ROUSSEAU 130 ROUSSEAU was a member of the Isthmian Canal Commission. From 1914 to 1916, engi- neer of terminal construction, Panama Canal; from 1916 to 1920 a member of the commission of Navy Yards, and from 1917 to 1919 manager of the shipyard plants division, Emergency Fleet Cor- poration. He was also a director of the Panama Railroad Company, vice-chair- man of the United States Shipping Board, and a member of several engi- neering societies. ROUSSEAU, JEAN JACQUES, a Swiss-French philosopher, one of the most celebrated and influential writers of the 18th century; born in Geneva, Switzerland, June 28, 1712. He was the son of a watchmaker. For the first 35 years of his life the chief authority JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU is his own painfully frank, but perhaps not absolutely accurate "Confessions," first published in 1782 and 1789. After a desultory education he was apprenticed in 1725 to an engraver, from whose real or fancied severity he ran away in 1728. He now fell under the notice of Madame de Warens, a lady residing at Annecy, who sent him to a Roman Catholic in- stitution at Turin, where he abjured Protestantism. After several fits of ec- centric wandering he went to live with Mme. de Warens at Les Charmettes, a country house near Chambery, where they appear to have lived happily to- gether for nearly three years. From a short absence at Montpellier, however, Rousseau returned to find his place at Les Charmettes occupied by another, whereupon he departed to become a tutor at Lyons. In 1741 he went to Paris, and in 1743 obtained the post or secre- tary to the French ambassador at Ven- ice. This office he resigned, and returned to Paris in 1745, to lead a precarious life, copying music and studying science. About this time he became intimate wit,h Diderot, Grimm, D'Holbach, Mme. D'Epinay, etc., and contributed to the "Encyclopedic"; and from this period also dated his connection with Therese le Vasseur, with whom, 25 years later, he went through some form of marriage ceremony. In 1750 his essay, in which he adopted the negative side of the ques- tion whether civilization has contrib- uted to purify manners, won a prize offered by the Academy of Dijon, and brought him for the first time into gen- eral notice. In 1752 he brought out a successful operetta (the music by him- self), and soon after a celebrated "Let- ter on French Music." In 1754 he revisited Geneva, where he was readmitted a free citizen on once more embracing Protestantism. Having returned to Paris he wrote a sort of novel, "Julia, or the New Heloise," which was published in 1760, being followed by "The Social Contract" (Le Contrat So- cial), a political work, and "Emile, or on Education," another story, in 1762. The principles expressed in these works stirred up much animosity against their author. The confession of faith of the Savoyard vicar in Emile was declared a dangerous attack on religion, and the book was burned both in Paris and Gen- eva. Persecution, exaggerated by his own morbid sensibility, forced Rousseau to flee to Neufchatel, then to the He St. Pierre in the Lake of Bienne, and finally to England, where he was welcomed by Hume, Boswell, and others in 1766. A malicious letter by Horace Walpole un- luckily roused his suspicions of his Eng- lish friends, and in May, 1767, he re- turned to France, where his presence was now tolerated. He lived in great poverty, supporting himself by copying music and publishing occasional works. In May, 1778, he retired to Ermenon- ville near Paris. His celebrated "Con- fessions" appeared at Geneva in 1782. Rousseau united an enthusiastic passion for love and freedom with an inflexible obstinacy and a strange spirit of para- dox. The chief importance of his works lies perhaps in the fact that they con- tain the germ of the doctrines which were carried out with such ruthless con- sistency in the French Revolution. He died in Ermenonville, July 2, 1778. ROUSSEAU, THEODORE, a French painter, born in Paris in 1812. His tal- ent was well developed before he was 14 years of age. He identified himself
