The next important book was “The New Heloise,” a love story written in the form of a series of letters. French women were rebelling against being sold in marriage; their natural desire to marry the man of their own choice was reaching a point dangerous to the old convention. To be sure, Heloise obeyed her parents and married according to their command; but her sufferings were so moving that she was more effective as an inspirer of revolt than if she had herself revolted.
Then came another novel, “Emile, or The Sentimental Education”—that is to say, an education according to the dictates of the natural feelings. The physical and moral soundness of the infant Emile were based upon the fact that his mother suckled him, instead of turning him over to a wet nurse, according to the fashion of the great world of France. The child was raised in close contact with nature, and followed the dictates of those natural desires, which Rousseau believed were always wholesome and trustworthy. The youth was taught to work and be useful instead of being a culture parasite; and in due course a pure and beautiful maiden appeared to deserve his love. Today Rousseau’s ideas of education are freely applied in the Ferrer schools; but in 1762 “Emile” was condemned by the Sorbonne, and burned by the common executioner, and its author was forced to flee to Switzerland, and finally to England.
In his later years of desolation Rousseau produced the story of his life, known as the “Confessions.” His other works are not easy for us to read, but the “Confessions” will be read so long as man is interested in his own heart. Here for the first time in the history of our race a man of first-rate genius told the full truth about himself. A great deal of it is painful truth; we read it with dismay, and on the basis of it Rousseau’s enemies have condemned him to infamy.
But never forget, we know these painful things because Rousseau tells them to us; if he had concealed them, or dressed them up to look romantic, then we should have had quite a different Rousseau in our minds. Many authors have done that, and live enthroned in our regard. But this man says to us: much as I care about myself—and I care a great deal—I care still more about enabling my fellowmen to understand reality. And that is the spirit in which we take the “Confessions.” We realize that we are not dealing with one of those feeble natures which first commit offenses, and then find pleasure in talking about them; we are sharing life with a deeply serious man, who seeks in agony a cure for human ills.
I doubt if there has ever been a preacher of doctrine who delivered himself more completely to his enemies than Jean-Jacques. He tells us how, not knowing how to get his bread, he left his newly born children in care of a foundling asylum. This was a custom of the time; but as a rule those who followed the custom did not go away and write a book advising other people how to rear and educate their children! For such inconsistencies his critics ridiculed him unmercifully. And yet, in spite of all they could say, he became the trumpeter of the revolution, political, economic, and cultural, which was on the way in France. He remains in our time a trumpeter of the social revolution which is happening before our eyes.
That does not mean that we are blind to the fallacies and absurdities in his doctrines. We of today study education in the light of a mass of psychological knowledge, we study government in the light of historical and economic knowledge, we study the human soul in the light of biology, sociology, chemistry, psychoanalysis—a host of sciences whose very names were unknown to Rousseau. But how do we come to possess this knowledge? We possess it because Jean-Jacques, with the divination of a prophet and the fervor of a moral genius, proclaimed from the housetops the right of the human spirit to be free, and to face the facts of life, and to choose its path in accordance with its own happiness and health.
With any critic of Rousseau there is one question to be settled at the outset. Why do you quarrel with this man? Is it because you wish to correct his errors, and clear the way to his goal of liberty, equality, and fraternity? Or are you one of those who dread the torrent of new ideas and new feelings which Rousseau let loose upon the world? Is it your purpose to discredit the whole individualistic movement which he fathered, and to take us back to the good old days when children obeyed their parents, and servants obeyed their masters, and women obeyed their husbands, and subjects obeyed their popes and kings, and students in colleges accepted without question what their professors told them?
Says Mrs. Ogi: “I suspect that last phrase is meant for Professor Babbitt.”
“It is wonderful,” says her husband, “that he should have that name. A judgment of Providence, without doubt!”