is. When the great art of life has been more systematically conceived
in the long processes of time and endeavour, and when more bold,
ffective, and far-reaching advance has been made in defining those
pathological manifestations which deserve to be seriously studied, as
distinguished from those of a minor sort which are barely worth
registering, then we should know better how to speak, or how to be
silent, in the present most unwelcome instance. As it is, we perhaps do
best in chronicling the fact and passing on. The harmless young are
allowed to play without monition or watching among the deep open graves
of temperament; and Rousseau, telling the tale of his inmost experience,
unlike the physician and the moralist who love decorous surfaces of
things, did not spare himself nor others a glimpse of the ignominies to
which the body condemns its high tenant, the soul.[12]

The second piece of experience which he acquired at Bossey was the
knowledge of injustice and wrongful suffering as things actual and
existent. Circumstances brought him under suspicion of having broken the
teeth of a comb which did not belong to him. He was innocent, and not
even the most terrible punishment could wring from him an untrue
confession of guilt. The root of his constancy was not in an abhorrence
of falsehood, which is exceptional in youth, and for which he takes no
credit, but in a furious and invincible resentment against the violent
pressure that was unjustly put upon him. "Picture a character, timid and
docile in ordinary life, but ardent, impetuous, indomitable in its
passions; a child always governed by the voice of reason, always treated
with equity, gentleness, and consideration, who had not even the idea of
injustice, and who for the first time experiences an injustice so
terrible, from the very people whom he most cherishes and respects! What
a confusion of ideas, what disorder of sentiments, what revolution in
heart, in brain, in every part of his moral and intellectual being!" He
had not learnt, any more than other children, either to put himself in
the place of his elders, or to consider the strength of the apparent
case against him. All that he felt was the rigour of a frightful
chastisement for an offence of which he was innocent. And the
association of ideas was permanent. "This first sentiment of violence
and injustice has remained so deeply engraved in my soul, that all the
ideas relating to it bring my first emotion back