Rousseau (Volume 1 and 2)

is abiographical account written in the late 19th century. The work provides an extensive exploration of the life and philosophical contributions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, emphasizinghis role as a seminal figure in the context of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. TheauthordelvesintoRousseau'spersonalhistory,ideological impact, and the complexities of his character, presenting him as a profound thinkerwhoinfluenced socialand politicalthought. Theopeningofthetext establishes the significance of Rousseau's work as a precursor to the revolu tionary ideas that shaped modern democratic societies. Morley introduces the revolutionary nature of Rousseau's theories, explaining his philosoph ical divergence from contemporaries like Voltaire and Diderot. The initial chapters cover Rousseau's early life, including his formative experiences, the profound impact of his family and educational influences, and his tumul tuous relationships. This serves to lay the groundwork for understanding how Rousseau's personal struggles translated into his revolutionary ideas about society, religion, and governance, ultimately framing him as a pivotal thinker who grappled with the moral and political complexities of his time themany conditions of intellectual productiveness are still hidden in such profoundobscuritythatweareunabletoexplainwhyaperiodofstormy moral agitation seems to be in certain natures the indispensable antecedent of their highest creative effort. Byron is one instance, and Rousseau is an other, in which the current of stimulating force made this rapid way from the lower to the higher parts of character, and only expended itself after having traversed the whole range of emotion and faculty, from their mean est, most realistic, most personal forms of exercise, up to the summit of what is lofty and ideal. No man was ever involved in such an odious com plication of moral maladies as beset Rousseau in the winter of 1758. Yet within three years of this miserable epoch he had completed not only the New Heloïsa, which is the monument of his fall, but the Social Contract, which was the most influential, and Emilius, which was perhaps the most elevated and spiritual, of all the productions of the prolific genius of France in the eighteenth century. A poor light-hearted Marmontel thought that the secret of Rousseau's success lay in the circumstance that he began to write late, and it is true that no other author, so considerable as Rousseau, waited until the age of fifty for the full vigour of his inspiration. No tale of years, however, could have ripened such fruit without native strength and incommunicable savour. Nor can the mechanical movement of those bet ter ordered characters which keep the balance of the world even, impart to literature that peculiar quality, peculiar but not the finest, that comes from experience of the black unlighted abysses of the soul.