DIDEROT, (bt-'d'-r6'. DEN Is (1713-S4). One of the most brilliant, versatile, and prolific writers of the French 'philosophic' generation. He was horn at Langres, October 5. 1713. and was educated by the Jesuit.. Ile declined to study medicine or law, quarreled with his family, and eked out a meagre livelihood in young man hood by literary hack work and teaching mathe matics. After several discreditable bohemian adventures, lie !Parried (174:3), and became defi nitely estranged from his father. In this year he published translations of Stanyan's History of Grceec, and in 1746 a translation of James's Dictionary of Medicine, with an Essai cur le rite rt la rertu, a paraphrase of Shaftesbury. The Prnsies philos9phiques of this year was his first independent work, and is said to have been in spired by a caprice of his mistress, de Puisieux, who certainly prompted his anony mous and most indecent novel, Les bijoux in disrrets of which he is reported to have said later that he "would cut off an arm not to have written it." though he was never squeam ish in fiction. Diderot's first work of philosophic importance is the Erttre cur irN a rrU a Pusage dr crux qui roirof which, though apparently a hypothetical study of the philosophy of sensation, really involved an undermining of ethical standards and so of social order. This essay abounds in strange previsions of later discoveries and hypotheses. Its immediate re sult was the imprisonment of its author at Vin cennes—not because of its audacity, but because a passage in it offended a lady of great though unavowable inductive, NIadatne de Saint :Mann imprisonment Diderot was leased at the urgency of the publishers who had undertaken to bring out the 1Wilie, originally conceived by Diderot as an en largem•nt of Chombers's L'ocgc/optudia (17:27). but becoming. under his editorship and, for a time. that of D'Alembert, the organ of intellec tual emancipation rather than of any school of ethics or philosophy. To this Diderot gave twenty years of unremitting labor, writing. re vising. editing, correcting, supervising, and com bating the intrigues and threats of theological opponents and the prohibitions of a censorship that, fortunately for his publishers, was venal as well as corrupt. The Enege/opc'dic counts twenty-eight volumes (1751-72), with a six-vol ume supplement 1177G-77) and two volumes of tables (17SO). It was not primarily or chiefly revolutionary. but practical. All branches of science. manufacture• and agrieulthre were treat ed with great fullness. It is only occasionally, and then often by mocking insinuation rather than direct attack. that it touches religion or morals, in which it has no consistent theory to uphold. The attacks on legal abuses and feudal
survivals are quite as marked a feature. The work was greeted with immense enthusiasm and was hardly in print before it was out of it. The last sets brought the price of a rarity, and it was several times reprinted. Diderot had during brief intervals of repose in this herculean work found opportunity to compose two plays—Le file nature! (1757) and Lc pere de famine (175S)— that mark the beginning of the modern domestic drama, and by hi. critical Paradox(' sue• lc romf' dien had great influence on Lessing. and so on the German stage. The French classic tragedy had confined itself to 'noble' themes. Diderot took his tragic situations from every-day middle-ela,N. life. To this period belongs also an essay on painting in the Encyclopedic, which Goethe trans lated, adding a luminous commentary; his post humously published novel. La Hcliyieuse (1759) ; the eccentric Jacques le fatalist(' (1773). also and the yet more eccentric Le morn de nameall, which first appeared in print in a translation by Goethe (1s05). Diderot wrote also three short stories and nine Nairn's. critiques beginning in 1739 on the annual exhibition of painting, and unsurpassed in their unteehnical and suggestive freshness. In 1773 Diderot, who had received hut $11n0 a year for his work on the Encycloinklie, felt constrained to sell his library. It was pur chased by Catharine IL, and presented to him as salaried caretaker. He went to Faint Petersburg to thank the Empress, and spent some months there in her intimate society. Ile re turned in 1774 and passed his last decade in ephemeral writing and conversations that left lasting impressions. In talk his contemporaries thought him unrivaled. "lie who knows Diderot in his only." said "does lint know him at all." Ile worked and talked with disinterested enthusiasm, greeting the mention of a collected edition of his writings with laughter, well did he know the reckless haste of their .onipositii 1i. Yet they lia‘e by .1s-ezat and •ourneut Is75-77). Di derot'. I ore, spoiab with 1111e. \ olland gives the best clue to his antithetical iharaeter. The r.-1 study, iu 44 plat., ellViT(411111•111, nil influence is dolin Did. rot anti the m Int ts (1.4.1111o11, I. Consult 11.0: I I) ith rot' s L, h, n rin ( Leip I : Brunet Etad( s critiques. second series ( Paris. ItiSI I : Carlyle. Essay On I lid, nit 1..”11.1011. 1 s:';1 i : and the monographs by Danii ren i Paris, 1 ti52 i ; Seller( r 1 ib., I Still) ; Fagitet di.. I titlo : dincros Iih., I titI4 ; Veinarli ( ib., I si.if Pelissier ( ib., I ti99