running through the graver and more
active minds of Geneva about the time of Rousseau's visit. Whether it be
true or not that the accepted belief of many of the preachers was a pure
Deism, it is certain that the theory was fully launched among them, and
that those who could not accept it were still pressed to refute it, and
in refuting, to discuss. Rousseau's friendships were according to his
own account almost entirely among the ministers of religion and the
professors of the academy, precisely the sort of persons who would be
most sure to familiarise him, in the course of frequent conversations,
with the current religious ideas and the arguments by which they were
opposed or upheld. We may picture the effect on his mind of the
difference in tone and temper in these grave, candid, and careful men,
and the tone of his Parisian friends in discussing the same high themes;
how this difference would strengthen his repugnance, and corroborate his
own inborn spirit of veneration; how he would here feel himself in his
own world. For as wise men have noticed, it is not so much difference of
opinion that stirs resentment in us, at least in great subjects where
the difference is not trivial but profound, as difference in gravity of
humour and manner of moral approach. He returned to Paris (Oct. 1754)
warm with the resolution to give up his concerns there, and in the
spring go back once and for all to the city of liberty and virtue, where
men revered wisdom and reason instead of wasting life in the frivolities
of literary dialectic.[245]

The project, however, grew cool. The dedication of his Discourse on
Inequality to the Republic was received with indifference by some and
indignation by others.[246] Nobody thought it a compliment, and some
thought it an impertinence. This was one reason which turned his purpose
aside. Another was the fact that the illustrious Voltaire now also
signed himself Swiss, and boasted that if he shook his wig the powder
flew over the whole of the tiny Republic. Rousseau felt certain that
Voltaire would make a revolution in Geneva, and that he should find in
his native country the tone, the air, the manners which were driving him
from Paris. From that moment he counted Geneva lost. Perhaps he ought to
make head against the disturber, but what could he do alone, timid and
bad talker as he was, against a man arrogant, rich, supported by the
credit of the great, of brilliant eloquence, and already the very i