194 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



Courts are the true centres of the corruption of nations." The theme 

 is always the same, though the emphasis may vary, 



Eousseau's position among this incendiary group of writers is an 

 anomalous one, and more especially in regard to the permanency of his 

 influence upon Shelley. Long after the poet had burst the shackles 

 of the dull theories of the materialists he continued to read Rousseau 

 vrith delight. With Byron, Eousseau's " Héloise " in hand, he traversed 

 the scenes hallowed in their eyes by the guilty passion of Julie and St. 

 Preux; and in the great poem left fragmentary by his death Shelley 

 allows Eousseau to interpret for him the meaning of the visionary 

 throng chained through their passions to the car of life. Rousseau, 

 whose quivering sensibilities had forbidden him the mastery of himself, 

 lias been conquered in the strife : 



*' I was overcome 

 By my own heart alone, which neither age, 

 Nor tears, nor infamy, nor now the tomb. 

 Could temper to its object/' 



In Eousseau's fate Slielley foresaw his own. That degree of 

 wisdom at least he had attained before he died. 



From Eousseau, the prophet of the Xatural Eeligion, Shelley could 

 derive nothing of the arid materialism of his earlier years. But to 

 Eousseau, the individualist and the exponent of passionate love, to 

 Eousseau, the great precursor in France of lyrical Eomanticism, Shelley 

 and the world owed much, however we may question the value of the 

 debt. 



If we omit the customary arraignment of kings, and the denuncia- 

 tory objurgations levelled at the luxury of a corrupt civilization, there 

 was little in the specious theories of Eousseau to which Shelley gave 

 unquestioned adherence. Shelley, in common with the revolutionary 

 writers, looked confidently forward to a period when, law and custom 

 having been abolished, the world would enter upon a heritage of per- 

 fection. Eousseau perversely placed this period of perfection in the 

 childhood of the race. Shelley, on the contrary, subscribed to the 

 glowing picture which Condorcet drew of the happy future of humanity. 

 " No boundaries are set to the improvement of the human faculties ; 

 man's perfectibility is really indefinite . . . then will arrive a 

 moment when the sun will shine upon free men only, who recognize no 

 other master than their own reason ; when tyrants and slaves, priests and 

 their stupid or hypocritical instruments will exist only in history or 



