Nature’s integrity and its signs

Being part of nature it was difficult to segregate its components into parts, there was rather an all-embracing wholeness that did not admit distinction. An identification with nature as a totality occured.(1) Nevertheless the individual creature became also the sign that encapsulated experience and conveyed the reverie. “La fleur desséchée est le ‘signe accidentel’ qui réveille le paysage, la journée, la lumière, la bienheureuse solitude de la promenade où elle fut cueillie. Elle est le signe qui permet au bonheur révolu de redevenir un sentiment immédiat.”(2) Emotional memory encompassed Jean Jacques’ joy and happiness, his relatedness to nature, the freedom to savour the pleasures and cupidity of nature. Feelings were kindred to those accidental signs, they were recorded and contained in its utmost purity in those receptacles. Nature became a place of inner peace and renewed confidence.

Rousseau also professed a deep trust in nature’s healing capabilities rather than in any sort of medicine or curing. No important disease ever happened to him during his sojourns to the countryside. Whenever he might be in his last trance, close to expiring, he should be put under the shadow of an oak and he would recover.(3) Health was not produced by any human practice or art, but appeared rather as a certain primordial harmony with nature that could be restored and refreshed.(4) Therefore any practical application of nature regarding healing, preparation of unguents and ointments, and, in last resource, any sort of instrumentation of nature, had to be despised by the amateur botanist, who saw in his practice an end in itself.

(1) “Cependant cet univers visible est matière, matière éparse et morte, qui n’a rien dans son tout de l’union, de l’organisation, du sentiment commun des parties d’un corps animé, puisqu’il est certain que nous qui sommes parties ne nous sentons nullement dans le tout.” Émile IV (Foi du vicaire savoyard) [Seuil III, p. 190]. 389 “Il faut quelque circonstance particulière resserre ses idées et circonscrire son imagination pour qu’il puisse observer par parties cet univers qu’il s’efforçait d’embrasser.” Rêveries du Promeneur Solitaire VII [Seuil I, p. 529].

(2) J. Starobinski, op. cit., p. 197. “Rousseau, lui, voit dans la plante, dans la fleur, comme le rayon venu d’un soleil lointain, comme le reflet d’un monde perdu, la réminiscence de quelque chose qui fut une fois, dans une autrre vie, en un temps d’avant le temps, où la nature était la création et où tou encore sortait des mains de Dieu,” M. Raymond, “Rousseau et la rêverie” VV.AA., op. cit., p. 162. For a contemporary homomorphism between man and plant cf. J.O. de La Mettrie, L’Homme Plante, Postdam, 1748.

(3) Confessions VI [Seuil I, p. 210].

(4) “Quinze ans d’expérience m’ont instruit à mes dépens; rentré maintenant sous les seules lois de la nature, j’ai
repris par elles ma première santé. ” Rêveries du Promeneur Solitaire VII [Seuil I, p. 530].