philosophers. Tradition had given place to private judgment and
in its first reaction private judgment knew no law but its own
caprices. The watchword of intellectual freedom was made to
cover universal license, and clever sophists constructed theories
to justify the mad carnival of vice and frivolity. "As soon as
one does a bad action, one never fails to make a bad maxim," said
the clever Marquise de Crequi. "As soon as a school boy has his
love affairs, he wishes no more to say his prayers; and when a
woman wrongs her husband, she tries to believe no more in God."

The fact that this brilliant but heartless and epicurean world
was tempered with intellect and taste changed its color but not
its moral quality. Talent turned to intrigue, and character was
the toy of the scheming and flexible brain. The maxims of La
Rochefoucauld were the rule of life. Wit counted for everything,
the heart for nothing. The only sins that could not be pardoned
were stupidity and awkwardness. "Bah! He has only revealed
every one's secret," said Mme. du Defand to an acquaintance who
censured Helvetius for making selfishness the basis of all human
actions. To some one who met this typical woman of her time, in
the gay salon of Mme. de Marchais, and condoled with her upon the
death of her lifelong friend and lover, Pont de Veyle, she
quietly replied, "Alas! He died this evening at six o"clock;
otherwise you would not see me here." "My friend fell ill, I
attended him; he died, and I dissected him" was the remark of a
wit on reading her satirical pen portrait of the Marquise du
Chatelet. This cold skepticism, keen analysis, and undisguised
heartlessness strike the keynote of the century which was
socially so brilliant, intellectually so fruitful, and morally so
weak.