ancient institutions; a whole new way of thinking and acting
was set in motion on the assumption that it was old. Yet, so
far as is known, no one in or out of Palestine ever saw
through the illusion for over two thousand years. It was
reserved for nineteenth-century scholars to draw aside the
veil hiding the real facts of the case.

Modern times supply another instance, less important than the
first, but remarkable enough. Rousseau came in the middle of
the eighteenth century, and preached a doctrine that took the
world by storm, and soon precipitated that world in ruins. How
did he discover his gospel? He tells us quite naively:--

All the rest of the day, buried in the forest, I
sought, I found there the image of primitive ages,
whose history I boldly traced. I made havoc of men's
petty lies; I dared to unveil and strip naked man's
true nature, to follow up the course of time and of
the circumstances that have disfigured it, and,
comparing man as men have made him with man as
nature made him, to demonstrate that the so-called
improvements [of civilisation] have been the source
of all his woes, etc. [5]

[Note 5] "Confessions," Book VIII., year 1753.


In other words, he spun a pseudo-history from his own brain.
What is stranger, he fanatically believed in this his pure
invention, and, most extraordinary of all, persuaded other