The key to them all is his everlasting watchword: _Watch nature, follow her simple, and spontaneous leading_.
The Paradox on the Player is one of the very few of Diderot's pieces of which we can say that, besides containing vigorous thought, it has real finish in point of literary form.

There is not the flat tone, the heavy stroke, the loose shamble, that give a certain stamp of commonness to so many of his most elaborate discussions.

In the Paradox the thoughts seem to fall with rapidity and precision into their right places; they are direct; they are not overloaded with qualifications; their clear delivery is not choked by a throng of asides and casual ejaculations.
Usually Diderot writes as if he were loath to let the sentence go, and to allow the paragraph to come to an end.

Here he lays down his proposition, and without rambling passes on to the next.

The effort is not kept up quite to the close, for the last half dozen pages have the ordinary clumsy mannerism of their author.
What is the Paradox?
That a player of the first rank must have much judgment, self-possession, and penetration, _but no sensibility_.