think that his languors were due to polypus of the heart, and she encouraged him to go to Montpellier to be cured, starting him off in a sedan chair, as he was too feeble to ride! On the way, he fell into the most vulgar sort of intrigue with a coarse woman, and quite forgot his mamma-and his polypus. He, nevertheless, went to Montpellier and frittered away some months there. When his money was exhausted, he started off to join his new mistress; but, on coming to a point where the road to her parted from the road to his mamma, he virtuously chose the latter! His account of this deserves to be quoted: "As I approached Saint Esprit, I made up my mind to give Saint Andiol the go-by, and go straight on. I carried out this resolution courageously, with some sighs, I admit, but also with the inner satisfaction, which I tasted for the first time in my life, of being able to say: 'I deserve my own good opinion; I know how to prefer my duty to my pleasure.' This was the first real obligation I owed to study. This it was that had taught me to reflect and compare." "One advantage of good actions is that they elevate the soul and dispose it to do better ones; for human weakness is such that one must count among good actions every abstinence from evil that one is tempted to commit. As soon as I had made up my mind, I became another man." We must not despise the day of small things! ... It is well that virtue is its own reward; for in this case there was no other. On reaching the house of his " 'mamma, ," he was coolly received, and found that his place had been taken-taken by a travelling wig maker of brusque, noisy ways. With a bleeding heart, he tells us, he voluntarily gave up his rights. "I kept this resolution with a firmness, I venture to say, worthy of the feeling which inspired it." "The ardent desire to see her happy, at any price, absorbed all my affections." "Thus began to spring up, with my misfortunes, those virtues of which the seeds lay in the depths of my soul, which study had cultivated, and which only awaited the influence (ferment) of adversity to bring them to fruition." In spite of his disappointment, Rousseau remained for some time with Madame de Warens; but at last, finding his position intolerable, went off to Lyons, to be tutor to the sons of M. de Mably, brother of the famous Condillac. In this capacity he was not a success, "having but three instruments, always useless, and often hurtful, with children,sentiment, reasoning, anger." He seems, however, to have retained the good opinion of his employer, and he made several important acquaintances which were valuable to him in the future. His morals, too, improved somewhat; he stole nothing but wine. He kept his place for a year, and then, as usual, returned to his "mamma," who, though she treated him kindly, showed no desire to retain him. Nevertheless, he remained with her for some time; but, seeing that the renewal of the old relations was impossible, and that she was drifting to ruin, he at last left her, resolved to try his fortune in Paris, and hoping, we may well believe sincerely, if he were successful, to return and relieve her at a later time. - Here, in 1741, at the age of twenty-nine, Rousseau passes, almost suddenly, from the dependent and passive period of his life to the independent and productive. Looking back upon the former, he says: "We have seen my peaceful youth glide by in a quiet, not ungentle sort of existence, without great troubles or great prosperities. This absence of extremes was, in large degree, due to my ardent but feeble temperament, slow to undertake and quick to be discouraged, shaking off inaction by fits and starts, but always returning to it from lassitude or taste; a temperament which, continually drawing me far away from great virtues and yet further from great vices, to the indolent, quiet life, for which I felt myself born, never permitted me to rise to anything great, in the way either of good or of evil." Though, after what we have seen, it is impossible to agree with the author in this indulgent estimate of himself, it nevertheless contains much truth. For the first thirty years of his life, Rousseau was a bundle of ardent desires, undisciplined by either serious reflection or moral training. He responded to outward impressions exactly as an animal does, restrained, if at all, only by fear. So utterly unaware was he that there is such a thing in the world as morality or duty, that it seems almost unfair to apply any moral standard to his actions. He is the natural man, pure and simple, with egoistic and altruistic instincts of a merely sensuous, not to say sensual, kind. He has gone back to the state of nature; he is a savage living among civilized men, and adapting himself to their standards as far as he must. He is lying, faithless, slanderous, thievish, lascivious, indecent, cruel, cowardly, self ish. Only toward the end do germs of nobler things begin to appear. Into what grotesque and portentous forms these developed, in the spongy soil of passion, and under the bitter rain of adversity, we shall see in the next chapter. CHAPTER III ROUSSEAU'S LIFE (2) PRODUCTIVE PERIOD (1741-1778) I knew that all my talent came from a certain warmth of soul regarding the subjects I had to treat, and that it was only the love of the great, the true, and the good that could animate my genius. . . . I have never been able to write except from passion. ROUSSEAU, Confessions, Bk. X. ROUSSEAU's early education, failing to discipline his instincts, and leaving him in a state of animal spontaneity, had produced the man whom we have seen. Toward his thirtieth year, thanks partly to poor health, partly to rather extensive reading, he began, as we have seen, to realize his condition and to have dim glimpses, still in a sensuous way indeed, of a higher. His sated sensuality made him think of hell, while the vague thrill of delight which he felt in the presence of sublime nature was objectified into a god.1 At all events, he began to make good resolutions, which is the first step in moral life. And he 1 See Confessions, Pt. I., Bk. VI. It is perhaps worth noting that this is exactly the god of Faust, at the time when he is trying to ruin Gretchen. "Feeling is all," he says, at the close of a gush of immoral sentimentality. The result proves the moral value of such a god. Rousseau sat for much in the portrait of Faust. |