He was absolutely uncramped by any of the formal mannerisms of the spirit.

He was wholly uncorrupted by the affectation of culture with which the great Goethe infected part of the world a generation later.

His own life was never made the centre of the world.

Self-development and self-idealisation as ends in themselves would have struck Diderot as effeminate drolleries.
The daily and hourly interrogation of experience for the sake of building up the fabric of his own character in this wise or that, would have been incomprehensible and a little odious to him in theory, and impossible as a matter of practice.

In the midst of all the hardships of his younger time, as afterwards in the midst of crushing Herculean taskwork, he was saved from moral ruin by the inexhaustible geniality and expansiveness of his affections.