LORD'S LECTURES
BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY, VOLUME XIII
GREAT WRITERS.
Dr Lord's Uncompleted Plan, Supplemented with Essays by
Emerson, Macaulay, Hedge, And Mercer Adam
BY JOHN LORD, LL.D.,
AUTHOR OF "THE OLD ROMAN WORLD," "MODERN EUROPE,"
ETC., ETC.
PUBLISHERS' PREFACE.
This being the last possible volume in the series of "Beacon Lights of
History" from the pen of Dr. Lord, its readers will be interested to
know that it contains all the lectures that he had completed (although
not all that he had projected) for his review of certain of the chief
Men of Letters. Lectures on other topics were found among his papers,
but none that would perfectly fit into this scheme; and it was thought
best not to attempt any collection of his material which he himself had
not deemed worthy or appropriate for use in this series, which embodies
the best of his life's work,--all of his books and his lectures that he
wished to have preserved. For instance, "The Old Roman World," enlarged
in scope and rewritten, is included in the volumes on "Old Pagan
Civilizations," "Ancient Achievements," and "Imperial Antiquity;" much
of his "Modern Europe" reappears in "Great Rulers," "Modern European
Statesmen," and "European National Leaders," etc.
The consideration of "Great Writers" was reserved by Dr. Lord for his
final task,--a task interrupted by death and left unfinished. In order
to round out and complete this volume, recourse has been had to some
other masters in literary art, whose productions are added to Dr. Lord's
final writings.
In the present volume, therefore, are included the paper on
"Shakspeare" by Emerson, reprinted from his "Representative Men" by
permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., the authorized publishers
of Emerson's works; the famous essay on "Milton" by Macaulay; the
principal portion--biographical and generally critical--of the article
on "Goethe," from "Hours with the German Classics," by the late Dr.
Frederic H. Hedge, by permission of Messrs. Little, Brown & Co., the
publishers of that work; and a chapter on "Tennyson: the Spirit of
Modern Poetry," by G. Mercer Adam.
A certain advantage may accrue to the reader in finding these masters
side by side for comparison and for gauging Dr. Lord's unique life-work
by recognized standards, keeping well in view the purpose no less than
the perfection of these literary performances, all of which, like those
of Dr. Lord, were aimed at setting forth the services of _selected
forces_ in the world's life.
NEW YORK, September 15, 1902.
CONTENTS.
ROUSSEAU.
SOCIALISM AND EDUCATION.
Jean Jacques Rousseau and Edmund Burke
Rousseau representative of his century
Birth
Education and early career; engraver, footman
Secretary, music teacher, and writer
Meets Thérèse
His first public essay in literature
Operetta and second essay
Geneva; the Hermitage; Madame d'Épinay.
The "Nouvelle Héloïse;" Comtesse d'Houdetot
"Émile;" "The Social Contract"
Books publicly burned; author flees
England; Hume; the "Confessions"
Death, career reviewed
Character of Rousseau
Essay on the Arts and Sciences
"Origin of Human Inequalities"
"The Social Contract"
"Émile"
The "New Héloïse"
The "Confessions"
Influence of Rousseau
SIR WALTER SCOTT.
THE MODERN NOVEL.
Scott and Byron
Evanescence of literary fame
Parentage of Scott
Birth and childhood
Schooling and reading
Becomes an advocate
His friends and pleasures
Personal peculiarities
Writing of poetry; first publication
Marriage and settlement
"Scottish Minstrelsy"
"Lay of the Last Minstrel;" Ashestiel rented
The Edinburgh Review: Jeffrey, Brougham, Smith
The Ballantynes
"Marmion"
Jeffrey as a critic
Quarrels of author and publishers; Quarterly Review
Scott's poetry
Duration of poetic fame
Clerk of Sessions; Abbotsford bought
"Lord of the Isles;" "Rokeby"
Fiction; fame of great authors
"Waverley"
"Guy Mannering"
Great popularity of Scott
"The Antiquary"
"Old Mortality;" comparisons
"Rob Roy"
Scotland's debt to Scott
Prosperity; rank; correspondence
Personal habits
Life at Abbotsford
Chosen friends
Works issued in 1820-1825
Bankruptcy through failure of his publishers
Scott's noble character and action
Works issued in 1825-1831
Illness and death
Payment of his enormous debt
Vast pecuniary returns from his works
LORD BYRON.
POETIC GENIUS.
Difficulty of depicting Byron
Descent; birth; lameness
Schooling; early reading habits
College life
Temperament and character
First publication of poems
Savage criticism by Edinburgh Review
"English Bards and Scotch Reviewers"
Byron becomes a peer
Loneliness and melancholy; determines to travel
Portugal; Spain
Malta; Greece; Turkey
Profanity of language in Byron's time
"Childe Harold"
Instant fame and popularity
Consideration of the poem
Marries Miss Milbanke; separation
Genius and marriage
"The Corsair;" "Bride of Abydos"
Evil reputation; loss of public favor
Byron leaves England forever
Switzerland; the Shelleys; new poems
Degrading life in Venice
Wonderful labors amid dissipation
The Countess Guiccioli
Two sides to Byron's character
His power and fertility
Inexcusable immorality; "Don Juan"
"Manfred" and "Cain" not irreligious but dramatic
Byron not atheistical but morbid
Many noble traits and actions
Generosity and fidelity in friendship
Eulogies by Scott and Moore
Byron's interest in the Greek Revolution
Devotes himself to that cause
Raises £10,000 and embarks for Greece
Collects troops in his own pay
His latest verses
Illness from vexation and exposure
Death and burial
The verdict
THOMAS CARLYLE.
CRITICISM AND BIOGRAPHY.
Froude's Biography of Carlyle
Brief résumé of Carlyle's career
Parentage and birth
Slender education; school-teaching
Abandons clerical intentions to become a writer
"Elements of Geometry;" "Life of Schiller;" "Wilhelm Meister"
Marries Jane Welsh
Her character
Edinburgh and Craigenputtock
Essays: "German Literature"
Goethe's "Helena"
"Burns"
"Life of Heyne;" "Voltaire"
"Characteristics"
Wholesome and productive life at Craigenputtock
"Dr. Johnson"
Friendship with Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Sartor Resartus"
Carlyle removes to London
Begins "The French Revolution"
Manuscript accidentally destroyed
Habits of great authors in rewriting
Publication of the work; Carlyle's literary style
Better reception in America than in England
Carlyle begins lecturing
Popular eloquence in England
Carlyle and the Chartists
"Heroes and Hero Worship"
"Past and Present"
Carlyle becomes bitter
"Latter-Day Pamphlets"
"Life of Oliver Cromwell"
Carlyle's confounding right with might
Great merits of Carlyle as historian
Death of Mrs. Carlyle
Success of Carlyle established
"Frederick the Great"
Decline of the author's popularity
Public honors; private sorrow
Final illness and death
Carlyle's place in literature
LORD MACAULAY.
ARTISTIC HISTORICAL WRITING.
Macaulay's varied talents
Descent and parentage
Birth and youth
Education
Character; his greatness intellectual rather than moral
College career
Enters the law
His early writings; poetry; essay on Milton
Social success; contemporaries
Enters politics and Parliament
Sent to India; secretary board of education
Essays in the Reviews
Limitations as a statesman
Devotion to literature
Personal characteristics
Return to London and public office
Still writing essays; "Warren Hastings," "Clive"
Special public appreciation in America
Drops out of Parliament; begins "History of England"
Prodigious labor; extent and exactness of his knowledge
Self-criticism; brilliancy of style
Some inconsistencies
Public honors
Remarkable successes; re-enters Parliament
Illness and growing weakness
Conclusion of the History; foreign and domestic honors
Resigns seat in Parliament
Social habits
Literary tastes
Final illness and death; his fame
SHAKSPEARE; OR, THE POET.
BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
The debt of genius to its age and preceding time.
The era of Shakspeare favorable to dramatic entertainments.
The stage a substitute for the newspaper of his era.
The poet draws upon extant materials--the lime and mortar to his hand.
Plays which show the original rock on which his own finer stratum is
laid.
In drawing upon tradition and upon earlier plays the poet's memory is
taxed equally with his invention.
All originality is relative; every thinker is retrospective.
The world's literary treasure the result of many a one's labor;
centuries have contributed to its existence and perfection.
Shakspeare's contemporaries, correspondents, and acquaintances.
Work of the Shakspeare Society in gathering material to throw light upon
the poet's life, and to illustrate the development of the drama.
His external history meagre; Shakspeare is the only biographer of
Shakspeare.
What the sonnets and the dramas reveal of the poet's mind and character.
His unique creative power, wisdom of life, and great gifts of
imagination.
Equality of power in farce, tragedy, narrative, and love-songs.
Notable traits in the poet's character and disposition; his tone pure,
sovereign, and cheerful.
Despite his genius, he shares the halfness and imperfection of humanity.
A seer who saw all things to convert them into entertainments, as master
of the revels to mankind.
JOHN MILTON: POET AND PATRIOT.
BY THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.
His long-lost essay on Doctrines of Christianity.
As a poet, his place among the greatest masters of the art.
Unfavorable circumstances of his era, born "an age too late".
A rude era more favorable to poetry.
The poetical temperament highest in a rude state of society.
Milton distinguished by the excellence of his Latin verse.
His genius gives to it an air of nobleness and freedom.
Characteristics and magical influence of Milton's poetry.
Mechanism of his language attains exquisite perfection.
"L'Allegro" and "II Penseroso," "Comus" and "Samson Agonistes"
described.
"Comus" properly more lyrical than dramatic.
Milton's preference for "Paradise Regained" over "Paradise Lost".
Contrasts between Milton and Dante.
Milton's handling of supernatural beings in his poetry.
His art of communicating his meaning through succession of associated
ideas.
Other contrasts between Milton and Dante--the mysterious and the
picturesque in their verse.
Milton's fiends wonderful creations, not metaphysical abstractions.
Moral qualities of Milton and Dante.
The Sonnets simple but majestic records of the poet's feelings.
Milton's public conduct that of a man of high spirit and powerful
intellect.
Eloquent champion of the principles of freedom.
His public conduct to be esteemed in the light of the times, and of its
great question whether the resistance of the people to Charles I. was
justifiable or criminal.
Approval of the Great Rebellion and of Milton's attitude towards it.
Eulogium on Cromwell and approval of Milton's taking office (Latin
Secretaryship) under him.
The Puritans and Royalists, or Roundheads and Cavaliers.
The battle Milton fought for freedom of the human mind.
High estimate of Milton's prose works.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE.
GERMANY'S GREATEST WRITER.
BY FREDERIC HENRY HEDGE.
Fills highest place among the poets and prose-writers of Germany.
Influences that made the man.
Self-discipline and educational training.
Counsellor to Duke Karl August at Weimar, where he afterwards resides.
Visits Italy; makes Schiller's acquaintance; Goethe's personal
appearance.
His unflagging industry; defence of the poet's personal character.
The "Märchen," its interpretation and the light it throws on Goethe's
political career.
Lyrist, dramatist, novelist, and mystic seer.
His drama "Götz von Berlichingen," and "Sorrows of Werther".
Popularity of his ballads; his elegies, and "Hermann und Dorothea".
"Iphigenie auf Tauris;" his stage plays "Faust" (First Part) and
"Egmont".
The prose works "Wilhelm Meister" and the "Elective Affinities".
His skill in the delineation of female character.
"Faust;" contrasts in spirit and style between the two Parts.
Import of the work, key to or analysis of the plot.
ALFRED (LORD) TENNYSON.
THE SPIRIT OF MODERN POETRY.
BY G. MERCER ADAM.
Tennyson's supreme excellence--his transcendent art.
His work the perfection of literary form; his melody exquisite.
Representative of the age's highest thought and culture.
Keen interpreter of the deep underlying spirit of his time.
Contemplative and brooding verse, full of rhythmic beauty.
The "Idylls of the King," their deep ethical motive and underlying
purpose.
His profound religious convictions and belief in the eternal verities.
Hallam Tennyson's memoir of the poet; his friends and intimates.
The poet's birth, family, and youthful characteristics
Early publishing ventures; his volume of 1842 gave him high rank.
Personal appearance, habits, and mental traits.
"In Memoriam," its noble, artistic expression of sorrow for Arthur
Hallam.
"The Princess" and its moral, in the treatment of its "Woman Question"
theme.
The metrical romance "Maud," and "The Idylls of the King," an epic of
chivalry.
"Enoch Arden," and the dramas "Harold," "Becket," and "Queen Mary".
Other dramatic compositions: "The Falcon," "The Cup," and "The Promise
of May".
The pastoral play, "The Foresters," and later collections of poems and
ballads.
The poet's high faith, and belief that "good is the final goal of ill".
His exalted place among the great literary influences of his era.
Expressive to his age of the high and hallowing Spirit of Modern
Poetry.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
VOLUME XIII.
The Young Goethe at Frankfort _Frontispiece_
_After the painting by Frank Kirchbach_.
Jean Jacques Rousseau
_After the painting by M. Q. de la Tour, Chantilly, France_.
Sir Walter Scott
_After the painting by Sir Henry Raeburn, R. A_.
Lord Byron
_After the painting by P. Krämer_.
François Marie Arouet de Voltaire
_After the painting by M. Q. de la Tour, Endoxe Marville
Collection, Paris_.
Thomas Carlyle
_After a photograph from life_
Thomas Babington Macaulay
_After a photograph by Maule, London_.
William Shakspeare
_After the "Chandos Portrait," National Portrait Gallery, London_.
John Milton
_After the painting by Pieter van der Plaas_.
Milton Visits the Aged Galileo
_After the painting by T. Lessi_.
Goethe
_After the painting by C. Jaeger_.
Alfred (Lord) Tennyson
_After the painting by G. F. Watts, R. A_.
Tennyson's Elaine
_After the painting by T. E. Rosenthal_.
BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY.
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU.
1712-1778.
SOCIALISM AND EDUCATION.
Two great political writers in the eighteenth century, of antagonistic
views, but both original and earnest, have materially affected the whole
science of government, and even of social life, from their day to ours,
and in their influence really belong to the nineteenth century. One was
the apostle of radicalism; the other of conservatism. The one, more than
any other single man, stimulated, though unwittingly, the French
Revolution; the other opposed that mad outburst with equal eloquence,
and caused in Europe a reaction from revolutionary principles. While one
is far better known to-day than the other, to the thoughtful both are
exponents and representatives of conflicting political and social
questions which agitate this age.
These men were Jean Jacques Rousseau and Edmund Burke,--one Swiss, and
the other English. Burke I have already treated of in a former volume.
His name is no longer a power, but his influence endures in all the
grand reforms of which he was a part, and for which his generation in
England is praised; while his writings remain a treasure-house of
political and moral wisdom, sure to be drawn upon during every public
discussion of governmental principles. Rousseau, although a writer of a
hundred years ago, seems to me a fit representative of political,
social, and educational ideas in the present day, because his theories
are still potent, and even in this scientific age more widely diffused
than ever before. Not without reason, it is true, for he embodied
certain germinant ideas in a fascinating literary style; but it is hard
to understand how so weak a man could have exercised such far-reaching
influence.
Himself a genuine and passionate lover of Nature; recognizing in his
principles of conduct no duties that could conflict with personal
inclinations; born in democratic and freedom-loving Switzerland, and
early imbued through his reading of German and English writers with
ideas of liberty,--which in those conservative lands were
wholesome,--he distilled these ideas into charming literary creations
that were eagerly read by the restless minds of France and wrought in
them political frenzy. The reforms he projected grew out of his theories
of the "rights" of man, without reference to the duties that limit those
rights; and his appeal for their support to men's passions and selfish
instincts and to a sentimental philosophy, in an age of irreligion and
immorality, aroused a political tempest which he little contemplated.
In an age so infidel and brilliant as that which preceded the French
Revolution, the writings of Rousseau had a peculiar charm, and produced
a great effect even on men who despised his character and ignored his
mission. He engendered the Robespierres and Condorcets of the
Revolution,--those sentimental murderers, who under the guise of
philosophy attacked the fundamental principles of justice and destroyed
the very rights which they invoked.
Jean Jacques Rousseau was born at Geneva in the year 1712, when Voltaire
was first rising into notice. He belonged to the plebeian ranks, being
the son of a watchmaker; was sickly, miserable, and morbid from a child;
was poorly educated, but a great devourer of novels (which his
father--sentimental as he--read with him), poetry, and gushing
biographies; although a little later he became, with impartial facility,
equally delighted with the sturdy Plutarch. His nature was passionate
and inconstant, his sensibilities morbidly acute, and his imagination
lively. He hated all rules, precedents, and authority. He was lazy,
listless, deceitful, and had a great craving for novelties and
excitement,--as he himself says, "feeling everything and knowing
nothing." At an early age, without money or friends, he ran away from
the engraver to whom he had been apprenticed, and after various
adventures was first kindly received by a Catholic priest in Savoy; then
by a generous and erring woman of wealth lately converted to
Catholicism; and again by the priests of a Catholic Seminary in
Sardinia, under whose tuition, and in order to advance his personal
fortunes, he abjured the religion in which he had been brought up, and
professed Catholicism. This, however, cost him no conscientious
scruples, for his religious training had been of the slimmest, and
principles he had none.
We next see Rousseau as a footman in the service of an Italian Countess,
where he was mean enough to accuse a servant girl of a theft he had
himself committed, thereby causing her ruin. Again, employed as a
footman in the service of another noble family, his extraordinary
talents were detected, and he was made secretary. But all this kindness
he returned with insolence, and again became a wanderer. In his
isolation he sought the protection of the Swiss lady who had before
befriended him, Madame de Warens. He began as her secretary, and ended
in becoming her lover. In her house he saw society and learned music.
A fit of caprice induced Rousseau to throw up this situation, and he
then taught music in Chambéry for a living, studied hard, read Voltaire,
Descartes, Locke, Hobbes, Leibnitz, and Puffendorf, and evinced an
uncommon vivacity and talent for conversation, which made him a favorite
in social circles. His chief labor, however, for five years was in
inventing a system of musical notation, which led him to Lyons, and
then, in 1741, to Paris.
He was now twenty-nine years old,--a visionary man, full of schemes,
with crude opinions and unbounded self-conceit, but poor and unknown,--a
true adventurer, with many agreeable qualities, irregular habits, and
not very scrupulous morals. Favored by letters of introduction to ladies
of distinction,--for he was a favorite with ladies, who liked his
enthusiasm, freshness, elegant talk, and grand sentiments,--he succeeded
in getting his system of musical notation examined, although not
accepted, by the French Academy, and secured an appointment as
secretary in the suite of the Ambassador to Venice.
In this city Rousseau remained but a short time, being disgusted with
what he called "official insolence," which did not properly recognize
native genius. He returned to Paris as poor as when he left it, and
lived in a cheap restaurant. There he made the acquaintance of his
Thérèse, a healthy, amiable woman, but low, illiterate, unappreciative,
and coarse, the author of many of his subsequent miseries. She lived
with him till he died,--at first as his mistress and housekeeper,
although later in life he married her. She was the mother of his five
children, every one of whom he sent to a foundling hospital, justifying
his inhumanity by those sophistries and paradoxes with which his
writings abound,--even in one of his letters appealing for pity because
he "had never known the sweetness of a father's embrace." With
extraordinary self-conceit, too, he looked upon himself, all the while,
in his numerous illicit loves, as a paragon of virtue, being apparently
without any moral sense or perception of moral distinctions.
It was not till Rousseau was thirty-nine years of age that he attracted
public attention by his writings, although earlier known in literary
circles,--especially in that infidel Parisian _coterie_, where Diderot,
Grimm, D'Holbach, D'Alembert, David Hume, the Marquis de Mirabeau,
Helvetius, and other wits shined, in which circle no genius was
acknowledged and no profundity of thought was deemed possible unless
allied with those pagan ideas which Saint Augustine had exploded and
Pascal had ridiculed. Even while living among these people, Rousseau had
all the while a kind of sentimental religiosity which revolted at their
ribald scoffing, although he never protested.
He had written some fugitive pieces of music, and had attempted and
failed in several slight operettas, composing both music and words; but
the work which made Rousseau famous was his essay on a subject
propounded in 1749 by the Academy of Dijon: "Has the Progress of Science
and the Arts Contributed to Corrupt or to Purify Morals?" This was a
strange subject for a literary institution to propound, but one which
exactly fitted the genius of Rousseau. The boldness of his paradox--for
he maintained the evil effects of science and art--and the brilliancy of
his style secured readers, although the essay was crude in argument and
false in logic. In his "Confessions" he himself condemns it as the
weakest of all his works, although "full of force and fire;" and he
adds: "With whatever talent a man may be born, the art of writing is not
easily learned." It has been said that Rousseau got the idea of taking
the "off side" of this question from his literary friend Diderot, and
that his unexpected success with it was the secret of his life-long
career of opposition to all established institutions. This is
interesting, but not very authentic.
The next year, his irregular activity having been again stimulated by
learning that his essay had gained the premium at Dijon, and by the fact
of its great vogue as a published pamphlet, another performance fairly
raised Rousseau to the pinnacle of fashion; and this was an opera which
he composed, "Le Devin du Village" (The Village Sorcerer), which was
performed at Fontainebleau before the Court, and received with
unexampled enthusiasm. His profession, so far as he had any, was that of
a copyist of music, and his musical taste and facile talents had at last
brought him an uncritical recognition.
But Rousseau soon abandoned music for literature. In 1753 he wrote
another essay for the Academy of Dijon, on the "Origin of the Inequality
of Man," full of still more startling paradoxes than his first, in which
he attempted to show, with great felicity of language, the superiority
of savage life over civilization.
At the age of forty-two Rousseau revisited Protestant Geneva, abjured in
its turn the Catholic faith, and was offered the post of librarian of
the city. But he could not live out of the atmosphere of Paris; nor did
he wish to remain under the shadow of Voltaire, living in his villa near
the City Gate of Geneva, who had but little admiration for Rousseau, and
whose superior social position excited the latter's envy. Yet he
professed to hate Paris with its conventionalities and fashions, and
sought a quiet retreat where he could more leisurely pursue his studies
and enjoy Nature, which he really loved. This was provided for him by an
enthusiastic friend,--Madame d'Épinay,--in the beautiful valley of
Montmorenci, and called "The Hermitage," situated in the grounds of her
Château de la Chevrette. Here he lived with his wife and mother-in-law,
he himself enjoying the hospitalities of the Château besides,--society
of a most cultivated kind, also woods, lawns, parks, gardens,--all for
nothing; the luxuries of civilization, the glories of Nature, and the
delights of friendship combined. It was an earthly paradise, given him
by enthusiastic admirers of his genius and conversation.
In this retreat, one of the most favored which a poor author ever had,
Rousseau, ever craving some outlet for his passionate sentiments,
created an ideal object of love. He wrote imaginary letters, dwelling
with equal rapture on those he wrote and those he fancied he received
in return, and which he read to his lady friends, after his rambles in
the forests and parks, during their reunions at the supper-table. Thus
was born the "Nouvelle Héloïse,"--a novel of immense fame, in which the
characters are invested with every earthly attraction, living in
voluptuous peace, yet giving vent to those passions which consume the
unsatisfied soul. It was the forerunner of "Corinne," "The Sorrows of
Werther," "Thaddeus of Warsaw," and all those sentimental romances which
amused our grandfathers and grandmothers, but which increased the
prejudice of religious people against novels. It was not until Sir
Walter Scott arose with his wholesome manliness that the embargo against
novels was removed.
The life which Rousseau lived at the Hermitage--reveries in the
forest, luxurious dinners, and sentimental friendships--led to a
passionate love-affair with the Comtesse d'Houdetot, a sister-in-law
of his patroness Madame d'Épinay,--a woman not only married,
but who had another lover besides. The result, of course, was
miserable,--jealousies, piques, humiliations, misunderstandings, and the
sundering of the ties of friendship, which led to the necessity of
another retreat: a real home the wretched man never had. This was
furnished, still in the vicinity of Montmorenci, by another aristocratic
friend, the Maréchal de Luxembourg, the fiscal agent of the Prince de
Condé. And nothing to me is stranger than that this wandering, morbid,
irritable man, without birth or fortune, the father of the wildest
revolutionary and democratic doctrines, and always hated both by the
Court and the Church, should have found his friends and warmest admirers
and patrons in the highest circles of social life. It can be explained
only by the singular fascination of his eloquence, and by the extreme
stolidity of his worshippers in appreciating his doctrines, and the
state of society to which his principles logically led.
In this second retreat Rousseau had the _entrée_ to the palace of the
Duke of Luxembourg, where he read to the friends assembled at its
banquets his new production, "Émile,"--a singular treatise on education,
not so faulty as his previous works, but still false in many of its
principles, especially in regard to religion. This book contained an
admirable and powerful impulse away from artificiality and towards
naturalness in education, which has exerted an immense influence for
good; we shall revert to it later.
A few months before the publication of "Émile," Rousseau had issued "The
Social Contract," the most revolutionary of all his works, subversive of
all precedents in politics, government, and the organization of society,
while also confounding Christianity with ecclesiasticism and attacking
its influence in the social order. All his works obtained a wide fame
before publication by reason of his habit of reading them to
enthusiastic and influential friends who made them known.
"The Social Contract," however, dangerous as it was, did not when
published arouse so much opposition as "Émile." The latter book, as we
now see, contained much that was admirable; but its freedom and
looseness in religious discussion called down the wrath of the clergy,
excited the alarm of the government, and finally compelled the author to
fly for his life to Switzerland.
Rousseau is now regarded as an enemy to Christian doctrine, even as he
was a foe to the existing institutions of society. In Geneva his books
are publicly burned. Henceforth his life is embittered by constant
persecution. He flies from canton to canton in the freest country in
Europe, obnoxious not only for his opinions but for his habits of life.
He affectedly adopts the Armenian dress, with its big fur bonnet and
long girdled caftan, among the Swiss peasantry. He is as full of
personal eccentricities as he is of intellectual crotchets. He becomes a
sort of literary vagabond, with every man's hand against him. He now
writes a series of essays, called "Letters from the Mountain," full of
bitterness and anti-Christian sentiments. So incensed by these writings
are the country people among whom he dwells that he is again forced
to fly.
David Hume, regarding him as a mild, affectionate, and persecuted man,
gives Rousseau a shelter in England. The wretched man retires to
Derbyshire, and there writes his "Confessions,"--the most interesting
and most dangerous of his books, showing a diseased and irritable mind,
and most sophistical views on the immutable principles of both morality
and religion. A victim of mistrust and jealousy, he quarrels with Hume,
who learns to despise his character, while pitying the sensitive
sufferings of one whom he calls "a man born without a skin."
Rousseau returns to France at the age of fifty-five. After various
wanderings he is permitted to settle in Paris, where he lives with great
frugality in a single room, poorly furnished,--supporting himself by
again copying music, sought still in high society, yet shy, reserved,
forlorn, bitter; occasionally making new friends, who are attracted by
the infantine simplicity of his manners and apparent amiability, but
losing them almost as soon as made by his petty jealousies and
irritability, being "equally indignant at neglect and intolerant of
attention."
Rousseau's declining health and the fear of his friends that he was on
the borders of insanity led to his last retreat, offered by a
munificent friend, at Ermenonville, near Paris, where he died at
sixty-six years of age, in 1778, as some think from poison administered
by his own hand. The revolutionary National Assembly of France in 1790
bestowed a pension of fifteen hundred francs on his worthless widow, who
had married a stable-boy soon after the death of her husband.
Such was the checkered life of Rousseau. As to his character, Lord
Brougham says that "never was so much genius before united with so much
weakness." The leading spring of his life was egotism. He never felt
himself wrong, and the sophistries he used to justify his immoralities
are both ludicrous and pitiable. His treatment of Madame de Warens, his
first benefactor, was heartless, while the abandonment of his children
was infamous. He twice changed his religion without convictions, for the
advancement of his fortunes. He pretended to be poor when he was
independent in his circumstances. He supposed himself to be without
vanity, while he was notoriously the most conceited man in France. He
quarrelled with all his friends. He made war on society itself. He
declared himself a believer in Christianity, but denied all revelation,
all miracles, all inspiration, all supernaturalism, and everything he
could not reconcile with his reason. His bitterest enemies were the
atheists themselves, who regarded him as a hypocrite, since he professed
to believe in what he undermined. The hostility of the Church was
excited against him, not because he directly assailed Christianity, but
because he denied all its declarations and sapped its authority.
Rousseau was, however, a sentimentalist rather than a rationalist, an
artist rather than a philosopher. He was not a learned man, but a bold
thinker. He would root out all distinctions in society, because they
could not be reconciled with his sense of justice. He preached a gospel
of human rights, based not on Christianity but on instinct. He was full
of impracticable theories. He would have no war, no suffering, no
hardship, no bondage, no fear, and even no labor, since these were
evils, and, according to his notions of moral government, unnecessary.
But in all his grand theories he ignored the settled laws of
Providence,--even those of that "Nature" he so fervently
worshipped,--all that is decreed concerning man or woman, all that is
stern and real in existence; and while he uttered such sophistries, he
excited discontent with the inevitable condition of man, he loosened
family ties, he relaxed wholesome restraints, he infused an intense
hatred of all conditions subject to necessary toil.
The life of this embittered philanthropist was as great a contradiction
as were his writings. This benevolent man sends his own children to a
foundling hospital. This independent man lives for years on the bounty
of an erring woman, whom at last he exposes and deserts. This
high-minded idealizer of friendship quarrels with every man who seeks to
extricate him from the consequences of his own imprudence. This
affectionate lover refuses a seat at his table to the woman with whom he
lives and who is the mother of his children. This proud republican
accepts a pension from King George III., and lives in the houses of
aristocratic admirers without payment. This religious teacher rarely
goes to church, or respects the outward observances of the Christianity
he affects. This moral theorizer, on his own confession, steals and lies
and cheats. This modest innocent corrupts almost every woman who listens
to his eloquence. This lofty thinker consumes his time in frivolity and
senseless quarrels. This patriot makes war on the institutions of his
country and even of civilized life. This humble man turns his back on
every one who will not do him reverence.
Such was this precursor of revolutions, this agitator, this hypocrite,
this egotist, this lying prophet,--a man admired and despised, brilliant
but indefinite, original but not true, acute but not wise; logical, but
reasoning on false premises; advancing some great truths, but spoiling
their legitimate effect by sophistries and falsehoods.
Why, then, discuss the ideas and influence of so despicable a creature?
Because, sophistical as they were, those ideas contained truths of
tremendous germinant power; because in the rank soil of his times they
produced a vast crop of bitter, poisonous fruit, while in the more open,
better aërated soil of this century they have borne and have yet to bear
a fruitage of universal benefit. God's ways seem mysterious; it is for
men patiently to study, understand, and utilize them.
Let us turn to the more definite consideration of the writings which
have given this author so brilliant a fame. I omit any review of his
operas and his system of musical notation, as not bearing on the
opinions of society.
The first work, as I have said, which brought Rousseau into notice was
the treatise for the Academy of Dijon, as to whether the arts and
sciences have contributed to corrupt or to purify morals. Rousseau
followed the bent of his genius, in maintaining that they have done more
harm than good; and he was so fresh and original and brilliant that he
gained the prize. This little work contains the germ of all his
subsequent theories, especially that in which he magnifies the state of
nature over civilization,--an amazing paradox, which, however, appealed
to society when men were wearied with the very pleasures for which
they lived.
Rousseau's cant about the virtues engendered by ignorance, idleness, and
barbarism is repulsive to every sound mind, Civilization may present
greater temptations than a state of nature, but these are inseparable
from any growth, and can be overcome by the valorous mind. Who but a
madman would sweep away civilization with its factitious and remediable
evils for barbarism with its untutored impulses and animal life? Here
Rousseau makes war upon society, upon all that is glorious in the
advance of intellect and the growth of morality,--upon the reason and
aspirations of mankind. Can inexperience be a better guide than
experience, when it encounters crime and folly? Yet, on the other hand,
a plea for greater simplicity of life, a larger study of Nature, and a
freer enjoyment of its refreshing contrasts to the hot-house life of
cities, is one of the most reasonable and healthful impulses of our
own day.
What can be more absurd, although bold and striking, than Rousseau's
essay on the "Origin of Human Inequalities"! In this he pushes out the
doctrine of personal liberty to its utmost logical sequence, so as to do
away with government itself, and with all regulation for the common
good. We do not quarrel with his abstract propositions in respect to
political equality; but his deductions strike a blow at civilization,
since he maintains that inequalities of human condition are the source
of all political and social evils, while Christianity, confirmed by
common-sense, teaches that the source of social evils is in the selfish
nature of man rather than in his outward condition. And further, if it
were possible to destroy the inequalities of life, they would soon again
return, even with the most boundless liberty. Here common-sense is
sacrificed to a captivating theory, and all the experiences of the world
are ignored.
This shows the folly of projecting any abstract theory, however true, to
its remote and logical sequence. In the attempt we are almost certain to
be landed in absurdity, so complicated are the relations of life,
especially in governmental and political science. What doctrine of civil
or political economy would be applicable in all ages and all countries
and all conditions? Like the ascertained laws of science, or the great
and accepted truths of the Bible, political axioms are to be considered
in their relation with other truths equally accepted, or men are soon
brought into a labyrinth of difficulties, and the strongest intellect is
perplexed.
And especially will this be the case when a theory under consideration
is not a truth but an assumption. That was the trouble with Rousseau.
His theories, disdainful of experience, however logically treated,
became in their remotest sequence and application insulting to the human
understanding, because they were often not only assumptions, but
assumptions of what was not true, although very specious and flattering
to certain classes.
Rousseau confounded the great truth of the justice of moral and
political equality with the absurd and unnatural demand for social and
material equality. The great modern cry for equal opportunity for all is
sound and Christian; but any attempt to guarantee individual success in
using opportunity, to insure the lame and the lazy an equal rank in the
race, must end in confusion and distraction.
The evil of Rousseau's crude theories or false assumptions was
practically seen in the acceptance of their logical conclusions, which
led to anarchy, murder, pillage, and outrageous excess. The great danger
attending his theories is that they are generally half-truths,--truth
and falsehood blended. His writings are sophistical. It is difficult to
separate the truth from the error, by reason of the marvellous felicity
of his language. I do not underrate his genius or his style. He was
doubtless an original thinker and a most brilliant and artistic writer;
and by so much did he confuse people, even by the speciousness of his
logic. There is nothing indefinite in what he advances. He is not a poet
dealing in mysticisms, but a rhetorical philosopher, propounding
startling theories, partly true and partly false, which he logically
enforces with matchless eloquence.
Probably the most influential of Rousseau's writings was "The Social
Contract,"--the great textbook of the Revolution. In this famous
treatise he advanced some important ideas which undoubtedly are based on
ultimate truth, such as that the people are the source of power, that
might does not make right, that slavery is an aggression on human
rights; but with these ideal truths he combines the assertion that
government is a contract between the governor and the governed. In a
perfect state of society this may be the ideal; but society is not and
never has been perfect, and certainly in all the early ages of the world
governments were imposed upon people by the strong hand, irrespective of
their will and wishes,--and these were the only governments which were
fit and useful in that elder day. Governments, as a plain matter of
fact, have generally arisen from circumstances and relations with which
the people have had little to do. The Oriental monarchies were the
gradual outgrowth of patriarchal tradition and successful military
leadership, and in regard to them the people were never consulted at
all. The Roman Empire was ruled without the consent of the governed.
Feudal monarchies in Europe were based on the divine rights of kings.
There was no state in Europe where a compact or social contract had been
made or implied. Even later, when the French elected Napoleon, they
chose a monarch because they feared anarchy, without making any
stipulation. There were no contracting parties.
The error of Rousseau was in assuming a social contract as a fact, and
then reasoning upon the assumption. His premises are wrong, or at least
they are nothing more than statements of what abstractly might be made
to follow from the assumption that the people actually are the source of
power,--a condition most desirable and in the last analysis correct,
since even military despots use the power of the people in order to
oppress the people, but which is practically true only in certain
states. Yet, after all, when brought under the domain of law by the
sturdy sense and utilitarian sagacity of the Anglo-Saxon race,
Rousseau's doctrine of the sovereignty of the people is the great
political motor of this century, in republics and monarchies alike.
Again, Rousseau maintains that, whatever acquisitions an individual or
a society may make, the right to this property must be always
subordinate to the right which the community at large has over the
possessions of all. Here is the germ of much of our present-day
socialism. Whatever element of truth there may be in the theory that
would regard land and capital, the means of production, as the joint
possession of all the members of the community,--the basic doctrine of
socialism,--any forcible attempt to distribute present results of
individual production and accumulation would be unjust and dangerous to
the last degree. In the case of the furious carrying out of this
doctrine by the crazed French revolutionists, it led to outrageous
confiscation, on the ground that all property belonged to the state, and
therefore the representatives of the nation could do what they pleased
with it. This shallow sophistry was accepted by the French National
Convention when it swept away estates of nobles and clergy, not on the
tenable ground that the owners were public enemies, but on the baseless
pretext that their property belonged to the nation.
From this sophistry about the rights of property, Rousseau advanced
another of still worse tendency, which was that the general will is
always in the right and constantly tends to the public good. The theory
is inconsistent with itself. Light and truth do not come from the
universal reason, but from the thoughts of great men stimulated into
growth among the people. The teachers of the world belong to a small
class. Society is in need of constant reforms, which are not suggested
by the mass, but by a few philosophers or reformers,--the wise men who
save cities.
Rousseau further says that a whole people can never become corrupted,--a
most barefaced assertion. Have not all nations suffered periods of
corruption? This notion, that the whole people cannot err, opens the
door for any license. It logically leads to that other idea, of the
native majesty of man and the perfectibility of society, which this
sophist boldly accepted. Rousseau thought that if society were released
from all law and all restraint, the good impulses and good sense of the
majority would produce a higher state of virtue and wisdom than what he
saw around him, since majorities could do no wrong and the universal
reason could not err. In this absurdity lay the fundamental principle of
the French Revolution, so far as it was produced by the writings of
philosophers. This doctrine was eagerly seized upon by the French
people, maddened by generations of oppression, poverty, and degradation,
because it appealed to the pride and vanity of the masses, at that time
congregated bodies of ignorance and wickedness.
Rousseau had an unbounded trust in human nature,--that it is good and
wise, and will do the best thing if left to itself. But can anything be
more antagonistic to all the history of the race? I doubt if Rousseau
had any profound knowledge, or even really extensive reading. He was a
dreamer, a theorist, a sentimentalist. He was the arch-priest of all
sensationalism in the guise of logic. What more acceptable to the vile
people of his age than the theory that in their collective capacity they
could not err, that the universal reason was divine? What more logical
than its culmination in that outrageous indecency, the worship of Reason
in the person of a prostitute!