try,
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 wretchedne