Page:The story of the French revolution (IA storyoffrenchrev00baxe).pdf/30

 time being — which went far beyond this. But the flood- tide of the Revolution did not represent the permanent gain of progress. The waters receded from the ground touched at the height of the crisis, leaving the enfran- chisement of the bourgeoisie as the one achievement per- manently effected,

Foremost among the precursors of this mighty change * was the Genevese thinker, Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712- 1778). This remarkable personality may be termed the Messiah of the Revolutionary Crisis. His writings were quoted and read as a new gospel by well-nigh all the prominent leaders of the time. Rousseau’s doctrines were contained in an early essay on civilization, in his Emule, a treatise on Education, and in the Social Contract, his chief work.

In his first essay, Rousseau maintained the superiority of the savage over the civilized state, and the whole of his subsequent teaching centered in deprecation of the hoilowness and artificiality of society, and in an inculca- tion of the imperative need of a return, as far as might be, to a state of nature in all our relations. This he es- pecially applies to education in his Emile, in which he sketches the training of a hypothetical child.

The Social Contract, his greatest work, contains a discussion of the first principles of social and political order. It is to this work the magic formulas which served as watchwords during the Revolution, formulas such as “ Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity,” “ Divine Right of Insurrection,” the term “ Citizen,” employed as a style of address, and many other things are traceable. The title of the work was suggested by Locke’s (or rather Hobbes’ ) supposition of a primitive contract having been entered into between governor and governed, which was set up in opposition to that of the “ divine right ” of kings. This idea Rousseau accepts in basis, but denies the un- - conditional nature of the contract affirmed by the orig- inators of the theory. No original distinction existed