from nature

humanity.

His want of love of na

self-control,

ture, and sympathy

with the op

been cultivated by the beauties of Genevan environment, departure was greatly heightened. He found a wonderful enjoy- had corrupted ment in this rural life, until a severe punishment for a boyish offense turned all to dross. Thereupon, he declares, he began to evolve the theory that it is through restraint and discipline of the impulses and departure from nature that humanity has ever been corrupted and ruined, and it may well be that later on, from his adult standpoint, this experience seemed to have contributed to what then became the central feature of his philosophy. After this the boy returned to Geneva and spent a couple of years in idleness and sentimentality. Then, during trade apprenticeships lasting four years, he was further corrupted by low companions and gave free rein to his impulses to loaf, lie, and steal. Eventually, strengthened he ran away from the city, and spent several years in wanderings. .vagrancy, dissoluteness, and menial service. During this time the beauties of nature were more than ever impressed upon the youth by the wonderful scenery of the Savoy country through which he passed, and his education was somewhat improved by incidental instruction from a relative of one of the families he served. Finally, at nineteen, Rousseau went to stay in Savoy with Madame de Warens, a person of shallow character and considerable beauty. In the decade he lived there, under most anomalous conditions, upon the meager pension of a woman, he obtained further sporadic train

pressed, were

by his

His attitude blended well with the

vague senti

period.

ing in Latin, music, philosophy, and some of the sciences. Through occasional wanderings he also strengthened his love of nature and learned to sympathize with the condition of the poor and oppressed. At length he and Madame de Warens grew tired of each other, and Rousseau gravitated to Paris. In this city he was forced to earn a livelihood for himself and Thérèse Le Vasseur, a coarse and stupid servant girl, with whom he lived for the rest of his life. He thus began to develop some sense of responsibility.

While Rousseau's days of vagabondage were now over, they had left an ineffaceable stamp upon him. His ments of the sensitiveness, impulsiveness, love for nature, and sympathy for the poor, together with his inaccurate and unsystematic education, were ever afterward in evidence. And it can be seen that these characteristics of Rousseau blended well with a body of inchoate sentiments and vague longings of this period that were striving for expression. These were the days of Louis XV and royal absolutism, when the administration of all affairs in the kingdom was controlled nominally by the monarch, but really by a small clique of idle and extravagant courtiers about him. It was necessary for those who had any desire for advancement to seek to attach themselves to the court and adopt its elaborate rules and customs. In consequence, a most artificial system of etiquette and conduct had grown up everywhere in the upper class of

society. Under this veneer and extreme conventionality were the degraded peasants, ground down by taxation, deprived of their rights, and obliged to minister to the pleasure of a vicious leisure class. But against this oppression and decadence there had gradually arisen an undefined spirit of protest and a tendency to hark back to simpler conditions. There had come into the air a feeling that the despotism and artificiality of the times were due to the departure of civilized man from an original beneficent state of nature, and that above all legislation and institutions was a natural law in complete harmony with the divine will. Hence it happened that Rousseau, emotional, uncontrolled, and half-trained, was destined to bring to consciousness and give voice to the revolutionary and naturalistic ideas and tendencies of the century.

His Discourses, and The New Heloise, Social

Contract, and Emile

For some time, among other methods of securing a living, he had been attempting literary production, when by a curious accident in 1750 he leaped into fame as a writer. The preceding year the Academy of Dijon1 had proposed as a theme for a prize essay: Has the progress of the sciences and arts contributed to corrupt or to

1 A few of the larger cities of France had, in imitation of Paris, founded 'academies' for the discussion of scientific and philosophic questions. Of these institutions one of the earliest and most prominent was that of Dijon.

Finally at chaotic

Paris his

thought was crystallized

in his essay Progress

on The

of the Sciences

and Arts in

essay on

Inequality

three years

later.

1

1750 and his purify morals? This inquiry seems to have suddenly brought to a focus all the chaotic thought that had been surging within Rousseau, and with much fervor and conviction, though most illogically, he declared that the existing oppression and corruption of society were due to the advancement of civilization. In the discourse written by him he contrasts the rugged conduct of men in the primitive ages with the artificial manners of his day, under which were cloaked impiety, deception, and arrogance. He undertakes to show from the history of the Oriental and classical nations that this degeneracy has ever been caused by the development of the arts and sciences and the attempt to pass from that happy state of ignorance in which men are placed by nature. Rousseau's essay won the prize and created a tremendous stir. Three years later he competed for another prize offered by the same academy on the subject: The origin of inequality among men.2 In his discourse on this subject Rousseau holds that the physical and intellectual inequalities of nature which existed in primitive society were scarcely noticeable, but that, with the growth of civilization, most oppressive distinctions arose, especially through the institution of private property. He declares:

"The first man who, having inclosed a piece of ground, could think of saying, "This is mine,' and found people simple enough to

1 Si le progrès des sciences et des arts a contribué à corrompre ou à épurer 2 L'origine de l'inégalité parmi les hommes.

les mœurs.

believe him, was the real founder of civil society. How many crimes, wars, murders, miseries, and horrors would not have been spared to the human race by any one who, pulling up the stakes or filling in the trench, could have called out to his fellows: 'Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you forget that the earth belongs to no one, and that its fruits are for all!""

For, he claims, it is the institution of property that soon led to robbery and insecurity, and this brought about civilization and laws to protect the accumulations of the wealthy. Through a law-governed society the poor were thrown more deeply into bondage and a new power was added to the rich.1

drawing to

rency, he

As Rousseau's democratic and revolutionary spirit After withdeveloped, Paris, with its hypocritical and cold-blooded Montmoatmosphere, became more and more stifling to him. Finally, in 1756, he withdrew to the village of Montmorency and the society of devoted friends. Here in 1761, after a period of idleness and a most unfortunate

1 The following ironical letter written by Voltaire to Rousseau concerning this work exposes the fundamental weakness of the author's philosophy :

"I have received your new book against the human race and thank you for it. Never was such cleverness used in the design of making us all stupid. One longs on reading your book to walk on all fours. But as I have lost that habit for more than sixty years, I feel unhappily the impossibility of renewing it. Nor can I embark in search of the savages of Canada, because the maladies to which I am condemned render a European surgeon necessary to me; because war is going on in those regions; and because the example of our actions has made the savages nearly as bad as ourselves."

produced by 1762 The Social Con

New Heloise,

tract, and

Emile, which