Diderot delighted in this kind of argument, as Socrates or Dr.Johnson delighted in it.

He was above all others the archetype and representative of the passion for moralising, analysing, and philosophising which made the epoch what it was; but the rest of the world was all in the same vein.

If he came to Paris in a coach from the country, he found a young lady in it, eager to demonstrate that serious passions are nowadays merely ridiculous; that 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.