as we suppose he suffers; the suffering is not ours but his. So no one becomes sensitive till his
imagination is aroused and begins to carry him outside himself” (Emile, p. 261) [p. 184].
“It is clear that such transport supposes a great deal of acquired knowledge. How am I to
imagine ills of which I have no idea? How would I suffer in seeing another suffer, if I know
not what he is suffering, if I am ignorant of what he and I have in common. He who has never
been reflective is incapable of being malicious and vindictive. He who imagines nothing is
aware only of himself; he is isolated in the midst of mankind” (Essay) [p. 32].
“To show the means by which he may be kept in the path of nature is to show plainly enough
how he might stray from that path. So long as his consciousness is confined to himself there is
no morality in his actions; it is only when it begins to extend beyond himself that he forms
first the sentiments and then the ideas of good and ill, which make him indeed a man, and an
integral part of his species” (Emile, p. 257) [p. 181].
25.Cf. notes 3 and 4 of the Pléiade edition of Confessions, p. 56o.
26.[Pierre Maurice Masson], « Questions de chronologie rousseauiste, » Annales [de le
société] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, IX (1913) : 37.
27.[Alfred Victor Espinas], « Le ‘système’ de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, » Revue [Inter-
nationale] de l’enseignement [XXX (October 15, November 15], 189 5)
28.That was also the conclusion of H. Baudouin (La vie et les oeuvres de Jean-Jacques
Rousseau [Paris, 18911) . The page he devotes to the
Essay shows how Rousseau, and notably
the Essay, might then have normally been read, and allows us to measure the distance to be
covered: “Between the Discourse on the Sciences and the Discourse on Inequality, one must
place The Essay on the Origin of Languages. Rousseau also gave it the title of Essay on the
Principle of Melody. In fact in it he deals equally with language and music; which does not
stop him from speaking a great deal about society and its origins. . . . The date of its
composition is not perfectly clear; but the context indicates it sufficiently. Even the passages
therein where Rousseau speaks of the pernicious role of the arts and sciences show that his
opinions were already decided on this point: it is well-known that he was yet hesitant at the
time of composition of his discourse. He therefore could have written the Essay. only at a later
date. On the other hand, it is easy to see that on the question of society he had not yet formed
those radical ideas which he professed in his book on Inequality. (The quotation from the
Lettre sur les spectacles in
((344))
a note to Chapter 1 is not a serious enough objection. Nothing is simpler, in fact, than a note
added after the event.) Such as it is, the Essay offers a curious enough mixture of truth and
falsehood, caution and audacity. The method is constantly hypothetical, there are no proofs,
the social doctrines are at the very least mediocre. Often one would believe one were reading
the Inequality: same style, same turn of phrase, same investigative procedures, same
sequences of reasoning and ideas. But in the midst of all this, there is such caution in the
conclusions, such a respect for Holy Writ and tradition, such a faith in Providence, such a
horror of the materialist philosophers, that one finds oneself disarmed, as it were. In sum then,
Rousseau has created a transitional work here, which presages evil, rather than producing it
fully. The good that he placed there might have led him to saner ideas, if he had known how
to make use of it; unhappily enough he placed there the germs of those errors which he
developed in his later works. A memorable example of the care that one must take in order
somehow to orient his talent and life well, and what sort of route a principle, pushed to its
extreme consequences by an extremist logic, would carve out” (vol. I, pp. 323–34)
29.”L’unité de la pensée de Jean-Jacques Rousseau,” Annales, VIII (1912) : 1.
30.”This is how Rousseau’s work appears to me: very diverse, tumultuous, agitated by all
sorts of fluctuations, and yet, beginning from a certain moment, continuous and constant in its
spirit, in its successive directions....” And opposing the writer or the man, “dreamer and
timid,” to the work which “lives with an independent life,” moving by “its intrinsic
properties” and “quite charged with revolutionary explosives,” leading equally to “anarchy,”
and “social despotism,” Lanson concludes: “We must not try to hide this contrast of man and
work, which may even be called contradiction; for that is Rousseau himself.” Is it still
necessary to specify that what interests us in Rousseau, and here in Lanson, is the obstinate
veiling of this “critical” unveiling of the “contra-diction” between the man and the work?
Allowing us the concession of a certain internal contradiction, what is hidden from us under
this “Rousseau himself?” Where and when is one assured that there would have to be
something that fits the proposition “that is Rousseau himself?”
31.That was Lanson’s opinion as well and he finally came to agree with Masson.
32.”Note, in particular, that the long note to Chapter.7 was added and that the entire Chapter 6
[‘Whether It Is Likely That Homer Knew How to Write’] was considerably revised. In the
first draft, Rousseau thought it very probable that Homer did not know writing (pp. 29–30 of
the manuscript) . Rereading his text, he struck out that passage and added in the margin: ‘N.
B. This is a stupidity that one must avoid, since the story of Bellerophon, in the Iliad itself,
proves that the art of writing was in use in the author’s time, but this would not prevent his
work from being more sung than written’ “ (Masson’s Note. The examination of the
manuscript seemed less fruitful to me than Masson seems to think).
33.”I am publishing the final text at which Rousseau seems provisionally to have stopped, for
the Preface remains unfinished. . . . This Preface had already been published by A. Jansens, in
his J.-J. Rousseau als Musiker (Berlin 1884), pp. 472–73, but with many lacunae and faults of
reading which characterize most of his publications of texts” (Extract from Masson’s notes) .
34.Here is a passage that relates to the distinction between animal and human languages,
which the Essay equates with the distinction between non-perfectibility and perfectibility:
“That single distinction would seem to be far-reaching. It is said to be explicable by organic
differences. I would be curious to see such an explanation” (end of Chapter I) [p. ro].
35.Is it useful to indicate here that we find the same problematics of example and a literally
identical formulation in The Critique of Practical Reason, certainly, but above all in the
Metaphysische An f angsgründe der Tugendlehre (1797) [translated as
The Principles of
Virtue: Part II of The Metaphysics of Morals, by James Ellington (New York, 1964)], which
distinguishes between the example as the particular case of a practical rule (Exempel) and the