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 invective against the effeminacy and frivolity of the Parisian.  One of the most significant episodes in the discussion is the lengthy criticism on the immortal Misanthrope of Moliere.  Rousseau admits it for the masterpiece of the comic muse, though with characteristic perversity he insists that the hero is not misanthropic enough, nor truly misanthropic at all, because he flies into rage at small things affecting himself, instead of at the large follies of the race.  Again, he says that Moliere makes Alceste ridiculous, virtuous as he is, in order to win the applause of the pit.  It is for the character of Philinte, however, that Rousseau reserves all his spleen.  He takes care to describe him in terms which exactly hit Rousseau’s own conception of his philosophic enemies, who find all going well because they have no interest in anything going better; who are content with everybody, because they do not care