Alpha Book

Sordid as was his career,
the man himself was not without beautiful and generous impulses. He
loved nature in an age when other men simply studied nature. He liked
to look at the clear blue sky, or to admire the soft green fields and
shapely trees, and he was not ashamed to confess it. The emotions had
been forgotten while philosophers were praising the intellect: Rousseau
reminded the eighteenth century that after all it may be as sane to
enjoy a sunset as to solve a problem in algebra. Rousseau possessed the
soul of a poet.
To him right feeling was as important as right thinking, and in this
respect he quarreled with the rationalists who claimed that common
sense alone was worth while. Rousseau was a Deist--at most he believed
but vaguely in a "Being, whatever He may be, Who moves the universe and
orders all things." But he detested the cold reasoning of philosophers
who conceived of God as too much interested in watching the countless
stars obey His eternal laws, to stoop to help puny mortals with their
petty affairs.


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