next great step in the improvement of society. If it means that we do
wrong to invest with the most marked, serious, and unmistakable
formality an act that brings human beings into existence, with uncounted
results both to such beings themselves and to others who are equally
irresponsible for their appearance in the world, then the position is
recklessly immoral, and it is, moreover, wholly repugnant to Diderot's
own better mind.

CHAPTER II

ROMANCE.

The President de Brosses on a visit to Paris, in 1754, was anxious to
make the acquaintance of that "furious metaphysical head," as he styled
Diderot. Buffon introduced him. "He is a good fellow," said the
President, "very pleasant, very amiable, a great philosopher, a strong
reasoner, but given to perpetual digressions. He made twenty-five
digressions yesterday in my room, between nine o'clock and one o'clock."
And so it is that a critic who has undertaken to give an account of
Diderot, finds himself advancing from digression to digression, through
a chain of all the subjects that are under the sun. The same Diderot,
however, is present amid them all, and behind each of them; the same
fresh enthusiasm, the same expansive sympathy, the same large
hospitality of spirit. Always, too, the same habitual reference of
ideas, systems, artistic forms, to the complex realities of life, and to
these realities as they figured to sympathetic emotions.

It was inevitable that Diderot should make an idol of the author of
_Clarissa Harlowe_. The spirit of reaction against the artificiality of
the pseudo-classic drama, which drove him to feel the way to a drama of
real life in the middle class, made him exult in the romance of ordinary
private life which was invented by Richardson. It was no mere accident
that the modern novel had its origin in England, but the result of
general social causes. The modern novel essentially depends on the
interest of the private life of ordinary men and women. But this
interest was only possible on condition that the feudal and aristocratic
spirit had received its deathblow, and it was only in England that such
a revolution had taken place even partially. It was only in England as
yet that the middle class had conquered a position of consideration,
equality, and independence. Only in England, as has been said, had every
man the power of making the best of his own personality, and arranging
his own destiny according to his private goodwill and