in spirit and atmosphere, there in no inconsistency, no contradiction, between them. And even this is to put the case too mildly. So far from contradicting each other, the one is the natural, if not the necessary, outcome of the other. It was just because he felt the miseries of Society so keenly that Rousseau was driven to seek so startling a remedy against them. It was just because he set so high a value upon individual freedom that he found himself driven to bend the individual to the sovereignty of the State. He may have been right, or he may have been wrong, in his judgment either of the disease, or of the cure, or of both. But there is no denying that it forms a consistent whole.

There is, however, one point of importance which still remains to consider. It was said above that faith in the 'natural goodness' of man was a cardinal article of Rousseau's creed. And it may fairly be asked how is that to be reconciled with the assertion that the passage from the state of nature to the civil state gives to the actions of man a moral character which was wanting to them before'; that, if he has ceased to be 'a stupid and limited animal '— and the context shows that Rousseau was thinking at least as much of his moral qualities as of his intelligence—he owes it solely to the State?1

Here again, however, reflection will show that, surprising as it may be to find the two doctrines side by side in the same system, there is no contradiction and no inconsistency between them. By natural goodness' Rousseau is always careful to explain that he means not a full-fledged, but a rudimentary, goodness; that he is speaking not of a perfected quality, but of an untrained and undeveloped instinct. That instinct or 'conscience,' he invariably contends, is in the first instance no more than a blind faculty, which awaits the gift of vision; a blank form, to be filled up at some later stage of growth and this is as true of mankind at large as it is of the individual, taken singly. The power which gives 1 C.S. I. viii. (compare first Draft, I. ii., Appendix), and II. vii.

this vision, the faculty which fills up this blank form, is the reason which comes only with the natural growth of years and with experience. And until it comes, the primitive instinct is nothing more than a blind impulse of pity for the sufferings of others, a pity which to some extent is shared even by the brutes.2 But, directly it does come, the natural instinct, or conscience, of man leaps forth to receive it; and, by so doing, is converted-or rather is made capable of conversion-into a living principle of action, the source of all that is good in man's dealings with his fellows; more than that, the one thing that makes it possible for him to live in fellowship with them at all.

Now it is quite true that these arguments would have fitted well enough into an individualist scheme of politics. And if Rousseau had really been the individualist that some critics suppose, it is certain that he might easily have woven them into a theory more or less closely resembling that of Locke. But it was equally open to him to turn them in exactly the opposite direction: to argue that the reason, without which the primitive instincts of conscience' are no more than blank forms, so far from being inherent in the natural growth of the individual, does in fact come to him only in and through the State. And this is the course which, unfortunately with some vacillation, he actually takes.

There are, no doubt, many difficulties which he leaves wholly unexplained. How, for instance, does the Lawgiver himself become possessed of the reason which he subsequently imparts to the State ?3 How can a community-or rather, a loose aggregate of 'stupid and limited animals' be capable of accepting the legislation in virtue of which they are to become reasonable beings and men'?

On reflection, however, it is easy to see that these and other difficulties spring not from the argument now before us,

1 Émile, book iv. (Œuvres, ii. pp. 205-6, 261–62); Lettre à Chr. de Beaumont (Euvres, ii. pp. 64-5).

2 Disc. sur l'inégalité (Œuvres, i. pp. 98-100).

3 C.S. II. vii.

but from a wholly different source: from the conviction, firmly rooted in Rousseau's mind, that the change from the natural to the civil state was a sudden change, the act of a single moment, that in which the social Contract was concluded, or the proposals of the heaven-sent Lawgiver accepted. In other words, they arise not from any incompatibility between his faith in the natural goodness of man and his belief in the absolute sovereignty of the State, but from his rejection-a rejection, however, not carried out with unfailing obduracy-of slow and ordered progress. This, however, is a point to which some return must be made later.1

Enough has been said to show that those who, whether for praise or blame, have found in Rousseau the champion of political individualism are wholly mistaken. For this mistake a superficial reading of the early Discourse and of Émile is doubtless responsible. The state of nature was glorified in the one; the ideal of the other was, or was taken to be, an isolation of the individual almost as complete as that attributed to the state of nature. And hasty readers jumped to the conclusion that the man who thus mistrusted Society must look with still deeper suspicion upon the very existence of the State; that, at the very least, he must desire to restrict its action within the narrowest limits possible; that he must be a sworn foe to entrusting it with any powers beyond the protection of individual life and individual property.

As we have seen, the very reverse is the case. And it is the historical importance of Rousseau that, so far from pleading the cause of individualism, he is its most powerful assailant; that, so far from following Locke, he was the first to raise the standard of revolt against him. Others, no doubt -above all, Montesquieu-had undermined the individualist theory from the side of history. Rousseau was the first to challenge it directly and in its speculative stronghold. The

1 See below, p. lii. The very retention of the Contract was a further cause; see Note A (end).

result was not long to wait. Before the appearance of the Contrat social, the whole tide of things both in thought and action, from the Reformation onwards, had flowed strongly in favour of individualism. Since that day-England is the one marked exception-it has set steadily in the opposite direction. Few books have a better claim to have marked a turningpoint in the history of Europe.

III

The main argument of the Contrat social is exceedingly simple. It would have been simpler yet but for one lamentable hesitation which meets us on the threshold. Rousseau was never able to make up his mind whether the Contract, which forms the pivot of his whole theory, is to be regarded as a transaction which actually happened in the past, or as a symbolic presentation of the ideal to which all well-ordered communities are consciously or unconsciously moving in other words, whether he was dealing with a question of origins or with an idea of Right.

There were moments in which he declared, boldly or timidly, for the latter alternative. Timidly, in the opening chapter of the final version; from which we may safely conclude that, if the 'convention' or 'contract,' which serves as the base of all other rights,' has really ended in leaving man everywhere in chains,' it was no better than a ' vain formulary,' an obligation which it was worth no man's while to undertake, and which, therefore, was presumably never undertaken.' Timidly again, in his repeated insistance that no Contract which does not provide for the 'absolute surrender' of all concerned in it can for one moment be regarded as valid-a plea which, at one stroke, transfers the question from the region of origins to that of Right.2 Boldly, in a passage of the earlier draft where we find the explicit statement that, 'in the multitude of aggregations actually 1 C.S. I. i.

2 C.S. I. vi. ; Lettres de la Montagne, vi. Œuvres, iii. p. 203).

existing under the name of civil societies, it may well be that
no two have been formed on the same model, and not one
upon
the model which I have adopted. What I am in
search of, however, is Right and reason. I am not concerned

to wrangle over facts.'1

Such moments, however, are unfortunately rare. And there can be little doubt that, as he brooded over the subject and as he put his thoughts into words, Rousseau habitually conceived of the Contract as a historical fact, or, at the very least, as a tacit understanding' which formed the historical foundation of every existing community and which is still present to the mind, and accepted as valid by the heart, of all its members whenever they seriously set themselves to consider the origin and nature of the bond which binds each of them to the others.2

The mischief of this assumption is not merely that it is unhistorical; that it runs counter not only to such scanty facts as are now discoverable, but even to all human probability. This, in itself, is damaging enough. It is still more damaging that, thanks to a bad tradition, a great thinker should have allowed himself to be drawn off on a false scent; that an idea, capable of transforming the whole field of political thought, should have been distorted into a beggarly story of historical origins. Such, however, was the form in which political theory had come down to Rousseau from a long line of thinkers. And, ready to counter their systems at all other points, he was unable to shake off the yoke of authority in this. Few things have done more to confuse his argument, few things have done more to hide the extent of his originality, than this.

Having cleared away this obstacle from the threshold, we are now free to consider the main argument of the revolutionary book. As has already been said, it is simple enough. The Contract, the communal self' which it calls into being,

1 First Draft of C.S. I. v. ; Pol. Writ. i. 462.
2 C.S. I. vi.; Lettres de la Montagne, vi.