Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/421

 The Eve of the French Revolution 383 These, it must be remembered, are Marcus Aurelius' words, not mine ; for God, who inspires you, has given me grace to believe all that you say, or have said, or shall say. Among Rousseau's writings the most permanently- influential is his Emile, or Education} This opens with his protest against the artificiality of the civilization which he saw about him, and his oft-repeated exhortation to return to nature as the safest guide. All things are good as their Author made them, but every- 388. Rous- thing degenerates in the hands of man. By man our native seau ' s sum " soil is forced to nourish plants brought from foreign regions, turnback and one tree is made to bear the fruit of another. Man to nature, brings about a general confusion of elements, climates, and seasons; he mutilates his dogs, his horses, and his slaves; he defaces and confounds everything, and seems to delight only in monsters and deformity. He is not content with any- thing as Nature left it, not even with man, whom he must train for his service like a saddle horse, and twist in his own particular way like a tree in his garden. Yet without this interference matters would be still worse than they are, for our species cannot remain half made over. As things now are, a man left to himself from his birth would, in his association with others, prove the most pre- posterous creature possible. The prejudices, authority, neces- sity, and example, and, in short, the vicious social institutions in which we find ourselves submerged, would stifle everything natural in him and yet give him nothing in return. He would be like a shrub which has sprung up by accident in the middle of the highway to perish by being thrust this way and that and trampled upon by passers-by. . . . To form this rare creature, man, what have we to do? Much, doubtless, but chiefly to prevent anything being done. ... In the natural order of things, all men being equal, their 1 There is an abridged translation by W. H. Payne of this interesting work issued, in the International Educational Series (Appleton, 1893), in one volume.