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in entire subordination to the eomniiinity. The citizen is accordingly altogether dependent on tlie community. He ought therefore to accept the religion appointed by the state or sutfer banishment, or, in case of resistance, death. As Rousseau recognises no representation of the people, nor yet any form of government that may not at any moment be overturned by the community of citizens, he really passes beyond every limit of a radicalism which yet admits the legal relation of au- thority and subject, and of political and religious con- ditions, and draws the tirst lineaments of socialism. Yet he was too much a dreamer to suspect the conse- quences that must spring from such ideas. In 1766 he declared to a pseudonymous Cassius who offered to reduce to practice these principles in the liberation of the people, that he abominated every such undertak- ing; and when disorders broke out on the occasion of the burning of his Einile at Geneva, he pacified the people himself.
or Rousseau's minor works, the Letire a M.d'Alem- hert sur les Spectacles is a determined protest against the establishing of a theatre at Geneva; the celebrated Lettre a Christopher de Beaumont was a response to a prohibition of the Emile hy the archljishop of Paris, and the Lettres de la Montayne form a similar rejoinder to the magistracy of Geneva. These letters have been compared with those of Junius, or of Lessing against Gotze.
The troubles of Rousseau began to germinate at the time of his highest prosperity. His ardent and sensi- tive nature was out of place in the circle of cold and cynical mockers by whom he was surrounded, and the frankness with which he uncovered his inmost experi- ences to their gaze made him an object of their merci- less witticisms and sarcasms; and when he proceeded to assail their cherished idols and to contend for God, vir- tue, and immortality, he brought on himself the full weight of their hatred in the form of incessant mali- cious sneers. Other matters contributed to fully dis- gust him with the situation. He burned with illicit love for jNIadame d'Houdelot, whose relations to her husband were not happy, but who adored the poet Lambert instead of Rousseau. He broke decidedly with Diderot. He participated in false gossip deroga- tory to Madame d'fipinay, who had been his patroness and had permitted him to occupy her summer-house in the forest of Montmorency since 17.o6. He lived from 1758 to 1762 in another house near Montmorency, and in the latter year encountered the storm which broke out against his Emile. This event forms the proper opening of a new period.
3. The Period of Unsettled Wanderincf and Morbid Fears. — It is remarkable that a government which tol- erated an entire school of atheistical mockers of religion in Paris should have condemned as godless the earnest deist who was alone in daring to contend for God in those circles; and equally strange that the decree of the Parisian Parliament should have condemned the Emile, instead of the far more dangerous Contrat Social. Perhaps the government which had just expelled the Jesuits may have found it convenient to persecute Rousseau, the Swiss, who had gone back to Calvinism, and who had dared to represent a Romish priest as af- fording a charming illustration of deism. To avoid ar- rest, he tied to Yverdun, in Switzerland ; but the Genevan senate had likewise condemned him before a copy of his book had reached tliatcity. He renounced his citi- zenship and turned aside to the canton Neufchatel, where he lived from 17()2 to 176d under the protection of Frederick the ( ireat of I'russia. He wrote the Lettres de la Montague, ]iursued studies in legislation in belialf of the Corsicans, and botanized— botany and music con- stituting his favorite employments. The gossiping tongue of his mistress, 'I'heresa, succeeded, however, in rendering him suspected of irreligion by the pastor and peasants of Motiers-Travers, where he resided. He im- agined himself no longer safe, and tletl the canton. In
1765 be accepted an invitation from Hume to visit England, but even here his mania of suspicion con- trolled him. He included Hume in the number of his foes, and removed to the house of a new friend, Daven- port, whence the objection of individual Englishmen to his relation with Theresa drove him back to France in 1767. He went under the assumed name of Renon to Castle Trye, a possession of prince Conti, and, after fur- ther travels, back to Paris in 1770. Seven or eight years more of life remained to him, which he passed in the Rue Platriere (now known by his name), tormented by melancholy fancies, oppressed by poverty, alienated from Theresa, and gradually failing in health. He sustained himself by copying notes, and finished his Confessions, which he had begun at Metiers. He died suddenl}' at Ermenonville, near Paris, July 2, 1778 — whether of disease or of poison administered by himself is not known. He was received into the Pantheon Oct. 11, 1794.
The European and even world-wide reputation which Rousseau had achieved is illustrated by the fact that he was induced in the last period of his life to compose the Lettres sur Legislation des Coises and the Considh-ations sur le Gourernement de Pologne (1772) ; and his mental force is apparent in the ability to write his Confessions at a time when his soul was darkened with the clouds of morbid and imaginary fears. His native frankness is very evident in that book, but faults and errors are so interwoven with virtues and attractive features that the result of the whole is a glorification of himself. The book may be regarded both as a comi>anion-pieture and a contrast to the Confessions of Augustine. Such con- tradictions are characteristic of the man in every rela- tion. He was immeasurably vain, selfish, changeful, and ungratefid — easily provoked, always suspicious, and morbidly misanthropic. As a reformer, his merit con- sists in having opposed to the godless humanism of his da}' the crying needs of the human heart; but he iden- tified the empirical sinful heart with the ideal heart, in- dividual participation in nature with personal conform- ity to nature, the beautiful soul with the moral spirit, the utilitarian with the practical, declamation with con- fession, and he therefore remained involved in contra- dictions to the end. In contrast with Calvin, he brought out the ideas of individual rights and of the personal dignity of man — elements of Christian truth often vio- lated by Calvin ; but he nevertheless gave his ideal state power over the religious worship and profession of its subjects. Compared with Voltaire, the sardonic mocker of all existing things, Rousseau commands re- spect by the frankness and manliness of his protests, even when they are directed against holy things. He was incapable of comprehending the syntheses nature and culture, liberty and authority, iniliviiluality and society, reason and revelation, the human and the di- vine. In its pedagogical aspects, his work compares with that of Pestalozzi as does the dawn with the noon- day sun. In politics he points forward to both Jlira- beau and Saint-Simon ; and in philosophy, as a preacher of deism, he may be compared with Kant. F\)r both good and evil, Rousseau was a mighty exponent of the siiirit of his time, and deserves, in justice, to be studied from both points of view.