ROUSSEAU. 1712-1778. ROUSSEAU. 1712-1778. 57 Rousseau was one of those rare geniuses whose influence helped to kindle that spirit of protest and love of liberty which became a dominant factor in European society about the middle of the eighteenth century, culminating toward its close in the American and French revolutions. He was a master of prose, and at length became one of the most distinguished names in French literature. He was born June 28, 1712, to Isaac Rousseau, a watchmaker in Geneva. He lost his mother in early childhood. At fourteen he was apprenticed to an engraver by whom he was treated so harshly that he ran away two years later. At length Madame de Warens, a Swiss lady, received young Rousseau as a guest at her house. While yet young, he sojourned in France, where he became an outcast and wanderer, without resources, and almost without friends. Finally, through the influence of his benefactress, and the skillful arguments of his preceptor, in the college at Turin, he was induced to make a formal renunciation of his Protestant faith, and was received into the Catholic church. His employments became various and diversified-mere makeshift to procure the immediate means of subsistence; now a clerk in the government bureau; next a teacher of music; then he did clerical work in a botanic garden. Still later he was appointed cashier to M. de Francueil. He was characterized by restlessness, melancholy, and instability. His temperament was highly wrought, shrinking, timid, and sensitive to the last degree. A sad, sweet music seemed to pulsate through his inner life, but in his outer or external life, he became, in a measure, addicted to the current vices of the society in which he moved. Rousseau formed a lasting but unhappy attachment with Therese Le Vasseur, an illiterate woman, by whom he had five children, but he was not married to her until late in life. From 1770 to 1778 he lived in Paris, always on the verge of poverty. He was awarded the first prize for an essay on the relation of science and the arts to the morals of mankind, by the Academie of Dijon. Then he wrote a "Discourse on the Inequalities Amongst Men," "Contract Social," a romance of "Julie: on la Nouvelle Heloise," and "Emilie," the last considered the best among his writings. "He was the father of modern democracy," says Professor Lowell, (North American Review, July, 1867) "and without him our Declaration of Independence would have wanted some of those sentences in which the immemorial longings of the poor and the dreams of social enthusiasts were at least affirmed in the manifesto of a nation, so that all the world might hear." Rousseau gave us a picture of his life in his "Confessions," which he wrote while in London. He seems to have been one of those supersensitive spirits, singularly gifted, living before his time, revelling in an ideal world which was sadly out of relation with the one in which he moved and struggled, a prophet of the age to be. It was especially in the education of the young that Rousseau enforces the importance of a dietary in which flesh has no place. "One of the proofs that the taste of flesh is not natural to man is the indifference which children exhibit for that sort of meat, and the preference they all give to vegetable foods, such as milk porridge, pastry, fruits, etc. It is of vast importance not to denaturalize them of this primitive taste, and not to render them carnivorous, if not for health reasons, at least for the sake of their character. For, however the experience may be explained, it is certain that great eaters of flesh are, in general, more cruel and ferocious than other men. observation is true of all places and of all times. English coarseness is well-known. All savages are cruel, and it is not their morals that urge them to be so; this cruelty proceeds from their food. They go to war as to the chase, and treat men as they do bears. Even in England the butchers are not received as legal witnesses any more than surgeons. Great criminals harden themselves to murder by drinking This BUFFON. 1707-1788. 59 blood. Homer represents the Cyclops, who were flesh eaters, as frightful men. "We should all be abstinents from alcohol if we had not been given wines in our early years. In fine, the more simple our tastes are, the more universal are they, and the most common repugnance is for made-up dishes. Does one ever see a person have a disgust for water or bread? Behold here the impress of nature! Behold here, then, the rule of life! Let us preserve to the child as long as possible his primitive taste; let its nourishment be common and simple; let not its palate be familiarized to any but natural flavors, and let no exclusive taste be formed." This distinguished French naturalist was born at Montford, in Burgundy, Sept. 7, 1707. He inherited a competent fortune and was liberally educated. In 1739 he was admitted into the Academy of Sciences and appointed attendant of the royal garden. He was an exact and immensely popular writer, combining a lively poetical fancy with a thorough literary training. He was the author of fifteen bulky volumes on natural history, and five volumes on mineralogy. The following passages selected from his voluminous writings reflect his views on flesh eating : "Man knows how to use as a master his power over other animals. He has selected those whose flesh flatter his taste. He has made domestic slaves of innumerable flocks, and by the care which he takes in propagating them he seems to have acquired the right of sacrificing them for himself. But he extends that right much beyond his needs. For independently of those species which he has subjected, and of which he disposes at will, he makes war also upon wild animals, upon birds, upon fishes. He does not even limit himself to those of the climate he inhabits. He seeks at a distance, even in the remotest seas, new meats, and entire nature seems scarcely to suffice for his intemperance and the inconsistent variety of his appetites. "Man alone consumes and engulfs more flesh than all other animals put together. He is, then, the great destroyer, and he is so more by abuse than by necessity. Instead of enjoying with moderation the resources offered him, in place of dispensing them with equity, in place of repairing in proportion as he destroys, in renewing in proportion as he annihilates, the rich man makes his boast and glory in consuming all his splendor in destroying, in one day, at his table, more material than would be necessary for the support of several families. He abuses equally other animals and his own species, the rest of whom live in famine, languish in misery, and work only to satisfy the immoderate appetite and the still more insatiable vanity of this human being who, destroying others by want, destroys himself by excess. "And yet, man might, like other animals, live upon vegetables. Flesh is not a better nourishment than grains or bread. What constitutes true nourishment, what contributes to the nutrition, to the development, to the growth, and to the support of the body, is not that brute matter which, to our eyes, composes the texture of flesh or of vegetables, but is those organic molecules which both contain; since the ox, in feeding on grass, acquires as much flesh as man or as animals who live upon flesh and blood." CHAPTER VII. PALEY. 1743-1805. "WAKE again, Teutonic father ages, Speak again, beloved primeval creeds; Bones and ashes feed the golden corn; Down the veins through which the live past Feeds its child-the live unborn."-Kingsley. A very able and logical theologian, born at Peterborough, England, in 1743; graduated at Christ's College in Cambridge, in 1763, and was chosen fellow of his college in 1766. Paley wrote several theological works, which display great logical power and clearness of style. He denied the existence of an innate moral sense in man, and adopted the maxim: "Whatever is expedient is right." His most important works are : "The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy," "Horæ Pan Linæ, or the Scriptural History of St. Paul Evinced," and "Natural Theology." Like nearly all hard workers in the mental domain, he leaned toward an exclusively vegetable diet. He writes: "A right to the flesh of animals! This is a very different claim from the former (a right to the fruits or vegetable produce of the earth). Some excuse seems necessary for the pain and loss which we occasion to other animals by restraining |