The Eve of the French Revolution

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Yet he kept on writing with enthusiasm. He speaks of himself as moved in
these years by the contemplation of great objects; ridiculously hoping
to bring about the triumph of reason and truth over prejudice and lies,
and to make men wiser by showing them their true interests. He learned
at this time, he says, to meditate profoundly, and for a moment
astonished Europe by productions in which vulgar souls saw only
eloquence and wit, but in which those persons who inhabit ethereal
regions joyfully recognized one of their own kind.[Footnote: Rousseau,
_Oeuvres_, xx. 275 (II. Dialogue).]

The best known and probably the most important of Rousseau's political
writings is the "Contrat Social," or "Social Compact," which followed
the Second Discourse after an interval of eight years, thus coming out
near the end of the period of its author's greatest literary activity.
In this essay, which is intended to be but a fragment of a larger work
on government, Rousseau lays down the conditions which should, as he
thinks, govern the lives of men united to form a true state. Indeed, he
believes that any government not founded on these principles is
illegitimate, resting merely on force and not on right. A nation thus
wrongly governed is but an aggregation, not an association. It is
without public weal or body politic.

There was nothing original with Rousseau in the idea of a social
compact. That idea may be traced in the writings of Plato, who speaks of
it as one already familiar. But it did not become a leading doctrine
with writers on politics until the publication of Hooker's
"Ecclesiastical Polity" in 1594. In that book it was contended that
there is no escape from the anarchy which exists before the
establishment of law, but by men "growing into composition and agreement
amongst themselves, by ordaining some kind of government public, and
yielding themselves subject thereunto." Through the seventeenth century
the theory grew and flourished. It was treated as the foundation of
absolute government by Hobbes, of free government by Locke; it was
recognized by Grotius. It received its embodiment in the cabin of the
Mayflower, when the Pilgrims did solemnly and mutually, in the presence
of God and one another, covenant and combine themselves together into a
civil body politic. By the time of Rousseau the social compact had
become one of the commonplaces of political thought.[Footnote: See a
history of the social compact in A. Lawrence Lowell, _Essays on
Government_. Plato, ii. 229 (_The Republic_, Book ii.). Hooker,
i. 241. Hobbes, _Leviathan, passim._ Locke, v. 388 (_Of Civil
Government_, Section 87). Morion's _New England's Memorial_,
37.] Men recognized, more or less vaguely, that in the case of most
countries no definite solemn agreement could actually be shown to have
been made, but in their inability to find the record of such a contract
writers were willing to assume one, express or implied. What, then, were
the exact conditions of the compact? Rousseau put the question as
follows: "To find a form of association which shall protect with all the
common strength the person and property of each associate, and by which
each one, uniting himself to all, may yet obey only himself and remain
as free as before." And he undertook to solve the problem by proposing
"the total alienation of every associate, with all his rights, to the
whole community," which he supported by saying that, as every one gave
himself up entirely, the condition was equal for all; and that as the
condition was equal for all, no one was interested in making it onerous
for others.

It will be noticed that there is a variation between the thing sought
and the thing found. Rousseau, having promised that each man shall obey
only himself, presently puts us off with a condition equal for all. That
is to say, instead of liberty we are given equality. The difference is
one generally recognized by Anglo-Saxons and often invisible to
Continentals. It was seldom seen by Frenchmen in the eighteenth century.
This confusion of thought was a cause of many of the troubles of the
French Revolution. We shall see that Rousseau, who had been carried by
the love of liberty beyond the verge of the ridiculous in his
Discourses, was brought back, in his "Social Compact," by his love of
equality, so far as to become the advocate of an intolerable tyranny,
yet was quite unaware that he was inconsistent. He composed, in fact, a
description of liberty strangely compounded of truth and falsehood. He
reckoned that man to be free who was not under the control of any
person, but only of the law, and then he provided for the most arbitrary
and capricious kind of law-making.

The first task of Rousseau, after settling the conditions of his
compact, is to provide a sovereign power in the state. This he finds in
the association of the citizens united, as above described, in a body
politic. This sovereign cannot be bound by its own actions or resolves,
except in case of an agreement with strangers, for none can make a
contract with himself. By the original compact the action of the
individual citizens as independent agents was exhausted. They can act
henceforth only as parts of the whole. There is no contract possible
between one or several of them and the community of which they form a
part.[Footnote: In an epitome of the _Social Compact_, inserted by
Rousseau in the fifth book of _Emile_, he thus defines the terms of
that compact. "Each of us puts into a common stock his property, his
person, his life and all his power, under the supreme direction of the
general will, and we receive as a body each member as an indivisible
part of the whole." _Oeuvres_, v. 254.] The sovereign must not,
however, act directly on individuals, for in so doing it would represent
a part only of the community acting on another part, and it would thus
lose its moral right. It must act in general matters exclusively, by
means of general decrees, which only can properly be called laws. "Now
the sovereign, being made up only of the individuals which compose it,
has and can have no interest opposed to theirs; therefore the sovereign
power need not provide its subject with any guarantee, because it is
impossible that the body should wish to injure its members," and as the
nature of its action is general and not particular, it cannot injure one
individual without doing harm to all the others at the same time. "The
sovereign, by the very fact of its existence, is always what it ought to
be."

The general will is always right and always tends to public utility,
says Rousseau, but it does not follow that the decisions of the people
are always equally correct. Man always wills his own good, but does not
always see it. The people is never corrupt, but often deceived, and in
the latter case only does it seem to will what is evil. If there were no
parties in the state, the people, if sufficiently informed, would always
vote rightly, for the little differences in private interests would
balance each other, and the resulting average would be the general will.
But through parties and associations this result is prevented. A nation
may change its laws when it pleases, even the best of them; for if it
likes to hurt itself, who has the right to say it nay?

Sovereignty is inalienable, for power is transmissible, but not will.
Sovereignty consists essentially in the general will, and the general
will cannot be represented. It is the same, or it is other; there is no
intermediate point. The deputies of the people cannot be its
representatives; they can only be its agents; they can conclude nothing
definitely. Any law that the people has not ratified in its assembly is
null; it is not a law. The English nation thinks itself free. It is much
mistaken. It is free only during the election of members of Parliament.
As soon as these are elected the nation is enslaved; it is nothing.
Sovereignty is indivisible, its powers being legislative only, and the
executive function of the state being but its emanation.

Such being the essential conditions of the social compact, what are the
states to which it may be applied? Although Rousseau gives many
directions for the government of larger countries, we see that his
system is truly applicable only to nations so small that the whole body
of voters can be united in one meeting. These popular assemblies, he
says, should be held frequently, at times fixed by law and independent
of any summons, and also at irregular times when needed. Let no one
object that such frequent meetings would take up too much time. He
answers that "as soon as the public service ceases to be the principal
business of the citizens, and they prefer to serve with their purses
rather than with their persons, the state is already near to ruin. If it
be necessary to march to battle, they pay soldiers and stay at home; if
it be necessary to attend the council, they choose deputies and stay at
home. By laziness and money they have at last got troops to enslave
their country and representatives to betray her."

The only law that requires unanimity is the social compact itself. When
that is once formed, each citizen consents to every law, even to those
which are passed in spite of him. When a law is proposed in the assembly
of the people, the question is not exactly whether the proposal is
approved or rejected, but whether it is in accordance with the general
will, which is the will of the people. Every man by his vote declares
his opinion on that point, and by counting the votes the declaration of
the general will is ascertained. When, therefore, the opinion which is
opposed to mine prevails, it proves nothing more than that I was
mistaken, and that what I took to be the general will was not so. If my
private opinion had carried the day against the general will, I should
have done what I did not wish; and then I should not have been free.

It has been said that the sovereign must not act in particular cases. To
do so would be to confound law and fact, and the body politic would soon
be a prey to violence. It is, therefore, necessary to institute an
executive branch, which Rousseau calls indifferently _government_
or _prince_, explaining that the latter word may be used
collectively. But, differing in this from older writers, he denies that
the establishment of an executive power gives rise to any contract
between the body of the people and the persons appointed to govern. He
considers these persons to be intermediate between the nation considered
as sovereign, and the people considered as subject, and to hold but a
delegated power. In this opinion, Rousseau has been followed by most
liberal governments instituted since his day. But he carries this theory
much farther than it is safe to do in practice. The sovereign, he says,
may at any moment revoke the powers of its agents, and the first act of
every public assembly should be to answer these two questions: first,
whether it pleases the sovereign to maintain the present form of
government; and second, whether it pleases the people to leave the
administration to those persons who now exercise it.

The chapters on the form of government are far less important than those
on sovereignty. Rousseau recognized democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy
as applicable respectively to small, middle-sized, and large states. He
says that democracy is the most difficult form to manage, requiring for
its perfect working a state so small that every citizen can know every
other personally, and also great simplicity of manners, great equality
of ranks and fortunes, and little luxury. This applies, of course, only
to democracy in its extreme form, in which the people exercises all the
functions of government without delegating any of them. Rousseau's
preference was for what he calls aristocracy, a government of the most
wise and experienced. The first societies, he says, were thus governed,
and the American Indians are so governed still. It is noticeable that
the Indians take in the works of Rousseau a place similar to that taken
by the Chinese in those of Voltaire; they are distant people, living in
an ideal condition. The freedom of the savage, the literary civilization
of the Oriental, were held up to admiration by these two writers,
diametrically opposed in their way of looking at life, but similar in
their utter want of comprehension of all that was not European and
contemporary. Next after the government of the sages and the elders
Rousseau placed elective government, which, in common with some other
abstract writers, he classes as aristocratic. An hereditary aristocracy
he calls the worst of all governments. He intimated that his remedy for
the weakness of small countries, as against foreign enemies, would be
found in federation, but he postponed the discussion of this subject to
a larger treatise, which was never written.[Footnote: Rousseau has
himself given two summaries of the Social Compact; one very short, in
the Sixth Letter from the Mountain (_Oeuvres_, vii. 378). This was
written after the condemnation of the book by the authorities of Geneva,
and he points out in his remonstrance that he has taken Geneva as the
model state, in the Social Compact. The other summary, much fuller, is
in the fifth book of _Emile_ (_Oeuvres_, v. 248). Here we find
the following growl at the whole social order: "Nous examinerons si l'on
n'a pas fait trop ou trop peu dans l'institution sociale. Si les
individus soumis aux loix et aux hommes, tandis que les societes gardent
entre elles l'independance de la nature, ne restent pas exposes aux maux
des deux etats sans en avoir les avantages, et s'il ne vaudrait pas
mieux qu'il n'y eut point de societe civile au monde que d'y en avoir
plusieurs."]

Rousseau pointed out very forcibly the incompatibility with civil
government of a religion depending on a priesthood whose organization
extends beyond the territory of the country itself and forms a body
politic. Yet he did not propose to apply the only true remedy for this
condition of things, which is the complete separation of church and
state, combined with liberty of speech both for the clergy and the
laity. He recognized as possible only three sorts of religion, of which
the first, without temples, altars, or rites, confined inwardly to the
worship of God and externally to the moral duties, was, as he thought,
the pure and simple religion of the Gospels, the true theism, and might
be called the natural divine law. The next is a national religion,
belonging to one country. It has its gods, its rites, its altars, all
within its own land, outside of which everything is infidel, strange,
and barbarian. Man's duties extend no farther than the boundaries of his
own country. Such were the religions of the early nations. The third
kind gives to its votaries two systems of legislation, two chiefs, two
homes, makes them submit to contradictory duties, prevents their being
at once devout worshipers and good citizens. Such a religion is the
Roman Catholic.

The Roman clergy, he says, is united, not by its formal assemblies, but
by communion and excommunication, which are its social compact, and by
means of which it will always retain the mastery over kings and nations.
All the priests who are in communion are citizens, although at the ends
of the earth. This invention is a masterpiece of politics.

On some religion our author believes that the state has a right to
insist. There is a purely civil profession of faith, whose articles the
sovereign may fix, not exactly as dogmas of religion, but as principles
of sociability. These must be few, simple and clear, and announced
without explanation or commentary. The existence of a deity, powerful,
intelligent, beneficent, foreseeing, and providing; the life to come,
with the happiness of the good and the punishment of the wicked; the
sacredness of the Social Compact and of the laws,--these are the
positive dogmas. Of things forbidden there should be but one:
intolerance. Whosoever says that there is no salvation but in the church
should be driven from the state; for such teaching is dangerous to the
sovereign, except, indeed, in a theocracy. Any one who does not hold to
the simple creed above described may properly be banished, not as
impious but as unsociable, incapable of loving justice and the laws
sincerely, or of sacrificing his life to his duty. And if any one, after
having publicly accepted these dogmas, behaves as if he did not believe
them, let him be put to death; he has committed the greatest of crimes;
he has lied before the laws.

In the short essay on the Social Compact, Rousseau has brought
together, as we have seen, several of the most dangerous errors which
have afflicted modern society. The people, according to him, is not
only all powerful, but always righteous; sometimes deceived, but never
corrupt. Why the whole community should be better or wiser than the
best of the persons who compose it; why our errors should balance or
counteract each other and our virtues not do so, Rousseau probably
never asked himself; or if the question occurred to his mind, he
dismissed it with a merely specious answer. There is hardly a limit to
the tyranny which he allows to the multitude. The individual citizen
is made free from the interference of a single master only that he may
be the more dependent on that corporate despot who is to control his
every action and his very thoughts. Manners, customs, above all public
opinion, are declared to be the most important of laws. Individuality
is, therefore, to be absolutely banished. Nor is security provided
for. It is the advantage of a stationary system that a man may know
this year what the world will expect of him ten years hence and may
lay his plans accordingly. Human laws may sometimes be pardoned for
being as inflexible as the laws of physics if they are as surely to be
relied on. But Rousseau, while hoping that his state will change very
little, carefully reserves for his tyrant the right to be
capricious. And lest that right should ever be forgotten he takes care
that the whole form of government shall be brought in question at
every public meeting. What the multitude has to-day decided it may
reverse to-morrow. The unfortunate citizen is not left even the right
to protest. The general will, when once proved by the popular vote, is
his own will. The very desires of his heart must loyally follow the
changing caprices of his many-headed master.

Yet here as elsewhere Rousseau has joined a noble conception to a base
one. The law, once promulgated by the sovereign power, is to be
universal throughout the state and superior to all human rulers. The
idea was not novel, but it was well that it should again be distinctly
formulated.

It is quite in accordance with the general spirit of the essay that
while intolerance is said to be the only religious crime, it is in fact
the foundation of the whole ecclesiastical system of the republic.
Whoever dares to say that there is no salvation outside of the church is
to be driven from the state. By this means Rousseau would have exiled
nearly every Christian of the eighteenth century. On the other hand,
whoever doubts the existence of God, His providence, and His rewards and
punishments, is to be treated in the same manner. Some of the
Philosophers of the age are thus excluded. Verily, few are the just that
remain, and Rousseau is quite right in his opinion that those who
distinguish between civil and theological intolerance are mistaken. In
his system, at least, the two are closely connected.

CHAPTER XIX.

"LA NOUVELLE HELOISE" AND "EMILE."

It was not alone by his political writings that Jean Jacques Rousseau
exercised a great influence over Europe. Of all his books, the two which
are perhaps most famous take the form of loose and disjointed fiction,
and deal not with government, but with life, passion, society, and
education. Yet the characters of "La Nouvelle Heloise," and of "Emile,"
are not mere frames of scarecrows clothed with abstract qualities and
fine sentiments. Saint-Preux, Emile and the Tutor, Julie, Sophie,
Claire, and Lord Edward Bomston are live persons, whom the reader may
like or dislike. In the first three Rousseau would seem to have
incorporated himself, and the result is interesting, but repulsive. In
Julie we have Jean Jacques' ideal woman, a being of a noble nature,
tinged and defiled with something low and morbid; but Claire and Sophie
seem taken only from observation, not introspection, and although far
from faultless are often charming.

"La Nouvelle Heloise" is a novel written in letters, a form of writing
more tedious than any other. But it should be remembered that in the
early days of fiction novels were so few that to occupy a long time in
the reading was not an impediment to the popularity of one of them. If
we may believe Rousseau, the "New Heloisa" produced a great sensation.
All Paris was impatient for its appearance. When at last it was
published, men of letters were divided in opinion, but society was
unanimous in its praise, and women were so much delighted with it that
there were few even of high rank whose conquest the author might not
have achieved had he chosen to undertake it. While making due
allowance for the morbid vanity of Jean Jacques, we may entirely
believe him when he says that the book captivated the reading
public. One lady, he tells us, had dressed after supper for the ball
at the Opera House, and sat down to read the new novel while waiting
for the time to go. At midnight she ordered her carriage, but did not
put down the book. The coach came to the door, but she kept on. At two
her servants warned her of the hour. She answered that there was no
hurry. At four she undressed, and continued to read for the rest of
the night. On the first appearance of the story the booksellers used
to let out copies at twelve sous the hour.[Footnote: Rousseau,
xix. 101 (_Confessions_, liv. xi.).] To-day its charm is gone. Few
indeed are the works of pure literature which are read a hundred years
after publication, except by the authors of literary histories and the
unfortunate pupils of injudicious school-mistresses (and the "New
Heloisa" will not form a part of any scheme of female education); but
a good style and a true enthusiasm may lighten the task even of these
sufferers.

It is a singular fact that in some matters of feeling no age seems so
far from our own as that of our great-grandfathers. The lovers of the
Middle Ages and of the sixteenth century appear to us natural and
healthy beings. Those of the eighteenth seem sentimental and foolish. In
the case of Rousseau's great novel this effect is increased by the
morbid strain of the author's mind. With him all passion tends to assume
unhealthy shapes, and the very breezes of Lake Leman come laden with
close and sickly odors.

It is not worth while to deal here with the story of the "New
Heloisa,"--a story of illicit passion in the first part; and in the
second, of the happy marriage of the heroine to a man who is not her
lover. The visit paid by that lover to his old mistress and her
husband in their home at Clarens, with all the trials of virtue which
it involves, is a disagreeable piece of sentimentality. The members of
the trio fall on each other's necks with unpleasant frequency and
fervor. But the picture of that home itself, with its well-ordered
housekeeping, its liberality and its plainness, is interesting and
attractive. "Since the masters of this house have taken it for their
dwelling, they have turned to their use all that served only for
ornament; it is no longer a house made to be seen, but to be lived
in. They have built up the long lines of doors by which rooms opened
one out of another, and made new doorways in convenient places; they
have cut up rooms that were too large, and improved the arrangement;
they have substituted simple and convenient furniture for what was old
and expensive. Everything is agreeable and smiling, everything
breathes abundance and cleanliness; nothing shows costliness or
luxury; there is no room where you do not feel yourself in the country
and where you do not find all the conveniences of town. The same
changes are noticeable outside; the poultry-yard has been enlarged at
the expense of the carriage-house. In the place of an old broken-down
billiard-table they have built a fine wine-press, and they have got
rid of some screeching peacocks to make room for a dairy. The kitchen
garden was too small for the kitchen; a second one has been made of
the parterre, but so neat and so well laid out that thus transformed
it is more pleasing to the eye than before. Good espaliers have been
substituted for the doleful yews that covered the wall. Instead of the
useless horse-chestnut tree, young black mulberries are beginning to
shade the courtyard, and two rows of walnut trees, running to the
road, have been planted in place of the old lindens which bordered the
avenue. Everywhere the useful has been substituted for the agreeable,
and almost everywhere the agreeable has gained by it." The description
is masterly, but we cannot quite forgive Rousseau for sacrificing the
horse-chestnut and the lindens.[Footnote: Rousseau, ix. 235
(Nouv. Hel. Part. iv. Let. x.).]

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