But still, had Adam no father or mother?  There is another sense in which solitude is not the natural state; for, at his entrance into the world, a man finds himself with parents, brothers, sisters, that is to say, in society, and not alone.  Accordingly it cannot be said that the love of solitude is an original characteristic of human nature; it is rather the result of experience and reflection, and these in their turn depend upon the development of intellectual power, and increase with the years.

Speaking generally, sociability stands in inverse ratio with age.  A little child raises a piteous cry of fright if it is left alone for only a few minutes; and later on, to be shut up by itself is a great punishment.  Young people soon get on very friendly terms with one another; it is only the few among them of any nobility of mind who are glad now and then to be alone;—­but to spend the whole day thus would be disagreeable.  A grown-up man can easily do it; it is little trouble to him to be much alone, and it becomes less and less trouble as he advances in years.  An old man who has outlived all his friends, and is either indifferent or dead to the pleasures of life, is in his proper element in solitude; and in individual cases the special tendency to retirement and seclusion will always be in direct proportion to intellectual capacity.

For this tendency is not, as I have said, a purely natural one; it does not come into existence as a direct need of human nature; it is rather the effect of the experience we go through, the product of reflection upon what our needs really are; proceeding, more especially, from the insight we attain into the wretched stuff of which most people are made, whether you look at their morals or their intellects.  The worst of it all is that, in the individual, moral and intellectual shortcomings are closely connected and play into each other’s hands, so that all manner of disagreeable results are obtained, which make intercourse with most people not only unpleasant but intolerable.  Hence, though the world contains many things which are thoroughly bad, the worst thing in it is society.  Even Voltaire, that sociable Frenchman, was obliged to admit that there are everywhere crowds of people not worth talking to:  la terre est couverte de gens qui ne meritent pas qu’on leur parle.  And Petrarch gives a similar reason for wishing to be alone—­that tender spirit! so strong and constant in his love of seclusion.  The streams, the plains and woods know well, he says, how he has tried to escape the perverse and stupid people who have missed the way to heaven:—­

  Cercato ho sempre solitaria vita
    (Le rive il sanno, e le campagne e i boschi)
  Per fuggir quest’ ingegni storti e loschi
    Che la strada del ciel’ hanno smarrita.