The barbaric vulgarity of our commercial age is largely responsible for the invidious slur cast upon any genuine critical psychology; upon any psychology which frankly recognises the enormous influence in literature exercised by normal or abnormal s.e.xual impulses.
Criticism of literature which has nothing to say about the particular s.e.xual impulse--natural or vicious, as it may happen--which drives a writer forward, becomes as dull and unenlightening as theology without the Real Presence.
Among the influences that obstruct such free criticism among us at present may be noted Puritan fanaticism, academic professionalism (with its cult of the "young person"), popular vulgarity, and that curious Anglo-Saxon uneasiness and reticence in these things which while in no sense a sign of purity of mind invokes an invincible prejudice against any sort of straightforward discussion.
It is for these reasons that the art of criticism in England and America is so childish and pedantic when compared with that of France. In France even the most reactionary of critics--persons like Leon Bloy, for instance--habitually use the boldest s.e.xual psychology in elucidating the mysterious caprices of human genius; and one can only wish that the conventional inhibition that renders such freedom impossible with us could come to be seen in its true light, that is to say as itself one of the most curious examples of s.e.xual morbidity ever produced by unnatural conditions.
Rousseau is perhaps of all great original geniuses the one most impossible to deal with without some sort of recognition of the s.e.xual peculiarities which penetrated his pa.s.sionate and restless spirit. No writer who has ever lived had so sensitive, so nervous, so vibrant a physiological const.i.tution. Nothing that he achieved in literature or in the creation of a new atmosphere of feeling in Europe, can be understood without at least a pa.s.sing reference to the impulses which pushed him forward on his wayward road.
As we watch him in his pleasures, his pa.s.sions, his pilgrimages, his savage reactions, it is difficult to avoid the impression that certain kinds of genius are eminently and organically anti-social.
It is perhaps for this reason at bottom that the political-minded Anglo-Saxon race, with its st.u.r.dy "good citizen" ideals, feels so hostile and suspicious toward these great anarchists of the soul.
Rousseau is indeed, temperamentally considered, one of the most pa.s.sionately anarchical minds in the history of the race. The citizen of Geneva, the lover of humanity, the advocate of liberty and equality, was so scandalous an individualist that there has come to breathe from the pa.s.sage of his personality across the world an intoxicating savour of irresponsible independence.
The most ingrained pursuer of his own path, the most intransigeant "enemy of the people," would be able to derive encouragement in his obstinate loneliness from reading the works of this philanthropist who detested humanity; this reformer who fled from society; this advocate of domesticity who deserted his children; this pietist who worshipped the G.o.d of nature.
The man"s intellect was so dominated by his sensualism that, even at the moment he is eloquently protesting in favour of a regenerated humanity living under enlightened laws, there emanates from the mere physical rhythm of his sentences an anti-social pa.s.sion, a misanthropic self-worship, a panic terror of the crowd, which remains in the mind when all his social theories are forgotten.
He is the grand example of a writer whose sub-conscious intimate self contradicts his overt dogmas and creates a spiritual atmosphere in which his own reforming schemes wither and vanish.
Rousseau is, from any moral or social or national point of view, a force of much more disintegrating power than Nietzsche can ever be.
And he is this for the very reason that his sensual and sentimental nature dominates him so completely.
From the austere Nietzschean watch-tower, this man"s incorrigible weakness presents itself as intrinsically more dangerous to the race than any unscrupulous strength. The voluptuous femininity of his insidious eloquence lends itself, as Nietzsche saw, to every sort of crafty hypocrisy.
Rousseau"s rich, subtle, melodious style--soft as a voice of a choir of women celebrating some Euripidean Dionysus--flows round the revolutionary figure of Liberty with an orgiastic pa.s.sion worthy of the backward flung heads, bared b.r.e.a.s.t.s and streaming hair of a dance of Ba.s.sarids.
Other symbolic figures besides that of Liberty emerge above the stream of this impa.s.sioned "Return to Nature." The figure of justice is there and the figure of fraternity; while above them all the shadowy lineaments of some female personification of the Future of Humanity, crowned with the happy stars of the Age of Gold, looks down upon the rushing tide.
"Oh, Liberty!" one can hear the voice of many heroic souls protesting, "Oh, Liberty--what things are done in thy name!"
For it is of the essential nature of Rousseau"s eloquence, as it is of the essential nature of his temperament, that any kind of sensual abandonment, slurred over by rich orchestral litanies of human freedom, should be more than tolerated.
This Religion of Liberty lends itself to strange hypocrisies when the torrent of his imaginative pa.s.sion breaks upon the jagged rocks of reality. That is why--from Robespierre down to very modern persons--the eloquent use of such vague generalisations as Justice, Virtue, Simplicity, Nature, Humanity, Reason, excites profound suspicion in the psychological mind.
From the antinomian torrent of this voluptuous anarchy the spirits of Epicurus, of Spinoza, of Goethe, of Nietzsche, turn away in horror.
This is indeed an insurrection from the depths; this is indeed a breaking loose of chaos; this is indeed a "return to Nature." For there is a perilous intoxication in all this, and, like chemical ingredients in some obsessing drug these great vague names work magically and wantonly upon us, giving scope to all our weaknesses and perversities.
If I were asked--taking all the great influences which have moulded human history together--what figure, what personality, I would set up as the antipodal antagonist of the influence of Nietzsche, I would retort with the name of Rousseau.
Here is an "immoralism" deeper and far more anti-social than any "beyond good and evil." Nietzsche hammered furiously at Christian ethics; but he did so with the sublime intention of subst.i.tuting for what he destroyed a new ethical construction of his own.
Rousseau, using with stirring and caressing unction symbol after symbol, catch-word after catch-word, from the moral atmosphere of Christendom, draws us furiously after him, in a mad hysterical abandonment of all that every human symbol covers, toward a cataract of limitless and almost inhuman subjectivity.
To certain types of mind Rousseau appears as a n.o.ble prophet of what is permanent in evangelic "truth" and of what is desirable and lovely in the future of humanity. To other types--to the p.r.o.nounced cla.s.sical or Goethean type, for instance--he must appear as the most pernicious, the most disintegrating, the most poisonous, the most unhealthy influence that has ever been brought to bear upon the world. Such minds--confronting him with a genuine and logical anarchist, such as Max Stirner--would find him far more dangerous.
For Rousseau"s anarchy is of an emotional, psychological, feminine kind; a kind that carries along upon the surface of its eloquence every sort of high-sounding abstraction; while, all the time, the sinuous waters of its world-sapping current filter through all the floodgates of human inst.i.tution.
One cannot but be certain that Rousseau would have been one of those irresistible but most injurious persons whom, honorably crowned with fillets of well-spun wool and fresh-grown myrtle, Plato would have dismissed from the gates of the great Republic.
One asks oneself the question--and it is a question less often asked than one would expect--whether it is really possible that a man of immense genius and magnetic influence can actually, as the phrase runs, "do more harm than good" to the happiness of the human race.
We are so absurdly sheep-like and conventional in these things that we permit our old-fashioned belief in a benignant providence turning all things to good, to transform itself into a vague optimistic trust in evolutionary progress; a progress which can never for one moment fail to make everything work out to the advantage of humanity.
We have such pathetic trust too in the inherent friendliness of the universe that it seems inconceivable to us that a great genius, inspired from hidden cosmic depths, should be actually a power of evil, dangerous to humanity. And yet, why not? Why should there not appear sometimes from the secret reservoirs of Being, powerful and fatal influences that, in the long result, are definitely baleful and malign in their effect upon the fortunes of the human race?
This was the underlying belief in the Middle Ages, and it led to the abominable persecution of persons who were obviously increasing the sum of human happiness. But may not there have been behind such unpardonable persecution, a legitimate instinct of self-protection--an instinct for which in these latter days of popular worship of "great names" there is no outlet of expression?
The uneasiness of the modern English-speaking world in the presence of free discussion of s.e.x is, of course, quite a different matter. This objection is a mere childish prejudice reinforced by outworn superst.i.tions. The religious terror excited by certain formidable free-thinkers and anti-social philosophers in earlier days went much deeper than this, and was quite free from that mere prurient itch of perverted sensuality which inspires the Puritans of our time.
This religious terror, barbarous and hideous as it was in many of its manifestations, may have been a legitimate expression of subconscious panic in the presence of something that, at least now and then, was really antagonistic to the general welfare.
Why should there not arise sometimes great demonic forces, incarnated in formidable personalities, who are really and truly "humani generis hostes," enemies of the human race? The weird mediaeval dream of the anti-Christ, drawn from Apocalyptic literature, symbolises this occult possibility.
Because a writer has immense genius there is no earthly reason why his influence upon the world should be good. There is no reason why it should be for the happiness of the world, putting the moral question aside.
In the cla.s.sic ages the State regulated literature. In the Middle Ages, the Church regulated it. In our own age it is not regulated at all; it is neglected by ignorance and expurgated by stupidity. The mob in our days cringes before great names, the journalist exploits great names, and the school-master dishes them up for the young. No one seriously criticises them; no one seriously considers their influence upon the world.
The business man has a shrewd suspicion that they have no influence at all; or certainly none comparable with that of well placed advertis.e.m.e.nts. Meanwhile under the surface, from sensitive minds to sensitive minds, there run the electric currents of new intellectual ideas, setting in motion those psychic and spiritual forces which still, in spite of all our economic philosophers, upheave the world.
Was Rousseau, more than any one, more than Voltaire, more than Diderot, responsible for the French Revolution? I am inclined to hold that he was, and if so, according to the revolutionary instincts of all enemies of oppression, we are bound to regard his influence as "good"; unless by chance we are among those who consider the tyranny of the middle-cla.s.s no less outrageous than the tyranny of the aristocracy. But Rousseau"s influence--so far stretching is the power of personal genius--does not stop with the French Revolution.
It does not stop with the Commune or with any other outburst of popular indignation. It works subterraneanly in a thousand devious ways until the present hour. Wherever, under the impa.s.sioned enthusiasm of such words as Justice, Liberty, Equality, Reason, Nature, Love, self-idealising, self-worshipping, self-deceiving prophets of magnetic genius give way to their weaknesses, their perversities, their anti-social reactions, the vibrant nerves of the great citizen of Geneva may still be felt, quivering melodiously; touching us with the tremulousness of their anarchical revolt against everything hard and stern and strong.
Suppose for a moment that Rousseau were the equivocal pernicious influence, half-priest, half-pandar, half-charlatan, half-prophet of a world-disintegrating orgy of sentiment, should I for one, I am tempted to ask, close the gates of our platonic republic against him?
Not so! Let the world look to itself. Let the sheep-like crowd take the risks of its docility. Let the new bourgeois tyrants cuddle and cosset the serpent that shall bite them, as did the salon ladies of the old regime.
No! Let the world look to itself and let progress look to itself.
There seems something exhilarating about this possible appearance upon the earth of genuinely dangerous writers, of writers who exploit their vices, lay bare their weaknesses, brew intoxicating philtres of sweet poison out of their obsessions and lead humanity to the edge of the precipice! And there is something peculiarly stimulating to one"s psychological intelligence when all this is done under the anaesthesia of humanitarian rhetoric and the lulling incantations of pastoral sentiment.
Rousseau is, in one very important sense, the pioneer of that art of delicate egoism in which the wisest epicureans of our day love to indulge. I refer to his mania for solitude, his self-conscious pa.s.sion for nature. This feeling for nature was absolutely genuine in him and a.s.sociates itself with all his amours and all his boldest speculations.
The interesting thing about it is that it takes the form of that vague, intimate magical rapport between our human souls and whatever mysterious soul lurks in the world around us, which has become in these recent days the predominant secret of imaginative poetry.
Not that Rousseau carries things as far as Wordsworth or Sh.e.l.ley.
He is a born prose writer, not a poet. But for the very reason that he is writing prose, and writing it with a sentimental rather than a mystical bias, there are aspects of his work which have a simple natural _personal_ appeal that the sublime imagination of the great spiritual poets must necessarily lack.
There is indeed about Rousseau"s allusions to places and spots which had become dear to him from emotional a.s.sociation a lingering regretful tenderness, full of wistful memories and a vague tremulous yearning, which leaves upon the mind a feeling unlike that produced by any other writer. The subconscious music of his days seems at those times to rise from some hidden wells of emotion in him and overflow the world.
When he speaks of such places the mere admixture in his tone of the material sensuousness of the eighteenth century with something new and thrilling and different has itself an appealing charm. The blending of a self-conscious artificial, pastoral sentiment, redolent of the sophisticated Arcadias of Poussin and Watteau, and suggestive of the dairy-maid masquerades of Marie Antoinette in the gardens of Versailles, with a direct pa.s.sionate simplicity almost worthy of some modern Russian, produces a unique and memorable effect upon a sympathetic spirit.
The mere fact that that incorrigible egoist and introspective epicurean, William Hazlitt, whose essays are themselves full of an ingratiating and engaging sensuousness, should have taken Rousseau as his special master and idealised him into a symbolic figure, is a proof of the presence in him of something subtle, arresting and unusual.
I always like to bring these recondite odours and intimations of delicate spiritual qualities down to the test of actual experience, and I am able to say that, through the help of Hazlitt"s intuitive commentaries, the idea of Rousseau has twined itself around some of the pleasantest recollections of my life.
I can see at this moment as I pen these lines, a certain ditch-bordered path leading to a narrow foot-bridge across a river in Norfolk. I can recall the indescribable sensations which the purple spikes of loosestrife and the tall willow-herb, growing with green rushes, produced in my mind on a certain misty morning when the veiled future bowed toward me like a vision of promise and the dead past flew away over the fens like a flight of wild swans.
The image of Rousseau cherishing so tenderly every rose-tinged memory and every leafy oasis in his pa.s.sionate pilgrimage, came to me then, as it comes to me now, a thing that no harsh blows of the world, no unkind turns of fate, no "coining of my soul for drachmas"