to me; and this
sentiment, though only relative to myself in its origin, has taken such
consistency, and become so disengaged from all personal interest, that
my heart is inflamed at the sight or story of any wrongful action, just
as much as if its effect fell on my own person. When I read of the
cruelties of some ferocious tyrant, or the subtle atrocities of some
villain of a priest, I would fain start on the instant to poniard such
wretches, though I were to perish a hundred times for the deed.... This
movement may be natural to me, and I believe it is so; but the profound
recollection of the first injustice I suffered was too long and too fast
bound up with it, not to have strengthened it enormously."[13]

To men who belong to the silent and phlegmatic races like our own, all
this may possibly strike on the ear like a false or strained note. Yet a
tranquil appeal to the real history of one's own strongest impressions
may disclose their roots in facts of childish experience, which
remoteness of time has gradually emptied of the burning colour they once
had. This childish discovery of the existence in his own world of that
injustice which he had only seen through a glass very darkly in the
imaginary world of his reading, was for Rousseau the angry dismissal
from the primitive Eden, which in one shape and at one time or another
overtakes all men. "Here," he says, "was the term of the serenity of my
childish days. From this moment I ceased to enjoy a pure happiness, and
I feel even at this day that the reminiscence of the delights of my
infancy here comes to an end.... Even the country lost in our eyes that
charm of sweetness and simplicity which goes to the heart; it seemed
sombre and deserted, and was as if covered by a veil, hiding its
beauties from our sight. We no longer tended our little gardens, our
plants, our flowers. We went no more lightly to scratch the earth,
shouting for joy as we discovered the germ of the seed we had sown."

Whatever may be the degree of literal truth in the Confessions, the
whole course of Rousseau's life forbids us to pass this passionate
description by as overcharged or exaggerated. We are conscious in it of
a constitutional infirmity. We perceive an absence of healthy power of
reaction against moral shock. Such shocks are experienced in many
unavoidable forms by all save the dullest natures, when they first come
into contact with the sharp tooth of outer circumstance. Indeed, a man
m