description by as overcharged or exaggerated. We are conscious in it of
a constitutional infirmity. We perceive an absence of healthy power of
reaction against moral shock. Such shocks are experienced in many
unavoidable forms by all save the dullest natures, when they first come
into contact with the sharp tooth of outer circumstance. Indeed, a man
must be either miraculously happy in his experiences, or exceptionally
obtuse in observing and feeling, or else be the creature of base and
cynical ideals, if life does not to the end continue to bring many a
repetition of that first day of incredulous bewilderment. But the urgent
demands for material activity quickly recall the mass of men to normal
relations with their fellows and the outer world. A vehement objective
temperament, like Voltaire's, is instantly roused by one of these
penetrative stimuli into angry and tenacious resistance. A proud and
collected soul, like Goethe's, loftily follows its own inner aims,
without taking any heed of the perturbations that arise from want of
self-collection in a world still spelling its rudiments. A sensitive and
depressed spirit, like Rousseau's or Cowper's, finds itself without any
of these reacting kinds of force, and the first stroke of cruelty or
oppression is the going out of a divine light.

Leaving Bossey, Rousseau returned to Geneva, and passed two or three
years with his uncle, losing his time for the most part, but learning
something of drawing and something of Euclid, for the former of which he
showed special inclination.[14] It was a question whether he was to be
made a watchmaker, a lawyer, or a minister. His own preference, as his
after-life might have led us to suppose, was in favour of the last of
the three; "for I thought it a fine thing," he says, "to preach." The
uncle was a man of pleasure, and as often happens in such
circumstances, his love of pleasure had the effect of turning his wife
into a pietist. Their son was Rousseau's constant comrade. "Our