A Clash with Democracy 87
nature as it might conceivably have been prior to government and civilization; but
such idealization was frankly conjectural on his part, was purely auxiliary to his
real message, and was discarded in his later writings. In 1750, for much the same
reasons, remembering with a warm glow the town he had left over twenty years
before, he began to sign his name, Jean- Jacques Rousseau, Citizen of Geneva. In
1753, when he wrote his Discourse on the Origins of Inequality among Men, which
included emphatic passages on the evils of property and the oppression of the poor
by the rich, he actually dedicated this inflammatory work “To the Republic of
Geneva.”
Rousseau could not go back to nature, and did not wish to. He could go back to
Geneva, and did so in 1754. He was received with mixed feelings, for the dedica-
tion was not relished; few at Geneva, and certainly not the ruling patriciate, enter-
tained any such opinions on property and wealth as were set forth in Rousseau’s
discourse. But here was a native son who had become famous; and the flattered
magistrates, as well as the Calvinist ministers, welcomed a prodigal who returned
meekly confessing his errors. Having turned Catholic he had forfeited the citizen-
ship which he now so proudly proclaimed. He announced his reconversion to the
Reformed religion. The awful solemnities prescribed at Geneva to purge such ren-
egades were relaxed to accommodate him. He became again a Protestant and a
recognized Citizen. He stayed several months in the city, renewing or building up
his acquaintance. The pure waters of the lake, the majestic and snow- capped
mountains, the peace and contentment that he thought he saw in the people’s
faces, all symbolized for him the world as it ought to be. In the following years,
particularly in his novel, the Nouvelle Héloise, he used Switzerland as a setting for
his moral message. Thus Switzerland became a symbol for the great world that
read French writers. As Mme. d’Houdetot remarked years later, after the Ameri-
can Revolution, there were only two countries in which she would have chosen to
be born. One was America; the other, Switzerland.
Soon after Rousseau left Geneva, Voltaire arrived.^4 He craved asylum, calling
himself an old man who had come there to die. He was sixty- one years old, with
the most combative twenty- three years of his career yet before him. The citizens,
embarrassed but flattered and charmed, as in the case of Rousseau, gave him
leave to stay. The affluent and sophisticated Voltaire, who loved all civilized refine-
ments, thereupon purchased two rural properties in nearby France, two town
houses in neighboring Lausanne, and a large vacant tract (now within the city of
Geneva) on which he built the chateau he called Les Deuces. He began to invite
prominent Genevans to his entertainments, which usually included acting in, or
watching productions of, his own plays. There was a law at Geneva against the-
atrical representations. When the magistrates intimated to Voltaire that the law
applied to him as to others, he moved from Les Delices to Ferney. But the better
sort of Geneva republicans, including many of the magistrates, then repaired to
4 P. Chapponière, Voltaire chez les Calvinistes, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1936). Chapponière is a little partial
to Voltaire, as Vallette is to Rousseau, in setting forth the disputes between their heroes; but both are
fair- minded and well documented, and they agree in their estimate of the situation. See also B. Gag-
nebin, Voltaire: Lettres inédites aux Tronchin, 3 vols. (Geneva, 1950).