“An infinitude of tyrannical things interpose between us and the duties of love and friendship; and we do nothing aright.  A man is neither free for his ambition, nor free for his taste, nor free for his passion.  And so we all live discontented with ourselves.  One of the great inconveniences of the state of society is the multitude of our occupations and, above all, the levity with which we make engagements to dispose of all our future happiness.  We marry, we go into business, we have children, all before we have common sense."[210]

After some equivocal speculations as to the conduct of a woman who, by the surrender of herself for a quarter of an hour to the desires of a powerful minister, wins an appointment for her husband and bread for her six children, he exclaims:  “In truth, I think Nature heeds neither good nor evil; she is wholly wrapped up in two objects, the preservation of the individual and the propagation of the species."[211] True; but the moral distinction between right and wrong is so much wrung from the forces that Diderot here calls Nature.

The intellectual excitement in which he lived and the energy with which he promoted it, sought relief either in calm or else in the play of sensibility.  “A delicious repose,” he writes in one of his most harassed moments, “a sweet book to read, a walk in some open and solitary spot, a conversation in which one discloses all one’s heart, a strong emotion that brings the tears to one’s eyes and makes the heart beat faster, whether it comes of some tale of generous action, or of a sentiment of tenderness, of health, of gaiety, of liberty, of indolence—­there is the true happiness, nor shall I ever know any other.”

A Point in Rhetoric.—­“Towards six in the evening the party broke up.  I remained alone with D., and as we were talking about the Eloges on Descartes that had been sent in to the Academy, I made two remarks that pleased him upon eloquence.  One, that it is a mistake to try to stir the passions before convincing the reason, and that the pathetic remains without effect, when it is not prepared by the syllogism.  Second, that after the orator had touched me keenly, I could not endure that he should break in upon this melting of the soul with some violent stroke:  that the pathetic insists on being followed by something moderate, weak, vague, that should leave room for no contention on my part."[212]

Holbach’s Impressions of England.—­“The Baron has returned from England.  He started with the pleasantest anticipations, he had a most agreeable reception, he had excellent health, and yet he has returned out of humour and discontented; discontented with the country, which he found neither as populous nor as well cultivated as people say; discontented with the buildings, that are nearly all bizarre and Gothic; with the gardens, where the affectation of imitating nature is worse than the monotonous symmetry of art; with the taste that heaps up in the palaces