Jean Jacques Rousseau, the son of a watch-maker at Geneva, was born June 28, 1712. His mother dying while he was yet a child, his father took a second wife; and he himself was placed at school at the village of Bossey, near Geneva, where he learnt but little, and was afterwards apprenticed to an engraver, a coarse, brutal man, whose treatment of him tended to sour a temper already wilful and morose. He became addicted to idleness, pilfering, and lying. The fear of punishment for some act of especial misconduct induced him to run away from his master, and he wandered into Savoy, where finding himself totally destitute, he applied to the Bishop of Annecy, on the plea of wishing to be instructed in the Catholic religion. The bishop recommended him to Madame de Warens, a Swiss lady, herself a convert to Catholicism, who lived at Annecy. She received the boy kindly, relieved his present wants, and afforded him the means of proceeding to Turin, where he entered the College of Catechumens, and after going through a preparatory course of instruction, abjured the reformed religion, and became a Catholic. But as he refused to enter into holy orders, on leaving the college he was again thrown upon his own resources. He became a domestic servant; but his want of self-control and discretion rendered him very unfit for his employment: and in 1730 he returned to the house of Madame de Warens, who received him kindly, and afforded him support and protection during the next ten years. Of his foolish, profligate, and ungrateful course of life during this period, we have neither space nor wish to give an account: after many absences, and many returns, Rousseau quitted her finally in 1740, receiving letters of introduction to some persons at Lyons. Tutor, musician, and private secretary to the French Ambassador, his restless temper and versatile mind led him successively from Lyons to Paris and Venice. From the last-named city he returned to Paris in 1745; and alighting at an obscure inn, met with a servant girl, Therese Levasseur, with whom he formed a connexion which lasted all the rest of his life. He tried to compose music for the stage, but did not succeed in his attempts. He was next employed as a clerk in the office of M. Dupin, Fermier-gÉnÉral, but did not remain long in his new employment. In 1748 he became acquainted with Madame d’Epinay, who proved afterwards one of his steadiest and kindest friends. He frequented the society also of D’Alembert, Diderot, and Condillac, and he was engaged to write the articles on music for the EncyclopÉdie, which he did very ill, as he himself acknowledges. One day he saw by chance in an advertisement, that a prize had been offered by the Academy of Dijon, for the best essay on the question, Whether the progress of sciences and of the arts has been favourable to the morals of mankind? He at once resolved to write for the prize, and apparently without having ever before considered the subject, made up his mind to take the negative side of the question. Diderot encouraged, but did not, as has been commonly said, originate this determination. He supported his position, that science, literature, and art, have been fatal to the virtues and happiness of mankind, with a glowing eloquence; and the Academy awarded him the prize. His success confirmed him in a turn for paradox and exaggeration; and he seems to have adopted, as a general principle, the doctrine that the extreme opposite to wrong must necessarily be right. At the same time his reputation as an author became established, and in a few years after his first essay, he was acknowledged to be one of the most, or rather the most, eloquent writer among his contemporaries. Meantime he persevered in his attempts at musical composition, and wrote ‘Le Devin du Village,’ an opera which was played before the king at the Court Theatre of Fontainebleau, and met with the royal approbation. Rousseau was in one of the boxes with a gentleman belonging to the court. The king having expressed a desire to see the composer of the opera, Rousseau became alarmed or ashamed at the slovenly condition of his dress, and instead of repairing to the royal presence, he ran out of the house and hastened back to Paris. Naturally shy, he possessed neither ease of manners nor facility of address, and he could never throughout life subdue his own acute feeling of these deficiencies; a feeling which of course tended to perpetuate and increase his awkwardness. This was the secret spring of most of his eccentricities. In order to hide his imperfections, he resorted to the plan of affecting to disregard manners altogether; he put on the appearance of a cynic, of a misanthropist, which he was not in reality.

It was about the year 1750, soon after writing his dissertation for the Dijon prize, that he made a total change in his habits and mode of living. He gave up all refinement about his dress, laid aside his sword, bag, and silk stockings, sold his watch, but kept his linen apparel, which, however, was stolen from him shortly after. He spent one half of the day in copying music as a means of subsistence, and he found constant employment. Several persons who knew his circumstances offered him three or four times the value of his labour, but he would never accept more than the usual remuneration. In 1753 he wrote his ‘Lettre sur la Musique FranÇaise,’ in which he asserted that the French had no music deserving the name, that they could not possibly have any, and then added, that “were they ever to have any it would be all the worse for them;” a sentence unintelligible to his readers, and probably to himself also. When years after this he heard Gluck, with whose music he was delighted, he observed to some one, “this man is setting French words to very good music, as if on purpose to contradict me;” and upon this reflection he broke off acquaintance with Gluck. However, his letter on French music sorely wounded the national vanity, and he was exposed to a sort of petty persecution in consequence of it. Rousseau wrote next his letter to D’Alembert, ‘sur les Spectacles,’ which led to a controversy between them. He wrote also the ‘Discours sur l’Origine de l’InÉgalitÉ parmi les Hommes,’ for another prize of the Academy of Dijon, with a dedication to the magistrates of his native town Geneva, which was much admired as a specimen of dignified eloquence. The discourse itself is composed in his accustomed paradoxical vein. He maintains that men are not intended to be sociable beings; that they have a natural bias for a solitary existence; that the condition of the savage, untutored and free in his native wilds, is the natural and proper state of man; and that every system of society is an infraction of man’s rights, and a subversion of the order of nature. He assumes that men are all born equal by nature, disregarding the daily evidence of the contrary, in respect both of their physical and moral powers. His idea of the equal rights of men, which he afterwards developed in the ‘Contrat Social,’ instead of being founded upon enlightened reason, religion, and morality, rests upon the base of his favourite theory, of man’s equality in a state of nature; while we know from experience, that those savage tribes who approach nearest to this imaginary natural state, acknowledge no other right than that of the strongest. Most of Rousseau’s paradoxes proceed from the false position assumed in his first dissertation, that a savage, unsocial state, is the very perfection of man’s existence.

After the publication of this discourse Rousseau repaired to Geneva, where he was well received by his countrymen. He there abjured Catholicism and resumed the profession of the reformed religion. But he soon returned to Paris; and, at the invitation of Madame d’Epinay, in 1756, took up his residence at the house called L’Hermitage, in the valley of Montmorency, near Paris. It was in this pleasant retirement that he began his celebrated novel ‘Julie, ou la Nouvelle HeloÏse,’ which he finished in 1759. As a work of imagination and invention it is little worth; but as a model of impassioned eloquence, it will be admired as long as the French language shall continue to be spoken or read by men. Rousseau, while he wrote it, was himself under the influence of a passion which he had conceived for the beautiful Madame d’Houdetot, Madame d’Epinay’s sister-in-law, a love totally hopeless and ridiculous on his part, but which no doubt inspired him while engaged in the composition of this work. When it appeared, many people, especially women, thought that Julie was a real living object of his attachment, and the supposition being favourable to the popularity of the book and its author, Rousseau was not very anxious to undeceive them. He esteemed the fourth portion of the work the best. “The first two parts are but the desultory verbiage of feverish excitement, and yet I could never alter them after I had once written them. The fifth and the sixth are comparatively weak, but I let them remain out of consideration of their moral utility.... My imagination cannot embellish the objects I see; it must create its own objects. If I am to paint the spring, I must do it in winter; if to describe a landscape, I must be shut up within walls: were I confined in the Bastille, I should then write best on the charms of liberty. I never could write as a matter of business, I can only do it through impulse or passion.” (Rousseau’s ‘Notes to the Nouvelle HeloÏse,’ in Mercier and Le Tourneur’s edition.) He had great difficulty in constructing his periods; he turned them and he altered them repeatedly in his head, often while in bed, before he attempted to put them on paper.

La Nouvelle HeloÏse has been censured for the dangerous example it affords, and for the interest it throws upon seduction and frailty. The character of St. Preux is decidedly faulty, and even base, in spite of all his sophistry, which however has probably led other young men placed in a similar situation to forget the relative duties of society, and the obligations of hospitality. Here we perceive also the influence of Rousseau’s favourite paradox; for in a state of nature, such as Rousseau has fancied it, the intimacy of St. Preux and Julie would have been unobjectionable. But then the relative position of the teacher, his pupil, and her parents, would not have been the same as in the novel, for they would have been all savages together. Rousseau has however redeemed the character of Julie after she becomes a wife, and he has thus paid a sincere homage to the sacredness of the marriage bond, and to the importance of conjugal duties, the basis of all society. Rousseau was not a contemner of virtue; he felt its beauty, though his practice was by no means modelled on its dictates. He tells us himself the workings of his mind on this subject. “After much observation I thought I perceived nothing but error and folly among philosophers, oppression and misery in the social order. In the delusion of my foolish pride I fancied myself born to dissipate all prejudices; but then I thought that, in order to have my advice listened to, my conduct ought to correspond to my principles. I had been till then good-hearted, I now became virtuous. Whoever has the courage of showing himself such as he is, must, if he be not totally depraved, become such as he ought to be.” It was probably in compliance with his growing sense of moral duty, that he married at last the woman he had so long been living with, when she was forty-seven years of age, and, as he himself acknowledges, was not possessed of any attractions of either mind or person, having nothing to recommend her except her attention to him, especially in his frequent fits of illness or despondency. He seems also to have bitterly repented, in the latter years of his life, having in his youth sent his illegitimate children to the foundling hospital.

Rousseau’s next work was the ‘Emile, ou de l’Education,’ which appeared in 1762. It contains many excellent precepts, especially in the first part, although, as a whole system, it may be considered as impracticable, at least in any state of society which has yet been formed upon the earth. It was remarked at the time, that the author, after having brought up his Emile to manhood, ought to create a new world for him to live in. Rousseau himself seems to have been of this opinion, for when a Mr. Angar introduced to him his son, whom he said he had educated according to the principles of the Emile, Rousseau quickly replied, “So much the worse for you, and for your son too.” The ‘Emile,’ however, introduced some beneficial changes in the early treatment of children. It discredited the absurd practice of swaddling infants like mummies, to the manifest injury of their tender limbs; it induced mothers of the higher ranks to suckle their children, instead of committing them to the care of nurses; it corrected several wrong principles of early education, such as that of ruling children through fear, of considering them as slaves having no will of their own, and of terrifying them by absurd stories and fables; it inculcated freedom of body and mind, the necessity of amusement and relaxation, of appealing to the feelings of children, of treating them like rational beings. Rousseau may be truly called the benefactor of children. As he proceeded, however, in his plan for boys grown older, Rousseau became involved in some of his favourite speculations about religion and metaphysics, which gave offence to both Catholics and Protestants. The Parliament of Paris condemned the work. The Archbishop issued a mandement against it. The States-General of Holland likewise proscribed the book. At Geneva, it was publicly burnt by the hand of the executioner. The publication of the ‘Contrat Social, ou Principes du Droit Politique,’ which appeared soon after, added to the storm against the author. It contains much speculative truth, combined with much ignorance of men’s nature and passions. The idea of a perfect and universal model of government, without regard to local circumstances, seems chimerical. It is a curious fact that Rousseau, after reading Bernardin de St. Pierre’s political works, observed that they contained projects which were impracticable on account of a fundamental error, out of which the author was unable to extricate himself, namely, “that of supposing that men in general and in all cases will conduct themselves according to the dictates of reason and virtue, rather than according to their passions.” Rousseau, in uttering these words, passed judgment on his own ‘Contrat Social,’ which he afterwards also acknowledged having written, “not for men but for angels.” In fact, he never meant it for anything but a speculative treatise, and in his ‘ConsidÉrations sur le Gouvernement de la Pologne,’ published some years after, having to write for a practical purpose, he considerably modified his former principles.

In consequence of the excitement produced by these works, Rousseau left Paris for Switzerland in 1762. He went first to Yverdun, but the Senate of Berne enjoined him to leave its territory. He then repaired to Neuchatel, which was subject to the King of Prussia, and of which the old Marshal Keith was Governor. Keith received him very kindly, and Rousseau took up his residence at the village of Motiers, in the Val de Travers. There he wrote a Reply to the Archbishop of Paris, and a Letter to the Magistrates of Geneva, in which he renounced his rights of citizenship. He next wrote the “Lettres de la Montagne,” which is a series of severe strictures on the political government and church of Geneva. It is curious as a sketch of the old institutions of that republic, written by one of its own citizens. This work increased the existing irritation against its author, a feeling which spread even to the villagers of Motiers, who are said to have annoyed their eccentric visiter in various ways. Rousseau, however, is suspected of having greatly magnified, if not invented, some of the acts of aggression of which he complains. He spoke of them as amounting to a regular conspiracy against his person, and removed his abode to the little island of St. Pierre, on the lake of Bienne. Thence, after a time, as if to court notice, he wrote a letter to the Senate of Berne, requesting permission to remain on the island. For answer he received an order to quit the territory of the canton in twenty-four hours. At the invitation of his former friend Marshal Keith, he meditated a visit to Berlin. But the advice of some friends in Paris induced him to change his mind, and accept the friendly offer of our historian Hume, who was anxious to procure for him a safe asylum in England, where he might quietly attend to his studies and live in peace. Rousseau arrived in London in January, 1766; and in the following March, went to his intended home at Wootton in Derbyshire. Knowing the man he had to deal with, Hume, with the real kindness of character which he possessed, had sought by every means to avoid shocking the irritable delicacy or vanity of his protÉgÉ: and the residence which he procured for him in the house of a man of fortune, Mr. Davenport, is said to have been unexceptionable. But before long he quarrelled with both Hume and Davenport, left Wootton abruptly, and returned to France. The ostensible cause of all this was the publication of a letter in the newspapers, bearing the King of Prussia’s name, and reflecting severely upon Rousseau’s weaknesses and eccentricities. Rousseau accused Hume, or some of his friends, of having written it. Hume protested in vain that he knew nothing of the matter. At last Horace Walpole acknowledged himself to be the author. Rousseau, however, would not be pacified, and attributed to Hume the blackest designs against him. The correspondence that passed between the parties on the subject is curious, and is given in the complete editions of our author’s works. He afterwards seemed to say that during his residence in England he had been subject to fits of insanity.

Returning to France, Rousseau led an unsettled life, with frequent changes in his place of residence, until June, 1770. He then returned to Paris, and took lodgings in the Rue PlÂtriÈre, which has since been called Rue J. J. Rousseau. It is to be noticed that in the interim he had published his ‘Dictionnaire de Musique,’ a work which has the reputation of being both imperfect and obscure. Indeed, notwithstanding his passionate fondness for the art, he never attained to a profound acquaintance with it. Passing through Lyons on his way to Paris, he subscribed his mite towards the erection of a statue to Voltaire: thus avenging himself for the coarse abuse which the latter had on many occasions poured upon him, and which Rousseau never returned. Voltaire is said to have been exceedingly annoyed at this. After his return to the capital, he was overwhelmed with visits and invitations to dinner. Though there was a prosecution pending against him for his ‘Emile,’ he was left undisturbed: but at the same time he was cautioned not to exhibit himself too conspicuously in public; advice which he utterly disregarded. He soon relapsed into his former misanthropy, and became subject to convulsive fits, which fearfully disfigured his features, and gave a haggard expression to his looks. He fancied that every body was conspiring against him, and he also complained of inward moral sufferings which tortured his mind.

Among other imaginary grievances he thought that the French ministers had imposed restrictions upon him with respect to his writings. One of his friends applied to the Duc de Choiseuil to ascertain the fact. The Duke’s answer, dated 1772, is as follows: “If ever I have engaged M. Rousseau not to publish anything without my previous knowledge, of which fact however I have no remembrance, it could only have been in order to save him from fresh squabbles and annoyance. However, now that I have no longer the power of protecting him (the Duke had resigned his premiership), I fully acquit him of any engagement of the kind.”

As Rousseau was walking one day in the street Menil Montant, a large dog that was running before the carriage of the President Saint Fargeau tripped his legs, and he fell. The President alighted, expressed his regret at the accident, and begged the sufferer to accept of his carriage to return home. Rousseau, however, refused. The next day the President sent to inquire after his health. “Tell your master to chain up his dog,” was the only reply.

Being old and infirm, the labour of copying music had become too irksome for him: still he would accept of no assistance from his friends, though all his income consisted of an annuity of 1450 livres. His wife was also in bad health, and provisions were very dear at the time; he therefore began to look out for a country residence. A friend mentioned this to the Marquis de Girardin, who immediately offered Rousseau a permanent habitation at his chÂteau of Ermenonville, near Chantilly. Rousseau accepted the proposal, and chose for his residence a detached cottage near the family mansion. He removed to it in May, 1778, and appeared more calm and contented in his new abode. He was fond of botany, and used to take long walks in quest of flowers with one of M. de Girardin’s sons. On July 1st he went out as usual, but returned home fatigued and ill: he however slept quietly that night. Next morning he rose early according to his custom, and went out to see the sun rise; he came back to breakfast, after which he went to his room to dress, as he intended to pay a visit to Madame de Girardin. His wife happening to enter his room shortly after, found him sitting with his elbow leaning on a chest of drawers. He said he was very ill, and complained of cold shivering and of violent pain in his head. Madame de Girardin being informed of this, came at once to visit him; but Rousseau, thanking her for all her kindness to him, begged of her to return home and leave him alone for the present. He then having requested his wife to sit by him, begged her forgiveness for any pain or displeasure of which he might have been the cause, and said that his end was approaching, that he died in peace, as he never had intended or wished evil to any human being, and that he hoped in the mercy of God. He begged that M. de Girardin would allow him to be buried in his park. He gave directions to his wife about his papers, and requested her particularly to have his body opened, that the cause of his death might be ascertained. He then asked her to open the window, “that he might once more behold the beautiful green of the fields.” “How pure and beautiful is the sky!” he then observed, “there is not a cloud. I trust the Almighty will receive me there above.” In so saying, he fell on his face to the floor, and on raising him, life was found to be extinct. On opening the body, a considerable quantity of serum was found between the brain and its integuments. His sudden death was attributed by many persons to suicide: but there is no direct evidence of which we know to prove this. On the other side there is the positive assertion of the physician who examined the body, that his death was natural. Rousseau was buried in an island shaded by poplars, on the little lake of the park of Ermenonville. A plain marble monument was raised to his memory.

The first part of his ‘Confessions,’ which he had begun to write while at Wootton, was published in 1781. He had himself fixed the year 1800 for the publication of the second part, judging that, by that time, the persons mentioned in the work would be dead; but, through an abuse of confidence on the part of the depositories of the MSS., it was published in 1788. His autobiography does not include the latter years of his life.

Rousseau was temperate and frugal in his habits, disinterested and warm-hearted, and impressed with strong feelings against oppression and injustice. He was not envious of the fame or success of his brother authors. He never sneered at religion like Voltaire and others of his contemporaries, although in his speculative works he expressed his doubts concerning revelation, and brought forth the arguments that occurred to him on that side of the question: but he had none of the fanaticism of incredulity against Christianity. Of the morality of the Gospel he was a sincere admirer, and a most eloquent eulogist. “I acknowledge,” he says in his ‘Emile,’ “that the majesty of the Scriptures astonishes me, that the holiness of the Gospel speaks to my heart. Look at the books of the philosophers; with all their pomp, how little they appear by the side of that one book! Can a book so sublime, and yet so simple, be the work of man? How prejudiced, how blind that man must be, who can compare the son of Sophroniscus (Socrates) to the son of Mary!” With such sentiments Rousseau could not long agree with Helvetius, Diderot, D’Holbach, and their coterie. They, on their side, ridiculed and abused him, because he was too sincere and independent for them. “I have spent my life,” says Rousseau, “among infidels, without being seduced by them; I loved and esteemed several of them, and yet their doctrine was to me insufferable. I told them repeatedly that I could not believe them.... I leave to my friends the task of constructing the world by chance. I find in the very architects of this new-fangled world, and in spite of themselves and their arguments, fresh proofs of the existence of a God, a Creator of all.” A very good collection of the moral maxims scattered about Rousseau’s works was published under the title of ‘Esprit, Maximes et Principes de J. J. Rousseau,’ 8vo., Neuchatel, 1774.

Rousseau set to music about 100 French romances, which he called ‘Consolations des MisÈres de ma Vie.’ Several editions of all his works have been made at different times: that by Mercier and Le Tourneur, 38 vols. 4to., has been long considered as one of the best. The edition of Lefevre, 22 vols. 8vo., 1819–20, and that of Lequien, 21 vols. 8vo., 1821–2, are now preferred to all former ones.