how little democratic were Diderot and his school in any Jacobinical, or anarchic, or even more respectable modern sense.  There is in Diderot’s contributions many a firm and manly plea for the self-respect of the common people, but not more than once or twice is there a syllable of the disorder which smoulders under the pages of Rousseau.  Thus:  “When the dwellers among the fields are well treated, the number of proprietors insensibly grows greater, the extreme distance and the vile dependence of poor on rich grow less; hence the people have courage, force of soul, and strength of body; they love their country, they respect the magistrates, they are attached to a prince, to an order, and to laws to which they owe their peace and well-being.  And you will no longer see the son of the honourable tiller of the soil so ready to quit the noble calling of his forefathers, nor so ready to go and sully himself with the liveries and with the contempt of the man of wealth."[190]

No one can find fault with democratic sentiment of this kind, nor with the generous commonplaces of the moralist, about virtue being the only claim to honour, and vice the only true source of shame and inferiority.  But neither Diderot nor Voltaire ever allowed himself to flatter the crowd for qualities which the crowd can scarcely possess.  The little article on Multitude seems merely inserted for the sake of buffeting unwarranted pretensions.  “Distrust the judgment of the multitude in all matters of reasoning and philosophy; there its voice is the voice of malice, folly, inhumanity, irrationality, and prejudice.  Distrust it again in things that suppose much knowledge or a fine taste.  The multitude is ignorant and dulled.  Distrust it in morality; it is not capable of strong and generous actions; it rather wonders at such actions than approves them; heroism is almost madness in its eyes.  Distrust it in the things of sentiment; is delicacy of sentiment so common a thing that you can accord it to the multitude?  In what then is the multitude right?  In everything, but only at the end of a very long time, because then it has become an echo, repeating the judgment of a small number of sensible men who shape the judgment of posterity for it beforehand.  If you have on your side the testimony of your conscience, and against you that of the multitude, take comfort and be assured that time does justice.”  It is far from being a universal gift among men of letters and others to unite this fastidious estimation of the incapacity of the crowd in the higher provinces of the intellectual judgment, with a fervid desire that the life of the crowd should be made worthy of self-respecting men.

The same hand that wrote the defiance of the populace that has just been quoted, wrote also this short article on Misery:  “There are few souls so firm that misery does not in the long run cast them down and degrade them.  The poor common people are incredibly stupid.  I know not what false dazzling prestige closes their eyes to their present wretchedness, and to the still deeper wretchedness that awaits the years of old age.  Misery is the mother of great crimes.  It is the sovereigns who make the miserable, and it is they who shall answer in this world and the other for the crimes that misery has committed.”