+the intellectual history of the eighteenth century is the decisive
+revolution that overtook that sustaining conviction. The movement and
+the men whom we are studying owe all their interest to the share that
+they had in this immense task. The central conception, that the universe
+was called into existence only to further its Creator's purpose towards
+man, became incredible. This absolute proposition was slowly displaced
+by notions of the limitation of human faculties, and of the
+comparatively small portion of the whole cosmos or chaos to which we
+have reason to believe that these faculties give us access. To
+substitute this relative point of view for the absolute, was the
+all-important preliminary to the effectual breaking up of the great
+Catholic construction.
+
+What seems to careless observers a mere metaphysical dispute was in
+truth, and still is, the decisive quarter of the great battle between
+theology and a philosophy reconcilable with science. When the Catholic
+reaction set in, Joseph de Maistre, by far its acutest champion in the
+region of philosophy, at once made it his first business to attack the
+principle of relativity with all his force of dialectic, and to
+reinstate absolute modes of thinking, and the absolute quality of
+Catholic propositions about religion, knowledge, and government.[73] Yet
+neither he nor any one else on his side has ever effectively shaken the
+solid argument which Diderot fancifully illustrated in the following
+passage from his reply to Voltaire's letter of thanks for the opuscule:
+"This marvellous order and these wondrous adaptations, what am I to
+think of them? That they are metaphysical entities only existing in your
+own mind. You cover a vast piece of ground with a mass of ruins falling
+hither or thither at hazard; amid these the worm and the ant find
+commodious shelter enough. What would you say of these insects, if they
+were to take for real and final entities the relations of the places
+which they inhabit to their organisation, and then fall into ecstasies
+over the beauty of their subterranean architecture, and the wonderfully
+superior intelligence of the gardener who arranges things so
+conveniently for them?"[74] This is the notion which Voltaire himself
+three years afterwards illustrated in the witty fancies of
+_Microm�gas_. The little animalcule in the square cap, who makes the
+giant laugh in a Homeric manner by its inflated account of itself as the
+final cause of the universe, is the type of the philosophy on which
+Catholicism is based.
+
+In the same letter Diderot avows his dissent--hypocritically, we find
+reason for suspecting--from Saunderson's conclusion. "It is commonly in
+the night-time," he says, "that the mists arise which obscure in me the
+existence of God; the rising of the sun never fails to scatter them. But
+then the darkness is ever-enduring for the blind, and the sun only rises
+for those who see." Diderot's denial of atheism seems more than
+suspicious, when one finds him taking so much pains to make out
+Saunderson's case for him, when he urges the argument following, for
+instance: "If there had never existed any but material beings, there
+would never have been spiritual beings; for then the spiritual beings
+would either have given themselves existence, or else would have
+received it from the material beings. But if there had never existed any
+but spiritual beings, you will see that there would never have been
+material beings. Right philosophy only allows me to suppose in things
+what I can distinctly perceive in them. Now I perceive no other
+faculties distinctly in the mind except those of willing and thinking,
+and I no more conceive that thought and will can act on material beings
+or on nothing, than I can conceive material beings or nothing acting on
+spiritual beings." And he winds up his letter thus: "It is very
+important not to take hemlock for parsley; but not important at all to
+believe or to disbelieve in God. The world, said Montaigne, is a
+tennis-ball that he has given to philosophers to toss hither and
+thither; and I would say nearly as much of the Deity himself."[75]
+
+In concluding our account of this piece, we may mention that Diderot
+threw out a hint, which is a good illustration of the alert and
+practically helpful way in which his mind was always seeking new ideas.
+We have common signs, he said, appealing to the eye, namely, written
+characters, and others appealing to the ear, namely, articulate sounds;
+we have none appealing to touch. "For want of such a language,
+communication is entirely broken between us and those who are born deaf,
+dumb, and blind. They grow, but they remain in a state of imbecility.
+Perhaps they would acquire ideas, if we made ourselves understood by
+them from childhood in a fixed, determinate, constant, and uniform
+manner; in short, if we traced on their hand the same characters that we
+trace upon paper, and invariably attached the same significance to
+them."[76] The patient benevolence and ingenuity of Dr. Howe of Boston
+has realised in our own day the value of Diderot's suggestion.
+
+One or two trifling points of literary interest may be noticed in the
+Letter on the Blind. Diderot refers to "the ingenious expression of an
+English geometer that _God geometrises_" (p. 294). He is unaware
+apparently of the tradition which attributes the expression to Plato,
+though it is not found in Plato's writings. Plutarch, I believe, is the
+first person who mentions the saying, and discusses what Plato exactly
+meant by it. In truth, it is one of that large class of dicta which look
+more ingenious than they are true. There is a fine Latin passage by
+Barrow on the mighty geometry of the universe, and the reader of the
+_Religio Medici_ (p. 42) may remember that Sir Thomas Browne pronounces
+God to be "like a skilful geometrician."
+
+An odd coincidence of simile is worth mentioning. Diderot says "that
+great services are like large pieces of money, that we have seldom any
+occasion to use. Small attentions are a current coin that we always
+carry in our hands." This is curiously like the saying in the _Tatler_
+that "A man endowed with great perfections without good breeding is like
+one who has his pockets full of gold, but wants change for his ordinary
+occasions." Yet if Diderot had read the _Tatler_, he would certainly
+have referred to the story in No. 55, how William Jones of Newington,
+born blind, was brought to sight at the age of twenty--a story told in a
+manner after Diderot's own heart.
+
+
+II.
+
+It is proper in this place to mention a short philosophic piece which
+Diderot wrote in 1751, his _Letter on the Deaf and Dumb for the Use of
+those who Hear and Talk_. This is not, like the Letter on the Blind,
+the examination of a case of the Intellect deprived of one or more of
+the senses. It is substantially a fragment, and a very important
+fragment, on �sthetics, and as such there will be something to say about
+it in another chapter. But there are, perhaps, one or two points at
+which the Letter on the Deaf and Dumb touches the line of thought of the
+Letter on the Blind.
+
+The Letter opens on the question of the origin and limits of inversion
+in language. This at once leads to a discussion of the natural order of
+ideas and expressions, and that original order, says Diderot, we can
+only ascertain by a study of the language of gesture. Such a study can
+be pursued either in assiduous conversation with one who has been deaf
+and dumb from birth, or by the experiment of a _muet de convention_, a
+man who foregoes the use of articulate sounds for the sake of experiment
+as to the process of the formation of language. Generalising this idea,
+Diderot proceeds to consider man as distributed into as many distinct
+and separate beings as he has senses. "My idea would be to decompose a
+man, so to speak, and to examine what he derives from each of the senses
+with which he is endowed. I have sometimes amused myself with this kind
+of metaphysical anatomy; and I found that of all the senses, the eye was
+the most superficial; the ear, the proudest; smell, the most voluptuous;
+taste, the most superstitious and the most inconstant; touch, the
+profoundest and the most of a philosopher. It would be amusing to get
+together a society, each member of which should have no more than one
+sense; there can be no doubt that they would all treat one another as
+out of their wits."
+
+This is interesting, because it was said at the time to be the source of
+one of the most famous fancies in the philosophical literature of the
+century, the Statue in Condillac's Treatise on the Sensations. Condillac
+imagined a statue organised like a man, but each sense unfolding itself
+singly, at the will of an eternal arbiter. The philosopher first admits
+the exercise of smell to his Frankenstein, and enumerates the mental
+faculties which might be expected to be set in operation under the
+changing impressions made upon that one sense. The other senses are
+imparted to it in turn, one by one, each adding a new group of ideas to
+the previous stock, until at length the mental equipment is complete.
+
+We may see the extent of the resemblance between Condillac's Statue and
+Diderot's _muet de convention_, but Diderot at least is free from the
+charge of borrowing. Condillac's book was published three years (1754)
+after the Letter on the Deaf and Dumb, and he afterwards wrote a
+pamphlet defending himself from the charge of having taken the fancy of
+his Statue from Diderot; nor, for that matter, did Diderot ever make
+sign or claim in the matter. We have already spoken of the relations
+between the two philosophers, and though it is a mistake to describe
+Diderot as one of Condillac's most celebrated pupils,[77] yet there is
+just as little reason to invert the connection, or to doubt Condillac's
+own assertion that the Statue was suggested to him by Mademoiselle
+Ferrand, that remarkable woman to whose stimulating and directing
+influence he always professed such deep obligation. Attention has been
+called to the fact that in 1671 a Parisian bookseller published a Latin
+version of a much more intelligent and scientific fancy than the
+Statue--the _Philosophus Autodidactus_ of the Arabian, Ibn Tophail. This
+was a romance, in which a human being is suckled by a gazelle on a
+desert island in the tropics, and grows up in the manner of some
+Robinson Crusoe with a turn for psychological speculation, and gradually
+becomes conscious, through observation, of the peculiar properties
+belonging to his senses.[78]
+
+Of the part of the Letter that concerns gesture, one can only say that
+it appears astonishingly crude to those who know the progress that has
+been made since Diderot's time in collecting and generalising the
+curious groups of fact connected with gesture-language. We can imagine
+the eager interest that Diderot would have had in such curious
+observations as that gesture-language has something like a definite
+syntax; that it furnishes no means of distinguishing causation from
+sequence or simultaneity; that savages can understand and be understood
+with ease and certainty in a deaf-and-dumb school.[79] Diderot was acute
+enough to see that the questions of language could only be solved, not
+by the old metaphysical methods, but experientially. For the
+experiential method in this matter the time was not ripe. It was no
+wonder, then, that after a few pages, he broke away and hastened to
+�sthetics.
+
+
+III.
+
+Penalties on the publication of heretical opinion did not cease in
+England with the disappearance of the Licensing Act. But they were at
+least inflicted by law. It was the Court of King's Bench which, in 1730,
+visited Woolston with fine and imprisonment, after all the forms of a
+prosecution had been duly gone through. It was no Bishop's court nor
+Star Chamber, much less a warrant signed by George the Third or by Bute,
+which in 1762 condemned Peter Annet to the pillory and the gaol for his
+Free Inquirer. The only evil which overtook Mandeville for his Fable of
+the Bees was to be harmlessly presented (1723) as a public nuisance by
+the Grand Jury of Middlesex. We may contrast with this the state of
+things which prepared a revolution in France.
+
+One morning in July, 1749--almost exactly forty years before that July
+of '89, so memorable in the annals of arbitrary government and state
+prisons--a commissary of police and three attendants came to Diderot's
+house, made a vigorous scrutiny of his papers, and then produced a
+warrant for his detention. The philosopher, without any ado, told his
+wife not to expect him home for dinner, stepped into the chaise, and
+was driven off with his escort to Vincennes. His real offence was a
+light sneer in the Letter on the Blind at the mistress of a
+minister.[80] The atheistical substance of the essay, however, apart
+from the pique of a favourite, would have given sufficiently good
+grounds for a prosecution in England, and in France for that vile
+substitute for prosecution, the _lettre-decachet_. And there happened to
+be special causes for harshness towards the press at this moment. Verses
+had been published satirising the king and his manner of life in bitter
+terms, and a stern raid was made upon all the scribblers in Paris. At
+the court there had just taken place one of those reactions in favour of
+the ecclesiastical party, which for thirty years in the court history
+alternated so frequently with movements in the opposite direction. The
+gossip of the town set down Diderot's imprisonment to a satire against
+the Jesuits, of which he was wrongly supposed to be the author.[81] It
+is not worth while to seek far for a reason, when authority was as able
+and as ready to thrust men into gaol for a bad reason as for a good one.
+The writer or the printer of a philosophical treatise was at this moment
+looked upon in France much as a magistrate now looks on the wretch who
+vends infamous prints.
+
+The lieutenant of police (Berryer) treated the miserable author with
+additional severity, for stubbornly refusing to give up the name of the
+printer. Diderot was well aware that the printer would be sent to the
+galleys for life, if the lieutenant of police could once lay hands upon
+him. This personage, we may mention, was afterwards raised to the
+dignified office of keeper of the seals, as a reward for his industry
+and skill in providing victims for the royal seraglio at Versailles.[82]
+The man who had ventured to use his mind, was thrown into the dungeon at
+Vincennes by the man who played spy and pander for the Pompadour. The
+official record of a dialogue between Berryer and Denis Diderot, "of the
+Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion," is a singular piece of
+reading, if we remember that the prisoner's answers were made, "after
+oath taken by the respondent to speak and answer the truth."
+
+"Interrogated if he has not composed a work entitled _Letters on the
+Blind_.
+
+"Answered no.
+
+"Interrogated by whom he had caused said work to be printed.
+
+"Answered that he had not caused the said work to be printed.
+
+"Interrogated if he knows the name of the author of the said work.
+
+"Answered that he knows nothing about it.
+
+"Interrogated whether he has not had said work in manuscript in his
+possession before it was printed.
+
+"Answered that he had not had the said manuscript in his possession
+before or after it was printed.
+
+"Interrogated whether he has not composed a work which appeared some
+years ago, entitled _Philosophic Thoughts_.
+
+"Answered no."
+
+And so, after a dozen more replies of equal veracity, on reading being
+made to the respondent of the present interrogatory, Diderot "said that
+the answers contain the truth, persisted in them, and signed," as
+witness his hand. A sorrowful picture, indeed, of the plight of an
+apostle of a new doctrine. On the other hand, the apostle of the new
+doctrine was perhaps good enough for the preachers of the old. Two years
+before this, the priest of the church of Saint M�dard had thought it
+worth while to turn spy and informer. This is the report which the base
+creature sent to the lieutenant of police (1747):--
+
+     "Diderot, a man of no profession, living, etc., is a young man
+     who plays the free-thinker, and glories in impiety. He is the
+     author of several works of philosophy, in which he attacks
+     religion. His talk is like his books. He is busy at the
+     composition of one now, which is very dangerous."
+
+The priest's delation was confirmed presently by a still lower agent of
+authority, who, in bad grammar and bad spelling, describes "this wretch
+Diderot as a very dangerous man, who speaks of the holy mysteries of
+our religion with contempt; who corrupts manners, and who says that when
+he comes to the last moment of his life, he will have to do like others,
+will confess, and will receive what we call our God, but it will only be
+for the sake of his family."[83]
+
+All these things had prepared an unfriendly fate for Diderot when his
+time at last came, as it came to most of his friends. For a month he was
+cut off from the outer world. His only company was the _Paradise Lost_,
+which he happened to have in his pocket at the moment of his arrest. He
+compounded an ink for himself, by scraping the slate at the side of his
+window, grinding it very fine, and mixing with wine in a broken glass. A
+toothpick, found by happy accident in the pocket of his waistcoat,
+served him for pen, and the fly-leaves and margins of the Milton made a
+repository for his thoughts. With a simple but very characteristic
+interest in others who might be as unfortunate as himself, he wrote upon
+the walls of his prison his short recipe for writing materials.[84]
+Diderot might easily have been buried here for months or even years.
+But, as it happened, the governor of Vincennes was a kinsman of
+Voltaire's divine Emily, the Marquise du Ch�telet. When Voltaire, who
+was then at Luneville, heard of Diderot's ill-fortune, he proclaimed as
+usual his detestation of a land where bigots can shut up philosophers
+under lock and key, and as usual he at once set to work to lessen the
+wrong. Madame du Ch�telet was made to write to the governor, praying him
+to soften the imprisonment of Socrates-Diderot as much as he could.[85]
+It was the last of her good deeds, for she died in circumstances of
+grotesque tragedy in the following month (Sept. 1749), and her husband,
+her son, Voltaire, and Saint Lambert alternately consoled and reproached
+one another over her grave. Diderot meanwhile had the benefit of her
+intervention. He was transferred from the dungeon to the ch�teau, was
+allowed to wander about the park on his parole, and to receive visits
+from his friends. One of the most impulsive of these friends was Jean
+Jacques. Their first meeting after Diderot's imprisonment has been,
+described by Rousseau himself, in terms at which the phlegmatic will
+smile--not wisely, for the manner of expressing emotion, like all else,
+is relative. "After three or four centuries of impatience, I flew into
+the arms of my friend. O indescribable moment! He, was not alone;
+D'Alembert and the treasurer of the Sainte Chapelle were with him. As I
+went in, I saw no one but himself. With a single hound and a cry, I
+pressed his face close to mine, I clasped him tightly in my arms,
+without speaking to him save by my tears and sobs; I was choking with
+tenderness and joy."[86] After this Rousseau used to walk over to see
+him two or three times a week. It was during one of these walks on a hot
+summer afternoon, that he first thought of that memorable literary
+effort, the essay against civilisation. He sank down at the foot of a
+tree, and feverishly wrote a page or two to show to his friend. He tells
+us that but for Diderot's encouragement he should hardly have executed
+his design. There is a story that it was Diderot who first suggested to
+Rousseau to affirm that arts and sciences had corrupted manners. There
+is no violent improbability in this. Diderot, for all the robustness and
+penetration of his judgment, was yet often borne by his natural
+impetuosity towards the region of paradox. His own curious and bold
+_Suppl�ment au Voyage de Bougainville_ is entirely in the vein of
+Rousseau's discourse on the superiority of primitive over civilised
+life. "Prodigious sibyl of the eighteenth century," cries Michelet, "the
+mighty magician Diderot! He breathed out one day a breath; lo, there
+sprang up a man--Rousseau."[87] It is hard to believe that such an
+astonishing genius for literature as Rousseau's could have lain
+concealed, after he had once inhaled the vivifying air of Paris. Yet the
+fire and inspiring energy of Diderot may well have been the quickening
+accident that brought his genius into productive life. All the testimony
+goes to show that it was so. Whether, however, Diderot is really
+responsible for the perverse direction of Rousseau's argument is a
+question of fact, and the evidence is not decisive.[88] It would be an
+odd example of that giant's nonchalance which is always so amazing in
+Diderot, if he really instigated the most eloquent and passionate writer
+then alive to denounce art and science as the scourge of mankind, at the
+very moment when he was himself straining his whole effort to spread the
+arts and sciences, and to cover them with glory in men's eyes.
+
+Among Diderot's other visitors was Madame de Puisieux. One day she came
+clad in gay apparel, bound for a merry-making at a neighbouring village.
+Diderot, conceiving jealous doubts of her fidelity, received assurance
+that she would be solitary and companionless at the feast, thinking
+mournfully of her persecuted philosopher lying in prison. She forgot
+that one of the parents of philosophy is curiosity, and that Diderot had
+trained himself in the school of the sceptics. That evening he scaled
+the walls of the park of Vincennes, flew to the scene of the festival,
+and there found what he had expected. In vain for her had he written
+upon virtue and merit, and the unhallowed friendship came to an end.
+
+After three months of captivity, Diderot was released. The booksellers
+who were interested in the Encyclop�dia were importunate with the
+authorities to restore its head and chief to an enterprise that stirred
+universal curiosity.[89] For the first volume of that famous work was
+now almost ready to appear, and expectation was keen. The idea of the
+book had occurred to Diderot in 1745, and from 1745 to 1765 it was the
+absorbing occupation of his life. Of the value and significance of the
+conception underlying this immense operation, I shall speak in the next
+chapter. There also I shall describe its history. The circumstances
+under which these five-and-thirty volumes were given to the world mark
+Diderot for one of the few true heroes of literature. They called into
+play some of the most admirable of human qualities. They required a
+laboriousness as steady and as prolonged, a wariness as alert, a grasp
+of plan as firm, a fortitude as patient, unvarying, and unshaken, as men
+are accustomed to applaud in the engineer who constructs some vast and
+difficult work, or the commander who directs a hardy and dangerous
+expedition.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE ENCYCLOP�DIA.
+
+
+The history of the encyclop�dic conception of human knowledge is a much
+more interesting and important object of inquiry than a list of the
+various encyclop�dic enterprises to be found in the annals of
+literature. Yet it is proper here to mention some of the attempts in
+this direction, which preceded our memorable book of the eighteenth
+century. It is to Aristotle, no doubt, that we must look for the first
+glimpse of the idea that human knowledge is a totality, whose parts are
+all closely and organically connected with one another. But the idea
+that only dawned in that gigantic understanding was lost for many
+centuries. The compilations of Pliny are not in a right sense
+encyclop�dic, being presided over by no definite idea of informing
+order. It was not until the later middle age that any attempt was made
+to present knowledge as a whole. Albertus Magnus, "the ape of Aristotle"
+(1193-1280), left for a season the three great questions of the
+existence of universals, of the modes of the existence of species and
+genus, and of their place in or out of the bosom of the individuals,
+and executed a compilation of such physical facts as had been then
+discovered.[90] A more distinctly encyclop�dic work was the book of
+Vincent de Beauvais (_d._ 1264), called _Speculum naturale, morale,
+doctrinale, et historiale_--a compilation from Aquinas in some parts,
+and from Aristotle in others. Hallam mentions three other compilations
+of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and observes that their
+laborious authors did not much improve the materials which they had
+amassed in their studies, though they sometimes arranged them
+conveniently. In the medi�val period, as he remarks, the want of
+capacity to discern probable truths was a very great drawback from the
+value of their compilations.[91]
+
+Far the most striking production of the thirteenth century in this kind
+was the _Opus Majus_ of Roger Bacon (1267), of which it has been said
+that it is at once the Encyclop�dia and the Novum Organum of that
+age;[92] at once a summary of knowledge, and the suggestion of a truer
+method. This, however, was merely the introductory sketch to a vaster
+encyclop�dic work, the _Compendium Philosophi�_, which was not
+perfected. "In common with minds of great and comprehensive grasp, his
+vivid perception of the intimate relationship of the different parts of
+philosophy, and his desire to raise himself from the dead level of
+every individual science, induced Bacon to grasp at and embrace the
+whole."[93] In truth, the encyclop�dic spirit was in the air throughout
+the thirteenth century. It was the century of books bearing the
+significant titles of Summa, or Universitas, or Speculum.
+
+The same spirit revived towards the middle of the sixteenth century. In
+1541 a book was published at Basel by one Ringelberg, which first took
+the name of Cyclop�dia, that has since then become so familiar a word in
+Western Europe. This was followed within sixty years by several other
+works of the same kind. The movement reached its height in a book which
+remained the best in its order for a century. A German, one J.H. Alsted
+(1588-1638), published in 1620 an _Encyclop�dia scientiarum omnium_. A
+hundred years later the illustrious Leibnitz pronounced it a worthy task
+to perfect and amend Alsted's book. What was wanting to the excellent
+man, he said, was neither labour nor judgment, but material, and the
+good fortune of such days as ours. And Leibnitz wrote a paper of
+suggestions for its extension and improvement.[94] Alsted's Encyclop�dia
+is of course written in Latin, and he prefixes to it by way of motto the
+celebrated lines in which Lucretius declares that nothing is sweeter
+than to dwell apart in the serene temples of the wise. Though he informs
+us in the preface that his object was to trace the outlines of the
+great "latifundium regni philosophici" in a single syntagma, yet he
+really does no more than arrange a number of separate treatises or
+manuals, and even dictionaries, within the limits of a couple of folios.
+As is natural to the spirit of the age in which he wrote, great
+predominance is given to the verbal sciences of grammar, rhetoric, and
+formal logic, and a verbal or logical division regulates the
+distribution of the matter, rather than a scientific regard for its
+objective relations.
+
+For the true parentage, however, of the Encyclop�dia of Diderot and
+D'Alembert, it is unnecessary to prolong this list. It was Francis
+Bacon's idea of the systematic classification of knowledge which
+inspired Diderot, and guided his hand throughout. "If we emerge from
+this vast operation," he wrote in the Prospectus, "our principal debt
+will be to the chancellor Bacon, who sketched the plan of a universal
+dictionary of sciences and arts at a time when there were not, so to
+say, either arts or sciences." This sense of profound and devoted
+obligation was shared by D'Alembert, and was expressed a hundred times
+in the course of the work. No more striking panegyric has ever been
+passed upon our immortal countryman than is to be found in the
+Preliminary Discourse.[95] The French Encyclop�dia was the direct fruit
+of Bacon's magnificent conceptions. And if the efficient origin of the
+Encyclop�dia was English, so did the occasion rise in England also.
+
+In 1727 Ephraim Chambers, a Westmoreland Quaker, published in London
+two folios, entitled, a Cyclop�dia or Universal Dictionary of the Arts
+and Sciences. The idea of it was broad and excellent. "Our view," says
+Chambers, "was to consider the several matters, not only in themselves,
+but relatively, or as they respect each other; both to treat them as so
+many wholes, and as so many parts of some greater whole." The compiler
+lacked the grasp necessary to realise this laudable purpose. The book
+has, however, the merit of conciseness, and is a singular monument of
+literary industry, for it was entirely compiled by Chambers himself. It
+had a great success, and though its price was high (four guineas), it
+ran through five editions in eighteen years. On the whole, however, it
+is meagre, and more like a dictionary than an encyclop�dia, such as
+Alsted's for instance.
+
+Some fifteen years after the publication of Chambers's Cyclop�dia, an
+Englishman (Mills) and a German (Sellius) went to Le Breton with a
+project for its translation into French. The bookseller obtained the
+requisite privilege from the government, but he obtained it for himself,
+and not for the projectors. This trick led to a quarrel, and before it
+was settled the German died and the Englishman returned to his own
+country. They left the translation behind them duly executed.[96] Le
+Breton then carried the undertaking to a certain abb�, Gua de Malves.
+Gua de Malves (_b._ 1712) seems to have been a man of a busy and
+ingenious mind. He was the translator of Berkeley's _Hylas and
+Philonous_, of Anson's Voyages, and of various English tracts on
+currency and political economy. It is said that he first suggested the
+idea of a cyclop�dia on a fuller plan,[97] but we have no evidence of
+this. In any case, the project made no advance in his hands. The
+embarrassed bookseller next applied to Diderot, who was then much in
+need of work that should bring him bread. His fertile and energetic
+intelligence transformed the scheme. By an admirable intuition, he
+divined the opportunity which would be given by the encyclop�dic form,
+of gathering up into a whole all that new thought and modern knowledge,
+which existed as yet in unsystematic and uninterpreted fragments. His
+enthusiasm fired Le Breton. It was resolved to make Chambers's work a
+mere starting-point for a new enterprise of far wider scope.
+
+"The old and learned D'Aguesseau," says Michelet, "notwithstanding the
+pitiable, the wretched sides of his character, had two lofty sides, his
+reform of the laws, and a personal passion, the taste and urgent need of
+universality, a certain encyclop�dic sense. A young man came to him one
+day, a man of letters living by his pen, and somewhat under a cloud for
+one or two hazardous books that lack of bread had driven him to write.
+Yet this stranger of dubious repute wrought a miracle. With
+bewilderment the old sage listened to him unrolling the gigantic scheme
+of a book that should be all books. On his lips, sciences were light and
+life. It was more than speech, it was creation. One would have said that
+he had made these sciences, and was still at work, adding, extending,
+fertilising, ever engendering. The effect was incredible. D'Aguesseau, a
+moment above himself, forgot the old man, received the infection of
+genius, and became great with the greatness of the other. He had faith
+in the young man, and protected the Encyclop�dia."[98]
+
+A fresh privilege was procured (Jan. 21, 1746), and as Le Breton's
+capital was insufficient for a project of this magnitude, he invited
+three other booksellers to join him, retaining a half share for himself,
+and allotting the other moiety to them. As Le Breton was not strong
+enough to bear the material burdens of producing a work on so gigantic a
+scale as was now proposed, so Diderot felt himself unequal to the task
+of arranging and supervising every department of a book that was to
+include the whole circle of the sciences. He was not skilled enough in
+mathematics, nor in physics, which were then for the most part
+mathematically conceived. For that province, he associated with himself
+as an editorial colleague one of the most conspicuous and active members
+of the philosophical party. Of this eminent man, whose relations with
+Diderot were for some years so intimate, it is proper that we should say
+something.
+
+D'Alembert was the natural son of Madame de Tencin, by whom he had been
+barbarously exposed immediately after his birth. "The true ancestors of
+a man of genius," says Condorcet finely upon this circumstance, "are the
+masters who have gone before him, and his true descendants are disciples
+that are worthy of him." He was discovered on a November night in the
+year 1717, by the beadle, in a nearly dying condition on the steps of
+the church of St. John the Round, from which he afterwards took his
+Christian name. An honest woman of the common people, with that personal
+devotion which is less rare among the poor than among the rich, took
+charge of the foundling. The father, who was an officer of artillery and
+brother of Destouches, the author of some poor comedies, by and by
+advanced the small sums required to pay for the boy's schooling.
+D'Alembert proved a brilliant student. Unlike nearly every other member
+of the encyclop�dic party, he was a pupil not of the Jesuits but of
+their rivals. The Jansenists recognised the keenness and force of their
+pupil, and hoped that they had discovered a new Pascal. But he was less
+docile than his great predecessor in their ranks. When his studies were
+completed, he devoted himself to geometry, for which he had a passion
+that nothing could extinguish. For the old monastic vow of poverty,
+chastity, and obedience, he adopted the manlier substitute of poverty,
+truth, and liberty--the worthy device of every man of letters. When he
+awoke in the morning, he thought with delight of the work that had been
+begun the previous day and would occupy the day before him. In the
+necessary intervals of his meditations, he recalled the lively pleasure
+that he felt at the play: at the play between the acts, he thought of
+the still greater pleasure that was promised to him by the work of the
+morrow. His mathematical labours led to valuable results in the
+principles of equilibrium and the movement of fluids, in a new calculus,
+and in a new solution of the problem of the precession of the
+equinoxes.[99]
+
+These contributions to what was then the most popular of the sciences
+brought him fame, and fame brought him its usual distractions. As soon
+as a writer has shown himself the possessor of gifts that may be of
+value to society, then society straightway sets to work to seduce and
+hinder him from diligently exercising them. D'Alembert resisted these
+influences steadfastly. His means were very limited, yet he could never
+be induced to increase them at the cost either of his social
+independence or of his scientific pursuits. He lived for forty years
+under the humble roof of the poor woman who had treated him as a son.
+"You will never be anything better than a philosopher," she used to cry
+reproachfully, "and what is a philosopher? 'Tis a madman who torments
+himself all his life, that people may talk about him when he is dead."
+D'Alembert zealously adhered to his destination. Frederick the Great
+vainly tempted him by an offer of the succession to Maupertuis as
+president of the Academy of Berlin. Although, however, he declined to
+accept the post, he enjoyed all its authority and prerogative. Frederick
+always consulted him in filling up vacancies and making appointments. It
+is a magnanimous trait in D'Alembert's history that he should have
+procured for Lagrange a position and livelihood at Berlin, warmly
+commending him as a man of rare and superior genius, although Lagrange
+had vigorously opposed some of his own mathematical theories. Ten years
+after Frederick's offer, the other great potentate of the north,
+Catherine of Russia, besought him to undertake the education of the
+young grand duke, her son. But neither urgent flatteries and
+solicitations under the imperial hand, nor the munificent offer of a
+hundred thousand francs a year, availed to draw him away from his
+independence and his friends. The great Frederick used to compare him to
+one of those oriental monarchs, who cherish a strict seclusion in order
+to enhance their importance and majesty. He did not refuse a pension of
+some fifty pounds a year from Berlin, and the same amount was bestowed
+upon him from the privy purse at Versailles. He received a small annual
+sum in addition from the Academy.
+
+Though the mathematical sciences remained the objects of his special
+study, D'Alembert was as free as the other great men of the encyclop�dic
+school from the narrowness of the pure specialist. He naturally reminds
+us of the remarkable saying imputed to Leibnitz, that he only attributed
+importance to science, because it enabled him to speak with authority in
+philosophy and religion. His correspondence with Voltaire, extending
+over the third quarter of the century, is the most instructive record
+that we possess of the many-sided doings of that busy time. His series
+of _�loges_ on the academicians who died between 1700 and 1772 is one of
+the most interesting works in the department of literary history. He
+paid the keenest attention to the great and difficult art of writing.
+Translations from Tacitus, Bacon, and Addison, show his industry in a
+useful practice. A long collection of synonyms bears witness to his fine
+discrimination in the use of words. And the clearness, precision, and
+reserved energy of his own prose mark the success of the pains that he
+took with style. He knew the secret. Have lofty sentiments, he said, and
+your manner of writing will be firm and noble.[100] Yet he did not
+ignore the other side and half of the truth, which is expressed in the
+saying of another important writer of that day--By taking trouble to
+speak with precision, one gains the habit of thinking rightly
+(_Condillac_).
+
+Like so many others to whom literature owes much, D'Alembert was all his
+life fighting against bad health. Like Voltaire and Rousseau, he was
+born dying, and he remained delicate and valetudinarian to the end. He
+had the mental infirmities belonging to his temperament. He was
+restless, impatient, mobile, susceptible of irritation. When the young
+Mademoiselle Phlipon, in after years famous as wife of the virtuous
+Roland, was taken to a sitting of the Academy, she was curious to see
+the author of the Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclop�dia, but his
+small face and sharp thin voice made her reflect with some
+disappointment, that the writings of a philosopher are better to know
+than his mask.[101] In everything except zeal for light and
+emancipation, D'Alembert was the opposite of Diderot. Where Diderot was
+exuberant, prodigal, and disordered, D'Alembert was a precisian.
+Difference of temperament, however, did not prevent their friendship
+from being for many years cordial and intimate. When the Encyclop�dia
+was planned, it was to D'Alembert, as we have said, that Diderot turned
+for aid in the mathematical sciences, where his own knowledge was not
+sufficiently full nor well grounded. They were in strong and singular
+agreement in their idea of the proper place and function of the man of
+letters. One of the most striking facts about their alliance, and one
+of the most important facts in the history of the Encyclop�dia, is that
+henceforth the profession of letters became at once definite and
+independent. Diderot and D'Alembert both of them remained poor, but they
+were never hangers-on. They did not look to patrons, nor did they bound
+their vision by Versailles. They were the first to assert the lawful
+authority of the new priesthood. They revolted deliberately and in set
+form against the old system of suitorship and protection. "Happy are men
+of letters," wrote D'Alembert, "if they recognise at last that the
+surest way of making themselves respectable is to live united and almost
+shut up among themselves; that by this union they will come, without any
+trouble, to give the law to the rest of the nation in all affairs of
+taste and philosophy; that the true esteem is that which is awarded by
+men who are themselves worthy of esteem.... As if the art of instructing
+and enlightening men were not, after the too rare art of good
+government, the noblest portion and gift in human reach."[102]
+
+This consciousness of the power and exaltation of their calling, which
+men of letters now acquired, is much more than the superficial fact
+which it may at first seem to be. It marked the rise of a new teaching
+order and the supersession of the old. The highest moral ideas now
+belonged no longer to the clergy, but to the writers; no longer to
+official Catholicism, but to that fertilising medley of new notions
+about human knowledge and human society which then went by the name of
+philosophy. What is striking is that the ideas sown by philosophy became
+eventually the source of higher life in Catholicism. If the church of
+the revolution showed something that we may justly admire, it was
+because the encyclop�dic band had involuntarily and inevitably imparted
+a measure of their own clearsightedness, fortitude, moral energy, and
+spirit of social improvement, to a church which was, when they began
+their work, an abominable burden on the spiritual life of the nation. If
+the Catholicism of Chateaubriand, of Lamennais, of Montalembert, was a
+different thing from the Catholicism of a Dubois, or a Rohan, from the
+vile corruptions of the Jesuits and the grovelling superstitions of the
+later Jansenists, it was the execrated freethinkers whom the church and
+mankind had to thank for the change. The most enlightened Catholic of
+to-day ought to admit that Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, were the true
+reformers of his creed. They supplied it with ideas which saved it from
+becoming finally a curse to civilisation. It was no Christian prelate,
+but Diderot who burst the bonds of a paralysing dogma by the
+magnificent cry, _D�truisez ces enceintes qui r�tr�cissent vos id�es!
+Elargissez Dieu!_[103] We see the same phenomenon in our own day. The
+Christian churches are assimilating as rapidly as their formula will
+permit, the new light and the more generous moral ideas and the higher
+spirituality of teachers who have abandoned all churches, and who are
+systematically denounced as enemies of the souls of men. _Sic vos non
+vobis mellificatis apes!_ These transformations of religion by leavening
+elements contributed from a foreign doctrine, are the most interesting
+process in the history of truth.
+
+The Encyclop�dia became a powerful engine for aiding such a
+transformation. Because it was this, and because it rallied all that was
+then best in France round the standard of light and social hope, we
+ought hardly to grudge time or pains to its history. For it was not
+merely in the field of religious ideas that the Encyclop�dists led
+France in a new way. They affected the national life on every side,
+pressing forward with enlightened principles in all the branches of
+material and political organisation. Their union in a great
+philosophical band gave an impressive significance to their work. The
+collection within a single set of volumes of a body of new truths,
+relating to so many of the main interests of men, invested the book and
+its writers with an aspect of universality, of collective and organic
+doctrine, which the writers themselves would without doubt have
+disowned, and which it is easy to dissolve by tests of logic. But the
+popular impression that the Encyclop�dists constituted a single body
+with a common doctrine and a common aim was practically sound. Comte has
+pointed out with admirable clearness the merit of the conception of an
+encyclop�dic workshop.[104] It united the members of rival destructive
+schools in a great constructive task. It furnished a rallying-point for
+efforts otherwise the most divergent. Their influence was precisely what
+it would have been, if popular impressions had been literally true.
+Diderot and D'Alembert did their best to heighten this feeling. They
+missed no occasion of fixing a sentiment of co-operation and fellowship.
+They spoke of their dictionary as the transactions of an Academy.[105]
+Each writer was answerable for his own contribution, but he was in the
+position of a member of some learned corporation. To every volume, until
+the great crisis of 1759, was prefixed a list of those who had
+contributed to it. If a colleague died, the public was informed of the
+loss that the work had sustained, and his services were worthily
+commemorated in a formal _�loge_.[106] Feuds, epigrams, and offences
+were not absent, but on the whole there was steadfast and generous
+fraternity.
+
+As Voltaire eloquently said, officers of war by land and by sea,
+magistrates, physicians who knew nature, men of letters whose taste
+purified knowledge, geometers, physicists, all united in a work that was
+as useful as it was laborious, without any view of interest, without
+even seeking fame, as many of them concealed their names; finally
+without any common understanding and agreement, and therefore without
+anything of the spirit of party.[107] Turning over the pages on which
+the list of writers is inscribed, we find in one place or another nearly
+every name that has helped to make the literature of the time famous.
+Montesquieu, who died in the beginning of 1755, left behind him the
+unfinished fragment of an article on Taste, and it may be noticed in
+passing that our good-natured Diderot was the only man of letters who
+attended the remains of the illustrious writer to the grave.[108] The
+article itself, though no more than a fragment, has all the charms of
+Montesquieu's delightful style; it is serious without pedantry, graceful
+without levity, and is rich in observations that are precise and pointed
+without the vice of emphasis. The great Turgot, diligently solicitous
+for the success of every enterprise that promised to improve human
+happiness by adding to knowledge and spreading enlightenment, wrote some
+of the most valuable articles that the work contained, and his
+discussion of Endowments perhaps still remains the weightiest
+contribution to that important subject. Oddly enough, he was one of the
+very few writers who refused to sign his name to his
+contributions.[109] His assistance only ceased when he perceived that
+the scheme was being coloured by that spirit of sect, which he always
+counted the worst enemy of the spirit of truth.[110] Jean Jacques
+Rousseau, who had just won a singular reputation by his paradoxes on
+natural equality and the corruptions of civilisation, furnished the
+articles on music in the first half dozen volumes. They were not free
+from mistakes, but his colleagues chivalrously defended him by the plea
+of careless printing or indifferent copying.[111] The stately Buffon
+very early in the history of the Encyclop�dia sent them an article upon
+Nature, and the editors made haste to announce to their subscribers the
+advent of so superb a colleague.[112] The articles on natural history,
+however, were left by Buffon in his usual majestic fashion to his
+faithful lieutenant and squire-at-arms, Daubenton. And even his own
+article seems not to have been printed. Before the eleventh volume
+appeared, terrible storms had arisen, not a few of the shipmen had
+parted company, and Buffon may well have been one of them. Certainly the
+article on Nature, as it stands, can hardly be his.
+
+In the supplementary volumes, which appeared in 1776--ten years after
+the completion of the original undertaking--two new labourers came into
+the vineyard, whose names add fresh lustre and give still more serious
+value to the work. One of these was the prince of the physiologists of
+the eighteenth century, the great Haller, who contributed an elaborate
+history of those who had been his predecessors in unfolding the
+intricate mechanism of the human frame, and analysing its marvels of
+complex function. The other was the austere and generous Condorcet. Ever
+loyal to good causes, and resolute against despairing of the human
+commonwealth, he began in the pages of the Encyclop�dia a career that
+was brilliant with good promise and high hopes, and ended in the grim
+hall of the Convention and a nobly tragic death amid the red storm of
+the Terror.
+
+Among the lesser stars in the encyclop�dic firmament are some whose
+names ought not to be wholly omitted. Forbonnais, one of the most
+instructive economic writers of the century, contributed articles to the
+early volumes, which were afterwards republished in his Elements of
+Commerce.[113] The light-hearted Marmontel wrote cheerful articles on
+Comedy, Eloges, Eclogues, Glory, and other matters of literature and
+taste. Quesnai, the eminent founder of the economic sect, dealt with two
+agricultural subjects, and reproduced both his theoretical paradoxes,
+and his admirable practical maxims, on the material prosperity of
+nations. Holbach, not yet author of the memorable System of Nature,
+compiled a vast number of the articles on chemistry and mineralogy,
+chiefly and avowedly from German sources, he being the only writer of
+the band with a mastery of a language which was at that moment hardly
+more essential to culture than Russian is now. The name of Duclos should
+not be passed over, in the list of the foremost men who helped to raise
+the encyclop�dic monument. 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
+Encyclop�dia (_D�clamation des Anciens_, _Etiquette_, etc.) are not very
+remarkable; but the reflections on conduct which he styled
+_Consid�rations sur les Moeurs de ce Si�cle_ (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 encyclop�dic 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 Encyclop�dia 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. We need not linger over the
+names of other writers, who indeed are now little more than mere shadows
+of names, such as La Condamine, a scientific traveller of fame and merit
+in his day and generation; of Du Marsais, the poverty-stricken and
+unlucky scholar who wrote articles on grammar; of the President Des
+Brosses, who was unfortunate enough to be in the right in a quarrel
+about money with Voltaire, and who has since been better known to
+readers through the fury of the provoked patriarch, than through his own
+meritorious contributions to the early history of civilisation.
+
+The name of one faithful worker in the building of this new Jerusalem
+ought not to be omitted, though his writings were _multa non multum_.
+The Chevalier de Jaucourt (1704-1779), as his title shows, was the
+younger son of a noble house. He studied at Geneva, Cambridge, and
+Leyden, and published in 1734 a useful account of the life and writings
+of Leibnitz. When the Encyclop�dia was projected, his services were at
+once secured, and he became its slave from the beginning of A to the end
+of Z. He wrote articles in his own special subjects of natural history
+and physical science, but he was always ready to lend his help in other
+departments, in writing, rewriting, reading, correcting, and all those
+other humbler necessities of editorship of which the inconsiderate
+reader knows little and thinks less. Jaucourt revelled in this drudgery.
+God made him for grinding articles, said Diderot. For six or seven
+years, he wrote one day, Jaucourt has been in the middle of half a dozen
+secretaries, reading, dictating, slaving, for thirteen or fourteen hours
+a day, and he is not tired of it even now. When he was told that the
+work must positively be brought to an end, his countenance fell, and the
+prospect of release from such happy bondage filled his heart with
+desolation.[115] "If," says Diderot in the preface to the eighth volume
+(1765), "we have raised a shout of joy like the sailor when he espies
+land after a sombre night that has kept him midway between sky and
+flood, it is to M. de Jaucourt that we are indebted for it. What has he
+not done for us, especially in these latter times? With what constancy
+has he not refused all the solicitations, whether of friendship or of
+authority, that sought to take him away from us? Never has sacrifice of
+repose, of health, of interest been more absolute and more entire."[116]
+These modest and unwearying helpers in good works ought not to be wholly
+forgotten, in a commemoration of more far-shining names.
+
+Besides those who were known to the conductors of the Encyclop�dia, was
+a host of unsought volunteers. "The further we proceed," the editors
+announced in the preface to the sixth volume (1756), "the more are we
+sensible of the increase both in matter and in number of those who are
+good enough to second our efforts." They received many articles on the
+same subject. They were constantly embarrassed by an emulation which,
+however flattering as a testimony to their work, obliged them to make a
+difficult choice, or to lose a good article, or to sacrifice one of
+their regular contributors, or to offend some influential newcomer.
+Every one who had a new idea in his head, or what he thought a new idea,
+sent them an article upon it. Men who were priests or pastors by
+profession and unbelievers in their hearts, sent them sheaves of
+articles in which they permitted themselves the delicious luxury of
+saying a little of what they thought. Women, too, pressed into the great
+work. Unknown ladies volunteered sprightly explanations of the
+technicalities of costume, from the falbala which adorned the bottom of
+their skirts, up to that little knot of riband in the hair, which had
+come to replace the old appalling edifice of ten stories high, in
+hierarchic succession of duchess, solitary, musketeer, crescent,
+firmament, tenth heaven, and mouse.[117] The oldest contributor was
+Lenglet du Fresnoy, whose book on the Method of Studying History is
+still known to those who have examined the development of men's ideas
+about the relations of the present to the past. Lenglet was born in
+1674. The youngest of the band was Condorcet, who was born nearly
+seventy years later (1743). One veteran, Morellet, who had been, the
+schoolmate of Turgot and Lom�nie de Brienne, lived to think of many
+things more urgent than Faith, Fils de Dieu, and Fundamentals. He
+survived the Revolution, the Terror, the Empire, Waterloo, the
+Restoration, and died in 1819, within sight of the Holy Alliance and the
+Peterloo massacre. From the birth of Lenglet to the death of
+Morellet--what an arc of the circle of western experience!
+
+No one will ask whether the keen eye, and stimulating word, and helpful
+hand of Voltaire were wanting to an enterprise which was to awaken men
+to new love of tolerance, enlightenment, charity, and justice. Voltaire
+was playing the refractory courtier at Potsdam when the first two
+volumes appeared. With characteristic vehemence, he instantly pronounced
+it a work which should be the glory of France, and the shame of its
+persecutors. Diderot and D'Alembert were raising an immortal edifice,
+and he would gladly furnish them with a little stone here or there,
+which they might find convenient to stuff into some corner or crevice in
+the wall. He was incessant in his industry. Unlike those feebler and
+more consequential spirits, the _petits-ma�tres_ of thought, by whom
+editors are harassed and hindered, this great writer was as willing to
+undertake small subjects as large ones, and to submit to all the
+mutilations and modifications which the exigencies of the work and the
+difficulties of its conductors recommended to them.[118] As the
+structure progresses, his enthusiasm waxes warmer. Diderot and his
+colleague are cutting their wings for a flight to posterity. They are
+Atlas and Hercules bearing a world upon their shoulders. It is the
+greatest work in the world; it is a superb pyramid; its printing-office
+is the office for the instruction of the human race; and so forth, in
+every phrase of stimulating sympathy and energetic interest. Nor does
+his sympathy blind him to faults of execution. Voltaire's good sense and
+sound judgment were as much at the service of his friends in warning
+them of shortcomings, as in eulogising what they achieved. And he had
+good faith enough to complain to his friends, instead of complaining of
+them. In one place he tells them, what is perfectly true, that their
+journeymen are far too declamatory, and too much addicted to substitute
+vague and puerile dissertations for that solid instruction which is what
+the reader of an Encyclop�dia seeks. In another he remonstrates against
+certain frivolous affectations, and some of the coxcombries of literary
+modishness. Everywhere he recommends them to insist on a firm and
+distinct method in their contributors--etymologies, definitions,
+examples, reasons, clearness, brevity. "You are badly seconded," he
+writes; "there are bad soldiers in the army of a great general."[119] "I
+am sorry to see that the writer of the article _Hell_ declares that
+hell was a point in the doctrine of Moses; now by all the devils that is
+not true. Why lie about it? Hell is an excellent thing, to be sure, but
+it is evident that Moses did not know it. 'Tis this world that is
+hell."[120]
+
+D'Alembert in reply always admitted the blemishes for which the
+patriarch and master reproached them, but urged various pleas in
+extenuation. He explains that Diderot is not always the master, either
+to reject or to prune the articles that are offered to him.[121] A
+writer who happened to be useful for many excellent articles would
+insist as the price of good work that they should find room for his bad
+work also; and so forth. "No doubt we have bad articles in theology and
+metaphysics, but with theologians for censors, and a privilege, I defy
+you to make them any better. There are other articles that are less
+exposed to the daylight, and in them all is repaired. Time will enable
+people to distinguish what we have thought from what we have said."[122]
+This last is a bitter and humiliating word, but before any man hastens
+to cast a stone, let him first make sure that his own life is free from
+every trace of hypocritical conformity and mendacious compliance.
+Condorcet seems to make the only remark that is worth making, when he
+says that the true shame and disgrace of these dissemblings lay not with
+the writers, whose only other alternative was to leave the stagnation
+of opinion undisturbed, but with the ecclesiastics and ministers whose
+tyranny made dissimulation necessary. And the veil imposed by authority
+did not really serve any purpose of concealment. Every reader was let
+into the secret of the writer's true opinion of the old mysteries, by
+means of a piquant phrase, an adroit parallel, a significant reference,
+an equivocal word of dubious panegyric. Diderot openly explains this in
+the pages of the Encyclop�dia itself. "In all cases," he says, "where a
+national prejudice would seem to deserve respect, the particular article
+ought to set it respectfully forth, with its whole procession of
+attractions and probabilities. But the edifice of mud ought to be
+overthrown and an unprofitable heap of dust scattered to the wind, by
+references to articles in which solid principles serve as a base for the
+opposite truths. This way of undeceiving men operates promptly on minds
+of the right stamp, and it operates infallibly and without any
+troublesome consequences, secretly and without disturbance, on minds of
+every description."[123] "Our fanatics feel the blows," cried D'Alembert
+complacently, "though they are sorely puzzled to tell from which side
+they come."[124]
+
+It is one of the most deplorable things in the history of literature to
+see a man endowed with Diderot's generous conceptions and high social
+aims, forced to stoop to these odious economies. In reading his
+Prospectus, and still more directly in his article,
+
+_Encyclop�die_, we are struck by the beneficence and breadth of the
+great designs which inspire and support him. The Encyclop�dia, it has
+been said, was no peaceful storehouse in which scholars and thinkers of
+all kinds could survey the riches they had acquired; it was a gigantic
+siege-engine and armoury of weapons of attack.[125] This is only true in
+a limited sense of one part of the work, and that not the most important
+part. Such a judgment is only possible for one who has not studied the
+book itself, or else who is ignorant of the social requirements of
+France at the time. We shall show this presently in detail. Meanwhile it
+is enough to make two observations. The implements which the
+circumstances of the time made it necessary to use as weapons of attack,
+were equally fitted for the acquisition in a happier season of those
+treasures of thought and knowledge which are the object of disinterested
+research. And what is still more important, we have to observe that it
+was the characteristic note and signal glory of the French revolutionary
+school, to subordinate mere knowledge to the practical work of raising
+society up from the corruption and paralysis to which it had been
+brought by the double action of civil and ecclesiastical authority. The
+efforts of the Encyclop�dists were not disinterested in the sense of
+being vague blows in the air. Their aim was not theory but practice, not
+literature but life. The Encyclop�dists were no doubt all men of battle,
+and some of them were hardly more than mere partisans.
+
+But Diderot at least had constantly in mind the great work which
+remained after the battle should be won. He was profoundly conscious
+that the mere accumulation of knowledge of the directly physical facts
+of the universe would take men a very short way towards reconstruction.
+And he struck the key-note in such admirable passages as this: "One
+consideration especially that we ought never to lose from sight is that,
+if we ever banish a man, or the thinking and contemplative being, from
+above the surface of the earth, this pathetic and sublime spectacle of
+nature becomes no more than a scene of melancholy and silence. The
+universe is dumb; the darkness and silence of the night take possession
+of it.... It is the presence of man that gives its interest to the
+existence of other beings; and what better object can we set before
+ourselves in the history of these beings, than to accept such a
+consideration? Why shall we not introduce man into our work in the same
+place which he holds in the universe? Why shall we not make him a common
+centre? Is there in infinite space any other point from which we can
+with greater advantage draw those immense lines that we propose to
+extend to all other points? What a vivid and softening reaction must
+result between man and the beings by whom he is surrounded?... Man is the
+single term from which we ought to set out, and to which we ought to
+trace all back, if we would please, interest, touch, even in the most
+arid reflections and the driest details. If you take away my own
+existence and the happiness of my fellows, of what concern to me is all
+the rest of nature."[126]
+
+In this we hear the voice of the new time, as we do in his exclamation
+that the perfection of an Encyclop�dia is the work of centuries;
+centuries had to elapse before the foundations could be laid; centuries
+would have to elapse before its completion: "_mais � la pos�rit�, et_ �
+L'�TRE QUI NE MEURT POINT!"[127] These exalted ideas were not a
+substitute for arduous labour. In all that Diderot writes upon his
+magnificent undertaking, we are struck by his singular union of common
+sense with elevation, of simplicity with grasp, of suppleness with
+strength, of modesty with hopeful confidence. On occasions that would
+have tempted a man of less sincerity and less seriousness to bombast and
+inflation, his sense of the unavoidable imperfections of so vast a work
+always makes itself felt through his pride in its lofty aim and
+beneficent design. The weight of the burden steadied him, and the
+anxiety of the honest and laborious craftsman mastered the impulses of
+rhetoric.
+
+Before going further into the general contents of the Encyclop�dia, we
+shall briefly describe the extraordinary succession of obstacles and
+embarrassments against which its intrepid conductor was compelled to
+fight his way. The project was fully conceived and its details worked
+out between 1745 and 1748. The Encyclopedia was announced in 1750, in a
+Prospectus of which Diderot was the author. At length in 1751 the first
+volume of the work itself was given to the public, followed by the
+second in January 1752. The clerical party at once discerned what
+tremendous fortifications, with how deadly an armament, were rising up
+in face of their camp. The Jesuits had always been jealous of an
+enterprise in which they had not been invited to take a part. They had
+expected at least to have the control of the articles on theology. They
+now were bent on taking the work into their own hands, and orthodoxy
+hastily set all the machinery of its ally, authority, in vigorous
+motion.
+
+The first attack was indirect. An abb� de Prades sustained a certain
+thesis in an official exercise at the Sorbonne, and Diderot was
+suspected, without good reason, of being its true author. An examination
+of its propositions was ordered. It was pronounced pernicious,
+dangerous, and tending to deism, chiefly on account of some too
+suggestive comparisons between the miraculous healings in the New
+Testament, and those ascribed in the more ancient legend to �sculapius.
+Other grounds of vehement objection were found in the writer's
+maintenance of the Lockian theory of the origin of our ideas. To deny
+the innateness of ideas was roundly asserted to be materialism and
+atheism. The abb� de Prades was condemned, and deprived of his license
+(Jan 27, 1752). As he was known to be a friend of Diderot, and was
+suspected of being the writer of articles on theology in the
+Encyclop�dia, the design of the Jesuit cabal in ruining De Prades was
+to discredit the new undertaking, and to induce the government to
+prohibit it. Their next step was to procure a pastoral from the
+archbishop of Paris. This document not only condemned the heretical
+propositions of De Prades, but referred in sombre terms to unnamed works
+teeming with error and impiety. Every one understood the reference, and
+among its effects was an extension of the vogue and notoriety of the
+Encyclop�dia.[128] The Jesuits were not allowed to retain a monopoly of
+persecuting zeal, and the Jansenists refused to be left behind in the
+race of hypocritical intrigue. The bishop of Auxerre, who belonged to
+this party, followed his brother prelate of Paris in a more direct
+attack, in which he included not only the Encyclop�dia, but
+Montesquieu and Buffon. De Prades took to flight. D'Alembert commended
+him to Voltaire, then at Berlin. The king was absent, but Voltaire gave
+royal protection to the fugitive until Frederick's return. De Prades was
+then at once taken into favour and appointed reader to the king. He
+proved but a poor martyr, however, for he afterwards retracted his
+heresies, got a benefice, and was put into prison by Frederick for
+giving information to his French countrymen during the Seven Years'
+War.[129] Unfortunately neither orthodoxy nor heterodoxy has any
+exclusive patent for monopoly of rascals.
+
+Meanwhile Diderot wrote on his behalf an energetic and dignified reply
+to the aggressive pastoral. This apology is not such a masterpiece of
+eloquence as the magnificent letter addressed by Rousseau ten years
+later to the archbishop of Paris, after the pastoral against Emilius.
+But Diderot's vindication of De Prades is firm, moderate, and closely
+argumentative. The piece is worth turning to in our own day, when great
+dignitaries of the churches too often show the same ignorance, the same
+temerity, and the same reckless want of charity, as the bishop of
+Auxerre showed a hundred and twenty years ago. They resort to the very
+same fallacies by way of shield against scientific truths or
+philosophical speculations that happen not to be easily reconcilable
+with their official opinions. "I know nothing so indecent," says
+Diderot, "and nothing so injurious to religion as these vague
+declamations of theologians against reason. One would suppose, to hear
+them, that men could only enter into the bosom of Christianity as a herd
+of cattle enter into a stable; and that we must renounce our common
+sense either to embrace our religion or to remain in it.... Such
+principles as yours are made to frighten small souls; everything alarms
+them, because they perceive clearly the consequences of nothing; they
+set up connections among things which have nothing to do with one
+another; they spy danger in any method of arguing which is strange to
+them; they float at hazard between truths and prejudices which they
+never distinguish, and to which they are equally attached; and all
+their life is passed in crying out either miracle or impiety." In an
+eloquent peroration, which is not more eloquent than it is instructive,
+De Prades is made to turn round on his Jansenist censor, and reproach
+him with the disturbance with which the intestine rivalries of Jansenist
+and Jesuit had afflicted the faithful. "It is the abominable testimony
+of your convulsions," he cries, "that has overthrown the testimony of
+miracles. It is the fatuous audacity with which your fanatics have
+confronted persecution, that has annihilated the evidence of the
+martyrs. It is your declamations against sovereign pontiffs, against
+bishops, against all the orders of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, that
+have covered priest, altar, and creed with opprobrium. If the pope, the
+bishops, the priests, the simple faithful, the whole church, if its
+mysteries, its sacraments, its temples, its ceremonies, have fallen into
+contempt, yours, yours, is the handiwork."[130]
+
+Bourdaloue more than half a century before had taunted the free-thinkers
+of his day with falseness and inconsistency in taking sides with the
+Jansenists, whose superstitions they notoriously held in open contempt.
+The motive for the alliance was tolerably obvious. The Jansenists, apart
+from their theology, were above all else the representatives of
+opposition to authority. It was for this that Lewis XIV. counted them
+worse than atheists. The Jesuits, it has been well said in keeping down
+their enemies by force, became the partisans of absolute government,
+and upheld it on every occasion. The Jansenists, after they had been
+crushed by violence, began to feel to what excesses power might be
+brought. From being speculative enemies to freedom as a theory, they
+became, through the education of persecution, the partisans of freedom
+in practice. The quarrel of Molinists and Jansenists, from a question of
+theology, grew into a question of human liberty.[131]
+
+Circumstances had now changed. The free-thinkers were becoming strong
+enough to represent opposition to authority on their own principles and
+in their own persons. Diderot's vigorous remonstrance with the bishop of
+Auxerre incidentally marks for us the definite rupture of philosophic
+sympathy for the Jansenist champions. "It is your disputatiousness," he
+said, "which within the last forty years has made far more unbelievers
+than all the productions of philosophy." As we cannot too clearly
+realise, it was the flagrant social incompetence of the church which
+brought what they called Philosophy, that is to say Liberalism, into
+vogue and power. Locke's Essay had been translated in 1700, but it had
+made no mark, and as late as 1725 the first edition of the translation
+remained unsold. It was the weakness and unsightly decrepitude of the
+ecclesiastics which opened the way for the thinkers.
+
+This victory, however, was not yet. Diderot had still a dismal
+wilderness to traverse. He was not without secret friends even in the
+camp of his enemies.
+
+After his reply to Per� Berthier's attack on the Prospectus, he
+received an anonymous letter to the effect that if he wished to avenge
+himself on the Jesuits, there were both important documents and money at
+his command. Diderot replied that he was in no want of money, and that
+he had no time to spare for Jesuit documents.[132] He trusted to reason.
+Neither reason nor eloquence availed against the credit at court of the
+ecclesiastical cabal. The sale of the second volume of the Encyclop�dia
+was stopped by orders which Malesherbes was reluctantly compelled to
+issue. A decree of the king's council (Feb. 7, 1752) suppressed both
+volumes, as containing maxims hostile to the royal authority and to
+religion. The publishers were forbidden to reprint them, and the
+booksellers were forbidden to deliver any copies that might still be in
+hand. The decree, however, contained no prohibition of the continuance
+of the work. It was probably not meant to do anything more serious than
+to pacify the Jesuits, and lend an apparent justification to the
+officious pastorals of the great prelates. Some even thought that the
+aim of the government was to forestall severer proceedings on the part
+of the parliament of lawyers;[133] for corporations of lawyers have
+seldom been less bigoted or obstructive than corporations of churchmen.
+Nor were lawyers and priests the only foes. Even the base and despicable
+jealousies of booksellers counted for something in the storm.[134]
+
+A curious triumph awaited the harassed Diderot.
+
+He was compelled, under pain of a second incarceration, to hand over to
+the authorities all the papers, proof-sheets, and plates in his
+possession. The Jesuit cabal supposed that if they could obtain the
+materials for the future volumes, they could easily arrange and
+manipulate them to suit their own purposes. Their ignorance and
+presumption were speedily confounded. In taking Diderot's papers, they
+had forgotten, as Grimm says, to take his head and his genius: they had
+forgotten to ask him for a key to articles which, so far from
+understanding, they with some confusion vainly strove even to decipher.
+The government was obliged (May 1752) to appeal to Diderot and
+D'Alembert to resume a work for which their enemies had thus proved
+themselves incompetent. Yet, by one of the meannesses of decaying
+authority, the decree of three months before was left suspended over
+their heads.[135]
+
+The third volume of the Encyclop�dia appeared in the autumn of 1753.
+D'Alembert prefixed an introduction, vindicating himself and his
+colleague with a manliness, a sincerity, a gravity, a fire, that are
+admirable and touching. "What," he concluded, "can malignity henceforth
+devise against two men of letters, trained long since by their
+meditations to fear neither injustice nor poverty; who having learnt by
+a long and mournful experience, not to despise, but to mistrust and
+dread men, have the courage to love them, and the prudence to flee
+them?... After having been the stormy and painful occupation of the
+most precious years of our life, this work will perhaps be the solace of
+its close. May it, when both we and our enemies alike have ceased to
+exist, be a durable monument of the good intention of the one, and the
+injustice of the other.... Let us remember the fable of Bocalina: 'A
+traveller was disturbed by the importunate chirrupings of the
+grasshoppers; he would fain have slain them every one, but only got
+belated and missed his way; he need only have fared peacefully on his
+road, and the grasshoppers would have died of themselves before the end
+of a week.'"[136] A volume was now produced in each year, until the
+autumn of 1757 and the issue of the seventh volume. This brought the
+work down to Gyromancy and Gythiuin. Then there arose storms and
+divisions which marked a memorable epoch alike in the history of the
+book, in the life of Diderot and others, and in the thought of the
+century. The progress of the work in popularity during the five years
+between 1752 and 1757 had been steady and unbroken. The original
+subscribers were barely two thousand. When the fourth volume appeared,
+there were three thousand. The seventh volume found nearly a thousand
+more.[137] Such prodigious success wrought the chagrin of the party of
+superstition to fever heat. As each annual volume came from the press
+and found a wider circle of readers than its predecessor, their malice
+and irritation waxed a degree more intense. They scattered malignant
+rumours abroad; they showered pamphlets; no imputation was too odious or
+too ridiculous for them. Diderot, D'Alembert, Voltaire, Rousseau,
+Buffon, were declared to have organised a league of writers, with the
+deliberate purpose of attacking the public tranquillity and overthrowing
+society. They were denounced as heads of a formal conspiracy, a
+clandestine association, a midnight band, united in a horrible community
+of pestilent opinions and sombre interests.
+
+In the seventh volume an article appeared which made the ferment angrier
+than it had ever been. D'Alembert had lately been the guest of Voltaire
+at Ferney, whence he had made frequent visits to Geneva. In his
+intercourse with the ministers of that famous city, he came to the
+conclusion that their religious opinions were really Socinian, and when
+he wrote the article on Geneva he stated this. He stated it in such a
+way as to make their heterodox opinions a credit to Genevese pastors,
+because he associated disbelief in the divinity of Jesus Christ, in
+mysteries of faith, and in eternal punishment, with a practical life of
+admirable simplicity, purity, and tolerance. Each line of this eulogy on
+the Socinian preachers of Geneva, veiled a burning and contemptuous
+reproach against the cruel and darkened spirit of the churchmen in
+France. Jesuit and Jansenist, loose abb�s and debauched prelates, felt
+the quivering of the arrow in the quick, as they read that the morals of
+the Genevese pastors were exemplary; that they did not pass their lives
+in furious disputes upon unintelligible points; that they brought no
+indecent and persecuting accusation against one another before the civil
+magistrate. There was gall and wormwood to the orthodox bigot in the
+harmless statement that "Hell, which is one of the principal articles of
+our belief, has ceased to be one with many of the ministers of Geneva;
+it would be, according to them, a great insult to the divinity, to
+imagine that this Being, so full of justice and goodness, is capable of
+punishing our faults by an eternity of torment: they explain in as good
+a sense as they can the formal passages of Scripture which are contrary
+to their opinion, declaring that we ought never in the sacred books to
+take anything literally, that seems to wound humanity and reason." And
+we may be sure that D'Alembert was thinking less of the consistory and
+the great council of Geneva, than of the priests and the parliament of
+Paris, when he praised the Protestant pastors, not only for their
+tolerance, but for confining themselves within their proper functions,
+and for being the first to set an example of submission to the
+magistrates and the laws. The intention of this elaborate and, reasoned
+account of the creed and practice of a handful of preachers in a
+heretical town, could not be mistaken by those at whom it was directed.
+It produced in the black ranks of official orthodoxy fully as angry a
+shock as its writer could have designed.
+
+The church had not yet, we must remember, borrowed the principles of
+humanity and tolerance from atheists. It was not the comparatively
+purified Christian doctrine of our own time with which the
+Encyclop�dists did battle, but an organised corporation, with
+exceptional tribunals, with special material privileges, with dungeons
+and chains at their disposal. We have to realise that official religion
+was then a strange union of Byzantine decrepitude, with the energetic
+ferocity of the Holy Office. Within five years of this indirect plea of
+D'Alembert for tolerance and humanity, Calas was murdered by the
+orthodoxy of Toulouse. Nearly ten years later (1766), we find Lewis XV.,
+with the steam of the Parc aux Cerfs about him, rewarded by the loyal
+acclamations of a Parisian crowd, for descending from his carriage as a
+priest passed bearing the sacrament, and prostrating himself in the mud
+before the holy symbol.[138] In the same year the youth La Barre was
+first tortured, then beheaded, then burnt, for some presumed disrespect
+to the same holy symbol--then become the hateful ensign of human
+degradation, of fanatical cruelty, of rancorous superstition. Yet I
+should be sorry to be unjust. It is to be said that even in these bad
+days when religion meant cruelty and cabal, the one or two men who
+boldly withstood to the face the king and the Pompadour for the vileness
+of their lives, were priests of the church.
+
+D'Alembert's article hardly goes beyond what to us seem the axioms of
+all men of sense. We must remember the time. Even members of the
+philosophic party itself, like Grimm, thought the article misplaced and
+hardy.[139] The Genevese ministers indignantly repudiated the compliment
+of Socinianism, and the eulogy of being rather less irrational than
+their neighbours. Voltaire read and read again with delight, and plied
+the writer with reiterated exhortations in every key, not to allow
+himself to be driven from the great work by the raging of the heathen
+and the vain imaginings of the people.[140]
+
+While the storm seemed to be at its height, an incident occurred which
+let loose a new flood of violent passion. Helv�tius published that
+memorable book in which he was thought to have told all the world its
+own secret. His _De l'Esprit_ came out in 1758.[141] It provoked a
+general insurrection of public opinion. The devout and the heedless
+agreed in denouncing it as scandalous, licentious, impious, and pregnant
+with peril. The philosophic party felt that their ally had dealt a sore
+blow to liberty of thought and the free expression of opinion.
+"Philosophy," said Grimm, by philosophy, as I have said, meaning
+Liberalism, "will long feel the effect of the rising of opinion which
+this author has caused by his book; and for having described too freely
+a morality that is bad and false in itself, M. Helv�tius will have to
+reproach himself with all the restraints that are now sure to be imposed
+on the few men of lofty genius who still are left to us, whose destiny
+was to enlighten their fellows, and to spread truth over the
+earth."[142]
+
+At the beginning of 1759 the procureur-g�n�ral laid an information
+before the court against Helv�tius's book, against half a dozen minor
+publications, and finally against the Encyclop�dia. The _De l'Esprit_
+was alleged to be a mere abridgment of the Encyclop�dia, and the
+Encyclop�dia was denounced as being the opprobrium of the nation by its
+impious maxims and its hostility to morals and religion. The court
+appointed nine commissaries to examine the seven volumes, suspending
+their further sale or delivery in the meanwhile. When the commissaries
+sent in their report a month later, the parliament was dissatisfied
+with its tenour, and appointed four new examiners, two of them being
+theologians and two of them lawyers. Before the new censors had time to
+do their work, the Council of State interposed with an arbitrary decree
+(March 1759) suppressing the privilege which had been conceded in 1746;
+prohibiting the sale of the seven volumes already printed, and the
+printing of any future volumes under pain of exemplary punishment.[143]
+The motive for this intervention has never been made plain. One view is
+that the king's government resented the action of the law courts, and
+that the royal decree was only an episode in the quarrel then raging
+between the crown and the parliaments. Another opinion is that
+Malesherbes or Choiseul was anxious to please the dauphin and the
+Jesuit party at Versailles. The most probable explanation is that the
+authorities were eager to silence one at least of the three elements of
+opposition, the Jansenists, the lawyers, and the philosophers,--who
+were then distracting the realm. The two former were beyond their
+direct reach. They threw themselves upon the foe who happened to be
+most accessible.
+
+The government, however, had no intention of finally exterminating an
+enemy who might at some future day happen to be a convenient ally. They
+encouraged or repressed the philosophers according to the political
+calculations of the moment, sometimes according to the caprices of the
+king's mistress, or even a minister's mistress. When the clergy braved
+the royal authority, the hardiest productions were received with
+indulgence. If the government were reduced to satisfy the clergy, then
+even the very commonplaces of the new philosophy became ground for
+accusation. The Encyclop�dia was naturally exposed in a special degree
+to such alternations of favour and suspicion.[144] The crisis of 1759
+furnishes a curious illustration of this. As we have seen, in the spring
+of that year the privilege was withdrawn from the four associated
+booksellers, and the continuance of the work strictly prohibited. Yet
+the printing was not suspended for a week. Fifty compositors were busily
+setting up a book which the ordinance of the government had decisively
+forbidden under heavy penalties.
+
+The same kind of connivance was practised to the advantage of other
+branches of the opposition. Thirty years before this, the organ of the
+Jansenist party was peremptorily suppressed. The police instituted a
+rigorous search, and seized the very presses on which the Nouvelles
+Eccl�siastiques was being printed. But the journal continued to appear,
+and was circulated, just as regularly as before.[145]
+
+The history of the policy of authority towards the Encyclop�dia is only
+one episode in the great lesson of the reign of Lewis XV. It was long a
+common mistake to think of this king's system of government as violent
+and tyrannical. In truth, its failure and confusion resulted less from
+the arbitrariness of its procedure, than from the hopeless absence of
+tenacity, conviction, and consistency in the substance and direction of
+its objects. And this, again, was the result partly of the complex and
+intractable nature of the opposition with which successive ministers had
+to deal, and partly of the overpowering strength of those Asiatic maxims
+of government which Richelieu and Lewis XIV. had invested with such
+ruinous prestige. The impatience and charlatanry of emotional or
+pseudo-scientific admirers of a personal system blind them to the
+permanent truth, of which the succession of the decrepitude of Lewis XV.
+to the strength of his great-grandfather, and of the decrepitude of
+Napoleon III. to the strength of his uncle, are only illustrations.
+
+The true interest of all these details about a mere book lies in the
+immense significance of the movement of political ideas and forces to
+which they belong. The true interest of all history lies in the
+spectacle which it furnishes of the growth and dissolution, the shock
+and the transformation, incessantly at work among the great groups of
+human conceptions. The decree against the Encyclop�dia marks the central
+moment of a collision between two antagonistic conceptions which
+disputed, and in France still dispute, with one another the shaping and
+control of institutions. One of these ideas is the exclusion of
+political authority from the sphere and function of directing opinion;
+it implies the absolute secularisation of government. The rival idea
+prompted the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the dragonnades, the
+revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and all the other acts of the same
+policy, which not only deprived France of thousands of the most
+conscientious and most ingenious of her sons, but warped and corrupted
+the integrity of the national conscience. It is natural that we should
+feel anger at the arbitrary attempt to arrest Diderot's courageous and
+enlightened undertaking. Yet in truth it was only the customary
+inference from an accepted principle, that it is the business or the
+right of governments to guide thought and regulate its expression. The
+Jesuits acted on this theory, and resorted to repressive power and the
+secular arm whenever they could. The Jansenists repudiated the
+principle, but eagerly practised it whenever the turn of intrigue gave
+them the chance.
+
+An extraordinary and unforeseen circumstance changed the external
+bearings of this critical conflict of ideas. The conception of the
+duties of the temporal authority in the spiritual sphere had been
+associated hitherto with Catholic doctrine. The decay of that doctrine
+was rapidly discrediting the conception allied with it. But the movement
+was interrupted. And it was interrupted by a man who suddenly stepped
+out from the ranks of the Encyclop�dists themselves. Rousseau from his
+solitary cottage at Montmorency (1758) fulminated the celebrated letter
+to D'Alembert on Stage Plays. The article on Geneva in the seventh
+volume of the Encyclop�dia had not only praised the pastors for their
+unbelief; it also assailed the time-honoured doctrine of the churches
+that the theatre is an institution from hell and an invention of devils.
+D'Alembert paid a compliment to his patriarch and master at Ferney, as
+well as shot a bolt at his ecclesiastical foes in Paris, by urging the
+people of Geneva to shake off irrational prejudices and straightway to
+set up a playhouse. Rousseau had long been brooding over certain private
+grievances of his own against Diderot; the dreary story has been told by
+me before, and happily need not be repeated.[146] He took the occasion
+of D'Alembert's mischievous suggestion to his native Geneva, not merely
+to denounce the drama with all the force and eloquence at his command,
+but formally to declare the breach between himself and Diderot. From
+this moment he treated the Holbachians--so he contemptuously styled the
+Encyclop�dists--as enemies of the human race and disseminators of the
+deadliest poisons.
+
+This was no mere quarrel of rival authors. It marked a fundamental
+divergence in thought, and proclaimed the beginning of a disastrous
+reaction in the very heart of the school of illumination. Among the most
+conspicuous elements of the reaction were these: the subordination of
+reason to emotion; the displacement of industry, science, energetic and
+many-sided ingenuity, by dreamy indolence; and finally, what brings us
+back to our starting-point, the suppression of opinions deemed to be
+anti-social by the secular arm. The old idea was brought back in a new
+dress; the absolutist conception of the function of authority,
+associated with a theistic doctrine. Unfortunately for France,
+Rousseau's idea prospered, and ended by vanquishing its antagonist. The
+reason is plain. Rousseau's idea exactly fitted in with the political
+traditions and institutions of the country. It was more easily and
+directly compatible than was the contending idea, with that temper and
+set of men's minds which tradition and institutions had fixed so
+disastrously deep in the national character.
+
+The crisis of 1758-59, then, is a date of the highest importance. It
+marks a collision between the old principle of Lewis XIV., of the
+Bartholomew Massacre, of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and the
+new rationalistic principle of spiritual emancipation. The old principle
+was decrepit, it was no longer able to maintain itself; the hounds were
+furious, but their fury was toothless. Before the new principle could
+achieve mastery, Rousseau had made mastery impossible. Two men came into
+the world at this very moment, whom destiny made incarnations of the
+discordant principles. Danton and Robespierre were both born in 1759.
+Diderot seems to have had a biblical presentiment, says Michelet. "We
+feel that he saw, beyond Rousseau, something sinister, a spectre of the
+future. Diderot-Danton already looks in the face of
+Rousseau-Robespierre."[147]
+
+A more vexatious incident now befell the all-daring, all-enduring
+Diderot, than either the decree of the Council or the schism of the
+heresiarch at Montmorency. D'Alembert declared his intention of
+abandoning the work, and urged his colleague to do the same. His letters
+to Voltaire show intelligibly enough how he brought himself to this
+resolution. "I am worn out," he says, "with the affronts and vexations
+of every kind that this work draws down upon us. The hateful and even
+infamous satires which they print against us, and which are not only
+tolerated, but protected, authorised, applauded, nay, actually commanded
+by the people with power in their hands; the sermons, or rather the
+tocsins that are rung against us at Versailles in the presence of the
+king, _nemine reclamante_; the new intolerable inquisition that they are
+bent on practising against the Encyclop�dia, by giving us new censors
+who are more absurd and more intractable than could be found at Goa;
+all these reasons, joined to some others, drive me to give up this
+accursed work once for all." He cared nothing for libels or stinging
+pamphlets in themselves, but libels permitted or ordered by those who
+could instantly have suppressed them, were a different thing, especially
+when they vomited forth the vilest personalities. He admitted that there
+were other reasons why he was bent on retiring, and it would appear that
+one of these reasons was dissatisfaction with the financial arrangements
+of the booksellers.[148]
+
+Voltaire for some time remonstrated against this retreat before the
+hated _Inf�me_. At length his opinion came round to D'Alembert's
+reiterated assertions of the shame and baseness of men of letters
+subjecting themselves to the humiliating yoke of ministers, priests, and
+police. Voltaire wrote to Diderot, protesting that before all things it
+was necessary to present a firm front to the foe; it would be atrocious
+weakness to continue the work after D'Alembert had quitted it; it was
+monstrous that such a genius as Diderot should make himself the slave of
+booksellers and the victim of fanatics. Must this dictionary, he asked,
+which is a hundred times more useful than Bayle's, be fettered with the
+superstition which it should annihilate; must they make terms with
+scoundrels who keep terms with none; could the enemies of reason, the
+persecutors of philosophers, the assassins of our kings, still dare to
+lift up their voices in such a century as that? "Men are on the eve of a
+great revolution in the human mind, and it is you to whom they are most
+of all indebted for it."[149]
+
+More than once Voltaire entreated Diderot to finish his work in a
+foreign country where his hands would be free. "No," said Diderot in a
+reply of pathetic energy; "to abandon the work is turning our back upon
+the breach, and to do precisely what the villains who persecute us
+desire. If you knew with what joy they have learnt D'Alembert's
+desertion! It is not for us to wait until the government have punished
+the brigands to whom they have given us up. Is it for us to complain,
+when they associate with us in their insults men who are so much better
+than ever we shall be? What ought we to do then? Do what becomes men of
+courage,--despise our foes, follow them up, and take advantage, as we
+have done, of the feebleness of our censors. If D'Alembert resumes, and
+we complete our work, is not that vengeance enough?... After all this,
+you will believe that I cling at any price to the Encyclop�dia, and you
+will be mistaken. My dear master, I am over forty. I am tired out with
+tricks and shufflings. I cry from morning till night for rest, rest; and
+scarcely a day passes when I am not tempted to go and live in obscurity
+and die in peace in the depths of my old country. There comes a time
+when all ashes are mingled. Then what will it boot me to have been
+Voltaire or Diderot, or whether it is your three syllables or my three
+syllables that survive? One must work, one must be useful, one owes an
+account of one's gifts, etcetera, etcetera. Be useful to men! Is it
+quite clear that one does more than amuse them, and that there is much
+difference between the philosopher and the flute-player? They listen to
+one or the other with pleasure or disdain, and remain what they were.
+The Athenians were never wickeder than in the time of Socrates, and
+perhaps all that they owe to his existence is a crime the more. That
+there is more spleen than good sense in all this, I admit--and back I go
+to the Encyclop�dia."[150]
+
+Thus for seven years the labour of conducting the vast enterprise fell
+upon Diderot alone. He had not only to write articles upon the most
+exhausting and various kinds of subjects; he had also to distribute
+topics among his writers, to shape their manuscripts, to correct
+proof-sheets, to supervise the preparation of the engravings, to write
+the text explanatory of them, and all this amid constant apprehension
+and alarm from the government and the police. He would have been free
+from persecution at Lausanne or at Leyden. The two great sovereigns of
+the north who thought it part of the trade of a king to patronise the
+new philosophy, offered him shelter at Petersburg or Berlin.[151]
+
+But how could he transport to the banks of the Neva or the Spree his
+fifty skilled compositors, his crafty engravers on copper-plate, and all
+the host of his industrial army? How could he find in those
+half-barbarous lands the looms and engines and thousand cunning
+implements and marvellous processes which he had under his eye and ready
+to his hand in France? And so he held fast to his post on the fifth
+floor of the house in the Rue Saint Beno�t, a standing marvel to the
+world of letters for all time.
+
+As his toil was drawing to a close, he suddenly received the most
+mortifying of all the blows that were struck at him in the course of his
+prolonged, hazardous, and tormenting adventure. After the interruption
+in 1759, it was resolved to bring out the ten volumes which were still
+wanting, in a single issue. Le Breton was entrusted with the business of
+printing them. The manuscript was set in type, Diderot corrected the
+proof-sheets, saw the revises, and returned each sheet duly marked with
+his signature for the press. At this point the nefarious operation of Le
+Breton began. He and his foreman took possession of the sheets, and
+proceeded to retrench, cut out, and suppress every passage, line, or
+phrase, that appeared to them to be likely to provoke clamour or the
+anger of the government. They thus, of their own brute authority,
+reduced most of the best articles to the condition of fragments
+mutilated and despoiled of all that had been most valuable in them. The
+miscreants did not even trouble themselves to secure any appearance of
+order or continuity in these mangled skeletons of articles. Their
+murderous work done, they sent the pages to the press, and to make the
+mischief beyond remedy, they committed all the original manuscripts and
+proof-sheets to the flames. One day, when the printing was nearly
+completed (1764), Diderot having occasion to consult an article under
+the letter S, found it entirely spoiled. He stood confounded. An
+instant's thought revealed the printer's atrocity. He eagerly turned to
+the articles on which he and his subordinates had taken most pains, and
+found everywhere the same ravages and disorder. "The discovery," says
+Grimm, "threw him into a state of frenzy and despair which I shall never
+forget."[152] He wept tears of rage and torment in the presence of the
+criminal himself, and before wife and children and sympathising
+domestics. For weeks he could neither eat nor sleep. "For years," he
+cried to Le Breton, "you have been basely cheating me. You have
+massacred, or got a brute beast to massacre, the work of twenty good men
+who have devoted to you their time, their talents, their vigils, from
+love of right and truth, from the simple hope of seeing their ideas
+given to the public, and reaping from them a little consideration richly
+earned, which your injustice and thanklessness have now stolen from them
+for ever.... You and your book will be dragged through the mire; you
+will henceforth be cited as a man who has been guilty of an act of
+treachery, an act of vile hardihood, to which nothing that has ever
+happened in this world can be compared. Then you will be able to judge
+your panic terror, and the cowardly counsels of those barbarous
+Ostrogoths and stupid Vandals who helped you in the havoc you have
+made."[153]
+
+Yet he remained undaunted to the very last. His first movement to throw
+up the work, and denounce Le Breton's outrage to the subscribers and the
+world, was controlled. His labour had lost its charm. The monument was
+disfigured and defaced. He never forgot the horrible chagrin, and he
+never forgave the ignoble author of it. But the last stone was at length
+laid. In 1765 the subscribers received the concluding ten volumes of
+letterpress. The eleven volumes of plates were not completed until 1772.
+The copies bore Neufch�tel on the title-page, and were distributed
+privately. The clergy in their assembly at once levelled a decree at the
+new book. The parliament quashed this, not from love of the book, but
+from hatred of the clergy. The government, however, ordered all who
+possessed the Encyclop�dia to deliver it over forthwith to the police.
+Eventually the copies were returned to their owners with some petty
+curtailments.
+
+Voltaire has left us a vivacious picture of authority in grave
+consultation over the great engine of destruction. With that we may
+conclude our account of its strange eventful history.
+
+     A servant of Lewis xv. told me that one day the king his
+     master supping at Trianon with a small party, the talk
+     happened to turn first upon the chase, and next on gunpowder.
+     Some one said that the best powder was made of equal parts of
+     saltpetre, of sulphur, and of charcoal. The Duke de la
+     Valli�re, better informed, maintained that to make good
+     gunpowder you required one part of sulphur and one of charcoal
+     to five parts of saltpetre.
+
+     "It is curious," said the Duke de Nivernois, "that we should
+     amuse ourselves every day in killing partridges at Versailles,
+     and sometimes in killing men or getting ourselves killed on
+     the frontier, without knowing exactly how the killing is
+     done."
+
+     "Alas," said Madame de Pompadour, "we are all reduced to that
+     about everything in the world: I don't know how they compound
+     the rouge that I put on my cheeks, and I should be vastly
+     puzzled if they were to ask me how they make my silk
+     stockings."
+
+     "'Tis a pity, then," said the Duke de la Valli�re, "that his
+     Majesty should have confiscated our Encyclop�dias, which cost
+     us a hundred pistoles apiece: we should soon find there an
+     answer to all our difficulties."
+
+     The king justified the confiscation: he had been warned that
+     one-and-twenty folios, that were to be found on the
+     dressing-tables of all the ladies, were the most dangerous
+     thing in all the world for the kingdom of France; and he meant
+     to find out for himself whether this were true or not, before
+     letting people read the book. When supper was over, he sent
+     three lackeys for the book, and they returned each with a good
+     deal of difficulty carrying seven volumes.
+
+     It was then seen from the article _Powder_ that the Duke de la
+     Valli�re was right; and then Madame de Pompadour learnt the
+     difference between the old rouge of Spain, with which the
+     ladies of Madrid coloured their faces, and the rouge of the
+     ladies of Paris. She knew that the Greek and Roman ladies
+     were painted with the purple that came from the _murex_, and
+     that therefore our scarlet is the purple of the ancients; that
+     there was more saffron in the rouge of Spain, and more
+     cochineal in that of France.
+
+     She saw how they made her stockings by loom; and the machine
+     transported her with amazement.
+
+     Everyone threw himself on the volumes like the daughters of
+     Lycomedes on the ornaments of Ulysses; every one immediately
+     found all he sought. Those who were at law were surprised to
+     see their affair decided. The king read all about the rights
+     of his crown. "But upon my word," he said, "I can't tell why
+     they spoke so ill of this book." "Do you not see, sire," said
+     the Duke de Nivernois, "it is because the book is so good;
+     people never cry out against what is mediocre or common in
+     anything. If women seek to throw ridicule on a new arrival,
+     she is sure to be prettier than they are."
+
+     All this time they kept on turning over the leaves; and the
+     Count de C---- said aloud--"Sire, how happy you are, that
+     under your reign men should be found capable of understanding
+     all the arts and transmitting them to posterity. Everything is
+     here, from the way to make a pin down to the art of casting
+     and pointing your guns; from the infinitely little up to the
+     infinitely great. Thank God for having brought into the world
+     in your kingdom the men who have done such good work for the
+     whole universe. Other nations must either buy the
+     Encyclop�dia, or else they must pirate it. Take all my
+     property if you will, but give me back my Encyclop�dia."
+
+     "Yet they say," replied the king, "that there are many faults
+     in this work, necessary and admirable as it is."
+
+     "Sire," said the Count de C----, "there were at your supper
+     two ragouts which were failures; we left them uneaten, and yet
+     we had excellent cheer. Would you have had them throw all the
+     supper out of the window because of those two ragouts?..."
+
+     Envy and Ignorance did not count themselves beaten; the two
+     immortal sisters continued their cries, their cabals, their
+     persecutions. What happened? Foreigners brought out four
+     editions of this French book which in France was proscribed,
+     and they gained about 1,800,000 crowns.[154]
+
+In a monotonous world it is a pity to spoil a striking effect, yet one
+must be vigilant. It has escaped the attention of writers who have
+reproduced this lively scene, that Madame de Pompadour was dead before
+the volumes containing Powder and Rouge were born. The twenty-one
+volumes were not published until 1765, and she died in the spring of the
+previous year. But the substance of the story is probably true, though
+Voltaire has only made a slip in a name.
+
+As to the reference with which Voltaire impatiently concludes, we have
+to remember that the work was being printed at Geneva as it came out in
+Paris. It was afterwards reprinted as a whole both at Geneva (1777) and
+at Lausanne (1778). An edition appeared at Leghorn in 1770, and another
+at Lucca in 1771. Immediately after the completion of the Encyclop�dia
+there began to appear volumes of selections from it. The compilers of
+these anthologies (for instance of an _Esprit de l'Encydop�die_
+published at Geneva in 1768) were free from all intention of
+proselytising. They meant only to turn a more or less honest penny by
+serving up in neat duodecimos the liveliest, most curious, and most
+amusing pieces to be found in the immense mass of the folios of the
+original.
+
+The Encyclop�dia of Diderot, though not itself the most prodigious
+achievement on which French booksellers may pride themselves, yet
+inspired that achievement. In 1782 Panckoucke--a familiar name in the
+correspondence of Voltaire and the Voltairean family--conceived the plan
+of a Methodical Encyclop�dia. This colossal work, which really consists
+of a collection of special cyclop�dias for each of the special sciences,
+was not completed until 1832, and comprises one hundred and sixty-six
+volumes of text, with a score more volumes of plates. It has no unity of
+doctrine, no equal application of any set of philosophic principles, and
+no definite social aim. The only encyclop�dia since 1772 with which I am
+acquainted, that is planned with a view to the presentation of a general
+body of doctrine, is the unfinished Encyclop�die Nuevelle of P�erre
+Leroux and Jean Reynaud. This work was intended to apply the socialistic
+and spiritualistic ideas of its authors over the whole field of
+knowledge and speculation. The result is that it furnishes only a series
+of dissertations, and is not an encyclop�dia in the ordinary sense.[155]
+
+The booksellers at first spoke of the Encyclop�dia as an affair of two
+million livres. It appeared, however that its cost did not go much
+beyond one million one hundred and forty thousand livres. The gross
+return was calculated to be nearly twice as much. The price to the
+subscriber of the seven volumes up to 1757, of the ten volumes issued in
+1765, and of the eleven volumes of plates completed in 1772, amounted to
+nine hundred and eighty livres,[156] or about forty-three pounds
+sterling of that date, equivalent in value to more than three times the
+sum in money of to-day.
+
+The payment received by Diderot is a little doubtful, and the terms were
+evidently changed from time to time. His average salary, after
+D'Alembert had quitted him, seems to have amounted to about three
+thousand livres, or one hundred and thirty pounds sterling, per annum.
+This coincides with Grimm's statement that the total sum received by
+Diderot was sixty thousand livres, or about two thousand six hundred
+pounds sterling.[157] And to think, cried Voltaire, when he heard of
+Diderot's humble wage, that an army contractor makes twenty thousand
+livres a day! Voltaire himself had made a profit of more than half a
+million livres by a share in an army contract in the war of 1734, and
+his yearly income derived from such gains and their prudent investment
+was as high as seventy thousand livres, representing in value a sum not
+far short of ten thousand pounds a year of our present money.
+
+II.
+
+
+All writers on the movement of illumination in France in the eighteenth
+century, call our attention to the quick transformation, which took
+place after the middle of the century, of a speculative or philosophical
+agitation into a political or social one. Readers often find some
+difficulty in understanding plainly how or why this metamorphosis was
+brought about. The metaphysical question which men were then so fond of
+discussing, whether matter can think, appears very far removed indeed
+from the sphere of political conceptions. The psychological question
+whether our ideas are innate, or are solely given to us by experience
+through the sensations, may strike the publicist as having the least
+possible to do with the type of a government or the aims of a community.
+Yet it is really the conclusions to which men come in this region, that
+determine the quality of the civil sentiment and the significance of
+political organisation. The theological doctors who persecuted De Prades
+for suggestions of Locke's psychology, and for high treason against
+Cartesianism, were guided by a right instinct of self-preservation. De
+Maistre, by far the most acute and penetrating of the Catholic school,
+was never more clear-sighted than when he made a vigorous and deliberate
+onslaught upon Bacon, the centre of his movement against revolutionary
+principles.[158]
+
+As we have said before, the immediate force of speculative literature
+hangs on practical opportuneness. It was not merely because Bacon and
+Hobbes and Locke had written certain books, that the Encyclop�dists, who
+took up their philosophic succession, inevitably became a powerful
+political party, and multiplied their adherents in an increasing
+proportion as the years went on. From various circumstances the attack
+acquired a significance and a weight in France which it had never
+possessed in England. For one thing, physical science had in the
+interval taken immense strides. This both dwarfed the sovereignty of
+theology and theological metaphysics, and indirectly disposed men's
+minds for non-theological theories of moral as well as of physical
+phenomena. In France, again, the objects of the attack were inelastic
+and unyielding. Political speculation in England followed, and did not
+precede, political innovation and reform. In France its light played
+round institutions which were too deeply rooted in absolutism and
+privilege to be capable of substantial modification. Deism was
+comparatively impotent against the Church of England, first, because it
+was an intellectual movement, and not a social one; second, because the
+constitutional doctrines of the church were flexible. Deism in the hands
+of its French propagators became connected with social liberalism,
+because the Catholic church in those days was identified with all the
+ideas of repression. And the tendencies of deism in France grew more
+violently destructive, not only because religious superstition was
+grosser, but because that superstition was incorporated in a strong and
+inexpansible social structure.
+
+"It would be a mistake," wrote that sagacious and well-informed
+observer, D'Argenson, so early as 1753, "to attribute the loss of
+religion in France to the English philosophy, which has not gained more
+than a hundred philosophers or so in Paris, instead of setting it down
+to the hatred against the priests, which goes to the very last extreme.
+All minds are turning to discontent and disobedience, and everything is
+on the high road to a great revolution, both in religion and in
+government. And it will be a very different thing to that rude
+Reformation, a medley of superstition and freedom, which came to us from
+Germany in the sixteenth century! As our nation and our century are
+enlightened in so very different a fashion, they will go whither they
+ought to go; they will banish every priest, all priesthood, all
+revelation, all mystery." This, however, only represents the destructive
+side of the vast change which D'Argenson then foresaw, six-and-thirty
+years before its consummation. That change had also a constructive side.
+If one of its elements was hate, another and more important element was
+hope. This constructive and reforming spirit which made its way in the
+intelligence of the leading men in France from 1750 to 1789, was
+represented in the encyclop�dic confederation, and embodied in their
+forty folios. And, to return to our first point, it was directly and
+inseparably associated with the philosophy of Bacon and Locke. What is
+the connection between their speculations and a vehement and energetic
+spirit of social reform? We have no space here to do more than barely
+hint the line of answer.
+
+The broad features of the speculative revolution of which the
+Encyclop�dia was the outcome, lie on the surface of its pages and cannot
+be mistaken. The transition from Descartes to Newton meant the definite
+substitution of observation for hypothesis. The exaltation of Bacon
+meant the advance from supernatural explanations to explanations from
+experience. The acceptance and development of the Lockian psychology
+meant the reference of our ideas to bodily sensations, and led men by
+what they thought a tolerably direct path to the identification of mind
+with functions of matter. We need not here discuss the philosophical
+truth or adequateness of these ways of considering the origin and nature
+of knowledge, or the composition of human character. All that now
+concerns us is to mark their tendency. That tendency clearly is to expel
+Magic as the decisive influence among us, in favour of ordered relations
+of cause and effect, only to be discovered by intelligent search. The
+universe began to be more directly conceived as a group of phenomena
+that are capable of rational and connected explanation. Then, the wider
+the area of law, the greater is man's consciousness of his power of
+controlling forces, and securing the results that he desires. Objective
+interests and their conditions acquire an increasing preponderance in
+his mind. On the other hand, as the limits of science expand, so do the
+limits of nescience become more definite. The more we know of the
+universal order, the more are we persuaded, however gradually and
+insensibly, that certain matters which men believed themselves to know
+outside of this phenomenal order, are in truth inaccessible by those
+instruments of experience and observation to which we are indebted for
+other knowledge. Hence, a natural inclination to devote our faculty to
+the forces within our control, and to withdraw it from vain industry
+about forces--if they be forces--which are beyond our control and beyond
+our apprehension. Thus man becomes the centre of the world to himself,
+nature his servant and minister, human society the field of his
+interests and his exertions. The sensational psychology, again, whether
+scientifically defensible or not, clearly tends to heighten our idea of
+the power of education and institutions upon character. The more vividly
+we realise the share of external impressions in making men what they
+are, the more ready we shall be to concern ourselves with external
+conditions and their improvement. The introduction of the positive
+spirit into the observation of the facts of society was not to be
+expected until the Cartesian philosophy, with its reliance on
+inexplicable intuitions and its exaggeration of the method of
+hypothesis, had been laid aside.
+
+Diderot struck a key-note of difference between the old Catholic spirit
+and the new social spirit, between quietist superstition and energetic
+science, in the casual sentence in his article on alms-houses and
+hospitals: "_It would be far more important to work at the prevention of
+misery, than to multiply places of refuge for the miserable_."
+
+It is very easy to show that the Encyclop�dists had not established an
+impregnable scientific basis for their philosophy. Anybody can now see
+that their metaphysic and psychology were imperfectly thought out. The
+important thing is that their metaphysic and psychology were calculated,
+notwithstanding all their superficialities, to inspire an energetic
+social spirit, because they were pregnant with humanistic sentiment. To
+represent the Encyclop�dia as the gospel of negation and denial is to
+omit four-fifths of its contents. Men may certainly, if they please,
+describe it as merely negative work, for example, to denounce such
+institutions as examination and punishment by Torture (See _Question,
+Peine_), but if so, what gospel of affirmation can bring better
+blessings?[159] If the metaphysic of these writers had been a
+thousandfold more superficial than it was, what mattered that, so long
+as they had vision for every one of the great social improvements on
+which the progress and even the very life of the nation depended? It
+would be obviously unfair to say that reasoned interest in social
+improvement is incompatible with a spiritualistic doctrine, but we are
+justified in saying that energetic faith in possibilities of social
+progress has been first reached through the philosophy of sensation and
+experience.
+
+In describing the encyclop�dic movement as being, among other things,
+the development of political interest under the presiding influence of a
+humanistic philosophy, we are using the name of politics in its widest
+sense. The economic conditions of a country, and the administration of
+its laws, are far more vitally related to its well-being than the form
+of its government. The form of government is indeed a question of the
+first importance, but then this is owing in a paramount degree to the
+influence which it may have upon the other two sets of elements in the
+national life. Form of government is like the fashion of a man's
+clothes; it may fret or may comfort him, may be imposing or mean, may
+react upon his spirits to elate or depress them. In either case it is
+less intimately related to his welfare than the state of his blood and
+tissues. In saying, then, that the Encyclop�dists began a political
+work, what is meant is that they drew into the light of new ideas,
+groups of institutions, usages, and arrangements which affected the real
+well-being and happiness of France, as closely as nutrition affected the
+health and strength of an individual Frenchman. It was the
+Encyclop�dists who first stirred opinion in France against the
+iniquities of colonial tyranny and the abominations of the slave trade.
+They demonstrated the folly and wastefulness and cruelty of a fiscal
+system that was eating the life out of the land. They protested in
+season and out of season against arrangements which made the
+administration of justice a matter of sale and purchase. They lifted up
+a strong voice against the atrocious barbarities of an antiquated penal
+code. It was this band of writers, organised by a harassed man of
+letters, and not the nobles swarming round Lewis XV., nor the churchmen
+singing masses, who first grasped the great principle of modern society,
+the honour that is owed to productive industry. They were vehement for
+the glories of peace, and passionate against the brazen glories of
+war.[160]
+
+We are not to suppose that the Encyclop�dia was the originating organ
+of either new methods or new social ideas. The exalted and peculiarly
+modern views about peace, for instance, were plainly inspired from the
+writings of the Abb� Saint Pierre (1658-1743)--one of the most original
+spirits of the century, who deserves to be remembered among other good
+services as the inventor of the word _bienfaisance_. Again, in the mass
+of the political articles we feel the immense impulse that was given to
+sociological discussion by the Esprit des Lois. Few questions are
+debated here, which Montesquieu had not raised, and none are debated
+without reference to Montesquieu's line of argument. The change of which
+we are conscious in turning from the Esprit des Lois to the Encyclop�dia
+is that political ideas have been grasped as instruments. Philosophy has
+become patriotism. The Encyclop�dists advanced with grave solicitude to
+the consideration of evils, to which the red-heeled parasites of
+Versailles were insolently and incorrigibly blind.
+
+The articles on Agriculture, for example, are admirable alike for the
+fulness and precision with which they expose the actual state of France;
+for the clearness with which they trace its deplorable inadequateness
+back to the true sources; and for the strong interest and sympathy in
+the subject, which they both exhibit and inspire. If now and again the
+touch is too idyllic, it was still a prodigious gain to let the country
+know in a definite way that of the fifty million arpents of cultivable
+land in the realm, more than one quarter lay either unbroken or
+abandoned. And it was a prodigious gain to arouse the attention of the
+general public to the causes of the forced deterioration of French
+agriculture, namely, the restrictions on trade in grain, the
+arbitrariness of the imposts, and the flight of the population to the
+large towns. Then the demonstration, corroborated in the pages of the
+Encyclop�dia by the two patriotic vaunts of contemporary English
+writers, of the stimulus given to agriculture by our system of free
+exports, contained one of the most useful lessons that the French had to
+learn.
+
+Again, there are some abuses which cannot be more effectively attacked,
+than by a mere statement of the facts in the plainest and least
+argumentative terms. The history of such an impost as the tax upon salt
+(_Gabelle_), and a bold outline of the random and incongruous fashions
+in which it was levied, were equivalent to a formal indictment. It
+needed no rhetoric nor discussion to heighten the harsh injustice of the
+rule that "persons who have changed domicile are still taxed for a
+certain time in the seat of their former abode, namely, farmers and
+labourers for one year, and all other tax-payers for two years, provided
+the parish to which they have removed is within the same district; and
+if otherwise, then farmers to pay for two years, and other persons for
+three years" (_Taille_). Thus a man under the given circumstances would
+have to pay double taxes for three years as a penalty for changing his
+dwelling. We already hear the murmur of the _cahiers_ of five-and-twenty
+years later in the account of the transports of joy with which the
+citizens of Lisieux saw the _taille proportionelle_ established (1718),
+and how numerous other cities sent up prayers that the same blessing
+might be conferred on them. "Reasons that it is not for us to divine,
+caused the rejection of these demands; so hard is it to do a good act,
+which everybody talks about, much more in order to seem to desire it,
+than from any intention of really doing it.... To illustrate the
+advantages of this plan, the impost of 1718 with all arrears for five
+years was discharged in twelve months without needless cost or dispute.
+By an extravagance more proper than any other to degrade humanity, the
+common happiness made malcontents of all that class whose prosperity
+depends on the misery of others,"--that is the privileged class.[161]
+
+It is no innate factiousness, as flighty critics of French affairs
+sometimes imply, that has made civil equality the passion of modern
+France. The root of this passion is an undying memory of the curse that
+was inflicted on its citizens, morally and materially, by the fiscal
+inequalities of the old _r�gime_. The article, _Privileg�_, urges the
+desirableness of inquiring into the grounds of the vast multitude of
+fiscal exemptions, and of abolishing all that were no longer associated
+with the performance of real and useful service. "A bourgeois," says
+the writer, anticipating a cry that was so soon to ring through the
+land, "a bourgeois in comfortable circumstances, and who could himself
+pay half of the _taille_ of a whole parish, if it were imposed in its
+due proportion,--on payment of the amount of his taxes for one or for
+two years, and often for less; without birth, education, or talents,
+buys a place in a local salt office, or some useless charge at court, or
+in the household of some prince.... This man proceeds to enjoy in the
+public eye all the exemptions possessed by the nobility and the high
+magistracy.... From such an abuse of privileges spring two very
+considerable evils: the poorer part of the citizens are always burdened
+beyond their strength, though they are the most useful to the State,
+since this class is composed of those who cultivate the land, and
+procure a subsistence for the upper classes; the other evil is that
+privileges disgust persons of education and talent with the idea of
+entering the magistracy or other professions demanding labour and
+application, and lead them to prefer small posts and paltry offices."
+And so forth, with a gravity and moderation, that were then common in
+political discussion in France. It gradually disappeared in 1789, when
+it was found that the privileged orders, even at that time, in their
+_cahiers_ steadily demanded the maintenance of every one of their most
+odious and iniquitous rights.[162]
+
+When it is said, then, that the Encyclop�dists deliberately prepared
+the way for a political revolution, let us remember that what they
+really did was to shed the light of rational discussion on such
+practical grievances as even the most fatuous conservative in France
+does not now dream of bringing back.
+
+Let us turn to two other of the most oppressive institutions that then
+scourged France. First the _Corv�e_, or feudal rule which forced every
+unprivileged farmer and peasant in France to furnish so many days'
+labour for the maintenance of the highways. Arthur Young tells us, and
+the statement is confirmed by the Minutes of Turgot, that this wasteful,
+cruel, and inefficient system was annually the ruin of many hundreds of
+persons, and he mentions that no less than three hundred farmers were
+reduced to beggary in filling up a single vale in Lorraine.[163] Under
+this all-important head, the Encyclop�dia has an article that does not
+merely add to the knowledge of its readers by a history of the
+_corv�es_, but proceeds to discuss, as in a pamphlet or review article,
+the inconveniences of the prevailing system, and presses schemes for
+avoiding them. Turgot had not yet shown in practice the only right
+substitute. The article was printed in 1754, and it was not until ten
+years later that this great administrator, then become intendant of the
+Limousin, did away in his district with compulsory personal service on
+the roads, and required in its place a money payment assessed on the
+parishes.[164] The writer of the article in the Encyclop�dia does not
+anticipate this obviously rational plan, but he paints a striking
+picture of the thousand abuses and miserable inefficiencies of the
+practice of _corv�es_, and his piece illustrates that vigorous
+discussion of social subjects which the Encyclop�dia stimulated. It is
+worth remarking that this writer was a sub-engineer of roads and bridges
+in the generality of Tours. The case is one example among others of the
+importance of the Encyclop�dia as a centre, to which active-minded men
+of all kinds might bring the fruits of their thought and observation.
+
+Next to the _corv�es_, the monster grievance of the third estate was the
+system of enrolments for the militia. The article, _Milice_, is very
+short, but it goes to the root of the matter. The only son of a
+cultivator of moderate means, forced to quit the paternal roof at the
+moment when his labour might recompense his straitened parents for the
+expense of having brought him up, is justly described as an irreparable
+loss. The writer, after hinting that it would be well if such an
+institution were wholly dispensed with, urges that at least its object
+might be more effectively and more humanely reached by allowing each
+parish to provide its due contingent of men in its own way. This change
+was indeed already (1765) being carried out by Turgot in the Limousin,
+and with excellent results. The writer concludes with the highly
+civilised remark, that we ought to weigh whether the good of the rural
+districts, the culture of the land, and population, are not preferable
+objects to the glory of setting enormous hosts of armed men on foot
+after the example of Xerxes. Alas, it is one of the discouragements of
+the student of history, that he often finds highly civilised remarks
+made one or two or twenty centuries ago, which are just as useful and
+just as little heeded now as they were when they were made.
+
+The same reflection occurs to one in reading the article on Foundations.
+As I have already said, this carefully written and sagacious piece still
+remains the most masterly discussion we possess of the advantages and
+disadvantages of endowments. Even now, and in our own country, the most
+fertile and beneficent work to which a statesman of energy and courage
+could devote himself, would be an application of the wise principles
+which were established in the Encyclop�dia. Passing from _Fondation_ to
+_Foire_ in the same volume, also from the pen of Turgot, we see an
+almost equally striking example of the economic wisdom of the
+encyclop�dic school. The provincial fairs, with their privileges,
+exemptions, exclusions, were a conspicuous case of the mischief done by
+that "mania for regulating and guiding everything," which then infected
+commercial administration, and interrupted the natural course of trade
+by imbecile vexations of police. Another vicious example of the same
+principle is exposed in the article on _Ma�trises_. This must have
+convinced every reader capable of rising above "the holy laws of
+prejudice," how bad faith, idleness, disorder, and all the other evils
+of monopoly were fomented by a system of jealous trade-guilds, carrying
+compulsory subdivision and restriction of all kinds of skilled labour
+down to a degree that would have been laughable enough, if it had only
+been less destructive.
+
+One of the loudest cries in 1789 was for the destruction of game and the
+great manorial chases or capitaineries. "By game," says Arthur Young,
+"must be understood whole droves of wild boars, and herds of deer not
+confined by any wall or pale, but wandering at pleasure over the whole
+country to the destruction of crops, and to the peopling of the galleys
+by the wretched peasants who presumed to kill them, in order to save
+that food which was to support their helpless children."[165] In the
+same place he enumerates the outrageous and incredible rules which
+ruined agriculture over hundreds of leagues of country, in order that
+the seigneurs might have sport. In most matters the seven volumes of the
+Encyclop�dia which were printed before 1757, are more reserved than the
+ten volumes which were conducted by Diderot alone after the great schism
+of 1759. On the subject of sport, however, the writer of the article
+_Chasse_ enumerates all the considerations which a patriotic minister
+could desire to see impressed on public opinion. Some of the paragraphs
+startle us by their directness and freedom of complaint, and even a very
+cool reader would still be likely to feel some of the wrath that was
+stirred in the breast of our shrewd and sober Arthur Young a generation
+later (1787). "Go to the residence of these great nobles," he says,
+"wherever it may be, and you would probably find them in the midst of a
+forest, very well peopled with deer, wild boar, and wolves. Oh! if I
+were the legislator of France for a day, I would make such great lords
+skip!"[166]
+
+This brings us to what is perhaps the most striking of all the guiding
+sentiments of the book. Virgil's Georgics have been described as a
+glorification of labour. The Encyclop�dia seems inspired by the same
+motive, the same earnest enthusiasm for all the purposes, interests, and
+details of productive industry. Diderot, as has been justly said,
+himself the son of a cutler, might well bring handiwork into honour;
+assuredly he had inherited from his good father's workshop sympathy and
+regard for skill and labour.[167] The illustrative plates to which
+Diderot gave the most laborious attention for a period of almost thirty
+years, are not only remarkable for their copiousness, their clearness,
+their finish--and in all these respects they are truly admirable--but
+they strike us even more by the semi-poetic feeling that transforms the
+mere representation of a process into an animated scene of human life,
+stirring the sympathy and touching the imagination of the onlooker as by
+something dramatic. The bustle, the dexterity, the alert force of the
+iron foundry, the glass furnace, the gunpowder mill, the silk calendry
+are as skilfully reproduced as the more tranquil toil of the dairywoman,
+the embroiderer, the confectioner, the setter of types, the compounder
+of drugs, the chaser of metals. The drawings recall that eager and
+personal interest in his work, that nimble complacency, which is so
+charming a trait in the best French craftsman. The animation of these
+great folios of plates is prodigious. They affect one like looking down
+on the world of Paris from the heights of Montmartre. To turn over
+volume after volume is like watching a splendid panorama of all the busy
+life of the time. Minute care is as striking in them as their
+comprehensiveness. The smallest tool, the knot in a thread, the ply in a
+cord, the curve of wrist or finger, each has special and proper
+delineation. The reader smiles at a complete and elaborate set of
+tailor's patterns. He shudders as he comes upon the knives, the probes,
+the bandages, the posture, of the wretch about to undergo the most
+dangerous operation in surgery. In all the chief departments of industry
+there are plates good enough to serve for practical specifications and
+working drawings. It has often been told how Diderot himself used to
+visit the workshops, to watch the men at work, to put a thousand
+questions, to sit down at the loom, to have the machine pulled to pieces
+and set together again before his eyes, to slave like any apprentice,
+and to do bad work, in order, as he says, to be able to instruct others
+how to do good work. That was no movement of empty rhetoric which made
+him cry out for the Encyclop�dia to become a sanctuary in which human
+knowledge might find shelter against time and revolutions. He actually
+took the pains to make it a complete storehouse of the arts, so perfect
+in detail that they could be at once reconstructed after a deluge in
+which everything had perished save a single copy of the Encyclop�dia.
+Such details, said D'Alembert, will perhaps seem extremely out of place
+to certain scholars, for whom a long dissertation on the cookery or the
+hair-dressing of the ancients, or on the site of a ruined hamlet, or on
+the baptismal name of some obscure writer of the tenth century, would be
+vastly interesting and precious. He suggests that details of economy,
+and of arts and trades, have as good a right to a place as the
+scholastic philosophy, or some system of rhetoric still in use, or the
+mysteries of heraldry. Yet none even of these had been passed over.[168]
+
+The importance given to physical science and the practical arts, in the
+Encyclop�dia, is the sign and exemplification of two elements of the
+great modern transition. It marks both a social and an intellectual
+revolution. We see in it, first, the distinct association with pacific
+labour, of honour and a kind of glory, such as had hitherto been
+reserved for knights and friars, for war and asceticism, for fighting
+and praying.
+
+It is the definite recognition of the basis of a new society. If the
+nobles and the churchmen could only have understood, as clearly as
+Diderot and D'Alembert understood, the irresistible forces that were
+making against the maintenance of the worn-out system, all the worst of
+the evils attending the great political changes of the last decade of
+the century would have been avoided. That the nobles and churchmen would
+not see this, was the fatality of the Revolution. We have a glimpse of
+the profound transformation of social ideas which was at work in the
+five or six lines of the article, _Journalier_. "Journeyman--a workman
+who labours with his hands, and is paid day-wages. This description of
+men forms the great part of a nation; it is their lot which a good
+government ought to keep principally in sight. If the journeyman is
+miserable, the nation is miserable." And again: "The net profit of a
+society, if equally distributed, may be preferable to a larger profit,
+if it be distributed unequally, and have the effect of dividing the
+people into two classes, one gorged with riches, the other perishing in
+misery" (_Homme_).
+
+The second element in the modern transition is only the intellectual
+side of the first. It is the substitution of interest in things for
+interest in words, of positive knowledge for verbal disputation. Few now
+dispute the services of the schoolmen to the intellectual development of
+Europe. But conditions had fully ripened, and it was time to complete
+the movement of Bacon and Descartes by finally placing verbal analysis,
+verbal definition, verbal inferences, in their right position. Form was
+no longer to take precedence of matter. The Encyclop�dists are never
+weary of contrasting their own age of practical rationalism with "the
+pusillanimous ages of taste." A great collection of books is described
+in one article (_Bibliomanie_) as a collection of material for the
+history of the blindness and infatuation of mankind. The gatherer of
+books is compared to one who should place five or six gems under a pile
+of common pebbles. If a man of sense buys a work in a dozen volumes, and
+finds that only half a dozen pages are worth reading, he does well to
+cut out the half dozen pages and fling the rest into the fire. Finally,
+it would be no unbecoming device for every great library to have
+inscribed over its portal, The Bedlam of the Human Mind. At this point
+one might perhaps suggest to D'Alembert that study of the pathology of
+the mind is no bad means of surprising the secrets of humanity and life.
+For his hour, however, the need was not knowledge of the thoughts,
+dreams, and mental methods of the past, but better mastery of the aids
+and instruments of active life. In any case Diderot was right when he
+expressed his preference for the essay over the treatise: "an essay
+where the writer throws me one or two ideas of genius, almost isolated,
+rather than a treatise where the precious gems are stifled beneath a
+mass of iteration.... A man had only one idea; the idea demanded no more
+than a phrase; this phrase, full of marrow and meaning, would have been
+seized with relish; washed out in a deluge of words, it wearies and
+disgusts."[169] Rousseau himself does not surpass Diderot or D'Alembert
+in contempt for mere bookishness. We wholly misjudge the Encyclop�dia,
+if we treat it either as literature or philosophy.
+
+The attitude of the Encyclop�dia to religion is almost universally
+misrepresented in the common accounts. We are always told that the aim
+of its conductors was to preach dogmatic atheism. Such a statement could
+not be made by any one who had read the theological articles, whether
+the more or the less important among them. Whether Diderot had himself
+advanced definitely to the dogma of atheism at this time or not, it is
+certain that the Encyclop�dia represents only the phase of rationalistic
+scepticism. That the criticism was destructive of much of the fabric of
+popular belief, and was designed to destroy it, is undeniable, as it was
+inevitable. But when the excesses of '93 and '94--and all the
+revolutionary excesses put together are but a drop compared with the
+oceans of bloodshed with which Catholicism and absolutism have made
+history crimson--when the crimes and confusion of the end of the century
+are traced by historians to the materialism and atheism of the
+Encyclop�dia, we can only say that such an account is a
+misrepresentation. The materialism and atheism are not there. The
+religious attack was prompted and guided by the same social feeling
+that inspired the economic articles. The priest was the enemy of
+society, the patron of indolence, the hater of knowledge, the mutineer
+against the civil laws, the unprofitable devourer of the national
+substance, the persecutor. Sacerdotalism is the object of the
+encyclop�dic attack. To undermine this, it was necessary first to
+establish the principle of toleration, because the priest claims to be
+recognised as the exclusive possessor of saving doctrine. Second, it was
+necessary to destroy the principle of miracle, because the priest
+professes himself in his daily rites the consecrated instrument of
+thaumaturgy. "Let a man," says Rosenkranz very truly, "turn over
+hundreds of histories of church, of state, of literature, and in every
+one of them he will read that the Encyclop�dia spread abroad an
+irreligious spirit. The accusation has only a relative truth, to the
+extent that the Encyclop�dia assailed the belief in miracles, and the
+oppression of conscience supported by a priestly aristocracy."[170]
+
+It must be admitted that no consistent and definite language is adhered
+to from beginning to end. D'Alembert's prophecy that time would disclose
+to people what the writers really thought, behind what fear of the
+censorship compelled them to say, is only partially fulfilled.
+
+The idea of miracle is sapped not by direct arguments, but by the
+indirect influences of science, and the exposition of the successes of
+scientific method. It was here that the Encyclop�dia exerted really
+destructive power, and it did so in the only way in which power of that
+kind can be exerted either wisely or effectually. The miracle of a
+divine revelation, of grace, of the mass, began to wear a different look
+in men's eyes, as they learned more of the physical processes of the
+universe. We should describe the work of the Encyclop�dia as being to
+make its readers lose their interest, rather than their belief, in
+mysteries. This is the normal process of theological dissolution. It
+unfolded a vast number of scientific conceptions in all branches of
+human activity, a surprising series of acquisitions, a vivid panorama of
+victories won by the ingenuity and travail of man. A contemplation of
+the wonders that man had wrought for himself, replaced meditation on the
+wonders that were alleged to have been wrought by the gods. The latter
+were not so much denied by the plain reader, as they were gradually left
+out of sight and forgotten. Nobody now cares to disprove Jupiter and
+Juno, Satyrs and Hamadryads.
+
+Diderot constantly insists on the propriety, the importance, the
+indispensableness of keeping the provinces of science and philosophy
+apart from the province of theology. This separation is much sought in
+our own day as a means of saving theology. Diderot designed it to save
+philosophy. He felt that the distinct recognition of positive thought as
+supreme within the widest limits then covered by it, would ultimately
+lead to the banishment of theological thought to a region of its own,
+too distant and too infertile for men to weary themselves in pursuit of
+it. His conception was to supplant the old ways of thinking and the old
+objects of intellectual interest by new ones. He trusted to the
+intrinsic fitness and value of the new knowledge and new views of human
+life, to displace the old. This marks him for a constructive thinker. He
+replaced barren theological interests that had outlived their time, by
+all those great groups of living and fruitful interests which glow and
+sparkle in the volumes of the Encyclop�dia. Here was the effective
+damage that the Encyclop�dia inflicted on the church as the organ of a
+stationary superstition. Some of the articles remind us on what a
+strange borderland France stood in those days, between debasing
+credulity and wholesome light. We are so sensible of the new air that
+breathes impalpably over the book, that when the old theological fancies
+appear for form's sake, and are solemnly marshalled in orthodox state,
+the contrast and the incongruity are so marked that one is amused by
+what looks like a subtle irony, mocking the censor under his very eyes.
+Who can help smiling at the grave question, _Adam, le premier de tous
+les hommes, a-t-il �t� philosophe?_ Such disputes as whether it is
+proper to baptize abortions, ceased to interest a public that had begun
+to educate itself by discussions on the virtue of Inoculation.
+
+Of the gross defects in the execution of the Encyclop�dia nobody was so
+sensible as Diderot himself. He drew up a truly formidable list of the
+departments where the work was badly done.[171] But when the blunders
+and omissions in each subject were all counted, the value of the vast
+grouping of the subjects was hardly diminished. The union of all these
+secular acquisitions in a single colossal work invested them with
+something imposing. Secular knowledge was made to present a massive and
+sumptuous front. It was pictured before the curious eyes of that
+generation as a great city of glittering palaces and stately mansions;
+or else as an immense landscape, with mountains, plains, rocks, waters,
+forests, animals, and a thousand objects, glorious and beautiful in the
+sunlight. Theology became visibly a shrivelled thing. Men grew to be
+conscious of the vastness of the universe. At the same time and by the
+same process the Encyclop�dia gave them a key to the plan, a guiding
+thread in the immense labyrinth. The genealogical tree, or
+classification of arts and sciences, which with a few modifications was
+borrowed from Bacon and appeared at the end of the Prospectus, is seen
+to be faulty and inadequate. It distributes the various branches of
+knowledge with reference to faculties of the human understanding,
+instead of grouping them according to their objective relations to one
+another. This led to many awkward results, as when the art of printing
+is placed by the side of orthography as a subdivision of Logic, to which
+also is given the art of heraldry or emblazonment. There is awkwardness
+too in dividing architecture into three heads, and then placing civil
+architecture under national jurisprudence, and naval architecture under
+social jurisprudence, while under fine arts no kind of architecture has
+any place. But when we have multiplied these objections to the
+uttermost, the effect of the magnificence and vastness of the scheme
+remains exactly what it was.
+
+Even more important than the exposition of human knowledge was the
+exposition of the degrees by which it had been slowly reared. The
+Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclop�dia, of which by far the greater
+and more valuable portion was written by D'Alembert, contains a fine
+survey of the progress of science, thought, and letters since the
+revival of learning. It is a generous canonisation of the great heroes
+of secular knowledge. It is rapid, but the contributions of Bacon,
+Descartes, Newton, Locke, Leibnitz are thrown into a series that
+penetrates the reader's mind with the idea of ordered growth and
+measured progress. This excited a vivid hopefulness of interest, which
+insensibly but most effectually pressed the sterile propositions of
+dogmatic theology into a dim and squalid background. Nor was this all.
+The Preliminary Discourse and the host of articles marshalled behind it,
+showed that the triumphs of knowledge and true opinion had all been
+gained on two conditions. The first of these conditions was a firm
+disregard of authority; the second was an abstention from the premature
+concoction of system. The reign of ignorance and prejudice was made
+inveterate by deference to tradition: the reign of truth was hindered by
+the artificial boundary-marks set mischievously deep by the authors of
+systems. As the whole spirit of theology is both essentially
+authoritative and essentially systematic, this disparagement was full of
+tolerably direct significance. It told in another way. The Sorbonne, the
+universities, the doctors, had identified orthodoxy with Cartesianism.
+"It is hard to believe," says D'Alembert in 1750, "that it is only
+within the last thirty years that people have even begun to renounce
+Cartesianism." He might have added that one of the most powerful of his
+contemporaries, Montesquieu himself, remained a rigid Cartesian to the
+end of his days. "Our nation," he says, "singularly eager as it is for
+novelties in all matters of taste, is in matters of science extremely
+attached to old opinions." This remark remains true of France to the
+present hour, and it would be an interesting digression, did time allow,
+to consider its significance. France can at all events count one master
+innovator, the founder of Cartesianism himself. D'Alembert points out
+that the disciples violate the first maxims of their chief. He describes
+the hypothesis of vortices and the doctrine of innate ideas as no longer
+tenable, and even as ridiculous; but do not let us forget, he says with
+a fine movement of candour, that it was Descartes who opened the way; he
+who set an example to men of intelligence, of shaking off the yoke of
+scholasticism, of opinion, of authority--in a word, of prejudices and
+barbarism. Those who remain faithful to his hypothetical system, while
+they abandon his method, may be the last of his partisans, but they
+would assuredly never have been the first of his disciples.
+
+By system the Encyclop�dists meant more or less coherent bodies of
+frivolous conjecture. The true merit of the philosopher or the physicist
+is described as being to have the spirit of system, yet never to
+construct a system. The notion expressed in this sentence promises a
+union of the advantages of an organic synthesis, with the advantages of
+an open mind and unfettered inquiry. It would be ridiculous to think,
+says D'Alembert, that there is nothing more to discover in anatomy,
+because anatomists devote themselves to researches that may seem to be
+of no use, and yet often prove to be full of use in their consequences.
+Nor would it be less absurd to lay a ban on erudition, on the pretext
+that our learned men often give themselves up to matters of trivial
+import.
+
+We are constantly struck in the Encyclop�dia by a genuine desire to
+reach the best opinion by the only right way, the way of abundant,
+many-sided, and liberal discussion. The article, for instance, on
+_Fermes G�n�rales_ contains an examination of the question whether it is
+more expedient that the taxes of a nation should be gathered by farmers
+of the revenue, or directly by the agents of the government acting on
+its behalf and under its supervision. Montesquieu had argued strongly
+in favour of a _R�gie_, the second of these methods. The writer of the
+article sets out the nine considerations by which Montesquieu had
+endeavoured to establish his position, and then he offers on each of
+them the strongest observations that occur to him in support of the
+opposite conclusion. At the conclusion of the article, the editors of
+the Encyclop�dia append the following note: "Our professed impartiality
+and our desire to promote the discussion and clearing up of an important
+question, have induced us to insert this article. As the Encyclop�dia
+has for its principal aim the public advantage and instruction, we will
+insert in the article, _R�gie_, without taking any side, all such
+reasons for and against, as people may he willing to submit to us,
+provided they are stated with due sense and moderation." Alas, when we
+turn to the article on _R�gie_, the promise is unfulfilled, and a dozen
+meagre lines disappoint the seeker. But eight years of storm had passed,
+and many a beneficent intention had been wrecked. The announcement at
+least shows us the aim and spirit of the original scheme.
+
+Of the line of argument taken in the Encyclop�dia as to Toleration we
+need say nothing. The Encyclop�dists were the most ardent propagators of
+the modern principles of tolerance. No one has to be reminded that this
+was something more than an abstract discussion among the doctors of
+social philosophy, in a country where youths were broken on the wheel
+for levity in face of an ecclesiastical procession, where nearly every
+considerable man of the century had been either banished or imprisoned
+for daring to use his mind, and which had been half ruined by the great
+proscription of Protestants more than once renewed. The article
+_Tol�rance_ was greatly admired in its day, and it is an eloquent and
+earnest reproduction of the pleas of Locke. One rather curious feature
+in it is the reproduction of the passage from the Social Contract, in
+which Rousseau explains the right of the magistrate to banish any
+citizen who has not got religion enough to make him do his duties, and
+who will not make a profession of civil faith. The writer of the article
+interprets this as implying that "atheists in particular, who remove
+from the powerful the only rein, and from the weak their only hope,"
+have no right to claim toleration. This is an unexpected stroke in a
+work that is vulgarly supposed to be a violent manifesto on behalf of
+atheism.[172]
+
+Diderot himself in an earlier article (_Intol�rance_) had treated the
+subject with more trenchant energy. He does not argue his points
+systematically, but launches a series of maxims, as with set teeth,
+clenched hands, and a brow like a thundercloud. He hails the oppressors
+of his life, the priests and the parliaments, with a pungency that is
+exhilarating, and winds up with a description of the intolerant as one
+who forgets that a man is his fellow, and for holding a different
+opinion, treats him like a ravening brute; as one who sacrifices the
+spirit and precepts of his religion to his pride; as the rash fool who
+thinks that the arch can only be upheld by his hands; as a man who is
+generally without religion, and to whom it comes easier to have zeal
+than morals. Every page of the Encyclop�dia was, in fact, a plea for
+toleration. This embittered the hostility of the churchmen to the work
+more than its attack upon dogma. For most ecclesiastics valued power
+more dearly than truth. And in power they valued most dearly the
+atrocious right of silencing, by foul means or fair, all opinions that
+were not official.
+
+
+III.
+
+Having thus described the general character and purport of the
+Encyclop�dia, we have still to look at a special portion of it from a
+more particular point of view. We have already shown how multifarious
+were Diderot's labours as editor. It remains to give a short account of
+his labours as a contributor. Everything was on the same vast scale. His
+industry in writing would have been in itself most astonishing, even if
+it had not been accompanied by the more depressing fatigue of revising
+what others had written. Diderot's articles fill more than four of the
+large volumes of his collected works.
+
+The confusion is immense. The spirit is sometimes historical, sometimes
+controversial; now critical, now dogmatic. In one place Diderot speaks
+in his own proper person, in another as the neutral scribe writing to
+the dictation of an unseen authority. There is no rigorous measure and
+ordered proportion. We constantly pass from a serious treatise to a
+sally, from an elaborate history to a caprice. There are not a few pages
+where we know that Diderot is saying what he does not think. Some of the
+articles seem only to have found a place because Diderot happened to
+have taken an interest in their subjects at the moment. After reading
+Voltaire's concise account of Imagination, we are amazed to find Diderot
+devoting a larger space than Voltaire had needed for the subject at
+large, to so subordinate and remote a branch of the matter as the Power
+of the Imagination in Pregnant Women upon the Unborn Young. The article
+on Theosophs would hardly have been so disproportionately long as it is,
+merely for the sake of Paracelsus and Van Helmont and Poiret and the
+Rosicrucians, unless Diderot happened to be curiously and
+half-sympathetically brooding over the mixture of inspiration and
+madness, of charlatanry and generous aim, of which these semi-mystic,
+semi-scientific characters were composed.[173]
+
+Many of Diderot's articles, again, have no rightful place in an
+Encyclop�dia. _Genius_, for instance, is dealt with in what is neither
+more nor less than a literary essay, vigorous, suggestive, diffuse; and
+containing, by the way, the curious assertion that, although there are
+few errors in Locke and too few truths in Shaftesbury, yet Locke is only
+an acute and comprehensive intelligence, while Shaftesbury is a genius
+of the first order.
+
+Under the word _Laborious_, we have only a dozen lines of angry reproach
+against the despotism that makes men idle by making property uncertain.
+Under such words as _Frivolous_, _Gallantry_, _Perfection_,
+_Importance_, _Politeness_, _Melancholy_, _Glorieux_, the reader is
+amused and edified by miniature essays on manners and character, seldom
+ending without some pithy sentence and pointed moral. Sometimes (e.g.
+_Grandeur_) we have a charming piece after the manner of La Bruy�re.
+Under the verb _Na�tre_, which is placed in the department of grammar,
+we find a passage so far removed from grammar as the following:--
+
+"The terms of life and death have nothing absolute; they only designate
+the successive states of one and the same being; for him who has been
+strongly nourished in this philosophy, the urn that contains the ashes
+of a father, a mother, a husband, a mistress, is truly a touching
+object. There still remains in it life and warmth; these ashes may
+perhaps even yet feel our tears and give them response; who knows if the
+movement that our tears stir, as they water those ashes, is wholly
+without sensibility?"
+
+This little burst of grotesque sentimentalism is one of the pieces that
+justify the description of Diderot as the most German of all the
+French.[174] Equally characteristic and more sensible is the writer's
+outbreak against Formalists. "The formalist knows exactly the proper
+interval between receiving and returning a visit; he expects you on the
+exact day at the exact time; if you fail, he thinks himself neglected
+and takes offence. A single man of this stamp is enough to chill and
+embarrass a whole company. There is nothing so repugnant to simple and
+upright souls as formalities; as such people have within themselves the
+consciousness of the good-will they bear to everybody, they neither
+plague themselves to be constantly displaying a sentiment that is
+habitual, nor to be constantly on the watch for it in others." This is
+analogous to his contempt for the pedants who object to the use of a
+hybrid word: "If it happens that a composite of a Greek word and a Latin
+word renders the idea as well, and is easier to pronounce or pleasanter
+to the ear than a compound of two Greek words and two Latin words, why
+prefer the latter?" (_Hibrides_). Some articles are simply diatribes
+against the enemy. _Pardon_, for instance: "It needs much attention,
+much modesty, much skill to wring from others pardon for our
+superiority. The men who have executed a foolish work, have never been
+able to pardon us for projecting a better. We could have got from them
+pardon for a crime, but never for a good action." And so forth, with
+much magnanimous acrimony. _Prostitution_ is only introduced for the
+pleasure of applying the unsavoury word to certain critics "of whom we
+have so many in these days, and of whom we say that they prostitute
+their pens to money, to favour, to lying, and to all the vices most
+unworthy of an honourable man."
+
+We are constantly being puzzled and diverted by Diderot's ingenuity in
+wandering away from the topic nominally in hand, to insinuate some of
+those doctrines of tolerance, of suspended judgment, or of liberty,
+which lay so much nearer to his heart than any point of mere erudition.
+There is a little article on Aius-Locutius, the Announcing Speaker, one
+of the minor Roman gods. Diderot begins by a few lines describing the
+rise of the deity into repute. He then quotes Cicero's pleasantry on the
+friendly divinity, that when nobody in the world had ever heard of him,
+he delivered a salutary oracle, but after people had built him a fine
+temple, then the god of speech fell dumb. This suggests to Diderot to
+wonder with edifying innocence how so religious a people as the Romans
+endured these irreverent jests in their philosophers. By an easy step we
+pass to the conditions on which modern philosophers should be allowed by
+authority to publish their speculations. Diderot throws out the curious
+hint that it would be best to forbid any writing against government and
+religion in the vulgar tongue, and to allow those who write in a learned
+tongue to publish what they please. And so we bid farewell to
+Aius-Locutius. In passing, we ask ourselves whether Diderot's suggestion
+is not available in the discussion of certain questions, where freedom
+of speech in the vernacular tongue is scarcely compatible with the
+_reverentia qu� debetur pueris_?
+
+Diderot is never prevented by any mistaken sense of the dignity of his
+enterprise from interspersing his disquisitions on science and
+philosophy with such practical thoughts on the common matters of daily
+life as come into his ingenious head. He suggests, for instance, by way
+of preventing the frauds of cab-drivers on their masters and on the
+public, that all payments of fares should be made to appointed officers
+at the various cab-stations, and that no driver should take up a fare
+except at one of these stations.[175] In writing about lackeys, after a
+word on their insolence and on the wretched case in which most of them
+end their days, he points out that the multitude of them is causing the
+depopulation of the fields. They are countrymen who have thronged to
+Paris to avoid military service. Peasants turned lackeys to escape the
+conscription, just as in our own days they turn priests. Then, says
+Diderot, this evil ought to be checked by a tax upon liveries; but such
+a tax is far too sensible ever to be imposed.
+
+Yet, notwithstanding the practical and fervid temper of his
+understanding, Diderot is not above literary trifling when the humour
+seizes him. If he can write an exhaustive article on Encyclop�dia, or
+Spinosa, or Academies, or Weaving, he can also stoop to Anagrams, and
+can tell us that the letters of Fr�re Jacques Cl�ment, the assassin of
+Henry III., make up the sinister words, _C'est l'enfer qui m'a cr��_. He
+can write a couple of amusing pages on Onomatomancy, or divination of a
+man's fortune from his name; and can record with neutral gravity how
+frequently great empires have been destroyed under princes bearing the
+same name as their first founders; how, again, certain names are unlucky
+for princes, as Cains among the Romans, John in France, England, and
+Scotland, and Henry in France.
+
+We have now and then an anecdote that is worth reading and worth
+preserving. Thus, under Machiavellist: "I have heard that a philosopher,
+being asked by a great prince about a refutation of Machiavellism, which
+the latter had just published, replied, 'Sire, I fancy that the first
+lesson that Machiavelli would have given to his disciple would have been
+to refute his work.'" Whether Voltaire ever did say this to the great
+Frederick, is very questionable, but it would not have been ill said.
+After the reader has been taken through a short course of Arabian
+philosophy, he is enlivened by a selection of poetic sayings about human
+life from the Rose-garden of Sadi, and the whole article winds up with
+an eastern fable, of no particular relevancy, of three men finding a
+treasure, and of one of them poisoning the food for which the other two
+had sent him; on his return they suddenly fell on him and slew him, and
+then ate the poisoned food, and so the treasure fell to none of
+them.[176]
+
+We have spoken in the previous section of the contempt expressed by
+D'Alembert for mere literary antiquarianism--a very different thing, let
+us remember, from scientific inquiry into the origin and classification
+of institutions and social organs. Diderot's article on the Germans is
+an excellent illustration of this wholesome predominance of the
+scientific spirit over the superficialities of barren erudition. The
+word "Allemand," says Diderot, "has a great many etymologies, but they
+are so forced, that it is almost as well to know none of them, as to
+know them all. As for the origin of this famous stock, all that has been
+said on that matter, between Tacitus and Clovis, is simply a tissue of
+guesses without foundation." Of course in this some persons will see a
+shameful levity; others will regard it as showing very good sense, and a
+right estimate of what is knowable and worth knowing, and what is
+neither one nor the other. In the article on Celibacy we notice the same
+temper. A few sentences are enough for the antiquarianism of the
+subject, what the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans thought and ordained
+about celibacy. The substance of the article is a reproduction of the
+Abb� Saint Pierre's discussion of the advantages that would be gained
+for France, with her declining population, if her forty thousand cur�s
+were allowed to marry, and to bring into the world eighty thousand
+children. We may believe that Diderot smiled as he transcribed the
+Abb�'s cunning suggestion that a dispensing power to relieve from the
+obligation of celibacy should be recognised in the Pope, and that the
+Roman court should receive a sum of money for every dispensation so
+granted.
+
+Although, however, Diderot despised mere bookishness, his article on
+Libraries is one of the longest and most painstaking, furnishing a
+tolerably complete list of the most famous collections, from the
+beginning of books down to the latest additions to the King's Library in
+the Rue Vivienne. In the course of this article he quotes with seeming
+approval the quaint words in which old Richard of Bury, the author of
+the _Philobiblon_ (1340), praised books as the best of masters, much as
+the immortal defender of the poet Archias had praised them: "Hi sunt
+magistri qui nos instruunt sine virgis et ferulis, sine cholera, sine
+pecuni�; si accedis non dormiunt; si inquiris non se abscondunt; non
+obmurmurant si oberres; cachinnos nesciunt si ignores."
+
+In literature proper, as in philosophy, Diderot loses no opportunity of
+insisting on the need of being content with suspended judgment. For
+instance, he blames historians of opinion for the readiness with which
+they attribute notions found in one or two rabbis to the whole of the
+Jews, or because two or three Fathers say something, boldly set this
+down as the sentiments of a whole century, although perhaps we have
+nothing else save these two or three Fathers left of the century, and
+although we do not know whether their writings were applauded, or were
+even widely known. "It were to be wished that people should speak less
+affirmatively, especially on particular points and remote consequences,
+and that they should only attribute them directly to those in whose
+writings they are actually to be found. I confess that the history of
+the sentiments of antiquity would not seem so complete, and that it
+would be necessary to speak in terms of doubt much more often than is
+common; but by acting otherwise we expose ourselves to the danger of
+taking false and uncertain conjectures for ascertained and
+unquestionable truths. The ordinary man of letters does not readily put
+up with suspensive expressions, any more than common people do so." All
+this is an odd digression to be found under the head of Hylopathianism,
+but it must always remain wholesome doctrine.
+
+We cannot wonder at Diderot's admiration for Montaigne and for Bayle,
+who, with Hume, would make the great trinity of scepticism. "The work of
+Montaigne," said Diderot, "is the touchstone of a good intelligence; you
+may be sure that any one whom the reading of Montaigne displeases has
+some vice either of heart or understanding. As for Bayle, he has had few
+equals in the art of reasoning, and perhaps no superior; and though he
+piles doubt upon doubt, he always proceeds with order; an article of his
+is a living polypus, which divides itself into a number of polypuses,
+all living, engendered one from the other."[177] Yet Diderot had a
+feeling of the necessity of advancing beyond the attitude of Bayle and
+Montaigne. Intellectual suspense and doubt was made difficult to him by
+his vehement and positive demand for emotional certainties.
+
+Diderot is always ready to fling away his proper subject in a burst of
+moralising. The article on _Man_, as a branch of natural history,
+contains a correct if a rather superficial account of that curious
+animal; at length the writer comes to a table showing the probable
+duration of life at certain ages. "You will observe," he says, "1st,
+that the age of seven is that at which you may hope a longer life; 2d,
+that at twelve or thirteen you have lived a quarter of your life; at
+twenty-eight or twenty-nine you have lived half; at fifty more than
+three-quarters." And then he suddenly winds up the whole performance by
+the exclamation: "O ye who have laboured up to fifty, who are in the
+enjoyment of comfort, and who still have left to you health and
+strength, what then are you waiting for before you take rest? How long
+will you go on saying _To-morrow, to-morrow?_"
+
+There are many casual brilliancies in the way of analogy and parallel,
+many aptnesses of thought and phrase. The Stoics are called the
+Jansenists of Paganism. "For a single blade of grass to grow, it is
+necessary that the whole of nature should co-operate." "A man comes to
+Pyrrhonism by one of two opposite ways; either because he does not know
+enough, or because he knows too much; the latter is not the most common
+way." And so forth.
+
+If we turn to the group of articles dealing with theology, it is
+difficult for us to know exactly where we are. Sometimes Diderot writes
+of popular superstitions with the gravity proper to a dictionary of
+mythology. Sometimes he sews on to the sober gray of his scepticism a
+purple patch of theistic declamation.[178] The article on Jesus Christ
+is obviously a mere piece of common form, and more than one passage in
+his article on _Christianisme_ is undoubtedly insincere. When we come to
+his more careful article, _Providence_, we find it impossible to extract
+from it a body of coherent propositions of which we could confidently
+say that they represented his own creed, or the creed that he desired
+his readers to bear away in their minds.
+
+It is hardly worth while to measure the more or the less of his
+adherence to Christianity, or even to Deism, as inferred from the
+Encyclop�dia. We need only turn to his private letters to find that he
+is in no degree nor kind an adherent, but the most hardy, contemptuous,
+and thoroughgoing of opponents. At the risk of shocking devout persons,
+I am bound to reproduce a passage from one of his letters, in which
+there can be no doubt that we have Diderot's true mind, as distinguished
+from what it was convenient to print. "The Christian religion," he says,
+"is to my mind the most absurd and atrocious in its dogmas; the most
+unintelligible, the most metaphysical, the most intertwisted and
+obscure, and consequently the most subject to divisions, sects, schisms,
+heresies; the most mischievous for the public tranquillity, the most
+dangerous to sovereigns by its hierarchic order, its persecutions, its
+discipline; the most flat, the most dreary, the most Gothic, and the
+most gloomy in its ceremonies; the most puerile and unsociable in its
+morality, considered not in what is common to it with universal
+morality, but in what is peculiarly its own, and constitutes it
+evangelical, apostolical, and Christian morality, which is the most
+intolerant of all. Lutheranism, freed from some absurdities, is
+preferable to Catholicism; Protestantism to Lutheranism, Socinianism to
+Protestantism, Deism, with temples and ceremonies, to Socinianism. Since
+it is necessary that man, being superstitious by nature, should have a
+fetish, the simplest and most harmless will be the best fetish."[179] We
+need not discuss nor extend the quotation; enough has been said to
+relieve us from the duty of analysing or criticising articles in which
+Christianity is treated with all the formal respect that the secular
+authority insisted upon.
+
+This formal respect is not incompatible with many veiled and secret
+sarcasms, which were as well understood as they were sharply enjoyed by
+those who read between the lines. It is not surprising that these
+sarcasms were constantly unjust and shallow. Even those of us who
+repudiate theology and all its works for ourselves, may feel a shock at
+the coarseness and impurity of innuendo which now and then disfigures
+Diderot's treatment of theological as of some other subjects. For this
+the attitude of the Church itself was much to blame; coarse, virulent,
+unspiritual as it was in France in those days. Voltaire, Diderot,
+Holbach, would have written in a very different spirit, even while
+maintaining and publishing the same attacks on theological opinion, if
+the Church of France had possessed such a school of teachers as the
+Church of England found in the Latitudinarians in the seventeenth
+century; or such as she finds now in the nineteenth century in those who
+have imported, partly from the poetry of Wordsworth, partly from the
+historic references of the Oxford Tracts, an equity, a breadth, an
+elevation, a pensive grace, that effectually forbid the use of those
+more brutal weapons of controversy which were the only weapons possible
+in France a century ago.
+
+We have already said so much of the great and important group of
+articles on arts and trades, that it is unnecessary to add anything
+further as to Diderot's particular share in them. He visited all the
+workshops in Paris; he sent for information and specifications to the
+most important seats of manufacture in the kingdom; he sometimes
+summoned workmen from the provinces to describe to him the paper works
+of Montargis, and the silk works and velvet works of Lyons.[180] Much of
+Diderot's work, even on great practical subjects, was, no doubt, the
+reproduction of mere book-knowledge acquired at second-hand. Take, for
+instance, Agriculture, which was undoubtedly the most important of all
+subjects for France at that date, as indeed at every other date. There
+are a dozen pages of practical precepts, for which Diderot was probably
+indebted to one of the farmers at Grandval. After this, he fills up the
+article with about twenty pages in which he gives an account of the new
+system of husbandry, which our English Jethro Tull described to an
+unbelieving public between 1731 and 1751. Tull's volume was translated
+into French by Duhamel, with notes and the record of experiments of his
+own; from this volume Diderot drew the pith of his article. Diderot's
+only merit in the matter--and it is hardly an inconsiderable one in a
+world of routine--is that he should have been at the pains to seek the
+newest lights, and above all that he should have urged the value of
+fresh experiments in agriculture. Tull was not the safest authority in
+the world, but it is to be remembered that the shrewd-witted Cobbett
+thought his ideas on husbandry worth reproducing, seventy years after
+Diderot had thought them worth compiling into an article.
+
+It was not merely in the details of the practical arts that Diderot
+wrote from material acquired at second-hand. The article on the
+Zend-Avesta is taken from the Annual Register for 1762. The long series
+of articles on the history of philosophy is in effect a reproduction of
+what he found in Bayle, in Deslandes, and in Brucker. There are one or
+two considerable exceptions. Perhaps the most important is under the
+heading of Spinosa, to which we shall return presently. The article on
+_Hobbisme_ contains an analysis, evidently made by the writer's own
+hand, of the bulk of Hobbes's propositions; it is scarcely, however,
+illuminated by a word of criticism. If we turn to the article on
+_Soci�t�_, it is true, we find Hobbes's view of the relations between
+the civil and temporal powers tolerably effectively combated, but even
+here Diderot hardly does more than arm himself with the weapons of
+Locke.
+
+Of course, he honestly refers his readers to these sources of wider
+information.[181] All that we can say of the articles on the history of
+philosophy is that the series is very complete; that Diderot used his
+matter with intelligence and the spirit of criticism, and that he often
+throws in luminous remarks and far-reaching suggestions of his own. This
+was all that the purpose of his book required. To imitate the laborious
+literary search of Bayle or of Brucker, and to attempt to compile an
+independent history of philosophy, would have been to sacrifice the
+Encyclop�dia as a whole, to the superfluous perfection of a minor part.
+There is only one imperative condition in such a case, namely, that the
+writer should pass the accepted material through his own mind before
+reproducing it. With this condition it was impossible for a man of
+Diderot's indefatigable energy of spirit, not as a rule to comply.
+
+But this rule too had exceptions. There were cases in which he
+reproduced, as any mere bookmaker might have done, the thought of his
+authority, without an attempt to make it his own. Of the confusion and
+inequalities in which Diderot was landed by this method of mingling the
+thoughts of other people with his own, there is a curious example in the
+two articles on Philosopher and Philosophy. In the first we have an
+essentially social and practical description of what the philosopher
+should be; in the second we have a definition of philosophy, which takes
+us into the regions most remote from what is social and practical. We
+soar to the airiest heights of verbal analysis and pure formalism.
+Nothing can be better, so far as it goes, than the picture of the
+philosopher. Diderot begins by contrasting him with the crowd of people,
+and clever people, who insist on passing judgment all day long. "They
+ignore the scope and limits of the human mind; they think it capable of
+knowing everything; hence they think it a disgrace not to pronounce
+judgment, and imagine that intelligence consists in that and nothing
+else. The philosopher believes that it consists in judging rightly. He
+is better pleased with himself when he has suspended his faculty of
+coming to a conclusion, than if he had come to a conclusion without the
+proper grounds. He prefers to brilliancy the pains of rightly
+distinguishing his ideas, of finding their true extent and exact
+connection. He is never so attached to a system as not to feel all the
+force of the objections to it. Most men are so strongly given over to
+their opinions that they do not take any trouble to make out those of
+others. The philosopher, on the other hand, understands what he rejects,
+with the same breadth and the same accuracy as he understands what he
+adopts." Then Diderot turns characteristically from the intellectual to
+the social side. "Our philosopher does not count himself an exile in the
+world; he does not suppose himself in an enemy's country; he would fain
+find pleasure with others, and to find it he must give it; he is a
+worthy man who wishes to please and to make himself useful. The ordinary
+philosophers who meditate too much, or rather who meditate to wrong
+purpose, are as surly and arrogant to all the world as great people are
+to those whom they do not think their equals; they flee men, and men
+avoid them. But our philosopher who knows how to divide himself between
+retreat and the commerce of men is full of humanity. _Civil society is,
+so to say, a divinity for him on the earth_; he honours it by his
+probity, by an exact attention to his duties, and by a sincere desire
+not to be a useless or an embarrassing member of it. The sage has the
+leaven of order and rule; he is full of the ideas connected with the
+good of civil society. What experience shows us every day is that the
+more reason and light people have, the better fitted they are and the
+more to be relied on for the common intercourse of life."[182]
+
+The transition is startling from this conception of
+
+Philosopher as a very high kind of man of the world, to the definition
+of Philosophy as "the science of possibles qu� possibles." Diderot's own
+reflection comes back to us, _Combien cette maudite m�taphysique fait
+des fous!_[183] We are abruptly plunged from a Baconian into a
+Leibnitzian atmosphere. We should naturally have expected some such
+account of Philosophy as that it begins with a limitation of the
+questions to which men can hope for an answer, and ends in an ordered
+arrangement of the principles of knowledge, with ultimate reference to
+the conditions of morals and the structure of civil societies. We should
+naturally have expected to find, what indeed we do find, that the
+characteristic of the philosopher is to "admit nothing without proof,
+never to acquiesce in illusory notions; to draw rigorously the dividing
+lines of the certain, the probable, the doubtful; above all things never
+to pay himself with mere words." But then these wholesome prescriptions
+come in an article whose definitions and distribution of philosophy are
+simply a reproduction from Christian Wolff, and the methods and dialect
+of Wolff are as essentially alien from the positive spirit of the
+Encyclop�dia as they were from the mystic spirit of Jacobi.
+
+Wolff's place in the philosophical succession of German speculation
+(1679-1754) is between Leibnitz and Kant, and until Kant came his
+system was dominant in the country of metaphysics.[184] It is from
+Wolff that Diderot borrows and throws unassimilated into the pages of
+the Encyclop�dia propositions so fundamentally incongruous as this,
+that "among all possibles there must of necessity be a Being subsisting
+by himself; otherwise there would be possible things, of the
+possibility of which no account could be given, an assertion that could
+never be made." It is a curious thing, and it illustrates again the
+strangely miscellaneous quality of Diderot's compilation, that the very
+article which begins by this incorporation of the author of a
+philosophical system expounded in a score of quartos, ends by a
+vigorous denunciation of the introduction of the systematic spirit into
+philosophy.
+
+I shall venture to quote a hardy passage from another article
+(_Pyrrhonienne_) which some will think a measure of Diderot's
+philosophical incompetency, and others will think a measure of his good
+sense. "We will conclude," he says, "for our part that as all in nature
+is bound together, there is nothing, properly speaking, of which man has
+perfect, absolute, and complete knowledge, because for that he would
+need knowledge of all. Now as all is bound together, it inevitably
+happens that, from discussion to discussion, he must come to something
+unknown: then in starting again from this unknown point, we shall be
+justified in pleading against him the ignorance or the obscurity or the
+uncertainty of the point preceding, and of that preceding this, and so
+forth, up to the most evident principle. So we must admit a sort of
+sobriety in the use of reason. When step by step I have brought a man to
+some evident proposition, I shall cease to dispute. I will listen no
+longer to a man who goes on to deny the existence of bodies, the rules
+of logic, the testimony of the senses, the difference between good and
+evil, true and false, etc. etc. I will turn my back on everybody who
+tries to lead me away from a simple question, to embark me in discussion
+as to the nature of matter, of the understanding of thought, and other
+subjects shoreless and bottomless."[185] Whatever else may be said of
+this, we have to recognise that it is exactly characteristic of the
+author. But then why have written on metaphysics at all?
+
+We have mentioned the article on Spinosa. It is characteristic both of
+the good and the bad sides of Diderot's work. Half of it is merely a
+reproduction of Bayle's criticisms on Spinosa and his system. The other
+half consists of original objections propounded by Diderot with marked
+vigour of thrust against Spinosa, but there is no evidence that he had
+gone deeper into Spinosa than the first book of the Ethics. There is no
+certain sign that he had read anything else, or that he had more of that
+before him than the extracts that were furnished by Bayle. Such
+treatment of a serious subject hardly conforms to the modern
+requirements of the literary conscience, for in truth the literary
+conscience has now turned specialist and shrinks from the encyclop�dic.
+Diderot's objections are, as we have said, pushed with marked energy of
+speech. "However short away," he says, "you penetrate into the thick
+darkness in which Spinosa has wrapped himself up, you discover a
+succession of abysses into which this audacious reasoner has
+precipitated himself, of propositions either evidently false or
+evidently doubtful, of arbitrary principles, substituted for natural
+principles and sensible truths; an abuse of terms taken for the most
+part in a wrong sense, a mass of deceptive equivocations, a cloud of
+palpable contradictions." The system is monstrous, it is absurd and
+ridiculous. It is Spinosa's plausible method that has deceived people;
+they supposed that one who employed geometry, and proceeded by way of
+axioms and definitions, must be on the track of truth. They did not see
+that these axioms were nothing better than very vague and very uncertain
+propositions; that the definitions were inexact, defective, and bizarre.
+
+We have no space to follow the reasoning by which Diderot supports this
+scornful estimate of the famous thinker, of whom it can never be settled
+whether he be pantheist, atheist, akosmist, or God-intoxicated man. He
+returns to the charge again and again, as if he felt a certain secret
+uneasiness lest for scorn so loudly expressed he had not brought forward
+adequate justification. And the reader feels that Diderot has scarcely
+hit the true line of cleavage that would have enabled him--from his own
+point of view--to shatter the Spinosist system. He tries various bouts
+of logic with Spinosa in connection with detached propositions. Thus he
+deals with Spinosa's third proposition, that, _in the case of things
+that have nothing in common with one another, one cannot be the cause of
+the other_. This proposition, Diderot contends, is false in all moral
+and occasional causes. The sound of the name of God has nothing in
+common with the idea of the Creator which that name produces in my mind.
+A misfortune that overtakes my friend has nothing in common with the
+grief that I feel in consequence. When I move my arm by an act of will,
+the movement has nothing in common in its nature with the act of my
+will; they are very different. I am not a triangle, yet I form the idea
+of one and I examine its properties. So with the fifth proposition, that
+_there cannot be in the universe two or more substances of the same
+nature or the same attributes_. If Spinosa is only talking of the
+essence of things or of their definition, what he says is naught; for it
+can only mean that there cannot be in the universe two different
+essences having the same essence. Who doubts it? But if Spinosa means
+that there cannot be an essence which is found in various single
+objects, in the same way as the essence of triangle is found in the
+triangle A and the triangle B, then he says what is manifestly untrue.
+It is not, however, until the last two or three pages that Diderot sets
+forth his dissent in its widest form.
+
+"To refute Spinosa," he says at last, "all that is necessary is to stop
+him at the first step, without taking the trouble to follow him into a
+mass of consequences; all that we need do is to substitute for the
+obscure principle which he makes the base of his system, the following:
+namely, that _there are several substances_--a principle that in its own
+way is clear to the last degree. And, in fact, what proposition can be
+clearer, more striking, more close to the understanding and
+consciousness of man? I here seek no other judge than the most just
+impression of the common sense that is spread among the human race....
+Now, since common sense revolts against each of Spinosa's propositions,
+no less than against the first, of which they are the pretended proofs,
+instead of stopping to reason on each of these proofs where common sense
+is lost, we should be right to say to him:--Your principle is contrary
+to common sense; from a principle in which common sense is lost, nothing
+can issue in which common sense is to be found again."
+
+The passage sounds unpleasantly like an appeal to the crowd in a matter
+of science, which is as the sin against the Holy Ghost in these high
+concerns. What Diderot meant, probably, was to charge Spinosa with
+inventing a conception of substance which has no relation to objective
+experience; and further with giving fantastic answers to questions that
+were in themselves never worth asking, because the answers must always
+involve a violent wrench of the terms of experience into the sphere
+transcending experience, and because, moreover, they can never be
+verified. Whether he meant this or something else, and whether he would
+have been right or wrong in such an intention, we may admit that it
+would have been more satisfactory if in dealing with such a master-type
+of the metaphysical method as Spinosa, so acute a positive critic as
+Diderot had taken more pains to give to his objections the utmost
+breadth of which they were capable.[186]
+
+The article on Leibnitz has less original matter in it than that on
+Spinosa. The various speculations of that great and energetic intellect
+in metaphysic, logic, natural theology, natural law, are merely drawn
+out in a long table of succinct propositions, while the account of the
+life and character of Leibnitz is simply taken from the excellent
+_�loge_ which had been published upon him by Fontenelle in 1716.
+Fontenelle's narrative is reproduced in a generous spirit of admiration
+and respect for a genius that was like Diderot's own in encyclop�dic
+variety of interest, while it was so far superior to Diderot's in
+concentration, in subtlety, in precision, in power of construction. If
+there could exist over our heads, says Diderot, a species of beings who
+could observe our works as we watch those of creatures at our feet, with
+what surprise would such beings have seen those four marvellous insects,
+Bayle, Descartes, Leibnitz, and Newton. And he then draws up a little
+calendar of the famous men, out of whom we must choose the name to be
+placed at the very head of the human race. The list contains, besides
+Julian the Apostate--who was inserted, we may presume, merely by way of
+playful insult to the ecclesiastical enemy--Socrates, Marcus Aurelius,
+Trajan, Bacon, and the four great names that have just been cited.
+Germany derives as much honour from Leibnitz alone, he concludes with
+unconsidered enthusiasm, as Greece from Plato, Aristotle, and
+Archimedes, all put together. As we have said, however, there is no
+criticism, nor any other sign that Diderot had done more than survey the
+fa�ade of the great Leibnitzian structure admiringly from without.
+
+The article on Liberty would be extremely remarkable, appearing where it
+does, and coming from a thinker of Diderot's general capacity, if only
+we could be sure that Diderot was sincere. As it happens, there is good
+reason to suppose that he was wholly insincere. It is quite as shallow,
+from the point of view of philosophy, as his article on the Jews or on
+the Bible is from the point of view of erudition. One reason for this
+might not be far to seek. We have repeatedly observed how paramount the
+social aim and the social test are in Diderot's mind over all other
+considerations. But this reference of all subjects of discussion to the
+good of society, and this measurement of conclusions by their presumed
+effect on society, is a method that has its own dangers. The aversion of
+ecclesiastics to unfettered discussion, lest it should damage
+institutions and beliefs deemed useful to mankind, is the great leading
+example of this peril. Diderot, it might be said by those who should
+contend that he wrote what he thought, did not escape exactly the same
+predicament, as soon as ever he forgot that of all the things that are
+good for society, Truth is the best. Now, who will believe that it is
+Diderot, the persecuted editor of the Encyclop�dia, and the author of
+the manly article on Intolerance, who introduces such a passage as the
+following into the discussion of the everlasting controversy of Free
+Will and Necessity: "Take away Liberty, and you leave no more vice nor
+virtue nor merit in the world; rewards are ridiculous, and punishments
+unjust. The ruin of Liberty overthrows all order and all police,
+confounds vice and virtue, authorises every monstrous infamy,
+extinguishes the last spark of shame and remorse, degrades and
+disfigures beyond recovery the whole human race. _A doctrine of such
+enormity as this ought not to be examined in the schools; it ought to be
+punished by the magistrates._"[187] Of course, this was exactly what the
+Jesuits said about a belief in God, about revelation, and about the
+institutions of the church. To take away these, they said, is to throw
+down the bulwarks of order, and an attempt to take them away, as by
+encyclop�dists or others, ought to be punished by the magistrates.
+Diderot had for the moment clearly lost himself.
+
+We need hardly be surprised if an article conceived in this spirit
+contains no serious contribution to the difficult question with which
+it deals. Diderot had persuaded himself that, without Free Will, all
+those emotional moralities in the way of sympathy and benevolence and
+justice which he adored would be lowered to the level of mere mechanism.
+"If men are not free in what they do of good and evil, then," he cries,
+in what is surely a paroxysm of unreason, "good is no longer good, and
+evil no longer evil." As if the outward quality and effects of good and
+evil were not independent of the mental operations which precede human
+action. Murder would not cease to be an evil simply because it had been
+proved that the murderer's will to do a bad deed was the result of
+antecedents. Acts have marks and consequences of their own, good or bad,
+whatever may be the state of mind of those who do them. But Diderot does
+not seem to divine the true issue; he writes as if Necessarians or
+Determinists denied the existence of volitions, and as if the question
+were whether volitions do exist. Nobody denies that they exist; the real
+question is of the conditions under which they exist. Are they
+determined by antecedents, or are they self-determined, spontaneous, and
+unconnected? Is Will independent of cause?
+
+Diderot's argumentation is, in fact, merely a protest that man is
+conscious of a Will. And just as in other parts of his article Diderot
+by Liberty means only the existence of Will, so by Liberty he means only
+the healthy condition of the soul, and not its independence of
+causation. We need not waste words on so dire a confusion, nor on the
+theory that Will is sometimes dependent on cerebral antecedents and
+sometimes not. The curious thing is that the writer should not have
+perceived that he was himself in this preposterous theory propounding
+the very principle which he denounced as destructive to virtue, ruinous
+to society, and worthy of punishment by the government. For it seems
+that, after all, the Will of those whose "dispositions are not moderate"
+is not free; and we may surely say that those whose dispositions are
+least moderate, are exactly the most violent malefactors against the
+common weal. One more passage is worth quoting to show how little the
+writer had seized the true meaning of the debate. "According to you," he
+says to Bayle, "it is not clear that it is at the pure choice of my will
+to move my arm or not to move it: if that be so, it is then necessarily
+determined that within a quarter of an hour from now I shall lift my
+hand three times together, or that I shall not. Now, if you seriously
+pretend that I am not free, you cannot refuse an offer that I make you;
+I will wager a thousand pistoles to one that I will do, in the matter of
+moving my hand, exactly the opposite to what you back; and you may take
+your choice. If you do think the wager fair, it can only be because of
+your necessary and invincible judgment that I am free." As if the will
+to move or not to move the arm would be uncaused and unaffected by
+antecedents, when you have just provided so strong an antecedent as the
+desire to save a thousand pistoles. It was, perhaps, well enough for
+Voltaire to content himself with vague poetical material for his
+poetical discourse on Liberty, but from Diderot, whether as editor or as
+writer, something better might have been expected than a clumsy
+reproduction of the reasoning by which men like Turretini had turned
+philosophy into the corrupted handmaid of theology.
+
+The most extraordinary thing about this extraordinary article still
+remains to be told. It was written, we may suppose, between 1757 and
+1762, or about that time. In June, 1756, Diderot wrote to a certain
+Landois, a fellow-worker on the Encyclop�dia, a letter containing the
+most emphatic possible repudiation of the whole doctrine of Liberty.
+"Liberty is a word void of sense; there are not and there never can have
+been free beings; we are only what fits in with the general order, with
+organisation, with education, and with the chain of events. We can no
+more conceive a being acting without a motive than we can conceive one
+of the arms of a balance acting without a weight; and the motive is
+always exterior and foreign to us, attached either by nature or by some
+cause or other that is not ourselves. _There is only one sort of causes,
+properly speaking, and those are, physical causes._"[188] And so forth
+in the vein of hard and remorseless necessarianism, which we shall find
+presently in the pages of the System of Nature.[189]
+
+There is only one explanation of this flagrant contradiction. Diderot
+must have written on Liberty just as he wrote on Jesus Christ or the
+Bible. He cannot have said what he thought, but only what the persons in
+authority required him to pretend to think. We may he sure that a letter
+to an intimate would be more likely to contain his real opinion than an
+article published in the Encyclop�dia. That such mystifications are
+odious, are shameful, are almost too degrading a price to pay for the
+gains of such a work, we may all readily enough admit. All that we can
+do is to note so flagrant a case, as a striking example of the common
+artifices of the time. One other point we may note. The fervour and
+dexterity with which Diderot made what he knew to be the worse appear
+the better cause, make a still more striking example of his astonishing
+dramatic power of throwing himself, as dialectician, casuist, sophist,
+into a false and illusive part.
+
+Turning from the philosophical to the political or social group of
+articles, we find little to add to what has been said in the previous
+section. One of the most excellent essays in this group is that on
+Luxury. Diderot opens ingeniously with a list of the propositions that
+state the supposed evils of luxury, and under each proposition he places
+the most striking case that he can find in history of its falseness. He
+goes through the same process with the propositions asserting the gains
+of luxury to society. Having thus effectually disposed of any wholesale
+way of dealing with the subject, he proceeds to make a number of
+observations on the gains and drawbacks of luxury; these are full of
+sense and freedom from commonplace. Such articles as _Pouvoir,
+Souverain, Autorit�_, do little more than tell over again the old
+unhistoric story about a society surrendering a portion of its sovereign
+power to some individual or dynasty to hold in trust. It is worth
+remarking how little democratic were Diderot and his school in any
+Jacobinical, or anarchic, or even more respectable modern sense. There
+is in Diderot's contributions many a firm and manly plea for the
+self-respect of the common people, but not more than once or twice is
+there a syllable of the disorder which smoulders under the pages of
+Rousseau. Thus: "When the dwellers among the fields are well treated,
+the number of proprietors insensibly grows greater, the extreme distance
+and the vile dependence of poor on rich grow less; hence the people have
+courage, force of soul, and strength of body; they love their country,
+they respect the magistrates, they are attached to a prince, to an
+order, and to laws to which they owe their peace and well-being. And you
+will no longer see the son of the honourable tiller of the soil so ready
+to quit the noble calling of his forefathers, nor so ready to go and
+sully himself with the liveries and with the contempt of the man of
+wealth."[190]
+
+No one can find fault with democratic sentiment of this kind, nor with
+the generous commonplaces of the moralist, about virtue being the only
+claim to honour, and vice the only true source of shame and inferiority.
+But neither Diderot nor Voltaire ever allowed himself to flatter the
+crowd for qualities which the crowd can scarcely possess. The little
+article on Multitude seems merely inserted for the sake of buffeting
+unwarranted pretensions. "Distrust the judgment of the multitude in all
+matters of reasoning and philosophy; there its voice is the voice of
+malice, folly, inhumanity, irrationality, and prejudice. Distrust it
+again in things that suppose much knowledge or a fine taste. The
+multitude is ignorant and dulled. Distrust it in morality; it is not
+capable of strong and generous actions; it rather wonders at such
+actions than approves them; heroism is almost madness in its eyes.
+Distrust it in the things of sentiment; is delicacy of sentiment so
+common a thing that you can accord it to the multitude? In what then is
+the multitude right? In everything, but only at the end of a very long
+time, because then it has become an echo, repeating the judgment of a
+small number of sensible men who shape the judgment of posterity for it
+beforehand. If you have on your side the testimony of your conscience,
+and against you that of the multitude, take comfort and be assured that
+time does justice." It is far from being a universal gift among men of
+letters and others to unite this fastidious estimation of the incapacity
+of the crowd in the higher provinces of the intellectual judgment, with
+a fervid desire that the life of the crowd should be made worthy of
+self-respecting men.
+
+The same hand that wrote the defiance of the populace that has just been
+quoted, wrote also this short article on Misery: "There are few souls so
+firm that misery does not in the long run cast them down and degrade
+them. The poor common people are incredibly stupid. I know not what
+false dazzling prestige closes their eyes to their present wretchedness,
+and to the still deeper wretchedness that awaits the years of old age.
+Misery is the mother of great crimes. It is the sovereigns who make the
+miserable, and it is they who shall answer in this world and the other
+for the crimes that misery has committed."
+
+So far as the mechanism of government is concerned, Diderot writes much
+as Montesquieu had done. Under the head of _Repr�sentants_ he proclaims
+the advantages, not exactly of government by a representative assembly,
+but of assisting and advising the royal government by means of such an
+assembly. There is no thought of universal suffrage. "_It is property
+that makes the citizen_; every man who has possessions in the state is
+interested in the state, and whatever be the rank that particular
+conventions may assign to him, it is always as a proprietor; it is by
+reason of his possessions that he ought to speak, and that he acquires
+the right of having himself represented." Yet this very definite
+statement does not save him from the standing difficulty of a democratic
+philosophy of politics. Nor can it be reconciled in point of logic with
+other propositions to which Diderot commits himself in the same article.
+For instance, he says that "no order of citizens is capable of
+stipulating for all; if one order had the right, it would very soon
+come to stipulate only for itself; each class ought to be represented by
+men who know its condition and its needs; _these needs are only well
+known to those who actually feel them_." But then, in that case, the
+poorest classes are those who have most need of direct representation;
+they are the most numerous, their needs are sharpest, they are the
+classes to which war, consumption of national capital and way of
+expending national income, equal laws, judicial administration, and the
+other concerns of a legislative assembly, come most close. The problem
+is to reconcile the sore interests of the multitude with the ignorance
+and the temper imputed in Diderot's own description of them.
+
+An interesting study might be made, if the limits of our subject
+permitted such a digression, on the new political ideas which a
+century's experience in England, France, Germany, the American Union,
+has added to the publicist's stock. Diderot's article on the Legislator
+is a curious mixture of views which political thinkers have left behind,
+with views which the most enlightened statesmen have taken up. There is
+much talk after the fashion of Jean Jacques Rousseau about the admirable
+legislation of Lycurgus at Sparta, the philosophical government of the
+great empire of China, and the fine spirit of the institutions of Peru.
+We perceive that the same influences which made Rousseau's political
+sentimentalism so popular also brought even strong heads like Diderot to
+believe in the unbounded power of a government to mould men at its
+will, and to impose institutions at discretion. The idea that it is the
+main function of a government to make its people virtuous, is generally
+as strong in Diderot as it was in Rousseau, and as it became in
+Robespierre. He admires the emperors of China, because their edicts are
+as the exhortation of a father to his children. All edicts, he says,
+ought to instruct and to exhort as much as they command. Yet two years
+after the Encyclop�dia was finished (1774), when Turgot prefaced his
+reforming edicts by elaborate and reasoned statements of the grounds for
+them, it was found that his prefaces caused greater provocation than the
+very laws that they introduced.
+
+Apart from the common form of enthusiasm for the "sublime legislation"
+of countries which the writer really knew nothing about, the article on
+the Legislator has some points worth noticing. We have seen how Diderot
+made the possession of property the true note of citizenship, and of a
+claim to share in the government. But he did not pay property this
+compliment for nothing. It is, he says, the business of the legislator
+to do his best to make up to mankind for the loss of that equality which
+was one of the comforts that men surrendered when they gave up the state
+of nature. Hence the legislator ought to take care that no one shall
+reach a position of extreme opulence otherwise than by an industry that
+enriches the state. "He must take care that the charges of society shall
+fall upon the rich, who enjoy the advantages of society." Even those who
+agree with Diderot, and are ready to vote for a graduated income-tax,
+will admit that he comes to his conclusion without knowing or reflecting
+about either the serious arguments for it, or the serious objections
+against it.
+
+What is really interesting in this long article is its anticipation of
+those ideas which in England we associate with the name of Cobden. "All
+the men of all lands have become necessary to one another for the
+exchange of the fruits of industry and the products of the soil.
+Commerce is a new bond among men. Every nation has an interest in these
+days in the preservation by every other nation of its wealth, its
+industry, its banks, its luxury, its agriculture. The ruin of Leipsic,
+of Lisbon, and of Lima has led to bankruptcies on all the exchanges of
+Europe, and has affected the fortunes of many millions of persons."[191]
+In the same spirit he foresees the decline of patriotism in its older
+and narrower sense, and the predominance of the international over the
+national sentiment. "All nations now have sufficiently just ideas of
+their neighbours, and consequently they have less enthusiasm for their
+country than in the old days of ignorance. There is little enthusiasm
+where there is much light; enthusiasm is nearly always the emotion of a
+soul that is more passionate than it is instructed. By comparing among
+all nations laws with laws, talents with talents, and manners with
+manners, nations will find so little reason to prefer themselves to
+others, that if they preserve for their own country that love which is
+the fruit of personal interest, at least they will lose that enthusiasm
+which is the fruit of an exclusive self-esteem."
+
+Yet Diderot had the perspicacity to discern the drawbacks to such a
+revolution in the conditions of social climate. "Commerce, like
+enlightenment, lessens ferocity, but also, just as enlightenment takes
+away the enthusiasm of self-esteem, so perhaps commerce takes away the
+enthusiasm of virtue. It gradually extinguishes the spirit of
+magnanimous disinterestedness, and replaces it by that of hard justice.
+By turning men's minds rather to use than beauty, to prudence rather
+than to greatness, it may be that it injures the strength, the
+generosity, the nobleness of manners."
+
+All this, whether it comes to much or little, is at least more true than
+Diderot's assurance that henceforth for any nation in Europe to make
+conquests must be a moral impossibility. Napoleon Bonaparte was then a
+child in arms. Whether his career was on the whole a fulfilment or a
+contradiction of Diderot's proposition, may be disputed.
+
+And so our sketch of the great book must at length end. Let us make one
+concluding remark. Is it not surprising that a man of Diderot's
+speculative boldness and power should have failed to rise from the
+mechanical arrangement of thought and knowledge, up to some higher and
+more commanding conception of the relation between himself in the
+eighteenth century, or ourselves in the nineteenth, and all those great
+systems of thought, method, and belief, which in various epochs and over
+different spaces of the globe have given to men working answers to the
+questions that their leading spirits were moved to put to themselves and
+to the iron universe around them? We constantly feel how near Diderot is
+to the point of view that would have brought light. We feel how very
+nearly ready he was to see the mental experiences of the race in east
+and west, not as superstition, degradation, grovelling error, but as
+aspects of intellectual effort and aspiration richly worthy of human
+interest and scientific consideration, and in their aim as well as in
+their substance all of one piece with the newest science and the last
+voices of religious or anti-religious development. Diderot was the one
+member of the party of Philosophers who was capable of grasping such a
+thought. If this guiding idea of the unity of the intellectual history
+of man, and the organic integrity of thought, had happily come into
+Diderot's mind, we should have had an Encyclop�dia indeed; a survey and
+representation of all the questions and answers of the world, such as
+would in itself have suggested what questions are best worth putting,
+and at the same time have furnished its own answers.
+
+For this the moment was not yet. An urgent social task lay before France
+and before Europe; it could not be postponed until the thinkers had
+worked out a scheme of philosophic completeness. The thinkers did not
+seriously make any effort after this completeness. The Encyclop�dia was
+the most serious attempt, and it did not wholly fail. As I replace in my
+shelves this mountain of volumes, "dusky and huge, enlarging on the
+sight," I have a presentiment that their pages will seldom again be
+disturbed by me or by others. They served a great purpose a hundred
+years ago. They are now a monumental ruin, clothed with all the profuse
+associations of history. It is no Ozymandias of Egypt, king of kings,
+whose wrecked shape of stone and sterile memories we contemplate. We
+think rather of the gray and crumbling walls of an ancient stronghold
+reared by the endeavour of stout hands and faithful, whence in its own
+day and generation a band once went forth against barbarous hordes, to
+strike a blow for humanity and truth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+SOCIAL LIFE (1759-1770).
+
+
+Any one must be ignorant of the facts who supposes that the men of the
+eighteenth century who did not believe in God, and were as little
+continent as King David, were therefore no better than the reckless
+vagabonds of Grub Street. Diderot, after he had once settled down to his
+huge task, became a very orderly person. It is true that he had an
+attachment to a lady who was not his wife. Marriage was in those days,
+among the courtiers and the encyclop�dic circle, too habitually regarded
+as merely an official relation. Provided that there was no official
+desertion, and no scandal, the world had nothing to say. Diderot was no
+worse than his neighbours, though we may well be sorry that a man of his
+generous sympathies and fine impulse was no better than his neighbours.
+Mademoiselle Voland, after proper deduction made for the manners of the
+time, was of a respectable and sentimental type. Her family were of good
+position; she lived with her mother and sisters, and Diderot was on good
+terms with them all. We have a glimpse of the characteristics of the
+three ladies in a little dialogue between Diderot and some one whom he
+met, and who happened to have made their acquaintance. "He informed me
+that he had passed three months in the country where you are.--_Three
+months_, said he, _is more than one needs to go mad about Madame Le
+Gendre_.[192]--True, but then she is so reserved.--_I scarcely know any
+woman with such an amount of self-respect_.--She is quite
+right.--_Madame Voland is a woman of rare merit_.--Yes, and her eldest
+daughter?--_She has the cleverness of a very devil_.--She is very
+clever, no doubt; but what I especially like is her frankness. I would
+lay a wager that she has never told a voluntary lie since she came to
+years of discretion."[193] The relations between Diderot and Sophie
+Voland were therefore not at all on the common footing of a low amour
+with a coarse or frivolous woman of the world. All the proprieties of
+appearance were scrupulously observed. Their mutual passion, though once
+not wholly without its gallantries, soon took on that worthy and
+decorous quality into which the ardour of valiant youth is reluctantly
+softened by middle age, when we gravely comfort it with names of
+philosophical compliment.
+
+One of the most interesting of all the documentary memorials of the
+century is to be found in the letters which Diderot wrote to
+Mademoiselle Voland. No doubt has ever been thrown on the authenticity
+of these letters, and they bear ample evidence of genuineness, so far as
+the substance of them is concerned, in their characteristic style. They
+were first published in 1830, from manuscripts sold to the bookseller
+the year before by a certain French man of letters, Jeudy-Dugour by
+name. He became a naturalised Russian, changed his name to Gouroff, and
+died in the position of councillor of state and director of the
+university of St. Petersburg. How he came by any papers of Diderot it is
+impossible to guess. It is assumed that when Mademoiselle Voland died
+her family gave his letters and other papers back to Diderot. These,
+along with other documents, are supposed to have been given by Diderot
+to Grimm. Thence they went to the Library of the Hermitage at St.
+Petersburg. Whether Jeudy-Dugour sold copies or originals, and whether
+he made the copies, if copies they were, from the Library, which was,
+however, rigorously closed during the reign of Nicholas I., are literary
+secrets which it is impossible to fathom. So far as Diderot is
+concerned, some of the spirit of mystification that haunted literature
+in the eighteenth century still hovers about it in the nineteenth. This
+we shall presently find in a still more interesting monument of Diderot
+than even his letters to Mademoiselle Voland.[194]
+
+They are not a continuous series. It was only when either Diderot was
+absent from Paris, or his correspondent was away at her mother's house
+in the country, that letter-writing was necessary. Diderot appears to
+have written to her openly and without disguise. The letters of
+Mademoiselle Voland in reply were for obvious reasons not sent to
+Diderot's house, but under cover to the office of Damilaville, so well
+known to the reader of Voltaire's correspondence. Damilaville was a
+commissioner in one of the revenue departments, and it is one among many
+instances of the connivance between authority and its foes, that most of
+the letters and packets of Voltaire, Diderot, and the rest of the group,
+should have been taken in, sent out, guarded, and franked by the head of
+a government office. The trouble that Damilaville willingly took in
+order to serve his friends is another example of what we have already
+remarked as the singular amiability and affectionate solicitude of those
+times. "Think of Damilaville's attention," says Diderot on one occasion:
+"to-day is Sunday, and he was obliged to leave his office. He was sure
+that I should come this evening, for I never fail when I hope for a
+letter from you. He left the key with two candles on a table, and
+between the two candles your little letter, and a pleasant note of his
+own." And by the light of the candles Diderot at once wrote a long
+answer.[195]
+
+We need not wonder if much is said in these letters of tardy couriers,
+missing answers, intolerable absences, dreary partings, delicious
+anticipations. All these are the old eternal talk of men and women, ever
+since the world began; without them we should hardly know that we are
+reading the words of man to woman. They are in our present case only
+the setting of a curiously frank and open picture of a man's life.
+
+It is held by some that one of the best means of giving the sense of a
+little fixity to lives that are but as the evanescent fabric of a dream
+and the shadow of smoke, is to secure stability of topographical centre
+by abiding in the same house. Diderot is one of the few who complied
+with this condition. For thirty years he occupied the fourth and fifth
+floors of a house which was still standing not long ago, at the corner
+of the Rue Saint Benoit by the Rue Taranne, in that Paris which our
+tourists leave unexplored, but which is nevertheless the true Paris of
+the eighteenth century. Of the equipment of his room we have a charming
+picture by the hand of its occupant. It occurs in his playful Regrets on
+My Old Dressing-gown, so rich in happy and delightful touches.
+
+"What induced me to part with it? It was made for me; I was made for it.
+It moulded itself to all the turns and outlines of my body without
+fretting me. I was picturesque and beautiful; its successor, so stiff,
+so heavy, makes a mere mannikin of me. There was no want to which, its
+complaisance did not lend itself, for indigence is ever obsequious. Was
+a book covered with dust, one of the lappets offered itself to wipe the
+dust away. Did the thick ink refuse to flow from the pen, it offered a
+fold. You saw traced in the long black lines upon it how many a service
+it had rendered me. Those long lines announced the man of letters, the
+writer, the workman. And now I have all the mien of a rich idler; you
+know not who I may be. I was the absolute master of my old robe; I am
+the slave of my new one. The dragon that guarded the golden fleece was
+not more restless than I. Care wraps me about.
+
+"The old man who has delivered himself up bound hand and foot to the
+caprices of a young giddypate, says from morning to night: Ah, where is
+my old, my kind housekeeper? What demon possessed me the day that I
+dismissed her for this creature? Then he sighs, he weeps. I do not weep
+nor sigh; but at every moment I say: Cursed be the man who invented the
+art of making common stuff precious by dyeing it scarlet! Cursed be the
+costly robe that I stand in awe of! Where is my old, my humble, my
+obliging piece of homespun?
+
+"That is not all, my friend. Hearken to the ravages of luxury--of a
+luxury that must needs be consistent with itself. My old gown was at one
+with the things about me. A straw-bottomed chair, a wooden table, a deal
+shelf that held a few books, and three or four engravings, dimmed by
+smoke, without a frame, nailed at the four corners to the wall. Among
+the engravings three or four casts in plaster were hung up; they formed,
+with my old dressing-gown, the most harmonious indigence. All has become
+discord. No more _ensemble_, no more unity, no more beauty.
+
+"The woman who comes into the house of a widower, the minister who steps
+into the place of a statesman in disgrace, the molinist bishop who gets
+hold of the diocese of a jansenist bishop--none of these people cause
+more trouble than the intruding scarlet has caused to me.
+
+"I can bear without disgust the sight of a peasant-woman. The bit of
+coarse canvas that covers her head, the hair falling about her cheeks,
+the rags that only half cover her, the poor short skirt that goes no
+more than half-way down her legs, the naked feet covered with mud--all
+these things do not wound me; 'tis the image of a condition that I
+respect, 'tis the sign and summary of a state that is inevitable, that
+is woful, and that I pity with all my heart. But my gorge rises, and in
+spite of the scented air that follows her, I turn my eyes from the
+courtesan, whose fine lace head-gear and torn cuffs, white stockings and
+worn-out shoes, show me the misery of the day in company with the
+opulence of last night. Such would my house have been, if the imperious
+scarlet had not forced all into harmony with itself. I had two
+engravings that were not without merit, Poussin's Manna in the
+Wilderness, and the same painter's Esther before Ahasuerus; the one is
+driven out in shame by some old man of Rubens's, the Fall of the Manna
+is scattered to the winds by a Storm of Vernet's. The old straw chair is
+banished to the ante-room by a luxurious thing of morocco. Homer,
+Virgil, Horace, Cicero, have been taken from their shelf and shut up in
+a case of grand marqueterie work, an asylum worthier of them than of me.
+The wooden table still held its ground, protected by a vast pile of
+pamphlets and papers heaped pell-mell upon it; they seemed as if they
+would long protect it from its doom. Yet one day that too was mastered
+by fate, and in spite of my idleness pamphlets and papers went to
+arrange themselves in the shelves of a costly bureau.... It was thus that
+the edifying retreat of the philosopher became transformed into the
+scandalous cabinet of the farmer-general. Thus I too am insulting the
+national misery.
+
+"Of my early mediocrity there remained only a list carpet. The shabby
+carpet hardly matches with my luxury. I feel it. But I have sworn and I
+swear that I will keep this carpet, as the peasant, who was raised from
+the hut to the palace of his sovereign, still kept his wooden shoes.
+When in a morning, clad in the sumptuous scarlet, I enter my room, if I
+lower my eyes I perceive my old list carpet; it recalls to me my early
+state, and rising pride stands checked. No, my friend, I am not
+corrupted. My door is open as ever to want; it finds me affable as ever;
+I listen to its tale, I counsel, I pity, I succour it." ...
+
+Yet the interior of Socrates-Diderot was as little blessed by domestic
+sympathy as the interior of the older and greater Socrates. Of course
+Diderot was far enough from being faultless. His wife is described by
+Rousseau as a shrew and a scold. It is too plain that she was so; sullen
+to her husband, impatient with her children, and exacting and
+unreasonable with her servants.[196] We cannot pretend accurately to
+divide the blame. The companionship was very dreary, and the picture
+grievous and most afflicting to our thoughts. Diderot returns in the
+evening from Holbach's, throws his carpet-bag in at the door, flies off
+to seek a letter from Mademoiselle Voland, writes one to her, gets back
+to his house at midnight, finds his daughter ill, puts cheerful and
+cordial questions to his wife, she replies with a tartness that drives
+him back into silence.[197] Another time the scene is violent. A torrent
+of injustice and unreasonableness flows over him for two long hours, and
+he wonders what the woman will profit, after she has made him burst a
+blood-vessel; he groans in anguish, "Ah, how hard life seems to me to
+bear! How many a time would I accept the end of it with joy!"[198] So
+sharp are the goads in a divided house; so sorely, with ache and smart
+and deep-welling tears, do men and women rend into shreds the fine web
+of one another's lives. But the pity of it, O the pity of it!
+
+There are many brighter intervals which make one willing to suppose
+that if the wife had been a little more patient, more tolerant, more
+cheerful, less severely addicted to her sterile superstition, there
+might have been somewhat more happiness in the house. One misery of the
+present social ideal of women is that, while it keeps them so
+systematically ignorant, superstitious, and narrow, it leaves them
+without humility. "Be content," said the great John Wesley to his
+froward wife, "be content to be a private insignificant person, known
+and loved by God and me. Of what importance is your character to
+mankind? If you was buried just now, or if you had never lived, what
+loss would it be to the cause of God?" This energetic remonstrance can
+hardly be said to exhaust the matter. Still it puts a wholesome side of
+the case which Madame Diderot missed, and which better persons are
+likely to miss, so long as the exclusion of women, by common opinion or
+by law, from an active participation in the settlement of great issues,
+makes them indifferent to all interests outside domestic egoism, and
+egoistic and personal religion. Brighter intervals shone in the
+household. "I announced my departure," writes Diderot, "for next
+Tuesday. At the first word I saw the faces both of mother and daughter
+fall. The child had a compliment for my f�te-day all ready, and it would
+not do to let her waste the trouble of having learnt it. The mother had
+projected a grand dinner for Sunday. Well, we arranged everything
+perfectly. I made my journey, and came back to be harangued and
+feasted. The poor child made her little speech in the most bewitching
+way. In the middle there came some hard words, so she stopped and said
+to me, 'My papa, 'tis because my two front teeth have come out'--as was
+true. Then she went on. At the end, as she had a posy to give me, and it
+could not be found, she stopped a second time to say to me--'Here's the
+worst of the tale; my pinks have got lost.' Then she started off in
+search of her flowers. We dined in great style. My wife had got all her
+friends together. I was very gay, eating, drinking, and doing the
+honours of my table to perfection. On rising from table I stayed among
+them and played cards instead of going out. I saw them all off between
+eleven and twelve: I was charming, and if you only knew with whom; what
+physiognomies, what folk, what talk!"
+
+Another time the child, whispering in his ear, asks why her mother bade
+her not remind him that the morrow was the mother's f�te-day. The
+presence of the blithe all-hoping young, looking on with innocent
+unconscious eyes at the veiled tragedy of love turned to bitter discord,
+gives to such scenes their last touch of piteousness. Diderot, however,
+observed the day, and presented a bouquet which was neither well or ill
+received. At the birthday dinner the master of the house presided. "If
+you had been behind the curtains, you would have said to yourself, how
+can all this gossip and twaddle find a place in the same head with
+certain ideas! And in truth I was charming, and played the fool to a
+marvel."[199]
+
+In the midst of distractions great and small, was an indomitable
+industry. "I tell you," he wrote, "and I tell all men, when you are ill
+at ease with yourself, instantly set about some good work. In busying
+myself to soothe the trouble of another, I forget my own." He was
+assiduous in teaching his daughter, though he complained that her mother
+crushed out in a day what it had taken him a month to implant. The
+booksellers found him the most cheerful and strenuous bondsman that ever
+booksellers had. He would pass a whole month without a day's break,
+working ten hours every day at the revision of proof-sheets. Sometimes
+he remains a whole week without leaving his workroom. He wears out his
+eyes over plates and diagrams, bristling with figures and letters, and
+with no more refreshing thought in the midst of this sore toil than that
+insult, persecution, torment, trickery, will be the fruit of it. He not
+only spent whole days bent over his desk, until he had a feeling as of
+burning flame within him; he also worked through the hours of the night.
+On one of these occasions, worn out with fatigue and weariness, he fell
+asleep with his head on his desk; the light fell down among his papers,
+and he awoke to find half the books and papers on the desk burnt to
+ashes. "I kept my own counsel about it," he writes, "because a single
+hint of such an accident would have robbed my wife of sleep for the
+rest of her life."[200]
+
+His favourite form of holiday was a visit to Holbach's country house at
+Grandval. Here he spent some six weeks or more nearly every autumn after
+1759. The manner of life there was delightful to him. There was perfect
+freedom, the mistress of the house neither rendering strict duties of
+ceremony nor exacting them. Diderot used to rise at six or at eight, and
+remain in his own room until one, reading, writing, meditating. Nobody
+was more exquisitely sensible than Diderot to the charm of loitering
+over books, "over those authors," as he said, "who ravish us from
+ourselves, in whose hands nature has placed a fairy wand, with which
+they no sooner touch us, than straightway we forget the evils of life,
+the darkness lifts from our souls, and we are reconciled to
+existence."[201] The musing suggestiveness of reading when we read only
+for reading's sake, and not for reproduction nor direct use, was as
+delightful to our laborious drudge as to others, but he could indulge
+himself with little of this sweet idleness. It was in harder labour that
+he passed most of his mornings. These hours of work achieved, he dressed
+and went down among his friends. Then came the mid-day dinner, which was
+sumptuous; host and guests both ate and drank more than was good for
+their health. After a short siesta, towards four o'clock they took their
+sticks and went forth to walk, among woods, over ploughed fields, up
+hills, through quagmires, delighting in nature. As they went, they
+talked of history, or politics, or chemistry, of literature, or physics,
+or morality. At sundown they returned, to find lights and cards on the
+tables, and they made parties of piquet, interrupted by supper. At
+half-past ten the game ends, they chat until eleven, and in half an hour
+more they are all fast asleep.[202] Each day was like the next;
+industry, gaiety, bodily comfort, mental activity, diversifying the
+hours. Grimm was often there, "the most French of all the Germans," and
+Galiani, the most nimble-witted of men, inexhaustible in story,
+inimitable in pantomimic narration, and yet with the keenest
+intellectual penetration shining through all his Neapolitan prank and
+buffoonery. Holbach cared most for the physical sciences. Marmontel
+brought a vein of sentimentalism, and Helv�tius a vein of cynical
+formalism. Diderot played Socrates, Panurge, Pantophile; questioning,
+instructing, combining; pouring out knowledge and suggestion, full of
+interest in every subject, sympathetic with every vein, relishing alike
+the newest philosophic hardihood, the last too merry mood of Holbach's
+mother-in-law, the freshest piece of news brought by a traveller. It was
+not at Grandval that he found life hard to bear, or would have accepted
+its close with joy. And indeed if one could by miracle be transported
+back into the sixth decade of that dead century for a single day,
+perhaps one might choose that such a day should be passed among the
+energetic and vivid men who walked of an afternoon among the fields and
+woods of Grandval.
+
+The unblushing grossness of speech which even the ladies of the party
+permitted themselves cannot be reproduced in the decorous print of our
+age. It is nothing less than inconceivable to us how Diderot can have
+brought himself to write down, in letters addressed to a woman of good
+education and decent manners, some of the talk that went on at Grandval.
+The coarsest schoolboy of these days would wince at such shameless
+freedoms. But it would be wrong to forget the allowance that must be
+made for differences in point of fashion. Diderot, for instance, in
+these very letters is wonderfully frank in his exposure of the details
+of his health. He describes his indigestions, and other more
+indescribable obstructions to happiness, as freely as Cicero wrote about
+the dysentery which punished him, when, after he had resisted oysters
+and lampreys at supper, he yielded to a dish of beet and mallow so
+dressed with pot-herbs, _ut nil posset esse suavius_. Whatever men could
+say to one another or to their surgeons they saw no harm in saying to
+women. We have to remember how Sir Walter Scott's great-aunt, about the
+very time when Diderot was writing to Mademoiselle Voland, had heard
+Mrs. Aphra Behn's books read aloud for the amusement of large circles,
+consisting of the first and most creditable society in London. We think
+of Swift, in an earlier period of the century, enclosing to Stella some
+recklessly gross verses of his own upon Bolingbroke, and habitually
+writing to fine ladies in a way that Falstaff might have thought too bad
+for Doll Tearsheet. In saying that these coarse impurities are only
+points of manners, we are as far as possible from meaning that they are
+on that account unimportant. But it is childish to waste our time in
+censorious judgment on the individual who does no worse than represent a
+ruling type. We can only note the difference and pass on.
+
+A characteristic trait in this rural life is Diderot's passion for high
+winds. They gave him a transport, and to hear the storm at night,
+tossing the trees, drenching the ground with rain, and filling the air
+with the bass of its hoarse ground-tones, was one of his keenest
+delights.[203] Yet Diderot was not of those in whom the feeling for the
+great effects of nature has something of savagery. He was above all
+things human, and the human lot was the central source of his innermost
+meditations. In the midst of gossip is constantly interpolated some
+passage of fine reflection on life--reflection as sincere, as real,
+coming as spontaneously from the writer's inmost mood and genuine
+sentiment, as little tainted either by affectation or by commonness, as
+ever passed through the mind of a man. Some of these are too
+characteristic to be omitted, and there is so little of what is
+exquisite in the flavour of Diderot's style, that he perhaps suffers
+less from the clumsiness of translation than writers of finer colour or
+more stirring melody. One of these passages is as follows:--
+
+"The last news from Paris has made the Baron anxious, as he has
+considerable sums in royal securities. He said to his wife: 'Listen, my
+friend; if this is going on, I put down the carriage, I buy you a good
+cloak and a good parasol, and for the rest of our days we will bless the
+minister for ridding us of horses, lackeys, coachmen, ladies'-maids,
+cooks, great dinner-parties, false friends, tiresome bores, and all the
+other privileges of opulence.' And for my part I began to think, that
+for a man without a wife or child, or any of those connections that make
+us long for money, and never leave any superfluity, it would be almost
+indifferent whether he were poor or rich. This paradox comes of the
+equality that I discover among various conditions of life, and in the
+little difference that I allow, in point of happiness, between the
+master of the house and the hall-porter. If I am sound in mind and body,
+if I have worth and a pure conscience, if I know the true from the
+false, if I avoid evil and do good, if I feel the dignity of my being,
+if nothing lowers me in my own eyes, then people may call me what they
+will, _My Lord,_ or _Sirrah_. To do what is good, to know what is
+true--that is what distinguishes one man from another; the rest is
+nothing. The duration of life is so short, its true needs are so narrow,
+and when we go away, it all matters so little whether we have been
+somebody or nobody. When the end comes, all that you want is a sorry
+piece of canvas and four deal boards. In the morning I hear the
+labourers under my window. Scarce has the day dawned before they are at
+work with spade and barrow, delving and wheeling. They munch a crust of
+black bread; they quench their thirst at the flowing stream; at noon
+they snatch an hour of sleep on the hard ground. They are cheerful; they
+sing as they work; they exchange their good broad pleasantries with one
+another; they shout with laughter. At sundown they go home to find
+their children naked round a smoke-blackened hearth, a woman hideous and
+dirty, and their lot is neither worse nor better than mine. I came down
+from my room in bad spirits; I heard talk about the public misery; I sat
+down to a table full of good cheer without an appetite; I had a stomach
+overloaded with the dainties of the day before; I grasped a stick and
+set out for a walk to find relief; I returned to play cards, and cheat
+the heavy-weighing hours. I had a friend of whom I could not hear; I was
+far from a woman whom I sighed for. Troubles in the country, troubles in
+the town, troubles everywhere. He who knows not trouble is not to be
+counted among the children of men. All gets paid off in time; the good
+by the evil, evil by good, and life is naught. Perhaps to-morrow night
+or Monday morning we may go to pass a day in town; so I shall see the
+woman for whom I sighed, and recover the man of whom I could not hear.
+But I shall lose them the next day; and the more I feel the happiness of
+being with them, the worse I shall suffer at parting. That is the way
+that all things go. Turn and turn and turn again; there is ever a
+crumpled rose-leaf to vex you."[204]
+
+It is not often that we find such active benevolence as Diderot's, in
+conjunction with such a vein of philosophy as follows:--
+
+"Ah, what a fine comedy this world would be, if only one had not to play
+a part in it; if one existed, for instance, in some point of space, in
+that interval of the celestial orbs where the gods of Epicurus slumber,
+far, far away, whence one could see this globe, on which we strut so
+big, about the size of a pumpkin, and whence one could watch all the
+airs and tricks of that two-footed mite who calls itself man. I would
+fain only look at the scenes of life in reduced size, so that those
+which are stamped with atrocity may be brought down to an inch in space,
+and to actors half a line high. But how bizarre, that our sense of
+revolt against injustice is in the ratio of the space and the mass. I am
+furious if a large animal unjustly attacks another. I feel nothing at
+all if it is two atoms that tear and rend. How our senses affect our
+morality. There is a fine text for philosophising!"[205]
+
+"What I see every day of physic and physicians does not much heighten my
+opinion of them. To come into the world in imbecility, in the midst of
+anguish and cries; to be the toy of ignorance, of error, of necessity,
+of sickness, of malice, of all passions; to return step by step to that
+imbecility whence one sprang; from the moment when we lisp our first
+words, down to the moment when we mumble the words of our dotage, to
+live among rascals and charlatans of every kind; to lie expiring between
+a man who feels your pulse, and another man who frets and wearies your
+head; not to know whence one comes, nor why one has come, nor whither
+one is going--that is what we call the greatest gift of our parents and
+of nature--human life."[206]
+
+These sombre meditations hardly represent Diderot's habitual vein; they
+are rather a reaction and a relief from the busy intensity with which he
+watches the scene, and is constantly putting interrogatories to human
+life, as day by day its motley circumstance passes before his eyes. We
+should scarcely suspect from his frequent repetitions of the mournful
+eternal chorus of the nullity of man and the vanity of all the things
+that are under the sun, how alert a watch he kept on incident and
+character, with what keen and open ear he listened for any curious note
+of pain, or voice of fine emotion, or odd perversity of fate. All this
+he does, not in the hard temper of a Balzac, not with the calm or pride
+of a Goethe, but with an overflowing fulness of spontaneous and
+uncontrollable sympathy. He is a sentimentalist in the rationalistic
+century, not with the sentimentalism of misanthropy, such as fired or
+soured Rousseau, but social, large-hearted, many-sided, careless of the
+wise rigours of morality. He is never callous nor neutral; on the
+contrary, he is always approving or disapproving, but not from the
+standards of the ethical text-books. The casuistry of feeling is of
+everlasting interest to him, and he is never tired of inventing
+imaginary cases, or pondering real ones, in which pliant feeling is
+invoked against the narrowness of duty. These are mostly in a kind of
+matter which modern taste hardly allows us to reproduce; nor, after all,
+is there much to be gained by turning the sanctities of human
+relationship, with all their immeasurable bliss, their immeasurable woe,
+into the playthings of an idle dialectic. It is pleasanter, and for us
+English not less instructive than pleasant, to see this dreaming,
+restless, thrice ingenious spirit, half Titan of the skies, half gnome
+of the lower earth, entering joyously or pitifully into the simple charm
+and natural tenderness of life as it comes and passes. Nothing delights
+him more than to hear or to tell such a story as this of Madame
+D'Epinay. She had given a small lad eighteen sous for a day's work. At
+night he went home without a farthing. When his mother asked him
+whether they had given him nothing for his work, he said No. The mother
+found out that this was untrue, and insisted on knowing what had become
+of the eighteen sous. The poor little creature had given them to an
+alehouse-keeper, where his father had been drinking all day; and so he
+had spared the worthy man a rough scene with his wife when he got
+home.[207]
+
+From the pathos of kindly youth to the grace of lovable age the step is
+not far. "To-day I have dined with a charming woman, who is only eighty
+years old. She is full of health and cheerfulness; her soul is still
+all gentleness and tenderness. She talks of love and friendship with
+the fire and sensibility of a girl of twenty. There were three men of
+us at table with her; she said to us, 'My friends, a delicate
+conversation, a true and passionate look, a tear, a touched expression,
+those are the good things of the world; as for all besides, it is
+hardly worth talking of. There are certain things that were said to me
+when I was young, and that I remember to this day, and any one of those
+words is to be preferred before ten glorious deeds: by my faith, I
+believe if I heard them even now, my old heart would beat the quicker.'
+'Madame, the reason is that your heart has grown no older.' 'No, my
+son, you are right; it is as young as ever. It is not for having kept
+me alive so long that I thank God, but for having kept me kind-hearted,
+gentle, and full of feeling.'"[208] All this was after Diderot's own
+heart, and he declares such a conversation to be worth more than all
+the hours of talk on politics and philosophy that he had been having a
+few days before with some English friends. We may understand how, as we
+shall presently see, a member of a society that could relish the beauty
+of such a scene, would be likely to think Englishmen hard, surly, and
+cheerless.
+
+His letters constantly offer us sensible and imaginative reflection. He
+amused himself in some country village by talking to an old man of
+eighty. "I love children and old men; the latter seem to me like some
+singular creatures that have been spared by caprice of fate." He meets
+some old schoolfellows at Langres, nearly all the rest having gone:
+"Well, there are two things that warn us of our end, and set us
+musing--old ruins, and the short duration of those who began life with
+us." He is taken by a host over-devoted to such joys, to walk among
+dung-heaps. "After all," he says, "it ought not to offend one's sense.
+To an honest nose that has preserved its natural innocence, 'tis not a
+goat, but a bemusked and ambre-scented woman, who smelleth ill."
+
+"When I compare our friendships to our antipathies, I find that the
+first are thin, small, pinched; we know how to hate, but we do not know
+how to love."
+
+"A poet who becomes idle, does excellently well to be idle; he ought to
+be sure that it is not industry that fails, but that his gift is
+departing from him."
+
+"Comfort the miserable; that is the true way to console yourself for my
+absence. I recollect saying to the Baron, when he lost his first wife,
+and was sure that there was not another day's happiness left for him in
+this world, 'Hasten out of doors, seek out the wretched, console them,
+and then you will pity yourself, if you dare.'"[209]
+
+"An infinitude of tyrannical things interpose between us and the duties
+of love and friendship; and we do nothing aright. A man is neither free
+for his ambition, nor free for his taste, nor free for his passion. And
+so we all live discontented with ourselves. One of the great
+inconveniences of the state of society is the multitude of our
+occupations and, above all, the levity with which we make engagements to
+dispose of all our future happiness. We marry, we go into business, we
+have children, all before we have common sense."[210]
+
+After some equivocal speculations as to the conduct of a woman who, by
+the surrender of herself for a quarter of an hour to the desires of a
+powerful minister, wins an appointment for her husband and bread for her
+six children, he exclaims: "In truth, I think Nature heeds neither good
+nor evil; she is wholly wrapped up in two objects, the preservation of
+the individual and the propagation of the species."[211] True; but the
+moral distinction between right and wrong is so much wrung from the
+forces that Diderot here calls Nature.
+
+The intellectual excitement in which he lived and the energy with which
+he promoted it, sought relief either in calm or else in the play of
+sensibility. "A delicious repose," he writes in one of his most harassed
+moments, "a sweet book to read, a walk in some open and solitary spot, a
+conversation in which one discloses all one's heart, a strong emotion
+that brings the tears to one's eyes and makes the heart beat faster,
+whether it comes of some tale of generous action, or of a sentiment of
+tenderness, of health, of gaiety, of liberty, of indolence--there is the
+true happiness, nor shall I ever know any other."
+
+_A Point in Rhetoric._--"Towards six in the evening the party broke up.
+I remained alone with D., and as we were talking about the Eloges on
+Descartes that had been sent in to the Academy, I made two remarks that
+pleased him upon eloquence. One, that it is a mistake to try to stir the
+passions before convincing the reason, and that the pathetic remains
+without effect, when it is not prepared by the syllogism. Second, that
+after the orator had touched me keenly, I could not endure that he
+should break in upon this melting of the soul with some violent stroke:
+that the pathetic insists on being followed by something moderate, weak,
+vague, that should leave room for no contention on my part."[212]
+
+_Holbach's Impressions of England._--"The Baron has returned from
+England. He started with the pleasantest anticipations, he had a most
+agreeable reception, he had excellent health, and yet he has returned
+out of humour and discontented; discontented with the country, which he
+found neither as populous nor as well cultivated as people say;
+discontented with the buildings, that are nearly all bizarre and Gothic;
+with the gardens, where the affectation of imitating nature is worse
+than the monotonous symmetry of art; with the taste that heaps up in the
+palaces what is first-rate, what is good, what is bad, what is
+detestable, all pell-mell. He is disgusted at the amusements, which have
+the air of religious ceremonies; with the men, on whose countenances you
+never see confidence, friendship, gaiety, sociability, but on every face
+the inscription, _'What is there in common between me and you?'_;
+disgusted with the great people, who are gloomy, cold, proud, haughty,
+and vain; and with the small people, who are hard, insolent, and
+barbarous. The only thing that I have heard him praise is the facility
+of travel: he says there is not a village, even on a cross-road, where
+you do not find four or five post-chaises and a score of horses ready to
+start.... There is no public education. The colleges--sumptuous
+buildings--palaces to be compared to the Tuileries, are occupied by rich
+idlers, who sleep and get drunk one part of the day, and the rest they
+spend in training, clumsily enough, a parcel of uncouth lads to be
+clergymen.... In the fine places that have been built for public
+amusements, you could hear a mouse run. A hundred stiff and silent women
+walk round and round an orchestra that is set up in the middle. The
+Baron compares these circuits to the seven processions of the Egyptians
+round the tomb of Osiris. A charming _mot_ of my good friend Garrick, is
+that London is good for the English, but Paris is good for all the
+world.... There is a great mania for conversions and missionaries. Mr.
+Hume told me a story which will let you know what to think of these
+pretended conversions of cannibals and Hurons. A minister thought he had
+done a great stroke in this line; he had the vanity to wish to show his
+proselyte, and brought him to London. They question his little Huron,
+and he answers to perfection. They take him to church, and administer
+the sacrament, where, as you know, the communion is in both kinds.
+Afterwards, the minister says to him, 'Well, my son, do you not feel
+yourself more animated with the love of God? Does not the grace of the
+sacrament work within you? Is not all your soul warmed?' 'Yes,' says the
+Huron: 'the wine does one good, but I think it would have done still
+better if it had been brandy.'"[213]
+
+_Two Cases of Conscience_.--"The cur� said that unhappy lovers always
+talked about dying, but that it was very rare to find one who kept his
+word; still he had seen one case. It was that of a young man of family,
+called Soulpse. He fell in love with a young lady of beauty and of good
+character, but without money, and belonging to a dishonoured family. Her
+father was in the galleys for forgery. The young man, who foresaw all
+the opposition, and all the good grounds for opposition, that he would
+have to encounter among his family, did all that he could to cure
+himself of his passion; but when he was assured of the uselessness of
+his efforts, he plucked up courage to open the matter to his parents,
+who wearied themselves with remonstrances. Our lover suddenly stopped
+them short, saying, 'I know all that you have to say against me; I
+cannot disapprove of your reasons, which I should be the first to urge
+against my own son, if I had one. But consider whether you would rather
+have me dead or badly married; for it is certain that if I do not marry
+the woman that I love, I shall die of it.' They treated this speech as
+it deserved; the result does not affect that. The young man fell sick,
+faded from day to day, and died. 'But, Cur�,' said I, 'in the place of
+the father, what would you have done?' 'I would have called my son; I
+would have said: Soulpse has been your name hitherto; never forget that
+it is yours no more; and call yourself by what other name you please.
+Here is your lawful share of our property; marry the woman you love, so
+far from here that I may never hear speak of you again, and God bless
+you. 'For my part,' said old Madame D'Esclavelles, 'if I had been the
+mother of the young madman, I would have done exactly as his father did,
+and let him die.' And upon this there was a tremendous division of
+opinion, and an uproar that made the room ring again.
+
+"The dispute lasted a long time, and would be going on now if the cure
+had not broken it off by putting to us another case. A young priest,
+discontented with his profession, flees to England, apostatises, marries
+according to the law, and has children. After a certain time he longs
+for his native country; he comes back to France with his children and
+his wife. After that, again, he is stricken by remorse; he returns to
+his religion, has scruples about his marriage, and thinks of separating
+from his wife. He opens his heart to our cur�, who finds the case very
+embarrassing, and not venturing to decide it, refers him to casuists and
+lawyers. They all decide that he cannot, with a sure conscience, remain
+with his wife. When the separation, which the wife opposed with all her
+might, was about to be legally effected--rather against the wishes of
+our cur�--the husband fell dangerously ill. When he knew that he could
+not recover, he said to the cur�: 'My friend, I wish to make public
+amends for my backsliding, to receive the sacraments, and to die in the
+hospital; be kind enough to have me taken there.' 'I will take care to
+do no such thing,' the cur� replied to him. 'This woman is innocent; she
+married you according to law; she knew nothing of the obstacles that
+existed. And these children, what share have they in your sin? You are
+the only wrongdoer, and it is they who are to be punished! Your wife
+will be disgraced, your children will be declared illegitimate, and what
+is the gain of it all?' And the good cur� stuck to his text. He
+confessed his man, the illness grew worse, he administered the last
+sacraments. The man died, and his wife and children remained in
+possession of the titles they had. We all approved the cur�'s wisdom,
+and Grimm insisted on having his portrait taken."[214]
+
+_Chinese Superiority_.---"Apropos of the Chinese, do you know that with
+them nobility ascends, and descends never? It is the children who
+ennoble their ancestors, and not the ancestors the children. And upon my
+word that is most sensible. We are greater poets, greater philosophers,
+greater orators, greater architects, greater astronomers, greater
+geometers, than these good people; but they understand better than we
+the science of good sense and virtue; and if peradventure that science
+should happen to be the first of all sciences, they would be right in
+saying that they have two eyes and we have only one, and all the rest of
+the world is blind."[215]
+
+_Why Women write good Letters_.--"She writes admirably, really
+admirably. That is because good style is in the heart; and that is why
+so many women talk and write like angels without ever having learnt
+either to talk or to write, and why so many pedants will both talk and
+write ill all the days of their life, though they were never weary of
+studying,--only without learning."[216]
+
+"A little adventure has just happened here that proves that all our fine
+sermons on intolerance have as yet produced but poor fruit. A young man
+of respectable birth, some say apprentice to an apothecary, others to a
+grocer, took it into his head to go through a course of chemistry; his
+master consented, on condition that he should pay for board; the lad
+agreed. At the end of the quarter the master demanded the money, and it
+was paid. Soon after, another demand from the master; the apprentice
+replied that he barely owed a single quarter. The master denied that the
+first quarter had been paid. The affair was taken into court. The master
+is put on his oath, and swears. He had no sooner perjured himself than
+the apprentice produced his receipt, and the master was straightway
+fined and disgraced. He was a scoundrel who deserved it, but the
+apprentice was a rash fellow, whose victory was bought at a price dearer
+than life. He had received, in payment or otherwise, from some
+colporteur, two copies of _Christianity Unveiled_, and one of them he
+had sold to his master. The master informs against him. The colporteur,
+his wife, and his apprentice, are all three arrested, and they have just
+been pilloried, whipped, and branded, and the apprentice condemned to
+nine years of the galleys, the colporteur to five years, and the woman
+to the hospital for life.... Do you see the meaning of this judgment? A
+colporteur brings me a prohibited book. If I buy more than one copy, I
+am declared to be encouraging unlawful trading, and exposed to a
+frightful prosecution. You have read the _Man with Forty Crowns_,[217]
+and will hardly be able to guess why it is placed under the ban in the
+judgment I am telling you of. It is in consequence of the profound
+resentment that our lords and masters feel about a certain article,
+_Tyrant_, in the _Philosophical Dictionary_. They will never forgive
+Voltaire for saying that it was better to have to do with a single wild
+beast, which one could avoid, than with a band of little subaltern
+tigers who are incessantly getting between your legs.... To return to
+those two unfortunate wretches whom they have condemned to the galleys.
+When they come out, what will become of them? There will be nothing left
+for them to do, save to turn highway robbers. The ignominious
+penalties, which take away all resource from a man, are worse than the
+capital punishment that takes away his life."[218]
+
+_Method and Genius: an Apologue._--"There was a question between Grimm
+and M. Le Roy of creative genius and co-ordinating method. Grimm detests
+method; according to him, it is the pedantry of letters. Those who can
+only arrange, would do as well to remain idle; those who can only get
+instruction from what has been arranged, would do as well to remain
+ignorant. What necessity is there for so many people knowing anything
+else besides their trade? They said a great many things that I don't
+report to you, and they would be saying things still, if the Abb�
+Galiani had not interrupted them:
+
+'My friends, I remember a fable: pray listen to it. One day, in the
+depths of a forest, a dispute arose between a Nightingale and a Cuckoo.
+Each prizes its own gift. What bird, said the Cuckoo, has a song so
+easy, so simple, so natural, so measured, as mine?
+
+What bird, said the Nightingale, has a song sweeter, more varied, more
+brilliant, more touching, than mine?
+
+_The Cuckoo:_ I say few things, but they are things of weight, of order,
+and people retain them.
+
+_The Nightingale:_ I love to use my voice, but I am always fresh, and I
+never weary. I enchant the woods; the Cuckoo makes them dismal. He is so
+attached to the lessons of his mother, that he would not dare to venture
+a single note that he had not taken from her. Now for me, I recognise no
+master. I laugh at rules. What comparison between his pedantic method
+and my glorious bursts?
+
+The Cuckoo tried several times to interrupt the Nightingale. But
+nightingales always go on singing, and never listen; that is rather
+their weakness. Ours, carried away by his ideas, followed them with
+rapidity, without paying the least attention to the answers of his
+rival.
+
+So after some talk and counter-talk, they agreed to refer their quarrel
+to the judgment of a third animal. But where were they to find this
+third, equally competent and impartial? It is not so easy to find a good
+judge. They sought on every side. As they crossed a meadow, they spied
+an Ass, one of the gravest and most solemn that ever was seen. Since the
+creation of the world, no ass had ever had such long ears. 'Ah,' said
+the Cuckoo, 'our luck is excellent; our quarrel is a matter of ears:
+here is our judge. God Almighty made him for the very purpose!'
+
+The Ass went on browsing. He little thought that one day he would have
+to decide a question of music. But Providence amuses itself with this
+and many another thing. Our two birds bow very low, compliment him upon
+his gravity and his judgment, explain the subject of their dispute, and
+beseech him, with all deference, to listen to their case and decide.
+
+But the Ass, hardly turning his heavy head and without losing a single
+toothsome blade, makes them a sign with his ears that he is hungry, and
+that he does not hold his court to-day. The birds persist; the Ass goes
+on browsing. At last his hunger was appeased. There were some trees
+planted by the edge of the meadow. 'Now, if you like,' said he, 'you go
+there, I will follow; you shall sing, I will digest; I will listen, and
+I'll give you my opinion.'
+
+The birds instantly fly away, and perch on branches. The Ass follows
+them with the air and the step of a chief justice crossing Westminster
+Hall: he stretches himself flat on the ground, and says, 'Begin, the
+court listens.'
+
+Says the Cuckoo: 'My lord, there is not a word to lose. I beg of you to
+seize carefully the character of my singing; above all things, deign, my
+lord, to mark its artifice and its method.' Then filling its throat, and
+flapping its wings at each note, it sang out, 'Coucou, coucou, coucou,
+coucou, coucou, coucou.' And after having combined this in every
+possible way, it fell silent.
+
+The Nightingale, without any prelude, pours forth his voice at once,
+launches into the most daring modulations, pursues the freshest and most
+delicate melodies, cadences, pauses, and trills; now you heard the notes
+murmuring at the bottom of its throat, like the ripple of the brook as
+it loses itself among the pebbles; now you heard them rising and
+gradually swelling and filling the air, and lingering long-drawn in the
+skies. It was tender, glad, brilliant, pathetic; but his music was not
+made for everybody.
+
+Carried away by enthusiasm, he would be singing still; but the Ass, who
+had already yawned more than once, stopped him, and said, 'I suspect
+that all you have been singing there is uncommonly fine, but I don't
+understand a word of it: it strikes me as bizarre, incoherent, and
+confused. It may be you are more scientific than your rival; but he is
+more methodic than you, and for my part, I'm for method.'
+
+"And then the abb�, addressing M. Le Roy, and pointing to Grimm with his
+finger: 'There,' he said, 'is the nightingale, and you the cuckoo; and I
+am the ass, who decide in your favour. Good-night.'
+
+"The abb�s stories are capital, but he acts in a way that makes them
+better still. You would have died with laughing to see him stretch his
+neck into the air, and imitate the fine note of the nightingale, then
+fill his throat, and take up the hoarse tone for the cuckoo; and all
+that naturally, and without effort. He is pantomime from head to
+foot."[219]
+
+_Conversation._--"'Tis a singular thing, conversation, especially when
+the company is tolerably large. Look at the roundabout circuits we took;
+the dreams of a patient in delirium are not more incongruous. Still,
+just as there is nothing absolutely unconnected in the head either of a
+man who dreams, or of a lunatic, so all hangs together in conversation;
+but it would often be extremely hard to find the imperceptible links
+that have brought so many disparate ideas together. A man lets fall a
+word which he detaches from what has gone before, and what has followed
+in his head; another does the same, and then let him catch the thread
+who can. A single physical quality may lead the mind that is engaged
+upon it to an infinity of different things. Take a colour--yellow, for
+instance; gold is yellow, silk is yellow, care is yellow, bile is
+yellow, straw is yellow; to how many other threads does not this thread
+answer? Madness, dreaming, the rambling of conversation, all consist in
+passing from one object to another, through the medium of some common
+quality."[220]
+
+_Annihilation._--"The conversation took a serious turn. They spoke of
+the horror that we all feel for annihilation.
+
+"'Ah,' cried Father Hoop, 'be good enough to leave me out, if you
+please. I have been too uncomfortable the first time to have any wish to
+come back. If they would give me an immortality of bliss for a single
+day of purgatory, I would not take it. The best that can befall us is to
+cease to be.'
+
+"This set me musing, and it seemed to me that so long as I was in good
+health I should agree with Father Hoop; but that, at the last instant, I
+should perhaps purchase the happiness of living again by a thousand,
+nay, ten thousand, years of hell. Ah, my dear, if I thought that I
+should see you again, I should soon persuade myself of what a daughter
+once succeeded in persuading her father on his deathbed. He was an old
+usurer; a priest had sworn to him that he would be damned unless he made
+restitution. He resolved to comply, and calling his daughter to his
+bedside, said to her: 'My child, you thought I should leave you very
+rich, and so I should; but the man there insists that I shall burn in
+hell-fire for ever, if I die without making restitution.' 'You are
+talking nonsense, father, with your restitution and your damnation,' the
+daughter answered; 'with your character I you will not have been damned
+ten years, before you will be perfectly used to it.'
+
+"This struck him as true, and he died without making restitution.
+
+"And so behold us launched into a discussion on life and death, on the
+world and its alleged Creator.
+
+"Some one remarked that whether there be a God or no, it is impossible
+to introduce that device either into nature or into a discussion without
+darkening it.
+
+"Another said that if a single supposition explained all the phenomena,
+it would not follow from this that it is true; for who knows whether the
+general order only allows of one reason? What, then, must we think of a
+supposition which, so far from resolving the one difficulty for the sake
+of which people imagined it, only makes an infinity of others spring up
+from it?
+
+"I believe, my dear, that our chat by the fireside still amuses you; so
+I go on.
+
+"Among these difficulties is one that has been proposed ever since the
+world has been a world; 'tis that men suffer without having deserved
+suffering. There has been no answer to it yet. 'Tis the incompatibility
+of physical and moral evil with the nature of the Eternal Being. This is
+how the dilemma is put: it is either impotence or bad will; impotence,
+if he wished to hinder evil and could not; bad will, if he could have
+hindered it and did not will it. A child would understand that. It is
+this that has led people to imagine the fault of the first father of us
+all, original sin, future rewards and punishments, the incarnation,
+immortality, the two principles of the Manicheans, the Ormuzd and
+Ahriman of the Persians, the doctrine of emanations, the empire of light
+and darkness, metempsychosis, optimism, and other absurdities that have
+found credit among the different nations of the earth, where there is
+always to be found some hollow vision of a dream, by way of answer to a
+clear, precise, and definite fact.
+
+"On such occasions what is the part of good sense? Why, the part that we
+took: whatever the optimists may say, we will reply to them that if the
+universe could not exist without sensible creatures, nor sensible
+creatures without pain, there was nothing to do but to leave chaos at
+peace. They had got on very well for a whole eternity without any such
+piece of folly.
+
+"The world a piece of folly! Ah, my dear, a glorious folly for all that!
+'Tis, according to some of the inhabitants of Malabar, one of the
+seventy-four comedies with which the Eternal amuses himself.
+
+"Leibnitz, the founder of optimism, tells somewhere how there was in the
+Temple of Memphis a high pyramid of globes placed one above the others;
+how a priest, being asked by a traveller about this pyramid and its
+globes, made answer that these were all the possible worlds, and that
+the most perfect of them all was at the summit; how the traveller,
+curious to see this most perfect of all possible worlds, mounted to the
+top of the pyramid, and the first thing that caught his eyes, as they
+turned towards the globe at the summit, was Tarquin outraging
+Lucretia."[221]
+
+Almost every letter reminds us that we are in the very height of the
+disputing, arguing, rationalistic century. Diderot delighted in this
+kind of argument, as Socrates or Dr. Johnson delighted in it. He was
+above all others the archetype and representative of the passion for
+moralising, analysing, and philosophising which made the epoch what it
+was; but the rest of the world was all in the same vein. If he came to
+Paris in a coach from the country, he found a young lady in it, eager to
+demonstrate that serious passions are nowadays merely ridiculous; that
+people only promise themselves pleasure, which they find or not, as the
+case may be; that thus they spare themselves all the broken oaths of old
+days. "I took the liberty of saying that I was still a man of those old
+days. '_So much the worse for you_,' she said, '_you either deceive or
+are deceived, and one is as bad as the other_.'"[222] If Grimm and
+Madame d'Epinay and he were together, they discussed ethics from morning
+to night; Diderot always on the side of the view that made most for the
+dignity and worth of human nature. Grimm is described on one of these
+occasions as having rather displeased Madame d'Epinay: "He was not
+sufficiently ready to disapprove the remark of a man of our
+acquaintance, who said that it was right to observe the most scrupulous
+probity with one's friends, but that it was mere dupery to treat other
+people better than they would treat us. We maintained, she and I, that
+it was right and necessary to be honest and good with all the world
+without distinction."[223]
+
+Here is another picture of discussion, with an introduction that is
+thoroughly characteristic of Diderot's temper:
+
+"This man looks at the human race only on its dark side. He does not
+believe in virtuous actions; he disparages them, and denies them. If he
+tells a story, it is always about something scandalous and abominable.
+I have just told you of the two women of my acquaintance, of whom he
+took occasion to speak as ill as he could to Madame Le Gendre. They have
+their defects, no doubt; but they have also their good qualities. Why be
+silent about the good qualities, and only pick out the defects? There is
+in all that a kind of envy that wounds me--me who read men as I read
+authors, and who never burden my memory except with things that are good
+to know and good to imitate. The conversation between Suard and Madame
+Le Gendre had been very vivacious. They sought the reasons why persons
+of sensibility were so readily, so strongly, so deliciously moved at the
+story of a good action. Suard maintained that it was due to a sixth
+sense that nature had endowed us with, to judge the good and the
+beautiful. They pressed to know what I thought of it. I answered that
+this sixth sense was a chim�ra; that all was the result of experience in
+us; that we learnt from our earliest infancy what it was in our instinct
+to hide or to show. When the motives of our actions, our judgments, our
+demonstrations, are present to us, we have what is called science; when
+they are not present to our memory, we have only what is called taste,
+instinct, and tact. The reasons for showing ourselves sensible to the
+recital of good actions are numberless: we reveal a quality that is
+worthy of infinite esteem; we promise to others our esteem, if ever they
+deserve it by any uncommon or worthy piece of conduct.... Independently
+of all these views of interest, we have a notion of order, and a taste
+for order, which we cannot resist, and which drags us along in spite of
+ourselves. Every fine action implies sacrifice; and it is impossible for
+us not to pay our homage to self-sacrifice"--and so forth.[224]
+
+Alas, all these endless debates and dialogues lacked the inspiration and
+the charm with which the genius of a Plato could adorn the narrowest
+quibble between Socrates and a Sophist. "Diderot," said Mademoiselle de
+Lespinasse, "is an extraordinary man; he is out of his place in society;
+he was meant for the chief of a sect, a Greek philosopher, instructing
+youth. He pleases me greatly, but his manner does not touch my
+soul."[225] And we understand this. People disputed what virtue is, but
+the dispute failed in that undefined spirit which makes men love and
+adore virtue. Goodness is surrounded with no spacious beauty, it is
+clothed with none of the high associations of spontaneous piety. The
+discussion seems close, stifling, and airless. Yet ages of loftier
+speech and greater spirituality have not always been so favourable to
+the affections or to the attachments of life. In amiability that society
+has never been surpassed; in sincerity of mutual sympathy and kindliness
+of mutual regard. The common irregularity of morals was seen to be
+perfectly compatible not merely with a desire to please, but with an
+honest anxiety to serve.
+
+Of the thorough excellence of Diderot's heart, of his friendliness and
+unwearied helpfulness, time would fail us to tell. Men's conceptions of
+friendship differ as widely as their conceptions of other things. Some
+look to friendship for absolute exemption from all criticism, and for a
+mutual admiration without limit or conditions. Others mistake it for the
+right of excessive criticism, in season and out of season.
+
+Diderot was content to take friendship as the right, the duty, or the
+privilege of rendering services, without thought of requiring either
+them, or gratitude for them, back in return. This we must confess to be
+rare. No man that ever lived showed more sterling interest in furthering
+the affairs of others around him. He seemed to admit every claim on his
+time, his purse, and his talents. A stranger called upon him one day,
+and begged Diderot to write for him a puffing advertisement of a new
+pomatum. Diderot with a laugh sat down and wrote what was wanted. The
+graver occasions of life found him no less ready. Damilaville lost one
+of his children, and his wife was inconsolable. It was Diderot who was
+summoned, and who cheerfully went for days together to soothe and divert
+her mind. For his correspondent and for us he makes the tedium of his
+story beautiful by recalling the fine saying of a grief-stricken woman
+in Metastasio, when they tried to console her by the example of Abraham,
+who was ready even to slay his son at the command of God: _Ah, God would
+never have given such an order to his mother!_
+
+The abb� Le Monnier wrote the worst verses that ever were read, a play
+that was instantly damned, and a translation of Terence that came into
+the world dead. But bad writers are always the most shameless intruders
+on the time of good critics, and we find Diderot willingly spending
+hours over the abb�'s handwriting, which was as wretched as what he
+wrote, and then spending hours more in offering critical observations
+on verses that were only fit to be thrown into the fire. The abb�, being
+absent from Paris and falling short of money, requested Diderot to sell
+for him his copy of the Encyclop�dia. "I have sold your Encyclop�dia,"
+said Diderot, "but did not get so much as I expected, for the rumour
+spread abroad by those scoundrels of Swiss booksellers, that they were
+going to issue a revised edition, has done us some harm. Send for the
+nine hundred and fifty livres (about �40) that belong to you, and if
+that is not enough for your expenses, besides the drawer that holds your
+money is another that holds mine. I don't know how much there is, but I
+will count it all at your disposal."[226]
+
+One Jodin, again, was a literary hack who had been employed on the
+Encyclop�dia. He died, leaving a foolish and extravagant widow, and a
+perverse and violent daughter. The latter went on to the stage, and
+Diderot took as much trouble in advising her, in seeking appointments
+for her, in executing her commissions, in investing her earnings, in
+dealing with her relatives, as if he had been her own father. If his
+counsels on her art are admirable, there is something that moves us with
+more than admiration in the good sense, the right feeling, the
+worthiness of his counsels on conduct. And Diderot did not merely
+moralise at large. All that he says is real, pointed, and apt for
+circumstance and person. The petulant damsel to whom they were addressed
+would not be likely to yawn over the sharp remonstrances, the vigorous
+plain speaking, the downright honesty and visible sincerity of his
+friendliness. It appears that she had sense enough not to be offended
+with the frankness of her father's old employer, for after he has
+plainly told her that she is violent, rude, vain, and not always too
+truthful, she still writes to him from Warsaw, from Dresden, from
+Bordeaux, praying him to procure a certain bracelet for her, to arrange
+her mother's affairs, to find a good investment for twelve thousand
+francs. When the mother was in the depths of indigence, Diderot insisted
+that she should take her meals at his own table. And all this for no
+other reason than that the troublesome pair had been thrown in his way
+by the chance of human circumstance, and needed help which he was able,
+not without sacrifice, to give. Mademoiselle Jodin was hardly worthy of
+so good a friend. Her parents were Protestants, and as she was a
+convert, she enjoyed a pension of some eight pounds a year. That did not
+prevent her from one day indulging in some too sprightly sallies, as the
+host was carried along the street. For this she was put into prison, and
+that is our last glimpse of the light creature.[227]
+
+Men knew how to be as wrong-headed and as graceless as women. We have
+already mentioned the name of Landois in connection with Diderot's
+article on Liberty. Landois seems to have been a marvel of
+unreasonableness, but he was a needy man of letters, and that was
+enough to make Diderot ready to bear with him and to succour him. He
+wound up an epistle abounding, after the manner of the worthless
+failures of the world, in reproaches and grievances against his
+benefactor, with a cool request about a manuscript that was full of
+dangerous matter. "Why, that," replied Diderot, "is a work that might
+well be the ruin of me! And it is after you have on two separate
+occasions charged me with the most atrocious and deliberate offences
+towards you, that you now propose that I should revise and print your
+work! You know that I have a wife and child, that I am a marked man,
+that you are putting me into the class of hardened offenders; never
+mind, you don't think of one of these things. You take me for an
+imbecile, or else you are one. But you are no imbecile.... I see through
+men's designs, and often enough I lend myself to them, without deigning
+to disabuse them as to the stupidity which they impute to me. It is
+enough if I perceive in their design some great service for them, and
+not an excess of inconvenience for myself. It is not I who am the fool,
+so often as people take me for one." Diderot then seems half to forget
+to whom he is writing and pours out what reads like a long soliloquy on
+morals, conduct, and the philosophy of life. He insists that man, with
+all his high-flying freedom of will, is but a little link in a great
+chain of events. He is a creature to be modified from without; hence the
+good effects of example, discourse, education, pleasures, pains,
+greatness, misery. Hence a sort of philosophy of commiseration, which
+attaches us strongly to the good, and irritates us no more against the
+bad than against a wind-storm that fills our eyes with dust. If you
+adopt such principles as these, they will reconcile you with others and
+yourself; you will neither praise nor blame yourself for what you are.
+To reproach others with nothing, to repent yourself of nothing--these
+are the two first steps towards wisdom; this is the philosophy that
+reconciles us with the human race and with life.[228]
+
+When he was in the very midst of all the toil and strife that the
+Encyclop�dia brought upon him, he could not refuse to spend three whole
+days in working like a galley-slave at an account of an important
+discovery that had been made by some worthy people with whom he was
+acquainted slightly. "But while I was busy about their affairs, my own
+are at a standstill. I write to you from Le Breton's, with a mass of
+uncorrected proofs before me, and the printers crying out for them.
+Still Grimm must be right, when he says that time is not a thing of
+which we are free to dispose at our own fancy; that we owe it first and
+foremost to our friends, our relations, our daily duties; and that in
+the lavish profusion of our time on people who are indifferent, there is
+nothing less than vice."[229] Yet in spite of Grimm's most just
+remonstrance, the lavish profusion always went on as before.
+
+There was one man, and only one man, for whose perverse and intractable
+spirit Diderot's most friendly patience, helpfulness, and devotion,
+were no match. I have already, in dealing with Rousseau,[230] said as
+much of the quarrel which he picked with Diderot as the matter
+requires, and it would be superfluous to go over the ground again from
+another side. Whether we listen to Rousseau's story or to Diderot's
+story, our judgment on what happened remains unchanged. We have already
+seen how warm and close an intimacy subsisted between them in the days
+when Diderot was a prisoner at Vincennes (1749). When Rousseau made up
+his mind to leave Paris and turn hermit (1756), there was a loud outcry
+from the social group at Holbach's. They said to him, in the least
+theological dialect of their day, what Sir Walter Scott had said to
+Ballantyne when Ballantyne thought of leaving Edinburgh, that, "when
+our Saviour himself was to be led into temptation, the first thing the
+Devil thought of was to get him into the wilderness." Diderot
+remonstrated rather more loudly than Rousseau's other friends, but
+there was no breach, and even no coolness. What sort of humours were
+bred by solitude in Rousseau's wayward mind we know, and the
+Confessions tell us how for a year and a half he was silently brooding
+over fancied slights and perhaps real pieces of heedlessness. Grimm,
+who was Diderot's closest friend next to Mademoiselle Voland, despised
+Rousseau, and Rousseau detested Grimm. "Grimm," he one day said to a
+disciple, "is the only man whom I have ever been able to hate." Madame
+d'Epinay was compelled to go to Geneva for her health, and Grimm easily
+persuaded Diderot that Rousseau was bound by all the ties of gratitude
+to accompany his benefactress on the expedition. Diderot wrote to the
+hermit a very strong letter to this effect: it made Rousseau furious.
+He declined the urgent counsel, he quarrelled outright and violently
+with Grimm, and after an angry and confusing interview with Diderot,
+all intercourse ceased with him also. "That man," wrote Diderot, on the
+evening of this, their last interview, "intrudes into my work; he fills
+me with trouble, and I feel as if I were haunted by a damned soul at my
+side. May I never see him more; he would make me believe in devils and
+hell."[231] And writing afterwards to some friend at Geneva, he recalls
+the days when he used to pour out the talk of intimacy "with the man
+who has buried himself at the bottom of a wood, where his soul has been
+soured and his moral nature has been corrupted. Yet how I pity him!
+Imagine that I used to love him, that I remember those old days of
+friendship, and that I see him now with crime on one side and remorse
+on the other, with deep waters in front of him. He will many a time be
+the torment of my thought; our common friends have judged between him
+and me; I have kept them all, and to him there remains not one."[232]
+It was not in Diderot's nature to bear malice, and when eight years
+later Rousseau passed through Paris on his ill-starred way to England
+and the Derbyshire hills, Diderot described the great pleasure that a
+visit from Rousseau would give to him. "Ah, I do well," he says, "not
+to let the access to my heart be too easy; when anybody has once found
+a place in it, he does not leave it without making a grievous rent;
+'tis a wound that can never be thoroughly cauterised."[233]
+
+It is needless to remind the neutral reader that Rousseau uses exactly
+the same kind of language about his heart. For this is the worst of
+sentimentalism, that it is so readily bent into a substitution of
+indulgence to oneself for upright and manly judgment about others. Still
+we may willingly grant that in the present rupture of a long friendship,
+it was not Diderot who was the real offender. _Too many honest people
+would be in the wrong_, he most truly said, _if Jean Jacques were in the
+right_.
+
+Of Grimm, I have already said elsewhere as much as is needful to be
+said.[234] His judgment in matters of conduct and character was cool and
+rather hard, but it was generally sound. He had a keen eye for what was
+hollow in the pretensions of the society in which he lived. Above all,
+he had the keen eye of his countrymen for his own interest, and for the
+use which he could make of other people. The best thing that we know in
+his favour, is that he should have won the friendship of Diderot.
+Diderot's attachment to Grimm seems like an exaggeration of the excesses
+of the epoch of sentimentalism in Germany.
+
+He pines for a letter from him, as he pined for letters from
+Mademoiselle Voland. If Grimm had been absent for a few months, their
+meeting was like a scene in a melodrama. "With what ardour we enclasped
+one another. My heart was swimming. I could not speak a word, nor could
+he. We embraced without speaking, and I shed tears. We were not
+expecting him. We were all at dessert when he was announced, _'Here is
+M. Grimm.'_ '_M. Grimm_,' I exclaimed, with a loud cry; and starting up,
+I ran to him and fell on his neck. He sat down, and ate a poor meal, you
+may be sure. As for me, I could not open my lips either to eat or to
+speak. He was next to me, and I kept pressing his hand and gazing at
+him."[235] Mademoiselle Voland appears on some occasion to have compared
+Diderot with his friend. "No more comparison, I beseech you, my good
+friend, between Grimm and me. I console myself for his superiority by
+frankly recognising it. I am vain of the victory that I thus gain over
+my self-love, and you must not deprive me of that little
+advantage."[236] Grimm, however, knew better than Diderot how to unite
+German sentimentalism with a steady selfishness. "I have just received
+from Grimm," writes good-natured Diderot, "a note that wounds my too
+sensitive spirit. I had promised to write him a few lines on the
+exhibition of pictures in the Salon; he writes to me that if it is not
+ready to-morrow, it will be of no use. I will be revenged for this kind
+of hardness, and in a way that becomes me. I worked all day yesterday,
+and all day to-day. I shall pass the night at work, and all to-morrow,
+and at nine o'clock he shall receive a volume of manuscript."[237] We
+may doubt whether his German friend would feel the force of a rebuke so
+extremely convenient to himself.
+
+While Grimm was amusing himself at Madame d'Epinay's country house,
+Diderot was working at the literary correspondence which Grimm was
+accustomed to send to St. Petersburg and the courts of Germany. While
+Grimm was hunting pensions and honorary titles at Saxe-Gotha, or
+currying favour with Frederick and waiting for gold boxes at Potsdam,
+Diderot was labouring like any journeyman in writing on his behalf
+accounts and reviews of the books, good, bad, and indifferent, with
+which the Paris market teemed. When there were no new books to talk
+about, the ingenious man, with the resource of the born journalist, gave
+extracts from books that did not exist.[238] When we hear of Paris being
+the centre of European intelligence and literary activity, we may
+understand that these circular letters of Grimm and Diderot were the
+machinery by which the light of Paris was diffused among darker lands.
+It is not too much to say that no contemporary record so intelligent, so
+independent, so vigorous, so complete, exists of any other remarkable
+literary epoch.
+
+The abb� Raynal, of whom we shall have more to say in a later chapter,
+had founded this counterpart of a modern review in 1747, and he sent a
+copy of it in manuscript once a month to anybody who cared to pay three
+hundred francs a year. In 1753 Raynal had handed the business over to
+Grimm, and by him it was continued until 1790, twelve years beyond the
+life of Voltaire and of Rousseau, and six years after the death of the
+ablest, most original, and most ungrudging of all those who gave him
+their help.
+
+An interesting episode in Diderot's life brought him into direct
+relations with one of the two crowned patrons of the revolutionary
+literature, who were philosophers in profession and the most arbitrary
+of despots in their practice. Frederick the Great, whose literary taste
+was wholly in the vein of the conventional French classic, was never
+much interested by Diderot's writing, and felt little curiosity about
+him. Catherine of Russia was sufficiently an admirer of the Encyclop�dia
+to be willing to serve its much-enduring builder. In 1765, when the
+enterprise was in full course, Diderot was moved by a provident anxiety
+about the future of his daughter. He had no dower for her in case a
+suitor should present himself, and he had but a scanty substance to
+leave her in case of his own death. The income of the property which he
+inherited from his father was regularly handed to his wife for the
+maintenance of the household. His own earnings, as we have seen, were of
+no considerable amount. There are men of letters, he wrote in 1767, to
+whom their industry has brought as much as twenty, thirty, eighty, or
+even a hundred thousand francs. As for himself, he thought that perhaps
+the fruit of his literary occupations would come to about forty thousand
+crowns, or some five thousand pounds sterling. "One could not amass
+wealth," he said pensively, and his words are of grievous generality for
+the literary tribe, "but one could acquire ease and comfort, if only
+these sums were not spread over so many years, did not vanish away as
+they were gathered in, and had not all been scattered and spent by the
+time that years had multiplied, wants, grown more numerous, eyes grown
+dim, and mind become blunted and worn."[239] This was his own case. His
+earnings were never thriftily husbanded. Diderot could not deny himself
+a book or an engraving that struck his fancy, though he was quite
+willing to make a present of it to any appreciative admirer the day
+after he had bought it. He was extravagant in hiring a hackney-coach
+where another person would have gone on foot, and not seldom the
+coachman stood for half a day at the door, while the heedless passenger
+was expatiating within upon truth, virtue, and the fine arts,
+unconscious of the passing hours and the swollen reckoning. Hence, when
+the time came, there were no savings. We have to take a man with the
+defects of his qualities, and as Diderot would not have been Diderot if
+he had taken time to save money, there is no more to be said.
+
+When it became his duty to provide for his daughter, between 1763 and
+1765, he resolved to sell his library. Through Grimm, Diderot's position
+reached the ears of the Empress of Russia. Her agent was instructed to
+buy the library at the price fixed by its possessor, and Diderot
+received sixteen thousand livres, a sum equal to something more than
+seven hundred pounds sterling of that day. The Empress added a handsome
+bounty to the bargain. She requested Diderot to consider himself the
+custodian of the new purchase on her behalf, and to receive a thousand
+livres a year for his pains. The salary was paid for fifty years in
+advance, and so Diderot drew at once what must have seemed to him the
+royal sum of between two and three thousand pounds sterling--a figure
+that would have to be trebled, or perhaps quadrupled, to convey its
+value in the money of our own day. We may wish for the honour of letters
+that Diderot had been able to preserve his independence. But pensions
+were the custom of the time. Voltaire, though a man of solid wealth, did
+not disdain an allowance from Frederick the Great, and complained
+shrilly because it was irregularly paid at the very time when he knew
+that Frederick was so short of money that he was driven to melt his
+plate. D'Alembert also had his pension from Berlin, and Grimm, as we
+have seen, picked up unconsidered trifles in half of the northern
+courts. Frederick offered an allowance to Rousseau, but that strange
+man, in whom so much that was simple, touching, and lofty, mingled with
+all that was wayward and perverse, declined to tax the king's strained
+finances.[240]
+
+It would shed an instructive light upon authorship and the characters of
+famous men, if we could always know the relations between a writer and
+his booksellers. Diderot's point of view in considering the great modern
+enginery and processes of producing and selling books, was invariably,
+like his practice, that of a man of sound common sense and sterling
+integrity. We have seen in the previous chapter something of the
+difficulties of the trade in those days. The booksellers were a close
+guild of three hundred and sixty members, and the printers were limited
+to thirty-six. Their privileges brought them little fortune. They were
+of the lowest credit and repute, and most of them were hardly better
+than beggars. It was said that not a dozen out of the three hundred and
+sixty could afford to have more than one coat for his back. They were
+bound hand and foot by vexatious rules, and their market was gradually
+spoiled by a band of men whom they hated as interlopers, but whom the
+public had some reason to bless. No bookseller nor printer could open an
+establishment outside of the quarter of the University, or on the north
+side of the bridges. The restriction, which was as old as the
+introduction of printing into France, had its origin in the days when
+the visits of the royal inspectors to the presses and bookshops were
+constant and rigorous, and it saved the time of the officials to have
+all their business close to their hand. Inasmuch, however, as people
+insisted on having books, and as they did not always choose to be at the
+pains of making a long journey to the region of the booksellers' shops,
+hawkers sprang into existence. Men bought books or got them on credit
+from the booksellers, and carried them in a bag over their shoulders to
+the houses of likely customers, just as a peddler now carries laces and
+calico, cheap silks and trumpory jewellery, round the country villages.
+Even poor women filled their aprons with a few books, took them across
+the bridges, and knocked at people's doors. This would have been well
+enough in the eyes of the guild, if the hawkers had been content to buy
+from the legally patented booksellers. But they began secretly to turn
+publishers in a small way on their own account. Contraband was here, as
+always, the natural substitute for free trade. They both issued pirated
+editions of their own, and they became the great purchasers and
+distributors of the pirated editions that came in vast bales from
+Switzerland, from Holland, from the Pope's country of Avignon. To their
+craft or courage the public owed its copies of works whose circulation
+was forbidden by the government. The Persian Letters of Montesquieu was
+a prohibited book, but, for all that, there were a hundred editions of
+it before it had been published twenty years, and every schoolboy could
+find a copy on the quays for a dozen halfpence. Bayle's Thoughts on the
+Comet, Rousseau's Emilius and Helo�sa, Helv�tius's L'Esprit, and a
+thousand other forbidden pieces were in every library, both public and
+private. The Social Contract, printed over and over again in endless
+editions, was sold for a shilling under the vestibule of the king's own
+palace. When the police were in earnest, the hawker ran horrible risks,
+as we saw a few pages further back; for these risks he recompensed
+himself by his prices. A prohibition by the authorities would send a
+book up within four-and-twenty hours from half a crown to a couple of
+louis. This only increased the public curiosity, quickened the demand,
+led to clandestine reprints, and extended the circulation of the book
+that was nominally suppressed. When the condemnation of a book was cried
+through the streets, the compositors said, "Good, another edition!"
+There was no favour that an unknown author could have asked from the
+magistrates so valuable to him as a little decree condemning his work to
+be torn up and burnt at the foot of the great staircase of the Palace of
+Justice.[241]
+
+It was this practical impossibility of suppression that interested both
+the guild of publishers and the government in the conditions of the book
+trade. The former were always harassed, often kept poor, and sometimes
+ruined, by systematic piracy and the invasion of their rights. The
+government, on the other hand, could not help seeing that, as the books
+could not possibly be kept out of the realm, it was to be regretted
+that their production conferred no benefit on the manufacturing industry
+of the realm, the composition, the printing, the casting of type, the
+fabrication of paper, the preparation of leather and vellum, the making
+of machines and tools. When Bayle's Dictionary appeared, it was the rage
+of Europe. Hundreds of the ever-renowned folios found their way into
+France, and were paid for by French money. The booksellers addressed the
+minister, and easily persuaded him of the difference, according to the
+economic light of those days, between an exchange of money against
+paper, compared with an exchange of paper against paper. The minister
+replied that this was true, but still that the gates of the kingdom
+would never be opened to a single copy of Bayle. "The best thing to do,"
+he said, "is to print it here." And the third edition of Bayle was
+printed in France, much to the contentment of the French printers,
+binders, and booksellers.
+
+In 1761 the booksellers were afflicted by a new alarm. Foreign pirates
+and domestic hawkers were doing them mischief enough. But in that year
+the government struck a blow at the very principle of literary property.
+The King's Council conferred upon the descendants of La Fontaine the
+exclusive privilege of publishing their ancestor's works. That is to
+say, the Council took away without compensation from La Fontaine's
+publishers a copyright for which they had paid in hard cash. The whole
+corporation naturally rose in arms, and in due time the lieutenant of
+police was obliged to take the whole matter into serious
+consideration--whether the maintenance of the guild of publishers was
+expedient; whether the royal privilege of publishing a book should be
+regarded as conferring a definite and unassailable right of property in
+the publication; whether the tacit permission to publish what it would
+have been thought unbecoming to authorise expressly by royal sanction,
+should not be granted liberally or even universally; and whether the old
+restriction of the booksellers to one quarter of the town ought to
+remain in force any longer. M. de Sartine invited Diderot to write him a
+memorandum on the subject, and was disappointed to find Diderot
+staunchly on the side of the booksellers (1767). He makes no secret,
+indeed, that for his own part he would like to see the whole apparatus
+of restraint abolished, but meanwhile he is strong for doing all that a
+system of regulation, as opposed to a system of freedom, can do to make
+the publication of books a source of prosperity to the bookseller, and
+of cheap acquisition to the book-buyer. Above all things, Diderot is
+vehemently in favour of the recognition of literary property, and
+against such infringement of it as had been ventured upon in the case of
+La Fontaine. He had no reason to be especially friendly to booksellers,
+but for one thing, he saw that to nullify or to tamper with copyright
+was in effect to prevent an author from having any commodity to sell,
+and so to do him the most serious injury possible. And for another
+thing, Diderot had equity and common sense enough to see that no
+high-flown nonsense about the dignity of letters and the spiritual power
+could touch the fact that a book is a piece of marketable ware, and that
+the men who deal in such wares have as much claim to be protected in
+their contracts as those who deal in any other wares.[242]
+
+There is a vivid illustration of this unexpected business-like quality
+in Diderot, in a conversation that he once had with D'Alembert. The
+dialogue is interesting to those who happen to be curious as to the
+characters of two famous men. It was in 1759, when D'Alembert was tired
+of the Encyclop�dia, and was for making hard terms as the condition of
+his return to it. "If," said Diderot to him, "six months ago, when we
+met to deliberate on the continuation of the work, you had then proposed
+these terms, the booksellers would have closed with them on the spot,
+but now, when they have the strongest reasons to be out of humour with
+you, that is another thing."
+
+"And pray, what reasons?"
+
+"Can you ask me?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Then I will tell you. You have a bargain with the booksellers; the
+terms are stipulated; you have nothing to ask beyond them. If you worked
+harder than you were bound to do, that was out of your interest in the
+book, out of friendship to me, out of respect for yourself; people do
+not pay in money for such motives as these. Still they sent you twenty
+louis a volume: that makes a hundred and forty louis that you had beyond
+what was due to you. You plan a journey to Wesel [in 1752, to meet
+Frederick of Prussia] at a time when you were wanted by them here; they
+do not detain you; on the contrary, you are short of money, and they
+supply you. You accept a couple of hundred louis; this debt you forget
+for two or three years. At the end of that rather long term you bethink
+you of paying. What do they do? They hand you back your note of hand
+torn up, with all the air of being very glad to have served you. Then,
+after all, you turn your back on an undertaking in which they have
+embarked their whole fortunes: an affair of a couple of millions is a
+trifle unworthy of the attention of a philosopher like you.... But that
+is not all. You have a fancy for collecting together different pieces
+scattered through the Encyclop�dia; nothing can be more opposed to
+their interests; they put this to you, you insist, the edition is
+produced, they advance the cost, you share the profits. It seemed that,
+after having thus twice paid you for their work, they had a right to
+look upon it as theirs. Yet you go in search of a bookseller in some
+quite different direction, and sell him in a mass what does not belong
+to you."
+
+"They gave me a thousand grounds for dissatisfaction."
+
+"_Quelle d�faite!_ There are no small things between friends. Everything
+weighs, because friendship is a commerce of purity and delicacy; but are
+the booksellers your friends? Then your behaviour to them is horrible.
+If not, then you have nothing to say against them. If the public were
+called upon to judge between you and them, my friend, you would be
+covered with shame."
+
+"What, can it be you, Diderot, who thus take the side of the
+booksellers?"
+
+"My grievances against them do not prevent me from seeing their
+grievances against you. After all this show of pride, confess now that
+you are cutting a very sorry figure?"[243]
+
+All this was the language of good sense, and there is no evidence that
+Diderot ever swerved from that fair and honourable attitude in his own
+dealings with the booksellers. Yet he was able to treat them with a
+sturdy spirit when they forgot themselves. Panckoucke, one of the great
+publishers of the time, came to him one day. "He was swollen with the
+arrogance of a parvenu, and thinking apparently that he could use me
+like one of those poor devils who depend upon him for a crust of bread,
+he permitted himself to fly into a passion; but it did not succeed at
+all. I let him go on as he pleased; then I got up abruptly, I took him
+by the arm, and I said to him: 'M. Panckoucke, in whatever place it may
+be, in the street, in church, in a bad house, and to whomsoever it may
+be, it is always right to keep a civil tongue in one's head. But that is
+all the more necessary still, when you speak to a man who has as little
+patience as I have, and that, too, in his own house. Go to the devil,
+you and your work. If you would give me twenty thousand louis, and I
+could do your business for you in the twinkling of an eye, I would not
+stir a finger. Be kind enough to be off."[244]
+
+Before returning from the author to his books, it is interesting to know
+how he and his circle appeared at this period to some who did not belong
+to them. Gibbon, for instance, visited Paris in the spring of 1763. "The
+moment," he says, "was happily chosen. At the close of a successful war
+the British name was respected on the continent; _clarum et venerabile
+nomen gentibus_. Our opinions, our fashions, even our games were adopted
+in France, a ray of national glory illuminated each individual, and
+every Englishman was supposed to be born a patriot and philosopher." He
+mentions D'Alembert and Diderot as those among the men of letters whom
+he saw, who "held the foremost rank in merit, or at least in fame."[245]
+
+Horace Walpole was often in Paris, and often saw the philosophic
+circle, but it did not please his supercilious humour.
+
+     "There was no soul in Paris but philosophers, whom I wished in
+     heaven, though they do not wish themselves so. They are so
+     overbearing and underbred.... I sometimes go to Baron
+     d'Holbach's, but I have left off his dinners, as there was no
+     bearing the authors and philosophers and savants of which he
+     has a pigeon-house full. They soon turned my head with a
+     system of antediluvian deluges which they have invented to
+     prove the eternity of matter.... In short, nonsense for
+     nonsense, I liked the Jesuits better than the
+     philosophers."[246]
+
+Hume, as everybody knows, found "the men of letters really very
+agreeable; all of them men of the world, living in entire, or almost
+entire harmony, among themselves, and quite irreproachable in their
+morals." He places Diderot among those whose person and conversation he
+liked best.
+
+We have always heard much of the power of the Salon in the eighteenth
+century, and it was no doubt a remarkable proof of the incorporation of
+intellectual interests in manners, that so many groups of men and women
+should have met habitually every week for the purpose of conversing
+about the new books and new plays, the fresh principles and fresh ideas,
+that were produced by the incessant vivacity of the time. The Salon of
+the eighteenth century passed through various phases; its character
+shifted with the intellectual mood of the day, but in all its phases it
+was an institution in which women occupied a place that they have never
+acquired in any society out of France. We are not here called upon to
+speculate as to the reasons for this; it is only worth remarking that
+Diderot was not commonly at his ease in the society of ladies, and that
+though he was a visitor at Madame Geoffrin's and at Mademoiselle
+Lespinasse's, yet he was not a constant attendant at any of the famous
+circles of which women had made themselves the centre. The reader of
+Madame d'Epinay's memoir is informed how hard she found it to tame
+Diderot into sociability. "What a pity," she exclaims, "that men of
+genius and of such eminent merit as M. Diderot should thus wrap
+themselves up in their philosophy, and disdain the homage that people
+would eagerly pay them in any society that they would honour with their
+presence."[247] One of the soundest social observers of the time was
+undoubtedly Duclos. His _Considerations on the Manners of the Century_,
+which was published in 1751, abounds in admirable criticism. He makes
+two remarks with which we may close our chapter. "The relaxation of
+morals does not prevent people from being very loud in praise of honour
+and virtue; those who have least of them know very well how much they
+are concerned in other people having them." Again, "The French," he
+said, "are the only people among whom it is possible for morals to be
+depraved, without either the heart being corrupted, or their courage
+being weakened."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE STAGE.
+
+
+There is at first something incredible in the account given by some
+thinkers of Diderot, as the greatest genius of the eighteenth century;
+and perhaps an adjustment of such nice degrees of comparison among the
+high men of the world is at no time very profitable. What is intended by
+these thoroughgoing panegyrists is that Diderot placed himself at the
+point of view whence, more comprehensively than was possible from any
+other, he discerned the long course and the many bearings, the complex
+faces and the large ramifications, of the huge movement of his day. He
+seized the great transition at every point, and grasped all the threads
+that were to be inwoven into the pattern of the new time.
+
+Diderot is in a thousand respects one of the most unsatisfactory of men
+and of writers. Yet it is hard to deny that to whatever quarter he
+turned, he caught the rising illumination and was shone upon by the
+spirit of the coming day. It was no copious and overflowing radiance,
+but they were the beams of the dawn. Hence, what he has to say, and we
+shall soon see how much he said, about the two great arts of painting
+and the drama, though it is fragmentary, though it is insufficient, yet
+points, as all the rest of his thoughts pointed, along the lines that
+the best minds of the western world have since traversed. He would, in
+the old metaphysical language, have called the direction of it a turning
+to Nature, but if we translate this into more positive terms, just as we
+have said that the Encyclop�dia was a glorification of pacific industry
+and of civil justice, so we may say that his whole theory of the drama
+was a glorification of private virtues and domestic life. And the
+definite rise of civil justice and industry over feudal privilege and a
+life of war, and again the elevation of domestic virtue into the place
+formerly held by patriotic devotion, are the two great sides of a single
+movement.[248] It is quite true that Diderot and the French of that day
+had only a glimpse of the promised land in art and poetry. The whole
+moral energy of the generation after Diderot was drawn inevitably into
+the strong current of social action. The freshly kindled torch of
+dramatic art passed for nearly half a century to the country of Lessing
+and Goethe.
+
+There is in the use of a certain kind of abstract language this
+inconvenience, that the reader may suppose us to be imputing to Diderot
+a deliberate and systematic survey of the whole movement of his time,
+and a calculated resolution to further it, now in this way and now in
+that. It is not necessary to suppose that the movement as a whole was
+always present to him. Diderot's mind was constantly feeling for
+explanations; it was never a passive recipient. The drama excited this
+alert interest just as everything else excited it. He thought about
+that, as about everything else, originally, that is to say, sincerely
+and in the spirit of reality.[249] Whoever turns with a clear eye and
+proper intellectual capacity in search of the real bearings of what he
+is about, is sure to find out the strong currents of the time, even
+though he may never consciously throw them into their most general and
+abstract expression.
+
+Since Aristotle, said Lessing, no more philosophical mind than Diderot's
+has treated of the theatre. Lessing himself translated Diderot's two
+plays, and the Essay on Dramatic Poetry, and repeatedly said that
+without the impulse of Diderot's principles and illustrations his own
+taste would have taken a different direction. As a dramatist, the author
+of _Miss Sara Sampson_, of _Emilia Galotti_, and above all that noble
+dramatic poem, _Nathan the Wise_, could hardly have owed much to the
+author of such poor stuff as _The Natural Son_ and _The Father of the
+Family_. Lessing had some dramatic fire, invention, spontaneous
+elevation; he had a certain measure, though not a very large one, of
+poetic impulse. Diderot had nothing of all these, but he had the eye of
+the philosophic critic.
+
+Any one who reads Lessing's dramatic criticisms will see that he did
+not at all overrate his obligations to his French contemporary.[250] It
+has been replied to the absurd taunt about the French inventing nothing,
+that at least Descartes invented German philosophy. Still more true is
+it that Diderot invented German criticism.
+
+Diderot's thoughts on the stage, besides his completed plays, and a
+number of fragmentary scenes, are contained principally in the Paradox
+on the Player, a short treatise on Dramatic Poetry, and three dialogues
+appended to _The Natural Son_. On the plays a very few words will
+suffice. _The Natural Son_ must, by me at least, be pronounced one of
+the most vapid performances in dramatic history. Even Lessing, unwilling
+as he was to say a word against a writer who had taught him so much, is
+too good a critic not to recognise monotony in the characters, stiffness
+and affectation in the dialogue, and a pedantic ring in the sentences of
+new-fangled philosophy.[251] Even in the three critical dialogues that
+Diderot added to the play, Lessing cannot help discerning the mixture of
+superficiality with an almost pompous pretension. Rosenkranz, it is
+true, finds the play rich in fine sentences, in scenes full of effect,
+in which Diderot's moral enthusiasm expresses itself with impetuous
+eloquence. But even he admits that the hero's servant is not so far
+wrong when he cries, "_Il semble que le bon sens se soit enfui de cette
+maison_," and adds that the whole atmosphere of the piece is sickly with
+conscious virtue.[252] For ourselves we are ready for once even to
+sympathise with Palissot, the hack-writer of the reactionary parties,
+when he says that _The Natural Son_ had neither invention, nor style,
+nor characters, nor any other single unit of a truly dramatic work. The
+reader who seeks to realise the nullity of the _genre s�rieux_ in
+Diderot's hands, should turn from _The Natural Son_ to Goldoni's play of
+_The True Friend_, from which Diderot borrowed the structure of his
+play, following it as narrowly as possible to the end of the third act.
+Seldom has transfusion turned a sparkling draught into anything so flat
+and vapid. In spite of the applause of the philosophic _claque_, led by
+Grimm,[253] posterity has ratified the coldness with which it was
+received by contemporaries. _The Natural Son_ was written in 1757, but
+it was not until 1771 that the directors of the French Comedy could be
+induced to place it on the stage. The actors detested their task, and as
+we can very well believe, went sulkily through parts which they had not
+even taken the trouble to master.[254] The public felt as little
+interest in the piece as the actors had done, and after a single
+representation, the play was put aside.
+
+Ill-natured critics compared Diderot's play with Rousseau's opera; they
+insisted that _The Natural Son_ and _The Village Conjuror_ were a
+couple of monuments of the presumptuous incompetence of the encyclop�dic
+cabal. The failure of _The Natural Son_ as a drama came after it had
+enjoyed considerable success as a piece of literature, for it had been
+fourteen years in print. We can only suppose that this success was the
+fruit of an unflinching partisanship.
+
+It is a curious illustration of the strength of the current passion for
+moral maxims in season and out of season, that one scene which to the
+scoffers of that day seemed, as it cannot but seem to everybody to-day,
+a climax of absurdity and unbecomingness, was hailed by the party as
+most admirable, for no other reason than that it contained a number of
+high moralising saws. Constance, a young widow and a model of reason,
+takes upon herself to combat the resolution of Dorval not to marry,
+after he has led her to suppose that he has a passion for her, and after
+a marriage between them has been arranged. "No," he cries, "a man of my
+character is not such a husband as befits Constance." Constance begs him
+to reassure himself; tells him that he is mistaken; to enjoy
+tranquillity, a man must have the approval of his own heart, and perhaps
+that of other men, and he can have neither unless he remains at his
+post; it is only the wicked who can bear isolation; a tender soul cannot
+view the general system of sensible beings without a strong desire that
+they should be happy. Dorval, who cuts an extremely sorry figure in
+such a scene, exclaims, "Ah, but children! Dorval would have children!
+When I think that we are thrown from our very birth into a chaos of
+prejudices, extravagances, vices, and miseries, the idea makes me
+shudder!"--"Dorval, you are beset by phantoms, and no wonder. The
+history of life is so little known, while the appearance of evil in the
+universe is so glaring.... Dorval, your daughters will be modest and
+good; your sons noble and high-minded; all your children will be
+charming.... There is no fear that a cruel soul should ever grow in my
+bosom from stock of yours."[255]
+
+We can hardly wonder that players were disgusted, or critics moved to
+wicked jests. The counterpart to the scene in which Constance persuades
+Dorval that they would be very happy in one case, is the scene in which
+Dorval persuades Rosalie that they would be very unhappy in another
+case. The situations in themselves may command our approval morally, but
+they certainly do not attract our sympathies dramatically. That a woman
+should demonstrate to a man in fine sententious language the expediency
+of marrying her, is not inconsistent with good sense, but it is
+displeasing. When a man tells a woman that, though love draws in one
+way, duty draws in the other, we may admire his prudence, but we are
+glad when so delicate a business comes to an end. In _The Natural Son_
+the latter scene, though very long, is the less disagreeable of the
+two. And just as in Diderot's most wordy and tiresome pages we generally
+find some one phrase, some epithet, some turn of a sentence whose
+freshness or strength or daring reveals a genius, so in this scene we
+find a few lines whose energy reminds us that we are not after all in
+the hands of some obscure playwright, whose works ought long ago to have
+been eaten by moths or burnt by fire. Those lines are a warning against
+the temptation so familiar in every age since Paris was a guest in the
+halls of Menelaus, to take that fatal resolve, All for love and the
+world well lost. "To do wrong," says Dorval, "is to condemn ourselves to
+live and to find our pleasure with wrong-doers; it is to pass an
+uncertain and troubled life in one long and never-ending lie; to have to
+praise with a blush the virtue that we flung behind us; to hear from the
+lips of others harsh words for our own action; to seek a little calm in
+sophistical systems, that the breath of a single good man scatters to
+the winds; to shut ourselves for ever out from the spring of true joys,
+the only joys that are virtuous, austere, sublime; and to give ourselves
+up, simply as a way of escape from ourselves, to the weariness of those
+frivolous diversions in which the day flows away in self-oblivion, and
+our life glides slowly from us and loses itself in waste."[256] A very
+old story, no doubt; but natural, true, and in its place.
+
+What adds to the flatness of the play is a device which Diderot
+introduced on a deliberately adopted principle; we mean the elaborate
+setting out of the acting directions. Every movement, every gesture,
+every silent pause is written down, and we have the impression less of a
+play than of some strangely bald romance. In the versified declamation
+which then reigned on the French stage, nothing was left to natural
+action, nothing was told by change of position, by movement without
+speech, or in short by any means other than discourse. Diderot,
+repudiating the conventions of dramatic art, and consulting nature or
+reality, saw that there are many scenes in life in which it is more
+natural to the personages of the scene to move than to speak, in which
+indeed motion is natural, and speech is altogether unnatural. If this be
+so in real life, he said, it should be so on the stage, because nothing
+passes in the world which may not pass also in the theatre; and as
+pantomime, or expression of emotion, feeling, purpose, otherwise than by
+speech, has so much to do in life, the dramatist should make abundant
+use of pantomime in composing stage-plays. Nor should he trust to the
+actor's invention and spontaneous sense of appropriateness. He ought to
+write down the pantomime whenever it adds energy or clearness to the
+dialogue; when it binds the parts of the dialogue together; when it
+consists in a delicate play that is not easily divined; and almost
+always he ought to write it down in the opening of a scene. If any one
+is inclined to regard this as superfluous, let him try the experiment of
+composing a play, and then writing the pantomime, or "business," for
+it; he will soon see what follies he commits.[257]
+
+Whatever we may think of the practice of writing the action as well as
+the words for the player, nobody would now dispute the wisdom of what
+Diderot says as to the part that pantomime fills in the highest kind of
+dramatic representation. We must agree with his repeated laments over
+the indigence, for purposes of full and adequate expression, of every
+language that ever has existed or ever can exist.[258] "My dear master,"
+he wrote to Voltaire on the occasion of a performance of _Tancred_, "if
+you could have seen Clairon passing across the stage, her knees bending
+under her, her eyes closed, her arms falling stiff by her side as if
+they were dead; if you heard the cry that she uttered when she perceives
+Tancred, you would remain more convinced than ever that silence and
+pantomime have sometimes a pathos that all the resources of speech can
+never approach."[259] If we wonder that he should have thought it worth
+while to lay so much emphasis on what seems so obvious, we have to
+remember that it did not seem at all obvious to people who were
+accustomed to the substitution of a mannered and symmetrical declamation
+for the energetic variety and manifold exuberance of passion and
+judgment in the daily lives of men.
+
+We have already seen that even when he wrote the Letter on the Deaf and
+Dumb, Diderot's mind was exercised about gesture as a supplement to
+discourse. In that Letter he had told a curious story of a bizarre
+experiment that he was in the habit of making at the theatre. He used to
+go to the highest seats in the house, thrust his fingers into his ears,
+and then, to the astonishment of his neighbours, watch the performance
+with the sharpest interest. As a constant playgoer, he knew the words of
+the plays by heart, and what he sought was to isolate the gesture of the
+performers, and to enjoy and criticise that by itself. He kept his ears
+tightly stopped, so long as the action and play went well with the words
+as he remembered them, and he only listened when some discord in gesture
+made him suppose that he had lost his place. The people around him were
+more and more amazed as they saw him, notwithstanding his stopped ears,
+shed copious tears in the pathetic passages. "They could not refrain
+from hazarding questions, to which I answered coldly, 'that everybody
+had his own way of listening, and that my way was to stop my ears, so as
+to understand better'--laughing within myself at the talk to which my
+oddity gave rise, and still more so at the simplicity of some young
+people who also put their fingers into their ears to hear after my
+fashion, and were quite astonished that the plan did not succeed."[260]
+This was an odd and whimsical way of acting on a conviction which lay
+deep in Diderot's mind, namely, that language is a very poor,
+misleading, and utterly inadequate instrument for representing what it
+professes, and what we stupidly suppose it, to represent. Rousseau had
+expressed the same kind of feeling when he said that definitions might
+be good things, if only we did not employ words in making them.
+
+A curious circumstance is worth mentioning in connection with the Three
+Dialogues appended to _The Natural Son_. Diderot informs his readers
+that the incidents of _The Natural Son_ had actually occurred in real
+life, and that he knew the personages. In the Dialogues it is assumed
+that the play had been written by the hero himself, and the hero is the
+chief speaker. Not a word is said from which the reader would guess that
+Diderot had borrowed the substance of his plot and some of its least
+insipid scenes from Goldoni. We can hardly wonder that he was charged
+with plagiarism. Yet it was not deliberate, we may be sure. When Diderot
+was strongly seized by an idea, outer circumstances were as if they did
+not exist. He was swept up into the clouds. "Diderot is a good and
+worthy man," wrote Madame Geoffrin to the King of Poland, "but he has
+such a bad head, and he is so curiously organised, that he neither sees
+nor hears what he does see and hear, as the thing really is; he is
+always like a man who is dreaming, and who thinks all that he has
+dreamed quite real."[261]
+
+_The Father of the Family_, written in 1758, and first acted in 1761,
+is very superior to _The Natural Son_; it even enjoyed a certain
+popularity. In Germany it became an established favourite, and in Italy
+it was only less popular than a piece of Goldoni's. The French were not
+quite so easy to please. In 1761 its reception was undoubtedly
+favourable, and it ran for more than a week. In 1769 it was reproduced,
+and, according to Diderot's own account, with enthusiasm. "There was a
+frightful crowd," he says, "and people hardly remember such a success. I
+was surprised at it myself. My friends are at the height of exultation.
+My daughter came home intoxicated with wonder and delight." Even Madame
+Diderot at length grew ashamed at having to confess that she had not
+seen her husband's triumph, and throwing aside her horror of the stage,
+was as deeply moved as every one else.[262]
+
+Notwithstanding this satisfactory degree of success, and though it was
+performed as late as 1835, the play never struck root in France. It is
+indeed a play without any real quality or distinction. "Diderot, in his
+plays," said Madame de Sta�l, "put the affectation of nature in the
+place of the affectation of convention."[263] The effect is still more
+disagreeable in the first kind of affectation than the second. _The
+Father of the Family_ is made more endurable than _The Natural Son_ by a
+certain rapidity and fire in the action, and a certain vigour in the
+characters of the impetuous son (Saint Albin) and the malignant
+brother-in-law (the Commander). But the dialogue is poor, and the Father
+of the Family himself is as woolly and mawkish a figure as is usually
+made out of benevolent intentions and weak purpose combined. The woes of
+the heavy father of the stage, where there is no true pathos, but only a
+sentimental version of it, find us very callous. The language has none
+of that exquisite grace and flexibility which makes a good French comedy
+of own day, a piece by Augier, Sandeau, Feuillet, Sardou, so delightful.
+Diderot was right in urging that there is no reason why a play should be
+in verse; but then the prose of a play ought to have a point, elegance,
+and highly-wrought perfection, which shall fill us with a sense of art,
+though not the art of the poet. Diderot not only did not write comedy in
+such a style; but he does not even so much as show consciousness that
+any difference exists between one kind of prose and another. The blurred
+phrases and clipped sentences of what Diderot would have called Nature,
+that is to say of real life, are intolerable on the stage. Even he felt
+this, for his characters, though their dialogue is without wit or
+finish, are still dull and tame of speech, in a different way from that
+in which the people whom we may meet are dull and tame. There is an art
+of a kind, though of an extremely vapid kind.
+
+Again, though he may be right in contending that there is a serious kind
+of comedy as distinct from that gay comedy which is neighbour to
+farce--of this we shall see more presently--yet he is certainly wrong
+in believing that we can willingly endure five acts of serious comedy
+without a single relieving passage of humour. Contrast of character,
+where all the characters are realistic and common, is not enough. We
+crave contrast in the dramatic point of view. We seek occasional change
+of key. That serious comedy should move a sympathetic tear is reasonable
+enough; but it is hard to find that it grudges us a single smile. The
+result of Diderot's method is that the spectator or the reader speedily
+feels that what he has before him substitutes for dramatic fulness and
+variety the flat monotony of a homily or a tract. It would be hard to
+show that there is no true comedy without laughter--Terence's _Hecyra_,
+for instance--but Diderot certainly overlooked what Lessing and most
+other critics saw so clearly, that laughter rightly stirred is one of
+the most powerful agencies in directing the moral sympathies of the
+audience,--the very end that Diderot most anxiously sought.
+
+It is mere waste of time to bestow serious criticism on Diderot's two
+plays, or on the various sketches, outlines, and fragments of scenes
+with which he amused his very slight dramatic faculty. If we wish to
+study the masterpieces of French comedy in the eighteenth century, we
+shall promptly shut up the volumes of Diderot, and turn to the ease and
+soft gracefulness of Marivaux's _Game of Love and Chance_, to the
+forcible and concentrated sententiousness of Piron's _M�tromanie_, to
+the salt and racy flavour of Le Sage's _Turcaret_. Gresset, again, and
+Destouches wrote at least two comedies that were really fit for the
+stage, and may be read with pleasure to-day. Neither of these
+compliments can fairly be paid to _The Natural Son_ and _The Father of
+the Family_. Diderot's plays ought to be looked upon merely as sketchy
+illustrations of a favourite theory; as the rough drawings on the black
+board with which a professor of the fine arts may accompany a lecture on
+oil painting.
+
+One radical part of Diderot's dramatic doctrine is wholly condemned by
+modern criticism; and it is the part which his plays were especially
+designed to enforce. "It is always," he says, "virtue and virtuous
+people that a man ought to have in view when he writes. Oh, what good
+would men gain, if all the arts of imitation proposed one common object,
+and were one day to unite with the laws in making us love virtue and
+hate vice. It is for the philosopher to address himself to the poet, the
+painter, the musician, and to cry to them with all his might: _O men of
+genius, to what end has heaven endowed you with gifts_? If they listen
+to him, speedily will the images of debauch cease to cover the walls of
+our palaces; our vices will cease to be the organs of crime; and taste
+and manners will gain. Can we believe that the action of two old blind
+people, man and wife, as they sought one another in their aged days, and
+with tears of tenderness clasped one another's hands and exchanged
+caresses on the brink of the grave, so to say--that this would not
+demand the same talent, and would not interest me far more than the
+spectacle of the violent pleasures with which their senses in all the
+first freshness of youth were once made drunk?"[264]
+
+The emphasising moralists of Diderot's school never understood that
+virtue may be made attractive, without pulling the reader or the
+spectator by the sleeve, and urgently shouting in his ear how attractive
+virtue is. When _The Heart of Midlothian_ appeared (1818), a lady wrote
+about it as follows: "Of late days, especially since it has been the
+fashion to write moral and even religious novels, one might almost say
+of the wise good heroines what a lively girl once said of her
+well-meaning aunt--'On my word she is enough to make anybody wicked.'
+Had this very story been conducted by a common hand, Effie would have
+attracted all our concern and sympathy, Jeanie only cold approbation.
+Whereas Jeanie, without youth, beauty, genius, warm passions, or any
+other novel perfection, is here our object from beginning to end. This
+is 'enlisting the affections in the cause of virtue' ten times more than
+ever Richardson did; for whose male and female pedants, all excelling as
+they are, I never could care half as much as I found myself inclined to
+do for Jeanie before I finished the first volume."[265]
+
+In other words, you must win us by kindling our sympathy, not by
+formally commanding our moral approval. To kindle sympathy your
+personage must be interesting; must touch our pity or wonder or
+energetic fellow-feeling or sense of moral loveliness, which is a very
+different thing from touching our mere sense of the distinctions between
+right and wrong. Direct homily excites no sympathy with the homilist.
+Deep pensive meditations on the moral puzzles of the world are not at
+all like didactic discourse. But the Father of the Family was exactly
+fulfilling Diderot's notion of dramatic purpose and utility when he
+talked to his daughter in such a strain as this: "Marriage, my daughter,
+is a vocation imposed by nature.... He who counts on bliss without alloy
+knows neither the life of man nor the designs of heaven. If marriage
+exposes us to cruel pain, it is also the source of the sweetest
+pleasures. Where are the examples of pure and heartfelt interest, of
+real tenderness, of inmost confidence, of daily help of griefs divided,
+of tears mingled, if they be not in marriage? What is there in the world
+that the good man prefers to his wife? What is there in the world that a
+father loves more dearly than his children? O sacred bond, if I think of
+thee, my whole soul is warmed and elevated!"[266]
+
+But these virtuous ejaculations do not warm and elevate us. In such a
+case words count for nothing. It is actual presentation of beautiful
+character, and not talk about it, that touches the spectator. It is the
+association of interesting action with character, that moves us and
+inspires such better moods as may be within our compass. Diderot, like
+many other people before and since, sought to make the stage the great
+moral teacher. That it may become so, is possible. It will not be by
+imitating the methods of that colossal type of histrionic failure, the
+church-pulpit. Exhortation in set speeches always has been, and always
+will be, the feeblest bulwark against the boiling floods of passion that
+helpless virtue ever invented, and it matters not at all whether the
+hortatory speeches are placed on the lips of Mr. Talkative, the son of
+Saywell, or of some tearful dummy labelled the Father of the Family.[267]
+
+Yet one is half ashamed to use hard words about Diderot. He was so
+modest about his work, so simple and unpretending, so wholly without
+restless and fretting ambitions, and so generous in his judgment of
+others. He made his own dramatic experiment, he thought little enough of
+it; and he was wholly above the hateful vice of sourly disparaging
+competitors, whether dead or living. He knew that he was himself no
+master, but he was manly enough to admire anybody who was nearer to
+mastery. He was full of unaffected delight at Sedaine's busy and
+pleasing little comedy, _The Philosopher without knowing it_; it was so
+simple without being stiff, so eloquent without the shadow of effort or
+rhetoric. After seeing it, Diderot ran off to the author to embrace him,
+with many tears of joyful sympathy and gratitude. Sedaine, like Lillo,
+the author of Diderot's favourite play of _George Barn__well_, was a
+plain tradesman, and the success of his libretti for comic operas had
+not spoiled him. He could find no more expansive words for his excited
+admirer than "_Ah, Monsieur Diderot, que vous �tes beau_!"[268] Diderot
+was just as sensible of the originality and Aristophanic gaiety of
+Coll�'s brilliant play, _Truth in Wine_, though Coll� detested the
+philosophic school from Voltaire downwards, and left behind him a
+bitterly contemptuous account of _The Natural Son_.[269]
+
+Of all comic writers, however, the author of the _Andria_ and the
+_Heautontimorumenos_ was Diderot's favourite. The half dozen pages upon
+Terence, which he threw off while the printer's boy waited in the
+passage (1762), are one of the most easy, flowing, and delightful of his
+fragments; there is such appreciation of Terence's suavity and tact, of
+his just and fine judgment, of his discrimination and character. He
+admits that Terence had no verve; for that he commends the young poet to
+Moli�re or Aristophanes, but as verve was exactly the quality most
+wanting to Diderot himself, he easily forgave its absence in Terence,
+and thought it amply replaced by his moderation, his truth, and his fine
+taste. Colman is praised for translating Terence, for here, says
+Diderot, is the lesson of which Colman's countrymen stand most in need.
+The English comic writers have more verve than taste. "Vanbrugh,
+Wycherley, Congreve, and some others have painted vices and foibles
+with vigour; it is not either invention or warmth or gaiety or force
+that is wanting to their pencil, but rather that unity in the drawing,
+that precision in the stroke, that truth in colouring, which distinguish
+portrait from caricature. Especially are they wanting in the art of
+discerning and seizing those _na�f_, simple, and yet singular movements
+of character, which always please and astonish, and render the imitation
+at once true and piquant."[270] Criticism has really nothing to add to
+these few lines, and if Diderot in his last years read _The School for
+Scandal_, or _The Rivals_, he would have found no reason to alter his
+judgment.
+
+One English play had the honour of being translated by Diderot; this
+was _The Gamester_, not _The Gamester_ of Shirley nor of Garrick, but
+of Edward Moore (1753). It is a good example of the bourgeois tragedy
+or domestic drama, which Diderot was so eager to see introduced on to
+the French stage. The infatuation of Beverley, the tears and virtue of
+Mrs. Beverley, the prudence of Charlotte and the sage devotion of her
+lover, the sympathetic remorse of Bates, and even the desperation of
+Stukely, made up a picture of domestic misery and moral sentiment with
+which Diderot was sure to fall in love. Lillo's _George Barnwell_, with
+its direct and urgent moral, was a still greater favourite, and Diderot
+compared the scene between Maria and Barnwell in prison to the despair
+of the _Philocletes_ of Sophocles, as the hero is heard shrieking at
+the mouth of his cavern;[271] just as a more modern critic has thought
+Lillo's other play, _The Fatal Curiosity_, worthy of comparison with
+the _Oedipus Tyrannus_.
+
+Diderot's feeling for Shakespeare seems to have been what we might have
+anticipated from the whole cast of his temperament. One of the scenes
+which delighted him most was that moment of awe, when Lady Macbeth
+silently advances down the stage with her eyes closed, and imitates the
+action of washing her hands, as wondering that "the old man should have
+so much blood in him." "I know nothing," he exclaims, "so pathetic in
+discourse as that woman's silence and the movement of her hands. What an
+image of remorse!"[272]
+
+It was not to be expected that Diderot should indulge in those
+undiscriminating superlatives about Shakespeare which are common in
+Shakespeare's country. But he knew enough about him to feel that he was
+dealing with a giant. "I will not compare Shakespeare," he said, "to the
+Belvedere Apollo, nor to the Gladiator, nor to Antinous"--he had
+compared Terence to the Medicean Venus--"but to the Saint Christopher of
+Notre Dame, an unshapely colossus, rudely carven, but between whose legs
+we could all pass without our brows touching him."[273] Not very
+satisfactory recognition perhaps; but the Saint Christopher is better
+than Voltaire's drunken savage.
+
+It is not every dramatist who treats the art of acting as seriously as
+the art of composition. The great author of _Wilhelm Meister_ is the
+most remarkable exception to this rule, and Lessing is only second to
+him. It is hardly possible for a man to be a great dramatist, and it is
+simply impossible for a man to be a great critic of the drama, who has
+not seriously studied the rules, aims, and conditions of stage
+representation. Hazlitt, for instance, has written some admirable pages
+about the poetry, the imaginative conception, the language, of
+Shakespeare's plays, but we find his limit when he says that King Lear
+is so noble a play that he cannot bear to see it acted. As if a play
+could be fully judged without reference to the conditions of the very
+object with which it was written. A play is to be criticised as a play,
+not merely as a poem. The whole structure of a piece depends on the fact
+that it is to be acted; its striking moments must be great dramatic, not
+merely beautiful poetic, moments. They must have the intensity of pitch
+by which the effect of action exceeds the effect of narrative. This
+intensity is made almost infinitely variable with the variations in the
+actor's mastery of his art.
+
+Diderot, who threw so penetrating a glance into every subject that he
+touched, even if it were no more than a glance, has left a number of
+excellent remarks on histrionics. The key to them all is his everlasting
+watchword: _Watch nature, follow her simple, and spontaneous leading_.
+The Paradox on the Player is one of the very few of Diderot's pieces of
+which we can say that, besides containing vigorous thought, it has real
+finish in point of literary form. There is not the flat tone, the heavy
+stroke, the loose shamble, that give a certain stamp of commonness to so
+many of his most elaborate discussions. In the Paradox the thoughts seem
+to fall with rapidity and precision into their right places; they are
+direct; they are not overloaded with qualifications; their clear
+delivery is not choked by a throng of asides and casual ejaculations.
+Usually Diderot writes as if he were loath to let the sentence go, and
+to allow the paragraph to come to an end. Here he lays down his
+proposition, and without rambling passes on to the next. The effort is
+not kept up quite to the close, for the last half dozen pages have the
+ordinary clumsy mannerism of their author.
+
+What is the Paradox? That a player of the first rank must have much
+judgment, self-possession, and penetration, _but no sensibility_. An
+actor with nothing but sense and judgment is apt to be cold; but an
+actor with nothing but verve and sensibility is crazy. It is a certain
+temperament of good sense and warmth combined, that makes the sublime
+player.[274] Why should he differ from the poet, the painter, the
+orator, the musician? It is not in the fury of the first impulse that
+characteristic strokes occur to any of these men; it is in moments when
+they are tranquil and cool, and such strokes come by an unexpected
+inspiration.[275] It is for coolness to temper the delirium of
+enthusiasm. It is not the violent man who is beside himself that
+disposes of us; that is an advantage reserved for the man who possesses
+himself. The great poets, the great actors, and perhaps generally all
+the great imitators of nature, whatever they may be, are gifted with a
+fine imagination, a great judgment, a subtle tact, a sure taste, but
+they are creatures of the smallest sensibility. They are equally well
+fitted for too many things; they are too busy in looking, in
+recognising, and in imitating, to be violently affected within
+themselves. Sensibility is hardly the quality of a great genius. He will
+have justice; but he will practise it without reaping all the sweetness
+of it. It is not his heart, but his head, that does it all. Well, then,
+what I insist upon, says Diderot, is that it is extreme sensibility that
+makes mediocre actors; it is mediocre sensibility that makes bad actors;
+and it is the absolute want of sensibility that prepares actors who
+shall be sublime.[276]
+
+This is worked out with great clearness and decision, and some of the
+illustrations to which he resorts to lighten the dialogue are amusing
+enough. Perhaps the most interesting to us English is his account of
+Garrick, whose acquaintance he made towards the year 1765. He says that
+he saw Garrick pass his head between two folding doors, and in the space
+of a few seconds, his face went successively from mad joy to moderate
+joy, from that to tranquillity, from tranquillity to surprise, from
+surprise to astonishment, from astonishment to gloom, from gloom to
+utter dejection, from dejection to fear, from fear to horror, from
+horror to despair, and then reascend from this lowest degree to the
+point whence he had started.[277]
+
+Of course his soul felt none of these emotions. "If you asked this
+famous man, who by himself was as well worth a journey to England to
+see, as all the wonders of Rome are worth a journey to Italy, if you
+asked him, I say, for the scene of _The Little Baker's Boy_, he played
+it; if you asked him the next minute for the scene from _Hamlet_, he
+played that too for you, equally ready to sob over the fall of his pies,
+and to follow the path of the dagger in the air."[278]
+
+Apart from the central proposition, Diderot makes a number of excellent
+observations which show his critical faculty at its best. As, for
+example, in answering the question, what is the truth of the stage? Is
+it to show things exactly as they are in nature? By no means. The true
+in that sense would only be the common. The really true is the
+conformity of action, speech, countenance, voice, movement, gesture,
+with an ideal model imagined by the poet, and often exaggerated by the
+player. And the marvel is that this model influences not only the tone,
+but the whole carriage and gait. Again, what is the aim of multiplied
+rehearsals? To establish a balance among the different talents of the
+actors. The supreme excellence of one actor does not recompense you for
+the mediocrity of the others, which is brought by that very superiority
+into disagreeable prominence. Again, accent is easier to imitate than
+movement, but movements are what strike us most violently. Hence a law
+to which there is no exception, namely, under pain of being cold, to
+make your denouement an action and not a narrative.[279]
+
+One of the strongest satires on the reigning dramatic style, Diderot
+found in the need that the actor had of the mirror. The fewer gestures,
+he said, the better; frequent gesticulation impairs energy and destroys
+nobleness. It is the countenance, the eyes, it is the whole body that
+ought to move, and not the arms.[280] There is no maxim more forgotten
+by poets than that which says that great passions are mute. It depends
+on the player to produce a greater effect by silence than the poet can
+produce by all his fine speeches.[281] Above all, the player is to study
+tranquil scenes, for it is these that are the most truly difficult. He
+commends a young actress to play every morning, by way of orisons, the
+scene of Athalie with Joas; to say for evensong some scenes of Agrippina
+with Nero; and for Benedicite the first scene of Ph�dra with her
+confidante. Especially there is to be little emphasis--a warning
+grievously needed by ninety-nine English speakers out of a hundred--for
+emphasis is hardly ever natural; it is only a forced imitation of
+nature.[282]
+
+Diderot had perceived very early that the complacency with which his
+countrymen regarded the national theatre was extravagant. He would not
+allow a comparison between the conventional classic of the French stage
+and the works of the Greek stage. He insisted in the case of the Greeks
+that their subjects are noble, well chosen, and interesting; that the
+action seems to develop itself spontaneously; that their dialogue is
+simple and very close to what is natural; that the d�nouements are not
+forced; that the interest is not divided nor the action overloaded with
+episodes. In the French classic he found none of these merits. He found
+none of that truth which is the only secret of pleasing and touching us;
+none of that simple and natural movement which is the only path to
+perfect and unbroken illusion. The dialogue is all emphasis, wit,
+glitter; all a thousand leagues away from nature. Instead of
+artificially giving to their characters _esprit_ at every point, poets
+ought to place them in such situations as will give it to them. Where in
+the world did men and women ever speak as we declaim? Why should princes
+and kings walk differently from any man who walks well? Did they then
+gesticulate like raving madmen? Do princesses when they speak utter
+sharp hissings?
+
+People believe us to have brought tragedy to a high degree of
+perfection. It is not so. Of all kinds of literature it is the most
+imperfect.[283]
+
+The ideas which appeared thus incongruously in the tales of 1748
+reappeared in the direct essays on the drama in 1757 and 1758. We have
+left nothing undone, he said, to corrupt dramatic style. We have
+preserved from the ancients that emphasis of versification which was so
+well fitted to languages of strong quantity and marked accent, to vast
+theatres, to a declamation that had an instrumental accompaniment; and
+then we have given up simplicity of plot and dialogue, and all truth of
+situation.[284] La Motte nearly fifty years before had attacked the
+pseudo-classic drama. He had inveighed against the unities, against long
+monologues, against the device of confidants, and against verse. His
+assault, in which he had the powerful aid of Fontenelle, was part of
+that battle between Moderns and Ancients with which the literary
+activity of the century had opened. The brilliant success of the
+tragedies of Voltaire had restored the lustre of the conventional drama,
+though Voltaire infused an element of the romantic under the severity of
+the old forms. But the drama had become even less like Sophocles and
+Euripides in _Za�re_ than in _Ph�dre_ or _Iphig�nie_. Voltaire intended
+to constitute the French drama into an independent form. He expected to
+be told that he was not like Sophocles, and he did not abstain from some
+singularly free railing against Euripides. The Greek pieces often
+smacked too much of the tone of the fair to satisfy him; they were too
+familiar and colloquial for a taste that had been made fastidious by the
+court-pieces of Lewis XIV. Diderot was kept free from such deplorable
+criticism as this by feeling that the Greek drama was true to the
+sentiment of the age that gave it birth, and that the French drama, if
+not in the hands of Racine, still even in the hands of Voltaire, and
+much more in the hands of such men as Lagrange-Chancel and the elder
+Cr�billon, was true to no sentiment save one purely literary,
+artificial, and barren. He insists on the hopelessness of the stage,
+unless men prepared themselves at every part for a grand return to
+nature. We have seen what is his counsel to the actor. He preaches in
+the same key to the scene-painter and the maker of costumes.
+Scene-painting ought to be more rigorously true than any other kind of
+picture. Let there be no distraction, no extraneous suggestion, to
+interfere with the impression intended by the poet. Have you a salon to
+represent? Let it be that of a man of taste and no more: no ostentation
+and no gilding, unless the situation expressly demands the contrary.
+
+In the dresses the same rule holds good. Under robes that are overladen
+with gold lace, I only see a rich man; what I want to see is a man.
+Pretty and simple draperies of severe tints are what we need, not a
+mass of tinsel and embroidery. "A courageous actress has just got rid of
+her panier, and nobody has found her any the worse for it. Ah, if she
+only dared one day to show herself on the stage with all the nobility
+and simplicity of adjustment that her characters demand; nay, in the
+disorder into which she would be thrown by an event so terrible as the
+death of a husband, the loss of a son, and the other catastrophes of the
+tragic stage, what would become, round her dishevelled figure, of all
+those powdered, curled, frizzled, tricked-out creatures? Sooner or later
+they must put themselves in unison. O nature, nature! We can never
+resist her."[285]
+
+From all this we turn, for a few moments only, and not too cheerfully,
+to the Serbonian bog of dramatic rules and the metaphysics of the
+theatre. There is no subject in literature, not even the interpretation
+of the Apocalypse, which has given birth to such pedantic, dismal, and
+futile discussion. The immense controversy, carried on in books,
+pamphlets, sheets and flying articles, mostly German, as to what it was
+that Aristotle really meant by the famous words in the sixth chapter of
+the _Poetics_, about tragedy accomplishing the purification of our moods
+of pity and sympathetic fear, is one of the disgraces of human
+intelligence, a grotesque monument of sterility. The great tap-root of
+fallacy has been and remains the incessant imputation of ethical or
+social purpose to the dramatist, and the demand of direct and combined
+ethical or social effect from the drama. There is no critic, from the
+great Aristotle downwards, who has steered quite clear of these evil
+shallows; Diderot, as we have seen, least of all. But Diderot disarms
+the impatience which narrower critics kindle, by this magnificent
+concession, coming at the close of all: "Especially remember that _there
+is no general principle;_ I do not know a single one of those that I
+have indicated which a man of genius cannot infringe with success."[286]
+Here we listen to the voice of the genuine Diderot; and if this be
+granted, we need not give more than a passing attention to the rules
+that have gone before--about the danger of borrowing in the same
+composition the shades both of the comic and of the tragic styles; about
+movement being injurious to dignity, and of the importance therefore of
+not making the principal personage the _machinist_ of the piece; about
+the inexpediency of episodic personages--and so forth. The only remark
+worth making on these propositions is that, whatever their value may be,
+Diderot at any rate, like a true philosopher, generalised from the facts
+of nature and art. He did not follow the too common critical method of
+reading one's own ideas into a work of art, and then taking them back
+again in the more imposing form of inevitable deductions from the work
+itself.
+
+What Diderot conceived himself really to have done, was to have sketched
+and constituted a new species in the great dramatic kingdom. Every one
+knows, he said, that there is tragedy and that there is comedy, but we
+have to learn that there is room in nature and the art of the stage for
+a third division, namely, the _genre s�rieux_, a kind of comedy that has
+for its object virtue and the duties of man. Why should the writer of
+comedy confine his work to what is vicious or ridiculous in men? Why
+should not the duties of men furnish the dramatist with as ample
+material as their vices? Surely in the _genre honn�te et s�rieux_ the
+subject is as important as in gay comedy. The characters are as varied
+and as original. The passions are all the more energetic as the interest
+will be greater. The style will be graver, loftier, more forcible, more
+susceptible of what we call sentiment, a quality without which no style
+ever yet spoke to the heart. The ridiculous will not be absent, for the
+madness of actions and speeches, when they are suggested by the
+misunderstanding of interests or by the transport of passion, is the
+truly ridiculous thing in men and in life.[287]
+
+Besides his own two pieces, Diderot would probably have pointed to
+Terence as the author coming nearest to the _genre s�rieux_. If Goethe's
+bad play of _Stella_ had retained the close as he originally wrote it,
+with the bigamous Fernando in the last scene rejoicing over the devoted
+agreement of the two ladies and his daughter to live with him in happy
+unity, that would perhaps have been a comedy of the _genre s�rieux_,
+with the duties of man gracefully adapted to circumstances.
+
+The theory of the _genre s�rieux_ has not led to the formation of any
+school of writers adopting it and working it out, or to the production
+of any masterpiece that has held its ground, as has happened in tragedy,
+comedy, and farce. Beaumarchais, who at last achieved such a dazzling
+and portentous success by one dramatic masterpiece, began his career as
+a playwright by following the vein of _The Father of the Family;_ but
+_The Marriage of Figaro_, though not without strong traces of Diderotian
+sentiment in pungent application, yet is in its structure and
+composition less French than Spanish. It is quite true, as Rosenkranz
+says, that the prevailing taste on the French stage in our own times
+favours above all else bourgeois romantic comedy, written in prose.[288]
+But the strength of the romantic element in them would have been as
+little satisfactory to Diderot's love of realistic moralising as the
+conventional tragedy of the court of Lewis XIV. The Fable of most of
+them turns on adultery, and this is not within the method of the _genre
+s�rieux_ as expounded by Diderot. Perhaps half a dozen comedies, such,
+for instance, as _The Ideas of Madame Aubray,_ by M. Dumas, are of the
+_genre s�rieux_, but certainly there are not enough of such comedies to
+constitute a genuine Diderotian school in France. There is no need
+therefore to say more about the theory than this, namely, that though
+the drama is an imitative art, yet besides imitation its effects demand
+illusion. What, cries Diderot, you do not conceive the effect that would
+be produced on you by a real scene, with real dresses, with speech in
+true proportion to the action, with the actions themselves simple, with
+the very dangers that have made you tremble for your parents, for your
+friends, for yourselves? No, we answer: reproduction of reality does not
+move us as a powerful work of imagination moves us. "We may as well
+urge," said Burke, "that stones, sand, clay, and metals lie in a certain
+manner in the earth, as a reason for building with these materials and
+in that manner, as for writing according to the accidental disposition
+of characters in Nature."[289] Common dangers do not excite us; it is
+the presentation of danger in some uncommon form, in some new
+combination, in some fresh play of motive and passion, that quickens
+that sympathetic fear and pity which it is the end of a play to produce.
+And if this be so, there is another thing to be said. If we are to be
+deliberately steeped in the atmosphere of Duty, illusion is out of
+place. The constant presence of that severe and overpowering figure,
+"Stern Daughter of the Voice of God," checks the native wildness of
+imagination, restricts the exuberance of fancy, and sets a rigorous
+limit to invention. Diderot used to admit that the _genre s�rieux_ could
+never take its right place until it had been handled by a man of high
+dramatic genius. The cause why this condition has never come to pass is
+simply that its whole structure and its regulations repel the faculties
+of dramatic genius.
+
+Besides the perfection of the _genre s�rieux_, Diderot insisted that the
+following tasks were also to be achieved before the stage could be said
+to have attained the full glory of the other arts. First, a domestic or
+bourgeois tragedy must be created. Second, the conditions of men, their
+callings and situations, the types of classes, in short, must be
+substituted for mere individual characters. Third, a real tragedy must
+be introduced upon the lyric theatre. Finally, the dance must be brought
+within the forms of a true poem.
+
+The only remark to be made upon this scheme touches the second article
+of it. To urge the substitution of types of classes for individual
+character was the very surest means that could have been devised for
+bringing back the conventional forms of the pseudo-classic drama. The
+very mark of that drama was that it introduced types instead of
+vigorously stamped personalities. What would be gained by driving the
+typical king off the stage, only to make room for the generalisation of
+a shopkeeper? This was not the path that led to romanticism, to Andr�
+Chenier, to De Vigny, to Lamartine, to Victor Hugo. Th�ophile Gautier
+has told us that the fiery chiefs of the romantic school who suddenly
+conquered France at the close of the Restoration, divided the whole
+world into _flamboyant_ and _drab_. In the literature of the past they
+counted Voltaire one of the Drab, and Diderot a Flamboyant.[290] If it
+be not too presumptuous in a foreigner to dissent, we cannot but think
+that they were mistaken. Nothing could be farther removed at every part
+from Diderot's dramatic scheme, than _Faust_ or _G�tz von Berlichingen_
+or _Hernani_.
+
+The truth is that it was impossible for an effective antagonism to the
+classic school to rise in the mind of an Encyclop�dist, for the reason
+that the Encyclop�dists hated and ignored what they called the Dark
+Ages. Yet it was exactly the Dark Ages from which the great romantic
+revival drew its very life-breath. "In the eighteenth century," it has
+been said, "it was really the reminiscence of the classic spirit which
+was awakened in the newer life of Europe, and made prominent."[291] This
+is true in a certain historic sense of Rousseau's politics, and perhaps
+of Voltaire's rationalism. In spite of the vein of mysticism which
+occasionally shows in him, it is true in some degree of Diderot himself,
+if by classicism we mean the tendency to make man the centre of the
+universe. Classicism treats man as worthy and great, living his life
+among cold and neutral forces. This is the very opposite of the
+sinfulness, imperfection, and nothingness habitually imputed to man, and
+the hourly presence of a whole hierarchy of busy supernatural agents
+placed about man by the Middle Ages. Yet we cannot but see that Diderot
+was feeling for dramatic forms and subjects that would have been as
+little classic as romantic. He failed in the search. There is one play
+and only one of his epoch that is not classic, and is not romantic, but
+speaks independently the truest and best mind of the eighteenth century
+itself, in its own form and language. That play is _Nathan the Wise_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+RAMEAU'S NEPHEW.
+
+
+In hypochondriacal moments, it has been said, the world, viewed from the
+�sthetic side, appears to many a one a cabinet of caricatures; from the
+intellectual side, a madhouse; and from the moral side, a harbouring
+place for rascals.[292] We might perhaps extend this saying beyond the
+accidents of hypochondriasis, and urge that the few wide, profound, and
+real observers of human life have all known, and known often, this
+fantastic consciousness of living in a strange distorted universe of
+lunatics, knaves, grotesques. It is an inevitable mood to any who dare
+to shake the kaleidoscopic fragments out of their conventional and
+accepted combination. Who does not remember deep traces of such a mood
+in Plato, Shakespeare, Pascal, Goethe? And Diderot, who went near to
+having something of the deep quality of those sovereign spirits, did not
+escape, any more than they, the visitation of the misanthropic spectre.
+The distinction of the greater minds is that they have no temptation to
+give the spectre a permanent home with them, as is done by theologians
+in order to prove the necessity of grace and another world, or by
+cynics in order to prove the wisdom of selfishness in this world. The
+greater minds accept the worse facts of character for what they are
+worth, and bring them into a right perspective with the better facts.
+They have no expectation of escaping all perplexities, nor of hitting on
+answers to all the moral riddles of the world. Yet are they ever drawn
+by an invincible fascination to the feet of the mighty Sphinx of
+society. She bewilders them with questions that are never overheard by
+common ears, and torments them with a mockery that is unobserved by
+common eyes. The energetic--a Socrates, a Diderot--cannot content
+themselves with merely recording her everlasting puzzles; still less
+with merely writing over again the already recorded answers. They insist
+on scrutinising the moral world afresh; they resolve the magniloquent
+vocabulary of abstract ethics into the small realities from which it has
+come; they break the complacent repose of opinion and usage by a graphic
+irony. "The definitions of moral beings," said Diderot, "are always made
+from what such beings ought to be, and never from what they are. People
+incessantly confound duty with the thing as it is."[293] We shall
+proceed to give a short account of one or two dialogues in which he
+endeavours to keep clear of this confusion.
+
+By far the most important of these is _Rameau's Nephew_. The fortunes
+of this singular production are probably unique in literary history. In
+the year 1804 Schiller handed to Goethe the manuscript of a piece by
+Diderot, with the wish that he might find himself able to translate it
+into German. "As I had long," says Goethe, "cherished a great regard
+for this author, I cheerfully undertook the task, after looking through
+the original. People can see, I hope, that I threw my whole soul into
+it."[294] When he had done his work, he returned the manuscript to
+Schiller. Schiller died almost immediately (May 1805), and the
+mysterious manuscript disappeared. Goethe could never learn either
+whence it had come, or whither it went. He always suspected that the
+autograph original had been sent to the Empress Catherine at St.
+Petersburg, and that Schiller's manuscript was a copy from that. Though
+Goethe had executed his translation, as he says, "not merely with
+readiness but even with passion," the violent and only too just hatred
+then prevailing in Germany for France and for all that belonged to
+France, hindered any vogue which _Rameau's Nephew_ might otherwise have
+had. On the eve of Austerlitz and of Jena there might well be little
+humour for a satire from the French.
+
+Thirteen years afterwards an edition of Diderot's works appeared in
+Paris (Belin's edition of 1818), but the editors were obliged to content
+themselves, for _Rameau's Nephew_, with an analysis of Goethe's
+translation. In 1821 a lively sensation was produced by the publication
+of what professed to be the original text of the missing dialogue. It
+was really a retranslation into French from Goethe. The fraud was not
+discovered for some time, until in 1823 Bri�re announced for his edition
+of Diderot's works a reprint from a genuine original. This original he
+had procured from Madame de Vandeul, Diderot's daughter, who still
+survived. She described it as a copy made in 1760 under the author's own
+eyes, and this may have been the case, though, if so, it must, from some
+of the references, have been revised after 1773. The two young men who
+had tried to palm off their retranslation from Goethe as Diderot's own
+text, at once had the effrontery to accuse Bri�re and Diderot's daughter
+of repeating their own fraud. A vivacious dispute followed between the
+indignant publisher and his impudent detractors. At length Bri�re
+appealed to the great Jove of Weimar. Goethe expressed his conviction
+that Bri�re's text was the genuine text of the original, and this was
+held to settle the question. Yet Goethe's voucher for its correspondence
+with the copy handed to him by Schiller was not really decisive
+evidence. He admits that he executed the translation very rapidly, and
+had no time to compare it closely with the French. An identification
+nearly twenty years afterwards of verbal resemblances and minute
+references, in a work that had been only a short time in his hands,
+cannot be counted testimony of the highest kind. We have thus the
+extraordinary circumstance that for a great number of years, down almost
+to the present decade, the text of the one masterpiece of a famous man
+who died so recently as 1784 rested on a single manuscript, and that a
+manuscript of disputed authenticity.[295]
+
+Critics differ extremely in their answers to the question of the subject
+or object of Diderot's singular "farce-tragedy." One declares it to be
+merely a satirical picture of contemporary manners. Another insists that
+it is meant to be an ironical _reductio ad absurdum_ of the theory of
+self-interest, by exhibiting a concrete example of its working in all
+its grossness. A third holds that it was composed by way of rejoinder to
+Palissot's comedy _(Les Philosophes_), 1760, which had brought the
+chiefs of the rationalistic school upon the stage, and presented them as
+enemies of the human race. A fourth suspects that the personal and
+dramatic portions are no more than a setting for the discussion of the
+comparative merits of the French and Italian schools of music. The true
+answer is that the dialogue is all of these things, because it is none
+of them. It is neither more nor less than the living picture and account
+of an original, drawn by a man of genius who was accustomed to observe
+human nature and society with a free unblinking vision, and to meditate
+upon them deeply and searchingly.
+
+Diderot goes to work with Rameau in some sort and to a certain extent
+as Shakespeare went to work with Falstaff. He is the artist, reproducing
+with the variety and perfection of art a whimsical figure that struck
+his fancy and stirred the creative impulse. Ethics, �sthetics, manners,
+satire, are all indeed to be found in the dialogue, but they are only
+there as incident to the central figure of the sketch, the prodigy of
+parasites. Diderot had no special fondness for these originals. Yet he
+had a keen and just sense of their interest. "Their character stands out
+from the rest of the world, it breaks that tiresome uniformity which our
+bringing up, our social conventions, and our arbitrary fashions have
+introduced. If one of them makes his appearance in a company, he is like
+leaven, fermenting and restoring to each person present a portion of his
+natural individuality. He stirs people up, moves them, provokes to
+praise or blame: he is a means of bringing out reality; gives honest
+people a chance of showing what they are made of, and unmasks the
+rogues."[296]
+
+Hearing that the subject of Diderot's dialogue is the Parasite, the
+scholar will naturally think of that savage satire in which Juvenal
+rehearses the thousand humiliations that Virro inflicts on Trebius: how
+the wretched follower has to drink fiery stuff from broken crockery,
+while the patron quaffs of the costliest from splendid cups of amber and
+precious stones; how the host has fine oil of Venafrum, while the guest
+munches cabbage that has been steeped in rancid lamp-oil; one plays
+daintily with mullet and lamprey, while the other has his stomach turned
+by an eel as long as a snake, and bloated in the foul torrent of the
+sewers; Virro has apples that might have come from the gardens of the
+Hesperides, while Trebius gnaws such musty things as are tossed to a
+performing monkey on the town wall. But the distance is immeasurable
+between Juvenal's scorching truculence and Diderot's half-ironical,
+half-serious sufferance. Juvenal knows that Trebius is a base and abject
+being; he tells him what he is; and in the process blasts him. Diderot
+knows that Rameau too is base and abject, but he is so little willing to
+rest in the fat and easy paradise of conventions, that he seems to be
+all the time vaguely wondering in his own mind how far this genius of
+grossness and paradox and bestial sophism is a pattern of the many, with
+the mask thrown off. He seems to be inwardly musing whether it can after
+all be true, that if one draws aside a fold of the gracious outer robe
+of conformity, there is no comeliness of life shining underneath, but
+only this horror of the skeleton and the worm. He restrains exasperation
+at the brilliant effrontery of his man, precisely as an anatomist would
+suppress disgust at a pathological monstrosity, or an astonishing
+variation in which he hoped to surprise some vital secret. Rameau is not
+crudely analysed as a vile type: he is searched as exemplifying on a
+prodigious scale elements of character that lie furtively in the depths
+of characters that are not vile. It seems as if Diderot unconsciously
+anticipated that terrible, that woful, that desolating saying,--_There
+is in every man and woman something which, if you knew it, would make
+you hate them_. Rameau is not all parasite. He is your brother and mine,
+a product from the same rudimentary factors of mental composition, a
+figure cast equally with ourselves in one of the countless moulds of the
+huge social foundry.
+
+Such is the scientific attitude of mind towards character: It is not
+philanthropic nor pitiful: the fact that base characters exist and are
+of intelligible origin is no reason why we should not do our best to
+shun and to extirpate them. This assumption of the scientific point of
+view, this change from mere praise and blame to scrutiny, this
+comprehension that mere execration is not the last word, is a mark of
+the modern spirit. Besides Juvenal, another writer of genius has shown
+us the parasite of an ancient society. Lucian, whose fertility, wit,
+invention, mockery, freshness of spirit, and honest hatred of false
+gods, make him the Voltaire of the second century, has painted with all
+his native liveliness more than one picture of the parasite. The great
+man's creature at Rome endures exactly the same long train of affronts
+and humiliations as the great man's creature at Paris sixteen centuries
+later, beginning with the anguish of the mortified stomach, as savoury
+morsels of venison or boar are given to more important guests, and
+ending with the anguish of the mortified spirit, as he sees himself
+supplanted by a rival of shapelier person, a more ingenious versifier, a
+cleverer mountebank. The dialogue in which Lucian ironically proves
+that Parasitic, or the honourable craft of Spunging, has as many of the
+marks of a genuine art as Rhetoric, Gymnastic, or Music, is a spirited
+parody of Socratic catechising and Platonic mannerisms. Simo shows to
+Tychiades, as ingeniously as Rameau shows to Diderot, that the Spunger
+has a far better life of it, and is a far more rational and consistent
+person than the orator and the philosopher.[297] Lucian's satire is
+vivid, brilliant, and diverting. Yet every one feels that Diderot's
+performance, while equally vivid, is marked by greater depth of spirit;
+comes from a soil that has been more freely broken up, and has been
+enriched by a more copious experience. The ancient turned upon these
+masterpieces of depravation the flash of intellectual scorn; the modern
+eyes them with a certain moral patience, and something of that curious
+kind of interest, looking half like sympathy, which a hunter has for the
+object of his chase.
+
+The Rameau of the dialogue was a real personage, and there is a dispute
+whether Diderot has not calumniated him. Evidence enough remains that he
+was at least a person of singular character and irregular disastrous
+life. Diderot's general veracity of temperament would make us believe
+that his picture is authentic, but the interest of the dialogue is
+exactly the same in either case. Juvenal's fifth satire would be worth
+neither more nor less, however much were found out about Trebius.
+
+"Rameau is one of the most eccentric figures in the country, where God
+has not made them lacking. He is a mixture of elevation and lowness, of
+good sense and madness; the notions of good and bad must be mixed up
+together in strange confusion in his head, for he shows the good
+qualities that nature has bestowed on him without any ostentation, and
+the bad ones without the smallest shame. For the rest, he is endowed
+with a vigorous frame, a particular warmth of imagination, and an
+uncommon strength of lungs. If you ever meet him, unless you happen to
+be arrested by his originality, you will either stuff your fingers into
+your ears or else take to your heels. Heavens, what a monstrous pipe!
+Nothing is so little like him as himself. One time he is lean and wan,
+like a patient in the last stage of consumption: you could count his
+teeth through his cheeks; you would say he must have passed some days
+without tasting a morsel, or that he is fresh from La Trappe. A month
+after, he is stout and sleek as if he had been sitting all the time at
+the board of a financier, or had been shut up in a Bernardine monastery.
+To-day in dirty linen, his clothes torn and patched, with barely a shoe
+to his foot, he steals along with a bent head; one is tempted to hail
+him and toss him a shilling. To-morrow, all powdered, curled, in a good
+coat, he marches about with head erect and open mien, and you would
+almost take him for a decent worthy creature. He lives from day to day,
+from hand to mouth, downcast or sad, just as things may go. His first
+care of a morning when he gets up is to know where he will dine; after
+dinner, he begins to think where he may pick up a supper. Night brings
+disquiets of its own. Either he climbs to a shabby garret he has, unless
+the landlady, weary of waiting for her rent, has taken the key away from
+him; or else he shrinks to some tavern on the outskirts of the town,
+where he waits for daybreak over a crust of bread and a mug of beer.
+When he has not threepence in his pocket, as sometimes happens, he has
+recourse either to a hackney-carriage belonging to a friend, or to a
+coachman of some man of quality, who gives him a bed on the straw beside
+the horses. In the morning he still has bits of the mattress in his
+hair. If the weather is mild, he measures the Champs Elys�es all night
+long. With the day he reappears in the town, dressed over night for the
+morrow, and from the morrow sometimes dressed for the rest of the week."
+
+Diderot is accosted by this curious being one afternoon on a bench in
+front of the Caf� de la R�gence in the Palais Royal. They proceed in the
+thoroughly natural and easy manner of interlocutors in a Platonic
+dialogue. It is not too much to say that _Rameau's Nephew_ is the most
+effective and masterly use of that form of discussion since Plato.
+Diderot's vein of realism is doubtless in strong contrast with Plato's
+poetic and idealising touch. Yet imaginative strokes are not wanting to
+soften the repulsive theme, and to bring the sordid and the foul within
+the sphere of art. For an example. "Time has passed," says Rameau, "and
+that is always so much gained."
+
+"_I._--So much lost, you mean.
+
+"_He._--No, no; gained. People grow rich every moment; a day less to
+live, or a crown piece to the good, 'tis all one. When the last moment
+comes, one is as rich as another. Samuel Bernard, who by pillaging and
+stealing and playing bankrupt, leaves seven-and-twenty million francs in
+gold, is no better than Rameau, who leaves not a penny, and will be
+indebted to charity for a shroud to wrap about him. The dead man hears
+not the tolling of the bell; 'tis in vain that a hundred priests bawl
+dirges for him, in vain that a long file of blazing torches go before.
+His soul walks not by the side of the master of the funeral ceremonies.
+To moulder under marble, or to moulder under clay, 'tis still to
+moulder. To have around one's bier children in red and children in blue,
+or to have not a creature, what matters it?"
+
+These are the gleams of the _mens divinior_, that relieve the perplexing
+moral squalor of the portrait. Even here we have the painful innuendo
+that a thought which is solemnising and holy to the noble, serves
+equally well to point a trait of cynical defiance in the ignoble.
+
+Again, there is an indirectly imaginative element in the sort of terror
+which the thoroughness of the presentation inspires. For indeed it is an
+emotion hardly short of terror that seizes us, as we listen to the
+stringent unflinching paradox of this heterogeneous figure. Rameau is
+the squalid and tattered Satan of the eighteenth century. He is a
+Mephistopheles out at elbows, a Lucifer in low water; yet always
+diabolic, with the bright flash of the pit in his eye. Disgust is
+transformed into horror and affright by the trenchant confidence of his
+spirit, the daring thoroughness and consistency of his dialectic, the
+lurid sarcasm, the vile penetration. He discusses a horrible action, or
+execrable crime, as a virtuoso examines a statue or a painting. He has
+that rarest fortitude of the vicious, not to shrink from calling his
+character and conduct by their names. He is one of Swift's Yahoos, with
+the courage of its opinions. He seems to give one reason for hating and
+dreading oneself. The effect is of mixed fear and fascination, as of a
+magician whose miraculous crystal is to show us what and how we shall
+be twenty years from now; or as when a surgeon tells the tale of some
+ghastly disorder, that may at the very moment be stealthily preparing
+for us a doom of anguish.
+
+Hence our dialogue is assuredly no "meat for little people nor for
+fools." Some of it is revolting in its brutal indecency. Even Goethe's
+self-possession cannot make it endurable to him. But it is a study to be
+omitted by no one who judges the corruption of the old society in France
+an important historic subject. The picture is very like the corruption
+of the old society in Rome. We see the rotten material which the
+purifying flame of Jacobinism was soon to consume out of the land with
+fiery swiftness. We watch the very classes from which, as we have been
+so often told, the regeneration of France would have come, if only
+demagogues and rabble had not violently interposed. There is no gaiety
+in the style; none of that laughter which makes such a delineation of
+the manners of the time as we find in Coll�'s play of _Truth in Wine_,
+_na�f_, true to nature, and almost exhilarating. In _Rameau_ we are
+afflicted by the odour of deadly taint.
+
+As the dialogue is not in every hand--nor could any one wish that it
+should be--I have thought it worth while to print an English rendering
+of a considerable part of it in an appendix. Mr. Carlyle told us long
+ago that it must be translated into English, and although such a piece
+of work is less simple than it may seem, it appears right to give the
+reader an opportunity of judging for himself of the flavour of the most
+characteristic of all Diderot's performances. Only let no reader turn to
+it who has any invincible repugnance to that curious turn for
+_wildbret_, which Goethe has described as the secret of some arts.
+
+    Dixeris h�c inter varicosos centuriones,
+    Continuo crassum ridet Pulfenius ingens
+    Et centum Gr�cos curto centusse licebit.
+
+As I have already said, it must be judged as something more than a
+literary diversion. "You do not suspect, Sir Philosopher," says Rameau,
+"that at this moment I represent the most important part of the town and
+the court." As the painter of the picture says, Rameau confessed the
+vices that he had, and that most of the people about us have; but he was
+no hypocrite. He was neither more nor less abominable than they; he was
+only more frank and systematic and profound in his depravity. This is
+the social significance of the dialogue. This is what, apart from other
+considerations, makes _Rameau's Nephew_ so much more valuable a guide to
+the moral sentiment of the time than merely licentious compositions like
+those of Louvet or La Olos. Its instructiveness is immense to those who
+examine the conditions that prepared the Revolution. Rameau is not the
+[Greek: akolastos] of Aristotle, nor the creature of [Greek: aponoia]
+described by Theophrastus--the castaway by individual idiosyncrasy, the
+reprobate by accident. The men whom he represented, the courtiers, the
+financiers, the merchants, the shopkeepers, were immoral by formula and
+depraved on principle. Vice was a doctrine to them, and wretchlessness
+of unclean living was reduced to a system of philosophy. Any one, I
+venture to repeat, who realises the extent to which this had corroded
+the ruling powers in France, will perceive that the furious flood of
+social energy which the Jacobins poured over the country was not less
+indispensable to France than the flood of the barbarians was
+indispensable for the transformation of the Roman Empire.
+
+Scattered among the more serious fragments of the dialogue is some
+excellent by-play of sarcasm upon Palissot, and one or two of the other
+assailants of the new liberal school. Palissot is an old story. The
+Palissots are an eternal species. The family never dies out, and it
+thrives in every climate. All societies know the literary dangler in
+great houses, and the purveyor to fashionable prejudices. Not that he is
+always servile. The reader, I daresay, remembers that La Bruy�re
+described a curious being in Troilus, the despotic parasite. Palissot,
+eighteenth century or nineteenth century, is often like Troilus,
+parasite and tyrant at the same time. He usually happens to have begun
+life with laudable aspirations and sincere interests of his own; and
+when, alas, the mediocrity of his gifts proves too weak to bear the
+burden of his ambitions, the recollection of a generous youth only
+serves to sour old age.
+
+    Bel esprit abhorr� de tous les bons esprits,
+    Il pense par la haine �chapper au m�pris.
+    A force d'attentats il se croit illustr�;
+    Et s'il n'�tait m�chant, il serait ignor�.
+
+Palissot began with a tragedy. He proceeded to an angry pamphlet
+against the Encyclop�dists and the fury for innovation. Then he achieved
+immense vogue among fine ladies, bishops, and the lighter heads of the
+town, by the comedy in which he held Diderot, D'Alembert, and the
+others, up to hatred and ridicule. Finally, after coming to look upon
+himself as a serious personage, he disappeared into the mire of
+half-oblivious contempt and disgust that happily awaits all the poor
+Palissots and all their works. His name only survives in connection with
+the men whom he maligned. He lived to be old, as, oddly enough, Spite so
+often does. In the Terror he had a narrow escape, for he was brought
+before Chaumette. Chaumette apostrophised the assailant of Rousseau and
+Diderot with rude energy, but did not send him to the guillotine. In
+this the practical disciple only imitated the magnanimity of his
+theoretical masters. Rousseau had declined an opportunity of punishing
+Palissot's impertinences, and Diderot took no worse vengeance upon him
+than by making an occasional reference of contempt to him in a dialogue
+which he perhaps never intended to publish.
+
+Another subject is handled in _Rameau's Nephew,_ which is interesting in
+connection with the mental activity of Paris in the eighteenth century.
+Music was the field of as much passionate controversy as theology and
+philosophy. The Bull Unigenitus itself did not lead to livelier
+disputes, or more violent cabals, than the conflict between the
+partisans of French music and the partisans of Italian music. The
+horror of a Jansenist for a Molinist did not surpass that of a Lullist
+for a Dunist, or afterwards of a Gluckist for a Piccinist.[298] Lulli
+and Rameau (the uncle of our parasite) had undisputed possession of
+Paris until the arrival, in 1752, of a company of Italian singers. The
+great quarrel at once broke out as to the true method and destination of
+musical composition. Is music an independent art, appealing directly to
+a special sense, or is it to be made an instrument for expressing
+affections of the mind in a certain deeper way? The Italians asked only
+for delicious harmonies and exquisite melodies. The French insisted that
+these should be subordinate to the work of the poet. The former were
+content with delight, the latter pressed for significance. The one
+declared that Italian music was no better than a silly tickling of the
+ears; the other that the overture to a French opera was like a prelude
+to a Miserere in plain-song. In 1772-73 the illustrious Gluck came to
+Paris. His art was believed to reconcile the two schools, to have more
+melody than the old French style, and more severity and meaning than the
+purely Italian style. French dignity was saved. But soon the old battle,
+which had been going on for twenty years, began to rage with greater
+violence than ever. Piccini was brought to Paris by the Neapolitan
+ambassador. The old cries were heard in a shriller key than before.
+Pamphlets, broadsheets, sarcasms flew over Paris from every side.
+
+Was music only to flatter the ear, or was it to paint the passions in
+all their energy, to harrow the soul, to raise men's courage, to form
+citizens and heroes? The coffee-houses were thrown into dire confusion,
+and literary societies were rent by fatal discord. Even dinner-parties
+breathed only constraint and mistrust, and the intimacies of a lifetime
+came to cruel end. _Rameau's Nephew_ was composed in the midst of the
+first part of this long campaign of a quarter of a century, and its
+seems to have been revised by its author in the midst of the second
+great episode. Diderot declares against the school of Rameau and Lulli.
+That he should do so was a part of his general reaction in favour of
+what he called the natural, against the artifice and affectation. Goethe
+has pointed out the inconsistency between Diderot's sympathy for the
+less expressive kind of music, and his usual vehement passion for the
+expressive in art. He truly observes that Diderot's sympathy went in
+this way, because the novelty and agitation seemed likely to break up
+the old, stiff, and abhorred fashion, and to clear the ground afresh for
+other efforts.[299]
+
+
+
+
+END OF VOL. I.
+
+_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_. FOOTNOTES:
+
+
+
+
+[Footnote 1: _Oeuv._, xviii. 505.]
+
+[Footnote 2: _Oeuv._, xviii. 364.]
+
+[Footnote 3: _Ib._ 379.]
+
+[Footnote 4: _Oeuv._, i. 30.]
+
+[Footnote 5: _Wahlverwandschaften_, pt. ii. ch. vii. The reader will do
+well to consult the philosophical estimate of the function of the man of
+letters given by Comte, _Philosophie Positive_, v. 512, vi. 192, 287.
+The best contemporary account of the principles and policy of the men of
+letters in the eighteenth century is to be found in Condorcet's
+_Esquisse d'un Tableau, etc._, pp. 187-189 (ed. 1847).]
+
+[Footnote 6: Naigeon, p. 24.]
+
+[Footnote 7: _Oeuv._, xix. 162.]
+
+[Footnote 8: _Oeuv._, xix. 89.]
+
+[Footnote 9: _Oeuv._, xix. 93.]
+
+[Footnote 10: _Oeuv._, i. xlviii.]
+
+[Footnote 11: Marmontel, _M�m._, vol. ii. b. vii. p. 315.]
+
+[Footnote 12: Morellet, _M�m._, i. p. 29.]
+
+[Footnote 13: _Oeuv._, i. xlviii.]
+
+[Footnote 14: _Ib._ xix. 55.]
+
+[Footnote 15: _Oeuv._, xviii. 376.]
+
+[Footnote 16: Madame de Vandeul says 1744. But M. Jal (_Dict. Crit._,
+495) reproduces the certificate of the marriage. Perhaps we may
+charitably hope that Diderot himself is equally mistaken, when in later
+years he sets down a disreputable adventure to 1744. (_Oeuv._, xix.
+85.)]
+
+[Footnote 17: For an account of Madame de Puisieux in her later years,
+see Mdme. Roland's _Memoirs_, i. 156.]
+
+[Footnote 18: Sainte Beuve, _Causeries_, ix. 136.]
+
+[Footnote 19: _Oeuv._, xix. 159. See also _Salons_, 1767, No, 118.]
+
+[Footnote 20: _Les R�gnes de Claud et de N�ron, � 79.]
+
+[Footnote 21: Account of Diderot by Meister, printed in Grimm's
+_Correspondence Litt�raire_ xiii. 202-211.]
+
+[Footnote 22: Gr�try, quoted in Genin's _Oeuv. choisies de Diderot_,
+42.]
+
+[Footnote 23: Marmontel, _M�m_., bk. vii. vol. ii. 312.]
+
+[Footnote 24: Plato, _Theages_, 130, c.]
+
+[Footnote 25: Art. _Encyclop�die_.]
+
+[Footnote 26: See Barbier's Journal, iv. 166.]
+
+[Footnote 27: The book was among those found in the possession of the
+unfortunate La Barre.]
+
+[Footnote 28: Honegger's _Kritische Geschichte der franz�sischen
+Cultureinfl�sse in den letzten Jahrhunderten_, pp. 267-273.]
+
+[Footnote 29: "Es ist nicht gleichg�ltig ob eine Folge grosser Gedanken
+in frischer Urspr�nglichkeit auf die Zeitgenossen wirkt, oder ob sie zu
+einer Mixtur mit reichlichem Zusatz �berlieferter Vorurtheile
+verarbeitet ist. Ebensowenig ist est gleichg�ltig welcher Stimmung,
+welchem Zustande der Geister eine neue Lehre begegnet. Man darf aber
+k�hn behaupten, das f�r die volle durchf�hrung der von Newton
+angebahnten Weltanschauung weder eine g�nstigere Naturanlage, noch eine
+g�nstigere Stimmung getroffen werden konnte, als die der Franzosen im
+18. Jahrhundert." (Lange's _Gesch. d. Materialismus_, i. 303.) But the
+writer, like most historians of opinion, does not dwell sufficiently on
+the co-operation of external social conditions with the progress of
+logical inference.]
+
+[Footnote 30: See Montgeron's _La Verit� des Miracles de M. de P�ris
+d�montr�e_ (1737)--an interesting contribution to the pathology of the
+human mind.]
+
+[Footnote 31: Barbier, 168, 244, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 32: _Pens�es Philosophiques_, xviii.]
+
+[Footnote 33: On this, see Lange, i. 294.]
+
+[Footnote 34: _Pens�es Philosophiques. Oeuv._, i. 128, 129.]
+
+[Footnote 35: _Oeuv._, xix. 87. Grimm, Supp. 148.]
+
+[Footnote 36: Volney, in a book that was famous in its day, _Les Ruines,
+ou M�ditation sur les r�volutions des empires_ (1791), resorted to a
+slight difference of method. Instead of leaving the pretensions of the
+various creeds to cancel one another, he invented a rather striking
+scene, in which the priests of each creed are made to listen to the
+professions of their rival, and then inveigh against his superstition
+and inconsistency. The assumption on which Diderot's argument rests is,
+that as so many different creeds all make the same exclusive claim, the
+claim is equally false throughout. Volney's argument turns more directly
+on the merits, and implies that all religions are equally morbid or
+pathological products, because they all lead to conduct condemned by
+their own most characteristic maxims. Volney's concrete presentation of
+comparative religion was highly effective for destructive purposes,
+though it would now be justly thought inadequate. (See _Oeuv. de
+Volney_, i. 109, etc.)]
+
+[Footnote 37: See on this, Lange, ii. 308.]
+
+[Footnote 38: _De la Suffisance de la Religion Naturelle_, � 5.]
+
+[Footnote 39: It is well to remember that torture was not abolished in
+France until the Revolution. A Catholic writer makes the following
+judicious remark: "We cannot study the eighteenth century without being
+struck by the immoral consequences that inevitably followed for the
+population of Paris from the frequency and the hideous details of
+criminal executions. In reading the journals of the time, we are amazed
+at the place taken in popular life by the scenes of the Gr�ve. It was
+the theatre of the day. The gibbet and the wheel did their work almost
+periodically, and people looked on while poor wretches writhed in slow
+agony all day long. Sometimes the programme was varied by decapitation
+and even by the stake. Torture had its legends and its heroes--the
+everyday talk of the generation which, having begun by seeing Damiens
+torn by red-hot pincers, was to end by rending Foulon limb from limb."
+(Carn�, _Monarchie fran�aise au 18i�me Si�cle_, p. 493.)]
+
+[Footnote 40: _Lettres sur les Anglais_, xxiii.]
+
+[Footnote 41: _Essai sur le M�rite_, I. ii. � 3. _Oeue.,_ i. 33.]
+
+[Footnote 42: "Shaftesbury is one of the most important apparitions of
+the eighteenth century. All the greatest spirits of that time, not only
+in England, but also Leibnitz, Voltaire, Diderot, Lessing, Mendelssohn,
+Wieland, and Herder, drew the strongest nourishment from him." (Hettner,
+_Literaturgeschichte des 18ten Jahrhunderts: ler Theil_. 188.) See also
+Lange's _Gesch. des Materialismus,_ i. 306, etc. An excellent account of
+Shaftesbury is given by Mr. Leslie Stephen, in his _Essays on
+Free-thinking and Plain-speaking_.]
+
+[Footnote 43: _Oeuv_., i. xlvi.]
+
+[Footnote 44: Jobez, _France sous Louis XV_., ii. 373. There were, in
+1725, 24,000 houses, 20,000 carriages, and 120,000 horses. (Martin's
+_Hist, de France_, xv. 116.)]
+
+[Footnote 45: The records of Paris in this century contain more than one
+illustration of the turbulence of this odious army of lackeys. Barbier,
+i. 118. For the way in which their insolence was fostered, see
+Saint-Simon, xii. 354, etc. The number of lackeys retained seems to have
+been extraordinarily great in proportion to the total of annual
+expenditure, and this is a curious point in the manners of the time. See
+Voltaire, _Dict. Phil_, � v. �conomie Domestique (liv. 182).]
+
+[Footnote 46: Duclos, _M�m. secrets sur le R�gne de Louis XV., iii 306.]
+
+[Footnote 47: _Oeuv_., xix. 91.]
+
+[Footnote 48: _Ib_. p. 130.]
+
+[Footnote 49: _Prom, du Sceptique. Oeuv_., i. 229.]
+
+[Footnote 50: "If there is a God, he is infinitely incomprehensible,
+since, being without parts or limits, he has no relation to us: we are
+therefore incapable of knowing what he is, or if he is. That being so,
+who shall venture to undertake the solution of the question? Not we, at
+any rate, who have no relation to him." _Pensees_, II. iii. 1.]
+
+[Footnote 51: P. 182.]
+
+[Footnote 52: P. 223.]
+
+[Footnote 53: Barbazan's _Fabliaux et Contes_, iii. 409 (ed. 1808). The
+learned Barbazan's first edition was published in 1756, and so Diderot
+may well have heard some of the contents of the work then in progress.]
+
+[Footnote 54: Naigeon.]
+
+[Footnote 55: In my _Rousseau_, p. 243 (new ed.)]
+
+[Footnote 56: _Voltaire_, p. 149 (new ed., Globe 8vo).]
+
+[Footnote 57: Joubert.]
+
+[Footnote 58: Hettner, _Literaiurgeschichte des 18ten Jahrhunderts_, ii.
+301.]
+
+[Footnote 59: _Oeuv._, ii. 260, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 60: _Oeuv._, ii. 258, 259. _De l'Essai sur les Femmes, par
+Thomas_. See Grimm's _Corr. Lit._, vii. 451, where the book is
+disparaged; and viii. 1, where Diderot's view of it is given. Thomas
+(1732-85) belonged to the philosophical party, but not to the militant
+section of it. He was a serious and orderly person in his life, and
+enjoyed the closest friendship with Madame Necker. His enthusiasm for
+virtue, justice, and freedom, expressed with much magniloquence, made
+him an idol in the respectable circle which Madame Necker gathered round
+her. He has been justly, though perhaps harshly, described as a
+"valetudinarian Grandison." (Albert's _Lit. Fran�aise au 18i�me Si�cle_,
+p. 423.)]
+
+[Footnote 61: _El�mens de la Philosophie de Newton_, Pt. II. ch. vii.
+Berkeley himself only refers once to Cheselden's case: _Theory of Vision
+vindicated_, � 71. Professor Fraser, in his important edition of
+Berkeley's works (i. 444), reproduces from the _Philosophical
+Transactions_ the original account of the operation, which is
+unfortunately much less clear and definite than Voltaire's emphasised
+version would make it, though its purport is distinct enough.]
+
+[Footnote 62: _Essai sur l'Origine des Connaissances humaines_, I. � 6.]
+
+[Footnote 63: _Let. sur les Aveugles_, 323, 324. Condorcet attaches a
+higher value to Cheselden's operation. _Oeuv._, ii. 121.]
+
+[Footnote 64: Dr. M'Cosh _(Exam. of J. S. Mill's Philosophy_, p. 163)
+quotes what seems to be the best reported case, by a Dr. Franz, of
+Leipsic; and Prof. Fraser, in the appendix to Berkeley (_loc. cit._),
+quotes another good case by Mr. Nunnely. See also Mill's _Exam. of
+Hamilton_, p. 288 (3d ed.)]
+
+[Footnote 65: _Confessions_, II, vii.]
+
+[Footnote 66: Darwin, _The Expression of the Emotions in Men and
+Animals_, c. xiii. p. 312, and also pp. 335-337. This fact, so far as it
+goes, seems to make against the theory of transmitted sentiments.]
+
+[Footnote 67: Locke answered that the man would not distinguish the cube
+from the sphere, until he had identified by actual touch the source of
+his former tactual impression with the object making a given visual
+impression. Condillac, while making just objections to the terms in
+which Molyneux propounded the question, answered it different from
+Locke. Diderot expresses his own opinion thus: "I think that when the
+eyes of the born-blind are opened for the first time to the light, he
+will perceive nothing at all; that some time will be necessary for his
+eye to make experiments for itself; but that it will make these
+experiments itself, and in its own way, and without the help of touch."
+This is in harmony with the modern doctrine, that there is an inherited
+aptitude of structure (in the eye, for instance), but that experience is
+an essential condition to the development and perfecting of this
+aptitude.]
+
+[Footnote 68: A very intelligent English translation of the _Letter on
+the Blind_ was published in 1773. For some reason or other, Diderot is
+described on the title-page as Physician to His most Christian Majesty.]
+
+[Footnote 69: _Oeuv_., i. 308.]
+
+[Footnote 70: Pp. 309, 310.]
+
+[Footnote 71: P. 311.]
+
+[Footnote 72: _Corr._, June 1749.]
+
+[Footnote 73: See _Critical Miscellanies: First Series_.]
+
+[Footnote 74: Diderot to Voltaire, 1749. _Oeuv_., xix. 421.]
+
+[Footnote 75: Diderot to Voltaire, 1749. _Oeuv_., xix. 421.]
+
+[Footnote 76: P. 294.]
+
+[Footnote 77: Lewes's _Hist. Philos_., ii. 342.]
+
+[Footnote 78: Rosenkranz, i. 102.]
+
+[Footnote 79: Tylor's _Researches into the early history of mankind_,
+chaps. ii. and iii.; Lubbock's _Origin of Civilization_, chap. ix.]
+
+[Footnote 80: Madame Dupr� de Saint Maur, who had found favour in the
+eyes of the Count d'Argenson. D'Argenson, younger brother of the
+Marquis, who had been dismissed in 1747, was in power from 1743 to 1757.
+Notwithstanding his alleged share in Diderot's imprisonment, he was a
+tolerably steady protector of the philosophical party.]
+
+[Footnote 81: Barbier, iv. 337.]
+
+[Footnote 82: There is a picture of Berryer, under the name of Orgon in
+that very curious book, _L'Ecole de l'Homme_, ii. 73.]
+
+[Footnote 83: Pieces given in Diderot's Works, xx. 121-123.]
+
+[Footnote 84: Naigeon, p. 131.]
+
+[Footnote 85: Voltaire's _Corr_. July and Aug. 1749.]
+
+[Footnote 86: _Conf_., II. viii.]
+
+[Footnote 87: Michelet's _Louis XV_., p. 258.]
+
+[Footnote 88: See the present author's _Rousseau_, vol. i. p. 134 (Globe
+8vo ed.)]
+
+[Footnote 89: For the two petitions of the booksellers to D'Argenson
+praying for Diderot's liberty, see M. Ass�zat's preliminary notice.
+_Oeuv_., xiii. 112, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 90: Jourdain's _Recherches sur les traductions latines
+d'Aristote_, p. 325.]
+
+[Footnote 91: _Lit. of Europe_, pt. i. ch. ii. � 39.]
+
+[Footnote 92: Whewell's _Hist. Induc. Sci._. xii. c. 7.]
+
+[Footnote 93: Fr. Roger Bacon; J.S. Brewer's Pref. pp 57, 63.]
+
+[Footnote 94: Leibnitii, Opera v. 184.]
+
+[Footnote 95: _Oeuv. de D'Alembert_, i. 63.]
+
+[Footnote 96: _M�m._ pour J.P.F. Luneau de Boisjermain, 4to, Paris,
+1771. See also Diderot's _Prospectus_, "La traduction enti�re de
+Chambers nous a pass� sous les yeux," etc.]
+
+[Footnote 97: Biog. Universelle, _s.v._]
+
+[Footnote 98: Michelet, _Louis XV._, 258. D'Aguesseau (1668-1751) has
+left one piece which ought to be extricated from the thirteen quartos of
+his works--his memoir of his father (_Oeuv._, xiii.) This is one of
+those records of solid and elevated character, which do more to refresh
+and invigorate the reader than a whole library of religious or ethical
+exhortations can do. It has the loftiness, the refined austerity, the
+touching impressiveness of Tacitus's _Agricola_ or Condorcet's _Turgot_,
+together with a certain grave sweetness that was almost peculiar to the
+Jansenist school of the seventeenth century.]
+
+[Footnote 99: A short estimate of D'Alembert's principal scientific
+pieces, by M. Bertram, is to be found in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_,
+for October 1865.]
+
+[Footnote 100: _Oeuv. de D'Alembert_, iv. 367.]
+
+[Footnote 101: _Oeuv. de J. Ph. Roland_, i. 230 (ed. 1800).]
+
+[Footnote 102: _Essai sur la Soci�t� des Gens de Lettres et des Grands_,
+etc. _Oeuv_., iv. 372. "Write," he says, "as if you loved glory; in
+conduct, act as if it were indifferent to you." Compare, with reference
+to the passage in the text, Duclos's remark (_Consid. sur les Moeurs_,
+ch. xi.): "The man in power commands, but the intelligent govern,
+because in time they form public opinion, and that sooner or later
+subjugates every kind of despotism." Only partially true.]
+
+[Footnote 103: _Pens�es Philos._, � 26.]
+
+[Footnote 104: _Phil. Pos._, v. 520. _Polit. Pos._, iii. 584.]
+
+[Footnote 105: See Pref. to vol. iii.]
+
+[Footnote 106: For instance, see Pref. to vol. vi.]
+
+[Footnote 107: _Si�cle de Louis XV_., ch. xliii.]
+
+[Footnote 108: Grimm, _Corr. Lit._, i. 273. Diderot, _Oeuv_., iv. 15.]
+
+[Footnote 109: _Avertissement_ to vol. vi.; also to vol. vii. Turgot's
+articles were Etymiologie, Existence, Expansibilit�, Foires, Fondations.
+The text of these is wrongly inserted among Diderot's contributions to
+the Encyclop�dia, in the new edition of his Works, xv. 12.]
+
+[Footnote 110: Condorcet's _Vie de Turgot_.]
+
+[Footnote 111: Pref. to vol. iii. (1752), and to vol. vi. (1756).]
+
+[Footnote 112: Pref. to vol. ii.]
+
+[Footnote 113: Grimm, _Corr. Lit._, i. 130. Forbonnais's chief work is
+his _Becherches et Consid�rations sur les finances de la France_.]
+
+[Footnote 114: _Avert._ to vol. ii.]
+
+[Footnote 115: Nov. 10, 1760, xix. 24. Also, Oct. 7, 1761, xix. 35.]
+
+[Footnote 116: See also Preface to vol. iii.]
+
+[Footnote 117: _Avert._ to vol. vi., and _s. v. Fontange_. Grimm, i.
+451.]
+
+[Footnote 118: _Corresp. avec D'Alembert_ (_Oeuv._, lxxv.), Sept.
+1755, Feb. 1757, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 119: Dec. 22, 1757.]
+
+[Footnote 120: May 24, 1757.]
+
+[Footnote 121: Dec. 13, 1756; April 1756.]
+
+[Footnote 122: July 21, 1757.]
+
+[Footnote 123: Article _Encyclop�die_.]
+
+[Footnote 124: To Voltaire, Feb. 15, 1757.]
+
+[Footnote 125: Hettner's _Literaturgesch, des 18ten Jahrhunderts_, ii.
+277.]
+
+[Footnote 126: Art. _Encyclop�die_.]
+
+[Footnote 127: _Prospectus_.]
+
+[Footnote 128: Barbier, v. 151, 153.]
+
+[Footnote 129: Diderot to Voland, _Oeuv_., xviii. 361. Carlyle's
+_Frederick,_ bk. xviii. ch. xi.]
+
+[Footnote 130: _Apologie de l' Abbe de Prades. Oeuv.,_ i. 482.]
+
+[Footnote 131: See Jobez, i. 358.]
+
+[Footnote 132: xix. 425.]
+
+[Footnote 133: Barbier, v. 160.]
+
+[Footnote 134: _Ib_. v. 169.]
+
+[Footnote 135: Grimm, _Corr. Lit_., i. 81. Barbier, _v_. 170.]
+
+[Footnote 136: _Avert._, to vol. iii. _Oeuv. de D'Alembert_, iv. 410.]
+
+[Footnote 137: Barbier, v. 170. Grimm, _Corr. Lit._, i. 201; _Ib._ ii.
+197.]
+
+[Footnote 138: Hardy, quoted by Aubertin, 407, 408.]
+
+[Footnote 139: _Corr. Lit._, ii. 271.]
+
+[Footnote 140: To D'Alembert, Dec. 29, 1757; Jan. 1758.]
+
+[Footnote 141: For a short account of Helv�tius's book, see a later
+chapter.]
+
+[Footnote 142: _Corr. Lit._, ii. 292, 293.]
+
+[Footnote 143: Barbier, vii. 125-142.]
+
+[Footnote 144: Lacretelle's _France pendant le 18i�me Si�cle_, iii. 89.]
+
+[Footnote 145: Jobez, ii. 464, 538.]
+
+[Footnote 146: See _Rousseau_, vol. i. chaps, vii. and ix. (Globe 8vo
+ed.)]
+
+[Footnote 147: _Louis XV. et Louis XVI._, p. 50.]
+
+[Footnote 148: Jan. 11, 1758. Jan. 20, 1758. Diderot to Mdlle. Voland,
+Oct. 11, 1759. See the following chapter.]
+
+[Footnote 149: Voltaire to D'Alembert, Jan. to May 1758. Voltaire to
+Diderot, Jan. 1758.]
+
+[Footnote 150: Diderot to Voltaire, Feb. 19, 1758, xix. 452.]
+
+[Footnote 151: To Voland, _Oeuv._, xix. 146.]
+
+[Footnote 152: _Corr. Lit._, vii. 146.]
+
+[Footnote 153: _Corr. Lit._, vii. 146.]
+
+[Footnote 154: _Oeuv. de Voltaire_. Published sometimes among
+_Fac�ties_, sometimes among _M�langes_.]
+
+[Footnote 155: See _Oeuv. Choisies de Jean Reynaud_, reprinted in
+1866. The article on _Encyclop�die_ (vol. i.) is an interesting attempt
+to vindicate Cartesian principles of classification.]
+
+[Footnote 156: See fly-leaf of vol. xxviii.]
+
+[Footnote 157: _M�m._, ii. 115. Grimm, vii. 145.]
+
+[Footnote 158: De Maistre says that the reputation of Bacon does not
+really go farther back than the Encyclop�dia, and that no true
+discoverer either knew him or leaned on him for support. (_Examen de la
+Phil. de Bacon_, ii. 110.) Diderot says: "I think I have taught my
+fellow-citizens to esteem and read Bacon; people have turned over the
+pages of this profound author more since the last five or six years than
+has ever been the case before" (xiv. 494). In Professor Fowler's careful
+and elaborate edition of the Novum Organum (_Introduct._, p. 104), he
+disputes the statement of Montuola and others, that the celebrity of
+Bacon dates from the Encyclop�dia. All turns upon what we mean by
+celebrity. What the Encyclop�dists certainly did was to raise Bacon, for
+a time, to the popular throne from which Voltaire's Newtonianism had
+pushed Descartes. Mr. Fowler traces a chain of Baconian tradition, no
+doubt, but he perhaps surrenders nearly as much as is claimed when he
+admits that "the patronage of Voltaire and the Encyclop�dists did much
+to extend the study of Bacon's writings, besides producing a
+considerable controversy as to his true meaning on many questions of
+philosophy and theology."]
+
+[Footnote 159: See above, p. 62, _note_.]
+
+[Footnote 160: D'Alembert was not afraid to contend against the great
+captain of the age, that the military spirit of Lewis XIV. had been a
+great curse to Europe. He showed a true appreciation of Frederick's
+character and conception of his duties as a ruler, in believing that the
+King of Prussia would rather have had a hundred thousand labourers more,
+and as many soldiers fewer, if his situation had allowed it. _Corresp.
+avec le roi de Prusse_, _Oeuv._, v. 305.]
+
+[Footnote 161: See Essay on Turgot in my _Critical Miscellanies_,
+_Second Series_.]
+
+[Footnote 162: Such, as that their feudal rights should be confirmed;
+that none but nobles should carry arms, or be eligible for the army;
+that _lettres-de-cachet_ should continue; that the press should not be
+free; that the wine trade should not be free internally or for export;
+that breaking up wastes and enclosing commons should be prohibited; that
+the old arrangement of the militia should remain.--Arthur Young's
+_France_, ch. xxi. p. 607.]
+
+[Footnote 163: _Ib._ ch. xxi.]
+
+[Footnote 164: _Critical Miscellanies_, _Second Series_, p. 202.]
+
+[Footnote 165: _Travels in France_, p. 600.]
+
+[Footnote 166: _Travels in France_, i. 63.]
+
+[Footnote 167: Rosenkranz, i. 219.]
+
+[Footnote 168: _Avert_. to vol. iii]
+
+[Footnote 169: Diderot, _Oeuv._, iv. 24.]
+
+[Footnote 170: Diderot's _Leben_, i. 157.]
+
+[Footnote 171: _Oeuv._, xx. 132.]
+
+[Footnote 172: The writer was one Romilly, who had been elected a
+minister of one of the French Protestant churches in London. See
+_Memoirs of Sir Samuel Romilly_, vol. i.]
+
+[Footnote 173: I have no space to quote an interesting page in this
+article on the characteristics and the varying destinies of genius. "We
+must rank in this class Pindar, �schylus, Moses, Jesus Christ, Mahomet,
+Shakespeare, Roger Bacon, and Paracelsus." xvii. 265-267.]
+
+[Footnote 174: The same idea is found still more ardently expressed in
+one of his letters to Mdlle. de Voland (Oct. 15, 1759, xviii. 408),
+where he defends the eagerness of those who have loved one another
+during life, to be placed side by side after death.]
+
+[Footnote 175: xiv. 32.]
+
+[Footnote 176: _S.v._ Sarrasins, xvii. 82. See also xviii. 429, for
+Diderot's admiration of Sadi.]
+
+[Footnote 177: _S.v. Pyrrhonienne_.]
+
+[Footnote 178: _E.g._ in the article on _Plaisir_, xvi. p. 298.]
+
+[Footnote 179: To Damilaville, 1766, xix. 477.]
+
+[Footnote 180: xx. 34.]
+
+[Footnote 181: xvi. 280.]
+
+[Footnote 182: See also article _Ind�pendance_.]
+
+[Footnote 183: iv. 93.]
+
+[Footnote 184: The reader will find abundant information and criticism
+upon the Wolffian Philosophy in Professor Edward Caird's _Critical
+Account of the Philosophy of Kant_, recently published at Glasgow.]
+
+[Footnote 185: xvi. 491, 492.]
+
+[Footnote 186: There are casual criticisms on Spinosa in the articles on
+_Identity_ and _Liberty_.]
+
+[Footnote 187: xv. 501.]
+
+[Footnote 188: xix. 435, 436.]
+
+[Footnote 189: See below, vol. ii.]
+
+[Footnote 190: S.v. _Luxe_, xvi. 23.]
+
+[Footnote 191: As an illustration how much these ideas were in the air,
+the reader may refer to a passage in S�daine's popular comedy, _The
+Philosopher without knowing it_ (1765), Act II. sc. 4. Vanderk, among
+other things, says of the merchant: "Ce n'est pas un temple, ce n'est
+pas une seule nation qu'il sert; il les sert toutes, et en est servi:
+c'est l'homme de l'univers. Quelques particuliers audacieux font armer
+les rois, la guerre s'allume, tout s'embrase, l'Europe est divis�e: mais
+ce n�gociant anglais, hollandais, russe ou chinois, n'en est pas moins
+l'ami de mon coeur: nous sommes sur la superficie de la terre autant de
+fils de soie qui lient ensemble les nations, et les ram�nent � la paix
+par la n�cessit� du commerce; voila, mon fils, ce que c'est qu'un
+honn�te n�gociant."]
+
+[Footnote 192: The younger sister of Diderot's Sophie.]
+
+[Footnote 193: xviii. 454.]
+
+[Footnote 194: See below, the chapter on _Rameau's Nephew_.]
+
+[Footnote 195: Nov. 10, 1770; xix. 22.]
+
+[Footnote 196: See, for instance, xix. 81, 91, 129, 133, 145,
+etc.--passages which Mr. Carlyle and Rosenkranz have either overlooked,
+or else, without any good reason, disbelieved.]
+
+[Footnote 197: xviii. 293.]
+
+[Footnote 198: xix. 46.]
+
+[Footnote 199: xix. 84. See also 326.]
+
+[Footnote 200: xix. 137, 341, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 201: xviii. 535.]
+
+[Footnote 202: xviii. 507, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 203: xviii. 526, 531.]
+
+[Footnote 204: Nov. 2, 1759; xviii. 431.]
+
+[Footnote 205: xix. 82.]
+
+[Footnote 206: xix. 139.]
+
+[Footnote 207: xix. 107.]
+
+[Footnote 208: xix. 181.]
+
+[Footnote 209: xix. 81.]
+
+[Footnote 210: xix. 149.]
+
+[Footnote 211: xix. 90.]
+
+[Footnote 212: xix. 163, 164.]
+
+[Footnote 213: Sept. 20, 1765; xix. 179-187.]
+
+[Footnote 214: xviii. 476, 478.]
+
+[Footnote 215: xviii. 479. Comte writes more seriously somewhat in the
+same sense: "For thirty centuries the priestly castes of China, and
+still more of India, have been watching our Western transition; to them
+it must appear mere agitation, as puerile as it is tempestuous, with
+nothing to harmonise its different phases but their common inroad upon
+unity." _Positive Polity_, iv. 11 (English Translation)]
+
+[Footnote 216: xix. 233.]
+
+[Footnote 217: Voltaire's Satire on the Economists.]
+
+[Footnote 218: Oct. 8, 1768; xix. 832.]
+
+[Footnote 219: xviii. 509.]
+
+[Footnote 220: xviii. 513.]
+
+[Footnote 221: xviii. 511-513.]
+
+[Footnote 222: xix. 244.]
+
+[Footnote 223: xviii. 459.]
+
+[Footnote 224: xix. 259.]
+
+[Footnote 225: _Lettres de Mdlle. de Lespinasse_, viii. p. 20. (Ed.
+Asse, 1876.)]
+
+[Footnote 226: Aug. 1, 1769; xix. 365.]
+
+[Footnote 227: (1765-69) xix. 381-412. Also p. 318.]
+
+[Footnote 228: June 1756; xix. 433-436.]
+
+[Footnote 229: Aug. 1762; xix. 112.]
+
+[Footnote 230: In _Rousseau_, vol. i. ch. vii. (Globe 8vo, ed.)]
+
+[Footnote 231: Dec. 1757; xix. 446.]
+
+[Footnote 232: xix. 449.]
+
+[Footnote 233: Dec. 20, 1765; xix. 210.]
+
+[Footnote 234: See _Rousseau_, vol. i. ch. vii. (Globe 8vo. ed.)]
+
+[Footnote 235: Oct. 9, 1759; xviii. 397.]
+
+[Footnote 236: Nov. 6, 1760; xix. 17.]
+
+[Footnote 237: Sept. 17, 1761; xix. 47.]
+
+[Footnote 238: Sept. 17, 1769; xix. 320.]
+
+[Footnote 239: _Lettres sur le Commerce de la Librairie_, xviii. 47.]
+
+[Footnote 240: See _Rousseau_, vol. ii. ch. i. (Globe 8vo. ed.)]
+
+[Footnote 241: Diderot's _Lettre sur le Commerce de la Librairie_
+(1767). _Oeuv._, xviii.]
+
+[Footnote 242: Those who are interested in the history of authorship may
+care to know the end of the matter. Copyright is no modern practice, and
+the perpetual right of authors, or persons to whom they had ceded it,
+was recognised in France through the whole of the seventeenth century
+and three-quarters of the eighteenth. The perpetuity of the right had
+produced literary properties of considerable value; for example,
+Boudot's Dictionary was sold by his executors for 24,000 livres;
+Pr�vot's Manual Lexicon and two Dictionaries for 115,000 livres. But in
+1777--ten years after Diderot's plea--the Council decreed that copyright
+was a privilege and an exercise of the royal grace. The motives for this
+reduction of an author's right from a transferable property to a
+terminable privilege seem to have been, first, the general mania of the
+time for drawing up the threads of national life into the hands of the
+administration, and second, the hope of making money by a tariff of
+permissions. The Constituent Assembly dealt with the subject with no
+intelligence nor care, but the Convention passed a law recognising in
+the author an exclusive right for his life, and giving a property for
+ten years after his death to heirs or _cessionaires_. The whole history
+is elaborately set forth in the collection of documents entitled _La
+Propri�t� litt�raire au 18i�me si�cle_. (Hachette, 1859.)]
+
+[Footnote 243: Oct. 11, 1759; xviii. 401.]
+
+[Footnote 244: xix. 319, 320.]
+
+[Footnote 245: _Miscellaneous Works_, p. 73.]
+
+[Footnote 246: Walpole to Selwyn. 1765. Jesse's _Selwyn_, ii. 9. See
+also Walpole to Mann, iv. 283.]
+
+[Footnote 247: D'Epinay, ii. 4, 138, 153, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 248: See Comte's _Positive Polity_, vol. iii.]
+
+[Footnote 249: "_That virtue of originality that men so strain after is
+not newness, as they vainly think (there is nothing new), it is only
+genuineness._"--Ruskin.]
+
+[Footnote 250: Lessing: 1729-81. Diderot: 1713-84. As De Quincey puts
+it, Lessing may be said to have begun his career precisely in the middle
+of the last century.]
+
+[Footnote 251: _Hamburg. Dramaturgie_, � 85. Werke, vi. 381. (Ed.
+1873.)]
+
+[Footnote 252: Diderot's _Leben_, i. 274, 277.]
+
+[Footnote 253: _Corr. Lit._, ii. 103.]
+
+[Footnote 254: See Grimm's account of the performance, _Corr. Lit._,
+vii. 313.]
+
+[Footnote 255: Act IV. sc. 3.]
+
+[Footnote 256: Act V. sc. 3.]
+
+[Footnote 257: _De la Po�sie Dramatique_, ch. xxi.]
+
+[Footnote 258: vii. 107.]
+
+[Footnote 259: Nov. 28, 1760; xix. 457.]
+
+[Footnote 260: _Lettre sur les Sourds et les Muets_, i. 359.]
+
+[Footnote 261: _Correspond. du Roi Stanislas-Auguste et de Mdme.
+Geoffrin, _p. 466.]
+
+[Footnote 262: Aug. 1769; xix. 314-323.]
+
+[Footnote 263: Quoted in Mr. Sime's excellent _Life of Lessing_ (Tr�bner
+and Co., 1877), p. 230.]
+
+[Footnote 264: _De la Po�sie Dramatique_, � 2, vii. 313.]
+
+[Footnote 265: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iv. 177 (ed. 1837).]
+
+[Footnote 266: xix. 474.]
+
+[Footnote 267: _P�re de Famille_, Act II. sc. 2, p. 211.]
+
+[Footnote 268: _Paradoxe sur le Com�dien_, p. 383.]
+
+[Footnote 269: _Journals_, ii. 331. Also vi. 248; vii. 9.]
+
+[Footnote 270: _R�flexions sur T�rence_, v. 228-238. In another place
+(_De la Po�sie Dram._, 370) he says: "Nous avons des com�dies. Les
+Anglais n'ont que des satires, � la v�rit� pleines de force et de
+gaiet�, mais sans moeurs et sans go�t. Les Italiens en sont r�duits au
+drame burlesque."]
+
+[Footnote 271: vii. 95.]
+
+[Footnote 272: _Lettre sur les Sourds et les Muets_, i. 355.]
+
+[Footnote 273: _Paradoxe_, viii. 384. The criticism on the detestable
+rendering of _Hamlet_ by Ducis (viii. 471) makes one doubt whether
+Diderot knew much about Shakespeare.]
+
+[Footnote 274: Letter to Mdlle. Jodin, xix. 387.]
+
+[Footnote 275: Johnson one day said to John Kemble: "Are you, sir, one
+of those enthusiasts who believe yourself transformed into the very
+character you represent?" Kemble answered that he had never felt so
+strong a persuasion himself. _Boswell_, ch. 77.]
+
+[Footnote 276: Lessing makes this a starting-point of his criticism of
+the art of acting, though he uses it less absolutely than Diderot would
+do. _Hamburg. Dramaturgie_, � 3, vol. vi. 19.]
+
+[Footnote 277: In Lichtenberg's _Briefe aus England_ (1776) there is a
+criticism of the most admirably intelligent kind on Garrick. Lord Lytton
+gave an account of it to English readers in the _Fortnightly Review_
+(February 1871). The following passage confirms what Diderot says above:
+
+"You have doubtless heard much of his extraordinary power of change of
+face. Here is one example of it. When he played the part of Sir John
+Brute, I was close to the stage, and could observe him narrowly. He
+entered with the corners of his mouth so turned down, as to give to his
+whole countenance the expression of habitual sottishness and debauchery.
+And this artificial form of the mouth he retained, unaltered, from the
+beginning to the end of the play, with the exception only that, as the
+play went on, the lips gaped and hung more and more in proportion to the
+gradually increasing drunkenness of the character represented. This
+made-up face was not produced by stage-paint, but solely by muscular
+contraction; and it must be so identified by Garrick with his idea of
+Sir John Brute as to be spontaneously assumed by him whenever he plays
+that part; otherwise, his retention of such a mask, without even once
+dropping it either from fatigue or surprise, even in the most boisterous
+action of his part, would be quite inexplicable."]
+
+[Footnote 278: viii. 382.]
+
+[Footnote 279: viii. 373, 376, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 280: As Hamlet to his players: "Nor do not saw the air too
+much with your hand thus; but use all gently; for in the very torrent,
+tempest, and (as I may say) the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire
+and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness."]
+
+[Footnote 281: To Jodin, xix, 382. "Point de hoquets, point de cris, de
+la dignit� vraie, un jeu ferme, sens�, raisonn�, juste, m�le; la plus
+grande sobri�t� de gestes. C'est de la contenance, c'est du maintien,
+qu'il faut d�clamer les trois quarts du temps."--P. 390.]
+
+[Footnote 282: P. 395.]
+
+[Footnote 283: _Bijoux Indiscrets_, ch. xxxviii.]
+
+[Footnote 284: vii. 121. Lessing makes a powerful addition to this.
+_Hamburg. Dram._ vi. 261.]
+
+[Footnote 285: _Po�sie Dramatique_, �� 20, 21.]
+
+[Footnote 286: _Sienne Entretien_, vii. 138.]
+
+[Footnote 287: _Po�s. Dram._., � 2. The Poetics of the Genre S�rieux are
+to be found, vii. 137, 138.]
+
+[Footnote 288: i. 316.]
+
+[Footnote 289: _Hints for an Essay on the Drama_, p. 155.]
+
+[Footnote 290: _Hist. du Romantisme_, p. 93.]
+
+[Footnote 291: _Der Gegensatz des Classischen und des Romantischen,
+etc._ By Conrad Hermann, p. 66.]
+
+[Footnote 292: Schopenhauer, _Ethik_, 199]
+
+[Footnote 293: _Oeuv._, iv. 29.]
+
+[Footnote 294: _Werke_, xxv. 291.]
+
+[Footnote 295: The original of the text, published in the Ass�zat
+edition of Diderot's works, was a manuscript found, with other waifs and
+strays of the eighteenth century, in a chest that had belonged to
+Messrs. W�rtel and Treutz, the publishers at Strasburg. Its authenticity
+is corroborated by the fact that in the places where Goethe has marked
+an omission, we find stories or expressions from which we understand
+only too well why Goethe forbore to reproduce them.]
+
+[Footnote 296: v. 339.]
+
+[Footnote 297: Lucian, [Greek: Peri Parasitou], and [Greek: Peri t�n epi
+misth� sunont�n.]]
+
+[Footnote 298: Grimm, ix. 349.]
+
+[Footnote 299: _Anmerkungen, Rameau's Neffe; Werke_, xxv. 268.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Diderot and the Encyclop�dists (Vol 1
+of 2), by John Morley
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2)
+by John Morley
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2)
+
+Author: John Morley
+
+Release Date: February 18, 2005 [EBook #15098]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DIDEROT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Paul Murray, LN Yaddanapudi, Leonard Johnson and the PG
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+
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+</pre>
+
+ <h1>DIDEROT AND THE
+ ENCYCLOPÆDISTS</h1>
+
+ <h2>BY JOHN MORLEY</h2>
+
+ <h3>VOL. I.</h3>
+
+ <h4>LONDON<br />
+ MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED<br />
+ NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br />
+ 1905</h4>
+ <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+ <h4><i>First
+ published elsewhere<br />
+ New Edition 1886. Reprinted 1891, 1897, 1905</i></h4>
+ <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+ <h2>PREFACE.</h2>
+
+ <p>The present work closes a series of studies on the literary
+ preparation for the French Revolution. It differs from the companion
+ volumes on Voltaire and Rousseau, in being much more fully
+ descriptive. In the case of those two famous writers, every educated
+ reader knows more or less of their performances. Of Diderot and his
+ circle, such knowledge cannot be taken for granted, and I have
+ therefore thought it best to occupy a considerable space, which I hope
+ that those who do me the honour to read these pages will not find
+ excessive, with what is little more than transcript or analysis. Such
+ a method will at least enable the reader to see what those ideas
+ really were, which the social and economic condition of France on the
+ eve of the convulsion made so welcome to men. The shortcomings of the
+ encyclopædic group are obvious enough. They have lately been
+ emphasised in the ingenious and one-sided exaggerations of that
+ brilliant man of letters, Mr. Taine. The social significance and the
+ positive quality of much of their writing is more easily missed, and
+ this side of their work it has been one of my principal objects, alike
+ in the case of Voltaire, of Rousseau, and of Diderot, to bring into
+ the prominence that it deserves in the history of opinion.</p>
+
+ <p>The edition of Diderot's works to which the references are made, is
+ that in twenty volumes by the late Mr. Assézat and Mr. Maurice
+ Tourneux. The only other serious book on Diderot with which I am
+ acquainted is Rosenkranz's valuable <i>Diderot's Leben</i>, published
+ in 1866, and abounding in full and patient knowledge. Of the numerous
+ criticisms on Diderot by Raumer, Arndt, Hettner, Damiron, Bersot, and
+ above all by Mr. Carlyle, I need not make more particular mention.</p>
+
+ <p><i>May, 1878.</i></p>
+
+ <p>NOTE.</p>
+
+ <div class="blockquot">
+  <p>Since the following pages were printed, an American correspondent
+  writes to me with reference to the dialogue between Franklin and
+  Raynal, mentioned on page 218, Vol. II.:—"I have now before me Volume
+  IV. of the <i>American Law Journal</i>, printed at Philadelphia in
+  the year 1813, and at page 458 find in full, 'The Speech of Miss
+  Polly Baker, delivered before a court of judicature in
+  <i>Connecticut</i>, where she was prosecuted.'" Raynal, therefore,
+  would have been right if instead of Massachusetts he had said
+  Connecticut; and either Franklin told an untruth, or else Silas
+  Deane.</p>
+
+  <p><i>September, 1878.</i></p>
+ </div>
+ <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+ <h2>CONTENTS OF VOL. I.</h2>
+
+ <p><a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.</a></p>
+
+ <p>PRELIMINARY.</p>
+
+ <p>The Church in the middle of the century<br />
+ New phase in the revolt<br />
+ The Encyclopædia, its symbol<br />
+ End of the reaction against the Encyclopædia<br />
+ Diderot's position in the movement<br /></p>
+
+ <p><a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.</a></p>
+
+ <p>YOUTH.</p>
+
+ <p>Birth and birthplace (1713)<br />
+ His family<br />
+ Men of letters in Paris<br />
+ Diderot joins their company<br />
+ His life in Paris: his friendly character<br />
+ Stories of his good-nature<br />
+ His tolerance for social reprobates<br />
+ His literary struggles<br />
+ Marriage (1743)<br /></p>
+
+ <p><a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.</a></p>
+
+ <p>EARLY WRITINGS.</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot's mismanagement of his own talents<br />
+ Apart from this, a great talker rather than a great writer<br />
+ A man of the Socratic type<br />
+ Hack-work for the booksellers<br />
+ The Philosophical Thoughts (1746)<br />
+ Shaftesbury's influence<br />
+ Scope of the Philosophical Thoughts<br />
+ On the Sufficiency of Natural Religion (1747)<br />
+ Explanation of the attraction of Natural Religion<br />
+ Police supervision over men of letters<br />
+ Two pictures of the literary hack<br />
+ Seizure of the Sceptic's Walk (1747)<br />
+ Its drift<br />
+ A volume of stories (1748)<br />
+ Diderot's view of the fate and character of women<br /></p>
+
+ <p><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.</a></p>
+
+ <p>THE NEW PHILOSOPHY.</p>
+
+ <p>Voltaire's account of Cheselden's operation<br />
+ Diderot publishes the Letter on the Blind (1749)<br />
+ Its significance<br />
+ Condillac and Diderot<br />
+ Account of the Letter on the Blind<br />
+ The pith of it, an application of Relativity to the conception<br />
+ <span style="margin-left: 2em;">of God</span><br />
+ Saunderson of Cambridge<br />
+ Argument assigned to him<br />
+ Curious anticipation of a famous modern hypothesis<br />
+ Voltaire's criticism<br />
+ Effect of Diderot's philosophic position on the system<br />
+ <span style="margin-left: 2em;">of the Church</span><br />
+ Not merely a dispute in metaphysics<br />
+ Illustration of Diderot's practical originality<br />
+ Points of literary interest<br />
+ The Letter on Deaf Mutes (1751)<br />
+ Condillac's Statue<br />
+ Diderot imprisoned at Vincennes (1749)<br />
+ Rousseau's visit to him<br />
+ Breach with Madame de Puisieux<br />
+ Diderot released from captivity<br /></p>
+
+ <p><a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.</a></p>
+
+ <p>THE ENCYCLOPÆDIA.</p>
+
+ <p>(1) ITS HISTORY.</p>
+
+ <p>Previous examples of the Encyclopædic idea<br />
+ True parentage of Diderot's Encyclopædia<br />
+ Origin of the undertaking<br />
+ Co-operation of D'Alembert: his history and character<br />
+ Diderot and D'Alembert on the function of literature<br />
+ Presiding characteristic of the Encyclopædia<br />
+ Its more eminent contributors<br />
+ The unsought volunteer<br />
+ Voltaire's share in it<br />
+ Its compliance with reigning prejudice<br />
+ Its aim, not literature but life<br />
+ Publication of first and second volumes (1751-52)<br />
+ Affair of De Prades<br />
+ Diderot's vindication of him (1752)<br />
+ Marks rupture between the Philosophers and the Jansenists<br />
+ Royal decree suppressing first two volumes (1752)<br />
+ Failure of the Jesuits to carry on the work<br />
+ Four more volumes published<br />
+ The seventh volume (1757)<br />
+ Arouses violent hostility<br />
+ The storm made fiercer by Helvétius's <i>L'Esprit</i><br />
+ Proceedings against the Encyclopædia<br />
+ Their significance<br />
+ They also mark singular reaction within the school of<br />
+ <span style="margin-left: 2em;">Illumination</span><br />
+ Retirement of D'Alembert<br />
+ Diderot continues the work alone for seven years<br />
+ His harassing mortifications<br />
+ The Encyclopædia at Versailles<br />
+ Reproduction and imitations<br />
+ Diderot's payment<br /></p>
+
+ <p>(2) GENERAL CONTENTS.</p>
+
+ <p>Transformation of a speculative into a social attack<br />
+ Circumstances of practical opportuneness<br />
+ Broad features of Encyclopædic revolution<br />
+ Positive spirit of the Encyclopædia<br />
+ Why we call it the organ of a political work<br />
+ Articles on Agriculture<br />
+ On the <i>Gabelle</i> and the <i>Taille</i><br />
+ On Privilege<br />
+ On the <i>Corveée</i><br />
+ On the Militia<br />
+ On Endowments, Fairs, and Industrial Guilds<br />
+ On Game and the Chase<br />
+ Enthusiasm for the details of industry<br />
+ Meaning of the importance assigned to industry and science<br />
+ Intellectual side of the change<br />
+ Attitude of the Encyclopædia to religion<br />
+ Diderot's intention under this head<br />
+ How far the scheme fulfilled his intention<br />
+ The Preliminary Discourse<br />
+ Recognition of the value of discussion<br />
+ And of toleration<br /></p>
+
+ <p>(3) DIDEROT'S CONTRIBUTIONS.</p>
+
+ <p>Their immense confusion<br />
+ Constant insinuation of sound doctrines<br />
+ And of practical suggestions<br />
+ Diderot not always above literary trifling<br />
+ No taste for barren erudition<br />
+ On Montaigne and Bayle<br />
+ Occasional bursts of moralising<br />
+ Varying attitude as to theology<br />
+ The practical arts<br />
+ Second-hand sources<br />
+ Inconsistencies<br />
+ Treatment of metaphysics<br />
+ On Spinosa<br />
+ On Leibnitz<br />
+ On Liberty<br />
+ Astonishing self-contradiction<br />
+ Political articles<br />
+ On the mechanism of government<br />
+ Anticipation of Cobdenic ideas<br />
+ Conclusion<br /></p>
+
+ <p><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.</a></p>
+
+ <p>SOCIAL LIFE (1759-1770).</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot's relations with Madame Voland<br />
+ His letters to her<br />
+ His Regrets on My Old Dressing-gown<br />
+ Domestic discomfort<br />
+ His indomitable industry<br />
+ Life at Grandval<br />
+ Meditations on human existence<br />
+ Interest in the casuistry of human feeling<br />
+ Various sayings<br />
+ A point in rhetoric<br />
+ Holbach's impressions of England<br />
+ Two cases of conscience<br />
+ A story of human wickedness<br />
+ Method and Genius: an Apologue<br />
+ Conversation<br />
+ Annihilation<br />
+ Characteristic of the century<br />
+ Diderot's inexhaustible friendliness<br />
+ The Abbé Monnier<br />
+ Mademoiselle Jodin<br />
+ Landois<br />
+ Rousseau<br />
+ Grimm<br />
+ Diderot's money affairs<br />
+ Succour rendered by Catherine of Russia<br />
+ French booksellers in the eighteenth century<br />
+ Dialogue between Diderot and D'Alembert<br />
+ English opinion on Diderot's circle<br /></p>
+
+ <p><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII.</a></p>
+
+ <p>THE STAGE.</p>
+
+ <p>In what sense Diderot the greatest genius of the century<br />
+ Mark of his theory of the drama<br />
+ Diderot's influence on Lessing<br />
+ His play, <i>The Natural Son</i> (1757)<br />
+ Its quality illustrated<br />
+ His sense of the importance of pantomime<br />
+ The dialogues appended to <i>The Natural Son</i><br />
+ His second play, <i>The Father of the Family</i> (1758)<br />
+ One radical error of his dramatic doctrine<br />
+ Modest opinion of his own experiments<br />
+ His admiration for Terence<br />
+ Diderot translates Moore's <i>Gamester</i><br />
+ On Shakespeare<br />
+ The Paradox on the Player<br />
+ Account of Garrick<br />
+ On the truth of the stage<br />
+ His condemnation of the French classic stage<br />
+ The foundations of dramatic art<br />
+ Diderot claims to have created a new kind of drama<br />
+ No Diderotian school<br />
+ Why the Encyclopædists could not replace the classic<br />
+ <span style="margin-left: 2em;">drama</span><br />
+ The great drama of the eighteenth century<br /></p>
+
+ <p><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.</a></p>
+
+ <p>"RAMEAU'S NEPHEW."</p>
+
+ <p>The mood that inspired this composition<br />
+ History of the text<br />
+ Various accounts of the design of <i>Rameau's Nephew</i><br />
+ Juvenal's Parasite<br />
+ Lucian<br />
+ Diderot's picture of his original<br />
+ Not without imaginative strokes<br />
+ More than a literary diversion<br />
+ Sarcasms on Palissot<br />
+ The musical controversy<br /></p>
+ <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+ <h2>DIDEROT.<br />
+ <a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.<br />
+ PRELIMINARY.</h2>
+
+ <p>There was a moment in the last century when the Gallican church
+ hoped for a return of internal union and prosperity. This brief era of
+ hope coincided almost exactly with the middle of the century. Voltaire
+ was in exile at Berlin. The author of the Persian Letters and the
+ Spirit of Laws was old and near his end. Rousseau was copying music in
+ a garret. The Encyclopædia was looked for, but only as a literary
+ project of some associated booksellers. The Jansenists, who had been
+ so many in number and so firm in spirit five-and-twenty years earlier,
+ had now sunk to a small minority of the French clergy. The great
+ ecclesiastical body at length offered an unbroken front to its rivals,
+ the great judicial bodies. A patriotic minister was indeed audacious
+ enough to propose a tax upon ecclesiastical property, but the Church
+ fought the battle and won. Troops had just been despatched to hunt and
+ scatter the Protestants of the desert, and bigots exulted in the
+ thought of pastors swinging on gibbets, and heretical congregations
+ fleeing for their lives before the fire of orthodox musketry. The
+ house of Austria had been forced to suffer spoliation at the hands of
+ the infidel Frederick, but all the world was well aware that the
+ haughty and devout Empress-Queen would seize a speedy opportunity of
+ taking a crushing vengeance; France would this time be on the side of
+ righteousness and truth. For the moment a churchman might be pardoned
+ if he thought that superstition, ignorance, abusive privilege, and
+ cruelty were on the eve of the smoothest and most triumphant days that
+ they had known since the Reformation.</p>
+
+ <p>We now know how illusory this sanguine anticipation was destined to
+ prove, and how promptly. In little more than forty years after the
+ triumphant enforcement of the odious system of confessional
+ certificates, then the crowning event of ecclesiastical supremacy,
+ Paris saw the Feast of the Supreme Being, and the adoration of the
+ Goddess of Reason. The Church had scarcely begun to dream before she
+ was rudely and peremptorily awakened. She found herself confronted by
+ the most energetic, hardy, and successful assailants whom the spirit
+ of progress ever inspired. Compared with the new attack, Jansenism was
+ no more than a trifling episode in a family quarrel. Thomists and
+ Molinists became as good as confederates, and Quietism barely seemed a
+ heresy. In every age, even in the very depth of the times of faith,
+ there had arisen disturbers of the intellectual peace. Almost each
+ century after the resettlement of Europe by Charlemagne had procured
+ some individual, or some little group, who had ventured to question
+ this or that article of the ecclesiastical creed, to whom broken
+ glimpses of new truth had come, and who had borne witness against the
+ error or inconsistency or inadequateness of old ways of thinking. The
+ questions which presented themselves to the acuter minds of a hundred
+ years ago, were present to the acuter minds who lived hundreds of
+ years before that. The more deeply we penetrate into the history of
+ opinion, the more strongly are we tempted to believe that in the great
+ matters of speculation no question is altogether new, and hardly any
+ answer is altogether new. But the Church had known how to deal with
+ intellectual insurgents, from Abelard in the twelfth century down to
+ Giordano Bruno and Vanini in the seventeenth. They were isolated; they
+ were for the most part submissive; and if they were not, the arm of
+ the Church was very long and her grasp mortal. And all these
+ meritorious precursors were made weak by one cardinal defect, for
+ which no gifts of intellectual acuteness could compensate. They had
+ the scientific idea, but they lacked the social idea. They could have
+ set opinion right about the efficacy of the syllogism, and the virtue
+ of entities and quiddities. They could have taught Europe earlier than
+ the Church allowed it to learn that the sun does not go round the
+ earth, and that it is the earth which goes round the sun. But they
+ were wholly unfitted to deal with the prodigious difficulties of moral
+ and social direction. This function, so immeasurably more important
+ than the mere discovery of any number of physical relations, it was
+ the glory of the Church to have discharged for some centuries with as
+ much success as the conditions permitted. We are told indeed by
+ writers ignorant alike of human history and human nature, that only
+ physical science can improve the social condition of man. The common
+ sense of the world always rejects this gross fallacy. The acquiescence
+ for so many centuries in the power of the great directing organisation
+ of Western Europe, notwithstanding its intellectual inadequateness,
+ was the decisive expression of that rejection.</p>
+
+ <p>After the middle of the last century the insurrection against the
+ pretensions of the Church and against the doctrines of Christianity
+ was marked in one of its most important phases by a new and most
+ significant feature. In this phase it was animated at once by the
+ scientific idea and by the social idea. It was an advance both in
+ knowledge and in moral motive. It rested on a conception which was
+ crude and imperfect enough, but which was still almost, like the great
+ ecclesiastical conception itself, a conception of life as a whole.
+ Morality, positive law, social order, economics, the nature and limits
+ of human knowledge, the constitution of the physical universe, had one
+ by one disengaged themselves from theological explanations. The final
+ philosophical movement of the century in France, which was represented
+ by Diderot, now tended to a new social synthesis resting on a purely
+ positive basis. If this movement had only added to its other contents
+ the historic idea, its destination would have been effectually
+ reached. As it was, its leaders surveyed the entire field with as much
+ accuracy and with as wide a range as their instruments allowed, and
+ they scattered over the world a set of ideas which at once entered
+ into energetic rivalry with the ancient scheme of authority. The great
+ symbol of this new comprehensiveness in the insurrection was the
+ Encyclopædia.</p>
+
+ <p>The Encyclopædia was virtually a protest against the old
+ organisation, no less than against the old doctrine. Broadly stated,
+ the great central moral of it all was this: that human nature is good,
+ that the world is capable of being made a desirable abiding-place, and
+ that the evil of the world is the fruit of bad education and bad
+ institutions. This cheerful doctrine now strikes on the ear as a
+ commonplace and a truism. A hundred years ago in France it was a
+ wonderful gospel, and the beginning of a new dispensation. It was the
+ great counter-principle to asceticism in life and morals, to formalism
+ in art, to absolutism in the social ordering, to obscurantism in
+ thought. Every social improvement since has been the outcome of that
+ doctrine in one form or another. The conviction that the character and
+ lot of man are indefinitely modifiable for good, was the indispensable
+ antecedent to any general and energetic endeavour to modify the
+ conditions that surround him. The omnipotence of early instruction, of
+ laws, of the method of social order, over the infinitely plastic
+ impulses of the human creature—this was the maxim which brought men of
+ such widely different temperament and leanings to the common
+ enterprise. Everybody can see what wide and deep-reaching bearings
+ such a doctrine possessed; how it raised all the questions connected
+ with psychology and the formation of character; how it went down to
+ the very foundation of morals; into what fresh and unwelcome sunlight
+ it brought the articles of the old theology; with what new importance
+ it clothed all the relations of real knowledge and the practical arts;
+ what intense interest it lent to every detail of economics and
+ legislation and government.</p>
+
+ <p>The deadly chagrin with which churchmen saw the encyclopedic fabric
+ rising was very natural. The teaching of the Church paints man as
+ fallen and depraved. The new secular knowledge clashed at a thousand
+ points, alike in letter and in spirit, with the old sacred lore. Even
+ where it did not clash, its vitality of interest and attraction drove
+ the older lore into neglected shade. To stir men's vivid curiosity and
+ hope about the earth was to make their care much less absorbing about
+ the kingdom of heaven. To awaken in them the spirit of social
+ improvement was ruin to the most scandalous and crying social abuse
+ then existing. The old spiritual power had lost its instinct, once so
+ keen and effective, of wise direction. Instead of being the guide and
+ corrector of the organs of the temporal power, it was the worst of
+ their accomplices. The Encyclopædia was an informal, transitory, and
+ provisional organisation of the new spiritual power. The school of
+ which it was the great expounder achieved a supreme control over
+ opinion by the only title to which control belongs: a more penetrating
+ eye for social exigencies and for the means of satisfying them.</p>
+
+ <p>Our veteran humorist told us long ago in his whimsical way that the
+ importance of the Acts of the French Philosophes recorded in whole
+ acres of typography is fast exhausting itself, that the famed
+ Encyclopædical Tree has borne no fruit, and that Diderot the great has
+ contracted into Diderot the easily measurable. The humoristic method
+ is a potent instrument for working such contractions and expansions at
+ will. The greatest of men are measurable enough, if you choose to set
+ up a standard that is half transcendental and half cynical. A saner
+ and more patient criticism measures the conspicuous figures of the
+ past differently. It seeks their relations to the great forward
+ movements of the world, and asks to what quarter of the heavens their
+ faces were set, whether towards the east where the new light dawns, or
+ towards the west after the old light has sunk irrevocably down. Above
+ all, a saner criticism bids us remember that pioneers in the
+ progressive way are rare, their lives rude and sorely tried, and their
+ services to mankind beyond price. "Diderot is Diderot," wrote one
+ greater than Carlyle: "a peculiar individuality; whoever holds him or
+ his doings cheaply is a Philistine, and the name of them is legion.
+ Men know neither from God, nor from Nature, nor from their fellows,
+ how to receive with gratitude what is valuable beyond appraisement"
+ (<i>Goethe</i>). An intense Philistinism underlay the great spiritual
+ reaction that followed the Revolution, and not even such of its
+ apostles as Wordsworth and Carlyle wholly escaped the taint.</p>
+
+ <p>Forty years ago, when Carlyle wrote, it might really seem to a
+ prejudiced observer as if the encyclopædic tree had borne no fruit.
+ Even then, and even when the critic happened to be a devotee of the
+ sterile transcendentalism then in vogue, one might have expected some
+ recognition of the fact that the seed of all the great improvements
+ bestowed on France by the Revolution, in spite of the woful evils
+ which followed in its train, had been sown by the Encyclopædists. But
+ now that the last vapours of the transcendental reaction are clearing
+ away, we see that the movement initiated by the Encyclopædia is again
+ in full progress. Materialistic solutions in the science of man,
+ humanitarian ends in legislation, naturalism in art, active faith in
+ the improvableness of institutions—all these are once more the marks
+ of speculation and the guiding ideas of practical energy. The
+ philosophical parenthesis is at an end. The interruption of eighty
+ years counts for no more than the twinkling of an eye in the history
+ of the transformation of the basis of thought. And the interruption
+ has for the present come to a close. Europe again sees the old enemies
+ face to face; the Church, and a Social Philosophy slowly labouring to
+ build her foundations in positive science. It cannot be other than
+ interesting to examine the aims, the instruments, and the degree of
+ success of those who a century ago saw most comprehensively how
+ profound and far-reaching a metamorphosis awaited the thought of the
+ Western world. We shall do this most properly in connection with
+ Diderot.</p>
+
+ <p>Whether we accept or question Comte's strong description of Diderot
+ as the greatest genius of the eighteenth century, it is at least
+ undeniable that he was the one member of the great party of
+ illumination with a real title to the name of thinker. Voltaire and
+ Rousseau were the heads of two important schools, and each of them set
+ deep and unmistakable marks both on the opinion and the events of the
+ century. It would not be difficult to show that their influence was
+ wider than that of the philosopher who discerned the inadequateness of
+ both. But Rousseau was moved by passion and sentiment; Voltaire was
+ only the master of a brilliant and penetrating rationalism. Diderot
+ alone of this famous trio had in his mind the idea of scientific
+ method; alone showed any feeling for a doctrine, and for large organic
+ and constructive conceptions. He had the rare faculty of true
+ philosophic meditation. Though immeasurably inferior both to Voltaire
+ and Rousseau in gifts of literary expression, he was as far their
+ superior in breadth and reality of artistic principle. He was the
+ originator of a natural, realistic, and sympathetic school of literary
+ criticism. He aspired to impose new forms upon the drama. Both in
+ imaginative creation and in criticism, his work was a constant appeal
+ from the artificial conventions of the classic schools to the
+ actualities of common life. The same spirit united with the tendency
+ of his philosophy to place him among the very few men who have been
+ great and genuine observers of human nature and human existence. So
+ singular and widely active a genius may well interest us, even apart
+ from the important place that he holds in the history of literature
+ and opinion.</p>
+ <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+ <h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.<br />
+ YOUTH.</h2>
+
+ <p>Denis Diderot was born at Langres in 1713, being thus a few months
+ younger than Rousseau (1712), nearly twenty years younger than
+ Voltaire (1694), nearly two years younger than Hume (1711), and eleven
+ years older than Kant (1724). His stock was ancient and of good
+ repute. The family had been engaged in the great local industry, the
+ manufacture of cutlery, for no less than two centuries in direct line.
+ Diderot liked to dwell on the historic prowess of his town, from the
+ days of Julius Cæsar and the old Lingones and Sabinus, down to the
+ time of the Great Monarch. With the taste of his generation for
+ tracing moral qualities to a climatic source, he explained a certain
+ vivacity and mobility in the people of his district by the great
+ frequency and violence of its atmospheric changes from hot to cold,
+ from calm to storm, from rain to sunshine. "Thus they learn from
+ earliest infancy to turn to every wind. The man of Langres has a head
+ on his shoulders like the weathercock at the top of the church spire.
+ It is never fixed at one point; if it returns to the point it has
+ left, it is not to stop there. With an amazing rapidity in their
+ movements, their desires, their plans, their fancies, their ideas,
+ they are cumbrous in speech. For myself, I belong to my country side."
+ This was thoroughly true. He inherited all the versatility of his
+ compatriots, all their swift impetuosity, and something of their want
+ of dexterity in expression.</p>
+
+ <p>His father was one of the bravest, most upright, most patient, most
+ sensible of men. Diderot never ceased to regret that the old man's
+ portrait had not been taken with his apron on, his spectacles pushed
+ up, and a hand on the grinder's wheel. After his death, none of his
+ neighbours could speak of him to his son without tears in their eyes.
+ Diderot, wild and irregular as were his earlier days, had always a
+ true affection for his father. "One of the sweetest moments of my
+ life," he once said, "was more than thirty years ago, and I remember
+ it as if it were yesterday, when my father saw me coming home from
+ school, my arms laden with the prizes I had carried off, and my
+ shoulders burdened with the wreaths they had given me, which were too
+ big for my brow and had slipped over my head. As soon as he caught
+ sight of me some way off, he threw down his work, hurried to the door
+ to meet me, and fell a-weeping. It is a fine sight—a grave and
+ sterling man melted to tears."<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id=
+ "FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class=
+ "fnanchor">[1]</a> Of his mother we know less. He had a
+ sister, who seems to have possessed the rough material of his own
+ qualities. He describes her as "lively, active, cheerful, decided,
+ prompt to take offence, slow to come round again, without much care
+ for present or future, never willing to be imposed on by people or
+ circumstance; free in her ways, still more free in her talk; she is a
+ sort of Diogenes in petticoats.... She is the most original and the
+ most strongly-marked creature I know; she is goodness itself, but with
+ a peculiar physiognomy."<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id=
+ "FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>
+ His only brother showed some of the same native stuff, but of thinner
+ and sourer quality. He became an abbé and a saint, peevish,
+ umbrageous, and as excessively devout as his more famous brother was
+ excessively the opposite. "He would have been a good friend and a good
+ brother," wrote Diderot, "if religion had not bidden him trample under
+ foot such poor weaknesses as these. He is a good Christian, who proves
+ to me every minute of the day how much better it would be to be a good
+ man. He shows that what they call evangelical perfection is only the
+ mischievous art of stifling nature, which would most likely have
+ spoken as lustily in him as in me."<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id=
+ "FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class=
+ "fnanchor">[3]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Diderot, like so many others of the eighteenth-century reformers,
+ was a pupil of the Jesuits. An ardent, impetuous, over-genial
+ temperament was the cause of frequent irregularities in conduct. But
+ his quick and active understanding overcame all obstacles. His
+ teachers, ever wisely on the alert for superior capacity, hoped to
+ enlist his talents in the Order. Either they or he planned his escape
+ from home, but his father got to hear of it. "My grandfather," says
+ Diderot's daughter, "kept the profoundest silence, but as he went off
+ to bed took with him the keys of the yard door." When he heard his son
+ going downstairs, he presented himself before him, and asked whither
+ he was bound at twelve o'clock at night. "To Paris," replied the
+ youth, "where I am to join the Jesuits." "That will not be to-night;
+ but your wishes shall be fulfilled. First let us have our sleep." The
+ next morning his father took two places in the coach, and carried him
+ to Paris to the Collége d'Harcourt. He made all the arrangements, and
+ wished his son good-bye. But the good man loved the boy too dearly to
+ leave him without being quite at ease how he would fare; he had the
+ patience to remain a whole fortnight, killing the time and half dead
+ of weariness in an inn, without ever seeing the one object of his
+ stay. At the end of the fortnight he went to the college, and Diderot
+ used many a time to say that such a mark of tenderness and goodness
+ would have made him go to the other end of the world if his father had
+ required it. "My friend," said his father, "I am come to see if you
+ are well, if you are satisfied with your superiors, with your food,
+ with your companions, and with yourself. If you are not well or not
+ happy, we will go back together to your mother. If you had rather stay
+ where you are, I am come to give you a word, to embrace you, and to
+ leave you my blessing." The boy declared he was perfectly happy; and
+ the principal pronounced him an excellent scholar, though already
+ promising to be a troublesome one.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id=
+ "FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class=
+ "fnanchor">[4]</a></p>
+
+ <p>After a couple of years the young Diderot, like other sons of Adam,
+ had to think of earning his bread. The usual struggle followed between
+ youthful genius and old prudence. His father, who was a man of
+ substance, gave him his choice between medicine and law. Law he
+ refused because he did not choose to spend his days in doing other
+ people's business; and medicine, because he had no turn for killing.
+ His father resolutely declined to let him have more money on these
+ terms, and Diderot was thrown on his wits.</p>
+
+ <p>The man of letters shortly before the middle of the century was as
+ much an outcast and a beggar in Paris as he was in London. Voltaire,
+ Gray, and Richardson were perhaps the only three conspicuous writers
+ of the time, who had never known what it was to want a meal or to go
+ without a shirt. But then none of the three depended on his pen for
+ his livelihood. Every other man of that day whose writings have
+ delighted and instructed the world since, had begun his career, and
+ more than one of them continued and ended it, as a drudge and a
+ vagabond. Fielding and Collins, Goldsmith and Johnson, in England;
+ Goldoni in Italy; Vauvenargues, Marmontel, Rousseau, in France;
+ Winckelmann and Lessing in Germany, had all alike been doubtful of
+ dinner, and trembled about a night's lodging. They all knew the life
+ of mean hazard, sorry shift, and petty expedient again and again
+ renewed. It is sorrowful to think how many of the compositions of that
+ time that do most to soothe and elevate some of the best hours of our
+ lives, were written by men with aching hearts, in the midst of haggard
+ perplexities. The man of letters, as distinguished alike from the
+ old-fashioned scholar and the systematic thinker, now first became a
+ distinctly marked type. Macaulay has contrasted the misery of the Grub
+ Street hack of Johnson's time, with the honours accorded to men like
+ Prior and Addison at an earlier date, and the solid sums paid by
+ booksellers to the authors of our own day. But these brilliant
+ passages hardly go lower than the surface of the great change. Its
+ significance lay quite apart from the prices paid for books. The
+ all-important fact about the men of letters in France was that they
+ constituted a new order, that their rise signified the transfer of the
+ spiritual power from ecclesiastical hands, and that, while they were
+ the organs of a new function, they associated it with a new substitute
+ for doctrine. These men were not only the pupils of the Jesuits; they
+ were also their immediate successors as the teachers, the guides, and
+ the directors of society. For two hundred years the followers of
+ Ignatius had taken the intellectual and moral control of Catholic
+ communities out of the failing hands of the Popes and the secular
+ clergy. Their own hour had now struck. The rationalistic historian has
+ seldom done justice to the services which this great Order rendered to
+ European civilisation. The immorality of many of their maxims, their
+ too frequent connivance at political wrong for the sake of power,
+ their inflexible malice against opponents, and the cupidity and
+ obstructiveness of the years of their decrepitude, have blinded us to
+ the many meritorious pages of the Jesuit chronicle. Even men like
+ Diderot and Voltaire, whose lives were for years made bitter by Jesuit
+ machinations, gave many signs that they recognised the aid which had
+ been rendered by their old masters to the cultivation and
+ enlightenment of Europe. It was from the Jesuit fathers that the men
+ of letters whom they trained, acquired that practical and social habit
+ of mind which made the world and its daily interests so real to them.
+ It was perhaps also his Jesuit preceptors whom the man of letters had
+ to blame for a certain want of rigour and exactitude on the side of
+ morality.</p>
+
+ <p>What was this new order which thus struggled into existence, which
+ so speedily made itself felt, and at length so completely succeeded in
+ seizing the lapsed inheritance of the old spiritual organisation? Who
+ is this man of letters? A satirist may easily describe him in epigrams
+ of cheap irony; the pedant of the colleges may see in him a frivolous
+ and shallow profaner of the mysteries of learning; the intellectual
+ coxcomb who nurses his own dainty wits in critical sterility, despises
+ him as Sir Piercie Shafton would have despised Lord Lindsay of the
+ Byres. This notwithstanding, the man of letters has his work to do in
+ the critical period of social transition. He is to be distinguished
+ from the great systematic thinker, as well as from the great
+ imaginative creator. He is borne on the wings neither of a broad
+ philosophic conception nor of a lofty poetic conception. He is only
+ the propagator of portions of such a conception, and of the minor
+ ideas which they suggest. Unlike the Jesuit father whom he replaced,
+ he has no organic doctrine, no historic tradition, no effective
+ discipline, and no definite, comprehensive, far-reaching, concentrated
+ aim. The characteristic of his activity is dispersiveness. Its
+ distinction is to popularise such detached ideas as society is in a
+ condition to assimilate; to interest men in these ideas by dressing
+ them up in varied forms of the literary art; to guide men through them
+ by judging, empirically and unconnectedly, each case of conduct, of
+ policy, or of new opinion as it arises. We have no wish to exalt the
+ office. On the contrary, I accept the maxim of that deep observer who
+ warned us that "the mania for isolation is the plague of the human
+ throng, and to be strong we must march together. You only obtain
+ anything by developing the spirit of discipline among men."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class=
+ "fnanchor">[5]</a></p>
+
+ <p>But there are ages of criticism when discipline is impossible, and
+ the evils of isolation are less than the evils of rash and premature
+ organisation. Fontenelle was the first and in some respects the
+ greatest type of this important class. He was sceptical, learned,
+ ingenious, eloquent. He stretched hands (1657-1757) from the famous
+ quarrel between Ancients and Moderns down to the Encyclopædia, and
+ from Bossuet and Corneille down to Jean Jacques and Diderot. When he
+ was born, the man of letters did not exist. When he died, the man of
+ letters was the most conspicuous personage in France. But when Diderot
+ first began to roam about the streets of Paris, this enormous change
+ was not yet complete.</p>
+
+ <p>For some ten years (1734-1744) Diderot's history is the old tale of
+ hardship and chance; of fine constancy and excellent faith, not wholly
+ free from an occasional stroke of rascality. For a time he earned a
+ little money by teaching. If the pupil happened to be quick and
+ docile, he grudged no labour, and was content with any fee or none. If
+ the pupil happened to be dull, Diderot never came again, and preferred
+ going supperless to bed. His employers paid him as they chose, in
+ shirts, in a chair or a table, in books, in money, and sometimes they
+ never paid him at all. The prodigious exuberance of his nature
+ inspired him with a sovereign indifference to material details. From
+ the beginning he belonged to those to whom it comes by nature to count
+ life more than meat, and the body than raiment. The outward things of
+ existence were to him really outward. They never vexed or absorbed his
+ days and nights, nor overcame his vigorous constitutional instinct for
+ the true proportions of external circumstance. He was of the humour of
+ the old philosopher who, when he heard that all his worldly goods had
+ been lost in a shipwreck, only made for answer, <i>Jubet me fortuna
+ expeditius philosophari</i>. Once he had the good hap to be appointed
+ tutor to the sons of a man of wealth. He performed his duties
+ zealously, he was well housed and well fed, and he gave the fullest
+ satisfaction to his employer. At the end of three months the
+ mechanical toil had grown unbearable to him. The father of his pupils
+ offered him any terms if he would remain. "Look at me, sir," replied
+ the tutor; "my face is as yellow as a lemon. I am making men of your
+ children, but each day I am becoming a child with them. I am a
+ thousand times too rich and too comfortable in your house; leave it I
+ must. What I want is not to live better, but to avoid dying." Again he
+ plunged from comfort into the life of the garret. If he met any old
+ friend from Langres, he borrowed, and the honest father repaid the
+ loan. His mother's savings were brought to him by a faithful creature
+ who had long served in their house, and who now more than once trudged
+ all the way from home on this errand, and added her own humble
+ earnings to the little stock. Many a time the hours went very slowly
+ for the necessitous man. One Shrove Tuesday he rose in the morning,
+ and found his pockets empty even of so much as a halfpenny. His
+ friends had not invited him to join their squalid Bohemian revels.
+ Hunger and thoughts of old Shrovetide merriment and feasting in the
+ far-off home made work impossible. He hastened out of doors and walked
+ about all day visiting such public sights as were open to the
+ penniless. When he returned to his garret at night, his landlady found
+ him in a swoon, and with the compassion of a good soul she forced him
+ to share her supper. "That day," Diderot used to tell his children in
+ later years, "I promised myself that if ever happier times should
+ come, and ever I should have anything, I would never refuse help to
+ any living creature, nor ever condemn him to the misery of such a day
+ as that."<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> And the real interest of the
+ story lies in the fact that no oath was ever more faithfully kept.
+ There is no greater test of the essential richness of a man's nature
+ than that this squalid adversity, not of the sentimental introspective
+ kind but hard and grinding, and not even kept in countenance by
+ respectability, fails to make him a savage or a miser or a
+ misanthrope.</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot had his bitter moments. He knew the gloom and despondency
+ that have their inevitable hour in every solitary and unordered life.
+ But the fits did not last. They left no sour sediment, and this is the
+ sign of health in temperament, provided it be not due to mere
+ callousness. From that horrible quality Diderot assuredly was the
+ furthest removed of any one of his time. Now and always he walked with
+ a certain large carelessness of spirit. He measured life with a roving
+ and liberal eye. Circumstance and conventions, the words under which
+ men hide things, the oracles of common acceptance, the infinitely
+ diversified properties of human character, the many complexities of
+ our conduct and destiny—all these he watched playing freely around
+ him, and he felt no haste to compress his experience into maxims and
+ system. He was absolutely uncramped by any of the formal mannerisms of
+ the spirit. He was wholly uncorrupted by the affectation of culture
+ with which the great Goethe infected part of the world a generation
+ later. His own life was never made the centre of the world.
+ Self-development and self-idealisation as ends in themselves would
+ have struck Diderot as effeminate drolleries. The daily and hourly
+ interrogation of experience for the sake of building up the fabric of
+ his own character in this wise or that, would have been
+ incomprehensible and a little odious to him in theory, and impossible
+ as a matter of practice. In the midst of all the hardships of his
+ younger time, as afterwards in the midst of crushing Herculean
+ taskwork, he was saved from moral ruin by the inexhaustible geniality
+ and expansiveness of his affections. Nor did he narrow their play by
+ looking only to the external forms of human relation. To Diderot it
+ came easily to act on a principle which most of us only accept in
+ words: he looked not to what people said, nor even to what they did,
+ but wholly to what they were.</p>
+
+ <p>Those whom he had once found reason to love and esteem might do him
+ many an ill turn, without any fear of estranging him. Any one can
+ measure character by conduct. It is a harder thing to be willing, in
+ cases that touch our own interests, to interpret conduct by previous
+ knowledge of character. His father, for instance, might easily have
+ spared money enough to save him from the harassing privations of
+ Bohemian life in Paris. A less full-blooded and generous person than
+ Diderot would have resented the stoutness of the old man's
+ persistency. Diderot on the contrary felt and delighted to feel, that
+ this conflict of wills was a mere accident which left undisturbed the
+ reality of old love. "The first few years of my life in Paris," he
+ once told an acquaintance, "had been rather irregular; my behaviour
+ was enough to irritate my father, without there being any need to make
+ it worse by exaggeration. Still calumny was not wanting. People told
+ him—well what did they not tell him? An opportunity for going to see
+ him presented itself. I did not give it two thoughts. I set out full
+ of confidence in his goodness. I thought that he would see me, that I
+ should throw myself into his arms, that we should both of us shed
+ tears, and that all would be forgotten. I thought rightly."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class=
+ "fnanchor">[7]</a> We may be sure of a stoutness of native stuff in
+ any stock where so much tenacity united with such fine confidence on
+ one side, and such generous love on the other. It is a commonplace how
+ much waste would be avoided in human life if men would more freely
+ allow their vision to pierce in this way through the distorting veils
+ of egoism, to the reality of sentiment and motive and
+ relationship.</p>
+
+ <p>Throughout his life Diderot was blessed with that divine gift of
+ pity, which one that has it could hardly be willing to barter for the
+ understanding of an Aristotle. Nor was it of the sentimental type
+ proper for fine ladies. One of his friends had an aversion for women
+ with child. "What monstrous sentiment!" Diderot wrote; "for my part,
+ that condition has always touched me. I cannot see a woman of the
+ common people so, without a tender commiseration."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class=
+ "fnanchor">[8]</a> And Diderot had delicacy and respect in his pity.
+ He tells a story in one of his letters of a poor woman who had
+ suffered some wrong from a priest; she had not money enough to resort
+ to law, until a friend of Diderot took her part. The suit was gained;
+ but when the moment came for execution, the priest had vanished with
+ all his goods. The woman came to thank her protector, and to regret
+ the loss he had suffered. "As she chatted, she pulled a shabby
+ snuff-box out of her pocket, and gathered up with the tip of her
+ finger what little snuff remained at the bottom: her benefactor says
+ to her 'Ah, ah! you have no more snuff; give me your box, and I will
+ fill it.' He took the box and put into it a couple of louis, which he
+ covered up with snuff. Now there's an action thoroughly to my taste,
+ and to yours too! Give, but, if you can, spare to the poor the shame
+ of holding out a hand."<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id=
+ "FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a>
+ And the important thing, as we have said, is that Diderot was as good
+ as his sentiment. Unlike most of the fine talkers of that day, to him
+ these homely and considerate emotions were the most real part of life.
+ Nobody in the world was ever more eager to give succour to others, nor
+ more careless of his own ease.</p>
+
+ <p>One singular story of Diderot's heedlessness about himself has
+ often been told before, but we shall be none the worse in an egoistic
+ world for hearing it told again. There came to him one morning a young
+ man, bringing a manuscript in his hand. He begged Diderot to do him
+ the favour of reading it, and to make any remarks he might think
+ useful on the margin. Diderot found it to be a bitter satire upon his
+ own person and writings. On the young man's return, Diderot asked him
+ his grounds for making such an attack. "I am without bread," the
+ satirist answered, "and I hoped you might perhaps give me a few crowns
+ not to print it." Diderot at once forgot everything in pity for the
+ starving scribbler. "I will tell you a way of making more than that by
+ it. The brother of the Duke of Orleans is one of the pious, and he
+ hates me. Dedicate your satire to him, get it bound with his arms on
+ the cover; take it to him some fine morning, and you will certainly
+ get assistance from him." "But I don't know the prince, and the
+ dedicatory epistle embarrasses me." "Sit down," said Diderot, "and I
+ will write one for you." The dedication was written, the author
+ carried it to the prince, and received a handsome fee.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10"
+ class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Marmontel assures us that never was Diderot seen to such advantage
+ as when an author consulted him about a work. "You should have seen
+ him," he says, "take hold of the subject, pierce to the bottom of it,
+ and at a single glance discover of what riches and of what beauty it
+ was susceptible. If he saw that the author missed the right track,
+ instead of listening to the reading, he at once worked up in his head
+ all that the author had left crude and imperfect. Was it a play, he
+ threw new scenes into it, new incidents, new strokes of character; and
+ thinking that he had actually heard all that he had dreamed, he
+ extolled to the skies the work that had just been read to him, and in
+ which, when it saw the light, we found hardly anything that he had
+ quoted from it.... He who was one of the most enlightened men of the
+ century, was also one of the most amiable; and in everything that
+ touched moral goodness, when he spoke of it freely, I cannot express
+ the charm of his eloquence. His whole soul was in his eyes and on his
+ lips; never did a countenance better depict the goodness of the
+ heart."<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> Morellet is equally loud
+ in praise, not only of Diderot's conversation, its brilliance, its
+ vivacity, its fertility, its suggestiveness, its sincerity, but also
+ his facility and indulgence to all who sought him, and of the
+ sympathetic readiness with which he gave the very best of himself to
+ others.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></p>
+
+ <p>It is needless to say that such a temper was constantly abused.
+ Three-fourths of Diderot's life were reckoned by his family to have
+ been given up to people who had need of his purse, his knowledge, or
+ his good offices. His daughter compares his library to a shop crowded
+ by a succession of customers, but the customers took whatever wares
+ they sought, not by purchase, but by way of free gift. Luckily for
+ Diderot, he was thus generous by temperament, and not because he
+ expected gratitude. Any necessitous knave with the gift of tears and
+ the mask of sensibility could dupe and prey upon him. In one case he
+ had taken a great deal of trouble for one of these needy and
+ importunate clients; had given him money and advice, and had devoted
+ much time to serve him. At the end of their last interview Diderot
+ escorts his departing friend to the head of the staircase. The
+ grateful client then asks him whether he knows natural history. "Well,
+ not much," Diderot replies; "I know an aloe from a lettuce, and a
+ pigeon from a humming-bird." "Do you know about the <i>Formica
+ leo?</i> No? Well, it is a little insect that is wonderfully
+ industrious; it hollows out in the ground a hole shaped like a funnel,
+ it covers the surface with a light fine sand, it attracts other
+ insects, it takes them, it sucks them dry, and then it says to them,
+ 'M. Diderot, I have the honour to wish you good day.'"<a name=
+ "FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13"
+ class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Yet insolence and ingratitude made no difference to Diderot. His
+ ear always remained as open to every tale of distress, his sensibility
+ always as quickly touched, his time, money, and service always as
+ profusely bestowed. I know not whether to say that this was made more,
+ or that it was made less, of a virtue by his excess of tolerance for
+ social castaways and reprobates. Our rough mode of branding a man as
+ bad revolted him. The common appetite for constituting ourselves
+ public prosecutors for the universe, was to him one of the worst of
+ human weaknesses. "You know," he used to say, "all the impetuosity of
+ the passions; you have weighed all circumstance in your everlasting
+ balance; you pass sentence on the goodness or the badness of
+ creatures; you set up rewards and penalties among matters which have
+ no proportion nor relation with one another. Are you sure that you
+ have never committed wrong acts, for which you pardoned yourselves
+ because their object was so slight, though at bottom they implied more
+ wickedness than a crime prompted by misery or fury? Even magistrates,
+ supported by experience, by the law, by conventions which force them
+ sometimes to give judgment against the testimony of their own
+ conscience, still tremble as they pronounce the doom of the accused.
+ And since when has it been lawful for the same person to be at once
+ judge and informer?"<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id=
+ "FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class=
+ "fnanchor">[14]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Such reasoned leniency is the noblest of traits in a man. "I am
+ more affected," he said, in words of which better men that Diderot
+ might often be reminded, "by the charms of virtue than by the
+ deformity of vice. I turn mildly away from the bad, and I fly to
+ embrace the good. If there is in a work, in a character, in a
+ painting, in a statue, a single fine bit, then on that my eyes fasten;
+ I see only that: that is all I remember; the rest is as good as
+ forgotten."<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a></p>
+
+ <p>This is the secret of a rare and admirable temperament. It carried
+ Diderot well through the trial and ordeal of the ragged apprenticeship
+ of letters. What to other men comes by culture, came to him by inborn
+ force and natural capaciousness. We do not know in what way Diderot
+ trained and nourished his understanding. The annotations to his
+ translation of Shaftesbury, as well as his earliest original pieces,
+ show that he had read Montaigne and Pascal, and not only read but
+ meditated on them with an independent mind. They show also that he had
+ been impressed by the Civitas Dei of Augustine, and had at least
+ dipped into Terence and Horace, Cicero and Tacitus. His subsequent
+ writings prove that, like the other men of letters of his day, he
+ found in our own literature the chief external stimulant to thought.
+ Above all, he was impressed by the magnificent ideas of the
+ illustrious Bacon, and these ideas were the direct source of the great
+ undertaking of Diderot's life. He is said to have read little and to
+ have meditated much —the right process for the few men of his potent
+ stamp. The work which he had to do for bread was of the kind that
+ crushes anything short of the strongest faculty. He composed sermons.
+ A missionary once ordered half-a-dozen of them for consumption in the
+ Portuguese colonies, and paid him fifty crowns apiece, which Diderot
+ counted far from the worst bargain of his life. All this was beggarly
+ toil for a man of genius, but Diderot never took the trouble to think
+ of himself as a man of genius, and was quite content with life as it
+ came. If he found himself absolutely without food and without pence,
+ he began moodily to think of abandoning his books and his pen, and of
+ complying with the wishes of his father. A line of Homer, an idea from
+ the Principia, an interesting problem in algebra or geometry, was
+ enough to restore the eternally invincible spell of knowledge. And no
+ sooner was this commanding interest touched, than the cloud of
+ uncomfortable circumstance vanished from before the sun, and calm and
+ serenity filled his spirit.</p>
+
+ <p>Montesquieu used to declare that he had never known a chagrin which
+ half an hour of a book was not able to dispel. Diderot had the same
+ fortunate temper.</p>
+
+ <p>Yet Diderot was not essentially a man of books. He never fell into
+ the characteristic weakness of the follower of letters, by treating
+ books as ends in themselves, or placing literature before life.
+ Character, passion, circumstance, the real tragi-comedy, not its
+ printed shadow and image, engrossed him. He was in this respect more
+ of the temper of Rousseau, than he was like Voltaire or Fontenelle.
+ "Abstraction made," he used to say, "of my existence and of the
+ happiness of my fellows, what does the rest of nature matter to me?"
+ Yet, as we see, nobody that ever lived was more interested in
+ knowledge. His biographer and disciple remarked the contrast in him
+ between his ardent impetuous disposition and enthusiasm, and his
+ spirit of close unwearied observation. <i>Faire le bien, connaître le
+ vrai</i>, was his formula for the perfect life, and defined the only
+ distinction that he cared to recognise between one man and another.
+ And the only motive he ever admitted as reasonable for seeking truth,
+ was as a means of doing good. So strong was his sense of practical
+ life, in the midst of incessant theorising.</p>
+ <hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+ <p>At the moment when he had most difficulty in procuring a little
+ bread each day for himself, Diderot conceived a violent passion for a
+ seamstress, Antoinnette Champion by name, who happened to live in his
+ neighbourhood. He instantly became importunate for marriage. The
+ mother long protested with prudent vigour against a young man of such
+ headstrong impetuosity, who did nothing and who had nothing, save the
+ art of making speeches that turned her daughter's head. At length the
+ young man's golden tongue won the mother as it had won the daughter.
+ It was agreed that his wishes should be crowned, if he could procure
+ the consent of his family. Diderot fared eagerly and with a sanguine
+ heart to Langres. His father supposed that he had seen the evil of his
+ ways, and was come at last to continue the honest tradition of their
+ name. When the son disclosed the object of his visit, he was treated
+ as a madman and threatened with malediction. Without a word of
+ remonstrance he started back one day for Paris. Madame Champion warned
+ him that his project must now be for ever at an end. Such unflinching
+ resoluteness is often the last preliminary before surrender. Diderot
+ fell ill. The two women could not bear to think of him lying sick in a
+ room no better than a dog-kennel, without broths and tisanes, lonely
+ and sorrowful. They hastened to nurse him, and when he got well, what
+ he thought the great object of his life was reached. He and his adored
+ were married (1743).<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id=
+ "FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class=
+ "fnanchor">[16]</a> As has been said, "Choice in marriage is a great
+ match of cajolery between purpose and invisible hazard: deep criticism
+ of a game of pure chance is time wasted." In Diderot's case destiny
+ was hostile.</p>
+
+ <p>His wife was over thirty. She was dutiful, sage, and pious. She had
+ plenty of that devotion which in small things women so seldom lack.
+ While her husband went to dine out, she remained at home to dine and
+ sup on dry bread, and was pleased to think that the next day she would
+ double the little ordinary for him. Coffee was too dear to be a
+ household luxury, so every day she handed him a few halfpence to have
+ his cup, and to watch the chess-players at the Café de la Régence.
+ When after a year or two she went to make her peace with her
+ father-in-law at Langres, she wound her way round the old man's heart
+ by her affectionate caresses, her respect, her ready industry in the
+ household, her piety, her simplicity. It is, however, unfortunately
+ possible for even the best women to manifest their goodness, their
+ prudence, their devotion, in forms that exasperate. Perhaps it was so
+ here. Diderot at fifty was an orderly and steadfast person, but at
+ thirty the blood of vagabondage was still hot within him. He needed in
+ his companion a robust patience, to match his own too robust activity.
+ One may suppose that if Mirabeau had married Hannah More, the union
+ would have turned out ill, and Diderot's marriage was unluckily of
+ such a type. His wife's narrow pieties and homely solicitudes fretted
+ him. He had not learned to count the cost of deranging the fragile
+ sympathy of the hearth. While his wife was away on her visit to his
+ family, he formed a connection with a woman (Madame Puisieux) who
+ seems to have been as bad and selfish as his wife was the opposite.
+ She was the authoress of some literary pieces, which the world
+ willingly and speedily let die; but even very moderate pretensions to
+ <i>bel-esprit</i> may have seemed wonderfully refreshing to a man
+ wearied to death by the illiterate stupidity of his daily
+ companion.<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> This lasted some three or
+ four years down to 1749. As we shall see, he discovered the infidelity
+ of his mistress and broke with her. But by this time his wife's
+ virtues seem to have gone a little sour, as disregarded prudence and
+ thwarted piety are so apt to do. It was too late now to knit up again
+ the ravelled threads of domestic concord. During a second absence of
+ his wife in Champagne (1754), he formed a new attachment to the
+ daughter of a financier's widow (Mdlle. Voland). This lasted to the
+ end of the lady's days (1783 or 1784).</p>
+
+ <p>There is probably nothing very profitable to be said about all this
+ domestic disorder. We do not know enough of the circumstances to be
+ sure of allotting censure in exact and rightful measure. We have to
+ remember that such irregularities were in the manners of the time. To
+ connect them by way of effect with the new opinions in religion, would
+ be as impertinent as to trace the immoralities of Dubois or Lewis the
+ Fifteenth or the Cardinal de Rohan to the old opinions.</p>
+ <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+ <h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.<br />
+ EARLY WRITINGS.</h2>
+
+ <p>La Rochefoucauld, expressing a commonplace with the penetrative
+ terseness that made him a master of the apophthegm, pronounced it "not
+ to be enough to have great qualities: a man must have the economy of
+ them." Or, as another writer says: "Empire in this world belongs not
+ so much to wits, to talents, and to industry, as to a certain skilful
+ economy and to the continual management that a man has the art of
+ applying to all his other gifts."<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id=
+ "FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class=
+ "fnanchor">[18]</a> Notwithstanding the peril that haunts superlative
+ propositions, we are inclined to say that Diderot is the most striking
+ illustration of this that the history of letters or speculation has to
+ furnish. If there are many who have missed the mark which they or
+ kindly intimates thought them certain of attaining, this is mostly not
+ for want of economy, but for want of the great qualities which were
+ imputed to them by mistake. To be mediocre, to be sterile, to be
+ futile, are the three fatal endings of many superbly announced
+ potentialities. Such an end nearly always comes of exaggerated
+ faculty, rather than of bad administration of natural gifts. In
+ Diderot were splendid talents. It was the art of prudent stewardship
+ that lay beyond his reach. Hence this singular fact, that he perhaps
+ alone in literature has left a name of almost the first eminence, and
+ impressed his greatness upon men of the strongest and most different
+ intelligence, and yet never produced a masterpiece; many a fine page,
+ as Marmontel said, but no one fine work.</p>
+
+ <p>No man that ever wrote was more wholly free from that unquiet
+ self-consciousness which too often makes literary genius pitiful or
+ odious in the flesh. He put on no airs of pretended resignation to
+ inferior production, with bursting hints of the vast superiorities
+ that unfriendly circumstance locked up within him. Yet on one
+ occasion, and only on one, so far as evidence remains, he indulged a
+ natural regret. "And so," he wrote when revising the last sheets of
+ the Encyclopædia (July 25, 1765), "in eight or ten days I shall see
+ the end of an undertaking that has occupied me for twenty years; that
+ has not made my fortune by a long way; that has exposed me many a time
+ to the risk of having to quit my country or lose my freedom; and that
+ has consumed a life that I might have made both more useful and more
+ glorious. The sacrifice of talent to need would be less common, if it
+ were only a question of self. One could easily resolve rather to drink
+ water and eat dry crusts and follow the bidding of one's genius in a
+ garret. But for a woman and for children, what can one not resolve? If
+ I sought to make myself of some account in their eyes, I would not
+ say—I have worked thirty years for you: I would say—I have for you
+ renounced for thirty years the vocation of my nature; I have preferred
+ to renounce my tastes in doing what was useful for you, instead of
+ what was agreeable to myself. That is your real obligation to me, and
+ of that you never think."<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id=
+ "FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class=
+ "fnanchor">[19]</a></p>
+
+ <p>It is a question, nevertheless, whether Diderot would have achieved
+ masterpieces, even if the pressure of housekeeping had never driven
+ him to seek bread where he could find it. Indeed it is hardly a
+ question. His genius was spacious and original, but it was too
+ dispersive, too facile of diversion, too little disciplined, for the
+ prolonged effort of combination which is indispensable to the greater
+ constructions whether of philosophy or art. The excellent talent of
+ economy and administration had been denied him; that thrift of
+ faculty, which accumulates store and force for concentrated occasions.
+ He was not encyclopædic by accident, nor merely from external
+ necessity. The quality of rapid movement, impetuous fancy, versatile
+ idea, which he traced to the climate of his birthplace, marked him
+ from the first for an encyclopædic or some such task. His interest was
+ nearly as promptly and vehemently kindled in one subject as in
+ another; he was always boldly tentative, always fresh and vigorous in
+ suggestion, always instant in search. But this multiplicity of active
+ excitements—and with Diderot every interest rose to the warmth of
+ excitement—was even more hostile to masterpieces than were the
+ exigencies of a livelihood. It was not unpardonable in a moment of
+ exhaustion and chagrin to fancy that he had offered up the treasures
+ of his genius to the dull gods of the hearth. But if he had been
+ childless and unwedded, the result would have been the same. He is the
+ munificent prodigal of letters, always believing his substance
+ inexhaustible, never placing a limit to his fancies nor a bound to his
+ outlay. "It is not they who rob me of my life," he wrote; "it is I who
+ give it to them. And what can I do better than accord a portion of it
+ to him who esteems me enough to solicit such a gift? I shall get no
+ praise for it, 'tis true, either now while I am here, nor when I shall
+ exist no longer; but I shall esteem myself for it, and people will
+ love me all the better for it. 'Tis no bad exchange, that of
+ benevolence, against a celebrity that one does not always win, and
+ that nobody wins without a drawback. I have never once regretted the
+ time that I have given to others; I can scarcely say as much for; the
+ time that I have used for myself."<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id=
+ "FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class=
+ "fnanchor">[20]</a> Remembering how uniformly men of letters take
+ themselves somewhat too seriously, we may be sorry that this unique
+ figure among them, who was in other respects constituted to be so
+ considerable and so effective, did not take himself seriously
+ enough.</p>
+
+ <p>Apart from his moral inaptitude for the monumental achievements of
+ authorship, Diderot was endowed with the gifts of the talker rather
+ than with those of the writer. Like Dr. Johnson, he was a great
+ converser rather than the author of great books. If we turn to his
+ writings, we are at some loss to understand the secret of his
+ reputation. They are too often declamatory, ill-compacted, broken by
+ frequent apostrophes, ungainly, dislocated, and rambling. He has been
+ described by a consummate judge as the most German of all the French.
+ And his style is deeply marked by that want of feeling for the
+ exquisite, that dulness of edge, that bluntness of stroke, which is
+ the common note of all German literature, save a little of the very
+ highest. In conversation we do not insist on constant precision of
+ phrase, nor on elaborate sustension of argument. Apostrophe is made
+ natural by the semi-dramatic quality of the situation. Even vehement
+ hyperbole, which is nearly always a disfigurement in written prose,
+ may become impressive or delightful, when it harmonises with the
+ voice, the glance, the gesture of a fervid and exuberant converser.
+ Hence Diderot's personality invested his talk, as happened in the case
+ of Johnson and of Coleridge, with an imposing interest and a power of
+ inspiration which we should never comprehend from the mere perusal of
+ his writings.</p>
+
+ <p>His admirers declared his head to be the ideal head of an Aristotle
+ or a Plato. His brow was wide, lofty, open, gently rounded. The arch
+ of the eyebrow was full of delicacy; the nose of masculine beauty; the
+ habitual expression of the eyes kindly and sympathetic, but as he grew
+ heated in talk, they sparkled like fire; the curves of the mouth
+ bespoke an interesting mixture of finesse, grace, and geniality. His
+ bearing was nonchalant enough, but there was naturally in the carriage
+ of his head, especially when he talked with action, much dignity,
+ energy, and nobleness. It seemed as if enthusiasm were the natural
+ condition for his voice, for his spirit, for every feature. He was
+ only truly Diderot when his thoughts had transported him beyond
+ himself. His ideas were stronger than himself; they swept him along
+ without the power either to stay or to guide their movement. "When I
+ recall Diderot," wrote one of his friends, "the immense variety of his
+ ideas, the amazing multiplicity of his knowledge, the rapid flight,
+ the warmth, the impetuous tumult of his imagination, all the charm and
+ all the disorder of his conversation, I venture to liken his character
+ to nature herself, exactly as he used to conceive her—rich, fertile,
+ abounding in germs of every sort, gentle and fierce, simple and
+ majestic, worthy and sublime, but without any dominating principle,
+ without a master and without a God."<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id=
+ "FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class=
+ "fnanchor">[21]</a> Grétry, the musical composer, declares that
+ Diderot was one of the rare men who had the art of blowing the spark
+ of genius into flame; the first impulses stirred by his glowing
+ imagination were of inspiration divine.<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id=
+ "FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class=
+ "fnanchor">[22]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Marmontel warns us that he who only knows Diderot in his writings,
+ does not know him at all. We should have listened to his persuasive
+ eloquence, and seen his face aglow with the fire of enthusiasm. It was
+ when he grew animated in talk, and let all the abundance of his ideas
+ flow freely from the source, that he became truly ravishing. In his
+ writings, says Marmontel with obvious truth, he never had the art of
+ forming a whole, and this was because that first process of arranging
+ everything in its place was too slow and too tiresome for him. The
+ want of ensemble vanished in the free and varied course of
+ conversation.<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></p>
+
+ <p>We have to remember then that Diderot was in this respect of the
+ Socratic type, though he was unlike Socrates, in being the
+ disseminator of positive and constructive ideas. His personality
+ exerted a decisive force and influence. In reading the testimony of
+ his friends, we think of the young Aristides saying to Socrates: "I
+ always made progress whenever I was in your neighbourhood, even if I
+ were only in the same house, without being in the same room; but my
+ advancement was greater if I were in the same room with you, and
+ greater still if I could keep my eyes fixed upon you."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24"
+ class="fnanchor">[24]</a> It has been well said that Diderot, like
+ Socrates, had about him a something dæmonic. He was possessed, and so
+ had the first secret of possessing others. But then to reach
+ excellence in literature, one must also have self-possession; a double
+ current of impulse and deliberation; a free stream of ideas
+ spontaneously obeying a sense or order, harmony, and form. Eloquence
+ in the informal discourse of the parlour or the country walk did not
+ mean in Diderot's case the empty fluency and nugatory emphasis of the
+ ordinary talker of reputation. It must have been both pregnant and
+ copious; declamatory in form, but fresh and substantial in matter;
+ excursive in arrangement, but forcible and pointed in intention. No
+ doubt, if he was a sage, he was sometimes a sage in a frenzy. He would
+ wind up a peroration by dashing his nightcap passionately against the
+ wall, by way of clencher to the argument. Yet this impetuosity, this
+ turn for declamation, did not hinder his talk from being directly
+ instructive. Younger men of the most various type, from Morellet down
+ to Joubert, men quite competent to detect mere bombast or ardent
+ vagueness, were held captive by the cogency of his understanding. His
+ writings have none of this compulsion. We see the flame, but through a
+ veil of interfused smoke. The expression is not obscure, but it is
+ awkward; not exactly prolix, but heavy, overcharged, and opaque. We
+ miss the vivid precision and the high spirits of Voltaire, the glow
+ and the brooding sonorousness of Rousseau, the pomp of Buffon. To
+ Diderot we go not for charm of style, but for a store of fertile
+ ideas, for some striking studies of human life, and for a vigorous and
+ singular personality.</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot's knowledge of our language now did him good service. One
+ of the details of the method by which he taught himself English is
+ curious. Instead of using an Anglo-French dictionary, he always used
+ one in Anglo-Latin. The sense of a Latin or Greek word, he said, is
+ better established, more surely fixed, more definite, less liable to
+ capricious peculiarities of convention, than the vernacular words
+ which the whim or ignorance of the lexicographer may choose. The
+ reader composes his own vocabulary, and gains both correctness and
+ energy.<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> However this may be, his
+ knowledge of English was more accurate than is possessed by most
+ French writers of our own day. Diderot's first work for the
+ booksellers after his marriage seems to have been a translation in
+ three volumes of Stanyan's History of Greece. For this, to the
+ amazement of his wife, he got a hundred crowns. About the same time
+ (1745) he published Principles of Moral Philosophy, or an Essay of Mr.
+ S. on Merit and Virtue. The initial stands for Shaftesbury, and the
+ book translated was his Inquiry concerning Virtue and Merit.</p>
+
+ <p>Towards the same time, again, Diderot probably made acquaintance
+ with Madame de Puisieux, of whom it has been said with too patent
+ humour that she was without either the virtue or the merit on which
+ her admirer had just been declaiming. We are told that it was her need
+ of money which inspired him with his first original work. As his
+ daughter's memoir, from which the tale comes, is swarming with
+ blunders, this may not be more true than some of her other statements.
+ All that we know of Diderot's sense and sincerity entitles him to the
+ benefit of the doubt. The Philosophical Thoughts (1746) are a
+ continuation of the vein of the annotations on the Essay. He is said
+ to have thrown these reflections together between Good Friday and
+ Easter Sunday. Nor is there anything incredible in such rapid
+ production, when we remember the sweeping impetuosity with which he
+ flung himself into all that he undertook. The Thoughts are evidently
+ the fruits of long meditation, and the literary arrangement of them
+ may well have been an easy task. They are a robuster development of
+ the scepticism which was the less important side of Shaftesbury. The
+ parliament of Paris ordered the book to be burnt along with some
+ others (July 7, 1746), partly because they were heterodox, partly
+ because the practice of publishing books without official leave was
+ gaining an unprecedented height of license.<a name="FNanchor_26_26"
+ id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class=
+ "fnanchor">[26]</a> This was Diderot's first experience of that hand
+ of authority, which was for thirty years to surround him with
+ mortification and torment. But the disapproval of authority did not
+ check the circulation or influence of the Thoughts. They were
+ translated into German and Italian, and were honoured by a shower of
+ hostile criticism. In France they were often reprinted, and even in
+ our own day they are said not wholly to have lost their vogue as a
+ short manual of scepticism.<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id=
+ "FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class=
+ "fnanchor">[27]</a></p>
+
+ <p>The historians of literature too often write as if a book were the
+ cause or the controlling force of controversies in which it is really
+ only a symbol, or a proclamation of feelings already in men's minds.
+ We should never occupy ourselves in tracing the thread of a set of
+ opinions, without trying to recognise the movement of living men and
+ concrete circumstance that accompanied and caused the progress of
+ thought. In watching how the beacon-fire flamed from height to
+ height—</p>
+
+ <div class="poem">
+  <div class="stanza">
+   <span>φάος δε τηέπομπον ουκ ηναίνετο<br /></span> <span>φρορα,
+   προσαιθρίζουσα πόμπιμονφλόγα—<br /></span>
+  </div>
+ </div>
+
+ <p>we should not forget that its source and reference lie in action,
+ in the motion and stirring of confused hosts and multitudes of men. A
+ book, after all, is only the mouthpiece of its author, and the author
+ being human is moved and drawn by the events that occur under his eye.
+ It was not merely because Bacon and Hobbes and Locke had written
+ certain books, that Voltaire and Diderot became free-thinkers and
+ assailed the church. "So long," it has been said, "as a Bossuet, a
+ Fénelon, an Arnauld, a Nicole, were alive, Bayle made few proselytes;
+ the elevation of Dubois and its consequences multiplied unbelievers
+ and indifferents."<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id=
+ "FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class=
+ "fnanchor">[28]</a></p>
+
+ <p>The force of speculative literature always hangs on practical
+ opportuneness. The economic evils of monasticism, the increasing
+ flagrancy and grossness of superstition, the aggressive factiousness
+ of the ecclesiastics, the cruelty of bigoted tribunals—these things
+ disgusted and wearied the more enlightened spirits, and the English
+ philosophy only held out an inspiring intellectual
+ alternative.<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Nor was it accident that drew Diderot's attention to Shaftesbury,
+ rather than to any other of our writers. That author's essay on
+ Enthusiasm had been suggested by the extravagances of the French
+ prophets, poor fanatics from the Cevennes, who had fled to London
+ after the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and whose paroxysms of
+ religious hysteria at length brought them into trouble with the
+ authorities (1707). Paris saw an outbreak of the same kind of ecstasy,
+ though on a much more formidable scale, among the Jansenist fanatics,
+ from 1727 down to 1758, or later. Some of the best attested miracles
+ in the whole history of the supernatural were wrought at the tomb of
+ the Jansenist deacon, Paris.<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id=
+ "FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class=
+ "fnanchor">[30]</a> The works of faith exalted multitudes into
+ convulsive transports; men and women underwent the most cruel
+ tortures, in the hope of securing a descent upon them of the divine
+ grace. The sober citizen, whose journal is so useful a guide to
+ domestic events in France from the Regency to the Peace of 1763, tells
+ us the effect of this hideous revival upon public sentiment. People
+ began to see, he says, what they were to think of the miracles of
+ antiquity. The more they went into these matters, whether miracles or
+ prophecies, the more obscurity they discovered in the one, the more
+ doubt about the other. Who could tell that they had not been
+ accredited and established in remote times with as little foundation
+ as what was then passing under men's very eyes? Just in the same way,
+ the violent and prolonged debates, the intrigue, the tergiversation,
+ which attended the acceptance of the famous Bull Unigenitus, taught
+ shrewd observers how it is that religions establish themselves. They
+ also taught how little respect is due in our minds and consciences to
+ the great points which the universal church claims to have
+ decided.<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a></p>
+
+ <p>These are the circumstances which explain the rude and vigorous
+ scepticism of Diderot's first performances. And they explain the
+ influence of Shaftesbury over him. Neither Diderot nor his
+ contemporaries were ready at once to plunge into the broader and
+ firmer negation to which they afterwards committed themselves. No
+ doubt some of the politeness which he shows to Christianity, both in
+ the notes to his translation of Shaftesbury, and in his own
+ Philosophic Thoughts, is no more than an ironical deference to
+ established prejudices. The notes to the Essay on Merit and Virtue
+ show that Diderot, like all the other French revolters against
+ established prejudice, had been deeply influenced by the shrewd-witted
+ Montaigne. But the ardour of the disciple pressed objections home with
+ a trenchancy that is very unlike the sage distillations of the master.
+ It was from Shaftesbury, however, that he borrowed common sense as a
+ philosophic principle. Shaftesbury had indirectly drawn it from Locke,
+ and through Hutcheson it became the source and sponsor of the Scottish
+ philosophy of that century. This was a weapon exactly adapted for
+ dealing with a theology that was discredited in the eyes of all cool
+ observers by the hysterical extravagances of one set of religionists,
+ and the factious pretensions of their rivals. And no other weapon was
+ at hand. The historic or critical method of investigation was
+ impossible, for the age did not possess the requisite learning. The
+ indirect attack from the side of physical science was equally
+ impossible. The bearing of Newton's great discovery on the current
+ conceptions of the Creator and the supposed system of the divine
+ government, was not yet fully realised. The other scientific ideas
+ which have since made the old hypothesis less credible, were not at
+ that time even conceived.</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot did indeed perceive even so early as this that the
+ controversy was passing from the metaphysicians to the physicists.
+ Though he for the moment misinterpreted the ultimate direction of the
+ effect of experimental discovery, he discerned its potency in the
+ field of theological discussion. "It is not from the hands of the
+ metaphysician," he said, "that atheism has received the weightiest
+ strokes. The sublime meditations of Malebranche and Descartes were
+ less calculated to shake materialism than a single observation of
+ Malpighi's. If this dangerous hypothesis is tottering in our days, it
+ is to experimental physics that such a result is due. It is only in
+ the works of Newton, of Muschenbroek, of Hartzoeker, and of
+ Nieuwentit, that people have found satisfactory proofs of the
+ existence of a being of sovereign intelligence. Thanks to the works of
+ these great men, the world is no longer a god; it is a machine with
+ its cords, its pulleys, its springs, its weights."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32"
+ class="fnanchor">[32]</a> In other words, Diderot had as yet not made
+ his way beyond the halting-place which has been the favourite goal of
+ English physicists from Newton down to Faraday.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33"
+ class="fnanchor">[33]</a> Consistent materialism had not yet
+ established itself in his mind. Meanwhile he laid about him with his
+ common sense, just as Voltaire did, though Diderot has more
+ weightiness of manner. If his use of the weapon cannot be regarded as
+ a decisive settlement of the true issues, we have to remember that he
+ himself became aware in a very short time of its inadequateness, and
+ proceeded to the discussion, as we shall presently see, from another
+ side.</p>
+
+ <p>The scope of the Philosophical Thoughts, and the attitude of
+ Diderot's mind when they were written, may be shown in a few brief
+ passages. The opening words point to the significance of the new time
+ in one direction, and they are the key-note to Diderot's whole
+ character. "People are for ever declaiming against the passions; they
+ set down to them all the pains that man endures, and quite forget that
+ they are also the source of all his pleasures. It is regarded as an
+ affront to reason if one dares to say a word in favour of its rivals.
+ Yet it is only passions, and strong passions, that can raise the soul
+ to great things. Sober passions produce only the commonplace. Deadened
+ passions degrade men of extraordinary quality. Constraint annihilates
+ the greatness and energy of nature. See that tree; 'tis to the luxury
+ of its branches that you owe the freshness and the wide-spreading
+ breadth of its shade, which you may enjoy till winter comes to despoil
+ it of its leafy tresses. An end to all excellence in poetry, in
+ painting, in music, as soon as superstition has once wrought upon
+ human temperament the effect of old age! It is the very climax of
+ madness to propose to oneself the ruin of the passions. A fine design
+ truly in your pietist, to torment himself like a convict in order to
+ desire nothing, love nothing, feel nothing; and he would end by
+ becoming a true monster, if he were to succeed!"<a name=
+ "FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34"
+ class="fnanchor">[34]</a> Many years afterwards he wrote in the same
+ sense to Madame Voland. "I have ever been the apologist of strong
+ passions; they alone move me. Whether they inspire me with admiration
+ or horror, I feel vehemently. If atrocious deeds that dishonour our
+ nature are due to them, it is by them also that we are borne to the
+ marvellous endeavour that elevates it. The man of mediocre passion
+ lives and dies like the brute." And so forth, until the writer is
+ carried to the perplexing position that "if we were bound to choose
+ between Racine, a bad husband, a bad father, a false friend, and a
+ sublime poet, and Racine, good father, good husband, good friend, and
+ dull worthy man, I hold to the first. Of Racine, the bad man, what
+ remains? Nothing. Of Racine, the man of genius? The work is
+ eternal."<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> Without attempting to
+ solve this problem in casuistry, we recognise Diderot's mood, and the
+ hatred with which it would be sure to inspire him for the starved and
+ mutilated passions of the Christian type. The humility, chastity,
+ obedience, indolent solitude, which had for centuries been glorified
+ by the Church, were monstrous to this vehement and energetic spirit.
+ The church had placed heroism in effacement. Diderot, borne to the
+ other extreme, left out even discipline. To turn from his maxims on
+ the foundation of conduct, to his maxims on opinion. As we have said,
+ his attitude is that of the sceptic:—</p>
+
+ <p>What has never been put in question, has not been proved. What
+ people have not examined without prepossessions, they have not
+ examined thoroughly. Scepticism is the touchstone. (§ 31.)</p>
+
+ <p>Incredulity is sometimes the vice of a fool, and credulity the
+ defect of a man of intelligence. The latter sees far into the
+ immensity of the Possible; the former scarcely sees anything possible
+ beyond the Actual. Perhaps this is what produces the timidity of the
+ one, and the temerity of the other.</p>
+
+ <p>A demi-scepticism is the mark of a feeble understanding. It reveals
+ a pusillanimous reasoner, who suffers himself to be alarmed by
+ consequences; a superstitious creature, who thinks he is honouring God
+ by the fetters which he imposes on his reason; a kind of unbeliever
+ who is afraid of unmasking himself to himself. For if truth has
+ nothing to lose by examination, as is the demi-sceptic's conviction,
+ what does he think in the bottom of his heart of those privileged
+ notions which he fears to sound, and which are placed in one of the
+ recesses of his brain, as in a sanctuary to which he dares not draw
+ nigh? (§ 34.)</p>
+
+ <p>Scepticism does not suit everybody. It supposes profound and
+ impartial examination. He who doubts because he does not know the
+ grounds of credibility, is no better than an ignoramus. The true
+ sceptic has counted and weighed the reasons. But it is no light matter
+ to weigh arguments. Who of us knows their value with any nicety? Every
+ mind has its own telescope. An objection that disappears in your eyes,
+ is a colossus in mine: you find an argument trivial that to me is
+ overwhelming.... If then it is so difficult to weigh reasons, and if
+ there are no questions which have not two sides, and nearly always in
+ equal measure, how come we to decide with such rapidity? (§ 24.)</p>
+
+ <p>When the pious cry out against scepticism, it seems to me that they
+ do not understand their own interest, or else that they are
+ inconsistent. If it is certain that a true faith to be embraced, and a
+ false faith to be abandoned, need only to be thoroughly known, then
+ surely it must be highly desirable that universal doubt should spread
+ over the surface of the earth, and that all nations should consent to
+ have the truth of their religions examined. Our missionaries would
+ find a good half of their work done for them. (§ 36.)</p>
+
+ <p>One thing to be remembered is that Diderot, like Vauvenargues,
+ Voltaire, Condorcet, always had Pascal in his mind when dealing with
+ apologetics. They all recognised in him a thinker with a love of
+ truth, as distinguished from the mere priest, Catholic, Anglican,
+ Brahman, or another. "Pascal," says Diderot, "was upright, but he was
+ timid and inclined to credulity. An elegant writer and a profound
+ reasoner, he would doubtless have enlightened the world, if Providence
+ had not abandoned him to people who sacrificed his talents to their
+ own antipathies. How much to be regretted, that he did not leave to
+ the theologians of his time the task of settling their own
+ differences; that he did not give himself up to the search for truth,
+ without reserve and without the fear of offending God by using all the
+ intelligence that God had given him. How much to be regretted that he
+ took for masters men who were not worthy to be his disciples, and was
+ foolish enough to think Arnauld, De Sacy, and Nicole, better men than
+ himself." (§ 14.) The Philosophic Thoughts are designed for an answer
+ in form to the more famous Thoughts of this champion of popular
+ theology. The first of the following extracts, for instance, recalls a
+ memorable illustration of Pascal's sublime pessimism. A few passages
+ will illustrate sufficiently the line of argument which led the
+ foremost men at the opening of the philosophic revolution to reject
+ the pretensions of Christianity:—</p>
+
+ <p>What voices! what cries! what groans! Who is it that has shut up in
+ dungeons all these piteous souls? What crimes have the poor wretches
+ committed? Who condemns them to such torments? <i>The God whom they
+ have offended</i>. Who then is this God? <i>A God full of
+ goodness</i>. But would a God full of goodness take delight in bathing
+ himself in tears? If criminals had to calm the furies of a tyrant,
+ what would they do more?... There are people of whom we ought not to
+ say that they fear God, but that they are horribly afraid of him....
+ Judging from the picture they paint of the Supreme Being, from his
+ wrath, from the rigour of his vengeance, from certain comparisons
+ expressive of the ratio between those whom he leaves to perish and
+ those to whom he deigns to stretch out a hand, the most upright soul
+ would be tempted to wish that such a being did not exist. (§§
+ 7-9.)</p>
+
+ <p>You present to an unbeliever a volume of writings of which you
+ claim to show him the divinity. But, before going into your proofs, he
+ will be sure to put some questions about your collection. Has it
+ always been the same? Why is it less ample now than it was some
+ centuries ago? By what right have they banished this work or that,
+ which another sect reveres, and preserved this or that, which the
+ other has repudiated?... You only answer all these difficulties by the
+ avowal that the first foundations of the faith are purely human; that
+ the choice between the manuscripts, the restoration of passages,
+ finally the collection, has been made according to rules of criticism.
+ Well, I do not refuse to concede to the divinity of the sacred books a
+ degree of faith proportioned to the certainty of these rules. (§
+ 59.)</p>
+
+ <p>People agree that it is of the last importance to employ none but
+ solid arguments for the defence of a creed. Yet they would gladly
+ persecute those who attempt to cry down the bad arguments. What then,
+ is it not enough to be a Christian? Am I also to be one upon wrong
+ grounds? (§57.)</p>
+
+ <p>The less probability a fact has, the more does the testimony of
+ history lose its weight. I should have no difficulty in believing a
+ single honest man who should tell me that the king had just won a
+ complete victory over the allies. But if all Paris were to assure me
+ that a dead man had come to life again, I should not believe a word of
+ it. That a historian should impose upon us, or that a whole people
+ should be mistaken—there is no miracle in that. (§46.)</p>
+
+ <p>What is God? A question that we put to children, and that
+ philosophers have much trouble to answer. We know the age at which a
+ child ought to learn to read, to sing, to dance, to begin Latin or
+ geometry. It is only in religion that you take no account of his
+ capacity. He scarcely hears what you say, before he is asked, What is
+ God? It is at the same instant, from the same lips, that he learns
+ that there are ghosts, goblins, were-wolves—and a God. (§25.)</p>
+
+ <p>The diversity of religious opinions has led the deists to invent an
+ argument that is perhaps more singular than sound. Cicero, having to
+ prove that the Romans were the most warlike people in the world,
+ adroitly draws this conclusion from the lips of their rivals. Gauls,
+ to whom if to any, do you yield the palm for courage? To the Romans.
+ Parthians, after you, who are the bravest of men? The Romans.
+ Africans, whom would you fear, if you were to fear any? The Romans.
+ Let us interrogate the religionists in this fashion, say the deists.
+ Chinese, what religion would be the best, if your own were not the
+ best? Naturalism. Mussulmans, what faith would you embrace, if you
+ abjured Mahomet? Naturalism. Christians, what is the true religion, if
+ it be not Christianity? Judaism. But you, O Jews, what is the true
+ religion, if Judaism be false? Naturalism. Now those, continues
+ Cicero, to whom the second place is awarded by unanimous consent, and
+ who do not in turn concede the first place to any—it is those who
+ incontestably deserve that place. (§62.)</p>
+ <hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+ <p>In all this we notice one constant characteristic of the eighteenth
+ century controversy about revealed religion. The assailant demands of
+ the defender an answer to all the intellectual or logical objections
+ that could possibly be raised by one who had never been a Christian,
+ and who refused to become a Christian until these objections could be
+ met. No account is taken of the mental conditions by which a creed is
+ engendered and limited; nor of the train of historic circumstance
+ which prepares men to receive it. The modern apologist escapes by
+ explaining religion; the apologist of a hundred years ago was required
+ to prove it. The end of such a method was inevitably a negation. The
+ objective propositions of a creed with supernatural pretensions can
+ never be demonstrated from natural or rationalistic premisses. And if
+ they could be so demonstrated, it would only be on grounds that are
+ equally good for some other creeds with the same pretensions. The
+ sceptic was left triumphantly weighing one revealed system against
+ another in an equal balance.<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id=
+ "FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class=
+ "fnanchor">[36]</a></p>
+
+ <p>The position of the writer of the Philosophical Thoughts is
+ distinctly theistic. Yet there is at least one striking passage to
+ show how forcibly some of the arguments on the other side impressed
+ him. "I open," says Diderot, "the pages of a celebrated professor, and
+ I read—'Atheists, I concede to you that movement is essential to
+ matter; what conclusion do you draw from that? That the world results
+ from the fortuitous concourse of atoms? You might as well say that
+ Homer's Iliad, or Voltaire's Henriade, is a result of the fortuitous
+ concourse of written characters.' Now for my part, I should be very
+ sorry to use that reasoning to an atheist; the comparison would give
+ him a very easy game to play. According to the laws of the analysis of
+ chances, he would say to me, I ought not to be surprised that a thing
+ comes to pass when it is possible, and the difficulty of the event is
+ compensated by the number of throws. There is a certain number of
+ throws in which I would safely back myself to bring 100,000 sixes at
+ once with 100,000 dice. Whatever the definite number of the letters
+ with which I am invited fortuitously to produce the Iliad, there is a
+ certain definite number of throws which would make the proposal
+ advantageous for me; nay, my advantage would be infinite if the
+ quantity of throws accorded to me were infinite. Now, you grant to me
+ that matter exists from all eternity, and that movement is essential
+ to it. In return for this concession, I will suppose with you that the
+ world has no limits; that the multitude of atoms is infinite, and that
+ this order, which astonishes you, nowhere contradicts itself. Well,
+ from these reciprocal admissions there follows nothing else unless it
+ be this, that the possibility of engendering the universe fortuitously
+ is very small, but that the number of throws is infinite, or in other
+ words, that <i>the difficulty of the event is more than sufficiently
+ compensated by the multitude of the throws. Therefore, if anything
+ ought to be repugnant to reason, it is the supposition that,—matter
+ being in motion from all eternity, and there being perhaps in the
+ infinite number of possible combinations an infinite number of
+ admirable arrangements,—none of these admirable arrangements would
+ have been met with, out of the infinite multitude of all those which
+ matter successively took on. Therefore the mind ought to be more
+ astonished at the hypothetical duration of chaos."</i><a name=
+ "FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37"
+ class="fnanchor">[37]</a> (§ 21.)</p>
+
+ <p>In a short continuation of the Philosophical Thoughts entitled On
+ the Sufficiency of Natural Religion, Diderot took the next step, and
+ turned towards that faith which the votaries of each creed allow to be
+ the best after their own. Even here he is still in the atmosphere of
+ negation. He desires no more than to show that revealed religion
+ confers no advantages which are not already secured by natural
+ religion. "The revealed law contains no moral precept which I do not
+ find recommended and practised under the law of nature; therefore it
+ has taught us nothing new upon morality. The revealed law has brought
+ us no new truth; for what is a truth but a proposition referring to an
+ object, conceived in terms which present clear ideas to me, and the
+ connection of which with one another is intelligible to me? Now
+ revealed religion has introduced no such propositions to us. What it
+ has added to the natural law consists of five or six propositions
+ which are not a whit more intelligible to me than if they were
+ expressed in ancient Carthaginian, inasmuch as the ideas represented
+ by the terms, and the connection among these ideas, escape me
+ entirely."<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a></p>
+
+ <p>There is no sign in this piece that Diderot had examined the
+ positive grounds of natural religion, or that he was ready with any
+ adequate answer to the argument which Butler had brought forward in
+ the previous decade of the century. We do not see that he is aware as
+ yet of there being as valid objections on his own sceptical principles
+ to the alleged data of naturalistic deism, as to the pretensions of a
+ supernatural religion. He was content with Shaftesbury's position.</p>
+
+ <p>Shaftesbury's influence on Diderot was permanent. It did not long
+ remain so full and entire as it was now in the sphere of religious
+ belief, but the traces of it never disappeared from his notions on
+ morals and art. Shaftesbury's cheerfulness and geniality in
+ philosophising were thoroughly sympathetic to Diderot. The optimistic
+ harmony which the English philosopher, coming after Leibnitz, assumed
+ as the starting-point of his ethical and religious ideas, was not only
+ highly congenial to Diderot's sanguine temperament; it was a most
+ attractive way of escape from the disorderly and confused theological
+ wilderness of sin, asceticism, miracle, and the other monkeries. This
+ naturalistic religion may seem a very unsafe and comfortless
+ halting-place to us. But to men who heard of religion only in
+ connection with the Bull Unigenitus and confessional certificates,
+ with some act of intolerance or cruelty, with futile disputes about
+ grace and the Five Propositions, the naturalism which Shaftesbury
+ taught in prose and Pope versified was like the dawn after the
+ foulness of night. Those who wished to soften the inhuman rigour of
+ the criminal procedure of the time<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id=
+ "FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class=
+ "fnanchor">[39]</a> used to appeal from customary ordinances and
+ written laws to the law natural. The law natural was announced to have
+ preceded any law of human devising. In the same way, those who wished
+ to disperse the darkness of unintelligible dogmas and degraded
+ ecclesiastical usages, appealed to the simplicity, light, and purity
+ of that natural religion which was supposed to have been overlaid and
+ depraved by the special superstitions of the different communities of
+ the world.</p>
+
+ <p>"Pope's Essay on Man," wrote Voltaire after his return from England
+ (1728), "seems to me the finest didactic poem, the most useful, the
+ most sublime, that was ever written in any tongue. 'Tis true the whole
+ substance of it is to be found in Shaftesbury's Characteristics, and I
+ do not know why Pope gives all the honour of it to Bolingbroke,
+ without saying a word of the celebrated Shaftesbury, the pupil of
+ Locke."<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> The ground of this
+ enthusiastic appreciation of the English naturalism was not merely
+ that it made morality independent of religion, which Shaftesbury took
+ great pains to do. It also identified religion with all that is
+ beautiful and harmonious in the universal scheme. It surrounded the
+ new faith with a pure and lofty poetry, that enabled it to confront
+ the old on more than equal terms of dignity and elevation.
+ Shaftesbury, and Diderot after him, ennobled human nature by placing
+ the principle of virtue, the sense of goodness, within the breast of
+ man. Diderot held to this idea throughout, as we shall see. That he
+ did so explains a kind of phraseology about virtue and morality in his
+ letters to Madame Voland and elsewhere, which would otherwise sound
+ disagreeably like cant. Finally, Shaftesbury's peculiar attribution of
+ beauty to morality, his reference of ethical matters to a kind of
+ taste, the tolerably equal importance attributed by him to a sense of
+ beauty and to the moral sense, all impressed Diderot with a mark that
+ was not effaced. In the text of the Inquiry the author pronounces it a
+ childish affectation in the eyes of any man who weighs things maturely
+ to deny that there is in moral beings, just as in corporeal objects, a
+ true and essential beauty, a real sublime. The eagerness with which
+ Diderot seized on this idea from the first, is shown in the
+ declamatory foot-note which he here appends to his original.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41"
+ class="fnanchor">[41]</a> It was the source, by a process of inverted
+ application, of that ethical colouring in his criticisms on art which
+ made them so new and so interesting, because it carried æsthetic
+ beyond technicalities, and associated it with the real impulses and
+ circumstances of human life.<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id=
+ "FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class=
+ "fnanchor">[42]</a></p>
+
+ <p>One of Diderot's writings composed about our present date (1747),
+ the Promenade du Sceptique, did not see the light until after his
+ death. His daughter tells us that a police agent came one day to the
+ house, and proceeded to search the author's room. He found a
+ manuscript, said, "Good, that is what I am looking for," thrust it
+ into his pocket, and went away. Diderot did his best to recover his
+ piece, but never succeeded.<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id=
+ "FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class=
+ "fnanchor">[43]</a> A copy of it came into the hands of Naigeon, and
+ it seems to have been retained by Malesherbes, the director of the
+ press, out of goodwill to the author. If it had been printed, it would
+ certainly have cost him a sojourn in Vincennes.</p>
+
+ <p>We have at first some difficulty in realising how he police could
+ know the contents of an obscure author's desk. For one thing we have
+ to remember that Paris, though it had been enormously increased in the
+ days of Law and the System (1719-20), was still of a comparatively
+ manageable size. In 1720, though the population of the whole realm was
+ only fourteen or fifteen millions, that of Paris had reached no less a
+ figure than a million and a half. After the explosion of the System,
+ its artificial expansion naturally came to an end. By the middle of
+ the century the highest estimate of the population does not make it
+ much more than eight hundred thousand.<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id=
+ "FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class=
+ "fnanchor">[44]</a> This, unlike the socially unwholesome and
+ monstrous agglomerations of Paris or London in our own time, was a
+ population over which police supervision might be made tolerably
+ effective. It was more like a very large provincial town. Again, the
+ inhabitants were marked off into groups or worlds with a definiteness
+ that is now no longer possible. One-fifth of the population, for
+ instance, consisted of domestic servants.<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id=
+ "FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class=
+ "fnanchor">[45]</a> There were between twenty-eight and thirty
+ thousand professional beggars.<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id=
+ "FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class=
+ "fnanchor">[46]</a> The legal circle was large, and was deeply
+ engrossed by its own interests and troubles. The world of authorship,
+ though extremely noisy and profoundly important, still made only a
+ small group. One effect of a censorship is to produce much gossip and
+ whispering about suspected productions before they see the light, and
+ these whispers let the police into as many secrets as they choose to
+ know.</p>
+
+ <p>In Diderot's case, his unsuspecting good-nature to all comers made
+ his affairs accessible enough. His house was the resort of all the
+ starving hacks in Paris, and he has left us more than one graphic
+ picture of the literary drudge of that time. He writes, for instance,
+ about a poor devil to whom he had given a manuscript to copy. "The
+ time for which he had promised it to me expired, and as my man did not
+ appear, I became uneasy, and started in search of him. I found him in
+ a hole about as big as my fist, almost pitch-dark, without the
+ smallest scrap of curtain or hanging to cover the nakedness of his
+ walls, a couple of straw-bottomed chairs, a truckle-bed with a quilt
+ riddled by the moths, a box in the corner of the chimney and rags of
+ every sort stuck upon it, a small tin lamp to which a bottle served as
+ support, and on a shelf some dozen first-rate books. I sat talking
+ there for three-quarters of an hour. My man was as bare as a worm,
+ lean, black, dry, but perfectly serene. He said nothing, but munched
+ his crust of bread with good appetite, and bestowed a caress from time
+ to time on his beloved, on the miserable bedstead that took up
+ two-thirds of his room. If I had never learnt before that happiness
+ resides in the soul, my Epictetus of Hyacinth Street would have taught
+ it me right thoroughly."<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id=
+ "FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class=
+ "fnanchor">[47]</a></p>
+
+ <p>The history of one of these ragged clients is to our point. "Among
+ those," he wrote to Madame Voland,<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id=
+ "FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class=
+ "fnanchor">[48]</a> "whom chance and misery sent to my address was one
+ Glénat, who knew mathematics, wrote a good hand, and was in want of
+ bread. I did all I could to extricate him from his embarrassments. I
+ went begging for customers for him on every side. If he came at
+ meal-times, i would not let him go; if he lacked shoes, I gave him
+ them; now and then I slipped a shilling into his hands as well. he had
+ the air of the worthiest man in the world, and he even bore his
+ neediness with a certain gaiety that used to amuse me. I was fond of
+ chatting with him; he seemed to set little store by fortune, fame, and
+ most of the other things that charm or dazzle us in life. Seven or
+ eight days ago Damilaville wrote to send this man to him, for one of
+ his friends who had a manuscript for him to copy. I send him; the
+ manuscript is entrusted to him—a work on religion and government. i do
+ not know how it came about, but that manuscript is now in the hands of
+ the lieutenant of police. Damilaville gives me word of this. I hasten
+ to my friend Glénat, to warn him to count no more upon me. 'And why am
+ I not to count upon you?' 'Because you are a marked man. The police
+ have their eyes upon you and 'tis impossible to send work to you.'
+ 'But, my dear sir, there's no risk, so long as you entrust nothing
+ reprehensible to my hands. The police only come here when they scent
+ game. I cannot tell how they do it, but they are never mistaken.' 'Ah
+ well, I at any rate know how it is, and you have let me see much more
+ in the the matter than I ever expected to learn from you,' and with
+ that I turn my back on my rascal." Diderot having occasion to visit
+ the lieutenant of police, introduced the matter, and could not
+ withhold an energetic remonstrance against such an odious abuse of a
+ man's kindness of heart, as the introduction of spies to his fireside.
+ M. de Sartine laughed and Diderot took his leave, vowing that all the
+ wretches who should come to him for the future, with cuffs dirty and
+ torn, with holes in their stockings and holes in their shoes, with
+ hair all unkempt, in shabby overcoats with many rents, or scanty black
+ suits with starting seams, with all the tones and looks of distressed
+ worth, would henceforth seem to him no better than police emissaries
+ and scoundrels set to spy on him. The vow, we may be sure, was soon
+ forgotten, but the story shows how seriously in one respect the man of
+ letters in France was worse off than his brother in England.</p>
+
+ <p>The world would have suffered no irreparable loss if the police had
+ thrown the Sceptic's Walk into the fire. It is an allegory designed to
+ contrast the life of religion, the life of philosophy, and the life of
+ sensual pleasure. Of all forms of composition, an allegory most
+ depends for its success upon the rapidity of the writer's eye for new
+ felicities. Accuracy, verisimilitude, sustention, count for nothing in
+ comparison with imaginative adroitness and variety. Bunyan had such an
+ eye, and so, with infinitely more vivacity, had Voltaire. Diderot had
+ not the deep sincerity or realism of conviction of the one; nor had he
+ the inimitable power of throwing himself into a fancy, that was
+ possessed by the other. He was the least agile, the least felicitous,
+ the least ready, of composers. His allegory of the avenue of thorns,
+ the avenue of chestnut-trees, and the avenue of flowers, is an
+ allegory, unskilful, obvious, poor, and not any more amusing than if
+ it's matter had been set forth without any attempt at fanciful
+ decoration. The blinded saints among the thorns, and the voluptuous
+ sinners among the flowers, are rather mechanical figures. The
+ translation into the dialect required by the allegorical situation, of
+ a sceptic's aversion for gross superstition on the one hand, and for
+ gross hedonism on the other, is forced and wooden. The most
+ interesting of the three sections is the second, containing a
+ discussion in which the respective parts are taken by a deist, a
+ pantheist, a subjective idealist, a sceptic, and an atheist. The
+ allegory falls into the background, and we have a plain statement of
+ some of the objections that may be made by the sceptical atheist both
+ to revelation and to natural religion. A starry sky calls forth the
+ usual glorification of the maker of so much beauty. "That is all
+ imagination," rejoins the atheist. "It is mere presumption. We have
+ before us an unknown machine, on which certain observations have been
+ made. Ignorant people who have only examined a single wheel of it, of
+ which they hardly know more than a tooth or two, form conjectures upon
+ the way in which their cogs fit in with a hundred thousand other
+ wheels. And then to finish like artisans, they label the work with the
+ name of it's author."</p>
+
+ <p>The defender justifies this by the argument from a repeater-watch,
+ of which Paley and others have made so much use. We at once ascribe
+ the structure and movement of a repeater-watch to intelligent
+ creation. "No—things are not equal," says the atheist. "You are
+ comparing a finished work, whose origin and manufacture we know, to an
+ infinite piece of complexity, whose beginnings, whose present
+ condition, and whose end are all alike unknown, and about whose author
+ you have nothing better than guesses."</p>
+
+ <p>But does not its structure announce an author? "No; you do not see
+ who nor what he is. Who told you that the order you admire here belies
+ itself nowhere else? Are you allowed to conclude from a point in space
+ to infinite space? You pile a vast piece of ground with earth-heaps
+ thrown here or there by chance, but among which the worm and the ant
+ find convenient dwelling-places enough. What would you think of these
+ insects, if, reasoning after your fashion, they fell into raptures
+ over the intelligence of the gardener who had arranged all these
+ materials so delightfully for their convenience?"<a name=
+ "FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49"
+ class="fnanchor">[49]</a></p>
+
+ <p>In this rudimentary form the chief speaker presses some of the
+ objections to optimistic deism from the point of view of the fixed
+ limitations, the inevitable relativity, of human knowledge. This kind
+ of objection had been more pithily expressed by Pascal long before, in
+ the famous article of his Thoughts, on the difficulty of demonstrating
+ the existence of a deity by light of nature.<a name="FNanchor_50_50"
+ id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class=
+ "fnanchor">[50]</a> Diderot's argument does not extend to dogmatic
+ denial. It only shows that the deist is exposed to an attack from the
+ same sceptical armoury from which he had drawn his own weapons for
+ attacking revelation. It is impossible to tell how far Diderot went at
+ this moment. The trenchancy with which his atheist urges his
+ reasoning, proves that the writer was fully alive to its force. On the
+ other hand, the atheist is left in the midst of a catastrophe. On his
+ return home, he finds his children murdered, his house pillaged, and
+ his wife carried off. And we are told that he could not complain on
+ his own principles.</p>
+
+ <p>If the absence of witnesses allowed the robber to commit his crime
+ with impunity, why should he not? Again, there is a passage in which
+ the writer seems to be speaking his own opinions. An interlocutor
+ maintains the importance of keeping the people in bondage to certain
+ prejudices. "What prejudices? If a man once admits the existence of a
+ God, the reality of moral good and evil, the immortality of the soul,
+ future rewards and punishments, what need has he of prejudices?
+ Supposing him initiated in all the mysteries of transubstantiation,
+ consubstantiation, the Trinity, hypostatical union, predestination,
+ incarnation, and the rest, will he be any the better citizen?"<a name=
+ "FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51"
+ class="fnanchor">[51]</a></p>
+
+ <p>In truth, Diderot's mind was at this time floating in an atmosphere
+ of rationalistic negation, and the moral of his piece, as he hints,
+ points first to the extravagance of Catholicism, next to the vanity of
+ the pleasures of the world, and lastly, to the unfathomable
+ uncertainty of philosophy. Still, we may discern a significant leaning
+ towards the theory of the eternity of matter, which has arranged
+ itself and assumed variety of form by virtue of its inherent quality
+ of motion.<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a></p>
+
+ <p>It is a characteristic and displeasing mark of the time that
+ Diderot in the midst of these serious speculations, should have set
+ himself (1748) to the composition of a story in the kind which the
+ author of the <i>Sofa</i> had made highly popular. The mechanism of
+ this deplorable piece is more grossly disgusting—I mean æsthetically,
+ not morally—than anything to be found elsewhere in the too voluminous
+ library of impure literature. The idea would seem to have been
+ borrowed from one of the old Fabliaux.<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id=
+ "FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class=
+ "fnanchor">[53]</a> But what is tolerable in the quaint and
+ <i>naïf</i> verse of the twelfth or thirteenth century, becomes
+ shocking when deliberately rendered by a grave man into bald
+ unblushing prose of the eighteenth. The humour, the rich sparkle, the
+ wit, the merry <i>gaillardise</i>, have all vanished; we are left with
+ the vapid dregs of an obscene anachronism. Mr. Carlyle, who knows how
+ to be manly in these matters, and affects none of the hypocritical
+ airs of our conventional criticism, yet has not more energetically
+ than truly pronounced this "the beastliest of all past, present, or
+ future dull novels." As "the next mortal creature, even a Reviewer,
+ again compelled to glance into that book," I have felt the propriety
+ of our humorist's injunction to such a one, "to bathe himself in
+ running water, put on change of raiment, and be unclean until the
+ even." Diderot himself, as might have been expected, soon had the
+ grace to repent him of this shameful book, and could never hear it
+ mentioned without a very lively embarrassment.<a name="FNanchor_54_54"
+ id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class=
+ "fnanchor">[54]</a></p>
+
+ <p>As I have said before,<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id=
+ "FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class=
+ "fnanchor">[55]</a> it was such books as this, as Crébillon's novels,
+ as Duclos's Confessions du Comte</p>
+
+ <p>X., and the dissoluteness of manners indicated by them, which
+ invested Rousseau's New Heloïsa (1761) with its delightful and
+ irresistible fascinations. Having pointed out elsewhere the
+ significance of the licentiousness from which the philosophic party
+ did not escape untainted,<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id=
+ "FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class=
+ "fnanchor">[56]</a> I need not here do more than make two short
+ remarks. First, the corruption which had seized the court after the
+ death of Lewis XIV. in the course of a few years had reached the
+ middle class in the town. The loosening of social fibre, caused by the
+ insenate speculation at the time of Law, no doubt furthered the spread
+ of demoralisation. Second, the reaction against the Church involved
+ among its other elements a passionate contempt for all asceticism.
+ This happened to fall in with the general relaxation of morals that
+ followed Lewis's gloomy rigour. Consequently even men of pure life,
+ like Condorcet, carried the theoretical protest against asceticism so
+ far as to vindicate the practical immorality of the time. This is one
+ of those enormous drawbacks that people seldom take into account when
+ they are enumerating the blessings of superstition. Mediæval
+ superstition had produced some advantages, but now came the set-off.
+ Durable morality had been associated with a transitory religious
+ faith. The faith fell into intellectual discredit, and sexual morality
+ shared its decline for a short season. This must always be the natural
+ consequence of building sound ethics on the shifting sands and rotting
+ foundations of theology.</p>
+
+ <p>Such literature as these tales of Diderot's, was the mirror both of
+ the ordinary practical sentiment and the philosophic theory. A nation
+ pays dearly for one of those outbreaks, when they happen to stamp
+ themselves in a literary form that endures. There are those who hold
+ that Louvet's Faublas is to this day a powerful agent in the
+ depravation of the youth of France. Diderot, however, had not the most
+ characteristic virtues of French writing; he was no master in the art
+ of the <i>naïf</i>, nor in delicate malice, nor in sprightly cynicism.
+ His book, consequently, has not lived, and we need not waste more
+ words upon it. <i>Chaque esprit a sa lie</i>, wrote one who for a
+ while had sat at Diderot's feet;<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id=
+ "FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class=
+ "fnanchor">[57]</a> and we may dismiss this tale as the lees of
+ Diderot's strong, careless, sensualised understanding. He was
+ afterwards the author of a work, La Religieuse, on which the
+ superficial critic may easily pour out the vials of affected wrath.
+ There, however, he was executing a profound pathological study in a
+ serious spirit. If the subject is horrible, we have to blame the
+ composition of human character, or the mischievousness of a human
+ institution. La Religieuse is no continuation of the vein of
+ defilement which began and ended with the story of 1748—a story which
+ is one among so many illustrations of Guizot's saying about the
+ eighteenth century, that it was the most tempting and seductive of all
+ centuries, for it promised full satisfaction at once to all the
+ greatnesses of humanity and to all its weaknesses. Hettner quotes a
+ passage from the minor writings of Niebuhr, in which the historian
+ compares Diderot with Petronius, as having both of them been honest
+ and well-intentioned men, who in shameless times were carried towards
+ cynicism by their deep contempt for the prevailing vice. "If Diderot
+ were alive now," says Niebuhr, "and if Petronius had only lived in the
+ fourth instead of the third century, then the painting of obscenity
+ would have been odious to them, and the inducement to it infinitely
+ smaller."<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a> There is no trace in
+ Diderot of this deep contempt for the viciousness of his time. All
+ that can be said is that he did not escape it in his earlier years, in
+ spite of the natural wholesomeness and rectitude of his character.</p>
+
+ <p>It is worthy of remark that the dissoluteness of the middle portion
+ of the century was not associated with the cynical and contemptuous
+ view about women that usually goes with relaxed morality. There was a
+ more or less distinct consciousness of a truth which has ever since
+ grown into clearer prominence with the advance of thought since the
+ Revolution. It is that the sphere and destiny of women are among the
+ three or four foremost questions in social improvement. This is now
+ perceived on all sides, profound as are the differences of opinion
+ upon the proper solution of the problem. A hundred years ago this
+ perception was vague and indefinite, but there was an unmistakable
+ apprehension that the Catholic ideal of womanhood was no more adequate
+ to the facts of life, than Catholic views about science, or property,
+ or labour, or political order and authority.</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot has left some curious and striking reflections upon the
+ fate and character of women. He gives no signs of feeling after social
+ reorganisation; he only speaks as one brooding in uneasy meditation
+ over a very mournful perplexity. There is no sentimentalising, after
+ the fashion of Jean Jacques. He does not neglect the plain physical
+ facts, about which it is so difficult in an age of morbid reserve to
+ speak with freedom, yet about which it is fatal to be silent. He
+ indulged in none of those mischievous flatteries of women, which
+ satisfy narrow observers, or coxcombs, or the uxorious. "Never
+ forget," he said, "that for lack of reflection and principles, nothing
+ penetrates down to a certain profoundness of conviction in the
+ understanding of women. The ideas of justice, virtue, vice, goodness,
+ badness, float on the surface of their souls. They have preserved
+ self-love and personal interest with all the energy of nature.
+ Although more civilized than we are outwardly, they have remained true
+ savages inwardly.... It is in the passion of love, the access of
+ jealousy, the transports of maternal tenderness, the instants of
+ superstition, the way in which they show epidemic and popular notions,
+ that women amaze us; fair as the seraphin of Klopstock, terrible as
+ the fiends of Milton.... The distractions of a busy and contentious
+ life break up our passions. A woman, on the contrary, broods over her
+ passions; they are a fixed point on which her idleness or the
+ frivolity of her duties holds her attention fast.... Impenetrable in
+ dissimulation, cruel in vengeance, tenacious in their designs, without
+ scruples about the means of success, animated by a deep and secret
+ hatred against the despotism of man—it seems as if there were among
+ them a sort of league, such as exists among the priests of all
+ nations.... The symbol of women in general is that of the Apocalypse,
+ on the front of which is inscribed <i>Mystery</i>.... If we have more
+ reason than women have, they have far more instinct than we
+ have."<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a> All this was said in no
+ bitterness, but in the spirit of the strong observer.</p>
+
+ <p>Cynical bitterness is as misplaced as frivolous adulation. Diderot
+ had a deep pity for women. Their physical weaknesses moved him to
+ compassion. To these are added the burden of their maternal function,
+ and the burden of unequal laws. "The moment which shall deliver the
+ girl from subjection to her parents is come; her imagination opens to
+ a future thronged by chimæras; her heart swims in secret delight.
+ Rejoice while thou canst, luckless creature! Time would have weakened
+ the tyranny that thou hast left; time will strengthen the tyranny that
+ awaits thee. They choose a husband for her. She becomes a mother. It
+ is in anguish, at the peril of their lives, at the cost of their
+ charms, often to the damage of their health, that they give birth to
+ their little ones. The organs that mark their sex are subject to two
+ incurable maladies. There is, perhaps, no joy comparable to that of
+ the mother as she looks on her first-born; but the moment is dearly
+ bought. Time advances, beauty passes; there come the years of neglect,
+ of spleen, of weariness. 'Tis in pain that Nature disposes them for
+ maternity; in pain and illness, dangerous and prolonged, she brings
+ maternity to its close. What is a woman after that? Neglected by her
+ husband, left by her children, a nullity in society, then piety
+ becomes her one and last resource. In nearly every part of the world,
+ the cruelty of the civil laws against women is added to the cruelty of
+ Nature. They have been treated like weak-minded children. There is no
+ sort of vexation which, among civilised peoples, man cannot inflict
+ upon woman with impunity."<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id=
+ "FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class=
+ "fnanchor">[60]</a></p>
+
+ <p>The thought went no further, in Diderot's mind, than this pathetic
+ ejaculation. He left it to the next generation, to Condorcet and
+ others, to attack the problem practically; effectively to assert the
+ true theory that we must look to social emancipation in women, and
+ moral discipline in men, to redress the physical disadvantages.
+ Meanwhile Diderot deserves credit for treating the position and
+ character of women in a civilised society with a sense of reality; and
+ for throwing aside those faded gallantries of poetic and literary
+ convention, that screen a broad and dolorous gulf.</p>
+ <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+ <h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.<br />
+ THE NEW PHILOSOPHY.</h2>
+
+ <p>It is a common prejudice to treat Voltaire as if he had done
+ nothing save write the Pucelle and mock at Habakkuk. Every serious and
+ instructed student knows better. Voltaire's popularisation of the
+ philosophy of Newton (1738) was a stimulus of the greatest importance
+ to new thought in France. In a chapter of this work he had explained
+ with his usual matchless terseness and lucidity Berkeley's theory of
+ vision. The principle of this theory is, as every one knows, that
+ figures, magnitudes, situations, distances, are not sensations but
+ inferences; they are not the immediate revelations of sight, but the
+ products of association and intellectual construction; they are not
+ directly judged by vision, but by imagination and experience. If this
+ be so, neither situation, nor distance, nor magnitude, nor figure,
+ would be at once discerned by one born blind, supposing him suddenly
+ to receive sight. Voltaire then describes the results of the operation
+ performed by Cheselden (1728) on a lad who had been blind from his
+ birth. This experiment was believed to confirm all that Locke and
+ Berkeley had foreseen, for it was long before the patient could
+ distinguish objects by size, distance, or shape.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61"
+ class="fnanchor">[61]</a> Condillac had renewed the interest which
+ Voltaire had first kindled in the subject, by referring to Cheselden's
+ experiment in his first work, which was published in 1746.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62"
+ class="fnanchor">[62]</a></p>
+
+ <p>It happened that in 1748 Réaumur couched the eyes of a girl who had
+ been born blind. Diderot sought to be admitted to the operation, but
+ the favour was denied him, and he expressed his resentment in terms
+ which, as we shall see, cost him very dear. As he could not witness
+ the experiment, he began to meditate upon the subject, and the result
+ was the <i>Letter on the Blind for the Use of those who See</i>.
+ published in 1749—the date, it may be observed in passing, of another
+ very important work in the development of materialistic speculation,
+ David Hartley's <i>Observations on man, his frame, his duty, and his
+ expectations</i>. Diderot's real disappointment at not being admitted
+ to the operation was slight. In a vigorous passage he shows the
+ difficulties in the way of conducting such an experiment under the
+ conditions necessary to make it conclusive. To prepare the born-blind
+ to answer philosophical interrogatories truly, and then to put these
+ interrogatories rightly, would have been a feat, he declares, not
+ unworthy of the united talents of Newton, Descartes, Locke, and
+ Leibnitz. Unless the patient were placed in such conditions as this,
+ Diderot thinks there would be more profit in questioning a blind
+ person of good sense, than in the answers of an uneducated person
+ receiving sight for the first time under abnormal and bewildering
+ circumstances.<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id=
+ "FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class=
+ "fnanchor">[63]</a> In this he was undoubtedly right. If the
+ experiment could be prepared under the delicate conditions proper to
+ make it demonstrative evidence, it would be final. But the experiment
+ had certainly not been so prepared in his time, and probably never
+ will be.<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Read in the light of the rich and elaborate speculative literature
+ which England is producing in our own day, Diderot's once famous
+ Letter on the Blind seems both crude and loose in its thinking. Yet
+ considering the state of philosophy in France at the time of its
+ appearance, we are struck by the acuteness, the good sense, and the
+ originality of many of its positions. It was the first effective
+ introduction into France of these great and fundamental principles;
+ that all knowledge is relative to our intelligence, that thought is
+ not the measure of existence, nor the conceivableness of a proposition
+ the test of its truth, and that our experience is not the limit to the
+ possibilities of things. That is an impatient criticism which
+ dismisses the French philosophers with some light word as radically
+ shallow and impotent. Diderot grasped the doctrine of Relativity in
+ some of the most important and far-reaching of all its bearings. The
+ fact that he and his allies used the doctrine as a weapon of combat
+ against the standing organisation, is exactly what makes their history
+ worth writing about. The standing organisation was the antagonistic
+ doctrine incarnate. It made anthropomorphism and the absolute the very
+ base and spring alike of individual and of social life. No growth was
+ possible until this speculative base had been transformed. Hence the
+ profound significance of what looks like a mere discussion of one of
+ the minor problems of metaphysics. Diderot was not the first to
+ discover Relativity, nor did he establish it; but it was he who
+ introduced it into the literature of his country at the moment when
+ circumstances were ripe for it.</p>
+
+ <p>Condillac, as we have said, had published his first work, the Essay
+ on the Origin of Human Knowledge, three years before (1746). This was
+ a simple and undeveloped rendering of the doctrine of Locke, that the
+ ultimate source of our notions lies in impressions made upon the
+ senses, shaped and combined by reflection. It was not until 1754 that
+ Condillac published his more celebrated treatise on the Sensations, in
+ which he advanced a stride beyond Locke, and instead of tracing our
+ notions to the double source of sensation and reflection, maintained
+ that reflection itself is nothing but sensation "differently
+ transformed." In the first book, again, he had disputed Berkeley's
+ theory of vision: in the second, he gave a reasoned adhesion to it.
+ Now Diderot and Condillac had first been brought together by Rousseau,
+ when all three were needy wanderers about the streets of Paris. They
+ used to dine together once a week at a tavern, and it was Diderot who
+ persuaded a bookseller to give Condillac a hundred crowns for his
+ first manuscript. "The Paris booksellers," says Rousseau, "are very
+ arrogant and harsh to beginners; and metaphysics, then extremely
+ little in fashion, did not offer a very particularly attractive
+ subject."<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a> The constant intercourse
+ between Diderot and Condillac in the interval between the two works of
+ the great apostle of Sensationalism, may well account for the
+ remarkable development in doctrine. This is one of the many examples
+ of the share of Diderot's energetic and stimulating intelligence, in
+ directing and nourishing the movement of the time, its errors and
+ precipitancies included. On the other hand, the share of Condillac in
+ providing a text for Diderot's first considerable performance, is
+ equally evident.</p>
+
+ <p>The Letter on the Blind is an inquiry how far a modification of the
+ five senses, such as the congenital absence of one of them, would
+ involve a corresponding modification of the ordinary notions acquired
+ by men who are normally endowed in their capacity for sensation. It
+ considers the Intellect in a case where it is deprived of one of the
+ senses. The writer opens with an account of a visit made by himself
+ and some friends to a man born blind at Puisaux, a place seventy miles
+ from Paris. They asked him in what way he thought of the eyes. "They
+ are an organ on which the air produces the same effect as my stick
+ upon my hand." A mirror he described "as a machine which sets things
+ in relief away from themselves, if they are properly placed in
+ relation to it." This conception had formed itself in his mind in the
+ following way. The blind man only knows objects by touch. He is aware,
+ on the testimony of others, that we know objects by sight as he knows
+ them by touch; he can form no other notion. He is aware, again, that a
+ man cannot see his own face, though he can touch it. Sight, then, he
+ concludes, is a sort of touch, which only extends to objects different
+ from our own visage, and remote from us. Now touch only conveys to him
+ the idea of relief. A mirror, therefore, must be a machine which sets
+ us in relief out of ourselves. How many philosophers, cries Diderot,
+ have employed less subtlety to reach notions just as untrue?</p>
+
+ <p>The born-blind had a memory for sound in a surprising degree, and
+ countenances do not present more diversity to us than he observed in
+ voices. The voice has for such persons an infinite number of delicate
+ shades that escape us, because we have not the same reason for
+ attention that the blind have. The help that our senses lend to one
+ another, is an obstacle to their perfection.</p>
+
+ <p>The blind man said he should have been tempted to regard persons
+ endowed with sight as superior intelligences, if he had not found out
+ a hundred times how inferior we are in other respects. How do we
+ know—Diderot reflects upon this—that all the animals do not reason in
+ the same way, and look upon themselves as our equals or superiors,
+ notwithstanding our more complex and efficient intelligence? They may
+ accord to us a reason with which we should still have much need of
+ their instinct while they claim to be endowed with an instinct which
+ enables them to do very well without our reason.</p>
+
+ <p>When asked whether he should be glad to have sight, the born-blind
+ replied that, apart from curiosity, he would be just as well pleased
+ to have long arms: his hands would tell him what is going on in the
+ moon, better than our eyes or telescopes; and the eyes cease to see
+ earlier than the hands lose the sense of touch. It would therefore be
+ just as good to perfect in him the organ that he had, as to confer
+ upon him another which he had not. This is untrue. No conceivable
+ perfection of touch would reveal phenomena of light, and the longest
+ arms must leave those phenomena undisclosed.</p>
+
+ <p>After recounting various other peculiarities of thought, Diderot
+ notices that the blind man attaches slight importance to the sense of
+ shame. He would hardly understand the utility of clothes, for
+ instance, except as a protection against cold. He frankly told his
+ philosophising visitors that he could not see why one part of the body
+ should be covered rather than another. "I have never doubted," says
+ Diderot, "that the state of our organs and senses has much influence
+ both on our metaphysics and our morality." This, I may observe, does
+ not in the least show that in a society of human beings, not blind,
+ but endowed with vision, the sense of physical shame is a mere
+ prejudice of which philosophy will rid us. The fact that a blind man
+ discerns no ill in nakedness, has no bearing on the value or
+ naturalness of shame among people with eyes. And moreover, the fact
+ that delicacy or shame is not a universal human impulse, but is
+ established, and its scope defined, by a varying etiquette, does not
+ in the least affect the utility or wisdom of such an artificial
+ establishment and definition. The grounds of delicacy, though
+ connected with the senses, are fixed by considerations that spring
+ from the social reason. It seems to be true, as Diderot says, that the
+ born-blind are at first without physical delicacy; because delicacy
+ has its root in the consciousness that we are observed, while the
+ born-blind are not conscious that they are observed. It is found that
+ one of the most important parts of their education is to impress this
+ knowledge upon them.<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id=
+ "FNanchor_66_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class=
+ "fnanchor">[66]</a></p>
+
+ <p>But the artificiality of a moral acquisition is obviously no test
+ of its worth, nor of the reasons for preserving it. Diderot exclaims,
+ "Ah, madam, how different is the morality of a blind man from ours;
+ and how the morality of the deaf would differ from that of the blind;
+ and if a being should have a sense more than we have, how wofully
+ imperfect would he find our morality!" This is plainly a crude and
+ erroneous way of illustrating the important truth of the strict
+ relativity of ethical standards and maxims. Diderot speaks as if they
+ were relative simply and solely to our five wits, and would vary with
+ them only. Everybody now has learnt that morality depends not merely
+ on the five wits, but on the mental constitution within, and on the
+ social conditions without. It is to these rather than to the number of
+ our senses, that moral ideas are relative.</p>
+
+ <p>Passing over various other remarks, we come to those pages in the
+ Letter which apply the principle of relativity to the
+ master-conception of God. Diderot's argument on this point naturally
+ drew keener attention than the more disinterestedly scientific parts
+ of his contribution. People were not strongly agitated by the question
+ whether a blind man who had learned to distinguish a sphere from a
+ cube by touch, would instantly identify each of them if he received
+ sight.<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a></p>
+
+ <p>The question whether a blind man has as good reasons for believing
+ in the existence of a God as a man with sight can find, was of more
+ vivid interest. As a matter of fact, Diderot's treatment of the
+ narrower question (pp. 324, etc.) is more closely coherent than his
+ treatment of the wider one, for the simple reason that the special
+ limitation of experience in the born-blind cannot fairly be made to
+ yield any decisive evidence on the great, the insoluble enigma.</p>
+
+ <p>Here, as in the other part of his essay, Diderot followed the
+ method of interrogating the blind themselves. In this instance, he
+ turned to the most extraordinary example in history, of intellectual
+ mastery and scientific penetration in one who practically belonged to
+ the class of the born-blind; and this too in dealing with subjects
+ where sight might be thought most indispensable. From 1711 to 1739 one
+ of the professors of mathematics at Cambridge was Nicholas Saunderson,
+ who had lost his sight before he was twelve months old. He was a man
+ of striking mental vigour, an original and efficient teacher, and the
+ author of a book upon algebra which was considered meritorious in its
+ day. His knowledge of optics was highly remarkable. He had distinct
+ ideas of perspective, of the projections of the sphere, and of the
+ forms assumed by plane or solid figures in certain positions. For
+ performing computations he devised a machine of great ingenuity, which
+ also served the purpose, with certain modifications, of representing
+ geometrical diagrams. In religion he was a sceptic or something more,
+ and in his last hours Diderot supposes him to have engaged in a
+ discussion with a minister of religion, upon the arguments for the
+ existence of a deity drawn from final causes. This discussion Diderot
+ professes to reproduce, and he makes Saunderson discourse with much
+ eloquence and some pathos.</p>
+
+ <p>By one of those mystifications which make the French polemical
+ literature of the eighteenth century the despair of bibliographers,
+ Diderot cites as his authority a <i>Life of Saunderson</i>, by Dr.
+ Inchlif. He sets forth the title with great circumstantiality, but no
+ such book exists or ever did exist. The Royal Society of London,
+ however, took the jest of fathering atheism on one of its members in
+ bad part, and Diderot was systematically excluded from the honour of
+ admission to that learned body, as he was excluded all his life from
+ the French Academy.</p>
+
+ <p>The reasoning which Diderot puts into the professor's mouth is at
+ first a fervid enlargement of the text, that the argument drawn from
+ the wonders of nature is very weak evidence for blind men. Our power
+ of creating new objects, so to speak, by means of a little mirror, is
+ far more incomprehensible to them, than the stars which they have been
+ condemned never to behold. The luminous ball that moves from east to
+ west through the heavens, is a less astonishing thing to them than the
+ fire on the hearth which they can lessen or augment at
+ pleasure.<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a> "Why talk to me," says
+ Saunderson, "of all that fine spectacle which has never been made for
+ me? I have been condemned to pass my life in darkness; and you cite
+ marvels that I cannot understand, and that are only evidence for you
+ and for those who see as you do. If you want me to believe in God, you
+ must make me touch him." The minister replied that the sense of touch
+ ought to be enough to reveal the divinity to him in the admirable
+ mechanism of his organs. To this, Saunderson:—"I repeat, all that is
+ not as fine for me as it is for you. But the animal mechanism, even
+ were it as perfect as you pretend, and as I daresay it is—what has it
+ in common with a Being of sovereign intelligence? If it fills you with
+ astonishment, that is perhaps because you are in the habit of treating
+ as a prodigy anything that strikes you as being beyond your own
+ strength. I have been myself so often an object of admiration for you,
+ that I have a poor opinion of what surprises you. I have attracted
+ people from all parts of England, who could not conceive by what means
+ I could work at geometry. Well, you must agree that such persons had
+ not very exact notions about the possibility of things. Is a
+ phenomenon in our notions beyond the power of man? Then we instantly
+ say—<i>'Tis the handiwork of a God</i>. Nothing short of that can
+ content our vanity. Why can we not contrive to throw into our talk
+ less pride and more philosophy?. If nature offers us some knot that is
+ hard to untie, let us leave it for what it is; do not let us employ
+ for cutting it the hand of a Being, who then immediately becomes in
+ turn a new knot for us, and a knot harder to untie than the first. An
+ Indian tells you that our globe is suspended in the air on the back of
+ an elephant. And the elephant! It stands on a tortoise. And the
+ tortoise? what sustains that?... You pity the Indian: and yet one
+ might very well say to you as to him—Mr. Holmes, my good friend,
+ confess your ignorance, and spare me elephant and tortoise."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_69_69" id="FNanchor_69_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69_69"
+ class="fnanchor">[69]</a></p>
+
+ <p>The minister very naturally then falls back upon good authority,
+ and asks Saunderson to take the word of Newton, Clarke, and Leibnitz.
+ The blind man answers that though the actual state of the universe may
+ be the illustration of a marvellous and admirable order, still Newton,
+ Clarke, and Leibnitz must leave him freedom of opinion as to its
+ earlier states. And then he foreshadows in a really singular and
+ remarkable way that theory which is believed to be the great triumph
+ of scientific discovery, and which is certainly the great stimulus to
+ speculation, in our own time. As to anterior states "you have no
+ witnesses to confront with me, and your eyes give you no help.
+ Imagine, if you choose, that the order which strikes you so profoundly
+ has subsisted from the beginning. But leave me free to think that it
+ has done no such thing, and that if we went back to the birth of
+ things and scenes, and perceived matter in motion and chaos slowly
+ disentangling itself, we should come across a whole multitude of
+ shapeless creatures, instead of a very few creatures highly organised.
+ If I have no objection to make to what you say about the present
+ condition of things, I may at least question you as to their past
+ condition. I may at least ask of you, for example, who told you—you
+ and Leibnitz and Clarke and Newton—that in the first instances of the
+ formation of animals, some were not without heads and others without
+ feet? I may maintain that these had no stomachs, and those no
+ intestines; that some to whom a stomach, a palate, and teeth seemed to
+ promise permanence, came to an end through some fault of heart or
+ lungs; that the monsters annihilated one another in succession, that
+ all the faulty (<i>vicieuses</i>) combinations of matter disappeared,
+ and that <i>those only survived whose mechanism implied no important
+ mis-adaptation</i> (contradiction), <i>and who had the power of
+ supporting and perpetuating themselves</i>.</p>
+
+ <p>"On this hypothesis, if the first man had happened to have his
+ larynx closed, or had not found suitable food, or had been defective
+ in the parts of generation, or had failed to find a mate, then what
+ would have become of the human race? It would have been still enfolded
+ in the general depuration of the universe; and that arrogant being who
+ calls himself Man, dissolved and scattered among the molecules of
+ matter, would perhaps have remained for all time hidden in the number
+ of mere possibilities.</p>
+
+ <p>"If shapeless creatures had never existed, you would not fail to
+ insist that none will ever appear, and that I am throwing myself
+ headlong into chimerical hypotheses. But the order is not even now so
+ perfect, but that monstrous products appear from time to
+ time."<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id="FNanchor_70_70"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_70_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a></p>
+
+ <p>We have here a distinct enough conception, though in an exceedingly
+ undigested shape, first, of incessant Variability in organisms as an
+ actual circumstance, which we may see exemplified in its extreme form
+ in the monstrous deviations of structure that occur from time to time
+ before our own eyes; second, of Adaptation to environment as the
+ determining condition of Survival among the forms that present
+ themselves. Even as a bald and unsustained guess, this was an
+ effective side-blow at the doctrine of final causes—a doctrine, as has
+ been often remarked, which does not survive, in any given set of
+ phenomena, the reduction of these phenomena to terms of matter and
+ motion.</p>
+
+ <p>"I conjecture then," continues Saunderson, enlarging the idea of
+ the possibilities of matter and motion, "that in the beginning when
+ matter in fermentation gradually brought our universe bursting into
+ being, blind creatures like myself were very common. But why should I
+ not believe of worlds what I believe of animals? How many worlds,
+ mutilated and imperfect, were peradventure dispersed, then re-formed,
+ and are again dispersing at each moment of time in those far-off
+ spaces which I cannot touch and you cannot behold, but where motion
+ combines and will continue to combine masses of matter, until they
+ have chanced on some arrangement in which they may finally persevere!
+ O philosophers, transport yourselves with me on to the confines of the
+ universe, beyond the point where I feel, and you see, organised
+ beings; gaze over that new ocean, and seek across its lawless, aimless
+ heavings some vestiges of that intelligent Being whose wisdom strikes
+ you with such wonder here!</p>
+
+ <p>"What is this world? A complex whole, subject to endless
+ revolutions. All these revolutions show a continual tendency to
+ destruction; a swift succession of beings who follow one another,
+ press forward, and vanish; a fleeting symmetry; the order of a moment.
+ I reproached you just now with estimating the perfection of things by
+ your own capacity; and I might accuse you here of measuring its
+ duration by the length of your own days. You judge of the continuous
+ existence of the world, as an ephemeral insect might judge of yours.
+ The world is eternal for you, as you are eternal to the being that
+ lives but for one instant. Yet the insect is the more reasonable of
+ the two. For what a prodigious succession of ephemeral generations
+ attests your eternity! What an immeasurable tradition! Yet shall we
+ all pass away, without the possibility of assigning either the real
+ extension that we filled in space, or the precise time that we shall
+ have endured. Time, matter, space—all, it may be, are no more than a
+ point."<a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Diderot sent a copy of his work to Voltaire. The poet replied with
+ his usual playful politeness, but declared his dissent from
+ Saunderson, "who denied God, because he happened to have been born
+ blind."<a name="FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_72_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a> More pretentious, and
+ infinitely less acute critics than Voltaire, have fixed on the same
+ point in the argument and met it by the same answer; namely, that,
+ blind as he was, Saunderson ought to have recognised an intelligent
+ Being who had provided him with so many substitutes for sight; he
+ ought to have inferred a skilful demiurgus from those ordered
+ relations in the universe, which Thought, independently of Vision,
+ might well have disclosed to him. In truth, this is not the centre of
+ the whole argument. When Saunderson implies that he could only admit a
+ God on condition that he could touch him, he makes a single sense the
+ channel of all possible ideas, and the arbiter of all reasoned
+ combinations of ideas. This is absurd, and Diderot, as we have seen,
+ rapidly passed away from that to the real strength of the position.
+ All the rest of the contention against final causes would have come
+ just as fitly from the lips of a man with vision, as from Saunderson.
+ The hypothetical inference of a deity from the marvels of adaptation
+ to be found in the universe is unjustified, among other reasons,
+ because it ignores or leaves unexplained the marvels of mis-adaptation
+ in the universe. It makes absolute through eternity a hypothesis which
+ can at its best only be true relatively—not merely to the number of
+ our senses, but—to a few partially chosen phenomena of our own little
+ day. It explains a few striking facts; it leaves wholly unexplained a
+ far greater number of equally striking facts, even if it be not
+ directly contradicted by them. It is the invention of an imaginary
+ agency to account for the scanty successes of creation, and an
+ attribution to that agency of the kind of motives that might have
+ animated a benevolent European living in the eighteenth century. It
+ leaves wholly unaccounted for the prodigious host of monstrous or
+ imperfect organisms, and the appalling law of merciless and incessant
+ destruction.</p>
+
+ <p>To us this is the familiar discussion of the day. But let us return
+ to the starting-point of this chapter. In France a hundred and twenty
+ years ago it was the first opening of a decisive breach in the walls
+ that had sheltered the men of Western Europe against outer desolation
+ for some fifteen centuries or more. The completeness of Catholicism,
+ as a self-containing system of life and thought, is now harder for
+ Protestants or Sceptics to realise, than any other fact in the whole
+ history of human society. Catholicism was not only an institution, nor
+ only a religious faith; it was also a philosophy and a systematised
+ theory of the universe. The Church during its best age directed the
+ moral relations of individual men, and attempted, more or less
+ successfully, to humanise the relations of communities. It satisfied
+ or stimulated the affections by its exaltation of the Virgin Mary as a
+ supreme object of worship; it nourished the imagination on
+ polytheistic legends of saints and martyrs; it stirred the religious
+ emotions by touching and impressive rites; it surrounded its members
+ with emblems of a special and invincible protection. Catholicism, we
+ have again and again to repeat, claimed to deal with life as a whole,
+ and to leave no province of nature, no faculty of man, no need of
+ intelligence or spirit, uncomprehended. But we must not forget that,
+ though this prodigious system had its root in the affections and
+ sympathies of human nature, it was also fenced round by a theory of
+ metaphysic. It rested upon authority and tradition, but it also sought
+ an expression in an intellectual philosophy of things. The essence of
+ this philosophy was to make man the final cause of the universe. Its
+ interpretation of the world was absolute; its conception of the
+ Creator was absolute; its account of our intellectual impressions, of
+ our moral rules, of our spiritual ideals, made them all absolute. Now
+ Diderot, when he wrote the Letter on the Blind, perceived that mere
+ rationalistic attacks upon the sacred books, upon the miracles, upon
+ the moral types, of Catholicism, could only be partially effective for
+ destruction, and could have no effect at all in replacing the old ways
+ of thinking by others of more solid truth. The attack must begin in
+ philosophy. The first fruitful process must consist in shifting the
+ point of view, in enlarging the range of the facts to be considered,
+ in pressing the relativity of our ideas, in freeing ourselves from the
+ tyranny of anthropomorphism.</p>
+
+ <p>Hobbes's witty definition of the papacy as the ghost of the old
+ Roman Empire sitting enthroned on the grave thereof, may tempt us to
+ forget the all-important truth that the basis of the power of the
+ ghost was essentially different from that of the dissolved body. The
+ Empire was a political organisation, resting on military force. The
+ Church was a social organisation, made vital by a conviction. The
+ greatest fact in the intellectual history of the eighteenth century is
+ the decisive revolution that overtook that sustaining conviction. The
+ movement and the men whom we are studying owe all their interest to
+ the share that they had in this immense task. The central conception,
+ that the universe was called into existence only to further its
+ Creator's purpose towards man, became incredible. This absolute
+ proposition was slowly displaced by notions of the limitation of human
+ faculties, and of the comparatively small portion of the whole cosmos
+ or chaos to which we have reason to believe that these faculties give
+ us access. To substitute this relative point of view for the absolute,
+ was the all-important preliminary to the effectual breaking up of the
+ great Catholic construction.</p>
+
+ <p>What seems to careless observers a mere metaphysical dispute was in
+ truth, and still is, the decisive quarter of the great battle between
+ theology and a philosophy reconcilable with science. When the Catholic
+ reaction set in, Joseph de Maistre, by far its acutest champion in the
+ region of philosophy, at once made it his first business to attack the
+ principle of relativity with all his force of dialectic, and to
+ reinstate absolute modes of thinking, and the absolute quality of
+ Catholic propositions about religion, knowledge, and
+ government.<a name="FNanchor_73_73" id="FNanchor_73_73"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_73_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a> Yet neither he nor any one
+ else on his side has ever effectively shaken the solid argument which
+ Diderot fancifully illustrated in the following passage from his reply
+ to Voltaire's letter of thanks for the opuscule: "This marvellous
+ order and these wondrous adaptations, what am I to think of them? That
+ they are metaphysical entities only existing in your own mind. You
+ cover a vast piece of ground with a mass of ruins falling hither or
+ thither at hazard; amid these the worm and the ant find commodious
+ shelter enough. What would you say of these insects, if they were to
+ take for real and final entities the relations of the places which
+ they inhabit to their organisation, and then fall into ecstasies over
+ the beauty of their subterranean architecture, and the wonderfully
+ superior intelligence of the gardener who arranges things so
+ conveniently for them?"<a name="FNanchor_74_74" id=
+ "FNanchor_74_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74_74" class=
+ "fnanchor">[74]</a> This is the notion which Voltaire himself three
+ years afterwards illustrated in the witty fancies of
+ <i>Micromégas</i>. The little animalcule in the square cap, who makes
+ the giant laugh in a Homeric manner by its inflated account of itself
+ as the final cause of the universe, is the type of the philosophy on
+ which Catholicism is based.</p>
+
+ <p>In the same letter Diderot avows his dissent—hypocritically, we
+ find reason for suspecting—from Saunderson's conclusion. "It is
+ commonly in the night-time," he says, "that the mists arise which
+ obscure in me the existence of God; the rising of the sun never fails
+ to scatter them. But then the darkness is ever-enduring for the blind,
+ and the sun only rises for those who see." Diderot's denial of atheism
+ seems more than suspicious, when one finds him taking so much pains to
+ make out Saunderson's case for him, when he urges the argument
+ following, for instance: "If there had never existed any but material
+ beings, there would never have been spiritual beings; for then the
+ spiritual beings would either have given themselves existence, or else
+ would have received it from the material beings. But if there had
+ never existed any but spiritual beings, you will see that there would
+ never have been material beings. Right philosophy only allows me to
+ suppose in things what I can distinctly perceive in them. Now I
+ perceive no other faculties distinctly in the mind except those of
+ willing and thinking, and I no more conceive that thought and will can
+ act on material beings or on nothing, than I can conceive material
+ beings or nothing acting on spiritual beings." And he winds up his
+ letter thus: "It is very important not to take hemlock for parsley;
+ but not important at all to believe or to disbelieve in God. The
+ world, said Montaigne, is a tennis-ball that he has given to
+ philosophers to toss hither and thither; and I would say nearly as
+ much of the Deity himself."<a name="FNanchor_75_75" id=
+ "FNanchor_75_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75_75" class=
+ "fnanchor">[75]</a></p>
+
+ <p>In concluding our account of this piece, we may mention that
+ Diderot threw out a hint, which is a good illustration of the alert
+ and practically helpful way in which his mind was always seeking new
+ ideas. We have common signs, he said, appealing to the eye, namely,
+ written characters, and others appealing to the ear, namely,
+ articulate sounds; we have none appealing to touch. "For want of such
+ a language, communication is entirely broken between us and those who
+ are born deaf, dumb, and blind. They grow, but they remain in a state
+ of imbecility. Perhaps they would acquire ideas, if we made ourselves
+ understood by them from childhood in a fixed, determinate, constant,
+ and uniform manner; in short, if we traced on their hand the same
+ characters that we trace upon paper, and invariably attached the same
+ significance to them."<a name="FNanchor_76_76" id=
+ "FNanchor_76_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76_76" class=
+ "fnanchor">[76]</a> The patient benevolence and ingenuity of Dr. Howe
+ of Boston has realised in our own day the value of Diderot's
+ suggestion.</p>
+
+ <p>One or two trifling points of literary interest may be noticed in
+ the Letter on the Blind. Diderot refers to "the ingenious expression
+ of an English geometer that <i>God geometrises</i>" (p. 294). He is
+ unaware apparently of the tradition which attributes the expression to
+ Plato, though it is not found in Plato's writings. Plutarch, I
+ believe, is the first person who mentions the saying, and discusses
+ what Plato exactly meant by it. In truth, it is one of that large
+ class of dicta which look more ingenious than they are true. There is
+ a fine Latin passage by Barrow on the mighty geometry of the universe,
+ and the reader of the <i>Religio Medici</i> (p. 42) may remember that
+ Sir Thomas Browne pronounces God to be "like a skilful
+ geometrician."</p>
+
+ <p>An odd coincidence of simile is worth mentioning. Diderot says
+ "that great services are like large pieces of money, that we have
+ seldom any occasion to use. Small attentions are a current coin that
+ we always carry in our hands." This is curiously like the saying in
+ the <i>Tatler</i> that "A man endowed with great perfections without
+ good breeding is like one who has his pockets full of gold, but wants
+ change for his ordinary occasions." Yet if Diderot had read the
+ <i>Tatler</i>, he would certainly have referred to the story in No.
+ 55, how William Jones of Newington, born blind, was brought to sight
+ at the age of twenty—a story told in a manner after Diderot's own
+ heart.</p>
+
+ <p>II.</p>
+
+ <p>It is proper in this place to mention a short philosophic piece
+ which Diderot wrote in 1751, his <i>Letter on the Deaf and Dumb for
+ the Use of those who Hear and Talk</i>. This is not, like the Letter
+ on the Blind, the examination of a case of the Intellect deprived of
+ one or more of the senses. It is substantially a fragment, and a very
+ important fragment, on Æsthetics, and as such there will be something
+ to say about it in another chapter. But there are, perhaps, one or two
+ points at which the Letter on the Deaf and Dumb touches the line of
+ thought of the Letter on the Blind.</p>
+
+ <p>The Letter opens on the question of the origin and limits of
+ inversion in language. This at once leads to a discussion of the
+ natural order of ideas and expressions, and that original order, says
+ Diderot, we can only ascertain by a study of the language of gesture.
+ Such a study can be pursued either in assiduous conversation with one
+ who has been deaf and dumb from birth, or by the experiment of a
+ <i>muet de convention</i>, a man who foregoes the use of articulate
+ sounds for the sake of experiment as to the process of the formation
+ of language. Generalising this idea, Diderot proceeds to consider man
+ as distributed into as many distinct and separate beings as he has
+ senses. "My idea would be to decompose a man, so to speak, and to
+ examine what he derives from each of the senses with which he is
+ endowed. I have sometimes amused myself with this kind of metaphysical
+ anatomy; and I found that of all the senses, the eye was the most
+ superficial; the ear, the proudest; smell, the most voluptuous; taste,
+ the most superstitious and the most inconstant; touch, the profoundest
+ and the most of a philosopher. It would be amusing to get together a
+ society, each member of which should have no more than one sense;
+ there can be no doubt that they would all treat one another as out of
+ their wits."</p>
+
+ <p>This is interesting, because it was said at the time to be the
+ source of one of the most famous fancies in the philosophical
+ literature of the century, the Statue in Condillac's Treatise on the
+ Sensations. Condillac imagined a statue organised like a man, but each
+ sense unfolding itself singly, at the will of an eternal arbiter. The
+ philosopher first admits the exercise of smell to his Frankenstein,
+ and enumerates the mental faculties which might be expected to be set
+ in operation under the changing impressions made upon that one sense.
+ The other senses are imparted to it in turn, one by one, each adding a
+ new group of ideas to the previous stock, until at length the mental
+ equipment is complete.</p>
+
+ <p>We may see the extent of the resemblance between Condillac's Statue
+ and Diderot's <i>muet de convention</i>, but Diderot at least is free
+ from the charge of borrowing. Condillac's book was published three
+ years (1754) after the Letter on the Deaf and Dumb, and he afterwards
+ wrote a pamphlet defending himself from the charge of having taken the
+ fancy of his Statue from Diderot; nor, for that matter, did Diderot
+ ever make sign or claim in the matter. We have already spoken of the
+ relations between the two philosophers, and though it is a mistake to
+ describe Diderot as one of Condillac's most celebrated pupils,<a name=
+ "FNanchor_77_77" id="FNanchor_77_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77_77"
+ class="fnanchor">[77]</a> yet there is just as little reason to invert
+ the connection, or to doubt Condillac's own assertion that the Statue
+ was suggested to him by Mademoiselle Ferrand, that remarkable woman to
+ whose stimulating and directing influence he always professed such
+ deep obligation. Attention has been called to the fact that in 1671 a
+ Parisian bookseller published a Latin version of a much more
+ intelligent and scientific fancy than the Statue—the <i>Philosophus
+ Autodidactus</i> of the Arabian, Ibn Tophail. This was a romance, in
+ which a human being is suckled by a gazelle on a desert island in the
+ tropics, and grows up in the manner of some Robinson Crusoe with a
+ turn for psychological speculation, and gradually becomes conscious,
+ through observation, of the peculiar properties belonging to his
+ senses.<a name="FNanchor_78_78" id="FNanchor_78_78"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_78_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Of the part of the Letter that concerns gesture, one can only say
+ that it appears astonishingly crude to those who know the progress
+ that has been made since Diderot's time in collecting and generalising
+ the curious groups of fact connected with gesture-language. We can
+ imagine the eager interest that Diderot would have had in such curious
+ observations as that gesture-language has something like a definite
+ syntax; that it furnishes no means of distinguishing causation from
+ sequence or simultaneity; that savages can understand and be
+ understood with ease and certainty in a deaf-and-dumb school.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_79_79" id="FNanchor_79_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79_79"
+ class="fnanchor">[79]</a> Diderot was acute enough to see that the
+ questions of language could only be solved, not by the old
+ metaphysical methods, but experientially. For the experiential method
+ in this matter the time was not ripe. It was no wonder, then, that
+ after a few pages, he broke away and hastened to æsthetics.</p>
+
+ <p>III.</p>
+
+ <p>Penalties on the publication of heretical opinion did not cease in
+ England with the disappearance of the Licensing Act. But they were at
+ least inflicted by law. It was the Court of King's Bench which, in
+ 1730, visited Woolston with fine and imprisonment, after all the forms
+ of a prosecution had been duly gone through. It was no Bishop's court
+ nor Star Chamber, much less a warrant signed by George the Third or by
+ Bute, which in 1762 condemned Peter Annet to the pillory and the gaol
+ for his Free Inquirer. The only evil which overtook Mandeville for his
+ Fable of the Bees was to be harmlessly presented (1723) as a public
+ nuisance by the Grand Jury of Middlesex. We may contrast with this the
+ state of things which prepared a revolution in France.</p>
+
+ <p>One morning in July, 1749—almost exactly forty years before that
+ July of '89, so memorable in the annals of arbitrary government and
+ state prisons—a commissary of police and three attendants came to
+ Diderot's house, made a vigorous scrutiny of his papers, and then
+ produced a warrant for his detention. The philosopher, without any
+ ado, told his wife not to expect him home for dinner, stepped into the
+ chaise, and was driven off with his escort to Vincennes. His real
+ offence was a light sneer in the Letter on the Blind at the mistress
+ of a minister.<a name="FNanchor_80_80" id=
+ "FNanchor_80_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80_80" class=
+ "fnanchor">[80]</a> The atheistical substance of the essay, however,
+ apart from the pique of a favourite, would have given sufficiently
+ good grounds for a prosecution in England, and in France for that vile
+ substitute for prosecution, the <i>lettre-decachet</i>. And there
+ happened to be special causes for harshness towards the press at this
+ moment. Verses had been published satirising the king and his manner
+ of life in bitter terms, and a stern raid was made upon all the
+ scribblers in Paris. At the court there had just taken place one of
+ those reactions in favour of the ecclesiastical party, which for
+ thirty years in the court history alternated so frequently with
+ movements in the opposite direction. The gossip of the town set down
+ Diderot's imprisonment to a satire against the Jesuits, of which he
+ was wrongly supposed to be the author.<a name="FNanchor_81_81" id=
+ "FNanchor_81_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81_81" class=
+ "fnanchor">[81]</a> It is not worth while to seek far for a reason,
+ when authority was as able and as ready to thrust men into gaol for a
+ bad reason as for a good one. The writer or the printer of a
+ philosophical treatise was at this moment looked upon in France much
+ as a magistrate now looks on the wretch who vends infamous prints.</p>
+
+ <p>The lieutenant of police (Berryer) treated the miserable author
+ with additional severity, for stubbornly refusing to give up the name
+ of the printer. Diderot was well aware that the printer would be sent
+ to the galleys for life, if the lieutenant of police could once lay
+ hands upon him. This personage, we may mention, was afterwards raised
+ to the dignified office of keeper of the seals, as a reward for his
+ industry and skill in providing victims for the royal seraglio at
+ Versailles.<a name="FNanchor_82_82" id="FNanchor_82_82"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_82_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a> The man who had ventured
+ to use his mind, was thrown into the dungeon at Vincennes by the man
+ who played spy and pander for the Pompadour. The official record of a
+ dialogue between Berryer and Denis Diderot, "of the Catholic,
+ Apostolic, and Roman religion," is a singular piece of reading, if we
+ remember that the prisoner's answers were made, "after oath taken by
+ the respondent to speak and answer the truth."</p>
+
+ <p>"Interrogated if he has not composed a work entitled <i>Letters on
+ the Blind</i>.</p>
+
+ <p>"Answered no.</p>
+
+ <p>"Interrogated by whom he had caused said work to be printed.</p>
+
+ <p>"Answered that he had not caused the said work to be printed.</p>
+
+ <p>"Interrogated if he knows the name of the author of the said
+ work.</p>
+
+ <p>"Answered that he knows nothing about it.</p>
+
+ <p>"Interrogated whether he has not had said work in manuscript in his
+ possession before it was printed.</p>
+
+ <p>"Answered that he had not had the said manuscript in his possession
+ before or after it was printed.</p>
+
+ <p>"Interrogated whether he has not composed a work which appeared
+ some years ago, entitled <i>Philosophic Thoughts</i>.</p>
+
+ <p>"Answered no."</p>
+
+ <p>And so, after a dozen more replies of equal veracity, on reading
+ being made to the respondent of the present interrogatory, Diderot
+ "said that the answers contain the truth, persisted in them, and
+ signed," as witness his hand. A sorrowful picture, indeed, of the
+ plight of an apostle of a new doctrine. On the other hand, the apostle
+ of the new doctrine was perhaps good enough for the preachers of the
+ old. Two years before this, the priest of the church of Saint Médard
+ had thought it worth while to turn spy and informer. This is the
+ report which the base creature sent to the lieutenant of police
+ (1747):—</p>
+
+ <div class="blockquot">
+  <p>"Diderot, a man of no profession, living, etc., is a young man who
+  plays the free-thinker, and glories in impiety. He is the author of
+  several works of philosophy, in which he attacks religion. His talk
+  is like his books. He is busy at the composition of one now, which is
+  very dangerous."</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <p>The priest's delation was confirmed presently by a still lower
+ agent of authority, who, in bad grammar and bad spelling, describes
+ "this wretch Diderot as a very dangerous man, who speaks of the holy
+ mysteries of our religion with contempt; who corrupts manners, and who
+ says that when he comes to the last moment of his life, he will have
+ to do like others, will confess, and will receive what we call our
+ God, but it will only be for the sake of his family."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_83_83" id="FNanchor_83_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83_83"
+ class="fnanchor">[83]</a></p>
+
+ <p>All these things had prepared an unfriendly fate for Diderot when
+ his time at last came, as it came to most of his friends. For a month
+ he was cut off from the outer world. His only company was the
+ <i>Paradise Lost</i>, which he happened to have in his pocket at the
+ moment of his arrest. He compounded an ink for himself, by scraping
+ the slate at the side of his window, grinding it very fine, and mixing
+ with wine in a broken glass. A toothpick, found by happy accident in
+ the pocket of his waistcoat, served him for pen, and the fly-leaves
+ and margins of the Milton made a repository for his thoughts. With a
+ simple but very characteristic interest in others who might be as
+ unfortunate as himself, he wrote upon the walls of his prison his
+ short recipe for writing materials.<a name="FNanchor_84_84" id=
+ "FNanchor_84_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84_84" class=
+ "fnanchor">[84]</a> Diderot might easily have been buried here for
+ months or even years. But, as it happened, the governor of Vincennes
+ was a kinsman of Voltaire's divine Emily, the Marquise du Châtelet.
+ When Voltaire, who was then at Luneville, heard of Diderot's
+ ill-fortune, he proclaimed as usual his detestation of a land where
+ bigots can shut up philosophers under lock and key, and as usual he at
+ once set to work to lessen the wrong. Madame du Châtelet was made to
+ write to the governor, praying him to soften the imprisonment of
+ Socrates-Diderot as much as he could.<a name="FNanchor_85_85" id=
+ "FNanchor_85_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85_85" class=
+ "fnanchor">[85]</a> It was the last of her good deeds, for she died in
+ circumstances of grotesque tragedy in the following month (Sept.
+ 1749), and her husband, her son, Voltaire, and Saint Lambert
+ alternately consoled and reproached one another over her grave.
+ Diderot meanwhile had the benefit of her intervention. He was
+ transferred from the dungeon to the château, was allowed to wander
+ about the park on his parole, and to receive visits from his friends.
+ One of the most impulsive of these friends was Jean Jacques. Their
+ first meeting after Diderot's imprisonment has been, described by
+ Rousseau himself, in terms at which the phlegmatic will smile—not
+ wisely, for the manner of expressing emotion, like all else, is
+ relative. "After three or four centuries of impatience, I flew into
+ the arms of my friend. indescribable moment! He, was not alone;
+ D'Alembert and the treasurer of the Sainte Chapelle were with him. As
+ I went in, I saw no one but himself. With a single hound and a cry, I
+ pressed his face close to mine, I clasped him tightly in my arms,
+ without speaking to him save by my tears and sobs; I was choking with
+ tenderness and joy."<a name="FNanchor_86_86" id=
+ "FNanchor_86_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_86_86" class=
+ "fnanchor">[86]</a> After this Rousseau used to walk over to see him
+ two or three times a week. It was during one of these walks on a hot
+ summer afternoon, that he first thought of that memorable literary
+ effort, the essay against civilisation. He sank down at the foot of a
+ tree, and feverishly wrote a page or two to show to his friend. He
+ tells us that but for Diderot's encouragement he should hardly have
+ executed his design. There is a story that it was Diderot who first
+ suggested to Rousseau to affirm that arts and sciences had corrupted
+ manners. There is no violent improbability in this. Diderot, for all
+ the robustness and penetration of his judgment, was yet often borne by
+ his natural impetuosity towards the region of paradox. His own curious
+ and bold <i>Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville</i> is entirely in
+ the vein of Rousseau's discourse on the superiority of primitive over
+ civilised life. "Prodigious sibyl of the eighteenth century," cries
+ Michelet, "the mighty magician Diderot! He breathed out one day a
+ breath; lo, there sprang up a man—Rousseau."<a name="FNanchor_87_87"
+ id="FNanchor_87_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_87_87" class=
+ "fnanchor">[87]</a> It is hard to believe that such an astonishing
+ genius for literature as Rousseau's could have lain concealed, after
+ he had once inhaled the vivifying air of Paris. Yet the fire and
+ inspiring energy of Diderot may well have been the quickening accident
+ that brought his genius into productive life. All the testimony goes
+ to show that it was so. Whether, however, Diderot is really
+ responsible for the perverse direction of Rousseau's argument is a
+ question of fact, and the evidence is not decisive.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_88_88" id="FNanchor_88_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_88_88"
+ class="fnanchor">[88]</a> It would be an odd example of that giant's
+ nonchalance which is always so amazing in Diderot, if he really
+ instigated the most eloquent and passionate writer then alive to
+ denounce art and science as the scourge of mankind, at the very moment
+ when he was himself straining his whole effort to spread the arts and
+ sciences, and to cover them with glory in men's eyes.</p>
+
+ <p>Among Diderot's other visitors was Madame de Puisieux. One day she
+ came clad in gay apparel, bound for a merry-making at a neighbouring
+ village. Diderot, conceiving jealous doubts of her fidelity, received
+ assurance that she would be solitary and companionless at the feast,
+ thinking mournfully of her persecuted philosopher lying in prison. She
+ forgot that one of the parents of philosophy is curiosity, and that
+ Diderot had trained himself in the school of the sceptics. That
+ evening he scaled the walls of the park of Vincennes, flew to the
+ scene of the festival, and there found what he had expected. In vain
+ for her had he written upon virtue and merit, and the unhallowed
+ friendship came to an end.</p>
+
+ <p>After three months of captivity, Diderot was released. The
+ booksellers who were interested in the Encyclopædia were importunate
+ with the authorities to restore its head and chief to an enterprise
+ that stirred universal curiosity.<a name="FNanchor_89_89" id=
+ "FNanchor_89_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_89_89" class=
+ "fnanchor">[89]</a> For the first volume of that famous work was now
+ almost ready to appear, and expectation was keen. The idea of the book
+ had occurred to Diderot in 1745, and from 1745 to 1765 it was the
+ absorbing occupation of his life. Of the value and significance of the
+ conception underlying this immense operation, I shall speak in the
+ next chapter. There also I shall describe its history. The
+ circumstances under which these five-and-thirty volumes were given to
+ the world mark Diderot for one of the few true heroes of literature.
+ They called into play some of the most admirable of human qualities.
+ They required a laboriousness as steady and as prolonged, a wariness
+ as alert, a grasp of plan as firm, a fortitude as patient, unvarying,
+ and unshaken, as men are accustomed to applaud in the engineer who
+ constructs some vast and difficult work, or the commander who directs
+ a hardy and dangerous expedition.</p>
+ <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+ <h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.<br />
+ THE ENCYCLOPÆDIA.</h2>
+
+ <p>The history of the encyclopædic conception of human knowledge is a
+ much more interesting and important object of inquiry than a list of
+ the various encyclopædic enterprises to be found in the annals of
+ literature. Yet it is proper here to mention some of the attempts in
+ this direction, which preceded our memorable book of the eighteenth
+ century. It is to Aristotle, no doubt, that we must look for the first
+ glimpse of the idea that human knowledge is a totality, whose parts
+ are all closely and organically connected with one another. But the
+ idea that only dawned in that gigantic understanding was lost for many
+ centuries. The compilations of Pliny are not in a right sense
+ encyclopædic, being presided over by no definite idea of informing
+ order. It was not until the later middle age that any attempt was made
+ to present knowledge as a whole. Albertus Magnus, "the ape of
+ Aristotle" (1193-1280), left for a season the three great questions of
+ the existence of universals, of the modes of the existence of species
+ and genus, and of their place in or out of the bosom of the
+ individuals, and executed a compilation of such physical facts as had
+ been then discovered.<a name="FNanchor_90_90" id=
+ "FNanchor_90_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_90_90" class=
+ "fnanchor">[90]</a> A more distinctly encyclopædic work was the book
+ of Vincent de Beauvais (<i>d.</i> 1264), called <i>Speculum naturale,
+ morale, doctrinale, et historiale</i>—a compilation from Aquinas in
+ some parts, and from Aristotle in others. Hallam mentions three other
+ compilations of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and observes
+ that their laborious authors did not much improve the materials which
+ they had amassed in their studies, though they sometimes arranged them
+ conveniently. In the mediæval period, as he remarks, the want of
+ capacity to discern probable truths was a very great drawback from the
+ value of their compilations.<a name="FNanchor_91_91" id=
+ "FNanchor_91_91"></a><a href="#Footnote_91_91" class=
+ "fnanchor">[91]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Far the most striking production of the thirteenth century in this
+ kind was the <i>Opus Majus</i> of Roger Bacon (1267), of which it has
+ been said that it is at once the Encyclopædia and the Novum Organum of
+ that age;<a name="FNanchor_92_92" id="FNanchor_92_92"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_92_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a> at once a summary of
+ knowledge, and the suggestion of a truer method. This, however, was
+ merely the introductory sketch to a vaster encyclopædic work, the
+ <i>Compendium Philosophiæ</i>, which was not perfected. "In common
+ with minds of great and comprehensive grasp, his vivid perception of
+ the intimate relationship of the different parts of philosophy, and
+ his desire to raise himself from the dead level of every individual
+ science, induced Bacon to grasp at and embrace the whole."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_93_93" id="FNanchor_93_93"></a><a href="#Footnote_93_93"
+ class="fnanchor">[93]</a> In truth, the encyclopædic spirit was in the
+ air throughout the thirteenth century. It was the century of books
+ bearing the significant titles of Summa, or Universitas, or
+ Speculum.</p>
+
+ <p>The same spirit revived towards the middle of the sixteenth
+ century. In 1541 a book was published at Basel by one Ringelberg,
+ which first took the name of Cyclopædia, that has since then become so
+ familiar a word in Western Europe. This was followed within sixty
+ years by several other works of the same kind. The movement reached
+ its height in a book which remained the best in its order for a
+ century. A German, one J.H. Alsted (1588-1638), published in 1620 an
+ <i>Encyclopædia scientiarum omnium</i>. A hundred years later the
+ illustrious Leibnitz pronounced it a worthy task to perfect and amend
+ Alsted's book. What was wanting to the excellent man, he said, was
+ neither labour nor judgment, but material, and the good fortune of
+ such days as ours. And Leibnitz wrote a paper of suggestions for its
+ extension and improvement.<a name="FNanchor_94_94" id=
+ "FNanchor_94_94"></a><a href="#Footnote_94_94" class=
+ "fnanchor">[94]</a> Alsted's Encyclopædia is of course written in
+ Latin, and he prefixes to it by way of motto the celebrated lines in
+ which Lucretius declares that nothing is sweeter than to dwell apart
+ in the serene temples of the wise. Though he informs us in the preface
+ that his object was to trace the outlines of the great "latifundium
+ regni philosophici" in a single syntagma, yet he really does no more
+ than arrange a number of separate treatises or manuals, and even
+ dictionaries, within the limits of a couple of folios. As is natural
+ to the spirit of the age in which he wrote, great predominance is
+ given to the verbal sciences of grammar, rhetoric, and formal logic,
+ and a verbal or logical division regulates the distribution of the
+ matter, rather than a scientific regard for its objective
+ relations.</p>
+
+ <p>For the true parentage, however, of the Encyclopædia of Diderot and
+ D'Alembert, it is unnecessary to prolong this list. It was Francis
+ Bacon's idea of the systematic classification of knowledge which
+ inspired Diderot, and guided his hand throughout. "If we emerge from
+ this vast operation," he wrote in the Prospectus, "our principal debt
+ will be to the chancellor Bacon, who sketched the plan of a universal
+ dictionary of sciences and arts at a time when there were not, so to
+ say, either arts or sciences." This sense of profound and devoted
+ obligation was shared by D'Alembert, and was expressed a hundred times
+ in the course of the work. No more striking panegyric has ever been
+ passed upon our immortal countryman than is to be found in the
+ Preliminary Discourse.<a name="FNanchor_95_95" id=
+ "FNanchor_95_95"></a><a href="#Footnote_95_95" class=
+ "fnanchor">[95]</a> The French Encyclopædia was the direct fruit of
+ Bacon's magnificent conceptions. And if the efficient origin of the
+ Encyclopædia was English, so did the occasion rise in England
+ also.</p>
+
+ <p>In 1727 Ephraim Chambers, a Westmoreland Quaker, published in
+ London two folios, entitled, a Cyclopædia or Universal Dictionary of
+ the Arts and Sciences. The idea of it was broad and excellent. "Our
+ view," says Chambers, "was to consider the several matters, not only
+ in themselves, but relatively, or as they respect each other; both to
+ treat them as so many wholes, and as so many parts of some greater
+ whole." The compiler lacked the grasp necessary to realise this
+ laudable purpose. The book has, however, the merit of conciseness, and
+ is a singular monument of literary industry, for it was entirely
+ compiled by Chambers himself. It had a great success, and though its
+ price was high (four guineas), it ran through five editions in
+ eighteen years. On the whole, however, it is meagre, and more like a
+ dictionary than an encyclopædia, such as Alsted's for instance.</p>
+
+ <p>Some fifteen years after the publication of Chambers's Cyclopædia,
+ an Englishman (Mills) and a German (Sellius) went to Le Breton with a
+ project for its translation into French. The bookseller obtained the
+ requisite privilege from the government, but he obtained it for
+ himself, and not for the projectors. This trick led to a quarrel, and
+ before it was settled the German died and the Englishman returned to
+ his own country. They left the translation behind them duly
+ executed.<a name="FNanchor_96_96" id="FNanchor_96_96"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_96_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a> Le Breton then carried the
+ undertaking to a certain abbé, Gua de Malves. Gua de Malves (<i>b.</i>
+ 1712) seems to have been a man of a busy and ingenious mind. He was
+ the translator of Berkeley's <i>Hylas and Philonous</i>, of Anson's
+ Voyages, and of various English tracts on currency and political
+ economy. It is said that he first suggested the idea of a cyclopædia
+ on a fuller plan,<a name="FNanchor_97_97" id=
+ "FNanchor_97_97"></a><a href="#Footnote_97_97" class=
+ "fnanchor">[97]</a> but we have no evidence of this. In any case, the
+ project made no advance in his hands. The embarrassed bookseller next
+ applied to Diderot, who was then much in need of work that should
+ bring him bread. His fertile and energetic intelligence transformed
+ the scheme. By an admirable intuition, he divined the opportunity
+ which would be given by the encyclopædic form, of gathering up into a
+ whole all that new thought and modern knowledge, which existed as yet
+ in unsystematic and uninterpreted fragments. His enthusiasm fired Le
+ Breton. It was resolved to make Chambers's work a mere starting-point
+ for a new enterprise of far wider scope.</p>
+
+ <p>"The old and learned D'Aguesseau," says Michelet, "notwithstanding
+ the pitiable, the wretched sides of his character, had two lofty
+ sides, his reform of the laws, and a personal passion, the taste and
+ urgent need of universality, a certain encyclopædic sense. A young man
+ came to him one day, a man of letters living by his pen, and somewhat
+ under a cloud for one or two hazardous books that lack of bread had
+ driven him to write. Yet this stranger of dubious repute wrought a
+ miracle. With bewilderment the old sage listened to him unrolling the
+ gigantic scheme of a book that should be all books. On his lips,
+ sciences were light and life. It was more than speech, it was
+ creation. One would have said that he had made these sciences, and was
+ still at work, adding, extending, fertilising, ever engendering. The
+ effect was incredible. D'Aguesseau, a moment above himself, forgot the
+ old man, received the infection of genius, and became great with the
+ greatness of the other. He had faith in the young man, and protected
+ the Encyclopædia."<a name="FNanchor_98_98" id=
+ "FNanchor_98_98"></a><a href="#Footnote_98_98" class=
+ "fnanchor">[98]</a></p>
+
+ <p>A fresh privilege was procured (Jan. 21, 1746), and as Le Breton's
+ capital was insufficient for a project of this magnitude, he invited
+ three other booksellers to join him, retaining a half share for
+ himself, and allotting the other moiety to them. As Le Breton was not
+ strong enough to bear the material burdens of producing a work on so
+ gigantic a scale as was now proposed, so Diderot felt himself unequal
+ to the task of arranging and supervising every department of a book
+ that was to include the whole circle of the sciences. He was not
+ skilled enough in mathematics, nor in physics, which were then for the
+ most part mathematically conceived. For that province, he associated
+ with himself as an editorial colleague one of the most conspicuous and
+ active members of the philosophical party. Of this eminent man, whose
+ relations with Diderot were for some years so intimate, it is proper
+ that we should say something.</p>
+
+ <p>D'Alembert was the natural son of Madame de Tencin, by whom he had
+ been barbarously exposed immediately after his birth. "The true
+ ancestors of a man of genius," says Condorcet finely upon this
+ circumstance, "are the masters who have gone before him, and his true
+ descendants are disciples that are worthy of him." He was discovered
+ on a November night in the year 1717, by the beadle, in a nearly dying
+ condition on the steps of the church of St. John the Round, from which
+ he afterwards took his Christian name. An honest woman of the common
+ people, with that personal devotion which is less rare among the poor
+ than among the rich, took charge of the foundling. The father, who was
+ an officer of artillery and brother of Destouches, the author of some
+ poor comedies, by and by advanced the small sums required to pay for
+ the boy's schooling. D'Alembert proved a brilliant student. Unlike
+ nearly every other member of the encyclopædic party, he was a pupil
+ not of the Jesuits but of their rivals. The Jansenists recognised the
+ keenness and force of their pupil, and hoped that they had discovered
+ a new Pascal. But he was less docile than his great predecessor in
+ their ranks. When his studies were completed, he devoted himself to
+ geometry, for which he had a passion that nothing could extinguish.
+ For the old monastic vow of poverty, chastity, and obedience, he
+ adopted the manlier substitute of poverty, truth, and liberty—the
+ worthy device of every man of letters. When he awoke in the morning,
+ he thought with delight of the work that had been begun the previous
+ day and would occupy the day before him. In the necessary intervals of
+ his meditations, he recalled the lively pleasure that he felt at the
+ play: at the play between the acts, he thought of the still greater
+ pleasure that was promised to him by the work of the morrow. His
+ mathematical labours led to valuable results in the principles of
+ equilibrium and the movement of fluids, in a new calculus, and in a
+ new solution of the problem of the precession of the
+ equinoxes.<a name="FNanchor_99_99" id="FNanchor_99_99"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_99_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a></p>
+
+ <p>These contributions to what was then the most popular of the
+ sciences brought him fame, and fame brought him its usual
+ distractions. As soon as a writer has shown himself the possessor of
+ gifts that may be of value to society, then society straightway sets
+ to work to seduce and hinder him from diligently exercising them.
+ D'Alembert resisted these influences steadfastly. His means were very
+ limited, yet he could never be induced to increase them at the cost
+ either of his social independence or of his scientific pursuits. He
+ lived for forty years under the humble roof of the poor woman who had
+ treated him as a son. "You will never be anything better than a
+ philosopher," she used to cry reproachfully, "and what is a
+ philosopher? 'Tis a madman who torments himself all his life, that
+ people may talk about him when he is dead." D'Alembert zealously
+ adhered to his destination. Frederick the Great vainly tempted him by
+ an offer of the succession to Maupertuis as president of the Academy
+ of Berlin. Although, however, he declined to accept the post, he
+ enjoyed all its authority and prerogative. Frederick always consulted
+ him in filling up vacancies and making appointments. It is a
+ magnanimous trait in D'Alembert's history that he should have procured
+ for Lagrange a position and livelihood at Berlin, warmly commending
+ him as a man of rare and superior genius, although Lagrange had
+ vigorously opposed some of his own mathematical theories. Ten years
+ after Frederick's offer, the other great potentate of the north,
+ Catherine of Russia, besought him to undertake the education of the
+ young grand duke, her son. But neither urgent flatteries and
+ solicitations under the imperial hand, nor the munificent offer of a
+ hundred thousand francs a year, availed to draw him away from his
+ independence and his friends. The great Frederick used to compare him
+ to one of those oriental monarchs, who cherish a strict seclusion in
+ order to enhance their importance and majesty. He did not refuse a
+ pension of some fifty pounds a year from Berlin, and the same amount
+ was bestowed upon him from the privy purse at Versailles. He received
+ a small annual sum in addition from the Academy.</p>
+
+ <p>Though the mathematical sciences remained the objects of his
+ special study, D'Alembert was as free as the other great men of the
+ encyclopædic school from the narrowness of the pure specialist. He
+ naturally reminds us of the remarkable saying imputed to Leibnitz,
+ that he only attributed importance to science, because it enabled him
+ to speak with authority in philosophy and religion. His correspondence
+ with Voltaire, extending over the third quarter of the century, is the
+ most instructive record that we possess of the many-sided doings of
+ that busy time. His series of <i>éloges</i> on the academicians who
+ died between 1700 and 1772 is one of the most interesting works in the
+ department of literary history. He paid the keenest attention to the
+ great and difficult art of writing. Translations from Tacitus, Bacon,
+ and Addison, show his industry in a useful practice. A long collection
+ of synonyms bears witness to his fine discrimination in the use of
+ words. And the clearness, precision, and reserved energy of his own
+ prose mark the success of the pains that he took with style. He knew
+ the secret. Have lofty sentiments, he said, and your manner of writing
+ will be firm and noble.<a name="FNanchor_100_100" id=
+ "FNanchor_100_100"></a><a href="#Footnote_100_100" class=
+ "fnanchor">[100]</a> Yet he did not ignore the other side and half of
+ the truth, which is expressed in the saying of another important
+ writer of that day—By taking trouble to speak with precision, one
+ gains the habit of thinking rightly (<i>Condillac</i>).</p>
+
+ <p>Like so many others to whom literature owes much, D'Alembert was
+ all his life fighting against bad health. Like Voltaire and Rousseau,
+ he was born dying, and he remained delicate and valetudinarian to the
+ end. He had the mental infirmities belonging to his temperament. He
+ was restless, impatient, mobile, susceptible of irritation. When the
+ young Mademoiselle Phlipon, in after years famous as wife of the
+ virtuous Roland, was taken to a sitting of the Academy, she was
+ curious to see the author of the Preliminary Discourse to the
+ Encyclopædia, but his small face and sharp thin voice made her reflect
+ with some disappointment, that the writings of a philosopher are
+ better to know than his mask.<a name="FNanchor_101_101" id=
+ "FNanchor_101_101"></a><a href="#Footnote_101_101" class=
+ "fnanchor">[101]</a> In everything except zeal for light and
+ emancipation, D'Alembert was the opposite of Diderot. Where Diderot
+ was exuberant, prodigal, and disordered, D'Alembert was a precisian.
+ Difference of temperament, however, did not prevent their friendship
+ from being for many years cordial and intimate. When the Encyclopædia
+ was planned, it was to D'Alembert, as we have said, that Diderot
+ turned for aid in the mathematical sciences, where his own knowledge
+ was not sufficiently full nor well grounded. They were in strong and
+ singular agreement in their idea of the proper place and function of
+ the man of letters. One of the most striking facts about their
+ alliance, and one of the most important facts in the history of the
+ Encyclopædia, is that henceforth the profession of letters became at
+ once definite and independent. Diderot and D'Alembert both of them
+ remained poor, but they were never hangers-on. They did not look to
+ patrons, nor did they bound their vision by Versailles. They were the
+ first to assert the lawful authority of the new priesthood. They
+ revolted deliberately and in set form against the old system of
+ suitorship and protection. "Happy are men of letters," wrote
+ D'Alembert, "if they recognise at last that the surest way of making
+ themselves respectable is to live united and almost shut up among
+ themselves; that by this union they will come, without any trouble, to
+ give the law to the rest of the nation in all affairs of taste and
+ philosophy; that the true esteem is that which is awarded by men who
+ are themselves worthy of esteem.... As if the art of instructing and
+ enlightening men were not, after the too rare art of good government,
+ the noblest portion and gift in human reach."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_102_102" id="FNanchor_102_102"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_102_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a></p>
+
+ <p>This consciousness of the power and exaltation of their calling,
+ which men of letters now acquired, is much more than the superficial
+ fact which it may at first seem to be. It marked the rise of a new
+ teaching order and the supersession of the old. The highest moral
+ ideas now belonged no longer to the clergy, but to the writers; no
+ longer to official Catholicism, but to that fertilising medley of new
+ notions about human knowledge and human society which then went by the
+ name of philosophy. What is striking is that the ideas sown by
+ philosophy became eventually the source of higher life in Catholicism.
+ If the church of the revolution showed something that we may justly
+ admire, it was because the encyclopædic band had involuntarily and
+ inevitably imparted a measure of their own clearsightedness,
+ fortitude, moral energy, and spirit of social improvement, to a church
+ which was, when they began their work, an abominable burden on the
+ spiritual life of the nation. If the Catholicism of Chateaubriand, of
+ Lamennais, of Montalembert, was a different thing from the Catholicism
+ of a Dubois, or a Rohan, from the vile corruptions of the Jesuits and
+ the grovelling superstitions of the later Jansenists, it was the
+ execrated freethinkers whom the church and mankind had to thank for
+ the change. The most enlightened Catholic of to-day ought to admit
+ that Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, were the true reformers of his
+ creed. They supplied it with ideas which saved it from becoming
+ finally a curse to civilisation. It was no Christian prelate, but
+ Diderot who burst the bonds of a paralysing dogma by the magnificent
+ cry, <i>Détruisez ces enceintes qui rétrécissent vos idées! Elargissez
+ Dieu!</i><a name="FNanchor_103_103" id="FNanchor_103_103"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_103_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a> We see the same
+ phenomenon in our own day. The Christian churches are assimilating as
+ rapidly as their formula will permit, the new light and the more
+ generous moral ideas and the higher spirituality of teachers who have
+ abandoned all churches, and who are systematically denounced as
+ enemies of the souls of men. <i>Sic vos non vobis mellificatis
+ apes!</i> These transformations of religion by leavening elements
+ contributed from a foreign doctrine, are the most interesting process
+ in the history of truth.</p>
+
+ <p>The Encyclopædia became a powerful engine for aiding such a
+ transformation. Because it was this, and because it rallied all that
+ was then best in France round the standard of light and social hope,
+ we ought hardly to grudge time or pains to its history. For it was not
+ merely in the field of religious ideas that the Encyclopædists led
+ France in a new way. They affected the national life on every side,
+ pressing forward with enlightened principles in all the branches of
+ material and political organisation. Their union in a great
+ philosophical band gave an impressive significance to their work. The
+ collection within a single set of volumes of a body of new truths,
+ relating to so many of the main interests of men, invested the book
+ and its writers with an aspect of universality, of collective and
+ organic doctrine, which the writers themselves would without doubt
+ have disowned, and which it is easy to dissolve by tests of logic. But
+ the popular impression that the Encyclopædists constituted a single
+ body with a common doctrine and a common aim was practically sound.
+ Comte has pointed out with admirable clearness the merit of the
+ conception of an encyclopædic workshop.<a name="FNanchor_104_104" id=
+ "FNanchor_104_104"></a><a href="#Footnote_104_104" class=
+ "fnanchor">[104]</a> It united the members of rival destructive
+ schools in a great constructive task. It furnished a rallying-point
+ for efforts otherwise the most divergent. Their influence was
+ precisely what it would have been, if popular impressions had been
+ literally true. Diderot and D'Alembert did their best to heighten this
+ feeling. They missed no occasion of fixing a sentiment of co-operation
+ and fellowship. They spoke of their dictionary as the transactions of
+ an Academy.<a name="FNanchor_105_105" id=
+ "FNanchor_105_105"></a><a href="#Footnote_105_105" class=
+ "fnanchor">[105]</a> Each writer was answerable for his own
+ contribution, but he was in the position of a member of some learned
+ corporation. To every volume, until the great crisis of 1759, was
+ prefixed a list of those who had contributed to it. If a colleague
+ died, the public was informed of the loss that the work had sustained,
+ and his services were worthily commemorated in a formal
+ <i>éloge</i>.<a name="FNanchor_106_106" id=
+ "FNanchor_106_106"></a><a href="#Footnote_106_106" class=
+ "fnanchor">[106]</a> Feuds, epigrams, and offences were not absent,
+ but on the whole there was steadfast and generous fraternity.</p>
+
+ <p>As Voltaire eloquently said, officers of war by land and by sea,
+ magistrates, physicians who knew nature, men of letters whose taste
+ purified knowledge, geometers, physicists, all united in a work that
+ was as useful as it was laborious, without any view of interest,
+ without even seeking fame, as many of them concealed their names;
+ finally without any common understanding and agreement, and therefore
+ without anything of the spirit of party.<a name="FNanchor_107_107" id=
+ "FNanchor_107_107"></a><a href="#Footnote_107_107" class=
+ "fnanchor">[107]</a> Turning over the pages on which the list of
+ writers is inscribed, we find in one place or another nearly every
+ name that has helped to make the literature of the time famous.
+ Montesquieu, who died in the beginning of 1755, left behind him the
+ unfinished fragment of an article on Taste, and it may be noticed in
+ passing that our good-natured Diderot was the only man of letters who
+ attended the remains of the illustrious writer to the grave.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_108_108" id="FNanchor_108_108"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_108_108" class="fnanchor">[108]</a> The article itself,
+ though no more than a fragment, has all the charms of Montesquieu's
+ delightful style; it is serious without pedantry, graceful without
+ levity, and is rich in observations that are precise and pointed
+ without the vice of emphasis. The great Turgot, diligently solicitous
+ for the success of every enterprise that promised to improve human
+ happiness by adding to knowledge and spreading enlightenment, wrote
+ some of the most valuable articles that the work contained, and his
+ discussion of Endowments perhaps still remains the weightiest
+ contribution to that important subject. Oddly enough, he was one of
+ the very few writers who refused to sign his name to his
+ contributions.<a name="FNanchor_109_109" id=
+ "FNanchor_109_109"></a><a href="#Footnote_109_109" class=
+ "fnanchor">[109]</a> His assistance only ceased when he perceived that
+ the scheme was being coloured by that spirit of sect, which he always
+ counted the worst enemy of the spirit of truth.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_110_110" id="FNanchor_110_110"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_110_110" class="fnanchor">[110]</a> Jean Jacques Rousseau,
+ who had just won a singular reputation by his paradoxes on natural
+ equality and the corruptions of civilisation, furnished the articles
+ on music in the first half dozen volumes. They were not free from
+ mistakes, but his colleagues chivalrously defended him by the plea of
+ careless printing or indifferent copying.<a name="FNanchor_111_111"
+ id="FNanchor_111_111"></a><a href="#Footnote_111_111" class=
+ "fnanchor">[111]</a> The stately Buffon very early in the history of
+ the Encyclopædia sent them an article upon Nature, and the editors
+ made haste to announce to their subscribers the advent of so superb a
+ colleague.<a name="FNanchor_112_112" id=
+ "FNanchor_112_112"></a><a href="#Footnote_112_112" class=
+ "fnanchor">[112]</a> The articles on natural history, however, were
+ left by Buffon in his usual majestic fashion to his faithful
+ lieutenant and squire-at-arms, Daubenton. And even his own article
+ seems not to have been printed. Before the eleventh volume appeared,
+ terrible storms had arisen, not a few of the shipmen had parted
+ company, and Buffon may well have been one of them. Certainly the
+ article on Nature, as it stands, can hardly be his.</p>
+
+ <p>In the supplementary volumes, which appeared in 1776—ten years
+ after the completion of the original undertaking—two new labourers
+ came into the vineyard, whose names add fresh lustre and give still
+ more serious value to the work. One of these was the prince of the
+ physiologists of the eighteenth century, the great Haller, who
+ contributed an elaborate history of those who had been his
+ predecessors in unfolding the intricate mechanism of the human frame,
+ and analysing its marvels of complex function. The other was the
+ austere and generous Condorcet. Ever loyal to good causes, and
+ resolute against despairing of the human commonwealth, he began in the
+ pages of the Encyclopædia a career that was brilliant with good
+ promise and high hopes, and ended in the grim hall of the Convention
+ and a nobly tragic death amid the red storm of the Terror.</p>
+
+ <p>Among the lesser stars in the encyclopædic firmament are some whose
+ names ought not to be wholly omitted. Forbonnais, one of the most
+ instructive economic writers of the century, contributed articles to
+ the early volumes, which were afterwards republished in his Elements
+ of Commerce.<a name="FNanchor_113_113" id=
+ "FNanchor_113_113"></a><a href="#Footnote_113_113" class=
+ "fnanchor">[113]</a> The light-hearted Marmontel wrote cheerful
+ articles on Comedy, Eloges, Eclogues, Glory, and other matters of
+ literature and taste. Quesnai, the eminent founder of the economic
+ sect, dealt with two agricultural subjects, and reproduced both his
+ theoretical paradoxes, and his admirable practical maxims, on the
+ material prosperity of nations. Holbach, not yet author of the
+ memorable System of Nature, compiled a vast number of the articles on
+ chemistry and mineralogy, chiefly and avowedly from German sources, he
+ being the only writer of the band with a mastery of a language which
+ was at that moment hardly more essential to culture than Russian is
+ now. The name of Duclos should not be passed over, in the list of the
+ foremost men who helped to raise the encyclopædic monument. 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 Encyclopædia (<i>Déclamation des
+ Anciens</i>, <i>Etiquette</i>, etc.) are not very remarkable; but the
+ reflections on conduct which he styled <i>Considérations sur les Mœurs
+ de ce Siécle</i> (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 encyclopædic 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 Encyclopædia 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."<a name="FNanchor_114_114" id=
+ "FNanchor_114_114"></a><a href="#Footnote_114_114" class=
+ "fnanchor">[114]</a> 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. We need not linger over the names of other writers, who indeed
+ are now little more than mere shadows of names, such as La Condamine,
+ a scientific traveller of fame and merit in his day and generation; of
+ Du Marsais, the poverty-stricken and unlucky scholar who wrote
+ articles on grammar; of the President Des Brosses, who was unfortunate
+ enough to be in the right in a quarrel about money with Voltaire, and
+ who has since been better known to readers through the fury of the
+ provoked patriarch, than through his own meritorious contributions to
+ the early history of civilisation.</p>
+
+ <p>The name of one faithful worker in the building of this new
+ Jerusalem ought not to be omitted, though his writings were <i>multa
+ non multum</i>. The Chevalier de Jaucourt (1704-1779), as his title
+ shows, was the younger son of a noble house. He studied at Geneva,
+ Cambridge, and Leyden, and published in 1734 a useful account of the
+ life and writings of Leibnitz. When the Encyclopædia was projected,
+ his services were at once secured, and he became its slave from the
+ beginning of A to the end of Z. He wrote articles in his own special
+ subjects of natural history and physical science, but he was always
+ ready to lend his help in other departments, in writing, rewriting,
+ reading, correcting, and all those other humbler necessities of
+ editorship of which the inconsiderate reader knows little and thinks
+ less. Jaucourt revelled in this drudgery. God made him for grinding
+ articles, said Diderot. For six or seven years, he wrote one day,
+ Jaucourt has been in the middle of half a dozen secretaries, reading,
+ dictating, slaving, for thirteen or fourteen hours a day, and he is
+ not tired of it even now. When he was told that the work must
+ positively be brought to an end, his countenance fell, and the
+ prospect of release from such happy bondage filled his heart with
+ desolation.<a name="FNanchor_115_115" id=
+ "FNanchor_115_115"></a><a href="#Footnote_115_115" class=
+ "fnanchor">[115]</a> "If," says Diderot in the preface to the eighth
+ volume (1765), "we have raised a shout of joy like the sailor when he
+ espies land after a sombre night that has kept him midway between sky
+ and flood, it is to M. de Jaucourt that we are indebted for it. What
+ has he not done for us, especially in these latter times? With what
+ constancy has he not refused all the solicitations, whether of
+ friendship or of authority, that sought to take him away from us?
+ Never has sacrifice of repose, of health, of interest been more
+ absolute and more entire."<a name="FNanchor_116_116" id=
+ "FNanchor_116_116"></a><a href="#Footnote_116_116" class=
+ "fnanchor">[116]</a> These modest and unwearying helpers in good works
+ ought not to be wholly forgotten, in a commemoration of more
+ far-shining names.</p>
+
+ <p>Besides those who were known to the conductors of the Encyclopædia,
+ was a host of unsought volunteers. "The further we proceed," the
+ editors announced in the preface to the sixth volume (1756), "the more
+ are we sensible of the increase both in matter and in number of those
+ who are good enough to second our efforts." They received many
+ articles on the same subject. They were constantly embarrassed by an
+ emulation which, however flattering as a testimony to their work,
+ obliged them to make a difficult choice, or to lose a good article, or
+ to sacrifice one of their regular contributors, or to offend some
+ influential newcomer. Every one who had a new idea in his head, or
+ what he thought a new idea, sent them an article upon it. Men who were
+ priests or pastors by profession and unbelievers in their hearts, sent
+ them sheaves of articles in which they permitted themselves the
+ delicious luxury of saying a little of what they thought. Women, too,
+ pressed into the great work. Unknown ladies volunteered sprightly
+ explanations of the technicalities of costume, from the falbala which
+ adorned the bottom of their skirts, up to that little knot of riband
+ in the hair, which had come to replace the old appalling edifice of
+ ten stories high, in hierarchic succession of duchess, solitary,
+ musketeer, crescent, firmament, tenth heaven, and mouse.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_117_117" id="FNanchor_117_117"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_117_117" class="fnanchor">[117]</a> The oldest contributor
+ was Lenglet du Fresnoy, whose book on the Method of Studying History
+ is still known to those who have examined the development of men's
+ ideas about the relations of the present to the past. Lenglet was born
+ in 1674. The youngest of the band was Condorcet, who was born nearly
+ seventy years later (1743). One veteran, Morellet, who had been, the
+ schoolmate of Turgot and Loménie de Brienne, lived to think of many
+ things more urgent than Faith, Fils de Dieu, and Fundamentals. He
+ survived the Revolution, the Terror, the Empire, Waterloo, the
+ Restoration, and died in 1819, within sight of the Holy Alliance and
+ the Peterloo massacre. From the birth of Lenglet to the death of
+ Morellet—what an arc of the circle of western experience!</p>
+
+ <p>No one will ask whether the keen eye, and stimulating word, and
+ helpful hand of Voltaire were wanting to an enterprise which was to
+ awaken men to new love of tolerance, enlightenment, charity, and
+ justice. Voltaire was playing the refractory courtier at Potsdam when
+ the first two volumes appeared. With characteristic vehemence, he
+ instantly pronounced it a work which should be the glory of France,
+ and the shame of its persecutors. Diderot and D'Alembert were raising
+ an immortal edifice, and he would gladly furnish them with a little
+ stone here or there, which they might find convenient to stuff into
+ some corner or crevice in the wall. He was incessant in his industry.
+ Unlike those feebler and more consequential spirits, the
+ <i>petits-maîtres</i> of thought, by whom editors are harassed and
+ hindered, this great writer was as willing to undertake small subjects
+ as large ones, and to submit to all the mutilations and modifications
+ which the exigencies of the work and the difficulties of its
+ conductors recommended to them.<a name="FNanchor_118_118" id=
+ "FNanchor_118_118"></a><a href="#Footnote_118_118" class=
+ "fnanchor">[118]</a> As the structure progresses, his enthusiasm waxes
+ warmer. Diderot and his colleague are cutting their wings for a flight
+ to posterity. They are Atlas and Hercules bearing a world upon their
+ shoulders. It is the greatest work in the world; it is a superb
+ pyramid; its printing-office is the office for the instruction of the
+ human race; and so forth, in every phrase of stimulating sympathy and
+ energetic interest. Nor does his sympathy blind him to faults of
+ execution. Voltaire's good sense and sound judgment were as much at
+ the service of his friends in warning them of shortcomings, as in
+ eulogising what they achieved. And he had good faith enough to
+ complain to his friends, instead of complaining of them. In one place
+ he tells them, what is perfectly true, that their journeymen are far
+ too declamatory, and too much addicted to substitute vague and puerile
+ dissertations for that solid instruction which is what the reader of
+ an Encyclopædia seeks. In another he remonstrates against certain
+ frivolous affectations, and some of the coxcombries of literary
+ modishness. Everywhere he recommends them to insist on a firm and
+ distinct method in their contributors—etymologies, definitions,
+ examples, reasons, clearness, brevity. "You are badly seconded," he
+ writes; "there are bad soldiers in the army of a great
+ general."<a name="FNanchor_119_119" id="FNanchor_119_119"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_119_119" class="fnanchor">[119]</a> "I am sorry to see that
+ the writer of the article <i>Hell</i> declares that hell was a point
+ in the doctrine of Moses; now by all the devils that is not true. Why
+ lie about it? Hell is an excellent thing, to be sure, but it is
+ evident that Moses did not know it. 'Tis this world that is
+ hell."<a name="FNanchor_120_120" id="FNanchor_120_120"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_120_120" class="fnanchor">[120]</a></p>
+
+ <p>D'Alembert in reply always admitted the blemishes for which the
+ patriarch and master reproached them, but urged various pleas in
+ extenuation. He explains that Diderot is not always the master, either
+ to reject or to prune the articles that are offered to him.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_121_121" id="FNanchor_121_121"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_121_121" class="fnanchor">[121]</a> A writer who happened
+ to be useful for many excellent articles would insist as the price of
+ good work that they should find room for his bad work also; and so
+ forth. "No doubt we have bad articles in theology and metaphysics, but
+ with theologians for censors, and a privilege, I defy you to make them
+ any better. There are other articles that are less exposed to the
+ daylight, and in them all is repaired. Time will enable people to
+ distinguish what we have thought from what we have said."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_122_122" id="FNanchor_122_122"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_122_122" class="fnanchor">[122]</a> This last is a bitter
+ and humiliating word, but before any man hastens to cast a stone, let
+ him first make sure that his own life is free from every trace of
+ hypocritical conformity and mendacious compliance. Condorcet seems to
+ make the only remark that is worth making, when he says that the true
+ shame and disgrace of these dissemblings lay not with the writers,
+ whose only other alternative was to leave the stagnation of opinion
+ undisturbed, but with the ecclesiastics and ministers whose tyranny
+ made dissimulation necessary. And the veil imposed by authority did
+ not really serve any purpose of concealment. Every reader was let into
+ the secret of the writer's true opinion of the old mysteries, by means
+ of a piquant phrase, an adroit parallel, a significant reference, an
+ equivocal word of dubious panegyric. Diderot openly explains this in
+ the pages of the Encyclopædia itself. "In all cases," he says, "where
+ a national prejudice would seem to deserve respect, the particular
+ article ought to set it respectfully forth, with its whole procession
+ of attractions and probabilities. But the edifice of mud ought to be
+ overthrown and an unprofitable heap of dust scattered to the wind, by
+ references to articles in which solid principles serve as a base for
+ the opposite truths. This way of undeceiving men operates promptly on
+ minds of the right stamp, and it operates infallibly and without any
+ troublesome consequences, secretly and without disturbance, on minds
+ of every description."<a name="FNanchor_123_123" id=
+ "FNanchor_123_123"></a><a href="#Footnote_123_123" class=
+ "fnanchor">[123]</a> "Our fanatics feel the blows," cried D'Alembert
+ complacently, "though they are sorely puzzled to tell from which side
+ they come."<a name="FNanchor_124_124" id=
+ "FNanchor_124_124"></a><a href="#Footnote_124_124" class=
+ "fnanchor">[124]</a></p>
+
+ <p>It is one of the most deplorable things in the history of
+ literature to see a man endowed with Diderot's generous conceptions
+ and high social aims, forced to stoop to these odious economies. In
+ reading his Prospectus, and still more directly in his article,</p>
+
+ <p><i>Encyclopédie</i>, we are struck by the beneficence and breadth
+ of the great designs which inspire and support him. The Encyclopædia,
+ it has been said, was no peaceful storehouse in which scholars and
+ thinkers of all kinds could survey the riches they had acquired; it
+ was a gigantic siege-engine and armoury of weapons of attack.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_125_125" id="FNanchor_125_125"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_125_125" class="fnanchor">[125]</a> This is only true in a
+ limited sense of one part of the work, and that not the most important
+ part. Such a judgment is only possible for one who has not studied the
+ book itself, or else who is ignorant of the social requirements of
+ France at the time. We shall show this presently in detail. Meanwhile
+ it is enough to make two observations. The implements which the
+ circumstances of the time made it necessary to use as weapons of
+ attack, were equally fitted for the acquisition in a happier season of
+ those treasures of thought and knowledge which are the object of
+ disinterested research. And what is still more important, we have to
+ observe that it was the characteristic note and signal glory of the
+ French revolutionary school, to subordinate mere knowledge to the
+ practical work of raising society up from the corruption and paralysis
+ to which it had been brought by the double action of civil and
+ ecclesiastical authority. The efforts of the Encyclopædists were not
+ disinterested in the sense of being vague blows in the air. Their aim
+ was not theory but practice, not literature but life. The
+ Encyclopædists were no doubt all men of battle, and some of them were
+ hardly more than mere partisans.</p>
+
+ <p>But Diderot at least had constantly in mind the great work which
+ remained after the battle should be won. He was profoundly conscious
+ that the mere accumulation of knowledge of the directly physical facts
+ of the universe would take men a very short way towards
+ reconstruction. And he struck the key-note in such admirable passages
+ as this: "One consideration especially that we ought never to lose
+ from sight is that, if we ever banish a man, or the thinking and
+ contemplative being, from above the surface of the earth, this
+ pathetic and sublime spectacle of nature becomes no more than a scene
+ of melancholy and silence. The universe is dumb; the darkness and
+ silence of the night take possession of it ...It is the presence of
+ man that gives its interest to the existence of other beings; and what
+ better object can we set before ourselves in the history of these
+ beings, than to accept such a consideration? Why shall we not
+ introduce man into our work in the same place which he holds in the
+ universe? Why shall we not make him a common centre? Is there in
+ infinite space any other point from which we can with greater
+ advantage draw those immense lines that we propose to extend to all
+ other points? What a vivid and softening reaction must result between
+ man and the beings by whom he is surrounded ...Man is the single term
+ from which we ought to set out, and to which we ought to trace all
+ back, if we would please, interest, touch, even in the most arid
+ reflections and the driest details. If you take away my own existence
+ and the happiness of my fellows, of what concern to me is all the rest
+ of nature.'<a name="FNanchor_126_126" id=
+ "FNanchor_126_126"></a><a href="#Footnote_126_126" class=
+ "fnanchor">[126]</a></p>
+
+ <p>In this we hear the voice of the new time, as we do in his
+ exclamation that the perfection of an Encyclopædia is the work of
+ centuries; centuries had to elapse before the foundations could be
+ laid; centuries would have to elapse before its completion: "<i>mais à
+ la posérité, et</i> À L'ÊTRE QUI NE MEURT POINT!"<a name=
+ "FNanchor_127_127" id="FNanchor_127_127"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_127_127" class="fnanchor">[127]</a> These exalted ideas
+ were not a substitute for arduous labour. In all that Diderot writes
+ upon his magnificent undertaking, we are struck by his singular union
+ of common sense with elevation, of simplicity with grasp, of
+ suppleness with strength, of modesty with hopeful confidence. On
+ occasions that would have tempted a man of less sincerity and less
+ seriousness to bombast and inflation, his sense of the unavoidable
+ imperfections of so vast a work always makes itself felt through his
+ pride in its lofty aim and beneficent design. The weight of the burden
+ steadied him, and the anxiety of the honest and laborious craftsman
+ mastered the impulses of rhetoric.</p>
+
+ <p>Before going further into the general contents of the Encyclopædia,
+ we shall briefly describe the extraordinary succession of obstacles
+ and embarrassments against which its intrepid conductor was compelled
+ to fight his way. The project was fully conceived and its details
+ worked out between 1745 and 1748. The Encyclopedia was announced in
+ 1750, in a Prospectus of which Diderot was the author. At length in
+ 1751 the first volume of the work itself was given to the public,
+ followed by the second in January 1752. The clerical party at once
+ discerned what tremendous fortifications, with how deadly an armament,
+ were rising up in face of their camp. The Jesuits had always been
+ jealous of an enterprise in which they had not been invited to take a
+ part. They had expected at least to have the control of the articles
+ on theology. They now were bent on taking the work into their own
+ hands, and orthodoxy hastily set all the machinery of its ally,
+ authority, in vigorous motion.</p>
+
+ <p>The first attack was indirect. An abbé de Prades sustained a
+ certain thesis in an official exercise at the Sorbonne, and Diderot
+ was suspected, without good reason, of being its true author. An
+ examination of its propositions was ordered. It was pronounced
+ pernicious, dangerous, and tending to deism, chiefly on account of
+ some too suggestive comparisons between the miraculous healings in the
+ New Testament, and those ascribed in the more ancient legend to
+ Æsculapius. Other grounds of vehement objection were found in the
+ writer's maintenance of the Lockian theory of the origin of our ideas.
+ To deny the innateness of ideas was roundly asserted to be materialism
+ and atheism. The abbé de Prades was condemned, and deprived of his
+ license (Jan 27, 1752). As he was known to be a friend of Diderot, and
+ was suspected of being the writer of articles on theology in the
+ Encyclopædia, the design of the Jesuit cabal in ruining De Prades was
+ to discredit the new undertaking, and to induce the government to
+ prohibit it. Their next step was to procure a pastoral from the
+ archbishop of Paris. This document not only condemned the heretical
+ propositions of De Prades, but referred in sombre terms to unnamed
+ works teeming with error and impiety. Every one understood the
+ reference, and among its effects was an extension of the vogue and
+ notoriety of the Encyclopædia.<a name="FNanchor_128_128" id=
+ "FNanchor_128_128"></a><a href="#Footnote_128_128" class=
+ "fnanchor">[128]</a> The Jesuits were not allowed to retain a monopoly
+ of persecuting zeal, and the Jansenists refused to be left behind in
+ the race of hypocritical intrigue. The bishop of Auxerre, who belonged
+ to this party, followed his brother prelate of Paris in a more direct
+ attack, in which he included not only the Encyclopædia, but
+ Montesquieu and Buffon. De Prades took to flight. D'Alembert commended
+ him to Voltaire, then at Berlin. The king was absent, but Voltaire
+ gave royal protection to the fugitive until Frederick's return. De
+ Prades was then at once taken into favour and appointed reader to the
+ king. He proved but a poor martyr, however, for he afterwards
+ retracted his heresies, got a benefice, and was put into prison by
+ Frederick for giving information to his French countrymen during the
+ Seven Years' War.<a name="FNanchor_129_129" id=
+ "FNanchor_129_129"></a><a href="#Footnote_129_129" class=
+ "fnanchor">[129]</a> Unfortunately neither orthodoxy nor heterodoxy
+ has any exclusive patent for monopoly of rascals.</p>
+
+ <p>Meanwhile Diderot wrote on his behalf an energetic and dignified
+ reply to the aggressive pastoral. This apology is not such a
+ masterpiece of eloquence as the magnificent letter addressed by
+ Rousseau ten years later to the archbishop of Paris, after the
+ pastoral against Emilius. But Diderot's vindication of De Prades is
+ firm, moderate, and closely argumentative. The piece is worth turning
+ to in our own day, when great dignitaries of the churches too often
+ show the same ignorance, the same temerity, and the same reckless want
+ of charity, as the bishop of Auxerre showed a hundred and twenty years
+ ago. They resort to the very same fallacies by way of shield against
+ scientific truths or philosophical speculations that happen not to be
+ easily reconcilable with their official opinions. "I know nothing so
+ indecent," says Diderot, "and nothing so injurious to religion as
+ these vague declamations of theologians against reason. One would
+ suppose, to hear them, that men could only enter into the bosom of
+ Christianity as a herd of cattle enter into a stable; and that we must
+ renounce our common sense either to embrace our religion or to remain
+ in it ...Such principles as yours are made to frighten small souls;
+ everything alarms them, because they perceive clearly the consequences
+ of nothing; they set up connections among things which have nothing to
+ do with one another; they spy danger in any method of arguing which is
+ strange to them; they float at hazard between truths and prejudices
+ which they never distinguish, and to which they are equally attached;
+ and all their life is passed in crying out either miracle or impiety."
+ In an eloquent peroration, which is not more eloquent than it is
+ instructive, De Prades is made to turn round on his Jansenist censor,
+ and reproach him with the disturbance with which the intestine
+ rivalries of Jansenist and Jesuit had afflicted the faithful. "It is
+ the abominable testimony of your convulsions," he cries, "that has
+ overthrown the testimony of miracles. It is the fatuous audacity with
+ which your fanatics have confronted persecution, that has annihilated
+ the evidence of the martyrs. It is your declamations against sovereign
+ pontiffs, against bishops, against all the orders of the
+ ecclesiastical hierarchy, that have covered priest, altar, and creed
+ with opprobrium. If the pope, the bishops, the priests, the simple
+ faithful, the whole church, if its mysteries, its sacraments, its
+ temples, its ceremonies, have fallen into contempt, yours, yours, is
+ the handiwork."<a name="FNanchor_130_130" id=
+ "FNanchor_130_130"></a><a href="#Footnote_130_130" class=
+ "fnanchor">[130]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Bourdaloue more than half a century before had taunted the
+ free-thinkers of his day with falseness and inconsistency in taking
+ sides with the Jansenists, whose superstitions they notoriously held
+ in open contempt. The motive for the alliance was tolerably obvious.
+ The Jansenists, apart from their theology, were above all else the
+ representatives of opposition to authority. It was for this that Lewis
+ XIV. counted them worse than atheists. The Jesuits, it has been well
+ said in keeping down their enemies by force, became the partisans of
+ absolute government, and upheld it on every occasion. The Jansenists,
+ after they had been crushed by violence, began to feel to what
+ excesses power might be brought. From being speculative enemies to
+ freedom as a theory, they became, through the education of
+ persecution, the partisans of freedom in practice. The quarrel of
+ Molinists and Jansenists, from a question of theology, grew into a
+ question of human liberty.<a name="FNanchor_131_131" id=
+ "FNanchor_131_131"></a><a href="#Footnote_131_131" class=
+ "fnanchor">[131]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Circumstances had now changed. The free-thinkers were becoming
+ strong enough to represent opposition to authority on their own
+ principles and in their own persons. Diderot's vigorous remonstrance
+ with the bishop of Auxerre incidentally marks for us the definite
+ rupture of philosophic sympathy for the Jansenist champions. "It is
+ your disputatiousness," he said, "which within the last forty years
+ has made far more unbelievers than all the productions of philosophy."
+ As we cannot too clearly realise, it was the flagrant social
+ incompetence of the church which brought what they called Philosophy,
+ that is to say Liberalism, into vogue and power. Locke's Essay had
+ been translated in 1700, but it had made no mark, and as late as 1725
+ the first edition of the translation remained unsold. It was the
+ weakness and unsightly decrepitude of the ecclesiastics which opened
+ the way for the thinkers.</p>
+
+ <p>This victory, however, was not yet. Diderot had still a dismal
+ wilderness to traverse. He was not without secret friends even in the
+ camp of his enemies.</p>
+
+ <p>After his reply to Peré Berthier's attack on the Prospectus, he
+ received an anonymous letter to the effect that if he wished to avenge
+ himself on the Jesuits, there were both important documents and money
+ at his command. Diderot replied that he was in no want of money, and
+ that he had no time to spare for Jesuit documents.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_132_132" id="FNanchor_132_132"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_132_132" class="fnanchor">[132]</a> He trusted to reason.
+ Neither reason nor eloquence availed against the credit at court of
+ the ecclesiastical cabal. The sale of the second volume of the
+ Encyclopædia was stopped by orders which Malesherbes was reluctantly
+ compelled to issue. A decree of the king's council (Feb. 7, 1752)
+ suppressed both volumes, as containing maxims hostile to the royal
+ authority and to religion. The publishers were forbidden to reprint
+ them, and the booksellers were forbidden to deliver any copies that
+ might still be in hand. The decree, however, contained no prohibition
+ of the continuance of the work. It was probably not meant to do
+ anything more serious than to pacify the Jesuits, and lend an apparent
+ justification to the officious pastorals of the great prelates. Some
+ even thought that the aim of the government was to forestall severer
+ proceedings on the part of the parliament of lawyers;<a name=
+ "FNanchor_133_133" id="FNanchor_133_133"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_133_133" class="fnanchor">[133]</a> for corporations of
+ lawyers have seldom been less bigoted or obstructive than corporations
+ of churchmen. Nor were lawyers and priests the only foes. Even the
+ base and despicable jealousies of booksellers counted for something in
+ the storm.<a name="FNanchor_134_134" id=
+ "FNanchor_134_134"></a><a href="#Footnote_134_134" class=
+ "fnanchor">[134]</a></p>
+
+ <p>A curious triumph awaited the harassed Diderot.</p>
+
+ <p>He was compelled, under pain of a second incarceration, to hand
+ over to the authorities all the papers, proof-sheets, and plates in
+ his possession. The Jesuit cabal supposed that if they could obtain
+ the materials for the future volumes, they could easily arrange and
+ manipulate them to suit their own purposes. Their ignorance and
+ presumption were speedily confounded. In taking Diderot's papers, they
+ had forgotten, as Grimm says, to take his head and his genius: they
+ had forgotten to ask him for a key to articles which, so far from
+ understanding, they with some confusion vainly strove even to
+ decipher. The government was obliged (May 1752) to appeal to Diderot
+ and D'Alembert to resume a work for which their enemies had thus
+ proved themselves incompetent. Yet, by one of the meannesses of
+ decaying authority, the decree of three months before was left
+ suspended over their heads.<a name="FNanchor_135_135" id=
+ "FNanchor_135_135"></a><a href="#Footnote_135_135" class=
+ "fnanchor">[135]</a></p>
+
+ <p>The third volume of the Encyclopædia appeared in the autumn of
+ 1753. D'Alembert prefixed an introduction, vindicating himself and his
+ colleague with a manliness, a sincerity, a gravity, a fire, that are
+ admirable and touching. "What," he concluded, "can malignity
+ henceforth devise against two men of letters, trained long since by
+ their meditations to fear neither injustice nor poverty; who having
+ learnt by a long and mournful experience, not to despise, but to
+ mistrust and dread men, have the courage to love them, and the
+ prudence to flee them?... After having been the stormy and painful
+ occupation of the most precious years of our life, this work will
+ perhaps be the solace of its close. May it, when both we and our
+ enemies alike have ceased to exist, be a durable monument of the good
+ intention of the one, and the injustice of the other.... Let us
+ remember the fable of Bocalina: 'A traveller was disturbed by the
+ importunate chirrupings of the grasshoppers; he would fain have slain
+ them every one, but only got belated and missed his way; he need only
+ have fared peacefully on his road, and the grasshoppers would have
+ died of themselves before the end of a week.'"<a name=
+ "FNanchor_136_136" id="FNanchor_136_136"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_136_136" class="fnanchor">[136]</a> A volume was now
+ produced in each year, until the autumn of 1757 and the issue of the
+ seventh volume. This brought the work down to Gyromancy and Gythiuin.
+ Then there arose storms and divisions which marked a memorable epoch
+ alike in the history of the book, in the life of Diderot and others,
+ and in the thought of the century. The progress of the work in
+ popularity during the five years between 1752 and 1757 had been steady
+ and unbroken. The original subscribers were barely two thousand. When
+ the fourth volume appeared, there were three thousand. The seventh
+ volume found nearly a thousand more.<a name="FNanchor_137_137" id=
+ "FNanchor_137_137"></a><a href="#Footnote_137_137" class=
+ "fnanchor">[137]</a> Such prodigious success wrought the chagrin of
+ the party of superstition to fever heat. As each annual volume came
+ from the press and found a wider circle of readers than its
+ predecessor, their malice and irritation waxed a degree more intense.
+ They scattered malignant rumours abroad; they showered pamphlets; no
+ imputation was too odious or too ridiculous for them. Diderot,
+ D'Alembert, Voltaire, Rousseau, Buffon, were declared to have
+ organised a league of writers, with the deliberate purpose of
+ attacking the public tranquillity and overthrowing society. They were
+ denounced as heads of a formal conspiracy, a clandestine association,
+ a midnight band, united in a horrible community of pestilent opinions
+ and sombre interests.</p>
+
+ <p>In the seventh volume an article appeared which made the ferment
+ angrier than it had ever been. D'Alembert had lately been the guest of
+ Voltaire at Ferney, whence he had made frequent visits to Geneva. In
+ his intercourse with the ministers of that famous city, he came to the
+ conclusion that their religious opinions were really Socinian, and
+ when he wrote the article on Geneva he stated this. He stated it in
+ such a way as to make their heterodox opinions a credit to Genevese
+ pastors, because he associated disbelief in the divinity of Jesus
+ Christ, in mysteries of faith, and in eternal punishment, with a
+ practical life of admirable simplicity, purity, and tolerance. Each
+ line of this eulogy on the Socinian preachers of Geneva, veiled a
+ burning and contemptuous reproach against the cruel and darkened
+ spirit of the churchmen in France. Jesuit and Jansenist, loose abbès
+ and debauched prelates, felt the quivering of the arrow in the quick,
+ as they read that the morals of the Genevese pastors were exemplary;
+ that they did not pass their lives in furious disputes upon
+ unintelligible points; that they brought no indecent and persecuting
+ accusation against one another before the civil magistrate. There was
+ gall and wormwood to the orthodox bigot in the harmless statement that
+ "Hell, which is one of the principal articles of our belief, has
+ ceased to be one with many of the ministers of Geneva; it would be,
+ according to them, a great insult to the divinity, to imagine that
+ this Being, so full of justice and goodness, is capable of punishing
+ our faults by an eternity of torment: they explain in as good a sense
+ as they can the formal passages of Scripture which are contrary to
+ their opinion, declaring that we ought never in the sacred books to
+ take anything literally, that seems to wound humanity and reason." And
+ we may be sure that D'Alembert was thinking less of the consistory and
+ the great council of Geneva, than of the priests and the parliament of
+ Paris, when he praised the Protestant pastors, not only for their
+ tolerance, but for confining themselves within their proper functions,
+ and for being the first to set an example of submission to the
+ magistrates and the laws. The intention of this elaborate and,
+ reasoned account of the creed and practice of a handful of preachers
+ in a heretical town, could not be mistaken by those at whom it was
+ directed. It produced in the black ranks of official orthodoxy fully
+ as angry a shock as its writer could have designed.</p>
+
+ <p>The church had not yet, we must remember, borrowed the principles
+ of humanity and tolerance from atheists. It was not the comparatively
+ purified Christian doctrine of our own time with which the
+ Encyclopædists did battle, but an organised corporation, with
+ exceptional tribunals, with special material privileges, with dungeons
+ and chains at their disposal. We have to realise that official
+ religion was then a strange union of Byzantine decrepitude, with the
+ energetic ferocity of the Holy Office. Within five years of this
+ indirect plea of D'Alembert for tolerance and humanity, Calas was
+ murdered by the orthodoxy of Toulouse. Nearly ten years later (1766),
+ we find Lewis XV., with the steam of the Parc aux Cerfs about him,
+ rewarded by the loyal acclamations of a Parisian crowd, for descending
+ from his carriage as a priest passed bearing the sacrament, and
+ prostrating himself in the mud before the holy symbol.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_138_138" id="FNanchor_138_138"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_138_138" class="fnanchor">[138]</a> In the same year the
+ youth La Barre was first tortured, then beheaded, then burnt, for some
+ presumed disrespect to the same holy symbol—then become the hateful
+ ensign of human degradation, of fanatical cruelty, of rancorous
+ superstition. Yet I should be sorry to be unjust. It is to be said
+ that even in these bad days when religion meant cruelty and cabal, the
+ one or two men who boldly withstood to the face the king and the
+ Pompadour for the vileness of their lives, were priests of the
+ church.</p>
+
+ <p>D'Alembert's article hardly goes beyond what to us seem the axioms
+ of all men of sense. We must remember the time. Even members of the
+ philosophic party itself, like Grimm, thought the article misplaced
+ and hardy.<a name="FNanchor_139_139" id=
+ "FNanchor_139_139"></a><a href="#Footnote_139_139" class=
+ "fnanchor">[139]</a> The Genevese ministers indignantly repudiated the
+ compliment of Socinianism, and the eulogy of being rather less
+ irrational than their neighbours. Voltaire read and read again with
+ delight, and plied the writer with reiterated exhortations in every
+ key, not to allow himself to be driven from the great work by the
+ raging of the heathen and the vain imaginings of the people.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_140_140" id="FNanchor_140_140"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_140_140" class="fnanchor">[140]</a></p>
+
+ <p>While the storm seemed to be at its height, an incident occurred
+ which let loose a new flood of violent passion. Helvétius published
+ that memorable book in which he was thought to have told all the world
+ its own secret. His <i>De l'Esprit</i> came out in 1758.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_141_141" id="FNanchor_141_141"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_141_141" class="fnanchor">[141]</a> It provoked a general
+ insurrection of public opinion. The devout and the heedless agreed in
+ denouncing it as scandalous, licentious, impious, and pregnant with
+ peril. The philosophic party felt that their ally had dealt a sore
+ blow to liberty of thought and the free expression of opinion.
+ "Philosophy," said Grimm, by philosophy, as I have said, meaning
+ Liberalism, "will long feel the effect of the rising of opinion which
+ this author has caused by his book; and for having described too
+ freely a morality that is bad and false in itself, M. Helvétius will
+ have to reproach himself with all the restraints that are now sure to
+ be imposed on the few men of lofty genius who still are left to us,
+ whose destiny was to enlighten their fellows, and to spread truth over
+ the earth."<a name="FNanchor_142_142" id=
+ "FNanchor_142_142"></a><a href="#Footnote_142_142" class=
+ "fnanchor">[142]</a></p>
+
+ <p>At the beginning of 1759 the procureur-général laid an information
+ before the court against Helvétius's book, against half a dozen minor
+ publications, and finally against the Encyclopædia. The <i>De
+ l'Esprit</i> was alleged to be a mere abridgment of the Encyclopædia,
+ and the Encyclopædia was denounced as being the opprobrium of the
+ nation by its impious maxims and its hostility to morals and religion.
+ The court appointed nine commissaries to examine the seven volumes,
+ suspending their further sale or delivery in the meanwhile. When the
+ commissaries sent in their report a month later, the parliament was
+ dissatisfied with its tenour, and appointed four new examiners, two of
+ them being theologians and two of them lawyers. Before the new censors
+ had time to do their work, the Council of State interposed with an
+ arbitrary decree (March 1759) suppressing the privilege which had been
+ conceded in 1746; prohibiting the sale of the seven volumes already
+ printed, and the printing of any future volumes under pain of
+ exemplary punishment.<a name="FNanchor_143_143" id=
+ "FNanchor_143_143"></a><a href="#Footnote_143_143" class=
+ "fnanchor">[143]</a> The motive for this intervention has never been
+ made plain. One view is that the king's government resented the action
+ of the law courts, and that the royal decree was only an episode in
+ the quarrel then raging between the crown and the parliaments. Another
+ opinion is that Malesherbes or</p>
+
+ <p>Choiseul was anxious to please the dauphin and the Jesuit party at
+ Versailles. The most probable explanation is that the authorities were
+ eager to silence one at least of the three elements of opposition, the
+ Jansenists, the lawyers, and the philosophers,—who were then
+ distracting the realm. The two former were beyond their direct reach.
+ They threw themselves upon the foe who happened to be most
+ accessible.</p>
+
+ <p>The government, however, had no intention of finally exterminating
+ an enemy who might at some future day happen to be a convenient ally.
+ They encouraged or repressed the philosophers according to the
+ political calculations of the moment, sometimes according to the
+ caprices of the king's mistress, or even a minister's mistress. When
+ the clergy braved the royal authority, the hardiest productions were
+ received with indulgence. If the government were reduced to satisfy
+ the clergy, then even the very commonplaces of the new philosophy
+ became ground for accusation. The Encyclopædia was naturally exposed
+ in a special degree to such alternations of favour and
+ suspicion.<a name="FNanchor_144_144" id=
+ "FNanchor_144_144"></a><a href="#Footnote_144_144" class=
+ "fnanchor">[144]</a> The crisis of 1759 furnishes a curious
+ illustration of this. As we have seen, in the spring of that year the
+ privilege was withdrawn from the four associated booksellers, and the
+ continuance of the work strictly prohibited. Yet the printing was not
+ suspended for a week. Fifty compositors were busily setting up a book
+ which the ordinance of the government had decisively forbidden under
+ heavy penalties.</p>
+
+ <p>The same kind of connivance was practised to the advantage of other
+ branches of the opposition. Thirty years before this, the organ of the
+ Jansenist party was peremptorily suppressed. The police instituted a
+ rigorous search, and seized the very presses on which the Nouvelles
+ Ecclésiastiques was being printed. But the journal continued to
+ appear, and was circulated, just as regularly as before.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_145_145" id="FNanchor_145_145"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_145_145" class="fnanchor">[145]</a></p>
+
+ <p>The history of the policy of authority towards the Encyclopædia is
+ only one episode in the great lesson of the reign of Lewis XV. It was
+ long a common mistake to think of this king's system of government as
+ violent and tyrannical. In truth, its failure and confusion resulted
+ less from the arbitrariness of its procedure, than from the hopeless
+ absence of tenacity, conviction, and consistency in the substance and
+ direction of its objects. And this, again, was the result partly of
+ the complex and intractable nature of the opposition with which
+ successive ministers had to deal, and partly of the overpowering
+ strength of those Asiatic maxims of government which Richelieu and
+ Lewis XIV. had invested with such ruinous prestige. The impatience and
+ charlatanry of emotional or pseudo-scientific admirers of a personal
+ system blind them to the permanent truth, of which the succession of
+ the decrepitude of Lewis XV. to the strength of his great-grandfather,
+ and of the decrepitude of Napoleon III. to the strength of his uncle,
+ are only illustrations.</p>
+
+ <p>The true interest of all these details about a mere book lies in
+ the immense significance of the movement of political ideas and forces
+ to which they belong. The true interest of all history lies in the
+ spectacle which it furnishes of the growth and dissolution, the shock
+ and the transformation, incessantly at work among the great groups of
+ human conceptions. The decree against the Encyclopædia marks the
+ central moment of a collision between two antagonistic conceptions
+ which disputed, and in France still dispute, with one another the
+ shaping and control of institutions. One of these ideas is the
+ exclusion of political authority from the sphere and function of
+ directing opinion; it implies the absolute secularisation of
+ government. The rival idea prompted the massacre of St. Bartholomew,
+ the dragonnades, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and all the
+ other acts of the same policy, which not only deprived France of
+ thousands of the most conscientious and most ingenious of her sons,
+ but warped and corrupted the integrity of the national conscience. It
+ is natural that we should feel anger at the arbitrary attempt to
+ arrest Diderot's courageous and enlightened undertaking. Yet in truth
+ it was only the customary inference from an accepted principle, that
+ it is the business or the right of governments to guide thought and
+ regulate its expression. The Jesuits acted on this theory, and
+ resorted to repressive power and the secular arm whenever they could.
+ The Jansenists repudiated the principle, but eagerly practised it
+ whenever the turn of intrigue gave them the chance.</p>
+
+ <p>An extraordinary and unforeseen circumstance changed the external
+ bearings of this critical conflict of ideas. The conception of the
+ duties of the temporal authority in the spiritual sphere had been
+ associated hitherto with Catholic doctrine. The decay of that doctrine
+ was rapidly discrediting the conception allied with it. But the
+ movement was interrupted. And it was interrupted by a man who suddenly
+ stepped out from the ranks of the Encyclopædists themselves. Rousseau
+ from his solitary cottage at Montmorency (1758) fulminated the
+ celebrated letter to D'Alembert on Stage Plays. The article on Geneva
+ in the seventh volume of the Encyclopædia had not only praised the
+ pastors for their unbelief; it also assailed the time-honoured
+ doctrine of the churches that the theatre is an institution from hell
+ and an invention of devils. D'Alembert paid a compliment to his
+ patriarch and master at Ferney, as well as shot a bolt at his
+ ecclesiastical foes in Paris, by urging the people of Geneva to shake
+ off irrational prejudices and straightway to set up a playhouse.
+ Rousseau had long been brooding over certain private grievances of his
+ own against Diderot; the dreary story has been told by me before, and
+ happily need not be repeated.<a name="FNanchor_146_146" id=
+ "FNanchor_146_146"></a><a href="#Footnote_146_146" class=
+ "fnanchor">[146]</a> He took the occasion of D'Alembert's mischievous
+ suggestion to his native Geneva, not merely to denounce the drama with
+ all the force and eloquence at his command, but formally to declare
+ the breach between himself and Diderot. From this moment he treated
+ the Holbachians—so he contemptuously styled the Encyclopædists—as
+ enemies of the human race and disseminators of the deadliest
+ poisons.</p>
+
+ <p>This was no mere quarrel of rival authors. It marked a fundamental
+ divergence in thought, and proclaimed the beginning of a disastrous
+ reaction in the very heart of the school of illumination. Among the
+ most conspicuous elements of the reaction were these: the
+ subordination of reason to emotion; the displacement of industry,
+ science, energetic and many-sided ingenuity, by dreamy indolence; and
+ finally, what brings us back to our starting-point, the suppression of
+ opinions deemed to be anti-social by the secular arm. The old idea was
+ brought back in a new dress; the absolutist conception of the function
+ of authority, associated with a theistic doctrine. Unfortunately for
+ France, Rousseau's idea prospered, and ended by vanquishing its
+ antagonist. The reason is plain. Rousseau's idea exactly fitted in
+ with the political traditions and institutions of the country. It was
+ more easily and directly compatible than was the contending idea, with
+ that temper and set of men's minds which tradition and institutions
+ had fixed so disastrously deep in the national character.</p>
+
+ <p>The crisis of 1758-59, then, is a date of the highest importance.
+ It marks a collision between the old principle of Lewis XIV., of the
+ Bartholomew Massacre, of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and
+ the new rationalistic principle of spiritual emancipation. The old
+ principle was decrepit, it was no longer able to maintain itself; the
+ hounds were furious, but their fury was toothless. Before the new
+ principle could achieve mastery, Rousseau had made mastery impossible.
+ Two men came into the world at this very moment, whom destiny made
+ incarnations of the discordant principles. Danton and Robespierre were
+ both born in 1759. Diderot seems to have had a biblical presentiment,
+ says Michelet. "We feel that he saw, beyond Rousseau, something
+ sinister, a spectre of the future. Diderot-Danton already looks in the
+ face of Rousseau-Robespierre."<a name="FNanchor_147_147" id=
+ "FNanchor_147_147"></a><a href="#Footnote_147_147" class=
+ "fnanchor">[147]</a></p>
+
+ <p>A more vexatious incident now befell the all-daring, all-enduring
+ Diderot, than either the decree of the Council or the schism of the
+ heresiarch at Montmorency. D'Alembert declared his intention of
+ abandoning the work, and urged his colleague to do the same. His
+ letters to Voltaire show intelligibly enough how he brought himself to
+ this resolution. "I am worn out," he says, "with the affronts and
+ vexations of every kind that this work draws down upon us. The hateful
+ and even infamous satires which they print against us, and which are
+ not only tolerated, but protected, authorised, applauded, nay,
+ actually commanded by the people with power in their hands; the
+ sermons, or rather the tocsins that are rung against us at Versailles
+ in the presence of the king, <i>nemine reclamante</i>; the new
+ intolerable inquisition that they are bent on practising against the
+ Encyclopædia, by giving us new censors who are more absurd and more
+ intractable than could be found at Goa; all these reasons, joined to
+ some others, drive me to give up this accursed work once for all." He
+ cared nothing for libels or stinging pamphlets in themselves, but
+ libels permitted or ordered by those who could instantly have
+ suppressed them, were a different thing, especially when they vomited
+ forth the vilest personalities. He admitted that there were other
+ reasons why he was bent on retiring, and it would appear that one of
+ these reasons was dissatisfaction with the financial arrangements of
+ the booksellers.<a name="FNanchor_148_148" id=
+ "FNanchor_148_148"></a><a href="#Footnote_148_148" class=
+ "fnanchor">[148]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Voltaire for some time remonstrated against this retreat before the
+ hated <i>Infâme</i>. At length his opinion came round to D'Alembert's
+ reiterated assertions of the shame and baseness of men of letters
+ subjecting themselves to the humiliating yoke of ministers, priests,
+ and police. Voltaire wrote to Diderot, protesting that before all
+ things it was necessary to present a firm front to the foe; it would
+ be atrocious weakness to continue the work after D'Alembert had
+ quitted it; it was monstrous that such a genius as Diderot should make
+ himself the slave of booksellers and the victim of fanatics. Must this
+ dictionary, he asked, which is a hundred times more useful than
+ Bayle's, be fettered with the superstition which it should annihilate;
+ must they make terms with scoundrels who keep terms with none; could
+ the enemies of reason, the persecutors of philosophers, the assassins
+ of our kings, still dare to lift up their voices in such a century as
+ that? "Men are on the eve of a great revolution in the human mind, and
+ it is you to whom they are most of all indebted for it."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_149_149" id="FNanchor_149_149"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_149_149" class="fnanchor">[149]</a></p>
+
+ <p>More than once Voltaire entreated Diderot to finish his work in a
+ foreign country where his hands would be free. "No," said Diderot in a
+ reply of pathetic energy; "to abandon the work is turning our back
+ upon the breach, and to do precisely what the villains who persecute
+ us desire. If you knew with what joy they have learnt D'Alembert's
+ desertion! It is not for us to wait until the government have punished
+ the brigands to whom they have given us up. Is it for us to complain,
+ when they associate with us in their insults men who are so much
+ better than ever we shall be? What ought we to do then? Do what
+ becomes men of courage,—despise our foes, follow them up, and take
+ advantage, as we have done, of the feebleness of our censors. If
+ D'Alembert resumes, and we complete our work, is not that vengeance
+ enough?... After all this, you will believe that I cling at any price
+ to the Encyclopædia, and you will be mistaken. My dear master, I am
+ over forty. I am tired out with tricks and shufflings. I cry from
+ morning till night for rest, rest; and scarcely a day passes when I am
+ not tempted to go and live in obscurity and die in peace in the depths
+ of my old country. There comes a time when all ashes are mingled. Then
+ what will it boot me to have been Voltaire or Diderot, or whether it
+ is your three syllables or my three syllables that survive? One must
+ work, one must be useful, one owes an account of one's gifts,
+ etcetera, etcetera. Be useful to men! Is it quite clear that one does
+ more than amuse them, and that there is much difference between the
+ philosopher and the flute-player? They listen to one or the other with
+ pleasure or disdain, and remain what they were. The Athenians were
+ never wickeder than in the time of Socrates, and perhaps all that they
+ owe to his existence is a crime the more. That there is more spleen
+ than good sense in all this, I admit—and back I go to the
+ Encyclopædia."<a name="FNanchor_150_150" id=
+ "FNanchor_150_150"></a><a href="#Footnote_150_150" class=
+ "fnanchor">[150]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Thus for seven years the labour of conducting the vast enterprise
+ fell upon Diderot alone. He had not only to write articles upon the
+ most exhausting and various kinds of subjects; he had also to
+ distribute topics among his writers, to shape their manuscripts, to
+ correct proof-sheets, to supervise the preparation of the engravings,
+ to write the text explanatory of them, and all this amid constant
+ apprehension and alarm from the government and the police. He would
+ have been free from persecution at Lausanne or at Leyden. The two
+ great sovereigns of the north who thought it part of the trade of a
+ king to patronise the new philosophy, offered him shelter at
+ Petersburg or Berlin.<a name="FNanchor_151_151" id=
+ "FNanchor_151_151"></a><a href="#Footnote_151_151" class=
+ "fnanchor">[151]</a></p>
+
+ <p>But how could he transport to the banks of the Neva or the Spree
+ his fifty skilled compositors, his crafty engravers on copper-plate,
+ and all the host of his industrial army? How could he find in those
+ half-barbarous lands the looms and engines and thousand cunning
+ implements and marvellous processes which he had under his eye and
+ ready to his hand in France? And so he held fast to his post on the
+ fifth floor of the house in the Rue Saint Benoît, a standing marvel to
+ the world of letters for all time.</p>
+
+ <p>As his toil was drawing to a close, he suddenly received the most
+ mortifying of all the blows that were struck at him in the course of
+ his prolonged, hazardous, and tormenting adventure. After the
+ interruption in 1759, it was resolved to bring out the ten volumes
+ which were still wanting, in a single issue. Le Breton was entrusted
+ with the business of printing them. The manuscript was set in type,
+ Diderot corrected the proof-sheets, saw the revises, and returned each
+ sheet duly marked with his signature for the press. At this point the
+ nefarious operation of Le Breton began. He and his foreman took
+ possession of the sheets, and proceeded to retrench, cut out, and
+ suppress every passage, line, or phrase, that appeared to them to be
+ likely to provoke clamour or the anger of the government. They thus,
+ of their own brute authority, reduced most of the best articles to the
+ condition of fragments mutilated and despoiled of all that had been
+ most valuable in them. The miscreants did not even trouble themselves
+ to secure any appearance of order or continuity in these mangled
+ skeletons of articles. Their murderous work done, they sent the pages
+ to the press, and to make the mischief beyond remedy, they committed
+ all the original manuscripts and proof-sheets to the flames. One day,
+ when the printing was nearly completed (1764), Diderot having occasion
+ to consult an article under the letter S, found it entirely spoiled.
+ He stood confounded. An instant's thought revealed the printer's
+ atrocity. He eagerly turned to the articles on which he and his
+ subordinates had taken most pains, and found everywhere the same
+ ravages and disorder. "The discovery," says Grimm, "threw him into a
+ state of frenzy and despair which I shall never forget."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_152_152" id="FNanchor_152_152"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_152_152" class="fnanchor">[152]</a> He wept tears of rage
+ and torment in the presence of the criminal himself, and before wife
+ and children and sympathising domestics. For weeks he could neither
+ eat nor sleep. "For years," he cried to Le Breton, "you have been
+ basely cheating me. You have massacred, or got a brute beast to
+ massacre, the work of twenty good men who have devoted to you their
+ time, their talents, their vigils, from love of right and truth, from
+ the simple hope of seeing their ideas given to the public, and reaping
+ from them a little consideration richly earned, which your injustice
+ and thanklessness have now stolen from them for ever.... You and your
+ book will be dragged through the mire; you will henceforth be cited as
+ a man who has been guilty of an act of treachery, an act of vile
+ hardihood, to which nothing that has ever happened in this world can
+ be compared. Then you will be able to judge your panic terror, and the
+ cowardly counsels of those barbarous Ostrogoths and stupid Vandals who
+ helped you in the havoc you have made."<a name="FNanchor_153_153" id=
+ "FNanchor_153_153"></a><a href="#Footnote_153_153" class=
+ "fnanchor">[153]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Yet he remained undaunted to the very last. His first movement to
+ throw up the work, and denounce Le Breton's outrage to the subscribers
+ and the world, was controlled. His labour had lost its charm. The
+ monument was disfigured and defaced. He never forgot the horrible
+ chagrin, and he never forgave the ignoble author of it. But the last
+ stone was at length laid. In 1765 the subscribers received the
+ concluding ten volumes of letterpress. The eleven volumes of plates
+ were not completed until 1772. The copies bore Neufchâtel on the
+ title-page, and were distributed privately. The clergy in their
+ assembly at once levelled a decree at the new book. The parliament
+ quashed this, not from love of the book, but from hatred of the
+ clergy. The government, however, ordered all who possessed the
+ Encyclopædia to deliver it over forthwith to the police. Eventually
+ the copies were returned to their owners with some petty
+ curtailments.</p>
+
+ <p>Voltaire has left us a vivacious picture of authority in grave
+ consultation over the great engine of destruction. With that we may
+ conclude our account of its strange eventful history.</p>
+
+ <div class="blockquot">
+  <p>A servant of Lewis xv. told me that one day the king his master
+  supping at Trianon with a small party, the talk happened to turn
+  first upon the chase, and next on gunpowder. Some one said that the
+  best powder was made of equal parts of saltpetre, of sulphur, and of
+  charcoal. The Duke de la Vallière, better informed, maintained that
+  to make good gunpowder you required one part of sulphur and one of
+  charcoal to five parts of saltpetre.</p>
+
+  <p>"It is curious," said the Duke de Nivernois, "that we should amuse
+  ourselves every day in killing partridges at Versailles, and
+  sometimes in killing men or getting ourselves killed on the frontier,
+  without knowing exactly how the killing is done."</p>
+
+  <p>"Alas," said Madame de Pompadour, "we are all reduced to that
+  about everything in the world: I don't know how they compound the
+  rouge that I put on my cheeks, and I should be vastly puzzled if they
+  were to ask me how they make my silk stockings."</p>
+
+  <p>"'Tis a pity, then," said the Duke de la Vallière, "that his
+  Majesty should have confiscated our Encyclopædias, which cost us a
+  hundred pistoles apiece: we should soon find there an answer to all
+  our difficulties."</p>
+
+  <p>The king justified the confiscation: he had been warned that
+  one-and-twenty folios, that were to be found on the dressing-tables
+  of all the ladies, were the most dangerous thing in all the world for
+  the kingdom of France; and he meant to find out for himself whether
+  this were true or not, before letting people read the book. When
+  supper was over, he sent three lackeys for the book, and they
+  returned each with a good deal of difficulty carrying seven
+  volumes.</p>
+
+  <p>It was then seen from the article <i>Powder</i> that the Duke de
+  la Vallière was right; and then Madame de Pompadour learnt the
+  difference between the old rouge of Spain, with which the ladies of
+  Madrid coloured their faces, and the rouge of the ladies of Paris.
+  She knew that the Greek and Roman ladies were painted with the purple
+  that came from the <i>murex</i>, and that therefore our scarlet is
+  the purple of the ancients; that there was more saffron in the rouge
+  of Spain, and more cochineal in that of France.</p>
+
+  <p>She saw how they made her stockings by loom; and the machine
+  transported her with amazement.</p>
+
+  <p>Everyone threw himself on the volumes like the daughters of
+  Lycomedes on the ornaments of Ulysses; every one immediately found
+  all he sought. Those who were at law were surprised to see their
+  affair decided. The king read all about the rights of his crown. "But
+  upon my word," he said, "I can't tell why they spoke so ill of this
+  book." "Do you not see, sire, said the Duke de Nivernois, "it is
+  because the book is so good; people never cry out against what is
+  mediocre or common in anything. If women seek to throw ridicule on a
+  new arrival, she is sure to be prettier than they are."</p>
+
+  <p>All this time they kept on turning over the leaves; and the Count
+  de C—— said aloud—"Sire, how happy you are, that under your reign men
+  should be found capable of understanding all the arts and
+  transmitting them to posterity. Everything is here, from the way to
+  make a pin down to the art of casting and pointing your guns; from
+  the infinitely little up to the infinitely great. Thank God for
+  having brought into the world in your kingdom the men who have done
+  such good work for the whole universe. Other nations must either buy
+  the Encyclopædia, or else they must pirate it. Take all my property
+  if you will, but give me back my Encyclopædia."</p>
+
+  <p>"Yet they say," replied the king, "that there are many faults in
+  this work, necessary and admirable as it is."</p>
+
+  <p>"Sire," said the Count de C——, "there were at your supper two
+  ragouts which were failures; we left them uneaten, and yet we had
+  excellent cheer. Would you have had them throw all the supper out of
+  the window because of those two ragouts?..."</p>
+
+  <p>Envy and Ignorance did not count themselves beaten; the two
+  immortal sisters continued their cries, their cabals, their
+  persecutions. What happened? Foreigners brought out four editions of
+  this French book which in France was proscribed, and they gained
+  about 1,800,000 crowns.<a name="FNanchor_154_154" id=
+  "FNanchor_154_154"></a><a href="#Footnote_154_154" class=
+  "fnanchor">[154]</a></p>
+ </div>
+
+ <p>In a monotonous world it is a pity to spoil a striking effect, yet
+ one must be vigilant. It has escaped the attention of writers who have
+ reproduced this lively scene, that Madame de Pompadour was dead before
+ the volumes containing Powder and Rouge were born. The twenty-one
+ volumes were not published until 1765, and she died in the spring of
+ the previous year. But the substance of the story is probably true,
+ though Voltaire has only made a slip in a name.</p>
+
+ <p>As to the reference with which Voltaire impatiently concludes, we
+ have to remember that the work was being printed at Geneva as it came
+ out in Paris. It was afterwards reprinted as a whole both at Geneva
+ (1777) and at Lausanne (1778). An edition appeared at Leghorn in 1770,
+ and another at Lucca in 1771. Immediately after the completion of the
+ Encyclopædia there began to appear volumes of selections from it. The
+ compilers of these anthologies (for instance of an <i>Esprit de
+ l'Encydopédie</i> published at Geneva in 1768) were free from all
+ intention of proselytising. They meant only to turn a more or less
+ honest penny by serving up in neat duodecimos the liveliest, most
+ curious, and most amusing pieces to be found in the immense mass of
+ the folios of the original.</p>
+
+ <p>The Encyclopædia of Diderot, though not itself the most prodigious
+ achievement on which French booksellers may pride themselves, yet
+ inspired that achievement. In 1782 Panckoucke—a familiar name in the
+ correspondence of Voltaire and the Voltairean family—conceived the
+ plan of a Methodical Encyclopædia. This colossal work, which really
+ consists of a collection of special cyclopædias for each of the
+ special sciences, was not completed until 1832, and comprises one
+ hundred and sixty-six volumes of text, with a score more volumes of
+ plates. It has no unity of doctrine, no equal application of any set
+ of philosophic principles, and no definite social aim. The only
+ encyclopædia since 1772 with which I am acquainted, that is planned
+ with a view to the presentation of a general body of doctrine, is the
+ unfinished Encyclopédie Nuevelle of Pìerre Leroux and Jean Reynaud.
+ This work was intended to apply the socialistic and spiritualistic
+ ideas of its authors over the whole field of knowledge and
+ speculation. The result is that it furnishes only a series of
+ dissertations, and is not an encyclopædia in the ordinary
+ sense.<a name="FNanchor_155_155" id="FNanchor_155_155"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_155_155" class="fnanchor">[155]</a></p>
+
+ <p>The booksellers at first spoke of the Encyclopædia as an affair of
+ two million livres. It appeared, however that its cost did not go much
+ beyond one million one hundred and forty thousand livres. The gross
+ return was calculated to be nearly twice as much. The price to the
+ subscriber of the seven volumes up to 1757, of the ten volumes issued
+ in 1765, and of the eleven volumes of plates completed in 1772,
+ amounted to nine hundred and eighty livres,<a name="FNanchor_156_156"
+ id="FNanchor_156_156"></a><a href="#Footnote_156_156" class=
+ "fnanchor">[156]</a> or about forty-three pounds sterling of that
+ date, equivalent in value to more than three times the sum in money of
+ to-day.</p>
+
+ <p>The payment received by Diderot is a little doubtful, and the terms
+ were evidently changed from time to time. His average salary, after
+ D'Alembert had quitted him, seems to have amounted to about three
+ thousand livres, or one hundred and thirty pounds sterling, per annum.
+ This coincides with Grimm's statement that the total sum received by
+ Diderot was sixty thousand livres, or about two thousand six hundred
+ pounds sterling.<a name="FNanchor_157_157" id=
+ "FNanchor_157_157"></a><a href="#Footnote_157_157" class=
+ "fnanchor">[157]</a> And to think, cried Voltaire, when he heard of
+ Diderot's humble wage, that an army contractor makes twenty thousand
+ livres a day! Voltaire himself had made a profit of more than half a
+ million livres by a share in an army contract in the war of 1734, and
+ his yearly income derived from such gains and their prudent investment
+ was as high as seventy thousand livres, representing in value a sum
+ not far short of ten thousand pounds a year of our present money.</p>
+
+ <p>II.</p>
+
+ <p>All writers on the movement of illumination in France in the
+ eighteenth century, call our attention to the quick transformation,
+ which took place after the middle of the century, of a speculative or
+ philosophical agitation into a political or social one. Readers often
+ find some difficulty in understanding plainly how or why this
+ metamorphosis was brought about. The metaphysical question which men
+ were then so fond of discussing, whether matter can think, appears
+ very far removed indeed from the sphere of political conceptions. The
+ psychological question whether our ideas are innate, or are solely
+ given to us by experience through the sensations, may strike the
+ publicist as having the least possible to do with the type of a
+ government or the aims of a community. Yet it is really the
+ conclusions to which men come in this region, that determine the
+ quality of the civil sentiment and the significance of political
+ organisation. The theological doctors who persecuted De Prades for
+ suggestions of Locke's psychology, and for high treason against
+ Cartesianism, were guided by a right instinct of self-preservation. De
+ Maistre, by far the most acute and penetrating of the Catholic school,
+ was never more clear-sighted than when he made a vigorous and
+ deliberate onslaught upon Bacon, the centre of his movement against
+ revolutionary principles.<a name="FNanchor_158_158" id=
+ "FNanchor_158_158"></a><a href="#Footnote_158_158" class=
+ "fnanchor">[158]</a></p>
+
+ <p>As we have said before, the immediate force of speculative
+ literature hangs on practical opportuneness. It was not merely because
+ Bacon and Hobbes and Locke had written certain books, that the
+ Encyclopædists, who took up their philosophic succession, inevitably
+ became a powerful political party, and multiplied their adherents in
+ an increasing proportion as the years went on. From various
+ circumstances the attack acquired a significance and a weight in
+ France which it had never possessed in England. For one thing,
+ physical science had in the interval taken immense strides. This both
+ dwarfed the sovereignty of theology and theological metaphysics, and
+ indirectly disposed men's minds for non-theological theories of moral
+ as well as of physical phenomena. In France, again, the objects of the
+ attack were inelastic and unyielding. Political speculation in England
+ followed, and did not precede, political innovation and reform. In
+ France its light played round institutions which were too deeply
+ rooted in absolutism and privilege to be capable of substantial
+ modification. Deism was comparatively impotent against the Church of
+ England, first, because it was an intellectual movement, and not a
+ social one; second, because the constitutional doctrines of the church
+ were flexible. Deism in the hands of its French propagators became
+ connected with social liberalism, because the Catholic church in those
+ days was identified with all the ideas of repression. And the
+ tendencies of deism in France grew more violently destructive, not
+ only because religious superstition was grosser, but because that
+ superstition was incorporated in a strong and inexpansible social
+ structure.</p>
+
+ <p>"It would be a mistake," wrote that sagacious and well-informed
+ observer, D'Argenson, so early as 1753, "to attribute the loss of
+ religion in France to the English philosophy, which has not gained
+ more than a hundred philosophers or so in Paris, instead of setting it
+ down to the hatred against the priests, which goes to the very last
+ extreme. All minds are turning to discontent and disobedience, and
+ everything is on the high road to a great revolution, both in religion
+ and in government. And it will be a very different thing to that rude
+ Reformation, a medley of superstition and freedom, which came to us
+ from Germany in the sixteenth century! As our nation and our century
+ are enlightened in so very different a fashion, they will go whither
+ they ought to go; they will banish every priest, all priesthood, all
+ revelation, all mystery." This, however, only represents the
+ destructive side of the vast change which D'Argenson then foresaw,
+ six-and-thirty years before its consummation. That change had also a
+ constructive side. If one of its elements was hate, another and more
+ important element was hope. This constructive and reforming spirit
+ which made its way in the intelligence of the leading men in France
+ from 1750 to 1789, was represented in the encyclopædic confederation,
+ and embodied in their forty folios. And, to return to our first point,
+ it was directly and inseparably associated with the philosophy of
+ Bacon and Locke. What is the connection between their speculations and
+ a vehement and energetic spirit of social reform? We have no space
+ here to do more than barely hint the line of answer.</p>
+
+ <p>The broad features of the speculative revolution of which the
+ Encyclopædia was the outcome, lie on the surface of its pages and
+ cannot be mistaken. The transition from Descartes to Newton meant the
+ definite substitution of observation for hypothesis. The exaltation of
+ Bacon meant the advance from supernatural explanations to explanations
+ from experience. The acceptance and development of the Lockian
+ psychology meant the reference of our ideas to bodily sensations, and
+ led men by what they thought a tolerably direct path to the
+ identification of mind with functions of matter. We need not here
+ discuss the philosophical truth or adequateness of these ways of
+ considering the origin and nature of knowledge, or the composition of
+ human character. All that now concerns us is to mark their tendency.
+ That tendency clearly is to expel Magic as the decisive influence
+ among us, in favour of ordered relations of cause and effect, only to
+ be discovered by intelligent search. The universe began to be more
+ directly conceived as a group of phenomena that are capable of
+ rational and connected explanation. Then, the wider the area of law,
+ the greater is man's consciousness of his power of controlling forces,
+ and securing the results that he desires. Objective interests and
+ their conditions acquire an increasing preponderance in his mind. On
+ the other hand, as the limits of science expand, so do the limits of
+ nescience become more definite. The more we know of the universal
+ order, the more are we persuaded, however gradually and insensibly,
+ that certain matters which men believed themselves to know outside of
+ this phenomenal order, are in truth inaccessible by those instruments
+ of experience and observation to which we are indebted for other
+ knowledge. Hence, a natural inclination to devote our faculty to the
+ forces within our control, and to withdraw it from vain industry about
+ forces—if they be forces—which are beyond our control and beyond our
+ apprehension. Thus man becomes the centre of the world to himself,
+ nature his servant and minister, human society the field of his
+ interests and his exertions. The sensational psychology, again,
+ whether scientifically defensible or not, clearly tends to heighten
+ our idea of the power of education and institutions upon character.
+ The more vividly we realise the share of external impressions in
+ making men what they are, the more ready we shall be to concern
+ ourselves with external conditions and their improvement. The
+ introduction of the positive spirit into the observation of the facts
+ of society was not to be expected until the Cartesian philosophy, with
+ its reliance on inexplicable intuitions and its exaggeration of the
+ method of hypothesis, had been laid aside.</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot struck a key-note of difference between the old Catholic
+ spirit and the new social spirit, between quietist superstition and
+ energetic science, in the casual sentence in his article on
+ alms-houses and hospitals: "<i>It would be far more important to work
+ at the prevention of misery, than to multiply places of refuge for the
+ miserable</i>."</p>
+
+ <p>It is very easy to show that the Encyclopædists had not established
+ an impregnable scientific basis for their philosophy. Anybody can now
+ see that their metaphysic and psychology were imperfectly thought out.
+ The important thing is that their metaphysic and psychology were
+ calculated, notwithstanding all their superficialities, to inspire an
+ energetic social spirit, because they were pregnant with humanistic
+ sentiment. To represent the Encyclopædia as the gospel of negation and
+ denial is to omit four-fifths of its contents. Men may certainly, if
+ they please, describe it as merely negative work, for example, to
+ denounce such institutions as examination and punishment by Torture
+ (See <i>Question, Peine</i>), but if so, what gospel of affirmation
+ can bring better blessings?<a name="FNanchor_159_159" id=
+ "FNanchor_159_159"></a><a href="#Footnote_159_159" class=
+ "fnanchor">[159]</a> If the metaphysic of these writers had been a
+ thousandfold more superficial than it was, what mattered that, so long
+ as they had vision for every one of the great social improvements on
+ which the progress and even the very life of the nation depended? It
+ would be obviously unfair to say that reasoned interest in social
+ improvement is incompatible with a spiritualistic doctrine, but we are
+ justified in saying that energetic faith in possibilities of social
+ progress has been first reached through the philosophy of sensation
+ and experience.</p>
+
+ <p>In describing the encyclopædic movement as being, among other
+ things, the development of political interest under the presiding
+ influence of a humanistic philosophy, we are using the name of
+ politics in its widest sense. The economic conditions of a country,
+ and the administration of its laws, are far more vitally related to
+ its well-being than the form of its government. The form of government
+ is indeed a question of the first importance, but then this is owing
+ in a paramount degree to the influence which it may have upon the
+ other two sets of elements in the national life. Form of government is
+ like the fashion of a man's clothes; it may fret or may comfort him,
+ may be imposing or mean, may react upon his spirits to elate or
+ depress them. In either case it is less intimately related to his
+ welfare than the state of his blood and tissues. In saying, then, that
+ the Encyclopædists began a political work, what is meant is that they
+ drew into the light of new ideas, groups of institutions, usages, and
+ arrangements which affected the real well-being and happiness of
+ France, as closely as nutrition affected the health and strength of an
+ individual Frenchman. It was the Encyclopædists who first stirred
+ opinion in France against the iniquities of colonial tyranny and the
+ abominations of the slave trade. They demonstrated the folly and
+ wastefulness and cruelty of a fiscal system that was eating the life
+ out of the land. They protested in season and out of season against
+ arrangements which made the administration of justice a matter of sale
+ and purchase. They lifted up a strong voice against the atrocious
+ barbarities of an antiquated penal code. It was this band of writers,
+ organised by a harassed man of letters, and not the nobles swarming
+ round Lewis XV., nor the churchmen singing masses, who first grasped
+ the great principle of modern society, the honour that is owed to
+ productive industry. They were vehement for the glories of peace, and
+ passionate against the brazen glories of war.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_160_160" id="FNanchor_160_160"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_160_160" class="fnanchor">[160]</a></p>
+
+ <p>We are not to suppose that the Encyclopædia was the originating
+ organ of either new methods or new social ideas. The exalted and
+ peculiarly modern views about peace, for instance, were plainly
+ inspired from the writings of the Abbé Saint Pierre (1658-1743)—one of
+ the most original spirits of the century, who deserves to be
+ remembered among other good services as the inventor of the word
+ <i>bienfaisance</i>. Again, in the mass of the political articles we
+ feel the immense impulse that was given to sociological discussion by
+ the Esprit des Lois. Few questions are debated here, which Montesquieu
+ had not raised, and none are debated without reference to
+ Montesquieu's line of argument. The change of which we are conscious
+ in turning from the Esprit des Lois to the Encyclopædia is that
+ political ideas have been grasped as instruments. Philosophy has
+ become patriotism. The Encyclopædists advanced with grave solicitude
+ to the consideration of evils, to which the red-heeled parasites of
+ Versailles were insolently and incorrigibly blind.</p>
+
+ <p>The articles on Agriculture, for example, are admirable alike for
+ the fulness and precision with which they expose the actual state of
+ France; for the clearness with which they trace its deplorable
+ inadequateness back to the true sources; and for the strong interest
+ and sympathy in the subject, which they both exhibit and inspire. If
+ now and again the touch is too idyllic, it was still a prodigious gain
+ to let the country know in a definite way that of the fifty million
+ arpents of cultivable land in the realm, more than one quarter lay
+ either unbroken or abandoned. And it was a prodigious gain to arouse
+ the attention of the general public to the causes of the forced
+ deterioration of French agriculture, namely, the restrictions on trade
+ in grain, the arbitrariness of the imposts, and the flight of the
+ population to the large towns. Then the demonstration, corroborated in
+ the pages of the Encyclopædia by the two patriotic vaunts of
+ contemporary English writers, of the stimulus given to agriculture by
+ our system of free exports, contained one of the most useful lessons
+ that the French had to learn.</p>
+
+ <p>Again, there are some abuses which cannot be more effectively
+ attacked, than by a mere statement of the facts in the plainest and
+ least argumentative terms. The history of such an impost as the tax
+ upon salt (<i>Gabelle</i>), and a bold outline of the random and
+ incongruous fashions in which it was levied, were equivalent to a
+ formal indictment. It needed no rhetoric nor discussion to heighten
+ the harsh injustice of the rule that "persons who have changed
+ domicile are still taxed for a certain time in the seat of their
+ former abode, namely, farmers and labourers for one year, and all
+ other tax-payers for two years, provided the parish to which they have
+ removed is within the same district; and if otherwise, then farmers to
+ pay for two years, and other persons for three years" (<i>Taille</i>).
+ Thus a man under the given circumstances would have to pay double
+ taxes for three years as a penalty for changing his dwelling. We
+ already hear the murmur of the <i>cahiers</i> of five-and-twenty years
+ later in the account of the transports of joy with which the citizens
+ of Lisieux saw the <i>taille proportionelle</i> established (1718),
+ and how numerous other cities sent up prayers that the same blessing
+ might be conferred on them. "Reasons that it is not for us to divine,
+ caused the rejection of these demands; so hard is it to do a good act,
+ which everybody talks about, much more in order to seem to desire it,
+ than from any intention of really doing it.... To illustrate the
+ advantages of this plan, the impost of 1718 with all arrears for five
+ years was discharged in twelve months without needless cost or
+ dispute. By an extravagance more proper than any other to degrade
+ humanity, the common happiness made malcontents of all that class
+ whose prosperity depends on the misery of others,"—that is the
+ privileged class.<a name="FNanchor_161_161" id=
+ "FNanchor_161_161"></a><a href="#Footnote_161_161" class=
+ "fnanchor">[161]</a></p>
+
+ <p>It is no innate factiousness, as flighty critics of French affairs
+ sometimes imply, that has made civil equality the passion of modern
+ France. The root of this passion is an undying memory of the curse
+ that was inflicted on its citizens, morally and materially, by the
+ fiscal inequalities of the old <i>régime</i>. The article,
+ <i>Privilegé</i>, urges the desirableness of inquiring into the
+ grounds of the vast multitude of fiscal exemptions, and of abolishing
+ all that were no longer associated with the performance of real and
+ useful service. "A bourgeois," says the writer, anticipating a cry
+ that was so soon to ring through the land, "a bourgeois in comfortable
+ circumstances, and who could himself pay half of the <i>taille</i> of
+ a whole parish, if it were imposed in its due proportion,—on payment
+ of the amount of his taxes for one or for two years, and often for
+ less; without birth, education, or talents, buys a place in a local
+ salt office, or some useless charge at court, or in the household of
+ some prince.... This man proceeds to enjoy in the public eye all the
+ exemptions possessed by the nobility and the high magistracy.... From
+ such an abuse of privileges spring two very considerable evils: the
+ poorer part of the citizens are always burdened beyond their strength,
+ though they are the most useful to the State, since this class is
+ composed of those who cultivate the land, and procure a subsistence
+ for the upper classes; the other evil is that privileges disgust
+ persons of education and talent with the idea of entering the
+ magistracy or other professions demanding labour and application, and
+ lead them to prefer small posts and paltry offices." And so forth,
+ with a gravity and moderation, that were then common in political
+ discussion in France. It gradually disappeared in 1789, when it was
+ found that the privileged orders, even at that time, in their
+ <i>cahiers</i> steadily demanded the maintenance of every one of their
+ most odious and iniquitous rights.<a name="FNanchor_162_162" id=
+ "FNanchor_162_162"></a><a href="#Footnote_162_162" class=
+ "fnanchor">[162]</a></p>
+
+ <p>When it is said, then, that the Encyclopædists deliberately
+ prepared the way for a political revolution, let us remember that what
+ they really did was to shed the light of rational discussion on such
+ practical grievances as even the most fatuous conservative in France
+ does not now dream of bringing back.</p>
+
+ <p>Let us turn to two other of the most oppressive institutions that
+ then scourged France. First the <i>Corvée</i>, or feudal rule which
+ forced every unprivileged farmer and peasant in France to furnish so
+ many days' labour for the maintenance of the highways. Arthur Young
+ tells us, and the statement is confirmed by the Minutes of Turgot,
+ that this wasteful, cruel, and inefficient system was annually the
+ ruin of many hundreds of persons, and he mentions that no less than
+ three hundred farmers were reduced to beggary in filling up a single
+ vale in Lorraine.<a name="FNanchor_163_163" id=
+ "FNanchor_163_163"></a><a href="#Footnote_163_163" class=
+ "fnanchor">[163]</a> Under this all-important head, the Encyclopædia
+ has an article that does not merely add to the knowledge of its
+ readers by a history of the <i>corvées</i>, but proceeds to discuss,
+ as in a pamphlet or review article, the inconveniences of the
+ prevailing system, and presses schemes for avoiding them. Turgot had
+ not yet shown in practice the only right substitute. The article was
+ printed in 1754, and it was not until ten years later that this great
+ administrator, then become intendant of the Limousin, did away in his
+ district with compulsory personal service on the roads, and required
+ in its place a money payment assessed on the parishes.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_164_164" id="FNanchor_164_164"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_164_164" class="fnanchor">[164]</a> The writer of the
+ article in the Encyclopædia does not anticipate this obviously
+ rational plan, but he paints a striking picture of the thousand abuses
+ and miserable inefficiencies of the practice of <i>corvées</i>, and
+ his piece illustrates that vigorous discussion of social subjects
+ which the Encyclopædia stimulated. It is worth remarking that this
+ writer was a sub-engineer of roads and bridges in the generality of
+ Tours. The case is one example among others of the importance of the
+ Encyclopædia as a centre, to which active-minded men of all kinds
+ might bring the fruits of their thought and observation.</p>
+
+ <p>Next to the <i>corvées</i>, the monster grievance of the third
+ estate was the system of enrolments for the militia. The article,
+ <i>Milice</i>, is very short, but it goes to the root of the matter.
+ The only son of a cultivator of moderate means, forced to quit the
+ paternal roof at the moment when his labour might recompense his
+ straitened parents for the expense of having brought him up, is justly
+ described as an irreparable loss. The writer, after hinting that it
+ would be well if such an institution were wholly dispensed with, urges
+ that at least its object might be more effectively and more humanely
+ reached by allowing each parish to provide its due contingent of men
+ in its own way. This change was indeed already (1765) being carried
+ out by Turgot in the Limousin, and with excellent results. The writer
+ concludes with the highly civilised remark, that we ought to weigh
+ whether the good of the rural districts, the culture of the land, and
+ population, are not preferable objects to the glory of setting
+ enormous hosts of armed men on foot after the example of Xerxes. Alas,
+ it is one of the discouragements of the student of history, that he
+ often finds highly civilised remarks made one or two or twenty
+ centuries ago, which are just as useful and just as little heeded now
+ as they were when they were made.</p>
+
+ <p>The same reflection occurs to one in reading the article on
+ Foundations. As I have already said, this carefully written and
+ sagacious piece still remains the most masterly discussion we possess
+ of the advantages and disadvantages of endowments. Even now, and in
+ our own country, the most fertile and beneficent work to which a
+ statesman of energy and courage could devote himself, would be an
+ application of the wise principles which were established in the
+ Encyclopædia. Passing from <i>Fondation</i> to <i>Foire</i> in the
+ same volume, also from the pen of Turgot, we see an almost equally
+ striking example of the economic wisdom of the encyclopædic school.
+ The provincial fairs, with their privileges, exemptions, exclusions,
+ were a conspicuous case of the mischief done by that "mania for
+ regulating and guiding everything," which then infected commercial
+ administration, and interrupted the natural course of trade by
+ imbecile vexations of police. Another vicious example of the same
+ principle is exposed in the article on <i>Maîtrises</i>. This must
+ have convinced every reader capable of rising above "the holy laws of
+ prejudice," how bad faith, idleness, disorder, and all the other evils
+ of monopoly were fomented by a system of jealous trade-guilds,
+ carrying compulsory subdivision and restriction of all kinds of
+ skilled labour down to a degree that would have been laughable enough,
+ if it had only been less destructive.</p>
+
+ <p>One of the loudest cries in 1789 was for the destruction of game
+ and the great manorial chases or capitaineries. "By game," says Arthur
+ Young, "must be understood whole droves of wild boars, and herds of
+ deer not confined by any wall or pale, but wandering at pleasure over
+ the whole country to the destruction of crops, and to the peopling of
+ the galleys by the wretched peasants who presumed to kill them, in
+ order to save that food which was to support their helpless
+ children."<a name="FNanchor_165_165" id=
+ "FNanchor_165_165"></a><a href="#Footnote_165_165" class=
+ "fnanchor">[165]</a> In the same place he enumerates the outrageous
+ and incredible rules which ruined agriculture over hundreds of leagues
+ of country, in order that the seigneurs might have sport. In most
+ matters the seven volumes of the Encyclopædia which were printed
+ before 1757, are more reserved than the ten volumes which were
+ conducted by Diderot alone after the great schism of 1759. On the
+ subject of sport, however, the writer of the article <i>Chasse</i>
+ enumerates all the considerations which a patriotic minister could
+ desire to see impressed on public opinion. Some of the paragraphs
+ startle us by their directness and freedom of complaint, and even a
+ very cool reader would still be likely to feel some of the wrath that
+ was stirred in the breast of our shrewd and sober Arthur Young a
+ generation later (1787). "Go to the residence of these great nobles,"
+ he says, "wherever it may be, and you would probably find them in the
+ midst of a forest, very well peopled with deer, wild boar, and wolves.
+ Oh! if I were the legislator of France for a day, I would make such
+ great lords skip!"<a name="FNanchor_166_166" id=
+ "FNanchor_166_166"></a><a href="#Footnote_166_166" class=
+ "fnanchor">[166]</a></p>
+
+ <p>This brings us to what is perhaps the most striking of all the
+ guiding sentiments of the book. Virgil's Georgics have been described
+ as a glorification of labour. The Encyclopædia seems inspired by the
+ same motive, the same earnest enthusiasm for all the purposes,
+ interests, and details of productive industry. Diderot, as has been
+ justly said, himself the son of a cutler, might well bring handiwork
+ into honour; assuredly he had inherited from his good father's
+ workshop sympathy and regard for skill and labour.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_167_167" id="FNanchor_167_167"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_167_167" class="fnanchor">[167]</a> The illustrative plates
+ to which Diderot gave the most laborious attention for a period of
+ almost thirty years, are not only remarkable for their copiousness,
+ their clearness, their finish—and in all these respects they are truly
+ admirable—but they strike us even more by the semi-poetic feeling that
+ transforms the mere representation of a process into an animated scene
+ of human life, stirring the sympathy and touching the imagination of
+ the onlooker as by something dramatic. The bustle, the dexterity, the
+ alert force of the iron foundry, the glass furnace, the gunpowder
+ mill, the silk calendry are as skilfully reproduced as the more
+ tranquil toil of the dairywoman, the embroiderer, the confectioner,
+ the setter of types, the compounder of drugs, the chaser of metals.
+ The drawings recall that eager and personal interest in his work, that
+ nimble complacency, which is so charming a trait in the best French
+ craftsman. The animation of these great folios of plates is
+ prodigious. They affect one like looking down on the world of Paris
+ from the heights of Montmartre. To turn over volume after volume is
+ like watching a splendid panorama of all the busy life of the time.
+ Minute care is as striking in them as their comprehensiveness. The
+ smallest tool, the knot in a thread, the ply in a cord, the curve of
+ wrist or finger, each has special and proper delineation. The reader
+ smiles at a complete and elaborate set of tailor's patterns. He
+ shudders as he comes upon the knives, the probes, the bandages, the
+ posture, of the wretch about to undergo the most dangerous operation
+ in surgery. In all the chief departments of industry there are plates
+ good enough to serve for practical specifications and working
+ drawings. It has often been told how Diderot himself used to visit the
+ workshops, to watch the men at work, to put a thousand questions, to
+ sit down at the loom, to have the machine pulled to pieces and set
+ together again before his eyes, to slave like any apprentice, and to
+ do bad work, in order, as he says, to be able to instruct others how
+ to do good work. That was no movement of empty rhetoric which made him
+ cry out for the Encyclopædia to become a sanctuary in which human
+ knowledge might find shelter against time and revolutions. He actually
+ took the pains to make it a complete storehouse of the arts, so
+ perfect in detail that they could be at once reconstructed after a
+ deluge in which everything had perished save a single copy of the
+ Encyclopædia. Such details, said D'Alembert, will perhaps seem
+ extremely out of place to certain scholars, for whom a long
+ dissertation on the cookery or the hair-dressing of the ancients, or
+ on the site of a ruined hamlet, or on the baptismal name of some
+ obscure writer of the tenth century, would be vastly interesting and
+ precious. He suggests that details of economy, and of arts and trades,
+ have as good a right to a place as the scholastic philosophy, or some
+ system of rhetoric still in use, or the mysteries of heraldry. Yet
+ none even of these had been passed over.<a name="FNanchor_168_168" id=
+ "FNanchor_168_168"></a><a href="#Footnote_168_168" class=
+ "fnanchor">[168]</a></p>
+
+ <p>The importance given to physical science and the practical arts, in
+ the Encyclopædia, is the sign and exemplification of two elements of
+ the great modern transition. It marks both a social and an
+ intellectual revolution. We see in it, first, the distinct association
+ with pacific labour, of honour and a kind of glory, such as had
+ hitherto been reserved for knights and friars, for war and asceticism,
+ for fighting and praying.</p>
+
+ <p>It is the definite recognition of the basis of a new society. If
+ the nobles and the churchmen could only have understood, as clearly as
+ Diderot and D'Alembert understood, the irresistible forces that were
+ making against the maintenance of the worn-out system, all the worst
+ of the evils attending the great political changes of the last decade
+ of the century would have been avoided. That the nobles and churchmen
+ would not see this, was the fatality of the Revolution. We have a
+ glimpse of the profound transformation of social ideas which was at
+ work in the five or six lines of the article, <i>Journalier</i>.
+ "Journeyman—a workman who labours with his hands, and is paid
+ day-wages. This description of men forms the great part of a nation;
+ it is their lot which a good government ought to keep principally in
+ sight. If the journeyman is miserable, the nation is miserable." And
+ again: "The net profit of a society, if equally distributed, may be
+ preferable to a larger profit, if it be distributed unequally, and
+ have the effect of dividing the people into two classes, one gorged
+ with riches, the other perishing in misery" (<i>Homme</i>).</p>
+
+ <p>The second element in the modern transition is only the
+ intellectual side of the first. It is the substitution of interest in
+ things for interest in words, of positive knowledge for verbal
+ disputation. Few now dispute the services of the schoolmen to the
+ intellectual development of Europe. But conditions had fully ripened,
+ and it was time to complete the movement of Bacon and Descartes by
+ finally placing verbal analysis, verbal definition, verbal inferences,
+ in their right position. Form was no longer to take precedence of
+ matter. The Encyclopædists are never weary of contrasting their own
+ age of practical rationalism with "the pusillanimous ages of taste." A
+ great collection of books is described in one article
+ (<i>Bibliomanie</i>) as a collection of material for the history of
+ the blindness and infatuation of mankind. The gatherer of books is
+ compared to one who should place five or six gems under a pile of
+ common pebbles. If a man of sense buys a work in a dozen volumes, and
+ finds that only half a dozen pages are worth reading, he does well to
+ cut out the half dozen pages and fling the rest into the fire.
+ Finally, it would be no unbecoming device for every great library to
+ have inscribed over its portal, The Bedlam of the Human Mind. At this
+ point one might perhaps suggest to D'Alembert that study of the
+ pathology of the mind is no bad means of surprising the secrets of
+ humanity and life. For his hour, however, the need was not knowledge
+ of the thoughts, dreams, and mental methods of the past, but better
+ mastery of the aids and instruments of active life. In any case
+ Diderot was right when he expressed his preference for the essay over
+ the treatise: "an essay where the writer throws me one or two ideas of
+ genius, almost isolated, rather than a treatise where the precious
+ gems are stifled beneath a mass of iteration.... A man had only one
+ idea; the idea demanded no more than a phrase; this phrase, full of
+ marrow and meaning, would have been seized with relish; washed out in
+ a deluge of words, it wearies and disgusts."<a name="FNanchor_169_169"
+ id="FNanchor_169_169"></a><a href="#Footnote_169_169" class=
+ "fnanchor">[169]</a> Rousseau himself does not surpass Diderot or
+ D'Alembert in contempt for mere bookishness. We wholly misjudge the
+ Encyclopædia, if we treat it either as literature or philosophy.</p>
+
+ <p>The attitude of the Encyclopædia to religion is almost universally
+ misrepresented in the common accounts. We are always told that the aim
+ of its conductors was to preach dogmatic atheism. Such a statement
+ could not be made by any one who had read the theological articles,
+ whether the more or the less important among them. Whether Diderot had
+ himself advanced definitely to the dogma of atheism at this time or
+ not, it is certain that the Encyclopædia represents only the phase of
+ rationalistic scepticism. That the criticism was destructive of much
+ of the fabric of popular belief, and was designed to destroy it, is
+ undeniable, as it was inevitable. But when the excesses of '93 and
+ '94—and all the revolutionary excesses put together are but a drop
+ compared with the oceans of bloodshed with which Catholicism and
+ absolutism have made history crimson—when the crimes and confusion of
+ the end of the century are traced by historians to the materialism and
+ atheism of the Encyclopædia, we can only say that such an account is a
+ misrepresentation. The materialism and atheism are not there. The
+ religious attack was prompted and guided by the same social feeling
+ that inspired the economic articles. The priest was the enemy of
+ society, the patron of indolence, the hater of knowledge, the mutineer
+ against the civil laws, the unprofitable devourer of the national
+ substance, the persecutor. Sacerdotalism is the object of the
+ encyclopædic attack. To undermine this, it was necessary first to
+ establish the principle of toleration, because the priest claims to be
+ recognised as the exclusive possessor of saving doctrine. Second, it
+ was necessary to destroy the principle of miracle, because the priest
+ professes himself in his daily rites the consecrated instrument of
+ thaumaturgy. "Let a man," says Rosenkranz very truly, "turn over
+ hundreds of histories of church, of state, of literature, and in every
+ one of them he will read that the Encyclopædia spread abroad an
+ irreligious spirit. The accusation has only a relative truth, to the
+ extent that the Encyclopædia assailed the belief in miracles, and the
+ oppression of conscience supported by a priestly aristocracy."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_170_170" id="FNanchor_170_170"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_170_170" class="fnanchor">[170]</a></p>
+
+ <p>It must be admitted that no consistent and definite language is
+ adhered to from beginning to end. D'Alembert's prophecy that time
+ would disclose to people what the writers really thought, behind what
+ fear of the censorship compelled them to say, is only partially
+ fulfilled.</p>
+
+ <p>The idea of miracle is sapped not by direct arguments, but by the
+ indirect influences of science, and the exposition of the successes of
+ scientific method. It was here that the Encyclopædia exerted really
+ destructive power, and it did so in the only way in which power of
+ that kind can be exerted either wisely or effectually. The miracle of
+ a divine revelation, of grace, of the mass, began to wear a different
+ look in men's eyes, as they learned more of the physical processes of
+ the universe. We should describe the work of the Encyclopædia as being
+ to make its readers lose their interest, rather than their belief, in
+ mysteries. This is the normal process of theological dissolution. It
+ unfolded a vast number of scientific conceptions in all branches of
+ human activity, a surprising series of acquisitions, a vivid panorama
+ of victories won by the ingenuity and travail of man. A contemplation
+ of the wonders that man had wrought for himself, replaced meditation
+ on the wonders that were alleged to have been wrought by the gods. The
+ latter were not so much denied by the plain reader, as they were
+ gradually left out of sight and forgotten. Nobody now cares to
+ disprove Jupiter and Juno, Satyrs and Hamadryads.</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot constantly insists on the propriety, the importance, the
+ indispensableness of keeping the provinces of science and philosophy
+ apart from the province of theology. This separation is much sought in
+ our own day as a means of saving theology. Diderot designed it to save
+ philosophy. He felt that the distinct recognition of positive thought
+ as supreme within the widest limits then covered by it, would
+ ultimately lead to the banishment of theological thought to a region
+ of its own, too distant and too infertile for men to weary themselves
+ in pursuit of it. His conception was to supplant the old ways of
+ thinking and the old objects of intellectual interest by new ones. He
+ trusted to the intrinsic fitness and value of the new knowledge and
+ new views of human life, to displace the old. This marks him for a
+ constructive thinker. He replaced barren theological interests that
+ had outlived their time, by all those great groups of living and
+ fruitful interests which glow and sparkle in the volumes of the
+ Encyclopædia. Here was the effective damage that the Encyclopædia
+ inflicted on the church as the organ of a stationary superstition.
+ Some of the articles remind us on what a strange borderland France
+ stood in those days, between debasing credulity and wholesome light.
+ We are so sensible of the new air that breathes impalpably over the
+ book, that when the old theological fancies appear for form's sake,
+ and are solemnly marshalled in orthodox state, the contrast and the
+ incongruity are so marked that one is amused by what looks like a
+ subtle irony, mocking the censor under his very eyes. Who can help
+ smiling at the grave question, <i>Adam, le premier de tous les hommes,
+ a-t-il été philosophe?</i> Such disputes as whether it is proper to
+ baptize abortions, ceased to interest a public that had begun to
+ educate itself by discussions on the virtue of Inoculation.</p>
+
+ <p>Of the gross defects in the execution of the Encyclopædia nobody
+ was so sensible as Diderot himself. He drew up a truly formidable list
+ of the departments where the work was badly done.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_171_171" id="FNanchor_171_171"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_171_171" class="fnanchor">[171]</a> But when the blunders
+ and omissions in each subject were all counted, the value of the vast
+ grouping of the subjects was hardly diminished. The union of all these
+ secular acquisitions in a single colossal work invested them with
+ something imposing. Secular knowledge was made to present a massive
+ and sumptuous front. It was pictured before the curious eyes of that
+ generation as a great city of glittering palaces and stately mansions;
+ or else as an immense landscape, with mountains, plains, rocks,
+ waters, forests, animals, and a thousand objects, glorious and
+ beautiful in the sunlight. Theology became visibly a shrivelled thing.
+ Men grew to be conscious of the vastness of the universe. At the same
+ time and by the same process the Encyclopædia gave them a key to the
+ plan, a guiding thread in the immense labyrinth. The genealogical
+ tree, or classification of arts and sciences, which with a few
+ modifications was borrowed from Bacon and appeared at the end of the
+ Prospectus, is seen to be faulty and inadequate. It distributes the
+ various branches of knowledge with reference to faculties of the human
+ understanding, instead of grouping them according to their objective
+ relations to one another. This led to many awkward results, as when
+ the art of printing is placed by the side of orthography as a
+ subdivision of Logic, to which also is given the art of heraldry or
+ emblazonment. There is awkwardness too in dividing architecture into
+ three heads, and then placing civil architecture under national
+ jurisprudence, and naval architecture under social jurisprudence,
+ while under fine arts no kind of architecture has any place. But when
+ we have multiplied these objections to the uttermost, the effect of
+ the magnificence and vastness of the scheme remains exactly what it
+ was.</p>
+
+ <p>Even more important than the exposition of human knowledge was the
+ exposition of the degrees by which it had been slowly reared. The
+ Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopædia, of which by far the greater
+ and more valuable portion was written by D'Alembert, contains a fine
+ survey of the progress of science, thought, and letters since the
+ revival of learning. It is a generous canonisation of the great heroes
+ of secular knowledge. It is rapid, but the contributions of Bacon,
+ Descartes, Newton, Locke, Leibnitz are thrown into a series that
+ penetrates the reader's mind with the idea of ordered growth and
+ measured progress. This excited a vivid hopefulness of interest, which
+ insensibly but most effectually pressed the sterile propositions of
+ dogmatic theology into a dim and squalid background. Nor was this all.
+ The Preliminary Discourse and the host of articles marshalled behind
+ it, showed that the triumphs of knowledge and true opinion had all
+ been gained on two conditions. The first of these conditions was a
+ firm disregard of authority; the second was an abstention from the
+ premature concoction of system. The reign of ignorance and prejudice
+ was made inveterate by deference to tradition: the reign of truth was
+ hindered by the artificial boundary-marks set mischievously deep by
+ the authors of systems. As the whole spirit of theology is both
+ essentially authoritative and essentially systematic, this
+ disparagement was full of tolerably direct significance. It told in
+ another way. The Sorbonne, the universities, the doctors, had
+ identified orthodoxy with Cartesianism. "It is hard to believe," says
+ D'Alembert in 1750, "that it is only within the last thirty years that
+ people have even begun to renounce Cartesianism." He might have added
+ that one of the most powerful of his contemporaries, Montesquieu
+ himself, remained a rigid Cartesian to the end of his days. "Our
+ nation," he says, "singularly eager as it is for novelties in all
+ matters of taste, is in matters of science extremely attached to old
+ opinions." This remark remains true of France to the present hour, and
+ it would be an interesting digression, did time allow, to consider its
+ significance. France can at all events count one master innovator, the
+ founder of Cartesianism himself. D'Alembert points out that the
+ disciples violate the first maxims of their chief. He describes the
+ hypothesis of vortices and the doctrine of innate ideas as no longer
+ tenable, and even as ridiculous; but do not let us forget, he says
+ with a fine movement of candour, that it was Descartes who opened the
+ way; he who set an example to men of intelligence, of shaking off the
+ yoke of scholasticism, of opinion, of authority—in a word, of
+ prejudices and barbarism. Those who remain faithful to his
+ hypothetical system, while they abandon his method, may be the last of
+ his partisans, but they would assuredly never have been the first of
+ his disciples.</p>
+
+ <p>By system the Encyclopædists meant more or less coherent bodies of
+ frivolous conjecture. The true merit of the philosopher or the
+ physicist is described as being to have the spirit of system, yet
+ never to construct a system. The notion expressed in this sentence
+ promises a union of the advantages of an organic synthesis, with the
+ advantages of an open mind and unfettered inquiry. It would be
+ ridiculous to think, says D'Alembert, that there is nothing more to
+ discover in anatomy, because anatomists devote themselves to
+ researches that may seem to be of no use, and yet often prove to be
+ full of use in their consequences. Nor would it be less absurd to lay
+ a ban on erudition, on the pretext that our learned men often give
+ themselves up to matters of trivial import.</p>
+
+ <p>We are constantly struck in the Encyclopædia by a genuine desire to
+ reach the best opinion by the only right way, the way of abundant,
+ many-sided, and liberal discussion. The article, for instance, on
+ <i>Fermes Générales</i> contains an examination of the question
+ whether it is more expedient that the taxes of a nation should be
+ gathered by farmers of the revenue, or directly by the agents of the
+ government acting on its behalf and under its supervision. Montesquieu
+ had argued strongly in favour of a <i>Régie</i>, the second of these
+ methods. The writer of the article sets out the nine considerations by
+ which Montesquieu had endeavoured to establish his position, and then
+ he offers on each of them the strongest observations that occur to him
+ in support of the opposite conclusion. At the conclusion of the
+ article, the editors of the Encyclopædia append the following note:
+ "Our professed impartiality and our desire to promote the discussion
+ and clearing up of an important question, have induced us to insert
+ this article. As the Encyclopædia has for its principal aim the public
+ advantage and instruction, we will insert in the article,
+ <i>Régie</i>, without taking any side, all such reasons for and
+ against, as people may he willing to submit to us, provided they are
+ stated with due sense and moderation." Alas, when we turn to the
+ article on <i>Régie</i>, the promise is unfulfilled, and a dozen
+ meagre lines disappoint the seeker. But eight years of storm had
+ passed, and many a beneficent intention had been wrecked. The
+ announcement at least shows us the aim and spirit of the original
+ scheme.</p>
+
+ <p>Of the line of argument taken in the Encyclopædia as to Toleration
+ we need say nothing. The Encyclopædists were the most ardent
+ propagators of the modern principles of tolerance. No one has to be
+ reminded that this was something more than an abstract discussion
+ among the doctors of social philosophy, in a country where youths were
+ broken on the wheel for levity in face of an ecclesiastical
+ procession, where nearly every considerable man of the century had
+ been either banished or imprisoned for daring to use his mind, and
+ which had been half ruined by the great proscription of Protestants
+ more than once renewed. The article <i>Tolérance</i> was greatly
+ admired in its day, and it is an eloquent and earnest reproduction of
+ the pleas of Locke. One rather curious feature in it is the
+ reproduction of the passage from the Social Contract, in which
+ Rousseau explains the right of the magistrate to banish any citizen
+ who has not got religion enough to make him do his duties, and who
+ will not make a profession of civil faith. The writer of the article
+ interprets this as implying that "atheists in particular, who remove
+ from the powerful the only rein, and from the weak their only hope,"
+ have no right to claim toleration. This is an unexpected stroke in a
+ work that is vulgarly supposed to be a violent manifesto on behalf of
+ atheism.<a name="FNanchor_172_172" id="FNanchor_172_172"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_172_172" class="fnanchor">[172]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Diderot himself in an earlier article (<i>Intolérance</i>) had
+ treated the subject with more trenchant energy. He does not argue his
+ points systematically, but launches a series of maxims, as with set
+ teeth, clenched hands, and a brow like a thundercloud. He hails the
+ oppressors of his life, the priests and the parliaments, with a
+ pungency that is exhilarating, and winds up with a description of the
+ intolerant as one who forgets that a man is his fellow, and for
+ holding a different opinion, treats him like a ravening brute; as one
+ who sacrifices the spirit and precepts of his religion to his pride;
+ as the rash fool who thinks that the arch can only be upheld by his
+ hands; as a man who is generally without religion, and to whom it
+ comes easier to have zeal than morals. Every page of the Encyclopædia
+ was, in fact, a plea for toleration. This embittered the hostility of
+ the churchmen to the work more than its attack upon dogma. For most
+ ecclesiastics valued power more dearly than truth. And in power they
+ valued most dearly the atrocious right of silencing, by foul means or
+ fair, all opinions that were not official.</p>
+
+ <p>III.</p>
+
+ <p>Having thus described the general character and purport of the
+ Encyclopædia, we have still to look at a special portion of it from a
+ more particular point of view. We have already shown how multifarious
+ were Diderot's labours as editor. It remains to give a short account
+ of his labours as a contributor. Everything was on the same vast
+ scale. His industry in writing would have been in itself most
+ astonishing, even if it had not been accompanied by the more
+ depressing fatigue of revising what others had written. Diderot's
+ articles fill more than four of the large volumes of his collected
+ works.</p>
+
+ <p>The confusion is immense. The spirit is sometimes historical,
+ sometimes controversial; now critical, now dogmatic. In one place
+ Diderot speaks in his own proper person, in another as the neutral
+ scribe writing to the dictation of an unseen authority. There is no
+ rigorous measure and ordered proportion. We constantly pass from a
+ serious treatise to a sally, from an elaborate history to a caprice.
+ There are not a few pages where we know that Diderot is saying what he
+ does not think. Some of the articles seem only to have found a place
+ because Diderot happened to have taken an interest in their subjects
+ at the moment. After reading Voltaire's concise account of
+ Imagination, we are amazed to find Diderot devoting a larger space
+ than Voltaire had needed for the subject at large, to so subordinate
+ and remote a branch of the matter as the Power of the Imagination in
+ Pregnant Women upon the Unborn Young. The article on Theosophs would
+ hardly have been so disproportionately long as it is, merely for the
+ sake of Paracelsus and Van Helmont and Poiret and the Rosicrucians,
+ unless Diderot happened to be curiously and half-sympathetically
+ brooding over the mixture of inspiration and madness, of charlatanry
+ and generous aim, of which these semi-mystic, semi-scientific
+ characters were composed.<a name="FNanchor_173_173" id=
+ "FNanchor_173_173"></a><a href="#Footnote_173_173" class=
+ "fnanchor">[173]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Many of Diderot's articles, again, have no rightful place in an
+ Encyclopædia. <i>Genius</i>, for instance, is dealt with in what is
+ neither more nor less than a literary essay, vigorous, suggestive,
+ diffuse; and containing, by the way, the curious assertion that,
+ although there are few errors in Locke and too few truths in
+ Shaftesbury, yet Locke is only an acute and comprehensive
+ intelligence, while Shaftesbury is a genius of the first order.</p>
+
+ <p>Under the word <i>Laborious</i>, we have only a dozen lines of
+ angry reproach against the despotism that makes men idle by making
+ property uncertain. Under such words as <i>Frivolous</i>,
+ <i>Gallantry</i>, <i>Perfection</i>, <i>Importance</i>,
+ <i>Politeness</i>, <i>Melancholy</i>, <i>Glorieux</i>, the reader is
+ amused and edified by miniature essays on manners and character,
+ seldom ending without some pithy sentence and pointed moral. Sometimes
+ (e.g. <i>Grandeur</i>) we have a charming piece after the manner of La
+ Bruyère. Under the verb <i>Naítre</i>, which is placed in the
+ department of grammar, we find a passage so far removed from grammar
+ as the following:—</p>
+
+ <p>"The terms of life and death have nothing absolute; they only
+ designate the successive states of one and the same being; for him who
+ has been strongly nourished in this philosophy, the urn that contains
+ the ashes of a father, a mother, a husband, a mistress, is truly a
+ touching object. There still remains in it life and warmth; these
+ ashes may perhaps even yet feel our tears and give them response; who
+ knows if the movement that our tears stir, as they water those ashes,
+ is wholly without sensibility?"</p>
+
+ <p>This little burst of grotesque sentimentalism is one of the pieces
+ that justify the description of Diderot as the most German of all the
+ French.<a name="FNanchor_174_174" id="FNanchor_174_174"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_174_174" class="fnanchor">[174]</a> Equally characteristic
+ and more sensible is the writer's outbreak against Formalists. "The
+ formalist knows exactly the proper interval between receiving and
+ returning a visit; he expects you on the exact day at the exact time;
+ if you fail, he thinks himself neglected and takes offence. A single
+ man of this stamp is enough to chill and embarrass a whole company.
+ There is nothing so repugnant to simple and upright souls as
+ formalities; as such people have within themselves the consciousness
+ of the good-will they bear to everybody, they neither plague
+ themselves to be constantly displaying a sentiment that is habitual,
+ nor to be constantly on the watch for it in others." This is analogous
+ to his contempt for the pedants who object to the use of a hybrid
+ word: "If it happens that a composite of a Greek word and a Latin word
+ renders the idea as well, and is easier to pronounce or pleasanter to
+ the ear than a compound of two Greek words and two Latin words, why
+ prefer the latter?" (<i>Hibrides</i>). Some articles are simply
+ diatribes against the enemy. <i>Pardon</i>, for instance: "It needs
+ much attention, much modesty, much skill to wring from others pardon
+ for our superiority. The men who have executed a foolish work, have
+ never been able to pardon us for projecting a better. We could have
+ got from them pardon for a crime, but never for a good action." And so
+ forth, with much magnanimous acrimony. <i>Prostitution</i> is only
+ introduced for the pleasure of applying the unsavoury word to certain
+ critics "of whom we have so many in these days, and of whom we say
+ that they prostitute their pens to money, to favour, to lying, and to
+ all the vices most unworthy of an honourable man."</p>
+
+ <p>We are constantly being puzzled and diverted by Diderot's ingenuity
+ in wandering away from the topic nominally in hand, to insinuate some
+ of those doctrines of tolerance, of suspended judgment, or of liberty,
+ which lay so much nearer to his heart than any point of mere
+ erudition. There is a little article on Aius-Locutius, the Announcing
+ Speaker, one of the minor Roman gods. Diderot begins by a few lines
+ describing the rise of the deity into repute. He then quotes Cicero's
+ pleasantry on the friendly divinity, that when nobody in the world had
+ ever heard of him, he delivered a salutary oracle, but after people
+ had built him a fine temple, then the god of speech fell dumb. This
+ suggests to Diderot to wonder with edifying innocence how so religious
+ a people as the Romans endured these irreverent jests in their
+ philosophers. By an easy step we pass to the conditions on which
+ modern philosophers should be allowed by authority to publish their
+ speculations. Diderot throws out the curious hint that it would be
+ best to forbid any writing against government and religion in the
+ vulgar tongue, and to allow those who write in a learned tongue to
+ publish what they please. And so we bid farewell to Aius-Locutius. In
+ passing, we ask ourselves whether Diderot's suggestion is not
+ available in the discussion of certain questions, where freedom of
+ speech in the vernacular tongue is scarcely compatible with the
+ <i>reverentia quæ debetur pueris</i>?</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot is never prevented by any mistaken sense of the dignity of
+ his enterprise from interspersing his disquisitions on science and
+ philosophy with such practical thoughts on the common matters of daily
+ life as come into his ingenious head. He suggests, for instance, by
+ way of preventing the frauds of cab-drivers on their masters and on
+ the public, that all payments of fares should be made to appointed
+ officers at the various cab-stations, and that no driver should take
+ up a fare except at one of these stations.<a name="FNanchor_175_175"
+ id="FNanchor_175_175"></a><a href="#Footnote_175_175" class=
+ "fnanchor">[175]</a> In writing about lackeys, after a word on their
+ insolence and on the wretched case in which most of them end their
+ days, he points out that the multitude of them is causing the
+ depopulation of the fields. They are countrymen who have thronged to
+ Paris to avoid military service. Peasants turned lackeys to escape the
+ conscription, just as in our own days they turn priests. Then, says
+ Diderot, this evil ought to be checked by a tax upon liveries; but
+ such a tax is far too sensible ever to be imposed.</p>
+
+ <p>Yet, notwithstanding the practical and fervid temper of his
+ understanding, Diderot is not above literary trifling when the humour
+ seizes him. If he can write an exhaustive article on Encyclopædia, or
+ Spinosa, or Academies, or Weaving, he can also stoop to Anagrams, and
+ can tell us that the letters of Frère Jacques Clément, the assassin of
+ Henry III., make up the sinister words, <i>C'est l'enfer qui m'a
+ créé</i>. He can write a couple of amusing pages on Onomatomancy, or
+ divination of a man's fortune from his name; and can record with
+ neutral gravity how frequently great empires have been destroyed under
+ princes bearing the same name as their first founders; how, again,
+ certain names are unlucky for princes, as Cains among the Romans, John
+ in France, England, and Scotland, and Henry in France.</p>
+
+ <p>We have now and then an anecdote that is worth reading and worth
+ preserving. Thus, under Machiavellist: "I have heard that a
+ philosopher, being asked by a great prince about a refutation of
+ Machiavellism, which the latter had just published, replied, 'Sire, I
+ fancy that the first lesson that Machiavelli would have given to his
+ disciple would have been to refute his work.'" Whether Voltaire ever
+ did say this to the great Frederick, is very questionable, but it
+ would not have been ill said. After the reader has been taken through
+ a short course of Arabian philosophy, he is enlivened by a selection
+ of poetic sayings about human life from the Rose-garden of Sadi, and
+ the whole article winds up with an eastern fable, of no particular
+ relevancy, of three men finding a treasure, and of one of them
+ poisoning the food for which the other two had sent him; on his return
+ they suddenly fell on him and slew him, and then ate the poisoned
+ food, and so the treasure fell to none of them.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_176_176" id="FNanchor_176_176"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_176_176" class="fnanchor">[176]</a></p>
+
+ <p>We have spoken in the previous section of the contempt expressed by
+ D'Alembert for mere literary antiquarianism—a very different thing,
+ let us remember, from scientific inquiry into the origin and
+ classification of institutions and social organs. Diderot's article on
+ the Germans is an excellent illustration of this wholesome
+ predominance of the scientific spirit over the superficialities of
+ barren erudition. The word "Allemand," says Diderot, "has a great many
+ etymologies, but they are so forced, that it is almost as well to know
+ none of them, as to know them all. As for the origin of this famous
+ stock, all that has been said on that matter, between Tacitus and
+ Clovis, is simply a tissue of guesses without foundation." Of course
+ in this some persons will see a shameful levity; others will regard it
+ as showing very good sense, and a right estimate of what is knowable
+ and worth knowing, and what is neither one nor the other. In the
+ article on Celibacy we notice the same temper. A few sentences are
+ enough for the antiquarianism of the subject, what the Egyptians,
+ Greeks, and Romans thought and ordained about celibacy. The substance
+ of the article is a reproduction of the Abbé Saint Pierre's discussion
+ of the advantages that would be gained for France, with her declining
+ population, if her forty thousand curés were allowed to marry, and to
+ bring into the world eighty thousand children. We may believe that
+ Diderot smiled as he transcribed the Abbé's cunning suggestion that a
+ dispensing power to relieve from the obligation of celibacy should be
+ recognised in the Pope, and that the Roman court should receive a sum
+ of money for every dispensation so granted.</p>
+
+ <p>Although, however, Diderot despised mere bookishness, his article
+ on Libraries is one of the longest and most painstaking, furnishing a
+ tolerably complete list of the most famous collections, from the
+ beginning of books down to the latest additions to the King's Library
+ in the Rue Vivienne. In the course of this article he quotes with
+ seeming approval the quaint words in which old Richard of Bury, the
+ author of the <i>Philobiblon</i> (1340), praised books as the best of
+ masters, much as the immortal defender of the poet Archias had praised
+ them: "Hi sunt magistri qui nos instruunt sine virgis et ferulis, sine
+ cholera, sine pecuniâ; si accedis non dormiunt; si inquiris non se
+ abscondunt; non obmurmurant si oberres; cachinnos nesciunt si
+ ignores."</p>
+
+ <p>In literature proper, as in philosophy, Diderot loses no
+ opportunity of insisting on the need of being content with suspended
+ judgment. For instance, he blames historians of opinion for the
+ readiness with which they attribute notions found in one or two rabbis
+ to the whole of the Jews, or because two or three Fathers say
+ something, boldly set this down as the sentiments of a whole century,
+ although perhaps we have nothing else save these two or three Fathers
+ left of the century, and although we do not know whether their
+ writings were applauded, or were even widely known. "It were to be
+ wished that people should speak less affirmatively, especially on
+ particular points and remote consequences, and that they should only
+ attribute them directly to those in whose writings they are actually
+ to be found. I confess that the history of the sentiments of antiquity
+ would not seem so complete, and that it would be necessary to speak in
+ terms of doubt much more often than is common; but by acting otherwise
+ we expose ourselves to the danger of taking false and uncertain
+ conjectures for ascertained and unquestionable truths. The ordinary
+ man of letters does not readily put up with suspensive expressions,
+ any more than common people do so." All this is an odd digression to
+ be found under the head of Hylopathianism, but it must always remain
+ wholesome doctrine.</p>
+
+ <p>We cannot wonder at Diderot's admiration for Montaigne and for
+ Bayle, who, with Hume, would make the great trinity of scepticism.
+ "The work of Montaigne," said Diderot, "is the touchstone of a good
+ intelligence; you may be sure that any one whom the reading of
+ Montaigne displeases has some vice either of heart or understanding.
+ As for Bayle, he has had few equals in the art of reasoning, and
+ perhaps no superior; and though he piles doubt upon doubt, he always
+ proceeds with order; an article of his is a living polypus, which
+ divides itself into a number of polypuses, all living, engendered one
+ from the other."<a name="FNanchor_177_177" id=
+ "FNanchor_177_177"></a><a href="#Footnote_177_177" class=
+ "fnanchor">[177]</a> Yet Diderot had a feeling of the necessity of
+ advancing beyond the attitude of Bayle and Montaigne. Intellectual
+ suspense and doubt was made difficult to him by his vehement and
+ positive demand for emotional certainties.</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot is always ready to fling away his proper subject in a burst
+ of moralising. The article on <i>Man</i>, as a branch of natural
+ history, contains a correct if a rather superficial account of that
+ curious animal; at length the writer comes to a table showing the
+ probable duration of life at certain ages. "You will observe," he
+ says, "1st, that the age of seven is that at which you may hope a
+ longer life; 2d, that at twelve or thirteen you have lived a quarter
+ of your life; at twenty-eight or twenty-nine you have lived half; at
+ fifty more than three-quarters." And then he suddenly winds up the
+ whole performance by the exclamation: "O ye who have laboured up to
+ fifty, who are in the enjoyment of comfort, and who still have left to
+ you health and strength, what then are you waiting for before you take
+ rest? How long will you go on saying <i>To-morrow, to-morrow?</i>"</p>
+
+ <p>There are many casual brilliancies in the way of analogy and
+ parallel, many aptnesses of thought and phrase. The Stoics are called
+ the Jansenists of Paganism. "For a single blade of grass to grow, it
+ is necessary that the whole of nature should co-operate." "A man comes
+ to Pyrrhonism by one of two opposite ways; either because he does not
+ know enough, or because he knows too much; the latter is not the most
+ common way." And so forth.</p>
+
+ <p>If we turn to the group of articles dealing with theology, it is
+ difficult for us to know exactly where we are. Sometimes Diderot
+ writes of popular superstitions with the gravity proper to a
+ dictionary of mythology. Sometimes he sews on to the sober gray of his
+ scepticism a purple patch of theistic declamation.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_178_178" id="FNanchor_178_178"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_178_178" class="fnanchor">[178]</a> The article on Jesus
+ Christ is obviously a mere piece of common form, and more than one
+ passage in his article on <i>Christianisme</i> is undoubtedly
+ insincere. When we come to his more careful article,
+ <i>Providence</i>, we find it impossible to extract from it a body of
+ coherent propositions of which we could confidently say that they
+ represented his own creed, or the creed that he desired his readers to
+ bear away in their minds.</p>
+
+ <p>It is hardly worth while to measure the more or the less of his
+ adherence to Christianity, or even to Deism, as inferred from the
+ Encyclopædia. We need only turn to his private letters to find that he
+ is in no degree nor kind an adherent, but the most hardy,
+ contemptuous, and thoroughgoing of opponents. At the risk of shocking
+ devout persons, I am bound to reproduce a passage from one of his
+ letters, in which there can be no doubt that we have Diderot's true
+ mind, as distinguished from what it was convenient to print. "The
+ Christian religion," he says, "is to my mind the most absurd and
+ atrocious in its dogmas; the most unintelligible, the most
+ metaphysical, the most intertwisted and obscure, and consequently the
+ most subject to divisions, sects, schisms, heresies; the most
+ mischievous for the public tranquillity, the most dangerous to
+ sovereigns by its hierarchic order, its persecutions, its discipline;
+ the most flat, the most dreary, the most Gothic, and the most gloomy
+ in its ceremonies; the most puerile and unsociable in its morality,
+ considered not in what is common to it with universal morality, but in
+ what is peculiarly its own, and constitutes it evangelical,
+ apostolical, and Christian morality, which is the most intolerant of
+ all. Lutheranism, freed from some absurdities, is preferable to
+ Catholicism; Protestantism to Lutheranism, Socinianism to
+ Protestantism, Deism, with temples and ceremonies, to Socinianism.
+ Since it is necessary that man, being superstitious by nature, should
+ have a fetish, the simplest and most harmless will be the best
+ fetish."<a name="FNanchor_179_179" id="FNanchor_179_179"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_179_179" class="fnanchor">[179]</a> We need not discuss nor
+ extend the quotation; enough has been said to relieve us from the duty
+ of analysing or criticising articles in which Christianity is treated
+ with all the formal respect that the secular authority insisted
+ upon.</p>
+
+ <p>This formal respect is not incompatible with many veiled and secret
+ sarcasms, which were as well understood as they were sharply enjoyed
+ by those who read between the lines. It is not surprising that these
+ sarcasms were constantly unjust and shallow. Even those of us who
+ repudiate theology and all its works for ourselves, may feel a shock
+ at the coarseness and impurity of innuendo which now and then
+ disfigures Diderot's treatment of theological as of some other
+ subjects. For this the attitude of the Church itself was much to
+ blame; coarse, virulent, unspiritual as it was in France in those
+ days. Voltaire, Diderot, Holbach, would have written in a very
+ different spirit, even while maintaining and publishing the same
+ attacks on theological opinion, if the Church of France had possessed
+ such a school of teachers as the Church of England found in the
+ Latitudinarians in the seventeenth century; or such as she finds now
+ in the nineteenth century in those who have imported, partly from the
+ poetry of Wordsworth, partly from the historic references of the
+ Oxford Tracts, an equity, a breadth, an elevation, a pensive grace,
+ that effectually forbid the use of those more brutal weapons of
+ controversy which were the only weapons possible in France a century
+ ago.</p>
+
+ <p>We have already said so much of the great and important group of
+ articles on arts and trades, that it is unnecessary to add anything
+ further as to Diderot's particular share in them. He visited all the
+ workshops in Paris; he sent for information and specifications to the
+ most important seats of manufacture in the kingdom; he sometimes
+ summoned workmen from the provinces to describe to him the paper works
+ of Montargis, and the silk works and velvet works of Lyons.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_180_180" id="FNanchor_180_180"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_180_180" class="fnanchor">[180]</a> Much of Diderot's work,
+ even on great practical subjects, was, no doubt, the reproduction of
+ mere book-knowledge acquired at second-hand. Take, for instance,
+ Agriculture, which was undoubtedly the most important of all subjects
+ for France at that date, as indeed at every other date. There are a
+ dozen pages of practical precepts, for which Diderot was probably
+ indebted to one of the farmers at Grandval. After this, he fills up
+ the article with about twenty pages in which he gives an account of
+ the new system of husbandry, which our English Jethro Tull described
+ to an unbelieving public between 1731 and 1751. Tull's volume was
+ translated into French by Duhamel, with notes and the record of
+ experiments of his own; from this volume Diderot drew the pith of his
+ article. Diderot's only merit in the matter—and it is hardly an
+ inconsiderable one in a world of routine—is that he should have been
+ at the pains to seek the newest lights, and above all that he should
+ have urged the value of fresh experiments in agriculture. Tull was not
+ the safest authority in the world, but it is to be remembered that the
+ shrewd-witted Cobbett thought his ideas on husbandry worth
+ reproducing, seventy years after Diderot had thought them worth
+ compiling into an article.</p>
+
+ <p>It was not merely in the details of the practical arts that Diderot
+ wrote from material acquired at second-hand. The article on the
+ Zend-Avesta is taken from the Annual Register for 1762. The long
+ series of articles on the history of philosophy is in effect a
+ reproduction of what he found in Bayle, in Deslandes, and in Brucker.
+ There are one or two considerable exceptions. Perhaps the most
+ important is under the heading of Spinosa, to which we shall return
+ presently. The article on <i>Hobbisme</i> contains an analysis,
+ evidently made by the writer's own hand, of the bulk of Hobbes's
+ propositions; it is scarcely, however, illuminated by a word of
+ criticism. If we turn to the article on <i>Société</i>, it is true, we
+ find Hobbes's view of the relations between the civil and temporal
+ powers tolerably effectively combated, but even here Diderot hardly
+ does more than arm himself with the weapons of Locke.</p>
+
+ <p>Of course, he honestly refers his readers to these sources of wider
+ information.<a name="FNanchor_181_181" id=
+ "FNanchor_181_181"></a><a href="#Footnote_181_181" class=
+ "fnanchor">[181]</a> All that we can say of the articles on the
+ history of philosophy is that the series is very complete; that
+ Diderot used his matter with intelligence and the spirit of criticism,
+ and that he often throws in luminous remarks and far-reaching
+ suggestions of his own. This was all that the purpose of his book
+ required. To imitate the laborious literary search of Bayle or of
+ Brucker, and to attempt to compile an independent history of
+ philosophy, would have been to sacrifice the Encyclopædia as a whole,
+ to the superfluous perfection of a minor part. There is only one
+ imperative condition in such a case, namely, that the writer should
+ pass the accepted material through his own mind before reproducing it.
+ With this condition it was impossible for a man of Diderot's
+ indefatigable energy of spirit, not as a rule to comply.</p>
+
+ <p>But this rule too had exceptions. There were cases in which he
+ reproduced, as any mere bookmaker might have done, the thought of his
+ authority, without an attempt to make it his own. Of the confusion and
+ inequalities in which Diderot was landed by this method of mingling
+ the thoughts of other people with his own, there is a curious example
+ in the two articles on Philosopher and Philosophy. In the first we
+ have an essentially social and practical description of what the
+ philosopher should be; in the second we have a definition of
+ philosophy, which takes us into the regions most remote from what is
+ social and practical. We soar to the airiest heights of verbal
+ analysis and pure formalism. Nothing can be better, so far as it goes,
+ than the picture of the philosopher. Diderot begins by contrasting him
+ with the crowd of people, and clever people, who insist on passing
+ judgment all day long. "They ignore the scope and limits of the human
+ mind; they think it capable of knowing everything; hence they think it
+ a disgrace not to pronounce judgment, and imagine that intelligence
+ consists in that and nothing else. The philosopher believes that it
+ consists in judging rightly. He is better pleased with himself when he
+ has suspended his faculty of coming to a conclusion, than if he had
+ come to a conclusion without the proper grounds. He prefers to
+ brilliancy the pains of rightly distinguishing his ideas, of finding
+ their true extent and exact connection. He is never so attached to a
+ system as not to feel all the force of the objections to it. Most men
+ are so strongly given over to their opinions that they do not take any
+ trouble to make out those of others. The philosopher, on the other
+ hand, understands what he rejects, with the same breadth and the same
+ accuracy as he understands what he adopts." Then Diderot turns
+ characteristically from the intellectual to the social side. "Our
+ philosopher does not count himself an exile in the world; he does not
+ suppose himself in an enemy's country; he would fain find pleasure
+ with others, and to find it he must give it; he is a worthy man who
+ wishes to please and to make himself useful. The ordinary philosophers
+ who meditate too much, or rather who meditate to wrong purpose, are as
+ surly and arrogant to all the world as great people are to those whom
+ they do not think their equals; they flee men, and men avoid them. But
+ our philosopher who knows how to divide himself between retreat and
+ the commerce of men is full of humanity. <i>Civil society is, so to
+ say, a divinity for him on the earth</i>; he honours it by his
+ probity, by an exact attention to his duties, and by a sincere desire
+ not to be a useless or an embarrassing member of it. The sage has the
+ leaven of order and rule; he is full of the ideas connected with the
+ good of civil society. What experience shows us every day is that the
+ more reason and light people have, the better fitted they are and the
+ more to be relied on for the common intercourse of life."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_182_182" id="FNanchor_182_182"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_182_182" class="fnanchor">[182]</a></p>
+
+ <p>The transition is startling from this conception of</p>
+
+ <p>Philosopher as a very high kind of man of the world, to the
+ definition of Philosophy as "the science of possibles quâ possibles."
+ Diderot's own reflection comes back to us, <i>Combien cette maudite
+ métaphysique fait des fous!</i><a name="FNanchor_183_183" id=
+ "FNanchor_183_183"></a><a href="#Footnote_183_183" class=
+ "fnanchor">[183]</a> We are abruptly plunged from a Baconian into a
+ Leibnitzian atmosphere. We should naturally have expected some such
+ account of Philosophy as that it begins with a limitation of the
+ questions to which men can hope for an answer, and ends in an ordered
+ arrangement of the principles of knowledge, with ultimate reference to
+ the conditions of morals and the structure of civil societies. We
+ should naturally have expected to find, what indeed we do find, that
+ the characteristic of the philosopher is to "admit nothing without
+ proof, never to acquiesce in illusory notions; to draw rigorously the
+ dividing lines of the certain, the probable, the doubtful; above all
+ things never to pay himself with mere words." But then these wholesome
+ prescriptions come in an article whose definitions and distribution of
+ philosophy are simply a reproduction from Christian Wolff, and the
+ methods and dialect of Wolff are as essentially alien from the
+ positive spirit of the Encyclopædia as they were from the mystic
+ spirit of Jacobi.</p>
+
+ <p>Wolff's place in the philosophical succession of German speculation
+ (1679-1754) is between Leibnitz and Kant, and until Kant came his
+ system was dominant in the country of metaphysics.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_184_184" id="FNanchor_184_184"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_184_184" class="fnanchor">[184]</a> It is from</p>
+
+ <p>Wolff that Diderot borrows and throws unassimilated into the pages
+ of the Encyclopædia propositions so fundamentally incongruous as this,
+ that "among all possibles there must of necessity be a Being
+ subsisting by himself; otherwise there would be possible things, of
+ the possibility of which no account could be given, an assertion that
+ could never be made." It is a curious thing, and it illustrates again
+ the strangely miscellaneous quality of Diderot's compilation, that the
+ very article which begins by this incorporation of the author of a
+ philosophical system expounded in a score of quartos, ends by a
+ vigorous denunciation of the introduction of the systematic spirit
+ into philosophy.</p>
+
+ <p>I shall venture to quote a hardy passage from another article
+ (<i>Pyrrhonienne</i>) which some will think a measure of Diderot's
+ philosophical incompetency, and others will think a measure of his
+ good sense. "We will conclude," he says, "for our part that as all in
+ nature is bound together, there is nothing, properly speaking, of
+ which man has perfect, absolute, and complete knowledge, because for
+ that he would need knowledge of all. Now as all is bound together, it
+ inevitably happens that, from discussion to discussion, he must come
+ to something unknown: then in starting again from this unknown point,
+ we shall be justified in pleading against him the ignorance or the
+ obscurity or the uncertainty of the point preceding, and of that
+ preceding this, and so forth, up to the most evident principle. So we
+ must admit a sort of sobriety in the use of reason. When step by step
+ I have brought a man to some evident proposition, I shall cease to
+ dispute. I will listen no longer to a man who goes on to deny the
+ existence of bodies, the rules of logic, the testimony of the senses,
+ the difference between good and evil, true and false, etc. etc. I will
+ turn my back on everybody who tries to lead me away from a simple
+ question, to embark me in discussion as to the nature of matter, of
+ the understanding of thought, and other subjects shoreless and
+ bottomless."<a name="FNanchor_185_185" id=
+ "FNanchor_185_185"></a><a href="#Footnote_185_185" class=
+ "fnanchor">[185]</a> Whatever else may be said of this, we have to
+ recognise that it is exactly characteristic of the author. But then
+ why have written on metaphysics at all?</p>
+
+ <p>We have mentioned the article on Spinosa. It is characteristic both
+ of the good and the bad sides of Diderot's work. Half of it is merely
+ a reproduction of Bayle's criticisms on Spinosa and his system. The
+ other half consists of original objections propounded by Diderot with
+ marked vigour of thrust against Spinosa, but there is no evidence that
+ he had gone deeper into Spinosa than the first book of the Ethics.
+ There is no certain sign that he had read anything else, or that he
+ had more of that before him than the extracts that were furnished by
+ Bayle. Such treatment of a serious subject hardly conforms to the
+ modern requirements of the literary conscience, for in truth the
+ literary conscience has now turned specialist and shrinks from the
+ encyclopædic. Diderot's objections are, as we have said, pushed with
+ marked energy of speech. "However short away," he says, "you penetrate
+ into the thick darkness in which Spinosa has wrapped himself up, you
+ discover a succession of abysses into which this audacious reasoner
+ has precipitated himself, of propositions either evidently false or
+ evidently doubtful, of arbitrary principles, substituted for natural
+ principles and sensible truths; an abuse of terms taken for the most
+ part in a wrong sense, a mass of deceptive equivocations, a cloud of
+ palpable contradictions." The system is monstrous, it is absurd and
+ ridiculous. It is Spinosa's plausible method that has deceived people;
+ they supposed that one who employed geometry, and proceeded by way of
+ axioms and definitions, must be on the track of truth. They did not
+ see that these axioms were nothing better than very vague and very
+ uncertain propositions; that the definitions were inexact, defective,
+ and bizarre.</p>
+
+ <p>We have no space to follow the reasoning by which Diderot supports
+ this scornful estimate of the famous thinker, of whom it can never be
+ settled whether he be pantheist, atheist, akosmist, or God-intoxicated
+ man. He returns to the charge again and again, as if he felt a certain
+ secret uneasiness lest for scorn so loudly expressed he had not
+ brought forward adequate justification. And the reader feels that
+ Diderot has scarcely hit the true line of cleavage that would have
+ enabled him—from his own point of view—to shatter the Spinosist
+ system. He tries various bouts of logic with Spinosa in connection
+ with detached propositions. Thus he deals with Spinosa's third
+ proposition, that, <i>in the case of things that have nothing in
+ common with one another, one cannot be the cause of the other</i>.
+ This proposition, Diderot contends, is false in all moral and
+ occasional causes. The sound of the name of God has nothing in common
+ with the idea of the Creator which that name produces in my mind. A
+ misfortune that overtakes my friend has nothing in common with the
+ grief that I feel in consequence. When I move my arm by an act of
+ will, the movement has nothing in common in its nature with the act of
+ my will; they are very different. I am not a triangle, yet I form the
+ idea of one and I examine its properties. So with the fifth
+ proposition, that <i>there cannot be in the universe two or more
+ substances of the same nature or the same attributes</i>. If Spinosa
+ is only talking of the essence of things or of their definition, what
+ he says is naught; for it can only mean that there cannot be in the
+ universe two different essences having the same essence. Who doubts
+ it? But if Spinosa means that there cannot be an essence which is
+ found in various single objects, in the same way as the essence of
+ triangle is found in the triangle A and the triangle B, then he says
+ what is manifestly untrue. It is not, however, until the last two or
+ three pages that Diderot sets forth his dissent in its widest
+ form.</p>
+
+ <p>"To refute Spinosa," he says at last, "all that is necessary is to
+ stop him at the first step, without taking the trouble to follow him
+ into a mass of consequences; all that we need do is to substitute for
+ the obscure principle which he makes the base of his system, the
+ following: namely, that <i>there are several substances</i>—a
+ principle that in its own way is clear to the last degree. And, in
+ fact, what proposition can be clearer, more striking, more close to
+ the understanding and consciousness of man? I here seek no other judge
+ than the most just impression of the common sense that is spread among
+ the human race.... Now, since common sense revolts against each of
+ Spinosa's propositions, no less than against the first, of which they
+ are the pretended proofs, instead of stopping to reason on each of
+ these proofs where common sense is lost, we should be right to say to
+ him:—Your principle is contrary to common sense; from a principle in
+ which common sense is lost, nothing can issue in which common sense is
+ to be found again."</p>
+
+ <p>The passage sounds unpleasantly like an appeal to the crowd in a
+ matter of science, which is as the sin against the Holy Ghost in these
+ high concerns. What Diderot meant, probably, was to charge Spinosa
+ with inventing a conception of substance which has no relation to
+ objective experience; and further with giving fantastic answers to
+ questions that were in themselves never worth asking, because the
+ answers must always involve a violent wrench of the terms of
+ experience into the sphere transcending experience, and because,
+ moreover, they can never be verified. Whether he meant this or
+ something else, and whether he would have been right or wrong in such
+ an intention, we may admit that it would have been more satisfactory
+ if in dealing with such a master-type of the metaphysical method as
+ Spinosa, so acute a positive critic as Diderot had taken more pains to
+ give to his objections the utmost breadth of which they were
+ capable.<a name="FNanchor_186_186" id="FNanchor_186_186"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_186_186" class="fnanchor">[186]</a></p>
+
+ <p>The article on Leibnitz has less original matter in it than that on
+ Spinosa. The various speculations of that great and energetic
+ intellect in metaphysic, logic, natural theology, natural law, are
+ merely drawn out in a long table of succinct propositions, while the
+ account of the life and character of Leibnitz is simply taken from the
+ excellent <i>éloge</i> which had been published upon him by Fontenelle
+ in 1716. Fontenelle's narrative is reproduced in a generous spirit of
+ admiration and respect for a genius that was like Diderot's own in
+ encyclopædic variety of interest, while it was so far superior to
+ Diderot's in concentration, in subtlety, in precision, in power of
+ construction. If there could exist over our heads, says Diderot, a
+ species of beings who could observe our works as we watch those of
+ creatures at our feet, with what surprise would such beings have seen
+ those four marvellous insects, Bayle, Descartes, Leibnitz, and Newton.
+ And he then draws up a little calendar of the famous men, out of whom
+ we must choose the name to be placed at the very head of the human
+ race. The list contains, besides Julian the Apostate—who was inserted,
+ we may presume, merely by way of playful insult to the ecclesiastical
+ enemy—Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, Trajan, Bacon, and the four great
+ names that have just been cited. Germany derives as much honour from
+ Leibnitz alone, he concludes with unconsidered enthusiasm, as Greece
+ from Plato, Aristotle, and Archimedes, all put together. As we have
+ said, however, there is no criticism, nor any other sign that Diderot
+ had done more than survey the façade of the great Leibnitzian
+ structure admiringly from without.</p>
+
+ <p>The article on Liberty would be extremely remarkable, appearing
+ where it does, and coming from a thinker of Diderot's general
+ capacity, if only we could be sure that Diderot was sincere. As it
+ happens, there is good reason to suppose that he was wholly insincere.
+ It is quite as shallow, from the point of view of philosophy, as his
+ article on the Jews or on the Bible is from the point of view of
+ erudition. One reason for this might not be far to seek. We have
+ repeatedly observed how paramount the social aim and the social test
+ are in Diderot's mind over all other considerations. But this
+ reference of all subjects of discussion to the good of society, and
+ this measurement of conclusions by their presumed effect on society,
+ is a method that has its own dangers. The aversion of ecclesiastics to
+ unfettered discussion, lest it should damage institutions and beliefs
+ deemed useful to mankind, is the great leading example of this peril.
+ Diderot, it might be said by those who should contend that he wrote
+ what he thought, did not escape exactly the same predicament, as soon
+ as ever he forgot that of all the things that are good for society,
+ Truth is the best. Now, who will believe that it is Diderot, the
+ persecuted editor of the Encyclopædia, and the author of the manly
+ article on Intolerance, who introduces such a passage as the following
+ into the discussion of the everlasting controversy of Free Will and
+ Necessity: "Take away Liberty, and you leave no more vice nor virtue
+ nor merit in the world; rewards are ridiculous, and punishments
+ unjust. The ruin of Liberty overthrows all order and all police,
+ confounds vice and virtue, authorises every monstrous infamy,
+ extinguishes the last spark of shame and remorse, degrades and
+ disfigures beyond recovery the whole human race. <i>A doctrine of such
+ enormity as this ought not to be examined in the schools; it ought to
+ be punished by the magistrates.</i>"<a name="FNanchor_187_187" id=
+ "FNanchor_187_187"></a><a href="#Footnote_187_187" class=
+ "fnanchor">[187]</a> Of course, this was exactly what the Jesuits said
+ about a belief in God, about revelation, and about the institutions of
+ the church. To take away these, they said, is to throw down the
+ bulwarks of order, and an attempt to take them away, as by
+ encyclopædists or others, ought to be punished by the magistrates.
+ Diderot had for the moment clearly lost himself.</p>
+
+ <p>We need hardly be surprised if an article conceived in this spirit
+ contains no serious contribution to the difficult question with which
+ it deals. Diderot had persuaded himself that, without Free Will, all
+ those emotional moralities in the way of sympathy and benevolence and
+ justice which he adored would be lowered to the level of mere
+ mechanism. "If men are not free in what they do of good and evil,
+ then," he cries, in what is surely a paroxysm of unreason, "good is no
+ longer good, and evil no longer evil." As if the outward quality and
+ effects of good and evil were not independent of the mental operations
+ which precede human action. Murder would not cease to be an evil
+ simply because it had been proved that the murderer's will to do a bad
+ deed was the result of antecedents. Acts have marks and consequences
+ of their own, good or bad, whatever may be the state of mind of those
+ who do them. But Diderot does not seem to divine the true issue; he
+ writes as if Necessarians or Determinists denied the existence of
+ volitions, and as if the question were whether volitions do exist.
+ Nobody denies that they exist; the real question is of the conditions
+ under which they exist. Are they determined by antecedents, or are
+ they self-determined, spontaneous, and unconnected? Is Will
+ independent of cause?</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot's argumentation is, in fact, merely a protest that man is
+ conscious of a Will. And just as in other parts of his article Diderot
+ by Liberty means only the existence of Will, so by Liberty he means
+ only the healthy condition of the soul, and not its independence of
+ causation. We need not waste words on so dire a confusion, nor on the
+ theory that Will is sometimes dependent on cerebral antecedents and
+ sometimes not. The curious thing is that the writer should not have
+ perceived that he was himself in this preposterous theory propounding
+ the very principle which he denounced as destructive to virtue,
+ ruinous to society, and worthy of punishment by the government. For it
+ seems that, after all, the Will of those whose "dispositions are not
+ moderate" is not free; and we may surely say that those whose
+ dispositions are least moderate, are exactly the most violent
+ malefactors against the common weal. One more passage is worth quoting
+ to show how little the writer had seized the true meaning of the
+ debate. "According to you," he says to Bayle, "it is not clear that it
+ is at the pure choice of my will to move my arm or not to move it: if
+ that be so, it is then necessarily determined that within a quarter of
+ an hour from now I shall lift my hand three times together, or that I
+ shall not. Now, if you seriously pretend that I am not free, you
+ cannot refuse an offer that I make you; I will wager a thousand
+ pistoles to one that I will do, in the matter of moving my hand,
+ exactly the opposite to what you back; and you may take your choice.
+ If you do think the wager fair, it can only be because of your
+ necessary and invincible judgment that I am free." As if the will to
+ move or not to move the arm would be uncaused and unaffected by
+ antecedents, when you have just provided so strong an antecedent as
+ the desire to save a thousand pistoles. It was, perhaps, well enough
+ for Voltaire to content himself with vague poetical material for his
+ poetical discourse on Liberty, but from Diderot, whether as editor or
+ as writer, something better might have been expected than a clumsy
+ reproduction of the reasoning by which men like Turretini had turned
+ philosophy into the corrupted handmaid of theology.</p>
+
+ <p>The most extraordinary thing about this extraordinary article still
+ remains to be told. It was written, we may suppose, between 1757 and
+ 1762, or about that time. In June, 1756, Diderot wrote to a certain
+ Landois, a fellow-worker on the Encyclopædia, a letter containing the
+ most emphatic possible repudiation of the whole doctrine of Liberty.
+ "Liberty is a word void of sense; there are not and there never can
+ have been free beings; we are only what fits in with the general
+ order, with organisation, with education, and with the chain of
+ events. We can no more conceive a being acting without a motive than
+ we can conceive one of the arms of a balance acting without a weight;
+ and the motive is always exterior and foreign to us, attached either
+ by nature or by some cause or other that is not ourselves. <i>There is
+ only one sort of causes, properly speaking, and those are, physical
+ causes.</i>"<a name="FNanchor_188_188" id=
+ "FNanchor_188_188"></a><a href="#Footnote_188_188" class=
+ "fnanchor">[188]</a> And so forth in the vein of hard and remorseless
+ necessarianism, which we shall find presently in the pages of the
+ System of Nature.<a name="FNanchor_189_189" id=
+ "FNanchor_189_189"></a><a href="#Footnote_189_189" class=
+ "fnanchor">[189]</a></p>
+
+ <p>There is only one explanation of this flagrant contradiction.
+ Diderot must have written on Liberty just as he wrote on Jesus Christ
+ or the Bible. He cannot have said what he thought, but only what the
+ persons in authority required him to pretend to think. We may he sure
+ that a letter to an intimate would be more likely to contain his real
+ opinion than an article published in the Encyclopædia. That such
+ mystifications are odious, are shameful, are almost too degrading a
+ price to pay for the gains of such a work, we may all readily enough
+ admit. All that we can do is to note so flagrant a case, as a striking
+ example of the common artifices of the time. One other point we may
+ note. The fervour and dexterity with which Diderot made what he knew
+ to be the worse appear the better cause, make a still more striking
+ example of his astonishing dramatic power of throwing himself, as
+ dialectician, casuist, sophist, into a false and illusive part.</p>
+
+ <p>Turning from the philosophical to the political or social group of
+ articles, we find little to add to what has been said in the previous
+ section. One of the most excellent essays in this group is that on
+ Luxury. Diderot opens ingeniously with a list of the propositions that
+ state the supposed evils of luxury, and under each proposition he
+ places the most striking case that he can find in history of its
+ falseness. He goes through the same process with the propositions
+ asserting the gains of luxury to society. Having thus effectually
+ disposed of any wholesale way of dealing with the subject, he proceeds
+ to make a number of observations on the gains and drawbacks of luxury;
+ these are full of sense and freedom from commonplace. Such articles as
+ <i>Pouvoir, Souverain, Autorité</i>, do little more than tell over
+ again the old unhistoric story about a society surrendering a portion
+ of its sovereign power to some individual or dynasty to hold in trust.
+ It is worth remarking how little democratic were Diderot and his
+ school in any Jacobinical, or anarchic, or even more respectable
+ modern sense. There is in Diderot's contributions many a firm and
+ manly plea for the self-respect of the common people, but not more
+ than once or twice is there a syllable of the disorder which smoulders
+ under the pages of Rousseau. Thus: "When the dwellers among the fields
+ are well treated, the number of proprietors insensibly grows greater,
+ the extreme distance and the vile dependence of poor on rich grow
+ less; hence the people have courage, force of soul, and strength of
+ body; they love their country, they respect the magistrates, they are
+ attached to a prince, to an order, and to laws to which they owe their
+ peace and well-being. And you will no longer see the son of the
+ honourable tiller of the soil so ready to quit the noble calling of
+ his forefathers, nor so ready to go and sully himself with the
+ liveries and with the contempt of the man of wealth."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_190_190" id="FNanchor_190_190"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_190_190" class="fnanchor">[190]</a></p>
+
+ <p>No one can find fault with democratic sentiment of this kind, nor
+ with the generous commonplaces of the moralist, about virtue being the
+ only claim to honour, and vice the only true source of shame and
+ inferiority. But neither Diderot nor Voltaire ever allowed himself to
+ flatter the crowd for qualities which the crowd can scarcely possess.
+ The little article on Multitude seems merely inserted for the sake of
+ buffeting unwarranted pretensions. "Distrust the judgment of the
+ multitude in all matters of reasoning and philosophy; there its voice
+ is the voice of malice, folly, inhumanity, irrationality, and
+ prejudice. Distrust it again in things that suppose much knowledge or
+ a fine taste. The multitude is ignorant and dulled. Distrust it in
+ morality; it is not capable of strong and generous actions; it rather
+ wonders at such actions than approves them; heroism is almost madness
+ in its eyes. Distrust it in the things of sentiment; is delicacy of
+ sentiment so common a thing that you can accord it to the multitude?
+ In what then is the multitude right? In everything, but only at the
+ end of a very long time, because then it has become an echo, repeating
+ the judgment of a small number of sensible men who shape the judgment
+ of posterity for it beforehand. If you have on your side the testimony
+ of your conscience, and against you that of the multitude, take
+ comfort and be assured that time does justice." It is far from being a
+ universal gift among men of letters and others to unite this
+ fastidious estimation of the incapacity of the crowd in the higher
+ provinces of the intellectual judgment, with a fervid desire that the
+ life of the crowd should be made worthy of self-respecting men.</p>
+
+ <p>The same hand that wrote the defiance of the populace that has just
+ been quoted, wrote also this short article on Misery: "There are few
+ souls so firm that misery does not in the long run cast them down and
+ degrade them. The poor common people are incredibly stupid. I know not
+ what false dazzling prestige closes their eyes to their present
+ wretchedness, and to the still deeper wretchedness that awaits the
+ years of old age. Misery is the mother of great crimes. It is the
+ sovereigns who make the miserable, and it is they who shall answer in
+ this world and the other for the crimes that misery has
+ committed."</p>
+
+ <p>So far as the mechanism of government is concerned, Diderot writes
+ much as Montesquieu had done. Under the head of <i>Représentants</i>
+ he proclaims the advantages, not exactly of government by a
+ representative assembly, but of assisting and advising the royal
+ government by means of such an assembly. There is no thought of
+ universal suffrage. "<i>It is property that makes the citizen</i>;
+ every man who has possessions in the state is interested in the state,
+ and whatever be the rank that particular conventions may assign to
+ him, it is always as a proprietor; it is by reason of his possessions
+ that he ought to speak, and that he acquires the right of having
+ himself represented." Yet this very definite statement does not save
+ him from the standing difficulty of a democratic philosophy of
+ politics. Nor can it be reconciled in point of logic with other
+ propositions to which Diderot commits himself in the same article. For
+ instance, he says that "no order of citizens is capable of stipulating
+ for all; if one order had the right, it would very soon come to
+ stipulate only for itself; each class ought to be represented by men
+ who know its condition and its needs; <i>these needs are only well
+ known to those who actually feel them</i>." But then, in that case,
+ the poorest classes are those who have most need of direct
+ representation; they are the most numerous, their needs are sharpest,
+ they are the classes to which war, consumption of national capital and
+ way of expending national income, equal laws, judicial administration,
+ and the other concerns of a legislative assembly, come most close. The
+ problem is to reconcile the sore interests of the multitude with the
+ ignorance and the temper imputed in Diderot's own description of
+ them.</p>
+
+ <p>An interesting study might be made, if the limits of our subject
+ permitted such a digression, on the new political ideas which a
+ century's experience in England, France, Germany, the American Union,
+ has added to the publicist's stock. Diderot's article on the
+ Legislator is a curious mixture of views which political thinkers have
+ left behind, with views which the most enlightened statesmen have
+ taken up. There is much talk after the fashion of Jean Jacques
+ Rousseau about the admirable legislation of Lycurgus at Sparta, the
+ philosophical government of the great empire of China, and the fine
+ spirit of the institutions of Peru. We perceive that the same
+ influences which made Rousseau's political sentimentalism so popular
+ also brought even strong heads like Diderot to believe in the
+ unbounded power of a government to mould men at its will, and to
+ impose institutions at discretion. The idea that it is the main
+ function of a government to make its people virtuous, is generally as
+ strong in Diderot as it was in Rousseau, and as it became in
+ Robespierre. He admires the emperors of China, because their edicts
+ are as the exhortation of a father to his children. All edicts, he
+ says, ought to instruct and to exhort as much as they command. Yet two
+ years after the Encyclopædia was finished (1774), when Turgot prefaced
+ his reforming edicts by elaborate and reasoned statements of the
+ grounds for them, it was found that his prefaces caused greater
+ provocation than the very laws that they introduced.</p>
+
+ <p>Apart from the common form of enthusiasm for the "sublime
+ legislation" of countries which the writer really knew nothing about,
+ the article on the Legislator has some points worth noticing. We have
+ seen how Diderot made the possession of property the true note of
+ citizenship, and of a claim to share in the government. But he did not
+ pay property this compliment for nothing. It is, he says, the business
+ of the legislator to do his best to make up to mankind for the loss of
+ that equality which was one of the comforts that men surrendered when
+ they gave up the state of nature. Hence the legislator ought to take
+ care that no one shall reach a position of extreme opulence otherwise
+ than by an industry that enriches the state. "He must take care that
+ the charges of society shall fall upon the rich, who enjoy the
+ advantages of society." Even those who agree with Diderot, and are
+ ready to vote for a graduated income-tax, will admit that he comes to
+ his conclusion without knowing or reflecting about either the serious
+ arguments for it, or the serious objections against it.</p>
+
+ <p>What is really interesting in this long article is its anticipation
+ of those ideas which in England we associate with the name of Cobden.
+ "All the men of all lands have become necessary to one another for the
+ exchange of the fruits of industry and the products of the soil.
+ Commerce is a new bond among men. Every nation has an interest in
+ these days in the preservation by every other nation of its wealth,
+ its industry, its banks, its luxury, its agriculture. The ruin of
+ Leipsic, of Lisbon, and of Lima has led to bankruptcies on all the
+ exchanges of Europe, and has affected the fortunes of many millions of
+ persons."<a name="FNanchor_191_191" id="FNanchor_191_191"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_191_191" class="fnanchor">[191]</a> In the same spirit he
+ foresees the decline of patriotism in its older and narrower sense,
+ and the predominance of the international over the national sentiment.
+ "All nations now have sufficiently just ideas of their neighbours, and
+ consequently they have less enthusiasm for their country than in the
+ old days of ignorance. There is little enthusiasm where there is much
+ light; enthusiasm is nearly always the emotion of a soul that is more
+ passionate than it is instructed. By comparing among all nations laws
+ with laws, talents with talents, and manners with manners, nations
+ will find so little reason to prefer themselves to others, that if
+ they preserve for their own country that love which is the fruit of
+ personal interest, at least they will lose that enthusiasm which is
+ the fruit of an exclusive self-esteem."</p>
+
+ <p>Yet Diderot had the perspicacity to discern the drawbacks to such a
+ revolution in the conditions of social climate. "Commerce, like
+ enlightenment, lessens ferocity, but also, just as enlightenment takes
+ away the enthusiasm of self-esteem, so perhaps commerce takes away the
+ enthusiasm of virtue. It gradually extinguishes the spirit of
+ magnanimous disinterestedness, and replaces it by that of hard
+ justice. By turning men's minds rather to use than beauty, to prudence
+ rather than to greatness, it may be that it injures the strength, the
+ generosity, the nobleness of manners."</p>
+
+ <p>All this, whether it comes to much or little, is at least more true
+ than Diderot's assurance that henceforth for any nation in Europe to
+ make conquests must be a moral impossibility. Napoleon Bonaparte was
+ then a child in arms. Whether his career was on the whole a fulfilment
+ or a contradiction of Diderot's proposition, may be disputed.</p>
+
+ <p>And so our sketch of the great book must at length end. Let us make
+ one concluding remark. Is it not surprising that a man of Diderot's
+ speculative boldness and power should have failed to rise from the
+ mechanical arrangement of thought and knowledge, up to some higher and
+ more commanding conception of the relation between himself in the
+ eighteenth century, or ourselves in the nineteenth, and all those
+ great systems of thought, method, and belief, which in various epochs
+ and over different spaces of the globe have given to men working
+ answers to the questions that their leading spirits were moved to put
+ to themselves and to the iron universe around them? We constantly feel
+ how near Diderot is to the point of view that would have brought
+ light. We feel how very nearly ready he was to see the mental
+ experiences of the race in east and west, not as superstition,
+ degradation, grovelling error, but as aspects of intellectual effort
+ and aspiration richly worthy of human interest and scientific
+ consideration, and in their aim as well as in their substance all of
+ one piece with the newest science and the last voices of religious or
+ anti-religious development. Diderot was the one member of the party of
+ Philosophers who was capable of grasping such a thought. If this
+ guiding idea of the unity of the intellectual history of man, and the
+ organic integrity of thought, had happily come into Diderot's mind, we
+ should have had an Encyclopædia indeed; a survey and representation of
+ all the questions and answers of the world, such as would in itself
+ have suggested what questions are best worth putting, and at the same
+ time have furnished its own answers.</p>
+
+ <p>For this the moment was not yet. An urgent social task lay before
+ France and before Europe; it could not be postponed until the thinkers
+ had worked out a scheme of philosophic completeness. The thinkers did
+ not seriously make any effort after this completeness. The
+ Encyclopædia was the most serious attempt, and it did not wholly fail.
+ As I replace in my shelves this mountain of volumes, "dusky and huge,
+ enlarging on the sight," I have a presentiment that their pages will
+ seldom again be disturbed by me or by others. They served a great
+ purpose a hundred years ago. They are now a monumental ruin, clothed
+ with all the profuse associations of history. It is no Ozymandias of
+ Egypt, king of kings, whose wrecked shape of stone and sterile
+ memories we contemplate. We think rather of the gray and crumbling
+ walls of an ancient stronghold reared by the endeavour of stout hands
+ and faithful, whence in its own day and generation a band once went
+ forth against barbarous hordes, to strike a blow for humanity and
+ truth.</p>
+ <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+ <h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.<br />
+ SOCIAL LIFE (1759-1770).</h2>
+
+ <p>Any one must be ignorant of the facts who supposes that the men of
+ the eighteenth century who did not believe in God, and were as little
+ continent as King David, were therefore no better than the reckless
+ vagabonds of Grub Street. Diderot, after he had once settled down to
+ his huge task, became a very orderly person. It is true that he had an
+ attachment to a lady who was not his wife. Marriage was in those days,
+ among the courtiers and the encyclopædic circle, too habitually
+ regarded as merely an official relation. Provided that there was no
+ official desertion, and no scandal, the world had nothing to say.
+ Diderot was no worse than his neighbours, though we may well be sorry
+ that a man of his generous sympathies and fine impulse was no better
+ than his neighbours. Mademoiselle Voland, after proper deduction made
+ for the manners of the time, was of a respectable and sentimental
+ type. Her family were of good position; she lived with her mother and
+ sisters, and Diderot was on good terms with them all. We have a
+ glimpse of the characteristics of the three ladies in a little
+ dialogue between Diderot and some one whom he met, and who happened to
+ have made their acquaintance. "He informed me that he had passed three
+ months in the country where you are.—<i>Three months</i>, said he,
+ <i>is more than one needs to go mad about Madame Le
+ Gendre</i>.<a name="FNanchor_192_192" id=
+ "FNanchor_192_192"></a><a href="#Footnote_192_192" class=
+ "fnanchor">[192]</a>—True, but then she is so reserved.—<i>I scarcely
+ know any woman with such an amount of self-respect</i>.—She is quite
+ right.—<i>Madame Voland is a woman of rare merit</i>.—Yes, and her
+ eldest daughter?—<i>She has the cleverness of a very devil</i>.—She is
+ very clever, no doubt; but what I especially like is her frankness. I
+ would lay a wager that she has never told a voluntary lie since she
+ came to years of discretion."<a name="FNanchor_193_193" id=
+ "FNanchor_193_193"></a><a href="#Footnote_193_193" class=
+ "fnanchor">[193]</a> The relations between Diderot and Sophie Voland
+ were therefore not at all on the common footing of a low amour with a
+ coarse or frivolous woman of the world. All the proprieties of
+ appearance were scrupulously observed. Their mutual passion, though
+ once not wholly without its gallantries, soon took on that worthy and
+ decorous quality into which the ardour of valiant youth is reluctantly
+ softened by middle age, when we gravely comfort it with names of
+ philosophical compliment.</p>
+
+ <p>One of the most interesting of all the documentary memorials of the
+ century is to be found in the letters which Diderot wrote to
+ Mademoiselle Voland. No doubt has ever been thrown on the authenticity
+ of these letters, and they bear ample evidence of genuineness, so far
+ as the substance of them is concerned, in their characteristic style.
+ They were first published in 1830, from manuscripts sold to the
+ bookseller the year before by a certain French man of letters,
+ Jeudy-Dugour by name. He became a naturalised Russian, changed his
+ name to Gouroff, and died in the position of councillor of state and
+ director of the university of St. Petersburg. How he came by any
+ papers of Diderot it is impossible to guess. It is assumed that when
+ Mademoiselle Voland died her family gave his letters and other papers
+ back to Diderot. These, along with other documents, are supposed to
+ have been given by Diderot to Grimm. Thence they went to the Library
+ of the Hermitage at St. Petersburg. Whether Jeudy-Dugour sold copies
+ or originals, and whether he made the copies, if copies they were,
+ from the Library, which was, however, rigorously closed during the
+ reign of Nicholas I., are literary secrets which it is impossible to
+ fathom. So far as Diderot is concerned, some of the spirit of
+ mystification that haunted literature in the eighteenth century still
+ hovers about it in the nineteenth. This we shall presently find in a
+ still more interesting monument of Diderot than even his letters to
+ Mademoiselle Voland.<a name="FNanchor_194_194" id=
+ "FNanchor_194_194"></a><a href="#Footnote_194_194" class=
+ "fnanchor">[194]</a></p>
+
+ <p>They are not a continuous series. It was only when either Diderot
+ was absent from Paris, or his correspondent was away at her mother's
+ house in the country, that letter-writing was necessary. Diderot
+ appears to have written to her openly and without disguise. The
+ letters of Mademoiselle Voland in reply were for obvious reasons not
+ sent to Diderot's house, but under cover to the office of Damilaville,
+ so well known to the reader of Voltaire's correspondence. Damilaville
+ was a commissioner in one of the revenue departments, and it is one
+ among many instances of the connivance between authority and its foes,
+ that most of the letters and packets of Voltaire, Diderot, and the
+ rest of the group, should have been taken in, sent out, guarded, and
+ franked by the head of a government office. The trouble that
+ Damilaville willingly took in order to serve his friends is another
+ example of what we have already remarked as the singular amiability
+ and affectionate solicitude of those times. "Think of Damilaville's
+ attention," says Diderot on one occasion: "to-day is Sunday, and he
+ was obliged to leave his office. He was sure that I should come this
+ evening, for I never fail when I hope for a letter from you. He left
+ the key with two candles on a table, and between the two candles your
+ little letter, and a pleasant note of his own." And by the light of
+ the candles Diderot at once wrote a long answer.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_195_195" id="FNanchor_195_195"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_195_195" class="fnanchor">[195]</a></p>
+
+ <p>We need not wonder if much is said in these letters of tardy
+ couriers, missing answers, intolerable absences, dreary partings,
+ delicious anticipations. All these are the old eternal talk of men and
+ women, ever since the world began; without them we should hardly know
+ that we are reading the words of man to woman. They are in our present
+ case only the setting of a curiously frank and open picture of a man's
+ life.</p>
+
+ <p>It is held by some that one of the best means of giving the sense
+ of a little fixity to lives that are but as the evanescent fabric of a
+ dream and the shadow of smoke, is to secure stability of topographical
+ centre by abiding in the same house. Diderot is one of the few who
+ complied with this condition. For thirty years he occupied the fourth
+ and fifth floors of a house which was still standing not long ago, at
+ the corner of the Rue Saint Benoit by the Rue Taranne, in that Paris
+ which our tourists leave unexplored, but which is nevertheless the
+ true Paris of the eighteenth century. Of the equipment of his room we
+ have a charming picture by the hand of its occupant. It occurs in his
+ playful Regrets on My Old Dressing-gown, so rich in happy and
+ delightful touches.</p>
+
+ <p>"What induced me to part with it? It was made for me; I was made
+ for it. It moulded itself to all the turns and outlines of my body
+ without fretting me. I was picturesque and beautiful; its successor,
+ so stiff, so heavy, makes a mere mannikin of me. There was no want to
+ which, its complaisance did not lend itself, for indigence is ever
+ obsequious. Was a book covered with dust, one of the lappets offered
+ itself to wipe the dust away. Did the thick ink refuse to flow from
+ the pen, it offered a fold. You saw traced in the long black lines
+ upon it how many a service it had rendered me. Those long lines
+ announced the man of letters, the writer, the workman. And now I have
+ all the mien of a rich idler; you know not who I may be. I was the
+ absolute master of my old robe; I am the slave of my new one. The
+ dragon that guarded the golden fleece was not more restless than I.
+ Care wraps me about.</p>
+
+ <p>"The old man who has delivered himself up bound hand and foot to
+ the caprices of a young giddypate, says from morning to night: Ah,
+ where is my old, my kind housekeeper? What demon possessed me the day
+ that I dismissed her for this creature? Then he sighs, he weeps. I do
+ not weep nor sigh; but at every moment I say: Cursed be the man who
+ invented the art of making common stuff precious by dyeing it scarlet!
+ Cursed be the costly robe that I stand in awe of! Where is my old, my
+ humble, my obliging piece of homespun?</p>
+
+ <p>"That is not all, my friend. Hearken to the ravages of luxury—of a
+ luxury that must needs be consistent with itself. My old gown was at
+ one with the things about me. A straw-bottomed chair, a wooden table,
+ a deal shelf that held a few books, and three or four engravings,
+ dimmed by smoke, without a frame, nailed at the four corners to the
+ wall. Among the engravings three or four casts in plaster were hung
+ up; they formed, with my old dressing-gown, the most harmonious
+ indigence. All has become discord. No more <i>ensemble</i>, no more
+ unity, no more beauty.</p>
+
+ <p>"The woman who comes into the house of a widower, the minister who
+ steps into the place of a statesman in disgrace, the molinist bishop
+ who gets hold of the diocese of a jansenist bishop—none of these
+ people cause more trouble than the intruding scarlet has caused to
+ me.</p>
+
+ <p>"I can bear without disgust the sight of a peasant-woman. The bit
+ of coarse canvas that covers her head, the hair falling about her
+ cheeks, the rags that only half cover her, the poor short skirt that
+ goes no more than half-way down her legs, the naked feet covered with
+ mud —all these things do not wound me; 'tis the image of a condition
+ that I respect, 'tis the sign and summary of a state that is
+ inevitable, that is woful, and that I pity with all my heart. But my
+ gorge rises, and in spite of the scented air that follows her, I turn
+ my eyes from the courtesan, whose fine lace head-gear and torn cuffs,
+ white stockings and worn-out shoes, show me the misery of the day in
+ company with the opulence of last night. Such would my house have
+ been, if the imperious scarlet had not forced all into harmony with
+ itself. I had two engravings that were not without merit, Poussin's
+ Manna in the Wilderness, and the same painter's Esther before
+ Ahasuerus; the one is driven out in shame by some old man of Rubens's,
+ the Fall of the Manna is scattered to the winds by a Storm of
+ Vernet's. The old straw chair is banished to the ante-room by a
+ luxurious thing of morocco. Homer, Virgil, Horace, Cicero, have been
+ taken from their shelf and shut up in a case of grand marqueterie
+ work, an asylum worthier of them than of me. The wooden table still
+ held its ground, protected by a vast pile of pamphlets and papers
+ heaped pell-mell upon it; they seemed as if they would long protect it
+ from its doom. Yet one day that too was mastered by fate, and in spite
+ of my idleness pamphlets and papers went to arrange themselves in the
+ shelves of a costly bureau....It was thus that the edifying retreat of
+ the philosopher became transformed into the scandalous cabinet of the
+ farmer-general. Thus I too am insulting the national misery.</p>
+
+ <p>"Of my early mediocrity there remained only a list carpet. The
+ shabby carpet hardly matches with my luxury. I feel it. But I have
+ sworn and I swear that I will keep this carpet, as the peasant, who
+ was raised from the hut to the palace of his sovereign, still kept his
+ wooden shoes. When in a morning, clad in the sumptuous scarlet, I
+ enter my room, if I lower my eyes I perceive my old list carpet; it
+ recalls to me my early state, and rising pride stands checked. No, my
+ friend, I am not corrupted. My door is open as ever to want; it finds
+ me affable as ever; I listen to its tale, I counsel, I pity, I succour
+ it." ...</p>
+
+ <p>Yet the interior of Socrates-Diderot was as little blessed by
+ domestic sympathy as the interior of the older and greater Socrates.
+ Of course Diderot was far enough from being faultless. His wife is
+ described by Rousseau as a shrew and a scold. It is too plain that she
+ was so; sullen to her husband, impatient with her children, and
+ exacting and unreasonable with her servants.<a name="FNanchor_196_196"
+ id="FNanchor_196_196"></a><a href="#Footnote_196_196" class=
+ "fnanchor">[196]</a> We cannot pretend accurately to divide the blame.
+ The companionship was very dreary, and the picture grievous and most
+ afflicting to our thoughts. Diderot returns in the evening from
+ Holbach's, throws his carpet-bag in at the door, flies off to seek a
+ letter from Mademoiselle Voland, writes one to her, gets back to his
+ house at midnight, finds his daughter ill, puts cheerful and cordial
+ questions to his wife, she replies with a tartness that drives him
+ back into silence.<a name="FNanchor_197_197" id=
+ "FNanchor_197_197"></a><a href="#Footnote_197_197" class=
+ "fnanchor">[197]</a> Another time the scene is violent. A torrent of
+ injustice and unreasonableness flows over him for two long hours, and
+ he wonders what the woman will profit, after she has made him burst a
+ blood-vessel; he groans in anguish, "Ah, how hard life seems to me to
+ bear! How many a time would I accept the end of it with joy!"<a name=
+ "FNanchor_198_198" id="FNanchor_198_198"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_198_198" class="fnanchor">[198]</a> So sharp are the goads
+ in a divided house; so sorely, with ache and smart and deep-welling
+ tears, do men and women rend into shreds the fine web of one another's
+ lives. But the pity of it, O the pity of it!</p>
+
+ <p>There are many brighter intervals which make one willing to suppose
+ that if the wife had been a little more patient, more tolerant, more
+ cheerful, less severely addicted to her sterile superstition, there
+ might have been somewhat more happiness in the house. One misery of
+ the present social ideal of women is that, while it keeps them so
+ systematically ignorant, superstitious, and narrow, it leaves them
+ without humility. "Be content," said the great John Wesley to his
+ froward wife, "be content to be a private insignificant person, known
+ and loved by God and me. Of what importance is your character to
+ mankind? If you was buried just now, or if you had never lived, what
+ loss would it be to the cause of God?" This energetic remonstrance can
+ hardly be said to exhaust the matter. Still it puts a wholesome side
+ of the case which Madame Diderot missed, and which better persons are
+ likely to miss, so long as the exclusion of women, by common opinion
+ or by law, from an active participation in the settlement of great
+ issues, makes them indifferent to all interests outside domestic
+ egoism, and egoistic and personal religion. Brighter intervals shone
+ in the household. "I announced my departure," writes Diderot, "for
+ next Tuesday. At the first word I saw the faces both of mother and
+ daughter fall. The child had a compliment for my fête-day all ready,
+ and it would not do to let her waste the trouble of having learnt it.
+ The mother had projected a grand dinner for Sunday. Well, we arranged
+ everything perfectly. I made my journey, and came back to be harangued
+ and feasted. The poor child made her little speech in the most
+ bewitching way. In the middle there came some hard words, so she
+ stopped and said to me, 'My papa, 'tis because my two front teeth have
+ come out'—as was true. Then she went on. At the end, as she had a posy
+ to give me, and it could not be found, she stopped a second time to
+ say to me—'Here's the worst of the tale; my pinks have got lost.' Then
+ she started off in search of her flowers. We dined in great style. My
+ wife had got all her friends together. I was very gay, eating,
+ drinking, and doing the honours of my table to perfection. On rising
+ from table I stayed among them and played cards instead of going out.
+ I saw them all off between eleven and twelve: I was charming, and if
+ you only knew with whom; what physiognomies, what folk, what
+ talk!"</p>
+
+ <p>Another time the child, whispering in his ear, asks why her mother
+ bade her not remind him that the morrow was the mother's fête-day. The
+ presence of the blithe all-hoping young, looking on with innocent
+ unconscious eyes at the veiled tragedy of love turned to bitter
+ discord, gives to such scenes their last touch of piteousness.
+ Diderot, however, observed the day, and presented a bouquet which was
+ neither well or ill received. At the birthday dinner the master of the
+ house presided. "If you had been behind the curtains, you would have
+ said to yourself, how can all this gossip and twaddle find a place in
+ the same head with certain ideas! And in truth I was charming, and
+ played the fool to a marvel."<a name="FNanchor_199_199" id=
+ "FNanchor_199_199"></a><a href="#Footnote_199_199" class=
+ "fnanchor">[199]</a></p>
+
+ <p>In the midst of distractions great and small, was an indomitable
+ industry. "I tell you," he wrote, "and I tell all men, when you are
+ ill at ease with yourself, instantly set about some good work. In
+ busying myself to soothe the trouble of another, I forget my own." He
+ was assiduous in teaching his daughter, though he complained that her
+ mother crushed out in a day what it had taken him a month to implant.
+ The booksellers found him the most cheerful and strenuous bondsman
+ that ever booksellers had. He would pass a whole month without a day's
+ break, working ten hours every day at the revision of proof-sheets.
+ Sometimes he remains a whole week without leaving his workroom. He
+ wears out his eyes over plates and diagrams, bristling with figures
+ and letters, and with no more refreshing thought in the midst of this
+ sore toil than that insult, persecution, torment, trickery, will be
+ the fruit of it. He not only spent whole days bent over his desk,
+ until he had a feeling as of burning flame within him; he also worked
+ through the hours of the night. On one of these occasions, worn out
+ with fatigue and weariness, he fell asleep with his head on his desk;
+ the light fell down among his papers, and he awoke to find half the
+ books and papers on the desk burnt to ashes. "I kept my own counsel
+ about it," he writes, "because a single hint of such an accident would
+ have robbed my wife of sleep for the rest of her life."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_200_200" id="FNanchor_200_200"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_200_200" class="fnanchor">[200]</a></p>
+
+ <p>His favourite form of holiday was a visit to Holbach's country
+ house at Grandval. Here he spent some six weeks or more nearly every
+ autumn after 1759. The manner of life there was delightful to him.
+ There was perfect freedom, the mistress of the house neither rendering
+ strict duties of ceremony nor exacting them. Diderot used to rise at
+ six or at eight, and remain in his own room until one, reading,
+ writing, meditating. Nobody was more exquisitely sensible than Diderot
+ to the charm of loitering over books, "over those authors," as he
+ said, "who ravish us from ourselves, in whose hands nature has placed
+ a fairy wand, with which they no sooner touch us, than straightway we
+ forget the evils of life, the darkness lifts from our souls, and we
+ are reconciled to existence."<a name="FNanchor_201_201" id=
+ "FNanchor_201_201"></a><a href="#Footnote_201_201" class=
+ "fnanchor">[201]</a> The musing suggestiveness of reading when we read
+ only for reading's sake, and not for reproduction nor direct use, was
+ as delightful to our laborious drudge as to others, but he could
+ indulge himself with little of this sweet idleness. It was in harder
+ labour that he passed most of his mornings. These hours of work
+ achieved, he dressed and went down among his friends. Then came the
+ mid-day dinner, which was sumptuous; host and guests both ate and
+ drank more than was good for their health. After a short siesta,
+ towards four o'clock they took their sticks and went forth to walk,
+ among woods, over ploughed fields, up hills, through quagmires,
+ delighting in nature. As they went, they talked of history, or
+ politics, or chemistry, of literature, or physics, or morality. At
+ sundown they returned, to find lights and cards on the tables, and
+ they made parties of piquet, interrupted by supper. At half-past ten
+ the game ends, they chat until eleven, and in half an hour more they
+ are all fast asleep.<a name="FNanchor_202_202" id=
+ "FNanchor_202_202"></a><a href="#Footnote_202_202" class=
+ "fnanchor">[202]</a> Each day was like the next; industry, gaiety,
+ bodily comfort, mental activity, diversifying the hours. Grimm was
+ often there, "the most French of all the Germans," and Galiani, the
+ most nimble-witted of men, inexhaustible in story, inimitable in
+ pantomimic narration, and yet with the keenest intellectual
+ penetration shining through all his Neapolitan prank and buffoonery.
+ Holbach cared most for the physical sciences. Marmontel brought a vein
+ of sentimentalism, and Helvétius a vein of cynical formalism. Diderot
+ played Socrates, Panurge, Pantophile; questioning, instructing,
+ combining; pouring out knowledge and suggestion, full of interest in
+ every subject, sympathetic with every vein, relishing alike the newest
+ philosophic hardihood, the last too merry mood of Holbach's
+ mother-in-law, the freshest piece of news brought by a traveller. It
+ was not at Grandval that he found life hard to bear, or would have
+ accepted its close with joy. And indeed if one could by miracle be
+ transported back into the sixth decade of that dead century for a
+ single day, perhaps one might choose that such a day should be passed
+ among the energetic and vivid men who walked of an afternoon among the
+ fields and woods of Grandval.</p>
+
+ <p>The unblushing grossness of speech which even the ladies of the
+ party permitted themselves cannot be reproduced in the decorous print
+ of our age. It is nothing less than inconceivable to us how Diderot
+ can have brought himself to write down, in letters addressed to a
+ woman of good education and decent manners, some of the talk that went
+ on at Grandval. The coarsest schoolboy of these days would wince at
+ such shameless freedoms. But it would be wrong to forget the allowance
+ that must be made for differences in point of fashion. Diderot, for
+ instance, in these very letters is wonderfully frank in his exposure
+ of the details of his health. He describes his indigestions, and other
+ more indescribable obstructions to happiness, as freely as Cicero
+ wrote about the dysentery which punished him, when, after he had
+ resisted oysters and lampreys at supper, he yielded to a dish of beet
+ and mallow so dressed with pot-herbs, <i>ut nil posset esse
+ suavius</i>. Whatever men could say to one another or to their
+ surgeons they saw no harm in saying to women. We have to remember how
+ Sir Walter Scott's great-aunt, about the very time when Diderot was
+ writing to Mademoiselle Voland, had heard Mrs. Aphra Behn's books read
+ aloud for the amusement of large circles, consisting of the first and
+ most creditable society in London. We think of Swift, in an earlier
+ period of the century, enclosing to Stella some recklessly gross
+ verses of his own upon Bolingbroke, and habitually writing to fine
+ ladies in a way that Falstaff might have thought too bad for Doll
+ Tearsheet. In saying that these coarse impurities are only points of
+ manners, we are as far as possible from meaning that they are on that
+ account unimportant. But it is childish to waste our time in
+ censorious judgment on the individual who does no worse than represent
+ a ruling type. We can only note the difference and pass on.</p>
+
+ <p>A characteristic trait in this rural life is Diderot's passion for
+ high winds. They gave him a transport, and to hear the storm at night,
+ tossing the trees, drenching the ground with rain, and filling the air
+ with the bass of its hoarse ground-tones, was one of his keenest
+ delights.<a name="FNanchor_203_203" id="FNanchor_203_203"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_203_203" class="fnanchor">[203]</a> Yet Diderot was not of
+ those in whom the feeling for the great effects of nature has
+ something of savagery. He was above all things human, and the human
+ lot was the central source of his innermost meditations. In the midst
+ of gossip is constantly interpolated some passage of fine reflection
+ on life—reflection as sincere, as real, coming as spontaneously from
+ the writer's inmost mood and genuine sentiment, as little tainted
+ either by affectation or by commonness, as ever passed through the
+ mind of a man. Some of these are too characteristic to be omitted, and
+ there is so little of what is exquisite in the flavour of Diderot's
+ style, that he perhaps suffers less from the clumsiness of translation
+ than writers of finer colour or more stirring melody. One of these
+ passages is as follows:—</p>
+
+ <p>"The last news from Paris has made the Baron anxious, as he has
+ considerable sums in royal securities. He said to his wife: 'Listen,
+ my friend; if this is going on, I put down the carriage, I buy you a
+ good cloak and a good parasol, and for the rest of our days we will
+ bless the minister for ridding us of horses, lackeys, coachmen,
+ ladies'-maids, cooks, great dinner-parties, false friends, tiresome
+ bores, and all the other privileges of opulence.' And for my part I
+ began to think, that for a man without a wife or child, or any of
+ those connections that make us long for money, and never leave any
+ superfluity, it would be almost indifferent whether he were poor or
+ rich. This paradox comes of the equality that I discover among various
+ conditions of life, and in the little difference that I allow, in
+ point of happiness, between the master of the house and the
+ hall-porter. If I am sound in mind and body, if I have worth and a
+ pure conscience, if I know the true from the false, if I avoid evil
+ and do good, if I feel the dignity of my being, if nothing lowers me
+ in my own eyes, then people may call me what they will, <i>My
+ Lord,</i> or <i>Sirrah</i>. To do what is good, to know what is
+ true—that is what distinguishes one man from another; the rest is
+ nothing. The duration of life is so short, its true needs are so
+ narrow, and when we go away, it all matters so little whether we have
+ been somebody or nobody. When the end comes, all that you want is a
+ sorry piece of canvas and four deal boards. In the morning I hear the
+ labourers under my window. Scarce has the day dawned before they are
+ at work with spade and barrow, delving and wheeling. They munch a
+ crust of black bread; they quench their thirst at the flowing stream;
+ at noon they snatch an hour of sleep on the hard ground. They are
+ cheerful; they sing as they work; they exchange their good broad
+ pleasantries with one another; they shout with laughter. At sundown
+ they go home to find their children naked round a smoke-blackened
+ hearth, a woman hideous and dirty, and their lot is neither worse nor
+ better than mine. I came down from my room in bad spirits; I heard
+ talk about the public misery; I sat down to a table full of good cheer
+ without an appetite; I had a stomach overloaded with the dainties of
+ the day before; I grasped a stick and set out for a walk to find
+ relief; I returned to play cards, and cheat the heavy-weighing hours.
+ I had a friend of whom I could not hear; I was far from a woman whom I
+ sighed for. Troubles in the country, troubles in the town, troubles
+ everywhere. He who knows not trouble is not to be counted among the
+ children of men. All gets paid off in time; the good by the evil, evil
+ by good, and life is naught. Perhaps to-morrow night or Monday morning
+ we may go to pass a day in town; so I shall see the woman for whom I
+ sighed, and recover the man of whom I could not hear. But I shall lose
+ them the next day; and the more I feel the happiness of being with
+ them, the worse I shall suffer at parting. That is the way that all
+ things go. Turn and turn and turn again; there is ever a crumpled
+ rose-leaf to vex you."<a name="FNanchor_204_204" id=
+ "FNanchor_204_204"></a><a href="#Footnote_204_204" class=
+ "fnanchor">[204]</a></p>
+
+ <p>It is not often that we find such active benevolence as Diderot's,
+ in conjunction with such a vein of philosophy as follows:—</p>
+
+ <p>"Ah, what a fine comedy this world would be, if only one had not to
+ play a part in it; if one existed, for instance, in some point of
+ space, in that interval of the celestial orbs where the gods of
+ Epicurus slumber, far, far away, whence one could see this globe, on
+ which we strut so big, about the size of a pumpkin, and whence one
+ could watch all the airs and tricks of that two-footed mite who calls
+ itself man. I would fain only look at the scenes of life in reduced
+ size, so that those which are stamped with atrocity may be brought
+ down to an inch in space, and to actors half a line high. But how
+ bizarre, that our sense of revolt against injustice is in the ratio of
+ the space and the mass. I am furious if a large animal unjustly
+ attacks another. I feel nothing at all if it is two atoms that tear
+ and rend. How our senses affect our morality. There is a fine text for
+ philosophising!"<a name="FNanchor_205_205" id=
+ "FNanchor_205_205"></a><a href="#Footnote_205_205" class=
+ "fnanchor">[205]</a></p>
+
+ <p>"What I see every day of physic and physicians does not much
+ heighten my opinion of them. To come into the world in imbecility, in
+ the midst of anguish and cries; to be the toy of ignorance, of error,
+ of necessity, of sickness, of malice, of all passions; to return step
+ by step to that imbecility whence one sprang; from the moment when we
+ lisp our first words, down to the moment when we mumble the words of
+ our dotage, to live among rascals and charlatans of every kind; to lie
+ expiring between a man who feels your pulse, and another man who frets
+ and wearies your head; not to know whence one comes, nor why one has
+ come, nor whither one is going—that is what we call the greatest gift
+ of our parents and of nature—human life."<a name="FNanchor_206_206"
+ id="FNanchor_206_206"></a><a href="#Footnote_206_206" class=
+ "fnanchor">[206]</a></p>
+
+ <p>These sombre meditations hardly represent Diderot's habitual vein;
+ they are rather a reaction and a relief from the busy intensity with
+ which he watches the scene, and is constantly putting interrogatories
+ to human life, as day by day its motley circumstance passes before his
+ eyes. We should scarcely suspect from his frequent repetitions of the
+ mournful eternal chorus of the nullity of man and the vanity of all
+ the things that are under the sun, how alert a watch he kept on
+ incident and character, with what keen and open ear he listened for
+ any curious note of pain, or voice of fine emotion, or odd perversity
+ of fate. All this he does, not in the hard temper of a Balzac, not
+ with the calm or pride of a Goethe, but with an overflowing fulness of
+ spontaneous and uncontrollable sympathy. He is a sentimentalist in the
+ rationalistic century, not with the sentimentalism of misanthropy,
+ such as fired or soured Rousseau, but social, large-hearted,
+ many-sided, careless of the wise rigours of morality. He is never
+ callous nor neutral; on the contrary, he is always approving or
+ disapproving, but not from the standards of the ethical text-books.
+ The casuistry of feeling is of everlasting interest to him, and he is
+ never tired of inventing imaginary cases, or pondering real ones, in
+ which pliant feeling is invoked against the narrowness of duty. These
+ are mostly in a kind of matter which modern taste hardly allows us to
+ reproduce; nor, after all, is there much to be gained by turning the
+ sanctities of human relationship, with all their immeasurable bliss,
+ their immeasurable woe, into the playthings of an idle dialectic. It
+ is pleasanter, and for us English not less instructive than pleasant,
+ to see this dreaming, restless, thrice ingenious spirit, half Titan of
+ the skies, half gnome of the lower earth, entering joyously or
+ pitifully into the simple charm and natural tenderness of life as it
+ comes and passes. Nothing delights him more than to hear or to tell
+ such a story as this of Madame D'Epinay. She had given a small lad
+ eighteen sous for a day's work. At night he went home without a
+ farthing. When his mother asked him whether they had given him nothing
+ for his work, he said No. The mother found out that this was untrue,
+ and insisted on knowing what had become of the eighteen sous. The poor
+ little creature had given them to an alehouse-keeper, where his father
+ had been drinking all day; and so he had spared the worthy man a rough
+ scene with his wife when he got home.<a name="FNanchor_207_207" id=
+ "FNanchor_207_207"></a><a href="#Footnote_207_207" class=
+ "fnanchor">[207]</a></p>
+
+ <p>From the pathos of kindly youth to the grace of lovable age the
+ step is not far. "To-day I have dined with a charming woman, who is
+ only eighty years old. She is full of health and cheerfulness; her
+ soul is still all gentleness and tenderness. She talks of love and
+ friendship with the fire and sensibility of a girl of twenty. There
+ were three men of us at table with her; she said to us, 'My friends, a
+ delicate conversation, a true and passionate look, a tear, a touched
+ expression, those are the good things of the world; as for all
+ besides, it is hardly worth talking of. There are certain things that
+ were said to me when I was young, and that I remember to this day, and
+ any one of those words is to be preferred before ten glorious deeds:
+ by my faith, I believe if I heard them even now, my old heart would
+ beat the quicker.' 'Madame, the reason is that your heart has grown no
+ older.' 'No, my son, you are right; it is as young as ever. It is not
+ for having kept me alive so long that I thank God, but for having kept
+ me kind-hearted, gentle, and full of feeling.'"<a name=
+ "FNanchor_208_208" id="FNanchor_208_208"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_208_208" class="fnanchor">[208]</a> All this was after</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot's own heart, and he declares such a conversation to be
+ worth more than all the hours of talk on politics and philosophy that
+ he had been having a few days before with some English friends. We may
+ understand how, as we shall presently see, a member of a society that
+ could relish the beauty of such a scene, would be likely to think
+ Englishmen hard, surly, and cheerless.</p>
+
+ <p>His letters constantly offer us sensible and imaginative
+ reflection. He amused himself in some country village by talking to an
+ old man of eighty. "I love children and old men; the latter seem to me
+ like some singular creatures that have been spared by caprice of
+ fate." He meets some old schoolfellows at Langres, nearly all the rest
+ having gone: "Well, there are two things that warn us of our end, and
+ set us musing—old ruins, and the short duration of those who began
+ life with us." He is taken by a host over-devoted to such joys, to
+ walk among dung-heaps. "After all," he says, "it ought not to offend
+ one's sense. To an honest nose that has preserved its natural
+ innocence, 'tis not a goat, but a bemusked and ambre-scented woman,
+ who smelleth ill."</p>
+
+ <p>"When I compare our friendships to our antipathies, I find that the
+ first are thin, small, pinched; we know how to hate, but we do not
+ know how to love."</p>
+
+ <p>"A poet who becomes idle, does excellently well to be idle; he
+ ought to be sure that it is not industry that fails, but that his gift
+ is departing from him."</p>
+
+ <p>"Comfort the miserable; that is the true way to console yourself
+ for my absence. I recollect saying to the Baron, when he lost his
+ first wife, and was sure that there was not another day's happiness
+ left for him in this world, 'Hasten out of doors, seek out the
+ wretched, console them, and then you will pity yourself, if you
+ dare.'"<a name="FNanchor_209_209" id="FNanchor_209_209"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_209_209" class="fnanchor">[209]</a></p>
+
+ <p>"An infinitude of tyrannical things interpose between us and the
+ duties of love and friendship; and we do nothing aright. A man is
+ neither free for his ambition, nor free for his taste, nor free for
+ his passion. And so we all live discontented with ourselves. One of
+ the great inconveniences of the state of society is the multitude of
+ our occupations and, above all, the levity with which we make
+ engagements to dispose of all our future happiness. We marry, we go
+ into business, we have children, all before we have common
+ sense."<a name="FNanchor_210_210" id="FNanchor_210_210"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_210_210" class="fnanchor">[210]</a></p>
+
+ <p>After some equivocal speculations as to the conduct of a woman who,
+ by the surrender of herself for a quarter of an hour to the desires of
+ a powerful minister, wins an appointment for her husband and bread for
+ her six children, he exclaims: "In truth, I think Nature heeds neither
+ good nor evil; she is wholly wrapped up in two objects, the
+ preservation of the individual and the propagation of the
+ species."<a name="FNanchor_211_211" id="FNanchor_211_211"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_211_211" class="fnanchor">[211]</a> True; but the moral
+ distinction between right and wrong is so much wrung from the forces
+ that Diderot here calls Nature.</p>
+
+ <p>The intellectual excitement in which he lived and the energy with
+ which he promoted it, sought relief either in calm or else in the play
+ of sensibility. "A delicious repose," he writes in one of his most
+ harassed moments, "a sweet book to read, a walk in some open and
+ solitary spot, a conversation in which one discloses all one's heart,
+ a strong emotion that brings the tears to one's eyes and makes the
+ heart beat faster, whether it comes of some tale of generous action,
+ or of a sentiment of tenderness, of health, of gaiety, of liberty, of
+ indolence—there is the true happiness, nor shall I ever know any
+ other."</p>
+
+ <p><i>A Point in Rhetoric.</i>—"Towards six in the evening the party
+ broke up. I remained alone with D., and as we were talking about the
+ Eloges on Descartes that had been sent in to the Academy, I made two
+ remarks that pleased him upon eloquence. One, that it is a mistake to
+ try to stir the passions before convincing the reason, and that the
+ pathetic remains without effect, when it is not prepared by the
+ syllogism. Second, that after the orator had touched me keenly, I
+ could not endure that he should break in upon this melting of the soul
+ with some violent stroke: that the pathetic insists on being followed
+ by something moderate, weak, vague, that should leave room for no
+ contention on my part."<a name="FNanchor_212_212" id=
+ "FNanchor_212_212"></a><a href="#Footnote_212_212" class=
+ "fnanchor">[212]</a></p>
+
+ <p><i>Holbach's Impressions of England.</i>—"The Baron has returned
+ from England. He started with the pleasantest anticipations, he had a
+ most agreeable reception, he had excellent health, and yet he has
+ returned out of humour and discontented; discontented with the
+ country, which he found neither as populous nor as well cultivated as
+ people say; discontented with the buildings, that are nearly all
+ bizarre and Gothic; with the gardens, where the affectation of
+ imitating nature is worse than the monotonous symmetry of art; with
+ the taste that heaps up in the palaces what is first-rate, what is
+ good, what is bad, what is detestable, all pell-mell. He is disgusted
+ at the amusements, which have the air of religious ceremonies; with
+ the men, on whose countenances you never see confidence, friendship,
+ gaiety, sociability, but on every face the inscription, <i>'What is
+ there in common between me and you?'</i>; disgusted with the great
+ people, who are gloomy, cold, proud, haughty, and vain; and with the
+ small people, who are hard, insolent, and barbarous. The only thing
+ that I have heard him praise is the facility of travel: he says there
+ is not a village, even on a cross-road, where you do not find four or
+ five post-chaises and a score of horses ready to start.... There is no
+ public education. The colleges—sumptuous buildings—palaces to be
+ compared to the Tuileries, are occupied by rich idlers, who sleep and
+ get drunk one part of the day, and the rest they spend in training,
+ clumsily enough, a parcel of uncouth lads to be clergymen.... In the
+ fine places that have been built for public amusements, you could hear
+ a mouse run. A hundred stiff and silent women walk round and round an
+ orchestra that is set up in the middle. The Baron compares these
+ circuits to the seven processions of the Egyptians round the tomb of
+ Osiris. A charming <i>mot</i> of my good friend Garrick, is that
+ London is good for the English, but Paris is good for all the
+ world.... There is a great mania for conversions and missionaries. Mr.
+ Hume told me a story which will let you know what to think of these
+ pretended conversions of cannibals and Hurons. A minister thought he
+ had done a great stroke in this line; he had the vanity to wish to
+ show his proselyte, and brought him to London. They question his
+ little Huron, and he answers to perfection. They take him to church,
+ and administer the sacrament, where, as you know, the communion is in
+ both kinds. Afterwards, the minister says to him, 'Well, my son, do
+ you not feel yourself more animated with the love of God? Does not the
+ grace of the sacrament work within you? Is not all your soul warmed?'
+ 'Yes,' says the Huron: 'the wine does one good, but I think it would
+ have done still better if it had been brandy.'"<a name=
+ "FNanchor_213_213" id="FNanchor_213_213"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_213_213" class="fnanchor">[213]</a></p>
+
+ <p><i>Two Cases of Conscience</i>.—"The curé said that unhappy lovers
+ always talked about dying, but that it was very rare to find one who
+ kept his word; still he had seen one case. It was that of a young man
+ of family, called Soulpse. He fell in love with a young lady of beauty
+ and of good character, but without money, and belonging to a
+ dishonoured family. Her father was in the galleys for forgery. The
+ young man, who foresaw all the opposition, and all the good grounds
+ for opposition, that he would have to encounter among his family, did
+ all that he could to cure himself of his passion; but when he was
+ assured of the uselessness of his efforts, he plucked up courage to
+ open the matter to his parents, who wearied themselves with
+ remonstrances. Our lover suddenly stopped them short, saying, 'I know
+ all that you have to say against me; I cannot disapprove of your
+ reasons, which I should be the first to urge against my own son, if I
+ had one. But consider whether you would rather have me dead or badly
+ married; for it is certain that if I do not marry the woman that I
+ love, I shall die of it.' They treated this speech as it deserved; the
+ result does not affect that. The young man fell sick, faded from day
+ to day, and died. 'But, Curé,' said I, 'in the place of the father,
+ what would you have done?' 'I would have called my son; I would have
+ said: Soulpse has been your name hitherto; never forget that it is
+ yours no more; and call yourself by what other name you please. Here
+ is your lawful share of our property; marry the woman you love, so far
+ from here that I may never hear speak of you again, and God bless you.
+ 'For my part,' said old Madame D'Esclavelles, 'if I had been the
+ mother of the young madman, I would have done exactly as his father
+ did, and let him die.' And upon this there was a tremendous division
+ of opinion, and an uproar that made the room ring again.</p>
+
+ <p>"The dispute lasted a long time, and would be going on now if the
+ cure had not broken it off by putting to us another case. A young
+ priest, discontented with his profession, flees to England,
+ apostatises, marries according to the law, and has children. After a
+ certain time he longs for his native country; he comes back to France
+ with his children and his wife. After that, again, he is stricken by
+ remorse; he returns to his religion, has scruples about his marriage,
+ and thinks of separating from his wife. He opens his heart to our
+ curé, who finds the case very embarrassing, and not venturing to
+ decide it, refers him to casuists and lawyers. They all decide that he
+ cannot, with a sure conscience, remain with his wife. When the
+ separation, which the wife opposed with all her might, was about to be
+ legally effected—rather against the wishes of our curé—the husband
+ fell dangerously ill. When he knew that he could not recover, he said
+ to the curé: 'My friend, I wish to make public amends for my
+ backsliding, to receive the sacraments, and to die in the hospital; be
+ kind enough to have me taken there.' 'I will take care to do no such
+ thing,' the curé replied to him. 'This woman is innocent; she married
+ you according to law; she knew nothing of the obstacles that existed.
+ And these children, what share have they in your sin? You are the only
+ wrongdoer, and it is they who are to be punished! Your wife will be
+ disgraced, your children will be declared illegitimate, and what is
+ the gain of it all?' And the good curé stuck to his text. He confessed
+ his man, the illness grew worse, he administered the last sacraments.
+ The man died, and his wife and children remained in possession of the
+ titles they had. We all approved the curé's wisdom, and Grimm insisted
+ on having his portrait taken."<a name="FNanchor_214_214" id=
+ "FNanchor_214_214"></a><a href="#Footnote_214_214" class=
+ "fnanchor">[214]</a></p>
+
+ <p><i>Chinese Superiority</i>.—-"Apropos of the Chinese, do you know
+ that with them nobility ascends, and descends never? It is the
+ children who ennoble their ancestors, and not the ancestors the
+ children. And upon my word that is most sensible. We are greater
+ poets, greater philosophers, greater orators, greater architects,
+ greater astronomers, greater geometers, than these good people; but
+ they understand better than we the science of good sense and virtue;
+ and if peradventure that science should happen to be the first of all
+ sciences, they would be right in saying that they have two eyes and we
+ have only one, and all the rest of the world is blind."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_215_215" id="FNanchor_215_215"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_215_215" class="fnanchor">[215]</a></p>
+
+ <p><i>Why Women write good Letters</i>.—"She writes admirably, really
+ admirably. That is because good style is in the heart; and that is why
+ so many women talk and write like angels without ever having learnt
+ either to talk or to write, and why so many pedants will both talk and
+ write ill all the days of their life, though they were never weary of
+ studying,—only without learning."<a name="FNanchor_216_216" id=
+ "FNanchor_216_216"></a><a href="#Footnote_216_216" class=
+ "fnanchor">[216]</a></p>
+
+ <p>"A little adventure has just happened here that proves that all our
+ fine sermons on intolerance have as yet produced but poor fruit. A
+ young man of respectable birth, some say apprentice to an apothecary,
+ others to a grocer, took it into his head to go through a course of
+ chemistry; his master consented, on condition that he should pay for
+ board; the lad agreed. At the end of the quarter the master demanded
+ the money, and it was paid. Soon after, another demand from the
+ master; the apprentice replied that he barely owed a single quarter.
+ The master denied that the first quarter had been paid. The affair was
+ taken into court. The master is put on his oath, and swears. He had no
+ sooner perjured himself than the apprentice produced his receipt, and
+ the master was straightway fined and disgraced. He was a scoundrel who
+ deserved it, but the apprentice was a rash fellow, whose victory was
+ bought at a price dearer than life. He had received, in payment or
+ otherwise, from some colporteur, two copies of <i>Christianity
+ Unveiled</i>, and one of them he had sold to his master. The master
+ informs against him. The colporteur, his wife, and his apprentice, are
+ all three arrested, and they have just been pilloried, whipped, and
+ branded, and the apprentice condemned to nine years of the galleys,
+ the colporteur to five years, and the woman to the hospital for
+ life.... Do you see the meaning of this judgment? A colporteur brings
+ me a prohibited book. If I buy more than one copy, I am declared to be
+ encouraging unlawful trading, and exposed to a frightful prosecution.
+ You have read the <i>Man with Forty Crowns</i>,<a name=
+ "FNanchor_217_217" id="FNanchor_217_217"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_217_217" class="fnanchor">[217]</a> and will hardly be able
+ to guess why it is placed under the ban in the judgment I am telling
+ you of. It is in consequence of the profound resentment that our lords
+ and masters feel about a certain article, <i>Tyrant</i>, in the
+ <i>Philosophical Dictionary</i>. They will never forgive Voltaire for
+ saying that it was better to have to do with a single wild beast,
+ which one could avoid, than with a band of little subaltern tigers who
+ are incessantly getting between your legs.... To return to those two
+ unfortunate wretches whom they have condemned to the galleys. When
+ they come out, what will become of them? There will be nothing left
+ for them to do, save to turn highway robbers. The ignominious
+ penalties, which take away all resource from a man, are worse than the
+ capital punishment that takes away his life."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_218_218" id="FNanchor_218_218"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_218_218" class="fnanchor">[218]</a></p>
+
+ <p><i>Method and Genius: an Apologue.</i>—"There was a question
+ between Grimm and M. Le Roy of creative genius and co-ordinating
+ method. Grimm detests method; according to him, it is the pedantry of
+ letters. Those who can only arrange, would do as well to remain idle;
+ those who can only get instruction from what has been arranged, would
+ do as well to remain ignorant. What necessity is there for so many
+ people knowing anything else besides their trade? They said a great
+ many things that I don't report to you, and they would be saying
+ things still, if the Abbé Galiani had not interrupted them:</p>
+
+ <p>'My friends, I remember a fable: pray listen to it. One day, in the
+ depths of a forest, a dispute arose between a Nightingale and a
+ Cuckoo. Each prizes its own gift. What bird, said the Cuckoo, has a
+ song so easy, so simple, so natural, so measured, as mine?</p>
+
+ <p>What bird, said the Nightingale, has a song sweeter, more varied,
+ more brilliant, more touching, than mine?</p>
+
+ <p><i>The Cuckoo:</i> I say few things, but they are things of weight,
+ of order, and people retain them.</p>
+
+ <p><i>The Nightingale:</i> I love to use my voice, but I am always
+ fresh, and I never weary. I enchant the woods; the Cuckoo makes them
+ dismal. He is so attached to the lessons of his mother, that he would
+ not dare to venture a single note that he had not taken from her. Now
+ for me, I recognise no master. I laugh at rules. What comparison
+ between his pedantic method and my glorious bursts?</p>
+
+ <p>The Cuckoo tried several times to interrupt the Nightingale. But
+ nightingales always go on singing, and never listen; that is rather
+ their weakness. Ours, carried away by his ideas, followed them with
+ rapidity, without paying the least attention to the answers of his
+ rival.</p>
+
+ <p>So after some talk and counter-talk, they agreed to refer their
+ quarrel to the judgment of a third animal. But where were they to find
+ this third, equally competent and impartial? It is not so easy to find
+ a good judge. They sought on every side. As they crossed a meadow,
+ they spied an Ass, one of the gravest and most solemn that ever was
+ seen. Since the creation of the world, no ass had ever had such long
+ ears. 'Ah,' said the Cuckoo, 'our luck is excellent; our quarrel is a
+ matter of ears: here is our judge. God Almighty made him for the very
+ purpose!'</p>
+
+ <p>The Ass went on browsing. He little thought that one day he would
+ have to decide a question of music. But Providence amuses itself with
+ this and many another thing. Our two birds bow very low, compliment
+ him upon his gravity and his judgment, explain the subject of their
+ dispute, and beseech him, with all deference, to listen to their case
+ and decide.</p>
+
+ <p>But the Ass, hardly turning his heavy head and without losing a
+ single toothsome blade, makes them a sign with his ears that he is
+ hungry, and that he does not hold his court to-day. The birds persist;
+ the Ass goes on browsing. At last his hunger was appeased. There were
+ some trees planted by the edge of the meadow. 'Now, if you like,' said
+ he, 'you go there, I will follow; you shall sing, I will digest; I
+ will listen, and I'll give you my opinion.'</p>
+
+ <p>The birds instantly fly away, and perch on branches. The Ass
+ follows them with the air and the step of a chief justice crossing
+ Westminster Hall: he stretches himself flat on the ground, and says,
+ 'Begin, the court listens.'</p>
+
+ <p>Says the Cuckoo: 'My lord, there is not a word to lose. I beg of
+ you to seize carefully the character of my singing; above all things,
+ deign, my lord, to mark its artifice and its method.' Then filling its
+ throat, and flapping its wings at each note, it sang out, 'Coucou,
+ coucou, coucou, coucou, coucou, coucou.' And after having combined
+ this in every possible way, it fell silent.</p>
+
+ <p>The Nightingale, without any prelude, pours forth his voice at
+ once, launches into the most daring modulations, pursues the freshest
+ and most delicate melodies, cadences, pauses, and trills; now you
+ heard the notes murmuring at the bottom of its throat, like the ripple
+ of the brook as it loses itself among the pebbles; now you heard them
+ rising and gradually swelling and filling the air, and lingering
+ long-drawn in the skies. It was tender, glad, brilliant, pathetic; but
+ his music was not made for everybody.</p>
+
+ <p>Carried away by enthusiasm, he would be singing still; but the Ass,
+ who had already yawned more than once, stopped him, and said, 'I
+ suspect that all you have been singing there is uncommonly fine, but I
+ don't understand a word of it: it strikes me as bizarre, incoherent,
+ and confused. It may be you are more scientific than your rival; but
+ he is more methodic than you, and for my part, I'm for method.'</p>
+
+ <p>"And then the abbé, addressing M. Le Roy, and pointing to Grimm
+ with his finger: 'There,' he said, 'is the nightingale, and you the
+ cuckoo; and I am the ass, who decide in your favour. Good-night.'</p>
+
+ <p>"The abbés stories are capital, but he acts in a way that makes
+ them better still. You would have died with laughing to see him
+ stretch his neck into the air, and imitate the fine note of the
+ nightingale, then fill his throat, and take up the hoarse tone for the
+ cuckoo; and all that naturally, and without effort. He is pantomime
+ from head to foot."<a name="FNanchor_219_219" id=
+ "FNanchor_219_219"></a><a href="#Footnote_219_219" class=
+ "fnanchor">[219]</a></p>
+
+ <p><i>Conversation.</i>—"'Tis a singular thing, conversation,
+ especially when the company is tolerably large. Look at the roundabout
+ circuits we took; the dreams of a patient in delirium are not more
+ incongruous. Still, just as there is nothing absolutely unconnected in
+ the head either of a man who dreams, or of a lunatic, so all hangs
+ together in conversation; but it would often be extremely hard to find
+ the imperceptible links that have brought so many disparate ideas
+ together. A man lets fall a word which he detaches from what has gone
+ before, and what has followed in his head; another does the same, and
+ then let him catch the thread who can. A single physical quality may
+ lead the mind that is engaged upon it to an infinity of different
+ things. Take a colour—yellow, for instance; gold is yellow, silk is
+ yellow, care is yellow, bile is yellow, straw is yellow; to how many
+ other threads does not this thread answer? Madness, dreaming, the
+ rambling of conversation, all consist in passing from one object to
+ another, through the medium of some common quality."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_220_220" id="FNanchor_220_220"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_220_220" class="fnanchor">[220]</a></p>
+
+ <p><i>Annihilation.</i>—"The conversation took a serious turn. They
+ spoke of the horror that we all feel for annihilation.</p>
+
+ <p>"'Ah,' cried Father Hoop, 'be good enough to leave me out, if you
+ please. I have been too uncomfortable the first time to have any wish
+ to come back. If they would give me an immortality of bliss for a
+ single day of purgatory, I would not take it. The best that can befall
+ us is to cease to be.'</p>
+
+ <p>"This set me musing, and it seemed to me that so long as I was in
+ good health I should agree with Father Hoop; but that, at the last
+ instant, I should perhaps purchase the happiness of living again by a
+ thousand, nay, ten thousand, years of hell. Ah, my dear, if I thought
+ that I should see you again, I should soon persuade myself of what a
+ daughter once succeeded in persuading her father on his deathbed. He
+ was an old usurer; a priest had sworn to him that he would be damned
+ unless he made restitution. He resolved to comply, and calling his
+ daughter to his bedside, said to her: 'My child, you thought I should
+ leave you very rich, and so I should; but the man there insists that I
+ shall burn in hell-fire for ever, if I die without making
+ restitution.' 'You are talking nonsense, father, with your restitution
+ and your damnation,' the daughter answered; 'with your character I you
+ will not have been damned ten years, before you will be perfectly used
+ to it.'</p>
+
+ <p>"This struck him as true, and he died without making
+ restitution.</p>
+
+ <p>"And so behold us launched into a discussion on life and death, on
+ the world and its alleged Creator.</p>
+
+ <p>"Some one remarked that whether there be a God or no, it is
+ impossible to introduce that device either into nature or into a
+ discussion without darkening it.</p>
+
+ <p>"Another said that if a single supposition explained all the
+ phenomena, it would not follow from this that it is true; for who
+ knows whether the general order only allows of one reason? What, then,
+ must we think of a supposition which, so far from resolving the one
+ difficulty for the sake of which people imagined it, only makes an
+ infinity of others spring up from it?</p>
+
+ <p>"I believe, my dear, that our chat by the fireside still amuses
+ you; so I go on.</p>
+
+ <p>"Among these difficulties is one that has been proposed ever since
+ the world has been a world; 'tis that men suffer without having
+ deserved suffering. There has been no answer to it yet. 'Tis the
+ incompatibility of physical and moral evil with the nature of the
+ Eternal Being. This is how the dilemma is put: it is either impotence
+ or bad will; impotence, if he wished to hinder evil and could not; bad
+ will, if he could have hindered it and did not will it. A child would
+ understand that. It is this that has led people to imagine the fault
+ of the first father of us all, original sin, future rewards and
+ punishments, the incarnation, immortality, the two principles of the
+ Manicheans, the Ormuzd and Ahriman of the Persians, the doctrine of
+ emanations, the empire of light and darkness, metempsychosis,
+ optimism, and other absurdities that have found credit among the
+ different nations of the earth, where there is always to be found some
+ hollow vision of a dream, by way of answer to a clear, precise, and
+ definite fact.</p>
+
+ <p>"On such occasions what is the part of good sense? Why, the part
+ that we took: whatever the optimists may say, we will reply to them
+ that if the universe could not exist without sensible creatures, nor
+ sensible creatures without pain, there was nothing to do but to leave
+ chaos at peace. They had got on very well for a whole eternity without
+ any such piece of folly.</p>
+
+ <p>"The world a piece of folly! Ah, my dear, a glorious folly for all
+ that! 'Tis, according to some of the inhabitants of Malabar, one of
+ the seventy-four comedies with which the Eternal amuses himself.</p>
+
+ <p>"Leibnitz, the founder of optimism, tells somewhere how there was
+ in the Temple of Memphis a high pyramid of globes placed one above the
+ others; how a priest, being asked by a traveller about this pyramid
+ and its globes, made answer that these were all the possible worlds,
+ and that the most perfect of them all was at the summit; how the
+ traveller, curious to see this most perfect of all possible worlds,
+ mounted to the top of the pyramid, and the first thing that caught his
+ eyes, as they turned towards the globe at the summit, was Tarquin
+ outraging Lucretia."<a name="FNanchor_221_221" id=
+ "FNanchor_221_221"></a><a href="#Footnote_221_221" class=
+ "fnanchor">[221]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Almost every letter reminds us that we are in the very height of
+ the disputing, arguing, rationalistic century. Diderot delighted in
+ this kind of argument, as Socrates or Dr. Johnson delighted in it. He
+ was above all others the archetype and representative of the passion
+ for moralising, analysing, and philosophising which made the epoch
+ what it was; but the rest of the world was all in the same vein. If he
+ came to Paris in a coach from the country, he found a young lady in
+ it, eager to demonstrate that serious passions are nowadays merely
+ ridiculous; that people only promise themselves pleasure, which they
+ find or not, as the case may be; that thus they spare themselves all
+ the broken oaths of old days. "I took the liberty of saying that I was
+ still a man of those old days. '<i>So much the worse for you</i>,' she
+ said, '<i>you either deceive or are deceived, and one is as bad as the
+ other</i>.'"<a name="FNanchor_222_222" id=
+ "FNanchor_222_222"></a><a href="#Footnote_222_222" class=
+ "fnanchor">[222]</a> If Grimm and Madame d'Epinay and he were
+ together, they discussed ethics from morning to night; Diderot always
+ on the side of the view that made most for the dignity and worth of
+ human nature. Grimm is described on one of these occasions as having
+ rather displeased Madame d'Epinay: "He was not sufficiently ready to
+ disapprove the remark of a man of our acquaintance, who said that it
+ was right to observe the most scrupulous probity with one's friends,
+ but that it was mere dupery to treat other people better than they
+ would treat us. We maintained, she and I, that it was right and
+ necessary to be honest and good with all the world without
+ distinction."<a name="FNanchor_223_223" id=
+ "FNanchor_223_223"></a><a href="#Footnote_223_223" class=
+ "fnanchor">[223]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Here is another picture of discussion, with an introduction that is
+ thoroughly characteristic of Diderot's temper:</p>
+
+ <p>"This man looks at the human race only on its dark side. He does
+ not believe in virtuous actions; he disparages them, and denies them.
+ If he tells a story, it is always about something scandalous and
+ abominable. I have just told you of the two women of my acquaintance,
+ of whom he took occasion to speak as ill as he could to Madame Le
+ Gendre. They have their defects, no doubt; but they have also their
+ good qualities. Why be silent about the good qualities, and only pick
+ out the defects? There is in all that a kind of envy that wounds me—me
+ who read men as I read authors, and who never burden my memory except
+ with things that are good to know and good to imitate. The
+ conversation between Suard and Madame Le Gendre had been very
+ vivacious. They sought the reasons why persons of sensibility were so
+ readily, so strongly, so deliciously moved at the story of a good
+ action. Suard maintained that it was due to a sixth sense that nature
+ had endowed us with, to judge the good and the beautiful. They pressed
+ to know what I thought of it. I answered that this sixth sense was a
+ chimæra; that all was the result of experience in us; that we learnt
+ from our earliest infancy what it was in our instinct to hide or to
+ show. When the motives of our actions, our judgments, our
+ demonstrations, are present to us, we have what is called science;
+ when they are not present to our memory, we have only what is called
+ taste, instinct, and tact. The reasons for showing ourselves sensible
+ to the recital of good actions are numberless: we reveal a quality
+ that is worthy of infinite esteem; we promise to others our esteem, if
+ ever they deserve it by any uncommon or worthy piece of conduct....
+ Independently of all these views of interest, we have a notion of
+ order, and a taste for order, which we cannot resist, and which drags
+ us along in spite of ourselves. Every fine action implies sacrifice;
+ and it is impossible for us not to pay our homage to
+ self-sacrifice"—and so forth.<a name="FNanchor_224_224" id=
+ "FNanchor_224_224"></a><a href="#Footnote_224_224" class=
+ "fnanchor">[224]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Alas, all these endless debates and dialogues lacked the
+ inspiration and the charm with which the genius of a Plato could adorn
+ the narrowest quibble between Socrates and a Sophist. "Diderot," said
+ Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, "is an extraordinary man; he is out of his
+ place in society; he was meant for the chief of a sect, a Greek
+ philosopher, instructing youth. He pleases me greatly, but his manner
+ does not touch my soul."<a name="FNanchor_225_225" id=
+ "FNanchor_225_225"></a><a href="#Footnote_225_225" class=
+ "fnanchor">[225]</a> And we understand this. People disputed what
+ virtue is, but the dispute failed in that undefined spirit which makes
+ men love and adore virtue. Goodness is surrounded with no spacious
+ beauty, it is clothed with none of the high associations of
+ spontaneous piety. The discussion seems close, stifling, and airless.
+ Yet ages of loftier speech and greater spirituality have not always
+ been so favourable to the affections or to the attachments of life. In
+ amiability that society has never been surpassed; in sincerity of
+ mutual sympathy and kindliness of mutual regard. The common
+ irregularity of morals was seen to be perfectly compatible not merely
+ with a desire to please, but with an honest anxiety to serve.</p>
+
+ <p>Of the thorough excellence of Diderot's heart, of his friendliness
+ and unwearied helpfulness, time would fail us to tell. Men's
+ conceptions of friendship differ as widely as their conceptions of
+ other things. Some look to friendship for absolute exemption from all
+ criticism, and for a mutual admiration without limit or conditions.
+ Others mistake it for the right of excessive criticism, in season and
+ out of season.</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot was content to take friendship as the right, the duty, or
+ the privilege of rendering services, without thought of requiring
+ either them, or gratitude for them, back in return. This we must
+ confess to be rare. No man that ever lived showed more sterling
+ interest in furthering the affairs of others around him. He seemed to
+ admit every claim on his time, his purse, and his talents. A stranger
+ called upon him one day, and begged Diderot to write for him a puffing
+ advertisement of a new pomatum. Diderot with a laugh sat down and
+ wrote what was wanted. The graver occasions of life found him no less
+ ready. Damilaville lost one of his children, and his wife was
+ inconsolable. It was Diderot who was summoned, and who cheerfully went
+ for days together to soothe and divert her mind. For his correspondent
+ and for us he makes the tedium of his story beautiful by recalling the
+ fine saying of a grief-stricken woman in Metastasio, when they tried
+ to console her by the example of Abraham, who was ready even to slay
+ his son at the command of God: <i>Ah, God would never have given such
+ an order to his mother!</i></p>
+
+ <p>The abbé Le Monnier wrote the worst verses that ever were read, a
+ play that was instantly damned, and a translation of Terence that came
+ into the world dead. But bad writers are always the most shameless
+ intruders on the time of good critics, and we find Diderot willingly
+ spending hours over the abbé's handwriting, which was as wretched as
+ what he wrote, and then spending hours more in offering critical
+ observations on verses that were only fit to be thrown into the fire.
+ The abbé, being absent from Paris and falling short of money,
+ requested Diderot to sell for him his copy of the Encyclopædia. "I
+ have sold your Encyclopædia," said Diderot, "but did not get so much
+ as I expected, for the rumour spread abroad by those scoundrels of
+ Swiss booksellers, that they were going to issue a revised edition,
+ has done us some harm. Send for the nine hundred and fifty livres
+ (about £40) that belong to you, and if that is not enough for your
+ expenses, besides the drawer that holds your money is another that
+ holds mine. I don't know how much there is, but I will count it all at
+ your disposal."<a name="FNanchor_226_226" id=
+ "FNanchor_226_226"></a><a href="#Footnote_226_226" class=
+ "fnanchor">[226]</a></p>
+
+ <p>One Jodin, again, was a literary hack who had been employed on the
+ Encyclopædia. He died, leaving a foolish and extravagant widow, and a
+ perverse and violent daughter. The latter went on to the stage, and
+ Diderot took as much trouble in advising her, in seeking appointments
+ for her, in executing her commissions, in investing her earnings, in
+ dealing with her relatives, as if he had been her own father. If his
+ counsels on her art are admirable, there is something that moves us
+ with more than admiration in the good sense, the right feeling, the
+ worthiness of his counsels on conduct. And Diderot did not merely
+ moralise at large. All that he says is real, pointed, and apt for
+ circumstance and person. The petulant damsel to whom they were
+ addressed would not be likely to yawn over the sharp remonstrances,
+ the vigorous plain speaking, the downright honesty and visible
+ sincerity of his friendliness. It appears that she had sense enough
+ not to be offended with the frankness of her father's old employer,
+ for after he has plainly told her that she is violent, rude, vain, and
+ not always too truthful, she still writes to him from Warsaw, from
+ Dresden, from Bordeaux, praying him to procure a certain bracelet for
+ her, to arrange her mother's affairs, to find a good investment for
+ twelve thousand francs. When the mother was in the depths of
+ indigence, Diderot insisted that she should take her meals at his own
+ table. And all this for no other reason than that the troublesome pair
+ had been thrown in his way by the chance of human circumstance, and
+ needed help which he was able, not without sacrifice, to give.
+ Mademoiselle Jodin was hardly worthy of so good a friend. Her parents
+ were Protestants, and as she was a convert, she enjoyed a pension of
+ some eight pounds a year. That did not prevent her from one day
+ indulging in some too sprightly sallies, as the host was carried along
+ the street. For this she was put into prison, and that is our last
+ glimpse of the light creature.<a name="FNanchor_227_227" id=
+ "FNanchor_227_227"></a><a href="#Footnote_227_227" class=
+ "fnanchor">[227]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Men knew how to be as wrong-headed and as graceless as women. We
+ have already mentioned the name of Landois in connection with
+ Diderot's article on Liberty. Landois seems to have been a marvel of
+ unreasonableness, but he was a needy man of letters, and that was
+ enough to make Diderot ready to bear with him and to succour him. He
+ wound up an epistle abounding, after the manner of the worthless
+ failures of the world, in reproaches and grievances against his
+ benefactor, with a cool request about a manuscript that was full of
+ dangerous matter. "Why, that," replied Diderot, "is a work that might
+ well be the ruin of me! And it is after you have on two separate
+ occasions charged me with the most atrocious and deliberate offences
+ towards you, that you now propose that I should revise and print your
+ work! You know that I have a wife and child, that I am a marked man,
+ that you are putting me into the class of hardened offenders; never
+ mind, you don't think of one of these things. You take me for an
+ imbecile, or else you are one. But you are no imbecile.... I see
+ through men's designs, and often enough I lend myself to them, without
+ deigning to disabuse them as to the stupidity which they impute to me.
+ It is enough if I perceive in their design some great service for
+ them, and not an excess of inconvenience for myself. It is not I who
+ am the fool, so often as people take me for one." Diderot then seems
+ half to forget to whom he is writing and pours out what reads like a
+ long soliloquy on morals, conduct, and the philosophy of life. He
+ insists that man, with all his high-flying freedom of will, is but a
+ little link in a great chain of events. He is a creature to be
+ modified from without; hence the good effects of example, discourse,
+ education, pleasures, pains, greatness, misery. Hence a sort of
+ philosophy of commiseration, which attaches us strongly to the good,
+ and irritates us no more against the bad than against a wind-storm
+ that fills our eyes with dust. If you adopt such principles as these,
+ they will reconcile you with others and yourself; you will neither
+ praise nor blame yourself for what you are. To reproach others with
+ nothing, to repent yourself of nothing—these are the two first steps
+ towards wisdom; this is the philosophy that reconciles us with the
+ human race and with life.<a name="FNanchor_228_228" id=
+ "FNanchor_228_228"></a><a href="#Footnote_228_228" class=
+ "fnanchor">[228]</a></p>
+
+ <p>When he was in the very midst of all the toil and strife that the
+ Encyclopædia brought upon him, he could not refuse to spend three
+ whole days in working like a galley-slave at an account of an
+ important discovery that had been made by some worthy people with whom
+ he was acquainted slightly. "But while I was busy about their affairs,
+ my own are at a standstill. I write to you from Le Breton's, with a
+ mass of uncorrected proofs before me, and the printers crying out for
+ them. Still Grimm must be right, when he says that time is not a thing
+ of which we are free to dispose at our own fancy; that we owe it first
+ and foremost to our friends, our relations, our daily duties; and that
+ in the lavish profusion of our time on people who are indifferent,
+ there is nothing less than vice."<a name="FNanchor_229_229" id=
+ "FNanchor_229_229"></a><a href="#Footnote_229_229" class=
+ "fnanchor">[229]</a> Yet in spite of Grimm's most just remonstrance,
+ the lavish profusion always went on as before.</p>
+
+ <p>There was one man, and only one man, for whose perverse and
+ intractable spirit Diderot's most friendly patience, helpfulness, and
+ devotion, were no match. I have already, in dealing with
+ Rousseau,<a name="FNanchor_230_230" id="FNanchor_230_230"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_230_230" class="fnanchor">[230]</a> said as much of the
+ quarrel which he picked with Diderot as the matter requires, and it
+ would be superfluous to go over the ground again from another side.
+ Whether we listen to Rousseau's story or to Diderot's story, our
+ judgment on what happened remains unchanged. We have already seen how
+ warm and close an intimacy subsisted between them in the days when
+ Diderot was a prisoner at Vincennes (1749). When Rousseau made up his
+ mind to leave Paris and turn hermit (1756), there was a loud outcry
+ from the social group at Holbach's. They said to him, in the least
+ theological dialect of their day, what Sir Walter Scott had said to
+ Ballantyne when Ballantyne thought of leaving Edinburgh, that, "when
+ our Saviour himself was to be led into temptation, the first thing the
+ Devil thought of was to get him into the wilderness." Diderot
+ remonstrated rather more loudly than Rousseau's other friends, but
+ there was no breach, and even no coolness. What sort of humours were
+ bred by solitude in Rousseau's wayward mind we know, and the
+ Confessions tell us how for a year and a half he was silently brooding
+ over fancied slights and perhaps real pieces of heedlessness. Grimm,
+ who was Diderot's closest friend next to Mademoiselle Voland, despised
+ Rousseau, and Rousseau detested Grimm. "Grimm," he one day said to a
+ disciple, "is the only man whom I have ever been able to hate." Madame
+ d'Epinay was compelled to go to Geneva for her health, and Grimm
+ easily persuaded Diderot that Rousseau was bound by all the ties of
+ gratitude to accompany his benefactress on the expedition. Diderot
+ wrote to the hermit a very strong letter to this effect: it made
+ Rousseau furious. He declined the urgent counsel, he quarrelled
+ outright and violently with Grimm, and after an angry and confusing
+ interview with Diderot, all intercourse ceased with him also. "That
+ man," wrote Diderot, on the evening of this, their last interview,
+ "intrudes into my work; he fills me with trouble, and I feel as if I
+ were haunted by a damned soul at my side. May I never see him more; he
+ would make me believe in devils and hell."<a name="FNanchor_231_231"
+ id="FNanchor_231_231"></a><a href="#Footnote_231_231" class=
+ "fnanchor">[231]</a> And writing afterwards to some friend at Geneva,
+ he recalls the days when he used to pour out the talk of intimacy
+ "with the man who has buried himself at the bottom of a wood, where
+ his soul has been soured and his moral nature has been corrupted. Yet
+ how I pity him! Imagine that I used to love him, that I remember those
+ old days of friendship, and that I see him now with crime on one side
+ and remorse on the other, with deep waters in front of him. He will
+ many a time be the torment of my thought; our common friends have
+ judged between him and me; I have kept them all, and to him there
+ remains not one."<a name="FNanchor_232_232" id=
+ "FNanchor_232_232"></a><a href="#Footnote_232_232" class=
+ "fnanchor">[232]</a> It was not in Diderot's nature to bear malice,
+ and when eight years later Rousseau passed through Paris on his
+ ill-starred way to England and the</p>
+
+ <p>Derbyshire hills, Diderot described the great pleasure that a visit
+ from Rousseau would give to him. "Ah, I do well," he says, "not to let
+ the access to my heart be too easy; when anybody has once found a
+ place in it, he does not leave it without making a grievous rent; 'tis
+ a wound that can never be thoroughly cauterised."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_233_233" id="FNanchor_233_233"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_233_233" class="fnanchor">[233]</a></p>
+
+ <p>It is needless to remind the neutral reader that Rousseau uses
+ exactly the same kind of language about his heart. For this is the
+ worst of sentimentalism, that it is so readily bent into a
+ substitution of indulgence to oneself for upright and manly judgment
+ about others. Still we may willingly grant that in the present rupture
+ of a long friendship, it was not Diderot who was the real offender.
+ <i>Too many honest people would be in the wrong</i>, he most truly
+ said, <i>if Jean Jacques were in the right</i>.</p>
+
+ <p>Of Grimm, I have already said elsewhere as much as is needful to be
+ said.<a name="FNanchor_234_234" id="FNanchor_234_234"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_234_234" class="fnanchor">[234]</a> His judgment in matters
+ of conduct and character was cool and rather hard, but it was
+ generally sound. He had a keen eye for what was hollow in the
+ pretensions of the society in which he lived. Above all, he had the
+ keen eye of his countrymen for his own interest, and for the use which
+ he could make of other people. The best thing that we know in his
+ favour, is that he should have won the friendship of Diderot.
+ Diderot's attachment to Grimm seems like an exaggeration of the
+ excesses of the epoch of sentimentalism in Germany.</p>
+
+ <p>He pines for a letter from him, as he pined for letters from
+ Mademoiselle Voland. If Grimm had been absent for a few months, their
+ meeting was like a scene in a melodrama. "With what ardour we
+ enclasped one another. My heart was swimming. I could not speak a
+ word, nor could he. We embraced without speaking, and I shed tears. We
+ were not expecting him. We were all at dessert when he was announced,
+ <i>'Here is M. Grimm.'</i> '<i>M. Grimm</i>,' I exclaimed, with a loud
+ cry; and starting up, I ran to him and fell on his neck. He sat down,
+ and ate a poor meal, you may be sure. As for me, I could not open my
+ lips either to eat or to speak. He was next to me, and I kept pressing
+ his hand and gazing at him."<a name="FNanchor_235_235" id=
+ "FNanchor_235_235"></a><a href="#Footnote_235_235" class=
+ "fnanchor">[235]</a> Mademoiselle Voland appears on some occasion to
+ have compared Diderot with his friend. "No more comparison, I beseech
+ you, my good friend, between Grimm and me. I console myself for his
+ superiority by frankly recognising it. I am vain of the victory that I
+ thus gain over my self-love, and you must not deprive me of that
+ little advantage."<a name="FNanchor_236_236" id=
+ "FNanchor_236_236"></a><a href="#Footnote_236_236" class=
+ "fnanchor">[236]</a> Grimm, however, knew better than Diderot how to
+ unite German sentimentalism with a steady selfishness. "I have just
+ received from Grimm," writes good-natured Diderot, "a note that wounds
+ my too sensitive spirit. I had promised to write him a few lines on
+ the exhibition of pictures in the Salon; he writes to me that if it is
+ not ready to-morrow, it will be of no use. I will be revenged for this
+ kind of hardness, and in a way that becomes me. I worked all day
+ yesterday, and all day to-day. I shall pass the night at work, and all
+ to-morrow, and at nine o'clock he shall receive a volume of
+ manuscript."<a name="FNanchor_237_237" id=
+ "FNanchor_237_237"></a><a href="#Footnote_237_237" class=
+ "fnanchor">[237]</a> We may doubt whether his German friend would feel
+ the force of a rebuke so extremely convenient to himself.</p>
+
+ <p>While Grimm was amusing himself at Madame d'Epinay's country house,
+ Diderot was working at the literary correspondence which Grimm was
+ accustomed to send to St. Petersburg and the courts of Germany. While
+ Grimm was hunting pensions and honorary titles at Saxe-Gotha, or
+ currying favour with Frederick and waiting for gold boxes at Potsdam,
+ Diderot was labouring like any journeyman in writing on his behalf
+ accounts and reviews of the books, good, bad, and indifferent, with
+ which the Paris market teemed. When there were no new books to talk
+ about, the ingenious man, with the resource of the born journalist,
+ gave extracts from books that did not exist.<a name="FNanchor_238_238"
+ id="FNanchor_238_238"></a><a href="#Footnote_238_238" class=
+ "fnanchor">[238]</a> When we hear of Paris being the centre of
+ European intelligence and literary activity, we may understand that
+ these circular letters of Grimm and Diderot were the machinery by
+ which the light of Paris was diffused among darker lands. It is not
+ too much to say that no contemporary record so intelligent, so
+ independent, so vigorous, so complete, exists of any other remarkable
+ literary epoch.</p>
+
+ <p>The abbé Raynal, of whom we shall have more to say in a later
+ chapter, had founded this counterpart of a modern review in 1747, and
+ he sent a copy of it in manuscript once a month to anybody who cared
+ to pay three hundred francs a year. In 1753 Raynal had handed the
+ business over to Grimm, and by him it was continued until 1790, twelve
+ years beyond the life of Voltaire and of Rousseau, and six years after
+ the death of the ablest, most original, and most ungrudging of all
+ those who gave him their help.</p>
+
+ <p>An interesting episode in Diderot's life brought him into direct
+ relations with one of the two crowned patrons of the revolutionary
+ literature, who were philosophers in profession and the most arbitrary
+ of despots in their practice. Frederick the Great, whose literary
+ taste was wholly in the vein of the conventional French classic, was
+ never much interested by Diderot's writing, and felt little curiosity
+ about him. Catherine of Russia was sufficiently an admirer of the
+ Encyclopædia to be willing to serve its much-enduring builder. In
+ 1765, when the enterprise was in full course, Diderot was moved by a
+ provident anxiety about the future of his daughter. He had no dower
+ for her in case a suitor should present himself, and he had but a
+ scanty substance to leave her in case of his own death. The income of
+ the property which he inherited from his father was regularly handed
+ to his wife for the maintenance of the household. His own earnings, as
+ we have seen, were of no considerable amount. There are men of
+ letters, he wrote in 1767, to whom their industry has brought as much
+ as twenty, thirty, eighty, or even a hundred thousand francs. As for
+ himself, he thought that perhaps the fruit of his literary occupations
+ would come to about forty thousand crowns, or some five thousand
+ pounds sterling. "One could not amass wealth," he said pensively, and
+ his words are of grievous generality for the literary tribe, "but one
+ could acquire ease and comfort, if only these sums were not spread
+ over so many years, did not vanish away as they were gathered in, and
+ had not all been scattered and spent by the time that years had
+ multiplied, wants, grown more numerous, eyes grown dim, and mind
+ become blunted and worn."<a name="FNanchor_239_239" id=
+ "FNanchor_239_239"></a><a href="#Footnote_239_239" class=
+ "fnanchor">[239]</a> This was his own case. His earnings were never
+ thriftily husbanded. Diderot could not deny himself a book or an
+ engraving that struck his fancy, though he was quite willing to make a
+ present of it to any appreciative admirer the day after he had bought
+ it. He was extravagant in hiring a hackney-coach where another person
+ would have gone on foot, and not seldom the coachman stood for half a
+ day at the door, while the heedless passenger was expatiating within
+ upon truth, virtue, and the fine arts, unconscious of the passing
+ hours and the swollen reckoning. Hence, when the time came, there were
+ no savings. We have to take a man with the defects of his qualities,
+ and as Diderot would not have been Diderot if he had taken time to
+ save money, there is no more to be said.</p>
+
+ <p>When it became his duty to provide for his daughter, between 1763
+ and 1765, he resolved to sell his library. Through Grimm, Diderot's
+ position reached the ears of the Empress of Russia. Her agent was
+ instructed to buy the library at the price fixed by its possessor, and
+ Diderot received sixteen thousand livres, a sum equal to something
+ more than seven hundred pounds sterling of that day. The Empress added
+ a handsome bounty to the bargain. She requested Diderot to consider
+ himself the custodian of the new purchase on her behalf, and to
+ receive a thousand livres a year for his pains. The salary was paid
+ for fifty years in advance, and so Diderot drew at once what must have
+ seemed to him the royal sum of between two and three thousand pounds
+ sterling—a figure that would have to be trebled, or perhaps
+ quadrupled, to convey its value in the money of our own day. We may
+ wish for the honour of letters that Diderot had been able to preserve
+ his independence. But pensions were the custom of the time. Voltaire,
+ though a man of solid wealth, did not disdain an allowance from
+ Frederick the Great, and complained shrilly because it was irregularly
+ paid at the very time when he knew that Frederick was so short of
+ money that he was driven to melt his plate. D'Alembert also had his
+ pension from Berlin, and Grimm, as we have seen, picked up
+ unconsidered trifles in half of the northern courts. Frederick offered
+ an allowance to Rousseau, but that strange man, in whom so much that
+ was simple, touching, and lofty, mingled with all that was wayward and
+ perverse, declined to tax the king's strained finances.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_240_240" id="FNanchor_240_240"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_240_240" class="fnanchor">[240]</a></p>
+
+ <p>It would shed an instructive light upon authorship and the
+ characters of famous men, if we could always know the relations
+ between a writer and his booksellers. Diderot's point of view in
+ considering the great modern enginery and processes of producing and
+ selling books, was invariably, like his practice, that of a man of
+ sound common sense and sterling integrity. We have seen in the
+ previous chapter something of the difficulties of the trade in those
+ days. The booksellers were a close guild of three hundred and sixty
+ members, and the printers were limited to thirty-six. Their privileges
+ brought them little fortune. They were of the lowest credit and
+ repute, and most of them were hardly better than beggars. It was said
+ that not a dozen out of the three hundred and sixty could afford to
+ have more than one coat for his back. They were bound hand and foot by
+ vexatious rules, and their market was gradually spoiled by a band of
+ men whom they hated as interlopers, but whom the public had some
+ reason to bless. No bookseller nor printer could open an establishment
+ outside of the quarter of the University, or on the north side of the
+ bridges. The restriction, which was as old as the introduction of
+ printing into France, had its origin in the days when the visits of
+ the royal inspectors to the presses and bookshops were constant and
+ rigorous, and it saved the time of the officials to have all their
+ business close to their hand. Inasmuch, however, as people insisted on
+ having books, and as they did not always choose to be at the pains of
+ making a long journey to the region of the booksellers' shops, hawkers
+ sprang into existence. Men bought books or got them on credit from the
+ booksellers, and carried them in a bag over their shoulders to the
+ houses of likely customers, just as a peddler now carries laces and
+ calico, cheap silks and trumpory jewellery, round the country
+ villages. Even poor women filled their aprons with a few books, took
+ them across the bridges, and knocked at people's doors. This would
+ have been well enough in the eyes of the guild, if the hawkers had
+ been content to buy from the legally patented booksellers. But they
+ began secretly to turn publishers in a small way on their own account.
+ Contraband was here, as always, the natural substitute for free trade.
+ They both issued pirated editions of their own, and they became the
+ great purchasers and distributors of the pirated editions that came in
+ vast bales from Switzerland, from Holland, from the Pope's country of
+ Avignon. To their craft or courage the public owed its copies of works
+ whose circulation was forbidden by the government. The Persian Letters
+ of Montesquieu was a prohibited book, but, for all that, there were a
+ hundred editions of it before it had been published twenty years, and
+ every schoolboy could find a copy on the quays for a dozen halfpence.
+ Bayle's Thoughts on the Comet, Rousseau's Emilius and Heloïsa,
+ Helvétius's L'Esprit, and a thousand other forbidden pieces were in
+ every library, both public and private. The Social Contract, printed
+ over and over again in endless editions, was sold for a shilling under
+ the vestibule of the king's own palace. When the police were in
+ earnest, the hawker ran horrible risks, as we saw a few pages further
+ back; for these risks he recompensed himself by his prices. A
+ prohibition by the authorities would send a book up within
+ four-and-twenty hours from half a crown to a couple of louis. This
+ only increased the public curiosity, quickened the demand, led to
+ clandestine reprints, and extended the circulation of the book that
+ was nominally suppressed. When the condemnation of a book was cried
+ through the streets, the compositors said, "Good, another edition!"
+ There was no favour that an unknown author could have asked from the
+ magistrates so valuable to him as a little decree condemning his work
+ to be torn up and burnt at the foot of the great staircase of the
+ Palace of Justice.<a name="FNanchor_241_241" id=
+ "FNanchor_241_241"></a><a href="#Footnote_241_241" class=
+ "fnanchor">[241]</a></p>
+
+ <p>It was this practical impossibility of suppression that interested
+ both the guild of publishers and the government in the conditions of
+ the book trade. The former were always harassed, often kept poor, and
+ sometimes ruined, by systematic piracy and the invasion of their
+ rights. The government, on the other hand, could not help seeing that,
+ as the books could not possibly be kept out of the realm, it was to be
+ regretted that their production conferred no benefit on the
+ manufacturing industry of the realm, the composition, the printing,
+ the casting of type, the fabrication of paper, the preparation of
+ leather and vellum, the making of machines and tools. When Bayle's
+ Dictionary appeared, it was the rage of Europe. Hundreds of the
+ ever-renowned folios found their way into France, and were paid for by
+ French money. The booksellers addressed the minister, and easily
+ persuaded him of the difference, according to the economic light of
+ those days, between an exchange of money against paper, compared with
+ an exchange of paper against paper. The minister replied that this was
+ true, but still that the gates of the kingdom would never be opened to
+ a single copy of Bayle. "The best thing to do," he said, "is to print
+ it here." And the third edition of Bayle was printed in France, much
+ to the contentment of the French printers, binders, and
+ booksellers.</p>
+
+ <p>In 1761 the booksellers were afflicted by a new alarm. Foreign
+ pirates and domestic hawkers were doing them mischief enough. But in
+ that year the government struck a blow at the very principle of
+ literary property. The King's Council conferred upon the descendants
+ of La Fontaine the exclusive privilege of publishing their ancestor's
+ works. That is to say, the Council took away without compensation from
+ La Fontaine's publishers a copyright for which they had paid in hard
+ cash. The whole corporation naturally rose in arms, and in due time
+ the lieutenant of police was obliged to take the whole matter into
+ serious consideration—whether the maintenance of the guild of
+ publishers was expedient; whether the royal privilege of publishing a
+ book should be regarded as conferring a definite and unassailable
+ right of property in the publication; whether the tacit permission to
+ publish what it would have been thought unbecoming to authorise
+ expressly by royal sanction, should not be granted liberally or even
+ universally; and whether the old restriction of the booksellers to one
+ quarter of the town ought to remain in force any longer. M. de Sartine
+ invited Diderot to write him a memorandum on the subject, and was
+ disappointed to find Diderot staunchly on the side of the booksellers
+ (1767). He makes no secret, indeed, that for his own part he would
+ like to see the whole apparatus of restraint abolished, but meanwhile
+ he is strong for doing all that a system of regulation, as opposed to
+ a system of freedom, can do to make the publication of books a source
+ of prosperity to the bookseller, and of cheap acquisition to the
+ book-buyer. Above all things, Diderot is vehemently in favour of the
+ recognition of literary property, and against such infringement of it
+ as had been ventured upon in the case of La Fontaine. He had no reason
+ to be especially friendly to booksellers, but for one thing, he saw
+ that to nullify or to tamper with copyright was in effect to prevent
+ an author from having any commodity to sell, and so to do him the most
+ serious injury possible. And for another thing, Diderot had equity and
+ common sense enough to see that no high-flown nonsense about the
+ dignity of letters and the spiritual power could touch the fact that a
+ book is a piece of marketable ware, and that the men who deal in such
+ wares have as much claim to be protected in their contracts as those
+ who deal in any other wares.<a name="FNanchor_242_242" id=
+ "FNanchor_242_242"></a><a href="#Footnote_242_242" class=
+ "fnanchor">[242]</a></p>
+
+ <p>There is a vivid illustration of this unexpected business-like
+ quality in Diderot, in a conversation that he once had with
+ D'Alembert. The dialogue is interesting to those who happen to be
+ curious as to the characters of two famous men. It was in 1759, when
+ D'Alembert was tired of the Encyclopædia, and was for making hard
+ terms as the condition of his return to it. "If," said Diderot to him,
+ "six months ago, when we met to deliberate on the continuation of the
+ work, you had then proposed these terms, the booksellers would have
+ closed with them on the spot, but now, when they have the strongest
+ reasons to be out of humour with you, that is another thing."</p>
+
+ <p>"And pray, what reasons?"</p>
+
+ <p>"Can you ask me?"</p>
+
+ <p>"Certainly."</p>
+
+ <p>"Then I will tell you. You have a bargain with the booksellers; the
+ terms are stipulated; you have nothing to ask beyond them. If you
+ worked harder than you were bound to do, that was out of your interest
+ in the book, out of friendship to me, out of respect for yourself;
+ people do not pay in money for such motives as these. Still they sent
+ you twenty louis a volume: that makes a hundred and forty louis that
+ you had beyond what was due to you. You plan a journey to Wesel [in
+ 1752, to meet Frederick of Prussia] at a time when you were wanted by
+ them here; they do not detain you; on the contrary, you are short of
+ money, and they supply you. You accept a couple of hundred louis; this
+ debt you forget for two or three years. At the end of that rather long
+ term you bethink you of paying. What do they do? They hand you back
+ your note of hand torn up, with all the air of being very glad to have
+ served you. Then, after all, you turn your back on an undertaking in
+ which they have embarked their whole fortunes: an affair of a couple
+ of millions is a trifle unworthy of the attention of a philosopher
+ like you.... But that is not all. You have a fancy for collecting
+ together different pieces scattered through the Encyclopædia; nothing
+ can be more opposed to their interests; they put this to you, you
+ insist, the edition is produced, they advance the cost, you share the
+ profits. It seemed that, after having thus twice paid you for their
+ work, they had a right to look upon it as theirs. Yet you go in search
+ of a bookseller in some quite different direction, and sell him in a
+ mass what does not belong to you."</p>
+
+ <p>"They gave me a thousand grounds for dissatisfaction."</p>
+
+ <p>"<i>Quelle défaite!</i> There are no small things between friends.
+ Everything weighs, because friendship is a commerce of purity and
+ delicacy; but are the booksellers your friends? Then your behaviour to
+ them is horrible. If not, then you have nothing to say against them.
+ If the public were called upon to judge between you and them, my
+ friend, you would be covered with shame."</p>
+
+ <p>"What, can it be you, Diderot, who thus take the side of the
+ booksellers?"</p>
+
+ <p>"My grievances against them do not prevent me from seeing their
+ grievances against you. After all this show of pride, confess now that
+ you are cutting a very sorry figure?"<a name="FNanchor_243_243" id=
+ "FNanchor_243_243"></a><a href="#Footnote_243_243" class=
+ "fnanchor">[243]</a></p>
+
+ <p>All this was the language of good sense, and there is no evidence
+ that Diderot ever swerved from that fair and honourable attitude in
+ his own dealings with the booksellers. Yet he was able to treat them
+ with a sturdy spirit when they forgot themselves. Panckoucke, one of
+ the great publishers of the time, came to him one day. "He was swollen
+ with the arrogance of a parvenu, and thinking apparently that he could
+ use me like one of those poor devils who depend upon him for a crust
+ of bread, he permitted himself to fly into a passion; but it did not
+ succeed at all. I let him go on as he pleased; then I got up abruptly,
+ I took him by the arm, and I said to him: 'M. Panckoucke, in whatever
+ place it may be, in the street, in church, in a bad house, and to
+ whomsoever it may be, it is always right to keep a civil tongue in
+ one's head. But that is all the more necessary still, when you speak
+ to a man who has as little patience as I have, and that, too, in his
+ own house. Go to the devil, you and your work. If you would give me
+ twenty thousand louis, and I could do your business for you in the
+ twinkling of an eye, I would not stir a finger. Be kind enough to be
+ off."<a name="FNanchor_244_244" id="FNanchor_244_244"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_244_244" class="fnanchor">[244]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Before returning from the author to his books, it is interesting to
+ know how he and his circle appeared at this period to some who did not
+ belong to them. Gibbon, for instance, visited Paris in the spring of
+ 1763. "The moment," he says, "was happily chosen. At the close of a
+ successful war the British name was respected on the continent;
+ <i>clarum et venerabile nomen gentibus</i>. Our opinions, our
+ fashions, even our games were adopted in France, a ray of national
+ glory illuminated each individual, and every Englishman was supposed
+ to be born a patriot and philosopher." He mentions D'Alembert and
+ Diderot as those among the men of letters whom he saw, who "held the
+ foremost rank in merit, or at least in fame."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_245_245" id="FNanchor_245_245"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_245_245" class="fnanchor">[245]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Horace Walpole was often in Paris, and often saw the philosophic
+ circle, but it did not please his supercilious humour.</p>
+
+ <div class="blockquot">
+  <p>"There was no soul in Paris but philosophers, whom I wished in
+  heaven, though they do not wish themselves so. They are so
+  overbearing and underbred.... I sometimes go to Baron d'Holbach's,
+  but I have left off his dinners, as there was no bearing the authors
+  and philosophers and savants of which he has a pigeon-house full.
+  They soon turned my head with a system of antediluvian deluges which
+  they have invented to prove the eternity of matter.... In short,
+  nonsense for nonsense, I liked the Jesuits better than the
+  philosophers."<a name="FNanchor_246_246" id=
+  "FNanchor_246_246"></a><a href="#Footnote_246_246" class=
+  "fnanchor">[246]</a></p>
+ </div>
+
+ <p>Hume, as everybody knows, found "the men of letters really very
+ agreeable; all of them men of the world, living in entire, or almost
+ entire harmony, among themselves, and quite irreproachable in their
+ morals." He places Diderot among those whose person and conversation
+ he liked best.</p>
+
+ <p>We have always heard much of the power of the Salon in the
+ eighteenth century, and it was no doubt a remarkable proof of the
+ incorporation of intellectual interests in manners, that so many
+ groups of men and women should have met habitually every week for the
+ purpose of conversing about the new books and new plays, the fresh
+ principles and fresh ideas, that were produced by the incessant
+ vivacity of the time. The Salon of the eighteenth century passed
+ through various phases; its character shifted with the intellectual
+ mood of the day, but in all its phases it was an institution in which
+ women occupied a place that they have never acquired in any society
+ out of France. We are not here called upon to speculate as to the
+ reasons for this; it is only worth remarking that Diderot was not
+ commonly at his ease in the society of ladies, and that though he was
+ a visitor at Madame Geoffrin's and at Mademoiselle Lespinasse's, yet
+ he was not a constant attendant at any of the famous circles of which
+ women had made themselves the centre. The reader of Madame d'Epinay's
+ memoir is informed how hard she found it to tame Diderot into
+ sociability. "What a pity," she exclaims, "that men of genius and of
+ such eminent merit as M. Diderot should thus wrap themselves up in
+ their philosophy, and disdain the homage that people would eagerly pay
+ them in any society that they would honour with their
+ presence."<a name="FNanchor_247_247" id=
+ "FNanchor_247_247"></a><a href="#Footnote_247_247" class=
+ "fnanchor">[247]</a> One of the soundest social observers of the time
+ was undoubtedly Duclos. His <i>Considerations on the Manners of the
+ Century</i>, which was published in 1751, abounds in admirable
+ criticism. He makes two remarks with which we may close our chapter.
+ "The relaxation of morals does not prevent people from being very loud
+ in praise of honour and virtue; those who have least of them know very
+ well how much they are concerned in other people having them." Again,
+ "The French," he said, "are the only people among whom it is possible
+ for morals to be depraved, without either the heart being corrupted,
+ or their courage being weakened."</p>
+ <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+ <h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.<br />
+ THE STAGE.</h2>
+
+ <p>There is at first something incredible in the account given by some
+ thinkers of Diderot, as the greatest genius of the eighteenth century;
+ and perhaps an adjustment of such nice degrees of comparison among the
+ high men of the world is at no time very profitable. What is intended
+ by these thoroughgoing panegyrists is that Diderot placed himself at
+ the point of view whence, more comprehensively than was possible from
+ any other, he discerned the long course and the many bearings, the
+ complex faces and the large ramifications, of the huge movement of his
+ day. He seized the great transition at every point, and grasped all
+ the threads that were to be inwoven into the pattern of the new
+ time.</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot is in a thousand respects one of the most unsatisfactory of
+ men and of writers. Yet it is hard to deny that to whatever quarter he
+ turned, he caught the rising illumination and was shone upon by the
+ spirit of the coming day. It was no copious and overflowing radiance,
+ but they were the beams of the dawn. Hence, what he has to say, and we
+ shall soon see how much he said, about the two great arts of painting
+ and the drama, though it is fragmentary, though it is insufficient,
+ yet points, as all the rest of his thoughts pointed, along the lines
+ that the best minds of the western world have since traversed. He
+ would, in the old metaphysical language, have called the direction of
+ it a turning to Nature, but if we translate this into more positive
+ terms, just as we have said that the Encyclopædia was a glorification
+ of pacific industry and of civil justice, so we may say that his whole
+ theory of the drama was a glorification of private virtues and
+ domestic life. And the definite rise of civil justice and industry
+ over feudal privilege and a life of war, and again the elevation of
+ domestic virtue into the place formerly held by patriotic devotion,
+ are the two great sides of a single movement.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_248_248" id="FNanchor_248_248"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_248_248" class="fnanchor">[248]</a> It is quite true that
+ Diderot and the French of that day had only a glimpse of the promised
+ land in art and poetry. The whole moral energy of the generation after
+ Diderot was drawn inevitably into the strong current of social action.
+ The freshly kindled torch of dramatic art passed for nearly half a
+ century to the country of Lessing and Goethe.</p>
+
+ <p>There is in the use of a certain kind of abstract language this
+ inconvenience, that the reader may suppose us to be imputing to
+ Diderot a deliberate and systematic survey of the whole movement of
+ his time, and a calculated resolution to further it, now in this way
+ and now in that. It is not necessary to suppose that the movement as a
+ whole was always present to him. Diderot's mind was constantly feeling
+ for explanations; it was never a passive recipient. The drama excited
+ this alert interest just as everything else excited it. He thought
+ about that, as about everything else, originally, that is to say,
+ sincerely and in the spirit of reality.<a name="FNanchor_249_249" id=
+ "FNanchor_249_249"></a><a href="#Footnote_249_249" class=
+ "fnanchor">[249]</a> Whoever turns with a clear eye and proper
+ intellectual capacity in search of the real bearings of what he is
+ about, is sure to find out the strong currents of the time, even
+ though he may never consciously throw them into their most general and
+ abstract expression.</p>
+
+ <p>Since Aristotle, said Lessing, no more philosophical mind than
+ Diderot's has treated of the theatre. Lessing himself translated
+ Diderot's two plays, and the Essay on Dramatic Poetry, and repeatedly
+ said that without the impulse of Diderot's principles and
+ illustrations his own taste would have taken a different direction. As
+ a dramatist, the author of <i>Miss Sara Sampson</i>, of <i>Emilia
+ Galotti</i>, and above all that noble dramatic poem, <i>Nathan the
+ Wise</i>, could hardly have owed much to the author of such poor stuff
+ as <i>The Natural Son</i> and <i>The Father of the Family</i>. Lessing
+ had some dramatic fire, invention, spontaneous elevation; he had a
+ certain measure, though not a very large one, of poetic impulse.
+ Diderot had nothing of all these, but he had the eye of the
+ philosophic critic.</p>
+
+ <p>Any one who reads Lessing's dramatic criticisms will see that he
+ did not at all overrate his obligations to his French
+ contemporary.<a name="FNanchor_250_250" id=
+ "FNanchor_250_250"></a><a href="#Footnote_250_250" class=
+ "fnanchor">[250]</a> It has been replied to the absurd taunt about the
+ French inventing nothing, that at least Descartes invented German
+ philosophy. Still more true is it that Diderot invented German
+ criticism.</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot's thoughts on the stage, besides his completed plays, and a
+ number of fragmentary scenes, are contained principally in the Paradox
+ on the Player, a short treatise on Dramatic Poetry, and three
+ dialogues appended to <i>The Natural Son</i>. On the plays a very few
+ words will suffice. <i>The Natural Son</i> must, by me at least, be
+ pronounced one of the most vapid performances in dramatic history.
+ Even Lessing, unwilling as he was to say a word against a writer who
+ had taught him so much, is too good a critic not to recognise monotony
+ in the characters, stiffness and affectation in the dialogue, and a
+ pedantic ring in the sentences of new-fangled philosophy.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_251_251" id="FNanchor_251_251"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_251_251" class="fnanchor">[251]</a> Even in the three
+ critical dialogues that Diderot added to the play, Lessing cannot help
+ discerning the mixture of superficiality with an almost pompous
+ pretension. Rosenkranz, it is true, finds the play rich in fine
+ sentences, in scenes full of effect, in which Diderot's moral
+ enthusiasm expresses itself with impetuous eloquence. But even he
+ admits that the hero's servant is not so far wrong when he cries,
+ "<i>Il semble que le bon sens se soit enfui de cette maison</i>," and
+ adds that the whole atmosphere of the piece is sickly with conscious
+ virtue.<a name="FNanchor_252_252" id="FNanchor_252_252"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_252_252" class="fnanchor">[252]</a> For ourselves we are
+ ready for once even to sympathise with Palissot, the hack-writer of
+ the reactionary parties, when he says that <i>The Natural Son</i> had
+ neither invention, nor style, nor characters, nor any other single
+ unit of a truly dramatic work. The reader who seeks to realise the
+ nullity of the <i>genre sérieux</i> in Diderot's hands, should turn
+ from <i>The Natural Son</i> to Goldoni's play of <i>The True
+ Friend</i>, from which Diderot borrowed the structure of his play,
+ following it as narrowly as possible to the end of the third act.
+ Seldom has transfusion turned a sparkling draught into anything so
+ flat and vapid. In spite of the applause of the philosophic
+ <i>claque</i>, led by Grimm,<a name="FNanchor_253_253" id=
+ "FNanchor_253_253"></a><a href="#Footnote_253_253" class=
+ "fnanchor">[253]</a> posterity has ratified the coldness with which it
+ was received by contemporaries. <i>The Natural Son</i> was written in
+ 1757, but it was not until 1771 that the directors of the French
+ Comedy could be induced to place it on the stage. The actors detested
+ their task, and as we can very well believe, went sulkily through
+ parts which they had not even taken the trouble to master.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_254_254" id="FNanchor_254_254"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_254_254" class="fnanchor">[254]</a> The public felt as
+ little interest in the piece as the actors had done, and after a
+ single representation, the play was put aside.</p>
+
+ <p>Ill-natured critics compared Diderot's play with Rousseau's opera;
+ they insisted that <i>The Natural Son</i> and <i>The Village
+ Conjuror</i> were a couple of monuments of the presumptuous
+ incompetence of the encyclopædic cabal. The failure of <i>The Natural
+ Son</i> as a drama came after it had enjoyed considerable success as a
+ piece of literature, for it had been fourteen years in print. We can
+ only suppose that this success was the fruit of an unflinching
+ partisanship.</p>
+
+ <p>It is a curious illustration of the strength of the current passion
+ for moral maxims in season and out of season, that one scene which to
+ the scoffers of that day seemed, as it cannot but seem to everybody
+ to-day, a climax of absurdity and unbecomingness, was hailed by the
+ party as most admirable, for no other reason than that it contained a
+ number of high moralising saws. Constance, a young widow and a model
+ of reason, takes upon herself to combat the resolution of Dorval not
+ to marry, after he has led her to suppose that he has a passion for
+ her, and after a marriage between them has been arranged. "No," he
+ cries, "a man of my character is not such a husband as befits
+ Constance." Constance begs him to reassure himself; tells him that he
+ is mistaken; to enjoy tranquillity, a man must have the approval of
+ his own heart, and perhaps that of other men, and he can have neither
+ unless he remains at his post; it is only the wicked who can bear
+ isolation; a tender soul cannot view the general system of sensible
+ beings without a strong desire that they should be happy. Dorval, who
+ cuts an extremely sorry figure in such a scene, exclaims, "Ah, but
+ children! Dorval would have children! When I think that we are thrown
+ from our very birth into a chaos of prejudices, extravagances, vices,
+ and miseries, the idea makes me shudder!"—"Dorval, you are beset by
+ phantoms, and no wonder. The history of life is so little known, while
+ the appearance of evil in the universe is so glaring.... Dorval, your
+ daughters will be modest and good; your sons noble and high-minded;
+ all your children will be charming.... There is no fear that a cruel
+ soul should ever grow in my bosom from stock of yours."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_255_255" id="FNanchor_255_255"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_255_255" class="fnanchor">[255]</a></p>
+
+ <p>We can hardly wonder that players were disgusted, or critics moved
+ to wicked jests. The counterpart to the scene in which Constance
+ persuades Dorval that they would be very happy in one case, is the
+ scene in which Dorval persuades Rosalie that they would be very
+ unhappy in another case. The situations in themselves may command our
+ approval morally, but they certainly do not attract our sympathies
+ dramatically. That a woman should demonstrate to a man in fine
+ sententious language the expediency of marrying her, is not
+ inconsistent with good sense, but it is displeasing. When a man tells
+ a woman that, though love draws in one way, duty draws in the other,
+ we may admire his prudence, but we are glad when so delicate a
+ business comes to an end. In <i>The Natural Son</i> the latter scene,
+ though very long, is the less disagreeable of the two. And just as in
+ Diderot's most wordy and tiresome pages we generally find some one
+ phrase, some epithet, some turn of a sentence whose freshness or
+ strength or daring reveals a genius, so in this scene we find a few
+ lines whose energy reminds us that we are not after all in the hands
+ of some obscure playwright, whose works ought long ago to have been
+ eaten by moths or burnt by fire. Those lines are a warning against the
+ temptation so familiar in every age since Paris was a guest in the
+ halls of Menelaus, to take that fatal resolve, All for love and the
+ world well lost. "To do wrong," says Dorval, "is to condemn ourselves
+ to live and to find our pleasure with wrong-doers; it is to pass an
+ uncertain and troubled life in one long and never-ending lie; to have
+ to praise with a blush the virtue that we flung behind us; to hear
+ from the lips of others harsh words for our own action; to seek a
+ little calm in sophistical systems, that the breath of a single good
+ man scatters to the winds; to shut ourselves for ever out from the
+ spring of true joys, the only joys that are virtuous, austere,
+ sublime; and to give ourselves up, simply as a way of escape from
+ ourselves, to the weariness of those frivolous diversions in which the
+ day flows away in self-oblivion, and our life glides slowly from us
+ and loses itself in waste."<a name="FNanchor_256_256" id=
+ "FNanchor_256_256"></a><a href="#Footnote_256_256" class=
+ "fnanchor">[256]</a> A very old story, no doubt; but natural, true,
+ and in its place.</p>
+
+ <p>What adds to the flatness of the play is a device which Diderot
+ introduced on a deliberately adopted principle; we mean the elaborate
+ setting out of the acting directions. Every movement, every gesture,
+ every silent pause is written down, and we have the impression less of
+ a play than of some strangely bald romance. In the versified
+ declamation which then reigned on the French stage, nothing was left
+ to natural action, nothing was told by change of position, by movement
+ without speech, or in short by any means other than discourse.
+ Diderot, repudiating the conventions of dramatic art, and consulting
+ nature or reality, saw that there are many scenes in life in which it
+ is more natural to the personages of the scene to move than to speak,
+ in which indeed motion is natural, and speech is altogether unnatural.
+ If this be so in real life, he said, it should be so on the stage,
+ because nothing passes in the world which may not pass also in the
+ theatre; and as pantomime, or expression of emotion, feeling, purpose,
+ otherwise than by speech, has so much to do in life, the dramatist
+ should make abundant use of pantomime in composing stage-plays. Nor
+ should he trust to the actor's invention and spontaneous sense of
+ appropriateness. He ought to write down the pantomime whenever it adds
+ energy or clearness to the dialogue; when it binds the parts of the
+ dialogue together; when it consists in a delicate play that is not
+ easily divined; and almost always he ought to write it down in the
+ opening of a scene. If any one is inclined to regard this as
+ superfluous, let him try the experiment of composing a play, and then
+ writing the pantomime, or "business," for it; he will soon see what
+ follies he commits.<a name="FNanchor_257_257" id=
+ "FNanchor_257_257"></a><a href="#Footnote_257_257" class=
+ "fnanchor">[257]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Whatever we may think of the practice of writing the action as well
+ as the words for the player, nobody would now dispute the wisdom of
+ what Diderot says as to the part that pantomime fills in the highest
+ kind of dramatic representation. We must agree with his repeated
+ laments over the indigence, for purposes of full and adequate
+ expression, of every language that ever has existed or ever can
+ exist.<a name="FNanchor_258_258" id="FNanchor_258_258"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_258_258" class="fnanchor">[258]</a> "My dear master," he
+ wrote to Voltaire on the occasion of a performance of <i>Tancred</i>,
+ "if you could have seen Clairon passing across the stage, her knees
+ bending under her, her eyes closed, her arms falling stiff by her side
+ as if they were dead; if you heard the cry that she uttered when she
+ perceives Tancred, you would remain more convinced than ever that
+ silence and pantomime have sometimes a pathos that all the resources
+ of speech can never approach."<a name="FNanchor_259_259" id=
+ "FNanchor_259_259"></a><a href="#Footnote_259_259" class=
+ "fnanchor">[259]</a> If we wonder that he should have thought it worth
+ while to lay so much emphasis on what seems so obvious, we have to
+ remember that it did not seem at all obvious to people who were
+ accustomed to the substitution of a mannered and symmetrical
+ declamation for the energetic variety and manifold exuberance of
+ passion and judgment in the daily lives of men.</p>
+
+ <p>We have already seen that even when he wrote the Letter on the Deaf
+ and Dumb, Diderot's mind was exercised about gesture as a supplement
+ to discourse. In that Letter he had told a curious story of a bizarre
+ experiment that he was in the habit of making at the theatre. He used
+ to go to the highest seats in the house, thrust his fingers into his
+ ears, and then, to the astonishment of his neighbours, watch the
+ performance with the sharpest interest. As a constant playgoer, he
+ knew the words of the plays by heart, and what he sought was to
+ isolate the gesture of the performers, and to enjoy and criticise that
+ by itself. He kept his ears tightly stopped, so long as the action and
+ play went well with the words as he remembered them, and he only
+ listened when some discord in gesture made him suppose that he had
+ lost his place. The people around him were more and more amazed as
+ they saw him, notwithstanding his stopped ears, shed copious tears in
+ the pathetic passages. "They could not refrain from hazarding
+ questions, to which I answered coldly, 'that everybody had his own way
+ of listening, and that my way was to stop my ears, so as to understand
+ better'—laughing within myself at the talk to which my oddity gave
+ rise, and still more so at the simplicity of some young people who
+ also put their fingers into their ears to hear after my fashion, and
+ were quite astonished that the plan did not succeed."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_260_260" id="FNanchor_260_260"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_260_260" class="fnanchor">[260]</a> This was an odd and
+ whimsical way of acting on a conviction which lay deep in Diderot's
+ mind, namely, that language is a very poor, misleading, and utterly
+ inadequate instrument for representing what it professes, and what we
+ stupidly suppose it, to represent. Rousseau had expressed the same
+ kind of feeling when he said that definitions might be good things, if
+ only we did not employ words in making them.</p>
+
+ <p>A curious circumstance is worth mentioning in connection with the
+ Three Dialogues appended to <i>The Natural Son</i>. Diderot informs
+ his readers that the incidents of <i>The Natural Son</i> had actually
+ occurred in real life, and that he knew the personages. In the
+ Dialogues it is assumed that the play had been written by the hero
+ himself, and the hero is the chief speaker. Not a word is said from
+ which the reader would guess that Diderot had borrowed the substance
+ of his plot and some of its least insipid scenes from Goldoni. We can
+ hardly wonder that he was charged with plagiarism. Yet it was not
+ deliberate, we may be sure. When Diderot was strongly seized by an
+ idea, outer circumstances were as if they did not exist. He was swept
+ up into the clouds. "Diderot is a good and worthy man," wrote Madame
+ Geoffrin to the King of Poland, "but he has such a bad head, and he is
+ so curiously organised, that he neither sees nor hears what he does
+ see and hear, as the thing really is; he is always like a man who is
+ dreaming, and who thinks all that he has dreamed quite real."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_261_261" id="FNanchor_261_261"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_261_261" class="fnanchor">[261]</a></p>
+
+ <p><i>The Father of the Family</i>, written in 1758, and first acted
+ in 1761, is very superior to <i>The Natural Son</i>; it even enjoyed a
+ certain popularity. In Germany it became an established favourite, and
+ in Italy it was only less popular than a piece of Goldoni's. The
+ French were not quite so easy to please. In 1761 its reception was
+ undoubtedly favourable, and it ran for more than a week. In 1769 it
+ was reproduced, and, according to Diderot's own account, with
+ enthusiasm. "There was a frightful crowd," he says, "and people hardly
+ remember such a success. I was surprised at it myself. My friends are
+ at the height of exultation. My daughter came home intoxicated with
+ wonder and delight." Even Madame Diderot at length grew ashamed at
+ having to confess that she had not seen her husband's triumph, and
+ throwing aside her horror of the stage, was as deeply moved as every
+ one else.<a name="FNanchor_262_262" id="FNanchor_262_262"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_262_262" class="fnanchor">[262]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Notwithstanding this satisfactory degree of success, and though it
+ was performed as late as 1835, the play never struck root in France.
+ It is indeed a play without any real quality or distinction. "Diderot,
+ in his plays," said Madame de Staël, "put the affectation of nature in
+ the place of the affectation of convention."<a name="FNanchor_263_263"
+ id="FNanchor_263_263"></a><a href="#Footnote_263_263" class=
+ "fnanchor">[263]</a> The effect is still more disagreeable in the
+ first kind of affectation than the second. <i>The Father of the
+ Family</i> is made more endurable than <i>The Natural Son</i> by a
+ certain rapidity and fire in the action, and a certain vigour in the
+ characters of the impetuous son (Saint Albin) and the malignant
+ brother-in-law (the Commander). But the dialogue is poor, and the
+ Father of the Family himself is as woolly and mawkish a figure as is
+ usually made out of benevolent intentions and weak purpose combined.
+ The woes of the heavy father of the stage, where there is no true
+ pathos, but only a sentimental version of it, find us very callous.
+ The language has none of that exquisite grace and flexibility which
+ makes a good French comedy of own day, a piece by Augier, Sandeau,
+ Feuillet, Sardou, so delightful. Diderot was right in urging that
+ there is no reason why a play should be in verse; but then the prose
+ of a play ought to have a point, elegance, and highly-wrought
+ perfection, which shall fill us with a sense of art, though not the
+ art of the poet. Diderot not only did not write comedy in such a
+ style; but he does not even so much as show consciousness that any
+ difference exists between one kind of prose and another. The blurred
+ phrases and clipped sentences of what Diderot would have called
+ Nature, that is to say of real life, are intolerable on the stage.
+ Even he felt this, for his characters, though their dialogue is
+ without wit or finish, are still dull and tame of speech, in a
+ different way from that in which the people whom we may meet are dull
+ and tame. There is an art of a kind, though of an extremely vapid
+ kind.</p>
+
+ <p>Again, though he may be right in contending that there is a serious
+ kind of comedy as distinct from that gay comedy which is neighbour to
+ farce—of this we shall see more presently—yet he is certainly wrong in
+ believing that we can willingly endure five acts of serious comedy
+ without a single relieving passage of humour. Contrast of character,
+ where all the characters are realistic and common, is not enough. We
+ crave contrast in the dramatic point of view. We seek occasional
+ change of key. That serious comedy should move a sympathetic tear is
+ reasonable enough; but it is hard to find that it grudges us a single
+ smile. The result of Diderot's method is that the spectator or the
+ reader speedily feels that what he has before him substitutes for
+ dramatic fulness and variety the flat monotony of a homily or a tract.
+ It would be hard to show that there is no true comedy without
+ laughter—Terence's <i>Hecyra</i>, for instance—but Diderot certainly
+ overlooked what Lessing and most other critics saw so clearly, that
+ laughter rightly stirred is one of the most powerful agencies in
+ directing the moral sympathies of the audience,—the very end that
+ Diderot most anxiously sought.</p>
+
+ <p>It is mere waste of time to bestow serious criticism on Diderot's
+ two plays, or on the various sketches, outlines, and fragments of
+ scenes with which he amused his very slight dramatic faculty. If we
+ wish to study the masterpieces of French comedy in the eighteenth
+ century, we shall promptly shut up the volumes of Diderot, and turn to
+ the ease and soft gracefulness of Marivaux's <i>Game of Love and
+ Chance</i>, to the forcible and concentrated sententiousness of
+ Piron's <i>Métromanie</i>, to the salt and racy flavour of Le Sage's
+ <i>Turcaret</i>. Gresset, again, and Destouches wrote at least two
+ comedies that were really fit for the stage, and may be read with
+ pleasure to-day. Neither of these compliments can fairly be paid to
+ <i>The Natural Son</i> and <i>The Father of the Family</i>. Diderot's
+ plays ought to be looked upon merely as sketchy illustrations of a
+ favourite theory; as the rough drawings on the black board with which
+ a professor of the fine arts may accompany a lecture on oil
+ painting.</p>
+
+ <p>One radical part of Diderot's dramatic doctrine is wholly condemned
+ by modern criticism; and it is the part which his plays were
+ especially designed to enforce. "It is always," he says, "virtue and
+ virtuous people that a man ought to have in view when he writes. Oh,
+ what good would men gain, if all the arts of imitation proposed one
+ common object, and were one day to unite with the laws in making us
+ love virtue and hate vice. It is for the philosopher to address
+ himself to the poet, the painter, the musician, and to cry to them
+ with all his might: <i>0 men of genius, to what end has heaven endowed
+ you with gifts</i>? If they listen to him, speedily will the images of
+ debauch cease to cover the walls of our palaces; our vices will cease
+ to be the organs of crime; and taste and manners will gain. Can we
+ believe that the action of two old blind people, man and wife, as they
+ sought one another in their aged days, and with tears of tenderness
+ clasped one another's hands and exchanged caresses on the brink of the
+ grave, so to say—that this would not demand the same talent, and would
+ not interest me far more than the spectacle of the violent pleasures
+ with which their senses in all the first freshness of youth were once
+ made drunk?"<a name="FNanchor_264_264" id=
+ "FNanchor_264_264"></a><a href="#Footnote_264_264" class=
+ "fnanchor">[264]</a></p>
+
+ <p>The emphasising moralists of Diderot's school never understood that
+ virtue may be made attractive, without pulling the reader or the
+ spectator by the sleeve, and urgently shouting in his ear how
+ attractive virtue is. When <i>The Heart of Midlothian</i> appeared
+ (1818), a lady wrote about it as follows: "Of late days, especially
+ since it has been the fashion to write moral and even religious
+ novels, one might almost say of the wise good heroines what a lively
+ girl once said of her well-meaning aunt—'On my word she is enough to
+ make anybody wicked.' Had this very story been conducted by a common
+ hand, Effie would have attracted all our concern and sympathy, Jeanie
+ only cold approbation. Whereas Jeanie, without youth, beauty, genius,
+ warm passions, or any other novel perfection, is here our object from
+ beginning to end. This is 'enlisting the affections in the cause of
+ virtue' ten times more than ever Richardson did; for whose male and
+ female pedants, all excelling as they are, I never could care half as
+ much as I found myself inclined to do for Jeanie before I finished the
+ first volume."<a name="FNanchor_265_265" id=
+ "FNanchor_265_265"></a><a href="#Footnote_265_265" class=
+ "fnanchor">[265]</a></p>
+
+ <p>In other words, you must win us by kindling our sympathy, not by
+ formally commanding our moral approval. To kindle sympathy your
+ personage must be interesting; must touch our pity or wonder or
+ energetic fellow-feeling or sense of moral loveliness, which is a very
+ different thing from touching our mere sense of the distinctions
+ between right and wrong. Direct homily excites no sympathy with the
+ homilist. Deep pensive meditations on the moral puzzles of the world
+ are not at all like didactic discourse. But the Father of the Family
+ was exactly fulfilling Diderot's notion of dramatic purpose and
+ utility when he talked to his daughter in such a strain as this:
+ "Marriage, my daughter, is a vocation imposed by nature.... He who
+ counts on bliss without alloy knows neither the life of man nor the
+ designs of heaven. If marriage exposes us to cruel pain, it is also
+ the source of the sweetest pleasures. Where are the examples of pure
+ and heartfelt interest, of real tenderness, of inmost confidence, of
+ daily help of griefs divided, of tears mingled, if they be not in
+ marriage? What is there in the world that the good man prefers to his
+ wife? What is there in the world that a father loves more dearly than
+ his children? O sacred bond, if I think of thee, my whole soul is
+ warmed and elevated!"<a name="FNanchor_266_266" id=
+ "FNanchor_266_266"></a><a href="#Footnote_266_266" class=
+ "fnanchor">[266]</a></p>
+
+ <p>But these virtuous ejaculations do not warm and elevate us. In such
+ a case words count for nothing. It is actual presentation of beautiful
+ character, and not talk about it, that touches the spectator. It is
+ the association of interesting action with character, that moves us
+ and inspires such better moods as may be within our compass. Diderot,
+ like many other people before and since, sought to make the stage the
+ great moral teacher. That it may become so, is possible. It will not
+ be by imitating the methods of that colossal type of histrionic
+ failure, the church-pulpit. Exhortation in set speeches always has
+ been, and always will be, the feeblest bulwark against the boiling
+ floods of passion that helpless virtue ever invented, and it matters
+ not at all whether the hortatory speeches are placed on the lips of
+ Mr. Talkative, the son of Saywell, or of some tearful dummy labelled
+ the Father of the Family.<a name="FNanchor_267_267" id=
+ "FNanchor_267_267"></a><a href="#Footnote_267_267" class=
+ "fnanchor">[267]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Yet one is half ashamed to use hard words about Diderot. He was so
+ modest about his work, so simple and unpretending, so wholly without
+ restless and fretting ambitions, and so generous in his judgment of
+ others. He made his own dramatic experiment, he thought little enough
+ of it; and he was wholly above the hateful vice of sourly disparaging
+ competitors, whether dead or living. He knew that he was himself no
+ master, but he was manly enough to admire anybody who was nearer to
+ mastery. He was full of unaffected delight at Sedaine's busy and
+ pleasing little comedy, <i>The Philosopher without knowing it</i>; it
+ was so simple without being stiff, so eloquent without the shadow of
+ effort or rhetoric. After seeing it, Diderot ran off to the author to
+ embrace him, with many tears of joyful sympathy and gratitude.
+ Sedaine, like Lillo, the author of Diderot's favourite play of
+ <i>George Barn</i><i>well</i>, was a plain tradesman, and the success
+ of his libretti for comic operas had not spoiled him. He could find no
+ more expansive words for his excited admirer than "<i>Ah, Monsieur
+ Diderot, que vous étes beau</i>!"<a name="FNanchor_268_268" id=
+ "FNanchor_268_268"></a><a href="#Footnote_268_268" class=
+ "fnanchor">[268]</a> Diderot was just as sensible of the originality
+ and Aristophanic gaiety of Collé's brilliant play, <i>Truth in
+ Wine</i>, though Collé detested the philosophic school from Voltaire
+ downwards, and left behind him a bitterly contemptuous account of
+ <i>The Natural Son</i>.<a name="FNanchor_269_269" id="FNanchor_269_269"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_269_269" class="fnanchor">[269]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Of all comic writers, however, the author of the <i>Andria</i> and
+ the <i>Heautontimorumenos</i> was Diderot's favourite. The half dozen
+ pages upon Terence, which he threw off while the printer's boy waited
+ in the passage (1762), are one of the most easy, flowing, and
+ delightful of his fragments; there is such appreciation of Terence's
+ suavity and tact, of his just and fine judgment, of his discrimination
+ and character. He admits that Terence had no verve; for that he
+ commends the young poet to Molière or Aristophanes, but as verve was
+ exactly the quality most wanting to Diderot himself, he easily forgave
+ its absence in Terence, and thought it amply replaced by his
+ moderation, his truth, and his fine taste. Colman is praised for
+ translating Terence, for here, says Diderot, is the lesson of which
+ Colman's countrymen stand most in need. The English comic writers have
+ more verve than taste. "Vanbrugh, Wycherley, Congreve, and some others
+ have painted vices and foibles with vigour; it is not either invention
+ or warmth or gaiety or force that is wanting to their pencil, but
+ rather that unity in the drawing, that precision in the stroke, that
+ truth in colouring, which distinguish portrait from caricature.
+ Especially are they wanting in the art of discerning and seizing those
+ <i>naïf</i>, simple, and yet singular movements of character, which
+ always please and astonish, and render the imitation at once true and
+ piquant."<a name="FNanchor_270_270" id="FNanchor_270_270"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_270_270" class="fnanchor">[270]</a> Criticism has really
+ nothing to add to these few lines, and if Diderot in his last years
+ read <i>The School for Scandal</i>, or <i>The Rivals</i>, he would
+ have found no reason to alter his judgment.</p>
+
+ <p>One English play had the honour of being translated by Diderot;
+ this was <i>The Gamester</i>, not <i>The Gamester</i> of Shirley nor
+ of Garrick, but of Edward Moore (1753). It is a good example of the
+ bourgeois tragedy or domestic drama, which Diderot was so eager to see
+ introduced on to the French stage. The infatuation of Beverley, the
+ tears and virtue of Mrs. Beverley, the prudence of Charlotte and the
+ sage devotion of her lover, the sympathetic remorse of Bates, and even
+ the desperation of Stukely, made up a picture of domestic misery and
+ moral sentiment with which Diderot was sure to fall in love.
+ Lillo's</p>
+
+ <p><i>George Barnwell</i>, with its direct and urgent moral, was a
+ still greater favourite, and Diderot compared the scene between Maria
+ and Barnwell in prison to the despair of the <i>Philocletes</i> of
+ Sophocles, as the hero is heard shrieking at the mouth of his
+ cavern;<a name="FNanchor_271_271" id=
+ "FNanchor_271_271"></a><a href="#Footnote_271_271" class=
+ "fnanchor">[271]</a> just as a more modern
+ critic has thought Lillo's other play, <i>The Fatal Curiosity</i>,
+ worthy of comparison with the <i>Œdipus Tyrannus</i>.</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot's feeling for Shakespeare seems to have been what we might
+ have anticipated from the whole cast of his temperament. One of the
+ scenes which delighted him most was that moment of awe, when Lady
+ Macbeth silently advances down the stage with her eyes closed, and
+ imitates the action of washing her hands, as wondering that "the old
+ man should have so much blood in him." "I know nothing," he exclaims,
+ "so pathetic in discourse as that woman's silence and the movement of
+ her hands. What an image of remorse!"<a name="FNanchor_272_272" id="FNanchor_272_272"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_272_272" class="fnanchor">[272]</a></p>
+
+ <p>It was not to be expected that Diderot should indulge in those
+ undiscriminating superlatives about Shakespeare which are common in
+ Shakespeare's country. But he knew enough about him to feel that he
+ was dealing with a giant. "I will not compare Shakespeare," he said,
+ "to the Belvedere Apollo, nor to the Gladiator, nor to Antinous"—he
+ had compared Terence to the Medicean Venus—"but to the Saint
+ Christopher of Notre Dame, an unshapely colossus, rudely carven, but
+ between whose legs we could all pass without our brows touching
+ him."<a name="FNanchor_273_273" id="FNanchor_273_273"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_273_273" class="fnanchor">[273]</a> Not very satisfactory
+ recognition perhaps; but the Saint Christopher is better than
+ Voltaire's drunken savage.</p>
+
+ <p>It is not every dramatist who treats the art of acting as seriously
+ as the art of composition. The great author of <i>Wilhelm Meister</i>
+ is the most remarkable exception to this rule, and Lessing is only
+ second to him. It is hardly possible for a man to be a great
+ dramatist, and it is simply impossible for a man to be a great critic
+ of the drama, who has not seriously studied the rules, aims, and
+ conditions of stage representation. Hazlitt, for instance, has written
+ some admirable pages about the poetry, the imaginative conception, the
+ language, of Shakespeare's plays, but we find his limit when he says
+ that King Lear is so noble a play that he cannot bear to see it acted.
+ As if a play could be fully judged without reference to the conditions
+ of the very object with which it was written. A play is to be
+ criticised as a play, not merely as a poem. The whole structure of a
+ piece depends on the fact that it is to be acted; its striking moments
+ must be great dramatic, not merely beautiful poetic, moments. They
+ must have the intensity of pitch by which the effect of action exceeds
+ the effect of narrative. This intensity is made almost infinitely
+ variable with the variations in the actor's mastery of his art.</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot, who threw so penetrating a glance into every subject that
+ he touched, even if it were no more than a glance, has left a number
+ of excellent remarks on histrionics. The key to them all is his
+ everlasting watchword: <i>Watch nature, follow her simple, and
+ spontaneous leading</i>. The Paradox on the Player is one of the very
+ few of Diderot's pieces of which we can say that, besides containing
+ vigorous thought, it has real finish in point of literary form. There
+ is not the flat tone, the heavy stroke, the loose shamble, that give a
+ certain stamp of commonness to so many of his most elaborate
+ discussions. In the Paradox the thoughts seem to fall with rapidity
+ and precision into their right places; they are direct; they are not
+ overloaded with qualifications; their clear delivery is not choked by
+ a throng of asides and casual ejaculations. Usually Diderot writes as
+ if he were loath to let the sentence go, and to allow the paragraph to
+ come to an end. Here he lays down his proposition, and without
+ rambling passes on to the next. The effort is not kept up quite to the
+ close, for the last half dozen pages have the ordinary clumsy
+ mannerism of their author.</p>
+
+ <p>What is the Paradox? That a player of the first rank must have much
+ judgment, self-possession, and penetration, <i>but no sensibility</i>.
+ An actor with nothing but sense and judgment is apt to be cold; but an
+ actor with nothing but verve and sensibility is crazy. It is a certain
+ temperament of good sense and warmth combined, that makes the sublime
+ player.<a name="FNanchor_274_274"
+ id="FNanchor_274_274"></a><a href="#Footnote_274_274" class=
+ "fnanchor">[274]</a> Why should he differ
+ from the poet, the painter, the orator, the musician? It is not in the
+ fury of the first impulse that characteristic strokes occur to any of
+ these men; it is in moments when they are tranquil and cool, and such
+ strokes come by an unexpected inspiration.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_275_275" id="FNanchor_275_275"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_275_275" class="fnanchor">[275]</a> It is for coolness to temper the delirium of
+ enthusiasm. It is not the violent man who is beside himself that
+ disposes of us; that is an advantage reserved for the man who
+ possesses himself. The great poets, the great actors, and perhaps
+ generally all the great imitators of nature, whatever they may be, are
+ gifted with a fine imagination, a great judgment, a subtle tact, a
+ sure taste, but they are creatures of the smallest sensibility. They
+ are equally well fitted for too many things; they are too busy in
+ looking, in recognising, and in imitating, to be violently affected
+ within themselves. Sensibility is hardly the quality of a great
+ genius. He will have justice; but he will practise it without reaping
+ all the sweetness of it. It is not his heart, but his head, that does
+ it all. Well, then, what I insist upon, says Diderot, is that it is
+ extreme sensibility that makes mediocre actors; it is mediocre
+ sensibility that makes bad actors; and it is the absolute want of
+ sensibility that prepares actors who shall be sublime.<a name="FNanchor_276_276"
+ id="FNanchor_276_276"></a><a href="#Footnote_276_276" class=
+ "fnanchor">[276]</a></p>
+
+ <p>This is worked out with great clearness and decision, and some of
+ the illustrations to which he resorts to lighten the dialogue are
+ amusing enough. Perhaps the most interesting to us English is his
+ account of Garrick, whose acquaintance he made towards the year 1765.
+ He says that he saw Garrick pass his head between two folding doors,
+ and in the space of a few seconds, his face went successively from mad
+ joy to moderate joy, from that to tranquillity, from tranquillity to
+ surprise, from surprise to astonishment, from astonishment to gloom,
+ from gloom to utter dejection, from dejection to fear, from fear to
+ horror, from horror to despair, and then reascend from this lowest
+ degree to the point whence he had started.<a name="FNanchor_277_277" id="FNanchor_277_277"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_277_277" class="fnanchor">[277]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Of course his soul felt none of these emotions. "If you asked this
+ famous man, who by himself was as well worth a journey to England to
+ see, as all the wonders of Rome are worth a journey to Italy, if you
+ asked him, I say, for the scene of <i>The Little Baker's Boy</i>, he
+ played it; if you asked him the next minute for the scene from
+ <i>Hamlet</i>, he played that too for you, equally ready to sob over
+ the fall of his pies, and to follow the path of the dagger in the
+ air."<a name="FNanchor_278_278" id=
+ "FNanchor_278_278"></a><a href="#Footnote_278_278" class=
+ "fnanchor">[278]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Apart from the central proposition, Diderot makes a number of
+ excellent observations which show his critical faculty at its best.
+ As, for example, in answering the question, what is the truth of the
+ stage? Is it to show things exactly as they are in nature? By no
+ means. The true in that sense would only be the common. The really
+ true is the conformity of action, speech, countenance, voice,
+ movement, gesture, with an ideal model imagined by the poet, and often
+ exaggerated by the player. And the marvel is that this model
+ influences not only the tone, but the whole carriage and gait. Again,
+ what is the aim of multiplied rehearsals? To establish a balance among
+ the different talents of the actors. The supreme excellence of one
+ actor does not recompense you for the mediocrity of the others, which
+ is brought by that very superiority into disagreeable prominence.
+ Again, accent is easier to imitate than movement, but movements are
+ what strike us most violently. Hence a law to which there is no
+ exception, namely, under pain of being cold, to make your denouement
+ an action and not a narrative.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_279_279" id="FNanchor_279_279"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_279_279" class="fnanchor">[279]</a></p>
+
+ <p>One of the strongest satires on the reigning dramatic style,
+ Diderot found in the need that the actor had of the mirror. The fewer
+ gestures, he said, the better; frequent gesticulation impairs energy
+ and destroys nobleness. It is the countenance, the eyes, it is the
+ whole body that ought to move, and not the arms.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_280_280" id="FNanchor_280_280"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_280_280" class="fnanchor">[280]</a> There is no maxim more
+ forgotten by poets than that which says that great passions are mute.
+ It depends on the player to produce a greater effect by silence than
+ the poet can produce by all his fine speeches.<a name="FNanchor_281_281" id=
+ "FNanchor_281_281"></a><a href="#Footnote_281_281" class=
+ "fnanchor">[281]</a> Above all, the player
+ is to study tranquil scenes, for it is these that are the most truly
+ difficult. He commends a young actress to play every morning, by way
+ of orisons, the scene of Athalie with Joas; to say for evensong some
+ scenes of Agrippina with Nero; and for Benedicite the first scene of
+ Phædra with her confidante. Especially there is to be little
+ emphasis—a warning grievously needed by ninety-nine English speakers
+ out of a hundred—for emphasis is hardly ever natural; it is only a
+ forced imitation of nature.<a name="FNanchor_282_282" id=
+ "FNanchor_282_282"></a><a href="#Footnote_282_282" class=
+ "fnanchor">[282]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Diderot had perceived very early that the complacency with which
+ his countrymen regarded the national theatre was extravagant. He would
+ not allow a comparison between the conventional classic of the French
+ stage and the works of the Greek stage. He insisted in the case of the
+ Greeks that their subjects are noble, well chosen, and interesting;
+ that the action seems to develop itself spontaneously; that their
+ dialogue is simple and very close to what is natural; that the
+ dénouements are not forced; that the interest is not divided nor the
+ action overloaded with episodes. In the French classic he found none
+ of these merits. He found none of that truth which is the only secret
+ of pleasing and touching us; none of that simple and natural movement
+ which is the only path to perfect and unbroken illusion. The dialogue
+ is all emphasis, wit, glitter; all a thousand leagues away from
+ nature. Instead of artificially giving to their characters
+ <i>esprit</i> at every point, poets ought to place them in such
+ situations as will give it to them. Where in the world did men and
+ women ever speak as we declaim? Why should princes and kings walk
+ differently from any man who walks well? Did they then gesticulate
+ like raving madmen? Do princesses when they speak utter sharp
+ hissings?</p>
+
+ <p>People believe us to have brought tragedy to a high degree of
+ perfection. It is not so. Of all kinds of literature it is the most
+ imperfect.<a name="FNanchor_283_283" id=
+ "FNanchor_283_283"></a><a href="#Footnote_283_283" class=
+ "fnanchor">[283]</a></p>
+
+ <p>The ideas which appeared thus incongruously in the tales of 1748
+ reappeared in the direct essays on the drama in 1757 and 1758. We have
+ left nothing undone, he said, to corrupt dramatic style. We have
+ preserved from the ancients that emphasis of versification which was
+ so well fitted to languages of strong quantity and marked accent, to
+ vast theatres, to a declamation that had an instrumental
+ accompaniment; and then we have given up simplicity of plot and
+ dialogue, and all truth of situation.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_284_284" id="FNanchor_284_284"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_284_284" class="fnanchor">[284]</a> La Motte nearly fifty years before had attacked
+ the pseudo-classic drama. He had inveighed against the unities,
+ against long monologues, against the device of confidants, and against
+ verse. His assault, in which he had the powerful aid of Fontenelle,
+ was part of that battle between Moderns and Ancients with which the
+ literary activity of the century had opened. The brilliant success of
+ the tragedies of Voltaire had restored the lustre of the conventional
+ drama, though Voltaire infused an element of the romantic under the
+ severity of the old forms. But the drama had become even less like
+ Sophocles and Euripides in <i>Zaïre</i> than in <i>Phédre</i> or
+ <i>Iphigénie</i>. Voltaire intended to constitute the French drama
+ into an independent form. He expected to be told that he was not like
+ Sophocles, and he did not abstain from some singularly free railing
+ against Euripides. The Greek pieces often smacked too much of the tone
+ of the fair to satisfy him; they were too familiar and colloquial for
+ a taste that had been made fastidious by the court-pieces of Lewis
+ XIV. Diderot was kept free from such deplorable criticism as this by
+ feeling that the Greek drama was true to the sentiment of the age that
+ gave it birth, and that the French drama, if not in the hands of
+ Racine, still even in the hands of Voltaire, and much more in the
+ hands of such men as Lagrange-Chancel and the elder Crébillon, was
+ true to no sentiment save one purely literary, artificial, and barren.
+ He insists on the hopelessness of the stage, unless men prepared
+ themselves at every part for a grand return to nature. We have seen
+ what is his counsel to the actor. He preaches in the same key to the
+ scene-painter and the maker of costumes. Scene-painting ought to be
+ more rigorously true than any other kind of picture. Let there be no
+ distraction, no extraneous suggestion, to interfere with the
+ impression intended by the poet. Have you a salon to represent? Let it
+ be that of a man of taste and no more: no ostentation and no gilding,
+ unless the situation expressly demands the contrary.</p>
+
+ <p>In the dresses the same rule holds good. Under robes that are
+ overladen with gold lace, I only see a rich man; what I want to see is
+ a man. Pretty and simple draperies of severe tints are what we need,
+ not a mass of tinsel and embroidery. "A courageous actress has just
+ got rid of her panier, and nobody has found her any the worse for it.
+ Ah, if she only dared one day to show herself on the stage with all
+ the nobility and simplicity of adjustment that her characters demand;
+ nay, in the disorder into which she would be thrown by an event so
+ terrible as the death of a husband, the loss of a son, and the other
+ catastrophes of the tragic stage, what would become, round her
+ dishevelled figure, of all those powdered, curled, frizzled,
+ tricked-out creatures? Sooner or later they must put themselves in
+ unison. O nature, nature! We can never resist her."<a name="FNanchor_285_285" id="FNanchor_285_285"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_285_285" class="fnanchor">[285]</a></p>
+
+ <p>From all this we turn, for a few moments only, and not too
+ cheerfully, to the Serbonian bog of dramatic rules and the metaphysics
+ of the theatre. There is no subject in literature, not even the
+ interpretation of the Apocalypse, which has given birth to such
+ pedantic, dismal, and futile discussion. The immense controversy,
+ carried on in books, pamphlets, sheets and flying articles, mostly
+ German, as to what it was that Aristotle really meant by the famous
+ words in the sixth chapter of the <i>Poetics</i>, about tragedy
+ accomplishing the purification of our moods of pity and sympathetic
+ fear, is one of the disgraces of human intelligence, a grotesque
+ monument of sterility. The great tap-root of fallacy has been and
+ remains the incessant imputation of ethical or social purpose to the
+ dramatist, and the demand of direct and combined ethical or social
+ effect from the drama. There is no critic, from the great Aristotle
+ downwards, who has steered quite clear of these evil shallows;
+ Diderot, as we have seen, least of all. But Diderot disarms the
+ impatience which narrower critics kindle, by this magnificent
+ concession, coming at the close of all: "Especially remember that
+ <i>there is no general principle;</i> I do not know a single one of
+ those that I have indicated which a man of genius cannot infringe with
+ success."<a name="FNanchor_286_286" id=
+ "FNanchor_286_286"></a><a href="#Footnote_286_286" class=
+ "fnanchor">[286]</a> Here we listen to the
+ voice of the genuine Diderot; and if this be granted, we need not give
+ more than a passing attention to the rules that have gone before—about
+ the danger of borrowing in the same composition the shades both of the
+ comic and of the tragic styles; about movement being injurious to
+ dignity, and of the importance therefore of not making the principal
+ personage the <i>machinist</i> of the piece; about the inexpediency of
+ episodic personages —and so forth. The only remark worth making on
+ these propositions is that, whatever their value may be, Diderot at
+ any rate, like a true philosopher, generalised from the facts of
+ nature and art. He did not follow the too common critical method of
+ reading one's own ideas into a work of art, and then taking them back
+ again in the more imposing form of inevitable deductions from the work
+ itself.</p>
+
+ <p>What Diderot conceived himself really to have done, was to have
+ sketched and constituted a new species in the great dramatic kingdom.
+ Every one knows, he said, that there is tragedy and that there is
+ comedy, but we have to learn that there is room in nature and the art
+ of the stage for a third division, namely, the <i>genre sérieux</i>, a
+ kind of comedy that has for its object virtue and the duties of man.
+ Why should the writer of comedy confine his work to what is vicious or
+ ridiculous in men? Why should not the duties of men furnish the
+ dramatist with as ample material as their vices? Surely in the
+ <i>genre honnête et sérieux</i> the subject is as important as in gay
+ comedy. The characters are as varied and as original. The passions are
+ all the more energetic as the interest will be greater. The style will
+ be graver, loftier, more forcible, more susceptible of what we call
+ sentiment, a quality without which no style ever yet spoke to the
+ heart. The ridiculous will not be absent, for the madness of actions
+ and speeches, when they are suggested by the misunderstanding of
+ interests or by the transport of passion, is the truly ridiculous
+ thing in men and in life.<a name="FNanchor_287_287"
+ id="FNanchor_287_287"></a><a href="#Footnote_287_287" class=
+ "fnanchor">[287]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Besides his own two pieces, Diderot would probably have pointed to
+ Terence as the author coming nearest to the <i>genre sérieux</i>. If
+ Goethe's bad play of <i>Stella</i> had retained the close as he
+ originally wrote it, with the bigamous Fernando in the last scene
+ rejoicing over the devoted agreement of the two ladies and his
+ daughter to live with him in happy unity, that would perhaps have been
+ a comedy of the <i>genre sérieux</i>, with the duties of man
+ gracefully adapted to circumstances.</p>
+
+ <p>The theory of the <i>genre sérieux</i> has not led to the formation
+ of any school of writers adopting it and working it out, or to the
+ production of any masterpiece that has held its ground, as has
+ happened in tragedy, comedy, and farce. Beaumarchais, who at last
+ achieved such a dazzling and portentous success by one dramatic
+ masterpiece, began his career as a playwright by following the vein of
+ <i>The Father of the Family;</i> but <i>The Marriage of Figaro</i>,
+ though not without strong traces of Diderotian sentiment in pungent
+ application, yet is in its structure and composition less French than
+ Spanish. It is quite true, as Rosenkranz says, that the prevailing
+ taste on the French stage in our own times favours above all else
+ bourgeois romantic comedy, written in prose.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_288_288" id="FNanchor_288_288"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_288_288" class="fnanchor">[288]</a> But the strength of the romantic element in them
+ would have been as little satisfactory to Diderot's love of realistic
+ moralising as the conventional tragedy of the court of Lewis XIV. The
+ Fable of most of them turns on adultery, and this is not within the
+ method of the <i>genre sérieux</i> as expounded by Diderot. Perhaps
+ half a dozen comedies, such, for instance, as <i>The Ideas of Madame
+ Aubray,</i> by M. Dumas, are of the <i>genre sérieux</i>, but
+ certainly there are not enough of such comedies to constitute a
+ genuine Diderotian school in France. There is no need therefore to say
+ more about the theory than this, namely, that though the drama is an
+ imitative art, yet besides imitation its effects demand illusion.
+ What, cries Diderot, you do not conceive the effect that would be
+ produced on you by a real scene, with real dresses, with speech in
+ true proportion to the action, with the actions themselves simple,
+ with the very dangers that have made you tremble for your parents, for
+ your friends, for yourselves? No, we answer: reproduction of reality
+ does not move us as a powerful work of imagination moves us. "We may
+ as well urge," said Burke, "that stones, sand, clay, and metals lie in
+ a certain manner in the earth, as a reason for building with these
+ materials and in that manner, as for writing according to the
+ accidental disposition of characters in Nature."<a name="FNanchor_289_289" id=
+ "FNanchor_289_289"></a><a href="#Footnote_289_289" class=
+ "fnanchor">[289]</a> Common dangers do not
+ excite us; it is the presentation of danger in some uncommon form, in
+ some new combination, in some fresh play of motive and passion, that
+ quickens that sympathetic fear and pity which it is the end of a play
+ to produce. And if this be so, there is another thing to be said. If
+ we are to be deliberately steeped in the atmosphere of Duty, illusion
+ is out of place. The constant presence of that severe and overpowering
+ figure, "Stern Daughter of the Voice of God," checks the native
+ wildness of imagination, restricts the exuberance of fancy, and sets a
+ rigorous limit to invention. Diderot used to admit that the <i>genre
+ sérieux</i> could never take its right place until it had been handled
+ by a man of high dramatic genius. The cause why this condition has
+ never come to pass is simply that its whole structure and its
+ regulations repel the faculties of dramatic genius.</p>
+
+ <p>Besides the perfection of the <i>genre sérieux</i>, Diderot
+ insisted that the following tasks were also to be achieved before the
+ stage could be said to have attained the full glory of the other arts.
+ First, a domestic or bourgeois tragedy must be created. Second, the
+ conditions of men, their callings and situations, the types of
+ classes, in short, must be substituted for mere individual characters.
+ Third, a real tragedy must be introduced upon the lyric theatre.
+ Finally, the dance must be brought within the forms of a true
+ poem.</p>
+
+ <p>The only remark to be made upon this scheme touches the second
+ article of it. To urge the substitution of types of classes for
+ individual character was the very surest means that could have been
+ devised for bringing back the conventional forms of the pseudo-classic
+ drama. The very mark of that drama was that it introduced types
+ instead of vigorously stamped personalities. What would be gained by
+ driving the typical king off the stage, only to make room for the
+ generalisation of a shopkeeper? This was not the path that led to
+ romanticism, to André Chenier, to De Vigny, to Lamartine, to Victor
+ Hugo. Théophile Gautier has told us that the fiery chiefs of the
+ romantic school who suddenly conquered France at the close of the
+ Restoration, divided the whole world into <i>flamboyant</i> and
+ <i>drab</i>. In the literature of the past they counted Voltaire one
+ of the Drab, and Diderot a Flamboyant.<a name="FNanchor_290_290" id=
+ "FNanchor_290_290"></a><a href="#Footnote_290_290" class=
+ "fnanchor">[290]</a> If it be not too presumptuous in a foreigner to
+ dissent, we cannot but think that they were mistaken. Nothing could be
+ farther removed at every part from Diderot's dramatic scheme, than
+ <i>Faust</i> or <i>Götz von Berlichingen</i> or <i>Hernani</i>.</p>
+
+ <p>The truth is that it was impossible for an effective antagonism to
+ the classic school to rise in the mind of an Encyclopædist, for the
+ reason that the Encyclopædists hated and ignored what they called the
+ Dark Ages. Yet it was exactly the Dark Ages from which the great
+ romantic revival drew its very life-breath. "In the eighteenth
+ century," it has been said, "it was really the reminiscence of the
+ classic spirit which was awakened in the newer life of Europe, and
+ made prominent."<a name="FNanchor_291_291"
+ id="FNanchor_291_291"></a><a href="#Footnote_291_291" class=
+ "fnanchor">[291]</a> This is true in a certain historic sense of
+ Rousseau's politics, and perhaps of Voltaire's rationalism. In spite
+ of the vein of mysticism which occasionally shows in him, it is true
+ in some degree of Diderot himself, if by classicism we mean the
+ tendency to make man the centre of the universe. Classicism treats man
+ as worthy and great, living his life among cold and neutral forces.
+ This is the very opposite of the sinfulness, imperfection, and
+ nothingness habitually imputed to man, and the hourly presence of a
+ whole hierarchy of busy supernatural agents placed about man by the
+ Middle Ages. Yet we cannot but see that Diderot was feeling for
+ dramatic forms and subjects that would have been as little classic as
+ romantic. He failed in the search. There is one play and only one of
+ his epoch that is not classic, and is not romantic, but speaks
+ independently the truest and best mind of the eighteenth century
+ itself, in its own form and language. That play is <i>Nathan the
+ Wise</i>.</p>
+ <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+ <h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.<br />
+ RAMEAU'S NEPHEW.</h2>
+
+ <p>In hypochondriacal moments, it has been said, the world, viewed
+ from the æsthetic side, appears to many a one a cabinet of
+ caricatures; from the intellectual side, a madhouse; and from the
+ moral side, a harbouring place for rascals.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_292_292" id="FNanchor_292_292"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_292_292" class="fnanchor">[292]</a> We might perhaps extend this saying beyond the
+ accidents of hypochondriasis, and urge that the few wide, profound,
+ and real observers of human life have all known, and known often, this
+ fantastic consciousness of living in a strange distorted universe of
+ lunatics, knaves, grotesques. It is an inevitable mood to any who dare
+ to shake the kaleidoscopic fragments out of their conventional and
+ accepted combination. Who does not remember deep traces of such a mood
+ in Plato, Shakespeare, Pascal, Goethe? And Diderot, who went near to
+ having something of the deep quality of those sovereign spirits, did
+ not escape, any more than they, the visitation of the misanthropic
+ spectre. The distinction of the greater minds is that they have no
+ temptation to give the spectre a permanent home with them, as is done
+ by theologians in order to prove the necessity of grace and another
+ world, or by cynics in order to prove the wisdom of selfishness in
+ this world. The greater minds accept the worse facts of character for
+ what they are worth, and bring them into a right perspective with the
+ better facts. They have no expectation of escaping all perplexities,
+ nor of hitting on answers to all the moral riddles of the world. Yet
+ are they ever drawn by an invincible fascination to the feet of the
+ mighty Sphinx of society. She bewilders them with questions that are
+ never overheard by common ears, and torments them with a mockery that
+ is unobserved by common eyes. The energetic—a Socrates, a
+ Diderot—cannot content themselves with merely recording her
+ everlasting puzzles; still less with merely writing over again the
+ already recorded answers. They insist on scrutinising the moral world
+ afresh; they resolve the magniloquent vocabulary of abstract ethics
+ into the small realities from which it has come; they break the
+ complacent repose of opinion and usage by a graphic irony. "The
+ definitions of moral beings," said Diderot, "are always made from what
+ such beings ought to be, and never from what they are. People
+ incessantly confound duty with the thing as it is."<a name="FNanchor_293_293" id="FNanchor_293_293"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_293_293" class="fnanchor">[293]</a> We shall proceed to
+ give a short account of one or two dialogues in which he endeavours to
+ keep clear of this confusion.</p>
+
+ <p>By far the most important of these is <i>Rameau's Nephew</i>. The
+ fortunes of this singular production are probably unique in literary
+ history. In the year 1804</p>
+
+ <p>Schiller handed to Goethe the manuscript of a piece by Diderot,
+ with the wish that he might find himself able to translate it into
+ German. "As I had long," says Goethe, "cherished a great regard for
+ this author, I cheerfully undertook the task, after looking through
+ the original. People can see, I hope, that I threw my whole soul into
+ it."<a name="FNanchor_294_294" id=
+ "FNanchor_294_294"></a><a href="#Footnote_294_294" class=
+ "fnanchor">[294]</a> When he had done his
+ work, he returned the manuscript to Schiller. Schiller died almost
+ immediately (May 1805), and the mysterious manuscript disappeared.
+ Goethe could never learn either whence it had come, or whither it
+ went. He always suspected that the autograph original had been sent to
+ the Empress Catherine at St. Petersburg, and that Schiller's
+ manuscript was a copy from that. Though Goethe had executed his
+ translation, as he says, "not merely with readiness but even with
+ passion," the violent and only too just hatred then prevailing in
+ Germany for France and for all that belonged to France, hindered any
+ vogue which <i>Rameau's Nephew</i> might otherwise have had. On the
+ eve of Austerlitz and of Jena there might well be little humour for a
+ satire from the French.</p>
+
+ <p>Thirteen years afterwards an edition of Diderot's works appeared in
+ Paris (Belin's edition of 1818), but the editors were obliged to
+ content themselves, for <i>Rameau's Nephew</i>, with an analysis of
+ Goethe's translation. In 1821 a lively sensation was produced by the
+ publication of what professed to be the original text of the missing
+ dialogue. It was really a retranslation into French from Goethe. The
+ fraud was not discovered for some time, until in 1823 Brière announced
+ for his edition of Diderot's works a reprint from a genuine original.
+ This original he had procured from Madame de Vandeul, Diderot's
+ daughter, who still survived. She described it as a copy made in 1760
+ under the author's own eyes, and this may have been the case, though,
+ if so, it must, from some of the references, have been revised after
+ 1773. The two young men who had tried to palm off their retranslation
+ from Goethe as Diderot's own text, at once had the effrontery to
+ accuse Brière and Diderot's daughter of repeating their own fraud. A
+ vivacious dispute followed between the indignant publisher and his
+ impudent detractors. At length Brière appealed to the great Jove of
+ Weimar. Goethe expressed his conviction that Brière's text was the
+ genuine text of the original, and this was held to settle the
+ question. Yet Goethe's voucher for its correspondence with the copy
+ handed to him by Schiller was not really decisive evidence. He admits
+ that he executed the translation very rapidly, and had no time to
+ compare it closely with the French. An identification nearly twenty
+ years afterwards of verbal resemblances and minute references, in a
+ work that had been only a short time in his hands, cannot be counted
+ testimony of the highest kind. We have thus the extraordinary
+ circumstance that for a great number of years, down almost to the
+ present decade, the text of the one masterpiece of a famous man who
+ died so recently as 1784 rested on a single manuscript, and that a
+ manuscript of disputed authenticity.<a name="FNanchor_295_295" id="FNanchor_295_295"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_295_295" class="fnanchor">[295]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Critics differ extremely in their answers to the question of the
+ subject or object of Diderot's singular "farce-tragedy." One declares
+ it to be merely a satirical picture of contemporary manners. Another
+ insists that it is meant to be an ironical <i>reductio ad absurdum</i>
+ of the theory of self-interest, by exhibiting a concrete example of
+ its working in all its grossness. A third holds that it was composed
+ by way of rejoinder to Palissot's comedy <i>(Les Philosophes</i>),
+ 1760, which had brought the chiefs of the rationalistic school upon
+ the stage, and presented them as enemies of the human race. A fourth
+ suspects that the personal and dramatic portions are no more than a
+ setting for the discussion of the comparative merits of the French and
+ Italian schools of music. The true answer is that the dialogue is all
+ of these things, because it is none of them. It is neither more nor
+ less than the living picture and account of an original, drawn by a
+ man of genius who was accustomed to observe human nature and society
+ with a free unblinking vision, and to meditate upon them deeply and
+ searchingly.</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot goes to work with Rameau in some sort and to a certain
+ extent as Shakespeare went to work with Falstaff. He is the artist,
+ reproducing with the variety and perfection of art a whimsical figure
+ that struck his fancy and stirred the creative impulse. Ethics,
+ æsthetics, manners, satire, are all indeed to be found in the
+ dialogue, but they are only there as incident to the central figure of
+ the sketch, the prodigy of parasites. Diderot had no special fondness
+ for these originals. Yet he had a keen and just sense of their
+ interest. "Their character stands out from the rest of the world, it
+ breaks that tiresome uniformity which our bringing up, our social
+ conventions, and our arbitrary fashions have introduced. If one of
+ them makes his appearance in a company, he is like leaven, fermenting
+ and restoring to each person present a portion of his natural
+ individuality. He stirs people up, moves them, provokes to praise or
+ blame: he is a means of bringing out reality; gives honest people a
+ chance of showing what they are made of, and unmasks the
+ rogues."<a name="FNanchor_296_296" id=
+ "FNanchor_296_296"></a><a href="#Footnote_296_296" class=
+ "fnanchor">[296]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Hearing that the subject of Diderot's dialogue is the Parasite, the
+ scholar will naturally think of that savage satire in which Juvenal
+ rehearses the thousand humiliations that Virro inflicts on Trebius:
+ how the wretched follower has to drink fiery stuff from broken
+ crockery, while the patron quaffs of the costliest from splendid cups
+ of amber and precious stones; how the host has fine oil of Venafrum,
+ while the guest munches cabbage that has been steeped in rancid
+ lamp-oil; one plays daintily with mullet and lamprey, while the other
+ has his stomach turned by an eel as long as a snake, and bloated in
+ the foul torrent of the sewers; Virro has apples that might have come
+ from the gardens of the Hesperides, while Trebius gnaws such musty
+ things as are tossed to a performing monkey on the town wall. But the
+ distance is immeasurable between Juvenal's scorching truculence and
+ Diderot's half-ironical, half-serious sufferance. Juvenal knows that
+ Trebius is a base and abject being; he tells him what he is; and in
+ the process blasts him. Diderot knows that Rameau too is base and
+ abject, but he is so little willing to rest in the fat and easy
+ paradise of conventions, that he seems to be all the time vaguely
+ wondering in his own mind how far this genius of grossness and paradox
+ and bestial sophism is a pattern of the many, with the mask thrown
+ off. He seems to be inwardly musing whether it can after all be true,
+ that if one draws aside a fold of the gracious outer robe of
+ conformity, there is no comeliness of life shining underneath, but
+ only this horror of the skeleton and the worm. He restrains
+ exasperation at the brilliant effrontery of his man, precisely as an
+ anatomist would suppress disgust at a pathological monstrosity, or an
+ astonishing variation in which he hoped to surprise some vital secret.
+ Rameau is not crudely analysed as a vile type: he is searched as
+ exemplifying on a prodigious scale elements of character that lie
+ furtively in the depths of characters that are not vile. It seems as
+ if Diderot unconsciously anticipated that terrible, that woful, that
+ desolating saying,—<i>There is in every man and woman something which,
+ if you knew it, would make you hate them</i>. Rameau is not all
+ parasite. He is your brother and mine, a product from the same
+ rudimentary factors of mental composition, a figure cast equally with
+ ourselves in one of the countless moulds of the huge social
+ foundry.</p>
+
+ <p>Such is the scientific attitude of mind towards character: It is
+ not philanthropic nor pitiful: the fact that base characters exist and
+ are of intelligible origin is no reason why we should not do our best
+ to shun and to extirpate them. This assumption of the scientific point
+ of view, this change from mere praise and blame to scrutiny, this
+ comprehension that mere execration is not the last word, is a mark of
+ the modern spirit. Besides Juvenal, another writer of genius has shown
+ us the parasite of an ancient society. Lucian, whose fertility, wit,
+ invention, mockery, freshness of spirit, and honest hatred of false
+ gods, make him the Voltaire of the second century, has painted with
+ all his native liveliness more than one picture of the parasite. The
+ great man's creature at Rome endures exactly the same long train of
+ affronts and humiliations as the great man's creature at Paris sixteen
+ centuries later, beginning with the anguish of the mortified stomach,
+ as savoury morsels of venison or boar are given to more important
+ guests, and ending with the anguish of the mortified spirit, as he
+ sees himself supplanted by a rival of shapelier person, a more
+ ingenious versifier, a cleverer mountebank. The dialogue in which
+ Lucian ironically proves that Parasitic, or the honourable craft of
+ Spunging, has as many of the marks of a genuine art as Rhetoric,
+ Gymnastic, or Music, is a spirited parody of Socratic catechising and
+ Platonic mannerisms. Simo shows to Tychiades, as ingeniously as Rameau
+ shows to Diderot, that the Spunger has a far better life of it, and is
+ a far more rational and consistent person than the orator and the
+ philosopher.<a name="FNanchor_297_297" id=
+ "FNanchor_297_297"></a><a href="#Footnote_297_297" class=
+ "fnanchor">[297]</a> Lucian's satire is vivid, brilliant, and
+ diverting. Yet every one feels that Diderot's performance, while
+ equally vivid, is marked by greater depth of spirit; comes from a soil
+ that has been more freely broken up, and has been enriched by a more
+ copious experience. The ancient turned upon these masterpieces of
+ depravation the flash of intellectual scorn; the modern eyes them with
+ a certain moral patience, and something of that curious kind of
+ interest, looking half like sympathy, which a hunter has for the
+ object of his chase.</p>
+
+ <p>The Rameau of the dialogue was a real personage, and there is a
+ dispute whether Diderot has not calumniated him. Evidence enough
+ remains that he was at least a person of singular character and
+ irregular disastrous life. Diderot's general veracity of temperament
+ would make us believe that his picture is authentic, but the interest
+ of the dialogue is exactly the same in either case. Juvenal's fifth
+ satire would be worth neither more nor less, however much were found
+ out about Trebius.</p>
+
+ <p>"Rameau is one of the most eccentric figures in the country, where
+ God has not made them lacking. He is a mixture of elevation and
+ lowness, of good sense and madness; the notions of good and bad must
+ be mixed up together in strange confusion in his head, for he shows
+ the good qualities that nature has bestowed on him without any
+ ostentation, and the bad ones without the smallest shame. For the
+ rest, he is endowed with a vigorous frame, a particular warmth of
+ imagination, and an uncommon strength of lungs. If you ever meet him,
+ unless you happen to be arrested by his originality, you will either
+ stuff your fingers into your ears or else take to your heels. Heavens,
+ what a monstrous pipe! Nothing is so little like him as himself. One
+ time he is lean and wan, like a patient in the last stage of
+ consumption: you could count his teeth through his cheeks; you would
+ say he must have passed some days without tasting a morsel, or that he
+ is fresh from La Trappe. A month after, he is stout and sleek as if he
+ had been sitting all the time at the board of a financier, or had been
+ shut up in a Bernardine monastery. To-day in dirty linen, his clothes
+ torn and patched, with barely a shoe to his foot, he steals along with
+ a bent head; one is tempted to hail him and toss him a shilling.
+ To-morrow, all powdered, curled, in a good coat, he marches about with
+ head erect and open mien, and you would almost take him for a decent
+ worthy creature. He lives from day to day, from hand to mouth,
+ downcast or sad, just as things may go. His first care of a morning
+ when he gets up is to know where he will dine; after dinner, he begins
+ to think where he may pick up a supper. Night brings disquiets of its
+ own. Either he climbs to a shabby garret he has, unless the landlady,
+ weary of waiting for her rent, has taken the key away from him; or
+ else he shrinks to some tavern on the outskirts of the town, where he
+ waits for daybreak over a crust of bread and a mug of beer. When he
+ has not threepence in his pocket, as sometimes happens, he has
+ recourse either to a hackney-carriage belonging to a friend, or to a
+ coachman of some man of quality, who gives him a bed on the straw
+ beside the horses. In the morning he still has bits of the mattress in
+ his hair. If the weather is mild, he measures the Champs Elysées all
+ night long. With the day he reappears in the town, dressed over night
+ for the morrow, and from the morrow sometimes dressed for the rest of
+ the week."</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot is accosted by this curious being one afternoon on a bench
+ in front of the Café de la Régence in the Palais Royal. They proceed
+ in the thoroughly natural and easy manner of interlocutors in a
+ Platonic dialogue. It is not too much to say that <i>Rameau's
+ Nephew</i> is the most effective and masterly use of that form of
+ discussion since Plato. Diderot's vein of realism is doubtless in
+ strong contrast with Plato's poetic and idealising touch. Yet
+ imaginative strokes are not wanting to soften the repulsive theme, and
+ to bring the sordid and the foul within the sphere of art. For an
+ example. "Time has passed," says Rameau, "and that is always so much
+ gained."</p>
+
+ <p>"<i>I.</i>—So much lost, you mean.</p>
+
+ <p>"<i>He.</i>—No, no; gained. People grow rich every moment; a day
+ less to live, or a crown piece to the good, 'tis all one. When the
+ last moment comes, one is as rich as another. Samuel Bernard, who by
+ pillaging and stealing and playing bankrupt, leaves seven-and-twenty
+ million francs in gold, is no better than Rameau, who leaves not a
+ penny, and will be indebted to charity for a shroud to wrap about him.
+ The dead man hears not the tolling of the bell; 'tis in vain that a
+ hundred priests bawl dirges for him, in vain that a long file of
+ blazing torches go before. His soul walks not by the side of the
+ master of the funeral ceremonies. To moulder under marble, or to
+ moulder under clay, 'tis still to moulder. To have around one's bier
+ children in red and children in blue, or to have not a creature, what
+ matters it?"</p>
+
+ <p>These are the gleams of the <i>mens divinior</i>, that relieve the
+ perplexing moral squalor of the portrait. Even here we have the
+ painful innuendo that a thought which is solemnising and holy to the
+ noble, serves equally well to point a trait of cynical defiance in the
+ ignoble.</p>
+
+ <p>Again, there is an indirectly imaginative element in the sort of
+ terror which the thoroughness of the presentation inspires. For indeed
+ it is an emotion hardly short of terror that seizes us, as we listen
+ to the stringent unflinching paradox of this heterogeneous figure.
+ Rameau is the squalid and tattered Satan of the eighteenth century. He
+ is a Mephistopheles out at elbows, a Lucifer in low water; yet always
+ diabolic, with the bright flash of the pit in his eye. Disgust is
+ transformed into horror and affright by the trenchant confidence of
+ his spirit, the daring thoroughness and consistency of his dialectic,
+ the lurid sarcasm, the vile penetration. He discusses a horrible
+ action, or execrable crime, as a virtuoso examines a statue or a
+ painting. He has that rarest fortitude of the vicious, not to shrink
+ from calling his character and conduct by their names. He is one of
+ Swift's Yahoos, with the courage of its opinions. He seems to give one
+ reason for hating and dreading oneself. The effect is of mixed fear
+ and fascination, as of a magician whose miraculous crystal is to show
+ us what and how we shall be twenty years from now; or as when a
+ surgeon tells the tale of some ghastly disorder, that may at the very
+ moment be stealthily preparing for us a doom of anguish.</p>
+
+ <p>Hence our dialogue is assuredly no "meat for little people nor for
+ fools." Some of it is revolting in its brutal indecency. Even Goethe's
+ self-possession cannot make it endurable to him. But it is a study to
+ be omitted by no one who judges the corruption of the old society in
+ France an important historic subject. The picture is very like the
+ corruption of the old society in Rome. We see the rotten material
+ which the purifying flame of Jacobinism was soon to consume out of the
+ land with fiery swiftness. We watch the very classes from which, as we
+ have been so often told, the regeneration of France would have come,
+ if only demagogues and rabble had not violently interposed. There is
+ no gaiety in the style; none of that laughter which makes such a
+ delineation of the manners of the time as we find in Collé's play of
+ <i>Truth in Wine</i>, <i>naïf</i>, true to nature, and almost
+ exhilarating. In <i>Rameau</i> we are afflicted by the odour of deadly
+ taint.</p>
+
+ <p>As the dialogue is not in every hand—nor could any one wish that it
+ should be—I have thought it worth while to print an English rendering
+ of a considerable part of it in an appendix. Mr. Carlyle told us long
+ ago that it must be translated into English, and although such a piece
+ of work is less simple than it may seem, it appears right to give the
+ reader an opportunity of judging for himself of the flavour of the
+ most characteristic of all Diderot's performances. Only let no reader
+ turn to it who has any invincible repugnance to that curious turn for
+ <i>wildbret</i>, which Goethe has described as the secret of some
+ arts.</p>
+
+ <div class="poem">
+  <div class="stanza">
+   <span>Dixeris hæc inter varicosos centuriones,<br /></span>
+   <span>Continuo crassum ridet Pulfenius ingens<br /></span> <span>Et
+   centum Græcos curto centusse licebit.<br /></span>
+  </div>
+ </div>
+
+ <p>As I have already said, it must be judged as something more than a
+ literary diversion. "You do not suspect, Sir Philosopher," says
+ Rameau, "that at this moment I represent the most important part of
+ the town and the court." As the painter of the picture says, Rameau
+ confessed the vices that he had, and that most of the people about us
+ have; but he was no hypocrite. He was neither more nor less abominable
+ than they; he was only more frank and systematic and profound in his
+ depravity. This is the social significance of the dialogue. This is
+ what, apart from other considerations, makes <i>Rameau's Nephew</i> so
+ much more valuable a guide to the moral sentiment of the time than
+ merely licentious compositions like those of Louvet or La Olos. Its
+ instructiveness is immense to those who examine the conditions that
+ prepared the Revolution. Rameau is not the ακόλστος of Aristotle, nor
+ the creature of απονοία described by Theophrastus—the castaway by
+ individual idiosyncrasy, the reprobate by accident. The men whom he
+ represented, the courtiers, the financiers, the merchants, the
+ shopkeepers, were immoral by formula and depraved on principle. Vice
+ was a doctrine to them, and wretchlessness of unclean living was
+ reduced to a system of philosophy. Any one, I venture to repeat, who
+ realises the extent to which this had corroded the ruling powers in
+ France, will perceive that the furious flood of social energy which
+ the Jacobins poured over the country was not less indispensable to
+ France than the flood of the barbarians was indispensable for the
+ transformation of the Roman Empire.</p>
+
+ <p>Scattered among the more serious fragments of the dialogue is some
+ excellent by-play of sarcasm upon Palissot, and one or two of the
+ other assailants of the new liberal school. Palissot is an old story.
+ The Palissots are an eternal species. The family never dies out, and
+ it thrives in every climate. All societies know the literary dangler
+ in great houses, and the purveyor to fashionable prejudices. Not that
+ he is always servile. The reader, I daresay, remembers that La Bruyère
+ described a curious being in Troilus, the despotic parasite. Palissot,
+ eighteenth century or nineteenth century, is often like Troilus,
+ parasite and tyrant at the same time. He usually happens to have begun
+ life with laudable aspirations and sincere interests of his own; and
+ when, alas, the mediocrity of his gifts proves too weak to bear the
+ burden of his ambitions, the recollection of a generous youth only
+ serves to sour old age.</p>
+
+ <div class="poem">
+  <div class="stanza">
+   <span>Bel esprit abhorré de tous les bons esprits,<br /></span>
+   <span>Il pense par la haine échapper au mépris.<br /></span> <span>A
+   force d'attentats il se croit illustré;<br /></span> <span>Et s'il
+   n'était méchant, il serait ignoré.<br /></span>
+  </div>
+ </div>
+
+ <p>Palissot began with a tragedy. He proceeded to an angry pamphlet
+ against the Encyclopædists and the fury for innovation. Then he
+ achieved immense vogue among fine ladies, bishops, and the lighter
+ heads of the town, by the comedy in which he held Diderot, D'Alembert,
+ and the others, up to hatred and ridicule. Finally, after coming to
+ look upon himself as a serious personage, he disappeared into the mire
+ of half-oblivious contempt and disgust that happily awaits all the
+ poor Palissots and all their works. His name only survives in
+ connection with the men whom he maligned. He lived to be old, as,
+ oddly enough, Spite so often does. In the Terror he had a narrow
+ escape, for he was brought before Chaumette. Chaumette apostrophised
+ the assailant of Rousseau and Diderot with rude energy, but did not
+ send him to the guillotine. In this the practical disciple only
+ imitated the magnanimity of his theoretical masters. Rousseau had
+ declined an opportunity of punishing Palissot's impertinences, and
+ Diderot took no worse vengeance upon him than by making an occasional
+ reference of contempt to him in a dialogue which he perhaps never
+ intended to publish.</p>
+
+ <p>Another subject is handled in <i>Rameau's Nephew,</i> which is
+ interesting in connection with the mental activity of Paris in the
+ eighteenth century. Music was the field of as much passionate
+ controversy as theology and philosophy. The Bull Unigenitus itself did
+ not lead to livelier disputes, or more violent cabals, than the
+ conflict between the partisans of French music and the partisans of
+ Italian music. The horror of a Jansenist for a Molinist did not
+ surpass that of a Lullist for a Dunist, or afterwards of a Gluckist
+ for a Piccinist.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_298_298" id="FNanchor_298_298"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_298_298" class="fnanchor">[298]</a> Lulli and Rameau (the uncle of our parasite) had
+ undisputed possession of Paris until the arrival, in 1752, of a
+ company of Italian singers. The great quarrel at once broke out as to
+ the true method and destination of musical composition. Is music an
+ independent art, appealing directly to a special sense, or is it to be
+ made an instrument for expressing affections of the mind in a certain
+ deeper way? The Italians asked only for delicious harmonies and
+ exquisite melodies. The French insisted that these should be
+ subordinate to the work of the poet. The former were content with
+ delight, the latter pressed for significance. The one declared that
+ Italian music was no better than a silly tickling of the ears; the
+ other that the overture to a French opera was like a prelude to a
+ Miserere in plain-song. In 1772-73 the illustrious Gluck came to
+ Paris. His art was believed to reconcile the two schools, to have more
+ melody than the old French style, and more severity and meaning than
+ the purely Italian style. French dignity was saved. But soon the old
+ battle, which had been going on for twenty years, began to rage with
+ greater violence than ever. Piccini was brought to Paris by the
+ Neapolitan ambassador. The old cries were heard in a shriller key than
+ before. Pamphlets, broadsheets, sarcasms flew over Paris from every
+ side.</p>
+
+ <p>Was music only to flatter the ear, or was it to paint the passions
+ in all their energy, to harrow the soul, to raise men's courage, to
+ form citizens and heroes? The coffee-houses were thrown into dire
+ confusion, and literary societies were rent by fatal discord. Even
+ dinner-parties breathed only constraint and mistrust, and the
+ intimacies of a lifetime came to cruel end. <i>Rameau's Nephew</i> was
+ composed in the midst of the first part of this long campaign of a
+ quarter of a century, and its seems to have been revised by its author
+ in the midst of the second great episode. Diderot declares against the
+ school of Rameau and Lulli. That he should do so was a part of his
+ general reaction in favour of what he called the natural, against the
+ artifice and affectation. Goethe has pointed out the inconsistency
+ between Diderot's sympathy for the less expressive kind of music, and
+ his usual vehement passion for the expressive in art. He truly
+ observes that Diderot's sympathy went in this way, because the novelty
+ and agitation seemed likely to break up the old, stiff, and abhorred
+ fashion, and to clear the ground afresh for other efforts.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_299_299" id="FNanchor_299_299"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_299_299" class="fnanchor">[299]</a></p>
+ <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+ <h2>END OF VOL. I.</h2>
+
+ <p><i>Printed by</i> R. &amp; R. CLARK, LIMITED, <i>Edinburgh</i>.</p>
+ <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+ <h2><a name="FOOTNOTES" id="FOOTNOTES"></a>FOOTNOTES</h2>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i>,
+  xviii. 505.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i>,
+  xviii. 364.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i>
+  379.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i>, i.
+  30.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a>
+  <i>Wahlverwandschaften</i>, pt. ii. ch. vii. The reader will do well
+  to consult the philosophical estimate of the function of the man of
+  letters given by Comte, <i>Philosophie Positive</i>, v. 512, vi. 192,
+  287. The best contemporary account of the principles and policy of
+  the men of letters in the eighteenth century is to be found in
+  Condorcet's <i>Esquisse d'un Tableau, etc.</i>, pp. 187-189 (ed.
+  1847).</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Naigeon, p.
+  24.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i>, xix.
+  162.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i>, xix.
+  89.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i>, xix.
+  93.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i>, i.
+  xlviii.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> Marmontel,
+  <i>Mém.</i>, vol. ii. b. vii. p. 315.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> Morellet,
+  <i>Mém.</i>, i. p. 29.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i>, i.
+  xlviii.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> xix.
+  55.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i>,
+  xviii. 376.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> Madame de
+  Vandeul says 1744. But M. Jal (<i>Dict. Crit.</i>, 495) reproduces
+  the certificate of the marriage. Perhaps we may charitably hope that
+  Diderot himself is equally mistaken, when in later years he sets down
+  a disreputable adventure to 1744. (<i>Œuv.</i>, xix. 85.)</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> For an account
+  of Madame de Puisieux in her later years, see Mdme. Roland's
+  <i>Memoirs</i>, i. 156.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> Sainte Beuve,
+  <i>Causeries</i>, ix. 136.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i>,
+  xix. 159. See also <i>Salons</i>, 1767, No, 118.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> <i>Les Règnes
+  de Claud et de Néron</i>, § 79.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> Account of
+  Diderot by Meister, printed in Grimm's <i>Correspondence
+  Littéraire</i> xiii. 202-211.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> Grétry, quoted
+  in Genin's <i>Œuv. choisies de Diderot</i>, 42.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> Marmontel,
+  <i>Mém</i>., bk. vii. vol. ii. 312.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> Plato,
+  <i>Theages</i>, 130, c.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> Art.
+  <i>Encyclopédie</i>.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> See Barbier's
+  Journal, iv. 166.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> The book was
+  among those found in the possession of the unfortunate La Barre.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> Honegger's
+  <i>Kritische Geschichte der französischen Cultureinflüsse in den
+  letzten Jahrhunderten</i>, pp. 267-273.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> "Es ist nicht
+  gleichgültig ob eine Folge grosser Gedanken in frischer
+  Ursprünglichkeit auf die Zeitgenossen wirkt, oder ob sie zu einer
+  Mixtur mit reichlichem Zusatz überlieferter Vorurtheile verarbeitet
+  ist. Ebensowenig ist est gleichgültig welcher Stimmung, welchem
+  Zustande der Geister eine neue Lehre begegnet. Man darf aber kühn
+  behaupten, das für die volle durchführung der von Newton angebahnten
+  Weltanschauung weder eine günstigere Naturanlage, noch eine
+  günstigere Stimmung getroffen werden konnte, als die der Franzosen im
+  18. Jahrhundert." (Lange's <i>Gesch. d. Materialismus</i>, i. 303.)
+  But the writer, like most historians of opinion, does not dwell
+  sufficiently on the co-operation of external social conditions with
+  the progress of logical inference.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> See Montgeron's
+  <i>La Verité des Miracles de M. de Pâris démontrée</i> (1737)—an
+  interesting contribution to the pathology of the human mind.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> Barbier, 168,
+  244, etc.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> <i>Pensées
+  Philosophiques</i>, xviii.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> On this, see
+  Lange, i. 294.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> <i>Pensées
+  Philosophiques. Œuv.</i>, i. 128, 129.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i>,
+  xix. 87. Grimm, Supp. 148.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> Volney, in a
+  book that was famous in its day, <i>Les Ruines, ou Méditation sur les
+  révolutions des empires</i> (1791), resorted to a slight difference
+  of method. Instead of leaving the pretensions of the various creeds
+  to cancel one another, he invented a rather striking scene, in which
+  the priests of each creed are made to listen to the professions of
+  their rival, and then inveigh against his superstition and
+  inconsistency. The assumption on which Diderot's argument rests is,
+  that as so many different creeds all make the same exclusive claim,
+  the claim is equally false throughout. Volney's argument turns more
+  directly on the merits, and implies that all religions are equally
+  morbid or pathological products, because they all lead to conduct
+  condemned by their own most characteristic maxims. Volney's concrete
+  presentation of comparative religion was highly effective for
+  destructive purposes, though it would now be justly thought
+  inadequate. (See <i>Œuv. de Volney</i>, i. 109, etc.)</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> See on this,
+  Lange, ii. 308.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> <i>De la
+  Suffisance de la Religion Naturelle</i>, § 5.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> It is well to
+  remember that torture was not abolished in France until the
+  Revolution. A Catholic writer makes the following judicious remark:
+  "We cannot study the eighteenth century without being struck by the
+  immoral consequences that inevitably followed for the population of
+  Paris from the frequency and the hideous details of criminal
+  executions. In reading the journals of the time, we are amazed at the
+  place taken in popular life by the scenes of the Grève. It was the
+  theatre of the day. The gibbet and the wheel did their work almost
+  periodically, and people looked on while poor wretches writhed in
+  slow agony all day long. Sometimes the programme was varied by
+  decapitation and even by the stake. Torture had its legends and its
+  heroes—the everyday talk of the generation which, having begun by
+  seeing Damiens torn by red-hot pincers, was to end by rending Foulon
+  limb from limb." (Carné, <i>Monarchie française au 18ième Siècle</i>,
+  p. 493.)</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> <i>Lettres sur
+  les Anglais</i>, xxiii.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> <i>Essai sur le
+  Mérite</i>, I. ii. § 3. <i>Œue.,</i> i. 33.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> "Shaftesbury is
+  one of the most important apparitions of the eighteenth century. All
+  the greatest spirits of that time, not only in England, but also
+  Leibnitz, Voltaire, Diderot, Lessing, Mendelssohn, Wieland, and
+  Herder, drew the strongest nourishment from him." (Hettner,
+  <i>Literaturgeschichte des 18ten Jahrhunderts: ler Theil</i>. 188.)
+  See also Lange's <i>Gesch. des Materialismus,</i> i. 306, etc. An
+  excellent account of Shaftesbury is given by Mr. Leslie Stephen, in
+  his <i>Essays on Free-thinking and Plain-speaking</i>.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> <i>Œuv</i>., i.
+  xlvi.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> Jobez,
+  <i>France sous Louis XV</i>., ii. 373. There were, in 1725, 24,000
+  houses, 20,000 carriages, and 120,000 horses. (Martin's <i>Hist, de
+  France</i>, xv. 116.)</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> The records of
+  Paris in this century contain more than one illustration of the
+  turbulence of this odious army of lackeys. Barbier, i. 118. For the
+  way in which their insolence was fostered, see Saint-Simon, xii. 354,
+  etc. The number of lackeys retained seems to have been
+  extraordinarily great in proportion to the total of annual
+  expenditure, and this is a curious point in the manners of the time.
+  See Voltaire, <i>Dict. Phil</i>, § v. Économie Domestique (liv.
+  182).</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> Duclos, <i>Mém.
+  secrets sur le Règne de Louis XV</i>., iii 306.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> <i>Œuv</i>.,
+  xix. 91.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> <i>Ib</i>. p.
+  130.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> <i>Prom, du
+  Sceptique. Œuv</i>., i. 229.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> "If there is a
+  God, he is infinitely incomprehensible, since, being without parts or
+  limits, he has no relation to us: we are therefore incapable of
+  knowing what he is, or if he is. That being so, who shall venture to
+  undertake the solution of the question? Not we, at any rate, who have
+  no relation to him." <i>Pensees</i>, II. iii. 1.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> P. 182.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> P. 223.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> Barbazan's
+  <i>Fabliaux et Contes</i>, iii. 409 (ed. 1808). The learned
+  Barbazan's first edition was published in 1756, and so Diderot may
+  well have heard some of the contents of the work then in
+  progress.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> Naigeon.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> In my
+  <i>Rousseau</i>, p. 243 (new ed.)</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a>
+  <i>Voltaire</i>, p. 149 (new ed., Globe 8vo).</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> Joubert.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> Hettner,
+  <i>Literaiurgeschichte des 18ten Jahrhunderts</i>, ii. 301.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i>,
+  ii. 260, etc.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i>,
+  ii. 258, 259. <i>De l'Essai sur les Femmes, par Thomas</i>. See
+  Grimm's <i>Corr. Lit.</i>, vii. 451, where the book is disparaged;
+  and viii. 1, where Diderot's view of it is given. Thomas (1732-85)
+  belonged to the philosophical party, but not to the militant section
+  of it. He was a serious and orderly person in his life, and enjoyed
+  the closest friendship with Madame Necker. His enthusiasm for virtue,
+  justice, and freedom, expressed with much magniloquence, made him an
+  idol in the respectable circle which Madame Necker gathered round
+  her. He has been justly, though perhaps harshly, described as a
+  "valetudinarian Grandison." (Albert's <i>Lit. Française au 18ième
+  Siècle</i>, p. 423.)</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> <i>Elémens de
+  la Philosophie de Newton</i>, Pt. II. ch. vii. Berkeley himself only
+  refers once to Cheselden's case: <i>Theory of Vision vindicated</i>,
+  § 71. Professor Fraser, in his important edition of Berkeley's works
+  (i. 444), reproduces from the <i>Philosophical Transactions</i> the
+  original account of the operation, which is unfortunately much less
+  clear and definite than Voltaire's emphasised version would make it,
+  though its purport is distinct enough.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> <i>Essai sur
+  l'Origine des Connaissances humaines</i>, I. § 6.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> <i>Let. sur les
+  Aveugles</i>, 323, 324. Condorcet attaches a higher value to
+  Cheselden's operation. <i>Œuv.</i>, ii. 121.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> Dr. M'Cosh
+  <i>(Exam. of J. S. Mill's Philosophy</i>, p. 163) quotes what seems
+  to be the best reported case, by a Dr. Franz, of Leipsic; and Prof.
+  Fraser, in the appendix to Berkeley (<i>loc. cit.</i>), quotes
+  another good case by Mr. Nunnely. See also Mill's <i>Exam. of
+  Hamilton</i>, p. 288 (3d ed.)</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a>
+  <i>Confessions</i>, II, vii.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_66_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a> Darwin, <i>The
+  Expression of the Emotions in Men and Animals</i>, c. xiii. p. 312,
+  and also pp. 335-337. This fact, so far as it goes, seems to make
+  against the theory of transmitted sentiments.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_67_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a> Locke answered
+  that the man would not distinguish the cube from the sphere, until he
+  had identified by actual touch the source of his former tactual
+  impression with the object making a given visual impression.
+  Condillac, while making just objections to the terms in which
+  Molyneux propounded the question, answered it different from Locke.
+  Diderot expresses his own opinion thus: "I think that when the eyes
+  of the born-blind are opened for the first time to the light, he will
+  perceive nothing at all; that some time will be necessary for his eye
+  to make experiments for itself; but that it will make these
+  experiments itself, and in its own way, and without the help of
+  touch." This is in harmony with the modern doctrine, that there is an
+  inherited aptitude of structure (in the eye, for instance), but that
+  experience is an essential condition to the development and
+  perfecting of this aptitude.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_68_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a> A very
+  intelligent English translation of the <i>Letter on the Blind</i> was
+  published in 1773. For some reason or other, Diderot is described on
+  the title-page as Physician to His most Christian Majesty.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_69_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a> <i>Œuv</i>., i.
+  308.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_70_70" id="Footnote_70_70"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_70_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a> Pp. 309,
+  310.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_71_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a> P. 311.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_72_72" id="Footnote_72_72"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_72_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a> <i>Corr.</i>,
+  June 1749.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_73_73" id="Footnote_73_73"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_73_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a> See <i>Critical
+  Miscellanies: First Series</i>.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_74_74" id="Footnote_74_74"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_74_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a> Diderot to
+  Voltaire, 1749. <i>Œuv</i>., xix. 421.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_75_75" id="Footnote_75_75"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_75_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a> Diderot to
+  Voltaire, 1749. <i>Œuv</i>., xix. 421.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_76_76" id="Footnote_76_76"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_76_76"><span class="label">[76]</span></a> P. 294.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_77_77" id="Footnote_77_77"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_77_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a> Lewes's
+  <i>Hist. Philos</i>., ii. 342.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_78_78" id="Footnote_78_78"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_78_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a> Rosenkranz, i.
+  102.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_79_79" id="Footnote_79_79"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_79_79"><span class="label">[79]</span></a> Tylor's
+  <i>Researches into the early history of mankind</i>, chaps. ii. and
+  iii.; Lubbock's <i>Origin of Civilization</i>, chap. ix.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_80_80" id="Footnote_80_80"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_80_80"><span class="label">[80]</span></a> Madame Dupré de
+  Saint Maur, who had found favour in the eyes of the Count d'Argenson.
+  D'Argenson, younger brother of the Marquis, who had been dismissed in
+  1747, was in power from 1743 to 1757. Notwithstanding his alleged
+  share in Diderot's imprisonment, he was a tolerably steady protector
+  of the philosophical party.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_81_81" id="Footnote_81_81"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_81_81"><span class="label">[81]</span></a> Barbier, iv.
+  337.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_82_82" id="Footnote_82_82"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_82_82"><span class="label">[82]</span></a> There is a
+  picture of Berryer, under the name of Orgon in that very curious
+  book, <i>L'Ecole de l'Homme</i>, ii. 73.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_83_83" id="Footnote_83_83"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_83_83"><span class="label">[83]</span></a> Pieces given in
+  Diderot's Works, xx. 121-123.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_84_84" id="Footnote_84_84"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_84_84"><span class="label">[84]</span></a> Naigeon, p.
+  131.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_85_85" id="Footnote_85_85"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_85_85"><span class="label">[85]</span></a> Voltaire's
+  <i>Corr</i>. July and Aug. 1749.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_86_86" id="Footnote_86_86"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_86_86"><span class="label">[86]</span></a> <i>Conf</i>.,
+  II. viii.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_87_87" id="Footnote_87_87"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_87_87"><span class="label">[87]</span></a> Michelet's
+  <i>Louis XV</i>., p. 258.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_88_88" id="Footnote_88_88"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_88_88"><span class="label">[88]</span></a> See the present
+  author's <i>Rousseau</i>, vol. i. p. 134 (Globe 8vo ed.)</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_89_89" id="Footnote_89_89"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_89_89"><span class="label">[89]</span></a> For the two
+  petitions of the booksellers to D'Argenson praying for Diderot's
+  liberty, see M. Assézat's preliminary notice. <i>Œuv</i>., xiii. 112,
+  etc.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_90_90" id="Footnote_90_90"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_90_90"><span class="label">[90]</span></a> Jourdain's
+  <i>Recherches sur les traductions latines d'Aristote</i>, p. 325.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_91_91" id="Footnote_91_91"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_91_91"><span class="label">[91]</span></a> <i>Lit. of
+  Europe</i>, pt. i. ch. ii. § 39.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_92_92" id="Footnote_92_92"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_92_92"><span class="label">[92]</span></a> Whewell's
+  <i>Hist. Induc. Sci.</i>. xii. c. 7.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_93_93" id="Footnote_93_93"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_93_93"><span class="label">[93]</span></a> Fr. Roger
+  Bacon; J.S. Brewer's Pref. pp 57, 63.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_94_94" id="Footnote_94_94"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_94_94"><span class="label">[94]</span></a> Leibnitii,
+  Opera v. 184.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_95_95" id="Footnote_95_95"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_95_95"><span class="label">[95]</span></a> <i>Œuv. de
+  D'Alembert</i>, i. 63.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_96_96" id="Footnote_96_96"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_96_96"><span class="label">[96]</span></a> <i>Mém.</i>
+  pour J.P.F. Luneau de Boisjermain, 4to, Paris, 1771. See also
+  Diderot's <i>Prospectus</i>, "La traduction entière de Chambers nous
+  a passé sous les yeux," etc.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_97_97" id="Footnote_97_97"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_97_97"><span class="label">[97]</span></a> Biog.
+  Universelle, <i>s.v.</i></p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_98_98" id="Footnote_98_98"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_98_98"><span class="label">[98]</span></a> Michelet,
+  <i>Louis XV.</i>, 258. D'Aguesseau (1668-1751) has left one piece
+  which ought to be extricated from the thirteen quartos of his
+  works—his memoir of his father (<i>Œuv.</i>, xiii.) This is one of
+  those records of solid and elevated character, which do more to
+  refresh and invigorate the reader than a whole library of religious
+  or ethical exhortations can do. It has the loftiness, the refined
+  austerity, the touching impressiveness of Tacitus's <i>Agricola</i>
+  or Condorcet's <i>Turgot</i>, together with a certain grave sweetness
+  that was almost peculiar to the Jansenist school of the seventeenth
+  century.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_99_99" id="Footnote_99_99"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_99_99"><span class="label">[99]</span></a> A short
+  estimate of D'Alembert's principal scientific pieces, by M. Bertram,
+  is to be found in the <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, for October
+  1865.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_100_100" id="Footnote_100_100"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_100_100"><span class="label">[100]</span></a> <i>Œuv. de
+  D'Alembert</i>, iv. 367.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_101_101" id="Footnote_101_101"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_101_101"><span class="label">[101]</span></a> <i>Œuv. de
+  J. Ph. Roland</i>, i. 230 (ed. 1800).</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_102_102" id="Footnote_102_102"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_102_102"><span class="label">[102]</span></a> <i>Essai sur
+  la Société des Gens de Lettres et des Grands</i>, etc. <i>Œuv</i>.,
+  iv. 372. "Write," he says, "as if you loved glory; in conduct, act as
+  if it were indifferent to you." Compare, with reference to the
+  passage in the text, Duclos's remark (<i>Consid. sur les Mœurs</i>,
+  ch. xi.): "The man in power commands, but the intelligent govern,
+  because in time they form public opinion, and that sooner or later
+  subjugates every kind of despotism." Only partially true.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_103_103" id="Footnote_103_103"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_103_103"><span class="label">[103]</span></a> <i>Pensées
+  Philos.</i>, § 26.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_104_104" id="Footnote_104_104"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_104_104"><span class="label">[104]</span></a> <i>Phil.
+  Pos.</i>, v. 520. <i>Polit. Pos.</i>, iii. 584.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_105_105" id="Footnote_105_105"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_105_105"><span class="label">[105]</span></a> See Pref. to
+  vol. iii.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_106_106" id="Footnote_106_106"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_106_106"><span class="label">[106]</span></a> For
+  instance, see Pref. to vol. vi.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_107_107" id="Footnote_107_107"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_107_107"><span class="label">[107]</span></a> <i>Siècle de
+  Louis XV</i>., ch. xliii.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_108_108" id="Footnote_108_108"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_108_108"><span class="label">[108]</span></a> Grimm,
+  <i>Corr. Lit.</i>, i. 273. Diderot, <i>Œuv</i>., iv. 15.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_109_109" id="Footnote_109_109"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_109_109"><span class="label">[109]</span></a>
+  <i>Avertissement</i> to vol. vi.; also to vol. vii. Turgot's articles
+  were Etymiologie, Existence, Expansibilité, Foires, Fondations. The
+  text of these is wrongly inserted among Diderot's contributions to
+  the Encyclopædia, in the new edition of his Works, xv. 12.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_110_110" id="Footnote_110_110"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_110_110"><span class="label">[110]</span></a> Condorcet's
+  <i>Vie de Turgot</i>.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_111_111" id="Footnote_111_111"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_111_111"><span class="label">[111]</span></a> Pref. to
+  vol. iii. (1752), and to vol. vi. (1756).</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_112_112" id="Footnote_112_112"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_112_112"><span class="label">[112]</span></a> Pref. to
+  vol. ii.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_113_113" id="Footnote_113_113"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_113_113"><span class="label">[113]</span></a> Grimm,
+  <i>Corr. Lit.</i>, i. 130. Forbonnais's chief work is his
+  <i>Becherches et Considérations sur les finances de la
+  France</i>.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_114_114" id="Footnote_114_114"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_114_114"><span class="label">[114]</span></a>
+  <i>Avert.</i> to vol. ii.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_115_115" id="Footnote_115_115"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_115_115"><span class="label">[115]</span></a> Nov. 10,
+  1760, xix. 24. Also, Oct. 7, 1761, xix. 35.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_116_116" id="Footnote_116_116"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_116_116"><span class="label">[116]</span></a> See also
+  Preface to vol. iii.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_117_117" id="Footnote_117_117"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_117_117"><span class="label">[117]</span></a>
+  <i>Avert.</i> to vol. vi., and <i>s. v. Fontange</i>. Grimm, i.
+  451.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_118_118" id="Footnote_118_118"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_118_118"><span class="label">[118]</span></a> <i>Corresp.
+  avec D'Alembert</i> (<i>Œuv.</i>, lxxv.), Sept. 1755, Feb. 1757,
+  etc.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_119_119" id="Footnote_119_119"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_119_119"><span class="label">[119]</span></a> Dec. 22,
+  1757.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_120_120" id="Footnote_120_120"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_120_120"><span class="label">[120]</span></a> May 24,
+  1757.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_121_121" id="Footnote_121_121"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_121_121"><span class="label">[121]</span></a> Dec. 13,
+  1756; April 1756.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_122_122" id="Footnote_122_122"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_122_122"><span class="label">[122]</span></a> July 21,
+  1757.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_123_123" id="Footnote_123_123"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_123_123"><span class="label">[123]</span></a> Article
+  <i>Encyclopédie</i>.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_124_124" id="Footnote_124_124"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_124_124"><span class="label">[124]</span></a> To Voltaire,
+  Feb. 15, 1757.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_125_125" id="Footnote_125_125"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_125_125"><span class="label">[125]</span></a> Hettner's
+  <i>Literaturgesch, des 18ten Jahrhunderts</i>, ii. 277.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_126_126" id="Footnote_126_126"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_126_126"><span class="label">[126]</span></a> Art.
+  <i>Encyclopédie</i>.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_127_127" id="Footnote_127_127"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_127_127"><span class="label">[127]</span></a>
+  <i>Prospectus</i>.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_128_128" id="Footnote_128_128"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_128_128"><span class="label">[128]</span></a> Barbier, v.
+  151, 153.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_129_129" id="Footnote_129_129"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_129_129"><span class="label">[129]</span></a> Diderot to
+  Voland, <i>Œuv</i>., xviii. 361. Carlyle's <i>Frederick,</i> bk.
+  xviii. ch. xi.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_130_130" id="Footnote_130_130"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_130_130"><span class="label">[130]</span></a> <i>Apologie
+  de l' Abbe de Prades. Œuv.,</i> i. 482.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_131_131" id="Footnote_131_131"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_131_131"><span class="label">[131]</span></a> See Jobez,
+  i. 358.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_132_132" id="Footnote_132_132"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_132_132"><span class="label">[132]</span></a> xix.
+  425.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_133_133" id="Footnote_133_133"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_133_133"><span class="label">[133]</span></a> Barbier, v.
+  160.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_134_134" id="Footnote_134_134"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_134_134"><span class="label">[134]</span></a> <i>Ib</i>.
+  v. 169.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_135_135" id="Footnote_135_135"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_135_135"><span class="label">[135]</span></a> Grimm,
+  <i>Corr. Lit</i>., i. 81. Barbier, <i>v</i>. 170.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_136_136" id="Footnote_136_136"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_136_136"><span class="label">[136]</span></a>
+  <i>Avert.</i>, to vol. iii. <i>Œuv. de D'Alembert</i>, iv. 410.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_137_137" id="Footnote_137_137"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_137_137"><span class="label">[137]</span></a> Barbier, v.
+  170. Grimm, <i>Corr. Lit.</i>, i. 201; <i>Ib.</i> ii. 197.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_138_138" id="Footnote_138_138"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_138_138"><span class="label">[138]</span></a> Hardy,
+  quoted by Aubertin, 407, 408.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_139_139" id="Footnote_139_139"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_139_139"><span class="label">[139]</span></a> <i>Corr.
+  Lit.</i>, ii. 271.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_140_140" id="Footnote_140_140"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_140_140"><span class="label">[140]</span></a> To
+  D'Alembert, Dec. 29, 1757; Jan. 1758.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_141_141" id="Footnote_141_141"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_141_141"><span class="label">[141]</span></a> For a short
+  account of Helvétius's book, see a later chapter.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_142_142" id="Footnote_142_142"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_142_142"><span class="label">[142]</span></a> <i>Corr.
+  Lit.</i>, ii. 292, 293.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_143_143" id="Footnote_143_143"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_143_143"><span class="label">[143]</span></a> Barbier,
+  vii. 125-142.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_144_144" id="Footnote_144_144"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_144_144"><span class="label">[144]</span></a> Lacretelle's
+  <i>France pendant le 18ième Siècle</i>, iii. 89.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_145_145" id="Footnote_145_145"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_145_145"><span class="label">[145]</span></a> Jobez, ii.
+  464, 538.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_146_146" id="Footnote_146_146"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_146_146"><span class="label">[146]</span></a> See
+  <i>Rousseau</i>, vol. i. chaps, vii. and ix. (Globe 8vo ed.)</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_147_147" id="Footnote_147_147"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_147_147"><span class="label">[147]</span></a> <i>Louis XV.
+  et Louis XVI.</i>, p. 50.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_148_148" id="Footnote_148_148"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_148_148"><span class="label">[148]</span></a> Jan. 11,
+  1758. Jan. 20, 1758. Diderot to Mdlle. Voland, Oct. 11, 1759. See
+  the following chapter.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_149_149" id="Footnote_149_149"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_149_149"><span class="label">[149]</span></a> Voltaire to
+  D'Alembert, Jan. to May 1758. Voltaire to Diderot, Jan. 1758.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_150_150" id="Footnote_150_150"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_150_150"><span class="label">[150]</span></a> Diderot to
+  Voltaire, Feb. 19, 1758, xix. 452.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_151_151" id="Footnote_151_151"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_151_151"><span class="label">[151]</span></a> To Voland,
+  <i>Œuv.</i>, xix. 146.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_152_152" id="Footnote_152_152"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_152_152"><span class="label">[152]</span></a> <i>Corr.
+  Lit.</i>, vii. 146.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_153_153" id="Footnote_153_153"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_153_153"><span class="label">[153]</span></a> <i>Corr.
+  Lit.</i>, vii. 146.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_154_154" id="Footnote_154_154"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_154_154"><span class="label">[154]</span></a> <i>Œuv. de
+  Voltaire</i>. Published sometimes among <i>Facéties</i>, sometimes
+  among <i>Mélanges</i>.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_155_155" id="Footnote_155_155"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_155_155"><span class="label">[155]</span></a> See <i>Œuv.
+  Choisies de Jean Reynaud</i>, reprinted in 1866. The article on
+  <i>Encyclopèdie</i> (vol. i.) is an interesting attempt to vindicate
+  Cartesian principles of classification.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_156_156" id="Footnote_156_156"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_156_156"><span class="label">[156]</span></a> See fly-leaf
+  of vol. xxviii.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_157_157" id="Footnote_157_157"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_157_157"><span class="label">[157]</span></a> <i>Mém.</i>,
+  ii. 115. Grimm, vii. 145.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_158_158" id="Footnote_158_158"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_158_158"><span class="label">[158]</span></a> De Maistre
+  says that the reputation of Bacon does not really go farther back
+  than the Encyclopædia, and that no true discoverer either knew him or
+  leaned on him for support. (<i>Examen de la Phil. de Bacon</i>, ii.
+  110.) Diderot says: "I think I have taught my fellow-citizens to
+  esteem and read Bacon; people have turned over the pages of this
+  profound author more since the last five or six years than has ever
+  been the case before" (xiv. 494). In Professor Fowler's careful and
+  elaborate edition of the Novum Organum (<i>Introduct.</i>, p. 104),
+  he disputes the statement of Montuola and others, that the celebrity
+  of Bacon dates from the Encyclopædia. All turns upon what we mean by
+  celebrity. What the Encyclopædists certainly did was to raise Bacon,
+  for a time, to the popular throne from which Voltaire's Newtonianism
+  had pushed Descartes. Mr. Fowler traces a chain of Baconian
+  tradition, no doubt, but he perhaps surrenders nearly as much as is
+  claimed when he admits that "the patronage of Voltaire and the
+  Encyclopædists did much to extend the study of Bacon's writings,
+  besides producing a considerable controversy as to his true meaning
+  on many questions of philosophy and theology."</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_159_159" id="Footnote_159_159"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_159_159"><span class="label">[159]</span></a> See above,
+  p. 62, <i>note</i>.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_160_160" id="Footnote_160_160"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_160_160"><span class="label">[160]</span></a> D'Alembert
+  was not afraid to contend against the great captain of the age, that
+  the military spirit of Lewis XIV. had been a great curse to Europe.
+  He showed a true appreciation of Frederick's character and conception
+  of his duties as a ruler, in believing that the King of Prussia would
+  rather have had a hundred thousand labourers more, and as many
+  soldiers fewer, if his situation had allowed it. <i>Corresp. avec le
+  roi de Prusse</i>, <i>Œuv.</i>, v. 305.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_161_161" id="Footnote_161_161"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_161_161"><span class="label">[161]</span></a> See Essay on
+  Turgot in my <i>Critical Miscellanies</i>, <i>Second Series</i>.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_162_162" id="Footnote_162_162"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_162_162"><span class="label">[162]</span></a> Such, as
+  that their feudal rights should be confirmed; that none but nobles
+  should carry arms, or be eligible for the army; that
+  <i>lettres-de-cachet</i> should continue; that the press should not
+  be free; that the wine trade should not be free internally or for
+  export; that breaking up wastes and enclosing commons should be
+  prohibited; that the old arrangement of the militia should
+  remain.—Arthur Young's <i>France</i>, ch. xxi. p. 607.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_163_163" id="Footnote_163_163"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_163_163"><span class="label">[163]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i>
+  ch. xxi.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_164_164" id="Footnote_164_164"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_164_164"><span class="label">[164]</span></a> <i>Critical
+  Miscellanies</i>, <i>Second Series</i>, p. 202.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_165_165" id="Footnote_165_165"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_165_165"><span class="label">[165]</span></a> <i>Travels
+  in France</i>, p. 600.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_166_166" id="Footnote_166_166"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_166_166"><span class="label">[166]</span></a> <i>Travels
+  in France</i>, i. 63.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_167_167" id="Footnote_167_167"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_167_167"><span class="label">[167]</span></a> Rosenkranz,
+  i. 219.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_168_168" id="Footnote_168_168"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_168_168"><span class="label">[168]</span></a>
+  <i>Avert</i>. to vol. iii</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_169_169" id="Footnote_169_169"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_169_169"><span class="label">[169]</span></a> Diderot,
+  <i>Œuv.</i>, iv. 24.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_170_170" id="Footnote_170_170"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_170_170"><span class="label">[170]</span></a> Diderot's
+  <i>Leben</i>, i. 157.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_171_171" id="Footnote_171_171"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_171_171"><span class="label">[171]</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i>,
+  xx. 132.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_172_172" id="Footnote_172_172"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_172_172"><span class="label">[172]</span></a> The writer
+  was one Romilly, who had been elected a minister of one of the French
+  Protestant churches in London. See <i>Memoirs of Sir Samuel
+  Romilly</i>, vol. i.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_173_173" id="Footnote_173_173"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_173_173"><span class="label">[173]</span></a> I have no
+  space to quote an interesting page in this article on the
+  characteristics and the varying destinies of genius. "We must rank in
+  this class Pindar, Æschylus, Moses, Jesus Christ, Mahomet,
+  Shakespeare, Roger Bacon, and Paracelsus." xvii. 265-267.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_174_174" id="Footnote_174_174"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_174_174"><span class="label">[174]</span></a> The same
+  idea is found still more ardently expressed in one of his letters to
+  Mdlle. de Voland (Oct. 15, 1759, xviii. 408), where he defends the
+  eagerness of those who have loved one another during life, to be
+  placed side by side after death.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_175_175" id="Footnote_175_175"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_175_175"><span class="label">[175]</span></a> xiv. 32.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_176_176" id="Footnote_176_176"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_176_176"><span class="label">[176]</span></a> <i>S.v.</i>
+  Sarrasins, xvii. 82. See also xviii. 429, for Diderot's admiration of
+  Sadi.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_177_177" id="Footnote_177_177"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_177_177"><span class="label">[177]</span></a> S. v.
+  <i>Pyrrhonienne</i>.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_178_178" id="Footnote_178_178"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_178_178"><span class="label">[178]</span></a> <i>E.g.</i>
+  in the article on <i>Plaisir</i>, xvi. p. 298.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_179_179" id="Footnote_179_179"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_179_179"><span class="label">[179]</span></a> To
+  Damilaville, 1766, xix. 477.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_180_180" id="Footnote_180_180"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_180_180"><span class="label">[180]</span></a> xx. 34.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_181_181" id="Footnote_181_181"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_181_181"><span class="label">[181]</span></a> xvi.
+  280.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_182_182" id="Footnote_182_182"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_182_182"><span class="label">[182]</span></a> See also
+  article <i>Indépendance</i>.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_183_183" id="Footnote_183_183"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_183_183"><span class="label">[183]</span></a> iv. 93.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_184_184" id="Footnote_184_184"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_184_184"><span class="label">[184]</span></a> The reader
+  will find abundant information and criticism upon the Wolffian
+  Philosophy in Professor Edward Caird's <i>Critical Account of the
+  Philosophy of Kant</i>, recently published at Glasgow.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_185_185" id="Footnote_185_185"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_185_185"><span class="label">[185]</span></a> xvi. 491,
+  492.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_186_186" id="Footnote_186_186"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_186_186"><span class="label">[186]</span></a> There are
+  casual criticisms on Spinosa in the articles on <i>Identity</i> and
+  <i>Liberty</i>.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_187_187" id="Footnote_187_187"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_187_187"><span class="label">[187]</span></a> xv. 501.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_188_188" id="Footnote_188_188"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_188_188"><span class="label">[188]</span></a> xix. 435,
+  436.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_189_189" id="Footnote_189_189"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_189_189"><span class="label">[189]</span></a> See below,
+  vol. ii.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_190_190" id="Footnote_190_190"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_190_190"><span class="label">[190]</span></a> S.v.
+  <i>Luxe</i>, xvi. 23.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_191_191" id="Footnote_191_191"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_191_191"><span class="label">[191]</span></a> As an
+  illustration how much these ideas were in the air, the reader may
+  refer to a passage in Sédaine's popular comedy, <i>The Philosopher
+  without knowing it</i> (1765), Act II. sc. 4. Vanderk, among other
+  things, says of the merchant: "Ce n'est pas un temple, ce n'est pas
+  une seule nation qu'il sert; il les sert toutes, et en est servi:
+  c'est l'homme de l'univers. Quelques particuliers audacieux font
+  armer les rois, la guerre s'allume, tout s'embrase, l'Europe est
+  divisée: mais ce négociant anglais, hollandais, russe ou chinois,
+  n'en est pas moins l'ami de mon coeur: nous sommes sur la superficie
+  de la terre autant de fils de soie qui lient ensemble les nations, et
+  les ramènent à la paix par la nécessité du commerce; voila, mon fils,
+  ce que c'est qu'un honnête négociant."</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_192_192" id="Footnote_192_192"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_192_192"><span class="label">[192]</span></a> The younger
+  sister of Diderot's Sophie.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_193_193" id="Footnote_193_193"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_193_193"><span class="label">[193]</span></a> xviii.
+  454.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_194_194" id="Footnote_194_194"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_194_194"><span class="label">[194]</span></a> See below,
+  the chapter on <i>Rameau's Nephew</i>.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_195_195" id="Footnote_195_195"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_195_195"><span class="label">[195]</span></a> Nov. 10,
+  1770; xix. 22.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_196_196" id="Footnote_196_196"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_196_196"><span class="label">[196]</span></a> See, for
+  instance, xix. 81, 91, 129, 133, 145, etc.—passages which Mr. Carlyle
+  and Rosenkranz have either overlooked, or else, without any good
+  reason, disbelieved.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_197_197" id="Footnote_197_197"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_197_197"><span class="label">[197]</span></a> xviii.
+  293.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_198_198" id="Footnote_198_198"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_198_198"><span class="label">[198]</span></a> xix. 46.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_199_199" id="Footnote_199_199"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_199_199"><span class="label">[199]</span></a> xix. 84. See
+  also 326.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_200_200" id="Footnote_200_200"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_200_200"><span class="label">[200]</span></a> xix. 137,
+  341, etc.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_201_201" id="Footnote_201_201"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_201_201"><span class="label">[201]</span></a> xviii.
+  535.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_202_202" id="Footnote_202_202"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_202_202"><span class="label">[202]</span></a> xviii. 507,
+  etc.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_203_203" id="Footnote_203_203"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_203_203"><span class="label">[203]</span></a> xviii. 526,
+  531.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_204_204" id="Footnote_204_204"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_204_204"><span class="label">[204]</span></a> Nov. 2,
+  1759; xviii. 431.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_205_205" id="Footnote_205_205"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_205_205"><span class="label">[205]</span></a> xix. 82.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_206_206" id="Footnote_206_206"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_206_206"><span class="label">[206]</span></a> xix.
+  139.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_207_207" id="Footnote_207_207"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_207_207"><span class="label">[207]</span></a> xix.
+  107.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_208_208" id="Footnote_208_208"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_208_208"><span class="label">[208]</span></a> xix.
+  181.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_209_209" id="Footnote_209_209"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_209_209"><span class="label">[209]</span></a> xix. 81.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_210_210" id="Footnote_210_210"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_210_210"><span class="label">[210]</span></a> xix.
+  149.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_211_211" id="Footnote_211_211"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_211_211"><span class="label">[211]</span></a> xix. 90.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_212_212" id="Footnote_212_212"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_212_212"><span class="label">[212]</span></a> xix. 163,
+  164.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_213_213" id="Footnote_213_213"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_213_213"><span class="label">[213]</span></a> Sept. 20,
+  1765; xix. 179-187.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_214_214" id="Footnote_214_214"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_214_214"><span class="label">[214]</span></a> xviii. 476,
+  478.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_215_215" id="Footnote_215_215"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_215_215"><span class="label">[215]</span></a> xviii. 479.
+  Comte writes more seriously somewhat in the same sense: "For thirty
+  centuries the priestly castes of China, and still more of India, have
+  been watching our Western transition; to them it must appear mere
+  agitation, as puerile as it is tempestuous, with nothing to harmonise
+  its different phases but their common inroad upon unity." <i>Positive
+  Polity</i>, iv. 11 (English Translation)</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_216_216" id="Footnote_216_216"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_216_216"><span class="label">[216]</span></a> xix.
+  233.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_217_217" id="Footnote_217_217"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_217_217"><span class="label">[217]</span></a> Voltaire's
+  Satire on the Economists.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_218_218" id="Footnote_218_218"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_218_218"><span class="label">[218]</span></a> Oct. 8,
+  1768; xix. 832.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_219_219" id="Footnote_219_219"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_219_219"><span class="label">[219]</span></a> xviii.
+  509.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_220_220" id="Footnote_220_220"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_220_220"><span class="label">[220]</span></a> xviii.
+  513.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_221_221" id="Footnote_221_221"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_221_221"><span class="label">[221]</span></a> xviii.
+  511-513.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_222_222" id="Footnote_222_222"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_222_222"><span class="label">[222]</span></a> xix.
+  244.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_223_223" id="Footnote_223_223"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_223_223"><span class="label">[223]</span></a> xviii.
+  459.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_224_224" id="Footnote_224_224"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_224_224"><span class="label">[224]</span></a> xix.
+  259.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_225_225" id="Footnote_225_225"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_225_225"><span class="label">[225]</span></a> <i>Lettres
+  de Mdlle. de Lespinasse</i>, viii. p. 20. (Ed. Asse, 1876.)</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_226_226" id="Footnote_226_226"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_226_226"><span class="label">[226]</span></a> Aug. 1,
+  1769; xix. 365.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_227_227" id="Footnote_227_227"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_227_227"><span class="label">[227]</span></a> (1765-69)
+  xix. 381-412. Also p. 318.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_228_228" id="Footnote_228_228"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_228_228"><span class="label">[228]</span></a> June 1756;
+  xix. 433-436.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_229_229" id="Footnote_229_229"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_229_229"><span class="label">[229]</span></a> Aug. 1762;
+  xix. 112.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_230_230" id="Footnote_230_230"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_230_230"><span class="label">[230]</span></a> In
+  <i>Rousseau</i>, vol. i. ch. vii. (Globe 8vo, ed.)</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_231_231" id="Footnote_231_231"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_231_231"><span class="label">[231]</span></a> Dec. 1757;
+  xix. 446.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_232_232" id="Footnote_232_232"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_232_232"><span class="label">[232]</span></a> xix.
+  449.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_233_233" id="Footnote_233_233"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_233_233"><span class="label">[233]</span></a> Dec. 20,
+  1765; xix. 210.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_234_234" id="Footnote_234_234"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_234_234"><span class="label">[234]</span></a> See
+  <i>Rousseau</i>, vol. i. ch. vii. (Globe 8vo. ed.)</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_235_235" id="Footnote_235_235"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_235_235"><span class="label">[235]</span></a> Oct. 9,
+  1759; xviii. 397.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_236_236" id="Footnote_236_236"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_236_236"><span class="label">[236]</span></a> Nov. 6,
+  1760; xix. 17.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_237_237" id="Footnote_237_237"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_237_237"><span class="label">[237]</span></a> Sept. 17,
+  1761; xix. 47.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_238_238" id="Footnote_238_238"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_238_238"><span class="label">[238]</span></a> Sept. 17,
+  1769; xix. 320.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_239_239" id="Footnote_239_239"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_239_239"><span class="label">[239]</span></a> <i>Lettres
+  sur le Commerce de la Librairie</i>, xviii. 47.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_240_240" id="Footnote_240_240"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_240_240"><span class="label">[240]</span></a> See
+  <i>Rousseau</i>, vol. ii. ch. i. (Globe 8vo. ed.)</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_241_241" id="Footnote_241_241"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_241_241"><span class="label">[241]</span></a> Diderot's
+  <i>Lettre sur le Commerce de la Librairie</i> (1767). <i>Œuv.</i>,
+  xviii.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_242_242" id="Footnote_242_242"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_242_242"><span class="label">[242]</span></a> Those who
+  are interested in the history of authorship may care to know the end
+  of the matter. Copyright is no modern practice, and the perpetual
+  right of authors, or persons to whom they had ceded it, was
+  recognised in France through the whole of the seventeenth century and
+  three-quarters of the eighteenth. The perpetuity of the right had
+  produced literary properties of considerable value; for example,
+  Boudot's Dictionary was sold by his executors for 24,000 livres;
+  Prévot's Manual Lexicon and two Dictionaries for 115,000 livres. But
+  in 1777—ten years after Diderot's plea—the Council decreed that
+  copyright was a privilege and an exercise of the royal grace. The
+  motives for this reduction of an author's right from a transferable
+  property to a terminable privilege seem to have been, first, the
+  general mania of the time for drawing up the threads of national life
+  into the hands of the administration, and second, the hope of making
+  money by a tariff of permissions. The Constituent Assembly dealt with
+  the subject with no intelligence nor care, but the Convention passed
+  a law recognising in the author an exclusive right for his life, and
+  giving a property for ten years after his death to heirs or
+  <i>cessionaires</i>. The whole history is elaborately set forth in
+  the collection of documents entitled <i>La Propriété littéraire au
+  18ième siècle</i>. (Hachette, 1859.)</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_243_243" id="Footnote_243_243"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_243_243"><span class="label">[243]</span></a> Oct. 11,
+  1759; xviii. 401.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_244_244" id="Footnote_244_244"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_244_244"><span class="label">[244]</span></a> xix. 319,
+  320.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_245_245" id="Footnote_245_245"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_245_245"><span class="label">[245]</span></a>
+  <i>Miscellaneous Works</i>, p. 73.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_246_246" id="Footnote_246_246"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_246_246"><span class="label">[246]</span></a> Walpole to
+  Selwyn. 1765. Jesse's <i>Selwyn</i>, ii. 9. See also Walpole to Mann,
+  iv. 283.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_247_247" id="Footnote_247_247"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_247_247"><span class="label">[247]</span></a> D'Epinay,
+  ii. 4, 138, 153, etc.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_248_248" id="Footnote_248_248"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_248_248"><span class="label">[248]</span></a> See Comte's
+  <i>Positive Polity</i>, vol. iii.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_249_249" id="Footnote_249_249"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_249_249"><span class="label">[249]</span></a> "<i>That
+  virtue of originality that men so strain after is not newness, as
+  they vainly think (there is nothing new), it is only
+  genuineness.</i>"—Ruskin.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_250_250" id="Footnote_250_250"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_250_250"><span class="label">[250]</span></a> Lessing:
+  1729-81. Diderot: 1713-84. As De Quincey puts it, Lessing may be said
+  to have begun his career precisely in the middle of the last
+  century.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_251_251" id="Footnote_251_251"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_251_251"><span class="label">[251]</span></a> <i>Hamburg.
+  Dramaturgie</i>, § 85. Werke, vi. 381. (Ed. 1873.)</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_252_252" id="Footnote_252_252"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_252_252"><span class="label">[252]</span></a> Diderot's
+  <i>Leben</i>, i. 274, 277.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_253_253" id="Footnote_253_253"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_253_253"><span class="label">[253]</span></a> <i>Corr.
+  Lit.</i>, ii. 103.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_254_254" id="Footnote_254_254"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_254_254"><span class="label">[254]</span></a> See Grimm's
+  account of the performance, <i>Corr. Lit.</i>, vii. 313.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_255_255" id="Footnote_255_255"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_255_255"><span class="label">[255]</span></a> Act IV. sc.
+  3.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_256_256" id="Footnote_256_256"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_256_256"><span class="label">[256]</span></a> Act V. sc.
+  3.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_257_257" id="Footnote_257_257"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_257_257"><span class="label">[257]</span></a> <i>De la
+  Poésie Dramatique</i>, ch. xxi.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_258_258" id="Footnote_258_258"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_258_258"><span class="label">[258]</span></a> vii.
+  107.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_259_259" id="Footnote_259_259"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_259_259"><span class="label">[259]</span></a> Nov. 28,
+  1760; xix. 457.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_260_260" id="Footnote_260_260"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_260_260"><span class="label">[260]</span></a> <i>Lettre
+  sur les Sourds et les Muets</i>, i. 359.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_261_261" id="Footnote_261_261"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_261_261"><span class="label">[261]</span></a>
+  <i>Correspond. du Roi Stanislas-Auguste et de Mdme. Geoffrin,</i> p.
+  466.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_262_262" id="Footnote_262_262"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_262_262"><span class="label">[262]</span></a> Aug. 1769;
+  xix. 314-323.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_263_263" id="Footnote_263_263"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_263_263"><span class="label">[263]</span></a> Quoted in
+  Mr. Sime's excellent <i>Life of Lessing</i> (Trübner and Co., 1877),
+  p. 230.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_264_264" id="Footnote_264_264"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_264_264"><span class="label">[264]</span></a> <i>De la
+  Poésie Dramatique</i>, § 2, vii. 313.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_265_265" id="Footnote_265_265"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_265_265"><span class="label">[265]</span></a> Lockhart's
+  <i>Life of Scott</i>, iv. 177 (ed. 1837).</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_266_266" id="Footnote_266_266"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_266_266"><span class="label">[266]</span></a> <i>Père de
+  Famille</i>, Act II. sc. 2, p. 211.</p>
+ </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_267_267" id="Footnote_267_267"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_267_267"><span class="label">[267]</span></a>xix. 474.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_268_268" id="Footnote_268_268"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_268_268"><span class="label">[268]</span></a> <i>Paradoxe
+  sur le Comédien</i>, p. 383.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_269_269" id="Footnote_269_269"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_269_269"><span class="label">[269]</span></a>
+  <i>Journals</i>, ii. 331. Also vi. 248; vii. 9.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_270_270" id="Footnote_270_270"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_270_270"><span class="label">[270]</span></a>
+  <i>Réflexions sur Térence</i>, v. 228-238. In another place (<i>De la
+  Poésie Dram.</i>, 370) he says: "Nous avons des comédies. Les Anglais
+  n'ont que des satires, à la vérité pleines de force et de gaieté,
+  mais sans mœurs et sans goût. Les Italiens en sont réduits au drame
+  burlesque."</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_271_271" id="Footnote_271_271"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_271_271"><span class="label">[271]</span></a> vii. 95.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_272_272" id="Footnote_272_272"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_272_272"><span class="label">[272]</span></a> <i>Lettre
+  sur les Sourds et les Muets</i>, i. 355.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_273_273" id="Footnote_273_273"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_273_273"><span class="label">[273]</span></a>
+  <i>Paradoxe</i>, viii. 384. The criticism on the detestable rendering
+  of <i>Hamlet</i> by Ducis (viii. 471) makes one doubt whether Diderot
+  knew much about Shakespeare.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_274_274" id="Footnote_274_274"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_274_274"><span class="label">[274]</span></a> Letter to
+  Mdlle. Jodin, xix. 387.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_275_275" id="Footnote_275_275"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_275_275"><span class="label">[275]</span></a> Johnson one
+  day said to John Kemble: "Are you, sir, one of those enthusiasts who
+  believe yourself transformed into the very character you represent?"
+  Kemble answered that he had never felt so strong a persuasion
+  himself. <i>Boswell</i>, ch. 77.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_276_276" id="Footnote_276_276"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_276_276"><span class="label">[276]</span></a> Lessing
+  makes this a starting-point of his criticism of the art of acting,
+  though he uses it less absolutely than Diderot would do. <i>Hamburg.
+  Dramaturgie</i>, § 3, vol. vi. 19.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_277_277" id="Footnote_277_277"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_277_277"><span class="label">[277]</span></a> In
+  Lichtenberg's <i>Briefe aus England</i> (1776) there is a criticism
+  of the most admirably intelligent kind on Garrick. Lord Lytton gave
+  an account of it to English readers in the <i>Fortnightly Review</i>
+  (February 1871). The following passage confirms what Diderot says
+  above:</p>
+
+  <p>"You have doubtless heard much of his extraordinary power of
+  change of face. Here is one example of it. When he played the part of
+  Sir John Brute, I was close to the stage, and could observe him
+  narrowly. He entered with the corners of his mouth so turned down, as
+  to give to his whole countenance the expression of habitual
+  sottishness and debauchery. And this artificial form of the mouth he
+  retained, unaltered, from the beginning to the end of the play, with
+  the exception only that, as the play went on, the lips gaped and hung
+  more and more in proportion to the gradually increasing drunkenness
+  of the character represented. This made-up face was not produced by
+  stage-paint, but solely by muscular contraction; and it must be so
+  identified by Garrick with his idea of Sir John Brute as to be
+  spontaneously assumed by him whenever he plays that part; otherwise,
+  his retention of such a mask, without even once dropping it either
+  from fatigue or surprise, even in the most boisterous action of his
+  part, would be quite inexplicable."</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_278_278" id="Footnote_278_278"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_278_278"><span class="label">[278]</span></a> viii.
+  382.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_279_279" id="Footnote_279_279"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_279_279"><span class="label">[279]</span></a> viii. 373,
+  376, etc.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_280_280" id="Footnote_280_280"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_280_280"><span class="label">[280]</span></a> As Hamlet to
+  his players: "Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand thus;
+  but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may
+  say) the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a
+  temperance that may give it smoothness."</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_281_281" id="Footnote_281_281"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_281_281"><span class="label">[281]</span></a> To Jodin,
+  xix, 382. "Point de hoquets, point de cris, de la dignité vraie, un
+  jeu ferme, sensé, raisonné, juste, mâle; la plus grande sobriété de
+  gestes. C'est de la contenance, c'est du maintien, qu'il faut
+  déclamer les trois quarts du temps."—P. 390.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_282_282" id="Footnote_282_282"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_282_282"><span class="label">[282]</span></a> P. 395.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_283_283" id="Footnote_283_283"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_283_283"><span class="label">[283]</span></a> <i>Bijoux
+  Indiscrets</i>, ch. xxxviii.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_284_284" id="Footnote_284_284"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_284_284"><span class="label">[284]</span></a> vii. 121.
+  Lessing makes a powerful addition to this. <i>Hamburg. Dram.</i> vi.
+  261.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_285_285" id="Footnote_285_285"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_285_285"><span class="label">[285]</span></a> <i>Poésie
+  Dramatique</i>, §§ 20, 21.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_286_286" id="Footnote_286_286"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_286_286"><span class="label">[286]</span></a> <i>Sienne
+  Entretien</i>, vii. 138.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_287_287" id="Footnote_287_287"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_287_287"><span class="label">[287]</span></a> <i>Poés.
+  Dram.</i>., § 2. The Poetics of the Genre Sérieux are to be found,
+  vii. 137, 138.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_288_288" id="Footnote_288_288"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_288_288"><span class="label">[288]</span></a> i. 316.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_289_289" id="Footnote_289_289"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_289_289"><span class="label">[289]</span></a> <i>Hints for
+  an Essay on the Drama</i>, p. 155.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_290_290" id="Footnote_290_290"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_290_290"><span class="label">[290]</span></a> <i>Hist. du
+  Romantisme</i>, p. 93.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_291_291" id="Footnote_291_291"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_291_291"><span class="label">[291]</span></a> <i>Der
+  Gegensatz des Classischen und des Romantischen, etc.</i> By Conrad
+  Hermann, p. 66.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_292_292" id="Footnote_292_292"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_292_292"><span class="label">[292]</span></a>
+  Schopenhauer, <i>Ethik</i>, 199</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_293_293" id="Footnote_293_293"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_293_293"><span class="label">[293]</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i>,
+  iv. 29.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_294_294" id="Footnote_294_294"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_294_294"><span class="label">[294]</span></a>
+  <i>Werke</i>, xxv. 291.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_295_295" id="Footnote_295_295"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_295_295"><span class="label">[295]</span></a> The original
+  of the text, published in the Assézat edition of Diderot's works, was
+  a manuscript found, with other waifs and strays of the eighteenth
+  century, in a chest that had belonged to Messrs. Würtel and Treutz,
+  the publishers at Strasburg. Its authenticity is corroborated by the
+  fact that in the places where Goethe has marked an omission, we find
+  stories or expressions from which we understand only too well why
+  Goethe forbore to reproduce them.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_296_296" id="Footnote_296_296"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_296_296"><span class="label">[296]</span></a> v. 339.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_297_297" id="Footnote_297_297"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_297_297"><span class="label">[297]</span></a> Lucian, Περι
+  Παρασίτον, and Περι των επι μίσφω συνόντων.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_298_298" id="Footnote_298_298"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_298_298"><span class="label">[298]</span></a> Grimm, ix.
+  349.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_299_299" id="Footnote_299_299"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_299_299"><span class="label">[299]</span></a>
+  <i>Anmerkungen, Rameau's Neffe; Werke</i>, xxv. 268.</p>
+ </div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
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diff --git a/15098.txt b/15098.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2)
+by John Morley
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2)
+
+Author: John Morley
+
+Release Date: February 18, 2005 [EBook #15098]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DIDEROT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Paul Murray, LN Yaddanapudi, Leonard Johnson and the PG
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+DIDEROT
+
+AND
+
+THE ENCYCLOPAEDISTS
+
+
+BY JOHN MORLEY
+
+
+VOL. I.
+
+
+LONDON
+
+MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
+
+NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+
+1905
+
+
+
+
+_First published elsewhere_
+
+_New Edition 1886. Reprinted 1891, 1897, 1905_
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The present work closes a series of studies on the literary preparation
+for the French Revolution. It differs from the companion volumes on
+Voltaire and Rousseau, in being much more fully descriptive. In the case
+of those two famous writers, every educated reader knows more or less of
+their performances. Of Diderot and his circle, such knowledge cannot be
+taken for granted, and I have therefore thought it best to occupy a
+considerable space, which I hope that those who do me the honour to read
+these pages will not find excessive, with what is little more than
+transcript or analysis. Such a method will at least enable the reader to
+see what those ideas really were, which the social and economic
+condition of France on the eve of the convulsion made so welcome to men.
+The shortcomings of the encyclopaedic group are obvious enough. They have
+lately been emphasised in the ingenious and one-sided exaggerations of
+that brilliant man of letters, Mr. Taine. The social significance and
+the positive quality of much of their writing is more easily missed, and
+this side of their work it has been one of my principal objects, alike
+in the case of Voltaire, of Rousseau, and of Diderot, to bring into the
+prominence that it deserves in the history of opinion.
+
+The edition of Diderot's works to which the references are made, is that
+in twenty volumes by the late Mr. Assezat and Mr. Maurice Tourneux. The
+only other serious book on Diderot with which I am acquainted is
+Rosenkranz's valuable _Diderot's Leben_, published in 1866, and
+abounding in full and patient knowledge. Of the numerous criticisms on
+Diderot by Raumer, Arndt, Hettner, Damiron, Bersot, and above all by Mr.
+Carlyle, I need not make more particular mention.
+
+_May, 1878._
+
+
+NOTE.
+
+     Since the following pages were printed, an American
+     correspondent writes to me with reference to the dialogue
+     between Franklin and Raynal, mentioned on page 218, Vol.
+     II.:--"I have now before me Volume IV. of the _American Law
+     Journal_, printed at Philadelphia in the year 1813, and at
+     page 458 find in full, 'The Speech of Miss Polly Baker,
+     delivered before a court of judicature in _Connecticut_, where
+     she was prosecuted.'" Raynal, therefore, would have been right
+     if instead of Massachusetts he had said Connecticut; and
+     either Franklin told an untruth, or else Silas Deane.
+
+     _September, 1878._
+
+
+
+
+          CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
+
+
+          CHAPTER I.
+          PRELIMINARY.
+
+          The Church in the middle of the century
+          New phase in the revolt
+          The Encyclopaedia, its symbol
+          End of the reaction against the Encyclopaedia
+          Diderot's position in the movement
+
+
+          CHAPTER II.
+          YOUTH.
+
+          Birth and birthplace (1713)
+          His family
+          Men of letters in Paris
+          Diderot joins their company
+          His life in Paris: his friendly character
+          Stories of his good-nature
+          His tolerance for social reprobates
+          His literary struggles
+          Marriage (1743)
+
+
+          CHAPTER III.
+          EARLY WRITINGS.
+
+          Diderot's mismanagement of his own talents
+          Apart from this, a great talker rather than a great writer
+          A man of the Socratic type
+          Hack-work for the booksellers
+          The Philosophical Thoughts (1746)
+          Shaftesbury's influence
+          Scope of the Philosophical Thoughts
+          On the Sufficiency of Natural Religion (1747)
+          Explanation of the attraction of Natural Religion
+          Police supervision over men of letters
+          Two pictures of the literary hack
+          Seizure of the Sceptic's Walk (1747)
+          Its drift
+          A volume of stories (1748)
+          Diderot's view of the fate and character of women
+
+
+          CHAPTER IV.
+          THE NEW PHILOSOPHY.
+
+          Voltaire's account of Cheselden's operation
+          Diderot publishes the Letter on the Blind (1749)
+          Its significance
+          Condillac and Diderot
+          Account of the Letter on the Blind
+          The pith of it, an application of Relativity to the conception
+              of God
+          Saunderson of Cambridge
+          Argument assigned to him
+          Curious anticipation of a famous modern hypothesis
+          Voltaire's criticism
+          Effect of Diderot's philosophic position on the system
+              of the Church
+          Not merely a dispute in metaphysics
+          Illustration of Diderot's practical originality
+          Points of literary interest
+          The Letter on Deaf Mutes (1751)
+          Condillac's Statue
+          Diderot imprisoned at Vincennes (1749)
+          Rousseau's visit to him
+          Breach with Madame de Puisieux
+          Diderot released from captivity
+
+
+          CHAPTER V.
+          THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA.
+          (1) ITS HISTORY.
+
+          Previous examples of the Encyclopaedic idea
+          True parentage of Diderot's Encyclopaedia
+          Origin of the undertaking
+          Co-operation of D'Alembert: his history and character
+          Diderot and D'Alembert on the function of literature
+          Presiding characteristic of the Encyclopaedia
+          Its more eminent contributors
+          The unsought volunteers
+          Voltaire's share in it
+          Its compliance with reigning prejudice
+          Its aim, not literature but life
+          Publication of first and second volumes (1751-52)
+          Affair of De Prades
+          Diderot's vindication of him (1752)
+          Marks rupture between the Philosophers and the Jansenists
+          Royal decree suppressing first two volumes (1752)
+          Failure of the Jesuits to carry on the work
+          Four more volumes published
+          The seventh volume (1757)
+          Arouses violent hostility
+          The storm made fiercer by Helvetius's _L'Esprit_
+          Proceedings against the Encyclopaedia
+          Their significance
+          They also mark singular reaction within the school of
+              Illumination
+          Retirement of D'Alembert
+          Diderot continues the work alone for seven years
+          His harassing mortifications
+          The Encyclopaedia at Versailles
+          Reproduction and imitations
+          Diderot's payment
+
+          (2) GENERAL CONTENTS.
+
+          Transformation of a speculative into a social attack
+          Circumstances of practical opportuneness
+          Broad features of Encyclopaedic revolution
+          Positive spirit of the Encyclopaedia
+          Why we call it the organ of a political work
+          Articles on Agriculture
+          On the _Gabelle_ and the _Taille_
+          On Privilege
+          On the _Corveee_
+          On the Militia
+          On Endowments, Fairs, and Industrial Guilds
+          On Game and the Chase
+          Enthusiasm for the details of industry
+          Meaning of the importance assigned to industry and science
+          Intellectual side of the change
+          Attitude of the Encyclopaedia to religion
+          Diderot's intention under this head
+          How far the scheme fulfilled his intention
+          The Preliminary Discourse
+          Recognition of the value of discussion
+          And of toleration
+
+          (3) DIDEROT'S CONTRIBUTIONS.
+
+          Their immense confusion
+          Constant insinuation of sound doctrines
+          And of practical suggestions
+          Diderot not always above literary trifling
+          No taste for barren erudition
+          On Montaigne and Bayle
+          Occasional bursts of moralising
+          Varying attitude as to theology
+          The practical arts
+          Second-hand sources
+          Inconsistencies
+          Treatment of metaphysics
+          On Spinosa
+          On Leibnitz
+          On Liberty
+          Astonishing self-contradiction
+          Political articles
+          On the mechanism of government
+          Anticipation of Cobdenic ideas
+          Conclusion
+
+
+          CHAPTER VI.
+          SOCIAL LIFE (1759-1770).
+
+          Diderot's relations with Madame Voland
+          His letters to her
+          His Regrets on My Old Dressing-gown
+          Domestic discomfort
+          His indomitable industry
+          Life at Grandval
+          Meditations on human existence
+          Interest in the casuistry of human feeling
+          Various sayings
+          A point in rhetoric
+          Holbach's impressions of England
+          Two cases of conscience
+          A story of human wickedness
+          Method and Genius: an Apologue
+          Conversation
+          Annihilation
+          Characteristic of the century
+          Diderot's inexhaustible friendliness
+          The Abbe Monnier
+          Mademoiselle Jodin
+          Landois
+          Rousseau
+          Grimm
+          Diderot's money affairs
+          Succour rendered by Catherine of Russia
+          French booksellers in the eighteenth century
+          Dialogue between Diderot and D'Alembert
+          English opinion on Diderot's circle
+
+
+          CHAPTER VII.
+          THE STAGE.
+
+          In what sense Diderot the greatest genius of the century
+          Mark of his theory of the drama
+          Diderot's influence on Lessing
+          His play, _The Natural Son_ (1757)
+          Its quality illustrated
+          His sense of the importance of pantomime
+          The dialogues appended to _The Natural Son_
+          His second play, _The Father of the Family_ (1758)
+          One radical error of his dramatic doctrine
+          Modest opinion of his own experiments
+          His admiration for Terence
+          Diderot translates Moore's _Gamester_
+          On Shakespeare
+          The Paradox on the Player
+          Account of Garrick
+          On the truth of the stage
+          His condemnation of the French classic stage
+          The foundations of dramatic art
+          Diderot claims to have created a new kind of drama
+          No Diderotian school
+          Why the Encyclopaedists could not replace the classic
+              drama
+          The great drama of the eighteenth century
+
+
+          CHAPTER VIII.
+          "RAMEAU'S NEPHEW."
+
+          The mood that inspired this composition
+          History of the text
+          Various accounts of the design of _Rameau's Nephew_
+          Juvenal's Parasite
+          Lucian
+          Diderot's picture of his original
+          Not without imaginative strokes
+          More than a literary diversion
+          Sarcasms on Palissot
+          The musical controversy
+
+
+
+
+DIDEROT.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+PRELIMINARY.
+
+
+There was a moment in the last century when the Gallican church hoped
+for a return of internal union and prosperity. This brief era of hope
+coincided almost exactly with the middle of the century. Voltaire was in
+exile at Berlin. The author of the Persian Letters and the Spirit of
+Laws was old and near his end. Rousseau was copying music in a garret.
+The Encyclopaedia was looked for, but only as a literary project of some
+associated booksellers. The Jansenists, who had been so many in number
+and so firm in spirit five-and-twenty years earlier, had now sunk to a
+small minority of the French clergy. The great ecclesiastical body at
+length offered an unbroken front to its rivals, the great judicial
+bodies. A patriotic minister was indeed audacious enough to propose a
+tax upon ecclesiastical property, but the Church fought the battle and
+won. Troops had just been despatched to hunt and scatter the Protestants
+of the desert, and bigots exulted in the thought of pastors swinging on
+gibbets, and heretical congregations fleeing for their lives before the
+fire of orthodox musketry. The house of Austria had been forced to
+suffer spoliation at the hands of the infidel Frederick, but all the
+world was well aware that the haughty and devout Empress-Queen would
+seize a speedy opportunity of taking a crushing vengeance; France would
+this time be on the side of righteousness and truth. For the moment a
+churchman might be pardoned if he thought that superstition, ignorance,
+abusive privilege, and cruelty were on the eve of the smoothest and most
+triumphant days that they had known since the Reformation.
+
+We now know how illusory this sanguine anticipation was destined to
+prove, and how promptly. In little more than forty years after the
+triumphant enforcement of the odious system of confessional
+certificates, then the crowning event of ecclesiastical supremacy, Paris
+saw the Feast of the Supreme Being, and the adoration of the Goddess of
+Reason. The Church had scarcely begun to dream before she was rudely and
+peremptorily awakened. She found herself confronted by the most
+energetic, hardy, and successful assailants whom the spirit of progress
+ever inspired. Compared with the new attack, Jansenism was no more than
+a trifling episode in a family quarrel. Thomists and Molinists became as
+good as confederates, and Quietism barely seemed a heresy. In every age,
+even in the very depth of the times of faith, there had arisen
+disturbers of the intellectual peace. Almost each century after the
+resettlement of Europe by Charlemagne had procured some individual, or
+some little group, who had ventured to question this or that article of
+the ecclesiastical creed, to whom broken glimpses of new truth had come,
+and who had borne witness against the error or inconsistency or
+inadequateness of old ways of thinking. The questions which presented
+themselves to the acuter minds of a hundred years ago, were present to
+the acuter minds who lived hundreds of years before that. The more
+deeply we penetrate into the history of opinion, the more strongly are
+we tempted to believe that in the great matters of speculation no
+question is altogether new, and hardly any answer is altogether new. But
+the Church had known how to deal with intellectual insurgents, from
+Abelard in the twelfth century down to Giordano Bruno and Vanini in the
+seventeenth. They were isolated; they were for the most part submissive;
+and if they were not, the arm of the Church was very long and her grasp
+mortal. And all these meritorious precursors were made weak by one
+cardinal defect, for which no gifts of intellectual acuteness could
+compensate. They had the scientific idea, but they lacked the social
+idea. They could have set opinion right about the efficacy of the
+syllogism, and the virtue of entities and quiddities. They could have
+taught Europe earlier than the Church allowed it to learn that the sun
+does not go round the earth, and that it is the earth which goes round
+the sun. But they were wholly unfitted to deal with the prodigious
+difficulties of moral and social direction. This function, so
+immeasurably more important than the mere discovery of any number of
+physical relations, it was the glory of the Church to have discharged
+for some centuries with as much success as the conditions permitted. We
+are told indeed by writers ignorant alike of human history and human
+nature, that only physical science can improve the social condition of
+man. The common sense of the world always rejects this gross fallacy.
+The acquiescence for so many centuries in the power of the great
+directing organisation of Western Europe, notwithstanding its
+intellectual inadequateness, was the decisive expression of that
+rejection.
+
+After the middle of the last century the insurrection against the
+pretensions of the Church and against the doctrines of Christianity was
+marked in one of its most important phases by a new and most significant
+feature. In this phase it was animated at once by the scientific idea
+and by the social idea. It was an advance both in knowledge and in moral
+motive. It rested on a conception which was crude and imperfect enough,
+but which was still almost, like the great ecclesiastical conception
+itself, a conception of life as a whole. Morality, positive law, social
+order, economics, the nature and limits of human knowledge, the
+constitution of the physical universe, had one by one disengaged
+themselves from theological explanations. The final philosophical
+movement of the century in France, which was represented by Diderot,
+now tended to a new social synthesis resting on a purely positive basis.
+If this movement had only added to its other contents the historic idea,
+its destination would have been effectually reached. As it was, its
+leaders surveyed the entire field with as much accuracy and with as wide
+a range as their instruments allowed, and they scattered over the world
+a set of ideas which at once entered into energetic rivalry with the
+ancient scheme of authority. The great symbol of this new
+comprehensiveness in the insurrection was the Encyclopaedia.
+
+The Encyclopaedia was virtually a protest against the old organisation,
+no less than against the old doctrine. Broadly stated, the great central
+moral of it all was this: that human nature is good, that the world is
+capable of being made a desirable abiding-place, and that the evil of
+the world is the fruit of bad education and bad institutions. This
+cheerful doctrine now strikes on the ear as a commonplace and a truism.
+A hundred years ago in France it was a wonderful gospel, and the
+beginning of a new dispensation. It was the great counter-principle to
+asceticism in life and morals, to formalism in art, to absolutism in the
+social ordering, to obscurantism in thought. Every social improvement
+since has been the outcome of that doctrine in one form or another. The
+conviction that the character and lot of man are indefinitely modifiable
+for good, was the indispensable antecedent to any general and energetic
+endeavour to modify the conditions that surround him. The omnipotence
+of early instruction, of laws, of the method of social order, over the
+infinitely plastic impulses of the human creature--this was the maxim
+which brought men of such widely different temperament and leanings to
+the common enterprise. Everybody can see what wide and deep-reaching
+bearings such a doctrine possessed; how it raised all the questions
+connected with psychology and the formation of character; how it went
+down to the very foundation of morals; into what fresh and unwelcome
+sunlight it brought the articles of the old theology; with what new
+importance it clothed all the relations of real knowledge and the
+practical arts; what intense interest it lent to every detail of
+economics and legislation and government.
+
+The deadly chagrin with which churchmen saw the encyclopedic fabric
+rising was very natural. The teaching of the Church paints man as fallen
+and depraved. The new secular knowledge clashed at a thousand points,
+alike in letter and in spirit, with the old sacred lore. Even where it
+did not clash, its vitality of interest and attraction drove the older
+lore into neglected shade. To stir men's vivid curiosity and hope about
+the earth was to make their care much less absorbing about the kingdom
+of heaven. To awaken in them the spirit of social improvement was ruin
+to the most scandalous and crying social abuse then existing. The old
+spiritual power had lost its instinct, once so keen and effective, of
+wise direction. Instead of being the guide and corrector of the organs
+of the temporal power, it was the worst of their accomplices. The
+Encyclopaedia was an informal, transitory, and provisional organisation
+of the new spiritual power. The school of which it was the great
+expounder achieved a supreme control over opinion by the only title to
+which control belongs: a more penetrating eye for social exigencies and
+for the means of satisfying them.
+
+Our veteran humorist told us long ago in his whimsical way that the
+importance of the Acts of the French Philosophes recorded in whole acres
+of typography is fast exhausting itself, that the famed Encyclopaedical
+Tree has borne no fruit, and that Diderot the great has contracted into
+Diderot the easily measurable. The humoristic method is a potent
+instrument for working such contractions and expansions at will. The
+greatest of men are measurable enough, if you choose to set up a
+standard that is half transcendental and half cynical. A saner and more
+patient criticism measures the conspicuous figures of the past
+differently. It seeks their relations to the great forward movements of
+the world, and asks to what quarter of the heavens their faces were set,
+whether towards the east where the new light dawns, or towards the west
+after the old light has sunk irrevocably down. Above all, a saner
+criticism bids us remember that pioneers in the progressive way are
+rare, their lives rude and sorely tried, and their services to mankind
+beyond price. "Diderot is Diderot," wrote one greater than Carlyle: "a
+peculiar individuality; whoever holds him or his doings cheaply is a
+Philistine, and the name of them is legion. Men know neither from God,
+nor from Nature, nor from their fellows, how to receive with gratitude
+what is valuable beyond appraisement" (_Goethe_). An intense
+Philistinism underlay the great spiritual reaction that followed the
+Revolution, and not even such of its apostles as Wordsworth and Carlyle
+wholly escaped the taint.
+
+Forty years ago, when Carlyle wrote, it might really seem to a
+prejudiced observer as if the encyclopaedic tree had borne no fruit. Even
+then, and even when the critic happened to be a devotee of the sterile
+transcendentalism then in vogue, one might have expected some
+recognition of the fact that the seed of all the great improvements
+bestowed on France by the Revolution, in spite of the woful evils which
+followed in its train, had been sown by the Encyclopaedists. But now that
+the last vapours of the transcendental reaction are clearing away, we
+see that the movement initiated by the Encyclopaedia is again in full
+progress. Materialistic solutions in the science of man, humanitarian
+ends in legislation, naturalism in art, active faith in the
+improvableness of institutions--all these are once more the marks of
+speculation and the guiding ideas of practical energy. The philosophical
+parenthesis is at an end. The interruption of eighty years counts for no
+more than the twinkling of an eye in the history of the transformation
+of the basis of thought. And the interruption has for the present come
+to a close. Europe again sees the old enemies face to face; the Church,
+and a Social Philosophy slowly labouring to build her foundations in
+positive science. It cannot be other than interesting to examine the
+aims, the instruments, and the degree of success of those who a century
+ago saw most comprehensively how profound and far-reaching a
+metamorphosis awaited the thought of the Western world. We shall do this
+most properly in connection with Diderot.
+
+Whether we accept or question Comte's strong description of Diderot as
+the greatest genius of the eighteenth century, it is at least undeniable
+that he was the one member of the great party of illumination with a
+real title to the name of thinker. Voltaire and Rousseau were the heads
+of two important schools, and each of them set deep and unmistakable
+marks both on the opinion and the events of the century. It would not be
+difficult to show that their influence was wider than that of the
+philosopher who discerned the inadequateness of both. But Rousseau was
+moved by passion and sentiment; Voltaire was only the master of a
+brilliant and penetrating rationalism. Diderot alone of this famous trio
+had in his mind the idea of scientific method; alone showed any feeling
+for a doctrine, and for large organic and constructive conceptions. He
+had the rare faculty of true philosophic meditation. Though immeasurably
+inferior both to Voltaire and Rousseau in gifts of literary expression,
+he was as far their superior in breadth and reality of artistic
+principle. He was the originator of a natural, realistic, and
+sympathetic school of literary criticism. He aspired to impose new forms
+upon the drama. Both in imaginative creation and in criticism, his work
+was a constant appeal from the artificial conventions of the classic
+schools to the actualities of common life. The same spirit united with
+the tendency of his philosophy to place him among the very few men who
+have been great and genuine observers of human nature and human
+existence. So singular and widely active a genius may well interest us,
+even apart from the important place that he holds in the history of
+literature and opinion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+YOUTH.
+
+
+Denis Diderot was born at Langres in 1713, being thus a few months
+younger than Rousseau (1712), nearly twenty years younger than Voltaire
+(1694), nearly two years younger than Hume (1711), and eleven years
+older than Kant (1724). His stock was ancient and of good repute. The
+family had been engaged in the great local industry, the manufacture of
+cutlery, for no less than two centuries in direct line. Diderot liked to
+dwell on the historic prowess of his town, from the days of Julius
+Caesar and the old Lingones and Sabinus, down to the time of the Great
+Monarch. With the taste of his generation for tracing moral qualities to
+a climatic source, he explained a certain vivacity and mobility in the
+people of his district by the great frequency and violence of its
+atmospheric changes from hot to cold, from calm to storm, from rain to
+sunshine. "Thus they learn from earliest infancy to turn to every wind.
+The man of Langres has a head on his shoulders like the weathercock at
+the top of the church spire. It is never fixed at one point; if it
+returns to the point it has left, it is not to stop there. With an
+amazing rapidity in their movements, their desires, their plans, their
+fancies, their ideas, they are cumbrous in speech. For myself, I belong
+to my country side." This was thoroughly true. He inherited all the
+versatility of his compatriots, all their swift impetuosity, and
+something of their want of dexterity in expression.
+
+His father was one of the bravest, most upright, most patient, most
+sensible of men. Diderot never ceased to regret that the old man's
+portrait had not been taken with his apron on, his spectacles pushed up,
+and a hand on the grinder's wheel. After his death, none of his
+neighbours could speak of him to his son without tears in their eyes.
+Diderot, wild and irregular as were his earlier days, had always a true
+affection for his father. "One of the sweetest moments of my life," he
+once said, "was more than thirty years ago, and I remember it as if it
+were yesterday, when my father saw me coming home from school, my arms
+laden with the prizes I had carried off, and my shoulders burdened with
+the wreaths they had given me, which were too big for my brow and had
+slipped over my head. As soon as he caught sight of me some way off, he
+threw down his work, hurried to the door to meet me, and fell a-weeping.
+It is a fine sight--a grave and sterling man melted to tears."[1] Of his
+mother we know less. He had a sister, who seems to have possessed the
+rough material of his own qualities. He describes her as "lively,
+active, cheerful, decided, prompt to take offence, slow to come round
+again, without much care for present or future, never willing to be
+imposed on by people or circumstance; free in her ways, still more free
+in her talk; she is a sort of Diogenes in petticoats.... She is the most
+original and the most strongly-marked creature I know; she is goodness
+itself, but with a peculiar physiognomy."[2] His only brother showed
+some of the same native stuff, but of thinner and sourer quality. He
+became an abbe and a saint, peevish, umbrageous, and as excessively
+devout as his more famous brother was excessively the opposite. "He
+would have been a good friend and a good brother," wrote Diderot, "if
+religion had not bidden him trample under foot such poor weaknesses as
+these. He is a good Christian, who proves to me every minute of the day
+how much better it would be to be a good man. He shows that what they
+call evangelical perfection is only the mischievous art of stifling
+nature, which would most likely have spoken as lustily in him as in
+me."[3]
+
+Diderot, like so many others of the eighteenth-century reformers, was a
+pupil of the Jesuits. An ardent, impetuous, over-genial temperament was
+the cause of frequent irregularities in conduct. But his quick and
+active understanding overcame all obstacles. His teachers, ever wisely
+on the alert for superior capacity, hoped to enlist his talents in the
+Order. Either they or he planned his escape from home, but his father
+got to hear of it. "My grandfather," says Diderot's daughter, "kept the
+profoundest silence, but as he went off to bed took with him the keys of
+the yard door." When he heard his son going downstairs, he presented
+himself before him, and asked whither he was bound at twelve o'clock at
+night. "To Paris," replied the youth, "where I am to join the Jesuits."
+"That will not be to-night; but your wishes shall be fulfilled. First
+let us have our sleep." The next morning his father took two places in
+the coach, and carried him to Paris to the College d'Harcourt. He made
+all the arrangements, and wished his son good-bye. But the good man
+loved the boy too dearly to leave him without being quite at ease how he
+would fare; he had the patience to remain a whole fortnight, killing the
+time and half dead of weariness in an inn, without ever seeing the one
+object of his stay. At the end of the fortnight he went to the college,
+and Diderot used many a time to say that such a mark of tenderness and
+goodness would have made him go to the other end of the world if his
+father had required it. "My friend," said his father, "I am come to see
+if you are well, if you are satisfied with your superiors, with your
+food, with your companions, and with yourself. If you are not well or
+not happy, we will go back together to your mother. If you had rather
+stay where you are, I am come to give you a word, to embrace you, and to
+leave you my blessing." The boy declared he was perfectly happy; and the
+principal pronounced him an excellent scholar, though already promising
+to be a troublesome one.[4]
+
+After a couple of years the young Diderot, like other sons of Adam, had
+to think of earning his bread. The usual struggle followed between
+youthful genius and old prudence. His father, who was a man of
+substance, gave him his choice between medicine and law. Law he refused
+because he did not choose to spend his days in doing other people's
+business; and medicine, because he had no turn for killing. His father
+resolutely declined to let him have more money on these terms, and
+Diderot was thrown on his wits.
+
+The man of letters shortly before the middle of the century was as much
+an outcast and a beggar in Paris as he was in London. Voltaire, Gray,
+and Richardson were perhaps the only three conspicuous writers of the
+time, who had never known what it was to want a meal or to go without a
+shirt. But then none of the three depended on his pen for his
+livelihood. Every other man of that day whose writings have delighted
+and instructed the world since, had begun his career, and more than one
+of them continued and ended it, as a drudge and a vagabond. Fielding and
+Collins, Goldsmith and Johnson, in England; Goldoni in Italy;
+Vauvenargues, Marmontel, Rousseau, in France; Winckelmann and Lessing in
+Germany, had all alike been doubtful of dinner, and trembled about a
+night's lodging. They all knew the life of mean hazard, sorry shift,
+and petty expedient again and again renewed. It is sorrowful to think
+how many of the compositions of that time that do most to soothe and
+elevate some of the best hours of our lives, were written by men with
+aching hearts, in the midst of haggard perplexities. The man of letters,
+as distinguished alike from the old-fashioned scholar and the systematic
+thinker, now first became a distinctly marked type. Macaulay has
+contrasted the misery of the Grub Street hack of Johnson's time, with
+the honours accorded to men like Prior and Addison at an earlier date,
+and the solid sums paid by booksellers to the authors of our own day.
+But these brilliant passages hardly go lower than the surface of the
+great change. Its significance lay quite apart from the prices paid for
+books. The all-important fact about the men of letters in France was
+that they constituted a new order, that their rise signified the
+transfer of the spiritual power from ecclesiastical hands, and that,
+while they were the organs of a new function, they associated it with a
+new substitute for doctrine. These men were not only the pupils of the
+Jesuits; they were also their immediate successors as the teachers, the
+guides, and the directors of society. For two hundred years the
+followers of Ignatius had taken the intellectual and moral control of
+Catholic communities out of the failing hands of the Popes and the
+secular clergy. Their own hour had now struck. The rationalistic
+historian has seldom done justice to the services which this great
+Order rendered to European civilisation. The immorality of many of their
+maxims, their too frequent connivance at political wrong for the sake of
+power, their inflexible malice against opponents, and the cupidity and
+obstructiveness of the years of their decrepitude, have blinded us to
+the many meritorious pages of the Jesuit chronicle. Even men like
+Diderot and Voltaire, whose lives were for years made bitter by Jesuit
+machinations, gave many signs that they recognised the aid which had
+been rendered by their old masters to the cultivation and enlightenment
+of Europe. It was from the Jesuit fathers that the men of letters whom
+they trained, acquired that practical and social habit of mind which
+made the world and its daily interests so real to them. It was perhaps
+also his Jesuit preceptors whom the man of letters had to blame for a
+certain want of rigour and exactitude on the side of morality.
+
+What was this new order which thus struggled into existence, which so
+speedily made itself felt, and at length so completely succeeded in
+seizing the lapsed inheritance of the old spiritual organisation? Who is
+this man of letters? A satirist may easily describe him in epigrams of
+cheap irony; the pedant of the colleges may see in him a frivolous and
+shallow profaner of the mysteries of learning; the intellectual coxcomb
+who nurses his own dainty wits in critical sterility, despises him as
+Sir Piercie Shafton would have despised Lord Lindsay of the Byres. This
+notwithstanding, the man of letters has his work to do in the critical
+period of social transition. He is to be distinguished from the great
+systematic thinker, as well as from the great imaginative creator. He is
+borne on the wings neither of a broad philosophic conception nor of a
+lofty poetic conception. He is only the propagator of portions of such a
+conception, and of the minor ideas which they suggest. Unlike the Jesuit
+father whom he replaced, he has no organic doctrine, no historic
+tradition, no effective discipline, and no definite, comprehensive,
+far-reaching, concentrated aim. The characteristic of his activity is
+dispersiveness. Its distinction is to popularise such detached ideas as
+society is in a condition to assimilate; to interest men in these ideas
+by dressing them up in varied forms of the literary art; to guide men
+through them by judging, empirically and unconnectedly, each case of
+conduct, of policy, or of new opinion as it arises. We have no wish to
+exalt the office. On the contrary, I accept the maxim of that deep
+observer who warned us that "the mania for isolation is the plague of
+the human throng, and to be strong we must march together. You only
+obtain anything by developing the spirit of discipline among men."[5]
+
+But there are ages of criticism when discipline is impossible, and the
+evils of isolation are less than the evils of rash and premature
+organisation. Fontenelle was the first and in some respects the greatest
+type of this important class. He was sceptical, learned, ingenious,
+eloquent. He stretched hands (1657-1757) from the famous quarrel between
+Ancients and Moderns down to the Encyclopaedia, and from Bossuet and
+Corneille down to Jean Jacques and Diderot. When he was born, the man of
+letters did not exist. When he died, the man of letters was the most
+conspicuous personage in France. But when Diderot first began to roam
+about the streets of Paris, this enormous change was not yet complete.
+
+For some ten years (1734-1744) Diderot's history is the old tale of
+hardship and chance; of fine constancy and excellent faith, not wholly
+free from an occasional stroke of rascality. For a time he earned a
+little money by teaching. If the pupil happened to be quick and docile,
+he grudged no labour, and was content with any fee or none. If the pupil
+happened to be dull, Diderot never came again, and preferred going
+supperless to bed. His employers paid him as they chose, in shirts, in a
+chair or a table, in books, in money, and sometimes they never paid him
+at all. The prodigious exuberance of his nature inspired him with a
+sovereign indifference to material details. From the beginning he
+belonged to those to whom it comes by nature to count life more than
+meat, and the body than raiment. The outward things of existence were
+to him really outward. They never vexed or absorbed his days and nights,
+nor overcame his vigorous constitutional instinct for the true
+proportions of external circumstance. He was of the humour of the old
+philosopher who, when he heard that all his worldly goods had been lost
+in a shipwreck, only made for answer, _Jubet me fortuna expeditius
+philosophari_. Once he had the good hap to be appointed tutor to the
+sons of a man of wealth. He performed his duties zealously, he was well
+housed and well fed, and he gave the fullest satisfaction to his
+employer. At the end of three months the mechanical toil had grown
+unbearable to him. The father of his pupils offered him any terms if he
+would remain. "Look at me, sir," replied the tutor; "my face is as
+yellow as a lemon. I am making men of your children, but each day I am
+becoming a child with them. I am a thousand times too rich and too
+comfortable in your house; leave it I must. What I want is not to live
+better, but to avoid dying." Again he plunged from comfort into the life
+of the garret. If he met any old friend from Langres, he borrowed, and
+the honest father repaid the loan. His mother's savings were brought to
+him by a faithful creature who had long served in their house, and who
+now more than once trudged all the way from home on this errand, and
+added her own humble earnings to the little stock. Many a time the hours
+went very slowly for the necessitous man. One Shrove Tuesday he rose in
+the morning, and found his pockets empty even of so much as a
+halfpenny. His friends had not invited him to join their squalid
+Bohemian revels. Hunger and thoughts of old Shrovetide merriment and
+feasting in the far-off home made work impossible. He hastened out of
+doors and walked about all day visiting such public sights as were open
+to the penniless. When he returned to his garret at night, his landlady
+found him in a swoon, and with the compassion of a good soul she forced
+him to share her supper. "That day," Diderot used to tell his children
+in later years, "I promised myself that if ever happier times should
+come, and ever I should have anything, I would never refuse help to any
+living creature, nor ever condemn him to the misery of such a day as
+that."[6] And the real interest of the story lies in the fact that no
+oath was ever more faithfully kept. There is no greater test of the
+essential richness of a man's nature than that this squalid adversity,
+not of the sentimental introspective kind but hard and grinding, and not
+even kept in countenance by respectability, fails to make him a savage
+or a miser or a misanthrope.
+
+Diderot had his bitter moments. He knew the gloom and despondency that
+have their inevitable hour in every solitary and unordered life. But the
+fits did not last. They left no sour sediment, and this is the sign of
+health in temperament, provided it be not due to mere callousness. From
+that horrible quality Diderot assuredly was the furthest removed of any
+one of his time. Now and always he walked with a certain large
+carelessness of spirit. He measured life with a roving and liberal eye.
+Circumstance and conventions, the words under which men hide things, the
+oracles of common acceptance, the infinitely diversified properties of
+human character, the many complexities of our conduct and destiny--all
+these he watched playing freely around him, and he felt no haste to
+compress his experience into maxims and system. He was absolutely
+uncramped by any of the formal mannerisms of the spirit. He was wholly
+uncorrupted by the affectation of culture with which the great Goethe
+infected part of the world a generation later. His own life was never
+made the centre of the world. Self-development and self-idealisation as
+ends in themselves would have struck Diderot as effeminate drolleries.
+The daily and hourly interrogation of experience for the sake of
+building up the fabric of his own character in this wise or that, would
+have been incomprehensible and a little odious to him in theory, and
+impossible as a matter of practice. In the midst of all the hardships of
+his younger time, as afterwards in the midst of crushing Herculean
+taskwork, he was saved from moral ruin by the inexhaustible geniality
+and expansiveness of his affections. Nor did he narrow their play by
+looking only to the external forms of human relation. To Diderot it came
+easily to act on a principle which most of us only accept in words: he
+looked not to what people said, nor even to what they did, but wholly
+to what they were.
+
+Those whom he had once found reason to love and esteem might do him many
+an ill turn, without any fear of estranging him. Any one can measure
+character by conduct. It is a harder thing to be willing, in cases that
+touch our own interests, to interpret conduct by previous knowledge of
+character. His father, for instance, might easily have spared money
+enough to save him from the harassing privations of Bohemian life in
+Paris. A less full-blooded and generous person than Diderot would have
+resented the stoutness of the old man's persistency. Diderot on the
+contrary felt and delighted to feel, that this conflict of wills was a
+mere accident which left undisturbed the reality of old love. "The first
+few years of my life in Paris," he once told an acquaintance, "had been
+rather irregular; my behaviour was enough to irritate my father, without
+there being any need to make it worse by exaggeration. Still calumny was
+not wanting. People told him--well what did they not tell him? An
+opportunity for going to see him presented itself. I did not give it two
+thoughts. I set out full of confidence in his goodness. I thought that
+he would see me, that I should throw myself into his arms, that we
+should both of us shed tears, and that all would be forgotten. I thought
+rightly."[7] We may be sure of a stoutness of native stuff in any stock
+where so much tenacity united with such fine confidence on one side,
+and such generous love on the other. It is a commonplace how much waste
+would be avoided in human life if men would more freely allow their
+vision to pierce in this way through the distorting veils of egoism, to
+the reality of sentiment and motive and relationship.
+
+Throughout his life Diderot was blessed with that divine gift of pity,
+which one that has it could hardly be willing to barter for the
+understanding of an Aristotle. Nor was it of the sentimental type proper
+for fine ladies. One of his friends had an aversion for women with
+child. "What monstrous sentiment!" Diderot wrote; "for my part, that
+condition has always touched me. I cannot see a woman of the common
+people so, without a tender commiseration."[8] And Diderot had delicacy
+and respect in his pity. He tells a story in one of his letters of a
+poor woman who had suffered some wrong from a priest; she had not money
+enough to resort to law, until a friend of Diderot took her part. The
+suit was gained; but when the moment came for execution, the priest had
+vanished with all his goods. The woman came to thank her protector, and
+to regret the loss he had suffered. "As she chatted, she pulled a shabby
+snuff-box out of her pocket, and gathered up with the tip of her finger
+what little snuff remained at the bottom: her benefactor says to her
+'Ah, ah! you have no more snuff; give me your box, and I will fill it.'
+He took the box and put into it a couple of louis, which he covered up
+with snuff. Now there's an action thoroughly to my taste, and to yours
+too! Give, but, if you can, spare to the poor the shame of holding out a
+hand."[9] And the important thing, as we have said, is that Diderot was
+as good as his sentiment. Unlike most of the fine talkers of that day,
+to him these homely and considerate emotions were the most real part of
+life. Nobody in the world was ever more eager to give succour to others,
+nor more careless of his own ease.
+
+One singular story of Diderot's heedlessness about himself has often
+been told before, but we shall be none the worse in an egoistic world
+for hearing it told again. There came to him one morning a young man,
+bringing a manuscript in his hand. He begged Diderot to do him the
+favour of reading it, and to make any remarks he might think useful on
+the margin. Diderot found it to be a bitter satire upon his own person
+and writings. On the young man's return, Diderot asked him his grounds
+for making such an attack. "I am without bread," the satirist answered,
+"and I hoped you might perhaps give me a few crowns not to print it."
+Diderot at once forgot everything in pity for the starving scribbler. "I
+will tell you a way of making more than that by it. The brother of the
+Duke of Orleans is one of the pious, and he hates me. Dedicate your
+satire to him, get it bound with his arms on the cover; take it to him
+some fine morning, and you will certainly get assistance from him."
+"But I don't know the prince, and the dedicatory epistle embarrasses
+me." "Sit down," said Diderot, "and I will write one for you." The
+dedication was written, the author carried it to the prince, and
+received a handsome fee.[10]
+
+Marmontel assures us that never was Diderot seen to such advantage as
+when an author consulted him about a work. "You should have seen him,"
+he says, "take hold of the subject, pierce to the bottom of it, and at a
+single glance discover of what riches and of what beauty it was
+susceptible. If he saw that the author missed the right track, instead
+of listening to the reading, he at once worked up in his head all that
+the author had left crude and imperfect. Was it a play, he threw new
+scenes into it, new incidents, new strokes of character; and thinking
+that he had actually heard all that he had dreamed, he extolled to the
+skies the work that had just been read to him, and in which, when it saw
+the light, we found hardly anything that he had quoted from it.... He
+who was one of the most enlightened men of the century, was also one of
+the most amiable; and in everything that touched moral goodness, when he
+spoke of it freely, I cannot express the charm of his eloquence. His
+whole soul was in his eyes and on his lips; never did a countenance
+better depict the goodness of the heart."[11] Morellet is equally loud
+in praise, not only of Diderot's conversation, its brilliance, its
+vivacity, its fertility, its suggestiveness, its sincerity, but also
+his facility and indulgence to all who sought him, and of the
+sympathetic readiness with which he gave the very best of himself to
+others.[12]
+
+It is needless to say that such a temper was constantly abused.
+Three-fourths of Diderot's life were reckoned by his family to have been
+given up to people who had need of his purse, his knowledge, or his good
+offices. His daughter compares his library to a shop crowded by a
+succession of customers, but the customers took whatever wares they
+sought, not by purchase, but by way of free gift. Luckily for Diderot,
+he was thus generous by temperament, and not because he expected
+gratitude. Any necessitous knave with the gift of tears and the mask of
+sensibility could dupe and prey upon him. In one case he had taken a
+great deal of trouble for one of these needy and importunate clients;
+had given him money and advice, and had devoted much time to serve him.
+At the end of their last interview Diderot escorts his departing friend
+to the head of the staircase. The grateful client then asks him whether
+he knows natural history. "Well, not much," Diderot replies; "I know an
+aloe from a lettuce, and a pigeon from a humming-bird." "Do you know
+about the _Formica leo?_ No? Well, it is a little insect that is
+wonderfully industrious; it hollows out in the ground a hole shaped like
+a funnel, it covers the surface with a light fine sand, it attracts
+other insects, it takes them, it sucks them dry, and then it says to
+them, 'M. Diderot, I have the honour to wish you good day.'"[13]
+
+Yet insolence and ingratitude made no difference to Diderot. His ear
+always remained as open to every tale of distress, his sensibility
+always as quickly touched, his time, money, and service always as
+profusely bestowed. I know not whether to say that this was made more,
+or that it was made less, of a virtue by his excess of tolerance for
+social castaways and reprobates. Our rough mode of branding a man as bad
+revolted him. The common appetite for constituting ourselves public
+prosecutors for the universe, was to him one of the worst of human
+weaknesses. "You know," he used to say, "all the impetuosity of the
+passions; you have weighed all circumstance in your everlasting balance;
+you pass sentence on the goodness or the badness of creatures; you set
+up rewards and penalties among matters which have no proportion nor
+relation with one another. Are you sure that you have never committed
+wrong acts, for which you pardoned yourselves because their object was
+so slight, though at bottom they implied more wickedness than a crime
+prompted by misery or fury? Even magistrates, supported by experience,
+by the law, by conventions which force them sometimes to give judgment
+against the testimony of their own conscience, still tremble as they
+pronounce the doom of the accused. And since when has it been lawful for
+the same person to be at once judge and informer?"[14]
+
+Such reasoned leniency is the noblest of traits in a man. "I am more
+affected," he said, in words of which better men that Diderot might
+often be reminded, "by the charms of virtue than by the deformity of
+vice. I turn mildly away from the bad, and I fly to embrace the good. If
+there is in a work, in a character, in a painting, in a statue, a single
+fine bit, then on that my eyes fasten; I see only that: that is all I
+remember; the rest is as good as forgotten."[15]
+
+This is the secret of a rare and admirable temperament. It carried
+Diderot well through the trial and ordeal of the ragged apprenticeship
+of letters. What to other men comes by culture, came to him by inborn
+force and natural capaciousness. We do not know in what way Diderot
+trained and nourished his understanding. The annotations to his
+translation of Shaftesbury, as well as his earliest original pieces,
+show that he had read Montaigne and Pascal, and not only read but
+meditated on them with an independent mind. They show also that he had
+been impressed by the Civitas Dei of Augustine, and had at least dipped
+into Terence and Horace, Cicero and Tacitus. His subsequent writings
+prove that, like the other men of letters of his day, he found in our
+own literature the chief external stimulant to thought. Above all, he
+was impressed by the magnificent ideas of the illustrious Bacon, and
+these ideas were the direct source of the great undertaking of Diderot's
+life. He is said to have read little and to have meditated much--the
+right process for the few men of his potent stamp. The work which he had
+to do for bread was of the kind that crushes anything short of the
+strongest faculty. He composed sermons. A missionary once ordered
+half-a-dozen of them for consumption in the Portuguese colonies, and
+paid him fifty crowns apiece, which Diderot counted far from the worst
+bargain of his life. All this was beggarly toil for a man of genius, but
+Diderot never took the trouble to think of himself as a man of genius,
+and was quite content with life as it came. If he found himself
+absolutely without food and without pence, he began moodily to think of
+abandoning his books and his pen, and of complying with the wishes of
+his father. A line of Homer, an idea from the Principia, an interesting
+problem in algebra or geometry, was enough to restore the eternally
+invincible spell of knowledge. And no sooner was this commanding
+interest touched, than the cloud of uncomfortable circumstance vanished
+from before the sun, and calm and serenity filled his spirit.
+
+Montesquieu used to declare that he had never known a chagrin which half
+an hour of a book was not able to dispel. Diderot had the same fortunate
+temper.
+
+Yet Diderot was not essentially a man of books. He never fell into the
+characteristic weakness of the follower of letters, by treating books as
+ends in themselves, or placing literature before life. Character,
+passion, circumstance, the real tragi-comedy, not its printed shadow
+and image, engrossed him. He was in this respect more of the temper of
+Rousseau, than he was like Voltaire or Fontenelle. "Abstraction made,"
+he used to say, "of my existence and of the happiness of my fellows,
+what does the rest of nature matter to me?" Yet, as we see, nobody that
+ever lived was more interested in knowledge. His biographer and disciple
+remarked the contrast in him between his ardent impetuous disposition
+and enthusiasm, and his spirit of close unwearied observation. _Faire le
+bien, connaitre le vrai_, was his formula for the perfect life, and
+defined the only distinction that he cared to recognise between one man
+and another. And the only motive he ever admitted as reasonable for
+seeking truth, was as a means of doing good. So strong was his sense of
+practical life, in the midst of incessant theorising.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the moment when he had most difficulty in procuring a little bread
+each day for himself, Diderot conceived a violent passion for a
+seamstress, Antoinnette Champion by name, who happened to live in his
+neighbourhood. He instantly became importunate for marriage. The mother
+long protested with prudent vigour against a young man of such
+headstrong impetuosity, who did nothing and who had nothing, save the
+art of making speeches that turned her daughter's head. At length the
+young man's golden tongue won the mother as it had won the daughter. It
+was agreed that his wishes should be crowned, if he could procure the
+consent of his family. Diderot fared eagerly and with a sanguine heart
+to Langres. His father supposed that he had seen the evil of his ways,
+and was come at last to continue the honest tradition of their name.
+When the son disclosed the object of his visit, he was treated as a
+madman and threatened with malediction. Without a word of remonstrance
+he started back one day for Paris. Madame Champion warned him that his
+project must now be for ever at an end. Such unflinching resoluteness is
+often the last preliminary before surrender. Diderot fell ill. The two
+women could not bear to think of him lying sick in a room no better than
+a dog-kennel, without broths and tisanes, lonely and sorrowful. They
+hastened to nurse him, and when he got well, what he thought the great
+object of his life was reached. He and his adored were married
+(1743).[16] As has been said, "Choice in marriage is a great match of
+cajolery between purpose and invisible hazard: deep criticism of a game
+of pure chance is time wasted." In Diderot's case destiny was hostile.
+
+His wife was over thirty. She was dutiful, sage, and pious. She had
+plenty of that devotion which in small things women so seldom lack.
+While her husband went to dine out, she remained at home to dine and
+sup on dry bread, and was pleased to think that the next day she would
+double the little ordinary for him. Coffee was too dear to be a
+household luxury, so every day she handed him a few halfpence to have
+his cup, and to watch the chess-players at the Cafe de la Regence. When
+after a year or two she went to make her peace with her father-in-law at
+Langres, she wound her way round the old man's heart by her affectionate
+caresses, her respect, her ready industry in the household, her piety,
+her simplicity. It is, however, unfortunately possible for even the best
+women to manifest their goodness, their prudence, their devotion, in
+forms that exasperate. Perhaps it was so here. Diderot at fifty was an
+orderly and steadfast person, but at thirty the blood of vagabondage was
+still hot within him. He needed in his companion a robust patience, to
+match his own too robust activity. One may suppose that if Mirabeau had
+married Hannah More, the union would have turned out ill, and Diderot's
+marriage was unluckily of such a type. His wife's narrow pieties and
+homely solicitudes fretted him. He had not learned to count the cost of
+deranging the fragile sympathy of the hearth. While his wife was away on
+her visit to his family, he formed a connection with a woman (Madame
+Puisieux) who seems to have been as bad and selfish as his wife was the
+opposite. She was the authoress of some literary pieces, which the world
+willingly and speedily let die; but even very moderate pretensions to
+_bel-esprit_ may have seemed wonderfully refreshing to a man wearied to
+death by the illiterate stupidity of his daily companion.[17] This
+lasted some three or four years down to 1749. As we shall see, he
+discovered the infidelity of his mistress and broke with her. But by
+this time his wife's virtues seem to have gone a little sour, as
+disregarded prudence and thwarted piety are so apt to do. It was too
+late now to knit up again the ravelled threads of domestic concord.
+During a second absence of his wife in Champagne (1754), he formed a new
+attachment to the daughter of a financier's widow (Mdlle. Voland). This
+lasted to the end of the lady's days (1783 or 1784).
+
+There is probably nothing very profitable to be said about all this
+domestic disorder. We do not know enough of the circumstances to be sure
+of allotting censure in exact and rightful measure. We have to remember
+that such irregularities were in the manners of the time. To connect
+them by way of effect with the new opinions in religion, would be as
+impertinent as to trace the immoralities of Dubois or Lewis the
+Fifteenth or the Cardinal de Rohan to the old opinions.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+EARLY WRITINGS.
+
+
+La Rochefoucauld, expressing a commonplace with the penetrative
+terseness that made him a master of the apophthegm, pronounced it "not
+to be enough to have great qualities: a man must have the economy of
+them." Or, as another writer says: "Empire in this world belongs not so
+much to wits, to talents, and to industry, as to a certain skilful
+economy and to the continual management that a man has the art of
+applying to all his other gifts."[18] Notwithstanding the peril that
+haunts superlative propositions, we are inclined to say that Diderot is
+the most striking illustration of this that the history of letters or
+speculation has to furnish. If there are many who have missed the mark
+which they or kindly intimates thought them certain of attaining, this
+is mostly not for want of economy, but for want of the great qualities
+which were imputed to them by mistake. To be mediocre, to be sterile, to
+be futile, are the three fatal endings of many superbly announced
+potentialities. Such an end nearly always comes of exaggerated faculty,
+rather than of bad administration of natural gifts. In Diderot were
+splendid talents. It was the art of prudent stewardship that lay beyond
+his reach. Hence this singular fact, that he perhaps alone in literature
+has left a name of almost the first eminence, and impressed his
+greatness upon men of the strongest and most different intelligence, and
+yet never produced a masterpiece; many a fine page, as Marmontel said,
+but no one fine work.
+
+No man that ever wrote was more wholly free from that unquiet
+self-consciousness which too often makes literary genius pitiful or
+odious in the flesh. He put on no airs of pretended resignation to
+inferior production, with bursting hints of the vast superiorities that
+unfriendly circumstance locked up within him. Yet on one occasion, and
+only on one, so far as evidence remains, he indulged a natural regret.
+"And so," he wrote when revising the last sheets of the Encyclopaedia
+(July 25, 1765), "in eight or ten days I shall see the end of an
+undertaking that has occupied me for twenty years; that has not made my
+fortune by a long way; that has exposed me many a time to the risk of
+having to quit my country or lose my freedom; and that has consumed a
+life that I might have made both more useful and more glorious. The
+sacrifice of talent to need would be less common, if it were only a
+question of self. One could easily resolve rather to drink water and eat
+dry crusts and follow the bidding of one's genius in a garret. But for a
+woman and for children, what can one not resolve? If I sought to make
+myself of some account in their eyes, I would not say--I have worked
+thirty years for you: I would say--I have for you renounced for thirty
+years the vocation of my nature; I have preferred to renounce my tastes
+in doing what was useful for you, instead of what was agreeable to
+myself. That is your real obligation to me, and of that you never
+think."[19]
+
+It is a question, nevertheless, whether Diderot would have achieved
+masterpieces, even if the pressure of housekeeping had never driven him
+to seek bread where he could find it. Indeed it is hardly a question.
+His genius was spacious and original, but it was too dispersive, too
+facile of diversion, too little disciplined, for the prolonged effort of
+combination which is indispensable to the greater constructions whether
+of philosophy or art. The excellent talent of economy and administration
+had been denied him; that thrift of faculty, which accumulates store and
+force for concentrated occasions. He was not encyclopaedic by accident,
+nor merely from external necessity. The quality of rapid movement,
+impetuous fancy, versatile idea, which he traced to the climate of his
+birthplace, marked him from the first for an encyclopaedic or some such
+task. His interest was nearly as promptly and vehemently kindled in one
+subject as in another; he was always boldly tentative, always fresh and
+vigorous in suggestion, always instant in search. But this multiplicity
+of active excitements--and with Diderot every interest rose to the
+warmth of excitement--was even more hostile to masterpieces than were
+the exigencies of a livelihood. It was not unpardonable in a moment of
+exhaustion and chagrin to fancy that he had offered up the treasures of
+his genius to the dull gods of the hearth. But if he had been childless
+and unwedded, the result would have been the same. He is the munificent
+prodigal of letters, always believing his substance inexhaustible, never
+placing a limit to his fancies nor a bound to his outlay. "It is not
+they who rob me of my life," he wrote; "it is I who give it to them. And
+what can I do better than accord a portion of it to him who esteems me
+enough to solicit such a gift? I shall get no praise for it, 'tis true,
+either now while I am here, nor when I shall exist no longer; but I
+shall esteem myself for it, and people will love me all the better for
+it. 'Tis no bad exchange, that of benevolence, against a celebrity that
+one does not always win, and that nobody wins without a drawback. I have
+never once regretted the time that I have given to others; I can
+scarcely say as much for; the time that I have used for myself."[20]
+Remembering how uniformly men of letters take themselves somewhat too
+seriously, we may be sorry that this unique figure among them, who was
+in other respects constituted to be so considerable and so effective,
+did not take himself seriously enough.
+
+Apart from his moral inaptitude for the monumental achievements of
+authorship, Diderot was endowed with the gifts of the talker rather than
+with those of the writer. Like Dr. Johnson, he was a great converser
+rather than the author of great books. If we turn to his writings, we
+are at some loss to understand the secret of his reputation. They are
+too often declamatory, ill-compacted, broken by frequent apostrophes,
+ungainly, dislocated, and rambling. He has been described by a
+consummate judge as the most German of all the French. And his style is
+deeply marked by that want of feeling for the exquisite, that dulness of
+edge, that bluntness of stroke, which is the common note of all German
+literature, save a little of the very highest. In conversation we do not
+insist on constant precision of phrase, nor on elaborate sustension of
+argument. Apostrophe is made natural by the semi-dramatic quality of the
+situation. Even vehement hyperbole, which is nearly always a
+disfigurement in written prose, may become impressive or delightful,
+when it harmonises with the voice, the glance, the gesture of a fervid
+and exuberant converser. Hence Diderot's personality invested his talk,
+as happened in the case of Johnson and of Coleridge, with an imposing
+interest and a power of inspiration which we should never comprehend
+from the mere perusal of his writings.
+
+His admirers declared his head to be the ideal head of an Aristotle or a
+Plato. His brow was wide, lofty, open, gently rounded. The arch of the
+eyebrow was full of delicacy; the nose of masculine beauty; the
+habitual expression of the eyes kindly and sympathetic, but as he grew
+heated in talk, they sparkled like fire; the curves of the mouth bespoke
+an interesting mixture of finesse, grace, and geniality. His bearing was
+nonchalant enough, but there was naturally in the carriage of his head,
+especially when he talked with action, much dignity, energy, and
+nobleness. It seemed as if enthusiasm were the natural condition for his
+voice, for his spirit, for every feature. He was only truly Diderot when
+his thoughts had transported him beyond himself. His ideas were stronger
+than himself; they swept him along without the power either to stay or
+to guide their movement. "When I recall Diderot," wrote one of his
+friends, "the immense variety of his ideas, the amazing multiplicity of
+his knowledge, the rapid flight, the warmth, the impetuous tumult of his
+imagination, all the charm and all the disorder of his conversation, I
+venture to liken his character to nature herself, exactly as he used to
+conceive her--rich, fertile, abounding in germs of every sort, gentle
+and fierce, simple and majestic, worthy and sublime, but without any
+dominating principle, without a master and without a God."[21] Gretry,
+the musical composer, declares that Diderot was one of the rare men who
+had the art of blowing the spark of genius into flame; the first
+impulses stirred by his glowing imagination were of inspiration
+divine.[22]
+
+Marmontel warns us that he who only knows Diderot in his writings, does
+not know him at all. We should have listened to his persuasive
+eloquence, and seen his face aglow with the fire of enthusiasm. It was
+when he grew animated in talk, and let all the abundance of his ideas
+flow freely from the source, that he became truly ravishing. In his
+writings, says Marmontel with obvious truth, he never had the art of
+forming a whole, and this was because that first process of arranging
+everything in its place was too slow and too tiresome for him. The want
+of ensemble vanished in the free and varied course of conversation.[23]
+
+We have to remember then that Diderot was in this respect of the
+Socratic type, though he was unlike Socrates, in being the disseminator
+of positive and constructive ideas. His personality exerted a decisive
+force and influence. In reading the testimony of his friends, we think
+of the young Aristides saying to Socrates: "I always made progress
+whenever I was in your neighbourhood, even if I were only in the same
+house, without being in the same room; but my advancement was greater if
+I were in the same room with you, and greater still if I could keep my
+eyes fixed upon you."[24] It has been well said that Diderot, like
+Socrates, had about him a something daemonic. He was possessed, and so
+had the first secret of possessing others. But then to reach excellence
+in literature, one must also have self-possession; a double current of
+impulse and deliberation; a free stream of ideas spontaneously obeying a
+sense or order, harmony, and form. Eloquence in the informal discourse
+of the parlour or the country walk did not mean in Diderot's case the
+empty fluency and nugatory emphasis of the ordinary talker of
+reputation. It must have been both pregnant and copious; declamatory in
+form, but fresh and substantial in matter; excursive in arrangement, but
+forcible and pointed in intention. No doubt, if he was a sage, he was
+sometimes a sage in a frenzy. He would wind up a peroration by dashing
+his nightcap passionately against the wall, by way of clencher to the
+argument. Yet this impetuosity, this turn for declamation, did not
+hinder his talk from being directly instructive. Younger men of the most
+various type, from Morellet down to Joubert, men quite competent to
+detect mere bombast or ardent vagueness, were held captive by the
+cogency of his understanding. His writings have none of this compulsion.
+We see the flame, but through a veil of interfused smoke. The expression
+is not obscure, but it is awkward; not exactly prolix, but heavy,
+overcharged, and opaque. We miss the vivid precision and the high
+spirits of Voltaire, the glow and the brooding sonorousness of Rousseau,
+the pomp of Buffon. To Diderot we go not for charm of style, but for a
+store of fertile ideas, for some striking studies of human life, and for
+a vigorous and singular personality.
+
+Diderot's knowledge of our language now did him good service. One of
+the details of the method by which he taught himself English is curious.
+Instead of using an Anglo-French dictionary, he always used one in
+Anglo-Latin. The sense of a Latin or Greek word, he said, is better
+established, more surely fixed, more definite, less liable to capricious
+peculiarities of convention, than the vernacular words which the whim or
+ignorance of the lexicographer may choose. The reader composes his own
+vocabulary, and gains both correctness and energy.[25] However this may
+be, his knowledge of English was more accurate than is possessed by most
+French writers of our own day. Diderot's first work for the booksellers
+after his marriage seems to have been a translation in three volumes of
+Stanyan's History of Greece. For this, to the amazement of his wife, he
+got a hundred crowns. About the same time (1745) he published Principles
+of Moral Philosophy, or an Essay of Mr. S. on Merit and Virtue. The
+initial stands for Shaftesbury, and the book translated was his Inquiry
+concerning Virtue and Merit.
+
+Towards the same time, again, Diderot probably made acquaintance with
+Madame de Puisieux, of whom it has been said with too patent humour that
+she was without either the virtue or the merit on which her admirer had
+just been declaiming. We are told that it was her need of money which
+inspired him with his first original work. As his daughter's memoir,
+from which the tale comes, is swarming with blunders, this may not be
+more true than some of her other statements. All that we know of
+Diderot's sense and sincerity entitles him to the benefit of the doubt.
+The Philosophical Thoughts (1746) are a continuation of the vein of the
+annotations on the Essay. He is said to have thrown these reflections
+together between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Nor is there anything
+incredible in such rapid production, when we remember the sweeping
+impetuosity with which he flung himself into all that he undertook. The
+Thoughts are evidently the fruits of long meditation, and the literary
+arrangement of them may well have been an easy task. They are a robuster
+development of the scepticism which was the less important side of
+Shaftesbury. The parliament of Paris ordered the book to be burnt along
+with some others (July 7, 1746), partly because they were heterodox,
+partly because the practice of publishing books without official leave
+was gaining an unprecedented height of license.[26] This was Diderot's
+first experience of that hand of authority, which was for thirty years
+to surround him with mortification and torment. But the disapproval of
+authority did not check the circulation or influence of the Thoughts.
+They were translated into German and Italian, and were honoured by a
+shower of hostile criticism. In France they were often reprinted, and
+even in our own day they are said not wholly to have lost their vogue
+as a short manual of scepticism.[27]
+
+The historians of literature too often write as if a book were the cause
+or the controlling force of controversies in which it is really only a
+symbol, or a proclamation of feelings already in men's minds. We should
+never occupy ourselves in tracing the thread of a set of opinions,
+without trying to recognise the movement of living men and concrete
+circumstance that accompanied and caused the progress of thought. In
+watching how the beacon-fire flamed from height to height--
+
+    [Greek: phaos de telepompon ouk enaineto
+    phroura, prosaithrizousa pompimonphloga--]
+
+we should not forget that its source and reference lie in action, in the
+motion and stirring of confused hosts and multitudes of men. A book,
+after all, is only the mouthpiece of its author, and the author being
+human is moved and drawn by the events that occur under his eye. It was
+not merely because Bacon and Hobbes and Locke had written certain books,
+that Voltaire and Diderot became free-thinkers and assailed the church.
+"So long," it has been said, "as a Bossuet, a Fenelon, an Arnauld, a
+Nicole, were alive, Bayle made few proselytes; the elevation of Dubois
+and its consequences multiplied unbelievers and indifferents."[28]
+
+The force of speculative literature always hangs on practical
+opportuneness. The economic evils of monasticism, the increasing
+flagrancy and grossness of superstition, the aggressive factiousness of
+the ecclesiastics, the cruelty of bigoted tribunals--these things
+disgusted and wearied the more enlightened spirits, and the English
+philosophy only held out an inspiring intellectual alternative.[29]
+
+Nor was it accident that drew Diderot's attention to Shaftesbury, rather
+than to any other of our writers. That author's essay on Enthusiasm had
+been suggested by the extravagances of the French prophets, poor
+fanatics from the Cevennes, who had fled to London after the revocation
+of the edict of Nantes, and whose paroxysms of religious hysteria at
+length brought them into trouble with the authorities (1707). Paris saw
+an outbreak of the same kind of ecstasy, though on a much more
+formidable scale, among the Jansenist fanatics, from 1727 down to 1758,
+or later. Some of the best attested miracles in the whole history of the
+supernatural were wrought at the tomb of the Jansenist deacon,
+Paris.[30] The works of faith exalted multitudes into convulsive
+transports; men and women underwent the most cruel tortures, in the hope
+of securing a descent upon them of the divine grace. The sober citizen,
+whose journal is so useful a guide to domestic events in France from the
+Regency to the Peace of 1763, tells us the effect of this hideous
+revival upon public sentiment. People began to see, he says, what they
+were to think of the miracles of antiquity. The more they went into
+these matters, whether miracles or prophecies, the more obscurity they
+discovered in the one, the more doubt about the other. Who could tell
+that they had not been accredited and established in remote times with
+as little foundation as what was then passing under men's very eyes?
+Just in the same way, the violent and prolonged debates, the intrigue,
+the tergiversation, which attended the acceptance of the famous Bull
+Unigenitus, taught shrewd observers how it is that religions establish
+themselves. They also taught how little respect is due in our minds and
+consciences to the great points which the universal church claims to
+have decided.[31]
+
+These are the circumstances which explain the rude and vigorous
+scepticism of Diderot's first performances. And they explain the
+influence of Shaftesbury over him. Neither Diderot nor his
+contemporaries were ready at once to plunge into the broader and firmer
+negation to which they afterwards committed themselves. No doubt some of
+the politeness which he shows to Christianity, both in the notes to his
+translation of Shaftesbury, and in his own Philosophic Thoughts, is no
+more than an ironical deference to established prejudices. The notes to
+the Essay on Merit and Virtue show that Diderot, like all the other
+French revolters against established prejudice, had been deeply
+influenced by the shrewd-witted Montaigne. But the ardour of the
+disciple pressed objections home with a trenchancy that is very unlike
+the sage distillations of the master. It was from Shaftesbury, however,
+that he borrowed common sense as a philosophic principle. Shaftesbury
+had indirectly drawn it from Locke, and through Hutcheson it became the
+source and sponsor of the Scottish philosophy of that century. This was
+a weapon exactly adapted for dealing with a theology that was
+discredited in the eyes of all cool observers by the hysterical
+extravagances of one set of religionists, and the factious pretensions
+of their rivals. And no other weapon was at hand. The historic or
+critical method of investigation was impossible, for the age did not
+possess the requisite learning. The indirect attack from the side of
+physical science was equally impossible. The bearing of Newton's great
+discovery on the current conceptions of the Creator and the supposed
+system of the divine government, was not yet fully realised. The other
+scientific ideas which have since made the old hypothesis less credible,
+were not at that time even conceived.
+
+Diderot did indeed perceive even so early as this that the controversy
+was passing from the metaphysicians to the physicists. Though he for the
+moment misinterpreted the ultimate direction of the effect of
+experimental discovery, he discerned its potency in the field of
+theological discussion. "It is not from the hands of the metaphysician,"
+he said, "that atheism has received the weightiest strokes. The sublime
+meditations of Malebranche and Descartes were less calculated to shake
+materialism than a single observation of Malpighi's. If this dangerous
+hypothesis is tottering in our days, it is to experimental physics that
+such a result is due. It is only in the works of Newton, of
+Muschenbroek, of Hartzoeker, and of Nieuwentit, that people have found
+satisfactory proofs of the existence of a being of sovereign
+intelligence. Thanks to the works of these great men, the world is no
+longer a god; it is a machine with its cords, its pulleys, its springs,
+its weights."[32] In other words, Diderot had as yet not made his way
+beyond the halting-place which has been the favourite goal of English
+physicists from Newton down to Faraday.[33] Consistent materialism had
+not yet established itself in his mind. Meanwhile he laid about him with
+his common sense, just as Voltaire did, though Diderot has more
+weightiness of manner. If his use of the weapon cannot be regarded as a
+decisive settlement of the true issues, we have to remember that he
+himself became aware in a very short time of its inadequateness, and
+proceeded to the discussion, as we shall presently see, from another
+side.
+
+The scope of the Philosophical Thoughts, and the attitude of Diderot's
+mind when they were written, may be shown in a few brief passages. The
+opening words point to the significance of the new time in one
+direction, and they are the key-note to Diderot's whole character.
+"People are for ever declaiming against the passions; they set down to
+them all the pains that man endures, and quite forget that they are also
+the source of all his pleasures. It is regarded as an affront to reason
+if one dares to say a word in favour of its rivals. Yet it is only
+passions, and strong passions, that can raise the soul to great things.
+Sober passions produce only the commonplace. Deadened passions degrade
+men of extraordinary quality. Constraint annihilates the greatness and
+energy of nature. See that tree; 'tis to the luxury of its branches that
+you owe the freshness and the wide-spreading breadth of its shade, which
+you may enjoy till winter comes to despoil it of its leafy tresses. An
+end to all excellence in poetry, in painting, in music, as soon as
+superstition has once wrought upon human temperament the effect of old
+age! It is the very climax of madness to propose to oneself the ruin of
+the passions. A fine design truly in your pietist, to torment himself
+like a convict in order to desire nothing, love nothing, feel nothing;
+and he would end by becoming a true monster, if he were to succeed!"[34]
+Many years afterwards he wrote in the same sense to Madame Voland. "I
+have ever been the apologist of strong passions; they alone move me.
+Whether they inspire me with admiration or horror, I feel vehemently. If
+atrocious deeds that dishonour our nature are due to them, it is by them
+also that we are borne to the marvellous endeavour that elevates it. The
+man of mediocre passion lives and dies like the brute." And so forth,
+until the writer is carried to the perplexing position that "if we were
+bound to choose between Racine, a bad husband, a bad father, a false
+friend, and a sublime poet, and Racine, good father, good husband, good
+friend, and dull worthy man, I hold to the first. Of Racine, the bad
+man, what remains? Nothing. Of Racine, the man of genius? The work is
+eternal."[35] Without attempting to solve this problem in casuistry, we
+recognise Diderot's mood, and the hatred with which it would be sure to
+inspire him for the starved and mutilated passions of the Christian
+type. The humility, chastity, obedience, indolent solitude, which had
+for centuries been glorified by the Church, were monstrous to this
+vehement and energetic spirit. The church had placed heroism in
+effacement. Diderot, borne to the other extreme, left out even
+discipline. To turn from his maxims on the foundation of conduct, to his
+maxims on opinion. As we have said, his attitude is that of the
+sceptic:--
+
+What has never been put in question, has not been proved. What people
+have not examined without prepossessions, they have not examined
+thoroughly. Scepticism is the touchstone. (Sec. 31.)
+
+Incredulity is sometimes the vice of a fool, and credulity the defect of
+a man of intelligence. The latter sees far into the immensity of the
+Possible; the former scarcely sees anything possible beyond the Actual.
+Perhaps this is what produces the timidity of the one, and the temerity
+of the other.
+
+A demi-scepticism is the mark of a feeble understanding. It reveals a
+pusillanimous reasoner, who suffers himself to be alarmed by
+consequences; a superstitious creature, who thinks he is honouring God
+by the fetters which he imposes on his reason; a kind of unbeliever who
+is afraid of unmasking himself to himself. For if truth has nothing to
+lose by examination, as is the demi-sceptic's conviction, what does he
+think in the bottom of his heart of those privileged notions which he
+fears to sound, and which are placed in one of the recesses of his
+brain, as in a sanctuary to which he dares not draw nigh? (Sec. 34.)
+
+Scepticism does not suit everybody. It supposes profound and impartial
+examination. He who doubts because he does not know the grounds of
+credibility, is no better than an ignoramus. The true sceptic has
+counted and weighed the reasons. But it is no light matter to weigh
+arguments. Who of us knows their value with any nicety? Every mind has
+its own telescope. An objection that disappears in your eyes, is a
+colossus in mine: you find an argument trivial that to me is
+overwhelming.... If then it is so difficult to weigh reasons, and if
+there are no questions which have not two sides, and nearly always in
+equal measure, how come we to decide with such rapidity? (Sec. 24.)
+
+When the pious cry out against scepticism, it seems to me that they do
+not understand their own interest, or else that they are inconsistent.
+If it is certain that a true faith to be embraced, and a false faith to
+be abandoned, need only to be thoroughly known, then surely it must be
+highly desirable that universal doubt should spread over the surface of
+the earth, and that all nations should consent to have the truth of
+their religions examined. Our missionaries would find a good half of
+their work done for them. (Sec. 36.)
+
+One thing to be remembered is that Diderot, like Vauvenargues, Voltaire,
+Condorcet, always had Pascal in his mind when dealing with apologetics.
+They all recognised in him a thinker with a love of truth, as
+distinguished from the mere priest, Catholic, Anglican, Brahman, or
+another. "Pascal," says Diderot, "was upright, but he was timid and
+inclined to credulity. An elegant writer and a profound reasoner, he
+would doubtless have enlightened the world, if Providence had not
+abandoned him to people who sacrificed his talents to their own
+antipathies. How much to be regretted, that he did not leave to the
+theologians of his time the task of settling their own differences; that
+he did not give himself up to the search for truth, without reserve and
+without the fear of offending God by using all the intelligence that God
+had given him. How much to be regretted that he took for masters men who
+were not worthy to be his disciples, and was foolish enough to think
+Arnauld, De Sacy, and Nicole, better men than himself." (Sec. 14.) The
+Philosophic Thoughts are designed for an answer in form to the more
+famous Thoughts of this champion of popular theology. The first of the
+following extracts, for instance, recalls a memorable illustration of
+Pascal's sublime pessimism. A few passages will illustrate sufficiently
+the line of argument which led the foremost men at the opening of the
+philosophic revolution to reject the pretensions of Christianity:--
+
+What voices! what cries! what groans! Who is it that has shut up in
+dungeons all these piteous souls? What crimes have the poor wretches
+committed? Who condemns them to such torments? _The God whom they have
+offended_. Who then is this God? _A God full of goodness_. But would a
+God full of goodness take delight in bathing himself in tears? If
+criminals had to calm the furies of a tyrant, what would they do
+more?... There are people of whom we ought not to say that they fear
+God, but that they are horribly afraid of him.... Judging from the
+picture they paint of the Supreme Being, from his wrath, from the rigour
+of his vengeance, from certain comparisons expressive of the ratio
+between those whom he leaves to perish and those to whom he deigns to
+stretch out a hand, the most upright soul would be tempted to wish that
+such a being did not exist. (Sec.Sec. 7-9.)
+
+You present to an unbeliever a volume of writings of which you claim to
+show him the divinity. But, before going into your proofs, he will be
+sure to put some questions about your collection. Has it always been the
+same? Why is it less ample now than it was some centuries ago? By what
+right have they banished this work or that, which another sect reveres,
+and preserved this or that, which the other has repudiated?... You only
+answer all these difficulties by the avowal that the first foundations
+of the faith are purely human; that the choice between the manuscripts,
+the restoration of passages, finally the collection, has been made
+according to rules of criticism. Well, I do not refuse to concede to the
+divinity of the sacred books a degree of faith proportioned to the
+certainty of these rules. (Sec. 59.)
+
+People agree that it is of the last importance to employ none but solid
+arguments for the defence of a creed. Yet they would gladly persecute
+those who attempt to cry down the bad arguments. What then, is it not
+enough to be a Christian? Am I also to be one upon wrong grounds? (Sec.57.)
+
+The less probability a fact has, the more does the testimony of history
+lose its weight. I should have no difficulty in believing a single
+honest man who should tell me that the king had just won a complete
+victory over the allies. But if all Paris were to assure me that a dead
+man had come to life again, I should not believe a word of it. That a
+historian should impose upon us, or that a whole people should be
+mistaken--there is no miracle in that. (Sec.46.)
+
+What is God? A question that we put to children, and that philosophers
+have much trouble to answer. We know the age at which a child ought to
+learn to read, to sing, to dance, to begin Latin or geometry. It is only
+in religion that you take no account of his capacity. He scarcely hears
+what you say, before he is asked, What is God? It is at the same
+instant, from the same lips, that he learns that there are ghosts,
+goblins, were-wolves--and a God. (Sec.25.)
+
+The diversity of religious opinions has led the deists to invent an
+argument that is perhaps more singular than sound. Cicero, having to
+prove that the Romans were the most warlike people in the world,
+adroitly draws this conclusion from the lips of their rivals. Gauls, to
+whom if to any, do you yield the palm for courage? To the Romans.
+Parthians, after you, who are the bravest of men? The Romans. Africans,
+whom would you fear, if you were to fear any? The Romans. Let us
+interrogate the religionists in this fashion, say the deists. Chinese,
+what religion would be the best, if your own were not the best?
+Naturalism. Mussulmans, what faith would you embrace, if you abjured
+Mahomet? Naturalism. Christians, what is the true religion, if it be not
+Christianity? Judaism. But you, O Jews, what is the true religion, if
+Judaism be false? Naturalism. Now those, continues Cicero, to whom the
+second place is awarded by unanimous consent, and who do not in turn
+concede the first place to any--it is those who incontestably deserve
+that place. (Sec.62.)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In all this we notice one constant characteristic of the eighteenth
+century controversy about revealed religion. The assailant demands of
+the defender an answer to all the intellectual or logical objections
+that could possibly be raised by one who had never been a Christian, and
+who refused to become a Christian until these objections could be met.
+No account is taken of the mental conditions by which a creed is
+engendered and limited; nor of the train of historic circumstance which
+prepares men to receive it. The modern apologist escapes by explaining
+religion; the apologist of a hundred years ago was required to prove it.
+The end of such a method was inevitably a negation. The objective
+propositions of a creed with supernatural pretensions can never be
+demonstrated from natural or rationalistic premisses. And if they could
+be so demonstrated, it would only be on grounds that are equally good
+for some other creeds with the same pretensions. The sceptic was left
+triumphantly weighing one revealed system against another in an equal
+balance.[36]
+
+The position of the writer of the Philosophical Thoughts is distinctly
+theistic. Yet there is at least one striking passage to show how
+forcibly some of the arguments on the other side impressed him. "I
+open," says Diderot, "the pages of a celebrated professor, and I
+read--'Atheists, I concede to you that movement is essential to matter;
+what conclusion do you draw from that? That the world results from the
+fortuitous concourse of atoms? You might as well say that Homer's Iliad,
+or Voltaire's Henriade, is a result of the fortuitous concourse of
+written characters.' Now for my part, I should be very sorry to use that
+reasoning to an atheist; the comparison would give him a very easy game
+to play. According to the laws of the analysis of chances, he would say
+to me, I ought not to be surprised that a thing comes to pass when it is
+possible, and the difficulty of the event is compensated by the number
+of throws. There is a certain number of throws in which I would safely
+back myself to bring 100,000 sixes at once with 100,000 dice. Whatever
+the definite number of the letters with which I am invited fortuitously
+to produce the Iliad, there is a certain definite number of throws which
+would make the proposal advantageous for me; nay, my advantage would be
+infinite if the quantity of throws accorded to me were infinite. Now,
+you grant to me that matter exists from all eternity, and that movement
+is essential to it. In return for this concession, I will suppose with
+you that the world has no limits; that the multitude of atoms is
+infinite, and that this order, which astonishes you, nowhere contradicts
+itself. Well, from these reciprocal admissions there follows nothing
+else unless it be this, that the possibility of engendering the universe
+fortuitously is very small, but that the number of throws is infinite,
+or in other words, that _the difficulty of the event is more than
+sufficiently compensated by the multitude of the throws. Therefore, if
+anything ought to be repugnant to reason, it is the supposition
+that,--matter being in motion from all eternity, and there being perhaps
+in the infinite number of possible combinations an infinite number of
+admirable arrangements,--none of these admirable arrangements would have
+been met with, out of the infinite multitude of all those which_ matter
+successively took on. Therefore the mind ought to be more astonished at
+the hypothetical duration of chaos."_[37] (Sec. 21.)
+
+In a short continuation of the Philosophical Thoughts entitled On the
+Sufficiency of Natural Religion, Diderot took the next step, and turned
+towards that faith which the votaries of each creed allow to be the best
+after their own. Even here he is still in the atmosphere of negation. He
+desires no more than to show that revealed religion confers no
+advantages which are not already secured by natural religion. "The
+revealed law contains no moral precept which I do not find recommended
+and practised under the law of nature; therefore it has taught us
+nothing new upon morality. The revealed law has brought us no new truth;
+for what is a truth but a proposition referring to an object, conceived
+in terms which present clear ideas to me, and the connection of which
+with one another is intelligible to me? Now revealed religion has
+introduced no such propositions to us. What it has added to the natural
+law consists of five or six propositions which are not a whit more
+intelligible to me than if they were expressed in ancient Carthaginian,
+inasmuch as the ideas represented by the terms, and the connection among
+these ideas, escape me entirely."[38]
+
+There is no sign in this piece that Diderot had examined the positive
+grounds of natural religion, or that he was ready with any adequate
+answer to the argument which Butler had brought forward in the previous
+decade of the century. We do not see that he is aware as yet of there
+being as valid objections on his own sceptical principles to the alleged
+data of naturalistic deism, as to the pretensions of a supernatural
+religion. He was content with Shaftesbury's position.
+
+Shaftesbury's influence on Diderot was permanent. It did not long remain
+so full and entire as it was now in the sphere of religious belief, but
+the traces of it never disappeared from his notions on morals and art.
+Shaftesbury's cheerfulness and geniality in philosophising were
+thoroughly sympathetic to Diderot. The optimistic harmony which the
+English philosopher, coming after Leibnitz, assumed as the
+starting-point of his ethical and religious ideas, was not only highly
+congenial to Diderot's sanguine temperament; it was a most attractive
+way of escape from the disorderly and confused theological wilderness of
+sin, asceticism, miracle, and the other monkeries. This naturalistic
+religion may seem a very unsafe and comfortless halting-place to us. But
+to men who heard of religion only in connection with the Bull Unigenitus
+and confessional certificates, with some act of intolerance or cruelty,
+with futile disputes about grace and the Five Propositions, the
+naturalism which Shaftesbury taught in prose and Pope versified was like
+the dawn after the foulness of night. Those who wished to soften the
+inhuman rigour of the criminal procedure of the time[39] used to appeal
+from customary ordinances and written laws to the law natural. The law
+natural was announced to have preceded any law of human devising. In the
+same way, those who wished to disperse the darkness of unintelligible
+dogmas and degraded ecclesiastical usages, appealed to the simplicity,
+light, and purity of that natural religion which was supposed to have
+been overlaid and depraved by the special superstitions of the different
+communities of the world.
+
+"Pope's Essay on Man," wrote Voltaire after his return from England
+(1728), "seems to me the finest didactic poem, the most useful, the most
+sublime, that was ever written in any tongue. 'Tis true the whole
+substance of it is to be found in Shaftesbury's Characteristics, and I
+do not know why Pope gives all the honour of it to Bolingbroke, without
+saying a word of the celebrated Shaftesbury, the pupil of Locke."[40]
+The ground of this enthusiastic appreciation of the English naturalism
+was not merely that it made morality independent of religion, which
+Shaftesbury took great pains to do. It also identified religion with all
+that is beautiful and harmonious in the universal scheme. It surrounded
+the new faith with a pure and lofty poetry, that enabled it to confront
+the old on more than equal terms of dignity and elevation. Shaftesbury,
+and Diderot after him, ennobled human nature by placing the principle of
+virtue, the sense of goodness, within the breast of man. Diderot held to
+this idea throughout, as we shall see. That he did so explains a kind of
+phraseology about virtue and morality in his letters to Madame Voland
+and elsewhere, which would otherwise sound disagreeably like cant.
+Finally, Shaftesbury's peculiar attribution of beauty to morality, his
+reference of ethical matters to a kind of taste, the tolerably equal
+importance attributed by him to a sense of beauty and to the moral
+sense, all impressed Diderot with a mark that was not effaced. In the
+text of the Inquiry the author pronounces it a childish affectation in
+the eyes of any man who weighs things maturely to deny that there is in
+moral beings, just as in corporeal objects, a true and essential beauty,
+a real sublime. The eagerness with which Diderot seized on this idea
+from the first, is shown in the declamatory foot-note which he here
+appends to his original.[41] It was the source, by a process of
+inverted application, of that ethical colouring in his criticisms on art
+which made them so new and so interesting, because it carried aesthetic
+beyond technicalities, and associated it with the real impulses and
+circumstances of human life.[42]
+
+One of Diderot's writings composed about our present date (1747), the
+Promenade du Sceptique, did not see the light until after his death. His
+daughter tells us that a police agent came one day to the house, and
+proceeded to search the author's room. He found a manuscript, said,
+"Good, that is what I am looking for," thrust it into his pocket, and
+went away. Diderot did his best to recover his piece, but never
+succeeded.[43] A copy of it came into the hands of Naigeon, and it seems
+to have been retained by Malesherbes, the director of the press, out of
+goodwill to the author. If it had been printed, it would certainly have
+cost him a sojourn in Vincennes.
+
+We have at first some difficulty in realising how he police could know
+the contents of an obscure author's desk. For one thing we have to
+remember that Paris, though it had been enormously increased in the days
+of Law and the System (1719-20), was still of a comparatively manageable
+size. In 1720, though the population of the whole realm was only
+fourteen or fifteen millions, that of Paris had reached no less a figure
+than a million and a half. After the explosion of the System, its
+artificial expansion naturally came to an end. By the middle of the
+century the highest estimate of the population does not make it much
+more than eight hundred thousand.[44] This, unlike the socially
+unwholesome and monstrous agglomerations of Paris or London in our own
+time, was a population over which police supervision might be made
+tolerably effective. It was more like a very large provincial town.
+Again, the inhabitants were marked off into groups or worlds with a
+definiteness that is now no longer possible. One-fifth of the
+population, for instance, consisted of domestic servants.[45] There were
+between twenty-eight and thirty thousand professional beggars.[46] The
+legal circle was large, and was deeply engrossed by its own interests
+and troubles. The world of authorship, though extremely noisy and
+profoundly important, still made only a small group. One effect of a
+censorship is to produce much gossip and whispering about suspected
+productions before they see the light, and these whispers let the police
+into as many secrets as they choose to know.
+
+In Diderot's case, his unsuspecting good-nature to all comers made his
+affairs accessible enough. His house was the resort of all the starving
+hacks in Paris, and he has left us more than one graphic picture of the
+literary drudge of that time. He writes, for instance, about a poor
+devil to whom he had given a manuscript to copy. "The time for which he
+had promised it to me expired, and as my man did not appear, I became
+uneasy, and started in search of him. I found him in a hole about as big
+as my fist, almost pitch-dark, without the smallest scrap of curtain or
+hanging to cover the nakedness of his walls, a couple of straw-bottomed
+chairs, a truckle-bed with a quilt riddled by the moths, a box in the
+corner of the chimney and rags of every sort stuck upon it, a small tin
+lamp to which a bottle served as support, and on a shelf some dozen
+first-rate books. I sat talking there for three-quarters of an hour. My
+man was as bare as a worm, lean, black, dry, but perfectly serene. He
+said nothing, but munched his crust of bread with good appetite, and
+bestowed a caress from time to time on his beloved, on the miserable
+bedstead that took up two-thirds of his room. If I had never learnt
+before that happiness resides in the soul, my Epictetus of Hyacinth
+Street would have taught it me right thoroughly."[47]
+
+The history of one of these ragged clients is to our point. "Among
+those," he wrote to Madame Voland,[48] "whom chance and misery sent to
+my address was one Glenat, who knew mathematics, wrote a good hand, and
+was in want of bread. I did all I could to extricate him from his
+embarrassments. I went begging for customers for him on every side. If
+he came at meal-times, I would not let him go; if he lacked shoes, I
+gave him them; now and then I slipped a shilling into his hands as well.
+he had the air of the worthiest man in the world, and he even bore his
+neediness with a certain gaiety that used to amuse me. I was fond of
+chatting with him; he seemed to set little store by fortune, fame, and
+most of the other things that charm or dazzle us in life. Seven or eight
+days ago Damilaville wrote to send this man to him, for one of his
+friends who had a manuscript for him to copy. I send him; the manuscript
+is entrusted to him--a work on religion and government. I do not know
+how it came about, but that manuscript is now in the hands of the
+lieutenant of police. Damilaville gives me word of this. I hasten to my
+friend Glenat, to warn him to count no more upon me. 'And why am I not
+to count upon you?' 'Because you are a marked man. The police have their
+eyes upon you and 'tis impossible to send work to you.' 'But, my dear
+sir, there's no risk, so long as you entrust nothing reprehensible to my
+hands. The police only come here when they scent game. I cannot tell how
+they do it, but they are never mistaken.' 'Ah well, I at any rate know
+how it is, and you have let me see much more in the matter than I
+ever expected to learn from you,' and with that I turn my back on my
+rascal." Diderot having occasion to visit the lieutenant of police,
+introduced the matter, and could not withhold an energetic remonstrance
+against such an odious abuse of a man's kindness of heart, as the
+introduction of spies to his fireside. M. de Sartine laughed and Diderot
+took his leave, vowing that all the wretches who should come to him for
+the future, with cuffs dirty and torn, with holes in their stockings and
+holes in their shoes, with hair all unkempt, in shabby overcoats with
+many rents, or scanty black suits with starting seams, with all the
+tones and looks of distressed worth, would henceforth seem to him no
+better than police emissaries and scoundrels set to spy on him. The vow,
+we may be sure, was soon forgotten, but the story shows how seriously in
+one respect the man of letters in France was worse off than his brother
+in England.
+
+The world would have suffered no irreparable loss if the police had
+thrown the Sceptic's Walk into the fire. It is an allegory designed to
+contrast the life of religion, the life of philosophy, and the life of
+sensual pleasure. Of all forms of composition, an allegory most depends
+for its success upon the rapidity of the writer's eye for new
+felicities. Accuracy, verisimilitude, sustention, count for nothing in
+comparison with imaginative adroitness and variety. Bunyan had such an
+eye, and so, with infinitely more vivacity, had Voltaire. Diderot had
+not the deep sincerity or realism of conviction of the one; nor had he
+the inimitable power of throwing himself into a fancy, that was
+possessed by the other. He was the least agile, the least felicitous,
+the least ready, of composers. His allegory of the avenue of thorns, the
+avenue of chestnut-trees, and the avenue of flowers, is an allegory,
+unskilful, obvious, poor, and not any more amusing than if it's matter
+had been set forth without any attempt at fanciful decoration. The
+blinded saints among the thorns, and the voluptuous sinners among the
+flowers, are rather mechanical figures. The translation into the dialect
+required by the allegorical situation, of a sceptic's aversion for gross
+superstition on the one hand, and for gross hedonism on the other, is
+forced and wooden. The most interesting of the three sections is the
+second, containing a discussion in which the respective parts are taken
+by a deist, a pantheist, a subjective idealist, a sceptic, and an
+atheist. The allegory falls into the background, and we have a plain
+statement of some of the objections that may be made by the sceptical
+atheist both to revelation and to natural religion. A starry sky calls
+forth the usual glorification of the maker of so much beauty. "That is
+all imagination," rejoins the atheist. "It is mere presumption. We have
+before us an unknown machine, on which certain observations have been
+made. Ignorant people who have only examined a single wheel of it, of
+which they hardly know more than a tooth or two, form conjectures upon
+the way in which their cogs fit in with a hundred thousand other wheels.
+And then to finish like artisans, they label the work with the name of
+it's author."
+
+The defender justifies this by the argument from a repeater-watch, of
+which Paley and others have made so much use. We at once ascribe the
+structure and movement of a repeater-watch to intelligent creation.
+"No--things are not equal," says the atheist. "You are comparing a
+finished work, whose origin and manufacture we know, to an infinite
+piece of complexity, whose beginnings, whose present condition, and
+whose end are all alike unknown, and about whose author you have nothing
+better than guesses."
+
+But does not its structure announce an author? "No; you do not see who
+nor what he is. Who told you that the order you admire here belies
+itself nowhere else? Are you allowed to conclude from a point in space
+to infinite space? You pile a vast piece of ground with earth-heaps
+thrown here or there by chance, but among which the worm and the ant
+find convenient dwelling-places enough. What would you think of these
+insects, if, reasoning after your fashion, they fell into raptures over
+the intelligence of the gardener who had arranged all these materials so
+delightfully for their convenience?"[49]
+
+In this rudimentary form the chief speaker presses some of the
+objections to optimistic deism from the point of view of the fixed
+limitations, the inevitable relativity, of human knowledge. This kind of
+objection had been more pithily expressed by Pascal long before, in the
+famous article of his Thoughts, on the difficulty of demonstrating the
+existence of a deity by light of nature.[50] Diderot's argument does not
+extend to dogmatic denial. It only shows that the deist is exposed to an
+attack from the same sceptical armoury from which he had drawn his own
+weapons for attacking revelation. It is impossible to tell how far
+Diderot went at this moment. The trenchancy with which his atheist urges
+his reasoning, proves that the writer was fully alive to its force. On
+the other hand, the atheist is left in the midst of a catastrophe. On
+his return home, he finds his children murdered, his house pillaged, and
+his wife carried off. And we are told that he could not complain on his
+own principles.
+
+If the absence of witnesses allowed the robber to commit his crime with
+impunity, why should he not? Again, there is a passage in which the
+writer seems to be speaking his own opinions. An interlocutor maintains
+the importance of keeping the people in bondage to certain prejudices.
+"What prejudices? If a man once admits the existence of a God, the
+reality of moral good and evil, the immortality of the soul, future
+rewards and punishments, what need has he of prejudices? Supposing him
+initiated in all the mysteries of transubstantiation, consubstantiation,
+the Trinity, hypostatical union, predestination, incarnation, and the
+rest, will he be any the better citizen?"[51]
+
+In truth, Diderot's mind was at this time floating in an atmosphere of
+rationalistic negation, and the moral of his piece, as he hints, points
+first to the extravagance of Catholicism, next to the vanity of the
+pleasures of the world, and lastly, to the unfathomable uncertainty of
+philosophy. Still, we may discern a significant leaning towards the
+theory of the eternity of matter, which has arranged itself and assumed
+variety of form by virtue of its inherent quality of motion.[52]
+
+It is a characteristic and displeasing mark of the time that Diderot in
+the midst of these serious speculations, should have set himself (1748)
+to the composition of a story in the kind which the author of the _Sofa_
+had made highly popular. The mechanism of this deplorable piece is more
+grossly disgusting--I mean aesthetically, not morally--than anything to
+be found elsewhere in the too voluminous library of impure literature.
+The idea would seem to have been borrowed from one of the old
+Fabliaux.[53] But what is tolerable in the quaint and _naif_ verse of
+the twelfth or thirteenth century, becomes shocking when deliberately
+rendered by a grave man into bald unblushing prose of the eighteenth.
+The humour, the rich sparkle, the wit, the merry _gaillardise_, have all
+vanished; we are left with the vapid dregs of an obscene anachronism.
+Mr. Carlyle, who knows how to be manly in these matters, and affects
+none of the hypocritical airs of our conventional criticism, yet has not
+more energetically than truly pronounced this "the beastliest of all
+past, present, or future dull novels." As "the next mortal creature,
+even a Reviewer, again compelled to glance into that book," I have felt
+the propriety of our humorist's injunction to such a one, "to bathe
+himself in running water, put on change of raiment, and be unclean until
+the even." Diderot himself, as might have been expected, soon had the
+grace to repent him of this shameful book, and could never hear it
+mentioned without a very lively embarrassment.[54]
+
+As I have said before,[55] it was such books as this, as Crebillon's
+novels, as Duclos's Confessions du Comte X., and the dissoluteness of
+manners indicated by them, which invested Rousseau's New Heloisa
+(1761) with its delightful and irresistible fascinations. Having
+pointed out elsewhere the significance of the licentiousness from
+which the philosophic party did not escape untainted,[56] I need not
+here do more than make two short remarks. First, the corruption which
+had seized the court after the death of Lewis XIV. in the course of a
+few years had reached the middle class in the town. The loosening of
+social fibre, caused by the insenate speculation at the time of Law,
+no doubt furthered the spread of demoralisation. Second, the reaction
+against the Church involved among its other elements a passionate
+contempt for all asceticism. This happened to fall in with the
+general relaxation of morals that followed Lewis's gloomy rigour.
+Consequently even men of pure life, like Condorcet, carried the
+theoretical protest against asceticism so far as to vindicate the
+practical immorality of the time. This is one of those enormous
+drawbacks that people seldom take into account when they are
+enumerating the blessings of superstition. Mediaeval superstition had
+produced some advantages, but now came the set-off. Durable morality
+had been associated with a transitory religious faith. The faith fell
+into intellectual discredit, and sexual morality shared its decline
+for a short season. This must always be the natural consequence of
+building sound ethics on the shifting sands and rotting foundations
+of theology.
+
+Such literature as these tales of Diderot's, was the mirror both of the
+ordinary practical sentiment and the philosophic theory. A nation pays
+dearly for one of those outbreaks, when they happen to stamp themselves
+in a literary form that endures. There are those who hold that Louvet's
+Faublas is to this day a powerful agent in the depravation of the youth
+of France. Diderot, however, had not the most characteristic virtues of
+French writing; he was no master in the art of the _naif_, nor in
+delicate malice, nor in sprightly cynicism. His book, consequently, has
+not lived, and we need not waste more words upon it. _Chaque esprit a sa
+lie_, wrote one who for a while had sat at Diderot's feet;[57] and we
+may dismiss this tale as the lees of Diderot's strong, careless,
+sensualised understanding. He was afterwards the author of a work, La
+Religieuse, on which the superficial critic may easily pour out the
+vials of affected wrath. There, however, he was executing a profound
+pathological study in a serious spirit. If the subject is horrible, we
+have to blame the composition of human character, or the mischievousness
+of a human institution. La Religieuse is no continuation of the vein of
+defilement which began and ended with the story of 1748--a story which
+is one among so many illustrations of Guizot's saying about the
+eighteenth century, that it was the most tempting and seductive of all
+centuries, for it promised full satisfaction at once to all the
+greatnesses of humanity and to all its weaknesses. Hettner quotes a
+passage from the minor writings of Niebuhr, in which the historian
+compares Diderot with Petronius, as having both of them been honest and
+well-intentioned men, who in shameless times were carried towards
+cynicism by their deep contempt for the prevailing vice. "If Diderot
+were alive now," says Niebuhr, "and if Petronius had only lived in the
+fourth instead of the third century, then the painting of obscenity
+would have been odious to them, and the inducement to it infinitely
+smaller."[58] There is no trace in Diderot of this deep contempt for the
+viciousness of his time. All that can be said is that he did not escape
+it in his earlier years, in spite of the natural wholesomeness and
+rectitude of his character.
+
+It is worthy of remark that the dissoluteness of the middle portion of
+the century was not associated with the cynical and contemptuous view
+about women that usually goes with relaxed morality. There was a more or
+less distinct consciousness of a truth which has ever since grown into
+clearer prominence with the advance of thought since the Revolution. It
+is that the sphere and destiny of women are among the three or four
+foremost questions in social improvement. This is now perceived on all
+sides, profound as are the differences of opinion upon the proper
+solution of the problem. A hundred years ago this perception was vague
+and indefinite, but there was an unmistakable apprehension that the
+Catholic ideal of womanhood was no more adequate to the facts of life,
+than Catholic views about science, or property, or labour, or political
+order and authority.
+
+Diderot has left some curious and striking reflections upon the fate and
+character of women. He gives no signs of feeling after social
+reorganisation; he only speaks as one brooding in uneasy meditation over
+a very mournful perplexity. There is no sentimentalising, after the
+fashion of Jean Jacques. He does not neglect the plain physical facts,
+about which it is so difficult in an age of morbid reserve to speak with
+freedom, yet about which it is fatal to be silent. He indulged in none
+of those mischievous flatteries of women, which satisfy narrow
+observers, or coxcombs, or the uxorious. "Never forget," he said, "that
+for lack of reflection and principles, nothing penetrates down to a
+certain profoundness of conviction in the understanding of women. The
+ideas of justice, virtue, vice, goodness, badness, float on the surface
+of their souls. They have preserved self-love and personal interest with
+all the energy of nature. Although more civilized than we are outwardly,
+they have remained true savages inwardly.... It is in the passion of
+love, the access of jealousy, the transports of maternal tenderness, the
+instants of superstition, the way in which they show epidemic and
+popular notions, that women amaze us; fair as the seraphin of Klopstock,
+terrible as the fiends of Milton.... The distractions of a busy and
+contentious life break up our passions. A woman, on the contrary, broods
+over her passions; they are a fixed point on which her idleness or the
+frivolity of her duties holds her attention fast.... Impenetrable in
+dissimulation, cruel in vengeance, tenacious in their designs, without
+scruples about the means of success, animated by a deep and secret
+hatred against the despotism of man--it seems as if there were among
+them a sort of league, such as exists among the priests of all
+nations.... The symbol of women in general is that of the Apocalypse, on
+the front of which is inscribed _Mystery_.... If we have more reason
+than women have, they have far more instinct than we have."[59] All this
+was said in no bitterness, but in the spirit of the strong observer.
+
+Cynical bitterness is as misplaced as frivolous adulation. Diderot had a
+deep pity for women. Their physical weaknesses moved him to compassion.
+To these are added the burden of their maternal function, and the burden
+of unequal laws. "The moment which shall deliver the girl from
+subjection to her parents is come; her imagination opens to a future
+thronged by chimaeras; her heart swims in secret delight. Rejoice while
+thou canst, luckless creature! Time would have weakened the tyranny that
+thou hast left; time will strengthen the tyranny that awaits thee. They
+choose a husband for her. She becomes a mother. It is in anguish, at the
+peril of their lives, at the cost of their charms, often to the damage
+of their health, that they give birth to their little ones. The organs
+that mark their sex are subject to two incurable maladies. There is,
+perhaps, no joy comparable to that of the mother as she looks on her
+first-born; but the moment is dearly bought. Time advances, beauty
+passes; there come the years of neglect, of spleen, of weariness. 'Tis
+in pain that Nature disposes them for maternity; in pain and illness,
+dangerous and prolonged, she brings maternity to its close. What is a
+woman after that? Neglected by her husband, left by her children, a
+nullity in society, then piety becomes her one and last resource. In
+nearly every part of the world, the cruelty of the civil laws against
+women is added to the cruelty of Nature. They have been treated like
+weak-minded children. There is no sort of vexation which, among
+civilised peoples, man cannot inflict upon woman with impunity."[60]
+
+The thought went no further, in Diderot's mind, than this pathetic
+ejaculation. He left it to the next generation, to Condorcet and others,
+to attack the problem practically; effectively to assert the true theory
+that we must look to social emancipation in women, and moral discipline
+in men, to redress the physical disadvantages. Meanwhile Diderot
+deserves credit for treating the position and character of women in a
+civilised society with a sense of reality; and for throwing aside those
+faded gallantries of poetic and literary convention, that screen a broad
+and dolorous gulf.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE NEW PHILOSOPHY.
+
+
+It is a common prejudice to treat Voltaire as if he had done nothing
+save write the Pucelle and mock at Habakkuk. Every serious and
+instructed student knows better. Voltaire's popularisation of the
+philosophy of Newton (1738) was a stimulus of the greatest importance to
+new thought in France. In a chapter of this work he had explained with
+his usual matchless terseness and lucidity Berkeley's theory of vision.
+The principle of this theory is, as every one knows, that figures,
+magnitudes, situations, distances, are not sensations but inferences;
+they are not the immediate revelations of sight, but the products of
+association and intellectual construction; they are not directly judged
+by vision, but by imagination and experience. If this be so, neither
+situation, nor distance, nor magnitude, nor figure, would be at once
+discerned by one born blind, supposing him suddenly to receive sight.
+Voltaire then describes the results of the operation performed by
+Cheselden (1728) on a lad who had been blind from his birth. This
+experiment was believed to confirm all that Locke and Berkeley had
+foreseen, for it was long before the patient could distinguish objects
+by size, distance, or shape.[61] Condillac had renewed the interest
+which Voltaire had first kindled in the subject, by referring to
+Cheselden's experiment in his first work, which was published in
+1746.[62]
+
+It happened that in 1748 Reaumur couched the eyes of a girl who had been
+born blind. Diderot sought to be admitted to the operation, but the
+favour was denied him, and he expressed his resentment in terms which,
+as we shall see, cost him very dear. As he could not witness the
+experiment, he began to meditate upon the subject, and the result was
+the _Letter on the Blind for the Use of those who See_. published in
+1749--the date, it may be observed in passing, of another very important
+work in the development of materialistic speculation, David Hartley's
+_Observations on man, his frame, his duty, and his expectations_.
+Diderot's real disappointment at not being admitted to the operation was
+slight. In a vigorous passage he shows the difficulties in the way of
+conducting such an experiment under the conditions necessary to make it
+conclusive. To prepare the born-blind to answer philosophical
+interrogatories truly, and then to put these interrogatories rightly,
+would have been a feat, he declares, not unworthy of the united talents
+of Newton, Descartes, Locke, and Leibnitz. Unless the patient were
+placed in such conditions as this, Diderot thinks there would be more
+profit in questioning a blind person of good sense, than in the answers
+of an uneducated person receiving sight for the first time under
+abnormal and bewildering circumstances.[63] In this he was undoubtedly
+right. If the experiment could be prepared under the delicate conditions
+proper to make it demonstrative evidence, it would be final. But the
+experiment had certainly not been so prepared in his time, and probably
+never will be.[64]
+
+Read in the light of the rich and elaborate speculative literature which
+England is producing in our own day, Diderot's once famous Letter on the
+Blind seems both crude and loose in its thinking. Yet considering the
+state of philosophy in France at the time of its appearance, we are
+struck by the acuteness, the good sense, and the originality of many of
+its positions. It was the first effective introduction into France of
+these great and fundamental principles; that all knowledge is relative
+to our intelligence, that thought is not the measure of existence, nor
+the conceivableness of a proposition the test of its truth, and that our
+experience is not the limit to the possibilities of things. That is an
+impatient criticism which dismisses the French philosophers with some
+light word as radically shallow and impotent. Diderot grasped the
+doctrine of Relativity in some of the most important and far-reaching of
+all its bearings. The fact that he and his allies used the doctrine as a
+weapon of combat against the standing organisation, is exactly what
+makes their history worth writing about. The standing organisation was
+the antagonistic doctrine incarnate. It made anthropomorphism and the
+absolute the very base and spring alike of individual and of social
+life. No growth was possible until this speculative base had been
+transformed. Hence the profound significance of what looks like a mere
+discussion of one of the minor problems of metaphysics. Diderot was not
+the first to discover Relativity, nor did he establish it; but it was he
+who introduced it into the literature of his country at the moment when
+circumstances were ripe for it.
+
+Condillac, as we have said, had published his first work, the Essay on
+the Origin of Human Knowledge, three years before (1746). This was a
+simple and undeveloped rendering of the doctrine of Locke, that the
+ultimate source of our notions lies in impressions made upon the senses,
+shaped and combined by reflection. It was not until 1754 that Condillac
+published his more celebrated treatise on the Sensations, in which he
+advanced a stride beyond Locke, and instead of tracing our notions to
+the double source of sensation and reflection, maintained that
+reflection itself is nothing but sensation "differently transformed." In
+the first book, again, he had disputed Berkeley's theory of vision: in
+the second, he gave a reasoned adhesion to it. Now Diderot and Condillac
+had first been brought together by Rousseau, when all three were needy
+wanderers about the streets of Paris. They used to dine together once a
+week at a tavern, and it was Diderot who persuaded a bookseller to give
+Condillac a hundred crowns for his first manuscript. "The Paris
+booksellers," says Rousseau, "are very arrogant and harsh to beginners;
+and metaphysics, then extremely little in fashion, did not offer a very
+particularly attractive subject."[65] The constant intercourse between
+Diderot and Condillac in the interval between the two works of the great
+apostle of Sensationalism, may well account for the remarkable
+development in doctrine. This is one of the many examples of the share
+of Diderot's energetic and stimulating intelligence, in directing and
+nourishing the movement of the time, its errors and precipitancies
+included. On the other hand, the share of Condillac in providing a text
+for Diderot's first considerable performance, is equally evident.
+
+The Letter on the Blind is an inquiry how far a modification of the five
+senses, such as the congenital absence of one of them, would involve a
+corresponding modification of the ordinary notions acquired by men who
+are normally endowed in their capacity for sensation. It considers the
+Intellect in a case where it is deprived of one of the senses. The
+writer opens with an account of a visit made by himself and some friends
+to a man born blind at Puisaux, a place seventy miles from Paris. They
+asked him in what way he thought of the eyes. "They are an organ on
+which the air produces the same effect as my stick upon my hand." A
+mirror he described "as a machine which sets things in relief away from
+themselves, if they are properly placed in relation to it." This
+conception had formed itself in his mind in the following way. The blind
+man only knows objects by touch. He is aware, on the testimony of
+others, that we know objects by sight as he knows them by touch; he can
+form no other notion. He is aware, again, that a man cannot see his own
+face, though he can touch it. Sight, then, he concludes, is a sort of
+touch, which only extends to objects different from our own visage, and
+remote from us. Now touch only conveys to him the idea of relief. A
+mirror, therefore, must be a machine which sets us in relief out of
+ourselves. How many philosophers, cries Diderot, have employed less
+subtlety to reach notions just as untrue?
+
+The born-blind had a memory for sound in a surprising degree, and
+countenances do not present more diversity to us than he observed in
+voices. The voice has for such persons an infinite number of delicate
+shades that escape us, because we have not the same reason for
+attention that the blind have. The help that our senses lend to one
+another, is an obstacle to their perfection.
+
+The blind man said he should have been tempted to regard persons endowed
+with sight as superior intelligences, if he had not found out a hundred
+times how inferior we are in other respects. How do we know--Diderot
+reflects upon this--that all the animals do not reason in the same way,
+and look upon themselves as our equals or superiors, notwithstanding our
+more complex and efficient intelligence? They may accord to us a reason
+with which we should still have much need of their instinct while they
+claim to be endowed with an instinct which enables them to do very well
+without our reason.
+
+When asked whether he should be glad to have sight, the born-blind
+replied that, apart from curiosity, he would be just as well pleased to
+have long arms: his hands would tell him what is going on in the moon,
+better than our eyes or telescopes; and the eyes cease to see earlier
+than the hands lose the sense of touch. It would therefore be just as
+good to perfect in him the organ that he had, as to confer upon him
+another which he had not. This is untrue. No conceivable perfection of
+touch would reveal phenomena of light, and the longest arms must leave
+those phenomena undisclosed.
+
+After recounting various other peculiarities of thought, Diderot notices
+that the blind man attaches slight importance to the sense of shame. He
+would hardly understand the utility of clothes, for instance, except as
+a protection against cold. He frankly told his philosophising visitors
+that he could not see why one part of the body should be covered rather
+than another. "I have never doubted," says Diderot, "that the state of
+our organs and senses has much influence both on our metaphysics and our
+morality." This, I may observe, does not in the least show that in a
+society of human beings, not blind, but endowed with vision, the sense
+of physical shame is a mere prejudice of which philosophy will rid us.
+The fact that a blind man discerns no ill in nakedness, has no bearing
+on the value or naturalness of shame among people with eyes. And
+moreover, the fact that delicacy or shame is not a universal human
+impulse, but is established, and its scope defined, by a varying
+etiquette, does not in the least affect the utility or wisdom of such an
+artificial establishment and definition. The grounds of delicacy, though
+connected with the senses, are fixed by considerations that spring from
+the social reason. It seems to be true, as Diderot says, that the
+born-blind are at first without physical delicacy; because delicacy has
+its root in the consciousness that we are observed, while the born-blind
+are not conscious that they are observed. It is found that one of the
+most important parts of their education is to impress this knowledge
+upon them.[66]
+
+But the artificiality of a moral acquisition is obviously no test of
+its worth, nor of the reasons for preserving it. Diderot exclaims, "Ah,
+madam, how different is the morality of a blind man from ours; and how
+the morality of the deaf would differ from that of the blind; and if a
+being should have a sense more than we have, how wofully imperfect would
+he find our morality!" This is plainly a crude and erroneous way of
+illustrating the important truth of the strict relativity of ethical
+standards and maxims. Diderot speaks as if they were relative simply and
+solely to our five wits, and would vary with them only. Everybody now
+has learnt that morality depends not merely on the five wits, but on the
+mental constitution within, and on the social conditions without. It is
+to these rather than to the number of our senses, that moral ideas are
+relative.
+
+Passing over various other remarks, we come to those pages in the Letter
+which apply the principle of relativity to the master-conception of God.
+Diderot's argument on this point naturally drew keener attention than
+the more disinterestedly scientific parts of his contribution. People
+were not strongly agitated by the question whether a blind man who had
+learned to distinguish a sphere from a cube by touch, would instantly
+identify each of them if he received sight.[67]
+
+The question whether a blind man has as good reasons for believing in
+the existence of a God as a man with sight can find, was of more vivid
+interest. As a matter of fact, Diderot's treatment of the narrower
+question (pp. 324, etc.) is more closely coherent than his treatment of
+the wider one, for the simple reason that the special limitation of
+experience in the born-blind cannot fairly be made to yield any decisive
+evidence on the great, the insoluble enigma.
+
+Here, as in the other part of his essay, Diderot followed the method of
+interrogating the blind themselves. In this instance, he turned to the
+most extraordinary example in history, of intellectual mastery and
+scientific penetration in one who practically belonged to the class of
+the born-blind; and this too in dealing with subjects where sight might
+be thought most indispensable. From 1711 to 1739 one of the professors
+of mathematics at Cambridge was Nicholas Saunderson, who had lost his
+sight before he was twelve months old. He was a man of striking mental
+vigour, an original and efficient teacher, and the author of a book upon
+algebra which was considered meritorious in its day. His knowledge of
+optics was highly remarkable. He had distinct ideas of perspective, of
+the projections of the sphere, and of the forms assumed by plane or
+solid figures in certain positions. For performing computations he
+devised a machine of great ingenuity, which also served the purpose,
+with certain modifications, of representing geometrical diagrams. In
+religion he was a sceptic or something more, and in his last hours
+Diderot supposes him to have engaged in a discussion with a minister of
+religion, upon the arguments for the existence of a deity drawn from
+final causes. This discussion Diderot professes to reproduce, and he
+makes Saunderson discourse with much eloquence and some pathos.
+
+By one of those mystifications which make the French polemical
+literature of the eighteenth century the despair of bibliographers,
+Diderot cites as his authority a _Life of Saunderson_, by Dr. Inchlif.
+He sets forth the title with great circumstantiality, but no such book
+exists or ever did exist. The Royal Society of London, however, took the
+jest of fathering atheism on one of its members in bad part, and Diderot
+was systematically excluded from the honour of admission to that learned
+body, as he was excluded all his life from the French Academy.
+
+The reasoning which Diderot puts into the professor's mouth is at first
+a fervid enlargement of the text, that the argument drawn from the
+wonders of nature is very weak evidence for blind men. Our power of
+creating new objects, so to speak, by means of a little mirror, is far
+more incomprehensible to them, than the stars which they have been
+condemned never to behold. The luminous ball that moves from east to
+west through the heavens, is a less astonishing thing to them than the
+fire on the hearth which they can lessen or augment at pleasure.[68]
+"Why talk to me," says Saunderson, "of all that fine spectacle which has
+never been made for me? I have been condemned to pass my life in
+darkness; and you cite marvels that I cannot understand, and that are
+only evidence for you and for those who see as you do. If you want me to
+believe in God, you must make me touch him." The minister replied that
+the sense of touch ought to be enough to reveal the divinity to him in
+the admirable mechanism of his organs. To this, Saunderson:--"I repeat,
+all that is not as fine for me as it is for you. But the animal
+mechanism, even were it as perfect as you pretend, and as I daresay it
+is--what has it in common with a Being of sovereign intelligence? If it
+fills you with astonishment, that is perhaps because you are in the
+habit of treating as a prodigy anything that strikes you as being beyond
+your own strength. I have been myself so often an object of admiration
+for you, that I have a poor opinion of what surprises you. I have
+attracted people from all parts of England, who could not conceive by
+what means I could work at geometry. Well, you must agree that such
+persons had not very exact notions about the possibility of things. Is a
+phenomenon in our notions beyond the power of man? Then we instantly
+say--_'Tis the handiwork of a God_. Nothing short of that can content
+our vanity. Why can we not contrive to throw into our talk less pride
+and more philosophy? If nature offers us some knot that is hard to
+untie, let us leave it for what it is; do not let us employ for cutting
+it the hand of a Being, who then immediately becomes in turn a new knot
+for us, and a knot harder to untie than the first. An Indian tells you
+that our globe is suspended in the air on the back of an elephant. And
+the elephant! It stands on a tortoise. And the tortoise? what sustains
+that?... You pity the Indian: and yet one might very well say to you as
+to him--Mr. Holmes, my good friend, confess your ignorance, and spare me
+elephant and tortoise."[69]
+
+The minister very naturally then falls back upon good authority, and
+asks Saunderson to take the word of Newton, Clarke, and Leibnitz. The
+blind man answers that though the actual state of the universe may be
+the illustration of a marvellous and admirable order, still Newton,
+Clarke, and Leibnitz must leave him freedom of opinion as to its earlier
+states. And then he foreshadows in a really singular and remarkable way
+that theory which is believed to be the great triumph of scientific
+discovery, and which is certainly the great stimulus to speculation, in
+our own time. As to anterior states "you have no witnesses to confront
+with me, and your eyes give you no help. Imagine, if you choose, that
+the order which strikes you so profoundly has subsisted from the
+beginning. But leave me free to think that it has done no such thing,
+and that if we went back to the birth of things and scenes, and
+perceived matter in motion and chaos slowly disentangling itself, we
+should come across a whole multitude of shapeless creatures, instead of
+a very few creatures highly organised. If I have no objection to make to
+what you say about the present condition of things, I may at least
+question you as to their past condition. I may at least ask of you, for
+example, who told you--you and Leibnitz and Clarke and Newton--that in
+the first instances of the formation of animals, some were not without
+heads and others without feet? I may maintain that these had no
+stomachs, and those no intestines; that some to whom a stomach, a
+palate, and teeth seemed to promise permanence, came to an end through
+some fault of heart or lungs; that the monsters annihilated one another
+in succession, that all the faulty (_vicieuses_) combinations of matter
+disappeared, and that _those only survived whose mechanism implied no
+important mis-adaptation_ (contradiction), _and who had the power of
+supporting and perpetuating themselves_.
+
+"On this hypothesis, if the first man had happened to have his larynx
+closed, or had not found suitable food, or had been defective in the
+parts of generation, or had failed to find a mate, then what would have
+become of the human race? It would have been still enfolded in the
+general depuration of the universe; and that arrogant being who calls
+himself Man, dissolved and scattered among the molecules of matter,
+would perhaps have remained for all time hidden in the number of mere
+possibilities.
+
+"If shapeless creatures had never existed, you would not fail to insist
+that none will ever appear, and that I am throwing myself headlong into
+chimerical hypotheses. But the order is not even now so perfect, but
+that monstrous products appear from time to time."[70]
+
+We have here a distinct enough conception, though in an exceedingly
+undigested shape, first, of incessant Variability in organisms as an
+actual circumstance, which we may see exemplified in its extreme form in
+the monstrous deviations of structure that occur from time to time
+before our own eyes; second, of Adaptation to environment as the
+determining condition of Survival among the forms that present
+themselves. Even as a bald and unsustained guess, this was an effective
+side-blow at the doctrine of final causes--a doctrine, as has been often
+remarked, which does not survive, in any given set of phenomena, the
+reduction of these phenomena to terms of matter and motion.
+
+"I conjecture then," continues Saunderson, enlarging the idea of the
+possibilities of matter and motion, "that in the beginning when matter
+in fermentation gradually brought our universe bursting into being,
+blind creatures like myself were very common. But why should I not
+believe of worlds what I believe of animals? How many worlds, mutilated
+and imperfect, were peradventure dispersed, then re-formed, and are
+again dispersing at each moment of time in those far-off spaces which I
+cannot touch and you cannot behold, but where motion combines and will
+continue to combine masses of matter, until they have chanced on some
+arrangement in which they may finally persevere! O philosophers,
+transport yourselves with me on to the confines of the universe, beyond
+the point where I feel, and you see, organised beings; gaze over that
+new ocean, and seek across its lawless, aimless heavings some vestiges
+of that intelligent Being whose wisdom strikes you with such wonder
+here!
+
+"What is this world? A complex whole, subject to endless revolutions.
+All these revolutions show a continual tendency to destruction; a swift
+succession of beings who follow one another, press forward, and vanish;
+a fleeting symmetry; the order of a moment. I reproached you just now
+with estimating the perfection of things by your own capacity; and I
+might accuse you here of measuring its duration by the length of your
+own days. You judge of the continuous existence of the world, as an
+ephemeral insect might judge of yours. The world is eternal for you, as
+you are eternal to the being that lives but for one instant. Yet the
+insect is the more reasonable of the two. For what a prodigious
+succession of ephemeral generations attests your eternity! What an
+immeasurable tradition! Yet shall we all pass away, without the
+possibility of assigning either the real extension that we filled in
+space, or the precise time that we shall have endured. Time, matter,
+space--all, it may be, are no more than a point."[71]
+
+Diderot sent a copy of his work to Voltaire. The poet replied with his
+usual playful politeness, but declared his dissent from Saunderson, "who
+denied God, because he happened to have been born blind."[72] More
+pretentious, and infinitely less acute critics than Voltaire, have fixed
+on the same point in the argument and met it by the same answer; namely,
+that, blind as he was, Saunderson ought to have recognised an
+intelligent Being who had provided him with so many substitutes for
+sight; he ought to have inferred a skilful demiurgus from those ordered
+relations in the universe, which Thought, independently of Vision, might
+well have disclosed to him. In truth, this is not the centre of the
+whole argument. When Saunderson implies that he could only admit a God
+on condition that he could touch him, he makes a single sense the
+channel of all possible ideas, and the arbiter of all reasoned
+combinations of ideas. This is absurd, and Diderot, as we have seen,
+rapidly passed away from that to the real strength of the position. All
+the rest of the contention against final causes would have come just as
+fitly from the lips of a man with vision, as from Saunderson. The
+hypothetical inference of a deity from the marvels of adaptation to be
+found in the universe is unjustified, among other reasons, because it
+ignores or leaves unexplained the marvels of mis-adaptation in the
+universe. It makes absolute through eternity a hypothesis which can at
+its best only be true relatively--not merely to the number of our
+senses, but--to a few partially chosen phenomena of our own little day.
+It explains a few striking facts; it leaves wholly unexplained a far
+greater number of equally striking facts, even if it be not directly
+contradicted by them. It is the invention of an imaginary agency to
+account for the scanty successes of creation, and an attribution to that
+agency of the kind of motives that might have animated a benevolent
+European living in the eighteenth century. It leaves wholly unaccounted
+for the prodigious host of monstrous or imperfect organisms, and the
+appalling law of merciless and incessant destruction.
+
+To us this is the familiar discussion of the day. But let us return to
+the starting-point of this chapter. In France a hundred and twenty years
+ago it was the first opening of a decisive breach in the walls that had
+sheltered the men of Western Europe against outer desolation for some
+fifteen centuries or more. The completeness of Catholicism, as a
+self-containing system of life and thought, is now harder for
+Protestants or Sceptics to realise, than any other fact in the whole
+history of human society. Catholicism was not only an institution, nor
+only a religious faith; it was also a philosophy and a systematised
+theory of the universe. The Church during its best age directed the
+moral relations of individual men, and attempted, more or less
+successfully, to humanise the relations of communities. It satisfied or
+stimulated the affections by its exaltation of the Virgin Mary as a
+supreme object of worship; it nourished the imagination on polytheistic
+legends of saints and martyrs; it stirred the religious emotions by
+touching and impressive rites; it surrounded its members with emblems of
+a special and invincible protection. Catholicism, we have again and
+again to repeat, claimed to deal with life as a whole, and to leave no
+province of nature, no faculty of man, no need of intelligence or
+spirit, uncomprehended. But we must not forget that, though this
+prodigious system had its root in the affections and sympathies of human
+nature, it was also fenced round by a theory of metaphysic. It rested
+upon authority and tradition, but it also sought an expression in an
+intellectual philosophy of things. The essence of this philosophy was to
+make man the final cause of the universe. Its interpretation of the
+world was absolute; its conception of the Creator was absolute; its
+account of our intellectual impressions, of our moral rules, of our
+spiritual ideals, made them all absolute. Now Diderot, when he wrote the
+Letter on the Blind, perceived that mere rationalistic attacks upon the
+sacred books, upon the miracles, upon the moral types, of Catholicism,
+could only be partially effective for destruction, and could have no
+effect at all in replacing the old ways of thinking by others of more
+solid truth. The attack must begin in philosophy. The first fruitful
+process must consist in shifting the point of view, in enlarging the
+range of the facts to be considered, in pressing the relativity of our
+ideas, in freeing ourselves from the tyranny of anthropomorphism.
+
+Hobbes's witty definition of the papacy as the ghost of the old Roman
+Empire sitting enthroned on the grave thereof, may tempt us to forget
+the all-important truth that the basis of the power of the ghost was
+essentially different from that of the dissolved body. The Empire was a
+political organisation, resting on military force. The Church was a
+social organisation, made vital by a conviction. The greatest fact in
+the intellectual history of the eighteenth century is the decisive
+revolution that overtook that sustaining conviction. The movement and
+the men whom we are studying owe all their interest to the share that
+they had in this immense task. The central conception, that the universe
+was called into existence only to further its Creator's purpose towards
+man, became incredible. This absolute proposition was slowly displaced
+by notions of the limitation of human faculties, and of the
+comparatively small portion of the whole cosmos or chaos to which we
+have reason to believe that these faculties give us access. To
+substitute this relative point of view for the absolute, was the
+all-important preliminary to the effectual breaking up of the great
+Catholic construction.
+
+What seems to careless observers a mere metaphysical dispute was in
+truth, and still is, the decisive quarter of the great battle between
+theology and a philosophy reconcilable with science. When the Catholic
+reaction set in, Joseph de Maistre, by far its acutest champion in the
+region of philosophy, at once made it his first business to attack the
+principle of relativity with all his force of dialectic, and to
+reinstate absolute modes of thinking, and the absolute quality of
+Catholic propositions about religion, knowledge, and government.[73] Yet
+neither he nor any one else on his side has ever effectively shaken the
+solid argument which Diderot fancifully illustrated in the following
+passage from his reply to Voltaire's letter of thanks for the opuscule:
+"This marvellous order and these wondrous adaptations, what am I to
+think of them? That they are metaphysical entities only existing in your
+own mind. You cover a vast piece of ground with a mass of ruins falling
+hither or thither at hazard; amid these the worm and the ant find
+commodious shelter enough. What would you say of these insects, if they
+were to take for real and final entities the relations of the places
+which they inhabit to their organisation, and then fall into ecstasies
+over the beauty of their subterranean architecture, and the wonderfully
+superior intelligence of the gardener who arranges things so
+conveniently for them?"[74] This is the notion which Voltaire himself
+three years afterwards illustrated in the witty fancies of
+_Micromegas_. The little animalcule in the square cap, who makes the
+giant laugh in a Homeric manner by its inflated account of itself as the
+final cause of the universe, is the type of the philosophy on which
+Catholicism is based.
+
+In the same letter Diderot avows his dissent--hypocritically, we find
+reason for suspecting--from Saunderson's conclusion. "It is commonly in
+the night-time," he says, "that the mists arise which obscure in me the
+existence of God; the rising of the sun never fails to scatter them. But
+then the darkness is ever-enduring for the blind, and the sun only rises
+for those who see." Diderot's denial of atheism seems more than
+suspicious, when one finds him taking so much pains to make out
+Saunderson's case for him, when he urges the argument following, for
+instance: "If there had never existed any but material beings, there
+would never have been spiritual beings; for then the spiritual beings
+would either have given themselves existence, or else would have
+received it from the material beings. But if there had never existed any
+but spiritual beings, you will see that there would never have been
+material beings. Right philosophy only allows me to suppose in things
+what I can distinctly perceive in them. Now I perceive no other
+faculties distinctly in the mind except those of willing and thinking,
+and I no more conceive that thought and will can act on material beings
+or on nothing, than I can conceive material beings or nothing acting on
+spiritual beings." And he winds up his letter thus: "It is very
+important not to take hemlock for parsley; but not important at all to
+believe or to disbelieve in God. The world, said Montaigne, is a
+tennis-ball that he has given to philosophers to toss hither and
+thither; and I would say nearly as much of the Deity himself."[75]
+
+In concluding our account of this piece, we may mention that Diderot
+threw out a hint, which is a good illustration of the alert and
+practically helpful way in which his mind was always seeking new ideas.
+We have common signs, he said, appealing to the eye, namely, written
+characters, and others appealing to the ear, namely, articulate sounds;
+we have none appealing to touch. "For want of such a language,
+communication is entirely broken between us and those who are born deaf,
+dumb, and blind. They grow, but they remain in a state of imbecility.
+Perhaps they would acquire ideas, if we made ourselves understood by
+them from childhood in a fixed, determinate, constant, and uniform
+manner; in short, if we traced on their hand the same characters that we
+trace upon paper, and invariably attached the same significance to
+them."[76] The patient benevolence and ingenuity of Dr. Howe of Boston
+has realised in our own day the value of Diderot's suggestion.
+
+One or two trifling points of literary interest may be noticed in the
+Letter on the Blind. Diderot refers to "the ingenious expression of an
+English geometer that _God geometrises_" (p. 294). He is unaware
+apparently of the tradition which attributes the expression to Plato,
+though it is not found in Plato's writings. Plutarch, I believe, is the
+first person who mentions the saying, and discusses what Plato exactly
+meant by it. In truth, it is one of that large class of dicta which look
+more ingenious than they are true. There is a fine Latin passage by
+Barrow on the mighty geometry of the universe, and the reader of the
+_Religio Medici_ (p. 42) may remember that Sir Thomas Browne pronounces
+God to be "like a skilful geometrician."
+
+An odd coincidence of simile is worth mentioning. Diderot says "that
+great services are like large pieces of money, that we have seldom any
+occasion to use. Small attentions are a current coin that we always
+carry in our hands." This is curiously like the saying in the _Tatler_
+that "A man endowed with great perfections without good breeding is like
+one who has his pockets full of gold, but wants change for his ordinary
+occasions." Yet if Diderot had read the _Tatler_, he would certainly
+have referred to the story in No. 55, how William Jones of Newington,
+born blind, was brought to sight at the age of twenty--a story told in a
+manner after Diderot's own heart.
+
+
+II.
+
+It is proper in this place to mention a short philosophic piece which
+Diderot wrote in 1751, his _Letter on the Deaf and Dumb for the Use of
+those who Hear and Talk_. This is not, like the Letter on the Blind,
+the examination of a case of the Intellect deprived of one or more of
+the senses. It is substantially a fragment, and a very important
+fragment, on AEsthetics, and as such there will be something to say about
+it in another chapter. But there are, perhaps, one or two points at
+which the Letter on the Deaf and Dumb touches the line of thought of the
+Letter on the Blind.
+
+The Letter opens on the question of the origin and limits of inversion
+in language. This at once leads to a discussion of the natural order of
+ideas and expressions, and that original order, says Diderot, we can
+only ascertain by a study of the language of gesture. Such a study can
+be pursued either in assiduous conversation with one who has been deaf
+and dumb from birth, or by the experiment of a _muet de convention_, a
+man who foregoes the use of articulate sounds for the sake of experiment
+as to the process of the formation of language. Generalising this idea,
+Diderot proceeds to consider man as distributed into as many distinct
+and separate beings as he has senses. "My idea would be to decompose a
+man, so to speak, and to examine what he derives from each of the senses
+with which he is endowed. I have sometimes amused myself with this kind
+of metaphysical anatomy; and I found that of all the senses, the eye was
+the most superficial; the ear, the proudest; smell, the most voluptuous;
+taste, the most superstitious and the most inconstant; touch, the
+profoundest and the most of a philosopher. It would be amusing to get
+together a society, each member of which should have no more than one
+sense; there can be no doubt that they would all treat one another as
+out of their wits."
+
+This is interesting, because it was said at the time to be the source of
+one of the most famous fancies in the philosophical literature of the
+century, the Statue in Condillac's Treatise on the Sensations. Condillac
+imagined a statue organised like a man, but each sense unfolding itself
+singly, at the will of an eternal arbiter. The philosopher first admits
+the exercise of smell to his Frankenstein, and enumerates the mental
+faculties which might be expected to be set in operation under the
+changing impressions made upon that one sense. The other senses are
+imparted to it in turn, one by one, each adding a new group of ideas to
+the previous stock, until at length the mental equipment is complete.
+
+We may see the extent of the resemblance between Condillac's Statue and
+Diderot's _muet de convention_, but Diderot at least is free from the
+charge of borrowing. Condillac's book was published three years (1754)
+after the Letter on the Deaf and Dumb, and he afterwards wrote a
+pamphlet defending himself from the charge of having taken the fancy of
+his Statue from Diderot; nor, for that matter, did Diderot ever make
+sign or claim in the matter. We have already spoken of the relations
+between the two philosophers, and though it is a mistake to describe
+Diderot as one of Condillac's most celebrated pupils,[77] yet there is
+just as little reason to invert the connection, or to doubt Condillac's
+own assertion that the Statue was suggested to him by Mademoiselle
+Ferrand, that remarkable woman to whose stimulating and directing
+influence he always professed such deep obligation. Attention has been
+called to the fact that in 1671 a Parisian bookseller published a Latin
+version of a much more intelligent and scientific fancy than the
+Statue--the _Philosophus Autodidactus_ of the Arabian, Ibn Tophail. This
+was a romance, in which a human being is suckled by a gazelle on a
+desert island in the tropics, and grows up in the manner of some
+Robinson Crusoe with a turn for psychological speculation, and gradually
+becomes conscious, through observation, of the peculiar properties
+belonging to his senses.[78]
+
+Of the part of the Letter that concerns gesture, one can only say that
+it appears astonishingly crude to those who know the progress that has
+been made since Diderot's time in collecting and generalising the
+curious groups of fact connected with gesture-language. We can imagine
+the eager interest that Diderot would have had in such curious
+observations as that gesture-language has something like a definite
+syntax; that it furnishes no means of distinguishing causation from
+sequence or simultaneity; that savages can understand and be understood
+with ease and certainty in a deaf-and-dumb school.[79] Diderot was acute
+enough to see that the questions of language could only be solved, not
+by the old metaphysical methods, but experientially. For the
+experiential method in this matter the time was not ripe. It was no
+wonder, then, that after a few pages, he broke away and hastened to
+aesthetics.
+
+
+III.
+
+Penalties on the publication of heretical opinion did not cease in
+England with the disappearance of the Licensing Act. But they were at
+least inflicted by law. It was the Court of King's Bench which, in 1730,
+visited Woolston with fine and imprisonment, after all the forms of a
+prosecution had been duly gone through. It was no Bishop's court nor
+Star Chamber, much less a warrant signed by George the Third or by Bute,
+which in 1762 condemned Peter Annet to the pillory and the gaol for his
+Free Inquirer. The only evil which overtook Mandeville for his Fable of
+the Bees was to be harmlessly presented (1723) as a public nuisance by
+the Grand Jury of Middlesex. We may contrast with this the state of
+things which prepared a revolution in France.
+
+One morning in July, 1749--almost exactly forty years before that July
+of '89, so memorable in the annals of arbitrary government and state
+prisons--a commissary of police and three attendants came to Diderot's
+house, made a vigorous scrutiny of his papers, and then produced a
+warrant for his detention. The philosopher, without any ado, told his
+wife not to expect him home for dinner, stepped into the chaise, and
+was driven off with his escort to Vincennes. His real offence was a
+light sneer in the Letter on the Blind at the mistress of a
+minister.[80] The atheistical substance of the essay, however, apart
+from the pique of a favourite, would have given sufficiently good
+grounds for a prosecution in England, and in France for that vile
+substitute for prosecution, the _lettre-decachet_. And there happened to
+be special causes for harshness towards the press at this moment. Verses
+had been published satirising the king and his manner of life in bitter
+terms, and a stern raid was made upon all the scribblers in Paris. At
+the court there had just taken place one of those reactions in favour of
+the ecclesiastical party, which for thirty years in the court history
+alternated so frequently with movements in the opposite direction. The
+gossip of the town set down Diderot's imprisonment to a satire against
+the Jesuits, of which he was wrongly supposed to be the author.[81] It
+is not worth while to seek far for a reason, when authority was as able
+and as ready to thrust men into gaol for a bad reason as for a good one.
+The writer or the printer of a philosophical treatise was at this moment
+looked upon in France much as a magistrate now looks on the wretch who
+vends infamous prints.
+
+The lieutenant of police (Berryer) treated the miserable author with
+additional severity, for stubbornly refusing to give up the name of the
+printer. Diderot was well aware that the printer would be sent to the
+galleys for life, if the lieutenant of police could once lay hands upon
+him. This personage, we may mention, was afterwards raised to the
+dignified office of keeper of the seals, as a reward for his industry
+and skill in providing victims for the royal seraglio at Versailles.[82]
+The man who had ventured to use his mind, was thrown into the dungeon at
+Vincennes by the man who played spy and pander for the Pompadour. The
+official record of a dialogue between Berryer and Denis Diderot, "of the
+Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion," is a singular piece of
+reading, if we remember that the prisoner's answers were made, "after
+oath taken by the respondent to speak and answer the truth."
+
+"Interrogated if he has not composed a work entitled _Letters on the
+Blind_.
+
+"Answered no.
+
+"Interrogated by whom he had caused said work to be printed.
+
+"Answered that he had not caused the said work to be printed.
+
+"Interrogated if he knows the name of the author of the said work.
+
+"Answered that he knows nothing about it.
+
+"Interrogated whether he has not had said work in manuscript in his
+possession before it was printed.
+
+"Answered that he had not had the said manuscript in his possession
+before or after it was printed.
+
+"Interrogated whether he has not composed a work which appeared some
+years ago, entitled _Philosophic Thoughts_.
+
+"Answered no."
+
+And so, after a dozen more replies of equal veracity, on reading being
+made to the respondent of the present interrogatory, Diderot "said that
+the answers contain the truth, persisted in them, and signed," as
+witness his hand. A sorrowful picture, indeed, of the plight of an
+apostle of a new doctrine. On the other hand, the apostle of the new
+doctrine was perhaps good enough for the preachers of the old. Two years
+before this, the priest of the church of Saint Medard had thought it
+worth while to turn spy and informer. This is the report which the base
+creature sent to the lieutenant of police (1747):--
+
+     "Diderot, a man of no profession, living, etc., is a young man
+     who plays the free-thinker, and glories in impiety. He is the
+     author of several works of philosophy, in which he attacks
+     religion. His talk is like his books. He is busy at the
+     composition of one now, which is very dangerous."
+
+The priest's delation was confirmed presently by a still lower agent of
+authority, who, in bad grammar and bad spelling, describes "this wretch
+Diderot as a very dangerous man, who speaks of the holy mysteries of
+our religion with contempt; who corrupts manners, and who says that when
+he comes to the last moment of his life, he will have to do like others,
+will confess, and will receive what we call our God, but it will only be
+for the sake of his family."[83]
+
+All these things had prepared an unfriendly fate for Diderot when his
+time at last came, as it came to most of his friends. For a month he was
+cut off from the outer world. His only company was the _Paradise Lost_,
+which he happened to have in his pocket at the moment of his arrest. He
+compounded an ink for himself, by scraping the slate at the side of his
+window, grinding it very fine, and mixing with wine in a broken glass. A
+toothpick, found by happy accident in the pocket of his waistcoat,
+served him for pen, and the fly-leaves and margins of the Milton made a
+repository for his thoughts. With a simple but very characteristic
+interest in others who might be as unfortunate as himself, he wrote upon
+the walls of his prison his short recipe for writing materials.[84]
+Diderot might easily have been buried here for months or even years.
+But, as it happened, the governor of Vincennes was a kinsman of
+Voltaire's divine Emily, the Marquise du Chatelet. When Voltaire, who
+was then at Luneville, heard of Diderot's ill-fortune, he proclaimed as
+usual his detestation of a land where bigots can shut up philosophers
+under lock and key, and as usual he at once set to work to lessen the
+wrong. Madame du Chatelet was made to write to the governor, praying him
+to soften the imprisonment of Socrates-Diderot as much as he could.[85]
+It was the last of her good deeds, for she died in circumstances of
+grotesque tragedy in the following month (Sept. 1749), and her husband,
+her son, Voltaire, and Saint Lambert alternately consoled and reproached
+one another over her grave. Diderot meanwhile had the benefit of her
+intervention. He was transferred from the dungeon to the chateau, was
+allowed to wander about the park on his parole, and to receive visits
+from his friends. One of the most impulsive of these friends was Jean
+Jacques. Their first meeting after Diderot's imprisonment has been,
+described by Rousseau himself, in terms at which the phlegmatic will
+smile--not wisely, for the manner of expressing emotion, like all else,
+is relative. "After three or four centuries of impatience, I flew into
+the arms of my friend. O indescribable moment! He, was not alone;
+D'Alembert and the treasurer of the Sainte Chapelle were with him. As I
+went in, I saw no one but himself. With a single hound and a cry, I
+pressed his face close to mine, I clasped him tightly in my arms,
+without speaking to him save by my tears and sobs; I was choking with
+tenderness and joy."[86] After this Rousseau used to walk over to see
+him two or three times a week. It was during one of these walks on a hot
+summer afternoon, that he first thought of that memorable literary
+effort, the essay against civilisation. He sank down at the foot of a
+tree, and feverishly wrote a page or two to show to his friend. He tells
+us that but for Diderot's encouragement he should hardly have executed
+his design. There is a story that it was Diderot who first suggested to
+Rousseau to affirm that arts and sciences had corrupted manners. There
+is no violent improbability in this. Diderot, for all the robustness and
+penetration of his judgment, was yet often borne by his natural
+impetuosity towards the region of paradox. His own curious and bold
+_Supplement au Voyage de Bougainville_ is entirely in the vein of
+Rousseau's discourse on the superiority of primitive over civilised
+life. "Prodigious sibyl of the eighteenth century," cries Michelet, "the
+mighty magician Diderot! He breathed out one day a breath; lo, there
+sprang up a man--Rousseau."[87] It is hard to believe that such an
+astonishing genius for literature as Rousseau's could have lain
+concealed, after he had once inhaled the vivifying air of Paris. Yet the
+fire and inspiring energy of Diderot may well have been the quickening
+accident that brought his genius into productive life. All the testimony
+goes to show that it was so. Whether, however, Diderot is really
+responsible for the perverse direction of Rousseau's argument is a
+question of fact, and the evidence is not decisive.[88] It would be an
+odd example of that giant's nonchalance which is always so amazing in
+Diderot, if he really instigated the most eloquent and passionate writer
+then alive to denounce art and science as the scourge of mankind, at the
+very moment when he was himself straining his whole effort to spread the
+arts and sciences, and to cover them with glory in men's eyes.
+
+Among Diderot's other visitors was Madame de Puisieux. One day she came
+clad in gay apparel, bound for a merry-making at a neighbouring village.
+Diderot, conceiving jealous doubts of her fidelity, received assurance
+that she would be solitary and companionless at the feast, thinking
+mournfully of her persecuted philosopher lying in prison. She forgot
+that one of the parents of philosophy is curiosity, and that Diderot had
+trained himself in the school of the sceptics. That evening he scaled
+the walls of the park of Vincennes, flew to the scene of the festival,
+and there found what he had expected. In vain for her had he written
+upon virtue and merit, and the unhallowed friendship came to an end.
+
+After three months of captivity, Diderot was released. The booksellers
+who were interested in the Encyclopaedia were importunate with the
+authorities to restore its head and chief to an enterprise that stirred
+universal curiosity.[89] For the first volume of that famous work was
+now almost ready to appear, and expectation was keen. The idea of the
+book had occurred to Diderot in 1745, and from 1745 to 1765 it was the
+absorbing occupation of his life. Of the value and significance of the
+conception underlying this immense operation, I shall speak in the next
+chapter. There also I shall describe its history. The circumstances
+under which these five-and-thirty volumes were given to the world mark
+Diderot for one of the few true heroes of literature. They called into
+play some of the most admirable of human qualities. They required a
+laboriousness as steady and as prolonged, a wariness as alert, a grasp
+of plan as firm, a fortitude as patient, unvarying, and unshaken, as men
+are accustomed to applaud in the engineer who constructs some vast and
+difficult work, or the commander who directs a hardy and dangerous
+expedition.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA.
+
+
+The history of the encyclopaedic conception of human knowledge is a much
+more interesting and important object of inquiry than a list of the
+various encyclopaedic enterprises to be found in the annals of
+literature. Yet it is proper here to mention some of the attempts in
+this direction, which preceded our memorable book of the eighteenth
+century. It is to Aristotle, no doubt, that we must look for the first
+glimpse of the idea that human knowledge is a totality, whose parts are
+all closely and organically connected with one another. But the idea
+that only dawned in that gigantic understanding was lost for many
+centuries. The compilations of Pliny are not in a right sense
+encyclopaedic, being presided over by no definite idea of informing
+order. It was not until the later middle age that any attempt was made
+to present knowledge as a whole. Albertus Magnus, "the ape of Aristotle"
+(1193-1280), left for a season the three great questions of the
+existence of universals, of the modes of the existence of species and
+genus, and of their place in or out of the bosom of the individuals,
+and executed a compilation of such physical facts as had been then
+discovered.[90] A more distinctly encyclopaedic work was the book of
+Vincent de Beauvais (_d._ 1264), called _Speculum naturale, morale,
+doctrinale, et historiale_--a compilation from Aquinas in some parts,
+and from Aristotle in others. Hallam mentions three other compilations
+of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and observes that their
+laborious authors did not much improve the materials which they had
+amassed in their studies, though they sometimes arranged them
+conveniently. In the mediaeval period, as he remarks, the want of
+capacity to discern probable truths was a very great drawback from the
+value of their compilations.[91]
+
+Far the most striking production of the thirteenth century in this kind
+was the _Opus Majus_ of Roger Bacon (1267), of which it has been said
+that it is at once the Encyclopaedia and the Novum Organum of that
+age;[92] at once a summary of knowledge, and the suggestion of a truer
+method. This, however, was merely the introductory sketch to a vaster
+encyclopaedic work, the _Compendium Philosophiae_, which was not
+perfected. "In common with minds of great and comprehensive grasp, his
+vivid perception of the intimate relationship of the different parts of
+philosophy, and his desire to raise himself from the dead level of
+every individual science, induced Bacon to grasp at and embrace the
+whole."[93] In truth, the encyclopaedic spirit was in the air throughout
+the thirteenth century. It was the century of books bearing the
+significant titles of Summa, or Universitas, or Speculum.
+
+The same spirit revived towards the middle of the sixteenth century. In
+1541 a book was published at Basel by one Ringelberg, which first took
+the name of Cyclopaedia, that has since then become so familiar a word in
+Western Europe. This was followed within sixty years by several other
+works of the same kind. The movement reached its height in a book which
+remained the best in its order for a century. A German, one J.H. Alsted
+(1588-1638), published in 1620 an _Encyclopaedia scientiarum omnium_. A
+hundred years later the illustrious Leibnitz pronounced it a worthy task
+to perfect and amend Alsted's book. What was wanting to the excellent
+man, he said, was neither labour nor judgment, but material, and the
+good fortune of such days as ours. And Leibnitz wrote a paper of
+suggestions for its extension and improvement.[94] Alsted's Encyclopaedia
+is of course written in Latin, and he prefixes to it by way of motto the
+celebrated lines in which Lucretius declares that nothing is sweeter
+than to dwell apart in the serene temples of the wise. Though he informs
+us in the preface that his object was to trace the outlines of the
+great "latifundium regni philosophici" in a single syntagma, yet he
+really does no more than arrange a number of separate treatises or
+manuals, and even dictionaries, within the limits of a couple of folios.
+As is natural to the spirit of the age in which he wrote, great
+predominance is given to the verbal sciences of grammar, rhetoric, and
+formal logic, and a verbal or logical division regulates the
+distribution of the matter, rather than a scientific regard for its
+objective relations.
+
+For the true parentage, however, of the Encyclopaedia of Diderot and
+D'Alembert, it is unnecessary to prolong this list. It was Francis
+Bacon's idea of the systematic classification of knowledge which
+inspired Diderot, and guided his hand throughout. "If we emerge from
+this vast operation," he wrote in the Prospectus, "our principal debt
+will be to the chancellor Bacon, who sketched the plan of a universal
+dictionary of sciences and arts at a time when there were not, so to
+say, either arts or sciences." This sense of profound and devoted
+obligation was shared by D'Alembert, and was expressed a hundred times
+in the course of the work. No more striking panegyric has ever been
+passed upon our immortal countryman than is to be found in the
+Preliminary Discourse.[95] The French Encyclopaedia was the direct fruit
+of Bacon's magnificent conceptions. And if the efficient origin of the
+Encyclopaedia was English, so did the occasion rise in England also.
+
+In 1727 Ephraim Chambers, a Westmoreland Quaker, published in London
+two folios, entitled, a Cyclopaedia or Universal Dictionary of the Arts
+and Sciences. The idea of it was broad and excellent. "Our view," says
+Chambers, "was to consider the several matters, not only in themselves,
+but relatively, or as they respect each other; both to treat them as so
+many wholes, and as so many parts of some greater whole." The compiler
+lacked the grasp necessary to realise this laudable purpose. The book
+has, however, the merit of conciseness, and is a singular monument of
+literary industry, for it was entirely compiled by Chambers himself. It
+had a great success, and though its price was high (four guineas), it
+ran through five editions in eighteen years. On the whole, however, it
+is meagre, and more like a dictionary than an encyclopaedia, such as
+Alsted's for instance.
+
+Some fifteen years after the publication of Chambers's Cyclopaedia, an
+Englishman (Mills) and a German (Sellius) went to Le Breton with a
+project for its translation into French. The bookseller obtained the
+requisite privilege from the government, but he obtained it for himself,
+and not for the projectors. This trick led to a quarrel, and before it
+was settled the German died and the Englishman returned to his own
+country. They left the translation behind them duly executed.[96] Le
+Breton then carried the undertaking to a certain abbe, Gua de Malves.
+Gua de Malves (_b._ 1712) seems to have been a man of a busy and
+ingenious mind. He was the translator of Berkeley's _Hylas and
+Philonous_, of Anson's Voyages, and of various English tracts on
+currency and political economy. It is said that he first suggested the
+idea of a cyclopaedia on a fuller plan,[97] but we have no evidence of
+this. In any case, the project made no advance in his hands. The
+embarrassed bookseller next applied to Diderot, who was then much in
+need of work that should bring him bread. His fertile and energetic
+intelligence transformed the scheme. By an admirable intuition, he
+divined the opportunity which would be given by the encyclopaedic form,
+of gathering up into a whole all that new thought and modern knowledge,
+which existed as yet in unsystematic and uninterpreted fragments. His
+enthusiasm fired Le Breton. It was resolved to make Chambers's work a
+mere starting-point for a new enterprise of far wider scope.
+
+"The old and learned D'Aguesseau," says Michelet, "notwithstanding the
+pitiable, the wretched sides of his character, had two lofty sides, his
+reform of the laws, and a personal passion, the taste and urgent need of
+universality, a certain encyclopaedic sense. A young man came to him one
+day, a man of letters living by his pen, and somewhat under a cloud for
+one or two hazardous books that lack of bread had driven him to write.
+Yet this stranger of dubious repute wrought a miracle. With
+bewilderment the old sage listened to him unrolling the gigantic scheme
+of a book that should be all books. On his lips, sciences were light and
+life. It was more than speech, it was creation. One would have said that
+he had made these sciences, and was still at work, adding, extending,
+fertilising, ever engendering. The effect was incredible. D'Aguesseau, a
+moment above himself, forgot the old man, received the infection of
+genius, and became great with the greatness of the other. He had faith
+in the young man, and protected the Encyclopaedia."[98]
+
+A fresh privilege was procured (Jan. 21, 1746), and as Le Breton's
+capital was insufficient for a project of this magnitude, he invited
+three other booksellers to join him, retaining a half share for himself,
+and allotting the other moiety to them. As Le Breton was not strong
+enough to bear the material burdens of producing a work on so gigantic a
+scale as was now proposed, so Diderot felt himself unequal to the task
+of arranging and supervising every department of a book that was to
+include the whole circle of the sciences. He was not skilled enough in
+mathematics, nor in physics, which were then for the most part
+mathematically conceived. For that province, he associated with himself
+as an editorial colleague one of the most conspicuous and active members
+of the philosophical party. Of this eminent man, whose relations with
+Diderot were for some years so intimate, it is proper that we should say
+something.
+
+D'Alembert was the natural son of Madame de Tencin, by whom he had been
+barbarously exposed immediately after his birth. "The true ancestors of
+a man of genius," says Condorcet finely upon this circumstance, "are the
+masters who have gone before him, and his true descendants are disciples
+that are worthy of him." He was discovered on a November night in the
+year 1717, by the beadle, in a nearly dying condition on the steps of
+the church of St. John the Round, from which he afterwards took his
+Christian name. An honest woman of the common people, with that personal
+devotion which is less rare among the poor than among the rich, took
+charge of the foundling. The father, who was an officer of artillery and
+brother of Destouches, the author of some poor comedies, by and by
+advanced the small sums required to pay for the boy's schooling.
+D'Alembert proved a brilliant student. Unlike nearly every other member
+of the encyclopaedic party, he was a pupil not of the Jesuits but of
+their rivals. The Jansenists recognised the keenness and force of their
+pupil, and hoped that they had discovered a new Pascal. But he was less
+docile than his great predecessor in their ranks. When his studies were
+completed, he devoted himself to geometry, for which he had a passion
+that nothing could extinguish. For the old monastic vow of poverty,
+chastity, and obedience, he adopted the manlier substitute of poverty,
+truth, and liberty--the worthy device of every man of letters. When he
+awoke in the morning, he thought with delight of the work that had been
+begun the previous day and would occupy the day before him. In the
+necessary intervals of his meditations, he recalled the lively pleasure
+that he felt at the play: at the play between the acts, he thought of
+the still greater pleasure that was promised to him by the work of the
+morrow. His mathematical labours led to valuable results in the
+principles of equilibrium and the movement of fluids, in a new calculus,
+and in a new solution of the problem of the precession of the
+equinoxes.[99]
+
+These contributions to what was then the most popular of the sciences
+brought him fame, and fame brought him its usual distractions. As soon
+as a writer has shown himself the possessor of gifts that may be of
+value to society, then society straightway sets to work to seduce and
+hinder him from diligently exercising them. D'Alembert resisted these
+influences steadfastly. His means were very limited, yet he could never
+be induced to increase them at the cost either of his social
+independence or of his scientific pursuits. He lived for forty years
+under the humble roof of the poor woman who had treated him as a son.
+"You will never be anything better than a philosopher," she used to cry
+reproachfully, "and what is a philosopher? 'Tis a madman who torments
+himself all his life, that people may talk about him when he is dead."
+D'Alembert zealously adhered to his destination. Frederick the Great
+vainly tempted him by an offer of the succession to Maupertuis as
+president of the Academy of Berlin. Although, however, he declined to
+accept the post, he enjoyed all its authority and prerogative. Frederick
+always consulted him in filling up vacancies and making appointments. It
+is a magnanimous trait in D'Alembert's history that he should have
+procured for Lagrange a position and livelihood at Berlin, warmly
+commending him as a man of rare and superior genius, although Lagrange
+had vigorously opposed some of his own mathematical theories. Ten years
+after Frederick's offer, the other great potentate of the north,
+Catherine of Russia, besought him to undertake the education of the
+young grand duke, her son. But neither urgent flatteries and
+solicitations under the imperial hand, nor the munificent offer of a
+hundred thousand francs a year, availed to draw him away from his
+independence and his friends. The great Frederick used to compare him to
+one of those oriental monarchs, who cherish a strict seclusion in order
+to enhance their importance and majesty. He did not refuse a pension of
+some fifty pounds a year from Berlin, and the same amount was bestowed
+upon him from the privy purse at Versailles. He received a small annual
+sum in addition from the Academy.
+
+Though the mathematical sciences remained the objects of his special
+study, D'Alembert was as free as the other great men of the encyclopaedic
+school from the narrowness of the pure specialist. He naturally reminds
+us of the remarkable saying imputed to Leibnitz, that he only attributed
+importance to science, because it enabled him to speak with authority in
+philosophy and religion. His correspondence with Voltaire, extending
+over the third quarter of the century, is the most instructive record
+that we possess of the many-sided doings of that busy time. His series
+of _eloges_ on the academicians who died between 1700 and 1772 is one of
+the most interesting works in the department of literary history. He
+paid the keenest attention to the great and difficult art of writing.
+Translations from Tacitus, Bacon, and Addison, show his industry in a
+useful practice. A long collection of synonyms bears witness to his fine
+discrimination in the use of words. And the clearness, precision, and
+reserved energy of his own prose mark the success of the pains that he
+took with style. He knew the secret. Have lofty sentiments, he said, and
+your manner of writing will be firm and noble.[100] Yet he did not
+ignore the other side and half of the truth, which is expressed in the
+saying of another important writer of that day--By taking trouble to
+speak with precision, one gains the habit of thinking rightly
+(_Condillac_).
+
+Like so many others to whom literature owes much, D'Alembert was all his
+life fighting against bad health. Like Voltaire and Rousseau, he was
+born dying, and he remained delicate and valetudinarian to the end. He
+had the mental infirmities belonging to his temperament. He was
+restless, impatient, mobile, susceptible of irritation. When the young
+Mademoiselle Phlipon, in after years famous as wife of the virtuous
+Roland, was taken to a sitting of the Academy, she was curious to see
+the author of the Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopaedia, but his
+small face and sharp thin voice made her reflect with some
+disappointment, that the writings of a philosopher are better to know
+than his mask.[101] In everything except zeal for light and
+emancipation, D'Alembert was the opposite of Diderot. Where Diderot was
+exuberant, prodigal, and disordered, D'Alembert was a precisian.
+Difference of temperament, however, did not prevent their friendship
+from being for many years cordial and intimate. When the Encyclopaedia
+was planned, it was to D'Alembert, as we have said, that Diderot turned
+for aid in the mathematical sciences, where his own knowledge was not
+sufficiently full nor well grounded. They were in strong and singular
+agreement in their idea of the proper place and function of the man of
+letters. One of the most striking facts about their alliance, and one
+of the most important facts in the history of the Encyclopaedia, is that
+henceforth the profession of letters became at once definite and
+independent. Diderot and D'Alembert both of them remained poor, but they
+were never hangers-on. They did not look to patrons, nor did they bound
+their vision by Versailles. They were the first to assert the lawful
+authority of the new priesthood. They revolted deliberately and in set
+form against the old system of suitorship and protection. "Happy are men
+of letters," wrote D'Alembert, "if they recognise at last that the
+surest way of making themselves respectable is to live united and almost
+shut up among themselves; that by this union they will come, without any
+trouble, to give the law to the rest of the nation in all affairs of
+taste and philosophy; that the true esteem is that which is awarded by
+men who are themselves worthy of esteem.... As if the art of instructing
+and enlightening men were not, after the too rare art of good
+government, the noblest portion and gift in human reach."[102]
+
+This consciousness of the power and exaltation of their calling, which
+men of letters now acquired, is much more than the superficial fact
+which it may at first seem to be. It marked the rise of a new teaching
+order and the supersession of the old. The highest moral ideas now
+belonged no longer to the clergy, but to the writers; no longer to
+official Catholicism, but to that fertilising medley of new notions
+about human knowledge and human society which then went by the name of
+philosophy. What is striking is that the ideas sown by philosophy became
+eventually the source of higher life in Catholicism. If the church of
+the revolution showed something that we may justly admire, it was
+because the encyclopaedic band had involuntarily and inevitably imparted
+a measure of their own clearsightedness, fortitude, moral energy, and
+spirit of social improvement, to a church which was, when they began
+their work, an abominable burden on the spiritual life of the nation. If
+the Catholicism of Chateaubriand, of Lamennais, of Montalembert, was a
+different thing from the Catholicism of a Dubois, or a Rohan, from the
+vile corruptions of the Jesuits and the grovelling superstitions of the
+later Jansenists, it was the execrated freethinkers whom the church and
+mankind had to thank for the change. The most enlightened Catholic of
+to-day ought to admit that Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, were the true
+reformers of his creed. They supplied it with ideas which saved it from
+becoming finally a curse to civilisation. It was no Christian prelate,
+but Diderot who burst the bonds of a paralysing dogma by the
+magnificent cry, _Detruisez ces enceintes qui retrecissent vos idees!
+Elargissez Dieu!_[103] We see the same phenomenon in our own day. The
+Christian churches are assimilating as rapidly as their formula will
+permit, the new light and the more generous moral ideas and the higher
+spirituality of teachers who have abandoned all churches, and who are
+systematically denounced as enemies of the souls of men. _Sic vos non
+vobis mellificatis apes!_ These transformations of religion by leavening
+elements contributed from a foreign doctrine, are the most interesting
+process in the history of truth.
+
+The Encyclopaedia became a powerful engine for aiding such a
+transformation. Because it was this, and because it rallied all that was
+then best in France round the standard of light and social hope, we
+ought hardly to grudge time or pains to its history. For it was not
+merely in the field of religious ideas that the Encyclopaedists led
+France in a new way. They affected the national life on every side,
+pressing forward with enlightened principles in all the branches of
+material and political organisation. Their union in a great
+philosophical band gave an impressive significance to their work. The
+collection within a single set of volumes of a body of new truths,
+relating to so many of the main interests of men, invested the book and
+its writers with an aspect of universality, of collective and organic
+doctrine, which the writers themselves would without doubt have
+disowned, and which it is easy to dissolve by tests of logic. But the
+popular impression that the Encyclopaedists constituted a single body
+with a common doctrine and a common aim was practically sound. Comte has
+pointed out with admirable clearness the merit of the conception of an
+encyclopaedic workshop.[104] It united the members of rival destructive
+schools in a great constructive task. It furnished a rallying-point for
+efforts otherwise the most divergent. Their influence was precisely what
+it would have been, if popular impressions had been literally true.
+Diderot and D'Alembert did their best to heighten this feeling. They
+missed no occasion of fixing a sentiment of co-operation and fellowship.
+They spoke of their dictionary as the transactions of an Academy.[105]
+Each writer was answerable for his own contribution, but he was in the
+position of a member of some learned corporation. To every volume, until
+the great crisis of 1759, was prefixed a list of those who had
+contributed to it. If a colleague died, the public was informed of the
+loss that the work had sustained, and his services were worthily
+commemorated in a formal _eloge_.[106] Feuds, epigrams, and offences
+were not absent, but on the whole there was steadfast and generous
+fraternity.
+
+As Voltaire eloquently said, officers of war by land and by sea,
+magistrates, physicians who knew nature, men of letters whose taste
+purified knowledge, geometers, physicists, all united in a work that was
+as useful as it was laborious, without any view of interest, without
+even seeking fame, as many of them concealed their names; finally
+without any common understanding and agreement, and therefore without
+anything of the spirit of party.[107] Turning over the pages on which
+the list of writers is inscribed, we find in one place or another nearly
+every name that has helped to make the literature of the time famous.
+Montesquieu, who died in the beginning of 1755, left behind him the
+unfinished fragment of an article on Taste, and it may be noticed in
+passing that our good-natured Diderot was the only man of letters who
+attended the remains of the illustrious writer to the grave.[108] The
+article itself, though no more than a fragment, has all the charms of
+Montesquieu's delightful style; it is serious without pedantry, graceful
+without levity, and is rich in observations that are precise and pointed
+without the vice of emphasis. The great Turgot, diligently solicitous
+for the success of every enterprise that promised to improve human
+happiness by adding to knowledge and spreading enlightenment, wrote some
+of the most valuable articles that the work contained, and his
+discussion of Endowments perhaps still remains the weightiest
+contribution to that important subject. Oddly enough, he was one of the
+very few writers who refused to sign his name to his
+contributions.[109] His assistance only ceased when he perceived that
+the scheme was being coloured by that spirit of sect, which he always
+counted the worst enemy of the spirit of truth.[110] Jean Jacques
+Rousseau, who had just won a singular reputation by his paradoxes on
+natural equality and the corruptions of civilisation, furnished the
+articles on music in the first half dozen volumes. They were not free
+from mistakes, but his colleagues chivalrously defended him by the plea
+of careless printing or indifferent copying.[111] The stately Buffon
+very early in the history of the Encyclopaedia sent them an article upon
+Nature, and the editors made haste to announce to their subscribers the
+advent of so superb a colleague.[112] The articles on natural history,
+however, were left by Buffon in his usual majestic fashion to his
+faithful lieutenant and squire-at-arms, Daubenton. And even his own
+article seems not to have been printed. Before the eleventh volume
+appeared, terrible storms had arisen, not a few of the shipmen had
+parted company, and Buffon may well have been one of them. Certainly the
+article on Nature, as it stands, can hardly be his.
+
+In the supplementary volumes, which appeared in 1776--ten years after
+the completion of the original undertaking--two new labourers came into
+the vineyard, whose names add fresh lustre and give still more serious
+value to the work. One of these was the prince of the physiologists of
+the eighteenth century, the great Haller, who contributed an elaborate
+history of those who had been his predecessors in unfolding the
+intricate mechanism of the human frame, and analysing its marvels of
+complex function. The other was the austere and generous Condorcet. Ever
+loyal to good causes, and resolute against despairing of the human
+commonwealth, he began in the pages of the Encyclopaedia a career that
+was brilliant with good promise and high hopes, and ended in the grim
+hall of the Convention and a nobly tragic death amid the red storm of
+the Terror.
+
+Among the lesser stars in the encyclopaedic firmament are some whose
+names ought not to be wholly omitted. Forbonnais, one of the most
+instructive economic writers of the century, contributed articles to the
+early volumes, which were afterwards republished in his Elements of
+Commerce.[113] The light-hearted Marmontel wrote cheerful articles on
+Comedy, Eloges, Eclogues, Glory, and other matters of literature and
+taste. Quesnai, the eminent founder of the economic sect, dealt with two
+agricultural subjects, and reproduced both his theoretical paradoxes,
+and his admirable practical maxims, on the material prosperity of
+nations. Holbach, not yet author of the memorable System of Nature,
+compiled a vast number of the articles on chemistry and mineralogy,
+chiefly and avowedly from German sources, he being the only writer of
+the band with a mastery of a language which was at that moment hardly
+more essential to culture than Russian is now. The name of Duclos should
+not be passed over, in the list of the foremost men who helped to raise
+the encyclopaedic monument. 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. We need not linger over the
+names of other writers, who indeed are now little more than mere shadows
+of names, such as La Condamine, a scientific traveller of fame and merit
+in his day and generation; of Du Marsais, the poverty-stricken and
+unlucky scholar who wrote articles on grammar; of the President Des
+Brosses, who was unfortunate enough to be in the right in a quarrel
+about money with Voltaire, and who has since been better known to
+readers through the fury of the provoked patriarch, than through his own
+meritorious contributions to the early history of civilisation.
+
+The name of one faithful worker in the building of this new Jerusalem
+ought not to be omitted, though his writings were _multa non multum_.
+The Chevalier de Jaucourt (1704-1779), as his title shows, was the
+younger son of a noble house. He studied at Geneva, Cambridge, and
+Leyden, and published in 1734 a useful account of the life and writings
+of Leibnitz. When the Encyclopaedia was projected, his services were at
+once secured, and he became its slave from the beginning of A to the end
+of Z. He wrote articles in his own special subjects of natural history
+and physical science, but he was always ready to lend his help in other
+departments, in writing, rewriting, reading, correcting, and all those
+other humbler necessities of editorship of which the inconsiderate
+reader knows little and thinks less. Jaucourt revelled in this drudgery.
+God made him for grinding articles, said Diderot. For six or seven
+years, he wrote one day, Jaucourt has been in the middle of half a dozen
+secretaries, reading, dictating, slaving, for thirteen or fourteen hours
+a day, and he is not tired of it even now. When he was told that the
+work must positively be brought to an end, his countenance fell, and the
+prospect of release from such happy bondage filled his heart with
+desolation.[115] "If," says Diderot in the preface to the eighth volume
+(1765), "we have raised a shout of joy like the sailor when he espies
+land after a sombre night that has kept him midway between sky and
+flood, it is to M. de Jaucourt that we are indebted for it. What has he
+not done for us, especially in these latter times? With what constancy
+has he not refused all the solicitations, whether of friendship or of
+authority, that sought to take him away from us? Never has sacrifice of
+repose, of health, of interest been more absolute and more entire."[116]
+These modest and unwearying helpers in good works ought not to be wholly
+forgotten, in a commemoration of more far-shining names.
+
+Besides those who were known to the conductors of the Encyclopaedia, was
+a host of unsought volunteers. "The further we proceed," the editors
+announced in the preface to the sixth volume (1756), "the more are we
+sensible of the increase both in matter and in number of those who are
+good enough to second our efforts." They received many articles on the
+same subject. They were constantly embarrassed by an emulation which,
+however flattering as a testimony to their work, obliged them to make a
+difficult choice, or to lose a good article, or to sacrifice one of
+their regular contributors, or to offend some influential newcomer.
+Every one who had a new idea in his head, or what he thought a new idea,
+sent them an article upon it. Men who were priests or pastors by
+profession and unbelievers in their hearts, sent them sheaves of
+articles in which they permitted themselves the delicious luxury of
+saying a little of what they thought. Women, too, pressed into the great
+work. Unknown ladies volunteered sprightly explanations of the
+technicalities of costume, from the falbala which adorned the bottom of
+their skirts, up to that little knot of riband in the hair, which had
+come to replace the old appalling edifice of ten stories high, in
+hierarchic succession of duchess, solitary, musketeer, crescent,
+firmament, tenth heaven, and mouse.[117] The oldest contributor was
+Lenglet du Fresnoy, whose book on the Method of Studying History is
+still known to those who have examined the development of men's ideas
+about the relations of the present to the past. Lenglet was born in
+1674. The youngest of the band was Condorcet, who was born nearly
+seventy years later (1743). One veteran, Morellet, who had been, the
+schoolmate of Turgot and Lomenie de Brienne, lived to think of many
+things more urgent than Faith, Fils de Dieu, and Fundamentals. He
+survived the Revolution, the Terror, the Empire, Waterloo, the
+Restoration, and died in 1819, within sight of the Holy Alliance and the
+Peterloo massacre. From the birth of Lenglet to the death of
+Morellet--what an arc of the circle of western experience!
+
+No one will ask whether the keen eye, and stimulating word, and helpful
+hand of Voltaire were wanting to an enterprise which was to awaken men
+to new love of tolerance, enlightenment, charity, and justice. Voltaire
+was playing the refractory courtier at Potsdam when the first two
+volumes appeared. With characteristic vehemence, he instantly pronounced
+it a work which should be the glory of France, and the shame of its
+persecutors. Diderot and D'Alembert were raising an immortal edifice,
+and he would gladly furnish them with a little stone here or there,
+which they might find convenient to stuff into some corner or crevice in
+the wall. He was incessant in his industry. Unlike those feebler and
+more consequential spirits, the _petits-maitres_ of thought, by whom
+editors are harassed and hindered, this great writer was as willing to
+undertake small subjects as large ones, and to submit to all the
+mutilations and modifications which the exigencies of the work and the
+difficulties of its conductors recommended to them.[118] As the
+structure progresses, his enthusiasm waxes warmer. Diderot and his
+colleague are cutting their wings for a flight to posterity. They are
+Atlas and Hercules bearing a world upon their shoulders. It is the
+greatest work in the world; it is a superb pyramid; its printing-office
+is the office for the instruction of the human race; and so forth, in
+every phrase of stimulating sympathy and energetic interest. Nor does
+his sympathy blind him to faults of execution. Voltaire's good sense and
+sound judgment were as much at the service of his friends in warning
+them of shortcomings, as in eulogising what they achieved. And he had
+good faith enough to complain to his friends, instead of complaining of
+them. In one place he tells them, what is perfectly true, that their
+journeymen are far too declamatory, and too much addicted to substitute
+vague and puerile dissertations for that solid instruction which is what
+the reader of an Encyclopaedia seeks. In another he remonstrates against
+certain frivolous affectations, and some of the coxcombries of literary
+modishness. Everywhere he recommends them to insist on a firm and
+distinct method in their contributors--etymologies, definitions,
+examples, reasons, clearness, brevity. "You are badly seconded," he
+writes; "there are bad soldiers in the army of a great general."[119] "I
+am sorry to see that the writer of the article _Hell_ declares that
+hell was a point in the doctrine of Moses; now by all the devils that is
+not true. Why lie about it? Hell is an excellent thing, to be sure, but
+it is evident that Moses did not know it. 'Tis this world that is
+hell."[120]
+
+D'Alembert in reply always admitted the blemishes for which the
+patriarch and master reproached them, but urged various pleas in
+extenuation. He explains that Diderot is not always the master, either
+to reject or to prune the articles that are offered to him.[121] A
+writer who happened to be useful for many excellent articles would
+insist as the price of good work that they should find room for his bad
+work also; and so forth. "No doubt we have bad articles in theology and
+metaphysics, but with theologians for censors, and a privilege, I defy
+you to make them any better. There are other articles that are less
+exposed to the daylight, and in them all is repaired. Time will enable
+people to distinguish what we have thought from what we have said."[122]
+This last is a bitter and humiliating word, but before any man hastens
+to cast a stone, let him first make sure that his own life is free from
+every trace of hypocritical conformity and mendacious compliance.
+Condorcet seems to make the only remark that is worth making, when he
+says that the true shame and disgrace of these dissemblings lay not with
+the writers, whose only other alternative was to leave the stagnation
+of opinion undisturbed, but with the ecclesiastics and ministers whose
+tyranny made dissimulation necessary. And the veil imposed by authority
+did not really serve any purpose of concealment. Every reader was let
+into the secret of the writer's true opinion of the old mysteries, by
+means of a piquant phrase, an adroit parallel, a significant reference,
+an equivocal word of dubious panegyric. Diderot openly explains this in
+the pages of the Encyclopaedia itself. "In all cases," he says, "where a
+national prejudice would seem to deserve respect, the particular article
+ought to set it respectfully forth, with its whole procession of
+attractions and probabilities. But the edifice of mud ought to be
+overthrown and an unprofitable heap of dust scattered to the wind, by
+references to articles in which solid principles serve as a base for the
+opposite truths. This way of undeceiving men operates promptly on minds
+of the right stamp, and it operates infallibly and without any
+troublesome consequences, secretly and without disturbance, on minds of
+every description."[123] "Our fanatics feel the blows," cried D'Alembert
+complacently, "though they are sorely puzzled to tell from which side
+they come."[124]
+
+It is one of the most deplorable things in the history of literature to
+see a man endowed with Diderot's generous conceptions and high social
+aims, forced to stoop to these odious economies. In reading his
+Prospectus, and still more directly in his article,
+
+_Encyclopedie_, we are struck by the beneficence and breadth of the
+great designs which inspire and support him. The Encyclopaedia, it has
+been said, was no peaceful storehouse in which scholars and thinkers of
+all kinds could survey the riches they had acquired; it was a gigantic
+siege-engine and armoury of weapons of attack.[125] This is only true in
+a limited sense of one part of the work, and that not the most important
+part. Such a judgment is only possible for one who has not studied the
+book itself, or else who is ignorant of the social requirements of
+France at the time. We shall show this presently in detail. Meanwhile it
+is enough to make two observations. The implements which the
+circumstances of the time made it necessary to use as weapons of attack,
+were equally fitted for the acquisition in a happier season of those
+treasures of thought and knowledge which are the object of disinterested
+research. And what is still more important, we have to observe that it
+was the characteristic note and signal glory of the French revolutionary
+school, to subordinate mere knowledge to the practical work of raising
+society up from the corruption and paralysis to which it had been
+brought by the double action of civil and ecclesiastical authority. The
+efforts of the Encyclopaedists were not disinterested in the sense of
+being vague blows in the air. Their aim was not theory but practice, not
+literature but life. The Encyclopaedists were no doubt all men of battle,
+and some of them were hardly more than mere partisans.
+
+But Diderot at least had constantly in mind the great work which
+remained after the battle should be won. He was profoundly conscious
+that the mere accumulation of knowledge of the directly physical facts
+of the universe would take men a very short way towards reconstruction.
+And he struck the key-note in such admirable passages as this: "One
+consideration especially that we ought never to lose from sight is that,
+if we ever banish a man, or the thinking and contemplative being, from
+above the surface of the earth, this pathetic and sublime spectacle of
+nature becomes no more than a scene of melancholy and silence. The
+universe is dumb; the darkness and silence of the night take possession
+of it.... It is the presence of man that gives its interest to the
+existence of other beings; and what better object can we set before
+ourselves in the history of these beings, than to accept such a
+consideration? Why shall we not introduce man into our work in the same
+place which he holds in the universe? Why shall we not make him a common
+centre? Is there in infinite space any other point from which we can
+with greater advantage draw those immense lines that we propose to
+extend to all other points? What a vivid and softening reaction must
+result between man and the beings by whom he is surrounded?... Man is the
+single term from which we ought to set out, and to which we ought to
+trace all back, if we would please, interest, touch, even in the most
+arid reflections and the driest details. If you take away my own
+existence and the happiness of my fellows, of what concern to me is all
+the rest of nature."[126]
+
+In this we hear the voice of the new time, as we do in his exclamation
+that the perfection of an Encyclopaedia is the work of centuries;
+centuries had to elapse before the foundations could be laid; centuries
+would have to elapse before its completion: "_mais a la poserite, et_ A
+L'ETRE QUI NE MEURT POINT!"[127] These exalted ideas were not a
+substitute for arduous labour. In all that Diderot writes upon his
+magnificent undertaking, we are struck by his singular union of common
+sense with elevation, of simplicity with grasp, of suppleness with
+strength, of modesty with hopeful confidence. On occasions that would
+have tempted a man of less sincerity and less seriousness to bombast and
+inflation, his sense of the unavoidable imperfections of so vast a work
+always makes itself felt through his pride in its lofty aim and
+beneficent design. The weight of the burden steadied him, and the
+anxiety of the honest and laborious craftsman mastered the impulses of
+rhetoric.
+
+Before going further into the general contents of the Encyclopaedia, we
+shall briefly describe the extraordinary succession of obstacles and
+embarrassments against which its intrepid conductor was compelled to
+fight his way. The project was fully conceived and its details worked
+out between 1745 and 1748. The Encyclopedia was announced in 1750, in a
+Prospectus of which Diderot was the author. At length in 1751 the first
+volume of the work itself was given to the public, followed by the
+second in January 1752. The clerical party at once discerned what
+tremendous fortifications, with how deadly an armament, were rising up
+in face of their camp. The Jesuits had always been jealous of an
+enterprise in which they had not been invited to take a part. They had
+expected at least to have the control of the articles on theology. They
+now were bent on taking the work into their own hands, and orthodoxy
+hastily set all the machinery of its ally, authority, in vigorous
+motion.
+
+The first attack was indirect. An abbe de Prades sustained a certain
+thesis in an official exercise at the Sorbonne, and Diderot was
+suspected, without good reason, of being its true author. An examination
+of its propositions was ordered. It was pronounced pernicious,
+dangerous, and tending to deism, chiefly on account of some too
+suggestive comparisons between the miraculous healings in the New
+Testament, and those ascribed in the more ancient legend to AEsculapius.
+Other grounds of vehement objection were found in the writer's
+maintenance of the Lockian theory of the origin of our ideas. To deny
+the innateness of ideas was roundly asserted to be materialism and
+atheism. The abbe de Prades was condemned, and deprived of his license
+(Jan 27, 1752). As he was known to be a friend of Diderot, and was
+suspected of being the writer of articles on theology in the
+Encyclopaedia, the design of the Jesuit cabal in ruining De Prades was
+to discredit the new undertaking, and to induce the government to
+prohibit it. Their next step was to procure a pastoral from the
+archbishop of Paris. This document not only condemned the heretical
+propositions of De Prades, but referred in sombre terms to unnamed works
+teeming with error and impiety. Every one understood the reference, and
+among its effects was an extension of the vogue and notoriety of the
+Encyclopaedia.[128] The Jesuits were not allowed to retain a monopoly of
+persecuting zeal, and the Jansenists refused to be left behind in the
+race of hypocritical intrigue. The bishop of Auxerre, who belonged to
+this party, followed his brother prelate of Paris in a more direct
+attack, in which he included not only the Encyclopaedia, but
+Montesquieu and Buffon. De Prades took to flight. D'Alembert commended
+him to Voltaire, then at Berlin. The king was absent, but Voltaire gave
+royal protection to the fugitive until Frederick's return. De Prades was
+then at once taken into favour and appointed reader to the king. He
+proved but a poor martyr, however, for he afterwards retracted his
+heresies, got a benefice, and was put into prison by Frederick for
+giving information to his French countrymen during the Seven Years'
+War.[129] Unfortunately neither orthodoxy nor heterodoxy has any
+exclusive patent for monopoly of rascals.
+
+Meanwhile Diderot wrote on his behalf an energetic and dignified reply
+to the aggressive pastoral. This apology is not such a masterpiece of
+eloquence as the magnificent letter addressed by Rousseau ten years
+later to the archbishop of Paris, after the pastoral against Emilius.
+But Diderot's vindication of De Prades is firm, moderate, and closely
+argumentative. The piece is worth turning to in our own day, when great
+dignitaries of the churches too often show the same ignorance, the same
+temerity, and the same reckless want of charity, as the bishop of
+Auxerre showed a hundred and twenty years ago. They resort to the very
+same fallacies by way of shield against scientific truths or
+philosophical speculations that happen not to be easily reconcilable
+with their official opinions. "I know nothing so indecent," says
+Diderot, "and nothing so injurious to religion as these vague
+declamations of theologians against reason. One would suppose, to hear
+them, that men could only enter into the bosom of Christianity as a herd
+of cattle enter into a stable; and that we must renounce our common
+sense either to embrace our religion or to remain in it.... Such
+principles as yours are made to frighten small souls; everything alarms
+them, because they perceive clearly the consequences of nothing; they
+set up connections among things which have nothing to do with one
+another; they spy danger in any method of arguing which is strange to
+them; they float at hazard between truths and prejudices which they
+never distinguish, and to which they are equally attached; and all
+their life is passed in crying out either miracle or impiety." In an
+eloquent peroration, which is not more eloquent than it is instructive,
+De Prades is made to turn round on his Jansenist censor, and reproach
+him with the disturbance with which the intestine rivalries of Jansenist
+and Jesuit had afflicted the faithful. "It is the abominable testimony
+of your convulsions," he cries, "that has overthrown the testimony of
+miracles. It is the fatuous audacity with which your fanatics have
+confronted persecution, that has annihilated the evidence of the
+martyrs. It is your declamations against sovereign pontiffs, against
+bishops, against all the orders of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, that
+have covered priest, altar, and creed with opprobrium. If the pope, the
+bishops, the priests, the simple faithful, the whole church, if its
+mysteries, its sacraments, its temples, its ceremonies, have fallen into
+contempt, yours, yours, is the handiwork."[130]
+
+Bourdaloue more than half a century before had taunted the free-thinkers
+of his day with falseness and inconsistency in taking sides with the
+Jansenists, whose superstitions they notoriously held in open contempt.
+The motive for the alliance was tolerably obvious. The Jansenists, apart
+from their theology, were above all else the representatives of
+opposition to authority. It was for this that Lewis XIV. counted them
+worse than atheists. The Jesuits, it has been well said in keeping down
+their enemies by force, became the partisans of absolute government,
+and upheld it on every occasion. The Jansenists, after they had been
+crushed by violence, began to feel to what excesses power might be
+brought. From being speculative enemies to freedom as a theory, they
+became, through the education of persecution, the partisans of freedom
+in practice. The quarrel of Molinists and Jansenists, from a question of
+theology, grew into a question of human liberty.[131]
+
+Circumstances had now changed. The free-thinkers were becoming strong
+enough to represent opposition to authority on their own principles and
+in their own persons. Diderot's vigorous remonstrance with the bishop of
+Auxerre incidentally marks for us the definite rupture of philosophic
+sympathy for the Jansenist champions. "It is your disputatiousness," he
+said, "which within the last forty years has made far more unbelievers
+than all the productions of philosophy." As we cannot too clearly
+realise, it was the flagrant social incompetence of the church which
+brought what they called Philosophy, that is to say Liberalism, into
+vogue and power. Locke's Essay had been translated in 1700, but it had
+made no mark, and as late as 1725 the first edition of the translation
+remained unsold. It was the weakness and unsightly decrepitude of the
+ecclesiastics which opened the way for the thinkers.
+
+This victory, however, was not yet. Diderot had still a dismal
+wilderness to traverse. He was not without secret friends even in the
+camp of his enemies.
+
+After his reply to Pere Berthier's attack on the Prospectus, he
+received an anonymous letter to the effect that if he wished to avenge
+himself on the Jesuits, there were both important documents and money at
+his command. Diderot replied that he was in no want of money, and that
+he had no time to spare for Jesuit documents.[132] He trusted to reason.
+Neither reason nor eloquence availed against the credit at court of the
+ecclesiastical cabal. The sale of the second volume of the Encyclopaedia
+was stopped by orders which Malesherbes was reluctantly compelled to
+issue. A decree of the king's council (Feb. 7, 1752) suppressed both
+volumes, as containing maxims hostile to the royal authority and to
+religion. The publishers were forbidden to reprint them, and the
+booksellers were forbidden to deliver any copies that might still be in
+hand. The decree, however, contained no prohibition of the continuance
+of the work. It was probably not meant to do anything more serious than
+to pacify the Jesuits, and lend an apparent justification to the
+officious pastorals of the great prelates. Some even thought that the
+aim of the government was to forestall severer proceedings on the part
+of the parliament of lawyers;[133] for corporations of lawyers have
+seldom been less bigoted or obstructive than corporations of churchmen.
+Nor were lawyers and priests the only foes. Even the base and despicable
+jealousies of booksellers counted for something in the storm.[134]
+
+A curious triumph awaited the harassed Diderot.
+
+He was compelled, under pain of a second incarceration, to hand over to
+the authorities all the papers, proof-sheets, and plates in his
+possession. The Jesuit cabal supposed that if they could obtain the
+materials for the future volumes, they could easily arrange and
+manipulate them to suit their own purposes. Their ignorance and
+presumption were speedily confounded. In taking Diderot's papers, they
+had forgotten, as Grimm says, to take his head and his genius: they had
+forgotten to ask him for a key to articles which, so far from
+understanding, they with some confusion vainly strove even to decipher.
+The government was obliged (May 1752) to appeal to Diderot and
+D'Alembert to resume a work for which their enemies had thus proved
+themselves incompetent. Yet, by one of the meannesses of decaying
+authority, the decree of three months before was left suspended over
+their heads.[135]
+
+The third volume of the Encyclopaedia appeared in the autumn of 1753.
+D'Alembert prefixed an introduction, vindicating himself and his
+colleague with a manliness, a sincerity, a gravity, a fire, that are
+admirable and touching. "What," he concluded, "can malignity henceforth
+devise against two men of letters, trained long since by their
+meditations to fear neither injustice nor poverty; who having learnt by
+a long and mournful experience, not to despise, but to mistrust and
+dread men, have the courage to love them, and the prudence to flee
+them?... After having been the stormy and painful occupation of the
+most precious years of our life, this work will perhaps be the solace of
+its close. May it, when both we and our enemies alike have ceased to
+exist, be a durable monument of the good intention of the one, and the
+injustice of the other.... Let us remember the fable of Bocalina: 'A
+traveller was disturbed by the importunate chirrupings of the
+grasshoppers; he would fain have slain them every one, but only got
+belated and missed his way; he need only have fared peacefully on his
+road, and the grasshoppers would have died of themselves before the end
+of a week.'"[136] A volume was now produced in each year, until the
+autumn of 1757 and the issue of the seventh volume. This brought the
+work down to Gyromancy and Gythiuin. Then there arose storms and
+divisions which marked a memorable epoch alike in the history of the
+book, in the life of Diderot and others, and in the thought of the
+century. The progress of the work in popularity during the five years
+between 1752 and 1757 had been steady and unbroken. The original
+subscribers were barely two thousand. When the fourth volume appeared,
+there were three thousand. The seventh volume found nearly a thousand
+more.[137] Such prodigious success wrought the chagrin of the party of
+superstition to fever heat. As each annual volume came from the press
+and found a wider circle of readers than its predecessor, their malice
+and irritation waxed a degree more intense. They scattered malignant
+rumours abroad; they showered pamphlets; no imputation was too odious or
+too ridiculous for them. Diderot, D'Alembert, Voltaire, Rousseau,
+Buffon, were declared to have organised a league of writers, with the
+deliberate purpose of attacking the public tranquillity and overthrowing
+society. They were denounced as heads of a formal conspiracy, a
+clandestine association, a midnight band, united in a horrible community
+of pestilent opinions and sombre interests.
+
+In the seventh volume an article appeared which made the ferment angrier
+than it had ever been. D'Alembert had lately been the guest of Voltaire
+at Ferney, whence he had made frequent visits to Geneva. In his
+intercourse with the ministers of that famous city, he came to the
+conclusion that their religious opinions were really Socinian, and when
+he wrote the article on Geneva he stated this. He stated it in such a
+way as to make their heterodox opinions a credit to Genevese pastors,
+because he associated disbelief in the divinity of Jesus Christ, in
+mysteries of faith, and in eternal punishment, with a practical life of
+admirable simplicity, purity, and tolerance. Each line of this eulogy on
+the Socinian preachers of Geneva, veiled a burning and contemptuous
+reproach against the cruel and darkened spirit of the churchmen in
+France. Jesuit and Jansenist, loose abbes and debauched prelates, felt
+the quivering of the arrow in the quick, as they read that the morals of
+the Genevese pastors were exemplary; that they did not pass their lives
+in furious disputes upon unintelligible points; that they brought no
+indecent and persecuting accusation against one another before the civil
+magistrate. There was gall and wormwood to the orthodox bigot in the
+harmless statement that "Hell, which is one of the principal articles of
+our belief, has ceased to be one with many of the ministers of Geneva;
+it would be, according to them, a great insult to the divinity, to
+imagine that this Being, so full of justice and goodness, is capable of
+punishing our faults by an eternity of torment: they explain in as good
+a sense as they can the formal passages of Scripture which are contrary
+to their opinion, declaring that we ought never in the sacred books to
+take anything literally, that seems to wound humanity and reason." And
+we may be sure that D'Alembert was thinking less of the consistory and
+the great council of Geneva, than of the priests and the parliament of
+Paris, when he praised the Protestant pastors, not only for their
+tolerance, but for confining themselves within their proper functions,
+and for being the first to set an example of submission to the
+magistrates and the laws. The intention of this elaborate and, reasoned
+account of the creed and practice of a handful of preachers in a
+heretical town, could not be mistaken by those at whom it was directed.
+It produced in the black ranks of official orthodoxy fully as angry a
+shock as its writer could have designed.
+
+The church had not yet, we must remember, borrowed the principles of
+humanity and tolerance from atheists. It was not the comparatively
+purified Christian doctrine of our own time with which the
+Encyclopaedists did battle, but an organised corporation, with
+exceptional tribunals, with special material privileges, with dungeons
+and chains at their disposal. We have to realise that official religion
+was then a strange union of Byzantine decrepitude, with the energetic
+ferocity of the Holy Office. Within five years of this indirect plea of
+D'Alembert for tolerance and humanity, Calas was murdered by the
+orthodoxy of Toulouse. Nearly ten years later (1766), we find Lewis XV.,
+with the steam of the Parc aux Cerfs about him, rewarded by the loyal
+acclamations of a Parisian crowd, for descending from his carriage as a
+priest passed bearing the sacrament, and prostrating himself in the mud
+before the holy symbol.[138] In the same year the youth La Barre was
+first tortured, then beheaded, then burnt, for some presumed disrespect
+to the same holy symbol--then become the hateful ensign of human
+degradation, of fanatical cruelty, of rancorous superstition. Yet I
+should be sorry to be unjust. It is to be said that even in these bad
+days when religion meant cruelty and cabal, the one or two men who
+boldly withstood to the face the king and the Pompadour for the vileness
+of their lives, were priests of the church.
+
+D'Alembert's article hardly goes beyond what to us seem the axioms of
+all men of sense. We must remember the time. Even members of the
+philosophic party itself, like Grimm, thought the article misplaced and
+hardy.[139] The Genevese ministers indignantly repudiated the compliment
+of Socinianism, and the eulogy of being rather less irrational than
+their neighbours. Voltaire read and read again with delight, and plied
+the writer with reiterated exhortations in every key, not to allow
+himself to be driven from the great work by the raging of the heathen
+and the vain imaginings of the people.[140]
+
+While the storm seemed to be at its height, an incident occurred which
+let loose a new flood of violent passion. Helvetius published that
+memorable book in which he was thought to have told all the world its
+own secret. His _De l'Esprit_ came out in 1758.[141] It provoked a
+general insurrection of public opinion. The devout and the heedless
+agreed in denouncing it as scandalous, licentious, impious, and pregnant
+with peril. The philosophic party felt that their ally had dealt a sore
+blow to liberty of thought and the free expression of opinion.
+"Philosophy," said Grimm, by philosophy, as I have said, meaning
+Liberalism, "will long feel the effect of the rising of opinion which
+this author has caused by his book; and for having described too freely
+a morality that is bad and false in itself, M. Helvetius will have to
+reproach himself with all the restraints that are now sure to be imposed
+on the few men of lofty genius who still are left to us, whose destiny
+was to enlighten their fellows, and to spread truth over the
+earth."[142]
+
+At the beginning of 1759 the procureur-general laid an information
+before the court against Helvetius's book, against half a dozen minor
+publications, and finally against the Encyclopaedia. The _De l'Esprit_
+was alleged to be a mere abridgment of the Encyclopaedia, and the
+Encyclopaedia was denounced as being the opprobrium of the nation by its
+impious maxims and its hostility to morals and religion. The court
+appointed nine commissaries to examine the seven volumes, suspending
+their further sale or delivery in the meanwhile. When the commissaries
+sent in their report a month later, the parliament was dissatisfied
+with its tenour, and appointed four new examiners, two of them being
+theologians and two of them lawyers. Before the new censors had time to
+do their work, the Council of State interposed with an arbitrary decree
+(March 1759) suppressing the privilege which had been conceded in 1746;
+prohibiting the sale of the seven volumes already printed, and the
+printing of any future volumes under pain of exemplary punishment.[143]
+The motive for this intervention has never been made plain. One view is
+that the king's government resented the action of the law courts, and
+that the royal decree was only an episode in the quarrel then raging
+between the crown and the parliaments. Another opinion is that
+Malesherbes or Choiseul was anxious to please the dauphin and the
+Jesuit party at Versailles. The most probable explanation is that the
+authorities were eager to silence one at least of the three elements of
+opposition, the Jansenists, the lawyers, and the philosophers,--who
+were then distracting the realm. The two former were beyond their
+direct reach. They threw themselves upon the foe who happened to be
+most accessible.
+
+The government, however, had no intention of finally exterminating an
+enemy who might at some future day happen to be a convenient ally. They
+encouraged or repressed the philosophers according to the political
+calculations of the moment, sometimes according to the caprices of the
+king's mistress, or even a minister's mistress. When the clergy braved
+the royal authority, the hardiest productions were received with
+indulgence. If the government were reduced to satisfy the clergy, then
+even the very commonplaces of the new philosophy became ground for
+accusation. The Encyclopaedia was naturally exposed in a special degree
+to such alternations of favour and suspicion.[144] The crisis of 1759
+furnishes a curious illustration of this. As we have seen, in the spring
+of that year the privilege was withdrawn from the four associated
+booksellers, and the continuance of the work strictly prohibited. Yet
+the printing was not suspended for a week. Fifty compositors were busily
+setting up a book which the ordinance of the government had decisively
+forbidden under heavy penalties.
+
+The same kind of connivance was practised to the advantage of other
+branches of the opposition. Thirty years before this, the organ of the
+Jansenist party was peremptorily suppressed. The police instituted a
+rigorous search, and seized the very presses on which the Nouvelles
+Ecclesiastiques was being printed. But the journal continued to appear,
+and was circulated, just as regularly as before.[145]
+
+The history of the policy of authority towards the Encyclopaedia is only
+one episode in the great lesson of the reign of Lewis XV. It was long a
+common mistake to think of this king's system of government as violent
+and tyrannical. In truth, its failure and confusion resulted less from
+the arbitrariness of its procedure, than from the hopeless absence of
+tenacity, conviction, and consistency in the substance and direction of
+its objects. And this, again, was the result partly of the complex and
+intractable nature of the opposition with which successive ministers had
+to deal, and partly of the overpowering strength of those Asiatic maxims
+of government which Richelieu and Lewis XIV. had invested with such
+ruinous prestige. The impatience and charlatanry of emotional or
+pseudo-scientific admirers of a personal system blind them to the
+permanent truth, of which the succession of the decrepitude of Lewis XV.
+to the strength of his great-grandfather, and of the decrepitude of
+Napoleon III. to the strength of his uncle, are only illustrations.
+
+The true interest of all these details about a mere book lies in the
+immense significance of the movement of political ideas and forces to
+which they belong. The true interest of all history lies in the
+spectacle which it furnishes of the growth and dissolution, the shock
+and the transformation, incessantly at work among the great groups of
+human conceptions. The decree against the Encyclopaedia marks the central
+moment of a collision between two antagonistic conceptions which
+disputed, and in France still dispute, with one another the shaping and
+control of institutions. One of these ideas is the exclusion of
+political authority from the sphere and function of directing opinion;
+it implies the absolute secularisation of government. The rival idea
+prompted the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the dragonnades, the
+revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and all the other acts of the same
+policy, which not only deprived France of thousands of the most
+conscientious and most ingenious of her sons, but warped and corrupted
+the integrity of the national conscience. It is natural that we should
+feel anger at the arbitrary attempt to arrest Diderot's courageous and
+enlightened undertaking. Yet in truth it was only the customary
+inference from an accepted principle, that it is the business or the
+right of governments to guide thought and regulate its expression. The
+Jesuits acted on this theory, and resorted to repressive power and the
+secular arm whenever they could. The Jansenists repudiated the
+principle, but eagerly practised it whenever the turn of intrigue gave
+them the chance.
+
+An extraordinary and unforeseen circumstance changed the external
+bearings of this critical conflict of ideas. The conception of the
+duties of the temporal authority in the spiritual sphere had been
+associated hitherto with Catholic doctrine. The decay of that doctrine
+was rapidly discrediting the conception allied with it. But the movement
+was interrupted. And it was interrupted by a man who suddenly stepped
+out from the ranks of the Encyclopaedists themselves. Rousseau from his
+solitary cottage at Montmorency (1758) fulminated the celebrated letter
+to D'Alembert on Stage Plays. The article on Geneva in the seventh
+volume of the Encyclopaedia had not only praised the pastors for their
+unbelief; it also assailed the time-honoured doctrine of the churches
+that the theatre is an institution from hell and an invention of devils.
+D'Alembert paid a compliment to his patriarch and master at Ferney, as
+well as shot a bolt at his ecclesiastical foes in Paris, by urging the
+people of Geneva to shake off irrational prejudices and straightway to
+set up a playhouse. Rousseau had long been brooding over certain private
+grievances of his own against Diderot; the dreary story has been told by
+me before, and happily need not be repeated.[146] He took the occasion
+of D'Alembert's mischievous suggestion to his native Geneva, not merely
+to denounce the drama with all the force and eloquence at his command,
+but formally to declare the breach between himself and Diderot. From
+this moment he treated the Holbachians--so he contemptuously styled the
+Encyclopaedists--as enemies of the human race and disseminators of the
+deadliest poisons.
+
+This was no mere quarrel of rival authors. It marked a fundamental
+divergence in thought, and proclaimed the beginning of a disastrous
+reaction in the very heart of the school of illumination. Among the most
+conspicuous elements of the reaction were these: the subordination of
+reason to emotion; the displacement of industry, science, energetic and
+many-sided ingenuity, by dreamy indolence; and finally, what brings us
+back to our starting-point, the suppression of opinions deemed to be
+anti-social by the secular arm. The old idea was brought back in a new
+dress; the absolutist conception of the function of authority,
+associated with a theistic doctrine. Unfortunately for France,
+Rousseau's idea prospered, and ended by vanquishing its antagonist. The
+reason is plain. Rousseau's idea exactly fitted in with the political
+traditions and institutions of the country. It was more easily and
+directly compatible than was the contending idea, with that temper and
+set of men's minds which tradition and institutions had fixed so
+disastrously deep in the national character.
+
+The crisis of 1758-59, then, is a date of the highest importance. It
+marks a collision between the old principle of Lewis XIV., of the
+Bartholomew Massacre, of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and the
+new rationalistic principle of spiritual emancipation. The old principle
+was decrepit, it was no longer able to maintain itself; the hounds were
+furious, but their fury was toothless. Before the new principle could
+achieve mastery, Rousseau had made mastery impossible. Two men came into
+the world at this very moment, whom destiny made incarnations of the
+discordant principles. Danton and Robespierre were both born in 1759.
+Diderot seems to have had a biblical presentiment, says Michelet. "We
+feel that he saw, beyond Rousseau, something sinister, a spectre of the
+future. Diderot-Danton already looks in the face of
+Rousseau-Robespierre."[147]
+
+A more vexatious incident now befell the all-daring, all-enduring
+Diderot, than either the decree of the Council or the schism of the
+heresiarch at Montmorency. D'Alembert declared his intention of
+abandoning the work, and urged his colleague to do the same. His letters
+to Voltaire show intelligibly enough how he brought himself to this
+resolution. "I am worn out," he says, "with the affronts and vexations
+of every kind that this work draws down upon us. The hateful and even
+infamous satires which they print against us, and which are not only
+tolerated, but protected, authorised, applauded, nay, actually commanded
+by the people with power in their hands; the sermons, or rather the
+tocsins that are rung against us at Versailles in the presence of the
+king, _nemine reclamante_; the new intolerable inquisition that they are
+bent on practising against the Encyclopaedia, by giving us new censors
+who are more absurd and more intractable than could be found at Goa;
+all these reasons, joined to some others, drive me to give up this
+accursed work once for all." He cared nothing for libels or stinging
+pamphlets in themselves, but libels permitted or ordered by those who
+could instantly have suppressed them, were a different thing, especially
+when they vomited forth the vilest personalities. He admitted that there
+were other reasons why he was bent on retiring, and it would appear that
+one of these reasons was dissatisfaction with the financial arrangements
+of the booksellers.[148]
+
+Voltaire for some time remonstrated against this retreat before the
+hated _Infame_. At length his opinion came round to D'Alembert's
+reiterated assertions of the shame and baseness of men of letters
+subjecting themselves to the humiliating yoke of ministers, priests, and
+police. Voltaire wrote to Diderot, protesting that before all things it
+was necessary to present a firm front to the foe; it would be atrocious
+weakness to continue the work after D'Alembert had quitted it; it was
+monstrous that such a genius as Diderot should make himself the slave of
+booksellers and the victim of fanatics. Must this dictionary, he asked,
+which is a hundred times more useful than Bayle's, be fettered with the
+superstition which it should annihilate; must they make terms with
+scoundrels who keep terms with none; could the enemies of reason, the
+persecutors of philosophers, the assassins of our kings, still dare to
+lift up their voices in such a century as that? "Men are on the eve of a
+great revolution in the human mind, and it is you to whom they are most
+of all indebted for it."[149]
+
+More than once Voltaire entreated Diderot to finish his work in a
+foreign country where his hands would be free. "No," said Diderot in a
+reply of pathetic energy; "to abandon the work is turning our back upon
+the breach, and to do precisely what the villains who persecute us
+desire. If you knew with what joy they have learnt D'Alembert's
+desertion! It is not for us to wait until the government have punished
+the brigands to whom they have given us up. Is it for us to complain,
+when they associate with us in their insults men who are so much better
+than ever we shall be? What ought we to do then? Do what becomes men of
+courage,--despise our foes, follow them up, and take advantage, as we
+have done, of the feebleness of our censors. If D'Alembert resumes, and
+we complete our work, is not that vengeance enough?... After all this,
+you will believe that I cling at any price to the Encyclopaedia, and you
+will be mistaken. My dear master, I am over forty. I am tired out with
+tricks and shufflings. I cry from morning till night for rest, rest; and
+scarcely a day passes when I am not tempted to go and live in obscurity
+and die in peace in the depths of my old country. There comes a time
+when all ashes are mingled. Then what will it boot me to have been
+Voltaire or Diderot, or whether it is your three syllables or my three
+syllables that survive? One must work, one must be useful, one owes an
+account of one's gifts, etcetera, etcetera. Be useful to men! Is it
+quite clear that one does more than amuse them, and that there is much
+difference between the philosopher and the flute-player? They listen to
+one or the other with pleasure or disdain, and remain what they were.
+The Athenians were never wickeder than in the time of Socrates, and
+perhaps all that they owe to his existence is a crime the more. That
+there is more spleen than good sense in all this, I admit--and back I go
+to the Encyclopaedia."[150]
+
+Thus for seven years the labour of conducting the vast enterprise fell
+upon Diderot alone. He had not only to write articles upon the most
+exhausting and various kinds of subjects; he had also to distribute
+topics among his writers, to shape their manuscripts, to correct
+proof-sheets, to supervise the preparation of the engravings, to write
+the text explanatory of them, and all this amid constant apprehension
+and alarm from the government and the police. He would have been free
+from persecution at Lausanne or at Leyden. The two great sovereigns of
+the north who thought it part of the trade of a king to patronise the
+new philosophy, offered him shelter at Petersburg or Berlin.[151]
+
+But how could he transport to the banks of the Neva or the Spree his
+fifty skilled compositors, his crafty engravers on copper-plate, and all
+the host of his industrial army? How could he find in those
+half-barbarous lands the looms and engines and thousand cunning
+implements and marvellous processes which he had under his eye and ready
+to his hand in France? And so he held fast to his post on the fifth
+floor of the house in the Rue Saint Benoit, a standing marvel to the
+world of letters for all time.
+
+As his toil was drawing to a close, he suddenly received the most
+mortifying of all the blows that were struck at him in the course of his
+prolonged, hazardous, and tormenting adventure. After the interruption
+in 1759, it was resolved to bring out the ten volumes which were still
+wanting, in a single issue. Le Breton was entrusted with the business of
+printing them. The manuscript was set in type, Diderot corrected the
+proof-sheets, saw the revises, and returned each sheet duly marked with
+his signature for the press. At this point the nefarious operation of Le
+Breton began. He and his foreman took possession of the sheets, and
+proceeded to retrench, cut out, and suppress every passage, line, or
+phrase, that appeared to them to be likely to provoke clamour or the
+anger of the government. They thus, of their own brute authority,
+reduced most of the best articles to the condition of fragments
+mutilated and despoiled of all that had been most valuable in them. The
+miscreants did not even trouble themselves to secure any appearance of
+order or continuity in these mangled skeletons of articles. Their
+murderous work done, they sent the pages to the press, and to make the
+mischief beyond remedy, they committed all the original manuscripts and
+proof-sheets to the flames. One day, when the printing was nearly
+completed (1764), Diderot having occasion to consult an article under
+the letter S, found it entirely spoiled. He stood confounded. An
+instant's thought revealed the printer's atrocity. He eagerly turned to
+the articles on which he and his subordinates had taken most pains, and
+found everywhere the same ravages and disorder. "The discovery," says
+Grimm, "threw him into a state of frenzy and despair which I shall never
+forget."[152] He wept tears of rage and torment in the presence of the
+criminal himself, and before wife and children and sympathising
+domestics. For weeks he could neither eat nor sleep. "For years," he
+cried to Le Breton, "you have been basely cheating me. You have
+massacred, or got a brute beast to massacre, the work of twenty good men
+who have devoted to you their time, their talents, their vigils, from
+love of right and truth, from the simple hope of seeing their ideas
+given to the public, and reaping from them a little consideration richly
+earned, which your injustice and thanklessness have now stolen from them
+for ever.... You and your book will be dragged through the mire; you
+will henceforth be cited as a man who has been guilty of an act of
+treachery, an act of vile hardihood, to which nothing that has ever
+happened in this world can be compared. Then you will be able to judge
+your panic terror, and the cowardly counsels of those barbarous
+Ostrogoths and stupid Vandals who helped you in the havoc you have
+made."[153]
+
+Yet he remained undaunted to the very last. His first movement to throw
+up the work, and denounce Le Breton's outrage to the subscribers and the
+world, was controlled. His labour had lost its charm. The monument was
+disfigured and defaced. He never forgot the horrible chagrin, and he
+never forgave the ignoble author of it. But the last stone was at length
+laid. In 1765 the subscribers received the concluding ten volumes of
+letterpress. The eleven volumes of plates were not completed until 1772.
+The copies bore Neufchatel on the title-page, and were distributed
+privately. The clergy in their assembly at once levelled a decree at the
+new book. The parliament quashed this, not from love of the book, but
+from hatred of the clergy. The government, however, ordered all who
+possessed the Encyclopaedia to deliver it over forthwith to the police.
+Eventually the copies were returned to their owners with some petty
+curtailments.
+
+Voltaire has left us a vivacious picture of authority in grave
+consultation over the great engine of destruction. With that we may
+conclude our account of its strange eventful history.
+
+     A servant of Lewis xv. told me that one day the king his
+     master supping at Trianon with a small party, the talk
+     happened to turn first upon the chase, and next on gunpowder.
+     Some one said that the best powder was made of equal parts of
+     saltpetre, of sulphur, and of charcoal. The Duke de la
+     Valliere, better informed, maintained that to make good
+     gunpowder you required one part of sulphur and one of charcoal
+     to five parts of saltpetre.
+
+     "It is curious," said the Duke de Nivernois, "that we should
+     amuse ourselves every day in killing partridges at Versailles,
+     and sometimes in killing men or getting ourselves killed on
+     the frontier, without knowing exactly how the killing is
+     done."
+
+     "Alas," said Madame de Pompadour, "we are all reduced to that
+     about everything in the world: I don't know how they compound
+     the rouge that I put on my cheeks, and I should be vastly
+     puzzled if they were to ask me how they make my silk
+     stockings."
+
+     "'Tis a pity, then," said the Duke de la Valliere, "that his
+     Majesty should have confiscated our Encyclopaedias, which cost
+     us a hundred pistoles apiece: we should soon find there an
+     answer to all our difficulties."
+
+     The king justified the confiscation: he had been warned that
+     one-and-twenty folios, that were to be found on the
+     dressing-tables of all the ladies, were the most dangerous
+     thing in all the world for the kingdom of France; and he meant
+     to find out for himself whether this were true or not, before
+     letting people read the book. When supper was over, he sent
+     three lackeys for the book, and they returned each with a good
+     deal of difficulty carrying seven volumes.
+
+     It was then seen from the article _Powder_ that the Duke de la
+     Valliere was right; and then Madame de Pompadour learnt the
+     difference between the old rouge of Spain, with which the
+     ladies of Madrid coloured their faces, and the rouge of the
+     ladies of Paris. She knew that the Greek and Roman ladies
+     were painted with the purple that came from the _murex_, and
+     that therefore our scarlet is the purple of the ancients; that
+     there was more saffron in the rouge of Spain, and more
+     cochineal in that of France.
+
+     She saw how they made her stockings by loom; and the machine
+     transported her with amazement.
+
+     Everyone threw himself on the volumes like the daughters of
+     Lycomedes on the ornaments of Ulysses; every one immediately
+     found all he sought. Those who were at law were surprised to
+     see their affair decided. The king read all about the rights
+     of his crown. "But upon my word," he said, "I can't tell why
+     they spoke so ill of this book." "Do you not see, sire," said
+     the Duke de Nivernois, "it is because the book is so good;
+     people never cry out against what is mediocre or common in
+     anything. If women seek to throw ridicule on a new arrival,
+     she is sure to be prettier than they are."
+
+     All this time they kept on turning over the leaves; and the
+     Count de C---- said aloud--"Sire, how happy you are, that
+     under your reign men should be found capable of understanding
+     all the arts and transmitting them to posterity. Everything is
+     here, from the way to make a pin down to the art of casting
+     and pointing your guns; from the infinitely little up to the
+     infinitely great. Thank God for having brought into the world
+     in your kingdom the men who have done such good work for the
+     whole universe. Other nations must either buy the
+     Encyclopaedia, or else they must pirate it. Take all my
+     property if you will, but give me back my Encyclopaedia."
+
+     "Yet they say," replied the king, "that there are many faults
+     in this work, necessary and admirable as it is."
+
+     "Sire," said the Count de C----, "there were at your supper
+     two ragouts which were failures; we left them uneaten, and yet
+     we had excellent cheer. Would you have had them throw all the
+     supper out of the window because of those two ragouts?..."
+
+     Envy and Ignorance did not count themselves beaten; the two
+     immortal sisters continued their cries, their cabals, their
+     persecutions. What happened? Foreigners brought out four
+     editions of this French book which in France was proscribed,
+     and they gained about 1,800,000 crowns.[154]
+
+In a monotonous world it is a pity to spoil a striking effect, yet one
+must be vigilant. It has escaped the attention of writers who have
+reproduced this lively scene, that Madame de Pompadour was dead before
+the volumes containing Powder and Rouge were born. The twenty-one
+volumes were not published until 1765, and she died in the spring of the
+previous year. But the substance of the story is probably true, though
+Voltaire has only made a slip in a name.
+
+As to the reference with which Voltaire impatiently concludes, we have
+to remember that the work was being printed at Geneva as it came out in
+Paris. It was afterwards reprinted as a whole both at Geneva (1777) and
+at Lausanne (1778). An edition appeared at Leghorn in 1770, and another
+at Lucca in 1771. Immediately after the completion of the Encyclopaedia
+there began to appear volumes of selections from it. The compilers of
+these anthologies (for instance of an _Esprit de l'Encydopedie_
+published at Geneva in 1768) were free from all intention of
+proselytising. They meant only to turn a more or less honest penny by
+serving up in neat duodecimos the liveliest, most curious, and most
+amusing pieces to be found in the immense mass of the folios of the
+original.
+
+The Encyclopaedia of Diderot, though not itself the most prodigious
+achievement on which French booksellers may pride themselves, yet
+inspired that achievement. In 1782 Panckoucke--a familiar name in the
+correspondence of Voltaire and the Voltairean family--conceived the plan
+of a Methodical Encyclopaedia. This colossal work, which really consists
+of a collection of special cyclopaedias for each of the special sciences,
+was not completed until 1832, and comprises one hundred and sixty-six
+volumes of text, with a score more volumes of plates. It has no unity of
+doctrine, no equal application of any set of philosophic principles, and
+no definite social aim. The only encyclopaedia since 1772 with which I am
+acquainted, that is planned with a view to the presentation of a general
+body of doctrine, is the unfinished Encyclopedie Nuevelle of Pierre
+Leroux and Jean Reynaud. This work was intended to apply the socialistic
+and spiritualistic ideas of its authors over the whole field of
+knowledge and speculation. The result is that it furnishes only a series
+of dissertations, and is not an encyclopaedia in the ordinary sense.[155]
+
+The booksellers at first spoke of the Encyclopaedia as an affair of two
+million livres. It appeared, however that its cost did not go much
+beyond one million one hundred and forty thousand livres. The gross
+return was calculated to be nearly twice as much. The price to the
+subscriber of the seven volumes up to 1757, of the ten volumes issued in
+1765, and of the eleven volumes of plates completed in 1772, amounted to
+nine hundred and eighty livres,[156] or about forty-three pounds
+sterling of that date, equivalent in value to more than three times the
+sum in money of to-day.
+
+The payment received by Diderot is a little doubtful, and the terms were
+evidently changed from time to time. His average salary, after
+D'Alembert had quitted him, seems to have amounted to about three
+thousand livres, or one hundred and thirty pounds sterling, per annum.
+This coincides with Grimm's statement that the total sum received by
+Diderot was sixty thousand livres, or about two thousand six hundred
+pounds sterling.[157] And to think, cried Voltaire, when he heard of
+Diderot's humble wage, that an army contractor makes twenty thousand
+livres a day! Voltaire himself had made a profit of more than half a
+million livres by a share in an army contract in the war of 1734, and
+his yearly income derived from such gains and their prudent investment
+was as high as seventy thousand livres, representing in value a sum not
+far short of ten thousand pounds a year of our present money.
+
+II.
+
+
+All writers on the movement of illumination in France in the eighteenth
+century, call our attention to the quick transformation, which took
+place after the middle of the century, of a speculative or philosophical
+agitation into a political or social one. Readers often find some
+difficulty in understanding plainly how or why this metamorphosis was
+brought about. The metaphysical question which men were then so fond of
+discussing, whether matter can think, appears very far removed indeed
+from the sphere of political conceptions. The psychological question
+whether our ideas are innate, or are solely given to us by experience
+through the sensations, may strike the publicist as having the least
+possible to do with the type of a government or the aims of a community.
+Yet it is really the conclusions to which men come in this region, that
+determine the quality of the civil sentiment and the significance of
+political organisation. The theological doctors who persecuted De Prades
+for suggestions of Locke's psychology, and for high treason against
+Cartesianism, were guided by a right instinct of self-preservation. De
+Maistre, by far the most acute and penetrating of the Catholic school,
+was never more clear-sighted than when he made a vigorous and deliberate
+onslaught upon Bacon, the centre of his movement against revolutionary
+principles.[158]
+
+As we have said before, the immediate force of speculative literature
+hangs on practical opportuneness. It was not merely because Bacon and
+Hobbes and Locke had written certain books, that the Encyclopaedists, who
+took up their philosophic succession, inevitably became a powerful
+political party, and multiplied their adherents in an increasing
+proportion as the years went on. From various circumstances the attack
+acquired a significance and a weight in France which it had never
+possessed in England. For one thing, physical science had in the
+interval taken immense strides. This both dwarfed the sovereignty of
+theology and theological metaphysics, and indirectly disposed men's
+minds for non-theological theories of moral as well as of physical
+phenomena. In France, again, the objects of the attack were inelastic
+and unyielding. Political speculation in England followed, and did not
+precede, political innovation and reform. In France its light played
+round institutions which were too deeply rooted in absolutism and
+privilege to be capable of substantial modification. Deism was
+comparatively impotent against the Church of England, first, because it
+was an intellectual movement, and not a social one; second, because the
+constitutional doctrines of the church were flexible. Deism in the hands
+of its French propagators became connected with social liberalism,
+because the Catholic church in those days was identified with all the
+ideas of repression. And the tendencies of deism in France grew more
+violently destructive, not only because religious superstition was
+grosser, but because that superstition was incorporated in a strong and
+inexpansible social structure.
+
+"It would be a mistake," wrote that sagacious and well-informed
+observer, D'Argenson, so early as 1753, "to attribute the loss of
+religion in France to the English philosophy, which has not gained more
+than a hundred philosophers or so in Paris, instead of setting it down
+to the hatred against the priests, which goes to the very last extreme.
+All minds are turning to discontent and disobedience, and everything is
+on the high road to a great revolution, both in religion and in
+government. And it will be a very different thing to that rude
+Reformation, a medley of superstition and freedom, which came to us from
+Germany in the sixteenth century! As our nation and our century are
+enlightened in so very different a fashion, they will go whither they
+ought to go; they will banish every priest, all priesthood, all
+revelation, all mystery." This, however, only represents the destructive
+side of the vast change which D'Argenson then foresaw, six-and-thirty
+years before its consummation. That change had also a constructive side.
+If one of its elements was hate, another and more important element was
+hope. This constructive and reforming spirit which made its way in the
+intelligence of the leading men in France from 1750 to 1789, was
+represented in the encyclopaedic confederation, and embodied in their
+forty folios. And, to return to our first point, it was directly and
+inseparably associated with the philosophy of Bacon and Locke. What is
+the connection between their speculations and a vehement and energetic
+spirit of social reform? We have no space here to do more than barely
+hint the line of answer.
+
+The broad features of the speculative revolution of which the
+Encyclopaedia was the outcome, lie on the surface of its pages and cannot
+be mistaken. The transition from Descartes to Newton meant the definite
+substitution of observation for hypothesis. The exaltation of Bacon
+meant the advance from supernatural explanations to explanations from
+experience. The acceptance and development of the Lockian psychology
+meant the reference of our ideas to bodily sensations, and led men by
+what they thought a tolerably direct path to the identification of mind
+with functions of matter. We need not here discuss the philosophical
+truth or adequateness of these ways of considering the origin and nature
+of knowledge, or the composition of human character. All that now
+concerns us is to mark their tendency. That tendency clearly is to expel
+Magic as the decisive influence among us, in favour of ordered relations
+of cause and effect, only to be discovered by intelligent search. The
+universe began to be more directly conceived as a group of phenomena
+that are capable of rational and connected explanation. Then, the wider
+the area of law, the greater is man's consciousness of his power of
+controlling forces, and securing the results that he desires. Objective
+interests and their conditions acquire an increasing preponderance in
+his mind. On the other hand, as the limits of science expand, so do the
+limits of nescience become more definite. The more we know of the
+universal order, the more are we persuaded, however gradually and
+insensibly, that certain matters which men believed themselves to know
+outside of this phenomenal order, are in truth inaccessible by those
+instruments of experience and observation to which we are indebted for
+other knowledge. Hence, a natural inclination to devote our faculty to
+the forces within our control, and to withdraw it from vain industry
+about forces--if they be forces--which are beyond our control and beyond
+our apprehension. Thus man becomes the centre of the world to himself,
+nature his servant and minister, human society the field of his
+interests and his exertions. The sensational psychology, again, whether
+scientifically defensible or not, clearly tends to heighten our idea of
+the power of education and institutions upon character. The more vividly
+we realise the share of external impressions in making men what they
+are, the more ready we shall be to concern ourselves with external
+conditions and their improvement. The introduction of the positive
+spirit into the observation of the facts of society was not to be
+expected until the Cartesian philosophy, with its reliance on
+inexplicable intuitions and its exaggeration of the method of
+hypothesis, had been laid aside.
+
+Diderot struck a key-note of difference between the old Catholic spirit
+and the new social spirit, between quietist superstition and energetic
+science, in the casual sentence in his article on alms-houses and
+hospitals: "_It would be far more important to work at the prevention of
+misery, than to multiply places of refuge for the miserable_."
+
+It is very easy to show that the Encyclopaedists had not established an
+impregnable scientific basis for their philosophy. Anybody can now see
+that their metaphysic and psychology were imperfectly thought out. The
+important thing is that their metaphysic and psychology were calculated,
+notwithstanding all their superficialities, to inspire an energetic
+social spirit, because they were pregnant with humanistic sentiment. To
+represent the Encyclopaedia as the gospel of negation and denial is to
+omit four-fifths of its contents. Men may certainly, if they please,
+describe it as merely negative work, for example, to denounce such
+institutions as examination and punishment by Torture (See _Question,
+Peine_), but if so, what gospel of affirmation can bring better
+blessings?[159] If the metaphysic of these writers had been a
+thousandfold more superficial than it was, what mattered that, so long
+as they had vision for every one of the great social improvements on
+which the progress and even the very life of the nation depended? It
+would be obviously unfair to say that reasoned interest in social
+improvement is incompatible with a spiritualistic doctrine, but we are
+justified in saying that energetic faith in possibilities of social
+progress has been first reached through the philosophy of sensation and
+experience.
+
+In describing the encyclopaedic movement as being, among other things,
+the development of political interest under the presiding influence of a
+humanistic philosophy, we are using the name of politics in its widest
+sense. The economic conditions of a country, and the administration of
+its laws, are far more vitally related to its well-being than the form
+of its government. The form of government is indeed a question of the
+first importance, but then this is owing in a paramount degree to the
+influence which it may have upon the other two sets of elements in the
+national life. Form of government is like the fashion of a man's
+clothes; it may fret or may comfort him, may be imposing or mean, may
+react upon his spirits to elate or depress them. In either case it is
+less intimately related to his welfare than the state of his blood and
+tissues. In saying, then, that the Encyclopaedists began a political
+work, what is meant is that they drew into the light of new ideas,
+groups of institutions, usages, and arrangements which affected the real
+well-being and happiness of France, as closely as nutrition affected the
+health and strength of an individual Frenchman. It was the
+Encyclopaedists who first stirred opinion in France against the
+iniquities of colonial tyranny and the abominations of the slave trade.
+They demonstrated the folly and wastefulness and cruelty of a fiscal
+system that was eating the life out of the land. They protested in
+season and out of season against arrangements which made the
+administration of justice a matter of sale and purchase. They lifted up
+a strong voice against the atrocious barbarities of an antiquated penal
+code. It was this band of writers, organised by a harassed man of
+letters, and not the nobles swarming round Lewis XV., nor the churchmen
+singing masses, who first grasped the great principle of modern society,
+the honour that is owed to productive industry. They were vehement for
+the glories of peace, and passionate against the brazen glories of
+war.[160]
+
+We are not to suppose that the Encyclopaedia was the originating organ
+of either new methods or new social ideas. The exalted and peculiarly
+modern views about peace, for instance, were plainly inspired from the
+writings of the Abbe Saint Pierre (1658-1743)--one of the most original
+spirits of the century, who deserves to be remembered among other good
+services as the inventor of the word _bienfaisance_. Again, in the mass
+of the political articles we feel the immense impulse that was given to
+sociological discussion by the Esprit des Lois. Few questions are
+debated here, which Montesquieu had not raised, and none are debated
+without reference to Montesquieu's line of argument. The change of which
+we are conscious in turning from the Esprit des Lois to the Encyclopaedia
+is that political ideas have been grasped as instruments. Philosophy has
+become patriotism. The Encyclopaedists advanced with grave solicitude to
+the consideration of evils, to which the red-heeled parasites of
+Versailles were insolently and incorrigibly blind.
+
+The articles on Agriculture, for example, are admirable alike for the
+fulness and precision with which they expose the actual state of France;
+for the clearness with which they trace its deplorable inadequateness
+back to the true sources; and for the strong interest and sympathy in
+the subject, which they both exhibit and inspire. If now and again the
+touch is too idyllic, it was still a prodigious gain to let the country
+know in a definite way that of the fifty million arpents of cultivable
+land in the realm, more than one quarter lay either unbroken or
+abandoned. And it was a prodigious gain to arouse the attention of the
+general public to the causes of the forced deterioration of French
+agriculture, namely, the restrictions on trade in grain, the
+arbitrariness of the imposts, and the flight of the population to the
+large towns. Then the demonstration, corroborated in the pages of the
+Encyclopaedia by the two patriotic vaunts of contemporary English
+writers, of the stimulus given to agriculture by our system of free
+exports, contained one of the most useful lessons that the French had to
+learn.
+
+Again, there are some abuses which cannot be more effectively attacked,
+than by a mere statement of the facts in the plainest and least
+argumentative terms. The history of such an impost as the tax upon salt
+(_Gabelle_), and a bold outline of the random and incongruous fashions
+in which it was levied, were equivalent to a formal indictment. It
+needed no rhetoric nor discussion to heighten the harsh injustice of the
+rule that "persons who have changed domicile are still taxed for a
+certain time in the seat of their former abode, namely, farmers and
+labourers for one year, and all other tax-payers for two years, provided
+the parish to which they have removed is within the same district; and
+if otherwise, then farmers to pay for two years, and other persons for
+three years" (_Taille_). Thus a man under the given circumstances would
+have to pay double taxes for three years as a penalty for changing his
+dwelling. We already hear the murmur of the _cahiers_ of five-and-twenty
+years later in the account of the transports of joy with which the
+citizens of Lisieux saw the _taille proportionelle_ established (1718),
+and how numerous other cities sent up prayers that the same blessing
+might be conferred on them. "Reasons that it is not for us to divine,
+caused the rejection of these demands; so hard is it to do a good act,
+which everybody talks about, much more in order to seem to desire it,
+than from any intention of really doing it.... To illustrate the
+advantages of this plan, the impost of 1718 with all arrears for five
+years was discharged in twelve months without needless cost or dispute.
+By an extravagance more proper than any other to degrade humanity, the
+common happiness made malcontents of all that class whose prosperity
+depends on the misery of others,"--that is the privileged class.[161]
+
+It is no innate factiousness, as flighty critics of French affairs
+sometimes imply, that has made civil equality the passion of modern
+France. The root of this passion is an undying memory of the curse that
+was inflicted on its citizens, morally and materially, by the fiscal
+inequalities of the old _regime_. The article, _Privilege_, urges the
+desirableness of inquiring into the grounds of the vast multitude of
+fiscal exemptions, and of abolishing all that were no longer associated
+with the performance of real and useful service. "A bourgeois," says
+the writer, anticipating a cry that was so soon to ring through the
+land, "a bourgeois in comfortable circumstances, and who could himself
+pay half of the _taille_ of a whole parish, if it were imposed in its
+due proportion,--on payment of the amount of his taxes for one or for
+two years, and often for less; without birth, education, or talents,
+buys a place in a local salt office, or some useless charge at court, or
+in the household of some prince.... This man proceeds to enjoy in the
+public eye all the exemptions possessed by the nobility and the high
+magistracy.... From such an abuse of privileges spring two very
+considerable evils: the poorer part of the citizens are always burdened
+beyond their strength, though they are the most useful to the State,
+since this class is composed of those who cultivate the land, and
+procure a subsistence for the upper classes; the other evil is that
+privileges disgust persons of education and talent with the idea of
+entering the magistracy or other professions demanding labour and
+application, and lead them to prefer small posts and paltry offices."
+And so forth, with a gravity and moderation, that were then common in
+political discussion in France. It gradually disappeared in 1789, when
+it was found that the privileged orders, even at that time, in their
+_cahiers_ steadily demanded the maintenance of every one of their most
+odious and iniquitous rights.[162]
+
+When it is said, then, that the Encyclopaedists deliberately prepared
+the way for a political revolution, let us remember that what they
+really did was to shed the light of rational discussion on such
+practical grievances as even the most fatuous conservative in France
+does not now dream of bringing back.
+
+Let us turn to two other of the most oppressive institutions that then
+scourged France. First the _Corvee_, or feudal rule which forced every
+unprivileged farmer and peasant in France to furnish so many days'
+labour for the maintenance of the highways. Arthur Young tells us, and
+the statement is confirmed by the Minutes of Turgot, that this wasteful,
+cruel, and inefficient system was annually the ruin of many hundreds of
+persons, and he mentions that no less than three hundred farmers were
+reduced to beggary in filling up a single vale in Lorraine.[163] Under
+this all-important head, the Encyclopaedia has an article that does not
+merely add to the knowledge of its readers by a history of the
+_corvees_, but proceeds to discuss, as in a pamphlet or review article,
+the inconveniences of the prevailing system, and presses schemes for
+avoiding them. Turgot had not yet shown in practice the only right
+substitute. The article was printed in 1754, and it was not until ten
+years later that this great administrator, then become intendant of the
+Limousin, did away in his district with compulsory personal service on
+the roads, and required in its place a money payment assessed on the
+parishes.[164] The writer of the article in the Encyclopaedia does not
+anticipate this obviously rational plan, but he paints a striking
+picture of the thousand abuses and miserable inefficiencies of the
+practice of _corvees_, and his piece illustrates that vigorous
+discussion of social subjects which the Encyclopaedia stimulated. It is
+worth remarking that this writer was a sub-engineer of roads and bridges
+in the generality of Tours. The case is one example among others of the
+importance of the Encyclopaedia as a centre, to which active-minded men
+of all kinds might bring the fruits of their thought and observation.
+
+Next to the _corvees_, the monster grievance of the third estate was the
+system of enrolments for the militia. The article, _Milice_, is very
+short, but it goes to the root of the matter. The only son of a
+cultivator of moderate means, forced to quit the paternal roof at the
+moment when his labour might recompense his straitened parents for the
+expense of having brought him up, is justly described as an irreparable
+loss. The writer, after hinting that it would be well if such an
+institution were wholly dispensed with, urges that at least its object
+might be more effectively and more humanely reached by allowing each
+parish to provide its due contingent of men in its own way. This change
+was indeed already (1765) being carried out by Turgot in the Limousin,
+and with excellent results. The writer concludes with the highly
+civilised remark, that we ought to weigh whether the good of the rural
+districts, the culture of the land, and population, are not preferable
+objects to the glory of setting enormous hosts of armed men on foot
+after the example of Xerxes. Alas, it is one of the discouragements of
+the student of history, that he often finds highly civilised remarks
+made one or two or twenty centuries ago, which are just as useful and
+just as little heeded now as they were when they were made.
+
+The same reflection occurs to one in reading the article on Foundations.
+As I have already said, this carefully written and sagacious piece still
+remains the most masterly discussion we possess of the advantages and
+disadvantages of endowments. Even now, and in our own country, the most
+fertile and beneficent work to which a statesman of energy and courage
+could devote himself, would be an application of the wise principles
+which were established in the Encyclopaedia. Passing from _Fondation_ to
+_Foire_ in the same volume, also from the pen of Turgot, we see an
+almost equally striking example of the economic wisdom of the
+encyclopaedic school. The provincial fairs, with their privileges,
+exemptions, exclusions, were a conspicuous case of the mischief done by
+that "mania for regulating and guiding everything," which then infected
+commercial administration, and interrupted the natural course of trade
+by imbecile vexations of police. Another vicious example of the same
+principle is exposed in the article on _Maitrises_. This must have
+convinced every reader capable of rising above "the holy laws of
+prejudice," how bad faith, idleness, disorder, and all the other evils
+of monopoly were fomented by a system of jealous trade-guilds, carrying
+compulsory subdivision and restriction of all kinds of skilled labour
+down to a degree that would have been laughable enough, if it had only
+been less destructive.
+
+One of the loudest cries in 1789 was for the destruction of game and the
+great manorial chases or capitaineries. "By game," says Arthur Young,
+"must be understood whole droves of wild boars, and herds of deer not
+confined by any wall or pale, but wandering at pleasure over the whole
+country to the destruction of crops, and to the peopling of the galleys
+by the wretched peasants who presumed to kill them, in order to save
+that food which was to support their helpless children."[165] In the
+same place he enumerates the outrageous and incredible rules which
+ruined agriculture over hundreds of leagues of country, in order that
+the seigneurs might have sport. In most matters the seven volumes of the
+Encyclopaedia which were printed before 1757, are more reserved than the
+ten volumes which were conducted by Diderot alone after the great schism
+of 1759. On the subject of sport, however, the writer of the article
+_Chasse_ enumerates all the considerations which a patriotic minister
+could desire to see impressed on public opinion. Some of the paragraphs
+startle us by their directness and freedom of complaint, and even a very
+cool reader would still be likely to feel some of the wrath that was
+stirred in the breast of our shrewd and sober Arthur Young a generation
+later (1787). "Go to the residence of these great nobles," he says,
+"wherever it may be, and you would probably find them in the midst of a
+forest, very well peopled with deer, wild boar, and wolves. Oh! if I
+were the legislator of France for a day, I would make such great lords
+skip!"[166]
+
+This brings us to what is perhaps the most striking of all the guiding
+sentiments of the book. Virgil's Georgics have been described as a
+glorification of labour. The Encyclopaedia seems inspired by the same
+motive, the same earnest enthusiasm for all the purposes, interests, and
+details of productive industry. Diderot, as has been justly said,
+himself the son of a cutler, might well bring handiwork into honour;
+assuredly he had inherited from his good father's workshop sympathy and
+regard for skill and labour.[167] The illustrative plates to which
+Diderot gave the most laborious attention for a period of almost thirty
+years, are not only remarkable for their copiousness, their clearness,
+their finish--and in all these respects they are truly admirable--but
+they strike us even more by the semi-poetic feeling that transforms the
+mere representation of a process into an animated scene of human life,
+stirring the sympathy and touching the imagination of the onlooker as by
+something dramatic. The bustle, the dexterity, the alert force of the
+iron foundry, the glass furnace, the gunpowder mill, the silk calendry
+are as skilfully reproduced as the more tranquil toil of the dairywoman,
+the embroiderer, the confectioner, the setter of types, the compounder
+of drugs, the chaser of metals. The drawings recall that eager and
+personal interest in his work, that nimble complacency, which is so
+charming a trait in the best French craftsman. The animation of these
+great folios of plates is prodigious. They affect one like looking down
+on the world of Paris from the heights of Montmartre. To turn over
+volume after volume is like watching a splendid panorama of all the busy
+life of the time. Minute care is as striking in them as their
+comprehensiveness. The smallest tool, the knot in a thread, the ply in a
+cord, the curve of wrist or finger, each has special and proper
+delineation. The reader smiles at a complete and elaborate set of
+tailor's patterns. He shudders as he comes upon the knives, the probes,
+the bandages, the posture, of the wretch about to undergo the most
+dangerous operation in surgery. In all the chief departments of industry
+there are plates good enough to serve for practical specifications and
+working drawings. It has often been told how Diderot himself used to
+visit the workshops, to watch the men at work, to put a thousand
+questions, to sit down at the loom, to have the machine pulled to pieces
+and set together again before his eyes, to slave like any apprentice,
+and to do bad work, in order, as he says, to be able to instruct others
+how to do good work. That was no movement of empty rhetoric which made
+him cry out for the Encyclopaedia to become a sanctuary in which human
+knowledge might find shelter against time and revolutions. He actually
+took the pains to make it a complete storehouse of the arts, so perfect
+in detail that they could be at once reconstructed after a deluge in
+which everything had perished save a single copy of the Encyclopaedia.
+Such details, said D'Alembert, will perhaps seem extremely out of place
+to certain scholars, for whom a long dissertation on the cookery or the
+hair-dressing of the ancients, or on the site of a ruined hamlet, or on
+the baptismal name of some obscure writer of the tenth century, would be
+vastly interesting and precious. He suggests that details of economy,
+and of arts and trades, have as good a right to a place as the
+scholastic philosophy, or some system of rhetoric still in use, or the
+mysteries of heraldry. Yet none even of these had been passed over.[168]
+
+The importance given to physical science and the practical arts, in the
+Encyclopaedia, is the sign and exemplification of two elements of the
+great modern transition. It marks both a social and an intellectual
+revolution. We see in it, first, the distinct association with pacific
+labour, of honour and a kind of glory, such as had hitherto been
+reserved for knights and friars, for war and asceticism, for fighting
+and praying.
+
+It is the definite recognition of the basis of a new society. If the
+nobles and the churchmen could only have understood, as clearly as
+Diderot and D'Alembert understood, the irresistible forces that were
+making against the maintenance of the worn-out system, all the worst of
+the evils attending the great political changes of the last decade of
+the century would have been avoided. That the nobles and churchmen would
+not see this, was the fatality of the Revolution. We have a glimpse of
+the profound transformation of social ideas which was at work in the
+five or six lines of the article, _Journalier_. "Journeyman--a workman
+who labours with his hands, and is paid day-wages. This description of
+men forms the great part of a nation; it is their lot which a good
+government ought to keep principally in sight. If the journeyman is
+miserable, the nation is miserable." And again: "The net profit of a
+society, if equally distributed, may be preferable to a larger profit,
+if it be distributed unequally, and have the effect of dividing the
+people into two classes, one gorged with riches, the other perishing in
+misery" (_Homme_).
+
+The second element in the modern transition is only the intellectual
+side of the first. It is the substitution of interest in things for
+interest in words, of positive knowledge for verbal disputation. Few now
+dispute the services of the schoolmen to the intellectual development of
+Europe. But conditions had fully ripened, and it was time to complete
+the movement of Bacon and Descartes by finally placing verbal analysis,
+verbal definition, verbal inferences, in their right position. Form was
+no longer to take precedence of matter. The Encyclopaedists are never
+weary of contrasting their own age of practical rationalism with "the
+pusillanimous ages of taste." A great collection of books is described
+in one article (_Bibliomanie_) as a collection of material for the
+history of the blindness and infatuation of mankind. The gatherer of
+books is compared to one who should place five or six gems under a pile
+of common pebbles. If a man of sense buys a work in a dozen volumes, and
+finds that only half a dozen pages are worth reading, he does well to
+cut out the half dozen pages and fling the rest into the fire. Finally,
+it would be no unbecoming device for every great library to have
+inscribed over its portal, The Bedlam of the Human Mind. At this point
+one might perhaps suggest to D'Alembert that study of the pathology of
+the mind is no bad means of surprising the secrets of humanity and life.
+For his hour, however, the need was not knowledge of the thoughts,
+dreams, and mental methods of the past, but better mastery of the aids
+and instruments of active life. In any case Diderot was right when he
+expressed his preference for the essay over the treatise: "an essay
+where the writer throws me one or two ideas of genius, almost isolated,
+rather than a treatise where the precious gems are stifled beneath a
+mass of iteration.... A man had only one idea; the idea demanded no more
+than a phrase; this phrase, full of marrow and meaning, would have been
+seized with relish; washed out in a deluge of words, it wearies and
+disgusts."[169] Rousseau himself does not surpass Diderot or D'Alembert
+in contempt for mere bookishness. We wholly misjudge the Encyclopaedia,
+if we treat it either as literature or philosophy.
+
+The attitude of the Encyclopaedia to religion is almost universally
+misrepresented in the common accounts. We are always told that the aim
+of its conductors was to preach dogmatic atheism. Such a statement could
+not be made by any one who had read the theological articles, whether
+the more or the less important among them. Whether Diderot had himself
+advanced definitely to the dogma of atheism at this time or not, it is
+certain that the Encyclopaedia represents only the phase of rationalistic
+scepticism. That the criticism was destructive of much of the fabric of
+popular belief, and was designed to destroy it, is undeniable, as it was
+inevitable. But when the excesses of '93 and '94--and all the
+revolutionary excesses put together are but a drop compared with the
+oceans of bloodshed with which Catholicism and absolutism have made
+history crimson--when the crimes and confusion of the end of the century
+are traced by historians to the materialism and atheism of the
+Encyclopaedia, we can only say that such an account is a
+misrepresentation. The materialism and atheism are not there. The
+religious attack was prompted and guided by the same social feeling
+that inspired the economic articles. The priest was the enemy of
+society, the patron of indolence, the hater of knowledge, the mutineer
+against the civil laws, the unprofitable devourer of the national
+substance, the persecutor. Sacerdotalism is the object of the
+encyclopaedic attack. To undermine this, it was necessary first to
+establish the principle of toleration, because the priest claims to be
+recognised as the exclusive possessor of saving doctrine. Second, it was
+necessary to destroy the principle of miracle, because the priest
+professes himself in his daily rites the consecrated instrument of
+thaumaturgy. "Let a man," says Rosenkranz very truly, "turn over
+hundreds of histories of church, of state, of literature, and in every
+one of them he will read that the Encyclopaedia spread abroad an
+irreligious spirit. The accusation has only a relative truth, to the
+extent that the Encyclopaedia assailed the belief in miracles, and the
+oppression of conscience supported by a priestly aristocracy."[170]
+
+It must be admitted that no consistent and definite language is adhered
+to from beginning to end. D'Alembert's prophecy that time would disclose
+to people what the writers really thought, behind what fear of the
+censorship compelled them to say, is only partially fulfilled.
+
+The idea of miracle is sapped not by direct arguments, but by the
+indirect influences of science, and the exposition of the successes of
+scientific method. It was here that the Encyclopaedia exerted really
+destructive power, and it did so in the only way in which power of that
+kind can be exerted either wisely or effectually. The miracle of a
+divine revelation, of grace, of the mass, began to wear a different look
+in men's eyes, as they learned more of the physical processes of the
+universe. We should describe the work of the Encyclopaedia as being to
+make its readers lose their interest, rather than their belief, in
+mysteries. This is the normal process of theological dissolution. It
+unfolded a vast number of scientific conceptions in all branches of
+human activity, a surprising series of acquisitions, a vivid panorama of
+victories won by the ingenuity and travail of man. A contemplation of
+the wonders that man had wrought for himself, replaced meditation on the
+wonders that were alleged to have been wrought by the gods. The latter
+were not so much denied by the plain reader, as they were gradually left
+out of sight and forgotten. Nobody now cares to disprove Jupiter and
+Juno, Satyrs and Hamadryads.
+
+Diderot constantly insists on the propriety, the importance, the
+indispensableness of keeping the provinces of science and philosophy
+apart from the province of theology. This separation is much sought in
+our own day as a means of saving theology. Diderot designed it to save
+philosophy. He felt that the distinct recognition of positive thought as
+supreme within the widest limits then covered by it, would ultimately
+lead to the banishment of theological thought to a region of its own,
+too distant and too infertile for men to weary themselves in pursuit of
+it. His conception was to supplant the old ways of thinking and the old
+objects of intellectual interest by new ones. He trusted to the
+intrinsic fitness and value of the new knowledge and new views of human
+life, to displace the old. This marks him for a constructive thinker. He
+replaced barren theological interests that had outlived their time, by
+all those great groups of living and fruitful interests which glow and
+sparkle in the volumes of the Encyclopaedia. Here was the effective
+damage that the Encyclopaedia inflicted on the church as the organ of a
+stationary superstition. Some of the articles remind us on what a
+strange borderland France stood in those days, between debasing
+credulity and wholesome light. We are so sensible of the new air that
+breathes impalpably over the book, that when the old theological fancies
+appear for form's sake, and are solemnly marshalled in orthodox state,
+the contrast and the incongruity are so marked that one is amused by
+what looks like a subtle irony, mocking the censor under his very eyes.
+Who can help smiling at the grave question, _Adam, le premier de tous
+les hommes, a-t-il ete philosophe?_ Such disputes as whether it is
+proper to baptize abortions, ceased to interest a public that had begun
+to educate itself by discussions on the virtue of Inoculation.
+
+Of the gross defects in the execution of the Encyclopaedia nobody was so
+sensible as Diderot himself. He drew up a truly formidable list of the
+departments where the work was badly done.[171] But when the blunders
+and omissions in each subject were all counted, the value of the vast
+grouping of the subjects was hardly diminished. The union of all these
+secular acquisitions in a single colossal work invested them with
+something imposing. Secular knowledge was made to present a massive and
+sumptuous front. It was pictured before the curious eyes of that
+generation as a great city of glittering palaces and stately mansions;
+or else as an immense landscape, with mountains, plains, rocks, waters,
+forests, animals, and a thousand objects, glorious and beautiful in the
+sunlight. Theology became visibly a shrivelled thing. Men grew to be
+conscious of the vastness of the universe. At the same time and by the
+same process the Encyclopaedia gave them a key to the plan, a guiding
+thread in the immense labyrinth. The genealogical tree, or
+classification of arts and sciences, which with a few modifications was
+borrowed from Bacon and appeared at the end of the Prospectus, is seen
+to be faulty and inadequate. It distributes the various branches of
+knowledge with reference to faculties of the human understanding,
+instead of grouping them according to their objective relations to one
+another. This led to many awkward results, as when the art of printing
+is placed by the side of orthography as a subdivision of Logic, to which
+also is given the art of heraldry or emblazonment. There is awkwardness
+too in dividing architecture into three heads, and then placing civil
+architecture under national jurisprudence, and naval architecture under
+social jurisprudence, while under fine arts no kind of architecture has
+any place. But when we have multiplied these objections to the
+uttermost, the effect of the magnificence and vastness of the scheme
+remains exactly what it was.
+
+Even more important than the exposition of human knowledge was the
+exposition of the degrees by which it had been slowly reared. The
+Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopaedia, of which by far the greater
+and more valuable portion was written by D'Alembert, contains a fine
+survey of the progress of science, thought, and letters since the
+revival of learning. It is a generous canonisation of the great heroes
+of secular knowledge. It is rapid, but the contributions of Bacon,
+Descartes, Newton, Locke, Leibnitz are thrown into a series that
+penetrates the reader's mind with the idea of ordered growth and
+measured progress. This excited a vivid hopefulness of interest, which
+insensibly but most effectually pressed the sterile propositions of
+dogmatic theology into a dim and squalid background. Nor was this all.
+The Preliminary Discourse and the host of articles marshalled behind it,
+showed that the triumphs of knowledge and true opinion had all been
+gained on two conditions. The first of these conditions was a firm
+disregard of authority; the second was an abstention from the premature
+concoction of system. The reign of ignorance and prejudice was made
+inveterate by deference to tradition: the reign of truth was hindered by
+the artificial boundary-marks set mischievously deep by the authors of
+systems. As the whole spirit of theology is both essentially
+authoritative and essentially systematic, this disparagement was full of
+tolerably direct significance. It told in another way. The Sorbonne, the
+universities, the doctors, had identified orthodoxy with Cartesianism.
+"It is hard to believe," says D'Alembert in 1750, "that it is only
+within the last thirty years that people have even begun to renounce
+Cartesianism." He might have added that one of the most powerful of his
+contemporaries, Montesquieu himself, remained a rigid Cartesian to the
+end of his days. "Our nation," he says, "singularly eager as it is for
+novelties in all matters of taste, is in matters of science extremely
+attached to old opinions." This remark remains true of France to the
+present hour, and it would be an interesting digression, did time allow,
+to consider its significance. France can at all events count one master
+innovator, the founder of Cartesianism himself. D'Alembert points out
+that the disciples violate the first maxims of their chief. He describes
+the hypothesis of vortices and the doctrine of innate ideas as no longer
+tenable, and even as ridiculous; but do not let us forget, he says with
+a fine movement of candour, that it was Descartes who opened the way; he
+who set an example to men of intelligence, of shaking off the yoke of
+scholasticism, of opinion, of authority--in a word, of prejudices and
+barbarism. Those who remain faithful to his hypothetical system, while
+they abandon his method, may be the last of his partisans, but they
+would assuredly never have been the first of his disciples.
+
+By system the Encyclopaedists meant more or less coherent bodies of
+frivolous conjecture. The true merit of the philosopher or the physicist
+is described as being to have the spirit of system, yet never to
+construct a system. The notion expressed in this sentence promises a
+union of the advantages of an organic synthesis, with the advantages of
+an open mind and unfettered inquiry. It would be ridiculous to think,
+says D'Alembert, that there is nothing more to discover in anatomy,
+because anatomists devote themselves to researches that may seem to be
+of no use, and yet often prove to be full of use in their consequences.
+Nor would it be less absurd to lay a ban on erudition, on the pretext
+that our learned men often give themselves up to matters of trivial
+import.
+
+We are constantly struck in the Encyclopaedia by a genuine desire to
+reach the best opinion by the only right way, the way of abundant,
+many-sided, and liberal discussion. The article, for instance, on
+_Fermes Generales_ contains an examination of the question whether it is
+more expedient that the taxes of a nation should be gathered by farmers
+of the revenue, or directly by the agents of the government acting on
+its behalf and under its supervision. Montesquieu had argued strongly
+in favour of a _Regie_, the second of these methods. The writer of the
+article sets out the nine considerations by which Montesquieu had
+endeavoured to establish his position, and then he offers on each of
+them the strongest observations that occur to him in support of the
+opposite conclusion. At the conclusion of the article, the editors of
+the Encyclopaedia append the following note: "Our professed impartiality
+and our desire to promote the discussion and clearing up of an important
+question, have induced us to insert this article. As the Encyclopaedia
+has for its principal aim the public advantage and instruction, we will
+insert in the article, _Regie_, without taking any side, all such
+reasons for and against, as people may he willing to submit to us,
+provided they are stated with due sense and moderation." Alas, when we
+turn to the article on _Regie_, the promise is unfulfilled, and a dozen
+meagre lines disappoint the seeker. But eight years of storm had passed,
+and many a beneficent intention had been wrecked. The announcement at
+least shows us the aim and spirit of the original scheme.
+
+Of the line of argument taken in the Encyclopaedia as to Toleration we
+need say nothing. The Encyclopaedists were the most ardent propagators of
+the modern principles of tolerance. No one has to be reminded that this
+was something more than an abstract discussion among the doctors of
+social philosophy, in a country where youths were broken on the wheel
+for levity in face of an ecclesiastical procession, where nearly every
+considerable man of the century had been either banished or imprisoned
+for daring to use his mind, and which had been half ruined by the great
+proscription of Protestants more than once renewed. The article
+_Tolerance_ was greatly admired in its day, and it is an eloquent and
+earnest reproduction of the pleas of Locke. One rather curious feature
+in it is the reproduction of the passage from the Social Contract, in
+which Rousseau explains the right of the magistrate to banish any
+citizen who has not got religion enough to make him do his duties, and
+who will not make a profession of civil faith. The writer of the article
+interprets this as implying that "atheists in particular, who remove
+from the powerful the only rein, and from the weak their only hope,"
+have no right to claim toleration. This is an unexpected stroke in a
+work that is vulgarly supposed to be a violent manifesto on behalf of
+atheism.[172]
+
+Diderot himself in an earlier article (_Intolerance_) had treated the
+subject with more trenchant energy. He does not argue his points
+systematically, but launches a series of maxims, as with set teeth,
+clenched hands, and a brow like a thundercloud. He hails the oppressors
+of his life, the priests and the parliaments, with a pungency that is
+exhilarating, and winds up with a description of the intolerant as one
+who forgets that a man is his fellow, and for holding a different
+opinion, treats him like a ravening brute; as one who sacrifices the
+spirit and precepts of his religion to his pride; as the rash fool who
+thinks that the arch can only be upheld by his hands; as a man who is
+generally without religion, and to whom it comes easier to have zeal
+than morals. Every page of the Encyclopaedia was, in fact, a plea for
+toleration. This embittered the hostility of the churchmen to the work
+more than its attack upon dogma. For most ecclesiastics valued power
+more dearly than truth. And in power they valued most dearly the
+atrocious right of silencing, by foul means or fair, all opinions that
+were not official.
+
+
+III.
+
+Having thus described the general character and purport of the
+Encyclopaedia, we have still to look at a special portion of it from a
+more particular point of view. We have already shown how multifarious
+were Diderot's labours as editor. It remains to give a short account of
+his labours as a contributor. Everything was on the same vast scale. His
+industry in writing would have been in itself most astonishing, even if
+it had not been accompanied by the more depressing fatigue of revising
+what others had written. Diderot's articles fill more than four of the
+large volumes of his collected works.
+
+The confusion is immense. The spirit is sometimes historical, sometimes
+controversial; now critical, now dogmatic. In one place Diderot speaks
+in his own proper person, in another as the neutral scribe writing to
+the dictation of an unseen authority. There is no rigorous measure and
+ordered proportion. We constantly pass from a serious treatise to a
+sally, from an elaborate history to a caprice. There are not a few pages
+where we know that Diderot is saying what he does not think. Some of the
+articles seem only to have found a place because Diderot happened to
+have taken an interest in their subjects at the moment. After reading
+Voltaire's concise account of Imagination, we are amazed to find Diderot
+devoting a larger space than Voltaire had needed for the subject at
+large, to so subordinate and remote a branch of the matter as the Power
+of the Imagination in Pregnant Women upon the Unborn Young. The article
+on Theosophs would hardly have been so disproportionately long as it is,
+merely for the sake of Paracelsus and Van Helmont and Poiret and the
+Rosicrucians, unless Diderot happened to be curiously and
+half-sympathetically brooding over the mixture of inspiration and
+madness, of charlatanry and generous aim, of which these semi-mystic,
+semi-scientific characters were composed.[173]
+
+Many of Diderot's articles, again, have no rightful place in an
+Encyclopaedia. _Genius_, for instance, is dealt with in what is neither
+more nor less than a literary essay, vigorous, suggestive, diffuse; and
+containing, by the way, the curious assertion that, although there are
+few errors in Locke and too few truths in Shaftesbury, yet Locke is only
+an acute and comprehensive intelligence, while Shaftesbury is a genius
+of the first order.
+
+Under the word _Laborious_, we have only a dozen lines of angry reproach
+against the despotism that makes men idle by making property uncertain.
+Under such words as _Frivolous_, _Gallantry_, _Perfection_,
+_Importance_, _Politeness_, _Melancholy_, _Glorieux_, the reader is
+amused and edified by miniature essays on manners and character, seldom
+ending without some pithy sentence and pointed moral. Sometimes (e.g.
+_Grandeur_) we have a charming piece after the manner of La Bruyere.
+Under the verb _Naitre_, which is placed in the department of grammar,
+we find a passage so far removed from grammar as the following:--
+
+"The terms of life and death have nothing absolute; they only designate
+the successive states of one and the same being; for him who has been
+strongly nourished in this philosophy, the urn that contains the ashes
+of a father, a mother, a husband, a mistress, is truly a touching
+object. There still remains in it life and warmth; these ashes may
+perhaps even yet feel our tears and give them response; who knows if the
+movement that our tears stir, as they water those ashes, is wholly
+without sensibility?"
+
+This little burst of grotesque sentimentalism is one of the pieces that
+justify the description of Diderot as the most German of all the
+French.[174] Equally characteristic and more sensible is the writer's
+outbreak against Formalists. "The formalist knows exactly the proper
+interval between receiving and returning a visit; he expects you on the
+exact day at the exact time; if you fail, he thinks himself neglected
+and takes offence. A single man of this stamp is enough to chill and
+embarrass a whole company. There is nothing so repugnant to simple and
+upright souls as formalities; as such people have within themselves the
+consciousness of the good-will they bear to everybody, they neither
+plague themselves to be constantly displaying a sentiment that is
+habitual, nor to be constantly on the watch for it in others." This is
+analogous to his contempt for the pedants who object to the use of a
+hybrid word: "If it happens that a composite of a Greek word and a Latin
+word renders the idea as well, and is easier to pronounce or pleasanter
+to the ear than a compound of two Greek words and two Latin words, why
+prefer the latter?" (_Hibrides_). Some articles are simply diatribes
+against the enemy. _Pardon_, for instance: "It needs much attention,
+much modesty, much skill to wring from others pardon for our
+superiority. The men who have executed a foolish work, have never been
+able to pardon us for projecting a better. We could have got from them
+pardon for a crime, but never for a good action." And so forth, with
+much magnanimous acrimony. _Prostitution_ is only introduced for the
+pleasure of applying the unsavoury word to certain critics "of whom we
+have so many in these days, and of whom we say that they prostitute
+their pens to money, to favour, to lying, and to all the vices most
+unworthy of an honourable man."
+
+We are constantly being puzzled and diverted by Diderot's ingenuity in
+wandering away from the topic nominally in hand, to insinuate some of
+those doctrines of tolerance, of suspended judgment, or of liberty,
+which lay so much nearer to his heart than any point of mere erudition.
+There is a little article on Aius-Locutius, the Announcing Speaker, one
+of the minor Roman gods. Diderot begins by a few lines describing the
+rise of the deity into repute. He then quotes Cicero's pleasantry on the
+friendly divinity, that when nobody in the world had ever heard of him,
+he delivered a salutary oracle, but after people had built him a fine
+temple, then the god of speech fell dumb. This suggests to Diderot to
+wonder with edifying innocence how so religious a people as the Romans
+endured these irreverent jests in their philosophers. By an easy step we
+pass to the conditions on which modern philosophers should be allowed by
+authority to publish their speculations. Diderot throws out the curious
+hint that it would be best to forbid any writing against government and
+religion in the vulgar tongue, and to allow those who write in a learned
+tongue to publish what they please. And so we bid farewell to
+Aius-Locutius. In passing, we ask ourselves whether Diderot's suggestion
+is not available in the discussion of certain questions, where freedom
+of speech in the vernacular tongue is scarcely compatible with the
+_reverentia quae debetur pueris_?
+
+Diderot is never prevented by any mistaken sense of the dignity of his
+enterprise from interspersing his disquisitions on science and
+philosophy with such practical thoughts on the common matters of daily
+life as come into his ingenious head. He suggests, for instance, by way
+of preventing the frauds of cab-drivers on their masters and on the
+public, that all payments of fares should be made to appointed officers
+at the various cab-stations, and that no driver should take up a fare
+except at one of these stations.[175] In writing about lackeys, after a
+word on their insolence and on the wretched case in which most of them
+end their days, he points out that the multitude of them is causing the
+depopulation of the fields. They are countrymen who have thronged to
+Paris to avoid military service. Peasants turned lackeys to escape the
+conscription, just as in our own days they turn priests. Then, says
+Diderot, this evil ought to be checked by a tax upon liveries; but such
+a tax is far too sensible ever to be imposed.
+
+Yet, notwithstanding the practical and fervid temper of his
+understanding, Diderot is not above literary trifling when the humour
+seizes him. If he can write an exhaustive article on Encyclopaedia, or
+Spinosa, or Academies, or Weaving, he can also stoop to Anagrams, and
+can tell us that the letters of Frere Jacques Clement, the assassin of
+Henry III., make up the sinister words, _C'est l'enfer qui m'a cree_. He
+can write a couple of amusing pages on Onomatomancy, or divination of a
+man's fortune from his name; and can record with neutral gravity how
+frequently great empires have been destroyed under princes bearing the
+same name as their first founders; how, again, certain names are unlucky
+for princes, as Cains among the Romans, John in France, England, and
+Scotland, and Henry in France.
+
+We have now and then an anecdote that is worth reading and worth
+preserving. Thus, under Machiavellist: "I have heard that a philosopher,
+being asked by a great prince about a refutation of Machiavellism, which
+the latter had just published, replied, 'Sire, I fancy that the first
+lesson that Machiavelli would have given to his disciple would have been
+to refute his work.'" Whether Voltaire ever did say this to the great
+Frederick, is very questionable, but it would not have been ill said.
+After the reader has been taken through a short course of Arabian
+philosophy, he is enlivened by a selection of poetic sayings about human
+life from the Rose-garden of Sadi, and the whole article winds up with
+an eastern fable, of no particular relevancy, of three men finding a
+treasure, and of one of them poisoning the food for which the other two
+had sent him; on his return they suddenly fell on him and slew him, and
+then ate the poisoned food, and so the treasure fell to none of
+them.[176]
+
+We have spoken in the previous section of the contempt expressed by
+D'Alembert for mere literary antiquarianism--a very different thing, let
+us remember, from scientific inquiry into the origin and classification
+of institutions and social organs. Diderot's article on the Germans is
+an excellent illustration of this wholesome predominance of the
+scientific spirit over the superficialities of barren erudition. The
+word "Allemand," says Diderot, "has a great many etymologies, but they
+are so forced, that it is almost as well to know none of them, as to
+know them all. As for the origin of this famous stock, all that has been
+said on that matter, between Tacitus and Clovis, is simply a tissue of
+guesses without foundation." Of course in this some persons will see a
+shameful levity; others will regard it as showing very good sense, and a
+right estimate of what is knowable and worth knowing, and what is
+neither one nor the other. In the article on Celibacy we notice the same
+temper. A few sentences are enough for the antiquarianism of the
+subject, what the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans thought and ordained
+about celibacy. The substance of the article is a reproduction of the
+Abbe Saint Pierre's discussion of the advantages that would be gained
+for France, with her declining population, if her forty thousand cures
+were allowed to marry, and to bring into the world eighty thousand
+children. We may believe that Diderot smiled as he transcribed the
+Abbe's cunning suggestion that a dispensing power to relieve from the
+obligation of celibacy should be recognised in the Pope, and that the
+Roman court should receive a sum of money for every dispensation so
+granted.
+
+Although, however, Diderot despised mere bookishness, his article on
+Libraries is one of the longest and most painstaking, furnishing a
+tolerably complete list of the most famous collections, from the
+beginning of books down to the latest additions to the King's Library in
+the Rue Vivienne. In the course of this article he quotes with seeming
+approval the quaint words in which old Richard of Bury, the author of
+the _Philobiblon_ (1340), praised books as the best of masters, much as
+the immortal defender of the poet Archias had praised them: "Hi sunt
+magistri qui nos instruunt sine virgis et ferulis, sine cholera, sine
+pecunia; si accedis non dormiunt; si inquiris non se abscondunt; non
+obmurmurant si oberres; cachinnos nesciunt si ignores."
+
+In literature proper, as in philosophy, Diderot loses no opportunity of
+insisting on the need of being content with suspended judgment. For
+instance, he blames historians of opinion for the readiness with which
+they attribute notions found in one or two rabbis to the whole of the
+Jews, or because two or three Fathers say something, boldly set this
+down as the sentiments of a whole century, although perhaps we have
+nothing else save these two or three Fathers left of the century, and
+although we do not know whether their writings were applauded, or were
+even widely known. "It were to be wished that people should speak less
+affirmatively, especially on particular points and remote consequences,
+and that they should only attribute them directly to those in whose
+writings they are actually to be found. I confess that the history of
+the sentiments of antiquity would not seem so complete, and that it
+would be necessary to speak in terms of doubt much more often than is
+common; but by acting otherwise we expose ourselves to the danger of
+taking false and uncertain conjectures for ascertained and
+unquestionable truths. The ordinary man of letters does not readily put
+up with suspensive expressions, any more than common people do so." All
+this is an odd digression to be found under the head of Hylopathianism,
+but it must always remain wholesome doctrine.
+
+We cannot wonder at Diderot's admiration for Montaigne and for Bayle,
+who, with Hume, would make the great trinity of scepticism. "The work of
+Montaigne," said Diderot, "is the touchstone of a good intelligence; you
+may be sure that any one whom the reading of Montaigne displeases has
+some vice either of heart or understanding. As for Bayle, he has had few
+equals in the art of reasoning, and perhaps no superior; and though he
+piles doubt upon doubt, he always proceeds with order; an article of his
+is a living polypus, which divides itself into a number of polypuses,
+all living, engendered one from the other."[177] Yet Diderot had a
+feeling of the necessity of advancing beyond the attitude of Bayle and
+Montaigne. Intellectual suspense and doubt was made difficult to him by
+his vehement and positive demand for emotional certainties.
+
+Diderot is always ready to fling away his proper subject in a burst of
+moralising. The article on _Man_, as a branch of natural history,
+contains a correct if a rather superficial account of that curious
+animal; at length the writer comes to a table showing the probable
+duration of life at certain ages. "You will observe," he says, "1st,
+that the age of seven is that at which you may hope a longer life; 2d,
+that at twelve or thirteen you have lived a quarter of your life; at
+twenty-eight or twenty-nine you have lived half; at fifty more than
+three-quarters." And then he suddenly winds up the whole performance by
+the exclamation: "O ye who have laboured up to fifty, who are in the
+enjoyment of comfort, and who still have left to you health and
+strength, what then are you waiting for before you take rest? How long
+will you go on saying _To-morrow, to-morrow?_"
+
+There are many casual brilliancies in the way of analogy and parallel,
+many aptnesses of thought and phrase. The Stoics are called the
+Jansenists of Paganism. "For a single blade of grass to grow, it is
+necessary that the whole of nature should co-operate." "A man comes to
+Pyrrhonism by one of two opposite ways; either because he does not know
+enough, or because he knows too much; the latter is not the most common
+way." And so forth.
+
+If we turn to the group of articles dealing with theology, it is
+difficult for us to know exactly where we are. Sometimes Diderot writes
+of popular superstitions with the gravity proper to a dictionary of
+mythology. Sometimes he sews on to the sober gray of his scepticism a
+purple patch of theistic declamation.[178] The article on Jesus Christ
+is obviously a mere piece of common form, and more than one passage in
+his article on _Christianisme_ is undoubtedly insincere. When we come to
+his more careful article, _Providence_, we find it impossible to extract
+from it a body of coherent propositions of which we could confidently
+say that they represented his own creed, or the creed that he desired
+his readers to bear away in their minds.
+
+It is hardly worth while to measure the more or the less of his
+adherence to Christianity, or even to Deism, as inferred from the
+Encyclopaedia. We need only turn to his private letters to find that he
+is in no degree nor kind an adherent, but the most hardy, contemptuous,
+and thoroughgoing of opponents. At the risk of shocking devout persons,
+I am bound to reproduce a passage from one of his letters, in which
+there can be no doubt that we have Diderot's true mind, as distinguished
+from what it was convenient to print. "The Christian religion," he says,
+"is to my mind the most absurd and atrocious in its dogmas; the most
+unintelligible, the most metaphysical, the most intertwisted and
+obscure, and consequently the most subject to divisions, sects, schisms,
+heresies; the most mischievous for the public tranquillity, the most
+dangerous to sovereigns by its hierarchic order, its persecutions, its
+discipline; the most flat, the most dreary, the most Gothic, and the
+most gloomy in its ceremonies; the most puerile and unsociable in its
+morality, considered not in what is common to it with universal
+morality, but in what is peculiarly its own, and constitutes it
+evangelical, apostolical, and Christian morality, which is the most
+intolerant of all. Lutheranism, freed from some absurdities, is
+preferable to Catholicism; Protestantism to Lutheranism, Socinianism to
+Protestantism, Deism, with temples and ceremonies, to Socinianism. Since
+it is necessary that man, being superstitious by nature, should have a
+fetish, the simplest and most harmless will be the best fetish."[179] We
+need not discuss nor extend the quotation; enough has been said to
+relieve us from the duty of analysing or criticising articles in which
+Christianity is treated with all the formal respect that the secular
+authority insisted upon.
+
+This formal respect is not incompatible with many veiled and secret
+sarcasms, which were as well understood as they were sharply enjoyed by
+those who read between the lines. It is not surprising that these
+sarcasms were constantly unjust and shallow. Even those of us who
+repudiate theology and all its works for ourselves, may feel a shock at
+the coarseness and impurity of innuendo which now and then disfigures
+Diderot's treatment of theological as of some other subjects. For this
+the attitude of the Church itself was much to blame; coarse, virulent,
+unspiritual as it was in France in those days. Voltaire, Diderot,
+Holbach, would have written in a very different spirit, even while
+maintaining and publishing the same attacks on theological opinion, if
+the Church of France had possessed such a school of teachers as the
+Church of England found in the Latitudinarians in the seventeenth
+century; or such as she finds now in the nineteenth century in those who
+have imported, partly from the poetry of Wordsworth, partly from the
+historic references of the Oxford Tracts, an equity, a breadth, an
+elevation, a pensive grace, that effectually forbid the use of those
+more brutal weapons of controversy which were the only weapons possible
+in France a century ago.
+
+We have already said so much of the great and important group of
+articles on arts and trades, that it is unnecessary to add anything
+further as to Diderot's particular share in them. He visited all the
+workshops in Paris; he sent for information and specifications to the
+most important seats of manufacture in the kingdom; he sometimes
+summoned workmen from the provinces to describe to him the paper works
+of Montargis, and the silk works and velvet works of Lyons.[180] Much of
+Diderot's work, even on great practical subjects, was, no doubt, the
+reproduction of mere book-knowledge acquired at second-hand. Take, for
+instance, Agriculture, which was undoubtedly the most important of all
+subjects for France at that date, as indeed at every other date. There
+are a dozen pages of practical precepts, for which Diderot was probably
+indebted to one of the farmers at Grandval. After this, he fills up the
+article with about twenty pages in which he gives an account of the new
+system of husbandry, which our English Jethro Tull described to an
+unbelieving public between 1731 and 1751. Tull's volume was translated
+into French by Duhamel, with notes and the record of experiments of his
+own; from this volume Diderot drew the pith of his article. Diderot's
+only merit in the matter--and it is hardly an inconsiderable one in a
+world of routine--is that he should have been at the pains to seek the
+newest lights, and above all that he should have urged the value of
+fresh experiments in agriculture. Tull was not the safest authority in
+the world, but it is to be remembered that the shrewd-witted Cobbett
+thought his ideas on husbandry worth reproducing, seventy years after
+Diderot had thought them worth compiling into an article.
+
+It was not merely in the details of the practical arts that Diderot
+wrote from material acquired at second-hand. The article on the
+Zend-Avesta is taken from the Annual Register for 1762. The long series
+of articles on the history of philosophy is in effect a reproduction of
+what he found in Bayle, in Deslandes, and in Brucker. There are one or
+two considerable exceptions. Perhaps the most important is under the
+heading of Spinosa, to which we shall return presently. The article on
+_Hobbisme_ contains an analysis, evidently made by the writer's own
+hand, of the bulk of Hobbes's propositions; it is scarcely, however,
+illuminated by a word of criticism. If we turn to the article on
+_Societe_, it is true, we find Hobbes's view of the relations between
+the civil and temporal powers tolerably effectively combated, but even
+here Diderot hardly does more than arm himself with the weapons of
+Locke.
+
+Of course, he honestly refers his readers to these sources of wider
+information.[181] All that we can say of the articles on the history of
+philosophy is that the series is very complete; that Diderot used his
+matter with intelligence and the spirit of criticism, and that he often
+throws in luminous remarks and far-reaching suggestions of his own. This
+was all that the purpose of his book required. To imitate the laborious
+literary search of Bayle or of Brucker, and to attempt to compile an
+independent history of philosophy, would have been to sacrifice the
+Encyclopaedia as a whole, to the superfluous perfection of a minor part.
+There is only one imperative condition in such a case, namely, that the
+writer should pass the accepted material through his own mind before
+reproducing it. With this condition it was impossible for a man of
+Diderot's indefatigable energy of spirit, not as a rule to comply.
+
+But this rule too had exceptions. There were cases in which he
+reproduced, as any mere bookmaker might have done, the thought of his
+authority, without an attempt to make it his own. Of the confusion and
+inequalities in which Diderot was landed by this method of mingling the
+thoughts of other people with his own, there is a curious example in the
+two articles on Philosopher and Philosophy. In the first we have an
+essentially social and practical description of what the philosopher
+should be; in the second we have a definition of philosophy, which takes
+us into the regions most remote from what is social and practical. We
+soar to the airiest heights of verbal analysis and pure formalism.
+Nothing can be better, so far as it goes, than the picture of the
+philosopher. Diderot begins by contrasting him with the crowd of people,
+and clever people, who insist on passing judgment all day long. "They
+ignore the scope and limits of the human mind; they think it capable of
+knowing everything; hence they think it a disgrace not to pronounce
+judgment, and imagine that intelligence consists in that and nothing
+else. The philosopher believes that it consists in judging rightly. He
+is better pleased with himself when he has suspended his faculty of
+coming to a conclusion, than if he had come to a conclusion without the
+proper grounds. He prefers to brilliancy the pains of rightly
+distinguishing his ideas, of finding their true extent and exact
+connection. He is never so attached to a system as not to feel all the
+force of the objections to it. Most men are so strongly given over to
+their opinions that they do not take any trouble to make out those of
+others. The philosopher, on the other hand, understands what he rejects,
+with the same breadth and the same accuracy as he understands what he
+adopts." Then Diderot turns characteristically from the intellectual to
+the social side. "Our philosopher does not count himself an exile in the
+world; he does not suppose himself in an enemy's country; he would fain
+find pleasure with others, and to find it he must give it; he is a
+worthy man who wishes to please and to make himself useful. The ordinary
+philosophers who meditate too much, or rather who meditate to wrong
+purpose, are as surly and arrogant to all the world as great people are
+to those whom they do not think their equals; they flee men, and men
+avoid them. But our philosopher who knows how to divide himself between
+retreat and the commerce of men is full of humanity. _Civil society is,
+so to say, a divinity for him on the earth_; he honours it by his
+probity, by an exact attention to his duties, and by a sincere desire
+not to be a useless or an embarrassing member of it. The sage has the
+leaven of order and rule; he is full of the ideas connected with the
+good of civil society. What experience shows us every day is that the
+more reason and light people have, the better fitted they are and the
+more to be relied on for the common intercourse of life."[182]
+
+The transition is startling from this conception of
+
+Philosopher as a very high kind of man of the world, to the definition
+of Philosophy as "the science of possibles qua possibles." Diderot's own
+reflection comes back to us, _Combien cette maudite metaphysique fait
+des fous!_[183] We are abruptly plunged from a Baconian into a
+Leibnitzian atmosphere. We should naturally have expected some such
+account of Philosophy as that it begins with a limitation of the
+questions to which men can hope for an answer, and ends in an ordered
+arrangement of the principles of knowledge, with ultimate reference to
+the conditions of morals and the structure of civil societies. We should
+naturally have expected to find, what indeed we do find, that the
+characteristic of the philosopher is to "admit nothing without proof,
+never to acquiesce in illusory notions; to draw rigorously the dividing
+lines of the certain, the probable, the doubtful; above all things never
+to pay himself with mere words." But then these wholesome prescriptions
+come in an article whose definitions and distribution of philosophy are
+simply a reproduction from Christian Wolff, and the methods and dialect
+of Wolff are as essentially alien from the positive spirit of the
+Encyclopaedia as they were from the mystic spirit of Jacobi.
+
+Wolff's place in the philosophical succession of German speculation
+(1679-1754) is between Leibnitz and Kant, and until Kant came his
+system was dominant in the country of metaphysics.[184] It is from
+Wolff that Diderot borrows and throws unassimilated into the pages of
+the Encyclopaedia propositions so fundamentally incongruous as this,
+that "among all possibles there must of necessity be a Being subsisting
+by himself; otherwise there would be possible things, of the
+possibility of which no account could be given, an assertion that could
+never be made." It is a curious thing, and it illustrates again the
+strangely miscellaneous quality of Diderot's compilation, that the very
+article which begins by this incorporation of the author of a
+philosophical system expounded in a score of quartos, ends by a
+vigorous denunciation of the introduction of the systematic spirit into
+philosophy.
+
+I shall venture to quote a hardy passage from another article
+(_Pyrrhonienne_) which some will think a measure of Diderot's
+philosophical incompetency, and others will think a measure of his good
+sense. "We will conclude," he says, "for our part that as all in nature
+is bound together, there is nothing, properly speaking, of which man has
+perfect, absolute, and complete knowledge, because for that he would
+need knowledge of all. Now as all is bound together, it inevitably
+happens that, from discussion to discussion, he must come to something
+unknown: then in starting again from this unknown point, we shall be
+justified in pleading against him the ignorance or the obscurity or the
+uncertainty of the point preceding, and of that preceding this, and so
+forth, up to the most evident principle. So we must admit a sort of
+sobriety in the use of reason. When step by step I have brought a man to
+some evident proposition, I shall cease to dispute. I will listen no
+longer to a man who goes on to deny the existence of bodies, the rules
+of logic, the testimony of the senses, the difference between good and
+evil, true and false, etc. etc. I will turn my back on everybody who
+tries to lead me away from a simple question, to embark me in discussion
+as to the nature of matter, of the understanding of thought, and other
+subjects shoreless and bottomless."[185] Whatever else may be said of
+this, we have to recognise that it is exactly characteristic of the
+author. But then why have written on metaphysics at all?
+
+We have mentioned the article on Spinosa. It is characteristic both of
+the good and the bad sides of Diderot's work. Half of it is merely a
+reproduction of Bayle's criticisms on Spinosa and his system. The other
+half consists of original objections propounded by Diderot with marked
+vigour of thrust against Spinosa, but there is no evidence that he had
+gone deeper into Spinosa than the first book of the Ethics. There is no
+certain sign that he had read anything else, or that he had more of that
+before him than the extracts that were furnished by Bayle. Such
+treatment of a serious subject hardly conforms to the modern
+requirements of the literary conscience, for in truth the literary
+conscience has now turned specialist and shrinks from the encyclopaedic.
+Diderot's objections are, as we have said, pushed with marked energy of
+speech. "However short away," he says, "you penetrate into the thick
+darkness in which Spinosa has wrapped himself up, you discover a
+succession of abysses into which this audacious reasoner has
+precipitated himself, of propositions either evidently false or
+evidently doubtful, of arbitrary principles, substituted for natural
+principles and sensible truths; an abuse of terms taken for the most
+part in a wrong sense, a mass of deceptive equivocations, a cloud of
+palpable contradictions." The system is monstrous, it is absurd and
+ridiculous. It is Spinosa's plausible method that has deceived people;
+they supposed that one who employed geometry, and proceeded by way of
+axioms and definitions, must be on the track of truth. They did not see
+that these axioms were nothing better than very vague and very uncertain
+propositions; that the definitions were inexact, defective, and bizarre.
+
+We have no space to follow the reasoning by which Diderot supports this
+scornful estimate of the famous thinker, of whom it can never be settled
+whether he be pantheist, atheist, akosmist, or God-intoxicated man. He
+returns to the charge again and again, as if he felt a certain secret
+uneasiness lest for scorn so loudly expressed he had not brought forward
+adequate justification. And the reader feels that Diderot has scarcely
+hit the true line of cleavage that would have enabled him--from his own
+point of view--to shatter the Spinosist system. He tries various bouts
+of logic with Spinosa in connection with detached propositions. Thus he
+deals with Spinosa's third proposition, that, _in the case of things
+that have nothing in common with one another, one cannot be the cause of
+the other_. This proposition, Diderot contends, is false in all moral
+and occasional causes. The sound of the name of God has nothing in
+common with the idea of the Creator which that name produces in my mind.
+A misfortune that overtakes my friend has nothing in common with the
+grief that I feel in consequence. When I move my arm by an act of will,
+the movement has nothing in common in its nature with the act of my
+will; they are very different. I am not a triangle, yet I form the idea
+of one and I examine its properties. So with the fifth proposition, that
+_there cannot be in the universe two or more substances of the same
+nature or the same attributes_. If Spinosa is only talking of the
+essence of things or of their definition, what he says is naught; for it
+can only mean that there cannot be in the universe two different
+essences having the same essence. Who doubts it? But if Spinosa means
+that there cannot be an essence which is found in various single
+objects, in the same way as the essence of triangle is found in the
+triangle A and the triangle B, then he says what is manifestly untrue.
+It is not, however, until the last two or three pages that Diderot sets
+forth his dissent in its widest form.
+
+"To refute Spinosa," he says at last, "all that is necessary is to stop
+him at the first step, without taking the trouble to follow him into a
+mass of consequences; all that we need do is to substitute for the
+obscure principle which he makes the base of his system, the following:
+namely, that _there are several substances_--a principle that in its own
+way is clear to the last degree. And, in fact, what proposition can be
+clearer, more striking, more close to the understanding and
+consciousness of man? I here seek no other judge than the most just
+impression of the common sense that is spread among the human race....
+Now, since common sense revolts against each of Spinosa's propositions,
+no less than against the first, of which they are the pretended proofs,
+instead of stopping to reason on each of these proofs where common sense
+is lost, we should be right to say to him:--Your principle is contrary
+to common sense; from a principle in which common sense is lost, nothing
+can issue in which common sense is to be found again."
+
+The passage sounds unpleasantly like an appeal to the crowd in a matter
+of science, which is as the sin against the Holy Ghost in these high
+concerns. What Diderot meant, probably, was to charge Spinosa with
+inventing a conception of substance which has no relation to objective
+experience; and further with giving fantastic answers to questions that
+were in themselves never worth asking, because the answers must always
+involve a violent wrench of the terms of experience into the sphere
+transcending experience, and because, moreover, they can never be
+verified. Whether he meant this or something else, and whether he would
+have been right or wrong in such an intention, we may admit that it
+would have been more satisfactory if in dealing with such a master-type
+of the metaphysical method as Spinosa, so acute a positive critic as
+Diderot had taken more pains to give to his objections the utmost
+breadth of which they were capable.[186]
+
+The article on Leibnitz has less original matter in it than that on
+Spinosa. The various speculations of that great and energetic intellect
+in metaphysic, logic, natural theology, natural law, are merely drawn
+out in a long table of succinct propositions, while the account of the
+life and character of Leibnitz is simply taken from the excellent
+_eloge_ which had been published upon him by Fontenelle in 1716.
+Fontenelle's narrative is reproduced in a generous spirit of admiration
+and respect for a genius that was like Diderot's own in encyclopaedic
+variety of interest, while it was so far superior to Diderot's in
+concentration, in subtlety, in precision, in power of construction. If
+there could exist over our heads, says Diderot, a species of beings who
+could observe our works as we watch those of creatures at our feet, with
+what surprise would such beings have seen those four marvellous insects,
+Bayle, Descartes, Leibnitz, and Newton. And he then draws up a little
+calendar of the famous men, out of whom we must choose the name to be
+placed at the very head of the human race. The list contains, besides
+Julian the Apostate--who was inserted, we may presume, merely by way of
+playful insult to the ecclesiastical enemy--Socrates, Marcus Aurelius,
+Trajan, Bacon, and the four great names that have just been cited.
+Germany derives as much honour from Leibnitz alone, he concludes with
+unconsidered enthusiasm, as Greece from Plato, Aristotle, and
+Archimedes, all put together. As we have said, however, there is no
+criticism, nor any other sign that Diderot had done more than survey the
+facade of the great Leibnitzian structure admiringly from without.
+
+The article on Liberty would be extremely remarkable, appearing where it
+does, and coming from a thinker of Diderot's general capacity, if only
+we could be sure that Diderot was sincere. As it happens, there is good
+reason to suppose that he was wholly insincere. It is quite as shallow,
+from the point of view of philosophy, as his article on the Jews or on
+the Bible is from the point of view of erudition. One reason for this
+might not be far to seek. We have repeatedly observed how paramount the
+social aim and the social test are in Diderot's mind over all other
+considerations. But this reference of all subjects of discussion to the
+good of society, and this measurement of conclusions by their presumed
+effect on society, is a method that has its own dangers. The aversion of
+ecclesiastics to unfettered discussion, lest it should damage
+institutions and beliefs deemed useful to mankind, is the great leading
+example of this peril. Diderot, it might be said by those who should
+contend that he wrote what he thought, did not escape exactly the same
+predicament, as soon as ever he forgot that of all the things that are
+good for society, Truth is the best. Now, who will believe that it is
+Diderot, the persecuted editor of the Encyclopaedia, and the author of
+the manly article on Intolerance, who introduces such a passage as the
+following into the discussion of the everlasting controversy of Free
+Will and Necessity: "Take away Liberty, and you leave no more vice nor
+virtue nor merit in the world; rewards are ridiculous, and punishments
+unjust. The ruin of Liberty overthrows all order and all police,
+confounds vice and virtue, authorises every monstrous infamy,
+extinguishes the last spark of shame and remorse, degrades and
+disfigures beyond recovery the whole human race. _A doctrine of such
+enormity as this ought not to be examined in the schools; it ought to be
+punished by the magistrates._"[187] Of course, this was exactly what the
+Jesuits said about a belief in God, about revelation, and about the
+institutions of the church. To take away these, they said, is to throw
+down the bulwarks of order, and an attempt to take them away, as by
+encyclopaedists or others, ought to be punished by the magistrates.
+Diderot had for the moment clearly lost himself.
+
+We need hardly be surprised if an article conceived in this spirit
+contains no serious contribution to the difficult question with which
+it deals. Diderot had persuaded himself that, without Free Will, all
+those emotional moralities in the way of sympathy and benevolence and
+justice which he adored would be lowered to the level of mere mechanism.
+"If men are not free in what they do of good and evil, then," he cries,
+in what is surely a paroxysm of unreason, "good is no longer good, and
+evil no longer evil." As if the outward quality and effects of good and
+evil were not independent of the mental operations which precede human
+action. Murder would not cease to be an evil simply because it had been
+proved that the murderer's will to do a bad deed was the result of
+antecedents. Acts have marks and consequences of their own, good or bad,
+whatever may be the state of mind of those who do them. But Diderot does
+not seem to divine the true issue; he writes as if Necessarians or
+Determinists denied the existence of volitions, and as if the question
+were whether volitions do exist. Nobody denies that they exist; the real
+question is of the conditions under which they exist. Are they
+determined by antecedents, or are they self-determined, spontaneous, and
+unconnected? Is Will independent of cause?
+
+Diderot's argumentation is, in fact, merely a protest that man is
+conscious of a Will. And just as in other parts of his article Diderot
+by Liberty means only the existence of Will, so by Liberty he means only
+the healthy condition of the soul, and not its independence of
+causation. We need not waste words on so dire a confusion, nor on the
+theory that Will is sometimes dependent on cerebral antecedents and
+sometimes not. The curious thing is that the writer should not have
+perceived that he was himself in this preposterous theory propounding
+the very principle which he denounced as destructive to virtue, ruinous
+to society, and worthy of punishment by the government. For it seems
+that, after all, the Will of those whose "dispositions are not moderate"
+is not free; and we may surely say that those whose dispositions are
+least moderate, are exactly the most violent malefactors against the
+common weal. One more passage is worth quoting to show how little the
+writer had seized the true meaning of the debate. "According to you," he
+says to Bayle, "it is not clear that it is at the pure choice of my will
+to move my arm or not to move it: if that be so, it is then necessarily
+determined that within a quarter of an hour from now I shall lift my
+hand three times together, or that I shall not. Now, if you seriously
+pretend that I am not free, you cannot refuse an offer that I make you;
+I will wager a thousand pistoles to one that I will do, in the matter of
+moving my hand, exactly the opposite to what you back; and you may take
+your choice. If you do think the wager fair, it can only be because of
+your necessary and invincible judgment that I am free." As if the will
+to move or not to move the arm would be uncaused and unaffected by
+antecedents, when you have just provided so strong an antecedent as the
+desire to save a thousand pistoles. It was, perhaps, well enough for
+Voltaire to content himself with vague poetical material for his
+poetical discourse on Liberty, but from Diderot, whether as editor or as
+writer, something better might have been expected than a clumsy
+reproduction of the reasoning by which men like Turretini had turned
+philosophy into the corrupted handmaid of theology.
+
+The most extraordinary thing about this extraordinary article still
+remains to be told. It was written, we may suppose, between 1757 and
+1762, or about that time. In June, 1756, Diderot wrote to a certain
+Landois, a fellow-worker on the Encyclopaedia, a letter containing the
+most emphatic possible repudiation of the whole doctrine of Liberty.
+"Liberty is a word void of sense; there are not and there never can have
+been free beings; we are only what fits in with the general order, with
+organisation, with education, and with the chain of events. We can no
+more conceive a being acting without a motive than we can conceive one
+of the arms of a balance acting without a weight; and the motive is
+always exterior and foreign to us, attached either by nature or by some
+cause or other that is not ourselves. _There is only one sort of causes,
+properly speaking, and those are, physical causes._"[188] And so forth
+in the vein of hard and remorseless necessarianism, which we shall find
+presently in the pages of the System of Nature.[189]
+
+There is only one explanation of this flagrant contradiction. Diderot
+must have written on Liberty just as he wrote on Jesus Christ or the
+Bible. He cannot have said what he thought, but only what the persons in
+authority required him to pretend to think. We may he sure that a letter
+to an intimate would be more likely to contain his real opinion than an
+article published in the Encyclopaedia. That such mystifications are
+odious, are shameful, are almost too degrading a price to pay for the
+gains of such a work, we may all readily enough admit. All that we can
+do is to note so flagrant a case, as a striking example of the common
+artifices of the time. One other point we may note. The fervour and
+dexterity with which Diderot made what he knew to be the worse appear
+the better cause, make a still more striking example of his astonishing
+dramatic power of throwing himself, as dialectician, casuist, sophist,
+into a false and illusive part.
+
+Turning from the philosophical to the political or social group of
+articles, we find little to add to what has been said in the previous
+section. One of the most excellent essays in this group is that on
+Luxury. Diderot opens ingeniously with a list of the propositions that
+state the supposed evils of luxury, and under each proposition he places
+the most striking case that he can find in history of its falseness. He
+goes through the same process with the propositions asserting the gains
+of luxury to society. Having thus effectually disposed of any wholesale
+way of dealing with the subject, he proceeds to make a number of
+observations on the gains and drawbacks of luxury; these are full of
+sense and freedom from commonplace. Such articles as _Pouvoir,
+Souverain, Autorite_, do little more than tell over again the old
+unhistoric story about a society surrendering a portion of its sovereign
+power to some individual or dynasty to hold in trust. It is worth
+remarking how little democratic were Diderot and his school in any
+Jacobinical, or anarchic, or even more respectable modern sense. There
+is in Diderot's contributions many a firm and manly plea for the
+self-respect of the common people, but not more than once or twice is
+there a syllable of the disorder which smoulders under the pages of
+Rousseau. Thus: "When the dwellers among the fields are well treated,
+the number of proprietors insensibly grows greater, the extreme distance
+and the vile dependence of poor on rich grow less; hence the people have
+courage, force of soul, and strength of body; they love their country,
+they respect the magistrates, they are attached to a prince, to an
+order, and to laws to which they owe their peace and well-being. And you
+will no longer see the son of the honourable tiller of the soil so ready
+to quit the noble calling of his forefathers, nor so ready to go and
+sully himself with the liveries and with the contempt of the man of
+wealth."[190]
+
+No one can find fault with democratic sentiment of this kind, nor with
+the generous commonplaces of the moralist, about virtue being the only
+claim to honour, and vice the only true source of shame and inferiority.
+But neither Diderot nor Voltaire ever allowed himself to flatter the
+crowd for qualities which the crowd can scarcely possess. The little
+article on Multitude seems merely inserted for the sake of buffeting
+unwarranted pretensions. "Distrust the judgment of the multitude in all
+matters of reasoning and philosophy; there its voice is the voice of
+malice, folly, inhumanity, irrationality, and prejudice. Distrust it
+again in things that suppose much knowledge or a fine taste. The
+multitude is ignorant and dulled. Distrust it in morality; it is not
+capable of strong and generous actions; it rather wonders at such
+actions than approves them; heroism is almost madness in its eyes.
+Distrust it in the things of sentiment; is delicacy of sentiment so
+common a thing that you can accord it to the multitude? In what then is
+the multitude right? In everything, but only at the end of a very long
+time, because then it has become an echo, repeating the judgment of a
+small number of sensible men who shape the judgment of posterity for it
+beforehand. If you have on your side the testimony of your conscience,
+and against you that of the multitude, take comfort and be assured that
+time does justice." It is far from being a universal gift among men of
+letters and others to unite this fastidious estimation of the incapacity
+of the crowd in the higher provinces of the intellectual judgment, with
+a fervid desire that the life of the crowd should be made worthy of
+self-respecting men.
+
+The same hand that wrote the defiance of the populace that has just been
+quoted, wrote also this short article on Misery: "There are few souls so
+firm that misery does not in the long run cast them down and degrade
+them. The poor common people are incredibly stupid. I know not what
+false dazzling prestige closes their eyes to their present wretchedness,
+and to the still deeper wretchedness that awaits the years of old age.
+Misery is the mother of great crimes. It is the sovereigns who make the
+miserable, and it is they who shall answer in this world and the other
+for the crimes that misery has committed."
+
+So far as the mechanism of government is concerned, Diderot writes much
+as Montesquieu had done. Under the head of _Representants_ he proclaims
+the advantages, not exactly of government by a representative assembly,
+but of assisting and advising the royal government by means of such an
+assembly. There is no thought of universal suffrage. "_It is property
+that makes the citizen_; every man who has possessions in the state is
+interested in the state, and whatever be the rank that particular
+conventions may assign to him, it is always as a proprietor; it is by
+reason of his possessions that he ought to speak, and that he acquires
+the right of having himself represented." Yet this very definite
+statement does not save him from the standing difficulty of a democratic
+philosophy of politics. Nor can it be reconciled in point of logic with
+other propositions to which Diderot commits himself in the same article.
+For instance, he says that "no order of citizens is capable of
+stipulating for all; if one order had the right, it would very soon
+come to stipulate only for itself; each class ought to be represented by
+men who know its condition and its needs; _these needs are only well
+known to those who actually feel them_." But then, in that case, the
+poorest classes are those who have most need of direct representation;
+they are the most numerous, their needs are sharpest, they are the
+classes to which war, consumption of national capital and way of
+expending national income, equal laws, judicial administration, and the
+other concerns of a legislative assembly, come most close. The problem
+is to reconcile the sore interests of the multitude with the ignorance
+and the temper imputed in Diderot's own description of them.
+
+An interesting study might be made, if the limits of our subject
+permitted such a digression, on the new political ideas which a
+century's experience in England, France, Germany, the American Union,
+has added to the publicist's stock. Diderot's article on the Legislator
+is a curious mixture of views which political thinkers have left behind,
+with views which the most enlightened statesmen have taken up. There is
+much talk after the fashion of Jean Jacques Rousseau about the admirable
+legislation of Lycurgus at Sparta, the philosophical government of the
+great empire of China, and the fine spirit of the institutions of Peru.
+We perceive that the same influences which made Rousseau's political
+sentimentalism so popular also brought even strong heads like Diderot to
+believe in the unbounded power of a government to mould men at its
+will, and to impose institutions at discretion. The idea that it is the
+main function of a government to make its people virtuous, is generally
+as strong in Diderot as it was in Rousseau, and as it became in
+Robespierre. He admires the emperors of China, because their edicts are
+as the exhortation of a father to his children. All edicts, he says,
+ought to instruct and to exhort as much as they command. Yet two years
+after the Encyclopaedia was finished (1774), when Turgot prefaced his
+reforming edicts by elaborate and reasoned statements of the grounds for
+them, it was found that his prefaces caused greater provocation than the
+very laws that they introduced.
+
+Apart from the common form of enthusiasm for the "sublime legislation"
+of countries which the writer really knew nothing about, the article on
+the Legislator has some points worth noticing. We have seen how Diderot
+made the possession of property the true note of citizenship, and of a
+claim to share in the government. But he did not pay property this
+compliment for nothing. It is, he says, the business of the legislator
+to do his best to make up to mankind for the loss of that equality which
+was one of the comforts that men surrendered when they gave up the state
+of nature. Hence the legislator ought to take care that no one shall
+reach a position of extreme opulence otherwise than by an industry that
+enriches the state. "He must take care that the charges of society shall
+fall upon the rich, who enjoy the advantages of society." Even those who
+agree with Diderot, and are ready to vote for a graduated income-tax,
+will admit that he comes to his conclusion without knowing or reflecting
+about either the serious arguments for it, or the serious objections
+against it.
+
+What is really interesting in this long article is its anticipation of
+those ideas which in England we associate with the name of Cobden. "All
+the men of all lands have become necessary to one another for the
+exchange of the fruits of industry and the products of the soil.
+Commerce is a new bond among men. Every nation has an interest in these
+days in the preservation by every other nation of its wealth, its
+industry, its banks, its luxury, its agriculture. The ruin of Leipsic,
+of Lisbon, and of Lima has led to bankruptcies on all the exchanges of
+Europe, and has affected the fortunes of many millions of persons."[191]
+In the same spirit he foresees the decline of patriotism in its older
+and narrower sense, and the predominance of the international over the
+national sentiment. "All nations now have sufficiently just ideas of
+their neighbours, and consequently they have less enthusiasm for their
+country than in the old days of ignorance. There is little enthusiasm
+where there is much light; enthusiasm is nearly always the emotion of a
+soul that is more passionate than it is instructed. By comparing among
+all nations laws with laws, talents with talents, and manners with
+manners, nations will find so little reason to prefer themselves to
+others, that if they preserve for their own country that love which is
+the fruit of personal interest, at least they will lose that enthusiasm
+which is the fruit of an exclusive self-esteem."
+
+Yet Diderot had the perspicacity to discern the drawbacks to such a
+revolution in the conditions of social climate. "Commerce, like
+enlightenment, lessens ferocity, but also, just as enlightenment takes
+away the enthusiasm of self-esteem, so perhaps commerce takes away the
+enthusiasm of virtue. It gradually extinguishes the spirit of
+magnanimous disinterestedness, and replaces it by that of hard justice.
+By turning men's minds rather to use than beauty, to prudence rather
+than to greatness, it may be that it injures the strength, the
+generosity, the nobleness of manners."
+
+All this, whether it comes to much or little, is at least more true than
+Diderot's assurance that henceforth for any nation in Europe to make
+conquests must be a moral impossibility. Napoleon Bonaparte was then a
+child in arms. Whether his career was on the whole a fulfilment or a
+contradiction of Diderot's proposition, may be disputed.
+
+And so our sketch of the great book must at length end. Let us make one
+concluding remark. Is it not surprising that a man of Diderot's
+speculative boldness and power should have failed to rise from the
+mechanical arrangement of thought and knowledge, up to some higher and
+more commanding conception of the relation between himself in the
+eighteenth century, or ourselves in the nineteenth, and all those great
+systems of thought, method, and belief, which in various epochs and over
+different spaces of the globe have given to men working answers to the
+questions that their leading spirits were moved to put to themselves and
+to the iron universe around them? We constantly feel how near Diderot is
+to the point of view that would have brought light. We feel how very
+nearly ready he was to see the mental experiences of the race in east
+and west, not as superstition, degradation, grovelling error, but as
+aspects of intellectual effort and aspiration richly worthy of human
+interest and scientific consideration, and in their aim as well as in
+their substance all of one piece with the newest science and the last
+voices of religious or anti-religious development. Diderot was the one
+member of the party of Philosophers who was capable of grasping such a
+thought. If this guiding idea of the unity of the intellectual history
+of man, and the organic integrity of thought, had happily come into
+Diderot's mind, we should have had an Encyclopaedia indeed; a survey and
+representation of all the questions and answers of the world, such as
+would in itself have suggested what questions are best worth putting,
+and at the same time have furnished its own answers.
+
+For this the moment was not yet. An urgent social task lay before France
+and before Europe; it could not be postponed until the thinkers had
+worked out a scheme of philosophic completeness. The thinkers did not
+seriously make any effort after this completeness. The Encyclopaedia was
+the most serious attempt, and it did not wholly fail. As I replace in my
+shelves this mountain of volumes, "dusky and huge, enlarging on the
+sight," I have a presentiment that their pages will seldom again be
+disturbed by me or by others. They served a great purpose a hundred
+years ago. They are now a monumental ruin, clothed with all the profuse
+associations of history. It is no Ozymandias of Egypt, king of kings,
+whose wrecked shape of stone and sterile memories we contemplate. We
+think rather of the gray and crumbling walls of an ancient stronghold
+reared by the endeavour of stout hands and faithful, whence in its own
+day and generation a band once went forth against barbarous hordes, to
+strike a blow for humanity and truth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+SOCIAL LIFE (1759-1770).
+
+
+Any one must be ignorant of the facts who supposes that the men of the
+eighteenth century who did not believe in God, and were as little
+continent as King David, were therefore no better than the reckless
+vagabonds of Grub Street. Diderot, after he had once settled down to his
+huge task, became a very orderly person. It is true that he had an
+attachment to a lady who was not his wife. Marriage was in those days,
+among the courtiers and the encyclopaedic circle, too habitually regarded
+as merely an official relation. Provided that there was no official
+desertion, and no scandal, the world had nothing to say. Diderot was no
+worse than his neighbours, though we may well be sorry that a man of his
+generous sympathies and fine impulse was no better than his neighbours.
+Mademoiselle Voland, after proper deduction made for the manners of the
+time, was of a respectable and sentimental type. Her family were of good
+position; she lived with her mother and sisters, and Diderot was on good
+terms with them all. We have a glimpse of the characteristics of the
+three ladies in a little dialogue between Diderot and some one whom he
+met, and who happened to have made their acquaintance. "He informed me
+that he had passed three months in the country where you are.--_Three
+months_, said he, _is more than one needs to go mad about Madame Le
+Gendre_.[192]--True, but then she is so reserved.--_I scarcely know any
+woman with such an amount of self-respect_.--She is quite
+right.--_Madame Voland is a woman of rare merit_.--Yes, and her eldest
+daughter?--_She has the cleverness of a very devil_.--She is very
+clever, no doubt; but what I especially like is her frankness. I would
+lay a wager that she has never told a voluntary lie since she came to
+years of discretion."[193] The relations between Diderot and Sophie
+Voland were therefore not at all on the common footing of a low amour
+with a coarse or frivolous woman of the world. All the proprieties of
+appearance were scrupulously observed. Their mutual passion, though once
+not wholly without its gallantries, soon took on that worthy and
+decorous quality into which the ardour of valiant youth is reluctantly
+softened by middle age, when we gravely comfort it with names of
+philosophical compliment.
+
+One of the most interesting of all the documentary memorials of the
+century is to be found in the letters which Diderot wrote to
+Mademoiselle Voland. No doubt has ever been thrown on the authenticity
+of these letters, and they bear ample evidence of genuineness, so far as
+the substance of them is concerned, in their characteristic style. They
+were first published in 1830, from manuscripts sold to the bookseller
+the year before by a certain French man of letters, Jeudy-Dugour by
+name. He became a naturalised Russian, changed his name to Gouroff, and
+died in the position of councillor of state and director of the
+university of St. Petersburg. How he came by any papers of Diderot it is
+impossible to guess. It is assumed that when Mademoiselle Voland died
+her family gave his letters and other papers back to Diderot. These,
+along with other documents, are supposed to have been given by Diderot
+to Grimm. Thence they went to the Library of the Hermitage at St.
+Petersburg. Whether Jeudy-Dugour sold copies or originals, and whether
+he made the copies, if copies they were, from the Library, which was,
+however, rigorously closed during the reign of Nicholas I., are literary
+secrets which it is impossible to fathom. So far as Diderot is
+concerned, some of the spirit of mystification that haunted literature
+in the eighteenth century still hovers about it in the nineteenth. This
+we shall presently find in a still more interesting monument of Diderot
+than even his letters to Mademoiselle Voland.[194]
+
+They are not a continuous series. It was only when either Diderot was
+absent from Paris, or his correspondent was away at her mother's house
+in the country, that letter-writing was necessary. Diderot appears to
+have written to her openly and without disguise. The letters of
+Mademoiselle Voland in reply were for obvious reasons not sent to
+Diderot's house, but under cover to the office of Damilaville, so well
+known to the reader of Voltaire's correspondence. Damilaville was a
+commissioner in one of the revenue departments, and it is one among many
+instances of the connivance between authority and its foes, that most of
+the letters and packets of Voltaire, Diderot, and the rest of the group,
+should have been taken in, sent out, guarded, and franked by the head of
+a government office. The trouble that Damilaville willingly took in
+order to serve his friends is another example of what we have already
+remarked as the singular amiability and affectionate solicitude of those
+times. "Think of Damilaville's attention," says Diderot on one occasion:
+"to-day is Sunday, and he was obliged to leave his office. He was sure
+that I should come this evening, for I never fail when I hope for a
+letter from you. He left the key with two candles on a table, and
+between the two candles your little letter, and a pleasant note of his
+own." And by the light of the candles Diderot at once wrote a long
+answer.[195]
+
+We need not wonder if much is said in these letters of tardy couriers,
+missing answers, intolerable absences, dreary partings, delicious
+anticipations. All these are the old eternal talk of men and women, ever
+since the world began; without them we should hardly know that we are
+reading the words of man to woman. They are in our present case only
+the setting of a curiously frank and open picture of a man's life.
+
+It is held by some that one of the best means of giving the sense of a
+little fixity to lives that are but as the evanescent fabric of a dream
+and the shadow of smoke, is to secure stability of topographical centre
+by abiding in the same house. Diderot is one of the few who complied
+with this condition. For thirty years he occupied the fourth and fifth
+floors of a house which was still standing not long ago, at the corner
+of the Rue Saint Benoit by the Rue Taranne, in that Paris which our
+tourists leave unexplored, but which is nevertheless the true Paris of
+the eighteenth century. Of the equipment of his room we have a charming
+picture by the hand of its occupant. It occurs in his playful Regrets on
+My Old Dressing-gown, so rich in happy and delightful touches.
+
+"What induced me to part with it? It was made for me; I was made for it.
+It moulded itself to all the turns and outlines of my body without
+fretting me. I was picturesque and beautiful; its successor, so stiff,
+so heavy, makes a mere mannikin of me. There was no want to which, its
+complaisance did not lend itself, for indigence is ever obsequious. Was
+a book covered with dust, one of the lappets offered itself to wipe the
+dust away. Did the thick ink refuse to flow from the pen, it offered a
+fold. You saw traced in the long black lines upon it how many a service
+it had rendered me. Those long lines announced the man of letters, the
+writer, the workman. And now I have all the mien of a rich idler; you
+know not who I may be. I was the absolute master of my old robe; I am
+the slave of my new one. The dragon that guarded the golden fleece was
+not more restless than I. Care wraps me about.
+
+"The old man who has delivered himself up bound hand and foot to the
+caprices of a young giddypate, says from morning to night: Ah, where is
+my old, my kind housekeeper? What demon possessed me the day that I
+dismissed her for this creature? Then he sighs, he weeps. I do not weep
+nor sigh; but at every moment I say: Cursed be the man who invented the
+art of making common stuff precious by dyeing it scarlet! Cursed be the
+costly robe that I stand in awe of! Where is my old, my humble, my
+obliging piece of homespun?
+
+"That is not all, my friend. Hearken to the ravages of luxury--of a
+luxury that must needs be consistent with itself. My old gown was at one
+with the things about me. A straw-bottomed chair, a wooden table, a deal
+shelf that held a few books, and three or four engravings, dimmed by
+smoke, without a frame, nailed at the four corners to the wall. Among
+the engravings three or four casts in plaster were hung up; they formed,
+with my old dressing-gown, the most harmonious indigence. All has become
+discord. No more _ensemble_, no more unity, no more beauty.
+
+"The woman who comes into the house of a widower, the minister who steps
+into the place of a statesman in disgrace, the molinist bishop who gets
+hold of the diocese of a jansenist bishop--none of these people cause
+more trouble than the intruding scarlet has caused to me.
+
+"I can bear without disgust the sight of a peasant-woman. The bit of
+coarse canvas that covers her head, the hair falling about her cheeks,
+the rags that only half cover her, the poor short skirt that goes no
+more than half-way down her legs, the naked feet covered with mud--all
+these things do not wound me; 'tis the image of a condition that I
+respect, 'tis the sign and summary of a state that is inevitable, that
+is woful, and that I pity with all my heart. But my gorge rises, and in
+spite of the scented air that follows her, I turn my eyes from the
+courtesan, whose fine lace head-gear and torn cuffs, white stockings and
+worn-out shoes, show me the misery of the day in company with the
+opulence of last night. Such would my house have been, if the imperious
+scarlet had not forced all into harmony with itself. I had two
+engravings that were not without merit, Poussin's Manna in the
+Wilderness, and the same painter's Esther before Ahasuerus; the one is
+driven out in shame by some old man of Rubens's, the Fall of the Manna
+is scattered to the winds by a Storm of Vernet's. The old straw chair is
+banished to the ante-room by a luxurious thing of morocco. Homer,
+Virgil, Horace, Cicero, have been taken from their shelf and shut up in
+a case of grand marqueterie work, an asylum worthier of them than of me.
+The wooden table still held its ground, protected by a vast pile of
+pamphlets and papers heaped pell-mell upon it; they seemed as if they
+would long protect it from its doom. Yet one day that too was mastered
+by fate, and in spite of my idleness pamphlets and papers went to
+arrange themselves in the shelves of a costly bureau.... It was thus that
+the edifying retreat of the philosopher became transformed into the
+scandalous cabinet of the farmer-general. Thus I too am insulting the
+national misery.
+
+"Of my early mediocrity there remained only a list carpet. The shabby
+carpet hardly matches with my luxury. I feel it. But I have sworn and I
+swear that I will keep this carpet, as the peasant, who was raised from
+the hut to the palace of his sovereign, still kept his wooden shoes.
+When in a morning, clad in the sumptuous scarlet, I enter my room, if I
+lower my eyes I perceive my old list carpet; it recalls to me my early
+state, and rising pride stands checked. No, my friend, I am not
+corrupted. My door is open as ever to want; it finds me affable as ever;
+I listen to its tale, I counsel, I pity, I succour it." ...
+
+Yet the interior of Socrates-Diderot was as little blessed by domestic
+sympathy as the interior of the older and greater Socrates. Of course
+Diderot was far enough from being faultless. His wife is described by
+Rousseau as a shrew and a scold. It is too plain that she was so; sullen
+to her husband, impatient with her children, and exacting and
+unreasonable with her servants.[196] We cannot pretend accurately to
+divide the blame. The companionship was very dreary, and the picture
+grievous and most afflicting to our thoughts. Diderot returns in the
+evening from Holbach's, throws his carpet-bag in at the door, flies off
+to seek a letter from Mademoiselle Voland, writes one to her, gets back
+to his house at midnight, finds his daughter ill, puts cheerful and
+cordial questions to his wife, she replies with a tartness that drives
+him back into silence.[197] Another time the scene is violent. A torrent
+of injustice and unreasonableness flows over him for two long hours, and
+he wonders what the woman will profit, after she has made him burst a
+blood-vessel; he groans in anguish, "Ah, how hard life seems to me to
+bear! How many a time would I accept the end of it with joy!"[198] So
+sharp are the goads in a divided house; so sorely, with ache and smart
+and deep-welling tears, do men and women rend into shreds the fine web
+of one another's lives. But the pity of it, O the pity of it!
+
+There are many brighter intervals which make one willing to suppose
+that if the wife had been a little more patient, more tolerant, more
+cheerful, less severely addicted to her sterile superstition, there
+might have been somewhat more happiness in the house. One misery of the
+present social ideal of women is that, while it keeps them so
+systematically ignorant, superstitious, and narrow, it leaves them
+without humility. "Be content," said the great John Wesley to his
+froward wife, "be content to be a private insignificant person, known
+and loved by God and me. Of what importance is your character to
+mankind? If you was buried just now, or if you had never lived, what
+loss would it be to the cause of God?" This energetic remonstrance can
+hardly be said to exhaust the matter. Still it puts a wholesome side of
+the case which Madame Diderot missed, and which better persons are
+likely to miss, so long as the exclusion of women, by common opinion or
+by law, from an active participation in the settlement of great issues,
+makes them indifferent to all interests outside domestic egoism, and
+egoistic and personal religion. Brighter intervals shone in the
+household. "I announced my departure," writes Diderot, "for next
+Tuesday. At the first word I saw the faces both of mother and daughter
+fall. The child had a compliment for my fete-day all ready, and it would
+not do to let her waste the trouble of having learnt it. The mother had
+projected a grand dinner for Sunday. Well, we arranged everything
+perfectly. I made my journey, and came back to be harangued and
+feasted. The poor child made her little speech in the most bewitching
+way. In the middle there came some hard words, so she stopped and said
+to me, 'My papa, 'tis because my two front teeth have come out'--as was
+true. Then she went on. At the end, as she had a posy to give me, and it
+could not be found, she stopped a second time to say to me--'Here's the
+worst of the tale; my pinks have got lost.' Then she started off in
+search of her flowers. We dined in great style. My wife had got all her
+friends together. I was very gay, eating, drinking, and doing the
+honours of my table to perfection. On rising from table I stayed among
+them and played cards instead of going out. I saw them all off between
+eleven and twelve: I was charming, and if you only knew with whom; what
+physiognomies, what folk, what talk!"
+
+Another time the child, whispering in his ear, asks why her mother bade
+her not remind him that the morrow was the mother's fete-day. The
+presence of the blithe all-hoping young, looking on with innocent
+unconscious eyes at the veiled tragedy of love turned to bitter discord,
+gives to such scenes their last touch of piteousness. Diderot, however,
+observed the day, and presented a bouquet which was neither well or ill
+received. At the birthday dinner the master of the house presided. "If
+you had been behind the curtains, you would have said to yourself, how
+can all this gossip and twaddle find a place in the same head with
+certain ideas! And in truth I was charming, and played the fool to a
+marvel."[199]
+
+In the midst of distractions great and small, was an indomitable
+industry. "I tell you," he wrote, "and I tell all men, when you are ill
+at ease with yourself, instantly set about some good work. In busying
+myself to soothe the trouble of another, I forget my own." He was
+assiduous in teaching his daughter, though he complained that her mother
+crushed out in a day what it had taken him a month to implant. The
+booksellers found him the most cheerful and strenuous bondsman that ever
+booksellers had. He would pass a whole month without a day's break,
+working ten hours every day at the revision of proof-sheets. Sometimes
+he remains a whole week without leaving his workroom. He wears out his
+eyes over plates and diagrams, bristling with figures and letters, and
+with no more refreshing thought in the midst of this sore toil than that
+insult, persecution, torment, trickery, will be the fruit of it. He not
+only spent whole days bent over his desk, until he had a feeling as of
+burning flame within him; he also worked through the hours of the night.
+On one of these occasions, worn out with fatigue and weariness, he fell
+asleep with his head on his desk; the light fell down among his papers,
+and he awoke to find half the books and papers on the desk burnt to
+ashes. "I kept my own counsel about it," he writes, "because a single
+hint of such an accident would have robbed my wife of sleep for the
+rest of her life."[200]
+
+His favourite form of holiday was a visit to Holbach's country house at
+Grandval. Here he spent some six weeks or more nearly every autumn after
+1759. The manner of life there was delightful to him. There was perfect
+freedom, the mistress of the house neither rendering strict duties of
+ceremony nor exacting them. Diderot used to rise at six or at eight, and
+remain in his own room until one, reading, writing, meditating. Nobody
+was more exquisitely sensible than Diderot to the charm of loitering
+over books, "over those authors," as he said, "who ravish us from
+ourselves, in whose hands nature has placed a fairy wand, with which
+they no sooner touch us, than straightway we forget the evils of life,
+the darkness lifts from our souls, and we are reconciled to
+existence."[201] The musing suggestiveness of reading when we read only
+for reading's sake, and not for reproduction nor direct use, was as
+delightful to our laborious drudge as to others, but he could indulge
+himself with little of this sweet idleness. It was in harder labour that
+he passed most of his mornings. These hours of work achieved, he dressed
+and went down among his friends. Then came the mid-day dinner, which was
+sumptuous; host and guests both ate and drank more than was good for
+their health. After a short siesta, towards four o'clock they took their
+sticks and went forth to walk, among woods, over ploughed fields, up
+hills, through quagmires, delighting in nature. As they went, they
+talked of history, or politics, or chemistry, of literature, or physics,
+or morality. At sundown they returned, to find lights and cards on the
+tables, and they made parties of piquet, interrupted by supper. At
+half-past ten the game ends, they chat until eleven, and in half an hour
+more they are all fast asleep.[202] Each day was like the next;
+industry, gaiety, bodily comfort, mental activity, diversifying the
+hours. Grimm was often there, "the most French of all the Germans," and
+Galiani, the most nimble-witted of men, inexhaustible in story,
+inimitable in pantomimic narration, and yet with the keenest
+intellectual penetration shining through all his Neapolitan prank and
+buffoonery. Holbach cared most for the physical sciences. Marmontel
+brought a vein of sentimentalism, and Helvetius a vein of cynical
+formalism. Diderot played Socrates, Panurge, Pantophile; questioning,
+instructing, combining; pouring out knowledge and suggestion, full of
+interest in every subject, sympathetic with every vein, relishing alike
+the newest philosophic hardihood, the last too merry mood of Holbach's
+mother-in-law, the freshest piece of news brought by a traveller. It was
+not at Grandval that he found life hard to bear, or would have accepted
+its close with joy. And indeed if one could by miracle be transported
+back into the sixth decade of that dead century for a single day,
+perhaps one might choose that such a day should be passed among the
+energetic and vivid men who walked of an afternoon among the fields and
+woods of Grandval.
+
+The unblushing grossness of speech which even the ladies of the party
+permitted themselves cannot be reproduced in the decorous print of our
+age. It is nothing less than inconceivable to us how Diderot can have
+brought himself to write down, in letters addressed to a woman of good
+education and decent manners, some of the talk that went on at Grandval.
+The coarsest schoolboy of these days would wince at such shameless
+freedoms. But it would be wrong to forget the allowance that must be
+made for differences in point of fashion. Diderot, for instance, in
+these very letters is wonderfully frank in his exposure of the details
+of his health. He describes his indigestions, and other more
+indescribable obstructions to happiness, as freely as Cicero wrote about
+the dysentery which punished him, when, after he had resisted oysters
+and lampreys at supper, he yielded to a dish of beet and mallow so
+dressed with pot-herbs, _ut nil posset esse suavius_. Whatever men could
+say to one another or to their surgeons they saw no harm in saying to
+women. We have to remember how Sir Walter Scott's great-aunt, about the
+very time when Diderot was writing to Mademoiselle Voland, had heard
+Mrs. Aphra Behn's books read aloud for the amusement of large circles,
+consisting of the first and most creditable society in London. We think
+of Swift, in an earlier period of the century, enclosing to Stella some
+recklessly gross verses of his own upon Bolingbroke, and habitually
+writing to fine ladies in a way that Falstaff might have thought too bad
+for Doll Tearsheet. In saying that these coarse impurities are only
+points of manners, we are as far as possible from meaning that they are
+on that account unimportant. But it is childish to waste our time in
+censorious judgment on the individual who does no worse than represent a
+ruling type. We can only note the difference and pass on.
+
+A characteristic trait in this rural life is Diderot's passion for high
+winds. They gave him a transport, and to hear the storm at night,
+tossing the trees, drenching the ground with rain, and filling the air
+with the bass of its hoarse ground-tones, was one of his keenest
+delights.[203] Yet Diderot was not of those in whom the feeling for the
+great effects of nature has something of savagery. He was above all
+things human, and the human lot was the central source of his innermost
+meditations. In the midst of gossip is constantly interpolated some
+passage of fine reflection on life--reflection as sincere, as real,
+coming as spontaneously from the writer's inmost mood and genuine
+sentiment, as little tainted either by affectation or by commonness, as
+ever passed through the mind of a man. Some of these are too
+characteristic to be omitted, and there is so little of what is
+exquisite in the flavour of Diderot's style, that he perhaps suffers
+less from the clumsiness of translation than writers of finer colour or
+more stirring melody. One of these passages is as follows:--
+
+"The last news from Paris has made the Baron anxious, as he has
+considerable sums in royal securities. He said to his wife: 'Listen, my
+friend; if this is going on, I put down the carriage, I buy you a good
+cloak and a good parasol, and for the rest of our days we will bless the
+minister for ridding us of horses, lackeys, coachmen, ladies'-maids,
+cooks, great dinner-parties, false friends, tiresome bores, and all the
+other privileges of opulence.' And for my part I began to think, that
+for a man without a wife or child, or any of those connections that make
+us long for money, and never leave any superfluity, it would be almost
+indifferent whether he were poor or rich. This paradox comes of the
+equality that I discover among various conditions of life, and in the
+little difference that I allow, in point of happiness, between the
+master of the house and the hall-porter. If I am sound in mind and body,
+if I have worth and a pure conscience, if I know the true from the
+false, if I avoid evil and do good, if I feel the dignity of my being,
+if nothing lowers me in my own eyes, then people may call me what they
+will, _My Lord,_ or _Sirrah_. To do what is good, to know what is
+true--that is what distinguishes one man from another; the rest is
+nothing. The duration of life is so short, its true needs are so narrow,
+and when we go away, it all matters so little whether we have been
+somebody or nobody. When the end comes, all that you want is a sorry
+piece of canvas and four deal boards. In the morning I hear the
+labourers under my window. Scarce has the day dawned before they are at
+work with spade and barrow, delving and wheeling. They munch a crust of
+black bread; they quench their thirst at the flowing stream; at noon
+they snatch an hour of sleep on the hard ground. They are cheerful; they
+sing as they work; they exchange their good broad pleasantries with one
+another; they shout with laughter. At sundown they go home to find
+their children naked round a smoke-blackened hearth, a woman hideous and
+dirty, and their lot is neither worse nor better than mine. I came down
+from my room in bad spirits; I heard talk about the public misery; I sat
+down to a table full of good cheer without an appetite; I had a stomach
+overloaded with the dainties of the day before; I grasped a stick and
+set out for a walk to find relief; I returned to play cards, and cheat
+the heavy-weighing hours. I had a friend of whom I could not hear; I was
+far from a woman whom I sighed for. Troubles in the country, troubles in
+the town, troubles everywhere. He who knows not trouble is not to be
+counted among the children of men. All gets paid off in time; the good
+by the evil, evil by good, and life is naught. Perhaps to-morrow night
+or Monday morning we may go to pass a day in town; so I shall see the
+woman for whom I sighed, and recover the man of whom I could not hear.
+But I shall lose them the next day; and the more I feel the happiness of
+being with them, the worse I shall suffer at parting. That is the way
+that all things go. Turn and turn and turn again; there is ever a
+crumpled rose-leaf to vex you."[204]
+
+It is not often that we find such active benevolence as Diderot's, in
+conjunction with such a vein of philosophy as follows:--
+
+"Ah, what a fine comedy this world would be, if only one had not to play
+a part in it; if one existed, for instance, in some point of space, in
+that interval of the celestial orbs where the gods of Epicurus slumber,
+far, far away, whence one could see this globe, on which we strut so
+big, about the size of a pumpkin, and whence one could watch all the
+airs and tricks of that two-footed mite who calls itself man. I would
+fain only look at the scenes of life in reduced size, so that those
+which are stamped with atrocity may be brought down to an inch in space,
+and to actors half a line high. But how bizarre, that our sense of
+revolt against injustice is in the ratio of the space and the mass. I am
+furious if a large animal unjustly attacks another. I feel nothing at
+all if it is two atoms that tear and rend. How our senses affect our
+morality. There is a fine text for philosophising!"[205]
+
+"What I see every day of physic and physicians does not much heighten my
+opinion of them. To come into the world in imbecility, in the midst of
+anguish and cries; to be the toy of ignorance, of error, of necessity,
+of sickness, of malice, of all passions; to return step by step to that
+imbecility whence one sprang; from the moment when we lisp our first
+words, down to the moment when we mumble the words of our dotage, to
+live among rascals and charlatans of every kind; to lie expiring between
+a man who feels your pulse, and another man who frets and wearies your
+head; not to know whence one comes, nor why one has come, nor whither
+one is going--that is what we call the greatest gift of our parents and
+of nature--human life."[206]
+
+These sombre meditations hardly represent Diderot's habitual vein; they
+are rather a reaction and a relief from the busy intensity with which he
+watches the scene, and is constantly putting interrogatories to human
+life, as day by day its motley circumstance passes before his eyes. We
+should scarcely suspect from his frequent repetitions of the mournful
+eternal chorus of the nullity of man and the vanity of all the things
+that are under the sun, how alert a watch he kept on incident and
+character, with what keen and open ear he listened for any curious note
+of pain, or voice of fine emotion, or odd perversity of fate. All this
+he does, not in the hard temper of a Balzac, not with the calm or pride
+of a Goethe, but with an overflowing fulness of spontaneous and
+uncontrollable sympathy. He is a sentimentalist in the rationalistic
+century, not with the sentimentalism of misanthropy, such as fired or
+soured Rousseau, but social, large-hearted, many-sided, careless of the
+wise rigours of morality. He is never callous nor neutral; on the
+contrary, he is always approving or disapproving, but not from the
+standards of the ethical text-books. The casuistry of feeling is of
+everlasting interest to him, and he is never tired of inventing
+imaginary cases, or pondering real ones, in which pliant feeling is
+invoked against the narrowness of duty. These are mostly in a kind of
+matter which modern taste hardly allows us to reproduce; nor, after all,
+is there much to be gained by turning the sanctities of human
+relationship, with all their immeasurable bliss, their immeasurable woe,
+into the playthings of an idle dialectic. It is pleasanter, and for us
+English not less instructive than pleasant, to see this dreaming,
+restless, thrice ingenious spirit, half Titan of the skies, half gnome
+of the lower earth, entering joyously or pitifully into the simple charm
+and natural tenderness of life as it comes and passes. Nothing delights
+him more than to hear or to tell such a story as this of Madame
+D'Epinay. She had given a small lad eighteen sous for a day's work. At
+night he went home without a farthing. When his mother asked him
+whether they had given him nothing for his work, he said No. The mother
+found out that this was untrue, and insisted on knowing what had become
+of the eighteen sous. The poor little creature had given them to an
+alehouse-keeper, where his father had been drinking all day; and so he
+had spared the worthy man a rough scene with his wife when he got
+home.[207]
+
+From the pathos of kindly youth to the grace of lovable age the step is
+not far. "To-day I have dined with a charming woman, who is only eighty
+years old. She is full of health and cheerfulness; her soul is still
+all gentleness and tenderness. She talks of love and friendship with
+the fire and sensibility of a girl of twenty. There were three men of
+us at table with her; she said to us, 'My friends, a delicate
+conversation, a true and passionate look, a tear, a touched expression,
+those are the good things of the world; as for all besides, it is
+hardly worth talking of. There are certain things that were said to me
+when I was young, and that I remember to this day, and any one of those
+words is to be preferred before ten glorious deeds: by my faith, I
+believe if I heard them even now, my old heart would beat the quicker.'
+'Madame, the reason is that your heart has grown no older.' 'No, my
+son, you are right; it is as young as ever. It is not for having kept
+me alive so long that I thank God, but for having kept me kind-hearted,
+gentle, and full of feeling.'"[208] All this was after Diderot's own
+heart, and he declares such a conversation to be worth more than all
+the hours of talk on politics and philosophy that he had been having a
+few days before with some English friends. We may understand how, as we
+shall presently see, a member of a society that could relish the beauty
+of such a scene, would be likely to think Englishmen hard, surly, and
+cheerless.
+
+His letters constantly offer us sensible and imaginative reflection. He
+amused himself in some country village by talking to an old man of
+eighty. "I love children and old men; the latter seem to me like some
+singular creatures that have been spared by caprice of fate." He meets
+some old schoolfellows at Langres, nearly all the rest having gone:
+"Well, there are two things that warn us of our end, and set us
+musing--old ruins, and the short duration of those who began life with
+us." He is taken by a host over-devoted to such joys, to walk among
+dung-heaps. "After all," he says, "it ought not to offend one's sense.
+To an honest nose that has preserved its natural innocence, 'tis not a
+goat, but a bemusked and ambre-scented woman, who smelleth ill."
+
+"When I compare our friendships to our antipathies, I find that the
+first are thin, small, pinched; we know how to hate, but we do not know
+how to love."
+
+"A poet who becomes idle, does excellently well to be idle; he ought to
+be sure that it is not industry that fails, but that his gift is
+departing from him."
+
+"Comfort the miserable; that is the true way to console yourself for my
+absence. I recollect saying to the Baron, when he lost his first wife,
+and was sure that there was not another day's happiness left for him in
+this world, 'Hasten out of doors, seek out the wretched, console them,
+and then you will pity yourself, if you dare.'"[209]
+
+"An infinitude of tyrannical things interpose between us and the duties
+of love and friendship; and we do nothing aright. A man is neither free
+for his ambition, nor free for his taste, nor free for his passion. And
+so we all live discontented with ourselves. One of the great
+inconveniences of the state of society is the multitude of our
+occupations and, above all, the levity with which we make engagements to
+dispose of all our future happiness. We marry, we go into business, we
+have children, all before we have common sense."[210]
+
+After some equivocal speculations as to the conduct of a woman who, by
+the surrender of herself for a quarter of an hour to the desires of a
+powerful minister, wins an appointment for her husband and bread for her
+six children, he exclaims: "In truth, I think Nature heeds neither good
+nor evil; she is wholly wrapped up in two objects, the preservation of
+the individual and the propagation of the species."[211] True; but the
+moral distinction between right and wrong is so much wrung from the
+forces that Diderot here calls Nature.
+
+The intellectual excitement in which he lived and the energy with which
+he promoted it, sought relief either in calm or else in the play of
+sensibility. "A delicious repose," he writes in one of his most harassed
+moments, "a sweet book to read, a walk in some open and solitary spot, a
+conversation in which one discloses all one's heart, a strong emotion
+that brings the tears to one's eyes and makes the heart beat faster,
+whether it comes of some tale of generous action, or of a sentiment of
+tenderness, of health, of gaiety, of liberty, of indolence--there is the
+true happiness, nor shall I ever know any other."
+
+_A Point in Rhetoric._--"Towards six in the evening the party broke up.
+I remained alone with D., and as we were talking about the Eloges on
+Descartes that had been sent in to the Academy, I made two remarks that
+pleased him upon eloquence. One, that it is a mistake to try to stir the
+passions before convincing the reason, and that the pathetic remains
+without effect, when it is not prepared by the syllogism. Second, that
+after the orator had touched me keenly, I could not endure that he
+should break in upon this melting of the soul with some violent stroke:
+that the pathetic insists on being followed by something moderate, weak,
+vague, that should leave room for no contention on my part."[212]
+
+_Holbach's Impressions of England._--"The Baron has returned from
+England. He started with the pleasantest anticipations, he had a most
+agreeable reception, he had excellent health, and yet he has returned
+out of humour and discontented; discontented with the country, which he
+found neither as populous nor as well cultivated as people say;
+discontented with the buildings, that are nearly all bizarre and Gothic;
+with the gardens, where the affectation of imitating nature is worse
+than the monotonous symmetry of art; with the taste that heaps up in the
+palaces what is first-rate, what is good, what is bad, what is
+detestable, all pell-mell. He is disgusted at the amusements, which have
+the air of religious ceremonies; with the men, on whose countenances you
+never see confidence, friendship, gaiety, sociability, but on every face
+the inscription, _'What is there in common between me and you?'_;
+disgusted with the great people, who are gloomy, cold, proud, haughty,
+and vain; and with the small people, who are hard, insolent, and
+barbarous. The only thing that I have heard him praise is the facility
+of travel: he says there is not a village, even on a cross-road, where
+you do not find four or five post-chaises and a score of horses ready to
+start.... There is no public education. The colleges--sumptuous
+buildings--palaces to be compared to the Tuileries, are occupied by rich
+idlers, who sleep and get drunk one part of the day, and the rest they
+spend in training, clumsily enough, a parcel of uncouth lads to be
+clergymen.... In the fine places that have been built for public
+amusements, you could hear a mouse run. A hundred stiff and silent women
+walk round and round an orchestra that is set up in the middle. The
+Baron compares these circuits to the seven processions of the Egyptians
+round the tomb of Osiris. A charming _mot_ of my good friend Garrick, is
+that London is good for the English, but Paris is good for all the
+world.... There is a great mania for conversions and missionaries. Mr.
+Hume told me a story which will let you know what to think of these
+pretended conversions of cannibals and Hurons. A minister thought he had
+done a great stroke in this line; he had the vanity to wish to show his
+proselyte, and brought him to London. They question his little Huron,
+and he answers to perfection. They take him to church, and administer
+the sacrament, where, as you know, the communion is in both kinds.
+Afterwards, the minister says to him, 'Well, my son, do you not feel
+yourself more animated with the love of God? Does not the grace of the
+sacrament work within you? Is not all your soul warmed?' 'Yes,' says the
+Huron: 'the wine does one good, but I think it would have done still
+better if it had been brandy.'"[213]
+
+_Two Cases of Conscience_.--"The cure said that unhappy lovers always
+talked about dying, but that it was very rare to find one who kept his
+word; still he had seen one case. It was that of a young man of family,
+called Soulpse. He fell in love with a young lady of beauty and of good
+character, but without money, and belonging to a dishonoured family. Her
+father was in the galleys for forgery. The young man, who foresaw all
+the opposition, and all the good grounds for opposition, that he would
+have to encounter among his family, did all that he could to cure
+himself of his passion; but when he was assured of the uselessness of
+his efforts, he plucked up courage to open the matter to his parents,
+who wearied themselves with remonstrances. Our lover suddenly stopped
+them short, saying, 'I know all that you have to say against me; I
+cannot disapprove of your reasons, which I should be the first to urge
+against my own son, if I had one. But consider whether you would rather
+have me dead or badly married; for it is certain that if I do not marry
+the woman that I love, I shall die of it.' They treated this speech as
+it deserved; the result does not affect that. The young man fell sick,
+faded from day to day, and died. 'But, Cure,' said I, 'in the place of
+the father, what would you have done?' 'I would have called my son; I
+would have said: Soulpse has been your name hitherto; never forget that
+it is yours no more; and call yourself by what other name you please.
+Here is your lawful share of our property; marry the woman you love, so
+far from here that I may never hear speak of you again, and God bless
+you. 'For my part,' said old Madame D'Esclavelles, 'if I had been the
+mother of the young madman, I would have done exactly as his father did,
+and let him die.' And upon this there was a tremendous division of
+opinion, and an uproar that made the room ring again.
+
+"The dispute lasted a long time, and would be going on now if the cure
+had not broken it off by putting to us another case. A young priest,
+discontented with his profession, flees to England, apostatises, marries
+according to the law, and has children. After a certain time he longs
+for his native country; he comes back to France with his children and
+his wife. After that, again, he is stricken by remorse; he returns to
+his religion, has scruples about his marriage, and thinks of separating
+from his wife. He opens his heart to our cure, who finds the case very
+embarrassing, and not venturing to decide it, refers him to casuists and
+lawyers. They all decide that he cannot, with a sure conscience, remain
+with his wife. When the separation, which the wife opposed with all her
+might, was about to be legally effected--rather against the wishes of
+our cure--the husband fell dangerously ill. When he knew that he could
+not recover, he said to the cure: 'My friend, I wish to make public
+amends for my backsliding, to receive the sacraments, and to die in the
+hospital; be kind enough to have me taken there.' 'I will take care to
+do no such thing,' the cure replied to him. 'This woman is innocent; she
+married you according to law; she knew nothing of the obstacles that
+existed. And these children, what share have they in your sin? You are
+the only wrongdoer, and it is they who are to be punished! Your wife
+will be disgraced, your children will be declared illegitimate, and what
+is the gain of it all?' And the good cure stuck to his text. He
+confessed his man, the illness grew worse, he administered the last
+sacraments. The man died, and his wife and children remained in
+possession of the titles they had. We all approved the cure's wisdom,
+and Grimm insisted on having his portrait taken."[214]
+
+_Chinese Superiority_.---"Apropos of the Chinese, do you know that with
+them nobility ascends, and descends never? It is the children who
+ennoble their ancestors, and not the ancestors the children. And upon my
+word that is most sensible. We are greater poets, greater philosophers,
+greater orators, greater architects, greater astronomers, greater
+geometers, than these good people; but they understand better than we
+the science of good sense and virtue; and if peradventure that science
+should happen to be the first of all sciences, they would be right in
+saying that they have two eyes and we have only one, and all the rest of
+the world is blind."[215]
+
+_Why Women write good Letters_.--"She writes admirably, really
+admirably. That is because good style is in the heart; and that is why
+so many women talk and write like angels without ever having learnt
+either to talk or to write, and why so many pedants will both talk and
+write ill all the days of their life, though they were never weary of
+studying,--only without learning."[216]
+
+"A little adventure has just happened here that proves that all our fine
+sermons on intolerance have as yet produced but poor fruit. A young man
+of respectable birth, some say apprentice to an apothecary, others to a
+grocer, took it into his head to go through a course of chemistry; his
+master consented, on condition that he should pay for board; the lad
+agreed. At the end of the quarter the master demanded the money, and it
+was paid. Soon after, another demand from the master; the apprentice
+replied that he barely owed a single quarter. The master denied that the
+first quarter had been paid. The affair was taken into court. The master
+is put on his oath, and swears. He had no sooner perjured himself than
+the apprentice produced his receipt, and the master was straightway
+fined and disgraced. He was a scoundrel who deserved it, but the
+apprentice was a rash fellow, whose victory was bought at a price dearer
+than life. He had received, in payment or otherwise, from some
+colporteur, two copies of _Christianity Unveiled_, and one of them he
+had sold to his master. The master informs against him. The colporteur,
+his wife, and his apprentice, are all three arrested, and they have just
+been pilloried, whipped, and branded, and the apprentice condemned to
+nine years of the galleys, the colporteur to five years, and the woman
+to the hospital for life.... Do you see the meaning of this judgment? A
+colporteur brings me a prohibited book. If I buy more than one copy, I
+am declared to be encouraging unlawful trading, and exposed to a
+frightful prosecution. You have read the _Man with Forty Crowns_,[217]
+and will hardly be able to guess why it is placed under the ban in the
+judgment I am telling you of. It is in consequence of the profound
+resentment that our lords and masters feel about a certain article,
+_Tyrant_, in the _Philosophical Dictionary_. They will never forgive
+Voltaire for saying that it was better to have to do with a single wild
+beast, which one could avoid, than with a band of little subaltern
+tigers who are incessantly getting between your legs.... To return to
+those two unfortunate wretches whom they have condemned to the galleys.
+When they come out, what will become of them? There will be nothing left
+for them to do, save to turn highway robbers. The ignominious
+penalties, which take away all resource from a man, are worse than the
+capital punishment that takes away his life."[218]
+
+_Method and Genius: an Apologue._--"There was a question between Grimm
+and M. Le Roy of creative genius and co-ordinating method. Grimm detests
+method; according to him, it is the pedantry of letters. Those who can
+only arrange, would do as well to remain idle; those who can only get
+instruction from what has been arranged, would do as well to remain
+ignorant. What necessity is there for so many people knowing anything
+else besides their trade? They said a great many things that I don't
+report to you, and they would be saying things still, if the Abbe
+Galiani had not interrupted them:
+
+'My friends, I remember a fable: pray listen to it. One day, in the
+depths of a forest, a dispute arose between a Nightingale and a Cuckoo.
+Each prizes its own gift. What bird, said the Cuckoo, has a song so
+easy, so simple, so natural, so measured, as mine?
+
+What bird, said the Nightingale, has a song sweeter, more varied, more
+brilliant, more touching, than mine?
+
+_The Cuckoo:_ I say few things, but they are things of weight, of order,
+and people retain them.
+
+_The Nightingale:_ I love to use my voice, but I am always fresh, and I
+never weary. I enchant the woods; the Cuckoo makes them dismal. He is so
+attached to the lessons of his mother, that he would not dare to venture
+a single note that he had not taken from her. Now for me, I recognise no
+master. I laugh at rules. What comparison between his pedantic method
+and my glorious bursts?
+
+The Cuckoo tried several times to interrupt the Nightingale. But
+nightingales always go on singing, and never listen; that is rather
+their weakness. Ours, carried away by his ideas, followed them with
+rapidity, without paying the least attention to the answers of his
+rival.
+
+So after some talk and counter-talk, they agreed to refer their quarrel
+to the judgment of a third animal. But where were they to find this
+third, equally competent and impartial? It is not so easy to find a good
+judge. They sought on every side. As they crossed a meadow, they spied
+an Ass, one of the gravest and most solemn that ever was seen. Since the
+creation of the world, no ass had ever had such long ears. 'Ah,' said
+the Cuckoo, 'our luck is excellent; our quarrel is a matter of ears:
+here is our judge. God Almighty made him for the very purpose!'
+
+The Ass went on browsing. He little thought that one day he would have
+to decide a question of music. But Providence amuses itself with this
+and many another thing. Our two birds bow very low, compliment him upon
+his gravity and his judgment, explain the subject of their dispute, and
+beseech him, with all deference, to listen to their case and decide.
+
+But the Ass, hardly turning his heavy head and without losing a single
+toothsome blade, makes them a sign with his ears that he is hungry, and
+that he does not hold his court to-day. The birds persist; the Ass goes
+on browsing. At last his hunger was appeased. There were some trees
+planted by the edge of the meadow. 'Now, if you like,' said he, 'you go
+there, I will follow; you shall sing, I will digest; I will listen, and
+I'll give you my opinion.'
+
+The birds instantly fly away, and perch on branches. The Ass follows
+them with the air and the step of a chief justice crossing Westminster
+Hall: he stretches himself flat on the ground, and says, 'Begin, the
+court listens.'
+
+Says the Cuckoo: 'My lord, there is not a word to lose. I beg of you to
+seize carefully the character of my singing; above all things, deign, my
+lord, to mark its artifice and its method.' Then filling its throat, and
+flapping its wings at each note, it sang out, 'Coucou, coucou, coucou,
+coucou, coucou, coucou.' And after having combined this in every
+possible way, it fell silent.
+
+The Nightingale, without any prelude, pours forth his voice at once,
+launches into the most daring modulations, pursues the freshest and most
+delicate melodies, cadences, pauses, and trills; now you heard the notes
+murmuring at the bottom of its throat, like the ripple of the brook as
+it loses itself among the pebbles; now you heard them rising and
+gradually swelling and filling the air, and lingering long-drawn in the
+skies. It was tender, glad, brilliant, pathetic; but his music was not
+made for everybody.
+
+Carried away by enthusiasm, he would be singing still; but the Ass, who
+had already yawned more than once, stopped him, and said, 'I suspect
+that all you have been singing there is uncommonly fine, but I don't
+understand a word of it: it strikes me as bizarre, incoherent, and
+confused. It may be you are more scientific than your rival; but he is
+more methodic than you, and for my part, I'm for method.'
+
+"And then the abbe, addressing M. Le Roy, and pointing to Grimm with his
+finger: 'There,' he said, 'is the nightingale, and you the cuckoo; and I
+am the ass, who decide in your favour. Good-night.'
+
+"The abbes stories are capital, but he acts in a way that makes them
+better still. You would have died with laughing to see him stretch his
+neck into the air, and imitate the fine note of the nightingale, then
+fill his throat, and take up the hoarse tone for the cuckoo; and all
+that naturally, and without effort. He is pantomime from head to
+foot."[219]
+
+_Conversation._--"'Tis a singular thing, conversation, especially when
+the company is tolerably large. Look at the roundabout circuits we took;
+the dreams of a patient in delirium are not more incongruous. Still,
+just as there is nothing absolutely unconnected in the head either of a
+man who dreams, or of a lunatic, so all hangs together in conversation;
+but it would often be extremely hard to find the imperceptible links
+that have brought so many disparate ideas together. A man lets fall a
+word which he detaches from what has gone before, and what has followed
+in his head; another does the same, and then let him catch the thread
+who can. A single physical quality may lead the mind that is engaged
+upon it to an infinity of different things. Take a colour--yellow, for
+instance; gold is yellow, silk is yellow, care is yellow, bile is
+yellow, straw is yellow; to how many other threads does not this thread
+answer? Madness, dreaming, the rambling of conversation, all consist in
+passing from one object to another, through the medium of some common
+quality."[220]
+
+_Annihilation._--"The conversation took a serious turn. They spoke of
+the horror that we all feel for annihilation.
+
+"'Ah,' cried Father Hoop, 'be good enough to leave me out, if you
+please. I have been too uncomfortable the first time to have any wish to
+come back. If they would give me an immortality of bliss for a single
+day of purgatory, I would not take it. The best that can befall us is to
+cease to be.'
+
+"This set me musing, and it seemed to me that so long as I was in good
+health I should agree with Father Hoop; but that, at the last instant, I
+should perhaps purchase the happiness of living again by a thousand,
+nay, ten thousand, years of hell. Ah, my dear, if I thought that I
+should see you again, I should soon persuade myself of what a daughter
+once succeeded in persuading her father on his deathbed. He was an old
+usurer; a priest had sworn to him that he would be damned unless he made
+restitution. He resolved to comply, and calling his daughter to his
+bedside, said to her: 'My child, you thought I should leave you very
+rich, and so I should; but the man there insists that I shall burn in
+hell-fire for ever, if I die without making restitution.' 'You are
+talking nonsense, father, with your restitution and your damnation,' the
+daughter answered; 'with your character I you will not have been damned
+ten years, before you will be perfectly used to it.'
+
+"This struck him as true, and he died without making restitution.
+
+"And so behold us launched into a discussion on life and death, on the
+world and its alleged Creator.
+
+"Some one remarked that whether there be a God or no, it is impossible
+to introduce that device either into nature or into a discussion without
+darkening it.
+
+"Another said that if a single supposition explained all the phenomena,
+it would not follow from this that it is true; for who knows whether the
+general order only allows of one reason? What, then, must we think of a
+supposition which, so far from resolving the one difficulty for the sake
+of which people imagined it, only makes an infinity of others spring up
+from it?
+
+"I believe, my dear, that our chat by the fireside still amuses you; so
+I go on.
+
+"Among these difficulties is one that has been proposed ever since the
+world has been a world; 'tis that men suffer without having deserved
+suffering. There has been no answer to it yet. 'Tis the incompatibility
+of physical and moral evil with the nature of the Eternal Being. This is
+how the dilemma is put: it is either impotence or bad will; impotence,
+if he wished to hinder evil and could not; bad will, if he could have
+hindered it and did not will it. A child would understand that. It is
+this that has led people to imagine the fault of the first father of us
+all, original sin, future rewards and punishments, the incarnation,
+immortality, the two principles of the Manicheans, the Ormuzd and
+Ahriman of the Persians, the doctrine of emanations, the empire of light
+and darkness, metempsychosis, optimism, and other absurdities that have
+found credit among the different nations of the earth, where there is
+always to be found some hollow vision of a dream, by way of answer to a
+clear, precise, and definite fact.
+
+"On such occasions what is the part of good sense? Why, the part that we
+took: whatever the optimists may say, we will reply to them that if the
+universe could not exist without sensible creatures, nor sensible
+creatures without pain, there was nothing to do but to leave chaos at
+peace. They had got on very well for a whole eternity without any such
+piece of folly.
+
+"The world a piece of folly! Ah, my dear, a glorious folly for all that!
+'Tis, according to some of the inhabitants of Malabar, one of the
+seventy-four comedies with which the Eternal amuses himself.
+
+"Leibnitz, the founder of optimism, tells somewhere how there was in the
+Temple of Memphis a high pyramid of globes placed one above the others;
+how a priest, being asked by a traveller about this pyramid and its
+globes, made answer that these were all the possible worlds, and that
+the most perfect of them all was at the summit; how the traveller,
+curious to see this most perfect of all possible worlds, mounted to the
+top of the pyramid, and the first thing that caught his eyes, as they
+turned towards the globe at the summit, was Tarquin outraging
+Lucretia."[221]
+
+Almost every letter reminds us that we are in the very height of the
+disputing, arguing, rationalistic century. Diderot delighted in this
+kind of argument, as Socrates or Dr. Johnson delighted in it. He was
+above all others the archetype and representative of the passion for
+moralising, analysing, and philosophising which made the epoch what it
+was; but the rest of the world was all in the same vein. If he came to
+Paris in a coach from the country, he found a young lady in it, eager to
+demonstrate that serious passions are nowadays merely ridiculous; that
+people only promise themselves pleasure, which they find or not, as the
+case may be; that thus they spare themselves all the broken oaths of old
+days. "I took the liberty of saying that I was still a man of those old
+days. '_So much the worse for you_,' she said, '_you either deceive or
+are deceived, and one is as bad as the other_.'"[222] If Grimm and
+Madame d'Epinay and he were together, they discussed ethics from morning
+to night; Diderot always on the side of the view that made most for the
+dignity and worth of human nature. Grimm is described on one of these
+occasions as having rather displeased Madame d'Epinay: "He was not
+sufficiently ready to disapprove the remark of a man of our
+acquaintance, who said that it was right to observe the most scrupulous
+probity with one's friends, but that it was mere dupery to treat other
+people better than they would treat us. We maintained, she and I, that
+it was right and necessary to be honest and good with all the world
+without distinction."[223]
+
+Here is another picture of discussion, with an introduction that is
+thoroughly characteristic of Diderot's temper:
+
+"This man looks at the human race only on its dark side. He does not
+believe in virtuous actions; he disparages them, and denies them. If he
+tells a story, it is always about something scandalous and abominable.
+I have just told you of the two women of my acquaintance, of whom he
+took occasion to speak as ill as he could to Madame Le Gendre. They have
+their defects, no doubt; but they have also their good qualities. Why be
+silent about the good qualities, and only pick out the defects? There is
+in all that a kind of envy that wounds me--me who read men as I read
+authors, and who never burden my memory except with things that are good
+to know and good to imitate. The conversation between Suard and Madame
+Le Gendre had been very vivacious. They sought the reasons why persons
+of sensibility were so readily, so strongly, so deliciously moved at the
+story of a good action. Suard maintained that it was due to a sixth
+sense that nature had endowed us with, to judge the good and the
+beautiful. They pressed to know what I thought of it. I answered that
+this sixth sense was a chimaera; that all was the result of experience in
+us; that we learnt from our earliest infancy what it was in our instinct
+to hide or to show. When the motives of our actions, our judgments, our
+demonstrations, are present to us, we have what is called science; when
+they are not present to our memory, we have only what is called taste,
+instinct, and tact. The reasons for showing ourselves sensible to the
+recital of good actions are numberless: we reveal a quality that is
+worthy of infinite esteem; we promise to others our esteem, if ever they
+deserve it by any uncommon or worthy piece of conduct.... Independently
+of all these views of interest, we have a notion of order, and a taste
+for order, which we cannot resist, and which drags us along in spite of
+ourselves. Every fine action implies sacrifice; and it is impossible for
+us not to pay our homage to self-sacrifice"--and so forth.[224]
+
+Alas, all these endless debates and dialogues lacked the inspiration and
+the charm with which the genius of a Plato could adorn the narrowest
+quibble between Socrates and a Sophist. "Diderot," said Mademoiselle de
+Lespinasse, "is an extraordinary man; he is out of his place in society;
+he was meant for the chief of a sect, a Greek philosopher, instructing
+youth. He pleases me greatly, but his manner does not touch my
+soul."[225] And we understand this. People disputed what virtue is, but
+the dispute failed in that undefined spirit which makes men love and
+adore virtue. Goodness is surrounded with no spacious beauty, it is
+clothed with none of the high associations of spontaneous piety. The
+discussion seems close, stifling, and airless. Yet ages of loftier
+speech and greater spirituality have not always been so favourable to
+the affections or to the attachments of life. In amiability that society
+has never been surpassed; in sincerity of mutual sympathy and kindliness
+of mutual regard. The common irregularity of morals was seen to be
+perfectly compatible not merely with a desire to please, but with an
+honest anxiety to serve.
+
+Of the thorough excellence of Diderot's heart, of his friendliness and
+unwearied helpfulness, time would fail us to tell. Men's conceptions of
+friendship differ as widely as their conceptions of other things. Some
+look to friendship for absolute exemption from all criticism, and for a
+mutual admiration without limit or conditions. Others mistake it for the
+right of excessive criticism, in season and out of season.
+
+Diderot was content to take friendship as the right, the duty, or the
+privilege of rendering services, without thought of requiring either
+them, or gratitude for them, back in return. This we must confess to be
+rare. No man that ever lived showed more sterling interest in furthering
+the affairs of others around him. He seemed to admit every claim on his
+time, his purse, and his talents. A stranger called upon him one day,
+and begged Diderot to write for him a puffing advertisement of a new
+pomatum. Diderot with a laugh sat down and wrote what was wanted. The
+graver occasions of life found him no less ready. Damilaville lost one
+of his children, and his wife was inconsolable. It was Diderot who was
+summoned, and who cheerfully went for days together to soothe and divert
+her mind. For his correspondent and for us he makes the tedium of his
+story beautiful by recalling the fine saying of a grief-stricken woman
+in Metastasio, when they tried to console her by the example of Abraham,
+who was ready even to slay his son at the command of God: _Ah, God would
+never have given such an order to his mother!_
+
+The abbe Le Monnier wrote the worst verses that ever were read, a play
+that was instantly damned, and a translation of Terence that came into
+the world dead. But bad writers are always the most shameless intruders
+on the time of good critics, and we find Diderot willingly spending
+hours over the abbe's handwriting, which was as wretched as what he
+wrote, and then spending hours more in offering critical observations
+on verses that were only fit to be thrown into the fire. The abbe, being
+absent from Paris and falling short of money, requested Diderot to sell
+for him his copy of the Encyclopaedia. "I have sold your Encyclopaedia,"
+said Diderot, "but did not get so much as I expected, for the rumour
+spread abroad by those scoundrels of Swiss booksellers, that they were
+going to issue a revised edition, has done us some harm. Send for the
+nine hundred and fifty livres (about L40) that belong to you, and if
+that is not enough for your expenses, besides the drawer that holds your
+money is another that holds mine. I don't know how much there is, but I
+will count it all at your disposal."[226]
+
+One Jodin, again, was a literary hack who had been employed on the
+Encyclopaedia. He died, leaving a foolish and extravagant widow, and a
+perverse and violent daughter. The latter went on to the stage, and
+Diderot took as much trouble in advising her, in seeking appointments
+for her, in executing her commissions, in investing her earnings, in
+dealing with her relatives, as if he had been her own father. If his
+counsels on her art are admirable, there is something that moves us with
+more than admiration in the good sense, the right feeling, the
+worthiness of his counsels on conduct. And Diderot did not merely
+moralise at large. All that he says is real, pointed, and apt for
+circumstance and person. The petulant damsel to whom they were addressed
+would not be likely to yawn over the sharp remonstrances, the vigorous
+plain speaking, the downright honesty and visible sincerity of his
+friendliness. It appears that she had sense enough not to be offended
+with the frankness of her father's old employer, for after he has
+plainly told her that she is violent, rude, vain, and not always too
+truthful, she still writes to him from Warsaw, from Dresden, from
+Bordeaux, praying him to procure a certain bracelet for her, to arrange
+her mother's affairs, to find a good investment for twelve thousand
+francs. When the mother was in the depths of indigence, Diderot insisted
+that she should take her meals at his own table. And all this for no
+other reason than that the troublesome pair had been thrown in his way
+by the chance of human circumstance, and needed help which he was able,
+not without sacrifice, to give. Mademoiselle Jodin was hardly worthy of
+so good a friend. Her parents were Protestants, and as she was a
+convert, she enjoyed a pension of some eight pounds a year. That did not
+prevent her from one day indulging in some too sprightly sallies, as the
+host was carried along the street. For this she was put into prison, and
+that is our last glimpse of the light creature.[227]
+
+Men knew how to be as wrong-headed and as graceless as women. We have
+already mentioned the name of Landois in connection with Diderot's
+article on Liberty. Landois seems to have been a marvel of
+unreasonableness, but he was a needy man of letters, and that was
+enough to make Diderot ready to bear with him and to succour him. He
+wound up an epistle abounding, after the manner of the worthless
+failures of the world, in reproaches and grievances against his
+benefactor, with a cool request about a manuscript that was full of
+dangerous matter. "Why, that," replied Diderot, "is a work that might
+well be the ruin of me! And it is after you have on two separate
+occasions charged me with the most atrocious and deliberate offences
+towards you, that you now propose that I should revise and print your
+work! You know that I have a wife and child, that I am a marked man,
+that you are putting me into the class of hardened offenders; never
+mind, you don't think of one of these things. You take me for an
+imbecile, or else you are one. But you are no imbecile.... I see through
+men's designs, and often enough I lend myself to them, without deigning
+to disabuse them as to the stupidity which they impute to me. It is
+enough if I perceive in their design some great service for them, and
+not an excess of inconvenience for myself. It is not I who am the fool,
+so often as people take me for one." Diderot then seems half to forget
+to whom he is writing and pours out what reads like a long soliloquy on
+morals, conduct, and the philosophy of life. He insists that man, with
+all his high-flying freedom of will, is but a little link in a great
+chain of events. He is a creature to be modified from without; hence the
+good effects of example, discourse, education, pleasures, pains,
+greatness, misery. Hence a sort of philosophy of commiseration, which
+attaches us strongly to the good, and irritates us no more against the
+bad than against a wind-storm that fills our eyes with dust. If you
+adopt such principles as these, they will reconcile you with others and
+yourself; you will neither praise nor blame yourself for what you are.
+To reproach others with nothing, to repent yourself of nothing--these
+are the two first steps towards wisdom; this is the philosophy that
+reconciles us with the human race and with life.[228]
+
+When he was in the very midst of all the toil and strife that the
+Encyclopaedia brought upon him, he could not refuse to spend three whole
+days in working like a galley-slave at an account of an important
+discovery that had been made by some worthy people with whom he was
+acquainted slightly. "But while I was busy about their affairs, my own
+are at a standstill. I write to you from Le Breton's, with a mass of
+uncorrected proofs before me, and the printers crying out for them.
+Still Grimm must be right, when he says that time is not a thing of
+which we are free to dispose at our own fancy; that we owe it first and
+foremost to our friends, our relations, our daily duties; and that in
+the lavish profusion of our time on people who are indifferent, there is
+nothing less than vice."[229] Yet in spite of Grimm's most just
+remonstrance, the lavish profusion always went on as before.
+
+There was one man, and only one man, for whose perverse and intractable
+spirit Diderot's most friendly patience, helpfulness, and devotion,
+were no match. I have already, in dealing with Rousseau,[230] said as
+much of the quarrel which he picked with Diderot as the matter
+requires, and it would be superfluous to go over the ground again from
+another side. Whether we listen to Rousseau's story or to Diderot's
+story, our judgment on what happened remains unchanged. We have already
+seen how warm and close an intimacy subsisted between them in the days
+when Diderot was a prisoner at Vincennes (1749). When Rousseau made up
+his mind to leave Paris and turn hermit (1756), there was a loud outcry
+from the social group at Holbach's. They said to him, in the least
+theological dialect of their day, what Sir Walter Scott had said to
+Ballantyne when Ballantyne thought of leaving Edinburgh, that, "when
+our Saviour himself was to be led into temptation, the first thing the
+Devil thought of was to get him into the wilderness." Diderot
+remonstrated rather more loudly than Rousseau's other friends, but
+there was no breach, and even no coolness. What sort of humours were
+bred by solitude in Rousseau's wayward mind we know, and the
+Confessions tell us how for a year and a half he was silently brooding
+over fancied slights and perhaps real pieces of heedlessness. Grimm,
+who was Diderot's closest friend next to Mademoiselle Voland, despised
+Rousseau, and Rousseau detested Grimm. "Grimm," he one day said to a
+disciple, "is the only man whom I have ever been able to hate." Madame
+d'Epinay was compelled to go to Geneva for her health, and Grimm easily
+persuaded Diderot that Rousseau was bound by all the ties of gratitude
+to accompany his benefactress on the expedition. Diderot wrote to the
+hermit a very strong letter to this effect: it made Rousseau furious.
+He declined the urgent counsel, he quarrelled outright and violently
+with Grimm, and after an angry and confusing interview with Diderot,
+all intercourse ceased with him also. "That man," wrote Diderot, on the
+evening of this, their last interview, "intrudes into my work; he fills
+me with trouble, and I feel as if I were haunted by a damned soul at my
+side. May I never see him more; he would make me believe in devils and
+hell."[231] And writing afterwards to some friend at Geneva, he recalls
+the days when he used to pour out the talk of intimacy "with the man
+who has buried himself at the bottom of a wood, where his soul has been
+soured and his moral nature has been corrupted. Yet how I pity him!
+Imagine that I used to love him, that I remember those old days of
+friendship, and that I see him now with crime on one side and remorse
+on the other, with deep waters in front of him. He will many a time be
+the torment of my thought; our common friends have judged between him
+and me; I have kept them all, and to him there remains not one."[232]
+It was not in Diderot's nature to bear malice, and when eight years
+later Rousseau passed through Paris on his ill-starred way to England
+and the Derbyshire hills, Diderot described the great pleasure that a
+visit from Rousseau would give to him. "Ah, I do well," he says, "not
+to let the access to my heart be too easy; when anybody has once found
+a place in it, he does not leave it without making a grievous rent;
+'tis a wound that can never be thoroughly cauterised."[233]
+
+It is needless to remind the neutral reader that Rousseau uses exactly
+the same kind of language about his heart. For this is the worst of
+sentimentalism, that it is so readily bent into a substitution of
+indulgence to oneself for upright and manly judgment about others. Still
+we may willingly grant that in the present rupture of a long friendship,
+it was not Diderot who was the real offender. _Too many honest people
+would be in the wrong_, he most truly said, _if Jean Jacques were in the
+right_.
+
+Of Grimm, I have already said elsewhere as much as is needful to be
+said.[234] His judgment in matters of conduct and character was cool and
+rather hard, but it was generally sound. He had a keen eye for what was
+hollow in the pretensions of the society in which he lived. Above all,
+he had the keen eye of his countrymen for his own interest, and for the
+use which he could make of other people. The best thing that we know in
+his favour, is that he should have won the friendship of Diderot.
+Diderot's attachment to Grimm seems like an exaggeration of the excesses
+of the epoch of sentimentalism in Germany.
+
+He pines for a letter from him, as he pined for letters from
+Mademoiselle Voland. If Grimm had been absent for a few months, their
+meeting was like a scene in a melodrama. "With what ardour we enclasped
+one another. My heart was swimming. I could not speak a word, nor could
+he. We embraced without speaking, and I shed tears. We were not
+expecting him. We were all at dessert when he was announced, _'Here is
+M. Grimm.'_ '_M. Grimm_,' I exclaimed, with a loud cry; and starting up,
+I ran to him and fell on his neck. He sat down, and ate a poor meal, you
+may be sure. As for me, I could not open my lips either to eat or to
+speak. He was next to me, and I kept pressing his hand and gazing at
+him."[235] Mademoiselle Voland appears on some occasion to have compared
+Diderot with his friend. "No more comparison, I beseech you, my good
+friend, between Grimm and me. I console myself for his superiority by
+frankly recognising it. I am vain of the victory that I thus gain over
+my self-love, and you must not deprive me of that little
+advantage."[236] Grimm, however, knew better than Diderot how to unite
+German sentimentalism with a steady selfishness. "I have just received
+from Grimm," writes good-natured Diderot, "a note that wounds my too
+sensitive spirit. I had promised to write him a few lines on the
+exhibition of pictures in the Salon; he writes to me that if it is not
+ready to-morrow, it will be of no use. I will be revenged for this kind
+of hardness, and in a way that becomes me. I worked all day yesterday,
+and all day to-day. I shall pass the night at work, and all to-morrow,
+and at nine o'clock he shall receive a volume of manuscript."[237] We
+may doubt whether his German friend would feel the force of a rebuke so
+extremely convenient to himself.
+
+While Grimm was amusing himself at Madame d'Epinay's country house,
+Diderot was working at the literary correspondence which Grimm was
+accustomed to send to St. Petersburg and the courts of Germany. While
+Grimm was hunting pensions and honorary titles at Saxe-Gotha, or
+currying favour with Frederick and waiting for gold boxes at Potsdam,
+Diderot was labouring like any journeyman in writing on his behalf
+accounts and reviews of the books, good, bad, and indifferent, with
+which the Paris market teemed. When there were no new books to talk
+about, the ingenious man, with the resource of the born journalist, gave
+extracts from books that did not exist.[238] When we hear of Paris being
+the centre of European intelligence and literary activity, we may
+understand that these circular letters of Grimm and Diderot were the
+machinery by which the light of Paris was diffused among darker lands.
+It is not too much to say that no contemporary record so intelligent, so
+independent, so vigorous, so complete, exists of any other remarkable
+literary epoch.
+
+The abbe Raynal, of whom we shall have more to say in a later chapter,
+had founded this counterpart of a modern review in 1747, and he sent a
+copy of it in manuscript once a month to anybody who cared to pay three
+hundred francs a year. In 1753 Raynal had handed the business over to
+Grimm, and by him it was continued until 1790, twelve years beyond the
+life of Voltaire and of Rousseau, and six years after the death of the
+ablest, most original, and most ungrudging of all those who gave him
+their help.
+
+An interesting episode in Diderot's life brought him into direct
+relations with one of the two crowned patrons of the revolutionary
+literature, who were philosophers in profession and the most arbitrary
+of despots in their practice. Frederick the Great, whose literary taste
+was wholly in the vein of the conventional French classic, was never
+much interested by Diderot's writing, and felt little curiosity about
+him. Catherine of Russia was sufficiently an admirer of the Encyclopaedia
+to be willing to serve its much-enduring builder. In 1765, when the
+enterprise was in full course, Diderot was moved by a provident anxiety
+about the future of his daughter. He had no dower for her in case a
+suitor should present himself, and he had but a scanty substance to
+leave her in case of his own death. The income of the property which he
+inherited from his father was regularly handed to his wife for the
+maintenance of the household. His own earnings, as we have seen, were of
+no considerable amount. There are men of letters, he wrote in 1767, to
+whom their industry has brought as much as twenty, thirty, eighty, or
+even a hundred thousand francs. As for himself, he thought that perhaps
+the fruit of his literary occupations would come to about forty thousand
+crowns, or some five thousand pounds sterling. "One could not amass
+wealth," he said pensively, and his words are of grievous generality for
+the literary tribe, "but one could acquire ease and comfort, if only
+these sums were not spread over so many years, did not vanish away as
+they were gathered in, and had not all been scattered and spent by the
+time that years had multiplied, wants, grown more numerous, eyes grown
+dim, and mind become blunted and worn."[239] This was his own case. His
+earnings were never thriftily husbanded. Diderot could not deny himself
+a book or an engraving that struck his fancy, though he was quite
+willing to make a present of it to any appreciative admirer the day
+after he had bought it. He was extravagant in hiring a hackney-coach
+where another person would have gone on foot, and not seldom the
+coachman stood for half a day at the door, while the heedless passenger
+was expatiating within upon truth, virtue, and the fine arts,
+unconscious of the passing hours and the swollen reckoning. Hence, when
+the time came, there were no savings. We have to take a man with the
+defects of his qualities, and as Diderot would not have been Diderot if
+he had taken time to save money, there is no more to be said.
+
+When it became his duty to provide for his daughter, between 1763 and
+1765, he resolved to sell his library. Through Grimm, Diderot's position
+reached the ears of the Empress of Russia. Her agent was instructed to
+buy the library at the price fixed by its possessor, and Diderot
+received sixteen thousand livres, a sum equal to something more than
+seven hundred pounds sterling of that day. The Empress added a handsome
+bounty to the bargain. She requested Diderot to consider himself the
+custodian of the new purchase on her behalf, and to receive a thousand
+livres a year for his pains. The salary was paid for fifty years in
+advance, and so Diderot drew at once what must have seemed to him the
+royal sum of between two and three thousand pounds sterling--a figure
+that would have to be trebled, or perhaps quadrupled, to convey its
+value in the money of our own day. We may wish for the honour of letters
+that Diderot had been able to preserve his independence. But pensions
+were the custom of the time. Voltaire, though a man of solid wealth, did
+not disdain an allowance from Frederick the Great, and complained
+shrilly because it was irregularly paid at the very time when he knew
+that Frederick was so short of money that he was driven to melt his
+plate. D'Alembert also had his pension from Berlin, and Grimm, as we
+have seen, picked up unconsidered trifles in half of the northern
+courts. Frederick offered an allowance to Rousseau, but that strange
+man, in whom so much that was simple, touching, and lofty, mingled with
+all that was wayward and perverse, declined to tax the king's strained
+finances.[240]
+
+It would shed an instructive light upon authorship and the characters of
+famous men, if we could always know the relations between a writer and
+his booksellers. Diderot's point of view in considering the great modern
+enginery and processes of producing and selling books, was invariably,
+like his practice, that of a man of sound common sense and sterling
+integrity. We have seen in the previous chapter something of the
+difficulties of the trade in those days. The booksellers were a close
+guild of three hundred and sixty members, and the printers were limited
+to thirty-six. Their privileges brought them little fortune. They were
+of the lowest credit and repute, and most of them were hardly better
+than beggars. It was said that not a dozen out of the three hundred and
+sixty could afford to have more than one coat for his back. They were
+bound hand and foot by vexatious rules, and their market was gradually
+spoiled by a band of men whom they hated as interlopers, but whom the
+public had some reason to bless. No bookseller nor printer could open an
+establishment outside of the quarter of the University, or on the north
+side of the bridges. The restriction, which was as old as the
+introduction of printing into France, had its origin in the days when
+the visits of the royal inspectors to the presses and bookshops were
+constant and rigorous, and it saved the time of the officials to have
+all their business close to their hand. Inasmuch, however, as people
+insisted on having books, and as they did not always choose to be at the
+pains of making a long journey to the region of the booksellers' shops,
+hawkers sprang into existence. Men bought books or got them on credit
+from the booksellers, and carried them in a bag over their shoulders to
+the houses of likely customers, just as a peddler now carries laces and
+calico, cheap silks and trumpory jewellery, round the country villages.
+Even poor women filled their aprons with a few books, took them across
+the bridges, and knocked at people's doors. This would have been well
+enough in the eyes of the guild, if the hawkers had been content to buy
+from the legally patented booksellers. But they began secretly to turn
+publishers in a small way on their own account. Contraband was here, as
+always, the natural substitute for free trade. They both issued pirated
+editions of their own, and they became the great purchasers and
+distributors of the pirated editions that came in vast bales from
+Switzerland, from Holland, from the Pope's country of Avignon. To their
+craft or courage the public owed its copies of works whose circulation
+was forbidden by the government. The Persian Letters of Montesquieu was
+a prohibited book, but, for all that, there were a hundred editions of
+it before it had been published twenty years, and every schoolboy could
+find a copy on the quays for a dozen halfpence. Bayle's Thoughts on the
+Comet, Rousseau's Emilius and Heloisa, Helvetius's L'Esprit, and a
+thousand other forbidden pieces were in every library, both public and
+private. The Social Contract, printed over and over again in endless
+editions, was sold for a shilling under the vestibule of the king's own
+palace. When the police were in earnest, the hawker ran horrible risks,
+as we saw a few pages further back; for these risks he recompensed
+himself by his prices. A prohibition by the authorities would send a
+book up within four-and-twenty hours from half a crown to a couple of
+louis. This only increased the public curiosity, quickened the demand,
+led to clandestine reprints, and extended the circulation of the book
+that was nominally suppressed. When the condemnation of a book was cried
+through the streets, the compositors said, "Good, another edition!"
+There was no favour that an unknown author could have asked from the
+magistrates so valuable to him as a little decree condemning his work to
+be torn up and burnt at the foot of the great staircase of the Palace of
+Justice.[241]
+
+It was this practical impossibility of suppression that interested both
+the guild of publishers and the government in the conditions of the book
+trade. The former were always harassed, often kept poor, and sometimes
+ruined, by systematic piracy and the invasion of their rights. The
+government, on the other hand, could not help seeing that, as the books
+could not possibly be kept out of the realm, it was to be regretted
+that their production conferred no benefit on the manufacturing industry
+of the realm, the composition, the printing, the casting of type, the
+fabrication of paper, the preparation of leather and vellum, the making
+of machines and tools. When Bayle's Dictionary appeared, it was the rage
+of Europe. Hundreds of the ever-renowned folios found their way into
+France, and were paid for by French money. The booksellers addressed the
+minister, and easily persuaded him of the difference, according to the
+economic light of those days, between an exchange of money against
+paper, compared with an exchange of paper against paper. The minister
+replied that this was true, but still that the gates of the kingdom
+would never be opened to a single copy of Bayle. "The best thing to do,"
+he said, "is to print it here." And the third edition of Bayle was
+printed in France, much to the contentment of the French printers,
+binders, and booksellers.
+
+In 1761 the booksellers were afflicted by a new alarm. Foreign pirates
+and domestic hawkers were doing them mischief enough. But in that year
+the government struck a blow at the very principle of literary property.
+The King's Council conferred upon the descendants of La Fontaine the
+exclusive privilege of publishing their ancestor's works. That is to
+say, the Council took away without compensation from La Fontaine's
+publishers a copyright for which they had paid in hard cash. The whole
+corporation naturally rose in arms, and in due time the lieutenant of
+police was obliged to take the whole matter into serious
+consideration--whether the maintenance of the guild of publishers was
+expedient; whether the royal privilege of publishing a book should be
+regarded as conferring a definite and unassailable right of property in
+the publication; whether the tacit permission to publish what it would
+have been thought unbecoming to authorise expressly by royal sanction,
+should not be granted liberally or even universally; and whether the old
+restriction of the booksellers to one quarter of the town ought to
+remain in force any longer. M. de Sartine invited Diderot to write him a
+memorandum on the subject, and was disappointed to find Diderot
+staunchly on the side of the booksellers (1767). He makes no secret,
+indeed, that for his own part he would like to see the whole apparatus
+of restraint abolished, but meanwhile he is strong for doing all that a
+system of regulation, as opposed to a system of freedom, can do to make
+the publication of books a source of prosperity to the bookseller, and
+of cheap acquisition to the book-buyer. Above all things, Diderot is
+vehemently in favour of the recognition of literary property, and
+against such infringement of it as had been ventured upon in the case of
+La Fontaine. He had no reason to be especially friendly to booksellers,
+but for one thing, he saw that to nullify or to tamper with copyright
+was in effect to prevent an author from having any commodity to sell,
+and so to do him the most serious injury possible. And for another
+thing, Diderot had equity and common sense enough to see that no
+high-flown nonsense about the dignity of letters and the spiritual power
+could touch the fact that a book is a piece of marketable ware, and that
+the men who deal in such wares have as much claim to be protected in
+their contracts as those who deal in any other wares.[242]
+
+There is a vivid illustration of this unexpected business-like quality
+in Diderot, in a conversation that he once had with D'Alembert. The
+dialogue is interesting to those who happen to be curious as to the
+characters of two famous men. It was in 1759, when D'Alembert was tired
+of the Encyclopaedia, and was for making hard terms as the condition of
+his return to it. "If," said Diderot to him, "six months ago, when we
+met to deliberate on the continuation of the work, you had then proposed
+these terms, the booksellers would have closed with them on the spot,
+but now, when they have the strongest reasons to be out of humour with
+you, that is another thing."
+
+"And pray, what reasons?"
+
+"Can you ask me?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Then I will tell you. You have a bargain with the booksellers; the
+terms are stipulated; you have nothing to ask beyond them. If you worked
+harder than you were bound to do, that was out of your interest in the
+book, out of friendship to me, out of respect for yourself; people do
+not pay in money for such motives as these. Still they sent you twenty
+louis a volume: that makes a hundred and forty louis that you had beyond
+what was due to you. You plan a journey to Wesel [in 1752, to meet
+Frederick of Prussia] at a time when you were wanted by them here; they
+do not detain you; on the contrary, you are short of money, and they
+supply you. You accept a couple of hundred louis; this debt you forget
+for two or three years. At the end of that rather long term you bethink
+you of paying. What do they do? They hand you back your note of hand
+torn up, with all the air of being very glad to have served you. Then,
+after all, you turn your back on an undertaking in which they have
+embarked their whole fortunes: an affair of a couple of millions is a
+trifle unworthy of the attention of a philosopher like you.... But that
+is not all. You have a fancy for collecting together different pieces
+scattered through the Encyclopaedia; nothing can be more opposed to
+their interests; they put this to you, you insist, the edition is
+produced, they advance the cost, you share the profits. It seemed that,
+after having thus twice paid you for their work, they had a right to
+look upon it as theirs. Yet you go in search of a bookseller in some
+quite different direction, and sell him in a mass what does not belong
+to you."
+
+"They gave me a thousand grounds for dissatisfaction."
+
+"_Quelle defaite!_ There are no small things between friends. Everything
+weighs, because friendship is a commerce of purity and delicacy; but are
+the booksellers your friends? Then your behaviour to them is horrible.
+If not, then you have nothing to say against them. If the public were
+called upon to judge between you and them, my friend, you would be
+covered with shame."
+
+"What, can it be you, Diderot, who thus take the side of the
+booksellers?"
+
+"My grievances against them do not prevent me from seeing their
+grievances against you. After all this show of pride, confess now that
+you are cutting a very sorry figure?"[243]
+
+All this was the language of good sense, and there is no evidence that
+Diderot ever swerved from that fair and honourable attitude in his own
+dealings with the booksellers. Yet he was able to treat them with a
+sturdy spirit when they forgot themselves. Panckoucke, one of the great
+publishers of the time, came to him one day. "He was swollen with the
+arrogance of a parvenu, and thinking apparently that he could use me
+like one of those poor devils who depend upon him for a crust of bread,
+he permitted himself to fly into a passion; but it did not succeed at
+all. I let him go on as he pleased; then I got up abruptly, I took him
+by the arm, and I said to him: 'M. Panckoucke, in whatever place it may
+be, in the street, in church, in a bad house, and to whomsoever it may
+be, it is always right to keep a civil tongue in one's head. But that is
+all the more necessary still, when you speak to a man who has as little
+patience as I have, and that, too, in his own house. Go to the devil,
+you and your work. If you would give me twenty thousand louis, and I
+could do your business for you in the twinkling of an eye, I would not
+stir a finger. Be kind enough to be off."[244]
+
+Before returning from the author to his books, it is interesting to know
+how he and his circle appeared at this period to some who did not belong
+to them. Gibbon, for instance, visited Paris in the spring of 1763. "The
+moment," he says, "was happily chosen. At the close of a successful war
+the British name was respected on the continent; _clarum et venerabile
+nomen gentibus_. Our opinions, our fashions, even our games were adopted
+in France, a ray of national glory illuminated each individual, and
+every Englishman was supposed to be born a patriot and philosopher." He
+mentions D'Alembert and Diderot as those among the men of letters whom
+he saw, who "held the foremost rank in merit, or at least in fame."[245]
+
+Horace Walpole was often in Paris, and often saw the philosophic
+circle, but it did not please his supercilious humour.
+
+     "There was no soul in Paris but philosophers, whom I wished in
+     heaven, though they do not wish themselves so. They are so
+     overbearing and underbred.... I sometimes go to Baron
+     d'Holbach's, but I have left off his dinners, as there was no
+     bearing the authors and philosophers and savants of which he
+     has a pigeon-house full. They soon turned my head with a
+     system of antediluvian deluges which they have invented to
+     prove the eternity of matter.... In short, nonsense for
+     nonsense, I liked the Jesuits better than the
+     philosophers."[246]
+
+Hume, as everybody knows, found "the men of letters really very
+agreeable; all of them men of the world, living in entire, or almost
+entire harmony, among themselves, and quite irreproachable in their
+morals." He places Diderot among those whose person and conversation he
+liked best.
+
+We have always heard much of the power of the Salon in the eighteenth
+century, and it was no doubt a remarkable proof of the incorporation of
+intellectual interests in manners, that so many groups of men and women
+should have met habitually every week for the purpose of conversing
+about the new books and new plays, the fresh principles and fresh ideas,
+that were produced by the incessant vivacity of the time. The Salon of
+the eighteenth century passed through various phases; its character
+shifted with the intellectual mood of the day, but in all its phases it
+was an institution in which women occupied a place that they have never
+acquired in any society out of France. We are not here called upon to
+speculate as to the reasons for this; it is only worth remarking that
+Diderot was not commonly at his ease in the society of ladies, and that
+though he was a visitor at Madame Geoffrin's and at Mademoiselle
+Lespinasse's, yet he was not a constant attendant at any of the famous
+circles of which women had made themselves the centre. The reader of
+Madame d'Epinay's memoir is informed how hard she found it to tame
+Diderot into sociability. "What a pity," she exclaims, "that men of
+genius and of such eminent merit as M. Diderot should thus wrap
+themselves up in their philosophy, and disdain the homage that people
+would eagerly pay them in any society that they would honour with their
+presence."[247] One of the soundest social observers of the time was
+undoubtedly Duclos. His _Considerations on the Manners of the Century_,
+which was published in 1751, abounds in admirable criticism. He makes
+two remarks with which we may close our chapter. "The relaxation of
+morals does not prevent people from being very loud in praise of honour
+and virtue; those who have least of them know very well how much they
+are concerned in other people having them." Again, "The French," he
+said, "are the only people among whom it is possible for morals to be
+depraved, without either the heart being corrupted, or their courage
+being weakened."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE STAGE.
+
+
+There is at first something incredible in the account given by some
+thinkers of Diderot, as the greatest genius of the eighteenth century;
+and perhaps an adjustment of such nice degrees of comparison among the
+high men of the world is at no time very profitable. What is intended by
+these thoroughgoing panegyrists is that Diderot placed himself at the
+point of view whence, more comprehensively than was possible from any
+other, he discerned the long course and the many bearings, the complex
+faces and the large ramifications, of the huge movement of his day. He
+seized the great transition at every point, and grasped all the threads
+that were to be inwoven into the pattern of the new time.
+
+Diderot is in a thousand respects one of the most unsatisfactory of men
+and of writers. Yet it is hard to deny that to whatever quarter he
+turned, he caught the rising illumination and was shone upon by the
+spirit of the coming day. It was no copious and overflowing radiance,
+but they were the beams of the dawn. Hence, what he has to say, and we
+shall soon see how much he said, about the two great arts of painting
+and the drama, though it is fragmentary, though it is insufficient, yet
+points, as all the rest of his thoughts pointed, along the lines that
+the best minds of the western world have since traversed. He would, in
+the old metaphysical language, have called the direction of it a turning
+to Nature, but if we translate this into more positive terms, just as we
+have said that the Encyclopaedia was a glorification of pacific industry
+and of civil justice, so we may say that his whole theory of the drama
+was a glorification of private virtues and domestic life. And the
+definite rise of civil justice and industry over feudal privilege and a
+life of war, and again the elevation of domestic virtue into the place
+formerly held by patriotic devotion, are the two great sides of a single
+movement.[248] It is quite true that Diderot and the French of that day
+had only a glimpse of the promised land in art and poetry. The whole
+moral energy of the generation after Diderot was drawn inevitably into
+the strong current of social action. The freshly kindled torch of
+dramatic art passed for nearly half a century to the country of Lessing
+and Goethe.
+
+There is in the use of a certain kind of abstract language this
+inconvenience, that the reader may suppose us to be imputing to Diderot
+a deliberate and systematic survey of the whole movement of his time,
+and a calculated resolution to further it, now in this way and now in
+that. It is not necessary to suppose that the movement as a whole was
+always present to him. Diderot's mind was constantly feeling for
+explanations; it was never a passive recipient. The drama excited this
+alert interest just as everything else excited it. He thought about
+that, as about everything else, originally, that is to say, sincerely
+and in the spirit of reality.[249] Whoever turns with a clear eye and
+proper intellectual capacity in search of the real bearings of what he
+is about, is sure to find out the strong currents of the time, even
+though he may never consciously throw them into their most general and
+abstract expression.
+
+Since Aristotle, said Lessing, no more philosophical mind than Diderot's
+has treated of the theatre. Lessing himself translated Diderot's two
+plays, and the Essay on Dramatic Poetry, and repeatedly said that
+without the impulse of Diderot's principles and illustrations his own
+taste would have taken a different direction. As a dramatist, the author
+of _Miss Sara Sampson_, of _Emilia Galotti_, and above all that noble
+dramatic poem, _Nathan the Wise_, could hardly have owed much to the
+author of such poor stuff as _The Natural Son_ and _The Father of the
+Family_. Lessing had some dramatic fire, invention, spontaneous
+elevation; he had a certain measure, though not a very large one, of
+poetic impulse. Diderot had nothing of all these, but he had the eye of
+the philosophic critic.
+
+Any one who reads Lessing's dramatic criticisms will see that he did
+not at all overrate his obligations to his French contemporary.[250] It
+has been replied to the absurd taunt about the French inventing nothing,
+that at least Descartes invented German philosophy. Still more true is
+it that Diderot invented German criticism.
+
+Diderot's thoughts on the stage, besides his completed plays, and a
+number of fragmentary scenes, are contained principally in the Paradox
+on the Player, a short treatise on Dramatic Poetry, and three dialogues
+appended to _The Natural Son_. On the plays a very few words will
+suffice. _The Natural Son_ must, by me at least, be pronounced one of
+the most vapid performances in dramatic history. Even Lessing, unwilling
+as he was to say a word against a writer who had taught him so much, is
+too good a critic not to recognise monotony in the characters, stiffness
+and affectation in the dialogue, and a pedantic ring in the sentences of
+new-fangled philosophy.[251] Even in the three critical dialogues that
+Diderot added to the play, Lessing cannot help discerning the mixture of
+superficiality with an almost pompous pretension. Rosenkranz, it is
+true, finds the play rich in fine sentences, in scenes full of effect,
+in which Diderot's moral enthusiasm expresses itself with impetuous
+eloquence. But even he admits that the hero's servant is not so far
+wrong when he cries, "_Il semble que le bon sens se soit enfui de cette
+maison_," and adds that the whole atmosphere of the piece is sickly with
+conscious virtue.[252] For ourselves we are ready for once even to
+sympathise with Palissot, the hack-writer of the reactionary parties,
+when he says that _The Natural Son_ had neither invention, nor style,
+nor characters, nor any other single unit of a truly dramatic work. The
+reader who seeks to realise the nullity of the _genre serieux_ in
+Diderot's hands, should turn from _The Natural Son_ to Goldoni's play of
+_The True Friend_, from which Diderot borrowed the structure of his
+play, following it as narrowly as possible to the end of the third act.
+Seldom has transfusion turned a sparkling draught into anything so flat
+and vapid. In spite of the applause of the philosophic _claque_, led by
+Grimm,[253] posterity has ratified the coldness with which it was
+received by contemporaries. _The Natural Son_ was written in 1757, but
+it was not until 1771 that the directors of the French Comedy could be
+induced to place it on the stage. The actors detested their task, and as
+we can very well believe, went sulkily through parts which they had not
+even taken the trouble to master.[254] The public felt as little
+interest in the piece as the actors had done, and after a single
+representation, the play was put aside.
+
+Ill-natured critics compared Diderot's play with Rousseau's opera; they
+insisted that _The Natural Son_ and _The Village Conjuror_ were a
+couple of monuments of the presumptuous incompetence of the encyclopaedic
+cabal. The failure of _The Natural Son_ as a drama came after it had
+enjoyed considerable success as a piece of literature, for it had been
+fourteen years in print. We can only suppose that this success was the
+fruit of an unflinching partisanship.
+
+It is a curious illustration of the strength of the current passion for
+moral maxims in season and out of season, that one scene which to the
+scoffers of that day seemed, as it cannot but seem to everybody to-day,
+a climax of absurdity and unbecomingness, was hailed by the party as
+most admirable, for no other reason than that it contained a number of
+high moralising saws. Constance, a young widow and a model of reason,
+takes upon herself to combat the resolution of Dorval not to marry,
+after he has led her to suppose that he has a passion for her, and after
+a marriage between them has been arranged. "No," he cries, "a man of my
+character is not such a husband as befits Constance." Constance begs him
+to reassure himself; tells him that he is mistaken; to enjoy
+tranquillity, a man must have the approval of his own heart, and perhaps
+that of other men, and he can have neither unless he remains at his
+post; it is only the wicked who can bear isolation; a tender soul cannot
+view the general system of sensible beings without a strong desire that
+they should be happy. Dorval, who cuts an extremely sorry figure in
+such a scene, exclaims, "Ah, but children! Dorval would have children!
+When I think that we are thrown from our very birth into a chaos of
+prejudices, extravagances, vices, and miseries, the idea makes me
+shudder!"--"Dorval, you are beset by phantoms, and no wonder. The
+history of life is so little known, while the appearance of evil in the
+universe is so glaring.... Dorval, your daughters will be modest and
+good; your sons noble and high-minded; all your children will be
+charming.... There is no fear that a cruel soul should ever grow in my
+bosom from stock of yours."[255]
+
+We can hardly wonder that players were disgusted, or critics moved to
+wicked jests. The counterpart to the scene in which Constance persuades
+Dorval that they would be very happy in one case, is the scene in which
+Dorval persuades Rosalie that they would be very unhappy in another
+case. The situations in themselves may command our approval morally, but
+they certainly do not attract our sympathies dramatically. That a woman
+should demonstrate to a man in fine sententious language the expediency
+of marrying her, is not inconsistent with good sense, but it is
+displeasing. When a man tells a woman that, though love draws in one
+way, duty draws in the other, we may admire his prudence, but we are
+glad when so delicate a business comes to an end. In _The Natural Son_
+the latter scene, though very long, is the less disagreeable of the
+two. And just as in Diderot's most wordy and tiresome pages we generally
+find some one phrase, some epithet, some turn of a sentence whose
+freshness or strength or daring reveals a genius, so in this scene we
+find a few lines whose energy reminds us that we are not after all in
+the hands of some obscure playwright, whose works ought long ago to have
+been eaten by moths or burnt by fire. Those lines are a warning against
+the temptation so familiar in every age since Paris was a guest in the
+halls of Menelaus, to take that fatal resolve, All for love and the
+world well lost. "To do wrong," says Dorval, "is to condemn ourselves to
+live and to find our pleasure with wrong-doers; it is to pass an
+uncertain and troubled life in one long and never-ending lie; to have to
+praise with a blush the virtue that we flung behind us; to hear from the
+lips of others harsh words for our own action; to seek a little calm in
+sophistical systems, that the breath of a single good man scatters to
+the winds; to shut ourselves for ever out from the spring of true joys,
+the only joys that are virtuous, austere, sublime; and to give ourselves
+up, simply as a way of escape from ourselves, to the weariness of those
+frivolous diversions in which the day flows away in self-oblivion, and
+our life glides slowly from us and loses itself in waste."[256] A very
+old story, no doubt; but natural, true, and in its place.
+
+What adds to the flatness of the play is a device which Diderot
+introduced on a deliberately adopted principle; we mean the elaborate
+setting out of the acting directions. Every movement, every gesture,
+every silent pause is written down, and we have the impression less of a
+play than of some strangely bald romance. In the versified declamation
+which then reigned on the French stage, nothing was left to natural
+action, nothing was told by change of position, by movement without
+speech, or in short by any means other than discourse. Diderot,
+repudiating the conventions of dramatic art, and consulting nature or
+reality, saw that there are many scenes in life in which it is more
+natural to the personages of the scene to move than to speak, in which
+indeed motion is natural, and speech is altogether unnatural. If this be
+so in real life, he said, it should be so on the stage, because nothing
+passes in the world which may not pass also in the theatre; and as
+pantomime, or expression of emotion, feeling, purpose, otherwise than by
+speech, has so much to do in life, the dramatist should make abundant
+use of pantomime in composing stage-plays. Nor should he trust to the
+actor's invention and spontaneous sense of appropriateness. He ought to
+write down the pantomime whenever it adds energy or clearness to the
+dialogue; when it binds the parts of the dialogue together; when it
+consists in a delicate play that is not easily divined; and almost
+always he ought to write it down in the opening of a scene. If any one
+is inclined to regard this as superfluous, let him try the experiment of
+composing a play, and then writing the pantomime, or "business," for
+it; he will soon see what follies he commits.[257]
+
+Whatever we may think of the practice of writing the action as well as
+the words for the player, nobody would now dispute the wisdom of what
+Diderot says as to the part that pantomime fills in the highest kind of
+dramatic representation. We must agree with his repeated laments over
+the indigence, for purposes of full and adequate expression, of every
+language that ever has existed or ever can exist.[258] "My dear master,"
+he wrote to Voltaire on the occasion of a performance of _Tancred_, "if
+you could have seen Clairon passing across the stage, her knees bending
+under her, her eyes closed, her arms falling stiff by her side as if
+they were dead; if you heard the cry that she uttered when she perceives
+Tancred, you would remain more convinced than ever that silence and
+pantomime have sometimes a pathos that all the resources of speech can
+never approach."[259] If we wonder that he should have thought it worth
+while to lay so much emphasis on what seems so obvious, we have to
+remember that it did not seem at all obvious to people who were
+accustomed to the substitution of a mannered and symmetrical declamation
+for the energetic variety and manifold exuberance of passion and
+judgment in the daily lives of men.
+
+We have already seen that even when he wrote the Letter on the Deaf and
+Dumb, Diderot's mind was exercised about gesture as a supplement to
+discourse. In that Letter he had told a curious story of a bizarre
+experiment that he was in the habit of making at the theatre. He used to
+go to the highest seats in the house, thrust his fingers into his ears,
+and then, to the astonishment of his neighbours, watch the performance
+with the sharpest interest. As a constant playgoer, he knew the words of
+the plays by heart, and what he sought was to isolate the gesture of the
+performers, and to enjoy and criticise that by itself. He kept his ears
+tightly stopped, so long as the action and play went well with the words
+as he remembered them, and he only listened when some discord in gesture
+made him suppose that he had lost his place. The people around him were
+more and more amazed as they saw him, notwithstanding his stopped ears,
+shed copious tears in the pathetic passages. "They could not refrain
+from hazarding questions, to which I answered coldly, 'that everybody
+had his own way of listening, and that my way was to stop my ears, so as
+to understand better'--laughing within myself at the talk to which my
+oddity gave rise, and still more so at the simplicity of some young
+people who also put their fingers into their ears to hear after my
+fashion, and were quite astonished that the plan did not succeed."[260]
+This was an odd and whimsical way of acting on a conviction which lay
+deep in Diderot's mind, namely, that language is a very poor,
+misleading, and utterly inadequate instrument for representing what it
+professes, and what we stupidly suppose it, to represent. Rousseau had
+expressed the same kind of feeling when he said that definitions might
+be good things, if only we did not employ words in making them.
+
+A curious circumstance is worth mentioning in connection with the Three
+Dialogues appended to _The Natural Son_. Diderot informs his readers
+that the incidents of _The Natural Son_ had actually occurred in real
+life, and that he knew the personages. In the Dialogues it is assumed
+that the play had been written by the hero himself, and the hero is the
+chief speaker. Not a word is said from which the reader would guess that
+Diderot had borrowed the substance of his plot and some of its least
+insipid scenes from Goldoni. We can hardly wonder that he was charged
+with plagiarism. Yet it was not deliberate, we may be sure. When Diderot
+was strongly seized by an idea, outer circumstances were as if they did
+not exist. He was swept up into the clouds. "Diderot is a good and
+worthy man," wrote Madame Geoffrin to the King of Poland, "but he has
+such a bad head, and he is so curiously organised, that he neither sees
+nor hears what he does see and hear, as the thing really is; he is
+always like a man who is dreaming, and who thinks all that he has
+dreamed quite real."[261]
+
+_The Father of the Family_, written in 1758, and first acted in 1761,
+is very superior to _The Natural Son_; it even enjoyed a certain
+popularity. In Germany it became an established favourite, and in Italy
+it was only less popular than a piece of Goldoni's. The French were not
+quite so easy to please. In 1761 its reception was undoubtedly
+favourable, and it ran for more than a week. In 1769 it was reproduced,
+and, according to Diderot's own account, with enthusiasm. "There was a
+frightful crowd," he says, "and people hardly remember such a success. I
+was surprised at it myself. My friends are at the height of exultation.
+My daughter came home intoxicated with wonder and delight." Even Madame
+Diderot at length grew ashamed at having to confess that she had not
+seen her husband's triumph, and throwing aside her horror of the stage,
+was as deeply moved as every one else.[262]
+
+Notwithstanding this satisfactory degree of success, and though it was
+performed as late as 1835, the play never struck root in France. It is
+indeed a play without any real quality or distinction. "Diderot, in his
+plays," said Madame de Stael, "put the affectation of nature in the
+place of the affectation of convention."[263] The effect is still more
+disagreeable in the first kind of affectation than the second. _The
+Father of the Family_ is made more endurable than _The Natural Son_ by a
+certain rapidity and fire in the action, and a certain vigour in the
+characters of the impetuous son (Saint Albin) and the malignant
+brother-in-law (the Commander). But the dialogue is poor, and the Father
+of the Family himself is as woolly and mawkish a figure as is usually
+made out of benevolent intentions and weak purpose combined. The woes of
+the heavy father of the stage, where there is no true pathos, but only a
+sentimental version of it, find us very callous. The language has none
+of that exquisite grace and flexibility which makes a good French comedy
+of own day, a piece by Augier, Sandeau, Feuillet, Sardou, so delightful.
+Diderot was right in urging that there is no reason why a play should be
+in verse; but then the prose of a play ought to have a point, elegance,
+and highly-wrought perfection, which shall fill us with a sense of art,
+though not the art of the poet. Diderot not only did not write comedy in
+such a style; but he does not even so much as show consciousness that
+any difference exists between one kind of prose and another. The blurred
+phrases and clipped sentences of what Diderot would have called Nature,
+that is to say of real life, are intolerable on the stage. Even he felt
+this, for his characters, though their dialogue is without wit or
+finish, are still dull and tame of speech, in a different way from that
+in which the people whom we may meet are dull and tame. There is an art
+of a kind, though of an extremely vapid kind.
+
+Again, though he may be right in contending that there is a serious kind
+of comedy as distinct from that gay comedy which is neighbour to
+farce--of this we shall see more presently--yet he is certainly wrong
+in believing that we can willingly endure five acts of serious comedy
+without a single relieving passage of humour. Contrast of character,
+where all the characters are realistic and common, is not enough. We
+crave contrast in the dramatic point of view. We seek occasional change
+of key. That serious comedy should move a sympathetic tear is reasonable
+enough; but it is hard to find that it grudges us a single smile. The
+result of Diderot's method is that the spectator or the reader speedily
+feels that what he has before him substitutes for dramatic fulness and
+variety the flat monotony of a homily or a tract. It would be hard to
+show that there is no true comedy without laughter--Terence's _Hecyra_,
+for instance--but Diderot certainly overlooked what Lessing and most
+other critics saw so clearly, that laughter rightly stirred is one of
+the most powerful agencies in directing the moral sympathies of the
+audience,--the very end that Diderot most anxiously sought.
+
+It is mere waste of time to bestow serious criticism on Diderot's two
+plays, or on the various sketches, outlines, and fragments of scenes
+with which he amused his very slight dramatic faculty. If we wish to
+study the masterpieces of French comedy in the eighteenth century, we
+shall promptly shut up the volumes of Diderot, and turn to the ease and
+soft gracefulness of Marivaux's _Game of Love and Chance_, to the
+forcible and concentrated sententiousness of Piron's _Metromanie_, to
+the salt and racy flavour of Le Sage's _Turcaret_. Gresset, again, and
+Destouches wrote at least two comedies that were really fit for the
+stage, and may be read with pleasure to-day. Neither of these
+compliments can fairly be paid to _The Natural Son_ and _The Father of
+the Family_. Diderot's plays ought to be looked upon merely as sketchy
+illustrations of a favourite theory; as the rough drawings on the black
+board with which a professor of the fine arts may accompany a lecture on
+oil painting.
+
+One radical part of Diderot's dramatic doctrine is wholly condemned by
+modern criticism; and it is the part which his plays were especially
+designed to enforce. "It is always," he says, "virtue and virtuous
+people that a man ought to have in view when he writes. Oh, what good
+would men gain, if all the arts of imitation proposed one common object,
+and were one day to unite with the laws in making us love virtue and
+hate vice. It is for the philosopher to address himself to the poet, the
+painter, the musician, and to cry to them with all his might: _O men of
+genius, to what end has heaven endowed you with gifts_? If they listen
+to him, speedily will the images of debauch cease to cover the walls of
+our palaces; our vices will cease to be the organs of crime; and taste
+and manners will gain. Can we believe that the action of two old blind
+people, man and wife, as they sought one another in their aged days, and
+with tears of tenderness clasped one another's hands and exchanged
+caresses on the brink of the grave, so to say--that this would not
+demand the same talent, and would not interest me far more than the
+spectacle of the violent pleasures with which their senses in all the
+first freshness of youth were once made drunk?"[264]
+
+The emphasising moralists of Diderot's school never understood that
+virtue may be made attractive, without pulling the reader or the
+spectator by the sleeve, and urgently shouting in his ear how attractive
+virtue is. When _The Heart of Midlothian_ appeared (1818), a lady wrote
+about it as follows: "Of late days, especially since it has been the
+fashion to write moral and even religious novels, one might almost say
+of the wise good heroines what a lively girl once said of her
+well-meaning aunt--'On my word she is enough to make anybody wicked.'
+Had this very story been conducted by a common hand, Effie would have
+attracted all our concern and sympathy, Jeanie only cold approbation.
+Whereas Jeanie, without youth, beauty, genius, warm passions, or any
+other novel perfection, is here our object from beginning to end. This
+is 'enlisting the affections in the cause of virtue' ten times more than
+ever Richardson did; for whose male and female pedants, all excelling as
+they are, I never could care half as much as I found myself inclined to
+do for Jeanie before I finished the first volume."[265]
+
+In other words, you must win us by kindling our sympathy, not by
+formally commanding our moral approval. To kindle sympathy your
+personage must be interesting; must touch our pity or wonder or
+energetic fellow-feeling or sense of moral loveliness, which is a very
+different thing from touching our mere sense of the distinctions between
+right and wrong. Direct homily excites no sympathy with the homilist.
+Deep pensive meditations on the moral puzzles of the world are not at
+all like didactic discourse. But the Father of the Family was exactly
+fulfilling Diderot's notion of dramatic purpose and utility when he
+talked to his daughter in such a strain as this: "Marriage, my daughter,
+is a vocation imposed by nature.... He who counts on bliss without alloy
+knows neither the life of man nor the designs of heaven. If marriage
+exposes us to cruel pain, it is also the source of the sweetest
+pleasures. Where are the examples of pure and heartfelt interest, of
+real tenderness, of inmost confidence, of daily help of griefs divided,
+of tears mingled, if they be not in marriage? What is there in the world
+that the good man prefers to his wife? What is there in the world that a
+father loves more dearly than his children? O sacred bond, if I think of
+thee, my whole soul is warmed and elevated!"[266]
+
+But these virtuous ejaculations do not warm and elevate us. In such a
+case words count for nothing. It is actual presentation of beautiful
+character, and not talk about it, that touches the spectator. It is the
+association of interesting action with character, that moves us and
+inspires such better moods as may be within our compass. Diderot, like
+many other people before and since, sought to make the stage the great
+moral teacher. That it may become so, is possible. It will not be by
+imitating the methods of that colossal type of histrionic failure, the
+church-pulpit. Exhortation in set speeches always has been, and always
+will be, the feeblest bulwark against the boiling floods of passion that
+helpless virtue ever invented, and it matters not at all whether the
+hortatory speeches are placed on the lips of Mr. Talkative, the son of
+Saywell, or of some tearful dummy labelled the Father of the Family.[267]
+
+Yet one is half ashamed to use hard words about Diderot. He was so
+modest about his work, so simple and unpretending, so wholly without
+restless and fretting ambitions, and so generous in his judgment of
+others. He made his own dramatic experiment, he thought little enough of
+it; and he was wholly above the hateful vice of sourly disparaging
+competitors, whether dead or living. He knew that he was himself no
+master, but he was manly enough to admire anybody who was nearer to
+mastery. He was full of unaffected delight at Sedaine's busy and
+pleasing little comedy, _The Philosopher without knowing it_; it was so
+simple without being stiff, so eloquent without the shadow of effort or
+rhetoric. After seeing it, Diderot ran off to the author to embrace him,
+with many tears of joyful sympathy and gratitude. Sedaine, like Lillo,
+the author of Diderot's favourite play of _George Barn__well_, was a
+plain tradesman, and the success of his libretti for comic operas had
+not spoiled him. He could find no more expansive words for his excited
+admirer than "_Ah, Monsieur Diderot, que vous etes beau_!"[268] Diderot
+was just as sensible of the originality and Aristophanic gaiety of
+Colle's brilliant play, _Truth in Wine_, though Colle detested the
+philosophic school from Voltaire downwards, and left behind him a
+bitterly contemptuous account of _The Natural Son_.[269]
+
+Of all comic writers, however, the author of the _Andria_ and the
+_Heautontimorumenos_ was Diderot's favourite. The half dozen pages upon
+Terence, which he threw off while the printer's boy waited in the
+passage (1762), are one of the most easy, flowing, and delightful of his
+fragments; there is such appreciation of Terence's suavity and tact, of
+his just and fine judgment, of his discrimination and character. He
+admits that Terence had no verve; for that he commends the young poet to
+Moliere or Aristophanes, but as verve was exactly the quality most
+wanting to Diderot himself, he easily forgave its absence in Terence,
+and thought it amply replaced by his moderation, his truth, and his fine
+taste. Colman is praised for translating Terence, for here, says
+Diderot, is the lesson of which Colman's countrymen stand most in need.
+The English comic writers have more verve than taste. "Vanbrugh,
+Wycherley, Congreve, and some others have painted vices and foibles
+with vigour; it is not either invention or warmth or gaiety or force
+that is wanting to their pencil, but rather that unity in the drawing,
+that precision in the stroke, that truth in colouring, which distinguish
+portrait from caricature. Especially are they wanting in the art of
+discerning and seizing those _naif_, simple, and yet singular movements
+of character, which always please and astonish, and render the imitation
+at once true and piquant."[270] Criticism has really nothing to add to
+these few lines, and if Diderot in his last years read _The School for
+Scandal_, or _The Rivals_, he would have found no reason to alter his
+judgment.
+
+One English play had the honour of being translated by Diderot; this
+was _The Gamester_, not _The Gamester_ of Shirley nor of Garrick, but
+of Edward Moore (1753). It is a good example of the bourgeois tragedy
+or domestic drama, which Diderot was so eager to see introduced on to
+the French stage. The infatuation of Beverley, the tears and virtue of
+Mrs. Beverley, the prudence of Charlotte and the sage devotion of her
+lover, the sympathetic remorse of Bates, and even the desperation of
+Stukely, made up a picture of domestic misery and moral sentiment with
+which Diderot was sure to fall in love. Lillo's _George Barnwell_, with
+its direct and urgent moral, was a still greater favourite, and Diderot
+compared the scene between Maria and Barnwell in prison to the despair
+of the _Philocletes_ of Sophocles, as the hero is heard shrieking at
+the mouth of his cavern;[271] just as a more modern critic has thought
+Lillo's other play, _The Fatal Curiosity_, worthy of comparison with
+the _Oedipus Tyrannus_.
+
+Diderot's feeling for Shakespeare seems to have been what we might have
+anticipated from the whole cast of his temperament. One of the scenes
+which delighted him most was that moment of awe, when Lady Macbeth
+silently advances down the stage with her eyes closed, and imitates the
+action of washing her hands, as wondering that "the old man should have
+so much blood in him." "I know nothing," he exclaims, "so pathetic in
+discourse as that woman's silence and the movement of her hands. What an
+image of remorse!"[272]
+
+It was not to be expected that Diderot should indulge in those
+undiscriminating superlatives about Shakespeare which are common in
+Shakespeare's country. But he knew enough about him to feel that he was
+dealing with a giant. "I will not compare Shakespeare," he said, "to the
+Belvedere Apollo, nor to the Gladiator, nor to Antinous"--he had
+compared Terence to the Medicean Venus--"but to the Saint Christopher of
+Notre Dame, an unshapely colossus, rudely carven, but between whose legs
+we could all pass without our brows touching him."[273] Not very
+satisfactory recognition perhaps; but the Saint Christopher is better
+than Voltaire's drunken savage.
+
+It is not every dramatist who treats the art of acting as seriously as
+the art of composition. The great author of _Wilhelm Meister_ is the
+most remarkable exception to this rule, and Lessing is only second to
+him. It is hardly possible for a man to be a great dramatist, and it is
+simply impossible for a man to be a great critic of the drama, who has
+not seriously studied the rules, aims, and conditions of stage
+representation. Hazlitt, for instance, has written some admirable pages
+about the poetry, the imaginative conception, the language, of
+Shakespeare's plays, but we find his limit when he says that King Lear
+is so noble a play that he cannot bear to see it acted. As if a play
+could be fully judged without reference to the conditions of the very
+object with which it was written. A play is to be criticised as a play,
+not merely as a poem. The whole structure of a piece depends on the fact
+that it is to be acted; its striking moments must be great dramatic, not
+merely beautiful poetic, moments. They must have the intensity of pitch
+by which the effect of action exceeds the effect of narrative. This
+intensity is made almost infinitely variable with the variations in the
+actor's mastery of his art.
+
+Diderot, who threw so penetrating a glance into every subject that he
+touched, even if it were no more than a glance, has left a number of
+excellent remarks on histrionics. The key to them all is his everlasting
+watchword: _Watch nature, follow her simple, and spontaneous leading_.
+The Paradox on the Player is one of the very few of Diderot's pieces of
+which we can say that, besides containing vigorous thought, it has real
+finish in point of literary form. There is not the flat tone, the heavy
+stroke, the loose shamble, that give a certain stamp of commonness to so
+many of his most elaborate discussions. In the Paradox the thoughts seem
+to fall with rapidity and precision into their right places; they are
+direct; they are not overloaded with qualifications; their clear
+delivery is not choked by a throng of asides and casual ejaculations.
+Usually Diderot writes as if he were loath to let the sentence go, and
+to allow the paragraph to come to an end. Here he lays down his
+proposition, and without rambling passes on to the next. The effort is
+not kept up quite to the close, for the last half dozen pages have the
+ordinary clumsy mannerism of their author.
+
+What is the Paradox? That a player of the first rank must have much
+judgment, self-possession, and penetration, _but no sensibility_. An
+actor with nothing but sense and judgment is apt to be cold; but an
+actor with nothing but verve and sensibility is crazy. It is a certain
+temperament of good sense and warmth combined, that makes the sublime
+player.[274] Why should he differ from the poet, the painter, the
+orator, the musician? It is not in the fury of the first impulse that
+characteristic strokes occur to any of these men; it is in moments when
+they are tranquil and cool, and such strokes come by an unexpected
+inspiration.[275] It is for coolness to temper the delirium of
+enthusiasm. It is not the violent man who is beside himself that
+disposes of us; that is an advantage reserved for the man who possesses
+himself. The great poets, the great actors, and perhaps generally all
+the great imitators of nature, whatever they may be, are gifted with a
+fine imagination, a great judgment, a subtle tact, a sure taste, but
+they are creatures of the smallest sensibility. They are equally well
+fitted for too many things; they are too busy in looking, in
+recognising, and in imitating, to be violently affected within
+themselves. Sensibility is hardly the quality of a great genius. He will
+have justice; but he will practise it without reaping all the sweetness
+of it. It is not his heart, but his head, that does it all. Well, then,
+what I insist upon, says Diderot, is that it is extreme sensibility that
+makes mediocre actors; it is mediocre sensibility that makes bad actors;
+and it is the absolute want of sensibility that prepares actors who
+shall be sublime.[276]
+
+This is worked out with great clearness and decision, and some of the
+illustrations to which he resorts to lighten the dialogue are amusing
+enough. Perhaps the most interesting to us English is his account of
+Garrick, whose acquaintance he made towards the year 1765. He says that
+he saw Garrick pass his head between two folding doors, and in the space
+of a few seconds, his face went successively from mad joy to moderate
+joy, from that to tranquillity, from tranquillity to surprise, from
+surprise to astonishment, from astonishment to gloom, from gloom to
+utter dejection, from dejection to fear, from fear to horror, from
+horror to despair, and then reascend from this lowest degree to the
+point whence he had started.[277]
+
+Of course his soul felt none of these emotions. "If you asked this
+famous man, who by himself was as well worth a journey to England to
+see, as all the wonders of Rome are worth a journey to Italy, if you
+asked him, I say, for the scene of _The Little Baker's Boy_, he played
+it; if you asked him the next minute for the scene from _Hamlet_, he
+played that too for you, equally ready to sob over the fall of his pies,
+and to follow the path of the dagger in the air."[278]
+
+Apart from the central proposition, Diderot makes a number of excellent
+observations which show his critical faculty at its best. As, for
+example, in answering the question, what is the truth of the stage? Is
+it to show things exactly as they are in nature? By no means. The true
+in that sense would only be the common. The really true is the
+conformity of action, speech, countenance, voice, movement, gesture,
+with an ideal model imagined by the poet, and often exaggerated by the
+player. And the marvel is that this model influences not only the tone,
+but the whole carriage and gait. Again, what is the aim of multiplied
+rehearsals? To establish a balance among the different talents of the
+actors. The supreme excellence of one actor does not recompense you for
+the mediocrity of the others, which is brought by that very superiority
+into disagreeable prominence. Again, accent is easier to imitate than
+movement, but movements are what strike us most violently. Hence a law
+to which there is no exception, namely, under pain of being cold, to
+make your denouement an action and not a narrative.[279]
+
+One of the strongest satires on the reigning dramatic style, Diderot
+found in the need that the actor had of the mirror. The fewer gestures,
+he said, the better; frequent gesticulation impairs energy and destroys
+nobleness. It is the countenance, the eyes, it is the whole body that
+ought to move, and not the arms.[280] There is no maxim more forgotten
+by poets than that which says that great passions are mute. It depends
+on the player to produce a greater effect by silence than the poet can
+produce by all his fine speeches.[281] Above all, the player is to study
+tranquil scenes, for it is these that are the most truly difficult. He
+commends a young actress to play every morning, by way of orisons, the
+scene of Athalie with Joas; to say for evensong some scenes of Agrippina
+with Nero; and for Benedicite the first scene of Phaedra with her
+confidante. Especially there is to be little emphasis--a warning
+grievously needed by ninety-nine English speakers out of a hundred--for
+emphasis is hardly ever natural; it is only a forced imitation of
+nature.[282]
+
+Diderot had perceived very early that the complacency with which his
+countrymen regarded the national theatre was extravagant. He would not
+allow a comparison between the conventional classic of the French stage
+and the works of the Greek stage. He insisted in the case of the Greeks
+that their subjects are noble, well chosen, and interesting; that the
+action seems to develop itself spontaneously; that their dialogue is
+simple and very close to what is natural; that the denouements are not
+forced; that the interest is not divided nor the action overloaded with
+episodes. In the French classic he found none of these merits. He found
+none of that truth which is the only secret of pleasing and touching us;
+none of that simple and natural movement which is the only path to
+perfect and unbroken illusion. The dialogue is all emphasis, wit,
+glitter; all a thousand leagues away from nature. Instead of
+artificially giving to their characters _esprit_ at every point, poets
+ought to place them in such situations as will give it to them. Where in
+the world did men and women ever speak as we declaim? Why should princes
+and kings walk differently from any man who walks well? Did they then
+gesticulate like raving madmen? Do princesses when they speak utter
+sharp hissings?
+
+People believe us to have brought tragedy to a high degree of
+perfection. It is not so. Of all kinds of literature it is the most
+imperfect.[283]
+
+The ideas which appeared thus incongruously in the tales of 1748
+reappeared in the direct essays on the drama in 1757 and 1758. We have
+left nothing undone, he said, to corrupt dramatic style. We have
+preserved from the ancients that emphasis of versification which was so
+well fitted to languages of strong quantity and marked accent, to vast
+theatres, to a declamation that had an instrumental accompaniment; and
+then we have given up simplicity of plot and dialogue, and all truth of
+situation.[284] La Motte nearly fifty years before had attacked the
+pseudo-classic drama. He had inveighed against the unities, against long
+monologues, against the device of confidants, and against verse. His
+assault, in which he had the powerful aid of Fontenelle, was part of
+that battle between Moderns and Ancients with which the literary
+activity of the century had opened. The brilliant success of the
+tragedies of Voltaire had restored the lustre of the conventional drama,
+though Voltaire infused an element of the romantic under the severity of
+the old forms. But the drama had become even less like Sophocles and
+Euripides in _Zaire_ than in _Phedre_ or _Iphigenie_. Voltaire intended
+to constitute the French drama into an independent form. He expected to
+be told that he was not like Sophocles, and he did not abstain from some
+singularly free railing against Euripides. The Greek pieces often
+smacked too much of the tone of the fair to satisfy him; they were too
+familiar and colloquial for a taste that had been made fastidious by the
+court-pieces of Lewis XIV. Diderot was kept free from such deplorable
+criticism as this by feeling that the Greek drama was true to the
+sentiment of the age that gave it birth, and that the French drama, if
+not in the hands of Racine, still even in the hands of Voltaire, and
+much more in the hands of such men as Lagrange-Chancel and the elder
+Crebillon, was true to no sentiment save one purely literary,
+artificial, and barren. He insists on the hopelessness of the stage,
+unless men prepared themselves at every part for a grand return to
+nature. We have seen what is his counsel to the actor. He preaches in
+the same key to the scene-painter and the maker of costumes.
+Scene-painting ought to be more rigorously true than any other kind of
+picture. Let there be no distraction, no extraneous suggestion, to
+interfere with the impression intended by the poet. Have you a salon to
+represent? Let it be that of a man of taste and no more: no ostentation
+and no gilding, unless the situation expressly demands the contrary.
+
+In the dresses the same rule holds good. Under robes that are overladen
+with gold lace, I only see a rich man; what I want to see is a man.
+Pretty and simple draperies of severe tints are what we need, not a
+mass of tinsel and embroidery. "A courageous actress has just got rid of
+her panier, and nobody has found her any the worse for it. Ah, if she
+only dared one day to show herself on the stage with all the nobility
+and simplicity of adjustment that her characters demand; nay, in the
+disorder into which she would be thrown by an event so terrible as the
+death of a husband, the loss of a son, and the other catastrophes of the
+tragic stage, what would become, round her dishevelled figure, of all
+those powdered, curled, frizzled, tricked-out creatures? Sooner or later
+they must put themselves in unison. O nature, nature! We can never
+resist her."[285]
+
+From all this we turn, for a few moments only, and not too cheerfully,
+to the Serbonian bog of dramatic rules and the metaphysics of the
+theatre. There is no subject in literature, not even the interpretation
+of the Apocalypse, which has given birth to such pedantic, dismal, and
+futile discussion. The immense controversy, carried on in books,
+pamphlets, sheets and flying articles, mostly German, as to what it was
+that Aristotle really meant by the famous words in the sixth chapter of
+the _Poetics_, about tragedy accomplishing the purification of our moods
+of pity and sympathetic fear, is one of the disgraces of human
+intelligence, a grotesque monument of sterility. The great tap-root of
+fallacy has been and remains the incessant imputation of ethical or
+social purpose to the dramatist, and the demand of direct and combined
+ethical or social effect from the drama. There is no critic, from the
+great Aristotle downwards, who has steered quite clear of these evil
+shallows; Diderot, as we have seen, least of all. But Diderot disarms
+the impatience which narrower critics kindle, by this magnificent
+concession, coming at the close of all: "Especially remember that _there
+is no general principle;_ I do not know a single one of those that I
+have indicated which a man of genius cannot infringe with success."[286]
+Here we listen to the voice of the genuine Diderot; and if this be
+granted, we need not give more than a passing attention to the rules
+that have gone before--about the danger of borrowing in the same
+composition the shades both of the comic and of the tragic styles; about
+movement being injurious to dignity, and of the importance therefore of
+not making the principal personage the _machinist_ of the piece; about
+the inexpediency of episodic personages--and so forth. The only remark
+worth making on these propositions is that, whatever their value may be,
+Diderot at any rate, like a true philosopher, generalised from the facts
+of nature and art. He did not follow the too common critical method of
+reading one's own ideas into a work of art, and then taking them back
+again in the more imposing form of inevitable deductions from the work
+itself.
+
+What Diderot conceived himself really to have done, was to have sketched
+and constituted a new species in the great dramatic kingdom. Every one
+knows, he said, that there is tragedy and that there is comedy, but we
+have to learn that there is room in nature and the art of the stage for
+a third division, namely, the _genre serieux_, a kind of comedy that has
+for its object virtue and the duties of man. Why should the writer of
+comedy confine his work to what is vicious or ridiculous in men? Why
+should not the duties of men furnish the dramatist with as ample
+material as their vices? Surely in the _genre honnete et serieux_ the
+subject is as important as in gay comedy. The characters are as varied
+and as original. The passions are all the more energetic as the interest
+will be greater. The style will be graver, loftier, more forcible, more
+susceptible of what we call sentiment, a quality without which no style
+ever yet spoke to the heart. The ridiculous will not be absent, for the
+madness of actions and speeches, when they are suggested by the
+misunderstanding of interests or by the transport of passion, is the
+truly ridiculous thing in men and in life.[287]
+
+Besides his own two pieces, Diderot would probably have pointed to
+Terence as the author coming nearest to the _genre serieux_. If Goethe's
+bad play of _Stella_ had retained the close as he originally wrote it,
+with the bigamous Fernando in the last scene rejoicing over the devoted
+agreement of the two ladies and his daughter to live with him in happy
+unity, that would perhaps have been a comedy of the _genre serieux_,
+with the duties of man gracefully adapted to circumstances.
+
+The theory of the _genre serieux_ has not led to the formation of any
+school of writers adopting it and working it out, or to the production
+of any masterpiece that has held its ground, as has happened in tragedy,
+comedy, and farce. Beaumarchais, who at last achieved such a dazzling
+and portentous success by one dramatic masterpiece, began his career as
+a playwright by following the vein of _The Father of the Family;_ but
+_The Marriage of Figaro_, though not without strong traces of Diderotian
+sentiment in pungent application, yet is in its structure and
+composition less French than Spanish. It is quite true, as Rosenkranz
+says, that the prevailing taste on the French stage in our own times
+favours above all else bourgeois romantic comedy, written in prose.[288]
+But the strength of the romantic element in them would have been as
+little satisfactory to Diderot's love of realistic moralising as the
+conventional tragedy of the court of Lewis XIV. The Fable of most of
+them turns on adultery, and this is not within the method of the _genre
+serieux_ as expounded by Diderot. Perhaps half a dozen comedies, such,
+for instance, as _The Ideas of Madame Aubray,_ by M. Dumas, are of the
+_genre serieux_, but certainly there are not enough of such comedies to
+constitute a genuine Diderotian school in France. There is no need
+therefore to say more about the theory than this, namely, that though
+the drama is an imitative art, yet besides imitation its effects demand
+illusion. What, cries Diderot, you do not conceive the effect that would
+be produced on you by a real scene, with real dresses, with speech in
+true proportion to the action, with the actions themselves simple, with
+the very dangers that have made you tremble for your parents, for your
+friends, for yourselves? No, we answer: reproduction of reality does not
+move us as a powerful work of imagination moves us. "We may as well
+urge," said Burke, "that stones, sand, clay, and metals lie in a certain
+manner in the earth, as a reason for building with these materials and
+in that manner, as for writing according to the accidental disposition
+of characters in Nature."[289] Common dangers do not excite us; it is
+the presentation of danger in some uncommon form, in some new
+combination, in some fresh play of motive and passion, that quickens
+that sympathetic fear and pity which it is the end of a play to produce.
+And if this be so, there is another thing to be said. If we are to be
+deliberately steeped in the atmosphere of Duty, illusion is out of
+place. The constant presence of that severe and overpowering figure,
+"Stern Daughter of the Voice of God," checks the native wildness of
+imagination, restricts the exuberance of fancy, and sets a rigorous
+limit to invention. Diderot used to admit that the _genre serieux_ could
+never take its right place until it had been handled by a man of high
+dramatic genius. The cause why this condition has never come to pass is
+simply that its whole structure and its regulations repel the faculties
+of dramatic genius.
+
+Besides the perfection of the _genre serieux_, Diderot insisted that the
+following tasks were also to be achieved before the stage could be said
+to have attained the full glory of the other arts. First, a domestic or
+bourgeois tragedy must be created. Second, the conditions of men, their
+callings and situations, the types of classes, in short, must be
+substituted for mere individual characters. Third, a real tragedy must
+be introduced upon the lyric theatre. Finally, the dance must be brought
+within the forms of a true poem.
+
+The only remark to be made upon this scheme touches the second article
+of it. To urge the substitution of types of classes for individual
+character was the very surest means that could have been devised for
+bringing back the conventional forms of the pseudo-classic drama. The
+very mark of that drama was that it introduced types instead of
+vigorously stamped personalities. What would be gained by driving the
+typical king off the stage, only to make room for the generalisation of
+a shopkeeper? This was not the path that led to romanticism, to Andre
+Chenier, to De Vigny, to Lamartine, to Victor Hugo. Theophile Gautier
+has told us that the fiery chiefs of the romantic school who suddenly
+conquered France at the close of the Restoration, divided the whole
+world into _flamboyant_ and _drab_. In the literature of the past they
+counted Voltaire one of the Drab, and Diderot a Flamboyant.[290] If it
+be not too presumptuous in a foreigner to dissent, we cannot but think
+that they were mistaken. Nothing could be farther removed at every part
+from Diderot's dramatic scheme, than _Faust_ or _Goetz von Berlichingen_
+or _Hernani_.
+
+The truth is that it was impossible for an effective antagonism to the
+classic school to rise in the mind of an Encyclopaedist, for the reason
+that the Encyclopaedists hated and ignored what they called the Dark
+Ages. Yet it was exactly the Dark Ages from which the great romantic
+revival drew its very life-breath. "In the eighteenth century," it has
+been said, "it was really the reminiscence of the classic spirit which
+was awakened in the newer life of Europe, and made prominent."[291] This
+is true in a certain historic sense of Rousseau's politics, and perhaps
+of Voltaire's rationalism. In spite of the vein of mysticism which
+occasionally shows in him, it is true in some degree of Diderot himself,
+if by classicism we mean the tendency to make man the centre of the
+universe. Classicism treats man as worthy and great, living his life
+among cold and neutral forces. This is the very opposite of the
+sinfulness, imperfection, and nothingness habitually imputed to man, and
+the hourly presence of a whole hierarchy of busy supernatural agents
+placed about man by the Middle Ages. Yet we cannot but see that Diderot
+was feeling for dramatic forms and subjects that would have been as
+little classic as romantic. He failed in the search. There is one play
+and only one of his epoch that is not classic, and is not romantic, but
+speaks independently the truest and best mind of the eighteenth century
+itself, in its own form and language. That play is _Nathan the Wise_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+RAMEAU'S NEPHEW.
+
+
+In hypochondriacal moments, it has been said, the world, viewed from the
+aesthetic side, appears to many a one a cabinet of caricatures; from the
+intellectual side, a madhouse; and from the moral side, a harbouring
+place for rascals.[292] We might perhaps extend this saying beyond the
+accidents of hypochondriasis, and urge that the few wide, profound, and
+real observers of human life have all known, and known often, this
+fantastic consciousness of living in a strange distorted universe of
+lunatics, knaves, grotesques. It is an inevitable mood to any who dare
+to shake the kaleidoscopic fragments out of their conventional and
+accepted combination. Who does not remember deep traces of such a mood
+in Plato, Shakespeare, Pascal, Goethe? And Diderot, who went near to
+having something of the deep quality of those sovereign spirits, did not
+escape, any more than they, the visitation of the misanthropic spectre.
+The distinction of the greater minds is that they have no temptation to
+give the spectre a permanent home with them, as is done by theologians
+in order to prove the necessity of grace and another world, or by
+cynics in order to prove the wisdom of selfishness in this world. The
+greater minds accept the worse facts of character for what they are
+worth, and bring them into a right perspective with the better facts.
+They have no expectation of escaping all perplexities, nor of hitting on
+answers to all the moral riddles of the world. Yet are they ever drawn
+by an invincible fascination to the feet of the mighty Sphinx of
+society. She bewilders them with questions that are never overheard by
+common ears, and torments them with a mockery that is unobserved by
+common eyes. The energetic--a Socrates, a Diderot--cannot content
+themselves with merely recording her everlasting puzzles; still less
+with merely writing over again the already recorded answers. They insist
+on scrutinising the moral world afresh; they resolve the magniloquent
+vocabulary of abstract ethics into the small realities from which it has
+come; they break the complacent repose of opinion and usage by a graphic
+irony. "The definitions of moral beings," said Diderot, "are always made
+from what such beings ought to be, and never from what they are. People
+incessantly confound duty with the thing as it is."[293] We shall
+proceed to give a short account of one or two dialogues in which he
+endeavours to keep clear of this confusion.
+
+By far the most important of these is _Rameau's Nephew_. The fortunes
+of this singular production are probably unique in literary history. In
+the year 1804 Schiller handed to Goethe the manuscript of a piece by
+Diderot, with the wish that he might find himself able to translate it
+into German. "As I had long," says Goethe, "cherished a great regard
+for this author, I cheerfully undertook the task, after looking through
+the original. People can see, I hope, that I threw my whole soul into
+it."[294] When he had done his work, he returned the manuscript to
+Schiller. Schiller died almost immediately (May 1805), and the
+mysterious manuscript disappeared. Goethe could never learn either
+whence it had come, or whither it went. He always suspected that the
+autograph original had been sent to the Empress Catherine at St.
+Petersburg, and that Schiller's manuscript was a copy from that. Though
+Goethe had executed his translation, as he says, "not merely with
+readiness but even with passion," the violent and only too just hatred
+then prevailing in Germany for France and for all that belonged to
+France, hindered any vogue which _Rameau's Nephew_ might otherwise have
+had. On the eve of Austerlitz and of Jena there might well be little
+humour for a satire from the French.
+
+Thirteen years afterwards an edition of Diderot's works appeared in
+Paris (Belin's edition of 1818), but the editors were obliged to content
+themselves, for _Rameau's Nephew_, with an analysis of Goethe's
+translation. In 1821 a lively sensation was produced by the publication
+of what professed to be the original text of the missing dialogue. It
+was really a retranslation into French from Goethe. The fraud was not
+discovered for some time, until in 1823 Briere announced for his edition
+of Diderot's works a reprint from a genuine original. This original he
+had procured from Madame de Vandeul, Diderot's daughter, who still
+survived. She described it as a copy made in 1760 under the author's own
+eyes, and this may have been the case, though, if so, it must, from some
+of the references, have been revised after 1773. The two young men who
+had tried to palm off their retranslation from Goethe as Diderot's own
+text, at once had the effrontery to accuse Briere and Diderot's daughter
+of repeating their own fraud. A vivacious dispute followed between the
+indignant publisher and his impudent detractors. At length Briere
+appealed to the great Jove of Weimar. Goethe expressed his conviction
+that Briere's text was the genuine text of the original, and this was
+held to settle the question. Yet Goethe's voucher for its correspondence
+with the copy handed to him by Schiller was not really decisive
+evidence. He admits that he executed the translation very rapidly, and
+had no time to compare it closely with the French. An identification
+nearly twenty years afterwards of verbal resemblances and minute
+references, in a work that had been only a short time in his hands,
+cannot be counted testimony of the highest kind. We have thus the
+extraordinary circumstance that for a great number of years, down almost
+to the present decade, the text of the one masterpiece of a famous man
+who died so recently as 1784 rested on a single manuscript, and that a
+manuscript of disputed authenticity.[295]
+
+Critics differ extremely in their answers to the question of the subject
+or object of Diderot's singular "farce-tragedy." One declares it to be
+merely a satirical picture of contemporary manners. Another insists that
+it is meant to be an ironical _reductio ad absurdum_ of the theory of
+self-interest, by exhibiting a concrete example of its working in all
+its grossness. A third holds that it was composed by way of rejoinder to
+Palissot's comedy _(Les Philosophes_), 1760, which had brought the
+chiefs of the rationalistic school upon the stage, and presented them as
+enemies of the human race. A fourth suspects that the personal and
+dramatic portions are no more than a setting for the discussion of the
+comparative merits of the French and Italian schools of music. The true
+answer is that the dialogue is all of these things, because it is none
+of them. It is neither more nor less than the living picture and account
+of an original, drawn by a man of genius who was accustomed to observe
+human nature and society with a free unblinking vision, and to meditate
+upon them deeply and searchingly.
+
+Diderot goes to work with Rameau in some sort and to a certain extent
+as Shakespeare went to work with Falstaff. He is the artist, reproducing
+with the variety and perfection of art a whimsical figure that struck
+his fancy and stirred the creative impulse. Ethics, aesthetics, manners,
+satire, are all indeed to be found in the dialogue, but they are only
+there as incident to the central figure of the sketch, the prodigy of
+parasites. Diderot had no special fondness for these originals. Yet he
+had a keen and just sense of their interest. "Their character stands out
+from the rest of the world, it breaks that tiresome uniformity which our
+bringing up, our social conventions, and our arbitrary fashions have
+introduced. If one of them makes his appearance in a company, he is like
+leaven, fermenting and restoring to each person present a portion of his
+natural individuality. He stirs people up, moves them, provokes to
+praise or blame: he is a means of bringing out reality; gives honest
+people a chance of showing what they are made of, and unmasks the
+rogues."[296]
+
+Hearing that the subject of Diderot's dialogue is the Parasite, the
+scholar will naturally think of that savage satire in which Juvenal
+rehearses the thousand humiliations that Virro inflicts on Trebius: how
+the wretched follower has to drink fiery stuff from broken crockery,
+while the patron quaffs of the costliest from splendid cups of amber and
+precious stones; how the host has fine oil of Venafrum, while the guest
+munches cabbage that has been steeped in rancid lamp-oil; one plays
+daintily with mullet and lamprey, while the other has his stomach turned
+by an eel as long as a snake, and bloated in the foul torrent of the
+sewers; Virro has apples that might have come from the gardens of the
+Hesperides, while Trebius gnaws such musty things as are tossed to a
+performing monkey on the town wall. But the distance is immeasurable
+between Juvenal's scorching truculence and Diderot's half-ironical,
+half-serious sufferance. Juvenal knows that Trebius is a base and abject
+being; he tells him what he is; and in the process blasts him. Diderot
+knows that Rameau too is base and abject, but he is so little willing to
+rest in the fat and easy paradise of conventions, that he seems to be
+all the time vaguely wondering in his own mind how far this genius of
+grossness and paradox and bestial sophism is a pattern of the many, with
+the mask thrown off. He seems to be inwardly musing whether it can after
+all be true, that if one draws aside a fold of the gracious outer robe
+of conformity, there is no comeliness of life shining underneath, but
+only this horror of the skeleton and the worm. He restrains exasperation
+at the brilliant effrontery of his man, precisely as an anatomist would
+suppress disgust at a pathological monstrosity, or an astonishing
+variation in which he hoped to surprise some vital secret. Rameau is not
+crudely analysed as a vile type: he is searched as exemplifying on a
+prodigious scale elements of character that lie furtively in the depths
+of characters that are not vile. It seems as if Diderot unconsciously
+anticipated that terrible, that woful, that desolating saying,--_There
+is in every man and woman something which, if you knew it, would make
+you hate them_. Rameau is not all parasite. He is your brother and mine,
+a product from the same rudimentary factors of mental composition, a
+figure cast equally with ourselves in one of the countless moulds of the
+huge social foundry.
+
+Such is the scientific attitude of mind towards character: It is not
+philanthropic nor pitiful: the fact that base characters exist and are
+of intelligible origin is no reason why we should not do our best to
+shun and to extirpate them. This assumption of the scientific point of
+view, this change from mere praise and blame to scrutiny, this
+comprehension that mere execration is not the last word, is a mark of
+the modern spirit. Besides Juvenal, another writer of genius has shown
+us the parasite of an ancient society. Lucian, whose fertility, wit,
+invention, mockery, freshness of spirit, and honest hatred of false
+gods, make him the Voltaire of the second century, has painted with all
+his native liveliness more than one picture of the parasite. The great
+man's creature at Rome endures exactly the same long train of affronts
+and humiliations as the great man's creature at Paris sixteen centuries
+later, beginning with the anguish of the mortified stomach, as savoury
+morsels of venison or boar are given to more important guests, and
+ending with the anguish of the mortified spirit, as he sees himself
+supplanted by a rival of shapelier person, a more ingenious versifier, a
+cleverer mountebank. The dialogue in which Lucian ironically proves
+that Parasitic, or the honourable craft of Spunging, has as many of the
+marks of a genuine art as Rhetoric, Gymnastic, or Music, is a spirited
+parody of Socratic catechising and Platonic mannerisms. Simo shows to
+Tychiades, as ingeniously as Rameau shows to Diderot, that the Spunger
+has a far better life of it, and is a far more rational and consistent
+person than the orator and the philosopher.[297] Lucian's satire is
+vivid, brilliant, and diverting. Yet every one feels that Diderot's
+performance, while equally vivid, is marked by greater depth of spirit;
+comes from a soil that has been more freely broken up, and has been
+enriched by a more copious experience. The ancient turned upon these
+masterpieces of depravation the flash of intellectual scorn; the modern
+eyes them with a certain moral patience, and something of that curious
+kind of interest, looking half like sympathy, which a hunter has for the
+object of his chase.
+
+The Rameau of the dialogue was a real personage, and there is a dispute
+whether Diderot has not calumniated him. Evidence enough remains that he
+was at least a person of singular character and irregular disastrous
+life. Diderot's general veracity of temperament would make us believe
+that his picture is authentic, but the interest of the dialogue is
+exactly the same in either case. Juvenal's fifth satire would be worth
+neither more nor less, however much were found out about Trebius.
+
+"Rameau is one of the most eccentric figures in the country, where God
+has not made them lacking. He is a mixture of elevation and lowness, of
+good sense and madness; the notions of good and bad must be mixed up
+together in strange confusion in his head, for he shows the good
+qualities that nature has bestowed on him without any ostentation, and
+the bad ones without the smallest shame. For the rest, he is endowed
+with a vigorous frame, a particular warmth of imagination, and an
+uncommon strength of lungs. If you ever meet him, unless you happen to
+be arrested by his originality, you will either stuff your fingers into
+your ears or else take to your heels. Heavens, what a monstrous pipe!
+Nothing is so little like him as himself. One time he is lean and wan,
+like a patient in the last stage of consumption: you could count his
+teeth through his cheeks; you would say he must have passed some days
+without tasting a morsel, or that he is fresh from La Trappe. A month
+after, he is stout and sleek as if he had been sitting all the time at
+the board of a financier, or had been shut up in a Bernardine monastery.
+To-day in dirty linen, his clothes torn and patched, with barely a shoe
+to his foot, he steals along with a bent head; one is tempted to hail
+him and toss him a shilling. To-morrow, all powdered, curled, in a good
+coat, he marches about with head erect and open mien, and you would
+almost take him for a decent worthy creature. He lives from day to day,
+from hand to mouth, downcast or sad, just as things may go. His first
+care of a morning when he gets up is to know where he will dine; after
+dinner, he begins to think where he may pick up a supper. Night brings
+disquiets of its own. Either he climbs to a shabby garret he has, unless
+the landlady, weary of waiting for her rent, has taken the key away from
+him; or else he shrinks to some tavern on the outskirts of the town,
+where he waits for daybreak over a crust of bread and a mug of beer.
+When he has not threepence in his pocket, as sometimes happens, he has
+recourse either to a hackney-carriage belonging to a friend, or to a
+coachman of some man of quality, who gives him a bed on the straw beside
+the horses. In the morning he still has bits of the mattress in his
+hair. If the weather is mild, he measures the Champs Elysees all night
+long. With the day he reappears in the town, dressed over night for the
+morrow, and from the morrow sometimes dressed for the rest of the week."
+
+Diderot is accosted by this curious being one afternoon on a bench in
+front of the Cafe de la Regence in the Palais Royal. They proceed in the
+thoroughly natural and easy manner of interlocutors in a Platonic
+dialogue. It is not too much to say that _Rameau's Nephew_ is the most
+effective and masterly use of that form of discussion since Plato.
+Diderot's vein of realism is doubtless in strong contrast with Plato's
+poetic and idealising touch. Yet imaginative strokes are not wanting to
+soften the repulsive theme, and to bring the sordid and the foul within
+the sphere of art. For an example. "Time has passed," says Rameau, "and
+that is always so much gained."
+
+"_I._--So much lost, you mean.
+
+"_He._--No, no; gained. People grow rich every moment; a day less to
+live, or a crown piece to the good, 'tis all one. When the last moment
+comes, one is as rich as another. Samuel Bernard, who by pillaging and
+stealing and playing bankrupt, leaves seven-and-twenty million francs in
+gold, is no better than Rameau, who leaves not a penny, and will be
+indebted to charity for a shroud to wrap about him. The dead man hears
+not the tolling of the bell; 'tis in vain that a hundred priests bawl
+dirges for him, in vain that a long file of blazing torches go before.
+His soul walks not by the side of the master of the funeral ceremonies.
+To moulder under marble, or to moulder under clay, 'tis still to
+moulder. To have around one's bier children in red and children in blue,
+or to have not a creature, what matters it?"
+
+These are the gleams of the _mens divinior_, that relieve the perplexing
+moral squalor of the portrait. Even here we have the painful innuendo
+that a thought which is solemnising and holy to the noble, serves
+equally well to point a trait of cynical defiance in the ignoble.
+
+Again, there is an indirectly imaginative element in the sort of terror
+which the thoroughness of the presentation inspires. For indeed it is an
+emotion hardly short of terror that seizes us, as we listen to the
+stringent unflinching paradox of this heterogeneous figure. Rameau is
+the squalid and tattered Satan of the eighteenth century. He is a
+Mephistopheles out at elbows, a Lucifer in low water; yet always
+diabolic, with the bright flash of the pit in his eye. Disgust is
+transformed into horror and affright by the trenchant confidence of his
+spirit, the daring thoroughness and consistency of his dialectic, the
+lurid sarcasm, the vile penetration. He discusses a horrible action, or
+execrable crime, as a virtuoso examines a statue or a painting. He has
+that rarest fortitude of the vicious, not to shrink from calling his
+character and conduct by their names. He is one of Swift's Yahoos, with
+the courage of its opinions. He seems to give one reason for hating and
+dreading oneself. The effect is of mixed fear and fascination, as of a
+magician whose miraculous crystal is to show us what and how we shall
+be twenty years from now; or as when a surgeon tells the tale of some
+ghastly disorder, that may at the very moment be stealthily preparing
+for us a doom of anguish.
+
+Hence our dialogue is assuredly no "meat for little people nor for
+fools." Some of it is revolting in its brutal indecency. Even Goethe's
+self-possession cannot make it endurable to him. But it is a study to be
+omitted by no one who judges the corruption of the old society in France
+an important historic subject. The picture is very like the corruption
+of the old society in Rome. We see the rotten material which the
+purifying flame of Jacobinism was soon to consume out of the land with
+fiery swiftness. We watch the very classes from which, as we have been
+so often told, the regeneration of France would have come, if only
+demagogues and rabble had not violently interposed. There is no gaiety
+in the style; none of that laughter which makes such a delineation of
+the manners of the time as we find in Colle's play of _Truth in Wine_,
+_naif_, true to nature, and almost exhilarating. In _Rameau_ we are
+afflicted by the odour of deadly taint.
+
+As the dialogue is not in every hand--nor could any one wish that it
+should be--I have thought it worth while to print an English rendering
+of a considerable part of it in an appendix. Mr. Carlyle told us long
+ago that it must be translated into English, and although such a piece
+of work is less simple than it may seem, it appears right to give the
+reader an opportunity of judging for himself of the flavour of the most
+characteristic of all Diderot's performances. Only let no reader turn to
+it who has any invincible repugnance to that curious turn for
+_wildbret_, which Goethe has described as the secret of some arts.
+
+    Dixeris haec inter varicosos centuriones,
+    Continuo crassum ridet Pulfenius ingens
+    Et centum Graecos curto centusse licebit.
+
+As I have already said, it must be judged as something more than a
+literary diversion. "You do not suspect, Sir Philosopher," says Rameau,
+"that at this moment I represent the most important part of the town and
+the court." As the painter of the picture says, Rameau confessed the
+vices that he had, and that most of the people about us have; but he was
+no hypocrite. He was neither more nor less abominable than they; he was
+only more frank and systematic and profound in his depravity. This is
+the social significance of the dialogue. This is what, apart from other
+considerations, makes _Rameau's Nephew_ so much more valuable a guide to
+the moral sentiment of the time than merely licentious compositions like
+those of Louvet or La Olos. Its instructiveness is immense to those who
+examine the conditions that prepared the Revolution. Rameau is not the
+[Greek: akolastos] of Aristotle, nor the creature of [Greek: aponoia]
+described by Theophrastus--the castaway by individual idiosyncrasy, the
+reprobate by accident. The men whom he represented, the courtiers, the
+financiers, the merchants, the shopkeepers, were immoral by formula and
+depraved on principle. Vice was a doctrine to them, and wretchlessness
+of unclean living was reduced to a system of philosophy. Any one, I
+venture to repeat, who realises the extent to which this had corroded
+the ruling powers in France, will perceive that the furious flood of
+social energy which the Jacobins poured over the country was not less
+indispensable to France than the flood of the barbarians was
+indispensable for the transformation of the Roman Empire.
+
+Scattered among the more serious fragments of the dialogue is some
+excellent by-play of sarcasm upon Palissot, and one or two of the other
+assailants of the new liberal school. Palissot is an old story. The
+Palissots are an eternal species. The family never dies out, and it
+thrives in every climate. All societies know the literary dangler in
+great houses, and the purveyor to fashionable prejudices. Not that he is
+always servile. The reader, I daresay, remembers that La Bruyere
+described a curious being in Troilus, the despotic parasite. Palissot,
+eighteenth century or nineteenth century, is often like Troilus,
+parasite and tyrant at the same time. He usually happens to have begun
+life with laudable aspirations and sincere interests of his own; and
+when, alas, the mediocrity of his gifts proves too weak to bear the
+burden of his ambitions, the recollection of a generous youth only
+serves to sour old age.
+
+    Bel esprit abhorre de tous les bons esprits,
+    Il pense par la haine echapper au mepris.
+    A force d'attentats il se croit illustre;
+    Et s'il n'etait mechant, il serait ignore.
+
+Palissot began with a tragedy. He proceeded to an angry pamphlet
+against the Encyclopaedists and the fury for innovation. Then he achieved
+immense vogue among fine ladies, bishops, and the lighter heads of the
+town, by the comedy in which he held Diderot, D'Alembert, and the
+others, up to hatred and ridicule. Finally, after coming to look upon
+himself as a serious personage, he disappeared into the mire of
+half-oblivious contempt and disgust that happily awaits all the poor
+Palissots and all their works. His name only survives in connection with
+the men whom he maligned. He lived to be old, as, oddly enough, Spite so
+often does. In the Terror he had a narrow escape, for he was brought
+before Chaumette. Chaumette apostrophised the assailant of Rousseau and
+Diderot with rude energy, but did not send him to the guillotine. In
+this the practical disciple only imitated the magnanimity of his
+theoretical masters. Rousseau had declined an opportunity of punishing
+Palissot's impertinences, and Diderot took no worse vengeance upon him
+than by making an occasional reference of contempt to him in a dialogue
+which he perhaps never intended to publish.
+
+Another subject is handled in _Rameau's Nephew,_ which is interesting in
+connection with the mental activity of Paris in the eighteenth century.
+Music was the field of as much passionate controversy as theology and
+philosophy. The Bull Unigenitus itself did not lead to livelier
+disputes, or more violent cabals, than the conflict between the
+partisans of French music and the partisans of Italian music. The
+horror of a Jansenist for a Molinist did not surpass that of a Lullist
+for a Dunist, or afterwards of a Gluckist for a Piccinist.[298] Lulli
+and Rameau (the uncle of our parasite) had undisputed possession of
+Paris until the arrival, in 1752, of a company of Italian singers. The
+great quarrel at once broke out as to the true method and destination of
+musical composition. Is music an independent art, appealing directly to
+a special sense, or is it to be made an instrument for expressing
+affections of the mind in a certain deeper way? The Italians asked only
+for delicious harmonies and exquisite melodies. The French insisted that
+these should be subordinate to the work of the poet. The former were
+content with delight, the latter pressed for significance. The one
+declared that Italian music was no better than a silly tickling of the
+ears; the other that the overture to a French opera was like a prelude
+to a Miserere in plain-song. In 1772-73 the illustrious Gluck came to
+Paris. His art was believed to reconcile the two schools, to have more
+melody than the old French style, and more severity and meaning than the
+purely Italian style. French dignity was saved. But soon the old battle,
+which had been going on for twenty years, began to rage with greater
+violence than ever. Piccini was brought to Paris by the Neapolitan
+ambassador. The old cries were heard in a shriller key than before.
+Pamphlets, broadsheets, sarcasms flew over Paris from every side.
+
+Was music only to flatter the ear, or was it to paint the passions in
+all their energy, to harrow the soul, to raise men's courage, to form
+citizens and heroes? The coffee-houses were thrown into dire confusion,
+and literary societies were rent by fatal discord. Even dinner-parties
+breathed only constraint and mistrust, and the intimacies of a lifetime
+came to cruel end. _Rameau's Nephew_ was composed in the midst of the
+first part of this long campaign of a quarter of a century, and its
+seems to have been revised by its author in the midst of the second
+great episode. Diderot declares against the school of Rameau and Lulli.
+That he should do so was a part of his general reaction in favour of
+what he called the natural, against the artifice and affectation. Goethe
+has pointed out the inconsistency between Diderot's sympathy for the
+less expressive kind of music, and his usual vehement passion for the
+expressive in art. He truly observes that Diderot's sympathy went in
+this way, because the novelty and agitation seemed likely to break up
+the old, stiff, and abhorred fashion, and to clear the ground afresh for
+other efforts.[299]
+
+
+
+
+END OF VOL. I.
+
+_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_. FOOTNOTES:
+
+
+
+
+[Footnote 1: _Oeuv._, xviii. 505.]
+
+[Footnote 2: _Oeuv._, xviii. 364.]
+
+[Footnote 3: _Ib._ 379.]
+
+[Footnote 4: _Oeuv._, i. 30.]
+
+[Footnote 5: _Wahlverwandschaften_, pt. ii. ch. vii. The reader will do
+well to consult the philosophical estimate of the function of the man of
+letters given by Comte, _Philosophie Positive_, v. 512, vi. 192, 287.
+The best contemporary account of the principles and policy of the men of
+letters in the eighteenth century is to be found in Condorcet's
+_Esquisse d'un Tableau, etc._, pp. 187-189 (ed. 1847).]
+
+[Footnote 6: Naigeon, p. 24.]
+
+[Footnote 7: _Oeuv._, xix. 162.]
+
+[Footnote 8: _Oeuv._, xix. 89.]
+
+[Footnote 9: _Oeuv._, xix. 93.]
+
+[Footnote 10: _Oeuv._, i. xlviii.]
+
+[Footnote 11: Marmontel, _Mem._, vol. ii. b. vii. p. 315.]
+
+[Footnote 12: Morellet, _Mem._, i. p. 29.]
+
+[Footnote 13: _Oeuv._, i. xlviii.]
+
+[Footnote 14: _Ib._ xix. 55.]
+
+[Footnote 15: _Oeuv._, xviii. 376.]
+
+[Footnote 16: Madame de Vandeul says 1744. But M. Jal (_Dict. Crit._,
+495) reproduces the certificate of the marriage. Perhaps we may
+charitably hope that Diderot himself is equally mistaken, when in later
+years he sets down a disreputable adventure to 1744. (_Oeuv._, xix.
+85.)]
+
+[Footnote 17: For an account of Madame de Puisieux in her later years,
+see Mdme. Roland's _Memoirs_, i. 156.]
+
+[Footnote 18: Sainte Beuve, _Causeries_, ix. 136.]
+
+[Footnote 19: _Oeuv._, xix. 159. See also _Salons_, 1767, No, 118.]
+
+[Footnote 20: _Les Regnes de Claud et de Neron, Sec. 79.]
+
+[Footnote 21: Account of Diderot by Meister, printed in Grimm's
+_Correspondence Litteraire_ xiii. 202-211.]
+
+[Footnote 22: Gretry, quoted in Genin's _Oeuv. choisies de Diderot_,
+42.]
+
+[Footnote 23: Marmontel, _Mem_., bk. vii. vol. ii. 312.]
+
+[Footnote 24: Plato, _Theages_, 130, c.]
+
+[Footnote 25: Art. _Encyclopedie_.]
+
+[Footnote 26: See Barbier's Journal, iv. 166.]
+
+[Footnote 27: The book was among those found in the possession of the
+unfortunate La Barre.]
+
+[Footnote 28: Honegger's _Kritische Geschichte der franzoesischen
+Cultureinfluesse in den letzten Jahrhunderten_, pp. 267-273.]
+
+[Footnote 29: "Es ist nicht gleichgueltig ob eine Folge grosser Gedanken
+in frischer Urspruenglichkeit auf die Zeitgenossen wirkt, oder ob sie zu
+einer Mixtur mit reichlichem Zusatz ueberlieferter Vorurtheile
+verarbeitet ist. Ebensowenig ist est gleichgueltig welcher Stimmung,
+welchem Zustande der Geister eine neue Lehre begegnet. Man darf aber
+kuehn behaupten, das fuer die volle durchfuehrung der von Newton
+angebahnten Weltanschauung weder eine guenstigere Naturanlage, noch eine
+guenstigere Stimmung getroffen werden konnte, als die der Franzosen im
+18. Jahrhundert." (Lange's _Gesch. d. Materialismus_, i. 303.) But the
+writer, like most historians of opinion, does not dwell sufficiently on
+the co-operation of external social conditions with the progress of
+logical inference.]
+
+[Footnote 30: See Montgeron's _La Verite des Miracles de M. de Paris
+demontree_ (1737)--an interesting contribution to the pathology of the
+human mind.]
+
+[Footnote 31: Barbier, 168, 244, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 32: _Pensees Philosophiques_, xviii.]
+
+[Footnote 33: On this, see Lange, i. 294.]
+
+[Footnote 34: _Pensees Philosophiques. Oeuv._, i. 128, 129.]
+
+[Footnote 35: _Oeuv._, xix. 87. Grimm, Supp. 148.]
+
+[Footnote 36: Volney, in a book that was famous in its day, _Les Ruines,
+ou Meditation sur les revolutions des empires_ (1791), resorted to a
+slight difference of method. Instead of leaving the pretensions of the
+various creeds to cancel one another, he invented a rather striking
+scene, in which the priests of each creed are made to listen to the
+professions of their rival, and then inveigh against his superstition
+and inconsistency. The assumption on which Diderot's argument rests is,
+that as so many different creeds all make the same exclusive claim, the
+claim is equally false throughout. Volney's argument turns more directly
+on the merits, and implies that all religions are equally morbid or
+pathological products, because they all lead to conduct condemned by
+their own most characteristic maxims. Volney's concrete presentation of
+comparative religion was highly effective for destructive purposes,
+though it would now be justly thought inadequate. (See _Oeuv. de
+Volney_, i. 109, etc.)]
+
+[Footnote 37: See on this, Lange, ii. 308.]
+
+[Footnote 38: _De la Suffisance de la Religion Naturelle_, Sec. 5.]
+
+[Footnote 39: It is well to remember that torture was not abolished in
+France until the Revolution. A Catholic writer makes the following
+judicious remark: "We cannot study the eighteenth century without being
+struck by the immoral consequences that inevitably followed for the
+population of Paris from the frequency and the hideous details of
+criminal executions. In reading the journals of the time, we are amazed
+at the place taken in popular life by the scenes of the Greve. It was
+the theatre of the day. The gibbet and the wheel did their work almost
+periodically, and people looked on while poor wretches writhed in slow
+agony all day long. Sometimes the programme was varied by decapitation
+and even by the stake. Torture had its legends and its heroes--the
+everyday talk of the generation which, having begun by seeing Damiens
+torn by red-hot pincers, was to end by rending Foulon limb from limb."
+(Carne, _Monarchie francaise au 18ieme Siecle_, p. 493.)]
+
+[Footnote 40: _Lettres sur les Anglais_, xxiii.]
+
+[Footnote 41: _Essai sur le Merite_, I. ii. Sec. 3. _Oeue.,_ i. 33.]
+
+[Footnote 42: "Shaftesbury is one of the most important apparitions of
+the eighteenth century. All the greatest spirits of that time, not only
+in England, but also Leibnitz, Voltaire, Diderot, Lessing, Mendelssohn,
+Wieland, and Herder, drew the strongest nourishment from him." (Hettner,
+_Literaturgeschichte des 18ten Jahrhunderts: ler Theil_. 188.) See also
+Lange's _Gesch. des Materialismus,_ i. 306, etc. An excellent account of
+Shaftesbury is given by Mr. Leslie Stephen, in his _Essays on
+Free-thinking and Plain-speaking_.]
+
+[Footnote 43: _Oeuv_., i. xlvi.]
+
+[Footnote 44: Jobez, _France sous Louis XV_., ii. 373. There were, in
+1725, 24,000 houses, 20,000 carriages, and 120,000 horses. (Martin's
+_Hist, de France_, xv. 116.)]
+
+[Footnote 45: The records of Paris in this century contain more than one
+illustration of the turbulence of this odious army of lackeys. Barbier,
+i. 118. For the way in which their insolence was fostered, see
+Saint-Simon, xii. 354, etc. The number of lackeys retained seems to have
+been extraordinarily great in proportion to the total of annual
+expenditure, and this is a curious point in the manners of the time. See
+Voltaire, _Dict. Phil_, Sec. v. Economie Domestique (liv. 182).]
+
+[Footnote 46: Duclos, _Mem. secrets sur le Regne de Louis XV., iii 306.]
+
+[Footnote 47: _Oeuv_., xix. 91.]
+
+[Footnote 48: _Ib_. p. 130.]
+
+[Footnote 49: _Prom, du Sceptique. Oeuv_., i. 229.]
+
+[Footnote 50: "If there is a God, he is infinitely incomprehensible,
+since, being without parts or limits, he has no relation to us: we are
+therefore incapable of knowing what he is, or if he is. That being so,
+who shall venture to undertake the solution of the question? Not we, at
+any rate, who have no relation to him." _Pensees_, II. iii. 1.]
+
+[Footnote 51: P. 182.]
+
+[Footnote 52: P. 223.]
+
+[Footnote 53: Barbazan's _Fabliaux et Contes_, iii. 409 (ed. 1808). The
+learned Barbazan's first edition was published in 1756, and so Diderot
+may well have heard some of the contents of the work then in progress.]
+
+[Footnote 54: Naigeon.]
+
+[Footnote 55: In my _Rousseau_, p. 243 (new ed.)]
+
+[Footnote 56: _Voltaire_, p. 149 (new ed., Globe 8vo).]
+
+[Footnote 57: Joubert.]
+
+[Footnote 58: Hettner, _Literaiurgeschichte des 18ten Jahrhunderts_, ii.
+301.]
+
+[Footnote 59: _Oeuv._, ii. 260, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 60: _Oeuv._, ii. 258, 259. _De l'Essai sur les Femmes, par
+Thomas_. See Grimm's _Corr. Lit._, vii. 451, where the book is
+disparaged; and viii. 1, where Diderot's view of it is given. Thomas
+(1732-85) belonged to the philosophical party, but not to the militant
+section of it. He was a serious and orderly person in his life, and
+enjoyed the closest friendship with Madame Necker. His enthusiasm for
+virtue, justice, and freedom, expressed with much magniloquence, made
+him an idol in the respectable circle which Madame Necker gathered round
+her. He has been justly, though perhaps harshly, described as a
+"valetudinarian Grandison." (Albert's _Lit. Francaise au 18ieme Siecle_,
+p. 423.)]
+
+[Footnote 61: _Elemens de la Philosophie de Newton_, Pt. II. ch. vii.
+Berkeley himself only refers once to Cheselden's case: _Theory of Vision
+vindicated_, Sec. 71. Professor Fraser, in his important edition of
+Berkeley's works (i. 444), reproduces from the _Philosophical
+Transactions_ the original account of the operation, which is
+unfortunately much less clear and definite than Voltaire's emphasised
+version would make it, though its purport is distinct enough.]
+
+[Footnote 62: _Essai sur l'Origine des Connaissances humaines_, I. Sec. 6.]
+
+[Footnote 63: _Let. sur les Aveugles_, 323, 324. Condorcet attaches a
+higher value to Cheselden's operation. _Oeuv._, ii. 121.]
+
+[Footnote 64: Dr. M'Cosh _(Exam. of J. S. Mill's Philosophy_, p. 163)
+quotes what seems to be the best reported case, by a Dr. Franz, of
+Leipsic; and Prof. Fraser, in the appendix to Berkeley (_loc. cit._),
+quotes another good case by Mr. Nunnely. See also Mill's _Exam. of
+Hamilton_, p. 288 (3d ed.)]
+
+[Footnote 65: _Confessions_, II, vii.]
+
+[Footnote 66: Darwin, _The Expression of the Emotions in Men and
+Animals_, c. xiii. p. 312, and also pp. 335-337. This fact, so far as it
+goes, seems to make against the theory of transmitted sentiments.]
+
+[Footnote 67: Locke answered that the man would not distinguish the cube
+from the sphere, until he had identified by actual touch the source of
+his former tactual impression with the object making a given visual
+impression. Condillac, while making just objections to the terms in
+which Molyneux propounded the question, answered it different from
+Locke. Diderot expresses his own opinion thus: "I think that when the
+eyes of the born-blind are opened for the first time to the light, he
+will perceive nothing at all; that some time will be necessary for his
+eye to make experiments for itself; but that it will make these
+experiments itself, and in its own way, and without the help of touch."
+This is in harmony with the modern doctrine, that there is an inherited
+aptitude of structure (in the eye, for instance), but that experience is
+an essential condition to the development and perfecting of this
+aptitude.]
+
+[Footnote 68: A very intelligent English translation of the _Letter on
+the Blind_ was published in 1773. For some reason or other, Diderot is
+described on the title-page as Physician to His most Christian Majesty.]
+
+[Footnote 69: _Oeuv_., i. 308.]
+
+[Footnote 70: Pp. 309, 310.]
+
+[Footnote 71: P. 311.]
+
+[Footnote 72: _Corr._, June 1749.]
+
+[Footnote 73: See _Critical Miscellanies: First Series_.]
+
+[Footnote 74: Diderot to Voltaire, 1749. _Oeuv_., xix. 421.]
+
+[Footnote 75: Diderot to Voltaire, 1749. _Oeuv_., xix. 421.]
+
+[Footnote 76: P. 294.]
+
+[Footnote 77: Lewes's _Hist. Philos_., ii. 342.]
+
+[Footnote 78: Rosenkranz, i. 102.]
+
+[Footnote 79: Tylor's _Researches into the early history of mankind_,
+chaps. ii. and iii.; Lubbock's _Origin of Civilization_, chap. ix.]
+
+[Footnote 80: Madame Dupre de Saint Maur, who had found favour in the
+eyes of the Count d'Argenson. D'Argenson, younger brother of the
+Marquis, who had been dismissed in 1747, was in power from 1743 to 1757.
+Notwithstanding his alleged share in Diderot's imprisonment, he was a
+tolerably steady protector of the philosophical party.]
+
+[Footnote 81: Barbier, iv. 337.]
+
+[Footnote 82: There is a picture of Berryer, under the name of Orgon in
+that very curious book, _L'Ecole de l'Homme_, ii. 73.]
+
+[Footnote 83: Pieces given in Diderot's Works, xx. 121-123.]
+
+[Footnote 84: Naigeon, p. 131.]
+
+[Footnote 85: Voltaire's _Corr_. July and Aug. 1749.]
+
+[Footnote 86: _Conf_., II. viii.]
+
+[Footnote 87: Michelet's _Louis XV_., p. 258.]
+
+[Footnote 88: See the present author's _Rousseau_, vol. i. p. 134 (Globe
+8vo ed.)]
+
+[Footnote 89: For the two petitions of the booksellers to D'Argenson
+praying for Diderot's liberty, see M. Assezat's preliminary notice.
+_Oeuv_., xiii. 112, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 90: Jourdain's _Recherches sur les traductions latines
+d'Aristote_, p. 325.]
+
+[Footnote 91: _Lit. of Europe_, pt. i. ch. ii. Sec. 39.]
+
+[Footnote 92: Whewell's _Hist. Induc. Sci._. xii. c. 7.]
+
+[Footnote 93: Fr. Roger Bacon; J.S. Brewer's Pref. pp 57, 63.]
+
+[Footnote 94: Leibnitii, Opera v. 184.]
+
+[Footnote 95: _Oeuv. de D'Alembert_, i. 63.]
+
+[Footnote 96: _Mem._ pour J.P.F. Luneau de Boisjermain, 4to, Paris,
+1771. See also Diderot's _Prospectus_, "La traduction entiere de
+Chambers nous a passe sous les yeux," etc.]
+
+[Footnote 97: Biog. Universelle, _s.v._]
+
+[Footnote 98: Michelet, _Louis XV._, 258. D'Aguesseau (1668-1751) has
+left one piece which ought to be extricated from the thirteen quartos of
+his works--his memoir of his father (_Oeuv._, xiii.) This is one of
+those records of solid and elevated character, which do more to refresh
+and invigorate the reader than a whole library of religious or ethical
+exhortations can do. It has the loftiness, the refined austerity, the
+touching impressiveness of Tacitus's _Agricola_ or Condorcet's _Turgot_,
+together with a certain grave sweetness that was almost peculiar to the
+Jansenist school of the seventeenth century.]
+
+[Footnote 99: A short estimate of D'Alembert's principal scientific
+pieces, by M. Bertram, is to be found in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_,
+for October 1865.]
+
+[Footnote 100: _Oeuv. de D'Alembert_, iv. 367.]
+
+[Footnote 101: _Oeuv. de J. Ph. Roland_, i. 230 (ed. 1800).]
+
+[Footnote 102: _Essai sur la Societe des Gens de Lettres et des Grands_,
+etc. _Oeuv_., iv. 372. "Write," he says, "as if you loved glory; in
+conduct, act as if it were indifferent to you." Compare, with reference
+to the passage in the text, Duclos's remark (_Consid. sur les Moeurs_,
+ch. xi.): "The man in power commands, but the intelligent govern,
+because in time they form public opinion, and that sooner or later
+subjugates every kind of despotism." Only partially true.]
+
+[Footnote 103: _Pensees Philos._, Sec. 26.]
+
+[Footnote 104: _Phil. Pos._, v. 520. _Polit. Pos._, iii. 584.]
+
+[Footnote 105: See Pref. to vol. iii.]
+
+[Footnote 106: For instance, see Pref. to vol. vi.]
+
+[Footnote 107: _Siecle de Louis XV_., ch. xliii.]
+
+[Footnote 108: Grimm, _Corr. Lit._, i. 273. Diderot, _Oeuv_., iv. 15.]
+
+[Footnote 109: _Avertissement_ to vol. vi.; also to vol. vii. Turgot's
+articles were Etymiologie, Existence, Expansibilite, Foires, Fondations.
+The text of these is wrongly inserted among Diderot's contributions to
+the Encyclopaedia, in the new edition of his Works, xv. 12.]
+
+[Footnote 110: Condorcet's _Vie de Turgot_.]
+
+[Footnote 111: Pref. to vol. iii. (1752), and to vol. vi. (1756).]
+
+[Footnote 112: Pref. to vol. ii.]
+
+[Footnote 113: Grimm, _Corr. Lit._, i. 130. Forbonnais's chief work is
+his _Becherches et Considerations sur les finances de la France_.]
+
+[Footnote 114: _Avert._ to vol. ii.]
+
+[Footnote 115: Nov. 10, 1760, xix. 24. Also, Oct. 7, 1761, xix. 35.]
+
+[Footnote 116: See also Preface to vol. iii.]
+
+[Footnote 117: _Avert._ to vol. vi., and _s. v. Fontange_. Grimm, i.
+451.]
+
+[Footnote 118: _Corresp. avec D'Alembert_ (_Oeuv._, lxxv.), Sept.
+1755, Feb. 1757, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 119: Dec. 22, 1757.]
+
+[Footnote 120: May 24, 1757.]
+
+[Footnote 121: Dec. 13, 1756; April 1756.]
+
+[Footnote 122: July 21, 1757.]
+
+[Footnote 123: Article _Encyclopedie_.]
+
+[Footnote 124: To Voltaire, Feb. 15, 1757.]
+
+[Footnote 125: Hettner's _Literaturgesch, des 18ten Jahrhunderts_, ii.
+277.]
+
+[Footnote 126: Art. _Encyclopedie_.]
+
+[Footnote 127: _Prospectus_.]
+
+[Footnote 128: Barbier, v. 151, 153.]
+
+[Footnote 129: Diderot to Voland, _Oeuv_., xviii. 361. Carlyle's
+_Frederick,_ bk. xviii. ch. xi.]
+
+[Footnote 130: _Apologie de l' Abbe de Prades. Oeuv.,_ i. 482.]
+
+[Footnote 131: See Jobez, i. 358.]
+
+[Footnote 132: xix. 425.]
+
+[Footnote 133: Barbier, v. 160.]
+
+[Footnote 134: _Ib_. v. 169.]
+
+[Footnote 135: Grimm, _Corr. Lit_., i. 81. Barbier, _v_. 170.]
+
+[Footnote 136: _Avert._, to vol. iii. _Oeuv. de D'Alembert_, iv. 410.]
+
+[Footnote 137: Barbier, v. 170. Grimm, _Corr. Lit._, i. 201; _Ib._ ii.
+197.]
+
+[Footnote 138: Hardy, quoted by Aubertin, 407, 408.]
+
+[Footnote 139: _Corr. Lit._, ii. 271.]
+
+[Footnote 140: To D'Alembert, Dec. 29, 1757; Jan. 1758.]
+
+[Footnote 141: For a short account of Helvetius's book, see a later
+chapter.]
+
+[Footnote 142: _Corr. Lit._, ii. 292, 293.]
+
+[Footnote 143: Barbier, vii. 125-142.]
+
+[Footnote 144: Lacretelle's _France pendant le 18ieme Siecle_, iii. 89.]
+
+[Footnote 145: Jobez, ii. 464, 538.]
+
+[Footnote 146: See _Rousseau_, vol. i. chaps, vii. and ix. (Globe 8vo
+ed.)]
+
+[Footnote 147: _Louis XV. et Louis XVI._, p. 50.]
+
+[Footnote 148: Jan. 11, 1758. Jan. 20, 1758. Diderot to Mdlle. Voland,
+Oct. 11, 1759. See the following chapter.]
+
+[Footnote 149: Voltaire to D'Alembert, Jan. to May 1758. Voltaire to
+Diderot, Jan. 1758.]
+
+[Footnote 150: Diderot to Voltaire, Feb. 19, 1758, xix. 452.]
+
+[Footnote 151: To Voland, _Oeuv._, xix. 146.]
+
+[Footnote 152: _Corr. Lit._, vii. 146.]
+
+[Footnote 153: _Corr. Lit._, vii. 146.]
+
+[Footnote 154: _Oeuv. de Voltaire_. Published sometimes among
+_Faceties_, sometimes among _Melanges_.]
+
+[Footnote 155: See _Oeuv. Choisies de Jean Reynaud_, reprinted in
+1866. The article on _Encyclopedie_ (vol. i.) is an interesting attempt
+to vindicate Cartesian principles of classification.]
+
+[Footnote 156: See fly-leaf of vol. xxviii.]
+
+[Footnote 157: _Mem._, ii. 115. Grimm, vii. 145.]
+
+[Footnote 158: De Maistre says that the reputation of Bacon does not
+really go farther back than the Encyclopaedia, and that no true
+discoverer either knew him or leaned on him for support. (_Examen de la
+Phil. de Bacon_, ii. 110.) Diderot says: "I think I have taught my
+fellow-citizens to esteem and read Bacon; people have turned over the
+pages of this profound author more since the last five or six years than
+has ever been the case before" (xiv. 494). In Professor Fowler's careful
+and elaborate edition of the Novum Organum (_Introduct._, p. 104), he
+disputes the statement of Montuola and others, that the celebrity of
+Bacon dates from the Encyclopaedia. All turns upon what we mean by
+celebrity. What the Encyclopaedists certainly did was to raise Bacon, for
+a time, to the popular throne from which Voltaire's Newtonianism had
+pushed Descartes. Mr. Fowler traces a chain of Baconian tradition, no
+doubt, but he perhaps surrenders nearly as much as is claimed when he
+admits that "the patronage of Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists did much
+to extend the study of Bacon's writings, besides producing a
+considerable controversy as to his true meaning on many questions of
+philosophy and theology."]
+
+[Footnote 159: See above, p. 62, _note_.]
+
+[Footnote 160: D'Alembert was not afraid to contend against the great
+captain of the age, that the military spirit of Lewis XIV. had been a
+great curse to Europe. He showed a true appreciation of Frederick's
+character and conception of his duties as a ruler, in believing that the
+King of Prussia would rather have had a hundred thousand labourers more,
+and as many soldiers fewer, if his situation had allowed it. _Corresp.
+avec le roi de Prusse_, _Oeuv._, v. 305.]
+
+[Footnote 161: See Essay on Turgot in my _Critical Miscellanies_,
+_Second Series_.]
+
+[Footnote 162: Such, as that their feudal rights should be confirmed;
+that none but nobles should carry arms, or be eligible for the army;
+that _lettres-de-cachet_ should continue; that the press should not be
+free; that the wine trade should not be free internally or for export;
+that breaking up wastes and enclosing commons should be prohibited; that
+the old arrangement of the militia should remain.--Arthur Young's
+_France_, ch. xxi. p. 607.]
+
+[Footnote 163: _Ib._ ch. xxi.]
+
+[Footnote 164: _Critical Miscellanies_, _Second Series_, p. 202.]
+
+[Footnote 165: _Travels in France_, p. 600.]
+
+[Footnote 166: _Travels in France_, i. 63.]
+
+[Footnote 167: Rosenkranz, i. 219.]
+
+[Footnote 168: _Avert_. to vol. iii]
+
+[Footnote 169: Diderot, _Oeuv._, iv. 24.]
+
+[Footnote 170: Diderot's _Leben_, i. 157.]
+
+[Footnote 171: _Oeuv._, xx. 132.]
+
+[Footnote 172: The writer was one Romilly, who had been elected a
+minister of one of the French Protestant churches in London. See
+_Memoirs of Sir Samuel Romilly_, vol. i.]
+
+[Footnote 173: I have no space to quote an interesting page in this
+article on the characteristics and the varying destinies of genius. "We
+must rank in this class Pindar, AEschylus, Moses, Jesus Christ, Mahomet,
+Shakespeare, Roger Bacon, and Paracelsus." xvii. 265-267.]
+
+[Footnote 174: The same idea is found still more ardently expressed in
+one of his letters to Mdlle. de Voland (Oct. 15, 1759, xviii. 408),
+where he defends the eagerness of those who have loved one another
+during life, to be placed side by side after death.]
+
+[Footnote 175: xiv. 32.]
+
+[Footnote 176: _S.v._ Sarrasins, xvii. 82. See also xviii. 429, for
+Diderot's admiration of Sadi.]
+
+[Footnote 177: _S.v. Pyrrhonienne_.]
+
+[Footnote 178: _E.g._ in the article on _Plaisir_, xvi. p. 298.]
+
+[Footnote 179: To Damilaville, 1766, xix. 477.]
+
+[Footnote 180: xx. 34.]
+
+[Footnote 181: xvi. 280.]
+
+[Footnote 182: See also article _Independance_.]
+
+[Footnote 183: iv. 93.]
+
+[Footnote 184: The reader will find abundant information and criticism
+upon the Wolffian Philosophy in Professor Edward Caird's _Critical
+Account of the Philosophy of Kant_, recently published at Glasgow.]
+
+[Footnote 185: xvi. 491, 492.]
+
+[Footnote 186: There are casual criticisms on Spinosa in the articles on
+_Identity_ and _Liberty_.]
+
+[Footnote 187: xv. 501.]
+
+[Footnote 188: xix. 435, 436.]
+
+[Footnote 189: See below, vol. ii.]
+
+[Footnote 190: S.v. _Luxe_, xvi. 23.]
+
+[Footnote 191: As an illustration how much these ideas were in the air,
+the reader may refer to a passage in Sedaine's popular comedy, _The
+Philosopher without knowing it_ (1765), Act II. sc. 4. Vanderk, among
+other things, says of the merchant: "Ce n'est pas un temple, ce n'est
+pas une seule nation qu'il sert; il les sert toutes, et en est servi:
+c'est l'homme de l'univers. Quelques particuliers audacieux font armer
+les rois, la guerre s'allume, tout s'embrase, l'Europe est divisee: mais
+ce negociant anglais, hollandais, russe ou chinois, n'en est pas moins
+l'ami de mon coeur: nous sommes sur la superficie de la terre autant de
+fils de soie qui lient ensemble les nations, et les ramenent a la paix
+par la necessite du commerce; voila, mon fils, ce que c'est qu'un
+honnete negociant."]
+
+[Footnote 192: The younger sister of Diderot's Sophie.]
+
+[Footnote 193: xviii. 454.]
+
+[Footnote 194: See below, the chapter on _Rameau's Nephew_.]
+
+[Footnote 195: Nov. 10, 1770; xix. 22.]
+
+[Footnote 196: See, for instance, xix. 81, 91, 129, 133, 145,
+etc.--passages which Mr. Carlyle and Rosenkranz have either overlooked,
+or else, without any good reason, disbelieved.]
+
+[Footnote 197: xviii. 293.]
+
+[Footnote 198: xix. 46.]
+
+[Footnote 199: xix. 84. See also 326.]
+
+[Footnote 200: xix. 137, 341, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 201: xviii. 535.]
+
+[Footnote 202: xviii. 507, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 203: xviii. 526, 531.]
+
+[Footnote 204: Nov. 2, 1759; xviii. 431.]
+
+[Footnote 205: xix. 82.]
+
+[Footnote 206: xix. 139.]
+
+[Footnote 207: xix. 107.]
+
+[Footnote 208: xix. 181.]
+
+[Footnote 209: xix. 81.]
+
+[Footnote 210: xix. 149.]
+
+[Footnote 211: xix. 90.]
+
+[Footnote 212: xix. 163, 164.]
+
+[Footnote 213: Sept. 20, 1765; xix. 179-187.]
+
+[Footnote 214: xviii. 476, 478.]
+
+[Footnote 215: xviii. 479. Comte writes more seriously somewhat in the
+same sense: "For thirty centuries the priestly castes of China, and
+still more of India, have been watching our Western transition; to them
+it must appear mere agitation, as puerile as it is tempestuous, with
+nothing to harmonise its different phases but their common inroad upon
+unity." _Positive Polity_, iv. 11 (English Translation)]
+
+[Footnote 216: xix. 233.]
+
+[Footnote 217: Voltaire's Satire on the Economists.]
+
+[Footnote 218: Oct. 8, 1768; xix. 832.]
+
+[Footnote 219: xviii. 509.]
+
+[Footnote 220: xviii. 513.]
+
+[Footnote 221: xviii. 511-513.]
+
+[Footnote 222: xix. 244.]
+
+[Footnote 223: xviii. 459.]
+
+[Footnote 224: xix. 259.]
+
+[Footnote 225: _Lettres de Mdlle. de Lespinasse_, viii. p. 20. (Ed.
+Asse, 1876.)]
+
+[Footnote 226: Aug. 1, 1769; xix. 365.]
+
+[Footnote 227: (1765-69) xix. 381-412. Also p. 318.]
+
+[Footnote 228: June 1756; xix. 433-436.]
+
+[Footnote 229: Aug. 1762; xix. 112.]
+
+[Footnote 230: In _Rousseau_, vol. i. ch. vii. (Globe 8vo, ed.)]
+
+[Footnote 231: Dec. 1757; xix. 446.]
+
+[Footnote 232: xix. 449.]
+
+[Footnote 233: Dec. 20, 1765; xix. 210.]
+
+[Footnote 234: See _Rousseau_, vol. i. ch. vii. (Globe 8vo. ed.)]
+
+[Footnote 235: Oct. 9, 1759; xviii. 397.]
+
+[Footnote 236: Nov. 6, 1760; xix. 17.]
+
+[Footnote 237: Sept. 17, 1761; xix. 47.]
+
+[Footnote 238: Sept. 17, 1769; xix. 320.]
+
+[Footnote 239: _Lettres sur le Commerce de la Librairie_, xviii. 47.]
+
+[Footnote 240: See _Rousseau_, vol. ii. ch. i. (Globe 8vo. ed.)]
+
+[Footnote 241: Diderot's _Lettre sur le Commerce de la Librairie_
+(1767). _Oeuv._, xviii.]
+
+[Footnote 242: Those who are interested in the history of authorship may
+care to know the end of the matter. Copyright is no modern practice, and
+the perpetual right of authors, or persons to whom they had ceded it,
+was recognised in France through the whole of the seventeenth century
+and three-quarters of the eighteenth. The perpetuity of the right had
+produced literary properties of considerable value; for example,
+Boudot's Dictionary was sold by his executors for 24,000 livres;
+Prevot's Manual Lexicon and two Dictionaries for 115,000 livres. But in
+1777--ten years after Diderot's plea--the Council decreed that copyright
+was a privilege and an exercise of the royal grace. The motives for this
+reduction of an author's right from a transferable property to a
+terminable privilege seem to have been, first, the general mania of the
+time for drawing up the threads of national life into the hands of the
+administration, and second, the hope of making money by a tariff of
+permissions. The Constituent Assembly dealt with the subject with no
+intelligence nor care, but the Convention passed a law recognising in
+the author an exclusive right for his life, and giving a property for
+ten years after his death to heirs or _cessionaires_. The whole history
+is elaborately set forth in the collection of documents entitled _La
+Propriete litteraire au 18ieme siecle_. (Hachette, 1859.)]
+
+[Footnote 243: Oct. 11, 1759; xviii. 401.]
+
+[Footnote 244: xix. 319, 320.]
+
+[Footnote 245: _Miscellaneous Works_, p. 73.]
+
+[Footnote 246: Walpole to Selwyn. 1765. Jesse's _Selwyn_, ii. 9. See
+also Walpole to Mann, iv. 283.]
+
+[Footnote 247: D'Epinay, ii. 4, 138, 153, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 248: See Comte's _Positive Polity_, vol. iii.]
+
+[Footnote 249: "_That virtue of originality that men so strain after is
+not newness, as they vainly think (there is nothing new), it is only
+genuineness._"--Ruskin.]
+
+[Footnote 250: Lessing: 1729-81. Diderot: 1713-84. As De Quincey puts
+it, Lessing may be said to have begun his career precisely in the middle
+of the last century.]
+
+[Footnote 251: _Hamburg. Dramaturgie_, Sec. 85. Werke, vi. 381. (Ed.
+1873.)]
+
+[Footnote 252: Diderot's _Leben_, i. 274, 277.]
+
+[Footnote 253: _Corr. Lit._, ii. 103.]
+
+[Footnote 254: See Grimm's account of the performance, _Corr. Lit._,
+vii. 313.]
+
+[Footnote 255: Act IV. sc. 3.]
+
+[Footnote 256: Act V. sc. 3.]
+
+[Footnote 257: _De la Poesie Dramatique_, ch. xxi.]
+
+[Footnote 258: vii. 107.]
+
+[Footnote 259: Nov. 28, 1760; xix. 457.]
+
+[Footnote 260: _Lettre sur les Sourds et les Muets_, i. 359.]
+
+[Footnote 261: _Correspond. du Roi Stanislas-Auguste et de Mdme.
+Geoffrin, _p. 466.]
+
+[Footnote 262: Aug. 1769; xix. 314-323.]
+
+[Footnote 263: Quoted in Mr. Sime's excellent _Life of Lessing_ (Truebner
+and Co., 1877), p. 230.]
+
+[Footnote 264: _De la Poesie Dramatique_, Sec. 2, vii. 313.]
+
+[Footnote 265: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iv. 177 (ed. 1837).]
+
+[Footnote 266: xix. 474.]
+
+[Footnote 267: _Pere de Famille_, Act II. sc. 2, p. 211.]
+
+[Footnote 268: _Paradoxe sur le Comedien_, p. 383.]
+
+[Footnote 269: _Journals_, ii. 331. Also vi. 248; vii. 9.]
+
+[Footnote 270: _Reflexions sur Terence_, v. 228-238. In another place
+(_De la Poesie Dram._, 370) he says: "Nous avons des comedies. Les
+Anglais n'ont que des satires, a la verite pleines de force et de
+gaiete, mais sans moeurs et sans gout. Les Italiens en sont reduits au
+drame burlesque."]
+
+[Footnote 271: vii. 95.]
+
+[Footnote 272: _Lettre sur les Sourds et les Muets_, i. 355.]
+
+[Footnote 273: _Paradoxe_, viii. 384. The criticism on the detestable
+rendering of _Hamlet_ by Ducis (viii. 471) makes one doubt whether
+Diderot knew much about Shakespeare.]
+
+[Footnote 274: Letter to Mdlle. Jodin, xix. 387.]
+
+[Footnote 275: Johnson one day said to John Kemble: "Are you, sir, one
+of those enthusiasts who believe yourself transformed into the very
+character you represent?" Kemble answered that he had never felt so
+strong a persuasion himself. _Boswell_, ch. 77.]
+
+[Footnote 276: Lessing makes this a starting-point of his criticism of
+the art of acting, though he uses it less absolutely than Diderot would
+do. _Hamburg. Dramaturgie_, Sec. 3, vol. vi. 19.]
+
+[Footnote 277: In Lichtenberg's _Briefe aus England_ (1776) there is a
+criticism of the most admirably intelligent kind on Garrick. Lord Lytton
+gave an account of it to English readers in the _Fortnightly Review_
+(February 1871). The following passage confirms what Diderot says above:
+
+"You have doubtless heard much of his extraordinary power of change of
+face. Here is one example of it. When he played the part of Sir John
+Brute, I was close to the stage, and could observe him narrowly. He
+entered with the corners of his mouth so turned down, as to give to his
+whole countenance the expression of habitual sottishness and debauchery.
+And this artificial form of the mouth he retained, unaltered, from the
+beginning to the end of the play, with the exception only that, as the
+play went on, the lips gaped and hung more and more in proportion to the
+gradually increasing drunkenness of the character represented. This
+made-up face was not produced by stage-paint, but solely by muscular
+contraction; and it must be so identified by Garrick with his idea of
+Sir John Brute as to be spontaneously assumed by him whenever he plays
+that part; otherwise, his retention of such a mask, without even once
+dropping it either from fatigue or surprise, even in the most boisterous
+action of his part, would be quite inexplicable."]
+
+[Footnote 278: viii. 382.]
+
+[Footnote 279: viii. 373, 376, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 280: As Hamlet to his players: "Nor do not saw the air too
+much with your hand thus; but use all gently; for in the very torrent,
+tempest, and (as I may say) the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire
+and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness."]
+
+[Footnote 281: To Jodin, xix, 382. "Point de hoquets, point de cris, de
+la dignite vraie, un jeu ferme, sense, raisonne, juste, male; la plus
+grande sobriete de gestes. C'est de la contenance, c'est du maintien,
+qu'il faut declamer les trois quarts du temps."--P. 390.]
+
+[Footnote 282: P. 395.]
+
+[Footnote 283: _Bijoux Indiscrets_, ch. xxxviii.]
+
+[Footnote 284: vii. 121. Lessing makes a powerful addition to this.
+_Hamburg. Dram._ vi. 261.]
+
+[Footnote 285: _Poesie Dramatique_, Sec.Sec. 20, 21.]
+
+[Footnote 286: _Sienne Entretien_, vii. 138.]
+
+[Footnote 287: _Poes. Dram._., Sec. 2. The Poetics of the Genre Serieux are
+to be found, vii. 137, 138.]
+
+[Footnote 288: i. 316.]
+
+[Footnote 289: _Hints for an Essay on the Drama_, p. 155.]
+
+[Footnote 290: _Hist. du Romantisme_, p. 93.]
+
+[Footnote 291: _Der Gegensatz des Classischen und des Romantischen,
+etc._ By Conrad Hermann, p. 66.]
+
+[Footnote 292: Schopenhauer, _Ethik_, 199]
+
+[Footnote 293: _Oeuv._, iv. 29.]
+
+[Footnote 294: _Werke_, xxv. 291.]
+
+[Footnote 295: The original of the text, published in the Assezat
+edition of Diderot's works, was a manuscript found, with other waifs and
+strays of the eighteenth century, in a chest that had belonged to
+Messrs. Wuertel and Treutz, the publishers at Strasburg. Its authenticity
+is corroborated by the fact that in the places where Goethe has marked
+an omission, we find stories or expressions from which we understand
+only too well why Goethe forbore to reproduce them.]
+
+[Footnote 296: v. 339.]
+
+[Footnote 297: Lucian, [Greek: Peri Parasitou], and [Greek: Peri ton epi
+mistho sunonton.]]
+
+[Footnote 298: Grimm, ix. 349.]
+
+[Footnote 299: _Anmerkungen, Rameau's Neffe; Werke_, xxv. 268.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1
+of 2), by John Morley
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2)
+by John Morley
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2)
+
+Author: John Morley
+
+Release Date: February 18, 2005 [EBook #15098]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DIDEROT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Paul Murray, LN Yaddanapudi, Leonard Johnson and the PG
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+
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+</pre>
+
+ <h1>DIDEROT AND THE
+ ENCYCLOPÆDISTS</h1>
+
+ <h2>BY JOHN MORLEY</h2>
+
+ <h3>VOL. I.</h3>
+
+ <h4>LONDON<br />
+ MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED<br />
+ NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br />
+ 1905</h4>
+ <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+ <h4><i>First
+ published elsewhere<br />
+ New Edition 1886. Reprinted 1891, 1897, 1905</i></h4>
+ <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+ <h2>PREFACE.</h2>
+
+ <p>The present work closes a series of studies on the literary
+ preparation for the French Revolution. It differs from the companion
+ volumes on Voltaire and Rousseau, in being much more fully
+ descriptive. In the case of those two famous writers, every educated
+ reader knows more or less of their performances. Of Diderot and his
+ circle, such knowledge cannot be taken for granted, and I have
+ therefore thought it best to occupy a considerable space, which I hope
+ that those who do me the honour to read these pages will not find
+ excessive, with what is little more than transcript or analysis. Such
+ a method will at least enable the reader to see what those ideas
+ really were, which the social and economic condition of France on the
+ eve of the convulsion made so welcome to men. The shortcomings of the
+ encyclopædic group are obvious enough. They have lately been
+ emphasised in the ingenious and one-sided exaggerations of that
+ brilliant man of letters, Mr. Taine. The social significance and the
+ positive quality of much of their writing is more easily missed, and
+ this side of their work it has been one of my principal objects, alike
+ in the case of Voltaire, of Rousseau, and of Diderot, to bring into
+ the prominence that it deserves in the history of opinion.</p>
+
+ <p>The edition of Diderot's works to which the references are made, is
+ that in twenty volumes by the late Mr. Assézat and Mr. Maurice
+ Tourneux. The only other serious book on Diderot with which I am
+ acquainted is Rosenkranz's valuable <i>Diderot's Leben</i>, published
+ in 1866, and abounding in full and patient knowledge. Of the numerous
+ criticisms on Diderot by Raumer, Arndt, Hettner, Damiron, Bersot, and
+ above all by Mr. Carlyle, I need not make more particular mention.</p>
+
+ <p><i>May, 1878.</i></p>
+
+ <p>NOTE.</p>
+
+ <div class="blockquot">
+  <p>Since the following pages were printed, an American correspondent
+  writes to me with reference to the dialogue between Franklin and
+  Raynal, mentioned on page 218, Vol. II.:—"I have now before me Volume
+  IV. of the <i>American Law Journal</i>, printed at Philadelphia in
+  the year 1813, and at page 458 find in full, 'The Speech of Miss
+  Polly Baker, delivered before a court of judicature in
+  <i>Connecticut</i>, where she was prosecuted.'" Raynal, therefore,
+  would have been right if instead of Massachusetts he had said
+  Connecticut; and either Franklin told an untruth, or else Silas
+  Deane.</p>
+
+  <p><i>September, 1878.</i></p>
+ </div>
+ <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+ <h2>CONTENTS OF VOL. I.</h2>
+
+ <p><a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.</a></p>
+
+ <p>PRELIMINARY.</p>
+
+ <p>The Church in the middle of the century<br />
+ New phase in the revolt<br />
+ The Encyclopædia, its symbol<br />
+ End of the reaction against the Encyclopædia<br />
+ Diderot's position in the movement<br /></p>
+
+ <p><a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.</a></p>
+
+ <p>YOUTH.</p>
+
+ <p>Birth and birthplace (1713)<br />
+ His family<br />
+ Men of letters in Paris<br />
+ Diderot joins their company<br />
+ His life in Paris: his friendly character<br />
+ Stories of his good-nature<br />
+ His tolerance for social reprobates<br />
+ His literary struggles<br />
+ Marriage (1743)<br /></p>
+
+ <p><a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.</a></p>
+
+ <p>EARLY WRITINGS.</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot's mismanagement of his own talents<br />
+ Apart from this, a great talker rather than a great writer<br />
+ A man of the Socratic type<br />
+ Hack-work for the booksellers<br />
+ The Philosophical Thoughts (1746)<br />
+ Shaftesbury's influence<br />
+ Scope of the Philosophical Thoughts<br />
+ On the Sufficiency of Natural Religion (1747)<br />
+ Explanation of the attraction of Natural Religion<br />
+ Police supervision over men of letters<br />
+ Two pictures of the literary hack<br />
+ Seizure of the Sceptic's Walk (1747)<br />
+ Its drift<br />
+ A volume of stories (1748)<br />
+ Diderot's view of the fate and character of women<br /></p>
+
+ <p><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.</a></p>
+
+ <p>THE NEW PHILOSOPHY.</p>
+
+ <p>Voltaire's account of Cheselden's operation<br />
+ Diderot publishes the Letter on the Blind (1749)<br />
+ Its significance<br />
+ Condillac and Diderot<br />
+ Account of the Letter on the Blind<br />
+ The pith of it, an application of Relativity to the conception<br />
+ <span style="margin-left: 2em;">of God</span><br />
+ Saunderson of Cambridge<br />
+ Argument assigned to him<br />
+ Curious anticipation of a famous modern hypothesis<br />
+ Voltaire's criticism<br />
+ Effect of Diderot's philosophic position on the system<br />
+ <span style="margin-left: 2em;">of the Church</span><br />
+ Not merely a dispute in metaphysics<br />
+ Illustration of Diderot's practical originality<br />
+ Points of literary interest<br />
+ The Letter on Deaf Mutes (1751)<br />
+ Condillac's Statue<br />
+ Diderot imprisoned at Vincennes (1749)<br />
+ Rousseau's visit to him<br />
+ Breach with Madame de Puisieux<br />
+ Diderot released from captivity<br /></p>
+
+ <p><a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.</a></p>
+
+ <p>THE ENCYCLOPÆDIA.</p>
+
+ <p>(1) ITS HISTORY.</p>
+
+ <p>Previous examples of the Encyclopædic idea<br />
+ True parentage of Diderot's Encyclopædia<br />
+ Origin of the undertaking<br />
+ Co-operation of D'Alembert: his history and character<br />
+ Diderot and D'Alembert on the function of literature<br />
+ Presiding characteristic of the Encyclopædia<br />
+ Its more eminent contributors<br />
+ The unsought volunteer<br />
+ Voltaire's share in it<br />
+ Its compliance with reigning prejudice<br />
+ Its aim, not literature but life<br />
+ Publication of first and second volumes (1751-52)<br />
+ Affair of De Prades<br />
+ Diderot's vindication of him (1752)<br />
+ Marks rupture between the Philosophers and the Jansenists<br />
+ Royal decree suppressing first two volumes (1752)<br />
+ Failure of the Jesuits to carry on the work<br />
+ Four more volumes published<br />
+ The seventh volume (1757)<br />
+ Arouses violent hostility<br />
+ The storm made fiercer by Helvétius's <i>L'Esprit</i><br />
+ Proceedings against the Encyclopædia<br />
+ Their significance<br />
+ They also mark singular reaction within the school of<br />
+ <span style="margin-left: 2em;">Illumination</span><br />
+ Retirement of D'Alembert<br />
+ Diderot continues the work alone for seven years<br />
+ His harassing mortifications<br />
+ The Encyclopædia at Versailles<br />
+ Reproduction and imitations<br />
+ Diderot's payment<br /></p>
+
+ <p>(2) GENERAL CONTENTS.</p>
+
+ <p>Transformation of a speculative into a social attack<br />
+ Circumstances of practical opportuneness<br />
+ Broad features of Encyclopædic revolution<br />
+ Positive spirit of the Encyclopædia<br />
+ Why we call it the organ of a political work<br />
+ Articles on Agriculture<br />
+ On the <i>Gabelle</i> and the <i>Taille</i><br />
+ On Privilege<br />
+ On the <i>Corveée</i><br />
+ On the Militia<br />
+ On Endowments, Fairs, and Industrial Guilds<br />
+ On Game and the Chase<br />
+ Enthusiasm for the details of industry<br />
+ Meaning of the importance assigned to industry and science<br />
+ Intellectual side of the change<br />
+ Attitude of the Encyclopædia to religion<br />
+ Diderot's intention under this head<br />
+ How far the scheme fulfilled his intention<br />
+ The Preliminary Discourse<br />
+ Recognition of the value of discussion<br />
+ And of toleration<br /></p>
+
+ <p>(3) DIDEROT'S CONTRIBUTIONS.</p>
+
+ <p>Their immense confusion<br />
+ Constant insinuation of sound doctrines<br />
+ And of practical suggestions<br />
+ Diderot not always above literary trifling<br />
+ No taste for barren erudition<br />
+ On Montaigne and Bayle<br />
+ Occasional bursts of moralising<br />
+ Varying attitude as to theology<br />
+ The practical arts<br />
+ Second-hand sources<br />
+ Inconsistencies<br />
+ Treatment of metaphysics<br />
+ On Spinosa<br />
+ On Leibnitz<br />
+ On Liberty<br />
+ Astonishing self-contradiction<br />
+ Political articles<br />
+ On the mechanism of government<br />
+ Anticipation of Cobdenic ideas<br />
+ Conclusion<br /></p>
+
+ <p><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.</a></p>
+
+ <p>SOCIAL LIFE (1759-1770).</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot's relations with Madame Voland<br />
+ His letters to her<br />
+ His Regrets on My Old Dressing-gown<br />
+ Domestic discomfort<br />
+ His indomitable industry<br />
+ Life at Grandval<br />
+ Meditations on human existence<br />
+ Interest in the casuistry of human feeling<br />
+ Various sayings<br />
+ A point in rhetoric<br />
+ Holbach's impressions of England<br />
+ Two cases of conscience<br />
+ A story of human wickedness<br />
+ Method and Genius: an Apologue<br />
+ Conversation<br />
+ Annihilation<br />
+ Characteristic of the century<br />
+ Diderot's inexhaustible friendliness<br />
+ The Abbé Monnier<br />
+ Mademoiselle Jodin<br />
+ Landois<br />
+ Rousseau<br />
+ Grimm<br />
+ Diderot's money affairs<br />
+ Succour rendered by Catherine of Russia<br />
+ French booksellers in the eighteenth century<br />
+ Dialogue between Diderot and D'Alembert<br />
+ English opinion on Diderot's circle<br /></p>
+
+ <p><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII.</a></p>
+
+ <p>THE STAGE.</p>
+
+ <p>In what sense Diderot the greatest genius of the century<br />
+ Mark of his theory of the drama<br />
+ Diderot's influence on Lessing<br />
+ His play, <i>The Natural Son</i> (1757)<br />
+ Its quality illustrated<br />
+ His sense of the importance of pantomime<br />
+ The dialogues appended to <i>The Natural Son</i><br />
+ His second play, <i>The Father of the Family</i> (1758)<br />
+ One radical error of his dramatic doctrine<br />
+ Modest opinion of his own experiments<br />
+ His admiration for Terence<br />
+ Diderot translates Moore's <i>Gamester</i><br />
+ On Shakespeare<br />
+ The Paradox on the Player<br />
+ Account of Garrick<br />
+ On the truth of the stage<br />
+ His condemnation of the French classic stage<br />
+ The foundations of dramatic art<br />
+ Diderot claims to have created a new kind of drama<br />
+ No Diderotian school<br />
+ Why the Encyclopædists could not replace the classic<br />
+ <span style="margin-left: 2em;">drama</span><br />
+ The great drama of the eighteenth century<br /></p>
+
+ <p><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.</a></p>
+
+ <p>"RAMEAU'S NEPHEW."</p>
+
+ <p>The mood that inspired this composition<br />
+ History of the text<br />
+ Various accounts of the design of <i>Rameau's Nephew</i><br />
+ Juvenal's Parasite<br />
+ Lucian<br />
+ Diderot's picture of his original<br />
+ Not without imaginative strokes<br />
+ More than a literary diversion<br />
+ Sarcasms on Palissot<br />
+ The musical controversy<br /></p>
+ <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+ <h2>DIDEROT.<br />
+ <a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.<br />
+ PRELIMINARY.</h2>
+
+ <p>There was a moment in the last century when the Gallican church
+ hoped for a return of internal union and prosperity. This brief era of
+ hope coincided almost exactly with the middle of the century. Voltaire
+ was in exile at Berlin. The author of the Persian Letters and the
+ Spirit of Laws was old and near his end. Rousseau was copying music in
+ a garret. The Encyclopædia was looked for, but only as a literary
+ project of some associated booksellers. The Jansenists, who had been
+ so many in number and so firm in spirit five-and-twenty years earlier,
+ had now sunk to a small minority of the French clergy. The great
+ ecclesiastical body at length offered an unbroken front to its rivals,
+ the great judicial bodies. A patriotic minister was indeed audacious
+ enough to propose a tax upon ecclesiastical property, but the Church
+ fought the battle and won. Troops had just been despatched to hunt and
+ scatter the Protestants of the desert, and bigots exulted in the
+ thought of pastors swinging on gibbets, and heretical congregations
+ fleeing for their lives before the fire of orthodox musketry. The
+ house of Austria had been forced to suffer spoliation at the hands of
+ the infidel Frederick, but all the world was well aware that the
+ haughty and devout Empress-Queen would seize a speedy opportunity of
+ taking a crushing vengeance; France would this time be on the side of
+ righteousness and truth. For the moment a churchman might be pardoned
+ if he thought that superstition, ignorance, abusive privilege, and
+ cruelty were on the eve of the smoothest and most triumphant days that
+ they had known since the Reformation.</p>
+
+ <p>We now know how illusory this sanguine anticipation was destined to
+ prove, and how promptly. In little more than forty years after the
+ triumphant enforcement of the odious system of confessional
+ certificates, then the crowning event of ecclesiastical supremacy,
+ Paris saw the Feast of the Supreme Being, and the adoration of the
+ Goddess of Reason. The Church had scarcely begun to dream before she
+ was rudely and peremptorily awakened. She found herself confronted by
+ the most energetic, hardy, and successful assailants whom the spirit
+ of progress ever inspired. Compared with the new attack, Jansenism was
+ no more than a trifling episode in a family quarrel. Thomists and
+ Molinists became as good as confederates, and Quietism barely seemed a
+ heresy. In every age, even in the very depth of the times of faith,
+ there had arisen disturbers of the intellectual peace. Almost each
+ century after the resettlement of Europe by Charlemagne had procured
+ some individual, or some little group, who had ventured to question
+ this or that article of the ecclesiastical creed, to whom broken
+ glimpses of new truth had come, and who had borne witness against the
+ error or inconsistency or inadequateness of old ways of thinking. The
+ questions which presented themselves to the acuter minds of a hundred
+ years ago, were present to the acuter minds who lived hundreds of
+ years before that. The more deeply we penetrate into the history of
+ opinion, the more strongly are we tempted to believe that in the great
+ matters of speculation no question is altogether new, and hardly any
+ answer is altogether new. But the Church had known how to deal with
+ intellectual insurgents, from Abelard in the twelfth century down to
+ Giordano Bruno and Vanini in the seventeenth. They were isolated; they
+ were for the most part submissive; and if they were not, the arm of
+ the Church was very long and her grasp mortal. And all these
+ meritorious precursors were made weak by one cardinal defect, for
+ which no gifts of intellectual acuteness could compensate. They had
+ the scientific idea, but they lacked the social idea. They could have
+ set opinion right about the efficacy of the syllogism, and the virtue
+ of entities and quiddities. They could have taught Europe earlier than
+ the Church allowed it to learn that the sun does not go round the
+ earth, and that it is the earth which goes round the sun. But they
+ were wholly unfitted to deal with the prodigious difficulties of moral
+ and social direction. This function, so immeasurably more important
+ than the mere discovery of any number of physical relations, it was
+ the glory of the Church to have discharged for some centuries with as
+ much success as the conditions permitted. We are told indeed by
+ writers ignorant alike of human history and human nature, that only
+ physical science can improve the social condition of man. The common
+ sense of the world always rejects this gross fallacy. The acquiescence
+ for so many centuries in the power of the great directing organisation
+ of Western Europe, notwithstanding its intellectual inadequateness,
+ was the decisive expression of that rejection.</p>
+
+ <p>After the middle of the last century the insurrection against the
+ pretensions of the Church and against the doctrines of Christianity
+ was marked in one of its most important phases by a new and most
+ significant feature. In this phase it was animated at once by the
+ scientific idea and by the social idea. It was an advance both in
+ knowledge and in moral motive. It rested on a conception which was
+ crude and imperfect enough, but which was still almost, like the great
+ ecclesiastical conception itself, a conception of life as a whole.
+ Morality, positive law, social order, economics, the nature and limits
+ of human knowledge, the constitution of the physical universe, had one
+ by one disengaged themselves from theological explanations. The final
+ philosophical movement of the century in France, which was represented
+ by Diderot, now tended to a new social synthesis resting on a purely
+ positive basis. If this movement had only added to its other contents
+ the historic idea, its destination would have been effectually
+ reached. As it was, its leaders surveyed the entire field with as much
+ accuracy and with as wide a range as their instruments allowed, and
+ they scattered over the world a set of ideas which at once entered
+ into energetic rivalry with the ancient scheme of authority. The great
+ symbol of this new comprehensiveness in the insurrection was the
+ Encyclopædia.</p>
+
+ <p>The Encyclopædia was virtually a protest against the old
+ organisation, no less than against the old doctrine. Broadly stated,
+ the great central moral of it all was this: that human nature is good,
+ that the world is capable of being made a desirable abiding-place, and
+ that the evil of the world is the fruit of bad education and bad
+ institutions. This cheerful doctrine now strikes on the ear as a
+ commonplace and a truism. A hundred years ago in France it was a
+ wonderful gospel, and the beginning of a new dispensation. It was the
+ great counter-principle to asceticism in life and morals, to formalism
+ in art, to absolutism in the social ordering, to obscurantism in
+ thought. Every social improvement since has been the outcome of that
+ doctrine in one form or another. The conviction that the character and
+ lot of man are indefinitely modifiable for good, was the indispensable
+ antecedent to any general and energetic endeavour to modify the
+ conditions that surround him. The omnipotence of early instruction, of
+ laws, of the method of social order, over the infinitely plastic
+ impulses of the human creature—this was the maxim which brought men of
+ such widely different temperament and leanings to the common
+ enterprise. Everybody can see what wide and deep-reaching bearings
+ such a doctrine possessed; how it raised all the questions connected
+ with psychology and the formation of character; how it went down to
+ the very foundation of morals; into what fresh and unwelcome sunlight
+ it brought the articles of the old theology; with what new importance
+ it clothed all the relations of real knowledge and the practical arts;
+ what intense interest it lent to every detail of economics and
+ legislation and government.</p>
+
+ <p>The deadly chagrin with which churchmen saw the encyclopedic fabric
+ rising was very natural. The teaching of the Church paints man as
+ fallen and depraved. The new secular knowledge clashed at a thousand
+ points, alike in letter and in spirit, with the old sacred lore. Even
+ where it did not clash, its vitality of interest and attraction drove
+ the older lore into neglected shade. To stir men's vivid curiosity and
+ hope about the earth was to make their care much less absorbing about
+ the kingdom of heaven. To awaken in them the spirit of social
+ improvement was ruin to the most scandalous and crying social abuse
+ then existing. The old spiritual power had lost its instinct, once so
+ keen and effective, of wise direction. Instead of being the guide and
+ corrector of the organs of the temporal power, it was the worst of
+ their accomplices. The Encyclopædia was an informal, transitory, and
+ provisional organisation of the new spiritual power. The school of
+ which it was the great expounder achieved a supreme control over
+ opinion by the only title to which control belongs: a more penetrating
+ eye for social exigencies and for the means of satisfying them.</p>
+
+ <p>Our veteran humorist told us long ago in his whimsical way that the
+ importance of the Acts of the French Philosophes recorded in whole
+ acres of typography is fast exhausting itself, that the famed
+ Encyclopædical Tree has borne no fruit, and that Diderot the great has
+ contracted into Diderot the easily measurable. The humoristic method
+ is a potent instrument for working such contractions and expansions at
+ will. The greatest of men are measurable enough, if you choose to set
+ up a standard that is half transcendental and half cynical. A saner
+ and more patient criticism measures the conspicuous figures of the
+ past differently. It seeks their relations to the great forward
+ movements of the world, and asks to what quarter of the heavens their
+ faces were set, whether towards the east where the new light dawns, or
+ towards the west after the old light has sunk irrevocably down. Above
+ all, a saner criticism bids us remember that pioneers in the
+ progressive way are rare, their lives rude and sorely tried, and their
+ services to mankind beyond price. "Diderot is Diderot," wrote one
+ greater than Carlyle: "a peculiar individuality; whoever holds him or
+ his doings cheaply is a Philistine, and the name of them is legion.
+ Men know neither from God, nor from Nature, nor from their fellows,
+ how to receive with gratitude what is valuable beyond appraisement"
+ (<i>Goethe</i>). An intense Philistinism underlay the great spiritual
+ reaction that followed the Revolution, and not even such of its
+ apostles as Wordsworth and Carlyle wholly escaped the taint.</p>
+
+ <p>Forty years ago, when Carlyle wrote, it might really seem to a
+ prejudiced observer as if the encyclopædic tree had borne no fruit.
+ Even then, and even when the critic happened to be a devotee of the
+ sterile transcendentalism then in vogue, one might have expected some
+ recognition of the fact that the seed of all the great improvements
+ bestowed on France by the Revolution, in spite of the woful evils
+ which followed in its train, had been sown by the Encyclopædists. But
+ now that the last vapours of the transcendental reaction are clearing
+ away, we see that the movement initiated by the Encyclopædia is again
+ in full progress. Materialistic solutions in the science of man,
+ humanitarian ends in legislation, naturalism in art, active faith in
+ the improvableness of institutions—all these are once more the marks
+ of speculation and the guiding ideas of practical energy. The
+ philosophical parenthesis is at an end. The interruption of eighty
+ years counts for no more than the twinkling of an eye in the history
+ of the transformation of the basis of thought. And the interruption
+ has for the present come to a close. Europe again sees the old enemies
+ face to face; the Church, and a Social Philosophy slowly labouring to
+ build her foundations in positive science. It cannot be other than
+ interesting to examine the aims, the instruments, and the degree of
+ success of those who a century ago saw most comprehensively how
+ profound and far-reaching a metamorphosis awaited the thought of the
+ Western world. We shall do this most properly in connection with
+ Diderot.</p>
+
+ <p>Whether we accept or question Comte's strong description of Diderot
+ as the greatest genius of the eighteenth century, it is at least
+ undeniable that he was the one member of the great party of
+ illumination with a real title to the name of thinker. Voltaire and
+ Rousseau were the heads of two important schools, and each of them set
+ deep and unmistakable marks both on the opinion and the events of the
+ century. It would not be difficult to show that their influence was
+ wider than that of the philosopher who discerned the inadequateness of
+ both. But Rousseau was moved by passion and sentiment; Voltaire was
+ only the master of a brilliant and penetrating rationalism. Diderot
+ alone of this famous trio had in his mind the idea of scientific
+ method; alone showed any feeling for a doctrine, and for large organic
+ and constructive conceptions. He had the rare faculty of true
+ philosophic meditation. Though immeasurably inferior both to Voltaire
+ and Rousseau in gifts of literary expression, he was as far their
+ superior in breadth and reality of artistic principle. He was the
+ originator of a natural, realistic, and sympathetic school of literary
+ criticism. He aspired to impose new forms upon the drama. Both in
+ imaginative creation and in criticism, his work was a constant appeal
+ from the artificial conventions of the classic schools to the
+ actualities of common life. The same spirit united with the tendency
+ of his philosophy to place him among the very few men who have been
+ great and genuine observers of human nature and human existence. So
+ singular and widely active a genius may well interest us, even apart
+ from the important place that he holds in the history of literature
+ and opinion.</p>
+ <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+ <h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.<br />
+ YOUTH.</h2>
+
+ <p>Denis Diderot was born at Langres in 1713, being thus a few months
+ younger than Rousseau (1712), nearly twenty years younger than
+ Voltaire (1694), nearly two years younger than Hume (1711), and eleven
+ years older than Kant (1724). His stock was ancient and of good
+ repute. The family had been engaged in the great local industry, the
+ manufacture of cutlery, for no less than two centuries in direct line.
+ Diderot liked to dwell on the historic prowess of his town, from the
+ days of Julius Cæsar and the old Lingones and Sabinus, down to the
+ time of the Great Monarch. With the taste of his generation for
+ tracing moral qualities to a climatic source, he explained a certain
+ vivacity and mobility in the people of his district by the great
+ frequency and violence of its atmospheric changes from hot to cold,
+ from calm to storm, from rain to sunshine. "Thus they learn from
+ earliest infancy to turn to every wind. The man of Langres has a head
+ on his shoulders like the weathercock at the top of the church spire.
+ It is never fixed at one point; if it returns to the point it has
+ left, it is not to stop there. With an amazing rapidity in their
+ movements, their desires, their plans, their fancies, their ideas,
+ they are cumbrous in speech. For myself, I belong to my country side."
+ This was thoroughly true. He inherited all the versatility of his
+ compatriots, all their swift impetuosity, and something of their want
+ of dexterity in expression.</p>
+
+ <p>His father was one of the bravest, most upright, most patient, most
+ sensible of men. Diderot never ceased to regret that the old man's
+ portrait had not been taken with his apron on, his spectacles pushed
+ up, and a hand on the grinder's wheel. After his death, none of his
+ neighbours could speak of him to his son without tears in their eyes.
+ Diderot, wild and irregular as were his earlier days, had always a
+ true affection for his father. "One of the sweetest moments of my
+ life," he once said, "was more than thirty years ago, and I remember
+ it as if it were yesterday, when my father saw me coming home from
+ school, my arms laden with the prizes I had carried off, and my
+ shoulders burdened with the wreaths they had given me, which were too
+ big for my brow and had slipped over my head. As soon as he caught
+ sight of me some way off, he threw down his work, hurried to the door
+ to meet me, and fell a-weeping. It is a fine sight—a grave and
+ sterling man melted to tears."<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id=
+ "FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class=
+ "fnanchor">[1]</a> Of his mother we know less. He had a
+ sister, who seems to have possessed the rough material of his own
+ qualities. He describes her as "lively, active, cheerful, decided,
+ prompt to take offence, slow to come round again, without much care
+ for present or future, never willing to be imposed on by people or
+ circumstance; free in her ways, still more free in her talk; she is a
+ sort of Diogenes in petticoats.... She is the most original and the
+ most strongly-marked creature I know; she is goodness itself, but with
+ a peculiar physiognomy."<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id=
+ "FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>
+ His only brother showed some of the same native stuff, but of thinner
+ and sourer quality. He became an abbé and a saint, peevish,
+ umbrageous, and as excessively devout as his more famous brother was
+ excessively the opposite. "He would have been a good friend and a good
+ brother," wrote Diderot, "if religion had not bidden him trample under
+ foot such poor weaknesses as these. He is a good Christian, who proves
+ to me every minute of the day how much better it would be to be a good
+ man. He shows that what they call evangelical perfection is only the
+ mischievous art of stifling nature, which would most likely have
+ spoken as lustily in him as in me."<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id=
+ "FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class=
+ "fnanchor">[3]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Diderot, like so many others of the eighteenth-century reformers,
+ was a pupil of the Jesuits. An ardent, impetuous, over-genial
+ temperament was the cause of frequent irregularities in conduct. But
+ his quick and active understanding overcame all obstacles. His
+ teachers, ever wisely on the alert for superior capacity, hoped to
+ enlist his talents in the Order. Either they or he planned his escape
+ from home, but his father got to hear of it. "My grandfather," says
+ Diderot's daughter, "kept the profoundest silence, but as he went off
+ to bed took with him the keys of the yard door." When he heard his son
+ going downstairs, he presented himself before him, and asked whither
+ he was bound at twelve o'clock at night. "To Paris," replied the
+ youth, "where I am to join the Jesuits." "That will not be to-night;
+ but your wishes shall be fulfilled. First let us have our sleep." The
+ next morning his father took two places in the coach, and carried him
+ to Paris to the Collége d'Harcourt. He made all the arrangements, and
+ wished his son good-bye. But the good man loved the boy too dearly to
+ leave him without being quite at ease how he would fare; he had the
+ patience to remain a whole fortnight, killing the time and half dead
+ of weariness in an inn, without ever seeing the one object of his
+ stay. At the end of the fortnight he went to the college, and Diderot
+ used many a time to say that such a mark of tenderness and goodness
+ would have made him go to the other end of the world if his father had
+ required it. "My friend," said his father, "I am come to see if you
+ are well, if you are satisfied with your superiors, with your food,
+ with your companions, and with yourself. If you are not well or not
+ happy, we will go back together to your mother. If you had rather stay
+ where you are, I am come to give you a word, to embrace you, and to
+ leave you my blessing." The boy declared he was perfectly happy; and
+ the principal pronounced him an excellent scholar, though already
+ promising to be a troublesome one.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id=
+ "FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class=
+ "fnanchor">[4]</a></p>
+
+ <p>After a couple of years the young Diderot, like other sons of Adam,
+ had to think of earning his bread. The usual struggle followed between
+ youthful genius and old prudence. His father, who was a man of
+ substance, gave him his choice between medicine and law. Law he
+ refused because he did not choose to spend his days in doing other
+ people's business; and medicine, because he had no turn for killing.
+ His father resolutely declined to let him have more money on these
+ terms, and Diderot was thrown on his wits.</p>
+
+ <p>The man of letters shortly before the middle of the century was as
+ much an outcast and a beggar in Paris as he was in London. Voltaire,
+ Gray, and Richardson were perhaps the only three conspicuous writers
+ of the time, who had never known what it was to want a meal or to go
+ without a shirt. But then none of the three depended on his pen for
+ his livelihood. Every other man of that day whose writings have
+ delighted and instructed the world since, had begun his career, and
+ more than one of them continued and ended it, as a drudge and a
+ vagabond. Fielding and Collins, Goldsmith and Johnson, in England;
+ Goldoni in Italy; Vauvenargues, Marmontel, Rousseau, in France;
+ Winckelmann and Lessing in Germany, had all alike been doubtful of
+ dinner, and trembled about a night's lodging. They all knew the life
+ of mean hazard, sorry shift, and petty expedient again and again
+ renewed. It is sorrowful to think how many of the compositions of that
+ time that do most to soothe and elevate some of the best hours of our
+ lives, were written by men with aching hearts, in the midst of haggard
+ perplexities. The man of letters, as distinguished alike from the
+ old-fashioned scholar and the systematic thinker, now first became a
+ distinctly marked type. Macaulay has contrasted the misery of the Grub
+ Street hack of Johnson's time, with the honours accorded to men like
+ Prior and Addison at an earlier date, and the solid sums paid by
+ booksellers to the authors of our own day. But these brilliant
+ passages hardly go lower than the surface of the great change. Its
+ significance lay quite apart from the prices paid for books. The
+ all-important fact about the men of letters in France was that they
+ constituted a new order, that their rise signified the transfer of the
+ spiritual power from ecclesiastical hands, and that, while they were
+ the organs of a new function, they associated it with a new substitute
+ for doctrine. These men were not only the pupils of the Jesuits; they
+ were also their immediate successors as the teachers, the guides, and
+ the directors of society. For two hundred years the followers of
+ Ignatius had taken the intellectual and moral control of Catholic
+ communities out of the failing hands of the Popes and the secular
+ clergy. Their own hour had now struck. The rationalistic historian has
+ seldom done justice to the services which this great Order rendered to
+ European civilisation. The immorality of many of their maxims, their
+ too frequent connivance at political wrong for the sake of power,
+ their inflexible malice against opponents, and the cupidity and
+ obstructiveness of the years of their decrepitude, have blinded us to
+ the many meritorious pages of the Jesuit chronicle. Even men like
+ Diderot and Voltaire, whose lives were for years made bitter by Jesuit
+ machinations, gave many signs that they recognised the aid which had
+ been rendered by their old masters to the cultivation and
+ enlightenment of Europe. It was from the Jesuit fathers that the men
+ of letters whom they trained, acquired that practical and social habit
+ of mind which made the world and its daily interests so real to them.
+ It was perhaps also his Jesuit preceptors whom the man of letters had
+ to blame for a certain want of rigour and exactitude on the side of
+ morality.</p>
+
+ <p>What was this new order which thus struggled into existence, which
+ so speedily made itself felt, and at length so completely succeeded in
+ seizing the lapsed inheritance of the old spiritual organisation? Who
+ is this man of letters? A satirist may easily describe him in epigrams
+ of cheap irony; the pedant of the colleges may see in him a frivolous
+ and shallow profaner of the mysteries of learning; the intellectual
+ coxcomb who nurses his own dainty wits in critical sterility, despises
+ him as Sir Piercie Shafton would have despised Lord Lindsay of the
+ Byres. This notwithstanding, the man of letters has his work to do in
+ the critical period of social transition. He is to be distinguished
+ from the great systematic thinker, as well as from the great
+ imaginative creator. He is borne on the wings neither of a broad
+ philosophic conception nor of a lofty poetic conception. He is only
+ the propagator of portions of such a conception, and of the minor
+ ideas which they suggest. Unlike the Jesuit father whom he replaced,
+ he has no organic doctrine, no historic tradition, no effective
+ discipline, and no definite, comprehensive, far-reaching, concentrated
+ aim. The characteristic of his activity is dispersiveness. Its
+ distinction is to popularise such detached ideas as society is in a
+ condition to assimilate; to interest men in these ideas by dressing
+ them up in varied forms of the literary art; to guide men through them
+ by judging, empirically and unconnectedly, each case of conduct, of
+ policy, or of new opinion as it arises. We have no wish to exalt the
+ office. On the contrary, I accept the maxim of that deep observer who
+ warned us that "the mania for isolation is the plague of the human
+ throng, and to be strong we must march together. You only obtain
+ anything by developing the spirit of discipline among men."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class=
+ "fnanchor">[5]</a></p>
+
+ <p>But there are ages of criticism when discipline is impossible, and
+ the evils of isolation are less than the evils of rash and premature
+ organisation. Fontenelle was the first and in some respects the
+ greatest type of this important class. He was sceptical, learned,
+ ingenious, eloquent. He stretched hands (1657-1757) from the famous
+ quarrel between Ancients and Moderns down to the Encyclopædia, and
+ from Bossuet and Corneille down to Jean Jacques and Diderot. When he
+ was born, the man of letters did not exist. When he died, the man of
+ letters was the most conspicuous personage in France. But when Diderot
+ first began to roam about the streets of Paris, this enormous change
+ was not yet complete.</p>
+
+ <p>For some ten years (1734-1744) Diderot's history is the old tale of
+ hardship and chance; of fine constancy and excellent faith, not wholly
+ free from an occasional stroke of rascality. For a time he earned a
+ little money by teaching. If the pupil happened to be quick and
+ docile, he grudged no labour, and was content with any fee or none. If
+ the pupil happened to be dull, Diderot never came again, and preferred
+ going supperless to bed. His employers paid him as they chose, in
+ shirts, in a chair or a table, in books, in money, and sometimes they
+ never paid him at all. The prodigious exuberance of his nature
+ inspired him with a sovereign indifference to material details. From
+ the beginning he belonged to those to whom it comes by nature to count
+ life more than meat, and the body than raiment. The outward things of
+ existence were to him really outward. They never vexed or absorbed his
+ days and nights, nor overcame his vigorous constitutional instinct for
+ the true proportions of external circumstance. He was of the humour of
+ the old philosopher who, when he heard that all his worldly goods had
+ been lost in a shipwreck, only made for answer, <i>Jubet me fortuna
+ expeditius philosophari</i>. Once he had the good hap to be appointed
+ tutor to the sons of a man of wealth. He performed his duties
+ zealously, he was well housed and well fed, and he gave the fullest
+ satisfaction to his employer. At the end of three months the
+ mechanical toil had grown unbearable to him. The father of his pupils
+ offered him any terms if he would remain. "Look at me, sir," replied
+ the tutor; "my face is as yellow as a lemon. I am making men of your
+ children, but each day I am becoming a child with them. I am a
+ thousand times too rich and too comfortable in your house; leave it I
+ must. What I want is not to live better, but to avoid dying." Again he
+ plunged from comfort into the life of the garret. If he met any old
+ friend from Langres, he borrowed, and the honest father repaid the
+ loan. His mother's savings were brought to him by a faithful creature
+ who had long served in their house, and who now more than once trudged
+ all the way from home on this errand, and added her own humble
+ earnings to the little stock. Many a time the hours went very slowly
+ for the necessitous man. One Shrove Tuesday he rose in the morning,
+ and found his pockets empty even of so much as a halfpenny. His
+ friends had not invited him to join their squalid Bohemian revels.
+ Hunger and thoughts of old Shrovetide merriment and feasting in the
+ far-off home made work impossible. He hastened out of doors and walked
+ about all day visiting such public sights as were open to the
+ penniless. When he returned to his garret at night, his landlady found
+ him in a swoon, and with the compassion of a good soul she forced him
+ to share her supper. "That day," Diderot used to tell his children in
+ later years, "I promised myself that if ever happier times should
+ come, and ever I should have anything, I would never refuse help to
+ any living creature, nor ever condemn him to the misery of such a day
+ as that."<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> And the real interest of the
+ story lies in the fact that no oath was ever more faithfully kept.
+ There is no greater test of the essential richness of a man's nature
+ than that this squalid adversity, not of the sentimental introspective
+ kind but hard and grinding, and not even kept in countenance by
+ respectability, fails to make him a savage or a miser or a
+ misanthrope.</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot had his bitter moments. He knew the gloom and despondency
+ that have their inevitable hour in every solitary and unordered life.
+ But the fits did not last. They left no sour sediment, and this is the
+ sign of health in temperament, provided it be not due to mere
+ callousness. From that horrible quality Diderot assuredly was the
+ furthest removed of any one of his time. Now and always he walked with
+ a certain large carelessness of spirit. He measured life with a roving
+ and liberal eye. Circumstance and conventions, the words under which
+ men hide things, the oracles of common acceptance, the infinitely
+ diversified properties of human character, the many complexities of
+ our conduct and destiny—all these he watched playing freely around
+ him, and he felt no haste to compress his experience into maxims and
+ system. He was absolutely uncramped by any of the formal mannerisms of
+ the spirit. He was wholly uncorrupted by the affectation of culture
+ with which the great Goethe infected part of the world a generation
+ later. His own life was never made the centre of the world.
+ Self-development and self-idealisation as ends in themselves would
+ have struck Diderot as effeminate drolleries. The daily and hourly
+ interrogation of experience for the sake of building up the fabric of
+ his own character in this wise or that, would have been
+ incomprehensible and a little odious to him in theory, and impossible
+ as a matter of practice. In the midst of all the hardships of his
+ younger time, as afterwards in the midst of crushing Herculean
+ taskwork, he was saved from moral ruin by the inexhaustible geniality
+ and expansiveness of his affections. Nor did he narrow their play by
+ looking only to the external forms of human relation. To Diderot it
+ came easily to act on a principle which most of us only accept in
+ words: he looked not to what people said, nor even to what they did,
+ but wholly to what they were.</p>
+
+ <p>Those whom he had once found reason to love and esteem might do him
+ many an ill turn, without any fear of estranging him. Any one can
+ measure character by conduct. It is a harder thing to be willing, in
+ cases that touch our own interests, to interpret conduct by previous
+ knowledge of character. His father, for instance, might easily have
+ spared money enough to save him from the harassing privations of
+ Bohemian life in Paris. A less full-blooded and generous person than
+ Diderot would have resented the stoutness of the old man's
+ persistency. Diderot on the contrary felt and delighted to feel, that
+ this conflict of wills was a mere accident which left undisturbed the
+ reality of old love. "The first few years of my life in Paris," he
+ once told an acquaintance, "had been rather irregular; my behaviour
+ was enough to irritate my father, without there being any need to make
+ it worse by exaggeration. Still calumny was not wanting. People told
+ him—well what did they not tell him? An opportunity for going to see
+ him presented itself. I did not give it two thoughts. I set out full
+ of confidence in his goodness. I thought that he would see me, that I
+ should throw myself into his arms, that we should both of us shed
+ tears, and that all would be forgotten. I thought rightly."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class=
+ "fnanchor">[7]</a> We may be sure of a stoutness of native stuff in
+ any stock where so much tenacity united with such fine confidence on
+ one side, and such generous love on the other. It is a commonplace how
+ much waste would be avoided in human life if men would more freely
+ allow their vision to pierce in this way through the distorting veils
+ of egoism, to the reality of sentiment and motive and
+ relationship.</p>
+
+ <p>Throughout his life Diderot was blessed with that divine gift of
+ pity, which one that has it could hardly be willing to barter for the
+ understanding of an Aristotle. Nor was it of the sentimental type
+ proper for fine ladies. One of his friends had an aversion for women
+ with child. "What monstrous sentiment!" Diderot wrote; "for my part,
+ that condition has always touched me. I cannot see a woman of the
+ common people so, without a tender commiseration."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class=
+ "fnanchor">[8]</a> And Diderot had delicacy and respect in his pity.
+ He tells a story in one of his letters of a poor woman who had
+ suffered some wrong from a priest; she had not money enough to resort
+ to law, until a friend of Diderot took her part. The suit was gained;
+ but when the moment came for execution, the priest had vanished with
+ all his goods. The woman came to thank her protector, and to regret
+ the loss he had suffered. "As she chatted, she pulled a shabby
+ snuff-box out of her pocket, and gathered up with the tip of her
+ finger what little snuff remained at the bottom: her benefactor says
+ to her 'Ah, ah! you have no more snuff; give me your box, and I will
+ fill it.' He took the box and put into it a couple of louis, which he
+ covered up with snuff. Now there's an action thoroughly to my taste,
+ and to yours too! Give, but, if you can, spare to the poor the shame
+ of holding out a hand."<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id=
+ "FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a>
+ And the important thing, as we have said, is that Diderot was as good
+ as his sentiment. Unlike most of the fine talkers of that day, to him
+ these homely and considerate emotions were the most real part of life.
+ Nobody in the world was ever more eager to give succour to others, nor
+ more careless of his own ease.</p>
+
+ <p>One singular story of Diderot's heedlessness about himself has
+ often been told before, but we shall be none the worse in an egoistic
+ world for hearing it told again. There came to him one morning a young
+ man, bringing a manuscript in his hand. He begged Diderot to do him
+ the favour of reading it, and to make any remarks he might think
+ useful on the margin. Diderot found it to be a bitter satire upon his
+ own person and writings. On the young man's return, Diderot asked him
+ his grounds for making such an attack. "I am without bread," the
+ satirist answered, "and I hoped you might perhaps give me a few crowns
+ not to print it." Diderot at once forgot everything in pity for the
+ starving scribbler. "I will tell you a way of making more than that by
+ it. The brother of the Duke of Orleans is one of the pious, and he
+ hates me. Dedicate your satire to him, get it bound with his arms on
+ the cover; take it to him some fine morning, and you will certainly
+ get assistance from him." "But I don't know the prince, and the
+ dedicatory epistle embarrasses me." "Sit down," said Diderot, "and I
+ will write one for you." The dedication was written, the author
+ carried it to the prince, and received a handsome fee.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10"
+ class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Marmontel assures us that never was Diderot seen to such advantage
+ as when an author consulted him about a work. "You should have seen
+ him," he says, "take hold of the subject, pierce to the bottom of it,
+ and at a single glance discover of what riches and of what beauty it
+ was susceptible. If he saw that the author missed the right track,
+ instead of listening to the reading, he at once worked up in his head
+ all that the author had left crude and imperfect. Was it a play, he
+ threw new scenes into it, new incidents, new strokes of character; and
+ thinking that he had actually heard all that he had dreamed, he
+ extolled to the skies the work that had just been read to him, and in
+ which, when it saw the light, we found hardly anything that he had
+ quoted from it.... He who was one of the most enlightened men of the
+ century, was also one of the most amiable; and in everything that
+ touched moral goodness, when he spoke of it freely, I cannot express
+ the charm of his eloquence. His whole soul was in his eyes and on his
+ lips; never did a countenance better depict the goodness of the
+ heart."<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> Morellet is equally loud
+ in praise, not only of Diderot's conversation, its brilliance, its
+ vivacity, its fertility, its suggestiveness, its sincerity, but also
+ his facility and indulgence to all who sought him, and of the
+ sympathetic readiness with which he gave the very best of himself to
+ others.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></p>
+
+ <p>It is needless to say that such a temper was constantly abused.
+ Three-fourths of Diderot's life were reckoned by his family to have
+ been given up to people who had need of his purse, his knowledge, or
+ his good offices. His daughter compares his library to a shop crowded
+ by a succession of customers, but the customers took whatever wares
+ they sought, not by purchase, but by way of free gift. Luckily for
+ Diderot, he was thus generous by temperament, and not because he
+ expected gratitude. Any necessitous knave with the gift of tears and
+ the mask of sensibility could dupe and prey upon him. In one case he
+ had taken a great deal of trouble for one of these needy and
+ importunate clients; had given him money and advice, and had devoted
+ much time to serve him. At the end of their last interview Diderot
+ escorts his departing friend to the head of the staircase. The
+ grateful client then asks him whether he knows natural history. "Well,
+ not much," Diderot replies; "I know an aloe from a lettuce, and a
+ pigeon from a humming-bird." "Do you know about the <i>Formica
+ leo?</i> No? Well, it is a little insect that is wonderfully
+ industrious; it hollows out in the ground a hole shaped like a funnel,
+ it covers the surface with a light fine sand, it attracts other
+ insects, it takes them, it sucks them dry, and then it says to them,
+ 'M. Diderot, I have the honour to wish you good day.'"<a name=
+ "FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13"
+ class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Yet insolence and ingratitude made no difference to Diderot. His
+ ear always remained as open to every tale of distress, his sensibility
+ always as quickly touched, his time, money, and service always as
+ profusely bestowed. I know not whether to say that this was made more,
+ or that it was made less, of a virtue by his excess of tolerance for
+ social castaways and reprobates. Our rough mode of branding a man as
+ bad revolted him. The common appetite for constituting ourselves
+ public prosecutors for the universe, was to him one of the worst of
+ human weaknesses. "You know," he used to say, "all the impetuosity of
+ the passions; you have weighed all circumstance in your everlasting
+ balance; you pass sentence on the goodness or the badness of
+ creatures; you set up rewards and penalties among matters which have
+ no proportion nor relation with one another. Are you sure that you
+ have never committed wrong acts, for which you pardoned yourselves
+ because their object was so slight, though at bottom they implied more
+ wickedness than a crime prompted by misery or fury? Even magistrates,
+ supported by experience, by the law, by conventions which force them
+ sometimes to give judgment against the testimony of their own
+ conscience, still tremble as they pronounce the doom of the accused.
+ And since when has it been lawful for the same person to be at once
+ judge and informer?"<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id=
+ "FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class=
+ "fnanchor">[14]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Such reasoned leniency is the noblest of traits in a man. "I am
+ more affected," he said, in words of which better men that Diderot
+ might often be reminded, "by the charms of virtue than by the
+ deformity of vice. I turn mildly away from the bad, and I fly to
+ embrace the good. If there is in a work, in a character, in a
+ painting, in a statue, a single fine bit, then on that my eyes fasten;
+ I see only that: that is all I remember; the rest is as good as
+ forgotten."<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a></p>
+
+ <p>This is the secret of a rare and admirable temperament. It carried
+ Diderot well through the trial and ordeal of the ragged apprenticeship
+ of letters. What to other men comes by culture, came to him by inborn
+ force and natural capaciousness. We do not know in what way Diderot
+ trained and nourished his understanding. The annotations to his
+ translation of Shaftesbury, as well as his earliest original pieces,
+ show that he had read Montaigne and Pascal, and not only read but
+ meditated on them with an independent mind. They show also that he had
+ been impressed by the Civitas Dei of Augustine, and had at least
+ dipped into Terence and Horace, Cicero and Tacitus. His subsequent
+ writings prove that, like the other men of letters of his day, he
+ found in our own literature the chief external stimulant to thought.
+ Above all, he was impressed by the magnificent ideas of the
+ illustrious Bacon, and these ideas were the direct source of the great
+ undertaking of Diderot's life. He is said to have read little and to
+ have meditated much —the right process for the few men of his potent
+ stamp. The work which he had to do for bread was of the kind that
+ crushes anything short of the strongest faculty. He composed sermons.
+ A missionary once ordered half-a-dozen of them for consumption in the
+ Portuguese colonies, and paid him fifty crowns apiece, which Diderot
+ counted far from the worst bargain of his life. All this was beggarly
+ toil for a man of genius, but Diderot never took the trouble to think
+ of himself as a man of genius, and was quite content with life as it
+ came. If he found himself absolutely without food and without pence,
+ he began moodily to think of abandoning his books and his pen, and of
+ complying with the wishes of his father. A line of Homer, an idea from
+ the Principia, an interesting problem in algebra or geometry, was
+ enough to restore the eternally invincible spell of knowledge. And no
+ sooner was this commanding interest touched, than the cloud of
+ uncomfortable circumstance vanished from before the sun, and calm and
+ serenity filled his spirit.</p>
+
+ <p>Montesquieu used to declare that he had never known a chagrin which
+ half an hour of a book was not able to dispel. Diderot had the same
+ fortunate temper.</p>
+
+ <p>Yet Diderot was not essentially a man of books. He never fell into
+ the characteristic weakness of the follower of letters, by treating
+ books as ends in themselves, or placing literature before life.
+ Character, passion, circumstance, the real tragi-comedy, not its
+ printed shadow and image, engrossed him. He was in this respect more
+ of the temper of Rousseau, than he was like Voltaire or Fontenelle.
+ "Abstraction made," he used to say, "of my existence and of the
+ happiness of my fellows, what does the rest of nature matter to me?"
+ Yet, as we see, nobody that ever lived was more interested in
+ knowledge. His biographer and disciple remarked the contrast in him
+ between his ardent impetuous disposition and enthusiasm, and his
+ spirit of close unwearied observation. <i>Faire le bien, connaître le
+ vrai</i>, was his formula for the perfect life, and defined the only
+ distinction that he cared to recognise between one man and another.
+ And the only motive he ever admitted as reasonable for seeking truth,
+ was as a means of doing good. So strong was his sense of practical
+ life, in the midst of incessant theorising.</p>
+ <hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+ <p>At the moment when he had most difficulty in procuring a little
+ bread each day for himself, Diderot conceived a violent passion for a
+ seamstress, Antoinnette Champion by name, who happened to live in his
+ neighbourhood. He instantly became importunate for marriage. The
+ mother long protested with prudent vigour against a young man of such
+ headstrong impetuosity, who did nothing and who had nothing, save the
+ art of making speeches that turned her daughter's head. At length the
+ young man's golden tongue won the mother as it had won the daughter.
+ It was agreed that his wishes should be crowned, if he could procure
+ the consent of his family. Diderot fared eagerly and with a sanguine
+ heart to Langres. His father supposed that he had seen the evil of his
+ ways, and was come at last to continue the honest tradition of their
+ name. When the son disclosed the object of his visit, he was treated
+ as a madman and threatened with malediction. Without a word of
+ remonstrance he started back one day for Paris. Madame Champion warned
+ him that his project must now be for ever at an end. Such unflinching
+ resoluteness is often the last preliminary before surrender. Diderot
+ fell ill. The two women could not bear to think of him lying sick in a
+ room no better than a dog-kennel, without broths and tisanes, lonely
+ and sorrowful. They hastened to nurse him, and when he got well, what
+ he thought the great object of his life was reached. He and his adored
+ were married (1743).<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id=
+ "FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class=
+ "fnanchor">[16]</a> As has been said, "Choice in marriage is a great
+ match of cajolery between purpose and invisible hazard: deep criticism
+ of a game of pure chance is time wasted." In Diderot's case destiny
+ was hostile.</p>
+
+ <p>His wife was over thirty. She was dutiful, sage, and pious. She had
+ plenty of that devotion which in small things women so seldom lack.
+ While her husband went to dine out, she remained at home to dine and
+ sup on dry bread, and was pleased to think that the next day she would
+ double the little ordinary for him. Coffee was too dear to be a
+ household luxury, so every day she handed him a few halfpence to have
+ his cup, and to watch the chess-players at the Café de la Régence.
+ When after a year or two she went to make her peace with her
+ father-in-law at Langres, she wound her way round the old man's heart
+ by her affectionate caresses, her respect, her ready industry in the
+ household, her piety, her simplicity. It is, however, unfortunately
+ possible for even the best women to manifest their goodness, their
+ prudence, their devotion, in forms that exasperate. Perhaps it was so
+ here. Diderot at fifty was an orderly and steadfast person, but at
+ thirty the blood of vagabondage was still hot within him. He needed in
+ his companion a robust patience, to match his own too robust activity.
+ One may suppose that if Mirabeau had married Hannah More, the union
+ would have turned out ill, and Diderot's marriage was unluckily of
+ such a type. His wife's narrow pieties and homely solicitudes fretted
+ him. He had not learned to count the cost of deranging the fragile
+ sympathy of the hearth. While his wife was away on her visit to his
+ family, he formed a connection with a woman (Madame Puisieux) who
+ seems to have been as bad and selfish as his wife was the opposite.
+ She was the authoress of some literary pieces, which the world
+ willingly and speedily let die; but even very moderate pretensions to
+ <i>bel-esprit</i> may have seemed wonderfully refreshing to a man
+ wearied to death by the illiterate stupidity of his daily
+ companion.<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> This lasted some three or
+ four years down to 1749. As we shall see, he discovered the infidelity
+ of his mistress and broke with her. But by this time his wife's
+ virtues seem to have gone a little sour, as disregarded prudence and
+ thwarted piety are so apt to do. It was too late now to knit up again
+ the ravelled threads of domestic concord. During a second absence of
+ his wife in Champagne (1754), he formed a new attachment to the
+ daughter of a financier's widow (Mdlle. Voland). This lasted to the
+ end of the lady's days (1783 or 1784).</p>
+
+ <p>There is probably nothing very profitable to be said about all this
+ domestic disorder. We do not know enough of the circumstances to be
+ sure of allotting censure in exact and rightful measure. We have to
+ remember that such irregularities were in the manners of the time. To
+ connect them by way of effect with the new opinions in religion, would
+ be as impertinent as to trace the immoralities of Dubois or Lewis the
+ Fifteenth or the Cardinal de Rohan to the old opinions.</p>
+ <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+ <h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.<br />
+ EARLY WRITINGS.</h2>
+
+ <p>La Rochefoucauld, expressing a commonplace with the penetrative
+ terseness that made him a master of the apophthegm, pronounced it "not
+ to be enough to have great qualities: a man must have the economy of
+ them." Or, as another writer says: "Empire in this world belongs not
+ so much to wits, to talents, and to industry, as to a certain skilful
+ economy and to the continual management that a man has the art of
+ applying to all his other gifts."<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id=
+ "FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class=
+ "fnanchor">[18]</a> Notwithstanding the peril that haunts superlative
+ propositions, we are inclined to say that Diderot is the most striking
+ illustration of this that the history of letters or speculation has to
+ furnish. If there are many who have missed the mark which they or
+ kindly intimates thought them certain of attaining, this is mostly not
+ for want of economy, but for want of the great qualities which were
+ imputed to them by mistake. To be mediocre, to be sterile, to be
+ futile, are the three fatal endings of many superbly announced
+ potentialities. Such an end nearly always comes of exaggerated
+ faculty, rather than of bad administration of natural gifts. In
+ Diderot were splendid talents. It was the art of prudent stewardship
+ that lay beyond his reach. Hence this singular fact, that he perhaps
+ alone in literature has left a name of almost the first eminence, and
+ impressed his greatness upon men of the strongest and most different
+ intelligence, and yet never produced a masterpiece; many a fine page,
+ as Marmontel said, but no one fine work.</p>
+
+ <p>No man that ever wrote was more wholly free from that unquiet
+ self-consciousness which too often makes literary genius pitiful or
+ odious in the flesh. He put on no airs of pretended resignation to
+ inferior production, with bursting hints of the vast superiorities
+ that unfriendly circumstance locked up within him. Yet on one
+ occasion, and only on one, so far as evidence remains, he indulged a
+ natural regret. "And so," he wrote when revising the last sheets of
+ the Encyclopædia (July 25, 1765), "in eight or ten days I shall see
+ the end of an undertaking that has occupied me for twenty years; that
+ has not made my fortune by a long way; that has exposed me many a time
+ to the risk of having to quit my country or lose my freedom; and that
+ has consumed a life that I might have made both more useful and more
+ glorious. The sacrifice of talent to need would be less common, if it
+ were only a question of self. One could easily resolve rather to drink
+ water and eat dry crusts and follow the bidding of one's genius in a
+ garret. But for a woman and for children, what can one not resolve? If
+ I sought to make myself of some account in their eyes, I would not
+ say—I have worked thirty years for you: I would say—I have for you
+ renounced for thirty years the vocation of my nature; I have preferred
+ to renounce my tastes in doing what was useful for you, instead of
+ what was agreeable to myself. That is your real obligation to me, and
+ of that you never think."<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id=
+ "FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class=
+ "fnanchor">[19]</a></p>
+
+ <p>It is a question, nevertheless, whether Diderot would have achieved
+ masterpieces, even if the pressure of housekeeping had never driven
+ him to seek bread where he could find it. Indeed it is hardly a
+ question. His genius was spacious and original, but it was too
+ dispersive, too facile of diversion, too little disciplined, for the
+ prolonged effort of combination which is indispensable to the greater
+ constructions whether of philosophy or art. The excellent talent of
+ economy and administration had been denied him; that thrift of
+ faculty, which accumulates store and force for concentrated occasions.
+ He was not encyclopædic by accident, nor merely from external
+ necessity. The quality of rapid movement, impetuous fancy, versatile
+ idea, which he traced to the climate of his birthplace, marked him
+ from the first for an encyclopædic or some such task. His interest was
+ nearly as promptly and vehemently kindled in one subject as in
+ another; he was always boldly tentative, always fresh and vigorous in
+ suggestion, always instant in search. But this multiplicity of active
+ excitements—and with Diderot every interest rose to the warmth of
+ excitement—was even more hostile to masterpieces than were the
+ exigencies of a livelihood. It was not unpardonable in a moment of
+ exhaustion and chagrin to fancy that he had offered up the treasures
+ of his genius to the dull gods of the hearth. But if he had been
+ childless and unwedded, the result would have been the same. He is the
+ munificent prodigal of letters, always believing his substance
+ inexhaustible, never placing a limit to his fancies nor a bound to his
+ outlay. "It is not they who rob me of my life," he wrote; "it is I who
+ give it to them. And what can I do better than accord a portion of it
+ to him who esteems me enough to solicit such a gift? I shall get no
+ praise for it, 'tis true, either now while I am here, nor when I shall
+ exist no longer; but I shall esteem myself for it, and people will
+ love me all the better for it. 'Tis no bad exchange, that of
+ benevolence, against a celebrity that one does not always win, and
+ that nobody wins without a drawback. I have never once regretted the
+ time that I have given to others; I can scarcely say as much for; the
+ time that I have used for myself."<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id=
+ "FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class=
+ "fnanchor">[20]</a> Remembering how uniformly men of letters take
+ themselves somewhat too seriously, we may be sorry that this unique
+ figure among them, who was in other respects constituted to be so
+ considerable and so effective, did not take himself seriously
+ enough.</p>
+
+ <p>Apart from his moral inaptitude for the monumental achievements of
+ authorship, Diderot was endowed with the gifts of the talker rather
+ than with those of the writer. Like Dr. Johnson, he was a great
+ converser rather than the author of great books. If we turn to his
+ writings, we are at some loss to understand the secret of his
+ reputation. They are too often declamatory, ill-compacted, broken by
+ frequent apostrophes, ungainly, dislocated, and rambling. He has been
+ described by a consummate judge as the most German of all the French.
+ And his style is deeply marked by that want of feeling for the
+ exquisite, that dulness of edge, that bluntness of stroke, which is
+ the common note of all German literature, save a little of the very
+ highest. In conversation we do not insist on constant precision of
+ phrase, nor on elaborate sustension of argument. Apostrophe is made
+ natural by the semi-dramatic quality of the situation. Even vehement
+ hyperbole, which is nearly always a disfigurement in written prose,
+ may become impressive or delightful, when it harmonises with the
+ voice, the glance, the gesture of a fervid and exuberant converser.
+ Hence Diderot's personality invested his talk, as happened in the case
+ of Johnson and of Coleridge, with an imposing interest and a power of
+ inspiration which we should never comprehend from the mere perusal of
+ his writings.</p>
+
+ <p>His admirers declared his head to be the ideal head of an Aristotle
+ or a Plato. His brow was wide, lofty, open, gently rounded. The arch
+ of the eyebrow was full of delicacy; the nose of masculine beauty; the
+ habitual expression of the eyes kindly and sympathetic, but as he grew
+ heated in talk, they sparkled like fire; the curves of the mouth
+ bespoke an interesting mixture of finesse, grace, and geniality. His
+ bearing was nonchalant enough, but there was naturally in the carriage
+ of his head, especially when he talked with action, much dignity,
+ energy, and nobleness. It seemed as if enthusiasm were the natural
+ condition for his voice, for his spirit, for every feature. He was
+ only truly Diderot when his thoughts had transported him beyond
+ himself. His ideas were stronger than himself; they swept him along
+ without the power either to stay or to guide their movement. "When I
+ recall Diderot," wrote one of his friends, "the immense variety of his
+ ideas, the amazing multiplicity of his knowledge, the rapid flight,
+ the warmth, the impetuous tumult of his imagination, all the charm and
+ all the disorder of his conversation, I venture to liken his character
+ to nature herself, exactly as he used to conceive her—rich, fertile,
+ abounding in germs of every sort, gentle and fierce, simple and
+ majestic, worthy and sublime, but without any dominating principle,
+ without a master and without a God."<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id=
+ "FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class=
+ "fnanchor">[21]</a> Grétry, the musical composer, declares that
+ Diderot was one of the rare men who had the art of blowing the spark
+ of genius into flame; the first impulses stirred by his glowing
+ imagination were of inspiration divine.<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id=
+ "FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class=
+ "fnanchor">[22]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Marmontel warns us that he who only knows Diderot in his writings,
+ does not know him at all. We should have listened to his persuasive
+ eloquence, and seen his face aglow with the fire of enthusiasm. It was
+ when he grew animated in talk, and let all the abundance of his ideas
+ flow freely from the source, that he became truly ravishing. In his
+ writings, says Marmontel with obvious truth, he never had the art of
+ forming a whole, and this was because that first process of arranging
+ everything in its place was too slow and too tiresome for him. The
+ want of ensemble vanished in the free and varied course of
+ conversation.<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></p>
+
+ <p>We have to remember then that Diderot was in this respect of the
+ Socratic type, though he was unlike Socrates, in being the
+ disseminator of positive and constructive ideas. His personality
+ exerted a decisive force and influence. In reading the testimony of
+ his friends, we think of the young Aristides saying to Socrates: "I
+ always made progress whenever I was in your neighbourhood, even if I
+ were only in the same house, without being in the same room; but my
+ advancement was greater if I were in the same room with you, and
+ greater still if I could keep my eyes fixed upon you."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24"
+ class="fnanchor">[24]</a> It has been well said that Diderot, like
+ Socrates, had about him a something dæmonic. He was possessed, and so
+ had the first secret of possessing others. But then to reach
+ excellence in literature, one must also have self-possession; a double
+ current of impulse and deliberation; a free stream of ideas
+ spontaneously obeying a sense or order, harmony, and form. Eloquence
+ in the informal discourse of the parlour or the country walk did not
+ mean in Diderot's case the empty fluency and nugatory emphasis of the
+ ordinary talker of reputation. It must have been both pregnant and
+ copious; declamatory in form, but fresh and substantial in matter;
+ excursive in arrangement, but forcible and pointed in intention. No
+ doubt, if he was a sage, he was sometimes a sage in a frenzy. He would
+ wind up a peroration by dashing his nightcap passionately against the
+ wall, by way of clencher to the argument. Yet this impetuosity, this
+ turn for declamation, did not hinder his talk from being directly
+ instructive. Younger men of the most various type, from Morellet down
+ to Joubert, men quite competent to detect mere bombast or ardent
+ vagueness, were held captive by the cogency of his understanding. His
+ writings have none of this compulsion. We see the flame, but through a
+ veil of interfused smoke. The expression is not obscure, but it is
+ awkward; not exactly prolix, but heavy, overcharged, and opaque. We
+ miss the vivid precision and the high spirits of Voltaire, the glow
+ and the brooding sonorousness of Rousseau, the pomp of Buffon. To
+ Diderot we go not for charm of style, but for a store of fertile
+ ideas, for some striking studies of human life, and for a vigorous and
+ singular personality.</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot's knowledge of our language now did him good service. One
+ of the details of the method by which he taught himself English is
+ curious. Instead of using an Anglo-French dictionary, he always used
+ one in Anglo-Latin. The sense of a Latin or Greek word, he said, is
+ better established, more surely fixed, more definite, less liable to
+ capricious peculiarities of convention, than the vernacular words
+ which the whim or ignorance of the lexicographer may choose. The
+ reader composes his own vocabulary, and gains both correctness and
+ energy.<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> However this may be, his
+ knowledge of English was more accurate than is possessed by most
+ French writers of our own day. Diderot's first work for the
+ booksellers after his marriage seems to have been a translation in
+ three volumes of Stanyan's History of Greece. For this, to the
+ amazement of his wife, he got a hundred crowns. About the same time
+ (1745) he published Principles of Moral Philosophy, or an Essay of Mr.
+ S. on Merit and Virtue. The initial stands for Shaftesbury, and the
+ book translated was his Inquiry concerning Virtue and Merit.</p>
+
+ <p>Towards the same time, again, Diderot probably made acquaintance
+ with Madame de Puisieux, of whom it has been said with too patent
+ humour that she was without either the virtue or the merit on which
+ her admirer had just been declaiming. We are told that it was her need
+ of money which inspired him with his first original work. As his
+ daughter's memoir, from which the tale comes, is swarming with
+ blunders, this may not be more true than some of her other statements.
+ All that we know of Diderot's sense and sincerity entitles him to the
+ benefit of the doubt. The Philosophical Thoughts (1746) are a
+ continuation of the vein of the annotations on the Essay. He is said
+ to have thrown these reflections together between Good Friday and
+ Easter Sunday. Nor is there anything incredible in such rapid
+ production, when we remember the sweeping impetuosity with which he
+ flung himself into all that he undertook. The Thoughts are evidently
+ the fruits of long meditation, and the literary arrangement of them
+ may well have been an easy task. They are a robuster development of
+ the scepticism which was the less important side of Shaftesbury. The
+ parliament of Paris ordered the book to be burnt along with some
+ others (July 7, 1746), partly because they were heterodox, partly
+ because the practice of publishing books without official leave was
+ gaining an unprecedented height of license.<a name="FNanchor_26_26"
+ id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class=
+ "fnanchor">[26]</a> This was Diderot's first experience of that hand
+ of authority, which was for thirty years to surround him with
+ mortification and torment. But the disapproval of authority did not
+ check the circulation or influence of the Thoughts. They were
+ translated into German and Italian, and were honoured by a shower of
+ hostile criticism. In France they were often reprinted, and even in
+ our own day they are said not wholly to have lost their vogue as a
+ short manual of scepticism.<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id=
+ "FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class=
+ "fnanchor">[27]</a></p>
+
+ <p>The historians of literature too often write as if a book were the
+ cause or the controlling force of controversies in which it is really
+ only a symbol, or a proclamation of feelings already in men's minds.
+ We should never occupy ourselves in tracing the thread of a set of
+ opinions, without trying to recognise the movement of living men and
+ concrete circumstance that accompanied and caused the progress of
+ thought. In watching how the beacon-fire flamed from height to
+ height—</p>
+
+ <div class="poem">
+  <div class="stanza">
+   <span>φάος δε τηέπομπον ουκ ηναίνετο<br /></span> <span>φρορα,
+   προσαιθρίζουσα πόμπιμονφλόγα—<br /></span>
+  </div>
+ </div>
+
+ <p>we should not forget that its source and reference lie in action,
+ in the motion and stirring of confused hosts and multitudes of men. A
+ book, after all, is only the mouthpiece of its author, and the author
+ being human is moved and drawn by the events that occur under his eye.
+ It was not merely because Bacon and Hobbes and Locke had written
+ certain books, that Voltaire and Diderot became free-thinkers and
+ assailed the church. "So long," it has been said, "as a Bossuet, a
+ Fénelon, an Arnauld, a Nicole, were alive, Bayle made few proselytes;
+ the elevation of Dubois and its consequences multiplied unbelievers
+ and indifferents."<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id=
+ "FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class=
+ "fnanchor">[28]</a></p>
+
+ <p>The force of speculative literature always hangs on practical
+ opportuneness. The economic evils of monasticism, the increasing
+ flagrancy and grossness of superstition, the aggressive factiousness
+ of the ecclesiastics, the cruelty of bigoted tribunals—these things
+ disgusted and wearied the more enlightened spirits, and the English
+ philosophy only held out an inspiring intellectual
+ alternative.<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Nor was it accident that drew Diderot's attention to Shaftesbury,
+ rather than to any other of our writers. That author's essay on
+ Enthusiasm had been suggested by the extravagances of the French
+ prophets, poor fanatics from the Cevennes, who had fled to London
+ after the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and whose paroxysms of
+ religious hysteria at length brought them into trouble with the
+ authorities (1707). Paris saw an outbreak of the same kind of ecstasy,
+ though on a much more formidable scale, among the Jansenist fanatics,
+ from 1727 down to 1758, or later. Some of the best attested miracles
+ in the whole history of the supernatural were wrought at the tomb of
+ the Jansenist deacon, Paris.<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id=
+ "FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class=
+ "fnanchor">[30]</a> The works of faith exalted multitudes into
+ convulsive transports; men and women underwent the most cruel
+ tortures, in the hope of securing a descent upon them of the divine
+ grace. The sober citizen, whose journal is so useful a guide to
+ domestic events in France from the Regency to the Peace of 1763, tells
+ us the effect of this hideous revival upon public sentiment. People
+ began to see, he says, what they were to think of the miracles of
+ antiquity. The more they went into these matters, whether miracles or
+ prophecies, the more obscurity they discovered in the one, the more
+ doubt about the other. Who could tell that they had not been
+ accredited and established in remote times with as little foundation
+ as what was then passing under men's very eyes? Just in the same way,
+ the violent and prolonged debates, the intrigue, the tergiversation,
+ which attended the acceptance of the famous Bull Unigenitus, taught
+ shrewd observers how it is that religions establish themselves. They
+ also taught how little respect is due in our minds and consciences to
+ the great points which the universal church claims to have
+ decided.<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a></p>
+
+ <p>These are the circumstances which explain the rude and vigorous
+ scepticism of Diderot's first performances. And they explain the
+ influence of Shaftesbury over him. Neither Diderot nor his
+ contemporaries were ready at once to plunge into the broader and
+ firmer negation to which they afterwards committed themselves. No
+ doubt some of the politeness which he shows to Christianity, both in
+ the notes to his translation of Shaftesbury, and in his own
+ Philosophic Thoughts, is no more than an ironical deference to
+ established prejudices. The notes to the Essay on Merit and Virtue
+ show that Diderot, like all the other French revolters against
+ established prejudice, had been deeply influenced by the shrewd-witted
+ Montaigne. But the ardour of the disciple pressed objections home with
+ a trenchancy that is very unlike the sage distillations of the master.
+ It was from Shaftesbury, however, that he borrowed common sense as a
+ philosophic principle. Shaftesbury had indirectly drawn it from Locke,
+ and through Hutcheson it became the source and sponsor of the Scottish
+ philosophy of that century. This was a weapon exactly adapted for
+ dealing with a theology that was discredited in the eyes of all cool
+ observers by the hysterical extravagances of one set of religionists,
+ and the factious pretensions of their rivals. And no other weapon was
+ at hand. The historic or critical method of investigation was
+ impossible, for the age did not possess the requisite learning. The
+ indirect attack from the side of physical science was equally
+ impossible. The bearing of Newton's great discovery on the current
+ conceptions of the Creator and the supposed system of the divine
+ government, was not yet fully realised. The other scientific ideas
+ which have since made the old hypothesis less credible, were not at
+ that time even conceived.</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot did indeed perceive even so early as this that the
+ controversy was passing from the metaphysicians to the physicists.
+ Though he for the moment misinterpreted the ultimate direction of the
+ effect of experimental discovery, he discerned its potency in the
+ field of theological discussion. "It is not from the hands of the
+ metaphysician," he said, "that atheism has received the weightiest
+ strokes. The sublime meditations of Malebranche and Descartes were
+ less calculated to shake materialism than a single observation of
+ Malpighi's. If this dangerous hypothesis is tottering in our days, it
+ is to experimental physics that such a result is due. It is only in
+ the works of Newton, of Muschenbroek, of Hartzoeker, and of
+ Nieuwentit, that people have found satisfactory proofs of the
+ existence of a being of sovereign intelligence. Thanks to the works of
+ these great men, the world is no longer a god; it is a machine with
+ its cords, its pulleys, its springs, its weights."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32"
+ class="fnanchor">[32]</a> In other words, Diderot had as yet not made
+ his way beyond the halting-place which has been the favourite goal of
+ English physicists from Newton down to Faraday.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33"
+ class="fnanchor">[33]</a> Consistent materialism had not yet
+ established itself in his mind. Meanwhile he laid about him with his
+ common sense, just as Voltaire did, though Diderot has more
+ weightiness of manner. If his use of the weapon cannot be regarded as
+ a decisive settlement of the true issues, we have to remember that he
+ himself became aware in a very short time of its inadequateness, and
+ proceeded to the discussion, as we shall presently see, from another
+ side.</p>
+
+ <p>The scope of the Philosophical Thoughts, and the attitude of
+ Diderot's mind when they were written, may be shown in a few brief
+ passages. The opening words point to the significance of the new time
+ in one direction, and they are the key-note to Diderot's whole
+ character. "People are for ever declaiming against the passions; they
+ set down to them all the pains that man endures, and quite forget that
+ they are also the source of all his pleasures. It is regarded as an
+ affront to reason if one dares to say a word in favour of its rivals.
+ Yet it is only passions, and strong passions, that can raise the soul
+ to great things. Sober passions produce only the commonplace. Deadened
+ passions degrade men of extraordinary quality. Constraint annihilates
+ the greatness and energy of nature. See that tree; 'tis to the luxury
+ of its branches that you owe the freshness and the wide-spreading
+ breadth of its shade, which you may enjoy till winter comes to despoil
+ it of its leafy tresses. An end to all excellence in poetry, in
+ painting, in music, as soon as superstition has once wrought upon
+ human temperament the effect of old age! It is the very climax of
+ madness to propose to oneself the ruin of the passions. A fine design
+ truly in your pietist, to torment himself like a convict in order to
+ desire nothing, love nothing, feel nothing; and he would end by
+ becoming a true monster, if he were to succeed!"<a name=
+ "FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34"
+ class="fnanchor">[34]</a> Many years afterwards he wrote in the same
+ sense to Madame Voland. "I have ever been the apologist of strong
+ passions; they alone move me. Whether they inspire me with admiration
+ or horror, I feel vehemently. If atrocious deeds that dishonour our
+ nature are due to them, it is by them also that we are borne to the
+ marvellous endeavour that elevates it. The man of mediocre passion
+ lives and dies like the brute." And so forth, until the writer is
+ carried to the perplexing position that "if we were bound to choose
+ between Racine, a bad husband, a bad father, a false friend, and a
+ sublime poet, and Racine, good father, good husband, good friend, and
+ dull worthy man, I hold to the first. Of Racine, the bad man, what
+ remains? Nothing. Of Racine, the man of genius? The work is
+ eternal."<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> Without attempting to
+ solve this problem in casuistry, we recognise Diderot's mood, and the
+ hatred with which it would be sure to inspire him for the starved and
+ mutilated passions of the Christian type. The humility, chastity,
+ obedience, indolent solitude, which had for centuries been glorified
+ by the Church, were monstrous to this vehement and energetic spirit.
+ The church had placed heroism in effacement. Diderot, borne to the
+ other extreme, left out even discipline. To turn from his maxims on
+ the foundation of conduct, to his maxims on opinion. As we have said,
+ his attitude is that of the sceptic:—</p>
+
+ <p>What has never been put in question, has not been proved. What
+ people have not examined without prepossessions, they have not
+ examined thoroughly. Scepticism is the touchstone. (§ 31.)</p>
+
+ <p>Incredulity is sometimes the vice of a fool, and credulity the
+ defect of a man of intelligence. The latter sees far into the
+ immensity of the Possible; the former scarcely sees anything possible
+ beyond the Actual. Perhaps this is what produces the timidity of the
+ one, and the temerity of the other.</p>
+
+ <p>A demi-scepticism is the mark of a feeble understanding. It reveals
+ a pusillanimous reasoner, who suffers himself to be alarmed by
+ consequences; a superstitious creature, who thinks he is honouring God
+ by the fetters which he imposes on his reason; a kind of unbeliever
+ who is afraid of unmasking himself to himself. For if truth has
+ nothing to lose by examination, as is the demi-sceptic's conviction,
+ what does he think in the bottom of his heart of those privileged
+ notions which he fears to sound, and which are placed in one of the
+ recesses of his brain, as in a sanctuary to which he dares not draw
+ nigh? (§ 34.)</p>
+
+ <p>Scepticism does not suit everybody. It supposes profound and
+ impartial examination. He who doubts because he does not know the
+ grounds of credibility, is no better than an ignoramus. The true
+ sceptic has counted and weighed the reasons. But it is no light matter
+ to weigh arguments. Who of us knows their value with any nicety? Every
+ mind has its own telescope. An objection that disappears in your eyes,
+ is a colossus in mine: you find an argument trivial that to me is
+ overwhelming.... If then it is so difficult to weigh reasons, and if
+ there are no questions which have not two sides, and nearly always in
+ equal measure, how come we to decide with such rapidity? (§ 24.)</p>
+
+ <p>When the pious cry out against scepticism, it seems to me that they
+ do not understand their own interest, or else that they are
+ inconsistent. If it is certain that a true faith to be embraced, and a
+ false faith to be abandoned, need only to be thoroughly known, then
+ surely it must be highly desirable that universal doubt should spread
+ over the surface of the earth, and that all nations should consent to
+ have the truth of their religions examined. Our missionaries would
+ find a good half of their work done for them. (§ 36.)</p>
+
+ <p>One thing to be remembered is that Diderot, like Vauvenargues,
+ Voltaire, Condorcet, always had Pascal in his mind when dealing with
+ apologetics. They all recognised in him a thinker with a love of
+ truth, as distinguished from the mere priest, Catholic, Anglican,
+ Brahman, or another. "Pascal," says Diderot, "was upright, but he was
+ timid and inclined to credulity. An elegant writer and a profound
+ reasoner, he would doubtless have enlightened the world, if Providence
+ had not abandoned him to people who sacrificed his talents to their
+ own antipathies. How much to be regretted, that he did not leave to
+ the theologians of his time the task of settling their own
+ differences; that he did not give himself up to the search for truth,
+ without reserve and without the fear of offending God by using all the
+ intelligence that God had given him. How much to be regretted that he
+ took for masters men who were not worthy to be his disciples, and was
+ foolish enough to think Arnauld, De Sacy, and Nicole, better men than
+ himself." (§ 14.) The Philosophic Thoughts are designed for an answer
+ in form to the more famous Thoughts of this champion of popular
+ theology. The first of the following extracts, for instance, recalls a
+ memorable illustration of Pascal's sublime pessimism. A few passages
+ will illustrate sufficiently the line of argument which led the
+ foremost men at the opening of the philosophic revolution to reject
+ the pretensions of Christianity:—</p>
+
+ <p>What voices! what cries! what groans! Who is it that has shut up in
+ dungeons all these piteous souls? What crimes have the poor wretches
+ committed? Who condemns them to such torments? <i>The God whom they
+ have offended</i>. Who then is this God? <i>A God full of
+ goodness</i>. But would a God full of goodness take delight in bathing
+ himself in tears? If criminals had to calm the furies of a tyrant,
+ what would they do more?... There are people of whom we ought not to
+ say that they fear God, but that they are horribly afraid of him....
+ Judging from the picture they paint of the Supreme Being, from his
+ wrath, from the rigour of his vengeance, from certain comparisons
+ expressive of the ratio between those whom he leaves to perish and
+ those to whom he deigns to stretch out a hand, the most upright soul
+ would be tempted to wish that such a being did not exist. (§§
+ 7-9.)</p>
+
+ <p>You present to an unbeliever a volume of writings of which you
+ claim to show him the divinity. But, before going into your proofs, he
+ will be sure to put some questions about your collection. Has it
+ always been the same? Why is it less ample now than it was some
+ centuries ago? By what right have they banished this work or that,
+ which another sect reveres, and preserved this or that, which the
+ other has repudiated?... You only answer all these difficulties by the
+ avowal that the first foundations of the faith are purely human; that
+ the choice between the manuscripts, the restoration of passages,
+ finally the collection, has been made according to rules of criticism.
+ Well, I do not refuse to concede to the divinity of the sacred books a
+ degree of faith proportioned to the certainty of these rules. (§
+ 59.)</p>
+
+ <p>People agree that it is of the last importance to employ none but
+ solid arguments for the defence of a creed. Yet they would gladly
+ persecute those who attempt to cry down the bad arguments. What then,
+ is it not enough to be a Christian? Am I also to be one upon wrong
+ grounds? (§57.)</p>
+
+ <p>The less probability a fact has, the more does the testimony of
+ history lose its weight. I should have no difficulty in believing a
+ single honest man who should tell me that the king had just won a
+ complete victory over the allies. But if all Paris were to assure me
+ that a dead man had come to life again, I should not believe a word of
+ it. That a historian should impose upon us, or that a whole people
+ should be mistaken—there is no miracle in that. (§46.)</p>
+
+ <p>What is God? A question that we put to children, and that
+ philosophers have much trouble to answer. We know the age at which a
+ child ought to learn to read, to sing, to dance, to begin Latin or
+ geometry. It is only in religion that you take no account of his
+ capacity. He scarcely hears what you say, before he is asked, What is
+ God? It is at the same instant, from the same lips, that he learns
+ that there are ghosts, goblins, were-wolves—and a God. (§25.)</p>
+
+ <p>The diversity of religious opinions has led the deists to invent an
+ argument that is perhaps more singular than sound. Cicero, having to
+ prove that the Romans were the most warlike people in the world,
+ adroitly draws this conclusion from the lips of their rivals. Gauls,
+ to whom if to any, do you yield the palm for courage? To the Romans.
+ Parthians, after you, who are the bravest of men? The Romans.
+ Africans, whom would you fear, if you were to fear any? The Romans.
+ Let us interrogate the religionists in this fashion, say the deists.
+ Chinese, what religion would be the best, if your own were not the
+ best? Naturalism. Mussulmans, what faith would you embrace, if you
+ abjured Mahomet? Naturalism. Christians, what is the true religion, if
+ it be not Christianity? Judaism. But you, O Jews, what is the true
+ religion, if Judaism be false? Naturalism. Now those, continues
+ Cicero, to whom the second place is awarded by unanimous consent, and
+ who do not in turn concede the first place to any—it is those who
+ incontestably deserve that place. (§62.)</p>
+ <hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+ <p>In all this we notice one constant characteristic of the eighteenth
+ century controversy about revealed religion. The assailant demands of
+ the defender an answer to all the intellectual or logical objections
+ that could possibly be raised by one who had never been a Christian,
+ and who refused to become a Christian until these objections could be
+ met. No account is taken of the mental conditions by which a creed is
+ engendered and limited; nor of the train of historic circumstance
+ which prepares men to receive it. The modern apologist escapes by
+ explaining religion; the apologist of a hundred years ago was required
+ to prove it. The end of such a method was inevitably a negation. The
+ objective propositions of a creed with supernatural pretensions can
+ never be demonstrated from natural or rationalistic premisses. And if
+ they could be so demonstrated, it would only be on grounds that are
+ equally good for some other creeds with the same pretensions. The
+ sceptic was left triumphantly weighing one revealed system against
+ another in an equal balance.<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id=
+ "FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class=
+ "fnanchor">[36]</a></p>
+
+ <p>The position of the writer of the Philosophical Thoughts is
+ distinctly theistic. Yet there is at least one striking passage to
+ show how forcibly some of the arguments on the other side impressed
+ him. "I open," says Diderot, "the pages of a celebrated professor, and
+ I read—'Atheists, I concede to you that movement is essential to
+ matter; what conclusion do you draw from that? That the world results
+ from the fortuitous concourse of atoms? You might as well say that
+ Homer's Iliad, or Voltaire's Henriade, is a result of the fortuitous
+ concourse of written characters.' Now for my part, I should be very
+ sorry to use that reasoning to an atheist; the comparison would give
+ him a very easy game to play. According to the laws of the analysis of
+ chances, he would say to me, I ought not to be surprised that a thing
+ comes to pass when it is possible, and the difficulty of the event is
+ compensated by the number of throws. There is a certain number of
+ throws in which I would safely back myself to bring 100,000 sixes at
+ once with 100,000 dice. Whatever the definite number of the letters
+ with which I am invited fortuitously to produce the Iliad, there is a
+ certain definite number of throws which would make the proposal
+ advantageous for me; nay, my advantage would be infinite if the
+ quantity of throws accorded to me were infinite. Now, you grant to me
+ that matter exists from all eternity, and that movement is essential
+ to it. In return for this concession, I will suppose with you that the
+ world has no limits; that the multitude of atoms is infinite, and that
+ this order, which astonishes you, nowhere contradicts itself. Well,
+ from these reciprocal admissions there follows nothing else unless it
+ be this, that the possibility of engendering the universe fortuitously
+ is very small, but that the number of throws is infinite, or in other
+ words, that <i>the difficulty of the event is more than sufficiently
+ compensated by the multitude of the throws. Therefore, if anything
+ ought to be repugnant to reason, it is the supposition that,—matter
+ being in motion from all eternity, and there being perhaps in the
+ infinite number of possible combinations an infinite number of
+ admirable arrangements,—none of these admirable arrangements would
+ have been met with, out of the infinite multitude of all those which
+ matter successively took on. Therefore the mind ought to be more
+ astonished at the hypothetical duration of chaos."</i><a name=
+ "FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37"
+ class="fnanchor">[37]</a> (§ 21.)</p>
+
+ <p>In a short continuation of the Philosophical Thoughts entitled On
+ the Sufficiency of Natural Religion, Diderot took the next step, and
+ turned towards that faith which the votaries of each creed allow to be
+ the best after their own. Even here he is still in the atmosphere of
+ negation. He desires no more than to show that revealed religion
+ confers no advantages which are not already secured by natural
+ religion. "The revealed law contains no moral precept which I do not
+ find recommended and practised under the law of nature; therefore it
+ has taught us nothing new upon morality. The revealed law has brought
+ us no new truth; for what is a truth but a proposition referring to an
+ object, conceived in terms which present clear ideas to me, and the
+ connection of which with one another is intelligible to me? Now
+ revealed religion has introduced no such propositions to us. What it
+ has added to the natural law consists of five or six propositions
+ which are not a whit more intelligible to me than if they were
+ expressed in ancient Carthaginian, inasmuch as the ideas represented
+ by the terms, and the connection among these ideas, escape me
+ entirely."<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a></p>
+
+ <p>There is no sign in this piece that Diderot had examined the
+ positive grounds of natural religion, or that he was ready with any
+ adequate answer to the argument which Butler had brought forward in
+ the previous decade of the century. We do not see that he is aware as
+ yet of there being as valid objections on his own sceptical principles
+ to the alleged data of naturalistic deism, as to the pretensions of a
+ supernatural religion. He was content with Shaftesbury's position.</p>
+
+ <p>Shaftesbury's influence on Diderot was permanent. It did not long
+ remain so full and entire as it was now in the sphere of religious
+ belief, but the traces of it never disappeared from his notions on
+ morals and art. Shaftesbury's cheerfulness and geniality in
+ philosophising were thoroughly sympathetic to Diderot. The optimistic
+ harmony which the English philosopher, coming after Leibnitz, assumed
+ as the starting-point of his ethical and religious ideas, was not only
+ highly congenial to Diderot's sanguine temperament; it was a most
+ attractive way of escape from the disorderly and confused theological
+ wilderness of sin, asceticism, miracle, and the other monkeries. This
+ naturalistic religion may seem a very unsafe and comfortless
+ halting-place to us. But to men who heard of religion only in
+ connection with the Bull Unigenitus and confessional certificates,
+ with some act of intolerance or cruelty, with futile disputes about
+ grace and the Five Propositions, the naturalism which Shaftesbury
+ taught in prose and Pope versified was like the dawn after the
+ foulness of night. Those who wished to soften the inhuman rigour of
+ the criminal procedure of the time<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id=
+ "FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class=
+ "fnanchor">[39]</a> used to appeal from customary ordinances and
+ written laws to the law natural. The law natural was announced to have
+ preceded any law of human devising. In the same way, those who wished
+ to disperse the darkness of unintelligible dogmas and degraded
+ ecclesiastical usages, appealed to the simplicity, light, and purity
+ of that natural religion which was supposed to have been overlaid and
+ depraved by the special superstitions of the different communities of
+ the world.</p>
+
+ <p>"Pope's Essay on Man," wrote Voltaire after his return from England
+ (1728), "seems to me the finest didactic poem, the most useful, the
+ most sublime, that was ever written in any tongue. 'Tis true the whole
+ substance of it is to be found in Shaftesbury's Characteristics, and I
+ do not know why Pope gives all the honour of it to Bolingbroke,
+ without saying a word of the celebrated Shaftesbury, the pupil of
+ Locke."<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> The ground of this
+ enthusiastic appreciation of the English naturalism was not merely
+ that it made morality independent of religion, which Shaftesbury took
+ great pains to do. It also identified religion with all that is
+ beautiful and harmonious in the universal scheme. It surrounded the
+ new faith with a pure and lofty poetry, that enabled it to confront
+ the old on more than equal terms of dignity and elevation.
+ Shaftesbury, and Diderot after him, ennobled human nature by placing
+ the principle of virtue, the sense of goodness, within the breast of
+ man. Diderot held to this idea throughout, as we shall see. That he
+ did so explains a kind of phraseology about virtue and morality in his
+ letters to Madame Voland and elsewhere, which would otherwise sound
+ disagreeably like cant. Finally, Shaftesbury's peculiar attribution of
+ beauty to morality, his reference of ethical matters to a kind of
+ taste, the tolerably equal importance attributed by him to a sense of
+ beauty and to the moral sense, all impressed Diderot with a mark that
+ was not effaced. In the text of the Inquiry the author pronounces it a
+ childish affectation in the eyes of any man who weighs things maturely
+ to deny that there is in moral beings, just as in corporeal objects, a
+ true and essential beauty, a real sublime. The eagerness with which
+ Diderot seized on this idea from the first, is shown in the
+ declamatory foot-note which he here appends to his original.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41"
+ class="fnanchor">[41]</a> It was the source, by a process of inverted
+ application, of that ethical colouring in his criticisms on art which
+ made them so new and so interesting, because it carried æsthetic
+ beyond technicalities, and associated it with the real impulses and
+ circumstances of human life.<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id=
+ "FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class=
+ "fnanchor">[42]</a></p>
+
+ <p>One of Diderot's writings composed about our present date (1747),
+ the Promenade du Sceptique, did not see the light until after his
+ death. His daughter tells us that a police agent came one day to the
+ house, and proceeded to search the author's room. He found a
+ manuscript, said, "Good, that is what I am looking for," thrust it
+ into his pocket, and went away. Diderot did his best to recover his
+ piece, but never succeeded.<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id=
+ "FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class=
+ "fnanchor">[43]</a> A copy of it came into the hands of Naigeon, and
+ it seems to have been retained by Malesherbes, the director of the
+ press, out of goodwill to the author. If it had been printed, it would
+ certainly have cost him a sojourn in Vincennes.</p>
+
+ <p>We have at first some difficulty in realising how he police could
+ know the contents of an obscure author's desk. For one thing we have
+ to remember that Paris, though it had been enormously increased in the
+ days of Law and the System (1719-20), was still of a comparatively
+ manageable size. In 1720, though the population of the whole realm was
+ only fourteen or fifteen millions, that of Paris had reached no less a
+ figure than a million and a half. After the explosion of the System,
+ its artificial expansion naturally came to an end. By the middle of
+ the century the highest estimate of the population does not make it
+ much more than eight hundred thousand.<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id=
+ "FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class=
+ "fnanchor">[44]</a> This, unlike the socially unwholesome and
+ monstrous agglomerations of Paris or London in our own time, was a
+ population over which police supervision might be made tolerably
+ effective. It was more like a very large provincial town. Again, the
+ inhabitants were marked off into groups or worlds with a definiteness
+ that is now no longer possible. One-fifth of the population, for
+ instance, consisted of domestic servants.<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id=
+ "FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class=
+ "fnanchor">[45]</a> There were between twenty-eight and thirty
+ thousand professional beggars.<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id=
+ "FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class=
+ "fnanchor">[46]</a> The legal circle was large, and was deeply
+ engrossed by its own interests and troubles. The world of authorship,
+ though extremely noisy and profoundly important, still made only a
+ small group. One effect of a censorship is to produce much gossip and
+ whispering about suspected productions before they see the light, and
+ these whispers let the police into as many secrets as they choose to
+ know.</p>
+
+ <p>In Diderot's case, his unsuspecting good-nature to all comers made
+ his affairs accessible enough. His house was the resort of all the
+ starving hacks in Paris, and he has left us more than one graphic
+ picture of the literary drudge of that time. He writes, for instance,
+ about a poor devil to whom he had given a manuscript to copy. "The
+ time for which he had promised it to me expired, and as my man did not
+ appear, I became uneasy, and started in search of him. I found him in
+ a hole about as big as my fist, almost pitch-dark, without the
+ smallest scrap of curtain or hanging to cover the nakedness of his
+ walls, a couple of straw-bottomed chairs, a truckle-bed with a quilt
+ riddled by the moths, a box in the corner of the chimney and rags of
+ every sort stuck upon it, a small tin lamp to which a bottle served as
+ support, and on a shelf some dozen first-rate books. I sat talking
+ there for three-quarters of an hour. My man was as bare as a worm,
+ lean, black, dry, but perfectly serene. He said nothing, but munched
+ his crust of bread with good appetite, and bestowed a caress from time
+ to time on his beloved, on the miserable bedstead that took up
+ two-thirds of his room. If I had never learnt before that happiness
+ resides in the soul, my Epictetus of Hyacinth Street would have taught
+ it me right thoroughly."<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id=
+ "FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class=
+ "fnanchor">[47]</a></p>
+
+ <p>The history of one of these ragged clients is to our point. "Among
+ those," he wrote to Madame Voland,<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id=
+ "FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class=
+ "fnanchor">[48]</a> "whom chance and misery sent to my address was one
+ Glénat, who knew mathematics, wrote a good hand, and was in want of
+ bread. I did all I could to extricate him from his embarrassments. I
+ went begging for customers for him on every side. If he came at
+ meal-times, i would not let him go; if he lacked shoes, I gave him
+ them; now and then I slipped a shilling into his hands as well. he had
+ the air of the worthiest man in the world, and he even bore his
+ neediness with a certain gaiety that used to amuse me. I was fond of
+ chatting with him; he seemed to set little store by fortune, fame, and
+ most of the other things that charm or dazzle us in life. Seven or
+ eight days ago Damilaville wrote to send this man to him, for one of
+ his friends who had a manuscript for him to copy. I send him; the
+ manuscript is entrusted to him—a work on religion and government. i do
+ not know how it came about, but that manuscript is now in the hands of
+ the lieutenant of police. Damilaville gives me word of this. I hasten
+ to my friend Glénat, to warn him to count no more upon me. 'And why am
+ I not to count upon you?' 'Because you are a marked man. The police
+ have their eyes upon you and 'tis impossible to send work to you.'
+ 'But, my dear sir, there's no risk, so long as you entrust nothing
+ reprehensible to my hands. The police only come here when they scent
+ game. I cannot tell how they do it, but they are never mistaken.' 'Ah
+ well, I at any rate know how it is, and you have let me see much more
+ in the the matter than I ever expected to learn from you,' and with
+ that I turn my back on my rascal." Diderot having occasion to visit
+ the lieutenant of police, introduced the matter, and could not
+ withhold an energetic remonstrance against such an odious abuse of a
+ man's kindness of heart, as the introduction of spies to his fireside.
+ M. de Sartine laughed and Diderot took his leave, vowing that all the
+ wretches who should come to him for the future, with cuffs dirty and
+ torn, with holes in their stockings and holes in their shoes, with
+ hair all unkempt, in shabby overcoats with many rents, or scanty black
+ suits with starting seams, with all the tones and looks of distressed
+ worth, would henceforth seem to him no better than police emissaries
+ and scoundrels set to spy on him. The vow, we may be sure, was soon
+ forgotten, but the story shows how seriously in one respect the man of
+ letters in France was worse off than his brother in England.</p>
+
+ <p>The world would have suffered no irreparable loss if the police had
+ thrown the Sceptic's Walk into the fire. It is an allegory designed to
+ contrast the life of religion, the life of philosophy, and the life of
+ sensual pleasure. Of all forms of composition, an allegory most
+ depends for its success upon the rapidity of the writer's eye for new
+ felicities. Accuracy, verisimilitude, sustention, count for nothing in
+ comparison with imaginative adroitness and variety. Bunyan had such an
+ eye, and so, with infinitely more vivacity, had Voltaire. Diderot had
+ not the deep sincerity or realism of conviction of the one; nor had he
+ the inimitable power of throwing himself into a fancy, that was
+ possessed by the other. He was the least agile, the least felicitous,
+ the least ready, of composers. His allegory of the avenue of thorns,
+ the avenue of chestnut-trees, and the avenue of flowers, is an
+ allegory, unskilful, obvious, poor, and not any more amusing than if
+ it's matter had been set forth without any attempt at fanciful
+ decoration. The blinded saints among the thorns, and the voluptuous
+ sinners among the flowers, are rather mechanical figures. The
+ translation into the dialect required by the allegorical situation, of
+ a sceptic's aversion for gross superstition on the one hand, and for
+ gross hedonism on the other, is forced and wooden. The most
+ interesting of the three sections is the second, containing a
+ discussion in which the respective parts are taken by a deist, a
+ pantheist, a subjective idealist, a sceptic, and an atheist. The
+ allegory falls into the background, and we have a plain statement of
+ some of the objections that may be made by the sceptical atheist both
+ to revelation and to natural religion. A starry sky calls forth the
+ usual glorification of the maker of so much beauty. "That is all
+ imagination," rejoins the atheist. "It is mere presumption. We have
+ before us an unknown machine, on which certain observations have been
+ made. Ignorant people who have only examined a single wheel of it, of
+ which they hardly know more than a tooth or two, form conjectures upon
+ the way in which their cogs fit in with a hundred thousand other
+ wheels. And then to finish like artisans, they label the work with the
+ name of it's author."</p>
+
+ <p>The defender justifies this by the argument from a repeater-watch,
+ of which Paley and others have made so much use. We at once ascribe
+ the structure and movement of a repeater-watch to intelligent
+ creation. "No—things are not equal," says the atheist. "You are
+ comparing a finished work, whose origin and manufacture we know, to an
+ infinite piece of complexity, whose beginnings, whose present
+ condition, and whose end are all alike unknown, and about whose author
+ you have nothing better than guesses."</p>
+
+ <p>But does not its structure announce an author? "No; you do not see
+ who nor what he is. Who told you that the order you admire here belies
+ itself nowhere else? Are you allowed to conclude from a point in space
+ to infinite space? You pile a vast piece of ground with earth-heaps
+ thrown here or there by chance, but among which the worm and the ant
+ find convenient dwelling-places enough. What would you think of these
+ insects, if, reasoning after your fashion, they fell into raptures
+ over the intelligence of the gardener who had arranged all these
+ materials so delightfully for their convenience?"<a name=
+ "FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49"
+ class="fnanchor">[49]</a></p>
+
+ <p>In this rudimentary form the chief speaker presses some of the
+ objections to optimistic deism from the point of view of the fixed
+ limitations, the inevitable relativity, of human knowledge. This kind
+ of objection had been more pithily expressed by Pascal long before, in
+ the famous article of his Thoughts, on the difficulty of demonstrating
+ the existence of a deity by light of nature.<a name="FNanchor_50_50"
+ id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class=
+ "fnanchor">[50]</a> Diderot's argument does not extend to dogmatic
+ denial. It only shows that the deist is exposed to an attack from the
+ same sceptical armoury from which he had drawn his own weapons for
+ attacking revelation. It is impossible to tell how far Diderot went at
+ this moment. The trenchancy with which his atheist urges his
+ reasoning, proves that the writer was fully alive to its force. On the
+ other hand, the atheist is left in the midst of a catastrophe. On his
+ return home, he finds his children murdered, his house pillaged, and
+ his wife carried off. And we are told that he could not complain on
+ his own principles.</p>
+
+ <p>If the absence of witnesses allowed the robber to commit his crime
+ with impunity, why should he not? Again, there is a passage in which
+ the writer seems to be speaking his own opinions. An interlocutor
+ maintains the importance of keeping the people in bondage to certain
+ prejudices. "What prejudices? If a man once admits the existence of a
+ God, the reality of moral good and evil, the immortality of the soul,
+ future rewards and punishments, what need has he of prejudices?
+ Supposing him initiated in all the mysteries of transubstantiation,
+ consubstantiation, the Trinity, hypostatical union, predestination,
+ incarnation, and the rest, will he be any the better citizen?"<a name=
+ "FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51"
+ class="fnanchor">[51]</a></p>
+
+ <p>In truth, Diderot's mind was at this time floating in an atmosphere
+ of rationalistic negation, and the moral of his piece, as he hints,
+ points first to the extravagance of Catholicism, next to the vanity of
+ the pleasures of the world, and lastly, to the unfathomable
+ uncertainty of philosophy. Still, we may discern a significant leaning
+ towards the theory of the eternity of matter, which has arranged
+ itself and assumed variety of form by virtue of its inherent quality
+ of motion.<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a></p>
+
+ <p>It is a characteristic and displeasing mark of the time that
+ Diderot in the midst of these serious speculations, should have set
+ himself (1748) to the composition of a story in the kind which the
+ author of the <i>Sofa</i> had made highly popular. The mechanism of
+ this deplorable piece is more grossly disgusting—I mean æsthetically,
+ not morally—than anything to be found elsewhere in the too voluminous
+ library of impure literature. The idea would seem to have been
+ borrowed from one of the old Fabliaux.<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id=
+ "FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class=
+ "fnanchor">[53]</a> But what is tolerable in the quaint and
+ <i>naïf</i> verse of the twelfth or thirteenth century, becomes
+ shocking when deliberately rendered by a grave man into bald
+ unblushing prose of the eighteenth. The humour, the rich sparkle, the
+ wit, the merry <i>gaillardise</i>, have all vanished; we are left with
+ the vapid dregs of an obscene anachronism. Mr. Carlyle, who knows how
+ to be manly in these matters, and affects none of the hypocritical
+ airs of our conventional criticism, yet has not more energetically
+ than truly pronounced this "the beastliest of all past, present, or
+ future dull novels." As "the next mortal creature, even a Reviewer,
+ again compelled to glance into that book," I have felt the propriety
+ of our humorist's injunction to such a one, "to bathe himself in
+ running water, put on change of raiment, and be unclean until the
+ even." Diderot himself, as might have been expected, soon had the
+ grace to repent him of this shameful book, and could never hear it
+ mentioned without a very lively embarrassment.<a name="FNanchor_54_54"
+ id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class=
+ "fnanchor">[54]</a></p>
+
+ <p>As I have said before,<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id=
+ "FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class=
+ "fnanchor">[55]</a> it was such books as this, as Crébillon's novels,
+ as Duclos's Confessions du Comte</p>
+
+ <p>X., and the dissoluteness of manners indicated by them, which
+ invested Rousseau's New Heloïsa (1761) with its delightful and
+ irresistible fascinations. Having pointed out elsewhere the
+ significance of the licentiousness from which the philosophic party
+ did not escape untainted,<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id=
+ "FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class=
+ "fnanchor">[56]</a> I need not here do more than make two short
+ remarks. First, the corruption which had seized the court after the
+ death of Lewis XIV. in the course of a few years had reached the
+ middle class in the town. The loosening of social fibre, caused by the
+ insenate speculation at the time of Law, no doubt furthered the spread
+ of demoralisation. Second, the reaction against the Church involved
+ among its other elements a passionate contempt for all asceticism.
+ This happened to fall in with the general relaxation of morals that
+ followed Lewis's gloomy rigour. Consequently even men of pure life,
+ like Condorcet, carried the theoretical protest against asceticism so
+ far as to vindicate the practical immorality of the time. This is one
+ of those enormous drawbacks that people seldom take into account when
+ they are enumerating the blessings of superstition. Mediæval
+ superstition had produced some advantages, but now came the set-off.
+ Durable morality had been associated with a transitory religious
+ faith. The faith fell into intellectual discredit, and sexual morality
+ shared its decline for a short season. This must always be the natural
+ consequence of building sound ethics on the shifting sands and rotting
+ foundations of theology.</p>
+
+ <p>Such literature as these tales of Diderot's, was the mirror both of
+ the ordinary practical sentiment and the philosophic theory. A nation
+ pays dearly for one of those outbreaks, when they happen to stamp
+ themselves in a literary form that endures. There are those who hold
+ that Louvet's Faublas is to this day a powerful agent in the
+ depravation of the youth of France. Diderot, however, had not the most
+ characteristic virtues of French writing; he was no master in the art
+ of the <i>naïf</i>, nor in delicate malice, nor in sprightly cynicism.
+ His book, consequently, has not lived, and we need not waste more
+ words upon it. <i>Chaque esprit a sa lie</i>, wrote one who for a
+ while had sat at Diderot's feet;<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id=
+ "FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class=
+ "fnanchor">[57]</a> and we may dismiss this tale as the lees of
+ Diderot's strong, careless, sensualised understanding. He was
+ afterwards the author of a work, La Religieuse, on which the
+ superficial critic may easily pour out the vials of affected wrath.
+ There, however, he was executing a profound pathological study in a
+ serious spirit. If the subject is horrible, we have to blame the
+ composition of human character, or the mischievousness of a human
+ institution. La Religieuse is no continuation of the vein of
+ defilement which began and ended with the story of 1748—a story which
+ is one among so many illustrations of Guizot's saying about the
+ eighteenth century, that it was the most tempting and seductive of all
+ centuries, for it promised full satisfaction at once to all the
+ greatnesses of humanity and to all its weaknesses. Hettner quotes a
+ passage from the minor writings of Niebuhr, in which the historian
+ compares Diderot with Petronius, as having both of them been honest
+ and well-intentioned men, who in shameless times were carried towards
+ cynicism by their deep contempt for the prevailing vice. "If Diderot
+ were alive now," says Niebuhr, "and if Petronius had only lived in the
+ fourth instead of the third century, then the painting of obscenity
+ would have been odious to them, and the inducement to it infinitely
+ smaller."<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a> There is no trace in
+ Diderot of this deep contempt for the viciousness of his time. All
+ that can be said is that he did not escape it in his earlier years, in
+ spite of the natural wholesomeness and rectitude of his character.</p>
+
+ <p>It is worthy of remark that the dissoluteness of the middle portion
+ of the century was not associated with the cynical and contemptuous
+ view about women that usually goes with relaxed morality. There was a
+ more or less distinct consciousness of a truth which has ever since
+ grown into clearer prominence with the advance of thought since the
+ Revolution. It is that the sphere and destiny of women are among the
+ three or four foremost questions in social improvement. This is now
+ perceived on all sides, profound as are the differences of opinion
+ upon the proper solution of the problem. A hundred years ago this
+ perception was vague and indefinite, but there was an unmistakable
+ apprehension that the Catholic ideal of womanhood was no more adequate
+ to the facts of life, than Catholic views about science, or property,
+ or labour, or political order and authority.</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot has left some curious and striking reflections upon the
+ fate and character of women. He gives no signs of feeling after social
+ reorganisation; he only speaks as one brooding in uneasy meditation
+ over a very mournful perplexity. There is no sentimentalising, after
+ the fashion of Jean Jacques. He does not neglect the plain physical
+ facts, about which it is so difficult in an age of morbid reserve to
+ speak with freedom, yet about which it is fatal to be silent. He
+ indulged in none of those mischievous flatteries of women, which
+ satisfy narrow observers, or coxcombs, or the uxorious. "Never
+ forget," he said, "that for lack of reflection and principles, nothing
+ penetrates down to a certain profoundness of conviction in the
+ understanding of women. The ideas of justice, virtue, vice, goodness,
+ badness, float on the surface of their souls. They have preserved
+ self-love and personal interest with all the energy of nature.
+ Although more civilized than we are outwardly, they have remained true
+ savages inwardly.... It is in the passion of love, the access of
+ jealousy, the transports of maternal tenderness, the instants of
+ superstition, the way in which they show epidemic and popular notions,
+ that women amaze us; fair as the seraphin of Klopstock, terrible as
+ the fiends of Milton.... The distractions of a busy and contentious
+ life break up our passions. A woman, on the contrary, broods over her
+ passions; they are a fixed point on which her idleness or the
+ frivolity of her duties holds her attention fast.... Impenetrable in
+ dissimulation, cruel in vengeance, tenacious in their designs, without
+ scruples about the means of success, animated by a deep and secret
+ hatred against the despotism of man—it seems as if there were among
+ them a sort of league, such as exists among the priests of all
+ nations.... The symbol of women in general is that of the Apocalypse,
+ on the front of which is inscribed <i>Mystery</i>.... If we have more
+ reason than women have, they have far more instinct than we
+ have."<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a> All this was said in no
+ bitterness, but in the spirit of the strong observer.</p>
+
+ <p>Cynical bitterness is as misplaced as frivolous adulation. Diderot
+ had a deep pity for women. Their physical weaknesses moved him to
+ compassion. To these are added the burden of their maternal function,
+ and the burden of unequal laws. "The moment which shall deliver the
+ girl from subjection to her parents is come; her imagination opens to
+ a future thronged by chimæras; her heart swims in secret delight.
+ Rejoice while thou canst, luckless creature! Time would have weakened
+ the tyranny that thou hast left; time will strengthen the tyranny that
+ awaits thee. They choose a husband for her. She becomes a mother. It
+ is in anguish, at the peril of their lives, at the cost of their
+ charms, often to the damage of their health, that they give birth to
+ their little ones. The organs that mark their sex are subject to two
+ incurable maladies. There is, perhaps, no joy comparable to that of
+ the mother as she looks on her first-born; but the moment is dearly
+ bought. Time advances, beauty passes; there come the years of neglect,
+ of spleen, of weariness. 'Tis in pain that Nature disposes them for
+ maternity; in pain and illness, dangerous and prolonged, she brings
+ maternity to its close. What is a woman after that? Neglected by her
+ husband, left by her children, a nullity in society, then piety
+ becomes her one and last resource. In nearly every part of the world,
+ the cruelty of the civil laws against women is added to the cruelty of
+ Nature. They have been treated like weak-minded children. There is no
+ sort of vexation which, among civilised peoples, man cannot inflict
+ upon woman with impunity."<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id=
+ "FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class=
+ "fnanchor">[60]</a></p>
+
+ <p>The thought went no further, in Diderot's mind, than this pathetic
+ ejaculation. He left it to the next generation, to Condorcet and
+ others, to attack the problem practically; effectively to assert the
+ true theory that we must look to social emancipation in women, and
+ moral discipline in men, to redress the physical disadvantages.
+ Meanwhile Diderot deserves credit for treating the position and
+ character of women in a civilised society with a sense of reality; and
+ for throwing aside those faded gallantries of poetic and literary
+ convention, that screen a broad and dolorous gulf.</p>
+ <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+ <h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.<br />
+ THE NEW PHILOSOPHY.</h2>
+
+ <p>It is a common prejudice to treat Voltaire as if he had done
+ nothing save write the Pucelle and mock at Habakkuk. Every serious and
+ instructed student knows better. Voltaire's popularisation of the
+ philosophy of Newton (1738) was a stimulus of the greatest importance
+ to new thought in France. In a chapter of this work he had explained
+ with his usual matchless terseness and lucidity Berkeley's theory of
+ vision. The principle of this theory is, as every one knows, that
+ figures, magnitudes, situations, distances, are not sensations but
+ inferences; they are not the immediate revelations of sight, but the
+ products of association and intellectual construction; they are not
+ directly judged by vision, but by imagination and experience. If this
+ be so, neither situation, nor distance, nor magnitude, nor figure,
+ would be at once discerned by one born blind, supposing him suddenly
+ to receive sight. Voltaire then describes the results of the operation
+ performed by Cheselden (1728) on a lad who had been blind from his
+ birth. This experiment was believed to confirm all that Locke and
+ Berkeley had foreseen, for it was long before the patient could
+ distinguish objects by size, distance, or shape.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61"
+ class="fnanchor">[61]</a> Condillac had renewed the interest which
+ Voltaire had first kindled in the subject, by referring to Cheselden's
+ experiment in his first work, which was published in 1746.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62"
+ class="fnanchor">[62]</a></p>
+
+ <p>It happened that in 1748 Réaumur couched the eyes of a girl who had
+ been born blind. Diderot sought to be admitted to the operation, but
+ the favour was denied him, and he expressed his resentment in terms
+ which, as we shall see, cost him very dear. As he could not witness
+ the experiment, he began to meditate upon the subject, and the result
+ was the <i>Letter on the Blind for the Use of those who See</i>.
+ published in 1749—the date, it may be observed in passing, of another
+ very important work in the development of materialistic speculation,
+ David Hartley's <i>Observations on man, his frame, his duty, and his
+ expectations</i>. Diderot's real disappointment at not being admitted
+ to the operation was slight. In a vigorous passage he shows the
+ difficulties in the way of conducting such an experiment under the
+ conditions necessary to make it conclusive. To prepare the born-blind
+ to answer philosophical interrogatories truly, and then to put these
+ interrogatories rightly, would have been a feat, he declares, not
+ unworthy of the united talents of Newton, Descartes, Locke, and
+ Leibnitz. Unless the patient were placed in such conditions as this,
+ Diderot thinks there would be more profit in questioning a blind
+ person of good sense, than in the answers of an uneducated person
+ receiving sight for the first time under abnormal and bewildering
+ circumstances.<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id=
+ "FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class=
+ "fnanchor">[63]</a> In this he was undoubtedly right. If the
+ experiment could be prepared under the delicate conditions proper to
+ make it demonstrative evidence, it would be final. But the experiment
+ had certainly not been so prepared in his time, and probably never
+ will be.<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Read in the light of the rich and elaborate speculative literature
+ which England is producing in our own day, Diderot's once famous
+ Letter on the Blind seems both crude and loose in its thinking. Yet
+ considering the state of philosophy in France at the time of its
+ appearance, we are struck by the acuteness, the good sense, and the
+ originality of many of its positions. It was the first effective
+ introduction into France of these great and fundamental principles;
+ that all knowledge is relative to our intelligence, that thought is
+ not the measure of existence, nor the conceivableness of a proposition
+ the test of its truth, and that our experience is not the limit to the
+ possibilities of things. That is an impatient criticism which
+ dismisses the French philosophers with some light word as radically
+ shallow and impotent. Diderot grasped the doctrine of Relativity in
+ some of the most important and far-reaching of all its bearings. The
+ fact that he and his allies used the doctrine as a weapon of combat
+ against the standing organisation, is exactly what makes their history
+ worth writing about. The standing organisation was the antagonistic
+ doctrine incarnate. It made anthropomorphism and the absolute the very
+ base and spring alike of individual and of social life. No growth was
+ possible until this speculative base had been transformed. Hence the
+ profound significance of what looks like a mere discussion of one of
+ the minor problems of metaphysics. Diderot was not the first to
+ discover Relativity, nor did he establish it; but it was he who
+ introduced it into the literature of his country at the moment when
+ circumstances were ripe for it.</p>
+
+ <p>Condillac, as we have said, had published his first work, the Essay
+ on the Origin of Human Knowledge, three years before (1746). This was
+ a simple and undeveloped rendering of the doctrine of Locke, that the
+ ultimate source of our notions lies in impressions made upon the
+ senses, shaped and combined by reflection. It was not until 1754 that
+ Condillac published his more celebrated treatise on the Sensations, in
+ which he advanced a stride beyond Locke, and instead of tracing our
+ notions to the double source of sensation and reflection, maintained
+ that reflection itself is nothing but sensation "differently
+ transformed." In the first book, again, he had disputed Berkeley's
+ theory of vision: in the second, he gave a reasoned adhesion to it.
+ Now Diderot and Condillac had first been brought together by Rousseau,
+ when all three were needy wanderers about the streets of Paris. They
+ used to dine together once a week at a tavern, and it was Diderot who
+ persuaded a bookseller to give Condillac a hundred crowns for his
+ first manuscript. "The Paris booksellers," says Rousseau, "are very
+ arrogant and harsh to beginners; and metaphysics, then extremely
+ little in fashion, did not offer a very particularly attractive
+ subject."<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a> The constant intercourse
+ between Diderot and Condillac in the interval between the two works of
+ the great apostle of Sensationalism, may well account for the
+ remarkable development in doctrine. This is one of the many examples
+ of the share of Diderot's energetic and stimulating intelligence, in
+ directing and nourishing the movement of the time, its errors and
+ precipitancies included. On the other hand, the share of Condillac in
+ providing a text for Diderot's first considerable performance, is
+ equally evident.</p>
+
+ <p>The Letter on the Blind is an inquiry how far a modification of the
+ five senses, such as the congenital absence of one of them, would
+ involve a corresponding modification of the ordinary notions acquired
+ by men who are normally endowed in their capacity for sensation. It
+ considers the Intellect in a case where it is deprived of one of the
+ senses. The writer opens with an account of a visit made by himself
+ and some friends to a man born blind at Puisaux, a place seventy miles
+ from Paris. They asked him in what way he thought of the eyes. "They
+ are an organ on which the air produces the same effect as my stick
+ upon my hand." A mirror he described "as a machine which sets things
+ in relief away from themselves, if they are properly placed in
+ relation to it." This conception had formed itself in his mind in the
+ following way. The blind man only knows objects by touch. He is aware,
+ on the testimony of others, that we know objects by sight as he knows
+ them by touch; he can form no other notion. He is aware, again, that a
+ man cannot see his own face, though he can touch it. Sight, then, he
+ concludes, is a sort of touch, which only extends to objects different
+ from our own visage, and remote from us. Now touch only conveys to him
+ the idea of relief. A mirror, therefore, must be a machine which sets
+ us in relief out of ourselves. How many philosophers, cries Diderot,
+ have employed less subtlety to reach notions just as untrue?</p>
+
+ <p>The born-blind had a memory for sound in a surprising degree, and
+ countenances do not present more diversity to us than he observed in
+ voices. The voice has for such persons an infinite number of delicate
+ shades that escape us, because we have not the same reason for
+ attention that the blind have. The help that our senses lend to one
+ another, is an obstacle to their perfection.</p>
+
+ <p>The blind man said he should have been tempted to regard persons
+ endowed with sight as superior intelligences, if he had not found out
+ a hundred times how inferior we are in other respects. How do we
+ know—Diderot reflects upon this—that all the animals do not reason in
+ the same way, and look upon themselves as our equals or superiors,
+ notwithstanding our more complex and efficient intelligence? They may
+ accord to us a reason with which we should still have much need of
+ their instinct while they claim to be endowed with an instinct which
+ enables them to do very well without our reason.</p>
+
+ <p>When asked whether he should be glad to have sight, the born-blind
+ replied that, apart from curiosity, he would be just as well pleased
+ to have long arms: his hands would tell him what is going on in the
+ moon, better than our eyes or telescopes; and the eyes cease to see
+ earlier than the hands lose the sense of touch. It would therefore be
+ just as good to perfect in him the organ that he had, as to confer
+ upon him another which he had not. This is untrue. No conceivable
+ perfection of touch would reveal phenomena of light, and the longest
+ arms must leave those phenomena undisclosed.</p>
+
+ <p>After recounting various other peculiarities of thought, Diderot
+ notices that the blind man attaches slight importance to the sense of
+ shame. He would hardly understand the utility of clothes, for
+ instance, except as a protection against cold. He frankly told his
+ philosophising visitors that he could not see why one part of the body
+ should be covered rather than another. "I have never doubted," says
+ Diderot, "that the state of our organs and senses has much influence
+ both on our metaphysics and our morality." This, I may observe, does
+ not in the least show that in a society of human beings, not blind,
+ but endowed with vision, the sense of physical shame is a mere
+ prejudice of which philosophy will rid us. The fact that a blind man
+ discerns no ill in nakedness, has no bearing on the value or
+ naturalness of shame among people with eyes. And moreover, the fact
+ that delicacy or shame is not a universal human impulse, but is
+ established, and its scope defined, by a varying etiquette, does not
+ in the least affect the utility or wisdom of such an artificial
+ establishment and definition. The grounds of delicacy, though
+ connected with the senses, are fixed by considerations that spring
+ from the social reason. It seems to be true, as Diderot says, that the
+ born-blind are at first without physical delicacy; because delicacy
+ has its root in the consciousness that we are observed, while the
+ born-blind are not conscious that they are observed. It is found that
+ one of the most important parts of their education is to impress this
+ knowledge upon them.<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id=
+ "FNanchor_66_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class=
+ "fnanchor">[66]</a></p>
+
+ <p>But the artificiality of a moral acquisition is obviously no test
+ of its worth, nor of the reasons for preserving it. Diderot exclaims,
+ "Ah, madam, how different is the morality of a blind man from ours;
+ and how the morality of the deaf would differ from that of the blind;
+ and if a being should have a sense more than we have, how wofully
+ imperfect would he find our morality!" This is plainly a crude and
+ erroneous way of illustrating the important truth of the strict
+ relativity of ethical standards and maxims. Diderot speaks as if they
+ were relative simply and solely to our five wits, and would vary with
+ them only. Everybody now has learnt that morality depends not merely
+ on the five wits, but on the mental constitution within, and on the
+ social conditions without. It is to these rather than to the number of
+ our senses, that moral ideas are relative.</p>
+
+ <p>Passing over various other remarks, we come to those pages in the
+ Letter which apply the principle of relativity to the
+ master-conception of God. Diderot's argument on this point naturally
+ drew keener attention than the more disinterestedly scientific parts
+ of his contribution. People were not strongly agitated by the question
+ whether a blind man who had learned to distinguish a sphere from a
+ cube by touch, would instantly identify each of them if he received
+ sight.<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a></p>
+
+ <p>The question whether a blind man has as good reasons for believing
+ in the existence of a God as a man with sight can find, was of more
+ vivid interest. As a matter of fact, Diderot's treatment of the
+ narrower question (pp. 324, etc.) is more closely coherent than his
+ treatment of the wider one, for the simple reason that the special
+ limitation of experience in the born-blind cannot fairly be made to
+ yield any decisive evidence on the great, the insoluble enigma.</p>
+
+ <p>Here, as in the other part of his essay, Diderot followed the
+ method of interrogating the blind themselves. In this instance, he
+ turned to the most extraordinary example in history, of intellectual
+ mastery and scientific penetration in one who practically belonged to
+ the class of the born-blind; and this too in dealing with subjects
+ where sight might be thought most indispensable. From 1711 to 1739 one
+ of the professors of mathematics at Cambridge was Nicholas Saunderson,
+ who had lost his sight before he was twelve months old. He was a man
+ of striking mental vigour, an original and efficient teacher, and the
+ author of a book upon algebra which was considered meritorious in its
+ day. His knowledge of optics was highly remarkable. He had distinct
+ ideas of perspective, of the projections of the sphere, and of the
+ forms assumed by plane or solid figures in certain positions. For
+ performing computations he devised a machine of great ingenuity, which
+ also served the purpose, with certain modifications, of representing
+ geometrical diagrams. In religion he was a sceptic or something more,
+ and in his last hours Diderot supposes him to have engaged in a
+ discussion with a minister of religion, upon the arguments for the
+ existence of a deity drawn from final causes. This discussion Diderot
+ professes to reproduce, and he makes Saunderson discourse with much
+ eloquence and some pathos.</p>
+
+ <p>By one of those mystifications which make the French polemical
+ literature of the eighteenth century the despair of bibliographers,
+ Diderot cites as his authority a <i>Life of Saunderson</i>, by Dr.
+ Inchlif. He sets forth the title with great circumstantiality, but no
+ such book exists or ever did exist. The Royal Society of London,
+ however, took the jest of fathering atheism on one of its members in
+ bad part, and Diderot was systematically excluded from the honour of
+ admission to that learned body, as he was excluded all his life from
+ the French Academy.</p>
+
+ <p>The reasoning which Diderot puts into the professor's mouth is at
+ first a fervid enlargement of the text, that the argument drawn from
+ the wonders of nature is very weak evidence for blind men. Our power
+ of creating new objects, so to speak, by means of a little mirror, is
+ far more incomprehensible to them, than the stars which they have been
+ condemned never to behold. The luminous ball that moves from east to
+ west through the heavens, is a less astonishing thing to them than the
+ fire on the hearth which they can lessen or augment at
+ pleasure.<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a> "Why talk to me," says
+ Saunderson, "of all that fine spectacle which has never been made for
+ me? I have been condemned to pass my life in darkness; and you cite
+ marvels that I cannot understand, and that are only evidence for you
+ and for those who see as you do. If you want me to believe in God, you
+ must make me touch him." The minister replied that the sense of touch
+ ought to be enough to reveal the divinity to him in the admirable
+ mechanism of his organs. To this, Saunderson:—"I repeat, all that is
+ not as fine for me as it is for you. But the animal mechanism, even
+ were it as perfect as you pretend, and as I daresay it is—what has it
+ in common with a Being of sovereign intelligence? If it fills you with
+ astonishment, that is perhaps because you are in the habit of treating
+ as a prodigy anything that strikes you as being beyond your own
+ strength. I have been myself so often an object of admiration for you,
+ that I have a poor opinion of what surprises you. I have attracted
+ people from all parts of England, who could not conceive by what means
+ I could work at geometry. Well, you must agree that such persons had
+ not very exact notions about the possibility of things. Is a
+ phenomenon in our notions beyond the power of man? Then we instantly
+ say—<i>'Tis the handiwork of a God</i>. Nothing short of that can
+ content our vanity. Why can we not contrive to throw into our talk
+ less pride and more philosophy?. If nature offers us some knot that is
+ hard to untie, let us leave it for what it is; do not let us employ
+ for cutting it the hand of a Being, who then immediately becomes in
+ turn a new knot for us, and a knot harder to untie than the first. An
+ Indian tells you that our globe is suspended in the air on the back of
+ an elephant. And the elephant! It stands on a tortoise. And the
+ tortoise? what sustains that?... You pity the Indian: and yet one
+ might very well say to you as to him—Mr. Holmes, my good friend,
+ confess your ignorance, and spare me elephant and tortoise."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_69_69" id="FNanchor_69_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69_69"
+ class="fnanchor">[69]</a></p>
+
+ <p>The minister very naturally then falls back upon good authority,
+ and asks Saunderson to take the word of Newton, Clarke, and Leibnitz.
+ The blind man answers that though the actual state of the universe may
+ be the illustration of a marvellous and admirable order, still Newton,
+ Clarke, and Leibnitz must leave him freedom of opinion as to its
+ earlier states. And then he foreshadows in a really singular and
+ remarkable way that theory which is believed to be the great triumph
+ of scientific discovery, and which is certainly the great stimulus to
+ speculation, in our own time. As to anterior states "you have no
+ witnesses to confront with me, and your eyes give you no help.
+ Imagine, if you choose, that the order which strikes you so profoundly
+ has subsisted from the beginning. But leave me free to think that it
+ has done no such thing, and that if we went back to the birth of
+ things and scenes, and perceived matter in motion and chaos slowly
+ disentangling itself, we should come across a whole multitude of
+ shapeless creatures, instead of a very few creatures highly organised.
+ If I have no objection to make to what you say about the present
+ condition of things, I may at least question you as to their past
+ condition. I may at least ask of you, for example, who told you—you
+ and Leibnitz and Clarke and Newton—that in the first instances of the
+ formation of animals, some were not without heads and others without
+ feet? I may maintain that these had no stomachs, and those no
+ intestines; that some to whom a stomach, a palate, and teeth seemed to
+ promise permanence, came to an end through some fault of heart or
+ lungs; that the monsters annihilated one another in succession, that
+ all the faulty (<i>vicieuses</i>) combinations of matter disappeared,
+ and that <i>those only survived whose mechanism implied no important
+ mis-adaptation</i> (contradiction), <i>and who had the power of
+ supporting and perpetuating themselves</i>.</p>
+
+ <p>"On this hypothesis, if the first man had happened to have his
+ larynx closed, or had not found suitable food, or had been defective
+ in the parts of generation, or had failed to find a mate, then what
+ would have become of the human race? It would have been still enfolded
+ in the general depuration of the universe; and that arrogant being who
+ calls himself Man, dissolved and scattered among the molecules of
+ matter, would perhaps have remained for all time hidden in the number
+ of mere possibilities.</p>
+
+ <p>"If shapeless creatures had never existed, you would not fail to
+ insist that none will ever appear, and that I am throwing myself
+ headlong into chimerical hypotheses. But the order is not even now so
+ perfect, but that monstrous products appear from time to
+ time."<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id="FNanchor_70_70"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_70_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a></p>
+
+ <p>We have here a distinct enough conception, though in an exceedingly
+ undigested shape, first, of incessant Variability in organisms as an
+ actual circumstance, which we may see exemplified in its extreme form
+ in the monstrous deviations of structure that occur from time to time
+ before our own eyes; second, of Adaptation to environment as the
+ determining condition of Survival among the forms that present
+ themselves. Even as a bald and unsustained guess, this was an
+ effective side-blow at the doctrine of final causes—a doctrine, as has
+ been often remarked, which does not survive, in any given set of
+ phenomena, the reduction of these phenomena to terms of matter and
+ motion.</p>
+
+ <p>"I conjecture then," continues Saunderson, enlarging the idea of
+ the possibilities of matter and motion, "that in the beginning when
+ matter in fermentation gradually brought our universe bursting into
+ being, blind creatures like myself were very common. But why should I
+ not believe of worlds what I believe of animals? How many worlds,
+ mutilated and imperfect, were peradventure dispersed, then re-formed,
+ and are again dispersing at each moment of time in those far-off
+ spaces which I cannot touch and you cannot behold, but where motion
+ combines and will continue to combine masses of matter, until they
+ have chanced on some arrangement in which they may finally persevere!
+ O philosophers, transport yourselves with me on to the confines of the
+ universe, beyond the point where I feel, and you see, organised
+ beings; gaze over that new ocean, and seek across its lawless, aimless
+ heavings some vestiges of that intelligent Being whose wisdom strikes
+ you with such wonder here!</p>
+
+ <p>"What is this world? A complex whole, subject to endless
+ revolutions. All these revolutions show a continual tendency to
+ destruction; a swift succession of beings who follow one another,
+ press forward, and vanish; a fleeting symmetry; the order of a moment.
+ I reproached you just now with estimating the perfection of things by
+ your own capacity; and I might accuse you here of measuring its
+ duration by the length of your own days. You judge of the continuous
+ existence of the world, as an ephemeral insect might judge of yours.
+ The world is eternal for you, as you are eternal to the being that
+ lives but for one instant. Yet the insect is the more reasonable of
+ the two. For what a prodigious succession of ephemeral generations
+ attests your eternity! What an immeasurable tradition! Yet shall we
+ all pass away, without the possibility of assigning either the real
+ extension that we filled in space, or the precise time that we shall
+ have endured. Time, matter, space—all, it may be, are no more than a
+ point."<a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Diderot sent a copy of his work to Voltaire. The poet replied with
+ his usual playful politeness, but declared his dissent from
+ Saunderson, "who denied God, because he happened to have been born
+ blind."<a name="FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_72_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a> More pretentious, and
+ infinitely less acute critics than Voltaire, have fixed on the same
+ point in the argument and met it by the same answer; namely, that,
+ blind as he was, Saunderson ought to have recognised an intelligent
+ Being who had provided him with so many substitutes for sight; he
+ ought to have inferred a skilful demiurgus from those ordered
+ relations in the universe, which Thought, independently of Vision,
+ might well have disclosed to him. In truth, this is not the centre of
+ the whole argument. When Saunderson implies that he could only admit a
+ God on condition that he could touch him, he makes a single sense the
+ channel of all possible ideas, and the arbiter of all reasoned
+ combinations of ideas. This is absurd, and Diderot, as we have seen,
+ rapidly passed away from that to the real strength of the position.
+ All the rest of the contention against final causes would have come
+ just as fitly from the lips of a man with vision, as from Saunderson.
+ The hypothetical inference of a deity from the marvels of adaptation
+ to be found in the universe is unjustified, among other reasons,
+ because it ignores or leaves unexplained the marvels of mis-adaptation
+ in the universe. It makes absolute through eternity a hypothesis which
+ can at its best only be true relatively—not merely to the number of
+ our senses, but—to a few partially chosen phenomena of our own little
+ day. It explains a few striking facts; it leaves wholly unexplained a
+ far greater number of equally striking facts, even if it be not
+ directly contradicted by them. It is the invention of an imaginary
+ agency to account for the scanty successes of creation, and an
+ attribution to that agency of the kind of motives that might have
+ animated a benevolent European living in the eighteenth century. It
+ leaves wholly unaccounted for the prodigious host of monstrous or
+ imperfect organisms, and the appalling law of merciless and incessant
+ destruction.</p>
+
+ <p>To us this is the familiar discussion of the day. But let us return
+ to the starting-point of this chapter. In France a hundred and twenty
+ years ago it was the first opening of a decisive breach in the walls
+ that had sheltered the men of Western Europe against outer desolation
+ for some fifteen centuries or more. The completeness of Catholicism,
+ as a self-containing system of life and thought, is now harder for
+ Protestants or Sceptics to realise, than any other fact in the whole
+ history of human society. Catholicism was not only an institution, nor
+ only a religious faith; it was also a philosophy and a systematised
+ theory of the universe. The Church during its best age directed the
+ moral relations of individual men, and attempted, more or less
+ successfully, to humanise the relations of communities. It satisfied
+ or stimulated the affections by its exaltation of the Virgin Mary as a
+ supreme object of worship; it nourished the imagination on
+ polytheistic legends of saints and martyrs; it stirred the religious
+ emotions by touching and impressive rites; it surrounded its members
+ with emblems of a special and invincible protection. Catholicism, we
+ have again and again to repeat, claimed to deal with life as a whole,
+ and to leave no province of nature, no faculty of man, no need of
+ intelligence or spirit, uncomprehended. But we must not forget that,
+ though this prodigious system had its root in the affections and
+ sympathies of human nature, it was also fenced round by a theory of
+ metaphysic. It rested upon authority and tradition, but it also sought
+ an expression in an intellectual philosophy of things. The essence of
+ this philosophy was to make man the final cause of the universe. Its
+ interpretation of the world was absolute; its conception of the
+ Creator was absolute; its account of our intellectual impressions, of
+ our moral rules, of our spiritual ideals, made them all absolute. Now
+ Diderot, when he wrote the Letter on the Blind, perceived that mere
+ rationalistic attacks upon the sacred books, upon the miracles, upon
+ the moral types, of Catholicism, could only be partially effective for
+ destruction, and could have no effect at all in replacing the old ways
+ of thinking by others of more solid truth. The attack must begin in
+ philosophy. The first fruitful process must consist in shifting the
+ point of view, in enlarging the range of the facts to be considered,
+ in pressing the relativity of our ideas, in freeing ourselves from the
+ tyranny of anthropomorphism.</p>
+
+ <p>Hobbes's witty definition of the papacy as the ghost of the old
+ Roman Empire sitting enthroned on the grave thereof, may tempt us to
+ forget the all-important truth that the basis of the power of the
+ ghost was essentially different from that of the dissolved body. The
+ Empire was a political organisation, resting on military force. The
+ Church was a social organisation, made vital by a conviction. The
+ greatest fact in the intellectual history of the eighteenth century is
+ the decisive revolution that overtook that sustaining conviction. The
+ movement and the men whom we are studying owe all their interest to
+ the share that they had in this immense task. The central conception,
+ that the universe was called into existence only to further its
+ Creator's purpose towards man, became incredible. This absolute
+ proposition was slowly displaced by notions of the limitation of human
+ faculties, and of the comparatively small portion of the whole cosmos
+ or chaos to which we have reason to believe that these faculties give
+ us access. To substitute this relative point of view for the absolute,
+ was the all-important preliminary to the effectual breaking up of the
+ great Catholic construction.</p>
+
+ <p>What seems to careless observers a mere metaphysical dispute was in
+ truth, and still is, the decisive quarter of the great battle between
+ theology and a philosophy reconcilable with science. When the Catholic
+ reaction set in, Joseph de Maistre, by far its acutest champion in the
+ region of philosophy, at once made it his first business to attack the
+ principle of relativity with all his force of dialectic, and to
+ reinstate absolute modes of thinking, and the absolute quality of
+ Catholic propositions about religion, knowledge, and
+ government.<a name="FNanchor_73_73" id="FNanchor_73_73"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_73_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a> Yet neither he nor any one
+ else on his side has ever effectively shaken the solid argument which
+ Diderot fancifully illustrated in the following passage from his reply
+ to Voltaire's letter of thanks for the opuscule: "This marvellous
+ order and these wondrous adaptations, what am I to think of them? That
+ they are metaphysical entities only existing in your own mind. You
+ cover a vast piece of ground with a mass of ruins falling hither or
+ thither at hazard; amid these the worm and the ant find commodious
+ shelter enough. What would you say of these insects, if they were to
+ take for real and final entities the relations of the places which
+ they inhabit to their organisation, and then fall into ecstasies over
+ the beauty of their subterranean architecture, and the wonderfully
+ superior intelligence of the gardener who arranges things so
+ conveniently for them?"<a name="FNanchor_74_74" id=
+ "FNanchor_74_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74_74" class=
+ "fnanchor">[74]</a> This is the notion which Voltaire himself three
+ years afterwards illustrated in the witty fancies of
+ <i>Micromégas</i>. The little animalcule in the square cap, who makes
+ the giant laugh in a Homeric manner by its inflated account of itself
+ as the final cause of the universe, is the type of the philosophy on
+ which Catholicism is based.</p>
+
+ <p>In the same letter Diderot avows his dissent—hypocritically, we
+ find reason for suspecting—from Saunderson's conclusion. "It is
+ commonly in the night-time," he says, "that the mists arise which
+ obscure in me the existence of God; the rising of the sun never fails
+ to scatter them. But then the darkness is ever-enduring for the blind,
+ and the sun only rises for those who see." Diderot's denial of atheism
+ seems more than suspicious, when one finds him taking so much pains to
+ make out Saunderson's case for him, when he urges the argument
+ following, for instance: "If there had never existed any but material
+ beings, there would never have been spiritual beings; for then the
+ spiritual beings would either have given themselves existence, or else
+ would have received it from the material beings. But if there had
+ never existed any but spiritual beings, you will see that there would
+ never have been material beings. Right philosophy only allows me to
+ suppose in things what I can distinctly perceive in them. Now I
+ perceive no other faculties distinctly in the mind except those of
+ willing and thinking, and I no more conceive that thought and will can
+ act on material beings or on nothing, than I can conceive material
+ beings or nothing acting on spiritual beings." And he winds up his
+ letter thus: "It is very important not to take hemlock for parsley;
+ but not important at all to believe or to disbelieve in God. The
+ world, said Montaigne, is a tennis-ball that he has given to
+ philosophers to toss hither and thither; and I would say nearly as
+ much of the Deity himself."<a name="FNanchor_75_75" id=
+ "FNanchor_75_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75_75" class=
+ "fnanchor">[75]</a></p>
+
+ <p>In concluding our account of this piece, we may mention that
+ Diderot threw out a hint, which is a good illustration of the alert
+ and practically helpful way in which his mind was always seeking new
+ ideas. We have common signs, he said, appealing to the eye, namely,
+ written characters, and others appealing to the ear, namely,
+ articulate sounds; we have none appealing to touch. "For want of such
+ a language, communication is entirely broken between us and those who
+ are born deaf, dumb, and blind. They grow, but they remain in a state
+ of imbecility. Perhaps they would acquire ideas, if we made ourselves
+ understood by them from childhood in a fixed, determinate, constant,
+ and uniform manner; in short, if we traced on their hand the same
+ characters that we trace upon paper, and invariably attached the same
+ significance to them."<a name="FNanchor_76_76" id=
+ "FNanchor_76_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76_76" class=
+ "fnanchor">[76]</a> The patient benevolence and ingenuity of Dr. Howe
+ of Boston has realised in our own day the value of Diderot's
+ suggestion.</p>
+
+ <p>One or two trifling points of literary interest may be noticed in
+ the Letter on the Blind. Diderot refers to "the ingenious expression
+ of an English geometer that <i>God geometrises</i>" (p. 294). He is
+ unaware apparently of the tradition which attributes the expression to
+ Plato, though it is not found in Plato's writings. Plutarch, I
+ believe, is the first person who mentions the saying, and discusses
+ what Plato exactly meant by it. In truth, it is one of that large
+ class of dicta which look more ingenious than they are true. There is
+ a fine Latin passage by Barrow on the mighty geometry of the universe,
+ and the reader of the <i>Religio Medici</i> (p. 42) may remember that
+ Sir Thomas Browne pronounces God to be "like a skilful
+ geometrician."</p>
+
+ <p>An odd coincidence of simile is worth mentioning. Diderot says
+ "that great services are like large pieces of money, that we have
+ seldom any occasion to use. Small attentions are a current coin that
+ we always carry in our hands." This is curiously like the saying in
+ the <i>Tatler</i> that "A man endowed with great perfections without
+ good breeding is like one who has his pockets full of gold, but wants
+ change for his ordinary occasions." Yet if Diderot had read the
+ <i>Tatler</i>, he would certainly have referred to the story in No.
+ 55, how William Jones of Newington, born blind, was brought to sight
+ at the age of twenty—a story told in a manner after Diderot's own
+ heart.</p>
+
+ <p>II.</p>
+
+ <p>It is proper in this place to mention a short philosophic piece
+ which Diderot wrote in 1751, his <i>Letter on the Deaf and Dumb for
+ the Use of those who Hear and Talk</i>. This is not, like the Letter
+ on the Blind, the examination of a case of the Intellect deprived of
+ one or more of the senses. It is substantially a fragment, and a very
+ important fragment, on Æsthetics, and as such there will be something
+ to say about it in another chapter. But there are, perhaps, one or two
+ points at which the Letter on the Deaf and Dumb touches the line of
+ thought of the Letter on the Blind.</p>
+
+ <p>The Letter opens on the question of the origin and limits of
+ inversion in language. This at once leads to a discussion of the
+ natural order of ideas and expressions, and that original order, says
+ Diderot, we can only ascertain by a study of the language of gesture.
+ Such a study can be pursued either in assiduous conversation with one
+ who has been deaf and dumb from birth, or by the experiment of a
+ <i>muet de convention</i>, a man who foregoes the use of articulate
+ sounds for the sake of experiment as to the process of the formation
+ of language. Generalising this idea, Diderot proceeds to consider man
+ as distributed into as many distinct and separate beings as he has
+ senses. "My idea would be to decompose a man, so to speak, and to
+ examine what he derives from each of the senses with which he is
+ endowed. I have sometimes amused myself with this kind of metaphysical
+ anatomy; and I found that of all the senses, the eye was the most
+ superficial; the ear, the proudest; smell, the most voluptuous; taste,
+ the most superstitious and the most inconstant; touch, the profoundest
+ and the most of a philosopher. It would be amusing to get together a
+ society, each member of which should have no more than one sense;
+ there can be no doubt that they would all treat one another as out of
+ their wits."</p>
+
+ <p>This is interesting, because it was said at the time to be the
+ source of one of the most famous fancies in the philosophical
+ literature of the century, the Statue in Condillac's Treatise on the
+ Sensations. Condillac imagined a statue organised like a man, but each
+ sense unfolding itself singly, at the will of an eternal arbiter. The
+ philosopher first admits the exercise of smell to his Frankenstein,
+ and enumerates the mental faculties which might be expected to be set
+ in operation under the changing impressions made upon that one sense.
+ The other senses are imparted to it in turn, one by one, each adding a
+ new group of ideas to the previous stock, until at length the mental
+ equipment is complete.</p>
+
+ <p>We may see the extent of the resemblance between Condillac's Statue
+ and Diderot's <i>muet de convention</i>, but Diderot at least is free
+ from the charge of borrowing. Condillac's book was published three
+ years (1754) after the Letter on the Deaf and Dumb, and he afterwards
+ wrote a pamphlet defending himself from the charge of having taken the
+ fancy of his Statue from Diderot; nor, for that matter, did Diderot
+ ever make sign or claim in the matter. We have already spoken of the
+ relations between the two philosophers, and though it is a mistake to
+ describe Diderot as one of Condillac's most celebrated pupils,<a name=
+ "FNanchor_77_77" id="FNanchor_77_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77_77"
+ class="fnanchor">[77]</a> yet there is just as little reason to invert
+ the connection, or to doubt Condillac's own assertion that the Statue
+ was suggested to him by Mademoiselle Ferrand, that remarkable woman to
+ whose stimulating and directing influence he always professed such
+ deep obligation. Attention has been called to the fact that in 1671 a
+ Parisian bookseller published a Latin version of a much more
+ intelligent and scientific fancy than the Statue—the <i>Philosophus
+ Autodidactus</i> of the Arabian, Ibn Tophail. This was a romance, in
+ which a human being is suckled by a gazelle on a desert island in the
+ tropics, and grows up in the manner of some Robinson Crusoe with a
+ turn for psychological speculation, and gradually becomes conscious,
+ through observation, of the peculiar properties belonging to his
+ senses.<a name="FNanchor_78_78" id="FNanchor_78_78"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_78_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Of the part of the Letter that concerns gesture, one can only say
+ that it appears astonishingly crude to those who know the progress
+ that has been made since Diderot's time in collecting and generalising
+ the curious groups of fact connected with gesture-language. We can
+ imagine the eager interest that Diderot would have had in such curious
+ observations as that gesture-language has something like a definite
+ syntax; that it furnishes no means of distinguishing causation from
+ sequence or simultaneity; that savages can understand and be
+ understood with ease and certainty in a deaf-and-dumb school.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_79_79" id="FNanchor_79_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79_79"
+ class="fnanchor">[79]</a> Diderot was acute enough to see that the
+ questions of language could only be solved, not by the old
+ metaphysical methods, but experientially. For the experiential method
+ in this matter the time was not ripe. It was no wonder, then, that
+ after a few pages, he broke away and hastened to æsthetics.</p>
+
+ <p>III.</p>
+
+ <p>Penalties on the publication of heretical opinion did not cease in
+ England with the disappearance of the Licensing Act. But they were at
+ least inflicted by law. It was the Court of King's Bench which, in
+ 1730, visited Woolston with fine and imprisonment, after all the forms
+ of a prosecution had been duly gone through. It was no Bishop's court
+ nor Star Chamber, much less a warrant signed by George the Third or by
+ Bute, which in 1762 condemned Peter Annet to the pillory and the gaol
+ for his Free Inquirer. The only evil which overtook Mandeville for his
+ Fable of the Bees was to be harmlessly presented (1723) as a public
+ nuisance by the Grand Jury of Middlesex. We may contrast with this the
+ state of things which prepared a revolution in France.</p>
+
+ <p>One morning in July, 1749—almost exactly forty years before that
+ July of '89, so memorable in the annals of arbitrary government and
+ state prisons—a commissary of police and three attendants came to
+ Diderot's house, made a vigorous scrutiny of his papers, and then
+ produced a warrant for his detention. The philosopher, without any
+ ado, told his wife not to expect him home for dinner, stepped into the
+ chaise, and was driven off with his escort to Vincennes. His real
+ offence was a light sneer in the Letter on the Blind at the mistress
+ of a minister.<a name="FNanchor_80_80" id=
+ "FNanchor_80_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80_80" class=
+ "fnanchor">[80]</a> The atheistical substance of the essay, however,
+ apart from the pique of a favourite, would have given sufficiently
+ good grounds for a prosecution in England, and in France for that vile
+ substitute for prosecution, the <i>lettre-decachet</i>. And there
+ happened to be special causes for harshness towards the press at this
+ moment. Verses had been published satirising the king and his manner
+ of life in bitter terms, and a stern raid was made upon all the
+ scribblers in Paris. At the court there had just taken place one of
+ those reactions in favour of the ecclesiastical party, which for
+ thirty years in the court history alternated so frequently with
+ movements in the opposite direction. The gossip of the town set down
+ Diderot's imprisonment to a satire against the Jesuits, of which he
+ was wrongly supposed to be the author.<a name="FNanchor_81_81" id=
+ "FNanchor_81_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81_81" class=
+ "fnanchor">[81]</a> It is not worth while to seek far for a reason,
+ when authority was as able and as ready to thrust men into gaol for a
+ bad reason as for a good one. The writer or the printer of a
+ philosophical treatise was at this moment looked upon in France much
+ as a magistrate now looks on the wretch who vends infamous prints.</p>
+
+ <p>The lieutenant of police (Berryer) treated the miserable author
+ with additional severity, for stubbornly refusing to give up the name
+ of the printer. Diderot was well aware that the printer would be sent
+ to the galleys for life, if the lieutenant of police could once lay
+ hands upon him. This personage, we may mention, was afterwards raised
+ to the dignified office of keeper of the seals, as a reward for his
+ industry and skill in providing victims for the royal seraglio at
+ Versailles.<a name="FNanchor_82_82" id="FNanchor_82_82"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_82_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a> The man who had ventured
+ to use his mind, was thrown into the dungeon at Vincennes by the man
+ who played spy and pander for the Pompadour. The official record of a
+ dialogue between Berryer and Denis Diderot, "of the Catholic,
+ Apostolic, and Roman religion," is a singular piece of reading, if we
+ remember that the prisoner's answers were made, "after oath taken by
+ the respondent to speak and answer the truth."</p>
+
+ <p>"Interrogated if he has not composed a work entitled <i>Letters on
+ the Blind</i>.</p>
+
+ <p>"Answered no.</p>
+
+ <p>"Interrogated by whom he had caused said work to be printed.</p>
+
+ <p>"Answered that he had not caused the said work to be printed.</p>
+
+ <p>"Interrogated if he knows the name of the author of the said
+ work.</p>
+
+ <p>"Answered that he knows nothing about it.</p>
+
+ <p>"Interrogated whether he has not had said work in manuscript in his
+ possession before it was printed.</p>
+
+ <p>"Answered that he had not had the said manuscript in his possession
+ before or after it was printed.</p>
+
+ <p>"Interrogated whether he has not composed a work which appeared
+ some years ago, entitled <i>Philosophic Thoughts</i>.</p>
+
+ <p>"Answered no."</p>
+
+ <p>And so, after a dozen more replies of equal veracity, on reading
+ being made to the respondent of the present interrogatory, Diderot
+ "said that the answers contain the truth, persisted in them, and
+ signed," as witness his hand. A sorrowful picture, indeed, of the
+ plight of an apostle of a new doctrine. On the other hand, the apostle
+ of the new doctrine was perhaps good enough for the preachers of the
+ old. Two years before this, the priest of the church of Saint Médard
+ had thought it worth while to turn spy and informer. This is the
+ report which the base creature sent to the lieutenant of police
+ (1747):—</p>
+
+ <div class="blockquot">
+  <p>"Diderot, a man of no profession, living, etc., is a young man who
+  plays the free-thinker, and glories in impiety. He is the author of
+  several works of philosophy, in which he attacks religion. His talk
+  is like his books. He is busy at the composition of one now, which is
+  very dangerous."</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <p>The priest's delation was confirmed presently by a still lower
+ agent of authority, who, in bad grammar and bad spelling, describes
+ "this wretch Diderot as a very dangerous man, who speaks of the holy
+ mysteries of our religion with contempt; who corrupts manners, and who
+ says that when he comes to the last moment of his life, he will have
+ to do like others, will confess, and will receive what we call our
+ God, but it will only be for the sake of his family."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_83_83" id="FNanchor_83_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83_83"
+ class="fnanchor">[83]</a></p>
+
+ <p>All these things had prepared an unfriendly fate for Diderot when
+ his time at last came, as it came to most of his friends. For a month
+ he was cut off from the outer world. His only company was the
+ <i>Paradise Lost</i>, which he happened to have in his pocket at the
+ moment of his arrest. He compounded an ink for himself, by scraping
+ the slate at the side of his window, grinding it very fine, and mixing
+ with wine in a broken glass. A toothpick, found by happy accident in
+ the pocket of his waistcoat, served him for pen, and the fly-leaves
+ and margins of the Milton made a repository for his thoughts. With a
+ simple but very characteristic interest in others who might be as
+ unfortunate as himself, he wrote upon the walls of his prison his
+ short recipe for writing materials.<a name="FNanchor_84_84" id=
+ "FNanchor_84_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84_84" class=
+ "fnanchor">[84]</a> Diderot might easily have been buried here for
+ months or even years. But, as it happened, the governor of Vincennes
+ was a kinsman of Voltaire's divine Emily, the Marquise du Châtelet.
+ When Voltaire, who was then at Luneville, heard of Diderot's
+ ill-fortune, he proclaimed as usual his detestation of a land where
+ bigots can shut up philosophers under lock and key, and as usual he at
+ once set to work to lessen the wrong. Madame du Châtelet was made to
+ write to the governor, praying him to soften the imprisonment of
+ Socrates-Diderot as much as he could.<a name="FNanchor_85_85" id=
+ "FNanchor_85_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85_85" class=
+ "fnanchor">[85]</a> It was the last of her good deeds, for she died in
+ circumstances of grotesque tragedy in the following month (Sept.
+ 1749), and her husband, her son, Voltaire, and Saint Lambert
+ alternately consoled and reproached one another over her grave.
+ Diderot meanwhile had the benefit of her intervention. He was
+ transferred from the dungeon to the château, was allowed to wander
+ about the park on his parole, and to receive visits from his friends.
+ One of the most impulsive of these friends was Jean Jacques. Their
+ first meeting after Diderot's imprisonment has been, described by
+ Rousseau himself, in terms at which the phlegmatic will smile—not
+ wisely, for the manner of expressing emotion, like all else, is
+ relative. "After three or four centuries of impatience, I flew into
+ the arms of my friend. indescribable moment! He, was not alone;
+ D'Alembert and the treasurer of the Sainte Chapelle were with him. As
+ I went in, I saw no one but himself. With a single hound and a cry, I
+ pressed his face close to mine, I clasped him tightly in my arms,
+ without speaking to him save by my tears and sobs; I was choking with
+ tenderness and joy."<a name="FNanchor_86_86" id=
+ "FNanchor_86_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_86_86" class=
+ "fnanchor">[86]</a> After this Rousseau used to walk over to see him
+ two or three times a week. It was during one of these walks on a hot
+ summer afternoon, that he first thought of that memorable literary
+ effort, the essay against civilisation. He sank down at the foot of a
+ tree, and feverishly wrote a page or two to show to his friend. He
+ tells us that but for Diderot's encouragement he should hardly have
+ executed his design. There is a story that it was Diderot who first
+ suggested to Rousseau to affirm that arts and sciences had corrupted
+ manners. There is no violent improbability in this. Diderot, for all
+ the robustness and penetration of his judgment, was yet often borne by
+ his natural impetuosity towards the region of paradox. His own curious
+ and bold <i>Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville</i> is entirely in
+ the vein of Rousseau's discourse on the superiority of primitive over
+ civilised life. "Prodigious sibyl of the eighteenth century," cries
+ Michelet, "the mighty magician Diderot! He breathed out one day a
+ breath; lo, there sprang up a man—Rousseau."<a name="FNanchor_87_87"
+ id="FNanchor_87_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_87_87" class=
+ "fnanchor">[87]</a> It is hard to believe that such an astonishing
+ genius for literature as Rousseau's could have lain concealed, after
+ he had once inhaled the vivifying air of Paris. Yet the fire and
+ inspiring energy of Diderot may well have been the quickening accident
+ that brought his genius into productive life. All the testimony goes
+ to show that it was so. Whether, however, Diderot is really
+ responsible for the perverse direction of Rousseau's argument is a
+ question of fact, and the evidence is not decisive.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_88_88" id="FNanchor_88_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_88_88"
+ class="fnanchor">[88]</a> It would be an odd example of that giant's
+ nonchalance which is always so amazing in Diderot, if he really
+ instigated the most eloquent and passionate writer then alive to
+ denounce art and science as the scourge of mankind, at the very moment
+ when he was himself straining his whole effort to spread the arts and
+ sciences, and to cover them with glory in men's eyes.</p>
+
+ <p>Among Diderot's other visitors was Madame de Puisieux. One day she
+ came clad in gay apparel, bound for a merry-making at a neighbouring
+ village. Diderot, conceiving jealous doubts of her fidelity, received
+ assurance that she would be solitary and companionless at the feast,
+ thinking mournfully of her persecuted philosopher lying in prison. She
+ forgot that one of the parents of philosophy is curiosity, and that
+ Diderot had trained himself in the school of the sceptics. That
+ evening he scaled the walls of the park of Vincennes, flew to the
+ scene of the festival, and there found what he had expected. In vain
+ for her had he written upon virtue and merit, and the unhallowed
+ friendship came to an end.</p>
+
+ <p>After three months of captivity, Diderot was released. The
+ booksellers who were interested in the Encyclopædia were importunate
+ with the authorities to restore its head and chief to an enterprise
+ that stirred universal curiosity.<a name="FNanchor_89_89" id=
+ "FNanchor_89_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_89_89" class=
+ "fnanchor">[89]</a> For the first volume of that famous work was now
+ almost ready to appear, and expectation was keen. The idea of the book
+ had occurred to Diderot in 1745, and from 1745 to 1765 it was the
+ absorbing occupation of his life. Of the value and significance of the
+ conception underlying this immense operation, I shall speak in the
+ next chapter. There also I shall describe its history. The
+ circumstances under which these five-and-thirty volumes were given to
+ the world mark Diderot for one of the few true heroes of literature.
+ They called into play some of the most admirable of human qualities.
+ They required a laboriousness as steady and as prolonged, a wariness
+ as alert, a grasp of plan as firm, a fortitude as patient, unvarying,
+ and unshaken, as men are accustomed to applaud in the engineer who
+ constructs some vast and difficult work, or the commander who directs
+ a hardy and dangerous expedition.</p>
+ <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+ <h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.<br />
+ THE ENCYCLOPÆDIA.</h2>
+
+ <p>The history of the encyclopædic conception of human knowledge is a
+ much more interesting and important object of inquiry than a list of
+ the various encyclopædic enterprises to be found in the annals of
+ literature. Yet it is proper here to mention some of the attempts in
+ this direction, which preceded our memorable book of the eighteenth
+ century. It is to Aristotle, no doubt, that we must look for the first
+ glimpse of the idea that human knowledge is a totality, whose parts
+ are all closely and organically connected with one another. But the
+ idea that only dawned in that gigantic understanding was lost for many
+ centuries. The compilations of Pliny are not in a right sense
+ encyclopædic, being presided over by no definite idea of informing
+ order. It was not until the later middle age that any attempt was made
+ to present knowledge as a whole. Albertus Magnus, "the ape of
+ Aristotle" (1193-1280), left for a season the three great questions of
+ the existence of universals, of the modes of the existence of species
+ and genus, and of their place in or out of the bosom of the
+ individuals, and executed a compilation of such physical facts as had
+ been then discovered.<a name="FNanchor_90_90" id=
+ "FNanchor_90_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_90_90" class=
+ "fnanchor">[90]</a> A more distinctly encyclopædic work was the book
+ of Vincent de Beauvais (<i>d.</i> 1264), called <i>Speculum naturale,
+ morale, doctrinale, et historiale</i>—a compilation from Aquinas in
+ some parts, and from Aristotle in others. Hallam mentions three other
+ compilations of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and observes
+ that their laborious authors did not much improve the materials which
+ they had amassed in their studies, though they sometimes arranged them
+ conveniently. In the mediæval period, as he remarks, the want of
+ capacity to discern probable truths was a very great drawback from the
+ value of their compilations.<a name="FNanchor_91_91" id=
+ "FNanchor_91_91"></a><a href="#Footnote_91_91" class=
+ "fnanchor">[91]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Far the most striking production of the thirteenth century in this
+ kind was the <i>Opus Majus</i> of Roger Bacon (1267), of which it has
+ been said that it is at once the Encyclopædia and the Novum Organum of
+ that age;<a name="FNanchor_92_92" id="FNanchor_92_92"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_92_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a> at once a summary of
+ knowledge, and the suggestion of a truer method. This, however, was
+ merely the introductory sketch to a vaster encyclopædic work, the
+ <i>Compendium Philosophiæ</i>, which was not perfected. "In common
+ with minds of great and comprehensive grasp, his vivid perception of
+ the intimate relationship of the different parts of philosophy, and
+ his desire to raise himself from the dead level of every individual
+ science, induced Bacon to grasp at and embrace the whole."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_93_93" id="FNanchor_93_93"></a><a href="#Footnote_93_93"
+ class="fnanchor">[93]</a> In truth, the encyclopædic spirit was in the
+ air throughout the thirteenth century. It was the century of books
+ bearing the significant titles of Summa, or Universitas, or
+ Speculum.</p>
+
+ <p>The same spirit revived towards the middle of the sixteenth
+ century. In 1541 a book was published at Basel by one Ringelberg,
+ which first took the name of Cyclopædia, that has since then become so
+ familiar a word in Western Europe. This was followed within sixty
+ years by several other works of the same kind. The movement reached
+ its height in a book which remained the best in its order for a
+ century. A German, one J.H. Alsted (1588-1638), published in 1620 an
+ <i>Encyclopædia scientiarum omnium</i>. A hundred years later the
+ illustrious Leibnitz pronounced it a worthy task to perfect and amend
+ Alsted's book. What was wanting to the excellent man, he said, was
+ neither labour nor judgment, but material, and the good fortune of
+ such days as ours. And Leibnitz wrote a paper of suggestions for its
+ extension and improvement.<a name="FNanchor_94_94" id=
+ "FNanchor_94_94"></a><a href="#Footnote_94_94" class=
+ "fnanchor">[94]</a> Alsted's Encyclopædia is of course written in
+ Latin, and he prefixes to it by way of motto the celebrated lines in
+ which Lucretius declares that nothing is sweeter than to dwell apart
+ in the serene temples of the wise. Though he informs us in the preface
+ that his object was to trace the outlines of the great "latifundium
+ regni philosophici" in a single syntagma, yet he really does no more
+ than arrange a number of separate treatises or manuals, and even
+ dictionaries, within the limits of a couple of folios. As is natural
+ to the spirit of the age in which he wrote, great predominance is
+ given to the verbal sciences of grammar, rhetoric, and formal logic,
+ and a verbal or logical division regulates the distribution of the
+ matter, rather than a scientific regard for its objective
+ relations.</p>
+
+ <p>For the true parentage, however, of the Encyclopædia of Diderot and
+ D'Alembert, it is unnecessary to prolong this list. It was Francis
+ Bacon's idea of the systematic classification of knowledge which
+ inspired Diderot, and guided his hand throughout. "If we emerge from
+ this vast operation," he wrote in the Prospectus, "our principal debt
+ will be to the chancellor Bacon, who sketched the plan of a universal
+ dictionary of sciences and arts at a time when there were not, so to
+ say, either arts or sciences." This sense of profound and devoted
+ obligation was shared by D'Alembert, and was expressed a hundred times
+ in the course of the work. No more striking panegyric has ever been
+ passed upon our immortal countryman than is to be found in the
+ Preliminary Discourse.<a name="FNanchor_95_95" id=
+ "FNanchor_95_95"></a><a href="#Footnote_95_95" class=
+ "fnanchor">[95]</a> The French Encyclopædia was the direct fruit of
+ Bacon's magnificent conceptions. And if the efficient origin of the
+ Encyclopædia was English, so did the occasion rise in England
+ also.</p>
+
+ <p>In 1727 Ephraim Chambers, a Westmoreland Quaker, published in
+ London two folios, entitled, a Cyclopædia or Universal Dictionary of
+ the Arts and Sciences. The idea of it was broad and excellent. "Our
+ view," says Chambers, "was to consider the several matters, not only
+ in themselves, but relatively, or as they respect each other; both to
+ treat them as so many wholes, and as so many parts of some greater
+ whole." The compiler lacked the grasp necessary to realise this
+ laudable purpose. The book has, however, the merit of conciseness, and
+ is a singular monument of literary industry, for it was entirely
+ compiled by Chambers himself. It had a great success, and though its
+ price was high (four guineas), it ran through five editions in
+ eighteen years. On the whole, however, it is meagre, and more like a
+ dictionary than an encyclopædia, such as Alsted's for instance.</p>
+
+ <p>Some fifteen years after the publication of Chambers's Cyclopædia,
+ an Englishman (Mills) and a German (Sellius) went to Le Breton with a
+ project for its translation into French. The bookseller obtained the
+ requisite privilege from the government, but he obtained it for
+ himself, and not for the projectors. This trick led to a quarrel, and
+ before it was settled the German died and the Englishman returned to
+ his own country. They left the translation behind them duly
+ executed.<a name="FNanchor_96_96" id="FNanchor_96_96"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_96_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a> Le Breton then carried the
+ undertaking to a certain abbé, Gua de Malves. Gua de Malves (<i>b.</i>
+ 1712) seems to have been a man of a busy and ingenious mind. He was
+ the translator of Berkeley's <i>Hylas and Philonous</i>, of Anson's
+ Voyages, and of various English tracts on currency and political
+ economy. It is said that he first suggested the idea of a cyclopædia
+ on a fuller plan,<a name="FNanchor_97_97" id=
+ "FNanchor_97_97"></a><a href="#Footnote_97_97" class=
+ "fnanchor">[97]</a> but we have no evidence of this. In any case, the
+ project made no advance in his hands. The embarrassed bookseller next
+ applied to Diderot, who was then much in need of work that should
+ bring him bread. His fertile and energetic intelligence transformed
+ the scheme. By an admirable intuition, he divined the opportunity
+ which would be given by the encyclopædic form, of gathering up into a
+ whole all that new thought and modern knowledge, which existed as yet
+ in unsystematic and uninterpreted fragments. His enthusiasm fired Le
+ Breton. It was resolved to make Chambers's work a mere starting-point
+ for a new enterprise of far wider scope.</p>
+
+ <p>"The old and learned D'Aguesseau," says Michelet, "notwithstanding
+ the pitiable, the wretched sides of his character, had two lofty
+ sides, his reform of the laws, and a personal passion, the taste and
+ urgent need of universality, a certain encyclopædic sense. A young man
+ came to him one day, a man of letters living by his pen, and somewhat
+ under a cloud for one or two hazardous books that lack of bread had
+ driven him to write. Yet this stranger of dubious repute wrought a
+ miracle. With bewilderment the old sage listened to him unrolling the
+ gigantic scheme of a book that should be all books. On his lips,
+ sciences were light and life. It was more than speech, it was
+ creation. One would have said that he had made these sciences, and was
+ still at work, adding, extending, fertilising, ever engendering. The
+ effect was incredible. D'Aguesseau, a moment above himself, forgot the
+ old man, received the infection of genius, and became great with the
+ greatness of the other. He had faith in the young man, and protected
+ the Encyclopædia."<a name="FNanchor_98_98" id=
+ "FNanchor_98_98"></a><a href="#Footnote_98_98" class=
+ "fnanchor">[98]</a></p>
+
+ <p>A fresh privilege was procured (Jan. 21, 1746), and as Le Breton's
+ capital was insufficient for a project of this magnitude, he invited
+ three other booksellers to join him, retaining a half share for
+ himself, and allotting the other moiety to them. As Le Breton was not
+ strong enough to bear the material burdens of producing a work on so
+ gigantic a scale as was now proposed, so Diderot felt himself unequal
+ to the task of arranging and supervising every department of a book
+ that was to include the whole circle of the sciences. He was not
+ skilled enough in mathematics, nor in physics, which were then for the
+ most part mathematically conceived. For that province, he associated
+ with himself as an editorial colleague one of the most conspicuous and
+ active members of the philosophical party. Of this eminent man, whose
+ relations with Diderot were for some years so intimate, it is proper
+ that we should say something.</p>
+
+ <p>D'Alembert was the natural son of Madame de Tencin, by whom he had
+ been barbarously exposed immediately after his birth. "The true
+ ancestors of a man of genius," says Condorcet finely upon this
+ circumstance, "are the masters who have gone before him, and his true
+ descendants are disciples that are worthy of him." He was discovered
+ on a November night in the year 1717, by the beadle, in a nearly dying
+ condition on the steps of the church of St. John the Round, from which
+ he afterwards took his Christian name. An honest woman of the common
+ people, with that personal devotion which is less rare among the poor
+ than among the rich, took charge of the foundling. The father, who was
+ an officer of artillery and brother of Destouches, the author of some
+ poor comedies, by and by advanced the small sums required to pay for
+ the boy's schooling. D'Alembert proved a brilliant student. Unlike
+ nearly every other member of the encyclopædic party, he was a pupil
+ not of the Jesuits but of their rivals. The Jansenists recognised the
+ keenness and force of their pupil, and hoped that they had discovered
+ a new Pascal. But he was less docile than his great predecessor in
+ their ranks. When his studies were completed, he devoted himself to
+ geometry, for which he had a passion that nothing could extinguish.
+ For the old monastic vow of poverty, chastity, and obedience, he
+ adopted the manlier substitute of poverty, truth, and liberty—the
+ worthy device of every man of letters. When he awoke in the morning,
+ he thought with delight of the work that had been begun the previous
+ day and would occupy the day before him. In the necessary intervals of
+ his meditations, he recalled the lively pleasure that he felt at the
+ play: at the play between the acts, he thought of the still greater
+ pleasure that was promised to him by the work of the morrow. His
+ mathematical labours led to valuable results in the principles of
+ equilibrium and the movement of fluids, in a new calculus, and in a
+ new solution of the problem of the precession of the
+ equinoxes.<a name="FNanchor_99_99" id="FNanchor_99_99"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_99_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a></p>
+
+ <p>These contributions to what was then the most popular of the
+ sciences brought him fame, and fame brought him its usual
+ distractions. As soon as a writer has shown himself the possessor of
+ gifts that may be of value to society, then society straightway sets
+ to work to seduce and hinder him from diligently exercising them.
+ D'Alembert resisted these influences steadfastly. His means were very
+ limited, yet he could never be induced to increase them at the cost
+ either of his social independence or of his scientific pursuits. He
+ lived for forty years under the humble roof of the poor woman who had
+ treated him as a son. "You will never be anything better than a
+ philosopher," she used to cry reproachfully, "and what is a
+ philosopher? 'Tis a madman who torments himself all his life, that
+ people may talk about him when he is dead." D'Alembert zealously
+ adhered to his destination. Frederick the Great vainly tempted him by
+ an offer of the succession to Maupertuis as president of the Academy
+ of Berlin. Although, however, he declined to accept the post, he
+ enjoyed all its authority and prerogative. Frederick always consulted
+ him in filling up vacancies and making appointments. It is a
+ magnanimous trait in D'Alembert's history that he should have procured
+ for Lagrange a position and livelihood at Berlin, warmly commending
+ him as a man of rare and superior genius, although Lagrange had
+ vigorously opposed some of his own mathematical theories. Ten years
+ after Frederick's offer, the other great potentate of the north,
+ Catherine of Russia, besought him to undertake the education of the
+ young grand duke, her son. But neither urgent flatteries and
+ solicitations under the imperial hand, nor the munificent offer of a
+ hundred thousand francs a year, availed to draw him away from his
+ independence and his friends. The great Frederick used to compare him
+ to one of those oriental monarchs, who cherish a strict seclusion in
+ order to enhance their importance and majesty. He did not refuse a
+ pension of some fifty pounds a year from Berlin, and the same amount
+ was bestowed upon him from the privy purse at Versailles. He received
+ a small annual sum in addition from the Academy.</p>
+
+ <p>Though the mathematical sciences remained the objects of his
+ special study, D'Alembert was as free as the other great men of the
+ encyclopædic school from the narrowness of the pure specialist. He
+ naturally reminds us of the remarkable saying imputed to Leibnitz,
+ that he only attributed importance to science, because it enabled him
+ to speak with authority in philosophy and religion. His correspondence
+ with Voltaire, extending over the third quarter of the century, is the
+ most instructive record that we possess of the many-sided doings of
+ that busy time. His series of <i>éloges</i> on the academicians who
+ died between 1700 and 1772 is one of the most interesting works in the
+ department of literary history. He paid the keenest attention to the
+ great and difficult art of writing. Translations from Tacitus, Bacon,
+ and Addison, show his industry in a useful practice. A long collection
+ of synonyms bears witness to his fine discrimination in the use of
+ words. And the clearness, precision, and reserved energy of his own
+ prose mark the success of the pains that he took with style. He knew
+ the secret. Have lofty sentiments, he said, and your manner of writing
+ will be firm and noble.<a name="FNanchor_100_100" id=
+ "FNanchor_100_100"></a><a href="#Footnote_100_100" class=
+ "fnanchor">[100]</a> Yet he did not ignore the other side and half of
+ the truth, which is expressed in the saying of another important
+ writer of that day—By taking trouble to speak with precision, one
+ gains the habit of thinking rightly (<i>Condillac</i>).</p>
+
+ <p>Like so many others to whom literature owes much, D'Alembert was
+ all his life fighting against bad health. Like Voltaire and Rousseau,
+ he was born dying, and he remained delicate and valetudinarian to the
+ end. He had the mental infirmities belonging to his temperament. He
+ was restless, impatient, mobile, susceptible of irritation. When the
+ young Mademoiselle Phlipon, in after years famous as wife of the
+ virtuous Roland, was taken to a sitting of the Academy, she was
+ curious to see the author of the Preliminary Discourse to the
+ Encyclopædia, but his small face and sharp thin voice made her reflect
+ with some disappointment, that the writings of a philosopher are
+ better to know than his mask.<a name="FNanchor_101_101" id=
+ "FNanchor_101_101"></a><a href="#Footnote_101_101" class=
+ "fnanchor">[101]</a> In everything except zeal for light and
+ emancipation, D'Alembert was the opposite of Diderot. Where Diderot
+ was exuberant, prodigal, and disordered, D'Alembert was a precisian.
+ Difference of temperament, however, did not prevent their friendship
+ from being for many years cordial and intimate. When the Encyclopædia
+ was planned, it was to D'Alembert, as we have said, that Diderot
+ turned for aid in the mathematical sciences, where his own knowledge
+ was not sufficiently full nor well grounded. They were in strong and
+ singular agreement in their idea of the proper place and function of
+ the man of letters. One of the most striking facts about their
+ alliance, and one of the most important facts in the history of the
+ Encyclopædia, is that henceforth the profession of letters became at
+ once definite and independent. Diderot and D'Alembert both of them
+ remained poor, but they were never hangers-on. They did not look to
+ patrons, nor did they bound their vision by Versailles. They were the
+ first to assert the lawful authority of the new priesthood. They
+ revolted deliberately and in set form against the old system of
+ suitorship and protection. "Happy are men of letters," wrote
+ D'Alembert, "if they recognise at last that the surest way of making
+ themselves respectable is to live united and almost shut up among
+ themselves; that by this union they will come, without any trouble, to
+ give the law to the rest of the nation in all affairs of taste and
+ philosophy; that the true esteem is that which is awarded by men who
+ are themselves worthy of esteem.... As if the art of instructing and
+ enlightening men were not, after the too rare art of good government,
+ the noblest portion and gift in human reach."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_102_102" id="FNanchor_102_102"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_102_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a></p>
+
+ <p>This consciousness of the power and exaltation of their calling,
+ which men of letters now acquired, is much more than the superficial
+ fact which it may at first seem to be. It marked the rise of a new
+ teaching order and the supersession of the old. The highest moral
+ ideas now belonged no longer to the clergy, but to the writers; no
+ longer to official Catholicism, but to that fertilising medley of new
+ notions about human knowledge and human society which then went by the
+ name of philosophy. What is striking is that the ideas sown by
+ philosophy became eventually the source of higher life in Catholicism.
+ If the church of the revolution showed something that we may justly
+ admire, it was because the encyclopædic band had involuntarily and
+ inevitably imparted a measure of their own clearsightedness,
+ fortitude, moral energy, and spirit of social improvement, to a church
+ which was, when they began their work, an abominable burden on the
+ spiritual life of the nation. If the Catholicism of Chateaubriand, of
+ Lamennais, of Montalembert, was a different thing from the Catholicism
+ of a Dubois, or a Rohan, from the vile corruptions of the Jesuits and
+ the grovelling superstitions of the later Jansenists, it was the
+ execrated freethinkers whom the church and mankind had to thank for
+ the change. The most enlightened Catholic of to-day ought to admit
+ that Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, were the true reformers of his
+ creed. They supplied it with ideas which saved it from becoming
+ finally a curse to civilisation. It was no Christian prelate, but
+ Diderot who burst the bonds of a paralysing dogma by the magnificent
+ cry, <i>Détruisez ces enceintes qui rétrécissent vos idées! Elargissez
+ Dieu!</i><a name="FNanchor_103_103" id="FNanchor_103_103"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_103_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a> We see the same
+ phenomenon in our own day. The Christian churches are assimilating as
+ rapidly as their formula will permit, the new light and the more
+ generous moral ideas and the higher spirituality of teachers who have
+ abandoned all churches, and who are systematically denounced as
+ enemies of the souls of men. <i>Sic vos non vobis mellificatis
+ apes!</i> These transformations of religion by leavening elements
+ contributed from a foreign doctrine, are the most interesting process
+ in the history of truth.</p>
+
+ <p>The Encyclopædia became a powerful engine for aiding such a
+ transformation. Because it was this, and because it rallied all that
+ was then best in France round the standard of light and social hope,
+ we ought hardly to grudge time or pains to its history. For it was not
+ merely in the field of religious ideas that the Encyclopædists led
+ France in a new way. They affected the national life on every side,
+ pressing forward with enlightened principles in all the branches of
+ material and political organisation. Their union in a great
+ philosophical band gave an impressive significance to their work. The
+ collection within a single set of volumes of a body of new truths,
+ relating to so many of the main interests of men, invested the book
+ and its writers with an aspect of universality, of collective and
+ organic doctrine, which the writers themselves would without doubt
+ have disowned, and which it is easy to dissolve by tests of logic. But
+ the popular impression that the Encyclopædists constituted a single
+ body with a common doctrine and a common aim was practically sound.
+ Comte has pointed out with admirable clearness the merit of the
+ conception of an encyclopædic workshop.<a name="FNanchor_104_104" id=
+ "FNanchor_104_104"></a><a href="#Footnote_104_104" class=
+ "fnanchor">[104]</a> It united the members of rival destructive
+ schools in a great constructive task. It furnished a rallying-point
+ for efforts otherwise the most divergent. Their influence was
+ precisely what it would have been, if popular impressions had been
+ literally true. Diderot and D'Alembert did their best to heighten this
+ feeling. They missed no occasion of fixing a sentiment of co-operation
+ and fellowship. They spoke of their dictionary as the transactions of
+ an Academy.<a name="FNanchor_105_105" id=
+ "FNanchor_105_105"></a><a href="#Footnote_105_105" class=
+ "fnanchor">[105]</a> Each writer was answerable for his own
+ contribution, but he was in the position of a member of some learned
+ corporation. To every volume, until the great crisis of 1759, was
+ prefixed a list of those who had contributed to it. If a colleague
+ died, the public was informed of the loss that the work had sustained,
+ and his services were worthily commemorated in a formal
+ <i>éloge</i>.<a name="FNanchor_106_106" id=
+ "FNanchor_106_106"></a><a href="#Footnote_106_106" class=
+ "fnanchor">[106]</a> Feuds, epigrams, and offences were not absent,
+ but on the whole there was steadfast and generous fraternity.</p>
+
+ <p>As Voltaire eloquently said, officers of war by land and by sea,
+ magistrates, physicians who knew nature, men of letters whose taste
+ purified knowledge, geometers, physicists, all united in a work that
+ was as useful as it was laborious, without any view of interest,
+ without even seeking fame, as many of them concealed their names;
+ finally without any common understanding and agreement, and therefore
+ without anything of the spirit of party.<a name="FNanchor_107_107" id=
+ "FNanchor_107_107"></a><a href="#Footnote_107_107" class=
+ "fnanchor">[107]</a> Turning over the pages on which the list of
+ writers is inscribed, we find in one place or another nearly every
+ name that has helped to make the literature of the time famous.
+ Montesquieu, who died in the beginning of 1755, left behind him the
+ unfinished fragment of an article on Taste, and it may be noticed in
+ passing that our good-natured Diderot was the only man of letters who
+ attended the remains of the illustrious writer to the grave.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_108_108" id="FNanchor_108_108"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_108_108" class="fnanchor">[108]</a> The article itself,
+ though no more than a fragment, has all the charms of Montesquieu's
+ delightful style; it is serious without pedantry, graceful without
+ levity, and is rich in observations that are precise and pointed
+ without the vice of emphasis. The great Turgot, diligently solicitous
+ for the success of every enterprise that promised to improve human
+ happiness by adding to knowledge and spreading enlightenment, wrote
+ some of the most valuable articles that the work contained, and his
+ discussion of Endowments perhaps still remains the weightiest
+ contribution to that important subject. Oddly enough, he was one of
+ the very few writers who refused to sign his name to his
+ contributions.<a name="FNanchor_109_109" id=
+ "FNanchor_109_109"></a><a href="#Footnote_109_109" class=
+ "fnanchor">[109]</a> His assistance only ceased when he perceived that
+ the scheme was being coloured by that spirit of sect, which he always
+ counted the worst enemy of the spirit of truth.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_110_110" id="FNanchor_110_110"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_110_110" class="fnanchor">[110]</a> Jean Jacques Rousseau,
+ who had just won a singular reputation by his paradoxes on natural
+ equality and the corruptions of civilisation, furnished the articles
+ on music in the first half dozen volumes. They were not free from
+ mistakes, but his colleagues chivalrously defended him by the plea of
+ careless printing or indifferent copying.<a name="FNanchor_111_111"
+ id="FNanchor_111_111"></a><a href="#Footnote_111_111" class=
+ "fnanchor">[111]</a> The stately Buffon very early in the history of
+ the Encyclopædia sent them an article upon Nature, and the editors
+ made haste to announce to their subscribers the advent of so superb a
+ colleague.<a name="FNanchor_112_112" id=
+ "FNanchor_112_112"></a><a href="#Footnote_112_112" class=
+ "fnanchor">[112]</a> The articles on natural history, however, were
+ left by Buffon in his usual majestic fashion to his faithful
+ lieutenant and squire-at-arms, Daubenton. And even his own article
+ seems not to have been printed. Before the eleventh volume appeared,
+ terrible storms had arisen, not a few of the shipmen had parted
+ company, and Buffon may well have been one of them. Certainly the
+ article on Nature, as it stands, can hardly be his.</p>
+
+ <p>In the supplementary volumes, which appeared in 1776—ten years
+ after the completion of the original undertaking—two new labourers
+ came into the vineyard, whose names add fresh lustre and give still
+ more serious value to the work. One of these was the prince of the
+ physiologists of the eighteenth century, the great Haller, who
+ contributed an elaborate history of those who had been his
+ predecessors in unfolding the intricate mechanism of the human frame,
+ and analysing its marvels of complex function. The other was the
+ austere and generous Condorcet. Ever loyal to good causes, and
+ resolute against despairing of the human commonwealth, he began in the
+ pages of the Encyclopædia a career that was brilliant with good
+ promise and high hopes, and ended in the grim hall of the Convention
+ and a nobly tragic death amid the red storm of the Terror.</p>
+
+ <p>Among the lesser stars in the encyclopædic firmament are some whose
+ names ought not to be wholly omitted. Forbonnais, one of the most
+ instructive economic writers of the century, contributed articles to
+ the early volumes, which were afterwards republished in his Elements
+ of Commerce.<a name="FNanchor_113_113" id=
+ "FNanchor_113_113"></a><a href="#Footnote_113_113" class=
+ "fnanchor">[113]</a> The light-hearted Marmontel wrote cheerful
+ articles on Comedy, Eloges, Eclogues, Glory, and other matters of
+ literature and taste. Quesnai, the eminent founder of the economic
+ sect, dealt with two agricultural subjects, and reproduced both his
+ theoretical paradoxes, and his admirable practical maxims, on the
+ material prosperity of nations. Holbach, not yet author of the
+ memorable System of Nature, compiled a vast number of the articles on
+ chemistry and mineralogy, chiefly and avowedly from German sources, he
+ being the only writer of the band with a mastery of a language which
+ was at that moment hardly more essential to culture than Russian is
+ now. The name of Duclos should not be passed over, in the list of the
+ foremost men who helped to raise the encyclopædic monument. 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 Encyclopædia (<i>Déclamation des
+ Anciens</i>, <i>Etiquette</i>, etc.) are not very remarkable; but the
+ reflections on conduct which he styled <i>Considérations sur les Mœurs
+ de ce Siécle</i> (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 encyclopædic 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 Encyclopædia 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."<a name="FNanchor_114_114" id=
+ "FNanchor_114_114"></a><a href="#Footnote_114_114" class=
+ "fnanchor">[114]</a> 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. We need not linger over the names of other writers, who indeed
+ are now little more than mere shadows of names, such as La Condamine,
+ a scientific traveller of fame and merit in his day and generation; of
+ Du Marsais, the poverty-stricken and unlucky scholar who wrote
+ articles on grammar; of the President Des Brosses, who was unfortunate
+ enough to be in the right in a quarrel about money with Voltaire, and
+ who has since been better known to readers through the fury of the
+ provoked patriarch, than through his own meritorious contributions to
+ the early history of civilisation.</p>
+
+ <p>The name of one faithful worker in the building of this new
+ Jerusalem ought not to be omitted, though his writings were <i>multa
+ non multum</i>. The Chevalier de Jaucourt (1704-1779), as his title
+ shows, was the younger son of a noble house. He studied at Geneva,
+ Cambridge, and Leyden, and published in 1734 a useful account of the
+ life and writings of Leibnitz. When the Encyclopædia was projected,
+ his services were at once secured, and he became its slave from the
+ beginning of A to the end of Z. He wrote articles in his own special
+ subjects of natural history and physical science, but he was always
+ ready to lend his help in other departments, in writing, rewriting,
+ reading, correcting, and all those other humbler necessities of
+ editorship of which the inconsiderate reader knows little and thinks
+ less. Jaucourt revelled in this drudgery. God made him for grinding
+ articles, said Diderot. For six or seven years, he wrote one day,
+ Jaucourt has been in the middle of half a dozen secretaries, reading,
+ dictating, slaving, for thirteen or fourteen hours a day, and he is
+ not tired of it even now. When he was told that the work must
+ positively be brought to an end, his countenance fell, and the
+ prospect of release from such happy bondage filled his heart with
+ desolation.<a name="FNanchor_115_115" id=
+ "FNanchor_115_115"></a><a href="#Footnote_115_115" class=
+ "fnanchor">[115]</a> "If," says Diderot in the preface to the eighth
+ volume (1765), "we have raised a shout of joy like the sailor when he
+ espies land after a sombre night that has kept him midway between sky
+ and flood, it is to M. de Jaucourt that we are indebted for it. What
+ has he not done for us, especially in these latter times? With what
+ constancy has he not refused all the solicitations, whether of
+ friendship or of authority, that sought to take him away from us?
+ Never has sacrifice of repose, of health, of interest been more
+ absolute and more entire."<a name="FNanchor_116_116" id=
+ "FNanchor_116_116"></a><a href="#Footnote_116_116" class=
+ "fnanchor">[116]</a> These modest and unwearying helpers in good works
+ ought not to be wholly forgotten, in a commemoration of more
+ far-shining names.</p>
+
+ <p>Besides those who were known to the conductors of the Encyclopædia,
+ was a host of unsought volunteers. "The further we proceed," the
+ editors announced in the preface to the sixth volume (1756), "the more
+ are we sensible of the increase both in matter and in number of those
+ who are good enough to second our efforts." They received many
+ articles on the same subject. They were constantly embarrassed by an
+ emulation which, however flattering as a testimony to their work,
+ obliged them to make a difficult choice, or to lose a good article, or
+ to sacrifice one of their regular contributors, or to offend some
+ influential newcomer. Every one who had a new idea in his head, or
+ what he thought a new idea, sent them an article upon it. Men who were
+ priests or pastors by profession and unbelievers in their hearts, sent
+ them sheaves of articles in which they permitted themselves the
+ delicious luxury of saying a little of what they thought. Women, too,
+ pressed into the great work. Unknown ladies volunteered sprightly
+ explanations of the technicalities of costume, from the falbala which
+ adorned the bottom of their skirts, up to that little knot of riband
+ in the hair, which had come to replace the old appalling edifice of
+ ten stories high, in hierarchic succession of duchess, solitary,
+ musketeer, crescent, firmament, tenth heaven, and mouse.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_117_117" id="FNanchor_117_117"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_117_117" class="fnanchor">[117]</a> The oldest contributor
+ was Lenglet du Fresnoy, whose book on the Method of Studying History
+ is still known to those who have examined the development of men's
+ ideas about the relations of the present to the past. Lenglet was born
+ in 1674. The youngest of the band was Condorcet, who was born nearly
+ seventy years later (1743). One veteran, Morellet, who had been, the
+ schoolmate of Turgot and Loménie de Brienne, lived to think of many
+ things more urgent than Faith, Fils de Dieu, and Fundamentals. He
+ survived the Revolution, the Terror, the Empire, Waterloo, the
+ Restoration, and died in 1819, within sight of the Holy Alliance and
+ the Peterloo massacre. From the birth of Lenglet to the death of
+ Morellet—what an arc of the circle of western experience!</p>
+
+ <p>No one will ask whether the keen eye, and stimulating word, and
+ helpful hand of Voltaire were wanting to an enterprise which was to
+ awaken men to new love of tolerance, enlightenment, charity, and
+ justice. Voltaire was playing the refractory courtier at Potsdam when
+ the first two volumes appeared. With characteristic vehemence, he
+ instantly pronounced it a work which should be the glory of France,
+ and the shame of its persecutors. Diderot and D'Alembert were raising
+ an immortal edifice, and he would gladly furnish them with a little
+ stone here or there, which they might find convenient to stuff into
+ some corner or crevice in the wall. He was incessant in his industry.
+ Unlike those feebler and more consequential spirits, the
+ <i>petits-maîtres</i> of thought, by whom editors are harassed and
+ hindered, this great writer was as willing to undertake small subjects
+ as large ones, and to submit to all the mutilations and modifications
+ which the exigencies of the work and the difficulties of its
+ conductors recommended to them.<a name="FNanchor_118_118" id=
+ "FNanchor_118_118"></a><a href="#Footnote_118_118" class=
+ "fnanchor">[118]</a> As the structure progresses, his enthusiasm waxes
+ warmer. Diderot and his colleague are cutting their wings for a flight
+ to posterity. They are Atlas and Hercules bearing a world upon their
+ shoulders. It is the greatest work in the world; it is a superb
+ pyramid; its printing-office is the office for the instruction of the
+ human race; and so forth, in every phrase of stimulating sympathy and
+ energetic interest. Nor does his sympathy blind him to faults of
+ execution. Voltaire's good sense and sound judgment were as much at
+ the service of his friends in warning them of shortcomings, as in
+ eulogising what they achieved. And he had good faith enough to
+ complain to his friends, instead of complaining of them. In one place
+ he tells them, what is perfectly true, that their journeymen are far
+ too declamatory, and too much addicted to substitute vague and puerile
+ dissertations for that solid instruction which is what the reader of
+ an Encyclopædia seeks. In another he remonstrates against certain
+ frivolous affectations, and some of the coxcombries of literary
+ modishness. Everywhere he recommends them to insist on a firm and
+ distinct method in their contributors—etymologies, definitions,
+ examples, reasons, clearness, brevity. "You are badly seconded," he
+ writes; "there are bad soldiers in the army of a great
+ general."<a name="FNanchor_119_119" id="FNanchor_119_119"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_119_119" class="fnanchor">[119]</a> "I am sorry to see that
+ the writer of the article <i>Hell</i> declares that hell was a point
+ in the doctrine of Moses; now by all the devils that is not true. Why
+ lie about it? Hell is an excellent thing, to be sure, but it is
+ evident that Moses did not know it. 'Tis this world that is
+ hell."<a name="FNanchor_120_120" id="FNanchor_120_120"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_120_120" class="fnanchor">[120]</a></p>
+
+ <p>D'Alembert in reply always admitted the blemishes for which the
+ patriarch and master reproached them, but urged various pleas in
+ extenuation. He explains that Diderot is not always the master, either
+ to reject or to prune the articles that are offered to him.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_121_121" id="FNanchor_121_121"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_121_121" class="fnanchor">[121]</a> A writer who happened
+ to be useful for many excellent articles would insist as the price of
+ good work that they should find room for his bad work also; and so
+ forth. "No doubt we have bad articles in theology and metaphysics, but
+ with theologians for censors, and a privilege, I defy you to make them
+ any better. There are other articles that are less exposed to the
+ daylight, and in them all is repaired. Time will enable people to
+ distinguish what we have thought from what we have said."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_122_122" id="FNanchor_122_122"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_122_122" class="fnanchor">[122]</a> This last is a bitter
+ and humiliating word, but before any man hastens to cast a stone, let
+ him first make sure that his own life is free from every trace of
+ hypocritical conformity and mendacious compliance. Condorcet seems to
+ make the only remark that is worth making, when he says that the true
+ shame and disgrace of these dissemblings lay not with the writers,
+ whose only other alternative was to leave the stagnation of opinion
+ undisturbed, but with the ecclesiastics and ministers whose tyranny
+ made dissimulation necessary. And the veil imposed by authority did
+ not really serve any purpose of concealment. Every reader was let into
+ the secret of the writer's true opinion of the old mysteries, by means
+ of a piquant phrase, an adroit parallel, a significant reference, an
+ equivocal word of dubious panegyric. Diderot openly explains this in
+ the pages of the Encyclopædia itself. "In all cases," he says, "where
+ a national prejudice would seem to deserve respect, the particular
+ article ought to set it respectfully forth, with its whole procession
+ of attractions and probabilities. But the edifice of mud ought to be
+ overthrown and an unprofitable heap of dust scattered to the wind, by
+ references to articles in which solid principles serve as a base for
+ the opposite truths. This way of undeceiving men operates promptly on
+ minds of the right stamp, and it operates infallibly and without any
+ troublesome consequences, secretly and without disturbance, on minds
+ of every description."<a name="FNanchor_123_123" id=
+ "FNanchor_123_123"></a><a href="#Footnote_123_123" class=
+ "fnanchor">[123]</a> "Our fanatics feel the blows," cried D'Alembert
+ complacently, "though they are sorely puzzled to tell from which side
+ they come."<a name="FNanchor_124_124" id=
+ "FNanchor_124_124"></a><a href="#Footnote_124_124" class=
+ "fnanchor">[124]</a></p>
+
+ <p>It is one of the most deplorable things in the history of
+ literature to see a man endowed with Diderot's generous conceptions
+ and high social aims, forced to stoop to these odious economies. In
+ reading his Prospectus, and still more directly in his article,</p>
+
+ <p><i>Encyclopédie</i>, we are struck by the beneficence and breadth
+ of the great designs which inspire and support him. The Encyclopædia,
+ it has been said, was no peaceful storehouse in which scholars and
+ thinkers of all kinds could survey the riches they had acquired; it
+ was a gigantic siege-engine and armoury of weapons of attack.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_125_125" id="FNanchor_125_125"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_125_125" class="fnanchor">[125]</a> This is only true in a
+ limited sense of one part of the work, and that not the most important
+ part. Such a judgment is only possible for one who has not studied the
+ book itself, or else who is ignorant of the social requirements of
+ France at the time. We shall show this presently in detail. Meanwhile
+ it is enough to make two observations. The implements which the
+ circumstances of the time made it necessary to use as weapons of
+ attack, were equally fitted for the acquisition in a happier season of
+ those treasures of thought and knowledge which are the object of
+ disinterested research. And what is still more important, we have to
+ observe that it was the characteristic note and signal glory of the
+ French revolutionary school, to subordinate mere knowledge to the
+ practical work of raising society up from the corruption and paralysis
+ to which it had been brought by the double action of civil and
+ ecclesiastical authority. The efforts of the Encyclopædists were not
+ disinterested in the sense of being vague blows in the air. Their aim
+ was not theory but practice, not literature but life. The
+ Encyclopædists were no doubt all men of battle, and some of them were
+ hardly more than mere partisans.</p>
+
+ <p>But Diderot at least had constantly in mind the great work which
+ remained after the battle should be won. He was profoundly conscious
+ that the mere accumulation of knowledge of the directly physical facts
+ of the universe would take men a very short way towards
+ reconstruction. And he struck the key-note in such admirable passages
+ as this: "One consideration especially that we ought never to lose
+ from sight is that, if we ever banish a man, or the thinking and
+ contemplative being, from above the surface of the earth, this
+ pathetic and sublime spectacle of nature becomes no more than a scene
+ of melancholy and silence. The universe is dumb; the darkness and
+ silence of the night take possession of it ...It is the presence of
+ man that gives its interest to the existence of other beings; and what
+ better object can we set before ourselves in the history of these
+ beings, than to accept such a consideration? Why shall we not
+ introduce man into our work in the same place which he holds in the
+ universe? Why shall we not make him a common centre? Is there in
+ infinite space any other point from which we can with greater
+ advantage draw those immense lines that we propose to extend to all
+ other points? What a vivid and softening reaction must result between
+ man and the beings by whom he is surrounded ...Man is the single term
+ from which we ought to set out, and to which we ought to trace all
+ back, if we would please, interest, touch, even in the most arid
+ reflections and the driest details. If you take away my own existence
+ and the happiness of my fellows, of what concern to me is all the rest
+ of nature.'<a name="FNanchor_126_126" id=
+ "FNanchor_126_126"></a><a href="#Footnote_126_126" class=
+ "fnanchor">[126]</a></p>
+
+ <p>In this we hear the voice of the new time, as we do in his
+ exclamation that the perfection of an Encyclopædia is the work of
+ centuries; centuries had to elapse before the foundations could be
+ laid; centuries would have to elapse before its completion: "<i>mais à
+ la posérité, et</i> À L'ÊTRE QUI NE MEURT POINT!"<a name=
+ "FNanchor_127_127" id="FNanchor_127_127"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_127_127" class="fnanchor">[127]</a> These exalted ideas
+ were not a substitute for arduous labour. In all that Diderot writes
+ upon his magnificent undertaking, we are struck by his singular union
+ of common sense with elevation, of simplicity with grasp, of
+ suppleness with strength, of modesty with hopeful confidence. On
+ occasions that would have tempted a man of less sincerity and less
+ seriousness to bombast and inflation, his sense of the unavoidable
+ imperfections of so vast a work always makes itself felt through his
+ pride in its lofty aim and beneficent design. The weight of the burden
+ steadied him, and the anxiety of the honest and laborious craftsman
+ mastered the impulses of rhetoric.</p>
+
+ <p>Before going further into the general contents of the Encyclopædia,
+ we shall briefly describe the extraordinary succession of obstacles
+ and embarrassments against which its intrepid conductor was compelled
+ to fight his way. The project was fully conceived and its details
+ worked out between 1745 and 1748. The Encyclopedia was announced in
+ 1750, in a Prospectus of which Diderot was the author. At length in
+ 1751 the first volume of the work itself was given to the public,
+ followed by the second in January 1752. The clerical party at once
+ discerned what tremendous fortifications, with how deadly an armament,
+ were rising up in face of their camp. The Jesuits had always been
+ jealous of an enterprise in which they had not been invited to take a
+ part. They had expected at least to have the control of the articles
+ on theology. They now were bent on taking the work into their own
+ hands, and orthodoxy hastily set all the machinery of its ally,
+ authority, in vigorous motion.</p>
+
+ <p>The first attack was indirect. An abbé de Prades sustained a
+ certain thesis in an official exercise at the Sorbonne, and Diderot
+ was suspected, without good reason, of being its true author. An
+ examination of its propositions was ordered. It was pronounced
+ pernicious, dangerous, and tending to deism, chiefly on account of
+ some too suggestive comparisons between the miraculous healings in the
+ New Testament, and those ascribed in the more ancient legend to
+ Æsculapius. Other grounds of vehement objection were found in the
+ writer's maintenance of the Lockian theory of the origin of our ideas.
+ To deny the innateness of ideas was roundly asserted to be materialism
+ and atheism. The abbé de Prades was condemned, and deprived of his
+ license (Jan 27, 1752). As he was known to be a friend of Diderot, and
+ was suspected of being the writer of articles on theology in the
+ Encyclopædia, the design of the Jesuit cabal in ruining De Prades was
+ to discredit the new undertaking, and to induce the government to
+ prohibit it. Their next step was to procure a pastoral from the
+ archbishop of Paris. This document not only condemned the heretical
+ propositions of De Prades, but referred in sombre terms to unnamed
+ works teeming with error and impiety. Every one understood the
+ reference, and among its effects was an extension of the vogue and
+ notoriety of the Encyclopædia.<a name="FNanchor_128_128" id=
+ "FNanchor_128_128"></a><a href="#Footnote_128_128" class=
+ "fnanchor">[128]</a> The Jesuits were not allowed to retain a monopoly
+ of persecuting zeal, and the Jansenists refused to be left behind in
+ the race of hypocritical intrigue. The bishop of Auxerre, who belonged
+ to this party, followed his brother prelate of Paris in a more direct
+ attack, in which he included not only the Encyclopædia, but
+ Montesquieu and Buffon. De Prades took to flight. D'Alembert commended
+ him to Voltaire, then at Berlin. The king was absent, but Voltaire
+ gave royal protection to the fugitive until Frederick's return. De
+ Prades was then at once taken into favour and appointed reader to the
+ king. He proved but a poor martyr, however, for he afterwards
+ retracted his heresies, got a benefice, and was put into prison by
+ Frederick for giving information to his French countrymen during the
+ Seven Years' War.<a name="FNanchor_129_129" id=
+ "FNanchor_129_129"></a><a href="#Footnote_129_129" class=
+ "fnanchor">[129]</a> Unfortunately neither orthodoxy nor heterodoxy
+ has any exclusive patent for monopoly of rascals.</p>
+
+ <p>Meanwhile Diderot wrote on his behalf an energetic and dignified
+ reply to the aggressive pastoral. This apology is not such a
+ masterpiece of eloquence as the magnificent letter addressed by
+ Rousseau ten years later to the archbishop of Paris, after the
+ pastoral against Emilius. But Diderot's vindication of De Prades is
+ firm, moderate, and closely argumentative. The piece is worth turning
+ to in our own day, when great dignitaries of the churches too often
+ show the same ignorance, the same temerity, and the same reckless want
+ of charity, as the bishop of Auxerre showed a hundred and twenty years
+ ago. They resort to the very same fallacies by way of shield against
+ scientific truths or philosophical speculations that happen not to be
+ easily reconcilable with their official opinions. "I know nothing so
+ indecent," says Diderot, "and nothing so injurious to religion as
+ these vague declamations of theologians against reason. One would
+ suppose, to hear them, that men could only enter into the bosom of
+ Christianity as a herd of cattle enter into a stable; and that we must
+ renounce our common sense either to embrace our religion or to remain
+ in it ...Such principles as yours are made to frighten small souls;
+ everything alarms them, because they perceive clearly the consequences
+ of nothing; they set up connections among things which have nothing to
+ do with one another; they spy danger in any method of arguing which is
+ strange to them; they float at hazard between truths and prejudices
+ which they never distinguish, and to which they are equally attached;
+ and all their life is passed in crying out either miracle or impiety."
+ In an eloquent peroration, which is not more eloquent than it is
+ instructive, De Prades is made to turn round on his Jansenist censor,
+ and reproach him with the disturbance with which the intestine
+ rivalries of Jansenist and Jesuit had afflicted the faithful. "It is
+ the abominable testimony of your convulsions," he cries, "that has
+ overthrown the testimony of miracles. It is the fatuous audacity with
+ which your fanatics have confronted persecution, that has annihilated
+ the evidence of the martyrs. It is your declamations against sovereign
+ pontiffs, against bishops, against all the orders of the
+ ecclesiastical hierarchy, that have covered priest, altar, and creed
+ with opprobrium. If the pope, the bishops, the priests, the simple
+ faithful, the whole church, if its mysteries, its sacraments, its
+ temples, its ceremonies, have fallen into contempt, yours, yours, is
+ the handiwork."<a name="FNanchor_130_130" id=
+ "FNanchor_130_130"></a><a href="#Footnote_130_130" class=
+ "fnanchor">[130]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Bourdaloue more than half a century before had taunted the
+ free-thinkers of his day with falseness and inconsistency in taking
+ sides with the Jansenists, whose superstitions they notoriously held
+ in open contempt. The motive for the alliance was tolerably obvious.
+ The Jansenists, apart from their theology, were above all else the
+ representatives of opposition to authority. It was for this that Lewis
+ XIV. counted them worse than atheists. The Jesuits, it has been well
+ said in keeping down their enemies by force, became the partisans of
+ absolute government, and upheld it on every occasion. The Jansenists,
+ after they had been crushed by violence, began to feel to what
+ excesses power might be brought. From being speculative enemies to
+ freedom as a theory, they became, through the education of
+ persecution, the partisans of freedom in practice. The quarrel of
+ Molinists and Jansenists, from a question of theology, grew into a
+ question of human liberty.<a name="FNanchor_131_131" id=
+ "FNanchor_131_131"></a><a href="#Footnote_131_131" class=
+ "fnanchor">[131]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Circumstances had now changed. The free-thinkers were becoming
+ strong enough to represent opposition to authority on their own
+ principles and in their own persons. Diderot's vigorous remonstrance
+ with the bishop of Auxerre incidentally marks for us the definite
+ rupture of philosophic sympathy for the Jansenist champions. "It is
+ your disputatiousness," he said, "which within the last forty years
+ has made far more unbelievers than all the productions of philosophy."
+ As we cannot too clearly realise, it was the flagrant social
+ incompetence of the church which brought what they called Philosophy,
+ that is to say Liberalism, into vogue and power. Locke's Essay had
+ been translated in 1700, but it had made no mark, and as late as 1725
+ the first edition of the translation remained unsold. It was the
+ weakness and unsightly decrepitude of the ecclesiastics which opened
+ the way for the thinkers.</p>
+
+ <p>This victory, however, was not yet. Diderot had still a dismal
+ wilderness to traverse. He was not without secret friends even in the
+ camp of his enemies.</p>
+
+ <p>After his reply to Peré Berthier's attack on the Prospectus, he
+ received an anonymous letter to the effect that if he wished to avenge
+ himself on the Jesuits, there were both important documents and money
+ at his command. Diderot replied that he was in no want of money, and
+ that he had no time to spare for Jesuit documents.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_132_132" id="FNanchor_132_132"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_132_132" class="fnanchor">[132]</a> He trusted to reason.
+ Neither reason nor eloquence availed against the credit at court of
+ the ecclesiastical cabal. The sale of the second volume of the
+ Encyclopædia was stopped by orders which Malesherbes was reluctantly
+ compelled to issue. A decree of the king's council (Feb. 7, 1752)
+ suppressed both volumes, as containing maxims hostile to the royal
+ authority and to religion. The publishers were forbidden to reprint
+ them, and the booksellers were forbidden to deliver any copies that
+ might still be in hand. The decree, however, contained no prohibition
+ of the continuance of the work. It was probably not meant to do
+ anything more serious than to pacify the Jesuits, and lend an apparent
+ justification to the officious pastorals of the great prelates. Some
+ even thought that the aim of the government was to forestall severer
+ proceedings on the part of the parliament of lawyers;<a name=
+ "FNanchor_133_133" id="FNanchor_133_133"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_133_133" class="fnanchor">[133]</a> for corporations of
+ lawyers have seldom been less bigoted or obstructive than corporations
+ of churchmen. Nor were lawyers and priests the only foes. Even the
+ base and despicable jealousies of booksellers counted for something in
+ the storm.<a name="FNanchor_134_134" id=
+ "FNanchor_134_134"></a><a href="#Footnote_134_134" class=
+ "fnanchor">[134]</a></p>
+
+ <p>A curious triumph awaited the harassed Diderot.</p>
+
+ <p>He was compelled, under pain of a second incarceration, to hand
+ over to the authorities all the papers, proof-sheets, and plates in
+ his possession. The Jesuit cabal supposed that if they could obtain
+ the materials for the future volumes, they could easily arrange and
+ manipulate them to suit their own purposes. Their ignorance and
+ presumption were speedily confounded. In taking Diderot's papers, they
+ had forgotten, as Grimm says, to take his head and his genius: they
+ had forgotten to ask him for a key to articles which, so far from
+ understanding, they with some confusion vainly strove even to
+ decipher. The government was obliged (May 1752) to appeal to Diderot
+ and D'Alembert to resume a work for which their enemies had thus
+ proved themselves incompetent. Yet, by one of the meannesses of
+ decaying authority, the decree of three months before was left
+ suspended over their heads.<a name="FNanchor_135_135" id=
+ "FNanchor_135_135"></a><a href="#Footnote_135_135" class=
+ "fnanchor">[135]</a></p>
+
+ <p>The third volume of the Encyclopædia appeared in the autumn of
+ 1753. D'Alembert prefixed an introduction, vindicating himself and his
+ colleague with a manliness, a sincerity, a gravity, a fire, that are
+ admirable and touching. "What," he concluded, "can malignity
+ henceforth devise against two men of letters, trained long since by
+ their meditations to fear neither injustice nor poverty; who having
+ learnt by a long and mournful experience, not to despise, but to
+ mistrust and dread men, have the courage to love them, and the
+ prudence to flee them?... After having been the stormy and painful
+ occupation of the most precious years of our life, this work will
+ perhaps be the solace of its close. May it, when both we and our
+ enemies alike have ceased to exist, be a durable monument of the good
+ intention of the one, and the injustice of the other.... Let us
+ remember the fable of Bocalina: 'A traveller was disturbed by the
+ importunate chirrupings of the grasshoppers; he would fain have slain
+ them every one, but only got belated and missed his way; he need only
+ have fared peacefully on his road, and the grasshoppers would have
+ died of themselves before the end of a week.'"<a name=
+ "FNanchor_136_136" id="FNanchor_136_136"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_136_136" class="fnanchor">[136]</a> A volume was now
+ produced in each year, until the autumn of 1757 and the issue of the
+ seventh volume. This brought the work down to Gyromancy and Gythiuin.
+ Then there arose storms and divisions which marked a memorable epoch
+ alike in the history of the book, in the life of Diderot and others,
+ and in the thought of the century. The progress of the work in
+ popularity during the five years between 1752 and 1757 had been steady
+ and unbroken. The original subscribers were barely two thousand. When
+ the fourth volume appeared, there were three thousand. The seventh
+ volume found nearly a thousand more.<a name="FNanchor_137_137" id=
+ "FNanchor_137_137"></a><a href="#Footnote_137_137" class=
+ "fnanchor">[137]</a> Such prodigious success wrought the chagrin of
+ the party of superstition to fever heat. As each annual volume came
+ from the press and found a wider circle of readers than its
+ predecessor, their malice and irritation waxed a degree more intense.
+ They scattered malignant rumours abroad; they showered pamphlets; no
+ imputation was too odious or too ridiculous for them. Diderot,
+ D'Alembert, Voltaire, Rousseau, Buffon, were declared to have
+ organised a league of writers, with the deliberate purpose of
+ attacking the public tranquillity and overthrowing society. They were
+ denounced as heads of a formal conspiracy, a clandestine association,
+ a midnight band, united in a horrible community of pestilent opinions
+ and sombre interests.</p>
+
+ <p>In the seventh volume an article appeared which made the ferment
+ angrier than it had ever been. D'Alembert had lately been the guest of
+ Voltaire at Ferney, whence he had made frequent visits to Geneva. In
+ his intercourse with the ministers of that famous city, he came to the
+ conclusion that their religious opinions were really Socinian, and
+ when he wrote the article on Geneva he stated this. He stated it in
+ such a way as to make their heterodox opinions a credit to Genevese
+ pastors, because he associated disbelief in the divinity of Jesus
+ Christ, in mysteries of faith, and in eternal punishment, with a
+ practical life of admirable simplicity, purity, and tolerance. Each
+ line of this eulogy on the Socinian preachers of Geneva, veiled a
+ burning and contemptuous reproach against the cruel and darkened
+ spirit of the churchmen in France. Jesuit and Jansenist, loose abbès
+ and debauched prelates, felt the quivering of the arrow in the quick,
+ as they read that the morals of the Genevese pastors were exemplary;
+ that they did not pass their lives in furious disputes upon
+ unintelligible points; that they brought no indecent and persecuting
+ accusation against one another before the civil magistrate. There was
+ gall and wormwood to the orthodox bigot in the harmless statement that
+ "Hell, which is one of the principal articles of our belief, has
+ ceased to be one with many of the ministers of Geneva; it would be,
+ according to them, a great insult to the divinity, to imagine that
+ this Being, so full of justice and goodness, is capable of punishing
+ our faults by an eternity of torment: they explain in as good a sense
+ as they can the formal passages of Scripture which are contrary to
+ their opinion, declaring that we ought never in the sacred books to
+ take anything literally, that seems to wound humanity and reason." And
+ we may be sure that D'Alembert was thinking less of the consistory and
+ the great council of Geneva, than of the priests and the parliament of
+ Paris, when he praised the Protestant pastors, not only for their
+ tolerance, but for confining themselves within their proper functions,
+ and for being the first to set an example of submission to the
+ magistrates and the laws. The intention of this elaborate and,
+ reasoned account of the creed and practice of a handful of preachers
+ in a heretical town, could not be mistaken by those at whom it was
+ directed. It produced in the black ranks of official orthodoxy fully
+ as angry a shock as its writer could have designed.</p>
+
+ <p>The church had not yet, we must remember, borrowed the principles
+ of humanity and tolerance from atheists. It was not the comparatively
+ purified Christian doctrine of our own time with which the
+ Encyclopædists did battle, but an organised corporation, with
+ exceptional tribunals, with special material privileges, with dungeons
+ and chains at their disposal. We have to realise that official
+ religion was then a strange union of Byzantine decrepitude, with the
+ energetic ferocity of the Holy Office. Within five years of this
+ indirect plea of D'Alembert for tolerance and humanity, Calas was
+ murdered by the orthodoxy of Toulouse. Nearly ten years later (1766),
+ we find Lewis XV., with the steam of the Parc aux Cerfs about him,
+ rewarded by the loyal acclamations of a Parisian crowd, for descending
+ from his carriage as a priest passed bearing the sacrament, and
+ prostrating himself in the mud before the holy symbol.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_138_138" id="FNanchor_138_138"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_138_138" class="fnanchor">[138]</a> In the same year the
+ youth La Barre was first tortured, then beheaded, then burnt, for some
+ presumed disrespect to the same holy symbol—then become the hateful
+ ensign of human degradation, of fanatical cruelty, of rancorous
+ superstition. Yet I should be sorry to be unjust. It is to be said
+ that even in these bad days when religion meant cruelty and cabal, the
+ one or two men who boldly withstood to the face the king and the
+ Pompadour for the vileness of their lives, were priests of the
+ church.</p>
+
+ <p>D'Alembert's article hardly goes beyond what to us seem the axioms
+ of all men of sense. We must remember the time. Even members of the
+ philosophic party itself, like Grimm, thought the article misplaced
+ and hardy.<a name="FNanchor_139_139" id=
+ "FNanchor_139_139"></a><a href="#Footnote_139_139" class=
+ "fnanchor">[139]</a> The Genevese ministers indignantly repudiated the
+ compliment of Socinianism, and the eulogy of being rather less
+ irrational than their neighbours. Voltaire read and read again with
+ delight, and plied the writer with reiterated exhortations in every
+ key, not to allow himself to be driven from the great work by the
+ raging of the heathen and the vain imaginings of the people.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_140_140" id="FNanchor_140_140"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_140_140" class="fnanchor">[140]</a></p>
+
+ <p>While the storm seemed to be at its height, an incident occurred
+ which let loose a new flood of violent passion. Helvétius published
+ that memorable book in which he was thought to have told all the world
+ its own secret. His <i>De l'Esprit</i> came out in 1758.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_141_141" id="FNanchor_141_141"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_141_141" class="fnanchor">[141]</a> It provoked a general
+ insurrection of public opinion. The devout and the heedless agreed in
+ denouncing it as scandalous, licentious, impious, and pregnant with
+ peril. The philosophic party felt that their ally had dealt a sore
+ blow to liberty of thought and the free expression of opinion.
+ "Philosophy," said Grimm, by philosophy, as I have said, meaning
+ Liberalism, "will long feel the effect of the rising of opinion which
+ this author has caused by his book; and for having described too
+ freely a morality that is bad and false in itself, M. Helvétius will
+ have to reproach himself with all the restraints that are now sure to
+ be imposed on the few men of lofty genius who still are left to us,
+ whose destiny was to enlighten their fellows, and to spread truth over
+ the earth."<a name="FNanchor_142_142" id=
+ "FNanchor_142_142"></a><a href="#Footnote_142_142" class=
+ "fnanchor">[142]</a></p>
+
+ <p>At the beginning of 1759 the procureur-général laid an information
+ before the court against Helvétius's book, against half a dozen minor
+ publications, and finally against the Encyclopædia. The <i>De
+ l'Esprit</i> was alleged to be a mere abridgment of the Encyclopædia,
+ and the Encyclopædia was denounced as being the opprobrium of the
+ nation by its impious maxims and its hostility to morals and religion.
+ The court appointed nine commissaries to examine the seven volumes,
+ suspending their further sale or delivery in the meanwhile. When the
+ commissaries sent in their report a month later, the parliament was
+ dissatisfied with its tenour, and appointed four new examiners, two of
+ them being theologians and two of them lawyers. Before the new censors
+ had time to do their work, the Council of State interposed with an
+ arbitrary decree (March 1759) suppressing the privilege which had been
+ conceded in 1746; prohibiting the sale of the seven volumes already
+ printed, and the printing of any future volumes under pain of
+ exemplary punishment.<a name="FNanchor_143_143" id=
+ "FNanchor_143_143"></a><a href="#Footnote_143_143" class=
+ "fnanchor">[143]</a> The motive for this intervention has never been
+ made plain. One view is that the king's government resented the action
+ of the law courts, and that the royal decree was only an episode in
+ the quarrel then raging between the crown and the parliaments. Another
+ opinion is that Malesherbes or</p>
+
+ <p>Choiseul was anxious to please the dauphin and the Jesuit party at
+ Versailles. The most probable explanation is that the authorities were
+ eager to silence one at least of the three elements of opposition, the
+ Jansenists, the lawyers, and the philosophers,—who were then
+ distracting the realm. The two former were beyond their direct reach.
+ They threw themselves upon the foe who happened to be most
+ accessible.</p>
+
+ <p>The government, however, had no intention of finally exterminating
+ an enemy who might at some future day happen to be a convenient ally.
+ They encouraged or repressed the philosophers according to the
+ political calculations of the moment, sometimes according to the
+ caprices of the king's mistress, or even a minister's mistress. When
+ the clergy braved the royal authority, the hardiest productions were
+ received with indulgence. If the government were reduced to satisfy
+ the clergy, then even the very commonplaces of the new philosophy
+ became ground for accusation. The Encyclopædia was naturally exposed
+ in a special degree to such alternations of favour and
+ suspicion.<a name="FNanchor_144_144" id=
+ "FNanchor_144_144"></a><a href="#Footnote_144_144" class=
+ "fnanchor">[144]</a> The crisis of 1759 furnishes a curious
+ illustration of this. As we have seen, in the spring of that year the
+ privilege was withdrawn from the four associated booksellers, and the
+ continuance of the work strictly prohibited. Yet the printing was not
+ suspended for a week. Fifty compositors were busily setting up a book
+ which the ordinance of the government had decisively forbidden under
+ heavy penalties.</p>
+
+ <p>The same kind of connivance was practised to the advantage of other
+ branches of the opposition. Thirty years before this, the organ of the
+ Jansenist party was peremptorily suppressed. The police instituted a
+ rigorous search, and seized the very presses on which the Nouvelles
+ Ecclésiastiques was being printed. But the journal continued to
+ appear, and was circulated, just as regularly as before.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_145_145" id="FNanchor_145_145"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_145_145" class="fnanchor">[145]</a></p>
+
+ <p>The history of the policy of authority towards the Encyclopædia is
+ only one episode in the great lesson of the reign of Lewis XV. It was
+ long a common mistake to think of this king's system of government as
+ violent and tyrannical. In truth, its failure and confusion resulted
+ less from the arbitrariness of its procedure, than from the hopeless
+ absence of tenacity, conviction, and consistency in the substance and
+ direction of its objects. And this, again, was the result partly of
+ the complex and intractable nature of the opposition with which
+ successive ministers had to deal, and partly of the overpowering
+ strength of those Asiatic maxims of government which Richelieu and
+ Lewis XIV. had invested with such ruinous prestige. The impatience and
+ charlatanry of emotional or pseudo-scientific admirers of a personal
+ system blind them to the permanent truth, of which the succession of
+ the decrepitude of Lewis XV. to the strength of his great-grandfather,
+ and of the decrepitude of Napoleon III. to the strength of his uncle,
+ are only illustrations.</p>
+
+ <p>The true interest of all these details about a mere book lies in
+ the immense significance of the movement of political ideas and forces
+ to which they belong. The true interest of all history lies in the
+ spectacle which it furnishes of the growth and dissolution, the shock
+ and the transformation, incessantly at work among the great groups of
+ human conceptions. The decree against the Encyclopædia marks the
+ central moment of a collision between two antagonistic conceptions
+ which disputed, and in France still dispute, with one another the
+ shaping and control of institutions. One of these ideas is the
+ exclusion of political authority from the sphere and function of
+ directing opinion; it implies the absolute secularisation of
+ government. The rival idea prompted the massacre of St. Bartholomew,
+ the dragonnades, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and all the
+ other acts of the same policy, which not only deprived France of
+ thousands of the most conscientious and most ingenious of her sons,
+ but warped and corrupted the integrity of the national conscience. It
+ is natural that we should feel anger at the arbitrary attempt to
+ arrest Diderot's courageous and enlightened undertaking. Yet in truth
+ it was only the customary inference from an accepted principle, that
+ it is the business or the right of governments to guide thought and
+ regulate its expression. The Jesuits acted on this theory, and
+ resorted to repressive power and the secular arm whenever they could.
+ The Jansenists repudiated the principle, but eagerly practised it
+ whenever the turn of intrigue gave them the chance.</p>
+
+ <p>An extraordinary and unforeseen circumstance changed the external
+ bearings of this critical conflict of ideas. The conception of the
+ duties of the temporal authority in the spiritual sphere had been
+ associated hitherto with Catholic doctrine. The decay of that doctrine
+ was rapidly discrediting the conception allied with it. But the
+ movement was interrupted. And it was interrupted by a man who suddenly
+ stepped out from the ranks of the Encyclopædists themselves. Rousseau
+ from his solitary cottage at Montmorency (1758) fulminated the
+ celebrated letter to D'Alembert on Stage Plays. The article on Geneva
+ in the seventh volume of the Encyclopædia had not only praised the
+ pastors for their unbelief; it also assailed the time-honoured
+ doctrine of the churches that the theatre is an institution from hell
+ and an invention of devils. D'Alembert paid a compliment to his
+ patriarch and master at Ferney, as well as shot a bolt at his
+ ecclesiastical foes in Paris, by urging the people of Geneva to shake
+ off irrational prejudices and straightway to set up a playhouse.
+ Rousseau had long been brooding over certain private grievances of his
+ own against Diderot; the dreary story has been told by me before, and
+ happily need not be repeated.<a name="FNanchor_146_146" id=
+ "FNanchor_146_146"></a><a href="#Footnote_146_146" class=
+ "fnanchor">[146]</a> He took the occasion of D'Alembert's mischievous
+ suggestion to his native Geneva, not merely to denounce the drama with
+ all the force and eloquence at his command, but formally to declare
+ the breach between himself and Diderot. From this moment he treated
+ the Holbachians—so he contemptuously styled the Encyclopædists—as
+ enemies of the human race and disseminators of the deadliest
+ poisons.</p>
+
+ <p>This was no mere quarrel of rival authors. It marked a fundamental
+ divergence in thought, and proclaimed the beginning of a disastrous
+ reaction in the very heart of the school of illumination. Among the
+ most conspicuous elements of the reaction were these: the
+ subordination of reason to emotion; the displacement of industry,
+ science, energetic and many-sided ingenuity, by dreamy indolence; and
+ finally, what brings us back to our starting-point, the suppression of
+ opinions deemed to be anti-social by the secular arm. The old idea was
+ brought back in a new dress; the absolutist conception of the function
+ of authority, associated with a theistic doctrine. Unfortunately for
+ France, Rousseau's idea prospered, and ended by vanquishing its
+ antagonist. The reason is plain. Rousseau's idea exactly fitted in
+ with the political traditions and institutions of the country. It was
+ more easily and directly compatible than was the contending idea, with
+ that temper and set of men's minds which tradition and institutions
+ had fixed so disastrously deep in the national character.</p>
+
+ <p>The crisis of 1758-59, then, is a date of the highest importance.
+ It marks a collision between the old principle of Lewis XIV., of the
+ Bartholomew Massacre, of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and
+ the new rationalistic principle of spiritual emancipation. The old
+ principle was decrepit, it was no longer able to maintain itself; the
+ hounds were furious, but their fury was toothless. Before the new
+ principle could achieve mastery, Rousseau had made mastery impossible.
+ Two men came into the world at this very moment, whom destiny made
+ incarnations of the discordant principles. Danton and Robespierre were
+ both born in 1759. Diderot seems to have had a biblical presentiment,
+ says Michelet. "We feel that he saw, beyond Rousseau, something
+ sinister, a spectre of the future. Diderot-Danton already looks in the
+ face of Rousseau-Robespierre."<a name="FNanchor_147_147" id=
+ "FNanchor_147_147"></a><a href="#Footnote_147_147" class=
+ "fnanchor">[147]</a></p>
+
+ <p>A more vexatious incident now befell the all-daring, all-enduring
+ Diderot, than either the decree of the Council or the schism of the
+ heresiarch at Montmorency. D'Alembert declared his intention of
+ abandoning the work, and urged his colleague to do the same. His
+ letters to Voltaire show intelligibly enough how he brought himself to
+ this resolution. "I am worn out," he says, "with the affronts and
+ vexations of every kind that this work draws down upon us. The hateful
+ and even infamous satires which they print against us, and which are
+ not only tolerated, but protected, authorised, applauded, nay,
+ actually commanded by the people with power in their hands; the
+ sermons, or rather the tocsins that are rung against us at Versailles
+ in the presence of the king, <i>nemine reclamante</i>; the new
+ intolerable inquisition that they are bent on practising against the
+ Encyclopædia, by giving us new censors who are more absurd and more
+ intractable than could be found at Goa; all these reasons, joined to
+ some others, drive me to give up this accursed work once for all." He
+ cared nothing for libels or stinging pamphlets in themselves, but
+ libels permitted or ordered by those who could instantly have
+ suppressed them, were a different thing, especially when they vomited
+ forth the vilest personalities. He admitted that there were other
+ reasons why he was bent on retiring, and it would appear that one of
+ these reasons was dissatisfaction with the financial arrangements of
+ the booksellers.<a name="FNanchor_148_148" id=
+ "FNanchor_148_148"></a><a href="#Footnote_148_148" class=
+ "fnanchor">[148]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Voltaire for some time remonstrated against this retreat before the
+ hated <i>Infâme</i>. At length his opinion came round to D'Alembert's
+ reiterated assertions of the shame and baseness of men of letters
+ subjecting themselves to the humiliating yoke of ministers, priests,
+ and police. Voltaire wrote to Diderot, protesting that before all
+ things it was necessary to present a firm front to the foe; it would
+ be atrocious weakness to continue the work after D'Alembert had
+ quitted it; it was monstrous that such a genius as Diderot should make
+ himself the slave of booksellers and the victim of fanatics. Must this
+ dictionary, he asked, which is a hundred times more useful than
+ Bayle's, be fettered with the superstition which it should annihilate;
+ must they make terms with scoundrels who keep terms with none; could
+ the enemies of reason, the persecutors of philosophers, the assassins
+ of our kings, still dare to lift up their voices in such a century as
+ that? "Men are on the eve of a great revolution in the human mind, and
+ it is you to whom they are most of all indebted for it."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_149_149" id="FNanchor_149_149"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_149_149" class="fnanchor">[149]</a></p>
+
+ <p>More than once Voltaire entreated Diderot to finish his work in a
+ foreign country where his hands would be free. "No," said Diderot in a
+ reply of pathetic energy; "to abandon the work is turning our back
+ upon the breach, and to do precisely what the villains who persecute
+ us desire. If you knew with what joy they have learnt D'Alembert's
+ desertion! It is not for us to wait until the government have punished
+ the brigands to whom they have given us up. Is it for us to complain,
+ when they associate with us in their insults men who are so much
+ better than ever we shall be? What ought we to do then? Do what
+ becomes men of courage,—despise our foes, follow them up, and take
+ advantage, as we have done, of the feebleness of our censors. If
+ D'Alembert resumes, and we complete our work, is not that vengeance
+ enough?... After all this, you will believe that I cling at any price
+ to the Encyclopædia, and you will be mistaken. My dear master, I am
+ over forty. I am tired out with tricks and shufflings. I cry from
+ morning till night for rest, rest; and scarcely a day passes when I am
+ not tempted to go and live in obscurity and die in peace in the depths
+ of my old country. There comes a time when all ashes are mingled. Then
+ what will it boot me to have been Voltaire or Diderot, or whether it
+ is your three syllables or my three syllables that survive? One must
+ work, one must be useful, one owes an account of one's gifts,
+ etcetera, etcetera. Be useful to men! Is it quite clear that one does
+ more than amuse them, and that there is much difference between the
+ philosopher and the flute-player? They listen to one or the other with
+ pleasure or disdain, and remain what they were. The Athenians were
+ never wickeder than in the time of Socrates, and perhaps all that they
+ owe to his existence is a crime the more. That there is more spleen
+ than good sense in all this, I admit—and back I go to the
+ Encyclopædia."<a name="FNanchor_150_150" id=
+ "FNanchor_150_150"></a><a href="#Footnote_150_150" class=
+ "fnanchor">[150]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Thus for seven years the labour of conducting the vast enterprise
+ fell upon Diderot alone. He had not only to write articles upon the
+ most exhausting and various kinds of subjects; he had also to
+ distribute topics among his writers, to shape their manuscripts, to
+ correct proof-sheets, to supervise the preparation of the engravings,
+ to write the text explanatory of them, and all this amid constant
+ apprehension and alarm from the government and the police. He would
+ have been free from persecution at Lausanne or at Leyden. The two
+ great sovereigns of the north who thought it part of the trade of a
+ king to patronise the new philosophy, offered him shelter at
+ Petersburg or Berlin.<a name="FNanchor_151_151" id=
+ "FNanchor_151_151"></a><a href="#Footnote_151_151" class=
+ "fnanchor">[151]</a></p>
+
+ <p>But how could he transport to the banks of the Neva or the Spree
+ his fifty skilled compositors, his crafty engravers on copper-plate,
+ and all the host of his industrial army? How could he find in those
+ half-barbarous lands the looms and engines and thousand cunning
+ implements and marvellous processes which he had under his eye and
+ ready to his hand in France? And so he held fast to his post on the
+ fifth floor of the house in the Rue Saint Benoît, a standing marvel to
+ the world of letters for all time.</p>
+
+ <p>As his toil was drawing to a close, he suddenly received the most
+ mortifying of all the blows that were struck at him in the course of
+ his prolonged, hazardous, and tormenting adventure. After the
+ interruption in 1759, it was resolved to bring out the ten volumes
+ which were still wanting, in a single issue. Le Breton was entrusted
+ with the business of printing them. The manuscript was set in type,
+ Diderot corrected the proof-sheets, saw the revises, and returned each
+ sheet duly marked with his signature for the press. At this point the
+ nefarious operation of Le Breton began. He and his foreman took
+ possession of the sheets, and proceeded to retrench, cut out, and
+ suppress every passage, line, or phrase, that appeared to them to be
+ likely to provoke clamour or the anger of the government. They thus,
+ of their own brute authority, reduced most of the best articles to the
+ condition of fragments mutilated and despoiled of all that had been
+ most valuable in them. The miscreants did not even trouble themselves
+ to secure any appearance of order or continuity in these mangled
+ skeletons of articles. Their murderous work done, they sent the pages
+ to the press, and to make the mischief beyond remedy, they committed
+ all the original manuscripts and proof-sheets to the flames. One day,
+ when the printing was nearly completed (1764), Diderot having occasion
+ to consult an article under the letter S, found it entirely spoiled.
+ He stood confounded. An instant's thought revealed the printer's
+ atrocity. He eagerly turned to the articles on which he and his
+ subordinates had taken most pains, and found everywhere the same
+ ravages and disorder. "The discovery," says Grimm, "threw him into a
+ state of frenzy and despair which I shall never forget."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_152_152" id="FNanchor_152_152"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_152_152" class="fnanchor">[152]</a> He wept tears of rage
+ and torment in the presence of the criminal himself, and before wife
+ and children and sympathising domestics. For weeks he could neither
+ eat nor sleep. "For years," he cried to Le Breton, "you have been
+ basely cheating me. You have massacred, or got a brute beast to
+ massacre, the work of twenty good men who have devoted to you their
+ time, their talents, their vigils, from love of right and truth, from
+ the simple hope of seeing their ideas given to the public, and reaping
+ from them a little consideration richly earned, which your injustice
+ and thanklessness have now stolen from them for ever.... You and your
+ book will be dragged through the mire; you will henceforth be cited as
+ a man who has been guilty of an act of treachery, an act of vile
+ hardihood, to which nothing that has ever happened in this world can
+ be compared. Then you will be able to judge your panic terror, and the
+ cowardly counsels of those barbarous Ostrogoths and stupid Vandals who
+ helped you in the havoc you have made."<a name="FNanchor_153_153" id=
+ "FNanchor_153_153"></a><a href="#Footnote_153_153" class=
+ "fnanchor">[153]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Yet he remained undaunted to the very last. His first movement to
+ throw up the work, and denounce Le Breton's outrage to the subscribers
+ and the world, was controlled. His labour had lost its charm. The
+ monument was disfigured and defaced. He never forgot the horrible
+ chagrin, and he never forgave the ignoble author of it. But the last
+ stone was at length laid. In 1765 the subscribers received the
+ concluding ten volumes of letterpress. The eleven volumes of plates
+ were not completed until 1772. The copies bore Neufchâtel on the
+ title-page, and were distributed privately. The clergy in their
+ assembly at once levelled a decree at the new book. The parliament
+ quashed this, not from love of the book, but from hatred of the
+ clergy. The government, however, ordered all who possessed the
+ Encyclopædia to deliver it over forthwith to the police. Eventually
+ the copies were returned to their owners with some petty
+ curtailments.</p>
+
+ <p>Voltaire has left us a vivacious picture of authority in grave
+ consultation over the great engine of destruction. With that we may
+ conclude our account of its strange eventful history.</p>
+
+ <div class="blockquot">
+  <p>A servant of Lewis xv. told me that one day the king his master
+  supping at Trianon with a small party, the talk happened to turn
+  first upon the chase, and next on gunpowder. Some one said that the
+  best powder was made of equal parts of saltpetre, of sulphur, and of
+  charcoal. The Duke de la Vallière, better informed, maintained that
+  to make good gunpowder you required one part of sulphur and one of
+  charcoal to five parts of saltpetre.</p>
+
+  <p>"It is curious," said the Duke de Nivernois, "that we should amuse
+  ourselves every day in killing partridges at Versailles, and
+  sometimes in killing men or getting ourselves killed on the frontier,
+  without knowing exactly how the killing is done."</p>
+
+  <p>"Alas," said Madame de Pompadour, "we are all reduced to that
+  about everything in the world: I don't know how they compound the
+  rouge that I put on my cheeks, and I should be vastly puzzled if they
+  were to ask me how they make my silk stockings."</p>
+
+  <p>"'Tis a pity, then," said the Duke de la Vallière, "that his
+  Majesty should have confiscated our Encyclopædias, which cost us a
+  hundred pistoles apiece: we should soon find there an answer to all
+  our difficulties."</p>
+
+  <p>The king justified the confiscation: he had been warned that
+  one-and-twenty folios, that were to be found on the dressing-tables
+  of all the ladies, were the most dangerous thing in all the world for
+  the kingdom of France; and he meant to find out for himself whether
+  this were true or not, before letting people read the book. When
+  supper was over, he sent three lackeys for the book, and they
+  returned each with a good deal of difficulty carrying seven
+  volumes.</p>
+
+  <p>It was then seen from the article <i>Powder</i> that the Duke de
+  la Vallière was right; and then Madame de Pompadour learnt the
+  difference between the old rouge of Spain, with which the ladies of
+  Madrid coloured their faces, and the rouge of the ladies of Paris.
+  She knew that the Greek and Roman ladies were painted with the purple
+  that came from the <i>murex</i>, and that therefore our scarlet is
+  the purple of the ancients; that there was more saffron in the rouge
+  of Spain, and more cochineal in that of France.</p>
+
+  <p>She saw how they made her stockings by loom; and the machine
+  transported her with amazement.</p>
+
+  <p>Everyone threw himself on the volumes like the daughters of
+  Lycomedes on the ornaments of Ulysses; every one immediately found
+  all he sought. Those who were at law were surprised to see their
+  affair decided. The king read all about the rights of his crown. "But
+  upon my word," he said, "I can't tell why they spoke so ill of this
+  book." "Do you not see, sire, said the Duke de Nivernois, "it is
+  because the book is so good; people never cry out against what is
+  mediocre or common in anything. If women seek to throw ridicule on a
+  new arrival, she is sure to be prettier than they are."</p>
+
+  <p>All this time they kept on turning over the leaves; and the Count
+  de C—— said aloud—"Sire, how happy you are, that under your reign men
+  should be found capable of understanding all the arts and
+  transmitting them to posterity. Everything is here, from the way to
+  make a pin down to the art of casting and pointing your guns; from
+  the infinitely little up to the infinitely great. Thank God for
+  having brought into the world in your kingdom the men who have done
+  such good work for the whole universe. Other nations must either buy
+  the Encyclopædia, or else they must pirate it. Take all my property
+  if you will, but give me back my Encyclopædia."</p>
+
+  <p>"Yet they say," replied the king, "that there are many faults in
+  this work, necessary and admirable as it is."</p>
+
+  <p>"Sire," said the Count de C——, "there were at your supper two
+  ragouts which were failures; we left them uneaten, and yet we had
+  excellent cheer. Would you have had them throw all the supper out of
+  the window because of those two ragouts?..."</p>
+
+  <p>Envy and Ignorance did not count themselves beaten; the two
+  immortal sisters continued their cries, their cabals, their
+  persecutions. What happened? Foreigners brought out four editions of
+  this French book which in France was proscribed, and they gained
+  about 1,800,000 crowns.<a name="FNanchor_154_154" id=
+  "FNanchor_154_154"></a><a href="#Footnote_154_154" class=
+  "fnanchor">[154]</a></p>
+ </div>
+
+ <p>In a monotonous world it is a pity to spoil a striking effect, yet
+ one must be vigilant. It has escaped the attention of writers who have
+ reproduced this lively scene, that Madame de Pompadour was dead before
+ the volumes containing Powder and Rouge were born. The twenty-one
+ volumes were not published until 1765, and she died in the spring of
+ the previous year. But the substance of the story is probably true,
+ though Voltaire has only made a slip in a name.</p>
+
+ <p>As to the reference with which Voltaire impatiently concludes, we
+ have to remember that the work was being printed at Geneva as it came
+ out in Paris. It was afterwards reprinted as a whole both at Geneva
+ (1777) and at Lausanne (1778). An edition appeared at Leghorn in 1770,
+ and another at Lucca in 1771. Immediately after the completion of the
+ Encyclopædia there began to appear volumes of selections from it. The
+ compilers of these anthologies (for instance of an <i>Esprit de
+ l'Encydopédie</i> published at Geneva in 1768) were free from all
+ intention of proselytising. They meant only to turn a more or less
+ honest penny by serving up in neat duodecimos the liveliest, most
+ curious, and most amusing pieces to be found in the immense mass of
+ the folios of the original.</p>
+
+ <p>The Encyclopædia of Diderot, though not itself the most prodigious
+ achievement on which French booksellers may pride themselves, yet
+ inspired that achievement. In 1782 Panckoucke—a familiar name in the
+ correspondence of Voltaire and the Voltairean family—conceived the
+ plan of a Methodical Encyclopædia. This colossal work, which really
+ consists of a collection of special cyclopædias for each of the
+ special sciences, was not completed until 1832, and comprises one
+ hundred and sixty-six volumes of text, with a score more volumes of
+ plates. It has no unity of doctrine, no equal application of any set
+ of philosophic principles, and no definite social aim. The only
+ encyclopædia since 1772 with which I am acquainted, that is planned
+ with a view to the presentation of a general body of doctrine, is the
+ unfinished Encyclopédie Nuevelle of Pìerre Leroux and Jean Reynaud.
+ This work was intended to apply the socialistic and spiritualistic
+ ideas of its authors over the whole field of knowledge and
+ speculation. The result is that it furnishes only a series of
+ dissertations, and is not an encyclopædia in the ordinary
+ sense.<a name="FNanchor_155_155" id="FNanchor_155_155"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_155_155" class="fnanchor">[155]</a></p>
+
+ <p>The booksellers at first spoke of the Encyclopædia as an affair of
+ two million livres. It appeared, however that its cost did not go much
+ beyond one million one hundred and forty thousand livres. The gross
+ return was calculated to be nearly twice as much. The price to the
+ subscriber of the seven volumes up to 1757, of the ten volumes issued
+ in 1765, and of the eleven volumes of plates completed in 1772,
+ amounted to nine hundred and eighty livres,<a name="FNanchor_156_156"
+ id="FNanchor_156_156"></a><a href="#Footnote_156_156" class=
+ "fnanchor">[156]</a> or about forty-three pounds sterling of that
+ date, equivalent in value to more than three times the sum in money of
+ to-day.</p>
+
+ <p>The payment received by Diderot is a little doubtful, and the terms
+ were evidently changed from time to time. His average salary, after
+ D'Alembert had quitted him, seems to have amounted to about three
+ thousand livres, or one hundred and thirty pounds sterling, per annum.
+ This coincides with Grimm's statement that the total sum received by
+ Diderot was sixty thousand livres, or about two thousand six hundred
+ pounds sterling.<a name="FNanchor_157_157" id=
+ "FNanchor_157_157"></a><a href="#Footnote_157_157" class=
+ "fnanchor">[157]</a> And to think, cried Voltaire, when he heard of
+ Diderot's humble wage, that an army contractor makes twenty thousand
+ livres a day! Voltaire himself had made a profit of more than half a
+ million livres by a share in an army contract in the war of 1734, and
+ his yearly income derived from such gains and their prudent investment
+ was as high as seventy thousand livres, representing in value a sum
+ not far short of ten thousand pounds a year of our present money.</p>
+
+ <p>II.</p>
+
+ <p>All writers on the movement of illumination in France in the
+ eighteenth century, call our attention to the quick transformation,
+ which took place after the middle of the century, of a speculative or
+ philosophical agitation into a political or social one. Readers often
+ find some difficulty in understanding plainly how or why this
+ metamorphosis was brought about. The metaphysical question which men
+ were then so fond of discussing, whether matter can think, appears
+ very far removed indeed from the sphere of political conceptions. The
+ psychological question whether our ideas are innate, or are solely
+ given to us by experience through the sensations, may strike the
+ publicist as having the least possible to do with the type of a
+ government or the aims of a community. Yet it is really the
+ conclusions to which men come in this region, that determine the
+ quality of the civil sentiment and the significance of political
+ organisation. The theological doctors who persecuted De Prades for
+ suggestions of Locke's psychology, and for high treason against
+ Cartesianism, were guided by a right instinct of self-preservation. De
+ Maistre, by far the most acute and penetrating of the Catholic school,
+ was never more clear-sighted than when he made a vigorous and
+ deliberate onslaught upon Bacon, the centre of his movement against
+ revolutionary principles.<a name="FNanchor_158_158" id=
+ "FNanchor_158_158"></a><a href="#Footnote_158_158" class=
+ "fnanchor">[158]</a></p>
+
+ <p>As we have said before, the immediate force of speculative
+ literature hangs on practical opportuneness. It was not merely because
+ Bacon and Hobbes and Locke had written certain books, that the
+ Encyclopædists, who took up their philosophic succession, inevitably
+ became a powerful political party, and multiplied their adherents in
+ an increasing proportion as the years went on. From various
+ circumstances the attack acquired a significance and a weight in
+ France which it had never possessed in England. For one thing,
+ physical science had in the interval taken immense strides. This both
+ dwarfed the sovereignty of theology and theological metaphysics, and
+ indirectly disposed men's minds for non-theological theories of moral
+ as well as of physical phenomena. In France, again, the objects of the
+ attack were inelastic and unyielding. Political speculation in England
+ followed, and did not precede, political innovation and reform. In
+ France its light played round institutions which were too deeply
+ rooted in absolutism and privilege to be capable of substantial
+ modification. Deism was comparatively impotent against the Church of
+ England, first, because it was an intellectual movement, and not a
+ social one; second, because the constitutional doctrines of the church
+ were flexible. Deism in the hands of its French propagators became
+ connected with social liberalism, because the Catholic church in those
+ days was identified with all the ideas of repression. And the
+ tendencies of deism in France grew more violently destructive, not
+ only because religious superstition was grosser, but because that
+ superstition was incorporated in a strong and inexpansible social
+ structure.</p>
+
+ <p>"It would be a mistake," wrote that sagacious and well-informed
+ observer, D'Argenson, so early as 1753, "to attribute the loss of
+ religion in France to the English philosophy, which has not gained
+ more than a hundred philosophers or so in Paris, instead of setting it
+ down to the hatred against the priests, which goes to the very last
+ extreme. All minds are turning to discontent and disobedience, and
+ everything is on the high road to a great revolution, both in religion
+ and in government. And it will be a very different thing to that rude
+ Reformation, a medley of superstition and freedom, which came to us
+ from Germany in the sixteenth century! As our nation and our century
+ are enlightened in so very different a fashion, they will go whither
+ they ought to go; they will banish every priest, all priesthood, all
+ revelation, all mystery." This, however, only represents the
+ destructive side of the vast change which D'Argenson then foresaw,
+ six-and-thirty years before its consummation. That change had also a
+ constructive side. If one of its elements was hate, another and more
+ important element was hope. This constructive and reforming spirit
+ which made its way in the intelligence of the leading men in France
+ from 1750 to 1789, was represented in the encyclopædic confederation,
+ and embodied in their forty folios. And, to return to our first point,
+ it was directly and inseparably associated with the philosophy of
+ Bacon and Locke. What is the connection between their speculations and
+ a vehement and energetic spirit of social reform? We have no space
+ here to do more than barely hint the line of answer.</p>
+
+ <p>The broad features of the speculative revolution of which the
+ Encyclopædia was the outcome, lie on the surface of its pages and
+ cannot be mistaken. The transition from Descartes to Newton meant the
+ definite substitution of observation for hypothesis. The exaltation of
+ Bacon meant the advance from supernatural explanations to explanations
+ from experience. The acceptance and development of the Lockian
+ psychology meant the reference of our ideas to bodily sensations, and
+ led men by what they thought a tolerably direct path to the
+ identification of mind with functions of matter. We need not here
+ discuss the philosophical truth or adequateness of these ways of
+ considering the origin and nature of knowledge, or the composition of
+ human character. All that now concerns us is to mark their tendency.
+ That tendency clearly is to expel Magic as the decisive influence
+ among us, in favour of ordered relations of cause and effect, only to
+ be discovered by intelligent search. The universe began to be more
+ directly conceived as a group of phenomena that are capable of
+ rational and connected explanation. Then, the wider the area of law,
+ the greater is man's consciousness of his power of controlling forces,
+ and securing the results that he desires. Objective interests and
+ their conditions acquire an increasing preponderance in his mind. On
+ the other hand, as the limits of science expand, so do the limits of
+ nescience become more definite. The more we know of the universal
+ order, the more are we persuaded, however gradually and insensibly,
+ that certain matters which men believed themselves to know outside of
+ this phenomenal order, are in truth inaccessible by those instruments
+ of experience and observation to which we are indebted for other
+ knowledge. Hence, a natural inclination to devote our faculty to the
+ forces within our control, and to withdraw it from vain industry about
+ forces—if they be forces—which are beyond our control and beyond our
+ apprehension. Thus man becomes the centre of the world to himself,
+ nature his servant and minister, human society the field of his
+ interests and his exertions. The sensational psychology, again,
+ whether scientifically defensible or not, clearly tends to heighten
+ our idea of the power of education and institutions upon character.
+ The more vividly we realise the share of external impressions in
+ making men what they are, the more ready we shall be to concern
+ ourselves with external conditions and their improvement. The
+ introduction of the positive spirit into the observation of the facts
+ of society was not to be expected until the Cartesian philosophy, with
+ its reliance on inexplicable intuitions and its exaggeration of the
+ method of hypothesis, had been laid aside.</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot struck a key-note of difference between the old Catholic
+ spirit and the new social spirit, between quietist superstition and
+ energetic science, in the casual sentence in his article on
+ alms-houses and hospitals: "<i>It would be far more important to work
+ at the prevention of misery, than to multiply places of refuge for the
+ miserable</i>."</p>
+
+ <p>It is very easy to show that the Encyclopædists had not established
+ an impregnable scientific basis for their philosophy. Anybody can now
+ see that their metaphysic and psychology were imperfectly thought out.
+ The important thing is that their metaphysic and psychology were
+ calculated, notwithstanding all their superficialities, to inspire an
+ energetic social spirit, because they were pregnant with humanistic
+ sentiment. To represent the Encyclopædia as the gospel of negation and
+ denial is to omit four-fifths of its contents. Men may certainly, if
+ they please, describe it as merely negative work, for example, to
+ denounce such institutions as examination and punishment by Torture
+ (See <i>Question, Peine</i>), but if so, what gospel of affirmation
+ can bring better blessings?<a name="FNanchor_159_159" id=
+ "FNanchor_159_159"></a><a href="#Footnote_159_159" class=
+ "fnanchor">[159]</a> If the metaphysic of these writers had been a
+ thousandfold more superficial than it was, what mattered that, so long
+ as they had vision for every one of the great social improvements on
+ which the progress and even the very life of the nation depended? It
+ would be obviously unfair to say that reasoned interest in social
+ improvement is incompatible with a spiritualistic doctrine, but we are
+ justified in saying that energetic faith in possibilities of social
+ progress has been first reached through the philosophy of sensation
+ and experience.</p>
+
+ <p>In describing the encyclopædic movement as being, among other
+ things, the development of political interest under the presiding
+ influence of a humanistic philosophy, we are using the name of
+ politics in its widest sense. The economic conditions of a country,
+ and the administration of its laws, are far more vitally related to
+ its well-being than the form of its government. The form of government
+ is indeed a question of the first importance, but then this is owing
+ in a paramount degree to the influence which it may have upon the
+ other two sets of elements in the national life. Form of government is
+ like the fashion of a man's clothes; it may fret or may comfort him,
+ may be imposing or mean, may react upon his spirits to elate or
+ depress them. In either case it is less intimately related to his
+ welfare than the state of his blood and tissues. In saying, then, that
+ the Encyclopædists began a political work, what is meant is that they
+ drew into the light of new ideas, groups of institutions, usages, and
+ arrangements which affected the real well-being and happiness of
+ France, as closely as nutrition affected the health and strength of an
+ individual Frenchman. It was the Encyclopædists who first stirred
+ opinion in France against the iniquities of colonial tyranny and the
+ abominations of the slave trade. They demonstrated the folly and
+ wastefulness and cruelty of a fiscal system that was eating the life
+ out of the land. They protested in season and out of season against
+ arrangements which made the administration of justice a matter of sale
+ and purchase. They lifted up a strong voice against the atrocious
+ barbarities of an antiquated penal code. It was this band of writers,
+ organised by a harassed man of letters, and not the nobles swarming
+ round Lewis XV., nor the churchmen singing masses, who first grasped
+ the great principle of modern society, the honour that is owed to
+ productive industry. They were vehement for the glories of peace, and
+ passionate against the brazen glories of war.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_160_160" id="FNanchor_160_160"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_160_160" class="fnanchor">[160]</a></p>
+
+ <p>We are not to suppose that the Encyclopædia was the originating
+ organ of either new methods or new social ideas. The exalted and
+ peculiarly modern views about peace, for instance, were plainly
+ inspired from the writings of the Abbé Saint Pierre (1658-1743)—one of
+ the most original spirits of the century, who deserves to be
+ remembered among other good services as the inventor of the word
+ <i>bienfaisance</i>. Again, in the mass of the political articles we
+ feel the immense impulse that was given to sociological discussion by
+ the Esprit des Lois. Few questions are debated here, which Montesquieu
+ had not raised, and none are debated without reference to
+ Montesquieu's line of argument. The change of which we are conscious
+ in turning from the Esprit des Lois to the Encyclopædia is that
+ political ideas have been grasped as instruments. Philosophy has
+ become patriotism. The Encyclopædists advanced with grave solicitude
+ to the consideration of evils, to which the red-heeled parasites of
+ Versailles were insolently and incorrigibly blind.</p>
+
+ <p>The articles on Agriculture, for example, are admirable alike for
+ the fulness and precision with which they expose the actual state of
+ France; for the clearness with which they trace its deplorable
+ inadequateness back to the true sources; and for the strong interest
+ and sympathy in the subject, which they both exhibit and inspire. If
+ now and again the touch is too idyllic, it was still a prodigious gain
+ to let the country know in a definite way that of the fifty million
+ arpents of cultivable land in the realm, more than one quarter lay
+ either unbroken or abandoned. And it was a prodigious gain to arouse
+ the attention of the general public to the causes of the forced
+ deterioration of French agriculture, namely, the restrictions on trade
+ in grain, the arbitrariness of the imposts, and the flight of the
+ population to the large towns. Then the demonstration, corroborated in
+ the pages of the Encyclopædia by the two patriotic vaunts of
+ contemporary English writers, of the stimulus given to agriculture by
+ our system of free exports, contained one of the most useful lessons
+ that the French had to learn.</p>
+
+ <p>Again, there are some abuses which cannot be more effectively
+ attacked, than by a mere statement of the facts in the plainest and
+ least argumentative terms. The history of such an impost as the tax
+ upon salt (<i>Gabelle</i>), and a bold outline of the random and
+ incongruous fashions in which it was levied, were equivalent to a
+ formal indictment. It needed no rhetoric nor discussion to heighten
+ the harsh injustice of the rule that "persons who have changed
+ domicile are still taxed for a certain time in the seat of their
+ former abode, namely, farmers and labourers for one year, and all
+ other tax-payers for two years, provided the parish to which they have
+ removed is within the same district; and if otherwise, then farmers to
+ pay for two years, and other persons for three years" (<i>Taille</i>).
+ Thus a man under the given circumstances would have to pay double
+ taxes for three years as a penalty for changing his dwelling. We
+ already hear the murmur of the <i>cahiers</i> of five-and-twenty years
+ later in the account of the transports of joy with which the citizens
+ of Lisieux saw the <i>taille proportionelle</i> established (1718),
+ and how numerous other cities sent up prayers that the same blessing
+ might be conferred on them. "Reasons that it is not for us to divine,
+ caused the rejection of these demands; so hard is it to do a good act,
+ which everybody talks about, much more in order to seem to desire it,
+ than from any intention of really doing it.... To illustrate the
+ advantages of this plan, the impost of 1718 with all arrears for five
+ years was discharged in twelve months without needless cost or
+ dispute. By an extravagance more proper than any other to degrade
+ humanity, the common happiness made malcontents of all that class
+ whose prosperity depends on the misery of others,"—that is the
+ privileged class.<a name="FNanchor_161_161" id=
+ "FNanchor_161_161"></a><a href="#Footnote_161_161" class=
+ "fnanchor">[161]</a></p>
+
+ <p>It is no innate factiousness, as flighty critics of French affairs
+ sometimes imply, that has made civil equality the passion of modern
+ France. The root of this passion is an undying memory of the curse
+ that was inflicted on its citizens, morally and materially, by the
+ fiscal inequalities of the old <i>régime</i>. The article,
+ <i>Privilegé</i>, urges the desirableness of inquiring into the
+ grounds of the vast multitude of fiscal exemptions, and of abolishing
+ all that were no longer associated with the performance of real and
+ useful service. "A bourgeois," says the writer, anticipating a cry
+ that was so soon to ring through the land, "a bourgeois in comfortable
+ circumstances, and who could himself pay half of the <i>taille</i> of
+ a whole parish, if it were imposed in its due proportion,—on payment
+ of the amount of his taxes for one or for two years, and often for
+ less; without birth, education, or talents, buys a place in a local
+ salt office, or some useless charge at court, or in the household of
+ some prince.... This man proceeds to enjoy in the public eye all the
+ exemptions possessed by the nobility and the high magistracy.... From
+ such an abuse of privileges spring two very considerable evils: the
+ poorer part of the citizens are always burdened beyond their strength,
+ though they are the most useful to the State, since this class is
+ composed of those who cultivate the land, and procure a subsistence
+ for the upper classes; the other evil is that privileges disgust
+ persons of education and talent with the idea of entering the
+ magistracy or other professions demanding labour and application, and
+ lead them to prefer small posts and paltry offices." And so forth,
+ with a gravity and moderation, that were then common in political
+ discussion in France. It gradually disappeared in 1789, when it was
+ found that the privileged orders, even at that time, in their
+ <i>cahiers</i> steadily demanded the maintenance of every one of their
+ most odious and iniquitous rights.<a name="FNanchor_162_162" id=
+ "FNanchor_162_162"></a><a href="#Footnote_162_162" class=
+ "fnanchor">[162]</a></p>
+
+ <p>When it is said, then, that the Encyclopædists deliberately
+ prepared the way for a political revolution, let us remember that what
+ they really did was to shed the light of rational discussion on such
+ practical grievances as even the most fatuous conservative in France
+ does not now dream of bringing back.</p>
+
+ <p>Let us turn to two other of the most oppressive institutions that
+ then scourged France. First the <i>Corvée</i>, or feudal rule which
+ forced every unprivileged farmer and peasant in France to furnish so
+ many days' labour for the maintenance of the highways. Arthur Young
+ tells us, and the statement is confirmed by the Minutes of Turgot,
+ that this wasteful, cruel, and inefficient system was annually the
+ ruin of many hundreds of persons, and he mentions that no less than
+ three hundred farmers were reduced to beggary in filling up a single
+ vale in Lorraine.<a name="FNanchor_163_163" id=
+ "FNanchor_163_163"></a><a href="#Footnote_163_163" class=
+ "fnanchor">[163]</a> Under this all-important head, the Encyclopædia
+ has an article that does not merely add to the knowledge of its
+ readers by a history of the <i>corvées</i>, but proceeds to discuss,
+ as in a pamphlet or review article, the inconveniences of the
+ prevailing system, and presses schemes for avoiding them. Turgot had
+ not yet shown in practice the only right substitute. The article was
+ printed in 1754, and it was not until ten years later that this great
+ administrator, then become intendant of the Limousin, did away in his
+ district with compulsory personal service on the roads, and required
+ in its place a money payment assessed on the parishes.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_164_164" id="FNanchor_164_164"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_164_164" class="fnanchor">[164]</a> The writer of the
+ article in the Encyclopædia does not anticipate this obviously
+ rational plan, but he paints a striking picture of the thousand abuses
+ and miserable inefficiencies of the practice of <i>corvées</i>, and
+ his piece illustrates that vigorous discussion of social subjects
+ which the Encyclopædia stimulated. It is worth remarking that this
+ writer was a sub-engineer of roads and bridges in the generality of
+ Tours. The case is one example among others of the importance of the
+ Encyclopædia as a centre, to which active-minded men of all kinds
+ might bring the fruits of their thought and observation.</p>
+
+ <p>Next to the <i>corvées</i>, the monster grievance of the third
+ estate was the system of enrolments for the militia. The article,
+ <i>Milice</i>, is very short, but it goes to the root of the matter.
+ The only son of a cultivator of moderate means, forced to quit the
+ paternal roof at the moment when his labour might recompense his
+ straitened parents for the expense of having brought him up, is justly
+ described as an irreparable loss. The writer, after hinting that it
+ would be well if such an institution were wholly dispensed with, urges
+ that at least its object might be more effectively and more humanely
+ reached by allowing each parish to provide its due contingent of men
+ in its own way. This change was indeed already (1765) being carried
+ out by Turgot in the Limousin, and with excellent results. The writer
+ concludes with the highly civilised remark, that we ought to weigh
+ whether the good of the rural districts, the culture of the land, and
+ population, are not preferable objects to the glory of setting
+ enormous hosts of armed men on foot after the example of Xerxes. Alas,
+ it is one of the discouragements of the student of history, that he
+ often finds highly civilised remarks made one or two or twenty
+ centuries ago, which are just as useful and just as little heeded now
+ as they were when they were made.</p>
+
+ <p>The same reflection occurs to one in reading the article on
+ Foundations. As I have already said, this carefully written and
+ sagacious piece still remains the most masterly discussion we possess
+ of the advantages and disadvantages of endowments. Even now, and in
+ our own country, the most fertile and beneficent work to which a
+ statesman of energy and courage could devote himself, would be an
+ application of the wise principles which were established in the
+ Encyclopædia. Passing from <i>Fondation</i> to <i>Foire</i> in the
+ same volume, also from the pen of Turgot, we see an almost equally
+ striking example of the economic wisdom of the encyclopædic school.
+ The provincial fairs, with their privileges, exemptions, exclusions,
+ were a conspicuous case of the mischief done by that "mania for
+ regulating and guiding everything," which then infected commercial
+ administration, and interrupted the natural course of trade by
+ imbecile vexations of police. Another vicious example of the same
+ principle is exposed in the article on <i>Maîtrises</i>. This must
+ have convinced every reader capable of rising above "the holy laws of
+ prejudice," how bad faith, idleness, disorder, and all the other evils
+ of monopoly were fomented by a system of jealous trade-guilds,
+ carrying compulsory subdivision and restriction of all kinds of
+ skilled labour down to a degree that would have been laughable enough,
+ if it had only been less destructive.</p>
+
+ <p>One of the loudest cries in 1789 was for the destruction of game
+ and the great manorial chases or capitaineries. "By game," says Arthur
+ Young, "must be understood whole droves of wild boars, and herds of
+ deer not confined by any wall or pale, but wandering at pleasure over
+ the whole country to the destruction of crops, and to the peopling of
+ the galleys by the wretched peasants who presumed to kill them, in
+ order to save that food which was to support their helpless
+ children."<a name="FNanchor_165_165" id=
+ "FNanchor_165_165"></a><a href="#Footnote_165_165" class=
+ "fnanchor">[165]</a> In the same place he enumerates the outrageous
+ and incredible rules which ruined agriculture over hundreds of leagues
+ of country, in order that the seigneurs might have sport. In most
+ matters the seven volumes of the Encyclopædia which were printed
+ before 1757, are more reserved than the ten volumes which were
+ conducted by Diderot alone after the great schism of 1759. On the
+ subject of sport, however, the writer of the article <i>Chasse</i>
+ enumerates all the considerations which a patriotic minister could
+ desire to see impressed on public opinion. Some of the paragraphs
+ startle us by their directness and freedom of complaint, and even a
+ very cool reader would still be likely to feel some of the wrath that
+ was stirred in the breast of our shrewd and sober Arthur Young a
+ generation later (1787). "Go to the residence of these great nobles,"
+ he says, "wherever it may be, and you would probably find them in the
+ midst of a forest, very well peopled with deer, wild boar, and wolves.
+ Oh! if I were the legislator of France for a day, I would make such
+ great lords skip!"<a name="FNanchor_166_166" id=
+ "FNanchor_166_166"></a><a href="#Footnote_166_166" class=
+ "fnanchor">[166]</a></p>
+
+ <p>This brings us to what is perhaps the most striking of all the
+ guiding sentiments of the book. Virgil's Georgics have been described
+ as a glorification of labour. The Encyclopædia seems inspired by the
+ same motive, the same earnest enthusiasm for all the purposes,
+ interests, and details of productive industry. Diderot, as has been
+ justly said, himself the son of a cutler, might well bring handiwork
+ into honour; assuredly he had inherited from his good father's
+ workshop sympathy and regard for skill and labour.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_167_167" id="FNanchor_167_167"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_167_167" class="fnanchor">[167]</a> The illustrative plates
+ to which Diderot gave the most laborious attention for a period of
+ almost thirty years, are not only remarkable for their copiousness,
+ their clearness, their finish—and in all these respects they are truly
+ admirable—but they strike us even more by the semi-poetic feeling that
+ transforms the mere representation of a process into an animated scene
+ of human life, stirring the sympathy and touching the imagination of
+ the onlooker as by something dramatic. The bustle, the dexterity, the
+ alert force of the iron foundry, the glass furnace, the gunpowder
+ mill, the silk calendry are as skilfully reproduced as the more
+ tranquil toil of the dairywoman, the embroiderer, the confectioner,
+ the setter of types, the compounder of drugs, the chaser of metals.
+ The drawings recall that eager and personal interest in his work, that
+ nimble complacency, which is so charming a trait in the best French
+ craftsman. The animation of these great folios of plates is
+ prodigious. They affect one like looking down on the world of Paris
+ from the heights of Montmartre. To turn over volume after volume is
+ like watching a splendid panorama of all the busy life of the time.
+ Minute care is as striking in them as their comprehensiveness. The
+ smallest tool, the knot in a thread, the ply in a cord, the curve of
+ wrist or finger, each has special and proper delineation. The reader
+ smiles at a complete and elaborate set of tailor's patterns. He
+ shudders as he comes upon the knives, the probes, the bandages, the
+ posture, of the wretch about to undergo the most dangerous operation
+ in surgery. In all the chief departments of industry there are plates
+ good enough to serve for practical specifications and working
+ drawings. It has often been told how Diderot himself used to visit the
+ workshops, to watch the men at work, to put a thousand questions, to
+ sit down at the loom, to have the machine pulled to pieces and set
+ together again before his eyes, to slave like any apprentice, and to
+ do bad work, in order, as he says, to be able to instruct others how
+ to do good work. That was no movement of empty rhetoric which made him
+ cry out for the Encyclopædia to become a sanctuary in which human
+ knowledge might find shelter against time and revolutions. He actually
+ took the pains to make it a complete storehouse of the arts, so
+ perfect in detail that they could be at once reconstructed after a
+ deluge in which everything had perished save a single copy of the
+ Encyclopædia. Such details, said D'Alembert, will perhaps seem
+ extremely out of place to certain scholars, for whom a long
+ dissertation on the cookery or the hair-dressing of the ancients, or
+ on the site of a ruined hamlet, or on the baptismal name of some
+ obscure writer of the tenth century, would be vastly interesting and
+ precious. He suggests that details of economy, and of arts and trades,
+ have as good a right to a place as the scholastic philosophy, or some
+ system of rhetoric still in use, or the mysteries of heraldry. Yet
+ none even of these had been passed over.<a name="FNanchor_168_168" id=
+ "FNanchor_168_168"></a><a href="#Footnote_168_168" class=
+ "fnanchor">[168]</a></p>
+
+ <p>The importance given to physical science and the practical arts, in
+ the Encyclopædia, is the sign and exemplification of two elements of
+ the great modern transition. It marks both a social and an
+ intellectual revolution. We see in it, first, the distinct association
+ with pacific labour, of honour and a kind of glory, such as had
+ hitherto been reserved for knights and friars, for war and asceticism,
+ for fighting and praying.</p>
+
+ <p>It is the definite recognition of the basis of a new society. If
+ the nobles and the churchmen could only have understood, as clearly as
+ Diderot and D'Alembert understood, the irresistible forces that were
+ making against the maintenance of the worn-out system, all the worst
+ of the evils attending the great political changes of the last decade
+ of the century would have been avoided. That the nobles and churchmen
+ would not see this, was the fatality of the Revolution. We have a
+ glimpse of the profound transformation of social ideas which was at
+ work in the five or six lines of the article, <i>Journalier</i>.
+ "Journeyman—a workman who labours with his hands, and is paid
+ day-wages. This description of men forms the great part of a nation;
+ it is their lot which a good government ought to keep principally in
+ sight. If the journeyman is miserable, the nation is miserable." And
+ again: "The net profit of a society, if equally distributed, may be
+ preferable to a larger profit, if it be distributed unequally, and
+ have the effect of dividing the people into two classes, one gorged
+ with riches, the other perishing in misery" (<i>Homme</i>).</p>
+
+ <p>The second element in the modern transition is only the
+ intellectual side of the first. It is the substitution of interest in
+ things for interest in words, of positive knowledge for verbal
+ disputation. Few now dispute the services of the schoolmen to the
+ intellectual development of Europe. But conditions had fully ripened,
+ and it was time to complete the movement of Bacon and Descartes by
+ finally placing verbal analysis, verbal definition, verbal inferences,
+ in their right position. Form was no longer to take precedence of
+ matter. The Encyclopædists are never weary of contrasting their own
+ age of practical rationalism with "the pusillanimous ages of taste." A
+ great collection of books is described in one article
+ (<i>Bibliomanie</i>) as a collection of material for the history of
+ the blindness and infatuation of mankind. The gatherer of books is
+ compared to one who should place five or six gems under a pile of
+ common pebbles. If a man of sense buys a work in a dozen volumes, and
+ finds that only half a dozen pages are worth reading, he does well to
+ cut out the half dozen pages and fling the rest into the fire.
+ Finally, it would be no unbecoming device for every great library to
+ have inscribed over its portal, The Bedlam of the Human Mind. At this
+ point one might perhaps suggest to D'Alembert that study of the
+ pathology of the mind is no bad means of surprising the secrets of
+ humanity and life. For his hour, however, the need was not knowledge
+ of the thoughts, dreams, and mental methods of the past, but better
+ mastery of the aids and instruments of active life. In any case
+ Diderot was right when he expressed his preference for the essay over
+ the treatise: "an essay where the writer throws me one or two ideas of
+ genius, almost isolated, rather than a treatise where the precious
+ gems are stifled beneath a mass of iteration.... A man had only one
+ idea; the idea demanded no more than a phrase; this phrase, full of
+ marrow and meaning, would have been seized with relish; washed out in
+ a deluge of words, it wearies and disgusts."<a name="FNanchor_169_169"
+ id="FNanchor_169_169"></a><a href="#Footnote_169_169" class=
+ "fnanchor">[169]</a> Rousseau himself does not surpass Diderot or
+ D'Alembert in contempt for mere bookishness. We wholly misjudge the
+ Encyclopædia, if we treat it either as literature or philosophy.</p>
+
+ <p>The attitude of the Encyclopædia to religion is almost universally
+ misrepresented in the common accounts. We are always told that the aim
+ of its conductors was to preach dogmatic atheism. Such a statement
+ could not be made by any one who had read the theological articles,
+ whether the more or the less important among them. Whether Diderot had
+ himself advanced definitely to the dogma of atheism at this time or
+ not, it is certain that the Encyclopædia represents only the phase of
+ rationalistic scepticism. That the criticism was destructive of much
+ of the fabric of popular belief, and was designed to destroy it, is
+ undeniable, as it was inevitable. But when the excesses of '93 and
+ '94—and all the revolutionary excesses put together are but a drop
+ compared with the oceans of bloodshed with which Catholicism and
+ absolutism have made history crimson—when the crimes and confusion of
+ the end of the century are traced by historians to the materialism and
+ atheism of the Encyclopædia, we can only say that such an account is a
+ misrepresentation. The materialism and atheism are not there. The
+ religious attack was prompted and guided by the same social feeling
+ that inspired the economic articles. The priest was the enemy of
+ society, the patron of indolence, the hater of knowledge, the mutineer
+ against the civil laws, the unprofitable devourer of the national
+ substance, the persecutor. Sacerdotalism is the object of the
+ encyclopædic attack. To undermine this, it was necessary first to
+ establish the principle of toleration, because the priest claims to be
+ recognised as the exclusive possessor of saving doctrine. Second, it
+ was necessary to destroy the principle of miracle, because the priest
+ professes himself in his daily rites the consecrated instrument of
+ thaumaturgy. "Let a man," says Rosenkranz very truly, "turn over
+ hundreds of histories of church, of state, of literature, and in every
+ one of them he will read that the Encyclopædia spread abroad an
+ irreligious spirit. The accusation has only a relative truth, to the
+ extent that the Encyclopædia assailed the belief in miracles, and the
+ oppression of conscience supported by a priestly aristocracy."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_170_170" id="FNanchor_170_170"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_170_170" class="fnanchor">[170]</a></p>
+
+ <p>It must be admitted that no consistent and definite language is
+ adhered to from beginning to end. D'Alembert's prophecy that time
+ would disclose to people what the writers really thought, behind what
+ fear of the censorship compelled them to say, is only partially
+ fulfilled.</p>
+
+ <p>The idea of miracle is sapped not by direct arguments, but by the
+ indirect influences of science, and the exposition of the successes of
+ scientific method. It was here that the Encyclopædia exerted really
+ destructive power, and it did so in the only way in which power of
+ that kind can be exerted either wisely or effectually. The miracle of
+ a divine revelation, of grace, of the mass, began to wear a different
+ look in men's eyes, as they learned more of the physical processes of
+ the universe. We should describe the work of the Encyclopædia as being
+ to make its readers lose their interest, rather than their belief, in
+ mysteries. This is the normal process of theological dissolution. It
+ unfolded a vast number of scientific conceptions in all branches of
+ human activity, a surprising series of acquisitions, a vivid panorama
+ of victories won by the ingenuity and travail of man. A contemplation
+ of the wonders that man had wrought for himself, replaced meditation
+ on the wonders that were alleged to have been wrought by the gods. The
+ latter were not so much denied by the plain reader, as they were
+ gradually left out of sight and forgotten. Nobody now cares to
+ disprove Jupiter and Juno, Satyrs and Hamadryads.</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot constantly insists on the propriety, the importance, the
+ indispensableness of keeping the provinces of science and philosophy
+ apart from the province of theology. This separation is much sought in
+ our own day as a means of saving theology. Diderot designed it to save
+ philosophy. He felt that the distinct recognition of positive thought
+ as supreme within the widest limits then covered by it, would
+ ultimately lead to the banishment of theological thought to a region
+ of its own, too distant and too infertile for men to weary themselves
+ in pursuit of it. His conception was to supplant the old ways of
+ thinking and the old objects of intellectual interest by new ones. He
+ trusted to the intrinsic fitness and value of the new knowledge and
+ new views of human life, to displace the old. This marks him for a
+ constructive thinker. He replaced barren theological interests that
+ had outlived their time, by all those great groups of living and
+ fruitful interests which glow and sparkle in the volumes of the
+ Encyclopædia. Here was the effective damage that the Encyclopædia
+ inflicted on the church as the organ of a stationary superstition.
+ Some of the articles remind us on what a strange borderland France
+ stood in those days, between debasing credulity and wholesome light.
+ We are so sensible of the new air that breathes impalpably over the
+ book, that when the old theological fancies appear for form's sake,
+ and are solemnly marshalled in orthodox state, the contrast and the
+ incongruity are so marked that one is amused by what looks like a
+ subtle irony, mocking the censor under his very eyes. Who can help
+ smiling at the grave question, <i>Adam, le premier de tous les hommes,
+ a-t-il été philosophe?</i> Such disputes as whether it is proper to
+ baptize abortions, ceased to interest a public that had begun to
+ educate itself by discussions on the virtue of Inoculation.</p>
+
+ <p>Of the gross defects in the execution of the Encyclopædia nobody
+ was so sensible as Diderot himself. He drew up a truly formidable list
+ of the departments where the work was badly done.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_171_171" id="FNanchor_171_171"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_171_171" class="fnanchor">[171]</a> But when the blunders
+ and omissions in each subject were all counted, the value of the vast
+ grouping of the subjects was hardly diminished. The union of all these
+ secular acquisitions in a single colossal work invested them with
+ something imposing. Secular knowledge was made to present a massive
+ and sumptuous front. It was pictured before the curious eyes of that
+ generation as a great city of glittering palaces and stately mansions;
+ or else as an immense landscape, with mountains, plains, rocks,
+ waters, forests, animals, and a thousand objects, glorious and
+ beautiful in the sunlight. Theology became visibly a shrivelled thing.
+ Men grew to be conscious of the vastness of the universe. At the same
+ time and by the same process the Encyclopædia gave them a key to the
+ plan, a guiding thread in the immense labyrinth. The genealogical
+ tree, or classification of arts and sciences, which with a few
+ modifications was borrowed from Bacon and appeared at the end of the
+ Prospectus, is seen to be faulty and inadequate. It distributes the
+ various branches of knowledge with reference to faculties of the human
+ understanding, instead of grouping them according to their objective
+ relations to one another. This led to many awkward results, as when
+ the art of printing is placed by the side of orthography as a
+ subdivision of Logic, to which also is given the art of heraldry or
+ emblazonment. There is awkwardness too in dividing architecture into
+ three heads, and then placing civil architecture under national
+ jurisprudence, and naval architecture under social jurisprudence,
+ while under fine arts no kind of architecture has any place. But when
+ we have multiplied these objections to the uttermost, the effect of
+ the magnificence and vastness of the scheme remains exactly what it
+ was.</p>
+
+ <p>Even more important than the exposition of human knowledge was the
+ exposition of the degrees by which it had been slowly reared. The
+ Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopædia, of which by far the greater
+ and more valuable portion was written by D'Alembert, contains a fine
+ survey of the progress of science, thought, and letters since the
+ revival of learning. It is a generous canonisation of the great heroes
+ of secular knowledge. It is rapid, but the contributions of Bacon,
+ Descartes, Newton, Locke, Leibnitz are thrown into a series that
+ penetrates the reader's mind with the idea of ordered growth and
+ measured progress. This excited a vivid hopefulness of interest, which
+ insensibly but most effectually pressed the sterile propositions of
+ dogmatic theology into a dim and squalid background. Nor was this all.
+ The Preliminary Discourse and the host of articles marshalled behind
+ it, showed that the triumphs of knowledge and true opinion had all
+ been gained on two conditions. The first of these conditions was a
+ firm disregard of authority; the second was an abstention from the
+ premature concoction of system. The reign of ignorance and prejudice
+ was made inveterate by deference to tradition: the reign of truth was
+ hindered by the artificial boundary-marks set mischievously deep by
+ the authors of systems. As the whole spirit of theology is both
+ essentially authoritative and essentially systematic, this
+ disparagement was full of tolerably direct significance. It told in
+ another way. The Sorbonne, the universities, the doctors, had
+ identified orthodoxy with Cartesianism. "It is hard to believe," says
+ D'Alembert in 1750, "that it is only within the last thirty years that
+ people have even begun to renounce Cartesianism." He might have added
+ that one of the most powerful of his contemporaries, Montesquieu
+ himself, remained a rigid Cartesian to the end of his days. "Our
+ nation," he says, "singularly eager as it is for novelties in all
+ matters of taste, is in matters of science extremely attached to old
+ opinions." This remark remains true of France to the present hour, and
+ it would be an interesting digression, did time allow, to consider its
+ significance. France can at all events count one master innovator, the
+ founder of Cartesianism himself. D'Alembert points out that the
+ disciples violate the first maxims of their chief. He describes the
+ hypothesis of vortices and the doctrine of innate ideas as no longer
+ tenable, and even as ridiculous; but do not let us forget, he says
+ with a fine movement of candour, that it was Descartes who opened the
+ way; he who set an example to men of intelligence, of shaking off the
+ yoke of scholasticism, of opinion, of authority—in a word, of
+ prejudices and barbarism. Those who remain faithful to his
+ hypothetical system, while they abandon his method, may be the last of
+ his partisans, but they would assuredly never have been the first of
+ his disciples.</p>
+
+ <p>By system the Encyclopædists meant more or less coherent bodies of
+ frivolous conjecture. The true merit of the philosopher or the
+ physicist is described as being to have the spirit of system, yet
+ never to construct a system. The notion expressed in this sentence
+ promises a union of the advantages of an organic synthesis, with the
+ advantages of an open mind and unfettered inquiry. It would be
+ ridiculous to think, says D'Alembert, that there is nothing more to
+ discover in anatomy, because anatomists devote themselves to
+ researches that may seem to be of no use, and yet often prove to be
+ full of use in their consequences. Nor would it be less absurd to lay
+ a ban on erudition, on the pretext that our learned men often give
+ themselves up to matters of trivial import.</p>
+
+ <p>We are constantly struck in the Encyclopædia by a genuine desire to
+ reach the best opinion by the only right way, the way of abundant,
+ many-sided, and liberal discussion. The article, for instance, on
+ <i>Fermes Générales</i> contains an examination of the question
+ whether it is more expedient that the taxes of a nation should be
+ gathered by farmers of the revenue, or directly by the agents of the
+ government acting on its behalf and under its supervision. Montesquieu
+ had argued strongly in favour of a <i>Régie</i>, the second of these
+ methods. The writer of the article sets out the nine considerations by
+ which Montesquieu had endeavoured to establish his position, and then
+ he offers on each of them the strongest observations that occur to him
+ in support of the opposite conclusion. At the conclusion of the
+ article, the editors of the Encyclopædia append the following note:
+ "Our professed impartiality and our desire to promote the discussion
+ and clearing up of an important question, have induced us to insert
+ this article. As the Encyclopædia has for its principal aim the public
+ advantage and instruction, we will insert in the article,
+ <i>Régie</i>, without taking any side, all such reasons for and
+ against, as people may he willing to submit to us, provided they are
+ stated with due sense and moderation." Alas, when we turn to the
+ article on <i>Régie</i>, the promise is unfulfilled, and a dozen
+ meagre lines disappoint the seeker. But eight years of storm had
+ passed, and many a beneficent intention had been wrecked. The
+ announcement at least shows us the aim and spirit of the original
+ scheme.</p>
+
+ <p>Of the line of argument taken in the Encyclopædia as to Toleration
+ we need say nothing. The Encyclopædists were the most ardent
+ propagators of the modern principles of tolerance. No one has to be
+ reminded that this was something more than an abstract discussion
+ among the doctors of social philosophy, in a country where youths were
+ broken on the wheel for levity in face of an ecclesiastical
+ procession, where nearly every considerable man of the century had
+ been either banished or imprisoned for daring to use his mind, and
+ which had been half ruined by the great proscription of Protestants
+ more than once renewed. The article <i>Tolérance</i> was greatly
+ admired in its day, and it is an eloquent and earnest reproduction of
+ the pleas of Locke. One rather curious feature in it is the
+ reproduction of the passage from the Social Contract, in which
+ Rousseau explains the right of the magistrate to banish any citizen
+ who has not got religion enough to make him do his duties, and who
+ will not make a profession of civil faith. The writer of the article
+ interprets this as implying that "atheists in particular, who remove
+ from the powerful the only rein, and from the weak their only hope,"
+ have no right to claim toleration. This is an unexpected stroke in a
+ work that is vulgarly supposed to be a violent manifesto on behalf of
+ atheism.<a name="FNanchor_172_172" id="FNanchor_172_172"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_172_172" class="fnanchor">[172]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Diderot himself in an earlier article (<i>Intolérance</i>) had
+ treated the subject with more trenchant energy. He does not argue his
+ points systematically, but launches a series of maxims, as with set
+ teeth, clenched hands, and a brow like a thundercloud. He hails the
+ oppressors of his life, the priests and the parliaments, with a
+ pungency that is exhilarating, and winds up with a description of the
+ intolerant as one who forgets that a man is his fellow, and for
+ holding a different opinion, treats him like a ravening brute; as one
+ who sacrifices the spirit and precepts of his religion to his pride;
+ as the rash fool who thinks that the arch can only be upheld by his
+ hands; as a man who is generally without religion, and to whom it
+ comes easier to have zeal than morals. Every page of the Encyclopædia
+ was, in fact, a plea for toleration. This embittered the hostility of
+ the churchmen to the work more than its attack upon dogma. For most
+ ecclesiastics valued power more dearly than truth. And in power they
+ valued most dearly the atrocious right of silencing, by foul means or
+ fair, all opinions that were not official.</p>
+
+ <p>III.</p>
+
+ <p>Having thus described the general character and purport of the
+ Encyclopædia, we have still to look at a special portion of it from a
+ more particular point of view. We have already shown how multifarious
+ were Diderot's labours as editor. It remains to give a short account
+ of his labours as a contributor. Everything was on the same vast
+ scale. His industry in writing would have been in itself most
+ astonishing, even if it had not been accompanied by the more
+ depressing fatigue of revising what others had written. Diderot's
+ articles fill more than four of the large volumes of his collected
+ works.</p>
+
+ <p>The confusion is immense. The spirit is sometimes historical,
+ sometimes controversial; now critical, now dogmatic. In one place
+ Diderot speaks in his own proper person, in another as the neutral
+ scribe writing to the dictation of an unseen authority. There is no
+ rigorous measure and ordered proportion. We constantly pass from a
+ serious treatise to a sally, from an elaborate history to a caprice.
+ There are not a few pages where we know that Diderot is saying what he
+ does not think. Some of the articles seem only to have found a place
+ because Diderot happened to have taken an interest in their subjects
+ at the moment. After reading Voltaire's concise account of
+ Imagination, we are amazed to find Diderot devoting a larger space
+ than Voltaire had needed for the subject at large, to so subordinate
+ and remote a branch of the matter as the Power of the Imagination in
+ Pregnant Women upon the Unborn Young. The article on Theosophs would
+ hardly have been so disproportionately long as it is, merely for the
+ sake of Paracelsus and Van Helmont and Poiret and the Rosicrucians,
+ unless Diderot happened to be curiously and half-sympathetically
+ brooding over the mixture of inspiration and madness, of charlatanry
+ and generous aim, of which these semi-mystic, semi-scientific
+ characters were composed.<a name="FNanchor_173_173" id=
+ "FNanchor_173_173"></a><a href="#Footnote_173_173" class=
+ "fnanchor">[173]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Many of Diderot's articles, again, have no rightful place in an
+ Encyclopædia. <i>Genius</i>, for instance, is dealt with in what is
+ neither more nor less than a literary essay, vigorous, suggestive,
+ diffuse; and containing, by the way, the curious assertion that,
+ although there are few errors in Locke and too few truths in
+ Shaftesbury, yet Locke is only an acute and comprehensive
+ intelligence, while Shaftesbury is a genius of the first order.</p>
+
+ <p>Under the word <i>Laborious</i>, we have only a dozen lines of
+ angry reproach against the despotism that makes men idle by making
+ property uncertain. Under such words as <i>Frivolous</i>,
+ <i>Gallantry</i>, <i>Perfection</i>, <i>Importance</i>,
+ <i>Politeness</i>, <i>Melancholy</i>, <i>Glorieux</i>, the reader is
+ amused and edified by miniature essays on manners and character,
+ seldom ending without some pithy sentence and pointed moral. Sometimes
+ (e.g. <i>Grandeur</i>) we have a charming piece after the manner of La
+ Bruyère. Under the verb <i>Naítre</i>, which is placed in the
+ department of grammar, we find a passage so far removed from grammar
+ as the following:—</p>
+
+ <p>"The terms of life and death have nothing absolute; they only
+ designate the successive states of one and the same being; for him who
+ has been strongly nourished in this philosophy, the urn that contains
+ the ashes of a father, a mother, a husband, a mistress, is truly a
+ touching object. There still remains in it life and warmth; these
+ ashes may perhaps even yet feel our tears and give them response; who
+ knows if the movement that our tears stir, as they water those ashes,
+ is wholly without sensibility?"</p>
+
+ <p>This little burst of grotesque sentimentalism is one of the pieces
+ that justify the description of Diderot as the most German of all the
+ French.<a name="FNanchor_174_174" id="FNanchor_174_174"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_174_174" class="fnanchor">[174]</a> Equally characteristic
+ and more sensible is the writer's outbreak against Formalists. "The
+ formalist knows exactly the proper interval between receiving and
+ returning a visit; he expects you on the exact day at the exact time;
+ if you fail, he thinks himself neglected and takes offence. A single
+ man of this stamp is enough to chill and embarrass a whole company.
+ There is nothing so repugnant to simple and upright souls as
+ formalities; as such people have within themselves the consciousness
+ of the good-will they bear to everybody, they neither plague
+ themselves to be constantly displaying a sentiment that is habitual,
+ nor to be constantly on the watch for it in others." This is analogous
+ to his contempt for the pedants who object to the use of a hybrid
+ word: "If it happens that a composite of a Greek word and a Latin word
+ renders the idea as well, and is easier to pronounce or pleasanter to
+ the ear than a compound of two Greek words and two Latin words, why
+ prefer the latter?" (<i>Hibrides</i>). Some articles are simply
+ diatribes against the enemy. <i>Pardon</i>, for instance: "It needs
+ much attention, much modesty, much skill to wring from others pardon
+ for our superiority. The men who have executed a foolish work, have
+ never been able to pardon us for projecting a better. We could have
+ got from them pardon for a crime, but never for a good action." And so
+ forth, with much magnanimous acrimony. <i>Prostitution</i> is only
+ introduced for the pleasure of applying the unsavoury word to certain
+ critics "of whom we have so many in these days, and of whom we say
+ that they prostitute their pens to money, to favour, to lying, and to
+ all the vices most unworthy of an honourable man."</p>
+
+ <p>We are constantly being puzzled and diverted by Diderot's ingenuity
+ in wandering away from the topic nominally in hand, to insinuate some
+ of those doctrines of tolerance, of suspended judgment, or of liberty,
+ which lay so much nearer to his heart than any point of mere
+ erudition. There is a little article on Aius-Locutius, the Announcing
+ Speaker, one of the minor Roman gods. Diderot begins by a few lines
+ describing the rise of the deity into repute. He then quotes Cicero's
+ pleasantry on the friendly divinity, that when nobody in the world had
+ ever heard of him, he delivered a salutary oracle, but after people
+ had built him a fine temple, then the god of speech fell dumb. This
+ suggests to Diderot to wonder with edifying innocence how so religious
+ a people as the Romans endured these irreverent jests in their
+ philosophers. By an easy step we pass to the conditions on which
+ modern philosophers should be allowed by authority to publish their
+ speculations. Diderot throws out the curious hint that it would be
+ best to forbid any writing against government and religion in the
+ vulgar tongue, and to allow those who write in a learned tongue to
+ publish what they please. And so we bid farewell to Aius-Locutius. In
+ passing, we ask ourselves whether Diderot's suggestion is not
+ available in the discussion of certain questions, where freedom of
+ speech in the vernacular tongue is scarcely compatible with the
+ <i>reverentia quæ debetur pueris</i>?</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot is never prevented by any mistaken sense of the dignity of
+ his enterprise from interspersing his disquisitions on science and
+ philosophy with such practical thoughts on the common matters of daily
+ life as come into his ingenious head. He suggests, for instance, by
+ way of preventing the frauds of cab-drivers on their masters and on
+ the public, that all payments of fares should be made to appointed
+ officers at the various cab-stations, and that no driver should take
+ up a fare except at one of these stations.<a name="FNanchor_175_175"
+ id="FNanchor_175_175"></a><a href="#Footnote_175_175" class=
+ "fnanchor">[175]</a> In writing about lackeys, after a word on their
+ insolence and on the wretched case in which most of them end their
+ days, he points out that the multitude of them is causing the
+ depopulation of the fields. They are countrymen who have thronged to
+ Paris to avoid military service. Peasants turned lackeys to escape the
+ conscription, just as in our own days they turn priests. Then, says
+ Diderot, this evil ought to be checked by a tax upon liveries; but
+ such a tax is far too sensible ever to be imposed.</p>
+
+ <p>Yet, notwithstanding the practical and fervid temper of his
+ understanding, Diderot is not above literary trifling when the humour
+ seizes him. If he can write an exhaustive article on Encyclopædia, or
+ Spinosa, or Academies, or Weaving, he can also stoop to Anagrams, and
+ can tell us that the letters of Frère Jacques Clément, the assassin of
+ Henry III., make up the sinister words, <i>C'est l'enfer qui m'a
+ créé</i>. He can write a couple of amusing pages on Onomatomancy, or
+ divination of a man's fortune from his name; and can record with
+ neutral gravity how frequently great empires have been destroyed under
+ princes bearing the same name as their first founders; how, again,
+ certain names are unlucky for princes, as Cains among the Romans, John
+ in France, England, and Scotland, and Henry in France.</p>
+
+ <p>We have now and then an anecdote that is worth reading and worth
+ preserving. Thus, under Machiavellist: "I have heard that a
+ philosopher, being asked by a great prince about a refutation of
+ Machiavellism, which the latter had just published, replied, 'Sire, I
+ fancy that the first lesson that Machiavelli would have given to his
+ disciple would have been to refute his work.'" Whether Voltaire ever
+ did say this to the great Frederick, is very questionable, but it
+ would not have been ill said. After the reader has been taken through
+ a short course of Arabian philosophy, he is enlivened by a selection
+ of poetic sayings about human life from the Rose-garden of Sadi, and
+ the whole article winds up with an eastern fable, of no particular
+ relevancy, of three men finding a treasure, and of one of them
+ poisoning the food for which the other two had sent him; on his return
+ they suddenly fell on him and slew him, and then ate the poisoned
+ food, and so the treasure fell to none of them.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_176_176" id="FNanchor_176_176"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_176_176" class="fnanchor">[176]</a></p>
+
+ <p>We have spoken in the previous section of the contempt expressed by
+ D'Alembert for mere literary antiquarianism—a very different thing,
+ let us remember, from scientific inquiry into the origin and
+ classification of institutions and social organs. Diderot's article on
+ the Germans is an excellent illustration of this wholesome
+ predominance of the scientific spirit over the superficialities of
+ barren erudition. The word "Allemand," says Diderot, "has a great many
+ etymologies, but they are so forced, that it is almost as well to know
+ none of them, as to know them all. As for the origin of this famous
+ stock, all that has been said on that matter, between Tacitus and
+ Clovis, is simply a tissue of guesses without foundation." Of course
+ in this some persons will see a shameful levity; others will regard it
+ as showing very good sense, and a right estimate of what is knowable
+ and worth knowing, and what is neither one nor the other. In the
+ article on Celibacy we notice the same temper. A few sentences are
+ enough for the antiquarianism of the subject, what the Egyptians,
+ Greeks, and Romans thought and ordained about celibacy. The substance
+ of the article is a reproduction of the Abbé Saint Pierre's discussion
+ of the advantages that would be gained for France, with her declining
+ population, if her forty thousand curés were allowed to marry, and to
+ bring into the world eighty thousand children. We may believe that
+ Diderot smiled as he transcribed the Abbé's cunning suggestion that a
+ dispensing power to relieve from the obligation of celibacy should be
+ recognised in the Pope, and that the Roman court should receive a sum
+ of money for every dispensation so granted.</p>
+
+ <p>Although, however, Diderot despised mere bookishness, his article
+ on Libraries is one of the longest and most painstaking, furnishing a
+ tolerably complete list of the most famous collections, from the
+ beginning of books down to the latest additions to the King's Library
+ in the Rue Vivienne. In the course of this article he quotes with
+ seeming approval the quaint words in which old Richard of Bury, the
+ author of the <i>Philobiblon</i> (1340), praised books as the best of
+ masters, much as the immortal defender of the poet Archias had praised
+ them: "Hi sunt magistri qui nos instruunt sine virgis et ferulis, sine
+ cholera, sine pecuniâ; si accedis non dormiunt; si inquiris non se
+ abscondunt; non obmurmurant si oberres; cachinnos nesciunt si
+ ignores."</p>
+
+ <p>In literature proper, as in philosophy, Diderot loses no
+ opportunity of insisting on the need of being content with suspended
+ judgment. For instance, he blames historians of opinion for the
+ readiness with which they attribute notions found in one or two rabbis
+ to the whole of the Jews, or because two or three Fathers say
+ something, boldly set this down as the sentiments of a whole century,
+ although perhaps we have nothing else save these two or three Fathers
+ left of the century, and although we do not know whether their
+ writings were applauded, or were even widely known. "It were to be
+ wished that people should speak less affirmatively, especially on
+ particular points and remote consequences, and that they should only
+ attribute them directly to those in whose writings they are actually
+ to be found. I confess that the history of the sentiments of antiquity
+ would not seem so complete, and that it would be necessary to speak in
+ terms of doubt much more often than is common; but by acting otherwise
+ we expose ourselves to the danger of taking false and uncertain
+ conjectures for ascertained and unquestionable truths. The ordinary
+ man of letters does not readily put up with suspensive expressions,
+ any more than common people do so." All this is an odd digression to
+ be found under the head of Hylopathianism, but it must always remain
+ wholesome doctrine.</p>
+
+ <p>We cannot wonder at Diderot's admiration for Montaigne and for
+ Bayle, who, with Hume, would make the great trinity of scepticism.
+ "The work of Montaigne," said Diderot, "is the touchstone of a good
+ intelligence; you may be sure that any one whom the reading of
+ Montaigne displeases has some vice either of heart or understanding.
+ As for Bayle, he has had few equals in the art of reasoning, and
+ perhaps no superior; and though he piles doubt upon doubt, he always
+ proceeds with order; an article of his is a living polypus, which
+ divides itself into a number of polypuses, all living, engendered one
+ from the other."<a name="FNanchor_177_177" id=
+ "FNanchor_177_177"></a><a href="#Footnote_177_177" class=
+ "fnanchor">[177]</a> Yet Diderot had a feeling of the necessity of
+ advancing beyond the attitude of Bayle and Montaigne. Intellectual
+ suspense and doubt was made difficult to him by his vehement and
+ positive demand for emotional certainties.</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot is always ready to fling away his proper subject in a burst
+ of moralising. The article on <i>Man</i>, as a branch of natural
+ history, contains a correct if a rather superficial account of that
+ curious animal; at length the writer comes to a table showing the
+ probable duration of life at certain ages. "You will observe," he
+ says, "1st, that the age of seven is that at which you may hope a
+ longer life; 2d, that at twelve or thirteen you have lived a quarter
+ of your life; at twenty-eight or twenty-nine you have lived half; at
+ fifty more than three-quarters." And then he suddenly winds up the
+ whole performance by the exclamation: "O ye who have laboured up to
+ fifty, who are in the enjoyment of comfort, and who still have left to
+ you health and strength, what then are you waiting for before you take
+ rest? How long will you go on saying <i>To-morrow, to-morrow?</i>"</p>
+
+ <p>There are many casual brilliancies in the way of analogy and
+ parallel, many aptnesses of thought and phrase. The Stoics are called
+ the Jansenists of Paganism. "For a single blade of grass to grow, it
+ is necessary that the whole of nature should co-operate." "A man comes
+ to Pyrrhonism by one of two opposite ways; either because he does not
+ know enough, or because he knows too much; the latter is not the most
+ common way." And so forth.</p>
+
+ <p>If we turn to the group of articles dealing with theology, it is
+ difficult for us to know exactly where we are. Sometimes Diderot
+ writes of popular superstitions with the gravity proper to a
+ dictionary of mythology. Sometimes he sews on to the sober gray of his
+ scepticism a purple patch of theistic declamation.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_178_178" id="FNanchor_178_178"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_178_178" class="fnanchor">[178]</a> The article on Jesus
+ Christ is obviously a mere piece of common form, and more than one
+ passage in his article on <i>Christianisme</i> is undoubtedly
+ insincere. When we come to his more careful article,
+ <i>Providence</i>, we find it impossible to extract from it a body of
+ coherent propositions of which we could confidently say that they
+ represented his own creed, or the creed that he desired his readers to
+ bear away in their minds.</p>
+
+ <p>It is hardly worth while to measure the more or the less of his
+ adherence to Christianity, or even to Deism, as inferred from the
+ Encyclopædia. We need only turn to his private letters to find that he
+ is in no degree nor kind an adherent, but the most hardy,
+ contemptuous, and thoroughgoing of opponents. At the risk of shocking
+ devout persons, I am bound to reproduce a passage from one of his
+ letters, in which there can be no doubt that we have Diderot's true
+ mind, as distinguished from what it was convenient to print. "The
+ Christian religion," he says, "is to my mind the most absurd and
+ atrocious in its dogmas; the most unintelligible, the most
+ metaphysical, the most intertwisted and obscure, and consequently the
+ most subject to divisions, sects, schisms, heresies; the most
+ mischievous for the public tranquillity, the most dangerous to
+ sovereigns by its hierarchic order, its persecutions, its discipline;
+ the most flat, the most dreary, the most Gothic, and the most gloomy
+ in its ceremonies; the most puerile and unsociable in its morality,
+ considered not in what is common to it with universal morality, but in
+ what is peculiarly its own, and constitutes it evangelical,
+ apostolical, and Christian morality, which is the most intolerant of
+ all. Lutheranism, freed from some absurdities, is preferable to
+ Catholicism; Protestantism to Lutheranism, Socinianism to
+ Protestantism, Deism, with temples and ceremonies, to Socinianism.
+ Since it is necessary that man, being superstitious by nature, should
+ have a fetish, the simplest and most harmless will be the best
+ fetish."<a name="FNanchor_179_179" id="FNanchor_179_179"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_179_179" class="fnanchor">[179]</a> We need not discuss nor
+ extend the quotation; enough has been said to relieve us from the duty
+ of analysing or criticising articles in which Christianity is treated
+ with all the formal respect that the secular authority insisted
+ upon.</p>
+
+ <p>This formal respect is not incompatible with many veiled and secret
+ sarcasms, which were as well understood as they were sharply enjoyed
+ by those who read between the lines. It is not surprising that these
+ sarcasms were constantly unjust and shallow. Even those of us who
+ repudiate theology and all its works for ourselves, may feel a shock
+ at the coarseness and impurity of innuendo which now and then
+ disfigures Diderot's treatment of theological as of some other
+ subjects. For this the attitude of the Church itself was much to
+ blame; coarse, virulent, unspiritual as it was in France in those
+ days. Voltaire, Diderot, Holbach, would have written in a very
+ different spirit, even while maintaining and publishing the same
+ attacks on theological opinion, if the Church of France had possessed
+ such a school of teachers as the Church of England found in the
+ Latitudinarians in the seventeenth century; or such as she finds now
+ in the nineteenth century in those who have imported, partly from the
+ poetry of Wordsworth, partly from the historic references of the
+ Oxford Tracts, an equity, a breadth, an elevation, a pensive grace,
+ that effectually forbid the use of those more brutal weapons of
+ controversy which were the only weapons possible in France a century
+ ago.</p>
+
+ <p>We have already said so much of the great and important group of
+ articles on arts and trades, that it is unnecessary to add anything
+ further as to Diderot's particular share in them. He visited all the
+ workshops in Paris; he sent for information and specifications to the
+ most important seats of manufacture in the kingdom; he sometimes
+ summoned workmen from the provinces to describe to him the paper works
+ of Montargis, and the silk works and velvet works of Lyons.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_180_180" id="FNanchor_180_180"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_180_180" class="fnanchor">[180]</a> Much of Diderot's work,
+ even on great practical subjects, was, no doubt, the reproduction of
+ mere book-knowledge acquired at second-hand. Take, for instance,
+ Agriculture, which was undoubtedly the most important of all subjects
+ for France at that date, as indeed at every other date. There are a
+ dozen pages of practical precepts, for which Diderot was probably
+ indebted to one of the farmers at Grandval. After this, he fills up
+ the article with about twenty pages in which he gives an account of
+ the new system of husbandry, which our English Jethro Tull described
+ to an unbelieving public between 1731 and 1751. Tull's volume was
+ translated into French by Duhamel, with notes and the record of
+ experiments of his own; from this volume Diderot drew the pith of his
+ article. Diderot's only merit in the matter—and it is hardly an
+ inconsiderable one in a world of routine—is that he should have been
+ at the pains to seek the newest lights, and above all that he should
+ have urged the value of fresh experiments in agriculture. Tull was not
+ the safest authority in the world, but it is to be remembered that the
+ shrewd-witted Cobbett thought his ideas on husbandry worth
+ reproducing, seventy years after Diderot had thought them worth
+ compiling into an article.</p>
+
+ <p>It was not merely in the details of the practical arts that Diderot
+ wrote from material acquired at second-hand. The article on the
+ Zend-Avesta is taken from the Annual Register for 1762. The long
+ series of articles on the history of philosophy is in effect a
+ reproduction of what he found in Bayle, in Deslandes, and in Brucker.
+ There are one or two considerable exceptions. Perhaps the most
+ important is under the heading of Spinosa, to which we shall return
+ presently. The article on <i>Hobbisme</i> contains an analysis,
+ evidently made by the writer's own hand, of the bulk of Hobbes's
+ propositions; it is scarcely, however, illuminated by a word of
+ criticism. If we turn to the article on <i>Société</i>, it is true, we
+ find Hobbes's view of the relations between the civil and temporal
+ powers tolerably effectively combated, but even here Diderot hardly
+ does more than arm himself with the weapons of Locke.</p>
+
+ <p>Of course, he honestly refers his readers to these sources of wider
+ information.<a name="FNanchor_181_181" id=
+ "FNanchor_181_181"></a><a href="#Footnote_181_181" class=
+ "fnanchor">[181]</a> All that we can say of the articles on the
+ history of philosophy is that the series is very complete; that
+ Diderot used his matter with intelligence and the spirit of criticism,
+ and that he often throws in luminous remarks and far-reaching
+ suggestions of his own. This was all that the purpose of his book
+ required. To imitate the laborious literary search of Bayle or of
+ Brucker, and to attempt to compile an independent history of
+ philosophy, would have been to sacrifice the Encyclopædia as a whole,
+ to the superfluous perfection of a minor part. There is only one
+ imperative condition in such a case, namely, that the writer should
+ pass the accepted material through his own mind before reproducing it.
+ With this condition it was impossible for a man of Diderot's
+ indefatigable energy of spirit, not as a rule to comply.</p>
+
+ <p>But this rule too had exceptions. There were cases in which he
+ reproduced, as any mere bookmaker might have done, the thought of his
+ authority, without an attempt to make it his own. Of the confusion and
+ inequalities in which Diderot was landed by this method of mingling
+ the thoughts of other people with his own, there is a curious example
+ in the two articles on Philosopher and Philosophy. In the first we
+ have an essentially social and practical description of what the
+ philosopher should be; in the second we have a definition of
+ philosophy, which takes us into the regions most remote from what is
+ social and practical. We soar to the airiest heights of verbal
+ analysis and pure formalism. Nothing can be better, so far as it goes,
+ than the picture of the philosopher. Diderot begins by contrasting him
+ with the crowd of people, and clever people, who insist on passing
+ judgment all day long. "They ignore the scope and limits of the human
+ mind; they think it capable of knowing everything; hence they think it
+ a disgrace not to pronounce judgment, and imagine that intelligence
+ consists in that and nothing else. The philosopher believes that it
+ consists in judging rightly. He is better pleased with himself when he
+ has suspended his faculty of coming to a conclusion, than if he had
+ come to a conclusion without the proper grounds. He prefers to
+ brilliancy the pains of rightly distinguishing his ideas, of finding
+ their true extent and exact connection. He is never so attached to a
+ system as not to feel all the force of the objections to it. Most men
+ are so strongly given over to their opinions that they do not take any
+ trouble to make out those of others. The philosopher, on the other
+ hand, understands what he rejects, with the same breadth and the same
+ accuracy as he understands what he adopts." Then Diderot turns
+ characteristically from the intellectual to the social side. "Our
+ philosopher does not count himself an exile in the world; he does not
+ suppose himself in an enemy's country; he would fain find pleasure
+ with others, and to find it he must give it; he is a worthy man who
+ wishes to please and to make himself useful. The ordinary philosophers
+ who meditate too much, or rather who meditate to wrong purpose, are as
+ surly and arrogant to all the world as great people are to those whom
+ they do not think their equals; they flee men, and men avoid them. But
+ our philosopher who knows how to divide himself between retreat and
+ the commerce of men is full of humanity. <i>Civil society is, so to
+ say, a divinity for him on the earth</i>; he honours it by his
+ probity, by an exact attention to his duties, and by a sincere desire
+ not to be a useless or an embarrassing member of it. The sage has the
+ leaven of order and rule; he is full of the ideas connected with the
+ good of civil society. What experience shows us every day is that the
+ more reason and light people have, the better fitted they are and the
+ more to be relied on for the common intercourse of life."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_182_182" id="FNanchor_182_182"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_182_182" class="fnanchor">[182]</a></p>
+
+ <p>The transition is startling from this conception of</p>
+
+ <p>Philosopher as a very high kind of man of the world, to the
+ definition of Philosophy as "the science of possibles quâ possibles."
+ Diderot's own reflection comes back to us, <i>Combien cette maudite
+ métaphysique fait des fous!</i><a name="FNanchor_183_183" id=
+ "FNanchor_183_183"></a><a href="#Footnote_183_183" class=
+ "fnanchor">[183]</a> We are abruptly plunged from a Baconian into a
+ Leibnitzian atmosphere. We should naturally have expected some such
+ account of Philosophy as that it begins with a limitation of the
+ questions to which men can hope for an answer, and ends in an ordered
+ arrangement of the principles of knowledge, with ultimate reference to
+ the conditions of morals and the structure of civil societies. We
+ should naturally have expected to find, what indeed we do find, that
+ the characteristic of the philosopher is to "admit nothing without
+ proof, never to acquiesce in illusory notions; to draw rigorously the
+ dividing lines of the certain, the probable, the doubtful; above all
+ things never to pay himself with mere words." But then these wholesome
+ prescriptions come in an article whose definitions and distribution of
+ philosophy are simply a reproduction from Christian Wolff, and the
+ methods and dialect of Wolff are as essentially alien from the
+ positive spirit of the Encyclopædia as they were from the mystic
+ spirit of Jacobi.</p>
+
+ <p>Wolff's place in the philosophical succession of German speculation
+ (1679-1754) is between Leibnitz and Kant, and until Kant came his
+ system was dominant in the country of metaphysics.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_184_184" id="FNanchor_184_184"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_184_184" class="fnanchor">[184]</a> It is from</p>
+
+ <p>Wolff that Diderot borrows and throws unassimilated into the pages
+ of the Encyclopædia propositions so fundamentally incongruous as this,
+ that "among all possibles there must of necessity be a Being
+ subsisting by himself; otherwise there would be possible things, of
+ the possibility of which no account could be given, an assertion that
+ could never be made." It is a curious thing, and it illustrates again
+ the strangely miscellaneous quality of Diderot's compilation, that the
+ very article which begins by this incorporation of the author of a
+ philosophical system expounded in a score of quartos, ends by a
+ vigorous denunciation of the introduction of the systematic spirit
+ into philosophy.</p>
+
+ <p>I shall venture to quote a hardy passage from another article
+ (<i>Pyrrhonienne</i>) which some will think a measure of Diderot's
+ philosophical incompetency, and others will think a measure of his
+ good sense. "We will conclude," he says, "for our part that as all in
+ nature is bound together, there is nothing, properly speaking, of
+ which man has perfect, absolute, and complete knowledge, because for
+ that he would need knowledge of all. Now as all is bound together, it
+ inevitably happens that, from discussion to discussion, he must come
+ to something unknown: then in starting again from this unknown point,
+ we shall be justified in pleading against him the ignorance or the
+ obscurity or the uncertainty of the point preceding, and of that
+ preceding this, and so forth, up to the most evident principle. So we
+ must admit a sort of sobriety in the use of reason. When step by step
+ I have brought a man to some evident proposition, I shall cease to
+ dispute. I will listen no longer to a man who goes on to deny the
+ existence of bodies, the rules of logic, the testimony of the senses,
+ the difference between good and evil, true and false, etc. etc. I will
+ turn my back on everybody who tries to lead me away from a simple
+ question, to embark me in discussion as to the nature of matter, of
+ the understanding of thought, and other subjects shoreless and
+ bottomless."<a name="FNanchor_185_185" id=
+ "FNanchor_185_185"></a><a href="#Footnote_185_185" class=
+ "fnanchor">[185]</a> Whatever else may be said of this, we have to
+ recognise that it is exactly characteristic of the author. But then
+ why have written on metaphysics at all?</p>
+
+ <p>We have mentioned the article on Spinosa. It is characteristic both
+ of the good and the bad sides of Diderot's work. Half of it is merely
+ a reproduction of Bayle's criticisms on Spinosa and his system. The
+ other half consists of original objections propounded by Diderot with
+ marked vigour of thrust against Spinosa, but there is no evidence that
+ he had gone deeper into Spinosa than the first book of the Ethics.
+ There is no certain sign that he had read anything else, or that he
+ had more of that before him than the extracts that were furnished by
+ Bayle. Such treatment of a serious subject hardly conforms to the
+ modern requirements of the literary conscience, for in truth the
+ literary conscience has now turned specialist and shrinks from the
+ encyclopædic. Diderot's objections are, as we have said, pushed with
+ marked energy of speech. "However short away," he says, "you penetrate
+ into the thick darkness in which Spinosa has wrapped himself up, you
+ discover a succession of abysses into which this audacious reasoner
+ has precipitated himself, of propositions either evidently false or
+ evidently doubtful, of arbitrary principles, substituted for natural
+ principles and sensible truths; an abuse of terms taken for the most
+ part in a wrong sense, a mass of deceptive equivocations, a cloud of
+ palpable contradictions." The system is monstrous, it is absurd and
+ ridiculous. It is Spinosa's plausible method that has deceived people;
+ they supposed that one who employed geometry, and proceeded by way of
+ axioms and definitions, must be on the track of truth. They did not
+ see that these axioms were nothing better than very vague and very
+ uncertain propositions; that the definitions were inexact, defective,
+ and bizarre.</p>
+
+ <p>We have no space to follow the reasoning by which Diderot supports
+ this scornful estimate of the famous thinker, of whom it can never be
+ settled whether he be pantheist, atheist, akosmist, or God-intoxicated
+ man. He returns to the charge again and again, as if he felt a certain
+ secret uneasiness lest for scorn so loudly expressed he had not
+ brought forward adequate justification. And the reader feels that
+ Diderot has scarcely hit the true line of cleavage that would have
+ enabled him—from his own point of view—to shatter the Spinosist
+ system. He tries various bouts of logic with Spinosa in connection
+ with detached propositions. Thus he deals with Spinosa's third
+ proposition, that, <i>in the case of things that have nothing in
+ common with one another, one cannot be the cause of the other</i>.
+ This proposition, Diderot contends, is false in all moral and
+ occasional causes. The sound of the name of God has nothing in common
+ with the idea of the Creator which that name produces in my mind. A
+ misfortune that overtakes my friend has nothing in common with the
+ grief that I feel in consequence. When I move my arm by an act of
+ will, the movement has nothing in common in its nature with the act of
+ my will; they are very different. I am not a triangle, yet I form the
+ idea of one and I examine its properties. So with the fifth
+ proposition, that <i>there cannot be in the universe two or more
+ substances of the same nature or the same attributes</i>. If Spinosa
+ is only talking of the essence of things or of their definition, what
+ he says is naught; for it can only mean that there cannot be in the
+ universe two different essences having the same essence. Who doubts
+ it? But if Spinosa means that there cannot be an essence which is
+ found in various single objects, in the same way as the essence of
+ triangle is found in the triangle A and the triangle B, then he says
+ what is manifestly untrue. It is not, however, until the last two or
+ three pages that Diderot sets forth his dissent in its widest
+ form.</p>
+
+ <p>"To refute Spinosa," he says at last, "all that is necessary is to
+ stop him at the first step, without taking the trouble to follow him
+ into a mass of consequences; all that we need do is to substitute for
+ the obscure principle which he makes the base of his system, the
+ following: namely, that <i>there are several substances</i>—a
+ principle that in its own way is clear to the last degree. And, in
+ fact, what proposition can be clearer, more striking, more close to
+ the understanding and consciousness of man? I here seek no other judge
+ than the most just impression of the common sense that is spread among
+ the human race.... Now, since common sense revolts against each of
+ Spinosa's propositions, no less than against the first, of which they
+ are the pretended proofs, instead of stopping to reason on each of
+ these proofs where common sense is lost, we should be right to say to
+ him:—Your principle is contrary to common sense; from a principle in
+ which common sense is lost, nothing can issue in which common sense is
+ to be found again."</p>
+
+ <p>The passage sounds unpleasantly like an appeal to the crowd in a
+ matter of science, which is as the sin against the Holy Ghost in these
+ high concerns. What Diderot meant, probably, was to charge Spinosa
+ with inventing a conception of substance which has no relation to
+ objective experience; and further with giving fantastic answers to
+ questions that were in themselves never worth asking, because the
+ answers must always involve a violent wrench of the terms of
+ experience into the sphere transcending experience, and because,
+ moreover, they can never be verified. Whether he meant this or
+ something else, and whether he would have been right or wrong in such
+ an intention, we may admit that it would have been more satisfactory
+ if in dealing with such a master-type of the metaphysical method as
+ Spinosa, so acute a positive critic as Diderot had taken more pains to
+ give to his objections the utmost breadth of which they were
+ capable.<a name="FNanchor_186_186" id="FNanchor_186_186"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_186_186" class="fnanchor">[186]</a></p>
+
+ <p>The article on Leibnitz has less original matter in it than that on
+ Spinosa. The various speculations of that great and energetic
+ intellect in metaphysic, logic, natural theology, natural law, are
+ merely drawn out in a long table of succinct propositions, while the
+ account of the life and character of Leibnitz is simply taken from the
+ excellent <i>éloge</i> which had been published upon him by Fontenelle
+ in 1716. Fontenelle's narrative is reproduced in a generous spirit of
+ admiration and respect for a genius that was like Diderot's own in
+ encyclopædic variety of interest, while it was so far superior to
+ Diderot's in concentration, in subtlety, in precision, in power of
+ construction. If there could exist over our heads, says Diderot, a
+ species of beings who could observe our works as we watch those of
+ creatures at our feet, with what surprise would such beings have seen
+ those four marvellous insects, Bayle, Descartes, Leibnitz, and Newton.
+ And he then draws up a little calendar of the famous men, out of whom
+ we must choose the name to be placed at the very head of the human
+ race. The list contains, besides Julian the Apostate—who was inserted,
+ we may presume, merely by way of playful insult to the ecclesiastical
+ enemy—Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, Trajan, Bacon, and the four great
+ names that have just been cited. Germany derives as much honour from
+ Leibnitz alone, he concludes with unconsidered enthusiasm, as Greece
+ from Plato, Aristotle, and Archimedes, all put together. As we have
+ said, however, there is no criticism, nor any other sign that Diderot
+ had done more than survey the façade of the great Leibnitzian
+ structure admiringly from without.</p>
+
+ <p>The article on Liberty would be extremely remarkable, appearing
+ where it does, and coming from a thinker of Diderot's general
+ capacity, if only we could be sure that Diderot was sincere. As it
+ happens, there is good reason to suppose that he was wholly insincere.
+ It is quite as shallow, from the point of view of philosophy, as his
+ article on the Jews or on the Bible is from the point of view of
+ erudition. One reason for this might not be far to seek. We have
+ repeatedly observed how paramount the social aim and the social test
+ are in Diderot's mind over all other considerations. But this
+ reference of all subjects of discussion to the good of society, and
+ this measurement of conclusions by their presumed effect on society,
+ is a method that has its own dangers. The aversion of ecclesiastics to
+ unfettered discussion, lest it should damage institutions and beliefs
+ deemed useful to mankind, is the great leading example of this peril.
+ Diderot, it might be said by those who should contend that he wrote
+ what he thought, did not escape exactly the same predicament, as soon
+ as ever he forgot that of all the things that are good for society,
+ Truth is the best. Now, who will believe that it is Diderot, the
+ persecuted editor of the Encyclopædia, and the author of the manly
+ article on Intolerance, who introduces such a passage as the following
+ into the discussion of the everlasting controversy of Free Will and
+ Necessity: "Take away Liberty, and you leave no more vice nor virtue
+ nor merit in the world; rewards are ridiculous, and punishments
+ unjust. The ruin of Liberty overthrows all order and all police,
+ confounds vice and virtue, authorises every monstrous infamy,
+ extinguishes the last spark of shame and remorse, degrades and
+ disfigures beyond recovery the whole human race. <i>A doctrine of such
+ enormity as this ought not to be examined in the schools; it ought to
+ be punished by the magistrates.</i>"<a name="FNanchor_187_187" id=
+ "FNanchor_187_187"></a><a href="#Footnote_187_187" class=
+ "fnanchor">[187]</a> Of course, this was exactly what the Jesuits said
+ about a belief in God, about revelation, and about the institutions of
+ the church. To take away these, they said, is to throw down the
+ bulwarks of order, and an attempt to take them away, as by
+ encyclopædists or others, ought to be punished by the magistrates.
+ Diderot had for the moment clearly lost himself.</p>
+
+ <p>We need hardly be surprised if an article conceived in this spirit
+ contains no serious contribution to the difficult question with which
+ it deals. Diderot had persuaded himself that, without Free Will, all
+ those emotional moralities in the way of sympathy and benevolence and
+ justice which he adored would be lowered to the level of mere
+ mechanism. "If men are not free in what they do of good and evil,
+ then," he cries, in what is surely a paroxysm of unreason, "good is no
+ longer good, and evil no longer evil." As if the outward quality and
+ effects of good and evil were not independent of the mental operations
+ which precede human action. Murder would not cease to be an evil
+ simply because it had been proved that the murderer's will to do a bad
+ deed was the result of antecedents. Acts have marks and consequences
+ of their own, good or bad, whatever may be the state of mind of those
+ who do them. But Diderot does not seem to divine the true issue; he
+ writes as if Necessarians or Determinists denied the existence of
+ volitions, and as if the question were whether volitions do exist.
+ Nobody denies that they exist; the real question is of the conditions
+ under which they exist. Are they determined by antecedents, or are
+ they self-determined, spontaneous, and unconnected? Is Will
+ independent of cause?</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot's argumentation is, in fact, merely a protest that man is
+ conscious of a Will. And just as in other parts of his article Diderot
+ by Liberty means only the existence of Will, so by Liberty he means
+ only the healthy condition of the soul, and not its independence of
+ causation. We need not waste words on so dire a confusion, nor on the
+ theory that Will is sometimes dependent on cerebral antecedents and
+ sometimes not. The curious thing is that the writer should not have
+ perceived that he was himself in this preposterous theory propounding
+ the very principle which he denounced as destructive to virtue,
+ ruinous to society, and worthy of punishment by the government. For it
+ seems that, after all, the Will of those whose "dispositions are not
+ moderate" is not free; and we may surely say that those whose
+ dispositions are least moderate, are exactly the most violent
+ malefactors against the common weal. One more passage is worth quoting
+ to show how little the writer had seized the true meaning of the
+ debate. "According to you," he says to Bayle, "it is not clear that it
+ is at the pure choice of my will to move my arm or not to move it: if
+ that be so, it is then necessarily determined that within a quarter of
+ an hour from now I shall lift my hand three times together, or that I
+ shall not. Now, if you seriously pretend that I am not free, you
+ cannot refuse an offer that I make you; I will wager a thousand
+ pistoles to one that I will do, in the matter of moving my hand,
+ exactly the opposite to what you back; and you may take your choice.
+ If you do think the wager fair, it can only be because of your
+ necessary and invincible judgment that I am free." As if the will to
+ move or not to move the arm would be uncaused and unaffected by
+ antecedents, when you have just provided so strong an antecedent as
+ the desire to save a thousand pistoles. It was, perhaps, well enough
+ for Voltaire to content himself with vague poetical material for his
+ poetical discourse on Liberty, but from Diderot, whether as editor or
+ as writer, something better might have been expected than a clumsy
+ reproduction of the reasoning by which men like Turretini had turned
+ philosophy into the corrupted handmaid of theology.</p>
+
+ <p>The most extraordinary thing about this extraordinary article still
+ remains to be told. It was written, we may suppose, between 1757 and
+ 1762, or about that time. In June, 1756, Diderot wrote to a certain
+ Landois, a fellow-worker on the Encyclopædia, a letter containing the
+ most emphatic possible repudiation of the whole doctrine of Liberty.
+ "Liberty is a word void of sense; there are not and there never can
+ have been free beings; we are only what fits in with the general
+ order, with organisation, with education, and with the chain of
+ events. We can no more conceive a being acting without a motive than
+ we can conceive one of the arms of a balance acting without a weight;
+ and the motive is always exterior and foreign to us, attached either
+ by nature or by some cause or other that is not ourselves. <i>There is
+ only one sort of causes, properly speaking, and those are, physical
+ causes.</i>"<a name="FNanchor_188_188" id=
+ "FNanchor_188_188"></a><a href="#Footnote_188_188" class=
+ "fnanchor">[188]</a> And so forth in the vein of hard and remorseless
+ necessarianism, which we shall find presently in the pages of the
+ System of Nature.<a name="FNanchor_189_189" id=
+ "FNanchor_189_189"></a><a href="#Footnote_189_189" class=
+ "fnanchor">[189]</a></p>
+
+ <p>There is only one explanation of this flagrant contradiction.
+ Diderot must have written on Liberty just as he wrote on Jesus Christ
+ or the Bible. He cannot have said what he thought, but only what the
+ persons in authority required him to pretend to think. We may he sure
+ that a letter to an intimate would be more likely to contain his real
+ opinion than an article published in the Encyclopædia. That such
+ mystifications are odious, are shameful, are almost too degrading a
+ price to pay for the gains of such a work, we may all readily enough
+ admit. All that we can do is to note so flagrant a case, as a striking
+ example of the common artifices of the time. One other point we may
+ note. The fervour and dexterity with which Diderot made what he knew
+ to be the worse appear the better cause, make a still more striking
+ example of his astonishing dramatic power of throwing himself, as
+ dialectician, casuist, sophist, into a false and illusive part.</p>
+
+ <p>Turning from the philosophical to the political or social group of
+ articles, we find little to add to what has been said in the previous
+ section. One of the most excellent essays in this group is that on
+ Luxury. Diderot opens ingeniously with a list of the propositions that
+ state the supposed evils of luxury, and under each proposition he
+ places the most striking case that he can find in history of its
+ falseness. He goes through the same process with the propositions
+ asserting the gains of luxury to society. Having thus effectually
+ disposed of any wholesale way of dealing with the subject, he proceeds
+ to make a number of observations on the gains and drawbacks of luxury;
+ these are full of sense and freedom from commonplace. Such articles as
+ <i>Pouvoir, Souverain, Autorité</i>, do little more than tell over
+ again the old unhistoric story about a society surrendering a portion
+ of its sovereign power to some individual or dynasty to hold in trust.
+ It is worth remarking how little democratic were Diderot and his
+ school in any Jacobinical, or anarchic, or even more respectable
+ modern sense. There is in Diderot's contributions many a firm and
+ manly plea for the self-respect of the common people, but not more
+ than once or twice is there a syllable of the disorder which smoulders
+ under the pages of Rousseau. Thus: "When the dwellers among the fields
+ are well treated, the number of proprietors insensibly grows greater,
+ the extreme distance and the vile dependence of poor on rich grow
+ less; hence the people have courage, force of soul, and strength of
+ body; they love their country, they respect the magistrates, they are
+ attached to a prince, to an order, and to laws to which they owe their
+ peace and well-being. And you will no longer see the son of the
+ honourable tiller of the soil so ready to quit the noble calling of
+ his forefathers, nor so ready to go and sully himself with the
+ liveries and with the contempt of the man of wealth."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_190_190" id="FNanchor_190_190"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_190_190" class="fnanchor">[190]</a></p>
+
+ <p>No one can find fault with democratic sentiment of this kind, nor
+ with the generous commonplaces of the moralist, about virtue being the
+ only claim to honour, and vice the only true source of shame and
+ inferiority. But neither Diderot nor Voltaire ever allowed himself to
+ flatter the crowd for qualities which the crowd can scarcely possess.
+ The little article on Multitude seems merely inserted for the sake of
+ buffeting unwarranted pretensions. "Distrust the judgment of the
+ multitude in all matters of reasoning and philosophy; there its voice
+ is the voice of malice, folly, inhumanity, irrationality, and
+ prejudice. Distrust it again in things that suppose much knowledge or
+ a fine taste. The multitude is ignorant and dulled. Distrust it in
+ morality; it is not capable of strong and generous actions; it rather
+ wonders at such actions than approves them; heroism is almost madness
+ in its eyes. Distrust it in the things of sentiment; is delicacy of
+ sentiment so common a thing that you can accord it to the multitude?
+ In what then is the multitude right? In everything, but only at the
+ end of a very long time, because then it has become an echo, repeating
+ the judgment of a small number of sensible men who shape the judgment
+ of posterity for it beforehand. If you have on your side the testimony
+ of your conscience, and against you that of the multitude, take
+ comfort and be assured that time does justice." It is far from being a
+ universal gift among men of letters and others to unite this
+ fastidious estimation of the incapacity of the crowd in the higher
+ provinces of the intellectual judgment, with a fervid desire that the
+ life of the crowd should be made worthy of self-respecting men.</p>
+
+ <p>The same hand that wrote the defiance of the populace that has just
+ been quoted, wrote also this short article on Misery: "There are few
+ souls so firm that misery does not in the long run cast them down and
+ degrade them. The poor common people are incredibly stupid. I know not
+ what false dazzling prestige closes their eyes to their present
+ wretchedness, and to the still deeper wretchedness that awaits the
+ years of old age. Misery is the mother of great crimes. It is the
+ sovereigns who make the miserable, and it is they who shall answer in
+ this world and the other for the crimes that misery has
+ committed."</p>
+
+ <p>So far as the mechanism of government is concerned, Diderot writes
+ much as Montesquieu had done. Under the head of <i>Représentants</i>
+ he proclaims the advantages, not exactly of government by a
+ representative assembly, but of assisting and advising the royal
+ government by means of such an assembly. There is no thought of
+ universal suffrage. "<i>It is property that makes the citizen</i>;
+ every man who has possessions in the state is interested in the state,
+ and whatever be the rank that particular conventions may assign to
+ him, it is always as a proprietor; it is by reason of his possessions
+ that he ought to speak, and that he acquires the right of having
+ himself represented." Yet this very definite statement does not save
+ him from the standing difficulty of a democratic philosophy of
+ politics. Nor can it be reconciled in point of logic with other
+ propositions to which Diderot commits himself in the same article. For
+ instance, he says that "no order of citizens is capable of stipulating
+ for all; if one order had the right, it would very soon come to
+ stipulate only for itself; each class ought to be represented by men
+ who know its condition and its needs; <i>these needs are only well
+ known to those who actually feel them</i>." But then, in that case,
+ the poorest classes are those who have most need of direct
+ representation; they are the most numerous, their needs are sharpest,
+ they are the classes to which war, consumption of national capital and
+ way of expending national income, equal laws, judicial administration,
+ and the other concerns of a legislative assembly, come most close. The
+ problem is to reconcile the sore interests of the multitude with the
+ ignorance and the temper imputed in Diderot's own description of
+ them.</p>
+
+ <p>An interesting study might be made, if the limits of our subject
+ permitted such a digression, on the new political ideas which a
+ century's experience in England, France, Germany, the American Union,
+ has added to the publicist's stock. Diderot's article on the
+ Legislator is a curious mixture of views which political thinkers have
+ left behind, with views which the most enlightened statesmen have
+ taken up. There is much talk after the fashion of Jean Jacques
+ Rousseau about the admirable legislation of Lycurgus at Sparta, the
+ philosophical government of the great empire of China, and the fine
+ spirit of the institutions of Peru. We perceive that the same
+ influences which made Rousseau's political sentimentalism so popular
+ also brought even strong heads like Diderot to believe in the
+ unbounded power of a government to mould men at its will, and to
+ impose institutions at discretion. The idea that it is the main
+ function of a government to make its people virtuous, is generally as
+ strong in Diderot as it was in Rousseau, and as it became in
+ Robespierre. He admires the emperors of China, because their edicts
+ are as the exhortation of a father to his children. All edicts, he
+ says, ought to instruct and to exhort as much as they command. Yet two
+ years after the Encyclopædia was finished (1774), when Turgot prefaced
+ his reforming edicts by elaborate and reasoned statements of the
+ grounds for them, it was found that his prefaces caused greater
+ provocation than the very laws that they introduced.</p>
+
+ <p>Apart from the common form of enthusiasm for the "sublime
+ legislation" of countries which the writer really knew nothing about,
+ the article on the Legislator has some points worth noticing. We have
+ seen how Diderot made the possession of property the true note of
+ citizenship, and of a claim to share in the government. But he did not
+ pay property this compliment for nothing. It is, he says, the business
+ of the legislator to do his best to make up to mankind for the loss of
+ that equality which was one of the comforts that men surrendered when
+ they gave up the state of nature. Hence the legislator ought to take
+ care that no one shall reach a position of extreme opulence otherwise
+ than by an industry that enriches the state. "He must take care that
+ the charges of society shall fall upon the rich, who enjoy the
+ advantages of society." Even those who agree with Diderot, and are
+ ready to vote for a graduated income-tax, will admit that he comes to
+ his conclusion without knowing or reflecting about either the serious
+ arguments for it, or the serious objections against it.</p>
+
+ <p>What is really interesting in this long article is its anticipation
+ of those ideas which in England we associate with the name of Cobden.
+ "All the men of all lands have become necessary to one another for the
+ exchange of the fruits of industry and the products of the soil.
+ Commerce is a new bond among men. Every nation has an interest in
+ these days in the preservation by every other nation of its wealth,
+ its industry, its banks, its luxury, its agriculture. The ruin of
+ Leipsic, of Lisbon, and of Lima has led to bankruptcies on all the
+ exchanges of Europe, and has affected the fortunes of many millions of
+ persons."<a name="FNanchor_191_191" id="FNanchor_191_191"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_191_191" class="fnanchor">[191]</a> In the same spirit he
+ foresees the decline of patriotism in its older and narrower sense,
+ and the predominance of the international over the national sentiment.
+ "All nations now have sufficiently just ideas of their neighbours, and
+ consequently they have less enthusiasm for their country than in the
+ old days of ignorance. There is little enthusiasm where there is much
+ light; enthusiasm is nearly always the emotion of a soul that is more
+ passionate than it is instructed. By comparing among all nations laws
+ with laws, talents with talents, and manners with manners, nations
+ will find so little reason to prefer themselves to others, that if
+ they preserve for their own country that love which is the fruit of
+ personal interest, at least they will lose that enthusiasm which is
+ the fruit of an exclusive self-esteem."</p>
+
+ <p>Yet Diderot had the perspicacity to discern the drawbacks to such a
+ revolution in the conditions of social climate. "Commerce, like
+ enlightenment, lessens ferocity, but also, just as enlightenment takes
+ away the enthusiasm of self-esteem, so perhaps commerce takes away the
+ enthusiasm of virtue. It gradually extinguishes the spirit of
+ magnanimous disinterestedness, and replaces it by that of hard
+ justice. By turning men's minds rather to use than beauty, to prudence
+ rather than to greatness, it may be that it injures the strength, the
+ generosity, the nobleness of manners."</p>
+
+ <p>All this, whether it comes to much or little, is at least more true
+ than Diderot's assurance that henceforth for any nation in Europe to
+ make conquests must be a moral impossibility. Napoleon Bonaparte was
+ then a child in arms. Whether his career was on the whole a fulfilment
+ or a contradiction of Diderot's proposition, may be disputed.</p>
+
+ <p>And so our sketch of the great book must at length end. Let us make
+ one concluding remark. Is it not surprising that a man of Diderot's
+ speculative boldness and power should have failed to rise from the
+ mechanical arrangement of thought and knowledge, up to some higher and
+ more commanding conception of the relation between himself in the
+ eighteenth century, or ourselves in the nineteenth, and all those
+ great systems of thought, method, and belief, which in various epochs
+ and over different spaces of the globe have given to men working
+ answers to the questions that their leading spirits were moved to put
+ to themselves and to the iron universe around them? We constantly feel
+ how near Diderot is to the point of view that would have brought
+ light. We feel how very nearly ready he was to see the mental
+ experiences of the race in east and west, not as superstition,
+ degradation, grovelling error, but as aspects of intellectual effort
+ and aspiration richly worthy of human interest and scientific
+ consideration, and in their aim as well as in their substance all of
+ one piece with the newest science and the last voices of religious or
+ anti-religious development. Diderot was the one member of the party of
+ Philosophers who was capable of grasping such a thought. If this
+ guiding idea of the unity of the intellectual history of man, and the
+ organic integrity of thought, had happily come into Diderot's mind, we
+ should have had an Encyclopædia indeed; a survey and representation of
+ all the questions and answers of the world, such as would in itself
+ have suggested what questions are best worth putting, and at the same
+ time have furnished its own answers.</p>
+
+ <p>For this the moment was not yet. An urgent social task lay before
+ France and before Europe; it could not be postponed until the thinkers
+ had worked out a scheme of philosophic completeness. The thinkers did
+ not seriously make any effort after this completeness. The
+ Encyclopædia was the most serious attempt, and it did not wholly fail.
+ As I replace in my shelves this mountain of volumes, "dusky and huge,
+ enlarging on the sight," I have a presentiment that their pages will
+ seldom again be disturbed by me or by others. They served a great
+ purpose a hundred years ago. They are now a monumental ruin, clothed
+ with all the profuse associations of history. It is no Ozymandias of
+ Egypt, king of kings, whose wrecked shape of stone and sterile
+ memories we contemplate. We think rather of the gray and crumbling
+ walls of an ancient stronghold reared by the endeavour of stout hands
+ and faithful, whence in its own day and generation a band once went
+ forth against barbarous hordes, to strike a blow for humanity and
+ truth.</p>
+ <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+ <h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.<br />
+ SOCIAL LIFE (1759-1770).</h2>
+
+ <p>Any one must be ignorant of the facts who supposes that the men of
+ the eighteenth century who did not believe in God, and were as little
+ continent as King David, were therefore no better than the reckless
+ vagabonds of Grub Street. Diderot, after he had once settled down to
+ his huge task, became a very orderly person. It is true that he had an
+ attachment to a lady who was not his wife. Marriage was in those days,
+ among the courtiers and the encyclopædic circle, too habitually
+ regarded as merely an official relation. Provided that there was no
+ official desertion, and no scandal, the world had nothing to say.
+ Diderot was no worse than his neighbours, though we may well be sorry
+ that a man of his generous sympathies and fine impulse was no better
+ than his neighbours. Mademoiselle Voland, after proper deduction made
+ for the manners of the time, was of a respectable and sentimental
+ type. Her family were of good position; she lived with her mother and
+ sisters, and Diderot was on good terms with them all. We have a
+ glimpse of the characteristics of the three ladies in a little
+ dialogue between Diderot and some one whom he met, and who happened to
+ have made their acquaintance. "He informed me that he had passed three
+ months in the country where you are.—<i>Three months</i>, said he,
+ <i>is more than one needs to go mad about Madame Le
+ Gendre</i>.<a name="FNanchor_192_192" id=
+ "FNanchor_192_192"></a><a href="#Footnote_192_192" class=
+ "fnanchor">[192]</a>—True, but then she is so reserved.—<i>I scarcely
+ know any woman with such an amount of self-respect</i>.—She is quite
+ right.—<i>Madame Voland is a woman of rare merit</i>.—Yes, and her
+ eldest daughter?—<i>She has the cleverness of a very devil</i>.—She is
+ very clever, no doubt; but what I especially like is her frankness. I
+ would lay a wager that she has never told a voluntary lie since she
+ came to years of discretion."<a name="FNanchor_193_193" id=
+ "FNanchor_193_193"></a><a href="#Footnote_193_193" class=
+ "fnanchor">[193]</a> The relations between Diderot and Sophie Voland
+ were therefore not at all on the common footing of a low amour with a
+ coarse or frivolous woman of the world. All the proprieties of
+ appearance were scrupulously observed. Their mutual passion, though
+ once not wholly without its gallantries, soon took on that worthy and
+ decorous quality into which the ardour of valiant youth is reluctantly
+ softened by middle age, when we gravely comfort it with names of
+ philosophical compliment.</p>
+
+ <p>One of the most interesting of all the documentary memorials of the
+ century is to be found in the letters which Diderot wrote to
+ Mademoiselle Voland. No doubt has ever been thrown on the authenticity
+ of these letters, and they bear ample evidence of genuineness, so far
+ as the substance of them is concerned, in their characteristic style.
+ They were first published in 1830, from manuscripts sold to the
+ bookseller the year before by a certain French man of letters,
+ Jeudy-Dugour by name. He became a naturalised Russian, changed his
+ name to Gouroff, and died in the position of councillor of state and
+ director of the university of St. Petersburg. How he came by any
+ papers of Diderot it is impossible to guess. It is assumed that when
+ Mademoiselle Voland died her family gave his letters and other papers
+ back to Diderot. These, along with other documents, are supposed to
+ have been given by Diderot to Grimm. Thence they went to the Library
+ of the Hermitage at St. Petersburg. Whether Jeudy-Dugour sold copies
+ or originals, and whether he made the copies, if copies they were,
+ from the Library, which was, however, rigorously closed during the
+ reign of Nicholas I., are literary secrets which it is impossible to
+ fathom. So far as Diderot is concerned, some of the spirit of
+ mystification that haunted literature in the eighteenth century still
+ hovers about it in the nineteenth. This we shall presently find in a
+ still more interesting monument of Diderot than even his letters to
+ Mademoiselle Voland.<a name="FNanchor_194_194" id=
+ "FNanchor_194_194"></a><a href="#Footnote_194_194" class=
+ "fnanchor">[194]</a></p>
+
+ <p>They are not a continuous series. It was only when either Diderot
+ was absent from Paris, or his correspondent was away at her mother's
+ house in the country, that letter-writing was necessary. Diderot
+ appears to have written to her openly and without disguise. The
+ letters of Mademoiselle Voland in reply were for obvious reasons not
+ sent to Diderot's house, but under cover to the office of Damilaville,
+ so well known to the reader of Voltaire's correspondence. Damilaville
+ was a commissioner in one of the revenue departments, and it is one
+ among many instances of the connivance between authority and its foes,
+ that most of the letters and packets of Voltaire, Diderot, and the
+ rest of the group, should have been taken in, sent out, guarded, and
+ franked by the head of a government office. The trouble that
+ Damilaville willingly took in order to serve his friends is another
+ example of what we have already remarked as the singular amiability
+ and affectionate solicitude of those times. "Think of Damilaville's
+ attention," says Diderot on one occasion: "to-day is Sunday, and he
+ was obliged to leave his office. He was sure that I should come this
+ evening, for I never fail when I hope for a letter from you. He left
+ the key with two candles on a table, and between the two candles your
+ little letter, and a pleasant note of his own." And by the light of
+ the candles Diderot at once wrote a long answer.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_195_195" id="FNanchor_195_195"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_195_195" class="fnanchor">[195]</a></p>
+
+ <p>We need not wonder if much is said in these letters of tardy
+ couriers, missing answers, intolerable absences, dreary partings,
+ delicious anticipations. All these are the old eternal talk of men and
+ women, ever since the world began; without them we should hardly know
+ that we are reading the words of man to woman. They are in our present
+ case only the setting of a curiously frank and open picture of a man's
+ life.</p>
+
+ <p>It is held by some that one of the best means of giving the sense
+ of a little fixity to lives that are but as the evanescent fabric of a
+ dream and the shadow of smoke, is to secure stability of topographical
+ centre by abiding in the same house. Diderot is one of the few who
+ complied with this condition. For thirty years he occupied the fourth
+ and fifth floors of a house which was still standing not long ago, at
+ the corner of the Rue Saint Benoit by the Rue Taranne, in that Paris
+ which our tourists leave unexplored, but which is nevertheless the
+ true Paris of the eighteenth century. Of the equipment of his room we
+ have a charming picture by the hand of its occupant. It occurs in his
+ playful Regrets on My Old Dressing-gown, so rich in happy and
+ delightful touches.</p>
+
+ <p>"What induced me to part with it? It was made for me; I was made
+ for it. It moulded itself to all the turns and outlines of my body
+ without fretting me. I was picturesque and beautiful; its successor,
+ so stiff, so heavy, makes a mere mannikin of me. There was no want to
+ which, its complaisance did not lend itself, for indigence is ever
+ obsequious. Was a book covered with dust, one of the lappets offered
+ itself to wipe the dust away. Did the thick ink refuse to flow from
+ the pen, it offered a fold. You saw traced in the long black lines
+ upon it how many a service it had rendered me. Those long lines
+ announced the man of letters, the writer, the workman. And now I have
+ all the mien of a rich idler; you know not who I may be. I was the
+ absolute master of my old robe; I am the slave of my new one. The
+ dragon that guarded the golden fleece was not more restless than I.
+ Care wraps me about.</p>
+
+ <p>"The old man who has delivered himself up bound hand and foot to
+ the caprices of a young giddypate, says from morning to night: Ah,
+ where is my old, my kind housekeeper? What demon possessed me the day
+ that I dismissed her for this creature? Then he sighs, he weeps. I do
+ not weep nor sigh; but at every moment I say: Cursed be the man who
+ invented the art of making common stuff precious by dyeing it scarlet!
+ Cursed be the costly robe that I stand in awe of! Where is my old, my
+ humble, my obliging piece of homespun?</p>
+
+ <p>"That is not all, my friend. Hearken to the ravages of luxury—of a
+ luxury that must needs be consistent with itself. My old gown was at
+ one with the things about me. A straw-bottomed chair, a wooden table,
+ a deal shelf that held a few books, and three or four engravings,
+ dimmed by smoke, without a frame, nailed at the four corners to the
+ wall. Among the engravings three or four casts in plaster were hung
+ up; they formed, with my old dressing-gown, the most harmonious
+ indigence. All has become discord. No more <i>ensemble</i>, no more
+ unity, no more beauty.</p>
+
+ <p>"The woman who comes into the house of a widower, the minister who
+ steps into the place of a statesman in disgrace, the molinist bishop
+ who gets hold of the diocese of a jansenist bishop—none of these
+ people cause more trouble than the intruding scarlet has caused to
+ me.</p>
+
+ <p>"I can bear without disgust the sight of a peasant-woman. The bit
+ of coarse canvas that covers her head, the hair falling about her
+ cheeks, the rags that only half cover her, the poor short skirt that
+ goes no more than half-way down her legs, the naked feet covered with
+ mud —all these things do not wound me; 'tis the image of a condition
+ that I respect, 'tis the sign and summary of a state that is
+ inevitable, that is woful, and that I pity with all my heart. But my
+ gorge rises, and in spite of the scented air that follows her, I turn
+ my eyes from the courtesan, whose fine lace head-gear and torn cuffs,
+ white stockings and worn-out shoes, show me the misery of the day in
+ company with the opulence of last night. Such would my house have
+ been, if the imperious scarlet had not forced all into harmony with
+ itself. I had two engravings that were not without merit, Poussin's
+ Manna in the Wilderness, and the same painter's Esther before
+ Ahasuerus; the one is driven out in shame by some old man of Rubens's,
+ the Fall of the Manna is scattered to the winds by a Storm of
+ Vernet's. The old straw chair is banished to the ante-room by a
+ luxurious thing of morocco. Homer, Virgil, Horace, Cicero, have been
+ taken from their shelf and shut up in a case of grand marqueterie
+ work, an asylum worthier of them than of me. The wooden table still
+ held its ground, protected by a vast pile of pamphlets and papers
+ heaped pell-mell upon it; they seemed as if they would long protect it
+ from its doom. Yet one day that too was mastered by fate, and in spite
+ of my idleness pamphlets and papers went to arrange themselves in the
+ shelves of a costly bureau....It was thus that the edifying retreat of
+ the philosopher became transformed into the scandalous cabinet of the
+ farmer-general. Thus I too am insulting the national misery.</p>
+
+ <p>"Of my early mediocrity there remained only a list carpet. The
+ shabby carpet hardly matches with my luxury. I feel it. But I have
+ sworn and I swear that I will keep this carpet, as the peasant, who
+ was raised from the hut to the palace of his sovereign, still kept his
+ wooden shoes. When in a morning, clad in the sumptuous scarlet, I
+ enter my room, if I lower my eyes I perceive my old list carpet; it
+ recalls to me my early state, and rising pride stands checked. No, my
+ friend, I am not corrupted. My door is open as ever to want; it finds
+ me affable as ever; I listen to its tale, I counsel, I pity, I succour
+ it." ...</p>
+
+ <p>Yet the interior of Socrates-Diderot was as little blessed by
+ domestic sympathy as the interior of the older and greater Socrates.
+ Of course Diderot was far enough from being faultless. His wife is
+ described by Rousseau as a shrew and a scold. It is too plain that she
+ was so; sullen to her husband, impatient with her children, and
+ exacting and unreasonable with her servants.<a name="FNanchor_196_196"
+ id="FNanchor_196_196"></a><a href="#Footnote_196_196" class=
+ "fnanchor">[196]</a> We cannot pretend accurately to divide the blame.
+ The companionship was very dreary, and the picture grievous and most
+ afflicting to our thoughts. Diderot returns in the evening from
+ Holbach's, throws his carpet-bag in at the door, flies off to seek a
+ letter from Mademoiselle Voland, writes one to her, gets back to his
+ house at midnight, finds his daughter ill, puts cheerful and cordial
+ questions to his wife, she replies with a tartness that drives him
+ back into silence.<a name="FNanchor_197_197" id=
+ "FNanchor_197_197"></a><a href="#Footnote_197_197" class=
+ "fnanchor">[197]</a> Another time the scene is violent. A torrent of
+ injustice and unreasonableness flows over him for two long hours, and
+ he wonders what the woman will profit, after she has made him burst a
+ blood-vessel; he groans in anguish, "Ah, how hard life seems to me to
+ bear! How many a time would I accept the end of it with joy!"<a name=
+ "FNanchor_198_198" id="FNanchor_198_198"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_198_198" class="fnanchor">[198]</a> So sharp are the goads
+ in a divided house; so sorely, with ache and smart and deep-welling
+ tears, do men and women rend into shreds the fine web of one another's
+ lives. But the pity of it, O the pity of it!</p>
+
+ <p>There are many brighter intervals which make one willing to suppose
+ that if the wife had been a little more patient, more tolerant, more
+ cheerful, less severely addicted to her sterile superstition, there
+ might have been somewhat more happiness in the house. One misery of
+ the present social ideal of women is that, while it keeps them so
+ systematically ignorant, superstitious, and narrow, it leaves them
+ without humility. "Be content," said the great John Wesley to his
+ froward wife, "be content to be a private insignificant person, known
+ and loved by God and me. Of what importance is your character to
+ mankind? If you was buried just now, or if you had never lived, what
+ loss would it be to the cause of God?" This energetic remonstrance can
+ hardly be said to exhaust the matter. Still it puts a wholesome side
+ of the case which Madame Diderot missed, and which better persons are
+ likely to miss, so long as the exclusion of women, by common opinion
+ or by law, from an active participation in the settlement of great
+ issues, makes them indifferent to all interests outside domestic
+ egoism, and egoistic and personal religion. Brighter intervals shone
+ in the household. "I announced my departure," writes Diderot, "for
+ next Tuesday. At the first word I saw the faces both of mother and
+ daughter fall. The child had a compliment for my fête-day all ready,
+ and it would not do to let her waste the trouble of having learnt it.
+ The mother had projected a grand dinner for Sunday. Well, we arranged
+ everything perfectly. I made my journey, and came back to be harangued
+ and feasted. The poor child made her little speech in the most
+ bewitching way. In the middle there came some hard words, so she
+ stopped and said to me, 'My papa, 'tis because my two front teeth have
+ come out'—as was true. Then she went on. At the end, as she had a posy
+ to give me, and it could not be found, she stopped a second time to
+ say to me—'Here's the worst of the tale; my pinks have got lost.' Then
+ she started off in search of her flowers. We dined in great style. My
+ wife had got all her friends together. I was very gay, eating,
+ drinking, and doing the honours of my table to perfection. On rising
+ from table I stayed among them and played cards instead of going out.
+ I saw them all off between eleven and twelve: I was charming, and if
+ you only knew with whom; what physiognomies, what folk, what
+ talk!"</p>
+
+ <p>Another time the child, whispering in his ear, asks why her mother
+ bade her not remind him that the morrow was the mother's fête-day. The
+ presence of the blithe all-hoping young, looking on with innocent
+ unconscious eyes at the veiled tragedy of love turned to bitter
+ discord, gives to such scenes their last touch of piteousness.
+ Diderot, however, observed the day, and presented a bouquet which was
+ neither well or ill received. At the birthday dinner the master of the
+ house presided. "If you had been behind the curtains, you would have
+ said to yourself, how can all this gossip and twaddle find a place in
+ the same head with certain ideas! And in truth I was charming, and
+ played the fool to a marvel."<a name="FNanchor_199_199" id=
+ "FNanchor_199_199"></a><a href="#Footnote_199_199" class=
+ "fnanchor">[199]</a></p>
+
+ <p>In the midst of distractions great and small, was an indomitable
+ industry. "I tell you," he wrote, "and I tell all men, when you are
+ ill at ease with yourself, instantly set about some good work. In
+ busying myself to soothe the trouble of another, I forget my own." He
+ was assiduous in teaching his daughter, though he complained that her
+ mother crushed out in a day what it had taken him a month to implant.
+ The booksellers found him the most cheerful and strenuous bondsman
+ that ever booksellers had. He would pass a whole month without a day's
+ break, working ten hours every day at the revision of proof-sheets.
+ Sometimes he remains a whole week without leaving his workroom. He
+ wears out his eyes over plates and diagrams, bristling with figures
+ and letters, and with no more refreshing thought in the midst of this
+ sore toil than that insult, persecution, torment, trickery, will be
+ the fruit of it. He not only spent whole days bent over his desk,
+ until he had a feeling as of burning flame within him; he also worked
+ through the hours of the night. On one of these occasions, worn out
+ with fatigue and weariness, he fell asleep with his head on his desk;
+ the light fell down among his papers, and he awoke to find half the
+ books and papers on the desk burnt to ashes. "I kept my own counsel
+ about it," he writes, "because a single hint of such an accident would
+ have robbed my wife of sleep for the rest of her life."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_200_200" id="FNanchor_200_200"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_200_200" class="fnanchor">[200]</a></p>
+
+ <p>His favourite form of holiday was a visit to Holbach's country
+ house at Grandval. Here he spent some six weeks or more nearly every
+ autumn after 1759. The manner of life there was delightful to him.
+ There was perfect freedom, the mistress of the house neither rendering
+ strict duties of ceremony nor exacting them. Diderot used to rise at
+ six or at eight, and remain in his own room until one, reading,
+ writing, meditating. Nobody was more exquisitely sensible than Diderot
+ to the charm of loitering over books, "over those authors," as he
+ said, "who ravish us from ourselves, in whose hands nature has placed
+ a fairy wand, with which they no sooner touch us, than straightway we
+ forget the evils of life, the darkness lifts from our souls, and we
+ are reconciled to existence."<a name="FNanchor_201_201" id=
+ "FNanchor_201_201"></a><a href="#Footnote_201_201" class=
+ "fnanchor">[201]</a> The musing suggestiveness of reading when we read
+ only for reading's sake, and not for reproduction nor direct use, was
+ as delightful to our laborious drudge as to others, but he could
+ indulge himself with little of this sweet idleness. It was in harder
+ labour that he passed most of his mornings. These hours of work
+ achieved, he dressed and went down among his friends. Then came the
+ mid-day dinner, which was sumptuous; host and guests both ate and
+ drank more than was good for their health. After a short siesta,
+ towards four o'clock they took their sticks and went forth to walk,
+ among woods, over ploughed fields, up hills, through quagmires,
+ delighting in nature. As they went, they talked of history, or
+ politics, or chemistry, of literature, or physics, or morality. At
+ sundown they returned, to find lights and cards on the tables, and
+ they made parties of piquet, interrupted by supper. At half-past ten
+ the game ends, they chat until eleven, and in half an hour more they
+ are all fast asleep.<a name="FNanchor_202_202" id=
+ "FNanchor_202_202"></a><a href="#Footnote_202_202" class=
+ "fnanchor">[202]</a> Each day was like the next; industry, gaiety,
+ bodily comfort, mental activity, diversifying the hours. Grimm was
+ often there, "the most French of all the Germans," and Galiani, the
+ most nimble-witted of men, inexhaustible in story, inimitable in
+ pantomimic narration, and yet with the keenest intellectual
+ penetration shining through all his Neapolitan prank and buffoonery.
+ Holbach cared most for the physical sciences. Marmontel brought a vein
+ of sentimentalism, and Helvétius a vein of cynical formalism. Diderot
+ played Socrates, Panurge, Pantophile; questioning, instructing,
+ combining; pouring out knowledge and suggestion, full of interest in
+ every subject, sympathetic with every vein, relishing alike the newest
+ philosophic hardihood, the last too merry mood of Holbach's
+ mother-in-law, the freshest piece of news brought by a traveller. It
+ was not at Grandval that he found life hard to bear, or would have
+ accepted its close with joy. And indeed if one could by miracle be
+ transported back into the sixth decade of that dead century for a
+ single day, perhaps one might choose that such a day should be passed
+ among the energetic and vivid men who walked of an afternoon among the
+ fields and woods of Grandval.</p>
+
+ <p>The unblushing grossness of speech which even the ladies of the
+ party permitted themselves cannot be reproduced in the decorous print
+ of our age. It is nothing less than inconceivable to us how Diderot
+ can have brought himself to write down, in letters addressed to a
+ woman of good education and decent manners, some of the talk that went
+ on at Grandval. The coarsest schoolboy of these days would wince at
+ such shameless freedoms. But it would be wrong to forget the allowance
+ that must be made for differences in point of fashion. Diderot, for
+ instance, in these very letters is wonderfully frank in his exposure
+ of the details of his health. He describes his indigestions, and other
+ more indescribable obstructions to happiness, as freely as Cicero
+ wrote about the dysentery which punished him, when, after he had
+ resisted oysters and lampreys at supper, he yielded to a dish of beet
+ and mallow so dressed with pot-herbs, <i>ut nil posset esse
+ suavius</i>. Whatever men could say to one another or to their
+ surgeons they saw no harm in saying to women. We have to remember how
+ Sir Walter Scott's great-aunt, about the very time when Diderot was
+ writing to Mademoiselle Voland, had heard Mrs. Aphra Behn's books read
+ aloud for the amusement of large circles, consisting of the first and
+ most creditable society in London. We think of Swift, in an earlier
+ period of the century, enclosing to Stella some recklessly gross
+ verses of his own upon Bolingbroke, and habitually writing to fine
+ ladies in a way that Falstaff might have thought too bad for Doll
+ Tearsheet. In saying that these coarse impurities are only points of
+ manners, we are as far as possible from meaning that they are on that
+ account unimportant. But it is childish to waste our time in
+ censorious judgment on the individual who does no worse than represent
+ a ruling type. We can only note the difference and pass on.</p>
+
+ <p>A characteristic trait in this rural life is Diderot's passion for
+ high winds. They gave him a transport, and to hear the storm at night,
+ tossing the trees, drenching the ground with rain, and filling the air
+ with the bass of its hoarse ground-tones, was one of his keenest
+ delights.<a name="FNanchor_203_203" id="FNanchor_203_203"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_203_203" class="fnanchor">[203]</a> Yet Diderot was not of
+ those in whom the feeling for the great effects of nature has
+ something of savagery. He was above all things human, and the human
+ lot was the central source of his innermost meditations. In the midst
+ of gossip is constantly interpolated some passage of fine reflection
+ on life—reflection as sincere, as real, coming as spontaneously from
+ the writer's inmost mood and genuine sentiment, as little tainted
+ either by affectation or by commonness, as ever passed through the
+ mind of a man. Some of these are too characteristic to be omitted, and
+ there is so little of what is exquisite in the flavour of Diderot's
+ style, that he perhaps suffers less from the clumsiness of translation
+ than writers of finer colour or more stirring melody. One of these
+ passages is as follows:—</p>
+
+ <p>"The last news from Paris has made the Baron anxious, as he has
+ considerable sums in royal securities. He said to his wife: 'Listen,
+ my friend; if this is going on, I put down the carriage, I buy you a
+ good cloak and a good parasol, and for the rest of our days we will
+ bless the minister for ridding us of horses, lackeys, coachmen,
+ ladies'-maids, cooks, great dinner-parties, false friends, tiresome
+ bores, and all the other privileges of opulence.' And for my part I
+ began to think, that for a man without a wife or child, or any of
+ those connections that make us long for money, and never leave any
+ superfluity, it would be almost indifferent whether he were poor or
+ rich. This paradox comes of the equality that I discover among various
+ conditions of life, and in the little difference that I allow, in
+ point of happiness, between the master of the house and the
+ hall-porter. If I am sound in mind and body, if I have worth and a
+ pure conscience, if I know the true from the false, if I avoid evil
+ and do good, if I feel the dignity of my being, if nothing lowers me
+ in my own eyes, then people may call me what they will, <i>My
+ Lord,</i> or <i>Sirrah</i>. To do what is good, to know what is
+ true—that is what distinguishes one man from another; the rest is
+ nothing. The duration of life is so short, its true needs are so
+ narrow, and when we go away, it all matters so little whether we have
+ been somebody or nobody. When the end comes, all that you want is a
+ sorry piece of canvas and four deal boards. In the morning I hear the
+ labourers under my window. Scarce has the day dawned before they are
+ at work with spade and barrow, delving and wheeling. They munch a
+ crust of black bread; they quench their thirst at the flowing stream;
+ at noon they snatch an hour of sleep on the hard ground. They are
+ cheerful; they sing as they work; they exchange their good broad
+ pleasantries with one another; they shout with laughter. At sundown
+ they go home to find their children naked round a smoke-blackened
+ hearth, a woman hideous and dirty, and their lot is neither worse nor
+ better than mine. I came down from my room in bad spirits; I heard
+ talk about the public misery; I sat down to a table full of good cheer
+ without an appetite; I had a stomach overloaded with the dainties of
+ the day before; I grasped a stick and set out for a walk to find
+ relief; I returned to play cards, and cheat the heavy-weighing hours.
+ I had a friend of whom I could not hear; I was far from a woman whom I
+ sighed for. Troubles in the country, troubles in the town, troubles
+ everywhere. He who knows not trouble is not to be counted among the
+ children of men. All gets paid off in time; the good by the evil, evil
+ by good, and life is naught. Perhaps to-morrow night or Monday morning
+ we may go to pass a day in town; so I shall see the woman for whom I
+ sighed, and recover the man of whom I could not hear. But I shall lose
+ them the next day; and the more I feel the happiness of being with
+ them, the worse I shall suffer at parting. That is the way that all
+ things go. Turn and turn and turn again; there is ever a crumpled
+ rose-leaf to vex you."<a name="FNanchor_204_204" id=
+ "FNanchor_204_204"></a><a href="#Footnote_204_204" class=
+ "fnanchor">[204]</a></p>
+
+ <p>It is not often that we find such active benevolence as Diderot's,
+ in conjunction with such a vein of philosophy as follows:—</p>
+
+ <p>"Ah, what a fine comedy this world would be, if only one had not to
+ play a part in it; if one existed, for instance, in some point of
+ space, in that interval of the celestial orbs where the gods of
+ Epicurus slumber, far, far away, whence one could see this globe, on
+ which we strut so big, about the size of a pumpkin, and whence one
+ could watch all the airs and tricks of that two-footed mite who calls
+ itself man. I would fain only look at the scenes of life in reduced
+ size, so that those which are stamped with atrocity may be brought
+ down to an inch in space, and to actors half a line high. But how
+ bizarre, that our sense of revolt against injustice is in the ratio of
+ the space and the mass. I am furious if a large animal unjustly
+ attacks another. I feel nothing at all if it is two atoms that tear
+ and rend. How our senses affect our morality. There is a fine text for
+ philosophising!"<a name="FNanchor_205_205" id=
+ "FNanchor_205_205"></a><a href="#Footnote_205_205" class=
+ "fnanchor">[205]</a></p>
+
+ <p>"What I see every day of physic and physicians does not much
+ heighten my opinion of them. To come into the world in imbecility, in
+ the midst of anguish and cries; to be the toy of ignorance, of error,
+ of necessity, of sickness, of malice, of all passions; to return step
+ by step to that imbecility whence one sprang; from the moment when we
+ lisp our first words, down to the moment when we mumble the words of
+ our dotage, to live among rascals and charlatans of every kind; to lie
+ expiring between a man who feels your pulse, and another man who frets
+ and wearies your head; not to know whence one comes, nor why one has
+ come, nor whither one is going—that is what we call the greatest gift
+ of our parents and of nature—human life."<a name="FNanchor_206_206"
+ id="FNanchor_206_206"></a><a href="#Footnote_206_206" class=
+ "fnanchor">[206]</a></p>
+
+ <p>These sombre meditations hardly represent Diderot's habitual vein;
+ they are rather a reaction and a relief from the busy intensity with
+ which he watches the scene, and is constantly putting interrogatories
+ to human life, as day by day its motley circumstance passes before his
+ eyes. We should scarcely suspect from his frequent repetitions of the
+ mournful eternal chorus of the nullity of man and the vanity of all
+ the things that are under the sun, how alert a watch he kept on
+ incident and character, with what keen and open ear he listened for
+ any curious note of pain, or voice of fine emotion, or odd perversity
+ of fate. All this he does, not in the hard temper of a Balzac, not
+ with the calm or pride of a Goethe, but with an overflowing fulness of
+ spontaneous and uncontrollable sympathy. He is a sentimentalist in the
+ rationalistic century, not with the sentimentalism of misanthropy,
+ such as fired or soured Rousseau, but social, large-hearted,
+ many-sided, careless of the wise rigours of morality. He is never
+ callous nor neutral; on the contrary, he is always approving or
+ disapproving, but not from the standards of the ethical text-books.
+ The casuistry of feeling is of everlasting interest to him, and he is
+ never tired of inventing imaginary cases, or pondering real ones, in
+ which pliant feeling is invoked against the narrowness of duty. These
+ are mostly in a kind of matter which modern taste hardly allows us to
+ reproduce; nor, after all, is there much to be gained by turning the
+ sanctities of human relationship, with all their immeasurable bliss,
+ their immeasurable woe, into the playthings of an idle dialectic. It
+ is pleasanter, and for us English not less instructive than pleasant,
+ to see this dreaming, restless, thrice ingenious spirit, half Titan of
+ the skies, half gnome of the lower earth, entering joyously or
+ pitifully into the simple charm and natural tenderness of life as it
+ comes and passes. Nothing delights him more than to hear or to tell
+ such a story as this of Madame D'Epinay. She had given a small lad
+ eighteen sous for a day's work. At night he went home without a
+ farthing. When his mother asked him whether they had given him nothing
+ for his work, he said No. The mother found out that this was untrue,
+ and insisted on knowing what had become of the eighteen sous. The poor
+ little creature had given them to an alehouse-keeper, where his father
+ had been drinking all day; and so he had spared the worthy man a rough
+ scene with his wife when he got home.<a name="FNanchor_207_207" id=
+ "FNanchor_207_207"></a><a href="#Footnote_207_207" class=
+ "fnanchor">[207]</a></p>
+
+ <p>From the pathos of kindly youth to the grace of lovable age the
+ step is not far. "To-day I have dined with a charming woman, who is
+ only eighty years old. She is full of health and cheerfulness; her
+ soul is still all gentleness and tenderness. She talks of love and
+ friendship with the fire and sensibility of a girl of twenty. There
+ were three men of us at table with her; she said to us, 'My friends, a
+ delicate conversation, a true and passionate look, a tear, a touched
+ expression, those are the good things of the world; as for all
+ besides, it is hardly worth talking of. There are certain things that
+ were said to me when I was young, and that I remember to this day, and
+ any one of those words is to be preferred before ten glorious deeds:
+ by my faith, I believe if I heard them even now, my old heart would
+ beat the quicker.' 'Madame, the reason is that your heart has grown no
+ older.' 'No, my son, you are right; it is as young as ever. It is not
+ for having kept me alive so long that I thank God, but for having kept
+ me kind-hearted, gentle, and full of feeling.'"<a name=
+ "FNanchor_208_208" id="FNanchor_208_208"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_208_208" class="fnanchor">[208]</a> All this was after</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot's own heart, and he declares such a conversation to be
+ worth more than all the hours of talk on politics and philosophy that
+ he had been having a few days before with some English friends. We may
+ understand how, as we shall presently see, a member of a society that
+ could relish the beauty of such a scene, would be likely to think
+ Englishmen hard, surly, and cheerless.</p>
+
+ <p>His letters constantly offer us sensible and imaginative
+ reflection. He amused himself in some country village by talking to an
+ old man of eighty. "I love children and old men; the latter seem to me
+ like some singular creatures that have been spared by caprice of
+ fate." He meets some old schoolfellows at Langres, nearly all the rest
+ having gone: "Well, there are two things that warn us of our end, and
+ set us musing—old ruins, and the short duration of those who began
+ life with us." He is taken by a host over-devoted to such joys, to
+ walk among dung-heaps. "After all," he says, "it ought not to offend
+ one's sense. To an honest nose that has preserved its natural
+ innocence, 'tis not a goat, but a bemusked and ambre-scented woman,
+ who smelleth ill."</p>
+
+ <p>"When I compare our friendships to our antipathies, I find that the
+ first are thin, small, pinched; we know how to hate, but we do not
+ know how to love."</p>
+
+ <p>"A poet who becomes idle, does excellently well to be idle; he
+ ought to be sure that it is not industry that fails, but that his gift
+ is departing from him."</p>
+
+ <p>"Comfort the miserable; that is the true way to console yourself
+ for my absence. I recollect saying to the Baron, when he lost his
+ first wife, and was sure that there was not another day's happiness
+ left for him in this world, 'Hasten out of doors, seek out the
+ wretched, console them, and then you will pity yourself, if you
+ dare.'"<a name="FNanchor_209_209" id="FNanchor_209_209"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_209_209" class="fnanchor">[209]</a></p>
+
+ <p>"An infinitude of tyrannical things interpose between us and the
+ duties of love and friendship; and we do nothing aright. A man is
+ neither free for his ambition, nor free for his taste, nor free for
+ his passion. And so we all live discontented with ourselves. One of
+ the great inconveniences of the state of society is the multitude of
+ our occupations and, above all, the levity with which we make
+ engagements to dispose of all our future happiness. We marry, we go
+ into business, we have children, all before we have common
+ sense."<a name="FNanchor_210_210" id="FNanchor_210_210"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_210_210" class="fnanchor">[210]</a></p>
+
+ <p>After some equivocal speculations as to the conduct of a woman who,
+ by the surrender of herself for a quarter of an hour to the desires of
+ a powerful minister, wins an appointment for her husband and bread for
+ her six children, he exclaims: "In truth, I think Nature heeds neither
+ good nor evil; she is wholly wrapped up in two objects, the
+ preservation of the individual and the propagation of the
+ species."<a name="FNanchor_211_211" id="FNanchor_211_211"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_211_211" class="fnanchor">[211]</a> True; but the moral
+ distinction between right and wrong is so much wrung from the forces
+ that Diderot here calls Nature.</p>
+
+ <p>The intellectual excitement in which he lived and the energy with
+ which he promoted it, sought relief either in calm or else in the play
+ of sensibility. "A delicious repose," he writes in one of his most
+ harassed moments, "a sweet book to read, a walk in some open and
+ solitary spot, a conversation in which one discloses all one's heart,
+ a strong emotion that brings the tears to one's eyes and makes the
+ heart beat faster, whether it comes of some tale of generous action,
+ or of a sentiment of tenderness, of health, of gaiety, of liberty, of
+ indolence—there is the true happiness, nor shall I ever know any
+ other."</p>
+
+ <p><i>A Point in Rhetoric.</i>—"Towards six in the evening the party
+ broke up. I remained alone with D., and as we were talking about the
+ Eloges on Descartes that had been sent in to the Academy, I made two
+ remarks that pleased him upon eloquence. One, that it is a mistake to
+ try to stir the passions before convincing the reason, and that the
+ pathetic remains without effect, when it is not prepared by the
+ syllogism. Second, that after the orator had touched me keenly, I
+ could not endure that he should break in upon this melting of the soul
+ with some violent stroke: that the pathetic insists on being followed
+ by something moderate, weak, vague, that should leave room for no
+ contention on my part."<a name="FNanchor_212_212" id=
+ "FNanchor_212_212"></a><a href="#Footnote_212_212" class=
+ "fnanchor">[212]</a></p>
+
+ <p><i>Holbach's Impressions of England.</i>—"The Baron has returned
+ from England. He started with the pleasantest anticipations, he had a
+ most agreeable reception, he had excellent health, and yet he has
+ returned out of humour and discontented; discontented with the
+ country, which he found neither as populous nor as well cultivated as
+ people say; discontented with the buildings, that are nearly all
+ bizarre and Gothic; with the gardens, where the affectation of
+ imitating nature is worse than the monotonous symmetry of art; with
+ the taste that heaps up in the palaces what is first-rate, what is
+ good, what is bad, what is detestable, all pell-mell. He is disgusted
+ at the amusements, which have the air of religious ceremonies; with
+ the men, on whose countenances you never see confidence, friendship,
+ gaiety, sociability, but on every face the inscription, <i>'What is
+ there in common between me and you?'</i>; disgusted with the great
+ people, who are gloomy, cold, proud, haughty, and vain; and with the
+ small people, who are hard, insolent, and barbarous. The only thing
+ that I have heard him praise is the facility of travel: he says there
+ is not a village, even on a cross-road, where you do not find four or
+ five post-chaises and a score of horses ready to start.... There is no
+ public education. The colleges—sumptuous buildings—palaces to be
+ compared to the Tuileries, are occupied by rich idlers, who sleep and
+ get drunk one part of the day, and the rest they spend in training,
+ clumsily enough, a parcel of uncouth lads to be clergymen.... In the
+ fine places that have been built for public amusements, you could hear
+ a mouse run. A hundred stiff and silent women walk round and round an
+ orchestra that is set up in the middle. The Baron compares these
+ circuits to the seven processions of the Egyptians round the tomb of
+ Osiris. A charming <i>mot</i> of my good friend Garrick, is that
+ London is good for the English, but Paris is good for all the
+ world.... There is a great mania for conversions and missionaries. Mr.
+ Hume told me a story which will let you know what to think of these
+ pretended conversions of cannibals and Hurons. A minister thought he
+ had done a great stroke in this line; he had the vanity to wish to
+ show his proselyte, and brought him to London. They question his
+ little Huron, and he answers to perfection. They take him to church,
+ and administer the sacrament, where, as you know, the communion is in
+ both kinds. Afterwards, the minister says to him, 'Well, my son, do
+ you not feel yourself more animated with the love of God? Does not the
+ grace of the sacrament work within you? Is not all your soul warmed?'
+ 'Yes,' says the Huron: 'the wine does one good, but I think it would
+ have done still better if it had been brandy.'"<a name=
+ "FNanchor_213_213" id="FNanchor_213_213"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_213_213" class="fnanchor">[213]</a></p>
+
+ <p><i>Two Cases of Conscience</i>.—"The curé said that unhappy lovers
+ always talked about dying, but that it was very rare to find one who
+ kept his word; still he had seen one case. It was that of a young man
+ of family, called Soulpse. He fell in love with a young lady of beauty
+ and of good character, but without money, and belonging to a
+ dishonoured family. Her father was in the galleys for forgery. The
+ young man, who foresaw all the opposition, and all the good grounds
+ for opposition, that he would have to encounter among his family, did
+ all that he could to cure himself of his passion; but when he was
+ assured of the uselessness of his efforts, he plucked up courage to
+ open the matter to his parents, who wearied themselves with
+ remonstrances. Our lover suddenly stopped them short, saying, 'I know
+ all that you have to say against me; I cannot disapprove of your
+ reasons, which I should be the first to urge against my own son, if I
+ had one. But consider whether you would rather have me dead or badly
+ married; for it is certain that if I do not marry the woman that I
+ love, I shall die of it.' They treated this speech as it deserved; the
+ result does not affect that. The young man fell sick, faded from day
+ to day, and died. 'But, Curé,' said I, 'in the place of the father,
+ what would you have done?' 'I would have called my son; I would have
+ said: Soulpse has been your name hitherto; never forget that it is
+ yours no more; and call yourself by what other name you please. Here
+ is your lawful share of our property; marry the woman you love, so far
+ from here that I may never hear speak of you again, and God bless you.
+ 'For my part,' said old Madame D'Esclavelles, 'if I had been the
+ mother of the young madman, I would have done exactly as his father
+ did, and let him die.' And upon this there was a tremendous division
+ of opinion, and an uproar that made the room ring again.</p>
+
+ <p>"The dispute lasted a long time, and would be going on now if the
+ cure had not broken it off by putting to us another case. A young
+ priest, discontented with his profession, flees to England,
+ apostatises, marries according to the law, and has children. After a
+ certain time he longs for his native country; he comes back to France
+ with his children and his wife. After that, again, he is stricken by
+ remorse; he returns to his religion, has scruples about his marriage,
+ and thinks of separating from his wife. He opens his heart to our
+ curé, who finds the case very embarrassing, and not venturing to
+ decide it, refers him to casuists and lawyers. They all decide that he
+ cannot, with a sure conscience, remain with his wife. When the
+ separation, which the wife opposed with all her might, was about to be
+ legally effected—rather against the wishes of our curé—the husband
+ fell dangerously ill. When he knew that he could not recover, he said
+ to the curé: 'My friend, I wish to make public amends for my
+ backsliding, to receive the sacraments, and to die in the hospital; be
+ kind enough to have me taken there.' 'I will take care to do no such
+ thing,' the curé replied to him. 'This woman is innocent; she married
+ you according to law; she knew nothing of the obstacles that existed.
+ And these children, what share have they in your sin? You are the only
+ wrongdoer, and it is they who are to be punished! Your wife will be
+ disgraced, your children will be declared illegitimate, and what is
+ the gain of it all?' And the good curé stuck to his text. He confessed
+ his man, the illness grew worse, he administered the last sacraments.
+ The man died, and his wife and children remained in possession of the
+ titles they had. We all approved the curé's wisdom, and Grimm insisted
+ on having his portrait taken."<a name="FNanchor_214_214" id=
+ "FNanchor_214_214"></a><a href="#Footnote_214_214" class=
+ "fnanchor">[214]</a></p>
+
+ <p><i>Chinese Superiority</i>.—-"Apropos of the Chinese, do you know
+ that with them nobility ascends, and descends never? It is the
+ children who ennoble their ancestors, and not the ancestors the
+ children. And upon my word that is most sensible. We are greater
+ poets, greater philosophers, greater orators, greater architects,
+ greater astronomers, greater geometers, than these good people; but
+ they understand better than we the science of good sense and virtue;
+ and if peradventure that science should happen to be the first of all
+ sciences, they would be right in saying that they have two eyes and we
+ have only one, and all the rest of the world is blind."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_215_215" id="FNanchor_215_215"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_215_215" class="fnanchor">[215]</a></p>
+
+ <p><i>Why Women write good Letters</i>.—"She writes admirably, really
+ admirably. That is because good style is in the heart; and that is why
+ so many women talk and write like angels without ever having learnt
+ either to talk or to write, and why so many pedants will both talk and
+ write ill all the days of their life, though they were never weary of
+ studying,—only without learning."<a name="FNanchor_216_216" id=
+ "FNanchor_216_216"></a><a href="#Footnote_216_216" class=
+ "fnanchor">[216]</a></p>
+
+ <p>"A little adventure has just happened here that proves that all our
+ fine sermons on intolerance have as yet produced but poor fruit. A
+ young man of respectable birth, some say apprentice to an apothecary,
+ others to a grocer, took it into his head to go through a course of
+ chemistry; his master consented, on condition that he should pay for
+ board; the lad agreed. At the end of the quarter the master demanded
+ the money, and it was paid. Soon after, another demand from the
+ master; the apprentice replied that he barely owed a single quarter.
+ The master denied that the first quarter had been paid. The affair was
+ taken into court. The master is put on his oath, and swears. He had no
+ sooner perjured himself than the apprentice produced his receipt, and
+ the master was straightway fined and disgraced. He was a scoundrel who
+ deserved it, but the apprentice was a rash fellow, whose victory was
+ bought at a price dearer than life. He had received, in payment or
+ otherwise, from some colporteur, two copies of <i>Christianity
+ Unveiled</i>, and one of them he had sold to his master. The master
+ informs against him. The colporteur, his wife, and his apprentice, are
+ all three arrested, and they have just been pilloried, whipped, and
+ branded, and the apprentice condemned to nine years of the galleys,
+ the colporteur to five years, and the woman to the hospital for
+ life.... Do you see the meaning of this judgment? A colporteur brings
+ me a prohibited book. If I buy more than one copy, I am declared to be
+ encouraging unlawful trading, and exposed to a frightful prosecution.
+ You have read the <i>Man with Forty Crowns</i>,<a name=
+ "FNanchor_217_217" id="FNanchor_217_217"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_217_217" class="fnanchor">[217]</a> and will hardly be able
+ to guess why it is placed under the ban in the judgment I am telling
+ you of. It is in consequence of the profound resentment that our lords
+ and masters feel about a certain article, <i>Tyrant</i>, in the
+ <i>Philosophical Dictionary</i>. They will never forgive Voltaire for
+ saying that it was better to have to do with a single wild beast,
+ which one could avoid, than with a band of little subaltern tigers who
+ are incessantly getting between your legs.... To return to those two
+ unfortunate wretches whom they have condemned to the galleys. When
+ they come out, what will become of them? There will be nothing left
+ for them to do, save to turn highway robbers. The ignominious
+ penalties, which take away all resource from a man, are worse than the
+ capital punishment that takes away his life."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_218_218" id="FNanchor_218_218"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_218_218" class="fnanchor">[218]</a></p>
+
+ <p><i>Method and Genius: an Apologue.</i>—"There was a question
+ between Grimm and M. Le Roy of creative genius and co-ordinating
+ method. Grimm detests method; according to him, it is the pedantry of
+ letters. Those who can only arrange, would do as well to remain idle;
+ those who can only get instruction from what has been arranged, would
+ do as well to remain ignorant. What necessity is there for so many
+ people knowing anything else besides their trade? They said a great
+ many things that I don't report to you, and they would be saying
+ things still, if the Abbé Galiani had not interrupted them:</p>
+
+ <p>'My friends, I remember a fable: pray listen to it. One day, in the
+ depths of a forest, a dispute arose between a Nightingale and a
+ Cuckoo. Each prizes its own gift. What bird, said the Cuckoo, has a
+ song so easy, so simple, so natural, so measured, as mine?</p>
+
+ <p>What bird, said the Nightingale, has a song sweeter, more varied,
+ more brilliant, more touching, than mine?</p>
+
+ <p><i>The Cuckoo:</i> I say few things, but they are things of weight,
+ of order, and people retain them.</p>
+
+ <p><i>The Nightingale:</i> I love to use my voice, but I am always
+ fresh, and I never weary. I enchant the woods; the Cuckoo makes them
+ dismal. He is so attached to the lessons of his mother, that he would
+ not dare to venture a single note that he had not taken from her. Now
+ for me, I recognise no master. I laugh at rules. What comparison
+ between his pedantic method and my glorious bursts?</p>
+
+ <p>The Cuckoo tried several times to interrupt the Nightingale. But
+ nightingales always go on singing, and never listen; that is rather
+ their weakness. Ours, carried away by his ideas, followed them with
+ rapidity, without paying the least attention to the answers of his
+ rival.</p>
+
+ <p>So after some talk and counter-talk, they agreed to refer their
+ quarrel to the judgment of a third animal. But where were they to find
+ this third, equally competent and impartial? It is not so easy to find
+ a good judge. They sought on every side. As they crossed a meadow,
+ they spied an Ass, one of the gravest and most solemn that ever was
+ seen. Since the creation of the world, no ass had ever had such long
+ ears. 'Ah,' said the Cuckoo, 'our luck is excellent; our quarrel is a
+ matter of ears: here is our judge. God Almighty made him for the very
+ purpose!'</p>
+
+ <p>The Ass went on browsing. He little thought that one day he would
+ have to decide a question of music. But Providence amuses itself with
+ this and many another thing. Our two birds bow very low, compliment
+ him upon his gravity and his judgment, explain the subject of their
+ dispute, and beseech him, with all deference, to listen to their case
+ and decide.</p>
+
+ <p>But the Ass, hardly turning his heavy head and without losing a
+ single toothsome blade, makes them a sign with his ears that he is
+ hungry, and that he does not hold his court to-day. The birds persist;
+ the Ass goes on browsing. At last his hunger was appeased. There were
+ some trees planted by the edge of the meadow. 'Now, if you like,' said
+ he, 'you go there, I will follow; you shall sing, I will digest; I
+ will listen, and I'll give you my opinion.'</p>
+
+ <p>The birds instantly fly away, and perch on branches. The Ass
+ follows them with the air and the step of a chief justice crossing
+ Westminster Hall: he stretches himself flat on the ground, and says,
+ 'Begin, the court listens.'</p>
+
+ <p>Says the Cuckoo: 'My lord, there is not a word to lose. I beg of
+ you to seize carefully the character of my singing; above all things,
+ deign, my lord, to mark its artifice and its method.' Then filling its
+ throat, and flapping its wings at each note, it sang out, 'Coucou,
+ coucou, coucou, coucou, coucou, coucou.' And after having combined
+ this in every possible way, it fell silent.</p>
+
+ <p>The Nightingale, without any prelude, pours forth his voice at
+ once, launches into the most daring modulations, pursues the freshest
+ and most delicate melodies, cadences, pauses, and trills; now you
+ heard the notes murmuring at the bottom of its throat, like the ripple
+ of the brook as it loses itself among the pebbles; now you heard them
+ rising and gradually swelling and filling the air, and lingering
+ long-drawn in the skies. It was tender, glad, brilliant, pathetic; but
+ his music was not made for everybody.</p>
+
+ <p>Carried away by enthusiasm, he would be singing still; but the Ass,
+ who had already yawned more than once, stopped him, and said, 'I
+ suspect that all you have been singing there is uncommonly fine, but I
+ don't understand a word of it: it strikes me as bizarre, incoherent,
+ and confused. It may be you are more scientific than your rival; but
+ he is more methodic than you, and for my part, I'm for method.'</p>
+
+ <p>"And then the abbé, addressing M. Le Roy, and pointing to Grimm
+ with his finger: 'There,' he said, 'is the nightingale, and you the
+ cuckoo; and I am the ass, who decide in your favour. Good-night.'</p>
+
+ <p>"The abbés stories are capital, but he acts in a way that makes
+ them better still. You would have died with laughing to see him
+ stretch his neck into the air, and imitate the fine note of the
+ nightingale, then fill his throat, and take up the hoarse tone for the
+ cuckoo; and all that naturally, and without effort. He is pantomime
+ from head to foot."<a name="FNanchor_219_219" id=
+ "FNanchor_219_219"></a><a href="#Footnote_219_219" class=
+ "fnanchor">[219]</a></p>
+
+ <p><i>Conversation.</i>—"'Tis a singular thing, conversation,
+ especially when the company is tolerably large. Look at the roundabout
+ circuits we took; the dreams of a patient in delirium are not more
+ incongruous. Still, just as there is nothing absolutely unconnected in
+ the head either of a man who dreams, or of a lunatic, so all hangs
+ together in conversation; but it would often be extremely hard to find
+ the imperceptible links that have brought so many disparate ideas
+ together. A man lets fall a word which he detaches from what has gone
+ before, and what has followed in his head; another does the same, and
+ then let him catch the thread who can. A single physical quality may
+ lead the mind that is engaged upon it to an infinity of different
+ things. Take a colour—yellow, for instance; gold is yellow, silk is
+ yellow, care is yellow, bile is yellow, straw is yellow; to how many
+ other threads does not this thread answer? Madness, dreaming, the
+ rambling of conversation, all consist in passing from one object to
+ another, through the medium of some common quality."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_220_220" id="FNanchor_220_220"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_220_220" class="fnanchor">[220]</a></p>
+
+ <p><i>Annihilation.</i>—"The conversation took a serious turn. They
+ spoke of the horror that we all feel for annihilation.</p>
+
+ <p>"'Ah,' cried Father Hoop, 'be good enough to leave me out, if you
+ please. I have been too uncomfortable the first time to have any wish
+ to come back. If they would give me an immortality of bliss for a
+ single day of purgatory, I would not take it. The best that can befall
+ us is to cease to be.'</p>
+
+ <p>"This set me musing, and it seemed to me that so long as I was in
+ good health I should agree with Father Hoop; but that, at the last
+ instant, I should perhaps purchase the happiness of living again by a
+ thousand, nay, ten thousand, years of hell. Ah, my dear, if I thought
+ that I should see you again, I should soon persuade myself of what a
+ daughter once succeeded in persuading her father on his deathbed. He
+ was an old usurer; a priest had sworn to him that he would be damned
+ unless he made restitution. He resolved to comply, and calling his
+ daughter to his bedside, said to her: 'My child, you thought I should
+ leave you very rich, and so I should; but the man there insists that I
+ shall burn in hell-fire for ever, if I die without making
+ restitution.' 'You are talking nonsense, father, with your restitution
+ and your damnation,' the daughter answered; 'with your character I you
+ will not have been damned ten years, before you will be perfectly used
+ to it.'</p>
+
+ <p>"This struck him as true, and he died without making
+ restitution.</p>
+
+ <p>"And so behold us launched into a discussion on life and death, on
+ the world and its alleged Creator.</p>
+
+ <p>"Some one remarked that whether there be a God or no, it is
+ impossible to introduce that device either into nature or into a
+ discussion without darkening it.</p>
+
+ <p>"Another said that if a single supposition explained all the
+ phenomena, it would not follow from this that it is true; for who
+ knows whether the general order only allows of one reason? What, then,
+ must we think of a supposition which, so far from resolving the one
+ difficulty for the sake of which people imagined it, only makes an
+ infinity of others spring up from it?</p>
+
+ <p>"I believe, my dear, that our chat by the fireside still amuses
+ you; so I go on.</p>
+
+ <p>"Among these difficulties is one that has been proposed ever since
+ the world has been a world; 'tis that men suffer without having
+ deserved suffering. There has been no answer to it yet. 'Tis the
+ incompatibility of physical and moral evil with the nature of the
+ Eternal Being. This is how the dilemma is put: it is either impotence
+ or bad will; impotence, if he wished to hinder evil and could not; bad
+ will, if he could have hindered it and did not will it. A child would
+ understand that. It is this that has led people to imagine the fault
+ of the first father of us all, original sin, future rewards and
+ punishments, the incarnation, immortality, the two principles of the
+ Manicheans, the Ormuzd and Ahriman of the Persians, the doctrine of
+ emanations, the empire of light and darkness, metempsychosis,
+ optimism, and other absurdities that have found credit among the
+ different nations of the earth, where there is always to be found some
+ hollow vision of a dream, by way of answer to a clear, precise, and
+ definite fact.</p>
+
+ <p>"On such occasions what is the part of good sense? Why, the part
+ that we took: whatever the optimists may say, we will reply to them
+ that if the universe could not exist without sensible creatures, nor
+ sensible creatures without pain, there was nothing to do but to leave
+ chaos at peace. They had got on very well for a whole eternity without
+ any such piece of folly.</p>
+
+ <p>"The world a piece of folly! Ah, my dear, a glorious folly for all
+ that! 'Tis, according to some of the inhabitants of Malabar, one of
+ the seventy-four comedies with which the Eternal amuses himself.</p>
+
+ <p>"Leibnitz, the founder of optimism, tells somewhere how there was
+ in the Temple of Memphis a high pyramid of globes placed one above the
+ others; how a priest, being asked by a traveller about this pyramid
+ and its globes, made answer that these were all the possible worlds,
+ and that the most perfect of them all was at the summit; how the
+ traveller, curious to see this most perfect of all possible worlds,
+ mounted to the top of the pyramid, and the first thing that caught his
+ eyes, as they turned towards the globe at the summit, was Tarquin
+ outraging Lucretia."<a name="FNanchor_221_221" id=
+ "FNanchor_221_221"></a><a href="#Footnote_221_221" class=
+ "fnanchor">[221]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Almost every letter reminds us that we are in the very height of
+ the disputing, arguing, rationalistic century. Diderot delighted in
+ this kind of argument, as Socrates or Dr. Johnson delighted in it. He
+ was above all others the archetype and representative of the passion
+ for moralising, analysing, and philosophising which made the epoch
+ what it was; but the rest of the world was all in the same vein. If he
+ came to Paris in a coach from the country, he found a young lady in
+ it, eager to demonstrate that serious passions are nowadays merely
+ ridiculous; that people only promise themselves pleasure, which they
+ find or not, as the case may be; that thus they spare themselves all
+ the broken oaths of old days. "I took the liberty of saying that I was
+ still a man of those old days. '<i>So much the worse for you</i>,' she
+ said, '<i>you either deceive or are deceived, and one is as bad as the
+ other</i>.'"<a name="FNanchor_222_222" id=
+ "FNanchor_222_222"></a><a href="#Footnote_222_222" class=
+ "fnanchor">[222]</a> If Grimm and Madame d'Epinay and he were
+ together, they discussed ethics from morning to night; Diderot always
+ on the side of the view that made most for the dignity and worth of
+ human nature. Grimm is described on one of these occasions as having
+ rather displeased Madame d'Epinay: "He was not sufficiently ready to
+ disapprove the remark of a man of our acquaintance, who said that it
+ was right to observe the most scrupulous probity with one's friends,
+ but that it was mere dupery to treat other people better than they
+ would treat us. We maintained, she and I, that it was right and
+ necessary to be honest and good with all the world without
+ distinction."<a name="FNanchor_223_223" id=
+ "FNanchor_223_223"></a><a href="#Footnote_223_223" class=
+ "fnanchor">[223]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Here is another picture of discussion, with an introduction that is
+ thoroughly characteristic of Diderot's temper:</p>
+
+ <p>"This man looks at the human race only on its dark side. He does
+ not believe in virtuous actions; he disparages them, and denies them.
+ If he tells a story, it is always about something scandalous and
+ abominable. I have just told you of the two women of my acquaintance,
+ of whom he took occasion to speak as ill as he could to Madame Le
+ Gendre. They have their defects, no doubt; but they have also their
+ good qualities. Why be silent about the good qualities, and only pick
+ out the defects? There is in all that a kind of envy that wounds me—me
+ who read men as I read authors, and who never burden my memory except
+ with things that are good to know and good to imitate. The
+ conversation between Suard and Madame Le Gendre had been very
+ vivacious. They sought the reasons why persons of sensibility were so
+ readily, so strongly, so deliciously moved at the story of a good
+ action. Suard maintained that it was due to a sixth sense that nature
+ had endowed us with, to judge the good and the beautiful. They pressed
+ to know what I thought of it. I answered that this sixth sense was a
+ chimæra; that all was the result of experience in us; that we learnt
+ from our earliest infancy what it was in our instinct to hide or to
+ show. When the motives of our actions, our judgments, our
+ demonstrations, are present to us, we have what is called science;
+ when they are not present to our memory, we have only what is called
+ taste, instinct, and tact. The reasons for showing ourselves sensible
+ to the recital of good actions are numberless: we reveal a quality
+ that is worthy of infinite esteem; we promise to others our esteem, if
+ ever they deserve it by any uncommon or worthy piece of conduct....
+ Independently of all these views of interest, we have a notion of
+ order, and a taste for order, which we cannot resist, and which drags
+ us along in spite of ourselves. Every fine action implies sacrifice;
+ and it is impossible for us not to pay our homage to
+ self-sacrifice"—and so forth.<a name="FNanchor_224_224" id=
+ "FNanchor_224_224"></a><a href="#Footnote_224_224" class=
+ "fnanchor">[224]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Alas, all these endless debates and dialogues lacked the
+ inspiration and the charm with which the genius of a Plato could adorn
+ the narrowest quibble between Socrates and a Sophist. "Diderot," said
+ Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, "is an extraordinary man; he is out of his
+ place in society; he was meant for the chief of a sect, a Greek
+ philosopher, instructing youth. He pleases me greatly, but his manner
+ does not touch my soul."<a name="FNanchor_225_225" id=
+ "FNanchor_225_225"></a><a href="#Footnote_225_225" class=
+ "fnanchor">[225]</a> And we understand this. People disputed what
+ virtue is, but the dispute failed in that undefined spirit which makes
+ men love and adore virtue. Goodness is surrounded with no spacious
+ beauty, it is clothed with none of the high associations of
+ spontaneous piety. The discussion seems close, stifling, and airless.
+ Yet ages of loftier speech and greater spirituality have not always
+ been so favourable to the affections or to the attachments of life. In
+ amiability that society has never been surpassed; in sincerity of
+ mutual sympathy and kindliness of mutual regard. The common
+ irregularity of morals was seen to be perfectly compatible not merely
+ with a desire to please, but with an honest anxiety to serve.</p>
+
+ <p>Of the thorough excellence of Diderot's heart, of his friendliness
+ and unwearied helpfulness, time would fail us to tell. Men's
+ conceptions of friendship differ as widely as their conceptions of
+ other things. Some look to friendship for absolute exemption from all
+ criticism, and for a mutual admiration without limit or conditions.
+ Others mistake it for the right of excessive criticism, in season and
+ out of season.</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot was content to take friendship as the right, the duty, or
+ the privilege of rendering services, without thought of requiring
+ either them, or gratitude for them, back in return. This we must
+ confess to be rare. No man that ever lived showed more sterling
+ interest in furthering the affairs of others around him. He seemed to
+ admit every claim on his time, his purse, and his talents. A stranger
+ called upon him one day, and begged Diderot to write for him a puffing
+ advertisement of a new pomatum. Diderot with a laugh sat down and
+ wrote what was wanted. The graver occasions of life found him no less
+ ready. Damilaville lost one of his children, and his wife was
+ inconsolable. It was Diderot who was summoned, and who cheerfully went
+ for days together to soothe and divert her mind. For his correspondent
+ and for us he makes the tedium of his story beautiful by recalling the
+ fine saying of a grief-stricken woman in Metastasio, when they tried
+ to console her by the example of Abraham, who was ready even to slay
+ his son at the command of God: <i>Ah, God would never have given such
+ an order to his mother!</i></p>
+
+ <p>The abbé Le Monnier wrote the worst verses that ever were read, a
+ play that was instantly damned, and a translation of Terence that came
+ into the world dead. But bad writers are always the most shameless
+ intruders on the time of good critics, and we find Diderot willingly
+ spending hours over the abbé's handwriting, which was as wretched as
+ what he wrote, and then spending hours more in offering critical
+ observations on verses that were only fit to be thrown into the fire.
+ The abbé, being absent from Paris and falling short of money,
+ requested Diderot to sell for him his copy of the Encyclopædia. "I
+ have sold your Encyclopædia," said Diderot, "but did not get so much
+ as I expected, for the rumour spread abroad by those scoundrels of
+ Swiss booksellers, that they were going to issue a revised edition,
+ has done us some harm. Send for the nine hundred and fifty livres
+ (about £40) that belong to you, and if that is not enough for your
+ expenses, besides the drawer that holds your money is another that
+ holds mine. I don't know how much there is, but I will count it all at
+ your disposal."<a name="FNanchor_226_226" id=
+ "FNanchor_226_226"></a><a href="#Footnote_226_226" class=
+ "fnanchor">[226]</a></p>
+
+ <p>One Jodin, again, was a literary hack who had been employed on the
+ Encyclopædia. He died, leaving a foolish and extravagant widow, and a
+ perverse and violent daughter. The latter went on to the stage, and
+ Diderot took as much trouble in advising her, in seeking appointments
+ for her, in executing her commissions, in investing her earnings, in
+ dealing with her relatives, as if he had been her own father. If his
+ counsels on her art are admirable, there is something that moves us
+ with more than admiration in the good sense, the right feeling, the
+ worthiness of his counsels on conduct. And Diderot did not merely
+ moralise at large. All that he says is real, pointed, and apt for
+ circumstance and person. The petulant damsel to whom they were
+ addressed would not be likely to yawn over the sharp remonstrances,
+ the vigorous plain speaking, the downright honesty and visible
+ sincerity of his friendliness. It appears that she had sense enough
+ not to be offended with the frankness of her father's old employer,
+ for after he has plainly told her that she is violent, rude, vain, and
+ not always too truthful, she still writes to him from Warsaw, from
+ Dresden, from Bordeaux, praying him to procure a certain bracelet for
+ her, to arrange her mother's affairs, to find a good investment for
+ twelve thousand francs. When the mother was in the depths of
+ indigence, Diderot insisted that she should take her meals at his own
+ table. And all this for no other reason than that the troublesome pair
+ had been thrown in his way by the chance of human circumstance, and
+ needed help which he was able, not without sacrifice, to give.
+ Mademoiselle Jodin was hardly worthy of so good a friend. Her parents
+ were Protestants, and as she was a convert, she enjoyed a pension of
+ some eight pounds a year. That did not prevent her from one day
+ indulging in some too sprightly sallies, as the host was carried along
+ the street. For this she was put into prison, and that is our last
+ glimpse of the light creature.<a name="FNanchor_227_227" id=
+ "FNanchor_227_227"></a><a href="#Footnote_227_227" class=
+ "fnanchor">[227]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Men knew how to be as wrong-headed and as graceless as women. We
+ have already mentioned the name of Landois in connection with
+ Diderot's article on Liberty. Landois seems to have been a marvel of
+ unreasonableness, but he was a needy man of letters, and that was
+ enough to make Diderot ready to bear with him and to succour him. He
+ wound up an epistle abounding, after the manner of the worthless
+ failures of the world, in reproaches and grievances against his
+ benefactor, with a cool request about a manuscript that was full of
+ dangerous matter. "Why, that," replied Diderot, "is a work that might
+ well be the ruin of me! And it is after you have on two separate
+ occasions charged me with the most atrocious and deliberate offences
+ towards you, that you now propose that I should revise and print your
+ work! You know that I have a wife and child, that I am a marked man,
+ that you are putting me into the class of hardened offenders; never
+ mind, you don't think of one of these things. You take me for an
+ imbecile, or else you are one. But you are no imbecile.... I see
+ through men's designs, and often enough I lend myself to them, without
+ deigning to disabuse them as to the stupidity which they impute to me.
+ It is enough if I perceive in their design some great service for
+ them, and not an excess of inconvenience for myself. It is not I who
+ am the fool, so often as people take me for one." Diderot then seems
+ half to forget to whom he is writing and pours out what reads like a
+ long soliloquy on morals, conduct, and the philosophy of life. He
+ insists that man, with all his high-flying freedom of will, is but a
+ little link in a great chain of events. He is a creature to be
+ modified from without; hence the good effects of example, discourse,
+ education, pleasures, pains, greatness, misery. Hence a sort of
+ philosophy of commiseration, which attaches us strongly to the good,
+ and irritates us no more against the bad than against a wind-storm
+ that fills our eyes with dust. If you adopt such principles as these,
+ they will reconcile you with others and yourself; you will neither
+ praise nor blame yourself for what you are. To reproach others with
+ nothing, to repent yourself of nothing—these are the two first steps
+ towards wisdom; this is the philosophy that reconciles us with the
+ human race and with life.<a name="FNanchor_228_228" id=
+ "FNanchor_228_228"></a><a href="#Footnote_228_228" class=
+ "fnanchor">[228]</a></p>
+
+ <p>When he was in the very midst of all the toil and strife that the
+ Encyclopædia brought upon him, he could not refuse to spend three
+ whole days in working like a galley-slave at an account of an
+ important discovery that had been made by some worthy people with whom
+ he was acquainted slightly. "But while I was busy about their affairs,
+ my own are at a standstill. I write to you from Le Breton's, with a
+ mass of uncorrected proofs before me, and the printers crying out for
+ them. Still Grimm must be right, when he says that time is not a thing
+ of which we are free to dispose at our own fancy; that we owe it first
+ and foremost to our friends, our relations, our daily duties; and that
+ in the lavish profusion of our time on people who are indifferent,
+ there is nothing less than vice."<a name="FNanchor_229_229" id=
+ "FNanchor_229_229"></a><a href="#Footnote_229_229" class=
+ "fnanchor">[229]</a> Yet in spite of Grimm's most just remonstrance,
+ the lavish profusion always went on as before.</p>
+
+ <p>There was one man, and only one man, for whose perverse and
+ intractable spirit Diderot's most friendly patience, helpfulness, and
+ devotion, were no match. I have already, in dealing with
+ Rousseau,<a name="FNanchor_230_230" id="FNanchor_230_230"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_230_230" class="fnanchor">[230]</a> said as much of the
+ quarrel which he picked with Diderot as the matter requires, and it
+ would be superfluous to go over the ground again from another side.
+ Whether we listen to Rousseau's story or to Diderot's story, our
+ judgment on what happened remains unchanged. We have already seen how
+ warm and close an intimacy subsisted between them in the days when
+ Diderot was a prisoner at Vincennes (1749). When Rousseau made up his
+ mind to leave Paris and turn hermit (1756), there was a loud outcry
+ from the social group at Holbach's. They said to him, in the least
+ theological dialect of their day, what Sir Walter Scott had said to
+ Ballantyne when Ballantyne thought of leaving Edinburgh, that, "when
+ our Saviour himself was to be led into temptation, the first thing the
+ Devil thought of was to get him into the wilderness." Diderot
+ remonstrated rather more loudly than Rousseau's other friends, but
+ there was no breach, and even no coolness. What sort of humours were
+ bred by solitude in Rousseau's wayward mind we know, and the
+ Confessions tell us how for a year and a half he was silently brooding
+ over fancied slights and perhaps real pieces of heedlessness. Grimm,
+ who was Diderot's closest friend next to Mademoiselle Voland, despised
+ Rousseau, and Rousseau detested Grimm. "Grimm," he one day said to a
+ disciple, "is the only man whom I have ever been able to hate." Madame
+ d'Epinay was compelled to go to Geneva for her health, and Grimm
+ easily persuaded Diderot that Rousseau was bound by all the ties of
+ gratitude to accompany his benefactress on the expedition. Diderot
+ wrote to the hermit a very strong letter to this effect: it made
+ Rousseau furious. He declined the urgent counsel, he quarrelled
+ outright and violently with Grimm, and after an angry and confusing
+ interview with Diderot, all intercourse ceased with him also. "That
+ man," wrote Diderot, on the evening of this, their last interview,
+ "intrudes into my work; he fills me with trouble, and I feel as if I
+ were haunted by a damned soul at my side. May I never see him more; he
+ would make me believe in devils and hell."<a name="FNanchor_231_231"
+ id="FNanchor_231_231"></a><a href="#Footnote_231_231" class=
+ "fnanchor">[231]</a> And writing afterwards to some friend at Geneva,
+ he recalls the days when he used to pour out the talk of intimacy
+ "with the man who has buried himself at the bottom of a wood, where
+ his soul has been soured and his moral nature has been corrupted. Yet
+ how I pity him! Imagine that I used to love him, that I remember those
+ old days of friendship, and that I see him now with crime on one side
+ and remorse on the other, with deep waters in front of him. He will
+ many a time be the torment of my thought; our common friends have
+ judged between him and me; I have kept them all, and to him there
+ remains not one."<a name="FNanchor_232_232" id=
+ "FNanchor_232_232"></a><a href="#Footnote_232_232" class=
+ "fnanchor">[232]</a> It was not in Diderot's nature to bear malice,
+ and when eight years later Rousseau passed through Paris on his
+ ill-starred way to England and the</p>
+
+ <p>Derbyshire hills, Diderot described the great pleasure that a visit
+ from Rousseau would give to him. "Ah, I do well," he says, "not to let
+ the access to my heart be too easy; when anybody has once found a
+ place in it, he does not leave it without making a grievous rent; 'tis
+ a wound that can never be thoroughly cauterised."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_233_233" id="FNanchor_233_233"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_233_233" class="fnanchor">[233]</a></p>
+
+ <p>It is needless to remind the neutral reader that Rousseau uses
+ exactly the same kind of language about his heart. For this is the
+ worst of sentimentalism, that it is so readily bent into a
+ substitution of indulgence to oneself for upright and manly judgment
+ about others. Still we may willingly grant that in the present rupture
+ of a long friendship, it was not Diderot who was the real offender.
+ <i>Too many honest people would be in the wrong</i>, he most truly
+ said, <i>if Jean Jacques were in the right</i>.</p>
+
+ <p>Of Grimm, I have already said elsewhere as much as is needful to be
+ said.<a name="FNanchor_234_234" id="FNanchor_234_234"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_234_234" class="fnanchor">[234]</a> His judgment in matters
+ of conduct and character was cool and rather hard, but it was
+ generally sound. He had a keen eye for what was hollow in the
+ pretensions of the society in which he lived. Above all, he had the
+ keen eye of his countrymen for his own interest, and for the use which
+ he could make of other people. The best thing that we know in his
+ favour, is that he should have won the friendship of Diderot.
+ Diderot's attachment to Grimm seems like an exaggeration of the
+ excesses of the epoch of sentimentalism in Germany.</p>
+
+ <p>He pines for a letter from him, as he pined for letters from
+ Mademoiselle Voland. If Grimm had been absent for a few months, their
+ meeting was like a scene in a melodrama. "With what ardour we
+ enclasped one another. My heart was swimming. I could not speak a
+ word, nor could he. We embraced without speaking, and I shed tears. We
+ were not expecting him. We were all at dessert when he was announced,
+ <i>'Here is M. Grimm.'</i> '<i>M. Grimm</i>,' I exclaimed, with a loud
+ cry; and starting up, I ran to him and fell on his neck. He sat down,
+ and ate a poor meal, you may be sure. As for me, I could not open my
+ lips either to eat or to speak. He was next to me, and I kept pressing
+ his hand and gazing at him."<a name="FNanchor_235_235" id=
+ "FNanchor_235_235"></a><a href="#Footnote_235_235" class=
+ "fnanchor">[235]</a> Mademoiselle Voland appears on some occasion to
+ have compared Diderot with his friend. "No more comparison, I beseech
+ you, my good friend, between Grimm and me. I console myself for his
+ superiority by frankly recognising it. I am vain of the victory that I
+ thus gain over my self-love, and you must not deprive me of that
+ little advantage."<a name="FNanchor_236_236" id=
+ "FNanchor_236_236"></a><a href="#Footnote_236_236" class=
+ "fnanchor">[236]</a> Grimm, however, knew better than Diderot how to
+ unite German sentimentalism with a steady selfishness. "I have just
+ received from Grimm," writes good-natured Diderot, "a note that wounds
+ my too sensitive spirit. I had promised to write him a few lines on
+ the exhibition of pictures in the Salon; he writes to me that if it is
+ not ready to-morrow, it will be of no use. I will be revenged for this
+ kind of hardness, and in a way that becomes me. I worked all day
+ yesterday, and all day to-day. I shall pass the night at work, and all
+ to-morrow, and at nine o'clock he shall receive a volume of
+ manuscript."<a name="FNanchor_237_237" id=
+ "FNanchor_237_237"></a><a href="#Footnote_237_237" class=
+ "fnanchor">[237]</a> We may doubt whether his German friend would feel
+ the force of a rebuke so extremely convenient to himself.</p>
+
+ <p>While Grimm was amusing himself at Madame d'Epinay's country house,
+ Diderot was working at the literary correspondence which Grimm was
+ accustomed to send to St. Petersburg and the courts of Germany. While
+ Grimm was hunting pensions and honorary titles at Saxe-Gotha, or
+ currying favour with Frederick and waiting for gold boxes at Potsdam,
+ Diderot was labouring like any journeyman in writing on his behalf
+ accounts and reviews of the books, good, bad, and indifferent, with
+ which the Paris market teemed. When there were no new books to talk
+ about, the ingenious man, with the resource of the born journalist,
+ gave extracts from books that did not exist.<a name="FNanchor_238_238"
+ id="FNanchor_238_238"></a><a href="#Footnote_238_238" class=
+ "fnanchor">[238]</a> When we hear of Paris being the centre of
+ European intelligence and literary activity, we may understand that
+ these circular letters of Grimm and Diderot were the machinery by
+ which the light of Paris was diffused among darker lands. It is not
+ too much to say that no contemporary record so intelligent, so
+ independent, so vigorous, so complete, exists of any other remarkable
+ literary epoch.</p>
+
+ <p>The abbé Raynal, of whom we shall have more to say in a later
+ chapter, had founded this counterpart of a modern review in 1747, and
+ he sent a copy of it in manuscript once a month to anybody who cared
+ to pay three hundred francs a year. In 1753 Raynal had handed the
+ business over to Grimm, and by him it was continued until 1790, twelve
+ years beyond the life of Voltaire and of Rousseau, and six years after
+ the death of the ablest, most original, and most ungrudging of all
+ those who gave him their help.</p>
+
+ <p>An interesting episode in Diderot's life brought him into direct
+ relations with one of the two crowned patrons of the revolutionary
+ literature, who were philosophers in profession and the most arbitrary
+ of despots in their practice. Frederick the Great, whose literary
+ taste was wholly in the vein of the conventional French classic, was
+ never much interested by Diderot's writing, and felt little curiosity
+ about him. Catherine of Russia was sufficiently an admirer of the
+ Encyclopædia to be willing to serve its much-enduring builder. In
+ 1765, when the enterprise was in full course, Diderot was moved by a
+ provident anxiety about the future of his daughter. He had no dower
+ for her in case a suitor should present himself, and he had but a
+ scanty substance to leave her in case of his own death. The income of
+ the property which he inherited from his father was regularly handed
+ to his wife for the maintenance of the household. His own earnings, as
+ we have seen, were of no considerable amount. There are men of
+ letters, he wrote in 1767, to whom their industry has brought as much
+ as twenty, thirty, eighty, or even a hundred thousand francs. As for
+ himself, he thought that perhaps the fruit of his literary occupations
+ would come to about forty thousand crowns, or some five thousand
+ pounds sterling. "One could not amass wealth," he said pensively, and
+ his words are of grievous generality for the literary tribe, "but one
+ could acquire ease and comfort, if only these sums were not spread
+ over so many years, did not vanish away as they were gathered in, and
+ had not all been scattered and spent by the time that years had
+ multiplied, wants, grown more numerous, eyes grown dim, and mind
+ become blunted and worn."<a name="FNanchor_239_239" id=
+ "FNanchor_239_239"></a><a href="#Footnote_239_239" class=
+ "fnanchor">[239]</a> This was his own case. His earnings were never
+ thriftily husbanded. Diderot could not deny himself a book or an
+ engraving that struck his fancy, though he was quite willing to make a
+ present of it to any appreciative admirer the day after he had bought
+ it. He was extravagant in hiring a hackney-coach where another person
+ would have gone on foot, and not seldom the coachman stood for half a
+ day at the door, while the heedless passenger was expatiating within
+ upon truth, virtue, and the fine arts, unconscious of the passing
+ hours and the swollen reckoning. Hence, when the time came, there were
+ no savings. We have to take a man with the defects of his qualities,
+ and as Diderot would not have been Diderot if he had taken time to
+ save money, there is no more to be said.</p>
+
+ <p>When it became his duty to provide for his daughter, between 1763
+ and 1765, he resolved to sell his library. Through Grimm, Diderot's
+ position reached the ears of the Empress of Russia. Her agent was
+ instructed to buy the library at the price fixed by its possessor, and
+ Diderot received sixteen thousand livres, a sum equal to something
+ more than seven hundred pounds sterling of that day. The Empress added
+ a handsome bounty to the bargain. She requested Diderot to consider
+ himself the custodian of the new purchase on her behalf, and to
+ receive a thousand livres a year for his pains. The salary was paid
+ for fifty years in advance, and so Diderot drew at once what must have
+ seemed to him the royal sum of between two and three thousand pounds
+ sterling—a figure that would have to be trebled, or perhaps
+ quadrupled, to convey its value in the money of our own day. We may
+ wish for the honour of letters that Diderot had been able to preserve
+ his independence. But pensions were the custom of the time. Voltaire,
+ though a man of solid wealth, did not disdain an allowance from
+ Frederick the Great, and complained shrilly because it was irregularly
+ paid at the very time when he knew that Frederick was so short of
+ money that he was driven to melt his plate. D'Alembert also had his
+ pension from Berlin, and Grimm, as we have seen, picked up
+ unconsidered trifles in half of the northern courts. Frederick offered
+ an allowance to Rousseau, but that strange man, in whom so much that
+ was simple, touching, and lofty, mingled with all that was wayward and
+ perverse, declined to tax the king's strained finances.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_240_240" id="FNanchor_240_240"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_240_240" class="fnanchor">[240]</a></p>
+
+ <p>It would shed an instructive light upon authorship and the
+ characters of famous men, if we could always know the relations
+ between a writer and his booksellers. Diderot's point of view in
+ considering the great modern enginery and processes of producing and
+ selling books, was invariably, like his practice, that of a man of
+ sound common sense and sterling integrity. We have seen in the
+ previous chapter something of the difficulties of the trade in those
+ days. The booksellers were a close guild of three hundred and sixty
+ members, and the printers were limited to thirty-six. Their privileges
+ brought them little fortune. They were of the lowest credit and
+ repute, and most of them were hardly better than beggars. It was said
+ that not a dozen out of the three hundred and sixty could afford to
+ have more than one coat for his back. They were bound hand and foot by
+ vexatious rules, and their market was gradually spoiled by a band of
+ men whom they hated as interlopers, but whom the public had some
+ reason to bless. No bookseller nor printer could open an establishment
+ outside of the quarter of the University, or on the north side of the
+ bridges. The restriction, which was as old as the introduction of
+ printing into France, had its origin in the days when the visits of
+ the royal inspectors to the presses and bookshops were constant and
+ rigorous, and it saved the time of the officials to have all their
+ business close to their hand. Inasmuch, however, as people insisted on
+ having books, and as they did not always choose to be at the pains of
+ making a long journey to the region of the booksellers' shops, hawkers
+ sprang into existence. Men bought books or got them on credit from the
+ booksellers, and carried them in a bag over their shoulders to the
+ houses of likely customers, just as a peddler now carries laces and
+ calico, cheap silks and trumpory jewellery, round the country
+ villages. Even poor women filled their aprons with a few books, took
+ them across the bridges, and knocked at people's doors. This would
+ have been well enough in the eyes of the guild, if the hawkers had
+ been content to buy from the legally patented booksellers. But they
+ began secretly to turn publishers in a small way on their own account.
+ Contraband was here, as always, the natural substitute for free trade.
+ They both issued pirated editions of their own, and they became the
+ great purchasers and distributors of the pirated editions that came in
+ vast bales from Switzerland, from Holland, from the Pope's country of
+ Avignon. To their craft or courage the public owed its copies of works
+ whose circulation was forbidden by the government. The Persian Letters
+ of Montesquieu was a prohibited book, but, for all that, there were a
+ hundred editions of it before it had been published twenty years, and
+ every schoolboy could find a copy on the quays for a dozen halfpence.
+ Bayle's Thoughts on the Comet, Rousseau's Emilius and Heloïsa,
+ Helvétius's L'Esprit, and a thousand other forbidden pieces were in
+ every library, both public and private. The Social Contract, printed
+ over and over again in endless editions, was sold for a shilling under
+ the vestibule of the king's own palace. When the police were in
+ earnest, the hawker ran horrible risks, as we saw a few pages further
+ back; for these risks he recompensed himself by his prices. A
+ prohibition by the authorities would send a book up within
+ four-and-twenty hours from half a crown to a couple of louis. This
+ only increased the public curiosity, quickened the demand, led to
+ clandestine reprints, and extended the circulation of the book that
+ was nominally suppressed. When the condemnation of a book was cried
+ through the streets, the compositors said, "Good, another edition!"
+ There was no favour that an unknown author could have asked from the
+ magistrates so valuable to him as a little decree condemning his work
+ to be torn up and burnt at the foot of the great staircase of the
+ Palace of Justice.<a name="FNanchor_241_241" id=
+ "FNanchor_241_241"></a><a href="#Footnote_241_241" class=
+ "fnanchor">[241]</a></p>
+
+ <p>It was this practical impossibility of suppression that interested
+ both the guild of publishers and the government in the conditions of
+ the book trade. The former were always harassed, often kept poor, and
+ sometimes ruined, by systematic piracy and the invasion of their
+ rights. The government, on the other hand, could not help seeing that,
+ as the books could not possibly be kept out of the realm, it was to be
+ regretted that their production conferred no benefit on the
+ manufacturing industry of the realm, the composition, the printing,
+ the casting of type, the fabrication of paper, the preparation of
+ leather and vellum, the making of machines and tools. When Bayle's
+ Dictionary appeared, it was the rage of Europe. Hundreds of the
+ ever-renowned folios found their way into France, and were paid for by
+ French money. The booksellers addressed the minister, and easily
+ persuaded him of the difference, according to the economic light of
+ those days, between an exchange of money against paper, compared with
+ an exchange of paper against paper. The minister replied that this was
+ true, but still that the gates of the kingdom would never be opened to
+ a single copy of Bayle. "The best thing to do," he said, "is to print
+ it here." And the third edition of Bayle was printed in France, much
+ to the contentment of the French printers, binders, and
+ booksellers.</p>
+
+ <p>In 1761 the booksellers were afflicted by a new alarm. Foreign
+ pirates and domestic hawkers were doing them mischief enough. But in
+ that year the government struck a blow at the very principle of
+ literary property. The King's Council conferred upon the descendants
+ of La Fontaine the exclusive privilege of publishing their ancestor's
+ works. That is to say, the Council took away without compensation from
+ La Fontaine's publishers a copyright for which they had paid in hard
+ cash. The whole corporation naturally rose in arms, and in due time
+ the lieutenant of police was obliged to take the whole matter into
+ serious consideration—whether the maintenance of the guild of
+ publishers was expedient; whether the royal privilege of publishing a
+ book should be regarded as conferring a definite and unassailable
+ right of property in the publication; whether the tacit permission to
+ publish what it would have been thought unbecoming to authorise
+ expressly by royal sanction, should not be granted liberally or even
+ universally; and whether the old restriction of the booksellers to one
+ quarter of the town ought to remain in force any longer. M. de Sartine
+ invited Diderot to write him a memorandum on the subject, and was
+ disappointed to find Diderot staunchly on the side of the booksellers
+ (1767). He makes no secret, indeed, that for his own part he would
+ like to see the whole apparatus of restraint abolished, but meanwhile
+ he is strong for doing all that a system of regulation, as opposed to
+ a system of freedom, can do to make the publication of books a source
+ of prosperity to the bookseller, and of cheap acquisition to the
+ book-buyer. Above all things, Diderot is vehemently in favour of the
+ recognition of literary property, and against such infringement of it
+ as had been ventured upon in the case of La Fontaine. He had no reason
+ to be especially friendly to booksellers, but for one thing, he saw
+ that to nullify or to tamper with copyright was in effect to prevent
+ an author from having any commodity to sell, and so to do him the most
+ serious injury possible. And for another thing, Diderot had equity and
+ common sense enough to see that no high-flown nonsense about the
+ dignity of letters and the spiritual power could touch the fact that a
+ book is a piece of marketable ware, and that the men who deal in such
+ wares have as much claim to be protected in their contracts as those
+ who deal in any other wares.<a name="FNanchor_242_242" id=
+ "FNanchor_242_242"></a><a href="#Footnote_242_242" class=
+ "fnanchor">[242]</a></p>
+
+ <p>There is a vivid illustration of this unexpected business-like
+ quality in Diderot, in a conversation that he once had with
+ D'Alembert. The dialogue is interesting to those who happen to be
+ curious as to the characters of two famous men. It was in 1759, when
+ D'Alembert was tired of the Encyclopædia, and was for making hard
+ terms as the condition of his return to it. "If," said Diderot to him,
+ "six months ago, when we met to deliberate on the continuation of the
+ work, you had then proposed these terms, the booksellers would have
+ closed with them on the spot, but now, when they have the strongest
+ reasons to be out of humour with you, that is another thing."</p>
+
+ <p>"And pray, what reasons?"</p>
+
+ <p>"Can you ask me?"</p>
+
+ <p>"Certainly."</p>
+
+ <p>"Then I will tell you. You have a bargain with the booksellers; the
+ terms are stipulated; you have nothing to ask beyond them. If you
+ worked harder than you were bound to do, that was out of your interest
+ in the book, out of friendship to me, out of respect for yourself;
+ people do not pay in money for such motives as these. Still they sent
+ you twenty louis a volume: that makes a hundred and forty louis that
+ you had beyond what was due to you. You plan a journey to Wesel [in
+ 1752, to meet Frederick of Prussia] at a time when you were wanted by
+ them here; they do not detain you; on the contrary, you are short of
+ money, and they supply you. You accept a couple of hundred louis; this
+ debt you forget for two or three years. At the end of that rather long
+ term you bethink you of paying. What do they do? They hand you back
+ your note of hand torn up, with all the air of being very glad to have
+ served you. Then, after all, you turn your back on an undertaking in
+ which they have embarked their whole fortunes: an affair of a couple
+ of millions is a trifle unworthy of the attention of a philosopher
+ like you.... But that is not all. You have a fancy for collecting
+ together different pieces scattered through the Encyclopædia; nothing
+ can be more opposed to their interests; they put this to you, you
+ insist, the edition is produced, they advance the cost, you share the
+ profits. It seemed that, after having thus twice paid you for their
+ work, they had a right to look upon it as theirs. Yet you go in search
+ of a bookseller in some quite different direction, and sell him in a
+ mass what does not belong to you."</p>
+
+ <p>"They gave me a thousand grounds for dissatisfaction."</p>
+
+ <p>"<i>Quelle défaite!</i> There are no small things between friends.
+ Everything weighs, because friendship is a commerce of purity and
+ delicacy; but are the booksellers your friends? Then your behaviour to
+ them is horrible. If not, then you have nothing to say against them.
+ If the public were called upon to judge between you and them, my
+ friend, you would be covered with shame."</p>
+
+ <p>"What, can it be you, Diderot, who thus take the side of the
+ booksellers?"</p>
+
+ <p>"My grievances against them do not prevent me from seeing their
+ grievances against you. After all this show of pride, confess now that
+ you are cutting a very sorry figure?"<a name="FNanchor_243_243" id=
+ "FNanchor_243_243"></a><a href="#Footnote_243_243" class=
+ "fnanchor">[243]</a></p>
+
+ <p>All this was the language of good sense, and there is no evidence
+ that Diderot ever swerved from that fair and honourable attitude in
+ his own dealings with the booksellers. Yet he was able to treat them
+ with a sturdy spirit when they forgot themselves. Panckoucke, one of
+ the great publishers of the time, came to him one day. "He was swollen
+ with the arrogance of a parvenu, and thinking apparently that he could
+ use me like one of those poor devils who depend upon him for a crust
+ of bread, he permitted himself to fly into a passion; but it did not
+ succeed at all. I let him go on as he pleased; then I got up abruptly,
+ I took him by the arm, and I said to him: 'M. Panckoucke, in whatever
+ place it may be, in the street, in church, in a bad house, and to
+ whomsoever it may be, it is always right to keep a civil tongue in
+ one's head. But that is all the more necessary still, when you speak
+ to a man who has as little patience as I have, and that, too, in his
+ own house. Go to the devil, you and your work. If you would give me
+ twenty thousand louis, and I could do your business for you in the
+ twinkling of an eye, I would not stir a finger. Be kind enough to be
+ off."<a name="FNanchor_244_244" id="FNanchor_244_244"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_244_244" class="fnanchor">[244]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Before returning from the author to his books, it is interesting to
+ know how he and his circle appeared at this period to some who did not
+ belong to them. Gibbon, for instance, visited Paris in the spring of
+ 1763. "The moment," he says, "was happily chosen. At the close of a
+ successful war the British name was respected on the continent;
+ <i>clarum et venerabile nomen gentibus</i>. Our opinions, our
+ fashions, even our games were adopted in France, a ray of national
+ glory illuminated each individual, and every Englishman was supposed
+ to be born a patriot and philosopher." He mentions D'Alembert and
+ Diderot as those among the men of letters whom he saw, who "held the
+ foremost rank in merit, or at least in fame."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_245_245" id="FNanchor_245_245"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_245_245" class="fnanchor">[245]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Horace Walpole was often in Paris, and often saw the philosophic
+ circle, but it did not please his supercilious humour.</p>
+
+ <div class="blockquot">
+  <p>"There was no soul in Paris but philosophers, whom I wished in
+  heaven, though they do not wish themselves so. They are so
+  overbearing and underbred.... I sometimes go to Baron d'Holbach's,
+  but I have left off his dinners, as there was no bearing the authors
+  and philosophers and savants of which he has a pigeon-house full.
+  They soon turned my head with a system of antediluvian deluges which
+  they have invented to prove the eternity of matter.... In short,
+  nonsense for nonsense, I liked the Jesuits better than the
+  philosophers."<a name="FNanchor_246_246" id=
+  "FNanchor_246_246"></a><a href="#Footnote_246_246" class=
+  "fnanchor">[246]</a></p>
+ </div>
+
+ <p>Hume, as everybody knows, found "the men of letters really very
+ agreeable; all of them men of the world, living in entire, or almost
+ entire harmony, among themselves, and quite irreproachable in their
+ morals." He places Diderot among those whose person and conversation
+ he liked best.</p>
+
+ <p>We have always heard much of the power of the Salon in the
+ eighteenth century, and it was no doubt a remarkable proof of the
+ incorporation of intellectual interests in manners, that so many
+ groups of men and women should have met habitually every week for the
+ purpose of conversing about the new books and new plays, the fresh
+ principles and fresh ideas, that were produced by the incessant
+ vivacity of the time. The Salon of the eighteenth century passed
+ through various phases; its character shifted with the intellectual
+ mood of the day, but in all its phases it was an institution in which
+ women occupied a place that they have never acquired in any society
+ out of France. We are not here called upon to speculate as to the
+ reasons for this; it is only worth remarking that Diderot was not
+ commonly at his ease in the society of ladies, and that though he was
+ a visitor at Madame Geoffrin's and at Mademoiselle Lespinasse's, yet
+ he was not a constant attendant at any of the famous circles of which
+ women had made themselves the centre. The reader of Madame d'Epinay's
+ memoir is informed how hard she found it to tame Diderot into
+ sociability. "What a pity," she exclaims, "that men of genius and of
+ such eminent merit as M. Diderot should thus wrap themselves up in
+ their philosophy, and disdain the homage that people would eagerly pay
+ them in any society that they would honour with their
+ presence."<a name="FNanchor_247_247" id=
+ "FNanchor_247_247"></a><a href="#Footnote_247_247" class=
+ "fnanchor">[247]</a> One of the soundest social observers of the time
+ was undoubtedly Duclos. His <i>Considerations on the Manners of the
+ Century</i>, which was published in 1751, abounds in admirable
+ criticism. He makes two remarks with which we may close our chapter.
+ "The relaxation of morals does not prevent people from being very loud
+ in praise of honour and virtue; those who have least of them know very
+ well how much they are concerned in other people having them." Again,
+ "The French," he said, "are the only people among whom it is possible
+ for morals to be depraved, without either the heart being corrupted,
+ or their courage being weakened."</p>
+ <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+ <h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.<br />
+ THE STAGE.</h2>
+
+ <p>There is at first something incredible in the account given by some
+ thinkers of Diderot, as the greatest genius of the eighteenth century;
+ and perhaps an adjustment of such nice degrees of comparison among the
+ high men of the world is at no time very profitable. What is intended
+ by these thoroughgoing panegyrists is that Diderot placed himself at
+ the point of view whence, more comprehensively than was possible from
+ any other, he discerned the long course and the many bearings, the
+ complex faces and the large ramifications, of the huge movement of his
+ day. He seized the great transition at every point, and grasped all
+ the threads that were to be inwoven into the pattern of the new
+ time.</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot is in a thousand respects one of the most unsatisfactory of
+ men and of writers. Yet it is hard to deny that to whatever quarter he
+ turned, he caught the rising illumination and was shone upon by the
+ spirit of the coming day. It was no copious and overflowing radiance,
+ but they were the beams of the dawn. Hence, what he has to say, and we
+ shall soon see how much he said, about the two great arts of painting
+ and the drama, though it is fragmentary, though it is insufficient,
+ yet points, as all the rest of his thoughts pointed, along the lines
+ that the best minds of the western world have since traversed. He
+ would, in the old metaphysical language, have called the direction of
+ it a turning to Nature, but if we translate this into more positive
+ terms, just as we have said that the Encyclopædia was a glorification
+ of pacific industry and of civil justice, so we may say that his whole
+ theory of the drama was a glorification of private virtues and
+ domestic life. And the definite rise of civil justice and industry
+ over feudal privilege and a life of war, and again the elevation of
+ domestic virtue into the place formerly held by patriotic devotion,
+ are the two great sides of a single movement.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_248_248" id="FNanchor_248_248"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_248_248" class="fnanchor">[248]</a> It is quite true that
+ Diderot and the French of that day had only a glimpse of the promised
+ land in art and poetry. The whole moral energy of the generation after
+ Diderot was drawn inevitably into the strong current of social action.
+ The freshly kindled torch of dramatic art passed for nearly half a
+ century to the country of Lessing and Goethe.</p>
+
+ <p>There is in the use of a certain kind of abstract language this
+ inconvenience, that the reader may suppose us to be imputing to
+ Diderot a deliberate and systematic survey of the whole movement of
+ his time, and a calculated resolution to further it, now in this way
+ and now in that. It is not necessary to suppose that the movement as a
+ whole was always present to him. Diderot's mind was constantly feeling
+ for explanations; it was never a passive recipient. The drama excited
+ this alert interest just as everything else excited it. He thought
+ about that, as about everything else, originally, that is to say,
+ sincerely and in the spirit of reality.<a name="FNanchor_249_249" id=
+ "FNanchor_249_249"></a><a href="#Footnote_249_249" class=
+ "fnanchor">[249]</a> Whoever turns with a clear eye and proper
+ intellectual capacity in search of the real bearings of what he is
+ about, is sure to find out the strong currents of the time, even
+ though he may never consciously throw them into their most general and
+ abstract expression.</p>
+
+ <p>Since Aristotle, said Lessing, no more philosophical mind than
+ Diderot's has treated of the theatre. Lessing himself translated
+ Diderot's two plays, and the Essay on Dramatic Poetry, and repeatedly
+ said that without the impulse of Diderot's principles and
+ illustrations his own taste would have taken a different direction. As
+ a dramatist, the author of <i>Miss Sara Sampson</i>, of <i>Emilia
+ Galotti</i>, and above all that noble dramatic poem, <i>Nathan the
+ Wise</i>, could hardly have owed much to the author of such poor stuff
+ as <i>The Natural Son</i> and <i>The Father of the Family</i>. Lessing
+ had some dramatic fire, invention, spontaneous elevation; he had a
+ certain measure, though not a very large one, of poetic impulse.
+ Diderot had nothing of all these, but he had the eye of the
+ philosophic critic.</p>
+
+ <p>Any one who reads Lessing's dramatic criticisms will see that he
+ did not at all overrate his obligations to his French
+ contemporary.<a name="FNanchor_250_250" id=
+ "FNanchor_250_250"></a><a href="#Footnote_250_250" class=
+ "fnanchor">[250]</a> It has been replied to the absurd taunt about the
+ French inventing nothing, that at least Descartes invented German
+ philosophy. Still more true is it that Diderot invented German
+ criticism.</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot's thoughts on the stage, besides his completed plays, and a
+ number of fragmentary scenes, are contained principally in the Paradox
+ on the Player, a short treatise on Dramatic Poetry, and three
+ dialogues appended to <i>The Natural Son</i>. On the plays a very few
+ words will suffice. <i>The Natural Son</i> must, by me at least, be
+ pronounced one of the most vapid performances in dramatic history.
+ Even Lessing, unwilling as he was to say a word against a writer who
+ had taught him so much, is too good a critic not to recognise monotony
+ in the characters, stiffness and affectation in the dialogue, and a
+ pedantic ring in the sentences of new-fangled philosophy.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_251_251" id="FNanchor_251_251"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_251_251" class="fnanchor">[251]</a> Even in the three
+ critical dialogues that Diderot added to the play, Lessing cannot help
+ discerning the mixture of superficiality with an almost pompous
+ pretension. Rosenkranz, it is true, finds the play rich in fine
+ sentences, in scenes full of effect, in which Diderot's moral
+ enthusiasm expresses itself with impetuous eloquence. But even he
+ admits that the hero's servant is not so far wrong when he cries,
+ "<i>Il semble que le bon sens se soit enfui de cette maison</i>," and
+ adds that the whole atmosphere of the piece is sickly with conscious
+ virtue.<a name="FNanchor_252_252" id="FNanchor_252_252"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_252_252" class="fnanchor">[252]</a> For ourselves we are
+ ready for once even to sympathise with Palissot, the hack-writer of
+ the reactionary parties, when he says that <i>The Natural Son</i> had
+ neither invention, nor style, nor characters, nor any other single
+ unit of a truly dramatic work. The reader who seeks to realise the
+ nullity of the <i>genre sérieux</i> in Diderot's hands, should turn
+ from <i>The Natural Son</i> to Goldoni's play of <i>The True
+ Friend</i>, from which Diderot borrowed the structure of his play,
+ following it as narrowly as possible to the end of the third act.
+ Seldom has transfusion turned a sparkling draught into anything so
+ flat and vapid. In spite of the applause of the philosophic
+ <i>claque</i>, led by Grimm,<a name="FNanchor_253_253" id=
+ "FNanchor_253_253"></a><a href="#Footnote_253_253" class=
+ "fnanchor">[253]</a> posterity has ratified the coldness with which it
+ was received by contemporaries. <i>The Natural Son</i> was written in
+ 1757, but it was not until 1771 that the directors of the French
+ Comedy could be induced to place it on the stage. The actors detested
+ their task, and as we can very well believe, went sulkily through
+ parts which they had not even taken the trouble to master.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_254_254" id="FNanchor_254_254"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_254_254" class="fnanchor">[254]</a> The public felt as
+ little interest in the piece as the actors had done, and after a
+ single representation, the play was put aside.</p>
+
+ <p>Ill-natured critics compared Diderot's play with Rousseau's opera;
+ they insisted that <i>The Natural Son</i> and <i>The Village
+ Conjuror</i> were a couple of monuments of the presumptuous
+ incompetence of the encyclopædic cabal. The failure of <i>The Natural
+ Son</i> as a drama came after it had enjoyed considerable success as a
+ piece of literature, for it had been fourteen years in print. We can
+ only suppose that this success was the fruit of an unflinching
+ partisanship.</p>
+
+ <p>It is a curious illustration of the strength of the current passion
+ for moral maxims in season and out of season, that one scene which to
+ the scoffers of that day seemed, as it cannot but seem to everybody
+ to-day, a climax of absurdity and unbecomingness, was hailed by the
+ party as most admirable, for no other reason than that it contained a
+ number of high moralising saws. Constance, a young widow and a model
+ of reason, takes upon herself to combat the resolution of Dorval not
+ to marry, after he has led her to suppose that he has a passion for
+ her, and after a marriage between them has been arranged. "No," he
+ cries, "a man of my character is not such a husband as befits
+ Constance." Constance begs him to reassure himself; tells him that he
+ is mistaken; to enjoy tranquillity, a man must have the approval of
+ his own heart, and perhaps that of other men, and he can have neither
+ unless he remains at his post; it is only the wicked who can bear
+ isolation; a tender soul cannot view the general system of sensible
+ beings without a strong desire that they should be happy. Dorval, who
+ cuts an extremely sorry figure in such a scene, exclaims, "Ah, but
+ children! Dorval would have children! When I think that we are thrown
+ from our very birth into a chaos of prejudices, extravagances, vices,
+ and miseries, the idea makes me shudder!"—"Dorval, you are beset by
+ phantoms, and no wonder. The history of life is so little known, while
+ the appearance of evil in the universe is so glaring.... Dorval, your
+ daughters will be modest and good; your sons noble and high-minded;
+ all your children will be charming.... There is no fear that a cruel
+ soul should ever grow in my bosom from stock of yours."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_255_255" id="FNanchor_255_255"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_255_255" class="fnanchor">[255]</a></p>
+
+ <p>We can hardly wonder that players were disgusted, or critics moved
+ to wicked jests. The counterpart to the scene in which Constance
+ persuades Dorval that they would be very happy in one case, is the
+ scene in which Dorval persuades Rosalie that they would be very
+ unhappy in another case. The situations in themselves may command our
+ approval morally, but they certainly do not attract our sympathies
+ dramatically. That a woman should demonstrate to a man in fine
+ sententious language the expediency of marrying her, is not
+ inconsistent with good sense, but it is displeasing. When a man tells
+ a woman that, though love draws in one way, duty draws in the other,
+ we may admire his prudence, but we are glad when so delicate a
+ business comes to an end. In <i>The Natural Son</i> the latter scene,
+ though very long, is the less disagreeable of the two. And just as in
+ Diderot's most wordy and tiresome pages we generally find some one
+ phrase, some epithet, some turn of a sentence whose freshness or
+ strength or daring reveals a genius, so in this scene we find a few
+ lines whose energy reminds us that we are not after all in the hands
+ of some obscure playwright, whose works ought long ago to have been
+ eaten by moths or burnt by fire. Those lines are a warning against the
+ temptation so familiar in every age since Paris was a guest in the
+ halls of Menelaus, to take that fatal resolve, All for love and the
+ world well lost. "To do wrong," says Dorval, "is to condemn ourselves
+ to live and to find our pleasure with wrong-doers; it is to pass an
+ uncertain and troubled life in one long and never-ending lie; to have
+ to praise with a blush the virtue that we flung behind us; to hear
+ from the lips of others harsh words for our own action; to seek a
+ little calm in sophistical systems, that the breath of a single good
+ man scatters to the winds; to shut ourselves for ever out from the
+ spring of true joys, the only joys that are virtuous, austere,
+ sublime; and to give ourselves up, simply as a way of escape from
+ ourselves, to the weariness of those frivolous diversions in which the
+ day flows away in self-oblivion, and our life glides slowly from us
+ and loses itself in waste."<a name="FNanchor_256_256" id=
+ "FNanchor_256_256"></a><a href="#Footnote_256_256" class=
+ "fnanchor">[256]</a> A very old story, no doubt; but natural, true,
+ and in its place.</p>
+
+ <p>What adds to the flatness of the play is a device which Diderot
+ introduced on a deliberately adopted principle; we mean the elaborate
+ setting out of the acting directions. Every movement, every gesture,
+ every silent pause is written down, and we have the impression less of
+ a play than of some strangely bald romance. In the versified
+ declamation which then reigned on the French stage, nothing was left
+ to natural action, nothing was told by change of position, by movement
+ without speech, or in short by any means other than discourse.
+ Diderot, repudiating the conventions of dramatic art, and consulting
+ nature or reality, saw that there are many scenes in life in which it
+ is more natural to the personages of the scene to move than to speak,
+ in which indeed motion is natural, and speech is altogether unnatural.
+ If this be so in real life, he said, it should be so on the stage,
+ because nothing passes in the world which may not pass also in the
+ theatre; and as pantomime, or expression of emotion, feeling, purpose,
+ otherwise than by speech, has so much to do in life, the dramatist
+ should make abundant use of pantomime in composing stage-plays. Nor
+ should he trust to the actor's invention and spontaneous sense of
+ appropriateness. He ought to write down the pantomime whenever it adds
+ energy or clearness to the dialogue; when it binds the parts of the
+ dialogue together; when it consists in a delicate play that is not
+ easily divined; and almost always he ought to write it down in the
+ opening of a scene. If any one is inclined to regard this as
+ superfluous, let him try the experiment of composing a play, and then
+ writing the pantomime, or "business," for it; he will soon see what
+ follies he commits.<a name="FNanchor_257_257" id=
+ "FNanchor_257_257"></a><a href="#Footnote_257_257" class=
+ "fnanchor">[257]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Whatever we may think of the practice of writing the action as well
+ as the words for the player, nobody would now dispute the wisdom of
+ what Diderot says as to the part that pantomime fills in the highest
+ kind of dramatic representation. We must agree with his repeated
+ laments over the indigence, for purposes of full and adequate
+ expression, of every language that ever has existed or ever can
+ exist.<a name="FNanchor_258_258" id="FNanchor_258_258"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_258_258" class="fnanchor">[258]</a> "My dear master," he
+ wrote to Voltaire on the occasion of a performance of <i>Tancred</i>,
+ "if you could have seen Clairon passing across the stage, her knees
+ bending under her, her eyes closed, her arms falling stiff by her side
+ as if they were dead; if you heard the cry that she uttered when she
+ perceives Tancred, you would remain more convinced than ever that
+ silence and pantomime have sometimes a pathos that all the resources
+ of speech can never approach."<a name="FNanchor_259_259" id=
+ "FNanchor_259_259"></a><a href="#Footnote_259_259" class=
+ "fnanchor">[259]</a> If we wonder that he should have thought it worth
+ while to lay so much emphasis on what seems so obvious, we have to
+ remember that it did not seem at all obvious to people who were
+ accustomed to the substitution of a mannered and symmetrical
+ declamation for the energetic variety and manifold exuberance of
+ passion and judgment in the daily lives of men.</p>
+
+ <p>We have already seen that even when he wrote the Letter on the Deaf
+ and Dumb, Diderot's mind was exercised about gesture as a supplement
+ to discourse. In that Letter he had told a curious story of a bizarre
+ experiment that he was in the habit of making at the theatre. He used
+ to go to the highest seats in the house, thrust his fingers into his
+ ears, and then, to the astonishment of his neighbours, watch the
+ performance with the sharpest interest. As a constant playgoer, he
+ knew the words of the plays by heart, and what he sought was to
+ isolate the gesture of the performers, and to enjoy and criticise that
+ by itself. He kept his ears tightly stopped, so long as the action and
+ play went well with the words as he remembered them, and he only
+ listened when some discord in gesture made him suppose that he had
+ lost his place. The people around him were more and more amazed as
+ they saw him, notwithstanding his stopped ears, shed copious tears in
+ the pathetic passages. "They could not refrain from hazarding
+ questions, to which I answered coldly, 'that everybody had his own way
+ of listening, and that my way was to stop my ears, so as to understand
+ better'—laughing within myself at the talk to which my oddity gave
+ rise, and still more so at the simplicity of some young people who
+ also put their fingers into their ears to hear after my fashion, and
+ were quite astonished that the plan did not succeed."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_260_260" id="FNanchor_260_260"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_260_260" class="fnanchor">[260]</a> This was an odd and
+ whimsical way of acting on a conviction which lay deep in Diderot's
+ mind, namely, that language is a very poor, misleading, and utterly
+ inadequate instrument for representing what it professes, and what we
+ stupidly suppose it, to represent. Rousseau had expressed the same
+ kind of feeling when he said that definitions might be good things, if
+ only we did not employ words in making them.</p>
+
+ <p>A curious circumstance is worth mentioning in connection with the
+ Three Dialogues appended to <i>The Natural Son</i>. Diderot informs
+ his readers that the incidents of <i>The Natural Son</i> had actually
+ occurred in real life, and that he knew the personages. In the
+ Dialogues it is assumed that the play had been written by the hero
+ himself, and the hero is the chief speaker. Not a word is said from
+ which the reader would guess that Diderot had borrowed the substance
+ of his plot and some of its least insipid scenes from Goldoni. We can
+ hardly wonder that he was charged with plagiarism. Yet it was not
+ deliberate, we may be sure. When Diderot was strongly seized by an
+ idea, outer circumstances were as if they did not exist. He was swept
+ up into the clouds. "Diderot is a good and worthy man," wrote Madame
+ Geoffrin to the King of Poland, "but he has such a bad head, and he is
+ so curiously organised, that he neither sees nor hears what he does
+ see and hear, as the thing really is; he is always like a man who is
+ dreaming, and who thinks all that he has dreamed quite real."<a name=
+ "FNanchor_261_261" id="FNanchor_261_261"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_261_261" class="fnanchor">[261]</a></p>
+
+ <p><i>The Father of the Family</i>, written in 1758, and first acted
+ in 1761, is very superior to <i>The Natural Son</i>; it even enjoyed a
+ certain popularity. In Germany it became an established favourite, and
+ in Italy it was only less popular than a piece of Goldoni's. The
+ French were not quite so easy to please. In 1761 its reception was
+ undoubtedly favourable, and it ran for more than a week. In 1769 it
+ was reproduced, and, according to Diderot's own account, with
+ enthusiasm. "There was a frightful crowd," he says, "and people hardly
+ remember such a success. I was surprised at it myself. My friends are
+ at the height of exultation. My daughter came home intoxicated with
+ wonder and delight." Even Madame Diderot at length grew ashamed at
+ having to confess that she had not seen her husband's triumph, and
+ throwing aside her horror of the stage, was as deeply moved as every
+ one else.<a name="FNanchor_262_262" id="FNanchor_262_262"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_262_262" class="fnanchor">[262]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Notwithstanding this satisfactory degree of success, and though it
+ was performed as late as 1835, the play never struck root in France.
+ It is indeed a play without any real quality or distinction. "Diderot,
+ in his plays," said Madame de Staël, "put the affectation of nature in
+ the place of the affectation of convention."<a name="FNanchor_263_263"
+ id="FNanchor_263_263"></a><a href="#Footnote_263_263" class=
+ "fnanchor">[263]</a> The effect is still more disagreeable in the
+ first kind of affectation than the second. <i>The Father of the
+ Family</i> is made more endurable than <i>The Natural Son</i> by a
+ certain rapidity and fire in the action, and a certain vigour in the
+ characters of the impetuous son (Saint Albin) and the malignant
+ brother-in-law (the Commander). But the dialogue is poor, and the
+ Father of the Family himself is as woolly and mawkish a figure as is
+ usually made out of benevolent intentions and weak purpose combined.
+ The woes of the heavy father of the stage, where there is no true
+ pathos, but only a sentimental version of it, find us very callous.
+ The language has none of that exquisite grace and flexibility which
+ makes a good French comedy of own day, a piece by Augier, Sandeau,
+ Feuillet, Sardou, so delightful. Diderot was right in urging that
+ there is no reason why a play should be in verse; but then the prose
+ of a play ought to have a point, elegance, and highly-wrought
+ perfection, which shall fill us with a sense of art, though not the
+ art of the poet. Diderot not only did not write comedy in such a
+ style; but he does not even so much as show consciousness that any
+ difference exists between one kind of prose and another. The blurred
+ phrases and clipped sentences of what Diderot would have called
+ Nature, that is to say of real life, are intolerable on the stage.
+ Even he felt this, for his characters, though their dialogue is
+ without wit or finish, are still dull and tame of speech, in a
+ different way from that in which the people whom we may meet are dull
+ and tame. There is an art of a kind, though of an extremely vapid
+ kind.</p>
+
+ <p>Again, though he may be right in contending that there is a serious
+ kind of comedy as distinct from that gay comedy which is neighbour to
+ farce—of this we shall see more presently—yet he is certainly wrong in
+ believing that we can willingly endure five acts of serious comedy
+ without a single relieving passage of humour. Contrast of character,
+ where all the characters are realistic and common, is not enough. We
+ crave contrast in the dramatic point of view. We seek occasional
+ change of key. That serious comedy should move a sympathetic tear is
+ reasonable enough; but it is hard to find that it grudges us a single
+ smile. The result of Diderot's method is that the spectator or the
+ reader speedily feels that what he has before him substitutes for
+ dramatic fulness and variety the flat monotony of a homily or a tract.
+ It would be hard to show that there is no true comedy without
+ laughter—Terence's <i>Hecyra</i>, for instance—but Diderot certainly
+ overlooked what Lessing and most other critics saw so clearly, that
+ laughter rightly stirred is one of the most powerful agencies in
+ directing the moral sympathies of the audience,—the very end that
+ Diderot most anxiously sought.</p>
+
+ <p>It is mere waste of time to bestow serious criticism on Diderot's
+ two plays, or on the various sketches, outlines, and fragments of
+ scenes with which he amused his very slight dramatic faculty. If we
+ wish to study the masterpieces of French comedy in the eighteenth
+ century, we shall promptly shut up the volumes of Diderot, and turn to
+ the ease and soft gracefulness of Marivaux's <i>Game of Love and
+ Chance</i>, to the forcible and concentrated sententiousness of
+ Piron's <i>Métromanie</i>, to the salt and racy flavour of Le Sage's
+ <i>Turcaret</i>. Gresset, again, and Destouches wrote at least two
+ comedies that were really fit for the stage, and may be read with
+ pleasure to-day. Neither of these compliments can fairly be paid to
+ <i>The Natural Son</i> and <i>The Father of the Family</i>. Diderot's
+ plays ought to be looked upon merely as sketchy illustrations of a
+ favourite theory; as the rough drawings on the black board with which
+ a professor of the fine arts may accompany a lecture on oil
+ painting.</p>
+
+ <p>One radical part of Diderot's dramatic doctrine is wholly condemned
+ by modern criticism; and it is the part which his plays were
+ especially designed to enforce. "It is always," he says, "virtue and
+ virtuous people that a man ought to have in view when he writes. Oh,
+ what good would men gain, if all the arts of imitation proposed one
+ common object, and were one day to unite with the laws in making us
+ love virtue and hate vice. It is for the philosopher to address
+ himself to the poet, the painter, the musician, and to cry to them
+ with all his might: <i>0 men of genius, to what end has heaven endowed
+ you with gifts</i>? If they listen to him, speedily will the images of
+ debauch cease to cover the walls of our palaces; our vices will cease
+ to be the organs of crime; and taste and manners will gain. Can we
+ believe that the action of two old blind people, man and wife, as they
+ sought one another in their aged days, and with tears of tenderness
+ clasped one another's hands and exchanged caresses on the brink of the
+ grave, so to say—that this would not demand the same talent, and would
+ not interest me far more than the spectacle of the violent pleasures
+ with which their senses in all the first freshness of youth were once
+ made drunk?"<a name="FNanchor_264_264" id=
+ "FNanchor_264_264"></a><a href="#Footnote_264_264" class=
+ "fnanchor">[264]</a></p>
+
+ <p>The emphasising moralists of Diderot's school never understood that
+ virtue may be made attractive, without pulling the reader or the
+ spectator by the sleeve, and urgently shouting in his ear how
+ attractive virtue is. When <i>The Heart of Midlothian</i> appeared
+ (1818), a lady wrote about it as follows: "Of late days, especially
+ since it has been the fashion to write moral and even religious
+ novels, one might almost say of the wise good heroines what a lively
+ girl once said of her well-meaning aunt—'On my word she is enough to
+ make anybody wicked.' Had this very story been conducted by a common
+ hand, Effie would have attracted all our concern and sympathy, Jeanie
+ only cold approbation. Whereas Jeanie, without youth, beauty, genius,
+ warm passions, or any other novel perfection, is here our object from
+ beginning to end. This is 'enlisting the affections in the cause of
+ virtue' ten times more than ever Richardson did; for whose male and
+ female pedants, all excelling as they are, I never could care half as
+ much as I found myself inclined to do for Jeanie before I finished the
+ first volume."<a name="FNanchor_265_265" id=
+ "FNanchor_265_265"></a><a href="#Footnote_265_265" class=
+ "fnanchor">[265]</a></p>
+
+ <p>In other words, you must win us by kindling our sympathy, not by
+ formally commanding our moral approval. To kindle sympathy your
+ personage must be interesting; must touch our pity or wonder or
+ energetic fellow-feeling or sense of moral loveliness, which is a very
+ different thing from touching our mere sense of the distinctions
+ between right and wrong. Direct homily excites no sympathy with the
+ homilist. Deep pensive meditations on the moral puzzles of the world
+ are not at all like didactic discourse. But the Father of the Family
+ was exactly fulfilling Diderot's notion of dramatic purpose and
+ utility when he talked to his daughter in such a strain as this:
+ "Marriage, my daughter, is a vocation imposed by nature.... He who
+ counts on bliss without alloy knows neither the life of man nor the
+ designs of heaven. If marriage exposes us to cruel pain, it is also
+ the source of the sweetest pleasures. Where are the examples of pure
+ and heartfelt interest, of real tenderness, of inmost confidence, of
+ daily help of griefs divided, of tears mingled, if they be not in
+ marriage? What is there in the world that the good man prefers to his
+ wife? What is there in the world that a father loves more dearly than
+ his children? O sacred bond, if I think of thee, my whole soul is
+ warmed and elevated!"<a name="FNanchor_266_266" id=
+ "FNanchor_266_266"></a><a href="#Footnote_266_266" class=
+ "fnanchor">[266]</a></p>
+
+ <p>But these virtuous ejaculations do not warm and elevate us. In such
+ a case words count for nothing. It is actual presentation of beautiful
+ character, and not talk about it, that touches the spectator. It is
+ the association of interesting action with character, that moves us
+ and inspires such better moods as may be within our compass. Diderot,
+ like many other people before and since, sought to make the stage the
+ great moral teacher. That it may become so, is possible. It will not
+ be by imitating the methods of that colossal type of histrionic
+ failure, the church-pulpit. Exhortation in set speeches always has
+ been, and always will be, the feeblest bulwark against the boiling
+ floods of passion that helpless virtue ever invented, and it matters
+ not at all whether the hortatory speeches are placed on the lips of
+ Mr. Talkative, the son of Saywell, or of some tearful dummy labelled
+ the Father of the Family.<a name="FNanchor_267_267" id=
+ "FNanchor_267_267"></a><a href="#Footnote_267_267" class=
+ "fnanchor">[267]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Yet one is half ashamed to use hard words about Diderot. He was so
+ modest about his work, so simple and unpretending, so wholly without
+ restless and fretting ambitions, and so generous in his judgment of
+ others. He made his own dramatic experiment, he thought little enough
+ of it; and he was wholly above the hateful vice of sourly disparaging
+ competitors, whether dead or living. He knew that he was himself no
+ master, but he was manly enough to admire anybody who was nearer to
+ mastery. He was full of unaffected delight at Sedaine's busy and
+ pleasing little comedy, <i>The Philosopher without knowing it</i>; it
+ was so simple without being stiff, so eloquent without the shadow of
+ effort or rhetoric. After seeing it, Diderot ran off to the author to
+ embrace him, with many tears of joyful sympathy and gratitude.
+ Sedaine, like Lillo, the author of Diderot's favourite play of
+ <i>George Barn</i><i>well</i>, was a plain tradesman, and the success
+ of his libretti for comic operas had not spoiled him. He could find no
+ more expansive words for his excited admirer than "<i>Ah, Monsieur
+ Diderot, que vous étes beau</i>!"<a name="FNanchor_268_268" id=
+ "FNanchor_268_268"></a><a href="#Footnote_268_268" class=
+ "fnanchor">[268]</a> Diderot was just as sensible of the originality
+ and Aristophanic gaiety of Collé's brilliant play, <i>Truth in
+ Wine</i>, though Collé detested the philosophic school from Voltaire
+ downwards, and left behind him a bitterly contemptuous account of
+ <i>The Natural Son</i>.<a name="FNanchor_269_269" id="FNanchor_269_269"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_269_269" class="fnanchor">[269]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Of all comic writers, however, the author of the <i>Andria</i> and
+ the <i>Heautontimorumenos</i> was Diderot's favourite. The half dozen
+ pages upon Terence, which he threw off while the printer's boy waited
+ in the passage (1762), are one of the most easy, flowing, and
+ delightful of his fragments; there is such appreciation of Terence's
+ suavity and tact, of his just and fine judgment, of his discrimination
+ and character. He admits that Terence had no verve; for that he
+ commends the young poet to Molière or Aristophanes, but as verve was
+ exactly the quality most wanting to Diderot himself, he easily forgave
+ its absence in Terence, and thought it amply replaced by his
+ moderation, his truth, and his fine taste. Colman is praised for
+ translating Terence, for here, says Diderot, is the lesson of which
+ Colman's countrymen stand most in need. The English comic writers have
+ more verve than taste. "Vanbrugh, Wycherley, Congreve, and some others
+ have painted vices and foibles with vigour; it is not either invention
+ or warmth or gaiety or force that is wanting to their pencil, but
+ rather that unity in the drawing, that precision in the stroke, that
+ truth in colouring, which distinguish portrait from caricature.
+ Especially are they wanting in the art of discerning and seizing those
+ <i>naïf</i>, simple, and yet singular movements of character, which
+ always please and astonish, and render the imitation at once true and
+ piquant."<a name="FNanchor_270_270" id="FNanchor_270_270"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_270_270" class="fnanchor">[270]</a> Criticism has really
+ nothing to add to these few lines, and if Diderot in his last years
+ read <i>The School for Scandal</i>, or <i>The Rivals</i>, he would
+ have found no reason to alter his judgment.</p>
+
+ <p>One English play had the honour of being translated by Diderot;
+ this was <i>The Gamester</i>, not <i>The Gamester</i> of Shirley nor
+ of Garrick, but of Edward Moore (1753). It is a good example of the
+ bourgeois tragedy or domestic drama, which Diderot was so eager to see
+ introduced on to the French stage. The infatuation of Beverley, the
+ tears and virtue of Mrs. Beverley, the prudence of Charlotte and the
+ sage devotion of her lover, the sympathetic remorse of Bates, and even
+ the desperation of Stukely, made up a picture of domestic misery and
+ moral sentiment with which Diderot was sure to fall in love.
+ Lillo's</p>
+
+ <p><i>George Barnwell</i>, with its direct and urgent moral, was a
+ still greater favourite, and Diderot compared the scene between Maria
+ and Barnwell in prison to the despair of the <i>Philocletes</i> of
+ Sophocles, as the hero is heard shrieking at the mouth of his
+ cavern;<a name="FNanchor_271_271" id=
+ "FNanchor_271_271"></a><a href="#Footnote_271_271" class=
+ "fnanchor">[271]</a> just as a more modern
+ critic has thought Lillo's other play, <i>The Fatal Curiosity</i>,
+ worthy of comparison with the <i>Œdipus Tyrannus</i>.</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot's feeling for Shakespeare seems to have been what we might
+ have anticipated from the whole cast of his temperament. One of the
+ scenes which delighted him most was that moment of awe, when Lady
+ Macbeth silently advances down the stage with her eyes closed, and
+ imitates the action of washing her hands, as wondering that "the old
+ man should have so much blood in him." "I know nothing," he exclaims,
+ "so pathetic in discourse as that woman's silence and the movement of
+ her hands. What an image of remorse!"<a name="FNanchor_272_272" id="FNanchor_272_272"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_272_272" class="fnanchor">[272]</a></p>
+
+ <p>It was not to be expected that Diderot should indulge in those
+ undiscriminating superlatives about Shakespeare which are common in
+ Shakespeare's country. But he knew enough about him to feel that he
+ was dealing with a giant. "I will not compare Shakespeare," he said,
+ "to the Belvedere Apollo, nor to the Gladiator, nor to Antinous"—he
+ had compared Terence to the Medicean Venus—"but to the Saint
+ Christopher of Notre Dame, an unshapely colossus, rudely carven, but
+ between whose legs we could all pass without our brows touching
+ him."<a name="FNanchor_273_273" id="FNanchor_273_273"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_273_273" class="fnanchor">[273]</a> Not very satisfactory
+ recognition perhaps; but the Saint Christopher is better than
+ Voltaire's drunken savage.</p>
+
+ <p>It is not every dramatist who treats the art of acting as seriously
+ as the art of composition. The great author of <i>Wilhelm Meister</i>
+ is the most remarkable exception to this rule, and Lessing is only
+ second to him. It is hardly possible for a man to be a great
+ dramatist, and it is simply impossible for a man to be a great critic
+ of the drama, who has not seriously studied the rules, aims, and
+ conditions of stage representation. Hazlitt, for instance, has written
+ some admirable pages about the poetry, the imaginative conception, the
+ language, of Shakespeare's plays, but we find his limit when he says
+ that King Lear is so noble a play that he cannot bear to see it acted.
+ As if a play could be fully judged without reference to the conditions
+ of the very object with which it was written. A play is to be
+ criticised as a play, not merely as a poem. The whole structure of a
+ piece depends on the fact that it is to be acted; its striking moments
+ must be great dramatic, not merely beautiful poetic, moments. They
+ must have the intensity of pitch by which the effect of action exceeds
+ the effect of narrative. This intensity is made almost infinitely
+ variable with the variations in the actor's mastery of his art.</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot, who threw so penetrating a glance into every subject that
+ he touched, even if it were no more than a glance, has left a number
+ of excellent remarks on histrionics. The key to them all is his
+ everlasting watchword: <i>Watch nature, follow her simple, and
+ spontaneous leading</i>. The Paradox on the Player is one of the very
+ few of Diderot's pieces of which we can say that, besides containing
+ vigorous thought, it has real finish in point of literary form. There
+ is not the flat tone, the heavy stroke, the loose shamble, that give a
+ certain stamp of commonness to so many of his most elaborate
+ discussions. In the Paradox the thoughts seem to fall with rapidity
+ and precision into their right places; they are direct; they are not
+ overloaded with qualifications; their clear delivery is not choked by
+ a throng of asides and casual ejaculations. Usually Diderot writes as
+ if he were loath to let the sentence go, and to allow the paragraph to
+ come to an end. Here he lays down his proposition, and without
+ rambling passes on to the next. The effort is not kept up quite to the
+ close, for the last half dozen pages have the ordinary clumsy
+ mannerism of their author.</p>
+
+ <p>What is the Paradox? That a player of the first rank must have much
+ judgment, self-possession, and penetration, <i>but no sensibility</i>.
+ An actor with nothing but sense and judgment is apt to be cold; but an
+ actor with nothing but verve and sensibility is crazy. It is a certain
+ temperament of good sense and warmth combined, that makes the sublime
+ player.<a name="FNanchor_274_274"
+ id="FNanchor_274_274"></a><a href="#Footnote_274_274" class=
+ "fnanchor">[274]</a> Why should he differ
+ from the poet, the painter, the orator, the musician? It is not in the
+ fury of the first impulse that characteristic strokes occur to any of
+ these men; it is in moments when they are tranquil and cool, and such
+ strokes come by an unexpected inspiration.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_275_275" id="FNanchor_275_275"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_275_275" class="fnanchor">[275]</a> It is for coolness to temper the delirium of
+ enthusiasm. It is not the violent man who is beside himself that
+ disposes of us; that is an advantage reserved for the man who
+ possesses himself. The great poets, the great actors, and perhaps
+ generally all the great imitators of nature, whatever they may be, are
+ gifted with a fine imagination, a great judgment, a subtle tact, a
+ sure taste, but they are creatures of the smallest sensibility. They
+ are equally well fitted for too many things; they are too busy in
+ looking, in recognising, and in imitating, to be violently affected
+ within themselves. Sensibility is hardly the quality of a great
+ genius. He will have justice; but he will practise it without reaping
+ all the sweetness of it. It is not his heart, but his head, that does
+ it all. Well, then, what I insist upon, says Diderot, is that it is
+ extreme sensibility that makes mediocre actors; it is mediocre
+ sensibility that makes bad actors; and it is the absolute want of
+ sensibility that prepares actors who shall be sublime.<a name="FNanchor_276_276"
+ id="FNanchor_276_276"></a><a href="#Footnote_276_276" class=
+ "fnanchor">[276]</a></p>
+
+ <p>This is worked out with great clearness and decision, and some of
+ the illustrations to which he resorts to lighten the dialogue are
+ amusing enough. Perhaps the most interesting to us English is his
+ account of Garrick, whose acquaintance he made towards the year 1765.
+ He says that he saw Garrick pass his head between two folding doors,
+ and in the space of a few seconds, his face went successively from mad
+ joy to moderate joy, from that to tranquillity, from tranquillity to
+ surprise, from surprise to astonishment, from astonishment to gloom,
+ from gloom to utter dejection, from dejection to fear, from fear to
+ horror, from horror to despair, and then reascend from this lowest
+ degree to the point whence he had started.<a name="FNanchor_277_277" id="FNanchor_277_277"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_277_277" class="fnanchor">[277]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Of course his soul felt none of these emotions. "If you asked this
+ famous man, who by himself was as well worth a journey to England to
+ see, as all the wonders of Rome are worth a journey to Italy, if you
+ asked him, I say, for the scene of <i>The Little Baker's Boy</i>, he
+ played it; if you asked him the next minute for the scene from
+ <i>Hamlet</i>, he played that too for you, equally ready to sob over
+ the fall of his pies, and to follow the path of the dagger in the
+ air."<a name="FNanchor_278_278" id=
+ "FNanchor_278_278"></a><a href="#Footnote_278_278" class=
+ "fnanchor">[278]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Apart from the central proposition, Diderot makes a number of
+ excellent observations which show his critical faculty at its best.
+ As, for example, in answering the question, what is the truth of the
+ stage? Is it to show things exactly as they are in nature? By no
+ means. The true in that sense would only be the common. The really
+ true is the conformity of action, speech, countenance, voice,
+ movement, gesture, with an ideal model imagined by the poet, and often
+ exaggerated by the player. And the marvel is that this model
+ influences not only the tone, but the whole carriage and gait. Again,
+ what is the aim of multiplied rehearsals? To establish a balance among
+ the different talents of the actors. The supreme excellence of one
+ actor does not recompense you for the mediocrity of the others, which
+ is brought by that very superiority into disagreeable prominence.
+ Again, accent is easier to imitate than movement, but movements are
+ what strike us most violently. Hence a law to which there is no
+ exception, namely, under pain of being cold, to make your denouement
+ an action and not a narrative.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_279_279" id="FNanchor_279_279"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_279_279" class="fnanchor">[279]</a></p>
+
+ <p>One of the strongest satires on the reigning dramatic style,
+ Diderot found in the need that the actor had of the mirror. The fewer
+ gestures, he said, the better; frequent gesticulation impairs energy
+ and destroys nobleness. It is the countenance, the eyes, it is the
+ whole body that ought to move, and not the arms.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_280_280" id="FNanchor_280_280"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_280_280" class="fnanchor">[280]</a> There is no maxim more
+ forgotten by poets than that which says that great passions are mute.
+ It depends on the player to produce a greater effect by silence than
+ the poet can produce by all his fine speeches.<a name="FNanchor_281_281" id=
+ "FNanchor_281_281"></a><a href="#Footnote_281_281" class=
+ "fnanchor">[281]</a> Above all, the player
+ is to study tranquil scenes, for it is these that are the most truly
+ difficult. He commends a young actress to play every morning, by way
+ of orisons, the scene of Athalie with Joas; to say for evensong some
+ scenes of Agrippina with Nero; and for Benedicite the first scene of
+ Phædra with her confidante. Especially there is to be little
+ emphasis—a warning grievously needed by ninety-nine English speakers
+ out of a hundred—for emphasis is hardly ever natural; it is only a
+ forced imitation of nature.<a name="FNanchor_282_282" id=
+ "FNanchor_282_282"></a><a href="#Footnote_282_282" class=
+ "fnanchor">[282]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Diderot had perceived very early that the complacency with which
+ his countrymen regarded the national theatre was extravagant. He would
+ not allow a comparison between the conventional classic of the French
+ stage and the works of the Greek stage. He insisted in the case of the
+ Greeks that their subjects are noble, well chosen, and interesting;
+ that the action seems to develop itself spontaneously; that their
+ dialogue is simple and very close to what is natural; that the
+ dénouements are not forced; that the interest is not divided nor the
+ action overloaded with episodes. In the French classic he found none
+ of these merits. He found none of that truth which is the only secret
+ of pleasing and touching us; none of that simple and natural movement
+ which is the only path to perfect and unbroken illusion. The dialogue
+ is all emphasis, wit, glitter; all a thousand leagues away from
+ nature. Instead of artificially giving to their characters
+ <i>esprit</i> at every point, poets ought to place them in such
+ situations as will give it to them. Where in the world did men and
+ women ever speak as we declaim? Why should princes and kings walk
+ differently from any man who walks well? Did they then gesticulate
+ like raving madmen? Do princesses when they speak utter sharp
+ hissings?</p>
+
+ <p>People believe us to have brought tragedy to a high degree of
+ perfection. It is not so. Of all kinds of literature it is the most
+ imperfect.<a name="FNanchor_283_283" id=
+ "FNanchor_283_283"></a><a href="#Footnote_283_283" class=
+ "fnanchor">[283]</a></p>
+
+ <p>The ideas which appeared thus incongruously in the tales of 1748
+ reappeared in the direct essays on the drama in 1757 and 1758. We have
+ left nothing undone, he said, to corrupt dramatic style. We have
+ preserved from the ancients that emphasis of versification which was
+ so well fitted to languages of strong quantity and marked accent, to
+ vast theatres, to a declamation that had an instrumental
+ accompaniment; and then we have given up simplicity of plot and
+ dialogue, and all truth of situation.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_284_284" id="FNanchor_284_284"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_284_284" class="fnanchor">[284]</a> La Motte nearly fifty years before had attacked
+ the pseudo-classic drama. He had inveighed against the unities,
+ against long monologues, against the device of confidants, and against
+ verse. His assault, in which he had the powerful aid of Fontenelle,
+ was part of that battle between Moderns and Ancients with which the
+ literary activity of the century had opened. The brilliant success of
+ the tragedies of Voltaire had restored the lustre of the conventional
+ drama, though Voltaire infused an element of the romantic under the
+ severity of the old forms. But the drama had become even less like
+ Sophocles and Euripides in <i>Zaïre</i> than in <i>Phédre</i> or
+ <i>Iphigénie</i>. Voltaire intended to constitute the French drama
+ into an independent form. He expected to be told that he was not like
+ Sophocles, and he did not abstain from some singularly free railing
+ against Euripides. The Greek pieces often smacked too much of the tone
+ of the fair to satisfy him; they were too familiar and colloquial for
+ a taste that had been made fastidious by the court-pieces of Lewis
+ XIV. Diderot was kept free from such deplorable criticism as this by
+ feeling that the Greek drama was true to the sentiment of the age that
+ gave it birth, and that the French drama, if not in the hands of
+ Racine, still even in the hands of Voltaire, and much more in the
+ hands of such men as Lagrange-Chancel and the elder Crébillon, was
+ true to no sentiment save one purely literary, artificial, and barren.
+ He insists on the hopelessness of the stage, unless men prepared
+ themselves at every part for a grand return to nature. We have seen
+ what is his counsel to the actor. He preaches in the same key to the
+ scene-painter and the maker of costumes. Scene-painting ought to be
+ more rigorously true than any other kind of picture. Let there be no
+ distraction, no extraneous suggestion, to interfere with the
+ impression intended by the poet. Have you a salon to represent? Let it
+ be that of a man of taste and no more: no ostentation and no gilding,
+ unless the situation expressly demands the contrary.</p>
+
+ <p>In the dresses the same rule holds good. Under robes that are
+ overladen with gold lace, I only see a rich man; what I want to see is
+ a man. Pretty and simple draperies of severe tints are what we need,
+ not a mass of tinsel and embroidery. "A courageous actress has just
+ got rid of her panier, and nobody has found her any the worse for it.
+ Ah, if she only dared one day to show herself on the stage with all
+ the nobility and simplicity of adjustment that her characters demand;
+ nay, in the disorder into which she would be thrown by an event so
+ terrible as the death of a husband, the loss of a son, and the other
+ catastrophes of the tragic stage, what would become, round her
+ dishevelled figure, of all those powdered, curled, frizzled,
+ tricked-out creatures? Sooner or later they must put themselves in
+ unison. O nature, nature! We can never resist her."<a name="FNanchor_285_285" id="FNanchor_285_285"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_285_285" class="fnanchor">[285]</a></p>
+
+ <p>From all this we turn, for a few moments only, and not too
+ cheerfully, to the Serbonian bog of dramatic rules and the metaphysics
+ of the theatre. There is no subject in literature, not even the
+ interpretation of the Apocalypse, which has given birth to such
+ pedantic, dismal, and futile discussion. The immense controversy,
+ carried on in books, pamphlets, sheets and flying articles, mostly
+ German, as to what it was that Aristotle really meant by the famous
+ words in the sixth chapter of the <i>Poetics</i>, about tragedy
+ accomplishing the purification of our moods of pity and sympathetic
+ fear, is one of the disgraces of human intelligence, a grotesque
+ monument of sterility. The great tap-root of fallacy has been and
+ remains the incessant imputation of ethical or social purpose to the
+ dramatist, and the demand of direct and combined ethical or social
+ effect from the drama. There is no critic, from the great Aristotle
+ downwards, who has steered quite clear of these evil shallows;
+ Diderot, as we have seen, least of all. But Diderot disarms the
+ impatience which narrower critics kindle, by this magnificent
+ concession, coming at the close of all: "Especially remember that
+ <i>there is no general principle;</i> I do not know a single one of
+ those that I have indicated which a man of genius cannot infringe with
+ success."<a name="FNanchor_286_286" id=
+ "FNanchor_286_286"></a><a href="#Footnote_286_286" class=
+ "fnanchor">[286]</a> Here we listen to the
+ voice of the genuine Diderot; and if this be granted, we need not give
+ more than a passing attention to the rules that have gone before—about
+ the danger of borrowing in the same composition the shades both of the
+ comic and of the tragic styles; about movement being injurious to
+ dignity, and of the importance therefore of not making the principal
+ personage the <i>machinist</i> of the piece; about the inexpediency of
+ episodic personages —and so forth. The only remark worth making on
+ these propositions is that, whatever their value may be, Diderot at
+ any rate, like a true philosopher, generalised from the facts of
+ nature and art. He did not follow the too common critical method of
+ reading one's own ideas into a work of art, and then taking them back
+ again in the more imposing form of inevitable deductions from the work
+ itself.</p>
+
+ <p>What Diderot conceived himself really to have done, was to have
+ sketched and constituted a new species in the great dramatic kingdom.
+ Every one knows, he said, that there is tragedy and that there is
+ comedy, but we have to learn that there is room in nature and the art
+ of the stage for a third division, namely, the <i>genre sérieux</i>, a
+ kind of comedy that has for its object virtue and the duties of man.
+ Why should the writer of comedy confine his work to what is vicious or
+ ridiculous in men? Why should not the duties of men furnish the
+ dramatist with as ample material as their vices? Surely in the
+ <i>genre honnête et sérieux</i> the subject is as important as in gay
+ comedy. The characters are as varied and as original. The passions are
+ all the more energetic as the interest will be greater. The style will
+ be graver, loftier, more forcible, more susceptible of what we call
+ sentiment, a quality without which no style ever yet spoke to the
+ heart. The ridiculous will not be absent, for the madness of actions
+ and speeches, when they are suggested by the misunderstanding of
+ interests or by the transport of passion, is the truly ridiculous
+ thing in men and in life.<a name="FNanchor_287_287"
+ id="FNanchor_287_287"></a><a href="#Footnote_287_287" class=
+ "fnanchor">[287]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Besides his own two pieces, Diderot would probably have pointed to
+ Terence as the author coming nearest to the <i>genre sérieux</i>. If
+ Goethe's bad play of <i>Stella</i> had retained the close as he
+ originally wrote it, with the bigamous Fernando in the last scene
+ rejoicing over the devoted agreement of the two ladies and his
+ daughter to live with him in happy unity, that would perhaps have been
+ a comedy of the <i>genre sérieux</i>, with the duties of man
+ gracefully adapted to circumstances.</p>
+
+ <p>The theory of the <i>genre sérieux</i> has not led to the formation
+ of any school of writers adopting it and working it out, or to the
+ production of any masterpiece that has held its ground, as has
+ happened in tragedy, comedy, and farce. Beaumarchais, who at last
+ achieved such a dazzling and portentous success by one dramatic
+ masterpiece, began his career as a playwright by following the vein of
+ <i>The Father of the Family;</i> but <i>The Marriage of Figaro</i>,
+ though not without strong traces of Diderotian sentiment in pungent
+ application, yet is in its structure and composition less French than
+ Spanish. It is quite true, as Rosenkranz says, that the prevailing
+ taste on the French stage in our own times favours above all else
+ bourgeois romantic comedy, written in prose.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_288_288" id="FNanchor_288_288"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_288_288" class="fnanchor">[288]</a> But the strength of the romantic element in them
+ would have been as little satisfactory to Diderot's love of realistic
+ moralising as the conventional tragedy of the court of Lewis XIV. The
+ Fable of most of them turns on adultery, and this is not within the
+ method of the <i>genre sérieux</i> as expounded by Diderot. Perhaps
+ half a dozen comedies, such, for instance, as <i>The Ideas of Madame
+ Aubray,</i> by M. Dumas, are of the <i>genre sérieux</i>, but
+ certainly there are not enough of such comedies to constitute a
+ genuine Diderotian school in France. There is no need therefore to say
+ more about the theory than this, namely, that though the drama is an
+ imitative art, yet besides imitation its effects demand illusion.
+ What, cries Diderot, you do not conceive the effect that would be
+ produced on you by a real scene, with real dresses, with speech in
+ true proportion to the action, with the actions themselves simple,
+ with the very dangers that have made you tremble for your parents, for
+ your friends, for yourselves? No, we answer: reproduction of reality
+ does not move us as a powerful work of imagination moves us. "We may
+ as well urge," said Burke, "that stones, sand, clay, and metals lie in
+ a certain manner in the earth, as a reason for building with these
+ materials and in that manner, as for writing according to the
+ accidental disposition of characters in Nature."<a name="FNanchor_289_289" id=
+ "FNanchor_289_289"></a><a href="#Footnote_289_289" class=
+ "fnanchor">[289]</a> Common dangers do not
+ excite us; it is the presentation of danger in some uncommon form, in
+ some new combination, in some fresh play of motive and passion, that
+ quickens that sympathetic fear and pity which it is the end of a play
+ to produce. And if this be so, there is another thing to be said. If
+ we are to be deliberately steeped in the atmosphere of Duty, illusion
+ is out of place. The constant presence of that severe and overpowering
+ figure, "Stern Daughter of the Voice of God," checks the native
+ wildness of imagination, restricts the exuberance of fancy, and sets a
+ rigorous limit to invention. Diderot used to admit that the <i>genre
+ sérieux</i> could never take its right place until it had been handled
+ by a man of high dramatic genius. The cause why this condition has
+ never come to pass is simply that its whole structure and its
+ regulations repel the faculties of dramatic genius.</p>
+
+ <p>Besides the perfection of the <i>genre sérieux</i>, Diderot
+ insisted that the following tasks were also to be achieved before the
+ stage could be said to have attained the full glory of the other arts.
+ First, a domestic or bourgeois tragedy must be created. Second, the
+ conditions of men, their callings and situations, the types of
+ classes, in short, must be substituted for mere individual characters.
+ Third, a real tragedy must be introduced upon the lyric theatre.
+ Finally, the dance must be brought within the forms of a true
+ poem.</p>
+
+ <p>The only remark to be made upon this scheme touches the second
+ article of it. To urge the substitution of types of classes for
+ individual character was the very surest means that could have been
+ devised for bringing back the conventional forms of the pseudo-classic
+ drama. The very mark of that drama was that it introduced types
+ instead of vigorously stamped personalities. What would be gained by
+ driving the typical king off the stage, only to make room for the
+ generalisation of a shopkeeper? This was not the path that led to
+ romanticism, to André Chenier, to De Vigny, to Lamartine, to Victor
+ Hugo. Théophile Gautier has told us that the fiery chiefs of the
+ romantic school who suddenly conquered France at the close of the
+ Restoration, divided the whole world into <i>flamboyant</i> and
+ <i>drab</i>. In the literature of the past they counted Voltaire one
+ of the Drab, and Diderot a Flamboyant.<a name="FNanchor_290_290" id=
+ "FNanchor_290_290"></a><a href="#Footnote_290_290" class=
+ "fnanchor">[290]</a> If it be not too presumptuous in a foreigner to
+ dissent, we cannot but think that they were mistaken. Nothing could be
+ farther removed at every part from Diderot's dramatic scheme, than
+ <i>Faust</i> or <i>Götz von Berlichingen</i> or <i>Hernani</i>.</p>
+
+ <p>The truth is that it was impossible for an effective antagonism to
+ the classic school to rise in the mind of an Encyclopædist, for the
+ reason that the Encyclopædists hated and ignored what they called the
+ Dark Ages. Yet it was exactly the Dark Ages from which the great
+ romantic revival drew its very life-breath. "In the eighteenth
+ century," it has been said, "it was really the reminiscence of the
+ classic spirit which was awakened in the newer life of Europe, and
+ made prominent."<a name="FNanchor_291_291"
+ id="FNanchor_291_291"></a><a href="#Footnote_291_291" class=
+ "fnanchor">[291]</a> This is true in a certain historic sense of
+ Rousseau's politics, and perhaps of Voltaire's rationalism. In spite
+ of the vein of mysticism which occasionally shows in him, it is true
+ in some degree of Diderot himself, if by classicism we mean the
+ tendency to make man the centre of the universe. Classicism treats man
+ as worthy and great, living his life among cold and neutral forces.
+ This is the very opposite of the sinfulness, imperfection, and
+ nothingness habitually imputed to man, and the hourly presence of a
+ whole hierarchy of busy supernatural agents placed about man by the
+ Middle Ages. Yet we cannot but see that Diderot was feeling for
+ dramatic forms and subjects that would have been as little classic as
+ romantic. He failed in the search. There is one play and only one of
+ his epoch that is not classic, and is not romantic, but speaks
+ independently the truest and best mind of the eighteenth century
+ itself, in its own form and language. That play is <i>Nathan the
+ Wise</i>.</p>
+ <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+ <h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.<br />
+ RAMEAU'S NEPHEW.</h2>
+
+ <p>In hypochondriacal moments, it has been said, the world, viewed
+ from the æsthetic side, appears to many a one a cabinet of
+ caricatures; from the intellectual side, a madhouse; and from the
+ moral side, a harbouring place for rascals.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_292_292" id="FNanchor_292_292"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_292_292" class="fnanchor">[292]</a> We might perhaps extend this saying beyond the
+ accidents of hypochondriasis, and urge that the few wide, profound,
+ and real observers of human life have all known, and known often, this
+ fantastic consciousness of living in a strange distorted universe of
+ lunatics, knaves, grotesques. It is an inevitable mood to any who dare
+ to shake the kaleidoscopic fragments out of their conventional and
+ accepted combination. Who does not remember deep traces of such a mood
+ in Plato, Shakespeare, Pascal, Goethe? And Diderot, who went near to
+ having something of the deep quality of those sovereign spirits, did
+ not escape, any more than they, the visitation of the misanthropic
+ spectre. The distinction of the greater minds is that they have no
+ temptation to give the spectre a permanent home with them, as is done
+ by theologians in order to prove the necessity of grace and another
+ world, or by cynics in order to prove the wisdom of selfishness in
+ this world. The greater minds accept the worse facts of character for
+ what they are worth, and bring them into a right perspective with the
+ better facts. They have no expectation of escaping all perplexities,
+ nor of hitting on answers to all the moral riddles of the world. Yet
+ are they ever drawn by an invincible fascination to the feet of the
+ mighty Sphinx of society. She bewilders them with questions that are
+ never overheard by common ears, and torments them with a mockery that
+ is unobserved by common eyes. The energetic—a Socrates, a
+ Diderot—cannot content themselves with merely recording her
+ everlasting puzzles; still less with merely writing over again the
+ already recorded answers. They insist on scrutinising the moral world
+ afresh; they resolve the magniloquent vocabulary of abstract ethics
+ into the small realities from which it has come; they break the
+ complacent repose of opinion and usage by a graphic irony. "The
+ definitions of moral beings," said Diderot, "are always made from what
+ such beings ought to be, and never from what they are. People
+ incessantly confound duty with the thing as it is."<a name="FNanchor_293_293" id="FNanchor_293_293"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_293_293" class="fnanchor">[293]</a> We shall proceed to
+ give a short account of one or two dialogues in which he endeavours to
+ keep clear of this confusion.</p>
+
+ <p>By far the most important of these is <i>Rameau's Nephew</i>. The
+ fortunes of this singular production are probably unique in literary
+ history. In the year 1804</p>
+
+ <p>Schiller handed to Goethe the manuscript of a piece by Diderot,
+ with the wish that he might find himself able to translate it into
+ German. "As I had long," says Goethe, "cherished a great regard for
+ this author, I cheerfully undertook the task, after looking through
+ the original. People can see, I hope, that I threw my whole soul into
+ it."<a name="FNanchor_294_294" id=
+ "FNanchor_294_294"></a><a href="#Footnote_294_294" class=
+ "fnanchor">[294]</a> When he had done his
+ work, he returned the manuscript to Schiller. Schiller died almost
+ immediately (May 1805), and the mysterious manuscript disappeared.
+ Goethe could never learn either whence it had come, or whither it
+ went. He always suspected that the autograph original had been sent to
+ the Empress Catherine at St. Petersburg, and that Schiller's
+ manuscript was a copy from that. Though Goethe had executed his
+ translation, as he says, "not merely with readiness but even with
+ passion," the violent and only too just hatred then prevailing in
+ Germany for France and for all that belonged to France, hindered any
+ vogue which <i>Rameau's Nephew</i> might otherwise have had. On the
+ eve of Austerlitz and of Jena there might well be little humour for a
+ satire from the French.</p>
+
+ <p>Thirteen years afterwards an edition of Diderot's works appeared in
+ Paris (Belin's edition of 1818), but the editors were obliged to
+ content themselves, for <i>Rameau's Nephew</i>, with an analysis of
+ Goethe's translation. In 1821 a lively sensation was produced by the
+ publication of what professed to be the original text of the missing
+ dialogue. It was really a retranslation into French from Goethe. The
+ fraud was not discovered for some time, until in 1823 Brière announced
+ for his edition of Diderot's works a reprint from a genuine original.
+ This original he had procured from Madame de Vandeul, Diderot's
+ daughter, who still survived. She described it as a copy made in 1760
+ under the author's own eyes, and this may have been the case, though,
+ if so, it must, from some of the references, have been revised after
+ 1773. The two young men who had tried to palm off their retranslation
+ from Goethe as Diderot's own text, at once had the effrontery to
+ accuse Brière and Diderot's daughter of repeating their own fraud. A
+ vivacious dispute followed between the indignant publisher and his
+ impudent detractors. At length Brière appealed to the great Jove of
+ Weimar. Goethe expressed his conviction that Brière's text was the
+ genuine text of the original, and this was held to settle the
+ question. Yet Goethe's voucher for its correspondence with the copy
+ handed to him by Schiller was not really decisive evidence. He admits
+ that he executed the translation very rapidly, and had no time to
+ compare it closely with the French. An identification nearly twenty
+ years afterwards of verbal resemblances and minute references, in a
+ work that had been only a short time in his hands, cannot be counted
+ testimony of the highest kind. We have thus the extraordinary
+ circumstance that for a great number of years, down almost to the
+ present decade, the text of the one masterpiece of a famous man who
+ died so recently as 1784 rested on a single manuscript, and that a
+ manuscript of disputed authenticity.<a name="FNanchor_295_295" id="FNanchor_295_295"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_295_295" class="fnanchor">[295]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Critics differ extremely in their answers to the question of the
+ subject or object of Diderot's singular "farce-tragedy." One declares
+ it to be merely a satirical picture of contemporary manners. Another
+ insists that it is meant to be an ironical <i>reductio ad absurdum</i>
+ of the theory of self-interest, by exhibiting a concrete example of
+ its working in all its grossness. A third holds that it was composed
+ by way of rejoinder to Palissot's comedy <i>(Les Philosophes</i>),
+ 1760, which had brought the chiefs of the rationalistic school upon
+ the stage, and presented them as enemies of the human race. A fourth
+ suspects that the personal and dramatic portions are no more than a
+ setting for the discussion of the comparative merits of the French and
+ Italian schools of music. The true answer is that the dialogue is all
+ of these things, because it is none of them. It is neither more nor
+ less than the living picture and account of an original, drawn by a
+ man of genius who was accustomed to observe human nature and society
+ with a free unblinking vision, and to meditate upon them deeply and
+ searchingly.</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot goes to work with Rameau in some sort and to a certain
+ extent as Shakespeare went to work with Falstaff. He is the artist,
+ reproducing with the variety and perfection of art a whimsical figure
+ that struck his fancy and stirred the creative impulse. Ethics,
+ æsthetics, manners, satire, are all indeed to be found in the
+ dialogue, but they are only there as incident to the central figure of
+ the sketch, the prodigy of parasites. Diderot had no special fondness
+ for these originals. Yet he had a keen and just sense of their
+ interest. "Their character stands out from the rest of the world, it
+ breaks that tiresome uniformity which our bringing up, our social
+ conventions, and our arbitrary fashions have introduced. If one of
+ them makes his appearance in a company, he is like leaven, fermenting
+ and restoring to each person present a portion of his natural
+ individuality. He stirs people up, moves them, provokes to praise or
+ blame: he is a means of bringing out reality; gives honest people a
+ chance of showing what they are made of, and unmasks the
+ rogues."<a name="FNanchor_296_296" id=
+ "FNanchor_296_296"></a><a href="#Footnote_296_296" class=
+ "fnanchor">[296]</a></p>
+
+ <p>Hearing that the subject of Diderot's dialogue is the Parasite, the
+ scholar will naturally think of that savage satire in which Juvenal
+ rehearses the thousand humiliations that Virro inflicts on Trebius:
+ how the wretched follower has to drink fiery stuff from broken
+ crockery, while the patron quaffs of the costliest from splendid cups
+ of amber and precious stones; how the host has fine oil of Venafrum,
+ while the guest munches cabbage that has been steeped in rancid
+ lamp-oil; one plays daintily with mullet and lamprey, while the other
+ has his stomach turned by an eel as long as a snake, and bloated in
+ the foul torrent of the sewers; Virro has apples that might have come
+ from the gardens of the Hesperides, while Trebius gnaws such musty
+ things as are tossed to a performing monkey on the town wall. But the
+ distance is immeasurable between Juvenal's scorching truculence and
+ Diderot's half-ironical, half-serious sufferance. Juvenal knows that
+ Trebius is a base and abject being; he tells him what he is; and in
+ the process blasts him. Diderot knows that Rameau too is base and
+ abject, but he is so little willing to rest in the fat and easy
+ paradise of conventions, that he seems to be all the time vaguely
+ wondering in his own mind how far this genius of grossness and paradox
+ and bestial sophism is a pattern of the many, with the mask thrown
+ off. He seems to be inwardly musing whether it can after all be true,
+ that if one draws aside a fold of the gracious outer robe of
+ conformity, there is no comeliness of life shining underneath, but
+ only this horror of the skeleton and the worm. He restrains
+ exasperation at the brilliant effrontery of his man, precisely as an
+ anatomist would suppress disgust at a pathological monstrosity, or an
+ astonishing variation in which he hoped to surprise some vital secret.
+ Rameau is not crudely analysed as a vile type: he is searched as
+ exemplifying on a prodigious scale elements of character that lie
+ furtively in the depths of characters that are not vile. It seems as
+ if Diderot unconsciously anticipated that terrible, that woful, that
+ desolating saying,—<i>There is in every man and woman something which,
+ if you knew it, would make you hate them</i>. Rameau is not all
+ parasite. He is your brother and mine, a product from the same
+ rudimentary factors of mental composition, a figure cast equally with
+ ourselves in one of the countless moulds of the huge social
+ foundry.</p>
+
+ <p>Such is the scientific attitude of mind towards character: It is
+ not philanthropic nor pitiful: the fact that base characters exist and
+ are of intelligible origin is no reason why we should not do our best
+ to shun and to extirpate them. This assumption of the scientific point
+ of view, this change from mere praise and blame to scrutiny, this
+ comprehension that mere execration is not the last word, is a mark of
+ the modern spirit. Besides Juvenal, another writer of genius has shown
+ us the parasite of an ancient society. Lucian, whose fertility, wit,
+ invention, mockery, freshness of spirit, and honest hatred of false
+ gods, make him the Voltaire of the second century, has painted with
+ all his native liveliness more than one picture of the parasite. The
+ great man's creature at Rome endures exactly the same long train of
+ affronts and humiliations as the great man's creature at Paris sixteen
+ centuries later, beginning with the anguish of the mortified stomach,
+ as savoury morsels of venison or boar are given to more important
+ guests, and ending with the anguish of the mortified spirit, as he
+ sees himself supplanted by a rival of shapelier person, a more
+ ingenious versifier, a cleverer mountebank. The dialogue in which
+ Lucian ironically proves that Parasitic, or the honourable craft of
+ Spunging, has as many of the marks of a genuine art as Rhetoric,
+ Gymnastic, or Music, is a spirited parody of Socratic catechising and
+ Platonic mannerisms. Simo shows to Tychiades, as ingeniously as Rameau
+ shows to Diderot, that the Spunger has a far better life of it, and is
+ a far more rational and consistent person than the orator and the
+ philosopher.<a name="FNanchor_297_297" id=
+ "FNanchor_297_297"></a><a href="#Footnote_297_297" class=
+ "fnanchor">[297]</a> Lucian's satire is vivid, brilliant, and
+ diverting. Yet every one feels that Diderot's performance, while
+ equally vivid, is marked by greater depth of spirit; comes from a soil
+ that has been more freely broken up, and has been enriched by a more
+ copious experience. The ancient turned upon these masterpieces of
+ depravation the flash of intellectual scorn; the modern eyes them with
+ a certain moral patience, and something of that curious kind of
+ interest, looking half like sympathy, which a hunter has for the
+ object of his chase.</p>
+
+ <p>The Rameau of the dialogue was a real personage, and there is a
+ dispute whether Diderot has not calumniated him. Evidence enough
+ remains that he was at least a person of singular character and
+ irregular disastrous life. Diderot's general veracity of temperament
+ would make us believe that his picture is authentic, but the interest
+ of the dialogue is exactly the same in either case. Juvenal's fifth
+ satire would be worth neither more nor less, however much were found
+ out about Trebius.</p>
+
+ <p>"Rameau is one of the most eccentric figures in the country, where
+ God has not made them lacking. He is a mixture of elevation and
+ lowness, of good sense and madness; the notions of good and bad must
+ be mixed up together in strange confusion in his head, for he shows
+ the good qualities that nature has bestowed on him without any
+ ostentation, and the bad ones without the smallest shame. For the
+ rest, he is endowed with a vigorous frame, a particular warmth of
+ imagination, and an uncommon strength of lungs. If you ever meet him,
+ unless you happen to be arrested by his originality, you will either
+ stuff your fingers into your ears or else take to your heels. Heavens,
+ what a monstrous pipe! Nothing is so little like him as himself. One
+ time he is lean and wan, like a patient in the last stage of
+ consumption: you could count his teeth through his cheeks; you would
+ say he must have passed some days without tasting a morsel, or that he
+ is fresh from La Trappe. A month after, he is stout and sleek as if he
+ had been sitting all the time at the board of a financier, or had been
+ shut up in a Bernardine monastery. To-day in dirty linen, his clothes
+ torn and patched, with barely a shoe to his foot, he steals along with
+ a bent head; one is tempted to hail him and toss him a shilling.
+ To-morrow, all powdered, curled, in a good coat, he marches about with
+ head erect and open mien, and you would almost take him for a decent
+ worthy creature. He lives from day to day, from hand to mouth,
+ downcast or sad, just as things may go. His first care of a morning
+ when he gets up is to know where he will dine; after dinner, he begins
+ to think where he may pick up a supper. Night brings disquiets of its
+ own. Either he climbs to a shabby garret he has, unless the landlady,
+ weary of waiting for her rent, has taken the key away from him; or
+ else he shrinks to some tavern on the outskirts of the town, where he
+ waits for daybreak over a crust of bread and a mug of beer. When he
+ has not threepence in his pocket, as sometimes happens, he has
+ recourse either to a hackney-carriage belonging to a friend, or to a
+ coachman of some man of quality, who gives him a bed on the straw
+ beside the horses. In the morning he still has bits of the mattress in
+ his hair. If the weather is mild, he measures the Champs Elysées all
+ night long. With the day he reappears in the town, dressed over night
+ for the morrow, and from the morrow sometimes dressed for the rest of
+ the week."</p>
+
+ <p>Diderot is accosted by this curious being one afternoon on a bench
+ in front of the Café de la Régence in the Palais Royal. They proceed
+ in the thoroughly natural and easy manner of interlocutors in a
+ Platonic dialogue. It is not too much to say that <i>Rameau's
+ Nephew</i> is the most effective and masterly use of that form of
+ discussion since Plato. Diderot's vein of realism is doubtless in
+ strong contrast with Plato's poetic and idealising touch. Yet
+ imaginative strokes are not wanting to soften the repulsive theme, and
+ to bring the sordid and the foul within the sphere of art. For an
+ example. "Time has passed," says Rameau, "and that is always so much
+ gained."</p>
+
+ <p>"<i>I.</i>—So much lost, you mean.</p>
+
+ <p>"<i>He.</i>—No, no; gained. People grow rich every moment; a day
+ less to live, or a crown piece to the good, 'tis all one. When the
+ last moment comes, one is as rich as another. Samuel Bernard, who by
+ pillaging and stealing and playing bankrupt, leaves seven-and-twenty
+ million francs in gold, is no better than Rameau, who leaves not a
+ penny, and will be indebted to charity for a shroud to wrap about him.
+ The dead man hears not the tolling of the bell; 'tis in vain that a
+ hundred priests bawl dirges for him, in vain that a long file of
+ blazing torches go before. His soul walks not by the side of the
+ master of the funeral ceremonies. To moulder under marble, or to
+ moulder under clay, 'tis still to moulder. To have around one's bier
+ children in red and children in blue, or to have not a creature, what
+ matters it?"</p>
+
+ <p>These are the gleams of the <i>mens divinior</i>, that relieve the
+ perplexing moral squalor of the portrait. Even here we have the
+ painful innuendo that a thought which is solemnising and holy to the
+ noble, serves equally well to point a trait of cynical defiance in the
+ ignoble.</p>
+
+ <p>Again, there is an indirectly imaginative element in the sort of
+ terror which the thoroughness of the presentation inspires. For indeed
+ it is an emotion hardly short of terror that seizes us, as we listen
+ to the stringent unflinching paradox of this heterogeneous figure.
+ Rameau is the squalid and tattered Satan of the eighteenth century. He
+ is a Mephistopheles out at elbows, a Lucifer in low water; yet always
+ diabolic, with the bright flash of the pit in his eye. Disgust is
+ transformed into horror and affright by the trenchant confidence of
+ his spirit, the daring thoroughness and consistency of his dialectic,
+ the lurid sarcasm, the vile penetration. He discusses a horrible
+ action, or execrable crime, as a virtuoso examines a statue or a
+ painting. He has that rarest fortitude of the vicious, not to shrink
+ from calling his character and conduct by their names. He is one of
+ Swift's Yahoos, with the courage of its opinions. He seems to give one
+ reason for hating and dreading oneself. The effect is of mixed fear
+ and fascination, as of a magician whose miraculous crystal is to show
+ us what and how we shall be twenty years from now; or as when a
+ surgeon tells the tale of some ghastly disorder, that may at the very
+ moment be stealthily preparing for us a doom of anguish.</p>
+
+ <p>Hence our dialogue is assuredly no "meat for little people nor for
+ fools." Some of it is revolting in its brutal indecency. Even Goethe's
+ self-possession cannot make it endurable to him. But it is a study to
+ be omitted by no one who judges the corruption of the old society in
+ France an important historic subject. The picture is very like the
+ corruption of the old society in Rome. We see the rotten material
+ which the purifying flame of Jacobinism was soon to consume out of the
+ land with fiery swiftness. We watch the very classes from which, as we
+ have been so often told, the regeneration of France would have come,
+ if only demagogues and rabble had not violently interposed. There is
+ no gaiety in the style; none of that laughter which makes such a
+ delineation of the manners of the time as we find in Collé's play of
+ <i>Truth in Wine</i>, <i>naïf</i>, true to nature, and almost
+ exhilarating. In <i>Rameau</i> we are afflicted by the odour of deadly
+ taint.</p>
+
+ <p>As the dialogue is not in every hand—nor could any one wish that it
+ should be—I have thought it worth while to print an English rendering
+ of a considerable part of it in an appendix. Mr. Carlyle told us long
+ ago that it must be translated into English, and although such a piece
+ of work is less simple than it may seem, it appears right to give the
+ reader an opportunity of judging for himself of the flavour of the
+ most characteristic of all Diderot's performances. Only let no reader
+ turn to it who has any invincible repugnance to that curious turn for
+ <i>wildbret</i>, which Goethe has described as the secret of some
+ arts.</p>
+
+ <div class="poem">
+  <div class="stanza">
+   <span>Dixeris hæc inter varicosos centuriones,<br /></span>
+   <span>Continuo crassum ridet Pulfenius ingens<br /></span> <span>Et
+   centum Græcos curto centusse licebit.<br /></span>
+  </div>
+ </div>
+
+ <p>As I have already said, it must be judged as something more than a
+ literary diversion. "You do not suspect, Sir Philosopher," says
+ Rameau, "that at this moment I represent the most important part of
+ the town and the court." As the painter of the picture says, Rameau
+ confessed the vices that he had, and that most of the people about us
+ have; but he was no hypocrite. He was neither more nor less abominable
+ than they; he was only more frank and systematic and profound in his
+ depravity. This is the social significance of the dialogue. This is
+ what, apart from other considerations, makes <i>Rameau's Nephew</i> so
+ much more valuable a guide to the moral sentiment of the time than
+ merely licentious compositions like those of Louvet or La Olos. Its
+ instructiveness is immense to those who examine the conditions that
+ prepared the Revolution. Rameau is not the ακόλστος of Aristotle, nor
+ the creature of απονοία described by Theophrastus—the castaway by
+ individual idiosyncrasy, the reprobate by accident. The men whom he
+ represented, the courtiers, the financiers, the merchants, the
+ shopkeepers, were immoral by formula and depraved on principle. Vice
+ was a doctrine to them, and wretchlessness of unclean living was
+ reduced to a system of philosophy. Any one, I venture to repeat, who
+ realises the extent to which this had corroded the ruling powers in
+ France, will perceive that the furious flood of social energy which
+ the Jacobins poured over the country was not less indispensable to
+ France than the flood of the barbarians was indispensable for the
+ transformation of the Roman Empire.</p>
+
+ <p>Scattered among the more serious fragments of the dialogue is some
+ excellent by-play of sarcasm upon Palissot, and one or two of the
+ other assailants of the new liberal school. Palissot is an old story.
+ The Palissots are an eternal species. The family never dies out, and
+ it thrives in every climate. All societies know the literary dangler
+ in great houses, and the purveyor to fashionable prejudices. Not that
+ he is always servile. The reader, I daresay, remembers that La Bruyère
+ described a curious being in Troilus, the despotic parasite. Palissot,
+ eighteenth century or nineteenth century, is often like Troilus,
+ parasite and tyrant at the same time. He usually happens to have begun
+ life with laudable aspirations and sincere interests of his own; and
+ when, alas, the mediocrity of his gifts proves too weak to bear the
+ burden of his ambitions, the recollection of a generous youth only
+ serves to sour old age.</p>
+
+ <div class="poem">
+  <div class="stanza">
+   <span>Bel esprit abhorré de tous les bons esprits,<br /></span>
+   <span>Il pense par la haine échapper au mépris.<br /></span> <span>A
+   force d'attentats il se croit illustré;<br /></span> <span>Et s'il
+   n'était méchant, il serait ignoré.<br /></span>
+  </div>
+ </div>
+
+ <p>Palissot began with a tragedy. He proceeded to an angry pamphlet
+ against the Encyclopædists and the fury for innovation. Then he
+ achieved immense vogue among fine ladies, bishops, and the lighter
+ heads of the town, by the comedy in which he held Diderot, D'Alembert,
+ and the others, up to hatred and ridicule. Finally, after coming to
+ look upon himself as a serious personage, he disappeared into the mire
+ of half-oblivious contempt and disgust that happily awaits all the
+ poor Palissots and all their works. His name only survives in
+ connection with the men whom he maligned. He lived to be old, as,
+ oddly enough, Spite so often does. In the Terror he had a narrow
+ escape, for he was brought before Chaumette. Chaumette apostrophised
+ the assailant of Rousseau and Diderot with rude energy, but did not
+ send him to the guillotine. In this the practical disciple only
+ imitated the magnanimity of his theoretical masters. Rousseau had
+ declined an opportunity of punishing Palissot's impertinences, and
+ Diderot took no worse vengeance upon him than by making an occasional
+ reference of contempt to him in a dialogue which he perhaps never
+ intended to publish.</p>
+
+ <p>Another subject is handled in <i>Rameau's Nephew,</i> which is
+ interesting in connection with the mental activity of Paris in the
+ eighteenth century. Music was the field of as much passionate
+ controversy as theology and philosophy. The Bull Unigenitus itself did
+ not lead to livelier disputes, or more violent cabals, than the
+ conflict between the partisans of French music and the partisans of
+ Italian music. The horror of a Jansenist for a Molinist did not
+ surpass that of a Lullist for a Dunist, or afterwards of a Gluckist
+ for a Piccinist.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_298_298" id="FNanchor_298_298"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_298_298" class="fnanchor">[298]</a> Lulli and Rameau (the uncle of our parasite) had
+ undisputed possession of Paris until the arrival, in 1752, of a
+ company of Italian singers. The great quarrel at once broke out as to
+ the true method and destination of musical composition. Is music an
+ independent art, appealing directly to a special sense, or is it to be
+ made an instrument for expressing affections of the mind in a certain
+ deeper way? The Italians asked only for delicious harmonies and
+ exquisite melodies. The French insisted that these should be
+ subordinate to the work of the poet. The former were content with
+ delight, the latter pressed for significance. The one declared that
+ Italian music was no better than a silly tickling of the ears; the
+ other that the overture to a French opera was like a prelude to a
+ Miserere in plain-song. In 1772-73 the illustrious Gluck came to
+ Paris. His art was believed to reconcile the two schools, to have more
+ melody than the old French style, and more severity and meaning than
+ the purely Italian style. French dignity was saved. But soon the old
+ battle, which had been going on for twenty years, began to rage with
+ greater violence than ever. Piccini was brought to Paris by the
+ Neapolitan ambassador. The old cries were heard in a shriller key than
+ before. Pamphlets, broadsheets, sarcasms flew over Paris from every
+ side.</p>
+
+ <p>Was music only to flatter the ear, or was it to paint the passions
+ in all their energy, to harrow the soul, to raise men's courage, to
+ form citizens and heroes? The coffee-houses were thrown into dire
+ confusion, and literary societies were rent by fatal discord. Even
+ dinner-parties breathed only constraint and mistrust, and the
+ intimacies of a lifetime came to cruel end. <i>Rameau's Nephew</i> was
+ composed in the midst of the first part of this long campaign of a
+ quarter of a century, and its seems to have been revised by its author
+ in the midst of the second great episode. Diderot declares against the
+ school of Rameau and Lulli. That he should do so was a part of his
+ general reaction in favour of what he called the natural, against the
+ artifice and affectation. Goethe has pointed out the inconsistency
+ between Diderot's sympathy for the less expressive kind of music, and
+ his usual vehement passion for the expressive in art. He truly
+ observes that Diderot's sympathy went in this way, because the novelty
+ and agitation seemed likely to break up the old, stiff, and abhorred
+ fashion, and to clear the ground afresh for other efforts.<a name=
+ "FNanchor_299_299" id="FNanchor_299_299"></a><a href=
+ "#Footnote_299_299" class="fnanchor">[299]</a></p>
+ <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+ <h2>END OF VOL. I.</h2>
+
+ <p><i>Printed by</i> R. &amp; R. CLARK, LIMITED, <i>Edinburgh</i>.</p>
+ <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+ <h2><a name="FOOTNOTES" id="FOOTNOTES"></a>FOOTNOTES</h2>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i>,
+  xviii. 505.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i>,
+  xviii. 364.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i>
+  379.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i>, i.
+  30.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a>
+  <i>Wahlverwandschaften</i>, pt. ii. ch. vii. The reader will do well
+  to consult the philosophical estimate of the function of the man of
+  letters given by Comte, <i>Philosophie Positive</i>, v. 512, vi. 192,
+  287. The best contemporary account of the principles and policy of
+  the men of letters in the eighteenth century is to be found in
+  Condorcet's <i>Esquisse d'un Tableau, etc.</i>, pp. 187-189 (ed.
+  1847).</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Naigeon, p.
+  24.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i>, xix.
+  162.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i>, xix.
+  89.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i>, xix.
+  93.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i>, i.
+  xlviii.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> Marmontel,
+  <i>Mém.</i>, vol. ii. b. vii. p. 315.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> Morellet,
+  <i>Mém.</i>, i. p. 29.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i>, i.
+  xlviii.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> xix.
+  55.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i>,
+  xviii. 376.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> Madame de
+  Vandeul says 1744. But M. Jal (<i>Dict. Crit.</i>, 495) reproduces
+  the certificate of the marriage. Perhaps we may charitably hope that
+  Diderot himself is equally mistaken, when in later years he sets down
+  a disreputable adventure to 1744. (<i>Œuv.</i>, xix. 85.)</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> For an account
+  of Madame de Puisieux in her later years, see Mdme. Roland's
+  <i>Memoirs</i>, i. 156.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> Sainte Beuve,
+  <i>Causeries</i>, ix. 136.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i>,
+  xix. 159. See also <i>Salons</i>, 1767, No, 118.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> <i>Les Règnes
+  de Claud et de Néron</i>, § 79.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> Account of
+  Diderot by Meister, printed in Grimm's <i>Correspondence
+  Littéraire</i> xiii. 202-211.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> Grétry, quoted
+  in Genin's <i>Œuv. choisies de Diderot</i>, 42.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> Marmontel,
+  <i>Mém</i>., bk. vii. vol. ii. 312.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> Plato,
+  <i>Theages</i>, 130, c.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> Art.
+  <i>Encyclopédie</i>.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> See Barbier's
+  Journal, iv. 166.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> The book was
+  among those found in the possession of the unfortunate La Barre.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> Honegger's
+  <i>Kritische Geschichte der französischen Cultureinflüsse in den
+  letzten Jahrhunderten</i>, pp. 267-273.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> "Es ist nicht
+  gleichgültig ob eine Folge grosser Gedanken in frischer
+  Ursprünglichkeit auf die Zeitgenossen wirkt, oder ob sie zu einer
+  Mixtur mit reichlichem Zusatz überlieferter Vorurtheile verarbeitet
+  ist. Ebensowenig ist est gleichgültig welcher Stimmung, welchem
+  Zustande der Geister eine neue Lehre begegnet. Man darf aber kühn
+  behaupten, das für die volle durchführung der von Newton angebahnten
+  Weltanschauung weder eine günstigere Naturanlage, noch eine
+  günstigere Stimmung getroffen werden konnte, als die der Franzosen im
+  18. Jahrhundert." (Lange's <i>Gesch. d. Materialismus</i>, i. 303.)
+  But the writer, like most historians of opinion, does not dwell
+  sufficiently on the co-operation of external social conditions with
+  the progress of logical inference.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> See Montgeron's
+  <i>La Verité des Miracles de M. de Pâris démontrée</i> (1737)—an
+  interesting contribution to the pathology of the human mind.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> Barbier, 168,
+  244, etc.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> <i>Pensées
+  Philosophiques</i>, xviii.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> On this, see
+  Lange, i. 294.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> <i>Pensées
+  Philosophiques. Œuv.</i>, i. 128, 129.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i>,
+  xix. 87. Grimm, Supp. 148.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> Volney, in a
+  book that was famous in its day, <i>Les Ruines, ou Méditation sur les
+  révolutions des empires</i> (1791), resorted to a slight difference
+  of method. Instead of leaving the pretensions of the various creeds
+  to cancel one another, he invented a rather striking scene, in which
+  the priests of each creed are made to listen to the professions of
+  their rival, and then inveigh against his superstition and
+  inconsistency. The assumption on which Diderot's argument rests is,
+  that as so many different creeds all make the same exclusive claim,
+  the claim is equally false throughout. Volney's argument turns more
+  directly on the merits, and implies that all religions are equally
+  morbid or pathological products, because they all lead to conduct
+  condemned by their own most characteristic maxims. Volney's concrete
+  presentation of comparative religion was highly effective for
+  destructive purposes, though it would now be justly thought
+  inadequate. (See <i>Œuv. de Volney</i>, i. 109, etc.)</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> See on this,
+  Lange, ii. 308.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> <i>De la
+  Suffisance de la Religion Naturelle</i>, § 5.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> It is well to
+  remember that torture was not abolished in France until the
+  Revolution. A Catholic writer makes the following judicious remark:
+  "We cannot study the eighteenth century without being struck by the
+  immoral consequences that inevitably followed for the population of
+  Paris from the frequency and the hideous details of criminal
+  executions. In reading the journals of the time, we are amazed at the
+  place taken in popular life by the scenes of the Grève. It was the
+  theatre of the day. The gibbet and the wheel did their work almost
+  periodically, and people looked on while poor wretches writhed in
+  slow agony all day long. Sometimes the programme was varied by
+  decapitation and even by the stake. Torture had its legends and its
+  heroes—the everyday talk of the generation which, having begun by
+  seeing Damiens torn by red-hot pincers, was to end by rending Foulon
+  limb from limb." (Carné, <i>Monarchie française au 18ième Siècle</i>,
+  p. 493.)</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> <i>Lettres sur
+  les Anglais</i>, xxiii.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> <i>Essai sur le
+  Mérite</i>, I. ii. § 3. <i>Œue.,</i> i. 33.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> "Shaftesbury is
+  one of the most important apparitions of the eighteenth century. All
+  the greatest spirits of that time, not only in England, but also
+  Leibnitz, Voltaire, Diderot, Lessing, Mendelssohn, Wieland, and
+  Herder, drew the strongest nourishment from him." (Hettner,
+  <i>Literaturgeschichte des 18ten Jahrhunderts: ler Theil</i>. 188.)
+  See also Lange's <i>Gesch. des Materialismus,</i> i. 306, etc. An
+  excellent account of Shaftesbury is given by Mr. Leslie Stephen, in
+  his <i>Essays on Free-thinking and Plain-speaking</i>.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> <i>Œuv</i>., i.
+  xlvi.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> Jobez,
+  <i>France sous Louis XV</i>., ii. 373. There were, in 1725, 24,000
+  houses, 20,000 carriages, and 120,000 horses. (Martin's <i>Hist, de
+  France</i>, xv. 116.)</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> The records of
+  Paris in this century contain more than one illustration of the
+  turbulence of this odious army of lackeys. Barbier, i. 118. For the
+  way in which their insolence was fostered, see Saint-Simon, xii. 354,
+  etc. The number of lackeys retained seems to have been
+  extraordinarily great in proportion to the total of annual
+  expenditure, and this is a curious point in the manners of the time.
+  See Voltaire, <i>Dict. Phil</i>, § v. Économie Domestique (liv.
+  182).</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> Duclos, <i>Mém.
+  secrets sur le Règne de Louis XV</i>., iii 306.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> <i>Œuv</i>.,
+  xix. 91.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> <i>Ib</i>. p.
+  130.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> <i>Prom, du
+  Sceptique. Œuv</i>., i. 229.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> "If there is a
+  God, he is infinitely incomprehensible, since, being without parts or
+  limits, he has no relation to us: we are therefore incapable of
+  knowing what he is, or if he is. That being so, who shall venture to
+  undertake the solution of the question? Not we, at any rate, who have
+  no relation to him." <i>Pensees</i>, II. iii. 1.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> P. 182.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> P. 223.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> Barbazan's
+  <i>Fabliaux et Contes</i>, iii. 409 (ed. 1808). The learned
+  Barbazan's first edition was published in 1756, and so Diderot may
+  well have heard some of the contents of the work then in
+  progress.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> Naigeon.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> In my
+  <i>Rousseau</i>, p. 243 (new ed.)</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a>
+  <i>Voltaire</i>, p. 149 (new ed., Globe 8vo).</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> Joubert.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> Hettner,
+  <i>Literaiurgeschichte des 18ten Jahrhunderts</i>, ii. 301.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i>,
+  ii. 260, etc.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i>,
+  ii. 258, 259. <i>De l'Essai sur les Femmes, par Thomas</i>. See
+  Grimm's <i>Corr. Lit.</i>, vii. 451, where the book is disparaged;
+  and viii. 1, where Diderot's view of it is given. Thomas (1732-85)
+  belonged to the philosophical party, but not to the militant section
+  of it. He was a serious and orderly person in his life, and enjoyed
+  the closest friendship with Madame Necker. His enthusiasm for virtue,
+  justice, and freedom, expressed with much magniloquence, made him an
+  idol in the respectable circle which Madame Necker gathered round
+  her. He has been justly, though perhaps harshly, described as a
+  "valetudinarian Grandison." (Albert's <i>Lit. Française au 18ième
+  Siècle</i>, p. 423.)</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> <i>Elémens de
+  la Philosophie de Newton</i>, Pt. II. ch. vii. Berkeley himself only
+  refers once to Cheselden's case: <i>Theory of Vision vindicated</i>,
+  § 71. Professor Fraser, in his important edition of Berkeley's works
+  (i. 444), reproduces from the <i>Philosophical Transactions</i> the
+  original account of the operation, which is unfortunately much less
+  clear and definite than Voltaire's emphasised version would make it,
+  though its purport is distinct enough.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> <i>Essai sur
+  l'Origine des Connaissances humaines</i>, I. § 6.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> <i>Let. sur les
+  Aveugles</i>, 323, 324. Condorcet attaches a higher value to
+  Cheselden's operation. <i>Œuv.</i>, ii. 121.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> Dr. M'Cosh
+  <i>(Exam. of J. S. Mill's Philosophy</i>, p. 163) quotes what seems
+  to be the best reported case, by a Dr. Franz, of Leipsic; and Prof.
+  Fraser, in the appendix to Berkeley (<i>loc. cit.</i>), quotes
+  another good case by Mr. Nunnely. See also Mill's <i>Exam. of
+  Hamilton</i>, p. 288 (3d ed.)</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a>
+  <i>Confessions</i>, II, vii.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_66_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a> Darwin, <i>The
+  Expression of the Emotions in Men and Animals</i>, c. xiii. p. 312,
+  and also pp. 335-337. This fact, so far as it goes, seems to make
+  against the theory of transmitted sentiments.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_67_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a> Locke answered
+  that the man would not distinguish the cube from the sphere, until he
+  had identified by actual touch the source of his former tactual
+  impression with the object making a given visual impression.
+  Condillac, while making just objections to the terms in which
+  Molyneux propounded the question, answered it different from Locke.
+  Diderot expresses his own opinion thus: "I think that when the eyes
+  of the born-blind are opened for the first time to the light, he will
+  perceive nothing at all; that some time will be necessary for his eye
+  to make experiments for itself; but that it will make these
+  experiments itself, and in its own way, and without the help of
+  touch." This is in harmony with the modern doctrine, that there is an
+  inherited aptitude of structure (in the eye, for instance), but that
+  experience is an essential condition to the development and
+  perfecting of this aptitude.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_68_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a> A very
+  intelligent English translation of the <i>Letter on the Blind</i> was
+  published in 1773. For some reason or other, Diderot is described on
+  the title-page as Physician to His most Christian Majesty.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_69_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a> <i>Œuv</i>., i.
+  308.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_70_70" id="Footnote_70_70"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_70_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a> Pp. 309,
+  310.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_71_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a> P. 311.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_72_72" id="Footnote_72_72"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_72_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a> <i>Corr.</i>,
+  June 1749.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_73_73" id="Footnote_73_73"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_73_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a> See <i>Critical
+  Miscellanies: First Series</i>.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_74_74" id="Footnote_74_74"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_74_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a> Diderot to
+  Voltaire, 1749. <i>Œuv</i>., xix. 421.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_75_75" id="Footnote_75_75"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_75_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a> Diderot to
+  Voltaire, 1749. <i>Œuv</i>., xix. 421.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_76_76" id="Footnote_76_76"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_76_76"><span class="label">[76]</span></a> P. 294.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_77_77" id="Footnote_77_77"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_77_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a> Lewes's
+  <i>Hist. Philos</i>., ii. 342.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_78_78" id="Footnote_78_78"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_78_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a> Rosenkranz, i.
+  102.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_79_79" id="Footnote_79_79"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_79_79"><span class="label">[79]</span></a> Tylor's
+  <i>Researches into the early history of mankind</i>, chaps. ii. and
+  iii.; Lubbock's <i>Origin of Civilization</i>, chap. ix.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_80_80" id="Footnote_80_80"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_80_80"><span class="label">[80]</span></a> Madame Dupré de
+  Saint Maur, who had found favour in the eyes of the Count d'Argenson.
+  D'Argenson, younger brother of the Marquis, who had been dismissed in
+  1747, was in power from 1743 to 1757. Notwithstanding his alleged
+  share in Diderot's imprisonment, he was a tolerably steady protector
+  of the philosophical party.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_81_81" id="Footnote_81_81"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_81_81"><span class="label">[81]</span></a> Barbier, iv.
+  337.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_82_82" id="Footnote_82_82"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_82_82"><span class="label">[82]</span></a> There is a
+  picture of Berryer, under the name of Orgon in that very curious
+  book, <i>L'Ecole de l'Homme</i>, ii. 73.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_83_83" id="Footnote_83_83"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_83_83"><span class="label">[83]</span></a> Pieces given in
+  Diderot's Works, xx. 121-123.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_84_84" id="Footnote_84_84"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_84_84"><span class="label">[84]</span></a> Naigeon, p.
+  131.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_85_85" id="Footnote_85_85"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_85_85"><span class="label">[85]</span></a> Voltaire's
+  <i>Corr</i>. July and Aug. 1749.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_86_86" id="Footnote_86_86"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_86_86"><span class="label">[86]</span></a> <i>Conf</i>.,
+  II. viii.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_87_87" id="Footnote_87_87"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_87_87"><span class="label">[87]</span></a> Michelet's
+  <i>Louis XV</i>., p. 258.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_88_88" id="Footnote_88_88"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_88_88"><span class="label">[88]</span></a> See the present
+  author's <i>Rousseau</i>, vol. i. p. 134 (Globe 8vo ed.)</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_89_89" id="Footnote_89_89"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_89_89"><span class="label">[89]</span></a> For the two
+  petitions of the booksellers to D'Argenson praying for Diderot's
+  liberty, see M. Assézat's preliminary notice. <i>Œuv</i>., xiii. 112,
+  etc.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_90_90" id="Footnote_90_90"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_90_90"><span class="label">[90]</span></a> Jourdain's
+  <i>Recherches sur les traductions latines d'Aristote</i>, p. 325.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_91_91" id="Footnote_91_91"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_91_91"><span class="label">[91]</span></a> <i>Lit. of
+  Europe</i>, pt. i. ch. ii. § 39.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_92_92" id="Footnote_92_92"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_92_92"><span class="label">[92]</span></a> Whewell's
+  <i>Hist. Induc. Sci.</i>. xii. c. 7.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_93_93" id="Footnote_93_93"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_93_93"><span class="label">[93]</span></a> Fr. Roger
+  Bacon; J.S. Brewer's Pref. pp 57, 63.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_94_94" id="Footnote_94_94"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_94_94"><span class="label">[94]</span></a> Leibnitii,
+  Opera v. 184.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_95_95" id="Footnote_95_95"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_95_95"><span class="label">[95]</span></a> <i>Œuv. de
+  D'Alembert</i>, i. 63.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_96_96" id="Footnote_96_96"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_96_96"><span class="label">[96]</span></a> <i>Mém.</i>
+  pour J.P.F. Luneau de Boisjermain, 4to, Paris, 1771. See also
+  Diderot's <i>Prospectus</i>, "La traduction entière de Chambers nous
+  a passé sous les yeux," etc.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_97_97" id="Footnote_97_97"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_97_97"><span class="label">[97]</span></a> Biog.
+  Universelle, <i>s.v.</i></p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_98_98" id="Footnote_98_98"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_98_98"><span class="label">[98]</span></a> Michelet,
+  <i>Louis XV.</i>, 258. D'Aguesseau (1668-1751) has left one piece
+  which ought to be extricated from the thirteen quartos of his
+  works—his memoir of his father (<i>Œuv.</i>, xiii.) This is one of
+  those records of solid and elevated character, which do more to
+  refresh and invigorate the reader than a whole library of religious
+  or ethical exhortations can do. It has the loftiness, the refined
+  austerity, the touching impressiveness of Tacitus's <i>Agricola</i>
+  or Condorcet's <i>Turgot</i>, together with a certain grave sweetness
+  that was almost peculiar to the Jansenist school of the seventeenth
+  century.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_99_99" id="Footnote_99_99"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_99_99"><span class="label">[99]</span></a> A short
+  estimate of D'Alembert's principal scientific pieces, by M. Bertram,
+  is to be found in the <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, for October
+  1865.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_100_100" id="Footnote_100_100"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_100_100"><span class="label">[100]</span></a> <i>Œuv. de
+  D'Alembert</i>, iv. 367.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_101_101" id="Footnote_101_101"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_101_101"><span class="label">[101]</span></a> <i>Œuv. de
+  J. Ph. Roland</i>, i. 230 (ed. 1800).</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_102_102" id="Footnote_102_102"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_102_102"><span class="label">[102]</span></a> <i>Essai sur
+  la Société des Gens de Lettres et des Grands</i>, etc. <i>Œuv</i>.,
+  iv. 372. "Write," he says, "as if you loved glory; in conduct, act as
+  if it were indifferent to you." Compare, with reference to the
+  passage in the text, Duclos's remark (<i>Consid. sur les Mœurs</i>,
+  ch. xi.): "The man in power commands, but the intelligent govern,
+  because in time they form public opinion, and that sooner or later
+  subjugates every kind of despotism." Only partially true.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_103_103" id="Footnote_103_103"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_103_103"><span class="label">[103]</span></a> <i>Pensées
+  Philos.</i>, § 26.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_104_104" id="Footnote_104_104"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_104_104"><span class="label">[104]</span></a> <i>Phil.
+  Pos.</i>, v. 520. <i>Polit. Pos.</i>, iii. 584.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_105_105" id="Footnote_105_105"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_105_105"><span class="label">[105]</span></a> See Pref. to
+  vol. iii.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_106_106" id="Footnote_106_106"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_106_106"><span class="label">[106]</span></a> For
+  instance, see Pref. to vol. vi.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_107_107" id="Footnote_107_107"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_107_107"><span class="label">[107]</span></a> <i>Siècle de
+  Louis XV</i>., ch. xliii.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_108_108" id="Footnote_108_108"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_108_108"><span class="label">[108]</span></a> Grimm,
+  <i>Corr. Lit.</i>, i. 273. Diderot, <i>Œuv</i>., iv. 15.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_109_109" id="Footnote_109_109"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_109_109"><span class="label">[109]</span></a>
+  <i>Avertissement</i> to vol. vi.; also to vol. vii. Turgot's articles
+  were Etymiologie, Existence, Expansibilité, Foires, Fondations. The
+  text of these is wrongly inserted among Diderot's contributions to
+  the Encyclopædia, in the new edition of his Works, xv. 12.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_110_110" id="Footnote_110_110"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_110_110"><span class="label">[110]</span></a> Condorcet's
+  <i>Vie de Turgot</i>.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_111_111" id="Footnote_111_111"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_111_111"><span class="label">[111]</span></a> Pref. to
+  vol. iii. (1752), and to vol. vi. (1756).</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_112_112" id="Footnote_112_112"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_112_112"><span class="label">[112]</span></a> Pref. to
+  vol. ii.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_113_113" id="Footnote_113_113"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_113_113"><span class="label">[113]</span></a> Grimm,
+  <i>Corr. Lit.</i>, i. 130. Forbonnais's chief work is his
+  <i>Becherches et Considérations sur les finances de la
+  France</i>.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_114_114" id="Footnote_114_114"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_114_114"><span class="label">[114]</span></a>
+  <i>Avert.</i> to vol. ii.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_115_115" id="Footnote_115_115"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_115_115"><span class="label">[115]</span></a> Nov. 10,
+  1760, xix. 24. Also, Oct. 7, 1761, xix. 35.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_116_116" id="Footnote_116_116"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_116_116"><span class="label">[116]</span></a> See also
+  Preface to vol. iii.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_117_117" id="Footnote_117_117"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_117_117"><span class="label">[117]</span></a>
+  <i>Avert.</i> to vol. vi., and <i>s. v. Fontange</i>. Grimm, i.
+  451.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_118_118" id="Footnote_118_118"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_118_118"><span class="label">[118]</span></a> <i>Corresp.
+  avec D'Alembert</i> (<i>Œuv.</i>, lxxv.), Sept. 1755, Feb. 1757,
+  etc.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_119_119" id="Footnote_119_119"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_119_119"><span class="label">[119]</span></a> Dec. 22,
+  1757.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_120_120" id="Footnote_120_120"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_120_120"><span class="label">[120]</span></a> May 24,
+  1757.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_121_121" id="Footnote_121_121"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_121_121"><span class="label">[121]</span></a> Dec. 13,
+  1756; April 1756.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_122_122" id="Footnote_122_122"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_122_122"><span class="label">[122]</span></a> July 21,
+  1757.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_123_123" id="Footnote_123_123"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_123_123"><span class="label">[123]</span></a> Article
+  <i>Encyclopédie</i>.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_124_124" id="Footnote_124_124"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_124_124"><span class="label">[124]</span></a> To Voltaire,
+  Feb. 15, 1757.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_125_125" id="Footnote_125_125"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_125_125"><span class="label">[125]</span></a> Hettner's
+  <i>Literaturgesch, des 18ten Jahrhunderts</i>, ii. 277.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_126_126" id="Footnote_126_126"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_126_126"><span class="label">[126]</span></a> Art.
+  <i>Encyclopédie</i>.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_127_127" id="Footnote_127_127"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_127_127"><span class="label">[127]</span></a>
+  <i>Prospectus</i>.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_128_128" id="Footnote_128_128"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_128_128"><span class="label">[128]</span></a> Barbier, v.
+  151, 153.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_129_129" id="Footnote_129_129"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_129_129"><span class="label">[129]</span></a> Diderot to
+  Voland, <i>Œuv</i>., xviii. 361. Carlyle's <i>Frederick,</i> bk.
+  xviii. ch. xi.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_130_130" id="Footnote_130_130"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_130_130"><span class="label">[130]</span></a> <i>Apologie
+  de l' Abbe de Prades. Œuv.,</i> i. 482.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_131_131" id="Footnote_131_131"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_131_131"><span class="label">[131]</span></a> See Jobez,
+  i. 358.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_132_132" id="Footnote_132_132"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_132_132"><span class="label">[132]</span></a> xix.
+  425.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_133_133" id="Footnote_133_133"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_133_133"><span class="label">[133]</span></a> Barbier, v.
+  160.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_134_134" id="Footnote_134_134"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_134_134"><span class="label">[134]</span></a> <i>Ib</i>.
+  v. 169.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_135_135" id="Footnote_135_135"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_135_135"><span class="label">[135]</span></a> Grimm,
+  <i>Corr. Lit</i>., i. 81. Barbier, <i>v</i>. 170.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_136_136" id="Footnote_136_136"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_136_136"><span class="label">[136]</span></a>
+  <i>Avert.</i>, to vol. iii. <i>Œuv. de D'Alembert</i>, iv. 410.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_137_137" id="Footnote_137_137"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_137_137"><span class="label">[137]</span></a> Barbier, v.
+  170. Grimm, <i>Corr. Lit.</i>, i. 201; <i>Ib.</i> ii. 197.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_138_138" id="Footnote_138_138"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_138_138"><span class="label">[138]</span></a> Hardy,
+  quoted by Aubertin, 407, 408.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_139_139" id="Footnote_139_139"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_139_139"><span class="label">[139]</span></a> <i>Corr.
+  Lit.</i>, ii. 271.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_140_140" id="Footnote_140_140"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_140_140"><span class="label">[140]</span></a> To
+  D'Alembert, Dec. 29, 1757; Jan. 1758.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_141_141" id="Footnote_141_141"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_141_141"><span class="label">[141]</span></a> For a short
+  account of Helvétius's book, see a later chapter.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_142_142" id="Footnote_142_142"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_142_142"><span class="label">[142]</span></a> <i>Corr.
+  Lit.</i>, ii. 292, 293.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_143_143" id="Footnote_143_143"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_143_143"><span class="label">[143]</span></a> Barbier,
+  vii. 125-142.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_144_144" id="Footnote_144_144"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_144_144"><span class="label">[144]</span></a> Lacretelle's
+  <i>France pendant le 18ième Siècle</i>, iii. 89.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_145_145" id="Footnote_145_145"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_145_145"><span class="label">[145]</span></a> Jobez, ii.
+  464, 538.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_146_146" id="Footnote_146_146"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_146_146"><span class="label">[146]</span></a> See
+  <i>Rousseau</i>, vol. i. chaps, vii. and ix. (Globe 8vo ed.)</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_147_147" id="Footnote_147_147"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_147_147"><span class="label">[147]</span></a> <i>Louis XV.
+  et Louis XVI.</i>, p. 50.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_148_148" id="Footnote_148_148"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_148_148"><span class="label">[148]</span></a> Jan. 11,
+  1758. Jan. 20, 1758. Diderot to Mdlle. Voland, Oct. 11, 1759. See
+  the following chapter.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_149_149" id="Footnote_149_149"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_149_149"><span class="label">[149]</span></a> Voltaire to
+  D'Alembert, Jan. to May 1758. Voltaire to Diderot, Jan. 1758.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_150_150" id="Footnote_150_150"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_150_150"><span class="label">[150]</span></a> Diderot to
+  Voltaire, Feb. 19, 1758, xix. 452.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_151_151" id="Footnote_151_151"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_151_151"><span class="label">[151]</span></a> To Voland,
+  <i>Œuv.</i>, xix. 146.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_152_152" id="Footnote_152_152"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_152_152"><span class="label">[152]</span></a> <i>Corr.
+  Lit.</i>, vii. 146.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_153_153" id="Footnote_153_153"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_153_153"><span class="label">[153]</span></a> <i>Corr.
+  Lit.</i>, vii. 146.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_154_154" id="Footnote_154_154"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_154_154"><span class="label">[154]</span></a> <i>Œuv. de
+  Voltaire</i>. Published sometimes among <i>Facéties</i>, sometimes
+  among <i>Mélanges</i>.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_155_155" id="Footnote_155_155"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_155_155"><span class="label">[155]</span></a> See <i>Œuv.
+  Choisies de Jean Reynaud</i>, reprinted in 1866. The article on
+  <i>Encyclopèdie</i> (vol. i.) is an interesting attempt to vindicate
+  Cartesian principles of classification.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_156_156" id="Footnote_156_156"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_156_156"><span class="label">[156]</span></a> See fly-leaf
+  of vol. xxviii.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_157_157" id="Footnote_157_157"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_157_157"><span class="label">[157]</span></a> <i>Mém.</i>,
+  ii. 115. Grimm, vii. 145.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_158_158" id="Footnote_158_158"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_158_158"><span class="label">[158]</span></a> De Maistre
+  says that the reputation of Bacon does not really go farther back
+  than the Encyclopædia, and that no true discoverer either knew him or
+  leaned on him for support. (<i>Examen de la Phil. de Bacon</i>, ii.
+  110.) Diderot says: "I think I have taught my fellow-citizens to
+  esteem and read Bacon; people have turned over the pages of this
+  profound author more since the last five or six years than has ever
+  been the case before" (xiv. 494). In Professor Fowler's careful and
+  elaborate edition of the Novum Organum (<i>Introduct.</i>, p. 104),
+  he disputes the statement of Montuola and others, that the celebrity
+  of Bacon dates from the Encyclopædia. All turns upon what we mean by
+  celebrity. What the Encyclopædists certainly did was to raise Bacon,
+  for a time, to the popular throne from which Voltaire's Newtonianism
+  had pushed Descartes. Mr. Fowler traces a chain of Baconian
+  tradition, no doubt, but he perhaps surrenders nearly as much as is
+  claimed when he admits that "the patronage of Voltaire and the
+  Encyclopædists did much to extend the study of Bacon's writings,
+  besides producing a considerable controversy as to his true meaning
+  on many questions of philosophy and theology."</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_159_159" id="Footnote_159_159"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_159_159"><span class="label">[159]</span></a> See above,
+  p. 62, <i>note</i>.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_160_160" id="Footnote_160_160"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_160_160"><span class="label">[160]</span></a> D'Alembert
+  was not afraid to contend against the great captain of the age, that
+  the military spirit of Lewis XIV. had been a great curse to Europe.
+  He showed a true appreciation of Frederick's character and conception
+  of his duties as a ruler, in believing that the King of Prussia would
+  rather have had a hundred thousand labourers more, and as many
+  soldiers fewer, if his situation had allowed it. <i>Corresp. avec le
+  roi de Prusse</i>, <i>Œuv.</i>, v. 305.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_161_161" id="Footnote_161_161"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_161_161"><span class="label">[161]</span></a> See Essay on
+  Turgot in my <i>Critical Miscellanies</i>, <i>Second Series</i>.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_162_162" id="Footnote_162_162"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_162_162"><span class="label">[162]</span></a> Such, as
+  that their feudal rights should be confirmed; that none but nobles
+  should carry arms, or be eligible for the army; that
+  <i>lettres-de-cachet</i> should continue; that the press should not
+  be free; that the wine trade should not be free internally or for
+  export; that breaking up wastes and enclosing commons should be
+  prohibited; that the old arrangement of the militia should
+  remain.—Arthur Young's <i>France</i>, ch. xxi. p. 607.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_163_163" id="Footnote_163_163"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_163_163"><span class="label">[163]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i>
+  ch. xxi.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_164_164" id="Footnote_164_164"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_164_164"><span class="label">[164]</span></a> <i>Critical
+  Miscellanies</i>, <i>Second Series</i>, p. 202.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_165_165" id="Footnote_165_165"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_165_165"><span class="label">[165]</span></a> <i>Travels
+  in France</i>, p. 600.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_166_166" id="Footnote_166_166"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_166_166"><span class="label">[166]</span></a> <i>Travels
+  in France</i>, i. 63.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_167_167" id="Footnote_167_167"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_167_167"><span class="label">[167]</span></a> Rosenkranz,
+  i. 219.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_168_168" id="Footnote_168_168"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_168_168"><span class="label">[168]</span></a>
+  <i>Avert</i>. to vol. iii</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_169_169" id="Footnote_169_169"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_169_169"><span class="label">[169]</span></a> Diderot,
+  <i>Œuv.</i>, iv. 24.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_170_170" id="Footnote_170_170"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_170_170"><span class="label">[170]</span></a> Diderot's
+  <i>Leben</i>, i. 157.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_171_171" id="Footnote_171_171"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_171_171"><span class="label">[171]</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i>,
+  xx. 132.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_172_172" id="Footnote_172_172"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_172_172"><span class="label">[172]</span></a> The writer
+  was one Romilly, who had been elected a minister of one of the French
+  Protestant churches in London. See <i>Memoirs of Sir Samuel
+  Romilly</i>, vol. i.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_173_173" id="Footnote_173_173"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_173_173"><span class="label">[173]</span></a> I have no
+  space to quote an interesting page in this article on the
+  characteristics and the varying destinies of genius. "We must rank in
+  this class Pindar, Æschylus, Moses, Jesus Christ, Mahomet,
+  Shakespeare, Roger Bacon, and Paracelsus." xvii. 265-267.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_174_174" id="Footnote_174_174"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_174_174"><span class="label">[174]</span></a> The same
+  idea is found still more ardently expressed in one of his letters to
+  Mdlle. de Voland (Oct. 15, 1759, xviii. 408), where he defends the
+  eagerness of those who have loved one another during life, to be
+  placed side by side after death.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_175_175" id="Footnote_175_175"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_175_175"><span class="label">[175]</span></a> xiv. 32.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_176_176" id="Footnote_176_176"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_176_176"><span class="label">[176]</span></a> <i>S.v.</i>
+  Sarrasins, xvii. 82. See also xviii. 429, for Diderot's admiration of
+  Sadi.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_177_177" id="Footnote_177_177"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_177_177"><span class="label">[177]</span></a> S. v.
+  <i>Pyrrhonienne</i>.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_178_178" id="Footnote_178_178"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_178_178"><span class="label">[178]</span></a> <i>E.g.</i>
+  in the article on <i>Plaisir</i>, xvi. p. 298.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_179_179" id="Footnote_179_179"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_179_179"><span class="label">[179]</span></a> To
+  Damilaville, 1766, xix. 477.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_180_180" id="Footnote_180_180"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_180_180"><span class="label">[180]</span></a> xx. 34.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_181_181" id="Footnote_181_181"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_181_181"><span class="label">[181]</span></a> xvi.
+  280.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_182_182" id="Footnote_182_182"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_182_182"><span class="label">[182]</span></a> See also
+  article <i>Indépendance</i>.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_183_183" id="Footnote_183_183"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_183_183"><span class="label">[183]</span></a> iv. 93.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_184_184" id="Footnote_184_184"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_184_184"><span class="label">[184]</span></a> The reader
+  will find abundant information and criticism upon the Wolffian
+  Philosophy in Professor Edward Caird's <i>Critical Account of the
+  Philosophy of Kant</i>, recently published at Glasgow.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_185_185" id="Footnote_185_185"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_185_185"><span class="label">[185]</span></a> xvi. 491,
+  492.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_186_186" id="Footnote_186_186"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_186_186"><span class="label">[186]</span></a> There are
+  casual criticisms on Spinosa in the articles on <i>Identity</i> and
+  <i>Liberty</i>.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_187_187" id="Footnote_187_187"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_187_187"><span class="label">[187]</span></a> xv. 501.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_188_188" id="Footnote_188_188"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_188_188"><span class="label">[188]</span></a> xix. 435,
+  436.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_189_189" id="Footnote_189_189"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_189_189"><span class="label">[189]</span></a> See below,
+  vol. ii.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_190_190" id="Footnote_190_190"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_190_190"><span class="label">[190]</span></a> S.v.
+  <i>Luxe</i>, xvi. 23.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_191_191" id="Footnote_191_191"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_191_191"><span class="label">[191]</span></a> As an
+  illustration how much these ideas were in the air, the reader may
+  refer to a passage in Sédaine's popular comedy, <i>The Philosopher
+  without knowing it</i> (1765), Act II. sc. 4. Vanderk, among other
+  things, says of the merchant: "Ce n'est pas un temple, ce n'est pas
+  une seule nation qu'il sert; il les sert toutes, et en est servi:
+  c'est l'homme de l'univers. Quelques particuliers audacieux font
+  armer les rois, la guerre s'allume, tout s'embrase, l'Europe est
+  divisée: mais ce négociant anglais, hollandais, russe ou chinois,
+  n'en est pas moins l'ami de mon coeur: nous sommes sur la superficie
+  de la terre autant de fils de soie qui lient ensemble les nations, et
+  les ramènent à la paix par la nécessité du commerce; voila, mon fils,
+  ce que c'est qu'un honnête négociant."</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_192_192" id="Footnote_192_192"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_192_192"><span class="label">[192]</span></a> The younger
+  sister of Diderot's Sophie.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_193_193" id="Footnote_193_193"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_193_193"><span class="label">[193]</span></a> xviii.
+  454.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_194_194" id="Footnote_194_194"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_194_194"><span class="label">[194]</span></a> See below,
+  the chapter on <i>Rameau's Nephew</i>.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_195_195" id="Footnote_195_195"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_195_195"><span class="label">[195]</span></a> Nov. 10,
+  1770; xix. 22.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_196_196" id="Footnote_196_196"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_196_196"><span class="label">[196]</span></a> See, for
+  instance, xix. 81, 91, 129, 133, 145, etc.—passages which Mr. Carlyle
+  and Rosenkranz have either overlooked, or else, without any good
+  reason, disbelieved.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_197_197" id="Footnote_197_197"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_197_197"><span class="label">[197]</span></a> xviii.
+  293.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_198_198" id="Footnote_198_198"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_198_198"><span class="label">[198]</span></a> xix. 46.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_199_199" id="Footnote_199_199"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_199_199"><span class="label">[199]</span></a> xix. 84. See
+  also 326.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_200_200" id="Footnote_200_200"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_200_200"><span class="label">[200]</span></a> xix. 137,
+  341, etc.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_201_201" id="Footnote_201_201"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_201_201"><span class="label">[201]</span></a> xviii.
+  535.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_202_202" id="Footnote_202_202"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_202_202"><span class="label">[202]</span></a> xviii. 507,
+  etc.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_203_203" id="Footnote_203_203"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_203_203"><span class="label">[203]</span></a> xviii. 526,
+  531.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_204_204" id="Footnote_204_204"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_204_204"><span class="label">[204]</span></a> Nov. 2,
+  1759; xviii. 431.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_205_205" id="Footnote_205_205"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_205_205"><span class="label">[205]</span></a> xix. 82.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_206_206" id="Footnote_206_206"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_206_206"><span class="label">[206]</span></a> xix.
+  139.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_207_207" id="Footnote_207_207"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_207_207"><span class="label">[207]</span></a> xix.
+  107.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_208_208" id="Footnote_208_208"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_208_208"><span class="label">[208]</span></a> xix.
+  181.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_209_209" id="Footnote_209_209"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_209_209"><span class="label">[209]</span></a> xix. 81.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_210_210" id="Footnote_210_210"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_210_210"><span class="label">[210]</span></a> xix.
+  149.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_211_211" id="Footnote_211_211"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_211_211"><span class="label">[211]</span></a> xix. 90.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_212_212" id="Footnote_212_212"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_212_212"><span class="label">[212]</span></a> xix. 163,
+  164.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_213_213" id="Footnote_213_213"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_213_213"><span class="label">[213]</span></a> Sept. 20,
+  1765; xix. 179-187.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_214_214" id="Footnote_214_214"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_214_214"><span class="label">[214]</span></a> xviii. 476,
+  478.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_215_215" id="Footnote_215_215"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_215_215"><span class="label">[215]</span></a> xviii. 479.
+  Comte writes more seriously somewhat in the same sense: "For thirty
+  centuries the priestly castes of China, and still more of India, have
+  been watching our Western transition; to them it must appear mere
+  agitation, as puerile as it is tempestuous, with nothing to harmonise
+  its different phases but their common inroad upon unity." <i>Positive
+  Polity</i>, iv. 11 (English Translation)</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_216_216" id="Footnote_216_216"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_216_216"><span class="label">[216]</span></a> xix.
+  233.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_217_217" id="Footnote_217_217"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_217_217"><span class="label">[217]</span></a> Voltaire's
+  Satire on the Economists.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_218_218" id="Footnote_218_218"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_218_218"><span class="label">[218]</span></a> Oct. 8,
+  1768; xix. 832.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_219_219" id="Footnote_219_219"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_219_219"><span class="label">[219]</span></a> xviii.
+  509.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_220_220" id="Footnote_220_220"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_220_220"><span class="label">[220]</span></a> xviii.
+  513.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_221_221" id="Footnote_221_221"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_221_221"><span class="label">[221]</span></a> xviii.
+  511-513.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_222_222" id="Footnote_222_222"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_222_222"><span class="label">[222]</span></a> xix.
+  244.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_223_223" id="Footnote_223_223"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_223_223"><span class="label">[223]</span></a> xviii.
+  459.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_224_224" id="Footnote_224_224"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_224_224"><span class="label">[224]</span></a> xix.
+  259.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_225_225" id="Footnote_225_225"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_225_225"><span class="label">[225]</span></a> <i>Lettres
+  de Mdlle. de Lespinasse</i>, viii. p. 20. (Ed. Asse, 1876.)</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_226_226" id="Footnote_226_226"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_226_226"><span class="label">[226]</span></a> Aug. 1,
+  1769; xix. 365.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_227_227" id="Footnote_227_227"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_227_227"><span class="label">[227]</span></a> (1765-69)
+  xix. 381-412. Also p. 318.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_228_228" id="Footnote_228_228"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_228_228"><span class="label">[228]</span></a> June 1756;
+  xix. 433-436.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_229_229" id="Footnote_229_229"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_229_229"><span class="label">[229]</span></a> Aug. 1762;
+  xix. 112.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_230_230" id="Footnote_230_230"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_230_230"><span class="label">[230]</span></a> In
+  <i>Rousseau</i>, vol. i. ch. vii. (Globe 8vo, ed.)</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_231_231" id="Footnote_231_231"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_231_231"><span class="label">[231]</span></a> Dec. 1757;
+  xix. 446.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_232_232" id="Footnote_232_232"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_232_232"><span class="label">[232]</span></a> xix.
+  449.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_233_233" id="Footnote_233_233"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_233_233"><span class="label">[233]</span></a> Dec. 20,
+  1765; xix. 210.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_234_234" id="Footnote_234_234"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_234_234"><span class="label">[234]</span></a> See
+  <i>Rousseau</i>, vol. i. ch. vii. (Globe 8vo. ed.)</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_235_235" id="Footnote_235_235"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_235_235"><span class="label">[235]</span></a> Oct. 9,
+  1759; xviii. 397.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_236_236" id="Footnote_236_236"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_236_236"><span class="label">[236]</span></a> Nov. 6,
+  1760; xix. 17.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_237_237" id="Footnote_237_237"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_237_237"><span class="label">[237]</span></a> Sept. 17,
+  1761; xix. 47.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_238_238" id="Footnote_238_238"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_238_238"><span class="label">[238]</span></a> Sept. 17,
+  1769; xix. 320.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_239_239" id="Footnote_239_239"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_239_239"><span class="label">[239]</span></a> <i>Lettres
+  sur le Commerce de la Librairie</i>, xviii. 47.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_240_240" id="Footnote_240_240"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_240_240"><span class="label">[240]</span></a> See
+  <i>Rousseau</i>, vol. ii. ch. i. (Globe 8vo. ed.)</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_241_241" id="Footnote_241_241"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_241_241"><span class="label">[241]</span></a> Diderot's
+  <i>Lettre sur le Commerce de la Librairie</i> (1767). <i>Œuv.</i>,
+  xviii.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_242_242" id="Footnote_242_242"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_242_242"><span class="label">[242]</span></a> Those who
+  are interested in the history of authorship may care to know the end
+  of the matter. Copyright is no modern practice, and the perpetual
+  right of authors, or persons to whom they had ceded it, was
+  recognised in France through the whole of the seventeenth century and
+  three-quarters of the eighteenth. The perpetuity of the right had
+  produced literary properties of considerable value; for example,
+  Boudot's Dictionary was sold by his executors for 24,000 livres;
+  Prévot's Manual Lexicon and two Dictionaries for 115,000 livres. But
+  in 1777—ten years after Diderot's plea—the Council decreed that
+  copyright was a privilege and an exercise of the royal grace. The
+  motives for this reduction of an author's right from a transferable
+  property to a terminable privilege seem to have been, first, the
+  general mania of the time for drawing up the threads of national life
+  into the hands of the administration, and second, the hope of making
+  money by a tariff of permissions. The Constituent Assembly dealt with
+  the subject with no intelligence nor care, but the Convention passed
+  a law recognising in the author an exclusive right for his life, and
+  giving a property for ten years after his death to heirs or
+  <i>cessionaires</i>. The whole history is elaborately set forth in
+  the collection of documents entitled <i>La Propriété littéraire au
+  18ième siècle</i>. (Hachette, 1859.)</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_243_243" id="Footnote_243_243"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_243_243"><span class="label">[243]</span></a> Oct. 11,
+  1759; xviii. 401.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_244_244" id="Footnote_244_244"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_244_244"><span class="label">[244]</span></a> xix. 319,
+  320.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_245_245" id="Footnote_245_245"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_245_245"><span class="label">[245]</span></a>
+  <i>Miscellaneous Works</i>, p. 73.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_246_246" id="Footnote_246_246"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_246_246"><span class="label">[246]</span></a> Walpole to
+  Selwyn. 1765. Jesse's <i>Selwyn</i>, ii. 9. See also Walpole to Mann,
+  iv. 283.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_247_247" id="Footnote_247_247"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_247_247"><span class="label">[247]</span></a> D'Epinay,
+  ii. 4, 138, 153, etc.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_248_248" id="Footnote_248_248"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_248_248"><span class="label">[248]</span></a> See Comte's
+  <i>Positive Polity</i>, vol. iii.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_249_249" id="Footnote_249_249"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_249_249"><span class="label">[249]</span></a> "<i>That
+  virtue of originality that men so strain after is not newness, as
+  they vainly think (there is nothing new), it is only
+  genuineness.</i>"—Ruskin.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_250_250" id="Footnote_250_250"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_250_250"><span class="label">[250]</span></a> Lessing:
+  1729-81. Diderot: 1713-84. As De Quincey puts it, Lessing may be said
+  to have begun his career precisely in the middle of the last
+  century.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_251_251" id="Footnote_251_251"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_251_251"><span class="label">[251]</span></a> <i>Hamburg.
+  Dramaturgie</i>, § 85. Werke, vi. 381. (Ed. 1873.)</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_252_252" id="Footnote_252_252"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_252_252"><span class="label">[252]</span></a> Diderot's
+  <i>Leben</i>, i. 274, 277.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_253_253" id="Footnote_253_253"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_253_253"><span class="label">[253]</span></a> <i>Corr.
+  Lit.</i>, ii. 103.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_254_254" id="Footnote_254_254"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_254_254"><span class="label">[254]</span></a> See Grimm's
+  account of the performance, <i>Corr. Lit.</i>, vii. 313.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_255_255" id="Footnote_255_255"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_255_255"><span class="label">[255]</span></a> Act IV. sc.
+  3.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_256_256" id="Footnote_256_256"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_256_256"><span class="label">[256]</span></a> Act V. sc.
+  3.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_257_257" id="Footnote_257_257"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_257_257"><span class="label">[257]</span></a> <i>De la
+  Poésie Dramatique</i>, ch. xxi.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_258_258" id="Footnote_258_258"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_258_258"><span class="label">[258]</span></a> vii.
+  107.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_259_259" id="Footnote_259_259"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_259_259"><span class="label">[259]</span></a> Nov. 28,
+  1760; xix. 457.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_260_260" id="Footnote_260_260"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_260_260"><span class="label">[260]</span></a> <i>Lettre
+  sur les Sourds et les Muets</i>, i. 359.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_261_261" id="Footnote_261_261"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_261_261"><span class="label">[261]</span></a>
+  <i>Correspond. du Roi Stanislas-Auguste et de Mdme. Geoffrin,</i> p.
+  466.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_262_262" id="Footnote_262_262"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_262_262"><span class="label">[262]</span></a> Aug. 1769;
+  xix. 314-323.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_263_263" id="Footnote_263_263"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_263_263"><span class="label">[263]</span></a> Quoted in
+  Mr. Sime's excellent <i>Life of Lessing</i> (Trübner and Co., 1877),
+  p. 230.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_264_264" id="Footnote_264_264"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_264_264"><span class="label">[264]</span></a> <i>De la
+  Poésie Dramatique</i>, § 2, vii. 313.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_265_265" id="Footnote_265_265"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_265_265"><span class="label">[265]</span></a> Lockhart's
+  <i>Life of Scott</i>, iv. 177 (ed. 1837).</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_266_266" id="Footnote_266_266"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_266_266"><span class="label">[266]</span></a> <i>Père de
+  Famille</i>, Act II. sc. 2, p. 211.</p>
+ </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_267_267" id="Footnote_267_267"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_267_267"><span class="label">[267]</span></a>xix. 474.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_268_268" id="Footnote_268_268"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_268_268"><span class="label">[268]</span></a> <i>Paradoxe
+  sur le Comédien</i>, p. 383.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_269_269" id="Footnote_269_269"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_269_269"><span class="label">[269]</span></a>
+  <i>Journals</i>, ii. 331. Also vi. 248; vii. 9.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_270_270" id="Footnote_270_270"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_270_270"><span class="label">[270]</span></a>
+  <i>Réflexions sur Térence</i>, v. 228-238. In another place (<i>De la
+  Poésie Dram.</i>, 370) he says: "Nous avons des comédies. Les Anglais
+  n'ont que des satires, à la vérité pleines de force et de gaieté,
+  mais sans mœurs et sans goût. Les Italiens en sont réduits au drame
+  burlesque."</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_271_271" id="Footnote_271_271"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_271_271"><span class="label">[271]</span></a> vii. 95.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_272_272" id="Footnote_272_272"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_272_272"><span class="label">[272]</span></a> <i>Lettre
+  sur les Sourds et les Muets</i>, i. 355.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_273_273" id="Footnote_273_273"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_273_273"><span class="label">[273]</span></a>
+  <i>Paradoxe</i>, viii. 384. The criticism on the detestable rendering
+  of <i>Hamlet</i> by Ducis (viii. 471) makes one doubt whether Diderot
+  knew much about Shakespeare.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_274_274" id="Footnote_274_274"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_274_274"><span class="label">[274]</span></a> Letter to
+  Mdlle. Jodin, xix. 387.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_275_275" id="Footnote_275_275"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_275_275"><span class="label">[275]</span></a> Johnson one
+  day said to John Kemble: "Are you, sir, one of those enthusiasts who
+  believe yourself transformed into the very character you represent?"
+  Kemble answered that he had never felt so strong a persuasion
+  himself. <i>Boswell</i>, ch. 77.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_276_276" id="Footnote_276_276"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_276_276"><span class="label">[276]</span></a> Lessing
+  makes this a starting-point of his criticism of the art of acting,
+  though he uses it less absolutely than Diderot would do. <i>Hamburg.
+  Dramaturgie</i>, § 3, vol. vi. 19.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_277_277" id="Footnote_277_277"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_277_277"><span class="label">[277]</span></a> In
+  Lichtenberg's <i>Briefe aus England</i> (1776) there is a criticism
+  of the most admirably intelligent kind on Garrick. Lord Lytton gave
+  an account of it to English readers in the <i>Fortnightly Review</i>
+  (February 1871). The following passage confirms what Diderot says
+  above:</p>
+
+  <p>"You have doubtless heard much of his extraordinary power of
+  change of face. Here is one example of it. When he played the part of
+  Sir John Brute, I was close to the stage, and could observe him
+  narrowly. He entered with the corners of his mouth so turned down, as
+  to give to his whole countenance the expression of habitual
+  sottishness and debauchery. And this artificial form of the mouth he
+  retained, unaltered, from the beginning to the end of the play, with
+  the exception only that, as the play went on, the lips gaped and hung
+  more and more in proportion to the gradually increasing drunkenness
+  of the character represented. This made-up face was not produced by
+  stage-paint, but solely by muscular contraction; and it must be so
+  identified by Garrick with his idea of Sir John Brute as to be
+  spontaneously assumed by him whenever he plays that part; otherwise,
+  his retention of such a mask, without even once dropping it either
+  from fatigue or surprise, even in the most boisterous action of his
+  part, would be quite inexplicable."</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_278_278" id="Footnote_278_278"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_278_278"><span class="label">[278]</span></a> viii.
+  382.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_279_279" id="Footnote_279_279"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_279_279"><span class="label">[279]</span></a> viii. 373,
+  376, etc.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_280_280" id="Footnote_280_280"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_280_280"><span class="label">[280]</span></a> As Hamlet to
+  his players: "Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand thus;
+  but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may
+  say) the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a
+  temperance that may give it smoothness."</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_281_281" id="Footnote_281_281"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_281_281"><span class="label">[281]</span></a> To Jodin,
+  xix, 382. "Point de hoquets, point de cris, de la dignité vraie, un
+  jeu ferme, sensé, raisonné, juste, mâle; la plus grande sobriété de
+  gestes. C'est de la contenance, c'est du maintien, qu'il faut
+  déclamer les trois quarts du temps."—P. 390.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_282_282" id="Footnote_282_282"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_282_282"><span class="label">[282]</span></a> P. 395.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_283_283" id="Footnote_283_283"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_283_283"><span class="label">[283]</span></a> <i>Bijoux
+  Indiscrets</i>, ch. xxxviii.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_284_284" id="Footnote_284_284"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_284_284"><span class="label">[284]</span></a> vii. 121.
+  Lessing makes a powerful addition to this. <i>Hamburg. Dram.</i> vi.
+  261.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_285_285" id="Footnote_285_285"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_285_285"><span class="label">[285]</span></a> <i>Poésie
+  Dramatique</i>, §§ 20, 21.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_286_286" id="Footnote_286_286"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_286_286"><span class="label">[286]</span></a> <i>Sienne
+  Entretien</i>, vii. 138.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_287_287" id="Footnote_287_287"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_287_287"><span class="label">[287]</span></a> <i>Poés.
+  Dram.</i>., § 2. The Poetics of the Genre Sérieux are to be found,
+  vii. 137, 138.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_288_288" id="Footnote_288_288"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_288_288"><span class="label">[288]</span></a> i. 316.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_289_289" id="Footnote_289_289"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_289_289"><span class="label">[289]</span></a> <i>Hints for
+  an Essay on the Drama</i>, p. 155.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_290_290" id="Footnote_290_290"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_290_290"><span class="label">[290]</span></a> <i>Hist. du
+  Romantisme</i>, p. 93.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_291_291" id="Footnote_291_291"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_291_291"><span class="label">[291]</span></a> <i>Der
+  Gegensatz des Classischen und des Romantischen, etc.</i> By Conrad
+  Hermann, p. 66.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_292_292" id="Footnote_292_292"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_292_292"><span class="label">[292]</span></a>
+  Schopenhauer, <i>Ethik</i>, 199</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_293_293" id="Footnote_293_293"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_293_293"><span class="label">[293]</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i>,
+  iv. 29.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_294_294" id="Footnote_294_294"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_294_294"><span class="label">[294]</span></a>
+  <i>Werke</i>, xxv. 291.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_295_295" id="Footnote_295_295"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_295_295"><span class="label">[295]</span></a> The original
+  of the text, published in the Assézat edition of Diderot's works, was
+  a manuscript found, with other waifs and strays of the eighteenth
+  century, in a chest that had belonged to Messrs. Würtel and Treutz,
+  the publishers at Strasburg. Its authenticity is corroborated by the
+  fact that in the places where Goethe has marked an omission, we find
+  stories or expressions from which we understand only too well why
+  Goethe forbore to reproduce them.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_296_296" id="Footnote_296_296"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_296_296"><span class="label">[296]</span></a> v. 339.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_297_297" id="Footnote_297_297"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_297_297"><span class="label">[297]</span></a> Lucian, Περι
+  Παρασίτον, and Περι των επι μίσφω συνόντων.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_298_298" id="Footnote_298_298"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_298_298"><span class="label">[298]</span></a> Grimm, ix.
+  349.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+  <p><a name="Footnote_299_299" id="Footnote_299_299"></a><a href=
+  "#FNanchor_299_299"><span class="label">[299]</span></a>
+  <i>Anmerkungen, Rameau's Neffe; Werke</i>, xxv. 268.</p>
+ </div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1
+of 2), by John Morley
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+</pre>
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