"LA NOUVELLE HÉLOÏSE" AND "ÉMILE."
It was not alone by his political writings that Jean Jacques Rousseau
exercised a great influence over Europe. Of all his books, the two which
are perhaps most famous take the form of loose and disjointed fiction,
and deal not with government, but with life, passion, society, and
education. Yet the characters of "La Nouvelle Héloïse," and of "Émile,"
are not mere frames of scarecrows clothed with abstract qualities and
fine sentiments. Saint-Preux, Émile and the Tutor, Julie, Sophie,
Claire, and Lord Edward Bomston are live persons, whom the reader may
like or dislike. In the first three Rousseau would seem to have
incorporated himself, and the result is interesting, but repulsive. In
Julie we have Jean Jacques' ideal woman, a being of a noble nature,
tinged and defiled with something low and morbid; but Claire and Sophie
seem taken only from observation, not introspection, and although far
from faultless are often charming.
"La Nouvelle Héloïse" is a novel written in letters, a form of writing
more tedious than any other. But it should be remembered that in the
early days of fiction novels were so few that to occupy a long time in
the reading was not an impediment to the popularity of one of them. If
we may believe Rousseau, the "New Heloisa" produced a great sensation.
All Paris was impatient for its appearance. When at last it was
published, men of letters were divided in opinion, but society was
unanimous in its praise, and women were so much delighted with it that
there were few even of high rank whose conquest the author might not
have achieved had he chosen to undertake it. While making due
allowance for the morbid vanity of Jean Jacques, we may entirely
believe him when he says that the book captivated the reading
public. One lady, he tells us, had dressed after supper for the ball
at the Opera House, and sat down to read the new novel while waiting
for the time to go. At midnight she ordered her carriage, but did not
put down the book. The coach came to the door, but she kept on. At two
her servants warned her of the hour. She answered that there was no
hurry. At four she undressed, and continued to read for the rest of
the night. On the first appearance of the story the booksellers used
to let out copies at twelve sous the hour.[Footnote: Rousseau,
xix. 101 (_Confessions_, liv. xi.).] To-day its charm is gone. Few
indeed are the works of pure literature which are read a hundred years
after publication, except by the authors of literary histories and the
unfortunate pupils of injudicious school-mistresses (and the "New
Heloisa" will not form a part of any scheme of female education); but
a good style and a true enthusiasm may lighten the task even of these
sufferers.
It is a singular fact that in some matters of feeling no age seems so
far from our own as that of our great-grandfathers. The lovers of the
Middle Ages and of the sixteenth century appear to us natural and
healthy beings. Those of the eighteenth seem sentimental and foolish. In
the case of Rousseau's great novel this effect is increased by the
morbid strain of the author's mind. With him all passion tends to assume
unhealthy shapes, and the very breezes of Lake Leman come laden with
close and sickly odors.
It is not worth while to deal here with the story of the "New
Heloisa,"--a story of illicit passion in the first part; and in the
second, of the happy marriage of the heroine to a man who is not her
lover. The visit paid by that lover to his old mistress and her
husband in their home at Clarens, with all the trials of virtue which
it involves, is a disagreeable piece of sentimentality. The members of
the trio fall on each other's necks with unpleasant frequency and
fervor. But the picture of that home itself, with its well-ordered
housekeeping, its liberality and its plainness, is interesting and
attractive. "Since the masters of this house have taken it for their
dwelling, they have turned to their use all that served only for
ornament; it is no longer a house made to be seen, but to be lived
in. They have built up the long lines of doors by which rooms opened
one out of another, and made new doorways in convenient places; they
have cut up rooms that were too large, and improved the arrangement;
they have substituted simple and convenient furniture for what was old
and expensive. Everything is agreeable and smiling, everything
breathes abundance and cleanliness; nothing shows costliness or
luxury; there is no room where you do not feel yourself in the country
and where you do not find all the conveniences of town. The same
changes are noticeable outside; the poultry-yard has been enlarged at
the expense of the carriage-house. In the place of an old broken-down
billiard-table they have built a fine wine-press, and they have got
rid of some screeching peacocks to make room for a dairy. The kitchen
garden was too small for the kitchen; a second one has been made of
the parterre, but so neat and so well laid out that thus transformed
it is more pleasing to the eye than before. Good espaliers have been
substituted for the doleful yews that covered the wall. Instead of the
useless horse-chestnut tree, young black mulberries are beginning to
shade the courtyard, and two rows of walnut trees, running to the
road, have been planted in place of the old lindens which bordered the
avenue. Everywhere the useful has been substituted for the agreeable,
and almost everywhere the agreeable has gained by it." The description
is masterly, but we cannot quite forgive Rousseau for sacrificing the
horse-chestnut and the lindens.[Footnote: Rousseau, ix. 235
(Nouv. Hél. Part. iv. Let. x.).]
But not quite all the land is treated in this utilitarian manner. The
heroine has an "Elysium." This place is near the house, but separated
from the rest of the grounds by a thick hedge. It is full of native
plants forming a deep shade, yet the ground is covered with grass like
velvet, and flowers spring up on all sides. Vines climb from tree to
tree, rooted, it may be, in the trunks of the trees themselves. A stream
of clear water meanders through the place, sometimes divided into
several channels, sometimes united in one, rippling here over a bed of
gravel, there reflecting the trees and the sky. A colony of birds,
protected from all disturbance, charms the solitude with song. Nature is
here encouraged, not thwarted; little is left to the gardener; much to
the intelligent and loving care of the mistress.
The account of the garden covers many pages of the "New Heloisa," pages
at once eloquent and interesting. Artificial as are many of its details,
the letter is a plea for nature against artificiality. The readers in
the eighteenth century were charmed, and hastened to imitate Rousseau's
heroine. The straight gravel walks, the formal flower-beds, the clipped
hedges of old France, became tiresome in the eyes of their possessors. A
dreamer had told them that all these things made a very fine place,
where the owner would scarcely care to go, and they believed him. The
new fashion brought with it a new affectation, perhaps the most
offensive of all, the affectation of simplicity. The garden, as truly a
product of man's hand and brain as the house or the picture-gallery, was
made to mimic the forest, losing, in too many cases, its own peculiar
beauty, without gaining the true charm of wild nature. On the other
hand, the eyes of Rousseau's admirers were opened to many things not
noticed before. The real woods received their appropriate worship. The
novel of Jean Jacques combined with the exhortations of the economists
to turn the attention of the educated classes to rural matters.
The life led by the model couple in the "New Heloisa" is one of
humdrum, conscientious respectability. It is a country life, fairly
simple and without ostentation; but it is as far removed as possible
from all that can be connected with the noble savage. Julie and
Monsieur de Wolmar, her husband, rule their little world strictly and
kindly. They try to make life profitable and pleasant to their
children and their servants. To the poor they are patronizing and
benevolent. Apart from their overflowing sentimentality they are
honest, self-sufficient, commonplace people. Rousseau, born in the
middle class, had a middle-class, respectable ideal, lying beside many
very different ideals in his ill-ordered brain. And this novel which
begins with passion ends with something not far removed from
priggishness.
It is quite needless to discuss here how much Rousseau owed in his
"Émile" to the teachings of Locke, of Montaigne, or of others. His
ideas, wherever he may have got them, were always sufficiently colored
by his own personality. "Émile," which has even less structure of
fiction than the "New Heloisa," is a treatise on education, or rather on
the ideal education, for Rousseau distinctly disclaims the intention of
writing a handbook. It is on the whole the most agreeable and the most
useful of the works of its author; although not without deplorable marks
of his baseness. The book shows an amount of careful observation of
children not a little astonishing in a man who sent his own infants to
the Foundling lest they should disturb him; it contains remarks about
good women equally remarkable in one whose dealings in life were
principally with bad ones.
"All is good coming from the hands of the Author of things; everything
degenerates in the hands of man;" thus begins "Émile." "He makes one
land nourish the productions of another, one tree bear another's fruit;
he mixes and confounds the climates, the elements, the seasons; he
mutilates his dog, his horse, his slave; he overturns, he disfigures
everything; he loves deformity and monstrosities; he wants nothing such
as nature made it, not even man, who has to be trained for him like a
managed horse, trimmed to his fashion, like a tree of his garden."
Ignorance is harmless; error only is pernicious. Men do not go astray on
account of the things of which they are ignorant, but of those which
they think they know. The time which we spend in learning what others
have thought is lost for learning to think ourselves; we have more
information and less vigor of mind.
Let us seek out the kind of education proper for the formation of a
vigorous and, above all, of an independent man. We will call our pupil
Émile. The author himself shall be his tutor and shall devote himself
exclusively to the education of this single boy. A father, however, is
the best of tutors, for zeal is far more valuable in this place than
talent. But whoever it be that undertakes the education, he must be
always the same and always absolute. If a child ever gets the idea that
there are grown people that have no more reason than children, the
authority of age is lost, the education has failed.
The position of the tutor is one of the most curious and one of the most
mistaken things in "Émile." While in many respects the training
described in the book would tend to make a manly and independent boy,
the pervading presence of the tutor would perhaps undo all the good of
the system. It is true that absolute truth is recommended, that "a
single lie which the master was shown to have told the pupil would ruin
forever the fruit of the education." Yet the tutor is to interfere
openly or secretly in every part of Émile's life. "It is important that
the disciple shall do nothing without the master's knowing and willing
it, not even what is wrong; and it is a hundred times better that the
governor approve of a fault and be mistaken, than that he should be
deceived by his pupil and the fault committed without his knowledge."
Let the tutor, therefore, be the pupil's confidant, even; if necessary,
his companion in vice. You must be a man to speak strongly to the human
heart. The tutor is constantly deceiving Émile, and some of his tricks
are so transparent that it is wonderful that Rousseau could have
expected the simplest of boys to be taken in by them. Here is an
instance.
The object is to show Émile the origin of property, and to give him the
first idea of its obligations. "The child, living in the country, will
have got some notion of field-work; for that he will need only eyes and
leisure, and both of these he will have. It belongs to every age, and
especially to his, to wish to create, to imitate, to produce, to show
signs of power and activity. He will not twice have seen a garden dug,
vegetables sown, sprouting and growing, before he will want to be
gardening too.
"On the principles heretofore established, I do not oppose his desire;
on the contrary, I favor it, I share his taste, I work with him, not
for his pleasure, but for mine; at least he thinks so; I become his
under-gardener; as his arms are not strong yet, I dig the earth for
him; he takes possession of it by planting a bean; and surely that
possession is more sacred and worthy of respect than that which Nunes
Balbao took of South America, in the name of the king of Spain, by
planting his standard on the shores of the South Sea.
"We come every day to water the beans, we see them sprout with ecstasies
of joy. I increase that joy by telling him, `This belongs to you;' and
by explaining to him this term, `to belong,' I make him feel that he has
spent here his time, his labor, his pains, his very person; that in this
earth there is something of himself, which he can claim against every
one, as he could draw his arm from the hand of a man who should try to
hold it in spite of him.
"One fine day he comes out eagerly, with his watering-pot in his hand.
Oh horrible sight! Oh grief! All the beans are torn up, all the ground
is turned over; you could not recognize the very place. `Oh, what has
become of my labor, my work, the sweet fruit of my care and of my sweat?
Who has robbed me of my property? Who has taken my beans?' His young
heart rises; the first feeling of injustice comes to pour its sad
bitterness into it; tears flow in streams; the desolate child fills the
air with groans and cries. I share his pain, his indignation; we seek,
we inquire, we examine. At last we discover that the gardener has done
the deed; we summon him.
"But here we are very far out of our reckoning. The gardener, learning
of what we complain, begins to complain louder than we. `What!
gentlemen; it is you that have thus spoiled my work! I had sown in that
place some Maltese melons, whose seed had been given me as a treasure,
and which I hoped to serve up to you for a feast when they were ripe;
but now, to plant your miserable beans, you have destroyed my melons
after they had sprouted, and I can never replace them. You have done me
an irreparable injury, and you have deprived yourselves of the pleasure
of eating delicious melons.'
"Jean Jacques. Excuse us, my poor Robert. You had put there your labor
and your pains. I see that we were wrong to spoil your work; we will get
you some more Maltese seed, and we will dig no more in the ground,
without knowing if some one has not set his hand to it before us.
"Robert. Well, gentlemen, at that rate you may take your rest, for there
is very little wild land left. I work on what my father improved;
everybody does the same by his own, and all the land you see has long
been occupied.
"Émile. In that case, Robert, is melon seed often lost?
"Robert. I beg your pardon, my young sir; little gentlemen do not often
come along who are so thoughtless as you. No one touches his neighbor's
garden; each man respects the work of others, so that his own may be
safe.
"Émile. But I have no garden.
"Robert. What difference does that make to me? If you spoil mine, I will
no longer let you walk in it; for, you see, I do not want to lose my
labor.
"Jean Jacques. Could we not make an arrangement with our good Robert?
Let him grant my young friend and me a corner of his garden to
cultivate, on condition that he shall have half the produce.
"Robert. I grant it without conditions. But remember that I shall go and
dig up your beans if you touch my melons."
It is perhaps wrong to hold Rousseau in any part of his writings to any
approach to consistency. We have seen some of the mistakes in Émile's
education. Let us look at some of its strong points. Yet we shall find
the tares so thoroughly mixed with the wheat that to separate them
entirely may be impossible. Rousseau insists that from the earliest
infancy the child's body shall be free. The swaddling bands, common all
over the continent in the last century, in which the poor little being
was bound and bundled so that he could not move hand or foot, were to be
absolutely discontinued. The child, nursed if possible by its own
mother, was to have free limbs. It was to be brought up in the country,
and as it grew older was to run about bareheaded and barefoot. Too much
clothing, thought Rousseau, makes the body tender; and he seems to have
carried the theory unreasonably far.
Cleanliness and cold baths were recommended to a generation singularly
in need of them. Émile was brought up to enjoy fresh air, perhaps to be
almost a slave to the need of it. He was given plenty of sleep, but his
bed was hard, his food coarse. Everything was done to make him strong,
hardy, and active.
"The only habit which the child should be allowed to form is that of
forming none." He should not use one hand more than the other; he should
not be accustomed to want to eat or to sleep at the same hours every
day, nor should he fear to be alone. He should be gradually taught not
to be afraid of masks, to overcome his fright at firearms. He should be
helped in all that is really useful, but not encouraged to indulge vain
fancies. Children should be given as much real liberty as possible, and
as little dominion over others as may be. They should do as much as
possible by themselves, and ask as little as they can of others. "The
only person who does his own will is he who does not need, in doing it,
to put another's arms at the end of his own; whence it follows that the
first of all good things is not authority, but liberty."
Émile's desire to learn is to be excited. He is to see the reason for
the steps he takes. The talent of teaching is that of making the pupil
pleased with the instruction. Something must be left to the boy's own
mind and reflection. He is not to be given much to read. For a long
time, let "Robinson Crusoe" be his only book. But Émile shall learn a
trade, a good mechanical trade, which is always needed, in which there
is always employment. He shall also learn to draw; less for the art
itself than to make his eye accurate and his hand obedient; for in
general it is less important for him to know this or that than to
acquire the clearness of sense and the good habit of body which the
various studies give.
Having brought up Émile to manhood, it becomes necessary to provide him
with a wife. Here the tutor is still active, and prepares the meeting
with Sophie which Émile takes for accidental. It is needless to remark
again on the young man's gullibility. He is Rousseau's creature, and
fashioned as his maker pleases. Nothing is more disturbing than to
submit the dreams of such a man as Jean Jacques to the unsympathetic
rules of common sense. Our concern is with the effect they produced on
the minds of other people, who undertook in some measure to live them
out. Let us then pause over some of the considerations suggested by the
necessity of admitting into the scheme of education a being so
disturbing as a woman.
Rousseau saw more, I think, than most persons who have undertaken to
deal with the subject in a reforming spirit, what is the true and
proper relation between the sexes. While boys are to exercise the
manly trades that require physical strength, he would leave to women
the lighter employments, and more especially those connected with
dress and its materials. It is the usual mistake of those who in our
day set themselves up as champions of woman, to seek to make the sexes
not coordinate and mutually helpful, but identical and competing. "It
is perhaps one of the marvels of nature," says Rousseau, "to have made
two beings so similar while forming them so differently."[Footnote:
_Oeuvres_, v. 5 (_Émile_, liv. v.). Compare viii. 203 (_Nouv. Hél._
Letter). "A perfect man and a perfect woman should not resemble each
other any more in their souls than in their faces."]
On the whole, Sophie is a more attractive person than Émile; perhaps
because she has been brought up by her mother, and not given over in
her babyhood to the vigilance of Jean Jacques. The artistic quality of
the author's mind has obliged him to make his heroine more true to
nature than his theories have allowed him to make his hero. And his
theories about girls are quite as good and quite as different from the
fashionable practice of his day as those about boys. It is curious how
his ideas approach the American customs. A certain coquetry, he says,
is allowable in marriageable girls; amusement is their principal
business. Married women have the cares of home to occupy them, and
have no longer to seek husbands. Rousseau would let the girls appear
in public, would take them to balls, entertainments, the
theatre. Sophie is not only more vivacious than Émile, she has also
more self-control than he; who, in spite of his virile education, is
entirely overcome when the ever-meddling tutor insists on two years of
travel for his pupil, in order that the young people may grow older
and that Émile may learn to master his passions. The day of parting
arrives, and Émile, in true eighteenth century style, utters shrieks,
sheds torrents of tears on the hands of Sophie's father, of her
mother, of the heroine herself, embraces with sobs all the servants of
the family, and repeats the same things a thousand times with a
disorder which, even to Jean Jacques's rudimentary sense of humor,
would be laughable under circumstances less desperate. Sophie, on the
other hand is quiet, pale and sad, without tears, insensible to the
cries and caresses of her lover.
It is in "Émile" that Rousseau gives the most elaborate expression of
his religious opinions, putting them in the mouth of a poor curate in
Savoy.[Footnote: The passage is known as "Profession de Foi du Vicaire
savoyard" and is found in the fourth book of _Émile_, _Oeuvres_, iv.
136-254.] The pupil has been kept ignorant of all religion to the age
of eighteen, "for if he learns it earlier than he should, he runs the
risk of never knowing it." Without stopping to consider the dangers of
this course, let us see what answer Rousseau gives to the greatest
questions that perplex mankind. We may expect much sublime feeling,
some moral perversion, little logical thought.
The Roman Church, he says, by calling on us to believe too much, may
prevent our believing anything. We know not where to stop. But doubt on
matters so important to us is a state unbearable to the human mind. It
decides one way or another in spite of itself, and prefers to make a
mistake rather than to believe nothing.
Motion can originate only in will. "I believe, then, that a will moves
the universe and animates nature."... "How does a will produce a
physical and corporeal action? I do not know, but I feel within myself
that it does produce it. I will to act, and I act; I wish to move my
body, and my body moves; but that an inanimate body in repose should
move itself, or should produce motion, is incomprehensible and without
example."... "If matter moved shows me will, matter moved according to
certain laws shows me intelligence; this is my second article of faith."
We see that the universe has a plan, although we do not see to what it
tends. I cannot believe that dead matter has produced living and feeling
beings, that blind chance has produced intelligent beings, that what
does not think has produced what thinks. "Whether matter is eternal or
created, whether or not there is a passive principle, it is certain that
all is one and proclaims a single intelligence; for I see nothing which
is not ordered in the same system, and which does not concur to the same
end, namely, the preservation of the whole in the established order.
This Being who wills and who can, this Being active in Himself, this
Being, whatever he may be, who moves the universe and orders all things,
I call God. I attach to this name the ideas of intelligence, power and
will, which I have united to form the conception, and that of
goodness which is their necessary consequence; but I know no better the
Being to whom I have given it; He hides Himself alike from my senses and
my understanding; the more I think of it, the more I am confused; I know
very certainly that He exists and that He exists by himself; I know that
my existence is subordinated to His, and that all things that I know of
are in the same case. I perceive God everywhere in His works; I feel Him
in myself, I see Him about me; but as soon as I want to contemplate Him
in Himself, as soon as I want to seek where He is, what He is, what is
His substance, He escapes from me, and my troubled spirit perceives
nothing more."
Having considered the attributes of God, the Savoyard curate turns to
himself. He finds that he can observe and govern other creatures; whence
he infers that they may all be made for him. But mankind differs from
all other things in nature by being inharmonious, disorderly, and
miserable. Man has in himself two distinct principles, one of which
lifts him to the study of eternal truth, to the love of justice and
moral beauty; the other enslaves him under the rule of the senses, and
the passions which are their servants. "No! "cries the curate, "man is
not one; I will, and I will not; I feel myself at once enslaved, and
free; I see good, I love it, and I do evil; I am active when I listen to
reason, passive when my passions carry me away; my worst torture, when I
fail, is to feel that I could have resisted."
Man is free in his actions, and, therefore, animated by an immaterial
substance. This is the third article of the curate's faith. Conscience
is the voice of the soul; the passions are the voices of the body.
Immortality of the soul is a pleasing doctrine and there is nothing to
contradict it. "When, delivered from the illusions caused by the body
and the senses, we shall enjoy the contemplation of the Supreme Being,
and of the eternal truths whose source He is, when the beauty of order
shall strike all the powers of our soul, and we shall be solely occupied
in comparing what we have done with what we ought to have done, then
will the voice of conscience resume its force and its empire; then will
the pure bliss which is born of self-content, and the bitter regret for
self-debasement, distinguish by inexhaustible feelings the fate which
each man will have prepared for himself. Ask me not, O my good friend,
if there will be other sources of happiness and of misery; I do not
know, and the one I imagine is enough to console me for this life and to
make me hope for another. I do not say that the good will be rewarded;
for what other reward can await an excellent being than to live in
accordance with his nature; but I say that they will be happy, because
the Author of their being, the Author of all justice, having made them
to feel, has not made them to suffer; and because, not having abused
their liberty on the earth, they have not changed their destiny by their
own fault; yet they have suffered in this life, and so they will have it
made up to them in another. This feeling is less founded on the merit of
man than on the notion of goodness which seems to me inseparable from
the divine essence. I only suppose the laws of order to be observed, and
God consistent with Himself."[Footnote: "Non pas pour nous, non pas
pour nous, Seigneur, Mais pour ton nom, mais pour ton propre honneur, O
Dieu! fais nous revivre! Ps. 115." (Rousseau's note).]
"Neither ask me if the torments of the wicked will be eternal, and
whether it is consistent with the goodness of the Author of their being
to condemn them to suffer forever; I do not know that either, and have
not the vain curiosity to examine useless questions. What matters it to
me what becomes of the wicked? I take little interest in their fate.
Nevertheless I find it hard to believe that they are condemned to
endless torments. If Supreme Justice avenges itself, it avenges itself
in this life. You and your errors, O nations, are its ministers! It
employs the ills which you make to punish the crimes which brought them
about. It is in your insatiable hearts, gnawed with envy, avarice, and
ambition, that the avenging passions punish your crimes, in the midst of
your false prosperity. What need to seek hell in the other life? It is
already here, in the hearts of the wicked."
Revelation is unnecessary. Miracles need proof more than they give it.
As soon as the nations undertook to make God speak, each made Him speak
in its own way. If men had listened only to what He says in their
hearts, there had been but one religion upon earth. "I meditate on the
order of the universe, not to explain it by vain systems, but to admire
it unceasingly, to adore the wise Author who is felt in it. I converse
with Him, I let His divine essence penetrate all my faculties, I
tenderly remember His benefits, I bless Him for His gifts; but I do not
pray to Him. What should I ask Him? That He should change the course of
things on my account; that He should perform miracles in my favor? I,
who should love more than all things the order established by His
wisdom, and maintained by His Providence, should I wish to see that
order interfered with for me? No, that rash prayer would deserve to be
punished rather than to be answered. Nor do I ask Him for the power to
do good; why ask Him for what He has given me? Has He not given me a
conscience to love the good; reason, to know it; liberty, to choose it?
If I do evil, I have no excuse; I do it because I will; to ask him to
change my will is to ask of Him what He demands of me; it is wanting Him
to do my work, and let me take the reward; not to be content with my
state is to want to be a man no longer, it is to want things otherwise
than they are, it is to want disorder and evil. Source of justice and
truth, clement and kind God! in my trust in Thee the supreme wish of my
heart is that Thy will may be done. In uniting mine to it, I do what
thou doest, I acquiesce in Thy goodness; I seem to share beforehand the
supreme felicity which is its price."
This appears to have been Rousseau's deliberate opinion on the subject
of prayer. He has, however, expressed in the "New Heloisa" quite another
view, which is found in a letter from Julie to Saint-Preux, and is
inserted principally, perhaps, to give the latter an opportunity to
answer it. Yet Rousseau, as we have often seen, although unable to
understand that any one could honestly differ from himself, was quite
capable of holding conflicting opinions. And the value of any one of his
sayings is not much diminished by the fact that it is contradicted in
the next chapter. "You have religion," says Julie,[Footnote:
_Nouvelle Héloïse_, Part. vi. Let. vi. (_Oeuvres_, x. 261).]
"but I am afraid that you do not get from it all the advantage which it
offers in the conduct of life, and that philosophical pride may disdain
the simplicity of the Christian. I have seen you hold opinions on prayer
which are not to my taste. According to you, this act of humility is
fruitless for us; and God, having given us, in our consciences, all that
can lead us to good, afterwards leaves us to ourselves and allows our
liberty to act. That is not, as you know, the doctrine of Saint Paul,
nor that which is professed in our church. We are free, it is true, but
we are ignorant, weak, inclined to evil. And whence should light and
strength come to us, if not from Him who is their source? And why should
we obtain them, if we do not deign to ask for them? Beware, my friend,
lest to your sublime conceptions of the Great Being, human pride join
low ideas, which belong but to mankind; as if the means which relieve
our weakness were suitable to divine Power, and as if, like us, It
required art to generalize things, so as to treat them more easily! It
seems, to listen to you, that this Power would be embarrassed should It
watch over every individual; you fear that a divided and continual
attention might fatigue It, and you think it much finer that It should
do everything by general laws, doubtless because they cost It less care.
O great philosophers! How much God is obliged to you for your easy
methods and for sparing Him work."
Enough has been said of the theism of Rousseau to show its great
difference from that of Voltaire and of his followers. His attitude
toward them is not unlike that of Socrates toward the Sophists. Indeed,
Jean Jacques, by whomever inspired, is far more of a prophet than of a
philosopher. He speaks by an authority which he feels to be above
argument. In opposition to Locke and to all his school, he dares to
believe in innate ideas, although he calls them feelings.[Footnote:
"When, first occupied with the object, we think of ourselves only by
reflection, it is an idea; on the other hand, when the impression
received excites our first attention and we think only by reflection on
the object which causes it, it is a sensation." _Oeuvres_, iv. 195
_n_. (_Émile_, liv. iv.).] These innate ideas are love of
self, fear of pain, horror of death, the desire for well-being.
Conscience may well be one of them.
"My son," cries the Savoyard curate, "keep your soul always in a state
to desire that there may be a God, and you will never doubt it.
Moreover, whatever course you may adopt, consider that the true duties
of religion are independent of the institutions of men; that a just
heart is the true temple of Divinity; that in all countries and all
sects, to love God above all things, and your neighbor as yourself, is
the sum of the law; that no religion dispenses with the moral duties;
that these are the only duties really essential; that the inward worship
is the first of these duties, and that without faith no true virtue
exists.
"Flee from those who, under the pretense of explaining nature, sow
desolating doctrines in the hearts of men, and whose apparent skepticism
is a hundred times more affirmative and more dogmatic than the decided
tone of their adversaries."
At the time when "Émile" was written, Jean Jacques had quarreled
personally with most of his old associates of the Philosophic school.
Diderot, D'Alembert, Grimm, and their master, Voltaire,--Rousseau had
some real or fancied grievance against them all. But the difference
between him and them was intrinsic, not accidental. By nature and
training they belonged to the rather thin rationalism of the eighteenth
century; a rationalism which was so eager to believe nothing not
acquired through the senses that it preferred to leave half the
phenomena of life not only unaccounted for but unconsidered, because to
account for them by its own methods was difficult, if not impossible.
Rousseau, at least, contemplated the whole of human nature, its
affections, aspirations, and passions, as well as its observations and
reflections, and this was the secret of his influence over men.