Rousseau Part 8

[154] Diderot's account (_Vie de Seneque_, sect. 66, _Oeuv._, iii. 98; also ii. 285) is not inconsistent with Rousseau's own, so that we may dismiss as apocryphal Marmontel's version of the story (_Mem._ VIII.), to the effect that Rousseau was about to answer the question with a commonplace affirmative, until Diderot persuaded him that a paradox would attract more attention. It has been said also that M. de Francueil, and various others, first urged the writer to take a negative line of argument. To suppose this possible is to prove one's incapacity for understanding what manner of man Rousseau was.

[155] _Conf._, ix. 232, 233.

[156] _Rousseau Juge de Jean Jacques, Dialogues_, i. 252.

[157] _Dialogues_, i. 275, 276.

[158] _Conf._, viii. 138.

[159] "It made a kind of revolution in Paris," says Grimm. _Corr.

Lit._, i. 108.

[160] _Rep. au Roi de Pologne_, p. 111 and p. 113.

[161] _Rep. a M. Bordes_, 138.

[162] _Ib._ 137.

[163] "The first source of the evil is inequality; from inequality come riches ... from riches are born luxury and idleness; from luxury come the fine arts, and from idleness the sciences." _Rep. au Roi de Pologne_, 120, 121.

[164] _Rep. a M. Bordes_, 147. In the same spirit he once wrote the more wholesome maxim, "We should argue with the wise, and never with the public." _Corr._, i. 191.

[165] _Rep. au Roi de Pologne_, 128, 129.

[166] _Rep. a M. Bordes_, 150-161.

[167] P. 174.

[168] Egger's _h.e.l.lenisme en France_, 28ieme lecon, p. 265.

[169] Voltaire to J.J.R. Aug. 30, 1755.

[170] _Rep. au Roi de Pologne_, 105.

[171] In 1753 the French Academy, by way no doubt of summoning a counter-blast to Rousseau, boldly offered as the subject of their essay the thesis that "The love of letters inspires the love of virtue," and the prize was won fitly enough by a Jesuit professor of rhetoric. See Delandine, i. 42.

[172] Preface to _Narcisse_, 251.

[173] _Rep. a M. Bordes_, 167.

[174] P. 187.

[175] See for instance a strange discussion about _morale universelle_ and the like in _Mem. de Mdme. d'Epinay_, i. 217-226.

[176] Often described as Morelly the Younger, to distinguish him from his father, who wrote an essay on the human heart, and another on the human intelligence.

[177] _Code de la Nature, ou le veritable esprit de ses loix, de tout tems neglige ou meconnu._

[178] P. 169. Rousseau did not see it then, but he showed himself on the track.

[179] At the end of the _Code de la Nature_ Morelly places a complete set of rules for the organisation of a model community. The base of it was the absence of private property--a condition that was to be preserved by vigilant education of the young in ways of thinking, that should make the possession of private property odious or inconceivable. There are to be sumptuary laws of a moderate kind. The government is to be in the hands of the elders. The children are to be taken away from their parents at the age of five; reared and educated in public establishments; and returned to their parents at the age of sixteen or so when they will marry. Marriage is to be dissoluble at the end of ten years, but after divorce the woman is not to marry a man younger than herself, nor is the man to marry a woman younger than the wife from whom he has parted. The children of a divorced couple are to remain with the father, and if he marries again, they are to be held the children of the second wife. Mothers are to suckle their own children (p. 220). The whole scheme is fuller of good ideas than such schemes usually are.

[180] P. 218.

[181] This is obviously untrue. Animals do not know death in the sense of scientific definition, and probably have no abstract idea of it as a general state; but they know and are afraid of its concrete phenomena, and so are most savages.

[182] This is one of the pa.s.sages in the Discourse, the harshness of which was afterwards attributed by Rousseau to the influence of Diderot. _Conf._, viii. 205, _n._

[183] P. 261.

[184] As if sin really came by the law in this sense; as if a law defining and prohibiting a malpractice were the cause of the commission of the act which it const.i.tuted a malpractice. As if giving a name and juristic cla.s.sification to any kind of conduct were adding to men's motives for indulging in it.

[185] P. 269.

[186] P. 278.

[187] Pp. 285-287.

[188] P. 273.

[189] P. 250.

[190] _Politicus_, 268 D-274 E.

[191] Here for instance is D'Alembert's story:--"The necessity of shielding our own body from pain and destruction leads us to examine among external objects those which are useful and those which are hurtful, so that we may seek the one and flee the others. But we hardly begin our search into such objects before we discover among them a great number of beings which strike us as exactly like ourselves; that is, whose form is just like our own, and who, so far as we can judge at the first glance, appear to have the same perceptions. Everything therefore leads us to suppose that they have also the same wants, and consequently the same interest in satisfying them, whence it results that we must find great advantage in joining with them for the purpose of distinguishing in nature what has the power of preserving us from what has the power of hurting us. The communication of ideas is the principle and the stay of this union, and necessarily demands the invention of signs; such is the origin of the formation of societies." _Discours Preliminaire de l'Encyclopedie._ Contrast this with Aristotle's sensible statement (_Polit._ I. ii. 15) that "there is in men by nature a strong impulse to enter into such union."

[192] _Code de la Nature._

[193] See, for example, his criticism on the Abbe de St. Pierre.

_Conf._, viii. 264. And also in the a.n.a.lysis of this very Discourse, above, vol. i. p. 163.

[194] "I have lived with communities of savages in South America and in the East, who have no laws or law courts but the public opinion of the visage freely expressed. Each man scrupulously respects the rights of his fellow, and any infraction of those rights rarely or never takes place. In such a community all are nearly equal. There are none of those wide distinctions of education and ignorance, wealth and poverty, master and servant, which are the products of our civilisation; there is none of that widespread division of labour which, while it increases wealth, produces also conflicting interests; there is not that severe compet.i.tion and struggle for existence, or for wealth, which the dense population of civilised countries inevitably creates. All incitements to great crimes are thus wanting, and petty ones are repressed, partly by the influence of public opinion, but chiefly by that natural sense of justice and of his neighbour's right, which seems to be in some degree inherent in every race of man. Now, although we have progressed vastly beyond the savage state in intellectual achievements, we have not advanced equally in morals. It is true that among those cla.s.ses who have no wants that cannot be easily supplied, and among whom public opinion has great influence, the rights of others are fully respected. It is true, also, that we have vastly extended the sphere of those rights, and include within them all the brotherhood of man. But it is not too much to say, that the ma.s.s of our populations have not at all advanced beyond the savage code of morals, and have in many cases sunk below it."

Wallace's _Malay Archipelago_, vol. ii. pp. 460-461.

[195] So too Bougainville, a brother of the navigator, said in 1760, "For an attentive observer who sees nothing in events of the utmost diversity of appearance but the natural effects of a certain number of causes differently combined, Greece is the universe in small, and the history of Greece an excellent epitome of universal history." (Quoted in Egger's _h.e.l.lenisme en France_, ii. 272.) The revolutionists of the next generation, who used to appeal so unseasonably to the ancients, were only following a literary fashion set by their fathers.

[196] _Doutes sur l'Ordre Naturel_; _Oeuv._, xi. 80. (Ed. 1794, 1795.)

[197] _La Legislation_, I. i.

[198] _Ibid._

[199] It is not within our province to examine the vexed question whether the Convention was fundamentally socialist, and not merely political. That socialist ideas were afloat in the minds of some members, one can hardly doubt. See Von Sybel's _Hist. of the French Revolution_, Bk. II. ch. iv., on one side, and Quinet's _La Revolution_, ii. 90-107, on the other.

[200] _Economie Politique_, pp. 41, 53, etc.