CHAPTER IX.

CONCLUSION.

A few more pages must be given to one or two of Diderot's writings which

have not hitherto been mentioned. An exhaustive survey of his works is

out of the question, nor would any one be repaid for the labour of

criticism. A mere list of the topics that he handled would fill a long

chapter. A redaction of a long treatise on harmony, a vast sheaf of

notes on the elements of physiology, a collection of miscellanea on the

drama, a still more copious collection of miscellanea on a hundred

points in literature and art, a fragment on the exercise of young

Russians, an elaborate plan of studies for a proposed Russian

University,--no less panurgic and less encyclopaedic a critic than

Diderot himself could undertake to sweep with ever so light a wing over

this vast area. Everybody can find something to say about the collection

of tales, in which Diderot thought that he was satirising the manners of

his time, after the fashion of Rabelais, Montaigne, La Mothe-le-Vayer,

and Swift. But not everybody is competent to deal, for instance, with

the five memoirs on different subjects in mathematics (1748), with

which Diderot hoped to efface the scandal of his previous performance.

I.

Decidedly the most important of the pieces of which we have not yet

spoken must be counted the _Thoughts on the Interpretation of Nature_

(1754). His study of Bacon and the composition of the introductory

prospectus of the Encyclopaedia had naturally filled Diderot's mind with

ideas about the universe as a whole. The great problem of man's

knowledge of this universe,--the limits, the instruments, the meaning of

such knowledge, came before him with a force that he could not evade.

Maupertuis had in 1751, under the assumed name of Baumann, an imaginary

doctor of Erlangen, published a dissertation on the _Universal System of

Nature_, in which he seems to have maintained that the mechanism of the

universe is one and the same throughout, modifying itself, or being

modified by some vital element within, in an infinity of diverse

ways.[207] Leibnitz's famous idea, of making nature invariably work with

the minimum of action, was seized by Maupertuis, expressed as the Law of

Thrift, and made the starting-point of speculations that led directly to

Holbach and the _System of Nature_.[208] The _Loi d'Epargne_ evidently

tended to make unity of all the forces of the universe the keynote or

the goal of philosophical inquiry. At this time of his life, Diderot

resisted Maupertuis's theory of the unity of vital force in the

universe, or perhaps we should rather say that he saw how open it was to

criticism. His resistance has none of his usual air of vehement

conviction. However that may be, the theory excited his interest, and

fitted in with the train of meditation which his thoughts about the

Encyclopaedia had already set in motion, and of which the _Pensees

Philosophiques_ of 1746 were the cruder prelude.

[207] As to the precise drift of Maupertuis's theme, see Lange,

_Gesch. d. Materialismus_, i. 413, _n._ 37. Also Rosenkranz, i. 134.

[208] In 1765 Grimm describes the principle of Leibnitz and

Maupertuis as "gaining on us on every side."--_Corr. Lit._, iv. 186.

The _Thoughts on the Interpretation of Nature_ are, in form as in title,

imitated from those famous _Aphorismi de Interpretatione Naturae et Regni

Hominis_, which are more shortly known to all men as Bacon's _Novum

Organum_.[209] The connection between the aphorisms is very loosely

held. Diderot began by premising that he would let his thoughts follow

one another under his pen, in the order in which the subjects came up in

his mind; and he kept his word. Their general scope, so far as it is

capable of condensed expression, may be described as a reconciliation

between the two great classes into which Diderot found thinkers upon

Nature to be divided; those who have many instruments and few ideas, and

those who have few instruments and many ideas,--in other words, between

men of science without philosophy, and philosophers without knowledge

of experimental science.

[209] Palissot, in the _Philosophers_, concocted some very strained

satire on the too pompous opening of the _Interpretation of Nature_.

Act I. sc. 2.

In the region of science itself, again, Diderot foresees as great a

change as in the relations between science and philosophy. "We touch the

moment of a great revolution in the sciences. From the strong

inclination of men's minds towards morals, literature, the history of

nature and experimental physics, I would almost venture to assert that

before the next hundred years are over, there will not be three great

geometers to be counted in Europe. This science will stop short where

the Bernouillis, the Eulers, the Maupertuis, the Clairauts, the

Fontaines, the D'Alemberts, the Lagranges have left it. They will have

fixed the Pillars of Hercules. People will go no further." Those who

have read Comte's angry denunciations of the perversions of geometry by

means of algebra, and of the waste of intellectual force in modern

analysis,[210] will at least understand how such a view as Diderot's was

possible. And no one will be likely to deny that, whether or not the

pillars of the geometrical Hercules were finally set a hundred years

ago, the great discoveries of the hundred years since Diderot have been,

as he predicted, in the higher sciences. The great misfortune of France

was that the supremacy of geometry coincided with the opening of the

great era of political discussion. The definitions of Montesquieu's

famous book, which opened the political movement in literature, have

been shown to be less those of a jurisconsult than of a geometer.[211]

Social truths, with all their profound complexity, were handled like

propositions in Euclid, and logical deductions from arbitrary premises

were treated as accurate representations of real circumstance. The

repulse of geometry to its proper rank came too late.

[210] Comte's _System of Positive Polity_, i. 380, etc. English

translation, 1875.

[211] By F. Sclopis, quoted in M. Vian's _Hist. de Montesquieu_, p.

51.

Comte always liberally recognised Diderot's genius, and any reader of

Comte's views on the necessities of subjective synthesis will discern

the germ of that doctrine in the following remarkable section:

"When we compare the infinite multitude of the phenomena of nature

with the limits of our understandings and the weakness of our

organs, can we ever expect anything else from the slowness of our

work, from the long and frequent interruptions, and from the rarity

of creative genius than a few broken and separated pieces of the

great chain that binds all things together? Experimental philosophy

might work for centuries of centuries, and the materials that it

had heaped up, finally reaching in their number beyond all

combination, would still be far removed from an exact enumeration.

How many volumes would it not need to contain the mere terms by

which we should designate the distinct collections of phenomena, if

the phenomena were known? When will the philosophic language be

complete? If it were complete, who among men would be able to know

it? If the Eternal, to manifest his power still more plainly than

by the marvels of nature, had deigned to develop the universal

mechanism on pages traced by his own hand, do you suppose that this

great book would be more comprehensible to us than the universe

itself? How many pages of it all would have been intelligible to

the philosopher who, with all the force of head that had been

conferred upon him, was not sure of having grasped all the

conclusions by which an old geometer determined the relation of the

sphere to the cylinder? We should have in such pages a fairly good

measure of the reach of men's minds, and a still more pungent

satire on our vanity. We should say, Fermat went to such a page,

Archimedes went a few pages further.

"What then is our end? The execution of a work that can never be

achieved, and which would be far beyond human intelligence if it

were achieved. Are we not more insensate than the first inhabitants

of the plain of Shinar? We know the immeasurable distance between

the earth and the heavens, and still we insist on rearing our

tower.

"But can we presume that there will not come a time when our pride

will abandon the work in discouragement? What appearance is there

that, narrowly lodged and ill at its ease here below, our pride

should obstinately persist in constructing an uninhabitable palace

beyond the earth's atmosphere? Even if it should so insist, would

it not be arrested by the confusion of tongues, which is already

only too perceptible and too inconvenient in natural history?

Besides, it is utility that circumscribes all. It will be utility

that in a few centuries will set bounds to experimental physics, as

it is on the eve of setting bounds to geometry. I grant centuries

to this study, because the sphere of its utility is infinitely more

extensive than that of any abstract science, and it is without

contradiction the base of our real knowledge."[212]

[212] _Oeuv._, ii. 12, 13, Sec. 6. See the same idea in the

Encyclopaedia, above, vol. i. pp. 225-227.

We cannot wonder that when Comte drew up his list of the hundred and

fifty volumes that should form the good Positivist's library in the

nineteenth century, he should have placed Diderot's _Interpretation of

Nature_ on one side of Descartes' _Discourse on Method_, with Bacon's

_Novum Organum_ on the other.

The same spirit finds even stronger and more distinct expression in a

later aphorism:--"Since the reason cannot understand everything,

imagination foresee everything, sense observe everything, nor memory

retain everything; since great men are born at such remote intervals,

and the progress of science is so interrupted by revolution, that whole

ages of study are passed in recovering the knowledge of the centuries

that are gone,--to observe everything in nature without distinction is

to fail in duty to the human race. Men who are beyond the common run in

their talents ought to respect themselves and posterity in the

employment of their time. What would posterity think of us if we had

nothing to transmit to it save a complete insectology, an immense

history of microscopic animals? No--to the great geniuses great objects,

little objects to the little geniuses" (Sec. 54).

Diderot, while thus warning inquirers against danger on one side, was

alive to the advantages of stubborn and unlimited experiment on the

other. "When you have formed in your mind," he says, "one of those

systems which require to be verified by experience, you ought neither to

cling to it obstinately nor abandon it lightly. People sometimes think

their conjectures false, when they have not taken the proper measures to

find them true. Obstinacy, even, has fewer drawbacks than the opposite

excess. By multiplying experiments, if you do not find what you want, it

may happen that you will come on something better. _Never is time

employed in interrogating nature entirely lost_" (Sec. 42). The reader will

not fail to observe that this maxim is limited by the condition of

verifiableness. Of any system that could not be verified by experience

Diderot would have disdained to speak in connection with the

interpretation of nature.

This, of course, did not prevent him from hypothesis and prophecy which

he himself had not the means of justifying. For example, he said that

just as in mathematics, by examining all properties of a curve we find

that they are one and the same property presented under different faces,

so in nature when experimental physics are more advanced, people will

recognise that all the phenomena, whether of weight, or elasticity, or

magnetism, or electricity, are only different sides of the same

affection (Sec. 44). But he was content to leave it to posterity, and to

build no fabric on unproved propositions.

In the same scientific spirit he penetrated the hollowness of every

system dealing with Final Causes:

"The physicist, whose profession is to instruct and not to edify,

will abandon the _Why_, and will busy himself only with the

_How_.... How many absurd ideas, false suppositions, chimerical

notions in those hymns which some rash defenders of final causes

have dared to compose in honour of the Creator? Instead of sharing

the transports of admiration of the prophet, and crying out at the

sight of the unnumbered stars that light up the midnight sky, _The

heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth his

handiwork_, they have given themselves up to the superstition of

their conjectures. Instead of adoring the All-Powerful in the

creation of nature, they have prostrated themselves before the

phantoms of their imagination. If any one doubts the justice of my

reproach, I invite him to compare Galen's treatise on the use of

parts of the human body, with the physiology of Boerhaave, and the

physiology of Boerhaave with that of Haller; I invite posterity to

compare the systematic or passing views of Haller with what will be

the physiology of future times. Man praises the Eternal for his own

poor views; and the Eternal who hears from the elevation of his

throne, and who knows his own design, accepts the silly praise and

smiles at man's vanity" (Sec. 56).

The world has advanced rapidly along this path since Diderot's day, and

has opened out many new and unsuspected meanings by the way. Perhaps the

advance has been less satisfactory in working out, in a scientific way,

the philosophy that is implied in the following adaptation of the

Leibnitzian and Maupertuisian suggestion of the law of economy in

natural forces:--"Astonishment often comes from our supposing several

marvels, where in truth there is only one; from our imagining in nature

as many particular acts as we can count phenomena, whilst _nature has

perhaps in reality never produced more than one single act_. It seem

even that, if nature had been under the necessity of producing several

acts, the different results of such acts would be isolated; that there

would be collections of phenomena independent of one another, and that

the general chain of which philosophy assumes the continuity, would

break in many places. _The absolute independence of a single fact is

incompatible with the idea of an All; and without the idea of a Whole,

there can be no Philosophy_" (Sec. 11).

At length Diderot concludes by a series of questions which he thinks

that philosophers may perhaps count worthy of discussion. What is the

difference, for example, between living matter and dead? Does the energy

of a living molecule vary by itself, or according to the quantity, the

quality, the forms of the dead or living matter with which it is united?

We need not continue the enumeration, because Diderot himself suddenly

brings them to an end with a truly admirable expression of his sense of

how unworthy they are of the attention of serious men, who are able to

measure the difference between a wise and beneficent use of

intelligence, and a foolish and wasteful misuse of it. "When I turn my

eyes," he says, "to the works of men, and see the cities that are built

on every side, all the elements yoked to our service, languages fixed,

nations civilised, harbours constructed, lands and skies measured--then

the world seems to me very old. When I find man uncertain as to the

first principles of medicine and agriculture, as to the properties of

the commonest substances, as to knowledge of the maladies that afflict

him, as to the pruning of trees, as to the best form for the plough,

then it seems as if the earth had only been inhabited yesterday. And if

men were wise, they would at last give themselves up to such inquiries

as bear on their wellbeing, and would not take the trouble to answer my

futile questions for a thousand years at the very soonest; or perhaps,

even, considering the very scanty extent that they occupy in space and

time, they would never deign to answer them at all."

II.

In 1769 Diderot composed three dialogues, of which he said that, with a

certain mathematical memoir, they were the only writings of his own with

which he was contented. The first is a dialogue between himself and

D'Alembert; the second is D'Alembert's Dream, in which D'Alembert in his

sleep continues the discussion, while Mdlle. Lespinasse, who is watching

by his bedside, takes down the dreamer's words; in the third, Mdlle.

Lespinasse and the famous physician, Bordeu, conclude the matter.[213]

It is impossible, Diderot said to Mdlle. Voland, to be more profound and

more mad: it is at once a supreme extravagance, and the most

deep-reaching philosophy. He congratulated himself on the cleverness of

placing his ideas in the mouth of a man who dreams, on the ground that

we must often give to wisdom the air of madness, in order to secure

admittance. Mdlle. Lespinasse was not so complacent. She made D'Alembert

insist that the dialogue should be destroyed, and Diderot believed that

he had burned the only existing copy. As a matter of fact, the

manuscript was not published until 1830, when all the people concerned

had long been reduced to dust. There are five or six pages, Diderot said

to Mdlle. Voland, which would make your sister's hair stand on end. A

man may be much less squeamish than Mdlle. Voland's sister, and still

pronounce the imaginative invention of D'Alembert's Dream, and the

sequel, to be as odious as anything since the freaks of filthy Diogenes

in his tub. Two remarks may be made on this strange production. First,

Diderot never intended the dialogues for the public eye. He would have

been as shocked as the Archbishop of Paris himself, if he had supposed

that they would become accessible to everybody who knows how to read.

Second, though they are in form the most ugly and disgusting piece in

the literature of philosophy, they testify in their own way to Diderot's

sincerity of interest in his subject. Science is essentially unsparing

and unblushing, and D'Alembert's Dream plunged exactly into those parts

of physiology which are least fit to be handled in literature. The

attempt to give an air of polite comedy to functions and secretions must

be pronounced detestable, in spite of the dialectical acuteness and

force with which Diderot pressed his point.

[213] _Oeuv._, ii.

It would be impossible, in a book not exclusively designed for a public

of professors, to give a full account of these three dialogues. It is

indispensable to describe their drift, because it is here that Diderot

figures definitely as a materialist. Diderot was in no sense the

originator of the French materialism of the eighteenth century. He was

preceded by Maupertuis, by Robinet, and by La Mettrie; and we have

already seen that when he composed the Thoughts on the Interpretation of

Nature (1754), he did not fully accept Maupertuis's materialistic

thesis. Lange has shown that at a very early period in the movement the

most consistent materialism was ready and developed, while such leaders

of the movement as Voltaire and Diderot still leaned either on deism, or

on a mixture of deism and scepticism.[214] The philosophy of

D'Alembert's Dream is definite enough, and far enough removed alike from

deism and scepticism.

[214] _Gesch. d. Materialismus_, i. 309, 310, etc.

"The thinking man is like a musical instrument. Suppose a clavecin to

have sensibility and memory, and then say whether it would not repeat of

itself the airs that you have played on its keys. We are instruments

endowed with sensibility and memory. Our senses are so many keys,

pressed by the nature that surrounds them, and they often press one

another; and this, according to my judgment, is all that passes in a

clavecin organised as you and I are organised.

"There is only one substance in the world. The marble of the statue

makes the flesh of the man, and conversely. Reduce a block of marble to

impalpable powder; mix this powder with humus, or vegetable earth; knead

them well together; water the mixture; let it rot for a year, two

years--time does not count. In this you sow the plant, the plant

nourishes the man, and hence the passage from marble to tissue.

"Do you see this egg? With that you overturn all the schools of theology

and all the temples of the earth. It is an insensible mass before the

germ is introduced into it; and, after the germ is introduced, there is

still an insensible mass, for the germ itself is only an inert fluid.

How does this mass pass to another organisation, to life, to

sensibility? By heat. What will produce heat? Movement. What will be the

successive effects of movement? First, an oscillating point, a thread

that extends, the flesh, the beak, and so forth."

Then follows the application of the same ideas to the reproduction of

man--a region whither it is not convenient to follow the physiological

inquirer. The result as to the formation of the organic substance in man

is as unflinching as the materialism of Buechner.

But doctor, cries Mdlle. Lespinasse, what becomes of vice and

virtue? Virtue, that word so holy in all languages, that idea so

sacred among all nations?

BORDEU. We must transform it into beneficence, and its opposite

into the idea of maleficence. A man is happily or unhappily born;

people are irresistibly drawn on by the general torrent that

conducts one to glory, the other to ignominy.

MDLLE. LESPINASSE. And self-esteem, and shame, and remorse?

BORDEU. Proclivities, founded on the ignorance or the vanity of a

being who imputes to himself the merit or the demerit of a

necessary instant.

MDLLE. LESPINASSE. And rewards and punishments?

BORDEU. Means of correcting the modifiable being that we call bad,

and encouraging the other that we call good.[215]

[215] _Oeuv._, ii. 176.

The third dialogue we must leave. The fact that German books are written

for a public of specialists allows Dr. Rosenkranz to criticise these

dialogues with a freedom equal to Diderot's own, and his criticism is as

full as usual of candour, patience, and weight. An English writer must

be content to pass on, and his contentment may well be considerable, for

the subject is perhaps that on which, above all others, it is most

difficult to say any wise word.

III.

The Plan of a University for the Government of Russia was the work of

Diderot's last years, but no copy of it was given to the public before

1813-14, when M. Guizot published extracts from an autograph manuscript

confided to him by Suard. Diderot, with a characteristic respect for

competence, with which no egotism can ever interfere in minds of such

strength and veracity as his, began by urging the Empress to consult

Ernesti of Leipsic, the famous editor of Cicero, and no less famous in

his day (1707-1781) for the changes that he introduced into the system

of teaching in the German universities. Of Oxford and Cambridge Diderot

spoke more kindly than they then deserved.

The one strongly marked idea of the plan is what might have been

expected from the editor of the Encyclopaedia, namely, the elevation of

what the Germans call real or technological instruction, and the

banishment of pure literature as a subject of study from the first to

the last place in the course. In the faculty of arts the earliest course

begins with arithmetic, algebra, the calculation of probabilities, and

geometry. Next follow physics and mechanics. Then astronomy. Fourthly,

natural history and experimental physics. In the fifth class, chemistry

and anatomy. In the sixth, logic and grammar. In the seventh, the

language of the country. And it was not until the eighth, that Greek and

Latin, eloquence and poetry, took their place among the objects or

instruments of education. Parallel with this course, the student was to

follow the first principles of metaphysics, of universal morality, and

of natural and revealed religion. Here, too, history and geography had a

place. In a third parallel, perspective and drawing accompanied the

science of the first, and the philosophy and history of the second.

In the thorny field of religious instruction, Diderot expresses no

opinion of his own, beyond saying that it is natural for the Empress's

subjects to conform to her way of thinking. As her majesty thinks that

the fear of pains to come has much influence on men's actions, and is

persuaded that the total of small daily advantages produced by belief

outweighs the total of evils wrought by sectarianism and intolerance,

therefore students ought to be instructed in the mystery of the

distinction of the two substances, in the immortality of the soul, and

so forth.[216]

[216] _Oeuv._, iii. 490.

There is a story that one evening at St. Petersburg, Diderot was

declaiming with stormy eloquence against the baseness of those who

flatter kings; for such, he said, there ought to be a deeper and a

fiercer hell. "Tell me, Diderot," said the Empress by and by, "what they

say in Paris about the death of my husband." Instead of telling her the

plain truth that everybody said that Peter had been murdered by her

orders, the philosopher poured out a stream of the smoothest things.

"Come now," said Catherine suddenly, "confess, if you are not walking

along the path that leads to your deep hell, you are certainly coming

very close to purgatory." Diderot's elaborate concessions to her

majesty's political religion would, it is to be feared, have brought him

still further in the same sulphureous track.

As we have often had to bewail Diderot's diffuseness, it is as well to

remark that a long passage in the sketch of which we are speaking shows

how close and concentrated he could be upon occasion. The two pages in

which he demolishes the incorrigible superstition about Latin and

Greek,[217] contain a thoroughly exhaustive summary of all the arguments

and the answers. In the immense discussion about Latin and Greek that

has taken place in the hundred years since Diderot's time, it is

tolerably safe to say that not a single point has been brought forward

which Diderot did not in these most pithy and conclusive pages attempt

to deal with. He winds up with the position that, even for the man of

letters, the present system of teaching Latin and Greek is essentially

sterile. I am perfectly sure, he says, that Voltaire, who is not exactly

a mediocrity as a man of letters, knows extremely little Greek, and that

he is not twentieth nor even hundredth among the Latinists of the

day.[218]

[217] _Ib._ iii. 469-471.

[218] _Oeuv._, iii. 473.

Following this sketch is printed a letter to the Countess of Forbach on

the education of children. It is full of rich wisdom on its special

subject. Nobody can read it without feeling that quality in Diderot

which made his friends love him. And we see how, when he was called to

practical counsel, he banished into their own sphere the explosive

paradoxes with which he delighted to amuse his hours of speculative

dreaming.

IV.

Romilly has told us that Diderot was bent on converting him from the

error of his religious ways, and with that intention read to him a

Conversation with the Marechale de----.[219] It is believed to be an

idealised version of a real conversation with Madame de Broglie, and was

first printed, almost as soon as written (1777), in the correspondence

in which Metra, in imitation of Grimm, informed a circle of foreign

subscribers what was going on in Paris. The admirers of Diderot profess

to look on this Conversation as one of the most precious pearls in his

philosophic casket. It turns upon the conditions of belief and unbelief,

represented by the two interlocutors respectively, and is a terse and

graphic summary of the rationalistic objections to the creed of the

church. The most conspicuous literary passage in it is a parable which

has been attributed to Rousseau, but with which Rousseau had really

nothing to do, beyond reproducing the spirit of its argument in the ever

famous creed of the Savoyard Vicar.

[219] _Ib._ ii. 505-528.

A young Mexican, tired of his work, was sauntering one day on the

seashore. He spied a plank, with one end resting on the land, and

the other dipping into the water. He sat down on the plank, and

there gazing over the vast space that lay spread out before him, he

said to himself: "It is certain that my old grandmother is talking

nonsense, with her history of I know not what inhabitants, who, at

I know not what time, landed here from I know not where, from some

country far beyond our seas. It is against common sense: do I not

see the ocean touch the line of the sky? And can I believe, against

the evidence of my senses, an old fable of which nobody knows the

date, which everybody arranges according to his fancy, and which is

only a tissue of absurdities, about which people are ready to tear

out one another's eyes." As he was reasoning in this way, the

waters rocked him gently on his plank, and he fell asleep. As he

slept, the wind rose, the waves carried away the plank on which he

was stretched out, and behold our youthful reasoner embarked on a

voyage.

_La Marechale._--Alas, that is the image of all of us; we are each

on our plank; the wind blows, and the flood carries us away.

_C._--He was already far from the mainland when he awoke. No one

was ever so surprised as our young Mexican, to find himself out on

the open sea, and he was mightily surprised, too, when having lost

from sight the shore on which he had been idly walking only an

instant before, he saw the sea touching the line of the sky on

every side. Then he began to suspect that he might have been

mistaken, and that, if the wind remained in the same quarter,

perhaps he would be borne to that very shore and among those

dwellers on it, about whom his grandmother had so often told him.

_La Marechale._--And of his anxiety you say nothing.

_C._--He had none. He said to himself: "What does it matter,

provided that I find land? I have reasoned like a giddy-pate,

granted; but I have been sincere with myself, and that is all that

can be required of me. If it is no virtue to have understanding, at

any rate it is no crime to be without it." Meanwhile the wind

continued, the man and the plank floated on, and the unknown shore

came into sight. He touched it, and behold him again on land.

_La Marechale._--Ah, we shall all of us see one another there, one

of these days.

_C._--I hope so, madam; wherever it may be, I shall always be very

proud to pay you my homage. Hardly had he quitted his plank, and

put his foot on the sand, when he perceived a venerable old man

standing by his side. He asked him where he was, and to whom he had

the honour of speaking. "I am the sovereign of the country,"

replied the old man; "you have denied my existence?"--"Yes, it is

true."--"And that of my empire?"--"It is true!"--"I forgive you,

because I am he who sees the bottom of all hearts, and I have read

at the bottom of yours that you are of good faith; but the rest of

your thoughts and your actions are not equally innocent." Then the

old man, who held him by the ear, recalled to him all the errors

of his life; and as each was mentioned, the young Mexican bowed

himself upon the ground, beat his breast, and besought forgiveness.

V.

Of Falconet,[220] we have already spoken, as a sculptor of genius, and

as one of Diderot's most intimate friends. Writing to Sophie Voland

(Nov. 21, 1765), Diderot informs her that some pleasantries of

Falconet's have induced him to undertake very seriously the defence of

the sentiment of immortality and respect for posterity.[221] This

apology was carried on in an energetic correspondence which lasted from

the end of 1765 to 1767. Falconet's letters were burned by his

grand-daughter for reasons unknown, and we have only such passages from

them as are more specially referred to by Diderot himself. Falconet

flattered himself that he had the best of the argument, and was eager

that they should be published, but Diderot was sluggish or busy. The

correspondence was imparted to Catherine of Russia, who took a lively

interest in it, and to some others, but it was not given to the

public--and then only partially--until 1830.

[220] Above, vol. ii. p. 104.

[221] xix. 200.

Diderot's position in these twelve letters may be described in general

terms as being that the sentiment of immortality and respect for

posterity move the heart and elevate the soul; they are two germs of

great things, two promises as solid as any other, and two delights as

real as most of the delights of life, but more noble, more profitable,

and more virtuous. What Diderot means by immortality is not the

religious dogma, that the individual personality will be objectively

preserved and prolonged in some other mode of existence. On the

contrary, it was his disbelief in this dogma of the churches that gave a

certain keenness to his pleading for that other kind of immortality,

which prolongs our personality only in the grateful and admiring

memories of other people who come after us. He intended by the sentiment

of immortality "the desire to surround one's name with lustre among

posterity; to be the admiration and the talk of centuries to come; to

obtain after death the same honours as we pay to those who have gone

before us; to furnish a fine line to the historian; to inscribe one's

own name by the side of those which we never pronounce without shedding

a tear, heaving a sigh, or being touched by regret; to secure for

ourselves the blessings that we have such a thrill in bestowing on

Sully, Henry IV., and all the other benefactors of the human race."[222]

The sphere that surrounds us, and in which the world admires us, the

time in which we exist and listen to praise, the number of those who

directly address to us the eulogy that we have deserved of them--all

this is too small for the capacity of our ambitious souls. By the side

of those whom we see prostrated before us, we place those who are not

yet in the world. It is only this uncounted throng of adorers that can

satisfy a mind whose impulses are ever towards the infinite. At night it

is sweet to hear a distant concert, of which only snatches reach the

ear, all to be bound into a melodious whole by the imagination, which is

all the more charmed as the work is in the main its own. Even if all

this were but the sweetness of a lovely dream, is then the sweetness of

a dream as nothing? And am I to count for nothing a sweet dream that

lasts as long as my life, and holds me in perpetual intoxication?

[222] xviii. 94.

Falconet's answer was hard and positive. Contemporary glory suffices.

What is fame, if I am not there to enjoy? The fear of contempt and

disgrace is as strong a motive as you need, to incite men to great work.

Glory after death is chimerical and uncertain. Think of all the great

names that are clean forgotten, of all the great workers whose

achievements are lost or effaced, of all the others whose works are

attributed to those who did not execute them! Your posterity is no

better than a lottery.

No, cries Diderot, with redoubled eloquence, rising to his noblest

height,[223] "the present is an indivisible point that cuts in two the

length of an infinite line. It is impossible to rest on this point and

to glide gently along with it, never looking on in front, and never

turning the head to gaze behind. The more man ascends through the past,

and the more he launches into the future--the greater he will be....

And all these philosophers, and ministers, and truth-telling men, who

have fallen victims to the stupidity of nations, the atrocities of

priests, the fury of tyrants, what consolation was left for them in

death? This, that prejudice would pass, and that posterity would pour

out the vial of ignominy upon their enemies. O posterity, holy and

sacred! Stay of the unhappy and the oppressed, thou who art just, thou

who art incorruptible, who avengest the good man, who unmaskest the

hypocrite, who draggest down the tyrant, may thy sure faith, thy

consoling faith, never, never abandon me! Posterity is for the

philosopher what the other world is for the devout!"

[223] xviii. pp. 113 and 100.

APPENDIX.

RAMEAU'S NEPHEW: A TRANSLATION.

[See vol. i. p. 348.]

[I have omitted such pages in the following translation as refer simply

to personages who have lost all possibility of interest for our

generation; nor did any object seem to be served by reproducing the

technical points of the musical discussion. Enough is given, and given

as faithfully as I know how, to show the reader what _Rameau's Nephew_

is.]

In all weathers, wet or fine, it is my practice to go, towards five

o'clock in the evening, to take a turn in the Palais Royal. I am he

whom you may see any afternoon sitting by himself and musing in

D'Argenson's seat. I keep up talk with myself about politics, love,

taste, or philosophy; I leave my mind to play the libertine

unchecked; and it is welcome to run after the first idea that

offers, sage or gay, just as you see our young beaux in the Foy

passage following the steps of some gay nymph, with her saucy mien,

face all smiles, eyes all fire, and nose a trifle turned up; then

quitting her for another, attacking them all, but attaching

themselves to none. My thoughts,--these are the wantons for me. If

the weather be too cold or too wet, I take shelter in the Regency

coffee-house. There I amuse myself by looking on while they play

chess. Nowhere in the world do they play chess so skilfully as in

Paris, and nowhere in Paris as they do at this coffee-house; 'tis

here you see Legal the profound, Philidor the subtle, Mayot the

solid; here you see the most astounding moves, and listen to the

sorriest talk, for if a man may be at once a wit and a great

chess-player, like Legal, you may also be a great chess-player and

a sad simpleton, like Joubert and Mayot.

One day I was there after dinner, watching intently, saying little,

and hearing the very least possible, when there approached me 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 astonishing strength of lungs. If you ever meet him, and if

you are not 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 several 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 or patched, with

barely a shoe to his foot, he steals along with a bent head; you

are tempted to hail him and fling him a shilling. To-morrow all

powdered, curled, in a fine coat, he marches past 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 in a morning, when he

gets up, is to know where he will dine; and 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 that he has, unless

the landlady, weary of waiting for her rent, has taken the key away

from him; or else he slinks to some tavern on the outskirts of the

town, where he waits for daybreak over a piece 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 the 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 his 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.

I do not rate these originals very highly. Other people make

familiar acquaintances, and even friends, of them. They detain me

perhaps once in a twelvemonth, if I happen to fall in with them.

Their character stands out from the rest of the world, and breaks

that wearisome 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 a piece of leaven

which ferments and restores to each a portion of his natural

individuality. He stirs people up, moves them, invites to praise or

blame; he is the means of bringing out the truth, he gives honest

people a chance of showing themselves, he unmasks the rogues; this

is the time when a man of sense listens, and distinguishes his

company.

I had known my present man long ago. He used to frequent a house to

which his clever parts had opened the door. There was an only

daughter. He swore to the father and mother that he would marry

their daughter. They shrugged their shoulders, laughed in his face,

told him he was out of his senses, and I saw in an instant that his

business was done. He wanted to borrow a few crowns from me, which

I gave him. He worked his way, I cannot tell how, into some houses

where he had his plate laid for him, but on condition that he

should never open his lips without leave. He held his tongue and

ate away in a towering rage: it was excellent to watch him in this

state of constraint. If he could not resist breaking the treaty,

and ever began to open his mouth, at the first word all the guests

called out _Rameau!_ Then fury sparkled in his eyes, and he turned

to his plate in a worse passion than ever. You were curious to know

the man's name, and now you know it: 'tis Rameau, pupil of the

famous man who delivered us from the plain-song that we had been

used to chant for over a hundred years; who wrote so many

unintelligible visions and apocalyptic truths on the theory of

music, of which neither he nor anybody else understood a word; and

from whom we have a certain number of operas that are not without

harmony, refrains, random notions, uproar, triumphs, glories,

murmurs, breathless victories, and dance-tunes that will last to

all eternity; and who, after burying Lulli, the Florentine, will be

himself buried by the Italian virtuosi,--a fate that he had a

presentiment of, which made him gloomy and chagrined; for nobody is

in such ill-humour, not even a pretty woman who awakes with a

pimple on her nose, as an author threatened with loss of his

reputation.

He comes up to me. Ah, ah! here you are, my philosopher! And what

are you doing among this pack of idlers? Can it be possible that

you too waste your time in pushing the wood?...

_I._--No, but when I have nothing better to do, I amuse myself by

watching people who push it well.

_He._--In that case you are amusing yourself with a vengeance.

Except Philidor and Legal, there is not one of them who knows

anything about it.

_I._--What of M. de Bussy?

_He._--He is as a chess-player what Mademoiselle Clairon is as an

actress; they know of their playing, one and the other, as much as

anybody can learn.

_I._--You are hard to please, and I see you can forgive nothing

short of the sublimities.

_He._--True, in chess, women, poetry, eloquence, music, and all

such fiddle-faddle. What is the use of mediocrity in these matters?

_I._--Little enough, I agree. But the thing is that there must be a

great number of men at work, for us to make sure of the man of

genius: he is one out of a multitude. But let that pass. 'Tis an

age since I have seen you. Though I do not often think about you

when you are out of sight, yet it is always a pleasure to me to

meet you. What have you been about?

_He._--What you, I, and everybody else are about--some good, some

bad, and nothing at all. Then, I have been hungry, and I have eaten

when opportunity offered; after eating, I have been thirsty, and

now and then have had something to drink. Besides that, my beard

grew, and as it grew I had it shaved.

_I._--There you were wrong; it is the only thing wanting to make a

sage of you.

_He._--Ay, ay; I have a wide and furrowed brow, a glowing eye, a

firm nose, broad cheeks, a black and bushy eyebrow, a clean cut

mouth, a square jaw. Cover this enormous chin with amplitude of

beard, and I warrant you it would look vastly well in marble or in

bronze.

_I._--By the side of a Caesar, a Marcus Aurelius, a Socrates.

_He._--Nay, I should be better between Diogenes, Lais, and Phryne.

I am brazenfaced as the one, and I am happy to pay a visit to the

others.

_I._--Are you always well?

_He._--Yes, commonly; but I am no great wonders to-day.

_I._--Why, you have a paunch like Silenus, and a face like....

_He._--A face you might take for I don't know what. The ill humour

that dries up my dear master seems to fatten his dear pupil.

_I._--And this dear master, do you ever see him now?

_He._--Yes, passing along the street.

_I._--Does he do nothing for you?

_He._--If he has done anything for anybody, it is without knowing

it. He is a philosopher after his fashion. He thinks of nobody but

himself. His wife and his daughter may die as soon as they please;

provided the church bells that toll for them continue to sound the

_twelfth_ and the _seventeenth_, all will be well. It is lucky for

him, and that is what I especially prize in your men of genius.

They are only good for one thing; outside of that, nothing. They do

not know what it is to be citizens, fathers, mothers, kinsfolk,

friends. Between ourselves, it is no bad thing to be like them at

every point, but we should not wish the grain to become common. We

must have men; but men of genius, no; no, on my word; of them we

need none. 'Tis they who change the face of the globe; and in the

smallest things folly is so common and so almighty, that you cannot

mend it without an infinite disturbance. Part of what they have

dreamt comes to pass, and part remains as it was; hence two

gospels, the dress of a harlequin. The wisdom of Rabelais's moral

is the true wisdom both for his own repose and that of other

people: to do one's duty so so, always to speak well of the prior,

and to let the world go as it lists. It must go well, for most

people are content with it. If I knew history enough, I should

prove to you that evil has always come about here below through a

few men of genius, but I do not know history, no more than I know

anything else. The deuce take me, if I have learnt anything, or if

I find myself a pin the worse for not having learnt anything. I was

one day at the table of the minister of the King of----, who has

brains enough for four, and he showed as plain as one and one make

two, that nothing was more useful to people than falsehood, nothing

more mischievous than truth. I don't remember his proofs very

clearly, but it evidently followed from them that men of genius are

detestable, and that if a child at its birth bore on its brow the

mark of that dangerous gift of nature, it ought to be smothered or

else thrown to the ducks.

_I._--Yet such people, foes as they are to genius, all lay claim to

it.

_He._--I daresay they think so in their own minds, but I doubt if

they would venture to admit it.

_I._--Ah, that is their modesty. So you conceived from that a

frightful antipathy to genius.

_He._--One that I shall never get over.

_I._--Yet I have seen the time when you were in despair at the

thought of being only a common man. You will never be happy if the

pro and the con distress you alike. You should take your side, and

keep to it. Though people will agree with you that men of genius

are usually singular, or as the proverb says, _there are no great

wits without a grain of madness_, yet they will always look down on

ages that have produced no men of genius. They will pay honour to

the nations among whom they have existed; sooner or later, they

rear statues to them, and regard them as the benefactors of the

human race. With all deference to the sublime minister whom you

have cited, I still believe that if falsehood may sometimes be

useful for a moment, it is surely hurtful in the long-run; and so,

on the other hand, truth is surely useful in the long-run, though

it may sometimes chance to be inconvenient for the moment. Whence I

should be tempted to conclude that the man of genius who cries down

a general error, or wins credit for a great truth, is always a

creature that deserves our veneration. It may happen that such an

one falls a victim to prejudice and the laws; but there are two

sorts of laws, the one of an equity and generality that is

absolute, the other of an incongruous kind, which owe all their

sanction to the blindness or exigency of circumstance. The latter

only cover the culprit who infringes them with passing ignominy, an

ignominy that time pours back on the judges and the nations, there

to remain for ever. Whether is Socrates, or the authority that bade

him drink the hemlock, in the worst dishonour in our day?

_He._--Not so fast. Was he any the less for that condemned? Or any

the less put to death? Or any the less a bad citizen? By his

contempt for a bad law did he any the less encourage blockheads to

despise good ones? Or was he any the less an audacious eccentric?

You were close there upon an admission that would have done little

for men of genius.

_I._--But listen to me, my good man. A society ought not to have

bad laws, and if it had only good ones, it would never find itself

persecuting a man of genius. I never said to you that genius was

inseparably bound up with wickedness, any more than wickedness is

with genius. A fool is many a time far worse than a man of parts.

Even supposing a man of genius to be usually of a harsh carriage,

awkward, prickly, unbearable; even if he be thoroughly bad, what

conclusion do you draw?

_He._--That he ought to be drowned.

_I._--Gently, good man. Now I will not take your uncle Rameau for

an instance; he is harsh, he is brutal, he has no humanity, he is a

miser, he is a bad father, bad husband, bad uncle; but it has never

been settled that he is particularly clever, that he has advanced

his art, or that there will be any talk of his works ten years

hence. But Racine, now? He at any rate had genius, and did not pass

for too good a man. And Voltaire?

_He._--Beware of pressing me, for I am not one to shrink from

conclusions.

_I._--Which of the two would you prefer; that he should have been a

worthy soul, identified with his till, like Briasson, or with his

yard measure, like Barbier, each year producing a lawful babe, good

husband, good father, good uncle, good neighbour, decent trader,

but nothing more; or that he should have been treacherous,

ambitious, envious, spiteful, but the author of _Andromaque_,

_Britannicus_, _Iphigenie_, _Phedre_, _Athalie_?

_He._--For his own sake, on my word, perhaps of the two men it

would have been a great deal better that he should have been the

first.

_I._--That is even infinitely more true than you think.

_He._--Ah, there you are, you others! If we say anything good and

to the purpose, 'tis like madmen or creatures inspired, by a

hazard; it is only you wise people who know what you mean. Yes, my

philosopher, I know what I mean as well as you do.

_I._--Let us see. Now why did you say that of him?

_He._--Because all the fine things he did never brought him twenty

thousand francs, and if he had been a silk merchant in the Rue

Saint Denis or Saint Honore, a good wholesale grocer, an apothecary

with plenty of customers, he would have amassed an immense fortune,

and in amassing it, he could have enjoyed every pleasure in life;

he would have thrown a pistole from time to time to a poor devil of

a droll like me; we should have had good dinners at his house,

played high play, drunk first-rate wines, first-rate liqueurs,

first-rate coffee, had glorious excursions into the country. Now

you see I know what I meant. You laugh? But let me go on. It would

have been better for everybody about him.

_I._--No doubt it would, provided that he had not put to unworthy

use what gain he had made in lawful commerce, and had banished from

his house all those gamesters, all those parasites, all those idle

flatterers, all those depraved ne'er-do-wells, and had bidden his

shop-boys give a sound beating to the officious creature who offers

to play pander.

_He._--A beating, sir, a beating! No one is beaten in any

well-governed town. It is a decent enough trade; plenty of people

with fine titles meddle with it. And what the deuce would you have

him do with his money, if he is not to have a good table, good

company, good wines, handsome women, pleasures of every colour,

diversion of every sort? I would as lief be a beggar as possess a

mighty fortune without any of these enjoyments. But go back to

Racine. He was only good for people who did not know him, and for a

time when he had ceased to exist.

_I._--Granted, but weigh the good and bad. A thousand years from

now he will draw tears, he will be the admiration of men in all the

countries of the earth; he will inspire compassion, tenderness,

pity. They will ask who he was, and to what land he belonged, and

France will be envied. He brought suffering on one or two people

who are dead, and in whom we take hardly any interest; we have

nothing to fear from his vices or his foibles. It would have been

better, no doubt, that he should have received from nature the

virtues of a good man, instead of the talents of a great one. He is

a tree which made a few other trees planted near him wither up, and

which smothered the plants that grew at his feet; but he reared his

height to the clouds, and his branches spread far; he lends his

shadow to all who came, or come now, or ever shall come, to repose

by his majestic trunk; he brought forth fruits of exquisite savour

which are renewed again and again without ceasing.

We might wish that Voltaire had the mildness of Duclos, the

ingenuousness of the Abbe Trublet, the rectitude of the Abbe

d'Olivet. But as that cannot be, let us look at the thing on the

side of it that is really interesting; let us forget for an instant

the point we occupy in space and time, and let us extend our

vision over centuries to come, and peoples yet unborn, and distant

lands yet unvisited. Let us think of the good of our race: if we

are not generous enough, at least let us forgive nature for being

wiser than ourselves. If you throw cold water on Greuze's head,

very likely you will extinguish his talent along with his vanity.

If you make Voltaire less sensitive to criticism, he will lose the

art that took him to the inmost depths of the soul of Merope, and

will never stir a single emotion in you more.

_He._--But if nature be as powerful as she is wise, why did she not

make them as good as she made them great?

_I._--Do you not see how such reasoning as that overturns the

general order, and that if all were excellent here below, then

there would be nothing excellent.

_He._--You are right. The important point is that you and I should

be here; provided only that you and I are you and I, then let all

besides go as it can. The best order of things, in my notion, is

that in which I was to have a place, and a plague on the most

perfect of worlds, if I don't belong to it! I would rather exist,

and even be a bad hand at reasoning, than not exist at all.

_I._--There is nobody but thinks as you do, and whoever brings his

indictment against the order of things, forgets that he is

renouncing his own existence.

_He._--That is true.

_I._--So let us accept things as they are; let us see how much they

cost us and how much they give us, and leave the whole as it is,

for we do not know it well enough either to praise or blame it; and

perhaps after all it is neither good nor ill, if it is necessary,

as so many good folk suppose.

_He._--Now you are going beyond me. What you say seems like

philosophy, and I warn you that I never meddle with that. All that

I know is that I should be very well pleased to be somebody else,

on the chance of being a genius and a great man; yes, I must agree.

I have something here that tells me so. I never in my life heard a

man praised, that his eulogy did not fill me with secret fury. I am

full of envy. If I hear something about their private life that is

a discredit to them, I listen with pleasure: it brings us nearer to

a level; I bear my mediocrity more comfortably. I say to myself:

Ah, thou couldst never have done _Mahomet_, nor the eulogy on

Maupeou. So I have always been, and I always shall be, mortified at

my own mediocrity. Yes, I tell you I am mediocre, and it provokes

me. I never heard the overture to the _Indes galantes_ performed,

nor the _Profonds abimes de Tenare, Nuit, eternelle nuit_, sung

without saying to myself: That is what thou wilt never do. So I was

jealous of my uncle.

_I._--If that is the only thing that chagrins you, it is hardly

worth the trouble.

_He._--'Tis nothing, only a passing humour. [Then he set himself to

hum the overture and the air he had spoken of, and went on:]

The something which is here and speaks to me says: Rameau, thou

wouldst fain have written those two pieces: if thou hadst done

those two pieces, thou wouldst soon do two others; and after thou

hadst done a certain number, they would play thee and sing thee

everywhere. In walking, thou wouldst hold thy head erect, thy

conscience would testify within thy bosom to thy own merit; the

others would point thee out, There goes the man who wrote the

pretty gavottes [and he hummed the gavottes. Then with the air of a

man bathed in delight and his eyes shining with it, he went on,

rubbing his hands:] Thou shalt have a fine house [he marked out its

size with his arms], a famous bed [he stretched himself luxuriously

upon it], capital wines [he sipped them in imagination, smacking

his lips], a handsome equipage [he raised his foot as if to mount],

a hundred varlets who will come to offer thee fresh incense every

day [and he fancied he saw them all around him, Palissot,

Poinsinet, the two Frerons, Laporte, he heard them, approved of

them, smiled at them, contemptuously repulsed them, drove them

away, called them back; then he continued:] And it is thus they

would tell thee on getting up in a morning that thou art a great

man; thou wouldst read in the _Histoire des Trois Siecles_ that

thou art a great man, thou wouldst be convinced of an evening that

thou art a great man, and the great man Rameau would fall asleep to

the soft murmur of the eulogy that would ring in his ears; even as

he slept he would have a complacent air; his chest would expand,

and rise, and fall with comfort; he would move like a great man ...

[and as he talked he let himself sink softly on a bench, he closed

his eyes, and imitated the blissful sleep that his mind was

picturing. After relishing the sweetness of this repose for a few

instants he awoke, stretched his arms, yawned, rubbed his eyes, and

looked about him for his pack of vapid flatterers].

_I._--You think, then, the happy mortal has his sleep?

_He._--Think so! A sorry wretch like me! At night when I get back

to my garret, and burrow in my truckle-bed, I shrink up under my

blanket, my chest is all compressed, and I can hardly breathe; it

seems like a moan that you can barely hear. Now a banker makes the

room ring and astonishes a whole street. But what afflicts me

to-day, is not that I snore and sleep meanly and shabbily, like a

paltry outcast.

_I._--Yet that is a sorry thing enough.

_He._--What has befallen me is still more so.

_I._--What is that?

_He._--You have always taken some interest in me, because I am a

_bon diable_, whom you rather despise at bottom, but who diverts

you.

_I._--Well, that is the plain truth.

_He._--I will tell you. [Before beginning he heaved a profound

sigh, and clasped his brow with his two hands. Then he recovers his

tranquillity and says:]

You know that I am an ignoramus, a fool, a madman, an impertinent,

a sluggard, a glutton....

_I._--What a panegyric!

_He._--'Tis true to the letter, there is not a word to take away;

prithee, no debate on that. No one knows me better. I know myself

and I do not tell the whole.

_I._--I have no wish to cross you, and I will agree to anything.

_He._--Well, I used to live with people, who took a liking for me,

plainly because I was gifted with all these qualities to such a

rare degree.

_I._--That is curious. Until now I always thought that people hid

these things even from themselves, or else that they granted

themselves pardon, while they despised them in others.

_He._--Hide them from themselves! Can men do that? You may be sure

that when Palissot is all alone and returns upon himself, he tells

a very different tale; you may be sure that when he talks quietly

with his colleague, they candidly admit that they are only a pair

of mighty rogues. Despise such things in others! My people were far

more equitable, and they took my character for a perfect nonesuch;

I was in clover; they feasted me, they did not lose me from their

sight for a single instant without sighing for my return. I was

their excellent Rameau, their dear Rameau, their Rameau the mad,

the impertinent, the lazy, the greedy, the merry-man, the lout.

There was not one of these epithets which did not bring me a smile,

a caress, a tap on the shoulder, a cuff, a kick; at table, a titbit

tossed on to my plate; away from the table, a freedom that I took

without consequences, for, do you see, I am a man without

consequence. They do with me and before me and at me whatever they

like, without my standing on any ceremony. And the little presents

that showered on me! The great hound that I am, I have lost all! I

have lost all for having had common sense once, one single time in

my life. Ah! if that ever chances again!

_I._--What was the matter, then?

_He._--Rameau, Rameau, did they ever take you for that? The folly

of having had a little taste, a trifle of wit, a spice of reason;

Rameau, my friend, that will teach you the difference between what

God made you, and what your protectors wanted you to be. So they

took you by the shoulder, they led you to the door, and cried: "Be

off, rascal; never appear more. He would fain have sense, reason,

wit, I declare! Off with you; we have all these qualities and to

spare!" You went away biting your thumb; it was your infernal

tongue, that you ought to have bitten before all this. For not

bethinking you of that, here you are in the gutter without a

farthing, or a place to lay your head. You were well housed, and

now you will be lucky if you get your garret again; you had a good

bed, and now a truss of straw awaits you between M. de Soubise's

coachman and friend Robbe. Instead of the gentle quiet slumber that

you had, you will have the neighing and stamping of horses all

night long--you wretch, idiot, possessed by a million devils!

_I._--But is there no way of setting things straight? Is the fault

you committed so unpardonable? If I were you, I should go find my

people again. You are more indispensable to them than you suppose.

_He._--Oh, as for that, I know that now they have me no longer to

make fun for them, they are dull as ditch-water.

_I._--Then I should go back: I would not give them time enough to

learn how to get on without me, or to turn to some more decent

amusement. For who knows what may happen?

_He._--That is not what I am afraid of: that will never come to

pass.

_I._--But sublime as you may be, some one else may replace you.

_He._--Hardly.

_I._--Hardly, it is true. Still I would go with that lacklustre

face, those haggard eyes, that open breast, that tumbled hair, in

that downright tragic state in which you are now. I would throw

myself at the feet of the divinity, and without rising I would say

with a low and sobbing voice: "Forgive me, madam! Forgive me! I am

the vilest of creatures. It was only one unfortunate moment, for

you know I am not subject to common sense, and I promise you, I

will never have it again so long as I live."

[The diverting part of it was that, while I discoursed to him in

this way, he executed it pantomimically, and threw himself on the

ground; with his eyes fixed on the earth, he seemed to hold between

his two hands the tip of a slipper, he wept, he sobbed, he cried:

"Yes, my queen, yes, I promise, I never will, so long as I live, so

long as ever I live...." Then recovering himself abruptly, he went

on in a serious and deliberate tone:]

_He._--Yes, you are right; I see it is the best. Yet to go and

humiliate one's self before a hussy, cry for mercy at the feet of a

little actress with the hisses of the pit for ever in her ears! I,

Rameau, son of Rameau, the apothecary of Dijon, who is a good man

and never yet bent his knee to a creature in the world! I, Rameau,

who have composed pieces for the piano that nobody plays, but which

will perhaps be the only pieces ever to reach posterity, and

posterity will play them--I, I, must go! Stay, sir, it cannot be

[and striking his right hand on his breast, he went on:] I feel

here something that rises and tells me: Never, Rameau, never. There

must be a certain dignity attached to human nature that nothing can

stifle; it awakes _a propos des bottes_; you cannot explain it; for

there are other days when it would cost me not a pang to be as vile

as you like, and for a halfpenny there is nothing too dirty for me

to do.

_I._--Then if the expedient I have suggested to you is not to your

taste, have courage enough to remain a beggar.

_He._--'Tis hard being a beggar, while there are so many rich

fools at whose expense one can live. And the contempt for one's

self, it is insupportable.

_I._--Do you know that sentiment?

_He._--Know it! How many times have I said to myself: What, Rameau,

there are ten thousand good tables in Paris, with fifteen or twenty

covers apiece, and of these covers not one for thee! There are

purses full of gold which is poured out right and left, and not a

crown of it falls to thee! A thousand witlings without parts and

without worth, a thousand paltry creatures without a charm, a

thousand scurvy intriguers, are all well clad, while thou must go

bare! Canst thou be such a nincompoop as all this? Couldst thou not

flatter as well as anybody else? Couldst thou not find out how to

lie, swear, forswear, promise, keep or break, like anybody else?

Couldst thou not favour the intrigue of my lady, and carry the

love-letter of my lord, like anybody else? Couldst thou not find

out the trick of making some shopkeeper's daughter understand how

shabbily dressed she is, how two fine earrings, a touch of rouge,

some lace, and a Polish gown would make her ravishing; that those

little feet were not made for trudging through the mud; that there

is a handsome gentleman, young, rich, in a coat covered with lace,

with a superb carriage and six fine lackeys, who once saw her as he

passed, who thought her charming and wonderful, and that ever since

that day he has taken neither bite nor sup, cannot sleep at nights,

and will surely die of it?... He comes, he pleases, the little maid

vanishes, and I pocket my two thousand crowns. What, thou hast a

talent like this, and yet in want of bread? Shame on thee, wretch!

I recalled a crowd of scoundrels who were not a patch upon me, and

yet were rolling in money. There was I in serge, and they in

velvet; they leaned on gold-headed canes, and had fine rings on

their fingers. And what were they? Wretched bungling strummers, and

now they are a kind of fine gentlemen. At such times I felt full of

courage, my soul inflamed and elevated, my wits alert and subtle,

and capable of anything in the world. But this happy turn did not

last, it would seem, for so far I have not been able to make much

way. However that may be, there is the text of my frequent

soliloquies, which you may paraphrase as you choose, provided you

are sure that I know what self-contempt is, and that torture of

conscience which comes of the usefulness of the gifts that heaven

has bestowed on us; that is the cruellest stroke of all. A man

might almost as well never have been born.

[I had listened to him all the time, and as he enacted the scene

with the poor girl, with my heart moved by two conflicting

emotions, I did not know whether to give myself up to the longing I

had to laugh, or to a transport of indignation. I was distressingly

perplexed between two humours; twenty times an uncontrollable burst

of laughter kept my anger back, and twenty times the anger that was

rising from the bottom of my soul suddenly ended in a burst of

laughter. I was confounded by so much shrewdness and so much

vileness, by ideas now so just and then so false, by such general

perversity of sentiments, such complete turpitude, and such

marvellously uncommon frankness. He perceived the struggle going on

within me:] What ails you? said he.

_I._--Nothing.

_He._--You seem to be disturbed.

_I._--And I am.

_He._--But now, after all, what do you advise me to do?

_I._--To change your way of talking. You unfortunate soul, to what

abject state have you fallen!

_He._--I admit it. And yet, do not let my state touch you too

deeply; I had no intention, in opening my mind to you, to give you

pain. I managed to scrape up a few savings when I was with the

people. Remember that I wanted nothing, not a thing, and they made

me a certain allowance for pocket-money.

[He again began to tap his brow with one of his fists, to bite his

lips, and to roll his eyes towards the ceiling, going on to say:]

But 'tis all over; I have put something aside; time has passed, 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 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 just like Rameau, who leaves not a penny, and

will be indebted to charity for a shroud to wrap round him. The

dead man hears not the tolling of the bell; 'tis in vain that a

hundred priests bawl dirges for him, and that a long file of

blazing torches go before: his soul walks not by the side of the

master of the 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? And then, look at this wrist, it was stiff as the

devil; the ten fingers, they were so many sticks fastened into a

metacarpus made of wood; and these muscles were like old strings of

catgut, drier, stiffer, harder to bend than if that they had been

used for a turner's wheel; but I have so twisted and broken and

bent them. What, thou wilt not go? And I say that thou shalt....

[And at this, with his right hand he seized the fingers and wrist

of his left hand, and turned them first up and then down. The

extremity of the fingers touched the arm, till the joints cracked

again. I was afraid every instant that the bones would remain

dislocated.]

_I._--Take care, you will do yourself a mischief.

_He._--Don't be afraid, they are used to it. For ten years I have

given it them in a very different style. They had to accustom

themselves to it, however they liked it, and to learn to find their

place on the keys and to leap over the strings. So now they go

where they must.

[At the same moment he threw himself into the attitude of a

violin-player; he hummed an allegro of Locatelli's; his right arm

imitated the movement of the bow; his left hand and his fingers

seemed to be feeling along the handle. If he makes a false note, he

stops, tightens or slackens his string, and strikes it with his

nail, to make sure of its being in tune, and then takes up the

piece where he left off. He beats time with his foot, moves his

head, his feet, his hands, his arms, his body, as you may have seen

Ferrari or Chiabran, or some other virtuoso in the same

convulsions, presenting the image of the same torture, and giving

me nearly as much pain; for is it not a painful thing to watch the

torture of a man who is busy painting pleasure for my benefit? Draw

a curtain to hide the man from me, if he must show me the spectacle

of a victim on the rack. In the midst of all these agitations and

cries, if there occurred one of those harmonious passages where the

bow moves slowly over several of the strings at once, his face put

on an air of ecstasy, his voice softened, he listened to himself

with perfect ravishment; it is undoubted that the chorus sounded

both in his ears and mine. Then replacing his imaginary instrument

under his left arm with the same hand by which he held it, and

letting his right hand drop with the bow in it, said:]

Well, what do you think of it?

_I._--Wonderful!

_He._--Not bad, I fancy; it sounds pretty much like the others....

[And then he stooped down, like a musician placing himself at the

piano.]

_I._--Nay, I beg you to be merciful both to me and to yourself.

_He._--No, no; now that I have got you, you shall hear me. I will

have no vote that is given without your knowing why. You will say a

good word for me with more confidence, and that will be worth a

new pupil to me.

_I._--But I am so little in the world, and you will tire yourself

all to no purpose.

_He._--I am never tired.

[As I saw that it was useless to have pity on my man, for the

sonata on the violin had bathed him in perspiration, I resolved to

let him do as he would. So behold him seated at the piano, his legs

bent, his head thrown back towards the ceiling, where you would

have thought he saw a score written up, humming, preluding, dashing

off a piece of Alberti's or Galuppi's, I forget which. His voice

went like the wind, and his fingers leapt over the imaginary keys.

The various passions succeeded one another on his face; you

observed on it tenderness, anger, pleasure, sorrow; you felt the

piano notes, the forte notes, and I am sure that a more skilful

musician than myself would have recognised the piece by the

movement and the character, by his gestures, and by a few notes of

airs which escaped from him now and again. But the absurd thing was

to see him from time to time hesitate and take himself up as if he

had gone wrong.]

Now, you perceive, said he, rising and wiping away the drops of

sweat which rolled down his cheeks, that we know how to place our

third, our superfluous fifth, and that we know all about our

dominants. Those enharmonic passages, about which the dear uncle

makes such fuss, they are not like having the sea to swallow; we

can manage them well enough.

_I._--You have given yourself a great deal of trouble to show me

that you are uncommonly clever; but I would have taken your word

for it.

_He._--Uncommonly clever; oh no! For my trade, I know it decently,

and that is more than one wants; for in this country is one obliged

to know all that one shows?

_I._--No more than to know all that one teaches.

_He._--That is true, most thoroughly true. Now, sir philosopher,

your hand on your conscience, speak the truth; there was a time

when you were not a man of such substance as you are to-day.

_I._--I am not so very substantial even now.

_He._--But you would not go now to the Luxembourg in

summer-time.... You remember?

_I._--No more of that. Yes, I do remember.

_He._--In an overcoat of gray shag?

_I._--Ay, ay.

_He._--Terribly worn at one side, with one of the sleeves torn; and

black woollen stockings mended at the back with white thread.

_I._--Yes, anything you like.

_He._--What were you doing in the alley of Sighs?

_I._--Cutting a shabby figure enough, I daresay.

_He._--You used to give lessons in mathematics?

_I._--Without knowing a word about them. Is not that what you want

to come to?

_He._--Exactly so.

_I._--I learnt by teaching others, and I turned out some good

pupils.

_He_--That may be; but music is not like algebra or geometry. Now

that you are a substantial personage....

_I._--Not so substantial, I tell you.

_He._--And have a good lining to your purse....

_I._--Not so good.

_He._--Let your daughter have masters.

_I._--Not yet; it is her mother who looks to her education, for one

must have peace in one's house.

_He._--Peace in one's house? You have only that, when you are

either master or servant, and it should be master. I had a

wife--may heaven bless her soul--but when it happened sometimes

that she played malapert, I used to mount the high horse, and bring

out my thunder. I used to say like the Creator: Let there be light,

and there was light. So for four years we had not ten times in all

one word higher than another. How old is your child?

_I._--That has nothing to do with the matter.

_He._--How old is your child, I say?

_I._--The devil take you, leave my child and her age alone, and

return to the master she is to have.

_He._--I know nothing so pig-headed as a philosopher. In all

humility and supplication, might one not know from his highness the

philosopher, about what age her ladyship, his daughter, may be?

_I._--I suppose she is eight.

_He._--Eight! Then four years ago she ought to have had her fingers

on the keys.

_I._--But perhaps I have no fancy for including in the scheme of

her education a study that takes so much time and is good for so

little.

_He._--And what will you teach her, if you please?

_I._--To reason justly, if I can; a thing so uncommon among men,

and more uncommon still among women.

_He._--Oh, let her reason as ill as she chooses, if she is only

pretty, amusing, and coquettish.

_I._--As nature has been unkind enough to give her a delicate

organisation with a very sensitive soul, and to expose her to the

same troubles in life as if she had a strong organisation and a

heart of bronze, I will teach her, if I can, to bear them

courageously.

_He._--Let her weep and give herself airs, and have nerves all on

edge like the rest, if only she is pretty, amusing, and coquettish.

What, is she to learn no dancing nor deportment?

_I._--Yes, just enough to make a curtsey, to have a good carriage,

to enter a room gracefully, and to know how to walk.

_He._--No singing?

_I._--Just enough to pronounce her words well.

_He._--No music?

_I._--If there were a good teacher of harmony, I would gladly

entrust her to him two hours a day for two or three years, not any

more.

_He._--And instead of the essential things that you are going to

suppress?...

_I._--I place grammar, fables, history, geography, a little

drawing, and a great deal of morality.

_He._--How easy it would be for me to prove to you the uselessness

of all such knowledge in a world like ours? Uselessness, do I say?

Perhaps even the danger! But I will for the moment ask you a single

question, will she not require one or two masters?

_I._--No doubt.

_He._--And you hope that these masters will know the grammar, the

fables, the history, the geography, the morality, in which they

will give her lessons? Moonshine, my dear mentor, sheer moonshine!

If they knew these things well enough to teach them to other

people, they never would teach them?

_I._--And why?

_He._--Because they would have spent all their lives in studying

them. It is necessary to be profound in art and science, to know

its elements thoroughly. Classical books can only be well done by

those who have grown gray in harness; it is the middle and the end

which light up the darkness of the beginning. Ask your friend

D'Alembert, the coryphaeus of mathematics, if he thinks himself too

good to write about the elements. It was not till after thirty or

forty years of practice that my uncle got a glimpse of the

profundities and the first rays of light in musical theory.

_I._--O madman, arch-madman, I cried, how comes it that in thine

evil head such just ideas go pell-mell with such a mass of

extravagances?

_He._--Who on earth can find that out? 'Tis chance that flings them

to you, and they remain. If you do not know the whole of a thing,

you know none of it well; you do not know whither one thing leads,

nor whence another has come, where this and that should be placed,

which ought to pass the first, and where the second would be best.

Can you teach well without method? And method, whence comes that? I

vow to you, my dear philosopher, I have a notion that physics will

always be a poor science, a drop of water raised by a needle-point

from the vast ocean, a grain loosened from an Alpine chain. And

then, seeking the reasons of phenomena! In truth, one might every

whit as well be ignorant, as know so little and know it so ill; and

that was exactly my doctrine when I gave myself out for a

music-master. What are you musing over?

_I._--I am thinking that all you have told me is more specious than

solid. But that is no matter. You taught, you say, accompaniment

and composition.

_He._--Yes.

_I._--And you knew nothing about either.

_He._--No, i' faith; and that is why there were worse than I was,

namely those who fancied they knew something. At any rate, I did

not spoil either the child's taste or its hands. When they passed

from me to a good master, if they had learnt nothing, at all events

they had nothing to unlearn, and that was always so much time and

so much money saved.

_I._--What did you do?

_He._--What they all do! I got there, I threw myself into a chair.

"What shocking weather! How tiring the streets are!" Then some

gossip: "Mademoiselle Lemierre was to have taken the part of Vestal

in the new opera, but she is in an interesting condition for the

second time, and they do not know who will take her place.

Mademoiselle Arnould has just left her little Count: they say she

is negotiating with Bertin.... That poor Dumesnil no longer knows

either what he is saying or what he is doing.... Now, Miss, take

your book." While Miss, who is in no hurry, is looking for her

book, which is lost, while they call the housemaid and scold and

make a great stir, I continue--"The Clairon is really

incomprehensible. They talk of a marriage which is outrageously

absurd: 'tis that of Miss ... what is her name? a little creature

that used to live with so and so, etcetera, etcetera:--Come,

Rameau, you are talking nonsense; it is impossible.--I don't talk

nonsense at all; they even say it is done. There is a rumour that

Voltaire is dead, and so much the better.--And pray, why so much

the better?--Because he must be going to give us something more

laughable than usual; it is always his custom to die a fortnight

before." What more shall I tell you? I used to tell certain

naughtinesses that I brought from houses where I had been, for we

are all of us great fetchers and carriers. I played the madman,

they listened to me, they laughed, they called out: How charming he

is! Meanwhile Missy's book had been found under the sofa, where it

had been pulled about, gnawed, torn by a puppy or a kitten. She sat

down to the piano. At first she made a noise on it by herself; then

I went towards her, after giving her mother a sign of approbation.

The mother: "That is not bad; people have only to be in earnest,

but they are not in earnest; they would rather waste their time in

chattering, in disarranging things, in gadding hither and thither,

and I know not what besides. Your back is no sooner turned, M.

Rameau, than the book is shut up, not to be opened until your next

visit; still you never scold her." Then, as something had to be

done, I took hold of her hands and placed them differently; I got

out of temper, I called out "_Sol, Sol, Sol_, Miss, it is a _Sol_."

The mother: "Have you no ear? I am not at the piano, and I can't

see your book, yet I know it ought to be a _Sol_. You are most

troublesome to your teacher; I can't tell how he is so patient; you

do not remember a word of what he says to you; you make no

progress...." Then I would lower my tone rather, and throwing my

head on one side, would say: "Pardon me, madam, all would go very

well if the young lady liked, if she only studied a little more;

but it is not bad." The mother: "If I were you, I should keep her

at one piece for a whole year." "Oh, as for that, she shall not

leave it before she has mastered every difficulty, and that will

not be as long as you may think." "Monsieur Rameau, you flatter

her, you are too good. That is the only part of the lesson which

she will keep in mind, and she will take care to repeat it to me

upon occasion...." And so the time got over; my pupil presented me

my little fee, with the curtsey she had learnt from the dancing

master. I put it into my pocket while the mother said: "Very well

done, mademoiselle; if Favillier were here, he would applaud you."

I chattered a moment or two for politeness' sake, and behold, that

was what they call a music lesson.

_I._--Well, and now it is quite another thing?