From the “Life of Robespierre.”

THE SPIRIT which animated the Revolution was the spirit of Rousseau. From the Declaration of the Rights of Man to the formation of the Constitution in 1793, there is no important act in which the influence of the Genevese philosopher is not discernible. But beyond this Rousseau has special interest for us here, as the acknowledged teacher of Robespierre, who, of all his disciples, adhered most rigidly to his principles, and gave them the most unflinching application.

  Rightly to understand Robespierre it is first indispensable that we should understand Rousseau. I shall be fulfilling, therefore, the first object of this biography in devoting a few pages to the political writings of the author of the “Social Contract.”

  The gayety, frivolity, wit, and elegance of France, so charming to those who lived in the salons, formed, as it were, but the graceful vine which clustered over a volcano about to burst; or, rather, let me say it was the rouge which, on a sallow, sunken cheek, simulated the ruddy glow of health. Lying deep down in the heart of society there was profound seriousness: the sadness of misery, of want, of slavery clanking its chains, of free thought struggling for empire. This seriousness was about to find utterance. The most careless observer could not fail to perceive the heavy thunderclouds which darkened the horizon of this sunny day. The court and the salons were not France; they occupied the foremost place upon the stage, but another actor was about to appear, before whom they would shrink into insignificance; that actor was the People.

  The people became the fashion. Philanthropy was de bon ton. The philosophers speculated about the people; the littérateurs declaimed about them. Courtiers played at being peasants. A village was constructed at Trianon; village fêtes were given at royal farms by royal peasants. Idyls were à la mode. Florian, Gesner, and “Paul et Virginie” were the flowers of this peasant literature. As in our own day we see some aristocratic writers joining with the most democratic in the senseless laudation of that grandiose abstraction—“The People,”—so in unhappy France the warmest eulogists of the starved, uneducated, uncared-for masses were those who profited by their subjection. Restless, unbelieving, sick at heart of the existing state of things, they played at being peasants, and poetized the people!

  Among the philosophic nobles, there were some who quitted their talons rouges to wear thick shoes; and relinquished their costume to put on that of the bourgeoisie. It was very dangerous work playing thus with their dignities, when those dignities were already tottering!

  Few were in earnest, because few had convictions. At length a man arose in whom pretense grew into seriousness, paradoxes ripened into convictions: that man was Rousseau. The “Contrat Social” was the bible of the Revolution. From it orators drew their principles, their political aphorisms, their political language. As a metaphysician, and as a rhetorician, his influence was incalculable. He was the man of his epoch, and therefore was he powerful. He united the elegance and eloquence of the philosophers and littérateurs to the sadness and seriousness of the people. In his strange career we see him uneasily moving amidst the salons of Paris, dressed in his Armenian robes, creating a sensation amongst the wits and poets, the dilettanti and beauties; “among them, but not of them”; and then, sick of his uneasy position, brusquely breaking away from all society, turning misanthrope, disdaining all the elegances of life, and endeavoring in solitude to find that peace among plants which men had denied him. A similar course is observable in his writings: he commences with a frivolous paradox to end with an extravagant conviction.

  The mixture of pretense and reality in Rousseau; of willful folly, and of glorious truth; of despicable baseness, and of noble qualities, makes up the mystery and piquant charm of his character. “He was,” as Carlyle finely says, “a lonely man, his life a long soliloquy.” In that soliloquy may be read the heights and depths of human nature. His ideas were often noble, grand, and tender; his acts degraded. He taught mothers by his eloquence to nurse their children, and threw his own children into the foundling hospital. His sensibility led him to sympathize with whatever was beautiful; his weakness and selfishness suggested acts which have left ineffaceable stains upon his memory. He was one of that class of men whose practice springs not from their precepts; in whom the unclouded intellect discerns and honors truth, while the will is too miserably weak to act the truth. He has had his acrid antagonists, and his eloquent defenders. Are not both right—both wrong? It is possible to draw, and truly draw, a fearful picture of one-half of this man; but such a one-sided view will never obtain general acceptance, for many will deeply sympathize with what was noble in him, and impartial men will always proclaim it.

  Few read his works. That marvelous book, “The Confessions,” will never, indeed, cease to find readers; but while “Émile” and “La Nouvelle Héloïse” from time to time tempt the adventurous, lured by celebrated titles, I do not believe that one student in fifty ever looks into the “Discourse on the Inequality of Conditions,” or the “Social Contract.” But as these were his great revolutionary works, it is to them that I must here direct attention.

  The period which elapses between 1745 and 1764 is at once the most disastrous, and, in some respects, the most remarkable, in the history of France. No period offers such striking contrasts. On the one hand, France, beaten in every quarter of the globe, loses her colonies, her marine, and even her honor; on the other hand, she collects together at Paris a brilliant band of writers, whose ideas are destined to become the guiding lights of Europe. Among these Rousseau holds a foremost rank.

  In the year 1750 the Academy of Dijon proposed, as the subject of its prize essay, this question: “Has the establishment of science and literature contributed to purify society?”

  It was an absurd question. Absurd, because as literature is itself the expression of society, which it in turn reacts upon, you cannot separate the two, and determine either the influence of literature upon society, or what society would have been had there been no literature: in other words, what society would have been, had it not been society; for society is a complex condition, of which literature is a vital element. In rude ballads as in wealthy libraries, literature is an agent inseparable from civilization. You might as well speculate on what a man’s constitution would be without a liver, as on what the constitution of society would be without literature. In this question, however, the metaphysicians of the eighteenth century saw no absurdity. Rousseau determined to answer it.

  “One day, walking with Diderot at Vincennes, talking on the proposed question, ‘Which side do you take?’ I asked him (it is Diderot who speaks). He replied, ‘The affirmative.’ ‘That’ said I, ‘is the pons asinorum: all the mediocre talents will take that route, and you can only utter commonplaces. Take the other side, and you will find it an open field, rich and fruitful, for eloquence and philosophy.’ ‘You are right’ said he, after a few moments’ reflection; ‘I will follow your advice.’”

  It was as a paradox which would startle rather than as a truth which might be commonplace, that Rousseau first threw down the gauntlet against civilization, proclaiming the superiority of ignorance and the greatness of savage life. There was something piquant in the idea. He confesses as much in the first page, where he asked himself, “How shall I dare to blame the sciences in the presence of one of the most learned bodies of Europe? or praise ignorance before a celebrated Academy?” But the result is more piquant still; this Academy absolutely awarded the prize to the audacious eulogist of ignorance! After this we cannot wonder if a paradox which an Academy could crown should produce an immense sensation in a frivolous society startled by the novelty, and allured by the eloquence of the Discourse. There was an air of serious conviction about Rousseau. A close and pressing logic, bold and sweeping dogmatism, and a masterly style, if they failed to convince, at least left readers in an embarrassment from whence there was no escape. No one was persuaded, yet no one could refute him. Replies abounded; even a king condescended to step into the arena; but Rousseau’s antagonists did not see the absurdity of the question, and could not, therefore, see the πρωτον ψευδος of his answer.

  Rousseau’s position is this: Science, Art, and Literature are the produce and producers of all the vices of civilization. Man in a state of unlettered simplicity is healthy, brave, and virtuous. He loses these qualities in society. “The ebb and flow of the ocean have not been more regularly subjected to the course of the planet which illumes the night than the fate of morals and probity to the progress of science and art.” This aphorism is universally accepted, and Rousseau’s tactic consists in boldly, and without qualification, applying it in the sense contrary to that accepted by mankind. He thus continues: “We have seen virtue disappear, according as the light of the sciences has risen upon our horizon, and the same phenomenon has been observed in all times and in all countries.” This position, so authoritatively assumed, domineers over the whole argument. He subsequently supports it by a magnificent audacity: he gives to every science a vice as its origin! “Astronomy is born from superstition; Eloquence from ambition, from hate, from flattery, from falsehood; Geometry from avarice (!); Physics from a vain curiosity; all—including Morality itself—from human pride.”

  No sane man could seriously maintain such arguments, although this was not the first time they had found utterance. St. Aubain, in a now forgotten work, called “Traité de l’Opinion,” which Rousseau had studied in his youth, advanced most of the objections to be found in this “Discours.” In fact skepticism had infested every department of human inquiry, until at last men began to doubt whether all inquiry were not useless. Rousseau’s paradox, therefore, although suggested by Diderot, was the legitimate product of the epoch, and hence its success.

  Not merely as a protest against the science and literature of the age did this “Discours” startle France; there were tones in it of a higher strain; there were sentences of serious application. Philosophers were on thrones, were at court, were caressed in salons. Princes prided themselves on their patronage of literature. Rousseau, instead of swelling the list of eulogists who proclaimed such liberality as the great virtue of an enlightened monarch, boldly declared this patronage was adroit tyranny.

  Extravagant as the leading idea of this Discourse unquestionably is, it was surpassed in his next work. Men are prone to believe in their own lies when they find others credulous, and the idea which Rousseau took up as a paradox to display his ingenuity produced so great a sensation that he began to believe he had discovered a truth. He had accidentally lighted upon a mine, and now dug vigorously onwards in search of the ore. His own unhappy life, his own unsociable temper, his consciousness of genius, and irritated self-love, all fitted him for the task of declaiming against unjust social distinctions; and while thus indulging in his vengeance, he was earning his laurels. He spat upon the society wherein he felt his false position, and the world applauded that indulgence of his wrath!

  The Academy of Dijon having gained celebrity by its foolish program, grew bolder, and proposed this momentous question: “What is the origin of the inequality among men, and is it sanctioned by the law of nature?” Rousseau’s famous “Discours” did not obtain the prize, but it created a greater sensation than any prize essay ever written. It is the paradox of the first “Discours,” but more seriously meditated, more powerfully stated. It is less of a caprice, and more of a conviction. It is a sombre, vehement protest against civilization, a protest in favor of the poor against the rich, of the oppressed and degraded Many against the polished, vicious Few. This very seriousness, I suppose, prevented the prize being awarded to the “Discours.” Certain it is, that it alarmed the ingenious, frivolous society of France, and that its full success was not obtained till some years later, when the times had grown more serious.

  L’homme qui médité est un animal dépravé. That is the keystone of the arch; and it is nothing more than the aphoristic formula of his first “Discours.” He admits that inequalities, physical as well as mental, exist, but these inequalities he attributes to the corrosive influence of civilization, with its luxuries, its subtleties, and its vices. In a state of nature, men’s bodies, being equally exercised, become equally vigorous, and the healthy body forms the healthy mind. He paints in glowing colors the ideal state of savage life, of men without language, except a few expressive sounds such as animals employ to articulate their wants, wandering amidst boundless forests, chasing their game, reposing under trees, unperverted by the illimitable desires and unsatisfied passions of civilized men, knowing none of the subtleties of affection, taking a wife to satisfy a passing desire, and heedless of his offspring, brave, simple, truthful, and free.

  That is what man was, and what he is you are called upon to compare with that primeval state.

  So far it is only another statement of his former idea, but, as he proceeds, the dangerous consequences, rigorously deduced from it, appear. Men were born equal—equal in health, in strength, in virtue, in property. The earth belonged to all, and to none. Society began with the spoliation of the many, in favor of the few; it, and its laws, are the consecration of that spoliation.

  “The first man who, having inclosed a piece of land, took it into his head to say, ‘This is mine,’ and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. What crimes, what battles, what murders, and what horrible miseries, would he have spared the human race, who should have torn down the fence, and exclaimed: ‘Beware how you listen to this impostor; you are lost if you forget that the fruits belong to all, and the earth to no one!’”

  This bold attack upon the very nature of property so startled the age, that even Voltaire called it the philosophy of a blackguard who counseled the poor to plunder the rich. It was passing beyond the limits of permissible paradox, and was becoming alarming. Rousseau was serious. He met the objection naturally made, that a man having built a wall by his own labor was entitled to its benefit, by asking, “Who gave you the right to build it? How can you pretend to be repaid for a labor we, the masses, never imposed upon you? The unanimous consent of the whole human race was necessary before you could appropriate from the common funds more than was necessary for your own subsistence. You are rich! but we suffer. Your wealth is our poverty. In vain you appeal to laws. What are laws but the adroit selfishness of men, who framed maxims for the preservation of their possessions? Property is a spoliation; laws may secure, but they cannot justify it.”

  This is no longer a mere audacious paradox; it is an unhappy error. It is not a caprice of speculative ingenuity, it is a vigorously deduced conclusion. It has not only logical consistency, but is strengthened by popular feeling. It is a doctrine which will fructify in Revolutions! To those who are in misery and want, it comes like a revelation of truth, responding to their sense of social injustice. To those who roll in wealth, it comes like a spectre to scare them from their possessions,—a spectre they cannot exorcise. It is a doctrine, it is a conviction, and is backed by millions, stung by a sense of injustice! Attempt not to answer it with phrases about “sacred rights of property,” “security of order,” “well-being of the state,” and so forth; it tells you plainly that these rights are un-sacred, and that this well-being of a state is the pampered indulgence of a few, wrung from the sufferings of millions!

  That bold idea once thrown upon the world, the world “will not willingly let die.” France suffered from it. We, in our wealthy England, also suffer from it. In thousands of heads and hearts it works, forming the basis of a political gospel. Those who most revolt against it, find it difficult to answer. It never will be answered so long as social science continues in the hands of metaphysicians. Happily, their reign is drawing to a close!