Rousseau and Romanticism

I scarcely need say that I am speaking of the man of science only in so far as he is purely naturalistic in his point of view. There may enter into the total personality of Edison or any particular man of science other and very different elements.

291

M. René Berthelot has written a book on pragmatism and similar tendencies in contemporary philosophy entitled Un Romantisme utilitaire. I have not read it but the title alone is worth more than most books on the subject I have read.

292

Dedication of the Æneis (1697).

293

Adventure of one Hans Pfaal.

294

His attempt to rewrite Hyperion from a humanitarian point of view is a dismal failure.

295

There is also a strong idyllic element in Paradise Lost as Rousseau (Emile, V) and Schiller (Essay on Naïve and Sentimental Poetry) were among the first to point out. Critics may be found even to-day who, like Tennyson, prefer the passages which show a richly pastoral imagination to the passages where the ethical imagination is required but where it does not seem to prevail sufficiently over theology.

296

XII, 74.

297

Three Philosophical Poets, 188.

298

After telling of the days when “il n’y avait pour moi ni passé ni avenir et je goûtais à la fois les délices de mille siècles,” Saint-Preux concludes: “Hélas! vous avez disparu comme un éclair. Cette éternité de bonheur ne fut qu’un instant de ma vie. Le temps a repris sa lenteur dans les moments de mon désespoir, et l’ennui mesure par longues années le reste infortuné de mes jours” (Nouvelle Héloïse, Pt. III, Lettre VI).

299

The Church, so far as it has become humanitarian, has itself succumbed to naturalism.

300

Sutta of the Great Decease.

301

If a man recognizes the supreme rôle of fiction or illusion in life while proceeding in other respects on Kantian principles, he will reach results similar to the “As-if Philosophy” (Philosophie des Als Ob) of Vaihinger, a leading authority on Kant and co-editor of the Kantstudien. This work, though not published until 1911, was composed, the author tells us in his preface, as early as 1875-78. It will be found to anticipate very strikingly pragmatism and various other isms in which philosophy has been proclaiming so loudly of late its own bankruptcy.

302

“C’est en vain qu’on voudrait assigner à la vie un but, au sens humain du mot.” L’Evolution créatrice, 55.

303

Metaphysics, 1078 b.

304

In the beginning was the Word! To seek to substitute, like Faust, the Deed for the Word is to throw discrimination to the winds. The failure to discriminate as to the quality of the deed is responsible for the central sophistry of Faust (see p. 331) and perhaps of our modern life in general.

305

“J’adore la liberté; j’abhorre la gêne, la peine, l’assujettissement.” Confessions, Livre I.

306

Analects, XI, CXI. Cf. ibid., VI, CXX: “To give one’s self earnestly to the duties due to men, and while respecting spiritual beings, to keep aloof from them, may be called wisdom.” Much that has passed current as religion in all ages has made its chief appeal, not to awe but to wonder; and like many humanists Confucius was somewhat indifferent to the marvellous. “The subjects on which the Master did not talk were: extraordinary things, feats of strength, disorder and spiritual beings” (ibid., VII, CXX).

307

One of the last Chinese, I am told, to measure up to the Confucian standard was Tsêng Kuo-fan (1811-1872) who issued forth from poverty, trained a peasant soldiery and, more than any other one person, put down the Taiping Rebellion.

308

See J. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire’s Introduction to his translation of the Nicomachean Ethics, p. cxlix.

309

Eth. Nic., 1122-25.

310

I have in mind such passages as P., VIII, 76-78, 92-96; N., VI, 1-4; N., XI, 13-16.

311

“II n’y eut jamais pour moi d’intermédiaire entre tout et rien.” Confessions, Livre VII.

312

Some wag, it will be remembered, suggested as an alternative title for this work: Wild Religions I have known.

313

Letters, II, 298; cf. ibid., 291: “I have never known a life less wisely controlled or less helped by the wisdom of others than his. The whole retrospect of it is pathetic; waste, confusion, ruin of one of the most gifted and sweetest natures the world ever knew.”

314

Nic. Eth., 1145 b. The opposition between Socrates or Plato and Aristotle, when put thus baldly, is a bit misleading. Socrates emphasized the importance of practice (μελέτη) in the acquisition of virtue, and Plato has made much of habit in the Laws.

315