people only promise themselves pleasure, which they find or not, as the
case may be; that thus they spare themselves all the broken oaths of old
days. "I took the liberty of saying that I was still a man of those old
days. '_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 s