free. To the whisper of les Charmettes that there was a condition of
grace had been added the sterner voice of remorse for his abandoned
children, telling him that he had fallen from his high estate.

'J'ai fui en vain; partout j'ai retrouvé la Loi.
Il faut céder enfin! ô porte, il faut admettre
L'hôte; coeur frémissant, il faut subir le maître,
Quelqu'un qui soit en moi plus moi-même que moi.'

The noble verse of M. Claudel contains the final secret of Jean-Jacques.
He found in himself something more him than himself. Therefore he
declared: There is a God. But he sought to work out a logical foundation
for these pinnacles of truth. He must translate these luminous
convictions of his soul into arguments and conclusions. He could not,
even to himself, admit that they were only intuitions; and in the
_Contrat Social_ he turned the reason to the service of a certainty not
her own.

This unremitting endeavour to express an intuitive certainty in
intellectual terms lies at the root of the many superficial
contradictions in his work, and of the deeper contradiction which forms,
as it were, the inward rhythm of his three great books. He seems to
surge upwards on a passionate wave of revolutionary ideas, only to sink
back into the calm of conservative or quietist conclusions. M. Masson
has certainly observed it well.

'Le premier _Discours_ anathématise les sciences et les arts, et ne
voit le salut que dans les académies; le _Discours sur l'Inégalité_
paraît détruire tout autorité, et recommande pourtant "l'obéissance
scrupuleuse aux lois et aux hommes qui en sont les auteurs": la