2. The Period of hu Triumphs (1749-62). — The Academy of Dijon in 1749 offered a prize for the best essay on the question, "Whether the re-establishment of the sciences and arts has helped to purify manners V" for which Rousseau competed with success. He as- sumed that nature must ennoble mind, instead of mind being needed to redeem and improve nature, and argued the pessimist view with such force and brilliancy of style that he was at once assigned a place as a writer of prose by the side of Voltaire. The book was thor- oughly adapted to the times, when hearts throbbed with intense yearning for deliverance from the unnatural conditions that prevailed in culture and in practical life, and when longings had been stimulated by the appearance of books like Robinson Crusoe, Thomson's Seasons, etc., in which the bliss of a state of nature was celebrated. The gospel of nature was in vogue, and Rousseau became its leading prophet. Yet it was at this time that he chose to add one more to the many paradoxes of his life, by availing himself of the celeb- rity he had attained to secure employment in cop3'ing music as a means of livelihood. In 1752 he published the opera, Le Devin du Villiiye, by which his musical reputation became established; and in 1753 he dis- cussed a second prize question presented by the Acad- emy of Dijon, and relating to the inequalities existing in the conditions of mankind. His book, the Discours sur VOriyine et les Fondemens de VlueyuUte panni les Homines, takes the ground that human society, consid- ered in the abstract, is exclusively natural, and cannot therefore sustain a relation independent of nature, i. e. so as to divide nature and appropriate it to individuals. Rousseau does nut place all men on the same level, as if thej' were merely so many animals. He admits the existence of physical, mental, and spiritual diflferences. But he declares that the first man to fence off a piece
of land and claim that it belonged to him, and find peo- ple to concede his claim, was the founder of society. He evidently regards property as an egotistical robbery of the community of men, and has no conception of property as both required and conditioned by morality. This book also was in harmony with the spirit of the time, though its effect was not fully displayed until a later day; and Rousseau himself was so fully in sym- pathy with its teachings that he felt driven to forsake the gilded and varnished glory of Paris for a season of communion with nature in his native town, though the growing coolness between himself and his friends — to which his letters on French music contributed largely — was not without iuHuence in bringing him to that determination. He recovered liis forfeited citizenship at Geneva by returning to the Reformed faith, and de- lighted to call himself " Citoyen de Geneve." He found, however, that he could not remain away from Paris, especially after his adversary Voltaire had estab- lished himself at Fernej' ; and his return was signalized in 1760 by the publication of the romance La Nouvelle Helo'ise, in which the ideas of his two previous works are combined, and in which great brilliancies of style conceal grave faidts of composition. It was also sig- nificant because of moral, social, and religious reflections in its pages, which foreshadowed Rousseau's later posi- tions.
The tivo constructive works from Rousseau's pen, Le Contrnt Social and Emile, appeared in close succes- sion in 1762. Tlie latter book was directed against abuses in the training of the young, and effected a com- plete revolution in European pedagogics; but while it antagonized many real errors, it at the same time as- sailed the fundamental conditions upon which all youth- ful training must rest. Nature again is the key-note to which the argument is attuned. Each child, so runs the demand, should develop its own nature from the beginning, without being placed under adult hu- man guidance — that nature being its individualistic qualities. The object is to train the man, who exists for himself, and is contrasted with the training of the citizen, who exists for society, though the contrary ob- ject is enforced in the Contrnt Social. This egoistic nature is represented as an ideal nature which needs only development, but not redemption and regenera- tion. Emile finds his religious perfection in deism, not in Christianity. In the Profession de Foi du Vicaire Savoyard, Rousseau nevertheless assails the material- ism and atheism of his former friends, and insists on the three fundamental theistic truths— God, liberty, and immortality. He contends against revelation, but yet utters sentiments of reverence for the Gospel on ac- count of its exalted character, and declares that " if Socrates died like a philosopher, Christ died like a God."
The effects produced by the Contrat Social in the political world were less rapid, but more profound, than that occasioned by the Emile in pedagogics. Tlie ideas which ripened into the French Revolution were sown in the days of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew and during the reign of Louis XIV; but they found in Rousseau's book a spark which kindled them into a flame, ultimating in that furious blaze. The Contrat Social determined the scope of ideas at the beginning of the Revolution, conducted affairs to more far-reach- ing consetiuences, and furnished the watchwords — above ali, the crv— of " Liberty and equality." The book has no conception of the historical and rightful relation of the individual citizen to national and political author- ity, and of the supreme law of riglit above even such authority. The citizen is taught in it, not to take his place as a person under the divinely instituted order of things in this world, but to cultivate the idea that the state rests simply on an original agreement between in- dividuals, according to which the community stands pledged to protect the person and property of the indi- vidual, while the individual has bound himself to live