______________________________________________________________
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
DISCOURSE ON THE SCIENCES AND THE ARTS
[THE FIRST DISCOURSE]
______________________________________________________________
[This translation, which has been prepared
by Ian Johnston of Vancouver Island University, is available for general use
but has some copyright restrictions. For details, see Copyright.
This text (2013) is a slightly revised version of a translation first published
on the internet in 2008. For comments, questions, suggestions for improvements,
and so on, please contact Ian
Johnston. This translation is available free of charge in
the form of a Word booklet for those who wish to print off copies for
themselves or their students.]
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preliminary Notice
Preface
Discourse
First Part
Second Part
Rousseau’s Notes
Translator’s Endnotes
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
In the
following text there are two sorts of endnotes, those provided by Rousseau as
footnotes in his text and those provided by the translator. Rousseau’s notes
are indicated with numbers in brackets: (1), (2), (3), and so on. The translator’s
endnotes are indicated with a red superscript number.
Jean
Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) wrote A Discourse
on the Sciences and the Arts (commonly called The First Discourse) in 1750, as his entry in a competition set by
the Academy of Dijon. His essay won first prize, and that success very quickly
elevated him from obscurity and made him a celebrity.
DISCOURSE
which was awarded the prize
by the Academy of Dijon
in the year 1750
On this Question, which the Academy itself proposed,
Has the restoration of the sciences and the
arts contributed to purifying morality?
By a Citizen of Geneva
I am a barbarian here, because they do not
understand me. (Ovid)1
What is
celebrity? Here is the unfortunate work to which I owe my own. It is certain
that this piece, which won me a prize and made my name, is mediocre at best,
and I venture to add that it is one of the least in this whole collection. What
an abyss of miseries the author would have avoided, if this first book had been
received only according to its merits! But it was inevitable that an initially
unjustified favour gradually brought me severe treatment which is even more undeserved.2
Here is
one of the greatest and most beautiful questions ever raised. In this Discourse
it is not a question of those metaphysical subtleties which have triumphed over
all parts of literature and from which the programs in an academy are not always
exempt. However, it does concern one of those truths upon which depends the
happiness of the human race.
I
anticipate that people will have difficulty forgiving me for the position I
have dared to take. By colliding head on with everything which wins men’s admiration
nowadays, I can expect only universal censure. And I should not count on public
approval just because I have been honoured with the approbation of a few wise
men. But still, I have taken my position. I am not worried about pleasing
sophisticated wits or fashionable people. In every period there will be men
destined to be governed by the opinions of their age, their country, and their
society. For that very reason, certain men who nowadays act as free thinkers or
philosophers would have been nothing but fanatics at the time of the League.3 One must not write for such readers, if one
wishes to live beyond one’s own century.
One more
word, and I am be finished. Little expecting the honour
I received, since I submitted this Discourse, I had reorganized and expanded
it, to the point of making it, in one way or another, a different work. I
thought myself obliged today to restore it to the state it was in when it was
awarded the prize. I have only thrown in some notes and left two readily
recognizable additions, of which the Academy perhaps might not have approved. I
believed that equity, respect, and gratitude demanded I provide this notice.
We are deceived by the appearance of good.4 (Horace)
Has the
restoration of the sciences and the arts contributed to the purification or to
the corruption of morality? This is the matter we have to examine. What side
should I take on this question? That, gentlemen, which suits an honest man who
knows nothing and who does not, for that reason, think any less of himself.
It will be
difficult, I sense, to adapt what I have to say for the tribunal before which I
am appearing. How can one venture to criticize the sciences in front of one of
the most scholarly societies in Europe, to praise ignorance in a famous
academy, and to reconcile a contempt for study with
respect for truly learned men? I have seen these contradictions, and they have
not discouraged me. I am not mistreating science, I told myself; I am defending
virtue in front of virtuous men. Integrity is cherished among good people even
more than erudition is among scholars. So what am I afraid of? The enlightened minds of the assembly which is listening to me?
I confess that is a fear. But it is a fear about the construction of the Discourse
and not about the opinions of the speaker. Equitable sovereigns have never hesitated
to condemn themselves in doubtful arguments, and the greatest advantage in a
just cause is having to defend oneself against an
enlightened and honest party who is judge in his own case.
To this motive, which encourages me, is
added another which makes me resolute: after I have upheld, according to my
natural intelligence, the side of truth, no matter what success I have, there
is a prize which I cannot fail to win. I will find it in the depths of my
heart.
It is a
great and beautiful spectacle to see a man somehow emerging from nothing by his
own efforts, dispelling with the light of his reason the shadows in which nature
had enveloped him, rising above himself, soaring in his mind up to the celestial
regions, moving with giant strides, like the sun, through the vast expanse of
the universe, and, what is even greater and more difficult, returning into
himself in order to study man there and to understand his nature, his obligations, and his end. All of these marvelous things have
been renewed in the past few generations.
Europe had
fallen back into the barbarity of the first ages. Nations from this part of
world, so enlightened today, a few centuries ago lived in a state worse than
ignorance. Some sort of learned jargon even more despicable than ignorance had
usurped the name of knowledge and set up an almost invincible obstacle in the
way of its return. A revolution was necessary to bring men back to common
sense, and it finally came from a quarter where one would have least expected
it. It was the stupid Muslim, that eternal scourge of letters, who brought
about their rebirth among us. The collapse of the throne of Constantine carried
into Italy the debris of ancient Greece. France, in its turn, was enriched by
these precious remnants. The sciences soon followed literature. To the art of
writing was joined the art of thinking, a sequence which may seem strange but
which is perhaps only too natural. And people began to perceive the main advantage
of busying themselves with the Muses, which is to make men more sociable by
inspiring in them the desire to please one another with works worthy of their
mutual approbation.
The mind
has its needs, just as the body does. The latter are the foundations of society;
the former are its pleasing ornaments. While government and laws take care of
the security and wellbeing of men in groups, the sciences, letters, and the
arts, less despotic and perhaps more powerful, spread garlands of flowers over
the iron chains which weigh men down, snuffing out in them the feeling of that
original liberty for which they appear to have been born, and make them love
their servitude by turning them into what we call civilized people. Need has
raised thrones; the sciences and the arts have strengthened them. You earthly powers, cherish talents and protect those who nurture them (1). Civilized
nations, cultivate them. Happy slaves, to them you owe that refined and delicate
taste you take pride in, that softness of character and that urbanity of habits
which make dealings among you so sociable and easy—in a word, the appearance of
all the virtues without the possession of any.
It was
with this type of civility, all the more agreeable for being less pretentious,
that Athens and Rome earlier distinguished themselves in the days when they
were so praised for their magnificence and splendour. In that civility our age
and our nation will, no doubt, surpass all ages and all peoples. A philosophical
tone without pedantry, natural yet considerate manners, equally remote from
Teutonic boorishness and Italian pantomime: there you have the fruits of a
taste acquired by good education and perfected by social interaction in the
world.
How
pleasant it would be to live among us, if the exterior appearance was always an
image of the heart’s tendencies; if decency was a virtue; if our maxims served
us as rules; if true philosophy was inseparable from the title of philosopher!
But so many qualities too rarely go together, and virtue hardly ever walks in
so much pomp. Richness in dress can announce a man with wealth, and elegance a
man with taste. The healthy, robust man is recognized by other signs. It is under
the rustic clothing of a farmer and not under the gilt of a courtier that one
will find physical strength and energy. Finery is no less a stranger to virtue,
which is the strength and vigour of the soul. The good man is an athlete who delights
in competing naked. He scorns all those vile ornaments which hamper the use of
his strength, the majority of which were invented only to conceal some deformity.
Before art
fashioned our manners and taught our passions to speak an affected language,
our morals were rustic but natural, and differences in behaviour announced at
first glance differences in character. Human nature was not fundamentally
better, but men found their security in the ease with which they could see
through one another, and this advantage, whose value we no longer feel, spared them
many vices.
Nowadays,
when more subtle studies and a more refined taste have reduced the art of
pleasing into principles, a vile and misleading uniformity governs our morals,
and all minds seem to have been cast in the same mould. Politeness incessantly
makes demands, propriety issues orders, and people incessantly follow customary
habits, never their own inclinations. They no longer dare to appear as they
are. And in this perpetual constraint, men who make up this herd we call
society, placed in the same circumstances, will all do the same things, unless
more powerful motives prevent them. Thus, we never know well the person we are
dealing with. For to get to know our friends we must wait for critical occasions,
that is to say, to wait until too late, because these are the very occasions
when we would have needed to know who our friends are.
What a
cortege of vices accompanies this uncertainty! No more sincere friendships, no
more real esteem, no more well-founded trust. Suspicions, resentments, fears, coldness,
reserve, hatred, and betrayal will always be hiding under this uniform and perfidious
veil of politeness, under that urbanity which is so praised and which we owe to
our century’s enlightenment. We will no longer profane the name of the Lord of
the Universe by swearing, but we will insult it with blasphemies, which will
not offend our scrupulous ears. People will not boast of their own merit, but
they will demean that of others. No man will grossly abuse his enemy, but he
will slander him with skill. National hatreds will die out, but so will love of
one’s homeland. In place of contemptible ignorance, we will substitute a
dangerous Pyrrhonism.5 Some excesses will be forbidden, and some vices held in disgrace, but
others will be honoured with the name of virtues. It will be necessary to have
them or to affect them. Let anyone who wishes boast about the sobriety of the
wise men of our time. As for me, I see nothing there but a refinement of intemperance
as unworthy of my praise as their affected simplicity (2).
Such is
the purity our morality has acquired. In this way we have become good people.
It is up to literature, the sciences, and the arts to claim responsibility for
their share in such salutary work. I shall add merely one reflection: an inhabitant
in some distant country who was looking to form an idea of European morals
based on the condition of the sciences among us, on the perfection of our arts,
on the propriety of our entertainments, on the politeness of our manners, on
the affability of our discussions, on our perpetual displays of good will, and
on that turbulent competition among men of all ages and all conditions who
appear to be fussing from sunrise to sunset about pleasing one another, then
this stranger, I say, would guess that our morals are exactly the opposite of
what they are.
Where
there is no effect, there is no cause to look for. But here the effect is
certain, the depravity real, and our souls have become corrupted as our sciences
and our arts have advanced towards perfection. Will someone say that this is a
misfortune peculiar to our age? No, gentlemen. The evils brought about by our
vain curiosity are as old as the world. The daily ebb and flow of the ocean’s
waters have not been more regularly subjected to the orbit of the star which
gives us light during the night than the fate of morals and probity has been to
progress in the sciences and the arts. We have seen virtue fly away as their
light has risen over our horizon, and the same phenomenon has been observed at
all times and in all places.
Look at
Egypt, that first school of the universe, that climate so fertile under a
bronze sky, that celebrated country, which Sesostris left long ago to conquer the world. It became the
mother of philosophy and fine arts, and soon afterwards was conquered by
Cambyses, then by the Greeks, Romans, Arabs, and finally by the Turks.6
Look at
Greece, populated long ago with heroes who twice vanquished Asia, once before
Troy and then again in their own homeland. The early growth of literature had
not yet carried corruption into the hearts of its inhabitants, but progress in
the arts, the dissolution of morality, and the Macedonian yoke followed closely
on one another’s heels, and Greece, always knowledgeable, always voluptuous, always
enslaved, achieved nothing more in its revolutions except changes in its
masters. All the eloquence of Demosthenes could never reanimate a body which luxury
and the arts had enervated.7
It is at
the time of Ennius and Terence that Rome, founded by
a shepherd and made famous by farmers, begins to degenerate. But after Ovid,
Catullus, Martial, and that crowd of obscene authors, whose very names alarm
one’s sense of decency, Rome, formerly the temple of virtue, becomes the
theatre of crime, the disgrace of nations, and the toy of barbarians. This
capital of the world eventually falls under the yoke it had imposed on so many
peoples, and the day of its fall was the day before one of its citizens was
given the title of Arbiter of Good Taste.8
What shall
I say about that great city of the Eastern Empire which by its position seemed
destined to be the capital of the entire world, that sanctuary for the sciences
and arts forbidden in the rest of Europe, perhaps more through wisdom than
barbarity? Everything that is most disgraceful in debauchery and corruption—the
blackest of treasons, assassinations, poisons, and the most atrocious
combinations of every crime—that is what makes up the fabric of the history of
Constantinople; that is the pure source from which the enlightenment for which
our age glorifies itself spread to us.
But why
seek in distant times for proofs of a truth for which we have existing evidence
right before our eyes. There is in Asia an immense country where literary
honours lead to the highest offices of state. If the sciences purified morals,
if they taught men to shed their blood for their homeland, if they inspired courage,
the people of China would become wise, free, and invincible. But if there is no
vice which does not rule over them, no crime unfamiliar to them, if neither the
enlightenment of ministers nor the alleged wisdom of the laws nor the multitude
of inhabitants of this vast empire was capable of keeping it safe from yoke of
the ignorant and coarse Tartars, what use have all these wise men been to it?
What fruit has it reaped from the honours lavished on them? Could it be that of
being populated by evildoers and slaves?
Let us
contrast these pictures with those of the morals of a small number of peoples
who, protected from this contagion of vain knowledge, have by their virtues
created their own happiness and set an example to other nations. Such were the
first Persians, a remarkable nation, in which people learned virtue the way we
learn science, a country which conquered Asia so easily and which was the only
one to acquire the glory of having the history of its institutions taken for a
philosophical novel. Such were the Scythians to whom we have been left such magnificent
tributes. Such were the Germans, in whom a writer who had grown weary of tracing
the crimes and baseness of an educated, opulent, and voluptuous nation found
relief by describing their simplicity, innocence, and virtues. Rome had been
like that, even in the time of its poverty and ignorance. And finally in our
own day that rustic nation has shown itself to be like this, so lauded for its
courage, which adversity has been unable to defeat, and for its fidelity which
no example could corrupt (3).
It is not
through stupidity that these nations preferred other exercises to those of the
mind. They were not ignorant of the fact that in other lands idle men spent
their lives disputing the sovereign good, vice and virtue, and that proud reasoners, while giving themselves the greatest praise,
lumped all other nations together under the contemptuous name of barbarians. But
these nations took note of the other people’s morals and learned to scorn their
teachings. (4).
Could I
forget that it was the very heart of Greece that saw the emergence of that city
as famous for its happy ignorance as for the wisdom of its laws, whose virtues
seemed so much greater than those of humanity that it was a republic of demigods
rather than of men? O Sparta! How you eternally shame a vain doctrine! While
the vices, led along by the fine arts, were being introduced together in Athens
and a tyrant there was collecting with so much care the works of the prince of
poets, you were chasing the arts and the artists, the sciences and the scholars
from your walls.9
The way
things turned out indicated this difference. Athens became the abode of
politeness and good taste, the land of orators and philosophers. The elegance
of the buildings there corresponded to that of its language. In every quarter
one saw marble and canvas brought to life by the hands of the most accomplished
masters. From Athens came those amazing works which will serve as models in all
corrupt ages. The picture of Sparta is less brilliant. “In that place,” other
nations used to say, “the men are born virtuous, and even the air of the
country seems to inspire virtue.” Nothing is left for us of its inhabitants
except the memory of their heroic actions. Should monuments like that be less
valuable to us than those curious marbles which Athens has left us?
It is true
that some wise men resisted the general torrent and avoided vice while living
with the Muses. But one needs to hear the judgment which the most important and
most unfortunate among them delivered on the learned men and artists of his
time.
“I
examined the poets,” he says, “and I look on them as people whose talent overawes
both themselves and others, people who present themselves as wise men and are
taken as such, when they are nothing of the sort.”
“From the
poets,” Socrates continues, “I moved to the artists. No one was more ignorant
about the arts than I; no one was more convinced that artists possessed really
beautiful secrets. However, I noticed that their condition was no better than
that of the poets and that both of them have the same misconceptions. Because
the most skillful among them excel in what they do, they look upon themselves
as the wisest of men. In my eyes, this presumption completely tarnished their
knowledge. As a result, putting myself in the place of the oracle and asking
myself what I would prefer to be—what I am or what they are, to know what they
have learned or to know that I know nothing—I replied to myself and to the god:
I wish to remain what I am.”
“We do not
know—neither the sophists, nor the poets, nor the orators, nor the artists, nor
I—what the True, the Good, and the Beautiful is. But
there is this difference between us: although these people know nothing, they
all believe they know something; whereas, I, if I know nothing, at least have
no doubts about it. As a result, all this superiority in wisdom which the oracle
has attributed to me reduces itself to the single point that I am strongly
convinced that I am ignorant of what I do not know.”
So there
you have the wisest of men in the judgment of the gods and the most knowledgeable
Athenian in the opinion of all of Greece, Socrates, speaking in praise of
ignorance! Do we believe that if he came to life among us, our learned men and
our artists would make him change his opinion? No, gentlemen. This just man
would continue to be contemptuous of our vain sciences; he would not help to
augment that pile of books with which we are swamped from all directions, and
he would leave, as he once did, nothing by way of a moral precept for his disciples
and our posterity other than his example and the memory of his virtue. It is
beautiful to teach men in this way!
Socrates
had started in Athens. In Rome Cato the Elder continued to rail against those
artificial and subtle Greeks who were seducing virtue and weakening the courage
of his fellow citizens.10 But the sciences, arts, and dialectic prevailed
once more. Rome was filled with philosophers and orators, military discipline
was neglected, and agriculture scorned. People embraced factions and forgot about
their homeland. The sacred names of liberty, disinterestedness, and obedience
to the laws gave way to the names Epicurus, Zeno, and Arcesilas.11 “Since the learned men began to appear among
us,” their own philosophers used to say, “good people have been in eclipse.” Up
to that time Romans had been content to practise virtue; everything was lost
when they began to study it.
O Fabricius! What would your great soul have thought if, to
your own misfortune, you had been called back to life and had seen the pompous
face of this Rome saved by your hand, the city which your honourable name had
distinguished more than all its conquests? “Gods,” you would have said, “what
has happened to those thatched roofs and those rustic homes where moderation
and virtue once lived? What fatal splendour has succeeded Roman simplicity?
What is this strange language? What are these effeminate customs? What do these
statues signify, these paintings, these buildings? You mad people, what have
you done? You masters of nations, have you turned yourself into the slaves of
the frivolous men you conquered? Are you now governed by rhetoricians? Was it
to enrich architects, painters, sculptors, and actors that you soaked Greece
and Asia with your blood? Are the spoils of Carthage a trophy for a flute
player? Romans, hurry to tear down these amphitheatres, break up these marbles,
burn these paintings, chase out these slaves who are subjugating you, whose
fatal arts are corrupting you. Let other hands distinguish themselves with vain
talents. The only talent worthy of Rome is that of conquering the world and
making virtue reign there. When Cineas took our Senate
for an assembly of kings, he was not dazzled by an empty pomp or an affected elegance.
He did not hear there this frivolous eloquence, the study and charm of trivial
men. What then did Cineas see that was so majestic? O
citizens! He saw a spectacle which your riches or all your arts will never
produce, the most beautiful sight which has ever appeared under heaven, an assembly
of two hundred virtuous men, worthy to command in Rome and to govern the
earth.”12
But let us
move across distances of space and time and see what has happened in our countries,
before our own eyes, or rather, let us set aside the hateful pictures which
would wound our sensitivity and spare ourselves the trouble of repeating the
same things under other names. It is not in vain that I called upon the shade
of Fabricius. What did I make that great man say that
I could not have put into the mouth of Louis XII or of Henry IV? Among us, to
be sure, Socrates would not have drunk hemlock, but he would have drunk from an
even bitterer cup insulting mockery and contempt a hundred times worse than
death.13
There you
see how luxury, debauchery, and slavery have in every age been the punishment
for the arrogant efforts we have made in order to emerge from the happy
ignorance where Eternal Wisdom had placed us. The thick veil with which it has
covered all its operations seemed to provide a sufficient warning to us that it
had not destined us for vain investigations. But have we known how to profit
from any of its lessons? Have we neglected any with impunity? Then, people,
learn for once that nature wished to protect you from knowledge, just as a
mother snatches away a dangerous weapon from the hands of her child, that all
the secrets which she keeps hidden from you are so many evils she is protecting
you against, and that the difficulty you experience in educating yourselves is
not the least of her benefits. Men are perverse; they would be even worse if
they had had the misfortune of being born knowledgeable.
How
humiliating these reflections are for humanity! How our pride must be mortified
by them! What! Could integrity be the daughter of ignorance? Could knowledge
and virtue be incompatible? What consequences could we not draw from these opinions?
But to reconcile these apparent contradictions, we need only examine closely
the vanity and the emptiness of those proud titles which dazzle us and which we
hand out so gratuitously to human knowledge. Let us therefore consider the
sciences and the arts in themselves. Let us see what must result from their progress.
And let us no longer hesitate to concur on all points where our reasoning finds
itself in agreement with conclusions drawn from history.
It was an
old tradition, passed on from Egypt into Greece, that a god hostile to men’s
peace and quiet was the inventor of the sciences (5). What opinion, then, must
the Egyptians themselves have had about the sciences, which were born among
them? They could observe near at hand the sources which had produced them. In
fact, whether we leaf through the annals of the world or supplement uncertain
chronicles with philosophical research, we will not find an origin for human
learning that corresponds to the idea we like to create for it. Astronomy was
born from superstition; eloquence from ambition, hate, flattery, and lies;
geometry from avarice; physics from vain curiosity—everything, even the study
of morality itself, from human pride. The sciences and the arts thus owe their
birth to our vices; we would have fewer doubts about their advantages if they
owed their birth to our virtues.
The flaw
in their origin is only too clearly retraced for us in their objects. What
would we do with the arts without the luxury which nourishes them? Without human
injustice, what would be the use of jurisprudence? What would become of history
if there were neither tyrants, nor wars, nor conspirators? In a word, who would
want to spend his life in sterile contemplation, if each man consulted only his
human duties and natural needs and had time only for his homeland, for the
unfortunate, and for his friends? Are we thus fated to die tied down on the
edge of the well where truth has taken refuge? This single reflection should,
right from the outset, discourage every man who would seriously seek to instruct
himself through the study of philosophy.
What dangers
lurk! What false routes into an investigation of the sciences! How many errors,
a thousand times more dangerous than the truth is useful, does one not have to
get past to reach it? The problem is clear, for what is false is susceptible to
an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one
form of being. Besides, who is seeking it in full sincerity? Even with the best
of intentions, by what marks does one recognize it for certain? In this crowd
of different opinions, what will be our criterion to judge it properly (6)? And
the most difficult point of all: if by luck we do end up finding the truth, who
among us will know how to make good use of it?
If our
sciences are vain in the goal they set for themselves, they are even more dangerous
in the effects they produce. Born in idleness, they nourish it in their turn,
and the irreparable waste of time is the first damage they necessarily inflict
on society. In politics, as in morality, it is a great evil not to do good, and we can look on every useless citizen as a pernicious
man. So answer me, illustrious philosophers, those of you thanks to whom we
know in what proportions bodies attract each other in a vacuum, what in the
planetary orbits are the relationships of the areas gone through in equal
times, what curves have conjugate points, points of inflection and cusps, how
man sees everything in God, how the soul and the body work together without
communication, just as two clocks do, what stars could be inhabited, which insects
reproduce in an extraordinary way. Answer me, I say, you from whom we have
received so much sublime knowledge, if you had never taught us anything about
these things, would we be less numerous, less well governed, less formidable,
less thriving, or more perverse? So go back over the importance of what you
have produced, and if the work of our most enlightened scholars and of our best
citizens brings us so little of any use, tell us what we should think of that
crowd of obscure writers and idle men of letters who are uselessly devouring
the substance of the state.
Did I say
idle? Would to God they really were! Our morality would be healthier and
society more peaceful. But these vain and futile declaimers move around in all
directions armed with their fatal paradoxes, undermining the foundations of
faith and annihilating virtue. They smile with disdain at those old words homeland
and religion and dedicate their talents and their philosophy to the destruction
and degradation of everything sacred among men. Not that they basically hate
either virtue or our dogmas. It is public opinion they are opposed to, and to
bring them back to the foot of the altar, all one would have to do is make them
live among atheists. O rage to make oneself stand out, what are you not capable
of?
To misuse
one’s time is a great evil. But other even worse ones come with arts and
letters. Luxury is such an evil, born, like them, from the idleness and vanity
of men. Luxury rarely comes along without the sciences and the arts, and they
never appear without it. I know that our philosophy, always fertile in extravagant
maxims, maintains, contrary to the experience of all the ages, that luxury
creates the splendour of states, but, having forgotten about the need for
Sumptuary Laws, will philosophy still dare to deny that good morals are essential
to the duration of empires and that luxury is diametrically opposed to good
morals?14 True, luxury may be a sure sign of riches, and
it even serves, if you like, to multiply them. What will we necessarily
conclude from this paradox, so worthy of arising in our day,
and what will virtue become when people must enrich themselves at any price?
Ancient politicians talked incessantly about morality and virtue; our
politicians talk only about business and money. One will tell you that in a
particular country a man is worth the sum he could be sold for in Algiers;
another, by following this calculation, will find countries where a man is
worth nothing and others where he is worth less than nothing. They assess men
like herds of livestock. According to them, a man has no value to the state
apart from what he consumes in it. Thus one Sybarite would have been worth at
least thirty Lacedaemonians. Would someone therefore
hazard a guess which of these two republics, Sparta or Sybaris, was overthrown
by a handful of peasants and which one made Asia tremble?15
The
kingdom of Cyrus was conquered with thirty thousand men by a prince poorer than
the least of the Persian satraps, and the Scythians, the poorest of all
nations, managed to resist the most powerful kings of the universe. Two famous
republics were fighting for imperial control of the world. One was very rich,
the other had nothing, and the latter destroyed the former. The Roman Empire,
in its turn, after gulping down all the riches in the universe, became the prey
of a people who did not even know what wealth was. The Franks conquered the Gauls, and the Saxons conquered England, without any treasures
other than their bravery and their poverty. A bunch of poor mountain dwellers
whose greed was limited to a few sheep skins, after crushing Austrian pride,
wiped out that opulent and formidable House of Burgundy, which had made the
potentates of Europe tremble. Finally, all the power and all the wisdom of
Charles V’s heir, supported by all the treasures of the Indies, ended up being
shattered by a handful of herring fishermen. Let our politicians deign to suspend
their calculations in order to reflect upon these examples, and let them learn
for once that with money one has everything except morals and citizens.
What,
then, is precisely the issue in this question of luxury? To know which of the
following is more important to empires: to be brilliant and momentary or
virtuous and lasting. I say brilliant, but with what lustre? A taste for ostentation
is rarely associated in the same souls with a taste for honesty. No, it is not
possible that minds degraded by a multitude of futile concerns would ever raise
themselves to anything great. Even when they had the strength for that, they
would lack the courage.
Every
artist wishes to be applauded. The praises of his contemporaries are the most
precious part of his reward. What will he do, then, to obtain
that praise if he has the misfortune of being born among a people and in a time
when learned men who have come into fashion have seen to it that frivolous
young people set the tone, where men have sacrificed their taste to those who
tyrannize over their liberty (7), where, because one of the sexes dares to approve only
what matches the pusillanimity of the other, people abandon masterpieces of
dramatic poetry and wonderfully harmonious works are rejected? What will that
artist do, gentlemen? He will lower his genius to the level of his age and will
prefer to create commonplace works which people will applaud during his
lifetime rather than marvelous ones which would not be admired until long after
his death. Tell us, famous Arouet, how many strong
and manly beautiful things you have sacrificed to our false delicacy and how
many great things the spirit of gallantry, so fertile in small things, has cost
you?16
In this
way, the dissolution of morals, a necessary consequence of luxury, brings with
it, in its turn, the corruption of taste. If by chance among men of extraordinary
talents there is one who has a firm soul and refuses to accommodate the spirit
of his age and to demean himself with puerile works, too bad for him! He will
die in poverty and oblivion. I wish I were making a prediction here and not
describing experience! Carle and Pierre, the moment has come when that
paintbrush destined to augment the majesty of our temples with sublime and holy
images will fall from your hands or will be prostituted to decorate carriage
panels with lascivious paintings. And you, rival of Praxiteles and Phidias, you
whose chisel the ancients would have used to create for them gods capable of
excusing their idolatry in our eyes, inimitable Pigalle,
your hand will be resigned to refinishing the belly of a grotesque oriental
figurine, or it will have to remain idle.17
We cannot
reflect on morality without deriving pleasure from recalling the picture of the
simplicity of the first ages. It is a lovely shore, adorned only by the hands
of nature, toward which we are always turning our eyes, and from which we perceive,
with regret, we are growing more distant. When innocent and virtuous men liked
to have gods as witnesses of their actions, they lived with them in the same
huts. But having soon become evil, they grew weary of these inconvenient
spectators and relegated them to magnificent temples. Finally, they chased the
gods out of those so they could set themselves up there or at least the gods’
temples were no longer distinguished from the citizens’ homes. This was then
the height of depravity, and vices were never pushed further than when one saw
them, so to speak, propped up on marble columns and carved into Corinthian capitals
in the entrance ways of great men’s palaces.
While the
conveniences of life multiply, while the arts perfect themselves, and while
luxury spreads, true courage grows enervated, and military virtues vanish, once
again the work of the sciences and all those arts which are practised in the
shadows of the study. When the Goths ravaged Greece, all the libraries were rescued
from the flames only by the opinion spread by one of them that they should let
their enemies have properties so suitable for turning them away from military
exercise and for keeping them amused with sedentary and idle occupations.
Charles VIII saw himself master of Tuscany and the Kingdom of Naples without
hardly drawing his sword, and all his court attributed the unexpected ease of
this to the fact that the princes and the nobility of Italy enjoyed making themselves
clever and learned more than they did training to become vigorous and warlike.
In fact, says the sensible man who describes these two events, every example
teaches us that in military policy and all things similar to it, the study of
the sciences is far more suitable for softening and feminizing courageous
qualities than for strengthening and encouraging them.
The Romans
maintained that military virtue was extinguished among them as they began to
know about paintings, engravings, and vases worked in gold and silver, and to
cultivate the fine arts. And, as if this famous country was destined to serve
constantly as an example for other peoples, the rise of the Medici and the
re-establishment of letters led once again and perhaps for all time to the fall
of that warrior reputation which Italy seemed to have regained a few centuries
ago.
The
ancient republics of Greece, with that wisdom which shone out from most of
their institutions, prohibited their citizens all tranquil and sedentary occupations
which, by weakening and corrupting the body, quickly enervate vigour in the
soul. In fact, how do we think men whom the smallest need overwhelms and the
least trouble disheartens are capable of facing hunger, thirst, exhaustion,
dangers, and death? How courageously will soldiers endure excessive work with
which they are quite unfamiliar? How enthusiastically will they make forced
marches under officers who do not have the strength to make the journey even on
horseback? And let no one offer me objections concerning the celebrated valour
of these modern warriors who are trained so scientifically. People boast highly
to me of their bravery on a day of battle, but no one tells me anything about
how they bear an excess of work, about how they stand up to the harshness of
the seasons and bad weather. It requires only a little sun or snow, only the
lack of a few superfluities, to melt down and destroy in a few days the best of
our armies. Intrepid warriors, for once accept the truth which you so rarely
hear: you are brave, I know that; you would have triumphed with Hannibal at
Cannae and at Trasimene; with you Caesar would have
crossed the Rubicon and enslaved his people. But with you the former would not
have crossed the Alps, and the latter would not have conquered your ancestors.18
Combat
does not always produce success in war, and for generals there is an art
superior to that of winning battles. A man can run fearlessly into the firing
line and yet be a very bad officer. Even in an ordinary soldier, a little more
strength and energy could perhaps be more essential than so much bravery, which
does not protect him from death. And what does it matter to the state whether
its troops die of fever and cold or by the enemy’s sword?
If
cultivating the sciences is detrimental to warrior qualities, it is even more
so to moral qualities. From our very first years an inane education adorns our
minds and corrupts our judgment. I see all over the place immense establishments
where young people are raised at great expense to learn everything except their
obligations. Your children will not know their own language, but they will
speak others which are nowhere in use. They will know how to compose verses
which they will scarcely be able to understand. Without knowing how to distinguish
truth and error, they will possess the art of making both truth and error
unrecognizable to others through specious arguments. But they will not know
what the words magnanimity, temperance, humanity, and courage mean. That sweet
name of the homeland will never strike their ears, and if they hear talk of
God, that will be less to be in awe of Him than to fear Him (8). I
would be just as happy, a wise man said, that my pupil had spent his time on
the tennis court. At least that his body would be more fit. I know that
children must be kept busy and that idleness is for them the danger one should
fear most. What then should they be learning? Now, that is surely a good question!
Let them learn what they ought to do when they are men (9), and not what they ought to
forget.
Our
gardens are decorated with statues and our galleries with paintings. What do
you think these artistic masterpieces on show for public admiration depict?
Those who have defended their country? Or those even greater men who have
enriched it with their virtues? No. They are images of every depravity of the
heart and mind, carefully selected from ancient mythology and presented to our
children’s curiosity at a young age, no doubt so that they may have right
before their eyes models of perverse actions even before they know how to read.
From where
do all these abuses arise if not from the fatal inequality introduced among men
by distinctions among their talents and by the degradation of their virtues?
There you have the most obvious effect of all our studies and the most
dangerous of all their consequences. We no longer ask if a man has integrity
but if he has talent, nor whether a book is useful but whether it is well
written. The rewards for a witty man are enormous, while virtue remains without
honour. There are a thousand prizes for fine discourses, none for fine actions.
But let someone tell me if the glory attached to the best of the discourses
that will be crowned in this Academy is comparable to the merit of having
founded the prize?
The wise
man does not run after fortune, but he is not insensitive to glory. And when he
sees it so badly distributed, his virtue, which a little emulation would have
energized and made advantageous to society, grows sluggish, and dies away in
poverty and oblivion. That is what, in the long run, must be the result everywhere
of a preference for agreeable talents rather than for useful ones, and that is
what experience has only too often confirmed since the re-establishment of the
sciences and the arts. We have physicists, mathematicians, chemists, astronomers,
poets, musicians, painters, but we no longer have citizens. Or if we still have
some scattered in our abandoned countryside, they are dying there impoverished
and scorned. Such is the condition to which those who give us bread and provide
milk for our children are reduced, and such are the feelings they get from us.
However, I
concede that the evil is not as great as it could have become. Eternal
foresight, by placing beside various noxious plants some healing medicinal
herbs and setting inside the body of several harmful animals the remedy for
their wounds, has taught sovereigns, who are its ministers, to imitate its wisdom.
Through this example, that great monarch whose glory will only acquire new brilliance
from age to age drew from the very bosom of the sciences and the arts, sources
of a thousand moral failings, those celebrated societies charged with the dangerous
trust of human knowledge and, at the same time, with the sacred trust of
morals—charged, too, with taking care to preserve them in all their purity among
themselves and to demand that from the members they admit.19
These wise
institutions, reinforced by his august successor and imitated by all the kings
in Europe, will serve at least as a restraint on men of letters, who all aspire
to the honour of being admitted into the academies and will thus watch themselves
and try to make themselves worthy of that honour with useful works and irreproachable
morals. Among these academies, those who in their competitions for prizes with
which they pay tribute to literary merit offer a choice of subjects appropriate
to reanimating the love of virtue in citizens’ hearts will demonstrate that
this love reigns among them and will give nations such a rare and sweet
pleasure of seeing learned societies dedicating themselves to pouring out for
the human race, not merely agreeable enlightenment, but also beneficial teaching.
Let no one
therefore make an objection which is for me only a new proof. So many precautions
reveal only too clearly how necessary it is to take them, and people do not
seek remedies for evils which do not exist. Why must these ones, because of
their inadequacy, still have the character of ordinary remedies? So many
institutions created for the benefit of the learned are only more capable of impressing
them with the objects of the sciences and of directing minds towards their
cultivation. It seems, to judge from the precautions people take, that we have
too many farmers and are afraid of not having enough philosophers. I do not wish
to hazard a comparison here between agriculture and philosophy. People would
not put up with that. I will simply ask: What is philosophy? What do the
writings of the best known philosophers contain? What are the lessons of these
friends of wisdom? To listen to them, would one not take them for a troupe of
charlatans crying out in a public square, each from his own corner: “Come to me. I am the only one who does not deceive”? One of them
maintains that there are no bodies and that everything is appearance, another
that there is no substance except matter, no God other than the world. This one
here proposes that there are no virtues or vices, and that moral good and moral
evil are chimeras, that one over there that men are wolves and can devour each
other with a clear conscience. O great philosophers, why not reserve these
profitable lessons for your friends and children? You will soon earn your reward,
and we would have no fear of finding any of your followers among our own
friends and children.
There you have
the marvelous men on whom the esteem of their contemporaries was lavished
during their lives and for whom immortality was reserved after their passing
away! Such are the wise maxims which we have received from them and which we
will pass down to our descendants from age to age. Has paganism, though abandoned
to all the caprices of human reason, left posterity anything which could be
compared to the shameful monuments which printing has prepared for it under the
reign of the Gospel? The profane writings of Leucippus and Diagoras
perished with them.20 People had not yet invented the art of immortalizing
the extravagances of the human mind. But thanks to typographic characters (10) and the way we use them, the dangerous reveries of Hobbes and Spinoza
will remain forever. Go, you celebrated writings, which the ignorance and
rustic nature of our fathers would have been incapable of, pass down to our
descendants with those even more dangerous writings which exude the corruption
of morals in our age, and together carry into the centuries to come a faithful
history of the progress and the advantages of our sciences and our arts. If
they read you, you will not leave them in any perplexity about the question we
are dealing with today. And unless they are more foolish than we are, they will
lift their hands to heaven and say in the bitterness of their hearts, “Almighty
God, You who hold the minds of men in your hands, deliver us from the
enlightenment and the fatal arts of our fathers, and give us back ignorance, innocence,
and poverty, the only goods that can make our happiness and that are precious
in Your sight.”*
But if the
progress of the sciences and the arts has added nothing to our true happiness,
if it has corrupted our morality, and if that moral corruption has polluted
purity of taste, what will we think of that crowd of simpleminded writers who
have removed from the Temple of the Muses the obstacles which safeguarded
access to it and which nature had set up there as a test of strength for those
who would be tempted to seek knowledge? What will we think of those compilers
of works who have recklessly beaten down the door to the sciences and
introduced into their sanctuary a population unworthy of approaching it. One would hope that all those who could not advance far
in a career in letters would be turned back at the entrance way and thrown into
arts useful to society. A man who all his life will be a bad
versifier or a minor geometer could perhaps have become an important manufacturer
of textiles. Those whom nature has destined to make her disciples had no
need of teachers. Men like Bacon, Descartes, and Newton, these tutors of the human
race, did not require tutors themselves, and what guides could have led them to
those places where their vast genius carried them? Ordinary teachers could only
have limited their understanding by confining it within their own narrow capabilities.
With the first obstacles they encountered, they learned to exert themselves and
made the effort to traverse the immense space they moved through. If it is necessary
to permit some men to devote themselves to the study of the sciences and the
arts, that should be only those who feel in themselves the power to walk alone
in those men’s footsteps and to move beyond them. It is the task of this small
number of people to raise monuments to the glory of the human mind. But if we
wish nothing to lie outside their genius, then nothing must lie beyond their
hopes. That is the only encouragement they require. The soul adapts itself
insensibly to the objects which concern it, and it is great events which make
great men. The prince of eloquence was Consul of Rome, and perhaps the greatest
of the philosophers was Chancellor of England.21 Can we believe that if one of them had merely occupied a chair in
some university and the other had obtained only a modest pension from an
Academy, can we believe, I say, that their works would not have been affected
by their situations? So let kings not disdain to admit into their councils the
people who are most capable of giving them good advice, and may they give up
that old prejudice, invented by the pride of the great, that the art of leading
nations is more difficult than the art of enlightening them, as if it were
easier to induce men to do good voluntarily than to compel them to do it by
force. May learned men of the first rank find in their courts an honourable sanctuary. May they obtain there the only reward worthy of
them, contributing through their influence to the happiness of those people to
whom they have taught wisdom. Then, and only then,
will we see what can be achieved by virtue, science, and authority, energized
by a noble emulation and working cooperatively for the happiness of the human
race. But so long as power remains by itself on one side and enlightenment and
wisdom isolated on the other, wise men will rarely think of great things,
princes will even more rarely carry out fine actions, and nations will continue
to be wretched, corrupt, and unhappy.
As for us,
common men to whom heaven has not allotted such great talents and destined for
so much glory, let us remain in our obscurity. Let us not run after a
reputation that would elude us and which, in the present state of things, would
never give back to us what it would have cost, even if we had all the qualifications
to obtain it. What good is it looking for our happiness in the opinion of
others if we can find it in ourselves? Let us leave to others the care of
instructing nations about their duties and limit ourselves to carrying out our
own well. We do not need to know any more than this.
O virtue!
Sublime science of simple souls, are so many troubles
and trappings necessary for one to know you? Are your principles not engraved
in all hearts, and in order to learn your laws is it not enough to go back into
oneself and listen to the voice of one’s conscience in the silence of the
passions? There you have true philosophy. Let us learn to be satisfied with
that, and without envying the glory of those famous men who are immortalized in
the republic of letters, let us try to set between them and us that glorious
distinction which people made long ago between two great peoples: one knew how
to speak well; the other how to act well.22
[In Rousseau’s original text these are
footnotes]
(1) Princes always are always happy to see developing among
their subjects a taste for agreeable arts and for superfluities that do not
result in the export of wealth. For quite apart from the fact that in this way
they nourish that spiritual pettiness so appropriate for servitude, they know
very well that all the needs which people give themselves are so many chains
binding them. When Alexander wished to keep the Ichthyophagi
dependent on him, he forced them to abandon fishing and to feed themselves on
foods common to other people. And no one has ever been able to subjugate the
savages in America, who go around quite naked and live only from what their hunting
provides. In fact, what yoke could be imposed on men who have no need of
anything? [Back to
Text]
(2) “I like,” says Montaigne, “to argue and discuss, but only with a
few men and for myself. Because to serve as a spectacle for the great and to
make a display of one’s wit and one’s chatter is, I find, an occupation very unsuitable
to a man of honour.” But that is what all our fine wits do, except for one. [Back to Text]
(3) I do not dare speak of those happy nations who do not even know
the names of the vices we have such trouble suppressing, of those American savages
whose simple and natural political order Montaigne does not hesitate to prefer,
not merely to the laws of Plato, but even to anything more perfect which
philosophy will ever be able to dream up for governing a people. He cites a number
of striking examples for people capable of appreciating them. But what of that,
he says, they do not wear breeches! [Back to Text]
(4) In all honesty I wish someone would tell me what opinion the
Athenians themselves must have had about eloquence, when they took so much care
to remove it from that honest tribunal against whose judgments not even the gods
appealed. What did the Romans think of medicine when they banished it from the
republic? And when a remnant of humanity persuaded the Spaniards to forbid
their lawyers from entering America, what idea must they have had of
jurisprudence? Could we not say that by this single act they believed they were
making restitution for all the evils which they had committed against these
unfortunate Indians? [Back to Text]
(5) It is easy to see the allegory in the story of Prometheus, and it
does not appear that the Greeks who nailed him up on the Caucasus thought of
him any more favourably than the Egyptians did of their god Theutus.
“The satyr,” says an ancient fable, “wished to embrace and kiss fire the first
time he saw it. But Prometheus cried out at him, ‘Satyr, you will be lamenting
the beard on your chin, for that burns when you touch it.’” This is the subject
of the frontispiece. [The illustration in
the opening title pages for the Discourse was a picture of Prometheus warning
the satyr]. [Back to Text]
(6) The less we know, the more we believe we know. Did the Peripatetics have doubts about anything? Did not Descartes
construct the universe with cubes and vortexes? And is there even today in
Europe a physicist who is so feeble that he does not boldly explain away this
profound mystery of electricity, which will perhaps forever remain the despair
of true philosophers? [Back to Text]
(7) I am a long way from thinking that this ascendancy of women is
something bad in itself. It is a gift given to them by nature for the happiness
of the human race. Were it better directed, it could produce as much good as it
does evil nowadays. We do not have a sufficient sense of what advantages would
arise in society from a better education provided for this half of the human
race which governs the other half. Men will always do what women find pleasing.
Hence, if you wish men to become great and virtuous, then
teach women what greatness in the soul and virtue are. The reflections which
arise from this subject, something Plato dealt with long ago, really deserve to
be better developed by a pen worthy of following such a master and of defending
such a great cause. [Back to Text]
(8) Pensées Philosophiques. [Back to Text]
(9) Such was the education of the Spartans, according to their
greatest king. It is, Montaigne states, worth paying considerable attention to
the fact that those excellent regulations of Lycurgus, which were in truth
monstrous in their perfection, were so careful about the raising of children,
as if that was their main concern, and in the very home of the Muses made so
little mention of learning that it is as if these noble young people disdained
all other yokes and needed to be given, instead of our teachers of science,
instructors in valour, prudence, and justice.
Let us now
see how the same author talks about the ancient Persians. Plato, he says,
speaks of how the eldest son in their royal succession was raised in the following
manner. After his birth, he was handed over, not to women, but to eunuchs who,
because of their virtue, had the highest authority and were close to the king.
These eunuchs took charge of making his body beautiful and healthy. At seven
years of age they taught him to ride and to hunt. When he reached fourteen,
they handed him over to four men: the wisest, the most just, the most
temperate, and the most courageous in the kingdom. The first taught him
religion, the second to be always truthful, the third to overcome his desires,
and the fourth not to fear anything. All of them, I will add, working to make
him good, and none of them to make him learned.
Astyages, in Xenophon, asks
Cyrus to give him an account of his last lesson. It was this, answered Cyrus:
In our school a large boy who had a small tunic gave it to one of his companions
who was smaller and took his tunic, which was larger, away from him. Our tutor
made me the judge of this dispute, and I ruled that things should remain as
they were and that this arrangement seemed to suit both boys better. The tutor
criticized me for making a poor decision, on the ground that I had stopped to
take convenience into account, when my first concern should have been to
provide justice, which demands that no one is forced in matters concerning what
belongs to him. And, Cyrus added, he was punished for it, the way we are
punished in our villages for having forgotten the first aorist of τύπτω?.
My teacher would have to give me a splendid declamation, in genere demonstrativo
[in the style of a formal presentation],
before he could persuade me that his school is as good as that one. [Back to Text]
(10) Considering the dreadful disorders which printing has already
caused in Europe and judging the future by the progress which this evil makes
day by day, we can readily predict that sovereigns will not delay in taking as
many pains to banish this terrible art from their states as they took to
introduce it there. Sultan Achmet, yielding to the
repeated demands of some alleged men of taste, consented to establish a
printing press in Constantinople. But the press had barely started before they
were forced to destroy it and throw the equipment down a well. They say that
Caliph Omar, when consulted about what should be done with the library of Alexandria,
answered as follows: “If the books of this library contain matters opposed to
the Koran, they are bad and must be burned. If they contain only the doctrine
of the Koran, burn them anyway, for they are superfluous.” Our learned men have
cited this reasoning as the height of absurdity. However, suppose Gregory the
Great had been there instead of Omar and the Gospel instead of the Koran. The
library would still have been burned, and that might well have been the finest
act in the life of this illustrious pontiff. [Back to Text]
1The Latin quotation in Rousseau’s text reads: Barbarus hic ego sum qui non intelligor
illis. [Back to Text]
2This Preliminary Notice was not in the
original version of the discourse. When he was preparing a collected edition of
his work in 1763, Rousseau added this opening paragraph. The “severe treatment”
he mentions refers to the fact that in 1762 his work Emile was condemned in Paris and Geneva, and Rousseau was forced to
undertake the first of many unwelcome journeys to avoid arrest. [Back to Text]
3The Holy League was formed by Catholics in
France during the sixteenth century to attack Protestants. [Back to Text]
4The Latin quotation in Rousseau’s text reads: Decipimur specie recti.
[Back to Text]
5Pyrrhonism (from the ancient Greek
philosopher Pyrrho of Elis) means here a sophisticated
skepticism, a willingness to argue but without taking a firm stand. [Back to Text]
6Sesostris was a common name for Egyptian
pharaohs. Sesostris I was a pharaoh who conducted a
number of military campaigns in Syria, Nubia, and
Libya. He also carried out an energetic program of building monuments. His rule
was a prosperous time for Egypt. Cambyses was a Persian Emperor who in 525 BC
invaded Egypt, overthrew the pharaoh, and began almost two centuries of Persian
control over Egypt. [Back to Text]
7Demosthenes (d. 322 BC) was the greatest of
all the Greek orators. Many of his finest speeches were trying to rouse the
Greeks against the imperial ambitions of the Macedonians. His attempts to
foster rebellion against the Macedonian control of Greece resulted in his having
to commit suicide. [Back to Text]
8Ennius (b. 239 BC) was the writer the
Romans considered the father of their poetry. Terence was one of their most
famous writers of dramatic comedy. Ovid, Catullus, and Martial were important
writers from a later period (the first century BC). The title Arbiter of Good
Taste (arbiter elegantiae)
is the Latin term generally applied to someone who rules on matters of correct
taste. This is probably a reference to Petronius (d. 66 AD), a Roman satirist,
who was appointed arbiter elegantiae in the court of Nero. [Back to Text]
9The tyrant in Athens is a reference to
Peisistratus, who, in the sixth century BC, apparently began to establish
written versions of Homer’s epics, perhaps in an attempt to provide more or
less standardized copies for use in school. [Back to Text]
10Cato the Elder was Marcus Cato (234-149 BC)
a very prominent Roman soldier, politician, and orator, famous, among other
things, for his attacks on corruption and his emphasis on traditional Roman
virtues. [Back to
Text]
11Epicurus (c. 341 to 271 BC) was Greek
philosopher who advocated materialistic explanations of natural events and a hedonistic
morality; Zeno is probably a reference to Zeno of Citium
(334 to 262 BC), founder of the Stoic school (this observation comes from Wayne
Martin of the University of Essex); Arcesilas (c. 315
to c. 241 BC) was a Greek skeptical philosopher. Rousseau, Martin notes, is
thus referring to the leaders of the three best known Hellenistic schools of philosophy:
the Epicureans, the Stoics, and the Skeptics. [Back to Text]
12Gaius Fabricius Luscinus was a Roman general and statesman in the third century
BC, famous for his embodiment of the traditional Roman virtues. Cineas (330 to 270 BC) was a Greek politician from
Thessaly. [Back to
Text]
13Louis XII (1462 to 1515) and Henry IV (1553
to 1610) were strong, successful, and popular kings of France. They fought wars
outside of France and helped to consolidate the kingdom internally. [Back to Text]
14Sumptuary laws were passed in England and
France throughout the Renaissance to control the purchase of certain goods and
thus to restrict and control the spread of luxury items. [Back to Text]
15A Sybarite is a native of Sybaris and, by
reputation, a person devoted to luxury and luxurious living. A Lacedaemonian is a native of Sparta. [Back to Text]
16Arouet is the original name of Voltaire
(1694-1778), the most famous writer in France in the eighteenth century. [Back to Text]
17Carle is a reference to Charles-Andre Vanloo, and Pierre a reference to Jean-Baptiste-Marie
Pierre, two well-known French painters. Praxiteles and Phidias were the two
most famous Athenian sculptors of the fifth century BC. Pigalle
(Jean-Baptiste Pigalle) was
an eighteenth-century French sculptor. [Back to Text]
18Hannibal was the great Carthaginian general
who in the third century BC took his army from Spain over the Alps to attack
Rome from the north. He won the major military victories of Cannae and Lake Trasimene. Julius Caesar led Roman armies in Gaul in the
first century BC and expanded Rome’s empire there. When he brought his troops
back across the Rubicon (a river in north Italy), that was a declaration of war
against the Roman senate. [Back to Text]
19The “great monarch” is a reference to Louis
XIV (1643-1715) who established a number of learned academies. [Back to Text]
20Leucippus, a fifth-century Greek philosopher,
was the founder of the materialistic school of Atomism; Diagoras
was a famous atheistic Greek philosopher. [Back to Text]
21The phrase Consul of Rome is a reference to
Cicero, and title Chancellor of England is a reference to Francis Bacon. [Back to Text]
22This distinction was commonly made between Athens and Sparta. [Back to Text]
[Back to johnstonia
Home Page]
Page loads on johnstonia
web files
View
Stats