This is what, apart from other considerations, makes _Rameau's Nephew_ so much more valuable a guide to the moral sentiment of the time than merely licentious compositions like those of Louvet or La Olos.

Its instructiveness is immense to those who examine the conditions that prepared the Revolution.

Rameau is not the [Greek: akolastos] of Aristotle, nor the creature of [Greek: aponoia] described by Theophrastus--the castaway by individual idiosyncrasy, the reprobate by accident.

The men whom he represented, the courtiers, the financiers, the merchants, the shopkeepers, were immoral by formula and depraved on principle.

Vice was a doctrine to them, and wretchlessness of unclean living was reduced to a system of philosophy.