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It would have been odd to see Rousseau banished for having spoken ill of French music, after having with impunity dealt with the most delicate political matter." Rousseau had just printed his Discours sur l'Inegalite des conditions, a new and violent picture of the corruptions of human society.
Let Herr Stahr put all Lessing's "inimitably roguish words" together, and compare them with these few intranslatable lines from Voltaire's letter to Rousseau, thanking him for his Discours sur l'Inegalite: "On n'a jamais employe tant d'esprit a vouloir nous rendre betes; il prend enviede marcher a quatre pattes quand on lit votre ouvrage."
It is shocking that a man whose preaching made it fashionable for women of rank to nurse their own children should have sent his own, as soon as born, to the foundling hospital, still more shocking that, in a note to his Discours sur l'Inegalite, he should speak of this crime as one of the consequences of our social system.
The singularity of his paradox had worn off; Rousseau no longer astounded, he shocked the good sense as well as the aspirations, superficial or generous, of the eighteenth century. The Discours sur l'Inegalite des conditions was not a success. "I have received, sir, your new book against the human race," wrote Voltaire; "I thank you for it.
These deal with Nietzsche's principle of the desirability of rearing a select race. The biological and historical grounds for his insistence upon this principle are, of course, manifold. Gobineau in his great work, "L'Inegalite des Races Humaines", lays strong emphasis upon the evils which arise from promiscuous and inter-social marriages.
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