Rousseau and Revolution

by Will Durant

  Toward the end of his reply Rousseau defended his Émile lovingly, and wondered why no statue had been raised to its author.

  Assuming that I have made some mistakes, even that I have always been wrong, is no indulgence due to a book in which one feels everywhere—even in its errors, even in the harm that may be in it—a sincere love of the good and a zeal for the truth? … A book which breathes only peace, gentleness, patience, love of Order, and obedience to the laws in everything, even in the matter of religion? A book in which the cause of religion is so well established, where morals are so respected, … where wickedness is painted as folly, and virtue as so lovable? … Yes, I do not fear to say it: if there were in Europe a single government truly enlightened, … it would render public honors to the author of Émile, it would raise statues to him. I know men too well to expect such recognition; I did not know them well enough to expect that which they have done.42

  They have raised statues to him.

  III. ROUSSEAU AND THE CALVINISTS

  The Letter to Christophe Beaumont pleased only a few freethinkers in France and a few political rebels in Switzerland. Of twenty-three “refutations” addressed to the author, nearly all were from Protestants. The Calvinist clergy of Geneva saw in the Letter an attack upon miracles and Biblical inspiration; to condone such heresies would be to invite again the danger to which they had been exposed by d’Alembert. Angry at the failure of Genevan liberals to speak out in his defense, Rousseau (May 12, 1763) sent to the Grand Council of Geneva a renunciation of his citizenship.

  This action won some audible support. On June 18 a delegation submitted to the First Syndic of the republic a “Very Humble and Respectful Representation of Citizens and Burghers of Geneva,” which, among other grievances, complained that the judgment against Rousseau had been illegal, and that the confiscation of copies of Émile from Genevan bookstores had invaded property rights. The Council of Twenty-five rejected the protest, and in September the public prosecutor, Jean-Robert Tronchin (cousin of Voltaire’s doctor) issued Lettres écrites de la campagne, defending the disputed actions of the Council. The “Représentants” appealed to Rousseau to answer Tronchin. Never willing to let bad enough alone, Rousseau published (December, 1764) nine Lettres écrites de la montagne —a retort from his mountain home to the oligarchy of the Genevan plain. Furious against clergy as well as Council, he attacked Calvinism as well as Catholicism, and burned nearly all his bridges behind him.

  Formally he addressed the letters to the leader of the Représentants. He began by dealing with the harm done to himself through the hasty condemnation of his books and his person, without any opportunity for defense. He admitted the imperfections of his books: “I myself have found a great number of errors in them; I doubt not that others may see many more, and that there are still others that neither I nor others have perceived. … After having heard both parties the public will judge; … the book will triumph or fall, and the case is closecf.”43 But was the book “pernicious”? Could anyone read La Nouvelle Héloïse and the “Profession de foi du vicaire savoyard” and really believe that their author intended to destroy religion? True, these writings sought to destroy superstition as “the most terrible plague of mankind, the sorrow of sages and the tool of tyranny”;44 but did they not affirm the necessity of religion? The author is accused of not believing in Christ; he believes in Christ, but in a different way from his accusers:

  We recognize the authority of Jesus Christ because our intelligence agrees with his precepts and we find them sublime. … We admit revelation as emanating from the Spirit of God, without our knowing how. … Recognizing a divine authority in the Gospel, we believe that Jesus Christ was clothed with this authority; we recognize a more than human virtue in his conduct, and a more than human wisdom in his teaching.

  The second letter (forgetting The Social Contract) denied the right of a civic council to judge in matters of religion. A basic principle of the Protestant Reformation, the right of the individual to interpret Scripture for himself, had been violated in condemning Émile.45 “If you prove to me today that in matters of faith I am obliged to submit to the decisions of someone else, tomorrow I shall become a Catholic.”46 Rousseau admitted that the Reformers in their turn had become persecutors of individual interpretation,47 but this did not invalidate the principle without which the Protestant revolt against the papal authority would have been unjust. He accused the Calvinist clergy (“except my pastor”) of taking over the intolerant spirit of Catholicism; if they had been true to the spirit of the Reformation they would have defended his right to publish his own interpretation of the Bible. He now had a good word to say for d’Alembert’s view of the Genevan clergy:

  A philosopher casts a quick glance upon them; he penetrates them, sees that they are Arians, Socinians; he says so, and thinks to do them honor; but he does not see that he is endangering their temporal interests—the only matter that generally determines, here below, the faith of men.48

  In his third letter he took up the charge that he had rejected miracles. If we define a miracle as a violation of the laws of nature we can never know if anything is a miracle, for we do not know all the laws of nature.49 Even then every day saw a new “miracle” achieved by science, not in contravention, but through greater knowledge, of nature’s laws. “Anciently the Prophets made fire descend from the sky at their word; today children do as much with a little piece of [burning] glass.” Joshua made the sun stop; any almanac maker can promise the same result by calculating a solar eclipse.50 And as Europeans who perform such wonders among barbarians are thought by these to be gods, so the “miracles” of the past—even those of Jesus—may have been natural results misinterpreted by the populace as divine interruptions of natural law.51 Perhaps Lazarus, whom Christ raised from the dead, had not really been dead.—Besides, how can the “miracles” of a teacher prove the truth of his doctrine when teachers of doctrines generally considered false have performed “miracles” reported as equally real, as when the magicians of Egypt rivaled Aaron in turning wands into serpents?52 Christ warned against “false Christs” who “shall show great signs as wonders.”53

  Rousseau had begun his letters with a view to helping the middle-class Représentants; he made no plea for the further extension of the franchise in a democratic direction. Indeed, in Letter vi he again committed himself to an elected “aristocracy” as the best form of government, and he assured the rulers of Geneva that the ideal which he had sketched in The Social Contract was essentially one with the Genevan constitution.54 But in Letter VII he told his friends of the protesting bourgeoisie that that constitution acknowledged the sovereignty of the enfranchised citizens only during the elections to the General Council and its annual assembly; for the remainder of the year the citizens were powerless.55 In all that long interval the small Council of Twenty-five was the “supreme arbiter of the laws, and thereby of the fate of all individuals.” In effect the citoyens et bourgeois, who appeared sovereign in the Conseil Général, became, after its adjournment, “the slaves of a despotic power, delivered defenseless to the mercy of twenty-five despots.”56 This was almost a call to revolution. However, Rousseau deprecated such a last resort. In his final letter he praised the bourgeoisie as the sanest and most peace-loving class in the state, caught between an opulent and oppressive patriciate and a “brutish and stupid populace”;57 but he advised the Représentants to keep their patience and trust to justice and time to right their wrongs.

  The Lettres de la montagne offended Rousseau’s enemies and displeased his friends. The Genevan clergy were alarmed by his heresies, and still more by his claim that they shared them. Now he turned violently against the Calvinist ministers, called them “canaille, swindlers, stupid courtiers, mad wolves,” and expressed preference for the simple Catholic priests of the French villages and towns.58 The Représentants made no use of the Letters in their successful campaign for more political power; they considered Rousseau a dangerous and incalculable ally. He resol
ved to take no further part in Genevan politics.

  IV. ROUSSEAU AND VOLTAIRE

  He had wondered, in Letter v, why “M. de Voltaire,” whom the Genevan councilors “so often visit,” had not “inspired them with that spirit of tolerance which he preaches without cease, and of which he sometimes has need.” And he put into Voltaire’s mouth an imaginary speech59 favoring freedom of speech for philosophers on the ground that only a negligible few read them. The imitation of Voltaire’s light and graceful manner was excellent. But the sage of Ferney was represented as avowing his authorship of a recently published Sermon des cinquantes (Sermon of the Fifty), whose paternity Voltaire had repeatedly denied—for it was heavy with heresies. We do not know whether Rousseau’s revelation of the secret was deliberate and malicious; Voltaire thought so, and was furious, for it subjected him to the possibility of renewed expulsion from France just as he was settling into Ferney.

  “The miscreant!” he exclaimed when he read the telltale letter. “The monster! I must have him cudgeled—yes, I will have him cudgeled in his mountains at the knees of his nurse!”

  “Pray calm yourself,” said a bystander, “for I know that Rousseau means to pay you a visit, and will very shortly be at Ferney.”

  “Ah, only let him come!” cried Voltaire, apparently meditating mayhem.

  “But how will you receive him?”

  “I will give him supper, put him into my own bed, and say, ‘There is a good supper; this is the best bed in the house; do me the pleasure to accept one and the other, and to make yourself happy here.’”60

  But Rousseau did not come. Voltaire revenged himself by issuing (December 31, 1764) an anonymous pamphlet, Sentiments des citoyens (Feelings of the Citizens), which is one of the blackest marks on his character and career. It must be quoted to be believed.

  We take pity on a fool, but when his dementia becomes fury we tie him up. Tolerance, which is a virtue, then becomes a vice. … We pardoned this man’s romances, in which decency and modesty are as damaged as good sense. … When he mixed religion with his fiction, our magistrates were of necessity obliged to imitate those of Paris … and Bern. … Today is not patience exhausted when he publishes a new book wherein he outrages with fury the Christian religion, the Reformation that he professes, all the ministers of the Holy Gospel, and all the agencies of the state? … He says clearly, in his own name, “There are no miracles in the Gospel which we can take literally without abandoning good sense.” . . .

  Is he a scholar who debates with scholars? No, … he is a man who still carries the tragic marks of his debauches, and who … drags along with him from town to town, and from mountain to mountain, the unhappy woman whose mother he made die, and whose children he exposed at the door of a hospital, … abjuring all the feelings of nature, as he discards those of honor and religion. . . .

  Does he wish to overthrow our constitution by disfiguring it, as he wishes to overthrow the Christianity that he professes? It suffices to warn him that the city which he troubles disavows him.... If he thought that we would draw the sword [make a revolution] because of [the condemnation of] Émile, he can put this idea into the class of his absurdities and his follies. But he should be told that if we punish lightly an impious romance we punish capitally a vile traitor.61

  This was a disgraceful performance, hardly to be excused by Voltaire’s anger, ailments, and age. (He was now seventy.) No wonder Rousseau never believed (even today we can hardly believe) that Voltaire wrote it; he ascribed it instead to the Genevan minister Vernes, who protested in vain that he was not the author. Rousseau, in one of his finest moments, published a reply to the Sentiments (January, 1765):

  I wish to make with simplicity the declaration that seems required of me by this article. No malady small or great, such as the author speaks of, has ever soiled my body. The malady that affects me has not the slightest resemblance to the one indicated; it was born with me, as those who took care of my childhood, and who still live, know. It is known to MM. Malouin, Morand, Thierry, Daran.... If they find in this [ailment] the least sign of debauchery, I beg them to confound me and shame me. … The wise and world-esteemed woman who takes care of me in my misfortunes … is unhappy only because she shares my misery. Her mother is in fact full of life, and in good health, despite her old age [she lived to be ninety-three]. I have never exposed, nor caused to be exposed, any children at the door of a hospital, nor anywhere else.... I will add nothing more … except to say that, at the hour of death, I would prefer to have done that of which the author accuses me, than to have written a piece like this.62

  Though Rousseau’s delivery of his children to a foundling asylum (not quite precisely their “exposure”) had been known to Paris gossip (he had admitted it to the Maréchale de Luxembourg), Voltaire’s pamphlet was the first public disclosure. Jean-Jacques suspected Mme. d’Épinay of having revealed it on her visit to Geneva. Now he was convinced that she and Grimm and Diderot were conspiring to blacken his reputation. Grimm at this time repeatedly attacked Rousseau in the Correspondance littéraire, 63 and in his letter of January 15, 1765, speaking of the Letters from the Mountain, he joined Voltaire in accusing Rousseau of treason: “If there be anywhere on earth such a crime as high treason, it is found surely in attacking the fundamental constitution of a state with the arms that M. Rousseau has employed to overthrow the constitution of his country.”

  The long quarrel between Voltaire and Rousseau is one of the sorriest blemishes on the face of the Enlightenment. Their birth and status set them far apart. Voltaire, son of a prosperous notary, received a good education, especially in the classics; Rousseau, born to an impoverished and soon to be broken home, received no formal education, inherited no classical tradition. Voltaire accepted the literary norms laid down by Boileau—“Love reason, let all your writings take from reason their splendor and their worth”;64 to Rousseau (as to Faust seducing Marguerite with Rousseau) “feeling is” all.”65 Voltaire was as sensitive and excitable as Jean-Jacques, but usually he thought it bad manners to let passion discolor his art; he sensed in Rousseau’s appeal to feeling and instinct an individualistic anarchic irrationalism that would begin with revolt and end with religion. He repudiated—Rousseau echoed—Pascal. Voltaire lived like a millionaire, Rousseau copied music to earn his bread. Voltaire was the sum of all the graces in society; Rousseau was ill at ease in social gatherings, and too impatient and irritable to keep a friend. Voltaire was the son of Paris, of its gaiety and luxuries; Rousseau was the child of Geneva, a somber and Puritan bourgeois resentful of class distinctions that cut him, and of luxuries that he could not enjoy. Voltaire defended luxury as putting the money of the rich in circulation by giving work to the poor; Rousseau condemned it as “feeding a hundred poor people in our towns, and causing a hundred thousand to perish in our villages.”66 Voltaire thought that the sins of civilization are outweighed by its comforts and arts; Rousseau was uncomfortable everywhere, and denounced almost everything. Reformers listened to Voltaire; revolutionists heard Rousseau.

  When Horace Walpole remarked that “this world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel,”67 he unwittingly compressed into a line the lives of the two most influential minds of the eighteenth century.

  V. BOSWELL MEETS ROUSSEAU

  We get an exceptionally pleasant picture of Jean-Jacques in Boswell’s report of five visits to him in December, 1764. The inescapable idolator had solemnly sworn (October 21) “neither to talk to an infidel, nor to enjoy a woman, before seeing Rousseau.”68 On December 3 he set out from Neuchâtel for Môtiers-Travers. At Brot, halfway, he stopped at an inn, and asked the landlord’s daughter what she knew about his prey. Her reply was disconcerting:

  “Monsieur Rousseau often comes and stays here several days with his housekeeper, Mademoiselle Levasseur. He is a very amiable man. He has a fine face. But he doesn’t like to have people come and stare at him as if he were a man with two heads. Heavens! The curiosity of people is incredible. Many, many p
eople come to see him, and often he will not receive them. He is ill, and doesn’t wish to be disturbed.”69

  Of course Boswell went ahead. At Môtiers he put up at the village inn and

  prepared a letter to M. Rousseau, in which I informed him that an ancient Scots gentleman of twenty-four was come hither with the hopes of seeing him. I assured him that I deserved his regard. … Towards the end of my letter I showed him that I had a heart and soul. … The letter is really a masterpiece. I shall ever preserve it as proof that my soul can be sublime.70

  His letter—in French—was a subtle mixture of deliberate naïveté and irresistible adulation:

  Your writings, Sir, have melted my heart, have elevated my soul, have fired my imagination. Believe me, you will be glad to have seen me.... O dear Saint-Preux! Enlightened Mentor! Eloquent and amiable Rousseau! I have a presentiment that a truly noble friendship will be born today.... I have much to tell you. Though I am only a young man, I have experienced a variety of existence that will amaze you. … But I beg you, be alone.... I know not if I would not prefer never to see you than to see you for the first time in company. I await your reply with impatience.71

  Rousseau sent word that he might come if he promised to make his visit short. Boswell went, “dressed in a coat and waistcoat, scarlet with gold lace, buckskin breeches, and boots. Above all, I wore a greatcoat of green camlet lined with foxskin fur.” The door was opened by Thérèse, “a little, lively, neat French girl.” She led him upstairs to Rousseau—“a genteel black [dark-complexioned] man in the dress of an Armenian.... I asked him how he was. ‘Very ill, but I have given up doctors.’ “Rousseau expressed admiration for Frederick, scorn for the French—“a contemptible nation,” but “you will find great souls in Spain.” Boswell: “And in the mountains of Scotland.” Rousseau spoke of theologians as “gentlemen” who “provide a new explanation of something, leaving it as incomprehensible as before.” They discussed Corsica; Rousseau said he had been asked to draw up laws for it; Boswell began his lasting enthusiasm for Corsican independence. Presently Rousseau dismissed him, saying that he wished to go for a walk by himself.