Recording of Commissioner of Education Earl James McGrath, Librarian of Congress Dr. Luther H. Evans, and Professor Boas of John Hopkins University

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RECORDING* McGRATH: Thank you, Dr. Evans. Rousseau, is, of course, one of the great minds of our modern era, and his educational ideas are still very much alive today. EVANS: And, Professor Boas. BOAS: I agree with Commissioner McGrath. One of the charms of intellectual history, which has been my specialty, is that ideas have an immediacy which transcends their setting in time and space. EVANS: That especially applies to the ideas of Rousseau--who has been blamed for practically everything from the French Revolution down to Adolph Hitler! BOAS: Certainly Rousseau's writings represent an age-old tendency to attribute the world's misfortunes to a straying away from pristine simplicity. It's as old as the story of the Garden of Eden. Yet for some, Rousseau is one of the great false prophets, responsible for all the evils that now beset us. McGRATH: He has also had his passionate disciples, of course, including Goethe and Kant. You're either for or against Rousseau, and there seems to be no middle ground. *Recording by Earl J. McGrath, U.S. Commissioner of Education, Federal Security Agency, Mashington, D. C., with Dr. Luther H. Evans, Librarian of Congress, and Professor Boas, Johns Hookins University, of a discussion of Rousseau's Emile, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C., January 11, 1952.