KOUSSEAU. 187 



selfishness, fear as soon as any restraint is applied, and 

 fear invariably gives rise to the protection of falsehood. 

 All natural propensities are eagerly indulged ; all re- 

 straint is distasteful. Among others, the love of truth 

 is a restraint imposed by tuition, and like all restraints, 

 it is a violence to natural propensities. Now Rousseau 

 erected into his rule of conduct the self-indulgence 

 which the rules of reason and virtue proscribe alike. 

 The divinity he worshipped was sentiment, feeling, 

 often amiable, often reasonable, sometimes contrary to 

 reason, sometimes inconsistent with virtue ; and always, 

 when indulged in excess, offending against reason, and 

 leading to offences against virtue. Whoever reads his 

 ' Confessions ' must perceive that he never could conceive 

 he was acting wrong when he was following the bent 

 of his feelings ; scarcely that he was acting imprudently 

 when he was sacrificing to them his own plainest and 

 highest interests. To such a pitch was his folly on 

 this point, this cardinal point, carried, that we find 

 him unable to conceive how any one could ever re- 

 proach a man with his worst crimes after he had once 

 openly avowed them, or rather after he had allowed 

 certain things to be wrong ; for, having admitted in 

 the ' Emile ' that whoever under any pretext or from 

 any motive whatever withdrew from the performance 

 of his parental duties, must expect ever after to weep 

 bitterly over his fault (sa faute), he declares that it 

 " was surprising any person after such an avowal could 

 ever have the courage to reproach him with the fault " 

 (faute) of sending his five infants to the Foundling 

 Hospital. He altogether forgets that the courage of 

 making such confessions, even had they been much more 



