The delineations of manners by Destouches, which had so often delighted me when a boy, were called weak; the name of this honest man had passed away: and how many authors could I not point out, for the sake of whom I had to endure the reproach, that I judged like a provincial, if I showed any sympathy for such men and their works, in opposition to any one who was carried along by the newest literary torrent!
Thus, to our other German comrades, we became more and more annoying. According to our view, according to the peculiarity of our own nature, we had to retain the impressions of objects, to consume them but slowly, and, if it was to be so, to let them go as late as possible. We were convinced, that by faithful observation, by continued occupation, something might be gained from all things, and that by persevering zeal we must at last arrive at a point where the ground of the judgment may be expressed at the same time with the judgment itself. Neither did we fail to perceive that the great and noble French world offered us many an advantage and much profit, for Rousseau had really touched our sympathies. But, if we considered his life and his fate, he was nevertheless compelled to find the great reward for all he did in this,—that he could live unacknowledged and forgotten at Paris.
Whenever we heard the encyclopedists mentioned, or opened a volume of their monstrous work, we felt as if we were going between the innumerable moving spools and looms in a great factory, where, what with the mere creaking and rattling; what with all the mechanism, embarrassing both eyes and senses; what with the mere incomprehensibility of an arrangement, the parts of which work into each other in the most manifold way; what with the contemplation of all that is necessary to prepare a piece of cloth,—we feel disgusted with the very coat which we wear upon our backs.
