conventionality of civilization--the restrictions upon the free play of
the human spirit which seemed to be inherent in civilized life. The
strange feeling of revolt that surged up within him when he contemplated
the drawing-rooms of Paris, with their brilliance and their philosophy,
their intellect and their culture, arose from a profounder cause than a
false historical theory, or a defective logical system, or a mean
personal jealousy and morbid pride. All these elements, no doubt,
entered into his feeling--for Rousseau was a very far from perfect human
being; but the ultimate source was beyond and below them--in his
instinctive, overmastering perception of the importance and the dignity
of the individual soul. It was in this perception that Rousseau's great
originality lay. His revolt was a spiritual revolt. In the Middle Ages
the immense significance of the human spirit had been realized, but it
had been inextricably involved in a mass of theological superstition.
The eighteenth century, on the other hand, had achieved the great
conception of a secular system of society; but, in doing so, it had left
out of account the spiritual nature of man, who was regarded simply as a
rational animal in an organized social group. Rousseau was the first to
unite the two views, to revive the medieval theory of the soul without
its theological trappings, and to believe--half unconsciously, perhaps,
and yet with a profound conviction--that the individual, now, on this
earth, and in himself, was the most important thing in the world.

This belief, no doubt, would have arisen in Europe, in some way or
other, if Rousseau had never lived; but it was he who clothed it with
the splendour of genius, and, by the passion of his utterance, sowed it
far and wide in the hearts of men. In two directions his influence was
enormous. His glowing conception of individual dignity and individual
rights as adhering, not to a privileged few, but to the whole mass of
humanity, seized upon the imagination of France, supplied a new and