' Therefore he too wanders pitifully like that
child, seeking peace, and men are become the symbols of mankind. The
tragic paradox of human life which slumbers in the soul in years of
peace is awakened again. When we would be solitary and cannot, we are
made sensible of the depth and validity of the impulse which moved the
solitaries of the past.
The paradox is apparent now on every hand. It appears in the death of
the author of _La Formation Religieuse de J.J. Rousseau_.[1] One of the
most distinguished of the younger generation of French scholar-critics,
M. Masson met a soldier's death before the book to which he had devoted
ten years of his life was published. He had prepared it for the press in
the leisure hours of the trenches. There he had communed with the
unquiet spirit of the man who once thrilled the heart of Europe by
stammering forgotten secrets, and whispered to an age flushed and
confident with material triumphs that the battle had been won in vain.
Rousseau, rightly understood is no consoling companion for a soldier.
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