SIXTH PROMENADE the same pleasure, joining even the pleasure of exciting and listening to his small talk, which I found agreeable. This pleasure, become by degrees a habit, found itself, I know not why, transformed into a species of duty of which I soon felt the weight, above all on account of the preliminary harangue which it was necessary to listen to, and in which he did not ever fail to often call me M. Rousseau, in order to show that he knew me well; which showed me sufficiently to the contrary that he did not know me any more than those who had instructed him. From that time on, I passed by there less willingly, and finally I acquired mechanically the habit of making most frequently a détour when I approached this traverse.
This is what I discovered on reflecting, because nothing of all this had been offered up to that time distin@ly to my thought. This observation recalled to me successively multitudes of others, which have confirmed me in thinking that the true and human motives of the greater part of my a¢tions are not so clear to myself as I had long supposed: I know and I feel that to do good is the truest happiness that the human heart can taste; but for a long time, this happi- ness has been beyond my reach, and it is not in such a miserable lot as mine that one can hope to effect with joy and fruit a single truly good aétion. The greatest care of those who regulate my destiny has been to see that nothing should exist for me except in false and deceitful appearance, and so 2 motive of virtue is only REVERIES OF A SOLITARY a lure which is offered to me to draw me into the trap where they wish to bind me fast. I know this; I know that the only good which is henceforth in my power to do is to abstain from acting, for fear of doing harm without wishing to do so and without knowing it. But there were times more happy when, following the movements of my heart,I could sometimes make another heart content; and I owe myself the honourable witness that each time that I have been able to taste this pleasure, I have found it sweeter than any other; this inclination was strong, true, pure; and nothing, in my most secret heart, has ever denied it. Nevertheless, I have often felt the load of my own benefactions by the chain of duties which they brought with them: then the pleasure has disappeared, and I have not found, in the continuation of the same course which had charmed me beforehand, anything but an almost insupportable trouble. During my short prosperity, many people had recourse to me, and never in all the services that I could render them have any of them been rejected, But from these first aéts of goodness, poured out with effusion of heart, were born chains of successive engagements that I had not foreseen, and of which I could no longer shake off the yoke: my first services were, in the eyes of those who received them, only the earnest of those which should follow; and as soon as some unfortunate had thrown me upon the hook of a benefit received, it was henceforward settled that this first benefaétion, free and voluntary, should be- SIXTH PROMENADE come an indefinite right to all those of which he could have need in the future, without even my inability to grant them being sufficient to free me. That is how very sweet enjoyments were transformed for me in the sequel into onerous subjections.
These chains, however, did not appear to me very weighty, so long as I lived in obscurity unknown to the public; but when once my person was advertised by my writings (a grave fault without a doubt, but more than expiated by my woes), from that time on I became the general bureau to which all the sufferers or so-called sufferers addressed themselves, the butt of all the ad- venturers who sought for dupes, of all those who under the pretext of the great credit which they pretended to attribute to me, wished to take advantage of me in one way or another. It is then that I had opportunity to observe that all the inclinations of nature, without excepting benevolence itself, when carried or followed out into society without prudence and without choice, change their nature and become often as harmful as they were useful in their first administration. So many cruel exploitations little by little changed my first opinions, or rather, by closing them within their Sri limits, taught me to follow less blindly my inclination to do good, when it only served to favour the wickedness of another.
But I have no regret for these experiences, because they have procured me through refleCtion new light upon the knowledge of myself and upon the true Tar REVERIES OF A SOLITARY motives of my conduét in a thousand circumstances about which I have often deluded myself: I saw that, to do good with pleasure, it was necessary that I should a@ freely, without constraint, and that, to take from me all the sweetness of a good deed, it sufficed that it should become a duty for me. From thenceforward the weight of the obligation made sweetest pleasures a burden to me; and as I have said in “Emile,” I think, I should have been a bad husband among the Turks at the hour when the public crier called them to fulfil the duties of their condition.
This is what has modified greatly the opinion that I had for a long time of my own virtue; because there is no virtue in following out one’s own inclinations, and in giving oneself, when they carry us in that dire€tion, the pleasure of doing good; but virtue con- sists in conquering them when duty commands us to do that which it prescribes us, and that is what I have known less how to do than any man in the world. Born sensitive and kindly, carrying pity to the point of weakness, and feeling my soul exalted by all that is akin to generosity, I was humane, benevolent, charit- able from taste, from passion even, so long as my heart alone was concerned; I should have been the best and the kindest of men if I had been the most powerful, and in order to extinguish in me all desire of vengeance, it would have been enough to have the power to avenge myself, I could even have been just against my own interest without difficulty; but to act against the interest SIXTH PROMENADE SIXTH PROMENADE of those who were dear to me I could not find resolution. As soon as my duty and my heart were in contradiction, the first rarely had the viétory, unless it merely required me to abstain: then I was most often strong; but to a&t againé& my inclination was always impossible to me. ‘Whether it were men, or duty, or even necessity which commanded me, when my heart was silent, my will remained dumb, and I could not obey: I saw the evil which menaced me, and I let it come rather than disturb myself to anticipate it. I commenced some- times with effort; but this effort wearied and exhausted me rapidly; I could not continue. In every imaginable thing, that which I did not do with pleasure was soon impossible for me to do, There is more: the constraint, in accordance with my desire, sufficed to deStroy it and to change it into repugnance, even into aversion, whenever it acted too Strongly; and this is what renders painful the good deeds which others demand of me, and which I should do of myself if they were not demanded, A purely disinterested good deed is certainly a work which I love to do; but when he who has received it makes it the reason for exacting a continuation under threat of his hatred, when he makes it a law that I should be for ever his benefactor, for having in the first place taken pleasure in being so, from thenceforward the trouble increases and pleasure vanishes. That which I do when T yield is from weakness and shame; but good will does not enter into it; and far from applauding myself, I REVERIES OF A SOLITARY reproach myself in my own conscience for doing good grudgingly.
I know that there is a sort of contraét, perhaps one of the most sacred, between the benefa¢tor and the re- cipient; it is a sort of association that they form with each other, closer than that which unites men in general; and if the recipient engages himself tacitly to gratitude, the benefator engages himself to keep in regard to the other, so long as he does not render himself unworthy, the same good will which he has just shown him, and it is his part to renew these aéts every time he can when he is required to do so. These conditions are not expressly Stated, but they are the natural effects of the relation which is eStablished between the two parties. He who, for the first time, refuses a gratuitous service which someone asks him for, does not give any right of complaint to the person whom he has refused; but he who in a similar case refuses to the same man the same kind- ness which he has granted beforehand destroys a hope which he has given him reason to feel; he deceives and denies an expectation which he has caused to exift, In this refusal there is a feeling of more injuStice and hardness than in the other; but it is not less the result of an independence dear to the heart, which it does not renounce without an effort. ‘When I pay a debt, it is a duty that I fulfil, When I make a gift, it is a pleasure that I give myself. Now the pleasure of fulfilling one’s duty is among those SIXTH PROMENADE SIXTH PROMENADE which the sole praétice of virtue brings to birth: those which come to us immediately from nature do not raise themselves so high as this.
After so many sad experiences, I have learnt to fore- see from a distance the consequences of my impulses carried out, and I have often abstained from a good act, which I wished to perform, and had the power to do, frightened at the subje€tion to which in the long run I was about to submit, if I yielded myself incon- siderately. I have not always felt this fear; on the contrary, in my youth, I attached myself to my own benefaétions, and I have often felt similarly that those whom I obliged became fond of me through gratitude rather than through interest. But things completely changed, in this respeét as in every other, as soon as my misfortunes began; I have lived since then in a new generation which did not resemble the former, and my own sentiments towards others have suffered from the changes which I found in their sentiments towards me. The same people that I have known in these two different generations have, so to speak, successively become like the rest: from being true and frank as they were at the start, they have become that which they are, they have done as all the others; and for the sole reason that the times have changed, men changed with them. How could I keep the same feelings towards those in whom I find the contrary of that which made these sentiments exist? I do not hate them because I cannot hate, but I cannot prevent myself from REVERIES OF A SOLITARY feeling the contempt they merit, nor abstain from making it known.
Perhaps, without perceiving it, I have changed myself more than I ought: what nature could resist without alteration in a situation akin to mine? Con- vinced by twenty years of experience that all the right inclinations which Nature placed in my heart have been turned by my destiny and by those who have control of it to the prejudice of myself or of others, I can no longer regard a good aé& which is offered to me to do, except as a snare which is held forth to me, and beneath which is hidden some evil, I know, whatever may be the effect of my ad, that I shall none the less have the merit of my good intention: yes, this merit is there always, without a doubt, but the interior charm is no more there, and as soon as this Stimulant is lacking to me I do not feel anything but indifference and coldness within myself: and sure that in place of doing an ation truly useful I am only ating as a dupe; the indignation of self-respect, joined to the disavowal of reason, does not inspire me with anything but repugnance and resistance, when I should have been full of ardour and zeal in my natural condition.
There are kinds of adversity which elevate and Strengthen the soul, but there are other kinds which cast it down and kill it: such is that of which I am the prey. If there had been a little bad leaven in my soul it would have been made to ferment to excess by adversity, and SIXTH PROMENADE would have rendered me frantic, but it has only made me a nonentity. Incapable of well-doing both for myself and for others, J have abstained from acting; and this State, which is only innocent because it is forced, has made me find a sort of sweetness in yielding myself fully without reproach to my natural inclination. I go too far, without doubt, because I evade oppor- tunities of aétion, even where I do not see anything but good to do; but, certain that I am not allowed to see things as they are, I abstain from judging upon the appearances which are given them; and with whatsoever lure the motives of aétion are covered, it suffices that these motives should be left within my grasp for me to be sure that they are deceitful.
My deétiny seems to have held forth, from my childhood, the first snare which rendered me for a long time so apt to fall into all others; I was born the most confiding of men, and for forty years together never was this confidence deceived for a single time. Falling suddenly among another order of persons and things, I slipped into a thousand snares with- out perceiving one of them; and twenty years of experience have scarcely sufficed to enlighten me as to my lot, Once convinced that there was nothing but deceit and falsity in the grimacing demonstra- tions which have been lavished upon me, IJ passed rapidly to the other extreme; because, when we have once departed from our natural disposition, there are no bounds to regtrain us. Thenceforward I have REVERIES OF A SOLITARY been disgusted with men, and my will, concurring with theirs in this respect, held me Still more remote from them than all their machinations.
Whatever they may do, this repugnance cannot ever reach aversion; in thinking of the dependence in which they have put themselves in order to hold me in theirs, they create in me a true pity; if I am unhappy, they are unhappy too, and every time that I return home, I find them always to be pitied. Pride perhaps is Still mingled with these judgments; I feel myself too far above them to hate them; they can interest me at the most up to contempt, but never up to hatred; finally I love myself too much to be able to hate anyone that exists. This would be to enclose, to contra&t my existence; and I would rather spread it over the whole of the universe, I would rather fly than hate them; their aspect Strikes my senses, and through them, my heart, with impressions which a thousand cruel looks render painful to me; but the uneasiness ceases as soon as the obje& which has caused it has disappeared. Despite myself, I give my attention to them when they are present, but never to the remembrance of them; when I do not see them, they are for me as if they had never existed.
They are not even indifferent except in so far as concerns me; for, in their relations between each other, they can Sill interest and move me like the people of a drama which I see presented. My moral SIXTH PROMENADE being would have to be destroyed for justice to become indifferent to me: the spectacle of injustice and of deceit Still makes my blood boil with rage; the ats of virtue in which I do not see either make-believe or ostentation always make me quiver with joy and Still draw forth my tears. But it is necessary that I should see them and appreciate them myself because, after my own experience, I should be senseless to adopt the judgment of men on any point, and to believe anything upon the faith of another.
If my face and my features were as perfectly unknown to men as my charaCter and my natural disposition are, I could still live without pain in the mid&t of them; their society even might please me so long as I should be perfettly Strange to them; yielding without constraint to my natural inclinations, I should love them still if they did not ever concern themselves with me. I should exercise upon them an universal benevolence and a perfectly disinterested one; but without ever forming any particular attraction and without wearing the yoke of any duty, I should do unto them, freely and of my own will, all that they have so much trouble to do when urged by their self-respect and constrained by all their laws.
If I had remained free, obscure, isolated, as I was made to be, I should have done nothing but good, because I have not the germ of any harmful passion in my heart; if I were invisible and powerful as God, I should have been beneficent and good like Him.
REVERIES OF A SOLITARY It is Strength and liberty which make excellent men: weakness and slavery have made nothing but base ones. If I had been the possessor of the ring of Gyges, it would have drawn me from dependence upon men, and would havé put them into dependence upon me. I have often asked, in my day-dreams, what use I should have made of this ring; because it is there that the temptation of abusing it must be near to power. Able to content my desires, and to do anything, without being able to be deceived by anyone, what could I have desired continually? One simple thing: that would be to see all hearts contented; the sight of public felicity could alone have touched my heart with a permanent sentiment, and the ardent desire of helping it would have been my most constant passion. Always just without partiality, and always good without weakness, I should have equally preserved myself from blind suspicion and implacable hatred, because seeing men as they are, and reading easily the very depths of their hearts, I should have found very few sufficiently amiable to meet all my affections, very few sufficiently odious to merit all my hatred, and their deceitfulness even would have disposed me to pity them, by the certain knowledge of evil which they do to themselves in trying to do it to others. Perhaps, in moments of gaiety, I should have been childish enough sometimes to work miracles; but perfedtly disintereSted for myself, and having nothing but my natural inclinations for law, SIXTH PROMENADE for each act of severe justice, I should have performed a thousand of clemency and equity; a minister of Pro- vidence, and a dispenser of its laws, according to my power, I should have performed miracles wiser and more useful than those of the Golden Legend and of the tomb of St. Médard, There is but one point upon which the faculty of penetrating everywhere invisible might have made me seek temptations to which I should have ill resisted; and once entered into these ways of straying, where should I not have been conduéted by them? It would be to know ill both nature and myself, to flatter myself that these facilities would not have seduced me, or that reason would have Stopped me on this fatal incline; sure of myself on every other article, I was lost by this alone. He whom his power puts above men should be above the weaknesses of humanity, without which this excess of strength would only serve to put him in fa& below others and below that which the man would have been in himself if he had remained their equal.
All things considered, I believe that I shall do better to throw my magic ring away before it has made me do some foolish thing. If men are determined to see me other than I am, and if my aspeé irritates their injustice, to rob them of this sight it is necessary to fly them, but not to conceal myself in their midst: it is for them to conceal themselves before me, to conceal their manceuvres from me, to fly the light of day, to bury themselves in the earth like moles. As for me, let REVERIES OF A SOLITARY them see me if they can, so much the better; but that is impossible to them; they will never see in my place anything but the Jean-Jacques whom they have made, and whom they have made according to their desire to hate at their ease. I should be wrong in being moved at the way they see me; I ought not to take away real interest in it, because it is not I whom they see thus, The result I deduce from all these refleétions is that I have never been truly accustomed to civil society where all is worry, obligation, duty, and where my natural independence renders me always incapable of the subjections necessary to whoever wishes to live amongst men, So long as J act freely, I am good and do nothing but good; but, as soon as I feel the yoke, whether of necessity, or of men, I become a rebel or rather, restive: then Iam nothing. When itis necessary to do the contrary of my will, I do not do it, whatever may chance; I do not even carry out my own will, be- cause Iam weak. I abstain from a@ting, because all my weakness is in ation, all my force is negative, and all my sins are of omission, rarely of commission. I have never believed that a man’s freedom consisted in doing what he wished, but rather in not doing what he did not wish, and this is what I have always claimed, often preserved, and through which I have created the most scandal amongst my contem- poraries; because, as for them, who are a¢tive, Stirring, ambitious, detesting liberty in others and not wishing SIXTH PROMENADE SIXTH PROMENADE it for themselves, provided that they can sometimes work their will, or rather dominate that of another,. they waste all their lives in doing that which is re- pugnant to them, and do not omit anything base in order to have power. Their wrong has not then been that of chasing me from society like a useless member, but to proscribe me as a pernicious member —because I have done very little good, I admit; but as for evil, it has not entered into my will during life, and I doubt if there is any man in the world who has really done less evil than 1, SEVENTH PROMENADE HE gathering together of my long reveries has scarcely commenced, and already I feel that it touches its end. Another amusement succeeds to it, absorbs me, and robs me even of the time for dreaming: I yield myself to it with an enthusiasm which is extravagant, and which makes me laugh myself when I think on it; but I do not yield myself less, because, in my present situation, I have no other rule of conduct except to follow my inclination without constraint in everything. I can do nothing with my destiny. I have only innocent inclinations, and all the judgments of men being henceforward nothing for me, wisdom itself demands that in what remains within my grasp I should do all that pleases me either in public, or in private, without any other rule than my fancy, and no other limit than the little Strength that remains to me. Here I am then with my hay for nourish- ment, and my botany for sole occupation. Already old, I acquired the first taste for it in Switzerland, from a doétor of Ivernois, and I botanised happily enough during my wanderings, to gather a passable knowledge of the vegetable kingdom; but having become more than a sexagenarian and sedentary in Paris, the Strength for long botanising walks began to SEVENTH PROMENADE SEVENTH PROMENADE fail me, and, moreover being sufficiently devoted to my music-copying not to need another occupation, I had abandoned this amusement which was not necessary to me; I had sold my herbal, I sold my books, content to see again sometimes the common plants which I found about Paris, in my walks. During this interval, the little I knew was almost effaced from my memory and much more rapidly than it was fixed there.
All of a sudden, aged over sixty-five, deprived of the little memory I have, and of the Strength which remains to me to explore the fields, without a guide, without books, without a garden, without a herbal, I have returned to this folly, but with even more ardour than I had in yielding myself to it for the fir&t time: now I am seriously busied with the wise project of learning by heart all the “ Vegetable Kingdom ” of Murray, and of understanding all the known plants upon earth. Not being able to afford to buy botany books, I have undertaken to copy out those that have been lent me; and, resolved to remake a richer herbal than the firs, while waiting to put in all the plants of the sea and the Alps, and all the trees of India, I begin cheaply with chickweed, chervil, borage, and rag-wort; I botanise cunningly in the cage of my birds, and at every new blade of grass that I meet, I say with satisfa¢tion: Here is another plant.
I do not seek to justify myself in following this REVERIES OF A SOLITARY fantasy; I think it very reasonable, persuaded that in my present position, to yield myself to amuse- ments which please me is a great wisdom and a great virtue; it is a way to prevent any leaven of vengeance or of hatred from germinating in my heart; and to discover a taste for some amusement in his lot, a man mut certainly be purified of all angry passions. It is avenging myself upon my persecutors in my own way; I could not punish them more cruelly than to be happy despite them.
Yes, without a doubt, reason permits, demands even, that I should yield myself to every inclination which attra&ts me; and that nothing should prevent me from following it; but it does not teach me why this inclination attra€ts me nor what attraction I find in a vain Study without profit, without progress, and that old, doddering, already bent and heavy, without facility, without memory, it should take me back to the exercises of youth and the lessons of a schoolboy; this is a bizarre fat I should like to understand. It seems to me that if explained it might throw some light upon the knowledge of myself, to the acquisition of which I have devoted my latest leisure.
T have sometimes thought profoundly, but scarcely with pleasure, almost always against my will, and, as it were, by force. Reverie relaxes and amuses me, refleGtion wearies and saddens me. To think has always been a painful occupation for me and one without charm. Sometimes my reveries end up in SEVENTH PROMENADE meditation, but more often my meditations end up in reverie; and during these wanderings, my soul Strays and soars in the universe, upon the wings of the imagination, in ecStasies which surpass every other enjoyment.
As long as I tasted this in all its purity, every other occupation was always insipid to me; but when once I was thrown into the literary career by outside im- pulses and felt the fatigue of mental labour and the annoyance of an unfortunate celebrity, I felt at the same time my sweet reveries weaken and become tepid; and soon forced despite myself to occupy myself with my sad situation, I could rarely find these dear ecStasies which for fifty years have held the place of fortune and of glory for me, with no other expendi- ture than that of time, and have made me, in idleness, the happiest of mortals, Thad even to fear, in my reveries, that my imagina- tion, disturbed by my misfortunes, would turn its activity in that direCtion only, and that the continual feeling of my woes, oppressing my heart by degrees, would finally cas me down with their weight. In this State, an inSting& which is natural to me, making me fly every saddening idea, imposed silence upon my imagination, and, fixing my attention upon those obje€ts which surrounded me, made me, for the fir& time, absorb in detail the spectacle of Nature, which I had scarcely contemplated except in mass and in its whole, REVERIES OF A SOLITARY The trees, the shrubs, the plants, are the ornamen- tation and the vestment of the earth. Nothing is so sad as the aspect of a naked and treeless country, which displays to the eye nothing but Stones, soil, and sands; but, vivified by Nature, and reclad in its wedding robe, in the midst of watercourses and the song of the birds, the earth offers to man, in the harmony of its three kingdoms, a speétacle full of life, of interest and of charm, the one speétacle in the world of which his eyes and his heart are never weary.
The more a contemplator has a sensitive soul, the more he yields himself to ecstasies which excite in him this harmony. A profound and pleasing reverie then fills his senses, and he loses himself with a delicious intoxication in the immensity of the beautiful system with which he feels himself identified. Then all particular objeéts escape him; he does not see and does not feel anything but everything. It is necessary that some particular circumstance should gather together his ideas and circumscribe his imagination, in order for him to observe in part this universe which he struggles to embrace.
This naturally happened to me when my heart, oppressed by distress, recalled and concentrated all its movements on itself in order to preserve the remains of fervour which were ready to evaporate and to disappear, in the prostration I gradually ex- petienced. I wandered carelessly through the woods and the mountains, not daring to think, for fear of SEVENTH PROMENADE increasing my griefs. My imagination which refuses itself to painful obje&ts, let my senses yield them- selves to the light but sweet impressions of surround- ing objects. My eyes wandered ceaselessly from one to the other, and it was not possible that in so great a variety it should not find something to hold them despite themselves, and keep them fixed for a long period.
I acquired a taste for this recreation of the eyes, which in misfortune reposes, amuses, distraéts the mind and suspends the feeling of grief. The nature of the objects greatly aids this diversion, and renders it more seduétive, Delicate odours, strong colours, the most elegant forms, seem to dispute together for the right to hold one’s attention. It is not necessary to love pleasure in order to yield to sensations so sweet; and, if this result does not occur with all those who are smitten by them, it is, in some, a lack of natural sensibility, and in the greater part, because their mind is too much occupied by other ideas and does not yield except stealthily to the objects which Strike their senses, Another thing contributes to remove the attention of people of taste from the vegetable world—that is, the habit of seeking in plants nothing but drugs and remedies, Theophrastus was attracted for a different reason, and this philosopher may be looked upon as the sole botanist of antiquity: he is scarcely known amongst us; but thanks to a certain Dioscorides, REVERIES OF A SOLITARY