His second childhood had begun.
On such a man the historical method can have no grip. There is, as the
French say, no _engrenage_. It points to a certain lack of the subtler
kind of understanding to attempt to apply the method; more truly,
perhaps, to an unessential interest, which has of late years been
imported into French criticism from Germany. The Sorbonne has not, we
know, gone unscathed by the disease of documentation for documentation's
sake. M. Masson's three volumes leave us with the sense that their
author had learnt a method and in his zeal to apply it had lost sight of
the momentous question whether Jean-Jacques was a person to whom it
might be applied with a prospect of discovery. No one who read Rousseau
with a mind free of ulterior motives could have any doubt on the matter.
Jean-Jacques is categorical on the point. The Savoyard Vicar was
speaking for Jean-Jacques to posterity when he began his profession of
faith with the words:--
'Je ne veux argumenter avec vous, ni meme de tenter vous convaincre;
il me suffit de vous exposer ce que je pense dans la simplicite de
mon coeur.
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