Chapter X: Part 10

Jefferson especially was fascinated by Rousseau, and in his library was a well-thumbed copy of the "Social Contract." marked and re- marked on page and margin. Paine and Jefferson were the only men connected with the strenuous times of Seventeen Hundred Seventy-six who had a distinct literary style--who worked epigram and antithesis. And the style of each is identical with the other. That Paine wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence needs no argument for the literary connoisseur--he simply says, "Read it." But while we know that both Paine and Jefferson fed on Rousseau for ten years, it is not so clear that they collaborated. They got their information from the same source--one in England and the other in America--and met with minds mature.

As Victor Hugo gave the key to the modern American stylists, so did the stylists--and precious few there were--of Seventeen Hundred Seventy-six trace to Jean Jacques. The man who wrote the "Junius Letters" had only one model.

That opening phrase of the Declaration, "We hold these truths to be self-evident." is a literal translation from Jean Jacques.

The Reverend Joseph Parker once said to me, "I always begin strong and I end strong, for only your first phrase and your last will be remembered, if remembered at all, by the average listener."

Jean Jacques begins strong. The first words of the "Social Contract" are, "Man is born free, but is everywhere enslaved."

Does not that remind you of the not-to-be-forgotten opening words of "The Crisis": "These are the times that try men's souls"?

Rousseau says, "Every individual who opposes himself to the general will ought to be restrained by the whole body, which signifies nothing else than that they force him to be free." That is, he is no longer fit to receive the benefits of the social contract since he refused to pay the price.

The argument of the "Social Contract" is that, in all and every form of government, the people enter into an agreement with the prince or ruler, agreeing to waive the mutual right of freedom in consideration of his seeing to it that laws shall be passed and enforced giving the greatest good to the greatest number.

And this led to that shibboleth of the Revolution, "Liberty, Fraternity, Equality." Only when it was written by Jean Jacques twenty years before it ran thus, "Liberty, Fraternity, Equality--or Death." The final word was too strong for even his fiery followers to digest. But once understood it means that if either prince or pauper refuses to sign the Social Contract and live for all, death then must be his portion. For and in consideration of this interest in the peace and welfare of all, the prince is given honors and is allowed to call himself "a ruler." If, however, at any time the prince should so forget his sacred office as to work for private gain or for a favored few, then he is guilty of a breach of the contract, and the people owe to themselves the duty of deposition or revolution. Just as Nature, when a man's body is no more fit for service, kills the man, so must we kill the office and begin anew.

And this was to cause Thomas Paine to say in the Chamber of Deputies, when the execution of Louis the Sixteenth was under discussion, "I vote to kill the kingly office, not the man."

The following passages taken at random from Jean Jacques might safely be attributed to either Paine, Jefferson or "Junius":

Wherever theological intolerance is admitted, it is impossible that
it should not have some civil effect; and so soon as it has, the
sovereign is no longer sovereign even in secular matters: the
priests become the real masters, and kings are only their officers.
Whoever dares to say, Beyond the Church there is no salvation, ought
to be driven from the State.

I perceive God in all His works; I feel Him in myself; I see Him all
around me; but as soon as I contemplate His nature, as soon as I try
to find out where He is, what He is, what is His substance, He
eludes my gaze; my imagination is overwhelmed. I do not therefore
reason about Him, for it is more injurious to the Deity to think
wrongly of Him than not to think of Him at all.

By equality we do not mean that all individuals shall have the same
degree of wealth and power, but only, with respect to the former,
that no citizen shall be rich enough to buy another, and that none
shall be so poor as to be obliged to sell himself.

Almost everything conspires to deprive a man brought up to command
others of the principles of reason and justice. Great pains are
taken, it is said, to teach young princes the art of reigning; it
does not, however, appear that they profit much by their education.
The greatest monarchs are those who have never been trained to rule.
It is a science of which those who know least succeed best; and it
is acquired better by studying obedience than command.

Did there exist a nation of gods, their government would doubtless
be democratic; it is too perfect for mankind.

The individual by giving himself up to all gives himself up to none;
and there is no member over whom he does not acquire the same right
as that which he gives up himself. He gains an equivalent for what
he loses, and a still greater power to preserve what he has. If,
therefore, we take from the social contract everything which is not
essential to it, we shall find it reduced to the following terms:
Each of us puts his person and his power under the superior
direction of the general will of all, and, as a collective body,
receives each member into that body as an indivisible part of the
whole.

* * * * *

Rousseau was born in Seventeen Hundred Twelve, and died in Seventeen Hundred Seventy-eight. He wrote four books that are yet being read. These books are the "Confessions," the "Social Contract," "Emile," and the "New Heloise." I give the titles in order of popularity. It is easy to say that people read the "Confessions" for the same reason that they read "Peregrine Pickle" and "Tom Jones," it being one of those peculiar books labeled by our French friends "risque." But its salacious features are only incidental, and of themselves would not have kept it afloat upon the tide of the times. The author, dead over a hundred years, must have said something to keep men still reading and discussing him.

Rousseau dealt with the elemental impulses of men and women. His cry, "Back to Nature," is still the shibboleth of a great many good men, from Parson Wagner to Theodore Roosevelt. Between the nobility and orthodox Christianity, Nature was in a bad way in Rousseau's time. The nobles thought to improve on her, and the preachers told the people that what was natural was base. God was good, but Nature and the devil were playing a game and the stakes were the souls of men. There are many people still haunted with the hallucination that to trust your impulses is to be damned.

Rousseau described human nature, and being truthful, some of it he pictured as rude, crude and course. But on the other hand he showed much that was redeeming--traits of beauty, truth, gentleness, consideration, worth and aspirations that reached the skies. To trust humanity, he thought, was the only way humanity could be redeemed. He believed that blunders were sources of power, since by them we came to distinguish between right and wrong. He was the first man to say, "That country is governed best which is governed least." He gave Horace Walpole the cue for the mot, "When the people of Paris speak of the Garden of Eden, they always think of Versailles."

Rousseau is the first man of modern times to show us the beauty of Nature in her wild and uncultivated attire. And he, more than any other man who can be named, turned the attention of society towards nature-study as a refining force. Read this from "Emile": "It was Summer; we arose at break of day. He led me outside the town to a high hill, below which the Po wound its way; in the distance the immense chains of the Alps crowned the landscape; the rays of the rising sun struck athwart the plains, and projected on the fields the long shadows of the trees, the slopes, the houses, enriching by a thousand accidents of light the loveliest prospect which the human eye could behold." Rousseau is the spiritual ancestor of John Burroughs, Thompson-Seton, and all our scientific, unscientific and sentimental friends who flood us with Nature stories--fiction, fake or fact.

In his "Emile" he outlines our so-called pedagogic new-thought methods. Birds' nests, bumblebees, hornets' nests, leaves, buds, flowers, grasses, mosses, are schoolroom properties to which he often refers. To a great degree he replaced the ferule, cat-o'-nine-tails, dunce-cap, musty, dusty books, tear-stained slates, awful examples and punishments of a hundred lines of Vergil, by wholesome good-cheer and limpid forgetfulness of self in drawing pictures of spiders and noting the difference between a wasp and a bee, a butterfly and a moth, a frog and a toad, a mushroom and a toadstool. And so the reason Rousseau is read is because there is much in his work that is essentially modern. No thinker writes on political economy without quoting the "Social Contract," either for the sake of bolstering his own argument, or to show the folly of Jean Jacques. And I submit that as long as we feel it necessary to refute an author, Andrew Lang may expect letters from him any time, for, although dead, he yet lives.

SO HERE ENDETH "LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF GREAT REFORMERS," BEING VOLUME NINE OF THE SERIES, AS WRITTEN BY ELBERT HUBBARD; EDITED AND ARRANGED BY FRED BANN; BORDERS AND INITIALS BY ROYCROFT ARTISTS, AND PRODUCED BY THE ROYCROFTERS, AT THEIR SHOPS, WHICH ARE IN EAST AURORA, ERIE COUNTY, NEW YORK. MCMXXII