Nature, hailed by Rousseau and Wordsworth as a benevolent mother, is a dangerous guest. The ancient cult-followers of Dionysus knew that subordination to nature is a crucifixion and dismemberment. Human identity is obliterated in the Dionysian conversion of matter to energy, a theme of Euripides' Bacchae. Romanticism, like the Rousseauist Swinging Sixties, misunderstands the Dionysian as the pleasure principle, when in fact it is the gross continuum of pleasure-pain. Worshipping nature and seeking political and sexual freedom, Romanticism ends in imaginative entrammelment of every kind.
Perfect freedom is intolerable and therefore impossible.
Consequently, Sade arose, with all his horrors, to check Rousseau's happy hopes. Rousseau and Sade together equal the totality of Spenser. Spenser and Sade see the daemonism in sex and nature. No education in the western tradition is complete without Sade. He must be confronted, in all his ugliness.