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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
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 notes are indicated with
an asterisk.
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)*
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.*
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.* 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.* (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.* 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.*
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.*
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.*
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.*
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.* 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.* “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.”*
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.*
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?* 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?*
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?*
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.*
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.*
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.*
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.* 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.* 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.*
[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]
*The Latin quotation in Rousseau’s text reads: Barbarus hic ego sum qui non intelligor
illis. [Back to Text]
*This
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]
*The
Holy League was formed by Catholics in France during the sixteenth century to
attack Protestants. [Back to Text]
*The Latin quotation in Rousseau’s text
reads: Decipimur specie recti.
[Back to Text]
*Pyrrhonism (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]
*Sesostris 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]
*Demosthenes
(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]
*Ennius (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]
*The
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]
*Cato
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]
*Epicurus
(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]
*Gaius
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]
*Louis
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]
*Sumptuary
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]
*A 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]
*Arouet is the original name of Voltaire (1694-1778), the
most famous writer in France in the eighteenth century. [Back to Text]
*Carle
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]
*Hannibal
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]
*The
“great monarch” is a reference to Louis XIV (1643-1715) who established a
number of learned academies. [Back to Text]
*Leucippus,
a fifth-century Greek philosopher, was the founder of the materialistic school
of Atomism; Diagoras was a famous atheistic Greek
philosopher. [Back to Text]
*The
phrase Consul of Rome is a reference to Cicero, and title Chancellor of England
is a reference to Francis Bacon. [Back to
Text]
*This distinction was commonly made between
Athens and Sparta. [Back to Text]
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