, that which is its chief organ,--the heart.

I thus passed my days far from mankind, whom I wished to serve, and by
whom I have been persecuted. After having travelled over many countries
of Europe, and some parts of America and Africa, I at length pitched my
tent in this thinly-peopled island, allured by its mild climate and its
solitudes. A cottage which I built in the woods, at the foot of a tree,
a little field which I cleared with my own hands, a river which glides
before my door, suffice for my wants and for my pleasures. I blend with
these enjoyments the perusal of some chosen books, which teach me to
become better. They make that world, which I have abandoned, still
contribute something to my happiness. They lay before me pictures of
those passions which render its inhabitants so miserable; and in the
comparison I am thus led to make between their lot and my own, I feel a
kind of negative enjoyment. Like a man saved from shipwreck, and thrown
upon a rock, I contemplate, from my solitude, the storms which rage
through the rest of the world; and my repose seems more profound from
the distant sound of the tempest. As men have ceased to fall in my way,
I no longer view them with aversion; I only pity them. If I sometimes
fall in with an unfortunate being, I try to help him by my counsels, as
a passer-by on the brink of a torrent extends his hand to save a
wretch from drowning. But I have hardly ever found any but the innocent
attentive to my voice. Nature calls the majority of men to her in vain.
Each of them forms an image of her for himself, and invests her with his
own passions. He pursues during the whole of his life this vain phantom,
which leads him astray; and he afterwards complains to Heaven of the
misfortunes which he has thus created for himself. Among the many
children of misfortune whom I have endeavoured to lead back to the
enjoyments of nature, I have not found one but was intoxicated with his
own miseries. They have listened to me at first with attention, in the
hope that I could teach them how to acquire glory or fortune, but when
they found that I only wished to instruct them how to dispense with
these chimeras, their attention has been converted into pity, because I
did not prize their miserable happiness. They blamed my solitary life;
they alleged that they alone were useful to men, and they endeavoured to
draw me into their vortex. But if I communicate with all, I lay myself
open to none. It is