I am an anarchist in politics and an impressionist in art as well as a symbolist in literature. Not that I understand what these terms mean but I take them to be all merely synonyms of pessimist.
It is in Rousseau's writing above all that history begins to turn from upper-class honour to middle-class humanitarianism. Pity sympathy and compassion lie at the centre of his moral vision. Values associated with the feminine begin to infiltrate social existence as a whole rather than being confined to the domestic sphere.