“His first impulses are always right.....   The fundamental
principle of all moral questions which I have argued in all my
writings, is that Man is naturally good, and loving justice and
order.....   ‘Emile,’ especially, is a treatise on the natural goodness
of Man, intended to show how vice and error, foreign to his
constitution, gradually find their way into it from without and
insensibly change him.....Nature created Man happy and good, while
society has depraved him and made him miserable."[30]

Imagine him divested of his factitious habits, of his superadded necessities, of his false prejudices; put aside systems, study your own heart, listen to the inward dictates of feeling, let yourself be guided by the light of instinct and of conscience, and you will again find the first Adam, like an incorruptible marble statue that has fallen into a marsh, a long time lost under a crust of slime and mud, but which, released from its foul covering, may be replaced on its pedestal in the completeness of its form and in the perfect purity of its whiteness.

Around this central idea a reform occurs in the spiritualistic doctrine. —­ A being so noble cannot possibly consist of a simple collection of organs; he is something more than mere matter; the impression he derives from his senses do not constitute his full being.

“I am not merely a sensitive and passive being, but an active and intelligent being, and, whatever philosophy may say, I dare claim the honor of thinking.”

And better still, this thinking principle, in Man, at least, is of a superior kind.

“Show me another animal on the globe capable of producing fire and of admiring the sun.  What?  I who am able to observe, to comprehend beings and their associations; who can appreciate order, beauty and virtue; who can contemplate the universe and exalt myself to the hand which controls it; who can love the good and do good, should I compare myself to brutes!” Man is free, capable of deciding between two actions, and therefore the creator of his actions ; he is accordingly a first and original cause, “an immaterial substance,” distinct from the body, a soul hampered by the body and which may survive the body.  —­ This immortal soul imprisoned within the flesh has conscience for its organ.  “O Conscience, divine instinct, immortal and celestial voice, unfailing guide of an ignorant and finite but free and intelligent being, infallible judge between good and evil, and rendering Man similar to God, Thou foremost the superiority of his nature!”

Alongside of vanity, by which we subordinate everything to ourselves, there is a love of order by which we subordinate ourselves to the whole.  Alongside of egoism, by which Man seeks happiness even at the expense of others, is sympathy, by which he seeks the happiness of others even at the expense of his own.  Personal enjoyment does not suffice him; he still needs tranquillity of conscience and the effusions