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GEORGE HENRY LEWES

(1817-1878)

HEN a history or biography makes its way by fifty years of slow growth from the full-leather binding of the gentleman's library to the paper-backed edition sold at a shilling, it is beyond the reach of negative criticism. George Henry Lewes wrote a "History of Philosophy," which gained him the consideration of scholars. His "Studies in Animal Life" showed his sympathy with the high purposes of science. His "Aristotle" and "Life of Goethe» testified his habit of frequenting "the higher walks" of the world's literature. But only in his "Life of Robespierre» has he attained what seems to be the enduring honor of the paper back. The popularity of the book is due first to its picturesqueness, but scarcely less to the essay writer's habit of limiting himself. There is a sufficient element of completeness in the treatment of each episode to allow the book to be read, a little at a time, with satisfaction. For those who believe or feel with Dr. Johnson that "smattering" is a necessary habit of the human intellect, a result of the compulsion under which it cannot escape practicing the comparative method of scientific investigation, the essayist must always be the best historian and the most instructive biographer.

Lewes was born in London, April 18th, 1817. He lived to the age of sixty-one, dying November 30th, 1878, after a life devoted industriously and successfully to literature. It seems to be the irony of some halfmocking moral law, that such a man after such labors should be remembered chiefly as the associate of George Eliot!—the man who gave up his own uncongenial family life to seek the pleasures of intellectual sympathy. It is irony, however, which probes what seems to be the radical failing of his character, -a failing which initially was more than half a virtue, the fineness of nerve which made all that is repulsive in life so painful to him that he shunned it, and so lost that discipline of intellectual disturbance through which moral greatness is fostered and enabled to find its readiest expression.

ROUSSEAU, ROBESPIERRE, AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

THE

HE spirit which animated the Revolution was the spirit of Rousseau. From the Declaration of the Rights of Man to the formation of the Constitution in 1793, there is no important act in which the influence of the Genevese philosopher is not discernible. But beyond this Rousseau has special interest for us here, as the acknowledged teacher of Robespierre, who, of all his disciples, adhered most rigidly to his principles, and gave them the most unflinching application.

Rightly to understand Robespierre it is first indispensable that we should understand Rousseau. I shall be fulfilling, therefore, the first object of this biography in devoting a few pages to the political writings of the author of the "Social Contract."

The gayety, frivolity, wit, and elegance of France, so charming to those who lived in the salons, formed, as it were, but the graceful vine which clustered over a volcano about to burst; or, rather, let me say it was the rouge which, on a sallow, sunken cheek, simulated the ruddy glow of health. Lying deep down in the heart of society there was profound seriousness: the sadness of misery, of want, of slavery clanking its chains, of free thought struggling for empire. This seriousness was about to find utterance. The most careless observer could not fail to perceive the heavy thunderclouds which darkened the horizon of this sunny day. The court and the salons were not France; they occupied the foremost place upon the stage, but another actor was about to appear, before whom they would shrink into insignificance; that actor was the People.

The people became the fashion. Philanthrophy was de bon ton. The philosophers speculated about the people; the littérateurs declaimed about them. Courtiers played at being peasants. A village was constructed at Trianon; village fêtes were given at royal farms by royal peasants. Idyls were à la mode. Florian, Gesner, and "Paul et Virginie" were the flowers of this peasant literature. As in our own day we see some aristocratic writers joining with the most democratic in the senseless laudation of that grandiose abstraction - "The People," so in unhappy France the warmest eulogists of the starved, uneducated, uncared-for masses were those who profited by their subjection. Restless, unbelieving, sick at heart of the existing state of things, they played at being peasants, and poetized the people!

Among the philosophic nobles, there were some who quitted their talons rouges to wear thick shoes; and relinquished their costume to put on that of the bourgeoisie. It was very dangerous work playing thus with their dignities, when those dignities were already tottering!

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Few were in earnest, because few had convictions. At length a man arose in whom pretense grew into seriousness, paradoxes ripened into convictions: that man was Rousseau. The Contrat Social was the bible of the Revolution. From it orators drew their principles, their political aphorisms, their political language. As a metaphysician, and as a rhetorician, his influence was incalculable. He was the man of his epoch, and therefore was he powerful. He united the elegance and eloquence of the philosophers and littérateurs to the sadness and seriousness of the people. In his strange career we see him uneasily moving amidst the salons of Paris, dressed in his Armenian robes, creating a sensation amongst the wits and poets, the dilettanti and beauties; among them, but not of them "; and then, sick of his uneasy position, brusquely breaking away from all society, turning misanthrope, disdaining all the elegancies of life, and endeavoring in solitude to find that peace among plants which men had denied him. A similar course is observable in his writings: he commences with a frivolous paradox to end with an extravagant conviction.

The mixture of pretense and reality in Rousseau; of willful folly, and of glorious truth; of despicable baseness, and of noble qualities, makes up the mystery and piquant charm of his character. "He was," as Carlyle finely says, "a lonely man, his life a long soliloquy." In that soliloquy may be read the heights and depths of human nature. His ideas were often noble, grand, and tender; his acts degraded. He taught mothers by his eloquence to nurse their children, and threw his own children into the foundling hospital. His sensibility led him to sympathize with whatever was beautiful; his weakness and selfishness suggested acts which have left ineffaceable stains upon his memory. He was one of that class of men whose practice springs not from their precepts; in whom the unclouded intellect discerns and honors truth, while the will is too miserably weak to act the truth. He has had his acrid antagonists, and his eloquent defenders. Are not both right-both wrong? It is possible to draw, and truly draw, a fearful picture of one-half of this man;

but such a one-sided view will never obtain general acceptance, for many will deeply sympathize with what was noble in him, and impartial men will always proclaim it.

Few read his works. That marvelous book, "The Confes sions," will never, indeed, cease to find readers; but while "Émile"> and "La Nouvelle Héloïse" from time to time tempt the adventurous, lured by celebrated titles, I do not believe that one student in fifty ever looks into the "Discourse on the Inequality of Conditions, or the "Social Contract. » But as these were his great revolutionary works, it is to them that I must here direct attention.

The period which elapses between 1745 and 1764 is at once the most disastrous, and, in some respects, the most remarkable, in the history of France. No period offers such striking contrasts. On the one hand, France, beaten in every quarter of the globe, loses her colonies, her marine, and even her honor; on the other hand, she collects together at Paris a brilliant band of writers, whose ideas are destined to become the guiding lights of Europe. Among these Rousseau holds a foremost rank.

In the year 1750 the Academy of Dijon proposed, as the subject of its prize essay, this question: "Has the establishment of science and literature contributed to purify society?»

It was an absurd question. Absurd, because as literature is itself the expression of society, which it in turn reacts upon, you cannot separate the two, and determine either the influence of literature upon society, or what society would have been had there been no literature: in other words, what society would have been, had it not been society; for society is a complex condition, of which literature is a vital element. In rude ballads as in wealthy libraries, literature is an agent inseparable from civilization. You might as well speculate on what a man's constitution would be without a liver, as on what the constitution of society would be without literature. In this question, however, the metaphysicians of the eighteenth century saw no absurdity. Rousseau determined to answer it.

"One day, walking with Diderot at Vincennes, talking on the proposed question, 'Which side do you take?' I asked him (it is Diderot who speaks). He replied, "The affirmative.' 'That' said I, is the pons asinorum: all the mediocre talents will take that route, and you can only utter commonplaces. Take the other side, and you will find it an open field, rich and fruitful,

for eloquence and philosophy.' 'You are right' said he, after a few moments' reflection; 'I will follow your advice."

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It was as a paradox which would startle rather than as a truth which might be commonplace, that Rousseau first threw down the gauntlet against civilization, proclaiming the superiority of ignorance and the greatness of savage life. There was something piquant in the idea. He confesses as much in the first page, where he asked himself, "How shall I dare to blame the sciences in the presence of one of the most learned bodies of Europe? or praise ignorance before a celebrated Academy?" But the result is more piquant still; this Academy absolutely awarded the prize to the audacious eulogist of ignorance! After this we cannot wonder if a paradox which an Academy could crown should produce an immense sensation in a frivolous society startled by the novelty, and allured by the eloquence of the Discourse. There was an air of serious conviction about Rousseau. A close and pressing logic, bold and sweeping dogmatism, and a masterly style, if they failed to convince, at least left readers in an embarrassment from whence there was no escape. No one was persuaded, yet no one could refute him. Replies abounded; even a king condescended to step into the arena; but Rousseau's antagonists did not see the absurdity of the question, and could not, therefore, see the pшTo evoos of his

answer.

Rousseau's position is this: Science, Art, and Literature are the produce and producers of all the vices of civilization. Man in a state of unlettered simplicity is healthy, brave, and virtuous. He loses these qualities in society. "The ebb and flow of the ocean have not been more regularly subjected to the course of the planet which illumes the night than the fate of morals and probity to the progress of science and art." This aphorism is universally accepted, and Rousseau's tactic consists in boldly, and without qualification, applying it in the sense contrary to that accepted by mankind. He thus continues: "We have seen virtue disappear, according as the light of the sciences has risen. upon our horizon, and the same phenomenon has been observed. in all times and in all countries." This position, so authoritatively assumed, domineers over the whole argument. He subsequently supports it by a magnificent audacity: he gives to every science a vice as its origin! "Astronomy is born from superstition; Eloquence from ambition, from hate, from flattery, from

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