Book: The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Book XII.

J >> Jean Jacques Rousseau >> The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Book XII.




Botany, such as I have always considered it, and of which after my own
manner I began to become passionately fond, was precisely an idle study,
proper to fill up the void of my leisure, without leaving room for the
delirium of imagination or the weariness of total inaction. Carelessly
wandering in the woods and the country, mechanically gathering here a
flower and there a branch; eating my morsel almost by chance, observing a
thousand and a thousand times the same things, and always with the same
interest, because I always forgot them, were to me the means of passing
an eternity without a weary moment. However elegant, admirable, and
variegated the structure of plants may be, it does not strike an ignorant
eye sufficiently to fix the attention. The constant analogy, with, at
the same time, the prodigious variety which reigns in their conformation,
gives pleasure to those only who have already some idea of the vegetable
system. Others at the sight of these treasures of nature feel nothing
more than a stupid and monotonous admiration. They see nothing in detail
because they know not for what to look, nor do they perceive the whole,
having no idea of the chain of connection and combinations which
overwhelms with its wonders the mind of the observer. I was arrived at
that happy point of knowledge, and my want of memory was such as
constantly to keep me there, that I knew little enough to make the whole
new to me, and yet everything that was necessary to make me sensible to
the beauties of all the parts. The different soils into which the
island, although little, was divided, offered a sufficient variety of
plants, for the study and amusement of my whole life. I was determined
not to leave a blade of grass without analyzing it, and I began already
to take measures for making, with an immense collection of observations,
the 'Flora Petrinsularis'.

I sent for Theresa, who brought with her my books and effects. We
boarded with the receiver of the island. His wife had sisters at Nidau,
who by turns came to see her, and were company for Theresa. I here made
the experiment of the agreeable life which I could have wished to
continue to the end of my days, and the pleasure I found in it only
served to make me feel to a greater degree the bitterness of that by
which it was shortly to be succeeded.

I have ever been passionately fond of water, and the sight of it throws
me into a delightful reverie, although frequently without a determinate
object.

Immediately after I rose from my bed I never failed, if the weather was
fine, to run to the terrace to respire the fresh and salubrious air of
the morning, and glide my eye over the horizon of the lake, bounded by
banks and mountains, delightful to the view. I know no homage more
worthy of the divinity than the silent admiration excited by the
contemplation of his works, and which is not externally expressed.
I can easily comprehend the reason why the inhabitants of great cities,
who see nothing but walls, and streets, have but little faith; but not
whence it happens that people in the country, and especially such as live
in solitude, can possibly be without it. How comes it to pass that these
do not a hundred times a day elevate their minds in ecstasy to the Author
of the wonders which strike their senses. For my part, it is especially
at rising, wearied by a want of sleep, that long habit inclines me to
this elevation which imposes not the fatigue of thinking. But to this
effect my eyes must be struck with the ravishing beauties of nature. In
my chamber I pray less frequently, and not so fervently; but at the view
of a fine landscape I feel myself moved, but by what I am unable to tell.
I have somewhere read of a wise bishop who in a visit to his diocese
found an old woman whose only prayer consisted in the single interjection
"Oh!"--"Good mother," said he to her, "continue to pray in this manner;
your prayer is better than ours." This better prayer is mine also.

After breakfast, I hastened, with a frown on my brow, to write a few
pitiful letters, longing ardently for the moment after which I should
have no more to write. I busied myself for a few minutes about my books
and papers, to unpack and arrange them, rather than to read what they
contained; and this arrangement, which to me became the work of Penelope,
gave me the pleasure of musing for a while. I then grew weary, and
quitted my books to spend the three or four hours which remained to me of
the morning in the study of botany, and especially of the system of
Linnaeus, of which I became so passionately fond, that, after having felt
how useless my attachment to it was, I yet could not entirely shake it
off. This great observer is, in my opinion, the only one who, with
Ludwig, has hitherto considered botany as a naturalist, and a
philosopher; but he has too much studied it in herbals and gardens, and
not sufficiently in nature herself. For my part, whose garden was always
the whole island, the moment I wanted to make or verify an observation,
I ran into the woods or meadows with my book under my arm, and there laid
myself upon the ground near the plant in question, to examine it at my
ease as it stood. This method was of great service to me in gaining a
knowledge of vegetables in their natural state, before they had been
cultivated and changed in their nature by the hands of men. Fagon, first
physician to Louis XIV., and who named and perfectly knew all the plants
in the royal garden, is said to have been so ignorant in the country as
not to know how to distinguish the same plants. I am precisely the
contrary. I know something of the work of nature, but nothing of that of
the gardener.

I gave every afternoon totally up to my indolent and careless
disposition, and to following without regularity the impulse of the
moment. When the weather was calm, I frequently went immediately after
I rose from dinner, and alone got into the boat. The receiver had taught
me to row with one oar; I rowed out into the middle of the lake. The
moment I withdrew from the bank, I felt a secret joy which almost made me
leap, and of which it is impossible for me to tell or even comprehend the
cause, if it were not a secret congratulation on my being out of the
reach of the wicked. I afterwards rowed about the lake, sometimes
approaching the opposite bank, but never touching at it. I often let my
boat float at the mercy of the wind and water, abandoning myself to
reveries without object, and which were not the less agreeable for their
stupidity. I sometimes exclaimed, "O nature! O my mother! I am here
under thy guardianship alone; here is no deceitful and cunning mortal to
interfere between thee and me." In this manner I withdrew half a league
from land; I could have wished the lake had been the ocean. However, to
please my poor dog, who was not so fond as I was of such a long stay on
the water, I commonly followed one constant course; this was going to
land at the little island where I walked an hour or two, or laid myself
down on the grass on the summit of the hill, there to satiate myself with
the pleasure of admiring the lake and its environs, to examine and
dissect all the herbs within my reach, and, like another Robinson Crusoe,
built myself an imaginary place of residence in the island. I became
very much attached to this eminence. When I brought Theresa, with the
wife of the receiver and her sisters, to walk there, how proud was I to
be their pilot and guide! We took there rabbits to stock it. This was
another source of pleasure to Jean Jacques. These animals rendered the
island still more interesting to me. I afterwards went to it more
frequently, and with greater pleasure to observe the progress of the new
inhabitants.

To these amusements I added one which recalled to my recollection the
delightful life I led at the Charmettes, and to which the season
particularly invited me. This was assisting in the rustic labors of
gathering of roots and fruits, of which Theresa and I made it a pleasure
to partake with the wife of the receiver and his family. I remember a
Bernois, one M. Kirkeberguer, coming to see me, found me perched upon a
tree with a sack fastened to my waist, and already so full of apples that
I could not stir from the branch on which I stood. I was not sorry to be
caught in this and similar situations. I hoped the people of Berne,
witnesses to the employment of my leisure, would no longer think of
disturbing my tranquillity but leave me at peace in my solitude. I
should have preferred being confined there by their desire: this would
have rendered the continuation of my repose more certain.

This is another declaration upon which I am previously certain of the
incredulity of many of my readers, who obstinately continue to judge me
by themselves, although they cannot but have seen, in the course of my
life, a thousand internal affections which bore no resemblance to any of
theirs. But what is still more extraordinary is, that they refuse me
every sentiment, good or indifferent, which they have not, and are
constantly ready to attribute to me such bad ones as cannot enter into
the heart of man: in this case they find it easy to set me in opposition
to nature, and to make of me such a monster as cannot in reality exist.
Nothing absurd appears to them incredible, the moment it has a tendency
to blacken me, and nothing in the least extraordinary seems to them
possible, if it tends to do me honor.

But, notwithstanding what they may think or say, I will still continue
faithfully to state what J. J. Rousseau was, did, and thought; without
explaining, or justifying, the singularity of his sentiments and ideas,
or endeavoring to discover whether or not others have thought as he did.
I became so delighted with the island of St. Peter, and my residence
there was so agreeable to me that, by concentrating all my desires within
it, I formed the wish that I might stay there to the end of my life. The
visits I had to return in the neighborhood, the journeys I should be
under the necessity of making to Neuchatel, Bienne, Yverdon, and Nidau,
already fatigued my imagination. A day passed out of the island, seemed
to me a loss of so much happiness, and to go beyond the bounds of the
lake was to go out of my element. Past experience had besides rendered
me apprehensive. The very satisfaction that I received from anything
whatever was sufficient to make me fear the loss of it, and the ardent
desire I had to end my days in that island, was inseparable from the
apprehension of being obliged to leave it. I had contracted a habit of
going in the evening to sit upon the sandy shore, especially when the
lake was agitated. I felt a singular pleasure in seeing the waves break
at my feet. I formed of them in my imagination the image of the tumult
of the world contrasted with the peace of my habitation; and this
pleasing idea sometimes softened me even to tears. The repose I enjoyed
with ecstasy was disturbed by nothing but the fear of being deprived of
it, and this inquietude was accompanied with some bitterness. I felt my
situation so precarious as not to dare to depend upon its continuance.
"Ah! how willingly," said I to myself, "would I renounce the liberty of
quitting this place, for which I have no desire, for the assurance of
always remaining in it. Instead of being permitted to stay here by
favor, why am I not detained by force! They who suffer me to remain may
in a moment drive me away, and can I hope my persecutors, seeing me
happy, will leave me here to continue to be so? Permitting me to live in
the island is but a trifling favor. I could wish to be condemned to do
it, and constrained to remain here that I may not be obliged to go
elsewhere." I cast an envious eye upon Micheli du Cret, who, quiet in
the castle of Arbourg, had only to determine to be happy to become so.
In fine, by abandoning myself to these reflections, and the alarming
apprehensions of new storms always ready to break over my head, I wished
for them with an incredible ardor, and that instead of suffering me to
reside in the island, the Bernois would give it me for a perpetual
prison; and I can assert that had it depended upon me to get myself
condemned to this, I would most joyfully have done it, preferring a
thousand times the necessity of passing my life there to the danger of
being driven to another place.

This fear did not long remain on my mind. When I least expected what was
to happen, I received a letter from the bailiff of Nidau, within whose
jurisdiction the island of St. Peter was; by his letter he announced to
me from their excellencies an order to quit the island and their states.
I thought myself in a dream. Nothing could be less natural, reasonable,
or foreseen than such an order: for I considered my apprehensions as the
result of inquietude in a man whose imagination was disturbed by his
misfortunes, and not to proceed from a foresight which could have the
least foundation. The measures I had taken to insure myself the tacit
consent of the sovereign, the tranquillity with which I had been left to
make my establishment, the visits of several people from Berne, and that
of the bailiff himself, who had shown me such friendship and attention,
and the rigor of the season in which it was barbarous to expel a man who
was sickly and infirm, all these circumstances made me and many people
believe that there was some mistake in the order and that ill-disposed
people had purposely chosen the time of the vintage and the vacation of
the senate suddenly to do me an injury.

Had I yielded to the first impulse of my indignation, I should
immediately have departed. But to what place was I to go? What was to
become of me at the beginning of the winter, without object, preparation,
guide or carriage? Not to leave my papers and effects at the mercy of
the first comer, time was necessary to make proper arrangements, and it
was not stated in the order whether or not this would be granted me.
The continuance of misfortune began to weigh down my courage. For the
first time in my life I felt my natural haughtiness stoop to the yoke of
necessity, and, notwithstanding the murmurs of my heart, I was obliged to
demean myself by asking for a delay. I applied to M. de Graffenried, who
had sent me the order, for an explanation of it. His letter, conceived
in the strongest terms of disapprobation of the step that had been taken,
assured me it was with the greatest regret he communicated to me the
nature of it, and the expressions of grief and esteem it contained seemed
so many gentle invitations to open to him my heart: I did so. I had no
doubt but my letter would open the eyes of my persecutors, and that if so
cruel an order was not revoked, at least a reasonable delay, perhaps the
whole winter, to make the necessary preparations for my retreat, and to
choose a place of abode, would be granted me.

Whilst I waited for an answer, I reflected upon my situation, and
deliberated upon the steps I had to take. I perceived so many
difficulties on all sides, the vexation I had suffered had so strongly
affected me, and my health was then in such a bad state, that I was quite
overcome, and the effect of my discouragement was to deprive me of the
little resource which remained in my mind, by which I might, as well as
it was possible to do it, have withdrawn myself from my melancholy
situation. In whatever asylum I should take refuge, it appeared
impossible to avoid either of the two means made use of to expel me.
One of which was to stir up against me the populace by secret manoeuvres;
and the other to drive me away by open force, without giving a reason for
so doing. I could not, therefore, depend upon a safe retreat, unless I
went in search of it farther than my strength and the season seemed
likely to permit. These circumstances again bringing to my recollection
the ideas which had lately occurred to me, I wished my persecutors to
condemn me to perpetual imprisonment rather than oblige me incessantly to
wander upon the earth, by successively expelling me from the asylums of
which I should make choice: and to this effect I made them a proposal.
Two days after my first letter to M. de Graffenried, I wrote him a
second, desiring he would state what I had proposed to their
excellencies. The answer from Berne to both was an order, conceived in
the most formal and severe terms, to go out of the island, and leave
every territory, mediate and immediate of the republic, within the space
of twenty-four hours, and never to enter them again under the most
grievous penalties.

This was a terrible moment. I have since that time felt greater anguish,
but never have I been more embarrassed. What afflicted me most was being
forced to abandon the project which had made me desirous to pass the
winter in the island. It is now time I should relate the fatal anecdote
which completed my disasters, and involved in my ruin an unfortunate
people, whose rising virtues already promised to equal those of Rome and
Sparta, I had spoken of the Corsicans in the 'Social Contract' as a new
people, the only nation in Europe not too worn out for legislation,
and had expressed the great hope there was of such a people, if it were
fortunate enough to have a wise legislator. My work was read by some of
the Corsicans, who were sensible of the honorable manner in which I had
spoken of them; and the necessity under which they found themselves of
endeavoring to establish their republic, made their chiefs think of
asking me for my ideas upon the subject. M. Buttafuoco, of one of the
first families in the country, and captain in France, in the Royal
Italians, wrote to me to that effect, and sent me several papers for
which I had asked to make myself acquainted with the history of the
nation and the state of the country. M. Paoli, also, wrote to me several
times, and although I felt such an undertaking to be superior to my
abilities; I thought I could not refuse to give my assistance to so great
and noble a work, the moment I should have acquired all the necessary
information. It was to this effect I answered both these gentlemen, and
the correspondence lasted until my departure.

Precisely at the same time, I heard that France was sending troops to
Corsica, and that she had entered into a treaty with the Genoese. This
treaty and sending of troops gave me uneasiness, and, without imagining
I had any further relation with the business, I thought it impossible and
the attempt ridiculous, to labor at an undertaking which required such
undisturbed tranquillity as the political institution of a people in the
moment when perhaps they were upon the point of being subjugated. I did
not conceal my fears from M. Buttafuoco, who rather relieved me from them
by the assurance that, were there in the treaty things contrary to the
liberty of his country, a good citizen like himself would not remain as
he did in the service of France. In fact, his zeal for the legislation
of the Corsicans, and his connections with M. Paoli, could not leave a
doubt on my mind respecting him; and when I heard he made frequent
journeys to Versailles and Fontainebleau, and had conversations with M.
de Choiseul, all I concluded from the whole was, that with respect to the
real intentions of France he had assurances which he gave me to
understand, but concerning which he did not choose openly to explain
himself by letter.

This removed a part of my apprehensions. Yet, as I could not comprehend
the meaning of the transportation of troops from France, nor reasonably
suppose they were sent to Corsica to protect the liberty of the
inhabitants, which they of themselves were very well able to defend
against the Genoese, I could neither make myself perfectly easy, nor
seriously undertake the plan of the proposed legislation, until I had
solid proofs that the whole was serious, and that the parties meant not
to trifle with me. I much wished for an interview with M. Buttafuoco, as
that was certainly the best means of coming at the explanation I wished.
Of this he gave me hopes, and I waited for it with the greatest
impatience. I know not whether he really intended me any interview or
not; but had this even been the case, my misfortunes would have prevented
me from profiting by it.

The more I considered the proposed undertaking, and the further I
advanced in the examination of the papers I had in my hands, the greater
I found the necessity of studying, in the country, the people for whom
institutions were to be made, the soil they inhabited, and all the
relative circumstances by which it was necessary to appropriate to them
that institution. I daily perceived more clearly the impossibility of
acquiring at a distance all the information necessary to guide me. This
I wrote to M. Buttafuoco, and he felt as I did. Although I did not form
the precise resolution of going to Corsica. I considered a good deal of
the means necessary to make that voyage. I mentioned it to M. Dastier,
who having formerly served in the island under M. de Maillebois, was
necessarily acquainted with it. He used every effort to dissuade me from
this intention, and I confess the frightful description he gave me of the
Corsicans and their country, considerably abated the desire I had of
going to live amongst them.

But when the persecutions of Motiers made me think of quitting
Switzerland, this desire was again strengthened by the hope of at length
finding amongst these islanders the repose refused me in every other
place. One thing only alarmed me, which was my unfitness for the active
life to which I was going to be condemned, and the aversion I had always
had to it. My disposition, proper for meditating at leisure and in
solitude, was not so for speaking and acting, and treating of affairs
with men. Nature, which had endowed me with the first talent, had
refused me the last. Yet I felt that, even without taking a direct and
active part in public affairs, I should as soon as I was in Corsica,
be under the necessity of yielding to the desires of the people, and of
frequently conferring with the chiefs. The object even of the voyage
required that, instead of seeking retirement, I should in the heart of
the country endeavor to gain the information of which I stood in need.
It was certain that I should no longer be master of my own time, and
that, in spite of myself, precipitated into the vortex in which I was not
born to move, I should there lead a life contrary to my inclination,
and never appear but to disadvantage. I foresaw that ill-supporting by
my presence the opinion my books might have given the Corsicans of my
capacity, I should lose my reputation amongst them, and, as much to their
prejudice as my own, be deprived of the confidence they had in me,
without which, however, I could not successfully produce the work they
expected from my pen. I am certain that, by thus going out of my sphere,
I should become useless to the inhabitants, and render myself unhappy.

Tormented, beaten by storms from every quarter, and, for several years
past, fatigued by journeys and persecution, I strongly felt a want of the
repose of which my barbarous enemies wantonly deprived me: I sighed more
than ever after that delicious indolence, that soft tranquillity of body
and mind, which I had so much desired, and to which, now that I had
recovered from the chimeras of love and friendship, my heart limited its
supreme felicity. I viewed with terror the work I was about to
undertake; the tumultuous life into which I was to enter made me tremble,
and if the grandeur, beauty, and utility of the object animated my
courage, the impossibility of conquering so many difficulties entirely
deprived me of it.

Twenty years of profound meditation in solitude would have been less
painful to me than an active life of six months in the midst of men and
public affairs, with a certainty of not succeeding in my undertaking.

I thought of an expedient which seemed proper to obviate every
difficulty. Pursued by the underhand dealings of my secret persecutors
to every place in which I took refuge, and seeing no other except Corsica
where I could in my old days hope for the repose I had until then been
everywhere deprived of, I resolved to go there with the directions of M.
Buttafuoco as soon as this was possible, but to live there in
tranquillity; renouncing, in appearance, everything relative to
legislation, and, in some measure, to make my hosts a return for their
hospitality, to confine myself to writing in the country the history of
the Corsicans, with a reserve in my own mind of the intention of secretly
acquiring the necessary information to become more useful to them should
I see a probability of success. In this manner, by not entering into an
engagement, I hoped to be enabled better to meditate in secret and more
at my ease, a plan which might be useful to their purpose, and this
without much breaking in upon my dearly beloved solitude, or submitting
to a kind of life which I had ever found insupportable.

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