_Against Rousseau.--Alas!_ man is no longer sufficiently evil; Rousseau's opponents, who say that "man is a beast of prey," are unfortunately wrong. Not the corruption of man, but the softening and moralising of him is the curse. In the sphere which Rousseau attacked most violently, the _relatively_ strongest and most successful type of man was still to be found (the type which still possessed the great passions intact: Will to Power, Will to Pleasure, the Will and Ability to Command). The man of the eighteenth century must be compared with the man of the Renaissance (also with the man of the seventeenth century in France) if the matter is to be understood at all: Rousseau is a symptom of self-contempt and of inflamed vanity--both signs that the dominating will is lacking: he moralises and seeks the _cause_ of his own misery after the style of a revengeful man in the _ruling_ classes. 99. _Voltaire--Rousseau._--A state of nature is terrible; man is a beast of prey: our civilisation is an extraordinary _triumph_ over this beast of prey in nature--this was _Voltaires_ conclusion. He was conscious of the mildness, the refinements, the intellectual joys of the civilised state; he despised obtuseness, even in the form of virtue, and the lack of delicacy even in ascetics and monks. The _moral depravity_ of man seemed to pre-occupy _Rousseau_; the words "unjust," "cruel," are the best possible for the purpose of exciting the instincts of the oppressed, who otherwise find themselves under the ban of the _vetitum_ and of disgrace; _so that their conscience is opposed to their indulging any insurrectional desires._ These emancipators seek one thing above all: to give their party the great accents and attitudes of _higher Nature_. 100. _Rousseau_; the rule founded on sentiment; Nature as the source of justice; man perfects himself in proportion as he approaches _Nature_ (according to Voltaire, in proportion _as he leaves Nature behind_). The very same periods seem to the one to demonstrate the progress of _humanity_ and, to the other, the increase of injustice and inequality. Voltaire, who still understood _umanità_ in the sense of the Renaissance, as also _virtù_ (as "higher culture"), fights for the cause of the "_honnêtes gens_" "_la bonne compagnie_" taste, science, arts, and even for the cause of progress and civilisation. _The flare-up occurred towards 1760_: On the one hand the citizen of Geneva, on the other _le seigneur de Ferney._ It is only from that moment and henceforward that Voltaire was the man of his age, the philosopher, the representative of Toleration and of Disbelief (theretofore he had been merely _un bel esprit_). His envy and hatred of Rousseau's success forced him upwards. "_Pour 'la canaille' un dieu rémunérateur et vengeur_"--Voltaire.