: the 'general will' which is the organ of the communal self, and the Law which is the outward expression of the general will it is round these conceptions, themselves inseparably interwoven with each other, that all which is vital in the treatise may be said to centre. And, apart from the first, no one of these presents any difficulty which care and reflection will not enable us to overcome. Identifying, as we have seen, the question of Right with the question of origins, Rousseau makes short work of various 'false solutions' offered in the past. The State, he argues, is not an outgrowth of the Family; for it lacks the 'natural' basis, the tie of natural affection, upon which the Family rests. It is not founded upon the right of the stronger,' nor, more specifically, upon the right of slavery,' the right of the conqueror to enslave those he has subdued in battle; for such claims are the negation of all Right. And, even if this were not so, they could give rise to nothing more than an 'aggregation'; they could never produce that organic union' which is essential even to the most rudimentary forms of what we recognise as the State.2 The only alternative left, he urges, is to base political society upon convention,' or 'contract'; 8 and that, in fact, is the solution adopted by 'the soundest of those who have written of such matters': above all, by two thinkers so different as Hobbes and Locke.4 3 Contract, however, is a term which may cover a variety of meanings. It was one thing to Locke; it was another to Hobbes; and yet another to Rousseau. To the first, it was the sacrifice of some few liberties-in particular, the right of the individual to be judge in his own cause-to secure the free exercise of the rest. To the second, it was the total enslavement of all to the will of an absolute 1 C.S. I. ii. v. ; first Draft, I. v. 2 C.S. I. v. (Fausses notions du lien social). 4 Lettres de la Montagne, vi. (Œuvres, iii. p. 202). despot, who in return undertook to guard all from the 'force and fraud' of all, except himself. To the third, as to the second, it was the 'total surrender' of the whole community, not however to a despot exalted above the community, but to the community itself. Or to put the matter from another point of view, to Locke it was a perfectly free contract, which might take as many forms as were consistent with retaining the maximum of liberty to the individuals contracting. To Hobbes and Rousseau, on the other hand, it was a tied contract, the terms of which were prescribed beforehand by the necessities of the case-by the need of guarding the individual from the force and fraud of his neighbours, in Hobbes' version; by the need of securing his moral freedom, of saving him from his own passions, as well as from those of his fellow-men, according to Rousseau. What then are the conditions which, in Rousseau's view, the ends of the Contract thus inexorably impose? They may be summed up in one phrase: 'the absolute surrender of the individual, with all his rights and all his powers, to the community as a whole';1 in other words, the replacement of his own will by that of the community, of his individual self by the 'corporate self' (le moi commun), which he has joined with all the others to create. And if we ask, what is the justification for this sweeping sacrifice of individual liberty, Rousseau is at once ready with his answer. By no other means can we form that corporate self, without which there can be no moral life for the individual. By no other means can we secure that absolute equality, without which there can be no such thing as individual liberty. By no other means can we shut the door against that oppression of the weak by the strong, which it is the first object of civil society to prevent. Let the individual retain in the civil state any one of the powers, or rights,' which he held in the state of nature, 1 C.S. I. vi ix.; II. iv. and, sooner or later, the strong will inevitably use them to re-establish that superiority over the weak which he enjoyed in the state of nature: to reassert that tyranny over the weak which made the state of nature, in its later phases, a state of misery from which it was the first interest of all save the strongest-or rather, of all save those who felt sure of always remaining the strongest to escape.1 Laissez faire, laissez mourir : freedom of contract is freedom of enslavement-that is the conviction, a conviction but too well justified by experience, upon which Rousseau's argument, in all but its distinctively moral aspect, ultimately rests. The moral aspect of the argument demands a few further words of explanation. What did Rousseau mean by his assertion that, with the passage from the natural to the civil state, the sense of justice and duty is first awakened in the mind of man; that his actions receive thereby a moral character which was wanting to them before'; that 'from a stupid and limited animal, he now for the first time becomes a reasoning being and a man'; 2 in one word, that, apart from the State, no distinctively moral life is possible for man? He surely did not mean that, as a member of the State, man suddenly finds himself in possession of qualities of which, in his previous condition, he had given no sign, no promise, whatever. Such a view would, in itself, be wholly irrational. It is, moreover, directly contrary to the doctrine which, as we have seen, Rousseau consistently enforces, and which, in fact, is implicitly restated in the very chapter now under consideration: henceforth justice takes the place of instinct in man's conduct towards others.'3 The instinct of justice, that is, at least under the form of natural pity, is from the 1 C.S. I. vi.; II. xi. 2 C.S. I. viii.; a startling sentence in the first Draft (Pol. Writ. ii. p. 494) should be interpreted in the same light: La Loi est antérieure à la justice, et non pas la justice à la Loi.' 3 Ibid. first present in man's heart; but that this instinct should develop into a conscious sense of duty is, humanly speaking, impossible save under the fostering guidance of the State. The first half of this argument secures the continuity of the process from the natural to the civil state; 1 the secondwhich, for us, is manifestly the more important-sums up what, when all is said and done, is the main issue between Rousseau and the individualists. To the individualist, everything achieved by mankind, good and bad alike, comes from the individual, who gives everything to society and, except in so far as he wins a safeguard against the interference of others, takes nothing from it. It is true that he is made for society, and that, without society, he could neither support his physical life in tolerable comfort, nor find any outlet for his moral energies. But, beyond supplying the necessary field for his moral—and, in a less degree, for his physical—activities, society can do nothing for him except leave him alone. His will, his sense of duty, his code of right and wrong -all that makes him a moral being, all that constitutes his personality-are wholly and exclusively his own. No other man has the least share in moulding them; no other man has any right to question the sanctity of their bidding, or, save in so far as may be absolutely necessary for the protection of society, to interfere with the acts which his conscience dictates to him, or which it conveniently allows him to commit. Even this saving clause, it must be observed, is thrown in rather from necessity than conviction, in obedience rather to circumstances than to logic. On individualist principles, in fact, it is hard to see how any form of social coercion is to be justified at all. This, reduced to its simplest form, is the theory which Rousseau had before him. And this is the theory which, from foundation to coping-stone, he relentlessly assails. It is not true, he urges, that man owes nothing positive to 1 Emile, iv. (Euvres, ii. pp. 205-6); compare Euvres, i. pp. 98-100. society. It is not true that his will, his conscience, his sense of right and wrong, are purely his own creation, that they spring solely from the depth of his own being. The germ, the possibility, of those things is doubtless born with him. So much must come from the individual, or it could never come at all. But, until this germ is developed, until this possibility receives specific form, the working of a blind instinct, at perpetual war with passions stronger than itself, must necessarily be weak and fitful, its effect upon the conduct of the individual inevitably be little or nothing. And, as we have seen, it was Rousseau's belief that the conditions essential for growth, for the formation of a specific code of right and wrong, however rudimentary, are to be found only in that ordered development of society which we call the State. In this belief there is nothing startling; still less, anything overstrained, perverse, or fantastic. On the contrary, it is the belief upon which civilised men of all ages have, consciously or unconsciously, acted. It is the doctrine. which, in the dawn of philosophy, was proclaimed as self-evident by Plato and Aristotle; which, until the close of the Middle Ages, was accepted by all save a small minority of thinkers; which was not effectively questioned, until it became the first task of Europe to break up the outworn fabric of faith and government handed down from a remote past; and which, when once that task was accomplished, when the work of reconstruction -and that, after all, is the normal work of man-was once more taken in hand, was again recognised as the foundation of all truth in these matters by a long line of thinkers, at the head of whom stand Rousseau and, by a strange irony, his bitter assailant, Burke. He who gave our nature to be perfected by our virtue willed also the necessary means of its perfection. He willed therefore the State - without which man could not by any possibility arrive at the perfection of which his nature is capable, nor even make a remote |