ied, and their opera-girls vie in
benefit-nights. There is no State in Europe where the least wise have
not governed the most wise. We find the light and foolish keeping up
with the machinery of government easily and leisurely, just as we see
butterflies keep up with carriages at full speed. This is owing in
both cases to their levity and their position: the stronger and the
more active are left behind. I am resolved to prove that
farmers-general are the main causes of the defects in our music.

_Malesherbes._ Prove it, or anything else, provided that the
discussion does not irritate and torment you.

_Rousseau._ Truth is the object of philosophy.

_Malesherbes._ Not of philosophers: the display of ingenuity, for the
most part, is and always has been it. I must here offer you an opinion
of my own, which, if you think well of me, you will pardon, though you
should disbelieve its solidity. My opinion then is, that truth is not
reasonably the main and ultimate object of philosophy; but that
philosophy should seek truth merely as the means of acquiring and of
propagating happiness. Truths are simple; wisdom, which is formed by
their apposition and application, is concrete: out of this, in its
vast varieties, open to our wants and wishes, comes happiness. But the
knowledge of all the truths ever yet discovered does not lead
immediately to it, nor indeed will ever reach it, unless you make the
more important of them bear upon your heart and intellect, and form,
as it were, the blood that moves and nurtures them.

_Rousseau._ I never until now entertained a doubt that truth is the
ultimate aim and object of philosophy: no writer has denied it, I
think.

_Malesherbes._ Designedly none may: but when it is agreed that
happiness is the chief good, it must also be agreed that the chief
wisdom will pursue it; and I have already said, what your own
experience cannot but have pointed out to you, that no truth, or
series of truths, hypothetically, can communicate or attain it. Come,
M. Rousseau, tell me candidly, do you derive no pleasure from a sense
of superiority in genius and independence?

_Rousseau._ The highest, sir, from a consciousness of independence.

_Malesherbes._ _Ingenuous_ is the epithet we affix to modesty, but
modesty often makes men act otherwise than ingenuously: you, for
example, now. You are angry at the servility of people, and disgusted
at their obtuseness and indifference, on matters of most import to