Diderot and the Encyclopædists (Vol 1 of 2) | Page 8

has no organic doctrine, no historic
tradition, no effective discipline, and no definite, comprehensive,
far-reaching, concentrated aim. The characteristic of his activity is
dispersiveness. Its distinction is to popularise such detached ideas as
society is in a condition to assimilate; to interest men in these ideas by
dressing them up in varied forms of the literary art; to guide men
through them by judging, empirically and unconnectedly, each case of
conduct, of policy, or of new opinion as it arises. We have no wish to
exalt the office. On the contrary, I accept the maxim of that deep
observer who warned us that "the mania for isolation is the plague of

the human throng, and to be strong we must march together. You only
obtain anything by developing the spirit of discipline among men."[5]
But there are ages of criticism when discipline is impossible, and the
evils of isolation are less than the evils of rash and premature
organisation. Fontenelle was the first and in some respects the greatest
type of this important class. He was sceptical, learned, ingenious,
eloquent. He stretched hands (1657-1757) from the famous quarrel
between Ancients and Moderns down to the Encyclopædia, and from
Bossuet and Corneille down to Jean Jacques and Diderot. When he was
born, the man of letters did not exist. When he died, the man of letters
was the most conspicuous personage in France. But when Diderot first
began to roam about the streets of Paris, this enormous change was not
yet complete.
For some ten years (1734-1744) Diderot's history is the old tale of
hardship and chance; of fine constancy and excellent faith, not wholly
free from an occasional stroke of rascality. For a time he earned a little
money by teaching. If the pupil happened to be quick and docile, he
grudged no labour, and was content with any fee or none. If the pupil
happened to be dull, Diderot never came again, and preferred going
supperless to bed. His employers paid him as they chose, in shirts, in a
chair or a table, in books, in money, and sometimes they never paid
him at all. The prodigious exuberance of his nature inspired him with a
sovereign indifference to material details. From the beginning he
belonged to those to whom it comes by nature to count life more than
meat, and the body than raiment. The outward things of existence were
to him really outward. They never vexed or absorbed his days and
nights, nor overcame his vigorous constitutional instinct for the true
proportions of external circumstance. He was of the humour of the old
philosopher who, when he heard that all his worldly goods had been
lost in a shipwreck, only made for answer, Jubet me fortuna expeditius
philosophari. Once he had the good hap to be appointed tutor to the
sons of a man of wealth. He performed his duties zealously, he was
well housed and well fed, and he gave the fullest satisfaction to his
employer. At the end of three months the mechanical toil had grown
unbearable to him. The father of his pupils offered him any terms if he

would remain. "Look at me, sir," replied the tutor; "my face is as
yellow as a lemon. I am making men of your children, but each day I
am becoming a child with them. I am a thousand times too rich and too
comfortable in your house; leave it I must. What I want is not to live
better, but to avoid dying." Again he plunged from comfort into the life
of the garret. If he met any old friend from Langres, he borrowed, and
the honest father repaid the loan. His mother's savings were brought to
him by a faithful creature who had long served in their house, and who
now more than once trudged all the way from home on this errand, and
added her own humble earnings to the little stock. Many a time the
hours went very slowly for the necessitous man. One Shrove Tuesday
he rose in the morning, and found his pockets empty even of so much
as a halfpenny. His friends had not invited him to join their squalid
Bohemian revels. Hunger and thoughts of old Shrovetide merriment
and feasting in the far-off home made work impossible. He hastened
out of doors and walked about all day visiting such public sights as
were open to the penniless. When he returned to his garret at night, his
landlady found him in a swoon, and with the compassion of a good soul
she forced him to share her supper. "That day," Diderot used to tell his
children in later years, "I promised myself that if ever happier times
should come, and ever I should have anything, I would never refuse
help to any