The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1899-09-02

| who had already made a tremendous
| attack upon this principle of authori-
" as far as it had TO do with intellect
ual affairs, and the great leader of this
! movement was Noltaire: while Vol
taires name is we'll known TO us in
connection with his religious skepti-
c4sm, his weight directed against all re-
| Hgious bodies and control. when we
| come TO the more serious considera-
ton we must remember that Voltaire
| was the embodiment OF the movement
] that proclaimed the right 10 philosOph-
| zeal speculation, and the right to eX-
| press and publish these things His
negative side is less generally known
TO us than is his positive side; his
| ridicule. his irony, were not accessible.
| 1t was not safe for him to express his
| thoughts in the manner which is de-
manded and used by the men OF today.
| II should not be forgotten that a good
| part OF the intellectual freedom OF men
in Europe today, the ability TO think
| and express themselves as il pleases
| them TO, is due TO Voltaire and the
| thoughts he gathered about him.
There was large movement then
dependent upon Rousseau, and the
| characteristic OF this movement was
| the demand for freedom of speech and
| thought, particularly for moral and re-
| ligious affairs; they did not touch the
| established order of things so far as
| the political organization was con-
cerned; VOltaire, at one period of his
| lire was intimately acquainted with
| Frederick the Great, and perhaps
| once, from this association, his ideas
were those of absOlutiSm as abSolutism
| was conducted by Frederick. Now
Rousseau had his originality in the
| fact that he carried the assertion of
freedom over from the intellectual
| SkepticiSm into a social and political
| one; it was the assertion of the rights
of men anywhere and everywhere. We
find his name often connected with
that of Voltaire in the general attack
upon institutions of that period and
yet, in reality, he was opposed to Vol
taire. VOltaire took it for granted
that if they could get an intellectual
freedom other conditions would take
care of themselves. Rousseau, hOwev-
er, said that ii this took place, all men
would not be helped and would still
remain enslaved. He said, The peo-
pie were everything Now this dem
Ocratic principle is not novelty to
the Anglo Saxon, and, of course, we
cannot understand the greatness of
the principle as announced by Rous-
seau in his time; he proclaimed this
measure, or principle, not as a politi-
cal expedient, but he proclaimed it as
an absolute moral right, as a fulfill
ment of Christianity; he put ire
mendous moral force into the asser-
ton of the democratic principle He
identified the rights of the individual
to himself in thought and especially
the principle of the salvation of souls,
which meant the Overturning of all
kinds of restrictions to thought and
&c
principle with the ardor of morality
and the ardOr of religion.
There is much in the writings of
Dlstoi which is identified in the spir-
it of Rousseau, since he took to peas
ant life; Rousseau uttered more than
a century ago what Tolstoi is advocat-
ing today. Rousseau proclaimed the
superiority of the heart to whatever
comes from the head; the artificial side
of Intelligence, as manifested in the
society of the period, were mere words
and ideas, and they were going fur
Their and further away from the mass
OF the people: those were the main
thoughts which were thrown like fire.
brands into the camp Of the French
philosophers, or those who considered
themselves the leaders of thought. He
said that if the philosophers and great
thinkers would only devote themselves
to political and social matters then the
philosophers would think wise
thoughts. while the kings would do
good things, but as long as power and
freedom were separated, the philosO-
piers would utter foolish thoughts,
and the kings commit every kind of
error.
The same academy which offered a
prize for the best essay upon social
studies, and which was won by Rous-
seau. shortly afterwards prOpounded
another subject on ''The Origin of In
equality Among Men," and that called
out more spirited answer from Rous-
seau than his first essay in this he
attacked all political institutions; GER
tain words of Rousseaus became
watchworus at once; they were the sig
nal, or sign, of rebellion of thought
against restraint; some Of the SEN
fences which engraved themselves up
on mems minds became the rallying
point which eliminated in the French
revolution; Rousseau proposed to make
"a clean sweep of all political inStitu-
tons and begin all over again; it is a
matter of historical fact that he was
the real precursor of philOsOphical<an
archy in government, but not of the
mountaineering kind, or precisely that
if you can lead men to voluntary CO.
operation without being cOerciVe over
item, you will get to as close POSSIBLE
ity for solution of the social problem
as could be desired. There. again, is
where TOlstOi follows Rousseau, al
though | doubt if he ever read him,
and yet the conception is the same.
There are three distinct features of
Rousseau's writings which are readily
noted: his radical distinction between
the prosperous and the poor; the con-
troll OF the powerful over the weak, and
the inequality existing between mas
ter and slave. There are positive prin
ciples and facts used by him and he
strongly advocated that men are free
born. To my mind we have in Rous-
seau a figure in literature who has had
more influence in history and the de-
velopment of thought than any other
writer in the last one hundred and fifty
years.