CHAPTER VIII.
DIDEROT’S CLOSING YEARS.
At the end of a long series of notes and questions on points in anatomy and physiology, which he had been collecting for many years, Diderot wound up with a strange outburst:
“I shall not know until the end what I have lost or gained in this vast gaming-house, where I shall have passed some threescore years, dice-box in hand, tesseras agitans.
“What do I perceive? Forms. And what besides? Forms. Of the substance I know nothing. We walk among shadows, ourselves shadows to ourselves and to others.
“If I look at a rainbow traced on a cloud, I can perceive it; for him who looks at it from another angle, there is nothing.
“A fancy common enough among the living is to dream that they are dead, that they stand by the side of their own corpse, and follow their own funeral. It is like a swimmer watching his garments stretched out on the shore.
“Philosophy, that habitual and profound meditation which takes us away from all that surrounds us, which annihilates our own personality, is another apprenticeship for death.”[174]
This was now to be seen. Diderot, as we have said, came back from his expedition to Russia in the autumn of 1744, tranquilly counting on half a score more years to make up the tale of his days. He remained in temper and habit through this long evening of his life what he had been in its morning and noontide—friendly, industrious, cheerful, exuberant in conversation, keenly interested in the march of liberal and progressive ideas. On his return his wife and daughter found him thin and altered. A few months of absence so often suffice to reveal that our friend has grown old, and that time is casting long shadows. Age seems to have come in a day, like sudden winter. He was as gay and as kindly as ever. Some of his friends had declared that he would never bethink himself of returning at all. “Time and space in his eyes,” said Galiani, “are as in the eyes of the Almighty; he thinks that he is everywhere, and that he is eternal.”[175] They had predicted for Diderot at St. Petersburg the fate of Descartes at the court of Queen Christina. But the philosopher triumphantly vindicated his character. “My good wife,” said he, when he had reached the old familiar fourth floor, “prithee, count my things; thou wilt find no reason for scolding; I have not lost a single handkerchief.”[176]
This cheerfulness, however, did not hide from his friends that he was subject to a languor which had been unknown before his journey to Russia. It was not the peevish fatigue that often brings life to an unworthy close. He remained true to the healthy temper of his prime, and found himself across the threshold of old age without repining. As the veteran Cephalus said to Socrates, regrets and complaints are not in a man’s age, but in his temper; and he who is of a happy nature will scarcely feel the burden of the years.