and of the illimitable sovereignty thence resulting, is borrowed from Hobbes, though for the English thinker the despot is the Prince, for Rousseau The People. The notion of the omnipotence of the State, it should be remembered, was a commonplace of Renaissance Cæsarism, and had been nowhere more uncompromisingly taught than in France; the ancien régime in this, as in so many other particulars, providing, in M. de Tocqueville's phrase, "the education of the Revolution." Louis XIV. believed himself absolute master of the consciences, the property, and the liberty of his people, because he was persuaded, as he himself said, that "la nation ne faisait pas corps en France, et qu'elle résidait tout entière dans la personne du prince." Again, the all-sufficiency of the individual reason was a tenet of the Cartesian philosophy, which directly, and still more through the influence of Locke, had widely and deeply penetrated the French mind. To a like source must be referred the doctrine of man's natural goodness and perfectibility. Rousseau himself attributes it to a sort of inspiration. He was walking, he tells us, on the road from Paris to Vincennes, on a visit to Diderot, when he came upon an announcement, in a newspaper, that the academy at Dijon had offered a prize for an essay on the theme, "What is the origin of inequality among men, and is it authorised by natural law?" "If anything ever resembled a sudden inspiration," he continues, "it was the

movement which began in me as I read this. All at once I felt myself dazzled by a thousand sparkling lights, crowds of vivid ideas thronged into my mind with a force and confusion that threw me into unspeakable agitation. I felt my head whirling in a giddiness like that of intoxication. A violent palpitation oppressed me; unable to walk for difficulty of breathing, I sank under one of the trees of the avenue, and passed half an hour there in such a condition of excitement that, when I arose, I saw the front of my waistcoat was all wet with my tears, though I was unconscious of shedding them. Ah, if I could only have written the quarter of what I saw and felt under that tree, with what clearness should I have brought out all the contradictions of our social system, with what simplicity should I have demonstrated that man is naturally good, and that by institutions only is he made bad." Mr. John Morley appears to receive in undoubting faith the account of the revelation thus made to the sage, whom he venerates as his "spiritual father."* "This ecstatic vision of Rousseau's," he writes,

was the opening of a life of thought and production which only lasted a dozen years, but which in that brief space gave to man a new gospel."† In truth, Rousseau's optimist view of human nature was in the air of the century. Never, perhaps, has the moral level of society been lower than it was

among the cultivated classes of France in the eighty years which preceded the Revolution. And never was the Aristotelian dictum, concerning the ease with which vicious men can repeat fine phrases about virtue, more signally exemplified. The tendency everywhere was to bestow fair names on foul things; to make "agreeable feeling" the standard of duty and the end of life; to enthrone selfishness, masked as reason, in the place of conscience. It must be remembered that the Cartesian philosophy dominated men's minds. And in that philosophy ethics can hardly be said to have place; "l'indifférence morale," it has been observed, "est le principe de sa morale même." Even accredited exponents of Christianity had greatly toned down the strictness of its precepts. On two occasions Bossuet obtained from the Assembly of the French Clergy the condemnation of those casuists whom he accused "de porter les coussins sous les coudes des pécheurs." In the severe teaching which found its greatest exponent in Pascal, we seem to catch an echo of the preaching of evangelists like St. Vincent Ferrer to a frivolous and lubricious people. The response was the destruction of Port Royal, with circumstances of scandalous barbarity and revolting profanation. Rousseau's opinions did but formulate, and justify, this "morale relâchée" which abounded on all sides. "It is difficult to be good," says the adage of Hellenic wisdom. "Not at all," replies Rousseau,

III.] THE OPTIMIST VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE. 81

"it is quite easy. Only follow nature, and you will be virtuous. Look at me, for example; read my Confessions: I challenge the universe to produce a man who can sincerely say 'Je fus meilleur que cet homme-là.'" "Nothing is more significant in the history of the eighteenth century than the way in which this filthy dreamer was glorified as an ethical teacher. Voltaire, indeed, "rich in saving common-sense," in whatever else deficient, declined to bow the knee before "ce polisson de Jean-Jacques," who, as he judged, bore the same sort of resemblance to a philosopher that apes bear to men. * But it was destined that Voltaire should decrease, and that Rousseau should increase. In 1789 his "new gospel" reigned paramount in the general mind of France. "To make the constitution," meant, for the Revolutionary legislators, to translate his doctrine into institutions.

It is disheartening in an age boasting of enlightenment to have to expose the untenableness of this doctrine. The fewest possible words must suffice to exhibit the fundamental errors which vitiate it. And, first, surely if anything is flatly contrary to the most manifest facts, it is Rousseau's optimist view of human nature, which is still the substratum

"Il ne ressemble aux philosophes que comme les singes ressemblent aux hommes." The words occur in a letter of Voltaire's to the Comte d'Argental, written in 1766.

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of Jacobinism as it now exists. Man naturally good! Yes if Rousseau is a type of goodness: if "that moral dwarf mounted upon stilts," as Madame d'Épinay called him, was warranted in challenging the human race to produce a man who could rightly claim to surpass him in moral excellence. Far other is the testimony of the best and wisest of mankind, from the bitter cry of Job, "Behold I am vile; I abhor myself," to the judicial utterance of Kant, "The moral law inevitably humiliates any man who compares it with the sensual tendencies of his own nature." And what shall we say of the tenet of the sufficiency of the individual reason? Let the first of French historians answer the question: "Qu'est-ce que l'homme une fois connu ? Est-ce en lui que le sublime abonde? La vérité est qu'il emploie le meilleur de son temps à dormir, à diner, à bâiller, à travailler comme un cheval et à s'amuser comme un singe. C'est un animal: sauf quelques minutes irrégulières, ses nerfs, son sang, ses instincts le mènent. La routine va s'appliquer par-dessus, la nécessité fouette et la bête avance." Who can deny the vast amount of truth in this indictment of M. Taine's, unpalatable as it is? That every man of sound intellect is, in some degree, capable of ratiocination, is certain. No less certain is it that the vast majority of men, in the vast majority of their actions, are not swayed by reason. As little truth is there in the doctrine of the absolute equality of