Rousseau’s theory of education is closely allied to Locke’s (cf. above), whose leading idea—­the development of individuality—­was entirely in harmony with the subjectivism of the philosopher of feeling.  Posterity has not found it a difficult task to free the sound kernel therein from the husks of exaggeration and idiosyncrasy which surrounded it.  Among the latter belong the preference of bodily over intellectual development, and the unlimited faith in the goodness of human nature.  Exercise the body, the organs, the senses of the pupil, and keep his soul unemployed as long as possible; for the first, take care only that his mind be kept free from error and his heart from vice.  In order to secure complete freedom from disturbance in this development, it is advisable to isolate the child from society, nay, even from the family, and to bring him up in retirement under the guidance of a private tutor.

As the Swiss republican spoke in Rousseau’s politics, so his religious theories[1] betray the Genevan Calvinist.  “The Savoyard Vicar’s Profession of Faith” (in Emile) proclaims deism as a religion of feeling.  The rational proofs brought forward for the existence of God—­from the motion of matter in itself at rest, and from the finality of the world—­are only designed, as he declares by letter, to confute the materialists, and derive their impregnability entirely from the inner evidence of feeling, which amid the vacillation of the reason pro and con gives the final decision.

[Footnote 1:  Cf.  Ch.  Borgeaud, Rousseaus Religionsphilosophie, Geneva and Leipsic, 1883.]

If we limit our inquiry to that which is alone of importance for us, and rely on the evidence of feeling, it cannot be doubted that I myself exist and feel; that there exists an external world which affects me; that thought, comparison or judgment concerning relations is different from sensation or the perception of objects—­for the latter is a passive, but the former an active process; that I myself produce the activity of attention or consideration; that, consequently, I am not merely a sensitive or passive, but also an active or intelligent being.  The freedom of my thought and action guarantees to me the immateriality of my soul, and is that which distinguishes me from the brute.  The life of the soul after the decay of the body is assured to me by the fact that in this world the wicked triumphs, while the good are oppressed.  The favored position which man occupies in the scale of beings—­he is able to look over the universe and to reverence its author, to recognize order and beauty, to love the good and to do it; and shall he, then, compare himself to the brute?—­fills me with emotion and gratitude to the benevolent Creator, who existed before all things, and who will exist when they all shall have vanished away, to whom all truths are one single idea, all places a point, all times a moment.  The how of freedom, of eternity, of creation, of the action of my will upon matter, etc., is, indeed, incomprehensible to me, but that these are so, my feeling makes me certain.  The worthiest employment of my reason is to annihilate itself before God.  “The more I strive to contemplate his infinite essence the less do I conceive it.  But it is, and that suffices me.  The less I conceive it, the more I adore.”