Book 4, Book 4 : Chapter 1, Manhood Summary and Analysis

The author begins this new stage of life with a kind of energetic lamentation. He observes how much strife and sorrow there is in the world. There is great sadness. Rousseau complains that the first 25 years of life come and go so swiftly, and that, by the time a man has matured to the point that he knows better how to use his time, that stage of life has passed and he can no longer be that way. This is the opening threshold to manhood on the very first page of this chapter.

The second birth, the birth of the man, is described by the author. There are strange changes to the facial hair. He cites bizarre alterations in the ability to speak; the adolescent is some kind of half-boy, half-man creature with a cracking...