which the philosophic party did not escape untainted,[56] I need not
here do more than make two short remarks. First, the corruption which
had seized the court after the death of Lewis XIV. in the course of a
few years had reached the middle class in the town. The loosening of
social fibre, caused by the insenate speculation at the time of Law,
no doubt furthered the spread of demoralisation. Second, the reaction
against the Church involved among its other elements a passionate
contempt for all asceticism. This happened to fall in with the
general relaxation of morals that followed Lewis's gloomy rigour.
Consequently even men of pure life, like Condorcet, carried the
theoretical protest against asceticism so far as to vindicate the
practical immorality of the time. This is one of those enormous
drawbacks that people seldom take into account when they are
enumerating the blessings of superstition. Mediæval superstition had
produced some advantages, but now came the set-off. Durable morality
had been associated with a transitory religious faith. The faith fell
into intellectual discredit, and sexual morality shared its decline
for a short season. This must always be the natural consequence of
building sound ethics on the shifting sands and rotting foundations
of theology.

Such literature as these tales of Diderot's, was the mirror both of the
ordinary practical sentiment and the philosophic theory. A nation pays
dearly for one of those outbreaks, when they happen to stamp themselves
in a literary form that endures. There are those who hold that Louvet's
Faublas is to this day a powerful agent in the depravation of the youth
of France. Diderot, however, had not the most characteristic virtues of
French writing; he was no master in the art of the _naïf_, nor in
delicate malice, nor in sprightly cynicism. His book, consequently, has
not lived, and we need not waste more words upon it. _Chaque esprit a sa