CHAPTER III.
EARLY WRITINGS.
La Rochefoucauld, expressing a commonplace with the penetrative terseness that made him a master of the apophthegm, pronounced it "not to be enough to have great qualities: a man must have the economy of them." Or, as another writer says: "Empire in this world belongs not so much to wits, to talents, and to industry, as to a certain skilful economy and to the continual management that a man has the art of applying to all his other gifts."[18] Notwithstanding the peril that haunts superlative propositions, we are inclined to say that Diderot is the most striking illustration of this that the history of letters or speculation has to furnish.

If there are many who have missed the mark which they or kindly intimates thought them certain of attaining, this is mostly not for want of economy, but for want of the great qualities which were imputed to them by mistake.

To be mediocre, to be sterile, to be futile, are the three fatal endings of many superbly announced potentialities.

Such an end nearly always comes of exaggerated faculty, rather than of bad administration of natural gifts.

In Diderot were splendid talents.