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Updated: May 29, 2025
One side of this was the passion for geographical exploration which took possession of Europe towards the middle of the eighteenth century. See the Life of Humboldt, i. 28, 29. Rousseau's influence on Condorcet is seen in the latter's maxim, which has found such favour in the eyes of socialist writers, that "not only equality of right, but equality of fact, is the goal of the social art."
Professor Chittenden of Yale is quoted as saying that "lack of proper physical condition is responsible for more moral ... ills than any other factor." Certain temptations, at least, bear more hardly upon the man of weak and unstrung nerves; in Rousseau's well known words, "The weaker the body, the more it commands."
Howitt had somehow become imbued with Rousseau's doctrine that every boy, whatever his position in life, should learn a mechanical handicraft, in order that, if all else failed, he might be able to earn his own living by the labour of his hands.
Further, Papaverius had an extraordinary insight into practical human life; not merely in the abstract, but in the concrete; not merely as a philosopher of human nature, but as one who saw into those who passed him in the walk of life with the kind of intuition attributed to expert detectives a faculty that is known to have belonged to more than one dreamer, and is one of the mysteries in the nature of J.J. Rousseau; and, by the way, like Rousseau's, his handwriting was clear, angular, and unimpassioned, and not less uniform and legible than printing as if the medium of conveying so noble a thing as thought ought to be carefully, symmetrically, and decorously constructed, let all other material things be as neglectfully and scornfully dealt with as may be.
There is in literature no more seductive illustration of this seductive type than Rousseau's renowned character of the Savoyard Vicar penetrated with scepticism as to the attributes of the deity, the meaning of the holy rites, the authenticity of the sacred documents; yet full of reverence, and ever respecting in silence what he could neither reject nor understand.
The many distasteful sides of Rousseau's character ought not to hinder us from admiring his steadfastness in refusing to sacrifice his existence to the first person who spoke him civilly. We may wish there had been more of rugged simplicity in his way of dealing with temptations to sell his birthright for a mess of pottage; less of mere irritability.
To live according to my fantasy, to work according to my taste and convenience, to do nothing at all if I so choose, to build beautiful air-castles for the future, to think of you and know that you are happy, to have Rousseau's Julie for my mistress, La Fontaine and Moliere for my friends, Racine for my master and the cemetery of Pere Lachaise for my promenade! . . . Oh! if all this could last forever!"
The Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff, wherein are many morbid musings and information as to the development of her mind and anatomy, is intensely interesting; Amiel's Journal holds us with a tireless grasp; the Confessions of Saint Augustine can never die; Jean Jacques Rousseau's book was the favorite of such a trinity of opposites as Emerson, George Eliot and Walt Whitman; Pepys' Diary is so dull it is entertaining; and the Memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini have made a mediocre man immortal.
This thing sounds like money as if I were a mighty rich man! I'll have to do something about this!" But he wasn't overly upset, or even very greatly interested. His real concern had never been money; it had been, like Rousseau's and Millet's, to make the manifestation of life his first thought, to make a man really breathe, a tree really vegitate.
Cooper came to him at the age of twelve and remained with him till he became an actor at seventeen. Godwin had read Rousseau's Emile, not seldom with dissent, and all through his life was deeply interested in the problems of education.
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