The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Book I.

Excerpt

Among the notable books of later times-we may say, without exaggeration, of all time—­must be reckoned The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau.  It deals with leading personages and transactions of a momentous epoch, when absolutism and feudalism were rallying for their last struggle against the modern spirit, chiefly represented by Voltaire, the Encyclopedists, and Rousseau himself—­a struggle to which, after many fierce intestine quarrels and sanguinary wars throughout Europe and America, has succeeded the prevalence of those more tolerant and rational principles by which the statesmen of our own day are actuated.