Rousseau could find this simple wisdom which was his delight in the most unexpected places. He describes his mistress Therese with whom he lived many happy years: "Her mind is what nature has made it; cultivation is without effect. I do not blush to avow that she has never known how to read, although she writes passably. When I went to live in the Rue Neuve des Petits Champs I had opposite my windows a clock face on which I tried during several months to teach her to tell time. She can scarcely do it even now. She has never known in their order the twelve months of the year, and she does not know a single figure in spite of all the pains I have taken to explain them to her.... But this person, so limited and, if you wish, so stupid, has excellent judgment on occasions of difficulty. Often in my troubles she has seen what I did not see myself; she has given me the best advice to follow. She has pulled me out of dangers into which I rushed blindly.... The heart of my Therese was the heart of an angel. (_Le coeur de ma Therese etait celui d'un ange._)" It would be amusing to trace our belief in the good sense of man, in the wisdom and justice of public opinion, back to a philosopher's delight in a female moron; but that would be too great a paradox for a serious discussion of today's crisis in popular government. The truth probably is that Rousseau reached _a priori_ the conclusions about the sound sense of the simple and natural man that captivated a society so simple and natural as our own was in the eighteenth century, and then stumbled upon such convincing evidence in the person of Therese that he had to keep it by him all the rest of his days. And where after all has there been found any better evidence for our belief in the soundness and justice of public opinion than was furnished by the unlettered and unteachable Therese, who had "le coeur d'un ange" and "devant les dames du plus haut rang, devant les grands et les princes, ses sentiments, son bon sens, ses reponses et sa conduite lui out tire l'estime universelle"? To accept the doctrine of the rightness of public opinion you must believe that there resides in every man, even in the most unpromising man, of the mental level of Therese, "si bornee et, si l'on veut, si stupide," the capacity to be, like her, "d'un conseil excellent dans les occasions difficiles." The doctrine of the rightness of public opinion, however, never required proof. It was a political necessity. The world at the time when modern democracies had their birth accepted government only because it rested upon divine right. The government of men by mere men has always been intolerable.