DIDEROT
AND
THE ENCYCLOPÆDISTS
BY
JOHN MORLEY
VOL. II.
London
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1905
First published elsewhere
New Edition 1886. Reprinted 1891, 1897, 1905
CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
CHAPTER I.
Other Dialogues.
- PAGE
- (1) The Conversations of a Father with his Children 1
Remarks upon it. - (2) The Inconsistency of Public Judgment on Private Actions 8
Observations. - (3) Supplement to Bougainville’s Travels 14
- Philosophical qualities of the discussion not satisfactory 19
- Nothing gained by his criticism on marriage 21
CHAPTER II.
Romance.
- Digression inevitable in dealing with Diderot 24
- Richardson’s influence in Europe 26
- Diderot’s Éloge upon him 28
- Rousseau and Richardson 29
- Diderot writes The Nun (1796) 31
- Circumstances of its composition 32
- Its intention 33
- And characteristics 35
- Sterne 36
- Diderot writes Jacques le Fataliste 37
- Its history 38
- Goethe’s criticism on it 38
- Nature of Diderot’s imitation of Richardson and Sterne 40
- No true creation in Jacques le Fataliste 41
- Its unredeemed grossness 43
- Its lack of poetry and of flavour 44
CHAPTER III.
Art.
- The Salons 45
- Qualities of their criticism 45
- Deep foundation of Diderot’s critical quality 46
- French art-criticism 48
- Dufresnoy, Dubos, Webb, André, Batteux 48, 49
- Travellers in Italy 50
- Diderot never in Italy 52
- Spirit of French art in his day 52
- Greuze, Diderot’s
CHAPTER IV.
St. Petersburg and the Hague.
- Diderot’s resolution to visit the Empress of Russia 84
- The Princess Dashkow 84
- Prince Galitzin 85
- Diderot in Holland (1773) 86
- St. Petersburg and Russian civilisation 89
- The Empress 91
- Accounts of her by men of affairs 92
- Her pursuit of French culture 94
- Her interest in the French philosophic party 96
- Partly the result of political calculation 98
- The philosophers and the Partition of Poland 101
- Rulhière’s narrative of Catherine’s accession 102
- Falconet, the first Frenchman welcomed by her 104
- Diderot arrives at St. Petersburg (1773) 106
- His conversations with the Empress 107
- Not successful as a politician 108
- General impression of him 109
- Grimm outstrips him in court favour 110
- Diderot’s return to the Hague
CHAPTER V.
Helvétius.
- Three works of which Diderot was regarded as the inspirer 123
- Helvétius’s L’Esprit 123
- Contemporary protests against it 123
- Turgot’s weighty criticism 124
- Real drift of the book 127
- Account of Helvétius 127
- The style of his book 134
- The momentous principle contained in it 135
- Adopted from Helvétius by Bentham 136
- Helvétius’s statement of doctrine of Utility 137
- Miscarriage of the doctrine in his hands 139
- His fallacy 140
- True side of his objectionable position 140
- Helvétius’s reckless presentation of a true theory 141
- Confusion of beneficence with self-love 142
- Imitation from Mandeville 143
- Mean anecdotes 144
- Nature of Helvétius’s errors 144
- Explanation of them 146
- Positive side of his speculation 147
- Its true significance 149
- Second great paradox of L’Esprit 149
- Benjamin Constant’s Adolphe 152
CHAPTER VI.
Holbach’s System of Nature.
- Publication of the System of Nature (1770) 155
- Its startling effect 156
- Voltaire’s alarm 158
- He never understood Holbach’s position 159
- Account of Holbach 160
- Disregard of historic opinion in his book
CHAPTER VII.
Raynal’s History of the Indies.
- Contemporary estimate of The History of the Indies 204
- Account of Raynal 205
- Composition of the book 207
- Its varied popularity 209
- Frederick the Great dislikes it 210
- Signal merit of the History 213
- Its shortcomings 214
- Its idyllic inventions 215
- Its animation and variety 218
- Superficial causes of its popularity 220
- Its deeper source 221
- Catholicism in contact with the lower races 222
- The other side of this
CHAPTER VIII.
Diderot’s Closing Years.
- Diderot’s meditation on life and death 232
- Age overtakes him on his return from Russia 233
- Writes his life of Seneca 235
- Its quality 236
- Interest to Diderot of Seneca’s career 237
- Strange digression in the Essay 239
- Reason for Diderot’s anger against Rousseau 240
- His usual magnanimity 241
- Diderot’s relations with Voltaire 244
- Naigeon 246
- Romilly’s account of Diderot 247
- Palissot and the conservative writers 249
- The ecclesiastical champions of the old system 251
- The precursors gradually disappearing 253
- Galiani 254
- Beaumarchais’s Mariage de Figaro 255
- Diderot’s famous couplet 256
- His fellow-townsmen at Langres 257
- Last days 258
CHAPTER IX.
Conclusion.
- The variety of Diderot’s topics 261
- (1) Thoughts on the Interpretation of Nature 262
- Maupertuis’s Loi d’Epargne 262
- General scope of Diderot’s aphorisms 263
- Prophecy about geometry 264
- Utility made to prescribe limits to speculation 267
- The other side of this principle 267
- On Final Causes 268
- Adaptation of the Leibnitzian law of economy 269
- (2) D’Alembert’s Dream
- Diderot not the originator of French materialism 272
- Materialism of the three dialogues 273
- Mdlle. Lespinasse’s moral objections 274
- Religious instruction 276
- Latin and Greek 277
- Letter to the Countess of Forbach 278
- Parable of the young Mexican 279
- Diderot defends the feeling for posterity 283
Appendix.
- Rameau’s Nephew: a Translation 285
DIDEROT.
CHAPTER I.
OTHER DIALOGUES.
We may now pass to performances that are nearer to the accepted surface of things. A short but charming example of Diderot’s taste for putting questions of morals in an interesting way, is found in the Conversation of a Father with his Children (published in 1773). This little dialogue is perfect in the simple realism of its form. Its subject is the peril of setting one’s own judgment of some special set of circumstances above the law of the land. Diderot’s venerable and well-loved father is sitting in his arm-chair before the fire. He begins the discussion by telling his two sons and his daughter, who are tending him with pious care, how very near he had once been to destroying their inheritance. An old priest had died leaving a considerable fortune. There was believed to be no will, and the next of kin were a number of poor people whom the inheritance would have rescued from indigence for the rest of their days. They appointed the elder Diderot to guard their interests and divide the property. He finds at the bottom of a disused box of ancient letters, receipts, and other waste-paper, a will made long years ago, and bequeathing all the fortune to a very rich bookseller in Paris. There was every reason to suppose that the old priest had forgotten the existence of the will, and it involved a revolting injustice. Would not Diderot be fulfilling the dead man’s real wishes by throwing the unwelcome document into the flames?
At this point in the dialogue the doctor enters the room and interrupts the tale. It appears that he is fresh from the bedside of a criminal who is destined to the gallows. Diderot the younger reproaches him for labouring to keep in the world an offender whom it were best to send out of it with all despatch. The duty of the physician is to say to so execrable a patient—“I will not busy myself in restoring to life a creature whom it is enjoined upon me by natural equity, the good of society, the well-being of my fellow-creatures, to give up. Die, and let it never be said that through my skill there exists a monster the more on earth!” The doctor parries these energetic declamations with sufficient skill. “My business is to cure, not to judge; I shall cure him, because that is my trade; then the judge will have him hung, because that is his trade.” This episodic discussion ended, the story of the will is resumed. The father, when on the point of destroying it, was seized with a scruple of conscience, and hastened to a curé well versed in casuistry. As in England the agents of the law itself not seldom play the part of arbitrary benevolence, which the old Diderot would fain have played against the law, the scene may perhaps be worth transcribing:
“‘Nothing is more praiseworthy, sir, than the sentiment of compassion that touches you for these unfortunate people. Suppress the testament and succour them—good; but on condition of restoring to the rightful legatee the exact sum of which you deprive him, neither more nor less. Who authorised you to give a sanction to documents, or to take it away? Who authorised you to interpret the intentions of the dead?’
‘But then, father Bouin, the old box?’
‘Who authorised you to decide whether the will was thrown away on purpose, or mislaid by accident? Has it never happened to you to do such a thing, and to find at the bottom of a chest some valuable paper that you had tossed there inadvertently?’
‘But, father Bouin, the far-off date of the paper, and its injustice?’
‘Who authorised you to pronounce on the justice or injustice of the document, and to regard the bequest as an unlawful gift, rather than as a restitution or any other lawful act which you may choose to imagine?’
‘But, these poor kinsfolk here on the spot, and that mere collateral, distant and wealthy?’
‘Who authorised you to weigh in your balance what the dead man owed to his distant relations, whom you don’t know?’
‘But, father Bouin, that pile of letters from the legatee, which the departed never even took the trouble to open?’
‘There is neither old box, nor date, nor letters, nor father Bouin, nor if, nor but, in the case. No one has any right to infringe the laws, to enter into the intention of the dead, or to dispose of other people’s property. If providence has resolved to chastise either the heir or the legatee or the testator—we cannot tell which—by the accidental preservation of the will, the will must remain.’”
Diderot the younger declaims against all this with his usual vehemence, while his brother, the abbé, defends the supremacy of the law on the proper ground, that to evade or defy it in any given case is to open the door to the sophistries of all the knaves in the universe. At this point a journeyman of the neighbourhood comes in with a new case of conscience. His wife has died after twenty years of sickness; in these twenty years the cost of her illness has consumed all that he would otherwise have saved for the end of his days. But, as it happens, the marriage portion that she brought him has lain untouched. By law this ought to go to her family. Equity, however, seems to justify him in keeping what he might have spent if he had chosen. He consults the party round the fire. One bids him keep the money; another forbids him; a third thinks it fair for him to repay himself the cost of his wife’s illness. Diderot’s father cries out, that since on his own confession the detention of the inheritance has brought him no comfort, he had better surrender it as speedily as possible, and eat, drink, sleep, work, and make himself happy so.