Digitized by VjjOOQIC



30 ROUSSEAU. chap.
unsurpassed horror and anguish of such moments as
this in youth, when we know only the will of others,
and that this will is inexorable against us. Eousseau
dared not expose himself to the fulfilment of his
master's menace, and he ran away (1728). But for
this, wrote the unhappy man long years after, "I
should have passed, in the bosom of my religion, of
my native land, of my family, and my friends, a mild
and peaceful life, such as my character required, in
the uniformity of work which suited my taste, and of
a society after my heart. I should have been a good
Christian, good citizen, good father of a family, good
friend, good craftsman, good man in alL I should
have been happy in my condition, perhaps I might
have honoured it ; and after living a life obscure and
simple, but even and gentle, I should have died peace-
fully in the midst of my own people. Soon forgotten,
I should at any rate have been regretted as long as
any memory of me was left" l

As a man knows nothing about the secrets of his
own individual organisation, this illusory mapping out
of a supposed Possible need seldom be suspected of the
smallest insincerity. The poor madman who declares
that he is a king kept out of his rights only moves
our pity, and we perhaps owe pity no less to those
in all the various stages of aberration uncertificated
by surgeons, down to the very edge of most respectable
sanity, who accuse the injustice of men of keeping
them out of this or that kingdom, of which in truth
1 Co7\f. t i. 72.
