one
another in turn, absorbed by vivid interest in imaginary situations,
until the morning note of the birds recalled them to a sense of the
conditions of more actual life, and made the elder cry out in confusion
that he was the more childish of the two.

The effect of this was to raise passion to a premature exaltation in the
young brain. "I had no idea of real things," he said, "though all the
sentiments were already familiar to me. Nothing had come to me by
conception, everything by sensation. These confused emotions, striking
me one after another, did not warp a reason that I did not yet possess,
but they gradually shaped in me a reason of another cast and temper,
and gave me bizarre and romantic ideas of human life, of which neither
reflection nor experience has ever been able wholly to cure me."[5] Thus
these first lessons, which have such tremendous influence over all that
follow, had the direct and fatal effect in Rousseau's case of deadening
that sense of the actual relations of things to one another in the
objective world, which is the master-key and prime law of sanity.

In time the library of romances came to an end (1719), and Jean Jacques
and his father fell back on the more solid and moderated fiction of
history and biography. The romances had been the possession of the
mother; the more serious books were inherited from the old minister, her
father. Such books as Nani's History of Venice, and Le Sueur's History
of the Church and the Empire, made less impression on the young Rousseau
than the admirable Plutarch; and he used to read to his father during
the hours of work, and read over again to himself during all hours,
those stories of free and indomitable souls which are so proper to
kindle the glow of generous fire. Plutarch was dear to him to the end of
his life; he read him in the late days when he had almost ceased to
read, and he always declared Plutarch to be nearly the only author to
whom he had never gone without profit."[6] "I think I see my father now,"
he wrote when he had begun to make his mark in Paris, "living by the
work of his hands, and nourishing his soul on the sublimest truths. I
see Tacitus, Plutarch, and Grotius, lying before him along with the
tools of his craft. I see at his side a cherished son receiving
instruction from the best of fathers, alas, with but too little
fruit."[7] This did little to implant the needed impressions of the
actual world. Rousseau's first training contin