Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1854 edition. Excerpt: ... woman governed France. This silence cannot have been involuntary. Still, as to Duclos' book, it is a farther proof that to do well is not all, but that it is especially necessary to come to the point, as Voltaire said. The Reflexions on Morals appeared in 1750, the same year that the ardent genius of J. J. Rousseau produced a strong sensation, and the work of the thinker, who was only intellectual, calm, and delicate, was naturally thrown aside. XXVII. J. J. ROUSSEAU. 1711-1778. FIRST PART. "The eighteenth century had reached its middle, the philosophical school was in all its strength, and the minds of men were in all the fervour of a new protestantism, when a man, forty years of age, unknown till then, the sport of all vicissitudes, a deserter from all employments, after a life inconsistent, disorderly, and sometimes shameful, but whose storms had enlarged his thought and inflamed his genius, darts into this arena, into which combatants crowd, and, by some eloquent passages, announces a rival to the great writers of his age."1 J. J. Rousseau gained such eclat, that Voltaire alone could stand before him: and even he felt himself to be in danger, for Rousseau became the object of his special hatred. Was the irritation which he experienced directed against the pretended faults of Rousseau, against the defects of his system, or against his fame? In all these cases, it must be confessed, nothing so much resembles envy. The universal mind of Voltaire had mastered the most prominent elements of the eighteenth century; but he had left many vast domains uncultivated in dark and deep valleys, which his eye never reached. A man of his age, suited to civilization, and even to corrupt civilization--pathetic only in fiction--he was not the person...
