Yet one is not content to
bear, to suffer, to wait; one clutches desperately at light and
warmth and joy, and alas, in joy and sorrow alike, one is ever and
insupportably alone.
April 9, 1889.
I have been reading Rousseau lately, and find him a very
incomprehensible figure. The Confessions, it must be said, is a
dingy and sordid book. I cannot quite penetrate the motive which
induced him to write them. It cannot have been pure vanity, because
he does not spare himself; he might have made himself out a far
more romantic and attractive character, if he had suppressed the
shadows and heightened the lights. I am inclined to think that it
was partly vanity and partly honesty. Vanity was the motive force,
and honesty the accompanying mood. I do not suppose there is any
document so transparently true in existence, and we ought to be
thankful for that. It is customary to say that Rousseau had the
soul of a lackey, by which I suppose is meant that he had a gross
and vulgar nature, a thievish taste for low pleasures, and an ill-
bred absence of consideration for others. He had all these
qualities certainly, but he had a great deal more. He was upright
and disinterested.
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