Rousseau

It is sometimes taken for granted that a man who writes his own confessions gives to a scandalised or admiring world what he believes to be a true picture of himself. We might equally well assume that a man, whenever he talks about himself, believes that he is telling the whole truth. Common experience teaches the exact contrary. Even one who seems to possess in the fullest measure the hypothetical virtue of honesty breaks down in the process of self-revelation.

When Rousseau wrote his Confessions he was in a state of melancholy bordering upon actual madness. He was eager to show how, by reason of his extreme sensibility, he differed from other men, and, in consequence, how savagely he was persecuted and how cruelly maligned. Writing thus, with morbid intensity, and with a profusion of tedious or nauseating detail, he professed to give an honest account of his thoughts, words and actions. But these pages, while they describe accurately a most unhappy state of being, do not describe accurately the true course of events or the true attitude of those who appeared so black and hateful to a troubled spirit. The Confessions have been used in the present work with reasonable caution, and with full cognisance of their limitations as evidence of actual occurrences.

We cannot make any attempt to understand Rousseau without some knowledge of his books. Five chapters have therefore been devoted to short analyses of the Discourses, the Letter to d'Alembert, the New Heloise, the Social Contract and Emile. In the appropriate places, but not always with indication of source, use has been made of the Letters to Malesherbes, the Dialogues and the Reveries. Rousseau's private correspondence has naturally been quoted to a very considerable extent.