CONSTANT DE REBECQUE, BENJAMIN-HENRI. - Writer, polemicist, orator, born in Lausanne on 25 Oct. 1767 into a Protestant family, died in Paris on 8 Dec. 1830. He studied at Oxford, Erlangen, and Edinburgh, and at the age of twelve composed an epic poem in five cantos, *Les chevaliers*. A restless and passionate spirit, avid for emotions and pleasures, endowed with a fervid imagination but skeptical and irresolute, he led an adventurous and troubled life, particularly on account of his active participation in the political movements of his time and the violent amorous passions in which he became deeply embroiled. In 1794, he met in Lausanne A. de Staël, who exerted a great influence on his life. He accompanied her into exile and in Weimar met Goethe and Schiller.
The fruit of this encounter is a mediocre translation of Schiller’s *Wallenstein*. During his exile, Constant wrote *De la religion considérée dans sa source, ses formes et ses développements* (5 vols., 1824–31), a work of considerable importance for its anti-utilitarian vision of religion, though the progress of the human spirit is conceived within the autonomy of religion from Revelation, from the authority of the Church, and even from reason itself, the intimate sense of each individual and sentiment being sufficient. For this reason, the work was placed on the Index (decree of 11 June 1827). In 1807, in only fifteen days, he wrote his masterpiece, *Adolphe*, which, revised subsequently, was published in London in 1816. It is a novel predominantly autobiographical: the story of an unhappy love destroyed by the clash of temperaments, which the writer analyzes in all its phases with a depth and sobriety worthy of the greatest classics. The same qualities as psychologist and writer are found in the *Journal intime* and the *Cahier rouge*, published respectively in 1874 and 1907, of the utmost importance for their finely wrought introspective analysis of distinctly Romantic flavor. Numerous are the writings of a political and literary nature that Constant collected, especially in the *Discours* (1828) and the *Mélanges de politique et de littérature* (1829). Of fundamental importance is the *Cours de politique constitutionnelle*, a vast attempt to develop the concept of liberty as the dialectic of thought and action. Notable is the anti-Napoleonic pamphlet *De l'esprit de conquête et de l'usurpation* (1814), rich in the charm of legitimacy and, at the same time, of the most persuasive liberalism.