JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU in his own words
I have resolved on an enterprise which has no precedent, and which, once complete will have no imitator... I will even venture to say that I am like no one in the whole world. I may be no better, but at least I a am different. Whether nature did well or ill in breaking the mould in which she formed me, is a question which can only be resolved after the reading of my book.
(The Confessions of Jean-Jacques -P.17)
Sex
Not nly had I not till adolescence any clear ideas concerning sexual intercourse, but my muddled thoughts on the subject always assumed odious and disgusting shapes. I had a horror of prostitutes which had never left me, and I could not look on a debauchee without contempt and even fear. Such had been my my horror of immortality, ever since the day when, on my way to Petit Saconex along the sunken road, I saw the the holes in the earth on either side where I was told such people performed their fornications. When I thought of of this I was always reminded of the coupling of dogs, and my stomach turned over at the very thought.( p.27)
PUNISHMENTS
They were unable to force from me the confessions they required. Though the punishment was several times repeated and I was reduced to the most deplorable condition, I remained inflexible . i would have died rather than give in, and I was resolved to. So force had to yield before the diabolical obstinacy of a child. For that is what they called my persistence. But finally I emerged from that cruel ordeal shattered but triumphant .(p.29)
Injustice
.. That first meeting with violence and injustice has remained so deeply engraved on my heart that any thought which recall it summons back this first emotion. The feeling was only a personal one in its origins, but it has since assumed such a consistency and has become so divorced from personal interests that my blood boils at the sight or the tale of any injustice, whoever may be the sufferer and whenever it may have taken place, in just the same way as if I were myself its victim. When I read of the cruelties of a fierce tyrant, of the subtle machinations of a rascally priest, I would gladly go and stab the wretch myself, even if it were to cost my life hundred times over. (p.31)
Reading
My comrades' amusements bored me; and when too much constraint made my work repulsive too, I grew weary of everything. In that state I re-acquired my love of reading, which I long ago lost. The The time for books I stole from my work, and that brought me fresh punishments. But, spurred on by opposition, this taste soon became a furious passion.. Madame la Tribu,s famous lending library provided reading of all sorts. Good or bad was alike to me. I did not choose, I read everything with equal avidity. I read at my bench, I read on errands, I read in the lavatory, and was oblivious of myself for hours on end. I read till my head spun. I did nothing but read. My master spied on me, caught me, beat me, and took away my books. How many volumes were torn up, burnt, and thrown out of the window. How many works returned to madame La Tribu's shelves with volumes missing! When I had no money to pay her, I gave her my shirts, my ties, my clothes; my weekly pocket money of three Sous was carried to her regularly every Sunday.(p.46/
PRIESTS
... he was fanatic who knew no other virtue than the worship of his images and the telling of his beads; a kind of missionary who could imagine no better way of serving his faith than libelling the ministers of Geneva. Far from thinking of sending me home he took such advantage of my desire to run away as to make it impossible for me to go back even if I had wanted to. There was every possibility that he was sending me to the parish of hunger or to become a vagabond. He did not care about that. What he saw was a soul to be plucked from heresy and reconciled to the church. Honest man or vagabond, what did that matter so long as I went to the Mass? It must not be supposed, however, that this way of thinking is confined to Catholics. it is common to every dogmatic religion which makes faith the essential, not deeds. (p.54)
RELIGION
It is clear, I think, that for a child, and even for a man, to have a religion means to follow the one which he is born.. Sometimes one dispenses with part of it, one rarely adds anything to it; dogmatic faith is the fruit of education. Besides the common principle that bound me to the religion of my father, I had the aversion to Catholicism which is peculiar to our city. It was represented to us as the blackest idolatry, and its clergy were depicted in the most sordid colours. This point of view was so strong in my childhood I had never peeped inside a Catholic church, never met a priest in his vestments and never heard a procession bell, without a shiver of terror and alarm. I soon ceased to have these fears when in a town, but in country districts, which remind me most forcibly of the places where I knew them first, I have often found that terror to return . (Pp.67/68)
TYPICAL RELIGIOUS DEBATE
.. He thought he could floor me with Saint Augustine, Saint Gregory and other Fathers, but found to his utter surprise that I could handle all the Fathers as nimbly as he. It was not that I had ever read them. Not perhaps had he. But I remembered number of passages out of my Le Sueur, and when he made a quotation I did not pause to dispute it but replied immediately with another from the same Father, which often considerably upset him. But in the end he won the day, for two reasons: in the first place because he was stronger, and knowing that I was more or less at his mercy, I had sufficient judgement, young though I was, not to push him too far. For I could see well enough that the little old priest had not taken me or my erudition too kindly. But the second reason was that the young priest had studied and I had not. As a result he employed methods of argument that I could not follow, and every time he saw himself confronted with an unforeseen objection, he put off the discussion to the next day on the plea that I was straying from the point. Sometimes even, he disputed all my quotations, denying their authenticity. Then he would offer to get me the book and challenge me to find them. He knew that the risk he was making was slight, for with all my borrowed learning, I was not used enough to handling books and knew too little Latin to find a passage in a huge volume, even I had been sure that it was there. I rather suspect him of having resorted to that trickery of which he accused Protestant ministers, and of sometimes inventing passages to avoid answering an awkward questions. (Pp. 70/71)
PATRIOTISM
While I lived a life of sweet repose, divided between work, pleasure and instruction. Europe was not so calm. France and the Emperor had just declared war on one another... I was anxious for the success of this war as if I had myself great interests at stake. Upto that time it had never entered my head to think of public affairs; and I started to read the newspapers for the first time, but with so much partiality on the side of the French that my heart pounded with joy at their smallest successes, and their reverses distressed me as much as if I had suffered them myself. If this folly had only been a passing one I should not consider it worth mentioning, but it gained so deep a root in my heart, for no reason, then afterwards , in Paris, I was playing the anti-despot and proud Republican, I willingly felt a secret partiality for the same nation which I adjudged servile, and even for their government which I set out to condemn. The funny part of it was that, being ashamed of a prejudiced so contrary to my principles, I dared not confess it to anyone, and jeered at the French in their defeats while my heart bled for them more than did their own... I love the French in spite of myself , and although they ill use me.
I have for a long time sought the reason for this partiality, and I have never been able to find it anywhere except in tha occasion that gave it birth. A growing taste for literature made me love French books,, the authors of those books, and the country of those authors... My continuous reading , always confined to French authors, nurtured my affection for France, and finally transformed it into so blind a passion that nothing has been able to conquer it. I have since had occasion to observe in my travels that this feeling is not peculiar to me, and that by influencing more or less in all countries that that part of the nation which loves reading and cultivate literature, it acts as a counter-weight to the general hatred which the French incur by their conceited manners. Their novels rather than the men themselves win the hearts of the women in all lands.
In short, the excellence and good taste of their literature win the minds of allthose who have any; and in the unfortunate war from which they have just emerged I have seen their philosophers supporting the glory of the French name, which their soldiers have tarnished. (Pp.176/77)
INDISCRIMINATE READING
My illusions about the world caused me to think that in order to benefit by my reading I ought to posses all the knowledge the book presupposed. I was very far indeed from imagining that often the author did not pdssess it himself, but had extracted it from other books, as and when he needed it. This foolish conviction forced me to stop every moment, and to rush incessantly from one book to another; sometimes before coming to the tenth page of the one I was trying to read i should, by this extravagant method, have had to run through the whole libraries. Nevertheless I stuch to it so persistently that I wasted infinite time, and my head became so confused that I could hardly see or take anything. Luckily I saw that I was on a false track which was leading me into an immense labyrinth, and abandoned it before gettinh quite lost.
If one has any taste for learning, however slight, the first thing one feels in applying oneself to it is the interconnection of the sciences, which causes them to attract, help and throw light one on another, so that none is independent of the rest. Althogh the human mind is too weak to grasp them all and must always select one as itsprime interest, unless a man has some notion of the others he is often in the dark of his own. I felt that what I had undertaken was good and useful in itself, only that my method ought to be changed. For a start I took the Encyclopaedia and began dividing it according to subjects. But I soon saw that I had to do quite the opposite, to take each subject separately and pursue it on its own up to the point where they all joined. Thus I came back to it as a man who knows what he is doing. Now meditation supplied the place of knowledge , and a natural reflectivenes s helped to guide me on the way. Whether I lived or died I had no time to lose. To know nothing at nearly twenty-five, and to wish to know everything, entailed making the very best use of my days. Not knowing at what point fate or death might put and to my endeavours, I decided, aome what might, to get some idea about every subject, for the purpose not only of discovering my natural abilities but of deciding which was the best brand of knowlege to pursue. (p. 223)
METHODS OF LEARNING
... I Began with some philosophical works such as Logic of Port Royal, Locke's essay, Malebranche, Leibnitz, or Decarthes. I soon observed that all these authors were almost perpetually at variance with one another and I conceived the fanciful notion of reconciling them, which cost much labour and waste of time. I muddled my head, and made not the least progress. Finally I gave up this plan, and adopted an infinitely better one, to which I attribute all the progress that I may have made, notwithstanding my lack of talents - for there is no doubt that I never possessed much capacity for study. As I read each author, I made a rule of adopting and following all his ideas without adding on any of my own or of anyone else's, and without ever arguing with him. "Let us begin", Isaid to myself, "by collecting a store of ideas, true and false but all of them clear, until mind is sufficiently equipped be able to compare them and choose between them." This method is not without its drawbacks, I know; but it helped in attaining my object of self-tution. After I had spent some years never thinking independently, but following the thought of others, unreflectively, so to speak, and almost without reasoning, I found myself equipped with a great enough fund of learning to be self-sufficient and to think without the help of another. Then when travelling and business made it impossible for me to consult books i amused myself by going over and comparing what I have read, by weighing everything on the scales of reason, and by sometimes passing judgement on my masters. I did not find that my critical faculty had lost its vigour through my having begun to use it so late; and when I published my own ideas I was not accused of being a servile disciple , or of swearing in verba magistri.( By the words of the master )- (pp. 225/26)
LEARNING LATIN
After that came Latin. That was my most painful task, and I have never made much progress with it. At first I began learning by the Port Royal method, but without result. The barbarous verses disgusted me, and I could not get them into my head. I got lost among that crowd of rules, and when I learned the last forgot everything that had gone before. The study of words is not the right thing for a man without memory , and it was precisely in order to force my memory to improve that I persisted in studying Latin, though in the end I had to give it up. I knew sufficient of the construction, however, to be able to read an easy author with the help of the dictionary. I persisted in doing this, and succeeded fairly well. i applied myself to translations, not on paper but in my head, and stopped there. After much time and practice, I succeeded in reading Latin authors fluently enough, but never in speaking or writing in the language, which has put me into difficulties when I have found myself, for some reason or other,numbered among the men of letters. Another drawback arising from this method of learning is that I have never understood prosody, still less the rules of versification... if there is one advantage in being one's own teacher, there are also great disadvantages, chief of which is the incredible labour in involved. I know that better than anyone else. (p.227)
MUSIC
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