of Rousseau, who was free from that craving for system which is the
snare of those minds in which logic and pure reason prevail over
acuteness of self-observation.

The society of the eighteenth century had grown very rigid and
artificial. The struggle of the Philosophers was to bring men back in
one way and another to a life founded rationally on a few simple laws
derived from the nature of things. Of these laws the leaders themselves
had not always a true perception, nor did they always derive the right
rules from such laws as they perceived. But their struggle was ever for
reason, as they understood it, and generally for simplicity. In this
work Rousseau was a leader. He was constantly preaching the merits and
the charms of a simple life. In his denunciations of elaborateness, of
luxury, and even of civilization, he was often mistaken, sometimes
absurd. But his authority was great. He set a fashion of simplicity, and
he exerted an influence which went far beyond fashion, and has helped to
modify the world to this day.

There was another quality beside introspection in which Rousseau was the
precursor of the literary men of the nineteenth century, and that is the
love of nature. To say that he was the first great writer to enjoy and
describe natural scenery would be a gross exaggeration. But most of
Rousseau's predecessors valued the world out of doors principally for
its usefulness, and in proportion to its fertility. Rousseau is perhaps
the first great writer who fairly reveled in country life; for whom lake
and mountain, rock and cloud, tree and flower, had a constant joy and
meaning. The true enjoyment of natural scenery, generally affected
nowadays, is not given in a high degree to most people; in a very few it
may be as intense as the enjoyment of music is in many more; but most
people can get from scenery, as from other beautiful things, a