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We shall not greatly err, if we say that the foundation of Rousseau's character was spontaneity, that his whole life was an endeavor to give free and uncontrolled expression to this, and that his works were so many efforts to champion it, as the ideal of life, and to show how it might be preserved, free from constraint and corruption. In Rousseau himself, this spontaneity, naturally very rich and strong, was fostered by an education, which, leaving him at liberty to follow his momentary caprice, fired his imagination and made it ungovernable, so that he early became utterly incapable of submitting to any constraint, regulation, continuous occupation, or duty, however sacred. He lived in, and for, the present moment, seeking to draw from it the greatest amount of enjoyment, tranquil or ecstatic, as his mood happened to demand, without any thought of past, future, or the claims of others. (6: 71.)

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Rousseau's emotionalism the antithesis of Puritan represIt is evident that Rousseau's life and his standards of living were the direct antithesis of the hard, uncompromising humdrum life of Puritanism. Occasionally in his writings Rousseau praised the Puritan life; for example, when Voltaire, who was living near Geneva, sought to have a theater established in that city, where there had been no drama since the days of the miracle plays, Rousseau protested vigorously in a long letter. Similarly, in the "Émile” and in the "New Héloïse," he sometimes emphasizes duty and control of the emotions; but the major emphasis in his life and writings is on unrestrained enjoyment of the moment. He is the best example of the type of character which, since his day, has come to be known as the "artistic temperament." That man has lived most, he said, who has "felt life most," not he who has seen the greatest number of years. The acme of anti-Puritanism is expressed in the following quotation from the "Émile" (Book IV):

Our passions are our principal instruments of our conservation, and it is therefore an attempt as vain as it is ridiculous to wish to destroy them; it would be to control Nature and reform the work of God. If God were to tell man to destroy the passions which he has given him, God would and would not; he would contradict himself. But he has never given this senseless order; nothing like it is written in the human heart. . .

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Rousseau substituted faith and inward worship for religious ceremonialism. The persecutions that Rousseau suffered were almost entirely the result of his attack on religious hypocrisy and formalism. This attack was particularly vigorous in the "Émile," which was burned in Catholic Paris and Calvinistic Geneva. In the "Émile," Rousseau presented his own religious convictions, namely, a belief in a natural deism, in God revealed through nature, in an "intelligent will giving motion to the universe and animating all nature." So Émile was to be brought to a realization of God through a study of organic nature, but to be kept apart from all dogmatic systems or special sects. The following are typical quotations:

Observe the spectacle of nature listen to the inner voice. Has not God said everything to our eyes, our conscience, our judgment? What more will men tell us? Their revelations only degrade God by giving Him human passions. Far from illuminating our ideas of the Great Being, their particular dogmas confuse them. . . . They render men proud, intolerant, cruel. . . . I ask what good all this can subserve, and there is no answer. I see in it only the crimes of men and the miseries of the human race. (5: 215.)

My son, let your heart always desire that there may be a God, and you will never doubt it. For the rest, whatever course you adopt, remember always that the true duties of religion are independent of the institutions of men; that a just heart is the real temple of divinity; that in every country and sect to love God beyond all things else and one's neighbor as one's self is the sum of the law; that there is no religion which dispenses with the principles of morality; that nothing is essential save these; that inward worship is the first of such principles; that without faith no true virtue can exist. (5: 217.)

Opposed atheism as well as ceremonialism.-These quotations show Rousseau as the opponent not only of empty ceremonialism but also of atheism, which was so common in France at that time. True religion there is, he said, but the way to it is not through ceremonial and dogma but through emotion tempered by reason. The influence of Rousseau on religion has been "incalculable" according to Davidson.

His confession of faith was adopted by a large body of the French revolutionists and "is perpetuated to our own time, where it forms the chief element in religion, taking the place of dogma and so bidding defiance to the results of criticism, higher and lower."

Rousseau opposed social conventionality with the simple life. Rousseau's attack on the artificial standards of the drawing-room society may be summed up in the first sentence of the "Émile." "Everything is good as it comes from the hand of the author of nature, everything degenerates in the hands of man."

There were three circumstances in which Rousseau was perfectly happy: one was contemplating beautiful scenery; another, making passionate love to any attractive woman; the third, living a simple domestic life in a rural cottage. On the other hand, the circumstance which annoyed him most was to be in a large social gathering. As Taine said :

He feels awkward in a drawing-room. He is not capable of conversing and appearing amiable; his wit is late, coming to him on the steps as he leaves the house; he keeps silent with a sulky air or utters stupidities, redeeming his awkwardness with the sallies of a clown or with the phrases of a vulgar pedant. Elegance annoys him, luxuriousness makes him uncomfortable, politeness is a lie, conversation mere prattle, ease of manner a grimace, gayety a conventionalism. . . . (1: 225.)

The three phases of life which Rousseau enjoyed he idealized in his novel the "New Héloïse" (1761).

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Rousseau popularized enjoyment of natural scenery. In its descriptions of natural scenery the "New Héloïse an epoch-making work. This phase of the book is well described by Hudson, who says:

In the "Nouvelle Héloïse " as never before in the history of prose fiction, nature becomes a distinct and fundamental element of the human story. Woven into the drama of life and passion, of sin and moral victory, are magnificently wrought pictures from the country which Rousseau never ceased to love and yearn for. . . . He was certainly one of the very first, not in France alone, but in Europe, to discover the country,

to feel its beauty, to penetrate its religious meaning, to proclaim to all who were dungeoned in cities, and whose horizons were bounded by brick and mortar, the glory, the freshness, the anodyne sweetness, the uplifting power of nature. . . . It is no abuse of language to say that the "Nouvelle Héloïse" revealed a new emotion and started a new cult. (5: 175.)

Rousseau loved not only the gentler aspects of natural scenery, but his soul was also moved

by the stupendous grandeur of the mountains, the solitude of Alpine passes, the deafening crash of mighty torrents, the awe-inspiring spectacle of a world of ice and snow. In this . . . Rousseau stands alone among the French writers of the time. In France no sign of this new sentiment had hitherto appeared; while even in England (with only occasional exceptions) mountain scenery was still very commonly regarded (as in the days of Defoe and Addison) as barren and frightful rather than impressive and sublime. Thus, though Rousseau himself never ventured so far as his disciples in his enthusiasm for nature in the savage state, his historic place as the first interpreter of the wonder and glory of the Alps is incontestable. (5: 176.)

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New Héloïse" idealized romantic love. The Héloïse" was written during the period when he was partially insane and was living his imaginary romance in the woods of Montmorency. Hence the first part contains elaborate, highly analytical descriptions of the feelings of the two lovers, which created a startling interest in French readers. The following incident is an example described by Taine :

A woman of the court is familiar with love as then practiced, simply a preference, often only a pastime, mere gallantry of which the exquisite polish poorly conceals the shallowness, coldness and occasionally, wickedness. . . . One evening about to go out to the opera ball, she finds the "Nouvelle Héloïse" on her toilet-table; it is not surprising that she keeps her horses and footmen waiting from hour to hour, and that at four o'clock in the morning she orders the horses to be unharnessed, and then passes the rest of the night in reading, and that she is stifled with her tears; for the first time in her life she finds a man that loves. (1: 273.)

Idealized simple domestic life. The third phase of life that Rousseau idealized was simple domestic tranquillity. The

second part of the "New Héloïse" contains minute descriptions of an ideal establishment in the country, characterized by primitive simplicity, frugality, plain diet, home industries, etc.

Emotional element in modern religion, art, and literature due to Rousseau. The influence of Rousseau, as the leader of the emotional reaction, upon subsequent thinkers and writers is almost incalculable. Concerning it Davidson says:

Indeed modern art and literature with their fondness for the picturesque, the natural, the rural, the emotionally religious, the analysis of sentiment, and the interplay of passions, and their rebellion against the stiff and the conventional, may almost be said to date from Rousseau. [You may] trace his footsteps in the studiedly rural cottages and picturesque, half-wild parks, so common in Europe and America; in the landscape paintings, genre-pictures, and pictures of pathetic or religious emotions, that fill our galleries; or in the nature groups and sentimentally posed figures that delight the majority of our sculptors. (6: 228.)

Influence greatest in Germany; Goethe and Schiller. In French literature hundreds of writers were Rousseau's disciples. From England Rousseau had derived much of his own philosophy and spirit, but his writings in turn exerted a powerful influence on English writers, notably Byron and Shelley, and in more recent times on George Eliot. But it was in Germany and the German-speaking part of Switzerland that Rousseau's influence was especially strong and first modified public education. As Paulsen says:

Rousseau exercised an immense influence on his times, and Germany was stirred even more deeply than France. In France Voltaire continued to be regarded as the great man of his time, whereas, in Germany, his place in the esteem of the younger generation had been taken by the enthusiast of Geneva. Kant, Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, all of them were aroused by Rousseau to the inmost depths of their natures. He gave utterance to the passionate longings of their souls; to do away with the irritation of French courtly culture, by which Nature was suppressed and perverted in every way, to do away with the established political and social order, based on court society and class distinctions, and to return to Nature, to simple and unsophisticated habits of life. (9: 157.)

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