Juniata sentinel and Republican. [volume] (Mifflintown, Juniata County, Pa.) 1873-1955, 1875-05-05

eign emancipators, because he awoke
one dormant set of energies, Just as
Rousseau presently came to awake an
other set. Each was power. not merely
by virtue of some singular pre-eminence
of understanding or mysterious un-
shared insight of his own, but for the
reason that no partial and one-sided di-
rection can permanently satisfy the
manifold aspirations and faculties of
the human mind in the great average of
common men, to whom exceptional
thinkers speak, whom they influence,
and by whom, as painter or dramatist
is, they are in turn influenced, de-
pressed, or buoyed up. Voltaire's men
tai constitution made him eagerly OBJ
iective, a seeker of true things, quiver-
ing for action, admirably sympathetic
with all life and movement, a spirit
restlessly traversing the whole world.
Rousseau, for different from this, saw
in himself reflected microcosm of the
outer world, and was content to take
that instead of the outer world, and for
its trHest version. He made his own
moods the premises from which he de-
duced system of life for humanity,
and, so far as humanity has shared his
moods or some parts of them. his system
was true and has been accepted. To
him the hustle of the outer world was
only a hinderance to that process OF
self-absorption, which was his way Of
interpreting life. Accessible only to
interests of emotion and sense, he was
saved from intellectual sterilily, and
made eloquent, by the vehemence of his
emotion and the fire of his senses. He
was master-example of sensibility, as
Voltaire was a master-eIample of clear
eyed penetration.
This must not be taken for a rigid
piece of mutually exclusive division,
for the edges of character are not cut
exactly sharp, as words are. Especially
when any type is intense, it seems to
meet and touch its opposite. just as
Voltaire's piercing activity and sound
ness of intelligence made him one of
the humanest of men, so Rousseau s
emotional susceptibility endowed him
with the gift of vision that carried far
into the social depths. 1t was very
early criticism on the pair, that Voltaire
wrote on more subjects, but that Rous-
seau was the more profound. In truth
one was hardly much more profound
than the other. Rousseau had the
sonorousness of speech which popular
confusion of thought is apt to identify
with depth. And he had seriousness.
If profundity means the quality of see
ing to the heart of subjects, Rousseau
had, in general way, rather less of it
than the shrewd-witted crusher Of the
Infamous. What the distinction really
amounts to is that Rousseau had a
strong feeling for certain very impor-
tant aspects of human life, which
Voltaire thought very little about, or
never thought about at all, and that,
while Voltaire was concerned with poe
try, history, literature, and the more
ridiculous parts of the religious super
stition of his time, Rousseau thought
about social justice. and duty, and God,
and the spiritual consciousness of men,
with certain attempt at thoroughness
and system. As for the substance of
his thinking, as We have already seen in
the "Discourses, and shall soon have
an opportunity of seeing still more
clearly, it was often as thin and hollow
as if he had belonged to the company
of the epigrammatical, who, after all,
have far less of monopoly of shallow
thinking than is often supposed. The
prime merit of Rousseau, in comparing
him with the brilliant chief of the
rationalistic school of the time, in his
reverence reverence for moral worth
in however obscure intellectual com.
pany, for the dignity of human character
and the loftiness of duty, for some of
those cravings of the human mind after
the divine and incommensurable, which
may indeed often be content with solu-
tions proved by long time and slow ex-
perience to be inadequate, but which
are closely bound up with the highest
elements of nobleness of soul.-Apple-
TONS Journal