of reflection upon what our needs really are; proceeding, more
especially, from the insight we attain into the wretched stuff of
which most people are made, whether you look at their morals or their
intellects. The worst of it all is that, in the individual, moral and
intellectual shortcomings are closely connected and play into each
other's hands, so that all manner of disagreeable results are
obtained, which make intercourse with most people not only unpleasant
but intolerable. Hence, though the world contains many things which
are thoroughly bad, the worst thing in it is society. Even Voltaire,
that sociable Frenchman, was obliged to admit that there are
everywhere crowds of people not worth talking to: _la terre est
couverte de gens qui ne méritent pas qu'on leur parle_. And Petrarch
gives a similar reason for wishing to be alone--that tender spirit! so
strong and constant in his love of seclusion. The streams, the plains
and woods know well, he says, how he has tried to escape the perverse
and stupid people who have missed the way to heaven:--

_Cercato ho sempre solitaria vita
(Le rive il sanno, e le campagne e i boschi)
Per fuggir quest' ingegni storti e loschi
Che la strada del ciel' hanno smarrita_.

He pursues the same strain in that delightful book of his, _DeVita
Solitaria_, which seems to have given Zimmerman the idea of his
celebrated work on _Solitude_. It is the secondary and indirect
character of the love of seclusion to which Chamfort alludes in the
following passage, couched in his sarcastic vein: _On dit quelquefois
d'un homme qui vit seul, il n'aime pas la société. C'est souvent
comme si on disait d'un homme qu'il n'aime pas la promenade, sous le
pretexte qu'il ne se promène pas volontiers le soir dans le forêt de