e very feeling itself? I arose with the sun and I was happy; I went
out of doors and I was happy; I saw Maman and I was happy; I left her
and I was happy; I went among the woods and hills, I wandered about in
the dells, I read, I was idle, I dug in the garden, I gathered fruit, I
helped them indoors, and everywhere happiness followed me. It was not in
any given thing, it was all in myself, and could never leave me for a
single instant."[79] This was a true garden of Eden, with the serpent in
temporary quiescence, and we may count the man rare since the fall who
has found such happiness in such conditions, and not less blessed than
he is rare. The fact that he was one of this chosen company was among
the foremost of the circumstances which made Rousseau seem to so many
men in the eighteenth century as a spring of water in a thirsty land.

All innocent and amiable things moved him. He used to spend hours
together in taming pigeons; he inspired them with such confidence that
they would follow him about, and allow him to take them wherever he
would, and the moment that he appeared in the garden two or three of
them would instantly settle on his arms or his head. The bees, too,
gradually came to put the same trust in him, and his whole life was
surrounded with gentle companionship. He always began the day with the
sun, walking on the high ridge above the slope on which the house lay,
and going through his form of worship. "It did not consist in a vain
moving of the lips, but in a sincere elevation of heart to the author of
the tender nature whose beauties lay spread out before my eyes. This act
passed rather in wonder and contemplation than in requests; and I always
knew that with the dispenser of true blessings, the best means of
obtaining those which are needful for us, is less to ask than to deserve
them."[80] These effusions may be taken for the beginning of the
deistical reaction in the eighteenth century. While the truly scientific
and progressive spirits were occupied in laborious preparation for
adding to human knowledge and systematising it, Rousseau walked with his
head in the clouds among gods, beneficent authors of nature, wise
dispensers of blessings, and the like. "Ah, madam," he once said,
"sometimes in the privacy of my study, with my hands pressed tight over
my eyes or in the darkness of the night, I am of his opinion that there
is no God. But look yonder (pointing with his hand to the sky, with head
erect, a