more romantic and attractive character, if he had suppressed the
shadows and heightened the lights. I am inclined to think that it
was partly vanity and partly honesty. Vanity was the motive force,
and honesty the accompanying mood. I do not suppose there is any
document so transparently true in existence, and we ought to be
thankful for that. It is customary to say that Rousseau had the
soul of a lackey, by which I suppose is meant that he had a gross
and vulgar nature, a thievish taste for low pleasures, and an ill-
bred absence of consideration for others. He had all these
qualities certainly, but he had a great deal more. He was upright
and disinterested. He had a noble disregard of material advantages;
he had an enthusiasm for virtue, a passionate love of humanity, a
deep faith in God. He was not an intellectual man nor a
philosopher; and yet what a ridiculous criticism is that which is
generally made upon him, that his reasoning is bad, his knowledge
scanty, and that people had better read Hobbes! The very reason
which made Rousseau so tremendous an influence was that his point
of view was poetical rather than philosophical; he was not too far
removed from the souls to which he prophesied. What they needed was
inspiration, emotion, and sentimental dogma; these he could give,
and so he saved Europe from the philosophers and the cynics. Of
course it is a deplorable life, tormented by strong animal passion,
ill-health, insanity; but one tends to forget the prevalent
coarseness of social tone at that date, not because Rousseau made
any secret of it, but because none of his contemporaries dared to
be so frank. If Rousseau had struck out a dozen episodes from the
Confessions the result would have been a highly poetical,
reflective, charming book. I can easily conceive that it might have
a very bad effect upon an ingenuous mind, because it might be
argued from what he says that moral lapses do not very much matter,