Rousseau's savage has but few desires, and those of the simplest, and he
is dependent on no one for their satisfaction. In him natural pity is
awake, although obscure, while in civilized man it is developed, but
weak. The Philosopher will not leave his bed although his fellow-beings
be slaughtered under his window, but will clap his hands to his ears and
quiet himself with arguments. The savage is not so tranquil, and gives
way to the first impulse. In street fights the populace assembles and
prudent folk get out of the way. It is the rabble and the fishwives who
separate the combatants, and prevent respectable people from cutting
each other's throats.[Footnote: Rousseau says in his Confessions
(Oeuvres, xviii. 205 n. Part. ii. liv. viii.), that this heartless
philosopher was suggested to him by Diderot, who abused his confidence,
and gave his writings at this time a hard tone and a black appearance.
The abuse of confidence is nonsense, but the comic picture of the
philosopher, with his hands on his ears, may well have come from
Diderot. Rousseau was always in deadly earnest.]

Love, he says, is physical and moral. The physical side is that general
desire which leads to the union of the sexes. The moral side is that
which fixes that desire on one exclusive object, or at least that which
gives the exclusive desire a greater energy. Now it is easy to see that
this moral side of love is a factitious feeling, born of the usage of
society, and vaunted by women with much skill and care in order to
establish their empire, and to give dominion to the sex which ought to
obey. This feeling is dull in the savage, who has no abstract ideas of
regularity or beauty; he is not troubled with imagination, which causes
so many woes to civilized man. "Let us conclude that the savage man,
wandering in forests, without manufactures, without language, without a
home, without war, and without connections, with no need of his kind,
and no desire to injure it, perhaps never recognizing one person