Page:Four and Twenty Minds.djvu/271

Rh calls herself free precisely because she has always sent her children to be the armed servants of the most reactionary kings of Europe, from the Bourbons of Paris to the Bourbons of Naples. And there can be no offense to any one in the statement of this historic truth: that since Switzerland (thanks to the apple of Tell) withdrew from European civilization, she has contributed little or nothing to that civilization. Not one great writer, not one great artist, not one great philosopher. The most glorious Reformed church of Switzerland was founded by a Frenchman. Her writers are a Toepffer or a Keller, her scientists a Lavater or a Haller, her artists a Boecklin or a Hodler—none of them men who have risen above the mediocrity of the valleys.

The one universal man sprung from this land is Jean Jacques Rousseau—who was ashamed of his country, which in turn was ashamed of him, and condemned his books. Rousseau, indeed, was himself a sort of William Tell: but he shot the arrows of paradox not at apples, but at tyranny. And after his death the bloody mushroom growth of the Jacobin tyrants and the Terror grew from the mire of his excesses.