Interrelated Transformations of Rousseau's Life and of Western Culture of His Time*

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the thesis, through a particular instance, that cultural and individual (i.e. personal) transformations share a common dynamics. Culture refers hereto any system of skills, instrumentalities and certainties through which a particular people at a particular time conduct their lives. It is a pattern of learned activities and appreciations, which help members to form and fulfill their wants. Many are the elements which are incorporated and assimilated by any culture. Regardless of the nature and variety of the elements which are used in this process, an integrated structure emerges and the most astonishing variety of patterns have been studied and recorded.¹ Some students of cultural patterns hold techniques of production to be most important,² others the size of energy harnessed by the culture,³ still others techniques of interpersonal relations.⁴ For our present purpose it is sufficient to note that one pattern of culture follows a previous pattern. The succession of cultural patterns is what is meant here by cultural evolution. This view does not suggest that the succession of cultural patterns is a ready path, or an inexorable next stage, or an improvement. It is satisfied to observe the way the new pattern supplants the older one.⁵ When anthropology concerns itself with very old cultures, then the least perishable remains alone can give clues to the succession of culture patterns.⁶ Only changes in tools or changes in food production or climatic changes are available for scientific scrutiny. The reconstruction of a pattern of culture in such cases owes more to ingenious imagination than to the available solid data.

We will examine here the transformation of patterns of culture which occurred in the life of Western man in roughly two generations, between 1770 and 1840. A very substantial transformation occurred which was not complicated by non-Western military invasions. This period is safely in the past so that some perspec