Excerpt from The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Vol. 1 Voltaire's cold mock pity in l'homme aux Quarante Ecus: Let us pardon that poor jean-jacques when he writes only to contradict himself; when after having had a comedy hissed in the theatre at Paris, he abuses people who put comedies on a hundred miles away; when he seeks out protectors and then outrages them; when he holds forth against novels and then writes novels with a silly preceptor for a hero, who takes money from a Swiss lady to whom he has given a child and then goes Off to spend it in a Paris brothel: let us allow him to believe that he has surpassed Fenelon and Xenophon in bringing up a young man of quality in the trade of a carpenter: these extravagant platitudes do not merit a warrant for his arrest Yet the poor J ean-j acques had not only for all his self-contradictions more driving force than Voltaire, who conducted his campaign with far lighter weapons, but he has never been equalled by any of the subsequent prophets to whom he has trans mitted his mantle. We have all a little Of Rousseau now adays; it is easy to catch what is in the air. The re markable thing was to create in the first place both the new prophetic point Of view and the new language for expressing it. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.