EMkMiBH
THE HESPERIAN.
It
they seek some secluded nook in which tl.ey can
hold communion with Nature, trace out the Great
Bear and the Little Dipper and while away the honors
as only fiats can. Then toward morning they seek
their downy couch and lov'.ngly entwined in each
others arms, dream sweet dreAms of earthlv bliss.
Ah, this love that frat bears for his brother is ctherial
and far beyond the power of the uninitiated to com
prehend. Yet the question naturally arises, are such
manifestations sincere, or arc they hypocritical?
Belter by fai is it for a person to be free to choose
his own associates and friends than to be forced to
play the part of a hypocrite as often as he meets one,
whem he personally despises, but, who chances to
wear the same kind of bright colored ribbons. Fra
ternal love may become exceedingly "spoony" but
yet we sometimes think that it is entirely affected.
LITERARY.
In an age in which the ancient splendor of Rome had been
forgotten, when Christianity had been corrupted by contact
with pagan superstition, and points of doctrine were being
decided by physical force, Mahomet was impelled to publish
to tli world his creed. By the magic of his genius, backed
by pretended divine revelation, he united the scattered tribes
of Arabia, which never before in their history had known a
master, and sent them forth to the conquest in eighty years of
an empire as extensive as Rome had conquered in eight huiv
drcd!
The life and character of J. J. Rousseau arc in many re
spects like Mahomcts. The latter, it is safe to affirm, had the
greater genius. Hut apart from this they were similarly con
stituted, morally and intellectually. Each was devout; each
was dissolute; the one retired to a cave to commune with the
God above, the other abandoned the gay crowds of Pans and
Versailles for a hermitage by wood and stream, in order the
better to commune with nature, which he had chosen for his
divinity. The meditations of the one resulted in giving him
the fancy that he was inspired, and the Koran was promul
gated; the other's devout contemplation convinced him that
he had a message for the world, and the Social Contract, the
gospel of the French revolutionists, was written. From the
'most discordant material the Koran welded together an army
which, in a hundred years from Mahomet's death, contested
with Christianity on the plains of Tours the supremacy in Eu
rope. The Social Contract aroused to action a people whom
despots had ruled for centuries; and in thirty-one years from
its publication, n king, the descendant of Louis XIV, was on
the scaffold, with sansculotism triumphant.
Were it not for the influence which he exerted on the des
tiny of the French nation and through the French on other
nations, Rousseau's life would be worthy of little considera
tion, But his influence on the discontented masses was so
iircctly the result of the moral and intclcctual constitution of
the man, that the study of his life becomes n study in the prin
ciples of government. A moral wreck, with his motional in
stincts uncurbed, credulity and gratuitous assumption sup
planting reason in his intellectual labor, he was the last man
to educate a people aright in government. But the secret ot
his influence luy in the fact that, with an eloquence born of
earnest conviction, he held out to the oppressed the prospect,
of entering at once into a state of happiness which they in
their sorrow had despaired of ever icachiiig.
The golden age Rousseau described did not lie in the fu
ture; it was to be found by ''looking nackward," not one cen
tury but an indefinite number, to that guileless age when civ
ilization had not yet come with its corrupting infleueuces; the
age when classes were unknown, because cocicty was not yet
formed. By some marvelous intuition, for lie scorned docu
mentary evidence he was enabled to read the past. With
fulness of detail he described primativc man in all the phrases
of his narrow life, and contrasted in glowing colors the happi
ness of the savage and the misery of t!ic depressed in civ
ilized communities. "Let us regain at any cost the happy
state from which mankind has laspcdl" such was his urgent
entreaty, the essence of his doctrine. A third of a century
went by, and the Revolution after having gotton rid of its op
poncnts was, to copy the phrase of one of its victims, "de
vouring its own childrenl"
Thus this theory ot a former golden age, which under its
various forms in successive cpoclw had gratified the Greek in
tellect, had served to mitigate the vigor of the primitive Roman
law, and had furnished Locke with a speculative justification
of a revolution already consummated, became with Rousseau
and the French of the last century a weapon of destruction,
bringing the nation to dissolution in pursuit of a phantom.
Now, since it is known that the doctrine of Rouscau influenced
to some degree the American Colonists in their wise and suc
cessful efforts for freedom, it is just to conclude that the
French people are inherently le&a capable than others, of
self-government? This inference may be in part warranted.
But it is far more probable that the excesses of the French re
volution, the anarchy it produced, were in the main the result
of political ignorance produced by centuries of galling despot
ism. Aud just as the French people were inexperienced, were
incapable of self-rule, at least till after many unsuccessful at
tempts had been made, so Rousseau, from the resources of
his imagination, supplimcnted by u few facts gleaned from
the history of the diminutive republics of auiquity, was unable,
as the result showed, to elaborate a scheme of government
that should produce the best attainable results in the broad
domain of France.
Historically his doctrine is wholly without foundation.
Whence came his theory of a state of nature, of a golden age?
He learned it from Locke and Hobbs; they from the Romans,
the Romans from the Greeks; the Greeks from their inner
consciousness. Furthermore, the experience of all the primi
tive peoples of ancient times, and of his own age for that mat
ter, would have shown Rousseau that the savage state is not
to be preferred to the civilized. This fact is obvious to the
present generation. But it was the desire to experience the
hypothetical state of nature that led Jacobins a century ago to
decimate France.
Happily for mankind, however, the icign of closet phi
losophy is drawing to a close. Ridicule vould now be
heaped on the man who, like the Abbe Sieycs, should de
clare: "Politics politics is a science I have mastered;" and
he who should rcmaik with the maniac, Marat, "There is no
conceivable union of political forces which I have not
thought out and thoroughly comprehended," would be re
garded as an insufferable egotist. But to Rosseau and his
disciples it seemed a matter of course that, they from the
depths of their closets should be capable of legislating wisely
for the whole world. Their confidence was such that they
wished to sacrifice the gain of centuries of civilized existence
in order to attain their ideal. What a commentary on the
E9!Eul
HUD
