At the age of eleven Jean Jacques was sent into a notary's office, but
that respectable calling struck him in the same repulsive and
insufferable way in which it has struck many other boys of genius in all
countries. Contrary to the usual rule, he did not rebel, but was
ignominiously dismissed by his master[19] for dulness and inaptitude;
his fellow-clerks pronounced him stupid and incompetent past hope. He
was next apprenticed to an engraver,[20] a rough and violent man, who
seems to have instantly plunged the boy into a demoralised stupefaction.
The reality of contact with this coarse nature benumbed as by touch of
torpedo the whole being of a youth who had hitherto lived on pure
sensations and among those ideas which are nearest to sensations. There
were no longer heroic Romans in Rousseau's universe. "The vilest
tastes, the meanest bits of rascality, succeeded to my simple
amusements, without even leaving the least idea behind. I must, in spite
of the worthiest education, have had a strong tendency to degenerate."
The truth was that he had never had any education in its veritable
sense, as the process, on its negative side, of counteracting the
inborn. There are two kinds, or perhaps we should more correctly say two
degrees, of the constitution in which the reflective part is weak. There
are the men who live on sensation, but who do so lustily, with a certain
fulness of blood and active energy of muscle. There are others who do so
passively, not searching for excitement, but acquiescing. The former by
their sheer force and plenitude of vitality may, even in a world where
reflection is a first condition, still go far. The latter succumb, and
as reflection does nothing for them, and as their sensations in such a
world bring them few blandishments, they are tolerably early surrounded
with a self-diffusing atmosphere of misery. Rousseau had none of this
energy which makes oppression bracing. For a time he sank.