It seems as if Diderot unconsciously anticipated that terrible, that woful, that desolating saying,--_There is in every man and woman something which, if you knew it, would make you hate them_.

Rameau is not all parasite.

He is your brother and mine, a product from the same rudimentary factors of mental composition, a figure cast equally with ourselves in one of the countless moulds of the huge social foundry.
Such is the scientific attitude of mind towards character: It is not philanthropic nor pitiful: the fact that base characters exist and are of intelligible origin is no reason why we should not do our best to shun and to extirpate them.

This assumption of the scientific point of view, this change from mere praise and blame to scrutiny, this comprehension that mere execration is not the last word, is a mark of the modern spirit.

Besides Juvenal, another writer of genius has shown us the parasite of an ancient society.