ABSTRACT
So, at the early age of sixteen, rather than face a thrashing more severe than those he had already received and face further trouble in a home which had become utterly repugnant to him, because of the manner in which his life was regulated in it, Jean-Jacques Rousseau set out, alone, without rights and almost without consideration, to find his way in the world. His feelings on the morning after the fateful decision had been taken are best described in his own words:
The independence which I believed I had gained was the only feeling which moved me. Free, and my own master, I believed I could do everything, attain to everything; I had only to launch myself forth, to mount and fly through the air. I entered the vast world with a feeling of security; it was to be filled with the fame of my achievements; at every step I was to find festivities, treasures, adventures, friends ready to serve me, mistresses eager to please me; I had only to show myself to engage the attention of the whole world - and yet not the whole world; to a certain extent I could dispense with it, and did not want so much. Charming society was enough for me, without troubling myself about the rest. In my modesty I limited myself to a narrow, but delightfully select circle, in which my sovereignty was assured. A single castle was the limit of my ambition. As the favourite of the lord and the lady, as the lover of the daughter, as the friend of the son and protector of the neighbours, I was content - 1 wanted no more.
