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diff --git a/old/14052.txt b/old/14052.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..546405d --- /dev/null +++ b/old/14052.txt @@ -0,0 +1,19815 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Rousseau, by John Morley + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Rousseau + Volumes I. and II. + +Author: John Morley + +Release Date: January 25, 2006 [EBook #14052] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROUSSEAU *** + + + + +Produced by Paul Murray, Charlie Kirschner (Vol. 1), Linda +Cantoni (Vol. 2), and the Online Distributed Proofreading +Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + +ROUSSEAU + +BY + +JOHN MORLEY + + +VOLUMES I. and II. + + + +London +MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED +NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY +1905 + +_All rights reserved_ + +_First printed in this form 1886_ +_Reprinted 1888, 1891, 1896, 1900, 1905_ + + + + + +VOL. I. + + + +NOTE TO THE FIRST EDITION. + + +This work differs from its companion volume in offering something more +like a continuous personal history than was necessary in the case of +such a man as Voltaire, the story of whose life may be found in more +than one English book of repute. Of Rousseau there is, I believe, no +full biographical account in our literature, and even France has nothing +more complete under this head than Musset-Pathay's _Histoire de la Vie +et des Ouvrages de J.J. Rousseau_ (1821). This, though a meritorious +piece of labour, is extremely crude and formless in composition and +arrangement, and the interpreting portions are devoid of interest. + +The edition of Rousseau's works to which the references have been made +is that by M. Auguis, in twenty-seven volumes, published in 1825 by +Dalibon. In 1865 M. Streckeisen-Moultou published from the originals, +which had been deposited in the library of Neuchatel by Du Peyrou, the +letters addressed to Rousseau by various correspondents. These two +interesting volumes, which are entitled _Rousseau, ses Amis et ses +Ennemis_, are mostly referred to under the name of their editor. + +_February_, 1873. + + * * * * * + +The second edition in 1878 was revised; some portions were considerably +shortened, and a few additional footnotes inserted. No further changes +have been made in the present edition. + +_January_, 1886. + + + + +CONTENTS OF VOL. I. + + +CHAPTER I. + +PRELIMINARY. + PAGE + +The Revolution 1 +Rousseau its most direct speculative precursor 2 +His distinction among revolutionists 4 +His personality 5 + + +CHAPTER II. + +YOUTH. + +Birth and descent 8 +Predispositions 10 +First lessons 11 +At M. Lambercier's 15 +Early disclosure of sensitive temperament 19 +Return to Geneva 20 +Two apprenticeships 26 +Flight from Geneva 30 +Savoyard proselytisers 31 +Rousseau sent to Anncey, and thence to Turin 34 +Conversion to Catholicism 35 +Takes service with Madame de Vercellis 39 +Then with the Count de Gouvon 42 +Returns to vagabondage 43 +And to Madame de Warens 45 + + +CHAPTER III. + +SAVOY. + +Influence of women upon Rousseau 46 +Account of Madame de Warens 48 +Rousseau takes up his abode with her 54 +His delight in life with her 54 +The seminarists 57 +To Lyons 58 +Wanderings to Freiburg, Neuchatel, and elsewhere 60 +Through the east of France 62 +Influence of these wanderings upon him 67 +Chamberi 69 +Household of Madame de Warens 70 +Les Charmettes 73 +Account of his feeling for nature 79 +His intellectual incapacity at this time 83 +Temperament 84 +Literary interests, and method 85 +Joyful days with his benefactress 90 +To Montpellier: end of an episode 92 +Dates 94 + + +CHAPTER IV. + +THERESA LE VASSEUR. + +Tutorship at Lyons 95 +Goes to Paris in search of fortune 97 +His appearance at this time 98 +Made secretary to the ambassador at Venice 100 +His journey thither and life there 103 +Return to Paris 106 +Theresa Le Vasseur 107 +Character of their union 110 +Rousseau's conduct towards her 113 +Their later estrangements 115 +Rousseau's scanty means 119 +Puts away his five children 120 +His apologies for the crime 122 +Their futility 126 +Attempts to recover the children 128 +Rousseau never married to Theresa 129 +Contrast between outer and inner life 130 + + +CHAPTER V. + +THE DISCOURSES. + +Local academies in France 132 +Circumstances of the composition of the first Discourse 133 +How far the paradox was original 135 +His visions for thirteen years 136 +Summary of the first Discourse 138-145 +Obligations to Montaigne 145 +And to the Greeks 145 +Semi-Socratic manner 147 +Objections to the Discourse 148 +Ways of stating its positive side 149 +Dangers of exaggerating this positive side 151 +Its excess 152 +Second Discourse 154 +Ideas of the time upon the state of nature 155 +Their influence upon Rousseau 156 +Morelly, as his predecessor 156 +Summary of the second Discourse 159-170 +Criticism of its method 171 +Objection from its want of evidence 172 +Other objections to its account of primitive nature 173 +Takes uniformity of process for granted 176 +In what the importance of the second Discourse consisted 177 +Its protest against the mockery of civilisation 179 +The equality of man, how true, and how false 180 +This doctrine in France, and in America 182 +Rousseau's Discourses, a reaction against the historic + method 183 +Mably, and socialism 184 + + +CHAPTER VI. + +PARIS. + +Influence of Geneva upon Rousseau 187 +Two sides of his temperament 191 +Uncongenial characteristics of Parisian society 191 +His associates 195 +Circumstances of a sudden moral reform 196 +Arising from his violent repugnance for the manners of + the time 202 +His assumption of a seeming cynicism 207 +Protests against atheism 209 +The Village Soothsayer at Fontainebleau 212 +Two anedotes of his moral singularity 214 +Revisits Geneva 216 +End of Madame de Warens 217 +Rousseau's re-conversion to Protestantism 220 +The religious opinions then current in Geneva 223 +Turretini and other rationalisers 226 +Effect upon Rousseau 227 +Thinks of taking up his abode in Geneva 227 +Madame d'Epinay offers him the Hermitage 229 +Retires thither against the protests of his friends 231 + + +CHAPTER VII. + +THE HERMITAGE. + +Distinction between the old and the new anchorite 234 +Rousseau's first days at the Hermitage 235 +Rural delirium 237 +Dislike of society 242 +Meditates work on Sensitive Morality 243 +Arranges the papers of the Abbe de Saint Pierre 244 +His remarks on them 246 +Violent mental crisis 247 +First conception of the New Heloisa 250 +A scene of high morals 254 +Madame d'Houdetot 255 +Erotic mania becomes intensified 256 +Interviews with Madame d'Houdetot 258 +Saint Lambert interposes 262 +Rousseau's letter to Saint Lambert 264 +Its profound falsity 265 +Saint Lambert's reply 267 +Final relations with him and with Madame d'Houdetot 268 +Sources of Rousseau's irritability 270 +Relations with Diderot 273 +With Madame d'Epinay 276 +With Grimm 279 +Grimm's natural want of sympathy with Rousseau 282 +Madame d'Epinay's journey to Geneva 284 +Occasion of Rousseau's breach with Grimm 285 +And with Madame d'Epinay 288 +Leaves the Hermitage 289 + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +MUSIC. + +General character of Rousseau's aim in music 291 +As composer 292 +Contest on the comparative merits of French and Italian + music 293 +Rousseau's Letter on French Music 293 +His scheme of musical notation 296 +Its chief element 298 +Its practical value 299 +His mistake 300 +Two minor objections 300 + + +CHAPTER IX. + +VOLTAIRE AND D'ALEMBERT. + +Position of Voltaire 302 +General differences between him and Rousseau 303 +Rousseau not the profounder of the two 305 +But he had a spiritual element 305 +Their early relations 308 +Voltaire's poem on the Earthquake of Lisbon 309 +Rousseau's wonder that he should have written it 310 +His letter to Voltaire upon it 311 +Points to the advantages of the savage state 312 +Reproduces Pope's general position 313 +Not an answer to the position taken by Voltaire 314 +Confesses the question insoluble, but still argues 316 +Curious close of the letter 318 +Their subsequent relations 319 +D'Alembert's article on Geneva 321 +The church and the theatre 322 +Jeremy Collier: Bossuet 323 +Rousseau's contention on stage plays 324 +Rude handling of commonplace 325 +The true answer to Rousseau as to theory of dramatic + morality 326 +His arguments relatively to Geneva 327 +Their meaning 328 +Criticism on the Misanthrope 328 +Rousseau's contrast between Paris and an imaginary Geneva 329 +Attack on love as a poetic theme 332 +This letter, the mark of his schism from the party of the + philosophers 336 + + + + +JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU + +Born 1712 +Fled from Geneva _March_, 1728 +Changes religion at Turin _April_, " +With Madame de Warens, including various + intervals, until _April_, 1740 +Goes to Paris with musical schemes 1741 +Secretary at Venice _Spring_, 1743 + +Paris, first as secretary to M. Francueil, then { 1744 + as composer, and copyist { to + { 1756 +The Hermitage _April 9_, 1756 +Montmorency _Dec. 15_, 1757 +Yverdun _June 14_, 1762 +Motiers-Travers _July 10_, 1762 +Isle of St. Peter _Sept._, 1765 +Strasburg _Nov._, " +Paris _December_, " +Arrives in England _Jan. 13_, 1766 +Leaves Dover _May 22_, 1767 +Fleury _June_, " +Trye _July_, " +Dauphiny _Aug._, 1768 +Paris _June_, 1770 +Death _July 2_, 1778 + +PRINCIPAL WRITINGS. + +Discourse on the Influence of Learning and + Art PUBLISHED 1750 +Discourse on Inequality " 1754 +Letter to D'Alembert " 1758 +New Heloisa (began 1757, finished in winter + of 1759-60) " 1761 +Social Contract " 1762 +Emilius " 1762 +Letters from the Mountain " 1764 +Confessions (written 1766-70) { Pt. I 1781 + { Pt. II 1788 +Reveries (written 1777-78). + + _Comme dans les etangs assoupis sous les bois, + Dans plus d'une ame on voit deux choses a la fois: + Le ciel, qui teint les eaux a peine remuees + Avec tous ses rayons et toutes ses nuees; + Et la vase, fond morne, affreux, sombre et dormant, + Ou des reptiles noirs fourmillent vaguement._ + HUGO. + + + + +ROUSSEAU. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +PRELIMINARY. + + +Christianity is the name for a great variety of changes which took place +during the first centuries of our era, in men's ways of thinking and +feeling about their spiritual relations to unseen powers, about their +moral relations to one another, about the basis and type of social +union. So the Revolution is now the accepted name for a set of changes +which began faintly to take a definite practical shape first in America, +and then in France, towards the end of the eighteenth century; they had +been directly prepared by a small number of energetic thinkers, whose +speculations represented, as always, the prolongation of some old lines +of thought in obedience to the impulse of new social and intellectual +conditions. While one movement supplied the energy and the principles +which extricated civilisation from the ruins of the Roman empire, the +other supplies the energy and the principles which already once, between +the Seven Years' War and the assembly of the States General, saved +human progress in face of the political fatuity of England and the +political nullity of France; and they are now, amid the distraction of +the various representatives of an obsolete ordering, the only forces to +be trusted at once for multiplying the achievements of human +intelligence stimulated by human sympathy, and for diffusing their +beneficent results with an ampler hand and more far-scattering arm. +Faith in a divine power, devout obedience to its supposed will, hope of +ecstatic, unspeakable reward, these were the springs of the old +movement. Undivided love of our fellows, steadfast faith in human +nature, steadfast search after justice, firm aspiration towards +improvement, and generous contentment in the hope that others may reap +whatever reward may be, these are the springs of the new. + +There is no given set of practical maxims agreed to by all members of +the revolutionary schools for achieving the work of release from the +pressure of an antiquated social condition, any more than there is one +set of doctrines and one kind of discipline accepted by all Protestants. +Voltaire was a revolutionist in one sense, Diderot in another, and +Rousseau in a third, just as in the practical order, Lafayette, Danton, +Robespierre, represented three different aspirations and as many +methods. Rousseau was the most directly revolutionary of all the +speculative precursors, and he was the first to apply his mind boldly to +those of the social conditions which the revolution is concerned by one +solution or another to modify. How far his direct influence was +disastrous in consequence of a mischievous method, we shall have to +examine. It was so various that no single answer can comprehend an +exhaustive judgment. His writings produced that glow of enthusiastic +feeling in France, which led to the all-important assistance rendered by +that country to the American colonists in a struggle so momentous for +mankind. It was from his writings that the Americans took the ideas and +the phrases of their great charter, thus uniting the native principles +of their own direct Protestantism with principles that were strictly +derivative from the Protestantism of Geneva. Again, it was his work more +than that of any other one man, that France arose from the deadly decay +which had laid hold of her whole social and political system, and found +that irresistible energy which warded off dissolution within and +partition from without. We shall see, further, that besides being the +first immediately revolutionary thinker in politics, he was the most +stirring of reactionists in religion. His influence formed not only +Robespierre and Paine, but Chateaubriand, not only Jacobinism, but the +Catholicism of the Restoration. Thus he did more than any one else at +once to give direction to the first episodes of revolution, and force to +the first episode of reaction. + +There are some teachers whose distinction is neither correct thought, +nor an eye for the exigencies of practical organisation, but simply +depth and fervour of the moral sentiment, bringing with it the +indefinable gift of touching many hearts with love of virtue and the +things of the spirit. The Christian organisations which saved western +society from dissolution owe all to St. Paul, Hildebrand, Luther, +Calvin; but the spiritual life of the west during all these generations +has burnt with the pure flame first lighted by the sublime mystic of the +Galilean hills. Aristotle acquired for men much knowledge and many +instruments for gaining more; but it is Plato, his master, who moves the +soul with love of truth and enthusiasm for excellence. There is peril in +all such leaders of souls, inasmuch as they incline men to substitute +warmth for light, and to be content with aspiration where they need +direction. Yet no movement goes far which does not count one of them in +the number of its chiefs. Rousseau took this place among those who +prepared the first act of that revolutionary drama, whose fifth act is +still dark to us. + +At the heart of the Revolution, like a torrid stream flowing +undiscernible amid the waters of a tumbling sea, is a new way of +understanding life. The social changes desired by the various assailants +of the old order are only the expression of a deeper change in moral +idea, and the drift of the new moral idea is to make life simpler. This +in a sense is at the bottom of all great religious and moral movements, +and the Revolution emphatically belongs to the latter class. Like such +movements in the breast of the individual, those which stir an epoch +have their principle in the same craving for disentanglement of life. +This impulse to shake off intricacies is the mark of revolutionary +generations, and it was the starting-point of all Rousseau's mental +habits, and of the work in which they expressed themselves. His mind +moved outwards from this centre, and hence the fact that he dealt +principally with government and education, the two great agencies which, +in an old civilisation with a thousand roots and feelers, surround +external life and internal character with complexity. Simplification of +religion by clearing away the overgrowth of errors, simplification of +social relations by equality, of literature and art by constant return +to nature, of manners by industrious homeliness and thrift,--this is the +revolutionary process and ideal, and this is the secret of Rousseau's +hold over a generation that was lost amid the broken maze of +fallen systems. + + * * * * * + +The personality of Rousseau has most equivocal and repulsive sides. It +has deservedly fared ill in the esteem of the saner and more rational of +those who have judged him, and there is none in the history of famous +men and our spiritual fathers that begat us, who make more constant +demands on the patience or pity of those who study his life. Yet in no +other instance is the common eagerness to condense all predication about +a character into a single unqualified proposition so fatally inadequate. +If it is indispensable that we should be for ever describing, naming, +classifying, at least it is well, in speaking of such a nature as his, +to enlarge the vocabulary beyond the pedantic formulas of unreal ethics, +and to be as sure as we know how to make ourselves, that each of the +sympathies and faculties which together compose our power of spiritual +observation, is in a condition of free and patient energy. Any less open +and liberal method, which limits our sentiments to absolute approval or +disapproval, and fixes the standard either at the balance of common +qualities which constitutes mediocrity, or at the balance of uncommon +qualities which is divinity as in a Shakespeare, must leave in a cloud +of blank incomprehensibleness those singular spirits who come from time +to time to quicken the germs of strange thought and shake the quietness +of the earth. + +We may forget much in our story that is grievous or hateful, in +reflecting that if any man now deems a day basely passed in which he has +given no thought to the hard life of garret and hovel, to the forlorn +children and trampled women of wide squalid wildernesses in cities, it +was Rousseau who first in our modern time sounded a new trumpet note for +one more of the great battles of humanity. He makes the poor very proud, +it was truly said. Some of his contemporaries followed the same vein of +thought, as we shall see, and he was only continuing work which others +had prepared. But he alone had the gift of the golden mouth. It was in +Rousseau that polite Europe first hearkened to strange voices and faint +reverberation from out of the vague and cavernous shadow in which the +common people move. Science has to feel the way towards light and +solution, to prepare, to organise. But the race owes something to one +who helped to state the problem, writing up in letters of flame at the +brutal feast of kings and the rich that civilisation is as yet only a +mockery, and did furthermore inspire a generation of men and women with +the stern resolve that they would rather perish than live on in a world +where such things can be. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +YOUTH. + + +Jean Jacques Rousseau was born at Geneva, June 28, 1712. He was of old +French stock. His ancestors had removed from Paris to the famous city of +refuge as far back as 1529, a little while before Farel came thither to +establish the principles of the Reformation, and seven years before the +first visit of the more extraordinary man who made Geneva the mother +city of a new interpretation of Christianity, as Rome was the mother +city of the old. Three generations in a direct line separated Jean +Jacques from Didier Rousseau, the son of a Paris bookseller, and the +first emigrant.[1] Thus Protestant tradition in the Rousseau family +dates from the appearance of Protestantism in Europe, and seems to have +exerted the same kind of influence upon them as it did, in conjunction +with the rest of the surrounding circumstances, upon the other citizens +of the ideal state of the Reformation. It is computed by the historians +that out of three thousand families who composed the population of +Geneva towards the end of the seventeenth century, there were hardly +fifty who before the Reformation had acquired the position of +burgess-ship. The curious set of conditions which thus planted a colony +of foreigners in the midst of a free polity, with a new doctrine and +newer discipline, introduced into Europe a fresh type of character and +manners. People declared they could recognise in the men of Geneva +neither French vivacity, nor Italian subtlety and clearness, nor Swiss +gravity. They had a zeal for religion, a vigorous energy in government, +a passion for freedom, a devotion to ingenious industries, which marked +them with a stamp unlike that of any other community.[2] Towards the +close of the seventeenth century some of the old austerity and rudeness +was sensibly modified under the influence of the great neighbouring +monarchy. One striking illustration of this tendency was the rapid +decline of the Savoyard patois in popular use. The movement had not gone +far enough when Rousseau was born, to take away from the manners and +spirit of his country their special quality and individual note. + +The mother of Jean Jacques, who seems to have been a simple, cheerful, +and tender woman, was the daughter of a Genevan minister; her maiden +name, Bernard. The birth of her son was fatal to her, and the most +touching and pathetic of all the many shapes of death was the fit +beginning of a life preappointed to nearly unlifting cloud. "I cost my +mother her life," he wrote, "and my birth was the first of my woes."[3] +Destiny thus touches us with magical finger, long before consciousness +awakens to the forces that have been set to work in our personality, +launching us into the universe with country, forefathers, and physical +predispositions, all fixed without choice of ours. Rousseau was born +dying, and though he survived this first crisis by the affectionate care +of one of his father's sisters, yet his constitution remained infirm and +disordered. + +Inborn tendencies, as we perceive on every side, are far from having +unlimited irresistible mastery, if they meet early encounter from some +wise and patient external will. The father of Rousseau was unfortunately +cast in the same mould as his mother, and the child's own morbid +sensibility was stimulated and deepened by the excessive sensibility of +his first companion. Isaac Rousseau, in many of his traits, was a +reversion to an old French type. In all the Genevese there was an +underlying tendency of this kind. "Under a phlegmatic and cool air," +wrote Rousseau, when warning his countrymen against the inflammatory +effects of the drama, "the Genevese hide an ardent and sensitive +character, that is more easily moved than controlled."[4] And some of +the episodes in their history during the eighteenth century might be +taken for scenes from the turbulent dramas of Paris. But Isaac +Rousseau's restlessness, his eager emotion, his quick and punctilious +sense of personal dignity, his heedlessness of ordered affairs, were not +common in Geneva, fortunately for the stability of her society and the +prosperity of her citizens. This disorder of spirit descended in +modified form to the son; it was inevitable that he should be indirectly +affected by it. Before he was seven years old he had learnt from his +father to indulge a passion for the reading of romances. The child and +the man passed whole nights in a fictitious world, reading to one +another in turn, absorbed by vivid interest in imaginary situations, +until the morning note of the birds recalled them to a sense of the +conditions of more actual life, and made the elder cry out in confusion +that he was the more childish of the two. + +The effect of this was to raise passion to a premature exaltation in the +young brain. "I had no idea of real things," he said, "though all the +sentiments were already familiar to me. Nothing had come to me by +conception, everything by sensation. These confused emotions, striking +me one after another, did not warp a reason that I did not yet possess, +but they gradually shaped in me a reason of another cast and temper, +and gave me bizarre and romantic ideas of human life, of which neither +reflection nor experience has ever been able wholly to cure me."[5] Thus +these first lessons, which have such tremendous influence over all that +follow, had the direct and fatal effect in Rousseau's case of deadening +that sense of the actual relations of things to one another in the +objective world, which is the master-key and prime law of sanity. + +In time the library of romances came to an end (1719), and Jean Jacques +and his father fell back on the more solid and moderated fiction of +history and biography. The romances had been the possession of the +mother; the more serious books were inherited from the old minister, her +father. Such books as Nani's History of Venice, and Le Sueur's History +of the Church and the Empire, made less impression on the young Rousseau +than the admirable Plutarch; and he used to read to his father during +the hours of work, and read over again to himself during all hours, +those stories of free and indomitable souls which are so proper to +kindle the glow of generous fire. Plutarch was dear to him to the end of +his life; he read him in the late days when he had almost ceased to +read, and he always declared Plutarch to be nearly the only author to +whom he had never gone without profit."[6] "I think I see my father now," +he wrote when he had begun to make his mark in Paris, "living by the +work of his hands, and nourishing his soul on the sublimest truths. I +see Tacitus, Plutarch, and Grotius, lying before him along with the +tools of his craft. I see at his side a cherished son receiving +instruction from the best of fathers, alas, with but too little +fruit."[7] This did little to implant the needed impressions of the +actual world. Rousseau's first training continued to be in an excessive +degree the exact reverse of our common method; this stirs the +imagination too little, and shuts the young too narrowly within the +strait pen of present and visible reality. The reader of Plutarch at the +age of ten actually conceived himself a Greek or a Roman, and became the +personage whose strokes of constancy and intrepidity transported him +with sympathetic ecstasy, made his eyes sparkle, and raised his voice to +heroic pitch. Listeners were even alarmed one day as he told the tale of +Scaevola at table, to see him imitatively thrust forth his arm over a +hot chafing-dish.[8] + +Rousseau had one brother, on whom the spirit of the father came down in +ample measure, just as the sensibility of the mother descended upon Jean +Jacques. He passed through a boyhood of revolt, and finally ran away +into Germany, where he was lost from sight and knowledge of his kinsmen +for ever. Jean Jacques was thus left virtually an only child,[9] and he +commemorates the homely tenderness and care with which his early years +were surrounded. Except in the hours which he passed in reading by the +side of his father, he was always with his aunt, in the self-satisfying +curiosity of childhood watching her at work with the needle and busy +about affairs of the house, or else listening to her with contented +interest, as she sang the simple airs of the common people. The +impression of this kind and cheerful figure was stamped on his memory to +the end; her tone of voice, her dress, the quaint fashion of her hair. +The constant recollection of her shows, among many other signs, how he +cherished that conception of the true unity of a man's life, which +places it in a closely-linked chain of active memories, and which most +of us lose in wasteful dispersion of sentiment and poor fragmentariness +of days. When the years came in which he might well say, I have no +pleasure in them, and after a manhood of distress and suspicion and +diseased sorrows had come to dim those blameless times, he could still +often surprise himself unconsciously humming the tune of one of his +aunt's old songs, with many tears in his eyes.[10] + +This affectionate schooling came suddenly to an end. Isaac Rousseau in +the course of a quarrel in which he had involved himself, believed that +he saw unfairness in the operation of the law, for the offender had +kinsfolk in the Great Council. He resolved to leave his country rather +than give way, in circumstances which compromised his personal honour +and the free justice of the republic. So his house was broken up, and +his son was sent to school at the neighbouring village of Bossey (1722), +under the care of a minister, "there to learn along with Latin all the +medley of sorry stuff with which, under the name of education, they +accompany Latin."[11] Rousseau tells us nothing of the course of his +intellectual instruction here, but he marks his two years' sojourn under +the roof of M. Lambercier by two forward steps in that fateful +acquaintance with good and evil, which is so much more important than +literary knowledge. Upon one of these fruits of the tree of nascent +experience, men usually keep strict silence. Rousseau is the only person +that ever lived who proclaimed to the whole world as a part of his own +biography the ignoble circumstances of the birth of sensuality in +boyhood. Nobody else ever asked us to listen while he told of the +playmate with which unwarned youth takes its heedless pleasure, which +waxes and strengthens with years, until the man suddenly awakens to find +the playmate grown into a master, grotesque and foul, whose unclean grip +is not to be shaken off, and who poisons the air with the goatish fume +of the satyr. It is on this side that the unspoken plays so decisive a +part, that most of the spoken seems but as dust in the balance; it is +here that the flesh spreads gross clouds over the firmament of the +spirit. Thinking of it, we flee from talk about the high matters of will +and conscience, of purity of heart and the diviner mind, and hurry to +the physician. Manhood commonly saves itself by its own innate +healthiness, though the decent apron bequeathed to us in the old legend +of the fall, the thick veil of a more than legendary reserve, prevents +us from really measuring the actual waste of delicacy and the finer +forces. Rousseau, most unhappily for himself, lacked this innate +healthiness; he never shook off the demon which would be so ridiculous, +if it did not hide such terrible power. With a moral courage, that it +needs hardly less moral courage in the critic firmly to refrain from +calling cynical or shameless, he has told the whole story of this +lifelong depravation. In the present state of knowledge, which in the +region of the human character the false shamefacedness of science, aided +and abetted by the mutilating hand of religious asceticism, has kept +crude and imperfect, there is nothing very profitable to be said on all +this. When the great art of life has been more systematically conceived +in the long processes of time and endeavour, and when more bold, +ffective, and far-reaching advance has been made in defining those +pathological manifestations which deserve to be seriously studied, as +distinguished from those of a minor sort which are barely worth +registering, then we should know better how to speak, or how to be +silent, in the present most unwelcome instance. As it is, we perhaps do +best in chronicling the fact and passing on. The harmless young are +allowed to play without monition or watching among the deep open graves +of temperament; and Rousseau, telling the tale of his inmost experience, +unlike the physician and the moralist who love decorous surfaces of +things, did not spare himself nor others a glimpse of the ignominies to +which the body condemns its high tenant, the soul.[12] + +The second piece of experience which he acquired at Bossey was the +knowledge of injustice and wrongful suffering as things actual and +existent. Circumstances brought him under suspicion of having broken the +teeth of a comb which did not belong to him. He was innocent, and not +even the most terrible punishment could wring from him an untrue +confession of guilt. The root of his constancy was not in an abhorrence +of falsehood, which is exceptional in youth, and for which he takes no +credit, but in a furious and invincible resentment against the violent +pressure that was unjustly put upon him. "Picture a character, timid and +docile in ordinary life, but ardent, impetuous, indomitable in its +passions; a child always governed by the voice of reason, always treated +with equity, gentleness, and consideration, who had not even the idea of +injustice, and who for the first time experiences an injustice so +terrible, from the very people whom he most cherishes and respects! What +a confusion of ideas, what disorder of sentiments, what revolution in +heart, in brain, in every part of his moral and intellectual being!" He +had not learnt, any more than other children, either to put himself in +the place of his elders, or to consider the strength of the apparent +case against him. All that he felt was the rigour of a frightful +chastisement for an offence of which he was innocent. And the +association of ideas was permanent. "This first sentiment of violence +and injustice has remained so deeply engraved in my soul, that all the +ideas relating to it bring my first emotion back to me; and this +sentiment, though only relative to myself in its origin, has taken such +consistency, and become so disengaged from all personal interest, that +my heart is inflamed at the sight or story of any wrongful action, just +as much as if its effect fell on my own person. When I read of the +cruelties of some ferocious tyrant, or the subtle atrocities of some +villain of a priest, I would fain start on the instant to poniard such +wretches, though I were to perish a hundred times for the deed.... This +movement may be natural to me, and I believe it is so; but the profound +recollection of the first injustice I suffered was too long and too fast +bound up with it, not to have strengthened it enormously."[13] + +To men who belong to the silent and phlegmatic races like our own, all +this may possibly strike on the ear like a false or strained note. Yet a +tranquil appeal to the real history of one's own strongest impressions +may disclose their roots in facts of childish experience, which +remoteness of time has gradually emptied of the burning colour they once +had. This childish discovery of the existence in his own world of that +injustice which he had only seen through a glass very darkly in the +imaginary world of his reading, was for Rousseau the angry dismissal +from the primitive Eden, which in one shape and at one time or another +overtakes all men. "Here," he says, "was the term of the serenity of my +childish days. From this moment I ceased to enjoy a pure happiness, and +I feel even at this day that the reminiscence of the delights of my +infancy here comes to an end.... Even the country lost in our eyes that +charm of sweetness and simplicity which goes to the heart; it seemed +sombre and deserted, and was as if covered by a veil, hiding its +beauties from our sight. We no longer tended our little gardens, our +plants, our flowers. We went no more lightly to scratch the earth, +shouting for joy as we discovered the germ of the seed we had sown." + +Whatever may be the degree of literal truth in the Confessions, the +whole course of Rousseau's life forbids us to pass this passionate +description by as overcharged or exaggerated. We are conscious in it of +a constitutional infirmity. We perceive an absence of healthy power of +reaction against moral shock. Such shocks are experienced in many +unavoidable forms by all save the dullest natures, when they first come +into contact with the sharp tooth of outer circumstance. Indeed, a man +must be either miraculously happy in his experiences, or exceptionally +obtuse in observing and feeling, or else be the creature of base and +cynical ideals, if life does not to the end continue to bring many a +repetition of that first day of incredulous bewilderment. But the urgent +demands for material activity quickly recall the mass of men to normal +relations with their fellows and the outer world. A vehement objective +temperament, like Voltaire's, is instantly roused by one of these +penetrative stimuli into angry and tenacious resistance. A proud and +collected soul, like Goethe's, loftily follows its own inner aims, +without taking any heed of the perturbations that arise from want of +self-collection in a world still spelling its rudiments. A sensitive and +depressed spirit, like Rousseau's or Cowper's, finds itself without any +of these reacting kinds of force, and the first stroke of cruelty or +oppression is the going out of a divine light. + +Leaving Bossey, Rousseau returned to Geneva, and passed two or three +years with his uncle, losing his time for the most part, but learning +something of drawing and something of Euclid, for the former of which he +showed special inclination.[14] It was a question whether he was to be +made a watchmaker, a lawyer, or a minister. His own preference, as his +after-life might have led us to suppose, was in favour of the last of +the three; "for I thought it a fine thing," he says, "to preach." The +uncle was a man of pleasure, and as often happens in such +circumstances, his love of pleasure had the effect of turning his wife +into a pietist. Their son was Rousseau's constant comrade. "Our +friendship filled our hearts so amply, that if we were only together, +the simplest amusements were a delight." They made kites, cages, bows +and arrows, drums, houses; they spoiled the tools of their grandfather, +in trying to make watches like him. In the same cheerful imitative +spirit, which is the main feature in childhood when it is not disturbed +by excess of literary teaching, after Geneva had been visited by an +Italian showman with a troop of marionettes, they made puppets and +composed comedies for them; and when one day the uncle read aloud an +elegant sermon, they abandoned their comedies, and turned with blithe +energy to exhortation. They had glimpses of the rougher side of life in +the biting mockeries of some schoolboys of the neighbourhood. These +ended in appeal to the god of youthful war, who pronounced so plainly +for the bigger battalions, that the release of their enemies from school +was the signal for the quick retreat of our pair within doors. All this +is an old story in every biography written or unwritten. It seldom fails +to touch us, either in the way of sympathetic reminiscence, or if life +should have gone somewhat too hardly with a man, then in the way of +irony, which is not less real and poetic than the eironeia of a Greek +dramatist, for being concerned with more unheroic creatures. + +And this rough play of the streets always seemed to Rousseau a manlier +schooling than the effeminate tendencies which he thought he noticed in +Genevese youth in after years. "In my time," he says admiringly, +"children were brought up in rustic fashion and had no complexion to +keep.... Timid and modest before the old, they were bold, haughty, +combative among themselves; they had no curled locks to be careful of; +they defied one another at wrestling, running, boxing. They returned +home sweating, out of breath, torn; they were true blackguards, if you +will, but they made men who have zeal in their heart to serve their +country and blood to shed for her. May we be able to say as much one day +of our fine little gentlemen, and may these men at fifteen not turn out +children at thirty."[15] + +Two incidents of this period remain to us, described in Rousseau's own +words, and as they reveal a certain sweetness in which his life +unhappily did not afterwards greatly abound, it may help our equitable +balance of impressions about him to reproduce them. Every Sunday he used +to spend the day at Paquis at Mr. Fazy's, who had married one of his +aunts, and who carried on the production of printed calicoes. "One day I +was in the drying-room, watching the rollers of the hot press; their +brightness pleased my eye; I was tempted to lay my fingers on them, and +I was moving them up and down with much satisfaction along the smooth +cylinder, when young Fazy placed himself in the wheel and gave it a +half-quarter turn so adroitly, that I had just the ends of my two +longest fingers caught, but this was enough to crush the tips and tear +the nails. I raised a piercing cry; Fazy instantly turned back the +wheel, and the blood gushed from my fingers. In the extremity of +consternation he hastened to me, embraced me, and besought me to cease +my cries, or he would be undone. In the height of my own pain, I was +touched by his; I instantly fell silent, we ran to the pond, where he +helped me to wash my fingers and to staunch the blood with moss. He +entreated me with tears not to accuse him; I promised him that I would +not, and I kept my word so well that twenty years after no one knew the +origin of the scar. I was kept in bed for more than three weeks, and for +more than two months was unable to use my hand. But I persisted that a +large stone had fallen and crushed my fingers."[16] + +The other story is of the same tenour, though there is a new touch of +sensibility in its concluding words. "I was playing at ball at Plain +Palais, with one of my comrades named Plince. We began to quarrel over +the game; we fought, and in the fight he dealt me on my bare head a +stroke so well directed, that with a stronger arm it would have dashed +my brains out. I fell to the ground, and there never was agitation like +that of this poor lad, as he saw the blood in my hair. He thought he had +killed me. He threw himself upon me, and clasped me eagerly in his arms, +while his tears poured down his cheeks, and he uttered shrill cries. I +returned his embrace with all my force, weeping like him, in a state of +confused emotion which was not without a kind of sweetness. Then he +tried to stop the blood which kept flowing, and seeing that our two +handkerchiefs were not enough, he dragged me off to his mother's; she +had a small garden hard by. The good woman nearly fell sick at sight of +me in this condition; she kept strength enough to dress my wound, and +after bathing it well, she applied flower-de-luce macerated in brandy, +an excellent remedy much used in our country. Her tears and those of her +son, went to my very heart, so that I looked upon them for a long while +as my mother and my brother."[17] + +If it were enough that our early instincts should be thus amiable and +easy, then doubtless the dismal sloughs in which men and women lie +floundering would occupy a very much more insignificant space in the +field of human experience. The problem, as we know, lies in the +discipline of this primitive goodness. For character in a state of +society is not a tree that grows into uprightness by the law of its own +strength, though an adorable instance here and there of rectitude and +moral loveliness that seem intuitive may sometimes tempt us into a +moment's belief in a contrary doctrine. In Rousseau's case this serious +problem was never solved; there was no deliberate preparation of his +impulses, prepossessions, notions; no foresight on the part of elders, +and no gradual acclimatisation of a sensitive and ardent nature in the +fixed principles which are essential to right conduct in the frigid zone +of our relations with other people. It was one of the most elementary of +Rousseau's many perverse and mischievous contentions, that it is their +education by the older which ruins or wastes the abundant capacity for +virtue that subsists naturally in the young. His mind seems never to +have sought much more deeply for proof of this, than the fact that he +himself was innocent and happy so long as he was allowed to follow +without disturbance the easy simple proclivities of his own temperament. +Circumstances were not indulgent enough to leave the experiment to +complete itself within these very rudimentary conditions. + +Rousseau had been surrounded, as he is always careful to protest, with a +religious atmosphere. His father, though a man of pleasure, was +possessed also not only of probity but of religion as well. His three +aunts were all in their degrees gracious and devout. M. Lambercier at +Bossey, "although Churchman and preacher," was still a sincere believer +and nearly as good in act as in word. His inculcation of religion was so +hearty, so discreet, so reasonable, that his pupils, far from being +wearied by the sermon, never came away without being touched inwardly +and stirred to make virtuous resolutions. With his Aunt Bernard devotion +was rather more tiresome, because she made a business of it.[18] It +would be a distinct error to suppose that all this counted for nothing, +for let us remember that we are now engaged with the youth of the one +great religious writer of France in the eighteenth century. When after +many years Rousseau's character hardened, the influences which had +surrounded his boyhood came out in their full force and the historian of +opinion soon notices in his spirit and work a something which had no +counterpart in the spirit and work of men who had been trained in Jesuit +colleges. At the first outset, however, every trace of religious +sentiment was obliterated from sight, and he was left unprotected +against the shocks of the world and the flesh. + +At the age of eleven Jean Jacques was sent into a notary's office, but +that respectable calling struck him in the same repulsive and +insufferable way in which it has struck many other boys of genius in all +countries. Contrary to the usual rule, he did not rebel, but was +ignominiously dismissed by his master[19] for dulness and inaptitude; +his fellow-clerks pronounced him stupid and incompetent past hope. He +was next apprenticed to an engraver,[20] a rough and violent man, who +seems to have instantly plunged the boy into a demoralised stupefaction. +The reality of contact with this coarse nature benumbed as by touch of +torpedo the whole being of a youth who had hitherto lived on pure +sensations and among those ideas which are nearest to sensations. There +were no longer heroic Romans in Rousseau's universe. "The vilest +tastes, the meanest bits of rascality, succeeded to my simple +amusements, without even leaving the least idea behind. I must, in spite +of the worthiest education, have had a strong tendency to degenerate." +The truth was that he had never had any education in its veritable +sense, as the process, on its negative side, of counteracting the +inborn. There are two kinds, or perhaps we should more correctly say two +degrees, of the constitution in which the reflective part is weak. There +are the men who live on sensation, but who do so lustily, with a certain +fulness of blood and active energy of muscle. There are others who do so +passively, not searching for excitement, but acquiescing. The former by +their sheer force and plenitude of vitality may, even in a world where +reflection is a first condition, still go far. The latter succumb, and +as reflection does nothing for them, and as their sensations in such a +world bring them few blandishments, they are tolerably early surrounded +with a self-diffusing atmosphere of misery. Rousseau had none of this +energy which makes oppression bracing. For a time he sank. + +It would be a mistake to let the story of the Confessions carry us into +exaggerations. The brutality of his master and the harshness of his life +led him to nothing very criminal, but only to wrong acts which are +despicable by their meanness, rather than in any sense atrocious. He +told lies as readily as the truth. He pilfered things to eat. He +cunningly found a means of opening his master's private cabinet, and of +using his master's best instruments by stealth. He wasted his time in +idle and capricious tasks. When the man, with all the ravity of an adult +moralist, describes these misdeeds of the boy, they assume a certain +ugliness of mien, and excites a strong disgust which, when the misdeeds +themselves are before us in actual life, we experience in a far more +considerate form. The effect of calm, retrospective avowal is to create +a kind of feeling which is essentially unlike our feeling at what is +actually avowed. Still it is clear that his unlucky career as apprentice +brought out in Rousseau slyness, greediness, slovenliness, +untruthfulness, and the whole ragged regiment of the squalider vices. +The evil of his temperament now and always was of the dull smouldering +kind, seldom breaking out into active flame. There is a certain +sordidness in the scene. You may complain that the details which +Rousseau gives of his youthful days are insipid. Yet such things are the +web and stuff of life, and these days of transition from childhood to +full manhood in every case mark a crisis. These insipidities test the +education of home and family, and they presage definitely what is to +come. The roots of character, good or bad, are shown for this short +space, and they remain unchanged, though most people learn from their +fellows the decent and useful art of covering them over with a little +dust, in the shape of accepted phrases and routine customs and a silence +which is not oblivion. + +After a time the character of Jean Jacques was absolutely broken down. +He says little of the blows with which his offences were punished by his +master, but he says enough to enable us to discern that they were +terrible to him. This cowardice, if we choose to give the name to an +overmastering physical horror, at length brought his apprentice days to +an end. He was now in his sixteenth year. He was dragged by his comrades +into sports for which he had little inclination, though he admits that +once engaged in them he displayed an impetuosity that carried him beyond +the others. Such pastimes naturally led them beyond the city walls, and +on two occasions Rousseau found the gates closed on his return. His +master when he presented himself in the morning gave him such greeting +as we may imagine, and held out things beyond imagining as penalty for a +second sin in this kind. The occasion came, as, alas, it nearly always +does. "Half a league from the town," says Rousseau, "I hear the retreat +sounded, and redouble my pace; I hear the drum beat, and run at the top +of my speed: I arrive out of breath, bathed in sweat; my heart beats +violently, I see from a distance the soldiers at their post, and call +out with choking voice. It was too late. Twenty paces from the outpost +sentinel, I saw the first bridge rising. I shuddered, as I watched those +terrible horns, sinister and fatal augury of the inevitable lot which +that moment was opening for me."[21] + +In manhood when we have the resource of our own will to fall back upon, +we underestimate the unsurpassed horror and anguish of such moments as +this in youth, when we know only the will of others, and that this will +is inexorable against us. Rousseau dared not expose himself to the +fulfilment of his master's menace, and he ran away (1728). But for this, +wrote the unhappy man long years after, "I should have passed, in the +bosom of my religion, of my native land, of my family, and my friends, a +mild and peaceful life, such as my character required, in the uniformity +of work which suited my taste, and of a society after my heart. I should +have been a good Christian, good citizen, good father of a family, good +friend, good craftsman, good man in all. I should have been happy in my +condition, perhaps I might have honoured it; and after living a life +obscure and simple, but even and gentle, I should have died peacefully +in the midst of my own people. Soon forgotten, I should at any rate have +been regretted as long as any memory of me was left."[22] + +As a man knows nothing about the secrets of his own individual +organisation, this illusory mapping out of a supposed Possible need +seldom be suspected of the smallest insincerity. The poor madman who +declares that he is a king kept out of his rights only moves our pity, +and we perhaps owe pity no less to those in all the various stages of +aberration uncertificated by surgeons, down to the very edge of most +respectable sanity, who accuse the injustice of men of keeping them out +of this or that kingdom, of which in truth their own composition +finally disinherited them at the moment when they were conceived in a +mother's womb. The first of the famous Five Propositions of Jansen, +which were a stumbling-block to popes and to the philosophy of the +eighteenth-century foolishness, put this clear and permanent truth into +a mystic and perishable formula, to the effect that there are some +commandments of God which righteous and good men are absolutely unable +to obey, though ever so disposed to do them, and God does not give them +so much grace that they are able to observe them. + +If Rousseau's sensations in the evening were those of terror, the day +and its prospect of boundless adventures soon turned them into entire +delight. The whole world was before him, and all the old conceptions of +romance were instantly revived by the supposed nearness of their +realisation. He roamed for two or three days among the villages in the +neighbourhood of Geneva, finding such hospitality as he needed in the +cottages of friendly peasants. Before long his wanderings brought him to +the end of the territory of the little republic. Here he found himself +in the domain of Savoy, where dukes and lords had for ages been the +traditional foes of the freedom and the faith of Geneva, Rousseau came +to the village of Confignon, and the name of the priest of Confignon +recalled one of the most embittered incidents of the old feud. This feud +had come to take new forms; instead of midnight expeditions to scale the +city walls, the descendants of the Savoyard marauders of the sixteenth +century were now intent with equivocal good will on rescuing the souls +of the descendants of their old enemies from deadly heresy. At this time +a systematic struggle was going on between the priests of Savoy and the +ministers of Geneva, the former using every effort to procure the +conversion of any Protestant on whom they could lay hands.[23] As it +happened, the priest of Confignon was one of the most active in this +good work.[24] He made the young Rousseau welcome, spoke to him of the +heresies of Geneva and of the authority of the holy Church, and gave him +some dinner. He could hardly have had a more easy convert, for the +nature with which he had to deal was now swept and garnished, ready for +the entrance of all devils or gods. The dinner went for much. "I was too +good a guest," writes Rousseau in one of his few passages of humour, "to +be a good theologian, and his Frangi wine, which struck me as excellent, +was such a triumphant argument on his side, that I should have blushed +to oppose so capital a host."[25] So it was agreed that he should be put +in a way to be further instructed of these matters. We may accept +Rousseau's assurance that he was not exactly a hypocrite in this rapid +complaisance. He admits that any one who should have seen the artifices +to which he resorted, might have thought him very false. But, he +argues, "flattery, or rather concession, is not always a vice; it is +oftener a virtue, especially in the young. The kindness with which a man +receives us, attaches us to him; it is not to make a fool of him that we +give way, but to avoid displeasing him, and not to return him evil for +good." He never really meant to change his religion; his fault was like +the coquetting of decent women, who sometimes, to gain their ends, +without permitting anything or promising anything, lead men to hope more +than they mean to hold good.[26] Thereupon follow some austere +reflections on the priest, who ought to have sent him back to his +friends; and there are strictures even upon the ministers of all +dogmatic religions, in which the essential thing is not to do but to +believe; their priests therefore, provided that they can convert a man +to their faith, are wholly indifferent alike as to his worth and his +worldly interests. All this is most just; the occasion for such a strain +of remark, though so apposite on one side, is hardly well chosen to +impress us. We wonder, as we watch the boy complacently hoodwinking his +entertainer, what has become of the Roman severity of a few months back. +This nervous eagerness to please, however, was the complementary element +of a character of vague ambition, and it was backed by a stealthy +consciousness of intellectual superiority, which perhaps did something, +though poorly enough, to make such ignominy less deeply degrading. + +The die was cast. M. Pontverre despatched his brand plucked from the +burning to a certain Madame de Warens, a lady living at Annecy, and +counted zealous for the cause of the Church. In an interview whose +minutest circumstances remained for ever stamped in his mind (March 21, +1728), Rousseau exchanged his first words with this singular personage, +whose name and character he has covered with doubtful renown. He +expected to find some gray and wrinkled woman, saving a little remnant +of days in good works. Instead of this, there turned round upon him a +person not more than eight-and-twenty years old, with gentle caressing +air, a fascinating smile, a tender eye. Madame de Warens read the +letters he brought, and entertained their bearer cheerfully. It was +decided after consultation that the heretic should be sent to a +monastery at Turin, where he might be brought over in form to the true +Church. At the monastery not only would the spiritual question of faith +and the soul be dealt with, but at the same time the material problem of +shelter and subsistence for the body would be solved likewise. Elated +with vanity at the thought of seeing before any of his comrades the +great land of promise beyond the mountains, heedless of those whom he +had left, and heedless of the future before him and the object which he +was about, the young outcast made his journey over the Alps in all +possible lightness of heart. "Seeing country is an allurement which +hardly any Genevese can ever resist. Everything that met my eye seemed +the guarantee of my approaching happiness. In the houses I imagined +rustic festivals; in the fields, joyful sports; along the streams, +bathing and fishing; on the trees, delicious fruits; under their shade, +voluptuous interviews; on the mountains, pails of milk and cream, a +charming idleness, peace, simplicity, the delight of going forward +without knowing whither."[27] He might justly choose out this interval +as more perfectly free from care or anxiety than any other of his life. +It was the first of the too rare occasions when his usually passive +sensuousness was stung by novelty and hope into an active energy. + +The seven or eight days of the journey came to an end, and the youth +found himself at Turin without money or clothes, an inmate of a dreary +monastery, among some of the very basest and foulest of mankind, who +pass their time in going from one monastery to another through Spain and +Italy, professing themselves Jews or Moors for the sake of being +supported while the process of their conversion was going slowly +forward. At the Hospice of the Catechumens the work of his conversion +was begun in such earnest as the insincerity of at least one of the +parties to it might allow. It is needless to enter into the +circumstances of Rousseau's conversion to Catholicism. The mischievous +zeal for theological proselytising has led to thousands of such hollow +and degrading performances, but it may safely be said that none of them +was ever hollower than this. Rousseau avows that he had been brought up +in the heartiest abhorrence of the older church, and that he never lost +this abhorrence. He fully explains that he accepted the arguments with +which he was not very energetically plied, simply because he could not +bear the idea of returning to Geneva, and he saw no other way out of his +present destitute condition. "I could not dissemble from myself that the +holy deed I was about to do, was at the bottom the action of a bandit." +"The sophism which destroyed me," he says in one of those eloquent +pieces of moralising, which bring ignoble action into a relief that +exaggerates our condemnation, "is that of most men, who complain of lack +of strength when it is already too late for them to use it. It is only +through our own fault that virtue costs us anything; if we could be +always sage, we should rarely feel the need of being virtuous. But +inclinations that might be easily overcome, drag us on without +resistance; we yield to light temptations of which we despise the +hazard. Insensibly we fall into perilous situations, against which we +could easily have shielded ourselves, but from which we can afterwards +only make a way out by heroic efforts that stupefy us, and so we sink +into the abyss, crying aloud to God, Why hast thou made me so weak? But +in spite of ourselves, God gives answer to our conscience, 'I made thee +too weak to come out from the pit, because I made thee strong enough to +avoid falling into it.'"[28] So the hopeful convert did fall in, not as +happens to the pious soul "too hot for certainties in this our life," +to find rest in liberty of private judgment and an open Bible, but +simply as a means of getting food, clothing, and shelter.[29] The boy +was clever enough to make some show of resistance, and he turned to good +use for this purpose the knowledge of Church history and the great +Reformation controversy which he had picked up at M. Lambercier's. He +was careful not to carry things too far, and exactly nine days after his +admission into the Hospice, he "abjured the errors of the sect."[30] Two +days after that he was publicly received into the kindly bosom of the +true Church with all solemnity, to the high edification of the devout of +Turin, who marked their interest in the regenerate soul by contributions +to the extent of twenty francs in small money. + +With that sum and formal good wishes the fathers of the Hospice of the +Catechumens thrust him out of their doors into the broad world. The +youth who had begun the day with dreams of palaces, found himself at +night sleeping in a den where he paid a halfpenny for the privilege of +resting in the same room with the rude woman who kept the house, her +husband, her five or six children, and various other lodgers. This rough +awakening produced no consciousness of hardship in a nature which, +beneath all fantastic dreams, always remained true to its first sympathy +with the homely lives of the poor. The woman of the house swore like a +carter, and was always dishevelled and disorderly: this did not prevent +Rousseau from recognising her kindness of heart and her staunch +readiness to befriend. He passed his days in wandering about the streets +of Turin, seeing the wonders of a capital, and expecting some adventure +that should raise him to unknown heights. He went regularly to mass, +watched the pomp of the court, and counted upon stirring a passion in +the breast of a princess. A more important circumstance was the effect +of the mass in awakening in his own breast his latent passion for music; +a passion so strong that the poorest instrument, if it were only in +tune, never failed to give him the liveliest pleasure. The king of +Sardinia was believed to have the best performers in Europe; less than +that was enough to quicken the musical susceptibility which is perhaps +an invariable element in the most completely sensuous natures. + +When the end of the twenty francs began to seem a thing possible, he +tried to get work as an engraver. A young woman in a shop took pity on +him, gave him work and food, and perhaps permitted him to make dumb and +grovelling love to her, until her husband returned home and drove her +client away from the door with threats and the waving of a wand not +magical.[31] Rousseau's self-love sought an explanation in the natural +fury of an Italian husband's jealousy; but we need hardly ask for any +other cause than a shopkeeper's reasonable objection to vagabonds. + +The next step of this youth, who was always dreaming of the love of +princesses, was to accept with just thankfulness the position of lackey +or footboy in the household of a widow. With Madame de Vercellis he +passed three months, and at the end of that time she died. His stay here +was marked by an incident that has filled many pages with stormful +discussion. When Madame de Vercellis died, a piece of old rose-coloured +ribbon was missing; Rousseau had stolen it, and it was found in his +possession. They asked him whence he had taken it. He replied that it +had been given to him by Marion, a young and comely maid in the house. +In her presence and before the whole household he repeated his false +story, and clung to it with a bitter effrontery that we may well call +diabolic, remembering how the nervous terror of punishment and exposure +sinks the angel in man. Our phrase, want of moral courage, really +denotes in the young an excruciating physical struggle, often so keen +that the victim clutches after liberation with the spontaneous tenacity +and cruelty of a creature wrecked in mastering waters. Undisciplined +sensations constitute egoism in the most ruthless of its shapes, and at +this epoch, owing either to the brutalities which surrounded his +apprentice life at Geneva, or to that rapid tendency towards +degeneration which he suspected in his own character, Rousseau was the +slave of sensations which stained his days with baseness. "Never," he +says, in his account of this hateful action, "was wickedness further +from me than at this cruel moment; and when I accused the poor girl, it +is contradictory and yet it is true that my affection for her was the +cause of what I did. She was present to my mind, and I threw the blame +from myself on to the first object that presented itself. When I saw her +appear my heart was torn, but the presence of so many people was too +strong for my remorse. I feared punishment very little; I only feared +disgrace, but I feared that more than death, more than crime, more than +anything in the world. I would fain have buried myself in the depths of +the earth; invincible shame prevailed over all, shame alone caused my +effrontery, and the more criminal I became, the more intrepid was I made +by the fright of confessing it. I could see nothing but the horror of +being recognised and declared publicly to my face a thief, liar, and +traducer."[32] When he says that he feared punishment little, his +analysis of his mind is most likely wrong, for nothing is clearer than +that a dread of punishment in any physical form was a peculiarly strong +feeling with him at this time. However that may have been, the same +over-excited imagination which put every sense on the alarm and led him +into so abominable a misdemeanour, brought its own penalties. It led him +to conceive a long train of ruin as having befallen Marion in +consequence of his calumny against her, and this dreadful thought +haunted him to the end of his life. In the long sleepless nights he +thought he saw the unhappy girl coming to reproach him with a crime that +seemed as fresh to him as if it had been perpetrated the day before.[33] +Thus the same brooding memory which brought back to him the sweet pain +of his gentle kinswoman's household melody, preserved the darker side of +his history with equal fidelity and no less perfect continuousness. +Rousseau expresses a hope and belief that this burning remorse would +serve as expiation for his fault; as if expiation for the destruction of +another soul could be anything but a fine name for self-absolution. We +may, however, charitably and reasonably think that the possible +consequences of his fault to the unfortunate Marion were not actual, but +were as much a hallucination as the midnight visits of her reproachful +spirit. Indeed, we are hardly condoning evil, in suggesting that the +whole story from its beginning is marked with exaggeration, and that we +who have our own lives to lead shall find little help in criticising at +further length the exact heinousness of the ignoble falsehood of a boy +who happened to grow up into a man of genius.[34] + +After an interval of six weeks, which were passed in the garret or +cellar of his rough patroness with kind heart and ungentle tongue, +Rousseau again found himself a lackey in the house of a Piedmontese +person of quality. This new master, the Count of Gouvon, treated him +with a certain unusual considerateness, which may perhaps make us doubt +the narrative. His son condescended to teach the youth Latin, and +Rousseau presumed to entertain a passion for one of the daughters of the +house, to whom he paid silent homage in the odd shape of attending to +her wants at table with special solicitude. In this situation he had, or +at least he supposed that he had, an excellent chance of ultimate +advancement. But advancement here or elsewhere means a measure of +stability, and Rousseau's temperament in his youth was the archtype of +the mutable. An old comrade from Geneva visited him,[35] and as almost +any incident is stimulating enough to fire the restlessness of +imaginative youth, the gratitude which he professed to the Count of +Gouvon and his family, the prudence with which he marked his prospects, +the industry with which he profited by opportunity, all faded quickly +into mere dead and disembodied names of virtues. His imagination again +went over the journey across the mountains; the fields, the woods, the +streams, began to absorb his whole life. He recalled with delicious +satisfaction how charming the journey had seemed to him, and thought how +far more charming it would be in the society of a comrade of his own age +and taste, without duty, or constraint, or obligation to go or stay +other than as it might please them. "It would be madness to sacrifice +such a piece of good fortune to projects of ambition, which were slow, +difficult, doubtful of execution, and which, even if they should one day +be realised, were not with all their glory worth a quarter of an hour of +true pleasure and freedom in youth."[36] + +On these high principles he neglected his duties so recklessly that he +was dismissed from his situation, and he and his comrade began their +homeward wanderings with more than apostolic heedlessness as to what +they should eat or wherewithal they should be clothed. They had a toy +fountain; they hoped that in return for the amusement to be conferred by +this wonder they should receive all that they might need. Their hopes +were not fulfilled. The exhibition of the toy fountain did not excuse +them from their reckoning. Before long it was accidentally broken, and +to their secret satisfaction, for it had lost its novelty. Their naked, +vagrancy was thus undisguised. They made their way by some means or +other across the mountains, and their enjoyment of vagabondage was +undisturbed by any thought of a future. "To understand my delirium at +this moment," Rousseau says, in words which shed much light on darker +parts of his history than fits of vagrancy, "it is necessary to know to +what a degree my heart is subject to get aflame with the smallest +things, and with what force it plunges into the imagination of the +object that attracts it, vain as that object may be. The most grotesque, +the most childish, the maddest schemes come to caress my favourite idea, +and to show me the reasonableness of surrendering myself to it."[37] It +was this deep internal vehemence which distinguished Rousseau all +through his life from the commonplace type of social revolter. A vagrant +sensuous temperament, strangely compounded with Genevese austerity; an +ardent and fantastic imagination, incongruously shot with threads of +firm reason; too little conscience and too much; a monstrous and +diseased love of self, intertwined with a sincere compassion and keen +interest for the great fellowship of his brothers; a wild dreaming of +dreams that were made to look like sanity by the close and specious +connection between conclusions and premisses, though the premisses +happened to have the fault of being profoundly unreal:--this was the +type of character that lay unfolded in the youth who, towards the autumn +of 1729, reached Annecy, penniless and ragged, throwing himself once +more on the charity of the patroness who had given him shelter eighteen +months before. Few figures in the world at that time were less likely to +conciliate the favour or excite the interest of an observer, who had not +studied the hidden convolutions of human character deeply enough to know +that a boy of eighteen may be sly, sensual, restless, dreamy, and yet +have it in him to say things one day which may help to plunge a world +into conflagration. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] Here is the line:-- + +Didier Rousseau. | Jean | ----------------------- | | David. Noah. | | +Isaac (b. 1680-5, d. 1745-7). Jean Francois. | | | -------------- | | +| JEAN JACQUES. Jean. Theodore. + +(_Musset-Pathay_, ii. 283.) + +[2] Picot's _Hist. de Geneve_, iii. 114. + +[3] _Conf._, i. 7. + +[4] _Lettre a D'Alembert_, p. 187. Also _Nouv. Hel._, VI. v. 239. + +[5] _Conf._, i. 9. Also Second Letter to M. de Malesherbes, p. 356. + +[6] _Reveries_, iv. p. 189. "My master and counsellor, Plutarch," he +says, when he lends a volume to Madame d'Epinay in 1756. _Corr._, i. +265. + +[7] Dedication of the _Discours sur l'Origine de l'Inegalite_, p. 201. +(June, 1754.) + +[8] _Conf._, i. 1. + +[9] _Ib_, i. 12. + +[10] The tenacity of this grateful recollection is shown in letters to +her (Madame Gonceru)--one in 1754 (_Corr._, i. 204), another as late +as 1770 (vi. 129), and a third in 1762 (_Oeuvr. et Corr. Ined._, 392). + +[11] _Conf._, i. 17-32. + +[12] See also _Conf._, i. 43; iii. 185; vii. 73; xii. 188, _n._ 2. + +[13] _Conf._, i. 27-31. + +[14] _Conf._, i. 38-47. + +[15] _Lettre a D'Alembert_(1758), 178, 179. + +[16] _Reveries_, iv. 211, 212. + +[17] _Conf._ 212, 213. + +[18] _Conf._, ii. 102, 103. + +[19] M. Masseron. + +[20] M. Ducommun. + +[21] _Conf._, i. 69. + +[22] _Conf._, i. 72. + +[23] J. Gaberel's _Histoire de l'Eglise de Geneve_ (Geneva, 1853-62), +vol. iii. p. 285. + +[24] There is a minute in the register of the company of ministers, to +the effect that the Sieur de Pontverre "is attracting many young men +from this town, and changing their religion, and that the public ought +to be warned." (Gaberel, iii. 224.) + +[25] _Conf._, ii. 76. + +[26] _Conf._, ii. 77. + +[27] _Conf._, ii. 90-97. + +[28] _Conf._, ii. 107 + +[29] See _Emile_, iv. 124, 125, where the youth who was born a +Calvinist, finding himself a stranger in a strange land, without +resource, "changed his religion to get bread." + +[30] In the _Confessions_ (ii. 115) he has grace enough to make the +period a month; but the extract from the register of his baptism +(Gaberel's _Hist. de l'Eglise de Geneve_, iii. 224), which has been +recently published, shows that this is untrue: "Jean Jacques Rousseau, +de Geneve (Calviniste), entre a l'hospice a l'age de 16 ans, le 12 +avril, 1728. Abjura les erreurs de la secte le 21; et le 23 du meme +mois lui fut administre le saint bapteme, ayant pour parrain le sieur +Andre Ferrero et pour marraine Francoise Christine Rora (ou Rovea)." + +A little further on (p. 119) he speaks of having been shut up "for two +months," but this is not true even on his own showing. + +[31] Madame Basile. _Conf._, ii. 121-135. + +[32] _Conf._ ii. ad finem. + +[33] _Conf._, ii. 144. + +[34] Another version of the story mentioned by Musset-Pathay (i. 7) +makes the object of the theft a diamond, but there is really no +evidence in the matter beyond that given by Rousseau himself. + +[35] Bacle, by name. + +[36] _Conf._, iii. 168. + +[37] _Conf._, iii. 170. A slightly idealised account of the situation +is given in _Emile_, Bk. iv. 125. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +SAVOY. + + +The commonplace theory which the world takes for granted as to the +relations of the sexes, makes the woman ever crave the power and +guidance of her physically stronger mate. Even if this be a true account +of the normal state, there is at any rate a kind of temperament among +the many types of men, in which it seems as if the elements of character +remain mere futile and dispersive particles, until compelled into unity +and organisation by the creative shock of feminine influence. There are +men, famous or obscure, whose lives might be divided into a number of +epochs, each defined and presided over by the influence of a woman. For +the inconstant such a calendar contains many divisions, for the constant +it is brief and simple; for both alike it marks the great decisive +phases through which character has moved. + +Rousseau's temperament was deeply marked by this special sort of +susceptibility in one of its least agreeable forms. His sentiment was +neither robustly and courageously animal, nor was it an intellectual +demand for the bright and vivacious sympathies in which women sometimes +excel. It had neither bold virility, nor that sociable energy which +makes close emotional companionship an essential condition of freedom of +faculty and completeness of work. There is a certain close and sickly +air round all his dealings with women and all his feeling for them. We +seem to move not in the star-like radiance of love, nor even in the +fiery flames of lust, but among the humid heats of some unknown abode of +things not wholesome or manly. "I know a sentiment," he writes, "which +is perhaps less impetuous than love, but a thousand times more +delicious, which sometimes is joined to love, and which is very often +apart from it. Nor is this sentiment friendship only; it is more +voluptuous, more tender; I do not believe that any one of the same sex +could be its object; at least I have been a friend, if ever man was, and +I never felt this about any of my friends."[38] He admits that he can +only describe this sentiment by its effects; but our lives are mostly +ruled by elements that defy definition, and in Rousseau's case the +sentiment which he could not describe was a paramount trait of his +mental constitution. It was as a voluptuous garment; in it his +imagination was cherished into activity, and protected against that +outer air of reality which braces ordinary men, but benumbs and +disintegrates the whole vital apparatus of such an organisation as +Rousseau's. If he had been devoid of this feeling about women, his +character might very possibly have remained sterile. That feeling was +the complementary contribution, without which could be no fecundity. + +When he returned from his squalid Italian expedition in search of bread +and a new religion, his mind was clouded with the vague desire, the +sensual moodiness, which in such natures stains the threshold of +manhood. This unrest, with its mysterious torments and black delights, +was banished, or at least soothed into a happier humour, by the +influence of a person who is one of the most striking types to be found +in the gallery of fair women. + + +I. + +A French writer in the eighteenth century, in a story which deals with a +rather repulsive theme of action in a tone that is graceful, simple, and +pathetic, painted the portrait of a creature for whom no moralist with a +reputation to lose can say a word; and we may, if we choose, fool +ourselves by supposing her to be without a counterpart in the +better-regulated world of real life, but, in spite of both these +objections, she is an interesting and not untouching figure to those who +like to know all the many-webbed stuff out of which their brothers and +sisters are made. The Manon Lescaut of the unfortunate Abbe Prevost, +kindly, bright, playful, tender, but devoid of the very germ of the idea +of that virtue which is counted the sovereign recommendation of woman, +helps us to understand Madame de Warens. There are differences enough +between them, and we need not mistake them for one and the same type. +Manon Lescaut is a prettier figure, because romance has fewer +limitations than real life; but if we think of her in reading of +Rousseau's benefactress, the vision of the imaginary woman tends to +soften our judgment of the actual one, as well as to enlighten our +conception of a character that eludes the instruments of a commonplace +analysis.[39] + +She was born at Vevai in 1700; she married early, and early disagreed +with her husband, from whom she eventually went away, abandoning family, +religion, country, and means of subsistence, with all gaiety of heart. +The King of Sardinia happened to be keeping his court at a small town on +the southern shores of the lake of Geneva, and the conversion of Madame +de Warens to Catholicism by the preaching of the Bishop of Annecy,[40] +gave a zest to the royal visit, as being a successful piece of sport in +that great spiritual hunt which Savoy loved to pursue at the expense of +the reformed church in Switzerland. The king, to mark his zeal for the +faith of his house, conferred on the new convert a small pension for +life; but as the tongues of the scandalous imputed a less pure motive +for such generosity in a parsimonious prince, Madame de Warens removed +from the court and settled at Annecy. Her conversion was hardly more +serious than Rousseau's own, because seriousness was no condition of her +intelligence on any of its sides or in any of its relations. She was +extremely charitable to the poor, full of pity for all in misfortune, +easily moved to forgiveness of wrong or ingratitude; careless, gay, +open-hearted; having, in a word, all the good qualities which spring in +certain generous soils from human impulse, and hardly any of those which +spring from reflection, or are implanted by the ordering of society. Her +reason had been warped in her youth by an instructor of the devil's +stamp;[41] finding her attached to her husband and to her duties, always +cold, argumentative, and impregnable on the side of the senses, he +attacked her by sophisms, and at last persuaded her that the union of +the sexes is in itself a matter of the most perfect indifference, +provided only that decorum of appearance be preserved, and the peace of +mind of persons concerned be not disturbed.[42] This execrable lesson, +which greater and more unselfish men held and propagated in grave books +before the end of the century, took root in her mind. If we accept +Rousseau's explanation, it did so the more easily as her temperament was +cold, and thus corroborated the idea of the indifference of what public +opinion and private passion usually concur in investing with such +enormous weightiness. "I will even dare to say," Rousseau declares, +"that she only knew one true pleasure in the world, and that was to give +pleasure to those whom she loved."[43] He is at great pains to protest +how compatible this coolness of temperament is with excessive +sensibility of character; and neither ethological theory nor practical +observation of men and women is at all hostile to what he is so anxious +to prove. The cardinal element of character is the speed at which its +energies move; its rapidity or its steadiness, concentration or +volatility; whether the thought and feeling travel as quickly as light +or as slowly as sound. A rapid and volatile constitution like that of +Madame de Warens is inconsistent with ardent and glowing warmth, which +belongs to the other sort, but it is essentially bound up with +sensibility, or readiness of sympathetic answer to every cry from +another soul. It is the slow, brooding, smouldering nature, like +Rousseau's own, in which we may expect to find the tropics. + +To bring the heavy artillery of moral reprobation to bear upon a poor +soul like Madame de Warens is as if one should denounce flagrant want +of moral purpose in the busy movements of ephemera. Her activity was +incessant, but it ended in nothing better than debt, embarrassment, and +confusion. She inherited from her father a taste for alchemy, and spent +much time in search after secret elixirs and the like. "Quacks, taking +advantage of her weakness, made themselves her master, constantly +infested her, ruined her, and wasted, in the midst of furnaces and +chemicals, intelligence, talents, and charms which would have made her +the delight of the best societies."[44] Perhaps, however, the too +notorious vagrancy of her amours had at least as much to do with her +failure to delight the best societies as her indiscreet passion for +alchemy. Her person was attractive enough. "She had those points of +beauty," says Rousseau, "which are desirable, because they reside rather +in expression than in feature. She had a tender and caressing air, a +soft eye, a divine smile, light hair of uncommon beauty. You could not +see a finer head or bosom, finer arms or hands."[45] She was full of +tricks and whimsies. She could not endure the first smell of the soup +and meats at dinner; when they were placed on the table she nearly +swooned, and her disgust lasted some time, until at the end of half an +hour or so she took her first morsel.[46] On the whole, if we accept the +current standard of sanity, Madame de Warens must be pronounced ever so +little flighty; but a monotonous world can afford to be lenient to +people with a slight craziness, if it only has hearty benevolence and +cheerfulness in its company, and is free from egoism or +rapacious vanity. + +This was the person within the sphere of whose attraction Rousseau was +decisively brought in the autumn of 1729, and he remained, with certain +breaks of vagabondage, linked by a close attachment to her until 1738. +It was in many respects the truly formative portion of his life. He +acquired during this time much of his knowledge of books, such as it +was, and his principles of judging them. He saw much of the lives of the +poor and of the world's ways with them. Above all his ideal was +revolutionised, and the recent dreams of Plutarchian heroism, of +grandeur, of palaces, princesses, and a glorious career full in the +world's eye, were replaced by a new conception of blessedness of life, +which never afterwards faded from his vision, and which has held a front +place in the imagination of literary Europe ever since. The notions or +aspirations which he had picked up from a few books gave way to notions +and aspirations which were shaped and fostered by the scenes of actual +life into which he was thrown, and which found his character soft for +their impression. In one way the new pictures of a future were as +dissociated from the conditions of reality as the old had been, and the +sensuous life of the happy valley in Savoy as little fitted a man to +compose ideals for our gnarled and knotted world as the mental life +among the heroics of sentimental fiction had done. + +Rousseau's delight in the spot where Madame de Warens lived at Annecy +was the mark of the new ideal which circumstances were to engender in +him, and after him to spread in many hearts. His room looked over +gardens and a stream, and beyond them stretched a far landscape. "It was +the first time since leaving Bossey that I had green before my windows. +Always shut in by walls, I had nothing under my eye but house-tops and +the dull gray of the streets. How moving and delicious this novelty was +to me! It brightened all the tenderness of my disposition. I counted the +landscape among the kindnesses of my dear benefactress; it seemed as if +she had brought it there expressly for me. I placed myself there in all +peacefulness with her; she was present to me everywhere among the +flowers and the verdure; her charms and those of spring were all mingled +together in my eyes. My heart, which had hitherto been stifled, found +itself more free in this ample space, and my sighs had more liberal vent +among these orchard gardens."[47] Madame de Warens was the semi-divine +figure who made the scene live, and gave it perfect and harmonious +accent. He had neither transports nor desires by her side, but existed +in a state of ravishing calm, enjoying without knowing what. "I could +have passed my whole life and eternity itself in this way, without an +instant of weariness. She is the only person with whom I never felt that +dryness in conversation, which turns the duty of keeping it up into a +torment. Our intercourse was not so much conversation as an +inexhaustible stream of chatter, which never came to an end until it was +interrupted from without. I only felt all the force of my attachment for +her when she was out of my sight. So long as I could see her I was +merely happy and satisfied, but my disquiet in her absence went so far +as to be painful. I shall never forget how one holiday, while she was at +vespers, I went for a walk outside the town, my heart full of her image +and of an eager desire to pass all my days by her side. I had sense +enough to see that for the present this was impossible, and that the +bliss which I relished so keenly must be brief. This gave to my musing a +sadness which was free from everything sombre, and which was moderated +by pleasing hope. The sound of the bells, which has always moved me to a +singular degree, the singing of the birds, the glory of the weather, the +sweetness of the landscape, the scattered rustic dwellings in which my +imagination placed our common home;--all this so struck me with a vivid, +tender, sad, and touching impression that I saw myself as in an ecstasy +transported into the happy time and the happy place where my heart, +possessed of all the felicity that could bring it delight, without even +dreaming of the pleasures of sense, should share joys +inexpressible."[48] + +There was still, however, a space to be bridged between the doubtful now +and this delicious future. The harshness of circumstance is ever +interposing with a money question, and for a vagrant of eighteen the +first of all problems is a problem of economics. Rousseau was submitted +to the observation of a kinsman of Madame de Warens,[49] and his verdict +corresponded with that of the notary of Geneva, with whom years before +Rousseau had first tried the critical art of making a living. He +pronounced that in spite of an animated expression, the lad was, if not +thoroughly inept, at least of very slender intelligence, without ideas, +almost without attainments, very narrow indeed in all respects, and that +the honour of one day becoming a village priest was the highest piece of +fortune to which he had any right to aspire.[50] So he was sent to the +seminary, to learn Latin enough for the priestly offices. He began by +conceiving a deadly antipathy to his instructor, whose appearance +happened to be displeasing to him. A second was found,[51] and the +patient and obliging temper, the affectionate and sympathetic manner of +his new teacher made a great impression on the pupil, though the +progress in intellectual acquirement was as unsatisfactory in one case +as in the other. It is characteristic of that subtle impressionableness +to physical comeliness, which in ordinary natures is rapidly effaced by +press of more urgent considerations, but which Rousseau's strongly +sensuous quality retained, that he should have remembered, and thought +worth mentioning years afterwards, that the first of his two teachers at +the seminary of Annecy had greasy black hair, a complexion as of +gingerbread, and bristles in place of beard, while the second had the +most touching expression he ever saw in his life, with fair hair and +large blue eyes, and a glance and a tone which made you feel that he was +one of the band predestined from their birth to unhappy days. While at +Turin, Rousseau had made the acquaintance of another sage and benevolent +priest,[52] and uniting the two good men thirty years after he conceived +and drew the character of the Savoyard Vicar.[53] + +Shortly the seminarists reported that, though not vicious, their pupil +was not even good enough for a priest, so deficient was he in +intellectual faculty. It was next decided to try music, and Rousseau +ascended for a brief space into the seventh heaven of the arts. This was +one of the intervals of his life of which he says that he recalls not +only the times, places, persons, but all the surrounding objects, the +temperature of the air, its odour, its colour, a certain local +impression only felt there, and the memory of which stirs the old +transports anew. He never forgot a certain tune, because one Advent +Sunday he heard it from his bed being sung before daybreak on the steps +of the cathedral; nor an old lame carpenter who played the counter-bass, +nor a fair little abbe who played the violin in the choir.[54] Yet he +was in so dreamy, absent, and distracted a state, that neither his +good-will nor his assiduity availed, and he could learn nothing, not +even music. His teacher, one Le Maitre, belonged to that great class of +irregular and disorderly natures with which Rousseau's destiny, in the +shape of an irregular and disorderly temperament of his own, so +constantly brought him into contact. Le Maitre could not work without +the inspiration of the wine cup, and thus his passion for his art landed +him a sot. He took offence at a slight put upon him by the precentor of +the cathedral of which he was choir-master, and left Annecy in a furtive +manner along with Rousseau, whom the too comprehensive solicitude of +Madame de Warens despatched to bear him company. They went together as +far as Lyons; here the unfortunate musician happened to fall into an +epileptic fit in the street. Rousseau called for help, informed the +crowd of the poor man's hotel, and then seizing a moment when no one was +thinking about him, turned the street corner and finally disappeared, +the musician being thus "abandoned by the only friend on whom he had a +right to count."[55] It thus appears that a man maybe exquisitely moved +by the sound of bells, the song of birds, the fairness of smiling +gardens, and yet be capable all the time without a qualm of misgiving of +leaving a friend senseless in the road in a strange place. It has ceased +to be wonderful how many ugly and cruel actions are done by people with +an extraordinary sense of the beauty and beneficence of nature. At the +moment Rousseau only thought of getting back to Annecy and Madame de +Warens. "It is not," he says in words of profound warning, which many +men have verified in those two or three hours before the tardy dawn that +swell into huge purgatorial aeons,--"it is not when we have just done a +bad action, that it torments us; it is when we recall it long after, for +the memory of it can never be thrust out."[56] + + +II. + +When he made his way homewards again, he found to his surprise and +dismay that his benefactress had left Annecy, and had gone for an +indefinite time to Paris. He never knew the secret of this sudden +departure, for no man, he says, was ever so little curious as to the +private affairs of his friends. His heart, completely occupied with the +present, filled its whole capacity and entire space with that, and +except for past pleasures no empty corner was ever left for what was +done with.[57] He says he was too young to take the desertion deeply to +heart. Where he found subsistence we do not know. He was fascinated by a +flashy French adventurer,[58] in whose company he wasted many hours, and +the precious stuff of youthful opportunity. He passed a summer day in +joyful rustic fashion with two damsels whom he hardly ever saw again, +but the memory of whom and of the holiday that they had made with him +remained stamped in his brain, to be reproduced many a year hence in +some of the traits of the new Heloisa and her friend Claire.[59] Then he +accepted an invitation from a former waiting-woman of Madame de Warens +to attend her home to Freiburg. On this expedition he paid an hour's +visit to his father, who had settled and remarried at Nyon. Returning +from Freiburg, he came to Lausanne, where, with an audacity that might +be taken for the first presage of mental disturbance, he undertook to +teach music. "I have already," he says, "noted some moments of +inconceivable delirium, in which I ceased to be myself. Behold me now a +teacher of singing, without knowing how to decipher an air. Without the +least knowledge of composition, I boasted of my skill in it before all +the world; and without ability to score the slenderest vaudeville, I +gave myself out for a composer. Having been presented to M. de +Treytorens, a professor of law, who loved music and gave concerts at his +house, I insisted on giving him a specimen of my talent, and I set to +work to compose a piece for his concert with as much effrontery as if I +knew all about it." The performance came off duly, and the strange +impostor conducted it with as much gravity as the profoundest master. +Never since the beginning of opera has the like charivari greeted the +ears of men.[60] Such an opening was fatal to all chance of scholars, +but the friendly tavern-keeper who had first taken him in did not lack +either hope or charity. "How is it," Rousseau cried, many years after +this, "that having found so many good people in my youth, I find so few +in my advanced life? Is their stock exhausted? No; but the class in +which I have to seek them now is not the same as that in which I found +them then. Among the common people, where great passions only speak at +intervals, the sentiments of nature make themselves heard oftener. In +the higher ranks they are absolutely stifled, and under the mask of +sentiment it is only interest or vanity that speaks."[61] + +From Lausanne he went to Neuchatel, where he had more success, for, +teaching others, he began himself to learn. But no success was marked +enough to make him resist a vagrant chance. One day in his rambles +falling in with an archimandrite of the Greek church, who was traversing +Europe in search of subscriptions for the restoration of the Holy +Sepulchre, he at once attached himself to him in the capacity of +interpreter. In this position he remained for a few weeks, until the +French minister at Soleure took him away from the Greek monk, and +despatched him to Paris to be the attendant of a young officer.[62] A +few days in the famous city, which he now saw for the first time, and +which disappointed his expectations just as the sea and all other +wonders disappointed them,[63] convinced him that here was not what he +sought, and he again turned his face southwards in search of Madame de +Warens and more familiar lands. + +The interval thus passed in roaming over the eastern face of France, and +which we may date in the summer of 1732,[64] was always counted by +Rousseau among the happy epochs of his life, though the weeks may seem +grievously wasted to a generation which is apt to limit its ideas of +redeeming the time to the two pursuits of reading books or making money. +He travelled alone and on foot from Soleure to Paris and from Paris back +again to Lyons, and this was part of the training which served him in +the stead of books. Scarcely any great writer since the revival of +letters has been so little literary as Rousseau, so little indebted to +literature for the most characteristic part of his work. He was formed +by life; not by life in the sense of contact with a great number of +active and important persons, or with a great number of persons of any +kind, but in the rarer sense of free surrender to the plenitude of his +own impressions. A world composed of such people, all dispensing with +the inherited portion of human experience, and living independently on +their own stock, would rapidly fall backwards into dissolution. But +there is no more rash idea of the right composition of a society than +one which leads us to denounce a type of character for no better reason +than that, if it were universal, society would go to pieces. There is +very little danger of Rousseau's type becoming common, unless lunar or +other great physical influences arise to work a vast change in the +cerebral constitution of the species. We may safely trust the prodigious +_vis inertioe_ of human nature to ward off the peril of an eccentricity +beyond bounds spreading too far. At present, however, it is enough, +without going into the general question, to notice the particular fact +that while the other great exponents of the eighteenth century movement, +Hume, Voltaire, Diderot, were nourishing their natural strength of +understanding by the study and practice of literature, Rousseau, the +leader of the reaction against that movement, was wandering a beggar and +an outcast, craving the rude fare of the peasant's hut, knocking at +roadside inns, and passing nights in caves and holes in the fields, or +in the great desolate streets of towns. + +If such a life had been disagreeable to him, it would have lost all the +significance that it now has for us. But where others would have found +affliction, he had consolation, and where they would have lain desperate +and squalid, he marched elate and ready to strike the stars. "Never," he +says, "did I think so much, exist so much, be myself so much, as in the +journeys that I have made alone and on foot. Walking has something about +it which animates and enlivens my ideas. I can hardly think while I am +still; my body must be in motion, to move my mind. The sight of the +country, the succession of agreeable views, open air, good appetite, the +freedom of the alehouse, the absence of everything that could make me +feel dependence, or recall me to my situation--all this sets my soul +free, gives me a greater boldness of thought. I dispose of all nature as +its sovereign lord; my heart, wandering from object to object, mingles +and is one with the things that soothe it, wraps itself up in charming +images, and is intoxicated by delicious sentiment. Ideas come as they +please, not as I please: they do not come at all, or they come in a +crowd, overwhelming me with their number and their force. When I came to +a place I only thought of eating, and when I left it I only thought of +walking. I felt that a new paradise awaited me at the door, and I +thought of nothing but of hastening in search of it."[65] + +Here again is a picture of one whom vagrancy assuredly did not +degrade:--"I had not the least care for the future, and I awaited the +answer [as to the return of Madame de Warens to Savoy], lying out in the +open air, sleeping stretched out on the ground or on some wooden bench, +as tranquilly as on a bed of roses. I remember passing one delicious +night outside the town [Lyons], in a road which ran by the side of +either the Rhone or the Saone, I forget which of the two. Gardens raised +on a terrace bordered the other side of the road. It had been very hot +all day, and the evening was delightful; the dew moistened the parched +grass, the night was profoundly still, the air fresh without being cold; +the sun in going down had left red vapours in the heaven, and they +turned the water to rose colour; the trees on the terrace sheltered +nightingales, answering song for song. I went on in a sort of ecstasy, +surrendering my heart and every sense to the enjoyment of it all, and +only sighing for regret that I was enjoying it alone. Absorbed in the +sweetness of my musing, I prolonged my ramble far into the night, +without ever perceiving that I was tired. At last I found it out. I lay +down luxuriously on the shelf of a niche or false doorway made in the +wall of the terrace; the canopy of my bed was formed by overarching +tree-tops; a nightingale was perched exactly over my head, and I fell +asleep to his singing. My slumber was delicious, my awaking more +delicious still. It was broad day, and my opening eyes looked on sun and +water and green things, and an adorable landscape. I rose up and gave +myself a shake; I felt hungry and started gaily for the town, resolved +to spend on a good breakfast the two pieces of money which I still had +left. I was in such joyful spirits that I went along the road singing +lustily."[66] + +There is in this the free expansion of inner sympathy; the natural +sentiment spontaneously responding to all the delicious movement of the +external world on its peaceful and harmonious side, just as if the world +of many-hued social circumstance which man has made for himself had no +existence. We are conscious of a full nervous elation which is not the +product of literature, such as we have seen so many a time since, and +which only found its expression in literature in Rousseau's case by +accident. He did not feel in order to write, but felt without any +thought of writing. He dreamed at this time of many lofty destinies, +among them that of marshal of France, but the fame of authorship never +entered into his dreams. When the time for authorship actually came, +his work had all the benefit of the absence of self-consciousness, it +had all the disinterestedness, so to say, with which the first fresh +impressions were suffered to rise in his mind. + +One other picture of this time is worth remembering, as showing that +Rousseau was not wholly blind to social circumstances, and as +illustrating, too, how it was that his way of dealing with them was so +much more real and passionate, though so much less sagacious in some of +its aspects, than the way of the other revolutionists of the century. +One day, when he had lost himself in wandering in search of some site +which he expected to find beautiful, he entered the house of a peasant, +half dead with hunger and thirst. His entertainer offered him nothing +more restoring than coarse barley bread and skimmed milk. Presently, +after seeing what manner of guest he had, the worthy man descended by a +small trap into his cellar, and brought up some good brown bread, some +meat, and a bottle of wine, and an omelette was added afterwards. Then +he explained to the wondering Rousseau, who was a Swiss, and knew none +of the mysteries of the French fisc, that he hid away his wine on +account of the duties, and his bread on account of the _taille_, and +declared that he would be a ruined man if they suspected that he was not +dying of hunger. All this made an impression on Rousseau which he never +forgot. "Here," he says, "was the germ of the inextinguishable hatred +which afterwards grew up in my heart against the vexations that harass +the common people, and against all their oppressors. This man actually +did not dare to eat the bread which he had won by the sweat of his brow, +and only avoided ruin by showing the same misery as reigned +around him."[67] + +It was because he had thus seen the wrongs of the poor, not from without +but from within, not as a pitying spectator but as of their own company, +that Rousseau by and by brought such fire to the attack upon the old +order, and changed the blank practice of the elder philosophers into a +deadly affair of ball and shell. The man who had been a servant, who had +wanted bread, who knew the horrors of the midnight street, who had slept +in dens, who had been befriended by rough men and rougher women, who saw +the goodness of humanity under its coarsest outside, and who above all +never tried to shut these things out from his memory, but accepted them +as the most interesting, the most touching, the most real of all his +experiences, might well be expected to penetrate to the root of the +matter, and to protest to the few who usurp literature and policy with +their ideas, aspirations, interests, that it is not they but the many, +whose existence stirs the heart and fills the eye with the great prime +elements of the human lot. + + +III. + +It was, then, some time towards the middle of 1732 that Rousseau arrived +at Chamberi, and finally took up his residence with Madame de Warens, in +the dullest and most sombre room of a dull and sombre house. She had +procured him employment in connection with a land survey which the +government of Charles Emmanuel III. was then executing. It was only +temporary, and Rousseau's function was no loftier than that of clerk, +who had to copy and reduce arithmetical calculations. We may imagine how +little a youth fresh from nights under the summer sky would relish eight +hours a day of surly toil in a gloomy office, with a crowd of dirty and +ill-smelling fellow-workers.[68] If Rousseau was ever oppressed by any +set of circumstances, his method was invariable: he ran away from them. +So now he threw up his post, and again tried to earn a little money by +that musical instruction in which he had made so many singular and +grotesque endeavours. Even here the virtues which make ordinary life a +possible thing were not his. He was pleased at his lessons while there, +but he could not bear the idea of being bound to be there, nor the +fixing of an hour. In time this experiment for a subsistence came to the +same end as all the others. He next rushed to Besancon in search of the +musical instruction which he wished to give to others, but his baggage +was confiscated at the frontier, and he had to return.[69] Finally he +abandoned the attempt, and threw himself loyally upon the narrow +resources of Madame de Warens, whom he assisted in some singularly +indefinite way in the transaction of her very indefinite and +miscellaneous affairs,--if we are here, as so often, to give the name of +affairs to a very rapid and heedless passage along a shabby road +to ruin. + +The household at this time was on a very remarkable footing. Madame de +Warens was at its head, and Claude Anet, gardener, butler, steward, was +her factotum. He was a discreet person, of severe probity and few words, +firm, thrifty, and sage. The too comprehensive principles of his +mistress admitted him to the closest intimacy, and in due time, when +Madame de Warens thought of the seductions which ensnare the feet of +youth, Rousseau was delivered from them in an equivocal way by +solicitous application of the same maxims of comprehension. "Although +Claude Anet was as young as she was, he was so mature and so grave, that +he looked upon us as two children worthy of indulgence, and we both +looked upon him as a respectable man, whose esteem it was our business +to conciliate. Thus there grew up between us three a companionship, +perhaps without another example like it upon earth. All our wishes, our +cares, our hearts were in common; nothing seemed to pass outside our +little circle. The habit of living together, and of living together +exclusively, became so strong that if at our meals one of the three was +absent, or there came a fourth, all was thrown out; and in spite of our +peculiar relations, a _tete-a-tete_ was less sweet than a meeting of all +three."[70] Fate interfered to spoil this striking attempt after a new +type of the family, developed on a duandric base. Claude Anet was seized +with illness, a consequence of excessive fatigue in an Alpine expedition +in search of plants, and he came to his end.[71] In him Rousseau always +believed that he lost the most solid friend he ever possessed, "a rare +and estimable man, in whom nature served instead of education, and who +nourished in obscure servitude all the virtues of great men."[72] The +day after his death, Rousseau was speaking of their lost friend to +Madame de Warens with the liveliest and most sincere affliction, when +suddenly in the midst of the conversation he remembered that he should +inherit the poor man's clothes, and particularly a handsome black coat. +A reproachful tear from his Maman, as he always somewhat nauseously +called Madame de Warens, extinguished the vile thought and washed away +its last traces.[73] After all, those men and women are exceptionally +happy, who have no such involuntary meanness of thought standing against +themselves in that unwritten chapter of their lives which even the most +candid persons keep privately locked up in shamefast recollection. + +Shortly after his return to Chamberi, a wave from the great tide of +European affairs surged into the quiet valleys of Savoy. In the February +of 1733, Augustus the Strong died, and the usual disorder followed in +the choice of a successor to him in the kingship of Poland. France was +for Stanislaus, the father-in-law of Lewis XV., while the Emperor +Charles VI. and Anne of Russia were for August III., elector of Saxony. +Stanislaus was compelled to flee, and the French Government, taking up +his quarrel, declared war against the Emperor (October 14, 1733). The +first act of this war, which was to end in the acquisition of Naples and +the two Sicilies by Spanish Bourbons, and of Lorraine by France, was the +despatch of a French expedition to the Milanese under Marshall Villars, +the husband of one of Voltaire's first idols. This took place in the +autumn of 1733, and a French column passed through Chamberi, exciting +lively interest in all minds, including Rousseau's. He now read the +newspapers for the first time, with the most eager sympathy for the +country with whose history his own name was destined to be so +permanently associated. "If this mad passion," he says, "had only been +momentary, I should not speak of it; but for no visible reason it took +such root in my heart, that when I afterwards at Paris played the stern +republican, I could not help feeling in spite of myself a secret +predilection for the very nation that I found so servile, and the +government I made bold to assail."[74] This fondness for France was +strong, constant, and invincible, and found what was in the eighteenth +century a natural complement in a corresponding dislike of England.[75] + +Rousseau's health began to show signs of weakness. His breath became +asthmatic, he had palpitations, he spat blood, and suffered from a slow +feverishness from which he never afterwards became entirely free.[76] +His mind was as feverish as his body, and the morbid broodings which +active life reduces to their lowest degree in most young men, were left +to make full havoc along with the seven devils of idleness and vacuity. +An instinct which may flow from the unrecognised animal lying deep down +in us all, suggested the way of return to wholesomeness. Rousseau +prevailed upon Madame de Warens to leave the stifling streets for the +fresh fields, and to deliver herself by retreat to rural solitude from +the adventurers who made her their prey. Les Charmettes, the modest +farm-house to which they retired, still stands. The modern traveller, +with a taste for relieving an imagination strained by great historic +monuments and secular landmarks, with the sight of spots associated with +the passion and meditation of some far-shining teacher of men, may walk +a short league from where the gray slate roofs of dull Chamberi bake in +the sun, and ascending a gently mounting road, with high leafy bank on +the right throwing cool shadows over his head, and a stream on the left +making music at his feet, he sees an old red housetop lifted lonely +above the trees. The homes in which men have lived now and again lend +themselves to the beholder's subjective impression; they seemed to be +brooding in forlorn isolation like some life-wearied gray-beard over +ancient and sorrow-stricken memories. At Les Charmettes a pitiful +melancholy penetrates you. The supreme loveliness of the scene, the +sweet-smelling meadows, the orchard, the water-ways, the little vineyard +with here and there a rose glowing crimson among the yellow stunted +vines, the rust-red crag of the Nivolet rising against the sky far +across the broad valley; the contrast between all this peace, beauty, +silence, and the diseased miserable life of the famous man who found a +scanty span of paradise in the midst of it, touches the soul with a +pathetic spell. We are for the moment lifted out of squalor, vagrancy, +and disorder, and seem to hear some of the harmonies which sounded to +this perturbed spirit, soothing it, exalting it, and stirring those +inmost vibrations which in truth make up all the short divine part of a +man's life.[77] + +"No day passes," he wrote in the very year in which he died, "in which +I do not recall with joy and tender effusion this single and brief time +in my life, when I was fully myself, without mixture or hindrance, and +when I may say in a true sense that I lived. I may almost say, like the +prefect when disgraced and proceeding to end his days tranquilly in the +country, 'I have passed seventy years on the earth, and I have lived but +seven of them.' But for this brief and precious space, I should perhaps +have remained uncertain about myself; for during all the rest of my life +I have been so agitated, tossed, plucked hither and thither by the +passions of others, that, being nearly passive in a life so stormy, I +should find it hard to distinguish what belonged to me in my own +conduct,--to such a degree has harsh necessity weighed upon me. But +during these few years I did what I wished to do, I was what I wished to +be."[78] The secret of such rare felicity is hardly to be described in +words. It was the ease of a profoundly sensuous nature with every sense +gratified and fascinated. Caressing and undivided affection within +doors, all the sweetness and movement of nature without, solitude, +freedom, and the busy idleness of life in gardens,--these were the +conditions of Rousseau's ideal state. "If my happiness," he says, in +language of strange felicity, "consisted in facts, actions, or words, I +might then describe and represent it in some way; but how say what was +neither said nor done nor even thought, but only enjoyed and felt +without my being able to point to any other object of my happiness than +the very feeling itself? I arose with the sun and I was happy; I went +out of doors and I was happy; I saw Maman and I was happy; I left her +and I was happy; I went among the woods and hills, I wandered about in +the dells, I read, I was idle, I dug in the garden, I gathered fruit, I +helped them indoors, and everywhere happiness followed me. It was not in +any given thing, it was all in myself, and could never leave me for a +single instant."[79] This was a true garden of Eden, with the serpent in +temporary quiescence, and we may count the man rare since the fall who +has found such happiness in such conditions, and not less blessed than +he is rare. The fact that he was one of this chosen company was among +the foremost of the circumstances which made Rousseau seem to so many +men in the eighteenth century as a spring of water in a thirsty land. + +All innocent and amiable things moved him. He used to spend hours +together in taming pigeons; he inspired them with such confidence that +they would follow him about, and allow him to take them wherever he +would, and the moment that he appeared in the garden two or three of +them would instantly settle on his arms or his head. The bees, too, +gradually came to put the same trust in him, and his whole life was +surrounded with gentle companionship. He always began the day with the +sun, walking on the high ridge above the slope on which the house lay, +and going through his form of worship. "It did not consist in a vain +moving of the lips, but in a sincere elevation of heart to the author of +the tender nature whose beauties lay spread out before my eyes. This act +passed rather in wonder and contemplation than in requests; and I always +knew that with the dispenser of true blessings, the best means of +obtaining those which are needful for us, is less to ask than to deserve +them."[80] These effusions may be taken for the beginning of the +deistical reaction in the eighteenth century. While the truly scientific +and progressive spirits were occupied in laborious preparation for +adding to human knowledge and systematising it, Rousseau walked with his +head in the clouds among gods, beneficent authors of nature, wise +dispensers of blessings, and the like. "Ah, madam," he once said, +"sometimes in the privacy of my study, with my hands pressed tight over +my eyes or in the darkness of the night, I am of his opinion that there +is no God. But look yonder (pointing with his hand to the sky, with head +erect, and an inspired glance): the rising of the sun, as it scatters +the mists that cover the earth and lays bare the wondrous glittering +scene of nature, disperses at the same moment all cloud from my soul. I +find my faith again, and my God, and my belief in him. I admire and +adore him, and I prostrate myself in his presence."[81] As if that +settled the question affirmatively, any more than the absence of such +theistic emotion in many noble spirits settles it negatively. 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. One day, amusing himself in a characteristic manner by +throwing stones at trees, he began to be tormented by fear of the +eternal pit. He resolved to test his doom by throwing a stone at a +particular tree; if he hit, then salvation; if he missed, then +perdition. With a trembling hand and beating heart he threw; as he had +chosen a large tree and was careful not to place himself too far away, +all was well.[83] As a rule, however, in spite of the ugly phantoms of +theology, he passed his days in a state of calm. Even when illness +brought it into his head that he should soon know the future lot by more +assured experiment, he still preserved a tranquillity which he justly +qualifies as sensual. + +In thinking of Rousseau's peculiar feeling for nature, which acquired +such a decisive place in his character during his life at Les +Charmettes, it is to be remembered that it was entirely devoid of that +stormy and boisterous quality which has grown up in more modern +literature, out of the violent attempt to press nature in her most awful +moods into the service of the great revolt against a social and +religious tradition that can no longer be endured. Of this revolt +Rousseau was a chief, and his passion for natural aspects was connected +with this attitude, but he did not seize those of them which the poet of +_Manfred_, for example, forced into an imputed sympathy with his own +rebellion. Rousseau always loved nature best in her moods of quiescence +and serenity, and in proportion as she lent herself to such moods in +men. He liked rivulets better than rivers. He could not bear the sight +of the sea; its infertile bosom and blind restless tumblings filled him +with melancholy. The ruins of a park affected him more than the ruins of +castles.[84] It is true that no plain, however beautiful, ever seemed so +in his eyes; he required torrents, rocks, dark forests, mountains, and +precipices.[85] This does not affect the fact that he never moralised +appalling landscape, as post-revolutionary writers have done, and that +the Alpine wastes which throw your puniest modern into a rapture, had no +attraction for him. He could steep himself in nature without climbing +fifteen thousand feet to find her. In landscape, as has been said by one +with a right to speak, Rousseau was truly a great artist, and you can, +if you are artistic too, follow him with confidence in his wanderings; +he understood that beauty does not require a great stage, and that the +effect of things lies in harmony.[86] The humble heights of the Jura, +and the lovely points of the valley of Chamberi, sufficed to give him +all the pleasure of which he was capable. In truth a man cannot escape +from his time, and Rousseau at least belonged to the eighteenth century +in being devoid of the capacity for feeling awe, and the taste for +objects inspiring it. Nature was a tender friend with softest bosom, and +no sphinx with cruel enigma. He felt neither terror, nor any sense of +the littleness of man, nor of the mysteriousness of life, nor of the +unseen forces which make us their sport, as he peered over the precipice +and heard the water roaring at the bottom of it; he only remained for +hours enjoying the physical sensation of dizziness with which it turned +his brain, with a break now and again for hurling large stones, and +watching them roll and leap down into the torrent, with as little +reflection and as little articulate emotion as if he had been a +child.[87] + +Just as it is convenient for purposes of classification to divide a man +into body and soul, even when we believe the soul to be only a function +of the body, so people talk of his intellectual side and his emotional +side, his thinking quality and his feeling quality, though in fact and +at the roots these qualities are not two but one, with temperament for +the common substratum. During this period of his life the whole of +Rousseau's true force went into his feelings, and at all times feeling +predominated over reflection, with many drawbacks and some advantages of +a very critical kind for subsequent generations of men. Nearly every one +who came into contact with him in the way of testing his capacity for +being instructed pronounced him hopeless. He had several excellent +opportunities of learning Latin, especially at Turin in the house of +Count Gouvon, and in the seminary at Annecy, and at Les Charmettes he +did his best to teach himself, but without any better result than a very +limited power of reading. In learning one rule he forgot the last; he +could never master the most elementary laws of versification; he learnt +and re-learnt twenty times the Eclogues of Virgil, but not a single word +remained with him.[88] He was absolutely without verbal memory, and he +pronounces himself wholly incapable of learning anything from masters. +Madame de Warens tried to have him taught both dancing and fencing; he +could never achieve a minuet, and after three months of instruction he +was as clumsy and helpless with his foil as he had been on the first +day. He resolved to become a master at the chessboard; he shut himself +up in his room, and worked night and day over the books with +indescribable efforts which covered many weeks. On proceeding to the +cafe to manifest his powers, he found that all the moves and +combinations had got mixed up in his head, he saw nothing but clouds on +the board, and as often as he repeated the experiment he only found +himself weaker than before. Even in music, for which he had a genuine +passion and at which he worked hard, he never could acquire any facility +at sight, and he was an inaccurate scorer, even when only copying the +score of others.[89] + +Two things nearly incompatible, he writes in an important passage, are +united in me without my being able to think how; an extremely ardent +temperament, lively and impetuous passions, along with ideas that are +very slow in coming to birth, very embarrassed, and which never arise +until after the event. "One would say that my heart and my intelligence +do not belong to the same individual.... I feel all, and see nothing; I +am carried away, but I am stupid.... This slowness of thinking, united +with such vivacity of feeling, possesses me not only in conversation, +but when I am alone and working. My ideas arrange themselves in my head +with incredible difficulty; they circulate there in a dull way and +ferment until they agitate me, fill me with heat, and give me +palpitations; in the midst of this stir I see nothing clearly, I could +not write a single word. Insensibly the violent emotion grows still, the +chaos is disentangled, everything falls into its place, but very slowly +and after long and confused agitation."[90] + +So far from saying that his heart and intelligence belonged to two +persons, we might have been quite sure, knowing his heart, that his +intelligence must be exactly what he describes its process to have been. +The slow-burning ecstasy in which he knew himself at his height and was +most conscious of fulness of life, was incompatible with the rapid and +deliberate generation of ideas. The same soft passivity, the same +receptiveness, which made his emotions like the surface of a lake under +sky and breeze, entered also into the working of his intellectual +faculties. But it happens that in this region, in the attainment of +knowledge, truth, and definite thoughts, even receptiveness implies a +distinct and active energy, and hence the very quality of temperament +which left him free and eager for sensuous impressions, seemed to muffle +his intelligence in a certain opaque and resisting medium, of the +indefinable kind that interposes between will and action in a dream. His +rational part was fatally protected by a non-conducting envelope of +sentiment; this intercepted clear ideas on their passage, and even cut +off the direct and true impress of those objects and their relations, +which are the material of clear ideas. He was no doubt right in his +avowal that objects generally made less impression on him than the +recollection of them; that he could see nothing of what was before his +eyes, and had only his intelligence in cases where memories were +concerned; and that of what was said or done in his presence, he felt +and penetrated nothing.[91] In other words, this is to say that his +material of thought was not fact but image. When he plunged into +reflection, he did not deal with the objects of reflection at first hand +and in themselves, but only with the reminiscences of objects, which he +had never approached in a spirit of deliberate and systematic +observation, and with those reminiscences, moreover, suffused and +saturated by the impalpable but most potent essences of a fermenting +imagination. Instead of urgently seeking truth with the patient energy, +the wariness, and the conscience, with the sharpened instruments, the +systematic apparatus, and the minute feelers and tentacles of the +genuine thinker and solid reasoner, he only floated languidly on a +summer tide of sensation, and captured premiss and conclusion in a +succession of swoons. It would be a mistake to contend that no work can +be done for the world by this method, or that truth only comes to those +who chase her with logical forceps. But one should always try to +discover how a teacher of men came by his ideas, whether by careful +toil, or by the easy bequest of generous phantasy. + +To give a zest to rural delight, and partly perhaps to satisfy the +intellectual interest which must have been an instinct in one who became +so consummate a master in the great and noble art of composition, +Rousseau, during the time when he lived with Madame de Warens, tried as +well as he knew how to acquire a little knowledge of what fruit the +cultivation of the mind of man had hitherto brought forth. According to +his own account, it was Voltaire's Letters on the English which first +drew him seriously to study, and nothing which that illustrious man +wrote at this time escaped him. His taste for Voltaire inspired him with +the desire of writing with elegance, and of imitating "the fine and +enchanting colour of Voltaire's style"[92]--an object in which he cannot +be held to have in the least succeeded, though he achieved a superb +style of his own. On his return from Turin Madame de Warens had begun in +some small way to cultivate a taste for letters in him, though he had +lost the enthusiasm of his childhood for reading. Saint Evremond, +Puffendorff, the Henriade, and the Spectator happened to be in his room, +and he turned over their pages. The Spectator, he says, pleased him +greatly and did him much good.[93] Madame de Warens was what he calls +protestant in literary taste, and would talk for ever of the great +Bayle, while she thought more of Saint Evremond than she could ever +persuade Rousseau to think. Two or three years later than this he began +to use his own mind more freely, and opened his eyes for the first time +to the greatest question that ever dawns upon any human intelligence +that has the privilege of discerning it, the problem of a philosophy and +a body of doctrine. + +His way of answering it did not promise the best results. He read an +introduction to the Sciences, then he took an Encyclopaedia and tried to +learn all things together, until he repented and resolved to study +subjects apart. This he found a better plan for one to whom long +application was so fatiguing, that he could not with any effect occupy +himself for half an hour on any one matter, especially if following the +ideas of another person.[94] He began his morning's work, after an hour +or two of dispersive chat, with the Port-Royal Logic, Locke's Essay on +the Human Understanding, Malebranche, Leibnitz, Descartes.[95] He found +these authors in a condition of such perpetual contradiction among +themselves, that he formed the chimerical design of reconciling them +with one another. This was tedious, so he took up another method, on +which he congratulated himself to the end of his life. It consisted in +simply adopting and following the ideas of each author, without +comparing them either with one another or with those of other writers, +and above all without any criticism of his own. Let me begin, he said, +by collecting a store of ideas, true or false, but at any rate clear, +until my head is well enough stocked to enable me to compare and choose. +At the end of some years passed "in never thinking exactly, except after +other people, without reflecting so to speak, and almost without +reasoning," he found himself in a state to think for himself. "In spite +of beginning late to exercise my judicial faculty, I never found that it +had lost its vigour, and when I came to publish my own ideas, I was +hardly accused of being a servile disciple."[96] + +To that fairly credible account of the matter, one can only say that +this mutually exclusive way of learning the thoughts of others, and +developing thoughts of your own, is for an adult probably the most +mischievous, where it is not the most impotent, fashion in which +intellectual exercise can well be taken. It is exactly the use of the +judicial faculty, criticising, comparing, and defining, which is +indispensable in order that a student should not only effectually +assimilate the ideas of a writer, but even know what those ideas come to +and how much they are worth. And so when he works at ideas of his own, a +judicial faculty which has been kept studiously slumbering for some +years, is not likely to revive in full strength without any preliminary +training. Rousseau was a man of singular genius, and he set an +extraordinary mark on Europe, but this mark would have been very +different if he had ever mastered any one system of thought, or if he +had ever fully grasped what systematic thinking means. Instead of this, +his debt to the men whom he read was a debt of piecemeal, and his +obligation an obligation for fragments; and this is perhaps the worst +way of acquiring an intellectual lineage, for it leaves out the vital +continuity of temper and method. It is a small thing to accept this or +that of Locke's notions upon education or the origin of ideas, if you do +not see the merit of his way of coming by his notions. In short, +Rousseau has distinctions in abundance, but the distinction of knowing +how to think, in the exact sense of that term, was hardly among them, +and neither now nor at any other time did he go through any of that +toilsome and vigorous intellectual preparation to which the ablest of +his contemporaries, Diderot, Voltaire, D'Alembert, Turgot, Condorcet, +Hume, all submitted themselves. His comfortable view was that "the +sensible and interesting conversations of a woman of merit are more +proper to form a young man than all the pedantical philosophy of +books."[97] + +Style, however, in which he ultimately became such a proficient, and +which wrought such marvels as only style backed by passion can work, +already engaged his serious attention. We have already seen how Voltaire +implanted in him the first root idea, which so many of us never perceive +at all, that there is such a quality of writing as style. He evidently +took pains with the form of expression and thought about it, in +obedience to some inborn harmonious predisposition which is the source +of all veritable eloquence, though there is no strong trace now nor for +many years to come of any irresistible inclination for literary +composition. We find him, indeed, in 1736 showing consciousness of a +slight skill in writing,[98] but he only thought of it as a possible +recommendation for a secretaryship to some great person. He also appears +to have practised verses, not for their own sake, for he always most +justly thought his own verses mediocre, and they are even worse; but on +the ground that verse-making is a rather good exercise for breaking +one's self to elegant inversions, and learning a greater ease in +prose.[99] At the age of one and twenty he composed a comedy, long +afterwards damned as _Narcisse_. Such prelusions, however, were of small +importance compared with the fact of his being surrounded by a moral +atmosphere in which his whole mind was steeped. It is not in the study +of Voltaire or another, but in the deep soft soil of constant mood and +old habit that such a style as Rousseau's has its growth. + +It was the custom to return to Chamberi for the winter, and the day of +their departure from Les Charmettes was always a day blurred and tearful +for Rousseau; he never left it without kissing the ground, the trees, +the flowers; he had to be torn away from it as from a loved companion. +At the first melting of the winter snows they left their dungeon in +Chamberi, and they never missed the earliest song of the nightingale. +Many a joyful day of summer peace remained vivid in Rousseau's memory, +and made a mixed heaven and hell for him long years after in the +stifling dingy Paris street, and the raw and cheerless air of a +Derbyshire winter.[100] "We started early in the morning," he says, +describing one of these simple excursions on the day of St. Lewis, who +was the very unconscious patron saint of Madame de Warens, "together and +alone; I proposed that we should go and ramble about the side of the +valley opposite to our own, which we had not yet visited. We sent our +provisions on before us, for we were to be out all day. We went from +hill to hill and wood to wood, sometimes in the sun and often in the +shade, resting from time to time and forgetting ourselves for whole +hours; chatting about ourselves, our union, our dear lot, and offering +unheard prayers that it might last. All seemed to conspire for the bliss +of this day. Rain had fallen a short time before; there was no dust, and +the little streams were full; a light fresh breeze stirred the leaves, +the air was pure, the horizon without a cloud, and the same serenity +reigned in our own hearts. Our dinner was cooked in a peasant's cottage, +and we shared it with his family. These Savoyards are such good souls! +After dinner we sought shade under some tall trees, where, while I +collected dry sticks for making our coffee, Maman amused herself by +botanising among the bushes, and the expedition ended in transports of +tenderness and effusion."[101] This is one of such days as the soul +turns back to when the misery that stalks after us all has seized it, +and a man is left to the sting and smart of the memory of +irrecoverable things. + +He was resolved to bind himself to Madame de Warens with an inalterable +fidelity for all the rest of his days; he would watch over her with all +the dutiful and tender vigilance of a son, and she should be to him +something dearer than mother or wife or sister. What actually befell was +this. He was attacked by vapours, which he characterises as the disorder +of the happy. One symptom of his disease was the conviction derived from +the rash perusal of surgeon's treatises, that he was suffering from a +polypus in the heart. On the not very chivalrous principle that if he +did not spend Madame de Warens' money, he was only leaving it for +adventurers and knaves, he proceeded to Montpellier to consult the +physicians, and took the money for his expenses out of his +benefactress's store, which was always slender because it was always +open to any hand. While on the road, he fell into an intrigue with a +travelling companion, whom critics have compared to the fair Philina of +Wilhelm Meister. In due time, the Montpellier doctor being unable to +discover a disease, declared that the patient had none. The scenery was +dull and unattractive, and this would have counterbalanced the +weightiest prudential reasons with him at any time. Rousseau debated +whether he should keep tryst with his gay fellow-traveller, or return to +Chamberi. Remorse and that intractable emptiness of pocket which is the +iron key to many a deed of ingenuous-looking self-denial and Spartan +virtue, directed him homewards. Here he had a surprise, and perhaps +learnt a lesson. He found installed in the house a personage whom he +describes as tall, fair, noisy, coxcombical, flat-faced, flat-souled. +Another triple alliance seemed a thing odious in the eyes of a man whom +his travelling diversions had made a Pharisee for the hour. He +protested, but Madame de Warens was a woman of principle, and declined +to let Rousseau, who had profited by the doctrine of indifference, now +set up in his own favour the contrary doctrine of a narrow and churlish +partiality. So a short, delicious, and never-forgotten episode came to +an end: this pair who had known so much happiness together were happy +together no more, and the air became peopled for Rousseau with wan +spectres of dead joys and fast gathering cares. + +The dates of the various events described in the fifth and sixth books +of the Confessions are inextricable, and the order is evidently inverted +more than once. The inversion of order is less serious than the +contradictions between the dates of the Confessions and the more +authentic and unmistakable dates of his letters. For instance, he +describes a visit to Geneva as having been made shortly before Lautrec's +temporary pacification of the civic troubles of that town; and that +event took place in the spring of 1738. This would throw the Montpellier +journey, which he says came after the visit to Geneva, into 1738, but +the letters to Madame de Warens from Grenoble and Montpellier are dated +in the autumn and winter of 1737.[102] Minor verifications attest the +exactitude of the dates of the letters,[103] and we may therefore +conclude that he returned from Montpellier, found his place taken and +lost his old delight in Les Charmettes, in the early part of 1738. In +the tenth of the Reveries he speaks of having passed "a space of four or +five years" in the bliss of Les Charmettes, and it is true that his +connection with it in one way and another lasted from the middle of 1736 +until about the middle of 1741. But as he left for Montpellier in the +autumn of 1737, and found the obnoxious Vinzenried installed in 1738, +the pure and characteristic felicity of Les Charmettes perhaps only +lasted about a year or a year and a half. But a year may set a deep mark +on a man, and give him imperishable taste of many things bitter +and sweet. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[38] _Conf._, iii. 177. + +[39] Lamartine in _Raphael_ defies "a reasonable man to recompose with +any reality the character that Rousseau gives to his mistress, out of +the contradictory elements which he associates in her nature. One of +these elements excludes the other." It is worth while for any who care +for this kind of study to compare Madame de Warens with the Marquise +de Courcelles, whom Sainte-Beuve has well called the Manon Lescaut of +the seventeenth century. + +[40] Described by Rousseau in a memorandum for the biographer of M. de +Bernex, printed in _Melanges_, pp. 139-144. + +[41] De Tavel, by name. Disorderly ideas as to the relations of the +sexes began to appear in Switzerland along with the reformation of +religion. In the sixteenth century a woman appeared at Geneva with the +doctrine that it is as inhuman and as unjustifiable to refuse the +gratification of this appetite in a man as to decline to give food and +drink to the starving. Picot's _Hist. de Geneve_, vol. ii. + +[42] _Conf._, v. 341. Also ii. 83; and vi. 401. + +[43] _Conf._, v. 345. + +[44] _Conf._, ii. 83. + +[45] _Ib._ ii. 82. + +[46] _Ib._ iii. 179. See also 200. + +[47] _Conf._, iii. 177, 178. + +[48] _Conf._, iii. 183. + +[49] M. d'Aubonne. + +[50] _Conf._, iii 192. + +[51] M. Gatier. + +[52] M. Gaime. + +[53] _Conf._, iii. 204. + +[54] _Ib._ iii. 209, 210. + +[55] _Conf._, iii. 217-222. + +[56] _Conf._, iv. 227. + +[57] _Ib._ iii. 224. + +[58] One Venture de Villeneuve, who visited him years afterwards +(1755) in Paris, when Rousseau found that the idol of old days was a +crapulent debauchee. _Ib._ viii. 221. + +[59] Mdlles. de Graffenried and Galley. _Conf._, iv. 231. + +[60] _Ib._ iv. 254-256. + +[61] _Conf._, iv. 253. + +[62] While in the ambassador's house at Soleure, he was lodged in a +room which had once belonged to his namesake, Jean Baptiste Rousseau +(_b. 1670--d. 1741_), whom the older critics astonishingly insist on +counting the first of French lyric poets. There was a third Rousseau, +Pierre [_b. 1725--d. 1785_], who wrote plays and did other work now +well forgotten. There are some lines imperfectly commemorative of the +trio-- + +Trois auteurs que Rousseau l'on nomme, Connus de Paris jusqu'a Rome, +Sont differens; voici par ou; Rousseau de Paris fut grand homme; +Rousseau de Geneve est un fou; Rousseau de Toulouse un atome. + +Jean Jacques refers to both his namesakes in his letter to Voltaire, +Jan. 30, 1750. _Corr._, i. 145. + +[63] The only object which ever surpassed his expectation was the +great Roman structure near Nismes, the Pont du Gard. _Conf._, vi. 446. + +[64] Rousseau gives 1732 as the probable date of his return to +Chamberi, after his first visit to Paris [_Conf._, v. 305], and the +only objection to this is his mention of the incident of the march of +the French troops, which could not have happened until the winter of +1733, as having taken place "some months" after his arrival. +Musset-Pathay accepts this as decisive, and fixes the return in the +spring of 1733 [i. 12]. My own conjectural chronology is this: Returns +from Turin towards the autumn of 1729; stays at Annecy until the +spring of 1731; passes the winter of 1731-2 at Neuchatel; first visits +Paris in spring of 1732; returns to Savoy in the early summer of 1732. +But a precise harmonising of the dates in the Confessions is +impossible; Rousseau wrote them three and thirty years after our +present point [in 1766 at Wootton], and never claimed to be exact in +minuteness of date. Fortunately such matters in the present case are +absolutely devoid of importance. + +[65] _Conf._, iv. 279, 280. + +[66] _Conf._, iv. 290, 291, + +[67] _Conf._, iv. 281-283. + +[68] _Conf._, v. 325. + +[69] _Conf._, v. 360-364. _Corr._, i. 21-24. + +[70] _Conf._, v. 349, 350. + +[71] Apparently in the summer of 1736, though, the reference to the +return of the French troops at the peace [_Ib._ v. 365] would place it +in 1735. + +[72] _Ib._ v. 356 + +[73] _Ib._ + +[74] _Conf._, v. 315, 316. + +[75] _Ib._ iv. 276. _Nouv. Hel._, II. xiv. 381, etc. + +[76] He refers to the ill-health of his youth, _Conf._, vii. 32, and +describes an ominous head seizure while at Chamberi, _Ib._ vi. 396. + +[77] Rousseau's description of Les Charmettes is at the end of the +fifth book. The present proprietor keeps the house arranged as it used +to be, and has gathered one or two memorials of its famous tenant, +including his poor _clavecin_ and his watch. In an outside wall, +Herault de Sechelles, when Commissioner from the Convention in the +department of Mont Blanc, inserted a little white stone with two most +lapidary stanzas inscribed upon it, about _genie, solitude, fierte, +gloire, verite, envie_, and the like. + +[78] _Reveries_, x. 336 (1778). + +[79] _Conf._, vi. 393. + +[80] _Conf._, vi. 412. + +[81] _Mem. de Mdme. d'Epinay_, i. 394. (M. Boiteau's edition: +Charpentier. 1865.) + +[82] _Conf._, vi. 399. + +[83] _Ib._ vi. 424. Goethe made a similar experiment; see Mr. Lewes's +_Life_, p. 126. + +[84] Bernardin de Saint Pierre tells us this. _Oeuvres_ (Ed. 1818), +xii. 70, etc. + +[85] _Conf._, iv. 297. See also the description of the scenery of the +Valais, in the _Nouv. Hel._, Pt. I. Let. xxiii. + +[86] George Sand in _Mademoiselle la Quintinie_ (p. 27), a book +containing some peculiarly subtle appreciations of the Savoy +landscape. + +[87] _Conf._, iv. 298. + +[88] _Conf._, vi. 416, 422, etc.; iii. 164; iii. 203; v. 347; v. 383, +384. Also vii. 53. + +[89] _Conf._, v. 313, 367; iv. 293; ix. 353. Also _Mem. de Mdme. +d'Epinay_, ii. 151. + +[90] _Ib._ iii. 192, 193. + +[91] _Conf._, iv. 301; iii. 195. + +[92] _Conf._, v. 372, 373. The mistaken date assigned to the +correspondence between Voltaire and Frederick is one of many instances +how little we can trust the Confessions for minute accuracy, though +their substantial veracity is confirmed by all the collateral evidence +that we have. + +[93] _Ib._ iii. 188. For his debt in the way of education to Madame de +Warens, see also _Ib._ vii. 46. + +[94] _Conf._, vi. 409. + +[95] _Ib._ vi. 413. He adds a suspicious-looking "_et cetera_." + +[96] _Conf._, vi. 414 + +[97] _Conf._, iv. 295. See also v. 346. + +[98] _Corr._, 1736, pp. 26, 27. + +[99] _Conf._, iv. 271, where he says further that he never found +enough attraction in French poetry to make him think of pursuing it. + +[100] The first part of the Confessions was written in Wootton in +Derbyshire, in the winter of 1766-1767. + +[101] _Conf._, vi. 422. + +[102] _Corr._, i. 43, 46, 62, etc. + +[103] Musset-Pathay, i. 23, _n._ + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +THERESA LE VASSEUR. + + +Men like Rousseau, who are most heedless in letting their delight +perish, are as often as not most loth to bury what they have slain, or +even to perceive that life has gone out of it. The sight of simple +hearts trying to coax back a little warm breath of former days into a +present that is stiff and cold with indifference, is touching enough. +But there is a certain grossness around the circumstances in which +Rousseau now and too often found himself, that makes us watch his +embarrassment with some composure. One cannot easily think of him as a +simple heart, and we feel perhaps as much relief as he, when he resolves +after making all due efforts to thrust out the intruder and bring Madame +de Warens over from theories which had become too practical to be +interesting, to leave Les Charmettes and accept a tutorship at Lyons. +His new patron was a De Mably, elder brother of the philosophic abbe of +the same name (1709-85), and of the still more notable Condillac +(1714-80). + +The future author of the most influential treatise on education that has +ever been written, was not successful in the practical and far more +arduous side of that master art.[104] We have seen how little training +he had ever given himself in the cardinal virtues of collectedness and +self-control, and we know this to be the indispensable quality in all +who have to shape young minds for a humane life. So long as all went +well, he was an angel, but when things went wrong, he is willing to +confess that he was a devil. When his two pupils could not understand +him, he became frantic; when they showed wilfulness or any other part of +the disagreeable materials out of which, along with the rest, human +excellence has to be ingeniously and painfully manufactured, he was +ready to kill them. This, as he justly admits, was not the way to render +them either well learned or sage. The moral education of the teacher +himself was hardly complete, for he describes how he used to steal his +employer's wine, and the exquisite draughts which he enjoyed in the +secrecy of his own room, with a piece of cake in one hand and some dear +romance in the other. We should forgive greedy pilferings of this kind +more easily if Rousseau had forgotten them more speedily. These are +surely offences for which the best expiation is oblivion in a throng of +worthier memories. + +It is easy to understand how often Rousseau's mind turned from the +deadly drudgery of his present employment to the beatitude of former +days. "What rendered my present condition insupportable was the +recollection of my beloved Charmettes, of my garden, my trees, my +fountain, my orchard, and above all of her for whom I felt myself born +and who gave life to it all. As I thought of her, of our pleasures, our +guileless days, I was seized by a tightness in my heart, a stopping of +my breath, which robbed me of all spirit."[105] For years to come this +was a kind of far-off accompaniment, thrumming melodiously in his ears +under all the discords of a miserable life. He made another effort to +quicken the dead. Throwing up his office with his usual promptitude in +escaping from the irksome, after a residence of something like a year at +Lyons (April, 1740--spring of 1741), he made his way back to his old +haunts. The first half-hour with Madame de Warens persuaded him that +happiness here was really at an end. After a stay of a few months, his +desolation again overcame him. It was agreed that he should go to Paris +to make his fortune by a new method of musical notation which he had +invented, and after a short stay at Lyons, he found himself for the +second time in the famous city which in the eighteenth century had +become for the moment the centre of the universe.[106] + +It was not yet, however, destined to be a centre for him. His plan of +musical notation was examined by a learned committee of the Academy, no +member of whom was instructed in the musical art. Rousseau, dumb, +inarticulate, and unready as usual, was amazed at the ease with which +his critics by the free use of sounding phrases demolished arguments and +objections which he perceived that they did not at all understand. His +experience on this occasion suggested to him the most just reflection, +how even without breadth of intelligence, the profound knowledge of any +one thing is preferable in forming a judgment about it, to all possible +enlightenment conferred by the cultivation of the sciences, without +study of the special matter in question. It astonished him that all +these learned men, who knew so many things, could yet be so ignorant +that a man should only pretend to be a judge in his own craft.[107] + +His musical path to glory and riches thus blocked up, he surrendered +himself not to despair but to complete idleness and peace of mind. He +had a few coins left, and these prevented him from thinking of a future. +He was presented to one or two great ladies, and with the blundering +gallantry habitual to him he wrote a letter to one of the greatest of +them, declaring his passion for her. Madame Dupin was the daughter of +one, and the wife of another, of the richest men in France, and the +attentions of a man whose acquaintance Madame Beuzenval had begun by +inviting him to dine in the servants' hall, were not pleasing to +her.[108] She forgave the impertinence eventually, and her stepson, M. +Francueil, was Rousseau's patron for some years.[109] On the whole, +however, in spite of his own account of his social ineptitude, there +cannot have been anything so repulsive in his manners as this account +would lead us to think. There is no grave anachronism in introducing +here the impression which he made on two fine ladies not many years +after this. "He pays compliments, yet he is not polite, or at least he +is without the air of politeness. He seems to be ignorant of the usages +of society, but it is easily seen that he is infinitely intelligent. He +has a brown complexion, while eyes that overflow with fire give +animation to his expression. When he has spoken and you look at him, he +appears comely; but when you try to recall him, his image is always +extremely plain. They say that he has bad health, and endures agony +which from some motive of vanity he most carefully conceals. It is +this, I fancy, which gives him from time to time an air of +sullenness."[110] The other lady, who saw him at the same time, speaks +of "the poor devil of an author, who's as poor as Job for you, but with +wit and vanity enough for four.... They say his history is as queer as +his person, and that is saying a good deal.... Madame Maupeou and I +tried to guess what it was. 'In spite of his face,' said she (for it is +certain he is uncommonly plain), 'his eyes tell that love plays a great +part in his romance.' 'No,' said I, 'his nose tells me that it is +vanity.' 'Well then, 'tis both one and the other.'"[111] + +One of his patronesses took some trouble to procure him the post of +secretary to the French ambassador at Venice, and in the spring of 1743 +our much-wandering man started once more in quest of meat and raiment in +the famous city of the Adriatic. This was one of those steps of which +there are not a few in a man's life, that seem at the moment to rank +foremost in the short line of decisive acts, and then are presently seen +not to have been decisive at all, but mere interruptions conducting +nowhither. In truth the critical moments with us are mostly as points in +slumber. Even if the ancient oracles of the gods were to regain their +speech once more on the earth, men would usually go to consult them on +days when the answer would have least significance, and could guide +them least far. That one of the most heedless vagrants in Europe, and as +it happened one of the men of most extraordinary genius also, should +have got a footing in the train of the ambassador of a great government, +would naturally seem to him and others as chance's one critical stroke +in his life. In reality it was nothing. The Count of Montaigu, his +master, was one of the worst characters with whom Rousseau could for his +own profit have been brought into contact. In his professional quality +he was not far from imbecile. The folly and weakness of the government +at Versailles during the reign of Lewis XV., and its indifference to +competence in every department except perhaps partially in the fisc, was +fairly illustrated in its absurd representative at Venice. The +secretary, whose renown has preserved his master's name, has recorded +more amply than enough the grounds of quarrel between them. Rousseau is +for once eager to assert his own efficiency, and declares that he +rendered many important services for which he was repaid with +ingratitude and persecution.[112] One would be glad to know what the +Count of Montaigu's version of matters was, for in truth Rousseau's +conduct in previous posts makes us wonder how it was that he who had +hitherto always been unfaithful over few things, suddenly touched +perfection when he became lord over many. + +There is other testimony, however, to the ambassador's morbid quality, +of which, after that general imbecility which was too common a thing +among men in office to be remarkable, avarice was the most striking +trait. For instance, careful observation had persuaded him that three +shoes are equivalent to two pairs, because there is always one of a pair +which is more worn than its fellow; and hence he habitually ordered his +shoes in threes.[113] It was natural enough that such a master and such +a secretary should quarrel over perquisites. That slightly cringing +quality which we have noticed on one or two occasions in Rousseau's +hungry youthful time, had been hardened out of him by circumstance or +the strengthening of inborn fibre. He would now neither dine in a +servants' hall because a fine lady forgot what was due to a musician, +nor share his fees with a great ambassador who forgot what was due to +himself. These sordid disputes are of no interest now to anybody, and we +need only say that after a period of eighteen months passed in +uncongenial company, Rousseau parted from his count in extreme dudgeon, +and the diplomatic career which he had promised to himself came to the +same close as various other careers had already done. + +He returned to Paris towards the end of 1744, burning with indignation +at the unjust treatment which he believed himself to have suffered, and +laying memorial after memorial before the minister at home. He assures +us that it was the justice and the futility of his complaints, that left +in his soul the germ of exasperation against preposterous civil +institutions, "in which the true common weal and real justice are always +sacrificed to some seeming order or other, which is in fact destructive +of all order, and only adds the sanction of public authority to the +oppression of the weak and the iniquity of the strong."[114] + +One or two pictures connected with the Venetian episode remain in the +memory of the reader of the Confessions, and among them perhaps with +most people is that of the quarantine at Genoa in Rousseau's voyage to +his new post. The travellers had the choice of remaining on board the +felucca, or passing the time in an unfurnished lazaretto. This, we may +notice in passing, was his first view of the sea; he makes no mention of +the fact, nor does the sight or thought of the sea appear to have left +the least mark in any line of his writings. He always disliked it, and +thought of it with melancholy. Rousseau, as we may suppose, found the +want of space and air in the boat the most intolerable of evils, and +preferred to go alone to the lazaretto, though it had neither +window-sashes nor tables nor chairs nor bed, nor even a truss of straw +to lie down upon. He was locked up and had the whole barrack to himself. +"I manufactured," he says, "a good bed out of my coats and shirts, +sheets out of towels which I stitched together, a pillow out of my old +cloak rolled up. I made myself a seat of one trunk placed flat, and a +table of the other. I got out some paper and my writing-desk, and +arranged some dozen books that I had by way of library. In short I made +myself so comfortable, that, with the exception of curtains and windows, +I was nearly as well off in this absolutely naked lazaretto as in my +lodgings in Paris. My meals were served with much pomp; two grenadiers, +with bayonets at their musket-ends, escorted them; the staircase was my +dining-room, the landing did for table and the lower step for a seat, +and when my dinner was served, they rang a little bell as they withdrew, +to warn me to seat myself at table. Between my meals, when I was neither +writing nor reading, nor busy with my furnishing, I went for a walk in +the Protestant graveyard, or mounted into a lantern which looked out on +to the port, and whence I could see the ships sailing in and out. I +passed a fortnight in this way, and I could have spent the whole three +weeks of the quarantine without feeling an instant's weariness."[115] + +These are the occasions when we catch glimpses of the true Rousseau; but +his residence in Venice was on the whole one of his few really sociable +periods. He made friends and kept them, and there was even a certain +gaiety in his life. He used to tell people their fortunes in a way that +an earlier century would have counted unholy.[116] He rarely sought +pleasure in those of her haunts for which the Queen of the Adriatic had +a guilty renown, but he has left one singular anecdote, showing the +degree to which profound sensibility is capable of doing the moralist's +work in a man, and how a stroke of sympathetic imagination may keep one +from sin more effectually than an ethical precept.[117] It is pleasanter +to think of him as working at the formation of that musical taste which +ten years afterwards led him to amaze the Parisians by proving that +French melody was a hollow idea born of national self-delusion. A +Venetian experiment, whose evidence in the special controversy is less +weighty perhaps than Rousseau supposed, was among the facts which +persuaded him that Italian is the language of music. An Armenian who had +never heard any music was invited to listen first of all to a French +monologue, and then to an air of Galuppi's. Rousseau observed in the +Armenian more surprise than pleasure during the performance of the +French piece. The first notes of the Italian were no sooner struck, than +his eyes and whole expression softened; he was enchanted, surrendered +his whole soul to the ravishing impressions of the music, and could +never again be induced to listen to the performance of any +French air.[118] + +More important than this was the circumstance that the sight of the +defects of the government of the Venetian Republic first drew his mind +to political speculation, and suggested to him the composition of a +book that was to be called Institutions Politiques.[119] The work, as +thus designed and named, was never written, but the idea of it, after +many years of meditation, ripened first in the Discourse on Inequality, +and then in the Social Contract. + +If Rousseau's departure for Venice was a wholly insignificant element in +his life, his return from it was almost immediately followed by an event +which counted for nothing at the moment, which his friends by and by +came to regard as the fatal and irretrievable disaster of his life, but +which he persistently described as the only real consolation that heaven +permitted him to taste in his misery, and the only one that enabled him +to bear his many sore burdens.[120] + +He took up his quarters at a small and dirty hotel not far from the +Sorbonne, where he had alighted on the occasion of his second arrival in +Paris.[121] Here was a kitchen-maid, some two-and-twenty years old, who +used to sit at table with her mistress and the guests of the house. The +company was rough, being mainly composed of Irish and Gascon abbes, and +other people to whom graces of mien and refinement of speech had come +neither by nature nor cultivation. The hostess herself pitched the +conversation in merry Rabelaisian key, and the apparent modesty of her +serving-woman gave a zest to her own licence. Rousseau was moved with +pity for a maid defenceless against a ribald storm, and from pity he +advanced to some warmer sentiment, and he and Theresa Le Vasseur took +each other for better for worse, in a way informal but sufficiently +effective. This was the beginning of a union which lasted for the length +of a generation and more, down to the day of Rousseau's most tragical +ending.[122] She thought she saw in him a worthy soul; and he was +convinced that he saw in her a woman of sensibility, simple and free +from trick, and neither of the two, he says, was deceived in respect of +the other. Her intellectual quality was unique. She could never be +taught to read with any approach to success. She could never follow the +order of the twelve months of the year, nor master a single arithmetical +figure, nor count a sum of money, nor reckon the price of a thing. A +month's instruction was not enough to give knowledge of the hours of the +day on the dial-plate. The words she used were often the direct +opposites of the words that she meant to use.[123] + +The marriage choice of others is the inscrutable puzzle of those who +have no eye for the fact that such choice is the great match of cajolery +between purpose and invisible hazard; the blessedness of many lives is +the stake, as intention happens to cheat accident or to be cheated by +it. When the match is once over, deep criticism of a game of pure chance +is time wasted. The crude talk in which the unwise deliver their +judgments upon the conditions of success in the relations between men +and women, has flowed with unprofitable copiousness as to this not very +inviting case. People construct an imaginary Rousseau out of his +writings, and then fetter their elevated, susceptible, sensitive, and +humane creation, to the unfortunate woman who could never be taught that +April is the month after March, or that twice four and a half are nine. +Now we have already seen enough of Rousseau to know for how infinitely +little he counted the gift of a quick wit, and what small store he set +either on literary varnish or on capacity for receiving it. He was +touched in people with whom he had to do, not by attainment, but by +moral fibre or his imaginary impression of their moral fibre. Instead of +analysing a character, bringing its several elements into the balance, +computing the more or less of this faculty or that, he loved to feel its +influence as a whole, indivisible, impalpable, playing without sound or +agitation around him like soft light and warmth and the fostering air. +The deepest ignorance, the dullest incapacity, the cloudiest faculties +of apprehension, were nothing to him in man or woman, provided he could +only be sensible of that indescribable emanation from voice and eye and +movement, that silent effusion of serenity around spoken words, which +nature has given to some tranquillising spirits, and which would have +left him free in an even life of indolent meditation and unfretted +sense. A woman of high, eager, stimulating kind would have been a more +fatal mate for him than the most stupid woman that ever rivalled the +stupidity of man. Stimulation in any form always meant distress to +Rousseau. The moist warmth of the Savoy valleys was not dearer to him +than the subtle inhalations of softened and close enveloping +companionship, in which the one needful thing is not intellectual +equality, but easy, smooth, constant contact of feeling about the +thousand small matters that make up the existence of a day. This is not +the highest ideal of union that one's mind can conceive from the point +of view of intense productive energy, but Rousseau was not concerned +with the conditions of productive energy. He only sought to live, to be +himself, and he knew better than any critics can know for him, what kind +of nature was the best supplement for his own. As he said in an +apophthegm with a deep melancholy lying at the bottom of it,--you never +can cite the example of a thoroughly happy man, for no one but the man +himself knows anything about it.[124] "By the side of people we love," +he says very truly, "sentiment nourishes the intelligence as well as the +heart, and we have little occasion to seek ideas elsewhere. I lived with +my Theresa as pleasantly as with the finest genius in the +universe."[125] + +Theresa Le Vasseur would probably have been happier if she had married a +stout stable-boy, as indeed she did some thirty years hence by way of +gathering up the fragments that were left; but there is little reason to +think that Rousseau would have been much happier with any other mate +than he was with Theresa. There was no social disparity between the two. +She was a person accustomed to hardship and coarseness, and so was he. +And he always systematically preferred the honest coarseness of the +plain people from whom he was sprung and among whom he had lived, to the +more hateful coarseness of heart which so often lurks under fine manners +and a complete knowledge of the order of the months in the year and the +arithmetical table. Rousseau had been a serving-man, and there was no +deterioration in going with a serving-woman.[126] However this may be, +it is certain that for the first dozen years or so of his +partnership--and many others as well as he are said to have found in +this term a limit to the conditions of the original contract,--Rousseau +had perfect and entire contentment in the Theresa whom all his friends +pronounced as mean, greedy, jealous, degrading, as she was avowedly +brutish in understanding. Granting that she was all these things, how +much of the responsibility for his acts has been thus shifted from the +shoulders of Rousseau himself, whose connection with her was from +beginning to end entirely voluntary? If he attached himself deliberately +to an unworthy object by a bond which he was indisputably free to break +on any day that he chose, were not the effects of such a union as much +due to his own character which sought, formed, and perpetuated it, as to +the character of Theresa Le Vasseur? Nothing, as he himself said in a +passage to which he appends a vindication of Theresa, shows the true +leanings and inclinations of a man better than the sort of attachments +which he forms.[127] + +It is a natural blunder in a literate and well-mannered society to +charge a mistake against a man who infringes its conventions in this +particular way. Rousseau knew what he was about, as well as politer +persons. He was at least as happy with his kitchen wench as Addison was +with his countess, or Voltaire with his marchioness, and he would not +have been what he was, nor have played the part that he did play in the +eighteenth century, if he had felt anything derogatory or unseemly in a +kitchen wench. The selection was probably not very deliberate; as it +happened, Theresa served as a standing illustration of two of his most +marked traits, a contempt for mere literary culture, and a yet deeper +contempt for social accomplishments and social position. In time he +found out the grievous disadvantages of living in solitude with a +companion who did not know how to think, and whose stock of ideas was so +slight that the only common ground of talk between them was gossip and +quodlibets. But her lack of sprightliness, beauty, grace, refinement, +and that gentle initiative by which women may make even a sombre life so +various, went for nothing with him. What his friends missed in her, he +did not seek and would not have valued; and what he found in her, they +were naturally unable to appreciate, for they never were in the mood for +detecting it. "I have not seen much of happy men," he wrote when near +his end, "perhaps nothing; but I have many a time seen contented hearts, +and of all the objects that have struck me, I believe it is this which +has always given most contentment to myself."[128] This moderate +conception of felicity, which was always so characteristic with him, as +an even, durable, and rather low-toned state of the feelings, accounts +for his prolonged acquiescence in a companion whom men with more elation +in their ideal would assuredly have found hostile even to the most +modest contentment. + +"The heart of my Theresa," he wrote long after the first tenderness had +changed into riper emotion on his side, and, alas, into indifference on +hers, "was that of an angel; our attachment waxed stronger with our +intimacy, and we felt more and more each day that we were made for one +another. If our pleasures could be described, their simplicity would +make you laugh; our excursions together out of town, in which I would +munificently expend eight or ten halfpence in some rural tavern; our +modest suppers at my window, seated in front of one another on two small +chairs placed on a trunk that filled up the breadth of the embrasure. +Here the window did duty for a table, we breathed the fresh air, we +could see the neighbourhood and the people passing by, and though on the +fourth story, could look down into the street as we ate. Who shall +describe, who shall feel the charms of those meals, consisting of a +coarse quartern loaf, some cherries, a tiny morsel of cheese, and a pint +of wine which we drank between us? Ah, what delicious seasoning there is +in friendship, confidence, intimacy, gentleness of soul! We used +sometimes to remain thus until midnight, without once thinking of the +time."[129] + +Men and women are often more fairly judged by the way in which they bear +the burden of what they have done, than by the prime act which laid the +burden on their lives.[130] The deeper part of us shows in the manner of +accepting consequences. On the whole, Rousseau's relations with this +woman present him in a better light than those with any other person +whatever. If he became with all the rest of the world suspicious, angry, +jealous, profoundly diseased in a word, with her he was habitually +trustful, affectionate, careful, most long-suffering. It sometimes even +occurs to us that his constancy to Theresa was only another side of the +morbid perversity of his relations with the rest of the world. People of +a certain kind not seldom make the most serious and vital sacrifices for +bare love of singularity, and a man like Rousseau was not unlikely to +feel an eccentric pleasure in proving that he could find merit in a +woman who to everybody else was desperate. One who is on bad terms with +the bulk of his fellows may contrive to save his self-respect and +confirm his conviction that they are all in the wrong, by preserving +attachment to some one to whom general opinion is hostile; the private +argument being that if he is capable of this degree of virtue and +friendship in an unfavourable case, how much more could he have +practised it with others, if they would only have allowed him. Whether +this kind of apology was present to his mind or not, Rousseau could +always refer those who charged him with black caprice, to his steady +kindness towards Theresa Le Vasseur. Her family were among the most +odious of human beings, greedy, idle, and ill-humoured, while her mother +had every fault that a woman could have in Rousseau's eyes, including +that worst fault of setting herself up for a fine wit. Yet he bore with +them all for years, and did not break with Madame Le Vasseur until she +had poisoned the mind of her daughter, and done her best by rapacity and +lying to render him contemptible to all his friends. + +In the course of years Theresa herself gave him unmistakable signs of a +change in her affections. "I began to feel," he says, at a date of +sixteen or seventeen years from our present point, "that she was no +longer for me what she had been in our happy years, and I felt it all +the more clearly as I was still the same towards her."[131] This was in +1762, and her estrangement grew deeper and her indifference more open, +until at length, seven years afterwards, we find that she had proposed a +separation from him. What the exact reasons for this gradual change may +have been we do not know, nor have we any right in ignorance of the +whole facts to say that they were not adequate and just. There are two +good traits recorded of the woman's character. She could never console +herself for having let her father be taken away to end his days +miserably in a house of charity.[132] And the repudiation of her +children, against which the glowing egoism of maternity always rebelled, +remained a cruel dart in her bosom as long as she lived. We may suppose +that there was that about household life with Rousseau which might have +bred disgusts even in one as little fastidious as Theresa was. Among +other things which must have been hard to endure, we know that in +composing his works he was often weeks together without speaking a word +to her.[133] Perhaps again it would not be difficult to produce some +passages in Rousseau's letters and in the Confessions, which show traces +of that subtle contempt for women that lurks undetected in many who +would blush to avow it. Whatever the causes may have been, from +indifference she passed to something like aversion, and in the one +place where a word of complaint is wrung from him, he describes her as +rending and piercing his heart at a moment when his other miseries were +at their height. His patience at any rate was inexhaustible; now old, +worn by painful bodily infirmities, racked by diseased suspicion and the +most dreadful and tormenting of the minor forms of madness, nearly +friendless, and altogether hopeless, he yet kept unabated the old +tenderness of a quarter of a century before, and expressed it in words +of such gentleness, gravity, and self-respecting strength, as may touch +even those whom his books leave unmoved, and who view his character with +deepest distrust. "For the six-and-twenty years, dearest, that our union +has lasted, I have never sought my happiness except in yours, and have +never ceased to try to make you happy; and you saw by what I did +lately,[134] that your honour and happiness were one as dear to me as +the other. I see with pain that success does not answer my solicitude, +and that my kindness is not as sweet to you to receive, as it is sweet +to me to show. I know that the sentiments of honour and uprightness with +which you were born will never change in you; but as for those of +tenderness and attachment which were once reciprocal between us, I feel +that they now only exist on my side. Not only, dearest of all friends, +have you ceased to find pleasure in my company, but you have to tax +yourself severely even to remain a few minutes with me out of +complaisance. You are at your ease with all the world but me. I do not +speak to you of many other things. We must take our friends with their +faults, and I ought to pass over yours, as you pass over mine. If you +were happy with me I could be content, but I see clearly that you are +not, and this is what makes my heart sore. If I could do better for your +happiness, I would do it and hold my peace; but that is not possible. I +have left nothing undone that I thought would contribute to your +felicity. At this moment, while I am writing to you, overwhelmed with +distress and misery, I have no more true or lively desire than to finish +my days in closest union with you. You know my lot,--it is such as one +could not even dare to describe, for no one could believe it. I never +had, my dearest, other than one single solace, but that the sweetest; it +was to pour out all my heart in yours; when I talked of my miseries to +you, they were soothed; and when you had pitied me, I needed pity no +more. My every resource, my whole confidence, is in you and in you only; +my soul cannot exist without sympathy, and cannot find sympathy except +with you. It is certain that if you fail me and I am forced to live +alone, I am as a dead man. But I should die a thousand times more +cruelly still, if we continued to live together in misunderstanding, and +if confidence and friendship were to go out between us. It would be a +hundred times better to cease to see each other; still to live, and +sometimes to regret one another. Whatever sacrifice may be necessary on +my part to make you happy, be so at any cost, and I shall be content. +We have faults to weep over and to expiate, but no crimes; let us not +blot out by the imprudence of our closing days the sweetness and purity +of those we have passed together."[135] Think ill as we may of +Rousseau's theories, and meanly as we may of some parts of his conduct, +yet to those who can feel the pulsing of a human life apart from a man's +formulae, and can be content to leave to sure circumstance the tragic +retaliation for evil behaviour, this letter is like one of the great +master's symphonies, whose theme falls in soft strokes of melting pity +on the heart. In truth, alas, the union of this now diverse pair had +been stained by crimes shortly after its beginning. In the estrangement +of father and mother in their late years we may perhaps hear the rustle +and spy the pale forms of the avenging spectres of their lost children. + +At the time when the connection with Theresa Le Vasseur was formed, +Rousseau did not know how to gain bread. He composed the musical +diversion of the Muses Galantes, which Rameau rightly or wrongly +pronounced a plagiarism, and at the request of Richelieu he made some +minor re-adaptations in Voltaire's Princesse de Navarre, which Rameau +had set to music--that "farce of the fair" to which the author of Zaire +owed his seat in the Academy.[136] But neither task brought him money, +and he fell back on a sort of secretaryship, with perhaps a little of +the valet in it, to Madame Dupin and her son-in-law, M. de Francueil, +for which he received the too moderate income of nine hundred francs. On +one occasion he returned to his room expecting with eager impatience the +arrival of a remittance, the proceeds of some small property which came +to him by the death of his father.[137] He found the letter, and was +opening it with trembling hands, when he was suddenly smitten with shame +at his want of self-control; he placed it unopened on the chimney-piece, +undressed, slept better than usual, and when he awoke the next morning, +he had forgotten all about the letter until it caught his eye. He was +delighted to find that it contained his money, but "I can swear," he +adds, "that my liveliest delight was in having conquered myself." An +occasion for self-conquest on a more considerable scale was at hand. In +these tight straits, he received grievous news from the unfortunate +Theresa. He made up his mind cheerfully what to do; the mother +acquiesced after sore persuasion and with bitter tears; and the new-born +child was dropped into oblivion in the box of the asylum for foundlings. +Next year the same easy expedient was again resorted to, with the same +heedlessness on the part of the father, the same pain and reluctance on +the part of the mother. Five children in all were thus put away, and +with such entire absence of any precaution with a view to their +identification in happier times, that not even a note was kept of the +day of their birth.[138] + +People have made a great variety of remarks upon this transaction, from +the economist who turns it into an illustration of the evil results of +hospitals for foundlings in encouraging improvident unions, down to the +theologian who sees in it new proof of the inborn depravity of the human +heart and the fall of man. Others have vindicated it in various ways, +one of them courageously taking up the ground that Rousseau had good +reason to believe that the children were not his own, and therefore was +fully warranted in sending the poor creatures kinless into the +universe.[139] Perhaps it is not too transcendental a thing to hope that +civilisation may one day reach a point when a plea like this shall count +for an aggravation rather than a palliative; when a higher conception of +the duties of humanity, familiarised by the practice of adoption as well +as by the spread of both rational and compassionate considerations as to +the blameless little ones, shall have expelled what is surely as some +red and naked beast's emotion of fatherhood. What may be an excellent +reason for repudiating a woman, can never be a reason for abandoning a +child, except with those whom reckless egoism has made willing to think +it a light thing to fling away from us the moulding of new lives and the +ensuring of salutary nurture for growing souls. + +We are, however, dispensed from entering into these questions of the +greater morals by the very plain account which the chief actor has given +us, almost in spite of himself. His crime like most others was the +result of heedlessness, of the overriding of duty by the short dim-eyed +selfishness of the moment. He had been accustomed to frequent a tavern, +where the talk turned mostly upon topics which men with much +self-respect put as far from them, as men with little self-respect will +allow them to do. "I formed my fashion of thinking from what I perceived +to reign among people who were at bottom extremely worthy folk, and I +said to myself, Since it is the usage of the country, as one lives here, +one may as well follow it. So I made up my mind to it cheerfully, and +without the least scruple."[140] By and by he proceeded to cover this +nude and intelligible explanation with finer phrases, about preferring +that his children should be trained up as workmen and peasants rather +than as adventurers and fortune-hunters, and about his supposing that in +sending them to the hospital for foundlings he was enrolling himself a +citizen in Plato's Republic.[141] This is hardly more than the talk of +one become famous, who is defending the acts of his obscurity on the +high principles which fame requires. People do not turn citizens of +Plato's Republic "cheerfully and without the least scruple," and if a +man frequents company where the despatch of inconvenient children to the +hospital was an accepted point of common practice, it is superfluous to +drag Plato and his Republic into the matter. Another turn again was +given to his motives when his mind had become clouded by suspicious +mania. Writing a year or two before his death he had assured himself +that his determining reason was the fear of a destiny for his children a +thousand times worse than the hard life of foundlings, namely, being +spoiled by their mother, being turned into monsters by her family, and +finally being taught to hate and betray their father by his plotting +enemies.[142] This is obviously a mixture in his mind of the motives +which led to the abandonment of the children and justified the act to +himself at the time, with the circumstances that afterwards reconciled +him to what he had done; for now he neither had any enemies plotting +against him, nor did he suppose that he had. As for his wife's family, +he showed himself quite capable, when the time came, of dealing +resolutely and shortly with their importunities in his own case, and he +might therefore well have trusted his power to deal with them in the +case of his children. He was more right when in 1770, in his important +letter to M. de St. Germain, he admitted that example, necessity, the +honour of her who was dear to him, all united to make him entrust his +children to the establishment provided for that purpose, and kept him +from fulfilling the first and holiest of natural duties. "In this, far +from excusing, I accuse myself; and when my reason tells me that I did +what I ought to have done in my situation, I believe that less than my +heart, which bitterly belies it."[143] This coincides with the first +undisguised account given in the Confessions, which has been already +quoted, and it has not that flawed ring of cant and fine words which +sounds through nearly all his other references to this great stain upon +his life, excepting one, and this is the only further document with +which we need concern ourselves. In that,[144] which was written while +the unholy work was actually being done, he states very distinctly that +the motives were those which are more or less closely connected with +most unholy works, motives of money--the great instrument and measure of +our personal convenience, the quantitative test of our self-control in +placing personal convenience behind duty to other people. "If my misery +and my misfortunes rob me of the power of fulfilling a duty so dear, +that is a calamity to pity me for, rather than a crime to reproach me +with. I owe them subsistence, and I procured a better or at least a +surer subsistence for them than I could myself have provided; this +condition is above all others." Next comes the consideration of their +mother, whose honour must be kept. "You know my situation; I gained my +bread from day to day painfully enough; how then should I feed a family +as well? And if I were compelled to fall back on the profession of +author, how would domestic cares and the confusion of children leave me +peace of mind enough in my garret to earn a living? Writings which +hunger dictates are hardly of any use, and such a resource is speedily +exhausted. Then I should have to resort to patronage, to intrigue, to +tricks ... in short to surrender myself to all those infamies, for which +I am penetrated with such just horror. Support myself, my children, and +their mother on the blood of wretches? No, madame, it were better for +them to be orphans than to have a scoundrel for their father.... Why +have I not married, you will ask? Madame, ask it of your unjust laws. It +was not fitting for me to contract an eternal engagement; and it will +never be proved to me that my duty binds me to it. What is certain is +that I have never done it, and that I never meant to do it. But we ought +not to have children when we cannot support them. Pardon me, madame; +nature means us to have offspring, since the earth produces sustenance +enough for all; but it is the rich, it is your class, which robs mine of +the bread of my children.... I know that foundlings are not delicately +nurtured; so much the better for them, they become more robust. They +have nothing superfluous given to them, but they have everything that is +necessary. They do not make gentlemen of them, but peasants or +artisans.... They would not know how to dance, or ride on horseback, but +they would have strong unwearied legs. I would neither make authors of +them, nor clerks; I would not practise them in handling the pen, but the +plough, the file, and the plane, instruments for leading a healthy, +laborious, innocent life.... I deprived myself of the delight of seeing +them, and I have never tasted the sweetness of a father's embrace. Alas, +as I have already told you, I see in this only a claim on your pity, and +I deliver them from misery at my own expense."[145] We may see here that +Rousseau's sophistical eloquence, if it misled others, was at least as +powerful in misleading himself, and it may be noted that this letter, +with its talk of the children of the rich taking bread out of the mouths +of the children of the poor, contains the first of those socialistic +sentences by which the writer in after times gained so famous a name. It +is at any rate clear from this that the real motive of the abandonment +of the children was wholly material. He could not afford to maintain +them, and he did not wish to have his comfort disturbed by +their presence. + +There is assuredly no word to be said by any one with firm reason and +unsophisticated conscience in extenuation of this crime. We have only to +remember that a great many other persons in that lax time, when the +structure of the family was undermined alike in practice and +speculation, were guilty of the same crime; that Rousseau, better than +they, did not erect his own criminality into a social theory, but was +tolerably soon overtaken by a remorse which drove him both to confess +his misdeed, and to admit that it was inexpiable; and that the atrocity +of the offence owes half the blackness with which it has always been +invested by wholesome opinion, to the fact that the offender was by and +by the author of the most powerful book by which parental duty has been +commended in its full loveliness and nobility. And at any rate, let +Rousseau be a little free from excessive reproach from all clergymen, +sentimentalists, and others, who do their worst to uphold the common and +rather bestial opinion in favour of reckless propagation, and who, if +they do not advocate the despatch of children to public institutions, +still encourage a selfish incontinence which ultimately falls in burdens +on others than the offenders, and which turns the family into a scene of +squalor and brutishness, producing a kind of parental influence that is +far more disastrous and demoralising than the absence of it in public +institutions can possibly be. If the propagation of children without +regard to their maintenance be either a virtue or a necessity, and if +afterwards the only alternatives are their maintenance in an asylum on +the one hand, and their maintenance in the degradation of a +poverty-stricken home on the other, we should not hesitate to give +people who act as Rousseau acted, all that credit for self-denial and +high moral courage which he so audaciously claimed for himself. It +really seems to be no more criminal to produce children with the +deliberate intention of abandoning them to public charity, as Rousseau +did, than it is to produce them in deliberate reliance on the besotted +maxim that he who sends mouths will send meat, or any other of the +spurious saws which make Providence do duty for self-control, and add to +the gratification of physical appetite the grotesque luxury of +religious unction. + +In 1761 the Marechale de Luxembourg made efforts to discover Rousseau's +children, but without success. They were gone beyond hope of +identification, and the author of _Emitius_ and his sons and daughters +lived together in this world, not knowing one another. Rousseau with +singular honesty did not conceal his satisfaction at the fruitlessness +of the charitable endeavours to restore them to him. "The success of +your search," he wrote, "could not give me pure and undisturbed +pleasure; it is too late, too late.... In my present condition this +search interested me more for another person [Theresa] than myself; and +considering the too easily yielding character of the person in question, +it is possible that what she had found already formed for good or for +evil, might turn out a sorry boon to her."[146] We may doubt, in spite +of one or two charming and graceful passages, whether Rousseau was of a +nature to have any feeling for the pathos of infancy, the bright blank +eye, the eager unpurposed straining of the hand, the many turns and +changes in murmurings that yet can tell us nothing. He was both too +self-centred and too passionate for warm ease and fulness of life in all +things, to be truly sympathetic with a condition whose feebleness and +immaturity touch us with half-painful hope. + +Rousseau speaks in the Confessions of having married Theresa +five-and-twenty years after the beginning of their acquaintance,[147] +but we hardly have to understand that any ceremony took place which +anybody but himself would recognise as constituting a marriage. What +happened appears to have been this. Seated at table with Theresa and two +guests, one of them the mayor of the place, he declared that she was his +wife. "This good and seemly engagement was contracted," he says, "in all +the simplicity but also in all the truth of nature, in the presence of +two men of worth and honour.... During the short and simple act, I saw +the honest pair melted in tears."[148] He had at this time whimsically +assumed the name of Renou, and he wrote to a friend that of course he +had married in this name, for he adds, with the characteristic insertion +of an irrelevant bit of magniloquence, "it is not names that are +married; no, it is persons." "Even if in this simple and holy ceremony +names entered as a constituent part, the one I bear would have sufficed, +since I recognise no other. If it were a question of property to be +assured, then it would be another thing, but you know very well that is +not our case."[149] Of course, this may have been a marriage according +to the truth of nature, and Rousseau was as free to choose his own rites +as more sacramental performers, but it is clear from his own words about +property that there was no pretence of a marriage in law. He and Theresa +were on profoundly uncomfortable terms about this time,[150] and +Rousseau is not the only person by many thousands who has deceived +himself into thinking that some form of words between man and woman must +magically transform the substance of their characters and lives, and +conjure up new relations of peace and steadfastness. + + * * * * * + +We have, however, been outstripping slow-footed destiny, and have now to +return to the time when Theresa did not drink brandy, nor run after +stable-boys, nor fill Rousseau's soul with bitterness and suspicion, but +sat contentedly with him in an evening taking a stoic's meal in the +window of their garret on the fourth floor, seasoning it with +"confidence, intimacy, gentleness of soul," and that general comfort of +sensation which, as we know to our cost, is by no means an invariable +condition either of duty done externally or of spiritual growth within. +It is perhaps hard for us to feel that we are in the presence of a great +religious reactionist; there is so little sign of the higher graces of +the soul, there are so many signs of the lowering clogs of the flesh. +But the spirit of a man moves in mysterious ways, and expands like the +plants of the field with strange and silent stirrings. It is one of the +chief tests of worthiness and freedom from vulgarity of soul in us, to +be able to have faith that this expansion is a reality, and the most +important of all realities. We do not rightly seize the type of Socrates +if we can never forget that he was the husband of Xanthippe, nor David's +if we can only think of him as the murderer of Uriah, nor Peter's if we +can simply remember that he denied his master. Our vision is only +blindness, if we can never bring ourselves to see the possibilities of +deep mystic aspiration behind the vile outer life of a man, or to +believe that this coarse Rousseau, scantily supping with his coarse +mate, might yet have many glimpses of the great wide horizons that are +haunted by figures rather divine than human. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[104] In theory he was even now curiously prudent and almost +sagacious; witness the Projet pour l'Education, etc., submitted to M. +de Mably, and printed in the volume of his Works entitled _Melanges_, +pp. 106-136. In the matter of Latin, it may be worth noting that +Rousseau rashly or otherwise condemns the practice of writing it, as a +vexatious superfluity (p. 132). + +[105] _Conf._, vi. 471. + +[106] _Ib._, vi. 472-475; vii. 8. + +[107] _Conf._, vii. 18, 19. + +[108] Musset-Pathay (ii. 72) quotes the passage from Lord +Chesterfield's Letters, where the writer suggests Madame Dupin as a +proper person with whom his son might in a regular and business-like +manner open the elevating game of gallant intrigue. + +[109] M. Dupin deserves honourable mention as having helped the +editors of the Encyclopaedia by procuring information for them as to +salt-works (D'Alembert's _Discours Preliminaire_). His son M. Dupin de +Francueil, it may be worth noting, is a link in the genealogical chain +between two famous personages. In 1777, the year before Rousseau's +death, he married (in the chapel of the French embassy in London) +Aurora de Saxe, a natural daughter of the marshal, himself the natural +son of August the Strong, King of Poland. From this union was born +Maurice Dupin, and Maurice Dupin was the father of Madame George Sand. +M. Francueil died in 1787. + +[110] _Mem. de Mdme. d'Epinay_, vol. i. ch. iv. p. 176. + +[111] _Ib._ vol. i. ch. iv. pp. 178, 179. + +[112] _Conf._, vii. 46, 51, 52, etc. A diplomatic piece in Rousseau's +handwriting has been found in the archives of the French consulate at +Constantinople, as M. Girardin informs us. Voltaire unworthily spread +the report that Rousseau had been the ambassador's private attendant. +For Rousseau's reply to the calumny, see _Corr._, v. 75 (Jan. 5, +1767); also iv. 150. + +[113] Bernardin de St. Pierre, _Oeuv._, xii. 55 _seq._ + +[114] _Conf._, vii. 92. + +[115] _Conf._, vii. 38, 39. + +[116] _Lettres de la Montagne_, iii. 266. + +[117] _Conf._, vii. 75-84. Also a second example, 84-86. For Byron's +opinion of one of these stories, see Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, vi. +132. (Ed. 1837.) + +[118] _Lettre sur la Musique Francaise_ (1753), p. 186. + +[119] _Conf._, ix. 232. + +[120] _Ib._ vii. 97. + +[121] Hotel St. Quentin, rue des Cordiers, a narrow street running +between the rue St. Jacques and the rue Victor Cousin. The still +squalid hostelry is now visible as Hotel J.J. Rousseau. There is some +doubt whether he first saw Theresa in 1743 or 1745. The account in Bk. +vii. of the _Confessions_ is for the latter date (see also _Corr._, +ii. 207), but in the well-known letter to her in 1769 (_Ib._ vi. 79), +he speaks of the twenty-six years of their union. Their so-called +marriage took place in 1768, and writing in that year he speaks of the +five-and-twenty years of their attachment (_Ib._ v. 323), and in the +_Confessions_ (ix. 249) he fixes their marriage at the same date; also +in the letter to Saint-Germain (vi. 152). Musset-Pathay, though giving +1745 in one place (i. 45), and 1743 in another (ii. 198), has with +less than his usual care paid no attention to the discrepancy. + +[122] _Conf._, vii. 97-100. + +[123] _Conf._, vii. 101. A short specimen of her composition may be +interesting, at any rate to hieroglyphic students: "Mesiceuras ancor +mien re mies quan geu ceures o pres deu vous, e deu vous temoes tous +la goies e latandres deu mon querque vous cones ces que getou gour e +rus pour vous, e qui neu finiraes quotobocs ces mon quere qui vous +paleu ces paes mes le vre ... ge sui avestous lamities e la reu conec +caceu posible e la tacheman mon cher bonnamies votreau enble e bon +amiess theress le vasseur." Of which dark words this is the +interpretation:--"Mais il sera encore mieux remis quand je sera aupres +de vous, et de vous temoigner toute la joie et la tendresse de mon +coeur que vous connaissez que j'ai toujours eue pour vous, et qui ne +finira qu'au tombeau; c'est mon coeur qui vous parle, c'est pas mes +levres.... Je suis avec toute l'amitie et la reconnaissance possibles, +et l'attachement, mon cher bon ami, votre humble et bonne amie, +Therese Le Vasseur." (_Rousseau, ses Amis et ses Ennemis_, ii. 450.) +Certainly it was not learning and arts which hindered Theresa's +manners from being pure. + +[124] _Oeuv. et Corr. Ined._, 365. + +[125] _Conf._, vii. 102. See also _Corr._, v. 373 (Oct. 10, 1768). On +the other hand, _Conf._, ix. 249. + +[126] M. St. Marc Girardin, in one of his admirable papers on +Rousseau, speaks of him as "a bourgeois unclassed by an alliance with +a tavern servant" (_Rev. des Deux Mondes_, Nov. 1852, p. 759); but +surely Rousseau had unclassed himself long before, in the houses of +Madame Vercellis, Count Gouvon, and even Madame de Warens, and by his +repudiation, from the time when he ran away from Geneva, of nearly +every bourgeois virtue and bourgeois prejudice. + +[127] _Conf._, vii. 11. Also footnote. + +[128] _Reveries_, ix. 309. + +[129] _Conf._, viii. 142, 143. + +[130] The other day I came for the first time upon the following in +the sayings of Madame de Lambert:--"Ce ne sont pas toujours les fautes +qui nous perdent; c'est la maniere de se conduire apres les avoir +faites." [1877.] + +[131] _Conf._, xii. 187, 188. + +[132] _Ib._, viii. 221. + +[133] Bernardin de St. Pierre, _Oeuv._, xii. 103. See _Conf._, xii +188, and _Corr._, v. 324. + +[134] Referring, no doubt, to the ceremony which he called their +marriage, and which had taken place in 1768. + +[135] _Corr._, vi. 79-86. August 12, 1769. + +[136] Composed in 1745. The _Fetes de Ramire_ was represented at +Versailles at the very end of this year. + +[137] Some time in 1746-7. _Conf._, vii. 113, 114. + +[138] Probably in the winter of 1746-7. _Corr._, ii. 207. _Conf._, +vii. 120-124. _Ib._, viii. 148. _Corr._, ii. 208. June 12, 1761, to +the Marechale de Luxembourg. + +[139] George Sand,--in an eloquent piece entitled _A Propos des +Charmettes (Revue des Deux Mondes_, November 15, 1863), in which she +expresses her own obligations to Jean Jacques. In 1761 Rousseau +declares that he had never hitherto had the least reason to suspect +Theresa's fidelity. _Corr._, ii. 209 + +[140] _Conf._, vii. 123. + +[141] _Ib._, viii. 145-151. + +[142] _Reveries_, ix. 313. The same reason is given, _Conf._, ix. 252; +also in Letter to Madame B., January 17, 1770 (_Corr._, vi. 117). + +[143] _Corr._, vi. 152, 153. Feb. 27, 1770. + +[144] Letter to Madame de Francueil, April 20, 1751. _Corr._, i. 151. + +[145] _Corr._, i. 151-155 + +[146] August 10, 1761. _Corr._, ii. 220. The Marechale de Luxembourg's +note on the subject, to which this is a reply, is given in _Rousseau, +ses Amis et ses Ennemis_, i. 444. + +[147] _Conf._, x. 249. See above, p. 106, _n._ + +[148] To Lalliaud, Aug 31, 1768. _Corr._, v. 324. See also D'Escherny, +quoted in Musset-Pathay, i. 169, 170. + +[149] To Du Peyrou, Sept. 26, 1768. _Corr._, v. 360. + +[150] To Mdlle. Le Vasseur, July 25, 1768. _Corr._, v. 116-119. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +THE DISCOURSES. + + +The busy establishment of local academies in the provincial centres of +France only preceded the outbreak of the revolution by ten or a dozen +years; but one or two of the provincial cities, such as Bordeaux, Rouen, +Dijon, had possessed academies in imitation of the greater body of Paris +for a much longer time. Their activity covered a very varied ground, +from the mere commonplaces of literature to the most practical details +of material production. If they now and then relapsed into inquiries +about the laws of Crete, they more often discussed positive and +scientific theses, and rather resembled our chambers of agriculture than +bodies of more learned pretension. The academy of Dijon was one of the +earliest of these excellent institutions, and on the whole the list of +its theses shows it to have been among the most sensible in respect of +the subjects which it found worth thinking about. Its members, however, +could not entirely resist the intellectual atmosphere of the time. In +1742 they invited discussion of the point, whether the natural law can +conduct society to perfection without the aid of political laws.[151] +In 1749 they proposed this question as a theme for their prize essay: +_Has the restoration of the sciences contributed to purify or to corrupt +manners?_ Rousseau was one of fourteen competitors, and in 1750 his +discussion of the academic theme received the prize.[152] This was his +first entry on the field of literature and speculation. Three years +afterwards the same academy propounded another question: _What is the +origin of inequality among men, and is it authorised by the natural +law?_ Rousseau again competed, and though his essay neither gained the +prize, nor created as lively an agitation as its predecessor had done, +yet we may justly regard the second as a more powerful supplement to +the first. + +It is always interesting to know the circumstances under which pieces +that have moved a world were originally composed, and Rousseau's account +of the generation of his thoughts as to the influence of enlightenment +on morality, is remarkable enough to be worth transcribing. He was +walking along the road from Paris to Vincennes one hot summer afternoon +on a visit to Diderot, then in prison for his Letter on the Blind +(1749), when he came across in a newspaper the announcement of the theme +propounded by the Dijon academy. "If ever anything resembled a sudden +inspiration, it was the movement which began in me as I read this. All +at once I felt myself dazzled by a thousand sparkling lights; crowds of +vivid ideas thronged into my mind with a force and confusion that threw +me into unspeakable agitation; I felt my head whirling in a giddiness +like that of intoxication. A violent palpitation oppressed me; unable to +walk for difficulty of breathing, I sank under one of the trees of the +avenue, and passed half an hour there in such a condition of excitement, +that when I arose I saw that the front of my waistcoat was all wet with +my tears, though I was wholly unconscious of shedding them. Ah, if I +could ever have written the quarter of what I saw and felt under that +tree, with what clearness should I have brought out all the +contradictions of our social system; with what simplicity I should have +demonstrated that man is good naturally, and that by institutions only +is he made bad."[153] Diderot encouraged him to compete for the prize, +and to give full flight to the ideas which had come to him in this +singular way.[154] + +People have held up their hands at the amazing originality of the idea +that perhaps sciences and arts have not purified manners. This sentiment +is surely exaggerated, if we reflect first that it occurred to the +academicians of Dijon as a question for discussion, and second that, if +you are asked whether a given result has or has not followed from +certain circumstances, the mere form of the question suggests No quite +as readily as Yes. The originality lay not in the central contention, +but in the fervour, sincerity, and conviction of a most unacademic sort +with which it was presented and enforced. There is less originality in +denouncing your generation as wicked and adulterous than there is in +believing it to be so, and in persuading the generation itself both that +you believe it and that you have good reasons to give. We have not to +suppose that there was any miracle wrought by agency celestial or +infernal in the sudden disclosure of his idea to Rousseau. Rousseau had +been thinking of politics ever since the working of the government of +Venice had first drawn his mind to the subject. What is the government, +he had kept asking himself, which is most proper to form a sage and +virtuous nation? What government by its nature keeps closest to the law? +What is this law? And whence?[155] This chain of problems had led him to +what he calls the historic study of morality, though we may doubt +whether history was so much his teacher as the rather meagrely nourished +handmaid of his imagination. Here was the irregular preparation, the +hidden process, which suddenly burst into light and manifested itself +with an exuberance of energy, that passed to the man himself for an +inward revolution with no precursive sign. + +Rousseau's ecstatic vision on the road to Vincennes was the opening of a +life of thought and production which only lasted a dozen years, but +which in that brief space gave to Europe a new gospel. Emilius and the +Social Contract were completed in 1761, and they crowned a work which if +you consider its origin, influence, and meaning with due and proper +breadth, is marked by signal unity of purpose and conception. The key to +it is given to us in the astonishing transport at the foot of the +wide-spreading oak. Such a transport does not come to us of cool and +rational western temperament, but more often to the oriental after +lonely sojourning in the wilderness, or in violent reactions on the road +to Damascus and elsewhere. Jean Jacques detected oriental quality in his +own nature,[156] and so far as the union of ardour with mysticism, of +intense passion with vague dream, is to be defined as oriental, he +assuredly deserves the name. The ideas stirred in his mind by the Dijon +problem suddenly "opened his eyes, brought order into the chaos in his +head, revealed to him another universe. From the active effervescence +which thus began in his soul, came sparks of genius which people saw +glittering in his writings through ten years of fever and delirium, but +of which no trace had been seen in him previously, and which would +probably have ceased to shine henceforth, if he should have chanced to +wish to continue writing after the access was over. Inflamed by the +contemplation of these lofty objects, he had them incessantly present to +his mind. His heart, made hot within him by the idea of the future +happiness of the human race, and by the honour of contributing to it, +dictated to him a language worthy of so high an enterprise ... and for a +moment, he astonished Europe by productions in which vulgar souls saw +only eloquence and brightness of understanding, but in which those who +dwell in the ethereal regions recognised with joy one of their +own."[157] + +This was his own account of the matter quite at the end of his life, and +this is the only point of view from which we are secure against the +vulgarity of counting him a deliberate hypocrite and conscious +charlatan. He was possessed, as holier natures than his have been, by an +enthusiastic vision, an intoxicated confidence, a mixture of sacred rage +and prodigious love, an insensate but absolutely disinterested revolt +against the stone and iron of a reality which he was bent on melting in +a heavenly blaze of splendid aspiration and irresistibly persuasive +expression. The last word of this great expansion was Emilius, its first +and more imperfectly articulated was the earlier of the two Discourses. + +Rousseau's often-repeated assertion that here was the instant of the +ruin of his life, and that all his misfortunes flowed from that unhappy +moment, has been constantly treated as the word of affectation and +disguised pride. Yet, vain as he was, it may well have represented his +sincere feeling in those better moods when mental suffering was strong +enough to silence vanity. His visions mastered him for these thirteen +years, _grande mortalis oevi spatium_. They threw him on to that turbid +sea of literature for which he had so keen an aversion, and from which, +let it be remarked, he fled finally away, when his confidence in the +ease of making men good and happy by words of monition had left him. It +was the torment of his own enthusiasm which rent that veil of placid +living, that in his normal moments he would fain have interposed between +his existence and the tumult of a generation with which he was +profoundly out of sympathy. In this way the first Discourse was the +letting in of much evil upon him, as that and the next and the Social +Contract were the letting in of much evil upon all Europe. + +Of this essay the writer has recorded his own impression that, though +full of heat and force, it is absolutely wanting in logic and order, and +that of all the products of his pen, it is the feeblest in reasoning and +the poorest in numbers and harmony. "For," as he justly adds, "the art +of writing is not learnt all at once."[158] The modern critic must be +content to accept the same verdict; only a generation so in love as +this was with anything that could tickle its intellectual curiousness, +would have found in the first of the two Discourses that combination of +speculative and literary merit which was imputed to Rousseau on the +strength of it, and which at once brought him into a place among the +notables of an age that was full of them.[159] We ought to take in +connection with it two at any rate of the vindications of the Discourse, +which the course of controversy provoked from its author, and which +serve to complete its significance. It is difficult to analyse, because +in truth it is neither closely argumentative, nor is it vertebrate, even +as a piece of rhetoric. The gist of the piece, however, runs somewhat in +this wise:-- + +Before art had fashioned our manners, and taught our passions to use a +too elaborate speech, men were rude but natural, and difference of +conduct announced at a glance difference of character. To-day a vile and +most deceptive uniformity reigns over our manners, and all minds seem as +if they had been cast in a single mould. Hence we never know with what +sort of person we are dealing, hence the hateful troop of suspicions, +fears, reserves, and treacheries, and the concealment of impiety, +arrogance, calumny, and scepticism, under a dangerous varnish of +refinement. So terrible a set of effects must have a cause. History +shows that the cause here is to be found in the progress of sciences and +arts. Egypt, once so mighty, becomes the mother of philosophy and the +fine arts; straightway behold its conquest by Cambyses, by Greeks, by +Romans, by Arabs, finally by Turks. Greece twice conquered Asia, once +before Troy, once in its own homes; then came in fatal sequence the +progress of the arts, the dissolution of manners, and the yoke of the +Macedonian. Rome, founded by a shepherd and raised to glory by +husbandmen, began to degenerate with Ennius, and the eve of her ruin was +the day when she gave a citizen the deadly title of arbiter of good +taste. China, where letters carry men to the highest dignities of the +state, could not be preserved by all her literature from the conquering +power of the ruder Tartar. On the other hand, the Persians, Scythians, +Germans, remain in history as types of simplicity, innocence, and +virtue. Was not he admittedly the wisest of the Greeks, who made of his +own apology a plea for ignorance, and a denunciation of poets, orators, +and artists? The chosen people of God never cultivated the sciences, and +when the new law was established, it was not the learned, but the simple +and lowly, fishers and workmen, to whom Christ entrusted his teaching +and its ministry.[160] + +This, then, is the way in which chastisement has always overtaken our +presumptuous efforts to emerge from that happy ignorance in which +eternal wisdom placed us; though the thick veil with which that wisdom +has covered all its operations seemed to warn us that we were not +destined to fatuous research. All the secrets that Nature hides from us +are so many evils against which she would fain shelter us. + +Is probity the child of ignorance, and can science and virtue be really +inconsistent with one another? These sounding contrasts are mere +deceits, because if you look nearly into the results of this science of +which we talk so proudly, you will perceive that they confirm the +results of induction from history. Astronomy, for instance, is born of +superstition; geometry from the desire of gain; physics from a futile +curiosity; all of them, even morals, from human pride. Are we for ever +to be the dupes of words, and to believe that these pompous names of +science, philosophy, and the rest, stand for worthy and profitable +realities?[161] Be sure that they do not. + +How many errors do we pass through on our road to truth, errors a +thousandfold more dangerous than truth is useful? And by what marks are +we to know truth, when we think that we have found it? And above all, if +we do find it, who of us can be sure that he will make good use of it? +If celestial intelligences cultivated science, only good could result; +and we may say as much of great men of the stamp of Socrates, who are +born to be the guides of others.[162] But the intelligences of common +men are neither celestial nor Socratic. + +Again, every useless citizen may be fairly regarded as a pernicious man; +and let us ask those illustrious philosophers who have taught us what +insects reproduce themselves curiously, in what ratio bodies attract +one another in space, what curves have conjugate points, points of +inflection or reflection, what in the planetary revolutions are the +relations of areas traversed in equal times--let us ask those who have +attained all this sublime knowledge, by how much the worse governed, +less flourishing, or less perverse we should have been if they had +attained none of it? Now if the works of our most scientific men and +best citizens lead to such small utility, tell us what we are to think +of the crowd of obscure writers and idle men of letters who devour the +public substance in pure loss. + +Then it is in the nature of things that devotion to art leads to luxury, +and luxury, as we all know from our own experience, no less than from +the teaching of history, saps not only the military virtues by which +nations preserve their independence, but also those moral virtues which +make the independence of a nation worth preserving. Your children go to +costly establishments where they learn everything except their duties. +They remain ignorant of their own tongue, though they will speak others +not in use anywhere in the world; they gain the faculty of composing +verses which they can barely understand; without capacity to distinguish +truth from error, they possess the art of rendering them +indistinguishable to others by specious arguments. Magnanimity, equity, +temperance, courage, humanity, have no real meaning to them; and if they +hear speak of God, it breeds more terror than awful fear. + +Whence spring all these abuses, if not from the disastrous inequality +introduced among men by the distinction of talents and the cheapening of +virtue?[163] People no longer ask of a man whether he has probity, but +whether he is clever; nor of a book whether it is useful, but whether it +is well written. And after all, what is this philosophy, what are these +lessons of wisdom, to which we give the prize of enduring fame? To +listen to these sages, would you not take them for a troop of +charlatans, all bawling out in the market-place, Come to me, it is only +I who never cheat you, and always give good measure? One maintains that +there is no body, and that everything is mere representation; the other +that there is no entity but matter, and no God but the universe: one +that moral good and evil are chimeras; the other that men are wolves and +may devour one another with the easiest conscience in the world. These +are the marvellous personages on whom the esteem of contemporaries is +lavished so long as they live, and to whom immortality is reserved after +their death. And we have now invented the art of making their +extravagances eternal, and thanks to the use of typographic characters +the dangerous speculations of Hobbes and Spinoza will endure for ever. +Surely when they perceive the terrible disorders which printing has +already caused in Europe, sovereigns will take as much trouble to +banish this deadly art from their states as they once took to +introduce it. + +If there is perhaps no harm in allowing one or two men to give +themselves up to the study of sciences and arts, it is only those who +feel conscious of the strength required for advancing their subjects, +who have any right to attempt to raise monuments to the glory of the +human mind. We ought to have no tolerance for those compilers who rashly +break open the gate of the sciences, and introduce into their sanctuary +a populace that is unworthy even to draw near to it. It may be well that +there should be philosophers, provided only and always that the people +do not meddle with philosophising.[164] + +In short, there are two kinds of ignorance: one brutal and ferocious, +springing from a bad heart, multiplying vices, degrading the reason, and +debasing the soul: the other "a reasonable ignorance, which consists in +limiting our curiosity to the extent of the faculties we have received; +a modest ignorance, born of a lively love for virtue, and inspiring +indifference only for what is not worthy of filling a man's heart, or +fails to contribute to its improvement; a sweet and precious ignorance, +the treasure of a pure soul at peace with itself, which finds all its +blessedness in inward retreat, in testifying to itself its own +innocence, and which feels no need of seeking a warped and hollow +happiness in the opinion of other people as to its enlightenment."[165] + + * * * * * + +Some of the most pointed assaults in this Discourse, such for instance +as that on the pedantic parade of wit, or that on the excessive +preponderance of literary instruction in the art of education, are due +to Montaigne; and in one way, the Discourse might be described as +binding together a number of that shrewd man's detached hints by means +of a paradoxical generalisation. But the Rousseau is more important than +the Montaigne in it. Another remark to be made is that its vigorous +disparagement of science, of the emptiness of much that is called +science, of the deadly pride of intellect, is an anticipation in a very +precise way of the attitude taken by the various Christian churches and +their representatives now and for long, beginning with De Maistre, the +greatest of the religious reactionaries after Rousseau. The vilification +of the Greeks is strikingly like some vehement passages in De Maistre's +estimate of their share in sophisticating European intellect. At last +Rousseau even began to doubt whether "so chattering a people could ever +have had any solid virtues, even in primitive times."[166] Yet +Rousseau's own thinking about society is deeply marked with opinions +borrowed exactly from these very chatterers. His imagination was +fascinated from the first by the freedom and boldness of Plato's social +speculations, to which his debt in a hundred details of his political +and educational schemes is well known. What was more important than any +obligation of detail was the fatal conception, borrowed partly from the +Greeks and partly from Geneva, of the omnipotence of the Lawgiver in +moulding a social state after his own purpose and ideal. We shall +presently quote the passage in which he holds up for our envy and +imitation the policy of Lycurgus at Sparta, who swept away all that he +found existing and constructed the social edifice afresh from foundation +to roof.[167] It is true that there was an unmistakable decay of Greek +literary studies in France from the beginning of the eighteenth century, +and Rousseau seems to have read Plato only through Ficinus's +translation. But his example and its influence, along with that of Mably +and others, warrant the historian in saying that at no time did Greek +ideas more keenly preoccupy opinion than during this century.[168] +Perhaps we may say that Rousseau would never have proved how little +learning and art do for the good of manners, if Plato had not insisted +on poets being driven out of the Republic. The article on Political +Economy, written by him for the Encyclopaedia (1755), rings with the +names of ancient rulers and lawgivers; the project of public education +is recommended by the example of Cretans, Lacedaemonians, and Persians, +while the propriety of the reservation of a state domain is suggested +by Romulus. + +It may be added that one of the not too many merits of the essay is the +way in which the writer, more or less in the Socratic manner, insists on +dragging people out of the refuge of sonorous general terms, with a +great public reputation of much too well-established a kind to be +subjected to the affront of analysis. It is true that Rousseau himself +contributed nothing directly to that analytic operation which Socrates +likened to midwifery, and he set up graven images of his own in place of +the idols which he destroyed. This, however, did not wholly efface the +distinction, which he shares with all who have ever tried to lead the +minds of men into new tracks, of refusing to accept the current coins of +philosophical speech without test or measurement. Such a treatment of +the great trite words which come so easily to the tongue and seem to +weigh for so much, must always be the first step towards bringing +thought back into the region of real matter, and confronting phrases, +terms, and all the common form of the discussion of an age, with the +actualities which it is the object of sincere discussion to penetrate. + +The refutation of many parts of Rousseau's main contention on the +principles which are universally accepted among enlightened men in +modern society is so extremely obvious that to undertake it would merely +be to draw up a list of the gratulatory commonplaces of which we hear +quite enough in the literature and talk of our day. In this direction, +perhaps it suffices to say that the Discourse is wholly one-sided, +admitting none of the conveniences, none of the alleviations of +suffering of all kinds, nothing of the increase of mental stature, which +the pursuit of knowledge has brought to the race. They may or may not +counterbalance the evils that it has brought, but they are certainly to +be put in the balance in any attempt at philosophic examination of the +subject. It contains no serious attempt to tell us what those alleged +evils really are, or definitely to trace them one by one, to abuse of +the thirst for knowledge and defects in the method of satisfying it. It +omits to take into account the various other circumstances, such as +climate, government, race, and the disposition of neighbours, which must +enter equally with intellectual progress into whatever demoralisation +has marked the destinies of a nation. Finally it has for the base of its +argument the entirely unsupported assumption of there having once been +in the early history of each society a stage of mild, credulous, and +innocent virtue, from which appetite for the fruit of the forbidden tree +caused an inevitable degeneration. All evidence and all scientific +analogy are now well known to lead to the contrary doctrine, that the +history of civilisation is a history of progress and not of decline from +a primary state. After all, as Voltaire said to Rousseau in a letter +which only showed a superficial appreciation of the real drift of the +argument, we must confess that these thorns attached to literature are +only as flowers in comparison with the other evils that have deluged the +earth. "It was not Cicero nor Lucretius nor Virgil nor Horace, who +contrived the proscriptions of Marius, of Sulla, of the debauched +Antony, of the imbecile Lepidus, of that craven tyrant basely surnamed +Augustus. It was not Marot who produced the St. Bartholomew massacre, +nor the tragedy of the Cid that led to the wars of the Fronde. What +really makes, and always will make, this world into a valley of tears, +is the insatiable cupidity and indomitable insolence of men, from Kouli +Khan, who did not know how to read, down to the custom-house clerk, who +knows nothing but how to cast up figures. Letters nourish the soul, they +strengthen its integrity, they furnish a solace to it,"--and so on in +the sense, though without the eloquence, of the famous passage in +Cicero's defence of Archias the poet.[169] All this, however, in our +time is in no danger of being forgotten, and will be present to the mind +of every reader. The only danger is that pointed out by Rousseau +himself: "People always think they have described what the sciences do, +when they have in reality only described what the sciences ought +to do."[170] + +What we are more likely to forget is that Rousseau's piece has a +positive as well as a negative side, and presents, in however vehement +and overstated a way, a truth which the literary and speculative +enthusiasm of France in the eighteenth century, as is always the case +with such enthusiasm whenever it penetrates either a generation or an +individual, was sure to make men dangerously ready to forget.[171] This +truth may be put in different terms. We may describe it as the +possibility of eminent civic virtue existing in people, without either +literary taste or science or speculative curiosity. Or we may express it +as the compatibility of a great amount of contentment and order in a +given social state, with a very low degree of knowledge. Or finally, we +may give the truth its most general expression, as the subordination of +all activity to the promotion of social aims. Rousseau's is an elaborate +and roundabout manner of saying that virtue without science is better +than science without virtue; or that the well-being of a country depends +more on the standard of social duty and the willingness of citizens to +conform to it, than on the standard of intellectual culture and the +extent of its diffusion. In other words, we ought to be less concerned +about the speculative or scientific curiousness of our people than about +the height of their notion of civic virtue and their firmness and +persistency in realising it. It is a moralist's way of putting the +ancient preacher's monition, that they are but empty in whom is not the +wisdom of God. The importance of stating this is in our modern era +always pressing, because there is a constant tendency on the part of +energetic intellectual workers, first, to concentrate their energies on +a minute specialty, leaving public affairs and interests to their own +course. Second, they are apt to overestimate their contributions to the +stock of means by which men are made happier, and what is more serious, +to underestimate in comparison those orderly, modest, self-denying, +moral qualities, by which only men are made worthier, and the continuity +of society is made surer. Third, in consequence of their greater command +of specious expression and their control of the organs of public +opinion, they both assume a kind of supreme place in the social +hierarchy, and persuade the majority of plain men unsuspectingly to take +so very egregious an assumption for granted. So far as Rousseau's +Discourse recalled the truth as against this sort of error it was full +of wholesomeness. + +Unfortunately his indignation against the overweening pretensions of the +verse-writer, the gazetteer, and the great band of socialists at large, +led him into a general position with reference to scientific and +speculative energy, which seems to involve a perilous misconception of +the conditions of this energy producing its proper results. It is easy +now, as it was easy for Rousseau in the last century, to ask in an +epigrammatical manner by how much men are better or happier for having +found out this or that novelty in transcendental mathematics, biology, +or astronomy; and this is very well as against the discoverer of small +marvels who shall give himself out for the benefactor of the human +race. But both historical experience and observation of the terms on +which the human intelligence works, show us that we can only make sure +of intellectual activity on condition of leaving it free to work all +round, in every department and in every remotest nook of each +department, and that its most fruitful epochs are exactly those when +this freedom is greatest, this curiosity most keen and minute, and this +waste, if you choose to call the indispensable superfluity of force in a +natural process waste, most copious and unsparing. You will not find +your highest capacity in statesmanship, nor in practical science, nor in +art, nor in any other field where that capacity is most urgently needed +for the right service of life, unless there is a general and vehement +spirit of search in the air. If it incidentally leads to many +industrious futilities and much learned refuse, this is still the sign +and the generative element of industry which is not futile, and of +learning which is something more than mere water spilled upon +the ground. + +We may say in fine that this first Discourse and its vindications were a +dim, shallow, and ineffective feeling after the great truth, that the +only normal state of society is that in which neither the love of virtue +has been thrust far back into a secondary place by the love of +knowledge, nor the active curiosity of the understanding dulled, +blunted, and made ashamed by soft, lazy ideals of life as a life only of +the affections. Rousseau now and always fell into the opposite extreme +from that against which his whole work was a protest. We need not +complain very loudly that while remonstrating against the restless +intrepidity of the rationalists of his generation, he passed over the +central truth, namely that the full and ever festal life is found in +active freedom of curiosity and search taking significance, motive, +force, from a warm inner pulse of human love and sympathy. It was not +given to Rousseau to see all this, but it was given to him to see the +side of it for which the most powerful of the men living with him had no +eyes, and the first Discourse was only a moderately successful attempt +to bring his vision before Europe. It was said at the time that he did +not believe a word of what he had written.[172] It is a natural +characteristic of an age passionately occupied with its own set of +ideas, to question either the sincerity or the sanity of anybody who +declares its sovereign conceptions to be no better than foolishness. We +cannot entertain such a suspicion. Perhaps the vehemence of controversy +carries him rather further than he quite meant to go, when he declares +that if he were a chief of an African tribe, he would erect on his +frontier a gallows, on which he would hang without mercy the first +European who should venture to pass into his territory, and the first +native who should dare to pass out of it.[173] And there are many other +extravagances of illustration, but the main position is serious enough, +as represented in the emblematic vignette with which the essay was +printed--the torch of science brought to men by Prometheus, who warns a +satyr that it burns; the satyr, seeing fire for the first time and being +fain to embrace it, is the symbol of the vulgar men who, seduced by the +glitter of literature, insist on delivering themselves up to its +study.[174] Rousseau's whole doctrine hangs compactly together, and we +may see the signs of its growth after leaving his hands in the crude +formula of the first Discourse, if we proceed to the more audacious +paradox of the second. + + +II. + +The Discourse on the Origin of Inequality among men opens with a +description of the natural state of man, which occupies considerably +more than half of the entire performance. It is composed in a vein which +is only too familiar to the student of the literature of the time, +picturing each habit and thought, and each step to new habits and +thoughts, with the minuteness, the fulness, the precision, of one who +narrates circumstances of which he has all his life been the close +eye-witness. The natural man reveals to us every motive, every process +internal and external, every slightest circumstance of his daily life, +and each element that gradually transformed him into the non-natural +man. One who had watched bees or beetles for years could not give us a +more full or confident account of their doings, their hourly goings in +and out, than it was the fashion in the eighteenth century to give of +the walk and conversation of the primeval ancestor. The conditions of +primitive man were discussed by very incompetent ladies and gentlemen at +convivial supper parties, and settled with complete assurance.[175] + +Rousseau thought and talked about the state of nature because all his +world was thinking and talking about it. He used phrases and formulas +with reference to it which other people used. He required no more +evidence than they did, as to the reality of the existence of the +supposed set of conditions to which they gave the almost sacramental +name of state of nature. He never thought of asking, any more than +anybody else did in the middle of the eighteenth century, what sort of +proof, how strong, how direct, was to be had, that primeval man had such +and such habits, and changed them in such a way and direction, and for +such reasons. Physical science had reached a stage by this time when its +followers were careful to ask questions about evidence, correct +description, verification. But the idea of accurate method had to be +made very familiar to men by the successes of physical science in the +search after truths of one kind, before the indispensableness of +applying it in the search after truths of all kinds had extended to the +science of the constitution and succession of social states. In this +respect Rousseau was not guiltier than the bulk of his contemporaries. +Voltaire's piercing common sense, Hume's deep-set sagacity, +Montesquieu's caution, prevented them from launching very far on to this +metaphysical sea of nature and natural laws and states, but none of them +asked those critical questions in relation to such matters which occur +so promptly in the present day to persons far inferior to them in +intellectual strength. Rousseau took the notion of the state of nature +because he found it to his hand; he fitted to it his own characteristic +aspirations, expanding and vivifying a philosophic conception with all +the heat of humane passion; and thus, although, at the end of the +process when he had done with it, the state of nature came out blooming +as the rose, it was fundamentally only the dry, current abstraction of +his time, artificially decorated to seduce men into embracing a strange +ideal under a familiar name. + +Before analysing the Discourse on Inequality, we ought to make some +mention of a remarkable man whose influence probably reached Rousseau in +an indirect manner through Diderot; I mean Morelly.[176] In 1753 Morelly +published a prose poem called the Basiliade, describing the corruption +of manners introduced by the errors of the lawgiver, and pointing out +how this corruption is to be amended by return to the empire of nature +and truth. He was no doubt stimulated by what was supposed to be the +central doctrine of Montesquieu, then freshly given to the world, that +it is government and institutions which make men what they are. But he +was stimulated into a reaction, and in 1754 he propounded his whole +theory, in a piece which in closeness, consistency, and thoroughness is +admirably different from Rousseau's rhetoric.[177] It lacked the +sovereign quality of persuasiveness, and so fell on deaf ears. Morelly +accepts the doctrine that men are formed by the laws, but insists that +moralists and statesmen have always led us wrong by legislating and +prescribing conduct on the false theory that man is bad, whereas he is +in truth a creature endowed with natural probity. Then he strikes to the +root of society with a directness that Rousseau could not imitate, by +the position that "these laws by establishing a monstrous division of +the products of nature, and even of their very elements--by dividing +what ought to have remained entire, or ought to have been restored to +entireness if any accident had divided them, aided and favoured the +break-up of all sociability." All political and all moral evils are the +effects of this pernicious cause--private property. He says of +Rousseau's first Discourse that the writer ought to have seen that the +corruption of manners which he set down to literature and art really +came from this venomous principle of property, which infects all that +it touches.[178] Christianity, it is true, assailed this principle and +restored equality or community of possessions, but Christianity had the +radical fault of involving such a detachment from earthly affections, in +order to deliver ourselves to heavenly meditation, as brought about a +necessary degeneration in social activity. The form of government is a +matter of indifference, provided you can only assure community of goods. +Political revolutions are at bottom the clash of material interests, and +until you have equalised the one you will never prevent the other.[179] + +Let us turn from this very definite position to one of the least +definite productions to be found in all literature. + + * * * * * + +It will seem a little odd that more than half of a discussion on the +origin of inequality among men should be devoted to a glowing imaginary +description, from which no reader could conjecture what thesis it was +designed to support. But we have only to remember that Rousseau's object +was to persuade people that the happier state is that in which +inequality does not subsist, that there had once been such a state, and +that this was first the state of nature, and then the state only one +degree removed from it, in which we now find the majority of savage +tribes. At the outset he defines inequality as a word meaning two +different things; one, natural or physical inequality, such as +difference of age, of health, of physical strength, of attributes of +intelligence and character; the other, moral or political inequality, +consisting in difference of privileges which some enjoy to the detriment +of the rest, such as being richer, more honoured, more powerful. The +former differences are established by nature, the latter are authorised, +if they were not established, by the consent of men.[180] In the state +of nature no inequalities flow from the differences among men in point +of physical advantage and disadvantage, and which remain without +derivative differences so long as the state of nature endures +undisturbed. Nature deals with men as the law of Sparta dealt with the +children of its citizens; she makes those who are well constituted +strong and robust, and she destroys all the rest. + +The surface of the earth is originally covered by dense forest, and +inhabited by animals of every species. Men, scattered among them, +imitate their industry, and so rise to the instinct of the brutes, with +this advantage that while each species has only its own, man, without +anything special, appropriates the instincts of all. This admirable +creature, with foes on every side, is forced to be constantly on the +alert, and hence to be always in full possession of all his faculties, +unlike civilised man, whose native force is enfeebled by the mechanical +protections with which he has surrounded himself. He is not afraid of +the wild beasts around him, for experience has taught him that he is +their master. His health is better than ours, for we live in a time when +excess of idleness in some, excess of toil in others, the heating and +over-abundant diet of the rich, the bad food of the poor, the orgies and +excesses of every kind, the immoderate transport of every passion, the +fatigue and strain of spirit,--when all these things have inflicted more +disorders upon us than the vaunted art of medicine has been able to keep +pace with. Even if the sick savage has only nature to hope from, on the +other hand he has only his own malady to be afraid of. He has no fear of +death, for no animal can know what death is, and the knowledge of death +and its terrors is one of the first of man's terrible acquisitions +after abandoning his animal condition.[181] In other respects, such as +protection against weather, such as habitation, such as food, the +savage's natural power of adaptation, and the fact that his demands are +moderate in proportion to his means of satisfying them, forbid us to +consider him physically unhappy. Let us turn to the intellectual and +moral side. + +If you contend that men were miserable, degraded, and outcast during +these primitive centuries because the intelligence was dormant, then do +not forget, first, that you are drawing an indictment against +nature,--no trifling blasphemy in those days--and second, that you are +attributing misery to a free creature with tranquil spirit and healthy +body, and that must surely be a singular abuse of the term. We see +around us scarcely any but people who complain of the burden of their +lives; but who ever heard of a savage in full enjoyment of his liberty +ever dreaming of complaint about his life or of self-destruction? + +With reference to virtues and vices in a state of nature, Hobbes is +wrong in declaring that man in this state is vicious, as not knowing +virtue. He is not vicious, for the reason that he does not know what +being good is. It is not development of enlightenment nor the +restrictions of law, but the calm of the passions and ignorance of vice, +which keep them from doing ill. _Tanto plus in illis profitcit vitiorum +ignoratio, quam in his cognitio virtutis._ + +Besides man has one great natural virtue, that of pity, which precedes +in him the use of reflection, and which indeed he shares with some of +the brutes. Mandeville, who was forced to admit the existence of this +admirable quality in man, was absurd in not perceiving that from it flow +all the social virtues which he would fain deny. Pity is more energetic +in the primitive condition than it is among ourselves. It is reflection +which isolates one. It is philosophy which teaches the philosopher to +say secretly at sight of a suffering wretch, Perish if it please thee; I +am safe and sound. They may be butchering a fellow-creature under your +window; all you have to do is to clap your hands to your ears, and argue +a little with yourself to hinder nature in revolt from making you feel +as if you were in the case of the victim.[182] The savage man has not +got this odious gift. In the state of nature it is pity that takes the +place of laws, manners, and virtue. It is in this natural sentiment +rather than in subtle arguments that we have to seek the reluctance that +every man would feel to do ill, even without the precepts of +education.[183] + +Finally, the passion of love, which produces such disasters in a state +of society, where the jealousy of lovers and the vengeance of husbands +lead each day to duels and murders, where the duty of eternal fidelity +only serves to occasion adulteries, and where the law of continence +necessarily extends the debauching of women and the practice of +procuring abortion[184]--this passion in a state of nature, where it is +purely physical, momentary, and without any association of durable +sentiment with the object of it, simply leads to the necessary +reproduction of the species and nothing more. + +"Let us conclude, then, that wandering in the forests, without industry, +without speech, without habitation, without war, without connection of +any kind, without any need of his fellows or without any desire to harm +them, perhaps even without ever recognising one of them individually, +savage man, subject to few passions and sufficing to himself, had only +the sentiments and the enlightenment proper to his condition. He was +only sensible of his real wants, and only looked because he thought he +had an interest in seeing; and his intelligence made no more progress +than his vanity. If by chance he hit on some discovery, he was all the +less able to communicate it; as he did not know even his own children. +An art perished with its inventor. There was neither education nor +progress; generations multiplied uselessly; and as each generation +always started from the same point, centuries glided away in all the +rudeness of the first ages, the race was already old, the individual +remained always a child." + +This brings us to the point of the matter. For if you compare the +prodigious diversities in education and manner of life which reign in +the different orders of the civil condition, with the simplicity and +uniformity of the savage and animal life, where all find nourishment in +the same articles of food, live in the same way, and do exactly the same +things, you will easily understand to what degree the difference between +man and man must be less in the state of nature than in that of +society.[185] Physical inequality is hardly perceived in the state of +nature, and its indirect influences there are almost non-existent. + +Now as all the social virtues and other faculties possessed by man +potentially were not bound by anything inherent in him to develop into +actuality, he might have remained to all eternity in his admirable and +most fitting primitive condition, but for the fortuitous concurrence of +a variety of external changes. What are these different changes, which +may perhaps have perfected human reason, while they certainly have +deteriorated the race, and made men bad in making them sociable? + +What, then, are the intermediary facts between the state of nature and +the state of civil society, the nursery of inequality? What broke up the +happy uniformity of the first times? First, difference in soil, in +climate, in seasons, led to corresponding differences in men's manner of +living. Along the banks of rivers and on the shores of the sea, they +invented hooks and lines, and were eaters of fish. In the forests they +invented bows and arrows, and became hunters. In cold countries they +covered themselves with the skins of beasts. Lightning, volcanoes, or +some happy chance acquainted them with fire, a new protection against +the rigours of winter. In company with these natural acquisitions, grew +up a sort of reflection or mechanical prudence, which showed them the +kind of precautions most necessary to their security. From this +rudimentary and wholly egoistic reflection there came a sense of the +existence of a similar nature and similar interests in their +fellow-creatures. Instructed by experience that the love of well-being +and comfort is the only motive of human actions, the savage united with +his neighbours when union was for their joint convenience, and did his +best to blind and outwit his neighbours when their interests were +adverse to his own, and he felt himself the weaker. Hence the origin of +certain rude ideas of mutual obligation.[186] + +Soon, ceasing to fall asleep under the first tree, or to withdraw into +caves, they found axes of hard stone, which served them to cut wood, to +dig the ground, and to construct hovels of branches and clay. This was +the epoch of a first revolution, which formed the establishment and +division of families, and which introduced a rough and partial sort of +property. Along with rudimentary ideas of property, though not +connected with them, came the rudimentary forms of inequality. When men +were thrown more together, then he who sang or danced the best, the +strongest, the most adroit, or the most eloquent, acquired the most +consideration--that is, men ceased to take uniform and equal place. And +with the coming of this end of equality there passed away the happy +primitive immunity from jealousy, envy, malice, hate. + +On the whole, though men had lost some of their original endurance, and +their natural pity had already undergone a certain deterioration, this +period of the development of the human faculties, occupying a just +medium between the indolence of the primitive state and the petulant +activity of our modern self-love, must have been at once the happiest +and the most durable epoch. The more we reflect, the more evident we +find it that this state was the least subject to revolutions and the +best for man. "So long as men were content with their rustic hovels, so +long as they confined themselves to stitching their garments of skin +with spines or fish bones, to decking their bodies with feathers and +shells and painting them in different colours, to perfecting and +beautifying their bows and arrows--in a word, so long as they only +applied themselves to works that one person could do, and to arts that +needed no more than a single hand, then they lived free, healthy, good, +and happy, so far as was compatible with their natural constitution, and +continued to enjoy among themselves the sweetness of independent +intercourse. But from the moment that one man had need of the help of +another, as soon as they perceived it to be useful for one person to +have provisions for two, then equality disappeared, property was +introduced, labour became necessary, and the vast forests changed into +smiling fields, which had to be watered by the sweat of men, and in +which they ever saw bondage and misery springing up and growing ripe +with the harvests."[187] + +The working of metals and agriculture have been the two great agents in +this revolution. For the poet it is gold and silver, but for the +philosopher it is iron and corn, that have civilised men and undone the +human race. It is easy to see how the latter of the two arts was +suggested to men by watching the reproducing processes of vegetation. It +is less easy to be sure how they discovered metal, saw its uses, and +invented means of smelting it, for nature had taken extreme precautions +to hide the fatal secret. It was probably the operation of some volcano +which first suggested the idea of fusing ore. From the fact of land +being cultivated its division followed, and therefore the institution of +property in its full shape. From property arose civil society. "The +first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, could think of saying, +_This is mine_, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the +real founder of civil society. How many crimes, wars, murders, miseries, +and horrors would not have been spared to the human race by one who, +plucking up the stakes, or filling in the trench, should have called out +to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if +you forget that the earth belongs to no one, and that its fruits are for +all."[188] + +Things might have remained equal even in this state, if talents had only +been equal, and if for example the employment of iron and the +consumption of agricultural produce had always exactly balanced one +another. But the stronger did more work; the cleverer got more advantage +from his work; the more ingenious found means of shortening his labour; +the husbandman had more need of metal, or the smith more need of grain; +and while working equally, one got much gain, and the other could +scarcely live. This distinction between Have and Have-not led to +confusion and revolt, to brigandage on the one side and constant +insecurity on the other. + +Hence disorders of a violent and interminable kind, which gave rise to +the most deeply designed project that ever entered the human mind. This +was to employ in favour of property the strength of the very persons who +attacked it, to inspire them with other maxims, and to give them other +institutions which should be as favourable to property as natural law +had been contrary to it. The man who conceived this project, after +showing his neighbours the monstrous confusion which made their lives +most burdensome, spoke in this wise: "Let us unite to shield the weak +from oppression, to restrain the proud, and to assure to each the +possession of what belongs to him; let us set up rules of justice and +peace, to which all shall be obliged to conform, without respect of +persons, and which may repair to some extent the caprices of fortune, by +subjecting the weak and the mighty alike to mutual duties. In a word, +instead of turning our forces against one another, let us collect them +into one supreme power to govern us by sage laws, to protect and defend +all the members of the association, repel their common foes, and +preserve us in never-ending concord." This, and not the right of +conquest, must have been the origin of society and laws, which threw new +chains round the poor and gave new might to the rich; and for the profit +of a few grasping and ambitious men, subjected the whole human race +henceforth and for ever to toil and bondage and wretchedness +without hope. + +The social constitution thus propounded and accepted was radically +imperfect from the outset, and in spite of the efforts of the sagest +lawgivers, it has always remained imperfect, because it was the work of +chance, and because, inasmuch as it was ill begun, time, while revealing +defects and suggesting remedies, could never repair its vices; _people +went on incessantly repairing and patching, instead of which it was +indispensable to begin by making a clean surface and by throwing aside +all the old materials, just as Lycurgus did in Sparta_. + +Put shortly, the main positions are these. In the state of nature each +man lived in entire isolation, and therefore physical inequality was as +if it did not exist. After many centuries, accident, in the shape of +difference of climate and external natural conditions, enforcing for the +sake of subsistence some degree of joint labour, led to an increase of +communication among men, to a slight development of the reasoning and +reflective faculties, and to a rude and simple sense of mutual +obligation, as a means of greater comfort in the long run. The first +state was good and pure, but the second state was truly perfect. It was +destroyed by a fresh succession of chances, such as the discovery of the +arts of metal-working and tillage, which led first to the institution of +property, and second to the prominence of the natural or physical +inequalities, which now began to tell with deadly effectiveness. These +inequalities gradually became summed up in the great distinction between +rich and poor; and this distinction was finally embodied in the +constitution of a civil society, expressly adapted to consecrate the +usurpation of the rich, and to make the inequality of condition between +them and the poor eternal. + +We thus see that the Discourse, unlike Morelly's terse exposition, +contains no clear account of the kind of inequality with which it deals. +Is it inequality of material possession or inequality of political +right? Morelly tells you decisively that the latter is only an accident, +flowing from the first; that the key to renovation lies in the abolition +of the first. Rousseau mixes the two confusedly together under a single +name, bemoans each, but shrinks from a conclusion or a recommendation +as to either. He declares property to be the key to civil society, but +falls back from any ideas leading to the modification of the institution +lying at the root of all that he deplores. + +The first general criticism, which in itself contains and covers nearly +all others, turns on Method. "Conjectures become reasons when they are +the most likely that you can draw from the nature of things," and "it is +for philosophy in lack of history to determine the most likely facts." +In an inductive age this royal road is rigorously closed. Guesses drawn +from the general nature of things can no longer give us light as to the +particular nature of the things pertaining to primitive men, any more +than such guesses can teach us the law of the movement of the heavenly +bodies, or the foundations of jurisprudence. Nor can deduction from +anything but propositions which have themselves been won by laborious +induction, ever lead us to the only kind of philosophy which has fair +pretension to determine the most probable of the missing facts in the +chain of human history. That quantitative and differentiating knowledge +which is science, was not yet thought of in connection with the +movements of our own race upon the earth. It is to be said, further, +that of the two possible ways of guessing about the early state, the +conditions of advance from it, and the rest, Rousseau's guess that all +movement away from it has been towards corruption, is less supported by +subsequent knowledge than the guess of his adversaries, that it has +been a movement progressive and upwards. + +This much being said as to incurable vice of method, and there are +fervent disciples of Rousseau now living who will regard one's craving +for method in talking about men as a foible of pedantry, we may briefly +remark on one or two detached objections to Rousseau's story. To begin +with, there is no certainty as to there having ever been a state of +nature of a normal and organic kind, any more than there is any one +normal and typical state of society now. There are infinitely diverse +states of society, and there were probably as many diverse states of +nature. Rousseau was sufficiently acquainted with the most recent +metaphysics of his time to know that you cannot think of a tree in +general, nor of a triangle in general, but only of some particular tree +or triangle.[189] In a similar way he might have known that there never +was any such thing as a state of nature in the general and abstract, +fixed, typical, and single. He speaks of the savage state also, which +comes next, as one, identical, normal. It is, of course, nothing of the +kind. The varieties of belief and habit and custom among the different +tribes of savages, in reference to every object that can engage their +attention, from death and the gods and immortality down to the uses of +marriage and the art of counting and the ways of procuring subsistence, +are infinitely numerous; and the more we know about this vast diversity, +the less easy is it to think of the savage state in general. When +Rousseau extols the savage state as the veritable youth of the world, we +wonder whether we are to think of the negroes of the Gold Coast, or the +Dyaks of Borneo, Papuans or Maoris, Cheyennes or Tierra-del-Fuegians or +the fabled Troglodytes; whether in the veritable youth of the world they +counted up to five or only to two; whether they used a fire-drill, and +if so what kind of drill; whether they had the notion of personal +identity in so weak a shape as to practise the couvade; and a hundred +other points, which we should now require any writer to settle, who +should speak of the savage state as sovereign, one, and indivisible, in +the way in which Rousseau speaks of it, and holds it up to our vain +admiration. + +Again, if the savage state supervened upon the state of nature in +consequence of certain climatic accidents of a permanent kind, such as +living on the banks of a river or in a dense forest, how was it that the +force of these accidents did not begin to operate at once? How could the +isolated state of nature endure for a year in face of them? Or what was +the precipitating incident which suddenly set them to work, and drew the +primitive men from an isolation so profound that they barely recognised +one another, into that semi-social state in which the family +was founded? + +We cannot tell how the state of nature continued to subsist, or, if it +ever subsisted, how and why it ever came to an end, because the agencies +which are alleged to have brought it to an end must have been coeval +with the appearance of man himself. If gods had brought to men seed, +fire, and the mechanical arts, as in one of the Platonic myths,[190] we +could understand that there was a long stage preliminary to these +heavenly gifts. But if the gods had no part nor lot in it, and if the +accidents that slowly led the human creature into union were as old as +that nature, of which indeed they were actually the component elements, +then man must have quitted the state of nature the very day on which he +was born into it. And what can be a more monstrous anachronism than to +turn a flat-headed savage into a clever, self-conscious, argumentative +utilitarian of the eighteenth century; working the social problem out in +his flat head with a keenness, a consistency, a grasp of first +principles, that would have entitled him to a chair in the institute of +moral sciences, and entering the social union with the calm and +reasonable deliberation of a great statesman taking a critical step in +policy? Aristotle was wiser when he fixed upon sociability as an +ultimate quality of human nature, instead of making it, as Rousseau and +so many others have done, the conclusion of an unimpeachable train of +syllogistic reasoning.[191] Morelly even, his own contemporary, and +much less of a sage than Aristotle, was still sage enough to perceive +that this primitive human machine, "though composed of intelligent +parts, generally operates independently of its reason; its deliberations +are forestalled, and only leave it to look on, while sentiment does its +work."[192] It is the more remarkable that Rousseau should have fallen +into this kind of error, as it was one of his distinctions to have +perceived and partially worked out the principle, that men guide their +conduct rather from passion and instinct than from reasoned +enlightenment.[193] The ultimate quality which he named pity is, after +all, the germ of sociability, which is only extended sympathy. But he +did not firmly adhere to this ultimate quality, nor make any effort +consistently to trace out its various products. + +We do not find, however, in Rousseau any serious attempt to analyse the +composition of human nature in its primitive stages. Though constantly +warning his readers very impressively against confounding domesticated +with primitive men, he practically assumes that the main elements of +character must always have been substantially identical with such +elements and conceptions as are found after the addition of many ages of +increasingly complex experience. There is something worth considering in +his notion that civilisation has had effects upon man analogous to those +of domestication upon animals, but he lacked logical persistency enough +to enable him to adhere to his own idea, and work out conclusions +from it. + +It might further be pointed out in another direction that he takes for +granted that the mode of advance into a social state has always been one +and the same, a single and uniform process, marked by precisely the same +set of several stages, following one another in precisely the same +order. There is no evidence of this; on the contrary, evidence goes to +show that civilisation varies in origin and process with race and other +things, and that though in all cases starting from the prime factor of +sociableness in man, yet the course of its development has depended on +the particular sets of circumstances with which that factor has had to +combine. These are full of variety, according to climate and racial +predisposition, although, as has been justly said, the force of both +these two elements diminishes as the influence of the past in giving +consistency to our will becomes more definite, and our means of +modifying climate and race become better known. There is no sign that +Rousseau, any more than many other inquirers, ever reflected whether the +capacity for advance into the state of civil society in any highly +developed form is universal throughout the species, or whether there are +not races eternally incapable of advance beyond the savage state. +Progress would hardly be the exception which we know it to be in the +history of communities if there were not fundamental diversities in the +civilisable quality of races. Why do some bodies of men get on to the +high roads of civilisation, while others remain in the jungle and +thicket of savagery; and why do some races advance along one of these +roads, and others advance by different roads? + +Considerations of this sort disclose the pinched frame of trim theory +with which Rousseau advanced to set in order a huge mass of boundlessly +varied, intricate, and unmanageable facts. It is not, however, at all +worth while to extend such criticism further than suffices to show how +little his piece can stand the sort of questions which may be put to it +from a scientific point of view. Nothing that Rousseau had to say about +the state of nature was seriously meant for scientific exposition, any +more than the Sermon on the Mount was meant for political economy. The +importance of the Discourse on Inequality lay in its vehement +denunciation of the existing social state. To the writer the question +of the origin of inequality is evidently far less a matter at heart, +than the question of its results. It is the natural inclination of one +deeply moved by a spectacle of depravation in his own time and country, +to extol some other time or country, of which he is happily ignorant +enough not to know the drawbacks. Rousseau wrote about the savage state +in something of the same spirit in which Tacitus wrote the Germania. And +here, as in the Discourse on the influence of science and art upon +virtue, there is a positive side. To miss this in resentment of the +unscientific paradox that lies about it, is to miss the force of the +piece, and to render its enormous influence for a generation after it +was written incomprehensible. We may always be quite sure that no set of +ideas ever produced this resounding effect on opinion, unless they +contained something which the social or spiritual condition of the men +whom they inflamed made true for the time, and true in an urgent sense. +Is it not tenable that the state of certain savage tribes is more +normal, offers a better balance between desire and opportunity, between +faculty and performance, than the permanent state of large classes in +western countries, the broken wreck of civilisation?[194] To admit this +is not to conclude, as Rousseau so rashly concluded, that the movement +away from the primitive stages has been productive only of evil and +misery even to the masses of men, the hewers of wood and the drawers of +water; or that it was occasioned, and has been carried on by the +predominance of the lower parts and principles of human nature. Our +provisional acquiescence in the straitness and blank absence of outlook +or hope of the millions who come on to the earth that greets them with +no smile, and then stagger blindly under dull burdens for a season, and +at last are shovelled silently back under the ground,--our acquiescence +can only be justified in the sight of humanity by the conviction that +this is one of the temporary conditions of a vast process, working +forwards through the impulse and agency of the finer human spirits, but +needing much blood, many tears, uncounted myriads of lives, and +immeasurable geologic periods of time, for its high and beneficent +consummation. There is nothing surprising, perhaps nothing deeply +condemnable, in the burning anger for which this acquiescence is often +changed in the more impatient natures. As against the ignoble host who +think that the present ordering of men, with all its prodigious +inequalities, is in foundation and substance the perfection of social +blessedness, Rousseau was almost in the right. If the only alternative +to the present social order remaining in perpetuity were a retrogression +to some such condition as that of the islanders of the South Sea, a +lover of his fellow-creatures might look upon the result, so far as it +affected the happiness of the bulk of them, with tolerably complete +indifference. It is only the faith that we are moving slowly away from +the existing order, as our ancestors moved slowly away from the old want +of order, that makes the present endurable, and makes any tenacious +effort to raise the future possible. + + * * * * * + +An immense quantity of nonsense has been talked about the equality of +man, for which those who deny that doctrine and those who assert it may +divide the responsibility. It is in reality true or false, according to +the doctrines with which it is confronted. As against the theory that +the existing way of sharing the laboriously acquired fruits and delights +of the earth is a just representation and fair counterpart of natural +inequalities among men in merit and capacity, the revolutionary theory +is true, and the passionate revolutionary cry for equality of external +chance most righteous and unanswerable. But the issues do not end here. +Take such propositions as these:--there are differences in the capacity +of men for serving the community; the well-being of the community +demands the allotment of high function in proportion to high faculty; +the rights of man in politics are confined to a right of the same +protection for his own interests as is given to the interests of others. +As against these principles, the revolutionary deductions from the +equality of man are false. And such pretensions as that every man could +be made equally fit for every function, or that not only each should +have an equal chance, but that he who uses his chance well and sociably +should be kept on a level in common opinion and trust with him who uses +it ill and unsociably, or does not use it at all,--the whole of this is +obviously most illusory and most disastrous, and in whatever decree any +set of men have ever taken it up, to that degree they have paid +the penalty. + +What Rousseau's Discourse meant, what he intended it to mean, and what +his first direct disciples understood it as meaning, is not that all men +are born equal. He never says this, and his recognition of natural +inequality implies the contrary proposition. His position is that the +artificial differences, springing from the conditions of the social +union, do not coincide with the differences in capacity springing from +original constitution; that the tendency of the social union as now +organised is to deepen the artificial inequalities, and make the gulf +between those endowed with privileges and wealth and those not so +endowed ever wider and wider. It would have been very difficult a +hundred years ago to deny the truth of this way of stating the case. If +it has to some extent already ceased to be entirely true, and if violent +popular forces are at work making it less and less true, we owe the +origin of the change, among other causes and influences, not least to +the influence of Rousseau himself, and those whom he inspired. It was +that influence which, though it certainly did not produce, yet did as +certainly give a deep and remarkable bias, first to the American +Revolution, and a dozen years afterwards to the French Revolution. + +It would be interesting to trace the different fortunes which awaited +the idea of the equality of man in America and in France. In America it +has always remained strictly within the political order, and perhaps +with the considerable exception of the possibles share it may have had, +along with Christian notions of the brotherhood of man, and +statesmanlike notions of national prosperity, in leading to the +abolition of slavery, it has brought forth no strong moral sentiment +against the ethical and economic bases of any part of the social order. +In France, on the other hand, it was the starting-point of movements +that have had all the fervour and intensity of religions, and have made +men feel about social inequalities the burning shame and wrath with +which a Christian saw the flourishing temples of unclean gods. This +difference in the interpretation and development of the first doctrine +may be explained in various ways,--by difference of material +circumstance between America and France; difference of the political and +social level from which the principle of equality had to start; and not +least by difference of intellectual temperament. This last was itself +partly the product of difference in religion, which makes the English +dread the practical enforcement of logical conclusions, while the French +have hitherto been apt to dread and despise any tendency to stop +short of that. + + * * * * * + +Let us notice, finally, the important fact that the appearance of +Rousseau's Discourses was the first sign of reaction against the +historic mode of inquiry into society that had been initiated by +Montesquieu. The Spirit of Laws was published in 1748, with a truly +prodigious effect. It coloured the whole of the social literature in +France during the rest of the century. A history of its influence would +be a history of one of the most important sides of speculative activity. +In the social writings of Rousseau himself there is hardly a chapter +which does not contain tacit reference to Montesquieu's book. The +Discourses were the beginning of a movement in an exactly opposite +direction; that is, away from patient collection of wide multitudes of +facts relating to the conditions of society, towards the promulgation of +arbitrary systems of absolute social dogmas. Mably, the chief dogmatic +socialist of the century, and one of the most dignified and austere +characters, is an important example of the detriment done by the +influence of Rousseau to that of Montesquieu, in the earlier stages of +the conflict between the two schools. Mably (1709-1785), of whom the +remark is to be made that he was for some years behind the scenes of +government as De Tencin's secretary and therefore was versed in affairs, +began his inquiries with Greece and Rome. "You will find everything in +ancient history," he said.[195] And he remained entirely in this groove +of thought until Rousseau appeared. He then gradually left Montesquieu. +"To find the duties of a legislator," he said, "I descend into the +abysses of my heart, I study my sentiments." He opposed the Economists, +the other school that was feeling its way imperfectly enough to a +positive method. "As soon as I see landed property established," he +wrote, "then I see unequal fortunes; and from these unequal fortunes +must there not necessarily result different and opposed interests, all +the vices of riches, all the vices of poverty, the brutalisation of +intelligence, the corruption of civil manners?" and so forth.[196] In +his most important work, published in 1776, we see Rousseau's notions +developed, with a logic from which their first author shrunk, either +from fear, or more probably from want of firmness and consistency as a +reasoner. "It is to equality that nature has attached the preservation +of our social faculties and happiness: and from this I conclude that +legislation will only be taking useless trouble, unless all its +attention is first of all directed to the establishment of equality in +the fortune and condition of citizens."[197] That is to say not only +political equality, but economic communism. "What miserable folly, that +persons who pass for philosophers should go on repeating after one +another that without property there can be no society. Let us leave +illusion. It is property that divides us into two classes, rich and +poor; the first will alway prefer their fortune to that of the state, +while the second will never love a government or laws that leave them in +misery."[198] This was the kind of opinion for which Rousseau's diffuse +and rhetorical exposition of social necessity had prepared France some +twenty years before. After powerfully helping the process of general +dissolution, it produced the first fruits specifically after its own +kind some twenty years later in the system of Baboeuf.[199] + +The unflinching application of principles is seldom achieved by the men +who first launch them. The labour of the preliminary task seems to +exhaust one man's stock of mental force. Rousseau never thought of the +subversion of society or its reorganisation on a communistic basis. +Within a few months of his profession of profound lament that the first +man who made a claim to property had not been instantly unmasked as the +arch foe of the race, he speaks most respectfully of property as the +pledge of the engagements of citizens and the foundation of the social +pact, while the first condition of that pact is that every one should be +maintained in peaceful enjoyment of what belongs to him.[200] We need +not impute the apparent discrepancy to insincerity. Rousseau was always +apt to think in a slipshod manner. He sensibly though illogically +accepted wholesome practical maxims, as if they flowed from theoretical +premisses that were in truth utterly incompatible with them. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[151] Delandine's _Couronnes Academiques, ou Recueil de prix proposes +par les Societes Savantes_. (Paris, 2 vols., 1787.) + +[152] Musset-Pathay has collected the details connected with the award +of the prize, ii. 365-367. + +[153] Second Letter to M. de Malesherbes, p. 358. Also _Conf._, viii. +135. + +[154] Diderot's account (_Vie de Seneque_, sect. 66, _Oeuv._, iii. 98; +also ii. 285) is not inconsistent with Rousseau's own, so that we may +dismiss as apocryphal Marmontel's version of the story (_Mem._ VIII.), +to the effect that Rousseau was about to answer the question with a +commonplace affirmative, until Diderot persuaded him that a paradox +would attract more attention. It has been said also that M. de +Francueil, and various others, first urged the writer to take a +negative line of argument. To suppose this possible is to prove one's +incapacity for understanding what manner of man Rousseau was. + +[155] _Conf._, ix. 232, 233. + +[156] _Rousseau Juge de Jean Jacques, Dialogues_, i. 252. + +[157] _Dialogues_, i. 275, 276. + +[158] _Conf._, viii. 138. + +[159] "It made a kind of revolution in Paris," says Grimm. _Corr. +Lit._, i. 108. + +[160] _Rep. au Roi de Pologne_, p. 111 and p. 113. + +[161] _Rep. a M. Bordes_, 138. + +[162] _Ib._ 137. + +[163] "The first source of the evil is inequality; from inequality +come riches ... from riches are born luxury and idleness; from luxury +come the fine arts, and from idleness the sciences." _Rep. au Roi de +Pologne_, 120, 121. + +[164] _Rep. a M. Bordes_, 147. In the same spirit he once wrote the +more wholesome maxim, "We should argue with the wise, and never with +the public." _Corr._, i. 191. + +[165] _Rep. au Roi de Pologne_, 128, 129. + +[166] _Rep. a M. Bordes_, 150-161. + +[167] P. 174. + +[168] Egger's _Hellenisme en France_, 28ieme lecon, p. 265. + +[169] Voltaire to J.J.R. Aug. 30, 1755. + +[170] _Rep. au Roi de Pologne_, 105. + +[171] In 1753 the French Academy, by way no doubt of summoning a +counter-blast to Rousseau, boldly offered as the subject of their +essay the thesis that "The love of letters inspires the love of +virtue," and the prize was won fitly enough by a Jesuit professor of +rhetoric. See Delandine, i. 42. + +[172] Preface to _Narcisse_, 251. + +[173] _Rep. a M. Bordes_, 167. + +[174] P. 187. + +[175] See for instance a strange discussion about _morale universelle_ +and the like in _Mem. de Mdme. d'Epinay_, i. 217-226. + +[176] Often described as Morelly the Younger, to distinguish him from +his father, who wrote an essay on the human heart, and another on the +human intelligence. + +[177] _Code de la Nature, ou le veritable esprit de ses loix, de tout +tems neglige ou meconnu._ + +[178] P. 169. Rousseau did not see it then, but he showed himself on +the track. + +[179] At the end of the _Code de la Nature_ Morelly places a complete +set of rules for the organisation of a model community. The base of it +was the absence of private property--a condition that was to be +preserved by vigilant education of the young in ways of thinking, that +should make the possession of private property odious or +inconceivable. There are to be sumptuary laws of a moderate kind. The +government is to be in the hands of the elders. The children are to be +taken away from their parents at the age of five; reared and educated +in public establishments; and returned to their parents at the age of +sixteen or so when they will marry. Marriage is to be dissoluble at +the end of ten years, but after divorce the woman is not to marry a +man younger than herself, nor is the man to marry a woman younger than +the wife from whom he has parted. The children of a divorced couple +are to remain with the father, and if he marries again, they are to be +held the children of the second wife. Mothers are to suckle their own +children (p. 220). The whole scheme is fuller of good ideas than such +schemes usually are. + +[180] P. 218. + +[181] This is obviously untrue. Animals do not know death in the sense +of scientific definition, and probably have no abstract idea of it as +a general state; but they know and are afraid of its concrete +phenomena, and so are most savages. + +[182] This is one of the passages in the Discourse, the harshness of +which was afterwards attributed by Rousseau to the influence of +Diderot. _Conf._, viii. 205, _n._ + +[183] P. 261. + +[184] As if sin really came by the law in this sense; as if a law +defining and prohibiting a malpractice were the cause of the +commission of the act which it constituted a malpractice. As if giving +a name and juristic classification to any kind of conduct were adding +to men's motives for indulging in it. + +[185] P. 269. + +[186] P. 278. + +[187] Pp. 285-287. + +[188] P. 273. + +[189] P. 250. + +[190] _Politicus_, 268 D-274 E. + +[191] Here for instance is D'Alembert's story:--"The necessity of +shielding our own body from pain and destruction leads us to examine +among external objects those which are useful and those which are +hurtful, so that we may seek the one and flee the others. But we +hardly begin our search into such objects before we discover among +them a great number of beings which strike us as exactly like +ourselves; that is, whose form is just like our own, and who, so far +as we can judge at the first glance, appear to have the same +perceptions. Everything therefore leads us to suppose that they have +also the same wants, and consequently the same interest in satisfying +them, whence it results that we must find great advantage in joining +with them for the purpose of distinguishing in nature what has the +power of preserving us from what has the power of hurting us. The +communication of ideas is the principle and the stay of this union, +and necessarily demands the invention of signs; such is the origin of +the formation of societies." _Discours Preliminaire de +l'Encyclopedie._ Contrast this with Aristotle's sensible statement +(_Polit._ I. ii. 15) that "there is in men by nature a strong impulse +to enter into such union." + +[192] _Code de la Nature._ + +[193] See, for example, his criticism on the Abbe de St. Pierre. +_Conf._, viii. 264. And also in the analysis of this very Discourse, +above, vol. i. p. 163. + +[194] "I have lived with communities of savages in South America and +in the East, who have no laws or law courts but the public opinion of +the visage freely expressed. Each man scrupulously respects the rights +of his fellow, and any infraction of those rights rarely or never +takes place. In such a community all are nearly equal. There are none +of those wide distinctions of education and ignorance, wealth and +poverty, master and servant, which are the products of our +civilisation; there is none of that widespread division of labour +which, while it increases wealth, produces also conflicting interests; +there is not that severe competition and struggle for existence, or +for wealth, which the dense population of civilised countries +inevitably creates. All incitements to great crimes are thus wanting, +and petty ones are repressed, partly by the influence of public +opinion, but chiefly by that natural sense of justice and of his +neighbour's right, which seems to be in some degree inherent in every +race of man. Now, although we have progressed vastly beyond the savage +state in intellectual achievements, we have not advanced equally in +morals. It is true that among those classes who have no wants that +cannot be easily supplied, and among whom public opinion has great +influence, the rights of others are fully respected. It is true, also, +that we have vastly extended the sphere of those rights, and include +within them all the brotherhood of man. But it is not too much to say, +that the mass of our populations have not at all advanced beyond the +savage code of morals, and have in many cases sunk below it." +Wallace's _Malay Archipelago_, vol. ii. pp. 460-461. + +[195] So too Bougainville, a brother of the navigator, said in 1760, +"For an attentive observer who sees nothing in events of the utmost +diversity of appearance but the natural effects of a certain number of +causes differently combined, Greece is the universe in small, and the +history of Greece an excellent epitome of universal history." (Quoted +in Egger's _Hellenisme en France_, ii. 272.) The revolutionists of the +next generation, who used to appeal so unseasonably to the ancients, +were only following a literary fashion set by their fathers. + +[196] _Doutes sur l'Ordre Naturel_; _Oeuv._, xi. 80. (Ed. 1794, 1795.) + +[197] _La Legislation_, I. i. + +[198] _Ibid._ + +[199] It is not within our province to examine the vexed question +whether the Convention was fundamentally socialist, and not merely +political. That socialist ideas were afloat in the minds of some +members, one can hardly doubt. See Von Sybel's _Hist. of the French +Revolution_, Bk. II. ch. iv., on one side, and Quinet's _La +Revolution_, ii. 90-107, on the other. + +[200] _Economie Politique_, pp. 41, 53, etc. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +PARIS. + + +I. + +By what subtle process did Rousseau, whose ideal had been a summer life +among all the softnesses of sweet gardens and dappled orchards, turn +into panegyrist of the harsh austerity of old Cato and grim Brutus's +civic devotion? The amiability of eighteenth century France--and France +was amiable in spite of the atrocities of White Penitents at Toulouse, +and black Jansenists at Paris, and the men and women who dealt in +_lettres-de-cachet_ at Versailles--was revolted by the name of the cruel +patriot who slew his son for the honour of discipline.[201] How came +Rousseau of all men, the great humanitarian of his time, to rise to the +height of these unlovely rigours? + +The answer is that he was a citizen of Geneva transplanted. He had been +bred in puritan and republican tradition, with love of God and love of +law and freedom and love of country all penetrating it, and then he had +been accidentally removed to a strange city that was in active ferment +with ideas that were the direct abnegation of all these. In Paris the +idea of a God was either repudiated along with many other ancestral +conceptions, or else it was fatally entangled with the worst +superstition and not seldom with the vilest cruelties. The idea of +freedom was unknown, and the idea of law was benumbed by abuses and +exceptions. The idea of country was enfeebled in some and displaced in +others by a growing passion for the captivating something styled +citizenship of the world. If Rousseau could have ended his days among +the tranquil lakes and hills of Savoy, Geneva might possibly never have +come back to him. For it depends on circumstance, which of the chances +that slumber within us shall awake, and which shall fall unroused with +us into the darkness. The fact of Rousseau ranking among the greatest of +the writers of the French language, and the yet more important fact that +his ideas found their most ardent disciples and exploded in their most +violent form in France, constantly make us forget that he was not a +Frenchman, but a Genevese deeply imbued with the spirit of his native +city. He was thirty years old before he began even temporarily to live +in France: he had only lived there some five or six years when he wrote +his first famous piece, so un-French in all its spirit; and the ideas of +the Social Contract were in germ before he settled in France at all. + +There have been two great religious reactions, and the name of Geneva +has a fundamental association with each of them. The first was that +against the paganised Catholicism of the renaissance, and of this +Calvin was a prime leader; the second was that against the materialism +of the eighteenth century, of which the prime leader was Rousseau. The +diplomatist was right who called Geneva the fifth part of the world. At +the congress of Vienna, some one, wearied at the enormous place taken by +the hardly visible Geneva in the midst of negotiations involving +momentous issues for the whole habitable globe, called out that it was +after all no more than a grain of sand. But he was not wrong who made +bold to reply, "Geneva is no grain of sand; 'tis a grain of musk that +perfumes all Europe."[202] We have to remember that it was at all events +as a grain of musk ever pervading the character of Rousseau. It happened +in later years that he repudiated his allegiance to her, but however +bitterly a man may quarrel with a parent, he cannot change blood, and +Rousseau ever remained a true son of the city of Calvin. We may perhaps +conjecture without excessive fancifulness that the constant spectacle +and memory of a community, free, energetic, and prosperous, whose +institutions had been shaped and whose political temper had been +inspired by one great lawgiver, contributed even more powerfully than +what he had picked up about Lycurgus and Lacedaemon, to give him a turn +for Utopian speculation, and a conviction of the artificiality and easy +modifiableness of the social structure. This, however, is less certain +than that he unconsciously received impressions in his youth from the +circumstances of Geneva, both as to government and religion, as to +freedom, order, citizenship, manners, which formed the deepest part of +him on the reflective side, and which made themselves visible whenever +he exchanged the life of beatified sense for moods of speculative +energy, "Never," he says, "did I see the walls of that happy city, I +never went into it, without feeling a certain faintness at my heart, due +to excess of tender emotion. At the same time that the noble image of +freedom elevated my soul, those of equality, of union, of gentle +manners, touched me even to tears."[203] His spirit never ceased to +haunt city and lake to the end, and he only paid the debt of an owed +acknowledgment in the dedication of his Discourse on Inequality to the +republic of Geneva.[204] It was there it had its root. The honour in +which industry was held in Geneva, the democratic phrases that +constituted the dialect of its government, the proud tradition of the +long battle which had won and kept its independence, the severity of its +manners, the simplicity of its pleasures,--all these things awoke in his +memory as soon as ever occasion drew him to serious thought. More than +that, he had in a peculiar manner drawn in with the breath of his +earliest days in this theocratically constituted city, the vital idea +that there are sacred things and objects of reverence among men. And +hence there came to him, though with many stains and much misdirection, +the most priceless excellence of a capacity for devout veneration. + +There is certainly no real contradiction between the quality of +reverence and the more equivocal quality of a sensuous temperament, +though a man may well seem on the surface, as the first succeeds the +second in rule over him, to be the contradiction to his other self. The +objects of veneration and the objects of sensuous delight are externally +so unlike and so incongruous, that he who follows both in their turns is +as one playing the part of an ironical chorus in the tragi-comic drama +of his own life. You may perceive these two to be mere imperfect or +illusory opposites, when you confront a man like Rousseau with the true +opposite of his own type; with those who are from their birth analysts +and critics, keen, restless, urgent, inexorably questioning. That +energetic type, though not often dead or dull on the side of sense, yet +is incapable of steeping itself in the manifold delights of eye and ear, +of nostril and touch, with the peculiar intensity of passive absorption +that seeks nothing further nor deeper than unending continuance of this +profound repose of all filled sensation, just as it is incapable of the +kindred mood of elevated humility and joyful unasking devoutness in the +presence of emotions and dim thoughts that are beyond the compass +of words. + +The citizen of Geneva with this unseen fibre of Calvinistic veneration +and austerity strong and vigorous within him, found a world that had +nothing sacred and took nothing for granted; that held the past in +contempt, and ever like old Athenians asked for some new thing; that +counted simplicity of life an antique barbarism, and literary +curiousness the master virtue. There were giants in this world, like the +panurgic Diderot. There were industrious, worthy, disinterested men, who +used their minds honestly and actively with sincere care for truth, like +D'Holbach. There was poured around the whole, like a high stimulating +atmosphere to the stronger, and like some evil mental aphrodisiac to the +weaker, the influence of Voltaire, the great indomitable chieftain of +them all. Intellectual size half redeems want of perfect direction by +its generous power and fulness. It was not the strong men, atheists and +philosophisers as they were, who first irritated Rousseau into revolt +against their whole system of thought in all its principles. The dissent +between him and them was fundamental and enormous, and in time it flamed +out into open war. Conflict of theory, however, was brought home to him +first by slow-growing exasperation at the follies in practice of the +minor disciples of the gospel of knowing and acting, as distinguished +from his own gospel of placid being. He craved beliefs that should +uphold men in living their lives, substantial helps on which they might +lean without examination and without mistrust: his life in Paris was +thrown among people who lived in the midst of open questions, and +revelled in a reflective and didactic morality, which had no root in the +heart and so made things easy for the practical conscience. He sought +tranquillity and valued life for its own sake, not as an arena and a +theme for endless argument and debate: he found friends who knew no +higher pleasure than the futile polemics of mimic philosophy over +dessert, who were as full of quibble as the wrong-headed interlocutors +in a Platonic dialogue, and who babbled about God and state of nature, +about virtue and the spirituality of the soul, much as Boswell may have +done when Johnson complained of him for asking questions that would make +a man hang himself. The highest things were thus brought down to the +level of the cheapest discourse, and subjects which the wise take care +only to discuss with the wise, were here everyday topics for all comers. + +The association with such high themes of those light qualities of tact, +gaiety, complaisance, which are the life of the superficial commerce of +men and women of the world, probably gave quite as much offence to +Rousseau as the doctrines which some of his companions had the honest +courage or the heedless fatuity to profess. It was an outrage to all the +serious side of him to find persons of quality introducing materialism +as a new fashion, and atheism as the liveliest of condiments. The +perfume of good manners only made what he took for bad principles the +worse, and heightened his impatience at the flippancy of pretensions to +overthrow the beliefs of a world between two wines. + +Doctrine and temperament united to set him angrily against the world +around him. The one was austere and the other was sensuous, and the +sensuous temperament in its full strength is essentially solitary. The +play of social intercourse, its quick transitions, and incessant +demands, are fatal to free and uninterrupted abandonment to the flow of +soft internal emotions. Rousseau, dreaming, moody, indolently, +meditative, profoundly enwrapped in the brooding egoism of his own +sensations, had to mix with men and women whose egoism took the contrary +form of an eager desire to produce flashing effects on other people. We +may be sure that as the two sides of his character--his notions of +serious principle, and his notions of personal comfort--both went in the +same direction, the irritation and impatience with which they inspired +him towards society did not lessen with increased communication, but +naturally deepened with a more profoundly settled antipathy. + +Rousseau lived in Paris for twelve years, from his return from Venice in +1744 until his departure in 1756 for the rustic lodge in a wood which +the good-will of Madame d'Epinay provided for him. We have already seen +one very important side of his fortunes during these years, in the +relations he formed with Theresa, and the relations which he repudiated +with his children. We have heard too the new words with which during +these years he first began to make the hearts of his contemporaries wax +hot within them. It remains to examine the current of daily circumstance +on which his life was embarked, and the shores to which it was +bearing him. + +His patrons were at present almost exclusively in the circle of +finance. Richelieu, indeed, took him for a moment by the hand, but even +the introduction to him was through the too frail wife of one of the +greatest of the farmers general.[205] Madame Dupin and Madame d'Epinay, +his two chief patronesses, were also both of them the wives of magnates +of the farm. The society of the great people of this world was marked by +all the glare, artificiality, and sentimentalism of the epoch, but it +had also one or two specially hollow characteristics of its own. As is +always the case when a new rich class rises in the midst of a community +possessing an old caste, the circle of Parisian financiers made it their +highest social aim to thrust and strain into the circle of the +Versailles people of quality. They had no normal life of their own, with +independent traditions and self-respect; and for the same reason that an +essentially worn-out aristocracy may so long preserve a considerable +degree of vigour and even of social utility under certain circumstances +by means of tenacious pride in its own order, a new plutocracy is +demoralised from the very beginning of its existence by want of a +similar kind of pride in itself, and by the ignoble necessity of craving +the countenance of an upper class that loves to despise and humiliate +it. Besides the more obvious evils of a position resting entirely on +material opulence, and maintaining itself by coarse and glittering +ostentation, there is a fatal moral hollowness which infects both +serious conduct and social diversion. The result is seen in imitative +manners, affected culture, and a mixture of timorous self-consciousness +within and noisy self-assertion without, which completes the most +distasteful scene that any collected spirit can witness. + +Rousseau was, as has been said, the secretary of Madame Dupin and her +stepson Francueil. He occasionally went with them to Chenonceaux in +Touraine, one of Henry the Second's castles built for Diana of Poitiers, +and here he fared sumptuously every day. In Paris his means, as we know, +were too strait. For the first two years he had a salary of nine hundred +francs; then his employers raised it to as much as fifty louis. For the +first of the Discourses the publisher gave him nothing, and for the +second he had to extract his fee penny by penny, and after long waiting. +His comic opera, the Village Soothsayer, was a greater success; it +brought him the round sum of two hundred louis from the court, and some +five and twenty more from the bookseller, and so, he says, "the +interlude, which cost me five or six weeks of work, produced nearly as +much money as Emilius afterwards did, which had cost me twenty years of +meditation and three years of composition."[206] Before the arrival of +this windfall, M. Francueil, who was receiver-general, offered him the +post of cashier in that important department, and Rousseau attended for +some weeks to receive the necessary instructions. His progress was tardy +as usual, and the complexities of accounts were as little congenial to +him as notarial complexities had been three and twenty years previously. +It is, however, one of the characteristics of times of national break-up +not to be peremptory in exacting competence, and Rousseau gravely sat at +the receipt of custom, doing the day's duty with as little skill as +liking. Before he had been long at his post, his official chief going on +a short journey left him in charge of the chest, which happened at the +moment to contain no very portentous amount. The disquiet with which the +watchful custody of this moderate treasure harassed and afflicted +Rousseau, not only persuaded him that nature had never designed him to +be the guardian of money chests, but also threw him into a fit of very +painful illness. The surgeons let him understand that within six months +he would be in the pale kingdoms. The effect of such a hint on a man of +his temper, and the train of reflections which it would be sure to set +aflame, are to be foreseen by us who know Rousseau's fashion of dealing +with the irksome. Why sacrifice the peace and charm of the little +fragment of days left to him, to the bondage of an office for which he +felt nothing but disgust? How reconcile the austere principles which he +had just adopted in his denunciation of sciences and arts, and his +panegyric on the simplicity of the natural life, with such duties as he +had to perform? And how preach disinterestedness and frugality from amid +the cashboxes of a receiver-general? Plainly it was his duty to pass in +independence and poverty the little time that was yet left to him, to +bring all the forces of his soul to bear in breaking the fetters of +opinion, and to carry out courageously whatever seemed best to himself, +without suffering the judgment of others to interpose the slightest +embarrassment or hindrance.[207] + +With Rousseau, to conceive a project of this kind for simplifying his +life was to hasten urgently towards its realisation, because such +projects harmonised with all his strongest predispositions. His design +mastered and took whole possession of him. He resolved to earn his +living by copying music, as that was conformable to his taste, within +his capacity, and compatible with entire personal freedom. His patron +did as the world is so naturally ready to do with those who choose the +stoic's way; he declared that Rousseau was gone mad.[208] Talk like this +had no effect on a man whom self-indulgence led into a path that others +would only have been forced into by self-denial. Let it be said, +however, that this is a form of self-indulgence of which society is +never likely to see an excess, and meanwhile we may continue to pay it +some respect as assuredly leaning to virtue's side. Rousseau's many +lapses from grace perhaps deserve a certain gentleness of treatment, +after the time when with deliberation and collected effort he set +himself to the hard task of fitting his private life to his public +principles. Anything that heightens the self-respect of the race is good +for us to behold, and it is a permanent source of comfort to all who +thirst after reality in teachers, whether their teaching happens to be +our own or not, to find that the prophet of social equality was not a +fine gentleman, nor the teacher of democracy a hanger-on to the silly +skirts of fashion. + +Rousseau did not merely throw up a post which would one day have made +him rich. Stoicism on the heroic, peremptory scale is not so difficult +as the application of the same principle to trifles. Besides this +greater sacrifice, he gave up the pleasant things for which most men +value the money that procures them, and instituted an austere sumptuary +reform in truly Genevese spirit. His sword was laid aside; for flowing +peruke was substituted the small round wig; he left off gilt buttons and +white stockings, and he sold his watch with the joyful and singular +thought that he would never again need to know the time. One sacrifice +remained to be made. Part of his equipment for the Venetian embassy had +been a large stock of fine linen, and for this he retained a particular +affection, for both now and always Rousseau had a passion for personal +cleanliness, as he had for corporeal wholesomeness. He was seasonably +delivered from bondage to his fine linen by aid from without. One +Christmas Eve it lay drying in a garret in the rather considerable +quantity of forty-two shirts, when a thief, always suspected to be the +brother of Theresa, broke open the door and carried off the treasure, +leaving Rousseau henceforth to be the contented wearer of coarser +stuffs.[209] + +We may place this reform towards the end of the year 1750, or the +beginning of 1751, when his mind was agitated by the busy discussion +which his first Discourse excited, and by the new ideas of literary +power which its reception by the public naturally awakened in him. "It +takes," wrote Diderot, "right above the clouds; never was such a +success."[210] We can hardly have a surer sign of a man's fundamental +sincerity than that his first triumph, the first revelation to him of +his power, instead of seducing him to frequent the mischievous and +disturbing circle of his applauders, should throw him inwards upon +himself and his own principles with new earnestness and refreshed +independence. Rousseau very soon made up his mind what the world was +worth to him; and this, not as the ordinary sentimentalist or satirist +does, by way of set-off against the indulgence of personal foibles, but +from recognition of his own qualities, of the bounds set to our capacity +of life, and of the limits of the world's power to satisfy us. "When my +destiny threw me into the whirlpool of society," he wrote in his last +meditation on the course of his own life, "I found nothing there to +give a moment's solace to my heart. Regret for my sweet leisure followed +me everywhere; it shed indifference or disgust over all that might have +been within my reach, leading to fortune and honours. Uncertain in the +disquiet of my desires, I hoped for little, I obtained less, and I felt +even amid gleams of prosperity that if I obtained all that I supposed +myself to be seeking, I should still not have found the happiness for +which my heart was greedily athirst, though without distinctly knowing +its object. Thus everything served to detach my affections from society, +even before the misfortunes which were to make me wholly a stranger to +it. I reached the age of forty, floating between indigence and fortune, +between wisdom and disorder, full of vices of habit without any evil +tendency at heart, living by hazard, distracted as to my duties without +despising them, but often without much clear knowledge what they +were."[211] + +A brooding nature gives to character a connectedness and unity that is +in strong contrast with the dispersion and multiformity of the active +type. The attractions of fame never cheated Rousseau into forgetfulness +of the commanding principle that a man's life ought to be steadily +composed to oneness with itself in all its parts, as by mastery of an +art of moral counterpoint, and not crowded with a wild mixture of aim +and emotion like distracted masks in high carnival. He complains of the +philosophers with whom he came into contact, that their philosophy was +something foreign to them and outside of their own lives. They studied +human nature for the sake of talking learnedly about it, not for the +sake of self-knowledge; they laboured to instruct others, not to +enlighten themselves within. When they published a book, its contents +only interested them to the extent of making the world accept it, +without seriously troubling themselves whether it were true or false, +provided only that it was not refuted. "For my own part, when I desired +to learn, it was to know things myself, and not at all to teach others. +I always believed that before instructing others it was proper to begin +by knowing enough for one's self; and of all the studies that I have +tried to follow in my life in the midst of men, there is hardly one that +I should not have followed equally if I had been alone, and shut up in a +desert island for the rest of my days."[212] + +When we think of Turgot, whom Rousseau occasionally met among the +society which he denounces, such a denunciation sounds a little +outrageous. But then Turgot was perhaps the one sane Frenchman of the +first eminence in the eighteenth century. Voltaire chose to be an exile +from the society of Paris and Versailles as pertinaciously as Rousseau +did, and he spoke more bitterly of it in verse than Rousseau ever spoke +bitterly of it in prose.[213] It was, as has been so often said, a +society dominated by women, from the king's mistress who helped to ruin +France, down to the financier's wife who gave suppers to flashy men of +letters. The eighteenth century salon has been described as having three +stages; the salon of 1730, still retaining some of the stately +domesticity, elegance, dignity of the age of Lewis XIV.; that of 1780, +grave, cold, dry, given to dissertation; and between the two, the salon +of 1750, full of intellectual stir, brilliance, frivolous originality, +glittering wastefulness.[214] Though this division of time must not be +pressed too closely, it is certain that the era of Rousseau's advent in +literature with his Discourses fell in with the climax of social +unreality in the surface intercourse of France, and that the same date +marks the highest point of feminine activity and power. + +The common mixture of much reflective morality in theory with much +light-hearted immorality in practice, never entered so largely into +manners. We have constantly to wonder how they analysed and defined the +word Virtue, to which they so constantly appealed in letters, +conversation, and books, as the sovereign object for our deepest and +warmest adoration. A whole company of transgressors of the marriage law +would melt into floods of tears over a hymn to virtue, which they must +surely have held of too sacred an essence to mix itself with any one +virtue in particular, except that very considerable one of charitably +letting all do as they please. It is much, however, that these tears, +if not very burning, were really honest. Society, though not believing +very deeply in the supernatural, was not cursed with an arid, parching, +and hardened scepticism about the genuineness of good emotions in a man, +and so long as people keep this baleful poison out of their hearts, +their lives remain worth having. + +It is true that cynicism in the case of some women of this time +occasionally sounded in a diabolic key, as when one said, "It is your +lover to whom you should never say that you don't believe in God; to +one's husband that does not matter, because in the case of a lover one +must reserve for one's self some door of escape, and devotional scruples +cut everything short."[215] Or here: "I do not distrust anybody, for +that is a deliberate act; but I do not trust anybody, and there is no +trouble in this."[216] Or again in the word thrown to a man vaunting the +probity of some one: "What! can a man of intelligence like you accept +the prejudice of _meum_ and _tuum_?"[217] Such speech, however, was +probably most often a mere freak of the tongue, a mode and fashion, as +who should go to a masked ball in guise of Mephistopheles, without +anything more Mephistophelian about him than red apparel and peaked +toes. "She was absolutely charming," said one of a new-comer; "she did +not utter one single word that was not a paradox."[218] This was the +passing taste. Human nature is able to keep itself wholesome in +fundamentals even under very great difficulties, and it is as wise as it +is charitable in judging a sharp and cynical tone to make large +allowances for mere costume and assumed character. + +In respect of the light companionship of common usage, however, it is +exactly the costume which comes closest to us, and bad taste in that is +most jarring and least easily forgiven. There is a certain stage in an +observant person's experience of the heedlessness, indolence, and native +folly of men and women--and if his observation be conducted in a +catholic spirit, he will probably see something of this not merely in +others--when the tolerable average sanity of human arrangements strikes +him as the most marvellous of all the fortunate accidents in the +universe. Rousseau could not even accept the fact of this miraculous +result, the provisional and temporary sanity of things, and he +confronted society with eyes of angry chagrin. A great lady asked him +how it was that she had not seen him for an age. "Because when I wish to +see you, I wish to see no one but you. What do you want me to do in the +midst of your society? I should cut a sorry figure in a circle of +mincing tripping coxcombs; they do not suit me." We cannot wonder that +on some occasion when her son's proficiency was to be tested before a +company of friends, Madame d'Epinay prayed Rousseau to be of them, on +the ground that he would be sure to ask the child outrageously absurd +questions, which would give gaiety to the affair.[219] As it happened, +the father was unwise. He was a man of whom it was said that he had +devoured two million francs, without either saying or doing a single +good thing. He rewarded the child's performance with the gift of a +superb suit of cherry-coloured velvet, extravagantly trimmed with costly +lace; the peasant from whose sweat and travail the money had been wrung, +went in heavy rags, and his children lived as the beasts of the field. +The poor youth was ill dealt with. "That is very fine," said rude +Duclos, "but remember that a fool in lace is still a fool." Rousseau, in +reply to the child's importunity, was still blunter: "Sir, I am no judge +of finery, I am only a judge of man; I wished to talk with you a little +while ago, but I wish so no longer."[220] + +Marmontel, whose account may have been coloured by retrospection in +later years, says that before the success of the first Discourse, +Rousseau concealed his pride under the external forms of a politeness +that was timid even to obsequiousness; in his uneasy glance you +perceived mistrust and observant jealousy; there was no freedom in his +manner, and no one ever observed more cautiously the hateful precept to +live with your friends as though they were one day to be your +enemies.[221] Grimm's description is different and more trustworthy. +Until he began to affect singularity, he says, Rousseau had been gallant +and overflowing with artificial compliment, with manners that were +honeyed and even wearisome in their soft elaborateness. All at once he +put on the cynic's cloak, and went to the other extreme. Still in spite +of an abrupt and cynical tone he kept much of his old art of elaborate +fine speeches, and particularly in his relations with women.[222] Of his +abruptness, he tells a most displeasing tale. "One day Rousseau told us +with an air of triumph, that as he was coming out of the opera where he +had been seeing the first representation of the Village Soothsayer, the +Duke of Zweibruecken had approached him with much politeness, saying, +'Will you allow me to pay you a compliment?' and that he replied, 'Yes, +if it be very short.' Everybody was silent at this, until I said to him +laughingly, 'Illustrious citizen and co-sovereign of Geneva, since there +resides in you a part of the sovereignty of the republic, let me +represent to you that, for all the severity of your principles, you +should hardly refuse to a sovereign prince the respect due to a +water-carrier, and that if you had met a word of good-will from a +water-carrier with an answer as rough and brutal as that, you would have +had to reproach yourself with a most unseasonable piece of +impertinence.'"[223] + +There were still more serious circumstances when exasperation at the +flippant tone about him carried him beyond the ordinary bounds of that +polite time. A guest at table asked contemptuously what was the use of a +nation like the French having reason, if they did not use it. "They mock +the other nations of the earth, and yet are the most credulous of all." +ROUSSEAU: "I forgive them for their credulity, but not for condemning +those who are credulous in some other way." Some one said that in +matters of religion everybody was right, but that everybody should +remain in that in which he had been born. ROUSSEAU, with warmth: "Not +so, by God, if it is a bad one, for then it can do nothing but harm." +Then some one contended that religion always did some good, as a kind of +rein to the common people who had no other morality. All the rest cried +out at this in indignant remonstrance, one shrewd person remarking that +the common people had much livelier fear of being hanged than of being +damned. The conversation was broken off for a moment by the hostess +calling out, "After all, one must nourish the tattered affair we call +our body, so ring and let them bring us the joint." This done, the +servants dismissed, and the door shut, the discussion was resumed with +such vehemence by Duclos and Saint Lambert, that, says the lady who +tells us the story, "I feared they were bent on destroying all religion, +and I prayed for some mercy to be shown at any rate to natural +religion." There was not a whit more sympathy for that than for the +rest. Rousseau declared himself _paullo infirmior_, and clung to the +morality of the gospel as the natural morality which in old times +constituted the whole and only creed. "But what is a God," cried one +impetuous disputant, "who gets angry and is appeased again?" Rousseau +began to murmur between grinding teeth, and a tide of pleasantries set +in at his expense, to which came this: "If it is a piece of cowardice to +suffer ill to be spoken of one's friend behind his back, 'tis a crime to +suffer ill to be spoken of one's God, who is present; and for my part, +sirs, I believe in God." "I admit," said the atheistic champion, "that +it is a fine thing to see this God bending his brow to earth and +watching with admiration the conduct of a Cato. But this notion is, like +many others, very useful in some great heads, such as Trajan, Marcus +Aurelius, Socrates, where it can only produce heroism, but it is the +germ of all madnesses." ROUSSEAU: "Sirs, I leave the room if you say +another word more," and he was rising to fulfil his threat, when the +entry of a new-comer stopped the discussion.[224] + +His words on another occasion show how all that he saw helped to keep up +a fretted condition of mind, in one whose soft tenacious memory turned +daily back to simple and unsophisticated days among the green valleys, +and refused to acquiesce in the conditions of changed climate. So +terrible a thing is it to be the bondsman of reminiscence. Madame +d'Epinay was suspected, wrongfully as it afterwards proved, of having +destroyed some valuable papers belonging to a dead relative. There was +much idle and cruel gossip in an ill-natured world. Rousseau, her +friend, kept steadfast silence: she challenged his opinion. "What am I +to say?" he answered; "I go and come, and all that I hear outrages and +revolts me. I see the one so evidently malicious and so adroit in their +injustice; the other so awkward and so stupid in their good intentions, +that I am tempted (and it is not the first time) to look on Paris as a +cavern of brigands, of whom every traveller in his turn is the victim. +What gives me the worst idea of society is to see how eager each person +is to pardon himself, by reason of the number of the people who are like +him."[225] + +Notwithstanding his hatred of this cavern of brigands, and the little +pains he took to conceal his feelings from any individual brigand, +whether male or female, with whom he had to deal, he found out that "it +is not always so easy as people suppose to be poor and independent." +Merciless invasion of his time in every shape made his life weariness. +Sometimes he had the courage to turn and rend the invader, as in the +letter to a painter who sent him the same copy of verses three times, +requiring immediate acknowledgment. "It is not just," at length wrote +the exasperated Rousseau, "that I should be tyrannised over for your +pleasure; not that my time is precious, as you say; it is either passed +in suffering or it is lost in idleness; but when I cannot employ it +usefully for some one, I do not wish to be hindered from wasting it in +my own fashion. A single minute thus usurped is what all the kings of +the universe could not give me back, and it is to be my own master that +I flee from the idle folk of towns,--people as thoroughly wearied as +they are thoroughly wearisome,--who, because they do not know what to do +with their own time, think they have a right to waste that of +others."[226] The more abruptly he treated visitors, persecuting +dinner-givers, and all the tribe of the importunate, the more obstinate +they were in possessing themselves of his time. In seizing the hours +they were keeping his purse empty, as well as keeping up constant +irritation in his soul. He appears to have earned forty sous for a +morning's work, and to have counted this a fair fee, remarking modestly +that he could not well subsist on less.[227] He had one chance of a +pension, which he threw from him in a truly characteristic manner. + +When he came to Paris he composed his musical diversion of the Muses +Galantes, which was performed (1745) in the presence of Rameau, under +the patronage of M. de la Popeliniere. Rameau apostrophised the unlucky +composer with much violence, declaring that one-half of the piece was +the work of a master, while the other was that of a person entirely +ignorant of the musical rudiments; the bad work therefore was +Rousseau's own, and the good was a plagiarism.[228] This repulse did not +daunt the hero. Five or six years afterwards on a visit to Passy, as he +was lying awake in bed, he conceived the idea of a pastoral interlude +after the manner of the Italian comic operas. In six days the Village +Soothsayer was sketched, and in three weeks virtually completed. Duclos +procured its rehearsal at the Opera, and after some debate it was +performed before the court at Fontainebleau. The Plutarchian stoic, its +author, went from Paris in a court coach, but his Roman tone deserted +him, and he felt shamefaced as a schoolboy before the great world, such +divinity doth hedge even a Lewis XV., and even in a soul of Genevan +temper. The piece was played with great success, and the composer was +informed that he would the next day have the honour of being presented +to the king, who would most probably mark his favour by the bestowal of +a pension.[229] Rousseau was tossed with many doubts. He would fain have +greeted the king with some word that should show sensibility to the +royal graciousness, without compromising republican severity, "clothing +some great and useful truth in a fine and deserved compliment." This +moral difficulty was heightened by a physical one, for he was liable to +an infirmity which, if it should overtake him in presence of king and +courtiers, would land him in an embarrassment worse than death. What +would become of him if mind or body should fail, if either he should be +driven into precipitate retreat, or else there should escape him, +instead of the great truth wrapped delicately round in veracious +panegyric, a heavy, shapeless word of foolishness? He fled in terror, +and flung up the chance of pension and patronage. We perceive the born +dreamer with a phantasmagoric imagination, seizing nothing in just +proportion and true relation, and paralysing the spirit with terror of +unrealities; in short, with the most fatal form of moral cowardice, +which perhaps it is a little dangerous to try to analyse into +finer names. + +When Rousseau got back to Paris he was amazed to find that Diderot spoke +to him of this abandonment of the pension with a fire that he could +never have expected from a philosopher, Rousseau plainly sharing the +opinion of more vulgar souls that philosopher is but fool writ large. +"He said that if I was disinterested on my own account, I had no right +to be so on that of Madame Le Vasseur and her daughter, and that I owed +it to them not to let pass any possible and honest means of giving them +bread.... This was the first real dispute I had with him, and all our +quarrels that followed were of the same kind; he laying down for me what +he insisted that I should do, and I refusing because I thought that I +ought not to do it."[230] + +Let us abstain, at this and all other points, from being too sure that +we easily see to the bottom of our Rousseau. When we are most ready to +fling up the book and to pronounce him all selfishness and sophistry, +some trait is at hand to revive moral interest in him, and show him +unlike common men, reverent of truth and human dignity. There is a +slight anecdote of this kind connected with his visit to Fontainebleau. +The day after the representation of his piece, he happened to be taking +his breakfast in some public place. An officer entered, and, proceeding +to describe the performance of the previous day, told at great length +all that had happened, depicted the composer with much minuteness, and +gave a circumstantial account of his conversation. In this story, which +was told with equal assurance and simplicity, there was not a word of +truth, as was clear from the fact that the author of whom he spoke with +such intimacy sat unknown and unrecognised before his eyes. The effect +on Rousseau was singular enough. "The man was of a certain age; he had +no coxcombical or swaggering air; his expression bespoke a man of merit, +and his cross of St. Lewis showed that he was an old officer. While he +was retailing his untruths, I grew red in the face, I lowered my eyes, I +sat on thorns; I tried to think of some means of believing him to have +made a mistake in good faith. At length trembling lest some one should +recognise me and confront him, I hastened to finish my chocolate without +saying a word; and stooping down as I passed in front of him, I went +out as fast as possible, while the people present discussed his tale. I +perceived in the street that I was bathed in sweat, and I am sure that +if any one had recognised me and called me by name before I got out, +they would have seen in me the shame and embarrassment of a culprit, +simply from a feeling of the pain the poor man would have had to suffer +if his lie had been discovered."[231] One who can feel thus vividly +humiliated by the meanness of another, assuredly has in himself the +wholesome salt of respect for the erectness of his fellows; he has the +rare sentiment that the compromise of integrity in one of them is as a +stain on his own self-esteem, and a lowering of his own moral stature. +There is more deep love of humanity in this than in giving many alms, +and it was not the less deep for being the product of impulse and +sympathetic emotion, and not of a logical sorites. + +Another scene in a cafe is worth referring to, because it shows in the +same way that at this time Rousseau's egoism fell short of the +fatuousness to which disease or vicious habit eventually depraved it. In +1752 he procured the representation of his comedy of Narcisse, which he +had written at the age of eighteen, and which is as well worth reading +or playing as most comedies by youths of that amount of experience of +the ways of the world and the heart of man. Rousseau was amazed and +touched by the indulgence of the public, in suffering without any sign +of impatience even a second representation of his piece. For himself, +he could not so much as sit out the first; quitting the theatre before +it was over, he entered the famous cafe de Procope at the other side of +the street, where he found critics as wearied as himself. Here he called +out, "The new piece has fallen flat, and it deserved to fall flat; it +wearied me to death. It is by Rousseau of Geneva, and I am that very +Rousseau."[232] The relentless student of mental pathology is very +likely to insist that even this was egoism standing on its head and not +on its feet, choosing to be noticed for an absurdity, rather than not be +noticed at all. It may be so, but this inversion of the ordinary form of +vanity is rare enough to be not unrefreshing, and we are very loth to +hand Rousseau wholly over to the pathologist before his hour has come. + + +II. + +In the summer of 1754 Rousseau, in company with his Theresa, went to +revisit the city of his birth, partly because an exceptionally +favourable occasion presented itself, but in yet greater part because he +was growing increasingly weary of the uncongenial world in which he +moved. On his road he turned aside to visit her who had been more than +even his birth-place to him. He felt the shock known to all who cherish +a vision for a dozen years, and then suddenly front the changed reality. +He had not prepared himself by recalling the commonplace which we only +remember for others, how time wears hard and ugly lines into the face +that recollection at each new energy makes lovelier with an added +sweetness. "I saw her," he says, "but in what a state, O God, in what +debasement! Was this the same Madame de Warens, in those days so +brilliant, to whom the priest of Pontverre had sent me! How my heart was +torn by the sight!" Alas, as has been said with a truth that daily +experience proves to those whom pity and self-knowledge have made most +indulgent, as to those whom pinched maxims have made most +rigorous,--_morality is the nature of things_.[233] We may have a humane +tenderness for our Manon Lescaut, but we have a deep presentiment all +the time that the poor soul must die in a penal settlement. It is partly +a question of time; whether death comes fast enough to sweep you out of +reach of the penalties which the nature of things may appoint, but which +in their fiercest shape are mostly of the loitering kind. Death was +unkind to Madame de Warens, and the unhappy creature lived long enough +to find that morality does mean something after all; that the old hoary +world has not fixed on prudence in the outlay of money as a good thing, +out of avarice or pedantic dryness of heart; nor on some continence and +order in the relations of men and women as a good thing, out of +cheerless grudge to the body, but because the breach of such virtues is +ever in the long run deadly to mutual trust, to strength, to freedom, to +collectedness, which are the reserve of humanity against days of ordeal. + +Rousseau says that he tried hard to prevail upon his fallen benefactress +to leave Savoy, to come and take up her abode peacefully with him, while +he and Theresa would devote their days to making her happy. He had not +forgotten her in the little glimpse of prosperity; he had sent her money +when he had it.[234] She was sunk in indigence, for her pension had long +been forestalled, but still she refused to change her home. While +Rousseau was at Geneva she came to see him. "She lacked money to +complete her journey; I had not enough about me; I sent it to her an +hour afterwards by Theresa. Poor Maman! Let me relate this trait of her +heart. The only trinket she had left was a small ring; she took it from +her finger to place it on Theresa's, who instantly put it back, as she +kissed the noble hand and bathed it with her tears." In after years he +poured bitter reproaches upon himself for not quitting all to attach his +lot to hers until her last hour, and he professes always to have been +haunted by the liveliest and most enduring remorse.[235] Here is the +worst of measuring duty by sensation instead of principle; if the +sensations happen not to be in right order at the critical moment, the +chance goes by, never to return, and then, as memory in the best of +such temperaments is long though not without intermittence, old +sentiment revives and drags the man into a burning pit. Rousseau appears +not to have seen her again, but the thought of her remained with him to +the end, like a soft vesture fragrant with something of the sweet +mysterious perfume of many-scented night in the silent garden at +Charmettes. She died in a hovel eight years after this, sunk in disease, +misery, and neglect, and was put away in the cemetery on the heights +above Chamberi.[236] Rousseau consoled himself with thoughts of another +world that should reunite him to her and be the dawn of new happiness; +like a man who should illusorily confound the last glistening of a +wintry sunset seen through dark yew-branches, with the broad-beaming +strength of the summer morning. "If I thought," he said, "that I should +not see her in the other life, my poor imagination would shrink from the +idea of perfect bliss, which I would fain promise myself in it."[237] To +pluck so gracious a flower of hope on the edge of the sombre unechoing +gulf of nothingness into which our friend has slid silently down, is a +natural impulse of the sensitive soul, numbing remorse and giving a +moment's relief to the hunger and thirst of a tenderness that has been +robbed of its object. Yet would not men be more likely to have a deeper +love for those about them, and a keener dread of filling a house with +aching hearts, if they courageously realised from the beginning of their +days that we have none of this perfect companionable bliss to promise +ourselves in other worlds, that the black and horrible grave is indeed +the end of our communion, and that we know one another no more? + +The first interview between Rousseau and Madame de Warens was followed +by his ludicrous conversion to Catholicism (1728); the last was +contemporary with his re-conversion to the faith in which he had been +reared. The sight of Geneva gave new fire to his Republican enthusiasm; +he surrendered himself to transports of patriotic zeal. The thought of +the Parisian world that he had left behind, its frivolity, its +petulance, its disputation over all things in heaven and on the earth, +its profound deadness to all civic activity, quickened his admiration +for the simple, industrious, and independent community from which he +never forgot that he was sprung. But no Catholic could enjoy the rights +of citizenship. So Rousseau proceeded to reflect that the Gospel is the +same for all Christians, and the substance of dogma only differs, +because people interposed with explanations of what they could not +understand; that therefore it is in each country the business of the +sovereign to fix both the worship and the amount and quality of +unintelligible dogma; that consequently it is the citizen's duty to +admit the dogma, and follow the worship by law appointed. "The society +of the Encyclopaedists, far from shaking my faith, had confirmed it by my +natural aversion for partisanship and controversy. The reading of the +Bible, especially of the Gospel, to which I had applied myself for +several years, had made me despise the low and childish interpretation +put upon the words of Christ by the people who were least worthy to +understand him. In a word, philosophy by drawing me towards the +essential in religion, had drawn me away from that stupid mass of +trivial formulas with which men had overlaid and darkened it."[238] We +may be sure that if Rousseau had a strong inclination towards a given +course of action, he would have no difficulty in putting his case in a +blaze of the brightest light, and surrounding it with endless emblems +and devices of superlative conviction. In short, he submitted himself +faithfully to the instruction of the pastor of his parish; was closely +catechised by a commission of members of the consistory; received from +them a certificate that he had satisfied the requirements of doctrine in +all points; was received to partake of the Communion, and finally +restored to all his rights as a citizen.[239] + +This was no farce, such as Voltaire played now and again at the expense +of an unhappy bishop or unhappier parish priest; nor such as Rousseau +himself had played six-and-twenty years before, at the expense of those +honest Catholics of Turin whose helpful donation of twenty francs had +marked their enthusiasm over a soul that had been lost and was found +again. He was never a Catholic, any more than he was ever an atheist, +and if it might be said in one sense that he was no more a Protestant +than he was either of these two, yet he was emphatically the child of +Protestantism. It is hardly too much to say that one bred in Catholic +tradition and observance, accustomed to think of the whole life of men +as only a manifestation of the unbroken life of the Church, and of all +the several communities of men as members of that great organisation +which binds one order to another, and each generation to those that have +gone before and those that come after, would never have dreamed that +monstrous dream of a state of nature as a state of perfection. He would +never have held up to ridicule and hate the idea of society as an +organism with normal parts and conditions of growth, and never have left +the spirit of man standing in bald isolation from history, from his +fellows, from a Church, from a mediator, face to face with the great +vague phantasm. Nor, on the other hand, is it likely that one born and +reared in the religious school of authority with its elaborately +disciplined hierarchy, would have conceived that passion for political +freedom, that zeal for the rights of peoples against rulers, that +energetic enthusiasm for a free life, which constituted the fire and +essence of Rousseau's writing. As illustration of this, let us remark +how Rousseau's teaching fared when it fell upon a Catholic country like +France: so many of its principles were assimilated by the revolutionary +schools as were wanted for violent dissolvents, while the rest dropped +away, and in this rejected portion was precisely the most vital part of +his system. In other words, in no country has the power of collective +organisation been so pressed and exalted as in revolutionised France, +and in no country has the free life of the individual been made to count +for so little. With such force does the ancient system of temporal and +spiritual organisation reign in the minds of those who think most +confidently that they have cast it wholly out of them. The use of reason +may lead a man far, but it is the past that has cut the groove. + +In re-embracing the Protestant confession, therefore, Rousseau was not +leaving Catholicism, to which he had never really passed over; he was +only undergoing in entire gravity of spirit a formality which reconciled +him with his native city, and reunited those strands of spiritual +connection with it which had never been more than superficially parted. +There can be little doubt that the four months which he spent in Geneva +in 1754 marked a very critical time in the formation of some of the most +memorable of his opinions. He came from Paris full of inarticulate and +smouldering resentment against the irreverence and denial of the +materialistic circle which used to meet at the house of D'Holbach. What +sort of opinions he found prevailing among the most enlightened of the +Genevese pastors we know from an abundance of sources. D'Alembert had +three or four years later than this to suffer a bitter attack from +them, but the account of the creed of some of the ministers which he +gave in his article on Geneva in the Encyclopedia, was substantially +correct. "Many of them," he wrote, "have ceased to believe in the +divinity of Jesus Christ. Hell, one of the principal points in our +belief, is no longer one with many of the Genevese pastors, who contend +that it is an insult to the Divinity to imagine that a being full of +goodness and justice can be capable of punishing our faults by an +eternity of torment. In a word, they have no other creed than pure +Socinianism, rejecting everything that they call mysteries, and +supposing the first principle of a true religion to be that it shall +propose nothing for belief which clashes with reason. Religion here is +almost reduced to the adoration of one single God, at least among nearly +all who do not belong to the common people; and a certain respect for +Jesus Christ and the Scriptures is nearly the only thing that +distinguishes the Christianity of Geneva from pure Deism."[240] And it +would be easy to trace the growth of these rationalising tendencies. +Throughout the seventeenth century men sprang up who anticipated some of +the rationalistic arguments of the eighteenth, in denying the Trinity, +and so forth,[241] but the time was not then ripe. The general +conditions grew more favourable. Burnet, who was at Geneva in 1685-6, +says that though there were not many among the Genevese of the first +form of learning, "yet almost everybody here has a good tincture of a +learned education."[242] The pacification of civic troubles in 1738 was +followed by a quarter of a century of extreme prosperity and +contentment, and it is in such periods that the minds of men previously +trained are wont to turn to the great matters of speculation. There was +at all times a constant communication, both public and private, going on +between Geneva and Holland, as was only natural between the two chief +Protestant centres of the Continent. The controversy of the seventeenth +century between the two churches was as keenly followed in Geneva as at +Leyden, and there is more than one Genevese writer who deserves a place +in the history of the transition in the beginning of the eighteenth +century from theology proper to that metaphysical theology, which was +the first marked dissolvent of dogma within the Protestant bodies. To +this general movement of the epoch, of course, Descartes supplied the +first impulse. The leader of the movement in Geneva, that is of an +attempt to pacify the Christian churches on the basis of some such Deism +as was shortly to find its passionate expression in the Savoyard +Vicar's Confession of Faith, was John Alphonse Turretini (1661-1737). He +belonged to a family of Italian refugees from Lucca, and his grandfather +had been sent on a mission to Holland for aid in defence of Geneva +against Catholic Savoy. He went on his travels in 1692; he visited +Holland, where he saw Bayle, and England, where he saw Newton, and +France, where he saw Bossuet. Chouet initiated him into the mysteries of +Descartes. All this bore fruit when he returned home, and his eloquent +exposition of rationalistic ideas aroused the usual cry of heresy from +the people who justly insist that Deism is not Christianity. There was +much stir for many years, but he succeeded in holding his own and in +finding many considerable followers.[243] For example, some three years +or so after his death, a work appeared in Geneva under the title of _La +Religion Essentielle a l'Homme_, showing that faith in the existence of +a God suffices, and treating with contempt the belief in the +inspiration of the Gospels.[244] + +Thus we see what vein of thought was running through the graver and more +active minds of Geneva about the time of Rousseau's visit. Whether it be +true or not that the accepted belief of many of the preachers was a pure +Deism, it is certain that the theory was fully launched among them, and +that those who could not accept it were still pressed to refute it, and +in refuting, to discuss. Rousseau's friendships were according to his +own account almost entirely among the ministers of religion and the +professors of the academy, precisely the sort of persons who would be +most sure to familiarise him, in the course of frequent conversations, +with the current religious ideas and the arguments by which they were +opposed or upheld. We may picture the effect on his mind of the +difference in tone and temper in these grave, candid, and careful men, +and the tone of his Parisian friends in discussing the same high themes; +how this difference would strengthen his repugnance, and corroborate his +own inborn spirit of veneration; how he would here feel himself in his +own world. For as wise men have noticed, it is not so much difference of +opinion that stirs resentment in us, at least in great subjects where +the difference is not trivial but profound, as difference in gravity of +humour and manner of moral approach. He returned to Paris (Oct. 1754) +warm with the resolution to give up his concerns there, and in the +spring go back once and for all to the city of liberty and virtue, where +men revered wisdom and reason instead of wasting life in the frivolities +of literary dialectic.[245] + +The project, however, grew cool. The dedication of his Discourse on +Inequality to the Republic was received with indifference by some and +indignation by others.[246] Nobody thought it a compliment, and some +thought it an impertinence. This was one reason which turned his purpose +aside. Another was the fact that the illustrious Voltaire now also +signed himself Swiss, and boasted that if he shook his wig the powder +flew over the whole of the tiny Republic. Rousseau felt certain that +Voltaire would make a revolution in Geneva, and that he should find in +his native country the tone, the air, the manners which were driving him +from Paris. From that moment he counted Geneva lost. Perhaps he ought to +make head against the disturber, but what could he do alone, timid and +bad talker as he was, against a man arrogant, rich, supported by the +credit of the great, of brilliant eloquence, and already the very idol +of women and young men?[247] Perhaps it would not be uncharitable to +suspect that this was a reason after the event, for no man was ever so +fond as Rousseau, or so clever a master in the art, of covering an +accident in a fine envelope of principle, and, as we shall see, he was +at this time writing to Voltaire in strains of effusive panegyric. In +this case he almost tells us that the one real reason why he did not +return to Geneva was that he found a shelter from Paris close at hand. +Even before then he had begun to conceive characteristic doubts whether +his fellow-citizens at Geneva would not be nearly as hostile to his love +of living solitarily and after his own fashion as the good people +of Paris. + +Rousseau has told us a pretty story, how one day he and Madame d'Epinay +wandering about the park came upon a dilapidated lodge surrounded by +fruit gardens, in the skirts of the forest of Montmorency; how he +exclaimed in delight at its solitary charm that here was the very place +of refuge made for him; and how on a second visit he found that his good +friend had in the interval had the old lodge pulled down, and replaced +by a pretty cottage exactly arranged for his own household. "My poor +bear," she said, "here is your place of refuge; it was you who chose it, +'tis friendship offers it; I hope it will drive away your cruel notion +of going from me."[248] Though moved to tears by such kindness, +Rousseau did not decide on the spot, but continued to waver for some +time longer between this retreat and return to Geneva. + +In the interval Madame d'Epinay had experience of the character she was +dealing with. She wrote to Rousseau pressing him to live at the cottage +in the forest, and begging him to allow her to assist him in assuring +the moderate annual provision which he had once accidentally declared to +mark the limit of his wants.[249] He wrote to her bitterly in reply, +that her proposition struck ice into his soul, and that she could have +but sorry appreciation of her own interests in thus seeking to turn a +friend into a valet. He did not refuse to listen to what she proposed, +if only she would remember that neither he nor his sentiments were for +sale.[250] Madame d'Epinay wrote to him patiently enough in return, and +then Rousseau hastened to explain that his vocabulary needed special +appreciation, and that he meant by the word valet "the degradation into +which the repudiation of his principles would throw his soul. The +independence I seek is not immunity from work; I am firm for winning my +own bread, I take pleasure in it; but I mean not to subject myself to +any other duty, if I can help it. I will never pledge any portion of my +liberty, either for my own subsistence or that of any one else. I intend +to work, but at my own will and pleasure, and even to do nothing, if it +happens to suit me, without any one finding fault except my +stomach."[251] We may call this unamiable, if we please, but in a +frivolous world amiability can hardly go with firm resolve to live an +independent life after your own fashion. The many distasteful sides of +Rousseau's character ought not to hinder us from admiring his +steadfastness in refusing to sacrifice his existence to the first person +who spoke him civilly. We may wish there had been more of rugged +simplicity in his way of dealing with temptations to sell his birthright +for a mess of pottage; less of mere irritability. But then this +irritability is one side of soft temperament. The soft temperament is +easily agitated, and this unpleasant disturbance does not stir up true +anger nor lasting indignation, but only sends quick currents of eager +irritation along the sufferer's nerves. Rousseau, quivering from head to +foot with self-consciousness, is sufficiently unlike our plain Johnson, +the strong-armoured; yet persistent withstanding of the patron is as +worthy of our honour in one instance as in the other. Indeed, resistance +to humiliating pressure is harder for such a temper as Rousseau's, in +which deliberate endeavour is needed, than it is for the naturally +stoical spirit which asserts itself spontaneously and rises +without effort. + +When our born solitary, wearied of Paris and half afraid of the too +friendly importunity of Geneva, at length determined to accept Madame +d'Epinay's offer of the Hermitage on conditions which left him an +entire sentiment of independence of movement and freedom from all sense +of pecuniary obligation, he was immediately exposed to a very copious +torrent of pleasantry and remonstrance from the highly social circle who +met round D'Holbach's dinner-table. They deemed it sheer midsummer +madness, or even a sign of secret depravity, to quit their cheerful +world for the dismal solitude of woods and fields. "Only the bad man is +alone," wrote Diderot in words which Rousseau kept resentfully in his +memory as long as he lived. The men and women of the eighteenth century +had no comprehension of solitude, the strength which it may impart to +the vigorous, the poetic graces which it may shed about the life of +those who are less than vigorous; and what they did not comprehend, they +dreaded and abhorred, and thought monstrous in the one man who did +comprehend it. They were all of the mind of Socrates when he said to +Phaedrus, "Knowledge is what I love, and the men who dwell in the town +are my teachers, not trees and landscape."[252] Sarcasms fell on him +like hail, and the prophecies usual in cases where a stray soul does not +share the common tastes of the herd. He would never be able to live +without the incense and the amusements of the town; he would be back in +a fortnight; he would throw up the whole enterprise within three +months.[253] Amid a shower of such words, springing from men's perverse +blindness to the binding propriety of keeping all propositions as to +what is the best way of living in respect of place, hours, +companionship, strictly relative to each individual case, Rousseau +stubbornly shook the dust of the city from off his feet, and sought new +life away from the stridulous hum of men. Perhaps we are better pleased +to think of the unwearied Diderot spending laborious days in factories +and quarries and workshops and forges, while friendly toilers patiently +explained to him the structure of stocking looms and velvet looms, the +processes of metal-casting and wire-drawing and slate-cutting, and all +the other countless arts and ingenuities of fabrication, which he +afterwards reproduced to a wondering age in his spacious and magnificent +repertory of human thought, knowledge, and practical achievement. And it +is yet more elevating to us to think of the true stoic, the great +high-souled Turgot, setting forth a little later to discharge beneficent +duty in the hard field of his distant Limousin commissionership, +enduring many things and toiling late and early for long years, that the +burden of others might be lighter, and the welfare of the land more +assured. But there are many paths for many men, and if only magnanimous +self-denial has the power of inspiration, and can move us with the deep +thrill of the heroic, yet every truthful protest, even of excessive +personality, against the gregarious trifling of life in the social +groove, has a side which it is not ill for us to consider, and perhaps +for some men and women in every generation to seek to imitate. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[201] _Rep. a M. Bordes_, 163. + +[202] Pictet de Sergy., i. 18. + +[203] _Conf._, iv. 248. + +[204] _Ib._ ix. 279. Also _Economie Politique_. + +[205] Madame de la Popeliniere, whose adventures and the misadventures +of her husband are only too well known to the reader of Marmontel's +Memoirs. + +[206] The passages relating to income during his first residence in +Paris (1744-1756) are at pp. 119, 145, 153, 165, 200, 227, in Books +vii.-ix. of the _Confessions_. Rousseau told Bernardin de St. Pierre +(_Oeuv._, xii. 74) that Emile was sold for 7000 livres. In the +_Confessions_ (xi. 126), he says 6000 livres, and one or two hundred +copies. It may be worth while to add that Diderot and D'Alembert +received 1200 livres a year apiece for editing the Encyclopaedia. +Sterne received L650 for two volumes of _Tristram Shandy_ in 1780. +Walpole's _Letters_, in. 298. + +[207] _Conf._, viii. 154-157. + +[208] _Ib._ viii. 160. + +[209] _Conf._, viii. 160, 161. + +[210] _Ib._ viii. 159. + +[211] _Reveries_, iii 168. + +[212] _Reveries_, iii. 166. + +[213] See the _Epitre a Mdme. la Marquise du Chatelet, sur la +Calomnie_. + +[214] _La Femme au 18ieme siecle_, par MM. de Goncourt, p. 40. + +[215] Madame d'Epinay's _Mem._, i. 295. + +[216] Quoted in Goncourt's _Femme au 18ieme siecle_, p. 378. + +[217] _Ib._, p. 337. + +[218] Mdlle. L'Espinasse's _Letters_, ii. 89. + +[219] Madame d'Epinay's _Mem._, ii. 47, 48. + +[220] _Ib._, ii. 55. + +[221] _Mem._, Bk. iv. 327. + +[222] _Corr. Lit._, iii. 58. + +[223] _Ib._, 54. + +[224] Madame d'Epinay's _Mem._, i. 378-381. Saint Lambert formulated +his atheism afterwards in the _Catechisme Universel_. + +[225] Madame d'Epinay's _Mem._, i. 443. + +[226] _Corr._, i. 317. Sept. 14, 1756. + +[227] Letter to Madame de Crequi, 1752. _Corr._, i. 171. + +[228] _Conf_,., vii. 104. + +[229] The _Devin du Village_ was played at Fontainebleau on October +18, 1752, and at the Opera in Paris in March 1753. Madame de Pompadour +took a part in it in a private performance. See Rousseau's note to +her, _Corr._, i. 178. + +[230] _Conf._, viii. 190. + +[231] _Conf._, viii. 183. + +[232] _Conf._, viii. 202; and Musset-Pathay, ii. 439. When in +Strasburg, in 1765, he could not bring himself to be present at its +representation. _Oeuv. et Corr. Ined._, p. 434. + +[233] Madame de Stael insisted that her father said this, and Necker +insisted that it was his daughter's. + +[234] _Corr._, i. 176. Feb. 13, 1753. + +[235] _Conf._, viii. 208-210. + +[236] She died on July 30, 1762, aged "about sixty-three years." +Arthur Young, visiting Chamberi in 1789, with some trouble procured +the certificate of her death, which may be found in his _Travels_, i. +272. See a letter of M. de Conzie to Rousseau, in M. +Streckeisen-Moultou's collection, ii. 445. + +[237] _Conf._, xii. 233. + +[238] _Conf._, viii. 210. + +[239] Gaberel's _Rousseau et les Genevois_, p. 62. _Conf._, viii. 212. + +[240] The venerable Company of Pastors and Professors of the Church +and Academy of Geneva appointed a committee, as in duty bound, to +examine these allegations, and the committee, equally in duty bound, +reported (Feb. 10, 1758) with mild indignation, that they were +unfounded, and that the flock was untainted by unseasonable use of its +mind. See on this Rousseau's _Lettres ecrites de la Montagne_, ii. +231. + +[241] See Picot's _Hist. de Geneve_, ii. 415. + +[242] _Letters containing an account of Switzerland, Italy, etc., in +1685-86._ By G. Burnet, p. 9. + +[243] J.A. Turretini's complete works were published as late as 1776, +including among much besides that no longer interests men, an _Oratio +de Scientiarum Vanitate et Proestantia_ (vol. iii. 437), not at all in +the vein of Rousseau's Discourse, and a treatise in four parts, _De +Legibus Naturalibus_, in which, among other matters, he refutes Hobbes +and assails the doctrine of Utility (i. 173, etc.), by limiting its +definition to [Greek: to pros heauton] in its narrowest sense. He +appears to have been a student of Spinoza (i. 326). Francis Turretini, +his father, took part in the discussion as to the nature of the treaty +or contract between God and man, in a piece entitled _Foedus Naturae a +primo homine ruptum, ejusque Proevaricationem posteris imputatam_ +(1675). + +[244] Gaberel's _Eglise de Geneve_, iii. 188. + +[245] _Corr._, i. 223 (to Vernes, April 5, 1755). + +[246] _Conf._, viii. 215, 216. _Corr._, i. 218 (to Perdriau, Nov. 28, +1754). + +[247] _Conf._, viii. 218. + +[248] _Conf._, viii. 217. It is worth noticing as bearing on the +accuracy of the Confessions, that Madame d'Epinay herself (_Mem._, ii. +115) says that when she began to prepare the Hermitage for Rousseau he +had never been there, and that she was careful to lead him to believe +that the expense had not been incurred for him. Moreover her letter to +him describing it could only have been written to one who had not seen +it, and though her Memoirs are full of sheer imagination and romance, +the documents in them are substantially authentic, and this letter is +shown to be so by Rousseau's reply to it. + +[249] _Mem._, ii. 116. + +[250] _Corr._ (1755), i. 242. + +[251] _Corr._, i. 245. + +[252] _Phaedrus_, 230. + +[253] _Conf._, viii. 221, etc. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +THE HERMITAGE. + + +It would have been a strange anachronism if the decade of the +Encyclopaedia and the Seven Years' War had reproduced one of those scenes +which are as still resting-places amid the ceaseless forward tramp of +humanity, where some holy man turned away from the world, and with +adorable seriousness sought communion with the divine in mortification +of flesh and solitude of spirit. Those were the retreats of firm hope +and beatified faith. The hope and faith of the eighteenth century were +centred in action, not in contemplation, and the few solitaries of that +epoch, as well as of another nearer to our own, fled away from the +impotence of their own will, rather than into the haven of satisfied +conviction and clear-eyed acceptance. Only one of them--Wordsworth, the +poetic hermit of our lakes--impresses us in any degree like one of the +great individualities of the ages when men not only craved for the +unseen, but felt the closeness of its presence over their heads and +about their feet. The modern anchorite goes forth in the spirit of the +preacher who declared all the things that are under the sun to be +vanity, not in the transport of the saint who knew all the things that +are under the sun to be no more than the shadow of a dream in the light +of a celestial brightness to come. + +Rousseau's mood, deeply tinged as it was by bitterness against society +and circumstance, still contained a strong positive element in his +native exultation in all natural objects and processes, which did not +leave him vacantly brooding over the evil of the world he had quitted. +The sensuousness that penetrated him kept his sympathy with life +extraordinarily buoyant, and all the eager projects for the disclosure +of a scheme of wisdom became for a time the more vividly desired, as the +general tide of desire flowed more fully within him. To be surrounded +with the simplicity of rural life was with him not only a stimulus, but +an essential condition to free intellectual energy. Many a time, he +says, when making excursions into the country with great people, "I was +so tired of fine rooms, fountains, artificial groves and flower beds, +and the still more tiresome people who displayed all these; I was so +worn out with pamphlets, card-playing, music, silly jokes, stupid airs, +great suppers, that as I spied a poor hawthorn copse, a hedge, a +farmstead, a meadow, as in passing through a hamlet I snuffed the odour +of a good chervil omelette, as I heard from a distance the rude refrain +of the shepherd's songs, I used to wish at the devil the whole tale of +rouge and furbelows."[254] He was no anchorite proper, one weary of the +world and waiting for the end, but a man with a strong dislike for one +kind of life and a keen liking for another kind. He thought he was now +about to reproduce the old days of the Charmettes, true to his +inveterate error that one may efface years and accurately replace a +past. He forgot that instead of the once vivacious and tender +benefactress who was now waiting for slow death in her hovel, his +house-mates would be a poor dull drudge and her vile mother. He forgot, +too, that since those days the various processes of intellectual life +had expanded within him, and produced a busy fermentation which makes a +man's surroundings very critical. Finally, he forgot that in proportion +as a man suffers the smooth course of his thought to depend on anything +external, whether on the greenness of the field or the gaiety of the +street or the constancy of friends, so comes he nearer to chance of +making shipwreck. Hence his tragedy, though the very root of the tragedy +lay deeper,--in temperament. + + +I. + +Rousseau's impatience drove him into the country almost before the walls +of his little house were dry (April 9, 1756). "Although it was cold, and +snow still lay upon the ground, the earth began to show signs of life; +violets and primroses were to be seen; the buds on the trees were +beginning to shoot; and the very night of my arrival was marked by the +first song of the nightingale. I heard it close to my window in a wood +that touched the house. After a light sleep I awoke, forgetting that I +was transplanted; I thought myself still in the Rue de Grenelle, when in +an instant the warbling of the birds made me thrill with delight. My +very first care was to surrender myself to the impression of the rustic +objects about me. Instead of beginning by arranging things inside my +quarters, I first set about planning my walks, and there was not a path +nor a copse nor a grove round my cottage which I had not found out +before the end of the next day. The place, which was lonely rather than +wild, transported me in fancy to the end of the world, and no one could +ever have dreamed that we were only four leagues from Paris."[255] + +This rural delirium, as he justly calls it, lasted for some days, at the +end of which he began seriously to apply himself to work. But work was +too soon broken off by a mood of vehement exaltation, produced by the +stimulus given to all his senses by the new world of delight in which he +found himself. This exaltation was in a different direction from that +which had seized him half a dozen years before, when he had discarded +the usage and costume of politer society, and had begun to conceive an +angry contempt for the manners, prejudices, and maxims of his time. +Restoration to a more purely sensuous atmosphere softened this +austerity. No longer having the vices of a great city before his eyes, +he no longer cherished the wrath which they had inspired in him. "When I +did not see men, I ceased to despise them; and when I had not the bad +before my eyes, I ceased to hate them. My heart, little made as it is +for hate, now did no more than deplore their wretchedness, and made no +distinction between their wretchedness and their badness. This state, so +much more mild, if much less sublime, soon dulled the glowing enthusiasm +that had long transported me."[256] That is to say, his nature remained +for a moment not exalted but fairly balanced. It was only for a moment. +And in studying the movements of impulse and reflection in him at this +critical time of his life, we are hurried rapidly from phase to phase. +Once more we are watching a man who lived without either intellectual or +spiritual direction, swayed by a reminiscence, a passing mood, a +personality accidentally encountered, by anything except permanent aim +and fixed objects, and who would at any time have surrendered the most +deliberately pondered scheme of persistent effort to the fascination of +a cottage slumbering in a bounteous landscape. Hence there could be no +normally composed state for him; the first soothing effect of the rich +life of forest and garden on a nature exasperated by the life of the +town passed away, and became transformed into an exaltation that swept +the stoic into space, leaving sensuousness to sovereign and uncontrolled +triumph, until the delight turned to its inevitable ashes and +bitterness. + +At first all was pure and delicious. In after times when pain made him +gloomily measure the length of the night, and when fever prevented him +from having a moment of sleep, he used to try to still his suffering by +recollection of the days that he had passed in the woods of Montmorency, +with his dog, the birds, the deer, for his companions. "As I got up with +the sun to watch his rising from my garden, if I saw the day was going +to be fine, my first wish was that neither letters nor visits might come +to disturb its charm. After having given the morning to divers tasks +which I fulfilled with all the more pleasure that I could put them off +to another time if I chose, I hastened to eat my dinner, so as to escape +from the importunate and make myself a longer afternoon. Before one +o'clock, even on days of fiercest heat, I used to start in the blaze of +the sun, along with my faithful Achates, hurrying my steps lest some one +should lay hold of me before I could get away. But when I had once +passed a certain corner, with what beating of the heart, with what +radiant joy, did I begin to breathe freely, as I felt myself safe and my +own master for the rest of the day! Then with easier pace I went in +search of some wild and desert spot in the forest, where there was +nothing to show the hand of man, or to speak of servitude and +domination; some refuge where I could fancy myself its discoverer, and +where no inopportune third person came to interfere between nature and +me. She seemed to spread out before my eyes a magnificence that was +always new. The gold of the broom and the purple of the heather struck +my eyes with a glorious splendour that went to my very heart; the +majesty of the trees that covered me with their shadow, the delicacy of +the shrubs that surrounded me, the astonishing variety of grasses and +flowers that I trod under foot, kept my mind in a continual alternation +of attention and delight.... My imagination did not leave the earth thus +superbly arrayed without inhabitants. I formed a charming society, of +which I did not feel myself unworthy; I made a golden age to please my +own fancy, and filling up these fair days with all those scenes of my +life that had left sweet memories behind, and all that my heart could +yet desire or hope in scenes to come, I waxed tender even to shedding +tears over the true pleasures of humanity, pleasures so delicious, so +pure, and henceforth so far from the reach of men. Ah, if in such +moments any ideas of Paris, of the age, of my little aureole as author, +came to trouble my dreams, with what disdain did I drive them out, to +deliver myself without distraction to the exquisite sentiments of which +I was so full. Yet in the midst of it all, the nothingness of my +chimeras sometimes broke sadly upon my mind. Even if every dream had +suddenly been transformed into reality, it would not have been enough; +I should have dreamed, imagined, yearned still." Alas, this deep +insatiableness of sense, the dreary vacuity of soul that follows fulness +of animal delight, the restless exactingness of undirected imagination, +was never recognised by Rousseau distinctly enough to modify either his +conduct or his theory of life. He filled up the void for a short space +by that sovereign aspiration, which changed the dead bones of old +theology into the living figure of a new faith. "From the surface of the +earth I raised my ideas to all the existences in nature, to the +universal system of things, to the incomprehensible Being who embraces +all. Then with mind lost in that immensity, I did not think, I did not +reason, I did not philosophise; with a sort of pleasure I felt +overwhelmed by the weight of the universe, I surrendered myself to the +ravishing confusion of these vast ideas. I loved to lose myself in +imagination in immeasurable space; within the limits of real existences +my heart was too tightly compressed; in the universe I was stifled; I +would fain have launched myself into the infinite. I believe that if I +had unveiled all the mysteries of nature, I should have found myself in +a less delicious situation than that bewildering ecstasy to which my +mind so unreservedly delivered itself, and which sometimes transported +me until I cried out, 'O mighty Being! O mighty Being!' without power of +any other word or thought."[257] + +It is not wholly insignificant that though he could thus expand his +soul with ejaculatory delight in something supreme, he could not endure +the sight of one of his fellow-creatures. "If my gaiety lasted the whole +night, that showed that I had passed the day alone; I was very different +after I had seen people, for I was rarely content with others and never +with myself. Then in the evening I was sure to be in taciturn or +scolding humour." It is not in every condition that effervescent passion +for ideal forms of the religious imagination assists sympathy with the +real beings who surround us. And to this let us add that there are +natures in which all deep emotion is so entirely associated with the +ideal, that real and particular manifestations of it are repugnant to +them as something alien; and this without the least insincerity, though +with a vicious and disheartening inconsistency. Rousseau belonged to +this class, and loved man most when he saw men least. Bad as this was, +it does not justify us in denouncing his love of man as artificial; it +was one side of an ideal exaltation, which stirred the depths of his +spirit with a force as genuine as that which is kindled in natures of +another type by sympathy with the real and concrete, with the daily walk +and conversation and actual doings and sufferings of the men and women +whom we know. The fermentation which followed his arrival at the +Hermitage, in its first form produced a number of literary schemes. The +idea of the Political Institutions, first conceived at Venice, pressed +upon his meditations. He had been earnestly requested to compose a +treatise on education. Besides this, his thoughts wandered confusedly +round the notion of a treatise to be called Sensitive Morality, or the +Materialism of the Sage, the object of which was to examine the +influence of external agencies, such as light, darkness, sound, seasons, +food, noise, silence, motion, rest, on our corporeal machine, and thus +indirectly upon the soul also. By knowing these and acquiring the art of +modifying them according to our individual needs, we should become surer +of ourselves and fix a deeper constancy in our lives. An external system +of treatment would thus be established, which would place and keep the +soul in the condition most favourable to virtue.[258] Though the +treatise was never completed, and the sketch never saw the light, we +perceive at least that Rousseau would have made the means of access to +character wide enough, and the material influences that impress it and +produce its caprices, multitudinous enough, instead of limiting them +with the medical specialist to one or two organs, and one or two of the +conditions that affect them. Nor, on the other hand, do the words in +which he sketches his project in the least justify the attribution to +him of the doctrine of the absolute power of the physical constitution +over the moral habits, whether that doctrine would be a credit or a +discredit to his philosophical thoroughness of perception. No one denies +the influence of external conditions on the moral habits, and Rousseau +says no more than that he proposed to consider the extent and the +modifiableness of this influence. It was not then deemed essential for a +spiritualist thinker to ignore physical organisation. + +A third undertaking of a more substantial sort was to arrange and edit +the papers and printed works of the Abbe de Saint Pierre (1658-1743), +confided to him through the agency of Saint Lambert, and partly also of +Madame Dupin, the warm friend of that singular and good man.[259] This +task involved reading, considering, and picking extracts from +twenty-three diffuse and chaotic volumes, full of prolixity and +repetition. Rousseau, dreamer as he was, yet had quite keenness of +perception enough to discern the weakness of a dreamer of another sort; +and he soon found out that the Abbe de Saint Pierre's views were +impracticable, in consequence of the author's fixed idea that men are +guided rather by their lights than by their passions. In fact, Saint +Pierre was penetrated with the eighteenth-century faith to a peculiar +degree. As with Condorcet afterwards, he was led by his admiration for +the extent of modern knowledge to adopt the principle that perfected +reason is capable of being made the base of all institutions, and would +speedily terminate all the great abuses of the world. "He went wrong," +says Rousseau, "not merely in having no other passion but that of +reason, but by insisting on making all men like himself, instead of +taking them as they are and as they will continue to be." The critic's +own error in later days was not very different from this, save that it +applied to the medium in which men live, rather than to themselves, by +refusing to take complex societies as they are, even as starting-points +for higher attempts at organisation. Rousseau had occasionally seen the +old man, and he preserved the greatest veneration for his memory, +speaking of him as the honour of his age and race, with a fulness of +enthusiasm very unusual towards men, though common enough towards +inanimate nature. The sincerity of this respect, however, could not make +the twenty-three volumes which the good man had written, either fewer in +number or lighter in contents, and after dealing as well as he could +with two important parts of Saint Pierre's works, he threw up the +task.[260] It must not be supposed that Rousseau would allow that +fatigue or tedium had anything to do with a resolve which really needed +no better justification. As we have seen before, he had amazing skill in +finding a certain ingeniously contrived largeness for his motives. Saint +Pierre's writings were full of observations on the government of France, +some of them remarkably bold in their criticism, but he had not been +punished for them because the ministers always looked upon him as a +kind of preacher rather than a genuine politician, and he was allowed to +say what he pleased, because it was observed that no one listened to +what he said. Besides, he was a Frenchman, and Rousseau was not, and +hence the latter, in publishing Saint Pierre's strictures on French +affairs, was exposing himself to a sharp question why he meddled with a +country that did not concern him. "It surprised me," says Rousseau, +"that the reflection had not occurred to me earlier," but this +coincidence of the discovery that the work was imprudent, with the +discovery that he was weary of it, will surprise nobody versed in study +of a man who lives in his sensations, and yet has vanity enough to +dislike to admit it. + +The short remarks which Rousseau appended to his abridgment of Saint +Pierre's essays on Perpetual Peace, and on a Polysynodia, or Plurality +of Councils, are extremely shrewd and pointed, and would suffice to show +us, if there were nothing else to do so, the right kind of answer to +make to the more harmful dreams of the Social Contract. Saint Pierre's +fault is said, with entire truth, to be a failure to make his views +relative to men, to times, to circumstances; and there is something that +startles us when we think whose words we are reading, in the declaration +that, "whether an existing government be still that of old times, or +whether it have insensibly undergone a change of nature, it is equally +imprudent to touch it: if it is the same, it must be respected, and if +it has degenerated, that is due to the force of time and circumstance, +and human sagacity is powerless." Rousseau points to France, asking his +readers to judge the peril of once moving by an election the enormous +masses comprising the French monarchy; and in another place, after a +wise general remark on the futility of political machinery without men +of a certain character, he illustrates it by this scornful question: +When you see all Paris in a ferment about the rank of a dancer or a wit, +and the affairs of the academy or the opera making everybody forget the +interest of the ruler and the glory of the nation, what can you hope +from bringing political affairs close to such a people, and removing +them from the court to the town?[261] Indeed, there is perhaps not one +of these pages which Burke might not well have owned.[262] + +A violent and prolonged crisis followed this not entirely unsuccessful +effort after sober and laborious meditation. Rousseau was now to find +that if society has its perils, so too has solitude, and that if there +is evil in frivolous complaisance for the puppet-work of a world that is +only a little serious, so there is evil in a passionate tenderness for +phantoms of an imaginary world that is not serious at all. To the pure +or stoical soul the solitude of the forest is strength, but then the +imagination must know the yoke. Rousseau's imagination, in no way of the +strongest either as receptive or inventive, was the free accomplice of +his sensations. The undisciplined force of animal sensibility gradually +rose within him, like a slowly welling flood. The spectacle does not +either brighten or fortify the student's mind, yet if there are such +states, it is right that those who care to speak of human nature should +have an opportunity of knowing its less glorious parts. They may be +presumed to exist, though in less violent degree, in many people whom we +meet in the street and at the table, and there can be nothing but danger +in allowing ourselves to be so narrowed by our own virtuousness, +viciousness being conventionally banished to the remoter region of the +third person, as to forget the presence of "the brute brain within the +man's." In Rousseau's case, at any rate, it was no wicked broth nor +magic potion that "confused the chemic labour of the blood," but the too +potent wine of the joyful beauty of nature herself, working misery in a +mental structure that no educating care nor envelope of circumstance had +ever hardened against her intoxication. Most of us are protected against +this subtle debauch of sensuous egoism by a cool organisation, while +even those who are born with senses and appetites of great strength and +keenness, are guarded by accumulated discipline of all kinds from +without, especially by the necessity for active industry which brings +the most exaggerated native sensibility into balance. It is the constant +and rigorous social parade which keeps the eager regiment of the senses +from making furious rout. Rousseau had just repudiated all social +obligation, and he had never gone through external discipline. He was at +an age when passion that has never been broken in has the beak of the +bald vulture, tearing and gnawing a man; but its first approach is in +fair shapes. + +Wandering and dreaming "in the sweetest season of the year, in the month +of June, under the fresh groves, with the song of the nightingale and +the soft murmuring of the brooks in his ear," he began to wonder +restlessly why he had never tasted in their plenitude the vivid +sentiments which he was conscious of possessing in reserve, or any of +that intoxicating delight which he felt potentially existent in his +soul. Why had he been created with faculties so exquisite, to be left +thus unused and unfruitful? The feeling of his own quality, with this of +a certain injustice and waste superadded, brought warm tears which he +loved to let flow. Visions of the past, from girl playmates of his youth +down to the Venetian courtesan, thronged in fluttering tumult into his +brain. He saw himself surrounded by a seraglio of houris whom he had +known, until his blood was all aflame and his head in a whirl. His +imagination was kindled into deadly activity. "The impossibility of +reaching to the real beings plunged me into the land of chimera; and +seeing nothing actual that rose to the height of my delirium, I +nourished it in an ideal world, which my creative imagination had soon +peopled with beings after my heart's desire. In my continual ecstasies, +I made myself drunk with torrents of the most delicious sentiments that +ever entered the heart of man. Forgetting absolutely the whole human +race, I invented for myself societies of perfect creatures, as heavenly +for their virtues as their beauties; sure, tender, faithful friends, +such as I never found in our nether world. I had such a passion for +haunting this empyrean with all its charming objects, that I passed +hours and days in it without counting them as they went by; and losing +recollection of everything else, I had hardly swallowed a morsel in hot +haste, before I began to burn to run off in search of my beloved groves. +If, when I was ready to start for the enchanted world, I saw unhappy +mortals coming to detain me on the dull earth, I could neither moderate +nor hide my spleen, and, no longer master over myself, I used to give +them greeting so rough that it might well be called brutal."[263] + +This terrific malady was something of a very different kind from the +tranquil sensuousness of the days in Savoy, when the blood was young, +and life was not complicated with memories, and the sweet freshness of +nature made existence enough. Then his supreme expansion had been +attended with a kind of divine repose, and had found edifying voice in +devout acknowledgment in the exhilaration of the morning air of the +goodness and bounty of a beneficent master. In this later and more +pitiable time the beneficent master hid himself, and creation was only +not a blank because it was veiled by troops of sirens not in the flesh. +Nature without the association of some living human object, like Madame +de Warens, was a poison to Rousseau, until the advancing years which +slowly brought decay of sensual force thus brought the antidote. At our +present point we see one stricken with an ugly disease. It was almost +mercy when he was laid up with a sharp attack of the more painful, but +far less absorbing and frightful disorder, to which Rousseau was subject +all his life long. It gave pause to what he misnames his angelic loves. +"Besides that one can hardly think of love when suffering anguish, my +imagination, which is animated by the country and under the trees, +languishes and dies in a room and under roof-beams." This interval he +employed with some magnanimity, in vindicating the ways and economy of +Providence, in the letter to Voltaire which we shall presently examine. +The moment he could get out of doors again into the forest, the +transport returned, but this time accompanied with an active effort in +the creative faculties of his mind to bring the natural relief to these +over-wrought paroxysms of sensual imagination. He soothed his emotions +by associating them with the life of personages whom he invented, and by +introducing into them that play and movement and changing relation which +prevented them from bringing his days to an end in malodorous fever. The +egoism of persistent invention and composition was at least better than +the egoism of mere unreflecting ecstasy in the charm of natural +objects, and took off something from the violent excess of sensuous +force. His thought became absorbed in two female figures, one dark and +the other fair, one sage and the other yielding, one gentle and the +other quick, analogous in character but different, not handsome but +animated by cheerfulness and feeling. To one of these he gave a lover, +to whom the other was a tender friend. He planted them all, after much +deliberation and some changes, on the shores of his beloved lake at +Vevay, the spot where his benefactress was born, and which he always +thought the richest and loveliest in all Europe. + +This vicarious or reflected egoism, accompanied as it was by a certain +amount of productive energy, seemed to mark a return to a sort of moral +convalescence. He walked about the groves with pencil and tablets, +assigning this or that thought or expression to one or other of the +three companions of his fancy. When the bad weather set in, and he was +confined to the house (the winter of 1756-7), he tried to resume his +ordinary indoor labour, the copying of music and the compilation of his +Musical Dictionary. To his amazement he found that this was no longer +possible. The fever of that literary composition of which he had always +such dread had strong possession of him. He could see nothing on any +side but the three figures and the objects about them made beautiful by +his imagination. Though he tried hard to dismiss them, his resistance +was vain, and he set himself to bringing some order into his thoughts +"so as to produce a kind of romance." We have a glimpse of his mental +state in the odd detail, that he could not bear to write his romance on +anything but the very finest paper with gilt edges; that the powder with +which he dried the ink was of azure and sparkling silver; and that he +tied up the quires with delicate blue riband.[264] The distance from all +this to the state of nature is obviously very great indeed. It must not +be supposed that he forgot his older part as Cato, Brutus, and the other +Plutarchians. "My great embarrassment," he says honestly, "was that I +should belie myself so clearly and thoroughly. After the severe +principles I had just been laying down with so much bustle, after the +austere maxims I had preached so energetically, after so many biting +invectives against the effeminate books that breathed love and soft +delights, could anything be imagined more shocking, more unlooked-for, +than to see me inscribe myself with my own hand among the very authors +on whose books I had heaped this harsh censure? I felt this +inconsequence in all its force, I taxed myself with it, I blushed over +it, and was overcome with mortification; but nothing could restore me to +reason."[265] He adds that perhaps on the whole the composition of the +New Heloisa was turning his madness to the best account. That may be +true, but does not all this make the bitter denunciation, in the Letter +to D'Alembert, of love and of all who make its representation a +considerable element in literature or the drama, at the very time when +he was composing one of the most dangerously attractive romances of his +century, a rather indecent piece of invective? We may forgive +inconsistency when it is only between two of a man's theories, or two +self-concerning parts of his conduct, but hardly when it takes the form +of reviling in others what the reviler indulgently permits to himself. + +We are more edified by the energy with which Rousseau refused connivance +with the public outrages on morality perpetrated by a patron. M. +d'Epinay went to pay him a visit at the Hermitage, taking with him two +ladies with whom his relations were less than equivocal, and for whom +among other things he had given Rousseau music to copy. "They were +curious to see the eccentric man," as M. d'Epinay afterwards told his +scandalised wife, for it was in the manners of the day on no account to +parade even the most notorious of these unblessed connections. "He was +walking in front of the door; he saw me first; he advanced cap in hand; +he saw the ladies; he saluted us, put on his cap, turned his back, and +stalked off as fast as he could. Can anything be more mad?"[266] In the +miserable and intricate tangle of falsity, weakness, sensuality, and +quarrel, which make up this chapter in Rousseau's life, we are glad of +even one trait of masculine robustness. We should perhaps be still more +glad if the unwedded Theresa were not visible in the background of this +scene of high morals. + + +II. + +The New Heloisa was not to be completed without a further extension of +morbid experience of a still more burning kind than the sufferings of +compressed passion. The feverish torment of mere visions of the air +swarming impalpable in all his veins, was replaced when the earth again +began to live and the sap to stir in plants, by the more concentred fire +of a consuming passion for one who was no dryad nor figure of a dream. +In the spring of 1757 he received a visit from Madame d'Houdetot, the +sister-in-law of Madame d'Epinay.[267] Her husband had gone to the war +(we are in the year of Rossbach), and so had her lover, Saint Lambert, +whose passion had been so fatal to Voltaire's Marquise du Chatelet eight +years before. She rode over in man's guise to the Hermitage from a house +not very far off, where she was to pass her retreat during the absence +of her two natural protectors. Rousseau had seen her before on various +occasions; she had been to the Hermitage the previous year, and had +partaken of its host's homely fare.[268] But the time was not ripe; the +force of a temptation is not from without but within. Much, too, +depended with our hermit on the temperature; one who would have been a +very ordinary mortal to him in cold and rain, might grow to Aphrodite +herself in days when the sun shone hot and the air was aromatic. His +fancy was suddenly struck with the romantic guise of the female +cavalier, and this was the first onset of a veritable intoxication, +which many men have felt, but which no man before or since ever invited +the world to hear the story of. He may truly say that after the first +interview with her in this disastrous spring, he was as one who had +thirstily drained a poisoned bowl. A sort of palsy struck him. He lay +weeping in his bed at night, and on days when he did not see the +sorceress he wept in the woods.[269] He talked to himself for hours, and +was of a black humour to his house-mates. When approaching the object of +this deadly fascination, his whole organisation seemed to be dissolved. +He walked in a dream that filled him with a sense of sickly torture, +commixed with sicklier delight. + +People speak with precisely marked division of mind and body, of will, +emotion, understanding; the division is good in logic, but its +convenient lines are lost to us as we watch a being with soul all +blurred, body all shaken, unstrung, poisoned, by erotic mania, rising in +slow clouds of mephitic steam from suddenly heated stagnancies of the +blood, and turning the reality of conduct and duty into distant +unmeaning shadows. If such a disease were the furious mood of the brute +in spring-time, it would be less dreadful, but shame and remorse in the +ever-struggling reason of man or woman in the grip of the foul thing, +produces an aggravation of frenzy that makes the mental healer tremble. +Add to all this lurking elements of hollow rage that his passion was not +returned; of stealthy jealousy of the younger man whose place he could +not take, and who was his friend besides; of suspicion that he was a +little despised for his weakness by the very object of it, who saw that +his hairs were sprinkled with gray,--and the whole offers a scene of +moral humiliation that half sickens, half appals, and we turn away with +dismay as from a vision of the horrid loves of heavy-eyed and scaly +shapes that haunted the warm primeval ooze. + +Madame d'Houdetot, the unwilling enchantress bearing in an unconscious +hand the cup of defilement, was not strikingly singular either in +physical or mental attraction. She was now seven-and-twenty. Small-pox, +the terrible plague of the country, had pitted her face and given a +yellowish tinge to her complexion; her features were clumsy and her brow +low; she was short-sighted, and in old age at any rate was afflicted by +an excessive squint. This homeliness was redeemed by a gentle and +caressing expression, and by a sincerity, a gaiety of heart, and free +sprightliness of manner, that no trouble could restrain. Her figure was +very slight, and there was in all her movements at once awkwardness and +grace. She was natural and simple, and had a fairly good judgment of a +modest kind, in spite of the wild sallies in which her spirits sometimes +found vent. Capable of chagrin, she was never prevented by it from +yielding to any impulse of mirth. "She weeps with the best faith in the +world, and breaks out laughing at the same moment; never was anybody so +happily born," says her much less amiable sister-in-law.[270] Her +husband was indifferent to her. He preserved an attachment to a lady +whom he knew before his marriage, whose society he never ceased to +frequent, and who finally died in his arms in 1793. Madame d'Houdetot +found consolation in the friendship of Saint Lambert. "We both of us," +said her husband, "both Madame d'Houdetot and I, had a vocation for +fidelity, only there was a mis-arrangement." She occasionally composed +verses of more than ordinary point, but she had good sense enough not to +write them down, nor to set up on the strength of them for poetess and +wit.[271] Her talk in her later years, and she lived down to the year of +Leipsic, preserved the pointed sententiousness of earlier time. One day, +for instance, in the era of the Directory, a conversation was going on +as to the various merits and defects of women; she heard much, and then +with her accustomed suavity of voice contributed this light +summary:--"Without women, the life of man would be without aid at the +beginning, without pleasure in the middle, and without solace at the +end."[272] + +We may be sure that it was not her power of saying things of this sort +that kindled Rousseau's flame, but rather the sprightly naturalness, +frankness, and kindly softness of a character which in his opinion +united every virtue except prudence and strength, the two which Rousseau +would be least likely to miss. The bond of union between them was +subtle. She found in Rousseau a sympathetic listener while she told the +story of her passion for Saint Lambert, and a certain contagious force +produced in him a thrill which he never felt with any one else before or +after. Thus, as he says, there was equally love on both sides, though it +was not reciprocal. "We were both of us intoxicated with passion, she +for her lover, I for her; our sighs and sweet tears mingled. Tender +confidants, each of the other, our sentiments were of such close kin +that it was impossible for them not to mix; and still she never forgot +her duty for a moment, while for myself, I protest, I swear, that if +sometimes drawn astray by my senses, still"--still he was a paragon of +virtue, subject to rather new definition. We can appreciate the author +of the New Heloisa; we can appreciate the author of Emilius; but this +strained attempt to confound those two very different persons by +combining tearful erotics with high ethics, is an exhibition of +self-delusion that the most patient analyst of human nature might well +find hard to suffer. "The duty of privation exalted my soul. The glory +of all the virtues adorned the idol of my heart in my sight; to soil its +divine image would have been to annihilate it," and so forth.[273] +Moon-lighted landscape gave a background for the sentimentalist's +picture, and dim groves, murmuring cascades, and the soft rustle of the +night air, made up a scene which became for its chief actor "an immortal +memory of innocence and delight." "It was in this grove, seated with her +on a grassy bank, under an acacia heavy with flowers, that I found +expression for the emotions of my heart in words that were worthy of +them. 'Twas the first and single time of my life; but I was sublime, if +you can use the word of all the tender and seductive things that the +most glowing love can bring into the heart of a man. What intoxicating +tears I shed at her knees, what floods she shed in spite of herself! At +length in an involuntary transport, she cried out, 'Never was man so +tender, never did man love as you do! But your friend Saint Lambert +hears us, and my heart cannot love twice.'"[274] Happily, as we learn +from another source, a breath of wholesome life from without brought the +transcendental to grotesque end. In the climax of tears and +protestations, an honest waggoner at the other side of the park wall, +urging on a lagging beast launched a round and far-sounding oath out +into the silent night. Madame d'Houdetot answered with a lively +continuous peal of young laughter, while an angry chill brought back the +discomfited lover from an ecstasy that was very full of peril.[275] + +Rousseau wrote in the New Heloisa very sagely that you should grant to +the senses nothing when you mean to refuse them anything. He admits that +the saying was falsified by his relations with Madame d'Houdetot. +Clearly the credit of this happy falsification was due to her rather +than to himself. What her feelings were, it is not very easy to see. +Honest pity seems to have been the strongest of them. She was idle and +unoccupied, and idleness leaves the soul open for much stray generosity +of emotion, even towards an importunate lover. She thought him mad, and +she wrote to Saint Lambert to say so. "His madness must be very strong," +said Saint Lambert, "since she can perceive it."[276] + +Character is ceaselessly marching, even when we seem to have sunk into a +fixed and stagnant mood. The man is awakened from his dream of passion +by inexorable event; he finds the house of the soul not swept and +garnished for a new life, but possessed by demons who have entered +unseen. In short, such profound disorder of spirit, though in its first +stage marked by ravishing delirium, never escapes a bitter sequel. When +a man lets his soul be swept away from the narrow track of conduct +appointed by his relations with others, still the reality of such +relations survives. He may retreat to rural lodges; that will not save +him either from his own passion, or from some degree of that kinship +with others which instantly creates right and wrong like a wall of brass +around him. Let it be observed that the natures of finest stuff suffer +most from these forced reactions, and it was just because Rousseau had +innate moral sensitiveness, and a man like Diderot was without it, that +the first felt his fall so profoundly, while the second was unconscious +of having fallen at all. + +One day in July Rousseau went to pay his accustomed visit. He found +Madame d'Houdetot dejected, and with the flush of recent weeping on her +cheeks. A bird of the air had carried the matter. As usual, the matter +was carried wrongly, and apparently all that Saint Lambert suspected was +that Rousseau's high principles had persuaded Madame d'Houdetot of the +viciousness of her relations with her lover.[277] "They have played us +an evil turn," cried Madame d'Houdetot; "they have been unjust to me, +but that is no matter. Either let us break off at once, or be what you +ought to be."[278] This was Rousseau's first taste of the ashes of +shame into which the lusciousness of such forbidden fruit, plucked at +the expense of others, is ever apt to be transformed. Mortification of +the considerable spiritual pride that was yet alive after this lapse, +was a strong element in the sum of his emotion, and it was pointed by +the reflection which stung him so incessantly, that his monitress was +younger than himself. He could never master his own contempt for the +gallantry of grizzled locks.[279] His austerer self might at any rate +have been consoled by knowing that this scene was the beginning of the +end, though the end came without any seeking on his part and without +violence. To his amazement, one day Saint Lambert and Madame d'Houdetot +came to the Hermitage, asking him to give them dinner, and much to the +credit of human nature's elasticity, the three passed a delightful +afternoon. The wronged lover was friendly, though a little stiff, and he +passed occasional slights which Rousseau would surely not have forgiven, +if he had not been disarmed by consciousness of guilt. He fell asleep, +as we can well imagine that he might do, while Rousseau read aloud his +very inadequate justification of Providence against Voltaire.[280] + +In time he returned to the army, and Rousseau began to cure himself of +his mad passion. His method, however, was not unsuspicious, for it +involved the perilous assistance of Madame d'Houdetot. Fortunately her +loyalty and good sense forced a more resolute mode upon him. He found, +or thought he found her distracted, emharrassed, indifferent. In despair +at not being allowed to heal his passionate malady in his own fashion, +he did the most singular thing that he could have done under the +circumstances. He wrote to Saint Lambert.[281] His letter is a prodigy +of plausible duplicity, though Rousseau in some of his mental states had +so little sense of the difference between the actual and the imaginary, +and was moreover so swiftly borne away on a flood of fine phrases, that +it is hard to decide how far this was voluntary, and how far he was his +own dupe. Voluntary or not, it is detestable. We pass the false whine +about "being abandoned by all that was dear to him," as if he had not +deliberately quitted Paris against the remonstrance of every friend he +had; about his being "solitary and sad," as if he was not ready at this +very time to curse any one who intruded on his solitude, and hindered +him of a single half-hour in the desert spots that he adored. +Remembering the scenes in moon-lighted groves and elsewhere, we read +this:--"Whence comes her coldness to me? Is it possible that you can +have suspected me of wronging you with her, and of turning perfidious in +consequence of an unseasonably rigorous virtue? A passage in one of your +letters shows a glimpse of some such suspicion. No, no, Saint Lambert, +the breast of J.J. Rousseau never held the heart of a traitor, and I +should despise myself more than you suppose, if I had ever tried to rob +you of her heart.... Can you suspect that her friendship for me may hurt +her love for you? Surely natures endowed with sensibility are open to +all sorts of affections, and no sentiment can spring up in them which +does not turn to the advantage of the dominant passion. Where is the +lover who does not wax the more tender as he talks to his friend of her +whom he loves? And is it not sweeter for you in your banishment that +there should be some sympathetic creature to whom your mistress loves to +talk of you, and who loves to hear?" + +Let us turn to another side of his correspondence. The way in which the +sympathetic creature in the present case loved to hear his friend's +mistress talk of him, is interestingly shown in one or two passages from +a letter to her; as when he cries, "Ah, how proud would even thy lover +himself be of thy constancy, if he only knew how much it has +surmounted.... I appeal to your sincerity. You, the witness and the +cause of this delirium, these tears, these ravishing ecstasies, these +transports which were never made for mortal, say, have I ever tasted +your favours in such a way that I deserve to lose them?... Never once +did my ardent desires nor my tender supplications dare to solicit +supreme happiness, without my feeling stopped by the inner cries of a +sorrow-stricken soul.... O Sophie, after moments so sweet, the idea of +eternal privation is too frightful for one who groans that he cannot +identify himself with thee. What, are thy tender eyes never again to be +lowered with a delicious modesty, intoxicating me with pleasure? What, +are my burning lips never again to lay my very soul on thy heart along +with my kisses? What, may I never more feel that heavenly shudder, that +rapid and devouring fire, swifter than lightning?"[282].... We see a +sympathetic creature assuredly, and listen to the voice of a nature +endowed with sensibility even more than enough, but with decency, +loyalty, above all with self-knowledge, far less than enough. + +One more touch completes the picture of the fallen desperate man. He +takes great trouble to persuade Saint Lambert that though the rigour of +his principles constrains him to frown upon such breaches of social law +as the relations between Madame d'Houdetot and her lover, yet he is so +attached to the sinful pair that he half forgives them. "Do not +suppose," he says, with superlative gravity, "that you have seduced me +by your reasons; I see in them the goodness of your heart, not your +justification. I cannot help blaming your connection: you can hardly +approve it yourself; and so long as you both of you continue dear to me, +I will never leave you in careless security as to the innocence of your +state. Yet love such as yours deserves considerateness.... I feel +respect for a union so tender, and cannot bring myself to attempt to +lead it to virtue along the path of despair" (p. 401). + +Ignorance of the facts of the case hindered Saint Lambert from +appreciating the strange irony of a man protesting about leading to +virtue along the path of despair a poor woman whom he had done as much +as he could to lead to vice along the path of highly stimulated sense. +Saint Lambert was as much a sentimentalist as Rousseau was, but he had a +certain manliness, acquired by long contact with men, which his +correspondent only felt in moods of severe exaltation. Saint Lambert +took all the blame on himself. He had desired that his mistress and his +friend should love one another; then he thought he saw some coolness in +his mistress, and he set the change down to his friend, though not on +the true grounds. "Do not suppose that I thought you perfidious or a +traitor; I knew the austerity of your principles; people had spoken to +me of it; and she herself did so with a respect that love found hard to +bear." In short, he had suspected Rousseau of nothing worse than being +over-virtuous, and trying in the interest of virtue to break off a +connection sanctioned by contemporary manners, but not by law or +religion. If Madame d'Houdetot had changed, it was not that she had +ceased to honour her good friend, but only that her lover might be +spared a certain chagrin, from suspecting the excess of scrupulosity and +conscience in so austere an adviser.[283] + +It is well known how effectively one with a germ of good principle in +him is braced by being thought better than he is. With this letter in +his hands and its words in his mind, Rousseau strode off for his last +interview with Madame d'Houdetot. Had Saint Lambert, he says, been less +wise, less generous, less worthy, I should have been a lost man. As it +was, he passed four or five hours with her in a delicious calm, +infinitely more delightful than the accesses of burning fever which had +seized him before. They formed the project of a close companionship of +three, including the absent lover; and they counted on the project +coming more true than such designs usually do, "since all the feelings +that can unite sensitive and upright hearts formed the foundation of it, +and we three united talents enough as well as knowledge enough to +suffice to ourselves, without need of aid or supplement from others." +What happened was this. Madame d'Houdetot for the next three or four +months, which were among the most bitter in Rousseau's life, for then +the bitterness which became chronic was new and therefore harder to be +borne, wrote him the wisest, most affectionate, and most considerate +letters that a sincere and sensible woman ever wrote to the most +petulant, suspicious, perverse, and irrestrainable of men. For patience +and exquisite sweetness of friendship some of these letters are +matchless, and we can only conjecture the wearing querulousness of the +letters to which they were replies. If through no fault of her own she +had been the occasion of the monstrous delirium of which he never shook +off the consequences, at least this good soul did all that wise counsel +and grave tenderness could do, to bring him out of the black slough of +suspicion and despair into which he was plunged.[284] In the beginning +of 1758 there was a change. Rousseau's passion for her somehow became +known to all the world; it reached the ears of Saint Lambert, and was +the cause of a passing disturbance between him and his mistress. Saint +Lambert throughout acted like a man who is thoroughly master of himself. +At first, we learn, he ceased for a moment to see in Rousseau the virtue +which he sought in him, and which he was persuaded that he found in him. +"Since then, however," wrote Madame d'Houdetot, "he pities you more for +your weakness than he reproaches you, and we are both of us far from +joining the people who wish to blacken your character; we have and +always shall have the courage to speak of you with esteem."[285] They +saw one another a few times, and on one occasion the Count and Countess +d'Houdetot, Saint Lambert, and Rousseau all sat at table together, +happily without breach of the peace.[286] One curious thing about this +meeting was that it took place some three weeks after Rousseau and Saint +Lambert had interchanged letters on the subject of the quarrel with +Diderot, in which each promised the other contemptuous oblivion.[287] +Perpetuity of hate is as hard as perpetuity of love for our poor +short-spanned characters, and at length the three who were once to have +lived together in self-sufficing union, and then in their next mood to +have forgotten one another instantly and for ever, held to neither of +the extremes, but settled down into an easier middle path of indifferent +good-will. The conduct of all three, said the most famous of them, may +serve for an example of the way in which sensible people separate, when +it no longer suits them to see one another.[288] It is at least certain +that in them Rousseau lost two of the most unimpeachably good friends +that he ever possessed. + + +III. + +The egoistic character that loves to brood and hates to act, is big with +catastrophe. We have now to see how the inevitable law accomplished +itself in the case of Rousseau. In many this brooding egoism produces a +silent and melancholy insanity; with him it was developed into something +of acridly corrosive quality. One of the agents in this disastrous +process was the wearing torture of one of the most painful of disorders. +This disorder, arising from an internal malformation, harassed him from +his infancy to the day of his death. Our fatuous persistency in reducing +man to the spiritual, blinds the biographer to the circumstance that the +history of a life is the history of a body no less than that of a soul. +Many a piece of conduct that divides the world into two factions of +moral assailants and moral vindicators, provoking a thousand ingenuities +of ethical or psychological analysis, ought really to have been nothing +more than an item in a page of a pathologist's case-book. We are not to +suspend our judgment on action; right and wrong can depend on no man's +malformations. In trying to know the actor, it is otherwise; here it is +folly to underestimate the physical antecedents of mental phenomena. In +firm and lofty character, pain is mastered; in a character so little +endowed with cool tenacious strength as Rousseau's, pain such as he +endured was enough to account, not for his unsociality, which flowed +from temperament, but for the bitter, irritable, and suspicious form +which this unsociality now first assumed. Rousseau was never a saintly +nature, but far the reverse, and in reading the tedious tale of his +quarrels with Grimm and Madame d'Epinay and Diderot--a tale of +labyrinthine nightmares--let us remember that we may even to this point +explain what happened, without recourse to the too facile theory of +insanity, unless one defines that misused term so widely as to make many +sane people very uncomfortable. + +His own account was this: "In my quality of solitary, I am more +sensitive than another; if I am wrong with a friend who lives in the +world, he thinks of it for a moment, and then a thousand distractions +make him forget it for the rest of the day; but there is nothing to +distract me as to his wrong towards me; deprived of my sleep, I busy +myself with him all night long; solitary in my walks, I busy myself with +him from sunrise until sunset; my heart has not an instant's relief, and +the harshness of a friend gives me in one day years of anguish. In my +quality of invalid, I have a title to the considerateness that humanity +owes to the weakness or irritation of a man in agony. Who is the friend, +who is the good man, that ought not to dread to add affliction to an +unfortunate wretch tormented with a painful and incurable malady?"[289] +We need not accept this as an adequate extenuation of perversities, but +it explains them without recourse to the theory of uncontrollable +insanity. Insanity came later, the product of intellectual excitation, +public persecution, and moral reaction after prolonged tension. +Meanwhile he may well be judged by the standards of the sane; knowing +his temperament, his previous history, his circumstances, we have no +difficulty in accounting for his conduct. Least of all is there any need +for laying all the blame upon his friends. There are writers whom +enthusiasm for the principles of Jean Jacques has driven into fanatical +denigration of every one whom he called his enemy, that is to say, +nearly every one whom he ever knew.[290] Diderot said well, "Too many +honest people would be wrong, if Jean Jacques were right." + +The first downright breach was with Grimm, but there were angry passages +during the year 1757, not only with him, but with Diderot and Madame +d'Epinay as well. Diderot, like many other men of energetic nature +unchastened by worldly wisdom, was too interested in everything that +attracted his attention to keep silence over the indiscretion of a +friend. He threw as much tenacity and zeal into a trifle, if it had once +struck him, as he did into the Encyclopaedia. We have already seen how +warmly he rated Jean Jacques for missing the court pension. Then he +scolded and laughed at him for turning hermit. With still more +seriousness he remonstrated with him for remaining in the country +through the winter, thus endangering the life of Theresa's aged mother. +This stirred up hot anger in the Hermitage, and two or three bitter +letters were interchanged,[291] those of Diderot being pronounced by a +person who was no partisan of Rousseau decidedly too harsh.[292] Yet +there is copious warmth of friendship in these very letters, if only the +man to whom they were written had not hated interference in his affairs +as the worst of injuries. "I loved Diderot tenderly, I esteemed him +sincerely," says Rousseau, "and I counted with entire confidence upon +the same sentiments in him. But worn out by his unwearied obstinacy in +everlastingly thwarting my tastes, my inclinations, my ways of living, +everything that concerned myself only; revolted at seeing a younger man +than myself insist with all his might on governing me like a child; +chilled by his readiness in giving his promise and his negligence in +keeping it; tired of so many appointments which he made and broke, and +of his fancy for repairing them by new ones to be broken in their turn; +provoked at waiting for him to no purpose three or four times a month on +days which he had fixed, and of dining alone in the evening, after going +on as far as St. Denis to meet him and waiting for him all day,--I had +my heart already full of a multitude of grievances."[293] This +irritation subsided in presence of the storms that now rose up against +Diderot. He was in the thick of the dangerous and mortifying +distractions stirred up by the foes of the Encyclopaedia. Rousseau in +friendly sympathy went to see him; they embraced, and old wrongs were +forgotten until new arose.[294] + +There is a less rose-coloured account than this. Madame d'Epinay assigns +two motives to Rousseau: a desire to find an excuse for going to Paris, +in order to avoid seeing Saint Lambert; secondly, a wish to hear +Diderot's opinion of the two first parts of the New Heloisa. She says +that he wanted to borrow a portfolio in which to carry the manuscripts +to Paris; Rousseau says that they had already been in Diderot's +possession for six months.[295] As her letters containing this very +circumstantial story were written at the moment, it is difficult to +uphold the Confessions as valid authority against them. Thirdly, +Rousseau told her that he had not taken his manuscripts to Paris (p. +302), whereas Grimm writing a few days later (p. 309) mentions that he +has received a letter from Diderot, to the effect that Rousseau's visit +had no other object than the revision of these manuscripts. The scene is +characteristic. "Rousseau kept him pitilessly at work from Saturday at +ten o'clock in the morning till eleven at night on Monday, hardly giving +him time to eat and drink. The revision at an end, Diderot chats with +him about a plan he has in his head, and begs Rousseau to help him in +contriving some incident which he cannot yet arrange to his taste. 'It +is too difficult,' replies the hermit coldly, 'it is late, and I am not +used to sitting up. Good night; I am off at six in the morning, and 'tis +time for bed.' He rises from his chair, goes to bed, and leaves Diderot +petrified at his behaviour. The day of his departure, Diderot's wife saw +that her husband was in bad spirits, and asked the reason. 'It is that +man's want of delicacy,' he replied, 'which afflicts me; he makes me +work like a slave, but I should never have found that out, if he had not +so drily refused to take an interest in me for a quarter of an hour.' +'You are surprised at that,' his wife answered; 'do you not know him? He +is devoured with envy; he goes wild with rage when anything fine appears +that is not his own. You will see him one day commit some great crime +rather than let himself be ignored. I declare I would not swear that he +will not join the ranks of the Jesuits, and undertake their +vindication.'" + +Of course we cannot be sure that Grimm did not manipulate these letters +long after the event, but there is nothing in Rousseau's history to make +us perfectly sure that he was incapable either of telling a falsehood to +Madame d'Epinay, or of being shamelessly selfish in respect of Diderot. +I see no reason to refuse substantial credit to Grimm's account, and the +points of coincidence between that and the Confessions make its truth +probable.[296] + +Rousseau's relations with Madame d'Epinay were more complex, and his +sentiments towards her underwent many changes. There was a prevalent +opinion that he was her lover, for which no real foundation seems to +have existed.[297] Those who disbelieved that he had reached this +distinction, yet made sure that he had a passion for her, which may or +may not have been true.[298] Madame d'Epinay herself was vain enough to +be willing that this should be generally accepted, and it is certain +that she showed a friendship for him which, considering the manners of +the time, was invitingly open to misconception. Again, she was jealous +of her sister-in-law, Madame d'Houdetot, if for no other reason than +that the latter, being the wife of a Norman noble, had access to the +court, and this was unattainable by the wife of a farmer-general. Hence +Madame d'Epinay's barely-concealed mortification when she heard of the +meetings in the forest, the private suppers, the moonlight rambles in +the park. When Saint Lambert first became uneasy as to the relations +between Rousseau and his mistress, and wrote to her to say that he was +so, Rousseau instantly suspected that Madame d'Epinay had been his +informant. Theresa confirmed the suspicion by tales of baskets and +drawers ransacked by Madame d'Epinay in search of Madame d'Houdetot's +letters to him. Whether these tales were true or not, we can never know; +we can only say that Madame d'Epinay was probably not incapable of these +meannesses, and that there is no reason to suppose that she took the +pains to write directly to Saint Lambert a piece of news which she was +writing to Grimm, knowing that he was then in communication with Saint +Lambert. She herself suspected that Theresa had written to Saint +Lambert,[299] but it may be doubted whether Theresa's imagination could +have risen to such feat as writing to a marquis, and a marquis in what +would have seemed to her to be remote and inaccessible parts of the +earth. All this, however, has become ghostly for us; a puzzle that can +never be found out, nor be worth finding out. Rousseau was persuaded +that Madame d'Epinay was his betrayer, and was seized by one of his +blackest and most stormful moods. In reply to an affectionate letter +from her, inquiring why she had not seen him for so long, he wrote thus: +"I can say nothing to you yet. I wait until I am better informed, and +this I shall be sooner or later. Meanwhile, be certain that accused +innocence will find a champion ardent enough to make calumniators +repent, whoever they may be." It is rather curious that so strange a +missive as this, instead of provoking Madame d'Epinay to anger, was +answered by a warmer and more affectionate letter than the first. To +this Rousseau replied with increased vehemence, charged with dark and +mysteriously worded suspicion. Still Madame d'Epinay remained willing to +receive him. He began to repent of his imprudent haste, because it would +certainly end by compromising Madame d'Houdetot, and because, moreover, +he had no proof after all that his suspicions had any foundation. He +went instantly to the house of Madame d'Epinay; at his approach she +threw herself on his neck and melted into tears. This unexpected +reception from so old a friend moved him extremely; he too wept +abundantly. She showed no curiosity as to the precise nature of his +suspicions or their origin, and the quarrel came to an end.[300] + +Grimm's turn followed. Though they had been friends for many years, +there had long been a certain stiffness in their friendship. Their +characters were in fact profoundly antipathetic. Rousseau we +know,--sensuous, impulsive, extravagant, with little sense of the +difference between reality and dreams. Grimm was exactly the opposite; +judicious, collected, self-seeking, coldly upright. He was a German +(born at Ratisbon), and in Paris was first a reader to the Duke of Saxe +Gotha, with very scanty salary. He made his way, partly through the +friendship of Rousseau, into the society of the Parisian men of letters, +rapidly acquired a perfect mastery of the French language, and with the +inspiring help of Diderot, became an excellent critic. After being +secretary to sundry high people, he became the literary correspondent of +various German sovereigns, keeping them informed of what was happening +in the world of art and letters, just as an ambassador keeps his +government informed of what happens in politics. The sobriety, +impartiality, and discrimination of his criticism make one think highly +of his literary judgment; he had the courage, or shall we say he +preserved enough of the German, to defend both Homer and Shakespeare +against the unhappy strictures of Voltaire.[301] This is not all, +however; his criticism is conceived in a tone which impresses us with +the writer's integrity. And to this internal evidence we have to add the +external corroboration that in the latter part of his life he filled +various official posts, which implied a peculiar confidence in his +probity on the part of those who appointed him. At the present moment +(1756-57), he was acting as secretary to Marshal d'Estrees, commander of +the French army in Westphalia at the outset of the Seven Years' War. He +was an able and helpful man, in spite of his having a rough manner, +powdering his face, and being so monstrously scented as to earn the name +of the musk-bear. He had that firmness and positivity which are not +always beautiful, but of which there is probably too little rather than +too much in the world, certainly in the France of his time, and of which +there was none at all in Rousseau. Above all things he hated +declamation. Apparently cold and reserved, he had sensibility enough +underneath the surface to go nearly out of his mind for love of a singer +at the opera who had a thrilling voice. As he did not believe in the +metaphysical doctrine about the freedom of the will, he accepted from +temperament the necessity which logic confirmed, of guiding the will by +constant pressure from without. "I am surprised," Madame d'Epinay said +to him, "that men should be so little indulgent to one another." "Nay, +the want of indulgence comes of our belief in freedom; it is because the +established morality is false and bad, inasmuch as it starts from this +false principle of liberty." "Ah, but the contrary principle, by making +one too indulgent, disturbs order." "It does nothing of the kind. Though +man does not wholly change, he is susceptible of modification; you can +improve him; hence it is not useless to punish him. The gardener does +not cut down a tree that grows crooked; he binds up the branch and keeps +it in shape; that is the effect of public punishment."[302] He applied +the same doctrine, as we shall see, to private punishment for social +crookedness. + +It is easy to conceive how Rousseau's way of ordering himself would +gradually estrange so hard a head as this. What the one thought a +weighty moral reformation, struck the other as a vain desire to attract +attention. Rousseau on the other hand suspected Grimm of intriguing to +remove Theresa from him, as well as doing his best to alienate all his +friends. The attempted alienation of Theresa consisted in the secret +allowance to her mother and her by Grimm and Diderot of some sixteen +pounds a year.[303] Rousseau was unaware of this, but the whisperings +and goings and comings to which it gave rise, made him darkly uneasy. +That the suspicions in other respects were in a certain sense not wholly +unfounded, is shown by Grimm's own letters to Madame d'Epinay. He +disapproved of her installing Rousseau in the Hermitage, and warned her +in a very remarkable prophecy that solitude would darken his +imagination.[304] "He is a poor devil who torments himself, and does not +dare to confess the true subject of all his sufferings, which is in his +cursed head and his pride; he raises up imaginary matters, so as to have +the pleasure of complaining of the whole human race."[305] More than +once he assures her that Rousseau will end by going mad, it being +impossible that so hot and ill-organised a head should endure +solitude.[306] Rousseauite partisans usually explain all this by +supposing that Grimm was eager to set a woman for whom he had a passion, +against a man who was suspected of having a passion for her; and it is +possible that jealousy may have stimulated the exercise of his natural +shrewdness. But this shrewdness, added to entire want of imagination and +a very narrow range of sympathy, was quite enough to account for Grimm's +harsh judgment, without the addition of any sinister sentiment. He was +perfectly right in suspecting Rousseau of want of loyalty to Madame +d'Epinay, for we find our hermit writing to her in strains of perfect +intimacy, while he was writing of her to Madame d'Houdetot as "your +unworthy sister."[307] On the other hand, while Madame d'Epinay was +overwhelming him with caressing phrases, she was at the same moment +describing him to Grimm as a master of impertinence and intractableness. +As usual where there is radical incompatibility of character, an +attempted reconciliation between Grimm and Rousseau (some time in the +early part of October 1757) had only made the thinly veiled antipathy +more resolute. Rousseau excused himself for wrongs of which in his heart +he never thought himself guilty. Grimm replied by a discourse on the +virtues of friendship and his own special aptitude for practising them. +He then conceded to the impetuous penitent the kiss of peace, in a +slight embrace which was like the accolade given by a monarch to new +knights.[308] The whole scene is ignoble. We seem to be watching an +unclean cauldron, with Theresa's mother, a cringing and babbling crone, +standing witch-like over it and infusing suspicion, falsehood, and +malice. When minds are thus surcharged, any accident suffices to +release the evil creatures that lurk in an irritated imagination. + +One day towards the end of the autumn of 1757, Rousseau learned to his +unbounded surprise that Madame d'Epinay had been seized with some +strange disorder, which made it advisable that she should start without +any delay for Geneva, there to place herself under the care of Tronchin, +who was at that time the most famous doctor in Europe. His surprise was +greatly increased by the expectation which he found among his friends +that he would show his gratitude for her many kindnesses to him, by +offering to bear her company on her journey, and during her stay in a +town which was strange to her and thoroughly familiar to him. It was to +no purpose that he protested how unfit was one invalid to be the nurse +of another; and how great an incumbrance a man would be in a coach in +the bad season, when for many days he was absolutely unable to leave his +chamber without danger. Diderot, with his usual eagerness to guide a +friend's course, wrote him a letter urging that his many obligations, +and even his grievances in respect of Madame d'Epinay, bound him to +accompany her, as he would thus repay the one and console himself for +the other. "She is going into a country where she will be like one +fallen from the clouds. She is ill; she will need amusement and +distraction. As for winter, are you worse now than you were a month +back, or than you will be at the opening of the spring? For me, I +confess that if I could not bear the coach, I would take a staff and +follow her on foot."[309] Rousseau trembled with fury, and as soon as +the transport was over, he wrote an indignant reply, in which he more or +less politely bade the panurgic one to attend to his own affairs, and +hinted that Grimm was making a tool of him. Next he wrote to Grimm +himself a letter, not unfriendly in form, asking his advice and +promising to follow it, but hardly hiding his resentment. By this time +he had found out the secret of Madame d'Epinay's supposed illness and +her anxiety to pass some months away from her family, and the share +which Grimm had in it. This, however, does not make many passages of his +letter any the less ungracious or unseemly. "If Madame d'Epinay has +shown friend' ship to me, I have shown more to her.... As for benefits, +first of all I do not like them, I do not want them, and I owe no thanks +for any that people may burden me with by force. Madame d'Epinay, being +so often left alone in the country, wished me for company; it was for +that she had kept me. After making one sacrifice to friendship, I must +now make another to gratitude. A man must be poor, must be without a +servant, must be a hater of constraint, and he must have my character, +before he can know what it is for me to live in another person's house. +For all that, I lived two years in hers, constantly brought into bondage +with the finest harangues about liberty, served by twenty domestics, and +cleaning my own shoes every morning, overloaded with gloomy indigestion, +and incessantly sighing for my homely porringer.... Consider how much +money an hour of the life and the time of a man is worth; compare the +kindnesses of Madame d'Epinay with the sacrifice of my native country +and two years of serfdom; and then tell me whether the obligation is +greater on her side or mine." He then urges with a torrent of impetuous +eloquence the thoroughly sound reasons why it was unfair and absurd for +him, a beggar and an invalid, to make the journey with Madame d'Epinay, +rich and surrounded by attendants. He is particularly splenetic that the +philosopher Diderot, sitting in his own room before a good fire and +wrapped in a well-lined dressing-gown, should insist on his doing his +five and twenty leagues a day on foot, through the mud in winter.[310] + +The whole letter shows, as so many incidents in his later life showed, +how difficult it was to do Rousseau a kindness with impunity, and how +little such friends as Madame d'Epinay possessed the art of soothing +this unfortunate nature. They fretted him by not leaving him +sufficiently free to follow his own changing moods, while he in turn +lost all self-control, and yielded in hours of bodily torment to angry +and resentful fancies. But let us hasten to an end. Grimm replied to his +eloquent manifesto somewhat drily, to the effect that he would think the +matter over, and that meanwhile Rousseau had best keep quiet in his +hermitage. Rousseau burning with excitement at once conceived a thousand +suspicions, wholly unable to understand that a cold and reserved German +might choose to deliberate at length, and finally give an answer with +brevity. "After centuries of expectation in the cruel uncertainty in +which this barbarous man had plunged me"--that is after eight or ten +days, the answer came, apparently not without a second direct +application for one.[311] It was short and extremely pointed, not +complaining that Rousseau had refused to accompany Madame d'Epinay but +protesting against the horrible tone of the apology which he had sent to +him for not accompanying her. "It has made me quiver with indignation; +so odious are the principles it contains, so full is it of blackness and +duplicity. You venture to talk to me of your slavery, to me who for more +than two years have been the daily witness of all the marks of the +tenderest and most generous friendship that you have received at the +hands of that woman. If I could pardon you, I should think myself +unworthy of having a single friend. I will never see you again while I +live, and I shall think myself happy if I can banish the recollection of +your conduct from my mind."[312] A flash of manly anger like this is +very welcome to us, who have to thread a tedious way between morbid +egoistic irritation on the one hand, and sly pieces of equivocal +complaisance on the other. The effect on Rousseau was terrific. In a +paroxysm he sent Grimm's letter back to him, with three or four lines in +the same key. He wrote note after note to Madame d'Houdetot, in +shrieks. "Have I a single friend left, man or woman? One word, only one +word, and I can live." A day or two later: "Think of the state I am in. +I can bear to be abandoned by all the world, but you! You who know me so +well! Great God! am I a scoundrel? a scoundrel, I!"[313] And so on, +raving. It was to no purpose that Madame d'Houdetot wrote him soothing +letters, praying him to calm himself, to find something to busy himself +with, to remain at peace with Madame d'Epinay, "who had never appeared +other than the most thoughtful and warm-hearted friend to him."[314] He +was almost ready to quarrel with Madame d'Houdetot herself because she +paid the postage of her letters, which he counted an affront to his +poverty.[315] To Madame d'Epinay he had written in the midst of his +tormenting uncertainty as to the answer which Grimm would make to his +letter. It was an ungainly assertion that she was playing a game of +tyranny and intrigue at his cost. For the first time she replied with +spirit and warmth. "Your letter is hardly that of a man who, on the eve +of my departure, swore to me that he could never in his life repair the +wrongs he had done me." She then tersely remarks that it is not natural +to pass one's life in suspecting and insulting one's friends, and that +he abuses her patience. To this he answered with still greater terseness +that friendship was extinct between them, and that he meant to leave the +Hermitage, but as his friends desired him to remain there until the +spring he would with her permission follow their counsel. Then she, with +a final thrust of impatience, in which we perhaps see the hand of Grimm: +"Since you meant to leave the Hermitage, and felt you ought to do so, I +am astonished that your friends could detain you. For me, I don't +consult mine as to my duties, and I have nothing more to say to you as +to yours." This was the end. Rousseau returned for a moment from ignoble +petulance to dignity and self-respect. He wrote to her that if it is a +misfortune to make a mistake in the choice of friends, it is one not +less cruel to awake from so sweet an error, and two days before he +wrote, he left her house. He found a cottage at Montmorency, and +thither, nerved with fury, through snow and ice he carried his scanty +household goods (Dec. 15, 1757).[316] + +We have a picture of him in this fatal month. Diderot went to pay him a +visit (Dec. 5). Rousseau was alone at the bottom of his garden. As soon +as he saw Diderot, he cried in a voice of thunder and with his eyes all +aflame: "What have you come here for?" "I want to know whether you are +mad or malicious." "You have known me for fifteen years; you are well +aware how little malicious I am, and I will prove to you that I am not +mad: follow me." He then drew Diderot into a room, and proceeded to +clear himself, by means of letters, of the charge of trying to make a +breach between Saint Lambert and Madame d'Houdetot. They were in fact +letters that convicted him, as we know, of trying to persuade Madame +d'Houdetot of the criminality of her relations with her lover, and at +the same time to accept himself in the very same relation. Of all this +we have heard more than enough already. He was stubborn in the face of +Diderot's remonstrance, and the latter left him in a state which he +described in a letter to Grimm the same night. "I throw myself into your +arms, like one who has had a shock of fright: that man intrudes into my +work; he fills me with trouble, and I am as if I had a damned soul at my +side. May I never see him again; he would make me believe in devils and +hell."[317] And thus the unhappy man who had began this episode in his +life with confident ecstasy in the glories and clear music of spring, +ended it looking out from a narrow chamber upon the sullen crimson of +the wintry twilight and over fields silent in snow, with the haggard +desperate gaze of a lost spirit. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[254] _Conf._, ix. 247. + +[255] _Conf._, ix. 230. Madame d'Epinay (_Mem._, ii. 132) has given an +account of the installation, with a slight discrepancy of date. When +Madame d'Epinay's son-in-law emigrated at the Revolution, the +Hermitage--of which nothing now stands--along with the rest of the +estate became national property, and was bought after other purchasers +by Robespierre, and afterwards by Gretry the composer, who paid 10,000 +livres for it. + +[256] _Conf._, ix. 255. + +[257] Third letter to Malesherbes, 364-368. + +[258] _Conf._, ix. 239. + +[259] _Conf._, ix. 237, 238, and 263, etc. + +[260] The extract from the Project for Perpetual Peace and the +Polysynodia, together with Rousseau's judgments on them, are found at +the end of the volume containing the Social Contract. The first, but +without the judgment, was printed separately without Rousseau's +permission, in 1761, by Bastide, to whom he had sold it for twelve +louis for publication in his journal only. _Conf._, xi. 107. _Corr._, +ii. 110, 128. + +[261] P. 485. + +[262] For a sympathetic account of the Abbe de Saint Pierre's life and +speculations, see M. Leonce de Lavergne's _Economistes francais du +18ieme siecle_ (Paris: 1870). Also Comte's _Lettres a M. Valat_, p. +73. + +[263] _Conf._, ix. 270-274. + +[264] _Conf._, ix. 289. + +[265] _Ib._ ix. 286. + +[266] D'Epinay, ii. 153. + +[267] Madame d'Houdetot, (_b._ 1730--_d._ 1813) was the daughter of M. +de Bellegarde, the father of Madame d'Epinay's husband. Her marriage +with the Count d'Houdetot, of high Norman stock, took place in 1748. +The circumstances of the marriage, which help to explain the lax view +of the vows common among the great people of the time, are given with +perhaps a shade too much dramatic colouring in Madame d'Epinay's +_Mem._, i 101. + +[268] _Conf._, ix. 281. + +[269] D'Epinay, ii. 246. + +[270] D'Epinay, ii. 269. + +[271] Musset-Pathay has collected two or three trifles of her +composition, ii. 136-138. Heal so quotes Madame d'Allard's account of +her, pp. 140, 141. + +[272] Quoted by M. Girardin, _Rev. des Deux Mondes_, Sept. 1853, p. +1080. + +[273] _Conf._, ix. 304. + +[274] _Ib._ ix. 305. Slightly modified version in _Corr._, i. 377. + +[275] M. Boiteau's note to Madame d'Epinay, ii. 273. + +[276] Grimm, to Madame d'Epinay, ii. 305. + +[277] This is shown partly by Saint Lambert's letter to Rousseau, to +which we come presently, and partly by a letter of Madame d'Houdetot +to Rousseau in May, 1758 (Streckeisen-Moultou, i. 411-413), where she +distinctly says that she concealed his mad passion for her from Saint +Lambert, who first heard of it in common conversation. + +[278] _Conf._, ix. 311. + +[279] Besides the many hints of reference to this in the Confessions, +see the phrenetic Letters to Sarah, printed in the _Melanges_, pp. +347-360. + +[280] _Conf._, ix. 337. + +[281] _Corr._, i. 398. Sept. 4, 1757. + +[282] To Madame d'Houdetot. _Corr._, i. 376-387. June 1757. + +[283] Saint Lambert to Rousseau, from Wolfenbuttel, Oct. 11, 1757. +Streckeisen-Moultou, i. 415. + +[284] These letters are given in M. Streckeisen-Moultou's first volume +(pp. 354-414). The thirty-second of them (Jan. 10, 1758) is perhaps +the one best worth turning to. + +[285] Streckeisen-Moultou, i. 412. May 6, 1768. _Conf._, x. 15. + +[286] _Ib._ x. 22. + +[287] _Ib._ x. 18. Streckeisen, i. 422. + +[288] _Conf._, x. 24. + +[289] To Madame d'Epinay, 1757. _Corr._, i. 362, 353. See also +_Conf._, ix. 307. + +[290] One of the most unflinching in this kind is an _Essai sur la vie +et le caractere de J.J. Rousseau_, by G.H. Morin (Paris: 1851): the +laborious production of a bitter advocate, who accepts the +Confessions, Dialogues, Letters, etc., with the reverence due to +verbal inspiration, and writes of everybody who offended his hero, +quite in the vein of Marat towards aristocrats. + +[291] _Corr._, i. 327-335. D'Epinay, ii. 165-182 + +[292] D'Epinay, ii. 173. + +[293] _Conf._, ix. 325. + +[294] _Ib._, ix. 334. + +[295] _Mem._, ii. 297. She also places the date many mouths later than +Rousseau, and detaches the reconciliation from the quarrel in the +winter of 1756-1757. + +[296] The same story is referred to in Madame de Vandeul's _Mem. de +Diderot, _p. 61. + +[297] _Conf._, ix. 245, 246. + +[298] Grimm to Madame d'Epinay, ii. 259, 269, 313, 326. _Conf._, x. +17. + +[299] _Mem._, ii. 318. + +[300] _Conf._, ix. 322. Madame d'Epinay (_Mem._, ii. 326), writing to +Grimm, gives a much colder and stiffer colour to the scene of +reconciliation, but the nature of her relations with him would account +for this. The same circumstance, as M. Girardin has pointed out (_Rev. +des Deux Mondes_, Sept. 1853), would explain the discrepancy between +her letters as given in the Confessions, and the copies of them sent +to Grimm, and printed in her Memoirs. M. Sainte Beuve, who is never +perfectly master of himself in dealing with the chiefs of the +revolutionary schools, as might indeed have been expected in a writer +with his predilections for the seventeenth century, rashly hints +(_Causeries_, vii. 301) that Rousseau was the falsifier. The +publication from the autograph originals sets this at rest. + +[301] For Shakespeare, see _Corr. Lit._, iv. 143, etc. + +[302] D'Epinay, ii. 188. + +[303] D'Epinay, ii. 150. Also Vandeul's _Mem. de Diderot_, p. 61. + +[304] _Mem._ ii. 128. + +[305] P. 258. See also p. 146. + +[306] Pp. 282, 336, etc. + +[307] _Corr._, i. 386. June 1757. + +[308] _Conf._, ix. 355. For Madame d'Epinay's equally credible +version, assigning all the stiffness and arrogance to Rousseau, see +_Mem._, ii. 355-358. Saint Lambert refers to the momentary +reconciliation in his letter to Rousseau of Nov. 21 (Streckeisen, i. +418), repeating what he had said before (p. 417), that Grimm always +spoke of Mm in amicable terms, though complaining of Rousseau's +injustice. + +[309] _Conf._, ix. 372. + +[310] _Corr._, i. 404-416. Oct 19, 1757. + +[311] Grimm to Diderot, in Madame d'Epinay's _Mem._ ii. 386. Nov. 3, +1757. + +[312] D'Epinay, ii. 387. Nov. 3. + +[313] _Corr._, i. 425. Nov. 8. _Ib._ 426. + +[314] Streckeisen-Moultou, i. 381-383. + +[315] _Ib._ 387. Many years after, Rousseau told Bernardin de St. +Pierre (_Oeuv._, xii. 57) that one of the reasons which made him leave +the Hermitage was the indiscretion of friends who insisted on sending +him letters by some conveyance that cost 4 francs, when it might +equally well have been sent for as many sous. + +[316] The sources of all this are in the following places. _Corr._, i. +416. Oct. 29. Streckeisen, i. 349. Nov. 12. _Conf._, ix. 377. _Corr._, +i. 427. Nov. 23. _Conf._, ix. 381. Dec. 1. _Ib._, ix. 383. Dec. 17. + +[317] Diderot to Grimm; D'Epinay, ii. 397. Diderot's _Oeuv._, xix. +446. See also 449 and 210. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +MUSIC. + + +Simplification has already been used by us as the key-word to Rousseau's +aims and influence. The scheme of musical notation with which he came to +try his fortune in Paris in 1741, his published vindication of it, and +his musical compositions afterwards all fall under this term. Each of +them was a plea for the extrication of the simple from the cumbrousness +of elaborated pedantry, and for a return to nature from the unmeaning +devices of false art. And all tended alike in the popular direction, +towards the extension of enjoyment among the common people, and the +glorification of their simple lives and moods, in the art designed for +the great. + +The Village Soothsayer was one of the group of works which marked a +revolution in the history of French music, by putting an end to the +tyrannical tradition of Lulli and Rameau, and preparing the way through +a middle stage of freshness, simplicity, naturalism, up to the noble +severity of Gluck (1714-1787). This great composer, though a Bohemian by +birth, found his first appreciation in a public that had been trained +by the Italian pastoral operas, of which Rousseau's was one of the +earliest produced in France. Gretri, the Fleming (1741-1813), who had a +hearty admiration for Jean Jacques, and out of a sentiment of piety +lived for a time in his Hermitage, came in point of musical excellence +between the group of Rousseau, Philidor, Duni, and the rest, and Gluck. +"I have not produced exaltation in people's heads by tragical +superlative," Gretri said, "but I have revealed the accent of truth, +which I have impressed deeper in men's hearts."[318] These words express +sufficiently the kind of influence which Rousseau also had. Crude as the +music sounds to us who are accustomed to more sumptuous schools, we can +still hear in it the note which would strike a generation weary of +Rameau. It was the expression in one way of the same mood which in +another way revolted against paint, false hair, and preposterous costume +as of savages grown opulent. Such music seems without passion or +subtlety or depth or magnificence. Thus it had hardly any higher than a +negative merit, but it was the necessary preparation for the acceptance +of a more positive style, that should replace both the elaborate false +art of the older French composers and the too colourless realism of the +pastoral comic opera, by the austere loveliness and elevation of _Orfeo_ +and _Alceste_. + +In 1752 an Italian company visited Paris, and performed at the Opera a +number of pieces by Pergolese, and other composers of their country. A +violent war arose, which agitated Paris far more intensely than the +defeat of Rossbach and the loss of Canada did afterwards. The quarrel +between the Parliament and the Clergy was at its height. The Parliament +had just been exiled, and the gravest confusion threatened the State. +The operatic quarrel turned the excitement of the capital into another +channel. Things went so far that the censor was entreated to prohibit +the printing of any work containing the damnable doctrine and position +that Italian music is good. Rousseau took part enthusiastically with the +Italians.[319] His Letter on French Music (1753) proved to the great +fury of the people concerned, that the French had no national music, and +that it would be so much the worse for them if they ever had any. Their +language, so proper to be the organ of truth and reason, was radically +unfit either for poetry or music. All national music must derive its +principal characteristics from the language. Now if there is a language +in Europe fit for music, it is certainly the Italian, for it is sweet, +sonorous, harmonious, and more accentuated than any other, and these are +precisely the four qualities which adapt a language to singing. It is +sweet because the articulations are not composite, because the meeting +of consonants is both infrequent and soft, and because a great number of +the syllables being only formed of vowels, frequent elisions make its +pronunciation more flowing. It is sonorous because most of the vowels +are full, because it is without composite diphthongs, because it has +few or no nasal vowels. Again, the inversions of the Italian are far +more favourable to true melody than the didactic order of French. And so +onwards, with much close grappling of the matter. French melody does not +exist; it is only a sort of modulated plain-song which has nothing +agreeable in itself, which only pleases with the aid of a few capricious +ornaments, and then only pleases those who have agreed to find it +beautiful.[320] + +The letter contains a variety of acute remarks upon music, and includes +a vigorous protest against fugues, imitations, double designs, and the +like. Scarcely any one succeeds in them, and success even when obtained +hardly rewards the labour. As for counterfugues, double fugues, and +"other difficult fooleries that the ear cannot endure nor the reason +justify," they are evidently relics of barbarism and bad taste which +only remain, like the porticoes of our gothic churches, to the disgrace +of those who had patience enough to construct them.[321] The last +phrase-and both Voltaire and Turgot used gothic architecture as the +symbol for the supreme of rudeness and barbarism--shows that even a man +who seems to run counter to the whole current of his time yet does not +escape its influence. + +Grimm, after remarking on the singularity of a demonstration of the +impossibility of setting melody to French words on the part of a writer +who had just produced the Village Soothsayer, informs us that the letter +created a furious uproar, and set all Paris in a blaze. He had himself +taken the side of the Italians in an amusing piece of pleasantry, which +became a sort of classic model for similar facetiousness in other +controversies of the century. The French, as he said, forgive everything +in favour of what makes them laugh, but Rousseau talked reason and +demolished the pretensions of French music with great sounding strokes +as of an axe.[322] Rousseau expected to be assassinated, and gravely +assures us that there was a plot to that effect, as well as a design to +put him in the Bastille. This we may fairly surmise to have been a +fiction of his own imagination, and the only real punishment that +overtook him was the loss of his right to free admission to the Opera. +After what he had said of the intolerable horrors of French music, the +directors of the theatre can hardly be accused of vindictiveness in +releasing him from them.[323] Some twenty years after (1774), when Paris +was torn asunder by the violence of the two great factions of the +Gluckists and Piccinists, Rousseau retracted his opinion as to the +impossibility of wedding melody to French words.[324] He went as often +as he could to hear the works both of Gretri and Gluck, and _Orfeo_ +delighted him, while the _Fausse magie_ of the former moved him to say +to the composer, "Your music stirs sweet sensations to which I thought +my heart had long been closed."[325] This being so, and life being as +brief as art is long, we need not further examine the controversy. It +may be worth adding that Rousseau wrote some of the articles on music +for the Encyclopaedia, and that in 1767 he published a not inconsiderable +Musical Dictionary of his own. + +His scheme of a new musical notation and the principles on which he +defended it are worth attention, because some of the ideas are now +accepted as the base of a well-known and growing system of musical +instruction. The aim of the scheme, let us say to begin with, was at +once practical and popular; to reduce the difficulty of learning music +to the lowest possible point, and so to bring the most delightful of the +arts within the reach of the largest possible number of people. Hence, +although he maintains the fitness of his scheme for instrumental as well +as vocal performances, it is clearly the latter which he has most at +heart, evidently for the reason that this is the kind of music most +accessible to the thousands, and it was always the thousands of whom +Rousseau thought. This is the true distinction of music, it is for the +people; and the best musical notation is that which best enables persons +to sing at sight. The difficulty of the old notation had come +practically before him as a teacher. The quantity of details which the +pupil was forced to commit to memory before being able to sing from the +open book, struck him then as the chief obstacle to anything like +facility in performance, and without some of this facility he rightly +felt that music must remain a luxury for the few. So genuine was his +interest in the matter, that he was not very careful to fight for the +originality of his own scheme. Our present musical signs, he said, are +so imperfect and so inconvenient that it is no wonder that several +persons have tried to re-cast or amend them; nor is it any wonder that +some of them should have hit upon the same device in selecting the signs +most natural and proper, such as numerical figures. As much, however, +depends on the way of dealing with these figures, as with their +adoption, and here he submitted that his own plan was as novel as it was +advantageous.[326] Thus we have to bear in mind that Rousseau's scheme +was above all things a practical device, contrived for making the +teaching and the learning of musical elements an easier process.[327] + +The chief element of the project consists in the substitution of a +relative series of notes or symbols in place of an absolute series. In +the common notation any given note, say the A of the treble clef, is +uniformly represented by the same symbol, namely, the position of second +space in the clef, whatever key it may belong to. Rousseau, insisting on +the varying quality impressed on any tone of a given pitch by the +key-note of the scale to which it belongs, protested against the same +name being given to the tone, however the quality of it might vary. Thus +Re or D, which is the second tone in the key of C, ought, according to +him, to have a different name when found as the fifth in the key of G, +and in every case the name should at once indicate the interval of a +tone from its key-note. His mode of effecting this change is as follows. +The names _ut, re_, and the rest, are kept for the fixed order of the +tones, C, D, E, and the rest. The key of a piece is shown by prefixing +one of these symbols, and this determines the absolute quality of the +melody as to pitch. That settled, every tone is expressed by a number +bearing a relation to the key-note. This tonic note is represented by +one, the other six tones of the scale are expressed by the numbers from +two to seven. In the popular Tonic Sol-Fa notation, which corresponds +so closely to Rousseau's in principle, the key-note is always styled Do, +and the other symbols, _mi_, _la_, and the rest, indicate at once the +relative position of these tones in their particular key or scale. Here +the old names were preserved as being easily sung; Rousseau selected +numbers because he supposed that they best expressed the generation of +the sounds.[328] + +Rousseau attempted to find a theoretic base for this symbolic +establishment of the relational quality of tones, and he dimly guessed +that the order of the harmonics or upper tones of a given tonic would +furnish a principle for forming the familiar major scale,[329] but his +knowledge of the order was faulty. He was perhaps groping after the idea +by which Professor Helmholtz has accounted for the various mental +effects of the several intervals in a key--namely, the degree of natural +affinity, measured by means of the upper tones, existing between the +given tone and its tonic. Apart from this, however, the practical value +of his ideas in instruction in singing is clearly shown by the +circumstance that at any given time many thousands of young children are +now being taught to read melody in the Sol-Fa notation in a few weeks. +This shows how right Rousseau was in continually declaring the ease of +hitting a particular tone, when the relative position of the tone in +respect to the key-note is clearly manifested. A singer in trying to hit +the tone is compelled to measure the interval between it and the +preceding tone, and the simplest and easiest mode of doing this is to +associate every tone with the tonics, thus constituting it a term of a +relation with this fundamental tone. + +Rousseau made a mistake when he supposed that his ideas were just as +applicable to instrumental as they were to vocal music. The requirements +of the singer are not those of the player. To a performer on the piano, +who has to light rapidly and simultaneously on a number of tones, or to +a violinist who has to leap through several octaves with great rapidity, +the most urgent need is that of a definite and fixed mark, by which the +absolute pitch of each successive tone may be at once recognised. +Neither of these has any time to think about the melodious relation of +the tones; it is quite as much as they can do to find their place on the +key-board or the string. Rousseau's scheme, or any similar one, fails to +supply the clear and obvious index to pitch supplied by the old system. +Old Rameau pointed this out to Rousseau when the scheme was laid before +him, and Rousseau admitted that the objection was decisive,[330] though +his admission was not practically deterrent. + +His device for expressing change of octave by means of points would +render the rapid seizing of a particular tone by the performer still +more difficult, and it is strange that he should have preferred this to +the other plan suggested, of indicating height of octave by visible +place above or below a horizontal line. Again, his attempt to simplify +the many varieties of musical time by reducing them all to the two modes +of double and triple time, though laudable enough, yet implies an +imperfect recognition of the full meaning of time, by omitting all +reference to the distribution of accent and to the average time value of +the tones in a particular movement. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[318] Quoted in Martin's _Hist. de France_, xvi. 158. + +[319] _Conf._, viii. 197. Grimm, _Corr. Lit._, i. 27. + +[320] _Lettre sur la Musique Francaise_, 178, etc., 187. + +[321] P. 197. + +[322] _Corr. Lit._, i. 92. His own piece was _Le petit prophete de +Boehmischbroda_, the style of which will be seen in a subsequent +footnote. + +[323] He was burnt in effigy by the musicians of the Opera. Grimm, +_Corr. Lit._, i. 113. + +[324] This is Turgot's opinion on the controversy (Letter to Caillard, +_Oeuv._, ii. 827):--"Tous avez donc vu Jean-Jacques; la musique est un +excellent passe-port aupres de lui. Quant a l'impossibilite de faire +de la musique francaise, je ne puis y croire, et votre raison ne me +parait pas bonne; car il n'est point vrai que l'essence de la langue +francaise est d'etre sans accent. Point de conversation animee sans +beaucoup d'accent; mais l'accent est libre et determine seulement par +l'affection de celui qui parle, sans etre fixe par des conventions sur +certaines syllabes, quoique nous ayons aussi dans plusieurs mots des +syllabes dominantes qui seules peuvent etre accentuees." + +[325] Musset-Pathay, i. 289. + +[326] Preface to _Dissertation sur la Musique Moderne_, pp. 32, 33. + +[327] I am indebted to Mr. James Sully, M.A., for furnishing me with +notes on a technical subject with which I have too little +acquaintance. + +[328] _Dissertation_, p. 42. + +[329] P. 52. + +[330] _Conf._, vii. 18, 19. Also _Dissertation_, pp. 74, 75. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +VOLTAIRE AND D'ALEMBERT. + + +Everybody in the full tide of the eighteenth century had something to do +with Voltaire, from serious personages like Frederick the Great and +Turgot, down to the sorriest poetaster who sent his verses to be +corrected or bepraised. Rousseau's debt to him in the days of his +unformed youth we have already seen, as well as the courtesies with +which they approached one another, when Richelieu employed the +struggling musician to make some modifications in the great man's +unconsidered court-piece. Neither of them then dreamed that their two +names were destined to form the great literary antithesis of the +century. In the ten years that elapsed between their first interchange +of letters and their first fit of coldness, it must have been tolerably +clear to either of them, if either of them gave thought to the matter, +that their dissidence was increasing and likely to increase. Their +methods were different, their training different, their points of view +different, and above all these things, their temperaments were different +by a whole heaven's breadth. + +A great number of excellent and pointed half-truths have been uttered +by various persons in illustration of all these contrasts. The +philosophy of Voltaire, for instance, is declared to be that of the +happy, while Rousseau is the philosopher of the unhappy. Voltaire steals +away their faith from those who doubt, while Rousseau strikes doubt into +the mind of the unbeliever. The gaiety of the one saddens, while the +sadness of the other consoles. If we pass from the marked divergence in +tendencies, which is imperfectly hinted at in such sayings as these, to +the divergence between them in all the fundamental conditions of +intellectual and moral life, then the variation which divided the +revolutionary stream into two channels, flowing broadly apart through +unlike regions and climates down to the great sea, is intelligible +enough. Voltaire was the arch-representative of all those elements in +contemporary thought, its curiosity, irreverence, intrepidity, +vivaciousness, rationality, to which, as we have so often had to say, +Rousseau's temperament and his Genevese spirit made him profoundly +antipathetic. Voltaire was the great high priest, robed in the dazzling +vestments of poetry and philosophy and history, of that very religion of +knowledge and art which Rousseau declared to be the destroyer of the +felicity of men. The glitter has faded away from Voltaire's philosophic +raiment since those days, and his laurel bough lies a little leafless. +Still this can never make us forget that he was in his day and +generation one of the sovereign emancipators, because he awoke one +dormant set of energies, just as Rousseau presently came to awake +another set. Each was a power, not merely by virtue of some singular +preeminence of understanding or mysterious unshared insight of his own, +but for a far deeper reason. No partial and one-sided direction can +permanently satisfy the manifold aspirations and faculties of the human +mind in the great average of common men, and it is the common average of +men to whom exceptional thinkers speak, whom they influence, and by whom +they are in turn influenced, depressed, or buoyed up, just as a painter +or a dramatist is affected. Voltaire's mental constitution made him +eagerly objective, a seeker of true things, quivering for action, +admirably sympathetic with all life and movement, a spirit restlessly +traversing the whole world. Rousseau, far different from this, saw in +himself a reflected microcosm of the outer world, and was content to +take that instead of the outer world, and as its truest version. He made +his own moods the premisses from which he deduced a system of life for +humanity, and so far as humanity has shared his moods or some parts of +them, his system was true, and has been accepted. To him the bustle of +the outer world was only a hindrance to that process of self-absorption +which was his way of interpreting life. Accessible only to interests of +emotion and sense, he was saved from intellectual sterility, and made +eloquent, by the vehemence of his emotion and the fire of his senses. He +was a master example of sensibility, as Voltaire was a master example +of clear-eyed penetration. + +This must not be taken for a rigid piece of mutually exclusive division, +for the edges of character are not cut exactly sharp, as words are. +Especially when any type is intense, it seems to meet and touch its +opposite. Just as Voltaire's piercing activity and soundness of +intelligence made him one of the humanest of men, so Rousseau's +emotional susceptibility endowed him with the gift of a vision that +carried far into the social depths. It was a very early criticism on the +pair, that Voltaire wrote on more subjects, but that Rousseau was the +more profound. In truth one was hardly much more profound than the +other. Rousseau had the sonorousness of speech which popular confusion +of thought is apt to identify with depth. And he had seriousness. If +profundity means the quality of seeing to the heart of subjects, +Rousseau had in a general way rather less of it than the shrewd-witted +crusher of the Infamous. What the distinction really amounts to is that +Rousseau had a strong feeling for certain very important aspects of +human life, which Voltaire thought very little about, or never thought +about at all, and that while Voltaire was concerned with poetry, +history, literature, and the more ridiculous parts of the religious +superstition of his time, Rousseau thought about social justice and duty +and God and the spiritual consciousness of men, with a certain attempt +at thoroughness and system. As for the substance of his thinking, as we +have already seen in the Discourses, and shall soon have an opportunity +of seeing still more clearly, it was often as thin and hollow as if he +had belonged to the company of the epigrammatical, who, after all, have +far less of a monopoly of shallow thinking than is often supposed. The +prime merit of Rousseau, in comparing him with the brilliant chief of +the rationalistic school of the time, is his reverence; reverence for +moral worth in however obscure intellectual company, for the dignity of +human character and the loftiness of duty, for some of those cravings of +the human mind after the divine and incommensurable, which may indeed +often be content with solutions proved by long time and slow experience +to be inadequate, but which are closely bound up with the highest +elements of nobleness of soul. + +It was this spiritual part of him which made Rousseau a third great +power in the century, between the Encyclopaedic party and the Church. He +recognised a something in men, which the Encyclopaedists treated as a +chimera imposed on the imagination by theologians and others for their +own purposes. And he recognised this in a way which did not offend the +rational feeling of the times, as the Catholic dogmas offended it. In a +word he was religious. In being so, he separated himself from Voltaire +and his school, who did passably well without religion. Again, he was a +puritan. In being this, he was cut off from the intellectually and +morally unreformed church, which was then the organ of religion in +France. Nor is this all. It was Rousseau, and not the feeble +controversialists put up from time to time by the Jesuits and other +ecclesiastical bodies, who proved the effective champion of religion, +and the only power who could make head against the triumphant onslaught +of the Voltaireans. He gave up Christian dogmas and mysteries, and, +throwing himself with irresistible ardour upon the emotions in which all +religions have their root and their power, he breathed new life into +them, he quickened in men a strong desire to have them satisfied, and he +beat back the army of emancipators with the loud and incessantly +repeated cry that they were not come to deliver the human mind, but to +root out all its most glorious and consolatory attributes. This immense +achievement accomplished,--the great framework of a faith in God and +immortality and providential government of the world thus preserved, it +was an easy thing by and by for the churchmen to come back, and once +more unpack and restore to their old places the temporarily discredited +paraphernalia of dogma and mystery. How far all this was good or bad for +the mental elevation of France and Europe, we shall have a better +opportunity of considering presently. + +We have now only to glance at the first skirmishes between the religious +reactionist, on the one side, and, on the other, the leader of the +school who believed that men are better employed in thinking as +accurately, and knowing as widely, and living as humanely, as all those +difficult processes are possible, than in wearying themselves in futile +search after gods who dwell on inaccessible heights. + + * * * * * + +Voltaire had acknowledged Rousseau's gift of the second Discourse with +his usual shrewd pleasantry: "I have received your new book against the +human race, and thank you for it. Never was such cleverness used in the +design of making us all stupid. One longs in reading your book to walk +on all fours. But as I have lost that habit for more than sixty years, I +feel unhappily the impossibility of resuming it. Nor can I embark in +search of the savages of Canada, because the maladies to which I am +condemned render a European surgeon necessary to me; because war is +going on in those regions; and because the example of our actions has +made the savages nearly as bad as ourselves. So I content myself with +being a very peaceable savage in the solitude which I have chosen near +your native place, where you ought to be too." After an extremely +inadequate discussion of one or two points in the essay,[331] he +concludes:--"I am informed that your health is bad; you ought to come to +set it up again in your native air, to enjoy freedom, to drink with me +the milk of our cows and browse our grass."[332] Rousseau replied to all +this in a friendly way, recognising Voltaire as his chief, and actually +at the very moment when he tells us that the corrupting presence of the +arrogant and seductive man at Geneva helped to make the idea of +returning to Geneva odious to him, hailing him in such terms as +these:--"Sensible of the honour you do my country, I share the gratitude +of my fellow-citizens, and hope that it will increase when they have +profited by the lessons that you of all men are able to give them. +Embellish the asylum you have chosen; enlighten a people worthy of your +instruction; and do you who know so well how to paint virtue and +freedom, teach us to cherish them in our walls."[333] + +Within a year, however, the bright sky became a little clouded. In 1756 +Voltaire published one of the most sincere, energetic, and passionate +pieces to be found in the whole literature of the eighteenth century, +his poem on the great earthquake of Lisbon (November 1755). No such word +had been heard in Europe since the terrible images in which Pascal had +figured the doom of man. It was the reaction of one who had begun life +by refuting Pascal with doctrines of cheerfulness drawn from the +optimism of Pope and Leibnitz, who had done Pope's Essay on Man +(1732-34) into French verse as late as 1751,[334] and whose imagination, +already sombred by the triumphant cruelty and superstition which raged +around him, was suddenly struck with horror by a catastrophe which, in a +world where whatever is is best, destroyed hundreds of human creatures +in the smoking ashes and engulfed wreck of their city. How, he cried, +can you persist in talking of the deliberate will of a free and +benevolent God, whose eternal laws necessitated such an appalling climax +of misery and injustice as this? Was the disaster retributive? If so, +why is Lisbon in ashes, while Paris dances? The enigma is desperate and +inscrutable, and the optimist lives in the paradise of the fool. We ask +in vain what we are, where we are, whither we go, whence we came. We are +tormented atoms on a clod of earth, whom death at last swallows up, and +with whom destiny meanwhile makes cruel sport. The past is only a +disheartening memory, and if the tomb destroys the thinking creature, +how frightful is the present! + +Whatever else we may say of Voltaire's poem, it was at least the first +sign of the coming reaction of sympathetic imagination against the +polished common sense of the great Queen Anne school, which had for more +than a quarter of a century such influence in Europe.[335] It is a +little odd that Voltaire, the most brilliant and versatile branch of +this stock, should have broken so energetically away from it, and that +he should have done so, shows how open and how strong was the feeling in +him for reality and actual circumstance. + +Rousseau was amazed that a man overwhelmed as Voltaire was with +prosperity and glory, should declaim against the miseries of this life +and pronounce that all is evil and vanity. "Voltaire in seeming always +to believe in God, never really believed in anybody but the devil, since +his pretended God is a maleficent being who according to him finds all +his pleasure in working mischief. The absurdity of this doctrine is +especially revolting in a man crowned with good things of every sort, +and who from the midst of his own happiness tries to fill his +fellow-creatures with despair, by the cruel and terrible image of the +serious calamities from which he is himself free."[336] + +As if any doctrine could be more revolting than this which Rousseau so +quietly takes for granted, that if it is well with me and I am free from +calamities, then there must needs be a beneficent ruler of the universe, +and the calamities of all the rest of the world, if by chance they catch +the fortunate man's eye, count for nothing in our estimate of the method +of the supposed divine government. It is hard to imagine a more +execrable emotion than the complacent religiosity of the prosperous. +Voltaire is more admirable in nothing than in the ardent humanity and +far-spreading lively sympathy with which he interested himself in all +the world's fortunes, and felt the catastrophe of Lisbon as profoundly +as if the Geneva at his gates had been destroyed. He relished his own +prosperity keenly enough, but his prosperity became ashes in his mouth +when he heard of distress or wrong, and he did not rest until he had +moved heaven and earth to soothe the distress and repair the wrong. It +was his impatience in the face of the evils of the time which wrung from +him this desperate cry, and it is precisely because these evils did not +touch him in his own person, that he merits the greater honour for the +surpassing energy and sincerity of his feeling for them. + +Rousseau, however, whose biographer has no such stories to tell as those +of Calas and La Barre, Sirven and Lally, but only tales of a maiden +wrongfully accused of theft, and a friend left senseless on the pavement +of a strange town, and a benefactress abandoned to the cruelty of her +fate, still was moved in the midst of his erotic visions in the forest +of Montmorency to speak a jealous word in vindication of the divine +government of our world. For him at any rate life was then warm and the +day bright and the earth very fair, and he lauded his gods accordingly. +It was his very sensuousness, as we are so often saying, that made him +religious. The optimism which Voltaire wished to destroy was to him a +sovereign element of comfort. "Pope's poem," he says, "softens my +misfortunes and inclines me to patience, while yours sharpens all my +pains, excites me to murmuring, and reduces me to despair. Pope and +Leibnitz exhort me to resignation by declaring calamities to be a +necessary effect of the nature and constitution of the universe. You +cry, Suffer for ever, unhappy wretch; if there be a God who created +thee, he could have stayed thy pains if he would: hope for no end to +them, for there is no reason to be discerned for thy existence, except +to suffer and to perish."[337] Rousseau then proceeds to argue the +matter, but he says nothing really to the point which Pope had not said +before, and said far more effectively. He begins, however, originally +enough by a triumphant reference to his own great theme of the +superiority of the natural over the civil state. Moral evil is our own +work, the result of our liberty; so are most of our physical evils, +except death, and that is mostly an evil only from the preparations that +we make for it. Take the case of Lisbon. Was it nature who collected the +twenty thousand houses, all seven stories high? If the people of Lisbon +had been dispersed over the face of the country, as wild tribes are, +they would have fled at the first shock, and they would have been seen +the next day twenty leagues away, as gay as if nothing had happened. And +how many of them perished in the attempt to rescue clothes or papers or +money? Is it not true that the person of a man is now, thanks to +civilisation, the least part of himself, and is hardly worth saving +after loss of the rest? Again, there are some events which lose much of +their horror when we look at them closely. A premature death is not +always a real evil and may be a relative good; of the people crushed to +death under the ruins of Lisbon, many no doubt thus escaped still worse +calamities. And is it worse to be killed swiftly than to await death in +prolonged anguish?[338] + +The good of the whole is to be sought before the good of the part. +Although the whole material universe ought not to be dearer to its +Creator than a single thinking and feeling being, yet the system of the +universe which produces, preserves, and perpetuates all thinking and +feeling beings, ought to be dearer to him than any one of them, and he +may, notwithstanding his goodness, or rather by reason of his goodness, +sacrifice something of the happiness of individuals to the preservation +of the whole. "That the dead body of a man should feed worms or wolves +or plants is not, I admit, a compensation for the death of such a man; +but if in the system of this universe, it is necessary for the +preservation of the human race that there should be a circulation of +substance between men, animals, vegetables, then the particular mishap +of an individual contributes to the general good. I die, I am eaten by +worms; but my children, my brothers, will live as I have lived; my body +enriches the earth of which they will consume the fruits; and so I do, +by the order of nature and for all men, what Codrus, Curtius, the Decii, +and a thousand others, did of their own free will for a small part of +men." (p. 305.) + +All this is no doubt very well said, and we are bound to accept it as +true doctrine. Although, however, it may make resignation easier by +explaining the nature of evil, it does not touch the point of Voltaire's +outburst, which is that evil exists, and exists in shapes which it is a +mere mockery to associate with the omnipotence of a benevolent +controller of the world's forces. According to Rousseau, if we go to the +root of what he means, there is no such thing as evil, though much that +to our narrow and impatient sight has the look of it. This may be true +if we use that fatal word in an arbitrary and unreal sense, for the +avoidable, the consequent without antecedent, or antecedent without +consequent. If we consent to talk in this way, and only are careful to +define terms so that there is no doubt as to their meaning, it is hardly +deniable that evil is a mere word and not a reality, and whatever is is +indeed right and best, because no better is within our reach. Voltaire, +however, like the man of sense that he was, exclaimed that at any rate +relatively to us poor creatures the existence of pain, suffering, waste, +whether caused or uncaused, whether in accordance with stern immutable +law or mere divine caprice, is a most indisputable reality: from our +point of view it is a cruel puerility to cry out at every calamity and +every iniquity that all is well in the best of possible worlds, and to +sing hymns of praise and glory to the goodness and mercy of a being of +supreme might, who planted us in this evil state and keeps us in it. +Voltaire's is no perfect philosophy; indeed it is not a philosophy at +all, but a passionate ejaculation; but it is perfect in comparison with +a cut and dried system like this of Rousseau's, which rests on a mocking +juggle with phrases, and the substitution by dexterous sleight of hand +of one definition for another. + +Rousseau really gives up the battle, by confessing frankly that the +matter is beyond the light of reason, and that, "if the theist only +founds his sentiment on probabilities, the atheist with still less +precision only founds his on the alternative possibilities." The +objections on both sides are insoluble, because they turn on things of +which men can have no veritable idea; "yet I believe in God as strongly +as I believe any other truth, because believing and not believing are +the last things in the world that depend on me." So be it. But why take +the trouble to argue in favour of one side of an avowedly insoluble +question? It was precisely because he felt that the objections on both +sides cannot be answered, that Voltaire, hastily or not, cried out that +he faced the horrors of such a catastrophe as the Lisbon earthquake +without a glimpse of consolation. The upshot of Rousseau's remonstrance +only amounted to this, that he could not furnish one with any +consolation out of the armoury of reason, that he himself found this +consolation, but in a way that did not at all depend upon his own effort +or will, and was therefore as incommunicable as the advantage of having +a large appetite or being six feet high. The reader of Rousseau becomes +accustomed to this way of dealing with subjects of discussion. We see +him using his reason as adroitly as he knows how for three-fourths of +the debate, and then he suddenly flings himself back with a triumphant +kind of weariness into the buoyant waters of emotion and sentiment. "You +sir, who are a poet," once said Madame d'Epinay to Saint Lambert, "will +agree with me that the existence of a Being, eternal, all powerful, and +of sovereign intelligence, is at any rate the germ of the finest +enthusiasm."[339] To take this position and cleave to it may be very +well, but why spoil its dignity and repose by an unmeaning and +superfluous flourish of the weapons of the reasoner? + +With the same hasty change of direction Rousseau says the true question +is not whether each of us suffers or not, but whether it is good that +the universe should be, and whether our misfortunes were inevitable in +its constitution. Then within a dozen lines he admits that there can be +no direct proof either way; we must content ourselves with settling it +by means of inference from the perfections of God. Of course, it is +clear that in the first place what Rousseau calls the true question +consists of two quite distinct questions. Is the universe in its present +ordering on the whole good relatively either to men, or to all sentient +creatures? Next was evil an inevitable element in that ordering? Second, +this way of putting it does not in the least advance the case against +Voltaire, who insisted that no fine phrases ought to hide from us the +dreadful power and crushing reality of evil and the desolate plight in +which we are left. This is no exhaustive thought, but a deep cry of +anguish at the dark lot of men, and of just indignation against the +philosophy which to creatures asking for bread gave the brightly +polished stone of sentimental theism. Rousseau urged that Voltaire +robbed men of their only solace. What Voltaire really did urge was that +the solace derived from the attribution of humanity and justice to the +Supreme Being, and from the metaphysical account of evil, rests on too +narrow a base either to cover the facts, or to be a true solace to any +man who thinks and observes. He ought to have gone on, if it had only +been possible in those times, to persuade his readers that there is no +solace attainable, except that of an energetic fortitude, and that we do +best to go into life not in a softly lined silken robe, but with a sharp +sword and armour thrice tempered. As between himself and Rousseau, he +saw much the more keenly of the two, and this was because he approached +the matter from the side of the facts, while the latter approached it +from the side of his own mental comfort and the preconceptions +involved in it. + +The most curious part of this curious letter is the conclusion, where +Rousseau, loosely wandering from his theme, separates Voltaire from the +philosopher, and beseeches him to draw up a moral code or profession of +civil faith that should contain positively the social maxims that +everybody should be bound to admit, and negatively the intolerant maxims +that everybody should be forced to reject as seditious. Every religion +in accord with the code should be allowed, and every religion out of +accord with it proscribed, or a man might be free to have no other +religion but the code itself. + +Voltaire was much too clear-headed a person to take any notice of +nonsense like this. Rousseau's letter remained unanswered, nor is there +any reason to suppose that Voltaire ever got through it, though Rousseau +chose to think that _Candide_ (1759) was meant for a reply to him.[340] +He is careful to tell us that he never read that incomparable satire, +for which one would be disposed to pity any one except Rousseau, whose +appreciation of wit, if not of humour also, was probably more deficient +than in any man who ever lived, either in Geneva or any other country +fashioned after Genevan guise. Rousseau's next letter to Voltaire was +four years later, and by that time the alienation which had no +definitely avowed cause, and can be marked by no special date, had +become complete. "I hate you, in fact," he concluded, "since you have so +willed it; but I hate you like a man still worthier to have loved you, +if you had willed it. Of all the sentiments with which my heart was full +towards you, there only remains the admiration that we cannot refuse to +your fine genius, and love for your writings. If there is nothing in you +which I can honour but your talents, that is no fault of mine."[341] We +know that Voltaire did not take reproach with serenity, and he behaved +with bitter violence towards Rousseau in circumstances when silence +would have been both more magnanimous and more humane. Rousseau +occasionally, though not very often, retaliated in the same vein.[342] +On the whole his judgment of Voltaire, when calmly given, was not meant +to be unkind. "Voltaire's first impulse," he said, "is to be good; it is +reflection that makes him bad."[343] Tronchin had said in the same way +that Voltaire's heart was the dupe of his understanding. Rousseau is +always trying to like him, he always recognises him as the first man of +the time, and he subscribed his mite for the erection of a statue to +him. It was the satire and mockery in Voltaire which irritated Rousseau +more than the doctrines or denial of doctrine which they cloaked; in his +eyes sarcasm was always the veritable dialect of the evil power. It says +something for the sincerity of his efforts after equitable judgment, +that he should have had the patience to discern some of the fundamental +merit of the most remorseless and effective mocker that ever made +superstition look mean, and its doctors ridiculous. + + +II. + +Voltaire was indirectly connected with Rousseau's energetic attack upon +another great Encyclopaedist leader, the famous Letter to D'Alembert on +Stage Plays. "There," Rousseau said afterwards, "is my favourite book, +my Benjamin, because I produced it without effort, at the first +inspiration, and in the most lucid moments of my life."[344] Voltaire, +who to us figures so little as a poet and dramatist, was to himself and +to his contemporaries of this date a poet and dramatist before all else, +the author of _Zaire_ and _Mahomet_, rather than of _Candide_ and the +_Philosophical Dictionary_. D'Alembert was Voltaire's staunchest +henchman. He only wrote his article on Geneva for the Encyclopaedia to +gratify the master. Fresh from a visit to him when he composed it, he +took occasion to regret that the austerity of the tradition of the city +deprived it of the manifold advantages of a theatre. This suggestion had +its origin partly in a desire to promote something that would please the +eager vanity of the dramatist whom Geneva now had for so close a +neighbour, and who had just set her the example by setting up a theatre +of his own; and partly, also, because it gave the writer an opportunity +of denouncing the intolerant rigour with which the church nearer home +treated the stage and all who appeared on it. Geneva was to set an +example that could not be resisted, and France would no longer see +actors on the one hand pensioned by the government, and on the other an +object of anathema, excommunicated by priests and regarded with contempt +by citizens.[345] + +The inveterate hostility of the church to the theatre was manifested by +the French ecclesiastics in the full eighteenth century as bitterly as +ever. The circumstance that Voltaire was the great play-writer of the +time would not tend to soften their traditional prejudice, and the +persecution of players by priests was in some sense an episode of the +war between the priest and the philosophers. The latter took up the +cause of the stage partly because they hoped to make the drama an +effective rival to the teaching of pulpit and confessional, partly from +their natural sympathy with an elevated form of intellectual +manifestation, and partly from their abhorrence of the practical +inhumanity with which the officers of the church treated stage +performers. While people of quality eagerly sought the society of those +who furnished them as much diversion in private as in public, the church +refused to all players the marriage blessing; when an actor or actress +wished to marry, they were obliged to renounce the stage, and the +Archbishop of Paris diligently resisted evasion or subterfuge.[346] The +atrocities connected with the refusal of burial, as well in the case of +players as of philosophers, are known to all readers in a dozen +illustrious instances, from Moliere and Adrienne Lecouvreur downwards. + +Here, as along the whole line of the battle between new light and old +prejudice, Rousseau took part, if not with the church, at least against +its adversaries. His point of view was at bottom truly puritanical. +Jeremy Collier in his _Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of +the English Stage_ (1698) takes up quite a different position. This once +famous piece was not a treatment of the general question, but an attack +on certain specific qualities of the plays of his time--their indecency +of phrase, their oaths, their abuse of the clergy, the gross libertinism +of the characters. One can hardly deny that this was richly deserved by +the English drama of the Restoration, and Collier's strictures were not +applicable, nor meant to apply, either to the ancients, for he has a +good word even for Aristophanes, or to the French drama. Bossuet's +loftier denunciation, like Rousseau's, was puritanical, and it extended +to the whole body of stage plays. He objected to the drama as a school +of concupiscence, as a subtle or gross debaucher of the gravity and +purity of the understanding, as essentially a charmer of the senses, and +therefore the most equivocal and untrustworthy of teachers. He appeals +to the fathers, to Scripture, to Plato, and even to Christ, who cried, +_Woe unto you that laugh_.[347] There is a fine austerity about +Bossuet's energetic criticism; it is so free from breathless eagerness, +and so severe without being thinly bitter. The churchmen of a generation +or two later had fallen from this height into gloomy peevishness. + +Rousseau's letter on the theatre, it need hardly be said, is meant to be +an appeal to the common sense and judgment of his readers, and not +conceived in the ecclesiastical tone of unctuous anathema and fulgurant +menace. It is no bishop's pastoral, replete with solecisms of thought +and idiom, but a piece of firm dialectic in real matter. His position is +this: that the moral effect of the stage can never be salutary in +itself, while it may easily be extremely pernicious, and that the habit +of frequenting the theatre, the taste for imitating the style of the +actors, the cost in money, the waste in time, and all the other +accessory conditions, apart from the morality of the matter represented, +are bad things in themselves, absolutely and in every circumstance. +Secondly, these effects in all kinds are specially bad in relation to +the social condition and habits of Geneva.[348] The first part of the +discussion is an ingenious answer to some of the now trite pleas for +the morality of the drama, such as that tragedy leads to pity through +terror, that comedy corrects men while amusing them, that both make +virtue attractive and vice hateful.[349] Rousseau insists with abundance +of acutely chosen illustration that the pity that is awaked by tragedy +is a fleeting emotion which subsides when the curtain falls; that comedy +as often as not amuses men at the expense of old age, uncouth virtue, +paternal carefulness, and other objects which we should be taught rather +to revere than to ridicule; and that both tragedy and comedy, instead of +making vice hateful, constantly win our sympathy for it. Is not the +French stage, he asks, as much the triumph of great villains, like +Catilina, Mahomet, Atreus, as of illustrious heroes? + +This rude handling of accepted commonplace is always one of the most +interesting features in Rousseau's polemic. It was of course a +characteristic of the eighteenth century always to take up the ethical +and high prudential view of whatever had to be justified, and Rousseau +seems from this point to have been successful in demolishing arguments +which might hold of Greek tragedy at its best, but which certainly do +not hold of any other dramatic forms. The childishness of the old +criticism which attaches the label of some moral from the copybook to +each piece, as its lesson and point of moral aim, is evident. In +repudiating this Rousseau was certainly right.[350] Both the assailants +and the defenders of the stage, however, commit the double error, first +of supposing that the drama is always the same thing, from the Agamemnon +down to the last triviality of a London theatre, and next of pitching +the discussion in too high a key, as if the effect or object of a stage +play in the modern era, where grave sentiment clothes itself in other +forms, were substantially anything more serious than an evening's +amusement. Apart from this, and in so far as the discussion is confined +to the highest dramatic expression, the true answer to Rousseau is now a +very plain one. The drama does not work in the sphere of direct +morality, though like everything else in the world it has a moral or +immoral aspect. It is an art of ideal presentation, not concerned with +the inculcation of immediate practical lessons, but producing a stir in +all our sympathetic emotions, quickening the imagination, and so +communicating a wider life to the character of the spectator. This is +what the drama in the hands of a worthy master does; it is just what +noble composition in music does, and there is no more directly +moralising effect in the one than in the other. You must trust to the +sum of other agencies to guide the interest and sympathy thus quickened +into channels of right action. Rousseau, like most other +controversialists, makes an attack of which the force rests on the +assumption that the special object of the attack is the single +influencing element and the one decisive instrument in making men had or +good. What he says about the drama would only be true if the public went +to the play all day long, and were accessible to no other moral force +whatever, modifying and counteracting such lessons as they might learn +at the theatre. He failed here as in the wider controversy on the +sciences and arts, to consider the particular subject of discussion in +relation to the whole of the general medium in which character moves, +and by whose manifold action and reaction it is incessantly affected and +variously shaped. + +So when he passed on from the theory of dramatic morality to the matter +which he had more at heart, namely, the practical effects of introducing +the drama into Geneva, he keeps out of sight all the qualities in the +Genevese citizen which would protect him against the evil influence of +the stage, though it is his anxiety for the preservation of these very +qualities that gives all its fire to his eloquence. If the citizen +really was what Rousseau insisted that he was, then his virtues would +surely neutralise the evil of the drama; if not, the drama would do him +no harm. We need not examine the considerations in which Rousseau +pointed out the special reasons against introducing a theatre into his +native town. It would draw the artisans away from their work, cause +wasteful expenditure of money in amusements, break up the harmless and +inexpensive little clubs of men and the social gatherings of women. The +town was not populous enough to support a theatre, therefore the +government would have to provide one, and this would mean increased +taxation. All this was the secondary and merely colourable support by +argumentation, of a position that had been reached and was really held +by sentiment. Rousseau hated the introduction of French plays in the +same way that Cato hated the introduction of fine talkers from Greece. +It was an innovation, and so habitual was it with Rousseau to look on +all movement in the direction of what the French writers called taste +and cultivation as depraving, that he cannot help taking for granted +that any change in manners associated with taste must necessarily be a +change for the worse. Thus the Letter to D'Alembert was essentially a +supplement to the first Discourse; it was an application of its +principles to a practical case. It was part of his general reactionary +protest against philosophers, poets, men of letters, and all their +works, without particular apprehension on the side of the drama. Hence +its reasoning is much less interesting than its panegyric on the +simplicity, robust courage, and manliness of the Genevese, and its +invective against the effeminacy and frivolity of the Parisian. One of +the most significant episodes in the discussion is the lengthy criticism +on the immortal Misanthrope of Moliere. Rousseau admits it for the +masterpiece of the comic muse, though with characteristic perversity he +insists that the hero is not misanthropic enough, nor truly misanthropic +at all, because he flies into rage at small things affecting himself, +instead of at the large follies of the race. Again, he says that Moliere +makes Alceste ridiculous, virtuous as he is, in order to win the +applause of the pit. It is for the character of Philinte, however, that +Rousseau reserves all his spleen. He takes care to describe him in terms +which exactly hit Rousseau's own conception of his philosophic enemies, +who find all going well because they have no interest in anything going +better; who are content with everybody, because they do not care for +anybody; who round a full table maintain that it is not true that the +people are hungry. As criticism, one cannot value this kind of analysis. +D'Alembert replied with a much more rational interpretation of the great +comedy, but finding himself seized with the critic's besetting +impertinence of improving masterpieces, he suddenly stopped with the +becoming reflection--"But I perceive, sir, that I am giving lessons to +Moliere."[351] + +The constant thought of Paris gave Rousseau an admirable occasion of +painting two pictures in violent contrast, each as over-coloured as the +other by his mixed conceptions of the Plutarchian antique and imaginary +pastoral. We forget the depravation of the stage and the ill living of +comedians in magnificent descriptions of the manly exercises and +cheerful festivities of the free people on the shores of the Lake of +Geneva, and in scornful satire on the Parisian seraglios, where some +woman assembles a number of men who are more like women than their +entertainers. We see on the one side the rude sons of the republic, +boxing, wrestling, running, in generous emulation, and on the other the +coxcombs of cultivated Paris imprisoned in a drawing-room, "rising up, +sitting down, incessantly going and coming to the fire-place, to the +window, taking up a screen and putting it down again a hundred times, +turning over books, flitting from picture to picture, turning and +pirouetting about the room, while the idol stretched motionless on a +couch all the time is only alive in her tongue and eyes" (p. 161). If +the rough patriots of the Lake are less polished in speech, they are all +the weightier in reason; they do not escape by a pleasantry or a +compliment; each feeling himself attacked by all the forces of his +adversary, he is obliged to employ all his own to defend himself, and +this is how a mind acquires strength and precision. There may be here +and there a licentious phrase, but there is no ground for alarm in that. +It is not the least rude who are always the most pure, and even a rather +clownish speech is better than that artificial style in which the two +sexes seduce one another, and familiarise themselves decently with vice. +'Tis true our Swiss drinks too much, but after all let us not calumniate +even vice; as a rule drinkers are cordial and frank, good, upright, +just, loyal, brave, and worthy folk. Wherever people have most +abhorrence of drunkenness, be sure they have most reason to fear lest +its indiscretion should betray intrigue and treachery. In Switzerland it +is almost thought well of, while at Naples they hold it in horror; but +at bottom which is the more to be dreaded, the intemperance of the Swiss +or the reserve of the Italian? It is hardly surprising to learn that the +people of Geneva were as little gratified by this well-meant panegyric +on their jollity as they had been by another writer's friendly eulogy on +their Socinianism.[352] + +The reader who was not moved to turn brute and walk on all fours by the +pictures of the state of nature in the Discourses, may find it more +difficult to resist the charm of the brotherly festivities and simple +pastimes which in the Letter to D'Alembert the patriot holds up to the +admiration of his countrymen and the envy of foreigners. The writer is +in Sparta, but he tempers his Sparta with a something from Charmettes. +Never before was there so attractive a combination of martial austerity +with the grace of the idyll. And the interest of these pictures is much +more than literary; it is historic also. They were the original version +of those great gatherings in the Champ de Mars and strange suppers of +fraternity during the progress of the Revolution in Paris, which have +amused the cynical ever since, but which pointed to a not unworthy +aspiration. The fine gentlemen whom Rousseau did so well to despise had +then all fled, and the common people under Rousseauite leaders were +doing the best they could to realise on the banks of the Seine the +imaginary joymaking and simple fellowship which had been first dreamed +of for the banks of Lake Leman, and commended with an eloquence that +struck new chords in minds satiated or untouched by the brilliance of +mere literature. There was no real state of things in Geneva +corresponding to the gracious picture which Rousseau so generously +painted, and some of the citizens complained that his account of their +social joys was as little deserved as his ingenious vindication of their +hearty feeling for barrel or bottle was little founded.[353] + +The glorification of love of country did little for the Genevese for +whom it was meant, but it penetrated many a soul in the greater nation +that lay sunk in helpless indifference to its own ruin. Nowhere else +among the writers who are the glory of France at this time, is any +serious eulogy of patriotism. Rousseau glows with it, and though he +always speaks in connection with Geneva, yet there is in his words a +generous breadth and fire which gave them an irresistible +contagiousness. There are many passages of this fine persuasive force in +the Letter to D'Alembert; perhaps this, referring to the citizens of +Geneva who had gone elsewhere in search of fortune, is as good as +another. Do you think that the opening of a theatre, he asks, will bring +them back to their mother city? No; "each of them must feel that he can +never find anywhere else what he has left behind in his own land; an +invincible charm must call him back to the spot that he ought never to +have quitted; the recollection of their first exercises, their first +pleasures, their first sights, must remain deeply graven in their +hearts; the soft impressions made in the days of their youth must abide +and grow stronger with advancing years, while a thousand others wax dim; +in the midst of the pomp of great cities and all their cheerless +magnificence, a secret voice must for ever cry in the depth of the +wanderer's soul, Ah, where are the games and holidays of my youth? Where +is the concord of the townsmen, where the public brotherhood? Where is +pure joy and true mirth? Where are peace, freedom, equity? Let us hasten +to seek all these. With the heart of a Genevese, with a city as smiling, +a landscape as full of delight, a government as just, with pleasures so +true and so pure, and all that is needed to be able to relish them, how +is it that we do not all adore our birth-land? It was thus in old times +that by modest feasts and homely games her citizens were called back by +that Sparta which I can never quote often enough as an example for us; +thus in Athens in the midst of fine art, thus in Susa in the very bosom +of luxury and soft delights, the wearied Spartan sighed after his coarse +pastimes and exhausting exercises" (p. 211).[354] + +Any reference to this powerfully written, though most sophistical +piece, would be imperfect which should omit its slightly virulent +onslaught upon women and the passion which women inspire. The modern +drama, he said, being too feeble to rise to high themes, has fallen back +on love; and on this hint he proceeds to a censure of love as a poetic +theme, and a bitter estimate of women as companions for men, which might +have pleased Calvin or Knox in his sternest mood. The same eloquence +which showed men the superior delights of the state of nature, now shows +the superior fitness of the oriental seclusion of women; it makes a +sympathetic reader tremble at the want of modesty, purity, and decency, +in the part which women are allowed to take by the infatuated men of a +modern community. + +All this, again, is directed against "that philosophy of a day, which is +born and dies in the corner of a city, and would fain stifle the cry of +nature and the unanimous voice of the human race" (p. 131). The same +intrepid spirits who had brought reason to bear upon the current notions +of providence, inspiration, ecclesiastical tradition, and other +unlighted spots in the human mind, had perceived that the subjection of +women to a secondary place belonged to the same category, and could not +any more successfully be defended by reason. Instead of raging against +women for their boldness, their frivolousness, and the rest, as our +passionate sentimentalist did, the opposite school insisted that all +these evils were due to the folly of treating women with gallantry +instead of respect, and to the blindness of refusing an equally vigorous +and masculine education to those who must be the closest companions of +educated man. This was the view forced upon the most rational observers +of a society where women were so powerful, and so absolutely unfit by +want of intellectual training for the right use of social power. +D'Alembert expressed this view in a few pages of forcible pleading in +his reply to Rousseau,[355] and some thirty-two years later, when all +questions had become political (1790), Condorcet ably extended the same +line of argument so as to make it cover the claims of women to all the +rights of citizenship.[356] From the nature of the case, however, it is +impossible to confute by reason a man who denies that the matter in +dispute is within the decision and jurisdiction of reason, and who +supposes that his own opinion is placed out of the reach of attack when +he declares it to be the unanimous voice of the human race. We may +remember that the author of this philippic against love was at the very +moment brooding over the New Heloisa, and was fresh from strange +transports at the feet of the Julie whom we know. + +The Letter on the Stage was the definite mark of Rousseau's schism from +the philosophic congregation. Has Jean Jacques turned a father of the +church? asked Voltaire. Deserters who fight against their country ought +to be hung. The little flock are falling to devouring one another. This +arch-madman, who might have been something, if he would only have been +guided by his brethren of the Encyclopaedia, takes it into his head to +make a band of his own. He writes against the stage, after writing a bad +play of his own. He finds four or five rotten staves of Diogenes' tub, +and instals himself therein to bark at his friends.[357] D'Alembert was +more tolerant, but less clear-sighted. He insisted that the little flock +should do its best to heal divisions instead of widening them. Jean +Jacques, he said, "is a madman who is very clever, and who is only +clever when he is in a fever; it is best therefore neither to cure nor +to insult him." + +Rousseau made the preface to the Letter on the Stage an occasion for a +proclamation of his final breach with Diderot. "I once," he said, +"possessed a severe and judicious Aristarchus; I have him no longer, and +wish for him no longer." To this he added in a footnote a passage from +Ecclesiasticus, to the effect that if you have drawn a sword on a friend +there still remains a way open, and if you have spoken cheerless words +to him concord is still possible, but malicious reproach and the +betrayal of a secret--these things banish friendship beyond return. This +was the end of his personal connection with the men whom he always +contemptuously called the Holbachians. After 1760 the great stream +divided into two; the rationalist and the emotional schools became +visibly antipathetic, and the voice of the epoch was no longer single or +undistracted. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[331] See above p. 149. + +[332] Voltaire to Rousseau. Aug. 30, 1755. + +[333] _Corr._, i. 237. Sept. 10, 1755. + +[334] _La Loi Naturelle._ + +[335] In 1754 the Berlin Academy proposed for a prize essay, An +Examination of Pope's System, and Lessing the next year wrote a +pamphlet to show that Pope had no system, but only a patchwork. See +Mr. Pattison's _Introduction to Pope's Essay on Man_, p. 12. Sime's +_Lessing_, i. 128. + +[336] _Conf._ ix. 276. + +[337] _Corr._, i. 289-316. Aug. 18, 1756. + +[338] Joseph De Maistre put all this much more acutely; _Soirees_, iv. + +[339] Madame d'Epinay, _Mem._, i. 380. + +[340] _Conf._, ix. 277. Also _Corr._, iii. 326. March 11, 1764. +Tronchin's long letter, to which Rousseau refers in this passage, is +given in M. Streckeisen-Moultou's collection, i. 323, and is +interesting to people who care to know how Voltaire looked to a doctor +who saw him closely. + +[341] _Corr._, ii. 132. June 17, 1760. Also _Conf._, x. 91. + +[342] Some other interesting references to Voltaire in Rousseau's +letters are--ii. 170 (Nov. 29, 1760), denouncing Voltaire as "that +trumpet of impiety, that fine genius, and that low soul," and so +forth; iii. 29 (Oct. 30, 1762), accusing Voltaire of malicious +intrigues against him in Switzerland; iii. 168 (Mar. 21, 1763), that +if there is to be any reconciliation, Voltaire must make first +advances; iii. 280 (Dec., 1763), described a trick played by Voltaire; +iv. 40 (Jan. 31, 1765) 64; _Corr._, v. 74 (Jan. 5, 1767), replying to +Voltaire's calumnious account of his early life; note on this subject +giving Voltaire the lie direct, iv. 150 (May 31, 1765); the _Lettre a +D'Almbert_, p. 193, etc. + +[343] Bernardin St. Pierre, xii. 96. In the same sense, in Dusaulx, +_Mes Rapports avec J.J.R._, (Paris: 1798), p. 101. See also _Corr._, +iv. 254. Dec. 30, 1765. And again, iv. 276, Feb. 28, 1766, and p. 356. + +[344] Dusaulx, p. 102. + +[345] This part of D'Alembert's article is reproduced in Rousseau's +preface, and the whole is given at the end of the volume in M. +Auguis's edition, p. 409. + +[346] Goncourt, _Femme au 18ieme siecle_, p. 256. Grimm, _Corr. Lit._, +vi. 248. + +[347] _Maximes sur la Comedie_, Sec.15, etc. They were written in reply +to a plea for Comedy by Caffaro, a Jesuit father. + +[348] The letter may be conveniently divided into three parts: I. pp. +1-89, II. pp. 90-145, III. pp. 146 to the end. Of course if Rousseau +in saying that tragedy leads to pity through terror, was thinking of +the famous passage in the sixth chapter of Aristotle's _Poetics_, he +was guilty of a shocking mistranslation. + +[349] Some of the arguments seem drawn from Plato; see, besides the +well-known passages in the _Republic_, the _Laws_, iv. 719, and still +more directly, _Gorgias_, 502. + +[350] Yet D'Alembert in his very cool and sensible reply (p. 245) +repeats the old saws, as that in _Catilina_ we learn the lesson of the +harm which may be done to the human race by the abuse of great +talents, and so forth. + +[351] _Lettre a M. J.J. Rousseau_, p. 258. + +[352] D'Alembert's _Lettre a J.J. Rousseau_, p. 277. Rousseau has a +passage to the same effect, that false people are always sober, in the +_Nouv. Hel., _Pt. I. xxiii. 123. + +[353] Tronchin, for instance, in a letter to Rousseau, in M. +Streckeisen-Moultou's collection, i. 325. + +[354] A troop of comedians had been allowed to play for a short time +in Geneva, with many protests, during the mediation of 1738. In 1766, +eight years after Rousseau's letter, the government gave permission +for the establishment of a theatre in the town. It was burnt down in +1768, and Voltaire spitefully hinted that the catastrophe was the +result of design, instigated by Rousseau (_Corr._ v. 299, April 26, +1768). The theatre was not re-erected until 1783, when the oligarchic +party regained the ascendancy and brought back with them the drama, +which the democrats in their reign would not permit. + +[355] _Lettre a J.J. Rousseau_, pp. 265-271. + +[356] _Oeuv._, x. 121. + +[357] To Thieriot, Sept. 17, 1758. To D'Alembert, Oct. 20, 1761. _Ib._ +March 19, 1761. + + +END OF VOL. I. + + +_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_ + + + + * * * * * + + + +ROUSSEAU + + +BY + +JOHN MORLEY + + +VOL. II. + + +London +MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED +NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY +1905 + +_All rights reserved_ + +_First printed in this form 1886_ +_Reprinted 1888, 1891, 1896, 1900, 1905_ + + + + +CONTENTS OF VOL. II. + + +CHAPTER I. + +MONTMORENCY--THE NEW HELOISA. + +Conditions preceding the composition of the New Heloisa 1 + +The Duke and Duchess of Luxembourg 2 + +Rousseau and his patrician acquaintances 4 + +Peaceful life at Montmorency 9 + +Equivocal prudence occasionally shown by Rousseau 12 + +His want of gratitude for commonplace service 13 + +Bad health, and thoughts of suicide 16 + +Episode of Madame Latour de Franqueville 17 + +Relation of the New Heloisa to Rousseau's general doctrine 20 + +Action of the first part of the story 25 + +Contrasted with contemporary literature 25 + +And with contemporary manners 27 + +Criticism of the language and principal actors 28, 29 + +Popularity of the New Heloisa 31 + +Its reactionary intellectual direction 33 + +Action of the second part 35, 36 + +Its influence on Goethe and others 38 + +Distinction between Rousseau and his school 40 + +Singular pictures of domesticity 42 + +Sumptuary details 44 + +The slowness of movement in the work justified 46 + +Exaltation of marriage 47 + +Equalitarian tendencies 49 + +Not inconsistent with social quietism 51 + +Compensation in the political consequences of the triumph of sentiment +54 + +Circumstances of the publication of the New Heloisa 55 + +Nature of the trade in books 57 + +Malesherbes and the printing of Emilius 61 + +Rousseau's suspicions 62 + +The great struggle of the moment 64 + +Proscription of Emilius 67 + +Flight of the author 67 + + +CHAPTER II. + +PERSECUTION. + +Rousseau's journey from Switzerland 69 + +Absence of vindictiveness 70 + +Arrival at Yverdun 72 + +Repairs to Motiers 73 + +Relations with Frederick the Great 74 + +Life at Motiers 77 + +Lord Marischal 79 + +Voltaire 81 + +Rousseau's letter to the Archbishop of Paris 83 + +Its dialectic 86 + +The ministers of Neuchatel 90 + +Rousseau's singular costume 92 + +His throng of visitors 93 + +Lewis, prince of Wuertemberg 95 + +Gibbon 96 + +Boswell 98 + +Corsican affairs 99 + +The feud at Geneva 102 + +Rousseau renounces his citizenship 105 + +The Letters from the Mountain 106 + +Political side 107 + +Consequent persecution at Motiers 107 + +Flight to the isle of St. Peter 108 + +The fifth of the _Reveries_ 109 + +Proscription by the government of Berne 116 + +Rousseau's singular request 116 + +His renewed flight 117 + +Persuaded to seek shelter in England 118 + + +CHAPTER III. + +THE SOCIAL CONTRACT. + +Rousseau's reaction against perfectibility 119 + +Abandonment of the position of the Discourses 121 + +Doubtful idea of equality 121 + +The Social Contract, a repudiation of the historic method 124 + +Yet it has glimpses of relativity 127 + +Influence of Greek examples 129 + +And of Geneva 131 + +Impression upon Robespierre and Saint Just 132 + +Rousseau's scheme implied a small territory 135 + +Why the Social Contract made fanatics 137 + +Verbal quality of its propositions 138 + +The doctrine of public safety 143 + +The doctrine of the sovereignty of peoples 144 + +Its early phases 144 + +Its history in the sixteenth century 146 + +Hooker and Grotius 148 + +Locke 149 + +Hobbes 151 + +Central propositions of the Social Contract-- + + 1. Origin of society in compact 154 + Different conception held by the Physiocrats 156 + + 2. Sovereignty of the body thus constituted 158 + Difference from Hobbes and Locke 159 + The root of socialism 160 + Republican phraseology 161 + + 3. Attributes of sovereignty 162 + + 4. The law-making power 163 + A contemporary illustration 164 + Hints of confederation 166 + + 5. Forms of government 168 + Criticism on the common division 169 + Rousseau's preference for elective aristocracy 172 + + 6. Attitude of the state to religion 173 + Rousseau's view, the climax of a reaction 176 + Its effect at the French Revolution 179 + Its futility 180 + +Another method of approaching the philosophy of government-- + + Origin of society not a compact 183 + + The true reason of the submission of a minority to a majority 184 + + Rousseau fails to touch actual problems 186 + + The doctrine of resistance, for instance 188 + + Historical illustrations 190 + + Historical effect of the Social Contract in France and Germany 193 + + Socialist deductions from it 194 + + +CHAPTER IV. + +EMILIUS. + +Rousseau touched by the enthusiasm of his time 197 + +Contemporary excitement as to education, part of the revival of + naturalism 199 + +I.--Locke, on education 202 + Difference between him and Rousseau 204 + Exhortations to mothers 205 + Importance of infantile habits 208 + Rousseau's protest against reasoning with children 209 + Criticised 209 + The opposite theory 210 + The idea of property 212 + Artificially contrived incidents 214 + Rousseau's omission of the principle of authority 215 + Connected with his neglect of the faculty of sympathy 219 + +II.--Rousseau's ideal of living 221 + The training that follows from it 222 + The duty of knowing a craft 223 + Social conception involved in this moral conception 226 + +III.--Three aims before the instructor 229 + Rousseau's omission of training for the social conscience 230 + No contemplation of society as a whole 232 + Personal interest, the foundation of the morality of Emilius 233 + The sphere and definition of the social conscience 235 + +IV.--The study of history 237 + Rousseau's notions upon the subject 239 + +V.--Ideals of life for women 241 + Rousseau's repudiation of his own principles 242 + His oriental and obscurantist position 243 + Arising from his want of faith in improvement 244 + His reactionary tendencies in this region eventually + neutralised 248 + +VI.--Sum of the merits of Emilius 249 + Its influence in France and Germany 251 + In England 252 + + +CHAPTER V. + +THE SAVOYARD VICAR. + +Shallow hopes entertained by the dogmatic atheists 256 + +The good side of the religious reaction 258 + +Its preservation of some parts of Christian influence 259 + +Earlier forms of deism 260 + +The deism of the Savoyard Vicar 264 + +The elevation of man, as well as the restoration of a divinity 265 + +A divinity for fair weather 268 + +Religious self-denial 269 + +The Savoyard Vicar's vital omission 270 + +His position towards Christianity 272 + +Its effectiveness as a solvent 273 + +Weakness of the subjective test 276 + +The Savoyard Vicar's deism not compatible with growing intellectual + conviction 276 + +The true satisfaction of the religious emotion 277 + + +CHAPTER VI. + +ENGLAND. + +Rousseau's English portrait 281 + +His reception in Paris 282 + +And in London 283 + +Hume's account of him 284 + +Settlement at Wootton 286 + +The quarrel with Hume 287 + +Detail of the charges against Hume 287-291 + +Walpole's pretended letter from Frederick 291 + +Baselessness of the whole delusion 292 + +Hume's conduct in the quarrel 293 + +The war of pamphlets 295 + +Common theory of Rousseau's madness 296 + +Preparatory conditions 297 + +Extension of disorder from the affective life to the intelligence 299 + +The Confessions 301 + +His life at Wootton 306 + +Flight from Derbyshire 306 + +And from England 308 + + +CHAPTER VII. + +THE END. + +The elder Mirabeau 309 + +Shelters Rousseau at Fleury 311 + +Rousseau at Trye 312 + +In Dauphiny 314 + +Return to Paris 314 + +The _Reveries_ 315 + +Life in Paris 316 + +Bernardin de St. Pierre's account of him 317 + +An Easter excursion 320 + +Rousseau's unsociality 322 + +Poland and Spain 324 + +Withdrawal to Ermenonville 326 + +His death 326 + + + + +ROUSSEAU. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +MONTMORENCY--THE NEW HELOISA. + + +The many conditions of intellectual productiveness are still hidden in +such profound obscurity that we are unable to explain why a period of +stormy moral agitation seems to be in certain natures the +indispensable antecedent of their highest creative effort. Byron is +one instance, and Rousseau is another, in which the current of +stimulating force made this rapid way from the lower to the higher +parts of character, and only expended itself after having traversed +the whole range of emotion and faculty, from their meanest, most +realistic, most personal forms of exercise, up to the summit of what +is lofty and ideal. No man was ever involved in such an odious +complication of moral maladies as beset Rousseau in the winter of +1758. Yet within three years of this miserable epoch he had completed +not only the New Heloisa, which is the monument of his fall, but the +Social Contract, which was the most influential, and Emilius, which +was perhaps the most elevated and spiritual, of all the productions of +the prolific genius of France in the eighteenth century. A poor +light-hearted Marmontel thought that the secret of Rousseau's success +lay in the circumstance that he began to write late, and it is true +that no other author, so considerable as Rousseau, waited until the +age of fifty for the full vigour of his inspiration. No tale of years, +however, could have ripened such fruit without native strength and +incommunicable savour. Nor can the mechanical movement of those better +ordered characters which keep the balance of the world even, impart to +literature that peculiar quality, peculiar but not the finest, that +comes from experience of the black unlighted abysses of the soul. + +The period of actual production was externally calm. The New Heloisa +was completed in 1759, and published in 1761. The Social Contract was +published in the spring of 1762, and Emilius a few weeks later. +Throughout this period Rousseau was, for the last time in his life, at +peace with most of his fellows. Though he never relented from his +antipathy to the Holbachians, for the time it slumbered, until a more +real and serious persecution than any which he imputed to them, +transformed his antipathy into a gloomy frenzy. + +The new friends whom he made at Montmorency were among the greatest +people in the kingdom. The Duke of Luxembourg (1702-64) was a marshal +of France, and as intimate a friend of the king as the king was +capable of having. The Marechale de Luxembourg (1707-87) had been one +of the most beautiful, and continued to be one of the most brilliant +leaders of the last aristocratic generation that was destined to sport +on the slopes of the volcano. The former seems to have been a loyal +and homely soul; the latter, restless, imperious, penetrating, +unamiable. Their dealings with Rousseau were marked by perfect +sincerity and straightforward friendship. They gave him a convenient +apartment in a small summer lodge in the park, to which he retreated +when he cared for a change from his narrow cottage. He was a constant +guest at their table, where he met the highest personages in France. +The marshal did not disdain to pay him visits, or to walk with him, or +to discuss his private affairs. Unable as ever to shine in +conversation, yet eager to show his great friends that they had to do +with no common mortal, Rousseau bethought him of reading the New +Heloisa aloud to them. At ten in the morning he used to wait upon the +marechale, and there by her bedside he read the story of the love, the +sin, the repentance of Julie, the distraction of Saint Preux, the +wisdom of Wolmar, and the sage friendship of Lord Edward, in tones +which enchanted her both with his book and its author for all the rest +of the day, as all the women in France were so soon to be +enchanted.[1] This, as he expected, amply reconciled her to the +uncouthness and clumsiness of his conversation, which was at least as +maladroit and as spiritless in the presence of a duchess as it was in +presences less imposing. + +One side of character is obviously tested by the way in which a man +bears himself in his relations with those of greater social +consideration. Rousseau was taxed by some of his plebeian enemies with +a most unheroic deference to his patrician friends. He had a dog whose +name was _Duc_. When he came to sit at a duke's table, he changed his +dog's name to _Turc_.[2] Again, one day in a transport of tenderness +he embraced the old marshal--the duchess embraced Rousseau ten times a +day, for the age was effusive--"Ah, monsieur le marechal, I used to +hate the great before I knew you, and I hate them still more, since +you make me feel so strongly how easy it would be for them to have +themselves adored."[3] On another occasion he happened to be playing +at chess with the Prince of Conti, who had come to visit him in his +cottage.[4] In spite of the signs and grimaces of the attendants, he +insisted on beating the prince in a couple of games. Then he said with +respectful gravity, "Monseigneur, I honour your serene highness too +much not to beat you at chess always."[5] A few days after, the +vanquished prince sent him a present of game which Rousseau duly +accepted. The present was repeated, but this time Rousseau wrote to +Madame de Boufflers that he would receive no more, and that he loved +the prince's conversation better than his gifts.[6] He admits that +this was an ungracious proceeding, and that to refuse game "from a +prince of the blood who throws such good feeling into the present, is +not so much the delicacy of a proud man bent on preserving his +independence, as the rusticity of an unmannerly person who does not +know his place."[7] Considering the extreme virulence with which +Rousseau always resented gifts even of the most trifling kind from his +friends, one may perhaps find some inconsistency in this condemnation +of a sort of conduct to which he tenaciously clung on all other +occasions. If the fact of the donor being a prince of the blood is +allowed to modify the quality of the donation, that is hardly a +defensible position in the austere citizen of Geneva. Madame de +Boufflers,[8] the intimate friend of our sage Hume, and the yet more +intimate friend of the Prince of Conti, gave him a judicious warning +when she bade him beware of laying himself open to a charge of +affectation, lest it should obscure the brightness of his virtue and +so hinder its usefulness. "Fabius and Regulus would have accepted such +marks of esteem, without feeling in them any hurt to their +disinterestedness and frugality."[9] Perhaps there is a flutter of +self-consciousness that is not far removed from this affectation, in +the pains which Rousseau takes to tell us that after dining at the +castle, he used to return home gleefully to sup with a mason who was +his neighbour and his friend.[10] On the whole, however, and so far as +we know, Rousseau conducted himself not unworthily with these high +people. His letters to them are for the most part marked by +self-respect and a moderate graciousness, though now and again he +makes rather too much case of the difference of rank, and asserts his +independence with something too much of protestation.[11] Their +relations with him are a curious sign of the interest which the +members of the great world took in the men who were quietly preparing +the destruction both of them and their world. The Marechale de +Luxembourg places this squalid dweller in a hovel on her estate in the +place of honour at her table, and embraces his Theresa. The Prince of +Conti pays visits of courtesy and sends game to a man whom he employs +at a few sous an hour to copy manuscript for him. The Countess of +Boufflers, in sending him the money, insists that he is to count her +his warmest friend.[12] When his dog dies, the countess writes to +sympathise with his chagrin, and the prince begs to be allowed to +replace it.[13] And when persecution and trouble and infinite +confusion came upon him, they all stood as fast by him as their own +comfort would allow. Do we not feel that there must have been in the +unhappy man, besides all the recorded pettinesses and perversities +which revolt us in him, a vein of something which touched men, and +made women devoted to him, until he splenetically drove both men and +women away from him? With Madame d'Epinay and Madame d'Houdetot, as +with the dearer and humbler patroness of his youth, we have now parted +company. But they are instantly succeeded by new devotees. And the +lovers of Rousseau, in all degrees, were not silly women led captive +by idle fancy. Madame de Boufflers was one of the most distinguished +spirits of her time. Her friendship for him was such, that his +sensuous vanity made Rousseau against all reason or probability +confound it with a warmer form of emotion, and he plumes himself in a +manner most displeasing on the victory which he won over his own +feelings on the occasion.[14] As a matter of fact he had no feelings +to conquer, any more than the supposed object of them ever bore him +any ill-will for his indifference, as in his mania of suspicion he +afterwards believed. + +There was a calm about the too few years he passed at Montmorency, +which leaves us in doubt whether this mania would ever have afflicted +him, if his natural irritation had not been made intense and +irresistible by the cruel distractions that followed the publication +of Emilius. He was tolerably content with his present friends. The +simplicity of their way of dealing with him contrasted singularly, as +he thought, with the never-ending solicitudes, as importunate as they +were officious, of the patronising friends whom he had just cast +off.[15] Perhaps, too, he was soothed by the companionship of persons +whose rank may have flattered his vanity, while unlike Diderot and his +old literary friends in Paris, they entered into no competition with +him in the peculiar sphere of his own genius. Madame de Boufflers, +indeed, wrote a tragedy, but he told her gruffly enough that it was a +plagiarism from Southerne's Oroonoko.[16] That Rousseau was +thoroughly capable of this pitiful emotion of sensitive literary +jealousy is proved, if by nothing else, by his readiness to suspect +that other authors were jealous of him. No one suspects others of a +meanness of this kind unless he is capable of it himself. The +resounding success which followed the New Heloisa and Emilius put an +end to these apprehensions. It raised him to a pedestal in popular +esteem as high as that on which Voltaire stood triumphant. That very +success unfortunately brought troubles which destroyed Rousseau's last +chance of ending his days in full reasonableness. + +Meanwhile he enjoyed his final interval of moderate wholesomeness and +peace. He felt his old healthy joy in the green earth. One of the +letters commemorates his delight in the great scudding south-west +winds of February, soft forerunners of the spring, so sweet to all who +live with nature.[17] At the end of his garden was a summer-house, and +here even on wintry days he sat composing or copying. It was not music +only that he copied. He took a curious pleasure in making transcripts +of his romance, and he sold them to the Duchess of Luxembourg and +other ladies for some moderate fee.[18] Sometimes he moved from his +own lodging to the quarters in the park which his great friends had +induced him to accept. "They were charmingly neat; the furniture was +of white and blue. It was in this perfumed and delicious solitude, in +the midst of woods and streams and choirs of birds of every kind, +with the fragrance of the orange-flower poured round me, that I +composed in a continual ecstasy the fifth book of Emilius. With what +eagerness did I hasten every morning at sunrise to breathe the balmy +air! What good coffee I used to make under the porch in company with +my Theresa! The cat and the dog made up the party. That would have +sufficed me for all the days of my life, and I should never have known +weariness." And so to the assurance, so often repeated under so many +different circumstances, that here was a true heaven upon earth, where +if fates had only allowed he would have known unbroken innocence and +lasting happiness.[19] + +Yet he had the wisdom to warn others against attempting a life such as +he craved for himself. As on a more memorable occasion, there came to +him a young man who would fain have been with him always, and whom he +sent away exceeding sorrowful. "The first lesson I should give you +would be not to surrender yourself to the taste you say you have for +the contemplative life. It is only an indolence of the soul, to be +condemned at any age, but especially so at yours. Man is not made to +meditate, but to act. Labour therefore in the condition of life in +which you have been placed by your family and by providence: that is +the first precept of the virtue which you wish to follow. If residence +at Paris, joined to the business you have there, seems to you +irreconcilable with virtue, do better still, and return to your own +province. Go live in the bosom of your family, serve and solace your +honest parents. There you will be truly fulfilling the duties that +virtue imposes on you."[20] This intermixture of sound sense with +unutterable perversities almost suggests a doubt how far the +perversities were sincere, until we remember that Rousseau even in the +most exalted part of his writings was careful to separate immediate +practical maxims from his theoretical principles of social +philosophy.[21] + +Occasionally his good sense takes so stiff and unsympathetic a form as +to fill us with a warmer dislike for him than his worst paradoxes +inspire. A correspondent had written to him about the frightful +persecutions which were being inflicted on the Protestants in some +district of France. Rousseau's letter is a masterpiece in the style of +Eliphaz the Temanite. Our brethren must surely have given some pretext +for the evil treatment to which they were subjected. One who is a +Christian must learn to suffer, and every man's conduct ought to +conform to his doctrine. Our brethren, moreover, ought to remember +that the word of God is express upon the duty of obeying the laws set +up by the prince. The writer cannot venture to run any risk by +interceding in favour of our brethren with the government. "Every one +has his own calling upon the earth; mine is to tell the public harsh +but useful truths. I have preached humanity, gentleness, tolerance, so +far as it depended upon me; 'tis no fault of mine if the world has not +listened. I have made it a rule to keep to general truths; I produce +no libels, no satires; I attack no man, but men; not an action, but a +vice."[22] The worst of the worthy sort of people, wrote Voltaire, is +that they are such cowards: a man groans over a wrong, he holds his +tongue, he takes his supper, and he forgets all about it.[23] If +Voltaire could not write like Fenelon, at least he could never talk +like Tartufe; he responded to no tale of wrong with words about his +mission, with strings of antitheses, but always with royal anger and +the spring of alert and puissant endeavour. In an hour of oppression +one would rather have been the friend of the saviour of the Calas and +of Sirven, than of the vindicator of theism. + +Rousseau, however, had good sense enough in less equivocal forms than +this. For example, in another letter he remonstrates with a +correspondent for judging the rich too harshly. "You do not bear in +mind that having from their childhood contracted a thousand wants +which we are without, then to bring them down to the condition of the +poor, would be to make them more miserable than the poor. We should be +just towards all the world, even to those who are not just to us. Ah, +if we had the virtues opposed to the vices which we reproach in them, +we should soon forget that such people were in the world. One word +more. To have any right to despise the rich, we ought ourselves to be +prudent and thrifty, so as to have no need of riches."[24] In the +observance of this just precept Rousseau was to the end of his life +absolutely without fault. No one was more rigorously careful to make +his independence sure by the fewness of his wants and by minute +financial probity. This firm limitation of his material desires was +one cause of his habitual and almost invariable refusal to accept +presents, though no doubt another cause was the stubborn and +ungracious egoism which made him resent every obligation. + +It is worth remembering in illustration of the peculiar susceptibility +and softness of his character where women were concerned--it was not +quite without exception--that he did not fly into a fit of rage over +their gifts, as he did over those of men. He remonstrated, but in +gentler key. "What could I do with four pullets?" he wrote to a lady +who had presented them to him. "I began by sending two of them to +people to whom I am indifferent. That made me think of the difference +there is between a present and a testimony of friendship. The first +will never find in me anything but a thankless heart; the second.... +Ah, if you had only given me news of yourself without sending me +anything else, how rich and how grateful you would have made me; +instead of that the pullets are eaten, and the best thing I can do is +to forget all about them; let us say no more."[25] Rude and repellent +as this may seem, and as it is, there is a rough kind of playfulness +about it, when compared with the truculence which he was not slow to +exhibit to men. If a friend presumed to thank him for any service, he +was peremptorily rebuked for his ignorance of the true qualities of +friendship, with which thankfulness has no connection. He +ostentatiously refused to offer thanks for services himself, even to a +woman whom he always treated with so much consideration as the +Marechale de Luxembourg. He once declared boldly that modesty is a +false virtue,[26] and though he did not go so far as to make gratitude +the subject of a corresponding formula of denunciation, he always +implied that this too is really one of the false virtues. He confessed +to Malesherbes, without the slightest contrition, that he was +ungrateful by nature.[27] To Madame d'Epinay he once went still +further, declaring that he found it hard not to hate those who had +used him well.[28] Undoubtedly he was right so far as this, that +gratitude answering to a spirit of exaction in a benefactor is no +merit; a service done in expectation of gratitude is from that fact +stripped of the quality which makes gratitude due, and is a mere piece +of egoism in altruistic disguise. Kindness in its genuine forms is a +testimony of good feeling, and conventional speech is perhaps a little +too hard, as well as too shallow and unreal, in calling the recipient +evil names because he is unable to respond to the good feeling. +Rousseau protested against a conception of friendship which makes of +what ought to be disinterested helpfulness a title to everlasting +tribute. His way of expressing this was harsh and unamiable, but it +was not without an element of uprightness and veracity. As in his +greater themes, so in his paradoxes upon private relations, he hid +wholesome ingredients of rebuke to the unquestioning acceptance of +common form. "I am well pleased," he said to a friend, "both with thee +and thy letters, except the end, where thou say'st thou art more mine +than thine own. For there thou liest, and it is not worth while to +take the trouble to _thee_ and _thou_ a man as thine intimate, only to +tell him untruths."[29] Chesterfield was for people with much +self-love of the small sort, probably a more agreeable person to meet +than Doctor Johnson, but Johnson was the more wholesome companion for +a man. + +Occasionally, though not very often, he seems to have let spleen take +the place of honest surliness, and so drifted into clumsy and +ill-humoured banter, of a sort that gives a dreary shudder to one +fresh from Voltaire. "So you have chosen for yourself a tender and +virtuous mistress! I am not surprised; all mistresses are that. You +have chosen her in Paris! To find a tender and virtuous mistress in +Paris is to have not such bad luck. You have made her a promise of +marriage? My friend, you have made a blunder; for if you continue to +love, the promise is superfluous, and if you do not, then it is no +avail. You have signed it with your blood? That is all but tragic; but +I don't know that the choice of the ink in which he writes, gives +anything to the fidelity of the man who signs."[30] + +We can only add that the health in which a man writes may possibly +excuse the dismal quality of what he writes, and that Rousseau was now +as always the prey of bodily pain which, as he was conscious, made him +distraught. "My sufferings are not very excruciating just now," he +wrote on a later occasion, "but they are incessant, and I am not out +of pain a single moment day or night, and this quite drives me mad. I +feel bitterly my wrong conduct and the baseness of my suspicions; but +if anything can excuse me, it is my mournful state, my loneliness," +and so on.[31] This prolonged physical anguish, which was made more +intense towards the end of 1761 by the accidental breaking of a +surgical instrument,[32] sometimes so nearly wore his fortitude away +as to make him think of suicide.[33] In Lord Edward's famous letter on +suicide in the New Heloisa, while denying in forcible terms the right +of ending one's days merely to escape from intolerable mental +distress, he admits that inasmuch as physical disorders only grow +incessantly worse, violent and incurable bodily pain may be an excuse +for a man making away with himself; he ceases to be a human being +before dying, and in putting an end to his life he only completes his +release from a body that embarrasses him, and contains his soul no +longer.[34] The thought was often present to him in this form. +Eighteen months later than our last date, the purpose grew very +deliberate under an aggravation of his malady, and he seriously looked +upon his own case as falling within the conditions of Lord Edward's +exception.[35] It is difficult, in the face of outspoken declarations +like these, to know what writers can be thinking of when, with respect +to the controversy on the manner of Rousseau's death, they pronounce +him incapable of such a dereliction of his own most cherished +principles as anything like self-destruction would have been. + +As he sat gnawed by pain, with surgical instruments on his table, and +sombre thoughts of suicide in his head, the ray of a little episode of +romance shone in incongruously upon the scene. Two ladies in Paris, +absorbed in the New Heloisa, like all the women of the time, +identified themselves with the Julie and the Claire of the novel that +none could resist. They wrote anonymously to the author, claiming +their identification with characters fondly supposed to be immortal. +"You will know that Julie is not dead, and that she lives to love you; +I am not this Julie, you perceive it by my style; I am only her +cousin, or rather her friend, as Claire was." The unfortunate Saint +Preux responded as gallantly as he could be expected to do in the +intervals of surgery. "You do not know that the Saint Preux to whom +you write is tormented with a cruel and incurable disorder, and that +the very letter he writes to you is often interrupted by distractions +of a very different kind."[36] He figures rather uncouthly, but the +unknown fair were not at first disabused, and one of them never was. +Rousseau was deeply suspicious. He feared to be made the victim of a +masculine pleasantry. From women he never feared anything. His letters +were found too short, too cold. He replied to the remonstrance by a +reference of extreme coarseness. His correspondents wrote from the +neighbourhood of the Palais Royal, then and for long after the haunt +of mercenary women. "You belong to your quarter more than I thought," +he said brutally.[37] The vulgarity of the lackey was never quite +obliterated in him, even when the lackey had written Emilius. This +was too much for the imaginary Claire. "I have given myself three good +blows on my breast for the correspondence that I was silly enough to +open between you," she wrote to Julie, and she remained implacable. +The Julie, on the contrary, was faithful to the end of Rousseau's +life. She took his part vehemently in the quarrel with Hume, and wrote +in defence of his memory after he was dead. She is the most remarkable +of all the instances of that unreasoning passion which the New Heloisa +inflamed in the breasts of the women of that age. Madame Latour +pursued Jean Jacques with a devotion that no coldness could repulse. +She only saw him three times in all, the first time not until 1766, +when he was on his way through Paris to England. The second time, in +1772, she visited him without mentioning her name, and he did not +recognise her; she brought him some music to copy, and went away +unknown. She made another attempt, announcing herself: he gave her a +frosty welcome, and then wrote to her that she was to come no more. +With a strange fidelity she bore him no grudge, but cherished his +memory and sorrowed over his misfortunes to the day of her death. He +was not an idol of very sublime quality, but we may think kindly of +the idolatress.[38] Worshippers are ever dearer to us than their +graven images. Let us turn to the romance which touched women in this +way, and helped to give a new spirit to an epoch. + + +II. + +As has been already said, it is the business of criticism to separate +what is accidental in form, transitory in manner, and merely local in +suggestion, from the general ideas which live under a casual and +particular literary robe. And so we have to distinguish the external +conditions under which a book like the New Heloisa is produced, from +the living qualities in the author which gave the external conditions +their hold upon him, and turned their development in one direction +rather than another. We are only encouraging poverty of spirit, when +we insist on fixing our eyes on a few of the minutiae of construction, +instead of patiently seizing larger impressions and more durable +meanings; when we stop at the fortuitous incidents of composition, +instead of advancing to the central elements of the writer's +character. + +These incidents in the case of the New Heloisa we know; the sensuous +communion with nature in her summer mood in the woods of Montmorency, +the long hours and days of solitary expansion, the despairing passion +for the too sage Julie of actual experience. But the power of these +impressions from without depended on secrets of conformation within. +An adult with marked character is, consciously or unconsciously, his +own character's victim or sport. It is his whole system of impulses, +ideas, pre-occupations, that make those critical situations ready, +into which he too hastily supposes that an accident has drawn him. And +this inner system not only prepares the situation; it forces his +interpretation of the situation. Much of the interest of the New +Heloisa springs from the fact that it was the outcome, in a sense of +which the author himself was probably unconscious, of the general +doctrine of life and conduct which he only professed to expound in +writings of graver pretension. Rousseau generally spoke of his romance +in phrases of depreciation, as the monument of a passing weakness. It +was in truth as entirely a monument of the strength, no less than the +weakness, of his whole scheme, as his weightiest piece. That it was +not so deliberately, only added to its effect. The slow and musing air +which underlies all the assumption of ardent passion, made a way for +the doctrine into sensitive natures, that would have been untouched by +the pretended ratiocination of the Discourses, and the didactic manner +of the Emilius. + +Rousseau's scheme, which we must carefully remember was only present +to his own mind in an informal and fragmentary way, may be shortly +described as an attempt to rehabilitate human nature in as much of the +supposed freshness of primitive times, as the hardened crust of civil +institutions and social use might allow. In this survey, however +incoherently carried out, the mutual passion of the two sexes was the +very last that was likely to escape Rousseau's attention. Hence it was +with this that he began. The Discourses had been an attack upon the +general ordering of society, and an exposition of the mischief that +society has done to human nature at large. The romance treated one set +of emotions in human nature particularly, though it also touches the +whole emotional sphere indirectly. And this limitation of the field +was accompanied by a total revolution in the method. Polemic was +abandoned; the presence of hostility was forgotten in appearance, if +not in the heart of the writer; instead of discussion, presentation; +instead of abstract analysis of principles, concrete drawing of +persons and dramatic delineation of passion. There is, it is true, a +monstrous superfluity of ethical exposition of most doubtful value, +but then that, as we have already said, was in the manners of the +time. All people in those days with any pretensions to use their +minds, wrote and talked in a superfine ethical manner, and violently +translated the dictates of sensibility into formulas of morality. The +important thing to remark is not that this semi-didactic strain is +present, but that there is much less of it, and that it takes a far +more subordinate place, than the subject and the reigning taste would +have led us to expect. It is true, also, that Rousseau declared his +intention in the two characters of Julie and of Wolmar, who eventually +became Julie's husband, of leading to a reconciliation between the two +great opposing parties, the devout and the rationalistic; of teaching +them the lesson of reciprocal esteem, by showing the one that it is +possible to believe in a God without being a hypocrite, and the other +that it is possible to be an unbeliever without being a scoundrel.[39] +This intention, if it was really present to Rousseau's mind while he +was writing, and not an afterthought characteristically welcomed for +the sake of giving loftiness and gravity to a composition of which he +was always a little ashamed, must at any rate have been of a very pale +kind. It would hardly have occurred to a critic, unless Rousseau had +so emphatically pointed it out, that such a design had presided over +the composition, and contemporary readers saw nothing of it. In the +first part of the story, which is wholly passionate, it is certainly +not visible, and in the second part neither of the two contending +factions was likely to learn any lesson with respect to the other. +Churchmen would have insisted that Wolmar was really a Christian +dressed up as an atheist, and philosophers would hardly have accepted +Julie as a type of the too believing people who broke Calas on the +wheel, and cut off La Barre's head. + +French critics tell us that no one now reads the New Heloisa in France +except deliberate students of the works of Rousseau, and certainly few +in this generation read it in our own country.[40] The action is very +slight, and the play of motives very simple, when contrasted with the +ingenuity of invention, the elaborate subtleties of psychological +analysis, the power of rapid change from one perturbing incident or +excited humour to another, which mark the modern writer of sentimental +fiction. As the title warns us, it is a story of a youthful tutor and +a too fair disciple, straying away from the lessons of calm philosophy +into the heated places of passion. The high pride of Julie's father +forbade all hope of their union, and in very desperation the unhappy +pair lost the self-control of virtue, and threw themselves into the +pit that lies so ready to our feet. Remorse followed with quick step, +for Julie had with her purity lost none of the other lovelinesses of a +dutiful character. Her lover was hurried away from the country by the +generous solicitude of an English nobleman, one of the bravest, +tenderest, and best of men. Julie, left undisturbed by her lover's +presence, stricken with affliction at the death of a sweet and +affectionate mother, and pressed by the importunities of a father whom +she dearly loved, in spite of all the disasters which his will had +brought upon her, at length consented to marry a foreign baron from +some northern court. Wolmar was much older than she was; a devotee of +calm reason, without a system and without prejudices, benevolent, +orderly, above all things judicious. The lover meditated suicide, from +which he was only diverted by the arguments of Lord Edward, who did +more than argue; he hurried the forlorn man on board the ship of +Admiral Anson, then just starting for his famous voyage round the +world. And this marks the end of the first episode. + +Rousseau always urged that his story was dangerous for young girls, +and maintained that Richardson was grievously mistaken in supposing +that they could be instructed by romances. It was like setting fire to +the house, he said, for the sake of making the pumps play.[41] As he +admitted so much, he is not open to attack on this side, except from +those who hold the theory that no books ought to be written which may +not prudently be put into the hands of the young,--a puerile and +contemptible doctrine that must emasculate all literature and all art, +by excluding the most interesting of human relations and the most +powerful of human passions. There is not a single composition of the +first rank outside of science, from the Bible downwards, that could +undergo the test. The most useful standard for measuring the +significance of a book in this respect is found in the manners of the +time, and the prevailing tone of contemporary literature. In trying to +appreciate the meaning of the New Heloisa and its popularity, it is +well to think of it as a delineation of love, in connection not only +with such a book as the Pucelle, where there is at least wit, but with +a story like Duclos's, which all ladies both read and were not in the +least ashamed to acknowledge that they had read; or still worse, such +an abomination as Diderot's first stories; or a story like Laclos's, +which came a generation later, and with its infinite briskness and +devilry carried the tradition of artistic impurity to as vigorous a +manifestation as it is capable of reaching.[42] To a generation whose +literature is as pure as the best English, American, and German +literature is in the present day, the New Heloisa might without doubt +be corrupting. To the people who read Crebillon and the Pucelle, it +was without doubt elevating. + +The case is just as strong if we turn from books to manners. Without +looking beyond the circle of names that occur in Rousseau's own +history, we see how deep the depravity had become. Madame d'Epinay's +gallant sat at table with the husband, and the husband was perfectly +aware of the relations between them. M. d'Epinay had notorious +relations with two public women, and was not ashamed to refer to them +in the presence of his wife, and even to seek her sympathy on an +occasion when one of them was in some trouble. Not only this, but +husband and lover used to pursue their debaucheries in the town +together in jovial comradeship. An opera dancer presided at the table +of a patrician abbe in his country house, and he passed weeks in her +house in the town. As for shame, says Barbier on one occasion, "'tis +true the king has a mistress, but who has not?--except the Duke of +Orleans; he has withdrawn to Ste. Genevieve, and is thoroughly +despised in consequence, and rightly."[43] Reeking disorder such as +all this illustrates, made the passion of the two imaginary lovers of +the fair lake seem like a breath from the garden of Eden. One virtue +was lost in that simple paradise, but even that loss was followed by +circumstances of mental pain and far circling distress, which banished +the sin into a secondary place; and what remained to strike the +imagination of the time were delightful pictures of fast union between +two enchanting women, of the patience and compassionateness of a grave +mother, of the chivalrous warmth and helpfulness of a loyal friend. +Any one anxious to pick out sensual strokes and turns of grossness +could make a small collection of such defilements from the New Heloisa +without any difficulty. They were in Rousseau's character, and so they +came out in his work. Saint Preux afflicts us with touches of this +kind, just as we are afflicted with similar touches in the +Confessions. They were not noticed at that day, when people's ears did +not affect to be any chaster than the rest of them. + +A historian of opinion is concerned with the general effect that was +actually produced by a remarkable book, and with the causes that +produced it. It is not his easy task to produce a demonstration that +if the readers had all been as wise and as virtuous as the moralist +might desire them to be, or if they had all been discriminating and +scientific critics, not this, but a very different impression would +have followed. Today we may wonder at the effect of the New Heloisa. +A long story told in letters has grown to be a form incomprehensible +and intolerable to us. We find Richardson hard to be borne, and he put +far greater vivacity and wider variety into his letters than Rousseau +did, though he was not any less diffuse, and he abounds in repetitions +as Rousseau does not. Rousseau was absolutely without humour; that +belongs to the keenly observant natures, and to those who love men in +the concrete, not only humanity in the abstract. The pleasantries of +Julie's cousin, for instance, are heavy and misplaced. Thus the whole +book is in one key, without the dramatic changes of Richardson, too +few even as those are. And who now can endure that antique fashion of +apostrophising men and women, hot with passion and eager with all +active impulses, in oblique terms of abstract qualities, as if their +passion and their activity were only the inconsiderable embodiment of +fine general ideas? We have not a single thrill, when Saint Preux +being led into the chamber where his mistress is supposed to lie +dying, murmurs passionately, "What shall I now see in the same place +of refuge where once all breathed the ecstasy that intoxicated my +soul, in this same object who both caused and shared my transports! +the image of death, virtue unhappy, beauty expiring!"[44] This +rhetorical artificiality of phrase, so repulsive to the more realistic +taste of a later age, was as natural then as that facility of shedding +tears, which appears so deeply incredible a performance to a +generation that has lost that particular fashion of sensibility, +without realising for the honour of its ancestors the physiological +truth of the power of the will over the secretions. + +The characters seem as stiff as some of the language, to us who are +accustomed to an Asiatic luxuriousness of delineation. Yet the New +Heloisa was nothing less than the beginning of that fresh, full, +highly-coloured style which has now taught us to find so little charm +in the source and original of it. Saint Preux is a personage whom no +widest charity, literary, philosophic, or Christian, can make +endurable. Egoism is made thrice disgusting by a ceaseless redundance +of fine phrases. The exaggerated conceits of love in our old poets +turn graciously on the lover's eagerness to offer every sacrifice at +the feet of his mistress. Even Werther, stricken creature as he was, +yet had the stoutness to blow his brains out, rather than be the +instrument of surrounding the life of his beloved with snares. Saint +Preux's egoism is unbrightened by a single ray of tender abnegation, +or a single touch of the sweet humility of devoted passion. The slave +of his sensations, he has no care beyond their gratification. With +some rotund nothing on his lips about virtue being the only path to +happiness, his heart burns with sickly desire. He writes first like a +pedagogue infected by some cantharidean philter, and then like a +pedagogue without the philter, and that is the worse of the two. +Lovelace and the Count of Valmont are manly and hopeful characters in +comparison. Werther, again, at least represents a principle of +rebellion, in the midst of all his self-centred despair, and he +retains strength enough to know that his weakness is shameful. His +despair, moreover, is deeply coloured with repulsed social +ambition.[45] He feels the world about him. His French prototype, on +the contrary, represents nothing but the unalloyed selfishness of a +sensual love for which there is no universe outside of its own fevered +pulsation. + +Julie is much less displeasing, partly perhaps for the reason that she +belongs to the less displeasing sex. At least, she preserves +fortitude, self-control, and profound considerateness for others. At a +certain point her firmness even moves a measure of enthusiasm. If the +New Heloisa could be said to have any moral intention, it is here +where women learn from the example of Julie's energetic return to +duty, the possibility and the satisfaction of bending character back +to comeliness and honour. Excellent as this is from a moral point of +view, the reader may wish that Julie had been less of a preacher, as +well as less of a sinner. And even as sinner, she would have been more +readily forgiven if she had been less deliberate. A maiden who +sacrifices her virtue in order that the visible consequences may force +her parents to consent to a marriage, is too strategical to be +perfectly touching. As was said by the cleverest, though not the +greatest, of all the women whose youth was fascinated by Rousseau, +when one has renounced the charms of virtue, it is at least well to +have all the charms that entire surrender of heart can bestow.[46] In +spite of this, however, Julie struck the imagination of the time, and +struck it in a way that was thoroughly wholesome. The type taught men +some respect for the dignity of women, and it taught women a firmer +respect for themselves. It is useless, even if it be possible, to +present an example too lofty for the comprehension of an age. At this +moment the most brilliant genius in the country was filling France +with impish merriment at the expense of the greatest heroine that +France had then to boast. In such an atmosphere Julie had almost the +halo of saintliness. + +We may say all we choose about the inconsistency, the excess of +preaching, the excess of prudence, in the character of Julie. It was +said pungently enough by the wits of the time.[47] Nothing that could +be said on all this affected the fact, that the women between 1760 +and the Revolution were intoxicated by Rousseau's creation to such a +pitch that they would pay any price for a glass out of which Rousseau +had drunk, they would kiss a scrap of paper that contained a piece of +his handwriting, and vow that no woman of true sensibility could +hesitate to consecrate her life to him, if she were only certain to be +rewarded by his attachment.[48] The booksellers were unable to meet +the demand. The book was let out at the rate of twelve sous a volume, +and the volume could not be detained beyond an hour. All classes +shared the excitement, courtiers, soldiers, lawyers, and +bourgeois.[49] Stories were told of fine ladies, dressed for the ball, +who took the book up for half an hour until the time should come for +starting; they read until midnight, and when informed that the +carriage waited, answered not a word, and when reminded by and by that +it was two o'clock, still read on, and then at four, having ordered +the horses to be taken out of the carriage, disrobed, went to bed, and +passed the remainder of the night in reading. In Germany the effect +was just as astonishing. Kant only once in his life failed to take his +afternoon walk, and this unexampled omission was due to the witchery +of the New Heloisa. Gallantry was succeeded by passion, expansion, +exaltation; moods far more dangerous for society, as all enthusiasm is +dangerous, but also far higher and pregnant with better hopes for +character. To move the sympathetic faculties is the first step towards +kindling all the other energies which make life wiser and more +fruitful. It is especially worth noticing that nothing in the +character of Julie concentrates this outburst of sympathy in +subjective broodings. Julie is the representative of one recalled to +the straight path by practical, wholesome, objective sympathy for +others, not of one expiring in unsatisfied yearnings for the sympathy +of others for herself, and in moonstruck subjective aspirations. The +women who wept over her romance read in it the lesson of duty, not of +whimpering introspection. The danger lay in the mischievous +intellectual direction which Rousseau imparted to this effusion. + +The stir which the Julie communicated to the affections in so many +ways, marked progress, but in all the elements of reason she was the +most perilous of reactionaries. So hard it is with the human mind, +constituted as it is, to march forward a space further to the light, +without making some fresh swerve obliquely towards old darkness. The +great effusion of natural sentiment was in the air before the New +Heloisa appeared, to condense and turn it into definite channels. One +beautiful character, Vauven argues (1715-1747), had begun to teach the +culture of emotional instinct in some sayings of exquisite sweetness +and moderation, as that "Great thoughts come from the heart." But he +came too soon, and, alas for us all, he died young, and he made no +mark. Moderation never can make a mark in the epochs when men are +beginning to feel the urgent spirit of a new time. Diderot strove with +more powerful efforts, in the midst of all his herculean labours for +the acquisition and ordering of knowledge, in the same direction +towards the great outer world of nature, and towards the great inner +world of nature in the human breast. His criticisms on the paintings +of each year, mediocre as the paintings were, are admirable even now +for their richness and freshness. If Diderot had been endowed with +emotional tenacity, as he was with tenacity of understanding and of +purpose, the student of the eighteenth century would probably have +been spared the not perfectly agreeable task of threading a way along +the sinuosities of the character and work of Rousseau. But Rousseau +had what Diderot lacked--sustained ecstatic moods, and fervid trances; +his literary gesture was so commanding, his apparel so glistening, his +voice so rich in long-drawn notes of plangent vibration. His words +are the words of a prophet; a prophet, it is understood, who had lived +in Paris, and belonged to the eighteenth century, and wrote in French +instead of Hebrew. The mischief of his work lay in this, that he +raised feeling, now passionate, now quietest, into the supreme place +which it was to occupy alone, and not on an equal throne and in equal +alliance with understanding. Instead of supplementing reason, he +placed emotion as its substitute. And he made this evil doctrine come +from the lips of a fictitious character, who stimulated fancy and +fascinated imagination. Voltaire laughed at the _baisers acres_ of +Madame de Wolmar, and declared that a criticism of the Marquis of +Ximenes had crushed the wretched romance.[50] But Madame de Wolmar was +so far from crushed, that she turned the flood of feeling which her +own charms, passion, remorse, and conversion had raised, in a +direction that Voltaire abhorred, and abhorred in vain. + +It is after the marriage of Julie to Wolmar that the action of the +story takes the turn which sensible men like Voltaire found laughable. +Saint Preux is absent with Admiral Anson for some years. On his return +to Europe he is speedily invited by the sage Wolmar, who knows his +past history perfectly well, to pay them a visit. They all meet with +leapings on the neck and hearty kisses, the unprejudiced Wolmar +preserving an open, serene, and smiling air. He takes his young friend +to a chamber, which is to be reserved for him and for him only. In a +few days he takes an opportunity of visiting some distant property, +leaving his wife and Saint Preux together, with the sublime of +magnanimity. At the same time he confides to Claire his intention of +entrusting to Saint Preux the education of his children. All goes +perfectly well, and the household presents a picture of contentment, +prosperity, moderation, affection, and evenly diffused happiness, +which in spite of the disagreeableness of the situation is even now +extremely charming. There is only one cloud. Julie is devoured by a +source of hidden chagrin. Her husband, "so sage, so reasonable, so far +from every kind of vice, so little under the influence of human +passions, is without the only belief that makes virtue precious, and +in the innocence of an irreproachable life he carries at the bottom of +his heart the frightful peace of the wicked."[51] He is an atheist. +Julie is now a pietest, locking herself for hours in her chambers, +spending days in self-examination and prayer, constantly reading the +pages of the good Fenelon.[52] "I fear," she writes to Saint Preux, +"that you do not gain all you might from religion in the conduct of +your life, and that philosophic pride disdains the simplicity of the +Christian. You believe prayers to be of scanty service. That is not, +you know, the doctrine of Saint Paul, nor what our Church professes. +We are free, it is true, but we are ignorant, feeble, prone to ill. +And whence should light and force come, if not from him who is their +very well-spring?... Let us be humble, to be sage; let us see our +weakness, and we shall be strong."[53] This was the opening of the +deistical reaction; it was thus, associated with everything that +struck imagination and moved the sentiment of his readers, that +Rousseau brought back those sophistical conclusions which Pascal had +drawn from premisses of dark profound truth, and that enervating +displacement of reason by celestial contemplation, which Fenelon had +once made beautiful by the persuasion of virtuous example. He was +justified in saying, as he afterwards did, that there was nothing in +the Savoyard Vicar's Profession of Faith which was not to be found in +the letters of Julie. These were the effective preparations for that +more famous manifesto; they surrounded belief with all the attractions +of an interesting and sympathetic preacher, and set it to a harmony of +circumstance that touched softer fibres. + +For, curiously enough, while the first half of the romance is a scene +of disorderly passion, the second is the glorification of the family. +A modern writer of genius has inveighed with whimsical bitterness +against the character of Wolmar,--supposed, we may notice in passing, +to be partially drawn from D'Holbach,--a man performing so long an +experiment on these two souls, with the terrible curiosity of a +surgeon engaged in vivisection.[54] It was, however, much less +difficult for contemporaries than it is for us to accept so +unwholesome and prurient a situation. They forgot all the evil that +was in it, in the charm of the account of Wolmar's active, peaceful, +frugal, sunny household. The influence of this was immense.[55] It may +be that the overstrained scene where Saint Preux waits for Julie in +her room, suggested the far lovelier passage of Faust in the chamber +of the hapless Margaret. But we may, at least, be sure that Werther +(1774) would not have found Charlotte cutting bread and butter, if +Saint Preux had not gone to see Julie take cream and cakes with her +children and her female servants. And perhaps the other and nobler +Charlotte of the _Wahlverwandtschaften_ (1809) would not have detained +us so long with her moss hut, her terrace, her park prospect, if Julie +had not had her elysium, where the sweet freshness of the air, the +cool shadows, the shining verdure, flowers diffusing fragrance and +colour, water running with soft whisper, and the song of a thousand +birds, reminded the returned traveller of Tinian and Juan Fernandez. +There is an animation, a variety, an accuracy, a realistic brightness +in this picture, which will always make it enchanting, even to those +who cannot make their way through any other letter in the New +Heloisa.[56] Such qualities place it as an idyllic piece far above +such pieces in Goethe's two famous romances. They have a clearness +and spontaneous freshness which are not among the bountiful gifts of +Goethe. There are other admirable landscapes in the New Heloisa, +though not too many of them, and the minute and careful way in which +Rousseau made their features real to himself, is accidentally shown in +his urgent prayer for exactitude in the engraving of the striking +scene where Saint Preux and Julie visit the monuments of their old +love for one another.[57] "I have traversed all Rousseau's ground with +the Heloisa before me," said Byron, "and am struck to a degree I +cannot express, with the force and accuracy of his descriptions and +the beauty of their reality."[58] They were memories made true by long +dreaming, by endless brooding. The painter lived with these scenes +ever present to the inner eye. They were his real world, of which the +tamer world of meadow and woodland actually around him only gave +suggestion. He thought of the green steeps, the rocks, the mountain +pines, the waters of the lake, "the populous solitude of bees and +birds," as of some divine presence, too sublime for personality. And +they were always benign, standing in relief with the malignity or +folly of the hurtful insect, Man. He was never a manichaean towards +nature. To him she was all good and bounteous. The demon forces that +so fascinated Byron were to Rousseau invisible. These were the +compositions that presently inspired the landscapes of _Paul and +Virginia_ (1788), of _Atala_ and _Rene_ (1801), and of _Obermann_ +(1804), as well as those punier imitators who resemble their masters +as the hymns of a methodist negro resemble the psalms of David. They +were the outcome of eager and spontaneous feeling for nature, and not +the mere hackneyed common-form and inflated description of the +literary pastoral.[59] + +This leads to another great and important distinction to be drawn +between Rousseau and the school whom in other respects he inspired. +The admirable Sainte Beuve perplexes one by his strange remark, that +the union of the poetry of the family and the hearth with the poetry +of nature is essentially wanting to Rousseau.[60] It only shows that +the great critic had for the moment forgotten the whole of the second +part of the New Heloisa, and his failure to identify Cowper's allusion +to the _matinee a l'anglaise_ certainly proves that he had at any rate +forgotten one of the most striking and delicious scenes of the hearth +in French literature.[61] The tendency to read Rousseau only in the +Byronic sense is one of those foregone conclusions which are +constantly tempting the critic to travel out of his record. Rousseau +assuredly had a Byronic side, but he is just as often a Cowper done +into splendid prose. His pictures are full of social animation and +domestic order. He had exalted the simplicity of the savage state in +his Discourses, but when he came to constitute an ideal life, he found +it in a household that was more, and not less, systematically +disciplined than those of the common society around him. The paradise +in which his Julie moved with Wolmar and Saint Preux, was no more and +no less than an establishment of the best kind of the rural +middle-class, frugal, decorous, wholesome, tranquilly austere. No most +sentimental savage could have found it endurable, or could himself +without profound transformation of his manners have been endured in +it. The New Heloisa ends by exalting respectability, and putting the +spirit of insurrection to shame. Self-control, not revolt, is its last +word. + +This is what separates Rousseau here and throughout from Senancour, +Byron, and the rest. He consummates the triumph of will, while their +reigning mood is grave or reckless protest against impotence of will, +the little worth of common aims, the fretting triviality of common +rules. Franklin or Cobbett might have gloried in the regularity of +Madame de Wolmar's establishment. The employment of the day was marked +out with precision. By artful adjustment of pursuits, it was contrived +that the men-servants should be kept apart from the maid-servants, +except at their repasts. The women, namely, a cook, a housemaid, and a +nurse, found their pastime in rambles with their mistress and her +children, and lived mainly with them. The men were amused by games for +which their master made regulated provision, now for summer, now for +winter, offering prizes of a useful kind for prowess and adroitness. +Often on a Sunday night all the household met in an ample chamber, +and passed the evening in dancing. When Saint Preux inquired whether +this was not a rather singular infraction of puritan rule, Julie +wisely answered that pure morality is so loaded with severe duties, +that if you add to them the further burden of indifferent forms, it +must always be at the cost of the essential.[62] The servants were +taken from the country, never from the town. They entered the +household young, were gradually trained, and never went away except to +establish themselves. + +The vulgar and obvious criticism on all this is that it is utopian, +that such households do not generally exist, because neither masters +nor servants possess the qualities needed to maintain these relations +of unbroken order and friendliness. Perhaps not; and masters and +servants will be more and more removed from the possession of such +qualities, and their relations further distant from such order and +friendliness, if writers cease to press the beauty and serviceableness +of a domesticity that is at present only possible in a few rare cases, +or to insist on the ugliness, the waste of peace, the deterioration of +character, that are the results of our present system. Undoubtedly it +is much easier for Rousseau to draw his picture of semi-patriarchal +felicity, than for the rest of us to realise it. It was his function +to press ideals of sweeter life on his contemporaries, and they may be +counted fortunate in having a writer who could fulfil this function +with Rousseau's peculiar force of masterly persuasion. His scornful +diatribes against the domestic police of great houses, and the +essential inhumanity of the ordinary household relations, are both +excellent and of permanent interest. There is the full breath of a new +humaneness in them. They were the right way of attacking the +decrepitude of feudal luxury and insolence, and its imitation among +the great farmers-general. This criticism of the conditions of +domestic service marks a beginning of true democracy, as distinguished +from the mere pulverisation of aristocracy. It rests on the claim of +the common people to an equal consideration, as equally useful and +equally capable of virtue and vice; and it implies the essential +priority of social over political reform. + +The story abounds in sumptuary detail. The table partakes of the +general plenty, but this plenty is not ruinous. The senses are +gratified without daintiness. The food is common, but excellent of its +kind. The service is simple, yet exquisite. All that is mere show, all +that depends on vulgar opinion, all fine and elaborate dishes whose +value comes of their rarity, and whose names you must know before +finding any goodness in them, are banished without recall. Even in +such delicacies as they permit themselves, our friends abstain every +day from certain things which are reserved for feasts on special +occasions, and which are thus made more delightful without being more +costly. What do you suppose these delicacies are? Rare game, or fish +from the sea, or dainties from abroad? Better than all that; some +delicious vegetable of the district, one of the savoury things that +grow in our garden, some fish from the lake dressed in a peculiar way, +some cheese from our mountains. The service is modest and rustic, but +clean and smiling. Neither gold-laced liveries in sight of which you +die of hunger, nor tall crystals laden with flowers for your only +dessert, here take the place of honest dishes. Here people have not +the art of nourishing the stomach through the eyes, but they know how +to add grace to good cheer, to eat heartily without inconvenience, to +drink merrily without losing reason, to sit long at table without +weariness, and always to rise from it without disgust.[63] + +One singularity in this ideal household was the avoidance of those +middle exchanges between production and consumption, which enrich the +shopkeeper but impoverish his customers. Not one of these exchanges is +made without loss, and the multiplication of these losses would weaken +even a man of fortune. Wolmar seeks those real exchanges in which the +convenience of each party to the bargain serves as profit for both. +Thus the wool is sent to the factories, from which they receive cloth +in exchange; wine, oil, and bread are produced in the house; the +butcher pays himself in live cattle; the grocer receives grain in +return for his goods; the wages of the labourers and the +house-servants are derived from the produce of the land which they +render valuable.[64] It was reserved for Fourier, Cabet, and the rest, +to carry to its highest point this confusion of what is so +fascinating in a book with what is practicable in society. + +The expatiation on the loveliness of a well-ordered interior may +strike the impatient modern as somewhat long, and the movement as very +slow, just as people complain of the same things in Goethe's +_Wahlverwandtschaften_. Such complaint only proves inability, which is +or is not justifiable, to seize the spirit of the writer. The +expatiation was long and the movement slow, because Rousseau was full +of his thoughts; they were a deep and glowing part of himself, and did +not merely skim swiftly and lightly through his mind. Anybody who +takes the trouble may find out the difference between this expression +of long mental brooding, and a merely elaborated diction.[65] The +length is an essential part of the matter. The whole work is the +reflection of a series of slow inner processes, the many careful +weavings of a lonely and miserable man's dreams. And Julie expressed +the spirit and the joy of these dreams when she wrote, "People are +only happy before they are happy. Man, so eager and so feeble, made to +desire all and obtain little, has received from heaven a consoling +force which brings all that he desires close to him, which subjects it +to his imagination, which makes it sensible and present before him, +which delivers it over to him. The land of chimera is the only one in +this world that is worth dwelling in, and such is the nothingness of +the human lot, that except the being who exists in and by himself, +there is nothing beautiful except that which does not exist."[66] + +Closely connected with the vigorous attempt to fascinate his public +with the charm of a serene, joyful, and ordered house, is the +restoration of marriage in the New Heloisa to a rank among high and +honourable obligations, and its representation as the best support of +an equable life of right conduct and fruitful harmonious emotion. +Rousseau even invested it with the mysterious dignity as of some +natural sacrament. "This chaste knot of nature is subject neither to +the sovereign power nor to paternal authority," he cried, "but only to +the authority of the common Father." And he pointed his remark by a +bitter allusion to a celebrated case in which a great house had +prevailed on the courts to annul the marriage of an elder son with a +young actress, though her character was excellent, and though she had +befriended him when he was abandoned by everybody else.[67] This was +one of the countless democratic thrusts in the book. In the case of +its heroine, however, the author associated the sanctity of marriage +not only with equality but with religion. We may imagine the spleen +with which the philosophers, with both their hatred of the faith, and +their light esteem of marriage bonds, read Julie's eloquent account of +her emotions at the moment of her union with Wolmar. "I seemed to +behold the organ of Providence and to hear the voice of God, as the +minister gravely pronounced the words of the holy service. The purity, +the dignity, the sanctity of marriage, so vividly set forth in the +words of scripture; its chaste and sublime duties, so important to the +happiness, order, and peace of the human race, so sweet to fulfil even +for their own sake--all this made such an impression on me that I +seemed to feel within my breast a sudden revolution. An unknown power +seemed all at once to arrest the disorder of my affections, and to +restore them to accordance with the law of duty and of nature. The +eternal eye that sees everything, I said to myself, now reads to the +depth of my heart."[68] She has all the well-known fervour of the +proselyte, and never wearies of extolling the peace of the wedded +state. Love is no essential to its perfection. "Worth, virtue, a +certain accord not so much in condition and age as in character and +temper, are enough between husband and wife; and this does not prevent +the growth from such a union of a very tender attachment, which is +none the less sweet for not being exactly love, and is all the more +lasting."[69] Years after, when Saint Preux has returned and is +settled in the household, she even tries to persuade him to imitate +her example, and find contentment in marriage with her cousin. The +earnestness with which she presses the point, the very sensible but +not very delicate references to the hygienic drawbacks of celibacy, +and the fact that the cousin whom she would fain have him marry, had +complaisantly assisted them in their past loves, naturally drew the +fire of Rousseau's critical enemies. + +Such matters did not affect the general enthusiasm. When people are +weary of a certain way of surveying life, and have their faces eagerly +set in some new direction, they read in a book what it pleases them to +read; they assimilate as much as falls in with their dominant mood, +and the rest passes away unseen. The French public were bewitched by +Julie, and were no more capable of criticising her than Julie was +capable of criticising Saint Preux in the height of her passion for +him. When we say that Rousseau was the author of this movement, all we +mean is that his book and its chief personage awoke emotion to +self-consciousness, gave it a dialect, communicated an impulse in +favour of social order, and then very calamitously at the same moment +divorced it from the fundamental conditions of progress, by divorcing +it from disciplined intelligence and scientific reason. + +Apart from the general tendency of the New Heloisa in numberless +indirect ways to bring the manners of the great into contempt, by the +presentation of the happiness of a simple and worthy life, thrifty, +self-sufficing, and homely, there is one direct protest of singular +eloquence and gravity. Julie's father is deeply revolted at the bare +notion of marrying his daughter to a teacher. Rousseau puts his +vigorous remonstrance against pride of birth into the mouth of an +English nobleman. This is perhaps an infelicitous piece of +prosopopoeia, but it is interesting as illustrative of the idea of +England in the eighteenth century as the home of stout-hearted +freedom. We may quote one piece from the numerous bits of very +straightforward speaking in which our representative expressed his +mind as to the significance of birth. "My friend has nobility," cried +Lord Edward, "not written in ink on mouldering parchments, but graven +in his heart in characters that can never be effaced. For my own part, +by God, I should be sorry to have no other proof of my merit but that +of a man who has been in his grave these five hundred years. If you +know the English nobility, you know that it is the most enlightened, +the best informed, the wisest, the bravest in Europe. That being so, I +don't care to ask whether it is the oldest or not. We are not, it is +true, the slaves of the prince, but his friends; nor the tyrants of +the people, but their leaders. We hold the balance true between +people, and monarch. Our first duty is towards the nation, our second +towards him who governs; it is not his will but his right that we +consider.... We suffer no one in the land to say _God and my sword_, +nor more than this, _God and my right_."[70] All this was only +putting Montesquieu into heroics, it is true, but a great many people +read the romance who were not likely to read the graver book. And +there was a wide difference between the calm statement of a number of +political propositions about government, and their transformation into +dramatic invective against the arrogance of all social inequality that +does not correspond with inequalities of worth. + +There is no contradiction between this and the social quietism of +other parts of the book. Moral considerations and the paramount place +that they hold in Rousseau's way of thinking, explain at once his +contempt for the artificial privileges and assumptions of high rank, +and his contempt for anything like discontent with the conditions of +humble rank. Simplicity of life was his ideal. He wishes us to despise +both those who have departed from it, and those who would depart from +it if they could. So Julie does her best to make the lot of the +peasants as happy as it is capable of being made, without ever helping +them to change it for another. She teaches them to respect their +natural condition in respecting themselves. Her prime maxim is to +discourage change of station and calling, but above all to dissuade +the villager, whose life is the happiest of all, from leaving the true +pleasures of his natural career for the fever and corruption of +towns.[71] Presently a recollection of the sombre things that he had +seen in his rambles through France crossed Rousseau's pastoral +visions, and he admitted that there were some lands in which the +publican devours the fruits of the earth; where the misery that covers +the fields, the bitter greed of some grasping farmer, the inflexible +rigour of an inhuman master, take something from the charm of his +rural scenes. "Worn-out horses ready to expire under the blows they +receive, wretched peasants attenuated by hunger, broken by weariness, +clad in rags, hamlets all in ruins--these things offer a mournful +spectacle to the eye: one is almost sorry to be a man, as we think of +the unhappy creatures on whose blood we have to feed."[72] + +Yet there is no hint in the New Heloisa of the socialism which Morelly +and Mably flung themselves upon, as the remedy for all these desperate +horrors. Property, in every page of the New Heloisa, is held in full +respect; the master has the honourable burden of patriarchal duty; the +servant the not less honourable burden of industry and faithfulness; +disobedience or vice is promptly punished with paternal rigour and +more than paternal inflexibility. The insurrectionary quality and +effect of Rousseau's work lay in no direct preaching or vehement +denunciation of the abuses that filled France with cruelty on the one +hand and sodden misery on the other. It lay in pictures of a social +state in which abuses and cruelty cannot exist, nor any miseries save +those which are inseparable from humanity. The contrast between the +sober, cheerful, prosperous scenes of romance, and the dreariness of +the reality of the field life of France,--this was the element that +filled generous souls with an intoxicating transport. + +Rousseau's way of dealing with the portentous questions that lay about +that tragic scene of deserted fields, ruined hamlets, tottering +brutes, and hunger-stricken men, may be gathered from one of the many +traits in Julie which endeared her to that generation, and might +endear her even to our own if it only knew her. Wolmar's house was +near a great high-road, and so was daily haunted by beggars. Not one +of these was allowed to go empty away. And Julie had as many excellent +reasons to give for her charity, as if she had been one of the +philosophers of whom she thought so surpassingly ill. If you look at +mendicancy merely as a trade, what is the harm of a calling whose end +is to nourish feelings of humanity and brotherly love? From the point +of view of talent, why should I not pay the eloquence of a beggar who +stirs my pity, as highly as that of a player who makes me shed tears +over imaginary sorrows? If the great number of beggars is burdensome +to the state, of how many other professions that people encourage, may +you not say the same? How can I be sure that the man to whom I give +alms is not an honest soul, whom I may save from perishing? In short, +whatever we may think of the poor wretches, if we owe nothing to the +beggar, at least we owe it to ourselves to pay honour to suffering +humanity or to its image.[73] Nothing could be more admirably +illustrative of the author's confidence that the first thing for us to +do is to satisfy our fine feelings, and that then all the rest shall +be added unto us. The doctrine spread so far, that Necker,--a sort of +Julie in a frock-coat, who had never fallen, the incarnation of this +doctrine on the great stage of affairs,--was hailed to power to ward +off the bankruptcy of the state by means of a good heart and moral +sentences, while Turgot with science and firmness for his resources +was driven away as an economist and a philosopher. + +At a first glance, it may seem that there was compensation for the +triumph of sentiment over reason, and that if France was ruined by the +dreams in which Rousseau encouraged the nation to exult, she was saved +by the fervour and resoluteness of the aspirations with which he +filled the most generous of her children. No wide movement, we may be +sure, is thoroughly understood until we have mastered both its +material and its ideal sides. Materially, Rousseau's work was +inevitably fraught with confusion because in this sphere not to be +scientific, not to be careful in tracing effects to their true causes, +is to be without any security that the causes with which we try to +deal will lead to the effects that we desire. A Roman statesman who +had gone to the Sermon on the Mount for a method of staying the +economic ruin of the empire, its thinning population, its decreasing +capital, would obviously have found nothing of what he sought. But the +moral nature of man is redeemed by teaching that may have no bearing +on economics, or even a bearing purely mischievous, and which has to +be corrected by teaching that probably goes equally far in the +contrary direction of moral mischief. In the ideal sphere, the +processes are very complex. In measuring a man's influence within it +we have to balance. Rousseau's action was undoubtedly excellent in +leading men and women to desire simple lives, and a more harmonious +social order. Was this eminent benefit more than counterbalanced by +the eminent disadvantage of giving a reactionary intellectual +direction? By commending irrational retrogression from active use of +the understanding back to dreamy contemplation? + +To one teacher is usually only one task allotted. We do not reproach +want of science to the virtuous and benevolent Channing; his goodness +and effusion stirred women and the young, just as Rousseau did, to +sentimental but humane aspiration. It was this kind of influence that +formed the opinion which at last destroyed American slavery. We owe a +place in the temple that commemorates human emancipation, to every man +who has kindled in his generation a brighter flame of moral +enthusiasm, and a more eager care for the realisation of good and +virtuous ideals. + + +III. + +The story of the circumstances of the publication of Emilius and the +persecution which befell its author in consequence, recalls us to the +distinctively evil side of French history in this critical epoch, and +carries us away from light into the thick darkness of political +intrigue, obscurantist faction, and a misgovernment which was at once +tyrannical and decrepit. It is almost impossible for us to realise the +existence in the same society of such boundless license of thought, +and such unscrupulous restraint upon its expression. Not one of +Rousseau's three chief works, for instance, was printed in France. The +whole trade in books was a sort of contraband, and was carried on with +the stealth, subterfuge, daring, and knavery that are demanded in +contraband dealings. An author or a bookseller was forced to be as +careful as a kidnapper of coolies or the captain of a slaver would be +in our own time. He had to steer clear of the court, of the +parliament, of Jansenists, of Jesuits, of the mistresses of the king +and the minister, of the friends of the mistresses, and above all of +that organised hierarchy of ignorance and oppression in all times and +places where they raise their masked heads,--the bishops and +ecclesiastics of every sort and condition. Palissot produced his +comedy to please the devout at the expense of the philosophers (1760). +Madame de Robecq, daughter of Rousseau's marshal of Luxembourg, +instigated and protected him, for Diderot had offended her.[74] +Morellet replied in a piece in which the keen vision of feminine spite +detected a reference to Madame de Robecq. Though dying, she still had +relations with Choiseul, and so Morellet was flung into the +Bastile.[75] Diderot was thrown for three months into Vincennes, where +we saw him on a memorable occasion, for his Letter on the Blind +(1748), nominally because it was held to contain irreligious doctrine, +really because he had given offence to D'Argenson's mistress by +hinting that she might be very handsome, but that her judgment on +scientific experiment was of no value.[76] + +The New Heloisa could not openly circulate in France so long as it +contained the words, "I would rather be the wife of a charcoal-burner +than the mistress of a king." The last word was altered to "prince," +and then Rousseau was warned that he would offend the Prince de Conti +and Madame de Boufflers.[77] No work of merit could appear without +more or less of slavish mutilation, and no amount of slavish +mutilation could make the writer secure against the accidental grudge +of people who had influence in high quarters.[78] + +If French booksellers in the stirring intellectual time of the +eighteenth century needed all the craft of a smuggler, their morality +was reduced to an equally low level in dealing not only with the +police, but with their own accomplices, the book-writers. They excused +themselves from paying proper sums to authors, on the ground that they +were robbed of the profits that would enable them to pay such sums, by +the piracy of their brethren in trade. But then they all pirated the +works of one another. The whole commerce was a mass of fraud and +chicane, and every prominent author passed his life between two fires. +He was robbed, his works were pirated, and, worse than robbery and +piracy, they were defaced and distorted by the booksellers. On the +other side he was tormented to death by the suspicion and timidity, +alternately with the hatred and active tyranny of the administration. +As we read the story of the lives of all these strenuous men, their +struggles, their incessant mortifications, their constantly reviving +and ever irrepressible vigour and interest in the fight, we may wish +that the shabbiness and the pettiness of the daily lives of some of +them had faded away from memory, and left us nothing to think of in +connection with their names but the alertness, courage, tenacity, +self-sacrifice, and faith with which they defended the cause of human +emancipation and progress. Happily the mutual hate of the Christian +factions, to which liberty owes at least as much as charity owes to +their mutual love, prevented a common union for burning the +philosophers as well as their books. All torments short of this they +endured, and they had the great merit of enduring them without any +hope of being rewarded after their death, as truly good men must +always be capable of doing. + +Rousseau had no taste for martyrdom, nor any intention of courting it +in even its slightest forms. Holland was now the great printing press +of France, and when we are counting up the contributions of +Protestantism to the enfranchisement of Europe, it is just to remember +the indispensable services rendered by the freedom of the press in +Holland to the dissemination of French thought in the eighteenth +century, as well as the shelter that it gave to the French thinkers in +the seventeenth, including Descartes, the greatest of them all. The +monstrous tediousness of printing a book at Amsterdam or the Hague, +the delay, loss, and confusion in receiving and transmitting the +proofs, and the subterranean character of the entire process, +including the circulation of the book after it was once fairly +printed, were as grievous to Rousseau as to authors of more impetuous +temper. He agreed with Rey, for instance, the Amsterdam printer, to +sell him the Social Contract for 1000 francs. The manuscript had then +to be cunningly conveyed to Amsterdam. Rousseau wrote it out in very +small characters, sealed it carefully up, and entrusted it to the care +of the chaplain of the Dutch embassy, who happened to be a native of +Vaud. In passing the barrier, the packet fell into the hands of the +officials. They tore it open and examined it, happily unconscious that +they were handling the most explosive kind of gunpowder that they had +ever meddled with. It was not until the chaplain claimed it in the +name of ambassadorial privilege, that the manuscript was allowed to go +on its way to the press.[79] Rousseau repeats a hundred times, not +only in the Confessions, but also in letters to his friends, how +resolutely and carefully he avoided any evasion of the laws of the +country in which he lived. The French government was anxious enough on +all grounds to secure for France the production of the books of which +France was the great consumer, but the severity of its censorship +prevented this.[80] The introduction of the books, when printed, was +tolerated or connived at, because the country would hardly have +endured to be deprived of the enjoyment of its own literature. By a +greater inconsistency the reprinting of a book which had once found +admission into the country, was also connived at. Thus M. de +Malesherbes, out of friendship for Rousseau, wished to have an edition +of the New Heloisa printed in France, and sold for the benefit of the +author. That he should have done so is a curious illustration of the +low morality engendered by a repressive system imperfectly carried +out. For Rousseau had sold the book to Rey. Rey had treated with a +French bookseller in the usual way, that is, had sent him half the +edition printed, the bookseller paying either in cash or other books +for all the copies he received. Therefore to print an independent +edition in Paris was to injure, not Rey the foreigner, but the French +bookseller who stood practically in Rey's place. It was setting two +French booksellers to ruin one another. Rousseau emphatically declined +to receive any profit from such a transaction. But, said Malesherbes, +you sold to Rey a right which you had not got, the right of sole +proprietorship, excluding the competition of a pirated reprint. Then, +answered Rousseau, if the right which I sold happens to prove less +than I thought, it is clear that far from taking advantage of my +mistake, I owe to Rey compensation for any loss that he may +suffer.[81] + +The friendship of Malesherbes for the party of reason was shown on +numerous occasions. As director of the book trade he was really the +censor of the literature of the time.[82] The story of his service to +Diderot is well known--how he warned Diderot that the police were +about to visit his house and overhaul his papers, and how when Diderot +despaired of being able to put them out of sight in his narrow +quarters, Malesherbes said, "Then send them all to me," and took care +of them until the storm was overpast. The proofs of the New Heloisa +came through his hands, and now he made himself Rousseau's agent in +the affairs relative to the printing of Emilius. Rousseau entrusted +the whole matter to him and to Madame de Luxembourg, being confident +that, in acting through persons of such authority and position, he +should be protected against any unwitting illegality. Instead of being +sent to Rey, the manuscript was sold to a bookseller in Paris for six +thousand francs.[83] A long time elapsed before any proofs reached the +author, and he soon perceived that an edition was being printed in +France as well as in Holland. Still, as Malesherbes was in some sort +the director of the enterprise, the author felt no alarm. Duclos came +to visit him one day, and Rousseau read aloud to him the Savoyard +Vicar's Profession of Faith. "What, citizen," he cried, "and that is +part of a book that they are printing at Paris! Be kind enough not to +tell any one that you read this to me."[84] Still Rousseau remained +secure. Then the printing came to a standstill, and he could not find +out the reason, because Malesherbes was away, and the printer did not +take the trouble to answer his letters. "My natural tendency," he +says, and as the rest of his life only too abundantly proved, "is to +be afraid of darkness; mystery always disturbs me, it is utterly +antipathetic to my character, which is open even to the pitch of +imprudence. The aspect of the most hideous monster would alarm me +little, I verily believe; but if I discern at night a figure in a +white sheet, I am sure to be terrified out of my life."[85] So he at +once fancied that by some means the Jesuits had got possession of his +book, and knowing him to be at death's door, designed to keep the +Emilius back until he was actually dead, when they would publish a +truncated version of it to suit their own purposes.[86] He wrote +letter upon letter to the printer, to Malesherbes, to Madame de +Luxembourg, and if answers did not come, or did not come exactly when +he expected them, he grew delirious with anxiety. If he dropped his +conviction that the Jesuits were plotting the ruin of his book and the +defilement of his reputation, he lost no time in fastening a similar +design upon the Jansenists, and when the Jansenists were acquitted, +then the turn of the philosophers came. We have constantly to remember +that all this time the unfortunate man was suffering incessant pain, +and passing his nights in sleeplessness and fever. He sometimes threw +off the black dreams of unfathomable suspicion, and dreamed in their +stead of some sunny spot in pleasant Touraine, where under a mild +climate and among a gentle people he should peacefully end his +days.[87] At other times he was fond of supposing M. de Luxembourg +not a duke, nor a marshal of France, but a good country squire living +in some old mansion, and himself not an author, not a maker of books, +but with moderate intelligence and slight attainment, finding with the +squire and his dame the happiness of his life, and contributing to the +happiness of theirs.[88] Alas, in spite of all his precautions, he had +unwittingly drifted into the stream of great affairs. He and his book +were sacrificed to the exigencies of faction; and a persecution set +in, which destroyed his last chance of a composed life, by giving his +reason, already disturbed, a final blow from which it never recovered. + +Emilius appeared in the crisis of the movement against the Jesuits. +That formidable order had offended Madame de Pompadour by a refusal to +recognise her power and position,--a manly policy, as creditable to +their moral vigour as it was contrary to the maxims which had made +them powerful. They had also offended Choiseul by the part they had +taken in certain hostile intrigues at Versailles. The parliaments had +always been their enemies. This was due first to the jealousy with +which corporations of lawyers always regard corporations of +ecclesiastics, and next to their hatred of the bull Unigenitus, which +had been not only an infraction of French liberties, but the occasion +of special humiliation to the parliaments. Then the hostility of the +parliaments to the Jesuits was caused by the harshness with which the +system of confessional tickets was at this time being carried out. +Finally, the once powerful house of Austria, the protector of all +retrograde interests, was now weakened by the Seven Years' War; and +was unable to bring effective influence to bear on Lewis XV. At last +he gave his consent to the destruction of the order. The commercial +bankruptcy of one of their missions was the immediate occasion of +their fall, and nothing could save them. "I only know one man," said +Grimm, "in a position to have composed an apology for the Jesuits in +fine style, if it had been in his way to take the side of that tribe, +and this man is M. Rousseau." The parliaments went to work with +alacrity, but they were quite as hostile to the philosophers as they +were to the Jesuits, and hence their anxiety to show that they were no +allies of the one even when destroying the other. + +Contemporaries seldom criticise the shades and variations of +innovating speculation with any marked nicety. Anything with the stamp +of rationality on its phrases or arguments was roughly set down to the +school of the philosophers, and Rousseau was counted one of their +number, like Voltaire or Helvetius. The Emilius appeared in May 1762. +On the 11th of June the parliament of Paris ordered the book to be +burnt by the public executioner, and the writer to be arrested. For +Rousseau always scorned the devices of Voltaire and others; he +courageously insisted on placing his name on the title-page of all his +works,[89] and so there was none of the usual difficulty in +identifying the author. The grounds of the proceedings were alleged +irreligious tendencies to be found in the book.[90] + +The indecency of the requisition in which the advocate-general +demanded its proscription, was admitted even by people who were least +likely to defend Rousseau.[91] The author was charged with saying not +only that man may be saved without believing in God, but even that the +Christian religion does not exist--paradox too flagrant even for the +writer of the Discourse on Inequality. No evidence was produced either +that the alleged assertions were in the book, or that the name of the +author was really the name on its title-page. Rousseau fared no worse, +but better, than his fellows, for there was hardly a single man of +letters of that time who escaped arbitrary imprisonment. + +The unfortunate author had news of the ferment which his work was +creating in Paris, and received notes of warning from every hand, but +he could not believe that the only man in France who believed in God +was to be the victim of the defenders of Christianity.[92] On the 8th +of June he spent a merry day with two friends, taking their dinner in +the fields. "Ever since my youth I had a habit of reading at night in +my bed until my eyes grew heavy. Then I put out the candle, and tried +to fall asleep for a few minutes, but they seldom lasted long. My +ordinary reading at night was the Bible, and I have read it +continuously through at least five or six times in this way. That +night, finding myself more wakeful than usual, I prolonged my reading, +and read through the whole of the book which ends with the Levite of +Ephraim, and which if I mistake not is the book of Judges. The story +affected me deeply, and I was busy over it in a kind of dream, when +all at once I was roused by lights and noises."[93] + +It was two o'clock in the morning. A messenger had come in hot haste +to carry him to Madame de Luxembourg. News had reached her of the +proposed decree of the parliament. She knew Rousseau well enough to be +sure that if he were seized and examined, her own share and that of +Malesherbes in the production of the condemned book would be made +public, and their position uncomfortably compromised. It was to their +interest that he should avoid arrest by flight, and they had no +difficulty in persuading him to fall in with their plans. After a +tearful farewell with Theresa, who had hardly been out of his sight +for seventeen years, and many embraces from the greater ladies of the +castle, he was thrust into a chaise and despatched on the first stage +of eight melancholy years of wandering and despair, to be driven from +place to place, first by the fatuous tyranny of magistrates and +religious doctors, and then by the yet more cruel spectres of his own +diseased imagination, until at length his whole soul became the home +of weariness and torment. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] _Conf._, x. 62. + +[2] _Conf._, x. + +[3] _Ib._ x. 70. + +[4] Louis Francois de Bourbon, Prince de Conti (1717-1776), was +great-grandson of the brother of the Great Conde. He performed +creditable things in the war of the Austrian Succession (in Piedmont +1744, in Belgium 1745); had a scheme of foreign policy as director of +the secret diplomacy of Lewis XV. (1745-1756), which was to make +Turkey, Poland, Sweden, Prussia, a barrier against Russia primarily, +and Austria secondarily; lastly went into moderate opposition to the +court, protesting against the destruction of the _parlements_ (1771), +and afterwards opposing the reforms of Turgot (1776). Finally he had +the honour of refusing the sacraments of the church on his deathbed. +See Martin's _Hist. de France_, xv. and xvi. + +[5] _Conf._, 97. _Corr._, v. 215. + +[6] _Corr._, ii. 144. Oct. 7, 1760. + +[7] _Conf._, x. 98. + +[8] The reader will distinguish this correspondent of Rousseau's, +_Comtesse_ de Boufflers-Rouveret (1727-18--), from the _Duchesse_ de +Boufflers, which was the title of Rousseau's Marechale de Luxembourg +before her second marriage. And also from the _Marquise_ de Boufflers, +said to be the mistress of the old king Stanislaus at Luneville, and +the mother of the Chevalier de Boufflers (who was the intimate of +Voltaire, sat in the States General, emigrated, did homage to +Napoleon, and finally died peaceably under Lewis XVIII.). See Jal's +_Dict. Critique_, 259-262. Sainte Beuve has an essay on our present +Comtesse de Boufflers (_Nouveaux Lundis_, iv. 163). She is the Madame +de Boufflers who was taken by Beauclerk to visit Johnson in his Temple +chambers, and was conducted to her coach by him in a remarkable manner +(Boswell's _Life_, ch. li. p. 467). Also much talked of in H. +Walpole's Letters. See D'Alembert to Frederick, April 15, 1768. + +[9] Streckeisen, ii. 32. + +[10] _Conf._, x. 71. + +[11] For instance, _Corr._ ii. 85, 90, 92, etc. 1759. + +[12] Streckeisen, ii. 28, etc. + +[13] _Ib._, 29. + +[14] _Conf._, x. 99. + +[15] _Ib._, x. 57. + +[16] _Ib._, xi. 119. + +[17] _Corr._, ii. 196. Feb. 16, 1761. + +[18] _Ib._, ii. 102, 176, etc. + +[19] _Conf._, x. 60. + +[20] _Corr._, ii. 12. + +[21] As M. St. Marc Girardin has put it: "There are in all Rousseau's +discussions two things to be carefully distinguished from one another; +the maxims of the discourse, and the conclusions of the controversy. +The maxims are ordinarily paradoxical; the conclusions are full of +good sense." _Rev. des Deux Mondes_, Aug. 1852, p. 501. + +[22] _Corr._, ii. 244-246. Oct. 24, 1761. + +[23] _Ib._, 1766. _Oeuv._, lxxv. 364. + +[24] _Corr._, ii. 32. (1758.) + +[25] _Corr._, ii. 63. Jan. 15, 1779. + +[26] Bernardin de St. Pierre, xii. 102. + +[27] 4th Letter, p. 375. + +[28] _Mem._, ii. 299. + +[29] _Corr._, ii. 98. July 10, 1759. + +[30] _Corr._, ii. 106. Nov. 10, 1759. + +[31] _Ib._, ii. 179. Jan. 18, 1761. + +[32] _Ib._, ii. 268. Dec. 12, 1761. + +[33] _Ib._, ii. 28. Dec. 23, 1761. + +[34] _Nouv. Hel._, III. xxii. 147. In 1784 Hume's suppressed essays on +"Suicide and the Immortality of the Soul" were published in +London:--"With Remarks, intended as an Antidote to the Poison +contained in these Performances, by the Editor; to which is added, Two +Letters on Suicide, from Rousseau's Eloisa." In the preface the reader +is told that these "two very masterly letters have been much +celebrated." See Hume's _Essays_, by Green and Grose, i. 69, 70. + +[35] _Corr._, iii. 235. Aug. 1, 1763. + +[36] _Corr._, ii. 226. Sept. 29, 1761. + +[37] P. 294. Jan. 11, 1762. + +[38] Madame Latour (Nov. 7, 1730-Sept. 6, 1789) was the wife of a man +in the financial world, who used her ill and dissipated as much of her +fortune as he could, and from whom she separated in 1775. After that +she resumed her maiden name and was known as Madame de Franqueville. +Musset-Pathay, ii. 182, and Sainte Beuve, _Causeries_, ii. 63. + +[39] _Corr._, ii. 214. _Conf._, ix. 289. + +[40] English translations of Rousseau's works appeared very speedily +after the originals. A second edition of the Heloisa was called for as +early as May 1761. See _Corr._ ii. 223. A German translation of the +Heloisa appeared at Leipzig in 1761, in six duodecimos. + +[41] For instance, _Corr._, ii. 168. Nov. 19, 1762. + +[42] Choderlos de La Clos: 1741-1803. + +[43] Journal, iv. 496. (Ed. Charpentier, 1857.) + +[44] _Nouv. Hel._, III. xiv. 48. + +[45] _E.g._ Letters, 40-46. + +[46] Madame de Stael (1765-1817), in her _Lettres sur les ecrits et le +caractere de J.J. Rousseau_, written when she was twenty, and her +first work of any pretensions. _Oeuv._, i. 41. Ed. 1820. + +[47] Nowhere more pungently than in a little piece of some half-dozen +pages, headed, _Prediction tiree d'un vieux Manuscrit_, the form of +which is borrowed from Grimm's squib in the dispute about French +music, _Le petit Prophete de Boehmischbroda_, though it seems to me to +be superior to Grimm in pointedness. Here are a few verses from the +supposed prophecy of the man who should come--and of what he should +do. "Et la multitude courra sur ses pas et plusieurs croiront en lui. +Et il leur dira: Vous etes des scelerats et des fripons, vos femmes +sont toutes des femmes perdues, et je viens vivre parmi vous. Et il +ajoutera tous les hommes sont vertueux dans le pays ou je suis ne, et +je n'habiterai jamais le pays ou je suis ne.... Et il dira aussi qu'il +est impossible d'avoir des moeurs, et de lire des Romans, et il fera +un Roman; et dans son Roman le vice sera en action et la vertu en +paroles, et ses personages seront forcenes d'amour et de philosophie. +Et dans son Roman on apprendra l'art de suborner philosophiquement une +jeune fille. Et l'Ecoliere perdra toute honte et toute pudeur, et elle +fera avec son maitre des sottises et des maximes.... Et le bel Ami +etant dans un Bateau seul avec sa Maitresse voudra le jetter dans +l'eau et se precipiter avec elle. Et ils appelleront tout cela de la +Philosophie et de la Vertu," and so on, humorously enough in its way. + +[48] See passages in Goncourt's _La Femme au 18ieme siecle_, p. 380. + +[49] Musset-Pathay, II. 361. See Madame Roland's _Mem._, i. 207. + +[50] _Corr._, March 3, and March 19, 1761. The criticisms of Ximenes, +a thoroughly mediocre person in all respects, were entirely literary, +and were directed against the too strained and highly coloured quality +of the phrases--"baisers acres"--among them. + +[51] _Nouv. Hel._, V. v. 115. + +[52] VI. vii. + +[53] VI. vi. + +[54] Michelet's _Louis XV. et Louis XVI._, p. 58. + +[55] See Hettner's _Literaturgeschichte_, II. 486. + +[56] IV. xi. + +[57] IV. xvii. See vol. iii. 423. + +[58] In 1816. Moore's _Life_, iii. 247; also 285. And the note to the +stanzas in the Third Canto,--a note curious for a slight admixture of +transcendentalism, so rare a thing with Byron, who, sentimental though +he was, usually rejoiced in a truly Voltairean common sense. + +[59] "The present fashion in France, of passing some time in the +country, is new; at this time of the year, and for many weeks past, +Paris is, comparatively speaking, empty. Everybody who has a country +seat is at it, and such as have none visit others who have. This +remarkable revolution in the French manners is certainly one of the +best customs they have taken from England; and its introduction was +effected the easier, being assisted by the magic of Rousseau's +writings. Mankind are much indebted to that splendid genius, who, when +living, was hunted from country to country, to seek an asylum, with as +much venom as if he had been a mad dog; thanks to the vile spirit of +bigotry, which has not received its death wound. Women of the first +fashion in France are now ashamed of not nursing their own children; +and stays are universally proscribed from the bodies of the poor +infants, which were for so many ages torture to them, as they are +still in Spain. The country residence may not have effects equally +obvious; but they will be no less sure in the end, and in all respects +beneficial to every class in the state." Arthur Young's _Travels_, i. +72. + +[60] _Causeries_, xi. 195. + +[61] _Nouv. Hel._, V. iii. "You remember Rousseau's description of an +English morning: such are the mornings I spend with these good +people."--Cowper to Joseph Hill, Oct. 25, 1765. _Works_, iii. 269. In +a letter to William Unwin (Sept. 21, 1779), speaking of his being +engaged in mending windows, he says, "Rousseau would have been charmed +to have seen me so occupied, and would have exclaimed with rapture +that he had found the Emilius who, he supposed, had subsisted only in +his own idea." For a description illustrative of the likeness between +Rousseau and Cowper in their feeling for nature, see letter to Newton +(Sept. 18, 1784, v. 78), and compare it with the description of Les +Charmettes, making proper allowance for the colour of prose. + +[62] IV. x. 260. + +[63] V. ii. 37. + +[64] V. ii. 47-52. + +[65] Rousseau considered that the Fourth and Sixth parts of the New +Heloisa were masterpieces of diction. _Conf._ ix. 334. + +[66] VI. viii.. 298. _Conf._, xi. 106. + +[67] The La Bedoyere case, which began in 1745. See Barbier, iv. 54, +59, etc. + +[68] III. xviii. 84. + +[69] III. xx. 116. In the letter to Christopher de Beaumont (p. 102), +he fires a double shot against the philosophers on the one hand, and +the church on the other; exalting continence and purity, of which the +philosophers in their reaction against asceticism thought lightly, and +exalting marriage over the celibate state, which the churchmen +associated with mysterious sanctity. + +[70] I. lxii. + +[71] V. ii. + +[72] V. vii. 141. + +[73] V. ii. 31-33. + +[74] For the Robecq family, see Saint Simon, xviii. 58. + +[75] Morellet's _Mem._, i. 89-93. Rousseau, _Conf._, x. 85, etc. This +_Vision_ is also in the style of Grimm's _Petit Prophete_, like the +piece referred to in a previous note, vol. ii. p. 31. + +[76] Madame de Vandeul's _Mem. sur Diderot_, p. 27. Rousseau, _Conf._, +vii. 130. + +[77] _Nouv. Hel._, V. xiii. 194. _Conf._, x. 43. + +[78] The reader will find a fuller mention of the French book trade in +my _Diderot_, ch. vi. + +[79] _Conf._, xi. 127. + +[80] See a letter from Rousseau to Malesherbes, Nov. 5, 1760. _Corr._, +ii. 157. + +[81] _Corr._, ii. 157. + +[82] C.G. de Lamoignon de Malesherbes (p. 1721--guillotined, 1794), +son of the chancellor, and one of the best instructed and most +enlightened men of the century--a Turgot of the second rank--was +Directeur de la Librairie from 1750-1763. The process was this: a book +was submitted to him; he named a censor for it; on the censor's report +the director gave or refused permission to print, or required +alterations. Even after these formalities were complied with, the book +was liable to a decree of the royal council, a decree of the +parliament, or else a _lettre-de-cachet_ might send the author to the +Bastile. See Barbier, vii. 126. + +After Lord Shelburne saw Malesherbes, he said, "I have seen for the +first time in my life what I never thought could exist--a man whose +soul is absolutely free from hope or fear, and yet who is full of life +and ardour." Mdlle. Lespinasse's _Lettres_, 90. + +[83] See note, p. 132. + +[84] _Conf._, xi. 134. + +[85] _Conf._, xi. 139. + +[86] _Ib._, xi. 139. _Corr._, ii. 270, etc. Dec. 12, 1761, etc. + +[87] _Conf._, xi. 150. + +[88] Fourth Letter to Malesherbes, p. 377. + +[89] With one trifling exception, the Letter to Grimm on the Opera of +Omphale (1752): _Ecrits sur la Musique_, p. 337. + +[90] See Barbier's Journal, viii. 45 (Ed. Charpentier, 1857). A +succinct contemporary account of the general situation is to be found +in D'Alembert's little book, the _Destruction des Jesuites_. + +[91] Grimm, for instance: _Corr. Lit._, iii. 117. + +[92] _Corr._, ii. 337. June 7, 1672. _Conf._, xi. 152, 162. + +[93] _Conf._, xi. 162. The Levite's story is to be read in _Judges_, +ch. xix. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +PERSECUTION.[94] + + +Those to whom life consists in the immediate consciousness of +their own direct relations with the people and circumstances that are +in close contact with them, find it hard to follow the moods of a man +to whom such consciousness is the least part of himself, and such +relations the least real part of his life. Rousseau was no sooner in +the post-chaise which was bearing him away towards Switzerland, than +the troubles of the previous day at once dropped into a pale and +distant past, and he returned to a world where was neither parliament, +nor decree for burning books, nor any warrant for personal arrest. He +took up the thread where harassing circumstances had broken it, and +again fell musing over the tragic tale of the Levite of Ephraim. His +dream absorbed him so entirely as to take specific literary form, and +before the journey was at an end he had composed a long impassioned +version of the Bible story. Though it has Rousseau's usual fine +sonorousness in a high degree, no man now reads it; the author himself +always preserved a certain tenderness for it.[95] The contrast +between this singular quietism and the angry stir that marked +Voltaire's many flights in post-chaises, points like all else to the +profound difference between the pair. Contrast with Voltaire's shrill +cries under any personal vexation, this calm utterance:--"Though the +consequences of this affair have plunged me into a gulf of woes from +which I shall never come up again so long as I live, I bear these +gentlemen no grudge. I am aware that their object was not to do me any +harm, but only to reach ends of their own. I know that towards me they +have neither liking nor hate. I was found in their way, like a pebble +that you thrust aside with the foot without even looking at it. They +ought not to say they have performed their duty, but that they have +done their business."[96] A new note from a persecuted writer. + +Rousseau, in spite of the belief which henceforth possessed him that +he was the victim of a dark unfathomable plot, and in spite of passing +outbreaks of gloomy rage, was incapable of steady glowing and active +resentments. The world was not real enough to him for this. A throng +of phantoms pressed noiselessly before his sight, and dulled all sense +of more actual impression. "It is amazing," he wrote, "with what ease +I forget past ill, however fresh it may be. In proportion as the +anticipation of it alarms and confuses me when I see it coming, so +the memory of it returns feebly to my mind and dies out the moment +after it has arrived. My cruel imagination, which torments itself +incessantly in anticipating woes that are still unborn, makes a +diversion for my memory, and hinders me from recalling those which +have gone. I exhaust disaster beforehand. The more I have suffered in +foreseeing it, the more easily do I forget it; while on the contrary, +being incessantly busy with my past happiness, I recall it and brood +and ruminate over it, so as to enjoy it over again whenever I +wish."[97] The same turn of humour saved him from vindictiveness. "I +concern myself too little with the offence, to feel much concern about +the offender. I only think of the hurt that I have received from him, +on account of the hurt that he may still do me; and if I were sure he +would do me no more, what he had already done would be forgotten +straightway." Though he does not carry the analysis any further, we +may easily perceive that the same explanation covers what he called +his natural ingratitude. Kindness was not much more vividly understood +by him than malice. It was only one form of the troublesome +interposition of an outer world in his life; he was fain to hurry back +from it to the real world of his dreams. If any man called practical +is tempted to despise this dreaming creature, as he fares in his +chaise from stage to stage, let him remember that one making that +journey through France less than thirty years later might have seen +the castles of the great flaring in the destruction of a most +righteous vengeance, the great themselves fleeing ignobly from the +land to which their selfishness, and heedlessness, and hatred of +improvement, and inhuman pride had been a curse, while the legion of +toilers with eyes blinded by the oppression of ages were groping with +passionate uncertain hand for that divine something which they thought +of as justice and right. And this was what Rousseau both partially +foresaw and helped to prepare,[98] while the common politicians, like +Choiseul or D'Aiguillon, played their poor game--the elemental forces +rising unseen into tempest around them. + +He reached the territory of the canton of Berne, and alighted at the +house of an old friend at Yverdun,[99] where native air, the beauty of +the spot, and the charms of the season, immediately repaired all +weariness and fatigue.[100] Friends at Geneva wrote letters of sincere +feeling, joyful that he had not followed the precedent of Socrates too +closely by remaining in the power of a government eager to destroy +him.[101] A post or two later brought worse news. The Council at +Geneva ordered not only Emilius, but the Social Contract also, to be +publicly burnt, and issued a warrant of arrest against their author, +if he should set foot in the territory of the republic (June +19).[102] Rousseau could hardly believe it possible that the free +Government which he had held up to the reverence of Europe, could have +condemned him unheard, but he took occasion in a highly characteristic +manner to chide severely a friend at Geneva who had publicly taken his +part.[103] Within a fortnight this blow was followed by another. His +two books were reported to the senate of Berne, and Rousseau was +informed by one of the authorities that a notification was on its way +admonishing him to quit the canton within the space of fifteen +days.[104] This stroke he avoided by flight to Motiers, a village in +the principality of Neuchatel (July 10), then part of the dominions of +the King of Prussia.[105] Rousseau had some antipathy to Frederick, +both because he had beaten the French, whom Rousseau loved, and +because his maxims and his conduct alike seemed to trample under foot +respect for the natural law and not a few human duties. He had +composed a verse to the effect that Frederick thought like a +philosopher and acted like a king, philosopher and king notoriously +being words of equally evil sense in his dialect. There was also a +passage in Emilius about Adrastus, King of the Daunians, which was +commonly understood to mean Frederick, King of the Prussians. Still +Rousseau was acute enough to know that mean passions usually only rule +the weak, and have little hold over the strong. He boldly wrote both +to the king and to Lord Marischal, the governor of the principality, +informing them that he was there, and asking permission to remain in +the only asylum left for him upon the earth.[106] He compared himself +loftily to Coriolanus among the Volscians, and wrote to the king in a +vein that must have amused the strong man. "I have said much ill of +you, perhaps I shall still say more; yet, driven from France, from +Geneva, from the canton of Berne, I am come to seek shelter in your +states. Perhaps I was wrong in not beginning there; this is eulogy of +which you are worthy. Sire, I have deserved no grace from you, and I +seek none, but I thought it my duty to inform your majesty that I am +in your power, and that I am so of set design. Your majesty will +dispose of me as shall seem good to you."[107] Frederick, though no +admirer of Rousseau or his writings,[108] readily granted the required +permission. He also, says Lord Marischal, "gave me orders to furnish +him his small necessaries if he would accept them; and though that +king's philosophy be very different from that of Jean Jacques, yet he +does not think that a man of an irreproachable life is to be +persecuted because his sentiments are singular. He designs to build +him a hermitage with a little garden, which I find he will not accept, +nor perhaps the rest, which I have not yet offered him."[109] When the +offer of the flour, wine, and firewood was at length made in as +delicate terms as possible, Rousseau declined the gift on grounds +which may raise a smile, but which are not without a rather touching +simplicity.[110] "I have enough to live on for two or three years," he +said, "but if I were dying of hunger, I would rather in the present +condition of your good prince, and not being of any service to him, go +and eat grass and grub up roots, than accept a morsel of bread from +him."[111] Hume might well call this a phenomenon in the world of +letters, and one very honourable for the person concerned.[112] And we +recognise its dignity the more when we contrast it with the baseness +of Voltaire, who drew his pension from the King of Prussia while +Frederick was in his most urgent straits, and while the poet was +sportively exulting to all his correspondents in the malicious +expectation that he would one day have to allow the King of Prussia +himself a pension.[113] And Rousseau was a poor man, living among the +poor and in their style. His annual outlay at this time was covered by +the modest sum of sixty louis.[114] What stamps his refusal of +Frederick's gifts as true dignity, is the fact that he not only did +not refuse money for any work done, but expected and asked for it. +Malesherbes at this very time begged him to collect plants for him. +Joyfully, replied Rousseau, "but as I cannot subsist without the aid +of my own labour, I never meant, in spite of the pleasure that it +might otherwise have been to me, to offer you the use of my time for +nothing."[115] In the same year, we may add, when the tremendous +struggle of the Seven Years' War was closing, the philosopher wrote a +second terse epistle to the king, and with this their direct +communication came to an end. "Sire, you are my protector and my +benefactor; I would fain repay you if I can. You wish to give me +bread; is there none of your own subjects in want of it? Take that +sword away from my sight, it dazzles and pains me. It has done its +work only too well; the sceptre is abandoned. Great is the career for +kings of your stuff, and you are still far from the term; time +presses, you have not a moment to lose. Fathom well your heart, O +Frederick! Can you dare to die without having been the greatest of +men? Would that I could see Frederick, the just and the redoubtable, +covering his states with multitudes of men to whom he should be a +father; then will J.J. Rousseau, the foe of kings, hasten to die at +the foot of his throne."[116] Frederick, strong as his interest was in +all curious persons who could amuse him, was too busy to answer this, +and Rousseau was not yet recognised as Voltaire's rival in power and +popularity. + +Motiers is one of the half-dozen decent villages standing in the flat +bottom of the Val de Travers, a widish valley that lies between the +gorges of the Jura and the Lake of Neuchatel, and is famous in our day +for its production of absinthe and of asphalt. The flat of the valley, +with the Reuss making a bald and colourless way through the midst of +it, is nearly treeless, and it is too uniform to be very pleasing. In +winter the climate is most rigorous, for the level is high, and the +surrounding hills admit the sun's rays late and cut them off early. +Rousseau's description, accurate and recognisable as it is,[117] +strikes an impartial tourist as too favourable. But when a piece of +scenery is a home to a man, he has an eye for a thousand outlines, +changes of light, soft variations of colour; the landscape lives for +him with an unspoken suggestion and intimate association, to all of +which the swift passing stranger is very cold. + +His cottage, which is still shown, was in the midst of the other +houses, and his walks, which were at least as important to him as the +home in which he dwelt, lay mostly among woody heights with streaming +cascades. The country abounded in natural curiosities of a humble +sort, and here that interest in plants which had always been strong in +him, began to grow into a passion. Rousseau had so curious a feeling +about them, that when in his botanical expeditions he came across a +single flower of its kind, he could never bring himself to pluck it. +His sight, though not good for distant objects, was of the very finest +for things held close; his sense of smell was so acute and subtle +that, according to a good witness, he might have classified plants by +odours, if language furnished as many names as nature supplies +varieties of fragrance.[118] He insisted in all botanising and other +walking excursions on going bareheaded, even in the heat of the +dog-days; he declared that the action of the sun did him good. When +the days began to turn, the summer was straightway at an end for him: +"My imagination," he said, in a phrase which went further through his +life than he supposed, "at once brings winter." He hated rain as much +as he loved sun, so he must once have lost all the mystic fascination +of the green Savoy lakes gleaming luminous through pale showers, and +now again must have lost the sombre majesty of the pines of his valley +dripping in torn edges of cloud, and all those other sights in +landscape that touch subtler parts of us than comforted sense. + +One of his favourite journeys was to Colombier, the summer retreat of +Lord Marischal. For him he rapidly conceived the same warm friendship +which he felt for the Duke of Luxembourg, whom he had just left. And +the sagacious, moderate, silent Scot had as warm a liking for the +strange refugee who had come to him for shelter, or shall we call it a +kind of shaggy compassion, as of a faithful inarticulate creature. His +letters, which are numerous enough, abound in expressions of hearty +good-will. These, if we reflect on the genuine worth, veracity, +penetration, and experience of the old man who wrote them, may fairly +be counted the best testimony that remains to the existence of +something sterling at the bottom of Rousseau's character.[119] It is +here no insincere fine lady of the French court, but a homely and +weather-beaten Scotchman, who speaks so often of his refugee's +rectitude of heart and true sensibility.[120] + +He insisted on being allowed to settle a small sum on Theresa, who +had joined Rousseau at Motiers, and in other ways he showed a true +solicitude and considerateness both for her and for him.[121] It was +his constant dream, that on his return to Scotland, Jean Jacques +should accompany him, and that with David Hume, they would make a trio +of philosophic hermits; that this was no mere cheery pleasantry is +shown by the pains he took in settling the route for the journey.[122] +The plan only fell through in consequence of Frederick's cordial +urgency that his friend should end his days with him; he returned to +Prussia and lived at Sans Souci until the close, always retaining +something of his good-will for "his excellent savage," as he called +the author of the Discourses. They had some common antipathies, +including the fundamental one of dislike to society, and especially to +the society of the people of Neuchatel, the Gascons of Switzerland. +"Rousseau is gay in company," Lord Marischal wrote to Hume, "polite, +and what the French call _aimable_, and gains ground daily in the +opinion of even the clergy here. His enemies elsewhere continue to +persecute him, and he is pestered with anonymous letters."[123] + +Some of these were of a humour that disclosed the master hand. +Voltaire had been universally suspected of stirring up the feeling of +Geneva against its too famous citizen,[124] though for a man of less +energy the affair of the Calas, which he was now in the thick of, +might have sufficed. Voltaire's letters at this time show how hard he +found it in the case of Rousseau to exercise his usual pity for the +unfortunate. He could not forget that the man who was now tasting +persecution had barked at philosophers and stage-plays; that he was a +false brother, who had fatuously insulted the only men who could take +his part; that he was a Judas who had betrayed the sacred cause.[125] +On the whole, however, we ought probably to accept his word, though +not very categorically given,[126] that he had nothing to do with the +action taken against Rousseau. That action is quite adequately +explained, first by the influence of the resident of France at Geneva, +which we know to have been exerted against the two fatal books,[127] +and second by the anxiety of the oligarchic party to keep out of their +town a man whose democratic tendencies they now knew so well and so +justly dreaded.[128] Moultou, a Genevese minister, in the full tide +of devotion and enthusiasm for the author of Emilius, met Voltaire at +the house of a lady in Geneva. All will turn out well, cried the +patriarch; "the syndics will say M. Rousseau, you have done ill to +write what you have written; promise for the future to respect the +religion of your country. Jean Jacques will promise, and perhaps he +will say that the printer took the liberty of adding a sheet or two to +his book." "Never," cried the ardent Moultou; "Jean Jacques never puts +his name to works to disown them after."[129] Voltaire disowned his +own books with intrepid and sustained mendacity, yet he bore no grudge +to Moultou for his vehemence. He sent for him shortly afterwards, +professed an extreme desire to be reconciled with Rousseau, and would +talk of nothing else. "I swear to you," wrote Moultou, "that I could +not understand him the least in the world; he is a marvellous actor; I +could have sworn that he loved you."[130] And there really was no +acting in it. The serious Genevese did not see that he was dealing +with "one all fire and fickleness, a child." + +Rousseau soon found out that he had excited not only the band of +professed unbelievers, but also the tormenting wasps of orthodoxy. The +doctors of the Sorbonne, not to be outdone in fervour for truth by the +lawyers of the parliament, had condemned Emilius as a matter of +course. In the same spirit of generous emulation, Christopher de +Beaumont, "by the divine compassion archbishop of Paris, Duke of Saint +Cloud, peer of France, commander of the order of the Holy Ghost," had +issued (Aug. 20, 1762) one of those hateful documents in which +bishops, Catholic and Protestant, have been wont for the last century +and a half to hide with swollen bombastic phrase their dead and +decomposing ideas. The windy folly of these poor pieces is usually in +proportion to the hierarchic rank of those who promulgate them, and an +archbishop owes it to himself to blaspheme against reason and freedom +in superlatives of malignant unction. Rousseau's reply (Nov. 18, 1762) +is a masterpiece of dignity and uprightness. Turning to it from the +mandate which was its provocative, we seem to grasp the hand of a man, +after being chased by a nightmare of masked figures. Rousseau never +showed the substantial quality of his character more surely and +unmistakably than in controversy. He had such gravity, such austere +self-command, such closeness of grip. Most of us feel pleasure in +reading the matchless banter with which Voltaire assailed his +theological enemies. Reading Rousseau's letter to De Beaumont we +realise the comparative lowness of the pleasure which Voltaire had +given us. We understand how it was that Rousseau made fanatics, while +Voltaire only made sceptics. At the very first words, the mitre, the +crosier, the ring, fall into the dust; the Archbishop of Paris, the +Duke of Saint Cloud, the peer of France, the commander of the Holy +Ghost, is restored from the disguises of his enchantment, and becomes +a human being. We hear the voice of a man hailing a man. Voltaire +often sank to the level of ecclesiastics. Rousseau raised the +archbishop to his own level, and with magnanimous courtesy addressed +him as an equal. "Why, my lord, have I anything to say to you? What +common tongue can we use? How are we to understand one another? And +what is there between me and you?" And he persevered in this distant +lofty vein, hardly permitting himself a single moment of acerbity. We +feel the ever-inspiring breath of seriousness and sincerity. This was +because, as we repeat so often, Rousseau's ideas, all engendered of +dreams as they were, yet lived in him and were truly rooted in his +character. He did not merely say, as any of us can say so fluently, +that he craved reality in human relations, that distinctions of rank +and post count for nothing, that our lives are in our own hands and +ought not to be blown hither and thither by outside opinion and words +heedlessly scattered; that our faith, whatever it may be, is the most +sacred of our possessions, organic, indissoluble, self-sufficing; that +our passage across the world, if very short, is yet too serious to be +wasted in frivolous disrespect for ourselves, and angry disrespect for +others. All this was actually his mind. And hence the little +difficulty he had in keeping his retort to the archbishop, as to his +other antagonists, on a worthy level. + +Only once or twice does his sense of the reckless injustice with which +he had been condemned, and of the persecution which was inflicted on +him by one government after another, stir in him a blaze of high +remonstrance. "You accuse me of temerity," he cried; "how have I +earned such a name, when I only propounded difficulties, and even that +with so much reserve; when I only advanced reasons, and even that with +so much respect; when I attacked no one, nor even named one? And you, +my lord, how do you dare to reproach with temerity a man of whom you +speak with such scanty justice and so little decency, with so small +respect and so much levity? You call me impious, and of what impiety +can you accuse me--me who never spoke of the Supreme Being except to +pay him the honour and glory that are his due, nor of man except to +persuade all men to love one another? The impious are those who +unworthily profane the cause of God by making it serve the passions of +men. The impious are those who, daring to pass for the interpreters of +divinity, and judges between it and man, exact for themselves the +honours that are due to it only. The impious are those who arrogate to +themselves the right of exercising the power of God upon earth, and +insist on opening and shutting the gates of heaven at their own good +will and pleasure. The impious are those who have libels read in the +church. At this horrible idea my blood is enkindled, and tears of +indignation fall from my eyes. Priests of the God of peace, you shall +render an account one day, be very sure, of the use to which you have +dared to put his house.... My lord, you have publicly insulted me: +you are now convicted of heaping calumny upon me. If you were a +private person like myself, so that I could cite you before an +equitable tribunal, and we could both appear before it, I with my +book, and you with your mandate, assuredly you would be declared +guilty; you would be condemned to make reparation as public as the +wrong was public. But you belong to a rank that relieves you from the +necessity of being just, and I am nothing. Yet you who profess the +gospel, you, a prelate appointed to teach others their duty, you know +what your own duty is in such a case. Mine I have done: I have nothing +more to say to you, and I hold my peace."[131] + +The letter was as good in dialectic as it was in moral tone. For this +is a little curious, that Rousseau, so diffuse in expounding his +opinions, and so unscientific in his method of coming to them, should +have been one of the keenest and most trenchant of the +controversialists of a very controversial time. Some of his strokes in +defence of his first famous assault on civilisation are as hard, as +direct, and as effective as any in the records of polemical +literature. We will give one specimen from the letter to the +Archbishop of Paris; it has the recommendation of touching an argument +that is not yet quite universally recognised for slain. The Savoyard +Vicar had dwelt on the difficulty of accepting revelation as the voice +of God, on account of the long distance of time between us, and the +questionableness of the supporting testimony. To which the archbishop +thus:--"But is there not then an infinity of facts, even earlier than +those of the Christian revelation, which it would be absurd to doubt? +By what way other than that of human testimony has our author himself +known the Sparta, the Athens, the Rome, whose laws, manners, and +heroes he extols with such assurance? How many generations of men +between him and the historians who have preserved the memory of these +events?" First, says Rousseau in answer, "it is in the order of things +that human circumstances should be attested by human evidence, and +they can be attested in no other way. I can only know that Rome and +Sparta existed, because contemporaries assure me that they existed. In +such a case this intermediate communication is indispensable. But why +is it necessary between God and me? Is it simple or natural that God +should have gone in search of Moses to speak to Jean Jacques Rousseau? +Second, nobody is obliged to believe that Sparta once existed, and +nobody will be devoured by eternal flames for doubting it. Every fact +of which we are not witnesses is only established by moral proofs, and +moral proofs have various degrees of strength. Will the divine justice +hurl me into hell for missing the exact point at which a proof becomes +irresistible? If there is in the world an attested story, it is that +of vampires; nothing is wanting for judicial proof,--reports and +certificates from notables, surgeons, clergy, magistrates. But who +believes in vampires, and shall we all be damned for not believing? +Third, _my constant experience and that of all men is stronger in +reference to prodigies than the testimony of some men_." + +He then strikes home with a parable. The Abbe Paris had died in the +odour of Jansenist sanctity (1727), and extraordinary doings went on +at his tomb; the lame walked, men and women sick of the palsy were +made whole, and so forth. Suppose, says Rousseau, that an inhabitant +of the Rue St. Jacques speaks thus to the Archbishop of Paris, "My +lord, I know that you neither believe in the beatitude of St. Jean de +Paris, nor in the miracles which God has been pleased publicly to work +upon his tomb in the sight of the most enlightened and most populous +city in the world; but I feel bound to testify to you that I have just +seen the saint in person raised from the dead in the spot where his +bones were laid." The man of the Rue St. Jacques gives all the detail +of such a circumstance that could strike a beholder. "I am persuaded +that on hearing such strange news, you will begin by interrogating him +who testifies to its truth, as to his position, his feelings, his +confessor, and other such points; and when from his air, as from his +speech, you have perceived that he is a poor workman, and when having +no confessional ticket to show you, he has confirmed your notion that +he is a Jansenist, Ah, ah, you will say to him, you are a +convulsionary, and have seen Saint Paris resuscitated. There is +nothing wonderful in that; you have seen so many other wonders!" The +man would insist that the miracle had been seen equally by a number of +other people, who though Jansenists, it is true, were persons of sound +sense, good character, and excellent reputation. Some would send the +man to Bedlam, "but you after a grave reprimand, will be content with +saying: I know that two or three witnesses, good people and of sound +sense, may attest the life or the death of a man, but I do not know +how many more are needed to establish the resurrection of a Jansenist. +Until I find that out, go, my son, and try to strengthen your brain: I +give you a dispensation from fasting, and here is something for you to +make your broth with. That is what you would say, and what any other +sensible man would say in your place. Whence I conclude that even +according to you and to every other sensible man, the moral proofs +which are sufficient to establish facts that are in the order of moral +possibilities, are not sufficient to establish facts of another order +and purely supernatural."[132] + +Perhaps, however, the formal denunciation by the Archbishop of Paris +was less vexatious than the swarming of the angrier hive of ministers +at his gates. "If I had declared for atheism," he says bitterly, "they +would at first have shrieked, but they would soon have left me in +peace like the rest. The people of the Lord would not have kept watch +over me; everybody would not have thought he was doing me a high +favour in not treating me as a person cut off from communion, and I +should have been quits with all the world. The holy women in Israel +would not have written me anonymous letters, and their charity would +not have breathed devout insults. They would not have taken the +trouble to assure me in all humility of heart that I was a castaway, +an execrable monster, and that the world would have been well off if +some good soul had been at the pains to strangle me in my cradle. +Worthy people on their side would not torment themselves and torment +me to bring me back to the way of salvation; they would not charge at +me from right and left, nor stifle me under the weight of their +sermons, nor force me to bless their zeal while I cursed their +importunity, nor to feel with gratitude that they are obeying a call +to lay me in my very grave with weariness."[133] + +He had done his best to conciliate the good opinion of his vigilant +neighbours. Their character for contentious orthodoxy was well known. +It was at Neuchatel that the controversy as to the eternal punishment +of the wicked raged with a fury that ended in a civil outbreak. The +peace of the town was violently disturbed, ministers were suspended, +magistrates were interdicted, life was lost, until at last Frederick +promulgated his famous bull:--"Let the parsons who make for themselves +a cruel and barbarous God, be eternally damned as they desire and +deserve; and let those parsons who conceive God gentle and merciful, +enjoy the plenitude of his mercy."[134] When Rousseau came within the +territory, preparations were made to imitate the action of Paris, +Geneva, and Berne. It was only the king's express permission that +saved him from a fourth proscription. The minister at Motiers was of +the less inhuman stamp, and Rousseau, feeling that he could not, +without failing in his engagements and his duty as a citizen, neglect +the public profession of the faith to which he had been restored eight +years before, attended the religious services with regularity. He even +wrote to the pastor a letter in vindication of his book, and +protesting the sincerity of his union with the reformed +congregation.[135] The result of this was that the pastor came to tell +him how great an honour he held it to count such a member in his +flock, and how willing he was to admit him without further examination +to partake of the communion.[136] Rousseau went to the ceremony with +eyes full of tears and a heart swelling with emotion. We may respect +his mood as little or as much as we please, but it was certainly more +edifying than the sight of Voltaire going through the same rite, +merely to harass a priest and fill a bishop with fury. + +In all other respects he lived a harmless life during the three years +of his sojourn in the Val de Travers. As he could never endure what he +calls the inactive chattering of the parlour--people sitting in front +of one another with folded hands and nothing in motion except the +tongue--he learnt the art of making laces; he used to carry his pillow +about with him, or sat at his own door working like the women of the +village, and chatting with the passers-by. He made presents of his +work to young women about to marry, always on the condition that they +should suckle their children when they came to have them. If a little +whimsical, it was a harmless and respectable pastime. It is pleasanter +to think of a philosopher finding diversion in weaving laces, than of +noblemen making it the business of their lives to run after ribands. A +society clothed in breeches was incensed about the same time by +Rousseau's adoption of the Armenian costume, the vest, the furred +bonnet, the caftan, and the girdle. There was nothing very wonderful +in this departure from use. An Armenian tailor used often to visit +some friends at Montmorency. Rousseau knew him, and reflected that +such a dress would be of singular comfort to him in the circumstances +of his bodily disorder.[137] Here was a solid practical reason for +what has usually been counted a demonstration of a turned brain. +Rousseau had as good cause for going about in a caftan as Chatham had +for coming to the House of Parliament wrapped in flannel. Vanity and a +desire to attract notice may, we admit, have had something to do with +Rousseau's adoption of an uncommon way of dressing. Shrewd wits like +the Duke of Luxembourg and his wife did not suppose that it was so. +We, living a hundred years after, cannot possibly know whether it was +so or not, and our estimate of Rousseau's strange character would be +very little worth forming, if it only turned on petty singularities of +this kind. The foolish, equivocally gifted with the quality of +articulate speech, may, if they choose, satisfy their own self-love by +reducing all action out of the common course to a series of variations +on the same motive in others. Men blessed by the benignity of +experience will be thankful not to waste life in guessing evil about +unknowable trifles. + +During his stay at Motiers Rousseau's time was hardly ever his own. +Visitors of all nations, drawn either by respect for his work or by +curiosity to see a man who had been prescribed by so many governments, +came to him in throngs. His partisans at Geneva insisted on sending +people to convince themselves how good a man they were persecuting. "I +had never been free from strangers for six weeks," he writes. "Two +days after, I had a Westphalian gentleman and one from Genoa; six days +later, two persons from Zurich, who stayed a week; then a Genevese, +recovering from an illness, and coming for change of air, fell ill +again, and he has only just gone away."[138] One visitor, writing home +to his wife of the philosopher to whom he had come on a pilgrimage, +describes his manners in terms which perhaps touch us with +surprise:--"Thou hast no idea how charming his society is, what true +politeness there is in his manners, what a depth of serenity and +cheerfulness in his talk. Didst thou not expect quite a different +picture, and figure to thyself an eccentric creature, always grave and +sometimes even abrupt? Ah, what a mistake! To an expression of great +mildness he unites a glance of fire, and eyes of a vivacity the like +of which never was seen. When you handle any matter in which he takes +an interest, then his eyes, his lips, his hands, everything about him +speaks. You would be quite wrong to picture in him an everlasting +grumbler. Not at all; he laughs with those who laugh, he chats and +jokes with children, he rallies his housekeeper."[139] He was not so +civil to all the world, and occasionally turned upon his pursuers with +a word of most sardonic roughness.[140] But he could also be very +generous. We find him pressing a loan from his scanty store on an +outcast adventurer, and warning him, "When I lend (which happens +rarely enough), 'tis my constant maxim never to count on repayment, +nor to exact it."[141] He received hundreds of letters, some seeking +an application of his views on education to a special case, others +craving further exposition of his religious doctrines. Before he had +been at Motiers nine months he had paid ten louis for the postage of +letters, which after all contained little more than reproaches, +insults, menaces, imbecilities.[142] + +Not the least curious of his correspondence at this time is that with +the Prince of Wuertemberg, then living near Lausanne.[143] The prince +had a little daughter four months old, and he was resolved that her +upbringing should be carried on as the author of Emilius might please +to direct. Rousseau replied courteously that he did not pretend to +direct the education of princes or princesses.[144] His undaunted +correspondent sent him full details of his babe's habits and +faculties, and continued to do so at short intervals, with the +fondness of a young mother or an old nurse. Rousseau was interested, +and took some trouble to draw up rules for the child's nurture and +admonition. One may smile now and then at the prince's ingenuous zeal, +but his fervid respect and devotion for the teacher in whom he thought +he had found the wisest man that ever lived, and who had at any rate +spoken the word that kindled the love of virtue and truth in him, his +eagerness to know what Rousseau thought right, and his equal eagerness +in trying to do it, his care to arrange his household in a simple and +methodical way to please his master, his discipular patience when +Rousseau told him that his verses were poor, or that he was too fond +of his wife,--all this is a little uncommon in a prince, and deserves +a place among the ample mass of other evidence of the power which +Rousseau's pictures of domestic simplicity and wise and humane +education had in the eighteenth century. It gives us a glimpse, close +and direct, of the naturalist revival reaching up into high places. +But the trade of philosopher in such times is perhaps an irksome one, +and Rousseau was the private victim of his public action. His prince +sent multitudes of Germans to visit the sage, and his letters, endless +with their details of the nursery, may well have become a little +tedious to a worn-out creature who only wanted to be left alone.[145] +The famous Prince Henry, Frederick's brother, thought a man happy who +could have the delight of seeing Rousseau as often as he chose.[146] +People forgot the other side of this delight, and the unlucky +philosopher found in a hundred ways alike from enemies and the friends +whose curiosity makes them as bad as enemies, that the pedestal of +glory partakes of the nature of the pillory or the stocks. + +It is interesting to find the famous English names of Gibbon and +Boswell in the list of the multitudes with whom he had to do at this +time.[147] The former was now at Lausanne, whither he had just +returned from that memorable visit to England which persuaded him that +his father would never endure his alliance with the daughter of an +obscure Swiss pastor. He had just "yielded to his fate, sighed as a +lover, and obeyed as a son." "How sorry I am for our poor Mademoiselle +Curchod," writes Moultou to Rousseau; "Gibbon whom she loves, and to +whom she has sacrificed, as I know, some excellent matches, has come +to Lausanne, but cold, insensible, and as entirely cured of his old +passion as she is far from cure. She has written me a letter that +makes my heart ache." He then entreats Rousseau to use his influence +with Gibbon, who is on the point of starting for Motiers, by extolling +to him the lady's worth and understanding.[148] "I hope Mr. Gibbon +will not come," replied the sage; "his coldness makes me think ill of +him. I have been looking over his book again [the _Essai sur l'etude +de la litterature_, 1761]; he runs after brilliance too much, and is +strained and stilted. Mr. Gibbon is not the man for me, and I do not +think he is the man for Mademoiselle Curchod either."[149] Whether +Gibbon went or not, we do not know. He knew in after years what had +been said of him by Jean Jacques, and protested with mild pomp that +this extraordinary man should have been less precipitate in +condemning the moral character and the conduct of a stranger.[150] + +Boswell, as we know, had left Johnson "rolling his majestic frame in +his usual manner" on Harwich beach in 1763, and was now on his +travels. Like many of his countrymen, he found his way to Lord +Marischal, and here his indomitable passion for making the personal +acquaintance of any one who was much talked about, naturally led him +to seek so singular a character as the man who was now at Motiers. +What Rousseau thought of one who was as singular a character as +himself in another direction, we do not know.[151] Lord Marischal +warned Rousseau that his visitor is of excellent disposition, but full +of visionary ideas, even having seen spirits--a serious proof of +unsoundness to a man who had lived in the very positive atmosphere of +Frederick's court at Berlin. "I only hope," says the sage Scot, of the +Scot who was not sage, "that he may not fall into the hands of people +who will turn his head: he was very pleased with the reception you +gave him."[152] As it happens, he was the means of sending Boswell to +a place where his head was turned, though not very mischievously. +Rousseau was at that time full of Corsican projects, of which this is +the proper place for us very briefly to speak. + +The prolonged struggles of the natives of Corsica to assert their +independence of the oppressive administration of the Genoese, which +had begun in 1729, came to end for a moment in 1755, when Paoli +(1726-1807) defeated the Genoese, and proceeded to settle the +government of the island. In the Social Contract Rousseau had said, +"There is still in Europe one country capable of legislation, and that +is the island of Corsica. The valour and constancy with which this +brave people has succeeded in recovering and defending its liberty, +entitle it to the good fortune of having some wise man to teach them +how to preserve it. I have a presentiment that this little isle will +one day astonish Europe,"[153]--a presentiment that in a sense came +true enough long after Rousseau was gone, in a man who was born on the +little island seven years later than the publication of this passage. +Some of the Corsican leaders were highly flattered, and in August +1764, Buttafuoco entered into correspondence with Rousseau for the +purpose of inducing him to draw up a set of political institutions and +a code of laws. Paoli himself was too shrewd to have much belief in +the application of ideal systems, and we are assured that he had no +intention of making Rousseau the Solon of his island, but only of +inducing him to inflame the gallantry of its inhabitants by writing a +history of their exploits.[154] Rousseau, however, did not understand +the invitation in this narrower sense. He replied that the very idea +of such a task as legislation transported his soul, and he entered +into it with the liveliest ardour. He resolved to quarter himself with +Theresa in a cottage in some lonely district in the island; in a year +he would collect the necessary information as to the manners and +opinions of the inhabitants, and three years afterwards he would +produce a set of institutions that should be fit for a free and +valorous people.[155] In the midst of this enthusiasm (May 1765) he +urged Boswell to visit Corsica, and gave him a letter to Paoli, with +results which we know in the shape of an Account of Corsica (1768), +and in a feverishness of imagination upon the subject for many a long +day afterwards. "Mind your own affairs," at length cried Johnson +sternly to him, "and leave the Corsicans to theirs; I wish you would +empty your head of Corsica."[156] At the end of 1765, the immortal +hero-worshipper on his return expected to come upon his hero at +Motiers, but finding that he was in Paris wrote him a wonderful letter +in wonderful French. "You will forget all your cares for many an +evening, while I tell you what I have seen. I owe you the deepest +obligation for sending me to Corsica. The voyage has done me +marvellous good. It has made me as if all the lives of Plutarch had +sunk into my soul.... I am devoted to the Corsicans heart and soul; if +you, illustrious Rousseau, the philosopher whom they have chosen to +help them by your lights to preserve and enjoy the liberty which they +have acquired with so much heroism--if you have cooled towards these +gallant islanders, why then I am sorry for you, that is all I can +say."[157] + +Alas, by this time the gallant islanders had been driven out of +Rousseau's mind by personal mishaps. First, Voltaire or some other +enemy had spread the rumour that the invitation to become the Lycurgus +of Corsica was a practical joke, and Rousseau's suspicious temper +found what he took for confirmation of this in some trifling incidents +with which we certainly need not concern ourselves.[158] Next, a very +real storm had burst upon him which drove him once more to seek a new +place of shelter, other than an island occupied by French troops. For +France having begun by despatching auxiliaries to the assistance of +the Genoese (1764), ended by buying the island from the Genoese +senate, with a sort of equity of redemption (1768)--an iniquitous +transaction, as Rousseau justly called it, equally shocking to +justice, humanity, reason, and policy.[159] Civilisation would have +been saved one of its sorest trials if Genoa could have availed +herself of her equity, and so have delivered France from the +acquisition of the most terrible citizen that ever scourged a +state.[160] + +The condemnation of Rousseau by the Council in 1762 had divided Geneva +into two camps, and was followed by a prolonged contention between his +partisans and his enemies. The root of the contention was political +rather than theological. To take Rousseau's side was to protest +against the oligarchic authority which had condemned him, and the +quarrel about Emilius was only an episode in the long war between the +popular and aristocratic parties. This strife, after coming to a +height for the first time in 1734, had abated after the pacification +of 1738, but the pacification was only effective for a time, and the +roots of division were still full of vitality. The lawfulness of the +authority and the regularity of the procedure by which Rousseau had +been condemned, offered convenient ground for carrying on the dispute, +and its warmth was made more intense by the suggestion on the popular +side that perhaps the religion of the book which the oligarchs had +condemned was more like Christianity than the religion of the +oligarchs who condemned it. + +Rousseau was too near the scene of the quarrel, too directly involved +in its issues, too constantly in contact with the people who were +engaged in it, not to feel the angry buzzings very close about his +ears. If he had been as collected and as self-possessed as he loved to +fancy, they would have gone for very little in the life of the day. +But Rousseau never stood on the heights whence a strong man surveys +with clear eye and firm soul the unjust or mean or furious moods of +the world. Such achievement is not hard for the creature who is +wrapped up in himself; who is careless of the passions of men about +him, because he thinks they cannot hurt him, and not because he has +measured them, and deliberately assigned them a place among the +elements in which a man's destiny is cast. It is only hard for one who +is penetrated by true interest in the opinion and action of his +fellows, thus to keep both sympathy warm and self-sufficience true. +The task was too hard for Rousseau, though his patience under long +persecution far surpassed that of any of the other oppressed teachers +of the time. In the spring of 1763 he deliberately renounced in all +due forms his rights of burgess-ship and citizenship in the city and +republic of Geneva.[161] And at length he broke forth against his +Genevese persecutors in the Letters from the Mountain (1764), a long +but extremely vigorous and adroit rejoinder to the pleas which his +enemies had put forth in Tronchin's Letters from the Country. If any +one now cares to satisfy himself how really unjust and illegal the +treatment was, which Rousseau received at the hands of the authorities +of his native city, he may do so by examining these most forcible +letters. The second part of them may interest the student of political +history by its account of the working of the institutions of the +little republic. We seem to be reading over again the history of a +Greek city; the growth of a wealthy class in face of an increasing +number of poor burgesses, the imposition of burdens in unfair +proportions upon the metoikoi, the gradual usurpation of legislative +and administrative function (including especially the judicial) by the +oligarchs, and the twisting of democratic machinery to oligarchic +ends; then the growth of staseis or violent factions, followed by +metabole or overthrow of the established constitution, ending in +foreign intervention. The Four Hundred at Athens would have treated +any Social Contract that should have appeared in their day, just as +sternly as the Two Hundred or the Twenty-five treated the Social +Contract that did appear, and for just the same reasons. + +Rousseau proved his case with redundancy of demonstration. A body of +burgesses had previously availed themselves (Nov. 1763) of a legal +right, and made a technical representation to the Lesser Council that +the laws had been broken in his case. The Council in return availed +itself of an equally legal right, its _droit negatif_, and declined to +entertain the representation, without giving any reasons. +Unfortunately for Rousseau's comfort, the ferment which his new +vindication of his cause stirred up, did not end with the condemnation +and burning of his manifesto. For the parliament of Paris ordered the +Letters from the Mountain to be burned, and the same decree and the +same faggot served for that and for Voltaire's Philosophical +Dictionary (April 1765).[162] It was also burned at the Hague (Jan. +22). An observer by no means friendly to the priests noticed that at +Paris it was not the fanatics of orthodoxy, but the encyclopaedists and +their flock, who on this occasion raised the storm and set the zeal of +the magistrates in motion.[163] The vanity and egoism of rationalistic +sects can be as fatal to candour, justice, and compassion as the +intolerant pride of the great churches. + +Persecution came nearer to Rousseau and took more inconvenient shapes +than this. A terrible libel appeared (Feb. 1765), full of the coarsest +calumnies. Rousseau, stung by their insolence and falseness, sent it +to Paris to be published there with a prefatory note, stating that it +was by a Genevese pastor whom he named. This landed him in fresh +mortification, for the pastor disavowed the libel, Rousseau declined +to accept the disavowal, and sensible men were wearied by acrimonious +declarations, explanations, protests.[164] Then the clergy of +Neuchatel were not able any longer to resist the opportunity of +inflicting such torments as they could, upon a heretic whom they might +more charitably have left to those ultimate and everlasting torments +which were so precious to their religious imagination. They began to +press the pastor of the village where Rousseau lived, and with whom he +had hitherto been on excellent terms. The pastor, though he had been +liberal enough to admit his singular parishioner to the communion, in +spite of the Savoyard Vicar, was not courageous enough to resist the +bigotry of the professional body to which he belonged. He warned +Rousseau not to present himself at the next communion. The philosopher +insisted that he had a right to do this, until formally cast out by +the consistory. The consistory, composed mainly of a body of peasants +entirely bound to their minister in matters of religion, cited him to +appear, and answer such questions as might test his loyalty to the +faith. Rousseau prepared a most deliberate vindication of all that he +had written, which he intended to speak to his rustic judges. The eve +of the morning on which he had to appear, he knew his discourse by +heart; when morning came he could not repeat two sentences. So he fell +back on the instrument over which he had more mastery than he had over +tongue or memory, and wrote what he wished to say. The pastor, in whom +irritated egoism was probably by this time giving additional heat to +professional zeal, was for fulminating a decree of excommunication, +but there appears to have been some indirect interference with the +proceedings of the consistory by the king's officials at Neuchatel, +and the ecclesiastical bolt was held back.[165] Other weapons were not +wanting. The pastor proceeded to spread rumours among his flock that +Rousseau was a heretic, even an atheist, and most prodigious of all, +that he had written a book containing the monstrous doctrine that +women have no souls. The pulpit resounded with sermons proving to the +honest villagers that antichrist was quartered in their parish in very +flesh. The Armenian apparel gave a high degree of plausibleness to +such an opinion, and as the wretched man went by the door of his +neighbours, he heard cursing and menace, while a hostile pebble now +and again whistled past his ear. His botanising expeditions were +believed to be devoted to search for noxious herbs, and a man who +died in the agonies of nephritic colic, was supposed to have been +poisoned by him.[166] If persons went to the post-office for letters +for him, they were treated with insult.[167] At length the ferment +against him grew hot enough to be serious. A huge block of stone was +found placed so as to kill him when he opened his door; and one night +an attempt was made to stone him in his house.[168] Popular hate shown +with this degree of violence was too much for his fortitude, and after +a residence of rather more than three years (September 8-10, 1765), he +fled from the inhospitable valley to seek refuge he knew not where. + +In his rambles of a previous summer he had seen a little island in the +lake of Bienne, which struck his imagination and lived in his memory. +Thither he now, after a moment of hesitation, turned his steps, with +something of the same instinct as draws a child towards a beam of the +sun. He forgot or was heedless of the circumstance that the isle of +St. Peter lay in the jurisdiction of the canton of Berne, whose +government had forbidden him their territory. Strong craving for a +little ease in the midst of his wretchedness extinguished thought of +jurisdictions and proscriptive decrees. + +The spot where he now found peace for a brief space usually +disappoints the modern hunter for the picturesque, who after wearying +himself with the follies of a capital seeks the most violent tonic +that he can find in the lonely terrors of glacier and peak, and sees +only tameness in a pygmy island, that offers nothing sublimer than a +high grassy terrace, some cool over-branching avenues, some mimic +vales, and meadows and vineyards sloping down to the sheet of blue +water at their feet. Yet, as one sits here on a summer day, with tired +mowers sleeping on their grass heaps in the sun, in a stillness +faintly broken by the timid lapping of the water in the sedge, or the +rustling of swift lizards across the heated sand, while the Bernese +snow giants line a distant horizon with mysterious solitary shapes, it +is easy to know what solace life in such a scene might bring to a man +distracted by pain of body and pain and weariness of soul. Rousseau +has commemorated his too short sojourn here in the most perfect of all +his compositions.[169] + + "I found my existence so charming, and led a life so + agreeable to my humour, that I resolved here to end my days. + My only source of disquiet was whether I should be allowed + to carry my project out. In the midst of the presentiments + that disturbed me, I would fain have had them make a + perpetual prison of my refuge, to confine me in it for all + the rest of my life. I longed for them to cut off all chance + and all hope of leaving it; to forbid me holding any + communication with the mainland, so that, knowing nothing + of what was going on in the world, I might have forgotten + the world's existence, and people might have forgotten mine + too. They only suffered me to pass two months in the island, + but I could have passed two years, two centuries, and all + eternity, without a moment's weariness, though I had not, + with my companion, any other society than that of the + steward, his wife, and their servants. They were in truth + honest souls and nothing more, but that was just what I + wanted.... Carried thither in a violent hurry, alone and + without a thing, I afterwards sent for my housekeeper, my + books, and my scanty possessions, of which I had the delight + of unpacking nothing, leaving my boxes and chests just as + they had come, and dwelling in the house where I counted on + ending my days, exactly as if it were an inn whence I must + needs set forth on the morrow. All things went so well, just + as they were, that to think of ordering them better were to + spoil them. One of my greatest joys was to leave my books + safely fastened up in their boxes, and to be without even a + case for writing. When any luckless letter forced me to take + up a pen for an answer, I grumblingly borrowed the steward's + inkstand, and hurried to give it back to him with all the + haste I could, in the vain hope that I should never have + need of the loan any more. Instead of meddling with those + weary quires and reams and piles of old books, I filled my + chamber with flowers and grasses, for I was then in my first + fervour for botany. Having given up employment that would be + a task to me, I needed one that would be an amusement, nor + cause me more pains than a sluggard might choose to take. I + undertook to make the _Flora petrinsularis_, and to describe + every single plant on the island, in detail enough to occupy + me for the rest of my days. In consequence of this fine + scheme, every morning after breakfast, which we all took in + company, I used to go with a magnifying glass in my hand and + my Systema Naturae under my arm, to visit some district of + the island. I had divided it for that purpose into small + squares, meaning to go through them one after another in + each season of the year. At the end of two or three hours I + used to return laden with an ample harvest, a provision for + amusing myself after dinner indoors, in case of rain. I + spent the rest of the morning in going with the steward, his + wife, and Theresa, to see the labourers and the harvesting, + and I generally set to work along with them; many a time + when people from Berne came to see me, they found me perched + on a high tree, with a bag fastened round my waist; I kept + filling it with fruit and then let it down to the ground + with a rope. The exercise I had taken in the morning and the + good humour that always comes from exercise, made the repose + of dinner vastly pleasant to me. But if dinner was kept up + too long, and fine weather invited me forth, I could not + wait, but was speedily off to throw myself all alone into a + boat, which, when the water was smooth enough, I used to + pull out to the middle of the lake. There, stretched at full + length in the boat's bottom, with my eyes turned up to the + sky, I let myself float slowly hither and thither as the + water listed, sometimes for hours together, plunged in a + thousand confused delicious musings, which, though they had + no fixed nor constant object, were not the less on that + account a hundred times dearer to me than all that I had + found sweetest in what they call the pleasures of life. + Often warned by the going down of the sun that it was time + to return, I found myself so far from the island that I was + forced to row with all my might to get in before it was + pitch dark. At other times, instead of losing myself in the + midst of the waters, I had a fancy to coast along the green + shores of the island, where the clear waters and cool + shadows tempted me to bathe. But one of my most frequent + expeditions was from the larger island to the less; there I + disembarked and spent my afternoon, sometimes in mimic + rambles among wild elders, persicaries, willows, and shrubs + of every species, sometimes settling myself on the top of a + sandy knoll, covered with turf, wild thyme, flowers, even + sainfoin and trefoil that had most likely been sown there in + old days, making excellent quarters for rabbits. They might + multiply in peace without either fearing anything or harming + anything. I spoke of this to the steward. He at once had + male and female rabbits brought from Neuchatel, and we went + in high state, his wife, one of his sisters, Theresa, and I, + to settle them in the little islet. The foundation of our + colony was a feast-day. The pilot of the Argonauts was not + prouder than I, as I bore my company and the rabbits in + triumph from our island to the smaller one.... + + When the lake was too rough for me to sail, I spent my + afternoon in going up and down the island, gathering plants + to right and left; seating myself now in smiling lonely + nooks to dream at my ease, now on little terraces and + knolls, to follow with my eyes the superb and ravishing + prospect of the lake and its shores, crowned on one side by + the neighbouring hills, and on the other melting into rich + and fertile plains up to the feet of the pale blue mountains + on their far-off edge. + + As evening drew on, I used to come down from the high ground + and sit on the beach at the water's brink in some hidden + sheltering place. There the murmur of the waves and their + agitation, charmed all my senses and drove every other + movement away from my soul; they plunged it into delicious + dreamings, in which I was often surprised by night. The flux + and reflux of the water, its ceaseless stir-swelling and + falling at intervals, striking on ear and sight, made up for + the internal movements which my musings extinguished; they + were enough to give me delight in mere existence, without + taking any trouble of thinking. From time to time arose some + passing thought of the instability of the things of this + world, of which the face of the waters offered an image; but + such light impressions were swiftly effaced in the + uniformity of the ceaseless motion, which rocked me as in a + cradle; it held me with such fascination that even when + called at the hour and by the signal appointed, I could not + tear myself away without summoning all my force. + + After supper, when the evening was fine, we used to go all + together for a saunter on the terrace, to breathe the + freshness of the air from the lake. We sat down in the + arbour, laughing, chatting, or singing some old song, and + then we went home to bed, well pleased with the day, and + only craving another that should be exactly like it on the + morrow.... + + All is in a continual flux upon the earth. Nothing in it + keeps a form constant and determinate; our affections, + fastening on external things, necessarily change and pass + just as they do. Ever in front of us or behind us, they + recall the past that is gone, or anticipate a future that in + many a case is destined never to be. There is nothing solid + to which the heart can fix itself. Here we have little more + than a pleasure that comes and passes away; as for the + happiness that endures, I cannot tell if it be so much as + known among men. There is hardly in the midst of our + liveliest delights a single instant when the heart could + tell us with real truth--"_I would this instant might last + for ever_." And how can we give the name of happiness to a + fleeting state that all the time leaves the heart unquiet + and void, that makes us regret something gone, or still long + for something to come? + + But if there is a state in which the soul finds a situation + solid enough to comport with perfect repose, and with the + expansion of its whole faculty, without need of calling back + the past, or pressing on towards the future; where time is + nothing for it, and the present has no ending; with no mark + for its own duration and without a trace of succession; + without a single other sense of privation or delight, of + pleasure or pain, of desire or apprehension, than this + single sense of existence--so long as such a state endures, + he who finds himself in it may talk of bliss, not with a + poor, relative, and imperfect happiness such as people find + in the pleasures of life, but with a happiness full, + perfect, and sufficing, that leaves in the soul no conscious + unfilled void. Such a state was many a day mine in my + solitary musings in the isle of St. Peter, either lying in + my boat as it floated on the water, or seated on the banks + of the broad lake, or in other places than the little isle + on the brink of some broad stream, or a rivulet murmuring + over a gravel bed. + + What is it that one enjoys in a situation like this? Nothing + outside of one's self, nothing except one's self and one's + own existence.... But most men, tossed as they are by + unceasing passion, have little knowledge of such a state; + they taste it imperfectly for a few moments, and then retain + no more than an obscure confused idea of it, that is too + weak to let them feel its charm. It would not even be good + in the present constitution of things, that in their + eagerness for these gentle ecstasies, they should fall into + a disgust for the active life in which their duty is + prescribed to them by needs that are ever on the increase. + But a wretch cut off from human society, who can do nothing + here below that is useful and good either for himself or for + other people, may in such a state find for all lost human + felicities many recompenses, of which neither fortune nor + men can ever rob him. + + 'Tis true that these recompenses cannot be felt by all + souls, nor in all situations. The heart must be in peace, + nor any passion come to trouble its calm. There must be in + the surrounding objects neither absolute repose nor excess + of agitation, but a uniform and moderated movement without + shock, without interval. With no movement, life is only + lethargy. If the movement be unequal or too strong, it + awakes us; by recalling us to the objects around, it + destroys the charm of our musing, and plucks us from within + ourselves, instantly to throw us back under the yoke of + fortune and man, in a moment to restore us to all the + consciousness of misery. Absolute stillness inclines one to + gloom. It offers an image of death: then the help of a + cheerful imagination is necessary, and presents itself + naturally enough to those whom heaven has endowed with such + a gift. The movement which does not come from without then + stirs within us. The repose is less complete, it is true; + but it is also more agreeable when light and gentle ideas, + without agitating the depths of the soul, only softly skim + the surface. This sort of musing we may taste whenever there + is tranquillity about us, and I have thought that in the + Bastile, and even in a dungeon where no object struck my + sight, I could have dreamed away many a thrice pleasurable + day. + + But it must be said that all this came better and more + happily in a fruitful and lonely island, where nothing + presented itself to me save smiling pictures, where nothing + recalled saddening memories, where the fellowship of the few + dwellers there was gentle and obliging, without being + exciting enough to busy me incessantly, where, in short, I + was free to surrender myself all day long to the promptings + of my taste or to the most luxurious indolence.... As I came + out from a long and most sweet musing fit, seeing myself + surrounded by verdure and flowers and birds, and letting my + eyes wander far over romantic shores that fringed a wide + expanse of water bright as crystal, I fitted all these + attractive objects into my dreams; and when at last I slowly + recovered myself and recognised what was about me, I could + not mark the point that cut off dream from reality, so + equally did all things unite to endear to me the lonely + retired life I led in this happy spot! Why can that life not + come back to me again? Why can I not go finish my days in + the beloved island, never to quit it, never again to see in + it one dweller from the mainland, to bring back to me the + memory of all the woes of every sort that they have + delighted in heaping on my head for all these long years?... + Freed from the earthly passions engendered by the tumult of + social life, my soul would many a time lift itself above + this atmosphere, and commune beforehand with the heavenly + intelligences, into whose number it trusts to be ere long + taken." + +The exquisite dream, thus set to words of most soothing music, came +soon to its end. The full and perfect sufficience of life was abruptly +disturbed. The government of Berne gave him notice to quit the island +and their territory within fifteen days. He represented to the +authorities that he was infirm and ill, that he knew not whither to +go, and that travelling in wintry weather would be dangerous to his +life. He even made the most extraordinary request that any man in +similar straits ever did make. "In this extremity," he wrote to their +representative, "I only see one resource for me, and however frightful +it may appear, I will adopt it, not only without repugnance, but with +eagerness, if their excellencies will be good enough to give their +consent. It is that it should please them for me to pass the rest of +my days in prison in one of their castles, or such other place in +their states as they may think fit to select. I will there live at my +own expense, and I will give security never to put them to any cost. I +submit to be without paper or pen, or any communication from without, +except so far as may be absolutely necessary, and through the channel +of those who shall have charge of me. Only let me have left, with the +use of a few books, the liberty to walk occasionally in a garden, and +I am content. Do not suppose that an expedient, so violent in +appearance, is the fruit of despair. My mind is perfectly calm at this +moment; I have taken time to think about it, and it is only after +profound consideration that I have brought myself to this decision. +Mark, I pray you, that if this seems an extraordinary resolution, my +situation is still more so. The distracted life that I have been made +to lead for several years without intermission would be terrible for a +man in full health; judge what it must be for a miserable invalid worn +down with weariness and misfortune, and who has now no wish save only +to die in a little peace."[170] + +That the request was made in all sincerity we may well believe. The +difference between being in prison and being out of it was really not +considerable to a man who had the previous winter been confined to his +chamber for eight months without a break.[171] In other respects the +world was as cheerless as any prison could be. He was an exile from +the only places he knew, and to him a land unknown was terrible. He +had thought of Vienna, and the Prince of Wuertemburg had sought the +requisite permission for him, but the priests were too strong in the +court of the house of Austria.[172] Madame d'Houdetot offered him a +resting-place in Normandy, and Saint Lambert in Lorraine.[173] He +thought of Potsdam. Rey, the printer, pressed him to go to Holland. He +wondered if he should have strength to cross the Alps and make his way +to Corsica. Eventually he made up his mind to go to Berlin, and he +went as far as Strasburg on his road thither.[174] Here he began to +fear the rude climate of the northern capital; he changed his plans, +and resolved to accept the warm invitations that he had received to +cross over to England. His friends used their interest to procure a +passport for him,[175] and the Prince of Conti offered him an +apartment in the privileged quarter of the Temple, on his way through +Paris. His own purpose seems to have been irresolute to the last, but +his friends acted with such energy and bustle on his behalf that the +English scheme was adopted, and he found himself in Paris (Dec. 17, +1765), on his way to London, almost before he had deliberately +realised what he was doing. It was a step that led him into many fatal +vexations, as we shall presently see. Meanwhile we may pause to +examine the two considerable books which had involved his life in all +this confusion and perplexity. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[94] June, 1762-December, 1765. + +[95] _Conf._, xi. 175. It is generally printed in the volume of his +works entitled _Melanges_. + +[96] _Corr._, iii. 416. + +[97] _Conf._, xi. 172. + +[98] For a remarkable anticipation of the ruin of France, see _Conf._, +xi. 136. + +[99] M. Roguin. June 14, 1762. + +[100] _Corr._, ii. 347. + +[101] Streckeisen, i. 35. + +[102] His friend Moultou wrote him the news, Streckeisen, i. 43. +Geneva was the only place at which the Social Contract was burnt. Here +there were peculiar reasons, as we shall see. + +[103] _Corr._, ii. 356. + +[104] _Ib._, ii. 358, 369, etc. + +[105] The principality of Neuchatel had fallen by marriage (1504) to +the French house of Orleans-Longueville, which with certain +interruptions retained it until the extinction of the line by the +death of Marie, Duchess of Nemours (1707). Fifteen claimants arose +with fifteen varieties of far-off title, as well as a party for +constituting Neuchatel a Republic and making it a fourteenth canton. +(Saint Simon, v. 276.) The Estates adjudged the sovereignty to the +Protestant house of Prussia (Nov. 3, 1707). Lewis XIV., as heir of the +pretensions of the extinct line, protested. Finally, at the peace of +Utrecht (1713), Lewis surrendered his claim in exchange for the +cession by Prussia of the Principality of Orange, and Prussia held it +until 1806. The disturbed history of the connection between Prussia +and Neuchatel from 1814, when it became the twenty-first canton of the +Swiss Confederation, down to 1857, does not here concern us. + +[106] _Corr._, ii. 370. + +[107] _Corr._, ii. 371. July 1762. + +[108] D'Alembert, who knew Frederick better than any of the +philosophers, to Voltaire, Nov. 22, 1765. + +[109] Letter to Hume; Burton's _Life of Hume_, ii. 105, corroborating +_Conf._, xii. 196. + +[110] Marischal to J.J.R.; Streckeisen, ii. 70. + +[111] _Corr._, iii. 40. Nov. 1, 1762. + +[112] Burton's _Life_, ii. 113. + +[113] Voltaire's _Corr._ (1758). _Oeuv._, lxxv. pp. 31 and 80. + +[114] _Conf._, xii. 237. + +[115] _Corr._, iii. 41. Nov. 11, 1762. + +[116] _Corr._, iii. 38. Oct. 30, 1762. + +[117] _Ib._, iii. 110-115. Jan. 28, 1763. + +[118] Bernardin de St. Pierre, xii. 103, 59, etc. + +[119] George Keith (1685-1778) was elder brother of Frederick's famous +field-marshal, James Keith. They had taken part in the Jacobite rising +of 1715, and fled abroad on its failure. James Keith brought his +brother into the service of the King of Prussia, who sent him as +ambassador to Paris (1751), afterwards made him Governor of Neuchatel +(1754), and eventually prevailed on the English Government to +reinstate him in the rights which he had forfeited by his share in the +rebellion (1763). + +[120] Streckeisen, ii. 98, etc. + +[121] One of Rousseau's chief distresses hitherto arose from the +indigence in which Theresa would be placed in case of his death. Rey, +the bookseller, gave her an annuity of about L16 a year, and Lord +Marischal's gift seems to have been 300 louis, the only money that +Rousseau was ever induced to accept from any one in his life. See +Streckeisen, ii. 99; _Corr._, iii. 336. The most delicate and sincere +of the many offers to provide for Theresa was made by Madame de +Verdelin (Streckeisen, ii. 506). The language in which Madame de +Verdelin speaks of Theresa in all her letters is the best testimony to +character that this much-abused creature has to produce. + +[122] _Ib._, 90, 92, etc. Summer of 1763. + +[123] Burton's _Life of Hume_, ii. 105. Oct. 2, 1762. + +[124] The Confessions are not our only authority for this. See +Streckeisen, ii. 64; also D'Alembert to Voltaire, Sept. 8, 1762. + +[125] Voltaire's _Corr._ _Oeuv._, lxvii. 458, 459, 485, etc. + +[126] To D'Alembert, Sept. 15, 1762. + +[127] Moultou to Rousseau, Streckeisen, i. 85, 87. + +[128] Moultou to Rousseau, Streckeisen, i. 85, 87. + +[129] Streckeisen, i. 50. + +[130] _Ib._, i. 76. + +[131] _Lettre a Christophe de Beaumont_, pp. 163-166. + +[132] _Lettre a Christophe de Beaumont_, pp. 130-135. + +[133] _Lettre a Christophe de Beaumont_, p. 93. + +[134] Carlyle's _Frederick_, Bk. xxi. ch. iv. Rousseau, _Corr._, iii. +102. + +[135] _Corr._, iii. 57. Nov. 1762. To M. Montmollin. + +[136] _Conf._, xii. 206. + +[137] _Conf._, xii. 198. + +[138] _Corr._, iii. 295. Dec. 25, 1763. + +[139] Quoted in Musset-Pathay, ii. 500. + +[140] For instance, _Corr._, iii. 249. + +[141] _Ib._, iii. 364, 381. + +[142] _Corr._, iii. 181-186, etc. + +[143] Prince Lewis Eugene, son of Charles Alexander (reigning duke +from 1733 to 1737); a younger brother of Charles Eugene, known as +Schiller's Duke of Wuertemberg, who reigned up to 1793. Frederick +Eugene, known in the Seven Years' War, was another brother. Rousseau's +correspondent became reigning duke in 1793, but only lived a year and +a half afterwards. + +[144] _Corr._, iii. 250. Sept. 29, 1763. + +[145] The prince's letters are given in the Streckeisen collection, +vol. ii. + +[146] Streckeisen, ii. 202. + +[147] Possibly Wilkes also; _Corr._, iv. 200. + +[148] Streckeisen, i. 89. June 1, 1763. + +[149] _Corr._, iii. 202. June 4, 1763. + +[150] _Memoirs of my Life_, p. 55, _n._ (Ed. 1862). Necker +(1732-1804), whom Mdlle. Curchod ultimately married, was an eager +admirer of Rousseau. "Ah, how close the tender, humane, and virtuous +soul of Julie," he wrote to her author, "has brought me to you. How +the reading of those letters gratified me! how many good emotions did +they stir or fortify! How many sublimities in a thousand places in +these six volumes; not the sublimity that perches itself in the +clouds, but that which pushes everyday virtues to their highest +point," and so on. Feb. 16, 1761. Streckeisen, i. 333. + +[151] Boswell's name only occurs twice in Rousseau's letters, I +believe; once (_Corr._, iv. 394) as the writer of a letter which Hume +was suspected of tampering with, and previously (iv. 70) as the bearer +of a letter. See also Streckeisen, i. 262. + +[152] Streckeisen, ii. 111. Jan. 18, 1765. + +[153] Bk. ii. ch. x. + +[154] Boswell's _Account of Corsica_, p. 367. + +[155] The correspondence between Rousseau and Buttafuoco has been +published in the _Oeuvres et Corr. Inedites de J.J.R._, 1861. See pp. +35, 43, etc. + +[156] Boswell's _Life_, 179, 193, etc. (Ed. 1866). + +[157] _"Je suis tout homme de pouvoir vous regarder avec pitie!"_ +Letter dated Jan. 4, 1766, and given by Musset-Pathay as from a Scotch +lord, unnamed. Boswell had the honour of conducting Theresa to +England, after Hume had taken Rousseau over. "This young gentleman," +writes Hume, "very good-humoured, very agreeable, and very mad--has +such a rage for literature that I dread some circumstance fatal to our +friend's honour. You remember the story of Terentia, who was first +married to Cicero, then to Sallust, and at last in her old age married +a young nobleman, who imagined that she must possess some secret which +would convey to him eloquence and genius." Burton's _Life_, ii. 307, +308. Boswell mentions that he met Rousseau in England (_Account of +Corsica_, p. 340), and also gives Rousseau's letter introducing him to +Paoli (p. 266). + +[158] To Buttafuoco, p. 48, etc. + +[159] _Corr._, vi. 176. Feb. 26, 1770. + +[160] It may be worth noticing, as a link between historic personages, +that Napoleon Bonaparte's first piece was a _Lettre a Matteo +Buttafuoco_ (1791), the same Buttafuoco with whom Rousseau +corresponded, who had been Choiseul's agent in the union of the island +to France, was afterwards sent as deputy to the Constituent, and +finally became the bitterest enemy of Paoli and the patriotic party. + +[161] _Corr._, iii. 190. To the First Syndic, May 12, 1763. + +[162] Grimm's _Corr. Lit._, iv. 235. For Rousseau's opinion of his +book's companion at the stake, see _Corr._, iii. 442. + +[163] Streckeisen, ii. 526. + +[164] There appears to be no doubt that Rousseau was wrong in +attributing to Vernes the _Sentimens des Citoyens_. + +[165] _Corr._, iv. 116, 122 (April 1765), 165-196 (August); also +_Conf._, xii. 245. + +[166] Note to M. Auguis's edition, _Corr._, v. 395. + +[167] _Corr._, iv. 204. + +[168] _Conf._, xii. 259. This lapidation has sometimes been doubted, +and treated as an invention of Rousseau's morbid suspicion. The +official documents prove that his account was substantially true (see +Musset-Pathay, ii. 559.) + +[169] The fifth of the _Reveries_. See also _Conf._, 262-279, and +_Corr._, iv. 206-224. His stay in the island was from the second week +in September down to the last in October, 1765. + +[170] _Corr._, iv. 221. Oct. 20, 1765. + +[171] _Ib._, iv. 136, etc. April 27, 1765. + +[172] Streckeisen-Moultou, ii. 209, 212. + +[173] _Ib._, ii. 554. + +[174] He arrived at Strasburg on the 2d or 3d of November, left it +about the end of the first week in December, and arrived in Paris on +the 16th of December 1765. A sort of apocryphal tradition is said to +linger in the island about Rousseau's last evening on the island, how +after supper he called for a lute, and sang some passably bad verses. +See M. Bougy's _J.J. Rousseau_, p. 179 (Paris: 1853.) + +[175] Madame de Verdelin to J.J.R. Streckeisen, ii. 532. The minister +even expressed his especial delight at being able to serve Rousseau, +so little seriousness was there now in the formalities of absolution. +_Ib._ 547. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +THE SOCIAL CONTRACT. + + +The dominant belief of the best minds of the latter half of +the eighteenth century was a passionate faith in the illimitable +possibilities of human progress. Nothing short of a general overthrow +of the planet could in their eyes stay the ever upward movement of +human perfectibility. They differed as to the details of the +philosophy of government which they deduced from this philosophy of +society, but the conviction that a golden era of tolerance, +enlightenment, and material prosperity was close at hand, belonged to +them all. Rousseau set his face the other way. For him the golden era +had passed away from our globe many centuries ago. Simplicity had fled +from the earth. Wisdom and heroism had vanished from out of the minds +of leaders. The spirit of citizenship had gone from those who should +have upheld the social union in brotherly accord. The dream of human +perfectibility which nerved men like Condorcet, was to Rousseau a sour +and fantastic mockery. The utmost that men could do was to turn their +eyes to the past, to obliterate the interval, to try to walk for a +space in the track of the ancient societies. They would hardly +succeed, but endeavour might at least do something to stay the plague +of universal degeneracy. Hence the fatality of his system. It placed +the centre of social activity elsewhere than in careful and rational +examination of social conditions, and in careful and rational effort +to modify them. As we began by saying, it substituted a retrograde +aspiration for direction, and emotion for the discovery of law. We can +hardly wonder, when we think of the intense exaltation of spirit +produced both by the perfectibilitarians and the followers of +Rousseau, and at the same time of the political degradation and +material disorder of France, that so violent a contrast between the +ideal and the actual led to a great volcanic outbreak. Alas, the +crucial difficulty of political change is to summon new force without +destroying the sound parts of a structure which it has taken so many +generations to erect. The Social Contract is the formal denial of the +possibility of successfully overcoming the difficulty. + +"Although man deprives himself in the civil state of many advantages +which he holds from nature, yet he acquires in return others so great, +his faculties exercise and develop themselves, his ideas extend, his +sentiments are ennobled, his whole soul is raised to such a degree, +that if the abuses of this new condition did not so often degrade him +below that from which he has emerged, he would be bound to bless +without ceasing the happy moment which rescued him from it for ever, +and out of a stupid and blind animal made an intelligent being and a +man."[176] The little parenthesis as to the frequent degradation +produced by the abuses of the social condition, does not prevent us +from recognising in the whole passage a tolerably complete surrender +of the main position which was taken up in the two Discourses. The +short treatise on the Social Contract is an inquiry into the just +foundations and most proper form of that very political society, which +the Discourses showed to have its foundation in injustice, and to be +incapable of receiving any form proper for the attainment of the full +measure of human happiness. + +Inequality in the same way is no longer denounced, but accepted and +defined. Locke's influence has begun to tell. The two principal +objects of every system of legislation are declared to be liberty and +equality. By equality we are warned not to understand that the degrees +of power and wealth should be absolutely the same, but that in respect +of power, such power should be out of reach of any violence, and be +invariably exercised in virtue of the laws; and in respect of riches, +that no citizen should be wealthy enough to buy another, and none poor +enough to sell himself. Do you say this equality is a mere chimera? It +is precisely because the force of things is constantly tending to +destroy equality, that the force of legislation ought as constantly to +be directed towards upholding it.[177] This is much clearer than the +indefinite way of speaking which we have already noticed in the second +Discourse. It means neither more nor less than that equality before +the law which is one of the elementary marks of a perfectly free +community. + +The idea of the law being constantly directed to counteract the +tendencies to violent inequalities in material possessions among +different members of a society, is too vague to be criticised. Does it +cover and warrant so sweeping a measure as the old _seisachtheia_ of +Solon, voiding all contracts in which the debtor had pledged his land +or his person; or such measures as the agrarian laws of Licinius and +the Gracchi? Or is it to go no further than to condemn such a law as +that which in England gives unwilled lands to the eldest son? We can +only criticise accurately a general idea of this sort in connection +with specific projects in which it is applied. As it stands, it is no +more than the expression of what the author thinks a wise principle of +public policy. It assumes the existence of property just as completely +as the theory of the most rigorous capitalist could do; it gives no +encouragement, as the Discourse did, to the notion of an equality in +being without property. There is no element of communism in a +principle so stated, but it suggests a social idea, based on the moral +claim of men to have equality of opportunity. This ideal stamped +itself on the minds of Robespierre and the other revolutionary +leaders, and led to practical results in the sale of the Church and +other lands in small lots, so as to give the peasant a market to buy +in. The effect of the economic change thus introduced happened to work +in the direction in which Rousseau pointed, for it is now known that +the most remarkable and most permanent of the consequences of the +revolution in the ownership of land was the erection, between the two +extreme classes of proprietors, of an immense body of middle-class +freeholders. This state is not equality, but gradation, and there is +undoubtedly an immense difference between the two. Still its origin is +an illustration on the largest scale in history of the force of +legislation being exerted to counteract an irregularity that had +become unbearable.[178] + +Notwithstanding the disappearance of the more extravagant elements of +the old thesis, the new speculation was far from being purged of the +fundamental errors that had given such popularity to its predecessors. +"If the sea," he says in one place, "bathes nothing but inaccessible +rocks on your coasts, remain barbarous ichthyophagi; you will live all +the more tranquilly for it, better perhaps, and assuredly more +happily."[179] Apart from an outburst like this, the central idea +remained the same, though it was approached from another side and with +different objects. The picture of a state of nature had lost none of +its perilous attraction, though it was hung in a slightly changed +light. It remained the starting-point of the right and normal +constitution of civil society, just as it had been the starting-point +of the denunciation of civil society as incapable of right +constitution, and as necessarily and for ever abnormal. Equally with +the Discourses, the Social Contract is a repudiation of that historic +method which traces the present along a line of ascertained +circumstances, and seeks an improved future in an unbroken +continuation of that line. The opening words, which sent such a thrill +through the generation to which they were uttered in two continents, +"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains," tell us at the +outset that we are as far away as ever from the patient method of +positive observation, and as deeply buried as ever in deducing +practical maxims from a set of conditions which never had any other +than an abstract and phantasmatic existence. How is a man born free? +If he is born into isolation, he perishes instantly. If he is born +into a family, he is at the moment of his birth committed to a state +of social relation, in however rudimentary a form; and the more or +less of freedom which this state may ultimately permit to him, depends +upon circumstances. Man was hardly born free among Romans and +Athenians, when both law and public opinion left a father at perfect +liberty to expose his new-born infant. And the more primitive the +circumstances, the later the period at which he gains freedom. A child +was not born free in the early days of the Roman state, when the +_patria potestas_ was a vigorous reality. Nor, to go yet further back, +was he born free in the times of the Hebrew patriarchs, when Abraham +had full right of sacrificing his son, and Jephthah of sacrificing his +daughter. + +But to speak thus is to speak what we do know. Rousseau was not open +to such testimony. "My principles," he said in contempt of Grotius, +"are not founded on the authority of poets; they come from the nature +of things and are based on reason."[180] He does indeed in one place +express his reverence for the Judaic law, and administers a just +rebuke to the philosophic arrogance which saw only successful +impostors in the old legislators.[181] But he paid no attention to +the processes and usages of which this law was the organic expression, +nor did he allow himself to learn from it the actual conditions of the +social state which accepted it. It was Locke, whose essay on civil +government haunts us throughout the Social Contract, who had taught +him that men are born free, equal, and independent. Locke evaded the +difficulty of the dependence of childhood by saying that when the son +comes to the estate that made his father a free man, he becomes a free +man too.[182] What of the old Roman use permitting a father to sell +his son three times? In the same metaphysical spirit Locke had laid +down the absolute proposition that "conjugal society is made by a +voluntary compact between man and woman."[183] This is true of a small +number of western societies in our own day, but what of the primitive +usages of communal marriages, marriages by capture, purchase, and the +rest? We do not mean it as any discredit to writers upon government in +the seventeenth century that they did not make good out of their own +consciousness the necessary want of knowledge about primitive +communities. But it is necessary to point out, first, that they did +not realise all the knowledge within their reach, and next that, as a +consequence of this, their propositions had a quality that vitiated +all their speculative worth. Filmer's contention that man is not +naturally free was truer than the position of Locke and Rousseau, and +it was so because Filmer consulted and appealed to the most authentic +of the historic records then accessible.[184] + +It is the more singular that Rousseau should have thus deliberately +put aside all but the most arbitrary and empirical historical lessons, +and it shows the extraordinary force with which men may be mastered by +abstract prepossessions, even when they have a partial knowledge of +the antidote; because Rousseau in several places not only admits, but +insists upon, the necessity of making institutions relative to the +state of the community, in respect of size, soil, manners, occupation, +morality, character. "It is in view of such relations as these that we +must assign to each people a particular system, which shall be the +best, not perhaps in itself, but for the state for which it is +destined."[185] In another place he calls attention to manners, +customs, above all to opinion, as the part of a social system on which +the success of all the rest depends; particular rules being only the +arching of the vault, of which manners, though so much tardier in +rising, form a key-stone that can never be disturbed.[186] This was +excellent so far as it went, but it was one of the many great truths, +which men may hold in their minds without appreciating their full +value. He did not see that these manners, customs, opinions, have old +roots which must be sought in a historic past; that they are connected +with the constitution of human nature, and that then in turn they +prepare modifications of that constitution. His narrow, symmetrical, +impatient humour unfitted him to deal with the complex tangle of the +history of social growths. It was essential to his mental comfort that +he should be able to see a picture of perfect order and logical system +at both ends of his speculation. Hence, he invented, to begin with, +his ideal state of nature, and an ideal mode of passing from that to +the social state. He swept away in his imagination the whole series of +actual incidents between present and past; and he constructed a system +which might be imposed upon all societies indifferently by a +legislator summoned for that purpose, to wipe out existing uses, laws, +and institutions, and make afresh a clear and undisturbed beginning of +national life. The force of habit was slowly and insensibly to be +substituted for that of the legislator's authority, but the existence +of such habits previously as forces to be dealt with, and the +existence of certain limits of pliancy in the conditions of human +nature and social possibility, are facts of which the author of the +Social Contract takes not the least account. + +Rousseau knew hardly any history, and the few isolated pieces of old +fact which he had picked up in his very slight reading were exactly +the most unfortunate that a student in need of the historic method +could possibly have fallen in with. The illustrations which are +scantily dispersed in his pages,--and we must remark that they are no +more than illustrations for conclusions arrived at quite independently +of them, and not the historical proof and foundations of his +conclusions,--are nearly all from the annals of the small states of +ancient Greece, and from the earlier times of the Roman republic. We +have already pointed out to what an extent his imagination was struck +at the time of his first compositions by the tale of Lycurgus. The +influence of the same notions is still paramount. The hopelessness of +giving good laws to a corrupt people is supposed to be demonstrated by +the case of Minos, whose legislation failed in Crete because the +people for whom he made laws were sunk in vices; and by the further +example of Plato, who refused to give laws to the Arcadians and +Cyrenians, knowing that they were too rich and could never suffer +equality.[187] The writer is thinking of Plato's Laws, when he says +that just as nature has fixed limits to the stature of a well-formed +man, outside of which she produces giants and dwarfs, so with +reference to the best constitution for a state, there are bounds to +its extent, so that it may be neither too large to be capable of good +government, nor too small to be independent and self-sufficing. The +further the social bond is extended, the more relaxed it becomes, and +in general a small state is proportionally stronger than a large +one.[188] In the remarks with which he proceeds to corroborate this +position, we can plainly see that he is privately contrasting an +independent Greek community with the unwieldy oriental monarchy +against which at one critical period Greece had to contend. He had +never realised the possibility of such forms of polity as the Roman +Empire, or the half-federal dominion of England which took such +enormous dimensions in his time, or the great confederation of states +which came to birth two years before he died. He was the servant of +his own metaphor, as the Greek writers so often were. His argument +that a state must be of a moderate size because the rightly shapen man +is neither dwarf nor giant, is exactly on a par with Aristotle's +argument to the same effect, on the ground that beauty demands size, +and there must not be too great nor too small size, because a ship +sails badly if it be either too heavy or too light.[189] And when +Rousseau supposes the state to have ten thousand inhabitants, and +talks about the right size of its territory,[190] who does not think +of the five thousand and forty which the Athenian Stranger prescribed +to Cleinias the Cretan as the exactly proper number for the perfectly +formed state?[191] The prediction of the short career which awaits a +state that is cursed with an extensive and accessible seaboard, +corresponds precisely with the Athenian Stranger's satisfaction that +the new city is to be eighty stadia from the coast.[192] When Rousseau +himself began to think about the organisation of Corsica, he praised +the selection of Corte as the chief town of a patriotic +administration, because it was far from the sea, and so its +inhabitants would long preserve their simplicity and uprightness.[193] +And in later years still, when meditating upon a constitution for +Poland, he propounded an economic system essentially Spartan; the +people were enjoined to think little about foreigners, to give +themselves little concern about commerce, to suppress stamped paper, +and to put a tithe upon the land.[194] + +The chapter on the Legislator is in the same region. We are again +referred to Lycurgus; and to the circumstance that Greek towns usually +confided to a stranger the sacred task of drawing up their laws. His +experience in Venice and the history of his native town supplemented +the examples of Greece. Geneva summoned a stranger to legislate for +her, and "those who only look on Calvin as a theologian have a scanty +idea of the extent of his genius; the preparation of our wise edicts, +in which he had so large a part, do him as much honour as his +Institutes."[195] Rousseau's vision was too narrow to let him see the +growth of government and laws as a co-ordinate process, flowing from +the growth of all the other parts and organs of society, and advancing +in more or less equal step along with them. He could begin with +nothing short of an absolute legislator, who should impose a system +from without by a single act, a structure hit upon once for all by his +individual wisdom, not slowly wrought out by many minds, with popular +assent and co-operation, at the suggestion of changing social +circumstances and need.[196] + +All this would be of very trifling importance in the history of +political literature, but for the extraordinary influence which +circumstances ultimately bestowed upon it. The Social Contract was the +gospel of the Jacobins, and much of the action of the supreme party in +France during the first months of the year 1794 is only fully +intelligible when we look upon it as the result and practical +application of Rousseau's teaching. The conception of the situation +entertained by Robespierre and Saint Just was entirely moulded on all +this talk about the legislators of Greece and Geneva. "The transition +of an oppressed nation to democracy is like the effort by which nature +rose from nothingness to existence. You must entirely refashion a +people whom you wish to make free--destroy its prejudices, alter its +habits, limit its necessities, root up its vices, purify its desires. +The state therefore must lay hold on every human being at his birth, +and direct his education with powerful hand. Solon's weak confidence +threw Athens into fresh slavery, while Lycurgus's severity founded the +republic of Sparta on an immovable basis."[197] These words, which +come from a decree of the Committee of Public Safety, might well be +taken for an excerpt from the Social Contract. The fragments of the +institutions by which Saint Just intended to regenerate his country, +reveal a man with the example of Lycurgus before his eyes in every +line he wrote.[198] When on the eve of the Thermidorian revolution +which overthrew him and his party, he insisted on the necessity of a +dictatorship, he was only thinking of the means by which he should at +length obtain the necessary power for forcing his regenerating +projects on the country; for he knew that Robespierre, whom he named +as the man for the dictatorship, accepted his projects, and would lend +the full force of the temporal arm to the propagation of ideas which +they had acquired together from Jean Jacques, and from the Greeks to +whom Jean Jacques had sent them for example and instruction.[199] No +doubt the condition of France after 1792 must naturally have struck +any one too deeply imbued with the spirit of the Social Contract to +look beneath the surface of the society with which the Convention had +to deal, as urgently inviting a lawgiver of the ancient stamp. The old +order in church and state had been swept away, no organs for the +performance of the functions of national life were visible, the moral +ideas which had bound the social elements together in the extinct +monarchy seemed to be permanently sapped. A politician who had for +years been dreaming about Minos and Lycurgus and Calvin, especially if +he lived in a state with such a tradition of centralisation as ruled +in France, was sure to suppose that here was the scene and the moment +for a splendid repetition on an immense scale of those immortal +achievements. The futility of the attempt was the practical and ever +memorable illustration of the defect of Rousseau's geometrical method. +It was one thing to make laws for the handful of people who lived in +Geneva in the sixteenth century, united in religious faith, and +accepting the same form and conception of the common good. It was a +very different thing to try to play Calvin over some twenty-five +millions of a heterogeneously composed nation, abounding in variations +of temperament, faith, laws, and habits and weltering in unfathomable +distractions. The French did indeed at length invite a heaven-sent +stranger from Corsica to make laws for them, but not until he had set +his foot upon their neck; and even Napoleon Bonaparte, who had begun +life like the rest of his generation by writing Rousseauite essays, +made a swift return to the historic method in the equivocal shape of +the Concordat. + +Not only were Rousseau's schemes of polity conceived from the point of +view of a small territory with a limited population. "You must not," +he says in one place, "make the abuses of great states an objection to +a writer who would fain have none but small ones."[200] Again, when he +said that in a truly free state the citizens performed all their +services to the community with their arms and none by money, and that +he looked upon the corvee (or compulsory labour on the public roads) +as less hostile to freedom than taxes,[201] he showed that he was +thinking of a state not greatly passing the dimensions of a parish. +This was not the only defect of his schemes. They assumed a sort of +state of nature in the minds of the people with whom the lawgiver had +to deal. Saint Just made the same assumption afterwards, and trusted +to his military school to erect on these bare plots whatever +superstructure he might think fit to appoint. A society that had for +so many centuries been organised and moulded by a powerful and +energetic church, armed with a definite doctrine, fixing the same +moral tendencies in a long series of successive generations, was not +in the naked mental state which the Jacobins postulated. It was not +prepared to accept free divorce, the substitution of friendship for +marriage, the displacement of the family by the military school, and +the other articles in Saint Just's programme of social renovation. The +twelve apostles went among people who were morally swept and +garnished, and they went armed with instruments proper to seize the +imagination of their hearers. All moral reformers seek the ignorant +and simple, poor fishermen in one scene, labourers and women in +another, for the good reason that new ideas only make way on ground +that is not already too heavily encumbered with prejudices. But France +in 1793 was in no condition of this kind. Opinion in all its spheres +was deepened by an old and powerful organisation, to a degree which +made any attempt to abolish the opinion, as the organisation appeared +to have been abolished, quite hopeless until the lapse of three or +four hundred years had allowed due time for dissolution. After all it +was not until the fourth century of our era that the work of even the +twelve apostles began to tell decisively and quickly. As for the +Lycurgus of whom the French chattered, if such a personality ever +existed out of the region of myth, he came to his people armed with an +oracle from the gods, just as Moses did, and was himself regarded as +having a nature touched with divinity. No such pretensions could well +be made by any French legislator within a dozen years or so of the +death of Voltaire. + +Let us here remark that it was exactly what strikes us as the +desperate absurdity of the assumptions of the Social Contract, which +constituted the power of that work, when it accidentally fell into the +hands of men who surveyed a national system wrecked in all its parts. +The Social Contract is worked out precisely in that fashion which, if +it touches men at all, makes them into fanatics. Long trains of +reasoning, careful allegation of proofs, patient admission on every +hand of qualifying propositions and multitudinous limitations, are +essential to science, and produce treatises that guide the wise +statesman in normal times. But it is dogma that gives fervour to a +sect. There are always large classes of minds to whom anything in the +shape of a vigorously compact system is irresistibly fascinating, and +to whom the qualification of a proposition, or the limitation of a +theoretic principle is distressing or intolerable. Such persons always +come to the front for a season in times of distraction, when the party +that knows its own aims most definitely is sure to have the best +chance of obtaining power. And Rousseau's method charmed their +temperament. A man who handles sets of complex facts is necessarily +slow-footed, but one who has only words to deal with, may advance with +a speed, a precision, a consistency, a conclusiveness, that has a +magical potency over men who insist on having politics and theology +drawn out in exact theorems like those of Euclid. + +Rousseau traces his conclusions from words, and develops his system +from the interior germs of phrases. Like the typical schoolman, he +assumes that analysis of terms is the right way of acquiring new +knowledge about things; he mistakes the multiplication of propositions +for the discovery of fresh truth. Many pages of the Social Contract +are mere logical deductions from verbal definitions: the slightest +attempt to confront them with actual fact would have shown them to be +not only valueless, but wholly meaningless, in connection with real +human nature and the visible working of human affairs. He looks into +the word, or into his own verbal notion, and tells us what is to be +found in that, whereas we need to be told the marks and qualities that +distinguish the object which the word is meant to recall. Hence arises +his habit of setting himself questions, with reference to which we +cannot say that the answers are not true, but only that the questions +themselves were never worth asking. Here is an instance of his method +of supposing that to draw something from a verbal notion is to find +out something corresponding to fact. "We can distinguish in the +magistrate three essentially different wills: 1st, the will peculiar +to him as an individual, which only tends to his own particular +advantage; 2nd, the common will of the magistrates, which refers only +to the advantage of the prince [_i.e._ the government], and this we +may name corporate will, which is general in relation to the +government, and particular in relation to the state of which the +government is a part; 3rd, the will of the people or sovereign will, +which is general, as well in relation to the state considered as a +whole, as in relation to the government considered as part of the +whole."[202] It might be hard to prove that all this is not true, but +then it is unreal and comes to nothing, as we see if we take the +trouble to turn it into real matter. Thus a member of the British +House of Commons, who is a magistrate in Rousseau's sense, has three +essentially different wills: first, as a man, Mr. So-and-so; second, +his corporate will, as member of the chamber, and this will is general +in relation to the legislature, but particular in relation to the +whole body of electors and peers; third, his will as a member of the +great electoral body, which is a general will alike in relation to the +electoral body and to the legislature. An English publicist is +perfectly welcome to make assertions of this kind, if he chooses to do +so, and nobody will take the trouble to deny them. But they are +nonsense. They do not correspond to the real composition of a member +of parliament, nor do they shed the smallest light upon any part +either of the theory of government in general, or the working of our +own government in particular. Almost the same kind of observation +might be made of the famous dogmatic statements about sovereignty. +"Sovereignty, being only the exercise of the general will, can never +be alienated, and the sovereign, who is only a collective being, can +only be represented by himself: the power may be transmitted, but not +the will;"[203] sovereignty is indivisible, not only in principle, but +in object;[204] and so forth. We shall have to consider these remarks +from another point of view. At present we refer to them as +illustrating the character of the book, as consisting of a number of +expansions of definitions, analysed as words, not compared with the +facts of which the words are representatives. This way of treating +political theory enabled the writer to assume an air of certitude and +precision, which led narrow deductive minds completely captive. Burke +poured merited scorn on the application of geometry to politics and +algebraic formulas to government, but then it was just this seeming +demonstration, this measured accuracy, that filled Rousseau's +disciples with a supreme and undoubting confidence which leaves the +modern student of these schemes in amazement unspeakable. The thinness +of Robespierre's ideas on government ceases to astonish us, when we +remember that he had not trained himself to look upon it as the art of +dealing with huge groups of conflicting interests, of hostile +passions, of hardly reconcilable aims, of vehemently opposed forces. +He had disciplined his political intelligence on such meagre and +unsubstantial argumentation as the following:--"Let us suppose the +state composed of ten thousand citizens. The sovereign can only be +considered collectively and as a body; but each person, in his quality +as subject, is considered as an individual unit; thus the sovereign is +to the subject as ten thousand is to one; in other words, each member +of the state has for his share only the ten-thousandth part of the +sovereign authority, though he is submitted to it in all his own +entirety. If the people be composed of a hundred thousand men, the +condition of the subjects does not change, and each of them bears +equally the whole empire of the laws, while his suffrage, reduced to a +hundred-thousandth, has ten times less influence in drawing them up. +Then, the subject remaining still only one, the relation of the +sovereign augments in the ratio of the number of the citizens. Whence +it follows that, the larger the state becomes, the more does liberty +diminish."[205] + +Apart from these arithmetical conceptions, and the deep charm which +their assurance of expression had for the narrow and fervid minds of +which England and Germany seem to have got finally rid in Anabaptists +and Fifth Monarchy men, but which still haunted France, there were +maxims in the Social Contract of remarkable convenience for the +members of a Committee of Public Safety. "How can a blind multitude," +the writer asks in one place, "which so often does not know its own +will, because it seldom knows what is good for it, execute of itself +an undertaking so vast and so difficult as a system of +legislation?"[206] Again, "as nature gives to each man an absolute +power over all his members, so the social pact gives to the body +politic an absolute power over all its members; and it is this same +power which, when directed by the general will, bears, as I have said, +the name of sovereignty."[207] Above all, the little chapter on a +dictatorship is the very foundation of the position of the +Robespierrists in the few months immediately preceding their fall. "It +is evidently the first intention of the people that the state should +not perish," and so on, with much criticism of the system of +occasional dictatorships, as they were resorted to in old Rome.[208] +Yet this does not in itself go much beyond the old monarchic doctrine +of Prerogative, as a corrective for the slowness and want of immediate +applicability of mere legal processes in cases of state emergency; and +it is worth noticing again and again that in spite of the shriekings +of reaction, the few atrocities of the Terror are an almost invisible +speck compared with the atrocities of Christian churchmen and lawful +kings, perpetrated in accordance with their notion of what constituted +public safety. So far as Rousseau's intention goes, we find in his +writings one of the strongest denunciations of the doctrine of public +safety that is to be found in any of the writings of the century. "Is +the safety of a citizen," he cries, "less the common cause than the +safety of the state? They may tell us that it is well that one should +perish on behalf of all. I will admire such a sentence in the mouth of +a virtuous patriot, who voluntarily and for duty's sake devotes +himself to death for the salvation of his country. But if we are to +understand that it is allowed to the government to sacrifice an +innocent person for the safety of the multitude, I hold this maxim for +one of the most execrable that tyranny has ever invented, and the most +dangerous that can be admitted."[209] It may be said that the +Terrorists did not sacrifice innocent life, but the plea is frivolous +on the lips of men who proscribed whole classes. You cannot justly +draw a capital indictment against a class. Rousseau, however, cannot +fairly be said to have had a share in the responsibility for the more +criminal part of the policy of 1793, any more than the founder of +Christianity is responsible for the atrocities that have been +committed by the more ardent worshippers of his name, and justified by +stray texts caught up from the gospels. Helvetius had said, "All +becomes legitimate and even virtuous on behalf of the public safety." +Rousseau wrote in the margin, "The public safety is nothing unless +individuals enjoy security."[210] The author of a theory is not +answerable for the applications which may be read into it by the +passions of men and the exigencies of a violent crisis. Such +applications show this much and no more, that the theory was +constructed with an imperfect consideration of the qualities of human +nature, with too narrow a view of the conditions of society, and +therefore with an inadequate appreciation of the consequences which +the theory might be drawn to support. + +It is time to come to the central conception of the Social Contract, +the dogma which made of it for a time the gospel of a nation, the +memorable doctrine of the sovereignty of peoples. Of this doctrine +Rousseau was assuredly not the inventor, though the exaggerated +language of some popular writers in France leads us to suppose that +they think of him as nothing less. Even in the thirteenth century the +constitution of the Orders, and the contests of the friars with the +clergy, had engendered faintly democratic ways of thinking.[211] Among +others the great Aquinas had protested against the juristic doctrine +that the law is the pleasure of the prince. The will of the prince, he +says, to be a law, must be directed by reason; law is appointed for +the common good, and not for a special or private good: it follows +from this that only the reason of the multitude, or of a prince +representing the multitude, can make a law.[212] A still more +remarkable approach to later views was made by Marsilio of Padua, +physician to Lewis of Bavaria, who wrote a strong book on his master's +side, in the great contest between him and the pope (1324). Marsilio +in the first part of his work not only lays down very elaborately the +proposition that laws ought to be made by the "_universitas civium_"; +he places this sovereignty of the people on the true basis (which +Rousseau only took for a secondary support to his original compact), +namely, the greater likelihood of laws being obeyed in the first +place, and being good laws in the second, when they are made by the +body of the persons affected. "No one knowingly does hurt to himself, +or deliberately asks what is unjust, and on that account all or a +great majority must wish such law as best suits the common interest of +the citizens."[213] Turning from this to the Social Contract, or to +Locke's essay on Government, the identity in doctrine and +correspondence in dialect may teach us how little true originality +there can he among thinkers who are in the same stage; how a +metaphysician of the thirteenth century and a metaphysician of the +eighteenth hit on the same doctrine; and how the true classification +of thinkers does not follow intervals of time, but is fixed by +differences of method. It is impossible that in the constant play of +circumstances and ideas in the minds of different thinkers, the same +combinations of form and colour in a philosophic arrangement of such +circumstances and ideas should not recur. Signal novelties in thought +are as limited as signal inventions in architectural construction. It +is only one of the great changes in method, that can remove the limits +of the old combinations, by bringing new material and fundamentally +altering the point of view. + +In the sixteenth century there were numerous writers who declared the +right of subjects to depose a bad sovereign, but this position is to +be distinguished from Rousseau's doctrine. Thus, if we turn to the +great historic event of 1581, the rejection of the yoke of Spain by +the Dutch, we find the Declaration of Independence running, "that if a +prince is appointed by God over the land, it is to protect them from +harm, even as a shepherd to the guardianship of his flock. The +subjects are not appointed by God for the behoof of the prince, but +the prince for his subjects, without whom he is no prince." This is +obviously divine right, fundamentally modified by a popular +principle, accepted to meet the exigencies of the occasion, and to +justify after the event a measure which was dictated by urgent need +for practical relief. Such a notion of the social compact was still +emphatically in the semi-patriarchal stage, and is distinct as can be +from the dogma of popular sovereignty as Rousseau understood it. But +it plainly marked a step on the way. It was the development of +Protestant principles which produced and necessarily involved the +extreme democratic conclusion. Time was needed for their full +expansion in this sense, but the result could only have been avoided +by a suppression of the Reformation, and we therefore count it +inevitable. Bodin (1577) had defined sovereignty as residing in the +supreme legislative authority, without further inquiry as to the +source or seat of that authority, though he admits the vague position +which even Lewis XIV. did not deny, that the object of political +society is the greatest good of every citizen or the whole state. In +1603 a Protestant professor of law in Germany, Althusen by name, +published a treatise of Politics, in which the doctrine of the +sovereignty of peoples was clearly formulated, to the profound +indignation both of Jesuits and of Protestant jurists.[214] Rousseau +mentions his name;[215] it does not appear that he read Althusen's +rather uncommon treatise, but its teaching would probably have a place +in the traditions of political theorising current at Geneva, to the +spirit of whose government it was so congenial. Hooker, vindicating +episcopacy against the democratic principles of the Puritans, had +still been led, apparently by way of the ever dominant idea of a law +natural, to base civil government on the assent of the governed, and +had laid down such propositions as these: "Laws they are not, which +public approbation hath not made so. Laws therefore human, of what +kind soever, are available by consent," and so on.[216] The views of +the Ecclesiastical Polity were adopted by Locke, and became the +foundation of the famous essay on Civil Government, from which popular +leaders in our own country drew all their weapons down to the outbreak +of the French Revolution. Grotius (1625) starting from the principle +that the law of nature enjoins that we should stand by our agreements, +then proceeded to assume either an express, or at any rate a tacit and +implied, promise on the part of all who become members of a community, +to obey the majority of the body, or a majority of those to whom +authority has been delegated.[217] This is a unilateral view of the +social contract, and omits the element of reciprocity which in +Rousseau's idea was cardinal. + +Locke was Rousseau's most immediate inspirer, and the latter affirmed +himself to have treated the same matters exactly on Locke's +principles. Rousseau, however, exaggerated Locke's politics as greatly +as Condillac exaggerated his metaphysics. There was the important +difference that Locke's essay on Civil Government was the +justification in theory of a revolution which had already been +accomplished in practice, while the Social Contract, tinged as it was +by silent reference in the mind of the writer to Geneva, was yet a +speculation in the air. The circumstances under which it was written +gave to the propositions of Locke's piece a reserve and moderation +which savour of a practical origin and a special case. They have not +the wide scope and dogmatic air and literary precision of the +corresponding propositions in Rousseau. We find in Locke none of those +concise phrases which make fanatics. But the essential doctrine is +there. The philosopher of the Revolution of 1688 probably carried its +principles further than most of those who helped in the Revolution had +any intention to carry them, when he said that "the legislature being +only a fiduciary power to act for certain ends, there remains still in +the people a supreme power to remove or alter the legislative."[218] +It may be questioned how many of the peers of that day would have +assented to the proposition that the people--and did Locke mean by the +people the electors of the House of Commons, or all males over +twenty-one, or all householders paying rates?--could by any expression +of their will abolish the legislative power of the upper chamber, or +put an end to the legislative and executive powers of the crown. But +Locke's statements are direct enough, though he does not use so terse +a label for his doctrine as Rousseau affixed to it. + +Again, besides the principle of popular sovereignty, Locke most likely +gave to Rousseau the idea of the origin of this sovereignty in the +civil state in a pact or contract, which was represented as the +foundation and first condition of the civil state. From this naturally +flowed the connected theory, of a perpetual consent being implied as +given by the people to each new law. We need not quote passages from +Locke to demonstrate the substantial correspondence of assumption +between him and the author of the Social Contract. They are found in +every chapter.[219] Such principles were indispensable for the defence +of a Revolution like that of 1688, which was always carefully marked +out by its promoters, as well as by its eloquent apologist and +expositor a hundred years later, the great Burke, as above all things +a revolution within the pale of the law or the constitution. They +represented the philosophic adjustment of popular ideas to the +political changes wrought by shifting circumstances, as distinguished +from the biblical or Hebraic method of adjusting such ideas, which had +prevailed in the contests of the previous generation. + +Yet there was in the midst of those contests one thinker of the first +rank in intellectual power, who had constructed a genuine philosophy +of government. Hobbes's speculations did not fit in with the theory of +either of the two bodies of combatants in the Civil War. They were +each in the theological order of ideas, and neither of them sought or +was able to comprehend the application of philosophic principles to +their own case or to that of their adversaries.[220] Hebrew precedents +and bible texts, on the one hand; prerogative of use and high church +doctrine, on the other. Between these was no space for the acceptance +of a secular and rationalistic theory, covering the whole field of a +social constitution. Now the influence of Hobbes upon Rousseau was +very marked, and very singular. There were numerous differences +between the philosopher of Geneva and his predecessor of Malmesbury. +The one looked on men as good, the other looked on them as bad. The +one described the state of nature as a state of peace, the other as a +state of war. The one believed that laws and institutions had depraved +man, the other that they had improved him.[221] But these differences +did not prevent the action of Hobbes on Rousseau. It resulted in a +curious fusion between the premisses and the temper of Hobbes and the +conclusions of Locke. This fusion produced that popular absolutism of +which the Social Contract was the theoretical expression, and Jacobin +supremacy the practical manifestation. Rousseau borrowed from Hobbes +the true conception of sovereignty, and from Locke the true conception +of the ultimate seat and original of authority, and of the two +together he made the great image of the sovereign people. Strike the +crowned head from that monstrous figure which is the frontispiece of +the Leviathan, and you have a frontispiece that will do excellently +well for the Social Contract. Apart from a multitude of other +obligations, good and bad, which Rousseau owed to Hobbes, as we shall +point out, we may here mention that of the superior accuracy of the +notion of law in the Social Contract over the notion of law in +Montesquieu's work. The latter begins, as everybody knows, with a +definition inextricably confused: "Laws are necessary relations +flowing from the nature of things, and in this sense all beings have +their laws, divinity has its laws, the material world has its laws, +the intelligences superior to men have their laws, the beasts have +their laws, man has his laws.... There is a primitive reason, and laws +are the relations to be found between that and the different beings, +and the relations of these different beings among one another."[222] +Rousseau at once put aside these divergent meanings, made the proper +distinction between a law of nature and the imperative law of a state, +and justly asserted that the one could teach us nothing worth knowing +about the other.[223] Hobbes's phraseology is much less definite than +this, and shows that he had not himself wholly shaken off the same +confusion as reigned in Montesquieu's account a century later. But +then Hobbes's account of the true meaning of sovereignty was so clear, +firm, and comprehensive, as easily to lead any fairly perspicuous +student who followed him, to apply it to the true meaning of law. And +on this head of law not so much fault is to be found with Rousseau, as +on the head of larger constitutional theory. He did not look long +enough at given laws, and hence failed to seize all their distinctive +qualities; above all he only half saw, if he saw at all, that a law is +a command and not a contract, and his eyes were closed to this, +because the true view was incompatible with his fundamental assumption +of contract as the base of the social union.[224] But he did at all +events grasp the quality of generality as belonging to laws proper, +and separated them justly from what he calls decrees, which we are now +taught to name occasional or particular commands.[225] This is worth +mentioning, because it shows that, in spite of his habits of +intellectual laxity, Rousseau was capable, where he had a clear-headed +master before him, of a very considerable degree of precision of +thought, however liable it was to fall into error or deficiency for +want of abundant comparison with bodies of external fact. Let us now +proceed to some of the central propositions of the Social Contract. + +1. The origin of society dates from the moment when the obstacles +which impede the preservation of men in a state of nature are too +strong for such forces as each individual can employ in order to keep +himself in that state. At this point they can only save themselves by +aggregation. Problem: to find a form of association which defends and +protects with the whole common force the person and property of each +associate, and by which, each uniting himself to all, still only obeys +himself, and remains as free as he was before. Solution: a social +compact reducible to these words, "Each of us places in common his +person and his whole power under the supreme direction of the general +will; and we further receive each member as indivisible part of the +whole." This act of association constitutes a moral and collective +body, a public person. + +The practical importance and the mischief of thus suffering society to +repose on conventions which the human will had made, lay in the +corollary that the human will is competent at any time to unmake them, +and also therefore to devise all possible changes that fell short of +unmaking them. This was the root of the fatal hypothesis of the +dictator, or divinely commissioned lawgiver. External circumstance and +human nature alike were passive and infinitely pliable; they were the +material out of which the legislator was to devise conventions at +pleasure, without apprehension as to their suitableness either to the +conditions of society among which they were to work, or to the +passions and interests of those by whom they were to be carried out, +and who were supposed to have given assent to them. It would be unjust +to say that Rousseau actually faced this position and took the +consequences. He expressly says in more places than one that the +science of Government is only a science of combinations, applications, +and exceptions, according to time, place, and circumstance.[226] But +to base society on conventions is to impute an element of +arbitrariness to these combinations and applications, and to make them +independent, as they can never be, of the limits inexorably fixed by +the nature of things. The notion of compact is the main source of all +the worst vagaries in Rousseau's political speculation. + +It is worth remarking in the history of opinion, that there was at +this time in France a little knot of thinkers who were nearly in full +possession of the true view of the limits set by the natural ordering +of societies to the power of convention and the function of the +legislators. Five years after the publication of the Social Contract, +a remarkable book was written by one of the economic sect of the +Physiocrats, the later of whom, though specially concerned with the +material interests of communities, very properly felt the necessity of +connecting the discussion of wealth with the assumption of certain +fundamental political conditions. They felt this, because it is +impossible to settle any question about wages or profits, for +instance, until you have first settled whether you are assuming the +principles of liberty and property. This writer with great consistency +found the first essential of all social order in conformity of +positive law and institution to those qualities of human nature, and +their relations with those material instruments of life, which, and +not convention, were the true origin, as they are the actual grounds, +of the perpetuation of our societies.[227] This was wiser than +Rousseau's conception of the lawgiver as one who should change human +nature, and take away from man the forces that are naturally his own, +to replace them by others comparatively foreign to him.[228] Rousseau +once wrote, in a letter about Riviere's book, that the great problem +in politics, which might be compared with the quadrature of the circle +in geometry, is to find a form of government which shall place law +above man.[229] A more important problem, and not any less difficult +for the political theoriser, is to mark the bounds at which the +authority of the law is powerless or mischievous in attempting to +control the egoistic or non-social parts of man. This problem Rousseau +ignored, and that he should do so was only natural in one who +believed that man had bound himself by a convention, strictly to +suppress his egoistic and non-social parts, and who based all his +speculation on this pact as against the force, or the paternal +authority, or the will of a Supreme Being, in which other writers +founded the social union. + +2. The body thus constituted by convention is the sovereign. Each +citizen is a member of the sovereign, standing in a definite relation +to individuals _qua_ individuals; he is also as an individual a member +of the state and subject to the sovereign, of which from the first +point of view he is a component element. The sovereign and the body +politic are one and the same thing.[230] + +Of the antecedents and history of this doctrine enough has already +been said. Its general truth as a description either of what is, or +what ought to be and will be, demands an ampler discussion than there +is any occasion to carry on here. We need only point out its place as +a kind of intermediate dissolvent for which the time was most ripe. It +breaks up the feudal conception of political authority as a property +of land-ownership, noble birth, and the like, and it associates this +authority widely and simply with the bare fact of participation in any +form of citizenship in the social union. The later and higher idea of +every share of political power as a function to be discharged for the +good of the whole body, and not merely as a right to be enjoyed for +the advantage of its possessor, was a form of thought to which +Rousseau did not rise. That does not lessen the effectiveness of the +blow which his doctrine dealt to French feudalism, and which is its +main title to commemoration in connection with his name. + +The social compact thus made is essentially different from the social +compact which Hobbes described as the origin of what he calls +commonwealths by institution, to distinguish them from commonwealths +by acquisition, that is to say, states formed by conquest or resting +on hereditary rule. "A commonwealth," Hobbes says, "is said to be +instituted when a multitude of men do agree and covenant, every one +with every one, that to whatsoever man or assembly of men shall be +given by the major part the right to present the person of them all, +that is to say, to be their representative; every one ... shall +authorise all the actions and judgments of that man or assembly of +men, in the same manner as if they were his own, to the end to live +peaceably among themselves, and be protected against other men."[231] +But Rousseau's compact was an act of association among equals, who +also remained equals. Hobbes's compact was an act of surrender on the +part of the many to one or a number. The first was the constitution of +civil society, the second was the erection of a government. As nobody +now believes in the existence of any such compact in either one form +or the other, it would be superfluous to inquire which of the two is +the less inaccurate. All we need do is to point out that there was +this difference. Rousseau distinctly denied the existence of any +element of contract in the erection of a government; there is only one +contract in the state, he said, and it is that of association.[232] +Locke's notion of the compact which was the beginning of every +political society is indefinite on this point; he speaks of it +indifferently as an agreement of a body of free men to unite and +incorporate into a society, and an agreement to set up a +government.[233] Most of us would suppose the two processes to be as +nearly identical as may be; Rousseau drew a distinction, and from this +distinction he derived further differences. + +Here, we may remark, is the starting-point in the history of the ideas +of the revolution, of one of the most prominent of them all, that of +Fraternity. If the whole structure of society rests on an act of +partnership entered into by equals on behalf of themselves and their +descendants for ever, the nature of the union is not what it would be, +if the members of the union had only entered it to place their +liberties at the feet of some superior power. Society in the one case +is a covenant of subjection, in the other a covenant of social +brotherhood. This impressed itself deeply on the feelings of men like +Robespierre, who were never so well pleased as when they could find +for their sentimentalism a covering of neat political logic. The same +idea of association came presently to receive a still more remarkable +and momentous extension, when it was translated from the language of +mere government into that of the economic organisation of communities. +Rousseau's conception went no further than political association, as +distinct from subjection. Socialism, which came by and by to the front +place, carried the idea to its fullest capacity, and presented all the +relations of men with one another as fixed by the same bond. Men had +entered the social union as brethren, equal, and co-operators, not +merely for purposes of government, but for purposes of mutual succour +in all its aspects. This naturally included the most important of all, +material production. They were not associated merely as equal +participants in political sovereignty; they were equal participants in +all the rest of the increase made to the means of human happiness by +united action. Socialism is the transfer of the principle of fraternal +association from politics, where Rousseau left it, to the wider sphere +of industrial force. + +It is perhaps worth notice that another famous revolutionary term +belongs to the same source. All the associates of this act of union, +becoming members of the city, are as such to be called Citizens, as +participating in the sovereign authority.[234] The term was in +familiar use enough among the French in their worst days, but it was +Rousseau's sanction which marked it in the new times with a sort of +sacramental stamp. It came naturally to him, because it was the name +of the first of the two classes which constituted the active portion +of the republic of Geneva, and the only class whose members were +eligible to the chief magistracies. + +3. We next have a group of propositions setting forth the attributes +of sovereignty. It is inalienable.[235] It is indivisible. + +These two propositions, which play such a part in the history of some +of the episodes of the French Revolution, contain no more than was +contended for by Hobbes, and has been accepted in our own times by +Austin. When Hobbes says that "to the laws which the sovereign maketh, +the sovereign is not subject, for if he were subject to the civil laws +he were subject to himself, which were not subjection but freedom," +his notion of sovereignty is exactly that expressed by Rousseau in his +unexplained dogma of the inalienableness of sovereignty. So Rousseau +means no more by the dogma that sovereignty is indivisible, than +Austin meant when he declared of the doctrine that the legislative +sovereign powers and the executive sovereign powers belong in any +society to distinct parties, that it is a supposition too palpably +false to endure a moment's examination.[236] The way in which this +account of the indivisibleness of sovereignty was understood during +the revolution, twisted it into a condemnation of the dreaded idea of +Federalism. It might just as well have been interpreted to condemn +alliances between nations; for the properties of sovereignty are +clearly independent of the dimensions of the sovereign unit. Another +effect of this doctrine was the rejection by the Constituent Assembly +of the balanced parliamentary system, which the followers of +Montesquieu would fain have introduced on the English model. Whether +that was an evil or a good, publicists will long continue to dispute. + +4. The general will of the sovereign upon an object of common interest +is expressed in a law. Only the sovereign can possess this law-making +power, because no one but the sovereign has the right of declaring the +general will. The legislative power cannot be exerted by delegation or +representation. The English fancy that they are a free nation, but +they are grievously mistaken. They are only free during the election +of members of parliament; the members once chosen, the people are +slaves, nay, as people they have ceased to exist.[237] It is +impossible for the sovereign to act, except when the people are +assembled. Besides such extraordinary assemblies as unforeseen events +may call for, there must be fixed periodical meetings that nothing can +interrupt or postpone. Do you call this chimerical? Then you have +forgotten the Roman comitia, as well as such gatherings of the people +as those of the Macedonians and the Franks and most other nations in +their primitive times. What has existed is certainly possible.[238] + +It is very curious that Rousseau in this part of his subject should +have contented himself with going back to Macedonia and Rome, instead +of pointing to the sovereign states that have since become confederate +with his native republic. A historian in our own time has described +with an enthusiasm that equals that of the Social Contract, how he saw +the sovereign people of Uri and the sovereign people of Appenzell +discharge the duties of legislation and choice of executive, each in +the majesty of its corporate person.[239] That Rousseau was influenced +by the free sovereignty of the states of the Swiss confederation, as +well as by that of his own city, we may well believe. Whether he was +or not, it must always be counted a serious misfortune that a writer +who was destined to exercise such power in a crisis of the history of +a great nation, should have chosen his illustrations from a time and +from societies so remote, that the true conditions of their political +system could not possibly be understood with any approach to reality, +while there were, within a few leagues of his native place, +communities where the system of a sovereign public in his own sense +was actually alive and flourishing and at work. From them the full +meaning of his theories might have been practically gathered, and +whatever useful lessons lay at the bottom of them might have been made +plain. As it was, it came to pass singularly enough that the effect of +the French Revolution was the suppression, happily only for a time, of +the only governments in Europe where the doctrine of the favourite +apostle of the Revolution was a reality. The constitution of the +Helvetic Republic in 1798 was as bad a blow to the sovereignty of +peoples in a true sense, as the old house of Austria or Charles of +Burgundy could ever have dealt. That constitution, moreover, was +directly opposed to the Social Contract in setting up what it called +representative democracy, for representative democracy was just what +Rousseau steadily maintained to be a nullity and a delusion. + +The only lesson which the Social Contract contained for a statesman +bold enough to take into his hands the reconstruction of France, +undoubtedly pointed in the direction of confederation. At one place, +where he became sensible of the impotence which his assumption of a +small state inflicted on his whole speculation, Rousseau said he would +presently show how the good order of a small state might be united to +the external power of a great people. Though he never did this, he +hints in a footnote that his plan belonged to the theory of +confederations, of which the principles were still to be +established.[240] When he gave advice for the renovation of the +wretched constitution of Poland, he insisted above all things that +they should apply themselves to extend and perfect the system of +federate governments, "the only one that unites in itself all the +advantages of great and small states."[241] A very few years after the +appearance of his book, the great American union of sovereign states +arose to point the political moral. The French revolutionists missed +the force alike of the practical example abroad, and of the theory of +the book which they took for gospel at home. How far they were driven +to this by the urgent pressure of foreign war, or whether they would +have followed the same course without that interference, merely in +obedience to the catholic and monarchic absolutism which had sunk so +much deeper into French character than people have been willing to +admit, we cannot tell. The fact remains that the Jacobins, Rousseau's +immediate disciples, at once took up the chain of centralised +authority where it had been broken off by the ruin of the monarchy. +They caught at the letter of the dogma of a sovereign people, and lost +its spirit. They missed the germ of truth in Rousseau's scheme, +namely, that for order and freedom and just administration the unit +should not be too large to admit of the participation of the persons +concerned in the management of their own public affairs. If they had +realised this and applied it, either by transforming the old monarchy +into a confederacy of sovereign provinces, or by some less sweeping +modification of the old centralised scheme of government, they might +have saved France.[242] But, once more, men interpret a political +treatise on principles which either come to them by tradition; or +else spring suddenly up from roots of passion.[243] + +5. The government is the minister of the sovereign. It is an +intermediate body set up between sovereign and subjects for their +mutual correspondence, charged with the execution of the laws and the +maintenance of civil and political freedom. The members comprising it +are called magistrates or kings, and to the whole body so composed, +whether of one or of more than one, is given the name of prince. If +the whole power is centred in the hands of a single magistrate, from +whom all the rest hold their authority, the government is called a +monarchy. If there are more persons simply citizens than there are +magistrates, this is an aristocracy.[244] If more citizen magistrates +than simple private citizens, that is a democracy. The last government +is as a general rule best fitted for small states, and the first for +large ones--on the principle that the number of the supreme +magistrates ought to be in the inverse ratio of that of the citizens. +But there is a multitude of circumstances which may furnish reasons +for exceptions to this general rule. + +This common definition of the three forms of governments according to +the mere number of the participants in the chief magistracy, though +adopted by Hobbes and other writers, is certainly inadequate and +uninstructive, without some further qualification. Aristotle, for +instance, furnishes such a qualification, when he refers to the +interests in which the government is carried on, whether the interest +of a small body or of the whole of the citizens.[245] Montesquieu's +well-known division, though logically faulty, still has the merit of +pointing to conditions of difference among forms of government, +outside of and apart from the one fact of the number of the sovereign. +To divide governments, as Montesquieu did, into republics, monarchies, +and despotisms, was to use two principles of division, first the +number of the sovereign, and next something else, namely, the +difference between a constitutional and an absolute monarch. Then he +returned to the first principle of division, and separated a republic +into a government of all, which is a democracy, and a government by a +part, which is aristocracy.[246] Still, to have introduced the element +of law-abidingness in the chief magistracy, whether of one or more, +was to have called attention to the fact that no single distinction is +enough to furnish us with a conception of the real and vital +differences which may exist between one form of government and +another.[247] + +The important fact about a government lies quite as much in the +qualifying epithet which is to be affixed to any one of the three +names, as in the name itself. We know nothing about a monarchy, until +we have been told whether it is absolute or constitutional; if +absolute, whether it is administered in the interests of the realm, +like that of Prussia under Frederick the Great, or in the interests of +the ruler, like that of an Indian principality under a native prince; +if constitutional, whether the real power is aristocratic, as in Great +Britain a hundred years ago, or plutocratic, as in Great Britain +to-day, or popular, as it may be here fifty years hence. And so with +reference to each of the other two forms; neither name gives us any +instruction, except of a merely negative kind, until it has been made +precise by one or more explanatory epithets. What is the common +quality of the old Roman republic, the republics of the Swiss +confederation, the republic of Venice, the American republic, the +republic of Mexico? Plainly the word republic has no further effect +beyond that of excluding the idea of a recognised dynasty. + +Rousseau is perhaps less open to this kind of criticism than other +writers on political theory, for the reason that he distinguishes the +constitution of the state from the constitution of the government. The +first he settles definitely. The whole body of the people is to be +sovereign, and to be endowed alone with what he conceived as the only +genuinely legislative power. The only question which he considers open +is as to the form in which the _delegated executive authority_ shall +be organised. Democracy, the immediate government of all by all, he +rejects as too perfect for men; it requires a state so small that each +citizen knows all the others, manners so simple that the business may +be small and the mode of discussion easy, equality of rank and fortune +so general as not to allow of the overriding of political equality by +material superiority, and so forth.[248] Monarchy labours under a +number of disadvantages which are tolerably obvious. "One essential +and inevitable defect, which must always place monarchic below +republican government, is that in the latter the public voice hardly +ever promotes to the first places any but capable and enlightened men +who fill them with honour; whereas those who get on in monarchies, are +for the most part small busybodies, small knaves, small intriguers, in +whom the puny talents which are the secret of reaching substantial +posts in courts, only serve to show their stupidity to the public as +soon as they have made their way to the front. The people is far less +likely to make a blunder in a choice of this sort, than the prince, +and a man of true merit is nearly as rare in the ministry, as a fool +at the head of the government of a republic."[249] There remains +aristocracy. Of this there are three sorts: natural, elective, and +hereditary. The first can only thrive among primitive folk, while the +third is the worst of all governments. The second is the best, for it +is aristocracy properly so called. If men only acquire rule in virtue +of election, then purity, enlightenment, experience, and all the other +grounds of public esteem and preference, become so many new guarantees +that the administration shall be wise and just. It is the best and +most natural order that the wisest should govern the multitude, +provided you are sure that they will govern the multitude for its +advantage, and not for their own. If aristocracy of this kind requires +one or two virtues less than a popular executive, it also demands +others which are peculiar to itself, such as moderation in the rich +and content in the poor. For this form comports with a certain +inequality of fortune, for the reason that it is well that the +administration of public affairs should be confided to those who are +best able to give their whole time to it. At the same time it is of +importance that an opposite choice should occasionally teach the +people that in the merit of men there are more momentous reasons of +preference than wealth.[250] Rousseau, as we have seen, had pronounced +English liberty to be no liberty at all, save during the few days once +in seven years when the elections to parliament take place. Yet this +scheme of an elective aristocracy was in truth a very near approach +to the English form as it is theoretically presented in our own day, +with a suffrage gradually becoming universal. If the suffrage were +universal, and if its exercise took place once a year, our system, in +spite of the now obsolescent elements of hereditary aristocracy and +nominal monarchy, would be as close a realisation of the scheme of the +Social Contract as any representative system permits. If Rousseau had +further developed his notions of confederation, the United States +would most have resembled his type. + +6. What is to be the attitude of the state in respect of religion? +Certainly not that prescribed by the policy of the middle ages. The +separation of the spiritual from the temporal power, indicated by +Jesus Christ, and developed by his followers in the course of many +subsequent generations, was in Rousseau's eyes most mischievous, +because it ended in the subordination of the temporal power to the +spiritual, and that is incompatible with an efficient polity. Even the +kings of England, though they style themselves heads of the church, +are really its ministers and servants.[251] + +The last allegation evinces Rousseau's usual ignorance of history, and +need not be discussed, any more than his proposition on which he lays +so much stress, that Christians cannot possibly be good soldiers, nor +truly good citizens, because their hearts being fixed upon another +world, they must necessarily be indifferent to the success or failure +of such enterprises as they may take up in this.[252] In reading the +Social Contract, and some other of the author's writings besides, we +have constantly to interpret the direct, positive, categorical form of +assertion into something of this kind--"Such and such consequences +ought logically to follow from the meaning of the name, or the +definition of a principle, or from such and such motives." The change +of this moderate form of provisional assertion into the unconditional +statement that such and such consequences have actually followed, +constantly lands the author in propositions which any reader who tests +them by an appeal to the experience of mankind, written and unwritten, +at once discovers to be false and absurd. Rousseau himself took less +trouble to verify his conclusions by such an appeal to experience than +any writer that ever lived in a scientific age. The other remark to be +made on the above section is that the rejection of the Christian or +ecclesiastical division of the powers of the church and the powers of +the state, is the strongest illustration that could be found of the +debt of Rousseau's conception of a state to the old pagan conception. +It was the main characteristic of the polities which Christian +monotheism and feudalism together succeeded in replacing, to recognise +no such division as that between church and state, pope and emperor. +Rousseau resumed the old conception. But he adjusted it in a certain +degree to the spirit of his own time, and imposed certain +philosophical limitations upon it. His scheme is as follows. + +Religion, he says, in its relation to the state, may be considered as +of three kinds. First, natural religion, without temple, altar, or +rite, the true and pure theism of the natural conscience of man. +Second, local, civil, or positive religion, with dogmas, rites, +exercises; a theology of a primitive people, exactly co-extensive with +all the rights and all the duties of men. Third, a religion like the +Christianity of the Roman church, which gives men two sets of laws, +two chiefs, two countries, submits them to contradictory duties, and +prevents them from being able to be at once devout and patriotic. The +last of these is so evidently pestilent as to need no discussion. The +second has the merit of teaching men to identify duty to their gods +with duty to their country; under this to die for the land is +martyrdom, to break its laws impiety, and to subject a culprit to +public execration is to devote him to the anger of the gods. But it is +bad, because it is at bottom a superstition, and because it makes a +people sanguinary and intolerant. The first of all, which is now +styled a Christian theism, having no special relation with the body +politic, adds no force to the laws. There are many particular +objections to Christianity flowing from the fact of its not being a +kingdom of this world, and this above all, that Christianity only +preaches servitude and dependence.[253] What then is to be done? The +sovereign must establish a purely civil profession of faith. It will +consist of the following positive dogmas:--the existence of a +divinity, powerful, intelligent, beneficent and foreseeing; the life +to come; the happiness of the just, the chastisement of the wicked; +the sanctity of the social contract and the laws. These articles of +belief are imposed, not as dogmas of religion exactly, but as +sentiments of sociability. If any one declines to accept them, he +ought to be exiled, not for being impious, but for being unsociable, +incapable of sincere attachment to the laws, or of sacrificing his +life to his duty. If any one, after publicly recognising these dogmas, +carries himself as if he did not believe them, let him be punished by +death, for he has committed the worst of crimes, he has lied before +the laws.[254] + +Rousseau thus, unconsciously enough, brought to its climax that +reaction against the absorption of the state in the church which had +first taken a place in literature in the controversy between legists +and canonists, and had found its most famous illustration in the De +Monarchia of the great poet of catholicism. The division of two +co-equal realms, one temporal, the other spiritual, was replaced in +the Genevese thinker by what he admitted to be "pure Hobbism." This, +the rigorous subordination of the church to the state, was the end, so +far as France went, of the speculative controversy which had occupied +Europe for so many ages, as to the respective powers of pope and +emperor, of positive law and law divine. The famous civil constitution +of the clergy (1790), which was the expression of Rousseau's principle +as formulated by his disciples in the Constituent Assembly, was the +revolutionary conclusion to the world-wide dispute, whose most +melodramatic episode had been the scene in the courtyard of Canossa. + +Rousseau's memorable prescription, banishing all who should not +believe in God, or a future state, or in rewards and punishments for +the deeds done in the body, and putting to death any who, after +subscribing to the required profession, should seem no longer to hold +it, has naturally created a very lively horror in a tolerant +generation like our own, some of whose finest spirits have rejected +deliberately and finally the articles of belief, without which they +could not have been suffered to exist in Rousseau's state. It seemed +to contemporaries, who were enthusiastic above all things for humanity +and infinite tolerance, these being the prizes of the long conflict +which they hoped they were completing, to be a return to the horrors +of the Holy Office. Men were as shocked as the modern philosopher is, +when he finds the greatest of the followers of Socrates imposing in +his latest piece the penalty of imprisonment for five years, to be +followed in case of obduracy by death, on one who should not believe +in the gods set up for the state by the lawmaker.[255] And we can +hardly comfort ourselves, as Milton did about Plato, who framed laws +which no city ever yet received, and "fed his fancy with making many +edicts to his airy burgomasters, which they who otherwise admire him, +wish had been rather buried and excused in the genial cups of an +academic night-sitting."[256] Rousseau's ideas fell among men who were +most potent and corporeal burgomasters. In the winter of 1793 two +parties in Paris stood face to face; the rationalistic, Voltairean +party of the Commune, named improperly after Hebert, but whose best +member was Chaumette, and the sentimental, Rousseauite party, led by +Robespierre. The first had industriously desecrated the churches, and +consummated their revolt against the gods of the old time by the +public worship of the Goddess of Reason, who was prematurely set up +for deity of the new time. Robespierre retaliated with the mummeries +of the Festival of the Supreme Being, and protested against atheism as +the crime of aristocrats. Presently the atheistic party succumbed. +Chaumette was not directly implicated in the proceedings which led to +their fall, but he was by and by accused of conspiring with Hebert, +Clootz, and the rest, "to destroy all notion of Divinity and base the +government of France on atheism." "They attack the immortality of the +soul," cried Saint Just, "the thought which consoled Socrates in his +dying moments, and their dream is to raise atheism into a worship." +And this was the offence, technically and officially described, for +which Chaumette and Clootz were sent to the guillotine (April 1794), +strictly on the principle which had been laid down in the Social +Contract, and accepted by Robespierre.[257] + +It would have been odd in any writer less firmly possessed with the +infallibility of his own dreams than Rousseau was, that he should not +have seen the impossibility in anything like the existing conditions +of human nature, of limiting the profession of civil faith to the +three or four articles which happened to constitute his own belief. +Having once granted the general position that a citizen may be +required to profess some religious faith, there is no speculative +principle, and there is no force in the world, which can fix any bound +to the amount or kind of religious faith which the state has the right +thus to exact. Rousseau said that a man was dangerous to the city who +did not believe in God, a future state, and divine reward and +retribution. But then Calvin thought a man dangerous who did not +believe both that there is only one God, and also that there are +three Gods. And so Chaumette went to the scaffold, and Servetus to the +stake, on the one common principle that the civil magistrate is +concerned with heresy. And Hebert was only following out the same +doctrine in a mild and equitable manner, when he insisted on +preventing the publication of a book in which the author professed his +belief in a God. A single step in the path of civil interference with +opinion leads you the whole way. + +The history of the Protestant churches is enough to show the pitiable +futility of the proviso for religious tolerance with which Rousseau +closed his exposition. "If there is no longer an exclusive national +religion, then every creed ought to be tolerated which tolerates other +creeds, so long as it contains nothing contrary to the duties of the +citizen. But whoever dares to say, _Out of the church, no salvation_, +ought to be banished from the state." The reason for which Henry IV. +embraced the Roman religion--namely, that in that he might be saved, +in the opinion alike of Protestants and Catholics, whereas in the +reformed faith, though he was saved according to Protestants, yet +according to Catholics he was necessarily damned,--ought to have made +every honest man, and especially every prince, reject it. It was the +more curious that Rousseau did not see the futility of drawing the +line of tolerance at any given set of dogmas, however simple and +slight and acceptable to himself they might be, because he invited +special admiration for D'Argenson's excellent maxim that "in the +republic everybody is perfectly free in what does not hurt +others."[258] Surely this maxim has very little significance or value, +unless we interpret it as giving entire liberty of opinion, because no +opinion whatever can hurt others, until it manifests itself in act, +including of course speech, which is a kind of act. Rousseau admitted +that over and above the profession of civil faith, a citizen might +hold what opinions he pleased, in entire freedom from the sovereign's +cognisance or jurisdiction; "for as the sovereign has no competence in +the other world, the fate of subjects in that other world is not his +affair, provided they are good citizens in this." But good citizenship +consists in doing or forbearing from certain actions, and to punish +men on the inference that forbidden action is likely to follow from +the rejection of a set of opinions, or to exact a test oath of +adherence to such opinions on the same principle, is to concede the +whole theory of civil intolerance, however little Rousseau may have +realised the perfectly legitimate applications of his doctrine. It was +an unconscious compromise. He was thinking of Calvin in practice and +Hobbes in theory, and he was at the same time influenced by the +moderate spirit of his time, and the comparatively reasonable +character of his personal belief. He praised Hobbes as the only author +who had seen the right remedy for the conflict of the spiritual and +temporal jurisdictions, by proposing to unite the two heads of the +eagle, and reducing all to political unity, without which never will +either state or government be duly constituted. But Hobbes was +consistent without flinching. He refused to set limits to the +religious prescriptions which a sovereign might impose, for "even when +the civil sovereign is an infidel, every one of his own subjects that +resisteth him, sinneth against the laws of God (for such are the laws +of nature), and rejecteth the counsel of the apostles, that +admonisheth all Christians to obey their princes.... And for their +faith, it is internal and invisible: they have the licence that Naaman +had, and need not put themselves into danger for it; but if they do, +they ought to expect their reward in heaven, and not complain of their +lawful sovereign."[259] All this flowed from the very idea and +definition of sovereignty, which Rousseau accepted from Hobbes, as we +have already seen. Such consequences, however, stated in these bold +terms, must have been highly revolting to Rousseau; he could not +assent to an exercise of sovereignty which might be atheistic, +Mahometan, or anything else unqualifiedly monstrous. He failed to see +the folly of trying to unite the old notions of a Christian +commonwealth with what was fundamentally his own notion of a +commonwealth after the ancient type. He stripped the pagan republics, +which he took for his model, of their national and official +polytheism, and he put on in its stead a scanty remnant of theism +slightly tinged with Christianity. + +Then he practically accepted Hobbes's audacious bidding to the man who +should not be able to accept the state creed, to go courageously to +martyrdom, and leave the land in peace. For the modern principle, +which was contained in D'Argenson's saying previously quoted, that the +civil power does best absolutely and unreservedly to ignore +spirituals, he was not prepared either by his emancipation from the +theological ideas of his youth, or by his observation of the working +and tendencies of systems, which involved the state in some more or +less close relations with the church, either as superior, equal, or +subordinate. Every test is sure to insist on mental independence +ending exactly where the speculative curiosity of the time is most +intent to begin. + +Let us now shortly confront Rousseau's ideas with some of the +propositions belonging to another method of approaching the philosophy +of government, that have for their key-note the conception of +expediency or convenience, and are tested by their conformity to the +observed and recorded experience of mankind. According to this method, +the ground and origin of society is not a compact; that never existed +in any known case, and never was a condition of obligation either in +primitive or developed societies, either between subjects and +sovereign, or between the equal members of a sovereign body. The true +ground is an acceptance of conditions which came into existence by the +sociability inherent in man, and were developed by man's spontaneous +search after convenience. The statement that while the constitution +of man is the work of nature, that of the state is the work of +art,[260] is as misleading as the opposite statement that governments +are not made but grow.[261] The truth lies between them, in such +propositions as that institutions owe their existence and development +to deliberate human effort, working in accordance with circumstances +naturally fixed both in human character and in the external field of +its activity. The obedience of the subject to the sovereign has its +root not in contract but in force,--the force of the sovereign to +punish disobedience. A man does not consent to be put to death if he +shall commit a murder, for the reason alleged by Rousseau, namely, as +a means of protecting his own life against murder.[262] There is no +consent in the transaction. Some person or persons, possessed of +sovereign authority, promulgated a command that the subject should not +commit murder, and appointed penalties for such commission and it was +not a fictitious assent to these penalties, but the fact that the +sovereign was strong enough to enforce them, which made the command +valid. + +Supposing a law to be passed in an assembly of the sovereign people by +a majority; what binds a member of the minority to obedience? +Rousseau's answer is this:--When the law is proposed, the question +put is not whether they approve or reject the proposition, but whether +it is conformable to the general will: the general will appears from +the votes: if the opinion contrary to my own wins the day, that only +proves that I was mistaken, and that what I took for the general will +was not really so.[263] We can scarcely imagine more nonsensical +sophistry than this. The proper answer evidently is, that either +experience or calculation has taught the citizens in a popular +government that in the long run it is most expedient for the majority +of votes to decide the law. In other words, the inconvenience to the +minority of submitting to a law which they dislike, is less than the +inconvenience of fighting to have their own way, or retiring to form a +separate community. The minority submit to obey laws which were made +against their will, because they cannot avoid the necessity of +undergoing worse inconveniences than are involved in this submission. +The same explanation partially covers what is unfortunately the more +frequent case in the history of the race, the submission of the +majority to the laws imposed by a minority of one or more. In both +these cases, however, as in the general question of the source of our +obedience to the laws, deliberate and conscious sense of convenience +is as slight in its effect upon conduct here, as it is in the rest of +the field of our moral motives. It is covered too thickly over and +constantly neutralised by the multitudinous growths of use, by the +many forms of fatalistic or ascetic religious sentiment, by physical +apathy of race, and all other conditions that interpose to narrow or +abrogate the authority of pure reason over human conduct. Rousseau, +expounding his conception of a normal political state, was no doubt +warranted in leaving these complicating conditions out of account, +though to do so is to rob any treatise on government of much of its +possible value. The same excuse cannot warrant him in basing his +political institutions upon a figment, instead of upon the substantial +ground of propositions about human nature, which the average of +experience in given races and at given stages of advancement has shown +to be true within those limits. There are places in his writings where +he reluctantly admits that men are only moved by their interests, and +he does not even take care to qualify this sufficiently.[264] But +throughout the Social Contract we seem to be contemplating the +erection of a machine which is to work without reference to the only +forces that can possibly impart movement to it. + +The consequence of this is that Rousseau gives us not the least help +towards the solution of any of the problems of actual government, +because these are naturally both suggested and guided by +considerations of expediency and improvement. It is as if he had never +really settled the ends for which government exists, beyond the +construction of the symmetrical machine of government itself. He is a +geometer, not a mechanician; or shall we say that he is a mechanician, +and not a biologist concerned with the conditions of a living +organism. The analogy of the body politic to the body natural was as +present to him as it had been to all other writers on society, but he +failed to seize the only useful lessons which such an analogy might +have taught him--diversity of structure, difference of function, +development of strength by exercise, growth by nutrition--all of which +might have been serviceably translated into the dialect of political +science, and might have bestowed on his conception of political +society more of the features of reality. We see no room for the free +play of divergent forces, the active rivalry of hostile interests, the +regulated conflict of multifarious personal aims, which can never be +extinguished, except in moments of driving crisis, by the most sincere +attachment to the common causes of the land. Thus the modern question +which is of such vital interest for all the foremost human societies, +of the union of collective energy with the encouragement of individual +freedom, is, if not wholly untouched, at least wholly unillumined by +anything that Rousseau says. To tell us that a man on entering a +society exchanges his natural liberty for civil liberty which is +limited by the general will,[265] is to give us a phrase, where we +seek a solution. To say that if it is the opposition of private +interests which made the establishment of societies necessary, it is +the accord of those interests which makes them possible,[266] is to +utter a truth which feeds no practical curiosity. The opposition of +private interests remains, in spite of the yoke which their accord has +imposed upon it, but which only controls and does not suppress such an +opposition. What sort of control? What degree? What bounds? + +So again let us consider the statement that the instant the government +usurps the sovereignty, then the social pact is broken, and all the +citizens, restored by right to their natural liberty, are forced but +not morally obliged to obey.[267] He began by telling his readers that +man, though born free, is now everywhere in chains; and therefore it +would appear that in all existing cases the social pact has been +broken, and the citizens living under the reign of force, are free to +resume their natural liberty, if they are only strong enough to do so. +This declaration of the general duty of rebellion no doubt had its +share in generating that fervid eagerness that all other peoples +should rise and throw off the yoke, which was one of the most +astonishing anxieties of the French during their revolution. That was +not the worst quality of such a doctrine. It made government +impossible, by basing the right or duty of resistance on a question +that could not be reached by positive evidence, but must always be +decided by an arbitrary interpretation of an arbitrarily imagined +document. The moderate proposition that resistance is lawful if a +government is a bad one, and if the people are strong enough to +overthrow it, and if their leaders have reason to suppose they can +provide a less bad one in its place, supplies tests that are capable +of application. Our own writers in favour of the doctrine of +resistance partly based their arguments upon the historic instances of +the Old Testament, and it is one of the most striking contributions of +Protestantism to the cause of freedom, that it sent people in an +admiring spirit to the history of the most rebellious nation that ever +existed, and so provided them in Hebrew insurgency with a corrective +for the too submissive political teaching of the Gospel. But these +writers have throughout a tacit appeal to expediency, as writers might +always be expected to have, who were really meditating on the +possibility of their principles being brought to the test of practice. +There can be no evidence possible, with a test so vague as the fact of +the rupture of a compact whose terms are authentically known to nobody +concerned. Speak of bad laws and good, wise administration or unwise, +just government or unjust, extravagant or economical, civically +elevating or demoralising; all these are questions which men may apply +themselves to settle with knowledge, and with a more or less definite +degree of assurance. But who can tell how he is to find out whether +sovereignty has been usurped, and the social compact broken? Was there +a usurpation of sovereignty in France not many years ago, when the +assumption of power by the prince was ratified by many millions of +votes? + +The same case, we are told, namely, breach of the social compact and +restoration of natural liberty, occurs when the members of the +government usurp separately the power which they ought only to +exercise in a body.[268] Now this description applies very fairly to +the famous episode in our constitutional history, connected with +George the Third's first attack of madness in 1788. Parliament cannot +lawfully begin business without a declaration of the cause of summons +from the crown. On this occasion parliament both met and deliberated +without communication from the crown. What was still more important +was a vote of the parliament itself, authorising the passing of +letters patent under the great seal for opening parliament by +commission, and for giving assent to a Regency Bill. This was a +distinct usurpation of regal authority. Two members of the government +(in Rousseau's sense of the term), namely the houses of parliament, +usurped the power which they ought only to have exercised along with +the crown.[269] The Whigs denounced the proceeding as a fiction, a +forgery, a phantom, but if they had been readers of the Social +Contract, and if they had been bitten by its dogmatic temper, they +would have declared the compact of union violated, and all British +citizens free to resume their natural rights. Not even the bitter +virulence of faction at that time could tempt any politician to take +up such a line, though within half a dozen years each of the +democratic factions in France had worked at the overthrow of every +other in turn, on the very principle which Rousseau had formulated and +Robespierre had made familiar, that usurped authority is a valid +reason for annihilating a government, no matter under what +circumstances, nor how small the chance of replacing it by a better, +nor how enormous the peril to the national well-being in the process. +The true opposite to so anarchic a doctrine is assuredly not that of +passive obedience either to chamber or monarch, but the right and duty +of throwing off any government which inflicts more disadvantages than +it confers advantages. Rousseau's whole theory tends inevitably to +substitute a long series of struggles after phrases and shadows in the +new era, for the equally futile and equally bloody wars of dynastic +succession which have been the great curse of the old. Men die for a +phrase as they used to die for a family. The other theory, which all +English politicians accept in their hearts, and so many commanding +French politicians have seemed in their hearts to reject, was first +expounded in direct view of Rousseau's teaching by Paley.[270] Of +course the greatest, widest, and loftiest exposition of the bearings +of expediency on government and its conditions, is to be found in the +magnificent and immortal pieces of Burke, some of them suggested by +absolutist violations of the doctrine in our own affairs, and some of +them by anarchic violation of it in the affairs of France, after the +seed sown by Rousseau had brought forth fruit. + +We should, however, be false to our critical principle, if we did not +recognise the historical effect of a speculation scientifically +valueless. There has been no attempt to palliate either the +shallowness or the practical mischievousness of the Social Contract. +But there is another side to its influence. It was the match which +kindled revolutionary fire in generous breasts throughout Europe. Not +in France merely, but in Germany as well, its phrases became the +language of all who aspired after freedom. Schiller spoke of Rousseau +as one who "converted Christians into human beings," and the _Robbers_ +(1778) is as if it had been directly inspired by the doctrine that +usurped sovereignty restores men to their natural rights. Smaller men +in the violent movement which seized all the youth of Germany at that +time, followed the same lead, if they happened to have any feeling +about the political condition of their enslaved countries. + +There was alike in France and Germany a craving for a return to nature +among the whole of the young generation.[271] The Social Contract +supplied a dialect for this longing on one side, just as the Emilius +supplied it on another. Such parts in it as people did not understand +or did not like, they left out. They did not perceive its direction +towards that "perfect Hobbism," which the author declared to be the +only practical alternative to a democracy so austere as to be +intolerable. They grasped phrases about the sovereignty of the people, +the freedom for which nature had destined man, the slavery to which +tyrants and oppressors had brought him. Above all they were struck by +the patriotism which shines so brightly in every page, like the fire +on the altar of one of those ancient cities which had inspired the +writer's ideal. + +Yet there is a marked difference in the channels along which +Rousseau's influence moved in the two countries. In France it was +drawn eventually into the sphere of direct politics. In Germany it +inspired not a great political movement, but an immense literary +revival. In France, as we have already said, the patriotic flame +seemed extinct. The ruinous disorder of the whole social system made +the old love of country resemble love for a phantom, and so much of +patriotic speech as survived was profoundly hollow. Even a man like +Turgot was not so much a patriot as a passionate lover of improvement, +and with the whole school of which this great spirit was the noblest +and strongest, a generous citizenship of the world had replaced the +narrower sentiment which had inflamed antique heroism. Rousseau's +exaltation of the Greek and Roman types in all their concentration and +intensity, touches mortals of commoner mould. His theory made the +native land what it had been to the citizens of earlier date, a true +centre of existence, round which all the interests of the community, +all its pursuits, all its hopes, grouped themselves with entire +singleness of convergence, just as religious faith is the centre of +existence to a church. It was the virile and patriotic energy thus +evoked which presently saved France from partition. + +We complete the estimate of the positive worth and tendencies of the +Social Contract by adding to this, which was for the time the cardinal +service, of rekindling the fire of patriotism, the rapid deduction +from the doctrine of the sovereignty of peoples of the great truth, +that a nation with a civilised polity does not consist of an order or +a caste, but of the great body of its members, the army of toilers who +make the most painful of the sacrifices that are needed for the +continuous nutrition of the social organisation. As Condorcet put it, +and he drew inspiration partly from the intellectual school of +Voltaire, and partly from the social school of Rousseau, all +institutions ought to have for their aim the physical, intellectual, +and moral amelioration of the poorest and most numerous class.[272] +This is the People. Second, there gradually followed from the +important place given by Rousseau to the idea of equal association, as +at once the foundation and the enduring bond of a community, those +schemes of Mutualism, and all the other shapes of collective action +for a common social good, which have possessed such commanding +attraction for the imagination of large classes of good men in France +ever since. Hitherto these forms have been sterile and deceptive, and +they must remain so, until the idea of special function has been +raised to an equal level of importance with that of united forces +working together to a single end. + +In these ways the author of the Social Contract did involuntarily and +unconsciously contribute to the growth of those new and progressive +ideas, in which for his own part he lacked all faith. Prae-Newtonians +knew not the wonders of which Newton was to find the key; and so we, +grown weary of waiting for the master intelligence who may effect the +final combination of moral and scientific ideas needed for a new +social era, may be inclined to lend a half-complacent ear to the arid +sophisters who assume that the last word of civilisation has been +heard in existing arrangements. But we may perhaps take courage from +history to hope that generations will come, to whom our system of +distributing among a few the privileges and delights that are procured +by the toil of the many, will seem just as wasteful, as morally +hideous, and as scientifically indefensible, as that older system +which impoverished and depopulated empires, in order that a despot or +a caste might have no least wish ungratified, for which the lives or +the hard-won treasure of others could suffice. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[176] _Cont. Soc._, I. viii. + +[177] _Cont. Soc._, II. xi. He had written in much the same sense in +his article on Political Economy in the Encyclopaedia, p. 34. + +[178] Robespierre disclaimed the intention of attacking property, and +took up a position like that of Rousseau--teaching the poor contempt +for the rich, not envy. "I do not want to touch your treasures," he +cried, on one occasion, "however impure their source. It is far more +an object of concern to me to make poverty honourable, than to +proscribe wealth; the thatched hut of Fabricius never need envy the +palace of Crassus. I should be at least as content, for my own part, +to be one of the sons of Aristides, brought up in the Prytaneium at +the public expense, as the heir presumptive of Xerxes, born in the +mire of royal courts, to sit on a throne decorated by the abasement of +the people, and glittering with the public misery." Quoted in Malon's +_Expose des Ecoles Socialistes francaises_, 15. Baboeuf carried +Rousseau's sentiments further towards their natural conclusion by such +propositions as these: "The goal of the revolution is to destroy +inequality, and to re-establish the happiness of all." "The revolution +is not finished, because the rich absorb all the property, and hold +exclusive power; while the poor toil like born slaves, languish in +wretchedness, and are nothing in the state." _Expose des Ecoles +Socialistes francaises_, p. 29. + +[179] _Cont. Soc._, II. xi. + +[180] _Cont. Soc._, I. iv. + +[181] _Ib._, II. vii. + +[182] Ch. vi. (vol. v. 371; edit. 1801). + +[183] Ch. vii. (p. 383.) + +[184] Goguet, in his _Origine des Lois, des Arts, et des Sciences_ +(1758), really attempted as laboriously as possible to carry out a +notion of the historical method, but the fact that history itself at +that time had never been subjected to scientific examination made his +effort valueless. He accumulates testimony which would be excellent +evidence, if only it had been sifted, and had come out of the process +substantially undiminished. Yet even Goguet, who thus carefully +followed the accounts of early societies given in the Bible and other +monuments, intersperses abstract general statements about man being +born free and independent (i. 25), and entering society as the result +of deliberate reflection. + +[185] _Cont. Soc._, II. xi. Also III. viii. + +[186] II. xi. Also ch. viii. + +[187] II. viii. + +[188] II. ix. + +[189] _Politics_, VII. iv. 8, 10. + +[190] _Cont. Soc._, II. x. + +[191] Plato's _Laws_, v. 737. + +[192] _Ib._, iv. 705. + +[193] _Projet de Constitution pour la Corse_, p. 75. + +[194] _Gouvernement de Pologne_, ch. xi. + +[195] _Cont. Soc._, II. vii. + +[196] Goguet was much nearer to a true conception of this kind; see, +for instance, _Origine des Lois_, i. 46. + +[197] Decree of the Committee, April 20, 1794, reported by +Billaud-Varennes. Compare ch. iv. of Rousseau's _Considerations sur le +Gouvernement de Pologne_. + +[198] Here are some of Saint Just's regulations:--No servants, nor +gold or silver vessels; no child under 16 to eat meat, nor any adult +to eat meat on three days of the decade; boys at the age of 7 to be +handed over to the school of the nation, where they were to be brought +up to speak little, to endure hardships, and to train for war; divorce +to be free to all; friendship ordained a public institution, every +citizen on coming to majority being bound to proclaim his friends, and +if he had none, then to be banished; if one committed a crime, his +friends were to be banished. Quoted in Von Sybel's _Hist. French +Rev._, iv. 49. When Morelly dreamed his dream of a model community in +1754 (see above, vol. i. p. 158) he little supposed, one would think, +that within forty years a man would be so near trying the experiment +in France as Saint Just was. Baboeuf is pronounced by La Harpe to have +been inspired by the Code de la Nature, which La Harpe impudently set +down to Diderot, on whom every great destructive piece was +systematically fathered. + +[199] I forget where I have read the story of some member of the +Convention being very angry because the library contained no copy of +the laws which Minos gave to the Cretans. + +[200] III. xiii. + +[201] III. xv. He actually recommended the Poles to pay all public +functionaries in kind, and to have the public works executed on the +system of corvee. _Gouvernement de Pologne_, ch. xi. + +[202] _Cont. Soc._, III. ii. + +[203] II. i. + +[204] II. ii. + +[205] III. i. + +[206] II. vi. + +[207] II. iv. + +[208] IV. vi. + +[209] _Economie Politique_, p. 30. + +[210] _Melanges_, p. 310. + +[211] See for instance Green's _History of the English People_, i. +266. + +[212] _Summa_, xc.-cviii. (1265-1273). See Maurice's _Moral and +Metaphysical Philosophy_, i. 627, 628. Also Franck's _Reformateurs et +Publicistes de l'Europe_, p. 48, etc. + +[213] _Defensor Pacis_, Pt. I., ch. xii. This, again, is an example of +Marsilio's position:--"Convenerunt enim homines ad civilem +communicationem propter commodum et vitae sufficientiam consequendam, +et opposita declinandum. Quae igitur omnium tangere possunt commodum et +incommodum, ab omnibus sciri debent et audiri, ut commodum assequi et +oppositum repellere possint." The whole chapter is a most interesting +anticipation, partly due to the influence of Aristotle, of the notions +of later centuries. + +[214] See Bayle's Dict., s.v. _Althusius_. + +[215] _Lettres de la Montagne_, I. vi. 388. + +[216] _Eccles. Polity_, Bk. i.; bks. i.-iv., 1594; bk. v., 1597; bks. +vi.-viii., 1647,--being forty-seven years after the author's death. + +[217] Goguet (_Origine des Lois_, i. 22) dwells on tacit conventions +as a kind of engagement to which men commit themselves with extreme +facility. He was thus rather near the true idea of the spontaneous +origin and unconscious acceptance of early institutions. + +[218] Of Civil Government, ch. xiii. See also ch. xi. "This +legislative is not only the supreme power of the commonwealth, but +sacred and unalterable in the hands where the community have once +placed it; nor can any edict of anybody else, in what form soever +conceived, or by what power soever backed, have the force and +obligation of a law, which has not its sanction from that legislative +which the public has chosen and appointed; for without this the law +could not have that which is absolutely necessary to its being a +law--the consent of the society; over whom nobody can have a power to +make laws, but by their own consent, and by authority received from +them." If Rousseau had found no neater expression for his doctrine +than this, the Social Contract would assuredly have been no explosive. + +[219] See especially ch. viii. + +[220] Hence the antipathy of the clergy, catholic, episcopalian, and +presbyterian, to which, as Austin has pointed out (_Syst. of +Jurisprudence_, i. 288, _n._), Hobbes mainly owes his bad repute. + +[221] See Diderot's article on _Hobbisme_ in the Encyclopaedia, +_Oeuv._, xv. 122. + +[222] _Esprit des Lois_, I. i. + +[223] _Cont. Soc._, II. vi. 50. + +[224] Goguet has the merit of seeing distinctly that command is the +essence of law. + +[225] _Cont. Soc._, II. vi. 51-53. See Austin's _Jurisprudence_, i. +95, etc.; also _Lettres ecrites de la Montagne_, I. vi. 380, 381. + +[226] See, for instance, letter to Mirabeau (_l'ami des hommes_), July +26, 1767. _Corr._, v. 179. The same letter contains his criticism on +the good despot of the Economists. + +[227] _L'Ordre Naturel et Essentiel des Societes Politiques_ (1767). +By Mercier de la Riviere. One episode in the life of Mercier de la +Riviere is worth recounting, as closely connected with the subject we +are discussing. Just as Corsicans and Poles applied to Rousseau, +Catherine of Russia, in consequence of her admiration for Riviere's +book, summoned him to Russia to assist her in making laws. "Sir," said +the Czarina, "could you point out to me the best means for the good +government of a state?" "Madame, there is only one way, and that is +being just; in other words, in keeping order and exacting obedience to +the laws." "But on what base is it best to make the laws of an empire +repose?" "There is only one base, Madame: the nature of things and of +men." "Just so; but when you wish to give laws to a people, what are +the rules which indicate most surely such laws as are most suitable?" +"To give or make laws, Madame, is a task that God has left to none. +Ah, who is the man that should think himself capable of dictating laws +for beings that he does not know, or knows so ill? And by what right +can he impose laws on beings whom God has never placed in his hands?" +"To what, then, do you reduce the science of government?" "To studying +carefully; recognising and setting forth the laws which God has graven +so manifestly in the very organisation of men, when he called them +into existence. To wish to go any further would be a great misfortune +and a most destructive undertaking." "Sir, I am very pleased to have +heard what you have to say; I wish you good day." Quoted from +Thiebault's _Souvenirs de Berlin_, in M. Daire's edition of the +_Physiocrates_, ii. 432. + +[228] _Cont. Soc._, II. vii. + +[229] _Corr._, v. 181. + +[230] _Cont. Soc._, I. v., vi., vii. + +[231] _Leviathan_, II., ch. xviii. vol. iii. 159 (Molesworth's +edition). + +[232] _Cont. Soc._, III. xvi. + +[233] _Civil Government_, ch. viii. Sec. 99. + +[234] I. vi. Especially the footnote. + +[235] _Cont. Soc._, II. i. + +[236] _Syst. of Jurisprudence_, i. 256. + +[237] _Cont. Soc._, III. xv. 137. It was not long, however, before +Rousseau found reason to alter his opinion in this respect. The +champions of the Council at Geneva compared the _droit negatif_, in +the exercise of which the Council had refused to listen to the +representations of Rousseau's partisans (see above, vol. ii. p. 105) +to the right of veto possessed by the crown in Great Britain. Rousseau +seized upon this egregious blunder, which confused the power of +refusing assent to a proposed law, with the power of refusing justice +under law already passed. He at once found illustrations of the +difference, first in the case of the printers of No. 45 of the _North +Briton_, who brought actions for false imprisonment (1763), and next +in the proceedings against Wilkes at the same time. If Wilkes, said +Rousseau, had written, printed, published, or said, one-fourth against +the Lesser Council at Geneva of what he said, wrote, printed, and +published openly in London against the court and the government, he +would have been heavily punished, and most likely put to death. And so +forth, until he has proved very pungently how different degrees of +freedom are enjoyed in Geneva and in England. _Lettres ecrites de la +Montague_, ix. 491-500. When he wrote this he was unaware that the +Triennial Act had long been replaced by the Septennial Act of the 1 +Geo. I. On finding out, as he did afterwards, that a parliament could +sit for seven years, he thought as meanly of our liberty as ever. +_Considerations sur les gouvernement de Pologne_, ch. vii. 253-260. In +his _Projet de Constitution pour la Corse_, p. 113, he says that "the +English do not love liberty for itself, but because it is most +favourable to money-making." + +[238] III., xi., xii., and xiii. + +[239] Mr. Freeman's _Growth of the English Constitution_, c. i. + +[240] _Cont. Soc._, III. xv. 140. A small manuscript containing his +ideas on confederation was given by Rousseau to the Count d'Antraigues +(afterwards an _emigre_), who destroyed it in 1789, lest its arguments +should be used to sap the royal authority. See extract from his +pamphlet, prefixed to M. Auguis's edition of the Social Contract, pp. +xxiii, xxiv. + +[241] _Gouvernement de Pologne_, v. 246. + +[242] Of course no such modification as that proposed by Comte +(_Politique Positive_, iv. 421) would come within the scope of the +doctrine of the Social Contract. For each of the seventeen Intendances +into which Comte divides France, is to be ruled by a chief, "always +appointed and removed by the central power." There is no room for the +sovereignty of the people here, even in things parochial. + +[243] There was one extraordinary instance during the revolution of +attempting to make popular government direct on Rousseau's principle, +in the scheme (1790) of which Danton was a chief supporter, for +reorganising the municipal administration of Paris. The assemblies of +sections were to sit permanently; their vote was to be taken on +current questions; and action was to follow the aggregate of their +degrees. See Von Sybel's _Hist. Fr. Rev._ i. 275; M. Louis Blanc's +_History_, Bk. III. ch. ii. + +[244] This was also Bodin's definition of an aristocratic state; "si +minor pars civium caeteris imperat." + +[245] _Politics_, III. vi.-vii. + +[246] _Esprit des Lois_, II. i. ii. + +[247] Rousseau gave the name of _tyrant_ to a usurper of royal +authority in a kingdom, and _despot_ to a usurper of the sovereign +authority (_i.e._ [Greek: tyrannos] in the Greek sense). The former +might govern according to the laws, but the latter placed himself +above the laws (_Cont. Soc._, III. x.) This corresponded to Locke's +distinction: "As usurpation is the exercise of power which another +hath a right to, so tyranny is the exercise of a power beyond right, +which nobody can have a right to." _Civil Gov._, ch. xviii. + +[248] III. iv. + +[249] III. vi. + +[250] III. v. + +[251] _Cont. Soc._, IV. viii. + +[252] _Cont. Soc._, IV. viii. 197-201. + +[253] This is not unlike what Tocqueville says somewhere, that +Christianity bids you render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, +but seems to discourage any inquiry whether Caesar is an usurper or a +lawful ruler. + +[254] _Cont. Soc._, IV. viii. 203. As we have already seen, he had +entreated Voltaire, of all men in the world, to draw up a civil +profession of faith. See vol. i. 326. + +In the New Heloisa (V. v. 117, _n._) Rousseau expresses his opinion +that "no true believer could be intolerant or a persecutor. _If I were +a magistrate, and if the law pronounced the penalty of death against +atheists, I would begin by burning as such whoever should come to +inform against another._" + +[255] Plato's _Laws_, Bk. x. 909, etc. + +[256] _Areopagitica_, p. 417. (Edit. 1867.) + +[257] See a speech of his, which is Rousseau's "civil faith" done into +rhetoric, given in M. Louis Blanc's _Hist. de la Rev. Francaise_, Bk. +x. c. xiv. + +[258] _Considerations sur le gouvernement ancien et present de la +France_ (1764). Quoted by Rousseau from a manuscript copy. + +[259] _Leviathan_, ch. xliii. 601. Also ch. xlii. + +[260] _Cont. Soc._, III. xi. Borrowed from Hobbes, who said, "Magnus +ille Leviathan quae civitas appellatur, opificium artis est." + +[261] Mackintosh's. + +[262] _Cont. Soc._, II. v. + +[263] IV. ii. + +[264] For instance, _Gouvernement de la Pologne_, ch. xi. p. 305. And +_Corr._, v. 180. + +[265] _Cont. Soc._, I. viii. + +[266] _Cont. Soc._, II. i. + +[267] _Ib._, III. x. "Let every individual who may usurp the +sovereignty be instantly put to death by free men." Robespierre's +_Declaration des droits de l'homme_, Sec. 27. "When the government +violates the rights of the people, insurrection becomes for the people +the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties." Sec. 35. + +[268] _Cont. Soc._, III. x. + +[269] See May's _Constitutional Hist. of England_, ch. iii; and Lord +Stanhope's _Life of Pitt_, vol. ii. ch. xii. + +[270] In the 6th book of the _Moral Philosophy_ (1785), ch. iii., and +elsewhere. In the preface he refers to the effect which Rousseau's +political theory was supposed to have had in the civil convulsions of +Geneva, as one of the reasons which encouraged him to publish his own +book. + +[271] One side of this was the passion for geographical exploration +which took possession of Europe towards the middle of the eighteenth +century. See the _Life of Humboldt_, i. 28, 29. (_Eng. Trans._ by +Lassell.) + +[272] Rousseau's influence on Condorcet is seen in the latter's maxim, +which has found such favour in the eyes of socialist writers, that +"not only equality of right, but equality of fact, is the goal of the +social art." + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +EMILIUS. + + +One whose most intense conviction was faith in the goodness +of all things and creatures as they are first produced by nature, and +so long as they remain unsophisticated by the hand and purpose of man, +was in some degree bound to show a way by which this evil process of +sophistication might be brought to the lowest possible point, and the +best of all natural creatures kept as near as possible to his high +original. Rousseau, it is true, held in a sense of his own the +doctrine of the fall of man. That doctrine, however, has never made +people any more remiss in the search after a virtue, which if they +ought to have regarded it as hopeless according to strict logic, is +still indispensable in actual life. Rousseau's way of believing that +man had fallen was so coloured at once by that expansion of sanguine +emotion which marked his century, and by that necessity for repose in +idyllic perfection of simplicity which marked his own temperament, +that enthusiasm for an imaginary human creature effectually shut out +the dogma of his fatal depravation. "How difficult a thing it is," +Madame d'Epinay once said to him, "to bring up a child." "Assuredly +it is," answered Rousseau; "because the father and mother are not made +by nature to bring it up, nor the child to be brought up."[273] This +cynical speech can only have been an accidental outbreak of spleen. It +was a contradiction to his one constant opinion that nature is all +good and bounteous, and that the inborn capacity of man for reaching +true happiness knows no stint. + +In writing Emilius, he sat down to consider what man is, and what can +be made of him. Here, as in all the rest of his work, he only obeyed +the tendencies of his time in choosing a theme. An age touched by the +spirit of hope inevitably turns to the young; for with the young lies +fulfilment. Such epochs are ever pressing with the question, how is +the future to be shaped? Our answer depends on the theory of human +disposition, and in these epochs the theory is always optimistic. +Rousseau was saved, as so many thousands of men have been alike in +conduct and speculation, by inconsistency, and not shrinking from two +mutually contradictory trains of thought. Society is corrupt, and +society is the work of man. Yet man, who has engendered this corrupted +birth, is good and whole. The strain in the argument may be pardoned +for the hopefulness of the conclusion. It brought Rousseau into +harmony with the eager effort of the time to pour young character into +finer mould, and made him the most powerful agent in giving to such +efforts both fervour and elevation. While others were content with +the mere enunciation of maxims and precepts, he breathed into them the +spirit of life, and enforced them with a vividness of faith that +clothed education with the augustness and unction of religion. The +training of the young soul to virtue was surrounded with something of +the awful holiness of a sacrament; and those who laboured in this +sanctified field were exhorted to a constancy of devotion, and were +promised a fulness of recompense, that raised them from the rank of +drudges to a place of highest honour among the ministers of nature. + +Everybody at this time was thinking about education, partly perhaps on +account of the suppression of the Jesuits, the chief instructors of +the time, and a great many people were writing about it. The Abbe de +Saint Pierre had had new ideas on education, as on all the greater +departments of human interest. Madame d'Epinay wrote considerations +upon the bringing up of the young.[274] Madame de Grafigny did the +same in a less grave shape.[275] She received letters from the +precociously sage Turgot, abounding in the same natural and sensible +precepts which ten years later were commended with more glowing +eloquence in the pages of Emilius.[276] Grimm had an elaborate scheme +for a treatise on education.[277] Helvetius followed his exploration +of the composition of the human mind, by a treatise on the training +proper for the intellectual and moral faculties. Education by these +and other writers was being conceived in a wider sense than had been +known to ages controlled by ecclesiastical collegians. It slowly came +to be thought of in connection with the family. The improvement of +ideas upon education was only one phase of that great general movement +towards the restoration of the family, which was so striking a +spectacle in France after the middle of the century. Education now +came to comprehend the whole system of the relations between parents +and their children, from earliest infancy to maturity. The direction +of this wider feeling about such relations tended strongly towards an +increased closeness in them, more intimacy, and a more continuous +suffusion of tenderness and long attachment. All this was part of the +general revival of naturalism. People began to reflect that nature was +not likely to have designed infants to be suckled by other women than +their own mothers, nor that they should be banished from the society +of those who are most concerned in their well-being, from the cheerful +hearth and wise affectionate converse of home, to the frigid +discipline of colleges and convents and the unamiable monition of +strangers. + +Then the rising rebellion against the church and its faith perhaps +contributed something towards a movement which, if it could not break +the religious monopoly of instruction, must at least introduce the +parent as a competitor with the priestly instructor for influence over +the ideas, habits, and affections of his children. The rebellion was +aimed against the spirit as well as the manner of the established +system. The church had not fundamentally modified the significance of +the dogma of the fall and depravity of man; education was still +conceived as a process of eradication and suppression of the mystical +old Adam. The new current flowed in channels far away from that black +folly of superstition. Men at length ventured once more to look at one +another with free and generous gaze. The veil of the temple was rent, +and the false mockeries of the shrine of the Hebrew divinity made +plain to scornful eyes. People ceased to see one another as guilty +victims cowering under a divine curse. They stood erect in +consciousness of manhood. The palsied conception of man, with his +large discourse of reason looking before and after, his lofty and +majestic patience in search for new forms of beauty and new secrets of +truth, his sense of the manifold sweetness and glory and awe of the +universe, above all, his infinite capacity of loyal pity and love for +his comrades in the great struggle, and his high sorrow for his own +wrong-doing,--the palsied and crushing conception of this excellent +and helpful being as a poor worm, writhing under the vindictive and +meaningless anger of an omnipotent tyrant in the large heavens, only +to be appeased by sacerdotal intervention, was fading back into those +regions of night, whence the depth of human misery and the +obscuration of human intelligence had once permitted its escape, to +hang evilly over the western world for a season. So vital a change in +the point of view quickly touched the theory and art of the upbringing +of the young. Education began to figure less as the suppression of the +natural man, than his strengthening and development; less as a process +of rooting out tares, more as the grateful tending of shoots abounding +in promise of richness. What had been the most drearily mechanical of +duties, was transformed into a task that surpassed all others in +interest and hope. If man be born not bad but good, under no curse, +but rather the bestower and receiver of many blessings, then the +entire atmosphere of young life, in spite of the toil and the peril, +is made cheerful with the sunshine and warmth of the great folded +possibilities of excellence, happiness, and well-doing. + + +I. + +Locke in education, as in metaphysics and in politics, was the pioneer +of French thought. In education there is less room for scientific +originality. The sage of a parish, provided only she began her trade +with an open and energetic mind, may here pass philosophers. Locke was +nearly as sage, as homely, as real, as one of these strenuous women. +The honest plainness of certain of his prescriptions for the +preservation of physical health perhaps keeps us somewhat too near the +earth. His manner throughout is marked by the stout wisdom of the +practical teacher, who is content to assume good sense in his hearers, +and feels no necessity for kindling a blaze or raising a tempest. He +gives us a practical manual for producing a healthy, instructed, +upright, well-mannered young English squire, who shall be rightly +fitted to take his own life sensibly in hand, and procure from it a +fair amount of wholesome satisfaction both for himself and the people +with whom he is concerned. Locke's treatise is one of the most +admirable protests in the world against effeminacy and pedantry, and +parents already moved by grave desire to do their duty prudently to +their sons, will hardly find another book better suited to their ends. +Besides Locke, we must also count Charron, and the amazing educator of +Gargantua, and Montaigne before either, among the writers whom +Rousseau had read, with that profit and increase which attends the +dropping of the good ideas of other men into fertile minds. + +There is an immense class of natures, and those not the lowest, which +the connection of duty with mere prudence does not carry far enough. +They only stir when something has moved their feeling for the ideal, +and raised the mechanical offices of the narrow day into association +with the spaciousness and height of spiritual things. To these +Rousseau came. For both the tenour and the wording of the most +striking precepts of the Emilius, he owes much to Locke. But what was +so realistic in him becomes blended in Rousseau with all the power and +richness and beauty of an ideal that can move the most generous parts +of human character. The child is treated as the miniature of humanity; +it thus touches the whole sphere of our sympathies, warms our +curiosity as to the composition of man's nature, and becomes the very +eye and centre of moral and social aspirations. + +Accordingly Rousseau almost at once begins by elaborating his +conception of the kind of human creature which it is worth while to +take the trouble to rear, and the only kind which pure nature will +help you in perfecting. Hence Emilius, besides being a manual for +parents, contains the lines of a moral type of life and character for +all others. The old thought of the Discourses revives in full vigour. +The artifices of society, the perverting traditions of use, the feeble +maxims of indolence, convention, helpless dependence on the aid or the +approval of others, are routed at the first stroke. The old regimen of +accumulated prejudice is replaced, in dealing alike with body and +soul, by the new system of liberty and nature. In saying this we have +already said that the exaltation of Spartan manners which runs through +Rousseau's other writings has vanished, and that every trace of the +much-vaunted military and public training has yielded before the +attractive thought of tender parents and a wisely ruled home. Public +instruction, we learn, can now no longer exist, because there is no +longer such a thing as country, and therefore there can no longer be +citizens. Only domestic education can now help us to rear the man +according to nature,--the man who knows best among us how to bear +the mingled good and ill of our life. + +The artificial society of the time, with its aspirations after a +return to nature, was moved to the most energetic enthusiasm by +Rousseau's famous exhortations to mothers to nourish their own little +ones. Morelly, as we have seen, had already enjoined the adoption of +this practice. So too had Buffon. But Morelly's voice had no +resonance, Buffon's reasons were purely physical, and children were +still sent out to nurse, until Rousseau's more passionate moral +entreaties awoke maternal conscience. "Do these tender mothers," he +exclaimed, "who, when they have got rid of their infants, surrender +themselves gaily to all the diversions of the town, know what sort of +usage the child in the village is receiving, fastened in his swaddling +band? At the least interruption that comes, they hang him up by a nail +like a bundle of rags, and there the poor creature remains thus +crucified, while the nurse goes about her affairs. Every child found +in this position had a face of purple; as the violent compression of +the chest would not allow the blood to circulate, it all went to the +head, and the victim was supposed to be very quiet, just because it +had not strength enough to cry out."[278] But in Rousseau, as in +Beethoven, a harsh and rugged passage is nearly always followed by +some piece of exquisite and touching melody. The force of these +indignant pictures was heightened and relieved by moving appeal to +all the tender joys of maternal solicitude, and thoughts of all that +this solicitude could do for the happiness of the home, the father, +and the young. The attraction of domestic life is pronounced the best +antidote to the ill living of the time. The bustle of children, which +you now think so importunate, gradually becomes delightful; it brings +father and mother nearer to one another; and the lively animation of a +family added to domestic cares, makes the dearest occupation of the +wife, and the sweetest of all his amusements to the husband. If women +will only once more become mothers again, men will very soon become +fathers and husbands.[279] + +The physical effect of this was not altogether wholesome. Rousseau's +eloquence excited women to an inordinate pitch of enthusiasm for the +duty of suckling their infants, but his contemptuous denunciation of +the gaieties of Paris could not extinguish the love of amusement. + + Quid quod libelli Stoici inter sericos + Jacere pulvillos amant? + +So young mothers tried as well as they could to satisfy both desires, +and their babes were brought to them at all unseasonable hours, while +they were full of food and wine, or heated with dancing or play, and +there received the nurture which, but for Rousseau, they would have +drawn in more salutary sort from a healthy foster-mother in the +country. This, however, was only an incidental drawback to a movement +which was in its main lines full of excellent significance. The +importance of giving freedom to the young limbs, of accustoming the +body to rudeness and vicissitude of climate, of surrounding youth with +light and cheerfulness and air, and even a tiny detail such as the +propriety of substituting for coral or ivory some soft substance +against which the growing teeth might press a way without irritation, +all these matters are handled with a fervid reality of interest that +gives to the tedium of the nursery a genuine touch of the poetic. +Swathings, bandages, leading-strings, are condemned with a warmth like +that with which the author had denounced comedy.[280] The city is held +up to indignant reprobation as the gulf of infant life, just as it had +been in his earlier pieces as the gulf of all the loftiest energies of +the adult life. Every child ought to be born and nursed in the +country, and it would be all the better if it remained in the country +to the last day of its existence. You must accustom it little by +little to the sight of disagreeable objects, such as toads and snakes; +also in the same gradual manner to the sound of alarming noises, +beginning with snapping a cap in a pistol. If the infant cries from +pain which you cannot remove, make no attempt to soothe it; your +caresses will not lessen the anguish of its colic, while the child +will remember what it has to do in order to be coaxed and to get its +own way. The nurse may amuse it by songs and lively cries, but she is +not to din useless words into its ears; the first articulations that +come to it should be few, easy, distinct, frequently repeated, and +only referring to objects which may be shown to the child. "Our +unlucky facility in cheating ourselves with words that we do not +understand, begins earlier than we suppose." Let there be no haste in +inducing the child to speak articulately. The evil of precipitation in +this respect is not that children use and hear words without sense, +but that they use and hear them in a different sense from our own, +without our perceiving it. Mistakes of this sort, committed thus +early, have an influence, even after they are cured, over the turn of +the mind for the rest of the creature's life. Hence it is a good thing +to keep a child's vocabulary as limited as possible, lest it should +have more words than ideas, and should say more than it can possibly +realise in thought.[281] + +In moral as in intellectual habits, the most perilous interval in +human life is that between birth and the age of twelve. The great +secret is to make the early education purely negative; a process of +keeping the heart, naturally so good, clear of vice, and the +intelligence, naturally so true, clear of error. Take for first, +second, and third precept, to follow nature and leave her free to the +performance of her own tasks. Until the age of reason, there can be no +idea of moral beings or social relations. Therefore, says Rousseau, no +moral discussion. Locke's maxim in favour of constantly reasoning with +children was a mistake. Of all the faculties of man, reason, which is +only a compound of the rest, is that which is latest in development, +and yet it is this which we are to use to develop those which come +earliest of all. Such a course is to begin at the end, and to turn the +finished work into an instrument. "In speaking to children in these +early years a language which they do not comprehend, we accustom them +to cheat themselves with words, to criticise what is said to them, to +think themselves as wise as their masters, to become disputatious and +mutinous." If you forget that nature meant children to be children +before growing into men, you only force a fruit that has neither +ripeness nor savour, and must soon go bad; you will have youthful +doctors and old infants. + +To all this, however, there is certainly another side which Rousseau +was too impetuous to see. Perfected reason is truly the tardiest of +human endowments, but it can never be perfected at all unless the +process be begun, and, within limits, the sooner the beginning is +made, the earlier will be the ripening. To know the grounds of right +conduct is, we admit, a different thing from feeling a disposition to +practise it. But nobody will deny the expediency of an intelligent +acquaintance with the reasons why one sort of conduct is bad, and its +opposite good, even if such an acquaintance can never become a +substitute for the spontaneous action of thoroughly formed habit. For +one thing, cases are constantly arising in a man's life that demand +the exercise of reason, to settle the special application of +principles which may have been acquired without knowledge of their +rational foundation. In such cases, which are the critical and testing +points of character, all depends upon the possession of a more or less +justly trained intelligence, and the habit of using it. Now, as we +have said, it is one of the great merits of the Emilius that it calls +such attention to the early age at which mental influences begin to +operate. Why should the gradual formation of the master habit of using +the mind be any exception? + +Belief in the efficacy of preaching is the bane of educational +systems. Verbal lessons seem as if they ought to be so deeply +effective, if only the will and the throng of various motives which +guide it, instantly followed impression of a truth upon the +intelligence. And they are, moreover, so easily communicated, saving +the parent a lifetime of anxious painstaking in shaping his own +character, after such a pattern as shall silently draw all within its +influence to pursuit of good and honourable things. The most valuable +of Rousseau's notions about education, though he by no means +consistently adhered to them, was his urgent contempt for this +fatuous substitution of spoken injunctions and prohibitions, for the +deeper language of example, and the more living instruction of visible +circumstance. The vast improvements that have since taken place in the +theory and the art of education all over Europe, and of which he has +the honour of being the first and most widely influential promoter, +may all be traced to the spread of this wise principle, and its +adoption in various forms. The change in the up-bringing of the young +exactly corresponds to the change in the treatment of the insane. We +may look back to the old system of endless catechisms, apophthegms, +moral fables, and the rest of the paraphernalia of moral didactics, +with the same horror with which we regard the gags, strait-waistcoats, +chains, and dark cells, of poor mad people before the intervention of +Pinel. + +It is clear now to everybody who has any opinion on this most +important of all subjects, that spontaneousness is the first quality +in connection with right doing, which you can develop in the young, +and this spontaneousness of habit is best secured by associating it +with the approval of those to whom the child looks. Sympathy, in a +word, is the true foundation from which to build up the structure of +good habit. The young should be led to practise the elementary parts +of right conduct from the desire to please, because that is a securer +basis than the conclusions of an embryo reason, applied to the most +complex conditions of action, while the grounds on which action is +justified or condemned may be made plain in the fulness of time, when +the understanding is better able to deal with the ideas and terms +essential to the matter. You have two aims to secure, each without +sacrifice of the other. These are, first, that the child shall grow up +with firm and promptly acting habit; second, that it shall retain +respect for reason and an open mind. The latter may be acquired in the +less immature years, but if the former be not acquired in the earlier +times, a man grows up with a drifting unsettledness of will, that +makes his life either vicious by quibbling sophistries, or helpless +for want of ready conclusions. + +The first idea which is to be given to a child, little as we might +expect such a doctrine from the author of the Second Discourse, is +declared to be that of property. And he can only acquire this idea by +having something of his own. But how are we to teach him the +significance of a thing being one's own? It is a prime rule to attempt +to teach nothing by a verbal lesson; all instruction ought to be left +to experience.[282] Therefore you must contrive some piece of +experience which shall bring this notion of property vividly into a +child's mind; the following for instance. Emilius is taken to a piece +of garden; his instructor digs and dresses the ground for him, and the +boy takes possession by sowing some beans. "We come every day to water +them, and see them rise out of the ground with transports of joy. I +add to this joy by saying, This belongs to you. Then explaining the +term, I let him feel that he has put into the ground this time, +labour, trouble, his person in short; that there is in this bit of +ground something of himself which he may maintain against every comer, +as he might withdraw his own arm from the hand of another man who +would fain retain it in spite of him." One day Emilius comes to his +beloved garden, watering-pot in hand, and finds to his anguish and +despair that all the beans have been plucked up, that the ground has +been turned over, and that the spot is hardly recognisable. The +gardener comes up, and explains with much warmth that he had sown the +seed of a precious Maltese melon in that particular spot long before +Emilius had come with his trumpery beans, and that therefore it was +his land; that nobody touches the garden of his neighbour, in order +that his own may remain untouched; and that if Emilius wants a piece +of garden, he must pay for it by surrendering to the owner half the +produce.[283] Thus, says Rousseau, the boy sees how the notion of +property naturally goes back to the right of the first occupant as +derived from labour. We should have thought it less troublesome, as it +is certainly more important, to teach a boy the facts of property +positively and imperatively. This rather elaborate ascent to origins +seems an exaggerated form of that very vice of over-instructing the +growing reason in abstractions, which Rousseau had condemned so short +a time before. + +Again, there is the very strong objection to conveying lessons by +artificially contrived incidents, that children are nearly always +extremely acute in suspecting and discovering such contrivances. Yet +Rousseau recurs to them over and over again, evidently taking delight +in their ingenuity. Besides the illustration of the origin and +significance of property, there is the complex fancy in which a +juggler is made to combine instruction as to the properties of the +magnet with certain severe moral truths.[284] The tutor interests +Emilius in astronomy and geography by a wonderful stratagem indeed. +The poor youth loses his way in a wood, is overpowered by hunger and +weariness, and then is led on by his cunning tutor to a series of +inferences from the position of the sun and so forth, which convince +him that his home is just over the hedge, where it is duly found to +be.[285] Here, again, is the way in which the instructor proposes to +stir activity of limb in the young Emilius. "In walking with him of an +afternoon, I used sometimes to put in my pocket two cakes of a sort he +particularly liked; we each of us ate one. One day he perceived that I +had three cakes; he could easily have eaten six; he promptly +despatches his own, to ask me for the third. Nay, I said to him, I +could well eat it myself, or we would divide it, but I would rather +see it made the prize of a running match between the two little boys +there." The little boys run their race, and the winner devours the +cake. This and subsequent repetitions of the performance at first +only amused Emilius, but he presently began to reflect, and perceiving +that he also had two legs, he began privately to try how fast he could +run. When he thought he was strong enough, he importuned his tutor for +the third cake, and on being refused, insisted on being allowed to +compete for it. The habit of taking exercise was not the only +advantage gained. The tutor resorted to a variety of further +stratagems in order to induce the boy to find out and practise visual +compass, and so forth.[286] If we consider, as we have said, first the +readiness of children to suspect a stratagem wherever instruction is +concerned, and next their resentment on discovering artifice of that +kind, all this seems as little likely to be successful as it is +assuredly contrary to Rousseau's general doctrine of leaving +circumstances to lead. + +In truth Rousseau's appreciation of the real nature of spontaneousness +in the processes of education was essentially inadequate, and that it +was so, arose from a no less inadequate conception of the right +influence upon the growing character, of the great principle of +authority. His dread lest the child should ever be conscious of the +pressure of a will external to its own, constituted a fundamental +weakness of his system. The child, we are told with endless +repetition, ought always to be led to suppose that it is following its +own judgment or impulses, and has only them and their consequences to +consider. But Rousseau could not help seeing, as he meditated on the +actual development of his Emilius, that to leave him thus to the +training of accident would necessarily end in many fatal gaps and +chasms. Yet the hand and will of the parent or the master could not be +allowed to appear. The only alternative, therefore, was the secret +preparation of artificial sets of circumstances, alike in work and in +amusement. Jean Paul was wiser than Jean Jacques. "Let not the teacher +after the work also order and regulate the games. It is decidedly +better not to recognise or make any order in games, than to keep it up +with difficulty and send the zephyrets of pleasure through artistic +bellows and air-pumps to the little flowers."[287] + +The spontaneousness which we ought to seek, does not consist in +promptly willing this or that, independently of an authority imposed +from without, but in a self-acting desire to do what is right under +all its various conditions, including what the child finds pleasant to +itself on the one hand, and what it has good reason to suppose will be +pleasant to its parents on the other. "You must never," Rousseau +gravely warns us, "inflict punishment upon children as punishment; it +should always fall upon them as a natural consequence of their +ill-behaviour."[288] But why should one of the most closely following +of all these consequences be dissembled or carefully hidden from +sight, namely, the effect of ill-behaviour upon the contentment of the +child's nearest friend? Why are the effects of conduct upon the +actor's own physical well-being to be the only effects honoured with +the title of being natural? Surely, while we leave to the young the +widest freedom of choice, and even habitually invite them to decide +for themselves between two lines of conduct, we are bound afterwards +to state our approval or disapproval of their decision, so that on the +next occasion they may take this anger or pleasure in others into +proper account in their rough and hasty forecast, often less hasty +than it seems, of the consequences of what they are about to do. One +of the most important of educating influences is lost, if the young +are not taught to place the feelings of others in a front place, when +they think in their own simple way of what will happen to them from +yielding to a given impulse. Rousseau was quite right in insisting on +practical experience of consequences as the only secure foundation for +self-acting habit; he was fatally wrong in mutilating this experience +by the exclusion from it of the effects of perceiving, resisting, +accepting, ignoring, all will and authority from without. The great, +and in many respects so admirable, school of Rousseauite +philanthropists, have always been feeble on this side, alike in the +treatment of the young by their instructors, and the treatment of +social offenders by a government. + +Again, consider the large group of excellent qualities which are +associated with affectionate respect for a more fully informed +authority. In a world where necessity stands for so much, it is no +inconsiderable gain to have learnt the lesson of docility on easy +terms in our earliest days. If in another sense the will of each +individual is all-powerful over his own destinies, it is best that +this idea of firm purpose and a settled energy that will not be +denied, should grow up in the young soul in connection with a riper +wisdom and an ampler experience than its own; for then, when the time +for independent action comes, the force of the association will +continue. Finally, although none can be vicariously wise, none sage by +proxy, nor any pay for the probation of another, yet is it not a +puerile wastefulness to send forth the young all bare to the ordeal, +while the armour of old experience and tempered judgment hangs idle on +the wall? Surely it is thus by accumulation of instruction from +generation to generation, that the area of right conduct in the world +is extended. Such instruction must with youth be conveyed by military +word of command as often as by philosophical persuasion of its worth. +Nor is the atmosphere of command other than bracing, even to those who +are commanded. If education is to be mainly conducted by force of +example, it is a dreadful thing that the child is ever to have before +its eyes as living type and practical exemplar the pale figure of +parents without passions, and without a will as to the conduct of +those who are dependent on them. Even a slight excess of anger, +impatience, and the spirit of command, would be less demoralising to +the impressionable character than the constant sight of a man +artificially impassive. Rousseau is perpetually calling upon men to +try to lay aside their masks; yet the model instructor whom he has +created for us is to be the most artfully and elaborately masked of +all men; unless he happens to be naturally without blood and without +physiognomy. + +Rousseau, then, while he put away the old methods which imprisoned the +young spirit in injunctions and over-solicitous monitions, yet did +none the less in his own scheme imprison it in a kind of hothouse, +which with its regulated temperature and artificially contrived access +of light and air, was in many respects as little the method of nature, +that is to say it gave as little play for the spontaneous working and +growth of the forces of nature in the youth's breast, as that regimen +of the cloister which he so profoundly abhorred. Partly this was the +result of a ludicrously shallow psychology. He repeats again and again +that self-love is the one quality in the youthful embryo of character, +from which you have to work. From this, he says, springs the desire of +possessing pleasure and avoiding pain, the great fulcrum on which the +lever of experience rests. Not only so, but from this same +unslumbering quality of self-love you have to develop regard for +others. The child's first affection for his nurse is a result of the +fact that she serves his comfort, and so down to his passion in later +years for his mistress. Now this is not the place for a discussion as +to the ultimate atom of the complex moral sentiments of men and women, +nor for an examination of the question whether the faculty of +sympathy has or has not an origin independent of self-love. However +that may be, no one will deny that sympathy appears in good natures +extremely early, and is susceptible of rapid cultivation from the very +first. Here is the only adequate key to that education of the +affections, from their rudimentary expansion in the nursery, until +they include the complete range of all the objects proper to them. + +One secret of Rousseau's omission of this, the most important of all +educating agencies, from the earlier stages of the formation of +character, was the fact which is patent enough in every page, that he +was not animated by that singular tenderness and almost mystic +affection for the young, which breathes through the writings of some +of his German followers, of Richter above all others, and which +reveals to those who are sensible of it, the hold that may so easily +be gained for all good purposes upon the eager sympathy of the +youthful spirit. The instructor of Emilius speaks the words of a wise +onlooker, sagely meditating on the ideal man, rather than of a parent +who is living the life of his child through with him. Rousseau's +interest in children, though perfectly sincere, was still aesthetic, +moral, reasonable, rather than that pure flood of full-hearted feeling +for them, which is perhaps seldom stirred except in those who have +actually brought up children of their own. He composed a vindication +of his love for the young in an exquisite piece;[289] but it has none +of the yearnings of the bowels of tenderness. + + +II. + +Education being the art of preparing the young to grow into +instruments of happiness for themselves and others, a writer who +undertakes to speak about it must naturally have some conception of +the kind of happiness at which his art aims. We have seen enough of +Rousseau's own life to know what sort of ideal he would be likely to +set up. It is a healthier epicureanism, with enough stoicism to make +happiness safe in case that circumstances should frown. The man who +has lived most is not he who has counted most years, but he who has +most felt life.[290] It is mere false wisdom to throw ourselves +incessantly out of ourselves, to count the present for nothing, ever +to pursue without ceasing a future which flees in proportion as we +advance, to try to transport ourselves from whence we are not, to some +place where we shall never be.[291] He is happiest who suffers fewest +pains, and he is most miserable who feels fewest pleasures. Then we +have a half stoical strain. The felicity of man here below is only a +negative state, to be measured by the more or less of the ills he +undergoes. It is in the disproportion between desires and faculties +that our misery consists. Happiness, therefore, lies not in +diminishing our desires, nor any more in extending our faculties, but +in diminishing the excess of desire over faculty, and in bringing +power and will into perfect balance.[292] Excepting health, strength, +respect for one's self, all the goods of this life reside in opinion; +excepting bodily pain and remorse of conscience, all our ills are in +imagination. Death is no evil; it is only made so by half-knowledge +and false wisdom. "Live according to nature, be patient, and drive +away physicians; you will not avoid death, but you will only feel it +once, while they on the other hand would bring it daily before your +troubled imagination, and their false art, instead of prolonging your +days, only hinders you from enjoying them. Suffer, die, or recover; +but above all things live, live up to your last hour." It is +foresight, constantly carrying us out of ourselves, that is the true +source of our miseries.[293] O man, confine thy existence within +thyself, and thou wilt cease to be miserable. Thy liberty, thy power, +reach exactly as far as thy natural forces, and no further; all the +rest is slavery and illusion. The only man who has his own will is he +who does not need in order to have it the arms of another person at +the end of his own.[294] + +The training that follows from this is obvious. The instructor has +carefully to distinguish true or natural need from the need which is +only fancied, or which only comes from superabundance of life. +Emilius, who is brought up in the country, has nothing in his room to +distinguish it from that of a peasant.[295] If he is taken to a +luxurious banquet, he is bidden, instead of heedlessly enjoying it, to +reflect austerely how many hundreds or thousands of hands have been +employed in preparing it.[296] His preference for gay colours in his +clothes is to be consulted, because this is natural and becoming to +his age, but the moment he prefers a stuff merely because it is rich, +behold a sophisticated creature.[297] The curse of the world is +inequality, and inequality springs from the multitude of wants, which +cause us to be so much the more dependent. What makes man essentially +good is to have few wants, and to abstain from comparing himself with +others; what makes him essentially bad, is to have many wants, and to +cling much to opinion.[298] Hence, although Emilius happened to have +both wealth and good birth, he is not brought up to be a gentleman, +with the prejudices and helplessness and selfishness too naturally +associated with that abused name. + +This cardinal doctrine of limitation of desire, with its corollary of +self-sufficience, contains in itself the great maxim that Emilius and +every one else must learn some trade. To work is an indispensable duty +in the social man. Rich or poor, powerful or weak, every idle citizen +is a knave. And every boy must learn a real trade, a trade with his +hands. It is not so much a matter of learning a craft for the sake of +knowing one, as for the sake of conquering the prejudices which +despise it. Labour for glory, if you have not to labour from +necessity. Lower yourself to the condition of the artisan, so as to be +above your own. In order to reign in opinion, begin by reigning over +it. All things well considered, the trade most to be preferred is +that of carpenter; it is clean, useful, and capable of being carried +on in the house; it demands address and diligence in the workman, and +though the form of the work is determined by utility, still elegance +and taste are not excluded.[299] There are few prettier pictures than +that where Sophie enters the workshop, and sees in amazement her young +lover at the other end, in his white shirt-sleeves, his hair loosely +fastened back, with a chisel in one hand and a mallet in the other, +too intent upon his work to perceive even the approach of his +mistress.[300] + +When the revolution came, and princes and nobles wandered in indigent +exile, the disciples of Rousseau pointed in unkind triumph to the +advantage these unfortunate wretches would have had if they had not +been too puffed up with the vanity of feudalism to follow the prudent +example of Emilius in learning a craft. That Rousseau should have laid +so much stress on the vicissitudes of fortune, which might cause even +a king to be grateful one day that he had a trade at the end of his +arms, is sometimes quoted as a proof of his foresight of troublous +times. This, however, goes too far, because, apart from the instances +of such vicissitudes among the ancients, the King of Syracuse keeping +school at Corinth, or Alexander, son of Perseus, becoming a Roman +scrivener, he actually saw Charles Edward, the Stuart pretender, +wandering from court to court in search of succour and receiving only +rebuffs; and he may well have known that after the troubles of 1738 a +considerable number of the oligarchs of his native Geneva had gone +into exile, rather than endure the humiliation of their party.[301] +Besides all this, the propriety of being able to earn one's bread by +some kind of toil that would be useful in even the simplest societies, +flowed necessarily from every part of his doctrine of the aims of life +and the worth of character. He did, however, say, "We approach a state +of crisis and an age of revolutions," which proved true, but he added +too much when he pronounced it impossible that the great monarchies of +Europe could last long.[302] And it is certain that the only one of +the great monarchies which did actually fall would have had a far +better chance of surviving if Lewis XVI. had been as expert in the +trade of king as he was in that of making locks and bolts. + +From this semi-stoical ideal there followed certain social notions, +of which Rousseau had the distinction of being the most powerful +propagator. As has so often been said, his contemporaries were willing +to leave social questions alone, provided only the government would +suffer the free expression of opinion in literature and science. +Rousseau went deeper. His moral conception of individual life and +character contained in itself a social conception, and he did not +shrink from boldly developing it. The rightly constituted man suffices +for himself and is free from prejudices. He has arms, and knows how to +use them; he has few wants, and knows how to satisfy them. Nurtured in +the most absolute freedom, he can think of no worse ill than +servitude. He attaches himself to the beauty which perishes not, +limiting his desires to his condition, learning to lose whatever may +be taken away from him, to place himself above events, and to detach +his heart from loved objects without a pang.[303] He pities miserable +kings, who are the bondsmen of all that seems to obey them; he pities +false sages, who are fast bound in the chains of their empty renown; +he pities the silly rich, martyrs to their own ostentation.[304] All +the sympathies of such a man therefore naturally flow away from these, +the great of the earth, to those who lead the stoic's life perforce. +"It is the common people who compose the human race; what is not the +people is hardly worth taking into account. Man is the same in all +ranks; that being so, the ranks which are most numerous deserve most +respect. Before one who reflects, all civil distinctions vanish: he +marks the same passions and the same feelings in the clown as in the +man covered with reputation; he can only distinguish their speech, and +a varnish more or less elaborately laid on. Study people of this +humble condition; you will perceive that under another sort of +language, they have as much intelligence as you, and more good sense. +Respect your species: reflect that it is essentially made up of the +collection of peoples; that if every king and every philosopher were +cut off from among them, they would scarcely be missed, and the world +would go none the worse."[305] As it is, the universal spirit of the +law in every country is invariably to favour the strong against the +weak, and him who has, against him who has not. The many are +sacrificed to the few. The specious names of justice and subordination +serve only as instruments for violence and arms for iniquity. The +ostentatious orders who pretend to be useful to the others, are in +truth only useful to themselves at the expense of the others.[306] + +This was carrying on the work which had already been begun in the New +Heloisa, as we have seen, but in the Emilius it is pushed with a +gravity and a directness, that could not be imparted to the picture of +a fanciful and arbitrarily chosen situation. The only writer who has +approached Rousseau, so far as I know, in fulness and depth of +expression in proclaiming the sorrows and wrongs of the poor blind +crowd, who painfully drag along the car of triumphant civilisation +with its handful of occupants, is the author of the Book of the +People. Lamennais even surpasses Rousseau in the profundity of his +pathos; his pictures of the life of hut and hovel are as sincere and +as touching; and there is in them, instead of the anger and bitterness +of the older author, righteous as that was, a certain heroism of pity +and devoted sublimity of complaint, which lift the soul up from +resentment into divine moods of compassion and resolve, and stir us +like a tale of noble action.[307] It was Rousseau, however, who first +sounded the note of which the religion that had once been the champion +and consoler of the common people, seemed long to have lost even the +tradition. Yet the teaching was not constructive, because the ideal +man was not made truly social. Emilius is brought up in something of +the isolation of the imaginary savage of the state of nature. He +marries, and then he and his wife seem only fitted to lead a life of +detachment from the interests of the world in which they are placed. +Social or political education, that is the training which character +receives from the medium in which it grows, is left out of account, +and so is the correlative process of preparation for the various +conditions and exigencies which belong to that medium, until it is too +late to take its natural place in character. Nothing can be clumsier +than the way in which Rousseau proposes to teach Emilius the existence +and nature of his relations with his fellows. And the reason of this +was that he had never himself in the course of his ruminations, +willingly thought of Emilius as being in a condition of active social +relation, the citizen of a state. + + +III. + +There appear to be three dominant states of mind, with groups of +faculties associated with each of them, which it is the business of +the instructor firmly to establish in the character of the future man. +The first is a resolute and unflinching respect for Truth; for the +conclusions, that is to say, of the scientific reason, comprehending +also a constant anxiety to take all possible pains that such +conclusions shall be rightly drawn. Connected with this is the +discipline of the whole range of intellectual faculties, from the +simple habit of correct observation, down to the highly complex habit +of weighing and testing the value of evidence. This very important +branch of early discipline, Rousseau for reasons of his own which we +have already often referred to, cared little about, and he throws very +little light upon it, beyond one or two extremely sensible precepts of +the negative kind, warning us against beginning too soon and forcing +an apparent progress too rapidly. The second fundamental state in a +rightly formed character is a deep feeling for things of the spirit +which are unknown and incommensurable; a sense of awe, mystery, +sublimity, and the fateful bounds of life at its beginning and its +end. Here is the Religious side, and what Rousseau has to say of this +we shall presently see. It is enough now to remark that Emilius was +never to hear the name of a God or supreme being until his reason was +fairly ripened. The third state, which is at least as difficult to +bring to healthy perfection as either of the other two, is a passion +for Justice. + +The little use which Rousseau made of this momentous and +much-embracing word, which names the highest peak of social virtue, is +a very striking circumstance. The reason would seem to be that his +sense of the relations of men with one another was not virile enough +to comprehend the deep austerer lines which mark the brow of the +benignant divinity of Justice. In the one place in his writings where +he speaks of justice freely, he shows a narrowness of idea, which was +perhaps as much due to intellectual confusion as to lack of moral +robustness. He says excellently that "love of the human race is +nothing else in us but love of justice," and that "of all the virtues, +justice is that which contributes most to the common good of men." +While enjoining the discipline of pity as one of the noblest of +sentiments, he warns us against letting it degenerate into weakness, +and insists that we should only surrender ourselves to it when it +accords with justice.[308] But that is all. What constitutes justice, +what is its standard, what its source, what its sanction, whence the +extraordinary holiness with which its name has come to be invested +among the most highly civilised societies of men, we are never told, +nor do we ever see that our teacher had seen the possibility of such +questions being asked. If they had been propounded to him, he would, +it is most likely, have fallen back upon the convenient mystery of the +natural law. This was the current phrase of that time, and it was +meant to embody a hypothetical experience of perfect human relations +in an expression of the widest generality. If so, this would have to +be impressed upon the mind of Emilius in the same way as other +mysteries. As a matter of fact, Emilius was led through pity up to +humanity, or sociality in an imperfect signification, and there he was +left without a further guide to define the marks of truly social +conduct. + +This imperfection was a necessity, inseparable from Rousseau's +tenacity in keeping society in the background of the picture of life +which he opened to his pupil. He said, indeed, "We must study society +by men, and men by society; those who would treat politics and +morality apart will never understand anything about either one or the +other."[309] This is profoundly true, but we hardly see in the +morality which is designed for Emilius the traces of political +elements. Yet without some gradually unfolded presentation of society +as a whole, it is scarcely possible to implant the idea of justice +with any hope of large fertility. You may begin at a very early time +to develop, even from the primitive quality of self-love, a notion of +equity and a respect for it, but the vast conception of social justice +can only find room in a character that has been made spacious by +habitual contemplation of the height and breadth and close +compactedness of the fabric of the relations that bind man to man, and +of the share, integral or infinitesimally fractional, that each has in +the happiness or woe of other souls. And this contemplation should +begin when we prepare the foundation of all the other maturer habits. +Youth can hardly recognise too soon the enormous unresting machine +which bears us ceaselessly along, because we can hardly learn too soon +that its force and direction depend on the play of human motives, of +which our own for good or evil form an inevitable part when the ripe +years come. To one reared with the narrow care devoted to Emilius, or +with the capricious negligence in which the majority are left to grow +to manhood, the society into which they are thrown is a mere moral +wilderness. They are to make such way through it as they can, with +egotism for their only trusty instrument. This egotism may either be a +bludgeon, as with the most part, or it may be a delicately adjusted +and fastidiously decorated compass, as with an Emilius. In either case +is no perception that the gross outer contact of men with another is +transformed by worthiness of common aim and loyal faith in common +excellences, into a thing beautiful and generous. It is our business +to fix and root the habit of thinking of that _moral_ union, into +which, as Kant has so admirably expressed it, the _pathological_ +necessities of situation that first compelled social concert, have +been gradually transmuted. Instead of this, it is exactly the +primitive pathological conditions that a narrow theory of education +brings first into prominence; as if knowledge of origins were +indispensable to a right attachment to the transformed conditions of a +maturer system. + +It has been said that Rousseau founds all morality upon personal +interest, perhaps even more specially than Helvetius himself. The +accusation is just. Emilius will enter adult life without the germs of +that social conscience, which animates a man with all the associations +of duty and right, of gratitude for the past and resolute hope for the +future, in face of the great body of which he finds himself a part. "I +observe," says Rousseau, "that in the modern ages men have no hold +upon one another save through force and interest, while the ancients +on the other hand acted much more by persuasion and the affections of +the soul."[310] The reason was that with the ancients, supposing him +to mean the Greeks and Romans, the social conscience was so much wider +in its scope than the comparatively narrow fragment of duty which is +supposed to come under the sacred power of conscience in the more +complex and less closely contained organisation of a modern state. The +neighbours to whom a man owed duty in those times comprehended all the +members of his state. The neighbours of the modern preacher of duty +are either the few persons with whom each of us is brought into actual +and palpable contact, or else the whole multitude of dwellers on the +earth,--a conception that for many ages to come will remain with the +majority of men and women too vague to exert an energetic and +concentrating influence upon action, and will lead them no further +than an uncoloured and nerveless cosmopolitanism. + +What the young need to have taught to them in this too little +cultivated region, is that they are born not mere atoms floating +independent and apart for a season through a terraqueous medium, and +sucking up as much more than their share of nourishment as they can +seize; nor citizens of the world with no more definite duty than to +keep their feelings towards all their fellows in a steady simmer of +bland complacency; but soldiers in a host, citizens of a polity whose +boundaries are not set down in maps, members of a church the +handwriting of whose ordinances is not in the hieroglyphs of idle +mystery, nor its hope and recompense in the lands beyond death. They +need to be taught that they owe a share of their energies to the great +struggle which is in ceaseless progress in all societies in an endless +variety of forms, between new truth and old prejudice, between love of +self or class and solicitous passion for justice, between the +obstructive indolence and inertia of the many and the generous mental +activity of the few. This is the sphere and definition of the social +conscience. The good causes of enlightenment and justice in all +lands,--here is the church militant in which we should early seek to +enrol the young, and the true state to which they should be taught +that they owe the duties of active and arduous citizenship. These are +the struggles with which the modern instructor should associate those +virtues of fortitude, tenacity, silent patience, outspoken energy, +readiness to assert ourselves and readiness to efface ourselves, +willingness to suffer and resolution to inflict suffering, which men +of old knew how to show for their gods or their sovereign. But the +ideal of Emilius was an ideal of quietism; to possess his own soul in +patience, with a suppressed intelligence, a suppressed sociality, +without a single spark of generous emulation in the courses of +strong-fibred virtue, or a single thrill of heroical pursuit after so +much as one great forlorn cause. + +"If it once comes to him, in reading these parallels of the famous +ancients, to desire to be another rather than himself, were this other +Socrates, were he Cato, you have missed the mark; he who begins to +make himself a stranger to himself, is not long before he forgets +himself altogether."[311] But if a man only nurses the conception of +his own personality, for the sake of keeping his own peace and +self-contained comfort at a glow of easy warmth, assuredly the best +thing that can befall him is that he should perish, lest his example +should infect others with the same base contagion. Excessive +personality when militant is often wholesome, excessive personality +that only hugs itself is under all circumstances chief among unclean +things. Thus even Rousseau's finest monument of moral enthusiasm is +fatally tarnished by the cold damp breath of isolation, and the very +book which contained so many elements of new life for a state, was at +bottom the apotheosis of social despair. + + +IV. + +The great agent in fostering the rise to vigour and uprightness of a +social conscience, apart from the yet more powerful instrument of a +strong and energetic public spirit at work around the growing +character, must be found in the study of history rightly directed with +a view to this end. It is here, in observing the long processes of +time and appreciating the slowly accumulating sum of endeavour, that +the mind gradually comes to read the great lessons how close is the +bond that links men together. It is here that he gradually begins to +acquire the habit of considering what are the conditions of wise +social activity, its limits, its objects, its rewards, what is the +capacity of collective achievement, and of what sort is the +significance and purport of the little span of time that cuts off the +yesterday of our society from its to-morrow. + +Rousseau had very rightly forbidden the teaching of history to young +children, on the ground that the essence of history lies in the moral +relations between the bare facts which it recounts, and that the terms +and ideas of these relations are wholly beyond the intellectual grasp +of the very young.[312] He might have based his objections equally +well upon the impossibility of little children knowing the meaning of +the multitude of descriptive terms which make up a historical manual, +or realising the relations between events in bare point of time, +although childhood may perhaps be a convenient period for some +mechanical acquisition of dates. According to Rousseau, history was to +appear very late in the educational course, when the youth was almost +ready to enter the world. It was to be the finishing study, from which +he should learn not sociality either in its scientific or its higher +moral sense, but the composition of the heart of man, in a safer way +than through actual intercourse with society. Society might make him +either cynical or frivolous. History would bring him the same +information, without subjecting him to the same perils. In society you +only hear the words of men; to know man you must observe his actions, +and actions are only unveiled in history.[313] This view is hardly +worth discussing. The subject of history is not the heart of man, but +the movements of societies. Moreover, the oracles of history are +entirely dumb to one who seeks from them maxims for the shaping of +daily conduct, or living instruction as to the motives, aims, +caprices, capacities of self-restraint, self-sacrifice, of those with +whom the occasions of life bring us into contact. + +It is true that at the close of the other part of his education, +Emilius was to travel and there find the comment upon the completed +circle of his studies.[314] But excellent as travel is for some of the +best of those who have the opportunity, still for many it is +valueless for lack of the faculty of curiosity. For the great +majority it is impossible for lack of opportunity. To trust so much as +Rousseau did to the effect of travelling, is to leave a large chasm in +education unbridged. + +It is interesting, however, to notice some of Rousseau's notions about +history as an instrument for conveying moral instruction, a few of +them are so good, others are so characteristically narrow. "The worst +historians for a young man," he says, "are those who judge. The facts, +the facts; then let him judge for himself. If the author's judgment is +for ever guiding him, he is only seeing with the eye of another, and +as soon as this eye fails him, he sees nothing." Modern history is not +fit for instruction, not only because it has no physiognomy, all our +men being exactly like one another, but because our historians, intent +on brilliance above all other things, think of nothing so much as +painting highly coloured portraits, which for the most part represent +nothing at all.[315] Of course such a judgment as this implies an +ignorance alike of the ends and meaning of history, which, considering +that he was living in the midst of a singular revival of historical +study, is not easy to pardon. If we are to look only to perfection of +form and arrangement, it may have been right for one living in the +middle of the last century to place the ancients in the first rank +without competitors. But the author of the Discourse upon literature +and the arts might have been expected to look beyond composition, and +the contemporary of Voltaire's _Essai sur les Moeurs_ (1754-1757) +might have been expected to know that the profitable experience of the +human race did not close with the fall of the Roman republic. Among +the ancient historians, he counted Thucydides to be the true model, +because he reports facts without judging, and omits none of the +circumstances proper for enabling us to judge of them for +ourselves--though how Rousseau knew what facts Thucydides has omitted, +I am unable to divine. Then come Caesar's Commentaries and Xenophon's +Retreat of the Ten Thousand. The good Herodotus, without portraits and +without maxims, but abounding in details the most capable of +interesting and pleasing, would perhaps be the best of historians, if +only these details did not so often degenerate into puerilities. Livy +is unsuited to youth, because he is political and a rhetorician. +Tacitus is the book of the old; you must have learnt the art of +reading facts, before you can be trusted with maxims. + +The drawback of histories such as those of Thucydides and Caesar, +Rousseau admits to be that they dwell almost entirely on war, leaving +out the true life of nations, which belongs to the unwritten +chronicles of peace. This leads him to the equally just reflection +that historians while recounting facts omit the gradual and +progressive causes which led to them. "They often find in a battle +lost or won the reason of a revolution, which even before the battle +was already inevitable. War scarcely does more than bring into full +light events determined by moral causes, which historians can seldom +penetrate."[316] A third complaint against the study which he began by +recommending as a proper introduction to the knowledge of man, is that +it does not present men but actions, or at least men only in their +parade costume and in certain chosen moments, and he justly reproaches +writers alike of history and biography, for omitting those trifling +strokes and homely anecdotes, which reveal the true physiognomy of +character. "Remain then for ever, without bowels, without nature; +harden your hearts of cast iron in your trumpery decency, and make +yourselves despicable by force of dignity."[317] And so after all, by +a common stroke of impetuous inconsistency, he forsakes history, and +falls back upon the ancient biographies, because, all the low and +familiar details being banished from modern style, however true and +characteristic, men are as elaborately tricked out by our authors in +their private lives as they were tricked out upon the stage of the +world. + + +V. + +As women are from the constitution of things the educators of us all +at the most critical periods, and mainly of their own sex from the +beginning to the end of education, the writer of the most imperfect +treatise on this world-interesting subject can hardly avoid saying +something on the upbringing of women. Such a writer may start from +one of three points of view; he may consider the woman as destined to +be a wife, or a mother, or a human being; as the companion of a man, +as the rearer of the young, or as an independent personality, endowed +with gifts, talents, possibilities, in less or greater number, and +capable, as in the case of men, of being trained to the worst or the +best uses. Of course to every one who looks into life, each of these +three ideals melts into the other two, and we can only think of them +effectively when they are blended. Yet we test a writer's appreciation +of the conditions of human progress by observing the function which he +makes most prominent. A man's whole thought of the worth and aim of +womanhood depends upon the generosity and elevation of the ideal which +is silently present in his mind, while he is specially meditating the +relations of woman as wife or as mother. Unless he is really capable +of thinking of them as human beings, independently of these two +functions, he is sure to have comparatively mean notions in connection +with them in respect of the functions which he makes paramount. + +Rousseau breaks down here. The unsparing fashion in which he developed +the theory of individualism in the case of Emilius, and insisted on +man being allowed to grow into the man of nature, instead of the man +of art and manufacture, might have led us to expect that when he came +to speak of women, he would suffer equity and logic to have their way, +by giving equally free room in the two halves of the human race, for +the development of natural force and capacity. If, as he begins by +saying, he wishes to bring up Emilius, not to be a merchant nor a +physician nor a soldier nor to the practice of any other special +calling, but to be first and above all a man, why should not Sophie +too be brought up above all to be a human being, in whom the special +qualifications of wifehood and motherhood may be developed in their +due order? Emilius is a man first, a husband and a father afterwards +and secondarily. How can Sophie be a companion for him, and an +instructor for their children, unless she likewise has been left in +the hands of nature, and had the same chances permitted to her as were +given to her predestined mate? Again, the pictures of the New Heloisa +would have led us to conceive the ideal of womanly station not so much +in the wife, as in the house-mother, attached by esteem and sober +affection to her husband, but having for her chief functions to be the +gentle guardian of her little ones, and the mild, firm, and prudent +administrator of a cheerful and well-ordered household. In the last +book of the Emilius, which treats of the education of girls, education +is reduced within the compass of an even narrower ideal than this. We +are confronted with the oriental conception of women. Every principle +that has been followed in the education of Emilius is reversed in the +education of women. Opinion, which is the tomb of virtue among men, is +among women its high throne. The whole education of women ought to be +relative to men; to please them, to be useful to them, to make +themselves loved and honoured by them, to console them, to render +their lives agreeable and sweet to them,--these are the duties which +ought to be taught to women from their childhood. Every girl ought to +have the religion of her mother, and every wife that of her husband. +Not being in a condition to judge for themselves, they ought to +receive the decision of fathers and husbands as if it were that of the +church. And since authority is the rule of faith for women, it is not +so much a matter of explaining to them the reasons for belief, as for +expounding clearly to them what to believe. Although boys are not to +hear of the idea of God until they are fifteen, because they are not +in a condition to apprehend it, yet girls who are still less in a +condition to apprehend it, are _therefore_ to have it imparted to them +at an earlier age. Woman is created to give way to man, and to suffer +his injustice. Her empire is an empire of gentleness, mildness, and +complaisance. Her orders are caresses, and her threats are tears. +Girls must not only be made laborious and vigilant; they must also +very early be accustomed to being thwarted and kept in restraint. This +misfortune, if they feel it one, is inseparable from their sex, and if +ever they attempt to escape from it, they will only suffer misfortunes +still more cruel in consequence.[318] + +After a series of oriental and obscurantist propositions of this kind, +it is of little purpose to tell us that women have more intelligence +and men more genius; that women observe, while men reason; that men +will philosophise better upon the human heart, while women will be +more skilful in reading it.[319] And it is a mere mockery to end the +matter by a fervid assurance, that in spite of prejudices that have +their origin in the manners of the time, the enthusiasm for what is +worthy and noble is no more foreign to women than it is to men, and +that there is nothing which under the guidance of nature may not be +obtained from them as well as from ourselves.[320] Finally there is a +complete surrender of the obscurantist position in such a sentence as +this: "I only know for either sex two really distinct classes; one the +people who think, the other the people who do not think, and this +difference comes almost entirely from education. A man of the first of +these classes ought not to marry into the other; for the greatest +charm of companionship is wanting, when in spite of having a wife he +is reduced to think by himself. It is only a cultivated spirit that +provides agreeable commerce, and 'tis a cheerless thing for a father +of a family who loves his home, to be obliged to shut himself up +within himself, and to have no one about him who understands him. +Besides, how is a woman who has no habits of reflection to bring up +her children?"[321] Nothing could be more excellently urged. But how +is a woman to have habits of reflection, when she has been constantly +brought up in habits of the closest mental bondage, trained always to +consider her first business to be the pleasing of some man, and her +instruments not reasonable persuasion but caressing and crying? + +This pernicious nonsense was mainly due, like nearly all his most +serious errors, to Rousseau's want of a conception of improvement in +human affairs. If he had been filled with that conception as Turgot, +Condorcet, and others were, he would have been forced as they were, to +meditate upon changes in the education and the recognition accorded to +women, as one of the first conditions of improvement. For lack of +this, he contributed nothing to the most important branch of the +subject that he had undertaken to treat. He was always taunting the +champions of reigning systems of training for boys, with the vicious +or feeble men whom he thought he saw on every hand around him. The +same kind of answer obviously meets the current idea, which he adopted +with a few idyllic decorations of his own, of the type of the +relations between men and women. That type practically reduces +marriage in ninety-nine cases out of every hundred to a dolorous +parody of a social partnership. It does more than any one other cause +to keep societies back, because it prevents one half of the members of +a society from cultivating all their natural energies. Thus it +produces a waste of helpful quality as immeasurable as it is +deplorable, and besides rearing these creatures of mutilated faculty +to be the intellectually demoralising companions of the remaining half +of their own generation, makes them the mothers and the earliest and +most influential instructors of the whole of the generation that comes +after.[322] Of course, if any one believes that the existing +arrangements of a western community are the most successful that we +can ever hope to bring into operation, we need not complain of +Rousseau. If not, then it is only reasonable to suppose that a +considerable portion of the change will be effected in the hitherto +neglected and subordinate half of the race. That reconstitution of the +family, which Rousseau and others among his contemporaries rightly +sought after as one of the most pressing needs of the time, was +essentially impossible, so long as the typical woman was the adornment +of a semi-philosophic seraglio, a sort of compromise between the +frowzy ideal of an English bourgeois and the impertinent ideal of a +Parisian gallant. Condorcet and others made a grievous mistake in +defending the free gratification of sensual passion, as one of the +conditions of happiness and making the most of our lives.[323] But +even this was not at bottom more fatal to the maintenance and order of +the family, than Rousseau's enervating notion of keeping women in +strict intellectual and moral subjection was fatal to the family as +the true school of high and equal companionship, and the fruitful +seed-ground of wise activities and new hopes for each fresh +generation. + +This was one side of Rousseau's reactionary tendencies. Fortunately +for the revolution of thirty years later, which illustrated the +gallery of heroic women with some of its most splendid names, his +power was in this respect neutralised by other stronger tendencies in +the general spirit of the age. The aristocracy of sex was subjected to +the same destructive criticism as the aristocracy of birth. The same +feeling for justice which inspired the demand for freedom and equality +of opportunity among men, led to the demand for the same freedom and +equality of opportunity between men and women. All this was part of +the energy of the time, which Rousseau disliked with undisguised +bitterness. It broke inconveniently in upon his quietest visions. He +had no conception, with his sensuous brooding imagination, never +wholly purged of grossness, of that high and pure type of women whom +French history so often produced in the seventeenth century, and who +were not wanting towards the close of the eighteenth, a type in which +devotion went with force, and austerity with sweetness, and divine +candour and transparent innocence with energetic loyalty and +intellectual uprightness and a firmly set will. Such thoughts were not +for Rousseau, a dreamer led by his senses. Perhaps they are for none +of us any more. When we turn to modern literature from the pages in +which Fenelon speaks of the education of girls, who does not feel that +the world has lost a sacred accent, as if some ineffable essence has +passed out from our hearts? + +The fifth book of Emilius is not a chapter on the education of women, +but an idyll. We have already seen the circumstances under which +Rousseau composed it, in a profound and delicious solitude, in the +midst of woods and streams, with the fragrance of the orange-flower +poured around him, and in continual ecstasy. As an idyll it is +delicious; as a serious contribution to the hardest of problems it is +naught. The sequel, by a stroke of matchless whimsicality, unless it +be meant, as it perhaps may have been, for a piece of deep tragic +irony, is the best refutation that Rousseau's most energetic adversary +could have desired. The Sophie who has been educated on the oriental +principle, has presently to confess a flagrant infidelity to the +blameless Emilius, her lord.[324] + + +VI. + +Yet the sum of the merits of Emilius as a writing upon education is +not to be lightly counted. Its value lies, as has been said of the New +Heloisa, in the spirit which animates it and communicates itself with +vivid force to the reader. It is one of the seminal books in the +history of literature, and of such books the worth resides less in the +parts than in the whole. It touched the deeper things of character. It +filled parents with a sense of the dignity and moment of their task. +It cleared away the accumulation of clogging prejudices and obscure +inveterate usage, which made education one of the dark formalistic +arts. It admitted floods of light and air into the tightly closed +nurseries and schoolrooms. It effected the substitution of growth for +mechanism. A strong current of manliness, wholesomeness, simplicity, +self-reliance, was sent by it through Europe, while its eloquence was +the most powerful adjuration ever addressed to parental affection to +cherish the young life in all love and considerate solicitude. It was +the charter of youthful deliverance. The first immediate effect of +Emilius in France was mainly on the religious side. It was the +Christian religion that needed to be avenged, rather than education +that needed to be amended, and the press overflowed with replies to +that profession of faith which we shall consider in the next chapter. +Still there was also an immense quantity of educational books and +pamphlets, which is to be set down, first to the suppression of the +Jesuits, the great educating order, and the vacancy which they left; +and next to the impulse given by the Emilius to a movement from which +the book itself had originally been an outcome.[325] But why try to +state the influence of Emilius on France in this way? To strike the +account truly would be to write the history of the first French +Revolution.[326] All mothers, as Michelet says, were big with +Emilius. "It is not without good reason that people have noted the +children born at this glorious moment, as animated by a superior +spirit, by a gift of flame and genius. It is the generation of +revolutionary Titans: the other generation not less hardy in science. +It is Danton, Vergniaud, Desmoulins; it is Ampere, La Place, Cuvier, +Geoffroy Saint Hilaire."[327] + +In Germany Emilius had great power. There it fell in with the +extraordinary movement towards naturalness and freedom of which we +have already spoken.[328] Herder, whom some have called the Rousseau +of the Germans, wrote with enthusiasm to his then beloved Caroline of +the "divine Emilius," and he never ceased to speak of Rousseau as his +inspirer and his master.[329] Basedow (1723), that strange, restless, +and most ill-regulated person, was seized with an almost phrenetic +enthusiasm for Rousseau's educational theories, translated them into +German, and repeated them in his works over and over again with an +incessant iteration. Lavater (1741-1801), who differed from Basedow in +being a fervent Christian of soft mystic faith, was thrown into +company with him in 1774, and grew equally eager with him in the cause +of reforming education in the Rousseauite sense.[330] Pestalozzi +(1746-1827), the most systematic, popular, and permanently successful +of all the educational reformers, borrowed his spirit and his +principles mainly from the Emilius, though he gave larger extension +and more intelligent exactitude to their application. Jean Paul the +Unique, in the preface to his Levana, or Doctrine of Education (1806), +one of the most excellent of all books on the subject, declares that +among previous works to which he owes a debt, "first and last he names +Rousseau's Emilius; no preceding work can be compared to his; in no +previous work on education was the ideal so richly combined with the +actual," and so forth.[331] It was not merely a Goethe, a Schiller, a +Herder, whom Rousseau fired with new thoughts. The smaller men, such +as Fr. Jacobi, Heinse, Klinger, shared the same inspiration. The +worship of Rousseau penetrated all classes, and touched every degree +of intelligence.[332] + +In our own country Emilius was translated as soon as it appeared, and +must have been widely read, for a second version of the translation +was called for in a very short time. So far as a cursory survey gives +one a right to speak, its influence here in the field of education is +not very perceptible. That subject did not yet, nor for some time to +come, excite much active thought in England. Rousseau's speculations +on society both in the Emilius and elsewhere seem to have attracted +more attention. Reference has already been made to Paley.[333] Adam +Ferguson's celebrated Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767) has +many allusions, direct and indirect, to Rousseau.[334] Kames's +Sketches of the History of Man (1774) abounds still more copiously in +references to Emilius, sometimes to controvert its author, more often +to cite him as an authority worthy of respect, and Rousseau's crude +notions about women are cited with special acceptance.[335] Cowper was +probably thinking of the Savoyard Vicar when he wrote the energetic +lines in the Task, beginning "Haste now, philosopher, and set him +free," scornfully defying the deist to rescue apostate man.[336] Nor +should we omit what was counted so important a book in its day as +Godwin's Enquiry concerning Political Justice (1793). It is perhaps +more French in its spirit than any other work of equal consequence in +our literature of politics, and in its composition the author was +avowedly a student of Rousseau, as well as of the members of the +materialistic school. + +In fine we may add that Emilius was the first expression of that +democratic tendency in education, which political and other +circumstances gradually made general alike in England, France, and +Germany; a tendency, that is, to look on education as a process +concerning others besides the rich and the well-born. As has often +been remarked, Ascham, Milton, Locke, Fenelon, busy themselves about +the instruction of young gentlemen and gentlewomen. The rest of the +world are supposed to be sufficiently provided for by the education of +circumstance. Since the middle of the eighteenth century this +monopolising conception has vanished, along with and through the same +general agencies as the corresponding conception of social monopoly. +Rousseau enforced the production of a natural and self-sufficing man +as the object of education, and showed, or did his best to show, the +infinite capacity of the young for that simple and natural +cultivation. This easily and directly led people to reflect that such +a capacity was not confined to the children of the rich, nor the hope +of producing a natural and sufficing man narrowed to those who had +every external motive placed around them for being neither natural nor +self-sufficing. + +Voltaire pronounced Emilius a stupid romance, but admitted that it +contained fifty pages which he would have bound in morocco. These, we +may be sure, concerned religion; in truth it was the Savoyard Vicar's +profession of faith which stirred France far more than the upbringing +of the natural man in things temporal. Let us pass to that eloquent +document which is inserted in the middle of the Emilius, as the +expression of the religious opinion that best befits the man of +nature--a document most hyperbolically counted by some French +enthusiasts for the spiritualist philosophy and the religion of +sentiment, as the noblest monument of the eighteenth century. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[273] _Mem. de Mdme. d'Epinay_, ii. 276, 278. + +[274] _Lettres a mon Fils_ (1758), and _Les Conversations d'Emilie_ +(1783). + +[275] _Lettres Peruviennes._ + +[276] _Oeuv._, ii. 785-794. + +[277] _Corr. Lit._, iii. 65. + +[278] _Emile_, I. 27. + +[279] It is interesting to recall a similar movement in the Roman +society of the second century of our era. See the advice of Favorinus +to mothers, in Aulus Gellius, xii. 1. M. Boissier, contrasting the +solicitude of Tacitus and Marcus Aurelius for the infant young with +the brutality of Cicero, remarks that in the time of Seneca men +discussed in the schools the educational theories of Rousseau's +Emilius. (_La Relig. Romaine_, ii. 202.) + +[280] See also his diatribe against whalebone and tight-lacing for +girls, V. 27. + +[281] _Emile_, I. 93, etc. + +[282] _Emile_, II. 141. + +[283] _Emile_, II. 156-160. + +[284] _Emile_, III. 338-345. + +[285] III. 358, etc. + +[286] _Emile_, II. 263-267. + +[287] _Levana_, ch. iii. Sec. 54. + +[288] _Emile_, II. 163. + +[289] The Ninth Promenade (_Reveries_, 309). + +[290] _Emile_, I. 23. + +[291] II. 109. + +[292] II. 111. + +[293] _Emile_, II. 113-117. + +[294] II. 121. + +[295] II. 143. + +[296] _Emile_, III. 382. + +[297] II. 227. + +[298] IV. 10. + +[299] _Emile_, III. 394. + +[300] V. 199. + +[301] The reader will not forget the famous supper-party of princes in +_Candide_. + +[302] _Emile_, III. 392, and note. A still more remarkable passage, as +far as it goes, is that in the _Confessions_ (xi. 136):--"The +disasters of an unsuccessful war, all of which came from the fault of +the government, the incredible disorder of the finances, the continual +dissensions of the administration, divided as it was among two or +three ministers at open war with one another, and who for the sake of +hurting one another dragged the kingdom into ruin; the general +discontent of the people, and of all the orders of the state; the +obstinacy of a wrong-headed woman, who, always sacrificing her better +judgment, if indeed she had any, to her tastes, dismissed the most +capable from office, to make room for her favourites ... all this +prospect of a coming break-up made me think of seeking shelter +elsewhere." + +[303] _Emile_, V. 220. + +[304] IV. 85. + +[305] _Emile_, IV. 38, 39. Hence, we suppose, the famous reply to +Lavoisier's request that his life might be spared from the guillotine +for a fortnight, in order that he might complete some experiments, +that the Republic has no need of chemists. + +[306] IV. 65. Jefferson, who was American minister in France from 1784 +to 1789, and absorbed a great many of the ideas then afloat, writes in +words that seem as if they were borrowed from Rousseau:--"I am +convinced that those societies (as the Indians) which live without +government, enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree +of happiness than those who live under European governments. Among the +former public opinion is in the state of law, and restrains morals as +powerfully as laws ever did anywhere. Among the latter, under pretence +of governing, they have divided their nation into two classes, wolves +and sheep. I do not exaggerate; this is a true picture of Europe." +Tucker's _Life of Jefferson_, i. 255. + +[307] Lamennais was influenced by Rousseau throughout. In the _Essay +on Indifference_ he often appeals to him as the vindicator of the +religious sentiment (_e.g._ i. 21, 52, iv. 375, etc. Ed. 1837). The +same influence is seen still more markedly in the _Words of a +Believer_ (1835), when dogma had departed, and he was left with a kind +of dual deism, thus being less estranged from Rousseau than in the +first days (_e.g._ Sec. xix. "Tous naissent egaux," etc., Sec. xxi., etc.) +The _Book of the People_ is thoroughly Rousseauite. + +[308] _Emile_, IV. 105. + +[309] _Emile_, IV. 63. + +[310] _Emile_, IV. 273. + +[311] _Emile_, IV. 83. + +[312] _Emile_, II. 185. See the previous page for some equally prudent +observations on the folly of teaching geography to little children. + +[313] _Emile_, IV. 68. + +[314] V. 231, etc. + +[315] _Emile_, IV. 71. + +[316] _Emile_, IV. 73. + +[317] IV. 77. + +[318] _Emile_, V. 22, 53, 54, 101, 128-132. + +[319] _Emile_, V. 78. + +[320] V. 122. + +[321] V. 129, 130. + +[322] Well did Jean Paul say, "If we regard all life as an educational +institution, a circumnavigator of the world is less influenced by all +the nations he has seen than by his nurse."--_Levana._ + +[323] _Tableau des Progres de l'Esprit Humain._ _Oeuv._, vi. pp. 264, +523-526, and elsewhere. [Ed. 1847-1849.] + +[324] _Emile et Sophie_, i. + +[325] For an account of some of these, see Grimm's _Corr. Lit._, iii. +211, 252, 347, etc. Also _Corr. Ined._, p. 143. + +[326] For the early date at which Rousseau's power began to meet +recognition, see D'Alembert to Voltaire, July 31, 1762. + +[327] _Louis xv. et xvi._, p. 226. + +[328] See above, vol. ii. p. 193. + +[329] Hettner, III. iii., 2, p. 27, _s.v._ Herder. + +[330] The suggestion of the speculation with which Lavater's name is +most commonly associated, is to be found in the Emilius. "It is +supposed that physiognomy is only a development of features already +marked by nature. For my part, I should think that besides this +development, the features of a man's countenance form themselves +insensibly and take their expression from the frequent and habitual +wearing into them of certain affections of the soul. These affections +mark themselves in the countenance, nothing is more certain; and when +they grow into habits, they must leave durable impressions upon it." +IV. 49, 50. + +[331] Author's Preface, x. + +[332] See an excellent page in M. Joret's _Herder_, 322. + +[333] See above, vol. ii. p. 191. + +[334] _E.g._ pp. 8, 198, 204, 205. + +[335] _E.g._ Bk. I. Sec. 5, p. 279. Sec. 6, p. 406, 419, etc. (the portion +concerning the female sex). + +[336] Vv. 670-703. We have already seen (above, vol. ii. p. 41, _n._) +that Cowper had read Emilius, and the mocking reference to the Deist +as "an Orpheus and omnipotent in song," coincides with Rousseau's +comparison of the Savoyard Vicar to "the divine Orpheus singing the +first hymn" (_Emile_, IV. 205). + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +THE SAVOYARD VICAR. + + +The band of dogmatic atheists who met round D'Holbach's +dinner-table indulged a shallow and futile hope, if it was not an +ungenerous one, when they expected the immediate advent of a +generation with whom a humane and rational philosophy should displace, +not merely the superstitions which had grown around the Christian +dogma, but every root and fragment of theistic conception. A hope of +this kind implied a singularly random idea, alike of the hold which +Christianity had taken of the religious emotion in western Europe, and +of the durableness of those conditions in human character, to which +some belief in a deity with a greater or fewer number of good +attributes brings solace and nourishment. A movement like that of +Christianity does not pass through a group of societies, and then +leave no trace behind. It springs from many other sources besides that +of adherence to the truth of its dogmas. The stream of its influence +must continue to flow long after adherence to the letter has been +confined to the least informed portions of a community. The +Encyclopaedists knew that they had sapped religious dogma and shaken +ecclesiastical organisation. They forgot that religious sentiment on +the one hand, and habit of respect for authority on the other, were +both of them still left behind. They had convinced themselves by a +host of persuasive analogies that the universe is an automatic +machine, and man only an industrious particle in the stupendous whole; +that a final cause is not cognisable by our limited intelligence; and +that to make emotion in this or any other respect a test of objective +truth and a ground of positive belief, is to lower both truth and the +reason which is its single arbiter. They forgot that imagination is as +active in man as his reason, and that a craving for mental peace may +become much stronger than passion for demonstrated truth. Christianity +had given to this craving in western Europe a definite mould, which +was not to be effaced in a day, and one or two of its lines mark a +permanent and noble acquisition to the highest forces of human nature. +There will have to be wrought a profounder and more far-spreading +modification than any which the French atheists could effect, before +all debilitating influences in the old creed can be effaced, its +elevating influences finally separated from them, and then permanently +preserved in more beneficent form and in an association less +questionable to the understanding. + +Neither a purely negative nor a direct attack can ever suffice. There +must be a coincidence of many silently oppugnant forces, emotional, +scientific, and material. And, above all, there must be the slow +steadfast growth of some replacing faith, which shall retain all the +elements of moral beauty that once gave light to the old belief that +has disappeared, and must still possess a living force in the new. + +Here we find the good side of a religious reaction such as that which +Rousseau led in the last century, and of which the Savoyard Vicar's +profession of faith was the famous symbol. Evil as this reaction was +in many respects, and especially in the check which it gave to the +application of positive methods and conceptions to the most important +group of our beliefs, yet it had what was the very signal merit under +the circumstances of the time, of keeping the religious emotions alive +in association with a tolerant, pure, lofty, and living set of +articles of faith, instead of feeding them on the dead superstitions +which were at that moment the only practical alternative. The deism of +Rousseau could not in any case have acquired the force of the +corresponding religious reaction in England, because the former never +acquired a compact and vigorous external organisation, as the latter +did, especially in Wesleyanism and Evangelicalism, the most remarkable +of its developments. In truth the vague, fluid, purely subjective +character of deism disqualifies it from forming the doctrinal basis of +any great objective and visible church, for it is at bottom the +sublimation of individualism. But in itself it was a far less +retrogressive, as well as a far less powerful, movement. It kept fewer +of those dogmas which gradual change of intellectual climate had +reduced to the condition of rank superstitions. It preserved some of +its own, which a still further extension of the same change is +assuredly destined to reduce to the same condition; but, nevertheless, +along with them it cherished sentiments which the world will never +willingly let die. + +The one cardinal service of the Christian doctrine, which is of course +to be distinguished from the services rendered to civilisation in +early times by the Christian church, has been the contribution to the +active intelligence of the west, of those moods of holiness, awe, +reverence, and silent worship of an Unseen not made with hands, which +the Christianising Jews first brought from the east. Of the fabric +which four centuries ago looked so stupendous and so enduring, with +its magnificent whole and its minutely reticulated parts of belief and +practice, this gradual creation of a new temperament in the religious +imagination of Western Europe and the countries that take their mental +direction from her, is perhaps the only portion that will remain +distinctly visible, after all the rest has sunk into the repose of +histories of opinion. Whether this be the case or not, the fact that +these deeper moods are among the richest acquisitions of human nature, +will not be denied either by those who think that Christianity +associates them with objects destined permanently to awake them in +their loftiest form, or by others who believe that the deepest moods +of which man is capable, must ultimately ally themselves with +something still more purely spiritual than the anthropomorphised +deities of the falling church. And if so, then Rousseau's deism, while +intercepting the steady advance of the rationalistic assault and +diverting the current of renovating energy, still did something to +keep alive in a more or less worthy shape those parts of the slowly +expiring system which men have the best reasons for cherishing. + +Let us endeavour to characterise Rousseau's deism with as much +precision as it allows. It was a special and graceful form of a +doctrine which, though susceptible, alike in theory and in the +practical history of religious thought, of numberless wide varieties +of significance, is commonly designated by the name of deism, without +qualification. People constantly speak as if deism only came in with +the eighteenth century. It would be impossible to name any century +since the twelfth, in which distinct and abundant traces could not be +found within the dominion of Christianity of a belief in a +supernatural power apart from the supposed disclosure of it in a +special revelation.[337] A praeter-christian deism, or the principle of +natural religion, was inevitably contained in the legal conception of +a natural law, for how can we dissociate the idea of law from the idea +of a definite lawgiver? The very scholastic disputations themselves, +by the sharpness and subtlety which they gave to the reasoning +faculty, set men in search of novelties, and these novelties were not +always of a kind which orthodox views of the Christian mysteries could +have sanctioned. It has been said that religion is at the cradle of +every nation, and philosophy at its grave; it is at least true that +the cradle of philosophy is the open grave of religion. Wherever there +is argumentation, there is sure to be scepticism. When people begin to +reason, a shadow has already fallen across faith, though the reasoners +might have shrunk with horror from knowledge of the goal of their +work, and though centuries may elapse before the shadow deepens into +eclipse. But the church was strong and alert in the times when free +thought vainly tried to rear a dangerous head in Italy. With the +Protestant revolution came slowly a wider freedom, while the prolonged +and tempestuous discussion between the old church and the reformed +bodies, as well as the manifold variations among those bodies at +strife with one another, stimulated the growth of religious thought in +many directions that tended away from the exclusive pretensions of +Christianity to be the oracle of the divine Spirit. The same feeling +which thrust aside the sacerdotal interposition between the soul of +man and its sovereign creator and inspirer, gradually worked towards +the dethronement of those mediators other than sacerdotal, in whom the +moral timidity of a dark and stricken age had once sought shade from +the too dazzling brightness of the All-powerful and the Everlasting. +The assertion of the rights and powers of the individual reason within +the limits of the sacred documents, began in less than a hundred years +to grow into an assertion of the same rights and powers beyond those +limits. The rejection of tradition as a substitute for independent +judgment, in interpreting or supplementing the records of revelation, +gradually impaired the traditional authority both of the records +themselves, and of the central doctrines which all churches had in one +shape or another agreed to accept. The Trinitarian controversy of the +sixteenth century must have been a stealthy solvent. The deism of +England in the eighteenth century, which Voltaire was the prime agent +in introducing in its negative, colourless, and essentially futile +shape into his own country, had its main effect as a process of +dissolution. + +All this, however, down to the deistical movement which Rousseau found +in progress at Geneva in 1754,[338] was distinctly the outcome in a +more or less marked way of a rationalising and philosophic spirit, and +not of the religious spirit. The sceptical side of it with reference +to revealed religion, predominated over the positive side of it with +reference to natural religion. The wild pantheism of which there were +one or two extraordinary outbursts during the latter part of the +middle ages, to mark the mystical influence which Platonic studies +uncorrected by science always exert over certain temperaments, had +been full of religiosity, such as it was. These had all passed away +with a swift flash. There were, indeed, mystics like the author of the +immortal _De Imitatione_, in whom the special qualities of Christian +doctrine seem to have grown pale in a brighter flood of devout +aspiration towards the perfections of a single Being. But this was not +the deism with which either Christianity on the one side, or atheism +on the other, had ever had to deal in France. Deism, in its formal +acceptation, was either an idle piece of vaporous sentimentality, or +else it was the first intellectual halting-place for spirits who had +travelled out of the pale of the old dogmatic Christianity, and lacked +strength for the continuance of their onward journey. In the latter +case, it was only another name either for the shrewd rough conviction +of the man of the world, that his universe could not well be imagined +to go on without a sort of constitutional monarch, reigning but not +governing, keeping evil-doers in order by fear of eternal punishment, +and lending a sacred countenance to the indispensable doctrines of +property, the gradation of rank and station, and the other moral +foundations of the social structure. Or else it was a name for a +purely philosophic principle, not embraced with fervour as the basis +of a religion, but accepted with decorous satisfaction as the +alternative to a religion; not seized upon as the mainspring of +spiritual life, but held up as a shield in a controversy. + +The deism which the Savoyard Vicar explained to Emilius in his +profession of faith was pitched in a very different tone from this. +Though the Vicar's conception of the Deity was lightly fenced round +with rationalistic supports of the usual kind, drawn from the +evidences of will and intelligence in the vast machinery of the +universe, yet it was essentially the product not of reason, but of +emotional expansion, as every fundamental article of a faith that +touches the hearts of many men must always be. The Savoyard Vicar did +not believe that a God had made the great world, and rules it with +majestic power and supreme justice, in the same way in which he +believed that any two sides of a triangle are greater than the third +side. That there is a mysterious being penetrating all creation with +force, was not a proposition to be demonstrated, but only the poor +description in words of an habitual mood going far deeper into life +than words can ever carry us. Without for a single moment falling off +into the nullities of pantheism, neither did he for a single moment +suffer his thought to stiffen and grow hard in the formal lines of a +theological definition or a systematic credo. It remains firm enough +to give the religious imagination consistency and a centre, yet +luminous enough to give the spiritual faculty a vivifying +consciousness of freedom and space. A creed is concerned with a number +of affirmations, and is constantly held with honest strenuousness by +multitudes of men and women who are unfitted by natural temperament +for knowing what the glow of religious emotion means to the human +soul,--for not every one that saith, Lord, Lord, enters the kingdom of +heaven. The Savoyard Vicar's profession of faith was not a creed, and +so has few affirmations; it was a single doctrine, melted in a glow of +contemplative transport. It is impossible to set about disproving it, +for its exponent repeatedly warns his disciple against the idleness of +logomachy, and insists that the existence of the Divinity is traced +upon every heart in letters that can never be effaced, if we are only +content to read them with lowliness and simplicity. You cannot +demonstrate an emotion, nor prove an aspiration. How reason, asks the +Savoyard Vicar, about that which we cannot conceive? Conscience is the +best of all casuists, and conscience affirms the presence of a being +who moves the universe and ordains all things, and to him we give the +name of God. + +"To this name I join the ideas of intelligence, power, will, which I +have united in one, and that of goodness, which is a necessary +consequence flowing from them. But I do not know any the better for +this the being to whom I have given the name; he escapes equally from +my senses and my understanding; the more I think of him, the more I +confound myself. I have full assurance that he exists, and that he +exists by himself. I recognise my own being as subordinate to his and +all the things that are known to me as being absolutely in the same +case. I perceive God everywhere in his works; I feel him in myself; I +see him universally around me. But when I fain would seek where he is, +what he is, of what substance, he glides away from me, and my troubled +soul discerns nothing."[339] + +"In fine, the more earnestly I strive to contemplate his infinite +essence, the less do I conceive it. But it is, and that suffices me. +The less I conceive it, the more I adore. I bow myself down, and say +to him, O being of beings, I am because thou art; to meditate +ceaselessly on thee by day and night, is to raise myself to my +veritable source and fount. The worthiest use of my reason is to make +itself as naught before thee. It is the ravishment of my soul, it is +the solace of my weakness, to feel myself brought low before the awful +majesty of thy greatness."[340] + +Souls weary of the fierce mockeries that had so long been flying like +fiery shafts against the far Jehovah of the Hebrews, and the silent +Christ of the later doctors and dignitaries, and weary too of the +orthodox demonstrations that did not demonstrate, and leaden +refutations that could not refute, may well have turned with ardour to +listen to this harmonious spiritual voice, sounding clear from a +region towards which their hearts yearned with untold aspiration, but +from which the spirit of their time had shut them off with brazen +barriers. It was the elevation and expansion of man, as much as it was +the restoration of a divinity. To realise this, one must turn to such +a book as Helvetius's, which was supposed to reveal the whole inner +machinery of the heart. Man was thought of as a singular piece of +mechanism principally moved from without, not as a conscious organism, +receiving nourishment and direction from the medium in which it is +placed, but reacting with a life of its own from within. It was this +free and energetic inner life of the individual which the Savoyard +Vicar restored to lawful recognition, and made once more the centre of +that imaginative and spiritual existence, without which we live in a +universe that has no sun by day nor any stars by night. A writer in +whom learning has not extinguished enthusiasm, compares this to the +advance made by Descartes, who had given certitude to the soul by +turning thought confidently upon itself; and he declares that the +Savoyard Vicar is for the emancipation of sentiment what the Discourse +upon Method was for the emancipation of the understanding.[341] There +is here a certain audacity of panegyric; still the fact that Rousseau +chose to link the highest forms of man's ideal life with a fading +projection of the lofty image which had been set up in older days, +ought not to blind us to the excellent energies which, notwithstanding +defect of association, such a vindication of the ideal was certain to +quicken. And at least the lines of that high image were nobly traced. + +Yet who does not feel that it is a divinity for fair weather? +Rousseau, with his fine sense of a proper and artistic setting, +imagined the Savoyard Vicar as leading his youthful convert at break +of a summer day to the top of a high hill, at whose feet the Po flowed +between fertile banks; in the distance the immense chain of the Alps +crowned the landscape; the rays of the rising sun projected long level +shadows from the trees, the slopes, the houses, and accented with a +thousand lines of light the most magnificent of panoramas.[342] This +was the fitting suggestion, so serene, warm, pregnant with power and +hope, and half mysterious, of the idea of godhead which the man of +peace after an interval of silent contemplation proceeded to expound. +Rousseau's sentimental idea at least did not revolt moral sense; it +did not afflict the firmness of intelligence; nor did it silence the +diviner melodies of the soul. Yet, once more, the heavens in which +such a deity dwells are too high, his power is too impalpable, the +mysterious air which he has poured around his being is too awful and +impenetrable, for the rays from the sun of such majesty to reach more +than a few contemplative spirits, and these only in their hours of +tranquillity and expansion. The thought is too vague, too far, to +bring comfort and refreshment to the mass of travailing men, or to +invest duty with the stern ennobling quality of being done, "if I have +grace to use it so as ever in the great Taskmaster's eye." + +The Savoyard Vicar was consistent with the sublimity of his own +conception. He meditated on the order of the universe with a reverence +too profound to allow him to mingle with his thoughts meaner desires +as to the special relations of that order to himself. "I penetrate all +my faculties," he said, "with the divine essence of the author of the +world; I melt at the thought of his goodness, and bless all his gifts, +but I do not pray to him. What should I ask of him? That for me he +should change the course of things, and in my favour work miracles? +Could I, who must love above all else the order established by his +wisdom and upheld by his providence, presume to wish such order +troubled for my sake? Nor do I ask of him the power of doing +righteousness; why ask for what he has given me? Has he not bestowed +on me conscience to love what is good, reason to ascertain it, freedom +to choose it? If I do ill, I have no excuse; I do it because I will +it. To pray to him to change my will, is to seek from him what he +seeks from me; it is to wish no longer to be human, it is to wish +something other than what is, it is to wish disorder and evil."[343] +We may admire both the logical consistency of such self-denial and the +manliness which it would engender in the character that were strong +enough to practise it. But a divinity who has conceded no right of +petition is still further away from our lives than the divinities of +more popular creeds. + +Even the fairest deism is of its essence a faith of egotism and +complacency. It does not incorporate in the very heart of the +religious emotion the pitifulness and sorrow which Christianity first +clothed with associations of sanctity, and which can never henceforth +miss their place in any religious system to be accepted by men. Why is +this? Because a religion that leaves them out, or thrusts them into a +hidden corner, fails to comprehend at least one half, and that the +most touching and impressive half, of the most conspicuous facts of +human life. Rousseau was fuller of the capacity of pity than ordinary +men, and this pity was one of the deepest parts of himself. Yet it did +not enter into the composition of his religious faith, and this shows +that his religious faith, though entirely free from suspicion of +insincerity or ostentatious assumption, was like deism in so many +cases, whether rationalistic or emotional, a kind of gratuitously +adopted superfluity, not the satisfaction of a profound inner craving +and resistless spiritual necessity. He speaks of the good and the +wicked with the precision and assurance of the most pharisaic +theologian, and he begins by asking of what concern it is to him +whether the wicked are punished with eternal torment or not, though he +concludes more graciously with the hope that in another state the +wicked, delivered from their malignity, may enjoy a bliss no less than +his own.[344] But the divine pitifulness which we owe to +Christianity, and which will not be the less eagerly cherished by +those who repudiate Christian tradition and doctrines, enjoins upon us +that we should ask, Who are the wicked, and which is he that is +without sin among us? Rousseau answered this glibly enough by some +formula of metaphysics, about the human will having been left and +constituted free by the creator of the world; and that man is the bad +man who abuses his freedom. Grace, fate, destiny, force of +circumstances, are all so many names for the protests which the frank +sense of fact has forced from man against this miserably inadequate +explanation of the foundations of moral responsibility. + +Whatever these foundations may be, the theories of grace and fate had +at any rate the quality of connecting human conduct with the will of +the gods. Rousseau's deism, severing the influence of the Supreme +Being upon man, at the very moment when it could have saved him from +the guilt that brings misery,--that is at the moment when conduct +begins to follow the preponderant motives or the will,--did thus +effectually cut off the most admirable and fertile group of our +sympathies from all direct connection with religious sentiment. +Toiling as manfully as we may through the wilderness of our seventy +years, we are to reserve our deepest adoration for the being who has +left us there, with no other solace than that he is good and just and +all-powerful, and might have given us comfort and guidance if he +would. This was virtually the form which Pelagius had tried to impose +upon Christianity in the fifth century, and which the souls of men, +thirsting for consciousness of an active divine presence, had then +under the lead of Augustine so energetically cast away from them. The +faith to which they clung while rejecting this great heresy, though +just as transcendental, still had the quality of satisfying a +spiritual want. It was even more readily to be accepted by the human +intelligence, for it endowed the supreme power with the father's +excellence of compassion, and presented for our reverence and +gratitude and devotion a figure who drew from men the highest love for +the God whom they had not seen, along with the warmest pity and love +for their brethren whom they had seen. + +The Savoyard Vicar's own position to Christianity was one of +reverential scepticism. "The holiness of the gospel," he said, "is an +argument that speaks to my heart and to which I should even be sorry +to find a good answer. Look at the books of the philosophers with all +their pomp; how puny they are by the side of that! Is there here the +tone of an enthusiast or an ambitious sectary? What gentleness, what +purity, in his manners, what touching grace in his teaching, what +loftiness in his maxims! Assuredly there was something more than human +in such teaching, such a character, such a life, such a death. If the +life and death of Socrates were those of a sage, the life and death +of Jesus are those of a god. Shall we say that the history of the +gospels is invented at pleasure? My friend, that is not the fashion of +invention; and the facts about Socrates are less attested than the +facts about Christ.[345] Yet with all that, this same gospel abounds +in things incredible, which are repugnant to reason, and which it is +impossible for any sensible man to conceive or admit. What are we to +do in the midst of all these contradictions? To be ever modest and +circumspect, my son; to respect in silence what one can neither reject +nor understand, and to make one's self lowly before the great being +who alone knows the truth."[346] + +"I regard all particular religions as so many salutary institutions, +which prescribe in every country a uniform manner of honouring God by +public worship. I believe them all good, so long as men serve God +fittingly in them. The essential worship is the worship of the heart. +God never rejects this homage, under whatever form it be offered to +him. In other days I used to say mass with the levity which in time +infects even the gravest things, when we do them too often. Since +acquiring my new principles I celebrate it with more veneration; I am +overwhelmed by the majesty of the Supreme Being, by his presence, by +the insufficiency of the human mind, which conceives so little what +pertains to its author. When I approach the moment of consecration, I +collect myself for performing the act with all the feelings required +by the church, and the majesty of the sacrament; I strive to +annihilate my reason before the supreme intelligence, saying, 'Who art +thou, that thou shouldest measure infinite power?'"[347] + +A creed like this, whatever else it may be, is plainly a powerful +solvent of every system of exclusive dogma. If the one essential to +true worship, the worship of the heart and the inner sentiment, be +mystic adoration of an indefinable Supreme, then creeds based upon +books, prophecies, miracles, revelations, all fall alike into the +second place among things that may be lawful and may be expedient, but +that can never be exacted from men by a just God as indispensable to +virtue in this world or to bliss in the next. No better answer has +ever been given to the exclusive pretensions of sect, Christian, +Jewish, or Mahometan, than that propounded by the Savoyard Vicar with +such energy, closeness, and most sarcastic fire.[348] It was turning +an unexpected front upon the presumptuousness of all varieties of +theological infallibilists, to prove to them that if you insist upon +acceptance of this or that special revelation, over and above the +dictates of natural religion, then you are bound not only to grant, +but imperatively to enjoin upon all men, a searching inquiry and +comparison, that they may spare no pains in an affair of such +momentous issue in proving to themselves that this, and none of the +competing revelations, is the veritable message of eternal safety. +"Then no other study will be possible but that of religion: hardly +shall one who has enjoyed the most robust health, employed his time +and used his reason to best purpose, and lived the greatest number of +years, hardly shall such an one in his extreme age be quite sure what +to believe, and it will be a marvel if he finds out before he dies, in +what faith he ought to have lived." The superiority of the sceptical +parts of the Savoyard Vicar's profession, as well as those of the +Letters from the Mountain to which we referred previously, over the +biting mockeries which Voltaire had made the fashionable method of +assault, lay in this fact. The latter only revolted and irritated all +serious temperaments to whom religion is a matter of honest concern, +while the former actually appealed to their religious sense in support +of his doubts; and the more intelligent and sincere this sense +happened to be, the more surely would Rousseau's gravely urged +objections dissolve the hard particles of dogmatic belief. His +objections were on a moral level with the best side of the religion +that they oppugned. Those of Voltaire were only on a level with its +lowest side, and that was the side presented by the gross and +repulsive obscurantism of the functionaries of the church. + +Unfortunately Rousseau had placed in the hands of the partisans of +every exclusive revelation an instrument which was quite enough to +disperse all his objections to the winds, and which was the very +instrument that defended his own cherished religion. If he was +satisfied with replying to the atheist and the materialist, that he +knew there is a supreme God, and that the soul must have here and +hereafter an existence apart from the body, because he found these +truths ineffaceably written upon his own heart, what could prevent the +Christian or the Mahometan from replying to Rousseau that the New +Testament or the Koran is the special and final revelation from the +Supreme Power to his creatures? If you may appeal to the voice of the +heart and the dictate of the inner sentiment in one case, why not in +the other also? A subjective test necessarily proves anything that any +man desires, and the accident of the article proved appearing either +reasonable or monstrous to other people, cannot have the least bearing +on its efficacy or conclusiveness. + +Deism like the Savoyard Vicar's opens no path for the future, because +it makes no allowance for the growth of intellectual conviction, and +binds up religion with mystery, with an object whose attributes can +neither be conceived nor defined, with a Being too all-embracing to be +able to receive anything from us, too august, self-contained, remote, +to be able to bestow on us the humble gifts of which we have need. The +temperature of thought is slowly but without an instant's recoil +rising to a point when a mystery like this, definite enough to be +imposed as a faith, but too indefinite to be grasped by understanding +as a truth, melts away from the emotions of religion. Then those +instincts of holiness, without which the world would be to so many of +its highest spirits the most dreary of exiles, will perhaps come to +associate themselves less with unseen divinities, than with the long +brotherhood of humanity seen and unseen. Here we shall move with an +assurance that no scepticism and no advance of science can ever shake, +because the benefactions which we have received from the strenuousness +of human effort can never be doubted, and each fresh acquisition in +knowledge or goodness can only kindle new fervour. Those who have the +religious imagination struck by the awful procession of man from the +region of impenetrable night, by his incessant struggle with the +hardness of the material world, and his sublimer struggle with the +hard world of his own egotistic passions, by the pain and sacrifice by +which generation after generation has added some small piece to the +temple of human freedom or some new fragment to the ever incomplete +sum of human knowledge, or some fresh line to the types of strong or +beautiful character,--those who have an eye for all this may indeed +have no ecstasy and no terror, no heaven nor hell, in their religion, +but they will have abundant moods of reverence, deep-seated gratitude, +and sovereign pitifulness. + +And such moods will not end in sterile exaltation, or the deathly +chills of spiritual reaction. They will bring forth abundant fruit in +new hope and invigorated endeavour. This devout contemplation of the +experience of the race, instead of raising a man into the clouds, +brings him into the closest, loftiest, and most conscious relations +with his kind, to whom he owes all that is of value in his own life, +and to whom he can repay his debt by maintaining the beneficent +tradition of service, by cherishing honour for all the true and sage +spirits that have shone upon the earth, and sorrow and reprobation for +all the unworthier souls whose light has gone out in baseness. A man +with this faith can have no foul spiritual pride, for there is no +mysteriously accorded divine grace in which one may be a larger +participant than another. He can have no incentives to that mutilation +with which every branch of the church, from the oldest to the youngest +and crudest, has in its degree afflicted and retarded mankind, because +the key-note of his religion is the joyful energy of every faculty, +practical, reflective, creative, contemplative, in pursuit of a +visible common good. And he can be plunged into no fatal and +paralysing despair by any doctrine of mortal sin, because active faith +in humanity, resting on recorded experience, discloses the many +possibilities of moral recovery, and the work that may be done for men +in the fragment of days, redeeming the contrite from their burdens by +manful hope. If religion is our feeling about the highest forces that +govern human destiny, then as it becomes more and more evident how +much our destiny is shaped by the generation of the dead who have +prepared the present, and by the purport of our hopes and the +direction of our activity for the generations that are to fill the +future, the religious sentiment will more and more attach itself to +the great unseen host of our fellows who have gone before us and who +are to come after. Such a faith is no rag of metaphysic floating in +the sunshine of sentimentalism, like Rousseau's faith. It rests on a +positive base, which only becomes wider and firmer with the widening +of experience and the augmentation of our skill in interpreting it. +Nor is it too transcendent for practical acceptance. One of the most +scientific spirits of the eighteenth century, while each moment +expecting the knock of the executioner at his door, found as religious +a solace as any early martyr had ever found in his barbarous +mysteries, when he linked his own efforts for reason and freedom with +the eternal chain of the destinies of man. "This contemplation," he +wrote and felt, "is for him a refuge into which the rancour of his +persecutors can never follow him; in which, living in thought with man +reinstated in the rights and the dignity of his nature, he forgets man +tormented and corrupted by greed, by base fear, by envy; it is here +that he truly abides with his fellows, in an elysium that his reason +has known how to create for itself, and that his love for humanity +adorns with all purest delights."[349] + +This, to the shame of those wavering souls who despair of progress at +the first moment when it threatens to leave the path that they have +marked out for it, was written by a man at the very close of his days, +when every hope that he had ever cherished seemed to one without the +eye of faith to be extinguished in bloodshed, disorder, and barbarism. +But there is a still happier season in the adolescence of generous +natures that have been wisely fostered, when the horizons of the +dawning life are suddenly lighted up with a glow of aspiration towards +good and holy things. Commonly, alas, this priceless opportunity is +lost in a fit of theological exaltation, which is gradually choked out +by the dusty facts of life, and slowly moulders away into dry +indifference. It would not be so, but far different, if the Savoyard +Vicar, instead of taking the youth to the mountain-top, there to +contemplate that infinite unseen which is in truth beyond +contemplation by the limited faculties of man, were to associate these +fine impulses of the early prime with the visible, intelligible, and +still sublime possibilities of the human destiny,--that imperial +conception, which alone can shape an existence of entire proportion in +all its parts, and leave no natural energy of life idle or athirst. Do +you ask for sanctions! One whose conscience has been strengthened from +youth in this faith, can know no greater bitterness than the stain +cast by wrong act or unworthy thought on the high memories with which +he has been used to walk, and the discord wrought in hopes that have +become the ruling harmony of his days. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[337] See Hallam's _Literature of Europe_, Pt. I. ch. ii. Sec. 64. Again +(for the 16th century), Pt. II. ch. ii. Sec. 53. See also for mention of +a sect of deists at Lyons about 1560, Bayle's Dictionary, _s.v._ +Viret. + +[338] See above, vol. i. pp. 223-227. + +[339] _Emile_, IV. 163. + +[340] IV. 183-185. + +[341] M. Henri Martin's _Hist. de France_, xvi. 101, where there is an +interesting, but, as it seems to the present writer, hardly a +successful attempt, to bring the Savoyard Vicar's eloquence into +scientific form. + +[342] _Emile_, IV. 135. + +[343] _Emile_, IV. 204. + +[344] _Emile_, IV. 181, 182. In a letter to Vernes (Feb. 18, 1758. +_Corr._, ii. 9) he expresses his suspicion that possibly the souls of +the wicked may be annihilated at their death, and that being and +feeling may prove the first reward of a good life. In this letter he +asks also, with the same magnanimous security as the Savoyard Vicar, +"of what concern the destiny of the wicked can be to him." + +[345] A similar disparagement of Socrates, in comparison with the +Christ of the Gospels, is to be found in the long letter of Jan. 15, +1769 (_Corr._, vi. 59, 60), to M----, accompanied by a violent +denigration of the Jews, conformably to the philosophic prejudice of +the time. + +[346] _Emile_, IV. 241, 242. + +[347] _Emile_, IV. 243. + +[348] IV. 210-236. + +[349] Condorcet's _Progres de l'Esprit Humain_ (1794). _Oeuv._, vi. +276. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +ENGLAND.[350] + + +There is in an English collection a portrait of Jean Jacques, +which was painted during his residence in this country by a provincial +artist. Singular and displeasing as it is, yet this picture lights up +for us many a word and passage in Rousseau's life here and elsewhere, +which the ordinary engravings, and the trim self-complacency of the +statue on the little island at Geneva, would leave very +incomprehensible. It is almost as appalling in its realism as some of +the dark pits that open before the reader of the Confessions. Hard +struggles with objective difficulty and external obstacle wear deep +furrows in the brow; they throw into the glance a solicitude, half +penetrating and defiant, half dejected. When a man's hindrances have +sprung up from within, and the ill-fought battle of his days has been +with his own passions and morbid broodings and unchastened dreams, the +eye and the facial lines tell the story of that profound moral defeat +which is unlighted by the memories of resolute combat with evil and +weakness, and leaves only eternal desolation and the misery that is +formless. Our English artist has produced a vision from that prose +Inferno which is made so populous in the modern epoch by impotence of +will. Those who have seen the picture may easily understand how +largely the character of the original must have been pregnant with +harassing confusion and distress. + +Four years before this (1762), Hume, to whom Lord Marischal had told +the story of Rousseau's persecutions, had proffered his services, and +declared his eagerness to help in finding a proper refuge for him in +England. There had been an exchange of cordial letters,[351] and then +the matter had lain quiet, until the impossibility of remaining longer +in Neuchatel had once more set his friends on procuring a safe +establishment for their rather difficult refugee. Rousseau's +appearance in Paris had created the keenest excitement. "People may +talk of ancient Greece as they please," wrote Hume from Paris, "but no +nation was ever so proud of genius as this, and no person ever so much +engaged their attention as Rousseau! Voltaire and everybody else are +quite eclipsed by him." Even Theresa Le Vasseur, who was declared very +homely and very awkward, was more talked of than the Princess of +Morocco or the Countess of Egmont, on account of her fidelity towards +him. His very dog had a name and reputation in the world.[352] +Rousseau is always said to have liked the stir which his presence +created, but whether this was so or not, he was very impatient to be +away from it as soon as possible. + +In company with Hume, he left Paris in the second week of January +1766. They crossed from Calais to Dover by night in a passage that +lasted twelve hours. Hume, as the orthodox may be glad to know, was +extremely ill, while Rousseau cheerfully passed the whole night upon +deck, taking no harm, though the seamen were almost frozen to +death.[353] They reached London on the thirteenth of January, and the +people of London showed nearly as lively an interest in the strange +personage whom Hume had brought among them, as the people of Paris had +done. A prince of the blood at once went to pay his respects to the +Swiss philosopher. The crowd at the playhouse showed more curiosity +when the stranger came in than when the king and queen entered. Their +majesties were as interested as their subjects, and could scarcely +keep their eyes off the author of Emilius. George III., then in the +heyday of his youth, was so pleased to have a foreigner of genius +seeking shelter in his kingdom, that he readily acceded to Conway's +suggestion, prompted by Hume, that Rousseau should have a pension +settled on him. The ever illustrious Burke, then just made member of +Parliament, saw him nearly every day, and became persuaded that "he +entertained no principle either to influence his heart, or guide his +understanding, but vanity."[354] Hume, on the contrary, thought the +best things of his client; "He has an excellent warm heart, and in +conversation kindles often to a degree of heat which looks like +inspiration; I love him much, and hope that I have some share in his +affections.... He is a very modest, mild, well-bred, gentle-spirited +and warm-hearted man, as ever I knew in my life. He is also to +appearance very sociable. I never saw a man who seems better +calculated for good company, nor who seems to take more pleasure in +it." "He is a very agreeable, amiable man; but a great humorist. The +philosophers of Paris foretold to me that I could not conduct him to +Calais without a quarrel; but I think I could live with him all my +life in mutual friendship and esteem. I believe one great source of +our concord is that neither he nor I are disputatious, which is not +the case with any of them. They are also displeased with him, because +they think he over-abounds in religion; and it is indeed remarkable +that the philosopher of this age who has been most persecuted, is by +far the most devout."[355] + +What the Scotch philosopher meant by calling his pupil a humorist, may +perhaps be inferred from the story of the trouble he had in prevailing +upon Rousseau to go to the play, though Garrick had appointed a +special occasion and set apart a special box for him. When the hour +came, Rousseau declared that he could not leave his dog behind him. +"The first person," he said, "who opens the door, Sultan will run into +the streets in search of me and will be lost." Hume told him to lock +Sultan up in the room, and carry away the key in his pocket. This was +done, but as they proceeded downstairs, the dog began to howl; his +master turned back and avowed he had not resolution to leave him in +that condition. Hume, however, caught him in his arms, told him that +Mr. Garrick had dismissed another company in order to make room for +him, that the king and queen were expecting to see him, and that +without a better reason than Sultan's impatience it would be +ridiculous to disappoint them. Thus, a little by reason, but more by +force, he was carried off.[356] Such a story, whatever else we may +think of it, shows at least a certain curious and not untouching +simplicity. And singularity which made Rousseau like better to keep +his dog company at home, than to be stared at by a gaping pit, was too +private in its reward to be the result of that vanity and affectation +with which he was taxed by men who lived in another sphere of motive. + +There was considerable trouble in settling Rousseau. He was eager to +leave London almost as soon as he arrived in it. Though pleased with +the friendly reception which had been given him, he pronounced London +to be as much devoted to idle gossip and frivolity as other capitals. +He spent a few weeks in the house of a farmer at Chiswick, thought +about fixing himself in the Isle of Wight, then in Wales, then +somewhere in our fair Surrey, whose scenery, one is glad to know, +greatly attracted him. Finally arrangements were made by Hume with Mr. +Davenport for installing him in a house belonging to the latter, at +Wootton, near Ashbourne, in the Peak of Derbyshire.[357] Hither +Rousseau proceeded with Theresa, at the end of March. Mr. Davenport +was a gentleman of large property, and as he seldom inhabited this +solitary house, was very willing that Rousseau should take up his +abode there without payment. This, however, was what Rousseau's +independence could not brook, and he insisted that his entertainer +should receive thirty pounds a year for the board of himself and +Theresa.[358] So here he settled, in an extremely bitter climate, +knowing no word of the language of the people about him, with no +companionship but Theresa's, and with nothing to do but walk when the +weather was fair, play the harpsicord when it rained, and brood over +the incidents which had occurred to him since he had left Switzerland +six months before. The first fruits of this unfortunate leisure were a +bitter quarrel with Hume, one of the most famous and far-resounding of +all the quarrels of illustrious men, but one about which very little +needs now be said. The merits of it are plain, and all significance +that may ever have belonged to it is entirely dead. The incubation of +his grievances began immediately after his arrival at Wootton, but two +months elapsed before they burst forth in full flame.[359] + +The general charge against Hume was that he was a member of an +accursed triumvirate; Voltaire and D'Alembert were the other partners; +and their object was to blacken the character of Rousseau and render +his life miserable. The particular acts on which this belief was +established were the following:-- + +(1) While Rousseau was in Paris, there appeared a letter nominally +addressed to him by the King of Prussia, and written in an ironical +strain, which persuaded Jean Jacques himself that it was the work of +Voltaire.[360] Then he suspected D'Alembert. It was really the +composition of Horace Walpole, who was then in Paris. Now Hume was the +friend of Walpole, and had given Rousseau a card of introduction to +him for the purpose of entrusting Walpole with the carriage of some +papers. Although the false letter produced the liveliest amusement at +Rousseau's cost, first in Paris and then in London, Hume, while +feigning to be his warm friend and presenting him to the English +public, never took any pains to tell the world that the piece was a +forgery, nor did he break with its wicked author.[361] (2) When +Rousseau assured Hume that D'Alembert was a cunning and dishonourable +man, Hume denied it with an amazing heat, although he well knew the +latter to be Rousseau's enemy.[362] (3) Hume lived in London with the +son of Tronchin, the Genevese surgeon, and the most mortal of all the +foes of Jean Jacques.[363] (4) When Rousseau first came to London, his +reception was a distinguished triumph for the victim of persecution +from so many governments. England was proud of being his place of +refuge, and justly vaunted the freedom of her laws and administration. +Suddenly and for no assignable cause the public tone changed, the +newspapers either fell silent or else spoke unfavourably, and Rousseau +was thought of no more. This must have been due to Hume, who had much +influence among people of credit, and who went about boasting of the +protection which he had procured for Jean Jacques in Paris.[364] (5) +Hume resorted to various small artifices for preventing Rousseau from +making friends, for procuring opportunities of opening Rousseau's +letters, and the like.[365] (6) A violent satirical letter against +Rousseau appeared in the English newspapers, with allusions which +could only have been supplied by Hume. (7) On the first night after +their departure from Paris, Rousseau, who occupied the same room with +Hume, heard him call out several times in the middle of the night in +the course of his dreams, _Je tiens Jean Jacques Rousseau_, with +extreme vehemence--which words, in spite of the horribly sardonic tone +of the dreamer, he interpreted favourably at the time, but which later +event proved to have been full of malign significance.[366] (8) +Rousseau constantly found Hume eyeing him with a glance of sinister +and diabolic import that filled him with an astonishing disquietude, +though he did his best to combat it. On one of these occasions he was +seized with remorse, fell upon Hume's neck, embraced him warmly, and, +suffocated with sobs and bathed in tears, cried out in broken accents, +_No, no, David Hume is no traitor_, with many protests of affection. +The phlegmatic Hume only returned his embrace with politeness, stroked +him gently on the back, and repeated several times in a tranquil +voice, _Quoi, mon cher monsieur! Eh! mon cher monsieur! Quoi donc, mon +cher monsieur!_[367] (9) Although for many weeks Rousseau had kept a +firm silence to Hume, neglecting to answer letters that plainly called +for answer, and marking his displeasure in other unmistakable ways, +yet Hume had never sought any explanation of what must necessarily +have struck him as so singular, but continued to write as if nothing +had happened. Was not this positive proof of a consciousness of +perfidy? + +Some years afterwards he substituted another shorter set of +grievances, namely, that Hume would not suffer Theresa to sit at table +with him; that he made a show of him; and that Hume had an engraving +executed of himself, which made him as beautiful as a cherub, while in +another engraving, which was a pendant to his own, Jean Jacques was +made as ugly as a bear.[368] + +It would be ridiculous for us to waste any time in discussing these +charges. They are not open to serious examination, though it is +astonishing to find writers in our own day who fully believe that Hume +was a traitor, and behaved extremely basely to the unfortunate man +whom he had inveigled over to a barbarous island. The only part of the +indictment about which there could be the least doubt, was the +possibility of Hume having been an accomplice in Walpole's very small +pleasantry. Some of his friends in Paris suspected that he had had a +hand in the supposed letter from the King of Prussia. Although the +letter constituted no very malignant jest, and could not by a sensible +man have been regarded as furnishing just complaint against one who, +like Walpole, was merely an impudent stranger, yet if it could be +shown that Hume had taken an active part either in the composition or +the circulation of a spiteful bit of satire upon one towards whom he +was pretending a singular affection, then we should admit that he +showed such a want of sense of the delicacy of friendship as amounted +to something like treachery. But a letter from Walpole to Hume sets +this doubt at rest. "I cannot be precise as to the time of my writing +the King of Prussia's letter, but ... I not only suppressed the letter +while you stayed there, out of delicacy to you, but it was the reason +why, out of delicacy to myself, I did not go to see him as you often +proposed to me, thinking it wrong to go and make a cordial visit to a +man, with a letter in my pocket to laugh at him."[369] + +With this all else falls to the ground. It would be as unwise in us, +as it was in Rousseau himself, to complicate the hypotheses. Men do +not act without motives, and Hume could have no motive in entering +into any plot against Rousseau, even if the rival philosophers in +France might have motives. We know the character of our David Hume +perfectly well, and though it was not faultless, its fault certainly +lay rather in an excessive desire to make the world comfortable for +everybody, than in anything like purposeless malignity, of which he +never had a trace. Moreover, all that befell Rousseau through Hume's +agency was exceedingly to his advantage. Hume was not without vanity, +and his letters show that he was not displeased at the addition to his +consequence which came of his patronage of a man who was much talked +about and much stared at. But, however this was, he did all for +Rousseau that generosity and thoughtfulness could do. He was at great +pains in establishing him; he used his interest to procure for him the +grant of a pension from the king; when Rousseau provisionally refused +the pension rather than owe anything to Hume, the latter, still +ignorant of the suspicion that was blackening in Rousseau's mind, +supposed that the refusal came from the fact of the pension being kept +private, and at once took measures with the minister to procure the +removal of the condition of privacy. Besides undeniable acts like +these, the state of Hume's mind towards his curious ward is abundantly +shown in his letters to all his most intimate friends, just as +Rousseau's gratitude to him is to be read in all his early letters +both to Hume and other persons. In the presence of such facts on the +one side, and in the absence of any particle of intelligible evidence +to neutralise them on the other, to treat Rousseau's charges with +gravity is irrational. + +If Hume had written back in a mild and conciliatory strain, there can +be no doubt that the unfortunate victim of his own morbid imagination +would, for a time at any rate, have been sobered and brought to a +sense of his misconduct. But Hume was incensed beyond control at what +he very pardonably took for a masterpiece of atrocious ingratitude. He +reproached Rousseau in terms as harsh as those which Grimm had used +nine years before. He wrote to all his friends, withdrawing the kindly +words he had once used of Rousseau's character, and substituting in +their place the most unfavourable he could find. He gave the +philosophic circle in Paris exquisite delight by the confirmation +which his story furnished of their own foresight, when they had warned +him that he was taking a viper to his bosom. Finally, in spite of the +advice of Adam Smith, of one of the greatest of men, Turgot, and one +of the smallest, Horace Walpole, he published a succinct account of +the quarrel, first in French, and then in English. This step was +chiefly due to the advice of the clique of whom D'Alembert was the +spokesman, though it is due to him to mention that he softened various +expressions in Hume's narrative, which he pronounced too harsh. It may +be true that a council of war never fights; a council of men of +letters always does. The governing committee of a literary, +philosophical, or theological clique form the very worst advisers any +man can have. + +Much must be forgiven to Hume, stung as he was by what appeared the +most hateful ferocity in one on whom he had heaped acts of affection. +Still, one would have been glad on behalf of human dignity, if he had +suffered with firm silence petulant charges against which the +consciousness of his own uprightness should have been the only answer. +That high pride, of which there is too little rather than too much in +the world, and which saves men from waste of themselves and others in +pitiful accusations, vindications, retaliations, should have helped +humane pity in preserving him from this poor quarrel. Long afterwards +Rousseau said, "England, of which they paint such fine pictures in +France, has so cheerless a climate; my soul, wearied with many shocks, +was in a condition of such profound melancholy, that in all that +passed I believe I committed many faults. But are they comparable to +those of the enemies who persecuted me, supposing them even to have +done no more than published our private quarrels?"[370] An ampler +contrition would have been more seemly in the first offender, but +there is a measure of justice in his complaint. We need not, however, +reproach the good Hume. Before six months were over, he admits that he +is sometimes inclined to blame his publication, and always to regret +it.[371] And his regret was not verbal merely. When Rousseau had +returned to France, and was in danger of arrest, Hume was most urgent +in entreating Turgot to use his influence with the government to +protect the wretched wanderer, and Turgot's answer shows both how +sincere this humane interposition was, and how practically +serviceable.[372] + +Meanwhile there ensued a horrible fray in print. Pamphlets appeared in +Paris and London in a cloud. The Succinct Exposure was followed by +succinct rejoinders. Walpole officiously printed his own account of +his own share in the matter. Boswell officiously wrote to the +newspapers defending Rousseau and attacking Walpole. King George +followed the battle with intense curiosity. Hume with solemn +formalities sent the documents to the British Museum. There was +silence only in one place, and that was at Wootton. The unfortunate +person who had done all the mischief printed not a word. + +The most prompt and quite the least instructive of the remarks +invariably made upon any one who has acted in an unusual manner, is +that he must be mad. This universal criticism upon the unwonted really +tells us nothing, because the term may cover any state of mind from a +warranted dissent from established custom, down to absolute dementia. +Rousseau was called mad when he took to wearing convenient clothes and +living frugally. He was called mad when he quitted the town and went +to live in the country. The same facile explanation covered his +quarrel with importunate friends at the Hermitage. Voltaire called him +mad for saying that if there were perfect harmony of taste and +temperament between the king's daughter and the executioner's son, the +pair ought to be allowed to marry. We who are not forced by +conversational necessities to hurry to a judgment, may hesitate to +take either taste for the country, or for frugal living, or even for +democratic extravagances, as a mark of a disordered mind.[373] That +Rousseau's conduct towards Hume was inconsistent with perfect mental +soundness is quite plain. But to say this with crude trenchancy, +teaches us nothing. Instead of paying ourselves with phrases like +monomania, it is more useful shortly to trace the conditions which +prepared the way for mental derangement, because this is the only +means of understanding either its nature, or the degree to which it +extended. These conditions in Rousseau's case are perfectly simple and +obvious to any one who recognises the principle, that the essential +facts of such mental disorder as his must be sought not in the +symptoms, but from the whole range of moral and intellectual +constitution, acted on by physical states and acting on them in turn. + +Rousseau was born with an organisation of extreme sensibility. This +predisposition was further deepened by the application in early youth +of mental influences specially calculated to heighten juvenile +sensibility. Corrective discipline from circumstance and from formal +instruction was wholly absent, and thus the particular excess in his +temperament became ever more and more exaggerated, and encroached at a +rate of geometrical progression upon all the rest of his impulses and +faculties; these, if he had been happily placed under some of the many +forms of wholesome social pressure, would then on the contrary have +gradually reduced his sensibility to more normal proportion. When the +vicious excess had decisively rooted itself in his character, he came +to Paris, where it was irritated into further activity by the +uncongeniality of all that surrounded him. Hence the growth of a +marked unsociality, taking literary form in the Discourses, and +practical form in his retirement from the town. The slow depravation +of the affective life was hastened by solitude, by sensuous expansion, +by the long musings of literary composition. Well does Goethe's +Princess warn the hapless Tasso:-- + + Dieser Pfad + Verleitet uns, durch einsames Gebuesch, + Durch stille Thaeler fortzuwandern; mehr + Und mehr verwoehnt sich das Gemueth und strebt + Die goldne Zeit, die ihm von aussen mangelt, + In seinem Innern wieder herzustellen, + So wenig der Versuch gelingen will. + +Then came harsh and unjust treatment prolonged for many months, and +this introduced a slight but genuinely misanthropic element of +bitterness into what had hitherto been an excess of feeling about +himself, rather than any positive feeling of hostility or suspicion +about others. Finally and perhaps above all else, he was the victim of +tormenting bodily pain, and of sleeplessness which resulted from it. +The agitation and excitement of the journey to England, completed the +sum of the conditions of disturbance, and as soon as ever he was +settled at Wootton, and had leisure to brood over the incidents of +the few weeks since his arrival in England, the disorder which had +long been spreading through his impulses and affections, suddenly but +by a most natural sequence extended to the faculties of his +intelligence, and he became the prey of delusion, a delusion which was +not yet fixed, but which ultimately became so. + +"He has only _felt_ during the whole course of his life," wrote Hume +sympathetically; "and in this respect his sensibility rises to a pitch +beyond what I have seen any example of; but it still gives him a more +acute feeling of pain than of pleasure. He is like a man who was +stripped not only of his clothes, but of his skin, and turned out in +that situation to combat with the rude and boisterous elements."[374] +A morbid affective state of this kind and of such a degree of +intensity, was the sure antecedent of a morbid intellectual state, +general or partial, depressed or exalted. One who is the prey of +unsound feelings, if they are only marked enough and persistent +enough, naturally ends by a correspondingly unsound arrangement of all +or some of his ideas to match. The intelligence is seduced into +finding supports in misconception of circumstances, for a +misconception of human relation which had its root in disordered +emotion. This completes the breach of correspondence between the man's +nature and the external facts with which he has to deal, though the +breach may not, and in Rousseau's case certainly did not, extend along +the whole line of feeling and judgment. Rousseau's delusion about +Hume's sinister feeling and designs, which was the first definite +manifestation of positive unsoundness in the sphere of the +intelligence, was a last result of the gradual development of an +inherited predisposition to affective unsoundness, which unhappily for +the man's history had never been counteracted either by a strenuous +education, or by the wholesome urgencies of life. + +We have only to remember that with him, as with the rest of us, there +was entire unity of nature, without cataclysm or marvel or +inexplicable rupture of mental continuity. All the facts came in an +order that might have been foretold; they all lay together, with their +foundations down in physical temperament; the facts which made +Rousseau's name renowned and his influence a great force, along with +those which made his life a scandal to others and a misery to himself. +The deepest root of moral disorder lies in an immoderate expectation +of happiness, and this immoderate unlawful expectation was the mark +both of his character and his work. The exaltation of emotion over +intelligence was the secret of his most striking production; the same +exaltation, by gaining increased mastery over his whole existence, at +length passed the limit of sanity and wrecked him. The tendency of the +dominant side of a character towards diseased exaggeration is a fact +of daily observation. The ruin which the excess of strong religious +imagination works in natures without the quality of energetic +objective reaction, was shown in the case of Rousseau's contemporary, +Cowper. This gentle poet's delusions about the wrath of God were +equally pitiable and equally a source of torment to their victim, with +Rousseau's delusions about the malignity of his mysterious plotters +among men. We must call such a condition unsound, but the important +thing is to remember that insanity was only a modification of certain +specially marked tendencies of the sufferer's sanity. + +The desire to protect himself against the defamation of his enemies +led him at this time to compose that account of his own life, which is +probably the only one of his writings that continues to be generally +read. He composed the first part of the Confessions at Wootton, during +the autumn and winter of 1766. The idea of giving his memoirs to the +public was an old one, originally suggested by one of his publishers. +To write memoirs of one's own life was one of the fancies of the time, +but like all else, it became in Rousseau's hand something more +far-reaching and sincere than a passing fashion. Other people wrote +polite histories of their outer lives, amply coloured with romantic +decorations. Rousseau with unquailing veracity plunged into the inmost +depths, hiding nothing that would be likely to make him either +ridiculous or hateful in common opinion, and inventing nothing that +could attract much sympathy or much admiration. Though, as has been +pointed out already, the Confessions abound in small inaccuracies of +date, hardly to be avoided by an oldish man in reference to the facts +of his boyhood, whether a Rousseau or a Goethe, and though one or two +of the incidents are too deeply coloured with the hues of sentimental +reminiscence, and one or two of them are downright impossible, yet +when all these deductions have been made, the substantial truthfulness +of what remains is made more evident with every addition to our +materials for testing them. When all the circumstances of Rousseau's +life are weighed, and when full account has been taken of his proved +delinquencies, we yet perceive that he was at bottom a character as +essentially sincere, truthful, careful of fact and reality, as is +consistent with the general empire of sensation over untrained +intelligence.[375] As for the egotism of the Confessions, it is hard +to see how a man is to tell the story of his own life without egotism. +And it may be worth adding that the self-feeling which comes to the +surface and asserts itself, is in a great many cases far less vicious +and debilitating than the same feeling nursed internally with a +troglodytish shyness. But Rousseau's egotism manifested itself +perversely. This is true to a certain small extent, and one or two of +the disclosures in the Confessions are in very nauseous matter, and +are made moreover in a very nauseous manner. There are some vices +whose grotesqueness stirs us more deeply than downright atrocities, +and we read of certain puerilities avowed by Rousseau, with a livelier +impatience than old Benvenuto Cellini quickens in us, when he +confesses to a horrible assassination. This morbid form of +self-feeling is only less disgusting than the allied form which +clothes itself in the phrases of religious exaltation. And there is +not much of it. Blot out half a dozen pages from the Confessions, and +the egotism is no more perverted than in the confessions of Augustine +or of Cardan. + +These remarks are not made to extenuate Rousseau's faults, or to raise +the popular estimate of his character, but simply in the interests of +a greater precision of criticism. In England criticism has nearly +always been of the most vulgar superficiality in respect to Rousseau, +from the time of Horace Walpole downwards. The Confessions in their +least agreeable parts, or rather especially in those parts, are the +expression on a new side and in a peculiar way of the same notion of +the essential goodness of nature and the importance of understanding +nature and restoring its reign, which inspired the Discourses and +Emilius. "I would fain show to my fellows," he began, "a man in all +the truth of nature," and he cannot be charged with any failure to +keep his word. He despised opinion, and hence was careless to observe +whether or no this revelation of human nakedness was likely to add to +the popular respect for nature and the natural man. After all, +considering that literature is for the most part a hollow and +pretentious phantasmagoria of mimic figures posing in breeches and +peruke, we may try to forgive certain cruel blows to the dignified +assumptions, solemn words, and high heels of convention, in one who +would not lie, nor dissemble kinship with the four-footed. Intense +subjective preoccupations in markedly emotional natures all tend to +come to the same end. The distance from Rousseau's odious erotics to +the glorified ecstasies of many a poor female saint is not far. In any +case, let us know the facts about human nature, and the pathological +facts no less than the others. These are the first thing, and the +second, and the third also. + +The exaltation of the opening page of the Confessions is shocking. No +monk nor saint ever wrote anything more revolting in its blasphemous +self-feeling. But the exaltation almost instantly became calm, when +the course of the story necessarily drew the writer into dealings with +objective facts, even muffled as they were by memory and imagination. +The broodings over old reminiscence soothed him, the labour of +composition occupied him, and he forgot, as the modern reader would +never know from internal evidence, that he was preparing a vindication +of his life and character against the infamies with which Hume and +others were supposed to be industriously blackening them. While he was +writing this famous composition, severed by so vast a gulf from the +modes of English provincial life, he was on good terms with one or two +of the great people in his neighbourhood, and kept up a gracious and +social correspondence with them. He was greatly pleased by a +compliment that was paid to him by the government, apparently through +the interest of General Conway. The duty that had been paid upon +certain boxes forwarded to Rousseau from Switzerland was recouped by +the treasury,[376] and the arrangements for the annual pension of one +hundred pounds were concluded and accepted by him, after he had duly +satisfied himself that Hume was not the indirect author of the +benefaction.[377] The weather was the worst possible, but whenever it +allowed him to go out of doors, he found delight in climbing the +heights around him in search of curious mosses; for he had now come to +think the discovery of a single new plant a hundred times more useful +than to have the whole human race listening to your sermons for half a +century.[378] "This indolent and contemplative life that you do not +approve," he wrote to the elder Mirabeau, "and for which I pretend to +make no excuses, becomes every day more delicious to me: to wander +alone among the trees and rocks that surround my dwelling; to muse or +rather to extravagate at my ease, and as you say to stand gaping in +the air; when my brain gets too hot, to calm it by dissecting some +moss or fern; in short, to surrender myself without restraint to my +phantasies, which, heaven be thanked, are all under my own +control,--all that is for me the height of enjoyment, to which I can +imagine nothing superior in this world for a man of my age and in my +condition."[379] + +This contentment did not last long. The snow kept him indoors. The +excitement of composition abated. Theresa harassed him by ignoble +quarrels with the women in the kitchen. His delusions returned with +greater force than before. He believed that the whole English nation +was in a plot against him, that all his letters were opened before +reaching London and before leaving it, that all his movements were +closely watched, and that he was surrounded by unseen guards to +prevent any attempt at escape.[380] At length these delusions got such +complete mastery over him, that in a paroxysm of terror he fled away +from Wootton, leaving money, papers, and all else behind him. Nothing +was heard of him for a fortnight, when Mr. Davenport received a letter +from him dated at Spalding in Lincolnshire. Mr. Davenport's conduct +throughout was marked by a humanity and patience that do him the +highest honour. He confesses himself "quite moved to read poor +Rousseau's mournful epistle." "You shall see his letter," he writes to +Hume, "the first opportunity; but God help him, I can't for pity give +a copy; and 'tis so much mixed with his own poor little private +concerns, that it would not be right in me to do it."[381] This is +the generosity which makes Hume's impatience and that of his +mischievous advisers in Paris appear petty. Rousseau had behaved quite +as ill to Mr. Davenport as he had done to Hume, and had received at +least equal services from him.[382] The good man at once sent a +servant to Spalding in search of his unhappy guest, but Rousseau had +again disappeared. The parson of the parish had passed several hours +of each day in his company, and had found him cheerful and +good-humoured. He had had a blue coat made for himself, and had +written a long letter to the lord chancellor, praying him to appoint a +guard, at Rousseau's own expense, to escort him in safety out of the +kingdom where enemies were plotting against his life.[383] He was next +heard of at Dover (May 18), whence he wrote a letter to General +Conway, setting forth his delusion in full form.[384] He is the victim +of a plot; the conspirators will not allow him to leave the island, +lest he should divulge in other countries the outrages to which he has +been subjected here; he perceives the sinister manoeuvres that will +arrest him if he attempts to put his foot on board ship. But he warns +them that his tragical disappearance cannot take place without +creating inquiry. Still if General Conway will only let him go, he +gives his word of honour that he will not publish a line of the +memoirs he has written, nor ever divulge the wrongs which he has +suffered in England. "I see my last hour approaching," he concluded; +"I am determined, if necessary, to advance to meet it, and to perish +or be free; there is no longer any other alternative." On the same +evening on which he wrote this letter (about May 20-22), the forlorn +creature took boat and landed at Calais, where he seems at once to +have recovered his composure and a right mind. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[350] Jan. 1766--May 1767. + +[351] Streckeisen, ii. 275, etc. _Corr._, iii. + +[352] Burton, ii. 299. + +[353] The materials for this chapter are taken from Rousseau's +_Correspondence_ (vols. iv. and v.), and from Hume's letters to +various persons, given in the second volume of Mr. Burton's _Life of +Hume_. Everybody who takes an interest in Rousseau is indebted to Mr. +Burton for the ample documents which he has provided. Yet one cannot +but regret the satire on Rousseau with which he intersperses them, and +which is not always felicitous. For one instance, he implies (p. 295) +that Rousseau invented the story given in the Confessions, of Hume's +correcting the proofs of Wallace's book against himself. The story may +be true or not, but at any rate Rousseau had it very circumstantially +from Lord Marischal; see letter from Lord M. to J.J.R., in +Streckeisen, ii. 67. Again, such an expression as Rousseau's +"_occasional_ attention to small matters" (p. 321) only shows that the +writer has not read Rousseau's letters, which are indeed not worth +reading, except by those who wish to have a right to speak about +Rousseau's character. The numerous pamphlets on the quarrel between +Hume and Rousseau, if I may judge from those of them which I have +turned over, really shed no light on the matter, though they added +much heat. For the journey, see _Corr._, iv. 307; Burton, ii. 304. + +[354] _Letter to a Member of the National Assembly._ The same passage +contains some strong criticism on Rousseau's style. + +[355] Burton, 304, 309, 310. + +[356] _Ib._ ii. 309, _n._ + +[357] Mr. Howitt has given an account of Rousseau's quarters at +Wootton, in his _Visits to Remarkable Places_. One or two aged +peasants had some confused memory of "old Ross-hall." For Rousseau's +own description, see his letters to Mdme. de Luze, May 10, 1766. +_Corr._, iv. 326. + +[358] Burton, 313. It has been stated that Rousseau never paid this; +at any rate when he fled, he left between thirty and forty pounds in +Mr. Davenport's hands. See Davenport to Hume; Burton, 367. Rousseau's +accurate probity in affairs of money is absolutely unimpeachable. + +[359] _Corr._ iv. 312. April 9, 1766. + +[360] Here is a translation of this rather poor piece of sarcasm:--"My +dear Jean Jacques--You have renounced Geneva, your native place. You +have caused your expulsion from Switzerland, a country so extolled in +your writings; France has issued a warrant against you; so do you come +to me. I admire your talents; I am amused by your dreamings, though +let me tell you they absorb you too much and for too long. You must at +length be sober and happy; you have caused enough talk about yourself +by oddities which in truth are hardly becoming a really great man. +Prove to your enemies that you can now and then have common sense. +That will annoy them and do you no harm. My states offer you a +peaceful retreat. I wish you well, and will treat you well, if you +will let me. But if you persist in refusing my help, do not reckon +upon my telling any one that you did so. If you are bent on tormenting +your spirit to find new misfortunes, choose whatever you like best. I +am a king, and can procure them for you at your pleasure; and what +will certainly never happen to you in respect of your enemies, I will +cease to persecute you as soon as you cease to take a pride in being +persecuted. Your good friend, FREDERICK." + +[361] _Corr._, iv. 313, 343, 388, 398. + +[362] _Ib._ 395. + +[363] _Ib._ 389, etc. + +[364] _Ib._ 384. + +[365] _Ib._ 343, 344, 387, etc. + +[366] _Corr._, iv. 346. + +[367] _Ib._ 390. A letter from Hume to Blair, long before the rupture +overt, shows the former to have been by no means so phlegmatic on this +occasion as he may have seemed. "I hope," he writes, "you have not so +bad an opinion of me as to think I was not melted on this occasion; I +assure you I kissed him and embraced him twenty times, with a +plentiful effusion of tears. I think no scene of my life was ever more +affecting." Burton, ii. 315. The great doubters of the eighteenth +century could without fear have accepted the test of the ancient +saying, that men without tears are worth little. + +[368] Bernardin de St. Pierre, _Oeuv._, xii. 79. + +[369] Walpole's _Letters_, v. 7 (Cunningham's edition). For other +letters from the shrewd coxcomb on the same matter, see pp. 23-28. A +corroboration of the statement that Hume knew nothing of the letter +until he was in England, may be inferred from what he wrote to Madame +de Boufflers; Burton, ii. 306, and _n._ 2. + +[370] Bernardin de St. Pierre, _Oeuv._, xii. 79. + +[371] To Adam Smith. Burton, 380. + +[372] Burton, 381. + +[373] A very common but random opinion traces Rousseau's insanity to +certain disagreeable habits avowed in the Confessions. They may have +contributed in some small degree to depression of vital energies, +though for that matter Rousseau's strength and power of endurance were +remarkable to the end. But they certainly did not produce a mental +state in the least corresponding to that particular variety of +insanity, which possesses definitely marked features. + +[374] Burton, ii. 314. + +[375] For an instructive and, as it appears to me, a thoroughly +trustworthy account of the temper in which the Confessions were +written, see the 4th of the _Reveries_. + +[376] Letter to the Duke of Grafton, Feb. 27, 1767. _Corr._, v. 98: +also 118. + +[377] _Ib._ v. 133; also to General Conway (March 26), p. 137, etc. + +[378] _Corr._, v. 37. + +[379] _Corr._, v. 88. + +[380] See the letters to Du Peyrou, of the 2d and 4th of April 1767. +_Corr._, v. 140-147. + +[381] Davenport to Hume; Burton, 367-371. + +[382] J.J.R. to Davenport, Dec. 22, 1766, and April 30, 1767. _Corr._, +v. 66, 152. + +[383] Burton, 369, 375. + +[384] _Corr._, v. 153. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +THE END. + + +Before leaving England, Rousseau had received more than one +long and rambling letter from a man who was as unlike the rest of +mankind as he was unlike them himself. This was the Marquis of +Mirabeau (1715-89), the violent, tyrannical, pedantic, humoristic sire +of a more famous son. Perhaps we might say that Mirabeau and Rousseau +were the two most singular originals then known to men, and Mirabeau's +originality was in some respects the more salient of the two. There is +less of the conventional tone of the eighteenth century Frenchman in +him than in any other conspicuous man of the time, though like many +other headstrong and despotic souls he picked up the current notions +of philanthropy and human brotherhood. He really was by very force of +temperament that rebel against the narrowness, trimness, and moral +formalism of the time which Rousseau only claimed and attempted to be, +with the secondary degree of success that follows vehemence without +native strength. Mirabeau was a sort of Swift, who had strangely taken +up the trade of friendship for man and adopted the phrases of +perfectibility; while Rousseau on the other hand was meant for a +Fenelon, save that he became possessed of unclean devils. + +Mirabeau, like Jean Jacques himself, was so impressed by the marked +tenor of contemporary feeling, its prudential didactics, its +formulistic sociality, that his native insurgency only found vent in +private life, while in public he played pedagogue to the human race. +Friend of Quesnai and orthodox economist as he was, he delighted in +Rousseau's books: "I know no morality that goes deeper than yours; it +strikes like a thunderbolt, and advances with the steady assurance of +truth, for you are always true, according to your notions for the +moment." He wrote to tell him so, but he told him at the same time at +great length, and with a caustic humour and incoherency less academic +than Rabelaisian, that he had behaved absurdly in his quarrel with +Hume. There is nothing more quaint than the appearance of a few of the +sacramental phrases of the sect of the economists, floating in the +midst of a copious stream of egoistic whimsicalities. He concludes +with a diverting enumeration of all his country seats and demesnes, +with their respective advantages and disadvantages, and prays Rousseau +to take up his residence in whichever of them may please him +best.[385] + +Immediately on landing at Calais Rousseau informed Mirabeau, and +Mirabeau lost no time in conveying him stealthily, for the warrant of +the parliament of Paris was still in force, to a house at Fleury. But +the Friend of Men, to use his own account of himself, "bore letters as +a plum-tree bears plums," and wrote to his guest with strange +humoristic volubility and droll imperturbable temper, as one who knew +his Jean Jacques. He exhorts him in many sheets to harden himself +against excessive sensibility, to be less pusillanimous, to take +society more lightly, as his own light estimate of its worth should +lead him to do. "No doubt its outside is a shifting surface-picture, +nay even ridiculous, if you will; but if the irregular and ceaseless +flight of butterflies wearies you in your walk, it is your own fault +for looking continuously at what was only made to adorn and vary the +scene. But how many social virtues, how much gentleness and +considerateness, how many benevolent actions, remain at the bottom of +it all."[386] Enormous manifestoes of the doctrine of perfectibility +were not in the least degree either soothing or interesting to +Rousseau, and the thrusts of shrewd candour at his expense might touch +his fancy on a single occasion, but not oftener. Two humorists are +seldom successful in amusing one another. Besides, Mirabeau insisted +that Jean Jacques should read this or that of his books. Rousseau +answered that he would try, but warned him of the folly of it. "I do +not engage always to follow what you say, because it has always been +painful to me to think, and fatiguing to follow the thoughts of other +people, and at present I cannot do so at all."[387] Though they +continued to be good friends, Rousseau only remained three or four +weeks at Fleury. His old acquaintance at Montmorency, the Prince of +Conti, partly perhaps from contrition at the rather unchivalrous +fashion in which his great friends had hustled the philosopher away at +the time of the decree of the parliament of Paris, offered him refuge +at one of his country seats at Trye near Gisors. Here he installed +Rousseau under the name of Renou, either to silence the indiscreet +curiosity of neighbours, or to gratify a whim of Rousseau himself. + +Rousseau remained for a year (June 1767-June 1768), composing the +second part of the Confessions, in a condition of extreme mental +confusion. Dusky phantoms walked with him once more. He knew the +gardener, the servants, the neighbours, all to be in the pay of Hume, +and that he was watched day and night with a view to his +destruction.[388] He entirely gave up either reading or writing, save +a very small number of letters, and he declared that to take up the +pen even for these was like lifting a load of iron. The only interest +he had was botany, and for this his passion became daily more intense. +He appears to have been as contented as a child, so long as he could +employ himself in long expeditions in search of new plants, in +arranging a herbarium, in watching the growth of the germ of some rare +seed which needed careful tending. But the story had once more the +same conclusion. He fled from Trye, as he had fled from Wootton. He +meant apparently to go to Chamberi, drawn by the deep magnetic force +of old memories that seemed long extinct. But at Grenoble on his way +thither he encountered a substantial grievance. A man alleged that he +had lent Rousseau a few francs seven years previously. He was +undoubtedly mistaken, and was fully convicted of his mistake by proper +authorities, but Rousseau's correspondents suffered none the less for +that. We all know when monomania seizes a man, how adroitly and how +eagerly it colours every incident. The mistaken claim was proof +demonstrative of that frightful and tenebrous conspiracy, which they +might have thought a delusion hitherto, but which, alas, this showed +to be only too tragically real; and so on, through many pages of +droning wretchedness.[389] Then we find him at Bourgoin, where he +spent some months in shabby taverns, and then many months more at +Monquin on adjoining uplands.[390] The estrangement from Theresa, of +which enough has been said already,[391] was added to his other +torments. He resolved, as so many of the self-tortured have done +since, to go in search of happiness to the western lands beyond the +Atlantic, where the elixir of bliss is thought by the wearied among us +to be inexhaustible and assured. Almost in the same page he turns his +face eastwards, and dreams of ending his days peacefully among the +islands of the Grecian archipelago. Next he gravely, not only +designed, but actually took measures, to return to Wootton. All was no +more than the momentary incoherent purpose of a sick man's dream, the +weary distraction of one who had deliberately devoted himself to +isolation from his fellows, without first sitting down carefully to +count the cost, or to measure the inner resources which he possessed +to meet the deadly strain that isolation puts on every one of a man's +mental fibres. Geographical loneliness is to some a condition of their +fullest strength, but most of the few who dare to make a moral +solitude for themselves, find that they have assuredly not made peace. +Such solitude, as South said of the study of the Apocalypse, either +finds a man mad, or leaves him so. Not all can play the stoic who +will, and it is still more certain that one who like Rousseau has lain +down with the doctrine that in all things imaginable it is impossible +for him to do at all what he cannot do with pleasure, will end in a +condition of profound and hopeless impotence in respect to pleasure +itself. + +In July 1770, he made his way to Paris, and here he remained eight +years longer, not without the introduction of a certain degree of +order into his outer life, though the clouds of vague suspicion and +distrust, half bitter, half mournful, hung heavily as ever upon his +mind. The Dialogues, which he wrote at this period (1775-76) to +vindicate his memory from the defamation that was to be launched in a +dark torrent upon the world at the moment of his death, could not +possibly have been written by a man in his right mind. Yet the best of +the Musings, which were written still nearer the end, are masterpieces +in the style of contemplative prose. The third, the fifth, the +seventh, especially abound in that even, full, mellow gravity of tone +which is so rare in literature, because the deep absorption of spirit +which is its source is so rare in life. They reveal Rousseau to us +with a truth beyond that attained in any of his other pieces--a +mournful sombre figure, looming shadowily in the dark glow of sundown +among sad and desolate places. There is nothing like them in the +French tongue, which is the speech of the clear, the cheerful, or the +august among men; nothing like this sonorous plainsong, the strangely +melodious expression in the music of prose of a darkened spirit which +yet had imaginative visions of beatitude. + + * * * * * + +It is interesting to look on one or two pictures of the last waste and +obscure years of the man, whose words were at this time silently +fermenting for good and for evil in many spirits--a Schiller, a +Herder, a Jeanne Phlipon, a Robespierre, a Gabriel Mirabeau, and many +hundreds of those whose destiny was not to lead, but ingenuously to +follow. Rousseau seems to have repulsed nearly all his ancient +friends, and to have settled down with dogged resolve to his old trade +of copying music. In summer he rose at five, copied music until +half-past seven; munched his breakfast, arranging on paper during the +process such plants as he had gathered the previous afternoon; then he +returned to his work, dined at half-past twelve, and went forth to +take coffee at some public place. He would not return from his walk +until nightfall, and he retired at half-past ten. The pavements of +Paris were hateful to him because they tore his feet, and, said he, +with deeply significant antithesis, "I am not afraid of death, but I +dread pain." He always found his way as fast as possible to one of the +suburbs, and one of his greatest delights was to watch Mont Valerien +in the sunset. "Atheists," he said calumniously, "do not love the +country; they like the environs of Paris, where you have all the +pleasures of the city, good cheer, books, pretty women; but if you +take these things away, then they die of weariness." The note of every +bird held him attentive, and filled his mind with delicious images. A +graceful story is told of two swallows who made a nest in Rousseau's +sleeping-room, and hatched the eggs there. "I was no more than a +doorkeeper for them," he said, "for I kept opening the window for them +every moment. They used to fly with a great stir round my head, until +I had fulfilled the duties of the tacit convention between these +swallows and me." + +In January 1771, Bernardin de St. Pierre, author of the immortal _Paul +and Virginia_ (1788), finding himself at the Cape of Good Hope, wrote +to a friend in France just previously to his return to Europe, +counting among other delights that of seeing two summers in one +year.[392] Rousseau happened to see the letter, and expressed a desire +to make the acquaintance of a man who in returning home should think +of that as one of his chief pleasures. To this we owe the following +pictures of an interior from St. Pierre's hand:-- + + In the month of June in 1772, a friend having offered to + take me to see Jean Jacques Rousseau, he brought me to a + house in the Rue Platriere, nearly opposite to the Hotel de + la Poste. We mounted to the fourth story. We knocked, and + Madame Rousseau opened the door. "Come in, gentlemen," she + said, "you will find my husband." We passed through a very + small antechamber, where the household utensils were neatly + arranged, and from that into a room where Jean Jacques was + seated in an overcoat and a white cap, busy copying music. + He rose with a smiling face, offered us chairs, and resumed + his work, at the same time taking a part in conversation. He + was thin and of middle height. One shoulder struck me as + rather higher than the other ... otherwise he was very well + proportioned. He had a brown complexion, some colour on his + cheek-bones, a good mouth, a well-made nose, a rounded and + lofty brow, and eyes full of fire. The oblique lines falling + from the nostrils to the extremity of the lips, and marking + a physiognomy, in his case expressed great sensibility and + something even painful. One observed in his face three or + four of the characteristics of melancholy--the deep receding + eyes and the elevation of the eyebrows; you saw profound + sadness in the wrinkles of the brow; a keen and even caustic + gaiety in a thousand little creases at the corners of the + eyes, of which the orbits entirely disappeared when he + laughed.... Near him was a spinette on which from time to + time he tried an air. Two little beds of blue and white + striped calico, a table, and a few chairs, made the stock of + his furniture. On the walls hung a plan of the forest and + park of Montmorency, where he had once lived, and an + engraving of the King of England, his old benefactor. His + wife was sitting mending linen; a canary sang in a cage hung + from the ceiling; sparrows came for crumbs on to the sills + of the windows, which on the side of the street were open; + while in the window of the antechamber we noticed boxes and + pots filled with such plants as it pleases nature to sow. + There was in the whole effect of his little establishment an + air of cleanness, peace, and simplicity, which was + delightful. + +A few days after, Rousseau returned the visit. "He wore a round wig, +well powdered and curled, carrying a hat under his arm, and in a full +suit of nankeen. His whole exterior was modest, but extremely neat." +He expressed his passion for good coffee, saying that this and ice +were the only two luxuries for which he cared. St. Pierre happened to +have brought some from the Isle of Bourbon, so on the following day he +rashly sent Rousseau a small packet, which at first produced a polite +letter of thanks; but the day after the letter of thanks came one of +harsh protest against the ignominy of receiving presents which could +not be returned, and bidding the unfortunate donor to choose between +taking his coffee back or never seeing his new friend again. A fair +bargain was ultimately arranged, St. Pierre receiving in exchange for +his coffee some curious root or other, and a book on ichthyology. +Immediately afterwards he went to dine with his sage. He arrived at +eleven in the forenoon, and they conversed until half-past twelve. + + Then his wife laid the cloth. He took a bottle of wine, and + as he put it on the table, asked whether we should have + enough, or if I was fond of drinking. "How many are there of + us," said I. "Three," he said; "you, my wife, and myself." + "Well," I went on, "when I drink wine and am alone, I drink + a good half-bottle, and I drink a trifle more when I am with + friends." "In that case," he answered, "we shall not have + enough; I must go down into the cellar." He brought up a + second bottle. His wife served two dishes, one of small + tarts, and another which was covered. He said, showing me + the first, "That is your dish and the other is mine." "I + don't eat much pastry," I said, "but I hope to be allowed to + taste what you have got." "Oh, they are both common," he + replied; "but most people don't care for this. 'Tis a Swiss + dish; a compound of lard, mutton, vegetables, and + chestnuts." It was excellent. After these two dishes, we had + slices of beef in salad; then biscuits and cheese; after + which his wife served the coffee. + + * * * * * + + One morning when I was at his house, I saw various domestics + either coming for rolls of music, or bringing them to him to + copy. He received them standing and uncovered. He said to + some, "The price is so much," and received the money; to + others, "How soon must I return my copy?" "My mistress would + like to have it back in a fortnight." "Oh, that's out of the + question: I have work, I can't do it in less than three + weeks." I inquired why he did not take his talents to better + market. "Ah," he answered, "there are two Rousseaus in the + world; one rich, or who might have been if he had chosen; a + man capricious, singular, fantastic; this is the Rousseau of + the public; the other is obliged to work for his living, the + Rousseau whom you see."[393] + +They often took long rambles together, and all proceeded most +harmoniously, unless St. Pierre offered to pay for such refreshment as +they might take, when a furious explosion was sure to follow. Here is +one more picture, without explosion. + + _An Easter Monday Excursion to Mont Valerien._ + + We made an appointment at a cafe in the Champs Elysees. In + the morning we took some chocolate. The wind was westerly, + and the air fresh. The sun was surrounded by white clouds, + spread in masses over an azure sky. Reaching the Bois de + Boulogne by eight o'clock, Jean Jacques set to work + botanising. As he collected his little harvest, we kept + walking along. We had gone through part of the wood, when in + the midst of the solitude we perceived two young girls, one + of whom was arranging the other's hair.--[Reminded them of + some verses of Virgil.].... + + Arrived on the edge of the river, we crossed the ferry with + a number of people whom devotion was taking to Mont + Valerien. We climbed an extremely stiff slope, and were + hardly on the top before hunger overtook us and we began to + think of dining. Rousseau then led the way towards a + hermitage, where he knew we could make sure of hospitality. + The brother who opened to us, conducted us to the chapel, + where they were reciting the litanies of providence, which + are extremely beautiful.... When we had prayed, Jean Jacques + said to me with genuine feeling: "Now I feel what is said in + the gospel, 'Where several of you are gathered together in + my name, there will I be in the midst of them.' There is a + sentiment of peace and comfort here that penetrates the + soul." I replied, "If Fenelon were alive, you would be a + Catholic." "Ah," said he, the tears in his eyes, "if Fenelon + were alive, I would seek to be his lackey." + + Presently we were introduced into the refectory; we seated + ourselves during the reading. The subject was the injustice + of the complainings of man: God has brought him from + nothing, he oweth him nothing. After the reading, Rousseau + said to me in a voice of deep emotion: "Ah, how happy is the + man who can believe...." We walked about for some time in + the cloister and the gardens. They command an immense + prospect. Paris in the distance reared her towers all + covered with light, and made a crown to the far-spreading + landscape. The brightness of the view contrasted with the + great leaden clouds that rolled after one another from the + west, and seemed to fill the valley.... In the afternoon + rain came on, as we approached the Porte Maillot. We took + shelter along with a crowd of other holiday folk under some + chestnut-trees whose leaves were coming out. One of the + waiters of a tavern perceiving Jean Jacques, rushed to him + full of joy, exclaiming, "What, is it you, _mon bonhomme_? + Why, it is a whole age since we have seen you." Rousseau + replied cheerfully, "'Tis because my wife has been ill, and + I myself have been out of sorts." "_Mon pauvre bonhomme_," + replied the lad, "you must not stop here; come in, come in, + and I will find room for you." He hurried us along to a room + upstairs, where in spite of the crowd he procured for us + chairs and a table, and bread and wine. I said to Jean + Jacques, "He seems very familiar with you." He answered, + "Yes, we have known one another some years. We used to come + here in fine weather, my wife and I, to eat a cutlet of an + evening."[394] + +Things did not continue to go thus smoothly. One day St. Pierre went +to see him, and was received without a word, and with stiff and gloomy +mien. He tried to talk, but only got monosyllables; he took up a book, +and this drew a sarcasm which sent him forth from the room. For more +than two months they did not meet. At length they had an accidental +encounter at a street corner. Rousseau accosted St. Pierre, and with a +gradually warming sensibility proceeded thus: "There are days when I +want to be alone and crave privacy. I come back from my solitary +expeditions so calm and contented. There I have not been wanting to +anybody, nor has anybody been wanting to me," and so on.[395] He +expressed this humour more pointedly on some other occasion, when he +said that there were times in which he fled from the eyes of men as +from Parthian arrows. As one said who knew from experience, the fate +of his most intimate friend depended on a word or a gesture.[396] +Another of them declared that he knew Rousseau's style of discarding a +friend by letter so thoroughly, that he felt confident he could supply +Rousseau's place in case of illness or absence.[397] In much of this +we suspect that the quarrel was perfectly justified. Sociality meant a +futile display before unworthy and condescending curiosity. "It is not +I whom they care for," he very truly said, "but public opinion and +talk about me, without a thought of what real worth I may have." Hence +his steadfast refusal to go out to dine or sup. The mere impertinence +of the desire to see him was illustrated by some coxcombs who insisted +with a famous actress of his acquaintance, that she should invite the +strange philosopher to meet them. She was aware that no known force +would persuade Rousseau to come, so she dressed up her tailor as +philosopher, bade him keep a silent tongue, and vanish suddenly +without a word of farewell. The tailor was long philosophically +silent, and by the time that wine had loosened his tongue, the rest of +the company were too far gone to perceive that the supposed Rousseau +was chattering vulgar nonsense.[398] We can believe that with admirers +of this stamp Rousseau was well pleased to let tailors or others stand +in his place. There were some, however, of a different sort, who +flitted across his sight and then either vanished of their own accord, +or were silently dismissed, from Madame de Genlis up to Gretry and +Gluck. With Gluck he seems to have quarrelled for setting his music to +French words, when he must have known that Italian was the only tongue +fit for music.[399] Yet it was remarked that no one ever heard him +speak ill of others. His enemies, the figures of his delusion, were +vaguely denounced in many dronings, but they remained in dark shadow +and were unnamed. When Voltaire paid his famous last visit to the +capital (1778), some one thought of paying court to Rousseau by making +a mock of the triumphal reception of the old warrior, but Rousseau +harshly checked the detractor. It is true that in 1770-71 he gave to +some few of his acquaintances one or more readings of the Confessions, +although they contained much painful matter for many people still +living, among the rest for Madame d'Epinay. She wrote justifiably +enough to the lieutenant of police, praying that all such readings +might be prohibited, and it is believed that they were so +prohibited.[400] + +In 1769, when Polish anarchy was at its height, as if to show at once +how profound the anarchy was, and how profound the faith among many +minds in the power of the new French theories, an application was made +to Mably to draw up a scheme for the renovation of distracted Poland. +Mably's notions won little esteem from the persons who had sought for +them, and in 1771 a similar application was made to Rousseau in his +Parisian garret. He replied in the Considerations on the Government of +Poland, which are written with a good deal of vigour of expression, +but contain nothing that needs further discussion. He hinted to the +Poles with some shrewdness that a curtailment of their territory by +their neighbours was not far off,[401] and the prediction was rapidly +fulfilled by the first partition of Poland in the following year. + +He was asked one day of what nation he had the highest opinion. He +answered, the Spanish. The Spanish nation, he said, has a character; +if it is not rich, it still preserves all its pride and self-respect +in the midst of its poverty; and it is animated by a single spirit, +for it has not been scourged by the conflicting opinions of +philosophy.[402] + +He was extremely poor for these last eight years of his life. He seems +to have drawn the pension which George III. had settled on him, for +not more than one year. We do not know why he refused to receive it +afterwards. A well-meaning friend, when the arrears amounted to +between six and seven thousand francs, applied for it on his behalf, +and a draft for the money was sent. Rousseau gave the offender a +vigorous rebuke for meddling in affairs that did not concern him, and +the draft was destroyed. Other attempts to induce him to draw this +money failed equally.[403] Yet he had only about fifty pounds a year +to live on, together with the modest amount which he earned by copying +music.[404] + +The sting of indigence began to make itself felt towards 1777. His +health became worse and he could not work. Theresa was waxing old, and +could no longer attend to the small cares of the household. More than +one person offered them shelter and provision, and the old +distractions as to a home in which to end his days began once again. +At length M. Girardin prevailed upon him to come and live at +Ermenonville, one of his estates some twenty miles from Paris. A dense +cloud of obscure misery hangs over the last months of this forlorn +existence.[405] No tragedy had ever a fifth act so squalid. Theresa's +character seems to have developed into something truly bestial. +Rousseau's terrors of the designs of his enemies returned with great +violence. He thought he was imprisoned, and he knew that he had no +means of escape. One day (July 2, 1778), suddenly and without a single +warning symptom, all drew to an end; the sensations which had been the +ruling part of his life were affected by pleasure and pain no more, +the dusky phantoms all vanished into space. The surgeons reported that +the cause of his death was apoplexy, but a suspicion has haunted the +world ever since, that he destroyed himself by a pistol-shot. We +cannot tell. There is no inherent improbability in the fact of his +having committed suicide. In the New Heloisa he had thrown the +conditions which justified self-destruction into a distinct formula. +Fifteen years before, he declared that his own case fell within the +conditions which he had prescribed, and that he was meditating +action.[406] Only seven years before, he had implied that a man had +the right to deliver himself of the burden of his own life, if its +miseries were intolerable and irremediable.[407] This, however, counts +for nothing in the absence of some kind of positive evidence, and of +that there is just enough to leave the manner of his end a little +doubtful.[408] Once more, we cannot tell. + +By the serene moonrise of a summer night, his body was put under the +ground on an island in the midst of a small lake, where poplars throw +shadows over the still water, silently figuring the destiny of +mortals. Here it remained for sixteen years. Then amid the roar of +cannon, the crash of trumpet and drum, and the wild acclamations of a +populace gone mad in exultation, terror, fury, it was ordered that the +poor dust should be transported to the national temple of great men. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[385] Streckeisen, ii. 315-328. + +[386] Streckeisen, ii. 337. + +[387] June 19, 1767. _Corr._, v. 172. + +[388] _Corr._, v. 267, 375. + +[389] _Corr._, v. 330-381, 408, etc. + +[390] Bourgoin, Aug. 1768, to March, 1769. Monquin, to July 1770. + +[391] See above, vol. i. chap. iv. + +[392] The life of Bernardin de St. Pierre (1737-1814) was nearly as +irregular as that of his friend and master. But his character was +essentially crafty and selfish, like that of many other +sentimentalists of the first order. + +[393] _Oeuv._, xii. 69, 73. + +[394] _Oeuv._, xii. 104, etc.; and also the _Preambule de l'Arcadie_, +_Oeuv._, vii. 64, 65. + +[395] St. Pierre, xii. 81-83. + +[396] Dusaulx, p. 81. For his quarrel with Rousseau, see pp. 130, etc. + +[397] Rulhieres in Dusaulx, p. 179. For a strange interview between +Rulhieres and Rousseau, see pp. 185-186. + +[398] Musset-Pathay, i. 181. + +[399] _Ib._ + +[400] Musset-Pathay, i. 209. Rousseau gave a copy of the Confessions +to Moultou, but forbade the publication before the year 1800. +Notwithstanding this, printers procured copies surreptitiously, +perhaps through Theresa, ever in need of money; the first part was +published four years, and the second part with many suppressions +eleven years, after his death, in 1782 and 1789 respectively. See +Musset-Pathay, ii. 464. + +[401] Ch. v. Such a curtailment, he says, "would no doubt be a great +evil for the parts dismembered, but it would be a great advantage for +the body of the nation." He urged federation as the condition of any +solid improvement in their affairs. + +[402] Bernardin de St. Pierre, xii. 37. Comte had a similar admiration +for Spain and for the same reason. + +[403] Corancez, quoted in Musset-Pathay, i. 239. Also _Corr._, vi. +295. + +[404] _Corr._, vi. 303. + +[405] Robespierre, then a youth, is said to have invited him here. See +Hamel's _Robespierre_, i. 22. + +[406] See above, vol. i. pp. 16, 17. + +[407] _Corr._, vi. 264. + +[408] The case stands thus:--(1) There was the certificate of five +doctors, attesting that Rousseau had died of apoplexy. (2) The +assertion of M. Girardin, in whose house he died, that there was no +hole in his head, nor poison in the stomach or viscera, nor other sign +of self-destruction. (3) The assertion of Theresa to the same effect. +On the other hand, we have the assertion of Corancez, that on his +journey to Ermenonville on the day of Rousseau's burial a horse-master +on the road had said, "Who would have supposed that M. Rousseau would +have destroyed himself!"--and a variety of inferences from the wording +of the certificate, and of Theresa's letter. Musset-Pathay believes in +the suicide, and argued very ingeniously against M. Girardin. But his +arguments do not go far beyond verbal ingenuity, showing that suicide +was possible, and was consistent with the language of the documents, +rather than adducing positive testimony. See vol. i. of his _History_, +pp. 268, etc. The controversy was resumed as late as 1861, between the +_Figaro_ and the _Monde Illustre_. See also M. Jal's _Dict. Crit. de +Biog. et d'Hist._, p. 1091. + + + + +INDEX. + + +ACADEMIES (French) local, i. 132. + +Academy, of Dijon, Rousseau writes essays for, i. 133; + French, prize essay against Rousseau's Discourse, i. 150, _n._ + +Actors, how regarded in France in Rousseau's time, i. 322. + +Althusen, teaches doctrine of sovereignty of the people, ii. 147. + +America (U.S.), effects in, of the doctrine of the equality of men, + i. 182. + +American colonists indebted in eighteenth century to Rousseau's + writings, i. 3. + +Anchorite, distinction between the old and the new, i. 234. + +Annecy, i. 34, 50; + Rousseau's room at, i. 54; + Rousseau's teachers at, i. 56; + seminary at, i. 82. + +Aquinas, protest against juristical doctrine of law being the + pleasure of the prince, ii. 144, 145. + +Aristotle on Origin of Society, i. 174. + +Atheism, Rousseau's protest against, i. 208; + St. Lambert on, i. 209, _n._; + Robespierre's protest against, ii. 178; + Chaumette put to death for endeavouring to base the government of + France on, ii. 180. + +Augustine (of Hippo), ii. 272, 303. + +Austin, John, ii. 151, _n._; + on Sovereignty, ii. 162. + +Authors, difficulties of, in France in the eighteenth century, ii. + 55-61. + + +BABOEUF, on the Revolution, ii. 123, _n._ + +Barbier, ii. 26. + +Basedow, his enthusiasm for Rousseau's educational theories, ii. 251. + +Beaumont, De, Archbishop of Paris, mandate against Rousseau issued + by, ii. 83; + argument from, ii. 86. + +Bernard, maiden name of Rousseau's mother, i. 10. + +Bienne, Rousseau driven to take refuge in island in lake of, ii. + 108; + his account of, ii. 109-115. + +Bodin, on Government, ii. 147; + his definition of an aristocratic state, ii. 168, _n._ + +Bonaparte, Napoleon, ii. 102, _n._ + +Bossuet, on Stage Plays, i. 321. + +Boswell, James, ii. 98; + visits Rousseau, ii. 98, also _ib._ _n._; + urged by Rousseau to visit Corsica, ii. 100; + his letter to Rousseau, ii. 101. + +Boufflers, Madame de, ii. 5, _ib._ _n._ + +Bougainville (brother of the navigator), i. 184, _n._ + +Brutus, how Rousseau came to be panegyrist of, i. 187. + +Buffon, ii. 205. + +Burke, ii. 140, 192. + +Burnet, Bishop, on Genevese, i. 225. + +Burton, John Hill, his _Life of Hume_ (on Rousseau), ii. 283, + _n._ + +Byron, Lord, antecedents of highest creative efforts, ii. 1; + effect of nature upon, ii. 40; + difference between and Rousseau, ii. 41. + + +CALAS, i. 312. + +Calvin, i. 4, 189; + Rousseau on, as a legislator, ii. 131; + and Servetus, ii. 180; + mentioned, ii. 181. + +_Candide_, thought by Rousseau to be meant as a reply to him, + i. 319. + +Cardan, ii. 303. + +Cato, how Rousseau came to be his panegyrist, i. 187. + +Chamberi, probable date of Rousseau's return to, i. 62, _n._; + takes up his residence there, i. 69; + effect on his mind of a French column of troops passing through, + i. 72, 73; + his illness at, i. 73, _n._ + +Charmettes, Les, Madame de Warens's residence, i. 73; + present condition of, i. 74, 75, _n._; + time spent there by Rousseau, i. 94. + +Charron, ii. 203. + +Chateaubriand, influenced by Rousseau, i. 3. + +Chatham, Lord, ii. 92. + +Chaumette, ii. 178; + guillotined on charge of endeavouring to establish atheism in + France, ii. 179. + +Chesterfield, Lord, ii. 15. + +Choiseul, ii. 57, 64, 72. + +Citizen, revolutionary use of word, derived from Rousseau, ii. 161. + +Civilisation, variety of the origin and process of, i. 176; + defects of, i. 176; + one of the worst trials of, ii. 102. + +Cobbett, ii. 42. + +Collier, Jeremy, on the English Stage, i. 323. + +Condillac, i. 95. + +Condorcet, i. 89; + on Social Position of Women, i. 335; + human perfectibility, ii. 119; + inspiration of, drawn from the school of Voltaire and Rousseau, + ii. 194; + belief of, in the improvement of humanity, ii. 246; + grievous mistake of, ii. 247. + +Confessions, the, not to be trusted for minute accuracy, i. 86, + _n._; + or for dates, i. 93; + first part written 1766, ii. 301; + their character, ii. 303; + published surreptitiously, ii. 324, _n._; + readings from, prohibited by police, ii. 324. + +Conti, Prince of, ii. 4-7; + receives Rousseau at Trye, ii. 118. + +Contract, Social, i. 136. + +Corsica, struggles for independence of, ii. 99; + Rousseau invited to legislate for, ii. 99-102; + bought by France, ii. 102. + +Cowper, i. 20; + ii. 41; + on Rousseau, ii. 41 _n._; + lines in the Task, ii. 253; + his delusions, ii. 301. + +Cynicism, Rousseau's assumption of, i. 206. + + +D'AIGUILLON, ii. 72. + +D'Alembert, i. 89; + Voltaire's staunchest henchman, i. 321; + his article on Geneva, i. 321; + on Stage Plays, i. 326, _n._; + on Position of Women in Society, i. 335; + on Rousseau's letter on the Theatre, i. 336; + suspected by Rousseau of having written the pretended letter from + Frederick of Prussia, ii. 288; + advises Hume to publish account of Rousseau's quarrel with him, + ii. 294. + +D'Argenson, ii. 180. + +Dates of Rousseau's letters to be relied on, not those of the + Confessions, i. 93. + +Davenport, Mr., provides Rousseau with a home at Wootton, ii. 286; + his kindness to Rousseau, ii. 306. + +Deism, Rousseau's, ii. 260-275; + that of others, ii. 262-265; + shortcomings of Rousseau's, ii. 270. + +Democracy defined, ii. 168; + rejected by Rousseau, as too perfect for men, ii. 171. + +D'Epinay, Madame, i. 194, 195, 205; + gives the Hermitage to Rousseau, i. 229, _n._; + his quarrels with, i. 271; + his relations with, i. 273, 276; + journey to Geneva of, i. 284; + squabbles arising out of, between, and Rousseau, Diderot, and + Grimm, i. 285-290; + mentioned, ii. 7, 26, 197; + wrote on education, ii. 199; + applies to secretary of police to prohibit Rousseau's readings + from his Confessions, ii. 324. + +D'Epinay, Monsieur, i. 254; ii. 26. + +Descartes, i. 87, 225; ii. 267. + +Deux Ponts, Duc de, Rousseau's rude reply to, i. 207. + +D'Holbach, i. 192; + Rousseau's dislike of his materialistic friends, i. 223; + ii. 37, 256. + +D'Houdetot, Madame, i. 255-270; + Madame d'Epinay's jealousy of, i. 278; + mentioned, ii. 7; + offers Rousseau a home in Normandy, ii. 117. + +Diderot, i. 64, 89, 133; + tries to manage Rousseau, i. 213; + his domestic misconduct, i. 215; + leader of the materialistic party, i. 223; + on Solitary Life, i. 232; + his active life, i. 233; + without moral sensitiveness, i. 262; + mentioned, i. 262, 269, 271; + ii. 8; + his relations with Rousseau, i. 271; + accused of pilfering Goldoni's new play, i. 275; + his relations and contentions with Rousseau, i. 275, 276; + lectures Rousseau about Madame d'Epinay, i. 284; + visits Rousseau after his leaving the Hermitage, i. 289; + Rousseau's final breach with, i. 336; + his criticism, and plays, ii. 34; + his defects, ii. 34; + thrown into prison, ii. 57; + his difficulties with the Encyclopaedists, ii. 57; + his papers saved from the police by Malesherbes, ii. 62. + +Dijon, academy of, i. 132. + +Discourses, The, Circumstances of the composition of the first + Discourse, i. 133-136; + summary of it, i. 138-145 + disastrous effect of the progress of sciences and arts, i. + 140, 141; + error more dangerous than truth useful, i. 141; + uselessness of learning and art, i. 141, 142; + terrible disorders caused in Europe by the art of printing, i. + 143; + two kinds of ignorance, i. 144; + the relation of this Discourse to Montaigne, i. 145; + its one-sidedness and hollowness, i. 148; + shown by Voltaire, i. 148; + its positive side, i. 149, 150; + second Discourse, origin of the Inequality of Man, i. 154; + summary of it, i. 159, 170; + state of nature, i. 150, 162; + Hobbes's mistake, i. 161; + what broke up the "state of nature," i. 164; + its preferableness, i. 166, 167; + origin of society and laws, i. 168; + "new state of nature," i. 169; + main position of the Discourse, i. 169; + its utter inclusiveness, i. 170; + criticism on its method, i. 170; + on its matter, i. 172; + wanting in evidence, i. 172; + further objections to it, i. 173; + assumes uniformity of process, i. 176; + its unscientific character, i. 177; + its real importance, i. 178; + its protest against the mockery of civilisation, i. 178; + equality of man, i. 181; + different effects of this doctrine in France and the United States + explained, i. 182, 183; + discovers a reaction against the historical method of Montesquieu, + i. 183, 184; + pecuniary results of, i. 196; + Diderot's praise of first Discourse, i. 200; + Voltaire's acknowledgement of gift of second Discourse, i. 308; + the, an attack on the general ordering of society, ii. 22; + referred to, ii. 41. + +Drama, its proper effect, i. 326; + what would be that of its introduction into Geneva, i. 327; + true answer to Rousseau's contentions, i. 329. + +Dramatic morality, i. 326. + +Drinkers, Rousseau's estimate of, i. 330. + +Drunkenness, how esteemed in Switzerland and Naples, i. 331. + +Duclos, i. 206; + ii. 62. + +Duni, i. 292. + +Dupin, Madame de, Rousseau secretary to, i. 120; + her position in society, i. 195; + Rousseau's country life with, i. 196; + friend of the Abbe de Saint Pierre, i. 244. + + +EDUCATION, interest taken in, in France in Rousseau's time, ii. 193, + 194; + its new direction ii. 195; + Locke, the pioneer of, ii. 202, 203; + Rousseau's special merit in connection with, ii. 203; + his views on (see Emilius, _passim_, as well as for general + consideration of) what it is, ii. 219; + plans of, of Locke and others, designed for the higher class, ii. + 254; + Rousseau's for all, ii. 254. + +_Emile_, i. 136, 196. + +Emilius, character of, ii. 2, 3; + particulars of the publication of, ii. 59, 60; + effect of, on Rousseau's fortunes, ii. 62-64; + ordered to be burnt by public executioner at Paris, ii. 65; + at Geneva, ii. 72; + condemned by the Sorbonne, ii. 82; + supplied (as also did the Social Contract) dialect for the longing + in France and Germany to return to nature, ii. 193; + substance of, furnished by Locke, ii. 202; + examination of, ii. 197-280; + mischief produced by its good advice, ii. 206, 207; + training of young children, ii. 207, 208; + constantly reasoning with them a mistake of Locke's, ii. 209; + Rousseau's central idea, disparagement of the reasoning faculty, + ii. 209, 210; + theories of education, practice better than precept, ii. 211; + the idea of property, the first that Rousseau would have given to + a child, ii. 212; + modes of teaching, ii. 214, 215; + futility of such methods, ii. 215, 216; + where Rousseau is right, and where wrong, ii. 219, 220; + effect of his own want of parental love, ii. 220; + teaches that everybody should learn a trade, ii. 223; + no special foresight, ii. 224, 225; + supremacy of the common people insisted upon, ii. 226, 227; + three dominant states of mind to be established by the instructor, + ii. 229, 230; + Rousseau's incomplete notion of justice, ii. 231; + ideal of Emilius, ii. 232, 233; + forbids early teaching of history, ii. 237, 238; + disparages modern history, ii. 239; + criticism on the old historians, ii. 240; + education of women, ii. 241; + Rousseau's failure here, ii. 242, 243; + inconsistent with himself, ii. 244, 245; + worthlessness of his views, ii. 249; + real merits of the work, ii. 249; + its effect in Germany, ii. 251, 252; + not much effect on education in England, ii. 252; + Emilius the first expression of democratic teaching in education, + ii. 254; + Rousseau's deism, ii. 258, 260, 264-267, 269, 270, 276; + its inadequacy for the wants of men, ii. 267-270; + his position towards Christianity, ii. 270-276; + real satisfaction of the religious emotions, ii. 275-280. + +Encyclopaedia, The, D'Alembert's article on Geneva in, i. 321. + +Encyclopaedists, the society of, confirms Rousseau's religious + faith, i. 221; + referred to, ii. 257. + +Evil, discussions on Rousseau's, Voltaire's, and De Maistre's + teachings concerning, i. 313, _n._, 318; + different effect of existence of, on Rousseau and Voltaire, i. 319. + + +FENELON, ii. 37, 248; + Rousseau's veneration for, ii. 321. + +Ferguson, Adam, ii. 253. + +Filmer contends that a man is not naturally free, ii. 126. + +Foundling Hospital, Rousseau sends his children to the, i. 120. + +France, debt of, to Rousseau, i. 3; + Rousseau the one great religious writer of, in the eighteenth + century, i. 26; + his wanderings in the east of, i. 61; + his fondness for, i. 62-72; + establishment of local academies in, i. 132; + decay in, of Greek literary studies, i. 146; + effects in, of doctrine of equality of man, i. 182; + effects in, of Montesquieu's "Spirit of Laws," i. 183; + amiability of, in the eighteenth century, i. 187; + effect of Rousseau's writings in, i. 187; + collective organisation in, i. 222; + St. Pierre's strictures on government of, i. 244; + Rousseau on government of, i. 246; + effect of Rousseau's spiritual element on, i. 306; + patriotism wanting in, i. 332; + difficulties of authorship in, ii. 55-64; + buys Corsica from the Genoese, ii. 102; + state of, after 1792, apparently favourable to the carrying out of + Rousseau's political views, ii. 131, 132; + in 1793, ii. 135; + haunted by narrow and fervid minds, ii. 142. + +Francueil, Rousseau's patron, i. 99; + grandfather of Madame George Sand, i. 99, _n._; + Rousseau's salary from, i. 120; + country-house of, i. 196. + +Franklin, Benjamin, ii. 42. + +Frederick of Prussia, relations between, and Rousseau, ii. 73-78; + "famous bull" of, ii. 90. + +Freeman on Growth of English Constitution, ii. 164. + +French, principles of, revolution, i. 1, 2, 3; + process and ideas of, i. 4; + Rousseau of old, stock, i. 8; + poetry, Rousseau on, i. 90, _ib. n._; + melody, i. 105; + academy, thesis for prize, i. 150, _n._; + philosophers, i. 202, + music, i. 291; + music, its pretensions demolished by Rousseau, i. 294; + ecclesiastics opposed to the theatre, ii. 322; + stage, Rousseau on, i. 325; + morals, depravity of, ii. 26, 27; + Barbier on, ii. 26; + thought, benefit, or otherwise of revolution on, ii. 54; + history, evil side of, in Rousseau's time, ii. 56; + indebted to Holland for freedom of the press, ii. 59; + catholic and monarchic absolutism sunk deep into the character of + the, ii. 167. + +French Convention, story of member of the, ii. 134, _n._ + + +GALUPPI, effect of his music, i. 105. + +Geneva, i. 8; + characteristics of its people, i. 9; + Rousseau's visit to, i. 93; + influence of, on Rousseau, i. 94; + he revisits it in 1754, i. 186-190, 218; + turns Protestant again there, i. 220; + religious opinion in, i. 223 (also i. 224, _n._); + Rousseau thinks of taking up his abode in, i. 228; + Voltaire at, i. 308; + D'Alembert's article on, in Encyclopaedia, i. 321; + Rousseau's notions of effect of + introducing the drama at, i. 327; + council of, order public burning of Emilius and the Social + Contract, and arrest of the author if he came there, ii. 72; + the only place where the Social Contract was actually burnt, ii. 73, + _n._; + Voltaire suspected to have had a hand in the matter, ii. 81; + council of, divided into two camps by Rousseau's condemnation, in + 1762, ii. 102; + Rousseau renounces his citizenship in, ii. 104; + working of the republic, ii. 104. + +Genevese, Bishop Burnet on, i. 225; + Rousseau's distrust of, i. 228; + his panegyric on, i. 328; + manners of, according to Rousseau, i. 330; + their complaint of it, i. 331. + +Genlis, Madame de, ii. 323. + +Genoa, Rousseau in quarantine at, i. 103; + Corsica sold to France by, ii. 102. + +Germany, sentimental movements in, ii. 33. + +Gibbon, Edward, at Lausanne, ii. 96. + +Girardin, St. Marc, on Rousseau, i. 111, _n._; + on Rousseau's discussions, ii. 11, _n._; + offers Rousseau a home, ii. 326. + +Gluck, i. 291, 296; + Rousseau quarrels with, for setting his music to French words, ii. + 323. + +Goethe, i. 20. + +Goguet on Society, ii. 127, _n._; + on tacit conventions, ii. 148, _n._; + on law, ii. 153, _n._ + +Goldoni, Diderot accused of pilfering his new play, i. 275. + +Gothic architecture denounced by Voltaire and Turgot, i. 294. + +Gouvon, Count, Rousseau servant to, i. 42. + +Government, disquisitions on, ii. 131-206; + remarks on, ii. 131-141; + early democratic ideas of, ii. 144-148; + Hobbes' philosophy of, ii. 151; + Rousseau's science of, ii. 155, 156; + De la Riviere's science of, ii. 156, _n._; + federation recommended by Rousseau to the Poles, ii. 166; + three forms of government defined, ii. 169; + definition inadequate, ii. 169; + Montesquieu's definition, ii. 169; + Rousseau's distinction between _tyrant_ and _despot_, ii. + 169, _n._; + his objection to democracy, ii. 172; + to monarchy, ii. 173; + consideration of aristocracy, ii. 174; + his own scheme, ii. 175; + Hobbes's "Passive Obedience," ii. 181, 182; + social conscience theory, ii. 183-187; + government made impossible by Rousseau's doctrine of social + contract, ii. 188-192; + Burke on expediency in, ii. 192; + what a civilised nation is, ii. 194; + Jefferson on, ii. 227, 228, _n._ + +Governments, earliest, how composed, i. 169. + +Graffigny, Madame de, ii. 199. + +Gratitude, Rousseau on, ii. 14, 15; + explanation of his want of, ii. 70. + +Greece, importance of history of, i. 184, and _ib._ _n._ + +Greek ideas, influence of, in France in the eighteenth century, i. + 146. + +Grenoble, i. 93. + +Gretry, i. 292, 296; ii. 323. + +Grimm, + description of Rousseau by, i. 206; + Rousseau's quarrels with, i. 279; + letter of, about Rousseau and Diderot, i. 275; + relations of, with Rousseau, i. 279; + some account of his life, i. 279; + his conversation with Madame d'Epinay, i. 281; + criticism on Rousseau, i. 281; + natural want of sympathy between the two, i. 282; + Rousseau's quarrel with, i. 285-290; ii. 65, 199. + +Grotius, on Government, ii. 148. + + +HEBERT, ii. 178; + prevents publication of a book in which the author professed his + belief in a god, ii. 179. + +Helmholtz, i. 299. + +Helvetius, i. 191; ii. 65, 199. + +Herder, ii. 251; + Rousseau's influence on, ii. 315. + +Hermitage, the, given to Rousseau by Madame d'Epinay, i. 229 (also + _ib._ _n._); + what his friends thought of it, i. 231; + sale of, after the Revolution, i. 237, _n._; + reasons for Rousseau's leaving, i. 286. + +Hildebrand, i. 4. + +Hobbes, i. 143, 161; + his "Philosophy of Government," ii. 151; + singular influence of, upon Rousseau, ii. 151, 183; + essential difference between his views and those of Rousseau, ii. + 159; + on Sovereignty, ii. 162; + Rousseau's definition of the three forms of government adopted + by, inadequate, ii. 168; + would reduce spiritual and temporal jurisdiction to one political + unity, ii. 183. + +Holbachians, i. 337; ii. 2. + +Hooker, on Civil Government, ii. 148. + +Hotel St. Quentin, Rousseau at, i. 106. + +Hume, David, i. 64, 89; + his deep-set sagacity, i. 156, ii. 6, 75; + suspected of tampering with Boswell's letter, ii. 98, _n._; + on Boswell, ii. 101, _n._; + his eagerness to find Rousseau a refuge in England, ii. 282, 283; + his account of Rousseau, ii. 284; + finds him a home at Wootton, ii. 286; + Rousseau's quarrel with, ii. 286-291 (also ii. 290, _n._); + his innocence of Walpole's letter, ii. 292; + his conduct in the quarrel, ii. 293; + saves Rousseau from arrest of French Government, ii. 295; + on Rousseau's sensitiveness, ii. 299. + + +IMAGINATION, Rousseau's, i. 247. + + +JACOBINS, the, Rousseau's Social Contract, their gospel, ii. 132, + 133; + their mistake, ii. 136; + convenience to them of some of the maxims of the Social Contract, + ii. 142; + Jacobin supremacy and Hobbism, ii. 152; + how they might have saved France, ii. 167. + +Jansen, his propositions, i. 81. + +Jansenists, Rousseau's suspicions of, ii. 63; + mentioned, ii. 89. + +Jean Paul, ii. 216, 252. + +Jefferson, ii. 227, _n._ + +Jesuits, Rousseau's suspicions of the, ii. 64; + the, and parliaments, ii. 65; + movement against, ii. 65; + suppression of the, leads to increased thought about education, + ii. 199. + +Johnson, ii. 15, 98. + + +KAMES, Lord, ii. 253. + + +LAMENNAIS, influenced by Rousseau, ii. 228. + +Language, origin of, i. 161. + +Latour, Madame, ii. 19, _ib. n._ + +Lavater favourable to education on Rousseau's plan, ii. 251 (also + _ib._ _n._) + +Lavoisier, reply to his request for a fortnight's respite, ii. 227, + _n._ + +Law, not a contract, ii. 153. + +Lecouvreur, Adrienne, refused Christian burial on account of her + being an actress, i. 323. + +Leibnitz, i. 87; + his optimism, i. 309; + on the constitution of the universe, i. 312. + +Lessing, on Pope, i. 310, _n._ + +"Letters from the Mountain," ii. 104; + burned, by command, at Paris and the Hague, ii. 105. + +Liberty, English, Rousseau's notion of, ii. 163, _n._ + +Life, Rousseau's condemnation of the contemplative, i. 10; + his idea of household, i. 41; + easier for him to preach than for others to practise, i. 43. + +Lisbon, earthquake of, Voltaire on, i. 310; + Rousseau's letter to Voltaire on, i. 310, 311. + +Locke, his Essay, i. 87; + his notions, i. 87; + his influence upon Rousseau, ii. 121-126; + on Marriage, ii. 126; + on Civil Government, ii. 149, 150, _n._; + indefiniteness of his views, ii. 160; + the pioneer of French thought on education, ii. 202, 203; + Rousseau's indebtedness to, ii. 203; + his mistake in education, ii. 209; + subjects of his theories, ii. 254. + +Lulli (music), i. 291. + +Luther, i. 4. + +Luxembourg, the Duke of, gives Rousseau a home, ii. 2-7, 9. + +Luxembourg, the Marechale de, in vain seeks Rousseau's children, + i. 128; + helps to get Emilius published, ii. 63-64, 67. + +Lycurgus, ii. 129, 131; + influence of, upon Saint Just, ii. 133. + +Lyons, Rousseau a tutor at, i. 95-97. + + +MABLY, De, i. 95; + his socialism, i. 184; + applied to for scheme for the government of Poland, ii. 324. + +Maistre, De, i. 145; + on Optimism, i. 314. + +Maitre, Le, teaches Rousseau music, i. 58. + +Malebranche, i. 87. + +Malesherbes, Rousseau confesses his ungrateful nature to, ii. 14; + his dishonest advice to Rousseau, ii. 60; + helps Diderot, ii. 62; + and Rousseau in the publishing of Emilius, ii. 62, 63; + endangered by it, ii. 67; + asks Rousseau to collect plants for him, ii. 76. + +Man, his specific distinction from other animals, i. 161; + his state of nature, i. 161; + Hobbes wrong concerning this, i. 161; + equality of, i. 180; + effects of this doctrine in France and in the United States, i. + 182; + not naturally free, ii. 126. + +Mandeville, i. 162. + +Manners, Rousseau's, Marmontel, and Grimm on, i. 205, 206; + Rousseau on Swiss, i. 329, 330; + depravity of French, in the eighteenth century, ii. 25, 26. + +Marischal, Lord, friendship between, and Rousseau, ii. 79-81; + account of, ii. 80; + on Boswell, ii. 98 + +Marmontel, on Rousseau's manners, i. 206; + on his success, ii. 2. + +Marriage, design of the New Heloisa to exalt, ii. 46-48, _ib._ + _n._ + +Marsilio, of Padua, on Law, ii. 145. + +Men, inequality of, Rousseau's second Discourse (see Discourses), + dedicated to the republic of Geneva, i. 190; + how received there, i. 228. + +Mirabeau the elder, Rousseau's letter to, from Wootton, ii. 305, 306; + his character, ii. 309-312; + receives Rousseau at Fleury, ii. 311. + +Mirabeau, Gabriel, Rousseau's influence on, ii. 315. + +Moliere (Misanthrope of), Rousseau's criticism on, i. 329; + D'Alembert on, i. 329. + +Monarchy, Rousseau's objection to, ii. 171. + +Montaigu, Count de, avarice of, i. 101, 102. + +Montaigne, Rousseau's obligations to, i. 145; + influence of, on Rousseau, ii. 203. + +Montesquieu, "incomplete positivity" of, i. 156; + on Government, i. 157; + effect of his Spirit of Laws on Rousseau, i. 183; + confused definition of laws, ii. 153; + balanced parliamentary system of, ii. 163; + his definition of forms of government, ii. 169. + +Montmorency, Rousseau goes to live there, i. 229; + his life at, ii. 2-9. + +Montpellier, i. 92. + +Morals, state of, in France in the eighteenth century, ii. 26. + +Morellet, thrown into the Bastile, ii. 57. + +Morelly, his indirect influence on Rousseau, i. 156; + his socialistic theory, i. 157, 158; + his rules for organising a model community, i. 158, _n._; + his terse exposition of inequality contrasted with that of Rousseau, + i. 170; + on primitive human nature, i. 175; + his socialism, ii. 52; + influence of his "model community" upon St. Just, ii. 133, + _n._; + advice to mothers, ii. 205. + +Motiers, Rousseau's home there, ii. 77; + attends divine service at, ii. 91; + life at, ii. 91, 93. + +Moultou (pastor of Motiers), his enthusiasm for Rousseau, ii. 82. + +Music, Rousseau undertakes to teach, i. 60; + Rousseau's opinion concerning Italian, i. 105; + effect of Galuppi's, i. 105; + Rousseau earns his living by copying, i. 196; ii. 315; + Rameau's criticism on Rousseau's _Muses Galantes_, i. 211; + French, i. 291; + Rousseau's letter on, i. 292; + Italian, denounced at Paris, i. 292; + Rousseau utterly condemns French, i. 294; + quarrels with Gluck for setting his, to French words, ii. 323. + +Musical notation, Rousseau's, i. 291; + his Musical Dictionary, i. 296; + his notation explained, i. 296-301; + his system inapplicable to instruments, i. 301. + + +NAPLES, drunkenness, how regarded in, i. 331. + +_Narcisse_, Rousseau's condemnation of his own comedy of, i. + 215. + +Nature, Rousseau's love of, i. 234-241; ii. 39; + state of, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Hume on, i. 156-158; + Rousseau's, in Second Discourse, i. 171-180; + his starting-point of right, and normal constitution of civil + society, ii. 124. See State of Nature. + +Necker, ii. 54, 98, _n._ + +Neuchatel, flight to principality of, by Rousseau, ii. 73; + history of, ii. 73, _n._; + outbreak at, arising from religious controversy, ii. 90; + preparations for driving Rousseau out of, defeated by Frederick of + Prussia, ii. 90; + clergy of, against Rousseau, ii. 106. + +New Heloisa, first conception of, i. 250; + monument of Rousseau's fall, ii. 1; + when completed and published, ii. 2; + read aloud to the Duchess de Luxembourg, ii. 3; + letter on suicide in, ii. 16; + effects upon Parisian ladies of reading the, ii. 18, 19; + criticism on, ii. 20-55; + his scheme proposed in it, ii. 21; + its story, ii. 24; + its purity, contrasted with contemporary and later French + romances, ii. 24; + its general effect, ii. 27; + Rousseau absolutely without humour, ii. 27; + utter selfishness of hero of, ii. 30; + its heroine, ii. 30; + its popularity, ii. 231, 232; + burlesque on it, ii. 31, _n._; + its vital defect, ii. 35; + difference between Rousseau, Byron, and others, ii. 42; + sumptuary details of the story, ii. 44, 45; + its democratic tendency, ii. 49, 50; + the bearing of its teaching, ii. 54; + hindrances to its circulation in France, ii. 57; + Malesherbes's low morality as to publishing, ii. 61. + + +OPTIMISM of Pope and Leibnitz, i. 309-310; + discussed, ii. 128-130. + +Origin of inequality among men, i. 156. See also Discourses. + + +PALEY, ii. 191, _n._ + +Palissot, ii. 56. + +Paris, Rousseau's first visit to, i. 61; + his second, i. 63, 97, 102; + third visit, i. 106; + effect in, of his first Discourse, i. 139, _n._; + opinions in, on religion, laws, etc., i. 185; + "mimic philosophy" there, i. 193; + society in, in Rousseau's time, i. 202-211; + his view of it, i. 210; + composes there his _Muses Galantes_, i. 211; + returns to, from Geneva, i. 228; + his belief of the unfitness of its people for political affairs, + i. 246; + goes to, in 1741, with his scheme of musical notation, i. 291; + effect there of his letter on music, i. 295; + Rousseau's imaginary contrast between, and Geneva, i. 329; + Emilius ordered to be publicly burnt in, ii. 65; + parliament of, orders "Letters from the Mountain" to be burnt, + ii. 295; + also Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, ii. 295; + Danton's scheme for municipal administration of, ii. 168, + _n._; + two parties (those of Voltaire and of Rousseau) in, in 1793, ii. + 178; + excitement in, at Rousseau's appearance in 1765, ii. 283; + he goes to live there in 1770, ii. 314; + Voltaire's last visit to, ii. 323, 324. + +Paris, Abbe, miracles at his tomb, ii. 88. + +Parisian frivolity, i. 193, 220, 329. + +Parliament and Jesuits, ii. 64. + +Pascal, ii. 37. + +Passy, Rousseau composes the "Village Soothsayer" at, i. 212. + +Paul, St., effect of, on western society, i. 4. + +Peasantry, French, oppression of, i. 67, 68. + +Pedigree of Rousseau, i. 8, _n._ + +Pelagius, ii. 272. + +Peoples, sovereignty of, Rousseau not the inventor of doctrine of, + ii. 144-148; + taught by Althusen, i. 147; + constitution of Helvetic Republic in 1798, a blow at, ii. 165. + +Pergolese, i. 292. + +Pestalozzi indebted to Emilius, ii. 252. + +Philidor, i. 292. + +Philosophers, of Rousseau's time, contradicting each other, i. 87; + Rousseau's complaint of the, i. 202; + war between the, and the priests, i. 322; + Rousseau's reactionary protest against, i. 328; + troubles of, ii. 59; + parliaments hostile to, ii. 64. + +Philosophy, Rousseau's disgust at mimic, at Paris, i. 193; + drew him to the essential in religion, i. 220; + Voltaire's no perfect, i. 318. + +Phlipon, Jean Marie, Rousseau's influence on, ii. 315. + +Plato, his republic, i. 122; + his influence on Rousseau, i. 146, 325, _n._; + Milton on his Laws, ii. 178. + +Plays (stage), Rousseau's letter on, to D'Alembert, i. 321; + his views of, i. 323; + Jeremy Collier and Bossuet on, i. 323; + in Geneva, i. 333, 334, _n._; + Rousseau, Voltaire, and D'Alembert on, i. 332-337. + +Plutarch, Rousseau's love for, i. 13. + +Plutocracy, new, faults of, i. 195. + +Pompadour, Madame de, and the Jesuits, ii. 64. + +Pontverre (priest) converts Rousseau to Romanism, i. 31-35. + +Pope, his Essay on Man translated by Voltaire, i. 309; + Berlin Academy and Lessing on it, i. 310, _n._; + criticism on it by Rousseau, i. 312; + its general position reproduced by Rousseau, i. 315. + +Popeliniere, M. de, i. 211. + +Positive knowledge, i. 78. + +Press, freedom of the, ii. 59. + +Prevost, Abbe, i. 48. + +_Projet pour l'Education_, i. 96, _n._ + +Property, private, evils ascribed to i. 157, 185; + Robespierre disclaimed the intention of attacking, i. 123, + _n._ + +Protestant principles, effect of development of, ii. 146-147. + +Protestantism, his conversion to, i. 220; + its influence on Rousseau, i. 221. + + +RAMEAU on Rousseau's _Muses Galantes_, i. 119, 211; + mentioned, i. 291. + +Rationalism, i. 224, 225; + influence of Descartes on, i. 225. + +Reason, De Saint Pierre's views of, i. 244. + +Reform, essential priority of social over political, ii. 43. + +Religion, simplification of, i. 3; + ideas of, in Paris, i. 186, 187, 207, 208; + Rousseau's view of, i. 220; + doctrines of, in Geneva, i. 223-227, also _n._; + curious project concerning it, by Rousseau, i. 317; + separation of spiritual and temporal powers deemed mischievous by + Rousseau, ii. 173; + in its relation to the state may be considered as of three kinds, + ii. 175; + duty of the sovereign to establish a civil confession of faith, + ii. 176, 177; + positive dogmas of this, ii. 176; + Rousseau's "pure Hobbism," ii. 177. + See Savoyard Vicar (Emilius), ii. 256, 281. + +Renou, Rousseau assumes name of, i. 129; ii. 312. + +Revelation, Christian, Rousseau's controversy on, with Archbishop of + Paris, ii. 86-91. + +_Reveries_, Rousseau's relinquishing society, i. 199; + description of his life in the isle of St. Peter, in the, ii. + 109-115; + their style ii. 314. + +Revolution, French, principles of, i. 1, 2; + benefits of, or otherwise, ii. 54; + Baboeuf on, ii. 123, 124, _n._; + the starting point in the history of its ideas, ii. 160. + +Revolutionary process and ideal i. 4, 5. + +Revolutionists, difference among, i. 2. + +Richardson (the novelist), ii. 25, 28. + +Richelieu's brief patronage of Rousseau, i. 195, 302. + +Riviere, de la, origin of society, ii. 156, 157; + anecdote of, ii. 156, 157, _n._ + +Robecq, Madame de, ii. 56. + +Robespierre, ii. 123, 134, 160, 178, 179; + his "sacred right of insurrection," ii. 188, _n._; + Rousseau's influence on, ii. 315. + +Rousseau, Didier, i. 8. + +Rousseau, Jean Baptiste, i. 61, _n._ + +Rousseau, Jean Jacques, influence of his writings on France and the + American colonists, i. 1, 2; + on Robespierre, Paine, and Chateaubriand, i. 3; + his place as a leader, i. 3; + starting-point, of his mental habits, i. 4; + personality of, i. 4; + influence on the common people, i. 5; + his birth and ancestry, i. 8; + pedigree, i. 8, _n._; + parents, i. 10, 11; + influence upon him of his father's character, i. 11, 12; + his reading in childhood, i. 12, 13; + love of Plutarch, i. 13; + early years, i. 13, 14; + sent to school at Bossey, i. 15; + deterioration of his moral character there, i. 17; + indignation at an unjust punishment, i. 17, 18; + leaves school, i. 20; + youthful life at Geneva, i. 21, 22; + his remarks on its character, i. 24; + anecdotes of it, i. 22, 24; + his leading error as to the education of the young, i. 25, 26; + religious training, i. 25; + apprenticeship, i. 26; + boyish doings, i. 27; + harshness of his master, i. 27; + runs away, i. 29; + received by the priest of Confignon, i. 31; + sent to Madame de Warens, i. 84; + at Turin, i. 35; + hypocritical conversion to Roman Catholicism, i. 37; + motive, i. 38; + registry of his baptism, i. 38, _n._; + his forlorn condition, i. 39; + love of music, i. 39; + becomes servant to Madame de Vercellis, i. 39; + his theft, lying, and excuses for it, i. 39, 40; + becomes servant to Count of Gouvon, i. 42; + dismissed, i. 43; + returns to Madame de Warens, i. 45; + his temperament, i. 46, 47; + in training for the priesthood, but pronounced too stupid, i. 57; + tries music, i. 57; + shamelessly abandons his companion, i. 58; + goes to Freiburg, Neuchatel, and Paris, i. 61, 62; + conjectural chronology of his movements about this time. i. 62, + _n._; + love of vagabond life, i. 62-68; + effect upon him of his intercourse with the poor, i. 68; + becomes clerk to a land surveyor at Chamberi, i. 69; + life there, i. 69-72; + ill-health and retirement to Les Charmettes, i. 73; + his latest recollection of this time, i. 75-77; + his "form of worship," i. 77; + love of nature, i. 77, 78; + notion of deity, i. 77; + peculiar intellectual feebleness, i. 81; + criticism on himself, i. 83; + want of logic in his mental constitution, i. 85; + effect on him of Voltaire's Letters on the English, i. 85; + self-training, i. 86; + mistaken method of it, i. 86, 87; + writes a comedy, i. 89; + enjoyment of rural life at Les Charmettes, i. 91, 92; + robs Madame de Warens, i. 92; + leaves her, i. 93; + discrepancy between dates of his letters and the Confessions, i. + 93; + takes a tutorship at Lyons, i. 95; + condemns the practice of writing Latin, i. 96, _n._; + resigns his tutorship, and goes to Paris, i. 97; + reception there, i. 98-100; + appointed secretary to French Ambassador at Venice, i. 100-106; + in quarantine at Genoa, i. 104; + his estimate of French melody, i. 105; + returns to Paris, i. 106; + becomes acquainted with Theresa Le Vasseur, i. 106; + his conduct criticised, i. 107-113; + simple life, i. 113; + letter to her, i. 115-119; + his poverty, i. 119; + becomes secretary to Madame Dupin and her son-in-law, M. de + Francueil, i. 119; + sends his children to the foundling hospital, i. 120, 121; + paltry excuses for the crime, i. 121-126; + his pretended marriage under the name of Renou, i. 129; + his Discourses, i. 132-186 (see Discourses); + writes essays for academy of Dijon, i. 132; + origin of first essay, i. 133-137; + his "visions" for thirteen years, i. 138; + evil effect upon himself of the first Discourse, i. 138; + of it, the second Discourse and the Social Contract upon Europe, + i. 138; + his own opinion of it, i. 138, 139; + influence of Plato upon him, i. 146; + second Discourse, i. 154; + his "State of Nature," i. 159; + no evidence for it, i. 172; + influence of Montesquieu on him, i. 183; + inconsistency of his views, i. 124; + influence of Geneva upon him, i. 187, 188; + his disgust at Parisian philosophers, i. 191, 192; + the two sides of his character, i. 193; + associates in Paris, i. 193; + his income, i. 196, 197, _n._; + post of cashier, i. 196; + throws it up, i. 197, 198; + determines to earn his living by copying music, i. 198, 199; + change of manners, i. 201; + dislike of the manners of his time, i. 202, 203; + assumption of a seeming cynicism, i. 206; + Grimm's rebuke of it, i. 206; + Rousseau's protest against atheism, i. 208, 209; + composes a musical interlude, the Village Soothsayer, i. 212; + his nervousness loses him the chance of a pension, i. 213; + his moral simplicity, i. 214, 215; + revisits Geneva, i. 216; + re-conversion to Protestantism, i. 220; + his friends at Geneva, i. 227; + their effect upon him, i. 227; + returns to Paris, i. 227; + the Hermitage offered him by Madame d'Epinay, i. 229, 230 (and + _ib. n._); + retires to it against the protests of his friends, i. 231; + his love of nature, i. 234, 235, 236; + first days at the Hermitage, i. 237; + rural delirium, i. 237; + dislike of society, i. 242; + literary scheme, i. 242, 243; + remarks on Saint Pierre, i. 246; + violent mental crisis, i. 247; + employs his illness in writing to Voltaire on Providence, i. 250, + 251; + his intolerance of vice in others, i. 254; + acquaintance with Madame de Houdetot, i. 255-269; + source of his irritability, i. 270, 271; + blind enthusiasm of his admirers, i. 273, also _ib. n._; + quarrels with Diderot, i. 275; + Grimm's account of them, i. 276; + quarrels with Madame d'Epinay, i. 276, 288; + relations with Grimm, i. 279; + want of sympathy between the two, i. 279; + declines to accompany Madame d'Epinay to Geneva, i. 285; + quarrels with Grimm, i. 285; + leaves the Hermitage, i. 289, 290; + aims in music, i. 291; + letter on French music, i. 293, 294; + writes on music in the Encyclopaedia, i. 296; + his Musical Dictionary, i. 296; + scheme and principles of his new musical notation, i. 269; + explained, i. 298, 299; + its practical value, i. 299; + his mistake, i. 300; + minor objections, i. 300; + his temperament and Genevan spirit, i. 303; + compared with Voltaire, i. 304, 305; + had a more spiritual element than Voltaire, i. 306; + its influence in France, i. 307; + early relations with Voltaire, i. 308; + letter to him on his poem on the earthquake at Lisbon, i. 312, + 313, 314; + reasons in a circle, i. 316; + continuation of argument against Voltaire, i. 316, 317; + curious notion about religion, i. 317; + quarrels with Voltaire, i. 318, 319; + denounces him as a "trumpet of impiety," i. 320, _n._; + letter to D'Alembert on Stage Plays, i. 321; + true answer to his theory, i. 323, 324; + contrasts Paris and Geneva, i. 327, 328; + his patriotism, i. 329, 330, 331; + censure of love as a poetic theme, i. 334, 335; + on Social Position of Women, i. 335; + Voltaire and D'Alembert's criticism on his Letter on Stage Plays, + i. 336, 337; + final break with Diderot, i. 336; + antecedents of his highest creative efforts, ii. 1; + friends at Montmorency, ii. 2; + reads the New Heloisa to the Marechale de Luxembourg, ii. 2; + unwillingness to receive gifts, ii. 5; + his relations with the Duke and Duchess de Luxembourg, ii. 7; + misunderstands the friendliness of Madame de Boufflers, ii. 7; + calm life at Montmorency, ii. 8; + literary jealousy, ii. 8; + last of his peaceful days, ii. 9; + advice to a young man against the contemplative life, ii. 10; + offensive form of his "good sense" concerning persecution of + Protestants, ii. 11, 12; + cause of his unwillingness to receive gifts, ii. 13, 14; + owns his ungrateful nature, ii. 15; + ill-humoured banter, ii. 15; + his constant bodily suffering, ii. 16; + thinks of suicide, ii. 16; + correspondence with the readers of the New Heloisa, ii. 19, 20; + the New Heloisa, criticism on, ii. 20-55 (see New Heloisa); + his publishing difficulties, ii. 56; + no taste for martyrdom, ii. 59, 60; + curious discussion between, ii. 59; + and Malesherbes, ii. 60; + indebted to Malesherbes in the publication of Emilius, ii. 61, 62; + suspects Jesuits, Jansenists, and philosophers of plotting to + crush the book, ii. 63; + himself counted among the latter, ii. 65; + Emilius ordered to be burnt by public executioner, on the charge + of irreligious tendency, and its author to be arrested, ii. 65; + his flight, ii. 67; + literary composition on the journey to Switzerland, ii. 69; + contrast between him and Voltaire, ii. 70; + explanation of his "natural ingratitude," ii. 71; + reaches the canton of Berne, and ordered to quit it, ii. 72; + Emilius and Social Contract condemned to be publicly burnt at + Geneva, and author arrested if he came there, ii. 72, 73; + takes refuge at Motiers, in dominions of Frederick of Prussia, ii. + 73; + characteristic letters to the king, ii. 74, 77; + declines pecuniary help from him, ii. 75; + his home and habits at Motiers, ii. 77, 78; + Voltaire supposed to have stirred up animosity against him at + Geneva, ii. 81; + Archbishop of Paris writes against him, ii. 83; + his reply, and character as a controversialist, ii. 83-90; + life at Val de Travers (Motiers), ii. 91-95; + his generosity, ii. 93; + corresponds with the Prince of Wuertemberg on the education of the + prince's daughter, ii. 95, 96; + on Gibbon, ii. 96; + visit from Boswell, ii. 98; + invited to legislate for Corsica, ii. 99, _n._; + urges Boswell to go there, ii. 100; + denounces its sale by the Genoese, ii. 102; + renounces his citizenship of Geneva, ii. 103; + his Letters from the Mountain, ii. 104; + the letters condemned to be burned at Paris and the Hague, ii. + 105; + libel upon, ii. 105; + religious difficulties with his pastor, ii. 106; + ill-treatment of, in parish, ii. 106; + obliged to leave it, ii. 108; + his next retreat, ii. 108; + account in the _Reveries_ of his short stay there, ii. 109-115; + expelled by government of Berne, ii. 116; + makes an extraordinary request to it, ii. 116, 117; + difficulties in finding a home, ii. 117; + short stay at Strasburg, ii. 117, _n._; + decides on going to England, ii. 118; + his Social Contract, and criticism on, ii. 119, 196 (see Social + Contract); + scanty acquaintance with history, ii. 129; + its effects on his political writings, ii. 129, 136; + his object in writing Emilius, ii. 198; + his confession of faith, under the character of the Savoyard Vicar + (see Emilius), ii. 257-280; + excitement caused by his appearance in Paris in 1765, ii. 282; + leaves for England in company with Hume, ii. 283; + reception in London, ii. 283, 284; + George III. gives him a pension, ii. 284; + his love for his dog, ii. 286; + finds a home at Wootton, ii. 286; + quarrels with Hume, ii. 287; + particulars in connection with it, ii. 287-296; + his approaching insanity at this period, ii. 296; + the preparatory conditions of it, ii. 297-301; + begins writing the Confessions, ii. 301; + their character, ii. 301-304; + life at Wootton, ii. 305, 306; + sudden flight thence, ii. 306; + kindness of Mr. Davenport, ii. 306, 307; + his delusion, ii. 307; + returns to France, ii. 308; + received at Fleury by the elder Mirabeau, ii. 310, 311; + the prince of Conti next receives him at Trye, ii. 312; + composes the second part of the Confessions here, ii. 312; + delusion returns, ii. 312, 313; + leaves Trye, and wanders about the country, ii. 312, 313; + estrangement from Theresa, ii. 313; + goes to Paris, ii. 314; + writes his Dialogues there, ii. 314; + again earns his living by copying music, ii. 315; + daily life in, ii. 315, 316; + Bernardin St. Pierre's account of him, ii. 317-321; + his veneration for Fenelon, ii. 321; + his unsociality, ii. 322; + checks a detractor of Voltaire, ii. 324; + draws up his Considerations on the Government of Poland, ii. 324; + estimate of the Spanish, ii. 324; + his poverty, ii. 325; + accepts a home at Ermenonville from M. Girardin, ii. 326; + his painful condition, ii. 326; + sudden death, ii. 326; + cause of it unknown, ii. 326 (see also _ib. n._); + his interment, ii. 326; + finally removed to Paris, ii. 328. + + +SAINTE BEUVE on Rousseau and Madame d'Epinay, i. 279, _n._; + on Rousseau, ii. 40. + +Saint Germain, M. de, Rousseau's letter to, i. 123. + +Saint Just, ii. 132, 133; + his political regulations, ii. 133, _n._; + base of his system, ii. 136; + against the atheists, ii. 179. + +Saint Lambert, i. 244; + offers Rousseau a home in Lorraine, ii. 117. + +Saint Pierre, Abbe de, Rousseau arranges papers of, i. 244; + his views concerning reason, _ib._; + boldness of his observations, i. 245. + +Saint Pierre, Bernardin de, account of his visit to Rousseau at + Paris, ii. 317-321. + +Sand, Madame G., i. 81, _n._; + Savoy landscape, i. 99, _n._; + ancestry of, i. 121, _n._ + +Savages, code of morals of, i. 178-179, _n._ + +Savage state, advantages of, Rousseau's letter to Voltaire, i. 312. + +Savoy, priests of, proselytisers, i. 30, 31, 33 (also _ib._ _n._) + +Savoyard Vicar, the, origin of character of, ii. 257-280 (see + Emilius). + +Schiller on Rousseau, ii. 192 (also _ib._ _n._); + Rousseau's influence on, ii. 315. + +Servetus, ii. 180. + +Simplification, the revolutionary process and ideal of, i. 4; + in reference to Rousseau's music, i. 291. + +Social conscience, theory and definition of, ii. 234, 235; + the great agent in fostering, ii. 237. + +Social Contract, the, ill effect of, on Europe, i. 138; + beginning of its composition, i. 177; + ideas of, i. 188; + its harmful dreams, i. 246; + influence of, ii. 1; + price of, and difficulties in publishing, ii. 59; + ordered to be burnt at Geneva, ii. 72, 73, 104; + detailed criticism of, ii. 119-196; + Rousseau diametrically opposed to the dominant belief of his day + in human perfectibility, ii. 119; + object of the work, ii. 120; + main position of the two Discourses given up in it, ii. 120; + influenced by Locke, ii. 120; + its uncritical, illogical principles, ii. 123, 124; + its impracticableness, ii. 128; + nature of his illustrations, ii. 128-133; + the "gospel of the Jacobins," ii. 132, 133; + the desperate absurdity of its assumptions gave it power in the + circumstances of the times, ii. 135-141; + some of its maxims very convenient for ruling Jacobins, ii. 142; + its central conception, the sovereignty of peoples, ii. 144; + Rousseau not its inventor, ii. 144, 145; + this to be distinguished from doctrine of right of subjects to + depose princes, ii. 146; + Social Contract idea of government, probably derived from Locke, + ii. 150; + falseness of it, ii. 153, 154; + origin of society, ii. 154; + ill effects on Rousseau's political speculation, ii. 155; + what constitutes the sovereignty, ii. 158; + Rousseau's Social Contract different from that of Hobbes, ii. 159; + Locke's indefiniteness on, ii. 160; + attributes of sovereignty, ii. 163; + confederation, ii. 164, 165; + his distinction between _tyrant_ and _despot_, ii. 169, + _n._; + distinguishes constitution of the state from that of the government, + ii. 170; + scheme of an elective aristocracy, ii. 172; + similarity to the English form of government, ii. 173; + the state in respect to religion, ii. 173; + habitually illogical form of his statements, ii. 173, 174; + duty of sovereign to establish civil profession of faith, ii. 175, + 176; + infringement of it to be punished, even by death, ii. 176; + Rousseau's Hobbism, ii. 177; + denial of his social compact theory, ii. 183, 184; + futility of his disquisitions on, ii. 185, 186; + his declaration of general duty of rebellion (arising out of the + universal breach of social compact) considered, ii. 188; + it makes government impossible, ii. 188; + he urges that usurped authority is another valid reason for + rebellion, ii. 190; + practical evils of this, ii. 192; + historical effect of the Social Contract, ii. 192-195. + +Social quietism of some parts of New Heloisa, ii. 49. + +Socialism: Morelly, and De Mably, ii. 52; + what it is, ii. 159. + +Socialistic theory of Morelly, i. 158, 159 (also i. 158, _n._) + +Society, Aristotle on, i. 174; + D'Alembert's statements on, i. 174, _n._; + Parisian, Rousseau on, i. 209; + dislike of, i. 242; + Rousseau's origin of, ii. 153; + true grounds of, ii. 155, 156. + +Socrates, i. 131, 140, 232; ii. 72, 273. + +Solitude, eighteenth century notions of, i. 231, 232. + +Solon, ii. 133. + +Sorbonne, the, condemns Emilius, ii. 82. + +Spectator, the, Rousseau's liking for, i. 86. + +Spinoza, dangerous speculations of, i. 143. + +Stael, Madame de, i. 217, _n._ + +Stage players, how treated in France, i. 322. + +Stage plays (see Plays). + +State of Nature, Rousseau's, i. 159, 160; + Hobbes on, i. 161 (see Nature). + +Suicide, Rousseau on, ii. 16; + a mistake to pronounce him incapable of, ii. 19. + +Switzerland, i. 330. + + +TACITUS, i. 177. + +Theatre, Rousseau's letter, objecting to the, i. 133; + his error in the matter, i. 134. + +Theology, metaphysical, Descartes' influence on, i. 226. + +Theresa (see Le Vasseur). + +Thought, school of, division between rationalists and emotionalists, + i. 337. + +Tonic Sol-fa notation, close correspondence of the, to Rousseau's + system, i. 299. + +Tronchin on Voltaire, i. 319, _n._, 321. + +Turgot, i. 89; + his discourses at the Sorbonne in 1750, i. 155; + the one sane eminent Frenchman of eighteenth century, i. 202; + his unselfish toil, i. 233; ii. 193; + mentioned, ii. 246, 294. + +Turin, Rousseau at, i. 34-43; + leaves it, i. 45; + tries to learn Latin at, i. 91. + +Turretini and other rationalisers, i. 226; + his works, i. 226, _n._ + + +UNIVERSE, constitution of, discussion on, i. 311-317. + + +VAGABOND life, Rousseau's love of, i. 63, 68. + +Val de Travers, ii. 77; Rousseau's life in, ii. 91-95. + +Vasseur, Theresa Le, Rousseau's first acquaintance with, i. 106, + 107, also _ib._ _n._; + their life together, i. 110-113; + well befriended, ii. 80, _n._; + her evil character, ii. 326. + +Vauvenargues on emotional instinct, ii. 34. + +Venice, Rousseau at, i. 100-106. + +Vercellis, Madame de, Rousseau servant to, i. 39. + +Verdelin, Madame de, her kindness to Theresa, ii. 80, _n._; + to Rousseau, ii. 118, _n._ + +Village Soothsayer, the (_Devin du Village_), composed at + Passy, performed at Fontainebleau and Paris, i. 212; + marked a revolution in French Music, i. 291. + +Voltaire, i. 2, 21, 63; + effect on Rousseau of his Letters on the English, i. 86; + spreads a derogatory report about Rousseau, i. 101, _n._; + his "Princesse de Navarre," i. 119; + criticism on Rousseau's first Discourse, i. 147; + effect on his work of his common sense, i. 155; + avoids the society of Paris, i. 202; + his conversion to Romanism, i. 220, 221; + strictures on Homer and Shakespeare, i. 280; + his position in the eighteenth century, i. 301; + general difference between, and Rousseau, i. 301; + clung to the rationalistic school of his day, i. 305; + on Rousseau's second Discourse, i. 308; + his poem on the earthquake of Lisbon, i. 309, 310; + his sympathy with suffering, i. 311, 312; + entreated by Rousseau to draw up a civil profession of religious + faith, i. 317; + denounced by Rousseau as a "trumpet of impiety," i. 317, 320, + _n._; + his satire and mockery irritated Rousseau, i. 319; + what he was to his contemporaries, i. 321; + the great play-writer of the time, i. 321; + his criticism of Rousseau's Letter on the Theatre, i. 336; + his indignation at wrong, ii. 11; + ridicule of the New Heloisa, ii. 34; + less courageous than Rousseau, ii. 65; + contrast between the two, i. 99, ii. 75; + supposed to have stirred up animosity at Geneva against Rousseau, + ii. 81; + denies it, ii. 81; + his notion of how the matter would end, ii. 81; + his fickleness, ii. 83; + on Rousseau's connection with Corsica, ii. 101; + his Philosophical Dictionary burnt by order at Paris, ii. 105; + his opinion of Emilius, ii. 257; + prime agent in introducing English deism into France, ii. 262; + suspected by Rousseau of having written the pretended letter from + the King of Prussia, ii. 288; + last visit to Paris, ii. 324. + + +WALKING, Rousseau's love of, i. 63. + +Walpole, Horace, writer of the pretended letter from the King of + Prussia, ii. 288, _n._; + advises Hume not to publish his account of Rousseau's quarrel with + him, ii. 295. + +War arising out of the succession to the crown of Poland, i. 72. + +Warens, Madame de, Rousseau's introduction to, i. 34; + her personal appearance, i. 34; + receives Rousseau into her house, i. 43; + her early life, i. 48; + character of, i. 49-51; + goes to Paris, i. 59; + receives Rousseau at Chamberi, and gets him employment, i. 69; + her household, i. 70; + removes to Les Charmettes, i. 73; + cultivates Rousseau's taste for letters, i. 85; + Saint Louis, her patron saint, i. 91; + revisited by Rousseau in 1754, i. 216; + her death in poverty and wretchedness, i. 217, 218 (also i. 219, + _n._) + +Wesleyanism, ii. 258. + +Women, Condorcet on social position of, i. 335; + D'Alembert and Condorcet on, i. 335. + +Wootton, Rousseau's home at, ii. 286. + +World, divine government of, Rousseau vindicates, i. 312. + +Wuertemberg, correspondence between Prince of, and Rousseau, on the + education of the little princess, ii. 95; + becomes reigning duke, ii. 95, _n._; + seeks permission for Rousseau to live in Vienna, ii. 117. + + +THE END. + + +_Printed by_ R. & R. 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