esteemed. But he had more
genius, and exercised a greater influence on posterity. His influence
was more subtle and more dangerous, for he led astray people of
generous impulses and enthusiastic dispositions, with but little
intelligence or experience. He abounded in extravagant admiration of
unsophisticated nature, professed to love the simple and earnest,
affected extraordinary friendship and sympathy, and was most
enthusiastic in his rhapsodies of sentimental love. Voltaire had no
cant, but Rousseau was full of it. Voltaire was the father of Danton,
but Rousseau of Robespierre, that sentimental murderer who as a judge,
was too conscientious to hang a criminal, but sufficiently
unscrupulous to destroy a king. The absurdities of Rousseau can be
detected in the ravings of the ultra Transcendentalists, in the
extravagance of Fourierism, in the mock philanthropy of such apostles
of light as Eugene Sue and Louis Blanc. The whole mental and physical
constitution of Rousseau was diseased, and his actions were strangely
inconsistent with his sentiments. He gave the kiss of friendship, and
it proved the token of treachery; he expatiated on simplicity and
earnestness in most bewitching language, but was a hypocrite, seducer,
and liar. He was always breathing the raptures of affection, yet never
succeeded in keeping a friend; he was always denouncing the
selfishness and vanity of the world, and yet was miserable without its
rewards and praises; no man was more dependent on society, yet no man
ever professed to hold it in deeper contempt; no man ever had a
prouder spirit, yet no man ever affected a more abject humility. He
dilated, with apparent rapture, on disinterested love, and yet left
his own children to cold neglect and poverty. He poisoned the weak and
the susceptible by pouring out streams of passion in eloquent and
exciting language, under the pretence of unburdening his own soul and
revealing his own sorrows. He was always talking about philanthropy
and generosity, and yet seldom bestowed a charity. No man was ever
more eloquent in paradox, or sublime in absurdity. He spent his life
in gilding what is corrupt, and glossing over what is impure. The
great moral effect of his writings was to make men commit crimes under
the name of patriotism, and permit them to indulge in selfish passion
under the name of love.

[Sidenote: Diderot.]

But more powerful than either of these false prophets and guides, in
immediate influen