It is not necessary to suppose that the movement as a whole was always present to him.

Diderot's mind was constantly feeling for explanations; it was never a passive recipient.

The drama excited this alert interest just as everything else excited it.

He thought about that, as about everything else, originally, that is to say, sincerely and in the spirit of reality.[249] Whoever turns with a clear eye and proper intellectual capacity in search of the real bearings of what he is about, is sure to find out the strong currents of the time, even though he may never consciously throw them into their most general and abstract expression.
Since Aristotle, said Lessing, no more philosophical mind than Diderot's has treated of the theatre.

Lessing himself translated Diderot's two plays, and the Essay on Dramatic Poetry, and repeatedly said that without the impulse of Diderot's principles and illustrations his own taste would have taken a different direction.