him less, because they make him other than he declares himself to be.
His whole life has been an attempt to be himself and nothing else
besides; and all his works have been nothing more and nothing less than
his attempt to make his own nature plain to men. Now at the end of his
life he has to swallow the bitterness of failure. He has been acclaimed
the genius of his age; kings have delighted to honour him, but they have
honoured another man. They have not known the true Jean-Jacques. They
have taken his parables for literal truth, and he knows why.

'Des êtres si singulièrement constitués doivent nécessairement
s'exprimer autrement que les hommes ordinaires. Il est impossible
qu'avec des âmes si différemment modifiés ils ne portent pas dans
l'expression de leurs sentiments et de leurs idées l'empreinte de
ces modifications. Si cette empreinte échappe à ceux qui n'ont
aucune notion de cette manière d'être, elle ne peut échapper à ceux
qui la connoissent, et qui en sont affectés eux-mêmes. C'est une
signe caracteristique auquel les initiés se reconnoissent entre eux;
et ce qui donne un grand prix à ce signe, c'est qu'il ne peut se
contrefaire, que jamais il n'agit qu'au niveau de sa source, et que,
quand il ne part pas du coeur de ceux qui l'imitent, il n'arrive
pas non plus aux coeurs faits pour le distinguer; mais sitôt qu'il y
parvient, on ne sauroit s'y méprendre; il est vrai dès qu'il est
senti.'

At the end of his days he felt that the great labour of his life which
had been to express an intuitive certainty in words which would carry
intellectual conviction, had been in vain, and his last words are: 'It
is true so soon as it is felt.'

Three pages would tell as much of the essential truth of his 'religious