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

by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Brightly coloured flowers, the varied flora of the meadows, cool shade, streams, woods, and greenery, come and purify my imagination, sullied by all these hideous things. My soul, being dead to all great impulses, can no longer be touched by anything except things that appeal to the senses; sensations are all I have left, and through them alone can pain or pleasure now reach me here on earth. Attracted by the charming things that surround me, I look at them, consider them closely, compare them, and eventually learn to classify them, and all of a sudden, I am as much a botanist as anyone needs to be who wants to study nature with the sole aim of continually finding new reasons for loving it.

  I do not seek to educate myself: it is too late for that. In any case, I have never seen any of this science contributing to life’s happiness. But I do seek to offer myself pleasant and simple pastimes which I can enjoy effortlessly and which will distract me from my misfortunes. It costs me nothing nor does it take any effort to wander nonchalantly from plant to plant and flower to flower, examining them, comparing their various characteristics, noting their similarities and differences, and, finally, studying how they are organized so as to be able to follow the workings and processes of these living organisms, to discover occasionally their general laws and the reason for, and purpose of, their various structures, and to give myself over to the pleasure of grateful admiration of the hand that makes me enjoy all this.

  Plants seem to have been scattered profusely over the face of the earth like the stars in the sky as a means of inviting men, through the lure of pleasure and curiosity, to study nature; but the stars are placed far above us: we need to have some basic knowledge, instruments, and machines—so many long ladders enabling us to reach them and bring them within our grasp. Plants are naturally within our grasp. They grow beneath our feet and in our hands, so to speak, and even if their essential parts are so small that sometimes we cannot see them with the naked eye, the instruments which make them visible are much easier to use than those used in astronomy. Botany is what an idle and lazy solitary studies: a blade and a magnifying glass are all the equipment he needs to observe plants. He walks along, wanders freely from one thing to the next, considers each flower with interest and curiosity, and as soon as he starts to grasp the laws of their structure, he finds in observing them an effortless pleasure which is as intense as if it had required of him a great deal of effort. There is in this idle occupation a charm which is only felt when the passions are completely calm, but which is then enough on its own to make life happy and pleasant; but as soon as we add an element of self-interest or vanity, either to achieve a certain position or to write books, and as soon as we only want to learn in order to teach and we only botanize in order to become an author or a professor, this sweet charm vanishes entirely: we now see plants simply as the instruments of our passions, we no longer take any real pleasure in studying them, we no longer want to know but to show that we know, and in the woods, the world becomes but a stage for us, on which we want to be admired; or else, limiting ourselves to botany in the study or, at most, in the garden, instead of studying plants in nature, we concern ourselves only with systems and methods, a subject of endless dispute which does not reveal a single new plant or cast any real light on natural history or the plant kingdom. This leads to the hatred and jealousy that rivalry for fame arouses in authors of botanical works just as much as, and more than, in other scholars. By changing the nature of this agreeable study, they transplant it into the middle of towns and academies, where it degenerates no less than exotic plants do in the gardens of collectors.

  A quite different cast of mind has made this study a kind of passion for me which fills the emptiness left by those passions I no longer have. I climb up rocks and mountains, I go down deep into valleys and woods in order to escape as far as possible the memory of men and the attacks of the wicked. It seems to me that, in the shade of a forest, I am forgotten, free, and undisturbed, as if I no longer had any enemies or as if the foliage of the woods could protect me from their attacks as it distances them from my memory, and I imagine, in my foolishness, that if I do not think about them, they will not think about me. I find such a great satisfaction in this illusion that I would abandon myself to it completely, if my situation, my weakness, and my needs allowed me to. The deeper the solitude I live in, the more I need something to fill this void, and those things which my imagination denies me or which my memory rejects are made up for by those things that the earth spontaneously produces without any human constraint and sets before my eyes on all sides. The pleasure of going to some isolated spot to look for new plants gives me the added pleasure of escaping from my persecutors, and when I reach places where there is no trace of men, I breathe more freely, as if I were in a refuge where their hate can no longer pursue me.

  I shall remember all my life a botanical expedition I made one day over towards La Robella,* a farm belonging to the local judge Clerc.* All alone, I went deep along the winding paths up the mountain, and, passing from wood to wood and rock to rock, I finally reached a refuge that was so hidden that it was wilder than anything I have ever seen in my life. Black fir trees mixed in and all intertwined with huge beech trees, several of which had fallen over with age, formed an impenetrable barrier around this refuge; all that could be seen through the few gaps in this dark wall was sheer rock faces and terrifying chasms which I only dared look into while lying flat on my stomach. From the mountain crevices could be heard the cries of the horned owl, the little owl, and the barn owl; at the same time, a few rare but familiar little birds lightened the horror of this solitude. I found there seven-leaved toothwort, cyclamen, nidus avis,* the large laserpitium,* and a few other plants that delighted and amused me for a long time; but gradually overcome by the strong impression made on me by the things around me, I forgot about botany and plants, sat down on cushions of lycopodium* and mosses, and began dreaming more freely, imagining that I was in a refuge unknown to the whole universe, where my persecutors would never be able to unearth me. Soon this reverie was mixed with a feeling of pride. I compared myself to those great travellers who discover a desert island, and I said complacently to myself: ‘I am undoubtedly the first mortal ever to have reached this place’; I considered myself to be almost another Columbus. While I was strutting about, caught up in this idea, I heard not far off a certain clicking noise which I thought I recognized; I listened: the same sound came again and was then repeated over and over. Surprised and intrigued, I got up, pushed my way through a thicket of undergrowth in the direction of the noise, and, set in a little valley twenty yards from the place that I thought I was the first person to have reached, I saw a stocking factory.

  I cannot express the confused and contradictory commotion I felt in my heart on discovering this. My first instinct was a feeling of joy at finding myself among human beings again, having thought myself to be entirely alone; but this instinct, swifter than lightning, was soon followed by a more lasting feeling of distress at not being able, even in the caves of the Alps, to escape the cruel clutches of those men bent on tormenting me. For I was absolutely sure that perhaps all but two men at most in that factory were in on the plot whose self-appointed leader was the minister Montmollin* and which had its origins further back in the past still. I quickly banished this gloomy idea, and I ended up laughing to myself both because of my childish vanity and because of the comic way in which I had been punished for it.

  But after all, who would ever have expected to find a factory in a chasm? Switzerland is the only country in the world to offer this mixture of wild nature and human industry. The whole of Switzerland is, as it were, but one big city, whose wide, long streets, longer than the rue St Antoine,* are planted with forests and cut across by mountains, and whose scattered and isolated houses are only connected with one another by English landscape gardens. With this in mind, I remembered another botanical expedition that Du Peyrou,* d’Escherny,* colonel Pury,* judge Clerc, and I had made some time ago on the Chasseron mountain, from th
e summit of which can be seen seven lakes. We were told that there was only one house on the mountain, and we would surely never have guessed the profession of the person living there, had we not also been told that he was a bookseller, and indeed that he was doing a very good trade in the region. It seems to me that a single fact of this kind gives a better idea of Switzerland than all the travel accounts put together.

  Here is another fact of more or less the same kind which gives an equally good idea of a very different people. During my stay in Grenoble,* I often went on short botanical trips outside the town with Monsieur Bovier,* a local lawyer, not because he liked or knew about botany, but because, since he had appointed himself my bodyguard, he insisted as far as possible on accompanying me wherever I went. One day we were walking by the Isère* in a place full of buckthorns. I saw some ripe berries on the bushes, was curious enough to try them, and, finding their slightly acidic taste very pleasant, started eating them to revive me; Monsieur Bovier stood beside me, neither doing likewise nor saying a word. One of his friends came by and, seeing me pilfering these berries, said to me: ‘Oh, Monsieur, what are you doing there? Don’t you realize that those berries are poisonous?’ ‘Poisonous?’, I cried, astonished. ‘They certainly are’, he replied, ‘and everyone knows it so well that no locals ever think of trying them.’ I looked at Monsieur Bovier and said to him: ‘So why didn’t you warn me?’ ‘Ah, Monsieur,’ he replied, respectfully, ‘I didn’t dare take the liberty.’ I started laughing at this Dauphiné humility,* while nevertheless ending my little meal. I was convinced, and still am, that no natural thing which tastes pleasant can be harmful to our bodies, unless we have excessive amounts of it. However, I must admit that I kept a close eye on myself the rest of the day, but I escaped with just a little worry; I ate very well that evening, slept better still, and got up the next morning in perfect health, having the previous day eaten fifteen or twenty berries of this terrible hippophae,* which is poisonous even in very small amounts, according to what everyone in Grenoble told me the next day. This adventure amused me so much that whenever I remember it, I laugh at lawyer Bovier’s singular discretion.

  All my botanical walks, the varied impressions made on me by the places where I have seen striking things, the ideas they have stirred in me, and the incidents that became connected to them have all left me with impressions which are renewed by the sight of the plants I collected in those very places. I shall never again see those beautiful landscapes, those forests, those lakes, those groves, those rocks or those mountains, the sight of which has always touched my heart; but now that I can no longer roam about those glorious places, all I have to do is open my herbarium and it quickly transports me there. The pieces of plants that I gathered there are enough to remind me of the whole magnificent spectacle. This herbarium is for me a diary of my botanical expeditions which makes me set off on them again with renewed delight and which produces the effect of an optical chamber, showing them again before my very eyes.

  It is the chain of secondary ideas that attracts me to botany. It brings together and recalls to my imagination all the ideas which please it most. It constantly reminds me of the meadows, the waters, the woods, the solitude, above all the peace and the tranquillity one finds in the midst of all those things. It makes me forget the persecution of men, their hate, their scorn, their insults, and all their evil deeds with which they have repaid my tender and sincere attachment to them. It transports me to peaceful places amongst good and simple folk like those with whom I used to live. It reminds me of my youth and my innocent pleasures, it makes me enjoy them all over again, and very often it makes me happy, even in the midst of the most miserable fate ever endured by a mortal.

  EIGHTH WALK

  MEDITATING on the state of my soul through every stage of my life, I am extremely struck by the lack of direct relationship between the different forms my destiny has taken and the habitual feelings of well-being or despondency they have stirred in me. The various periods of short-lived prosperity have left me with almost no pleasant memories of the close and lasting way in which they affected me, and by contrast, in all the hardships of my life I constantly felt full of tender, touching, and delightful emotions which, as they poured a healing balm over my wounded heart, seemed to turn its pain into pleasure, and the memory of which comes back to me on its own, without that of the adversities I experienced at the same time. It seems to me that I enjoyed the pleasure of existence more fully, that I really lived more fully, when my feelings, concentrated, as it were, around my heart by my destiny, were not wasted on all the things prized by men, which are of such little value in themselves and which are all supposedly happy people are concerned with.

  When everything was in order around me and I was happy with everything surrounding me and with the sphere in which I had to live, I filled it with my affections. My expansive soul spread to other things, and, constantly drawn away from myself by a thousand different tastes and by delightful attachments which constantly occupied my heart, in a sense I forgot myself: I was entirely given over to what was foreign to me and I felt, in the continual agitation of my heart, all the instability of human things. This stormy life gave me neither inward peace nor outward tranquillity. Apparently happy, I had not a single feeling which could withstand the test of thought and which I could really take pleasure in. I was never perfectly happy with others or with myself. The tumult of the world stunned me, solitude bored me, and I constantly needed to be on the move and felt at ease nowhere. Yet I was acclaimed, well regarded, well received, and warmly welcomed wherever I went. I had not a single enemy, nobody wishing me ill, and nobody envying me. Since people sought only to oblige me, I often had the pleasure of obliging many people myself, and with neither possessions nor a role, nor a patron, nor any great talents which were well developed or well known, I enjoyed the advantages attached to such things, and I saw nobody of any rank whatsoever whose fate seemed preferable to mine. So what did I need to make me happy? I do not know, but I do know that I was not happy.

  What is missing today to make me the most unfortunate of mortals? Nothing of what men have done. And yet, even in this deplorable state I would not change my being or my destiny for those of the most fortunate amongst them, and I still prefer to be me in all my wretchedness than to be one of those people in all their prosperity. Reduced to my own self, it is true that I feed on my own substance, but it does not run out and I am self-sufficient, even though I ruminate, as it were, on nothing and my dried-up imagination and worn-out ideas no longer give my heart any sustenance. My soul, obscured and obstructed by my organs, sinks daily beneath the weight of these heavy masses and no longer has the strength it needs to soar as it once did beyond its old frame.

  Adversity forces us to turn back in on ourselves, and it is perhaps this which makes it most unbearable for most men. For my part, since I only have mistakes to reproach myself for, I blame them on my weakness and console myself, for premeditated evil never came near my heart.

  However, short of being in a complete daze, how can one for a moment contemplate my situation without seeing how horrible they have made it and without dying of pain and despair? By contrast, I, the most sensitive of beings, contemplate it and am unmoved by it; and without having to struggle or force myself, I look at myself almost with indifference in a situation the sight of which perhaps no other man could bear without being terrified.

  How have I reached this point? For I was far removed from this peaceful frame of mind when I first came to suspect that there was a plot in which I had quite unwittingly been ensnared for a long time. This new discovery overwhelmed me. The infamy and treachery took me by surprise; what decent soul is prepared for sufferings of this kind? One would have to deserve them to be able to foresee them. I fell into all the traps that were dug beneath my feet. Indignation, fury, and madness took hold of me, I lost my mind, my head was in convulsions, and in the horrible darkness in which they have constantly kept me buried, I could see no glimmer of light to gu
ide me nor any support or foothold to keep me upright and help me to resist the despair that was dragging me down.

  How could one possibly live happily and quietly in this awful state? Yet I am still in it, indeed more deeply than ever before, and I have regained my calm and peace, and I am living happily and quietly, and I laugh at the incredible torments that my persecutors continually inflict upon themselves while I remain in peace, busy with flowers, stamens, and childish things, never giving them a moment’s thought.