ICI REPOSE
L'HOMME DE LA NATURE
ET DE LA VÉRITÉ.
_Vitam impendere vero._
These last words he had adopted as his device. His grave ought to have
been held sacred; but, in the rage for desecration that possessed the
French at the period of the revolution, the body was exhumed and placed
in the Pantheon. When the allies invaded France, out of respect for his
memory, Ermenonville was exempted from contribution.
Rousseau has described himself; but, though sincere in an unexampled
degree, it is difficult to appreciate his character from the
"Confessions." A recent writer, Barante, founding his opinion on this
work, considers him a proud and envious egotist, full of vague
aspirations after virtue, incapable of a virtuous deed; yet we find
Saint Pierre, who knew him during the latter years of his life, when the
struggle between circumstances and his disposition had ceased, and his
character was formed, applaud his firm probity, his mild benevolence,
his frankness and natural gaiety of heart. One fact stamps Rousseau with
nobleness of soul. We turn to the pages of Voltaire's Correspondence,
and find it full of the most vilifying and insolent epithets applied to
his great contemporary--the opprobrium and insult with which he loads
his name bearing the stamp of the impurity and arrogance of his own
heart. Rousseau never spoke ill of Voltaire: when others dispraised, he
defended him; this might be the result of pride, but it was a noble and
generous pride.
Rousseau was proud; nourished in dreams of ancient virtue or chivalrous
romance, he respected himself, and he felt deeply aggrieved if he did
not meet respect in others. It is a strange anomaly to find this proud
man confessing the most degrading errors; but this arose from the
highest pride of all, and the most mistaken: he declared his faults, and
yet assumed himself to be better than other men.
Was Rousseau envious? Grimm says, that anger at finding men of greater
genius preferred engendered most of his ill-humour against society. But
who were these superior men? not Voltaire, with whom, as older than
himself, he never competed: it was Helvetius, Thomas, and, above all,
Diderot. Whatever merits Diderot had in society and conversation, he is
so poor a writer that Rousseau could never have been really hurt by any
mistaken preference shown him. Envy, base as it is, does not stoop to
envy that which is immeasurably inferior. Rousseau had certainly
sufficient cause to be displeased with Diderot, the tone of his letters
being arrogant and presumptuous; but his real displeasure was caused by
the belief that he had betrayed him, when he confided to him his
sentiments for madame d'Houdetot: balked and trampled on all sides, he
was stung to resent his disappointment somewhere, and he selected
Diderot for his victim. This was very wrong and self-deceptive: he
quotes good authority for proving the propriety of declaring to the
world that he and Diderot wore no longer friends, and there was no great
harm in so doing; but when he appended the quotation from Ecclesiastes
in a note, accusing Diderot of a great social crime, the betraying the
secret of a friend, he erred grossly, and cannot be defended.
Rousseau had passed his existence in romantic reveries. This abstraction
of mind always engenders an indolence that concentrates the mind in
self, and hates to be intruded upon by outward circumstances. Pride and
indolence conjoined, created the independence of spirit for which he
took praise to himself. Independence is of two sorts. When we sacrifice
our pleasures and our tastes to preserve the dear privilege of not
deferring our principles and feelings to others, we foster an exalted
virtue; but the independence that finds duty an unwelcome clog--that
regards the just claims of our fellow-creatures as injurious and
intolerable, and that casts off the affections as troublesome
shackles--is one of the greatest errors that the human heart can
nourish; and such was the independence to which Rousseau aspired when he
neglected the first duty of man by abandoning his children. He often
dilates on simple pleasures--the charms of unsophisticated affections,
and the ecstasy to be derived from virtuous sympathy--he, who never felt
the noblest and most devoted passion of the human soul--the love of a
parent for his child! We cannot help thinking that even while Rousseau
defends himself by many baseless sophisms, that this crime, rankling at
his heart, engendered much of the misery that he charged upon his
fellow-creatures. Still Barante is unjust when he declares Rousseau's
life to have been devoid of virtuous actions. He was unpretendingly
charitable; and his fidelity to Thérèse, unworthy as she was, deserves
praise. It would have been easy to cast her off, and gain a more
suitable companion; but he bore her defects; and even to the last, when
it has been suspected that her worthlessness drove him to suicide, he
never complained. There was, with all his errors, great nobleness in
Rousseau's soul. The pride and envy of which he is accused led him to
cherish poverty, to repel benefits, to suspect his friends, but never to
cringe, or grasp, or lie. Distrust was his chief error--a mighty
one--but it did not injure others, while it destroyed himself.
Of his works, the "Emile" stands in the first rank for its utility: his
theories however engendered some errors. The notion to which he was
attached, that entire independence, even of natural duties, was the
state congenial to man, mars many of his views. He would not allow a man
to be a father, scarcely a woman to be a mother; yet such are the
natural and imperative duties of life, even in the most primitive states
of society. We may add a further defect, gathered partly from the
continuation he projected. Sophie proves faithless; and Emile,
meditating on the conduct he ought to pursue, makes himself the centre
of his reflections, nor reverts to the claims which his unhappy wife and
blameless child have still on him. He leaves both to the mercy of a hard
world, and affords another proof of Rousseau's natural deficiency in a
sense of duty. Barante well observes that the "Emile" is the less
useful, because it gives no rules for public education; and public
education is doubtless the best fitted to form the character of social
man. Properly carried on, it prevents all need of having recourse to
those plans and impostures which deface Rousseau's system. The little
world of boys brings its own necessities and lessons with it: the chief
care devolving on the master, to prevent the elder and stronger from
domineering over the young and weak.
He perverts virtue and vice in the "Heloïse" still more glaringly, and
clashes against the prejudices of every country. In France, the fault of
an unmarried girl was regarded as peculiarly degrading and even
ridiculous, and the early error of Julie therefore could find little
sympathy in that country. In ours we commiserate such; but we turn
disgusted from her wedding another man; and the marriage with the
elderly Wolmar, which Rousseau makes the crown of her virtue, is to us
the seal of her degradation. His ideas also of a perfect life are
singularly faulty. It includes no instruction, no endeavours to acquire
knowledge and refine the soul by study; but is contracted to mere
domestic avocations, and to association with servants and labourers, on
their own footing of ignorance, though such must lead to mean and
trivial occupations and thoughts.
No author knows better than Rousseau how to spread a charm over the
internal movements of the mind, over the struggles of passion, over
romantic reveries that absorb the soul, abstracting it from real life
and our fellow-creatures, and causing it to find its joys in itself. No
author is more eloquent in paradox, and no man more sublime in
inculcating virtue. While Voltaire taints and degrades all that is
sacred and lovely by the grossness of his imagination, Rousseau
embellishes even the impure, by painting it in colours that hide its real
nature; and imparts to the emotions of sense all the elevation and
intensity of delicate and exalted passion.
[Footnote 8: He describes this moment of spontaneous inspiration in one
of his letters to M. de Malesherbes, and in his Confessions, with
enthusiastic eloquence. Diderot denied the truth of the statement,
saying, that in fact Rousseau had shown him the question in the
newspaper, in the park of Vincennes, and said, that he meant to write in
favour of the arts and sciences; but, on the representation of Diderot,
he found that finer things might be said on the other side, and
consequently adopted it. We doubt all this. Our own experience has shown
us the great mistakes people can fall into, when they pretend to recount
the thoughts and actions of others. Rousseau would never have written
this detail to M. de Malesherbes, had he not believed it to be true; and
we think that he is more likely to have known the truth than Diderot.]
[Footnote 9: There is an admirable letter addressed by the countess de
Boufflers to Hume, which proves the ill-treatment which Rousseau met,
and the general spirit of unkindness and treacherous ridicule in vogue
against him; while at the same time the writer does not defend
Rousseau's extravagant suspicions and conduct. The good sense and good
taste of the whole letter is remarkable. Unfortunately placid David Hume
had suffered himself to be led away by anger, and it was of no avail.]