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.- ,.r-.. i»-«

McGILL UNIVERSITY

PAPERS FROM THE DEPARTMENT

Philosophy.

No. 4. — Rousseau : His Position in the History
OF Philosophy.

J. CLARK MURRAY, LL.D.

[Reprinted from the Philosophical Review, Vol. viii. No. 4, July, 1899.]

Montreal, 1899

\^^^'

ROUSSEAU : HIS POSITION IN THE HISTORY
OF PHILOSOPHY.

By J. CtARK Murray,
McGill University.

[Reprinted from the Philosophical Review, Vol. VIII, No. 4. J«'y. ^Sgg.]

If^

<^^tf^ '

'I'h^*

ROUSSEAU: HIS POSITION IN THE HISTORY
OF PHILOSOPHY.

THE past few months have enriched English literature with
two new books on Jean Jacques Rousseau. One is en-
titled Rousseau, and Education according to Nature. It forms a
volume in the series of The Great Educators, and its author,
Mr. Thomas Davidson, is already well known to the readers of
that series by his admirable volume on Aristotle and the Ancient
Educational Ideals. The other book is translated from -^ French
work by M. Texte, Professor of Comparative Literature in the
University of Lyon. It is an interesting fruit of the professional
labor of the author. It takes Rousseau as the first French rep-
resentative of the cosmopolitan spirit in literature. Its " whole
object," as the Introduction explains, " is to exhibit Rousseau as
the man who has done the most to create in the French nation
both the taste and the need for the literature of the North."
These works, dealing each with a somewhat limited aspect of
Rousseau's influence, form thus a striking proof of the manifold
interest which continues to be felt in the teaching of the great
French writer. The secret of this interest is not difficult to find,
though it may be variously interpreted. It is needless to say, that
the interest does not arise from any peculiar attractiveness in the
personality of Rousseau. Indeed, among the great writers of the
world, there are few, the records of whose private lives one would
more willingly see obliterated ; and in Rousseau's case, fortu-
nately for our purpose, they can be left out of view. Rousseau
commands interest still as chief literary representative of one of
the greatest movements in the history of the world. That move-
ment offers many phases for study. Here we shall look mainly
at its philosophical aspect, noticing the others merely as they
throw light upon it.

It is an old criticism of the eighteenth century that its life had
become encrusted in extremely artificial forms. At all times,
indeed, human life tends to outgrow the modes of thought, of

-■*—*.

B iiW ■iti

358

THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW. [Vol. VIII.

language, of social action, in which it has to find concrete em-
bodiment ; and if they do not yield before the requirements of a
new order, they come to

"lie with a weight
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life "

At no period, and in no country, perhaps in the whole history of
the world, did the higher life of man chafe so impatic itly under
the restraint of an effete order, as in the France of last century.
This antiquated order imposed its irksome regulations upon every
sphere of human activity, spiritual and external alike. But
social authority especially had extended itself into an infinitude
of conventional rules, which narrowed the legitimate sphere of
free action, of origination, in the individual, and thereby fettered
the evolution of society, of the race. Thus, social regulation in
general came to appear, for many thoughtful men of the time, as
an artificial restriction, originating in human invention, and having
no foundation in any laws which nature herself has imposed upon
human life. Aspiration, therefore, took the form of a call to
emancipate men from the tyrannous complications, the oppres-
sive inequalities, of this artificial state by returning to the primi-
tive simplicity and freedom, to the fraternal equality, which must
have characterized the state of nature.- Now, it is evident that
the whole significance of this call hinges upon the conception of
nature by which it is interpreted — a conception which must in-
terpret the nature of things in general, but the nature of man in
particular. It is not necessary here to discuss the various mean-
ings of the word nature. A predominant use of the word is to
denote that which is essential — that which makes a thing what
it is, and without which it would no longer be the same thing.
This meaning appears very early in the Greek fuai^, which came
to be commonly rendered in Latin by natura. Even in the

' The wide spread of this aspiration among the reading people of the world could
not be more significantly indicated than by the extraordinary popularity of Robinson
Crusoe. Not only was the novel translated into all the languages of Europe, but, be-
fore the century was old, imitations of it in these languages were to be counted by the
score. M. Texte has given some account of this f>opularity (pp. 124-128). It is a
fact of further significance in this connection, as readers of Entile will remember,
that Defoe's story is the only book which Rousseau allows his^pupil to read.

ifc

3S8

THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW. [Vol. VIII.

language, of social action, in which it has to find concrete em-
bodiment ; and if thoy do not yield before the requirements of a
new order, they come to

" lie with a weight
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life "

At no period, and in no country, perhaps in the whole history of
the world, did the higher life of man chafe so impatic itly under
the restraint of an effete order, as in the France of last century.
This antiquated order imposed its irksome regulations upon every
sphere of human activity, spiritual and external alike. But
social authority especially had extended itself into an infinitude
of conventional rules, which narrowed the legitimate sphere of
free action, of origination, in the individual, and thereby fettered
the evolution of society, of the race. Thus, social regulation in
general came to appear, for many thoughtful men of the time, as
an artificial restriction, originating in human invention, and having
no foundation in any laws which nature herself has imposed upon
human life. Aspiration, therefore, took the form of a call to
emancipate men from the tyrannous complications, the oppres-
sive inequalities, of this artificial state by returning to the primi-
tive simplicity and freedom, to the fraternal equality, which must
have characterized the state of nature.- Now, it is evident that
the whole significance of this call Iiinges upon the conception of
nature by which it is interpreted — a conception which must in-
terpret the nature of things in general, but the nature of man in
particular. It is not necessary here to discuss the various mean-
ings of the word nature. A predominant use of the word is to
denote that which is essential — that which makes a thing what
it is, and without which it would no longer be the same thing.
This meaning appears very early in the Greek <p6ffi;, which came
to be commonly rendered in Latin by tiatura. Even in the

1 The wide spread of this aspiration among the reading people of the world could
not be more significantly indicated than by the extraordinary popularity of Robimon
Crttsoe. Not only was the novel translated into all the languages of Europe, but, be-
fore the century was old, imitations of it in these languages were to be counted by the
score. M. Texte has given some account of this popularity (pp. 124-128). It is a
fact of further significance in this connection, as readers of Emile will remember,
that Defoe's story is the only book which Rousseau allows his^pupil to read.

No. 4.]

ROUSSEAU,

359

Odyssey, tfoatz is used to denote the peculiar power (xftdro^) of
the mythical herb wo/y, by which Ulysses was instructed to
neutralize the enchantment of Circe. This early use determined '
its later meaning as a philosophical term. Philosophy in fact be-
came an endeavor to find out the essential element which makes
things what they are, and therefore ancient critics commonly
described early philosophical treatises by the conventional title

But this . jrm of philosophical inquiry soon became ambiguous.
The ambiguity appeared in the word (i-px^jt which is said to have
been applied first by Anaxagoras to denote the primitive sub-
stance which forms the essential nature of all things. This word,
like its Latin equivalent principium, and in general all words de-
noting priority or primacy, may be applied to what is first in
rank, as well as to what is first in time. Generally and logically,
empiricism considers merely the order in time. On its interpre-
tation, all inquiry into the nature of things becomes simply an at-
tempt to discover their primitive form. In the sciences of human
life, the direction of such an inquiry is obvious. Reason, not
being, obtrusively at least, a primitive factor of human action,
cannot be regarded as an essential constituent of human nature.
Even sensibility must be described, from its appearance in the
embryo, as being naturally and essentially of a very rudimentary
type. In short, the tendency in mental life will be to eliminate
all that differentiates the intelligence of man from that of the
higher animals, in bodily life, to eliminate all that differentiates his
organism from the lowest forms of organic matter. ,

But philosophical interest gathers specially about the spheres
of mental, moral, and social life, both separately and in their
relation to one another. This interest is connected with the di-
vergence of views represented by the twofold meaning of d.pfnij.
The divergence has received '< familiar expression in the great
conflict which has divided the history of religious speculation in
the Christian church, the conflict between the Pelagian and the
Augustinian theories of human nature. But, though accentuated
in Christian thought, the divergence seems almost to represent
an inevitable antinomy of reflection on the subject, and hadi

THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIFAV. [Vol. VIII.

therefore made its appearance in Pagan thought long before.
Among Pagan thinkers, probably the Pelagian view predominated,
especially after the rise of Stoicism. ICven the Flpicurcins are
not unfamiliar with this view ; and a mind like Cicero's, with no
great power of origination, but with great receptivity for the
thoughts of others, seems to vacillate between the two views,
drawn alternately, to both. Like a true Pelagian, he contends
that, though external prosperity is a matter which God alone can
regulate, " virtutcm autem nemo unquam acceptam adco retulit.'"
Yet in the very same treatise he had before fallen into the Au-
gustinian view, that "nemo vir magitus sine aliquo afflatu divino
unquam fuit."*

The problem involved in this antinomy is the relation of mind^
morals, religion, society, to man's nature. The first clear sight
of this problem dates from the great intellectual ferment in
Athens during the fifty years that followed the victory of Salamis.
One of the first results of reflection at that peri'^d was the scep-
tical conclusion of the Sophists with regard religion and
morality. Their attitude on religion denied the power of man to
discover anything about the gods ; their ethics maintained that
the moral law has its source, not in nature, but merely in the
customs and enactments of society. On the other hand, the in-
fluence of Socrates seems to have been decidedly opposed to this
view, and that is the interpretation put upon his teaching by his
greatest disciples, Xenophon and Plato. But he did not carry
all his followers with him in this direction. The teaching of
Aristippus and the Cyrenaics often outdid that of the Sophists in
undermining all natural foundation for the moral and religious
life of the world ; and even the Cynics, notwithstanding their
exaltation of self-denial, took at times such a narrow view of na-
ture as to degrade into meaningless artificialities even those regu-
lations of animal need, which are most indispensable in the in-
terests of moral refinement.

Socratic teaching, however, had been anticipated in the great

^ De Nat. Dear., Ill, 36. Harnack, 1 see, remarks that these words might serve
for a motto to Pelagianism [Lehrbuch der Dogmengcschichle, Vol. Ill, p. 156, note 2).

s Ibid., II, 66. Seneca, with all his Stoicism, is thoroughly Augustinian. " Bonus-
▼ir sine deo nemo est " i^Epist., IV, 12, 2), is a thought to which he often recurs.

No. 4.]

ROUSSEAL.

361

thought of Anaxagoras, that the real dft-jn^ of all things is reason
or intelligence. It has been, among ancient as v^ell as among
modern critics, a common objection urged against Anaxagoras,
that he failed to carry his own theory to its logical issue — that,
while in his general conception of nature, things were referred to
a rational purpose, yet many particular things were explained by
purely mechanical action. Hut it may be questioned how far
this criticism is just. The attitude of Anaxagoras may have
been merely that of philosophical science. For, while philoso-
phy must connect the whole of nature with the purpose of cre-
ative intelligence, yet this connection can be indicated only in its
general outlines at best, and science would be sure to be led
astray, if its prime object were to hunt after the universal thought
of the Creator, instead of the particular laws in which that
thought is evolved. But, to whatever extent the criticisms of
Anaxagoras may be justified, he rendered it impossible to leave
reason out of account in the explanation of the universe ; and
e\'er since his time the most atheistic materialism has been
haunted by the query, whether the processes of nature can find
any complete explanation until they are traced to rational pur-
posive action. It was this fact, that seemed to Aristotle to im-
part such significance to Anaxagoras in the history of speculative
thought In fact, the influence of Anaxagoras is strikingly indi-
cated in the teaching of Aristotle himself. In his well-known
theory of causality, Aristotle makes the end to which things
are adapted an essential principle of their explanation ; so that
the nature of a thing, according to him, must be sought, not in
the rudimentary state out of which it has grown, but rather in
the form which it ultimately assumes, the end which that form
subserves.

But the Anaxagorean doctrine found its clearest expression
and its fullest application in the philosophy of the Stoics. That
doctrine, indeed, may be said to be the central and germinative
idea of their whole system. With them, nature and reason came
to be identified, and this identi'" .tion held in macrocosm and
microcosm alike. They did not shrink, as Anaxagoras was
charged with doing, from the attempt to trace rational a^ itation

*).

362

THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW. [Vol. VIII.

in the minutest, as well as in the vastest, productions of nature ;
and the courage of their convictions is shown in many an alleged
purpose of natural products, which, to modern thought seems a
very superficial conceit. As they found reason embodied all
through the universe at large, they could not but find it particu-
larly in the nature of man. Reason is, in fact, for them the pri-
mary and dominant factor of man's nature. On it our very self-
hood depends. 7*0 iyio Xkyonzv xuto. tooto, is a statement of
Chr^'sippus which has been preserved.

The divergence of views in reference to human nature, which
had thus arisen in Pagan speculation, took a more earnest phase
in Christian thought, when it came to be connected with the
problems of the religious life. The natural state of man assumed
a new interpretation. It came to mean the state into which man
falls when he is completely divorced from the divine life. Such
a concept of man's nature, it may be urged, is one against which
religious thought must always be apt to revolt ; for any devout
interpretation of nature obliges us to believe that every creature
lives and moves and has being only in God. The concept there-
fore of man absolutely severed from the life of God must be a
mere fiction of abstract speculation, like the later fiction of a state
of nature in which man is conceived as absolutely isolated from
society. But in the elaboration of such a fictitious abstraction
man is necessarily conceived as by nature wholly void of good-
ness, if not even positively averse to it. All genuine goodness comes
to be viewed as an unmerited grace of God to man, and a grace
to b' won only through the society which He institutes for the
purpose. Extra ecclcsiam non esse lioininibus salutem, was a
logical conclusion of this dogmatic reasoning ; and we shall see
immediately that the later conception of the state of nature led to
the denial of the possibility of moral life outside of civil society.
The cognate theories fotm thus a speculative foundation for the
most appalling absolutism in church and state.

The Augustinian conception of man's natural state underwent
an energetic revival with the rise of modern speculation, cs ncially
in the spheres of Christian tliought represented in French liter-
ature. In the Calvinism of the Huguenots, equally with the

No. 4.]

ROUSSEAU.

363

Jansenism of the Catholic Church, the teaching of Augustine
remained the dominant influence ; and it is importarc to bear in
mind, that it was among the Jansenists of Port Royal, that the
philosophy of Descartes found its most powerful expositors.

But u new impulse and a new direction were given to the idea
of a state of nature oy Hobbes. This great thinker is indeed oftei.
misunderstood. His theory 01 .human nature is represented as if
it were an extravagant Augustirianism, interpreted in the light
of political science rather than in that of dogmatic theology. It
is not a pure negation of the Stoical theory, or a rehabilitation of
the theory which had been represented by the Sophists and the
Cyrenaics. On the contrary, it is rather a remarkable combi-
nation of the two views which had been previously opposed to
one another. Instead of regarding social institutions and rational
laws for the government of human life as purely artificial creations
of human convention, he finds a foundation for them in nature.
That foundation, moreover, i? laid both in the reason and in the
sensibility of man. The sufficiency of the foundation may,
indeed, be questioned, but it is not without a certain solidity of
its kind. Its insufficiency is perhaps peculiarly evident in the
enumeration of the emotional impulses upon which social life de-
pends. " The passions that incline men to peace," he says, " are
fear of death ; desire of such things as are necessary for com-
modious living ; and a hope by their industry to obtain them."
This, so far as I have observed, is all that Hobbes has to say on
the subject. But it is perhaps significant, that he finds the chief
foundation of social union in the intelligent requirements c Treason,
rather than in the blind instincts of sensibility. Those require-
ments, demanding social harmony among men, constitute, ac-
cording to Hobbes, laws of nature ; and natural law, at least in
his earlier work Dc Civc^ is identified wi^-h divine law, and indeed
with divine law as expounded in the Scnnon on the Mount.
^ The preceding sketch will enable us to understand more clearly
the place of Rousseau in the development of speculation on the
problems upon which his influence was most powerful. That influ-

' Leviathan, ]). I16 (Molesworth's ed.).

'Chap. IV. His later translation of the work into English retains this statement.

3^4

THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW. [Vol. VIII.

ence ran mainly along the lines of three ideas : The state of nature ;
the state of civil society ; and education.

I. In regard to the state of nature, his hostile critique of
Hobbes and Mandeville is apt to create the impression that his
view of human nature represents a strong reaction against theirs,
and in the direction of the nobler view of the Stoics. But, on
more careful examination, his view is seen to be far more com-
pletely opposed to the Stoical, and to form in fact a curiously
illogical syncretism of irreconcilable doctrines. While his whole
philosophy proceeds on the assumption that man is by nature
virtuous, and his antagonism to Hobbes and Mandeville arises
from the fact that they seem to proceed on an opposite view, he
yet describes the natural state of man by characteristics which
are incompatible with any intelligent conception of virtue. He
recognizes indeed the difficulty of defining this state, as it is one
which not only exists no longer, bu.: may never have existed in
the past, and may never exist in the future.^ Still he be-
lieves it possible, by analytical sti'dy of human nature as it is, to
strip off the artificial covering by which its original form is con-
cealed ; and though the rhetoric, which gave him his power, does
not always contribute to exactness, yet we can detect two features
by which he characterizes the original nature of man.

(l) The first is that man's natural sl^ate must be prior to the
evolution of reason. This, it nc d not be said, is the explicit
theme of the Discourse on the corruption of men by science ^.nd
art ; it underlies also the reasoning of the Discourse on the origin
of inequality among me:i. It may not be difficult to show that
this conception of man's natural state is modified, if not even
contradicted, in later writings of Rousseau ; yet it remained to
the last a dominant idea in his teachin-. All that teachincf re-
ceives a certain unity of aim, when we bear in mind that Rous-
seau looked for the well-being of man, not from the expansion of
man's intelligence, not from the growth of science and art, but by
getting rid of all that had been won for life by scientific or ar-
tistic intelligence, and by returning to th : primitive instincts of an
untutored sensibility.

' See preface and opening paragraphs of the Discours mr ronj;iite, etc.

No. 4.]

ROUSSEAU.

365

It is but fair to Rousseau to plead that all paradox may be
viewed as but an exaggeration and misinterpretation of a truth.
The truth in this case is a protest, partly against the overestimation
of a culture that is purely intellectual, partly against the frequent
perversion of intelligence to corrupt the moral life in general, but
especially in its uncutored innocence. Rousseau's teaching, in all
his leading works, perhaps also in the more deliberate actions of
his life, may be interpreted as a protest against both of these errors.
His protest, indeed, often runs into an extravagance more paradox-
ical than the errors against which it was directed. But it is difficult
for a fervid writer, like Rousseau, to avoid hyperbole ; and the
palpable extravagance of an hyperbole often takes from it its
misleading influence. Rousseau himself, in fact, seems at times
quite aware of his paradoxical exaggeration. " It would be
frightful," he says in the second Discourse, "to be obliged to
praise as a beneficent being the man who first suggested to the
dweller on the banks of the Orinoco the use of the boards \\ hich
he applies to the temples of his children, and which assures to
them at least a part of their original imbecility and happiness."^

(2) A second feature of man's natural state is, that it is abso-
lutely non-social. There is no aspect of this conception of man's
nature which brings out so clearly its fictitious character — none
which does such rude violence to the most evident facts of obser-
vation and experience. The attempt to picture man as by nature
a solitary being, simply eliminates all the attributes by which he is
most distinctively characterized, and leaves an animal essentially
different from man as we know him, not only in mental faculties,
but even in bodily organization. Not to dwell on the curious hints
about primitive man's physical life, that are scattered throughout
the notes to the second Discourse, Rosseau is, of course, obliged
to wipe out from man's original nature all his social instincts. He
does indeed of necessity, recognize the sexual instinct ; and, in

' M. Saint-Marc Girardin gives point to his own critique, but is scarcely fair to
Rousseau, when he introduces this quotation not with the author's own words, " II
serait aftreux d'etre oblig6 de louer coinme un §tre bienfaisant," etc., but substitutes
for them " Eh bien ! quand vous ne pensereiz pas, oil serait le mal ? L' imb6cillit6
n'est pas un si grand malheur, et ce fut un Stre bienfaisant," etc. {^Rousseau: Sa
vie et ses ottvrages. Vol. I, p. 103).

■^

366

THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW. [Vol. VIII.

the Contrat aocial at least, he admits the family to be a society
formed by nature. But such concessions only bring out more
clearly the repulsively individualistic character of his theory of
human nature, for the only natural bond he can see in family
life is the dependence of child upon parent. With the cessation
of that dependence the bond between them is snapped.* The
family is thus a purely animal connection ; it implies nothing of
the distinctive nature of a human society. In like manner, Rous-
seau ignores, even explicitly denies, any spiritual element in the
natural attraction of the sexes for each other ; for him, it is simply
an animal instinct, not binding to any union beyond the moment
of gratification. Was not Nietzsche justified in describing Rous-
seau's return to nature as a restoration of man " in /wpuris natu-
ralibus"?

II. From this conception of man's natural state, it is a neces-
sary inference that the social state is wholly artificial. The origin
o^^ch an artificial condition becomes very difficult for Rous-
seau to explain. Hobbes, as we have seen, recognized three
"passions that incline men to peace," and therefore to social
union ; and such union, he maintained, is also suggested by the
natural dictates of reason. But Rousseau was apparently unable
to find any such basis for society in man's nature. He does in-
deed recognize two human instincts " anterior to reason." ^ One
of these is simply the instinct of self-conser\'ation ; but the other,,
namely, sympathy or pity, is essentially social. It is worth not-
ing, moreover, that Rousseau does not follow Hobbes in his
purely egoistic theory of natural feelings. In his view, pity is
not merely " grief for the calamity of another, arising from the
imagination that the like calamity may befall oneself" ' It is a
bit of genuine altruism in human nature. But none the less does
it fail to afford any ground for the formation of society. Accord-
ingly, he is driven to that a priori method, so common among
the social philosophers of last century — the method of ' spinning
out of their own consciousness ' the history of the origin of so-

' Control social, Liv. I, chap. 2.
'^ Preface to the second Discourse.
" Hobbes' s Leviathan, p. 47.

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ROUSSEAL.

1^7

ciety. Rousseau's writings contain typical illustrations of this
method. There is, in fact, something delicious in the ndivctc with
which, in the second Discourse, he sums up an hypothetical
sketch : " Tel fut ou diit ctrc I'origine de la societe."

It has often been pointed out that the Contrat social mitigates
to some extent the harshness of the two discourses, by tracing the
corruptions of natural innocence to the artificial influence of life
in society. But the later work makes no mitigation of the earlier
theory, which holds man to be by nature non-social. Indeed, this
theory is obtruded, perhaps more bluntly than ever before, in
some parts of the Contrat social. Take, for example, the chap-
ter on the function of legislators in the second book. There, it
is said, that " he, who ventures to undertake the establishment of
a nation, ought to feel himself in the condition of changing, so to
speak, human nature, of transforming each individual, who is by
himself a perfect and isolated whole, into a part of a larger whole,
from which the individual receives in some sort his life and be-
ing ;" and so on in the same line of thought.

With this view of human nature, Rousseau had no alternative
but to trace the foundation of society to an arbitrary convention.
In this conclusion, we may recognize specially the influence of
Hobbes. The idea of a pact or covenant, indeed, was, in the
seventeenth century, a prominent category of thought in the ex-
position of moral and religious obligations. The celebrated work
of Witsius, Dc Occonojuia Foedcrum Dei cum Hominibiis (1677),
not only went through numerous editions and translations, but
created a vast literature, representing a peculiar system of religious
ideas, which has come to be known by the name of Federal Theol-
ogy. This system seems to have found wide acceptance, especially
in the Calvinistic sections of the Protestant church ; ' and it is
not impossible that Rousseau in his youth may have been
familiar with its exposition by the Swiss preachers. But proba-
bly Hobbes was the most potent influence in giving this direction
to Rousseau's speculations. Yet it must be remembered that
there is an important difference between the two theories. For,

' May not the national covenants in England and Scotland have been due partly
to the familiarity of the Calvinistic mind with this system of thought ?

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as we have seen, Hobbes finds a basis for social union both in
the natural impulses of passion, and in the natural dictates of rea-
son. The social contract is, therefore, for him simply the formal
enactment of natural law — the enactment necessary to give that
law practical force. For Rousseau, on the other hand, society is
based on a pure convention, which involves a more or less vio-
lent transformation of man's original nature.

There is one point, however, in which Rousseau follows
Hobbes. For both, the social compact involves a complete surren-
der of the individual to society, and the tyranny of social rule is
none the less exacting on account of the democracy which Rous-
seau advocates. In fact, it is a tyranny all the more insidious
that it puts on a show of reasonable self-government. It is the
people as a whole who appear simply to constrain the people as
individuals. It is forgotten that the people as a whole are, in
almost every case, merely a majority — in many cases, merely a
majority of the actual voters, overriding not only the minority,
but a vaster majority, who either do not care to vote at all, or
are disqualified from voting by being women or minors.

III. The absolutism, thus claimed for the State, cannot but
appear in strange conflict with Rousseau's theory of education,
through which his influence has been, perhaps, more powerful and
more beneficial than through any other part of his teaching. The
corruption of human life, as we have seen, he traces to the artificial
restraint imposed on its natural freedom by social organization,
on the one hand, and by intellectual culture, on the other. His
theory of education therefore proceeds on the assumption that, if the
artificial fetters of society and of civilization are once broken, and
the original nature of man allowed free play, it will develop a life
of unsophisticated innocence. The logical issue of such an educa-
tional theory would be the abrogation of all restrictive govern-
ment of human life. Anarchism rather than despotism is the po-
litical doctrine it involves.

This contradiction points to some defect in the theory of edu-
cation, which leaves no ground for governmental control of
human life. The defect in educational theory arises from defects,
which have been already pointed out, in the theory of man's es-

No. 4.]

ROUSSEAU.

369

sential nature. This theory, it will be remembered, not only
degrades intelligence from the rank of ro jj^-s/ww/ov — the power
which by nature has the right to rule in man, but treats intelli-
gence as if it were an artificial and corrupting growth. As vo-
lition is properly intelligent action, will is thus eliminated from
man's original nature too. The only element left is, therefore,
sensibility, and even this is so narrowed as to exclude all those
affections which bind men instinctively to one another, and lead
them instinctively to seek their individual good by concerted ac-
tion. The ideal end of human life is, by such a theory, lowered
to that of the crudest hedonism. To dally with agreeable feel-
ing, to avoid everything that might mar such dalliance — that is
the Sovereign Good for Rousseau. It is not necessary here to
illustrate '\i\ detail the pedagogical methods proposed by Rous-
seau for the attainment of this ideal. The monograph of Mr.
Davidson gives an elaborate analysis of these, which will be
found extremely helpful for the student of educational theory.

There is one fact which may be noticed in this connection as
perhaps likely to brin • into clearer view the distinctive defect of
Rousseau's teaching. In referring to his influence on contempo-
rary and subsequent speculation, it is common to point to the ex-
traordinary fascination which he exercised over Kant.^ I call
this extraordinary, because it would be difficult to point to two
men who exhibit a more striking contrast in per3onal character, in
modes of thought, and in style of literary expression. I shall not
attempt to unriddle the mystery of this fascination. But it may be
be said that the movement inaugurated by Kant was in a certain
sense, like Rousseau's, a return to nature. To penetrate beyond
the adventitious accretions of human thought, the conventional
customs of human action ; to reach the original facts of human
nature out of which these have grown ; — that was the aim of Kant
as well as of Rousseau.

Eut it seems to me simply of infinite significance, that in
Kant's mind the vague endeavor to return to nature translated

' It seems to have been specially Rousseau's educational theory that interested
Kant. It was Entile, not, as Mr. Davidson (p. 224) supposes, La nouvelle HiloUe,
that induced Kant to give up his daily walk. See K. Fischer's Geschichte der neuerett
Philosophic, Vol. Ill, p. 220.

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itself into a critique of pure reason. It cannot be denied that, in
ethical theory at least, this led Kant into an extreme Stoicisni,
which hardly allowed fair play to the emotional nature of man ;
but in the interpretation of educational problems it implies a
radical difference from Rousseau. At the present day, moreover,
when science is applying somewhat loosely the lower conception
of organization and organic growth to explain the higher phe-
nomena of human life, it is well to be re^ .''nded that neither the
individual man nor the community of men is merely an organism,
and that, therefore, the true evolution of humanity is directed,
not by physical force or animal instinct, but by strenuous efforts
of free intelligence towards a higher realization of intelligence
and freedom.

J. Clark Murray.
McGiLL University.

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