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Updated: May 18, 2025
But a man cannot be a critic without being thoroughly acquainted with the conditions, means, and styles of an art; and here the nature of Diderot's studies and acquirements renders his critical capabilities extremely questionable. This ingenious sophist deals out his blows with such boisterous haste in the province of criticism, that the half of them are thrown away.
But his lingering faith in Aristotle, with the influence which Diderot's writings had had on him, produced a strange compound in his theory of the dramatic art. He did not understand the rights of poetical imitation, and demanded not only in dialogue, but everywhere else also, a naked copy of nature, just as if this were in general allowable, or even possible in the fine arts.
Above all, he was impressed by the magnificent ideas of the illustrious Bacon, and these ideas were the direct source of the great undertaking of Diderot's life. He is said to have read little and to have meditated much the right process for the few men of his potent stamp. The work which he had to do for bread was of the kind that crushes anything short of the strongest faculty.
Streckeisen-Moultou, i. 381-383. Ib. 387. Many years after, Rousseau told Bernardin de St. The sources of all this are in the following places. Corr., i. 416. Oct. 29. Streckeisen, i. 349. Nov. 12. Conf., ix. 377. Corr., i. 427. Nov. 23. Conf., ix. 381. Dec. 1. Ib., ix. 383. Dec. 17. Diderot to Grimm; D'Epinay, ii. 397. Diderot's Oeuv., xix. 446. See also 449 and 210.
These are the circumstances which explain the rude and vigorous scepticism of Diderot's first performances. And they explain the influence of Shaftesbury over him. Neither Diderot nor his contemporaries were ready at once to plunge into the broader and firmer negation to which they afterwards committed themselves.
This original he had procured from Madame de Vandeul, Diderot's daughter, who still survived. She described it as a copy made in 1760 under the author's own eyes, and this may have been the case, though, if so, it must, from some of the references, have been revised after 1773.
With the literary and dramatic qualities of this play, its absence of humor and of sparkling dialogue, its tedious moralizing, its hollow pathos and its general relation to Diderot's dramatic theory, we are not here directly concerned.
Whoever turns with a clear eye and proper intellectual capacity in search of the real bearings of what he is about, is sure to find out the strong currents of the time, even though he may never consciously throw them into their most general and abstract expression. Since Aristotle, said Lessing, no more philosophical mind than Diderot's has treated of the theatre.
"It was not until 1771," says Diderot's latest English biographer, "that the directors of the French Comedy could be induced to place Le Fils Naturel on the stage. The actors detested their task, and, as we can well believe, went sulkily through parts which they had not taken the trouble to master.
Grimm, who was Diderot's closest friend next to Mademoiselle Voland, despised Rousseau, and Rousseau detested Grimm. "Grimm," he one day said to a disciple, "is the only man whom I have ever been able to hate."
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