Note 976 — Chapter VI · SCIENCE AND COMMUNAL POETRY

Perhaps there is some connection between the fervour and merit of French war-songs like the Marseillaise, the Ça ira, and the fact that French literature as a whole is averse from undue stress upon the individual and does not suffer, whatever its other defects, from “too much ego in its cosmos.” Texte points out that Jean-Jacques, Germanic by nature, noticed this trait in the French. “Le je ... est presque aussi scrupuleusement banni de la scène française que des écrits de Port-Royal, et les passions humaines ... n’y parlent jamais que par on.” How contemptuously M. Brunetière, who has no superior in the appreciation of French literature as a whole, speaks of that new personal note, set in fashion by Rousseau, “most eloquent of lackeys!” See “La Littérature Personnelle,” in B.’s Questions de Critique, pp. 211 ff., and his review of Hennequin’s book in the same collection, pp. 305 ff.