ROUSSEAU INTRODUCTORY THE Educational System of Rousseau forms an integral part of a complete theory, or philosophy, of human life, individual, domestic, social, economic, political, and religious. This theory, again, is compounded of elements mainly derived from two sources, (1) a somewhat incoherent body of ideas and aspirations current in Rousseau's time and in the centuries immediately preceding him, and (2) his own character, as formed by native endowment, education, and experience. The latter source makes a very large contribution; for among all writers of influence there is hardly one whose personality, that is, whose feelings, emotions, and tastes, enter for so much into his writings, as Rousseau's. He is, above all, subjective, and, indeed, the apostle of subjectivism. This is what he stands for in history. In order, then, to understand the pedagogics of Rousseau, we must begin by making as clear as possible to ourselves that body of ideas and aspirations which gave form and direction to his thought, and then consider his experience and character, as furnishing the matter of the same. Having done this, we shall be in a position to account for his theory of regen ROUSSEAU human life, and to see how his system of education is conditioned by it. We shall then find little difficulty in expounding that system itself, or in distinguishing what is objective and, therefore, permanent in it, from that which, being due to transitory notions or personal tastes, is subjective and temporary. Finally, and with this distinction in our minds, we shall be able to trace the effect of Rousseau's thought, as a whole, upon subsequent theory and practice, and to show how his educational teachings have influenced later systems, for good or for evil, down to the present day. Per l' altro modo quell' amor s' obblia DANTE, Inferno, XI., 55, 56, 61-63. Ir true human greatness consists in deep insight, strong and well-distributed affection, and free, beneficent will, Rousseau was not in any sense a great man. His insight, like his knowledge, was limited and superficial; his affections were capricious and undisciplined; and his will was ungenerous and selfish. His importance in literature and history is due to the fact that he summed up in his character, expressed in his writings, and exemplified in his experience, a group of tendencies and aspirations which had for some time been half blindly stirring in the bosom of society, and which in him attained to complete consciousness and manifestation for the first time.1 1 Rousseau has been undeservedly blamed for feeling and expressing this. In the opening of his Confessions he says: "I feel my heart, and I know men. I am not made like any that I have seen, 3 These tendencies and aspirations, which may be comprehended under the one term individualism, or, more strictly, subjective individualism, have a history, and this we must now sketch, if we are to understand the significance of our author. 2 Modern individualism is a reaction against the extreme socialism of the Middle Age. The ruling principle of that age was authority, conceived as derived from a Supreme Being of infinite power, and vested in the heads of two institutions, Church and Empire, or, more frequently, in that of the Church alone.1 According to the views then prevalent, the individual was neither his own origin nor his own end. He was created by God, for God's glory, and was merely a means to that. He had therefore, of course, no freedom, whether of thought, affection, or will. Free inquiry into the laws and nature of reality gave way to a timid discussion of the meaning of authority. The natural affections were but grudgingly admitted to a place in life, and, even as late as the Council of Trent, in the sixteenth century, an anathema was pronounced upon any one who should say that the state of vir and I venture to think that I am not made like any that exist. If I am not better, I am, at least, different. Whether nature did well or ill in breaking the mould in which she cast me, no one can tell till after he has read me." The truth is, Rousseau was the first of a new type, of which there are plenty of specimens in our day, the type of the subjective, sensuous, sentimental, dalliant, querulous individualist. Nature by no means broke the mould. See Morley, Rousseau, Vol. II., pp. 304 sqq. 1 See Dante, De Monarchia, and compare Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire, passim. 2" In His will is our peace," says a blessed spirit in the Paradise of Dante (III., 85). The task of the ginity and celibacy was not better than the state of matrimony.1 Above all, free self-determination of the will, possible only through free inquiry and free affection, was placed under the ban. centuries since the close of the Middle Age has been gradually to shake off this yoke and to restore men to freedom, that is, to convince them that they are ends in and through themselves. The first notable manifestations' of this tendency were the Germanic Reformation and the Italian Renaissance, both belonging to the sixteenth century. The former claimed freedom for the individual intelligence; the latter, freedom for the individual feelings and emotions. Neither of them thought of aspiring to freedom of the moral will, which is the only true freedom. This is a fact of the utmost importance in enabling us to comprehend the thought and practice of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. We look vainly in these for the conception of moral freedom. What the absence of this meant, we can perhaps most clearly see, when we realize that the complete, logical outcome of the Reformation was Voltaire; that of the Renaissance, Rousseau. It takes the clear, mathematical mind of the French to carry principles to their logical conclusions in thought and 1 See Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum et Definitionum, p. 231, § 856. 2 We can trace the tendency itself back to Abelard (1079-1142), and even further. * In Goethe's great drama, Faust, who stands for the complete movement toward individualism, and who discovers its nature and limitations, takes his stand upon the will. "Allein ich will!" he says, in defiance of all Mephistopheles' suggestions. Part I., 1. 1432 (Schröer). |