‘So much the worse for you,’ she said, ’you either deceive or are deceived, and one is as bad as the other.’"[222] If Grimm and Madame d’Epinay and he were together, they discussed ethics from morning to night; Diderot always on the side of the view that made most for the dignity and worth of human nature.  Grimm is described on one of these occasions as having rather displeased Madame d’Epinay:  “He was not sufficiently ready to disapprove the remark of a man of our acquaintance, who said that it was right to observe the most scrupulous probity with one’s friends, but that it was mere dupery to treat other people better than they would treat us.  We maintained, she and I, that it was right and necessary to be honest and good with all the world without distinction."[223]

Here is another picture of discussion, with an introduction that is thoroughly characteristic of Diderot’s temper: 

“This man looks at the human race only on its dark side.  He does not believe in virtuous actions; he disparages them, and denies them.  If he tells a story, it is always about something scandalous and abominable.  I have just told you of the two women of my acquaintance, of whom he took occasion to speak as ill as he could to Madame Le Gendre.  They have their defects, no doubt; but they have also their good qualities.  Why be silent about the good qualities, and only pick out the defects?  There is in all that a kind of envy that wounds me—­me who read men as I read authors, and who never burden my memory except with things that are good to know and good to imitate.  The conversation between Suard and Madame Le Gendre had been very vivacious.  They sought the reasons why persons of sensibility were so readily, so strongly, so deliciously moved at the story of a good action.  Suard maintained that it was due to a sixth sense that nature had endowed us with, to judge the good and the beautiful.  They pressed to know what I thought of it.  I answered that this sixth sense was a chimaera; that all was the result of experience in us; that we learnt from our earliest infancy what it was in our instinct to hide or to show.  When the motives of our actions, our judgments, our demonstrations, are present to us, we have what is called science; when they are not present to our memory, we have only what is called taste, instinct, and tact.  The reasons for showing ourselves sensible to the recital of good actions are numberless:  we reveal a quality that is worthy of infinite esteem; we promise to others our esteem, if ever they deserve it by any uncommon or worthy piece of conduct....  Independently of all these views of interest, we have a notion of order, and a taste for order, which we cannot resist, and which drags us along in spite of ourselves.  Every fine action implies sacrifice; and it is impossible for us not to pay our homage to self-sacrifice”—­and so forth.[224]