Rousseau Jean-Jacques - The Confessions

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Completeby Jean Jacques RousseauThis eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and withalmost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away orre-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License includedwith this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.netTitle: The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, CompleteAuthor: Jean Jacques RousseauRelease Date: October 4, 2006 [EBook #3913]Language: EnglishCharacter set encoding: ISO-8859-1*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONFESSIONS ROUSSEAU ***Produced by David Widger

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Among the notable books of later times-we may say, withoutexaggeration, of all timemust be reckoned The Confessions of JeanJacques Rousseau. It deals with leading personages and transactionsof a momentous epoch, when absolutism and feudalism were rallyingfor their last struggle against the modern spirit, chieflyrepresented by Voltaire, the Encyclopedists, and Rousseau himselfastruggle to which, after many fierce intestine quarrels andsanguinary wars throughout Europe and America, has succeeded theprevalence of those more tolerant and rational principles by whichthe statesmen of our own day are actuated.

On these matters, however, it is not our province to enlarge;nor is it necessary to furnish any detailed account of our author'spolitical, religious, and philosophic axioms and systems, hisparadoxes and his errors in logic: these have been so long and soexhaustively disputed over by contending factions that little isleft for even the most assiduous gleaner in the field. The inquirerwill find, in Mr. John Money's excellent work, the opinions ofRousseau reviewed succinctly and impartially. The 'Contrat Social',the 'Lattres Ecrites de la Montagne', and other treatises that oncearoused fierce controversy, may therefore be left in the repose towhich they have long been consigned, so far as the mass of mankindis concerned, though they must always form part of the library ofthe politician and the historian. One prefers to turn to the manRousseau as he paints himself in the remarkable work before us.

That the task which he undertook in offering to show himselfasPersius puts it'Intus et in cute', to posterity, exceeded hispowers, is a trite criticism; like all human enterprises, hispurpose was only imperfectly fulfilled; but this circumstance in noway lessens the attractive qualities of his book, not only for thestudent of history or psychology, but for the intelligent man ofthe world. Its startling frankness gives it a peculiar interestwanting in most other autobiographies.

Many censors have elected to sit in judgment on the failings ofthis strangely constituted being, and some have pronounced upon himvery severe sentences. Let it be said once for all that his faultsand mistakes were generally due to causes over which he had butlittle control, such as a defective education, a too acutesensitiveness, which engendered suspicion of his fellows,irresolution, an overstrained sense of honour and independence, andan obstinate refusal to take advice from those who really wished tobefriend him; nor should it be forgotten that he was afflictedduring the greater part of his life with an incurable disease.

Lord Byron had a soul near akin to Rousseau's, whose writingsnaturally made a deep impression on the poet's mind, and probablyhad an influence on his conduct and modes of thought: In somestanzas of 'Childe Harold' this sympathy is expressed with truthand power; especially is the weakness of the Swiss philosopher'scharacter summed up in the following admirable lines:

"Here the self-torturing sophist, wild Rousseau, The apostle of affliction, he who threw Enchantment over passion, and from woe Wrung overwhelming eloquence, first drew The breath which made him wretched; yet he knew How to make madness beautiful, and cast O'er erring deeds and thoughts a heavenly hue Of words, like sunbeams, dazzling as they passed The eyes, which o'er them shed tears feelingly and fast. "His life was one long war with self-sought foes, Or friends by him self-banished; for his mind Had grown Suspicion's sanctuary, and chose, For its own cruel sacrifice, the kind, 'Gainst whom he raged with fury strange and blind. But he was frenzied,-wherefore, who may know? Since cause might be which skill could never find; But he was frenzied by disease or woe To that worst pitch of all, which wears a reasoning show."

One would rather, however, dwell on the brighter hues of thepicture than on its shadows and blemishes; let us not, then, seekto "draw his frailties from their dread abode." His greatest faultwas his renunciation of a father's duty to his offspring; but thiscrime he expiated by a long and bitter repentance. We cannot,perhaps, very readily excuse the way in which he has occasionallytreated the memory of his mistress and benefactress. That he lovedMadame de Warenshis 'Mamma'deeply and sincerely is undeniable,notwithstanding which he now and then dwells on her improvidenceand her feminine indiscretions with an unnecessary and unbecominglack of delicacy that has an unpleasant effect on the reader,almost seeming to justify the remark of one of his most lenientcriticsthat, after all, Rousseau had the soul of a lackey. Hepossessed, however, many amiable and charming qualities, both as aman and a writer, which were evident to those amidst whom he lived,and will be equally so to the unprejudiced reader of theConfessions. He had a profound sense of justice and a real desirefor the improvement and advancement of the race. Owing to theseexcellences he was beloved to the last even by persons whom hetried to repel, looking upon them as members of a band ofconspirators, bent upon destroying his domestic peace and deprivinghim of the means of subsistence.

Those of his writings that are most nearly allied in tone andspirit to the 'Confessions' are the 'Reveries d'un PromeneurSolitaire' and 'La Nouvelle Heloise'. His correspondence throwsmuch light on his life and character, as do also parts of 'Emile'.It is not easy in our day to realize the effect wrought upon thepublic mind by the advent of 'La Nouvelle Heloise'. Julie andSaint-Preux became names to conjure with; their ill-starred amourswere everywhere sighed and wept over by the tender-hearted fair;indeed, in composing this work, Rousseau may be said to have donefor Switzerland what the author of the Waverly Novels did forScotland, turning its mountains, lakes and islands, formerlyregarded with aversion, into a fairyland peopled with creatureswhose joys and sorrows appealed irresistibly to every breast.Shortly after its publication began to flow that stream of touristsand travellers which tends to make Switzerland not only morecelebrated but more opulent every year. It, is one of the fewromances written in the epistolary form that do not oppress thereader with a sense of languor and unreality; for its creatorpoured into its pages a tide of passion unknown to his frigid andstilted predecessors, and dared to depict Nature as she really is,not as she was misrepresented by the modish authors and artists ofthe age. Some persons seem shy of owning an acquaintance with thiswork; indeed, it has been made the butt of ridicule by thedisciples of a decadent school. Its faults and its beauties are onthe surface; Rousseau's own estimate is freely expressed at thebeginning of the eleventh book of the Confessions and elsewhere. Itmight be wished that the preface had been differently conceived andworded; for the assertion made therein that the book may provedangerous has caused it to be inscribed on a sort of Index, andgood folk who never read a line of it blush at its name. Its"sensibility," too, is a little overdone, and has supplied the witswith opportunities for satire; for example, Canning, in his 'NewMorality':