trous; he is nearly a madman,
of which he displays the chief characteristics--furious exaltation,
constant over-excitement, feverish restlessness, an inexhaustible
propensity for scribbling, that mental automatism and single-mindedness
of purpose constrained and ruled by a fixed idea. In addition to this,
he displays the usual physical symptoms, such as insomnia, a pallid
complexion, hot-headed, foulness of dress and person,[3101] with,
during the last five months of his life, rashes and itching all over his
body.[3102] Issuing from ill-matched stock, born of a mixed blood and
tainted with serious moral agitation,[3103] he carries within him a
peculiar germ: physically, he is a freak, morally a pretender, and one
who covet all places of distinction. His father, who was a physician,
intended, from his early childhood, that he should be a scholar; his
mother, an idealist, had prepared him to become a philanthropist, while
he himself always steered his course towards both summits.

"At five years of age," he says, "it would have pleased me to be a
school-master, at fifteen a professor, at eighteen an author, and a
creative genius at twenty,"[3104]and, afterwards, up to the last, an
apostle and martyr to humanity. "From my earliest infancy I had an
intense love of fame which changed its object at various stages of my
life, but which never left me for a moment." He rambled over Europe
or vegetated in Paris for thirty years, living a nomadic life in
subordinate positions, hissed as an author, distrusted as a man of
science and ignored as a philosopher, a third rate political writer,
aspiring to every sort of celebrity and to every honor, constantly
presenting himself as a candidate and as constantly rejected,--too
great a disproportion between his faculties and ambition! Without
talents,[3105] possessing no critical acumen and of mediocre
intelligence, he was fitted only to teach some branch of the sciences,
or to practice some one of the arts, either as professor or doctor more
or less bold and lucky, or to follow, with occasional slips on one side
or the other, some path clearly marked out for him. "But," he says, "I
constantly refused any subject which did not hold out a promise.... of
showing off my originality and providing great results, for I
cannot make up my mind to treat a subject already well done by
others."--Consequently, when he tries to originate he merely imitates,
or commits mistakes. His treatise on "Man" is