ey
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]

"What I see every day of physic and physicians does not much heighten my
opinion of them. To come into the world