ondition of things.
"I have heard painters acknowledge that they could do better without
nature than with her, or, as they expressed themselves, it only put
them out. Our neighbours, the French, are much in this practice of
extempore invention, and their dexterity is such as even to excite
admiration, if not envy; but how rarely can this praise be given to
their finished pictures!" Twelfth Discourse, p. 105.

There is a passage in one of the Salons which sheds a striking
side-light on the difference between these two great types of genius.
The difference between the mere virtuoso and the deep critic is that, in
the latter, behind views on art we discern far-reaching thoughts on
life. And in Diderot, no less than in Goethe, art is ever seen in its
associations with character, aspiration, happiness, and conduct.

"The sun, which was on the edge of the horizon, disappeared; over
the sea there came all at once an aspect more sombre and solemn.
Twilight, which is at first neither day nor night--an image of our
feeble thoughts, and an image that warns the philosopher to stay in
his speculations--warns the traveller too to turn his steps towards
home. So I turned back, and as I continued the thread of my
thoughts, I began to reflect that if there is a particular morality
belonging to each species, so perhaps in the same species there is
a different morality for different individuals, or at least for
different kinds and collections of individuals. And in order not to
scandalise you by too serious an example, it came into my head that
there is perhaps a morality peculiar to artists or to art, and that
this morality might well be the very reverse of the common
morality. Yes, my friend, I am much afraid that man marches
straight to misery by the very path that leads the imitator of
nature to the sublime. To plunge into extremes--that is the rule
for poets. To keep in all things the just mean--there is the rule
for happiness. One must not make poetry in real life. The heroes,
the romantic lovers, the great patriots, the inflexible
magistrates, the apostles of religion, the philosophers _a toute
outrance_--all these rare and divine insensates make poetry in
their life, and that is their bane. It is they who after death
provide material for great pictures. They are excellent to paint.
Experi