That does not mean that we are blind to the fallacies and absurdities in his doctrines. We of today study education in the light of a mass of psychological knowledge, we study government in the light of historical and economic knowledge, we study the human soul in the light of biology, sociology, chemistry, psychoanalysis--a host of sciences whose very names were unknown to Rousseau. But how do we come to possess this knowledge? We possess it because Jean-Jacques, with the divination of a prophet and the fervor of a moral genius, proclaimed from the housetops the right of the human spirit to be free, and to face the facts of life, and to choose its path in accordance with its own happiness and health. With any critic of Rousseau there is one question to be settled at the outset. Why do you quarrel with this man? Is it because you wish to correct his errors, and clear the way to his goal of liberty, equality, and fraternity? Or are you one of those who dread the torrent of new ideas and new feelings which Rousseau let loose upon the world? Is it your purpose to discredit the whole individualistic movement which he fathered, and to take us back to the good old days when children obeyed their parents, and servants obeyed their masters, and women obeyed their husbands, and subjects obeyed their popes and kings, and students in colleges accepted without question what their professors told them? Says Mrs. Ogi: “I suspect that last phrase is meant for Professor Babbitt.” “It is wonderful,” says her husband, “that he should have that name. A judgment of Providence, without doubt!” CHAPTER XLV THE HARVARD MANNER Let it be explained at the outset that we are setting out to discuss, not a character in a novel, but a living person, Irving Babbitt, professor of French literature in Harvard University; a scholar who has set himself one goal in life, to deliver America from the evil influence of Rousseau and “Rousseauism”--by which he means the whole modern cultural movement. He has published a stately volume, “Rousseau and Romanticism,” three hundred and ninety-three pages, plus twenty-three pages of introduction, with an average of twelve quotations and citations per page, illustrating the follies, absurdities and monstrosities uttered or enacted by every man or woman who has at any time during the past hundred and seventy-five years ever thought a new thought, or tried an original experiment, or embodied an especially intense emotion in art form.