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Updated: May 29, 2025
There are also some men in whom old age supplies the place of solitude, and Rousseau's antagonist and mental antipodes, Voltaire, is of this order. The pert, the malignant, the arrogant, the lampooning author in his youth and manhood, has become in his old age the mild, the benevolent, and the venerable philosopher.
He began to hum the chorus of a song lately brought into vogue by the liberals, which ended with the words, "'Tis Voltaire's fault, 'tis Rousseau's fault." "Tiens! perhaps he is one of the chorus at the Opera," said Amaury. This exasperated Oscar, who bounded up, pulled out the wooden "back," and called to Pierrotin: "When do we start?"
It is very easy to point out that the Control Social is a miserable piece of logic-chopping, to pour scorn on the stilted sentiment and distorted morality of La Nouvelle Héloïse, and finally to draw a cutting comparison between Rousseau's preaching and his practice, as it stands revealed in the Confessions the lover of independence who never earned his own living, the apostle of equality who was a snob, and the educationist who left his children in the Foundling Hospital.
It is, I believe, possible to explain the condition of the d'Epinay manuscript without having recourse to the iconoclastic theory of Mrs. Macdonald. To explain everything, indeed, would be out of the question, owing to our insufficient data, and the extreme complexity of the events; all that we can hope to do is to suggest an explanation which will account for the most important of the known facts. Not the least interesting of Mrs. Macdonald's discoveries went to show that the Mémoires, so far from being historically accurate, were in reality full of unfounded statements, that they concluded with an entirely imaginary narrative, and that, in short, they might be described, almost without exaggeration, in the very words with which Grimm himself actually did describe them in his Correspondance Littéraire, as 'l'ébauche d'un long roman. Mrs. Macdonald eagerly lays emphasis upon this discovery, because she is, of course, anxious to prove that the most damning of all the accounts of Rousseau's conduct is an untrue one. But she has proved too much. The Mémoires, she says, are a fiction; therefore the writers of them were liars. The answer is obvious: why should we not suppose that the writers were not liars at all, but simply novelists? Will not this hypothesis fit into the facts just as well as Mrs. Macdonald's? Madame d'Epinay, let us suppose, wrote a narrative, partly imaginary and partly true, based upon her own experiences, but without any strict adherence to the actual course of events, and filled with personages whose actions were, in many cases, fictitious, but whose characters were, on the whole, moulded upon the actual characters of her friends. Let us suppose that when she had finished her work a work full of subtle observation and delightful writing she showed it to Grimm and Diderot. They had only one criticism to make: it related to her treatment of the character which had been moulded upon that of Rousseau. 'Your Rousseau, chère Madame, is a very poor affair indeed! The most salient points in his character seem to have escaped you. We know what that man really was. We know how he behaved at that time. C'était un homme
The arms sent us are, as you already know, European muskets of uncouth pattern, which the volunteers will not touch. General McCook has now three brigades Johnson's, Wood's, and Rousseau's. Negley's brigade arrived to-day, and will be sent out at once. The Minnesota regiment has also arrived, and will be sent forward.
The other remark to be made on the above section is that the rejection of the Christian or ecclesiastical division of the powers of the church and the powers of the state, is the strongest illustration that could be found of the debt of Rousseau's conception of a state to the old pagan conception.
An Italian gentleman, resident here, had to my own knowledge to obtain a special permission in order to retain a copy of Rousseau's works in his private library. The Roman nobles are not allowed to hunt because the Pope considers the amusement dangerous. Profane swearing is a criminal offence.
This idea of "popular sovereignty," or rule of the people, was in men's minds when they set up a republic in France fourteen years after the death of Rousseau. Rousseau's cry, "Back to nature," had still another aspect. He said that children should be allowed to follow their natural inclinations, instead of being driven to study.
If Rousseau's departure for Venice was a wholly insignificant element in his life, his return from it was almost immediately followed by an event which counted for nothing at the moment, which his friends by and by came to regard as the fatal and irretrievable disaster of his life, but which he persistently described as the only real consolation that heaven permitted him to taste in his misery, and the only one that enabled him to bear his many sore burdens.
It was no democratic struggle to enlarge the franchise, and realize Rousseau's idea of fraternity and equality, an idea of blended socialism, infidelity, and discontent, which united the colonies in resistance; but a broad, noble, patriotic desire, first, to conserve the rights of free English colonists, and finally to make America independent of all foreign forces, combined with a lofty faith in their own resources for success, however desperate the struggle might be.
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