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philosophy and politics, up to tlie middle of the eigh-
ieentli century. To bring this enterprise to a success-
ful issue, Diderot, who reserved to himself the greatest
part of (lie work, called to his assistance numerous
collahoratiirs, amongst whom were Voltaire, Buffon,
M()nles(|uieu, D'Alembert and Condillac. Jean-
Jacques Rousseau was entrusted with the department
of music. Despite the assistance of talents so diverse,
the same spirit breathes throughout the work. In
philosophy, the Encyclopedists seek to subvert the
principles on which the existing institutions and the
authority of dogma in religion were based. The Ency-
clopedia, therefore, which embodies all the opinions of
that age, is a work of destruction. However that
may be, its influence was considerable; it served as a
(1760), in his work on education, "Emile" (1762),
lastly in the "Contrat social" (1762) which was to be-
come the gospel of the Revolution.
From the publication of his first work, Rousseau won a success that was immediate and startling. This was because he brought qualities entirely novel or which had long been forgotten. With him eloquence returns to literature. Leaving aside his influence on the movement of politics, we must give him credit for all that the French literature of the nineteenth century owes to him. Rousseau, by causing a reaction against the philosophy of his time, prepared the revival of religious sentiment. It was he who, by signalizing in his most beautiful pages the emotions awakened in him by certain landscapes, aroused in the popular
Raoul le FicvRE Pre.senting
XV Century M.S., Bibli.
rallying-point for the philosophers, and by acting on public opinion, as Diderot had intended, came to "change the common way of thinking".
The Encyclopedia wrought the ruin of society, but proposed nothing to take its place ; Jean- Jacques Rousseau dreamed of effecting its re-constitution on a new plan. On certain points, Rousseau breaks with the philosophes and the Encyclopedists. Both of these believed in the sovereignty of reason, not, as was the case with the seventeenth-century writers, in rea- son subject to faith and controlled by it, but in reason absolute, universal, and refusing to admit what eludes its deductions — that is to say, the truths revealed by religion. _ They also believed in the omnipotence of science, in human progress and in civilization guided by reason and science. Rousseau, on the contrary, in his first notable work, " Discours sur les sciences et les arts" (1751), assails reason and science, and in a cer- tain sense denies progress. On the other hand, in maintaining the natural goodness of man he ap- proaches the philosophes. In his opinion, society has perverted man, who is by nature good and virtuous, has replaced primitive liberty with despotism, and brought inequality amongst men. Society, therefore, is evil; being so, it must be abolished, and men must return to the state of nature, that happiness may reign among them. This return to the natural state Rou.s- seau preaches in his romance, " La nouvelle H^loise"
Philip the Good with '"Jaso.n"
)th&que Nationale, Paris
imagination the feeling for nature. Rousseau, too, by his thoroughly plebeian manner of parading his per- sonality and displaying his egotism, helped to develop that sentiment of individualism whence sprangthe lyric poetry of the nineteenth century. He is also responsible for some of the most regrettable character- istics of nineteenth-century literature — for that mel- ancholy and unrest which has been termed "the distemper of the age", and which was originally the distemper of the hypochondriac Jean-Jacques; for the revolt against society; for the belief that passion has rights of its own and dominates the lives of mortals as a fatal compulsion.
The close of the eighteenth century is from some points of view a time of regeneration, and forebodes a still more radical and complete transformation of lit- erature in the immediate future. Some branches of literature that had been neglected in the course of the century receive new life and energy. Since I^esage's "Turcaret" and after Marivaux, comedy had harilly produced anything above the commonplace; it re- vives in the amusing " Barbier de Seville" (1775) of Beaumarchais, full of life and rapid movement. Beau- marchais owes much to his predecessors, to Moliere, Regnard, and many others. His originality as a play- wright consists in the political and social satire with which his comedies are filled. In this respect they are the children of the eighteenth century, essentially com-
