“Lastly, in those elevated regions you will yourself become better; you will verify the promise of the moral philosopher; you will feel greater facility of respiration, more suppleness and vigor of body, and greater buoyancy of spirits. All the passions are here softened down and pleasure is less intense. The mind is led into a grand and sublime train of thought, suited to the objects which surround us; it is filled with a certain calm delight unalloyed with anything that is painful or sensual. It seems as if in rising above the habitations of men we left behind us all base and earthly feelings; and as if the soul in approaching nearer to the ethereal heaven acquired somewhat of its unruffled serenity.”
And quite à propos, it seems to me, here is Rousseau’s famous description of the sunrise:
“Let us betake ourselves to some lofty place before the Sun appears. We see him announced from afar by the fiery darts which he sends before him. The fire increases; the east seems all in flames. By their dazzling splendor one looks for the orb long before it shows itself. Each instant one thinks to see it appear. There it is at last! A brilliant point shoots off like a flash and instantly fills all space....
“The veil of darkness is rent and falls; man recognizes his dwelling-place and finds it ever-more more beautiful. During the night the verdure has taken on new vigor; the dawning day which lights it, the first rays which gild it, bring it before us with a glittering panoply of dew, flashing brilliant colors into our eyes. The birds join in chorus and salute the father of life. The concourse of all these objects brings to the senses an impression of freshness which seems to penetrate into the depths of the soul. Here is a half-hour of enchantment which no man can resist. A spectacle so grand, so beautiful, so delicious, leaves no one unmoved.”
Rousseau attributed his love of Nature to the two peaceful years which he spent at the parsonage at Borsey, developing as they did his taste and enabling him later to bring about a complete revolution in the esthetic and literary tendencies of the century. If Rousseau got up to see a sunrise, why, then it became the fashion to get up and see sunrises; if Rousseau went to a high mountain-top, then it became fashionable to go to high mountain-tops. Here is his recipe for mountain-climbing, written after he had made an excursion on foot to Valais in the Autumn of 1759:—
“I gradually realized that the purity of the air was the real cause of the return of that interior peace which I had lost so long. In fact on high mountains, where the air is pure and subtle, we feel a greater facility in breathing, greater physical lightness, greater mental serenity. Our meditations take on a peculiar character of grandeur and sublimity, proportioned to the objects surrounding us. It seems as if in rising above the dwellings of men, we left behind all low and terrestrial thoughts and, in proportion as we approach the upper regions, the soul attains something of their changeless purity. Here we are grave, but not melancholy; peaceful, but not indolent; simply content to be and to think. I doubt if any violent agitation, if any maladie des vapeurs could resist such a sojourn if prolonged, and I am amazed that baths in the wholesome and beneficent mountain-air are not one of the sovereign remedies of medicine and morals.”
The same idea is found in quaint lines in a Mountain Poem by Usteri:
“Uf Bergen, uf Bergen
Da isch’s eim so wohl