to the general result, or to say
with certainty that the work performed by one would not, if he had
been wanting, have been equally accomplished by others. On the other
hand, there are a few master-spirits--men not of an age but for
all time--whose power has been so deeply infused, so generally
and silently absorbed, that it would be vain to inquire how it has
operated in detail. We cannot indicate the course or fix the limits
of its action: we perceive only that without it our intellectual life
must have been dormant or extinct. Rousseau belongs to neither of
these classes. His power was not general but specific, not creative
but stimulative, not a source of perennial light but the torch of
a conflagration; yet it was original and independent, it did not
co-operate but clashed with that of his contemporaries, and while it
acted upon minds far higher and broader than his own, it received no
aid except from disciples and imitators. Of the French Revolution
we may say with precision and confidence that it owed primarily its
peculiar character--its austere ideals and wild distortions, its
illimitable aspirations and chaotic endeavors--to the extent to which
the nation had become imbued with his spirit and theories. In regard
to literature, it is not sufficient to point to a long list of
celebrated writers, from Chateaubriand and De Stael to Lamartine and
George Sand, whose works have reflected the characteristic hues of
his sentiment and style; or to adduce particular instances of his
influence upon writers of higher and more contrasted genius, such
as Goethe and Byron, Schiller and Richter: what is to be noted, as
underlying all such examples and illustrations, is the fact that a
literature distinguished from that which had immediately preceded
it by earnestness, simplicity and depth, by spontaneous and vivid
conceptions and freedom from conventional restraints, had its
beginning with him, appealing to emotions and ideas which he was the
first to call into renewed and general activity. In education, in art,
in modifications of religious opinion and of social life, the same
force, if less measurable and distinct, is everywhere apparent either
as an active participant or a strong original impulse.

It need hardly be said that, as productions of genius, the writings of
Rousseau cannot hold any rank proportionate to the effect which they
thus produced. They are not among the treasures that constitute our
intellectual capita