On the Conversion of Rousseau

Abstract

and the concrete, a failure, as Aristotle would say, to supply the minor premise of the syllogism. Again and again in reading his words of sound wisdom and noble feeling, our judgment falters, and only a fresh appeal to the facts can protect against the charm of his written word. Whether in view of these facts one can justly speak of Rousseau's having acquired a sense or developed a character, is a question. That there was no overturn or conversion, we have seen. That principles ever became the determining motives of his actual life, has also appeared more than doubtful. To the end of his days he was a man driven before his feelings, for whom escape came only with death. And yet, while there was no new creation, there was growth. The conscience of his old age, weak though it may have been in its control of conduct, and indebted as it was in its principles to his inheritance from Geneva, spoke with a strength and authority unknown to his youth. The point of view, known and admired before, became, under the stress of life and reflection, his habitual standpoint. He became that moral tarantula to whose bite he was himself largely immune, but whose sting was a notable stimulus for his generation. In character, too, there was change. Not, it is true, a putting off of the old man and his deeds, but a growth in seriousness and steadiness of purpose. How far this was due to age and disease, how far to fascination with his own preaching, how far to the hard discipline of life and his own reflection, one cannot say, yet true it is that in spite of all the obvious meannesses of his personal life, of his cowardice and fear of ridicule, of his principles he was never ashamed and from his preaching he was never deterred. Slow in coming to expression as his dreams were, sentimental as was the form which they took, slight as was their hold on his personal life, his faith and enthusiasm for them grew only stronger with his advancing years. Recognizing to the full the gap between the world of his This content downloaded from 157.55.39.235 on Fri, 07 Oct 2016 05:59:49 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms ON THE CONVERSION OF ROUSSEAU. 71 imagination and his life, we still must admit development even though it be only in his character of a hero of romance. A hero of romance he had been in his youth, a hero of romance he remained to the end, with wider outlook and more chastened spirit, yet first and always the prophet of romantic individualism and the rights of the heart. NORMAN WILDE. THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.235 on Fri, 07 Oct 2016 05:59:49 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms