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DIDEROT, DENIS (1713-1784)
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See also:DIDEROT, See also:DENIS (1713-1784) , See also:French See also:man of letters and encyclopaedist, was See also:born at See also:Langres on the 5th of See also:October 1713. He was educated by the See also:Jesuits, like most of those who after-wards became the bitterest enemies of Catholicism; and, when his See also:education was at an end, he vexed his brave and worthy See also:father's See also:heart by turning away from respectable callings, like See also:law or See also:medicine, and throwing himself into the vagabond See also:life of a bookseller's hack in See also:Paris. An imprudent See also:marriage (1743) did not better his position. His wife, See also:Anne' Toinette See also:Champion, was a devout See also:Catholic, but her piety did not restrain a narrow and fretful See also:temper, and Diderot's domestic life was irregular and unhappy. He sought See also:consolation for chagrins at See also:home in attachments abroad, first with a Madame Puisieux, a fifth-See also:rate See also:female scribbler, and then with Sophie Voland, to whom he was See also:constant for the See also:rest of her life. His letters to her are among the most graphic of all the pictures that we have of the daily life of the philosophic circle in Paris. An interesting contrast may be made between the Bohemianism of the famous See also:English See also:literary set who supped at the Turk's See also:Head with the Tory See also: From tales Diderot went back to the more congenial region of See also:philosophy. Between the See also:morning of See also:Good See also:Friday and the evening of See also:Easter See also:Monday he wrote the Pensees philosophiques (1746), and he presently added to this a See also:short complementary See also:essay on the sufficiency of natural See also:religion. The gist of these performances is to See also:press the See also:ordinary rationalistic objections to a supernatural See also:revelation; but though Diderot did not at this time pass out into the See also:wilderness beyond natural religion, yet there are signs that he accepted that less as a See also:positive See also:doctrine, resting on grounds of its own, than as a convenient point of attack against See also:Christianity. In 1747 he wrote the See also:Promenade du sceptique, a rather poor allegory—pointing first to the extravagances of Catholicism; second, to the vanity of the pleasures of that See also:world which is the See also:rival of the See also: If the Lettre sur les aveugles introduced Diderot into the worshipful See also:company of the philosophers,, it also introduced him to the penalties of philosophy. His speculation was too See also:hardy for the authorities, and he was thrown into the See also:prison of See also:Vincennes. Here he remained for three months; then he was released, to enter upon the gigantic undertaking of his life.
The bookseller Lebreton had applied to him with a project for the publication of a translation into French of See also:Ephraim See also:Chambers's Cyclopaedia, undertaken in the first instance by an Englishman, See also: To any one who turns over the pages of these re-doubtable volumes now, it seems surprising that their doctrines should have stirred such portentous alarm. There is no See also:atheism, no overt attack on any of the See also:cardinal mysteries of the faith, no See also:direct denunciation even of the notorious abuses of the church. Yet we feel that the See also:atmosphere of the See also:book may well have been displeasing to authorities who had not yet learnt to encounter the modern spirit on equal terms. The Encyclopaedia takes for granted the See also:justice of religious tolerance and speculative freedom. It asserts in distinct tones the democratic doctrine that it is the See also:common See also:people in a nation whose See also:lot ought to be the See also:main concern of the nation's government. From beginning to end it is one unbroken See also:process of exaltation of scientific knowledge on the one See also:hand, and pacific See also:industry on the other. All these things were odious to the old governing classes of See also:France; their spirit was absolutist, ecclesiastical and military. Perhaps the most alarming thought of all was the current belief that the Encyclopaedia was the work of an organized See also:band of conspirators against society, and that a pestilent doctrine was now made truly formidable by the See also:confederation of its preachers into an open See also:league. When the seventh volume appeared, it contained an See also:article on " See also:Geneva," written by D'Alembert. The writer contrived a See also:panegyric on the pastors of Geneva, of which every word was a stinging reproach to the abbes and prelates of See also:Versailles. At the same moment Helvetius's book, L'Esprit, appeared, and gave a still more profound and, let us add, a more reasonable See also:shock to the ecclesiastical party. Authority could See also:brook no more, and in 1759 the Encyclopaedia was formally suppressed. The See also:decree, however, did not See also:arrest the continuance of the work. The connivance of the authorities at the See also:breach of their own See also:official orders was common in those times of distracted government. The work went on, but with its difficulties in-creased by the See also:necessity of being clandestine. And a worse thing than troublesome interference by the See also:police now befell Diderot. D'Alembert, wearied of shifts and indignities, withdrew from the enterprise. Other powerful colleagues, See also:Turgot among them, declined to contribute further to a book which had acquired an evil fame. Diderot was See also:left to bring the task to an end as he best could. For seven years he laboured like a slave at the See also:oar. He wrote several See also:hundred articles, some of them very slight, but many of them most laborious, comprehensive and ample. He wore out his eyesight in correcting proofs, and he wearied his soul in bringing the See also:manuscript of less competent contributors into decent shape. He spent his days in the workshops, mastering the processes of manufactures, and his nights in reproducing on See also:paper what he had learnt during the day. And he was incessantly harassed all the time by alarms of a descent from the police. At the last moment, when his immense work was just See also:drawing to an end, he encountered one last and crowning See also:mortification: he discovered that the bookseller, fearing the displeasure of the government, had struck out from the See also:proof sheets, after they had left Diderot's hands, all passages that he See also:chose to think too hardy. The See also:monument to which Diderot had given the labour of twenty See also:long and oppressive years was irreparably mutilated and defaced. It is calculated that the See also:average See also:annual See also:salary received by Diderot for his See also:share in the Encyclopaedia was about £1ao See also:sterling. " And then to think," said See also:Voltaire, " that an See also:army contractor makes £800 in a day! "
Although the Encyclopaedia was Diderot's monumental work, he is the author of a shower of dispersed pieces that sowed nearly every See also: Diderot helped his friend at one time and another between 1759 and 1779, by writing for him an See also:account of the annual exhibitions of paintings. These Salons are among the most readable of all pieces of art criticism. They have a freshness, a reality, a life, which take their readers into a different world from the dry and conceited pedantries of the ordinary virtuoso. As has been said by Sainte-Beuve, they initiated the French into a new sentiment, and introduced people to the See also:mystery and purport of See also:colour by ideas. " Before Diderot," Madame See also:Necker said, " I had never seen anything in pictures except dull and lifeless See also:colours; it was his See also:imagination that gavethem See also:relief and life, and it is almost a new sense for which I am indebted to his See also:genius." See also:Greuze was Diderot's favourite among contemporary artists, and it is easy to see why. Greuze's most characteristic pictures were the rendering in colour of the same sentiment of domestic virtue and the pathos of common life, which Diderot attempted with inferior success to represent upon the stage. For Diderot was above all things interested in the life of men,—not the abstract life of the See also:race, but the incidents of individual See also:character, the fortunes of a particular See also:family, the relations of real and See also:concrete motives in this or that See also:special case. He delighted with the enthusiasm of a born casuist in curious puzzles of right and wrong, and in devising a conflict between the generalities of See also:ethics and the conditions of an ingeniously contrived See also:practical See also:dilemma. Mostly his interest expressed itself in didactic and sympathetic form; in two, however, of the most remarkable of all his pieces, it is not sympathetic, but ironical. Jacques le fataliste (written in. 1773, but not published until 1796) is in manner an See also:imitation of Tristram Shandy and The Sentimental See also:Journey. Few modern readers will find in it any true diversion. In spite of some excellent criticisms dispersed here and there, and in spite of one or two stories that are not without a certain effective See also:realism, it must as a whole be pronounced savourless, forced, and as leaving unmoved those springs of See also:laughter and of tears which are the common See also:fountain of See also:humour. Le Neveu de See also:Rameau is a far superior performance. If there were any inevitable compulsion to name a masterpiece for Diderot, one must select this singular " See also:farce-tragedy." Its intention has been See also:matter of dispute; whether it was designed to be merely a See also:satire on contemporary See also:manners, or a reduction of the theory of self-interest to an absurdity, or the application of an ironical clincher to the ethics of ordinary See also:convention, or a mere setting for a discussion about See also:music, or a vigorous dramatic See also:sketch of a See also:parasite and a human original. There is no dispute as to its curious literary flavour, its mixed qualities of pungency, bitterness, pity and, in places, unflinching shamelessness. Goethe's .translation (18os) was the first introduction of Le Neveu de Rameau to the See also:European public. After executing it, he gave back the original French manuscript to See also:Schiller, from whom he had it. No See also:authentic French copy of it appeared until the writer had been nearly See also:forty years in his See also:grave (1823).
It would take several pages merely to contain the See also:list of Diderot's See also:miscellaneous pieces; from an infinitely graceful trifle like the Regrets sur ma vieille robe de chambre up to Le See also:Reeve de D'Alembert, where he plunges into the depths of the controversy as to the ultimate constitution of matter and the meaning of life. It is a See also:mistake tv set down Diderot for a coherent and systematic materialist. We ought to look upon him " as a philosopher in whom all the contradictions of the time strugglewith one another" (See also:Rosenkranz). That is to say, he is See also:critical and not dogmatic. There is no unity in Diderot, as there was in Voltaire or in See also: Just as in cases of conduct he loves to make new ethical assumptions and argue them out as a professional sophist might have done,so in the speculative problems as to the organization of matter, the origin of life, the compatibility between physiological machinery and free will, he takes a certain stand-point, and follows it out more or less digressively to its consequences. He seizes a See also:hypothesis and See also:works it to its end, and this made him the inspirer in others of materialist doctrines which they held more definitely than he did. Just as Diderot could not attain to the concentration, the positiveness, the finality of aim needed for a masterpiece of literature, so he could not attain to those qualities in the way of See also:dogma and See also:system. Yet he See also:drew at last to the conclusions of See also:materialism, and contributed many of its most declamatory pages to the Systeme de la nature of his friend D'Holbach,—the very See also:Bible of atheism, as some one styled it. All that he saw, if we reduce his opinions to formulae, was See also:motion in space: "attraction and repulsion, the only truth." If matter produces life by spontaneous See also:generation, and if man has no alternative but to obey the compulsion of nature, what remains for God to do? In proportion as these conclusions deepened in him, the more did Diderot turn for the See also:hope of the race to virtue; in other words, to such a regulation of conduct and See also:motive as shall make us See also:tender, pitiful, See also:simple, contented. Hence his one great literary See also:passion, his enthusiasm for See also:Richardson, the English novelist. Hence, also, his deepening aversion for the See also:political system of France, which makes the realization of a natural and See also:con-tented domestic life so hard. Diderot had almost as much to say against society as even Rousseau himself. The difference between them was that Rousseau was a fervent theist. The atheism of the Holbachians, as he called Diderot's See also:group, was intolerable to him; and this feeling, aided by certain private perversities of humour, led to a breach of what had once been an intimate friendship between Rousseau and Diderot (1957). Diderot was still alive when Rousseau's Confessions appeared, and he was so exasperated by Rousseau's stories about Grimm, then and always Didgrot's intimate, that in 1782 he transformed a life of See also:Seneca, that he had written four years earlier, into an Essai sur les rcgnes de See also:Claude et de Neron (1778—1782), which is much less an account of Seneca than a vindication of Diderot and Grimm, and is one of the most rambling and inept productions in literature. As for the merits of the old See also:quarrel between Rousseau and Diderot, we may agree with the latter, that too many sensible people would be in the wrong if See also:Jean Jacques was in the right. Varied and incessant as was Diderot's See also:mental activity, it was not of a See also:kind to bring him riches. He secured none of the posts that were occasionally given to needy men of letters; he could not even obtain that See also:bare official recognition of merit which was implied by being chosen a member of the See also:Academy. The time came for him to provide a See also:dower for his daughter, and he saw no other alternative than to sell his library. When the empress See also:Catherine of See also:Russia heard of his straits, she commissioned an See also:agent in Paris to buy the library at a See also:price equal to about £1000 of English See also:money,and then handsomely requested the philosopher to retain the books in Paris until she required them, and to constitute himself her librarian, with a yearly salary. In 1773 Diderot started on an expedition to thank his imperial benefactress in See also:person, and he passed some months at St See also:Petersburg.. The empress received him cordially. The strange pair passed their afternoons in disputes on a thousand points of high philosophy, and they debated with a vivacity and freedom not usual in courts. " Fi, donc," said Catherine one day, when Diderot hinted that he argued with her at a disadvantage, " is there any difference among men?" Diderot returned home in 1774. Ten years remained to him, and he spent them in the industrious acquisition of new knowledge, in the composition of a See also:host of fragmentary pieces, some of them mentioned above, and in luminous declamations with his friends. All accounts agree that Diderot was seen at his best in conversation. " He who only knows Diderot in his writings," says See also:Marmontel, " does not know him at all. When he See also:grew animated in talk, and allowed his thoughts to flow in all their abundance, then he became truly ravishing. In his writings he had not the art of ensemble; the first operation which orders and places everything was too slow and too painful to him." Diderot himself was conscious of the want of literary merit in his pieces. In truth he set no high value on what he had done. It is doubtful whether he was ever alive to the See also:waste that circumstance and temperament together made of an intelligence from which, if it had been free to work systematically, the world of thought had so much to hope. He was one of those simple, disinterested and intellectually sterling workers to whom their. own See also:personality is as nothing in presence of the vast subjects that engage the thoughts of their lives. He wrote what he found to write, and left the piece, as See also:Carlyle has said, " on the waste of See also:accident, with an See also:ostrich-like indifference." When he heard one day that a collected edition of his works was in the press at See also:Amsterdam, he greeted the news with " peals of laughter," so well did he know the haste and the little heed with which those works had been dashed off. Diderot died on the 3oth of See also:July 1784, six years after Voltaire and Rousseau, one See also:year after his old colleague D'Alembert, and five years before D'Holbach, his host and intimate for a lifetime. Notwithstanding Diderot's peals of laughter at the thought, anelaborate and exhaustive collection of his writings in twenty stout volumes, edited by MM. Assezat and See also:Tourneux, was completed in 1875-1877. E. See also:Faguet (189o) ; by Sainte-Beuve in the Causeries du lundi ; by F. Brunetiere in the Etudes critiques, 2nd See also:series, may be consulted. In English, Diderot has been the subject of a See also:biography by John See also:Morley [See also:Viscount Morley of See also:Blackburn] (1878). See also Karl Rosenkranz, Diderots Leben and Werke (1866). For a discussion of the authenticity of the See also:posthumous works of Diderot see R. See also:Dominic in the Revue See also:des deux mondes (October 15, 1902). (J. 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