God became the highest known formula for sensuous expansion, the synthesis of all complacent emotions, and Rousseau filled up the measure of his delight by creating and invoking a Supreme Being to match with fine scenery and sunny gardens.

We shall have a better occasion to mark the attributes of this important conception when we come to _Emilius_, where it was launched in a panoply of resounding phrases upon a Europe which was grown too strong for Christian dogma, and was not yet grown strong enough to rest in a provisional ordering of the results of its own positive knowledge.

Walking on the terrace at Les Charmettes, you are at the very birth-place of that particular Etre Supreme to whom Robespierre offered the incense of an official festival.
Sometimes the reading of a Jansenist book would make him unhappy by the prominence into which it brought the displeasing idea of hell, and he used now and then to pass a miserable day in wondering whether this cruel destiny should be his.

Madame de Warens, whose softness of heart inspired her with a theology that ought to have satisfied a seraphic doctor, had abolished hell, but she could not dispense with purgatory because she did not know what to do with the souls of the wicked, being unable either to damn them, or to instal them among the good until they had been purified into goodness.

In truth it must be confessed, says Rousseau, that alike in this world and the other the wicked are extremely embarrassing.[82] His own search after knowledge of his fate is well known.