When I was young, having all the needs that come from passions and led by them into society, forced to look there and in pleasures for distraction to my cruel pains, people preached love of solitude and work to me and harassed me with pedantic sermons on the subject. Now that I am forty years old, having lost the passions that made society bearable, no longer seeing anything but misery and futility in it, having no more need of it to escape from pains that no longer exist, love for solitude and work has become very lively in me, and has replaced everything else. I've stopped going into society. Since then, however, people haven't stopped plaguing me to go back into it. I have been accused of being a misanthrope, etc. What conclusion can be drawn from the difference between what they say now and when I was young? The need that men have to blame everything.