Rousseau, Judge of Jean-Jacques by Rousseau Jean-Jacques; Bush Judith R.; Kelly Christopher

Author:Rousseau, Jean-Jacques; Bush, Judith R.; Kelly, Christopher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dartmouth College Press

THIRD DIALOGUE

Rousseau

You had a long stay in the country.

The Frenchman

The time flew by for me. I spent it with your friend.

Rousseau

Oh! If only he could be yours someday!

The Frenchman

You’ll judge that possibility by the effect of your advice. I finally read those books that are so justifiably detested.

Rousseau

Sir!

The Frenchman

I’ve read them, not enough yet to understand them well, but enough to have found, enumerated, collected the irremediable crimes that couldn’t have failed to make their Author the most odious of monsters and the horror of the human race.

Rousseau

What are you saying? Is it really you talking, and is it your turn to make riddles? For pity’s sake explain yourself at once.

The Frenchman

The list I’m giving you will provide both the reply and the explanation. Reading it, no reasonable man would be surprised about the destiny of the Author.

Rousseau

Let me see this strange list then.

The Frenchman

There it is. I could easily have made it ten times more ample, especially if I had included the numerous articles about the trade of Author and the corps of men of letters. But they are so well known that it is enough to give one or two as examples. In those of all types to which I limited myself and which I noted down in the order in which they came, I did nothing except extract and transcribe the passages faithfully. You’ll judge for yourself the effects they had to produce and the names their Author must have hoped to be called once he could be accused of them with impunity.

EXTRACTS

MEN OF LETTERS

1. “Who denies that the learned know countless true things which the ignorant will never know? Are the learned thereby closer to the truth? On the contrary, they get farther from it in advancing; because the vanity of judging makes even more progress than enlightenment does, each truth that they learn comes only with a hundred false judgments. It is entirely evident that the learned companies of Europe are only public schools of lies. And there are very certainly more errors in the Academy of Sciences than in a whole nation of Hurons.” Emile, Book 3.86

2. “A man who plays the free thinker and philosopher today would, for the same reason, have been only a fanatic at the time of the League.” Preface of the Discourse of Dijon.87

3. “Men should never be half taught. If they must remain in error, why not leave them in ignorance? What good are so many schools and universities if they teach them nothing of what is important for them to know? What, then, is the object of your colleges, your academies, all your learned establishments? Is it to mislead the people, modify its reason at the outset, and prevent it from going to the truth? Professors of the lie, it is to lead it astray that you pretend to instruct it, and like those brigands who place beacons on reefs, you enlighten it in order to destroy it.” Letter to M. de Beaumont.88

4. “One read these words

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