[344] Emile, IV. 181, 182.  In a letter to Vernes (Feb. 18, 1758. Corr., ii. 9) he expresses his suspicion that possibly the souls of the wicked may be annihilated at their death, and that being and feeling may prove the first reward of a good life.  In this letter he asks also, with the same magnanimous security as the Savoyard Vicar, “of what concern the destiny of the wicked can be to him.”

[345] A similar disparagement of Socrates, in comparison with the Christ of the Gospels, is to be found in the long letter of Jan. 15, 1769 (Corr., vi. 59, 60), to M——­, accompanied by a violent denigration of the Jews, conformably to the philosophic prejudice of the time.

[346] Emile, IV. 241, 242.

[347] Emile, IV. 243.

[348] IV. 210-236.

[349] Condorcet’s Progres de l’Esprit Humain (1794). Oeuv., vi. 276.

CHAPTER VI.

ENGLAND.[350]

There is in an English collection a portrait of Jean Jacques, which was painted during his residence in this country by a provincial artist.  Singular and displeasing as it is, yet this picture lights up for us many a word and passage in Rousseau’s life here and elsewhere, which the ordinary engravings, and the trim self-complacency of the statue on the little island at Geneva, would leave very incomprehensible.  It is almost as appalling in its realism as some of the dark pits that open before the reader of the Confessions.  Hard struggles with objective difficulty and external obstacle wear deep furrows in the brow; they throw into the glance a solicitude, half penetrating and defiant, half dejected.  When a man’s hindrances have sprung up from within, and the ill-fought battle of his days has been with his own passions and morbid broodings and unchastened dreams, the eye and the facial lines tell the story of that profound moral defeat which is unlighted by the memories of resolute combat with evil and weakness, and leaves only eternal desolation and the misery that is formless.  Our English artist has produced a vision from that prose Inferno which is made so populous in the modern epoch by impotence of will.  Those who have seen the picture may easily understand how largely the character of the original must have been pregnant with harassing confusion and distress.

Four years before this (1762), Hume, to whom Lord Marischal had told the story of Rousseau’s persecutions, had proffered his services, and declared his eagerness to help in finding a proper refuge for him in England.  There had been an exchange of cordial letters,[351] and then the matter had lain quiet, until the impossibility of remaining longer in Neuchatel had once more set his friends on procuring a safe establishment for their rather difficult refugee.  Rousseau’s appearance in Paris had created the keenest excitement.  “People may talk of ancient Greece as they please,”