"There is no virtue or vice," he used to say, "but innate goodness or badness." Certain religious cravings, nevertheless, sometimes: asserted themselves in his conscience: he had.
a glimmering perception of the necessity for a higher rule and law.
"O God, I know not whether Thou art," he wrote in his _Interpretation de la Nature,_ but I will think as if Thou didst see into my soul, I will act as if I were in Thy presence." A strange illusion on the part of the philosopher about the power of ideas as well as about the profundity of evil in the human heart! Diderot fancied he could regulate his life by a perchance, and he was constantly hurried away by the torrent of his passion into a violence of thought and language foreign to his natural benevolence.

It was around his name that the philosophic strife had waxed most fierce: the active campaign undertaken by his friends to open to him the doors of the French Academy remained unsuccessful.

"He has too many enemies," said Louis XV.
"his election shall not be sanctioned." Diderot did not offer himself; he set out for St.Petersburg; the Empress Catherine had loaded him with kindnesses.

Hearing of the poverty of the philosopher who was trying to sell his library to obtain a dower for his daughter, she bought the books, leaving the enjoyment of them to Diderot, whom she appointed her librarian, and, to secure his maintenance in advance, she had a sum of fifty thousand livres remitted to him.

"So here I am obliged, in conscience, to live fifty years," said Diderot.
[Illustration: Diderot and Catherine II----321] He passed some months in Russia, admitted several hours a day to the closet of the empress, chatting with a frankness and a freedom which sometimes went to the extent of license.