The next eight years of his life were passed in comparative obscurity, and in migrating from one place to another in the neighbourhood of Paris. In his solitude gardening and botanising occupied a large part of his leisure hours. It was at this period he made the acquaintance of Bernardin St. Pierre, his enthusiastic disciple, and immortalised as the author of Paul et Virginie. His end came suddenly. He had been settled only a few months in a cottage given him by one of his numerous aristocratic friends and admirers, when one morning, feeling unwell, he requested his wife to open the window that he “might once more look on the lovely verdure of the fields,” and as he was expressing his delight at the exquisite beauty of the scene and of the skies he fell forward and instantly breathed his last. At his special request his place of burial was chosen on an island in a lake in the Park of Ermondville, a fitting resting-place for one of the most eloquent of the high priests of Nature.
His character (as we have already remarked) is revealed in his Confessions—which was written, in part, during his brief exile in England. It, as well as his other productions, shews him to us as a man of extraordinary sensibility, which, in regard to himself, occasionally degenerated into a sort of disease or, in popular language, morbidness (a word, by the way, constantly abused by the many who seem to excuse their own insensibility to surrounding evils by stigmatising with that vague expression the acuter feeling of the few), which sometimes assumed the appearance of partial unsoundness of mind. This it was that caused him to suspect and quarrel with his best friends, and which, we may suppose, led him, in his minute dissection of himself, to exaggerate his real moral infirmities.
In summing up his personal character we shall perhaps impartially judge him to have been, on the whole, amiable rather than admirable, of good impulses, and of a naturally humane disposition, cultivated by reading and reflection, but to have been wanting in firmness of mind and in that virtue so much esteemed in the school of Pythagoras—self control. His philosophy is distinguished rather by refinement than by vigour or depth of thought.
It is in the education of the young that Rousseau exerts his eloquence to enforce the importance of a non-flesh diet:—
“One of the proofs that the taste of flesh is not natural to man is the indifference which children exhibit for that sort of meat, and the preference they all give to vegetable foods, such as milk-porridge, pastry, fruits, &c. It is of the last importance not to denaturalise them of this primitive taste (de ne pas dénaturer ce goût primitif), and not to render them carnivorous, if not for health reasons, at least for the sake of their character. For, however the experience may be explained, it is certain that great eaters of flesh are, in general, more cruel and ferocious than other men. This observation is true of all places and of all times. English coarseness is well known.[175] The Gaures, on the contrary, are the gentlest of men. All savages are cruel, and it is not their morals that urge them to be so; this cruelty proceeds from their food. They go to war as to the chase, and treat men as they do bears. Even in England the butchers are not received as legal witnesses any more than surgeons.[176] Great criminals harden themselves to murder by drinking blood.[177] Homer represents the Cyclopes, who were flesh-eaters, as frightful men, and the Lotophagi [Lotus-eaters] as a people so amiable that as soon as one had any dealing with them one straightway forgot everything, even one’s country, to live with them.”
Rousseau, in a free translation, here quotes a considerable part of Plutarch’s Essay. He insists, especially, that children should be early accustomed to the pure diet:—
“The further we remove from a natural mode of living the more do we lose our natural tastes; or rather habit makes a second nature, which we substitute to such a degree for the first that none among us any longer knows what the latter is. It follows from this that the most simple tastes must also be the most natural, for they are those which are most easily changed, while by being sharpened and by being irritated by our whims they assume a form which never changes. The man who is yet of no country will conform himself without trouble to the customs of any country whatever, but the man of one country never becomes that of another. This appears to me true in every sense, and still more so applied to taste properly so-called. Our first food was milk. We accustom ourselves only by degrees to strong flavours. At first they are repugnant to us. Fruits, vegetables, kitchen herbs, and, in fine, often broiled dishes, without seasoning and without salt, composed the feasts of the first men. The first time a savage drinks wine he makes a grimace and rejects it; and even amongst ourselves, whoever has lived to his twentieth year without tasting fermented drinks, cannot afterwards accustom himself to them. We should all be abstinents from alcohol if we had not been given wines in our early years. In fine, the more simple our tastes are the more universal are they, and the most common repugnance is for made-up dishes. Does one ever see a person have a disgust for water or bread? Behold here the impress of nature! Behold here, then, our rule of life. Let us preserve to the child as long as possible his primitive taste; let its nourishment be common and simple; let not its palate be familiarised to any but natural flavours, and let no exclusive taste be formed.... I have sometimes examined those people who attached importance to good living, who thought, upon their first awaking, of what they should eat during the day, and described a dinner with more exactitude than Polybius would use in describing a battle. I have thought that all these so-called men were but children of forty years without vigour and without consistence—fruges consumere nati.[178] Gluttony is the vice of souls that have no solidity (qui n’ont point d’étoffe). The soul of a gourmand is in his palate. He is brought into the world but to devour. In his stupid incapacity he is at home only at his table. His powers of judgment are limited to his dishes. Let us leave him in his employment without regret. Better that for him than any other, as much for our own sakes as for his.”[179]
In the Julie: ou la Nouvelle Heloise he describes his heroine as preferring the innocent feast:—