y misery. With
what rage and fury I will overthrow this ancient barrier!--We detect
this in the vehement tone, in the embittered style, and in the sombre
eloquence of the new doctrine. Fun and games are no longer in vogue,
a serious tone is maintained; people become exasperated, while the
powerful voice now heard penetrates beyond the drawing-room, to the rude
and suffering crowd to which no word had yet been spoken, whose
mute resentment for the first time finds an interpreter, and whose
destructive instincts are soon to be set in motion at the summons of its
herald.--Rousseau is a man of the people, and not a man of high
society. He feels awkward in a drawing-room.[3333] He is not capable of
conversing and of appearing amiable; the nice expressions only come into
his head too late, on the staircase as he leaves the house; he keeps
silent with a sulky air or utters stupidities, redeeming his awkwardness
with the sallies of a clown or with the phrases of a vulgar pedant.
Elegance annoys him, luxury makes him uncomfortable, politeness is
a lie, conversation mere prattle, ease of manner a grimace, gaiety a
convention, wit a parade, science so much charlatanry, philosophy an
affection and morals utter corruption. All is factitious, false and
unwholesome,[3334] from the make-up, toilet and beauty of women to the
atmosphere of the apartments and the ragouts on the dinner-table, in
sentiment as in amusement, in literature as in music, in government as
in religion. This civilization, which boasts of its splendor, is simply
the restlessness of over-excited, servile monkeys each imitating the
other, and each corrupting the other to, through sophistication, end
up in worry and boredom. Human culture, accordingly, is in itself bad,
while the fruit it produces is merely excrescence or poison.--Of what
use are the sciences? Uncertain and useless, they afford merely a
pasture-ground for idlers and wranglers.[3335]

"Who would want to pass a lifetime in sterile observation, if they,
apart from their duties and nature's demands, had had to bestow their
time on their country, on the unfortunate and on their friends!"--Of
what use are the fine arts? They serve only as public flattery of
dominant passions. "The more pleasing and the more perfect the drama,
the more baneful its influence;" the theater, even with Moliere, is
a school of bad morals, "inasmuch as it excites deceitful souls to
ridicule, in the name of comedy, the candor of art