Confessions Rousseau Quotes

It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.

I know the feelings of my heart, and I know men. I am not made like any of those I have seen; I venture to believe that I am not made like any of those who are in existence. If I am not better, at least I am different. Whether Nature has acted rightly or wrongly in destroying the mould in which she cast me, can only be decided after I have been read.

There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character.

It is as if my heart and my brain did not belong to the same person. Feelings come quicker than lightning and fill my soul, but they bring me no illumination; they burn me and dazzle me.

So finally we tumble into the abyss, we ask God why he has made us so feeble. But, in spite of ourselves, He replies through our consciences: 'I have made you too feeble to climb out of the pit, because i made you strong enough not to fall in.

My illusions about the world caused me to think that in order to benefit by my reading I ought to possess all the knowledge the book presupposed. I was very far indeed from imagining that often the author did not possess it himself, but had extracted it from other books, as and when he needed it. This foolish conviction forced me to stop every moment, and to rush incessantly from one book to another; sometimes before coming to the tenth page of the one I was trying to read I should, by this extravagant method, have had to run through whole libraries. Nevertheless I stuck to it so persistently that I wasted infinite time, and my head became so confused that I could hardly see or take in anything.

My love for imaginary objects and my facility in lending myself to them ended by disillusioning me with everything around me, and determined that love of solitude which I have retained ever since that time.

I believed that I was approaching the end of my days without having tasted to the full any of the pleasures for which my heart thirsted...without having ever tasted that passion which, through lack of an object, was always suppressed. ...The impossibility of attaining the real persons precipitated me into the land of chimeras; and seeing nothing that existed worthy of my exalted feelings, I fostered them in an ideal world which my creative imagination soon peopled with beings after my own heart.

The history of a man's soul, even the pettiest soul, is hardly less interesting and useful than the history of a whole people; especially when the former is the result of the observations of a mature mind upon itself, and has been written without any egotistical desire of arousing sympathy or astonishment. Rousseau's Confessions has precisely this defect – he read it to his friends.

Hatred, as well as love, renders its votaries credulous.

The indolence I love is not that of a lazy fellow who sits with his arms across in total inaction, and thinks no more than he acts, but that of a child which is incessantly in motion doing nothing, and that of a dotard who wanders from his subject. I love to amuse myself with trifles, by beginning a hundred things and never finishing one of them, by going or coming as I take either into my head, by changing my project at every instant, by following a fly through all its windings, in wishing to overturn a rock to see what is under it, by undertaking with ardor the work of ten years, and abandoning it without regret at the end of ten minutes; finally, in musing from morning until night without order or coherence, and in following in everything the caprice of a moment.

I had brought from Paris the national prejudice against Italian music; but I had also received from nature that acute sensibility against which prejudices are powerless. I soon contracted the passion it inspires in all those born to understand it.

I was not much afraid of punishment, I was only afraid of disgrace.But that I feared more than death, more than crime, more than anything in the world. I should have rejoiced if the earth had swallowed me up and stifled me in the abyss. But my invincible sense of shame prevailed over everything . It was my shame that made me impudent, and the more wickedly I behaved the bolder my fear of confession made me. I saw nothing but the horror of being found out, of being publicly proclaimed, to my face, as a thief, as a liar, and slanderer.

My passions, when roused, are intense, and, so long as I am activated by them, nothing equals my impetuosity. I no longer know moderation, respect, fear, propriety; I am cynical, brazen, violent, fearless; no sense of shame deters me, no danger alarms me. Except for the object of my passion, the whole world is as nothing to me; but this only lasts for a moment, and the next I am plunged into utter dejection.

The sword wears out its sheath, as it is sometimes said. That is my story. My passions have made me live, and my passions have killed me. What passions, it may be asked. Trifles, the most childish things in the world. Yet they affected me as much as if the possessions of Helen, or the throne of the Universe, had been at stake.

Never have I thought so much, never have I realised my own existence so much, been so much alive, been so much myself ... as in those journeys which I have made alone and afoot. Walking has something in it which animates and heightens my ideas: I can scarcely think when I stay in one place ; my body must be set a-going if my mind is to work. The sight of the country, the succession of beautiful scenes ... releases my soul, gives me greater courage of thought, throws me as it were into the midst of the immensity of the objects of Nature ... my heart, surveying one object after another, unites itself, identifies itself with those in sympathy with it, surrounds itself with delightful images, intoxicates itself with emotions the most exquisite.

The story of a man's soul, however trivial, can be more interesting and instructive than the story of a whole nation, especially if it is based on the self-analysis of a mature mind and is written with no vain desire to rouse our sympathy and curiosity. The problem with Rousseau's Confessions is that he read them to his friends.

To be something, to be himself, and always at one with himself, a man must act as he speaks, must know what course he ought to take, and must follow that course with vigour and persistence.

I have somewhere read of a wise bishop who in a visit to his diocese found an old woman whose only prayer consisted in the single interjection "Oh!- "Good mother" said he to her, "continue to pray in this manner; your prayer is better than ours." This better prayer is mine also.

بقدر ما كانت اللحظة التي أُوحيَ إليّ فيها بفكرة الفرار حزينة ، فإن اللحظة التي أقدمت فيها على تنفيذ الفكرة بدت مبهجة.

I cannot repeat too often that to control the child one must often control oneself.

Those who read this will not fail to laugh at my gallantries, and remark, that after very promising preliminaries, my most forward adventures concluded by a kiss of the hand: yet be not mistaken, reader, in your estimate of my enjoyments; I have, perhaps, tasted more real pleasure in my amours, which concluded by a kiss of the hand, than you will ever have in yours, which, at least, begin there.

The wisest writers devote themselves to what a man ought to know, without asking what a child is capable of learning. They are always looking for the man in the child, without considering what he is before he becomes a man.

فكيف كان يتسنّى لي - و أنا في عنفوان الشباب - أن أشعر بشوقٍ قليل إلى المتعة الأولى؟... و كيف قدر لي أن أرقب ساعة القرب بألم أكثر مني بابتهاج؟... كيف حدث أنني شعرت بنفور و خوف تقريبًا، بدلا من أن أشعر بالمباهج التي كانت خليقة بأن تسكرني؟

I notice that a man seldom mentions what he had supposed to be his most idiosyncratic sensations without receiving from at least one (often more) of those present the reply, “What! Have you felt that too? I always thought I was the only one.” The book aims at telling the story of my conversion and is not a general autobiography, still less “Confessions” like those of St. Augustine or Rousseau. This means in practice that it gets less like a general autobiography as it goes on.

The indolence I love is not that of a lazy fellow who sits with his arms across in total inaction, and thinks no more than he acts,... ...but that of a child which is incessantly in motion doing nothing, and that of a dotard who wanders from his subject.

Rien ne rétrécit plus l’esprit, rien n’engendre plus de riens, de rapports, de paquets, de tracasseries, de mensonges, que d’être éternellement renfermés vis-à-vis les uns des autres dans une chambre, réduits pour tout ouvrage à la nécessité de babiller continuellement.

A father has done but a third of his task when he begets children and provides a living for them. He owes men to humanity, citizens to the state. A man who can pay this threefold debt and neglect to do so is guilty, more guilty, perhaps, if he pays it in part than when he neglects it entirely. He has no right to be a father if he cannot fulfil a father's duties. Poverty, pressure of business, mistaken social prejudices, none of these can excuse a man from his duty, which is to support and educate his own children.

Aș putea să spun că n-am început să simt că trăiesc decât atunci când mă privii ca un om mort.

Il fut mis dans une maison de charité, où l’âge et le regret de se voir loin de sa famille le mirent au tombeau presque en arrivant.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was one of the most influential thinkers during the Enlightenment in eighteenth century Europe.

If I could have seen her just once again I should have been content to die at that moment.

Singur, n-am cunoscut niciodată plictiseala, chiar atunci când nu făceam nimic: imaginația mea, umplând toate golurile, era ea singură de ajuns spre a mă ține ocupat.

He was freer and less constrained in the womb; he has gained nothing by birth.

It makes me feel very much what I believe I have said in some work, that remorse sleeps during a prosperous fate and grows sour in adversity

Your beginning," he said to me, "is the rule of what will be required of you: seek to behave so as to do more afterwards, but watch out never to do less.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

This is how in every condition the guilty strong person saves himself at the expense of the innocent weak one...

It makes me feel very much what I believe I have said in some work, that remorse sleeps during a prosperous fate and grows sour in adversity.

...she was Italian, that is to say sensitive and vindictive...

My lack of success with women has always come from loving them too much

As a result of quarrels, blows, furtive and poorly chosen readings, my disposition became taciturn, wild, my head began to be spoiled, and I lived like a true werewolf.

This collection of scattered thoughts and observations has little order or continuity; it was begun to give pleasure to a good mother who thinks for herself.

On pouvait la voir sans l’aimer, mais non pas la posséder sans l’adorer.

Ma mémoire, qui me retrace uniquement les objets agréables, est l’heureux contrepoids de mon imagination effarouchée, qui ne me fait prévoir que de cruels avenirs.

Among the notable books of later times-we may say, without exaggeration, of all time—must be reckoned The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau.

ils n’ont plus fait, par leurs formules, qu’une religion de mots, vu qu’il en coûte peu de prescrire l’impossible quand on se dispense de le pratiquer.

Rien de vigoureux, rien de grand ne peut partir d’une plume toute vénale.

Teach by doing whenever you can, and only fall back upon words when doing is out of the question.

Hard to rouse and hard to restrain: that had been a constant trait in my character.

كان الإخفاق في الإرضاء أقسى وقعًا على نفسي من العقاب

If you want to say something clever, you have only to talk long enough.

Civilised man is born and dies a slave. The infant is bound up in swaddling clothes, the corpse is nailed down in his coffin. All his life long man is imprisoned by our institutions.

The money which a man possesses is the instrument of freedom; that which we eagerly pursue is the instrument of slavery. Therefore I hold fast to that which I have, and desire nothing.

If instead of making a child stick to his books I employ him in a workshop, his hands work for the development of his mind. While he fancies himself a workman he is becoming a philosopher.

I would rather he never learnt to read at all, than that this art should be acquired at the price of all that makes reading useful. What is the use of reading to him if he always hates it?

People seek a tutor who has already educated one pupil. This is too much; one man can only educate one pupil; if two were essential to success, what right would he have to undertake the first?

I have entered upon a performance which is without example, whose accomplishment will have no imitator. I mean to present my fellow-mortals with a man in all the integrity of nature; and this man shall be myself. I know my heart, and have studied mankind; I am not made like any one I have been acquainted with, perhaps like no one in existence; if not better, I at least claim originality, and whether Nature did wisely in breaking the mould with which she formed me, can only be determined after having read this work. Whenever the last trumpet shall sound, I will present myself before the sovereign judge with this book in my hand, and loudly proclaim, thus have I acted; these were my thoughts; such was I. With equal freedom and veracity have I related what was laudable or wicked, I have concealed no crimes, added no virtues; and if I have sometimes introduced superfluous ornament, it was merely to occupy a void occasioned by defect of memory: I may have supposed that certain, which I only knew to be probable, but have never asserted as truth, a conscious falsehood. Such as I was, I have declared myself; sometimes vile and despicable, at others, virtuous, generous and sublime; even as thou hast read my inmost soul: Power eternal! assemble round thy throne an innumerable throng of my fellow-mortals, let them listen to my confessions, let them blush at my depravity, let them tremble at my sufferings; let each in his turn expose with equal sincerity the failings, the wanderings of his heart, and, if he dare, aver, I was better than that man.

It should not be thought, moreover, that this manner of thinking is peculiar to Catholics; it is that of every dogmatic religion in which belief is made into the essential thing rather than deeds.

With the growth of civilisation in Europe, and with the revival of letters and of science in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the ethical and intellectual criticism of theology once more recommenced, and arrived at a temporary resting-place in the confessions of the various reformed Protestant sects in the sixteenth century; almost all of which, as soon as they were strong enough, began to persecute those who carried criticism beyond their own limit. But the movement was not arrested by these ecclesiastical barriers, as their constructors fondly imagined it would be; it was continued, tacitly or openly, by Galileo, by Hobbes, by Descartes, and especially by Spinoza, in the seventeenth century; by the English Freethinkers, by Rousseau, by the French Encyclopaedists, and by the German Rationalists, among whom Lessing stands out a head and shoulders taller than the rest, throughout the eighteenth century; by the historians, the philologers, the Biblical critics, the geologists, and the biologists in the nineteenth century, until it is obvious to all who can see that the moral sense and the really scientific method of seeking for truth are once more predominating over false science. Once more ethics and theology are parting company.

I do not like verbal explanations. Young people pay little heed to them, nor do they remember them. Things! Things! I cannot repeat it too often. We lay too much stress upon words; we teachers babble, and our scholars follow our example.

Young teacher, pray consider this example, and remember that your lessons should always be in deeds rather than words, for children soon forget what they say or what is said to them, but not what they have done nor what has been done to them.

From this point of view, Rousseau knew that death is not the simple outside of life. Death by writing also inaugurates life. “I can certainly say that I never began to live, until I looked upon myself as a dead man” (Confessions, Book 6 [p. 236]).

As French academic Frederic Gros writes in A Philosophy of Walking, it’s simply “the best way to go more slowly than any other method that has ever been found.” Jefferson walked to clear his mind, while Thoreau and Nietzsche, like Aristotle, walked to think. “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking,” wrote Nietzsche in Twilight of the Idols. And Rousseau wrote in Confessions, “I can only meditate when I am walking. When I stop, I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs.

Luați femeia cea mai cuminte, cea mai înțeleaptă, cea mai puțin stăpânită de simțuri; crima cea mai de neiertat pe care un bărbat, căruia chiar dacă îi dă prea puțină atenție, poate să o săvârșească față de ea, este de a putea să o aibă și a nu o face.

There is quite another class of exceptions: those so gifted by nature that they rise above the level of their age. As there are men who never get beyond infancy, so there are others who are never, so to speak, children, they are men almost from birth. The

The end of this speech cruelly belied the brilliant hopes given to me by the beginning. "What, always a lackey?" I said to myself with a bitter disdain that confidence soon erased. I felt myself too little made for that place to fear that they would leave me there

Protestants are generally better educated than Catholics. This ought to be so: the doсtrine of the former requires discussion, that of the latter submission. The Catholic ought to adopt the decision he is given, the Protestant ought to learn to decide for himself.

Our contemporary Rousseau has a relevant maxim. He argues that true vengeance consists not of killing the antagonist, but forcing him to kill you. I confess that my own spirit is not sufficiently lofty for me to share this view with the sublime sage of Geneva. Yet the idea is strange and novel, and for those who subscribe to it, there is ample room for subtle and rather heroic argumentation, of the kind so frequently sought by our modern thinkers, who love nothing better than recycling paradoxes into aphorisms and vice-versa.

Lingușirea, sau mai bine zis îngăduința, nu e totdeauna un păcat, ea e de cele mai multe ori o virtute, îndeosebi la tineri. Bunătatea cu care un om ne tratează ne leagă de el; nu-i cedezi ca să profiți de el, ci ca să nu-l mâhnești, ca să nu-i plătești binele cu rău.

Then, turning toward me, he said to me, "My child, in almost everything the beginnings are rough; however yours will not be very much so. Be prudent, and seek to please everyone here; at present this is your sole business. For the rest, have courage; we want to take care of you.

Let the numberless legion of my fellow men gather round me and hear my confessions. Let them groan at my depravities, and blush for my misdeeds. But let each one of them reveal his heart at the foot of Thy throne with equal sincerity, and may any man who dares, say, “I was a better man that he.

Again I must enter into minute and detailed explanations. I hear my readers murmur, but I am prepared to meet their disapproval; I will not sacrifice the most important part of this book to your impatience. You may think me as long-winded as you please; I have my own opinion as to your complaints.

Flattery, or rather condescension, is not always a vice, it is more often a virtue, especially in young people. The kindness with which a man treats us attaches us to him; one does not give way to him in order to deceive him, one does so in order not to make him sad, not to return him harm for good.

The idea of solvitur ambulando (in walking it will be solved) has been around since St. Augustine, but well before that Aristotle thought and taught while walking the open-air parapets of the Lyceum. It has long been believed that walking in restorative settings could lead not only to physical vigor but to mental clarity and even bursts of genius, inspiration (with its etymology in breathing) and overall sanity. As French academic Frederic Gros writes in A Philosophy of Walking, it’s simply “the best way to go more slowly than any other method that has ever been found.” Jefferson walked to clear his mind, while Thoreau and Nietzsche, like Aristotle, walked to think. “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking,” wrote Nietzsche in Twilight of the Idols. And Rousseau wrote in Confessions, “I can only meditate when I am walking. When I stop, I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs.” Scotland

Without the study of books, such a memory as the child may possess is not left idle; everything he sees and hears makes an impression on him, he keeps a record of men's sayings and doings, and his whole environment is the book from which he unconsciously enriches his memory, till his judgment is able to profit by it.

When I thus get rid of children's lessons, I get rid of the chief cause of their sorrows, namely their books. Reading is the curse of childhood, yet it is almost the only occupation you can find for children. Emile, at twelve years old, will hardly know what a book is. "But," you say, "he must, at least, know how to read.

Young teacher, I am setting before you a difficult task, the art of controlling without precepts, and doing everything without doing anything at all. This art is, I confess, beyond your years, it is not calculated to display your talents nor to make your value known to your scholar's parents; but it is the only road to success.

From my heel to my toe is a measured space of 29.7 centimetres or 11.7 inches. This is a unit of progress and it is also a unit of thought. 'I can only meditate when I am walking,' wrote Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the fourth book of his 'Confessions', 'when I stop I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs.' Søren Kierkegaard speculated that the mind might function optimally at the pedestrian pace of three miles per hour, and in a journal entry describes going out for a wander and finding himself 'so overwhelmed with ideas' that he 'could scarcely walk'. Christopher Morley wrote of Wordsworth as 'employ[ing] his legs as an instrument of philosophy' and Wordsworth of his own 'feeling intellect'. Nietzsche was typically absolute on the subject - 'Only those thoughts which come from 'walking' have a value' - and Wallace Stevens typically tentative: 'Perhaps / The truth depends on a walk around the lake.' In all of these accounts, walking is not the action by which one arrives at knowledge; it is itself the means of knowing.

I can understand how it is that city-dwellers, who see only walls and streets and crimes, have so little religion. But I cannot understand how those who live in the country, and the solitary especially, can be lacking in faith. How is it that their souls are not raised in ecstasy a hundred times a day to the Author of the wonders that strike their eyes?

You fail to perceive that it is a greater waste of time to use it ill than to do nothing, and that a child ill taught is further from virtue than a child who has learnt nothing at all. You are afraid to see him spending his early years doing nothing. What! is it nothing to be happy, nothing to run and jump all day? He will never be so busy again all his life long.

I found that stealing and being beaten went together, and in some way made up a single condition, and that by fulfilling the part of that condition that depended on me, I could leave the care of the other part to my master. From this idea, I set out to steal more calmly than before. I said to myself, "What will come of it in the end? I will be beaten. So be it: that's what I am made for

The sophism that ruined me is the one made by the majority of men, who complain about lacking strength when it is already too late to make use of it. [...] Virtue costs us only through our own fault, and if we always wanted to be wise, we would rarely need to be virtuous. But inclinations that would be easy to overcome sweep us away without resistance: we give way to slight temptations whose danger we scorn

Children's lies are therefore entirely the work of their teachers, and to teach them to speak the truth is nothing less than to teach them the art of lying. In your zeal to rule, control, and teach them, you never find sufficient means at your disposal. You wish to gain fresh influence over their minds by baseless maxims, by unreasonable precepts; and you would rather they knew their lessons and told lies, than leave them ignorant and truthful.

Since everything that comes into the human mind enters through the gates of sense, man's first reason is a reason of sense-experience. It is this that serves as a foundation for the reason of the intelligence; our first teachers in natural philosophy are our feet, hands, and eyes. To substitute books for them does not teach us to reason, it teaches us to use the reason of others rather than our own; it teaches us to believe much and know little.

My passions are extremely violent; while under their influence, nothing can equal my impetuosity; I am an absolute stranger to discretion, respect, fear, or decorum; rude, saucy, violent, and intrepid: no shame can stop, no danger intimidate me. My mind is frequently so engrossed by a single object, that beyond it the whole world is not worth a thought; this is the enthusiasm of a moment, the next, perhaps, I am plunged in a state of annihilation. Take me in my moments of tranquility,

Rousseau confessed to Mr. Hume, and Mr. Hume repeated the conversation to Mr. Burke, that the secret of which he availed himself in his writings to excite the attention of mankind, was the employment of paradoxes. When a proposition is so expressed as to bear the appearance of absurdity, but by certain reasonings and explanations is made to assume the semblance of truth, the inexperienced hearers are, in general, wonderfully delighted, give credit to the author for the highest ingenuity, and congratulate themselves on a surprising discovery.

To select these objects, to take care to present him constantly with those he may know, to conceal from him those he ought not to know, this is the real way of training his early memory; and in this way you must try to provide him with a storehouse of knowledge which will serve for his education in youth and his conduct throughout life. True, this method does not produce infant prodigies, nor will it reflect glory upon their tutors and governesses, but it produces men, strong, right-thinking men, vigorous both in mind and body, men who do not win admiration as children, but honour as men.

We are born sensitive and from our birth onwards we are affected in various ways by our environment. As soon as we become conscious of our sensations we tend to seek or shun the things that cause them, at first because they are pleasant or unpleasant, then because they suit us or not, and at last because of judgments formed by means of the ideas of happiness and goodness which reason gives us. These tendencies gain strength and permanence with the growth of reason, but hindered by our habits they are more or less warped by our prejudices. Before this change they are what I call Nature within us.

Plato, in his Republic, which is considered so stern, teaches the children only through festivals, games, songs, and amusements. It seems as if he had accomplished his purpose when he had taught them to be happy; and Seneca, speaking of the Roman lads in olden days, says, "They were always on their feet, they were never taught anything which kept them sitting." Were they any the worse for it in manhood? Do not be afraid, therefore, of this so-called idleness. What would you think of a man who refused to sleep lest he should waste part of his life? You would say, "He is mad; he is not enjoying his life, he is robbing himself of part of it; to avoid sleep he is hastening his death." Remember that these two cases are alike, and that childhood is the sleep of reason.

He who would preserve the supremacy of natural feelings in social life knows not what he asks. Ever at war with himself, hesitating between his wishes and his duties, he will be neither a man nor a citizen. He will be of no use to himself nor to others. He will be a man of our day, a Frenchman, an Englishman, one of the great middle class. To be something, to be himself, and always at one with himself, a man must act as he speaks, must know what course he ought to take, and must follow that course with vigour and persistence. When I meet this miracle it will be time enough to decide whether he is a man or a citizen, or how he contrives to be both. Two conflicting types of educational systems spring from these conflicting aims. One is public and common to many, the other private and domestic.

To me money has never seemed to be as precious a thing as it is usually found to be. Further; to me it has never seemed very convenient; it is good for nothing by itself; one must transform it in order to enjoy it; one must buy, haggle, often be a dupe, pay well, in order to be poorly served. I would like something of good quality; with my money I am sure of having one of bad quality. I buy a fresh egg dearly, it is old; a fine fruit, it is green; a girl, she is tainted. I love good wine; but where is it to be found? At a wine merchant's? Whatever I might do he will poison me. Do I absolutely want to be well served? How many cares, what bother! to have friends, correspondents, to give commissions, to write, to go, to come, to wait, and often in the end still to be fooled. How much trouble with my money! I fear it more than I love good wine

He [Savoyard abbe M. Gaime] drew me a true picture of human life about which I had only false ideas; he showed me how, in an adverse destiny, the wise man can always attain happiness and tack close to the wind to reach it, how there is no true happiness without wisdom, and how there is wisdom in every station. He very much subdued my admiration for ]greatness by proving to me that those who dominated others were neither wiser nor happier than they. He told me something that has often returned to my memory, which is that if each man could read in the hearts of all the others, there would be more people who would want to descend than to rise. This reflection—the truth of which is striking and which is not at all exaggerated—has been of great use to me in the course of my life by making me keep peacefully in my place. He gave me the first true ideas about what is decent, which my bombastic genius had grasped only in its extremes. He made me feel that enthusiasm for sublime virtues was of little use in society; that by aiming too high one was subject to falls; that the continuity of small duties always well fulfilled did not require any less strength than heroic actions; that one could turn them to better account for honor and for happiness; and that it was worth infinitely more always to have men's esteem than sometimes to have their admiration.

If it is good to know how to deal with men as they are, it is much better to make them what there is need that they should be. The most absolute authority is that which penetrates into a man's inmost being, and concerns itself no less with his will than with his actions. It is certain that all peoples become in the long run what the government makes them; warriors, citizens, men, when it so pleases: or merely populace and rabble, when it chooses to make them so. Hence every prince who despises his subjects, dishonours himself, in confessing that he does not know how to make them worthy of respect. Make men, therefore, if you would command men: if you would have them obedient to the laws, make them love the laws, and then they will need only to know what is their duty to do it. This was the great art of ancient governments, in those distant times when philosophers gave laws to men, and made use of their authority only to render them wise and happy. Thence arose the numerous sumptuary laws, the many regulations of morals, and all the public rules of conduct which were admitted or rejected with the greatest care. Even tyrants did not forget this important part of administration, but took as great pains to corrupt the morals of their slaves, as Magistrates took to correct those of their fellowcitizens. But our modern governments, which imagine they have done everything when they have raised money, conceive that it is unnecessary and even impossible to go a step further.

The new-born infant cries, his early days are spent in crying. He is alternately petted and shaken by way of soothing him; sometimes he is threatened, sometimes beaten, to keep him quiet. We do what he wants or we make him do what we want, we submit to his whims or subject him to our own. There is no middle course; he must rule or obey. Thus his earliest ideas are those of the tyrant or the slave. He commands before he can speak, he obeys before he can act, and sometimes he is punished for faults before he is aware of them, or rather before they are committed. Thus early are the seeds of evil passions sown in his young heart. At a later day these are attributed to nature, and when we have taken pains to make him bad we lament his badness. In this way the child passes six or seven years in the hands of women, the victim of his own caprices or theirs, and after they have taught him all sorts of things, when they have burdened his memory with words he cannot understand, or things which are of no use to him, when nature has been stifled by the passions they have implanted in him, this sham article is sent to a tutor. The tutor completes the development of the germs of artificiality which he finds already well grown, he teaches him everything except self-knowledge and self-control, the arts of life and happiness. When at length this infant slave and tyrant, crammed with knowledge but empty of sense, feeble alike in mind and body, is flung upon the world, and his helplessness, his pride, and his other vices are displayed, we begin to lament the wretchedness and perversity of mankind. We are wrong; this is the creature of our fantasy; the natural man is cast in another mould.

In fact, Rousseau’s focus in Confessions on his inner psychology and the idea of the true self that he articulates in the Discourses together represent what we noted in chapter 1 is now known as expressive individualism, the notion that I am most truly myself when I am able to express outwardly what that voice of nature says to me inwardly. Doing that, to use modern parlance, is what makes me authentic.

Marie Antoinette is said to have dismissed the plight of the poor by declaring, “Let them eat cake.” But there’s no evidence the queen ever said it, and plenty of evidence that Jean-Jacques Rousseau did. His autobiographical book, “Confessions,” included the phrase about 1767, before Marie Antoinette even got to France. The quote in the original French refers to brioche, which is not really a cake and is better described as an enriched bread roll.

Rousseau’s autobiographical Confessions, published after his death, reveal that it was during his time in the Italian island-port of Venice—while working as an underpaid ambassadorial secretary—that he decided “everything depends entirely on politics.” People were not inherently evil, but could become so under evil governments. The virtues he saw in Geneva, and the vices in Venice—in particular, the sad decline of the city-state from its glorious past—could be traced not to human character, but to human institutions.

The autobiographer, for his part, is imprisoned in his own egotism. He must always be suspect. In contrast with the other two, the novelist is a god, creating his man, making him breathe and walk. The man, created in his own image, provides information about the god. In a sense you know more about Balzac and Dickens from their novels, than Rousseau and Casanova from their Confessions.

When Rousseau wrote at the beginning of the Confessions: “I am different from all men I have seen. If I am not better, at least I am different,” he expressed directly the note of egotistic sensibility.