ABSTRACT
The fundamental thing in Rousseauistic morality is not, as we have seen, the assertion that man is naturally good, but the denial of the "civil war in the cave". Though this denial is not complete in Rousseau himself, nothing is more certain than that his whole tendency is away from this form of dualism. The transition from an optimistic to a pessimistic naturalism can be followed with special clearness in the stages by which the sentimental drama of the eighteenth century passes over into the realistic drama of a later period. Strictly speaking, the intrusion of the naturalistic element into the realm of ethical values and the subversion by it of deliberation and choice and of the normal sequence of moral cause and effect is felt from the human point of view not as fate at all, but as chance.
