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 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."[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 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."[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] 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.[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 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.
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 têlepompon ouk ênaineto
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 Fénelon, 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 æsthetic
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 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 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 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.[53] But what is tolerable in the quaint and _naïf_ 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 Crébillon's
novels, as Duclos's Confessions du Comte 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,[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. 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.
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 _naïf_, 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 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."[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.