OF SOCIETY. 



449 



a return to nature, a revolt against the artificiality 

 of the existing state of society. Of this idea Rousseau 

 was the great champion, the extreme and passionate 

 exponent. The second was the idea of thejDerfectibility 

 of_ the human race, a not less " passionate faith in the 

 illimitable possibilities of human progress. Nothing 

 short of a general overthrow of the planet could, in 

 the eyes of the best minds of the latter half of the 

 Eighteenth Century, stay the ever upward movement 

 of human perfectibility." 1 



As already mentioned above, the latter conception 

 was connected with the growth and diffusion of the 

 scientific spirit, which owed much to Voltaire, though 

 he himself was in this respect only a populariser. 

 Although, in the long run, this scientific spirit has 

 got the upper hand, and probably a greater hold of 



25. 



Ideas of 

 Return to 

 Nature and 

 of Perfecti- 

 bility. 



1 " They differed as to the details 

 of the philosophy of government 

 which they deduced from this phil- 

 osophy of society, but the conviction 

 that the golden era of tolerance, 

 enlightenment, and material pros- 

 perity was close at hand, belonged 

 to them all. Rousseau set his face 

 the other way. For him the golden 

 era had passed away from our globe 

 many centuries ago. Simplicity had 

 fled from the earth. Wisdom and 

 heroism had vanished from out of 

 the minds of leaders. The spirit 

 of citizenship had gone from those 

 who should have upheld the social 

 union in brotherly accord. The 

 dream of human perfectibility 

 which nerved men like Condorcet, 

 was to Rousseau a sour and fantastic 

 mockery. The utmost that men 

 could do was to turn their eyes to 

 the past, to obliterate the interval, 

 to try to walk for a space in the 

 track of the ancient societies. They 



VOL. IV. 



would hardly succeed, but en- 

 deavour might at least do some- 

 thing to stay the plague of 

 universal degeneracy. Hence the 

 fatality of his system. It placed 

 the centre of social activity else- 

 where than in careful and rational 

 examination of social conditions, 

 and in careful and rational effort 

 to modify them. ... It sub- 

 stituted a retrograde aspiration 

 for direction, and emotion for the 

 discovery of law. We can hardly 

 wonder when we think of the 

 intense exaltation of spirit pro- 

 duced both by the Perfectibili- 

 tarians and the followers of 

 Rousseau, and at the same time 

 of the political degradation and 

 material disorder of France, that 

 so violent a contrast between the 

 ideal and the actual led to a great 

 volcanic outbreak." (See Lord 

 Morlev's ' Rousseau,' 1883, pp. 

 306-307.) 



2 F 



