The New Lifetime Reading Plan

whole character offends any reasonable mind. Socially awk- ward; sexually ill-balanced; immoral; nauseatingly sentimental; mean and quarrelsome; a liar; the victim of a large number of unpleasant ills, from persecution delusions to bladder trouble; a defender of the rights of little children who states calmly that he abandoned his five illegitimate offspring to a foundling institution: that is Rousseau, or part of him. It is simply exas- perating that this absurd fellow, who died half-cracked, should also have been one of the most powerful forces of his time, the virtual ancestor of the romantic movement in literature and art, and one of the major intellectual sources of the French Revolution. Even more annoying is the fact that this vagabond- valet-music teacher, whose formal education ended at about the age of twelve, should be a writer of such persuasion that, though his arguments have been refuted by many, his rhetoric still bewitches. The whole Rousseau case is highly irregular.

We have encountered the title Confessions once before, with Saint Augustine [22]. In one respect the two men are alike. Both had and recorded a decisive spiritual experience that changed the course of history. Saint Augustine's occurred in a garden, Rousseau's on the road to Vincennes, outside Paris. He was reading a paper as he walked along, on his way to visit the famous philosopher Diderot. He noticed an announcement. The Dijon Academy was offering a prize for the best essay on the subject "Has the progress of the arts and sciences contributed to the purification or the corruption of morais?"

"Ali at once," says Rousseau, "I felt myself dazzled by a thousand sparkling lights; crowds of vivid ideas thronged into my head with a force and confusion that threw me into unspeakable agitation; I felt my head whirling in a giddiness like that of intoxication." Out of this trance or vision or fit came his first work, the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences. It won the prize, it gained him European fame, and it led to his estab- lishment as the most revolutionary writer of his time. In it and succeeding works he attacked progress as a corrupter of man's

natural goodness. He assailed private property. He inveighed against the evil influence of educational discipline on a child's mind. He pointed out the constricting power of organized reli- gion. In his crucial Social Contract he cried out against those political institutions so contrived that "man is born free and everywhere he is in chains."

It is easy to say that Rousseau was a misfit, that his champi- onship of nature and of man's innate goodness sprang from his inability to adjust to the demands of organized society. That may be true. But what he said—it was not new, merely never before so irresistibly expressed—was what his century wanted to hear. This eccentric prophet, this wild "man without a skin," as Hume [54] called him, came at exactly the right time. And his power persists. Some of it, particularly in the field of edu- cation, has worked constructively. For Rousseau, unlike Voltaire [53], was a positive man; he meant his ideas to form the future.

Confessions is his masterpiece. One of its opening state- ments arrests attention at once, and has never ceased to do so: "I am commencing an undertaking, hitherto without prece- dent, and which will never find an imitator. I desire to set before my fellows the likeness of a man in ali the truth of nature, and that man myself. . . If I am not better, at least I am different."

Rousseau lies, exaggerates, and often misunderstands him- self. Yet, except for one thing, he makes good his boast. He was wrong in saying that his book would never find an imitator. It has found thousands. The whole literature of modern auto- biography, when designedly confessional, stems from this one book. Renowned writings like those of Chateaubriand and Amiel stem from it; dubious self-revelations like those of Frank Harris stem from it; confessional magazines stem from it. But, in its eye-opening candor on the one hand and its remarkable free-flowing and often lyrical style on the other, it has never been equaled.

Rousseau is easy to read. You need no one's guidance to help you make up your mind about him. However, just to con- fuse you a little, here are two judgments. The first is Romain Rolland^: "He opened into literature the riches of the subcon- scious, the secret movements of being, hitherto ignored and repressed." The second judgment is by Samuel Johnson [59]. To BoswelPs question whether he considered Rousseau as bad a man as Voltaire, Johnson replied: "Why, Sir, it is difficult to settle the proportion of iniquity between them.^,>

C.F.

58

LAURENCE STERNE

1713-1768 Tristram Shandij