between the master of the house and the hall-porter.  If I am sound in mind and body, if I have worth and a pure conscience, if I know the true from the false, if I avoid evil and do good, if I feel the dignity of my being, if nothing lowers me in my own eyes, then people may call me what they will, My Lord, or Sirrah.  To do what is good, to know what is true—­that is what distinguishes one man from another; the rest is nothing.  The duration of life is so short, its true needs are so narrow, and when we go away, it all matters so little whether we have been somebody or nobody.  When the end comes, all that you want is a sorry piece of canvas and four deal boards.  In the morning I hear the labourers under my window.  Scarce has the day dawned before they are at work with spade and barrow, delving and wheeling.  They munch a crust of black bread; they quench their thirst at the flowing stream; at noon they snatch an hour of sleep on the hard ground.  They are cheerful; they sing as they work; they exchange their good broad pleasantries with one another; they shout with laughter.  At sundown they go home to find their children naked round a smoke-blackened hearth, a woman hideous and dirty, and their lot is neither worse nor better than mine.  I came down from my room in bad spirits; I heard talk about the public misery; I sat down to a table full of good cheer without an appetite; I had a stomach overloaded with the dainties of the day before; I grasped a stick and set out for a walk to find relief; I returned to play cards, and cheat the heavy-weighing hours.  I had a friend of whom I could not hear; I was far from a woman whom I sighed for.  Troubles in the country, troubles in the town, troubles everywhere.  He who knows not trouble is not to be counted among the children of men.  All gets paid off in time; the good by the evil, evil by good, and life is naught.  Perhaps to-morrow night or Monday morning we may go to pass a day in town; so I shall see the woman for whom I sighed, and recover the man of whom I could not hear.  But I shall lose them the next day; and the more I feel the happiness of being with them, the worse I shall suffer at parting.  That is the way that all things go.  Turn and turn and turn again; there is ever a crumpled rose-leaf to vex you."[204]

It is not often that we find such active benevolence as Diderot’s, in conjunction with such a vein of philosophy as follows:—­

“Ah, what a fine comedy this world would be, if only one had not to play a part in it; if one existed, for instance, in some point of space, in that interval of the celestial orbs where the gods of Epicurus slumber, far, far away, whence one could see this globe, on which we strut so big, about the size of a pumpkin, and whence one could watch all the airs and tricks of that two-footed mite who calls itself man.  I would fain only look at the scenes of life in reduced size, so that those which are stamped with atrocity may be brought down to an inch in space, and to actors half a line high.  But how bizarre, that our sense of revolt against injustice is in the ratio of the space and the mass.  I am furious if a large animal unjustly attacks another.  I feel nothing at all if it is two atoms that tear and rend.  How our senses affect our morality.  There is a fine text for philosophising!"[205]