eyes, the reforms which his contemporaries were so busy introducing into society were worse than useless—­the mere patching of an edifice which would never be fit to live in.  He believed that it was necessary to start altogether afresh.  And what makes him so singularly interesting a figure is that, in more than one sense, he was right.  It was necessary to start afresh; and the new world which was to spring from the old one was to embody, in a multitude of ways, the visions of Rousseau.  He was a prophet, with the strange inspiration of a prophet—­and the dishonour in his own country.

But inspiration and dishonour are not the only characteristics of prophets:  as a rule, they are also highly confused in the delivery of their prophecies; and Rousseau was no exception.  In his writings, the true gist of his meaning seems to be only partially revealed; and it is clear that he himself was never really aware of the fundamental notions that lay at the back of his thought.  Hence nothing can be easier than to pull his work to pieces, and to demonstrate beyond a doubt that it is full of fallacies, inconsistencies, and absurdities.  It is very easy to point out that the Control Social is a miserable piece of logic-chopping, to pour scorn on the stilted sentiment and distorted morality of La Nouvelle Heloise, and finally to draw a cutting comparison between Rousseau’s preaching and his practice, as it stands revealed in the Confessions—­the lover of independence who never earned his own living, the apostle of equality who was a snob, and the educationist who left his children in the Foundling Hospital.  All this has often been done, and no doubt will often be done again; but it is futile.  Rousseau lives, and will live, a vast and penetrating influence, in spite of all his critics.  There is something in him that eludes their foot-rules.  It is so difficult to take the measure of a soul!

Difficult, indeed; for, if we examine the doctrine that seems to be Rousseau’s fundamental one—­that, at least, on which he himself lays most stress—­here, too, we shall find a mass of error.  Rousseau was perpetually advocating the return to Nature.  All the great evils from which humanity suffers are, he declared, the outcome of civilization; the ideal man is the primitive man—­the untutored Indian, innocent, chaste, brave, who adores the Creator of the universe in simplicity, and passes his life in virtuous harmony with the purposes of Nature.  If we cannot hope to reach quite that height of excellence, let us at least try to get as near it as we can.  So far from pressing on the work of civilization, with the Philosophes, let us try to forget that we are civilized and be natural instead.  This was the burden of Rousseau’s teaching, and it was founded on a complete misconception of the facts.  The noble Indian was a myth.  The more we find out about primitive man, the more certain it becomes that, so far from being the ideal creature of Rousseau’s