The Development of Rousseau

THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY THE DEVELOPMENT OF ROUSSEAU· G. S. BRETT The second half of the eighteenth century seems to have possessed a demonic power which was capable in its own day of tremendous activity and still has unexhausted reserves. The peace of the Augustan Age and the precision of the classical traditions appear in re'trospect mo'st like the sultry hours and filtered sunlight which foretell a storm. The year 1776 seems to mark a notable crisis in the politics and culture of Europe, as though the last memories of the Middle Ages had died out and the old traditions had finally relaxed their grip. In America new forms of political life were emerging; in France the seeds of revolution were maturing. The disintegrating force of ideas radiated from the works of Voltaire and Hume, destroying the vitality of sanctified beliefs in religion and in politics, while the constructive work of the economists built new foundations for the industrial systems which were destined to supersede the old forms of society. If the crisis of the Revolution was stil1 hardly foreseen, the preliminary stages of doubt and inquiry were in full action and needed only adequate expression to make their results inevitable. The perplexing contradictions of Rousseau's life and writings are made to some extent intelligible by this mental environment) though to the last they will remain largely unintelligible. In spite of being neither practical in action nor consistent in thought) Rousseau still persists as the most audible and significant voice of his age, still arresting our attention and compe1ling us to take sides in the ceaseless 'strife of human ideals. The outward and visible proof of this fact; is the amount of literature which has collected around Rousseau. Most recently the focus of interest has been in the supposed influence of.Rousseau on the standards of writers more con, ce;rned with self-expression than self-criticism; with the rather gratuitous suggesti6n that this was the essential message of Rousseau's work. In the less recent period preceding the crusade of Irvlng Babbitt) interest was evenly divided between " the ideals of education and the theory of political obligation as the chief contributions ofRousseau to modern thought. Whether the writers were inclined to praise or to blame, disproportionate emphasis was usually "Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Moralist, by Charles William Hendel Macdonald, Professor of Moral Philosophy, McGill University, 2 vols., Oxford University Press. 270 REVIEWs laid on the biographical 'details which Rousseau had supplied. Though the Confessions ate important as a contribution to our understanding of Rousseau and a~ a type of that personal psy'cho]ogy which was the core of the novel, the diary and democratic individualism , they have cast their shadow too far and too often' over achievements whic:h deserved to be examined in a dearer and purer light. The scope of Professor Hendel's work is from the beginning sharply defined: he deals with Rousseau 'the moralist. With the deceptive skill of the magician he brings on the scene the mature figure of Rousseau transformed by his own experience: HLate in the manhood of Rousseau the moralist was born." In this first sentence the hero of the story glides forward upon the stage and henceforth continues to glide with the same fascinating evenness of motion from one position to another. The drama is long and intri~ cate but the inner connection of the parts never fails) and if the reader, through weakness of the flesh, attempts to skip from one part to another, he will find his effort baffled by the close texture of the narrative. This characteristic of the two volumes deserves emphasis. It is not merely an artifice and praiseworthy as a successful technique; it is far more the natural effect of a complete assimilation of the material. ' The 'author moves with his subject and gathers impetus as he goes. As a consequence he has presented convincingly the movement of Rousseau from one stage of thought to another. As Rousseau himself gathered up in his later work the thoughts and spiritual experiences which had clarified themselves in previous efforts, so also the author by careful elaboration of each contributory work is able...