NOTES

Title. It is curious, and perhaps significant, that, as the manuscript of the first Draft shows, Rousseau vacillated over the title. He first wrote Du Contrat social, then cancelled it for De la Société civile, then restored it. This may mean that he felt it to be, as in fact it is, misleading to lay any stress upon the idea of Contract; an idea which properly belongs to the individualist theory and is out of place in any other. The sub-title in the manuscript was originally Essai sur la constitution de l'État; then Essai sur la formation du corps politique (or de l'État); finally, Essai sur la forme de la République. Principes du droit politique does not appear at all. A facsimile is given in M. Dreyfus-Brisac's edition.

Avertissement. 'Un ouvrage plus étendu,' i.e. Institutions politiques. See Introduction, p. xi. The sixteen chapters' on Federation, which d'Antraigues claimed to have received from Rousseau (see note to Book III. Chap. xv.) must have formed part of the Institutions; it is possible that the important Fragment, L'état de guerre, now in the Neuchâtel Library (Political Writings, i. 293– 307) may be another salvage from it; and the Fragments printed in Political Writings (i. pp. 308-24) were certainly written for insertion in it. But there is no reason to doubt Rousseau's statement that the bulk of the larger work was destroyed.

P. 3 1. 7. point divisées. The opening paragraph proclaims Rousseau's anxiety to fuse the more abstract and the more concrete elements of his theory, 'principles of right' and considerations of expediency, in one consistent whole. (See Introduction, pp. xxxivxxxvii.)

P. 3 1. 14. membre du souverain, i.e. the Conseil général, the sovereign body of the Republic of Geneva. Rousseau took part in one meeting of the Conseil, in 1754. See Lettres de la Montagne, vii (Pol. Writ. ii. p. 224).

P. 4 l. 21. l'homme est né libre. The words inevitably suggest the idea of purely individual freedom, such as inspired the Discours sur l'inégalité but is entirely alien to the main argument of the Contrat social. Placed in the forefront of the treatise, they are therefore extremely misleading. In the first Draft, however, this chapter, so far from opening the treatise, occurs after the elaborate refutation of a 'general society'-preceding the formation of particular States, and governed by 'natural Right'-which Rousseau struck out from the final version, but which will be found in the Appendix (below, p. 172). One of Rousseau's motives for cancelling this notable chapter may have been the sense that, in repudiating natural Right, he was destroying the only possible sanction of the Contract. It should be observed that in the following sentence (Tel se croit') Rousseau makes a sudden, and not very justifiable, transition to freedom, or slavery, in the moral sense. His meaning is best explained by a passage in Émile (Book II.): La domination même est servile, quand il tient à l'opinion; car tu dépends des préjugés de ceux que tu gouvernes par des préjugés. Pour les conduire comme il te plaît, il faut te conduire comme il leur plaît.' P. 4 l. 31. mais l'ordre social. The same thought, expressed in still clearer language, reappears in Chapter ix. : 'le Contrat social, dans l'État, sert de base à tous les droits.'

P. 4 1. 34. il est donc fondé sur des conventions. This sharp antithesis between 'natural' and 'conventional' rights is responsible for a good deal of the error which mingles with the truth of Rousseau's theory. Aristotle's maxim, 'Man is by nature a civic animal,' and Burke's declaration that 'art is man's nature (i.e. that the civil state is, in the truest sense, natural to man) are nearer the truth. It is in fact a pure assumption to say that the only alternative to 'natural,' in Rousseau's sense of 'primitive,' is 'conventional.' The slow development of an unconscious, or only half-conscious, instinct is a third alternative; and it offers a more probable explanation of the facts. But the idea of gradual progress was alien to Rousseau's mind. (See Introduction, p. lii.)

P. 4. Chap. II. and the next four chapters contain Rousseau's criticism of certain false notions' of the origin of the State. They appear under another form in the first Draft (I. v. ; Pol. Writ. i. pp. 462-70), in the early Fragment, L'état de guerre (ib. pp. 292-307), and, so far as the Family is concerned, in the opening paragraphs of

the Économie politique. See also Discours sur l'inégalité (Œuvres, i. pp. 116-20). In the first Draft, Rousseau rejects the influence of the 'model' of the Family much more decisively than in the final version: 'Il est donc certain que le lien social de la Cité n'a pu ni dû se former par l'extension de celui de la famille, ni sur le même modèle' (Pol. Writ. i. p. 466). But see a striking passage in Émile, Book V. (Œuvres, ii. pp. 333-4); 'Platon, dans sa République,' etc.

P. 5 l. 61. Grotius nie: De jure belli et pacis, I. iii. 8.

P. 5 1. 78. Caligula. The words of Caligula, according to Philo (De Legatione, p. 1002), were: 'As those who manage other beasts--cowherds, goatherds, shepherds-are themselves neither oxen nor goats nor sheep, but men, and as they are born to a higher destiny and with a higher endowment than their flocks, so it must be remembered that I, who rule the noblest flock of the human race, differ in nature from my charges: that I am born to a higher and more divine destiny than they.'

P. 5 l. 82. Aristote: Politics, I. v.

P. 6 1. 90. aimaient leur abrutissement.

Compare a striking

passage in Gouvernement de Pologne, chap. vi. (near the end).

P. 6 1. 107. ni rébellions. Many modern editors read 'rebellion' against the authentic editions.

P. 7 l. 147. dit Grotius: I. iii. 8, and III. vii. 2. It is an essential part of Grotius' argument that this alienation' of liberty binds the descendants of those who make it: neque vero ipsi tantum servi fiunt, sed et posteri in perpetuum.' Rousseau refutes this monstrous assumption.

P. 8 1. 189. renoncer à sa liberté. Compare Discours sur l'inégalité (Euvres, i. 119).

P. 9 1. 204. Grotius et les autres: Grotius, III. vii. 5.

P. 9 1. 229. la guerre n'est donc point. For a fuller development of this argument see L'état de guerre (Pol. Writ. i. 299-362).

P. 9. Note. les Romains. This note does not appear in the first edition (1762). It was taken by Rousseau's posthumous editors (1782) from a list of additions 'pour la grande édition,' entered by the author in MS. Neuchâtel, 7842 (p. 52). Mieux, before entendu, was accidentally omitted by these editors; and their reading has been carelessly followed in all subsequent editions.

P. 11. 1. 287. esclavage et droit. Many modern editors read 'esclave,' against the authentic editions and all fitness.

P. 12 l. 301. une agrégation, mais non pas une association. These words contain in germ Rousseau's whole criticism of the individualist theory of the State, together with a pregnant anticipation of that by which he seeks to replace it.

P. 12 l. 309. un peuple, dit Grotius: Licet homini cuique se in privatam servitutem cui velit addicere: quidni ergo populo sui juris liceat se unicuipiam aut pluribus ita addicere ut regendi sui jus in eum plane transcribat, nulla ejus juris parte retenta ?' Grotius, I. iii. 8. Compare first Draft, I. v. (Pol. Writ. i. p. 468).. P. 12 l. 323. Suppose, au moins une fois, l'unanimité. Compare 'par le droit naturel des sociétés, l'unanimité a été requise pour la formation du corps politique': Gouv. de Pologne, ix. (Œuvres, v. p. 270).

This ex

P. 12 l. 325. je suppose les hommes parvenus. planation of the origin of society is in fact no explanation at all; and Rousseau must have been well aware of it. The truth is that he has here suppressed a long chapter in which a vivid picture is drawn of the miseries of the state of nature in its later phases (compare Discours sur l'inégalité), and the passage to the civil state attributed to their intolerable pressure. Such an explanation, even if not historically true, is at least logically sufficient, which that offered in the final text is not. What prompted Rousseau to cut out the chapter in question, which is among the most striking things he ever wrote, is not clear. It may have been because he had ceased to believe in the arguments which it offered-it contained, for instance, a denial that natural law' can ever have been recognised as binding upon man in the state of nature—or because the whole argument is couched in the form of an answer to an article published by Diderot in 1755 (Encyclopédie, vol. v.), and would therefore be hardly intelligible to readers in 1762; or for some other reason which it is now impossible for us to divine. The chapter in question will be found in the Appendix (below, p. 172).

P. 12 l. 330. s'il ne changeait sa manière (1762). Ed. 1782 has de manière.'

P. 13 l. 349. dont le Contrat social donne la solution. Nearly all the modern editions print Contrat social in italics, which falsifies Rousseau's meaning. The reference is not to the book,

but to the idea. The authentic editions are as in the text; the first Draft has dont l'institution de l'État donne la solution.'

P. 13 l. 351. tellement déterminées. See Introduction, p. xxii. When he wrote the Discours sur l'inégalité, Rousseau, though with a plain hint that he does not personally commit himself to it, adopts, for the sake of argument, the 'common conception of the Contract as between the people and its rulers' (Œuvres, i. p. 120), and as one the stipulations of which are liable to vary according to circumstances. Here and in Lettres de la Montagne (vi.) we have what clearly came to be his settled opinion: (1) that the Contract, being that which constitutes the community, is between the individuals who propose to form it; (2) that it is a contract not variable, but rigorously determined by the nature of the case. In both respects, this is a far more fruitful conception; for (1) it gives an explanation (true or false) of the origin of society, which the other did not; and (2) it represents the formation of civil society as being due not to individual caprice, but to the inevitable pressure of events determined by human nature, i.e. more or less as a natural process. In that case, however, the term 'Contract' becomes manifestly inappropriate; and, if Rousseau had followed out this train of thought to its logical consequences, he would have been led, as other indications show that he was at moments not far from being led, to reject the idea of Contract altogether.

The idea of Contract, as held by most of its exponents, contains two distinct--indeed, two opposing-elements; the element of consent, and the element of compulsion: consent to the making of it, compulsion to observe it when once made. To the element of compulsion Rousseau manifestly attached little or no value. To him the Contract is dissoluble at any moment, on the part of the community as a whole; he is even disposed to allow the same liberty to each individual taken singly (III. xviii.). Moreover, in a mutilated fragment, he puts to himself the awkward question : 'How can we count on pledges which the contracting parties cannot be forced to keep, and which, when the interest that dictated them happens to change, they will inevitably desire to break?' (Pol. Writ. i. 324). Accordingly, he is thrown back solely, or almost solely, upon the opposite element; and to him the Contract stands for little more than a symbol of consent on the part of every member to his incorporation in a community the character of

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