le, and
painful, and full of shadows, is a noble melancholy, a superior sort of
madness. Yet one is not content to bear, to suffer, to wait; one
clutches desperately at light and warmth and joy, and alas, in joy and
sorrow alike, one is ever and insupportably alone.

April 9, 1889.

I have been reading Rousseau lately, and find him a very
incomprehensible figure. The Confessions, it must be said, is a dingy
and sordid book. I cannot quite penetrate the motive which induced him
to write them. It cannot have been pure vanity, because he does not
spare himself; he might have made himself out a far more romantic and
attractive character, if he had suppressed the shadows and heightened
the lights. I am inclined to think that it was partly vanity and partly
honesty. Vanity was the motive force, and honesty the accompanying
mood. I do not suppose there is any document so transparently true in
existence, and we ought to be thankful for that. It is customary to say
that Rousseau had the soul of a lackey, by which I suppose is meant
that he had a gross and vulgar nature, a thievish taste for low
pleasures, and an ill-bred absence of consideration for others. He had
all these qualities certainly, but he had a great deal more. He was
upright and disinterested. He had a noble disregard of material
advantages; he had an enthusiasm for virtue, a passionate love of
humanity, a deep faith in God. He was not an intellectual man nor a
philosopher; and yet what a ridiculous criticism is that which is
generally made upon him, that his reasoning is bad, his knowledge
scanty, and that people had better read Hobbes! The very reason which
made Rousseau so tremendous an influence was that his point of view was
poetical rather than philosophical; he was not too far removed from the
souls to which he prophesied. What they needed was inspiration,
emotion, and sentimental dogma; these he could give, and so he saved
Europe from the philosophers and the cynics. Of course it is a
deplorable life, tormented by strong animal passion, ill-health,
insanity; but one tends to forget the prevalent coarseness of social
tone at that date, not because Rousseau made any secret of it, but
because none of his contemporaries dared to be so frank. If Rousseau
had struck out a dozen episodes from the Confessions the result would
have been a highly poetical, reflective, charming book. I can easily
conceive that it might have a very bad effect upon an ingenuous mi