His character (as we have already remarked) is revealed in his _Confessions_--which was written, in part, during his brief exile in England. It, as well as his other productions, shews him to us as a man of extraordinary sensibility, which, in regard to himself, occasionally degenerated into a sort of disease or, in popular language, _morbidness_ (a word, by the way, constantly abused by the many who seem to excuse their own insensibility to surrounding evils by stigmatising with that vague expression the acuter feeling of the few), which sometimes assumed the appearance of partial unsoundness of mind. This it was that caused him to suspect and quarrel with his best friends, and which, we may suppose, led him, in his minute dissection of himself, to exaggerate his real moral infirmities. In summing up his personal character we shall perhaps impartially judge him to have been, on the whole, amiable rather than admirable, of good impulses, and of a naturally humane disposition, cultivated by reading and reflection, but to have been wanting in firmness of mind and in that virtue so much esteemed in the school of Pythagoras--self control. His philosophy is distinguished rather by refinement than by vigour or depth of thought. It is in the education of the young that Rousseau exerts his eloquence to enforce the importance of a non-flesh diet:-- “One of the proofs that the taste of flesh is not natural to man is the indifference which children exhibit for that sort of meat, and the preference they all give to vegetable foods, such as milk-porridge, pastry, fruits, &c. It is of the last importance not to _denaturalise_ them of this primitive taste (_de ne pas dénaturer ce goût primitif_), and not to render them carnivorous, if not for health reasons, at least _for the sake of their character_. For, however the experience may be explained, it is certain that great eaters of flesh are, in general, more cruel and ferocious than other men. This observation is true of all places and of all times. English coarseness is well known.[175] The Gaures, on the contrary, are the gentlest of men. All savages are cruel, and it is not their morals that urge them to be so; this cruelty proceeds _from their food_. They go to war as to the chase, and treat men as they do bears. Even in England the butchers are not received as legal witnesses any more than surgeons.[176] Great criminals harden themselves to murder by drinking blood.[177] Homer represents the _Cyclopes_, who were flesh-eaters, as frightful men, and the Lotophagi [Lotus-eaters] as a people so amiable that as soon as one had any dealing with them one straightway forgot everything, even one’s country, to live with them.” Rousseau, in a free translation, here quotes a considerable part of Plutarch’s _Essay_. He insists, especially, that children should be early accustomed to the pure diet:--