time finds an interpreter, and whose destructive instincts are soon to be set in motion at the summons of its herald. —­ Rousseau is a man of the people, and not a man of high society.  He feels awkward in a drawing-room.[33] He is not capable of conversing and of appearing amiable; the nice expressions only come into his head too late, on the staircase as he leaves the house; he keeps silent with a sulky air or utters stupidities, redeeming his awkwardness with the sallies of a clown or with the phrases of a vulgar pedant.  Elegance annoys him, luxury makes him uncomfortable, politeness is a lie, conversation mere prattle, ease of manner a grimace, gaiety a convention, wit a parade, science so much charlatanry, philosophy an affection and morals utter corruption.  All is factitious, false and unwholesome,[34] from the make-up, toilet and beauty of women to the atmosphere of the apartments and the ragouts on the dinner-table, in sentiment as in amusement, in literature as in music, in government as in religion.  This civilization, which boasts of its splendor, is simply the restlessness of over-excited, servile monkeys each imitating the other, and each corrupting the other to, through sophistication, end up in worry and boredom.  Human culture, accordingly, is in itself bad, while the fruit it produces is merely excrescence or poison. —­ Of what use are the sciences?  Uncertain and useless, they afford merely a pasture-ground for idlers and wranglers.[35]

" Who would want to pass a lifetime in sterile observation, if they, apart from their duties and nature’s demands, had had to bestow their time on their country, on the unfortunate and on their friends!” —­ Of what use are the fine arts?  They serve only as public flattery of dominant passions.  “The more pleasing and the more perfect the drama, the more baneful its influence;” the theater, even with Molière, is a school of bad morals, “inasmuch as it excites deceitful souls to ridicule, in the name of comedy, the candor of artless people.”  Tragedy, said to be moralizing, wastes in counterfeit effusions the little virtue that still remains. " When a man has been admiring the noble feats in the fables what more is expected of him?  After paying homage to virtue is he not discharged from all that he owes to it?  What more would they have him do?  Must he practice it himself?  He has no part to play, he is not a comedian.” —­ The sciences, the fine arts, the arts of luxury, philosophy, literature, all this serve only to effeminate and distract the mind; all that is only made for the small crowd of brilliant and noisy insects buzzing around the summits of society and sucking away all public substance.  —­ As regards the sciences, but one is important, that of our duties, and, without so many subtleties and so much study, our innermost conscience suffice to show us the way. —­ As regards the arts and the skills, only those should be tolerated which, ministering to our prime necessities, provide us with bread to feed