having with impunity dealt with the most delicate political matter."

Rousseau had just printed his _Discours sur l'Inegalite des conditions,_
a new and violent picture of the corruptions of human society.
"Inequality being almost nil in a state of nature," he says, "it derives
its force and increment from the development of our faculties and from
the progress of the human mind . . . according to the poet it is gold
and silver, but according to the philosopher it is iron and corn which
have civilized men and ruined the human race."

The singularity of his paradox had worn off; Rousseau no longer
astounded, he shocked the good sense as well as the aspirations,
superficial or generous, of the eighteenth century. The _Discours sur
l'Inegalite des conditions_ was not a success. "I have received, sir,
your new book against the human race," wrote Voltaire; "I thank you for
it. You will please men to whom you tell truths about them, and you will
not make them any better. Never was so much good wit expended in the
desire to make beasts of us; one feels disposed to walk on all fours when
one reads your work. However, as it is more than sixty years since I
lost the knack, I unfortunately find it impossible to recover it, and I
leave that natural gait to those who are better fitted for it than you or
I. No more can I embark upon a visit to the savages of Canada, first,
because the illnesses to which I am subject render a European doctor
necessary to me; secondly, because war has been introduced into that
country, and because the examples of our nations have rendered the
savages almost as wicked as ourselves. I shall confine myself to being a
peaceable savage in the solitude I have selected hard by your own
country, where you ought to be."

Rousseau had, indeed, thought of returning and settling at Geneva. In
1754, during a trip he made thither, he renounced the Catholic faith
which he had embraced at sixteen under the influence of Madame de Warens,
without any more conviction than he carried with him in his fresh
abjuration. "Ashamed," says he, "at being excluded from my rights of
citizenship by the profession of a cult other than that of my fathers, I
resolved to resume the latter openly. I considered that the Gospel was
the same for all Christians, and that, as the fundamental difference of
dogma arose from meddling with explanations of what could not be
understood, it appertained in every country to the sovereig