So when he passed on from the theory of dramatic morality to the matter
which he had more at heart, namely, the practical effects of introducing
the drama into Geneva, he keeps out of sight all the qualities in the
Genevese citizen which would protect him against the evil influence of
the stage, though it is his anxiety for the preservation of these very
qualities that gives all its fire to his eloquence. If the citizen
really was what Rousseau insisted that he was, then his virtues would
surely neutralise the evil of the drama; if not, the drama would do him
no harm. We need not examine the considerations in which Rousseau
pointed out the special reasons against introducing a theatre into his
native town. It would draw the artisans away from their work, cause
wasteful expenditure of money in amusements, break up the harmless and
inexpensive little clubs of men and the social gatherings of women. The
town was not populous enough to support a theatre, therefore the
government would have to provide one, and this would mean increased
taxation. All this was the secondary and merely colourable support by
argumentation, of a position that had been reached and was really held
by sentiment. Rousseau hated the introduction of French plays in the
same way that Cato hated the introduction of fine talkers from Greece.
It was an innovation, and so habitual was it with Rousseau to look on
all movement in the direction of what the French writers called taste
and cultivation as depraving, that he cannot help taking for granted
that any change in manners associated with taste must necessarily be a
change for the worse. Thus the Letter to D'Alembert was essentially a
supplement to the first Discourse; it was an application of its
principles to a practical case. It was part of his general reactionary
protest against philosophers, poets, men of letters, and all their
works, without particular apprehension on the side of the drama. Hence
its reasoning is much less interesting than its panegyric on the
simplicity, robust courage, and manliness of the Genevese, and its