At present, however, it is enough, without going into the general question, to notice the particular fact that while the other great exponents of the eighteenth century movement, Hume, Voltaire, Diderot, were nourishing their natural strength of understanding by the study and practice of literature, Rousseau, the leader of the reaction against that movement, was wandering a beggar and an outcast, craving the rude fare of the peasant's hut, knocking at roadside inns, and passing nights in caves and holes in the fields, or in the great desolate streets of towns.
If such a life had been disagreeable to him, it would have lost all the significance that it now has for us.

But where others would have found affliction, he had consolation, and where they would have lain desperate and squalid, he marched elate and ready to strike the stars.

"Never," he says, "did I think so much, exist so much, be myself so much, as in the journeys that I have made alone and on foot.

Walking has something about it which animates and enlivens my ideas.

I can hardly think while I am still; my body must be in motion, to move my mind.