of medicine. Religion is an old-fashioned prejudice. Let us push on and
unite the world in one great, comfortable, well-fed family. Such is the
last practical advice of the French Philosophic school of the eighteenth
century and of its unconscious followers in this. If the conclusion does
not satisfy the highest aspirations of the human race, that is perhaps
because of some flaw in the premises.



CHAPTER XVIII.

ROUSSEAU'S POLITICAL WRITINGS.


In passing from the study of the Philosophers to that of Rousseau, we
turn from talent to genius, from system to impulse. The theories of the
great Genevan were drawn from his own strange nature, with little regard
for consistency. They belong together much as the features of a
distorted and changeful countenance may do; their unity is personal
rather than systematic. And while Rousseau was, from certain aspects and
chiefly in respect to his conduct, the most contemptible of the great
thinkers of his day, he surpassed most of the others in constant
literary sincerity, and in occasional elevation of thought and feeling.
Voltaire, although never swerving long from his own general
philosophical scheme, would lie without hesitation for any purpose.
Diderot would quote from non-existent books to establish his theories.
But no one can read Rousseau without being convinced that he believed
what he wrote, at least at the moment of writing it. Truthfulness of
this kind is quite consistent with inaccuracy, and it is probable that
some incidents in Rousseau's autobiographical writings have been wrongly