I could not
even cross an alley in a public garden, if several persons had got
together in it. When alone, my malady subsided. I felt myself likewise
at ease in places where I saw children only. At the sight of any one
walking up to the place where I was, I felt my whole frame agitated, and
retired. I often said to myself, 'My sole study has been to merit well
of mankind; why do I fear them?'"
He attributes his improved health of mind and body to the counsels of
his friend, J. J. Rousseau. "I renounced," says he, "my books. I threw
my eyes upon the works of nature, which spake to all my senses a
language which neither time nor nations have it in their power to alter.
Thenceforth my histories and my journals were the herbage of the fields
and meadows. My thoughts did not go forth painfully after them, as in
the case of human systems; but their thoughts, under a thousand engaging
forms, quietly sought me. In these I studied, without effort, the laws
of that Universal Wisdom which had surrounded me from the cradle, but on
which heretofore I had bestowed little attention.
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