Reveries of the Solitary Walker (Oxford World's Classics)

by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  This is what I discovered when I thought about it, for none of this had hitherto been at all clear in my mind. This observation subsequently reminded me of very many others which have convinced me that the real and essential motives of most of my actions are not as clear to me as I had for a long time imagined them to be. I know and feel that doing good is the truest happiness that the human heart can savour; but this happiness was put beyond my reach a long time ago, and it is not in so wretched a destiny as mine that one can possibly hope to place carefully and usefully any one, really good action. Since the greatest concern of those who control my fate has been to ensure that everything for me is merely false and deceptive appearance, any occasion to be virtuous is only ever a bait set for me to entice me into the trap in which they want to ensnare me. I know that; I know that the only good in my power from now on is to refrain from doing anything for fear of unintentionally and unwittingly doing ill.

  But there were happier times when, following the impulses of my heart, I could sometimes make another heart happy, and I owe it to myself to acknowledge honourably that every time I enjoyed this pleasure, I found it sweeter than all the rest. This inclination was strong, genuine, and pure, and nothing even deep down within me has ever belied it. However, I often felt the burden of my own good deeds because of the chain of duties they brought with them in their train: then pleasure disappeared, and continuing to offer the same sort of attention which had originally delighted me now became almost unbearably irksome. During my brief periods of prosperity, many people turned to me for help, and doing everything I could for them, I never turned any of them away. But from these early good deeds, which I performed with an overflowing heart, there came chains of successive commitments which I had not foreseen and which I was unable to throw off. My early favours were, in the eyes of those who received them, only the down payment for those that were still to come; and as soon as some unfortunate individual had latched on to me on account of some kindness received, there was from then on no alternative, and that initial, freely given good deed became for him an indefinite right to all those good deeds he might subsequently have need of, and not even my powerlessness was enough to release me. This is how very sweet pleasures were turned into, for me, a succession of onerous obligations.

  These chains, however, did not seem to me very heavy as long as I lived in obscurity, unknown by the public. But as soon as my person was exposed by my writings, undoubtedly a serious mistake, albeit one more than made up for by my misfortunes, from that point on I became the one person to whom all the needy or supposedly needy turned, all the tricksters in search of a dupe, and all those who, under the pretext of the great authority they pretended to be attributing to me, wanted to take control of me in some way or another. It was then that I realized that all natural inclinations, including charity itself, once carried or followed in society carelessly and haphazardly, change their nature and often become as harmful as they were originally useful. All these cruel experiences gradually changed my initial inclinations, or rather, confining them at last within their true limits, they taught me to follow less blindly my inclination to do good, when all it did was to further other people’s wickedness.

  But I do not regret these experiences, since reflecting on them has given me new insights into my knowledge of myself and the real motives for my behaviour on a thousand occasions about which I have so often deluded myself. I came to see that, in order to enjoy doing good, I had to act freely and without constraint, and that in order for me to lose all the pleasure of a good deed, it had only to become a duty for me. From that point on, the weight of obligation turns one of the sweetest joys into a burden, and, as I have said in Émile I think, amongst the Turks I would have been a bad husband when the town crier called them to fulfil the duties of their position.*

  All this alters considerably the opinion that for a long time I had had of my own virtue, since there is no virtue in following one’s inclinations and, when they so lead, in offering oneself the pleasure of doing good. Rather, it consists in overcoming those inclinations when duty requires it in order to do what it tells us to do, and this is what I have been less able to do than any other man in the world. Born sensitive and good, compassionate to the point of weakness and feeling my soul exalted by all things generous, I was by inclination and even by passion humane, benevolent, and charitable, as long as only my heart was touched; I would have been the best and most merciful of men, if I had been the most powerful, and to extinguish in me all desire for vengeance, I would only have needed to be able to avenge myself. I would even have had no difficulty in being fair against my own interests, but I should never have been able to make myself do anything that went against the interests of people who were dear to me. As soon as my duty came into conflict with my heart, the former rarely defeated the latter, unless all I had to do was abstain; on such occasions I was most often strong, but going against my inclinations was always impossible for me. Whether it be men, duty, or even necessity who gives the command, when my heart falls silent, my will remains deaf and I cannot obey. I see the evil threatening me and I let it happen rather than do anything to prevent it. I sometimes make an effort to begin with, but this effort very quickly tires and exhausts me; I am unable to continue. In all imaginable things, what I do not enjoy doing I soon find impossible to do.

  And that is not all. Obligation coinciding with my desire is enough to destroy that desire and change it into repugnance, even aversion, if the obligation is too strong, and that is what makes a good deed irksome for me when it is demanded of me, even if I was doing it of my own accord without anyone demanding it of me. A purely voluntary good deed is certainly something that I like to do. But when the beneficiary of it thinks it entitles him to demand more good deeds of me on pain of provoking his hatred if I refuse, and when he insists that I have to be his benefactor for evermore, just because I initially enjoyed being so, from that point on annoyance begins and pleasure subsides. What I do then, when I give in, is weakness and false shame, but good will is no longer part of it, and far from applauding myself for it, I reproach myself in my conscience for doing good unwillingly.

  I know that there is a kind of contract, even the most sacred of contracts, between benefactor and beneficiary. It is a kind of society that they form together, more closely knit than that which unites men in general, and if the beneficiary tacitly promises his gratitude, the benefactor likewise agrees to keep showing the other, as long as he remains worthy of it, the same kindness as he has just shown him and to repeat such acts of charity whenever he can and whenever he is required to. These are not explicit conditions, but they are the natural consequences of the relationship that has just been established between them. A person who refuses freely to help someone the first time that person asks them to gives the person whom he has refused no right to complain; but anyone who, in a similar situation, refuses that person the same favour which he had done him in the past, frustrates a hope that he allowed him to form; he disappoints and belies an expectation that he created. In this refusal one feels something unjust and harsher than in the other, but it is no less the product of an independence which the heart loves and which it cannot give up easily. When I pay a debt, it is a duty I am fulfilling; when I give a gift, it is a pleasure I am offering myself. Now, the pleasure of fulfilling one’s duties is one which only the habit of virtue can create: those pleasures which come to us directly from nature are not so highly exalted.

  After so many unhappy experiences, I have learned to foresee from afar the consequences of following my instinctive inclinations, and I have often abstained from a good deed that I wanted and was able to do for fear of the enslavement to which I would subsequently submit myself if I gave myself over to it unthinkingly. I did not always feel this fear; on the contrary, in my youth I grew fond of others by my own good works, and similarly I often felt that those whom I helped became attached to me more out of gratitude than out of self-interest. But things certainly changed in this resp
ect as in all others as soon as my misfortunes began. From that point on I have lived in a new generation that looked nothing like the old one, and my own feelings for others have suffered from the changes that I found in theirs. The very same people whom I have seen successively in these two very different generations have in a sense assimilated themselves successively first to the one and then to the other. From being truthful and honest to begin with and having become what they are now, they have behaved as everyone else has, and simply because times have changed, men have changed too. Oh, but how could I keep the same feelings for them when I find in them the opposite of what created those feelings? I do not hate them, because I could not hate anybody; but I cannot help but feel the scorn they deserve or show it to them.

  Perhaps, without realizing it, I myself have changed more than I should have done. What sort of character could withstand a situation like mine without changing? Convinced by twenty years’ experience that all the happy dispositions that nature had put in my heart had been turned, both by my destiny and by those who control it, into something harmful to myself or others, now I can only see a good deed I am asked to do as a trap laid for me, underneath which lurks something bad. I know that, whatever the effect of my good deed may be, I will still be able to take credit for my good intention. Yes, that credit is no doubt still there, but the inner charm is not, and as soon as I do not have this spur, I feel only indifference and coldness within me, and since I am sure that, instead of doing something really useful, I am simply acting the dupe, the combination of my indignant self-love and my reason’s denial inspires only opposition and resistance in me, where once, in my natural state, I would have been full of ardour and zeal.

  There are some types of adversity which uplift and strengthen the soul, but there are others which weaken and kill it; it is to this latter type that I am prey. If there had been some trace of sin in my soul, this adversity would have made it ferment to excess and driven me delirious; but instead it simply rendered me of no significance. Incapable of doing good either for myself or for others, I abstain from acting at all; and this state, which is innocent only in so far as it is imposed upon me, makes me find a kind of charm in following my natural inclinations fully and without reproach. No doubt I go too far, because I avoid any opportunity to act, even when I see that only good can be done. But, since I am sure that I am not being allowed to see things as they really are, I refrain from judging on the basis of the appearances given to those things, and regardless of how alluring the motives for acting may appear, the very fact that these motives have been left within my grasp is enough to convince me that they are not to be trusted.

  I was but a child when destiny seems to have set the first trap, which for a long time made me so prone to fall into all the others. I was born the most trusting of men, and for a whole forty years this trust was never betrayed.* Suddenly plunged into a new order of people and things, I stumbled into a thousand snares without ever noticing a single one of them, and twenty years’ experience has hardly been enough to enlighten me about my fate. Once I was convinced that there was nothing but lies and falsehood in the affected protestations of friendship lavished upon me, I quickly went to the other extreme: for once we have left behind our true nature, there is nothing left to constrain us. From then on I grew sick of men, and my own will, coinciding with theirs in this respect, keeps me further removed from them than all their machinations do.

  Try as they might, my distaste for them will never turn into aversion. When I think of how they have become dependent on me in their attempt to make me dependent on them, I feel truly sorry for them. If I am not unhappy, then they are, and whenever I reflect on myself, I always find that they are to be pitied. Pride may still form a part of these judgements: I feel myself too much above them to hate them. They may make me feel as much as scorn for them, but never hatred, for I love myself too much to be able to hate anyone. To do so would be to limit and repress my existence, whereas I would prefer to extend it across the whole universe.

  I prefer to flee them than hate them. The sight of them strikes my senses and thence my heart with impressions which are made painful for me by a thousand cruel looks; but my distress ends as soon as the object causing it has disappeared. In spite of myself, their presence preoccupies me, but never the memory of them. When I do not see them, they do not exist as far as I am concerned.

  They are in fact indifferent to me only in terms of their relations with me; for in their relations with each other, they can still touch me and move me like the characters in a play I might go and see. My moral being would have to be destroyed for justice to become a matter of indifference to me. The spectacle of injustice and wickedness still makes my blood boil with anger; virtuous actions in which I can see no trace of boasting or ostentation always make me tremble with joy and still make me shed sweet tears. But I have to see them and appreciate them for myself; for, given what has happened to me, I would have to be mad to adopt men’s judgement on anything or to take anything on trust from anyone.

  If my face and features were as completely unknown to men as my character and true nature are, I would have no difficulty in still living amongst them. I could even enjoy their company, as long as I was a perfect stranger to them. Freely following my natural inclinations, I would still love them if they never had anything to do with me. I would display a complete and utterly disinterested benevolence towards them, but without ever forming an attachment to anyone in particular and without taking on the burden of any responsibilities, I would freely and willingly do for them everything that they have so much difficulty in doing, prompted as they are by their self-love and constrained by all their laws.

  If I had remained free, unknown, and isolated, as I was meant to be, I would have done only good: for I do not have in my heart the seeds of any harmful passion. If I had been invisible and omnipotent like God, I would have been beneficent and good like him. It is strength and freedom which make excellent men. Weakness and slavery have only ever made wicked men. If I had possessed the ring of Gyges,* it would have released me from being dependent on men and made them dependent on me. I have often wondered, in my castles in the air, what use I would have made of this ring; for in such an instance, power must be closely followed by the temptation to abuse it. Able to satisfy my desires and to do anything at all without anyone being able to deceive me, what might I have desired with some consistency? One thing alone: to see all hearts happy. The sight of public happiness is the one thing that could have touched my heart in a lasting way, and the ardent desire to contribute to it would have been my most constant passion. Always impartially just and unfailingly good, I should also have guarded myself against blind mistrust and implacable hatred; because, seeing men as they are and having no difficulty in reading what is in the depths of their hearts, I would have found few likeable enough to deserve all my affections and few odious enough to deserve all my hatred, and because their very wickedness would have inclined me to pity them, knowing full well the harm they do themselves in seeking to do harm to others. Perhaps in cheerful moments I would have had the childish urge to work some miracles: but completely disinterested in myself and having no other law than my natural inclinations, I would have worked a thousand wonders of forgiveness and fairness for a few acts of severe justice. As minister of providence and dispenser of its laws according to my power, I would have performed wiser and more useful miracles than those of the Golden Legend* or the tomb of St Medard.*

  There is only one point on which the ability to go everywhere unseen could have made me seek out temptations which I would have found difficult to resist, and once I had entered on these wayward paths, who knows where they would have led me? It would suggest a poor understanding of human nature and of myself if I were to flatter myself that these abilities would not have seduced me, or that reason would have stopped me going down this dangerous slope. I was sure of myself in every other respect, but this alone would be my undoing. Someone whose power puts him above man m
ust be above the weaknesses of humanity, otherwise this excess of power will serve only, in effect, to reduce him to beneath his fellow men and beneath what he himself would have been, had he remained the same as them.

  All things considered, I think it will be best for me to throw away my magic ring before it makes me do something foolish. If men insist on seeing me as other than I am and if the very sight of me exacerbates their injustice, I need to deprive them of this sight by fleeing them, not by becoming invisible in their midst. It is up to them to hide from me, to conceal their machinations from me, to flee the light of day, and to bury themselves in the ground like moles. As for me, let them see me if they can, so much the better, but that is impossible for them; they will only ever see in my place the J.-J. that they have created for themselves and fashioned to their heart’s content, which they can hate at their leisure. So I would be wrong to be upset by the way they see me: I should take no real interest in it, since it is not me that they are actually seeing.