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 _naif_, nor in delicate malice, nor in sprightly cynicism.