Imaginary Conversations and Poems: A Selection
beetles: let them consume a few blades of your clover without
molesting them, without bringing them to crawl on you and claw you.
The difference between them and men of genius is almost as great as
between men of genius and those higher intelligences who act in
immediate subordination to the Almighty. Yes, I assert it, without
flattery and without fear, the angels are not higher above mortals
than you are above the proudest that trample on them.
_Alfieri._ I believe, sir, you were the first in commending my
tragedies.
_Salomon._ He who first praises a good book becomingly is next in
merit to the author.
_Alfieri._ As a writer and as a man I know my station: if I found in
the world five equal to myself, I would walk out of it, not to be
jostled.
I must now, Signor Salomon, take my leave of you; for his Eminence my
coachman and their Excellencies my horses are waiting.
ROUSSEAU AND MALESHERBES
_Rousseau._ I am ashamed, sir, of my countrymen: let my humiliation
expiate their offence. I wish it had not been a minister of the Gospel
who received you with such inhospitality.
_Malesherbes._ Nothing can be more ardent and more cordial than the
expressions with which you greet me, M. Rousseau, on my return from
your lakes and mountains.
_Rousseau._ If the pastor took you for a courtier, I reverence him for
his contemptuousness.
_Malesherbes._ Why so? Indeed you are in the wrong, my friend. No
person has a right to treat another with contemptuousness unless he
knows him to deserve it. When a courtier enters the house of a pastor
in preference to the next, the pastor should partake in the sentiment
that induced him, or at least not to be offended to be preferred. A
courtier is such at court: in the house of a clergyman he is not a
courtier, but a guest. If to be a courtier is offensive, remember that
we punish offences where they are committed, where they can be
examined, where pleadings can be heard for and against the accused,
and where nothing is admitted extraneous from the indictment,
excepting what may be adduced in his behalf by witnesses to the
general tenor of his character.
_Rousseau._ Is it really true that the man told you to mount the
hayloft if you wished a night's lodging?
_Malesherbes._ He did: a certain proof that he no more took me to be a
courtier than I took him to be. I accepted his offer, and never slept
so soundly. Moderate fatigue, the Alpine air, the blaze of a good fire
(for I was admitted to it some moments), and a profusion of
odoriferous hay, below which a cow was sleeping, subdued my senses,
and protracted my slumbers beyond the usual hour.
_Rousseau._ You have no right, sir, to be the patron and remunerator
of inhospitality. Three or four such men as you would corrupt all
Switzerland, and prepare it for the fangs of France and Austria.
Kings, like hyenas, will always fall upon dead carcasses, although
their bellies are full, and although they are conscious that in the
end they will tear one another to pieces over them. Why should you
prepare their prey? Were your fire and effulgence given you for this?
Why, in short, did you thank this churl? Why did you recommend him to
his superiors for preferment on the next vacancy?
_Malesherbes._ I must adopt your opinion of his behaviour in order to
answer you satisfactorily. You suppose him inhospitable: what milder
or more effectual mode of reproving him, than to make every dish at
his table admonish him? If he did evil, have I no authority before me
which commands me to render him good for it? Believe me, M. Rousseau,
the execution of this command is always accompanied by the heart's
applause, and opportunities of obedience are more frequent here than
anywhere. Would not you exchange resentment for the contrary feeling,
even if religion or duty said nothing about the matter? I am afraid
the most philosophical of us are sometimes a little perverse, and will
not be so happy as they might be, because the path is pointed out to
them, and because he who points it out is wise and powerful. Obstinacy
and jealousy, the worst parts of childhood and of manhood, have range
enough for their ill humours without the heavens.
_Rousseau._ Sir, I perceive you are among my enemies. I did not think
it; for, whatever may be my faults, I am totally free from suspicion.
_Malesherbes._ And do not think it now, I entreat you, my good friend.
_Rousseau._ Courts and society have corrupted the best heart in
France, and have perverted the best intellect.
_Malesherbes._ They have done much evil then.
_Rousseau._ Answer me, and your own conscience: how could you choose
to live among the perfidies of Paris and Versailles?
_Malesherbes._ Lawyers, and advocates in particular, must live there;
philosophers need not. If every honest man thought it requisite to
leave those cities, would the inhabitants be the better?
_Rousseau._ You have entered into intimacies with the members of
various administrations, opposite in plans and sentiments, but alike
hostile to you, and all of whom, if they could have kept your talents
down, would have done it. Finding the thing impossible, they ceased to
persecute, and would gladly tempt you under the semblance of
friendship and esteem to supplicate for some office, that they might
indicate to the world your unworthiness by refusing you: a proof, as
you know, quite sufficient and self-evident.
_Malesherbes._ They will never tempt me to supplicate for anything but
justice, and that in behalf of others. I know nothing of parties. If I
am acquainted with two persons of opposite sides in politics, I
consider them as you consider a watchmaker and a cabinet-maker: one
desires to rise by one way, the other by another. Administrations and
systems of government would be quite indifferent to those very
functionaries and their opponents, who appear the most zealous
partisans, if their fortunes and consequence were not affixed to them.
Several of these men seem consistent, and indeed are; the reason is,
versatility would loosen and detach from them the public esteem and
confidence----
_Rousseau._ By which their girandoles are lighted, their dinners
served, their lackeys liveried, and their opera-girls vie in
benefit-nights. There is no State in Europe where the least wise have
not governed the most wise. We find the light and foolish keeping up
with the machinery of government easily and leisurely, just as we see
butterflies keep up with carriages at full speed. This is owing in
both cases to their levity and their position: the stronger and the
more active are left behind. I am resolved to prove that
farmers-general are the main causes of the defects in our music.
_Malesherbes._ Prove it, or anything else, provided that the
discussion does not irritate and torment you.
_Rousseau._ Truth is the object of philosophy.
_Malesherbes._ Not of philosophers: the display of ingenuity, for the
most part, is and always has been it. I must here offer you an opinion
of my own, which, if you think well of me, you will pardon, though you
should disbelieve its solidity. My opinion then is, that truth is not
reasonably the main and ultimate object of philosophy; but that
philosophy should seek truth merely as the means of acquiring and of
propagating happiness. Truths are simple; wisdom, which is formed by
their apposition and application, is concrete: out of this, in its
vast varieties, open to our wants and wishes, comes happiness. But the
knowledge of all the truths ever yet discovered does not lead
immediately to it, nor indeed will ever reach it, unless you make the
more important of them bear upon your heart and intellect, and form,
as it were, the blood that moves and nurtures them.
_Rousseau._ I never until now entertained a doubt that truth is the
ultimate aim and object of philosophy: no writer has denied it, I
think.
_Malesherbes._ Designedly none may: but when it is agreed that
happiness is the chief good, it must also be agreed that the chief
wisdom will pursue it; and I have already said, what your own
experience cannot but have pointed out to you, that no truth, or
series of truths, hypothetically, can communicate or attain it. Come,
M. Rousseau, tell me candidly, do you derive no pleasure from a sense
of superiority in genius and independence?
_Rousseau._ The highest, sir, from a consciousness of independence.
_Malesherbes._ _Ingenuous_ is the epithet we affix to modesty, but
modesty often makes men act otherwise than ingenuously: you, for
example, now. You are angry at the servility of people, and disgusted
at their obtuseness and indifference, on matters of most import to
their welfare. If they were equal to you, this anger would cease; but
the fire would break out somewhere else, on ground which appears at
present sound and level. Voltaire, for instance, is less eloquent than
you: but Voltaire is wittier than any man living. This quality----
_Rousseau._ Is the quality of a buffoon and a courtier. But the
buffoon should have most of it, to support his higher dignity.
_Malesherbes._ Voltaire's is Attic.
_Rousseau_. If malignity is Attic. Petulance is not wit, although a
few grains of wit may be found in petulance: quartz is not gold,
although a few grains of gold may be found in quartz. Voltaire is a
monkey in mischief, and a spaniel in obsequiousness. He declaims
against the cruel and tyrannical; and he kisses the hands of
adulteresses who murder their husbands, and of robbers who decimate
their gang.
_Malesherbes._ I will not discuss with you the character of the man,
and only that part of the author's on which I spoke. There may be
malignity in wit, there cannot be violence. You may irritate and
disquiet with it; but it must be by means of a flower or a feather.
Wit and humour stand on one side, irony and sarcasm on the other.
_Rousseau._ They are in near neighbourhood.
_Malesherbes._ So are the Elysian fields and Tartarus.
_Rousseau._ Pray, go on: teach me to stand quiet in my stall, while my
masters and managers pass by.
_Malesherbes._ Well then--Pascal argues as closely and methodically;
Bossuet is as scientific in the structure of his sentences;
Demosthenes, many think, has equal fire, vigour, dexterity: equal
selection of topics and equal temperance in treating them,
immeasurably as he falls short of you in appeals to the sensibility,
and in everything which by way of excellence we usually call genius.
_Rousseau._ Sir, I see no resemblance between a pleader at the bar, or
a haranguer of the populace, and me.
_Malesherbes._ Certainly his questions are occasional: but one great
question hangs in the centre, and high above the rest; and this is,
whether the Mother of liberty and civilization shall exist, or whether
she shall be extinguished in the bosom of her family. As we often
apply to Eloquence and her parts the terms we apply to Architecture
and hers, let me do it also, and remark that nothing can be more
simple, solid, and symmetrical, nothing more frugal in decoration or
more appropriate in distribution, than the apartments of Demosthenes.
Yours excel them in space and altitude; your ornaments are equally
chaste and beautiful, with more variety and invention, more airiness
and light. But why, among the Loves and Graces, does Apollo flay
Marsyas?--and why may not the tiara still cover the ears of Midas?
Cannot you, who detest kings and courtiers, keep away from them? If I
must be with them, let me be in good humour and good spirits. If I
will tread upon a Persian carpet, let it at least be in clean shoes.
As the raciest wine makes the sharpest vinegar, so the richest fancies
turn the most readily to acrimony. Keep yours, my dear M. Rousseau,
from the exposure and heats that generate it. Be contented; enjoy your