The criticism of both standpoints in regard to the _value of civilisation._ To Voltaire nothing seems finer than the _social invention_: there is no higher goal than to uphold and perfect it. _L'honnêteté_ consists precisely in respecting social usage; virtue in a certain obedience towards various necessary "prejudices" which favour the maintenance of society. _Missionary of Culture,_ aristocrat, representative of the triumphant and ruling classes and their values. But Rousseau remained a _plebeian,_ even as _hommes de lettres,_ this was _preposterous_; his shameless contempt for everything that was not himself. The _morbid feature_ in Rousseau is the one which happens to have been most admired and _imitated._ (Lord Byron resembled him somewhat, he too screwed himself up to sublime attitudes and to revengeful rage--a sign of vulgarity; later on, when Venice restored his equilibrium, he understood what _alleviates most_ and does the _most good ... l'insouciance_.) In spite of his antecedents, Rousseau is proud of himself; but he is incensed if he is reminded of his origin.... In Rousseau there was undoubtedly some brain trouble; in Voltaire--rare health and lightsomeness. _The revengefulness of the sick_; his periods of insanity as also those of his contempt of man, and of his mistrust. Rousseau's defence of _Providence_ (against Voltaire's Pessimism): he _had need of_ God in order to be able to curse society and civilisation; everything must be good _per se,_ because God had created it; man _alone has corrupted man._ The "good man" as a man of Nature was pure fantasy; but with the dogma of God's authorship he became something probable and even not devoid of foundation. _Romanticism_ à la _Rousseau_: passion ("the sovereign right of passion"); "naturalness"; the fascination of madness (foolishness reckoned as greatness); the senseless vanity of the weak; the revengefulness of the masses elevated to the position of _justice_ ("in politics, for one hundred years, the leader has always been this invalid"). 101. _Kant_: makes the scepticism of Englishmen, in regard to the theory of knowledge, _possible_ for Germans. (1) By enlisting in its cause the interest of the German's religious and moral needs: just as the new academicians used scepticism for the same reasons, as a preparation for Platonism (_vide_ Augustine); just as Pascal even used _moral_ scepticism in order to provoke (to justify) the need of belief; (2) By complicating and entangling it with scholastic flourishes in view of making it more acceptable to the German's scientific taste in form (for Locke and Hume, alone, were too illuminating, too clear--that is to say, judged according to the German valuing instinct, "too superficial").