Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Reveries of the Solitary Walker. First Walk

HERE I am, then, alone on the earth, having neither brother, neighbour, friend, or society but myfelf. The most sociable and the most: friendly of mankind is proscribed from the rest by universal consent. They have fought in the refinements of their malice to find out that torment which could most afflict my tender heart ; they have violently broken every tie which held me to them : I had loved mankind in spite of themselves. They had no other means than ceasing to be such of avoiding my affection. They are therefore unknown foreigners; nothing, in fact, to me, since they will have it so. But I, withdrawn from them and from every thing, what am I then? This remains to be fought into. Unfortunately, this research must be preceded by a view of my situation. This is an idea thro' which I muft necessarily pass, to arrive from them to me.

For fifteen years and more that I am in this strange situation, it still seems to me a dream. I continually imagine an indigestion troubles me, that I sleep badly, and that I am going to awake quite eased of all my pain, and am once more with my friends. Yes, without doubt, I must, without perceiving it, have skipped from labour to rest, or rather from life to death. Torn, I don't know how, from the order of things, I find myfelf precipitated into an incomprehensible chaos, where I can't distinguish the least thing; and the more I reflect on my present situation, the less I comprehend where I am.

Ah I how could I foresee the fate which awaited me ? How can I yet conceive it, at this moment that I am devoted to it? Could I, in my right senses, suppose a time when I, the same man I was, the same I still am, sbould be called, sbould be held, without the least doubt, a monster, a corrupter of mankind, an assassin; that I should become the aversion of the human race, the sport of the rabble ; that all the salutation I should receive from those who passed me would be spitting at me; that a whole generation would divert themselves, by common accord, in burying me alive ? When this strange revolution took place, taken unprepared, I was at first lost as in a maze. My agitation, my indignation, plunged me into a delirium which ten years were not too much to calm; and in this interval, falling from error to error, from fault to fault, from folly to folly, my imprudence supplied the directors of my destiny with all the instruments they have ingeniously set to work to fix it without a hope.

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