Ram, Lang Wahu 11-30-27 15927 845 R86 G27 1920 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION In preparing this enlarged edition of the Selections from J.-J. Rousseau I am availing myself of suggestions made by teachers who have used the first. The idea of giving complete works met with general approval. In the nature of things these could only be works of briefer compass. I have therefore retained in extenso the four complete selections of the first edition. To meet the request that all of Rousseau's important works be represented, selections have also been made from the remaining masterpieces. In arranging these I have attempted to choose such extracts as would, with the introductions to each, explain themselves, the purpose being to give in as brief a space as possible a general conspectus of Rousseau's contribution to the various fields of philosophy, politics and especially literature. Students of Rousseau are still impatiently awaiting a definitive text. Since my first edition an excellent text of The Political Writings of Rousseau (1915) has been provided by Professor C. E. Vaughan. I have followed this for the selections from the Discours sur l'Inégalité and the Contrat Social. For the remaining selections I have used the Musset-Pathay (1823-6) edition making a few changes which older or better authority seemed to warrant. In preparing this second edition I have been greatly aided in certain passages, especially of La Nouvelle Héloïse, by the J.-J. Rousseau, Morceaux Choisis, 3 édition, of that most learned of our Rousseau scholars, M. D. Mornet, to whom I wish to acknowledge particular indebtedness. For assistance in preparing this volume for the press my thanks are due to my colleague Professor Frank L. Critchlow. BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in Geneva in 1712, the son of a watchmaker whose character, like that of his illustrious descendant, was somewhat unstable. He spent less than two years at the school of M. Lambercier and after various vicissitudes was apprenticed to an engraver who treated him badly and whom the "temperamental” lad repaid in kind. Seeing the gates of Geneva locked in his face one Sunday evening, at the age of sixteen he turned his back upon his native city. He encountered Mme de Warens, a recent convert to Catholicism, who gave him harborage in the intervals between his many tramp trips, and to whom he seems to have been in turn, ward, lover and intendant. For a while he devoted himself to music and at her little farm Les Charmettes near Chambéry, spent some time in desultory study. In 1741 we find him in Paris which was to be his base during the next period of his life, 1741-1756. In 1743 for a brief and stormy interval he acted as secretary to the French Ambassador at Venice. In 1749 he wrote his famous Discours sur les Arts et les Sciences. At this time he had established friendly relations with a number of the Encyclopaedists, especially with Diderot, and as Secretary to Mme Dupin and to her son-in-law, M. de Francueil, had undergone a partial initiation into the life of the beau monde of Paris. He had already, however, conceived an attachment for Thérèse Le Vasseur, a dull |