He had, in fact, formed a very simple and sensible notion of evil. He ascribed it altogether to man’s functions and natural feelings, without mixing up with it all the prejudices that take on an artificial consistency in the codes. I have said that he formed no system, being little inclined to resolve his difficulties by sophistry. It is evident that, at the outset, a difficulty stopped him short in his meditations on the means of establishing happiness or even peace on earth. He was convinced that man is by nature a vicious animal, and that communities are not abominable simply because he uses all his wits to shape them. Consequently he looked for no benefit from a return to nature. I doubt if he would have changed his opinion if he had lived to read _Emile_. When he died, Jean-Jacques had not yet stirred the world by eloquence of the sincerest feeling joined to logic or the falsest. He was still but a little vagabond, and unhappily for him, found other Abbés than Monsieur Jérôme Coignard on the benches of Lyons’ deserted walks. We may regret that Monsieur Coignard, who knew all sorts of people, never met by chance Madame de Warens’ young friend. But it could only have been an amusing incident, a romantic scene. Jean-Jacques would not have found the wisdom of our disillusioned philosopher much to his taste. Nothing could be less like the philosophy of Rousseau than that of Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard. The latter is marked with a kindly irony. It is easy and indulgent. Founded on human infirmity it is solid at bottom. The other is lacking in its gay scepticism and fleeting smile. Taking its seat on an imaginary base, that of the original virtue of our kind, it finds itself in an awkward position, the comicality of which is not quite evident to itself. It is the doctrine for men who have never laughed. Its embarrassment is seen in its bad humour. It is ungracious. There would be nothing in that but it reinstals man among the monkeys, and then gets unreasonably angry when the monkey is not virtuous. In which it is absurd and cruel. This was well exemplified when statesmen wished to apply the teachings of the _Contrat Social_ to the best of Republics.