JEAN JACQUES

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 33, 8 February 1930, Page 21

JEAN JACQUES

ROUSSEAU. WHEN YOUNG

"The Early Life and Adventures of Jean Jacques Eousseau." By Arthur Lytton Sells, M.A. (Cant.), and D. es L. (Paris). Cambridge: William Heffer and Sons.

I .Rousseau's' early lifo certainly requires some explanation, and Mr. Soils has made an honest endeavour to do this. Ho has on his title page, however, a quotation from La Rochefoucauld which prepares the reader for what is to come in the book, and it reads "Qui vit sans folie nest pas si sagequ'il croit."' Rousseau's lii'.e offers material for pathological as well as literary research, but ho was human, and , his " confessions" show, that he did not pretend to being more than human. They aro candid enough.in all conscience, but it should always .be remembered that Bousscau reformed and that those of his philosophical works that came to have such a powerful influence over men's ideas at the end of the 18th century began to be written when he was nearly forty.' It was Napoleon who said that but for Rousseau there would have been no French Revolution, and Thomas Carlyle asked,"'" Has not Jca,n Jacques promulgated his new ovangel of a Contrat Social, explaining the ■ whole mystery of Government, and how it, is .contractto" and bargained for—to universal satisfaction?" Rousseau,' however, performed the' function of tho tinder and matches to that great conflagration, for the vast amount of combustible ma- j terial in tho form of abuses had been piling up for centuries, but undoubtedly his gospel lircrl the men who brought about the ' Revolution and its influence upon that earlier Revolution out of whi#h came the American colonies' declaration of independence. What Mr.- Sells has purposed to do, and what he has succeeded in doing, is to show that Eous3eau was perfectly sincere in his "Confessions, " and thai, lie was neither a monster nor a.saant. Further, the writer makes it plain that Rousseau was subject to hallucinations, especially in the form of imagining himself tho victim of persecution. The : secret of Bousseau's hold on men, Mr. Sells believes, is to be found in his extraordinary humanity. Quoting Maurieo Barres, who once said of Rousseau "C'est un autro moi-meme," Mr. Sells believes that every man will form his own- idea of Rousseau, and so ho describes what Jean Jacques is for himself. But it is. not so much' the philosophy as .the young manhood of his subject that tho writer deals with, and he does not follow Rousseau beyond his 28th year. The life begins with a.de scription of Geneva of the early part of the 18th century, when the influences of Calvin were still potent, and if. is carried on through tho childhood days to the tutelage of Pastor Lambercior, of whom Jean Jacques in his "Confessions" naively wrote: "Although a churchman and a preacher, M. Lambereier was a real believer, and almost as good in deed as in word." No ono, before or after, " exercised a better influence on Jean Jacques, writes Mr. Sells, but subsequently ■he refers to the wholesome and beneficent contact of Rousseau with the Abbe (Jaime, ""ith Rousseau's relations with Mine, de Warens, the biographer necessarily deals at length, but he handles thorn" with delicacy. ■ Life at Lcs Charmcttes is likewise- handled, and the story ends with the eventful departure of Rousseau to be tutor to the family of the Provost of Lyons. In his'writings, Jean Jacques was well in advance of his. time, and this, perhaps,- will" explain why some of his works arc refcd to-day and considered to bo quite modern. If he had been different, if he had not lied from his -master, the churlish engraver Ducoinmoii, he might not li.tvo desired to become a Roman Catholic, not met .Mine, de Warens. not*-have had any'"Confessions" worth reading, and become, as ho put it, "a good..Christian, a good citizen,' a' good father of a family, a good workman, a good man in everything." But he would then have died a nonentity, leaving no mark upon the world—for good or evil, according to the point of view. Mr. Sells lias supplemented his scholarly work with an appendix including notes on the mental malady of Rousseau, his conversion at the hospice of the Spirito Santo at Turin; also with a bibliography of works relating to the early lifo of 'Jean Jacques, and the book is fully indexed and illustrated