3.

If civilisation has been the curse of man, it might seem that the logical course for Rousseau to recommend was its destruction.  This was the inference which Voltaire drew in Timon, to laugh the whole theory out of court.  But Rousseau did not suggest a movement to destroy all the libraries and all the works of art in the world, to put to death or silence all the savants, to pull down the cities, and burn the ships.  He was not a mere dreamer, and his Arcadia was no more than a Utopian ideal, by the light of which he conceived that the society of his own day might be corrected and transformed.  He attached his hopes to equality, democracy, and a radical change in education.

Equality:  this revolutionary idea was of course quite compatible with the theory of Progress, and was soon to be closely associated with it.  But it is easy to understand that the two ideas should first have appeared in antagonism to each other.  The advance of knowledge and the increase of man’s power over nature had virtually profited only a minority.  When Fontenelle or Voltaire vaunted the illumination of their age and glorified the modern revolution in scientific thought, they took account only of a small class of privileged people.  Higher education, Voltaire observed, is not for cobblers or kitchenmaids; “on n’a jamais pretendu eclairer les cordonniers et les servantes.”  The theory of Progress had so far left the masses out of account.  Rousseau contrasted the splendour of the French court, the luxury of the opulent, the enlightenment of those who had the opportunity of education, with the hard lot of the ignorant mass of peasants, whose toil paid for the luxury of many of the idle enlightened people who amused themselves at Paris.  The horror of this contrast, which left Voltaire cold, was the poignant motive which inspired Rousseau, a man of the people, in constructing his new doctrine.  The existing inequality seemed an injustice which rendered the self-complacency of the age revolting.  If this is the result of progressive civilisation, what is progress worth?  The next step is to declare that civilisation is the causa malorum and that what is named progress is really regress.  But Rousseau found a way of circumventing pessimism.  He asked himself, cannot equality be realised in an organised state, founded on natural right?  The Social Contract was his answer, and there we can see the living idea of equality detaching itself from the dead theory of degradation. [Footnote:  The consistency of the Social Contract with the Discourse on Inequality has been much debated.  They deal with two distinct problems, and the Social Contract does not mark any change in the author’s views.  Though it was not published till 1762 he had been working at it since 1753.]