OPINIONSnAn Empirical Jean-Jacques RousseaunThe Noble Savage: Jean-JacquesnRousseau, 1754-1762nby Maurice CranstonnChicago: University of Chicago Press;n599 pp., $29.95nEver since Frederika MacDonaldnpublished her massive two-volumenwork, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: A NewnStudy in Criticism (1905), scholarsnfavorably disposed toward Rousseaunhave pursued the difficult task of rehabilitatingnhim from the “audacious historicalnfraud” perpetuated by Frederic-nMelchior Grimm, Denis Diderot, andnMme. d’Epinay. On the authority ofnGrimm’s malicious CorrespondancenPeter J. StanUs edited Studies innBurke and His Times for 13 yearsnand is the author and editor of sixnbooks on Edmund Burke and his era.nHis seventh, Edmund Burke: ThenEnlightenment and Revolution, wasnrecently published by Transaction.n28/CHRONICLESnby Peter J. Stanlisn”Man was wade of social earth.”n— R.W. EmersonnLitteraire (1812), and Mme. d’Epinay’sndeliberately doctored Memoirsn(1818), during the entire 19th centurynand well into the 20th, the publicnimage of Rousseau was that of annemotionally unstable and repulsivenpersonality and a moral cretin.nVoltaire’s intense contempt for Rousseau,ngenerally attributed to envy, togethernwith harsh personal criticism bynother philosophes, contributed to thisnwholly negative portrait of Rousseau.nAlso, even before the conspiracies tondefame him became public, his Confessionsnprovided much added credencenamong traditional conservativesnto the common belief that his psychenwas deranged. The long tradition,nwhich stretched from Samuel Johnsonnand Edmund Burke to Irving Babbitt,nconfirmed the widely held convictionnthat there were reptiles swarming innRousseau’s Eden-like image of primitive,nidyllic nature.nContemporary biographers such asnJean Guehenno, Lester Crocker,nnnRonald Grimsley, and Jean Starobinskinwere often compelled to wrestle morenwith Rousseau’s troubled psyche thannwith the empirical facts of his life.nThey have often exonerated him fromnsome of the most negative mythologicalnstrictures made against him, butnsometimes unwittingly they have alsonconfirmed much that his Enlightenmentnand conservative critics have contended.nAn added difficulty was creatednby biographical scholars in thenhistory of ideas, who often carried thennegative portrait of Rousseau’s characternand personality into their expositionnof his philosophical ideas on politics,nsociety, religion, education, and humannnature. Frequently they condemnednhis philosophy as false andnpernicious because they perceived it asna mere extension of his unbalancednmind and sensibility. In her apologia ofnRousseau, MacDonald committed thensame error in reverse: “Rousseau’s privatenlife was an example, in an artificialnage, of sincerity, independence, sim-n