JEAN JACQUES
ROUSSEAU
DISCOURSE ON
THE SCIENCES AND THE ARTS
Translated by
Ian Johnston
Vancouver Island University
2013
Second Revised Edition 2018
[A Rich Text Format
version of this text is available for download here: First
Discourse (RTF)]
This translation prepared by Ian Johnston
of Vancouver Island University, is available for general non-commercial use. Teachers
and members of the general public may make copies of it and distribute it (in
print or electronically) free of charge and may edit the text to suit their
purposes. This text (2018) is the second revised and corrected version of a
translation which first published on the internet in 2008. For comments,
questions, and so on please contact Ian Johnston).
Table of Contents
Preliminary Notice
Preface
Discourse
First Part
Second Part
Note on the Translator
Translator’s Note
In the following text there are two sorts
of footnotes, those provided by Rousseau as footnotes in his text and those
provided by the translator. Rousseau’s notes are indicated with the opening
phrase [Rousseau’s note]; the
translator’s notes are indicated with the phrase [Translator’s note]. Occasionally the translator has inserted an
explanatory phrase in the text itself. These are in italics and within square
brackets: e.g., [Explanatory phrase].
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.
On
the Sciences and the Arts
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 the
purification of morals?
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 that have triumphed over
all parts of literature and from which the programs in the 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 that wins people’s
admiration nowadays, I can expect only universal censure. And I should not
count on public approval just because I have been honored 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 made 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 and 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 finished. Little expecting the honor I received, since I
first 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)(4)
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? The one, 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 dare to blame 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. Probity 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 sentiment 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 a party enlightened and of integrity who is judge in his
own case.
To
this purpose, 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.
First
Part
It
is a grand and beautiful spectacle to see a man somehow emerge from nothing by
his own efforts, dispel with the light of his reason the shadows in which
nature had enveloped him, rise above himself, soar in his mind up to the
celestial regions, move with giant strides, like the sun, through the vast
expanse of the universe, and, what is even grander and more difficult, return
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
the 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 letters. To the art of
writing was joined the art of thinking, a sequence that seems strange but 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 make it pleasing. 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 peoples. Need has
raised thrones; the sciences and the arts have strengthened
them. You earthly powers, cherish talents and protect those who nurture them.(5) Civilized nations, cultivate them. Happy
slaves, to them you owe that refined and delicate taste in which you take
pride, that softness of character and that urbanity of mores 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 by 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 splendor. 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 dispositions; 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 vigor. 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 that 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 obliging
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 reigns over our
morals, and all minds seem to have been cast in the same mold. Politeness
incessantly makes demands, propriety issues orders, and people incessantly
follow customary habits, never their own genius. 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 friend we must wait for critical occasions,
that is to say, wait until it is too late, because these are the very occasions
when we need to know who our friend is.
What
a cortege of vices accompanies this uncertainty! No more sincere friendships,
no more genuine 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 this 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, without offending 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.(6) Some excesses will be forbidden, and some vices
held in disgrace, but others will be honored 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.(7)
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 bustling about from sunrise to
sunset to please 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 retreat to
the extent that 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.(8) 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 before their own homes. The nascent letters 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 learned, always voluptuous, always
enslaved, experienced 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.(9)
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 modesty,
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
Arbiter of Good Taste.(10)
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, poisonings, 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 spread the
enlightenment from which our age glorifies itself.
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 honours
in letters 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, then the people of China should be 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 have
been capable of keeping it safe from the yoke of the ignorant and coarse Tartars,
what use have all these erudite men been to it? What fruit has it reaped from
the honours lavished on them? Could it be that of being populated by slaves and
evildoers?
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 that conquered Asia so easily and alone
acquired the glory of having the history of its institutions taken for a
philosophical novel. Such were the Scythians, of 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 itself been like that 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.(11)
It
is not owing to 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 debating about 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 mores and learned to scorn their teachings.(12)
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, that
Republic of demi-gods rather than of men? Its virtues seemed so much greater
than those of humanity. 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.(13)
The
outcome indicated this difference. Athens became the abode of politeness and
good taste, the land of orators and philosophers. The elegance of its buildings
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 Lacedaemon is less brilliant. “In that place,” other nations
used to say, “the men are born virtuous, and the very 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 that the most
important and most unfortunate among them delivered on the learned men and
artists of his time.
“I
have examined the poets,” he says, “and I look on them as people whose talent
overawes both themselves and others; they 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 prejudice. 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 eyes 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 eclipsed.”(14) Up to that time
Romans had been content to practice 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 honorable 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 splendor has succeeded Roman simplicity? What is this strange
language? What are these effeminate customs? What do these statues signify,
these paintings, these buildings? Madmen! what have you done? You masters of
nations, have you become 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 showered 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.(15) He did not hear
there this frivolous eloquence, the study and charm of futile men. What then
did Cineas see that was so majestic? O citizens! He saw a spectacle which
neither your riches nor all your arts will ever produce, the most beautiful
sight that 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?(16) Among us, it is true, Socrates would not have
drunk hemlock, but he would have drunk from a still more bitter 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 proud 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, peoples,
know 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 from which she
protects you, and that the difficulty you experience in educating yourselves is
not the least of her benefits. Men are perverse; they would have been even
worse if they had had the misfortune of being born erudite.
How
humiliating these reflections are for humanity! How our pride must be mortified
by them! What! Could probity be the daughter of ignorance? Could knowledge and
virtue be incompatible? What consequences could we not draw from these views?
But to reconcile these apparent contradictions, we need only examine closely
the vanity and the emptiness of those proud titles that dazzle us and that 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 repose was the inventor of the sciences.(17) 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 that 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 futile 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 at the
edge of the well where truth has withdrawn? 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 the 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 infinite number of combinations, but truth has only one form
of being. Besides, who seeks it in full sincerity? Even with the best of wills,
by what marks does one recognize it for certain? In this crowd
of different sentiments, what will be our criterion to judge it properly?(18) 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 propose, 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
fundamentally 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 distinguish oneself, what are
you not capable of?
To
misuse one’s time is a great evil. But 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 splendor of states, but, having forgotten about the need for
[1] sumptuary laws, will it still dare to deny that
good morals are essential to the duration of empires and that
luxury is diametrically opposed to good morals?(19) 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 spoke incessantly about morality and virtue; our
politicians speak 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 clearly have been
worth 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?(20)
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.(21) 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.(22) 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 sheepskins, after taming Austrian pride, crushed 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 fleeting or
virtuous and lasting. I say brilliant, but with what luster? 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 are in a
position to set the tone, when men have sacrificed their taste to those who
tyrannize over their liberty, when, 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?(23) What will that artist do, gentlemen? He will
lower his genius to the level of his age and prefer to create commonplace works
that 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 beauties you have sacrificed to our false delicacy
and how many great things the spirit of gallantry, so fertile in small things,
has cost you!(24)
Thus
the dissolution of morals, a necessary consequence of luxury, brings with it in
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, woe to 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 those like 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.(25)
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, towards 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
entryways 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, and
this is once again the work of the sciences and of all those arts which are
practiced in the shadow 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 almost without having drawn 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 scholarly more than they did training to
become vigorous and warlike. In fact, says the sensible man who describes these
two characteristics, 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
animating them.
The
Romans maintained that military virtue was extinguished among them as they
began to know about paintings, engravings, 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 the
vigour of the soul. In fact, how do we think men whom the smallest need
overwhelms and the least trouble repels 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 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.(26)
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 everywhere immense establishments where
young people are raised at great expense to learn everything except their
duties. 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 that 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 homeland will never strike their ears, and if they hear
talk of God, it will be less to be in awe of Him than to be frightened of Him.(27) I would be just as happy, a wise man said, had
my pupil spent his time on the tennis court. At least 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, and not what they ought to forget.(28)
Our
gardens are decorated with statues and our galleries with paintings. What would
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 wayward folly of
the heart and reason, carefully drawn 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 bad 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 probity 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 honor.
There are a thousand prizes for fine discourses, none for fine actions. Let
someone tell me, however, 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
reestablishment 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 sentiments they receive 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 antidotes 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.(29)
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 that 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 peoples
the rare and sweet pleasure of seeing learned societies dedicating themselves
to showering humankind with, not merely agreeable enlightenment, but also
beneficial teachings.
Let
no one therefore make an objection which for me is 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 capable of
impressing them further with the objects of the sciences and of directing minds
towards their cultivation. It seems, to judge from the precautions taken, 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: it would
not be tolerated. 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 a representation, 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 your 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.
Behold
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 that
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.(30) The art of
immortalizing the extravagances of the human mind had not yet been invented.
But thanks to typographic characters and the way we use them,
the dangerous reveries of Hobbes and Spinoza will remain forever.(31) Go, you
celebrated writings, which the ignorance and rustic lives 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 out of their senses more 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 mores, and if that moral corruption has polluted
purity of taste, what will we think of that crowd of simplifying 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 and thrown into arts useful to society.
The sort of 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 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 comprehension. 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,
it 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 proportions 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 philosophers was Chancellor of England.(32) 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 peoples 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
honorable asylum. May they obtain there the only reward worthy of them,
contributing through their influence to the happiness of those peoples to whom
they have taught wisdom. Only then will we see what can be achieved by virtue,
science, and authority, animated 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 peoples 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 that, 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 to seek our happiness in the
opinion of others if we can find it in ourselves? Let us leave to others the
care of instructing peoples about their duties and limit ourselves to carrying
out our own well. Beyond this, we do not need to know any more.
O
virtue! Sublime science of simple souls, are so many troubles and appurtenances
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
was made long ago between two great peoples: one knew how to
speak well; the other how to act well.(33)
ENDNOTES
(1) [Translator’s
note] The Latin quotation in
Rousseau’s text reads: Barbarus hic ego
sum qui non intelligor illis. [Back to Text]
(2) [Translator’s
note] 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. [Back to Text]
(3)
[Translator’s note] The Holy League was formed by Catholics in
France during the sixteenth century to combat the growth of Protestantism. [Back to Text]
(4)
[Translator’s note] The Latin quotation in Rousseau’s text
reads: Decipimur specie recti. [Back to Text]
(5)
[Rousseau’s note] Princes always are always happy to see among
their subjects a spreading 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 pettiness of soul 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 [fish-eating people] dependent on him,
he forced them to abandon fishing and to feed themselves on foods common to
other peoples. And no one has ever been able to tame 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 need nothing? [Back to Text]
(6)
[Translator’s note] 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]
(7)
[Rousseau’s note] “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 honor.” But that is what
all our fine wits do, except for one. [Back to Text]
(8)
[Translator’s note] 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]
(9)
[Translator’s note] 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]
(10)
[Translator’s note] 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 elegantiarum) 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 elegantiarum in the
court of Nero. [Back to Text]
(11)
[Rousseau’s note] 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 that philosophy will ever be able to dream up for governing
peoples. He cites a number of striking examples for those capable of
appreciating them. But what of that! he says, they do not wear breeches! [Translator’s note]: The
“rustic nation” referred to in the main text is probably the Swiss
confederation. [Back to Text]
(12)
[Rousseau’s note] In all honesty I wish someone would tell me
what opinion the Athenians themselves must have 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 their 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 that they had committed
against these unfortunate Indians? [Back to Text]
(13)
[Translator’s note] 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]
(14)
[Translator’s note] 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. 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]
(15)
[Translator’s note] 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]
(16)
[Translator’s note] 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]
(17)
[Rousseau’s Note] 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 Theuth. “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]
(18)
[Rousseau’s note] The less one knows, the more one thinks one
knows. 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]
(19)
[Translator’s note] 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]
(20)
[Translator’s note] 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]
(21)
[Translator’s note] Cyrus’ Persia was conquered by Alexander the
Great in 334 BC; the Scythians were able to fight off attempted invasions by
Darius I (512 BC) and by Alexander the Great (329 BC). [Back to Text]
(22)
[Translator’s note] Rousseau here refers to the ancient republics
of Rome and Carthage. [Back to Text]
(23)
[Rousseau’s note] 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 that 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]
(24)
[Translator’s note] Arouet is the original name of Voltaire
(1694-1778), the most famous writer in France in the eighteenth century. [Back to Text]
(25)
[Translator’s note] 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]
(26)
[Translator’s note] 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]
(27)
[Rousseau’s note] Pensées
Philosophiques. [Back to Text]
(28)
[Rousseau’s note] Such was the education of the Spartans as far
as their greatest kings were concerned. Montaigne states that it is worth
paying considerable attention to the fact that that excellent political
organization of Lycurgus, which was in truth monstrous in its perfection, was
so careful about the raising of children, as if that was its main concern, and
in the very home of the Muses made so little mention of learned teaching that
it is as though these noble young people disdained all other yokes and needed
to be given, instead of our teachers of sciences, nothing but instructors in
valor, 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 military coat gave it
to one of his companions who was smaller and took his coat, 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 what was suitable into account, when my first
concern should have been to provide justice, which demands that no one must be compelled
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
[I strike]. 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]
(29)
[Translator’s note] The “great monarch” is a reference to Louis
XIV (1643-1715) who established a number of learned academies. [Back to Text]
(30)
[Translator’s note] 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]
(31)
[Rousseau’s note] 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 Ahmed, 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 to throw the equipment down a well. It is said 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 things 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]
(32)
[Translator’s note] The phrase Consul of Rome is a reference to
Cicero, and title Chancellor of England is a reference to Francis Bacon. [Back to Text]
(33)
[Translator’s note] This distinction refers to Athens and
Sparta. [Back to Text]
Ian Johnston is an Emeritus Professor at Vancouver Island
University, Nanaimo, British Columbia. He is the author of The Ironies of War: An Introduction to
Homer’s Iliad and of Essays
and Arguments: A Handbook for Writing Student Essays. He also
translated a number of works, including the following:
Aeschylus, Oresteia (Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides)
Aeschylus, Persians
Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound
Aeschylus, Seven Against
Thebes
Aeschylus, Suppliant Women
Aristophanes, Birds
Aristophanes, Clouds
Aristophanes, Frogs
Aristophanes, Knights
Aristophanes, Lysistrata
Aristophanes, Peace
Aristotle, Nicomachean
Ethics (Abridged)
Cuvier, Discourse on the
Revolutionary Upheavals on the Surface of the Earth
Descartes, Discourse on
Method
Descartes, Meditations on
First Philosophy
Diderot, A Conversation
Between D’Alembert and Diderot
Diderot, D’Alembert’s Dream
Diderot, Rameau’s Nephew
Euripides, Bacchae
Euripides, Electra
Euripides, Hippolytus
Euripides, Medea
Euripides, Orestes
Homer, Iliad (Complete
and Abridged)
Homer, Odyssey (Complete
and Abridged)
Kafka, Metamorphosis
Kafka, Selected Shorter Writings
Kant, Universal History of
Nature and Theory of Heaven
Kant, On Perpetual Peace
Lamarck, Zoological
Philosophy, Volume I
Lucretius, On the Nature of
Things
Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and
Evil
Nietzsche, Genealogy of
Morals
Nietzsche, On the Uses and
Abuses of History for Life
Ovid, Metamorphoses
Rousseau, Discourse on the
Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men [Second
Discourse]
Rousseau, Discourse on the
Sciences and the Arts [First Discourse]
Rousseau, Social Contract
Sophocles, Antigone
Sophocles, Ajax
Sophocles, Electra
Sophocles, Oedipus at
Colonus
Sophocles, Oedipus the King
Sophocles, Philoctetes
Wedekind, Castle Wetterstein
Wedekind, Marquis of Keith.
Most of these translations have been published as books or
audiobooks (or both)—by Richer Resources Publications, Broadview Press, Naxos,
Audible, and others.
Ian Johnston maintains a web site where texts of these translations
are freely available to students, teachers, artists, and the general public.
The site includes a number of Ian Johnston’s lectures on these (and other)
works, handbooks, curricular materials, and essays, all freely available.
The addresses where these texts are available is as follows:
https://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/
http://johnstoniatexts.x10host.com/homepageindex.html