redound more to the honor of the nation. The English have so great a
veneration for exalted talents, that a man of merit in their country
is always sure of making his fortune. Mr. Addison in France would have
been elected a member of one of the academies, and, by the credit of
some women, might have obtained a yearly pension of twelve hundred
livres, or else might have been imprisoned in the Bastille, upon
pretense that certain strokes in his tragedy of Cato had been
discovered which glanced at the porter of some man in power. Mr.
Addison was raised to the post of Secretary of State in England. Sir
Isaac Newton was made Master of the Royal Mint. Mr. Congreve had a
considerable employment. Mr. Prior was Plenipotentiary. Dr. Swift is
Dean of St. Patrick's in Dublin, and is more revered in Ireland than
the Primate himself. The religion which Mr. Pope professes[42]
excludes him, indeed, from preferments of every kind, but then it did
not prevent his gaining two hundred thousand livres by his excellent
translation of Homer. I myself saw a long time in France the author of
"Rhadamistus"[43] ready to perish for hunger. And the son of one of
the greatest men our country ever gave birth to, and who was beginning
to run the noble career which his father had set him, would have been
reduced to the extremes of misery had he not been patronized by
Monsieur Fagon.
[Footnote 42: Pope was a Catholic.]
[Footnote 43: "Rhadamiste et Zénobia," a tragedy by Crébillon (1711),
who long suffered from neglect and want.]
But the circumstance which mostly encourages the arts in England is
the great veneration which is paid them. The picture of the Prime
Minister hangs over the chimney of his own closet, but I have seen
that of Mr. Pope in twenty noblemen's houses. Sir Isaac Newton was
revered in his lifetime, and had a due respect paid to him after his
death,--the greatest men in the nation disputing who should have the
honor of holding up his pall. Go into Westminster Abbey, and you will
find that what raises the admiration of the spectator is not the
mausoleums of the English kings, but the monuments which the gratitude
of the nation has erected to perpetuate the memory of those
illustrious men who contributed to its glory. We view their statues in
that abbey in the same manner as those of Sophocles, Plato, and other
immortal personages were viewed in Athens; and I am persuaded that the
bare sight of those glorious monuments has fired more than one breast,
and been the occasion of their becoming great men.
The English have even been reproached with paying too extravagant
honors to mere merit, and censured for interring the celebrated
actress Mrs. Oldfield[44] in Westminster Abbey, with almost the same
pomp as Sir Isaac Newton. Some pretend that the English had paid her
these great funeral honors purposely to make us more strongly sensible
of the barbarity and injustice which they object to in us, for having
buried Mademoiselle Le Couvreur ignominiously in the fields.
[Footnote 44: Anne, or "Nance" Oldfield was born in 1683, and died in
1730. Her death occurred in the year which followed the close of
Voltaire's English visit. At her funeral, the body lay in state in the
Jerusalem Chamber of Westminster Abbey. She had a natural son, who
married Lady Mary Walpole, a natural daughter of Sir Robert Walpole,
the Prime Minister.]
But be assured from me that the English were prompted by no other
principle in burying Mrs. Oldfield in Westminster Abbey than their
good sense. They are far from being so ridiculous as to brand with
infamy an art which has immortalized a Euripides and a Sophocles; or
to exclude from the body of their citizens a set of people whose
business is to set off with the utmost grace of speech and action
those pieces which the nation is proud of.
Under the reign of Charles I and in the beginning of the civil wars
raised by a number of rigid fanatics, who at last were the victims to
it, a great many pieces were published against theatrical and other
shows, which were attacked with the greater virulence because that
monarch and his queen, daughter to Henry I of France, were
passionately fond of them.
One Mr. Prynne, a man of most furiously scrupulous principles, who
would have thought himself damned had he worn a cassock instead of a
short cloak, and have been glad to see one-half of mankind cut the
other to pieces for the glory of God and the _Propaganda Fide_, took
it into his head to write a most wretched satire against some pretty
good comedies, which were exhibited very innocently every night before
their majesties. He quoted the authority of the Rabbis, and some
passages from St. Bonaventura, to prove that the "Oedipus" of
Sophocles was the work of the evil spirit; that Terence was
excommunicated _ipso facto_; and added that doubtless Brutus, who was
a very severe Jansenist, assassinated Julius Cæsar for no other reason
but because he, who was Pontifex Maximus, presumed to write a tragedy
the subject of which was "Oepidus." Lastly, he declared that all who
frequented the theater were excommunicated, as they thereby renounced
their baptism. This was casting the highest insult on the king and all
the royal family; and as the English loved their prince at that time,
they could not bear to hear a writer talk of excommunicating him, tho
they themselves afterward cut his head off. Prynne was summoned to
appear before the Star Chamber; his wonderful book, from which Father
Lebrun stole his, was sentenced to be burned by the common hangman,
and himself to lose his ears.[45] His trial is now extant.
[Footnote 45: William Prynne, lawyer, pamphleteer, and statesman, was
born in 1600, and died in 1669. Prynne in 1648 was released from
imprisonment by the Long Parliament and obtained a seat in the House
of Commons where he took up the cause of the king. Later, in the
Cromwellian period, he was arrested and again imprisoned, but was
released in 1652, and, after the accession of Charles II, was made
keeper of the records in the Tower.]
The Italians are far from attempting to cast a blemish on the opera,
or to excommunicate Sigñor Senesino or Signora Cuzzoni. With regard to
myself, I could presume to wish that the magistrates would suppress I
know not what contemptible pieces written against the stage. For when
the English and Italians hear that we brand with the greatest mark of
infamy an art in which we excel; that we excommunicate persons who
receive salaries from the king; that we condemn as impious a spectacle
exhibited in convents and monasteries; that we dishonor sports in
which Louis XIV and Louis XV performed as actors; that we give the
title of the devil's works to pieces which are received by magistrates
of the most severe character, and represented before a virtuous queen;
when, I say, foreigners are told of this insolent conduct, this
contempt for the royal authority, and this Gothic rusticity which some
presume to call Christian severity, what idea must they entertain of
our nation? And how will it be possible for them to conceive, either
that our laws give a sanction to an art which is declared infamous, or
that some persons dare to stamp with infamy an art which receives a
sanction from the laws, is rewarded by kings, cultivated and
encouraged by the greatest men, and admired by whole nations? And that
Father Lebrun's impertinent libel against the stage is seen in a
bookseller's shop, standing the very next to the immortal labors of
Racine, of Corneille, of Molière, etc.?
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
Born in Geneva in 1712, died near Paris in 1778; his father
a mender of watches and teacher of dancing; lived from hand
to mouth until he was thirty-eight; achieved his first
literary reputation from a prize competition in 1749;
published "Le Devin du Village" in 1752, "La Nouvelle
Hèloise" in 1761, "Le Contrat Social" in 1762, "Emile" in
1762; the latter work led to his exile from France for five
years, during which he lived in Switzerland and England; his
"Confessions" published after his death in 1782; was the
father of five illegitimate children, each of whom he sent
to a foundling asylum.
I
OF CHRIST AND SOCRATES
I will confess that the majesty of the Scriptures strikes me with
admiration, as the purity of the Gospel hath its influence on my
heart. Peruse the works of our philosophers with all their pomp of
diction; how mean, how contemptible are they compared with the
Scriptures! Is it possible that a book, at once so simple and sublime,
should be merely the work of man? Is it possible that the sacred
personage, whose history it contains, should be himself a mere man? Do
we find that He assumed the tone of an enthusiast or ambitious
sectary? What sweetness, what purity in His manner! What an affecting
gracefulness in His delivery! What sublimity in His maxims! what
profound wisdom in His discourses? What presence of mind, what
subtlety, what truth in His replies! How great the command over His
passions! Where is the man, where the philosopher, who could so live,
and so die, without weakness, and without ostentation? When Plato
described his imaginary good man loaded with all the shame of guilt,
yet meriting the highest rewards of virtue, he describes exactly the
character of Jesus Christ: the resemblance was so striking that all
the Fathers perceived it.
What prepossession, what blindness must it be to compare the son of
Sophronicus to the son of Mary! What an infinite disproportion there
is between them! Socrates dying without pain or ignominy, easily
supported his character to the last; and if his death, however easy,
had not crowned his life, it might have been doubted whether Socrates,
with all his wisdom, was anything more than a vain sophist. He
invented, it is said, the theory of morals. Others, however, had
before put them in practise; he had only to say, therefore, what they
had done, and to reduce their examples to precepts. Aristides had been
just before Socrates defined justice; Leonidas had given up his life
for his country before Socrates declared patriotism to be a duty; the
Spartans were a sober people before Socrates recommended sobriety;
before he had even defined virtue Greece abounded in virtuous men.
But where could Jesus learn, among His competitors, that pure and
sublime morality, of which He only hath given us both precept and
example? The greatest wisdom was made known amongst the most bigoted
fanaticism, and the simplicity of the most heroic virtues did honor to
the vilest people on earth. The death of Socrates, peaceably
philosophizing with his friends, appears the most agreeable that could
be wished for; that of Jesus, expiring in the midst of agonizing
pains, abused, insulted, and accused by a whole nation, is the most
horrible that could be feared. Socrates, in receiving the cup of
poison, blest, indeed, the weeping executioner who administered it;
but Jesus, in the midst of excruciating torments, prayed for His
merciless tormentors. Yes, 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 suppose the evangelic history a mere fiction? Indeed, my friend, it
bears not the marks of fiction; on the contrary, the history of
Socrates, which nobody presumes to doubt, is not so well attested as
that of Jesus Christ. Such a supposition, in fact, only shifts the
difficulty without obviating it: it is more inconceivable that a
number of persons should agree to write such a history, than that one
only should furnish the subject of it. The Jewish authors were
incapable of the diction, and strangers to the morality contained in
the Gospel, the marks of whose truth are so striking and inimitable
that the inventor would be a more astonishing character than the
hero.
II
OF THE MANAGEMENT OF CHILDREN[46]
I have thought that the most essential part in the education of
children, and which is seldom regarded in the best families, is to
make them sensible of their inability, weakness, and dependence, and,
as my husband called it, the heavy yoke of that necessity which nature
has imposed upon our species; and that, not only in order to show them
how much is done to alleviate the burden of that yoke, but especially
to instruct them betimes in what rank Providence has placed them, that
they may not presume too far above themselves, or be ignorant of the
reciprocal duties of humanity.
[Footnote 46: From the "New Héloïse." The passage here given is from a
letter supposed to have been written by a person who was visiting
Héloïse. One of the earliest English versions of the "New Héloïse"
appeared in 1784.]
Young people who from their cradle have been brought up in ease and
effeminacy, who have been caressed by every one, indulged in all their
caprices, and have been used to obtain easily everything they desired,
enter upon the world with many impertinent prejudices; of which they
are generally cured by frequent mortifications, affronts, and chagrin.
Now, I would willingly spare my children this kind of education by
giving them, at first, a just notion of things. I had indeed once
resolved to indulge my eldest son in everything he wanted, from a
persuasion that the first impulses of nature must be good and
salutary; but I was not long in discovering that children, conceiving
from such treatment that they have a right to be obeyed, depart from a
state of nature almost as soon as born--contracting our vices from our
example, and theirs by our indiscretion. I saw that if I indulged him
in all his humors they would only increase by such indulgence; that it
was necessary to stop at some point, and that contradiction would be
but the more mortifying as he should be less accustomed to it; but,
that it might be less painful to him, I began to use it upon him by
degrees, and in order to prevent his tears and lamentations I made
every denial irrevocable.
It is true, I contradict him as little as possible, and never without
due consideration. Whatever is given or permitted him is done
unconditionally and at the first instance; and in this we are
indulgent enough; but he never gets anything by importunity, neither
his tears nor entreaties being of any effect. Of this he is now so
well convinced that he makes no use of them; he goes his way on the
first word, and frets himself no more at seeing a box of sweetmeats
taken away from him than at seeing a bird fly away which he would be
glad to catch, there appearing to him the same impossibility of having
the one as the other; and, so far from beating the chairs and tables,
he dares not lift his hand against those who oppose him. In everything
that displeases him he feels the weight of necessity, the effect of
his own weakness.
The great cause of the ill humor of children is the care which is
taken either to quiet or to aggravate them. They will sometimes cry
for an hour for no other reason in the world than because they
perceive we would not have them. So long as we take notice of their
crying, so long have they a reason for continuing to cry; but they
will soon give over of themselves when they see no notice is taken of
them; for, old or young, nobody loves to throw away his trouble. This
is exactly the case with my eldest boy, who was once the most peevish
little bawler, stunning the whole house with his cries; whereas now
you can hardly hear there is a child in the house. He cries, indeed,
when he is in pain; but then it is the voice of nature, which should
never be restrained; and he is again hushed as soon as ever the pain
is over. For this reason I pay great attention to his tears, as I am
certain he never sheds them for nothing; and hence I have gained the
advantage of being certain when he is in pain and when not; when he is
well and when sick; an advantage which is lost with those who cry out
of mere humor and only in order to be appeased. I must confess,
however, that this management is not to be expected from nurses and
governesses; for as nothing is more tiresome than to hear a child cry,
and as these good women think of nothing but the time present, they do
not foresee that by quieting it to-day it will cry the more to-morrow.
But, what is still worse, this indulgence produces an obstinacy which
is of more consequence as the child grows up. The very cause that
makes it a squaller at three years of age will make it stubborn and
refractory at twelve, quarrelsome at twenty, imperious and insolent at
thirty, and insupportable all its life.
In every indulgence granted to children they can easily see our desire
to please them, and therefore they should be taught to suppose we have
reason for refusing or complying with their requests. This is another
advantage gained by making use of authority, rather than persuasion,
on every necessary occasion. For, as it is impossible they can be
always blind to our motives, it is natural for them to imagine that we
have some reason for contradicting them, of which, they are ignorant.
On the contrary, when we have once submitted to their judgment, they
will pretend to judge of everything, and thus become cunning,
deceitful, fruitful in shifts and chicanery, endeavoring to silence
those who are weak enough to argue with them; for when one is obliged
to give them an account of things above their comprehension, they
attribute the most prudent conduct to caprice, because they are
incapable of understanding it. In a word, the only way to render
children docile and capable of reasoning is not to reason with them at
all, but to convince them that it is above their childish capacities;
for they will always suppose the argument in their favor unless you
can give them good cause to think otherwise. They know very well that
we are unwilling to displease them, when they are certain of our
affection; and children are seldom mistaken in this particular:
therefore, if I deny anything to my children, I never reason with
them, I never tell them why I do so and so; but I endeavor, as much as
possible, that they should find it out, and that even after the affair
is over. By these means they are accustomed to think that I never
deny them anything without a sufficient reason, tho they can not
always see it.
On the same principle it is that I never suffer my children to join in
the conversation of grown people, or foolishly imagine themselves on
an equality with them, because they are permitted to prattle. I would
have them give a short and modest answer when they are spoken to, but
never to speak of their own head, or ask impertinent questions of
persons so much older than themselves, to whom they ought to show more
respect....
What can a child think of himself when he sees a circle of sensible
people listening to, admiring, and waiting impatiently for his wit,
and breaking out in raptures at every impertinent expression? Such
false applause is enough to turn the head of a grown person; judge,
then, what effect it must have upon that of a child. It is with the
prattle of children as with the prediction in the almanac. It would be
strange if, amidst such a number of idle words, chance did not now and
then jumble some of them into sense. Imagine the effect which such
flattering exclamations must have on a simple mother, already too much
flattered by her own heart. Think not, however, that I am proof
against this error because I expose it. No, I see the fault, and yet
am guilty of it. But, if I sometimes admire the repartees of my son, I
do it at least in secret. He will not learn to become a vain prater by
hearing me applaud him, nor will flatterers have the pleasure, in
making me repeat them, of laughing at my weakness.
MADAME DE STAËL
Born in Paris, 1763, died there in 1817; daughter of Necker,
the Minister of Finance, and Susanne Courchod, the
sweetheart of Gibbon; married to the Baron of
Staël-Holstein, the Swedish ambassador to France, in 1786;
lived in Germany in 1803-04; traveled in Italy in 1805;
published "Corinne" in 1807; returned to Germany in 1808;
and finished "De l'Allemagne," the first edition of which
was destroyed, probably at the instigation of Napoleon, who
became her bitter enemy; exiled from France by Napoleon in
1812-14.
OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE[47]
General Bonaparte made himself as conspicuous by his character and his
intellect as by his victories; and the imagination of the French began
to be touched by him [1797]. His proclamations to the Cisalpine and
Ligurian republics were talked of.... A tone of moderation and of
dignity pervaded his style, which contrasted with the revolutionary
harshness of the civil rulers of France. The warrior spoke in those
days like a lawgiver, while the lawgivers exprest themselves with
soldier-like violence. General Bonaparte had not executed in his army
the decrees against the émigrés. It was said that he loved his wife,
whose character is full of sweetness; it was asserted that he felt
the beauties of Ossian; it was a pleasure to attribute to him all the
generous qualities that form a noble background for extraordinary
abilities....
[Footnote 47: From "Considerations on the French Revolution." This
work was not published until 1818, three years after the exile of
Napoleon to St. Helena. An English translation appeared in 1819.]
Such at least was my own mood when I saw him for the first time in
Paris. I could find no words with which to reply to him when he came
to me to tell me that he had tried to visit my father at Coppet, and
that he was sorry to have passed through Switzerland without seeing
him. But when I had somewhat recovered from the agitation of
admiration, it was followed by a feeling of very marked fear.
Bonaparte then had no power: he was thought even to be more or less in
danger from the vague suspiciousness of the Directory; so that the
fear he inspired was caused only by the singular effect of his
personality upon almost every one who had intercourse with him. I had
seen men worthy of high respect; I had also seen ferocious men: there
was nothing in the impression Bonaparte produced upon me which could
remind me of men of either type. I soon perceived, on the different
occasions when I met him during his stay in Paris, that his character
could not be defined by the words we are accustomed to make use of: he
was neither kindly nor violent, neither gentle nor cruel, after the
fashion of other men. Such a being, so unlike others, could neither
excite nor feel sympathy: he was more or less than man. His bearing,
his mind, his language have the marks of a foreigner's nature--an
advantage the more in subjugating Frenchmen....
Far from being reassured by seeing Bonaparte often, he always
intimidated me more and more. I felt vaguely that no emotional feeling
could influence him. He regards a human creature as a fact or a thing,
but not as an existence like his own. He feels no more hate than love.
For him there is no one but himself: all other creatures are mere
ciphers. The force of his will consists in the imperturbable
calculations of his egotism: he is an able chess-player whose opponent
is all humankind, whom he intends to checkmate. His success is due as
much to the qualities he lacks as to the talents he possesses. Neither
pity, nor sympathy, nor religion, nor attachment to any idea
whatsoever would have power to turn him from his path. He has the same
devotion to his own interests that a good man has to virtue: if the
object were noble, his persistency would be admirable.