"If I had fallen into the hands of a better master....I should have been a good Christian, a good father, a good friend, a good workman, a good man in all things."
The wrong is thus all on the side of society.—In the same way, with Man in general, his nature is good.
"His first impulses are always right..... The fundamental principle of all moral questions which I have argued in all my writings, is that Man is naturally good, and loving justice and order..... 'Emile,' especially, is a treatise on the natural goodness of Man, intended to show how vice and error, foreign to his constitution, gradually find their way into it from without and insensibly change him.....Nature created Man happy and good, while society has depraved him and made him miserable."[3330]
Imagine him divested of his factitious habits, of his superadded necessities, of his false prejudices; put aside systems, study your own heart, listen to the inward dictates of feeling, let yourself be guided by the light of instinct and of conscience, and you will again find the first Adam, like an incorruptible marble statue that has fallen into a marsh, a long time lost under a crust of slime and mud, but which, released from its foul covering, may be replaced on its pedestal in the completeness of its form and in the perfect purity of its whiteness.
Around this central idea a reform occurs in the spiritualistic doctrine.—A being so noble cannot possibly consist of a simple collection of organs; he is something more than mere matter; the impression he derives from his senses do not constitute his full being.
"I am not merely a sensitive and passive being, but an active and intelligent being, and, whatever philosophy may say, I dare claim the honor of thinking."
And better still, this thinking principle, in Man, at least, is of a superior kind.
"Show me another animal on the globe capable of producing fire and of admiring the sun. What? I who am able to observe, to comprehend beings and their associations; who can appreciate order, beauty and virtue; who can contemplate the universe and exalt myself to the hand which controls it; who can love the good and do good, should I compare myself to brutes!" Man is free, capable of deciding between two actions, and therefore the creator of his actions; he is accordingly a first and original cause, "an immaterial substance," distinct from the body, a soul hampered by the body and which may survive the body.—This immortal soul imprisoned within the flesh has conscience for its organ. "O Conscience, divine instinct, immortal and celestial voice, unfailing guide of an ignorant and finite but free and intelligent being, infallible judge between good and evil, and rendering Man similar to God, Thou foremost the superiority of his nature!"
Alongside of vanity, by which we subordinate everything to ourselves, there is a love of order by which we subordinate ourselves to the whole. Alongside of egoism, by which Man seeks happiness even at the expense of others, is sympathy, by which he seeks the happiness of others even at the expense of his own. Personal enjoyment does not suffice him; he still needs tranquillity of conscience and the effusions of the heart.—Such is Man as God designed and created him; in his organization there is no defect. Inferior elements are as serviceable as the superior elements; all are essential, proportionate, in proper place, not only the heart, the conscience, the intellect, and the faculties by which we surpass brutes, but again the inclinations in common with animals, the instinct of self-preservation and of self-defense, the need of physical activity, sexual appetite, and other primitive impulses as we observe them in the child, the savage and the uncultivated Man.[3331] None of these in themselves are either vicious or injurious. None are too strong, even the love of self. None come into play out of season. If we would not interfere with them, if we would impose no constraint on them, if we would permit these sparkling fountains to flow according to their bent, if we would not confine them to our artificial and foul channels, we should never see them boiling over and becoming turbid. We look with wonder on their ravages and on their stains; we forget that, in the beginning, they were pure and undefiled. The fault is with us, in our social arrangements, in our encrusted and formal channels whereby we cause deviations and windings, and make them heave and bound. "Your very governments are the cause of the evils which they pretend to remedy. Ye scepters of iron! ye absurd laws, ye we reproach for our inability to fulfill our duties on earth!" Away with these dikes, the work of tyranny and routine! An emancipated nature will at once resume a direct and healthy course and man, without effort, will find himself not only happy but virtuous as well.[3332] On this principle the attack begins: there is none that is pushed further, nor conducted with more bitter hostility. Thus far existing institutions are described simply as oppressive and unreasonable; but now they are now they are accused of being unjust and corrupting as well. Reason and the natural desires were the only insurgents; conscience and pride are now in rebellion. With Voltaire and Montesquieu all I might hope for is that fewer evils might be anticipated. With Diderot and d'Holbach the horizon discloses only a glowing El Dorado or a comfortable Cythera. With Rousseau I behold within reach an Eden where I shall immediately recover a nobility inseparable from my happiness. It is my right; nature and Providence summon me to it; it is my heritage. One arbitrary institution alone keeps me away from it, the creator of my vices as of my misery. With what rage and fury I will overthrow this ancient barrier!—We detect this in the vehement tone, in the embittered style, and in the sombre eloquence of the new doctrine. Fun and games are no longer in vogue, a serious tone is maintained; people become exasperated, while the powerful voice now heard penetrates beyond the drawing-room, to the rude and suffering crowd to which no word had yet been spoken, whose mute resentment for the first time finds an interpreter, and whose destructive instincts are soon to be set in motion at the summons of its herald.—Rousseau is a man of the people, and not a man of high society. He feels awkward in a drawing-room.[3333] He is not capable of conversing and of appearing amiable; the nice expressions only come into his head too late, on the staircase as he leaves the house; he keeps silent with a sulky air or utters stupidities, redeeming his awkwardness with the sallies of a clown or with the phrases of a vulgar pedant. Elegance annoys him, luxury makes him uncomfortable, politeness is a lie, conversation mere prattle, ease of manner a grimace, gaiety a convention, wit a parade, science so much charlatanry, philosophy an affection and morals utter corruption. All is factitious, false and unwholesome,[3334] from the make-up, toilet and beauty of women to the atmosphere of the apartments and the ragouts on the dinner-table, in sentiment as in amusement, in literature as in music, in government as in religion. This civilization, which boasts of its splendor, is simply the restlessness of over-excited, servile monkeys each imitating the other, and each corrupting the other to, through sophistication, end up in worry and boredom. Human culture, accordingly, is in itself bad, while the fruit it produces is merely excrescence or poison.—Of what use are the sciences? Uncertain and useless, they afford merely a pasture-ground for idlers and wranglers.[3335]
"Who would want to pass a lifetime in sterile observation, if they, apart from their duties and nature's demands, had had to bestow their time on their country, on the unfortunate and on their friends!"—Of what use are the fine arts? They serve only as public flattery of dominant passions. "The more pleasing and the more perfect the drama, the more baneful its influence;" the theater, even with Molière, is a school of bad morals, "inasmuch as it excites deceitful souls to ridicule, in the name of comedy, the candor of artless people." Tragedy, said to be moralizing, wastes in counterfeit effusions the little virtue that still remains. "When a man has been admiring the noble feats in the fables what more is expected of him? After paying homage to virtue is he not discharged from all that he owes to it? What more would they have him do? Must he practice it himself? He has no part to play, he is not a comedian."—The sciences, the fine arts, the arts of luxury, philosophy, literature, all this serve only to effeminate and distract the mind; all that is only made for the small crowd of brilliant and noisy insects buzzing around the summits of society and sucking away all public substance.—As regards the sciences, but one is important, that of our duties, and, without so many subtleties and so much study, our innermost conscience suffice to show us the way.—As regards the arts and the skills, only those should be tolerated which, ministering to our prime necessities, provide us with bread to feed us, with a roof to shelter us, clothing to cover us, and arms with which to defend ourselves.—In the way of existence that only is healthy which enables us to live in the country, artlessly, without display, in family union, devoted to cultivation, living on the products of the soil and among neighbors that are equals and with servants that one trusts as friends.[3336]—As for the classes, but one is respectable, that of laboring men, especially that of men working with their own hands, artisans and mechanics, only these being really of service, the only ones who, through their situation, are in close proximity to the natural state, and who preserve, under a rough exterior, the warmth, the goodness and the integrity of primitive instincts.—Accordingly, let us call by its true name this elegance, this luxury, this urbanity, this literary delicacy, this philosophical eccentricity, admired by the prejudiced as the flower of the life of humanity; it is only mold and mildew. In like manner esteem at its just value the swarm that live upon it, namely, the indolent aristocracy, the fashionable world, the privileged who direct and make a display, the idlers of the drawing room who talk, divert themselves and regard themselves as the elect of humanity, but who are simply so many parasites. Whether parasitic or excretory, one attracts the other, and the tree can only be well if we get rid of both.