The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV | Page 9

the general
policy of your tumultuous despotism, which, in my opinion, indicate,
beyond a doubt, that no revolution whatsoever in their disposition is to

be expected: I mean their scheme of educating the rising generation, the
principles which they intend to instil and the sympathies which they
wish to form in the mind at the season in which it is the most
susceptible. Instead of forming their young minds to that docility, to
that modesty, which are the grace and charm of youth, to an admiration
of famous examples, and to an averseness to anything which
approaches to pride, petulance, and self-conceit, (distempers to which
that time of life is of itself sufficiently liable,) they artificially foment
these evil dispositions, and even form them into springs of action.
Nothing ought to be more weighed than the nature of books
recommended by public authority. So recommended, they soon form
the character of the age. Uncertain indeed is the efficacy, limited indeed
is the extent, of a virtuous institution. But if education takes in vice as
any part of its system, there is no doubt but that it will operate with
abundant energy, and to an extent indefinite. The magistrate, who in
favor of freedom thinks himself obliged to suffer all sorts of
publications, is under a stricter duty than any other well to consider
what sort of writers he shall authorize, and shall recommend by the
strongest of all sanctions, that is, by public honors and rewards. He
ought to be cautious how he recommends authors of mixed or
ambiguous morality. He ought to be fearful of putting into the hands of
youth writers indulgent to the peculiarities of their own complexion,
lest they should teach the humors of the professor, rather than the
principles of the science. He ought, above all, to be cautious in
recommending any writer who has carried marks of a deranged
understanding: for where there is no sound reason, there can be no real
virtue; and madness is ever vicious and malignant.
The Assembly proceeds on maxims the very reverse of these. The
Assembly recommends to its youth a study of the bold experimenters in
morality. Everybody knows that there is a great dispute amongst their
leaders, which of them is the best resemblance of Rousseau. In truth,
they all resemble him. His blood they transfuse into their minds and
into their manners. Him they study; him they meditate; him they turn
over in all the time they can spare from the laborious mischief of the
day or the debauches of the night. Rousseau is their canon of holy writ;
in his life he is their canon of Polycletus; he is their standard figure of
perfection. To this man and this writer, as a pattern to authors and to

Frenchmen, the foundries of Paris are now running for statues, with the
kettles of their poor and the bells of their churches. If an author had
written like a great genius on geometry, though his practical and
speculative morals were vicious in the extreme, it might appear that in
voting the statue they honored only the geometrician. But Rousseau is a
moralist or he is nothing. It is impossible, therefore, putting the
circumstances together, to mistake their design in choosing the author
with whom they have begun to recommend a course of studies.
Their great problem is, to find a substitute for all the principles which
hitherto have been employed to regulate the human will and action.
They find dispositions in the mind of such force and quality as may fit
men, far better than the old morality, for the purposes of such a state as
theirs, and may go much further in supporting their power and
destroying their enemies. They have therefore chosen a selfish,
flattering, seductive, ostentatious vice, in the place of plain duty. True
humility, the basis of the Christian system, is the low, but deep and
firm foundation of all real virtue. But this, as very painful in the
practice, and little imposing in the appearance, they have totally
discarded. Their object is to merge all natural and all social sentiment
in inordinate vanity. In a small degree, and conversant in little things,
vanity is of little moment. When full-grown, it is the worst of vices, and
the occasional mimic of them all. It makes the whole man false. It
leaves nothing sincere or trustworthy about him. His best qualities are
poisoned and perverted by it, and operate exactly as the worst. When
your lords had many writers as immoral as the object of their statue
(such as Voltaire and others) they chose Rousseau, because in him that
peculiar vice which they wished to erect into ruling virtue was by far
the most conspicuous.
We have had the great professor and founder of the philosophy