History of Western Philosophy - Bertrand Russell [393]
We come now to the most fruitful period of Rousseau's life. His novel La nouvelle Héloïse appeared in 1760; Emile and The Social Contract both in 1762. Emile, which is a treatise on education according to 'natural' principles, might have been considered harmless by the authorities if it had not contained 'The Confession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar', which set forth the principles of natural religion as understood by Rousseau, and was irritating to both Catholic and Protestant orthodoxy. The Social Contract was even more dangerous, for it advocated democracy and denied the divine right of kings. The two books, while they greatly increased his fame, brought upon him a storm of official condemnation, He was obliged to fly from France; Geneva would have none of him;1 Bern refused him asylum. At last Frederick the Great took pity on him, and allowed him to live at Motiers, near Neuchatel, which was part of the philosopher-king's dominions. There he lived for three years; but at the end of that time (1765) the villagers of Motiers, led by the pastor, accused him of poisoning, and tried to murder him. He fled to England, where Hume, in 1762, had proffered his services.
In England, at first, all went well. He had a great social success, and George III granted him a pension. He saw Burke almost daily, but their friendship soon cooled to the point where Burke said: 'He entertained no principle, either to influence his heart, or guide his understanding, but vanity.' Hume was longest faithful, saying he loved him much, and could live with him all his life in mutual friendship and esteem. But by this time Rousseau, not unnaturally, had come to suffer from the persecution mania which ultimately drove him insane, and he suspected Hume of being the agent of plots against his life. At moments he would realize the absurdity of such suspicions, and would embrace Hume, exclaiming 'No, no, Hume is no traitor,' to which Hume (no doubt much embarrassed) replied, 'Quoi, mon cher Monsieur!' But in the end his delusions won the day and he fled. His last years were spent in Paris in great poverty, and when he died suicide was suspected.
After the breach, Hume said: 'He has only felt during the whole course of his life, and in this respect his sensibility rises to a pitch beyond what I have seen any example of; but it still gives him a more acute feeling of pain than of pleasure. He is like a man who was stripped not only of his clothes, but of his skin, and turned out in this situation to combat with the rude and boisterous elements.'
This is the kindest summary of his character that is in any degree compatible with truth.
There is much in Rousseau's work which, however important in other respects, does not concern the history of philosophical thought. There are only two parts of his thinking that I shall consider in any detail; these are, first, his theology, and second, his political theory.
In theology he made an innovation which has now been accepted by the great majority of Protestant theologians. Before him, every philosopher from Plato onwards, if he believed in God, offered intellectual arguments in favour
of his belief.2 The arguments may not, to us, seem very convincing, and we may feel that they would not have seemed cogent to anyone who did not already feel sure of the truth of the conclusion. But the philosopher who advanced the arguments certainly believed them to be logically valid, and such as should cause certainty of God's existence in any unprejudiced person of sufficient philosophical