Insensibly, under the stress of a boy's passions, of a violent sensuality and a stupendous pride of self,[9] this faith in perfection went astray, losing its disinterested quality, becoming material and practical. If he still wished to perfect his will, his body, and his mind, it was in order to conquer the world and to enforce its love.[10] He wished to please. To please: it was not an easy ambition. He was then of a simian ugliness: the face was long, heavy, brutish; the hair was cropped close, growing low upon the forehead; the eyes were small, with a hard, forbidding glance, deeply sunken in shadowy orbits; the nose was large, the lips were thick and protruding, and the ears were enormous.[11] Unable to alter this ugliness, which even as a child had subjected him to fits of despair,[12] he pretended to a realisation of the ideal man of the world, _l'homme comme il faut._[13] This ideal led him to do as did other "men of the world": to gamble, run foolishly into debt, and to live a completely dissipated existence.[14] One quality always came to his salvation: his absolute sincerity. "Do you know why I like you better than the others?" says Nekhludov to his friend. "You have a precious and surprising quality: candour." "Yes, I am always saying things which I am ashamed to own even to myself."[15] In his wildest moments he judges himself with a pitiless insight. "I am living an utterly bestial life," he writes in his _Journal_. "I am as low as one can fall." Then, with his mania for analysis, he notes minutely the causes of his errors: "1. Indecision or lack of energy. 2. Self-deception. 3. Insolence. 4. False modesty. 5. Ill-temper. 6. Licentiousness. 7. Spirit of imitation. 8. Versatility. 9. Lack of reflection." While still a student he was applying this independence of judgment to the criticism of social conventions and intellectual superstitions. He scoffed at the official science of the University; denied the least importance to historical studies, and was put under arrest for his audacity of thought. At this period he discovered Rousseau, reading his _Confessions_ and _Émile_. The discovery affected him like a mental thunderbolt. "I made him an object of religious worship. I wore a medallion portrait of him hung round my neck, as though it were a holy image."[16] His first essays in philosophy took the form of commentaries on Rousseau (1846-47).