Although he
delighted
to reason according to the method
which Descartes had inaugurated, and from which he could not free
himself, that old vessel in which bubbled up the new wine of his
thought, yet it is unreasonable to expect much reason from him.
which Descartes had inaugurated, and from which he could not free
himself, that old vessel in which bubbled up the new wine of his
thought, yet it is unreasonable to expect much reason from him.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v21 - Rab to Rus
12425 (#479) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
12425
THE CARD-DEALER
OULD you not drink her gaze like wine?
Yet though its splendor swoon
Into the silence languidly
As a tune into a tune,
Those eyes unravel the coiled nigh
And know the stars at noon.
C
The gold that's heaped beside her hand,
In truth rich prize it were;
And rich the dreams that wreathe her brows
With magic stillness there;
And he were rich who should unwind
That woven golden hair.
Around her, where she sits, the dance
Now breathes its eager heat;
And not more lightly or more true
Fall there the dancers' feet
Than fall her cards on the bright board
As 'twere an heart that beat.
Her fingers let them softly through,
Smooth polished silent things;
And each one as it falls reflects
In swift light-shadowings,
Blood-red and purple, green and blue,
The great eyes of her rings.
Whom plays she with? With thee, who lov'st
Those gems upon her hand;
With me, who search her secret brows;
With all men, blessed or banned.
We play together, she and we,
Within a vain strange land:
A land without any order,—
Day even as night (one saith),—
Where who lieth down ariseth not
Nor the sleeper awakeneth;
A land of darkness as darkness itself
And of the shadow of death.
What be her cards, you ask? Even these:-
The heart, that doth but crave
More, having fed; the diamond,
Skilled to make base seem brave;
## p. 12426 (#480) ##########################################
12426
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
The club, for smiting in the dark;
The spade, to dig a grave.
And do you ask what game she plays?
With me 'tis lost or won;
With thee it is playing still; with him
It is not well begun;
But 'tis a game she plays with all
Beneath the sway o' the sun.
Thou seest the card that falls,-she knows
The card that followeth :
Her game in thy tongue is called Life,
As ebbs thy daily breath:
When she shall speak, thou'lt learn her tongue
And know she calls it Death.
SUDDEN LIGHT
HAVE been here before,
I
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.
You have been mine before,—
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow's soar
Your neck turned so,
Some veil did fall,-I knew it all of yore.
Has this been thus before?
And shall not thus time's eddying flight
Still with our lives our loves restore
In death's despite,
And day and night yield one delight once more?
THE WOODSPURGE
THE
HE wind flapped loose, the wind was still,
Shaken out dead from tree and hill:
I had walked on at the wind's will,-
I sat now, for the wind was still.
-
Between my knees my forehead was, -
My lips, drawn in, said not Alas!
## p. 12427 (#481) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
My hair was over in the grass,
My naked ears heard the day pass.
My eyes, wide open, had the run
Of some ten weeds to fix upon;
Among those few, out of the sun,
The woodspurge flowered, three cups in one.
From perfect grief there need not be
Wisdom, or even memory:
One thing then learnt remains to me,-
The woodspurge has a cup of three.
THE SEA-LIMITS
ONSIDER the sea's listless chime:
C
Time's self it is, made audible,-
The murmur of the earth's own shell.
Secret continuance sublime
Is the sea's end: our sight may pass
No furlong further. Since time was,
This sound hath told the lapse of time.
No quiet, which is death's,—it hath
The mournfulness of ancient life,
Enduring always at dull strife.
As the world's heart of rest and wrath,
Its painful pulse is in the sands.
Last utterly, the whole sky stands,
Gray and not known, along its path.
Listen alone beside the sea,
Listen alone among the woods;
Those voices of twin solitudes
Shall have one sound alike to thee:
Hark where the murmurs of thronged men
Surge and sink back and surge again,—
Still the one voice of wave and tree.
Gather a shell from the strown beach
And listen at its lips: they sigh
The same desire and mystery,
The echo of the whole sea's speech.
And all mankind is thus at heart
Not anything but what thou art:
And Earth, Sea, Man, are all in each.
12427
## p. 12428 (#482) ##########################################
12428
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
THE CLOUD CONFINES
HE day is dark and the night
To him that would search their heart;
No lips of cloud that will part,
Nor morning song in the light:
Only, gazing alone,
To him wild shadows are shown,
Deep under deep unknown
And height above unknown height.
Still we say as we go,-
THE
"Strange to think by the way,
Whatever there is to know,
That shall we know one day. "
The Past is over and fled;
Named new, we name it the old:
Thereof some tale hath been told,
But no word comes from the dead;
Whether at all they be,
Or whether as bond or free,
Or whether they too were we,
Or by what spell they have sped.
Still we say as we go,-
"Strange to think by the way,
Whatever there is to know,
That shall we know one day. "
What of the heart of hate
That beats in thy breast, O Time? —
Red strife from the furthest prime,
And anguish of fierce debate;
War that shatters her slain,
And peace that grinds them as grain,
And eyes fixed ever in vain
On the pitiless eyes of Fate.
Still we say as we go,-
"Strange to think by the way,
Whatever there is to know,
That shall we know one day. "
What of the heart of love
That bleeds in thy breast, O Man? .
Thy kisses snatched 'neath the ban
Of fangs that mock them above;
## p. 12429 (#483) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Thy bells prolonged unto knells,
Thy hope that a breath dispels,
Thy bitter forlorn farewells
And the empty echoes thereof?
Still we say as we go,—
"Strange to think by the way,
Whatever there is to know,
That shall we know one day. ”
-
The sky leans dumb on the sea,
Aweary with all its wings;
And oh! the song the sea sings
Is dark everlastingly.
Our past is clean forgot,
Our present is and is not,
Our future's a sealed seed-plot,
And what betwixt them are we?
We who say as we go,-
"Strange to think by the way,
Whatever there is to know,
That shall we know one day. "
SONG OF THE BOWER
AY, is it day, is it dusk in thy bower,
SAY, Thou whom I long for, who longest for me?
Oh! be it light, be it night, 'tis Love's hour,
Love's that is fettered as Love's that is free.
Free Love has leaped to that innermost chamber,
Oh! the last time, and the hundred before:
Fettered Love, motionless, can but remember,
Yet something that sighs from him passes the door.
Nay, but my heart when it flies to thy bower,
What does it find there that knows it again?
There it must droop like a shower-beaten flower,
Red at the rent core and dark with the rain.
Ah! yet what shelter is still shed above it,-
What waters still image its leaves torn apart?
Thy soul is the shade that clings round it to love it,
And tears are its mirror deep down in thy heart.
12429
What were my prize could I enter thy bower,
This day, to-morrow, at eve or at morn?
T
## p. 12430 (#484) ##########################################
12430
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Large lovely arms and a neck like a tower,
Bosom then heaving that now lies forlorn.
Kindled with love-breath, (the sun's kiss is colder! )
Thy sweetness all near me, so distant to-day;
My hand round thy neck and thy hand on my shoulder,
My mouth to thy mouth as the world melts away.
What is it keeps me afar from thy bower,-
My spirit, my body, so fain to be there?
Waters engulfing or fires that devour? —
Earth heaped against me or death in the air?
Nay, but in day-dreams, for terror, for pity,
The trees wave their heads with an omen to tell;
Nay, but in night-dreams, throughout the dark city,
The hours, clashed together, lose count in the bell.
Shall I not one day remember thy bower,
One day when all days are one day to me? —
Thinking, "I stirred not, and yet had the power;"
Yearning, "Ah God, if again it might be! »
Peace, peace! such a small lamp illumes, on this highway,
So dimly so few steps in front of my feet,
Yet shows me that her way is parted from my way:
Out of sight, beyond light, at what goal may we meet?
SONNETS FROM THE HOUSE OF LIFE'
INTRODUCTORY SONNET
A
SONNET is a moment's monument,-
Memorial from the Soul's eternity
To one dead deathless hour.
Whether for lustral rite or dire portent,
Of its own arduous fullness reverent:
Carve it in ivory or in ebony,
As Day or Night may rule; and let Time see
Its flowering crest impearled and orient.
Look that it be,
A Sonnet is a coin: its face reveals
The soul,-its converse, to what Power 'tis due:
Whether for tribute to the august appeals
Of Life, or dower in Love's high retinue,
It serve; or, 'mid the dark wharf's cavernous breath,
In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death.
## p. 12431 (#485) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
12431
LOVESIGHT
WHEN do I see thee most, beloved one?
When in the light the spirits of mine eyes
Before thy face, their altar, solemnize
The worship of that Love through thee made known?
Or when in the dusk hours (we two alone),
Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies
Thy twilight hidden glimmering visage lies,
And my soul only sees thy soul its own?
O love, my love! if I no more should see
Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,
Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,-
How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope
The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope,
The wind of Death's imperishable wing?
KNOWN IN VAIN
As Two whose love, first foolish, widening scope,
Knows suddenly, to music high and soft,
The Holy of Holies; who because they scoffed
Are now amazed with shame, nor dare to cope
With the whole truth aloud, lest heaven should ope:
Yet, at their meetings, laugh not as they laughed
In speech; nor speak, at length: but sitting oft
Together, within hopeless sight of hope,
For hours are silent;-so it happeneth
When Work and Will awake too late, to gaze
After their life sailed by, and hold their breath.
Ah! who shall dare to search through what sad maze
Thenceforth their incommunicable ways
Follow the desultory feet of Death?
THE HILL SUMMIT
THIS feast-day of the sun, his altar there
In the broad west has blazed for vesper-song;
And I have loitered in the vale too long,
And gaze now a belated worshiper.
Yet may I not forget that I was 'ware,
So journeying, of his face at intervals
Transfigured where the fringed horizon falls,-
A fiery bush with coruscating hair.
## p. 12432 (#486) ##########################################
12432
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
And now that I have climbed and won this height,
I must tread downward through the sloping shade
And travel the bewildered tracks till night.
Yet for this hour I still may here be stayed,
And see the gold air and the silver fade
And the last bird fly into the last light.
THE CHOICE
I
EAT thou and drink: to-morrow thou shalt die.
Surely the earth, that's wise being very old,
Needs not our help. Then loose me, love, and hold
Thy sultry hair up from my face; that I
May pour for thee this golden wine, brim-high,
Till round the glass thy fingers glow like gold.
We'll drown all hours: thy song, while hours are tolled,
Shall leap, as fountains veil the changing sky.
Now kiss, and think that there are really those,
My own high-bosomed beauty, who increase
Vain gold, vain lore, and yet might choose our way!
Through many years they toil: then on a day
They die not,- for their life was death,- but cease;
And round their narrow lips the mold falls close.
II
WATCH thou and fear: to-morrow thou shalt die.
Or art thou sure thou shalt have time for death?
Is not the day which God's word promiseth
To come man knows not when? In yonder sky,
Now while we speak, the sun speeds forth: can I
Or thou assure him of his goal? God's breath
Even at this moment haply quickeneth
The air to a flame; till spirits, always nigh
Though screened and hid, shall walk the daylight here.
And dost thou prate of all that man shall do?
Canst thou, who hast but plagues, presume to be
Glad in his gladness that comes after thee?
Will his strength slay thy worm in Hell? Go to:
Cover thy countenance, and watch, and fear.
## p. 12433 (#487) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
12433
III
THINK thou and act: to-morrow thou shalt die.
Outstretched in the sun's warmth upon the shore,
Thou say'st:-"Man's measured path is all gone o'er:
Up, all his years, steeply, with strain and sigh,
Man clomb until he touched the truth; and I,
Even I, am he whom it was destined for. "
How should this be? Art thou then so much more
Than they who sowed, that thou shouldst reap thereby?
Nay, come up hither. From this wave-washed mound
Unto the furthest flood-brim look with me;
Then reach on with thy thought till it be drowned.
Miles and miles distant though the last line be,
And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues beyond,-
Still, leagues beyond those leagues, there is more sea.
LOST DAYS
THE lost days of my life until to-day,
What were they, could I see them on the street
Lie as they fell? Would they be ears of wheat
Sown once for food but trodden into clay?
Or golden coins squandered and still to pay?
Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet?
Or such spilt water as in dreams must cheat
The undying throats of Hell, athirst alway?
I do not see them here; but after death
God knows I know the faces I shall see,
Each one a murdered self, with low last breath.
"I am thyself,— what hast thou done to me? "
"And I and I-thyself" (lo! each one saith),
"And thou thyself to all eternity! "
A SUPERSCRIPTION
Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been;
I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell;
Unto thine ear I hold the dead-sea shell
Cast up thy Life's foam-fretted feet between;
Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seen
Which had Life's form and Love's, but by my spell
Is now a shaken shadow intolerable,
Of ultimate things unuttered the frail screen.
XXI-778
## p. 12434 (#488) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
12434
Mark me, how still I am! But should there dart
One moment through thy soul the soft surprise
Of that winged Peace which lulls the breath of sighs,-
Then shalt thou see me smile, and turn apart
Thy visage to mine ambush at thy heart,
Sleepless with cold commemorative eyes.
ON REFUSAL OF AID BETWEEN NATIONS
N°T
Or that the earth is changing, O my God!
Nor that the seasons totter in their walk,-
Not that the virulent ill of act and talk
Seethes ever as a winepress ever trod,-
Not therefore are we certain that the rod
Weighs in thine hand to smite thy world; though now
Beneath thine hand so many nations bow,
So many kings: not therefore, O my God! -
But because Man is parceled out in men
To-day because, for any wrongful blow,
No man not stricken asks, "I would be told
Why thou dost thus;" but his heart whispers then,
"He is he, I am I. " By this we know
That the earth falls asunder, being old.
FOR A VENETIAN PASTORAL,' BY GIORGIONE, IN THE LOUVRE
ATER, for anguish of the solstice: nay,
But dip the vessel slowly,- nay, but lean
And hark how at its verge the wave sighs in
Reluctant. Hush! Beyond all depth away
The heat lies silent at the brink of day:
Now the hand trails upon the viol-string
That sobs, and the brown faces cease to sing,
Sad with the whole of pleasure. Whither stray
Her eyes now, from whose mouth the slim pipes creep
And leave it pouting, while the shadowed grass
Is cool against her naked side? Let be:
Say nothing now unto her lest she weep,
Nor name this ever. Be it as it was,-
Life touching lips with Immortality.
WATER
-
## p. 12434 (#489) ##########################################
## p. 12434 (#490) ##########################################
J. J. ROUSSEAU.
## p. 12434 (#491) ##########################################
1
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## p. 12434 (#492) ##########################################
## p. 12435 (#493) ##########################################
12435
DGX
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
(1712-1778)
BY ÉDOUARD ROD
HROUGHOUT his life, Rousseau was tossed about as by an inner
storm, in exciting the violence of which malicious circum-
stances seemed to delight. He was born at Geneva, June
28th, 1712, in a troubled atmosphere, among the riots and agitations
which were beginning to threaten the old Genevan oligarchy. He
lost his mother at birth. His father, who was a watchmaker, scarcely
concerned himself with his early education except to read Plutarch
and Richardson with him. When forced to leave Geneva, he in-
trusted the boy to the care of a maternal uncle. Jean Jacques was
a dreamy, romantic child, sentimental, and not without a touch of
perversity. Early embarked on a wandering and adventurous life,
he was successively engraver's apprentice, vagabond, lackey, secre-
tary. He improvised himself into a musician; he even made him-
self a traveling tradesman. The counsels of a benefactress whose
influence over him was very great-Madame de Warens - converted
him to Catholicism, a faith which he afterward renounced. He
traveled. He saw Italy. He read French, English, and German phi-
losophers pell-mell, while studying music, history, and mathematics
without method. Engaged as a preceptor at the elder Mably's,-
brother of the Abbé Mably,- he was introduced to the literary soci-
ety of the epoch. After some fruitless gropings he was to conquer
first place in a competition before the Academy of Dijon, by a memo-
rial (which was crowned) upon this question: 'Has the progress of
sciences and arts contributed to corrupt or to purify morals? ' (1749).
The success of this initial work, which contains the germs of most
of the ideas developed in his later works, was both brilliant and bel-
ligerent.
Suddenly famous, Rousseau became at the same time distrustful,
solitary, misanthropic; and these characteristics were intensified by
his alliance with her who was to be the companion of his life,- a
person of inferior heart and mind, from whom he suffered much,
and with whom he could not break. The 'Discourse on the Arts and
Sciences' was soon followed by a new competitive essay assigned by
the same Academy of Dijon,-'A Discourse on the Inequality among
## p. 12436 (#494) ##########################################
12436
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
Men,' — which is a fuller and more authoritative exposition of the
earlier theme. The fundamental idea of this work the keystone
of all Rousseau's philosophy. It is summed up in this simple remark:
"Men are bad; my own sad experience furnishes the proof: yet man
is naturally good, as I think I have shown. What then can so have
degraded him, except the changes in his condition, the progress he
has made, and the knowledge he has acquired? " The Academy of
Dijon did not crown this second discourse, which was thought too
radical; and Rousseau continued a career filled with triumphs whose
bitterness alone he felt. His theories were violently opposed by the
literary and philosophic classes; but the public was with him.
In 1752, his opera 'Le Devin du Village' (The Village Sooth-
sayer), played at court under his direction, brought him a pension
from the King. He became the fashion; great lords and lovely ladies
invited him, petted him, patronized him. In less than five years
he was to launch on the world the works which made him the most
formidable protagonist of the new era: 'La Nouvelle Héloïse,' which
inaugurated "romantic" literature long before the word was found
to characterize it; the Contrat Social,' which preludes the doctrines
of the Revolution; and 'Émile,' which attempts to reform the princi-
ples of education. These three works brought Rousseau an unexam-
pled popularity. But the violent controversies they aroused, the real
hatreds they excited, the condemnations they drew upon him,- at
Paris where the Parliament decreed his arrest, and at Geneva where
'Émile' was burned by the executioner,- hurried him into a mel-
ancholy more and more bitter and afflicting. He took refuge with
different friends, whom his suspicions presently transformed into per-
secutors, in different places, where he always believed himself perse-
cuted.
Returning to Paris in 1770, he passed there several years of anxious
poverty: copying music for a livelihood; composing, in answer to
demands which honored him, such works as the 'Considerations on
the Government of Poland'; or to defend himself before posterity,
books like The Confessions,' and the Rêveries d'un Promeneur
Solitaire' (Musings of a Solitary Stroller), which did not appear until
after his death. In 1778 he accepted a refuge offered by one of
his faithful friends, René de Girardin, on his estate of Ermenonville.
There his mind seemed to be growing calmer in the serene contem-
plation of the green and smiling country, when he died suddenly, on
the 2d of July, 1778, in his sixty-seventh year. At first, suicide was
suspected; but an autopsy disclosed the cause of death to be serous
apoplexy. His body, buried at two o'clock at night under the pop-
lars of Ermenonville,- "by the most beautiful moonlight and in the
calmest weather," says a witness,- was transported to the Pantheon
## p. 12437 (#495) ##########################################
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
12437
in 1794 by order of the Convention. But in 1814 it was exhumed,
as was Voltaire's, without official order; and the bones of the two
philosophers, placed in the same sack, were thrust under ground in
the waste land toward Bercy.
What especially strikes the writer who attempts to analyze the
moral and intellectual personality of Rousseau, is the predominance
of his imagination. He was a poet and a romancer,— a romancer
who made theories instead of making romances; but 'Émile' is cer-
tainly a pedagogical story, as the Contrat Social' is a story, as the
'Discours sur l'Inégalité' is a historical, or if you like, an anthro-
pological story. This fertile imagination was constantly excited by a
very lively sensibility, which exalted itself in ardent friendships, in
ardent passions, which embraced all humanity, reaching out to ani-
mals and even to inanimate things, and finding only in communion
with nature some little joy and compensation. The disordered ac-
tion of the romantic imagination upon this morbid sensibility would
naturally produce and did produce errors of judgment, such as the
doctrines of the Contrat, of Émile, etc. ; and also errors in life, of
which the gravest was that systematic and deliberate abandonment
of his children, with which Rousseau has been so strongly reproached.
But these errors came from the mind, not from the heart. Many
facts prove that despite his paradoxes of thought and conduct, this
man possessed a sincere kindness, a generosity which could pardon
the worst offenses, a simple and touching tenderness of soul, a dis-
interestedness so great as to deprive him of all profit from his tal-
ents. These qualities are sometimes spoiled or perverted by a pride
to which perhaps must be attributed some of his acts of generosity
or devotion, as well as some of his errors; and which later became
exaggerated to mania in the mental malady of which it is impossi-
ble to say whether it was cause or effect. This pride, from which
he suffered more than any one else, was his only vice; in spite of his
having allowed himself to be drawn into certain culpable acts, such
as once to have stolen and often to have lied,-offenses which would
never have been known but for his own confession.
In spite of such errors, committed in hours of temptation, and
expiated by long and sincere regrets, it would be unjust to deny
Rousseau's true nobility of soul. If that soul seems to us sullied,
the blame rests upon the hazards of his neglected childhood and
adventurous youth; upon the storms of his genius, his sufferings dur-
ing the long period when he was forced to seek his true self among
the worst obstacles, upon the tempests he aroused; and finally, later,
upon the maddening mirages with which his sick imagination sur-
rounded him.
## p. 12438 (#496) ##########################################
12438
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
-
The elements of Rousseau's character were also those of his gen-
ius.
Although he delighted to reason according to the method
which Descartes had inaugurated, and from which he could not free
himself, that old vessel in which bubbled up the new wine of his
thought, yet it is unreasonable to expect much reason from him.
His logic usually ends in paradox. Upon going back to the origin of
his ideas and attempting to analyze them, one finds that taken sep-
arately they are neither very original nor very profound: all return
to that fundamental conception of the superiority of "the state of
nature" over "the social state," - a too inadequate conception, of
which it is impossible to prove the truth. It is that which inspired
his earliest Discourses. ' At first the 'Contrat Social' seemed to
contradict them: for how could a philosopher who hated society just-
ify the basis of its organization; and especially how could he conclude,
as he does, that to this fatal and illegitimate society the citizen owes
the sacrifice of himself? But after this passing infidelity to his dom-
inant faith, he returned to it again in 'Émile,' where he maintains
that normal education should isolate a child from society in order that
his natural qualities may develop; and he held this view to the end,
as appears in those Confessions,' which, in the portrait they give
of himself, explain without justifying the fundamental idea of all his
doctrine. The defects of his early education Rousseau never sup-
plied; his reading, insufficient and fantastic, left him defenseless to
all external influences. His religion was a vague spiritualism; his
morality, an unconvincing optimism; his politics, a Utopia, pastoral
in the 'Discours sur l'Inégalité,' epic in the 'Contrat Social. ' Finally,
he seems never to have known any other man than himself; and the
psychology of his 'Nouvelle Héloïse' remains essentially personal.
Whence comes it then, that in spite of so much weakness he was the
greatest French writer of his century,- or at least the most influen-
tial, the most universal, and the most persistent?
To understand this curious fact, we must consider Rousseau in his
century and environment. At that period, literature found itself in
flagrant conflict with the morality whose aspirations it was supposed
to express. The writers, most of them new-comers from another class,
usually ended by adding themselves to the old society and adopting
its conventions; or, penetrated with new sentiments, failed to adopt
new tools, and clung to the rhetoric inherited from the preceding
age. Dry, arid, "oldish" in Goethe's apt phrase, they tried in vain
to cultivate sensibility; and when they endeavored to depart from
routine, achieved only the artificial, as Diderot's plays show. The
strength and greatness of Rousseau was, above all, his sincerity: if
he was the first to discard conventional rhetoric, and to express his
own sensibility, it is because he possessed true sensibility; moreover,
---
-
## p. 12439 (#497) ##########################################
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
12439
plebeian by birth, he remained plebeian from resolute pride. Differ-
ent from his contemporaries in these two essentials, which conse-
crated his superiority, he became the supreme interpreter of those
ideas, feelings, passions, which were fermenting in the decomposition
of the Old World. He was sentimental and revolutionary, romantic
and rebellious. Animated by the fierce breath of the spirit of nega-
tion, he set himself against all authority, against all tradition; and
his attack was the more resistless, that the charm of his romantic
spirit dissembled its violence.
In the discharge of this little understood and almost fatal office,
he was aided by his wonderful literary gifts. With his most illustri-
ous rivals, French prose had become a conversational language,—
rapid, facile, and brilliant; but without the life which captivates or
the power which impresses itself. Rousseau instinctively abandoned
this use to return to the great oratorical style, to rediscover the lost
secrets of eloquence. For the short sentence, dry, laconic, and inci-
sive, which is that of the best writers of his time, he adopted the long
balanced period, sometimes even too rhythmic, which seizes the atten-
tion and holds it to the end. For the abstract terms in which those
about him delighted, he substituted words of color, living and ardent;
words which paint, words which feel, words which vibrate and weep.
The same instinct which thus revealed to him a new skill in the
sentence, revealed to him also a new and corresponding skill in com-
position. His sentences-long, vivid, and musical-link themselves
together to form a kind of organic charm; so that the complete work
may exercise the same fascination as each of its component parts.
It was the language of passion succeeding that of reason, or rather
of reasoning. The effect could not be doubtful. This effect was
extremely violent, not only upon ideas but upon morals. Is it neces-
sary to recall that after the 'Nouvelle Héloïse,' everybody wanted to
love like Saint-Preux and Julie? that 'Émile' transformed the cur-
rent opinions upon education? that people wished to be emotional,
to dream in the fields, to reascend the current of civilization, to
make their spirits ingenuous, primitive, or at least "natural"? Who
then first uttered the cry of the period, "O Nature! Nature! " the cry
which soon became a new affectation?
Thus Rousseau appears to us as the most enticing guide of his
century. "Beside him," says M. Faguet, "Voltaire appears at times
merely a witty student, and Buffon only a very remarkable teacher
of rhetoric. Montesquieu alone, inferior as a man of imagination,
equals him in strength of view, and excels him in clearness of vis-
ion. " But exactly because he lacked imagination, Montesquieu was
not a harbinger. Rousseau was essentially a forerunner. One may
say that he has shaped the whole century which followed him. His
## p. 12440 (#498) ##########################################
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JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
principal works not only called forth successions of imitations, but
the world is imbued with his ideas, whose consequences continue to
renew or overturn the human soul and society. The 'Contrat Social'
accounts in part for the excesses of the Revolution; and as to the
chief revolutionists, the most dangerous indeed were "Spartans," as
Rousseau had recommended. The vague yet ardent spiritualism pro-
claimed in the 'Profession de Foi du Vicaire Savoyard' (The Savoyard
Vicar's Creed), led to the Festival of the Supreme Being, and pro-
voked the religious reaction of the beginning of the century. The
notions concerning a return to the primitive life which he developed
in his first work, and which remained the basis of his doctrine, may
be found again with the socialists of 1848, underlying the Utopias of
the Saint-Simons, the Fouriers, the Enfantiers, and perhaps even in
the origin of the "collectivism" which has replaced those innocent
dreams. His optimism, his faith in the constant progress of humanity,
inspired during the same period not only the "reformer" who trans-
ported the golden age of the past to the future, but also the most
moderate, most clear-sighted, and most politic minds. The 'Nouvelle
Héloïse' created romanticism, that perilous and seductive disposition
of spirit to which we owe so many affecting works: Saint-Preux is
an elder brother of Werther, and what a posterity follows them!
Before Rousseau, a few English poets alone had perceived Nature.
After him, no one dared longer ignore her. Every one prided him-
self upon loving her. She found sincere adorers who perhaps would
never have perceived her if they had not listened to her worshiper's
enchanting voice.
In such details we get the impression of the whole man. Others
have left works more perfect, and above all more beneficent; but I do
not believe that in the whole history of literature there exists the man
whose influence has been so decisive, so far-reaching, and upon whom
it is so difficult to form a fair judgment. Measured from the point
of view of to-day, this influence seems disproportioned to the genius
which exercised it, and to the value of the works of that genius.
But the most perfect works do not necessarily count the most; and
the keenest criticism cannot always explain the mysterious affinities
of genius, of thought, and of morals. It has been questioned whether
this influence, the extent and duration of which are incontestable, has
been a salutary one. We are not now to consider this. An alluring,
an irresistible guide, Rousseau has not been an infallible one. Many
have gone astray in following him. If he had a kind and feeling
heart, he had not less a faulty intellect; and his paradoxes often par-
alyzed his good intention. The ability with which he followed them
to their extreme conclusion, like the eloquence he employed in their
service, only served to render them more dangerous. Therefore in
## p. 12441 (#499) ##########################################
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
12441
penetrating so deeply the consciousness of the generations that fol-
lowed im, Rousseau's thought has drawn upon them many ills. It
has involved them in many gropings and errors, in many delusive
visions and sufferings. It has spread abroad in the Old World a
general agitation, which the violent convulsions following it did not
succeed in dispelling. It has scattered abroad sadness which still
encompasses us. Passion is sad; nature breathes melancholy: all that
Rousseau loved and made us love puts the heart in mourning; it
may be that it is the memory of his teaching which spreads such dark-
ness over the end of the century. For by an amazing contradiction,
the optimist who believed so profoundly in the goodness of human
nature is the true father of the pessimists of our time. But what-
ever the proportions of the good and ill he has done us, we are still
responsive to his influence, while cherishing for him an affection not
unmingled with reproach. Those even who condemn or oppose him
do not always escape loving him. Although a whole century - one
of the centuries most freighted with historical events and evolutions
- has passed over his work, it is still too near to be fairly judged.
But we may feel sure that it will be reckoned in a balance whose
weights we do not know.
дол агония
Guard
FOREWORD
Copyright 1893, by G. P. Putnam's Sons
From The Social Contract.
I
WISH to discover whether, in the existing social order, there
may not be some rule of safe and legitimate administration,
taking men as they are and laws as they might be. I shall
try to ally, in this research, that which the law permits with that
which interest prescribes, so that justice and utility may not be
divided.
I enter upon this discussion without proving the importance
of the subject. I shall be asked if I am a prince or a legislator,
that I write about politics. I shall answer, No—and that for this
reason I write about politics. If I were a prince or a legislator,
I should not lose time in telling what ought to be done: I should
do it or be silent.
## p. 12442 (#500) ##########################################
12442
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
Born citizen of a free State and member of the sovereign peo-
ple, however feeble the influence of my voice in public affairs,
the right to vote upon them imposes upon me the duty of in-
structing myself. Whenever I meditate upon governments, I am
happy to find in my investigations new reasons for loving that of
my own country.
THE PEOPLE
From The Social Contract. Copyright 1893, by G. P. Putnam's Sons
THE
HE architect, before erecting a great building, examines and
sounds the soil to see if it will bear its weight: so the wise
lawgiver will not begin by making good laws, but he will
first see whether the people for whom they are destined is ready
to hear them. It was for this reason that Plato refused to give
laws to the Arcadians and the Cyrenians, knowing that these two
nations were rich and would not endure equality.
The reason that in Crete there were good laws and bad men,
was because Minos had given laws to a people loaded with vices.
Thousands of nations have flourished upon earth which could
never have endured good laws; and those which could have borne
them had but a short existence.
Most nations, like most men, are docile only in youth; they
become incorrigible as they grow old.
hey grow old. When customs are once
established and prejudices rooted, it is a dangerous and useless
enterprise to try to reform them: the people will not permit
their misfortunes to be touched upon, even for their instruction,
-like the stupid and cowardly sick who shudder at sight of a
physician.
It is not that
as some maladies upset a man's head and
make him forget the past - there may not be, in the existence of
States, violent epochs when revolutions produce upon nations the
effect that certain crises produce upon individuals; when horror
of the past takes the place of forgetfulness, and when the State,
destroyed by civil wars, rises from its ashes and takes on the
vigor of youth.
Such was Sparta in the time of Lycurgus; such was Rome
after the Tarquins; and such have been among us Holland and
Switzerland after the expulsion of tyrants.
-
•
## p. 12443 (#501) ##########################################
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
12443
But these events are rare; they are exceptions, and their
cause is always found in the particular constitution of the excep-
tional State. They cannot even take place twice with the same
nation; for a nation can make itself free as long as it is barbar-
ous, but it can do so no more when its civil energy is exhausted.
Troubles may then destroy, without its being possible for rev-
olutions to re-establish it: as soon as its chains are broken it
falls apart and exists no longer, needing thereafter a master, not
a liberator.
Let free nations remember this truth: "Liberty may be ac-
quired, but never recovered. "
Youth is not infancy. There is a time of youth for nations.
as well as man, or if you will, of maturity,- which must be
waited for before subjecting them to laws: but the maturity of
a people is not always easy to recognize, and if begun too early
the labor is lost. Certain peoples may be disciplined from their
earliest existence; others cannot be disciplined at the end of ten
centuries.
-
The Russians will never be truly civilized, because they were
taken in hand too early. Peter had the genius of imitation: he
had not the true genius which creates all from nothing. Some
things which he did were good, most of them were ill-timed.
He saw that his was a barbarous people: he did not see that
it was not ripe for civilization; he tried to civilize it when he
should have accustomed it to war. He tried at first to make
Germans or English, when he should have begun by making
Russians; he prevented his subjects from ever becoming what
they might have been, by persuading them that they were what
they were not.
It is thus that a French preceptor teaches his pupil to shine
in his infancy, and then to amount to nothing afterward. The
empire of Russia will desire to subjugate Europe, and will itself
be subjugated. The Tartars, its subjects or neighbors, will
become its masters and ours: this revolution seems to me inev-
itable. All the kings of Europe are working together to acceler-
ate it.
## p. 12444 (#502) ##########################################
12444
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
FROM ÉMILE>
Copyright 1892, by D. Appleton & Co. , and reprinted by permission of the
Translator
R
ATTLE-HEADED children become commonplace men. I know of
no observation more general and more certain than this.
Nothing is more difficult than to distinguish, in infancy,
real stupidity from that apparent and deceptive stupidity which
is the indication of strong characters. It seems strange, at
first sight, that the two extremes should have the same signs, and
yet this must needs be so; for at an age when the man has as
yet no real ideas, all the difference that exists between him
who has genius and him who has it not is, that the latter gives
admittance only to false ideas, while the former, finding no oth-
ers, gives admittance to none. In so far then as one is capable
of nothing, and nothing is befitting the other, both appear to be
stupid. The only sign that can distinguish them depends on
chance, which may offer to the last some idea within his com-
prehension; whereas the first is always and everywhere the same.
During his infancy the younger Cato seemed an imbecile in the
family. He was taciturn and obstinate, and this was all the judg
ment that was formed of him. It was only in the antechamber
of Sylla that his uncle learned to know him. If he had not
gone into that antechamber, perhaps he would have passed for a
dolt till the age of reason. If Cæsar had not lived, perhaps men
would always have treated as a visionary that very Cato who
penetrated his baleful genius, and foresaw all his projects from
afar. Oh, how liable to be deceived are they who are so precipi-
tate in their judgments of children! They are often the more
childish. I myself have seen a man somewhat advanced in age,
who honored me with his friendship, who was regarded by his
family and his friends as lacking in intelligence; but this was
a superior mind maturing in silence. All at once he has shown
himself a philosopher, and I doubt not that posterity will assign
him a distinguished and honorable place among the best reason.
ers and the most profound metaphysicians of his age.
Respect childhood, and do not hastily judge of it either for
good or for evil. Allow a long time for the exceptions to be
manifested, proved, and confirmed, before adopting special meth-
ods for them. Allow Nature to act in her place, for fear of
thwarting her operations. You know, you say, the value of time,
## p. 12445 (#503) ##########################################
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
12445
and do not wish to waste it. You do not see that to make a bad
use of time is much more wasteful than to do nothing with it;
and that a poorly taught child is further from wisdom than one
who has not been taught at all. You are alarmed at seeing him.
consume his early years in doing nothing! Really! Is it noth-
ing to be happy? Is it nothing to jump, play, and run, all day
long? In no other part of his life will he be so busy. Plato,
in his 'Republic,' which is deemed so austere, brings up children
only in festivals, games, songs, and pastimes. It might be said
that he has done all when he has really taught them how to
enjoy themselves; and Seneca, speaking of the ancient Roman
youth, says they were always on their feet, and were
taught anything which they could learn while seated. Were they
of less value for this when they reached the age of manhood?
Be not at all frightened, therefore, at this so-called idleness.
What would you think of a man who, in order to turn his whole
life to profitable account, would never take time to sleep? You
will say that he is a man out of his senses: that he does not
make use of his time but deprives himself of it; and that to fly
from sleep is to run toward death. Reflect, therefore, that this is
the same thing, and that childhood is the slumber of reason.
never
The apparent facility with which children learn is the cause
of their ruin. We do not see that this very facility is the proof
that they are learning nothing. Their smooth and polished brain
reflects like a mirror the objects that are presented to it; but
nothing remains, nothing penetrates it. The child retains words,
but ideas are reflected. Those who hear these words understand
them, but the child who utters them does not.
Although memory and reasoning are two essentially different
faculties, yet the first is not truly developed save in conjunction
with the second. Before the age of reason a child does not re-
ceive ideas, but images; and there is this difference between
them: images are but the faithful pictures of sensible objects,
while ideas are notions of objects determined by their rela-
tions. An image may exist alone in the mind which forms the
representation of it; but every idea supposes others.
When we
imagine, we do no more than see; but when we conceive, we com-
pare. Our sensations are purely passive, whereas all our percep-
tions or ideas spring from an active principle which judges.
I say then, that children, not being capable of judgment, have
no real memory. They retain sounds, forms, sensations, but rarely
## p. 12446 (#504) ##########################################
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JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
ideas; and still more rarely their combinations. The objection
that they learn some elements of geometry is thought to be a
proof that I am wrong; but directly to the contrary, it is a proof
in my favor. It is shown that, far from knowing how to rea-
son for themselves, they cannot even retain the reasonings of
others; for if you follow these little geometricians in their recita-
tions, you will at once see that they have retained only the exact
expressions of the figure and the terms of the demonstration.
If you interpose the least unforeseen objection to the argument,
or if you reverse the figure they are following, they are at once
disconcerted. All their knowledge is in sensation, and nothing
has penetrated the understanding. Their memory itself is hardly
more perfect than their other faculties; since they must almost
always learn over again, when grown, the things which they
learned by rote in childhood.
I am very far from thinking, however, that children are in-
capable of any kind of reasoning. On the contrary, I see that
they reason very well on whatever they know, and on whatever
is related to their present and obvious interests. But it is with
respect to their knowledge that we are deceived. We give them
credit for knowledge which they do not have, and make them
reason on matters which they cannot comprehend. We are de-
ceived, moreover, in trying to make them attentive to considera-
tions which in no wise affect them;-as that of their prospective
interest, of their happiness when grown to be men, or of the
esteem in which they will be held when they have become great,
talk which, addressed to creatures deprived of all foresight,
has absolutely no significance for them. Now, all the premature
studies of these unfortunates relate to objects entirely foreign to
their minds; and we may judge of the attention which they can
give them.
The pedagogues who make such a great display of the subjects
which they teach their disciples, are paid to speak of this matter
in different terms; but we see by their own course of action that
they think exactly as I do. For what do they really teach their
pupils? Words, words, nothing but words. Among the different
sciences which they boast of teaching, they are very careful not
to choose those which are really useful to them, because they are
the sciences of things, and they would never succeed in teaching
them; but they prefer the sciences which we seem to know when
we have learned their terminology,- such as heraldry, geography,
## p. 12447 (#505) ##########################################
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
12447
chronology, the languages, etc. , all of them studies so remote
from man, and especially from the child, that it would be a mar-
vel if a single item of all this could be useful to him once in the
course of his life.
―――――
It will seem surprising to some that I include the study of
languages among the inutilities of education; but it will be recol-
lected that I am speaking here only of primary studies; and that,
whatever may be thought of it, I do not believe that up to the
age of twelve or fifteen years, any child, prodigies excepted, has
ever really learned two languages.
I grant that if the study of languages were but the study of
words, that is, of the forms or sounds which express them,-
it might be suitable for children; but languages, by the changing
symbols, also modify the ideas which they represent. Languages
have their several and peculiar effects in the formation of the
intellectual faculties; the thoughts are tinged by their respect-
ive idioms. The only thing common to languages is the reason.
The spirit of each language has its peculiar form; and this dif-
ference is doubtless partly the cause and partly the effect of
national characteristics. This conjecture seems to be confirmed
by the fact that among all the nations of the earth, language
follows the vicissitudes of manners, and is preserved pure or is
corrupted just as they are.
Use has given one of these different forms of thought to
the child; and it is the only one which he preserves to the age
of reason. In order to have two of these forms, he must needs
know how to compare ideas; and how can he compare them
when he is hardly in a condition to conceive them? Each thing
may have for him a thousand different symbols; but each idea
can have but one form. Nevertheless, we are told that he learns
to speak several. This I deny. I have seen such little prodi-
gies, who thought they were speaking five or six languages. I
have heard them speak German in terms of Latin, French, and
Italian, respectively. In fact, they used five or six vocabularies,
but they spoke nothing but German. In a word, give children
as many synonyms as you please, and you will change the words
they utter, but not the language: they will never know but one.
It is to conceal their inaptitude in this respect that they
are drilled by preference on dead languages, since there are no
longer judges of those who may be called to testify. The famil-
iar use of these languages having for a long time been lost, we
-
## p.
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
12425
THE CARD-DEALER
OULD you not drink her gaze like wine?
Yet though its splendor swoon
Into the silence languidly
As a tune into a tune,
Those eyes unravel the coiled nigh
And know the stars at noon.
C
The gold that's heaped beside her hand,
In truth rich prize it were;
And rich the dreams that wreathe her brows
With magic stillness there;
And he were rich who should unwind
That woven golden hair.
Around her, where she sits, the dance
Now breathes its eager heat;
And not more lightly or more true
Fall there the dancers' feet
Than fall her cards on the bright board
As 'twere an heart that beat.
Her fingers let them softly through,
Smooth polished silent things;
And each one as it falls reflects
In swift light-shadowings,
Blood-red and purple, green and blue,
The great eyes of her rings.
Whom plays she with? With thee, who lov'st
Those gems upon her hand;
With me, who search her secret brows;
With all men, blessed or banned.
We play together, she and we,
Within a vain strange land:
A land without any order,—
Day even as night (one saith),—
Where who lieth down ariseth not
Nor the sleeper awakeneth;
A land of darkness as darkness itself
And of the shadow of death.
What be her cards, you ask? Even these:-
The heart, that doth but crave
More, having fed; the diamond,
Skilled to make base seem brave;
## p. 12426 (#480) ##########################################
12426
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
The club, for smiting in the dark;
The spade, to dig a grave.
And do you ask what game she plays?
With me 'tis lost or won;
With thee it is playing still; with him
It is not well begun;
But 'tis a game she plays with all
Beneath the sway o' the sun.
Thou seest the card that falls,-she knows
The card that followeth :
Her game in thy tongue is called Life,
As ebbs thy daily breath:
When she shall speak, thou'lt learn her tongue
And know she calls it Death.
SUDDEN LIGHT
HAVE been here before,
I
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.
You have been mine before,—
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow's soar
Your neck turned so,
Some veil did fall,-I knew it all of yore.
Has this been thus before?
And shall not thus time's eddying flight
Still with our lives our loves restore
In death's despite,
And day and night yield one delight once more?
THE WOODSPURGE
THE
HE wind flapped loose, the wind was still,
Shaken out dead from tree and hill:
I had walked on at the wind's will,-
I sat now, for the wind was still.
-
Between my knees my forehead was, -
My lips, drawn in, said not Alas!
## p. 12427 (#481) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
My hair was over in the grass,
My naked ears heard the day pass.
My eyes, wide open, had the run
Of some ten weeds to fix upon;
Among those few, out of the sun,
The woodspurge flowered, three cups in one.
From perfect grief there need not be
Wisdom, or even memory:
One thing then learnt remains to me,-
The woodspurge has a cup of three.
THE SEA-LIMITS
ONSIDER the sea's listless chime:
C
Time's self it is, made audible,-
The murmur of the earth's own shell.
Secret continuance sublime
Is the sea's end: our sight may pass
No furlong further. Since time was,
This sound hath told the lapse of time.
No quiet, which is death's,—it hath
The mournfulness of ancient life,
Enduring always at dull strife.
As the world's heart of rest and wrath,
Its painful pulse is in the sands.
Last utterly, the whole sky stands,
Gray and not known, along its path.
Listen alone beside the sea,
Listen alone among the woods;
Those voices of twin solitudes
Shall have one sound alike to thee:
Hark where the murmurs of thronged men
Surge and sink back and surge again,—
Still the one voice of wave and tree.
Gather a shell from the strown beach
And listen at its lips: they sigh
The same desire and mystery,
The echo of the whole sea's speech.
And all mankind is thus at heart
Not anything but what thou art:
And Earth, Sea, Man, are all in each.
12427
## p. 12428 (#482) ##########################################
12428
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
THE CLOUD CONFINES
HE day is dark and the night
To him that would search their heart;
No lips of cloud that will part,
Nor morning song in the light:
Only, gazing alone,
To him wild shadows are shown,
Deep under deep unknown
And height above unknown height.
Still we say as we go,-
THE
"Strange to think by the way,
Whatever there is to know,
That shall we know one day. "
The Past is over and fled;
Named new, we name it the old:
Thereof some tale hath been told,
But no word comes from the dead;
Whether at all they be,
Or whether as bond or free,
Or whether they too were we,
Or by what spell they have sped.
Still we say as we go,-
"Strange to think by the way,
Whatever there is to know,
That shall we know one day. "
What of the heart of hate
That beats in thy breast, O Time? —
Red strife from the furthest prime,
And anguish of fierce debate;
War that shatters her slain,
And peace that grinds them as grain,
And eyes fixed ever in vain
On the pitiless eyes of Fate.
Still we say as we go,-
"Strange to think by the way,
Whatever there is to know,
That shall we know one day. "
What of the heart of love
That bleeds in thy breast, O Man? .
Thy kisses snatched 'neath the ban
Of fangs that mock them above;
## p. 12429 (#483) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Thy bells prolonged unto knells,
Thy hope that a breath dispels,
Thy bitter forlorn farewells
And the empty echoes thereof?
Still we say as we go,—
"Strange to think by the way,
Whatever there is to know,
That shall we know one day. ”
-
The sky leans dumb on the sea,
Aweary with all its wings;
And oh! the song the sea sings
Is dark everlastingly.
Our past is clean forgot,
Our present is and is not,
Our future's a sealed seed-plot,
And what betwixt them are we?
We who say as we go,-
"Strange to think by the way,
Whatever there is to know,
That shall we know one day. "
SONG OF THE BOWER
AY, is it day, is it dusk in thy bower,
SAY, Thou whom I long for, who longest for me?
Oh! be it light, be it night, 'tis Love's hour,
Love's that is fettered as Love's that is free.
Free Love has leaped to that innermost chamber,
Oh! the last time, and the hundred before:
Fettered Love, motionless, can but remember,
Yet something that sighs from him passes the door.
Nay, but my heart when it flies to thy bower,
What does it find there that knows it again?
There it must droop like a shower-beaten flower,
Red at the rent core and dark with the rain.
Ah! yet what shelter is still shed above it,-
What waters still image its leaves torn apart?
Thy soul is the shade that clings round it to love it,
And tears are its mirror deep down in thy heart.
12429
What were my prize could I enter thy bower,
This day, to-morrow, at eve or at morn?
T
## p. 12430 (#484) ##########################################
12430
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Large lovely arms and a neck like a tower,
Bosom then heaving that now lies forlorn.
Kindled with love-breath, (the sun's kiss is colder! )
Thy sweetness all near me, so distant to-day;
My hand round thy neck and thy hand on my shoulder,
My mouth to thy mouth as the world melts away.
What is it keeps me afar from thy bower,-
My spirit, my body, so fain to be there?
Waters engulfing or fires that devour? —
Earth heaped against me or death in the air?
Nay, but in day-dreams, for terror, for pity,
The trees wave their heads with an omen to tell;
Nay, but in night-dreams, throughout the dark city,
The hours, clashed together, lose count in the bell.
Shall I not one day remember thy bower,
One day when all days are one day to me? —
Thinking, "I stirred not, and yet had the power;"
Yearning, "Ah God, if again it might be! »
Peace, peace! such a small lamp illumes, on this highway,
So dimly so few steps in front of my feet,
Yet shows me that her way is parted from my way:
Out of sight, beyond light, at what goal may we meet?
SONNETS FROM THE HOUSE OF LIFE'
INTRODUCTORY SONNET
A
SONNET is a moment's monument,-
Memorial from the Soul's eternity
To one dead deathless hour.
Whether for lustral rite or dire portent,
Of its own arduous fullness reverent:
Carve it in ivory or in ebony,
As Day or Night may rule; and let Time see
Its flowering crest impearled and orient.
Look that it be,
A Sonnet is a coin: its face reveals
The soul,-its converse, to what Power 'tis due:
Whether for tribute to the august appeals
Of Life, or dower in Love's high retinue,
It serve; or, 'mid the dark wharf's cavernous breath,
In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death.
## p. 12431 (#485) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
12431
LOVESIGHT
WHEN do I see thee most, beloved one?
When in the light the spirits of mine eyes
Before thy face, their altar, solemnize
The worship of that Love through thee made known?
Or when in the dusk hours (we two alone),
Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies
Thy twilight hidden glimmering visage lies,
And my soul only sees thy soul its own?
O love, my love! if I no more should see
Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,
Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,-
How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope
The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope,
The wind of Death's imperishable wing?
KNOWN IN VAIN
As Two whose love, first foolish, widening scope,
Knows suddenly, to music high and soft,
The Holy of Holies; who because they scoffed
Are now amazed with shame, nor dare to cope
With the whole truth aloud, lest heaven should ope:
Yet, at their meetings, laugh not as they laughed
In speech; nor speak, at length: but sitting oft
Together, within hopeless sight of hope,
For hours are silent;-so it happeneth
When Work and Will awake too late, to gaze
After their life sailed by, and hold their breath.
Ah! who shall dare to search through what sad maze
Thenceforth their incommunicable ways
Follow the desultory feet of Death?
THE HILL SUMMIT
THIS feast-day of the sun, his altar there
In the broad west has blazed for vesper-song;
And I have loitered in the vale too long,
And gaze now a belated worshiper.
Yet may I not forget that I was 'ware,
So journeying, of his face at intervals
Transfigured where the fringed horizon falls,-
A fiery bush with coruscating hair.
## p. 12432 (#486) ##########################################
12432
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
And now that I have climbed and won this height,
I must tread downward through the sloping shade
And travel the bewildered tracks till night.
Yet for this hour I still may here be stayed,
And see the gold air and the silver fade
And the last bird fly into the last light.
THE CHOICE
I
EAT thou and drink: to-morrow thou shalt die.
Surely the earth, that's wise being very old,
Needs not our help. Then loose me, love, and hold
Thy sultry hair up from my face; that I
May pour for thee this golden wine, brim-high,
Till round the glass thy fingers glow like gold.
We'll drown all hours: thy song, while hours are tolled,
Shall leap, as fountains veil the changing sky.
Now kiss, and think that there are really those,
My own high-bosomed beauty, who increase
Vain gold, vain lore, and yet might choose our way!
Through many years they toil: then on a day
They die not,- for their life was death,- but cease;
And round their narrow lips the mold falls close.
II
WATCH thou and fear: to-morrow thou shalt die.
Or art thou sure thou shalt have time for death?
Is not the day which God's word promiseth
To come man knows not when? In yonder sky,
Now while we speak, the sun speeds forth: can I
Or thou assure him of his goal? God's breath
Even at this moment haply quickeneth
The air to a flame; till spirits, always nigh
Though screened and hid, shall walk the daylight here.
And dost thou prate of all that man shall do?
Canst thou, who hast but plagues, presume to be
Glad in his gladness that comes after thee?
Will his strength slay thy worm in Hell? Go to:
Cover thy countenance, and watch, and fear.
## p. 12433 (#487) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
12433
III
THINK thou and act: to-morrow thou shalt die.
Outstretched in the sun's warmth upon the shore,
Thou say'st:-"Man's measured path is all gone o'er:
Up, all his years, steeply, with strain and sigh,
Man clomb until he touched the truth; and I,
Even I, am he whom it was destined for. "
How should this be? Art thou then so much more
Than they who sowed, that thou shouldst reap thereby?
Nay, come up hither. From this wave-washed mound
Unto the furthest flood-brim look with me;
Then reach on with thy thought till it be drowned.
Miles and miles distant though the last line be,
And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues beyond,-
Still, leagues beyond those leagues, there is more sea.
LOST DAYS
THE lost days of my life until to-day,
What were they, could I see them on the street
Lie as they fell? Would they be ears of wheat
Sown once for food but trodden into clay?
Or golden coins squandered and still to pay?
Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet?
Or such spilt water as in dreams must cheat
The undying throats of Hell, athirst alway?
I do not see them here; but after death
God knows I know the faces I shall see,
Each one a murdered self, with low last breath.
"I am thyself,— what hast thou done to me? "
"And I and I-thyself" (lo! each one saith),
"And thou thyself to all eternity! "
A SUPERSCRIPTION
Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been;
I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell;
Unto thine ear I hold the dead-sea shell
Cast up thy Life's foam-fretted feet between;
Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seen
Which had Life's form and Love's, but by my spell
Is now a shaken shadow intolerable,
Of ultimate things unuttered the frail screen.
XXI-778
## p. 12434 (#488) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
12434
Mark me, how still I am! But should there dart
One moment through thy soul the soft surprise
Of that winged Peace which lulls the breath of sighs,-
Then shalt thou see me smile, and turn apart
Thy visage to mine ambush at thy heart,
Sleepless with cold commemorative eyes.
ON REFUSAL OF AID BETWEEN NATIONS
N°T
Or that the earth is changing, O my God!
Nor that the seasons totter in their walk,-
Not that the virulent ill of act and talk
Seethes ever as a winepress ever trod,-
Not therefore are we certain that the rod
Weighs in thine hand to smite thy world; though now
Beneath thine hand so many nations bow,
So many kings: not therefore, O my God! -
But because Man is parceled out in men
To-day because, for any wrongful blow,
No man not stricken asks, "I would be told
Why thou dost thus;" but his heart whispers then,
"He is he, I am I. " By this we know
That the earth falls asunder, being old.
FOR A VENETIAN PASTORAL,' BY GIORGIONE, IN THE LOUVRE
ATER, for anguish of the solstice: nay,
But dip the vessel slowly,- nay, but lean
And hark how at its verge the wave sighs in
Reluctant. Hush! Beyond all depth away
The heat lies silent at the brink of day:
Now the hand trails upon the viol-string
That sobs, and the brown faces cease to sing,
Sad with the whole of pleasure. Whither stray
Her eyes now, from whose mouth the slim pipes creep
And leave it pouting, while the shadowed grass
Is cool against her naked side? Let be:
Say nothing now unto her lest she weep,
Nor name this ever. Be it as it was,-
Life touching lips with Immortality.
WATER
-
## p. 12434 (#489) ##########################################
## p. 12434 (#490) ##########################################
J. J. ROUSSEAU.
## p. 12434 (#491) ##########################################
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## p. 12434 (#492) ##########################################
## p. 12435 (#493) ##########################################
12435
DGX
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
(1712-1778)
BY ÉDOUARD ROD
HROUGHOUT his life, Rousseau was tossed about as by an inner
storm, in exciting the violence of which malicious circum-
stances seemed to delight. He was born at Geneva, June
28th, 1712, in a troubled atmosphere, among the riots and agitations
which were beginning to threaten the old Genevan oligarchy. He
lost his mother at birth. His father, who was a watchmaker, scarcely
concerned himself with his early education except to read Plutarch
and Richardson with him. When forced to leave Geneva, he in-
trusted the boy to the care of a maternal uncle. Jean Jacques was
a dreamy, romantic child, sentimental, and not without a touch of
perversity. Early embarked on a wandering and adventurous life,
he was successively engraver's apprentice, vagabond, lackey, secre-
tary. He improvised himself into a musician; he even made him-
self a traveling tradesman. The counsels of a benefactress whose
influence over him was very great-Madame de Warens - converted
him to Catholicism, a faith which he afterward renounced. He
traveled. He saw Italy. He read French, English, and German phi-
losophers pell-mell, while studying music, history, and mathematics
without method. Engaged as a preceptor at the elder Mably's,-
brother of the Abbé Mably,- he was introduced to the literary soci-
ety of the epoch. After some fruitless gropings he was to conquer
first place in a competition before the Academy of Dijon, by a memo-
rial (which was crowned) upon this question: 'Has the progress of
sciences and arts contributed to corrupt or to purify morals? ' (1749).
The success of this initial work, which contains the germs of most
of the ideas developed in his later works, was both brilliant and bel-
ligerent.
Suddenly famous, Rousseau became at the same time distrustful,
solitary, misanthropic; and these characteristics were intensified by
his alliance with her who was to be the companion of his life,- a
person of inferior heart and mind, from whom he suffered much,
and with whom he could not break. The 'Discourse on the Arts and
Sciences' was soon followed by a new competitive essay assigned by
the same Academy of Dijon,-'A Discourse on the Inequality among
## p. 12436 (#494) ##########################################
12436
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
Men,' — which is a fuller and more authoritative exposition of the
earlier theme. The fundamental idea of this work the keystone
of all Rousseau's philosophy. It is summed up in this simple remark:
"Men are bad; my own sad experience furnishes the proof: yet man
is naturally good, as I think I have shown. What then can so have
degraded him, except the changes in his condition, the progress he
has made, and the knowledge he has acquired? " The Academy of
Dijon did not crown this second discourse, which was thought too
radical; and Rousseau continued a career filled with triumphs whose
bitterness alone he felt. His theories were violently opposed by the
literary and philosophic classes; but the public was with him.
In 1752, his opera 'Le Devin du Village' (The Village Sooth-
sayer), played at court under his direction, brought him a pension
from the King. He became the fashion; great lords and lovely ladies
invited him, petted him, patronized him. In less than five years
he was to launch on the world the works which made him the most
formidable protagonist of the new era: 'La Nouvelle Héloïse,' which
inaugurated "romantic" literature long before the word was found
to characterize it; the Contrat Social,' which preludes the doctrines
of the Revolution; and 'Émile,' which attempts to reform the princi-
ples of education. These three works brought Rousseau an unexam-
pled popularity. But the violent controversies they aroused, the real
hatreds they excited, the condemnations they drew upon him,- at
Paris where the Parliament decreed his arrest, and at Geneva where
'Émile' was burned by the executioner,- hurried him into a mel-
ancholy more and more bitter and afflicting. He took refuge with
different friends, whom his suspicions presently transformed into per-
secutors, in different places, where he always believed himself perse-
cuted.
Returning to Paris in 1770, he passed there several years of anxious
poverty: copying music for a livelihood; composing, in answer to
demands which honored him, such works as the 'Considerations on
the Government of Poland'; or to defend himself before posterity,
books like The Confessions,' and the Rêveries d'un Promeneur
Solitaire' (Musings of a Solitary Stroller), which did not appear until
after his death. In 1778 he accepted a refuge offered by one of
his faithful friends, René de Girardin, on his estate of Ermenonville.
There his mind seemed to be growing calmer in the serene contem-
plation of the green and smiling country, when he died suddenly, on
the 2d of July, 1778, in his sixty-seventh year. At first, suicide was
suspected; but an autopsy disclosed the cause of death to be serous
apoplexy. His body, buried at two o'clock at night under the pop-
lars of Ermenonville,- "by the most beautiful moonlight and in the
calmest weather," says a witness,- was transported to the Pantheon
## p. 12437 (#495) ##########################################
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
12437
in 1794 by order of the Convention. But in 1814 it was exhumed,
as was Voltaire's, without official order; and the bones of the two
philosophers, placed in the same sack, were thrust under ground in
the waste land toward Bercy.
What especially strikes the writer who attempts to analyze the
moral and intellectual personality of Rousseau, is the predominance
of his imagination. He was a poet and a romancer,— a romancer
who made theories instead of making romances; but 'Émile' is cer-
tainly a pedagogical story, as the Contrat Social' is a story, as the
'Discours sur l'Inégalité' is a historical, or if you like, an anthro-
pological story. This fertile imagination was constantly excited by a
very lively sensibility, which exalted itself in ardent friendships, in
ardent passions, which embraced all humanity, reaching out to ani-
mals and even to inanimate things, and finding only in communion
with nature some little joy and compensation. The disordered ac-
tion of the romantic imagination upon this morbid sensibility would
naturally produce and did produce errors of judgment, such as the
doctrines of the Contrat, of Émile, etc. ; and also errors in life, of
which the gravest was that systematic and deliberate abandonment
of his children, with which Rousseau has been so strongly reproached.
But these errors came from the mind, not from the heart. Many
facts prove that despite his paradoxes of thought and conduct, this
man possessed a sincere kindness, a generosity which could pardon
the worst offenses, a simple and touching tenderness of soul, a dis-
interestedness so great as to deprive him of all profit from his tal-
ents. These qualities are sometimes spoiled or perverted by a pride
to which perhaps must be attributed some of his acts of generosity
or devotion, as well as some of his errors; and which later became
exaggerated to mania in the mental malady of which it is impossi-
ble to say whether it was cause or effect. This pride, from which
he suffered more than any one else, was his only vice; in spite of his
having allowed himself to be drawn into certain culpable acts, such
as once to have stolen and often to have lied,-offenses which would
never have been known but for his own confession.
In spite of such errors, committed in hours of temptation, and
expiated by long and sincere regrets, it would be unjust to deny
Rousseau's true nobility of soul. If that soul seems to us sullied,
the blame rests upon the hazards of his neglected childhood and
adventurous youth; upon the storms of his genius, his sufferings dur-
ing the long period when he was forced to seek his true self among
the worst obstacles, upon the tempests he aroused; and finally, later,
upon the maddening mirages with which his sick imagination sur-
rounded him.
## p. 12438 (#496) ##########################################
12438
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
-
The elements of Rousseau's character were also those of his gen-
ius.
Although he delighted to reason according to the method
which Descartes had inaugurated, and from which he could not free
himself, that old vessel in which bubbled up the new wine of his
thought, yet it is unreasonable to expect much reason from him.
His logic usually ends in paradox. Upon going back to the origin of
his ideas and attempting to analyze them, one finds that taken sep-
arately they are neither very original nor very profound: all return
to that fundamental conception of the superiority of "the state of
nature" over "the social state," - a too inadequate conception, of
which it is impossible to prove the truth. It is that which inspired
his earliest Discourses. ' At first the 'Contrat Social' seemed to
contradict them: for how could a philosopher who hated society just-
ify the basis of its organization; and especially how could he conclude,
as he does, that to this fatal and illegitimate society the citizen owes
the sacrifice of himself? But after this passing infidelity to his dom-
inant faith, he returned to it again in 'Émile,' where he maintains
that normal education should isolate a child from society in order that
his natural qualities may develop; and he held this view to the end,
as appears in those Confessions,' which, in the portrait they give
of himself, explain without justifying the fundamental idea of all his
doctrine. The defects of his early education Rousseau never sup-
plied; his reading, insufficient and fantastic, left him defenseless to
all external influences. His religion was a vague spiritualism; his
morality, an unconvincing optimism; his politics, a Utopia, pastoral
in the 'Discours sur l'Inégalité,' epic in the 'Contrat Social. ' Finally,
he seems never to have known any other man than himself; and the
psychology of his 'Nouvelle Héloïse' remains essentially personal.
Whence comes it then, that in spite of so much weakness he was the
greatest French writer of his century,- or at least the most influen-
tial, the most universal, and the most persistent?
To understand this curious fact, we must consider Rousseau in his
century and environment. At that period, literature found itself in
flagrant conflict with the morality whose aspirations it was supposed
to express. The writers, most of them new-comers from another class,
usually ended by adding themselves to the old society and adopting
its conventions; or, penetrated with new sentiments, failed to adopt
new tools, and clung to the rhetoric inherited from the preceding
age. Dry, arid, "oldish" in Goethe's apt phrase, they tried in vain
to cultivate sensibility; and when they endeavored to depart from
routine, achieved only the artificial, as Diderot's plays show. The
strength and greatness of Rousseau was, above all, his sincerity: if
he was the first to discard conventional rhetoric, and to express his
own sensibility, it is because he possessed true sensibility; moreover,
---
-
## p. 12439 (#497) ##########################################
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
12439
plebeian by birth, he remained plebeian from resolute pride. Differ-
ent from his contemporaries in these two essentials, which conse-
crated his superiority, he became the supreme interpreter of those
ideas, feelings, passions, which were fermenting in the decomposition
of the Old World. He was sentimental and revolutionary, romantic
and rebellious. Animated by the fierce breath of the spirit of nega-
tion, he set himself against all authority, against all tradition; and
his attack was the more resistless, that the charm of his romantic
spirit dissembled its violence.
In the discharge of this little understood and almost fatal office,
he was aided by his wonderful literary gifts. With his most illustri-
ous rivals, French prose had become a conversational language,—
rapid, facile, and brilliant; but without the life which captivates or
the power which impresses itself. Rousseau instinctively abandoned
this use to return to the great oratorical style, to rediscover the lost
secrets of eloquence. For the short sentence, dry, laconic, and inci-
sive, which is that of the best writers of his time, he adopted the long
balanced period, sometimes even too rhythmic, which seizes the atten-
tion and holds it to the end. For the abstract terms in which those
about him delighted, he substituted words of color, living and ardent;
words which paint, words which feel, words which vibrate and weep.
The same instinct which thus revealed to him a new skill in the
sentence, revealed to him also a new and corresponding skill in com-
position. His sentences-long, vivid, and musical-link themselves
together to form a kind of organic charm; so that the complete work
may exercise the same fascination as each of its component parts.
It was the language of passion succeeding that of reason, or rather
of reasoning. The effect could not be doubtful. This effect was
extremely violent, not only upon ideas but upon morals. Is it neces-
sary to recall that after the 'Nouvelle Héloïse,' everybody wanted to
love like Saint-Preux and Julie? that 'Émile' transformed the cur-
rent opinions upon education? that people wished to be emotional,
to dream in the fields, to reascend the current of civilization, to
make their spirits ingenuous, primitive, or at least "natural"? Who
then first uttered the cry of the period, "O Nature! Nature! " the cry
which soon became a new affectation?
Thus Rousseau appears to us as the most enticing guide of his
century. "Beside him," says M. Faguet, "Voltaire appears at times
merely a witty student, and Buffon only a very remarkable teacher
of rhetoric. Montesquieu alone, inferior as a man of imagination,
equals him in strength of view, and excels him in clearness of vis-
ion. " But exactly because he lacked imagination, Montesquieu was
not a harbinger. Rousseau was essentially a forerunner. One may
say that he has shaped the whole century which followed him. His
## p. 12440 (#498) ##########################################
12440
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
principal works not only called forth successions of imitations, but
the world is imbued with his ideas, whose consequences continue to
renew or overturn the human soul and society. The 'Contrat Social'
accounts in part for the excesses of the Revolution; and as to the
chief revolutionists, the most dangerous indeed were "Spartans," as
Rousseau had recommended. The vague yet ardent spiritualism pro-
claimed in the 'Profession de Foi du Vicaire Savoyard' (The Savoyard
Vicar's Creed), led to the Festival of the Supreme Being, and pro-
voked the religious reaction of the beginning of the century. The
notions concerning a return to the primitive life which he developed
in his first work, and which remained the basis of his doctrine, may
be found again with the socialists of 1848, underlying the Utopias of
the Saint-Simons, the Fouriers, the Enfantiers, and perhaps even in
the origin of the "collectivism" which has replaced those innocent
dreams. His optimism, his faith in the constant progress of humanity,
inspired during the same period not only the "reformer" who trans-
ported the golden age of the past to the future, but also the most
moderate, most clear-sighted, and most politic minds. The 'Nouvelle
Héloïse' created romanticism, that perilous and seductive disposition
of spirit to which we owe so many affecting works: Saint-Preux is
an elder brother of Werther, and what a posterity follows them!
Before Rousseau, a few English poets alone had perceived Nature.
After him, no one dared longer ignore her. Every one prided him-
self upon loving her. She found sincere adorers who perhaps would
never have perceived her if they had not listened to her worshiper's
enchanting voice.
In such details we get the impression of the whole man. Others
have left works more perfect, and above all more beneficent; but I do
not believe that in the whole history of literature there exists the man
whose influence has been so decisive, so far-reaching, and upon whom
it is so difficult to form a fair judgment. Measured from the point
of view of to-day, this influence seems disproportioned to the genius
which exercised it, and to the value of the works of that genius.
But the most perfect works do not necessarily count the most; and
the keenest criticism cannot always explain the mysterious affinities
of genius, of thought, and of morals. It has been questioned whether
this influence, the extent and duration of which are incontestable, has
been a salutary one. We are not now to consider this. An alluring,
an irresistible guide, Rousseau has not been an infallible one. Many
have gone astray in following him. If he had a kind and feeling
heart, he had not less a faulty intellect; and his paradoxes often par-
alyzed his good intention. The ability with which he followed them
to their extreme conclusion, like the eloquence he employed in their
service, only served to render them more dangerous. Therefore in
## p. 12441 (#499) ##########################################
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
12441
penetrating so deeply the consciousness of the generations that fol-
lowed im, Rousseau's thought has drawn upon them many ills. It
has involved them in many gropings and errors, in many delusive
visions and sufferings. It has spread abroad in the Old World a
general agitation, which the violent convulsions following it did not
succeed in dispelling. It has scattered abroad sadness which still
encompasses us. Passion is sad; nature breathes melancholy: all that
Rousseau loved and made us love puts the heart in mourning; it
may be that it is the memory of his teaching which spreads such dark-
ness over the end of the century. For by an amazing contradiction,
the optimist who believed so profoundly in the goodness of human
nature is the true father of the pessimists of our time. But what-
ever the proportions of the good and ill he has done us, we are still
responsive to his influence, while cherishing for him an affection not
unmingled with reproach. Those even who condemn or oppose him
do not always escape loving him. Although a whole century - one
of the centuries most freighted with historical events and evolutions
- has passed over his work, it is still too near to be fairly judged.
But we may feel sure that it will be reckoned in a balance whose
weights we do not know.
дол агония
Guard
FOREWORD
Copyright 1893, by G. P. Putnam's Sons
From The Social Contract.
I
WISH to discover whether, in the existing social order, there
may not be some rule of safe and legitimate administration,
taking men as they are and laws as they might be. I shall
try to ally, in this research, that which the law permits with that
which interest prescribes, so that justice and utility may not be
divided.
I enter upon this discussion without proving the importance
of the subject. I shall be asked if I am a prince or a legislator,
that I write about politics. I shall answer, No—and that for this
reason I write about politics. If I were a prince or a legislator,
I should not lose time in telling what ought to be done: I should
do it or be silent.
## p. 12442 (#500) ##########################################
12442
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
Born citizen of a free State and member of the sovereign peo-
ple, however feeble the influence of my voice in public affairs,
the right to vote upon them imposes upon me the duty of in-
structing myself. Whenever I meditate upon governments, I am
happy to find in my investigations new reasons for loving that of
my own country.
THE PEOPLE
From The Social Contract. Copyright 1893, by G. P. Putnam's Sons
THE
HE architect, before erecting a great building, examines and
sounds the soil to see if it will bear its weight: so the wise
lawgiver will not begin by making good laws, but he will
first see whether the people for whom they are destined is ready
to hear them. It was for this reason that Plato refused to give
laws to the Arcadians and the Cyrenians, knowing that these two
nations were rich and would not endure equality.
The reason that in Crete there were good laws and bad men,
was because Minos had given laws to a people loaded with vices.
Thousands of nations have flourished upon earth which could
never have endured good laws; and those which could have borne
them had but a short existence.
Most nations, like most men, are docile only in youth; they
become incorrigible as they grow old.
hey grow old. When customs are once
established and prejudices rooted, it is a dangerous and useless
enterprise to try to reform them: the people will not permit
their misfortunes to be touched upon, even for their instruction,
-like the stupid and cowardly sick who shudder at sight of a
physician.
It is not that
as some maladies upset a man's head and
make him forget the past - there may not be, in the existence of
States, violent epochs when revolutions produce upon nations the
effect that certain crises produce upon individuals; when horror
of the past takes the place of forgetfulness, and when the State,
destroyed by civil wars, rises from its ashes and takes on the
vigor of youth.
Such was Sparta in the time of Lycurgus; such was Rome
after the Tarquins; and such have been among us Holland and
Switzerland after the expulsion of tyrants.
-
•
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But these events are rare; they are exceptions, and their
cause is always found in the particular constitution of the excep-
tional State. They cannot even take place twice with the same
nation; for a nation can make itself free as long as it is barbar-
ous, but it can do so no more when its civil energy is exhausted.
Troubles may then destroy, without its being possible for rev-
olutions to re-establish it: as soon as its chains are broken it
falls apart and exists no longer, needing thereafter a master, not
a liberator.
Let free nations remember this truth: "Liberty may be ac-
quired, but never recovered. "
Youth is not infancy. There is a time of youth for nations.
as well as man, or if you will, of maturity,- which must be
waited for before subjecting them to laws: but the maturity of
a people is not always easy to recognize, and if begun too early
the labor is lost. Certain peoples may be disciplined from their
earliest existence; others cannot be disciplined at the end of ten
centuries.
-
The Russians will never be truly civilized, because they were
taken in hand too early. Peter had the genius of imitation: he
had not the true genius which creates all from nothing. Some
things which he did were good, most of them were ill-timed.
He saw that his was a barbarous people: he did not see that
it was not ripe for civilization; he tried to civilize it when he
should have accustomed it to war. He tried at first to make
Germans or English, when he should have begun by making
Russians; he prevented his subjects from ever becoming what
they might have been, by persuading them that they were what
they were not.
It is thus that a French preceptor teaches his pupil to shine
in his infancy, and then to amount to nothing afterward. The
empire of Russia will desire to subjugate Europe, and will itself
be subjugated. The Tartars, its subjects or neighbors, will
become its masters and ours: this revolution seems to me inev-
itable. All the kings of Europe are working together to acceler-
ate it.
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FROM ÉMILE>
Copyright 1892, by D. Appleton & Co. , and reprinted by permission of the
Translator
R
ATTLE-HEADED children become commonplace men. I know of
no observation more general and more certain than this.
Nothing is more difficult than to distinguish, in infancy,
real stupidity from that apparent and deceptive stupidity which
is the indication of strong characters. It seems strange, at
first sight, that the two extremes should have the same signs, and
yet this must needs be so; for at an age when the man has as
yet no real ideas, all the difference that exists between him
who has genius and him who has it not is, that the latter gives
admittance only to false ideas, while the former, finding no oth-
ers, gives admittance to none. In so far then as one is capable
of nothing, and nothing is befitting the other, both appear to be
stupid. The only sign that can distinguish them depends on
chance, which may offer to the last some idea within his com-
prehension; whereas the first is always and everywhere the same.
During his infancy the younger Cato seemed an imbecile in the
family. He was taciturn and obstinate, and this was all the judg
ment that was formed of him. It was only in the antechamber
of Sylla that his uncle learned to know him. If he had not
gone into that antechamber, perhaps he would have passed for a
dolt till the age of reason. If Cæsar had not lived, perhaps men
would always have treated as a visionary that very Cato who
penetrated his baleful genius, and foresaw all his projects from
afar. Oh, how liable to be deceived are they who are so precipi-
tate in their judgments of children! They are often the more
childish. I myself have seen a man somewhat advanced in age,
who honored me with his friendship, who was regarded by his
family and his friends as lacking in intelligence; but this was
a superior mind maturing in silence. All at once he has shown
himself a philosopher, and I doubt not that posterity will assign
him a distinguished and honorable place among the best reason.
ers and the most profound metaphysicians of his age.
Respect childhood, and do not hastily judge of it either for
good or for evil. Allow a long time for the exceptions to be
manifested, proved, and confirmed, before adopting special meth-
ods for them. Allow Nature to act in her place, for fear of
thwarting her operations. You know, you say, the value of time,
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and do not wish to waste it. You do not see that to make a bad
use of time is much more wasteful than to do nothing with it;
and that a poorly taught child is further from wisdom than one
who has not been taught at all. You are alarmed at seeing him.
consume his early years in doing nothing! Really! Is it noth-
ing to be happy? Is it nothing to jump, play, and run, all day
long? In no other part of his life will he be so busy. Plato,
in his 'Republic,' which is deemed so austere, brings up children
only in festivals, games, songs, and pastimes. It might be said
that he has done all when he has really taught them how to
enjoy themselves; and Seneca, speaking of the ancient Roman
youth, says they were always on their feet, and were
taught anything which they could learn while seated. Were they
of less value for this when they reached the age of manhood?
Be not at all frightened, therefore, at this so-called idleness.
What would you think of a man who, in order to turn his whole
life to profitable account, would never take time to sleep? You
will say that he is a man out of his senses: that he does not
make use of his time but deprives himself of it; and that to fly
from sleep is to run toward death. Reflect, therefore, that this is
the same thing, and that childhood is the slumber of reason.
never
The apparent facility with which children learn is the cause
of their ruin. We do not see that this very facility is the proof
that they are learning nothing. Their smooth and polished brain
reflects like a mirror the objects that are presented to it; but
nothing remains, nothing penetrates it. The child retains words,
but ideas are reflected. Those who hear these words understand
them, but the child who utters them does not.
Although memory and reasoning are two essentially different
faculties, yet the first is not truly developed save in conjunction
with the second. Before the age of reason a child does not re-
ceive ideas, but images; and there is this difference between
them: images are but the faithful pictures of sensible objects,
while ideas are notions of objects determined by their rela-
tions. An image may exist alone in the mind which forms the
representation of it; but every idea supposes others.
When we
imagine, we do no more than see; but when we conceive, we com-
pare. Our sensations are purely passive, whereas all our percep-
tions or ideas spring from an active principle which judges.
I say then, that children, not being capable of judgment, have
no real memory. They retain sounds, forms, sensations, but rarely
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ideas; and still more rarely their combinations. The objection
that they learn some elements of geometry is thought to be a
proof that I am wrong; but directly to the contrary, it is a proof
in my favor. It is shown that, far from knowing how to rea-
son for themselves, they cannot even retain the reasonings of
others; for if you follow these little geometricians in their recita-
tions, you will at once see that they have retained only the exact
expressions of the figure and the terms of the demonstration.
If you interpose the least unforeseen objection to the argument,
or if you reverse the figure they are following, they are at once
disconcerted. All their knowledge is in sensation, and nothing
has penetrated the understanding. Their memory itself is hardly
more perfect than their other faculties; since they must almost
always learn over again, when grown, the things which they
learned by rote in childhood.
I am very far from thinking, however, that children are in-
capable of any kind of reasoning. On the contrary, I see that
they reason very well on whatever they know, and on whatever
is related to their present and obvious interests. But it is with
respect to their knowledge that we are deceived. We give them
credit for knowledge which they do not have, and make them
reason on matters which they cannot comprehend. We are de-
ceived, moreover, in trying to make them attentive to considera-
tions which in no wise affect them;-as that of their prospective
interest, of their happiness when grown to be men, or of the
esteem in which they will be held when they have become great,
talk which, addressed to creatures deprived of all foresight,
has absolutely no significance for them. Now, all the premature
studies of these unfortunates relate to objects entirely foreign to
their minds; and we may judge of the attention which they can
give them.
The pedagogues who make such a great display of the subjects
which they teach their disciples, are paid to speak of this matter
in different terms; but we see by their own course of action that
they think exactly as I do. For what do they really teach their
pupils? Words, words, nothing but words. Among the different
sciences which they boast of teaching, they are very careful not
to choose those which are really useful to them, because they are
the sciences of things, and they would never succeed in teaching
them; but they prefer the sciences which we seem to know when
we have learned their terminology,- such as heraldry, geography,
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chronology, the languages, etc. , all of them studies so remote
from man, and especially from the child, that it would be a mar-
vel if a single item of all this could be useful to him once in the
course of his life.
―――――
It will seem surprising to some that I include the study of
languages among the inutilities of education; but it will be recol-
lected that I am speaking here only of primary studies; and that,
whatever may be thought of it, I do not believe that up to the
age of twelve or fifteen years, any child, prodigies excepted, has
ever really learned two languages.
I grant that if the study of languages were but the study of
words, that is, of the forms or sounds which express them,-
it might be suitable for children; but languages, by the changing
symbols, also modify the ideas which they represent. Languages
have their several and peculiar effects in the formation of the
intellectual faculties; the thoughts are tinged by their respect-
ive idioms. The only thing common to languages is the reason.
The spirit of each language has its peculiar form; and this dif-
ference is doubtless partly the cause and partly the effect of
national characteristics. This conjecture seems to be confirmed
by the fact that among all the nations of the earth, language
follows the vicissitudes of manners, and is preserved pure or is
corrupted just as they are.
Use has given one of these different forms of thought to
the child; and it is the only one which he preserves to the age
of reason. In order to have two of these forms, he must needs
know how to compare ideas; and how can he compare them
when he is hardly in a condition to conceive them? Each thing
may have for him a thousand different symbols; but each idea
can have but one form. Nevertheless, we are told that he learns
to speak several. This I deny. I have seen such little prodi-
gies, who thought they were speaking five or six languages. I
have heard them speak German in terms of Latin, French, and
Italian, respectively. In fact, they used five or six vocabularies,
but they spoke nothing but German. In a word, give children
as many synonyms as you please, and you will change the words
they utter, but not the language: they will never know but one.
It is to conceal their inaptitude in this respect that they
are drilled by preference on dead languages, since there are no
longer judges of those who may be called to testify. The famil-
iar use of these languages having for a long time been lost, we
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