kept my mind in a continual alternation of attention and delight....  My imagination did not leave the earth thus superbly arrayed without inhabitants.  I formed a charming society, of which I did not feel myself unworthy; I made a golden age to please my own fancy, and filling up these fair days with all those scenes of my life that had left sweet memories behind, and all that my heart could yet desire or hope in scenes to come, I waxed tender even to shedding tears over the true pleasures of humanity, pleasures so delicious, so pure, and henceforth so far from the reach of men.  Ah, if in such moments any ideas of Paris, of the age, of my little aureole as author, came to trouble my dreams, with what disdain did I drive them out, to deliver myself without distraction to the exquisite sentiments of which I was so full.  Yet in the midst of it all, the nothingness of my chimeras sometimes broke sadly upon my mind.  Even if every dream had suddenly been transformed into reality, it would not have been enough; I should have dreamed, imagined, yearned still.”  Alas, this deep insatiableness of sense, the dreary vacuity of soul that follows fulness of animal delight, the restless exactingness of undirected imagination, was never recognised by Rousseau distinctly enough to modify either his conduct or his theory of life.  He filled up the void for a short space by that sovereign aspiration, which changed the dead bones of old theology into the living figure of a new faith.  “From the surface of the earth I raised my ideas to all the existences in nature, to the universal system of things, to the incomprehensible Being who embraces all.  Then with mind lost in that immensity, I did not think, I did not reason, I did not philosophise; with a sort of pleasure I felt overwhelmed by the weight of the universe, I surrendered myself to the ravishing confusion of these vast ideas.  I loved to lose myself in imagination in immeasurable space; within the limits of real existences my heart was too tightly compressed; in the universe I was stifled; I would fain have launched myself into the infinite.  I believe that if I had unveiled all the mysteries of nature, I should have found myself in a less delicious situation than that bewildering ecstasy to which my mind so unreservedly delivered itself, and which sometimes transported me until I cried out, ‘O mighty Being!  O mighty Being!’ without power of any other word or thought."[257]

It is not wholly insignificant that though he could thus expand his soul with ejaculatory delight in something supreme, he could not endure the sight of one of his fellow-creatures.  “If my gaiety lasted the whole night, that showed that I had passed the day alone; I was very different after I had seen people, for I was rarely content with others and never with myself.  Then in the evening I was sure to be in taciturn or scolding humour.”  It is not in every condition that effervescent passion for ideal forms of the religious imagination assists sympathy