Beacon Lights of History, Volume 13 | Page 5

Ambassador to Venice.
In this city Rousseau remained but a short time, being disgusted with
what he called "official insolence," which did not properly recognize
native genius. He returned to Paris as poor as when he left it, and lived
in a cheap restaurant. There he made the acquaintance of his Thérèse, a
healthy, amiable woman, but low, illiterate, unappreciative, and coarse,
the author of many of his subsequent miseries. She lived with him till
he died,--at first as his mistress and housekeeper, although later in life
he married her. She was the mother of his five children, every one of
whom he sent to a foundling hospital, justifying his inhumanity by
those sophistries and paradoxes with which his writings abound,--even
in one of his letters appealing for pity because he "had never known the
sweetness of a father's embrace." With extraordinary self-conceit, too,
he looked upon himself, all the while, in his numerous illicit loves, as a
paragon of virtue, being apparently without any moral sense or
perception of moral distinctions.
It was not till Rousseau was thirty-nine years of age that he attracted
public attention by his writings, although earlier known in literary
circles,--especially in that infidel Parisian coterie, where Diderot,
Grimm, D'Holbach, D'Alembert, David Hume, the Marquis de
Mirabeau, Helvetius, and other wits shined, in which circle no genius
was acknowledged and no profundity of thought was deemed possible
unless allied with those pagan ideas which Saint Augustine had
exploded and Pascal had ridiculed. Even while living among these
people, Rousseau had all the while a kind of sentimental religiosity
which revolted at their ribald scoffing, although he never protested.
He had written some fugitive pieces of music, and had attempted and

failed in several slight operettas, composing both music and words; but
the work which made Rousseau famous was his essay on a subject
propounded in 1749 by the Academy of Dijon: "Has the Progress of
Science and the Arts Contributed to Corrupt or to Purify Morals?" This
was a strange subject for a literary institution to propound, but one
which exactly fitted the genius of Rousseau. The boldness of his
paradox--for he maintained the evil effects of science and art--and the
brilliancy of his style secured readers, although the essay was crude in
argument and false in logic. In his "Confessions" he himself condemns
it as the weakest of all his works, although "full of force and fire;" and
he adds: "With whatever talent a man may be born, the art of writing is
not easily learned." It has been said that Rousseau got the idea of taking
the "off side" of this question from his literary friend Diderot, and that
his unexpected success with it was the secret of his life-long career of
opposition to all established institutions. This is interesting, but not
very authentic.
The next year, his irregular activity having been again stimulated by
learning that his essay had gained the premium at Dijon, and by the fact
of its great vogue as a published pamphlet, another performance fairly
raised Rousseau to the pinnacle of fashion; and this was an opera which
he composed, "Le Devin du Village" (The Village Sorcerer), which
was performed at Fontainebleau before the Court, and received with
unexampled enthusiasm. His profession, so far as he had any, was that
of a copyist of music, and his musical taste and facile talents had at last
brought him an uncritical recognition.
But Rousseau soon abandoned music for literature. In 1753 he wrote
another essay for the Academy of Dijon, on the "Origin of the
Inequality of Man," full of still more startling paradoxes than his first,
in which he attempted to show, with great felicity of language, the
superiority of savage life over civilization.
At the age of forty-two Rousseau revisited Protestant Geneva, abjured
in its turn the Catholic faith, and was offered the post of librarian of the
city. But he could not live out of the atmosphere of Paris; nor did he
wish to remain under the shadow of Voltaire, living in his villa near the

City Gate of Geneva, who had but little admiration for Rousseau, and
whose superior social position excited the latter's envy. Yet he
professed to hate Paris with its conventionalities and fashions, and
sought a quiet retreat where he could more leisurely pursue his studies
and enjoy Nature, which he really loved. This was provided for him by
an enthusiastic friend,--Madame d'Épinay,--in the beautiful valley of
Montmorenci, and called "The Hermitage," situated in the grounds of
her Château de la Chevrette. Here he lived with his wife and
mother-in-law, he himself enjoying the hospitalities of the Château
besides,--society of a most cultivated kind, also woods, lawns, parks,
gardens,--all for nothing; the luxuries of civilization, the glories of
Nature, and the delights of friendship combined.