It is for these reasons that the art of criticism in England and America is so childish and pedantic when compared with that of France. In France even the most reactionary of critics--persons like Léon Bloy, for instance--habitually use the boldest sexual psychology in elucidating the mysterious caprices of human genius; and one can only wish that the conventional inhibition that renders such freedom impossible with us could come to be seen in its true light, that is to say as itself one of the most curious examples of sexual morbidity ever produced by unnatural conditions. Rousseau is perhaps of all great original geniuses the one most impossible to deal with without some sort of recognition of the sexual peculiarities which penetrated his passionate and restless spirit. No writer who has ever lived had so sensitive, so nervous, so vibrant a physiological constitution. Nothing that he achieved in literature or in the creation of a new atmosphere of feeling in Europe, can be understood without at least a passing reference to the impulses which pushed him forward on his wayward road. As we watch him in his pleasures, his passions, his pilgrimages, his savage reactions, it is difficult to avoid the impression that certain kinds of genius are eminently and organically anti-social. It is perhaps for this reason at bottom that the political-minded Anglo-Saxon race, with its sturdy "good citizen" ideals, feels so hostile and suspicious toward these great anarchists of the soul. Rousseau is indeed, temperamentally considered, one of the most passionately anarchical minds in the history of the race. The citizen of Geneva, the lover of humanity, the advocate of liberty and equality, was so scandalous an individualist that there has come to breathe from the passage of his personality across the world an intoxicating savour of irresponsible independence. The most ingrained pursuer of his own path, the most intransigeant "enemy of the people," would be able to derive encouragement in his obstinate loneliness from reading the works of this philanthropist who detested humanity; this reformer who fled from society; this advocate of domesticity who deserted his children; this pietist who worshipped the god of nature. The man's intellect was so dominated by his sensualism that, even at the moment he is eloquently protesting in favour of a regenerated humanity living under enlightened laws, there emanates from the mere physical rhythm of his sentences an anti-social passion, a misanthropic self-worship, a panic terror of the crowd, which remains in the mind when all his social theories are forgotten. He is the grand example of a writer whose sub-conscious intimate self contradicts his overt dogmas and creates a spiritual atmosphere in which his own reforming schemes wither and vanish.