A CREATIVE FORCE IN LITERATURE.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1527, 24 August 1912, Page 9

A CREATIVE FORCE IN LITERATURE.

: Two centuries oga was born Jean Jacques I'oussean, and ill a sense bo is ?.r\- lv ''b us," writes tho London "Times'' apropos of the annivorsary ol that event. "A'o man was ever more interesting to himself, and ho has inter- • ested men ever since his death as no other of his generation, and with good reason. Ho is to bo numbered among the half-dozen creative, some might rather say explosive or disintegrating, forces in literature. The seeds which he sowed h^ v o multiplied and grown marvellously, iho influences which originated with this half-fool, half-cntlnisiast, as some of his cleverest friends described him, are among tho most potent now at work. Tho note which ho first struck still vibrates. And of all writers of his own time—we might ask of any other time—who has left a more numerous progeny? "His descendants are in many lands, in Ins own in particular. Chateaubriand, Senancour, La,marline, de Vigny, Jlusset, Hugo, and George Sand are only a few of his spiritual children. The Rousseau strain in French literature is not quite so clear and unmixed as it was in the culmination of Romanticism; but it still subsists; wo can trace it even in those who ridiculo his colossal failings. And if Rene is tho child of Rousseau, so also is iVerther. A large group of writers in Germany, notably Jean Paul, are tho progeny of this restless, perturbing, emotional, volcanic, spirit. "We, too, have among ns children of Rousseau; some do not know their par qntage, some disown it, others would hide it. Those who can discern tho characteristics of the breed detect them in a crowd of writers who have the art, often become the mere trick, of secreting with facility feeling, or the simulation of it, arid who can, like him, combine exalted sentiment with just .so much sincerity as is compatible with somewhat squalid conduct. Need wo say that much of Bussian literature, so far as it is not the expression of the Slav nature, is Rousseauisto transplanted to a chilly utmcspliero and ' soil? "Even Tolstoy, with all his many special gifts, may be said to bo the continue? of that long line of which Jean Jacques was the first. There ore passages in the 'Confessions' and in 'Emile' of which one may say, 'Here are tho seeds of modernism; here was planted the treo under which, wo all sit.'" "What wa3 this new and potent element whicli he introduced into letters? To sf.y that it was the bold obtrusion of the rnoi, tho persistent habit of looking at" all things and questions with reference to himself, of regarding the world as existing only for him, of making boundless egotism tho dominant note of all lie wrote of making every word in effect port of an unending autobiography ot an ever-begin-. ning confession is not' to tell tho whole secret; but it is to describe a manifest trait. "The greatest and sincerest of egotists unconscious of effort in measuring everything by its effect on himself, he viewed the whole universe as of interest and important only so far as it was of interest to him. "Rousseau was also a creative and political force and not the least among the causes of the French Revolution. He gave voice and a creed to dumb, inarticu-' late discontent. Not that the reasoning of the 'Contrat Social' was new; it is to bo found in Locke and others. But stated in Rousseau's luminous and confident manner, this doctrine of society resting upon a contract,' the terms of which fixed the respective rights of sovereign and subject, the breach of which condoned insurrection, and released the subject from allegiance, became the working creed of thousands who did not read political philosophy. He. gave the hungry and tho envious and the ambitious reasons for I their passions ,',dnd infused passion: into l their reasons. The political descendants of Rousseau are countless."