Out of another
Today we hear those words so often that we cannot believe there was a time when they were the battle-cry of a new challenging idea which shook civilization to its foundations, which ended one period and initiated another. Nor do we pay our debt of gratitude to Jean Jacques Rousseau, who far more than any other man was the founder of the idea. There were others who were beginning to think as he did, indeed, the suggestion was, “in the air” during the second half of the 18th century and especially in the air of France. He made it the keynote of his life and of his books. Out of another, ‘Emite’ the romantic novel with its passion for nature. Out of the posthumous confessions came a new kind of autobiography, one which tells the whole truth about oneself, however shameful and unflattering. This Rousseau was a true modem. Like us, he believed in equality, liberty and democracy; but he happened to have believed them when nobody else did.