Online Library of Liberty: The Social Contract and Discourses

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and

Discourses [1761]

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Edition Used:

The Social Contract and Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, translated with an

Introduction by G.D. H. Cole (London and Toronto: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1923).

Author: Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Editor: G.D.H. Cole

About This Title:

This 1913 edition of Rousseau’s works includes the famous Social Contract as well as

3 discourses on Arts and Sciences, the Origin of Inequality, and Political Economy.

Rousseau’s writings inspired liberals and non-liberals alike which makes him rather

controversial in the history of political thought.

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About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the

study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.

The text is in the public domain.

Fair Use Statement:

This material is put online to further the educational goals of Liberty Fund, Inc.

Unless otherwise stated in the Copyright Information section above, this material may

be used freely for educational and academic purposes. It may not be used in any way

for profit.

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Table Of Contents

Introduction

The Social Contract Or Principles of Political Right

Foreword

Book I

Chapter I: Subject of the First Book

Chapter II: The First Societies

Chapter III: The Right of the Strongest

Chapter IV: Slavery

Chapter V: That We Must Always Go Back to a First Convention

Chapter VI: The Social Compact

Chapter VII: The Sovereign

Chapter VIII: The Civil State

Chapter IX: Real Property

Book Ii

Chapter I: That Sovereignty Is Inalienable

Chapter II: That Sovereignty Is Indivisible

Chapter III: Whether the General Will Is Fallible

Chapter IV: The Limits of the Sovereign Power

Chapter V: The Right of Life and Death

Chapter VI: Law

Chapter VII: The Legislator

Chapter VIII: The People

Chapter IX: The People ( Continued )

Chapter X: The People ( Continued )

Chapter XI: The Various Systems of Legislation

Chapter XII: The Division of the Laws

Book Iii

Chapter I: Government In General

Chapter II: The Constituent Principle In the Various Forms of Government

Chapter III: The Division of Governments

Chapter IV: Democracy

Chapter V: Aristocracy

Chapter VI: Monarchy

Chapter VII: Mixed Governments

Chapter VIII: That All Forms of Government Do Not Suit All Countries

Chapter IX: The Marks of a Good Government

Chapter X: The Abuse of Government and Its Tendency to Degenerate

Chapter XI: The Death of the Body Politic

Chapter XII: How the Sovereign Authority Maintains Itself

Chapter XIII: The Same ( Continued )

Chapter XIV: The Same ( Continued )

Chapter XV: Deputies Or Representatives

Chapter XVI: That the Institution of Government Is Not a Contract

Chapter XVII: The Institution of Government

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Chapter XVIII: How to Check the Usurpations of Government

Book Iv

Chapter I: That the General Will Is Indestructible

Chapter II: Voting

Chapter III: Elections

Chapter IV: The Roman Comitia

Chapter V: The Tribunate

Chapter VI: The Dictatorship

Chapter VII: The Censorship

Chapter VIII: Civil Religion

Chapter IX: Conclusion

A Discourse Which Won the Prize At the Academy of Dijon In 1750, On This

Question Proposed By the Academy: Has the Restoration of the Arts and

Sciences Had a Purifying Effect Upon Morals ?

A Discourse On the Moral Effects of the Arts and Sciences Decipimur Specie

Recti. — Horace.

The First Part

The Second Part

A Discourse On a Subject Proposed By the Academy of Dijon: What Is the

Origin of Inequality Among Men, and Is It Authorised By Natural Law ?

A Discourse On Political Economy

this is no. 660 ofEVERYMAN’S LIBRARY.the publishers will be pleased to send freely

to all applicants a list of the published and projected volumes arranged under the

following sections:

travel (illegible) science (illegible) fiction theology & philosophy history (illegible)

classical for young people essays (illegible) oratory poetry & drama biography

reference romance

the ordinary edition is bound in cloth with gilt design and coloured top. there is also a

library edition in reinforced cloth

London: J. M. DENT & SONS Ltd.

New York: E. P. DUTTON & CO.

How charming is divine philosophy

milton

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[Back to Table of Contents]

INTRODUCTION

For the study of the great writers and thinkers of the past, historical imagination is the

first necessity. Without mentally referring to the environment in which they lived, we

cannot hope to penetrate below the inessential and temporary to the absolute and

permanent value of their thought. Theory, no less than action, is subject to these

necessities; the form in which men cast their speculations, no less than the ways in

which they behave, are the result of the habits of thought and action which they find

around them. Great men make, indeed, individual contributions to the knowledge of

their times; but they can never transcend the age in which they live. The questions

they try to answer will always be those their contemporaries are asking; their

statement of fundamental problems will always be relative to the traditional

statements that have been handed down to them. When they are stating what is most

startlingly new, they will be most likely to put it in an old-fashioned form, and to use

the inadequate ideas and formulæ of tradition to express the deeper truths towards

which they are feeling their way. They will be most the children of their age, when

they are rising most above it.

Rousseau has suffered as much as any one from critics without a sense of history. He

has been cried up and cried down by democrats and oppressors with an equal lack of

understanding and imagination. His name, a hundred and fifty years after the

publication of the Social Contract, is still a controversial watchword and a party cry.

He is accepted as one of the greatest writers France has produced; but even now men

are inclined, as political bias prompts them, to accept or reject his political doctrines

as a whole, without sifting them or attempting to understand and discriminate. He is

still revered or hated as the author who, above all others, inspired the French

Revolution.

At the present day, his works possess a double significance. They are important

historically, alike as giving us an insight into the mind of the eighteenth century, and

for the actual influence they have had on the course of events in Europe. Certainly no

other writer of the time has exercised such an influence as his. He may fairly be called

the parent of the romantic movement in art, letters and life; he affected profoundly the

German romantics and Goethe himself; he set the fashion of a new introspection

which has permeated nineteenth century literature; he began modern educational

theory; and, above all, in political thought he represents the passage from a traditional

theory rooted in the Middle Ages to the modern philosophy of the State. His influence

on Kant’s moral philosophy and on Hegel’s philosophy of Right are two sides of the

same fundamental contribution to modern thought. He is, in fact, the great forerunner

of German and English Idealism.

It would not be possible, in the course of a short introduction, to deal both with the

positive content of Rousseau’s thought and with the actual influence he has had on

practical affairs. The statesmen of the French Revolution, from Robespierre

downwards, were throughout profoundly affected by the study of his works. Though

they seem often to have misunderstood him, they had on the whole studied him with

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the attention he demands. In the nineteenth century, men continued to appeal to

Rousseau, without, as a rule, knowing him well or penetrating deeply into his

meaning. “The Social Contract,” says M. Dreyfus-Brisac, “is the book of all books

that is most talked of and least read.” But with the great revival of interest in political

philosophy there has come a desire for the better understanding of Rousseau’s work.

He is again being studied more as a thinker and less as an ally or an opponent; there is

more eagerness to sift the true from the false, and to seek in the Social Contract the

“principles of political right,” rather than the great revolutionary’s ipse dixit in favour

of some view about circumstances which he could never have contemplated.

The Social Contract, then, may be regarded either as a document of the French

Revolution, or as one of the greatest books dealing with political philosophy. It is in

the second capacity, as a work of permanent value containing truth, that it finds a

place among the world’s great books. It is in that capacity also that it will be treated in

this introduction. Taking it in this aspect, we have no less need of historical insight

than if we came to it as historians pure and simple. To understand its value we must

grasp its limitations; when the questions it answers seem unnaturally put, we must not

conclude that they are meaningless; we must see if the answer still holds when the

question is put in a more up-to-date form.

First, then, we must always remember that Rousseau is writing in the eighteenth

century, and for the most part in France. Neither the French monarchy nor the

Genevese aristocracy loved outspoken criticism, and Rousseau had always to be very

careful what he said. This may seem a curious statement to make about a man who

suffered continual persecution on account of his subversive doctrines; but, although

Rousseau was one of the most daring writers of his time, he was forced continually to

moderate his language and, as a rule, to confine himself to generalisation instead of

attacking particular abuses. Rousseau’s theory has often been decried as too abstract

and metaphysical. This is in many ways its great strength; but where it is excessively

so, the accident of time is to blame. In the eighteenth century it was, broadly

speaking, safe to generalise and unsafe to particularise. Scepticism and discontent

were the prevailing temper of the intellectual classes, and a short-sighted despotism

held that, as long as they were confined to these, they would do little harm.

Subversive doctrines were only regarded as dangerous when they were so put as to

appeal to the masses; philosophy was regarded as impotent. The intellectuals of the

eighteenth century therefore generalised to their hearts’ content, and as a rule suffered

little for their lèse-majesté: Voltaire is the typical example of such generalisation. The

spirit of the age favoured such methods, and it was therefore natural for Rousseau to

pursue them. But his general remarks had such a way of bearing very obvious

particular applications, and were so obviously inspired by a particular attitude towards

the government of his day, that even philosophy became in his hands unsafe, and he

was attacked for what men read between the lines of his works. It is owing to this

faculty of giving his generalisations content and actuality that Rousseau has become

the father of modern political philosophy. He uses the method of his time only to

transcend it; out of the abstract and general he creates the concrete and universal.

Secondly, we must not forget that Rousseau’s theories are to be studied in a wider

historical environment. If he is the first of modern political theorists, he is also the last

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of a long line of Renaissance theorists, who in turn inherit and transform the concepts

of mediæval thought. So many critics have spent so much wasted time in proving that

Rousseau was not original only because they began by identifying originality with

isolation: they studied first the Social Contract by itself, out of relation to earlier

works, and then, having discovered that these earlier works resembled it, decided that

everything it had to say was borrowed. Had they begun their study in a truly historical

spirit, they would have seen that Rousseau’s importance lies just in the new use he

makes of old ideas, in the transition he makes from old to new in the general

conception of politics. No mere innovator could have exercised such an influence or

hit on so much truth. Theory makes no great leaps; it proceeds to new concepts by the

adjustment and renovation of old ones. Just as theological writers on politics, from

Hooker to Bossuet, make use of Biblical terminology and ideas; just as more modern

writers, from Hegel to Herbert Spencer, make use of the concept of evolution,

Rousseau uses the ideas and terms of the Social Contract theory. We should feel,

throughout his work, his struggle to free himself from what is lifeless and outworn in

that theory, while he develops out of it fruitful conceptions that go beyond its scope.

A too rigid literalism in the interpretation of Rousseau’s thought may easily reduce it

to the possession of a merely “historical interest”: if we approach it in a truly

historical spirit, we shall be able to appreciate at once its temporary and its lasting

value, to see how it served his contemporaries, and at the same time to disentangle

from it what may be serviceable to us and for all time.

Rousseau’s Emile, the greatest of all works on education, has already been issued in

this series. In this volume are contained the most important of his political works. Of

these the Social Contract, by far the most significant, is the latest in date. It represents

the maturity of his thought, while the other works only illustrate his development.

Born in 1712, he issued no work of importance till 1750; but he tells us, in the

Confessions, that in 1743, when he was attached to the Embassy at Venice, he had

already conceived the idea of a great work on Political Institutions, “which was to put

the seal on his reputation.” He seems, however, to have made little progress with this

work, until in 1749 he happened to light on the announcement of a prize offered by

the Academy of Dijon for an answer to the question, “Has the progress of the arts and

sciences tended to the purification or to the corruption of morality?” His old ideas

came thronging back, and sick at heart of the life he had been leading among the Paris

lumières, he composed a violent and rhetorical diatribe against civilisation generally.

In the following year, this work, having been awarded the prize by the Academy, was

published by its author. His success was instantaneous; he became at once a famous

man, the “lion” of Parisian literary circles. Refutations of his work were issued by

professors, scribblers, outraged theologians and even by the King of Poland. Rousseau

endeavoured to answer them all, and in the course of argument his thought developed.

From 1750 to the publication of the Social Contract and Emile in 1762 he gradually

evolved his views: in those twelve years he made his unique contribution to political

thought.

The Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, the earliest of the works reproduced in this

volume, is not in itself of very great importance. Rousseau has given his opinion of it

in the Confessions. “Full of warmth and force, it is wholly without logic or order; of

all my works it is the weakest in argument and the least harmonious. But whatever

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gifts a man may be born with, he cannot learn the art of writing in a moment.” This

criticism is just. The first Discourse neither is, nor attempts to be, a reasoned or a

balanced production. It is the speech of an advocate, wholly one-sided and arbitrary,

but so obviously and naïvely one-sided, that it is difficult for us to believe in its entire

seriousness. At the most, it is only a rather brilliant but flimsy rhetorical effort, a

sophistical improvisation, but not a serious contribution to thought. Yet it is certain

that this declamation made Rousseau’s name, and established his position as a great

writer in Parisian circles. D’Alembert even devoted the preface of the Encyclopædia

to a refutation. The plan of the first Discourse is essentially simple: it sets out from

the badness, immorality and misery of modern nations, traces all these ills to the

departure from a “natural” state, and then credits the progress of the arts and sciences

with being the cause of that departure. In it, Rousseau is already in possession of his

idea of “nature” as an ideal; but he has at present made no attempt to discriminate, in

what is unnatural, between good and bad. He is merely using a single idea, putting it

as strongly as he can, and neglecting all its limitations. The first Discourse is

important not for any positive doctrine it contains, but as a key to the development of

Rousseau’s mind. Here we see him at the beginning of the long journey which was to

lead on at last to the theory of the Social Contract.

In 1755 appeared the Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of Inequality among

Men, which is the second of the works given in this volume. With this essay,

Rousseau had unsuccessfully competed in 1753 for a second prize offered by the

Academy of Dijon, and he now issued it prefaced by a long Dedication to the

Republic of Geneva. In this work, which Voltaire, in thanking him for a presentation

copy, termed his “second book against the human race,” his style and his ideas have

made a great advance; he is no longer content merely to push a single idea to

extremes: while preserving the broad opposition between the state of nature and the

state of society, which runs through all his work, he is concerned to present a rational

justification of his views and to admit that a little at any rate may be said on the other

side. Moreover, the idea of “nature” has already undergone a great development; it is

no longer an empty opposition to the evils of society; it possesses a positive content.

Thus half the Discourse on Inequality is occupied by an imaginary description of the

state of nature, in which man is shown with ideas limited within the narrowest range,

with little need of his fellows, and little care beyond provision for the necessities of

the moment. Rousseau declares explicitly that he does not suppose the “state of

nature” ever to have existed: it is a pure “idea of reason,” a working concept reached

by abstraction from the “state of society.” The “natural man,” as opposed to “man’s

man,” is man stripped of all that society confers upon him, a creature formed by a

process of abstraction, and never intended for a historical portrait. The conclusion of

the Discourse favours not this purely abstract being, but a state of savagery

intermediate between the “natural” and the “social” conditions, in which men may

preserve the simplicity and the advantages of nature and at the same time secure the

rude comforts and assurances of early society. In one of the long notes appended to

the Discourse, Rousseau further explains his position. He does not wish, he says, that

modern corrupt society should return to a state of nature: corruption has gone too far

for that; he only desires now that men should palliate, by wiser use of the fatal arts,

the mistake of their introduction. He recognises society as inevitable and is already

feeling his way towards a justification of it. The second Discourse represents a second

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stage in his political thought: the opposition between the state of nature and the state

of society is still presented in naked contrast; but the picture of the former has already

filled out, and it only remains for Rousseau to take a nearer view of the fundamental

implications of the state of society for his thought to reach maturity.

Rousseau is often blamed, by modern critics, for pursuing in the Discourses a method

apparently that of history, but in reality wholly unhistorical. But it must be

remembered that he himself lays no stress on the historical aspect of his work; he

gives himself out as constructing a purely ideal picture, and not as depicting any

actual stages in human history. The use of false historical concepts is characteristic of

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and Rousseau is more to be congratulated on

having escaped from giving them too much importance than criticised for employing

them at all.

It is doubtful whether the Discourse on Political Economy, first printed in the great

Encyclopædia in 1755, was composed before or after the Discourse on Inequality. At

first sight the former seems to be far more in the manner of the Social Contract and to

contain views belonging essentially to Rousseau’s constructive period. It would not,

however, be safe to conclude from this that its date is really later. The Discourse on

Inequality still has about it much of the rhetorical looseness of the prize essay; it aims

not so much at close reasoning as at effective and popular presentation of a case. But,

by reading between the lines, an attentive student can detect in it a great deal of the

positive doctrine afterwards incorporated in the Social Contract. Especially in the

closing section, which lays down the plan of a general treatment of the fundamental

questions of politics, we are already to some extent in the atmosphere of the later

works. It is indeed almost certain that Rousseau never attempted to put into either of

the first two Discourses any of the positive content of his political theory. They were

intended, not as final expositions of his point of view, but as partial and preliminary

studies, in which his aim was far more destructive than constructive. It is clear that in

first conceiving the plan of a work on Political Institutions, Rousseau cannot have

meant to regard all society as in essence bad. It is indeed evident that he meant, from

the first, to study human society and institutions in their rational aspect, and that he

was rather diverted from his main purpose by the Academy of Dijon’s competition

than first induced by it to think about political questions. It need, therefore, cause no

surprise that a work probably written before the Discourse on Inequality should

contain the germs of the theory given in full in the Social Contract. The Discourse on

Political Economy is important as giving the first sketch of the theory of the “General

Will.” It will readily be seen that Rousseau does not mean by “political economy”

exactly what we mean nowadays. He begins with a discussion of the fundamental

nature of the State, and the possibility of reconciling its existence with human liberty,

and goes on with an admirable short study of the principles of taxation. He is thinking

throughout of “political” in the sense of “public” economy, of the State as the public

financier, and not of the conditions governing industry. He conceives the State as a

body aiming at the well-being of all its members and subordinates all his views of

taxation to that end. He who has only necessaries should not be taxed at all;

superfluities should be supertaxed; there should be heavy imposts on every sort of

luxury. The first part of the article is still more interesting. Rousseau begins by

demolishing the exaggerated parallel so often drawn between the State and the family;

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he shows that the State is not, and cannot be, patriarchal in nature, and goes on to lay

down his view that its real being consists in the General Will of its members. The

essential features of the Social Contract are present in this Discourse almost as if they

were commonplaces, certainly not as if they were new discoveries on which the

author had just hit by some happy inspiration. There is every temptation, after reading

the Political Economy, to suppose that Rousseau’s political ideas really reached

maturity far earlier than has generally been allowed.

The Social Contract finally appeared, along with Emile, in 1762. This year, therefore,

represents in every respect the culmination of Rousseau’s career. Henceforth, he was

to write only controversial and confessional works; his theories were now developed,

and, simultaneously, he gave to the world his views on the fundamental problems of

politics and education. It is now time to ask what Rousseau’s system, in its maturity,

finally amounted to. The Social Contract contains practically the whole of his

constructive political theory; it requires to be read, for full understanding, in

connection with his other works, especially Emile and the Letters on the Mount

(1764), but in the main it is self-contained and complete. The title sufficiently defines

its scope. It is called The Social Contract or Principles of Political Right, and the

second title explains the first. Rousseau’s object is not to deal, in a general way, like

Montesquieu, with the actual institutions of existing States, but to lay down the

essential principles which must form the basis of every legitimate society. Rousseau

himself, in the fifth book of the Emile, has stated the difference clearly.

“Montesquieu,” he says, “did not intend to treat of the principles of political right; he

was content to treat of the positive right (or law) of established governments; and no

two studies could be more different than these.” Rousseau then conceives his object as

being something very different from that of the Spirit of the Laws, and it is a wilful

error to misconstrue his purpose. When he remarks that “the facts,” the actual history

of political societies, “do not concern him,” he is not contemptuous of facts; he is

merely asserting the sure principle that a fact can in no case give rise to a right. His

desire is to establish society on a basis of pure right, so as at once to disprove his

attack on society generally and to reinforce his criticism of existing societies.

Round this point centres the whole dispute about the methods proper to political

theory. There are, broadly speaking, two schools of political theorists, if we set aside

the psychologists. One school, by collecting facts, aims at reaching broad

generalisations about what actually happens in human societies; the other tries to

penetrate to the universal principles at the root of all human combination. For the

latter purpose facts may be useful, but in themselves they can prove nothing. The

question is not one of fact, but one of right.

Rousseau belongs esentially to this philosophical school. He is not, as his less

philosophic critics seem to suppose, a purely abstract thinker generalising from

imaginary historical instances; he is a concrete thinker trying to get beyond the

inessential and changing to the permanent and invariable basis of human society. Like

Green, he is in search of the principle of political obligation, and beside this quest all

others fall into their place as secondary and derivative. It is required “to find a form of

association able to defend and protect with the whole common force the person and

goods of every associate, and of such a nature that each, uniting himself with all, may

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still obey only himself, and remain as free as before. This is the fundamental problem

of which the Social Contract provides the solution.” The problem of political

obligation is seen as including all other political problems, which fall into place in a

system based upon it. How, Rousseau asks, can the will of the State help being for me

a merely external will, imposing itself upon my own? How can the existence of the

State be reconciled with human freedom? How can man, who is born free, rightly

come to be everywhere in chains?

No-one could help understanding the central problem of the Social Contract

immediately, were it not that its doctrines often seem to be strangely formulated. We

have seen that this strangeness is due to Rousseau’s historical position, to his use of

the political concepts current in his own age, and to his natural tendency to build on

the foundations laid by his predecessors. There are a great many people whose idea of

Rousseau consists solely of the first words of the opening chapter of the Social

Contract, “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” But, they tell you, man

is not born free, even if he is everywhere in chains. Thus at the very outset we are

faced with the great difficulty in appreciating Rousseau. When we should naturally

say “man ought to be free,” or perhaps “man is born for freedom,” he prefers to say

“man is born free,” by which he means exactly the same thing. There is doubtless, in

his way of putting it, an appeal to a “golden age”; but this golden age is admittedly as

imaginary as the freedom to which men are born is bound, for most of them, to be.

Elsewhere Rousseau puts the point much as we might put it ourselves. “Nothing is

more certain than that every man born in slavery is born for slavery. . . . But if there

are slaves by nature, it is because there have been slaves against nature” (Social

Contract, Book I, chap. ii).

We have seen that the contrast between the “state of nature” and the “state of society”

runs through all Rousseau’s work. The Emile is a plea for “natural” education; the

Discourses are a plea for a “naturalisation” of society; the New Héloīse is the

romantic’s appeal for more “nature” in human relationships. What then is the position

of this contrast in Rousseau’s mature political thought? It is clear that the position is

not merely that of the Discourses. In them, he envisaged only the faults of actual

societies; now, he is concerned with the possibility of a rational society. His aim is to

justify the change from “nature” to “society,” although it has left men in chains. He is

in search of the true society, which leaves men “as free as before.” Altogether, the

space occupied by the idea of nature in the Social Contract is very small. It is used of

necessity in the controversial chapters, in which Rousseau is refuting false theories of

social obligation; but when once he has brushed aside the false prophets, he lets the

idea of nature go with them, and concerns himself solely with giving society the

rational sanction he has promised. It becomes clear that, in political matters at any

rate, the “state of nature” is for him only a term of controversy. He has in effect

abandoned, in so far as he ever held it, the theory of a human golden age; and where,

as in the Émile, he makes use of the idea of nature, it is broadened and deepened out

of all recognition. Despite many passages in which the old terminology cleaves to

him, he means by “nature” in this period not the original state of a thing, nor even its

reduction to the simplest terms: he is passing over to the conception of “nature” as

identical with the full development of capacity, with the higher idea of human

freedom. This view may be seen in germ even in the Discourse on Inequality, where,

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distinguishing selfrespect (amour de soi) from egoism (amour-propre), Rousseau

makes the former, the property of the “natural” man, consist not in the desire for self-

aggrandisement, but in the seeking of satisfaction for reasonable desire accompanied

by benevolence; whereas egoism is the preference of our own interests to those of

others, self-respect merely puts us on an equal footing with our fellows. It is true that

in the Discourse Rousseau is pleading against the development of many human

faculties; but he is equally advocating the fullest development of those he regards as

“natural,” by which he means merely “good.” The “state of society,” as envisaged in

the Social Contract, is no longer in contradiction to the “state of nature” upheld in the

Emile, where indeed the social environment is of the greatest importance, and, though

the pupil is screened from it, he is none the less being trained for it. Indeed the views

given in the Social Contract are summarised in the fifth book of the Emile, and by this

summary the essential unity of Rousseau’s system is emphasised.

Rousseau’s object, then, in the first words of the Social Contract, “is to inquire if, in

the civil order, there can be any sure and certain rule of administration, taking men as

they are and laws as they might be.” Montesquieu took laws as they were, and saw

what sort of men they made: Rousseau, founding his whole system on human

freedom, takes man as the basis, and regards him as giving himself what laws he

pleases. He takes his stand on the nature of human freedom: on this he bases his

whole system, making the will of the members the sole basis of every society.

In working out his theory, Rousseau makes use throughout of three general and, to

some extent, alternative conceptions. These are the Social Contract, Sovereignty and

the General Will. We shall now have to examine each of these in turn.

The Social Contract theory is as old as the sophists of Greece (see Plato, Republic,

Book II and the Gorgias), and as elusive. It has been adapted to the most opposite

points of view, and used, in different forms, on both sides of every question to which

it could conceivably be applied. It is frequent in mediæval writers, a commonplace

with the theorists of the Renaissance, and in the eighteenth century already nearing its

fall before a wider conception. It would be a long, as well as a thankless, task to trace

its history over again: it may be followed best in D. G. Ritchie’s admirable essay on it

in Darwin and Hegel and Other Studies. For us, it is important only to regard it in its

most general aspect, before studying the special use made of it by Rousseau.

Obviously, in one form or another, it is a theory very easily arrived at. Wherever any

form of government apart from the merest tyranny exists, reflection on the basis of the

State cannot but lead to the notion that, in one sense or another, it is based on the

consent, tacit or expressed, past or present, of its members. In this alone, the greater

part of the Social Contract theory is already latent. Add the desire to find actual

justification for a theory in facts, and, especially in an age possessed only of the

haziest historical sense, this doctrine of consent will inevitably be given a historical

setting. If in addition there is a tendency to regard society as something unnatural to

humanity, the tendency will become irresistible. By writers of almost all schools, the

State will be represented as having arisen, in some remote age, out of a compact or, in

more legal phrase, contract between two or more parties. The only class that will be

able to resist the doctrine is that which maintains the divine right of kings, and holds

that all existing governments were imposed on the people by the direct interposition

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of God. All who are not prepared to maintain that will be partisans of some form or

other of the Social Contract theory.

It is, therefore, not surprising that we find among its advocates writers of the most

opposite points of view. Barely stated, it is a mere formula, which may be filled in

with any content from absolutism to pure republicanism. And, in the hands of some at

least of its supporters, it turns out to be a weapon that cuts both ways. We shall be in a

better position to judge of its usefulness when we have seen its chief varieties at work.

All Social Contract theories that are at all definite fall under one or other of two

heads. They represent society as based on an original contract either between the

people and the government, or between all the individuals composing the State.

Historically, modern theory passes from the first to the second of these forms.

The doctrine that society is founded on a contract between the people and the

government is of mediæval origin. It was often supported by references to the Old

Testament, which contains a similar view in an unreflective form. It is found in most

of the great political writers of the sixteenth century; in Buchanan, and in the writings

of James I: it persists into the seventeenth in the works of Grotius and Puffendorf.

Grotius is sometimes held to have stated the theory so as to admit both forms of

contract; but it is clear that he is only thinking of the first form as admitting

democratic as well as monarchical government. We find it put very clearly by the

Convention Parliament of 1688, which accuses James II of having “endeavoured to

subvert the constitution of the kingdom by breaking the original contract between

king and people.” While Hobbes, on the side of the royalists, is maintaining the

contract theory in its second form, the Parliamentarian Algernon Sidney adheres to

the idea of a contract between the people and the government.

In this form, the theory clearly admits of opposite interpretations. It may be held that

the people, having given itself up once for all to its rulers, has nothing more to ask of

them, and is bound to submit to any usage they may choose to inflict. This, however,

is not the implication most usually drawn from it. The theory, in this form, originated

with theologians who were also lawyers. Their view of a contract implied mutual

obligations; they regarded the ruler as bound, by its terms, to govern constitutionally.

The old idea that a king must not violate the sacred customs of the realm passes easily

into the doctrine that he must not violate the terms of the original contract between

himself and his people. Just as in the days of the Norman kings, every appeal on the

part of the people for more liberties was couched in the form of a demand that the

customs of the “good old times” of Edward the Confessor should be respected, so in

the seventeenth century every act of popular assertion or resistance was stated as an

appeal to the king not to violate the contract. The demand was a good popular cry, and

it seemed to have the theorists behind it. Rousseau gives his refutation of this view,

which he had, in the Discourse on Inequality, maintained in passing, in the sixteenth

chapter of the third book of the Social Contract. (See also Book I, chap. iv, init.) His

attack is really concerned also with the theory of Hobbes, which in some respects

resembles, as we shall see, this first view; but, in form at least, it is directed against

this form of contract. It will be possible to examine it more closely, when the second

view has been considered.

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The second view, which may be called the Social Contract theory proper, regards

society as originating in, or based on, an agreement between the individuals

composing it. It seems to be found first, rather vaguely, in Richard Hooker’s

Ecclesiastical Polity, from which Locke largely borrowed: and it reappears, in

varying forms, in Milton’s Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, in Hobbes’s Leviathan,

in Locke’s Treatises on Civil Government, and in Rousseau. The best-known instance

of its actual use is by the Pilgrim Fathers on the Mayflower in 1620, in whose

declaration occurs the phrase, “We do solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God

and of one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body

politic.” The natural implication of this view would seem to be the corollary of

complete popular Sovereignty which Rousseau draws. But before Rousseau’s time it

had been used to support views as diverse as those which rested on the first form. We

saw that, in Grotius’s great work, De Jure Belli et Pacis, it was already possible to

doubt which of the two theories was being advocated. The first theory was,

historically, a means of popular protest against royal aggression. As soon as popular

government was taken into account, the act of contract between people and

government became in effect merely a contract between the individuals composing

the society, and readily passed over into the second form.

The second theory, in its ordinary form, expresses only the view that the people is

everywhere Sovereign, and that, in the phrase of Milton’s treatise, “the power of kings

and magistrates is only derivative.” Before, however, this view had been worked up

into a philosophical theory, it had already been used by Hobbes to support precisely

opposite principles. Hobbes agrees that the original contract is one between all the

individuals composing the State, and that the government is no party to it; but he

regards the people as agreeing, not merely to form a State, but to invest a certain

person or certain persons with the government of it. He agrees that the people is

naturally supreme, but regards it as alienating its Sovereignty by the contract itself,

and delegating its power, wholly and for ever, to the government. As soon, therefore,

as the State is set up, the government becomes for Hobbes the Sovereign; there is no

more question of popular Sovereignty, but only of passive obedience: the people is

bound, by the contract, to obey its ruler, no matter whether he governs well or ill. It

has alienated all its rights to the Sovereign, who is, therefore, absolute master.

Hobbes, living in a time of civil wars, regards the worst government as better than

anarchy, and is, therefore, at pains to find arguments in support of any form of

absolutism. It is easy to pick holes in this system, and to see into what difficulties a

conscientious Hobbist might be led by a revolution. For as soon as the revolutionaries

get the upper hand, he will have to sacrifice one of his principles: he will have to side

against either the actual or the legitimate Sovereign. It is easy also to see that

alienation of liberty, even if possible for an individual, which Rousseau denies, cannot

bind his posterity. But, with all its faults, the view of Hobbes is on the whole

admirably, if ruthlessly, logical, and to it Rousseau owes a great deal.

The special shape given to the second Social Contract theory by Hobbes looks, at first

sight, much like a combination, into a single act, of both the contracts. This, however,

is not the view he adopts. The theory of a contract between government and people

had, as we have seen, been used mainly as a support for popular liberties, a means of

assertion against the government. Hobbes, whose whole aim is to make his

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government Sovereign, can only do this by leaving the government outside the

contract: he thus avoids the necessity of submitting it to any obligation whatsoever,

and leaves it absolute and irresponsible. He secures, in fact, not merely a State which

has unbounded rights against the individual, but a determinate authority with the right

to enforce those rights. His theory is not merely Statism (étatisme); it is pure

despotism.

It is clear that, if such a theory is to be upheld, it can stand only by the view, which

Hobbes shares with Grotius, that a man can alienate not merely his own liberty, but

also that of his descendants, and that, consequently, a people as a whole can do the

same. This is the point at which both Locke and Rousseau attack it. Locke, whose aim

is largely to justify the Revolution of 1688, makes government depend, not merely at

its institution, but always, on the consent of the governed, and regards all rulers as

liable to be displaced if they govern tyrannically. He omits, however, to provide any

machinery short of revolution for the expression of popular opinion, and, on the

whole, seems to regard the popular consent as something essentially tacit and

assumed. He regards the State as existing mainly to protect life and property, and is,

in all his assertions of popular rights, so cautious as to reduce them almost to nothing.

It is not till we come to Rousseau that the second form of the contract theory is stated

in its purest and most logical form.

Rousseau sees clearly the necessity, if popular consent in government is to be more

than a name, of giving it some constitutional means of expression. For Locke’s theory

of tacit consent, he substitutes an active agreement periodically renewed. He looks

back with admiration to the city-states of ancient Greece and, in his own day, reserves

his admiration for the Swiss free cities, Berne and, above all, Geneva, his native

place. Seeing in the Europe of his day no case in which representative government

was working at all democratically, he was unable to conceive that means might be

found of giving effect to this active agreement in a nation-state; he therefore held that

self-government was impossible except for a city. He wished to break up the nation-

states of Europe, and create instead federative leagues of independent city-states.

It matters, however, comparatively little, for the appreciation of Rousseau’s political

theory in general, that he failed to become the theorist of the modern State. By taking

the State, which must have, in essentials, everywhere the same basis, at its simplest,

he was able, far better than his predecessors, to bring out the real nature of the “social

tie,” an alternative name which he often uses for the Social Contract. His doctrine of

the underlying principle of political obligation is that of all great modern writers, from

Kant to Mr. Bosanquet. This fundamental unity has been obscured only because

critics have failed to put the Social Contract theory in its proper place in Rousseau’s

system.

This theory was, we have seen, a commonplace. The amount of historical authenticity

assigned to the contract almost universally presupposed varied enormously.

Generally, the weaker a writer’s rational basis, the more he appealed to history—and

invented it. It was, therefore, almost inevitable that Rousseau should cast his theory

into the contractual form. There were, indeed, writers of his time who laughed at the

contract, but they were not writers who constructed a general system of political

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philosophy. From Cromwell to Montesquieu and Bentham, it was the practically

minded man, impatient of unactual hypotheses, who refused to accept the idea of

contract. The theorists were as unanimous in its favour as the Victorians were in

favour of the “organic” theory. But we, criticising them in the light of later events, are

in a better position for estimating the position the Social Contract really took in their

political system. We see that Locke’s doctrine of tacit consent made popular control

so unreal that he was forced, if the State was to have any hold, to make his contract

historical and actual, binding posterity for all time, and that he was also led to admit a

quasi-contract between people and government, as a second vindication of popular

liberties. Rousseau, on the other hand, bases no vital argument on the historical nature

of the contract, in which, indeed, he clearly does not believe. “How,” he asks, “did

this change [from nature to society] come about?” And he answers that he does not

know. Moreover, his aim is to find “a sure and legitimate rule of administration,

taking men as they are and laws as they might be”; that is to say, his Social Contract

is something which will be found at work in every legitimate society, but which will

be in abeyance in all forms of despotism. He clearly means by it no more and no less

than the fundamental principle of political association, the basis of the unity which

enables us, in the State, to realise political liberty by giving up lawlessness and

license. The presentation of this doctrine in the quasi-historical form of the Social

Contract theory is due to the accident of the time and place in which Rousseau wrote.

At the same time, the importance of the conception is best to be seen in the hard death

it dies. Though no-one, for a hundred years or so, has thought of regarding it as

historical, it has been found so hard to secure any other phrase explaining as well or

better the basis of political union that, to this day, the phraseology of the contract

theory largely persists. A conception so vital cannot have been barren.

It is indeed, in Rousseau’s own thought, only one of the three different ways in which

the basis of political union is stated, according to the preoccupation of his mind.

When he is thinking quasi-historically, he describes his doctrine as that of the Social

Contract. Modern anthropology, in its attempts to explain the complex by means of

the simple, often strays further from the straight paths of history and reason. In a

semi-legal aspect, using the terminology, if not the standpoint, of jurisprudence, he

restates the same doctrine in the form of popular Sovereignty. This use tends

continually to pass over into the more philosophical form which comes third.

“Sovereignty is the exercise of the general will.” Philosophically, Rousseau’s doctrine

finds its expression in the view that the State is based not on any original convention,

not on any determinate power, but on the living and sustaining rational will of its

members. We have now to examine first Sovereignty and then the General Will,

which is ultimately Rousseau’s guiding conception.

Sovereignty is, first and foremost, a legal term, and it has often been held that its use

in political philosophy merely leads to confusion. In jurisprudence, we are told, it has

the perfectly plain meaning given to it in Austin’s famous definition. The Sovereign is

“a determinate human superior, not in a habit of obedience to a like superior, but

receiving habitual obedience from the bulk of a given society.” Where Sovereignty is

placed is, on this view, a question purely of fact, and never of right. We have only to

seek out the determinate human superior in a given society, and we shall have the

Sovereign. In answer to this theory, it is not enough, though it is a valuable point, to

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show that such a determinate superior is rarely to be found. Where, for instance, is the

Sovereign of England or of the British Empire? Is it the King, who is called the

Sovereign? Or is it the Parliament, which is the legislature (for Austin’s Sovereign is

regarded as the source of law)? Or is it the electorate, or the whole mass of the

population, with or without the right of voting? Clearly all these exercise a certain

influence in the making of laws. Or finally, is it now the Cabinet? For Austin, one of

these bodies would be ruled out as indeterminate (the mass of the population) and

another as responsible (the Cabinet). But are we to regard the House of Commons or

those who elect it as forming part of the Sovereign? The search for a determinate

Sovereign may be a valuable legal conception; but it has evidently nothing to do with

political theory.

It is, therefore, essential to distinguish between the legal Sovereign of jurisprudence,

and the political Sovereign of political science and philosophy. Even so, it does not at

once become clear what this political Sovereign may be. Is it the body or bodies of

persons in whom political power in a State actually resides? Is it merely the complex

of actual institutions regarded as embodying the will of the society? This would leave

us still in the realm of mere fact, outside both right and philosophy. The Sovereign, in

the philosophical sense, is neither the nominal Sovereign, nor the legal Sovereign, nor

the political Sovereign of fact and common sense: it is the consequence of the

fundamental bond of union, the restatement of the doctrine of Social Contract, the

foreshadowing of that of General Will. The Sovereign is that body in the State in

which political power ought always to reside, and in which the right to such power

does always reside.

The idea at the back of the philosophical conception of Sovereignty is, therefore,

essentially the same as that we found to underlie the Social Contract theory. It is the

view that the people, whether it can alienate its right or not, is the ultimate director of

its own destinies, the final power from which there is no appeal. In a sense, this is

recognised even by Hobbes, who makes the power of his absolute Sovereign, the

predecessor of Austin’s “determinate human superior,” issue first of all from the

Social Contract, which is essentially a popular act. The difference between Hobbes

and Rousseau on this point is solely that Rousseau regards as inalienable a supreme

power which Hobbes makes the people alienate in its first corporate action. That is to

say, Hobbes in fact accepts the theory of popular supremacy in name only to destroy it

in fact; Rousseau asserts the theory in its only logical form, and is under no

temptation to evade it by means of false historical assumptions. In Locke, a

distinction is already drawn between the legal and the actual Sovereign, which Locke

calls “supreme power”; Rousseau unites the absolute Sovereignty of Hobbes and the

“popular consent” of Locke into the philosophic doctrine of popular Sovereignty,

which has since been the established form of the theory. His final view represents a

return from the perversions of Hobbes to a doctrine already familiar to mediæval and

Renaissance writers; but it is not merely a return. In its passage the view has fallen

into its place in a complete system of political philosophy.

In a second important respect Rousseau differentiates himself from Hobbes. For

Hobbes, the Sovereign is identical with the government. He is so hot for absolutism

largely because he regards revolution, the overthrow of the existing government, as at

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the same time the dissolution of the body politic, and a return to complete anarchy or

to the “state of nature.” Rousseau and, to some extent, Locke meet this view by sharp

division between the supreme power and the government. For Rousseau, they are so

clearly distinct that even a completely democratic government is not at the same time

the Sovereign; its members are sovereign only in a different capacity and as a

different corporate body, just as two different societies may exist for different

purposes with exactly the same members. Pure democracy, however, the government

of the State by all the people in every detail, is not, as Rousseau says, a possible

human institution. All governments are really mixed in character; and what we call a

democracy is only a more or less democratic government. Government, therefore, will

always be to some extent in the hands of selected persons. Sovereignty, on the other

hand, is in his view absolute, inalienable, indivisible, and indestructible. It cannot be

limited, abandoned, shared or destroyed. It is an essential part of all social life that the

right to control the destinies of the State belongs in the last resort to the whole people.

There clearly must in the end be somewhere in the society an ultimate court of appeal,

whether determinate or not; but, unless Sovereignty is distinguished from

government, the government, passing under the name of Sovereign, will inevitably be

regarded as absolute. The only way to avoid the conclusions of Hobbes is, therefore,

to establish a clear separation between them.

Rousseau tries to do this by an adaptation of the doctrine of the “three powers.” But

instead of three independent powers sharing the supreme authority, he gives only two,

and makes one of these wholly dependent on the other. He substitutes for the co-

ordination of the legislative, the executive, and the judicial authorities, a system in

which the legislative power, or Sovereign, is always supreme, the executive, or

government, always secondary and derivative, and the judicial power merely a

function of government. This division he makes, naturally, one of will and power. The

government is merely to carry out the decrees, or acts of will, of the Sovereign people.

Just as the human will transfers a command to its members for execution, so the body

politic may give its decisions force by setting up authority which, like the brain, may

command its members. In delegating the power necessary for the execution of its will,

it is abandoning none of its supreme authority. It remains Sovereign, and can at any

moment recall the grants it has made. Government, therefore, exists only at the

Sovereign’s pleasure, and is always revocable by the sovereign will.

It will be seen, when we come to discuss the nature of the General Will, that this

doctrine really contains the most valuable part of Rousseau’s theory. Here, we are

concerned rather with its limitations. The distinction between legislative and

executive functions is in practice very hard to draw. In Rousseau’s case, it is further

complicated by the presence of a second distinction. The legislative power, the

Sovereign, is concerned only with what is general, the executive only with what is

particular. This distinction, the full force of which can only be seen in connection with

the General Will, means roughly that a matter is general when it concerns the whole

community equally, and makes no mention of any particular class; as soon as it refers

to any class or person, it becomes particular, and can no longer form the subject

matter of an act of Sovereignty. However just this distinction may seem in the

abstract, it is clear that its effect is to place all the power in the hands of the executive:

modern legislation is almost always concerned with particular classes and interests. It

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is not, therefore, a long step from the view of Rousseau to the modern theory of

democratic government, in which the people has little power beyond that of removing

its rulers if they displease it. As long, however, as we confine our view to the city-

state of which Rousseau is thinking, his distinction is capable of preserving for the

people a greater actual exercise of will. A city can often generalise where a nation

must particularise.

It is in the third book of the Social Contract, where Rousseau is discussing the

problem of government, that it is most essential to remember that his discussion has in

view mainly the city-state and not the nation. Broadly put, his principle of

government is that democracy is possible only in small States, aristocracy in those of

medium extent, and monarchy in great States (Book III, chap. iii). In considering this

view, we have to take into account two things. First, he rejects representative

government; will being, in his theory, inalienable, representative Sovereignty is

impossible. But, as he regards all general acts as functions of Sovereignty, this means

that no general act can be within the competence of a representative assembly. In

judging this theory, we must take into account all the circumstances of Rousseau’s

time. France, Geneva and England were the three States he took most into account. In

France, representative government was practically non-existent; in Geneva, it was

only partially necessary; in England, it was a mockery, used to support a corrupt

oligarchy against a debased monarchy. Rousseau may well be pardoned for not taking

the ordinary modern view of it. Nor indeed is it, even in the modern world, so

satisfactory an instrument of the popular will that we can afford wholly to discard his

criticism. It is one of the problems of the day to find some means of securing effective

popular control over a weakened Parliament and a despotic Cabinet.

The second factor is the immense development of local government. It seemed to

Rousseau that, in the nation-state, all authority must necessarily pass, as it had in

France, to the central power. Devolution was hardly dreamed of; and Rousseau saw

the only means of securing effective popular government in a federal system, starting

from the small unit as Sovereign. The nineteenth century has proved the falsehood of

much of his theory of government; but there are still many wise comments and fruitful

suggestions to be found in the third book of the Social Contract and in the treatise on

the Government of Poland, as well as in his adaptation and criticism of the

Polysynodie of the Abbé de Saint-Pierre, a scheme of local government for France,

born out of its due time.

The point in Rousseau’s theory of Sovereignty that offers most difficulty is his view

(Book II, chap. vii) that, for every State, a Legislator is necessary. We shall

understand the section only by realising that the legislator is, in fact, in Rousseau’s

system, the spirit of institutions personified; his place, in a developed society, is taken

by the whole complex of social custom, organisation and tradition that has grown up

with the State. This is made clearer by the fact that the legislator is not to exercise

legislative power; he is merely to submit his suggestions for popular approval. Thus

Rousseau recognises that, in the case of institutions and traditions as elsewhere, will,

and not force, is the basis of the State.

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This may be seen in his treatment of law as a whole (Book II, chap. vi), which

deserves very careful attention. He defines laws as “acts of the general will,” and,

agreeing with Montesquieu in making law the “condition of civil association,” goes

beyond him only in tracing it more definitely to its origin in an act of will. The Social

Contract renders law necessary, and at the same time makes it quite clear that laws

can proceed only from the body of citizens who have constituted the State.

“Doubtless,” says Rousseau, “there is a universal justice emanating from reason

alone; but this justice, to be admitted among us, must be mutual. Humbly speaking, in

default of natural sanctions, the laws of justice are ineffective among men.” Of the

law which set up among men this reign of mutual justice the General Will is the

source.

We thus come at last to the General Will, the most disputed, and certainly the most

fundamental, of all Rousseau’s political concepts. No critic of the Social Contract has

found it easy to say either what precisely its author meant by it, or what is its final

value for political philosophy. The difficulty is increased because Rousseau himself

sometimes halts in the sense which he assigns to it, and even seems to suggest by it

two different ideas. Of its broad meaning, however, there can be no doubt. The effect

of the Social Contract is the creation of a new individual. When it has taken place, “at

once, in place of the individual personality of each contracting party, the act of

association creates a moral and collective body, composed of as many members as the

assembly contains voters, and receiving from the act its unity, its common identity

(moi commun), its life and its will” (Book I, chap. vi). The same doctrine had been

stated earlier, in the Political Economy, without the historical setting. “The body

politic is also a moral being, possessed of a will, and this general will, which tends

always to the preservation and welfare of the whole and of every part, and is the

source of the laws, constitutes for all the members of the State, in their relations to

one another and to it, the rule of what is just or unjust.” It will be seen at once that the

second statement, which could easily be fortified by others from the Social Contract,

says more than the first. It is not apparent that the common will, created by the

institution of society, need “tend always to the welfare of the whole.” Is not the

common will at least as fallible as the will of a single individual? May it not equally

be led away from its true interests to the pursuit of pleasure or of something which is

really harmful to it? And, if the whole society may vote what conduces to the

momentary pleasure of all the members and at the same time to the lasting damage of

the State as a whole, is it not still more likely that some of the members will try to

secure their private interests in opposition to those of the whole and of others? All

these questions, and others like them, have been asked by critics of the conception of

the General Will.

Two main points are involved, to one of which Rousseau gives a clear and definite

answer. “There is often,” he says, “a great deal of difference between the will of all

and the general will; the latter takes account only of the common interest, while the

former takes private interest into account, and is no more than a sum of particular

wills.” “The agreement of all interests is formed by opposition to that of each” (Book

II, chap. iii). It is indeed possible for a citizen, when an issue is presented to him, to

vote not for the good of the State, but for his own good; but, in such a case, his vote,

from the point of view of the General Will, is merely negligible. But “does it follow

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that the general will is exterminated or corrupted? Not at all: it is always constant,

unalterable, and pure; but it is subordinated to other wills which encroach upon its

sphere. . . . The fault [each man] commits [in detaching his interest from the common

interest] is that of changing the state of the question, and answering something

different from what he is asked. Instead of saying by his vote ‘It is to the advantage of

the State,’ he says, ‘It is to the advantage of this or that man or party that this or that

view should prevail.’ Thus the law of public order in assemblies is not so much to

maintain in them the general will as to secure that the question be always put to it, and

the answer always given by it” (Book IV, chap. i). These passages, with many others

that may be found in the text, make it quite clear that by the General Will Rousseau

means something quite distinct from the Will of All, with which it should never have

been confused. The only excuse for such confusion lies in his view that when, in a

city-state, all particular associations are avoided, votes guided by individual self-

interest will always cancel one another, so that majority voting will always result in

the General Will. This is clearly not the case, and in this respect we may charge him

with pushing the democratic argument too far. The point, however, can be better dealt

with at a later stage. Rousseau makes no pretence that the mere voice of a majority is

infallible; he only says, at the most, that, given his ideal conditions, it would be so.

The second main point raised by critics of the General Will is whether in defining it as

a will directed solely to the common interest, Rousseau means to exclude acts of

public immorality and short-sightedness. He answers the questions in different ways.

First, an act of public immorality would be merely an unanimous instance of

selfishness, different in no particular from similar acts less unanimous, and therefore

forming no part of a General Will. Secondly, a mere ignorance of our own and the

State’s good, entirely unprompted by selfish desires, does not make our will anti-

social or individual. “The general will is always right and tends to the public

advantage; but it does not follow that the deliberations of the people are always

equally correct. Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what

that is: the people is never corrupted, but it is often deceived, and on such occasions

only does it seem to will what is bad” (Book II, chap. iii). It is impossible to acquit

Rousseau in some of the passages in which he treats of the General Will, of something

worse than obscurity—positive contradiction. It is probable, indeed, that he never

quite succeeded in getting his view clear in his own mind; there is nearly always, in

his treatment of it, a certain amount of muddle and fluctuation. These difficulties the

student must be left to worry out for himself; it is only possible to present, in outline,

what Rousseau meant to convey.

The treatment of the General Will in the Political Economy is brief and lucid, and

furnishes the best guide to his meaning. The definition of it in this work, which has

already been quoted, is followed by a short account of the nature of general wills as a

whole. “Every political society is composed of other smaller societies of various

kinds, each of which has its interest and rules of conduct; but those societies which

everybody perceives, because they have an external or authorised form, are not the

only ones that actually exist in the State: all individuals who are united by a common

interest compose as many others, either temporary or permanent, whose influence is

none the less real because it is less apparent. . . . The influence of all these tacit or

formal associations causes by the influence of their will as many modifications of the

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public will. The will of these particular societies has always two relations; for the

members of the association, it is a general will; for the great society, it is a particular

will; and it is often right with regard to the first object and wrong as to the second.

The most general will is always the most just, and the voice of the people is, in fact,

the voice of God.”

The General Will, Rousseau continues in substance, is always for the common good;

but it is sometimes divided into smaller general wills, which are wrong in relation to

it. The supremacy of the great General Will is “the first principle of public economy

and the fundamental rule of government.”

In this passage, which differs only in clearness and simplicity from others in the

Social Contract itself, it is easy to see how far Rousseau had in his mind a perfectly

definite idea. Every association of several persons creates a new common will; every

association of a permanent character has already a “personality” of its own, and in

consequence a “general” will; the State, the highest known form of association, is a

fully developed moral and collective being with a common will which is, in the

highest sense yet known to us, general. All such wills are general only for the

members of the associations which exercise them; for outsiders, or rather for other

associations, they are purely particular wills. This applies even to the State; “for, in

relation to what is outside it, the State becomes a simple being, an individual” (Social

Contract, Book I, chap. vii). In certain passages in the Social Contract, in his

criticism of the Abbé de Saint-Pierre’s Project of Perpetual Peace, and in the second

chapter of the original draft of the Social Contract, Rousseau takes into account the

possibility of a still higher individual, “the federation of the world.” In the Political

Economy, thinking of the nation-state, he affirms what in the Social Contract (Book

II, chap. iii) he denies of the city, and recognises that the life of a nation is made up of

the whole complex of its institutions, and that the existence of lesser general wills is

not necessarily a menace to the General Will of the State. In the Social Contract, he

only treats of these lesser wills in relation to the government, which, he shows, has a

will of its own, general for its members, but particular for the State as a whole (Book

III, chap. ii). This governmental will he there prefers to call corporate will, and by

this name it will be convenient to distinguish the lesser general wills from the General

Will of the State that is over them all.

So far, there is no great difficulty; but in discussing the infallibility of the General

Will we are on more dangerous ground. Rousseau’s treatment here clearly oscillates

between regarding it as a purely ideal conception, to which human institutions can

only approximate, and holding it to be realised actually in every republican State, i. e.

wherever the people is the Sovereign in fact as well as in right. Book IV, chap. ii is

the most startling passage expressing the latter view. “When in the popular assembly a

law is proposed, what the people is asked is not exactly whether it accepts or rejects

the proposal, but whether it is in conformity with the general will, which is its will. . .

. When, therefore, the opinion that is contrary to my own prevails, this proves neither

more nor less than that I was mistaken, and that what I thought to be the general will

was not so.” On his own principles laid down elsewhere, Rousseau would have to

admit that it proves nothing of the sort, except in so far as the other voters have been

guided by the general interest. Though he sometimes affirms the opposite, there is no

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security on his principles that the will of the majority will be the General Will. At the

most it can only be said that there is a greater chance of its being general than of the

will of any selected class of persons not being led away by corporate interests. The

justification of democracy is not that it is always right, even in intention, but that it is

more general than any other kind of supreme power.

Fundamentally, however, the doctrine of the General Will is independent of these

contradictions. Apart from Kant’s narrow and rigid logic, it is essentially one with his

doctrine of the autonomy of the will. Kant takes Rousseau’s political theory, and

applies it to ethics as a whole. The germ of this application is already found in

Rousseau’s own work; for he protests more than once against attempts to treat moral

and political philosophy apart, as distinct studies, and asserts their absolute unity. This

is brought out clearly in the Social Contract (Book I, chap. viii), where he is speaking

of the change brought about by the establishment of society. “The passage from the

state of nature to the civil state produces a very remarkable change in man, by

substituting justice for instinct in his conduct, and giving his actions the morality they

had hitherto lacked. . . . What man loses by the social contract is his natural liberty

and an unlimited right to everything he tries to get and succeeds in getting; what he

gains is civil liberty . . . which is limited by the general will. . . . We might, over and

above all this, add to what man acquires in the civil state moral liberty, which alone

makes him truly master of himself; for the mere impulse of appetite is slavery, while

obedience to a law which we prescribe to ourselves is liberty.”

This one chapter contains the gist of the Kantian moral philosophy, and makes it quite

clear that Rousseau perceived its application to ethics as well as to politics. The

morality of our acts consists in their being directed in accordance with universal law;

acts in which we are guided merely by our passions are not moral. Further, man can

only possess freedom when his whole being is unified in the pursuit of a single end;

and, as his whole being can be unified only in pursuit of a rational end, which alone

excludes contradiction, only moral acts, only men directing their lives by universal

law, are free. In Kantian language, the will is autonomous (i. e. prescribes to itself its

own law) only when it is directed to a universal end; when it is guided by selfish

passions, or particular considerations, it is heteronomous (i. e. receives its law from

something external to itself), and in bondage. Rousseau, as he says (Book I, chap.

viii), was not directly concerned with the ethical sense of the word “liberty,” and Kant

was, therefore, left to develop the doctrine into a system; but the phrases of this

chapter prove false the view that the doctrine of a Real Will arises first in connection

with politics, and is only transferred thence to moral philosophy. Rousseau bases his

political doctrine throughout on his view of human freedom; it is because man is a

free agent capable of being determined by a universal law prescribed by himself that

the State is in like manner capable of realising the General Will, that is, of prescribing

to itself and its members a similar universal law.

The General Will, then, is the application of human freedom to political institutions.

Before the value of this conception can be determined, there is a criticism to be met.

The freedom which is realised in the General Will, we are told, is the freedom of the

State as a whole; but the State exists to secure individual freedom for its members. A

free State may be tyrannical; a despot may allow his subjects every freedom. What

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guarantee is there that the State, in freeing itself, will not enslave its members? This

criticism has been made with such regularity that it has to be answered in some detail.

“The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the

whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each,

while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as

before.” “The clauses of the contract . . . are everywhere the same and everywhere

tacitly admitted and recognised. . . . These clauses, properly understood, may be

reduced to one—the total alienation of each associate, together with all his rights, to

the whole community . . .; for, if the individuals retained certain rights, as there would

be no common superior to decide between them and the public, each, being on one

point his own judge, would ask to be so on all, and the state of nature would continue”

(Book I, chap. vi). Rousseau sees clearly that it is impossible to place any limits upon

the power of the State; when the people combine into a State, they must in the end

submit to be guided in all things by the will of the effective majority. Limited

Sovereignty is a contradiction in terms; the Sovereign has a right to all that reason

allows it, and as soon as reason demands that the State shall interfere, no appeal to

individual rights can be made. What is best for the State must be suffered by the

individual. This, however, is very far from meaning that the ruling power ought, or

has the moral right, to interfere in every particular case. Rousseau has been subjected

to much foolish criticism because, after upholding the State’s absolute supremacy, he

goes on (Book II, chap. iv) to speak of “the limits of the sovereign power.” There is

no contradiction whatsoever. Wherever State intervention is for the best, the State has

a right to intervene; but it has no moral right, though it must have a legal right, to

intervene where it is not for the best. The General Will, being always in the right, will

intervene only when intervention is proper. “The Sovereign,” therefore, “cannot

impose upon its subjects any fetters that are useless to the community, nor can it even

wish to do so.” As, however, the infallibility of the General Will is not enough to

make the State infallible, there still remains an objection. Since the General Will

cannot always be arrived at, who is to judge whether an act of intervention is

justified? Rousseau’s answer fails to satisfy many of his critics. “Each man alienates,

I admit, by the social compact, only such part of his powers, goods and liberty as it is

important for the community to control; but it must also be granted that the Sovereign

is sole judge of what is important.” This, we are told, is mere State tyranny over

again. But how is it possible to avoid such a conclusion? Rousseau has already given

his reasons for objecting to a limited Sovereignty (Book I, chap. vi): it follows

absolutely that we must take the best machinery we can find for the execution of the

State’s functions. No doubt the machinery will be imperfect; but we can only try to

get as near the General Will as possible, without hoping to realise it fully.

The answer, therefore, to the critics who hold that, in securing civil liberty Rousseau

has sacrificed the individual may be put after this fashion. Liberty is not a merely

negative conception; it does not consist solely in the absence of restraint. The purest

individualist, Herbert Spencer for example, would grant that a certain amount of State

interference is necessary to secure liberty; but as soon as this idea of securing liberty

is admitted in the smallest degree, the whole idea has undergone profound

modification. It can no longer be claimed that every interference on the part of the

State lessens the liberty of the individual; the “liberty-fund” theory is as untenable as

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that of the “wages-fund”: the members of a State may be more free when all are

restrained from doing one another mutual damage than when any one is left “free” to

enslave another or be himself enslaved. This principle once admitted, the precise

amount of State interference that is necessary to secure freedom will be always a

matter for particular discussion; every case must be decided on its own merits, and, in

right, the Sovereign will be omnipotent, or subject only to the law of reason.

It has often been held that Rousseau cannot really have inspired the French

Revolution because this view is totally inconsistent with the “rights of man,” which

the revolutionaries so fervently proclaimed. If every right is alienated in the Social

Contract, what sense can there be in talking of “natural rights” afterwards? This,

however, is to misrepresent Rousseau’s position. The rights of man as they are

preached by the modern individualist, are not the rights of which Rousseau and the

revolutionaries were thinking. We have seen that the theory of the Social Contract is

founded on human freedom: this freedom carries with it, in Rousseau’s view, the

guarantee of its own permanence; it is inalienable and indestructible. When, therefore,

government becomes despotic, it has no more right over its subjects than the master

has over his slave (Book I, chap. iv); the question is then purely one of might. In such

cases, appeal may be made either to the terms of the Social Contract, or, putting the

same idea another way, to the “natural right” of human freedom. This natural right is

in no sense inconsistent with the complete alienation supposed in the Contract; for the

Contract itself reposes on it and guarantees its maintenance. The Sovereign must,

therefore, treat all its members alike; but, so long as it does this, it remains

omnipotent. If it leaves the general for the particular, and treats one man better than

another, it ceases to be Sovereign; but equality is already presupposed in the terms of

the Contract.

It is more profitable to attack Rousseau for his facile identification of the interests of

each of the citizens with those of all; but here, too, most of the critics have abused

their opportunity. He does not maintain that there can be no opposition between a

man’s particular interests and the General Will as present in him; on the contrary, he

explicitly and consistently affirms the presence of such opposition (Book I, chap. vii).

What he asserts is, first, that the Sovereign, as such, cannot have any interest contrary

to the interest of the citizens as a whole—that is obvious; and, secondly, that it cannot

have an interest contrary to that of any individual. The second point Rousseau proves

by showing that the omnipotence of the Sovereign is essential to the preservation of

society, which in turn is necessary for the individual. His argument, however, really

rests on the fundamental character of the General Will. He would admit that, in any

actual State, the apparent interest of the many might often conflict with that of the

few; but he would contend that the real interest of State and individual alike, being

subject to universal law, could not be such as to conflict with any other real interest.

The interest of the State, in so far as it is directed by the General Will, must be the

interest of every individual, in so far as he is guided by his real will, that is, in so far

as he is acting universally, rationally and autonomously.

Thus the justification of Rousseau’s theory of liberty returns to the point from which

it set out—the omnipotence of the real will in State and individual. It is in this sense

that he speaks of man in the State as “forced to be free” by the General Will, much as

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Kant might speak of a man’s lower nature as forced to be free by the universal

mandate of his higher, more real and more rational will. It is in this recognition of the

State as a moral being, with powers of determination similar to the powers of the

individual mind, that the significance of the General Will ultimately lies. Even,

however, among those who have recognised its meaning, there are some who deny its

value as a conception of political philosophy. If, they say, the General Will is not the

Will of All, if it cannot be arrived at by a majority vote or by any system of voting

whatsoever, then it is nothing; it is a mere abstraction, neither general, nor a will. This

is, of course, precisely the criticism to which Kant’s “real will” is often subjected.

Clearly, it must be granted at once that the General Will does not form the whole

actual content of the will of every citizen. Regarded as actual, it must always be

qualified by “in so far as” or its equivalent. This, however, is so far from destroying

the value of the conception that therein lies its whole value. In seeking the universal

basis of society, we are not seeking anything that is wholly actualised in any State,

though we must be seeking something which exists, more or less perfectly, in every

State.

The point of the Social Contract theory, as Rousseau states it, is that legitimate society

exists by the consent of the people, and acts by popular will. Active will, and not

force or even mere consent, is the basis of the “republican” State, which can only

possess this character because individual wills are not really self-sufficient and

separate, but complementary and interdependent. The answer to the question “Why

ought I to obey the General Will?” is that the General Will exists in me and not

outside me. I am “obeying only myself,” as Rousseau says. The State is not a mere

accident of human history, a mere device for the protection of life and property; it

responds to a fundamental need of human nature, and is rooted in the character of the

individuals who compose it. The whole complex of human institutions is not a mere

artificial structure; it is the expression of the mutual dependence and fellowship of

men. If it means anything, the theory of the General Will means that the State is

natural, and the “state of nature” an abstraction. Without this basis of will and natural

need, no society could for a moment subsist; the State exists and claims our obedience

because it is a natural extension of our personality.

The problem, however, still remains of making the General Will, in any particular

State, active and conscious. It is clear that there are States in which visible and

recognised institutions hardly answer in any respect to its requirements. Even in such

States, however, there is a limit to tyranny; deep down, in immemorial customs with

which the despot dare not interfere, the General Will is still active and important. It

does not reside merely in the outward and visible organisation of social institutions, in

that complex of formal associations which we may call the State; its roots go deeper

and its branches spread further. It is realised, in greater or less degree, in the whole

life of the community, in the entire complex of private and public relations which, in

the widest sense, may be called Society. We may recognise it not only in a

Parliament, a Church, a University or a Trade Union, but also in the most intimate

human relationships, and the most trivial, as well as the most vital, social customs.

But, if all these things go to the making of the General Will in every community, the

General Will has, for politics, primarily a narrower sense. The problem here is to

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secure its supremacy in the official institutions and public councils of the nation. This

is the question to which Rousseau chiefly addressed himself. Here, too, we shall find

the General Will the best possible conception for the guidance of political endeavour.

For the General Will is realised not when that is done which is best for the

community, but when, in addition, the community as a whole has willed the doing of

it. The General Will demands not only good government, but also self-

government—not only rational conduct, but good-will. This is what some of

Rousseau’s admirers are apt to forget when they use his argument, as he himself was

sometimes inclined to use it, in support of pure aristocracy. Rousseau said that

aristocracy was the best of all governments, but he said also that it was the worst of all

usurpers of Sovereignty. Nor must it be forgotten that he expressly specified elective

aristocracy. There is no General Will unless the people wills the good. General Will

may be embodied in one man willing universally; but it can only be embodied in the

State when the mass of the citizens so wills. The will must be “general” in two senses:

in the sense in which Rousseau used the word, it must be general in its object, i. e.

universal; but it must also be generally held, i. e. common to all or to the majority.1

The General Will is, then, above all a universal and, in the Kantian sense, a “rational”

will. It would be possible to find in Rousseau many more anticipations of the views of

Kant; but it is better here to confine comment to an important difference between

them. It is surprising to find in Kant, the originator of modern “intellectualism,” and

in Rousseau, the great apostle of “sentiment,” an essentially similar view on the

nature and function of the will. Their views, however, present a difference; for,

whereas the moving force of Kant’s moral imperative is purely “rational,” Rousseau

finds the sanction of his General Will in human feeling itself. As we can see from a

passage in the original draft of the Social Contract, the General Will remains purely

rational. “No-one will dispute that the General Will is in each individual a pure act of

the understanding, which reasons while the passions are silent on what a man may

demand of his neighbour and on what his neighbour has a right to demand of him.”

The will remains purely rational, but Rousseau feels that it needs an external motive

power. “If natural law,” he writes, “were written only on the tablets of human reason

it would be incapable of guiding the greater part of our actions; but it is also graven

on the heart of man in characters that cannot be effaced, and it is there it speaks to

him more strongly than all the precepts of the philosophers” (from an unfinished

essay on The State of War). The nature of this guiding sentiment is explained in the

Discourse on Inequality (p. 197, note 2), where egoism (amour-propre) is contrasted

with self-respect (amour de soi). Naturally, Rousseau holds, man does not want

everything for himself, and nothing for others. “Egoism” and “altruism” are both one-

sided qualities arising out of the perversion of man’s “natural goodness.” “Man is

born good,” that is, man’s nature really makes him desire only to be treated as one

among others, to share equally. This natural love of equality (amour de soi) includes

love of others as well as love of self, and egoism, loving one’s self at the expense of

others, is an unnatural and perverted condition. The “rational” precepts of the General

Will, therefore, find an echo in the heart of the “natural” man, and, if we can only

secure the human being against perversion by existing societies, the General Will can

be made actual.

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This is the meeting-point of Rousseau’s educational with his political theory. His

view as a whole can be studied only by taking together the Social Contract and the

Emile as explained by the Letters on the Mount and other works. The fundamental

dogma of the natural goodness of man finds no place directly in the Social Contract;

but it lurks behind the whole of his political theory, and is indeed, throughout, his

master-conception. His educational, his religious, his political and his ethical ideas are

all inspired by a single consistent attitude. Here we have been attending only to his

political theory; in the volume which is to follow, containing the Letters on the Mount

and other works, some attempt will be made to draw the various threads together and

estimate his work as a whole. The political works, however, can be read separately,

and the Social Contract itself is still by far the best of all text-books of political

philosophy. Rousseau’s political influence, so far from being dead, is every day

increasing; and as new generations and new classes of men come to the study of his

work, his conceptions, often hazy and undeveloped, but nearly always of lasting

value, will assuredly form the basis of a new political philosophy, in which they will

be taken up and transformed. This new philosophy is the work of the future; but,

rooted upon the conception of Rousseau, it will stretch far back into the past. Of our

time, it will be for all time; its solutions will be at once relatively permanent and

ceaselessly progressive.

G. D. H. Cole.

A NOTE ON BOOKS

There are few good books in English on Rousseau’s politics. By far the best treatment

is to be found in Mr. Bernard Bosanquet’s Philosophical Theory of the State.

Viscount Morley’s Rousseau is a good life, but is not of much use as a criticism of

views; Mr. W. Boyd’s The Educational Theory of Rousseau contains some fairly good

chapters on the political views. D. G. Ritchie’s Darwin and Hegel includes an

admirable essay on The Social Contract Theory and another on Sovereignty. The

English translation of Professor Gran’s Rousseau is an interesting biography.

In French, there is a good cheap edition of Rousseau’s complete works published by

Hachette in thirteen volumes. M. Dreyfus-Brisac’s great edition of the Contrat Social

is indispensable, and there is a good small edition with notes by M. Georges

Beaulavon. M. Faguet’s study of Rousseau in his Dix-huitième siècle—études

littéraires and his Politique comparée de Montesquieu, Voltaire et Rousseau are

useful, though I am seldom in agreement with them. M. Henri Rodet’s Le Contrat

Social et les idées politiques de J. J. Rousseau is useful, if not inspired, and there are

interesting works by MM. Chuquet, Fabre and Lemaitre. The French translation of

Professor Höffding’s little volume on Rousseau: sa vie et sa philosophie is admirable.

Miss Foxley’s translation of the Emile, especially of Book V, should be studied in

connection with the Social Contract. A companion volume, containing the Letters on

the Mount and other works, will be issued shortly.

G. D. H. C.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Principal Works: Article in the Mercure in answer to one entitled Si le monde que

nous habitons est une sphère ou une sphéroïde, 1738; Le Verger de Mme. de Warens,

1739; Sur la musique moderne, 1743; Si le rétablissement des Sciences et des Arts a

contribué à épurer les Mœurs, prize essay, 1750, translated by R. Wynne, 1752, by

anonymous author, 1760, by H. Smithers, 1818; Devin du Village (opera), 1753,

translated by C. Burney, 1766; Narcisse, ou Amant de lui-même, 1753; Lettre sur la

musique Française, 1753; Sur l’origine de l’inégalité parmi les hommes, 1755;

Discours sur deux principes avancés par Rameau, 1755; Sur l’économie politique,

1758; Letter to d’Alembert on his article Genève in the Encyclopédie, 1758, translated

1759; Lettres à Voltaire, 1759; Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse, first published under the

title of Lettres de deux amants, habitants d’une petite ville au pied des Alpes, etc.,

1761; Contrat Social, or Principes du droit politique, 1762; Emile, ou De l’Education,

1762; Lettre à Christophe de Beaumont, Archevêque de Paris, 1763; Allée de Silvie

(poem), 1763; Lettres écrites de la Montagne, 1764; De l’imitation théâtrale, 1764;

Dictionnaire de musique, 1767, translated by W. Waring, 1779; Lettres sur son exil du

Canton de Berne, 1770.

Posthumous Works: Emile et Sophie, 1780; Les consolations des misères de ma vie,

1781; Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne, 1782; Les Confessions, and

Rêveries du Promeneur Solitaire, 4 vols., 1782–9; Nouveau Dédale, 1801; La

Botanique de J. J. Rousseau, 1805; translated, with additional letters, by T. Martyn,

1785, 7th edition, 1807; Testament de J. J. Rousseau, 1820.

Translations: Héloïse (Eloisa), 1761, with a sequel found after the author’s death,

1784, 1795, 1810; Emile, by Nugent, 1763; anonymous translator the same year;

abridged and annotated by W. H. Payne, 1893; Emile et Sophie, by Nugent, 1765 (?),

by the translator of Eloisa, 1767; Contrat Social, 1764, 1791, in vol. iii. of Political

Classics, 1795; 1840 (?), by R. M. Harrington, with Introduction by E. L. Walter,

1893; by H. J. Tozer 1895, 1902, 1905; Confessions, 2 vols., 1783; 1796–90, 1861,

1891 (Masterpieces of Foreign Authors), abridged from 1896 edition, with preface by

G. J. Holyoake, 1857; complete translation (privately printed), 2 vols., 1896; with

Introduction by Hesketh Milis (Sisley Books), 1907; the second part, with a new

collection of letters, 3 vols., 1791.

Works: 1764 (6 vols.); 1769 (11 vols.); 1774 (London, 9 vols.); 1782, etc. (17 vols.);

1790 (33 vols.); 1790 (30 vols., or 35); 1788–93 (39 vols.); 1793–1800 (Didot, 18

vols.), and later editions from this same firm; Musset-Pathay, 1823–6.

Miscellaneous Works: 5 vols., 1767.

Posthumous Works: 1782, 1783; Œuvres inédites (Musset-Pathay), 1825, 1833;

Fragments inédits, etc., by A. de Bougy, 1853; Œuvres et Correspondance inédites

(Streckeisen-Moultou), 1861; Fragments inédits; Recherches biographiques et

littéraires, A. Jansen, 1882.

Works translated from the French, 10 vols., 1773–74.

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Letters: Sur différents Sujets, 5 vols., 1749–53; Lettres nouvelles sur le motif de sa

retraite à la Campagne, adressées à M. de Malesherbes, 1780; Nouvelles lettres, 1789;

Lettres au citoyen Lenieps, etc., 1793 (?); Correspondance originale et inédite avec

Mme. Latour de Tranqueville et M. du Peyrou, 2 vols., 1803; Lettres inédites à Mme.

d’Epinay (see Memoirs of Mme. d’Epinay), 1818; Lettres de Voltaire et de Rousseau

à C. J. Panckoucke, 1828; Lettres inédites à M. M. Rey, 1858; Lettres à Mme. Dupin

(in Le Portefeuille de Mme. Dupin), 1884; Lettres inédites (correspondence with

Mme. Roy de Latour), published by H. de Rothschild, with preface by L. Claretie,

1892; Lettres (between Rousseau and “Henriette”), published by H. Buffenoir, 1902;

Correspondance avec Léonard Usteri, 1910.

Translations: Original letters to M. de Malesherbes, d’Alembert, Mme. la M. de

Luxembourg, etc., 1799, 1820; Eighteen letters to Mme. d’Houdetot, October

1757–March 1758, 1905.

Life, etc.: J. H. Fuessli, Remarks on the Writings and Conduct of Jean Jacques

Rousseau, 1767; Stäel-Holsteim (Baroness de Rocco), Letters on the Work and

Character of Jean Jacques Rousseau (translation), 1789, 1814; J. Morley, Rousseau,

1873, 1886; H. G. Graham, Rousseau (Foreign Classics for English Readers), 1882;

T. Davidson, Rousseau and Education according to Nature (Great Educators), vol. ix.,

1898; J. Texte, Jean Jacques Rousseau and the Cosmopolitan Spirit in Literature, etc.

(translation), 1899; H. H. Hudson, Rousseau and Naturalism in Life and Thought

(World’s Epoch Makers), 1903; F. Macdonald, Jean Jacques Rousseau, a new

criticism, 1906; J. C. Collins, Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau in England, 1908.

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THE SOCIAL CONTRACT Or PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL

RIGHT

Fœderis æquas Dicamus leges. (Vergil, Æneid XI.)

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FOREWORD

This little treatise is part of a longer work which I began years ago without realising

my limitations, and long since abandoned. Of the various fragments that might have

been extracted from what I wrote, this is the most considerable, and, I think, the least

unworthy of being offered to the public. The rest no longer exists.

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BOOK I

I mean to inquire if, in the civil order, there can be any sure and legitimate rule of

administration, men being taken as they are and laws as they might be. In this inquiry

I shall endeavour always to unite what right sanctions with what is prescribed by

interest, in order that justice and utility may in no case be divided.

I enter upon my task without proving the importance of the subject. I shall be asked if

I am a prince or a legislator, to write on politics. I answer that I am neither, and that is

why I do so. If I were a prince or a legislator, I should not waste time in saying what

wants doing; I should do it, or hold my peace.

As I was born a citizen of a free State, and a member of the Sovereign, I feel that,

however feeble the influence my voice can have on public affairs, the right of voting

on them makes it my duty to study them: and I am happy, when I reflect upon

governments, to find my inquiries always furnish me with new reasons for loving that

of my own country.

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CHAPTER I

Subject Of The First Book

Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of

others, and still remains a greater slave than they. How did this change come about? I

do not know. What can make it legitimate? That question I think I can answer.

If I took into account only force, and the effects derived from it, I should say: “As

long as a people is compelled to obey, and obeys, it does well; as soon as it can shake

off the yoke, and shakes it off, it does still better; for, regaining its liberty by the same

right as took it away, either it is justified in resuming it, or there was no justification

for those who took it away.” But the social order is a sacred right which is the basis of

all other rights. Nevertheless, this right does not come from nature, and must therefore

be founded on conventions. Before coming to that, I have to prove what I have just

asserted.

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CHAPTER II

The First Societies

The most ancient of all societies, and the only one that is natural, is the family: and

even so the children remain attached to the father only so long as they need him for

their preservation. As soon as this need ceases, the natural bond is dissolved. The

children, released from the obedience they owed to the father, and the father, released

from the care he owed his children, return equally to independence. If they remain

united, they continue so no longer naturally, but voluntarily; and the family itself is

then maintained only by convention.

This common liberty results from the nature of man. His first law is to provide for his

own preservation, his first cares are those which he owes to himself; and, as soon as

he reaches years of discretion, he is the sole judge of the proper means of preserving

himself, and consequently becomes his own master.

The family then may be called the first model of political societies: the ruler

corresponds to the father, and the people to the children; and all, being born free and

equal, alienate their liberty only for their own advantage. The whole difference is that,

in the family, the love of the father for his children repays him for the care he takes of

them, while, in the State, the pleasure of commanding takes the place of the love

which the chief cannot have for the peoples under him.

Grotius denies that all human power is established in favour of the governed, and

quotes slavery as an example. His usual method of reasoning is constantly to establish

right by fact.1 It would be possible to employ a more logical method, but none could

be more favourable to tyrants.

It is then, according to Grotius, doubtful whether the human race belongs to a hundred

men, or that hundred men to the human race: and, throughout his book, he seems to

incline to the former alternative, which is also the view of Hobbes. On this showing,

the human species is divided into so many herds of cattle, each with its ruler, who

keeps guard over them for the purpose of devouring them.

As a shepherd is of a nature superior to that of his flock, the shepherds of men, i. e.

their rulers, are of a nature superior to that of the peoples under them. Thus, Philo tells

us, the Emperor Caligula reasoned, concluding equally well either that kings were

gods, or that men were beasts.

The reasoning of Caligula agrees with that of Hobbes and Grotius. Aristotle, before

any of them, had said that men are by no means equal naturally, but that some are

born for slavery, and others for dominion.

Aristotle was right; but he took the effect for the cause. Nothing can be more certain

than that every man born in slavery is born for slavery. Slaves lose everything in their

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chains, even the desire of escaping from them: they love their servitude, as the

comrades of Ulysses loved their brutish condition.2 If then there are slaves by nature,

it is because there have been slaves against nature. Force made the first slaves, and

their cowardice perpetuated the condition.

I have said nothing of King Adam, or Emperor Noah, father of the three great

monarchs who shared out the universe, like the children of Saturn, whom some

scholars have recognised in them. I trust to getting due thanks for my moderation; for,

being a direct descendant of one of these princes, perhaps of the eldest branch, how

do I know that a verification of titles might not leave me the legitimate king of the

human race? In any case, there can be no doubt that Adam was sovereign of the

world, as Robinson Crusoe was of his island, as long as he was its only inhabitant;

and this empire had the advantage that the monarch, safe on his throne, had no

rebellions, wars, or conspirators to fear.

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CHAPTER III

The Right Of The Strongest

The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms

strength into right, and obedience into duty. Hence the right of the strongest, which,

though to all seeming meant ironically, is really laid down as a fundamental principle.

But are we never to have an explanation of this phrase? Force is a physical power, and

I fail to see what moral effect it can have. To yield to force is an act of necessity, not

of will—at the most, an act of prudence. In what sense can it be a duty?

Suppose for a moment that this so-called “right” exists. I maintain that the sole result

is a mass of inexplicable nonsense. For, if force creates right, the effect changes with

the cause: every force that is greater than the first succeeds to its right. As soon as it is

possible to disobey with impunity, disobedience is legitimate; and, the strongest being

always in the right, the only thing that matters is to act so as to become the strongest.

But what kind of right is that which perishes when force fails? If we must obey

perforce, there is no need to obey because we ought; and if we are not forced to obey,

we are under no obligation to do so. Clearly, the word “right” adds nothing to force:

in this connection, it means absolutely nothing.

Obey the powers that be. If this means yield to force, it is a good precept, but

superfluous: I can answer for its never being violated. All power comes from God, I

admit; but so does all sickness: does that mean that we are forbidden to call in the

doctor? A brigand surprises me at the edge of a wood: must I not merely surrender my

purse on compulsion; but, even if I could withhold it, am I in conscience bound to

give it up? For certainly the pistol he holds is also a power.

Let us then admit that force does not create right, and that we are obliged to obey only

legitimate powers. In that case, my original question recurs.

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CHAPTER IV

Slavery

Since no man has a natural authority over his fellow, and force creates no right, we

must conclude that conventions form the basis of all legitimate authority among men.

If an individual, says Grotius, can alienate his liberty and make himself the slave of a

master, why could not a whole people do the same and make itself subject to a king?

There are in this passage plenty of ambiguous words which would need explaining;

but let us confine ourselves to the word alienate. To alienate is to give or to sell. Now,

a man who becomes the slave of another does not give himself; he sells himself, at the

least for his subsistence: but for what does a people sell itself? A king is so far from

furnishing his subjects with their subsistence that he gets his own only from them;

and, according to Rabelais, kings do not live on nothing. Do subjects then give their

persons on condition that the king takes their goods also? I fail to see what they have

left to preserve.

It will be said that the despot assures his subjects civil tranquillity. Granted; but what

do they gain, if the wars his ambition brings down upon them, his insatiable avidity,

and the vexatious conduct of his ministers press harder on them than their own

dissensions would have done? What do they gain, if the very tranquillity they enjoy is

one of their miseries? Tranquillity is found also in dungeons; but is that enough to

make them desirable places to live in? The Greeks imprisoned in the cave of the

Cyclops lived there very tranquilly, while they were awaiting their turn to be

devoured.

To say that a man gives himself gratuitously, is to say what is absurd and

inconceivable; such an act is null and illegitimate, from the mere fact that he who

does it is out of his mind. To say the same of a whole people is to suppose a people of

madmen; and madness creates no right.

Even if each man could alienate himself, he could not alienate his children: they are

born men and free; their liberty belongs to them, and no one but they has the right to

dispose of it. Before they come to years of discretion, the father can, in their name, lay

down conditions for their preservation and well-being, but he cannot give them

irrevocably and without conditions: such a gift is contrary to the ends of nature, and

exceeds the rights of paternity. It would therefore be necessary, in order to legitimise

an arbitrary government, that in every generation the people should be in a position to

accept or reject it; but, were this so, the government would be no longer arbitrary.

To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity

and even its duties. For him who renounces everything no indemnity is possible. Such

a renunciation is incompatible with man’s nature; to remove all liberty from his will is

to remove all morality from his acts. Finally, it is an empty and contradictory

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convention that sets up, on the one side, absolute authority, and, on the other,

unlimited obedience. Is it not clear that we can be under no obligation to a person

from whom we have the right to exact everything? Does not this condition alone, in

the absence of equivalence or exchange, in itself involve the nullity of the act? For

what right can my slave have against me, when all that he has belongs to me, and, his

right being mine, this right of mine against myself is a phrase devoid of meaning?

Grotius and the rest find in war another origin for the so-called right of slavery. The

victor having, as they hold, the right of killing the vanquished, the latter can buy back

his life at the price of his liberty; and this convention is the more legitimate because it

is to the advantage of both parties.

But it is clear that this supposed right to kill the conquered is by no means deducible

from the state of war. Men, from the mere fact that, while they are living in their

primitive independence, they have no mutual relations stable enough to constitute

either the state of peace or the state of war, cannot be naturally enemies. War is

constituted by a relation between things, and not between persons; and, as the state of

war cannot arise out of simple personal relations, but only out of real relations, private

war, or war of man with man, can exist neither in the state of nature, where there is no

constant property, nor in the social state, where everything is under the authority of

the laws.

Individual combats, duels and encounters, are acts which cannot constitute a state;

while the private wars, authorised by the Establishments of Louis IX, King of France,

and suspended by the Peace of God, are abuses of feudalism, in itself an absurd

system if ever there was one, and contrary to the principles of natural right and to all

good polity.

War then is a relation, not between man and man, but between State and State, and

individuals are enemies only accidentally, not as men, nor even as citizens,1 but as

soldiers; not as members of their country, but as its defenders. Finally, each State can

have for enemies only other States, and not men; for between things disparate in

nature there can be no real relation.

Furthermore, this principle is in conformity with the established rules of all times and

the constant practice of all civilised peoples. Declarations of war are intimations less

to powers than to their subjects. The foreigner, whether king, individual, or people,

who robs, kills or detains the subjects, without declaring war on the prince, is not an

enemy, but a brigand. Even in real war, a just prince, while laying hands, in the

enemy’s country, on all that belongs to the public, respects the lives and goods of

individuals: he respects rights on which his own are founded. The object of the war

being the destruction of the hostile State, the other side has a right to kill its defenders,

while they are bearing arms; but as soon as they lay them down and surrender, they

cease to be enemies or instruments of the enemy, and become once more merely men,

whose life no one has any right to take. Sometimes it is possible to kill the State

without killing a single one of its members; and war gives no right which is not

necessary to the gaining of its object. These principles are not those of Grotius: they

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are not based on the authority of poets, but derived from the nature of reality and

based on reason.

The right of conquest has no foundation other than the right of the strongest. If war

does not give the conqueror the right to massacre the conquered peoples, the right to

enslave them cannot be based upon a right which does not exist. No one has a right to

kill an enemy except when he cannot make him a slave, and the right to enslave him

cannot therefore be derived from the right to kill him. It is accordingly an unfair

exchange to make him buy at the price of his liberty his life, over which the victor

holds no right. Is it not clear that there is a vicious circle in founding the right of life

and death on the right of slavery, and the right of slavery on the right of life and

death?

Even if we assume this terrible right to kill everybody, I maintain that a slave made in

war, or a conquered people, is under no obligation to a master, except to obey him as

far as he is compelled to do so. By taking an equivalent for his life, the victor has not

done him a favour; instead of killing him without profit, he has killed him usefully. So

far then is he from acquiring over him any authority in addition to that of force, that

the state of war continues to subsist between them: their mutual relation is the effect

of it, and the usage of the right of war does not imply a treaty of peace. A convention

has indeed been made; but this convention, so far from destroying the state of war,

presupposes its continuance.

So, from whatever aspect we regard the question, the right of slavery is null and void,

not only as being illegitimate, but also because it is absurd and meaningless. The

words slave and right contradict each other, and are mutually exclusive. It will always

be equally foolish for a man to say to a man or to a people: “I make with you a

convention wholly at your expense and wholly to my advantage; I shall keep it as

long as I like, and you will keep it as long as I like.”

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CHAPTER V

That We Must Always Go Back To A First Convention

Even if I granted all that I have been refuting, the friends of despotism would be no

better off. There will always be a great difference between subduing a multitude and

ruling a society. Even if scattered individuals were successively enslaved by one man,

however numerous they might be, I still see no more than a master and his slaves, and

certainly not a people and its ruler; I see what may be termed an aggregation, but not

an association; there is as yet neither public good nor body politic. The man in

question, even if he has enslaved half the world, is still only an individual; his interest,

apart from that of others, is still a purely private interest. If this same man comes to

die, his empire, after him, remains scattered and without unity, as an oak falls and

dissolves into a heap of ashes when the fire has consumed it.

A people, says Grotius, can give itself to a king. Then, according to Grotius, a people

is a people before it gives itself. The gift is itself a civil act, and implies public

deliberation. It would be better, before examining the act by which a people gives

itself to a king, to examine that by which it has become a people; for this act, being

necessarily prior to the other, is the true foundation of society.

Indeed, if there were no prior convention, where, unless the election were unanimous,

would be the obligation on the minority to submit to the choice of the majority? How

have a hundred men who wish for a master the right to vote on behalf of ten who do

not? The law of majority voting is itself something established by convention, and

presupposes unanimity, on one occasion at least.

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CHAPTER VI

The Social Compact

I suppose men to have reached the point at which the obstacles in the way of their

preservation in the state of nature show their power of resistance to be greater than the

resources at the disposal of each individual for his maintenance in that state. That

primitive condition can then subsist no longer; and the human race would perish

unless it changed its manner of existence.

But, as men cannot engender new forces, but only unite and direct existing ones, they

have no other means of preserving themselves than the formation, by aggregation, of

a sum of forces great enough to overcome the resistance. These they have to bring

into play by means of a single motive power, and cause to act in concert.

This sum of forces can arise only where several persons come together: but, as the

force and liberty of each man are the chief instruments of his self-preservation, how

can he pledge them without harming his own interests, and neglecting the care he

owes to himself? This difficulty, in its bearing on my present subject, may be stated in

the following terms—

“The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the

whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each,

while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as

before.” This is the fundamental problem of which the Social Contract provides the

solution.

The clauses of this contract are so determined by the nature of the act that the slightest

modification would make them vain and ineffective; so that, although they have

perhaps never been formally set forth, they are everywhere the same and everywhere

tacitly admitted and recognised, until, on the violation of the social compact, each

regains his original rights and resumes his natural liberty, while losing the

conventional liberty in favour of which he renounced it.

These clauses, properly understood, may be reduced to one—the total alienation of

each associate, together with all his rights, to the whole community; for, in the first

place, as each gives himself absolutely, the conditions are the same for all; and, this

being so, no one has any interest in making them burdensome to others.

Moreover, the alienation being without reserve, the union is as perfect as it can be,

and no associate has anything more to demand: for, if the individuals retained certain

rights, as there would be no common superior to decide between them and the public,

each, being on one point his own judge, would ask to be so on all; the state of nature

would thus continue, and the association would necessarily become inoperative or

tyrannical.

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Finally, each man, in giving himself to all, gives himself to nobody; and as there is no

associate over whom he does not acquire the same right as he yields others over

himself, he gains an equivalent for everything he loses, and an increase of force for

the preservation of what he has.

If then we discard from the social compact what is not of its essence, we shall find

that it reduces itself to the following terms—

“Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction

of the general will, and, in our corporate capacity, we receive each member as an

indivisible part of the whole.”

At once, in place of the individual personality of each contracting party, this act of

association creates a moral and collective body, composed of as many members as the

assembly contains votes, and receiving from this act its unity, its common identity, its

life and its will. This public person, so formed by the union of all other persons,

formerly took the name of city,1 and now takes that of Republic or body politic; it is

called by its members State when passive, Sovereign when active, and Power when

compared with others like itself. Those who are associated in it take collectively the

name of people, and severally are called citizens, as sharing in the sovereign power,

and subjects, as being under the laws of the State. But these terms are often confused

and taken one for another: it is enough to know how to distinguish them when they

are being used with precision.

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CHAPTER VII

The Sovereign

This formula shows us that the act of association comprises a mutual undertaking

between the public and the individuals, and that each individual, in making a contract,

as we may say, with himself, is bound in a double capacity; as a member of the

Sovereign he is bound to the individuals, and as a member of the State to the

Sovereign. But the maxim of civil right, that no one is bound by undertakings made to

himself, does not apply in this case; for there is a great difference between incurring

an obligation to yourself and incurring one to a whole of which you form a part.

Attention must further be called to the fact that public deliberation, while competent

to bind all the subjects to the Sovereign, because of the two different capacities in

which each of them may be regarded, cannot, for the opposite reason, bind the

Sovereign to itself; and that it is consequently against the nature of the body politic

for the Sovereign to impose on itself a law which it cannot infringe. Being able to

regard itself in only one capacity, it is in the position of an individual who makes a

contract with himself; and this makes it clear that there neither is nor can be any kind

of fundamental law binding on the body of the people—not even the social contract

itself. This does not mean that the body politic cannot enter into undertakings with

others, provided the contract is not infringed by them; for in relation to what is

external to it, it becomes a simple being, an individual.

But the body politic or the Sovereign, drawing its being wholly from the sanctity of

the contract, can never bind itself, even to an outsider, to do anything derogatory to

the original act, for instance, to alienate any part of itself, or to submit to another

Sovereign. Violation of the act by which it exists would be self-annihilation; and that

which is itself nothing can create nothing.

As soon as this multitude is so united in one body, it is impossible to offend against

one of the members without attacking the body, and still more to offend against the

body without the members resenting it. Duty and interest therefore equally oblige the

two contracting parties to give each other help; and the same men should seek to

combine, in their double capacity, all the advantages dependent upon that capacity.

Again, the Sovereign, being formed wholly of the individuals who compose it, neither

has nor can have any interest contrary to theirs; and consequently the sovereign power

need give no guarantee to its subjects, because it is impossible for the body to wish to

hurt all its members. We shall also see later on that it cannot hurt any in particular.

The Sovereign, merely by virtue of what it is, is always what it should be.

This, however, is not the case with the relation of the subjects to the Sovereign,

which, despite the common interest, would have no security that they would fulfil

their undertakings, unless it found means to assure itself of their fidelity.

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In fact, each individual, as a man, may have a particular will contrary or dissimilar to

the general will which he has as a citizen. His particular interest may speak to him

quite differently from the common interest: his absolute and naturally independent

existence may make him look upon what he owes to the common cause as a

gratuitous contribution, the loss of which will do less harm to others than the payment

of it is burdensome to himself; and, regarding the moral person which constitutes the

State as a persona ficta, because not a man, he may wish to enjoy the rights of

citizenship without being ready to fulfil the duties of a subject. The continuance of

such an injustice could not but prove the undoing of the body politic.

In order then that the social compact may not be an empty formula, it tacitly includes

the undertaking, which alone can give force to the rest, that whoever refuses to obey

the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body. This means nothing

less than that he will be forced to be free; for this is the condition which, by giving

each citizen to his country, secures him against all personal dependence. In this lies

the key to the working of the political machine; this alone legitimises civil

undertakings, which, without it, would be absurd, tyrannical, and liable to the most

frightful abuses.

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CHAPTER VIII

The Civil State

The passage from the state of nature to the civil state produces a very remarkable

change in man, by substituting justice for instinct in his conduct, and giving his

actions the morality they had formerly lacked. Then only, when the voice of duty

takes the place of physical impulses and right of appetite, does man, who so far had

considered only himself, find that he is forced to act on different principles, and to

consult his reason before listening to his inclinations. Although, in this state, he

deprives himself of some advantages which he got from nature, he gains in return

others so great, his faculties are so stimulated and developed, his ideas so extended,

his feelings so ennobled, and his whole soul so uplifted, that, did not the abuses of this

new condition often degrade him below that which he left, he would be bound to bless

continually the happy moment which took him from it for ever, and, instead of a

stupid and unimaginative animal, made him an intelligent being and a man.

Let us draw up the whole account in terms easily commensurable. What man loses by

the social contract is his natural liberty and an unlimited right to everything he tries to

get and succeeds in getting; what he gains is civil liberty and the proprietorship of all

he possesses. If we are to avoid mistake in weighing one against the other, we must

clearly distinguish natural liberty, which is bounded only by the strength of the

individual, from civil liberty, which is limited by the general will; and possession,

which is merely the effect of force or the right of the first occupier, from property,

which can be founded only on a positive title.

We might, over and above all this, add, to what man acquires in the civil state, moral

liberty, which alone makes him truly master of himself; for the mere impulse of

appetite is slavery, while obedience to a law which we prescribe to ourselves is

liberty. But I have already said too much on this head, and the philosophical meaning

of the word liberty does not now concern us.

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CHAPTER IX

Real Property

Each member of the community gives himself to it, at the moment of its foundation,

just as he is, with all the resources at his command, including the goods he possesses.

This act does not make possession, in changing hands, change its nature, and become

property in the hands of the Sovereign; but, as the forces of the city are incomparably

greater than those of an individual, public possession is also, in fact, stronger and

more irrevocable, without being any more legitimate, at any rate from the point of

view of foreigners. For the State, in relation to its members, is master of all their

goods by the social contract, which, within the State, is the basis of all rights; but, in

relation to other powers, it is so only by the right of the first occupier, which it holds

from its members.

The right of the first occupier, though more real than the right of the strongest,

becomes a real right only when the right of property has already been established.

Every man has naturally a right to everything he needs; but the positive act which

makes him proprietor of one thing excludes him from everything else. Having his

share, he ought to keep to it, and can have no further right against the community.

This is why the right of the first occupier, which in the state of nature is so weak,

claims the respect of every man in civil society. In this right we are respecting not so

much what belongs to another as what does not belong to ourselves.

In general, to establish the right of the first occupier over a plot of ground, the

following conditions are necessary: first, the land must not yet be inhabited; secondly,

a man must occupy only the amount he needs for his subsistence; and, in the third

place, possession must be taken, not by an empty ceremony, but by labour and

cultivation, the only sign of proprietorship that should be respected by others, in

default of a legal title.

In granting the right of first occupancy to necessity and labour, are we not really

stretching it as far as it can go? Is it possible to leave such a right unlimited? Is it to be

enough to set foot on a plot of common ground, in order to be able to call yourself at

once the master of it? Is it to be enough that a man has the strength to expel others for

a moment, in order to establish his right to prevent them from ever returning? How

can a man or a people seize an immense territory and keep it from the rest of the

world except by a punishable usurpation, since all others are being robbed, by such an

act, of the place of habitation and the means of subsistence which nature gave them in

common? When Nuñez Balbao, standing on the sea-shore, took possession of the

South Seas and the whole of South America in the name of the crown of Castille, was

that enough to dispossess all their actual inhabitants, and to shut out from them all the

princes of the world? On such a showing, these ceremonies are idly multiplied, and

the Catholic King need only take possession all at once, from his apartment, of the

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whole universe, merely making a subsequent reservation about what was already in

the possession of other princes.

We can imagine how the lands of individuals, where they were contiguous and came

to be united, became the public territory, and how the right of Sovereignty, extending

from the subjects over the lands they held, became at once real and personal. The

possessors were thus made more dependent, and the forces at their command used to

guarantee their fidelity. The advantage of this does not seem to have been felt by

ancient monarchs, who called themselves King of the Persians, Scythians, or

Macedonians, and seemed to regard themselves more as rulers of men than as masters

of a country. Those of the present day more cleverly call themselves Kings of France,

Spain, England, etc.: thus holding the land, they are quite confident of holding the

inhabitants.

The peculiar fact about this alienation is that, in taking over the goods of individuals,

the community, so far from despoiling them, only assures them legitimate possession,

and changes usurpation into a true right and enjoyment into proprietorship. Thus the

possessors, being regarded as depositaries of the public good, and having their rights

respected by all the members of the State and maintained against foreign aggression

by all its forces, have, by a cession which benefits both the public and still more

themselves, acquired, so to speak, all that they gave up. This paradox may easily be

explained by the distinction between the rights which the Sovereign and the proprietor

have over the same estate, as we shall see later on.

It may also happen that men begin to unite one with another before they possess

anything, and that, subsequently occupying a tract of country which is enough for all,

they enjoy it in common, or share it out among themselves, either equally or

according to a scale fixed by the Sovereign. However the acquisition be made, the

right which each individual has to his own estate is always subordinate to the right

which the community has over all: without this, there would be neither stability in the

social tie, nor real force in the exercise of Sovereignty.

I shall end this chapter and this book by remarking on a fact on which the whole

social system should rest: i. e. that, instead of destroying natural inequality, the

fundamental compact substitutes, for such physical inequality as nature may have set

up between men, an equality that is moral and legitimate, and that men, who may be

unequal in strength or intelligence, become every one equal by convention and legal

right.1

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BOOK II

CHAPTER I

That Sovereignty Is Inalienable

The first and most important deduction from the principles we have so far laid down

is that the general will alone can direct the State according to the object for which it

was instituted, i. e. the common good: for if the clashing of particular interests made

the establishment of societies necessary, the agreement of these very interests made it

possible. The common element in these different interests is what forms the social tie;

and, were there no point of agreement between them all, no society could exist. It is

solely on the basis of this common interest that every society should be governed.

I hold then that Sovereignty, being nothing less than the exercise of the general will,

can never be alienated, and that the Sovereign, who is no less than a collective being,

cannot be represented except by himself: the power indeed may be transmitted, but

not the will.

In reality, if it is not impossible for a particular will to agree on some point with the

general will, it is at least impossible for the agreement to be lasting and constant; for

the particular will tends, by its very nature, to partiality, while the general will tends

to equality. It is even more impossible to have any guarantee of this agreement; for

even if it should always exist, it would be the effect not of art, but of chance. The

Sovereign may indeed say: “I now will actually what this man wills, or at least what

he says he wills”; but it cannot say: “What he wills tomorrow, I too shall will”

because it is absurd for the will to bind itself for the future, nor is it incumbent on any

will to consent to anything that is not for the good of the being who wills. If then the

people promises simply to obey, by that very act it dissolves itself and loses what

makes it a people; the moment a master exists, there is no longer a Sovereign, and

from that moment the body politic has ceased to exist.

This does not mean that the commands of the rulers cannot pass for general wills, so

long as the Sovereign, being free to oppose them, offers no opposition. In such a case,

universal silence is taken to imply the consent of the people. This will be explained

later on.

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CHAPTER II

That Sovereignty Is Indivisible

Sovereignty, for the same reason as makes it inalienable, is indivisible; for will either

is, or is not, general;1 it is the will either of the body of the people, or only of a part of

it. In the first case, the will, when declared, is an act of Sovereignty and constitutes

law: in the second, it is merely a particular will, or act of magistracy—at the most a

decree.

But our political theorists, unable to divide Sovereignty in principle, divide it

according to its object: into force and will; into legislative power and executive

power; into rights of taxation, justice and war; into internal administration and power

of foreign treaty. Sometimes they confuse all these sections, and sometimes they

distinguish them; they turn the Sovereign into a fantastic being composed of several

connected pieces: it is as if they were making man of several bodies, one with eyes,

one with arms, another with feet, and each with nothing besides. We are told that the

jugglers of Japan dismember a child before the eyes of the spectators; then they throw

all the members into the air one after another, and the child falls down alive and

whole. The conjuring tricks of our political theorists are very like that; they first

dismember the body politic by an illusion worthy of a fair, and then join it together

again we know not how.

This error is due to a lack of exact notions concerning the Sovereign authority, and to

taking for parts of it what are only emanations from it. Thus, for example, the acts of

declaring war and making peace have been regarded as acts of Sovereignty; but this is

not the case, as these acts do not constitute law, but merely the application of a law, a

particular act which decides how the law applies, as we shall see clearly when the idea

attached to the word law has been defined.

If we examined the other divisions in the same manner, we should find that, whenever

Sovereignty seems to be divided, there is an illusion: the rights which are taken as

being part of Sovereignty are really all subordinate, and always imply supreme wills

of which they only sanction the execution.

It would be impossible to estimate the obscurity this lack of exactness has thrown

over the decisions of writers who have dealt with political right, when they have used

the principles laid down by them to pass judgment on the respective rights of kings

and peoples. Every one can see, in Chapters III and IV of the First Book of Grotius,

how the learned man and his translator, Barbeyrac, entangle and tie themselves up in

their own sophistries, for fear of saying too little or too much of what they think, and

so offending the interests they have to conciliate. Grotius, a refugee in France, ill-

content with his own country, and desirous of paying his court to Louis XIII, to whom

his book is dedicated, spares no pains to rob the peoples of all their rights and invest

kings with them by every conceivable artifice. This would also have been much to the

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taste of Barbeyrac, who dedicated his translation to George I of England. But

unfortunately the expulsion of James II, which he called his “abdication,” compelled

him to use all reserve, to shuffle and to tergiversate, in order to avoid making William

out a usurper. If these two writers had adopted the true principles, all difficulties

would have been removed, and they would have been always consistent; but it would

have been a sad truth for them to tell, and would have paid court for them to no-one

save the people. Moreover, truth is no road to fortune, and the people dispenses

neither ambassadorships, nor professorships, nor pensions.

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CHAPTER III

Whether The General Will Is Fallible

It follows from what has gone before that the general will is always right and tends to

the public advantage; but it does not follow that the deliberations of the people are

always equally correct. Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see

what that is; the people is never corrupted, but it is often deceived, and on such

occasions only does it seem to will what is bad.

There is often a great deal of difference between the will of all and the general will;

the latter considers only the common interest, while the former takes private interest

into account, and is no more than a sum of particular wills: but take away from these

same wills the pluses and minuses that cancel one another,1 and the general will

remains as the sum of the differences.

If, when the people, being furnished with adequate information, held its deliberations,

the citizens had no communication one with another, the grand total of the small

differences would always give the general will, and the decision would always be

good. But when factions arise, and partial associations are formed at the expense of

the great association, the will of each of these associations becomes general in relation

to its members, while it remains particular in relation to the State: it may then be said

that there are no longer as many votes as there are men, but only as many as there are

associations. The differences become less numerous and give a less general result.

Lastly, when one of these associations is so great as to prevail over all the rest, the

result is no longer a sum of small differences, but a single difference; in this case

there is no longer a general will, and the opinion which prevails is purely particular.

It is therefore essential, if the general will is to be able to express itself, that there

should be no partial society within the State, and that each citizen should think only

his own thoughts:1 which was indeed the sublime and unique system established by

the great Lycurgus. But if there are partial societies, it is best to have as many as

possible and to prevent them from being unequal, as was done by Solon, Numa and

Servius. These precautions are the only ones that can guarantee that the general will

shall be always enlightened, and that the people shall in no way deceive itself.

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CHAPTER IV

The Limits Of The Sovereign Power

If the State is a moral person whose life is in the union of its members, and if the most

important of its cares is the care for its own preservation, it must have a universal and

compelling force, in order to move and dispose each part as may be most

advantageous to the whole. As nature gives each man absolute power over all his

members, the social compact gives the body politic absolute power over all its

members also; and it is this power which, under the direction of the general will,

bears, as I have said, the name of Sovereignty.

But, besides the public person, we have to consider the private persons composing it,

whose life and liberty are naturally independent of it. We are bound then to

distinguish clearly between the respective rights of the citizens and the Sovereign,1

and between the duties the former have to fulfil as subjects, and the natural rights they

should enjoy as men.

Each man alienates, I admit, by the social compact, only such part of his powers,

goods and liberty as it is important for the community to control; but it must also be

granted that the Sovereign is sole judge of what is important.

Every service a citizen can render the State he ought to render as soon as the

Sovereign demands it; but the Sovereign, for its part, cannot impose upon its subjects

any fetters that are useless to the community, nor can it even wish to do so; for no

more by the law of reason than by the law of nature can anything occur without a

cause.

The undertakings which bind us to the social body are obligatory only because they

are mutual; and their nature is such that in fulfilling them we cannot work for others

without working for ourselves. Why is it that the general will is always in the right,

and that all continually will the happiness of each one, unless it is because there is not

a man who does not think of “each” as meaning him, and consider himself in voting

for all? This proves that equality of rights and the idea of justice which such equality

creates originate in the preference each man gives to himself, and accordingly in the

very nature of man. It proves that the general will, to be really such, must be general

in its object as well as its essence; that it must both come from all and apply to all;

and that it loses its natural rectitude when it is directed to some particular and

determinate object, because in such a case we are judging of something foreign to us,

and have no true principle of equity to guide us.

Indeed, as soon as a question of particular fact or right arises on a point not previously

regulated by a general convention, the matter becomes contentious. It is a case in

which the individuals concerned are one party, and the public the other, but in which I

can see neither the law that ought to be followed nor the judge who ought to give the

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decision. In such a case, it would be absurd to propose to refer the question to an

express decision of the general will, which can be only the conclusion reached by one

of the parties and in consequence will be, for the other party, merely an external and

particular will, inclined on this occasion to injustice and subject to error. Thus, just as

a particular will cannot stand for the general will, the general will, in turn, changes its

nature, when its object is particular, and, as general, cannot pronounce on a man or a

fact. When, for instance, the people of Athens nominated or displaced its rulers,

decreed honours to one, and imposed penalties on another, and, by a multitude of

particular decrees, exercised all the functions of government indiscriminately, it had

in such cases no longer a general will in the strict sense; it was acting no longer as

Sovereign, but as magistrate. This will seem contrary to current views; but I must be

given time to expound my own.

It should be seen from the foregoing that what makes the will general is less the

number of voters than the common interest uniting them; for, under this system, each

necessarily submits to the conditions he imposes on others: and this admirable

agreement between interest and justice gives to the common deliberations an

equitable character which at once vanishes when any particular question is discussed,

in the absence of a common interest to unite and identify the ruling of the judge with

that of the party.

From whatever side we approach our principle, we reach the same conclusion, that the

social compact sets up among the citizens an equality of such a kind, that they all bind

themselves to observe the same conditions and should therefore all enjoy the same

rights. Thus, from the very nature of the compact, every act of Sovereignty, i. e. every

authentic act of the general will, binds or favours all the citizens equally; so that the

Sovereign recognises only the body of the nation, and draws no distinctions between

those of whom it is made up. What, then, strictly speaking, is an act of Sovereignty? It

is not a convention between a superior and an inferior, but a convention between the

body and each of its members. It is legitimate, because based on the social contract,

and equitable, because common to all; useful, because it can have no other object than

the general good, and stable, because guaranteed by the public force and the supreme

power. So long as the subjects have to submit only to conventions of this sort, they

obey no-one but their own will; and to ask how far the respective rights of the

Sovereign and the citizens extend, is to ask up to what point the latter can enter into

undertakings with themselves, each with all, and all with each.

We can see from this that the sovereign power, absolute, sacred and inviolable as it is,

does not and cannot exceed the limits of general conventions, and that every man may

dispose at will of such goods and liberty as these conventions leave him; so that the

Sovereign never has a right to lay more charges on one subject than on another,

because, in that case, the question becomes particular, and ceases to be within its

competency.

When these distinctions have once been admitted, it is seen to be so untrue that there

is, in the social contract, any real renunciation on the part of the individuals, that the

position in which they find themselves as a result of the contract is really preferable to

that in which they were before. Instead of a renunciation, they have made an

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advantageous exchange: instead of an uncertain and precarious way of living they

have got one that is better and more secure; instead of natural independence they have

got liberty, instead of the power to harm others security for themselves, and instead of

their strength, which others might overcome, a right which social union makes

invincible. Their very life, which they have devoted to the State, is by it constantly

protected; and when they risk it in the State’s defence, what more are they doing than

giving back what they have received from it? What are they doing that they would not

do more often and with greater danger in the state of nature, in which they would

inevitably have to fight battles at the peril of their lives in defence of that which is the

means of their preservation? All have indeed to fight when their country needs them;

but then no one has ever to fight for himself. Do we not gain something by running,

on behalf of what gives us our security, only some of the risks we should have to run

for ourselves, as soon as we lost it?

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CHAPTER V

The Right Of Life And Death

The question is often asked how individuals, having no right to dispose of their own

lives, can transfer to the Sovereign a right which they do not possess. The difficulty of

answering this question seems to me to lie in its being wrongly stated. Every man has

a right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who

throws himself out of the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide? Has such

a crime ever been laid to the charge of him who perishes in a storm because, when he

went on board, he knew of the danger?

The social treaty has for its end the preservation of the contracting parties. He who

wills the end wills the means also, and the means must involve some risks, and even

some losses. He who wishes to preserve his life at others’ expense should also, when

it is necessary, be ready to give it up for their sake. Furthermore, the citizen is no

longer the judge of the dangers to which the law desires him to expose himself; and

when the prince says to him: “It is expedient for the State that you should die,” he

ought to die, because it is only on that condition that he has been living in security up

to the present, and because his life is no longer a mere bounty of nature, but a gift

made conditionally by the State.

The death-penalty inflicted upon criminals may be looked on in much the same light:

it is in order that we may not fall victims to an assassin that we consent to die if we

ourselves turn assassins. In this treaty, so far from disposing of our own lives, we

think only of securing them, and it is not to be assumed that any of the parties then

expects to get hanged.

Again, every malefactor, by attacking social rights, becomes on forfeit a rebel and a

traitor to his country; by violating its laws he ceases to be a member of it; he even

makes war upon it. In such a case the preservation of the State is inconsistent with his

own, and one or the other must perish; in putting the guilty to death, we slay not so

much the citizen as an enemy. The trial and the judgment are the proofs that he has

broken the social treaty, and is in consequence no longer a member of the State.

Since, then, he has recognised himself to be such by living there, he must be removed

by exile as a violator of the compact, or by death as a public enemy; for such an

enemy is not a moral person, but merely a man; and in such a case the right of war is

to kill the vanquished.

But, it will be said, the condemnation of a criminal is a particular act. I admit it: but

such condemnation is not a function of the Sovereign; it is a right the Sovereign can

confer without being able itself to exert it. All my ideas are consistent, but I cannot

expound them all at once.

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We may add that frequent punishments are always a sign of weakness or remissness

on the part of the government. There is not a single ill-doer who could not be turned

to some good. The State has no right to put to death, even for the sake of making an

example, any one whom it can leave alive without danger.

The right of pardoning or exempting the guilty from a penalty imposed by the law and

pronounced by the judge belongs only to the authority which is superior to both judge

and law, i. e. the Sovereign; even its right in this matter is far from clear, and the cases

for exercising it are extremely rare. In a well-governed State, there are few

punishments, not because there are many pardons, but because criminals are rare; it is

when a State is in decay that the multitude of crimes is a guarantee of impunity.

Under the Roman Republic, neither the Senate nor the Consuls ever attempted to

pardon; even the people never did so, though it sometimes revoked its own decision.

Frequent pardons mean that crime will soon need them no longer, and no-one can

help seeing whither that leads. But I feel my heart protesting and restraining my pen;

let us leave these questions to the just man who has never offended, and would

himself stand in no need of pardon.

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CHAPTER VI

Law

By the social compact we have given the body politic existence and life; we have now

by legislation to give it movement and will. For the original act by which the body is

formed and united still in no respect determines what it ought to do for its

preservation.

What is well and in conformity with order is so by the nature of things and

independently of human conventions. All justice comes from God, who is its sole

source; but if we knew how to receive so high an inspiration, we should need neither

government nor laws. Doubtless, there is a universal justice emanating from reason

alone; but this justice, to be admitted among us, must be mutual. Humanly speaking,

in default of natural sanctions, the laws of justice are ineffective among men: they

merely make for the good of the wicked and the undoing of the just, when the just

man observes them towards everybody and nobody observes them towards him.

Conventions and laws are therefore needed to join rights to duties and refer justice to

its object. In the state of nature, where everything is common, I owe nothing to him

whom I have promised nothing; I recognise as belonging to others only what is of no

use to me. In the state of society all rights are fixed by law, and the case becomes

different.

But what, after all, is a law? As long as we remain satisfied with attaching purely

metaphysical ideas to the word, we shall go on arguing without arriving at an

understanding; and when we have defined a law of nature, we shall be no nearer the

definition of a law of the State.

I have already said that there can be no general will directed to a particular object.

Such an object must be either within or outside the State. If outside, a will which is

alien to it cannot be, in relation to it, general; if within, it is part of the State, and in

that case there arises a relation between whole and part which makes them two

separate beings, of which the part is one, and the whole minus the part the other. But

the whole minus a part cannot be the whole; and while this relation persists, there can

be no whole, but only two unequal parts; and it follows that the will of one is no

longer in any respect general in relation to the other.

But when the whole people decrees for the whole people, it is considering only itself;

and if a relation is then formed, it is between two aspects of the entire object, without

there being any division of the whole. In that case the matter about which the decree

is made is, like the decreeing will, general. This act is what I call a law.

When I say that the object of laws is always general, I mean that law considers

subjects en masse and actions in the abstract, and never a particular person or action.

Thus the law may indeed decree that there shall be privileges, but cannot confer them

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on anybody by name. It may set up several classes of citizens, and even lay down the

qualifications for membership of these classes, but it cannot nominate such and such

persons as belonging to them; it may establish a monarchical government and

hereditary succession, but it cannot choose a king, or nominate a royal family. In a

word, no function which has a particular object belongs to the legislative power.

On this view, we at once see that it can no longer be asked whose business it is to

make laws, since they are acts of the general will; nor whether the prince is above the

law, since he is a member of the State; nor whether the law can be unjust, since no

one is unjust to himself; nor how we can be both free and subject to the laws, since

they are but registers of our wills.

We see further that, as the law unites universality of will with universality of object,

what a man, whoever he be, commands of his own motion cannot be a law; and even

what the Sovereign commands with regard to a particular matter is no nearer being a

law, but is a decree, an act, not of sovereignty, but of magistracy.

I therefore give the name ‘Republic’ to every State that is governed by laws, no matter

what the form of its administration may be: for only in such a case does the public

interest govern, and the res publica rank as a reality. Every legitimate government is

republican;1 what government is I will explain later on.

Laws are, properly speaking, only the conditions of civil association. The people,

being subject to the laws, ought to be their author: the conditions of the society ought

to be regulated solely by those who come together to form it. But how are they to

regulate them? Is it to be by common agreement, by a sudden inspiration? Has the

body politic an organ to declare its will? Who can give it the foresight to formulate

and announce its acts in advance? Or how is it to announce them in the hour of need?

How can a blind multitude, which often does not know what it wills, because it rarely

knows what is good for it, carry out for itself so great and difficult an enterprise as a

system of legislation? Of itself the people wills always the good, but of itself it by no

means always sees it. The general will is always in the right, but the judgment which

guides it is not always enlightened. It must be got to see objects as they are, and

sometimes as they ought to appear to it; it must be shown the good road it is in search

of, secured from the seductive influences of individual wills, taught to see times and

spaces as a series, and made to weigh the attractions of present and sensible

advantages against the danger of distant and hidden evils. The individuals see the

good they reject; the public wills the good it does not see. All stand equally in need of

guidance. The former must be compelled to bring their wills into conformity with

their reason; the latter must be taught to know what it wills. If that is done, public

enlightenment leads to the union of understanding and will in the social body: the

parts are made to work exactly together, and the whole is raised to its highest power.

This makes a legislator necessary.

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CHAPTER VII

The Legislator

In order to discover the rules of society best suited to nations, a superior intelligence

beholding all the passions of men without experiencing any of them would be needed.

This intelligence would have to be wholly unrelated to our nature, while knowing it

through and through; its happiness would have to be independent of us, and yet ready

to occupy itself with ours; and lastly, it would have, in the march of time, to look

forward to a distant glory, and, working in one century, to be able to enjoy in the

next.1 It would take gods to give men laws.

What Caligula argued from the facts, Plato, in the dialogue called the Politicus,

argued in defining the civil or kingly man, on the basis of right. But if great princes

are rare, how much more so are great legislators? The former have only to follow the

pattern which the latter have to lay down. The legislator is the engineer who invents

the machine, the prince merely the mechanic who sets it up and makes it go. “At the

birth of societies,” says Montesquieu, “the rulers of Republics establish institutions,

and afterwards the institutions mould the rulers.”2

He who dares to undertake the making of a people’s institutions ought to feel himself

capable, so to speak, of changing human nature, of transforming each individual, who

is by himself a complete and solitary whole, into part of a greater whole from which

he in a manner receives his life and being; of altering man’s constitution for the

purpose of strengthening it; and of substituting a partial and moral existence for the

physical and independent existence nature has conferred on us all. He must, in a word,

take away from man his own resources and give him instead new ones alien to him,

and incapable of being made use of without the help of other men. The more

completely these natural resources are annihilated, the greater and the more lasting are

those which he acquires, and the more stable and perfect the new institutions; so that

if each citizen is nothing and can do nothing without the rest, and the resources

acquired by the whole are equal or superior to the aggregate of the resources of all the

individuals, it may be said that legislation is at the highest possible point of

perfection.

The legislator occupies in every respect an extraordinary position in the State. If he

should do so by reason of his genius, he does so no less by reason of his office, which

is neither magistracy, nor Sovereignty. This office, which sets up the Republic,

nowhere enters into its constitution; it is an individual and superior function, which

has nothing in common with human empire; for if he who holds command over men

ought not to have command over the laws, he who has command over the laws ought

not any more to have it over men; or else his laws would be the ministers of his

passions and would often merely serve to perpetuate his injustices: his private aims

would inevitably mar the sanctity of his work.

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When Lycurgus gave laws to his country, he began by resigning the throne. It was the

custom of most Greek towns to entrust the establishment of their laws to foreigners.

The Republics of modern Italy in many cases followed this example; Geneva did the

same and profited by it.1 Rome, when it was most prosperous, suffered a revival of all

the crimes of tyranny, and was brought to the verge of destruction, because it put the

legislative authority and the sovereign power into the same hands.

Nevertheless, the decemvirs themselves never claimed the right to pass any law

merely on their own authority. “Nothing we propose to you,” they said to the people,

“can pass into law without your consent. Romans, be yourselves the authors of the

laws which are to make you happy.”

He, therefore, who draws up the laws has, or should have, no right of legislation, and

the people cannot, even if it wishes, deprive itself of this incommunicable right,

because, according to the fundamental compact, only the general will can bind the

individuals, and there can be no assurance that a particular will is in conformity with

the general will, until it has been put to the free vote of the people. This I have said

already; but it is worth while to repeat it.

Thus in the task of legislation we find together two things which appear to be

incompatible: an enterprise too difficult for human powers, and, for its execution, an

authority that is no authority.

There is a further difficulty that deserves attention. Wise men, if they try to speak

their language to the common herd instead of its own, cannot possibly make

themselves understood. There are a thousand kinds of ideas which it is impossible to

translate into popular language. Conceptions that are too general and objects that are

too remote are equally out of its range: each individual, having no taste for any other

plan of government than that which suits his particular interest, finds it difficult to

realise the advantages he might hope to draw from the continual privations good laws

impose. For a young people to be able to relish sound principles of political theory

and follow the fundamental rules of statecraft, the effect would have to become the

cause; the social spirit, which should be created by these institutions, would have to

preside over their very foundation; and men would have to be before law what they

should become by means of law. The legislator therefore, being unable to appeal to

either force or reason, must have recourse to an authority of a different order, capable

of constraining without violence and persuading without convincing.

This is what has, in all ages, compelled the fathers of nations to have recourse to

divine intervention and credit the gods with their own wisdom, in order that the

peoples, submitting to the laws of the State as to those of nature, and recognising the

same power in the formation of the city as in that of man, might obey freely, and bear

with docility the yoke of the public happiness.

This sublime reason, far above the range of the common herd, is that whose decisions

the legislator puts into the mouth of the immortals, in order to constrain by divine

authority those whom human prudence could not move.1 But it is not anybody who

can make the gods speak, or get himself believed when he proclaims himself their

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interpreter. The great soul of the legislator is the only miracle that can prove his

mission. Any man may grave tablets of stone, or buy an oracle, or feign secret

intercourse with some divinity, or train a bird to whisper in his ear, or find other

vulgar ways of imposing on the people. He whose knowledge goes no further may

perhaps gather round him a band of fools; but he will never found an empire, and his

extravagances will quickly perish with him. Idle tricks form a passing tie; only

wisdom can make it lasting. The Judaic law, which still subsists, and that of the child

of Ishmael, which, for ten centuries, has ruled half the world, still proclaim the great

men who laid them down; and, while the pride of philosophy or the blind spirit of

faction sees in them no more than lucky impostures, the true political theorist admires,

in the institutions they set up, the great and powerful genius which presides over

things made to endure.

We should not, with Warburton, conclude from this that politics and religion have

among us a common object, but that, in the first periods of nations, the one is used as

an instrument for the other.

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CHAPTER VIII

The People

As, before putting up a large building, the architect surveys and sounds the site to see

if it will bear the weight, the wise legislator does not begin by laying down laws good

in themselves, but by investigating the fitness of the people, for which they are

destined, to receive them. Plato refused to legislate for the Arcadians and the

Cyrenæans, because he knew that both peoples were rich and could not put up with

equality; and good laws and bad men were found together in Crete, because Minos

had inflicted discipline on a people already burdened with vice.

A thousand nations have achieved earthly greatness, that could never have endured

good laws; even such as could have endured them could have done so only for a very

brief period of their long history. Most peoples, like most men, are docile only in

youth; as they grow old they become incorrigible. When once customs have become

established and prejudices inveterate, it is dangerous and useless to attempt their

reformation; the people, like the foolish and cowardly patients who rave at sight of the

doctor, can no longer bear that any one should lay hands on its faults to remedy them.

There are indeed times in the history of States when, just as some kinds of illness turn

men’s heads and make them forget the past, periods of violence and revolutions do to

peoples what these crises do to individuals: horror of the past takes the place of

forgetfulness, and the State, set on fire by civil wars, is born again, so to speak, from

its ashes, and takes on anew, fresh from the jaws of death, the vigour of youth. Such

were Sparta at the time of Lycurgus, Rome after the Tarquins, and, in modern times,

Holland and Switzerland after the expulsion of the tyrants.

But such events are rare; they are exceptions, the cause of which is always to be found

in the particular constitution of the State concerned. They cannot even happen twice

to the same people, for it can make itself free as long as it remains barbarous, but not

when the civic impulse has lost its vigour. Then disturbances may destroy it, but

revolutions cannot mend it: it needs a master, and not a liberator. Free peoples, be

mindful of this maxim: “Liberty may be gained, but can never be recovered.”

Youth is not infancy. There is for nations, as for men, a period of youth, or, shall we

say, maturity, before which they should not be made subject to laws; but the maturity

of a people is not always easily recognisable, and, if it is anticipated, the work is

spoilt. One people is amenable to discipline from the beginning; another, not after ten

centuries. Russia will never be really civilised, because it was civilised too soon. Peter

had a genius for imitation; but he lacked true genius, which is creative and makes all

from nothing. He did some good things, but most of what he did was out of place. He

saw that his people was barbarous, but did not see that it was not ripe for civilisation:

he wanted to civilise it when it needed only hardening. His first wish was to make

Germans or Englishmen, when he ought to have been making Russians; and he

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prevented his subjects from ever becoming what they might have been by persuading

them that they were what they are not. In this fashion too a French teacher turns out

his pupil to be an infant prodigy, and for the rest of his life to be nothing whatsoever.

The empire of Russia will aspire to conquer Europe, and will itself be conquered. The

Tartars, its subjects or neighbours, will become its masters and ours, by a revolution

which I regard as inevitable. Indeed, all the kings of Europe are working in concert to

hasten its coming.

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CHAPTER IX

The People (Continued)

As nature has set bounds to the stature of a well-made man, and, outside those limits,

makes nothing but giants or dwarfs, similarly, for the constitution of a State to be at

its best, it is possible to fix limits that will make it neither too large for good

government, nor too small for self-maintenance. In every body politic there is a

maximum strength which it cannot exceed and which it only loses by increasing in

size. Every extension of the social tie means its relaxation; and, generally speaking, a

small State is stronger in proportion than a great one.

A thousand arguments could be advanced in favour of this principle. First, long

distances make administration more difficult, just as a weight becomes heavier at the

end of a longer lever. Administration therefore becomes more and more burdensome

as the distance grows greater; for, in the first place, each city has its own, which is

paid for by the people: each district its own, still paid for by the people: then comes

each province, and then the great governments, satrapies, and vice-royalties, always

costing more the higher you go, and always at the expense of the unfortunate people.

Last of all comes the supreme administration, which eclipses all the rest. All these

overcharges are a continual drain upon the subjects; so far from being better governed

by all these different orders, they are worse governed than if there were only a single

authority over them. In the meantime, there scarce remain resources enough to meet

emergencies; and, when recourse must be had to these, the State is always on the eve

of destruction.

This is not all; not only has the government less vigour and promptitude for securing

the observance of the laws, preventing nuisances, correcting abuses, and guarding

against seditious undertakings begun in distant places; the people has less affection

for its rulers, whom it never sees, for its country, which, to its eyes, seems like the

world, and for its fellow-citizens, most of whom are unknown to it. The same laws

cannot suit so many diverse provinces with different customs, situated in the most

various climates, and incapable of enduring a uniform government. Different laws

lead only to trouble and confusion among peoples which, living under the same rulers

and in constant communication one with another, intermingle and intermarry, and,

coming under the sway of new customs, never know if they can call their very

patrimony their own. Talent is buried, virtue unknown and vice unpunished, among

such a multitude of men who do not know one another, gathered together in one place

at the seat of the central administration. The leaders, overwhelmed with business, see

nothing for themselves; the State is governed by clerks. Finally, the measures which

have to be taken to maintain the general authority, which all these distant officials

wish to escape or to impose upon, absorb all the energy of the public, so that there is

none left for the happiness of the people. There is hardly enough to defend it when

need arises, and thus a body which is too big for its constitution gives way and falls

crushed under its own weight.

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Again, the State must assure itself a safe foundation, if it is to have stability, and to be

able to resist the shocks it cannot help experiencing, as well as the efforts it will be

forced to make for its maintenance; for all peoples have a kind of centrifugal force

that makes them continually act one against another, and tend to aggrandise

themselves at their neighbours’ expense, like the vortices of Descartes. Thus the weak

run the risk of being soon swallowed up; and it is almost impossible for any one to

preserve itself except by putting itself in a state of equilibrium with all, so that the

pressure is on all sides practically equal.

It may therefore be seen that there are reasons for expansion and reasons for

contraction; and it is no small part of the statesman’s skill to hit between them the

mean that is most favourable to the preservation of the State. It may be said that the

reason for expansion, being merely external and relative, ought to be subordinate to

the reasons for contraction, which are internal and absolute. A strong and healthy

constitution is the first thing to look for; and it is better to count on the vigour which

comes of good government than on the resources a great territory furnishes.

It may be added that there have been known States so constituted that the necessity of

making conquests entered into their very constitution, and that, in order to maintain

themselves, they were forced to expand ceaselessly. It may be that they congratulated

themselves greatly on this fortunate necessity, which none the less indicated to them,

along with the limits of their greatness, the inevitable moment of their fall.

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CHAPTER X

The People (Continued)

A body politic may be measured in two ways—either by the extent of its territory, or

by the number of its people; and there is, between these two measurements, a right

relation which makes the State really great. The men make the State, and the territory

sustains the men; the right relation therefore is that the land should suffice for the

maintenance of the inhabitants, and that there should be as many inhabitants as the

land can maintain. In this proportion lies the maximum strength of a given number of

people; for, if there is too much land, it is troublesome to guard and inadequately

cultivated, produces more than is needed, and soon gives rise to wars of defence; if

there is not enough, the State depends on its neighbours for what it needs over and

above, and this soon gives rise to wars of offence. Every people, to which its situation

gives no choice save that between commerce and war, is weak in itself: it depends on

its neighbours, and on circumstances; its existence can never be more than short and

uncertain. It either conquers others, and changes its situation, or it is conquered and

becomes nothing. Only insignificance or greatness can keep it free.

No fixed relation can be stated between the extent of territory and the population that

are adequate one to the other, both because of the differences in the quality of land, in

its fertility, in the nature of its products, and in the influence of climate, and because

of the different tempers of those who inhabit it; for some in a fertile country consume

little, and others on an ungrateful soil much. The greater or less fecundity of women,

the conditions that are more or less favourable in each country to the growth of

population, and the influence the legislator can hope to exercise by his institutions,

must also be taken into account. The legislator therefore should not go by what he

sees, but by what he foresees; he should stop not so much at the state in which he

actually finds the population, as at that to which it ought naturally to attain. Lastly,

there are countless cases in which the particular local circumstances demand or allow

the acquisition of a greater territory than seems necessary. Thus, expansion will be

great in a mountainous country, where the natural products, i. e. woods and pastures,

need less labour, where we know from experience that women are more fertile than in

the plains, and where a great expanse of slope affords only a small level tract that can

be counted on for vegetation. On the other hand, contraction is possible on the coast,

even in lands of rocks and nearly barren sands, because there fishing makes up to a

great extent for the lack of land-produce, because the inhabitants have to congregate

together more in order to repel pirates, and further because it is easier to unburden the

country of its superfluous inhabitants by means of colonies.

To these conditions of law-giving must be added one other which, though it cannot

take the place of the rest, renders them all useless when it is absent. This is the

enjoyment of peace and plenty; for the moment at which a State sets its house in order

is, like the moment when a battalion is forming up, that when its body is least capable

of offering resistance and easiest to destroy. A better resistance could be made at a

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time of absolute disorganisation than at a moment of fermentation, when each is

occupied with his own position and not with the danger. If war, famine, or sedition

arises at this time of crisis, the State will inevitably be overthrown.

Not that many governments have not been set up during such storms; but in such

cases these governments are themselves the State’s destroyers. Usurpers always bring

about or select troublous times to get passed, under cover of the public terror,

destructive laws, which the people would never adopt in cold blood. The moment

chosen is one of the surest means of distinguishing the work of the legislator from that

of the tyrant.

What people, then, is a fit subject for legislation? One which, already bound by some

unity of origin, interest, or convention, has never yet felt the real yoke of law; one that

has neither customs nor superstitions deeply ingrained, one which stands in no fear of

being overwhelmed by sudden invasion; one which, without entering into its

neighbours’ quarrels, can resist each of them singlehanded, or get the help of one to

repel another; one in which every member may be known by every other, and there is

no need to lay on any man burdens too heavy for a man to bear; one which can do

without other peoples, and without which all others can do;1 one which is neither rich

nor poor, but self-sufficient; and, lastly, one which unites the consistency of an

ancient people with the docility of a new one. Legislation is made difficult less by

what it is necessary to build up than by what has to be destroyed; and what makes

success so rare is the impossibility of finding natural simplicity together with social

requirements. All these conditions are indeed rarely found united, and therefore few

States have good constitutions.

There is still in Europe one country capable of being given laws—Corsica. The valour

and persistency with which that brave people has regained and defended its liberty

well deserves that some wise man should teach it how to preserve what it has won. I

have a feeling that some day that little island will astonish Europe.

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CHAPTER XI

The Various Systems Of Legislation

If we ask in what precisely consists the greatest good of all, which should be the end

of every system of legislation, we shall find it reduce itself to two main objects,

liberty and equality—liberty, because all particular dependence means so much force

taken from the body of the State, and equality, because liberty cannot exist without it.

I have already defined civil liberty; by equality, we should understand, not that the

degrees of power and riches are to be absolutely identical for everybody; but that

power shall never be great enough for violence, and shall always be exercised by

virtue of rank and law; and that, in respect of riches, no citizen shall ever be wealthy

enough to buy another, and none poor enough to be forced to sell himself:1 which

implies, on the part of the great, moderation in goods and position, and, on the side of

the common sort, moderation in avarice and covetousness.

Such equality, we are told, is an unpractical ideal that cannot actually exist. But if its

abuse is inevitable, does it follow that we should not at least make regulations

concerning it? It is precisely because the force of circumstances tends continually to

destroy equality that the force of legislation should always tend to its maintenance.

But these general objects of every good legislative system need modifying in every

country in accordance with the local situation and the temper of the inhabitants; and

these circumstances should determine, in each case, the particular system of

institutions which is best, not perhaps in itself, but for the State for which it is

destined. If, for instance, the soil is barren and unproductive, or the land too crowded

for its inhabitants, the people should turn to industry and the crafts, and exchange

what they produce for the commodities they lack. If, on the other hand, a people

dwells in rich plains and fertile slopes, or, in a good land, lacks inhabitants, it should

give all its attention to agriculture, which causes men to multiply, and should drive

out the crafts, which would only result in depopulation, by grouping in a few localities

the few inhabitants there are.1 If a nation dwells on an extensive and convenient

coast-line, let it cover the sea with ships and foster commerce and navigation. It will

have a life that will be short and glorious. If, on its coasts, the sea washes nothing but

almost inaccessible rocks, let it remain barbarous and ichthyophagous: it will have a

quieter, perhaps a better, and certainly a happier life. In a word, besides the principles

that are common to all, every nation has in itself something that gives them a

particular application, and makes its legislation peculiarly its own. Thus, among the

Jews long ago and more recently among the Arabs, the chief object was religion,

among the Athenians letters, at Carthage and Tyre commerce, at Rhodes shipping, at

Sparta war, at Rome virtue. The author of The Spirit of the Laws has shown with

many examples by what art the legislator directs the constitution towards each of

these objects.

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What makes the constitution of a State really solid and lasting is the due observance

of what is proper, so that the natural relations are always in agreement with the laws

on every point, and law only serves, so to speak, to assure, accompany and rectify

them. But if the legislator mistakes his object and adopts a principle other than

circumstances naturally direct; if his principle makes for servitude while they make

for liberty, or if it makes for riches, while they make for populousness, or if it makes

for peace, while they make for conquest—the laws will insensibly lose their influence,

the constitution will alter, and the State will have no rest from trouble till it is either

destroyed or changed, and nature has resumed her invincible sway.

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CHAPTER XII

The Division Of The Laws

If the whole is to be set in order, and the commonwealth put into the best possible

shape, there are various relations to be considered. First, there is the action of the

complete body upon itself, the relation of the whole to the whole, of the Sovereign to

the State; and this relation, as we shall see, is made up of the relations of the

intermediate terms.

The laws which regulate this relation bear the name of political laws, and are also

called fundamental laws, not without reason if they are wise. For, if there is, in each

State, only one good system, the people that is in possession of it should hold fast to

this; but if the established order is bad, why should laws that prevent men from being

good be regarded as fundamental? Besides, in any case, a people is always in a

position to change its laws, however good; for, if it choose to do itself harm, who can

have a right to stop it?

The second relation is that of the members one to another, or to the body as a whole;

and this relation should be in the first respect as unimportant, and in the second as

important, as possible. Each citizen would then be perfectly independent of all the

rest, and at the same time very dependent on the city; which is brought about always

by the same means, as the strength of the State can alone secure the liberty of its

members. From this second relation arise civil laws.

We may consider also a third kind of relation between the individual and the law, a

relation of disobedience to its penalty. This gives rise to the setting up of criminal

laws, which, at bottom, are less a particular class of law than the sanction behind all

the rest.

Along with these three kinds of law goes a fourth, most important of all, which is not

graven on tablets of marble or brass, but on the hearts of the citizens. This forms the

real constitution of the State, takes on every day new powers, when other laws decay

or die out, restores them or takes their place, keeps a people in the ways in which it

was meant to go, and insensibly replaces authority by the force of habit. I am

speaking of morality, of custom, above all of public opinion; a power unknown to

political thinkers, on which none the less success in everything else depends. With

this the great legislator concerns himself in secret, though he seems to confine himself

to particular regulations; for these are only the arc of the arch, while manners and

morals, slower to arise, form in the end its immovable keystone.

Among the different classes of laws, the political, which determine the form of the

government, are alone relevant to my subject.

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BOOK III

Before speaking of the different forms of government, let us try to fix the exact sense

of the word, which has not yet been very clearly explained.

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CHAPTER I

Government In General

I warn the reader that this chapter requires careful reading, and that I am unable to

make myself clear to those who refuse to be attentive.

Every free action is produced by the concurrence of two causes; one moral, i. e. the

will which determines the act; the other physical, i. e. the power which executes it.

When I walk towards an object, it is necessary first that I should will to go there, and,

in the second place, that my feet should carry me. If a paralytic wills to run and an

active man wills not to, they will both stay where they are. The body politic has the

same motive powers; here too force and will are distinguished, will under the name of

legislative power and force under that of executive power. Without their concurrence,

nothing is, or should be, done.

We have seen that the legislative power belongs to the people, and can belong to it

alone. It may, on the other hand, readily be seen, from the principles laid down above,

that the executive power cannot belong to the generality as legislature or Sovereign,

because it consists wholly of particular acts which fall outside the competency of the

law, and consequently of the Sovereign, whose acts must always be laws.

The public force therefore needs an agent of its own to bind it together and set it to

work under the direction of the general will, to serve as a means of communication

between the State and the Sovereign, and to do for the collective person more or less

what the union of soul and body does for man. Here we have what is, in the State, the

basis of government, often wrongly confused with the Sovereign, whose minister it is.

What then is government? An intermediate body set up between the subjects and the

Sovereign, to secure their mutual correspondence, charged with the execution of the

laws and the maintenance of liberty, both civil and political.

The members of this body are called magistrates or kings, that is to say governors,

and the whole body bears the name prince.1 Thus those who hold that the act, by

which a people puts itself under a prince, is not a contract, are certainly right. It is

simply and solely a commission, an employment, in which the rulers, mere officials of

the Sovereign, exercise in their own name the power of which it makes them

depositaries. This power it can limit, modify or recover at pleasure; for the alienation

of such a right is incompatible with the nature of the social body, and contrary to the

end of association.

I call then government, or supreme administration, the legitimate exercise of the

executive power, and prince or magistrate the man or the body entrusted with that

administration.

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In government reside the intermediate forces whose relations make up that of the

whole to the whole, or of the Sovereign to the State. This last relation may be

represented as that between the extreme terms of a continuous proportion, which has

government as its mean proportional. The government gets from the Sovereign the

orders it gives the people, and, for the State to be properly balanced, there must, when

everything is reckoned in, be equality between the product or power of the

government taken in itself, and the product or power of the citizens, who are on the

one hand sovereign and on the other subject.

Furthermore, none of these three terms can be altered without the equality being

instantly destroyed. If the Sovereign desires to govern, or the magistrate to give laws,

or if the subjects refuse to obey, disorder takes the place of regularity, force and will

no longer act together, and the State is dissolved and falls into despotism or anarchy.

Lastly, as there is only one mean proportional between each relation, there is also only

one good government possible for a State. But, as countless events may change the

relations of a people, not only may different governments be good for different

peoples, but also for the same people at different times.

In attempting to give some idea of the various relations that may hold between these

two extreme terms, I shall take as an example the number of a people, which is the

most easily expressible.

Suppose the State is composed of ten thousand citizens. The Sovereign can only be

considered collectively and as a body; but each member, as being a subject, is

regarded as an individual: thus the Sovereign is to the subject as ten thousand to one,

i. e. each member of the State has as his share only a ten-thousandth part of the

sovereign authority, although he is wholly under its control. If the people numbers a

hundred thousand, the condition of the subject undergoes no change, and each equally

is under the whole authority of the laws, while his vote, being reduced to one hundred

thousandth part, has ten times less influence in drawing them up. The subject

therefore remaining always a unit, the relation between him and the Sovereign

increases with the number of the citizens. From this it follows that, the larger the

State, the less the liberty.

When I say the relation increases, I mean that it grows more unequal. Thus the greater

it is in the geometrical sense, the less relation there is in the ordinary sense of the

word. In the former sense, the relation, considered according to quantity, is expressed

by the quotient; in the latter, considered according to identity, it is reckoned by

similarity.

Now, the less relation the particular wills have to the general will, that is, morals and

manners to laws, the more should the repressive force be increased. The government,

then, to be good, should be proportionately stronger as the people is more numerous.

On the other hand, as the growth of the State gives the depositaries of the public

authority more temptations and chances of abusing their power, the greater the force

with which the government ought to be endowed for keeping the people in hand, the

greater too should be the force at the disposal of the Sovereign for keeping the

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government in hand. I am speaking, not of absolute force, but of the relative force of

the different parts of the State.

It follows from this double relation that the continuous proportion between the

Sovereign, the prince and the people, is by no means an arbitrary idea, but a necessary

consequence of the nature of the body politic. It follows further that, one of the

extreme terms, viz. the people, as subject, being fixed and represented by unity,

whenever the duplicate ratio increases or diminishes, the simple ratio does the same,

and is changed accordingly. From this we see that there is not a single unique and

absolute form of government, but as many governments differing in nature as there

are States differing in size.

If, ridiculing this system, any one were to say that, in order to find the mean

proportional and give form to the body of the government, it is only necessary,

according to me, to find the square root of the number of the people, I should answer

that I am here taking this number only as an instance; that the relations of which I am

speaking are not measured by the number of men alone, but generally by the amount

of action, which is a combination of a multitude of causes; and that, further, if, to save

words, I borrow for a moment the terms of geometry, I am none the less well aware

that moral quantities do not allow of geometrical accuracy.

The government is on a small scale what the body politic which includes it is on a

great one. It is a moral person endowed with certain faculties, active like the

Sovereign and passive like the State, and capable of being resolved into other similar

relations. This accordingly gives rise to a new proportion, within which there is yet

another, according to the arrangement of the magistracies, till an indivisible middle

term is reached, i. e. a single ruler or supreme magistrate, who may be represented, in

the midst of this progression, as the unity between the fractional and the ordinal

series.

Without encumbering ourselves with this multiplication of terms, let us rest content

with regarding government as a new body within the State, distinct from the people

and the Sovereign, and intermediate between them.

There is between these two bodies this essential difference, that the State exists by

itself, and the government only through the Sovereign. Thus the dominant will of the

prince is, or should be, nothing but the general will or the law; his force is only the

public force concentrated in his hands, and, as soon as he tries to base any absolute

and independent act on his own authority, the tie that binds the whole together begins

to be loosened. If finally the prince should come to have a particular will more active

than the will of the Sovereign, and should employ the public force in his hands in

obedience to this particular will, there would be, so to speak, two Sovereigns, one

rightful and the other actual, the social union would evaporate instantly, and the body

politic would be dissolved.

However, in order that the government may have a true existence and a real life

distinguishing it from the body of the State, and in order that all its members may be

able to act in concert and fulfil the end for which it was set up, it must have a

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particular personality, a sensibility common to its members, and a force and will of its

own making for its preservation. This particular existence implies assemblies,

councils, power of deliberation and decision, rights, titles, and privileges belonging

exclusively to the prince and making the office of magistrate more honourable in

proportion as it is more troublesome. The difficulties lie in the manner of so ordering

this subordinate whole within the whole, that it in no way alters the general

constitution by affirmation of its own, and always distinguishes the particular force it

possesses, which is destined to aid in its preservation, from the public force, which is

destined to the preservation of the State; and, in a word, is always ready to sacrifice

the government to the people, and never to sacrifice the people to the government.

Furthermore, although the artificial body of the government is the work of another

artificial body, and has, we may say, only a borrowed and subordinate life, this does

not prevent it from being able to act with more or less vigour or promptitude, or from

being, so to speak, in more or less robust health. Finally, without departing directly

from the end for which it was instituted, it may deviate more or less from it, according

to the manner of its constitution.

From all these differences arise the various relations which the government ought to

bear to the body of the State, according to the accidental and particular relations by

which the State itself is modified, for often the government that is best in itself will

become the most pernicious, if the relations in which it stands have altered according

to the defects of the body politic to which it belongs.

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CHAPTER II

The Constituent Principle In The Various Forms Of Government

To set forth the general cause of the above differences, we must here distinguish

between government and its principle, as we did before between the State and the

Sovereign.

The body of the magistrate may be composed of a greater or a less number of

members. We said that the relation of the Sovereign to the subjects was greater in

proportion as the people was more numerous, and, by a clear analogy, we may say the

same of the relation of the government to the magistrates.

But the total force of the government, being always that of the State, is invariable; so

that, the more of this force it expends on its own members, the less it has left to

employ on the whole people.

The more numerous the magistrates, therefore, the weaker the government. This

principle being fundamental, we must do our best to make it clear.

In the person of the magistrate we can distinguish three essentially different wills:

first, the private will of the individual, tending only to his personal advantage;

secondly, the common will of the magistrates, which is relative solely to the

advantage of the prince, and may be called corporate will, being general in relation to

the government, and particular in relation to the State, of which the government forms

part; and, in the third place, the will of the people or the sovereign will, which is

general both in relation to the State regarded as the whole, and to the government

regarded as a part of the whole.

In a perfect act of legislation, the individual or particular will should be at zero; the

corporate will belonging to the government should occupy a very subordinate

position; and, consequently, the general or sovereign will should always predominate

and should be the sole guide of all the rest.

According to the natural order, on the other hand, these different wills become more

active in proportion as they are concentrated. Thus, the general will is always the

weakest, the corporate will second, and the individual will strongest of all: so that, in

the government, each member is first of all himself, then a magistrate, and then a

citizen—in an order exactly the reverse of what the social system requires.

This granted, if the whole government is in the hands of one man, the particular and

the corporate will are wholly united, and consequently the latter is at its highest

possible degree of intensity. But, as the use to which the force is put depends on the

degree reached by the will, and as the absolute force of the government is invariable,

it follows that the most active government is that of one man.

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Suppose, on the other hand, we unite the government with the legislative authority,

and make the Sovereign prince also, and all the citizens so many magistrates: then the

corporate will, being confounded with the general will, can possess no greater activity

than that will, and must leave the particular will as strong as it can possibly be. Thus,

the government, having always the same absolute force, will be at the lowest point of

its relative force or activity.

These relations are incontestable, and there are other considerations which still further

confirm them. We can see, for instance, that each magistrate is more active in the

body to which he belongs than each citizen in that to which he belongs, and that

consequently the particular will has much more influence on the acts of the

government than on those of the Sovereign; for each magistrate is almost always

charged with some governmental function, while each citizen, taken singly, exercises

no function of Sovereignty. Furthermore, the bigger the State grows, the more its real

force increases, though not in direct proportion to its growth; but, the State remaining

the same, the number of magistrates may increase to any extent, without the

government gaining any greater real force; for its force is that of the State, the

dimension of which remains equal. Thus the relative force or activity of the

government decreases, while its absolute or real force cannot increase.

Moreover, it is a certainty that promptitude in execution diminishes as more people

are put in charge of it: where prudence is made too much of, not enough is made of

fortune; opportunity is let slip, and deliberation results in the loss of its object.

I have just proved that the government grows remiss in proportion as the number of

the magistrates increases; and I previously proved that, the more numerous the people,

the greater should be the repressive force. From this it follows that the relation of the

magistrates to the government should vary inversely to the relation of the subjects to

the Sovereign; that is to say, the larger the State, the more should the government be

tightened, so that the number of the rulers diminish in proportion to the increase of

that of the people.

It should be added that I am here speaking of the relative strength of the government,

and not of its rectitude: for, on the other hand, the more numerous the magistracy, the

nearer the corporate will comes to the general will; while, under a single magistrate,

the corporate will is, as I said, merely a particular will. Thus, what may be gained on

one side is lost on the other, and the art of the legislator is to know how to fix the

point at which the force and the will of the government, which are always in inverse

proportion, meet in the relation that is most to the advantage of the State.

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CHAPTER III

The Division Of Governments

We saw in the last chapter what causes the various kinds or forms of government to

be distinguished according to the number of the members composing them: it remains

in this to discover how the division is made.

In the first place, the Sovereign may commit the charge of the government to the

whole people or to the majority of the people, so that more citizens are magistrates

than are mere private individuals. This form of government is called democracy.

Or it may restrict the government to a small number, so that there are more private

citizens than magistrates; and this is named aristocracy.

Lastly, it may concentrate the whole government in the hands of a single magistrate

from whom all others hold their power. This third form is the most usual, and is called

monarchy, or royal government.

It should be remarked that all these forms, or at least the first two, admit of degree,

and even of very wide differences; for democracy may include the whole people, or

may be restricted to half. Aristocracy, in its turn, may be restricted indefinitely from

half the people down to the smallest possible number. Even royalty is susceptible of a

measure of distribution. Sparta always had two kings, as its constitution provided; and

the Roman Empire saw as many as eight emperors at once, without it being possible

to say that the Empire was split up. Thus there is a point at which each form of

government passes into the next, and it becomes clear that, under three comprehensive

denominations, government is really susceptible of as many diverse forms as the State

has citizens.

There are even more: for, as the government may also, in certain aspects, be

subdivided into other parts, one administered in one fashion and one in another, the

combination of the three forms may result in a multitude of mixed forms, each of

which admits of multiplication by all the simple forms.

There has been at all times much dispute concerning the best form of government,

without consideration of the fact that each is in some cases the best, and in others the

worst.

If, in the different States, the number of supreme magistrates should be in inverse

ratio to the number of citizens, it follows that, generally, democratic government suits

small States, aristocratic government those of middle size, and monarchy great ones.

This rule is immediately deducible from the principle laid down. But it is impossible

to count the innumerable circumstances which may furnish exceptions.

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CHAPTER IV

Democracy

He who makes the law knows better than any one else how it should be executed and

interpreted. It seems then impossible to have a better constitution than that in which

the executive and legislative powers are united; but this very fact renders the

government in certain respects inadequate, because things which should be

distinguished are confounded, and the prince and the Sovereign, being the same

person, form, so to speak, no more than a government without government.

It is not good for him who makes the laws to execute them, or for the body of the

people to turn its attention away from a general standpoint and devote it to particular

objects. Nothing is more dangerous than the influence of private interests in public

affairs, and the abuse of the laws by the government is a less evil than the corruption

of the legislator, which is the inevitable sequel to a particular standpoint. In such a

case, the State being altered in substance, all reformation becomes impossible. A

people that would never misuse governmental powers would never misuse

independence; a people that would always govern well would not need to be

governed.

If we take the term in the strict sense, there never has been a real democracy, and

there never will be. It is against the natural order for the many to govern and the few

to be governed. It is unimaginable that the people should remain continually

assembled to devote their time to public affairs, and it is clear that they cannot set up

commissions for that purpose without the form of administration being changed.

In fact, I can confidently lay down as a principle that, when the functions of

government are shared by several tribunals, the less numerous sooner or later acquire

the greatest authority, if only because they are in a position to expedite affairs, and

power thus naturally comes into their hands.

Besides, how many conditions that are difficult to unite does such a government

presuppose! First, a very small State, where the people can readily be got together and

where each citizen can with ease know all the rest; secondly, great simplicity of

manners, to prevent business from multiplying and raising thorny problems; next, a

large measure of equality in rank and fortune, without which equality of rights and

authority cannot long subsist; lastly, little or no luxury—for luxury either comes of

riches or makes them necessary; it corrupts at once rich and poor, the rich by

possession and the poor by covetousness; it sells the country to softness and vanity,

and takes away from the State all its citizens, to make them slaves one to another, and

one and all to public opinion.

This is why a famous writer has made virtue the fundamental principle of Republics;

for all these conditions could not exist without virtue. But, for want of the necessary

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distinctions, that great thinker was often inexact, and sometimes obscure, and did not

see that, the sovereign authority being everywhere the same, the same principle

should be found in every well-constituted State, in a greater or less degree, it is true,

according to the form of the government.

It may be added that there is no government so subject to civil wars and intestine

agitations as democratic or popular government, because there is none which has so

strong and continual a tendency to change to another form, or which demands more

vigilance and courage for its maintenance as it is. Under such a constitution above all,

the citizen should arm himself with strength and constancy, and say, every day of his

life, what a virtuous Count Palatine1 said in the Diet of Poland: Malo periculosam

libertatem quam quietum servitium.

Were there a people of gods, their government would be democratic. So perfect a

government is not for men.

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CHAPTER V

Aristocracy

We have here two quite distinct moral persons, the government and the Sovereign,

and in consequence two general wills, one general in relation to all the citizens, the

other only for the members of the administration. Thus, although the government may

regulate its internal policy as it pleases, it can never speak to the people save in the

name of the Sovereign, that is, of the people itself, a fact which must not be forgotten.

The first societies governed themselves aristocratically. The heads of families took

counsel together on public affairs. The young bowed without question to the authority

of experience. Hence such names as priests, elders, senate, and gerontes. The savages

of North America govern themselves in this way even now, and their government is

admirable.

But, in proportion as artificial inequality produced by institutions became

predominant over natural inequality, riches or power1 were put before age, and

aristocracy became elective. Finally, the transmission of the father’s power along with

his goods to his children, by creating patrician families, made government hereditary,

and there came to be senators of twenty.

There are then three sorts of aristocracy—natural, elective and hereditary. The first is

only for simple peoples; the third is the worst of all governments; the second is the

best, and is aristocracy properly so called.

Besides the advantage that lies in the distinction between the two powers, it presents

that of its members being chosen; for, in popular government, all the citizens are born

magistrates; but here magistracy is confined to a few, who become such only by

election.2 By this means uprightness, understanding, experience and all other claims

to pre-eminence and public esteem become so many further guarantees of wise

government.

Moreover, assemblies are more easily held, affairs better discussed and carried out

with more order and diligence, and the credit of the State is better sustained abroad by

venerable senators than by a multitude that is unknown or despised.

In a word, it is the best and most natural arrangement that the wisest should govern

the many, when it is assured that they will govern for its profit, and not for their own.

There is no need to multiply instruments, or get twenty thousand men to do what a

hundred picked men can do even better. But it must not be forgotten that corporate

interest here begins to direct the public power less under the regulation of the general

will, and that a further inevitable propensity takes away from the laws part of the

executive power.

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If we are to speak of what is individually desirable, neither should the State be so

small, nor a people so simple and upright, that the execution of the laws follows

immediately from the public will, as it does in a good democracy. Nor should the

nation be so great that the rulers have to scatter in order to govern it and are able to

play the Sovereign each in his own department, and, beginning by making themselves

independent, end by becoming masters.

But if aristocracy does not demand all the virtues needed by popular government, it

demands others which are peculiar to itself; for instance, moderation on the side of the

rich and contentment on that of the poor; for it seems that thorough-going equality

would be out of place, as it was not found even at Sparta.

Furthermore, if this form of government carries with it a certain inequality of fortune,

this is justifiable in order that as a rule the administration of public affairs may be

entrusted to those who are most able to give them their whole time, but not, as

Aristotle maintains, in order that the rich may always be put first. On the contrary, it

is of importance that an opposite choice should occasionally teach the people that the

deserts of men offer claims to pre-eminence more important than those of riches.

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CHAPTER VI

Monarchy

So far, we have considered the prince as a moral and collective person, unified by the

force of the laws, and the depositary in the State of the executive power. We have

now to consider this power when it is gathered together into the hands of a natural

person, a real man, who alone has the right to dispose of it in accordance with the

laws. Such a person is called a monarch or king.

In contrast with other forms of administration, in which a collective being stands for

an individual, in this form an individual stands for a collective being; so that the moral

unity that constitutes the prince is at the same time a physical unity, and all the

qualities, which in the other case are only with difficulty brought together by the law,

are found naturally united.

Thus the will of the people, the will of the prince, the public force of the State, and the

particular force of the government, all answer to a single motive power; all the springs

of the machine are in the same hands, the whole moves towards the same end; there

are no conflicting movements to cancel one another, and no kind of constitution can

be imagined in which a less amount of effort produces a more considerable amount of

action. Archimedes, seated quietly on the bank and easily drawing a great vessel

afloat, stands to my mind for a skilful monarch, governing vast states from his study,

and moving everything while he seems himself unmoved.

But if no government is more vigorous than this, there is also none in which the

particular will holds more sway and rules the rest more easily. Everything moves

towards the same end indeed, but this end is by no means that of the public happiness,

and even the force of the administration constantly shows itself prejudicial to the

State.

Kings desire to be absolute, and men are always crying out to them from afar that the

best means of being so is to get themselves loved by their people. This precept is all

very well, and even in some respects very true. Unfortunately, it will always be

derided at court. The power which comes of a people’s love is no doubt the greatest;

but it is precarious and conditional, and princes will never rest content with it. The

best kings desire to be in a position to be wicked, if they please, without forfeiting

their mastery: political sermonisers may tell them to their hearts’ content that, the

people’s strength being their own, their first interest is that the people should be

prosperous, numerous and formidable; they are well aware that this is untrue. Their

first personal interest is that the people should be weak, wretched, and unable to resist

them. I admit that, provided the subjects remained always in submission, the prince’s

interest would indeed be that it should be powerful, in order that its power, being his

own, might make him formidable to his neighbours; but, this interest being merely

secondary and subordinate, and strength being incompatible with submission, princes

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naturally give the preference always to the principle that is more to their immediate

advantage. This is what Samuel put strongly before the Hebrews, and what

Macchiavelli has clearly shown. He professed to teach kings; but it was the people he

really taught. His Prince is the book of Republicans.1

We found, on general grounds, that monarchy is suitable only for great States, and

this is confirmed when we examine it in itself. The more numerous the public

administration, the smaller becomes the relation between the prince and the subjects,

and the nearer it comes to equality, so that in democracy the ratio is unity, or absolute

equality. Again, as the government is restricted in numbers the ratio increases and

reaches its maximum when the government is in the hands of a single person. There is

then too great a distance between prince and people, and the State lacks a bond of

union. To form such a bond, there must be intermediate orders, and princes,

personages and nobility to compose them. But no such things suit a small State, to

which all class differences mean ruin.

If, however, it is hard for a great State to be well governed, it is much harder for it to

be so by a single man; and every one knows what happens when kings substitute

others for themselves.

An essential and inevitable defect, which will always rank monarchical below

republican government, is that in a republic the public voice hardly ever raises to the

highest positions men who are not enlightened and capable, and such as to fill them

with honour; while in monarchies those who rise to the top are most often merely

petty blunderers, petty swindlers, and petty intriguers, whose petty talents cause them

to get into the highest positions at Court, but, as soon as they have got there, serve

only to make their ineptitude clear to the public. The people is far less often mistaken

in its choice than the prince; and a man of real worth among the king’s ministers is

almost as rare as a fool at the head of a republican government. Thus, when, by some

fortunate chance, one of these born governors takes the helm of State in some

monarchy that has been nearly overwhelmed by swarms of ‘gentlemanly’

administrators, there is nothing but amazement at the resources he discovers, and his

coming marks an era in his country’s history.

For a monarchical State to have a chance of being well governed, its population and

extent must be proportionate to the abilities of its governor. It is easier to conquer than

to rule. With a long enough lever, the world could be moved with a single finger; to

sustain it needs the shoulders of Hercules. However small a State may be, the prince

is hardly ever big enough for it. When, on the other hand, it happens that the State is

too small for its ruler, in these rare cases too it is ill governed, because the ruler,

constantly pursuing his great designs, forgets the interests of the people, and makes it

no less wretched by misusing the talents he has, than a ruler of less capacity would

make it for want of those he had not. A kingdom should, so to speak, expand or

contract with each reign, according to the prince’s capabilities; but, the abilities of a

senate being more constant in quantity, the State can then have permanent frontiers

without the administration suffering.

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The disadvantage that is most felt in monarchical government is the want of the

continuous succession which, in both the other forms, provides an unbroken bond of

union. When one king dies, another is needed; elections leave dangerous intervals and

are full of storms; and unless the citizens are disinterested and upright to a degree

which very seldom goes with this kind of government, intrigue and corruption

abound. He to whom the State has sold itself can hardly help selling it in his turn and

repaying himself, at the expense of the weak, the money the powerful have wrung

from him. Under such an administration, venality sooner or later spreads through

every part, and peace so enjoyed under a king is worse than the disorders of an

interregnum.

What has been done to prevent these evils? Crowns have been made hereditary in

certain families, and an order of succession has been set up, to prevent disputes from

arising on the death of kings. That is to say, the disadvantages of regency have been

put in place of those of election, apparent tranquillity has been preferred to wise

administration, and men have chosen rather to risk having children, monstrosities, or

imbeciles as rulers to having disputes over the choice of good kings. It has not been

taken into account that, in so exposing ourselves to the risks this possibility entails,

we are setting almost all the chances against us. There was sound sense in what the

younger Dionysius said to his father, who reproached him for doing some shameful

deed by asking, “Did I set you the example?” “No,” answered his son, “but your

father was not king.”

Everything conspires to take away from a man who is set in authority over others the

sense of justice and reason. Much trouble, we are told, is taken to teach young princes

the art of reigning; but their education seems to do them no good. It would be better to

begin by teaching them the art of obeying. The greatest kings whose praises history

tells were not brought up to reign: reigning is a science we are never so far from

possessing as when we have learnt too much of it, and one we acquire better by

obeying than by commanding. “Nam utilissimus idem ac brevissimus bonarum

malarumque rerum delectus cogitare quid aut nolueris sub alio principe, aut

volueris.”1

One result of this lack of coherence is the inconstancy of royal government, which,

regulated now on one scheme and now on another, according to the character of the

reigning prince or those who reign for him, cannot for long have a fixed object or a

consistent policy—and this variability, not found in the other forms of government,

where the prince is always the same, causes the State to be always shifting from

principle to principle and from project to project. Thus we may say that generally, if a

court is more subtle in intrigue, there is more wisdom in a senate, and Republics

advance towards their ends by more consistent and better considered policies; while

every revolution in a royal ministry creates a revolution in the State; for the principle

common to all ministers and nearly all kings is to do in every respect the reverse of

what was done by their predecessors.

This incoherence further clears up a sophism that is very familiar to royalist political

writers; not only is civil government likened to domestic government, and the prince

to the father of a family—this error has already been refuted—but the prince is also

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freely credited with all the virtues he ought to possess, and is supposed to be always

what he should be. This supposition once made, royal, government is clearly

preferable to all others, because it is incontestably the strongest, and, to be the best

also, wants only a corporate will more in conformity with the general will.

But if, according to Plato,1 the “king by nature” is such a rarity, how often will nature

and fortune conspire to give him a crown? And, if royal education necessarily

corrupts those who receive it, what is to be hoped from a series of men brought up to

reign? It is, then, wanton self-deception to confuse royal government with

government by a good king. To see such government as it is in itself, we must

consider it as it is under princes who are incompetent or wicked: for either they will

come to the throne wicked or incompetent, or the throne will make them so.

These difficulties have not escaped our writers, who, all the same, are not troubled by

them. The remedy, they say, is to obey without a murmur: God sends bad kings in His

wrath, and they must be borne as the scourges of Heaven. Such talk is doubtless

edifying; but it would be more in place in a pulpit than in a political book. What are

we to think of a doctor who promises miracles, and whose whole art is to exhort the

sufferer to patience? We know for ourselves that we must put up with a bad

government when it is there; the question is how to find a good one.

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CHAPTER VII

Mixed Governments

Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a simple government. An isolated ruler

must have subordinate magistrates; a popular government must have a head. There is

therefore, in the distribution of the executive power, always a gradation from the

greater to the lesser number, with the difference that sometimes the greater number is

dependent on the smaller, and sometimes the smaller on the greater.

Sometimes the distribution is equal, when either the constituent parts are in mutual

dependence, as in the government of England, or the authority of each section is

independent, but imperfect, as in Poland. This last form is bad; for it secures no unity

in the government, and the State is left without a bond of union.

Is a simple or a mixed government the better? Political writers are always debating the

question, which must be answered as we have already answered a question about all

forms of government.

Simple government is better in itself, just because it is simple. But when the executive

power is not sufficiently dependent upon the legislative power, i. e. when the prince is

more closely related to the Sovereign than the people to the prince, this lack of

proportion must be cured by the division of the government; for all the parts have then

no less authority over the subjects, while their division makes them all together less

strong against the Sovereign.

The same disadvantage is also prevented by the appointment of intermediate

magistrates, who leave the government entire, and have the effect only of balancing

the two powers and maintaining their respective rights. Government is then not

mixed, but moderated.

The opposite disadvantages may be similarly cured, and, when the government is too

lax, tribunals may be set up to concentrate it. This is done in all democracies. In the

first case, the government is divided to make it weak; in the second, to make it strong:

for the maxima of both strength and weakness are found in simple governments, while

the mixed forms result in a mean strength.

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CHAPTER VIII

That All Forms Of Government Do Not Suit All Countries

Liberty, not being a fruit of all climates, is not within the reach of all peoples. The

more this principle, laid down by Montesquieu, is considered, the more its truth is

felt; the more it is combated, the more chance is given to confirm it by new proofs.

In all the governments that there are, the public person consumes without producing.

Whence then does it get what it consumes? From the labour of its members. The

necessities of the public are supplied out of the superfluities of individuals. It follows

that the civil State can subsist only so long as men’s labour brings them a return

greater than their needs.

The amount of this excess is not the same in all countries. In some it is considerable,

in others middling, in yet others nil, in some even negative. The relation of product to

subsistence depends on the fertility of the climate, on the sort of labour the land

demands, on the nature of its products, on the strength of its inhabitants, on the greater

or less consumption they find necessary, and on several further considerations of

which the whole relation is made up.

On the other side, all governments are not of the same nature: some are less voracious

than others, and the differences between them are based on this second principle, that

the further from their source the public contributions are removed, the more

burdensome they become. The charge should be measured not by the amount of the

impositions, but by the path they have to travel in order to get back to those from

whom they came. When the circulation is prompt and well-established, it does not

matter whether much or little is paid; the people is always rich and, financially

speaking, all is well. On the contrary, however little the people gives, if that little does

not return to it, it is soon exhausted by giving continually: the State is then never rich,

and the people is always a people of beggars.

It follows that, the more the distance between people and government increases, the

more burdensome tribute becomes: thus, in a democracy, the people bears the least

charge; in an aristocracy, a greater charge; and, in monarchy, the weight becomes

heaviest. Monarchy therefore suits only wealthy nations; aristocracy, States of

middling size and wealth; and democracy, States that are small and poor.

In fact, the more we reflect, the more we find the difference between free and

monarchical States to be this: in the former, everything is used for the public

advantage; in the latter, the public forces and those of individuals are affected by each

other, and either increases as the other grows weak; finally, instead of governing

subjects to make them happy, despotism makes them wretched in order to govern

them.

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We find then, in every climate, natural causes according to which the form of

government which it requires can be assigned, and we can even say what sort of

inhabitants it should have.

Unfriendly and barren lands, where the product does not repay the labour, should

remain desert and uncultivated, or peopled only by savages; lands where men’s labour

brings in no more than the exact minimum necessary to subsistence should be

inhabited by barbarous peoples: in such places all polity is impossible. Lands where

the surplus of product over labour is only middling are suitable for free peoples; those

in which the soil is abundant and fertile and gives a great product for a little labour

call for monarchical government, in order that the surplus of superfluities among the

subjects may be consumed by the luxury of the prince: for it is better for this excess to

be absorbed by the government than dissipated among the individuals. I am aware that

there are exceptions; but these exceptions themselves confirm the rule, in that sooner

or later they produce revolutions which restore things to the natural order.

General laws should always be distinguished from individual causes that may modify

their effects. If all the South were covered with Republics and all the North with

despotic States, it would be none the less true that, in point of climate, despotism is

suitable to hot countries, barbarism to cold countries, and good polity to temperate

regions. I see also that, the principle being granted, there may be disputes on its

application; it may be said that there are cold countries that are very fertile, and

tropical countries that are very unproductive. But this difficulty exists only for those

who do not consider the question in all its aspects. We must, as I have already said,

take labour, strength, consumption, etc., into account.

Take two tracts of equal extent, one of which brings in five and the other ten. If the

inhabitants of the first consume four and those of the second nine, the surplus of the

first product will be a fifth and that of the second a tenth. The ratio of these two

surpluses will then be inverse to that of the products, and the tract which produces

only five will give a surplus double that of the tract which produces ten.

But there is no question of a double product, and I think no one would put the fertility

of cold countries, as a general rule, on an equality with that of hot ones. Let us,

however, suppose this equality to exist: let us, if you will, regard England as on the

same level as Sicily, and Poland as Egypt—further south, we shall have Africa and

the Indies; further north, nothing at all. To get this equality of product, what a

difference there must be in tillage: in Sicily, there is only need to scratch the ground;

in England, how men must toil! But, where more hands are needed to get the same

product, the superfluity must necessarily be less.

Consider, besides, that the same number of men consume much less in hot countries.

The climate requires sobriety for the sake of health; and Europeans who try to live

there as they would at home all perish of dysentery and indigestion. “We are,” says

Chardin, “carnivorous animals, wolves, in comparison with the Asiatics. Some

attribute the sobriety of the Persians to the fact that their country is less cultivated; but

it is my belief that their country abounds less in commodities because the inhabitants

need less. If their frugality,” he goes on, “were the effect of the nakedness of the land,

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only the poor would eat little; but everybody does so. Again, less or more would be

eaten in various provinces, according to the land’s fertility; but the same sobriety is

found throughout the kingdom. They are very proud of their manner of life, saying

that you have only to look at their hue to recognise how far it excels that of the

Christians. In fact, the Persians are of an even hue; their skins are fair, fine and

smooth; while the hue of their subjects, the Armenians, who live after the European

fashion, is rough and blotchy, and their bodies are gross and unwieldy.”

The nearer you get to the equator, the less people live on. Meat they hardly touch;

rice, maize, curcur, millet and cassava are their ordinary food. There are in the Indies

millions of men whose subsistence does not cost a halfpenny a day. Even in Europe

we find considerable differences of appetite between Northern and Southern peoples.

A Spaniard will live for a week on a German’s dinner. In the countries in which men

are more voracious, luxury therefore turns in the direction of consumption. In

England, luxury appears in a well-filled table; in Italy, you feast on sugar and flowers.

Luxury in clothes shows similar differences. In climates in which the changes of

season are prompt and violent, men have better and simpler clothes; where they clothe

themselves only for adornment, what is striking is more thought of than what is

useful; clothes themselves are then a luxury. At Naples, you may see daily walking in

the Pausilippeum men in gold-embroidered upper garments and nothing else. It is the

same with buildings; magnificence is the sole consideration where there is nothing to

fear from the air. In Paris and London, you desire to be lodged warmly and

comfortably; in Madrid, you have superb salons, but not a window that closes, and

you go to bed in a mere hole.

In hot countries foods are much more substantial and succulent; and the third

difference cannot but have an influence on the second. Why are so many vegetables

eaten in Italy? Because there they are good, nutritious and excellent in taste. In

France, where they are nourished only on water, they are far from nutritious and are

thought nothing of at table. They take up all the same no less ground, and cost at least

as much pains to cultivate. It is a proved fact that the wheat of Barbary, in other

respects inferior to that of France, yields much more flour, and that the wheat of

France in turn yields more than that of northern countries; from which it may be

inferred that a like gradation in the same direction, from equator to pole, is found

generally. But is it not an obvious disadvantage for an equal product to contain less

nourishment?

To all these points may be added another, which at once depends on and strengthens

them. Hot countries need inhabitants less than cold countries, and can support more of

them. There is thus a double surplus, which is all to the advantage of despotism. The

greater the territory occupied by a fixed number of inhabitants, the more difficult

revolt becomes, because rapid or secret concerted action is impossible, and the

government can easily unmask projects and cut communications; but the more a

numerous people is gathered together, the less can the government usurp the

Sovereign’s place: the people’s leaders can deliberate as safely in their houses as the

prince in council, and the crowd gathers as rapidly in the squares as the prince’s

troops in their quarters. The advantage of tyrannical government therefore lies in

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acting at great distances. With the help of the rallying-points it establishes, its

strength, like that of the lever,1 grows with distance. The strength of the people, on

the other hand, acts only when concentrated: when spread abroad, it evaporates and is

lost, like powder scattered on the ground, which catches fire only grain by grain. The

least populous countries are thus the fittest for tyranny: fierce animals reign only in

deserts.

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CHAPTER IX

The Marks Of A Good Government

The question “What absolutely is the best government?” is unanswerable as well as

indeterminate; or rather, there are as many good answers as there are possible

combinations in the absolute and relative situations of all nations.

But if it is asked by what sign we may know that a given people is well or ill

governed, that is another matter, and the question, being one of fact, admits of an

answer.

It is not, however, answered, because every-one wants to answer it in his own way.

Subjects extol public tranquillity, citizens individual liberty; the one class prefers

security of possessions, the other that of person; the one regards as the best

government that which is most severe, the other maintains that the mildest is the best;

the one wants crimes punished, the other wants them prevented; the one wants the

State to be feared by its neighbours, the other prefers that it should be ignored; the one

is content if money circulates, the other demands that the people shall have bread.

Even if an agreement were come to on these and similar points, should we have got

any further? As moral qualities do not admit of exact measurement, agreement about

the mark does not mean agreement about the valuation.

For my part, I am continually astonished that a mark so simple is not recognised, or

that men are of so bad faith as not to admit it. What is the end of political association?

The preservation and prosperity of its members. And what is the surest mark of their

preservation and prosperity? Their numbers and population. Seek then nowhere else

this mark that is in dispute. The rest being equal, the government under which,

without external aids, without naturalisation or colonies, the citizens increase and

multiply most, is beyond question the best. The government under which a people

wanes and diminishes is the worst. Calculators, it is left for you to count, to measure,

to compare.1

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CHAPTER X

The Abuse Of Government And Its Tendency To Degenerate

As the particular will acts constantly in opposition to the general will, the government

continually exerts itself against the Sovereignty. The greater this exertion becomes,

the more the constitution changes; and, as there is in this case no other corporate will

to create an equilibrium by resisting the will of the prince, sooner or later the prince

must inevitably suppress the Sovereign and break the social treaty. This is the

unavoidable and inherent defect which, from the very birth of the body politic, tends

ceaselessly to destroy it, as age and death end by destroying the human body.

There are two general courses by which government degenerates: i. e. when it

undergoes contraction, or when the State is dissolved.

Government undergoes contraction when it passes from the many to the few, that is,

from democracy to aristocracy, and from aristocracy to royalty. To do so is its natural

propensity.1 If it took the backward course from the few to the many, it could be said

that it was relaxed; by this inverse sequence is impossible.

Indeed, governments never change their form except when their energy is exhausted

and leaves them too weak to keep what they have. If a government at once extended

its sphere and relaxed its stringency, its force would become absolutely nil, and it

would persist still less. It is therefore necessary to wind up the spring and tighten the

hold as it gives way: or else the State it sustains will come to grief.

The dissolution of the State may come about in either of two ways.

First, when the prince ceases to administer the State in accordance with the laws, and

usurps the Sovereign power. A remarkable change then occurs: not the government,

but the State, undergoes contraction; I mean that the great State is dissolved, and

another is formed within it, composed solely of the members of the government,

which becomes for the rest of the people merely master and tyrant. So that the

moment the government usurps the Sovereignty, the social compact is broken, and all

private citizens recover by right their natural liberty, and are forced, but not bound, to

obey.

The same thing happens when the members of the government severally usurp the

power they should exercise only as a body; this is as great an infraction of the laws,

and results in even greater disorders. There are then, so to speak, as many princes as

there are magistrates, and the State, no less divided than the government, either

perishes or changes its form.

When the State is dissolved, the abuse of government, whatever it is, bears the

common name of anarchy. To distinguish, democracy degenerates into ochlocracy,

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and aristocracy into oligarchy; and I would add that royalty degenerates into tyranny;

but this last word is ambiguous and needs explanation.

In vulgar usage, a tyrant is a king who governs violently and without regard for justice

and law. In the exact sense, a tyrant is an individual who arrogates to himself the royal

authority without having a right to it. This is how the Greeks understood the word

“tyrant”: they applied it indifferently to good and bad princes whose authority was not

legitimate.1Tyrant and usurper are thus perfectly synonymous terms.

In order that I may give different things different names, I call him who usurps the

royal authority a tyrant, and him who usurps the sovereign power a despot. The tyrant

is he who thrusts himself in contrary to the laws to govern in accordance with the

laws; the despot is he who sets himself above the laws themselves. Thus the tyrant

cannot be a despot, but the despot is always a tyrant.

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CHAPTER XI

The Death Of The Body Politic

Such is the natural and inevitable tendency of the best constituted governments. If

Sparta and Rome perished, what State can hope to endure for ever? If we would set up

a long-lived form of government, let us not even dream of making it eternal. If we are

to succeed, we must not attempt the impossible, or flatter ourselves that we are

endowing the work of man with a stability of which human conditions do not permit.

The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and

carries in itself the causes of its destruction. But both may have a constitution that is

more or less robust and suited to preserve them a longer or a shorter time. The

constitution of man is the work of nature; that of the State the work of art. It is not in

men’s power to prolong their own lives; but it is for them to prolong as much as

possible the life of the State, by giving it the best possible constitution. The best

constituted State will have an end; but it will end later than any other, unless some

unforeseen accident brings about its untimely destruction.

The life-principle of the body politic lies in the sovereign authority. The legislative

power is the heart of the State; the executive power is its brain, which causes the

movement of all the parts. The brain may become paralysed and the individual still

live. A man may remain an imbecile and live; but as soon as the heart ceases to

perform its functions, the animal is dead.

The State subsists by means not of the laws, but of the legislative power. Yesterday’s

law is not binding to-day; but silence is taken for tacit consent, and the Sovereign is

held to confirm incessantly the laws it does not abrogate as it might. All that it has

once declared itself to will it wills always, unless it revokes its declaration.

Why then is so much respect paid to old laws? For this very reason. We must believe

that nothing but the excellence of old acts of will can have preserved them so long: if

the Sovereign had not recognised them as throughout salutary, it would have revoked

them a thousand times. This is why, so far from growing weak, the laws continually

gain new strength in any well constituted State; the precedent of antiquity makes them

daily more venerable: while wherever the laws grow weak as they become old, this

proves that there is no longer a legislative power, and that the State is dead.

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CHAPTER XII

How The Sovereign Authority Maintains Itself

The Sovereign, having no force other than the legislative power, acts only by means

of the laws; and the laws being solely the authentic acts of the general will, the

Sovereign cannot act save when the people is assembled. The people in assembly, I

shall be told, is a mere chimera. It is so to-day, but two thousand years ago it was not

so. Has man’s nature changed?

The bounds of possibility, in moral matters, are less narrow than we imagine: it is our

weaknesses, our vices and our prejudices that confine them. Base souls have no belief

in great men; vile slaves smile in mockery at the name of liberty.

Let us judge of what can be done by what has been done. I shall say nothing of the

Republics of ancient Greece; but the Roman Republic was, to my mind, a great State,

and the town of Rome a great town. The last census showed that there were in Rome

four hundred thousand citizens capable of bearing arms, and the last computation of

the population of the Empire showed over four million citizens, excluding subjects,

foreigners, women, children and slaves.

What difficulties might not be supposed to stand in the way of the frequent

assemblage of the vast population of this capital and its neighbourhood. Yet few

weeks passed without the Roman people being in assembly, and even being so several

times. It exercised not only the rights of Sovereignty, but also a part of those of

government. It dealt with certain matters, and judged certain cases, and this whole

people was found in the public meeting-place hardly less often as magistrates than as

citizens.

If we went back to the earliest history of nations, we should find that most ancient

governments, even those of monarchical form, such as the Macedonian and the

Frankish, had similar councils. In any case, the one incontestable fact I have given is

an answer to all difficulties; it is good logic to reason from the actual to the possible.

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CHAPTER XIII

The Same (Continued)

It is not enough for the assembled people to have once fixed the constitution of the

State by giving its sanction to a body of law; it is not enough for it to have set up a

perpetual government, or provided once for all for the election of magistrates. Besides

the extraordinary assemblies unforeseen circumstances may demand, there must be

fixed periodical assemblies which cannot be abrogated or prorogued, so that on the

proper day the people is legitimately called together by law, without need of any

formal summoning.

But, apart from these assemblies authorised by their date alone, every assembly of the

people not summoned by the magistrates appointed for that purpose, and in

accordance with the prescribed forms, should be regarded as unlawful, and all its acts

as null and void, because the command to assemble should itself proceed from the

law.

The greater or less frequency with which lawful assemblies should occur depends on

so many considerations that no exact rules about them can be given. It can only be

said generally that the stronger the government the more often should the Sovereign

show itself.

This, I shall be told, may do for a single town; but what is to be done when the State

includes several? Is the sovereign authority to be divided? Or is it to be concentrated

in a single town to which all the rest are made subject?

Neither the one nor the other, I reply. First, the sovereign authority is one and simple,

and cannot be divided without being destroyed. In the second place, one town cannot,

any more than one nation, legitimately be made subject to another, because the

essence of the body politic lies in the reconciliation of obedience and liberty, and the

words subject and Sovereign are identical correlatives the idea of which meets in the

single word “citizen.”

I answer further that the union of several towns in a single city is always bad, and

that, if we wish to make such a union, we should not expect to avoid its natural

disadvantages. It is useless to bring up abuses that belong to great States against one

who desires to see only small ones; but how can small States be given the strength to

resist great ones, as formerly the Greek towns resisted the Great King, and more

recently Holland and Switzerland have resisted the House of Austria?

Nevertheless, if the State cannot be reduced to the right limits, there remains still one

resource; this is, to allow no capital, to make the seat of government move from town

to town, and to assemble by turn in each the Provincial Estates of the country.

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People the territory evenly, extend everywhere the same rights, bear to every place in

it abundance and life: by these means will the State become at once as strong and as

well governed as possible. Remember that the walls of towns are built of the ruins of

the houses of the countryside. For every palace I see raised in the capital, my mind’s

eye sees a whole country made desolate.

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CHAPTER XIV

The Same (Continued)

The moment the people is legitimately assembled as a sovereign body, the jurisdiction

of the government wholly lapses, the executive power is suspended, and the person of

the meanest citizen is as sacred and inviolable as that of the first magistrate; for in the

presence of the person represented, representatives no longer exist. Most of the

tumults that arose in the comitia at Rome were due to ignorance or neglect of this

rule. The consuls were in them merely the presidents of the people; the tribunes were

mere speakers;1 the senate was nothing at all.

These intervals of suspension, during which the prince recognises or ought to

recognise an actual superior, have always been viewed by him with alarm; and these

assemblies of the people, which are the aegis of the body politic and the curb on the

government, have at all times been the horror of rulers: who therefore never spare

pains, objections, difficulties, and promises, to stop the citizens from having them.

When the citizens are greedy, cowardly, and pusillanimous, and love ease more than

liberty, they do not long hold out against the redoubled efforts of the government; and

thus, as the resisting force incessantly grows, the sovereign authority ends by

disappearing, and most cities fall and perish before their time.

But between the sovereign authority and arbitrary government there sometimes

intervenes a mean power of which something must be said.

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CHAPTER XV

Deputies Or Representatives

As soon as public service ceases to be the chief business of the citizens, and they

would rather serve with their money than with their persons, the State is not far from

its fall. When it is necessary to march out to war, they pay troops and stay at home:

when it is necessary to meet in council, they name deputies and stay at home. By

reason of idleness and money, they end by having soldiers to enslave their country

and representatives to sell it.

It is through the hustle of commerce and the arts, through the greedy self-interest of

profit, and through softness and love of amenities that personal services are replaced

by money payments. Men surrender a part of their profits in order to have time to

increase them at leisure. Make gifts of money, and you will not be long without

chains. The word finance is a slavish word, unknown in the city-state. In a country

that is truly free, the citizens do everything with their own arms and nothing by means

of money; so far from paying to be exempted from their duties, they would even pay

for the privilege of fulfilling them themselves. I am far from taking the common view:

I hold enforced labour to be less opposed to liberty than taxes.

The better the constitution of a State is, the more do public affairs encroach on private

in the minds of the citizens. Private affairs are even of much less importance, because

the aggregate of the common happiness furnishes a greater proportion of that of each

individual, so that there is less for him to seek in particular cares. In a well-ordered

city every man flies to the assemblies: under a bad government no one cares to stir a

step to get to them, because no one is interested in what happens there, because it is

foreseen that the general will will not prevail, and lastly because domestic cares are

all-absorbing. Good laws lead to the making of better ones; bad ones bring about

worse. As soon as any man says of the affairs of the State What does it matter to me?

the State may be given up for lost.

The lukewarmness of patriotism, the activity of private interest, the vastness of States,

conquest and the abuse of government suggested the method of having deputies or

representatives of the people in the national assemblies. These are what, in some

countries, men have presumed to call the Third Estate. Thus the individual interest of

two orders is put first and second; the public interest occupies only the third place.

Sovereignty, for the same reason as makes it inalienable, cannot be represented; it lies

essentially in the general will, and will does not admit of representation: it is either the

same, or other; there is no intermediate possibility. The deputies of the people,

therefore, are not and cannot be its representatives: they are merely its stewards, and

can carry through no definitive acts. Every law the people has not ratified in person is

null and void—is, in fact, not a law. The people of England regards itself as free; but

it is grossly mistaken; it is free only during the election of members of parliament. As

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soon as they are elected, slavery overtakes it, and it is nothing. The use it makes of the

short moments of liberty it enjoys shows indeed that it deserves to lose them.

The idea of representation is modern; it comes to us from feudal government, from

that iniquitous and absurd system which degrades humanity and dishonours the name

of man. In ancient republics and even in monarchies, the people never had

representatives; the word itself was unknown. It is very singular that in Rome, where

the tribunes were so sacrosanct, it was never even imagined that they could usurp the

functions of the people, and that in the midst of so great a multitude they never

attempted to pass on their own authority a single plebiscitum. We can, however, form

an idea of the difficulties caused sometimes by the people being so numerous, from

what happened in the time of the Gracchi, when some of the citizens had to cast their

votes from the roofs of buildings.

Where right and liberty are everything, disadvantages count for nothing. Among this

wise people everything was given its just value, its lictors were allowed to do what its

tribunes would never have dared to attempt; for it had no fear that its lictors would try

to represent it.

To explain, however, in what way the tribunes did sometimes represent it, it is enough

to conceive how the government represents the Sovereign. Law being purely the

declaration of the general will, it is clear that, in the exercise of the legislative power,

the people cannot be represented; but in that of the executive power, which is only the

force that is applied to give the law effect, it both can and should be represented. We

thus see that if we looked closely into the matter we should find that very few nations

have any laws. However that may be, it is certain that the tribunes, possessing no

executive power, could never represent the Roman people by right of the powers

entrusted to them, but only by usurping those of the senate.

In Greece, all that the people had to do, it did for itself; it was constantly assembled in

the public square. The Greeks lived in a mild climate; they had no natural greed;

slaves did their work for them; their great concern was with liberty. Lacking the same

advantages, how can you preserve the same rights? Your severer climates add to your

needs;1 for half the year your public squares are uninhabitable; the flatness of your

languages unfits them for being heard in the open air; you sacrifice more for profit

than for liberty, and fear slavery less than poverty.

What then? Is liberty maintained only by the help of slavery? It may be so. Extremes

meet. Everything that is not in the course of nature has its disadvantages, civil society

most of all. There are some unhappy circumstances in which we can only keep our

liberty at others’ expense, and where the citizen can be perfectly free only when the

slave is most a slave. Such was the case with Sparta. As for you, modern peoples, you

have no slaves, but you are slaves yourselves; you pay for their liberty with your own.

It is in vain that you boast of this preference; I find in it more cowardice than

humanity.

I do not mean by all this that it is necessary to have slaves, or that the right of slavery

is legitimate: I am merely giving the reasons why modern peoples, believing

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themselves to be free, have representatives, while ancient peoples had none. In any

case, the moment a people allows itself to be represented, it is no longer free: it no

longer exists.

All things considered, I do not see that it is possible henceforth for the Sovereign to

preserve among us the exercise of its rights, unless the city is very small. But if it is

very small, it will be conquered? No. I will show later on how the external strength of

a great people1 may be combined with the convenient polity and good order of a

small State.

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CHAPTER XVI

That The Institution Of Government Is Not A Contract

The legislative power once well established, the next thing is to establish similarly the

executive power; for this latter, which operates only by particular acts, not being of

the essence of the former, is naturally separate from it. Were it possible for the

Sovereign, as such, to possess the executive power, right and fact would be so

confounded that no one could tell what was law and what was not; and the body

politic, thus disfigured, would soon fall a prey to the violence it was instituted to

prevent.

As the citizens, by the social contract, are all equal, all can prescribe what all should

do, but no one has a right to demand that another shall do what he does not do

himself. It is strictly this right, which is indispensable for giving the body politic life

and movement, that the Sovereign, in instituting the government, confers upon the

prince.

It has been held that this act of establishment was a contract between the people and

the rulers it sets over itself,—a contract in which conditions were laid down between

the two parties binding the one to command and the other to obey. It will be admitted,

I am sure, that this is an odd kind of contract to enter into. But let us see if this view

can be upheld.

First, the supreme authority can no more be modified than it can be alienated; to limit

it is to destroy it. It is absurd and contradictory for the Sovereign to set a superior over

itself; to bind itself to obey a master would be to return to absolute liberty.

Moreover, it is clear that this contract between the people and such and such persons

would be a particular act; and from this it follows that it can be neither a law nor an

act of Sovereignty, and that consequently it would be illegitimate.

It is plain too that the contracting parties in relation to each other would be under the

law of nature alone and wholly without guarantees of their mutual undertakings, a

position wholly at variance with the civil state. He who has force at his command

being always in a position to control execution, it would come to the same thing if the

name “contract” were given to the act of one man who said to another; “I give you all

my goods, on condition that you give me back as much of them as you please.”

There is only one contract in the State, and that is the act of association, which in

itself excludes the existence of a second. It is impossible to conceive of any public

contract that would not be a violation of the first.

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CHAPTER XVII

The Institution Of Government

Under what general idea then should the act by which government is instituted be

conceived as falling? I will begin by stating that the act is complex, as being

composed of two others—the establishment of the law and its execution.

By the former, the Sovereign decrees that there shall be a governing body established

in this or that form; this act is clearly a law.

By the latter, the people nominates the rulers who are to be entrusted with the

government that has been established. This nomination, being a particular act, is

clearly not a second law, but merely a consequence of the first and a function of

government.

The difficulty is to understand how there can be a governmental act before

government exists, and how the people, which is only Sovereign or subject, can,

under certain circumstances, become a prince or magistrate.

It is at this point that there is revealed one of the astonishing properties of the body

politic, by means of which it reconciles apparently contradictory operations; for this is

accomplished by a sudden conversion of Sovereignty into democracy, so that, without

sensible change, and merely by virtue of a new relation of all to all, the citizens

become magistrates and pass from general to particular acts, from legislation to the

execution of the law.

This changed relation is no speculative subtlety without instances in practice: it

happens every day in the English Parliament, where, on certain occasions, the Lower

House resolves itself into Grand Committee, for the better discussion of affairs, and

thus, from being at one moment a sovereign court, becomes at the next a mere

commission; so that subsequently it reports to itself, as House of Commons, the result

of its proceedings in Grand Committee, and debates over again under one name what

it has already settled under another.

It is, indeed, the peculiar advantage of democratic government that it can be

established in actuality by a simple act of the general will. Subsequently, this

provisional government remains in power, if this form is adopted, or else establishes

in the name of the Sovereign the government that is prescribed by law; and thus the

whole proceeding is regular. It is impossible to set up government in any other

manner legitimately and in accordance with the principles so far laid down.

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CHAPTER XVIII

How To Check The Usurpations Of Government

What we have just said confirms Chapter XVI, and makes it clear that the institution

of government is not a contract, but a law; that the depositaries of the executive power

are not the people’s masters, but its officers; that it can set them up and pull them

down when it likes; that for them there is no question of contract, but of obedience;

and that in taking charge of the functions the State imposes on them they are doing no

more than fulfilling their duty as citizens, without having the remotest right to argue

about the conditions.

When therefore the people sets up an hereditary government, whether it be

monarchical and confined to one family, or aristocratic and confined to a class, what it

enters into is not an undertaking; the administration is given a provisional form, until

the people chooses to order it otherwise.

It is true that such changes are always dangerous, and that the established government

should never be touched except when it comes to be incompatible with the public

good; but the circumspection this involves is a maxim of policy and not a rule of

right, and the State is no more bound to leave civil authority in the hands of its rulers

than military authority in the hands of its generals.

It is also true that it is impossible to be too careful to observe, in such cases, all the

formalities necessary to distinguish a regular and legitimate act from a seditious

tumult, and the will of a whole people from the clamour of a faction. Here above all

no further concession should be made to the untoward possibility than cannot, in the

strictest logic, be refused it. From this obligation the prince derives a great advantage

in preserving his power despite the people, without it being possible to say he has

usurped it; for, seeming to avail himself only of his rights, he finds it very easy to

extend them, and to prevent, under the pretext of keeping the peace, assemblies that

are destined to the re-establishment of order; with the result that he takes advantage of

a silence he does not allow to be broken, or of irregularities he causes to be

committed, to assume that he has the support of those whom fear prevents from

speaking, and to punish those who dare to speak. Thus it was that the decemvirs, first

elected for one year and then kept on in office for a second, tried to perpetuate their

power by forbidding the comitia to assemble; and by this easy method every

government in the world, once clothed with the public power, sooner or later usurps

the sovereign authority.

The periodical assemblies of which I have already spoken are designed to prevent or

postpone this calamity, above all when they need no formal summoning; for in that

case, the prince cannot stop them without openly declaring himself a law-breaker and

an enemy of the State.

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The opening of these assemblies, whose sole object is the maintenance of the social

treaty, should always take the form of putting two propositions that may not be

suppressed, which should be voted on separately.

The first is: “Does it please the Sovereign to preserve the present form of

government?”

The second is: “Does it please the people to leave its administration in the hands of

those who are actually in charge of it?”

I am here assuming what I think I have shown; that there is in the State no

fundamental law that cannot be revoked, not excluding the social compact itself; for if

all the citizens assembled of one accord to break the compact, it is impossible to doubt

that it would be very legitimately broken. Grotius even thinks that each man can

renounce his membership of his own State, and recover his natural liberty and his

goods on leaving the country.1 It would be indeed absurd if all the citizens in

assembly could not do what each can do by himself.

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BOOK IV

CHAPTER I

That The General Will Is Indestructible

As long as several men in assembly regard themselves as a single body, they have

only a single will which is concerned with their common preservation and general

well-being. In this case, all the springs of the State are vigorous and simple and its

rules clear and luminous; there are no embroilments or conflicts of interests; the

common good is everywhere clearly apparent, and only good sense is needed to

perceive it. Peace, unity and equality are the enemies of political subtleties. Men who

are upright and simple are difficult to deceive because of their simplicity; lures and

ingenious pretexts fail to impose upon them, and they are not even subtle enough to

be dupes. When, among the happiest people in the world, bands of peasants are seen

regulating affairs of State under an oak, and always acting wisely, can we help

scorning the ingenious methods of other nations, which make themselves illustrious

and wretched with so much art and mystery?

A State so governed needs very few laws; and, as it becomes necessary to issue new

ones, the necessity is universally seen. The first man to propose them merely says

what all have already felt, and there is no question of factions or intrigues or

eloquence in order to secure the passage into law of what every one has already

decided to do, as soon as he is sure that the rest will act with him.

Theorists are led into error because, seeing only States that have been from the

beginning wrongly constituted, they are struck by the impossibility of applying such a

policy to them. They make great game of all the absurdities a clever rascal or an

insinuating speaker might get the people of Paris or London to believe. They do not

know that Cromwell would have been put to “the bells” by the people of Berne, and

the Duc de Beaufort on the treadmill by the Genevese.

But when the social bond begins to be relaxed and the State to grow weak, when

particular interests begin to make themselves felt and the smaller societies to exercise

an influence over the larger, the common interest changes and finds opponents:

opinion is no longer unanimous; the general will ceases to be the will of all;

contradictory views and debates arise; and the best advice is not taken without

question.

Finally, when the State, on the eve of ruin, maintains only a vain, illusory and formal

existence, when in every heart the social bond is broken, and the meanest interest

brazenly lays hold of the sacred name of “public good,” the general will becomes

mute: all men, guided by secret motives, no more give their views as citizens than if

the State had never been; and iniquitous decrees directed solely to private interest get

passed under the name of laws.

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Does it follow from this that the general will is exterminated or corrupted? Not at all:

it is always constant, unalterable and pure; but it is subordinated to other wills which

encroach upon its sphere. Each man, in detaching his interest from the common

interest, sees clearly that he cannot entirely separate them; but his share in the public

mishaps seems to him negligible beside the exclusive good he aims at making his

own. Apart from this particular good, he wills the general good in his own interest, as

strongly as any one else. Even in selling his vote for money, he does not extinguish in

himself the general will, but only eludes it. The fault he commits is that of changing

the state of the question, and answering something different from what he is asked.

Instead of saying, by his vote, “It is to the advantage of the State,” he says, “It is of

advantage to this or that man or party that this or that view should prevail.” Thus the

law of public order in assemblies is not so much to maintain in them the general will

as to secure that the question be always put to it, and the answer always given by it.

I could here set down many reflections on the simple right of voting in every act of

Sovereignty—a right which no-one can take from the citizens—and also on the right

of stating views, making proposals, dividing and discussing, which the government is

always most careful to leave solely to its members; but this important subject would

need a treatise to itself, and it is impossible to say everything in a single work.

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CHAPTER II

Voting

It may be seen, from the last chapter, that the way in which general business is

managed may give a clear enough indication of the actual state of morals and the

health of the body politic. The more concert reigns in the assemblies, that is, the

nearer opinion approaches unanimity, the greater is the dominance of the general will.

On the other hand, long debates, dissensions and tumult proclaim the ascendancy of

particular interests and the decline of the State.

This seems less clear when two or more orders enter into the constitution, as

patricians and plebeians did at Rome; for quarrels between these two orders often

disturbed the comitia, even in the best days of the Republic. But the exception is

rather apparent than real; for then, through the defect that is inherent in the body

politic, there were, so to speak, two States in one, and what is not true of the two

together is true of either separately. Indeed, even in the most stormy times, the

plebiscita of the people, when the Senate did not interfere with them, always went

through quietly and by large majorities. The citizens having but one interest, the

people had but a single will.

At the other extremity of the circle, unanimity recurs; this is the case when the

citizens, having fallen into servitude, have lost both liberty and will. Fear and flattery

then change votes into acclamation; deliberation ceases, and only worship or

malediction is left. Such was the vile manner in which the senate expressed its views

under the Emperors. It did so sometimes with absurd precautions. Tacitus observes

that, under Otho, the senators, while they heaped curses on Vitellius, contrived at the

same time to make a deafening noise, in order that, should he ever become their

master, he might not know what each of them had said.

On these various considerations depend the rules by which the methods of counting

votes and comparing opinions should be regulated, according as the general will is

more or less easy to discover, and the State more or less in its decline.

There is but one law which, from its nature, needs unanimous consent. This is the

social compact; for civil association is the most voluntary of all acts. Every man being

born free and his own master, no-one, under any pretext whatsoever, can make any

man subject without his consent. To decide that the son of a slave is born a slave is to

decide that he is not born a man.

If then there are opponents when the social compact is made, their opposition does not

invalidate the contract, but merely prevents them from being included in it. They are

foreigners among citizens. When the State is instituted, residence constitutes consent;

to dwell within its territory is to submit to the Sovereign.1

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Apart from this primitive contract, the vote of the majority always binds all the rest.

This follows from the contract itself. But it is asked how a man can be both free and

forced to conform to wills that are not his own. How are the opponents at once free

and subject to laws they have not agreed to?

I retort that the question is wrongly put. The citizen gives his consent to all the laws,

including those which are passed in spite of his opposition, and even those which

punish him when he dares to break any of them. The constant will of all the members

of the State is the general will; by virtue of it they are citizens and free.2 When in the

popular assembly a law is proposed, what the people is asked is not exactly whether it

approves or rejects the proposal, but whether it is in conformity with the general will,

which is their will. Each man, in giving his vote, states his opinion on that point; and

the general will is found by counting votes. When therefore the opinion that is

contrary to my own prevails, this proves neither more nor less than that I was

mistaken, and that what I thought to be the general will was not so. If my particular

opinion had carried the day I should have achieved the opposite of what was my will;

and it is in that case that I should not have been free.

This presupposes, indeed, that all the qualities of the general will still reside in the

majority: when they cease to do so, whatever side a man may take, liberty is no longer

possible.

In my earlier demonstration of how particular wills are substituted for the general will

in public deliberation, I have adequately pointed out the practicable methods of

avoiding this abuse; and I shall have more to say of them later on. I have also given

the principles for determining the proportional number of votes for declaring that will.

A difference of one vote destroys equality; a single opponent destroys unanimity; but

between equality and unanimity, there are several grades of unequal division, at each

of which this proportion may be fixed in accordance with the condition and the needs

of the body politic.

There are two general rules that may serve to regulate this relation. First, the more

grave and important the questions discussed, the nearer should the opinion that is to

prevail approach unanimity. Secondly, the more the matter in hand calls for speed, the

smaller the prescribed difference in the numbers of votes may be allowed to become:

where an instant decision has to be reached, a majority of one vote should be enough.

The first of these two rules seems more in harmony with the laws, and the second

with practical affairs. In any case, it is the combination of them that gives the best

proportions for determining the majority necessary.

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CHAPTER III

Elections

In the elections of the prince and the magistrates, which are, as I have said, complex

acts, there are two possible methods of procedure, choice and lot. Both have been

employed in various republics, and a highly complicated mixture of the two still

survives in the election of the Doge at Venice.

“Election by lot,” says Montesquieu, “is democratic in nature.” I agree that it is so;

but in what sense? “The lot,” he goes on, “is a way of making choice that is unfair to

nobody; it leaves each citizen a reasonable hope of serving his country.” These are not

reasons.

If we bear in mind that the election of rulers is a function of government, and not of

Sovereignty, we shall see why the lot is the method more natural to democracy, in

which the administration is better in proportion as the number of its acts is small.

In every real democracy, magistracy is not an advantage, but a burdensome charge

which cannot justly be imposed on one individual rather than another. The law alone

can lay the charge on him on whom the lot falls. For, the conditions being then the

same for all, and the choice not depending on any human will, there is no particular

application to alter the universality of the law.

In an aristocracy, the prince chooses the prince, the government is preserved by itself,

and voting is rightly ordered.

The instance of the election of the Doge of Venice confirms, instead of destroying,

this distinction; the mixed form suits a mixed government. For it is an error to take the

government of Venice for a real aristocracy. If the people has no share in the

government, the nobility is itself the people. A host of poor Barnabotes never gets

near any magistracy, and its nobility consists merely in the empty title of Excellency,

and in the right to sit in the Great Council. As this Great Council is as numerous as

our General Council at Geneva, its illustrious members have no more privileges than

our plain citizens. It is indisputable that, apart from the extreme disparity between the

two republics, the bourgeoisie of Geneva is exactly equivalent to the patriciate of

Venice; our natives and inhabitants correspond to the townsmen and the people of

Venice; our peasants correspond to the subjects on the mainland; and, however that

republic be regarded, if its size be left out of account, its government is no more

aristocratic than our own. The whole difference is that, having no life-ruler, we do

not, like Venice, need to use the lot.

Election by lot would have few disadvantages in a real democracy, in which, as

equality would everywhere exist in morals and talents as well as in principles and

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fortunes, it would become almost a matter of indifference who was chosen. But I have

already said that a real democracy is only an ideal.

When choice and lot are combined, positions that require special talents, such as

military posts, should be filled by the former; the latter does for cases, such as judicial

offices, in which good sense, justice, and integrity are enough, because in a State that

is well constituted, these qualities are common to all the citizens.

Neither lot nor vote has any place in monarchical government. The monarch being by

right sole prince and only magistrate, the choice of his lieutenants belongs to none but

him. When the Abbé de Saint-Pierre proposed that the Councils of the King of France

should be multiplied, and their members elected by ballot, he did not see that he was

proposing to change the form of government.

I should now speak of the methods of giving and counting opinions in the assembly of

the people; but perhaps an account of this aspect of the Roman constitution will more

forcibly illustrate all the rules I could lay down. It is worth the while of a judicious

reader to follow in some detail the working of public and private affairs in a Council

consisting of two hundred thousand men.

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CHAPTER IV

The Roman Comitia

We are without well-certified records of the first period of Rome’s existence; it even

appears very probable that most of the stories told about it are fables; indeed,

generally speaking, the most instructive part of the history of peoples, that which

deals with their foundation, is what we have least of. Experience teaches us every day

what causes lead to the revolutions of empires; but, as no new peoples are now

formed, we have almost nothing beyond conjecture to go upon in explaining how they

were created.

The customs we find established show at least that these customs had an origin. The

traditions that go back to those origins, that have the greatest authorities behind them,

and that are confirmed by the strongest proofs, should pass for the most certain. These

are the rules I have tried to follow in inquiring how the freest and most powerful

people on earth exercised its supreme power.

After the foundation of Rome, the new-born republic, that is, the army of its founder,

composed of Albans, Sabines and foreigners, was divided into three classes, which,

from this division, took the name of tribes. Each of these tribes was subdivided into

ten curiæ, and each curia into decuriæ, headed by leaders called curiones and

decuriones.

Besides this, out of each tribe was taken a body of one hundred Equites or Knights,

called a century, which shows that these divisions, being unnecessary in a town, were

at first merely military. But an instinct for greatness seems to have led the little

township of Rome to provide itself in advance with a political system suitable for the

capital of the world.

Out of this original division an awkward situation soon arose. The tribes of the Albans

(Ramnenses) and the Sabines (Tatienses) remained always in the same condition,

while that of the foreigners (Luceres) continually grew as more and more foreigners

came to live at Rome, so that it soon surpassed the others in strength. Servius

remedied this dangerous fault by changing the principle of cleavage, and substituting

for the racial division, which he abolished, a new one based on the quarter of the town

inhabited by each tribe. Instead of three tribes he created four, each occupying and

named after one of the hills of Rome. Thus, while redressing the inequality of the

moment, he also provided for the future; and in order that the division might be one of

persons as well as localities, he forbade the inhabitants of one quarter to migrate to

another, and so prevented the mingling of the races.

He also doubled the three old centuries of Knights and added twelve more, still

keeping the old names, and by this simple and prudent method, succeeded in making a

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distinction between the body of Knights and the people, without a murmur from the

latter.

To the four urban tribes Servius added fifteen others called rural tribes, because they

consisted of those who lived in the country, divided into fifteen cantons.

Subsequently, fifteen more were created, and the Roman people finally found itself

divided into thirty-five tribes, as it remained down to the end of the Republic.

The distinction between urban and rural tribes had one effect which is worth mention,

both because it is without parallel elsewhere, and because to it Rome owed the

preservation of her morality and the enlargement of her empire. We should have

expected that the urban tribes would soon monopolise power and honours, and lose no

time in bringing the rural tribes into disrepute; but what happened was exactly the

reverse. The taste of the early Romans for country life is well known. This taste they

owed to their wise founder, who made rural and military labours go along with

liberty, and, so to speak, relegated to the town arts, crafts, intrigue, fortune and

slavery.

Since therefore all Rome’s most illustrious citizens lived in the fields and tilled the

earth, men grew used to seeking there alone the mainstays of the republic. This

condition, being that of the best patricians, was honoured by all men; the simple and

laborious life of the villager was preferred to the slothful and idle life of the

bourgeoisie of Rome; and he who, in the town, would have been but a wretched

proletarian, became, as a labourer in the fields, a respected citizen. Not without

reason, says Varro, did our great-souled ancestors establish in the village the nursery

of the sturdy and valiant men who defended them in time of war and provided for

their sustenance in time of peace. Pliny states positively that the country tribes were

honoured because of the men of whom they were composed; while cowards men

wished to dishonour were transferred, as a public disgrace, to the town tribes. The

Sabine Appius Claudius, when he had come to settle in Rome, was loaded with

honours and enrolled in a rural tribe, which subsequently took his family name.

Lastly, freedmen always entered the urban, and never the rural, tribes: nor is there a

single example, throughout the Republic, of a freedman, though he had become a

citizen, reaching any magistracy.

This was an excellent rule; but it was carried so far that in the end it led to a change

and certainly to an abuse in the political system.

First the censors, after having for a long time claimed the right of transferring citizens

arbitrarily from one tribe to another, allowed most persons to enrol themselves in

whatever tribe they pleased. This permission certainly did no good, and further robbed

the censorship of one of its greatest resources. Moreover, as the great and powerful all

got themselves enrolled in the country tribes, while the freedmen who had become

citizens remained with the populace in the town tribes, both soon ceased to have any

local or territorial meaning, and all were so confused that the members of one could

not be told from those of another except by the registers; so that the idea of the word

tribe became personal instead of real, or rather came to be little more than a chimera.

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It happened in addition that the town tribes, being more on the spot, were often the

stronger in the comitia and sold the State to those who stooped to buy the votes of the

rabble composing them.

As the founder had set up ten curiæ in each tribe, the whole Roman people, which

was then contained within the walls, consisted of thirty curiæ, each with its temples,

its gods, its officers, its priests and its festivals, which were called compitalia and

corresponded to the paganalia, held in later times by the rural tribes.

When Servius made his new division, as the thirty curiæ could not be shared equally

between his four tribes, and as he was unwilling to interfere with them, they became a

further division of the inhabitants of Rome, quite independent of the tribes: but in the

case of the rural tribes and their members there was no question of curiæ, as the tribes

had then become a purely civil institution, and, a new system of levying troops having

been introduced, the military divisions of Romulus were superfluous. Thus, although

every citizen was enrolled in a tribe, there were very many who were not members of

a curia.

Servius made yet a third division, quite distinct from the two we have mentioned,

which became, in its effects, the most important of all. He distributed the whole

Roman people into six classes, distinguished neither by place nor by person, but by

wealth; the first classes included the rich, the last the poor, and those between persons

of moderate means. These six classes were subdivided into one hundred and ninety-

three other bodies, called centuries, which were so divided that the first class alone

comprised more than half of them, while the last comprised only one. Thus the class

that had the smallest number of members had the largest number of centuries, and the

whole of the last class only counted as a single subdivision, although it alone included

more than half the inhabitants of Rome.

In order that the people might have the less insight into the results of this

arrangement, Servius tried to give it a military tone: in the second class he inserted

two centuries of armourers, and in the fourth two of makers of instruments of war: in

each class, except the last, he distinguished young and old, that is, those who were

under an obligation to bear arms and those whose age gave them legal exemption. It

was this distinction, rather than that of wealth, which required frequent repetition of

the census or counting. Lastly, he ordered that the assembly should be held in the

Campus Martius, and that all who were of age to serve should come there armed.

The reason for his not making in the last class also the division of young and old was

that the populace, of whom it was composed, was not given the right to bear arms for

its country: a man had to possess a hearth to acquire the right to defend it, and of all

the troops of beggars who to-day lend lustre to the armies of kings, there is perhaps

not one who would not have been driven with scorn out of a Roman cohort, at a time

when soldiers were the defenders of liberty.

In this last class, however, proletarians were distinguished from capite censi. The

former, not quite reduced to nothing, at least gave the State citizens, and sometimes,

when the need was pressing, even soldiers. Those who had nothing at all, and could

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be numbered only by counting heads, were regarded as of absolutely no account, and

Marius was the first who stooped to enrol them.

Without deciding now whether this third arrangement was good or bad in itself, I

think I may assert that it could have been made practicable only by the simple morals,

the disinterestedness, the liking for agriculture and the scorn for commerce and for

love of gain which characterised the early Romans. Where is the modern people

among whom consuming greed, unrest, intrigue, continual removals, and perpetual

changes of fortune, could let such a system last for twenty years without turning the

State upside down? We must indeed observe that morality and the censorship, being

stronger than this institution, corrected its defects at Rome, and that the rich man

found himself degraded to the class of the poor for making too much display of his

riches.

From all this it is easy to understand why only five classes are almost always

mentioned, though there were really six. The sixth, as it furnished neither soldiers to

the army nor votes in the Campus Martius,1 and was almost without function in the

State, was seldom regarded as of any account.

These were the various ways in which the Roman people was divided. Let us now see

the effect on the assemblies. When lawfully summoned, these were called comitia:

they were usually held in the public square at Rome or in the Campus Martius, and

were distinguished as Comitia Curiata, Comitia Centuriata, and Comitia Tributa,

according to the form under which they were convoked. The Comitia Curiata were

founded by Romulus; the Centuriata by Servius; and the Tributa by the tribunes of

the people. No law received its sanction and no magistrate was elected, save in the

comitia; and as every citizen was enrolled in a curia, a century, or a tribe, it follows

that no citizen was excluded from the right of voting, and that the Roman people was

truly sovereign both de jure and de facto.

For the comitia to be lawfully assembled, and for their acts to have the force of law,

three conditions were necessary. First, the body or magistrate convoking them had to

possess the necessary authority; secondly, the assembly had to be held on a day

allowed by law; and thirdly, the auguries had to be favourable.

The reason for the first regulation needs no explanation; the second is a matter of

policy. Thus, the comitia might not be held on festivals or market-days, when the

country-folk, coming to Rome on business, had not time to spend the day in the public

square. By means of the third, the senate held in check the proud and restive people,

and meetly restrained the ardour of seditious tribunes, who, however, found more than

one way of escaping this hindrance.

Laws and the election of rulers were not the only questions submitted to the judgment

of the comitia: as the Roman people had taken on itself the most important functions

of government, it may be said that the lot of Europe was regulated in its assemblies.

The variety of their objects gave rise to the various forms these took, according to the

matters on which they had to pronounce.

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In order to judge of these various forms, it is enough to compare them. Romulus,

when he set up curiæ, had in view the checking of the senate by the people, and of the

people by the senate, while maintaining his ascendancy over both alike. He therefore

gave the people, by means of this assembly, all the authority of numbers to balance

that of power and riches, which he left to the patricians. But, after the spirit of

monarchy, he left all the same a greater advantage to the patricians in the influence of

their clients on the majority of votes. This excellent institution of patron and client

was a masterpiece of statesmanship and humanity without which the patriciate, being

flagrantly in contradiction to the republican spirit, could not have survived. Rome

alone has the honour of having given to the world this great example, which never led

to any abuse, and yet has never been followed.

As the assemblies by curiæ persisted under the kings till the time of Servius, and the

reign of the later Tarquin was not regarded as legitimate, royal laws were called

generally leges curiatæ.

Under the Republic, the curiæ, still confined to the four urban tribes, and including

only the populace of Rome, suited neither the senate, which led the patricians, nor the

tribunes, who, though plebeians, were at the head of the well-to-do citizens. They

therefore fell into disrepute, and their degradation was such, that thirty lictors used to

assemble and do what the Comitia Curiata should have done.

The division by centuries was so favourable to the aristocracy that it is hard to see at

first how the senate ever failed to carry the day in the comitia bearing their name, by

which the consuls, the censors and the other curule magistrates were elected. Indeed,

of the hundred and ninety-three centuries into which the six classes of the whole

Roman people were divided, the first class contained ninety-eight; and, as voting went

solely by centuries, this class alone had a majority over all the rest. When all these

centuries were in agreement, the rest of the votes were not even taken; the decision of

the smallest number passed for that of the multitude, and it may be said that, in the

Comitia Centuriata, decisions were regulated far more by depth of purses than by the

number of votes.

But this extreme authority was modified in two ways. First, the tribunes as a rule, and

always a great number of plebeians, belonged to the class of the rich, and so

counterbalanced the influence of the patricians in the first class.

The second way was this. Instead of causing the centuries to vote throughout in order,

which would have meant beginning always with the first, the Romans always chose

one by lot which proceeded alone to the election; after this all the centuries were

summoned another day according to their rank, and the same election was repeated,

and as a rule confirmed. Thus the authority of example was taken away from rank,

and given to the lot on a democratic principle.

From this custom resulted a further advantage. The citizens from the country had

time, between the two elections, to inform themselves of the merits of the candidate

who had been provisionally nominated, and did not have to vote without knowledge

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of the case. But, under the pretext of hastening matters, the abolition of this custom

was achieved, and both elections were held on the same day.

The Comitia Tributa were properly the council of the Roman people. They were

convoked by the tribunes alone; at them the tribunes were elected and passed their

plebiscita. The senate not only had no standing in them, but even no right to be

present; and the senators, being forced to obey laws on which they could not vote,

were in this respect less free than the meanest citizens. This injustice was altogether

ill-conceived, and was alone enough to invalidate the decrees of a body to which all

its members were not admitted. Had all the patricians attended the comitia by virtue

of the right they had as citizens, they would not, as mere private individuals, have had

any considerable influence on a vote reckoned by counting heads, where the meanest

proletarian was as good as the princeps senatus.

It may be seen, therefore, that besides the order which was achieved by these various

ways of distributing so great a people and taking its votes, the various methods were

not reducible to forms indifferent in themselves, but the results of each were relative

to the objects which caused it to be preferred.

Without going here into further details, we may gather from what has been said above

that the Comitia Tributa were the most favourable to popular government, and the

Comitia Centuriata to aristocracy. The Comitia Curiata, in which the populace of

Rome formed the majority, being fitted only to further tyranny and evil designs,

naturally fell into disrepute, and even seditious persons abstained from using a

method which too clearly revealed their projects. It is indisputable that the whole

majesty of the Roman people lay solely in the Comitia Centuriata, which alone

included all; for the Comitia Curiata excluded the rural tribes, and the Comitia

Tributa the senate and the patricians.

As for the method of taking the vote, it was among the ancient Romans as simple as

their morals, although not so simple as at Sparta. Each man declared his vote aloud,

and a clerk duly wrote it down; the majority in each tribe determined the vote of the

tribe, the majority of the tribes that of the people, and so with curiæ and centuries.

This custom was good as long as honesty was triumphant among the citizens, and

each man was ashamed to vote publicly in favour of an unjust proposal or an

unworthy subject; but, when the people grew corrupt and votes were bought, it was

fitting that voting should be secret in order that purchasers might be restrained by

mistrust, and rogues be given the means of not being traitors.

I know that Cicero attacks this change, and attributes partly to it the ruin of the

Republic. But though I feel the weight Cicero’s authority must carry on such a point, I

cannot agree with him; I hold, on the contrary, that, for want of enough such changes,

the destruction of the State must be hastened. Just as the regimen of health does not

suit the sick, we should not wish to govern a people that has been corrupted by the

laws that a good people requires. There is no better proof of this rule than the long life

of the Republic of Venice, of which the shadow still exists, solely because its laws are

suitable only for men who are wicked.

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The citizens were provided, therefore, with tablets by means of which each man could

vote without any one knowing how he voted: new methods were also introduced for

collecting the tablets, for counting voices, for comparing numbers, etc.; but all these

precautions did not prevent the good faith of the officers charged with these

functions1 from being often suspect. Finally, to prevent intrigues and trafficking in

votes, edicts were issued; but their very number proves how useless they were.

Towards the close of the Republic, it was often necessary to have recourse to

extraordinary expedients in order to supplement the inadequacy of the laws.

Sometimes miracles were supposed; but this method, while it might impose on the

people, could not impose on those who governed. Sometimes an assembly was hastily

called together, before the candidates had time to form their factions: sometimes a

whole sitting was occupied with talk, when it was seen that the people had been won

over and was on the point of taking up a wrong position. But in the end ambition

eluded all attempts to check it; and the most incredible fact of all is that, in the midst

of all these abuses, the vast people, thanks to its ancient regulations, never ceased to

elect magistrates, to pass laws, to judge cases, and to carry through business both

public and private, almost as easily as the senate itself could have done.

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[Back to Table of Contents]

CHAPTER V

The Tribunate

When an exact proportion cannot be established between the constituent parts of the

State, or when causes that cannot be removed continually alter the relation of one part

to another, recourse is had to the institution of a peculiar magistracy that enters into

no corporate unity with the rest. This restores to each term its right relation to the

others, and provides a link or middle term between either prince and people, or prince

and Sovereign, or, if necessary, both at once.

This body, which I shall call the tribunate, is the preserver of the laws and of the

legislative power. It serves sometimes to protect the Sovereign against the

government, as the tribunes of the people did at Rome; sometimes to uphold the

government against the people, as the Council of Ten now does at Venice; and

sometimes to maintain the balance between the two, as the Ephors did at Sparta.

The tribunate is not a constituent part of the city, and should have no share in either

legislative or executive power; but this very fact makes its own power the greater: for,

while it can do nothing, it can prevent anything from being done. It is more sacred and

more revered, as the defender of the laws, than the prince who executes them, or than

the Sovereign which ordains them. This was seen very clearly at Rome, when the

proud patricians, for all their scorn of the people, were forced to bow before one of its

officers, who had neither auspices nor jurisdiction.

The tribunate, wisely tempered, is the strongest support a good constitution can have;

but if its strength is ever so little excessive, it upsets the whole State. Weakness, on

the other hand, is not natural to it: provided it is something, it is never less than it

should be.

It degenerates into tyranny when it usurps the executive power, which it should

confine itself to restraining, and when it tries to dispense with the laws, which it

should confine itself to protecting. The immense power of the Ephors, harmless as

long as Sparta preserved its morality, hastened corruption when once it had begun.

The blood of Agis, slaughtered by these tyrants, was avenged by his successor; the

crime and the punishment of the Ephors alike hastened the destruction of the republic,

and after Cleomenes Sparta ceased to be of any account. Rome perished in the same

way: the excessive power of the tribunes, which they had usurped by degrees, finally

served, with the help of laws made to secure liberty, as a safeguard for the emperors

who destroyed it. As for the Venetian Council of Ten, it is a tribunal of blood, an

object of horror to patricians and people alike; and, so far from giving a lofty

protection to the laws, it does nothing, now they have become degraded, but strike in

the darkness blows of which no one dare take note.

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The tribunate, like the government, grows weak as the number of its members

increases. When the tribunes of the Roman people, who first numbered only two, and

then five, wished to double that number, the senate let them do so, in the confidence

that it could use one to check another, as indeed it afterwards freely did.

The best method of preventing usurpations by so formidable a body, though no

government has yet made use of it, would be not to make it permanent, but to regulate

the periods during which it should remain in abeyance. These intervals, which should

not be long enough to give abuses time to grow strong, may be so fixed by law that

they can easily be shortened at need by extraordinary commissions.

This method seems to me to have no disadvantages, because, as I have said, the

tribunate, which forms no part of the constitution, can be removed without the

constitution being affected. It seems to be also efficacious, because a newly restored

magistrate starts not with the power his predecessor exercised, but with that which the

law allows him.

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[Back to Table of Contents]

CHAPTER VI

The Dictatorship

The inflexibility of the laws, which prevents them from adapting themselves to

circumstances, may, in certain cases, render them disastrous, and make them bring

about, at a time of crisis, the ruin of the State. The order and slowness of the forms

they enjoin require a space of time which circumstances sometimes withhold. A

thousand cases against which the legislator has made no provision may present

themselves, and it is a highly necessary part of foresight to be conscious that

everything cannot be foreseen.

It is wrong therefore to wish to make political institutions so strong as to render it

impossible to suspend their operation. Even Sparta allowed its laws to lapse.

However, none but the greatest dangers can counter-balance that of changing the

public order, and the sacred power of the laws should never be arrested save when the

existence of the country is at stake. In these rare and obvious cases, provision is made

for the public security by a particular act entrusting it to him who is most worthy. This

commitment may be carried out in either of two ways, according to the nature of the

danger.

If increasing the activity of the government is a sufficient remedy, power is

concentrated in the hands of one or two of its members: in this case the change is not

in the authority of the laws, but only in the form of administering them. If, on the

other hand, the peril is of such a kind that the paraphernalia of the laws are an obstacle

to their preservation, the method is to nominate a supreme ruler, who shall silence all

the laws and suspend for a moment the sovereign authority. In such a case, there is no

doubt about the general will, and it is clear that the people’s first intention is that the

State shall not perish. Thus the suspension of the legislative authority is in no sense its

abolition; the magistrate who silences it cannot make it speak; he dominates it, but

cannot represent it. He can do anything, except make laws.

The first method was used by the Roman senate when, in a consecrated formula, it

charged the consuls to provide for the safety of the Republic. The second was

employed when one of the two consuls nominated a dictator:1 a custom Rome

borrowed from Alba.

During the first period of the Republic, recourse was very often had to the

dictatorship, because the State had not yet a firm enough basis to be able to maintain

itself by the strength of its constitution alone. As the state of morality then made

superfluous many of the precautions which would have been necessary at other times,

there was no fear that a dictator would abuse his authority, or try to keep it beyond his

term of office. On the contrary, so much power appeared to be burdensome to him

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who was clothed with it, and he made all speed to lay it down, as if taking the place of

the laws had been too troublesome and too perilous a position to retain.

It is therefore the danger not of its abuse, but of its cheapening, that makes me attack

the indiscreet use of this supreme magistracy in the earliest times. For as long as it

was freely employed at elections, dedications and purely formal functions, there was

danger of its becoming less formidable in time of need, and of men growing

accustomed to regarding as empty a title that was used only on occasions of empty

ceremonial.

Towards the end of the Republic, the Romans, having grown more circumspect, were

as unreasonably sparing in the use of the dictatorship as they had formerly been

lavish. It is easy to see that their fears were without foundation, that the weakness of

the capital secured it against the magistrates who were in its midst; that a dictator

might, in certain cases, defend the public liberty, but could never endanger it; and that

the chains of Rome would be forged, not in Rome itself, but in her armies. The weak

resistance offered by Marius to Sulla, and by Pompey to Cæsar, clearly showed what

was to be expected from authority at home against force from abroad.

This misconception led the Romans to make great mistakes; such, for example, as the

failure to nominate a dictator in the Catilinarian conspiracy. For, as only the city

itself, with at most some province in Italy, was concerned, the unlimited authority the

laws gave to the dictator would have enabled him to make short work of the

conspiracy, which was, in fact, stifled only by a combination of lucky chances human

prudence had no right to expect.

Instead, the senate contented itself with entrusting its whole power to the consuls, so

that Cicero, in order to take effective action, was compelled on a capital point to

exceed his powers; and if, in the first transports of joy, his conduct was approved, he

was justly called, later on, to account for the blood of citizens spilt in violation of the

laws. Such a reproach could never have been levelled at a dictator. But the consul’s

eloquence carried the day; and he himself, Roman though he was, loved his own glory

better than his country, and sought, not so much the most lawful and secure means of

saving the State, as to get for himself the whole honour of having done so.1 He was

therefore justly honoured as the liberator of Rome, and also justly punished as a law-

breaker. However brilliant his recall may have been, it was undoubtedly an act of

pardon.

However this important trust be conferred, it is important that its duration should be

fixed at a very brief period, incapable of being ever prolonged. In the crises which

lead to its adoption, the State is either soon lost, or soon saved; and, the present need

passed, the dictatorship becomes either tyrannical or idle. At Rome, where dictators

held office for six months only, most of them abdicated before their time was up. If

their term had been longer, they might well have tried to prolong it still further, as the

decemvirs did when chosen for a year. The dictator had only time to provide against

the need that had caused him to be chosen; he had none to think of further projects.

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[Back to Table of Contents]

CHAPTER VII

The Censorship

As the law is the declaration of the general will, the censorship is the declaration of

the public judgment: public opinion is the form of law which the censor administers,

and, like the prince, only applies to particular cases.

The censorial tribunal, so far from being the arbiter of the people’s opinion, only

declares it, and, as soon as the two part company, its decisions are null and void.

It is useless to distinguish the morality of a nation from the objects of its esteem; both

depend on the same principle and are necessarily indistinguishable. There is no people

on earth the choice of whose pleasures is not decided by opinion rather than nature.

Right men’s opinions, and their morality will purge itself. Men always love what is

good or what they find good; it is in judging what is good that they go wrong. This

judgment, therefore, is what must be regulated. He who judges of morality judges of

honour; and he who judges of honour finds his law in opinion.

The opinions of a people are derived from its constitution; although the law does not

regulate morality, it is legislation that gives it birth. When legislation grows weak,

morality degenerates; but in such cases the judgment of the censors will not do what

the force of the laws has failed to effect.

From this it follows that the censorship may be useful for the preservation of morality,

but can never be so for its restoration. Set up censors while the laws are vigorous; as

soon as they have lost their vigour, all hope is gone; no legitimate power can retain

force when the laws have lost it.

The censorship upholds morality by preventing opinion from growing corrupt, by

preserving its rectitude by means of wise applications, and sometimes even by fixing

it when it is still uncertain. The employment of seconds in duels, which had been

carried to wild extremes in the kingdom of France, was done away with merely by

these words in a royal edict: “As for those who are cowards enough to call upon

seconds.” This judgment, in anticipating that of the public, suddenly decided it. But

when edicts from the same source tried to pronounce duelling itself an act of

cowardice, as indeed it is, then, since common opinion does not regard it as such, the

public took no notice of a decision on a point on which its mind was already made up.

I have stated elsewhere1 that as public opinion is not subject to any constraint, there

need be no trace of it in the tribunal set up to represent it. It is impossible to admire

too much the art with which this resource, which we moderns have wholly lost, was

employed by the Romans, and still more by the Lacedæmonians.

A man of bad morals having made a good proposal in the Spartan Council, the Ephors

neglected it, and caused the same proposal to be made by a virtuous citizen. What an

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honour for the one, and what a disgrace for the other, without praise or blame of

either! Certain drunkards from Samos2 polluted the tribunal of the Ephors: the next

day, a public edict gave Samians permission to be filthy. An actual punishment would

not have been so severe as such an impunity. When Sparta has pronounced on what is

or is not right, Greece makes no appeal from her judgments.

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CHAPTER VIII

Civil Religion

At first men had no kings save the gods, and no government save theocracy. They

reasoned like Caligula, and, at that period, reasoned aright. It takes a long time for

feeling so to change that men can make up their minds to take their equals as masters,

in the hope that they will profit by doing so.

From the mere fact that God was set over every political society, it followed that there

were as many gods as peoples. Two peoples that were strangers the one to the other,

and almost always enemies, could not long recognise the same master: two armies

giving battle could not obey the same leader. National divisions thus led to

polytheism, and this in turn gave rise to theological and civil intolerance, which, as

we shall see hereafter, are by nature the same.

The fancy the Greeks had for rediscovering their gods among the barbarians arose

from the way they had of regarding themselves as the natural Sovereigns of such

peoples. But there is nothing so absurd as the erudition which in our days identifies

and confuses gods of different nations. As if Moloch, Saturn and Chronos could be

the same god! As if the Phœnician Baal, the Greek Zeus, and the Latin Jupiter could

be the same! As if there could still be anything common to imaginary beings with

different names!

If it is asked how in pagan times, where each State had its cult and its gods, there were

no wars of religion, I answer that it was precisely because each State, having its own

cult as well as its own government, made no distinction between its gods and its laws.

Political war was also theological; the provinces of the gods were, so to speak, fixed

by the boundaries of nations. The god of one people had no right over another. The

gods of the pagans were not jealous gods; they shared among themselves the empire

of the world: even Moses and the Hebrews sometimes lent themselves to this view by

speaking of the God of Israel. It is true, they regarded as powerless the gods of the

Canaanites, a proscribed people condemned to destruction, whose place they were to

take; but remember how they spoke of the divisions of the neighbouring peoples they

were forbidden to attack! “Is not the possession of what belongs to your god Chamos

lawfully your due?” said Jephthah to the Ammonites. “We have the same title to the

lands our conquering God has made his own.”1 Here, I think, there is a recognition

that the rights of Chamos and those of the God of Israel are of the same nature.

But when the Jews, being subject to the kings of Babylon, and, subsequently, to those

of Syria, still obstinately refused to recognise any god save their own, their refusal

was regarded as rebellion against their conqueror, and drew down on them the

persecutions we read of in their history, which are without parallel till the coming of

Christianity.2

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Every religion, therefore, being attached solely to the laws of the State which

prescribed it, there was no way of converting a people except by enslaving it, and

there could be no missionaries save conquerors. The obligation to change cults being

the law to which the vanquished yielded, it was necessary to be victorious before

suggesting such a change. So far from men fighting for the gods, the gods, as in

Homer, fought for men; each asked his god for victory, and repayed him with new

altars. The Romans, before taking a city, summoned its gods to quit it; and, in leaving

the Tarentines their outraged gods, they regarded them as subject to their own and

compelled to do them homage. They left the vanquished their gods as they left them

their laws. A wreath to the Jupiter of the Capitol was often the only tribute they

imposed.

Finally, when, along with their empire, the Romans had spread their cult and their

gods, and had themselves often adopted those of the vanquished, by granting to both

alike the rights of the city, the peoples of that vast empire insensibly found themselves

with multitudes of gods and cults, everywhere almost the same; and thus paganism

throughout the known world finally came to be one and the same religion.

It was in these circumstances that Jesus came to set up on earth a spiritual kingdom,

which, by separating the theological from the political system, made the State no

longer one, and brought about the internal divisions which have never ceased to

trouble Christian peoples. As the new idea of a kingdom of the other world could

never have occurred to pagans, they always looked on the Christians as really rebels,

who, while feigning to submit, were only waiting for the chance to make themselves

independent and their masters, and to usurp by guile the authority they pretended in

their weakness to respect. This was the cause of the persecutions.

What the pagans had feared took place. Then everything changed its aspect: the

humble Christians changed their language, and soon this so-called kingdom of the

other world turned, under a visible leader, into the most violent of earthly despotisms.

However, as there have always been a prince and civil laws, this double power and

conflict of jurisdiction have made all good polity impossible in Christian States; and

men have never succeeded in finding out whether they were bound to obey the master

or the priest.

Several peoples, however, even in Europe and its neighbourhood, have desired

without success to preserve or restore the old system: but the spirit of Christianity has

everywhere prevailed. The sacred cult has always remained or again become

independent of the Sovereign, and there has been no necessary link between it and the

body of the State. Mahomet held very sane views, and linked his political system well

together; and, as long as the form of his government continued under the caliphs who

succeeded him, that government was indeed one, and so far good. But the Arabs,

having grown prosperous, lettered, civilised, slack and cowardly, were conquered by

barbarians: the division between the two powers began again; and, although it is less

apparent among the Mahometans than among the Christians, it none the less exists,

especially in the sect of Ali, and there are States, such as Persia, where it is

continually making itself felt.

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Among us, the Kings of England have made themselves heads of the Church, and the

Czars have done the same: but this title has made them less its masters than its

ministers; they have gained not so much the right to change it, as the power to

maintain it: they are not its legislators, but only its princes. Wherever the clergy is a

corporate body,1 it is master and legislator in its own country. There are thus two

powers, two Sovereigns, in England and in Russia, as well as elsewhere.

Of all Christian writers, the philosopher Hobbes alone has seen the evil and how to

remedy it, and has dared to propose the reunion of the two heads of the eagle, and the

restoration throughout of political unity, without which no State or government will

ever be rightly constituted. But he should have seen that the masterful spirit of

Christianity is incompatible with his system, and that the priestly interest would

always be stronger than that of the State. It is not so much what is false and terrible in

his political theory, as what is just and true, that has drawn down hatred on it.2

I believe that if the study of history were developed from this point of view, it would

be easy to refute the contrary opinions of Bayle and Warburton, one of whom holds

that religion can be of no use to the body politic, while the other, on the contrary,

maintains that Christianity is its strongest support. We should demonstrate to the

former that no State has ever been founded without a religious basis, and to the latter,

that the law of Christianity at bottom does more harm by weakening than good by

strengthening the constitution of the State. To make myself understood, I have only to

make a little more exact the too vague ideas of religion as relating to this subject.

Religion, considered in relation to society, which is either general or particular, may

also be divided into two kinds: the religion of man, and that of the citizen. The first,

which has neither temples, nor altars, nor rites, and is confined to the purely internal

cult of the supreme God and the eternal obligations of morality, is the religion of the

Gospel pure and simple, the true theism, what may be called natural divine right or

law. The other, which is codified in a single country, gives it its gods, its own tutelary

patrons; it has its dogmas, its rites, and its external cult prescribed by law; outside the

single nation that follows it, all the world is in its sight infidel, foreign and barbarous;

the duties and rights of man extend for it only as far as its own altars. Of this kind

were all the religions of early peoples, which we may define as civil or positive divine

right or law.

There is a third sort of religion of a more singular kind, which gives men two codes of

legislation, two rulers, and two countries, renders them subject to contradictory duties,

and makes it impossible for them to be faithful both to religion and to citizenship.

Such are the religions of the Lamas and of the Japanese, and such is Roman

Christianity, which may be called the religion of the priest. It leads to a sort of mixed

and anti-social code which has no name.

In their political aspect, all these three kinds of religion have their defects. The third is

so clearly bad, that it is waste of time to stop to prove it such. All that destroys social

unity is worthless; all institutions that set man in contradiction to himself are

worthless.

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The second is good in that it unites the divine cult with love of the laws, and, making

country the object of the citizens’ adoration, teaches them that service done to the

State is service done to its tutelary god. It is a form of theocracy, in which there can

be no pontiff save the prince, and no priests save the magistrates. To die for one’s

country then becomes martyrdom; violation of its laws, impiety; and to subject one

who is guilty to public execration is to condemn him to the anger of the gods: Sacer

estod.

On the other hand, it is bad in that, being founded on lies and error, it deceives men,

makes them credulous and superstitious, and drowns the true cult of the Divinity in

empty ceremonial. It is bad, again, when it becomes tyrannous and exclusive, and

makes a people bloodthirsty and intolerant, so that it breathes fire and slaughter, and

regards as a sacred act the killing of every one who does not believe in its gods. The

result is to place such a people in a natural state of war with all others, so that its

security is deeply endangered.

There remains therefore the religion of man or Christianity—not the Christianity of

to-day, but that of the Gospel, which is entirely different. By means of this holy,

sublime, and real religion all men, being children of one God, recognise one another

as brothers, and the society that unites them is not dissolved even at death.

But this religion, having no particular relation to the body politic, leaves the laws in

possession of the force they have in themselves without making any addition to it; and

thus one of the great bonds that unite society considered in severalty fails to operate.

Nay, more, so far from binding the hearts of the citizens to the State, it has the effect

of taking them away from all earthly things. I know of nothing more contrary to the

social spirit.

We are told that a people of true Christians would form the most perfect society

imaginable. I see in this supposition only one great difficulty: that a society of true

Christians would not be a society of men.

I say further that such a society, with all its perfection, would be neither the strongest

nor the most lasting: the very fact that it was perfect would rob it of its bond of union;

the flaw that would destroy it would lie in its very perfection.

Every one would do his duty; the people would be lawabiding, the rulers just and

temperate; the magistrates upright and incorruptible; the soldiers would scorn death;

there would be neither vanity nor luxury. So far, so good; but let us hear more.

Christianity as a religion is entirely spiritual, occupied solely with heavenly things;

the country of the Christian is not of this world. He does his duty, indeed, but does it

with profound indifference to the good or ill success of his cares. Provided he has

nothing to reproach himself with, it matters little to him whether things go well or ill

here on earth. If the State is prosperous, he hardly dares to share in the public

happiness, for fear he may grow proud of his country’s glory; if the State is

languishing, he blesses the hand of God that is hard upon His people.

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For the State to be peaceable and for harmony to be maintained, all the citizens

without exception would have to be good Christians; if by ill hap there should be a

single self-seeker or hypocrite, a Catiline or a Cromwell, for instance, he would

certainly get the better of his pious compatriots. Christian charity does not readily

allow a man to think hardly of his neighbours. As soon as, by some trick, he has

discovered the art of imposing on them and getting hold of a share in the public

authority, you have a man established in dignity; it is the will of God that he be

respected: very soon you have a power; it is God’s will that it be obeyed: and if the

power is abused by him who wields it, it is the scourge wherewith God punishes His

children. There would be scruples about driving out the usurper: public tranquillity

would have to be disturbed, violence would have to be employed, and blood spilt; all

this accords ill with Christian meekness; and after all, in this vale of sorrows, what

does it matter whether we are free men or serfs? The essential thing is to get to

heaven, and resignation is only an additional means of doing so.

If war breaks out with another State, the citizens march readily out to battle; not one

of them thinks of flight; they do their duty, but they have no passion for victory; they

know better how to die than how to conquer. What does it matter whether they win or

lose? Does not Providence know better than they what is meet for them? Only think to

what account a proud, impetuous and passionate enemy could turn their stoicism! Set

over against them those generous peoples who were devoured by ardent love of glory

and of their country, imagine your Christian republic face to face with Sparta or

Rome: the pious Christians will be beaten, crushed and destroyed, before they know

where they are, or will owe their safety only to the contempt their enemy will

conceive for them. It was to my mind a fine oath that was taken by the soldiers of

Fabius, who swore, not to conquer or die, but to come back victorious—and kept their

oath. Christians would never have taken such an oath; they would have looked on it as

tempting God.

But I am mistaken in speaking of a Christian republic; the terms are mutually

exclusive. Christianity preaches only servitude and dependence. Its spirit is so

favourable to tyranny that it always profits by such a régime. True Christians are

made to be slaves, and they know it and do not much mind: this short life counts for

too little in their eyes.

I shall be told that Christian troops are excellent. I deny it. Show me an instance. For

my part, I know of no Christian troops. I shall be told of the Crusades. Without

disputing the valour of the Crusaders, I answer that, so far from being Christians, they

were the priests’ soldiery, citizens of the Church. They fought for their spiritual

country, which the Church had, somehow or other, made temporal. Well understood,

this goes back to paganism: as the Gospel sets up no national religion, a holy war is

impossible among Christians.

Under the pagan emperors, the Christian soldiers were brave; every Christian writer

affirms it, and I believe it: it was a case of honourable emulation of the pagan troops.

As soon as the emperors were Christian, this emulation no longer existed, and, when

the Cross had driven out the eagle, Roman valour wholly disappeared.

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But, setting aside political considerations, let us come back to what is right, and settle

our principles on this important point. The right which the social compact gives the

Sovereign over the subjects does not, we have seen, exceed the limits of public

expediency.1 The subjects then owe the Sovereign an account of their opinions only

to such an extent as they matter to the community. Now, it matters very much to the

community that each citizen should have a religion. That will make him love his duty;

but the dogmas of that religion concern the State and its members only so far as they

have reference to morality and to the duties which he who professes them is bound to

do to others. Each man may have, over and above, what opinions he pleases, without

it being the Sovereign’s business to take cognisance of them; for, as the Sovereign has

no authority in the other world, whatever the lot of its subjects may be in the life to

come, that is not its business, provided they are good citizens in this life.

There is therefore a purely civil profession of faith of which the Sovereign should fix

the articles, not exactly as religious dogmas, but as social sentiments without which a

man cannot be a good citizen or a faithful subject.1 While it can compel no one to

believe them, it can banish from the State whoever does not believe them—it can

banish him, not for impiety, but as an anti-social being, incapable of truly loving the

laws and justice, and of sacrificing, at need, his life to his duty. If any one, after

publicly recognising these dogmas, behaves as if he does not believe them, let him be

punished by death: he has committed the worst of all crimes, that of lying before the

law.

The dogmas of civil religion ought to be few, simple, and exactly worded, without

explanation or commentary. The existence of a mighty, intelligent and beneficent

Divinity, possessed of foresight and providence, the life to come, the happiness of the

just, the punishment of the wicked, the sanctity of the social contract and the laws:

these are its positive dogmas. Its negative dogmas I confine to one, intolerance, which

is a part of the cults we have rejected.

Those who distinguish civil from theological intolerance are, to my mind, mistaken.

The two forms are inseparable. It is impossible to live at peace with those we regard

as damned; to love them would be to hate God who punishes them: we positively

must either reclaim or torment them. Wherever theological intolerance is admitted, it

must inevitably have some civil effect;1 and as soon as it has such an effect, the

Sovereign is no longer Sovereign even in the temporal sphere: thenceforth priests are

the real masters, and kings only their ministers.

Now that there is and can be no longer an exclusive national religion, tolerance should

be given to all religions that tolerate others, so long as their dogmas contain nothing

contrary to the duties of citizenship. But whoever dares to say: Outside the Church is

no salvation, ought to be driven from the State, unless the State is the Church, and the

prince the pontiff. Such a dogma is good only in a theocratic government; in any

other, it is fatal. The reason for which Henry IV is said to have embraced the Roman

religion ought to make every honest man leave it, and still more any prince who

knows how to reason.

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CHAPTER IX

Conclusion

Now that I have laid down the true principles of political right, and tried to give the

State a basis of its own to rest on, I ought next to strengthen it by its external relations,

which would include the law of nations, commerce, the right of war and conquest,

public right, leagues, negotiations, treaties, etc. But all this forms a new subject that is

far too vast for my narrow scope. I ought throughout to have kept to a more limited

sphere.

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A DISCOURSE Which Won The Prize At The Academy Of

Dijon In 1750, On This Question Proposed By The Academy:

Has The Restoration Of The Arts And Sciences Had A Purifying

Effect Upon Morals?

Barbarus hic ego sum, qui non intelligor illis.—Ovid.1

PREFACE

The following pages contain a discussion of one of the most sublime and interesting

of all moral questions. It is not concerned, however, with those metaphysical

subtleties, which of late have found their way into every department of literature, and

from which even our academic curricula are not always free. We have now to do with

one of those truths on which the happiness of mankind depends.

I foresee that I shall not readily be forgiven for having taken up the position I have

adopted. Setting myself up against all that is nowadays most admired, I can expect no

less than a universal outcry against me: nor is the approbation of a few sensible men

enough to make me count on that of the public. But I have taken my stand, and I shall

be at no pains to please either intellectuals or men of the world. There are in all ages

men born to be in bondage to the opinions of the society in which they live. There are

not a few, who to-day play the free-thinker and the philosopher, who would, if they

had lived in the time of the League, have been no more than fanatics. No author, who

has a mind to outlive his own age, should write for such readers.

A word more and I have done. As I did not expect the honour conferred on me, I had,

since sending in my Discourse, so altered and enlarged it as almost to make it a new

work; but in the circumstances I have felt bound to publish it just as it was when it

received the prize. I have only added a few notes, and left two alterations which are

easily recognisable, of which the Academy possibly might not have approved. The

respect, gratitude and even justice I owe to that body seemed to me to demand this

acknowledgment.

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A DISCOURSE ON THE MORAL EFFECTS OF THE ARTS

AND SCIENCES

Decipimur Specie Recti.—Horace.

The question before me is, “Whether the Restoration of the arts and sciences has had

the effect of purifying or corrupting morals.” Which side am I to take? That,

gentlemen, which becomes an honest man, who is sensible of his own ignorance, and

thinks himself none the worse for it.

I feel the difficulty of treating this subject fittingly, before the tribunal which is to

judge of what I advance. How can I presume to belittle the sciences before one of the

most learned assemblies in Europe, to commend ignorance in a famous Academy, and

reconcile my contempt for study with the respect due to the truly learned?

I was aware of these inconsistencies, but not discouraged by them. It is not science, I

said to myself, that I am attacking; it is virtue that I am defending, and that before

virtuous men—and goodness is even dearer to the good than learning to the learned.

What then have I to fear? The sagacity of the assembly before which I am pleading?

That, I acknowledge, is to be feared; but rather on account of faults of construction

than of the views I hold. Just sovereigns have never hesitated to decide against

themselves in doubtful cases; and indeed the most advantageous situation in which a

just claim can be, is that of being laid before a just and enlightened arbitrator, who is

judge in his own case.

To this motive, which encouraged me, I may add another which finally decided me.

And this is, that as I have upheld the cause of truth to the best of my natural abilities,

whatever my apparent success, there is one reward which cannot fail me. That reward

I shall find in the bottom of my heart.

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THE FIRST PART

It is a noble and beautiful spectacle to see man raising himself, so to speak, from

nothing by his own exertions; dissipating, by the light of reason, all the thick clouds in

which he was by nature enveloped; mounting above himself; soaring in thought even

to the celestial regions; like the sun, encompassing with giant strides the vast extent of

the universe; and, what is still grander and more wonderful, going back into himself,

there to study man and get to know his own nature, his duties and his end. All these

miracles we have seen renewed within the last few generations.

Europe had relapsed into the barbarism of the earliest ages; the inhabitants of this part

of the world, which is at present so highly enlightened, were plunged, some centuries

ago, in a state still worse than ignorance. A scientific jargon, more despicable than

mere ignorance, had usurped the name of knowledge, and opposed an almost

invincible obstacle to its restoration.

Things had come to such a pass, that it required a complete revolution to bring men

back to common sense. This came at last from the quarter from which it was least to

be expected. It was the stupid Mussulman, the eternal scourge of letters, who was the

immediate cause of their revival among us. The fall of the throne of Constantine

brought to Italy the relics of ancient Greece; and with these precious spoils France in

turn was enriched. The sciences soon followed literature, and the art of thinking

joined that of writing: an order which may seem strange, but is perhaps only too

natural. The world now began to perceive the principal advantage of an intercourse

with the Muses, that of rendering mankind more sociable by inspiring them with the

desire to please one another with performances worthy of their mutual approbation.

The mind, as well as the body, has its needs: those of the body are the basis of society,

those of the mind its ornaments.

So long as government and law provide for the security and well-being of men in their

common life, the arts, literature and the sciences, less despotic though perhaps more

powerful, fling garlands of flowers over the chains which weigh them down. They

stifle in men’s breasts that sense of original liberty, for which they seem to have been

born; cause them to love their own slavery, and so make of them what is called a

civilised people.

Necessity raised up thrones; the arts and sciences have made them strong. Powers of

the earth, cherish all talents and protect those who cultivate them.1 Civilised peoples,

cultivate such pursuits: to them, happy slaves, you owe that delicacy and

exquisiteness of taste, which is so much your boast, that sweetness of disposition and

urbanity of manners which make intercourse so easy and agreeable among you—in a

word, the appearance of all the virtues, without being in possession of one of them.

It was for this sort of accomplishment, which is by so much the more captivating as it

seems less affected, that Athens and Rome were so much distinguished in the boasted

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times of their splendour and magnificence: and it is doubtless in the same respect that

our own age and nation will excel all periods and peoples. An air of philosophy

without pedantry; an address at once natural and engaging, distant equally from

Teutonic clumsiness and Italian pantomime; these are the effects of a taste acquired

by liberal studies and improved by conversation with the world. What happiness

would it be for those who live among us, if our external appearance were always a

true mirror of our hearts; if decorum were but virtue; if the maxims we professed were

the rules of our conduct; and if real philosophy were inseparable from the title of a

philosopher! But so many good qualities too seldom go together; virtue rarely appears

in so much pomp and state.

Richness of apparel may proclaim the man of fortune, and elegance the man of taste;

but true health and manliness are known by different signs. It is under the homespun

of the labourer, and not beneath the gilt and tinsel of the courtier, that we should look

for strength and vigour of body.

External ornaments are no less foreign to virtue, which is the strength and activity of

the mind. The honest man is an athlete, who loves to wrestle stark naked; he scorns all

those vile trappings, which prevent the exertion of his strength, and were, for the most

part, invented only to conceal some deformity.

Before art had moulded our behaviour, and taught our passions to speak an artificial

language, our morals were rude but natural; and the different ways in which we

behaved proclaimed at the first glance the difference of our dispositions. Human

nature was not at bottom better then than now; but men found their security in the

ease with which they could see through one another, and this advantage, of which we

no longer feel the value, prevented their having many vices.

In our day, now that more subtle study and a more refined taste have reduced the art

of pleasing to a system, there prevails in modern manners a servile and deceptive

conformity; so that one would think every mind had been cast in the same mould.

Politeness requires this thing; decorum that; ceremony has its forms, and fashion its

laws, and these we must always follow, never the promptings of our own nature.

We no longer dare seem what we really are, but lie under a perpetual restraint; in the

meantime the herd of men, which we call society, all act under the same

circumstances exactly alike, unless very particular and powerful motives prevent

them. Thus we never know with whom we have to deal; and even to know our friends

we must wait for some critical and pressing occasion; that is, till it is too late; for it is

on those very occasions that such knowledge is of use to us.

What a train of vices must attend this uncertainty! Sincere friendship, real esteem, and

perfect confidence are banished from among men. Jealousy, suspicion, fear, coldness,

reserve, hate and fraud lie constantly concealed under that uniform and deceitful veil

of politeness; that boasted candour and urbanity, for which we are indebted to the

light and leading of this age. We shall no longer take in vain by our oaths the name of

our Creator; but we shall insult Him with our blasphemies, and our scrupulous ears

will take no offence. We have grown too modest to brag of our own deserts; but we

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do not scruple to decry those of others. We do not grossly outrage even our enemies,

but artfully calumniate them. Our hatred of other nations diminishes, but patriotism

dies with it. Ignorance is held in contempt; but a dangerous scepticism has succeeded

it. Some vices indeed are condemned and others grown dishonourable; but we have

still many that are honoured with the names of virtues, and it is become necessary that

we should either have, or at least pretend to have them. Let who will extol the

moderation of our modern sages, I see nothing in it but a refinement of intemperance

as unworthy of my commendation as their artificial simplicity.1

Such is the purity to which our morals have attained; this is the virtue we have made

our own. Let the arts and sciences claim the share they have had in this salutary work.

I shall add but one reflection more; suppose an inhabitant of some distant country

should endeavour to form an idea of European morals from the state of the sciences,

the perfection of the arts, the propriety of our public entertainments, the politeness of

our behaviour, the affability of our conversation, our constant professions of

benevolence, and from those tumultuous assemblies of people of all ranks, who seem,

from morning till night, to have no other care than to oblige one another. Such a

stranger, I maintain, would arrive at a totally false view of our morality.

Where there is no effect, it is idle to look for a cause: but here the effect is certain and

the depravity actual; our minds have been corrupted in proportion as the arts and

sciences have improved. Will it be said, that this is a misfortune peculiar to the

present age? No, gentlemen, the evils resulting from our vain curiosity are as old as

the world. The daily ebb and flow of the tides are not more regularly influenced by

the moon, than the morals of a people by the progress of the arts and sciences. As

their light has risen above our horizon, virtue has taken flight, and the same

phenomenon has been constantly observed in all times and places.

Take Egypt, the first school of mankind, that ancient country, famous for its fertility

under a brazen sky; the spot from which Sesostris once set out to conquer the world.

Egypt became the mother of philosophy and the fine arts; soon she was conquered by

Cambyses, and then successively by the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, and finally

the Turks.

Take Greece, once peopled by heroes, who twice vanquished Asia. Letters, as yet in

their infancy, had not corrupted the disposition of its inhabitants; but the progress of

the sciences soon produced a dissoluteness of manners, and the imposition of the

Macedonian yoke: from which time Greece, always learned, always voluptuous and

always a slave, has experienced amid all its revolutions no more than a change of

masters. Not all the eloquence of Demosthenes could breathe life into a body which

luxury and the arts had once enervated.

It was not till the days of Ennius and Terence that Rome, founded by a shepherd, and

made illustrious by peasants, began to degenerate. But after the appearance of an

Ovid, a Catullus, a Martial, and the rest of those numerous obscene authors, whose

very names are enough to put modesty to the blush, Rome, once the shrine of virtue,

became the theatre of vice, a scorn among the nations, and an object of derision even

to barbarians. Thus the capital of the world at length submitted to the yoke of slavery

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it had imposed on others, and the very day of its fall was the eve of that on which it

conferred on one of its citizens the title of Arbiter of Good Taste.

What shall I say of that metropolis of the Eastern Empire, which, by its situation,

seemed destined to be the capital of the world; that refuge of the arts and sciences,

when they were banished from the rest of Europe, more perhaps by wisdom than

barbarism? The most profligate debaucheries, the most abandoned villainies, the most

atrocious crimes, plots, murders and assassinations form the warp and woof of the

history of Constantinople. Such is the pure source from which have flowed to us the

floods of knowledge on which the present age so prides itself.

But wherefore should we seek, in past ages, for proofs of a truth, of which the present

affords us ample evidence? There is in Asia a vast empire, where learning is held in

honour, and leads to the highest dignities in the state. If the sciences improved our

morals, if they inspired us with courage and taught us to lay down our lives for the

good of our country, the Chinese should be wise, free and invincible. But, if there be

no vice they do not practise, no crime with which they are not familiar; if the sagacity

of their ministers, the supposed wisdom of their laws, and the multitude of inhabitants

who people that vast empire, have alike failed to preserve them from the yoke of the

rude and ignorant Tartars, of what use were their men of science and literature? What

advantage has that country reaped from the honours bestowed on its learned men?

Can it be that of being peopled by a race of scoundrels and slaves?

Contrast with these instances the morals of those few nations which, being preserved

from the contagion of useless knowledge, have by their virtues become happy in

themselves and afforded an example to the rest of the world. Such were the first

inhabitants of Persia, a nation so singular that virtue was taught among them in the

same manner as the sciences are with us. They very easily subdued Asia, and possess

the exclusive glory of having had the history of their political institutions regarded as

a philosophical romance. Such were the Scythians, of whom such wonderful eulogies

have come down to us. Such were the Germans, whose simplicity, innocence and

virtue, afforded a most delightful contrast to the pen of an historian, weary of

describing the baseness and villainies of an enlightened, opulent and voluptuous

nation. Such had been even Rome in the days of its poverty and ignorance. And such

has shown itself to be, even in our own times, that rustic nation, whose justly

renowned courage not even adversity could conquer, and whose fidelity no example

could corrupt.1

It is not through stupidity that the people have preferred other activities to those of the

mind. They were not ignorant that in other countries there were men who spent their

time in disputing idly about the sovereign good, and about vice and virtue. They knew

that these useless thinkers were lavish in their own praises, and stigmatised other

nations contemptuously as barbarians. But they noted the morals of these people, and

so learnt what to think of their learning.1

Can it be forgotten that, in the very heart of Greece, there arose a city as famous for

the happy ignorance of its inhabitants, as for the wisdom of its laws; a republic of

demi-gods rather than of men, so greatly superior their virtues seemed to those of

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mere humanity? Sparta, eternal proof of the vanity of science, while the vices, under

the conduct of the fine arts, were being introduced into Athens, even while its tyrant

was carefully collecting together the works of the prince of poets, was driving from

her walls artists and the arts, the learned and their learning!

The difference was seen in the outcome. Athens became the seat of politeness and

taste, the country of orators and philosophers. The elegance of its buildings equalled

that of its language; on every side might be seen marble and canvas, animated by the

hands of the most skilful artists. From Athens we derive those astonishing

performances, which will serve as models to every corrupt age. The picture of

Lacedæmon is not so highly coloured. There, the neighbouring nations used to say,

“men were born virtuous, their native air seeming to inspire them with virtue.” But its

inhabitants have left us nothing but the memory of their heroic actions: monuments

that should not count for less in our eyes than the most curious relics of Athenian

marble.

It is true that, among the Athenians, there were some few wise men who withstood the

general torrent, and preserved their integrity even in the company of the muses. But

hear the judgment which the principal, and most unhappy of them, passed on the

artists and learned men of his day.

“I have considered the poets,” says he, “and I look upon them as people whose talents

impose both on themselves and on others; they give themselves out for wise men, and

are taken for such; but in reality they are anything sooner than that.”

“From the poets,” continues Socrates, “I turned to the artists. Nobody was more

ignorant of the arts than myself; nobody was more fully persuaded that the artists

were possessed of amazing knowledge. I soon discovered, however, that they were in

as bad a way as the poets, and that both had fallen into the same misconception.

Because the most skilful of them excel others in their particular jobs, they think

themselves wiser than all the rest of mankind. This arrogance spoilt all their skill in

my eyes, so that, putting myself in the place of the oracle, and asking myself whether

I would rather be what I am or what they are, know what they know, or know that I

know nothing, I very readily answered, for myself and the god, that I had rather

remain as I am.

“None of us, neither the sophists, nor the poets, nor the orators, nor the artists, nor I,

know what is the nature of the true, the good, or the beautiful. But there is this

difference between us; that, though none of these people know anything, they all think

they know something; whereas for my part, if I know nothing, I am at least in no

doubt of my ignorance. So the superiority of wisdom, imputed to me by the oracle, is

reduced merely to my being fully convinced that I am ignorant of what I do not

know.”

Thus we find Socrates, the wisest of men in the judgment of the god, and the most

learned of all the Athenians in the opinion of all Greece, speaking in praise of

ignorance. Were he alive now, there is little reason to think that our modern scholars

and artists would induce him to change his mind. No, gentlemen, that honest man

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would still persist in despising our vain sciences. He would lend no aid to swell the

flood of books that flows from every quarter: he would leave to us, as he did to his

disciples, only the example and memory of his virtues; that is the noblest method of

instructing mankind.

Socrates had begun at Athens, and the elder Cato proceeded at Rome, to inveigh

against those seductive and subtle Greeks, who corrupted the virtue and destroyed the

courage of their fellow-citizens: culture, however, prevailed. Rome was filled with

philosophers and orators, military discipline was neglected, agriculture was held in

contempt, men formed sects, and forgot their country. To the sacred names of liberty,

disinterestedness and obedience to law, succeeded those of Epicurus, Zeno and

Arcesilaus. It was even a saying among their own philosophers that since learned men

appeared among them, honest men had been in eclipse. Before that time the Romans

were satisfied with the practice of virtue; they were undone when they began to study

it.

What would the great soul of Fabricius have felt, if it had been his misfortune to be

called back to life, when he saw the pomp and magnificence of that Rome, which his

arm had saved from ruin, and his honourable name made more illustrious than all its

conquests. “Ye gods!” he would have said, “what has become of those thatched roofs

and rustic hearths, which were formerly the habitations of temperance and virtue?

What fatal splendour has succeeded the ancient Roman simplicity? What is this

foreign language, this effeminacy of manners? What is the meaning of these statues,

paintings and buildings? Fools, what have you done? You, the lords of the earth, have

made yourselves the slaves of the frivolous nations you have subdued. You are

governed by rhetoricians, and it has been only to enrich architects, painters, sculptors

and stage-players that you have watered Greece and Asia with your blood. Even the

spoils of Carthage are the prize of a flute-player. Romans! Romans! make haste to

demolish those amphitheatres, break to pieces those statues, burn those paintings;

drive from among you those slaves who keep you in subjection, and whose fatal arts

are corrupting your morals. Let other hands make themselves illustrious by such vain

talents; the only talent worthy of Rome is that of conquering the world and making

virtue its ruler. When Cyneas took the Roman senate for an assembly of kings, he was

not struck by either useless pomp or studied elegance. He heard there none of that

futile eloquence, which is now the study and the charm of frivolous orators. What

then was the majesty that Cyneas beheld? Fellow citizens, he saw the noblest sight

that ever existed under heaven, a sight which not all your riches or your arts can

show; an assembly of two hundred virtuous men, worthy to command in Rome, and to

govern the world.”

But let pass the distance of time and place, and let us see what has happened in our

own time and country; or rather let us banish odious descriptions that might offend

our delicacy, and spare ourselves the pains of repeating the same things under

different names. It was not for nothing that I invoked the Manes of Fabricius; for what

have I put into his mouth, that might not have come with as much propriety from

Louis the Twelfth or Henry the Fourth? It is true that in France Socrates would not

have drunk the hemlock, but he would have drunk of a potion infinitely more bitter, of

insult, mockery and contempt a hundred times worse than death.

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Thus it is that luxury, profligacy and slavery, have been, in all ages, the scourge of the

efforts of our pride to emerge from that happy state of ignorance, in which the

wisdom of providence had placed us. That thick veil with which it has covered all its

operations seems to be a sufficient proof that it never designed us for such fruitless

researches. But is there, indeed, one lesson it has taught us, by which we have rightly

profited, or which we have neglected with impunity? Let men learn for once that

nature would have preserved them from science, as a mother snatches a dangerous

weapon from the hands of her child. Let them know that all the secrets she hides are

so many evils from which she protects them, and that the very difficulty they find in

acquiring knowledge is not the least of her bounty towards them. Men are perverse;

but they would have been far worse, if they had had the misfortune to be born learned.

How humiliating are these reflections to humanity, and how mortified by them our

pride should be! What! it will be asked, is uprightness the child of ignorance? Is virtue

inconsistent with learning? What consequences might not be drawn from such

suppositions? But to reconcile these apparent contradictions, we need only examine

closely the emptiness and vanity of those pompous titles, which are so liberally

bestowed on human knowledge, and which so blind our judgment. Let us consider,

therefore, the arts and sciences in themselves. Let us see what must result from their

advancement, and let us not hesitate to admit the truth of all those points on which our

arguments coincide with the inductions we can make from history.

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[Back to Table of Contents]

THE SECOND PART

An ancient tradition passed out of Egypt into Greece, that some god, who was an

enemy to the repose of mankind, was the inventor of the sciences.1 What must the

Egyptians, among whom the sciences first arose, have thought of them? And they

beheld, near at hand, the sources from which they sprang. In fact, whether we turn to

the annals of the world, or eke out with philosophical investigations the uncertain

chronicles of history, we shall not find for human knowledge an origin answering to

the idea we are pleased to entertain of it at present. Astronomy was born of

superstition, eloquence of ambition, hatred, falsehood and flattery; geometry of

avarice; physics of an idle curiosity; and even moral philosophy of human pride. Thus

the arts and sciences owe their birth to our vices; we should be less doubtful of their

advantages, if they had sprung from our virtues.

Their evil origin is, indeed, but too plainly reproduced in their objects. What would

become of the arts, were they not cherished by luxury? If men were not unjust, of

what use were jurisprudence? What would become of history, if there were no tyrants,

wars, or conspiracies? In a word, who would pass his life in barren speculations, if

everybody, attentive only to the obligations of humanity and the necessities of nature,

spent his whole life in serving his country, obliging his friends, and relieving the

unhappy? Are we then made to live and die on the brink of that well at the bottom of

which Truth lies hid? This reflection alone is, in my opinion, enough to discourage at

first setting out every man who seriously endeavours to instruct himself by the study

of philosophy.

What a variety of dangers surrounds us! What a number of wrong paths present

themselves in the investigation of the sciences! Through how many errors, more

perilous than truth itself is useful, must we not pass to arrive at it? The disadvantages

we lie under are evident; for falsehood is capable of an infinite variety of

combinations; but the truth has only one manner of being. Besides, where is the man

who sincerely desires to find it? Or even admitting his good will, by what

characteristic marks is he sure of knowing it? Amid the infinite diversity of opinions

where is the criterion1 by which we may certainly judge of it? Again, what is still

more difficult, should we even be fortunate enough to discover it, who among us will

know how to make right use of it?

If our sciences are futile in the objects they propose, they are no less dangerous in the

effects they produce. Being the effect of idleness, they generate idleness in their turn;

and an irreparable loss of time is the first prejudice which they must necessarily cause

to society. To live without doing some good is a great evil as well in the political as in

the moral world; and hence every useless citizen should be regarded as a pernicious

person. Tell me then, illustrious philosophers, of whom we learn the ratios in which

attraction acts in vacuo; and in the revolution of the planets, the relations of spaces

traversed in equal times; by whom we are taught what curves have conjugate points,

points of inflexion, and cusps; how the soul and body correspond, like two clocks,

without actual communication; what planets may be inhabited; and what insects

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reproduce in an extraordinary manner. Answer me, I say, you from whom we receive

all this sublime information, whether we should have been less numerous, worse

governed, less formidable, less flourishing, or more perverse, supposing you had

taught us none of all these fine things.

Reconsider therefore the importance of your productions; and, since the labours of the

most enlightened of our learned men and the best of our citizens are of so little utility,

tell us what we ought to think of that numerous herd of obscure writers and useless

littérateurs, who devour without any return the substance of the State.

Useless, do I say? Would God they were! Society would be more peaceful, and

morals less corrupt. But these vain and futile declaimers go forth on all sides, armed

with their fatal paradoxes, to sap the foundations of our faith, and nullify virtue. They

smile contemptuously at such old names as patriotism and religion, and consecrate

their talents and philosophy to the destruction and defamation of all that men hold

sacred. Not that they bear any real hatred to virtue or dogma; they are the enemies of

public opinion alone; to bring them to the foot of the altar, it would be enough to

banish them to a land of atheists. What extravagancies will not the rage of singularity

induce men to commit!

The waste of time is certainly a great evil; but still greater evils attend upon literature

and the arts. One is luxury, produced like them by indolence and vanity. Luxury is

seldom unattended by the arts and sciences; and they are always attended by luxury. I

know that our philosophy, fertile in paradoxes, pretends, in contradiction to the

experience of all ages, that luxury contributes to the splendour of States. But, without

insisting on the necessity of sumptuary laws, can it be denied that rectitude of morals

is essential to the duration of empires, and that luxury is diametrically opposed to

such rectitude? Let it be admitted that luxury is a certain indication of wealth; that it

even serves, if you will, to increase such wealth: what conclusion is to be drawn from

this paradox, so worthy of the times? And what will become of virtue if riches are to

be acquired at any cost? The politicians of the ancient world were always talking of

morals and virtue; ours speak of nothing but commerce and money. One of them will

tell you that in such a country a man is worth just as much as he will sell for at

Algiers: another, pursuing the same mode of calculation, finds that in some countries

a man is worth nothing, and in others still less than nothing; they value men as they do

droves of oxen. According to them, a man is worth no more to the State, than the

amount he consumes; and thus a Sybarite would be worth at least thirty

Lacedæmonians. Let these writers tell me, however, which of the two republics,

Sybaris or Sparta, was subdued by a handful of peasants, and which became the terror

of Asia.

The monarchy of Cyrus was conquered by thirty thousand men, led by a prince poorer

than the meanest of Persian Satraps: in like manner the Scythians, the poorest of all

nations, were able to resist the most powerful monarchs of the universe. When two

famous republics contended for the empire of the world, the one rich and the other

poor, the former was subdued by the latter. The Roman empire in its turn, after having

engulfed all the riches of the universe, fell a prey to peoples who knew not even what

riches were. The Franks conquered the Gauls, and the Saxons England, without any

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other treasures than their bravery and their poverty. A band of poor mountaineers,

whose whole cupidity was confined to the possession of a few sheep-skins, having

first given a check to the arrogance of Austria, went on to crush the opulent and

formidable house of Burgundy, which at that time made the potentates of Europe

tremble. In short, all the power and wisdom of the heir of Charles the Fifth, backed by

all the treasures of the Indies, broke before a few herring-fishers. Let our politicians

condescend to lay aside their calculations for a moment, to reflect on these examples;

let them learn for once that money, though it buys everything else, cannot buy morals

and citizens. What then is the precise point in dispute about luxury? It is to know

which is most advantageous to empires, that their existence should be brilliant and

momentary, or virtuous and lasting? I say brilliant, but with what lustre! A taste for

ostentation never prevails in the same minds as a taste for honesty. No, it is

impossible that understandings, degraded by a multitude of futile cares, should ever

rise to what is truly great and noble; even if they had the strength, they would want

the courage.

Every artist loves applause. The praise of his contemporaries is the most valuable part

of his recompense. What then will he do to obtain it, if he have the misfortune to be

born among a people, and at a time, when learning is in vogue, and the superficiality

of youth is in a position to lead the fashion; when men have sacrificed their taste to

those who tyrannise over their liberty, and one sex dare not approve anything but

what is proportionate to the pusillanimity of the other;1 when the greatest

masterpieces of dramatic poetry are condemned, and the noblest of musical

productions neglected? This is what he will do. He will lower his genius to the level

of the age, and will rather submit to compose mediocre works, that will be admired

during his life-time, than labour at sublime achievements which will not be admired

till long after he is dead. Let the famous Voltaire tell us how many nervous and

masculine beauties he has sacrificed to our false delicacy, and how much that is great

and noble, that spirit of gallantry, which delights in what is frivolous and petty, has

cost him.

It is thus that the dissolution of morals, the necessary consequence of luxury, brings

with it in its turn the corruption of taste. Further, if by chance there be found among

men of average ability, an individual with enough strength of mind to refuse to

comply with the spirit of the age, and to debase himself by puerile productions, his lot

will be hard. He will die in indigence and oblivion. This is not so much a prediction,

as a fact already confirmed by experience! Yes, Carle and Pierre Vanloo, the time is

already come when your pencils, destined to increase the majesty of our temples by

sublime and holy images, must fall from your hands, or else be prostituted to adorn

the panels of a coach with lascivious paintings. And you, inimitable Pigal, rival of

Phidias and Praxiteles, whose chisel the ancients would have employed to carve them

gods, whose images almost excuse their idolatry in our eyes; even your hand must

condescend to fashion the belly of an ape, or else remain idle.

We cannot reflect on the morality of mankind without contemplating with pleasure

the picture of the simplicity which prevailed in the earliest times. This image may be

justly compared to a beautiful coast, adorned only by the hands of nature; towards

which our eyes are constantly turned, and which we see receding with regret. While

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men were innocent and virtuous and loved to have the gods for witnesses of their

actions, they dwelt together in the same huts; but when they became vicious, they

grew tired of such inconvenient onlookers, and banished them to magnificent temples.

Finally, they expelled their deities even from these, in order to dwell there

themselves; or at least the temples of the gods were no longer more magnificent than

the palaces of the citizens. This was the height of degeneracy; nor could vice ever be

carried to greater lengths than when it was seen, supported, as it were, at the doors of

the great, on columns of marble, and graven on Corinthian capitals.

As the conveniences of life increase, as the arts are brought to perfection, and luxury

spreads, true courage flags, the virtues disappear; and all this is the effect of the

sciences and of those arts which are exercised in the privacy of men’s dwellings.

When the Goths ravaged Greece, the libraries only escaped the flames owing to an

opinion that was set on foot among them, that it was best to leave the enemy with a

possession so calculated to divert their attention from military exercises, and keep

them engaged in indolent and sedentary occupations.

Charles the Eighth found himself master of Tuscany and the kingdom of Naples,

almost without drawing sword; and all his court attributed this unexpected success to

the fact that the princes and nobles of Italy applied themselves with greater

earnestness to the cultivation of their understandings than to active and martial

pursuits. In fact, says the sensible person who records these characteristics, experience

plainly tells us, that in military matters and all that resemble them application to the

sciences tends rather to make men effeminate and cowardly than resolute and

vigorous.

The Romans confessed that military virtue was extinguished among them, in

proportion as they became connoisseurs in the arts of the painter, the engraver and the

goldsmith, and began to cultivate the fine arts. Indeed, as if this famous country was

to be for ever an example to other nations, the rise of the Medici and the revival of

letters has once more destroyed, this time perhaps for ever, the martial reputation

which Italy seemed a few centuries ago to have recovered.

The ancient republics of Greece, with that wisdom which was so conspicuous in most

of their institutions, forbade their citizens to pursue all those inactive and sedentary

occupations, which by enervating and corrupting the body diminish also the vigour of

the mind. With what courage, in fact, can it be thought that hunger and thirst, fatigues,

dangers and death, can be faced by men whom the smallest want overwhelms and the

slightest difficulty repels? With what resolution can soldiers support the excessive

toils of war, when they are entirely unaccustomed to them? With what spirits can they

make forced marches under officers who have not even the strength to travel on

horseback? It is no answer to cite the reputed valour of all the modern warriors who

are so scientifically trained. I hear much of their bravery in a day’s battle; but I am

told nothing of how they support excessive fatigue, how they stand the severity of the

seasons and the inclemency of the weather. A little sunshine or snow, or the want of a

few superfluities, is enough to cripple and destroy one of our finest armies in a few

days. Intrepid warriors! permit me for once to tell you the truth, which you seldom

hear. Of your bravery I am fully satisfied. I have no doubt that you would have

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triumphed with Hannibal at Cannæ, and at Trasimene: that you would have passed the

Rubicon with Cæsar, and enabled him to enslave his country; but you never would

have been able to cross the Alps with the former, or with the latter to subdue your

own ancestors, the Gauls.

A war does not always depend on the events of battle: there is in generalship an art

superior to that of gaining victories. A man may behave with great intrepidity under

fire, and yet be a very bad officer. Even in the common soldier, a little more strength

and vigour would perhaps be more useful than so much courage, which after all is no

protection from death. And what does it matter to the State whether its troops perish

by cold and fever, or by the sword of the enemy?

If the cultivation of the sciences is prejudicial to military qualities, it is still more so to

moral qualities. Even from our infancy an absurd system of education serves to adorn

our wit and corrupt our judgment. We see, on every side, huge institutions, where our

youth are educated at great expense, and instructed in everything but their duty. Your

children will be ignorant of their own language, when they can talk others which are

not spoken anywhere. They will be able to compose verses which they can hardly

understand; and, without being capable of distinguishing truth from error, they will

possess the art of making them unrecognisable by specious arguments. But

magnanimity, equity, temperance, humanity and courage will be words of which they

know not the meaning. The dear name of country will never strike on their ears; and if

they ever hear speak of God,1 it will be less to fear, than to be frightened of, Him. I

would as soon, said a wise man, that my pupil had spent his time in the tennis court as

in this manner; for there his body at least would have got exercise.

I well know that children ought to be kept employed, and that idleness is for them the

danger most to be feared. But what should they be taught? This is undoubtedly an

important question. Let them be taught what they are to practise when they come to be

men;1 not what they ought to forget.

Our gardens are adorned with statues and our galleries with pictures. What would you

imagine these masterpieces of art, thus exhibited to public admiration, represent? The

great men, who have defended their country, or the still greater men who have

enriched it by their virtues? Far from it. They are the images of every perversion of

heart and mind, carefully selected from ancient mythology, and presented to the early

curiosity of our children, doubtless that they may have before their eyes the

representations of vicious actions, even before they are able to read.

Whence arise all those abuses, unless it be from that fatal inequality introduced

among men by the difference of talents and the cheapening of virtue? This is the most

evident effect of all our studies, and the most dangerous of all their consequences. The

question is no longer whether a man is honest, but whether he is clever. We do not ask

whether a book is useful, but whether it is well-written. Rewards are lavished on with

and ingenuity, while virtue is left unhonoured. There are a thousand prizes for fine

discourses, and none for good actions. I should be glad, however, to know whether the

honour attaching to the best discourse that ever wins the prize in this Academy is

comparable with the merit of having founded the prize.

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A wise man does not go in chase of fortune; but he is by no means insensible to glory,

and when he sees it so ill distributed, his virtue, which might have been animated by a

little emulation, and turned to the advantage of society, droops and dies away in

obscurity and indigence. It is for this reason that the agreeable arts must in time

everywhere be preferred to the useful; and this truth has been but too much confirmed

since the revival of the arts and sciences. We have physicists, geometricians,

chemists, astronomers, poets, musicians, and painters in plenty; but we have no longer

a citizen among us; or if there be found a few scattered over our abandoned

countryside, they are left to perish there unnoticed and neglected. Such is the

condition to which we are reduced, and such are our feelings towards those who give

us our daily bread, and our children milk.

I confess, however, that the evil is not so great as it might have become. The eternal

providence, in placing salutary simples beside noxious plants, and making poisonous

animals contain their own antidote, has taught the sovereigns of the earth, who are its

ministers, to imitate its wisdom. It is by following this example that the truly great

monarch, to whose glory every age will add new lustre, drew from the very bosom of

the arts and sciences, the very fountains of a thousand lapses from rectitude, those

famous societies, which, while they are depositaries of the dangerous trust of human

knowledge, are yet the sacred guardians of morals, by the attention they pay to their

maintenance among themselves in all their purity, and by the demands which they

make on every member whom they admit.

These wise institutions, confirmed by his august successor and imitated by all the

kings of Europe, will serve at least to restrain men of letters, who, all aspiring to the

honour of being admitted into these Academies, will keep watch over themselves, and

endeavour to make themselves worthy of such honour by useful performances and

irreproachable morals. Those Academies also, which, in proposing prizes for literary

merit, make choice of such subjects as are calculated to arouse the love of virtue in

the hearts of citizens, prove that it prevails in themselves, and must give men the rare

and real pleasure of finding learned societies devoting themselves to the

enlightenment of mankind, not only by agreeable exercises of the intellect, but also by

useful instructions.

An objection which may be made is, in fact, only an additional proof of my argument.

So much precaution proves but too evidently the need for it. We never seek remedies

for evils that do not exist. Why, indeed, must these bear all the marks of ordinary

remedies, on account of their inefficacy? The numerous establishments in favour of

the learned are only adapted to make men mistake the objects of the sciences, and turn

men’s attention to the cultivation of them. One would be inclined to think, from the

precautions everywhere taken, that we are overstocked with husbandmen, and are

afraid of a shortage of philosophers. I will not venture here to enter into a comparison

between agriculture and philosophy, as they would not bear it. I shall only ask What is

philosophy? What is contained in the writings of the most celebrated philosophers?

What are the lessons of these friends of wisdom. To hear them, should we not take

them for so many mountebanks, exhibiting themselves in public, and crying out,

Here, Here, come to me, I am the only true doctor? One of them teaches that there is

no such thing as matter, but that everything exists only in representation. Another

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declares that there is no other substance than matter, and no other God than the world

itself. A third tells you that there are no such things as virtue and vice, and that moral

good and evil are chimeras; while a fourth informs you that men are only beasts of

prey, and may conscientiously devour one another. Why, my great philosophers, do

you not reserve these wise and profitable lessons for your friends and children? You

would soon reap the benefit of them, nor should we be under any apprehension of our

own becoming your disciples.

Such are the wonderful men, whom their contemporaries held in the highest esteem

during their lives, and to whom immortality has been attributed since their decease.

Such are the wise maxims we have received from them, and which are transmitted,

from age to age, to our descendants. Paganism, though given over to all the

extravagances of human reason, has left nothing to compare with the shameful

monuments which have been prepared by the art of printing, during the reign of the

gospel. The impious writings of Leucippus and Diagoras perished with their authors.

The world, in their days, was ignorant of the art of immortalising the errors and

extravagancies of the human mind. But thanks to the art of printing1 and the use we

make of it, the pernicious reflections of Hobbes and Spinoza will last for ever. Go,

famous writings, of which the ignorance and rusticity of our forefathers would have

been incapable. Go to our descendants, along with those still more pernicious works

which reek of the corrupted manners of the present age! Let them together convey to

posterity a faithful history of the progress and advantages of our arts and sciences. If

they are read, they will leave not a doubt about the question we are now discussing,

and unless mankind should then be still more foolish than we, they will lift up their

hands to Heaven and exclaim in bitterness of heart: “Almighty God! thou who holdest

in Thy hand the minds of men, deliver us from the fatal arts and sciences of our

forefathers; give us back ignorance, innocence and poverty, which alone can make us

happy and are precious in Thy sight.”

But if the progress of the arts and sciences has added nothing to our real happiness; if

it has corrupted our morals, and if that corruption has vitiated our taste, what are we to

think of the herd of text-book authors, who have removed those impediments which

nature purposely laid in the way to the Temple of the Muses, in order to guard its

approach and try the powers of those who might be tempted to seek knowledge? What

are we to think of those compilers who have indiscreetly broken open the door of the

sciences, and introduced into their sanctuary a populace unworthy to approach it,

when it was greatly to be wished that all who should be found incapable of making a

considerable progress in the career of learning should have been repulsed at the

entrance, and thereby cast upon those arts which are useful to society. A man who

will be all his life a bad versifier, or a third-rate geometrician, might have made

nevertheless an excellent clothier. Those whom nature intended for her disciples have

not needed masters. Bacon, Descartes and Newton, those teachers of mankind, had

themselves no teachers. What guide indeed could have taken them so far as their

sublime genius directed them? Ordinary masters would only have cramped their

intelligence, by confining it within the narrow limits of their own capacity. It was

from the obstacles they met with at first, that they learned to exert themselves, and

bestirred themselves to traverse the vast field which they covered. If it be proper to

allow some men to apply themselves to the study of the arts and sciences, it is only

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those who feel themselves able to walk alone in their footsteps and to outstrip them. It

belongs only to these few to raise monuments to the glory of the human

understanding. But if we are desirous that nothing should be above their genius,

nothing should be beyond their hopes. This is the only encouragement they require.

The soul insensibly adapts itself to the objects on which it is employed, and thus it is

that great occasions produce great men. The greatest orator in the world was Consul

of Rome, and perhaps the greatest of philosophers Lord Chancellor of England. Can it

be conceived that, if the former had only been a professor at some University, and the

latter a pensioner of some Academy, their works would not have suffered from their

situation. Let not princes disdain to admit into their councils those who are most

capable of giving them good advice. Let them renounce the old prejudice, which was

invented by the pride of the great, that the art of governing mankind is more difficult

than that of instructing them; as if it was easier to induce men to do good voluntarily,

than to compel them to it by force. Let the learned of the first rank find an honourable

refuge in their courts; let them there enjoy the only recompense worthy of them, that

of promoting by their influence the happiness of the peoples they have enlightened by

their wisdom. It is by this means only that we are likely to see what virtue, science

and authority can do, when animated by the noblest emulation, and working

unanimously for the happiness of mankind.

But so long as power alone is on one side, and knowledge and understanding alone on

the other, the learned will seldom make great objects their study, princes will still

more rarely do great actions, and the peoples will continue to be, as they are, mean,

corrupt and miserable.

As for us, ordinary men, on whom Heaven has not been pleased to bestow such great

talents; as we are not destined to reap such glory, let us remain in our obscurity. Let

us not covet a reputation we should never attain, and which, in the present state of

things, would never make up to us for the trouble it would have cost us, even if we

were fully qualified to obtain it. Why should we build our happiness on the opinions

of others, when we can find it in our own hearts? Let us leave to others the task of

instructing mankind in their duty, and confine ourselves to the discharge of our own.

We have no occasion for greater knowledge than this.

Virtue! sublime science of simple minds, are such industry and preparation needed if

we are to know you? Are not your principles graven on every heart? Need we do

more, to learn your laws, than examine ourselves, and listen to the voice of

conscience, when the passions are silent?

This is the true philosophy, with which we must learn to be content, without envying

the fame of those celebrated men, whose names are immortal in the republic of letters.

Let us, instead of envying them, endeavour to make, between them and us, that

honourable distinction which was formerly seen to exist between two great peoples,

that the one knew how to speak, and the other how to act, aright.

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[Back to Table of Contents]

A DISCOURSE On A Subject Proposed By The Academy Of

Dijon:

What Is The Origin Of Inequality Among Men, And Is It

Authorised By Natural Law?

Non in depravatis, sed in his quæ bene secundum naturam se habent, considerandum

est quid sit naturale.

Aristotle, Politics, Bk. i, ch. 2.

[We should consider what is natural not in things which are depraved but in those

which are rightly ordered according to nature.]

Dedication To The REPUBLIC OF GENEVA

Most Honourable, Magnificent and Sovereign Lords, convinced that only a virtuous

citizen can confer on his country honours which it can accept, I have been for thirty

years past working to make myself worthy to offer you some public homage; and, this

fortunate opportunity supplementing in some degree the insufficiency of my efforts, I

have thought myself entitled to follow in embracing it the dictates of the zeal which

inspires me, rather than the right which should have been my authorisation. Having

had the happiness to be born among you, how could I reflect on the equality which

nature has ordained between men, and the inequality which they have introduced,

without reflecting on the profound wisdom by which both are in this State happily

combined and made to coincide, in the manner that is most in conformity with natural

law, and most favourable to society, to the maintenance of public order and to the

happiness of individuals? In my researches after the best rules common sense can lay

down for the constitution of a government, I have been so struck at finding them all in

actuality in your own, that even had I not been born within your walls I should have

thought it indispensable for me to offer this picture of human society to that people,

which of all others seems to be possessed of its greatest advantages, and to have best

guarded against its abuses.

If I had had to make choice of the place of my birth, I should have preferred a society

which had an extent proportionate to the limits of the human faculties; that is, to the

possibility of being well governed: in which every person being equal to his

occupation, no one should be obliged to commit to others the functions with which he

was entrusted: a State, in which all the individuals being well known to one another,

neither the secret machinations of vice, nor the modesty of virtue should be able to

escape the notice and judgment of the public; and in which the pleasant custom of

seeing and knowing one another should make the love of country rather a love of the

citizens than of its soil.

I should have wished to be born in a country in which the interest of the Sovereign

and that of the people must be single and identical; to the end that all the movements

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of the machine might tend always to the general happiness. And as this could not be

the case, unless the Sovereign and the people were one and the same person, it

follows that I should have wished to be born under a democratic government, wisely

tempered.

I should have wished to live and die free: that is, so far subject to the laws that neither

I, nor anybody else, should be able to cast off their honourable yoke: the easy and

salutary yoke which the haughtiest necks bear with the greater docility, as they are

made to bear no other.

I should have wished then that no one within the State should be able to say he was

above the law; and that no one without should be able to dictate so that the State

should be obliged to recognise his authority. For, be the constitution of a government

what it may, if there be within its jurisdiction a single man who is not subject to the

law, all the rest are necessarily at his discretion. And if there be a national ruler

within, and a foreign ruler without, however they may divide their authority, it is

impossible that both should be duly obeyed, or that the State should be well governed.

I should not have chosen to live in a republic of recent institution, however excellent

its laws; for fear the government, being perhaps otherwise framed than the

circumstances of the moment might require, might disagree with the new citizens, or

they with it, and the State run the risk of overthrow and destruction almost as soon as

it came into being. For it is with liberty as it is with those solid and succulent foods, or

with those generous wines which are well adapted to nourish and fortify robust

constitutions that are used to them, but ruin and intoxicate weak and delicate

constitutions to which they are not suited. Peoples once accustomed to masters are not

in a condition to do without them. If they attempt to shake off the yoke, they still

more estrange themselves from freedom, as, by mistaking for it an unbridled license

to which it is diametrically opposed, they nearly always manage, by their revolutions,

to hand themselves over to seducers, who only make their chains heavier than before.

The Roman people itself, a model for all free peoples, was wholly incapable of

governing itself when it escaped from the oppression of the Tarquins. Debased by

slavery, and the ignominious tasks which had been imposed upon it, it was at first no

better than a stupid mob, which it was necessary to control and govern with the

greatest wisdom; in order that, being accustomed by degrees to breathe the health-

giving air of liberty, minds which had been enervated or rather brutalised under

tyranny, might gradually acquire that severity of morals and spirit of fortitude which

made it at length the people of all most worthy of respect. I should, then, have sought

out for my country some peaceful and happy Republic, of an antiquity that lost itself,

as it were, in the night of time: which had experienced only such shocks as served to

manifest and strengthen the courage and patriotism of its subjects; and whose citizens,

long accustomed to a wise independence, were not only free, but worthy to be so.

I should have wished to choose myself a country, diverted, by a fortunate impotence,

from the brutal love of conquest, and secured, by a still more fortunate situation, from

the fear of becoming itself the conquest of other States: a free city situated between

several nations, none of which should have any interest in attacking it, while each had

an interest in preventing it from being attacked by the others; in short, a Republic

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which should have nothing to tempt the ambition of its neighbours, but might

reasonably depend on their assistance in case of need. It follows that a republican

State so happily situated could have nothing to fear but from itself; and that, if its

members trained themselves to the use of arms, it would be rather to keep alive that

military ardour and courageous spirit which are so proper among free-men, and tend

to keep up their taste for liberty, than from the necessity of providing for their

defence.

I should have sought a country, in which the right of legislation was vested in all the

citizens; for who can judge better than they of the conditions under which they had

best dwell together in the same society? Not that I should have approved of Plebiscita,

like those among the Romans; in which the rulers in the State, and those most

interested in its preservation, were excluded from the deliberations on which in many

cases its security depended; and in which, by the most absurd inconsistency, the

magistrates were deprived of rights which the meanest citizens enjoyed.

On the contrary, I should have desired that, in order to prevent self-interested and ill-

conceived projects, and all such dangerous innovations as finally ruined the

Athenians, each man should not be at liberty to propose new laws at pleasure; but that

this right should belong exclusively to the magistrates; and that even they should use

it with so much caution, the people, on its side, be so reserved in giving its consent to

such laws, and the promulgation of them be attended with so much solemnity, that

before the constitution could be upset by them, there might be time enough for all to

be convinced, that it is above all the great antiquity of the laws which makes them

sacred and venerable, that men soon learn to despise laws which they see daily

altered, and that States, by accustoming themselves to neglect their ancient customs

under the pretext of improvement, often introduce greater evils than those they

endeavour to remove.

I should have particularly avoided, as necessarily ill-governed, a Republic in which

the people, imagining themselves in a position to do without magistrates, or at least to

leave them with only a precarious authority, should imprudently have kept for

themselves the administration of civil affairs and the execution of their own laws.

Such must have been the rude constitution of primitive governments, directly

emerging from a state of nature; and this was another of the vices that contributed to

the downfall of the Republic of Athens.

But I should have chosen a community in which the individuals, content with

sanctioning their laws, and deciding the most important public affairs in general

assembly and on the motion of the rulers, had established honoured tribunals,

carefully distinguished the several departments, and elected year by year some of the

most capable and upright of their fellow-citizens to administer justice and govern the

State; a community, in short, in which the virtue of the magistrates thus bearing

witness to the wisdom of the people, each class reciprocally did the other honour. If in

such a case any fatal misunderstandings arose to disturb the public peace, even these

intervals of blindness and error would bear the marks of moderation, mutual esteem,

and a common respect for the laws; which are sure signs and pledges of a

reconciliation as lasting as sincere. Such are the advantages, most honourable,

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magnificent and sovereign lords, which I should have sought in the country in which I

should have chosen to be born. And if providence had added to all these a delightful

situation, a temperate climate, a fertile soil, and the most beautiful countryside under

Heaven, I should have desired only, to complete my felicity, the peaceful enjoyment

of all these blessings, in the bosom of this happy country; to live at peace in the sweet

society of my fellow-citizens, and practising towards them, from their own example,

the duties of friendship, humanity, and every other virtue, to leave behind me the

honourable memory of a good man, and an upright and virtuous patriot.

But, if less fortunate or too late grown wise, I had seen myself reduced to end an

infirm and languishing life in other climates, vainly regretting that peaceful repose

which I had forfeited in the imprudence of youth, I should at least have entertained the

same feelings in my heart, though denied the opportunity of making use of them in

my native country. Filled with a tender and disinterested love for my distant fellow-

citizens, I should have addressed them from my heart, much in the following terms.

“My dear fellow-citizens, or rather my brothers, since the ties of blood, as well as the

laws, unite almost all of us, it gives me pleasure that I cannot think of you, without

thinking, at the same time, of all the blessings you enjoy, and of which none of you,

perhaps, more deeply feels the value than I who have lost them. The more I reflect on

your civil and political condition, the less can I conceive that the nature of human

affairs could admit of a better. In all other governments, when there is a question of

ensuring the greatest good of the State, nothing gets beyond projects and ideas, or at

best bare possibilities. But as for you, your happiness is complete, and you have

nothing to do but enjoy it; you require nothing more to be made perfectly happy, than

to know how to be satisfied with being so. Your sovereignty, acquired or recovered by

the sword, and maintained for two centuries past by your valour and wisdom, is at

length fully and universally acknowledged. Your boundaries are fixed, your rights

confirmed and your repose secured by honourable treaties. Your constitution is

excellent, being not only dictated by the profoundest wisdom, but guaranteed by great

and friendly powers. Your State enjoys perfect tranquillity; you have neither wars nor

conquerors to fear; you have no other master than the wise laws you have yourselves

made; and these are administered by upright magistrates of your own choosing. You

are neither so wealthy as to be enervated by effeminacy, and thence to lose, in the

pursuit of frivolous pleasures, the taste for real happiness and solid virtue; nor poor

enough to require more assistance from abroad than your own industry is sufficient to

procure you. In the meantime the precious privilege of liberty, which in great nations

is maintained only by submission to the most exorbitant impositions, costs you hardly

anything for its preservation.

May a Republic, so wisely and happily constituted, last for ever, for an example to

other nations, and for the felicity of its own citizens! This is the only prayer you have

left to make, the only precaution that remains to be taken. It depends, for the future,

on yourselves alone (not to make you happy, for your ancestors have saved you that

trouble), but to render that happiness lasting, by your wisdom in its enjoyment. It is on

your constant union, your obedience to the laws, and your respect for their ministers,

that your preservation depends. If there remains among you the smallest trace of

bitterness or distrust, hasten to destroy it, as an accursed leaven which sooner or later

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must bring misfortune and ruin on the State. I conjure you all to look into your hearts,

and to hearken to the secret voice of conscience. Is there any among you who can

find, throughout the universe, a more upright, more enlightened and more honourable

body than your magistracy? Do not all its members set you an example of moderation,

of simplicity of manners, of respect for the laws, and of the most sincere harmony?

Place, therefore, without reserve, in such wise superiors, that salutary confidence

which reason ever owes to virtue. Consider that they are your own choice, that they

justify that choice, and that the honours due to those whom you have dignified are

necessarily yours by reflexion. Not one of you is so ignorant as not to know that,

when the laws lose their force and those who defend them their authority, security and

liberty are universally impossible. Why, therefore, should you hesitate to do that

cheerfully and with just confidence which you would all along have been bound to do

by your true interest, your duty and reason itself?

Let not a culpable and pernicious indifference to the maintenance of the constitution

ever induce you to neglect, in case of need, the prudent advice of the most enlightened

and zealous of your fellow-citizens; but let equity, moderation and firmness of

resolution continue to regulate all your proceedings, and to exhibit you to the whole

universe as the example of a valiant and modest people, jealous equally of their

honour and of their liberty. Beware particularly, as the last piece of advice I shall give

you, of sinister constructions and venomous rumours, the secret motives of which are

often more dangerous than the actions at which they are levelled. A whole house will

be awake and take the first alarm given by a good and trusty watch-dog, who barks

only at the approach of thieves; but we hate the importunity of those noisy curs, which

are perpetually disturbing the public repose, and whose continual ill-timed warnings

prevent our attending to them, when they may perhaps be necessary.”

And you, most honourable and magnificent lords, the worthy and revered magistrates

of a free people, permit me to offer you in particular my duty and homage. If there is

in the world a station capable of conferring honour on those who fill it, it is

undoubtedly that which virtue and talents combine to bestow, that of which you have

made yourselves worthy, and to which you have been promoted by your fellow-

citizens. Their worth adds a new lustre to your own; while, as you have been chosen,

by men capable of governing others, to govern themselves, I cannot but hold you as

much superior to all other magistrates, as a free people, and particularly that over

which you have the honour to preside, is by its wisdom and its reason superior to the

populace of other States.

Be it permitted me to cite an example of which there ought to have existed better

records, and one which will be ever near to my heart. I cannot recall to mind, without

the sweetest emotions, the memory of that virtuous citizen, to whom I owe my being,

and by whom I was often instructed, in my infancy, in the respect which is due to you.

I see him still, living by the work of his hands, and feeding his soul on the sublimest

truths. I see the works of Tacitus, Plutarch and Grotius, lying before him in the midst

of the tools of his trade. At his side stands his dear son, receiving, alas with too little

profit, the tender instructions of the best of fathers. But, if the follies of youth made

me for a while forget his wise lessons, I have at length the happiness to be conscious

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that, whatever propensity one may have to vice, it is not easy for an education, with

which love has mingled, to be entirely thrown away.

Such, my most honourable and magnificent lords, are the citizens, and even the

common inhabitants of the State which you govern; such are those intelligent and

sensible men, of whom, under the name of workmen and the people, it is usual, in

other nations, to have a low and false opinion. My father, I own with pleasure, was in

no way distinguished among his fellow-citizens. He was only such as they all are; and

yet, such as he was, there is no country, in which his acquaintance would not have

been coveted, and cultivated even with advantage by men of the highest character. It

would not become me, nor is it, thank Heaven, at all necessary for me to remind you

of the regard which such men have a right to expect of their magistrates, to whom

they are equal both by education and by the rights of nature and birth, and inferior

only, by their own will, by that preference which they owe to your merit, and, for

giving you, can claim some sort of acknowledgment on your side. It is with a lively

satisfaction I understand that the greatest candour and condescension attend, in all

your behaviour towards them, on that gravity which becomes the ministers of the law;

and that you so well repay them, by your esteem and attention, the respect and

obedience which they owe to you. This conduct is not only just but prudent; as it

happily tends to obliterate the memory of many unhappy events, which ought to be

buried in eternal oblivion. It is also so much the more judicious, as it tends to make

this generous and equitable people find a pleasure in their duty; to make them

naturally love to do you honour, and to cause those who are the most zealous in the

maintenance of their own rights to be at the same time the most disposed to respect

yours.

It ought not to be thought surprising that the rulers of a civil society should have the

welfare and glory of their communities at heart: but it is uncommonly fortunate for

the peace of men, when those persons who look upon themselves as the magistrates,

or rather the masters of a more holy and sublime country, show some love for the

earthly country which maintains them. I am happy in having it in my power to make

so singular an exception in our favour, and to be able to rank, among its best citizens,

those zealous depositaries of the sacred articles of faith established by the laws, those

venerable shepherds of souls whose powerful and captivating eloquence are so much

the better calculated to bear to men’s hearts the maxims of the gospel, as they are

themselves the first to put them into practice. All the world knows of the great success

with which the art of the pulpit is cultivated at Geneva; but men are so used to hearing

divines preach one thing and practise another, that few have a chance of knowing how

far the spirit of Christianity, holiness of manners, severity towards themselves and

indulgence towards their neighbours, prevail throughout the whole body of our

ministers. It is, perhaps, given to the city of Geneva alone, to produce the edifying

example of so perfect a union between its clergy and men of letters. It is in great

measure on their wisdom, their known moderation, and their zeal for the prosperity of

the State that I build my hopes of its perpetual tranquillity. At the same time, I notice,

with a pleasure mingled with surprise and veneration, how much they detest the

frightful maxims of those accursed and barbarous men, of whom history furnishes us

with more than one example; who, in order to support the pretended rights of God,

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that is to say their own interests, have been so much the less greedy of human blood,

as they were more hopeful their own in particular would be always respected.

I must not forget that precious half of the Republic, which makes the happiness of the

other; and whose sweetness and prudence preserve its tranquillity and virtue. Amiable

and virtuous daughters of Geneva, it will be always the lot of your sex to govern ours.

Happy are we, so long as your chaste influence, solely exercised within the limits of

conjugal union, is exerted only for the glory of the State and the happiness of the

public. It was thus the female sex commanded at Sparta; and thus you deserve to

command at Geneva. What man can be such a barbarian as to resist the voice of

honour and reason, coming from the lips of an affectionate wife? Who would not

despise the vanities of luxury, on beholding the simple and modest attire which, from

the lustre it derives from you, seems the most favourable to beauty? It is your task to

perpetuate, by your insinuating influence and your innocent and amiable rule, a

respect for the laws of the State, and harmony among the citizens. It is yours to

reunite divided families by happy marriages; and, above all things, to correct, by the

persuasive sweetness of your lessons and the modest graces of your conversation,

those extravagancies which our young people pick up in other countries, whence,

instead of many useful things by which they might profit, they bring home hardly

anything, besides a puerile air and a ridiculous manner, acquired among loose women,

but an admiration for I know not what so-called grandeur, and paltry recompenses for

being slaves, which can never come near the real greatness of liberty. Continue,

therefore, always to be what you are, the chaste guardians of our morals, and the

sweet security for our peace, exerting on every occasion the privileges of the heart

and of nature, in the interests of duty and virtue.

I flatter myself that I shall never be proved to have been mistaken, in building on such

a foundation my hopes of the general happiness of the citizens and the glory of the

Republic. It must be confessed, however, that with all these advantages, it will not

shine with that lustre, by which the eyes of most men are dazzled; a puerile and fatal

taste for which is the most mortal enemy of happiness and liberty.

Let our dissolute youth seek elsewhere light pleasures and long repentances. Let our

pretenders to taste admire elsewhere the grandeur of palaces, the beauty of equipages,

sumptuous furniture, the pomp of public entertainments, and all the refinements of

luxury and effeminacy. Geneva boasts nothing but men; such a sight has nevertheless

a value of its own, and those who have a taste for it are well worth the admirers of all

the rest.

Deign, most honourable, magnificent and sovereign lords, to receive, and with equal

goodness, this respectful testimony of the interest I take in your common prosperity.

And, if I have been so unhappy as to be guilty of any indiscreet transport in this

glowing effusion of my heart, I beseech you to pardon me, and to attribute it to the

tender affection of a true patriot, and to the ardent and legitimate zeal of a man, who

can imagine for himself no greater felicity than to see you happy.

Most honourable, magnificent and sovereign lords, I am, with the most profound

respect,

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Your most humble and obedient servant and fellow-citizen.

J. J. Rousseau.

Chambéry,

June 12, 1754.

PREFACE

Of all human sciences the most useful and most imperfect appears to me to be that of

mankind: and I will venture to say, the single inscription on the Temple of Delphi

contained a precept more difficult and more important than is to be found in all the

huge volumes that moralists have ever written. I consider the subject of the following

discourse as one of the most interesting questions philosophy can propose, and

unhappily for us, one of the most thorny that philosophers can have to solve. For how

shall we know the source of inequality between men, if we do not begin by knowing

mankind? And how shall man hope to see himself as nature made him, across all the

changes which the succession of place and time must have produced in his original

constitution? How can he distinguish what is fundamental in his nature from the

changes and additions which his circumstances and the advances he has made have

introduced to modify his primitive condition? Like the statue of Glaucus, which was

so disfigured by time, seas and tempests, that it looked more like a wild beast than a

god, the human soul, altered in society by a thousand causes perpetually recurring, by

the acquisition of a multitude of truths and errors, by the changes happening to the

constitution of the body, and by the continual jarring of the passions, has, so to speak,

changed in appearance, so as to be hardly recognisable. Instead of a being, acting

constantly from fixed and invariable principles, instead of that celestial and majestic

simplicity, impressed on it by its divine Author, we find in it only the frightful

contrast of passion mistaking itself for reason, and of understanding grown delirious.

It is still more cruel that, as every advance made by the human species removes it still

farther from its primitive state, the more discoveries we make, the more we deprive

ourselves of the means of making the most important of all. Thus it is, in one sense,

by our very study of man, that the knowledge of him is put out of our power.

It is easy to perceive that it is in these successive changes in the constitution of man

that we must look for the origin of those differences which now distinguish men, who,

it is allowed, are as equal among themselves as were the animals of every kind, before

physical causes had introduced those varieties which are now observable among some

of them.

It is, in fact, not to be conceived that these primary changes, however they may have

arisen, could have altered, all at once and in the same manner, every individual of the

species. It is natural to think that, while the condition of some of them grew better or

worse, and they were acquiring various good or bad qualities not inherent in their

nature, there were others who continued a longer time in their original condition. Such

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was doubtless the first source of the inequality of mankind, which it is much easier to

point out thus in general terms, than to assign with precision to its actual causes.

Let not my readers therefore imagine that I flatter myself with having seen what it

appears to me so difficult to discover. I have here entered upon certain arguments, and

risked some conjectures, less in the hope of solving the difficulty, than with a view to

throwing some light upon it, and reducing the question to its proper form. Others may

easily proceed farther on the same road, and yet no one find it very easy to get to the

end. For it is by no means a light undertaking to distinguish properly between what is

original and what is artificial in the actual nature of man, or to form a true idea of a

state which no longer exists, perhaps never did exist, and probably never will exist;

and of which, it is, nevertheless, necessary to have true ideas, in order to form a

proper judgment of our present state. It requires, indeed, more philosophy than can be

imagined to enable any one to determine exactly what precautions he ought to take, in

order to make solid observations on this subject; and it appears to me that a good

solution of the following problem would be not unworthy of the Aristotles and Plinys

of the present age. What experiments would have to be made, to discover the natural

man? And how are those experiments to be made in a state of society?

So far am I from undertaking to solve this problem, that I think I have sufficiently

considered the subject, to venture to declare beforehand that our greatest philosophers

would not be too good to direct such experiments, and our most powerful sovereigns

to make them. Such a combination we have very little reason to expect, especially

attended with the perseverance, or rather succession of intelligence and good-will

necessary on both sides to success.

These investigations, which are so difficult to make, and have been hitherto so little

thought of, are, nevertheless, the only means that remain of obviating a multitude of

difficulties which deprive us of the knowledge of the real foundations of human

society. It is this ignorance of the nature of man, which casts so much uncertainty and

obscurity on the true definition of natural right: for, the idea of right, says

Burlamaqui, and more particularly that of natural right, are ideas manifestly relative to

the nature of man. It is then from this very nature itself, he goes on, from the

constitution and state of man, that we must deduce the first principles of this science.

We cannot see without surprise and disgust how little agreement there is between the

different authors who have treated this great subject. Among the more important

writers there are scarcely two of the same mind about it. Not to speak of the ancient

philosophers, who seem to have done their best purposely to contradict one another on

the most fundamental principles, the Roman jurists subjected man and the other

animals indiscriminately to the same natural law, because they considered, under that

name, rather the law which nature imposes on herself than that which she prescribes

to others; or rather because of the particular acceptation of the term law among those

jurists; who seem on this occasion to have understood nothing more by it than the

general relations established by nature between all animated beings, for their common

preservation. The moderns, understanding, by the term law, merely a rule prescribed

to a moral being, that is to say intelligent, free and considered in his relations to other

beings, consequently confine the jurisdiction of natural law to man, as the only animal

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endowed with reason. But, defining this law, each after his own fashion, they have

established it on such metaphysical principles, that there are very few persons among

us capable of comprehending them, much less of discovering them for themselves. So

that the definitions of these learned men, all differing in everything else, agree only in

this, that it is impossible to comprehend the law of nature, and consequently to obey

it, without being a very subtle casuist and a profound metaphysician. All which is as

much as to say that mankind must have employed, in the establishment of society, a

capacity which is acquired only with great difficulty, and by very few persons, even in

a state of society.

Knowing so little of nature, and agreeing so ill about the meaning of the word law, it

would be difficult for us to fix on a good definition of natural law. Thus all the

definitions we meet with in books, setting aside their defect in point of uniformity,

have yet another fault, in that they are derived from many kinds of knowledge, which

men do not possess naturally, and from advantages of which they can have no idea

until they have already departed from that state. Modern writers begin by inquiring

what rules it would be expedient for men to agree on for their common interest, and

then give the name of natural law to a collection of these rules, without any other

proof than the good that would result from their being universally practised. This is

undoubtedly a simple way of making definitions, and of explaining the nature of

things by almost arbitrary conveniences.

But as long as we are ignorant of the natural man, it is in vain for us to attempt to

determine either the law originally prescribed to him, or that which is best adapted to

his constitution. All we can know with any certainty respecting this law is that, if it is

to be a law, not only the wills of those it obliges must be sensible of their submission

to it; but also, to be natural, it must come directly from the voice of nature.

Throwing aside, therefore, all those scientific books, which teach us only to see men

such as they have made themselves, and contemplating the first and most simple

operations of the human soul, I think I can perceive in it two principles prior to

reason, one of them deeply interesting us in our own welfare and preservation, and the

other exciting a natural repugnance at seeing any other sensible being, and

particularly any of our own species, suffer pain or death. It is from the agreement and

combination which the understanding is in a position to establish between these two

principles, without its being necessary to introduce that of sociability, that all the rules

of natural right appear to me to be derived—rules which our reason is afterwards

obliged to establish on other foundations, when by its successive developments it has

been led to suppress nature itself.

In proceeding thus, we shall not be obliged to make man a philosopher before he is a

man. His duties toward others are not dictated to him only by the later lessons of

wisdom; and, so long as he does not resist the internal impulse of compassion, he will

never hurt any other man, nor even any sentient being, except on those lawful

occasions on which his own preservation is concerned and he is obliged to give

himself the preference. By this method also we put an end to the time-honoured

disputes concerning the participation of animals in natural law: for it is clear that,

being destitute of intelligence and liberty, they cannot recognise that law; as they

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partake, however, in some measure of our nature, in consequence of the sensibility

with which they are endowed, they ought to partake of natural right; so that mankind

is subjected to a kind of obligation even toward the brutes. It appears, in fact, that if I

am bound to do no injury to my fellow-creatures, this is less because they are rational

than because they are sentient beings: and this quality, being common both to men

and beasts, ought to entitle the latter at least to the privilege of not being wantonly ill-

treated by the former.

The very study of the original man, of his real wants, and the fundamental principles

of his duty, is besides the only proper method we can adopt to obviate all the

difficulties which the origin of moral inequality presents, on the true foundations of

the body politic, on the reciprocal rights of its members, and on many other similar

topics equally important and obscure.

If we look at human society with a calm and disinterested eye, it seems, at first, to

show us only the violence of the powerful and the oppression of the weak. The mind

is shocked at the cruelty of the one, or is induced to lament the blindness of the other;

and as nothing is less permanent in life than those external relations, which are more

frequently produced by accident than wisdom, and which are called weakness or

power, riches or poverty, all human institutions seem at first glance to be founded

merely on banks of shifting sand. It is only by taking a closer look, and removing the

dust and sand that surround the edifice, that we perceive the immovable basis on

which it is raised, and learn to respect its foundations. Now, without a serious study of

man, his natural faculties and their successive development, we shall never be able to

make these necessary distinctions, or to separate, in the actual constitution of things,

that which is the effect of the divine will, from the innovations attempted by human

art. The political and moral investigations, therefore, to which the important question

before us leads, are in every respect useful; while the hypothetical history of

governments affords a lesson equally instructive to mankind.

In considering what we should have become, had we been left to ourselves, we should

learn to bless Him, whose gracious hand, correcting our institutions, and giving them

an immovable basis, has prevented those disorders which would otherwise have arisen

from them, and caused our happiness to come from those very sources which seemed

likely to involve us in misery.

Quem te deus esse

Jussit, et humanâ quâ parte locatus es in re,

Disce.

Persius, Satire iii, 71.

A DISSERTATION

On The Origin And Foundation Of The Inequality Of Mankind

It is of man that I have to speak; and the question I am investigating shows me that it

is to men that I must address myself: for questions of this sort are not asked by those

who are afraid to honour truth. I shall then confidently uphold the cause of humanity

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before the wise men who invite me to do so, and shall not be dissatisfied if I acquit

myself in a manner worthy of my subject and of my judges.

I conceive that there are two kinds of inequality among the human species; one, which

I call natural or physical, because it is established by nature, and consists in a

difference of age, health, bodily strength, and the qualities of the mind or of the soul:

and another, which may be called moral or political inequality, because it depends on

a kind of convention, and is established, or at least authorised by the consent of men.

This latter consists of the different privileges, which some men enjoy to the prejudice

of others; such as that of being more rich, more honoured, more powerful or even in a

position to exact obedience.

It is useless to ask what is the source of natural inequality, because that question is

answered by the simple definition of the word. Again, it is still more useless to inquire

whether there is any essential connection between the two inequalities; for this would

be only asking, in other words, whether those who command are necessarily better

than those who obey, and if strength of body or of mind, wisdom or virtue are always

found in particular individuals, in proportion to their power or wealth: a question fit

perhaps to be discussed by slaves in the hearing of their masters, but highly

unbecoming to reasonable and free men in search of the truth.

The subject of the present discourse, therefore, is more precisely this. To mark, in the

progress of things, the moment at which right took the place of violence and nature

became subject to law, and to explain by what sequence of miracles the strong came

to submit to serve the weak, and the people to purchase imaginary repose at the

expense of real felicity.

The philosophers, who have inquired into the foundations of society, have all felt the

necessity of going back to a state of nature; but not one of them has got there. Some

of them have not hesitated to ascribe to man, in such a state, the idea of just and

unjust, without troubling themselves to show that he must be possessed of such an

idea, or that it could be of any use to him. Others have spoken of the natural right of

every man to keep what belongs to him, without explaining what they meant by

belongs. Others again, beginning by giving the strong authority over the weak,

proceeded directly to the birth of government, without regard to the time that must

have elapsed before the meaning of the words authority and government could have

existed among men. Every one of them, in short, constantly dwelling on wants,

avidity, oppression, desires and pride, has transferred to the state of nature ideas

which were acquired in society; so that, in speaking of the savage, they described the

social man. It has not even entered into the heads of most of our writers to doubt

whether the state of nature ever existed; but it is clear from the Holy Scriptures that

the first man, having received his understanding and commandments immediately

from God, was not himself in such a state; and that, if we give such credit to the

writings of Moses as every Christian philosopher ought to give, we must deny that,

even before the deluge, men were ever in the pure state of nature; unless, indeed, they

fell back into it from some very extraordinary circumstance; a paradox which it would

be very embarrassing to defend, and quite impossible to prove.

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Let us begin then by laying facts aside, as they do not affect the question. The

investigations we may enter into, in treating this subject, must not be considered as

historical truths, but only as mere conditional and hypothetical reasonings, rather

calculated to explain the nature of things, than to ascertain their actual origin; just like

the hypotheses which our physicists daily form respecting the formation of the world.

Religion commands us to believe that, God Himself having taken men out of a state of

nature immediately after the creation, they are unequal only because it is His will they

should be so: but it does not forbid us to form conjectures based solely on the nature

of man, and the beings around him, concerning what might have become of the

human race, if it had been left to itself. This then is the question asked me, and that

which I propose to discuss in the following discourse. As my subject interests

mankind in general, I shall endeavour to make use of a style adapted to all nations, or

rather, forgetting time and place, to attend only to men to whom I am speaking. I shall

suppose myself in the Lyceum of Athens, repeating the lessons of my masters, with

Plato and Xenocrates for judges, and the whole human race for audience.

O man, of whatever country you are, and whatever your opinions may be, behold your

history, such as I have thought to read it, not in books written by your fellow-

creatures, who are liars, but in nature, which never lies. All that comes from her will

be true; nor will you meet with anything false, unless I have involuntarily put in

something of my own. The times of which I am going to speak are very remote: how

much are you changed from what you once were! It is, so to speak, the life of your

species which I am going to write, after the qualities which you have received, which

your education and habits may have depraved, but cannot have entirely destroyed.

There is, I feel, an age at which the individual man would wish to stop: you are about

to inquire about the age at which you would have liked your whole species to stand

still. Discontented with your present state, for reasons which threaten your

unfortunate descendants with still greater discontent, you will perhaps wish it were in

your power to go back; and this feeling should be a panegyric on your first ancestors,

a criticism of your contemporaries, and a terror to the unfortunates who will come

after you.

THE FIRST PART

Important as it may be, in order to judge rightly of the natural state of man, to

consider him from his origin, and to examine him, as it were, in the embryo of his

species; I shall not follow his organisation through its successive developments, nor

shall I stay to inquire what his animal system must have been at the beginning, in

order to become at length what it actually is. I shall not ask whether his long nails

were at first, as Aristotle supposes, only crooked talons; whether his whole body, like

that of a bear, was not covered with hair; or whether the fact that he walked upon all

fours, with his looks directed toward the earth, confined to a horizon of a few paces,

did not at once point out the nature and limits of his ideas. On this subject I could

form none but vague and almost imaginary conjectures. Comparative anatomy has as

yet made too little progress, and the observations of naturalists are too uncertain, to

afford an adequate basis for any solid reasoning. So that, without having recourse to

the supernatural information given us on this head, or paying any regard to the

changes which must have taken place in the internal, as well as the external,

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conformation of man, as he applied his limbs to new uses, and fed himself on new

kinds of food, I shall suppose his conformation to have been at all times what it

appears to us at this day; that he always walked on two legs, made use of his hands as

we do, directed his looks over all nature, and measured with his eyes the vast expanse

of Heaven.

If we strip this being, thus constituted, of all the supernatural gifts he may have

received, and all the artificial faculties he can have acquired only by a long process; if

we consider him, in a word, just as he must have come from the hands of nature, we

behold in him an animal weaker than some, and less agile than others; but, taking him

all round, the most advantageously organised of any. I see him satisfying his hunger at

the first oak, and slaking his thirst at the first brook; finding his bed at the foot of the

tree which afforded him a repast; and, with that, all his wants supplied.

While the earth was left to its natural fertility and covered with immense forests,

whose trees were never mutilated by the axe, it would present on every side both

sustenance and shelter for every species of animal. Men, dispersed up and down

among the rest, would observe and imitate their industry, and thus attain even to the

instinct of the beasts, with the advantage that, whereas every species of brutes was

confined to one particular instinct, man, who perhaps has not any one peculiar to

himself, would appropriate them all, and live upon most of those different foods,

which other animals shared among themselves; and thus would find his subsistence

much more easily than any of the rest.

Accustomed from their infancy to the inclemencies of the weather and the rigour of

the seasons, inured to fatigue, and forced, naked and unarmed, to defend themselves

and their prey from other ferocious animals, or to escape them by flight, men would

acquire a robust and almost unalterable constitution. The children, bringing with them

into the world the excellent constitution of their parents, and fortifying it by the very

exercises which first produced it, would thus acquire all the vigour of which the

human frame is capable. Nature in this case treats them exactly as Sparta treated the

children of her citizens: those who come well formed into the world she renders

strong and robust, and all the rest she destroys; differing in this respect from our

modern communities, in which the State, by making children a burden to their

parents, kills them indiscriminately before they are born.

The body of a savage man being the only instrument he understands, he uses it for

various purposes, of which ours, for want of practice, are incapable: for our industry

deprives us of that force and agility, which necessity obliges him to acquire. If he had

had an axe, would he have been able with his naked arm to break so large a branch

from a tree? If he had had a sling, would he have been able to throw a stone with so

great velocity? If he had had a ladder, would he have been so nimble in climbing a

tree? If he had had a horse, would he have been himself so swift of foot? Give

civilised man time to gather all his machines about him, and he will no doubt easily

beat the savage; but if you would see a still more unequal contest, set them together

naked and unarmed, and you will soon see the advantage of having all our forces

constantly at our disposal, of being always prepared for every event, and of carrying

one’s self, as it were, perpetually whole and entire about one.

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Hobbes contends that man is naturally intrepid, and is intent only upon attacking and

fighting. Another illustrious philosopher holds the opposite, and Cumberland and

Puffendorf also affirm that nothing is more timid and fearful than man in the state of

nature; that he is always in a tremble, and ready to fly at the least noise or the slightest

movement. This may be true of things he does not know; and I do not doubt his being

terrified by every novelty that presents itself, when he neither knows the physical

good or evil he may expect from it, nor can make a comparison between his own

strength and the dangers he is about to encounter. Such circumstances, however,

rarely occur in a state of nature, in which all things proceed in a uniform manner, and

the face of the earth is not subject to those sudden and continual changes which arise

from the passions and caprices of bodies of men living together. But savage man,

living dispersed among other animals, and finding himself betimes in a situation to

measure his strength with theirs, soon comes to compare himself with them; and,

perceiving that he surpasses them more in adroitness than they surpass him in

strength, learns to be no longer afraid of them. Set a bear, or a wolf, against a robust,

agile, and resolute savage, as they all are, armed with stones and a good cudgel, and

you will see that the danger will be at least on both sides, and that, after a few trials of

this kind, wild beasts, which are not fond of attacking each other, will not be at all

ready to attack man, whom they will have found to be as wild and ferocious as

themselves. With regard to such animals as have really more strength than man has

adroitness, he is in the same situation as all weaker animals, which notwithstanding

are still able to subsist; except indeed that he has the advantage that, being equally

swift of foot, and finding an almost certain place of refuge in every tree, he is at

liberty to take or leave it at every encounter, and thus to fight or fly, as he chooses.

Add to this that it does not appear that any animal naturally makes war on man,

except in case of self-defence or excessive hunger, or betrays any of those violent

antipathies, which seem to indicate that one species is intended by nature for the food

of another.

This is doubtless why negroes and savages are so little afraid of the wild beasts they

may meet in the woods. The Caraibs of Venezuela among others live in this respect in

absolute security and without the smallest inconvenience. Though they are almost

naked, Francis Corréal tells us, they expose themselves freely in the woods, armed

only with bows and arrows; but no one has ever heard of one of them being devoured

by wild beasts.

But man has other enemies more formidable, against which he is not provided with

such means of defence: these are the natural infirmities of infancy, old age, and illness

of every kind, melancholy proofs of our weakness, of which the two first are common

to all animals, and the last belongs chiefly to man in a state of society. With regard to

infancy, it is observable that the mother, carrying her child always with her, can nurse

it with much greater ease than the females of many other animals, which are forced to

be perpetually going and coming, with great fatigue, one way to find subsistence, and

another to suckle or feed their young. It is true that if the woman happens to perish,

the infant is in great danger of perishing with her; but this risk is common to many

other species of animals, whose young take a long time before they are able to provide

for themselves. And if our infancy is longer than theirs, our lives are longer in

proportion; so that all things are in this respect fairly equal; though there are other

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rules to be considered regarding the duration of the first period of life, and the number

of young, which do not affect the present subject. In old age, when men are less active

and perspire little, the need for food diminishes with the ability to provide it. As the

savage state also protects them from gout and rheumatism, and old age is, of all ills,

that which human aid can least alleviate, they cease to be, without others perceiving

that they are no more, and almost without perceiving it themselves.

With respect to sickness, I shall not repeat the vain and false declamations which most

healthy people pronounce against medicine; but I shall ask if any solid observations

have been made from which it may be justly concluded that, in the countries where

the art of medicine is most neglected, the mean duration of man’s life is less than in

those where it is most cultivated. How indeed can this be the case, if we bring on

ourselves more diseases than medicine can furnish remedies? The great inequality in

manner of living, the extreme idleness of some, and the excessive labour of others, the

easiness of exciting and gratifying our sensual appetites, the too exquisite foods of the

wealthy which overheat and fill them with indigestion, and, on the other hand, the

unwholesome food of the poor, often, bad as it is, insufficient for their needs, which

induces them, when opportunity offers, to eat voraciously and overcharge their

stomachs; all these, together with sitting up late, and excesses of every kind,

immoderate transports of every passion, fatigue, mental exhaustion, the innumerable

pains and anxieties inseparable from every condition of life, by which the mind of

man is incessantly tormented; these are too fatal proofs that the greater part of our ills

are of our own making, and that we might have avoided them nearly all by adhering

to that simple, uniform and solitary manner of life which nature prescribed. If she

destined man to be healthy, I venture to declare that a state of reflection is a state

contrary to nature, and that a thinking man is a depraved animal. When we think of

the good constitution of the savages, at least of those whom we have not ruined with

our spirituous liquors, and reflect that they are troubled with hardly any disorders,

save wounds and old age, we are tempted to believe that, in following the history of

civil society, we shall be telling also that of human sickness. Such, at least, was the

opinion of Plato, who inferred from certain remedies prescribed, or approved, by

Podalirius and Machaon at the siege of Troy, that several sicknesses which these

remedies gave rise to in his time, were not then known to mankind: and Celsus tells us

that diet, which is now so necessary, was first invented by Hippocrates.

Being subject therefore to so few causes of sickness, man, in the state of nature, can

have no need of remedies, and still less of physicians: nor is the human race in this

respect worse off than other animals, and it is easy to learn from hunters whether they

meet with many infirm animals in the course of the chase. It is certain they frequently

meet with such as carry the marks of having been considerably wounded, with many

that have had bones or even limbs broken, yet have been healed without any other

surgical assistance than that of time, or any other regimen than that of their ordinary

life. At the same time their cures seem not to have been less perfect, for their not

having been tortured by incisions, poisoned with drugs, or wasted by fasting. In short,

however useful medicine, properly administered, may be among us, it is certain that,

if the savage, when he is sick and left to himself, has nothing to hope but from nature,

he has, on the other hand, nothing to fear but from his disease; which renders his

situation often preferable to our own.

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We should beware, therefore, of confounding the savage man with the men we have

daily before our eyes. Nature treats all the animals left to her care with a predilection

that seems to show how jealous she is of that right. The horse, the cat, the bull, and

even the ass are generally of greater stature, and always more robust, and have more

vigour, strength and courage, when they run wild in the forests than when bred in the

stall. By becoming domesticated, they lose half these advantages; and it seems as if all

our care to feed and treat them well serves only to deprave them. It is thus with man

also: as he becomes sociable and a slave, he grows weak, timid and servile; his

effeminate way of life totally enervates his strength and courage. To this it may be

added that there is still a greater difference between savage and civilised man, than

between wild and tame beasts: for men and brutes having been treated alike by nature,

the several conveniences in which men indulge themselves still more than they do

their beasts, are so many additional causes of their deeper degeneracy.

It is not therefore so great a misfortune to these primitive men, nor so great an

obstacle to their preservation, that they go naked, have no dwellings and lack all the

superfluities which we think so necessary. If their skins are not covered with hair,

they have no need of such covering in warm climates; and, in cold countries, they

soon learn to appropriate the skins of the beasts they have overcome. If they have but

two legs to run with, they have two arms to defend themselves with, and provide for

their wants. Their children are slowly and with difficulty taught to walk; but their

mothers are able to carry them with ease; an advantage which other animals lack, as

the mother, if pursued, is forced either to abandon her young, or to regulate her pace

by theirs. Unless, in short, we suppose a singular and fortuitous concurrence of

circumstances of which I shall speak later, and which would be unlikely to exist, it is

plain in every state of the case, that the man who first made himself clothes or a

dwelling was furnishing himself with things not at all necessary; for he had till then

done without them, and there is no reason why he should not have been able to put up

in manhood with the same kind of life as had been his in infancy.

Solitary, indolent, and perpetually accompanied by danger, the savage cannot but be

fond of sleep; his sleep too must be light, like that of the animals, which think but

little and may be said to slumber all the time they do not think. Self-preservation

being his chief and almost sole concern, he must exercise most those faculties which

are most concerned with attack or defence, either for overcoming his prey, or for

preventing him from becoming the prey of other animals. On the other hand, those

organs which are perfected only by softness and sensuality will remain in a gross and

imperfect state, incompatible with any sort of delicacy; so that, his senses being

divided on this head, his touch and taste will be extremely coarse, his sight, hearing

and smell exceedingly fine and subtle. Such in general is the animal condition, and

such, according to the narratives of travellers, is that of most savage nations. It is

therefore no matter for surprise that the Hottentots of the Cape of Good Hope

distinguish ships at sea, with the naked eye, at as great a distance as the Dutch can do

with their telescopes; or that the savages of America should trace the Spaniards, by

their smell, as well as the best dogs could have done; or that these barbarous peoples

feel no pain in going naked, or that they use large quantities of piemento with their

food, and drink the strongest European liquors like water.

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Hitherto I have considered merely the physical man; let us now take a view of him on

his metaphysical and moral side.

I see nothing in any animal but an ingenious machine, to which nature hath given

senses to wind itself up, and to guard itself, to a certain degree, against anything that

might tend to disorder or destroy it. I perceive exactly the same things in the human

machine, with this difference, that in the operations of the brute, nature is the sole

agent, whereas man has some share in his own operations, in his character as a free

agent. The one chooses and refuses by instinct, the other from an act of free-will:

hence the brute cannot deviate from the rule prescribed to it, even when it would be

advantageous for it to do so; and, on the contrary, man frequently deviates from such

rules to his own prejudice. Thus a pigeon would be starved to death by the side of a

dish of the choicest meats, and a cat on a heap of fruit or grain; though it is certain

that either might find nourishment in the foods which it thus rejects with disdain, did

it think of trying them. Hence it is that dissolute men run into excesses which bring on

fevers and death; because the mind depraves the senses, and the will continues to

speak when nature is silent.

Every animal has ideas, since it has senses; it even combines those ideas in a certain

degree; and it is only in degree that man differs, in this respect, from the brute. Some

philosophers have even maintained that there is a greater difference between one man

and another than between some men and some beasts. It is not, therefore, so much the

understanding that constitutes the specific difference between the man and the brute,

as the human quality of free-agency. Nature lays her commands on every animal, and

the brute obeys her voice. Man receives the same impulsion, but at the same time

knows himself at liberty to acquiesce or resist: and it is particularly in his

consciousness of this liberty that the spirituality of his soul is displayed. For physics

may explain, in some measure, the mechanism of the senses and the formation of

ideas; but in the power of willing or rather of choosing, and in the feeling of this

power, nothing is to be found but acts which are purely spiritual and wholly

inexplicable by the laws of mechanism.

However, even if the difficulties attending all these questions should still leave room

for difference in this respect between men and brutes, there is another very specific

quality which distinguishes them, and which will admit of no dispute. This is the

faculty of self-improvement, which, by the help of circumstances, gradually develops

all the rest of our faculties, and is inherent in the species as in the individual: whereas

a brute is, at the end of a few months, all he will ever be during his whole life, and his

species, at the end of a thousand years, exactly what it was the first year of that

thousand. Why is man alone liable to grow into a dotard? Is it not because he returns,

in this, to his primitive state; and that, while the brute, which has acquired nothing and

has therefore nothing to lose, still retains the force of instinct, man, who loses, by age

or accident, all that his perfectibility had enabled him to gain, falls by this means

lower than the brutes themselves? It would be melancholy, were we forced to admit

that this distinctive and almost unlimited faculty is the source of all human

misfortunes; that it is this which, in time, draws man out of his original state, in which

he would have spent his days insensibly in peace and innocence; that it is this faculty,

which, successively producing in different ages his discoveries and his errors, his

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vices and his virtues, makes him at length a tyrant both over himself and over nature.1

It would be shocking to be obliged to regard as a benefactor the man who first

suggested to the Oroonoko Indians the use of the boards they apply to the temples of

their children, which secure to them some part at least of their imbecility and original

happiness.

Savage man, left by nature solely to the direction of instinct, or rather indemnified for

what he may lack by faculties capable at first of supplying its place, and afterwards of

raising him much above it, must accordingly begin with purely animal functions: thus

seeing and feeling must be his first condition, which would be common to him and all

other animals. To will, and not to will, to desire and to fear, must be the first, and

almost the only operations of his soul, till new circumstances occasion new

developments of his faculties.

Whatever moralists may hold, the human understanding is greatly indebted to the

passions, which, it is universally allowed, are also much indebted to the

understanding. It is by the activity of the passions that our reason is improved; for we

desire knowledge only because we wish to enjoy; and it is impossible to conceive any

reason why a person who has neither fears nor desires should give himself the trouble

of reasoning. The passions, again, originate in our wants, and their progress depends

on that of our knowledge; for we cannot desire or fear anything, except from the idea

we have of it, or from the simple impulse of nature. Now savage man, being destitute

of every species of intelligence, can have no passions save those of the latter kind: his

desires never go beyond his physical wants. The only goods he recognises in the

universe are food, a female, and sleep: the only evils he fears are pain and hunger. I

say pain, and not death: for no animal can know what it is to die; the knowledge of

death and its terrors being one of the first acquisitions made by man in departing from

an animal state.

It would be easy, were it necessary, to support this opinion by facts, and to show that,

in all the nations of the world, the progress of the understanding has been exactly

proportionate to the wants which the peoples had received from nature, or been

subjected to by circumstances, and in consequence to the passions that induced them

to provide for those necessities. I might instance the arts, rising up in Egypt and

expanding with the inundation of the Nile. I might follow their progress into Greece,

where they took root afresh, grew up and towered to the skies, among the rocks and

sands of Attica, without being able to germinate on the fertile banks of the Eurotas: I

might observe that in general, the people of the North are more industrious than those

of the South, because they cannot get on so well without being so: as if nature wanted

to equalise matters by giving their understandings the fertility she had refused to their

soil.

But who does not see, without recurring to the uncertain testimony of history, that

everything seems to remove from savage man both the temptation and the means of

changing his condition? His imagination paints no pictures; his heart makes no

demands on him. His few wants are so readily supplied, and he is so far from having

the knowledge which is needful to make him want more, that he can have neither

foresight nor curiosity. The face of nature becomes indifferent to him as it grows

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familiar. He sees in it always the same order, the same successions: he has not

understanding enough to wonder at the greatest miracles; nor is it in his mind that we

can expect to find that philosophy man needs, if he is to know how to notice for once

what he sees every day. His soul, which nothing disturbs, is wholly wrapped up in the

feeling of its present existence, without any idea of the future, however near at hand;

while his projects, as limited as his views, hardly extend to the close of day. Such,

even at present, is the extent of the native Caribean’s foresight: he will improvidently

sell you his cotton-bed in the morning, and come crying in the evening to buy it again,

not having foreseen he would want it again the next night.

The more we reflect on this subject, the greater appears the distance between pure

sensation and the most simple knowledge: it is impossible indeed to conceive how a

man, by his own powers alone, without the aid of communication and the spur of

necessity, could have bridged so great a gap. How many ages may have elapsed

before mankind were in a position to behold any other fire than that of the heavens.

What a multiplicity of chances must have happened to teach them the commonest

uses of that element! How often must they have let it out before they acquired the art

of reproducing it? and how often may not such a secret have died with him who had

discovered it? What shall we say of agriculture, an art which requires so much labour

and foresight, which is so dependent on others that it is plain it could only be

practised in a society which had at least begun, and which does not serve so much to

draw the means of subsistence from the earth—for these it would produce of

itself—but to compel it to produce what is most to our taste? But let us suppose that

men had so multiplied that the natural produce of the earth was no longer sufficient

for their support; a supposition, by the way, which would prove such a life to be very

advantageous for the human race; let us suppose that, without forges or workshops,

the instruments of husbandry had dropped from the sky into the hands of savages; that

they had overcome their natural aversion to continual labour; that they had learnt so

much foresight for their needs; that they had divined how to cultivate the earth, to sow

grain and plant trees; that they had discovered the arts of grinding corn, and of setting

the grape to ferment—all being things that must have been taught them by the gods,

since it is not to be conceived how they could discover them for themselves—yet after

all this, what man among them would be so absurd as to take the trouble of cultivating

a field, which might be stripped of its crop by the first comer, man or beast, that might

take a liking to it; and how should each of them resolve to pass his life in wearisome

labour, when, the more necessary to him the reward of his labour might be, the surer

he would be of not getting it? In a word, how could such a situation induce men to

cultivate the earth, till it was regularly parcelled out among them; that is to say, till the

state of nature had been abolished?

Were we to suppose savage man as trained in the art of thinking as philosophers make

him; were we, like them, to suppose him a very philosopher capable of investigating

the sublimest truths, and of forming, by highly abstract chains of reasoning, maxims

of reason and justice, deduced from the love of order in general, or the known will of

his Creator; in a word, were we to suppose him as intelligent and enlightened, as he

must have been, and is in fact found to have been, dull and stupid, what advantage

would accrue to the species, from all such metaphysics, which could not be

communicated by one to another, but must end with him who made them? What

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progress could be made by mankind, while dispersed in the woods among other

animals? and how far could men improve or mutually enlighten one another, when,

having no fixed habitation, and no need of one another’s assistance, the same persons

hardly met twice in their lives, and perhaps then, without knowing one another or

speaking together?

Let it be considered how many ideas we owe to the use of speech; how far grammar

exercises the understanding and facilitates its operations. Let us reflect on the

inconceivable pains and the infinite space of time that the first invention of languages

must have cost. To these reflections add what preceded, and then judge how many

thousand ages must have elapsed in the successive development in the human mind of

those operations of which it is capable.

I shall here take the liberty for a moment, of considering the difficulties of the origin

of languages, on which subject I might content myself with a simple repetition of the

Abbé Condillac’s investigations, as they fully confirm my system, and perhaps even

first suggested it. But it is plain, from the manner in which this philosopher solves the

difficulties he himself raises, concerning the origin of arbitrary signs, that he assumes

what I question, viz. that a kind of society must already have existed among the first

inventors of language. While I refer, therefore, to his observations on this head, I

think it right to give my own, in order to exhibit the same difficulties in a light

adapted to my subject. The first which presents itself is to conceive how language can

have become necessary; for as there was no communication among men and no need

for any, we can neither conceive the necessity of this invention, nor the possibility of

it, if it was not somehow indispensable. I might affirm, with many others, that

languages arose in the domestic intercourse between parents and their children. But

this expedient would not obviate the difficulty, and would besides involve the blunder

made by those who, in reasoning on the state of nature, always import into it ideas

gathered in a state of society. Thus they constantly consider families as living together

under one roof, and the individuals of each as observing among themselves a union as

intimate and permanent as that which exists among us, where so many common

interests unite them: whereas, in this primitive state, men had neither houses, nor huts,

nor any kind of property whatever; every one lived where he could, seldom for more

than a single night; the sexes united without design, as accident, opportunity or

inclination brought them together, nor had they any great need of words to

communicate their designs to each other; and they parted with the same indifference.

The mother gave suck to her children at first for her own sake; and afterwards, when

habit had made them dear, for theirs: but as soon as they were strong enough to go in

search of their own food, they forsook her of their own accord; and, as they had

hardly any other method of not losing one another than that of remaining continually

within sight, they soon became quite incapable of recognising one another when they

happened to meet again. It is farther to be observed that the child, having all his wants

to explain, and of course more to say to his mother than the mother could have to say

to him, must have borne the brunt of the task of invention, and the language he used

would be of his own device, so that the number of languages would be equal to that of

the individuals speaking them, and the variety would be increased by the vagabond

and roving life they led, which would not give time for any idiom to become constant.

For to say that the mother dictated to her child the words he was to use in asking her

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for one thing or another, is an explanation of how languages already formed are

taught, but by no means explains how languages were originally formed.

We will suppose, however, that this first difficulty is obviated. Let us for a moment

then take ourselves as being on this side of the vast space which must lie between a

pure state of nature and that in which languages had become necessary, and, admitting

their necessity, let us inquire how they could first be established. Here we have a new

and worse difficulty to grapple with; for if men need speech to learn to think, they

must have stood in much greater need of the art of thinking, to be able to invent that

of speaking. And though we might conceive how the articulate sounds of the voice

came to be taken as the conventional interpreters of our ideas, it would still remain for

us to inquire what could have been the interpreters of this convention for those ideas,

which, answering to no sensible objects, could not be indicated either by gesture or

voice; so that we can hardly form any tolerable conjectures about the origin of this art

of communicating our thoughts and establishing a correspondence between minds: an

art so sublime, that far distant as it is from its origin, philosophers still behold it at

such an immeasurable distance from perfection, that there is none rash enough to

affirm it will ever reach it, even though the revolutions time necessarily produces

were suspended in its favour, though prejudice should be banished from our

academies or condemned to silence, and those learned societies should devote

themselves uninterruptedly for whole ages to this thorny question.

The first language of mankind, the most universal and vivid, in a word the only

language man needed, before he had occasion to exert his eloquence to persuade

assembled multitudes, was the simple cry of nature. But as this was excited only by a

sort of instinct on urgent occasions, to implore assistance in case of danger, or relief

in case of suffering, it could be of little use in the ordinary course of life, in which

more moderate feelings prevail. When the ideas of men began to expand and multiply,

and closer communication took place among them, they strove to invent more

numerous signs and a more copious language. They multiplied the inflections of the

voice, and added gestures, which are in their own nature more expressive, and depend

less for their meaning on a prior determination. Visible and movable objects were

therefore expressed by gestures, and audible ones by imitative sounds: but, as hardly

anything can be indicated by gestures, except objects actually present or easily

described, and visible actions; as they are not universally useful—for darkness or the

interposition of a material object destroys their efficacy—and as besides they rather

request than secure our attention; men at length bethought themselves of substituting

for them the articulate sounds of the voice, which, without bearing the same relation

to any particular ideas, are better calculated to express them all, as conventional signs.

Such an institution could only be made by common consent, and must have been

effected in a manner not very easy for men whose gross organs had not been

accustomed to any such exercise. It is also in itself still more difficult to conceive,

since such a common agreement must have had motives, and speech seems to have

been highly necessary to establish the use of it.

It is reasonable to suppose that the words first made use of by mankind had a much

more extensive signification than those used in languages already formed, and that

ignorant as they were of the division of discourse into its constituent parts, they at first

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gave every single word the sense of a whole proposition. When they began to

distinguish subject and attribute, and noun and verb, which was itself no common

effort of genius, substantives were at first only so many proper names; the present

infinitive was the only tense of verbs; and the very idea of adjectives must have been

developed with great difficulty; for every adjective is an abstract idea, and

abstractions are painful and unnatural operations.

Every object at first received a particular name without regard to genus or species,

which these primitive originators were not in a position to distinguish; every

individual presented itself to their minds in isolation, as they are in the picture of

nature. If one oak was called A, another was called B; for the primitive idea of two

things is that they are not the same, and it often takes a long time for what they have

in common to be seen: so that, the narrower the limits of their knowledge of things,

the more copious their dictionary must have been. The difficulty of using such a

vocabulary could not be easily removed; for, to arrange beings under common and

generic denominations, it became necessary to know their distinguishing properties:

the need arose for observation and definition, that is to say, for natural history and

metaphysics of a far more developed kind than men can at that time have possessed.

Add to this, that general ideas cannot be introduced into the mind without the

assistance of words, nor can the understanding seize them except by means of

propositions. This is one of the reasons why animals cannot form such ideas, or ever

acquire that capacity for self-improvement which depends on them. When a monkey

goes from one nut to another, are we to conceive that he entertains any general idea of

that kind of fruit, and compares its archetype with the two individual nuts? Assuredly

he does not; but the sight of one of these nuts recalls to his memory the sensations

which he received from the other, and his eyes, being modified after a certain manner,

give information to the palate of the modification it is about to receive. Every general

idea is purely intellectual; if the imagination meddles with it ever so little, the idea

immediately becomes particular. If you endeavour to trace in your mind the image of

a tree in general, you never attain to your end. In spite of all you can do, you will have

to see it as great or little, bare or leafy, light or dark, and were you capable of seeing

nothing in it but what is common to all trees, it would no longer be like a tree at all.

Purely abstract beings are perceivable in the same manner, or are only conceivable by

the help of language. The definition of a triangle alone gives you a true idea of it: the

moment you imagine a triangle in your mind, it is some particular triangle and not

another, and you cannot avoid giving it sensible lines and a coloured area. We must

then make use of propositions and of language in order to form general ideas. For no

sooner does the imagination cease to operate than the understanding proceeds only by

the help of words. If then the first inventors of speech could give names only to ideas

they already had, it follows that the first substantives could be nothing more than

proper names.

But when our new grammarians, by means of which I have no conception, began to

extend their ideas and generalise their terms, the ignorance of the inventors must have

confined this method within very narrow limits; and, as they had at first gone too far

in multiplying the names of individuals, from ignorance of their genus and species,

they made afterwards too few of these, from not having considered beings in all their

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specific differences. It would indeed have needed more knowledge and experience

than they could have, and more pains and inquiry than they would have bestowed, to

carry these distinctions to their proper length. If, even to-day, we are continually

discovering new species, which have hitherto escaped observation, let us reflect how

many of them must have escaped men who judged things merely from their first

appearance! It is superfluous to add that the primitive classes and the most general

notions must necessarily have escaped their notice also. How, for instance, could they

have understood or thought of the words matter, spirit, substance, mode, figure,

motion, when even our philosophers, who have so long been making use of them,

have themselves the greatest difficulty in understanding them; and when, the ideas

attached to them being purely metaphysical, there are no models of them to be found

in nature?

But I stop at this point, and ask my judges to suspend their reading a while, to

consider, after the invention of physical substantives, which is the easiest part of

language to invent, that there is still a great way to go, before the thoughts of men will

have found perfect expression and constant form, such as would answer the purposes

of public speaking, and produce their effect on society. I beg of them to consider how

much time must have been spent, and how much knowledge needed, to find out

numbers, abstract terms, aorists and all the tenses of verbs, particles, syntax, the

method of connecting propositions, the forms of reasoning, and all the logic of

speech. For myself, I am so aghast at the increasing difficulties which present

themselves, and so well convinced of the almost demonstrable impossibility that

languages should owe their original institution to merely human means, that I leave,

to any one who will undertake it, the discussion of the difficult problem, which was

most necessary, the existence of society to the invention of language, or the invention

of language to the establishment of society. But be the origin of language and society

what they may, it may be at least inferred, from the little care which nature has taken

to unite mankind by mutual wants, and to facilitate the use of speech, that she has

contributed little to make them sociable, and has put little of her own into all they

have done to create such bonds of union. It is in fact impossible to conceive why, in a

state of nature, one man should stand more in need of the assistance of another, than a

monkey or a wolf of the assistance of another of its kind: or, granting that he did,

what motives could induce that other to assist him; or, even then, by what means they

could agree about the conditions. I know it is incessantly repeated that man would in

such a state have been the most miserable of creatures; and indeed, if it be true, as I

think I have proved, that he must have lived many ages, before he could have either

desire or an opportunity of emerging from it, this would only be an accusation against

nature, and not against the being which she had thus unhappily constituted. But as I

understand the word miserable, it either has no meaning at all, or else signifies only a

painful privation of something, or a state of suffering either in body or soul. I should

be glad to have explained to me, what kind of misery a free being, whose heart is at

ease and whose body is in health, can possibly suffer. I would ask also, whether a

social or a natural life is most likely to become insupportable to those who enjoy it.

We see around us hardly a creature in civil society, who does not lament his

existence: we even see many deprive themselves of as much of it as they can, and

laws human and divine together can hardly put a stop to the disorder. I ask, if it was

ever known that a savage took it into his head, when at liberty, to complain of life or

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to make away with himself. Let us therefore judge, with less vanity, on which side the

real misery is found. On the other hand, nothing could be more unhappy than savage

man, dazzled by science, tormented by his passions, and reasoning about a state

different from his own. It appears that Providence most wisely determined that the

faculties, which he potentially possessed, should develop themselves only as occasion

offered to exercise them, in order that they might not be superfluous or perplexing to

him, by appearing before their time, nor slow and useless when the need for them

arose. In instinct alone, he had all he required for living in the state of nature; and

with a developed understanding he has only just enough to support life in society.

It appears, at first view, that men in a state of nature, having no moral relations or

determinate obligations one with another, could not be either good or bad, virtuous or

vicious; unless we take these terms in a physical sense, and call, in an individual,

those qualities vices which may be injurious to his preservation, and those virtues

which contribute to it; in which case, he would have to be accounted most virtuous,

who put least check on the pure impulses of nature. But without deviating from the

ordinary sense of the words, it will be proper to suspend the judgment we might be

led to form on such a state, and be on our guard against our prejudices, till we have

weighed the matter in the scales of impartiality, and seen whether virtues or vices

preponderate among civilised men; and whether their virtues do them more good than

their vices do harm; till we have discovered, whether the progress of the sciences

sufficiently indemnifies them for the mischiefs they do one another, in proportion as

they are better informed of the good they ought to do; or whether they would not be,

on the whole, in a much happier condition if they had nothing to fear or to hope from

any one, than as they are, subjected to universal dependence, and obliged to take

everything from those who engage to give them nothing in return.

Above all, let us not conclude, with Hobbes, that because man has no idea of

goodness, he must be naturally wicked; that he is vicious because he does not know

virtue; that he always refuses to do his fellow-creatures services which he does not

think they have a right to demand; or that by virtue of the right he truly claims to

everything he needs, he foolishly imagines himself the sole proprietor of the whole

universe. Hobbes had seen clearly the defects of all the modern definitions of natural

right: but the consequences which he deduces from his own show that he understands

it in an equally false sense. In reasoning on the principles he lays down, he ought to

have said that the state of nature, being that in which the care for our own

preservation is the least prejudicial to that of others, was consequently the best

calculated to promote peace, and the most suitable for mankind. He does say the exact

opposite, in consequence of having improperly admitted, as a part of savage man’s

care for self-preservation, the gratification of a multitude of passions which are the

work of society, and have made laws necessary. A bad man, he says, is a robust child.

But it remains to be proved whether man in a state of nature is this robust child: and,

should we grant that he is, what would he infer? Why truly, that if this man, when

robust and strong, were dependent on others as he is when feeble, there is no

extravagance he would not be guilty of; that he would beat his mother when she was

too slow in giving him her breast; that he would strangle one of his younger brothers,

if he should be troublesome to him, or bite the arm of another, if he put him to any

inconvenience. But that man in the state of nature is both strong and dependent

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involves two contrary suppositions. Man is weak when he is dependent, and is his

own master before he comes to be strong. Hobbes did not reflect that the same cause,

which prevents a savage from making use of his reason, as our jurists hold, prevents

him also from abusing his faculties, as Hobbes himself allows: so that it may be justly

said that savages are not bad merely because they do not know what it is to be good:

for it is neither the development of the understanding nor the restraint of law that

hinders them from doing ill; but the peacefulness of their passions, and their

ignorance of vice: tanto plus in illis proficit vitiorum ignoratio, quam in his cognitio

virtutis.1 There is another principle which has escaped Hobbes; which, having been

bestowed on mankind, to moderate, on certain occasions, the impetuosity of egoism,

or, before its birth, the desire of self-preservation, tempers the ardour with which he

pursues his own welfare, by an innate repugnance at seeing a fellow-creature suffer.2

I think I need not fear contradiction in holding man to be possessed of the only natural

virtue, which could not be denied him by the most violent detractor of human virtue. I

am speaking of compassion, which is a disposition suitable to creatures so weak and

subject to so many evils as we certainly are: by so much the more universal and useful

to mankind, as it comes before any kind of reflection; and at the same time so natural,

that the very brutes themselves sometimes give evident proofs of it. Not to mention

the tenderness of mothers for their offspring and the perils they encounter to save

them from danger, it is well known that horses show a reluctance to trample on living

bodies. One animal never passes by the dead body of another of its species: there are

even some which give their fellows a sort of burial; while the mournful lowings of the

cattle when they enter the slaughter-house show the impressions made on them by the

horrible spectacle which meets them. We find, with pleasure, the author of the Fable

of the Bees obliged to own that man is a compassionate and sensible being, and laying

aside his cold subtlety of style, in the example he gives, to present us with the pathetic

description of a man who, from a place of confinement, is compelled to behold a wild

beast tear a child from the arms of its mother, grinding its tender limbs with its

murderous teeth, and tearing its palpitating entrails with its claws. What horrid

agitation must not the eye-witness of such a scene experience, although he would not

be personally concerned! What anxiety would he not suffer at not being able to give

any assistance to the fainting mother and the dying infant!

Such is the pure emotion of nature, prior to all kinds of reflection! Such is the force of

natural compassion, which the greatest depravity of morals has as yet hardly been able

to destroy! for we daily find at our theatres men affected, nay shedding tears at the

sufferings of a wretch who, were he in the tyrant’s place, would probably even add to

the torments of his enemies; like the blood-thirsty Sulla, who was so sensitive to ills

he had not caused, or that Alexander of Pheros who did not dare to go and see any

tragedy acted, for fear of being seen weeping with Andromache and Priam, though he

could listen without emotion to the cries of all the citizens who were daily strangled at

his command.

Mollissima corda

Humano generi dare se natura fatetur,

Quæ lacrimas dedit.

Juvenal, Satire xv, 151.

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Mandeville well knew that, in spite of all their morality, men would have never been

better than monsters, had not nature bestowed on them a sense of compassion, to aid

their reason: but he did not see that from this quality alone flow all those social

virtues, of which he denied man the possession. But what is generosity, clemency or

humanity but compassion applied to the weak, to the guilty, or to mankind in general?

Even benevolence and friendship are, if we judge rightly, only the effects of

compassion, constantly set upon a particular object: for how is it different to wish that

another person may not suffer pain and uneasiness and to wish him happy? Were it

even true that pity is no more than a feeling, which puts us in the place of the sufferer,

a feeling, obscure yet lively in a savage, developed yet feeble in civilised man; this

truth would have no other consequence than to confirm my argument. Compassion

must, in fact, be the stronger, the more the animal beholding any kind of distress

identifies himself with the animal that suffers. Now, it is plain that such identification

must have been much more perfect in a state of nature than it is in a state of reason. It

is reason that engenders self-respect, and reflection that confirms it: it is reason which

turns man’s mind back upon itself, and divides him from everything that could disturb

or afflict him. It is philosophy that isolates him, and bids him say, at sight of the

misfortunes of others: “Perish if you will, I am secure.” Nothing but such general

evils as threaten the whole community can disturb the tranquil sleep of the

philosopher, or tear him from his bed. A murder may with impunity be committed

under his window; he has only to put his hands to his ears and argue a little with

himself, to prevent nature, which is shocked within him, from identifying itself with

the unfortunate sufferer. Uncivilised man has not this admirable talent; and for want

of reason and wisdom, is always foolishly ready to obey the first promptings of

humanity. It is the populace that flocks together at riots and street-brawls, while the

wise man prudently makes off. It is the mob and the market-women, who part the

combatants, and hinder gentle-folks from cutting one another’s throats.

It is then certain that compassion is a natural feeling, which, by moderating the

violence of love of self in each individual, contributes to the preservation of the whole

species. It is this compassion that hurries us without reflection to the relief of those

who are in distress: it is this which in a state of nature supplies the place of laws,

morals and virtues, with the advantage that none are tempted to disobey its gentle

voice: it is this which will always prevent a sturdy savage from robbing a weak child

or a feeble old man of the sustenance they may have with pain and difficulty acquired,

if he sees a possibility of providing for himself by other means: it is this which,

instead of inculcating that sublime maxim of rational justice, Do to others as you

would have them do unto you, inspires all men with that other maxim of natural

goodness, much less perfect indeed, but perhaps more useful; Do good to yourself

with as little evil as possible to others. In a word, it is rather in this natural feeling

than in any subtle arguments that we must look for the cause of that repugnance,

which every man would experience in doing evil, even independently of the maxims

of education. Although it might belong to Socrates and other minds of the like craft to

acquire virtue by reason, the human race would long since have ceased to be, had its

preservation depended only on the reasonings of the individuals composing it.

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With passions so little active, and so good a curb, men, being rather wild than wicked,

and more intent to guard themselves against the mischief that might be done them,

than to do mischief to others, were by no means subject to very perilous dissensions.

They maintained no kind of intercourse with one another, and were consequently

strangers to vanity, deference, esteem and contempt; they had not the least idea of

meum and tuum, and no true conception of justice; they looked upon every violence to

which they were subjected, rather as an injury that might easily be repaired than as a

crime that ought to be punished; and they never thought of taking revenge, unless

perhaps mechanically and on the spot, as a dog will sometimes bite the stone which is

thrown at him. Their quarrels therefore would seldom have very bloody

consequences; for the subject of them would be merely the question of subsistence.

But I am aware of one greater danger, which remains to be noticed.

Of the passions that stir the heart of man, there is one which makes the sexes

necessary to each other, and is extremely ardent and impetuous; a terrible passion that

braves danger, surmounts all obstacles, and in its transports seems calculated to bring

destruction on the human race which it is really destined to preserve. What must

become of men who are left to this brutal and boundless rage, without modesty,

without shame, and daily upholding their amours at the price of their blood?

It must, in the first place, be allowed that, the more violent the passions are, the more

are laws necessary to keep them under restraint. But, setting aside the inadequacy of

laws to effect this purpose, which is evident from the crimes and disorders to which

these passions daily give rise among us, we should do well to inquire if these evils did

not spring up with the laws themselves; for in this case, even if the laws were capable

of repressing such evils, it is the least that could be expected from them, that they

should check a mischief which would not have arisen without them.

Let us begin by distinguishing between the physical and moral ingredients in the

feeling of love. The physical part of love is that general desire which urges the sexes

to union with each other. The moral part is that which determines and fixes this desire

exclusively upon one particular object; or at least gives it a greater degree of energy

toward the object thus preferred. It is easy to see that the moral part of love is a

factitious feeling, born of social usage, and enhanced by the women with much care

and cleverness, to establish their empire, and put in power the sex which ought to

obey. This feeling, being founded on certain ideas of beauty and merit which a savage

is not in a position to acquire, and on comparisons which he is incapable of making,

must be for him almost non-existent; for, as his mind cannot form abstract ideas of

proportion and regularity, so his heart is not susceptible of the feelings of love and

admiration, which are even insensibly produced by the application of these ideas. He

follows solely the character nature has implanted in him, and not tastes which he

could never have acquired; so that every woman equally answers his purpose.

Men in a state of nature being confined merely to what is physical in love, and

fortunate enough to be ignorant of those excellences, which whet the appetite while

they increase the difficulty of gratifying it, must be subject to fewer and less violent

fits of passion, and consequently fall into fewer and less violent disputes. The

imagination, which causes such ravages among us, never speaks to the heart of

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savages, who quietly await the impulses of nature, yield to them involuntarily, with

more pleasure than ardour, and, their wants once satisfied, lose the desire. It is

therefore incontestable that love, as well as all other passions, must have acquired in

society that glowing impetuosity, which makes it so often fatal to mankind. And it is

the more absurd to represent savages as continually cutting one another’s throats to

indulge their brutality, because this opinion is directly contrary to experience; the

Caribeans, who have as yet least of all deviated from the state of nature, being in fact

the most peaceable of people in their amours, and the least subject to jealousy, though

they live in a hot climate which seems always to inflame the passions.

With regard to the inferences that might be drawn, in the case of several species of

animals, the males of which fill our poultry-yards with blood and slaughter, or in

spring make the forests resound with their quarrels over their females; we must begin

by excluding all those species, in which nature has plainly established, in the

comparative power of the sexes, relations different from those which exist among us:

thus we can base no conclusion about men on the habits of fighting cocks. In those

species where the proportion is better observed, these battles must be entirely due to

the scarcity of females in comparison with males; or, what amounts to the same thing,

to the intervals during which the female constantly refuses the advances of the male:

for if each female admits the male but during two months in the year, it is the same as

if the number of females were five-sixths less. Now, neither of these two cases is

applicable to the human species, in which the number of females usually exceeds that

of males, and among whom it has never been observed, even among savages, that the

females have, like those of other animals, their stated times of passion and

indifference. Moreover, in several of these species, the individuals all take fire at

once, and there comes a fearful moment of universal passion, tumult and disorder

among them; a scene which is never beheld in the human species, whose love is not

thus seasonal. We must not then conclude from the combats of such animals for the

enjoyment of the females, that the case would be the same with mankind in a state of

nature: and, even if we drew such a conclusion, we see that such contests do not

exterminate other kinds of animals, and we have no reason to think they would be

more fatal to ours. It is indeed clear that they would do still less mischief than is the

case in a state of society; especially in those countries in which, morals being still

held in some repute, the jealousy of lovers and the vengeance of husbands are the

daily cause of duels, murders, and even worse crimes; where the obligation of eternal

fidelity only occasions adultery, and the very laws of honour and continence

necessarily increase debauchery and lead to the multiplication of abortions.

Let us conclude then that man in a state of nature, wandering up and down the forests,

without industry, without speech, and without home, an equal stranger to war and to

all ties, neither standing in need of his fellow-creatures nor having any desire to hurt

them, and perhaps even not distinguishing them one from another; let us conclude

that, being self-sufficient and subject to so few passions, he could have no feelings or

knowledge but such as befitted his situation; that he felt only his actual necessities,

and disregarded everything he did not think himself immediately concerned to notice,

and that his understanding made no greater progress than his vanity. If by accident he

made any discovery, he was the less able to communicate it to others, as he did not

know even his own children. Every art would necessarily perish with its inventor,

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where there was no kind of education among men, and generations succeeded

generations without the least advance; when, all setting out from the same point,

centuries must have elapsed in the barbarism of the first ages; when the race was

already old, and man remained a child.

If I have expatiated at such length on this supposed primitive state, it is because I had

so many ancient errors and inveterate prejudices to eradicate, and therefore thought it

incumbent on me to dig down to their very root, and show, by means of a true picture

of the state of nature, how far even the natural inequalities of mankind are from

having that reality and influence which modern writers suppose.

It is in fact easy to see that many of the differences which distinguish men are merely

the effect of habit and the different methods of life men adopt in society. Thus a

robust or delicate constitution, and the strength or weakness attaching to it, are more

frequently the effects of a hardy or effeminate method of education than of the

original endowment of the body. It is the same with the powers of the mind; for

education not only makes a difference between such as are cultured and such as are

not, but even increases the differences which exist among the former, in proportion to

their respective degrees of culture: as the distance between a giant and a dwarf on the

same road increases with every step they take. If we compare the prodigious diversity,

which obtains in the education and manner of life of the various orders of men in the

state of society, with the uniformity and simplicity of animal and savage life, in which

every one lives on the same kind of food and in exactly the same manner, and does

exactly the same things, it is easy to conceive how much less the difference between

man and man must be in a state of nature than in a state of society, and how greatly

the natural inequality of mankind must be increased by the inequalities of social

institutions.

But even if nature really affected, in the distribution of her gifts, that partiality which

is imputed to her, what advantage would the greatest of her favourites derive from it,

to the detriment of others, in a state that admits of hardly any kind of relation between

them? Where there is no love, of what advantage is beauty? Of what use is wit to

those who do not converse, or cunning to those who have no business with others? I

hear it constantly repeated that, in such a state, the strong would oppress the weak; but

what is here meant by oppression? Some, it is said, would violently domineer over

others, who would groan under a servile submission to their caprices. This indeed is

exactly what I observe to be the case among us; but I do not see how it can be inferred

of men in a state of nature, who could not easily be brought to conceive what we

mean by dominion and servitude. One man, it is true, might seize the fruits which

another had gathered, the game he had killed, or the cave he had chosen for shelter;

but how would he ever be able to exact obedience, and what ties of dependence could

there be among men without possessions? If, for instance, I am driven from one tree, I

can go to the next; if I am disturbed in one place, what hinders me from going to

another? Again, should I happen to meet with a man so much stronger than myself,

and at the same time so depraved, so indolent, and so barbarous, as to compel me to

provide for his sustenance while he himself remains idle; he must take care not to

have his eyes off me for a single moment; he must bind me fast before he goes to

sleep, or I shall certainly either knock him on the head or make my escape. That is to

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say, he must in such a case voluntarily expose himself to much greater trouble than he

seeks to avoid, or can give me. After all this, let him be off his guard ever so little; let

him but turn his head aside at any sudden noise, and I shall be instantly twenty paces

off, lost in the forest, and, my fetters burst asunder, he would never see me again.

Without my expatiating thus uselessly on these details, every one must see that as the

bonds of servitude are formed merely by the mutual dependence of men on one

another and the reciprocal needs that unite them, it is impossible to make any man a

slave, unless he be first reduced to a situation in which he cannot do without the help

of others: and, since such a situation does not exist in a state of nature, every one is

there his own master, and the law of the strongest is of no effect.

Having proved that the inequality of mankind is hardly felt, and that its influence is

next to nothing in a state of nature, I must next show its origin and trace its progress

in the successive developments of the human mind. Having shown that human

perfectibility, the social virtues, and the other faculties which natural man potentially

possessed, could never develop of themselves, but must require the fortuitous

concurrence of many foreign causes that might never arise, and without which he

would have remained for ever in his primitive condition, I must now collect and

consider the different accidents which may have improved the human understanding

while depraving the species, and made man wicked while making him sociable; so as

to bring him and the world from that distant period to the point at which we now

behold them.

I confess that, as the events I am going to describe might have happened in various

ways, I have nothing to determine my choice but conjectures: but such conjectures

become reasons, when they are the most probable that can be drawn from the nature

of things, and the only means of discovering the truth. The consequences, however,

which I mean to deduce will not be barely conjectural; as, on the principles just laid

down, it would be impossible to form any other theory that would not furnish the

same results, and from which I could not draw the same conclusions.

This will be a sufficient apology for my not dwelling on the manner in which the

lapse of time compensates for the little probability in the events; on the surprising

power of trivial causes, when their action is constant; on the impossibility, on the one

hand, of destroying certain hypotheses, though on the other we cannot give them the

certainty of known matters of fact; on its being within the province of history, when

two facts are given as real, and have to be connected by a series of intermediate facts,

which are unknown or supposed to be so, to supply such facts as may connect them;

and on its being in the province of philosophy when history is silent, to determine

similar facts to serve the same end; and lastly, on the influence of similarity, which, in

the case of events, reduces the facts to a much smaller number of different classes

than is commonly imagined. It is enough for me to offer these hints to the

consideration of my judges, and to have so arranged that the general reader has no

need to consider them at all.

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THE SECOND PART

The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying

This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of

civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and

misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or

filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, “Beware of listening to this impostor;

you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the

earth itself to nobody.” But there is great probability that things had then already

come to such a pitch, that they could no longer continue as they were; for the idea of

property depends on many prior ideas, which could only be acquired successively,

and cannot have been formed all at once in the human mind. Mankind must have

made very considerable progress, and acquired considerable knowledge and industry

which they must also have transmitted and increased from age to age, before they

arrived at this last point of the state of nature. Let us then go farther back, and

endeavour to unify under a single point of view that slow succession of events and

discoveries in the most natural order.

Man’s first feeling was that of his own existence, and his first care that of self-

preservation. The produce of the earth furnished him with all he needed, and instinct

told him how to use it. Hunger and other appetites made him at various times

experience various modes of existence; and among these was one which urged him to

propagate his species—a blind propensity that, having nothing to do with the heart,

produced a merely animal act. The want once gratified, the two sexes knew each other

no more; and even the offspring was nothing to its mother, as soon as it could do

without her.

Such was the condition of infant man; the life of an animal limited at first to mere

sensations, and hardly profiting by the gifts nature bestowed on him, much less

capable of entertaining a thought of forcing anything from her. But difficulties soon

presented themselves, and it became necessary to learn how to surmount them: the

height of the trees, which prevented him from gathering their fruits, the competition

of other animals desirous of the same fruits, and the ferocity of those who needed

them for their own preservation, all obliged him to apply himself to bodily exercises.

He had to be active, swift of foot, and vigorous in fight. Natural weapons, stones and

sticks, were easily found: he learnt to surmount the obstacles of nature, to contend in

case of necessity with other animals, and to dispute for the means of subsistence even

with other men, or to indemnify himself for what he was forced to give up to a

stronger.

In proportion as the human race grew more numerous, men’s cares increased. The

difference of soils, climates and seasons, must have introduced some differences into

their manner of living. Barren years, long and sharp winters, scorching summers

which parched the fruits of the earth, must have demanded a new industry. On the

seashore and the banks of rivers, they invented the hook and line, and became

fishermen and eaters of fish. In the forests they made bows and arrows, and became

huntsmen and warriors. In cold countries they clothed themselves with the skins of the

beasts they had slain. The lightning, a volcano, or some lucky chance acquainted them

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with fire, a new resource against the rigours of winter: they next learned how to

preserve this element, then how to reproduce it, and finally how to prepare with it the

flesh of animals which before they had eaten raw.

This repeated relevance of various beings to himself, and one to another, would

naturally give rise in the human mind to the perceptions of certain relations between

them. Thus the relations which we denote by the terms, great, small, strong, weak,

swift, slow, fearful, bold, and the like, almost insensibly compared at need, must have

at length produced in him a kind of reflection, or rather a mechanical prudence, which

would indicate to him the precautions most necessary to his security.

The new intelligence which resulted from this development increased his superiority

over other animals, by making him sensible of it. He would now endeavour, therefore,

to ensnare them, would play them a thousand tricks, and though many of them might

surpass him in swiftness or in strength, would in time become the master of some and

the scourge of others. Thus, the first time he looked into himself, he felt the first

emotion of pride; and, at a time when he scarce knew how to distinguish the different

orders of beings, by looking upon his species as of the highest order, he prepared the

way for assuming pre-eminence as an individual.

Other men, it is true, were not then to him what they now are to us, and he had no

greater intercourse with them than with other animals; yet they were not neglected in

his observations. The conformities, which he would in time discover between them,

and between himself and his female, led him to judge of others which were not then

perceptible; and finding that they all behaved as he himself would have done in like

circumstances, he naturally inferred that their manner of thinking and acting was

altogether in conformity with his own. This important truth, once deeply impressed on

his mind, must have induced him, from an intuitive feeling more certain and much

more rapid than any kind of reasoning, to pursue the rules of conduct, which he had

best observe towards them, for his own security and advantage.

Taught by experience that the love of well-being is the sole motive of human actions,

he found himself in a position to distinguish the few cases, in which mutual interest

might justify him in relying upon the assistance of his fellows; and also the still fewer

cases in which a conflict of interests might give cause to suspect them. In the former

case, he joined in the same herd with them, or at most in some kind of loose

association, that laid no restraint on its members, and lasted no longer than the

transitory occasion that formed it. In the latter case, every one sought his own private

advantage, either by open force, if he thought himself strong enough, or by address

and cunning, if he felt himself the weaker.

In this manner, men may have insensibly acquired some gross ideas of mutual

undertakings, and of the advantages of fulfilling them: that is, just so far as their

present and apparent interest was concerned: for they were perfect strangers to

foresight, and were so far from troubling themselves about the distant future, that they

hardly thought of the morrow. If a deer was to be taken, every one saw that, in order

to succeed, he must abide faithfully by his post: but if a hare happened to come within

the reach of any one of them, it is not to be doubted that he pursued it without scruple,

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and, having seized his prey, cared very little, if by so doing he caused his companions

to miss theirs.

It is easy to understand that such intercourse would not require a language much more

refined than that of rooks or monkeys, who associate together for much the same

purpose. Inarticulate cries, plenty of gestures and some imitative sounds, must have

been for a long time the universal language; and by the addition, in every country, of

some conventional articulate sounds (of which, as I have already intimated, the first

institution is not too easy to explain) particular languages were produced; but these

were rude and imperfect, and nearly such as are now to be found among some savage

nations.

Hurried on by the rapidity of time, by the abundance of things I have to say, and by

the almost insensible progress of things in their beginnings, I pass over in an instant a

multitude of ages; for the slower the events were in their succession, the more rapidly

may they be described.

These first advances enabled men to make others with greater rapidity. In proportion

as they grew enlightened, they grew industrious. They ceased to fall asleep under the

first tree, or in the first cave that afforded them shelter; they invented several kinds of

implements of hard and sharp stones, which they used to dig up the earth, and to cut

wood; they then made huts out of branches, and afterwards learnt to plaster them over

with mud and clay. This was the epoch of a first revolution, which established and

distinguished families, and introduced a kind of property, in itself the source of a

thousand quarrels and conflicts. As, however, the strongest were probably the first to

build themselves huts which they felt themselves able to defend, it may be concluded

that the weak found it much easier and safer to imitate, than to attempt to dislodge

them: and of those who were once provided with huts, none could have any

inducement to appropriate that of his neighbour; not indeed so much because it did

not belong to him, as because it could be of no use, and he could not make himself

master of it without exposing himself to a desperate battle with the family which

occupied it.

The first expansions of the human heart were the effects of a novel situation, which

united husbands and wives, fathers and children, under one roof. The habit of living

together soon gave rise to the finest feelings known to humanity, conjugal love and

paternal affection. Every family became a little society, the more united because

liberty and reciprocal attachment were the only bonds of its union. The sexes, whose

manner of life had been hitherto the same, began now to adopt different ways of

living. The women became more sedentary, and accustomed themselves to mind the

hut and their children, while the men went abroad in search of their common

subsistence. From living a softer life, both sexes also began to lose something of their

strength and ferocity: but, if individuals became to some extent less able to encounter

wild beasts separately, they found it, on the other hand, easier to assemble and resist

in common.

The simplicity and solitude of man’s life in this new condition, the paucity of his

wants, and the implements he had invented to satisfy them, left him a great deal of

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leisure, which he employed to furnish himself with many conveniences unknown to

his fathers: and this was the first yoke he inadvertently imposed on himself, and the

first source of the evils he prepared for his descendants. For, besides continuing thus

to enervate both body and mind, these conveniences lost with use almost all their

power to please, and even degenerated into real needs, till the want of them became

far more disagreeable than the possession of them had been pleasant. Men would have

been unhappy at the loss of them, though the possession did not make them happy.

We can here see a little better how the use of speech became established, and

insensibly improved in each family, and we may form a conjecture also concerning

the manner in which various causes may have extended and accelerated the progress

of language, by making it more and more necessary. Floods or earthquakes

surrounded inhabited districts with precipices or waters: revolutions of the globe tore

off portions from the continent, and made them islands. It is readily seen that among

men thus collected and compelled to live together, a common idiom must have arisen

much more easily than among those who still wandered through the forests of the

continent. Thus it is very possible that after their first essays in navigation the

islanders brought over the use of speech to the continent: and it is at least very

probable that communities and languages were first established in islands, and even

came to perfection there before they were known on the mainland.

Everything now begins to change its aspect. Men, who have up to now been roving in

the woods, by taking to a more settled manner of life, come gradually together, form

separate bodies, and at length in every country arises a distinct nation, united in

character and manners, not by regulations or laws, but by uniformity of life and food,

and the common influence of climate. Permanent neighbourhood could not fail to

produce, in time, some connection between different families. Among young people

of opposite sexes, living in neighbouring huts, the transient commerce required by

nature soon led, through mutual intercourse, to another kind not less agreeable, and

more permanent. Men began now to take the difference between objects into account,

and to make comparisons; they acquired imperceptibly the ideas of beauty and merit,

which soon gave rise to feelings of preference. In consequence of seeing each other

often, they could not do without seeing each other constantly. A tender and pleasant

feeling insinuated itself into their souls, and the least opposition turned it into an

impetuous fury: with love arose jealousy; discord triumphed, and human blood was

sacrificed to the gentlest of all passions.

As ideas and feelings succeeded one another, and heart and head were brought into

play, men continued to lay aside their original wildness; their private connections

became every day more intimate as their limits extended. They accustomed

themselves to assemble before their huts round a large tree; singing and dancing, the

true offspring of love and leisure, became the amusement, or rather the occupation, of

men and women thus assembled together with nothing else to do. Each one began to

consider the rest, and to wish to be considered in turn; and thus a value came to be

attached to public esteem. Whoever sang or danced best, whoever was the

handsomest, the strongest, the most dexterous, or the most eloquent, came to be of

most consideration; and this was the first step towards inequality, and at the same

time towards vice. From these first distinctions arose on the one side vanity and

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contempt and on the other shame and envy: and the fermentation caused by these new

leavens ended by producing combinations fatal to innocence and happiness.

As soon as men began to value one another, and the idea of consideration had got a

footing in the mind, every one put in his claim to it, and it became impossible to

refuse it to any with impunity. Hence arose the first obligations of civility even among

savages; and every intended injury became an affront; because, besides the hurt which

might result from it, the party injured was certain to find in it a contempt for his

person, which was often more insupportable than the hurt itself.

Thus, as every man punished the contempt shown him by others, in proportion to his

opinion of himself, revenge became terrible, and men bloody and cruel. This is

precisely the state reached by most of the savage nations known to us: and it is for

want of having made a proper distinction in our ideas, and seen how very far they

already are from the state of nature, that so many writers have hastily concluded that

man is naturally cruel, and requires civil institutions to make him more mild; whereas

nothing is more gentle than man in his primitive state, as he is placed by nature at an

equal distance from the stupidity of brutes, and the fatal ingenuity of civilised man.

Equally confined by instinct and reason to the sole care of guarding himself against

the mischiefs which threaten him, he is restrained by natural compassion from doing

any injury to others, and is not led to do such a thing even in return for injuries

received. For, according to the axiom of the wise Locke, There can be no injury,

where there is no property.

But it must be remarked that the society thus formed, and the relations thus

established among men, required of them qualities different from those which they

possessed from their primitive constitution. Morality began to appear in human

actions, and every one, before the institution of law, was the only judge and avenger

of the injuries done him, so that the goodness which was suitable in the pure state of

nature was no longer proper in the new-born state of society. Punishments had to be

made more severe, as opportunities of offending became more frequent, and the dread

of vengeance had to take the place of the rigour of the law. Thus, though men had

become less patient, and their natural compassion had already suffered some

diminution, this period of expansion of the human faculties, keeping a just mean

between the indolence of the primitive state and the petulant activity of our egoism,

must have been the happiest and most stable of epochs. The more we reflect on it, the

more we shall find that this state was the least subject to revolutions, and altogether

the very best man could experience; so that he can have departed from it only through

some fatal accident, which, for the public good, should never have happened. The

example of savages, most of whom have been found in this state, seems to prove that

men were meant to remain in it, that it is the real youth of the world, and that all

subsequent advances have been apparently so many steps towards the perfection of

the individual, but in reality towards the decrepitude of the species.

So long as men remained content with their rustic huts, so long as they were satisfied

with clothes made of the skins of animals and sewn together with thorns and fish-

bones, adorned themselves only with feathers and shells, and continued to paint their

bodies different colours, to improve and beautify their bows and arrows and to make

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with sharp-edged stones fishing boats or clumsy musical instruments; in a word, so

long as they undertook only what a single person could accomplish, and confined

themselves to such arts as did not require the joint labour of several hands, they lived

free, healthy, honest and happy lives, so long as their nature allowed, and as they

continued to enjoy the pleasures of mutual and independent intercourse. But from the

moment one man began to stand in need of the help of another; from the moment it

appeared advantageous to any one man to have enough provisions for two, equality

disappeared, property was introduced, work became indispensable, and vast forests

became smiling fields, which man had to water with the sweat of his brow, and where

slavery and misery were soon seen to germinate and grow up with the crops.

Metallurgy and agriculture were the two arts which produced this great revolution.

The poets tell us it was gold and silver, but, for the philosophers, it was iron and corn,

which first civilised men, and ruined humanity. Thus both were unknown to the

savages of America, who for that reason are still savage: the other nations also seem

to have continued in a state of barbarism while they practised only one of these arts.

One of the best reasons, perhaps, why Europe has been, if not longer, at least more

constantly and highly civilised than the rest of the world, is that it is at once the most

abundant in iron and the most fertile in corn.

It is difficult to conjecture how men first came to know and use iron; for it is

impossible to suppose they would of themselves think of digging the ore out of the

mine, and preparing it for smelting, before they knew what would be the result. On

the other hand, we have the less reason to suppose this discovery the effect of any

accidental fire, as mines are only formed in barren places, bare of trees and plants; so

that it looks as if nature had taken pains to keep the fatal secret from us. There

remains, therefore, only the extraordinary accident of some volcano which, by

ejecting metallic substances already in fusion, suggested to the spectators the idea of

imitating the natural operation. And we must further conceive them as possessed of

uncommon courage and foresight, to undertake so laborious a work, with so distant a

prospect of drawing advantage from it; yet these qualities are united only in minds

more advanced than we can suppose those of these first discoverers to have been.

With regard to agriculture, the principles of it were known long before they were put

in practice; and it is indeed hardly possible that men, constantly employed in drawing

their subsistence from plants and trees, should not readily acquire a knowledge of the

means made use of by nature for the propagation of vegetables. It was in all

probability very long, however, before their industry took that turn, either because

trees, which together with hunting and fishing afforded them food, did not require

their attention; or because they were ignorant of the use of corn, or without

instruments to cultivate it; or because they lacked foresight to future needs; or lastly,

because they were without means of preventing others from robbing them of the fruit

of their labour.

When they grew more industrious, it is natural to believe that they began, with the

help of sharp stones and pointed sticks, to cultivate a few vegetables or roots around

their huts; though it was long before they knew how to prepare corn, or were provided

with the implements necessary for raising it in any large quantity; not to mention how

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essential it is, for husbandry, to consent to immediate loss, in order to reap a future

gain—a precaution very foreign to the turn of a savage’s mind; for, as I have said, he

hardly foresees in the morning what he will need at night.

The invention of the other arts must therefore have been necessary to compel mankind

to apply themselves to agriculture. No sooner were artificers wanted to smelt and

forge iron, than others were required to maintain them; the more hands that were

employed in manufactures, the fewer were left to provide for the common

subsistence, though the number of mouths to be furnished with food remained the

same: and as some required commodities in exchange for their iron, the rest at length

discovered the method of making iron serve for the multiplication of commodities. By

this means the arts of husbandry and agriculture were established on the one hand,

and the art of working metals and multiplying their uses on the other.

The cultivation of the earth necessarily brought about its distribution; and property,

once recognised, gave rise to the first rules of justice; for, to secure each man his own,

it had to be possible for each to have something. Besides, as men began to look

forward to the future, and all had something to lose, every one had reason to

apprehend that reprisals would follow any injury he might do to another. This origin

is so much the more natural, as it is impossible to conceive how property can come

from anything but manual labour: for what else can a man add to things which he does

not originally create, so as to make them his own property? It is the husbandman’s

labour alone that, giving him a title to the produce of the ground he has tilled, gives

him a claim also to the land itself, at least till harvest; and so, from year to year, a

constant possession which is easily transformed into property. When the ancients,

says Grotius, gave to Ceres the title of Legislatrix, and to a festival celebrated in her

honour the name of Thesmophoria, they meant by that that the distribution of lands

had produced a new kind of right: that is to say, the right of property, which is

different from the right deducible from the law of nature.

In this state of affairs, equality might have been sustained, had the talents of

individuals been equal, and had, for example, the use of iron and the consumption of

commodities always exactly balanced each other; but, as there was nothing to

preserve this balance, it was soon disturbed; the strongest did most work; the most

skilful turned his labour to best account; the most ingenious devised methods of

diminishing his labour: the husbandman wanted more iron, or the smith more corn,

and, while both laboured equally, the one gained a great deal by his work, while the

other could hardly support himself. Thus natural inequality unfolds itself insensibly

with that of combination, and the difference between men, developed by their

different circumstances, becomes more sensible and permanent in its effects, and

begins to have an influence, in the same proportion, over the lot of individuals.

Matters once at this pitch, it is easy to imagine the rest. I shall not detain the reader

with a description of the successive invention of other arts, the development of

language, the trial and utilisation of talents, the inequality of fortunes, the use and

abuse of riches, and all the details connected with them which the reader can easily

supply for himself. I shall confine myself to a glance at mankind in this new situation.

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Behold then all human faculties developed, memory and imagination in full play,

egoism interested, reason active, and the mind almost at the highest point of its

perfection. Behold all the natural qualities in action, the rank and condition of every

man assigned him; not merely his share of property and his power to serve or injure

others, but also his wit, beauty, strength or skill, merit or talents: and these being the

only qualities capable of commanding respect, it soon became necessary to possess or

to affect them.

It now became the interest of men to appear what they really were not. To be and to

seem became two totally different things; and from this distinction sprang insolent

pomp and cheating trickery, with all the numerous vices that go in their train. On the

other hand, free and independent as men were before, they were now, in consequence

of a multiplicity of new wants, brought into subjection, as it were, to all nature, and

particularly to one another; and each became in some degree a slave even in becoming

the master of other men: if rich, they stood in need of the services of others; if poor, of

their assistance; and even a middle condition did not enable them to do without one

another. Man must now, therefore, have been perpetually employed in getting others

to interest themselves in his lot, and in making them, apparently at least, if not really,

find their advantage in promoting his own. Thus he must have been sly and artful in

his behaviour to some, and imperious and cruel to others; being under a kind of

necessity to ill-use all the persons of whom he stood in need, when he could not

frighten them into compliance, and did not judge it his interest to be useful to them.

Insatiable ambition, the thirst of raising their respective fortunes, not so much from

real want as from the desire to surpass others, inspired all men with a vile propensity

to injure one another, and with a secret jealousy, which is the more dangerous, as it

puts on the mask of benevolence, to carry its point with greater security. In a word,

there arose rivalry and competition on the one hand, and conflicting interests on the

other, together with a secret desire on both of profiting at the expense of others. All

these evils were the first effects of property, and the inseparable attendants of growing

inequality.

Before the invention of signs to represent riches, wealth could hardly consist in

anything but lands and cattle, the only real possessions men can have. But, when

inheritances so increased in number and extent as to occupy the whole of the land, and

to border on one another, one man could aggrandise himself only at the expense of

another; at the same time the supernumeraries, who had been too weak or too indolent

to make such acquisitions, and had grown poor without sustaining any loss, because,

while they saw everything change around them, they remained still the same, were

obliged to receive their subsistence, or steal it, from the rich; and this soon bred,

according to their different characters, dominion and slavery, or violence and rapine.

The wealthy, on their part, had no sooner begun to taste the pleasure of command,

than they disdained all others, and, using their old slaves to acquire new, thought of

nothing but subduing and enslaving their neighbours; like ravenous wolves, which,

having once tasted human flesh, despise every other food and thenceforth seek only

men to devour.

Thus, as the most powerful or the most miserable considered their might or misery as

a kind of right to the possessions of others, equivalent, in their opinion, to that of

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property, the destruction of equality was attended by the most terrible disorders.

Usurpations by the rich, robbery by the poor, and the unbridled passions of both,

suppressed the cries of natural compassion and the still feeble voice of justice, and

filled men with avarice, ambition and vice. Between the title of the strongest and that

of the first occupier, there arose perpetual conflicts, which never ended but in battles

and bloodshed. The new-born state of society thus gave rise to a horrible state of war;

men thus harassed and depraved were no longer capable of retracing their steps or

renouncing the fatal acquisitions they had made, but, labouring by the abuse of the

faculties which do them honour, merely to their own confusion, brought themselves to

the brink of ruin.

Attonitus novitate mali, divesque miserque,

Effugere optat opes; et quæ modo voverat odit.1

It is impossible that men should not at length have reflected on so wretched a

situation, and on the calamities that overwhelmed them. The rich, in particular, must

have felt how much they suffered by a constant state of war, of which they bore all the

expense; and in which, though all risked their lives, they alone risked their property.

Besides, however speciously they might disguise their usurpations, they knew that

they were founded on precarious and false titles; so that, if others took from them by

force what they themselves had gained by force, they would have no reason to

complain. Even those who had been enriched by their own industry, could hardly base

their proprietorship on better claims. It was in vain to repeat, “I built this well; I

gained this spot by my industry.” Who gave you your standing, it might be answered,

and what right have you to demand payment of us for doing what we never asked you

to do? Do you not know that numbers of your fellow-creatures are starving, for want

of what you have too much of? You ought to have had the express and universal

consent of mankind, before appropriating more of the common subsistence than you

needed for your own maintenance. Destitute of valid reasons to justify and sufficient

strength to defend himself, able to crush individuals with ease, but easily crushed

himself by a troop of bandits, one against all, and incapable, on account of mutual

jealousy, of joining with his equals against numerous enemies united by the common

hope of plunder, the rich man, thus urged by necessity, conceived at length the

profoundest plan that ever entered the mind of man: this was to employ in his favour

the forces of those who attacked him, to make allies of his adversaries, to inspire them

with different maxims, and to give them other institutions as favourable to himself as

the law of nature was unfavourable.

With this view, after having represented to his neighbours the horror of a situation

which armed every man against the rest, and made their possessions as burdensome to

them as their wants, and in which no safety could be expected either in riches or in

poverty, he readily devised plausible arguments to make them close with his design.

“Let us join,” said he, “to guard the weak from oppression, to restrain the ambitious,

and secure to every man the possession of what belongs to him: let us institute rules of

justice and peace, to which all without exception may be obliged to conform; rules

that may in some measure make amends for the caprices of fortune, by subjecting

equally the powerful and the weak to the observance of reciprocal obligations. Let us,

in a word, instead of turning our forces against ourselves, collect them in a supreme

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power which may govern us by wise laws, protect and defend all the members of the

association, repulse their common enemies, and maintain eternal harmony among us.”

Far fewer words to this purpose would have been enough to impose on men so

barbarous and easily seduced; especially as they had too many disputes among

themselves to do without arbitrators, and too much ambition and avarice to go long

without masters. All ran headlong to their chains, in hopes of securing their liberty;

for they had just wit enough to perceive the advantages of political institutions,

without experience enough to enable them to foresee the dangers. The most capable of

foreseeing the dangers were the very persons who expected to benefit by them; and

even the most prudent judged it not inexpedient to sacrifice one part of their freedom

to ensure the rest; as a wounded man has his arm cut off to save the rest of his body.

Such was, or may well have been, the origin of society and law, which bound new

fetters on the poor, and gave new powers to the rich; which irretrievably destroyed

natural liberty, eternally fixed the law of property and inequality, converted clever

usurpation into unalterable right, and, for the advantage of a few ambitious

individuals, subjected all mankind to perpetual labour, slavery and wretchedness. It is

easy to see how the establishment of one community made that of all the rest

necessary, and how, in order to make head against united forces, the rest of mankind

had to unite in turn. Societies soon multiplied and spread over the face of the earth, till

hardly a corner of the world was left in which a man could escape the yoke, and

withdraw his head from beneath the sword which he saw perpetually hanging over

him by a thread. Civil right having thus become the common rule among the members

of each community, the law of nature maintained its place only between different

communities, where, under the name of the right of nations, it was qualified by certain

tacit conventions, in order to make commerce practicable, and serve as a substitute for

natural compassion, which lost, when applied to societies, almost all the influence it

had over individuals, and survived no longer except in some great cosmopolitan

spirits, who, breaking down the imaginary barriers that separate different peoples,

follow the example of our Sovereign Creator, and include the whole human race in

their benevolence.

But bodies politic, remaining thus in a state of nature among themselves, presently

experienced the inconveniences which had obliged individuals to forsake it; for this

state became still more fatal to these great bodies than it had been to the individuals of

whom they were composed. Hence arose national wars, battles, murders, and

reprisals, which shock nature and outrage reason; together with all those horrible

prejudices which class among the virtues the honour of shedding human blood. The

most distinguished men hence learned to consider cutting each other’s throats a duty;

at length men massacred their fellow-creatures by thousands without so much as

knowing why, and committed more murders in a single day’s fighting, and more

violent outrages in the sack of a single town, than were committed in the state of

nature during whole ages over the whole earth. Such were the first effects which we

can see to have followed the division of mankind into different communities. But let

us return to their institutions.

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I know that some writers have given other explanations of the origin of political

societies, such as the conquest of the powerful, or the association of the weak. It is,

indeed, indifferent to my argument which of these causes we choose. That which I

have just laid down, however, appears to me the most natural for the following

reasons. First: because, in the first case, the right of conquest, being no right in itself,

could not serve as a foundation on which to build any other; the victor and the

vanquished people still remained with respect to each other in the state of war, unless

the vanquished, restored to the full possession of their liberty, voluntarily made choice

of the victor for their chief. For till then, whatever capitulation may have been made

being founded on violence, and therefore ipso facto void, there could not have been

on this hypothesis either a real society or body politic, or any law other than that of

the strongest. Secondly: because the words strong and weak are, in the second case,

ambiguous; for during the interval between the establishment of a right of property, or

prior occupancy, and that of political government, the meaning of these words is

better expressed by the terms rich and poor: because, in fact, before the institution of

laws, men had no other way of reducing their equals to submission, than by attacking

their goods, or making some of their own over to them. Thirdly: because, as the poor

had nothing but their freedom to lose, it would have been in the highest degree absurd

for them to resign voluntarily the only good they still enjoyed, without getting

anything in exchange: whereas the rich having feelings, if I may so express myself, in

every part of their possessions, it was much easier to harm them, and therefore more

necessary for them to take precautions against it; and, in short, because it is more

reasonable to suppose a thing to have been invented by those to whom it would be of

service, than by those whom it must have harmed.

Government had, in its infancy, no regular and constant form. The want of experience

and philosophy prevented men from seeing any but present inconveniences, and they

thought of providing against others only as they presented themselves. In spite of the

endeavours of the wisest legislators, the political state remained imperfect, because it

was little more than the work of chance; and, as it had begun ill, though time revealed

its defects and suggested remedies, the original faults were never repaired. It was

continually being patched up, when the first task should have been to get the site

cleared and all the old materials removed, as was done by Lycurgus at Sparta, if a

stable and lasting edifice was to be erected. Society consisted at first merely of a few

general conventions, which every member bound himself to observe; and for the

performance of covenants the whole body went security to each individual.

Experience only could show the weakness of such a constitution, and how easily it

might be infringed with impunity, from the difficulty of convicting men of faults,

where the public alone was to be witness and judge: the laws could not but be eluded

in many ways; disorders and inconveniences could not but multiply continually, till it

became necessary to commit the dangerous trust of public authority to private

persons, and the care of enforcing obedience to the deliberations of the people to the

magistrate. For to say that chiefs were chosen before the confederacy was formed, and

that the administrators of the laws were there before the laws themselves, is too

absurd a supposition to consider seriously.

It would be as unreasonable to suppose that men at first threw themselves

irretrievably and unconditionally into the arms of an absolute master, and that the first

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expedient which proud and unsubdued men hit upon for their common security was to

run headlong into slavery. For what reason, in fact, did they take to themselves

superiors, if it was not in order that they might be defended from oppression, and have

protection for their lives, liberties and properties, which are, so to speak, the

constituent elements of their being? Now, in the relations between man and man, the

worst that can happen is for one to find himself at the mercy of another, and it would

have been inconsistent with common-sense to begin by bestowing on a chief the only

things they wanted his help to preserve. What equivalent could he offer them for so

great a right? And if he had presumed to exact it under pretext of defending them,

would he not have received the answer recorded in the fable: “What more can the

enemy do to us?” It is therefore beyond dispute, and indeed the fundamental maxim

of all political right, that people have set up chiefs to protect their liberty, and not to

enslave them. If we have a prince, said Pliny to Trajan, it is to save ourselves from

having a master.

Politicians indulge in the same sophistry about the love of liberty as philosophers

about the state of nature. They judge, by what they see, of very different things, which

they have not seen; and attribute to man a natural propensity to servitude, because the

slaves within their observation are seen to bear the yoke with patience; they fail to

reflect that it is with liberty as with innocence and virtue; the value is known only to

those who possess them, and the taste for them is forfeited when they are forfeited

themselves. “I know the charms of your country,” said Brasidas to a Satrap, who was

comparing the life at Sparta with that at Persepolis, “but you cannot know the

pleasures of mine.”

An unbroken horse erects his mane, paws the ground and starts back impetuously at

the sight of the bridle; while one which is properly trained suffers patiently even whip

and spur: so savage man will not bend his neck to the yoke to which civilised man

submits without a murmur, but prefers the most turbulent state of liberty to the most

peaceful slavery. We cannot therefore, from the servility of nations already enslaved,

judge of the natural disposition of mankind for or against slavery; we should go by the

prodigious efforts of every free people to save itself from oppression. I know that the

former are for ever holding forth in praise of the tranquillity they enjoy in their chains,

and that they call a state of wretched servitude a state of peace: miserriman servitutem

pacem appellant.1 But when I observe the latter sacrificing pleasure, peace, wealth,

power and life itself to the preservation of that one treasure, which is so disdained by

those who have lost it; when I see free-born animals dash their brains out against the

bars of their cage, from an innate impatience of captivity; when I behold numbers of

naked savages, that despise European pleasures, braving hunger, fire, the sword and

death, to preserve nothing but their independence, I feel that it is not for slaves to

argue about liberty.

With regard to paternal authority, from which some writers have derived absolute

government and all society, it is enough, without going back to the contrary

arguments of Locke and Sidney, to remark that nothing on earth can be further from

the ferocious spirit of despotism than the mildness of that authority which looks more

to the advantage of him who obeys than to that of him who commands; that, by the

law of nature, the father is the child’s master no longer than his help is necessary; that

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from that time they are both equal, the son being perfectly independent of the father,

and owing him only respect and not obedience. For gratitude is a duty which ought to

be paid, but not a right to be exacted: instead of saying that civil society is derived

from paternal authority, we ought to say rather that the latter derives its principal

force from the former. No individual was ever acknowledged as the father of many,

till his sons and daughters remained settled around him. The goods of the father, of

which he is really the master, are the ties which keep his children in dependence, and

he may bestow on them, if he pleases, no share of his property, unless they merit it by

constant deference to his will. But the subjects of an arbitrary despot are so far from

having the like favour to expect from their chief, that they themselves and everything

they possess are his property, or at least are considered by him as such; so that they

are forced to receive, as a favour, the little of their own he is pleased to leave them.

When he despoils them, he does but justice, and mercy in that he permits them to live.

By proceeding thus to test fact by right, we should discover as little reason as truth in

the voluntary establishment of tyranny. It would also be no easy matter to prove the

validity of a contract binding on only one of the parties, where all the risk is on one

side, and none on the other; so that no one could suffer but he who bound himself.

This hateful system is indeed, even in modern times, very far from being that of wise

and good monarchs, and especially of the kings of France; as may be seen from

several passages in their edicts; particularly from the following passage in a

celebrated edict published in 1667 in the name and by order of Louis XIV.

“Let it not, therefore, be said that the Sovereign is not subject to the laws of his State;

since the contrary is a true proposition of the right of nations, which flattery has

sometimes attacked but good princes have always defended as the tutelary divinity of

their dominions. How much more legitimate is it to say with the wise Plato, that the

perfect felicity of a kingdom consists in the obedience of subjects to their prince, and

of the prince to the laws, and in the laws being just and constantly directed to the

public good!”1

I shall not stay here to inquire whether, as liberty is the noblest faculty of man, it is

not degrading our very nature, reducing ourselves to the level of the brutes, which are

mere slaves of instinct, and even an affront to the Author of our being, to renounce

without reserve the most precious of all His gifts, and to bow to the necessity of

committing all the crimes He has forbidden, merely to gratify a mad or a cruel master;

or if this sublime craftsman ought not to be less angered at seeing His workmanship

entirely destroyed than thus dishonoured. I will waive (if my opponents please) the

authority of Barbeyrac, who, following Locke, roundly declares that no man can so

far sell his liberty as to submit to an arbitrary power which may use him as it likes.

For, he adds, this would be to sell his own life, of which he is not master. I shall ask

only what right those who were not afraid thus to debase themselves could have to

subject their posterity to the same ignominy, and to renounce for them those blessings

which they do not owe to the liberality of their progenitors, and without which life

itself must be a burden to all who are worthy of it.

Puffendorf says that we may divest ourselves of our liberty in favour of other men,

just as we transfer our property from one to another by contracts and agreements. But

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this seems a very weak argument. For in the first place, the property I alienate

becomes quite foreign to me, nor can I suffer from the abuse of it; but it very nearly

concerns me that my liberty should not be abused, and I cannot without incurring the

guilt of the crimes I may be compelled to commit, expose myself to become an

instrument of crime. Besides, the right of property being only a convention of human

institution, men may dispose of what they possess as they please: but this is not the

case with the essential gifts of nature, such as life and liberty, which every man is

permitted to enjoy, and of which it is at least doubtful whether any have a right to

divest themselves. By giving up the one, we degrade our being; by giving up the

other, we do our best to annul it; and, as no temporal good can indemnify us for the

loss of either, it would be an offence against both reason and nature to renounce them

at any price whatsoever. But, even if we could transfer our liberty, as we do our

property, there would be a great difference with regard to the children, who enjoy the

father’s substance only by the transmission of his right; whereas, liberty being a gift

which they hold from nature as being men, their parents have no right whatever to

deprive them of it. As then, to establish slavery, it was necessary to do violence to

nature, so, in order to perpetuate such a right, nature would have to be changed.

Jurists, who have gravely determined that the child of a slave comes into the world a

slave, have decided, in other words, that a man shall come into the world not a man.

I regard it then as certain, that government did not begin with arbitrary power, but that

this is the depravation, the extreme term, of government, and brings it back, finally, to

just the law of the strongest, which it was originally designed to remedy. Supposing,

however, it had begun in this manner, such power, being in itself illegitimate, could

not have served as a basis for the laws of society, nor, consequently, for the inequality

they instituted.

Without entering at present upon the investigations which still remain to be made into

the nature of the fundamental compact underlying all government, I content myself

with adopting the common opinion concerning it, and regard the establishment of the

political body as a real contract between the people and the chiefs chosen by them: a

contract by which both parties bind themselves to observe the laws therein expressed,

which form the ties of their union. The people having in respect of their social

relations concentrated all their wills in one, the several articles, concerning which this

will is explained, become so many fundamental laws, obligatory on all the members

of the State without exception, and one of these articles regulates the choice and

power of the magistrates appointed to watch over the execution of the rest. This

power extends to everything which may maintain the constitution, without going so

far as to alter it. It is accompanied by honours, in order to bring the laws and their

administrators into respect. The ministers are also distinguished by personal

prerogatives, in order to recompense them for the cares and labour which good

administration involves. The magistrate, on his side, binds himself to use the power he

is entrusted with only in conformity with the intention of his constituents, to maintain

them all in the peaceable possession of what belongs to them, and to prefer on every

occasion the public interest to his own.

Before experience had shown, or knowledge of the human heart enabled men to

foresee, the unavoidable abuses of such a constitution, it must have appeared so much

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the more excellent, as those who were charged with the care of its preservation had

themselves most interest in it; for magistracy and the rights attaching to it being based

solely on the fundamental laws, the magistrates would cease to be legitimate as soon

as these ceased to exist; the people would no longer owe them obedience; and as not

the magistrates, but the laws, are essential to the being of a State, the members of it

would regain the right to their natural liberty.

If we reflect with ever so little attention on this subject, we shall find new arguments

to confirm this truth, and be convinced from the very nature of the contract that it

cannot be irrevocable: for, if there were no superior power capable of ensuring the

fidelity of the contracting parties, or compelling them to perform their reciprocal

engagements, the parties would be sole judges in their own cause, and each would

always have a right to renounce the contract, as soon as he found that the other had

violated its terms, or that they no longer suited his convenience. It is upon this

principle that the right of abdication may possibly be founded. Now, if, as here, we

consider only what is human in this institution, it is certain that, if the magistrate, who

has all the power in his own hands, and appropriates to himself all the advantages of

the contract, has none the less a right to renounce his authority, the people, who suffer

for all the faults of their chief, must have a much better right to renounce their

dependence. But the terrible and innumerable quarrels and disorders that would

necessarily arise from so dangerous a privilege, show, more than anything else, how

much human governments stood in need of a more solid basis than mere reason, and

how expedient it was for the public tranquillity that the divine will should interpose to

invest the sovereign authority with a sacred and inviolable character, which might

deprive subjects of the fatal right of disposing of it. If the world had received no other

advantages from religion, this would be enough to impose on men the duty of

adopting and cultivating it, abuses and all, since it has been the means of saving more

blood than fanaticism has ever spilt. But let us follow the thread of our hypothesis.

The different forms of government owe their origin to the differing degrees of

inequality which existed between individuals at the time of their institution. If there

happened to be any one man among them pre-eminent in power, virtue, riches or

personal influence, he became sole magistrate, and the State assumed the form of

monarchy. If several, nearly equal in point of eminence, stood above the rest, they

were elected jointly, and formed an aristocracy. Again, among a people who had

deviated less from a state of nature, and between whose fortune or talents there was

less disproportion, the supreme administration was retained in common, and a

democracy was formed. It was discovered in process of time which of these forms

suited men the best. Some peoples remained altogether subject to the laws; others

soon came to obey their magistrates. The citizens laboured to preserve their liberty;

the subjects, irritated at seeing others enjoying a blessing they had lost, thought only

of making slaves of their neighbours. In a word, on the one side arose riches and

conquests, and on the other happiness and virtue.

In these different governments, all the offices were at first elective; and when the

influence of wealth was out of the question, the preference was given to merit, which

gives a natural ascendancy, and to age, which is experienced in business and

deliberate in council. The Elders of the Hebrews, the Gerontes at Sparta, the Senate at

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Rome, and the very etymology of our word Seigneur, show how old age was once

held in veneration. But the more often the choice fell upon old men, the more often

elections had to be repeated, and the more they became a nuisance; intrigues set in,

factions were formed, party feeling grew bitter, civil wars broke out; the lives of

individuals were sacrificed to the pretended happiness of the State; and at length men

were on the point of relapsing into their primitive anarchy. Ambitious chiefs profited

by these circumstances to perpetuate their offices in their own families: at the same

time the people, already used to dependence, ease, and the conveniences of life, and

already incapable of breaking its fetters, agreed to an increase of its slavery, in order

to secure its tranquillity. Thus magistrates, having become hereditary, contracted the

habit of considering their offices as a family estate, and themselves as proprietors of

the communities of which they were at first only the officers, of regarding their

fellow-citizens as their slaves, and numbering them, like cattle, among their

belongings, and of calling themselves the equals of the gods and kings of kings.

If we follow the progress of inequality in these various revolutions, we shall find that

the establishment of laws and of the right of property was its first term, the institution

of magistracy the second, and the conversion of legitimate into arbitrary power the

third and last; so that the condition of rich and poor was authorised by the first period;

that of powerful and weak by the second; and only by the third that of master and

slave, which is the last degree of inequality, and the term at which all the rest remain,

when they have got so far, till the government is either entirely dissolved by new

revolutions, or brought back again to legitimacy.

To understand this progress as necessary we must consider not so much the motives

for the establishment of the body politic, as the forms it assumes in actuality, and the

faults that necessarily attend it: for the flaws which make social institutions necessary

are the same as make the abuse of them unavoidable. If we except Sparta, where the

laws were mainly concerned with the education of children, and where Lycurgus

established such morality as practically made laws needless—for laws as a rule, being

weaker than the passions, restrain men without altering them—it would not be

difficult to prove that every government, which scrupulously complied with the ends

for which it was instituted, and guarded carefully against change and corruption, was

set up unnecessarily. For a country, in which no one either evaded the laws or made a

bad use of magisterial power, could require neither laws nor magistrates.

Political distinctions necessarily produce civil distinctions. The growing equality

between the chiefs and the people is soon felt by individuals, and modified in a

thousand ways according to passions, talents and circumstances. The magistrate could

not usurp any illegitimate power, without giving distinction to the creatures with

whom he must share it. Besides, individuals only allow themselves to be oppressed so

far as they are hurried on by blind ambition, and, looking rather below than above

them, come to love authority more than independence, and submit to slavery, that they

may in turn enslave others. It is no easy matter to reduce to obedience a man who has

no ambition to command; nor would the most adroit politician find it possible to

enslave a people whose only desire was to be independent. But inequality easily

makes its way among cowardly and ambitious minds, which are ever ready to run the

risks of fortune, and almost indifferent whether they command or obey, as it is

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favourable or adverse. Thus, there must have been a time, when the eyes of the people

were so fascinated, that their rulers had only to say to the least of men, “Be great, you

and all your posterity,” to make him immediately appear great in the eyes of every

one as well as in his own. His descendants took still more upon them, in proportion to

their distance from him; the more obscure and uncertain the cause, the greater the

effect: the greater the number of idlers one could count in a family, the more

illustrious it was held to be.

If this were the place to go into details, I could readily explain how, even without the

intervention of government, inequality of credit and authority became unavoidable

among private persons, as soon as their union in a single society made them compare

themselves one with another, and take into account the differences which they found

out from the continual intercourse every man had to have with his neighbours.1 These

differences are of several kinds; but riches, nobility or rank, power and personal merit

being the principal distinctions by which men form an estimate of each other in

society, I could prove that the harmony or conflict of these different forces is the

surest indication of the good or bad constitution of a State. I could show that among

these four kinds of inequality, personal qualities being the origin of all the others,

wealth is the one to which they are all reduced in the end; for, as riches tend most

immediately to the prosperity of individuals, and are easiest to communicate, they are

used to purchase every other distinction. By this observation we are enabled to judge

pretty exactly how far a people has departed from its primitive constitution, and of its

progress towards the extreme term of corruption. I could explain how much this

universal desire for reputation, honours and advancement, which inflames us all,

exercises and holds up to comparison our faculties and powers; how it excites and

multiplies our passions, and, by creating universal competition and rivalry, or rather

enmity, among men, occasions numberless failures, successes and disturbances of all

kinds by making so many aspirants run the same course. I could show that it is to this

desire of being talked about, and this unremitting rage of distinguishing ourselves,

that we owe the best and the worst things we possess, both our virtues and our vices,

our science and our errors, our conquerors and our philosophers; that is to say, a great

many bad things, and a very few good ones. In a word, I could prove that, if we have

a few rich and powerful men on the pinnacle of fortune and grandeur, while the crowd

grovels in want and obscurity, it is because the former prize what they enjoy only in

so far as others are destitute of it; and because, without changing their condition, they

would cease to be happy the moment the people ceased to be wretched.

These details alone, however, would furnish matter for a considerable work, in which

the advantages and disadvantages of every kind of government might be weighed, as

they are related to man in the state of nature, and at the same time all the different

aspects, under which inequality has up to the present appeared, or may appear in ages

yet to come, according to the nature of the several governments, and the alterations

which time must unavoidably occasion in them, might be demonstrated. We should

then see the multitude oppressed from within, in consequence of the very precautions

it had taken to guard against foreign tyranny. We should see oppression continually

gain ground without it being possible for the oppressed to know where it would stop,

or what legitimate means was left them of checking its progress. We should see the

rights of citizens, and the freedom of nations slowly extinguished, and the complaints,

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protests and appeals of the weak treated as seditious murmurings. We should see the

honour of defending the common cause confined by statecraft to a mercenary part of

the people. We should see taxes made necessary by such means, and the disheartened

husbandman deserting his fields even in the midst of peace, and leaving the plough to

gird on the sword. We should see fatal and capricious codes of honour established;

and the champions of their country sooner or later becoming its enemies, and for ever

holding their daggers to the breasts of their fellow-citizens. The time would come

when they would be heard saying to the oppressor of their country—

Pectore si fratris gladium juguloque parentis

Condere me jubeas, gravidæque in viscera partu

Conjugis, invitâ peragam tamen omnia dextrâ.

Lucan. i, 376.

From great inequality of fortunes and conditions, from the vast variety of passions and

of talents, of useless and pernicious arts, of vain sciences, would arise a multitude of

prejudices equally contrary to reason, happiness and virtue. We should see the

magistrates fomenting everything that might weaken men united in society, by

promoting dissension among them; everything that might sow in it the seeds of actual

division, while it gave society the air of harmony; everything that might inspire the

different ranks of people with mutual hatred and distrust, by setting the rights and

interests of one against those of another, and so strengthen the power which

comprehended them all.

It is from the midst of this disorder and these revolutions, that despotism, gradually

raising up its hideous head and devouring everything that remained sound and

untainted in any part of the State, would at length trample on both the laws and the

people, and establish itself on the ruins of the republic. The times which immediately

preceded this last change would be times of trouble and calamity; but at length the

monster would swallow up everything, and the people would no longer have either

chiefs or laws, but only tyrants. From this moment there would be no question of

virtue or morality; for despotism cui ex honesto nulla est spes, wherever it prevails,

admits no other master; it no sooner speaks than probity and duty lose their weight

and blind obedience is the only virtue which slaves can still practise.

This is the last term of inequality, the extreme point that closes the circle, and meets

that from which we set out. Here all private persons return to their first equality,

because they are nothing; and, subjects having no law but the will of their master, and

their master no restraint but his passions, all notions of good and all principles of

equity again vanish. There is here a complete return to the law of the strongest, and so

to a new state of nature, differing from that we set out from; for the one was a state of

nature in its first purity, while this is the consequence of excessive corruption. There

is so little difference between the two states in other respects, and the contract of

government is so completely dissolved by despotism, that the despot is master only so

long as he remains the strongest; as soon as he can be expelled, he has no right to

complain of violence. The popular insurrection that ends in the death or deposition of

a Sultan is as lawful an act as those by which he disposed, the day before, of the lives

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and fortunes of his subjects. As he was maintained by force alone, it is force alone

that overthrows him. Thus everything takes place according to the natural order; and,

whatever may be the result of such frequent and precipitate revolutions, no one man

has reason to complain of the injustice of another, but only of his own ill-fortune or

indiscretion.

If the reader thus discovers and retraces the lost and forgotten road, by which man

must have passed from the state of nature to the state of society; if he carefully

restores, along with the intermediate situations which I have just described, those

which want of time has compelled me to suppress, or my imagination has failed to

suggest, he cannot fail to be struck by the vast distance which separates the two states.

It is in tracing this slow succession that he will find the solution of a number of

problems of politics and morals, which philosophers cannot settle. He will feel that,

men being different in different ages, the reason why Diogenes could not find a man

was that he sought among his contemporaries a man of an earlier period. He will see

that Cato died with Rome and liberty, because he did not fit the age in which he lived;

the greatest of men served only to astonish a world which he would certainly have

ruled, had he lived five hundred years sooner. In a word, he will explain how the soul

and the passions of men insensibly change their very nature; why our wants and

pleasures in the end seek new objects; and why, the original man having vanished by

degrees, society offers to us only an assembly of artificial men and factitious passions,

which are the work of all these new relations, and without any real foundation in

nature. We are taught nothing on this subject, by reflection, that is not entirely

confirmed by observation. The savage and the civilised man differ so much in the

bottom of their hearts and in their inclinations, that what constitutes the supreme

happiness of one would reduce the other to despair. The former breathes only peace

and liberty; he desires only to live and be free from labour; even the ataraxia of the

Stoic falls far short of his profound indifference to every other object. Civilised man,

on the other hand, is always moving, sweating, toiling and racking his brains to find

still more laborious occupations: he goes on in drudgery to his last moment, and even

seeks death to put himself in a position to live, or renounces life to acquire

immortality. He pays his court to men in power, whom he hates, and to the wealthy,

whom he despises; he stops at nothing to have the honour of serving them; he is not

ashamed to value himself on his own meanness and their protection; and, proud of his

slavery, he speaks with disdain of those, who have not the honour of sharing it. What

a sight would the perplexing and envied labours of a European minister of State

present to the eyes of a Caribean! How many cruel deaths would not this indolent

savage prefer to the horrors of such a life, which is seldom even sweetened by the

pleasure of doing good! But, for him to see into the motives of all this solicitude, the

words power and reputation, would have to bear some meaning in his mind; he would

have to know that there are men who set a value on the opinion of the rest of the

world; who can be made happy and satisfied with themselves rather on the testimony

of other people than on their own. In reality, the source of all these differences is, that

the savage lives within himself, while social man lives constantly outside himself, and

only knows how to live in the opinion of others, so that he seems to receive the

consciousness of his own existence merely from the judgment of others concerning

him. It is not to my present purpose to insist on the indifference to good and evil

which arises from this disposition, in spite of our many fine works on morality, or to

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show how, everything being reduced to appearances, there is but art and mummery in

even honour, friendship, virtue, and often vice itself, of which we at length learn the

secret of boasting; to show, in short, how, always asking others what we are, and

never daring to ask ourselves, in the midst of so much philosophy, humanity and

civilisation, and of such sublime codes of morality, we have nothing to show for

ourselves but a frivolous and deceitful appearance, honour without virtue, reason

without wisdom, and pleasure without happiness. It is sufficient that I have proved

that this is not by any means the original state of man, but that it is merely the spirit of

society, and the inequality which society produces, that thus transform and alter all

our natural inclinations.

I have endeavoured to trace the origin and progress of inequality, and the institution

and abuse of political societies, as far as these are capable of being deduced from the

nature of man merely by the light of reason, and independently of those sacred

dogmas which give the sanction of divine right to sovereign authority. It follows from

this survey that, as there is hardly any inequality in the state of nature, all the

inequality which now prevails owes its strength and growth to the development of our

faculties and the advance of the human mind, and becomes at last permanent and

legitimate by the establishment of property and laws. Secondly, it follows that moral

inequality, authorised by positive right alone, clashes with natural right, whenever it is

not proportionate to physical inequality; a distinction which sufficiently determines

what we ought to think of that species of inequality which prevails in all civilised

countries; since it is plainly contrary to the law of nature, however defined, that

children should command old men, fools wise men, and that the privileged few should

gorge themselves with superfluities, while the starving multitude are in want of the

bare necessities of life.

APPENDIX1

A famous author, reckoning up the good and evil of human life, and comparing the

aggregates, finds that our pains greatly exceed our pleasures: so that, all things

considered, human life is not at all a valuable gift. This conclusion does not surprise

me; for the writer drew all his arguments from man in civilisation. Had he gone back

to the state of nature, his inquiries would clearly have had a different result, and man

would have been seen to be subject to very few evils not of his own creation. It has

indeed cost us not a little trouble to make ourselves as wretched as we are. When we

consider, on the one hand, the immense labours of mankind, the many sciences

brought to perfection, the arts invented, the powers employed, the deeps filled up, the

mountains levelled, the rocks shattered, the rivers made navigable, the tracts of land

cleared, the lakes emptied, the marshes drained, the enormous structures erected on

land, and the teeming vessels that cover the sea; and, on the other hand, estimate with

ever so little thought, the real advantages that have accrued from all these works to

mankind, we cannot help being amazed at the vast disproportion there is between

these things, and deploring the infatuation of man, which, to gratify his silly pride and

vain self-admiration, induces him eagerly to pursue all the miseries he is capable of

feeling, though beneficent nature had kindly placed them out of his way.

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That men are actually wicked, a sad and continual experience of them proves beyond

doubt: but, all the same, I think I have shown that man is naturally good. What then

can have depraved him to such an extent, except the changes that have happened in

his constitution, the advances he has made, and the knowledge he has acquired? We

may admire human society as much as we please; it will be none the less true that it

necessarily leads men to hate each other in proportion as their interests clash, and to

do one another apparent services, while they are really doing every imaginable

mischief. What can be thought of a relation, in which the interest of every individual

dictates rules directly opposite to those the public reason dictates to the community in

general—in which every man finds his profit in the misfortunes of his neighbour?

There is not perhaps any man in a comfortable position who has not greedy heirs, and

perhaps even children, secretly wishing for his death; not a ship at sea, of which the

loss would not be good news to some merchant or other; not a house, which some

debtor of bad faith would not be glad to see reduced to ashes with all the papers it

contains; not a nation which does not rejoice at the disasters that befall its neighbours.

Thus it is that we find our advantage in the misfortunes of our fellow-creatures, and

that the loss of one man almost always constitutes the prosperity of another. But it is

still more pernicious that public calamities are the objects of the hopes and

expectations of innumerable individuals. Some desire sickness, some mortality, some

war, and some famine. I have seen men wicked enough to weep for sorrow at the

prospect of a plentiful season; and the great and fatal fire of London, which cost so

many unhappy persons their lives or their fortunes, made the fortunes of perhaps ten

thousand others. I know that Montaigne censures Demades the Athenian for having

caused to be punished a workman who, by selling his coffins very dear, was a great

gainer by the deaths of his fellow-citizens; but, the reason alleged by Montaigne being

that everybody ought to be punished, my point is clearly confirmed by it. Let us

penetrate, therefore, the superficial appearances of benevolence, and survey what

passes in the inmost recesses of the heart. Let us reflect what must be the state of

things, when men are forced to caress and destroy one another at the same time; when

they are born enemies by duty, and knaves by interest. It will perhaps be said that

society is so formed that every man gains by serving the rest. That would be all very

well, if he did not gain still more by injuring them. There is no legitimate profit so

great, that it cannot be greatly exceeded by what may be made illegitimately; we

always gain more by hurting our neighbours than by doing them good. Nothing is

required but to know how to act with impunity; and to this end the powerful employ

all their strength, and the weak all their cunning.

Savage man, when he has dined, is at peace with all nature, and the friend of all his

fellow-creatures. If a dispute arises about a meal, he rarely comes to blows, without

having first compared the difficulty of conquering his antagonist with the trouble of

finding subsistence elsewhere: and, as pride does not come in, it all ends in a few

blows; the victor eats, and the vanquished seeks provision somewhere else, and all is

at peace. The case is quite different with man in the state of society, for whom first

necessaries have to be provided, and then superfluities; delicacies follow next, then

immense wealth, then subjects, and then slaves. He enjoys not a moment’s relaxation;

and what is yet stranger, the less natural and pressing his wants, the more headstrong

are his passions, and, still worse, the more he has it in his power to gratify them; so

that after a long course of prosperity, after having swallowed up treasures and ruined

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multitudes, the hero ends up by cutting every throat till he finds himself, at last, sole

master of the world. Such is in miniature the moral picture, if not of human life, at

least of the secret pretensions of the heart of civilised man.

Compare without partiality the state of the citizen with that of the savage, and trace

out, if you can, how many inlets the former has opened to pain and death, besides

those of his vices, his wants and his misfortunes. If you reflect on the mental

afflictions that prey on us, the violent passions that waste and exhaust us, the

excessive labour with which the poor are burdened, the still more dangerous

indolence to which the wealthy give themselves up, so that the poor perish of want,

and the rich of surfeit; if you reflect but a moment on the heterogeneous mixtures and

pernicious seasonings of foods; the corrupt state in which they are frequently eaten;

on the adulteration of medicines, the wiles of those who sell them, the mistakes of

those who administer them, and the poisonous vessels in which they are prepared; on

the epidemics bred by foul air in consequence of great numbers of men being crowded

together, or those which are caused by our delicate way of living, by our passing from

our houses into the open air and back again, by the putting on or throwing off our

clothes with too little care, and by all the precautions which sensuality has converted

into necessary habits, and the neglect of which sometimes costs us our life or health;

if you take into account the conflagrations and earthquakes, which, devouring or

overwhelming whole cities, destroy the inhabitants by thousands; in a word, if you

add together all the dangers with which these causes are always threatening us, you

will see how dearly nature makes us pay for the contempt with which we have treated

her lessons.

I shall not here repeat, what I have elsewhere said of the calamities of war; but wish

that those, who have sufficient knowledge, were willing or bold enough to make

public the details of the villainies committed in armies by the contractors for

commissariat and hospitals: we should see plainly that their monstrous frauds, already

none too well concealed, which cripple the finest armies in less than no time, occasion

greater destruction among the soldiers than the swords of the enemy.

The number of people who perish annually at sea, by famine, the scurvy, pirates, fire

and shipwrecks, affords matter for another shocking calculation. We must also place

to the credit of the establishment of property, and consequently to the institution of

society, assassinations, poisonings, highway robberies, and even the punishments

inflicted on the wretches guilty of these crimes; which, though expedient to prevent

greater evils, yet by making the murder of one man cost the lives of two or more,

double the loss to the human race.

What shameful methods are sometimes practised to prevent the birth of men, and

cheat nature; either by brutal and depraved appetites which insult her most beautiful

work—appetites unknown to savages or mere animals, which can spring only from

the corrupt imagination of mankind in civilised countries; or by secret abortions, the

fitting effects of debauchery and vitiated notions of honour; or by the exposure or

murder of multitudes of infants, who fall victims to the poverty of their parents, or the

cruel shame of their mothers; or, finally, by the mutilation of unhappy wretches, part

of whose life, with their hope of posterity, is given up to vain singing, or, still worse,

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the brutal jealousy of other men: a mutilation which, in the last case, becomes a

double outrage against nature from the treatment of those who suffer it, and from the

use to which they are destined. But is it not a thousand times more common and more

dangerous for paternal rights openly to offend against humanity? How many talents

have not been thrown away, and inclinations forced, by the unwise constraint of

fathers? How many men, who would have distinguished themselves in a fitting estate,

have died dishonoured and wretched in another for which they had no taste! How

many happy, but unequal, marriages have been broken or disturbed, and how many

chaste wives have been dishonoured, by an order of things continually in

contradiction with that of nature! How many good and virtuous husbands and wives

are reciprocally punished for having been ill-assorted! How many young and unhappy

victims of their parents’ avarice plunge into vice, or pass their melancholy days in

tears, groaning in the indissoluble bonds which their hearts repudiate and gold alone

has formed! Fortunate sometimes are those whose courage and virtue remove them

from life before inhuman violence makes them spend it in crime or in despair. Forgive

me, father and mother, whom I shall ever regret: my complaint embitters your griefs;

but would they might be an eternal and terrible example to every one who dares, in

the name of nature, to violate her most sacred right.

If I have spoken only of those ill-starred unions which are the result of our system, is

it to be thought that those over which love and sympathy preside are free from

disadvantages? What if I should undertake to show humanity attacked in its very

source, and even in the most sacred of all ties, in which fortune is consulted before

nature, and, the disorders of society confounding all virtue and vice, continence

becomes a criminal precaution, and a refusal to give life to a fellow-creature, an act of

humanity? But, without drawing aside the veil which hides all these horrors, let us

content ourselves with pointing out the evil which others will have to remedy.

To all this add the multiplicity of unhealthy trades, which shorten men’s lives or

destroy their bodies, such as working in the mines, and the preparing of metals and

minerals, particularly lead, copper, mercury, cobalt, and arsenic: add those other

dangerous trades which are daily fatal to many tilers, carpenters, masons and miners:

put all these together and we can see, in the establishment and perfection of societies,

the reasons for that diminution of our species, which has been noticed by many

philosophers.

Luxury, which cannot be prevented among men who are tenacious of their own

convenience and of the respect paid them by others, soon completes the evil society

had begun, and, under the pretence of giving bread to the poor, whom it should never

have made such, impoverishes all the rest, and sooner or later depopulates the State.

Luxury is a remedy much worse than the disease it sets up to cure; or rather it is in

itself the greatest of all evils, for every State, great or small: for, in order to maintain

all the servants and vagabonds it creates, it brings oppression and ruin on the citizen

and the labourer; it is like those scorching winds, which, covering the trees and plants

with devouring insects, deprive useful animals of their subsistence and spread famine

and death wherever they blow.

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From society and the luxury to which it gives birth arise the liberal and mechanical

arts, commerce, letters, and all those superfluities which make industry flourish, and

enrich and ruin nations. The reason for such destruction is plain. It is easy to see, from

the very nature of agriculture, that it must be the least lucrative of all the arts; for, its

produce being the most universally necessary, the price must be proportionate to the

abilities of the very poorest of mankind.

From the same principle may be deduced this rule, that the arts in general are more

lucrative in proportion as they are less useful; and that, in the end, the most useful

becomes the most neglected. From this we may learn what to think of the real

advantages of industry and the actual effects of its progress.

Such are the sensible causes of all the miseries, into which opulence at length plunges

the most celebrated nations. In proportion as arts and industry flourish, the despised

husbandman, burdened with the taxes necessary for the support of luxury, and

condemned to pass his days between labour and hunger, forsakes his native field, to

seek in towns the bread he ought to carry thither. The more our capital cities strike the

vulgar eye with admiration, the greater reason is there to lament the sight of the

abandoned countryside, the large tracts of land that lie uncultivated, the roads

crowded with unfortunate citizens turned beggars or highwaymen, and doomed to end

their wretched lives either on a dunghill or on the gallows. Thus the State grows rich

on the one hand, and feeble and depopulated on the other; the mightiest monarchies,

after having taken immense pains to enrich and depopulate themselves, fall at last a

prey to some poor nation, which has yielded to the fatal temptation of invading them,

and then, growing opulent and weak in its turn, is itself invaded and ruined by some

other.

Let any one inform us what produced the swarms of barbarians, who overran Europe,

Asia and Africa for so many ages. Was their prodigious increase due to their industry

and arts, to the wisdom of their laws, or to the excellence of their political system? Let

the learned tell us why, instead of multiplying to such a degree, these fierce and brutal

men, without sense or science, without education, without restraint, did not destroy

each other hourly in quarrelling over the productions of their fields and woods. Let

them tell us how these wretches could have the presumption to oppose such clever

people as we were, so well trained in military discipline, and possessed of such

excellent laws and institutions: and why, since society has been brought to perfection

in northern countries, and so much pains taken to instruct their inhabitants in their

social duties and in the art of living happily and peaceably together, we see them no

longer produce such numberless hosts as they used once to send forth to be the plague

and terror of other nations. I fear some one may at last answer me by saying, that all

these fine things, arts, sciences and laws, were wisely invented by men, as a salutary

plague, to prevent the too great multiplication of mankind, lest the world, which was

given us for a habitation, should in time be too small for its inhabitants.

What, then, is to be done? Must societies be totally abolished? Must meum and tuum

be annihilated, and must we return again to the forests to live among bears? This is a

deduction in the manner of my adversaries, which I would as soon anticipate as let

them have the shame of drawing. O you, who have never heard the voice of heaven,

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who think man destined only to live this little life and die in peace; you, who can

resign in the midst of populous cities your fatal acquisitions, your restless spirits, your

corrupt hearts and endless desires; resume, since it depends entirely on yourselves,

your ancient and primitive innocence: retire to the woods, there to lose the sight and

remembrance of the crimes of your contemporaries; and be not apprehensive of

degrading your species, by renouncing its advances in order to renounce its vices. As

for men like me, whose passions have destroyed their original simplicity, who can no

longer subsist on plants or acorns, or live without laws and magistrates; those who

were honoured in their first father with supernatural instructions; those who discover,

in the design of giving human actions at the start a morality which they must

otherwise have been so long in acquiring, the reason for a precept in itself indifferent

and inexplicable on every other system; those, in short, who are persuaded that the

Divine Being has called all mankind to be partakers in the happiness and perfection of

celestial intelligences, all these will endeavour to merit the eternal prize they are to

expect from the practice of those virtues, which they make themselves follow in

learning to know them. They will respect the sacred bonds of their respective

communities; they will love their fellow-citizens, and serve them with all their might:

they will scrupulously obey the laws, and all those who make or administer them;

they will particularly honour those wise and good princes, who find means of

preventing, curing or even palliating all these evils and abuses, by which we are

constantly threatened; they will animate the zeal of their deserving rulers, by showing

them, without flattery or fear, the importance of their office and the severity of their

duty. But they will not therefore have less contempt for a constitution that cannot

support itself without the aid of so many splendid characters, much oftener wished for

than found; and from which, notwithstanding all their pains and solicitude, there

always arise more real calamities than even apparent advantages.

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[Back to Table of Contents]

A DISCOURSE ON POLITICAL ECONOMY

The word Economy, or Œconomy, is derived from ο?κός, a house, and νόμος, law,

and meant originally only the wise and legitimate government of the house for the

common good of the whole family. The meaning of the term was then extended to the

government of that great family, the State. To distinguish these two senses of the

word, the latter is called general or political economy, and the former domestic or

particular economy. The first only is discussed in the present discourse.

Even if there were as close an analogy as many authors maintain between the State

and the family, it would not follow that the rules of conduct proper for one of these

societies would be also proper for the other. They differ too much in extent to be

regulated in the same manner; and there will always be a great difference between

domestic government, in which a father can see everything for himself, and civil

government, where the chief sees hardly anything save through the eyes of others. To

put both on an equality in this respect, the talents, strength, and all the faculties of the

father would have to increase in proportion to the size of his family, and the soul of a

powerful monarch would have to be, to that of an ordinary man, as the extent of his

empire is to that of a private person’s estate.

But how could the government of the State be like that of the family, when the basis

on which they rest is so different? The father being physically stronger than his

children, his paternal authority, as long as they need his protection, may be reasonably

said to be established by nature. But in the great family, all the members of which are

naturally equal, the political authority, being purely arbitrary as far as its institution is

concerned, can be founded only on conventions, and the Magistrate can have no

authority over the rest, except by virtue of the laws. The duties of a father are dictated

to him by natural feelings, and in a manner that seldom allows him to neglect them.

For rulers there is no such principle, and they are really obliged to the people only by

what they themselves have promised to do, and the people have therefore a right to

require of them. Another more important difference is that since the children have

nothing but what they receive from their father, it is plain that all the rights of

property belong to him, or emanate from him; but quite the opposite is the case in the

great family, where the general administration is established only to secure individual

property, which is antecedent to it. The principal object of the work of the whole

house is to preserve and increase the patrimony of the father, in order that he may be

able some day to distribute it among his children without impoverishing them;

whereas the wealth of the exchequer is only a means, often ill understood, of keeping

the individuals in peace and plenty. In a word, the little family is destined to be

extinguished, and to resolve itself some day into several families of a similar nature;

but the great family, being constituted to endure for ever in the same condition, need

not, like the small one, increase for the purpose of multiplying, but need only

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maintain itself; and it can easily be proved that any increase does it more harm than

good.

In the family, it is clear, for several reasons which lie in its very nature, that the father

ought to command. In the first place, the authority ought not to be equally divided

between father and mother; the government must be single, and in every division of

opinion there must be one preponderant voice to decide. Secondly, however lightly

we may regard the disadvantages peculiar to women, yet, as they necessarily occasion

intervals of inaction, this is a sufficient reason for excluding them from this supreme

authority: for when the balance is perfectly even, a straw is enough to turn the scale.

Besides, the husband ought to be able to superintend his wife’s conduct, because it is

of importance for him to be assured that the children, whom he is obliged to

acknowledge and maintain, belong to no-one but himself. Thirdly, children should be

obedient to their father, at first of necessity, and afterwards from gratitude: after

having had their wants satisfied by him during one half of their lives, they ought to

consecrate the other half to providing for his. Fourthly, servants owe him their

services in exchange for the provision he makes for them, though they may break off

the bargain as soon as it ceases to suit them. I say nothing here of slavery, because it

is contrary to nature, and cannot be authorised by any right or law.

There is nothing of all this in political society, in which the chief is so far from having

any natural interest in the happiness of the individuals, that it is not uncommon for

him to seek his own in their misery. If the magistracy is hereditary, a community of

men is often governed by a child. If it be elective, innumerable inconveniences arise

from such election; while in both cases all the advantages of paternity are lost. If you

have but a single ruler, you lie at the discretion of a master who has no reason to love

you: and if you have several, you must bear at once their tyranny and their divisions.

In a word, abuses are inevitable and their consequences fatal in every society where

the public interest and the laws have no natural force, and are perpetually attacked by

personal interest and the passions of the ruler and the members.

Although the functions of the father of a family and those of the chief magistrate

ought to make for the same object, they must do so in such different ways, and their

duty and rights are so essentially distinct, that we cannot confound them without

forming very false ideas about the fundamental laws of society, and falling into errors

which are fatal to mankind. In fact, if the voice of nature is the best counsellor to

which a father can listen in the discharge of his duty, for the Magistrate it is a false

guide, which continually prevents him from performing his, and leads him on sooner

or later to the ruin of himself and of the State, if he is not restrained by the most

sublime virtue. The only precaution necessary for the father of a family is to guard

himself against depravity, and prevent his natural inclinations from being corrupted;

whereas it is these themselves which corrupt the Magistrate. In order to act aright, the

first has only to consult his heart; the other becomes a traitor the moment he listens to

his. Even his own reason should be suspect to him, nor should he follow any rule

other than the public reason, which is the law. Thus nature has made a multitude of

good fathers of families; but it is doubtful whether, from the very beginning of the

world, human wisdom has made ten men capable of governing their peers.

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From all that has just been said, it follows that public economy, which is my subject,

has been rightly distinguished from private economy, and that, the State having

nothing in common with the family except the obligations which their heads lie under

of making both of them happy, the same rules of conduct cannot apply to both. I have

considered these few lines enough to overthrow the detestable system which Sir

Robert Filmer has endeavoured to establish in his Patriarcha; a work to which two

celebrated writers have done too much honour in writing books to refute it. Moreover,

this error is of very long standing; for Aristotle himself thought proper to combat it

with arguments which may be found in the first book of his Politics.

I must here ask my readers to distinguish also between public economy, which is my

subject and which I call government, and the supreme authority, which I call

Sovereignty; a distinction which consists in the fact that the latter has the right of

legislation, and in certain cases binds the body of the nation itself, while the former

has only the right of execution, and is binding only on individuals.

I shall take the liberty of making use of a very common, and in some respects

inaccurate, comparison, which will serve to illustrate my meaning.

The body politic, taken individually, may be considered as an organised, living body,

resembling that of man. The sovereign power represents the head; the laws and

customs are the brain, the source of the nerves and seat of the understanding, will and

senses, of which the Judges and Magistrates are the organs: commerce, industry, and

agriculture are the mouth and stomach which prepare the common subsistence; the

public income is the blood, which a prudent economy, in performing the functions of

the heart, causes to distribute through the whole body nutriment and life: the citizens

are the body and the members, which make the machine live, move and work; and no

part of this machine can be damaged without the painful impression being at once

conveyed to the brain, if the animal is in a state of health.

The life of both bodies is the self common to the whole, the reciprocal sensibility and

internal correspondence of all the parts. Where this communication ceases, where the

formal unity disappears, and the contiguous parts belong to one another only by

juxtaposition, the man is dead, or the State is dissolved.

The body politic, therefore, is also a moral being possessed of a will; and this general

will, which tends always to the preservation and welfare of the whole and of every

part, and is the source of the laws, constitutes for all the members of the State, in their

relations to one another and to it, the rule of what is just or unjust: a truth which

shows, by the way, how idly some writers have treated as theft the subtlety prescribed

to children at Sparta for obtaining their frugal repasts, as if everything ordained by the

law were not lawful.

It is important to observe that this rule of justice, though certain with regard to all

citizens, may be defective with regard to foreigners. The reason is clear. The will of

the State, though general in relation to its own members, is no longer so in relation to

other States and their members, but becomes, for them, a particular and individual

will, which has its rule of justice in the law of nature. This, however, enters equally

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into the principle here laid down; for in such a case, the great city of the world

becomes the body politic, whose general will is always the law of nature, and of

which the different States and peoples are individual members. From these

distinctions, applied to each political society and its members, are derived the most

certain and universal rules, by which we can judge whether a government is good or

bad, and in general of the morality of all human actions.

Every political society is composed of other smaller societies of different kinds, each

of which has its interests and its rules of conduct: but those societies which everybody

perceives, because they have an external and authorised form, are not the only ones

that actually exist in the State: all individuals who are united by a common interest

compose as many others, either transitory or permanent, whose influence is none the

less real because it is less apparent, and the proper observation of whose various

relations is the true knowledge of public morals and manners. The influence of all

these tacit or formal associations causes, by the influence of their will, as many

different modifications of the public will. The will of these particular societies has

always two relations; for the members of the association, it is a general will; for the

great society, it is a particular will; and it is often right with regard to the first object,

and wrong as to the second. An individual may be a devout priest, a brave soldier, or a

zealous senator, and yet a bad citizen. A particular resolution may be advantageous to

the smaller community, but pernicious to the greater. It is true that particular societies

being always subordinate to the general society in preference to others, the duty of a

citizen takes precedence of that of a senator, and a man’s duty of that of a citizen: but

unhappily personal interest is always found in inverse ratio to duty, and increases in

proportion as the association grows narrower, and the engagement less sacred; which

irrefragably proves that the most general will is always the must just also, and that the

voice of the people is in fact the voice of God.

It does not follow that the public decisions are always equitable; they may possibly,

for reasons which I have given, not be so when they have to do with foreigners. Thus

it is not impossible that a Republic, though in itself well governed, should enter upon

an unjust war. Nor is it less possible for the Council of a Democracy to pass unjust

decrees, and condemn the innocent; but this never happens unless the people is

seduced by private interests, which the credit or eloquence of some clever persons

substitutes for those of the State: in which case the general will will be one thing, and

the result of the public deliberation another. This is not contradicted by the case of the

Athenian Democracy; for Athens was in fact not a Democracy, but a very tyrannical

Aristocracy, governed by philosophers and orators. Carefully determine what happens

in every public deliberation, and it will be seen that the general will is always for the

common good; but very often there is a secret division, a tacit confederacy, which, for

particular ends, causes the natural disposition of the assembly to be set at nought. In

such a case the body of society is really divided into other bodies, the members of

which acquire a general will, which is good and just with respect to these new bodies,

but unjust and bad with regard to the whole, from which each is thus dismembered.

We see then how easy it is, by the help of these principles, to explain those apparent

contradictions, which are noticed in the conduct of many persons who are

scrupulously honest in some respects, and cheats and scoundrels in others, who

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trample under foot the most sacred duties, and yet are faithful to the death to

engagements that are often illegitimate. Thus the most depraved of men always pay

some sort of homage to public faith; and even robbers, who are the enemies of virtue

in the great society, pay some respect to the shadow of it in their secret caves.

In establishing the general will as the first principle of public economy, and the

fundamental rule of government, I have not thought it necessary to inquire seriously

whether the Magistrates belong to the people, or the people to the Magistrates; or

whether in public affairs the good of the State should be taken into account, or only

that of its rulers. That question indeed has long been decided one way in theory, and

another in practice; and in general it would be ridiculous to expect that those who are

in fact masters will prefer any other interest to their own. It would not be improper,

therefore, further to distinguish public economy as popular or tyrannical. The former

is that of every State, in which there reigns between the people and the rulers unity of

interest and will: the latter will necessarily exist wherever the government and the

people have different interests, and, consequently, opposing wills. The rules of the

latter are written at length in the archives of history, and in the satires of Macchiavelli.

The rules of the former are found only in the writings of those philosophers who

venture to proclaim the rights of humanity.

I. The first and most important rule of legitimate or popular government, that is to say,

of government whose object is the good of the people, is therefore, as I have

observed, to follow in everything the general will. But to follow this will it is

necessary to know it, and above all to distinguish it from the particular will, beginning

with one’s self: this distinction is always very difficult to make, and only the most

sublime virtue can afford sufficient illumination for it. As, in order to will, it is

necessary to be free, a difficulty no less great than the former arises—that of

preserving at once the public liberty and the authority of government. Look into the

motives which have induced men, once united by their common needs in a general

society, to unite themselves still more intimately by means of civil societies: you will

find no other motive than that of assuring the property, life and liberty of each

member by the protection of all. But can men be forced to defend the liberty of any

one among them, without trespassing on that of others? And how can they provide for

the public needs, without alienating the individual property of those who are forced to

contribute to them? With whatever sophistry all this may be covered over, it is certain

that if any constraint can be laid on my will, I am no longer free, and that I am no

longer master of my own property, if any one else can lay a hand on it. This difficulty,

which would have seemed insurmountable, has been removed, like the first, by the

most sublime of all human institutions, or rather by a divine inspiration, which

teaches mankind to imitate here below the unchangeable decrees of the Deity. By

what inconceivable art has a means been found of making men free by making them

subject; of using in the service of the State the properties, the persons and even the

lives of all its members, without constraining and without consulting them; of

confining their will by their own admission; of overcoming their refusal by that

consent, and forcing them to punish themselves, when they act against their own will?

How can it be that all should obey, yet nobody take upon him to command, and that

all should serve, and yet have no masters, but be the more free, as, in apparent

subjection, each loses no part of his liberty but what might be hurtful to that of

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another? These wonders are the work of law. It is to law alone that men owe justice

and liberty. It is this salutary organ of the will of all which establishes, in civil right,

the natural equality between men. It is this celestial voice which dictates to each

citizen the precepts of public reason, and teaches him to act according to the rules of

his own judgment, and not to behave inconsistently with himself. It is with this voice

alone that political rulers should speak when they command; for no sooner does one

man, setting aside the law, claim to subject another to his private will, than he departs

from the state of civil society, and confronts him face to face in the pure state of

nature, in which obedience is prescribed solely by necessity.

The most pressing interest of the ruler, and even his most indispensable duty,

therefore, is to watch over the observation of the laws of which he is the minister, and

on which his whole authority is founded. At the same time, if he exacts the

observance of them from others, he is the more strongly bound to observe them

himself, since he enjoys all their favour. For his example is of such force, that even if

the people were willing to permit him to release himself from the yoke of the law, he

ought to be cautious in availing himself of so dangerous a prerogative, which others

might soon claim to usurp in their turn, and often use to his prejudice. At bottom, as

all social engagements are mutual in nature, it is impossible for any one to set himself

above the law, without renouncing its advantages; for nobody is bound by any

obligation to one who claims that he is under no obligations to others. For this reason

no exemption from the law will ever be granted, on any ground whatsoever, in a well-

regulated government. Those citizens who have deserved well of their country ought

to be rewarded with honours, but never with privileges: for the Republic is at the eve

of its fall, when any one can think it fine not to obey the laws. If the nobility or the

soldiery should ever adopt such a maxim, all would be lost beyond redemption.

The power of the laws depends still more on their own wisdom than on the severity of

their administrators, and the public will derives its greatest weight from the reason

which has dictated it. Hence Plato looked upon it as a very necessary precaution to

place at the head of all edicts a preamble, setting forth their justice and utility. In fact,

the first of all laws is to respect the laws: the severity of penalties is only a vain

resource, invented by little minds in order to substitute terror for that respect which

they have no means of obtaining. It has constantly been observed that in those

countries where legal punishments are most severe, they are also most frequent; so

that the cruelty of such punishments is a proof only of the multitude of criminals, and,

punishing everything with equal severity, induces those who are guilty to commit

crimes, in order to escape being punished for their faults.

But though the government be not master of the law, it is much to be its guarantor,

and to possess a thousand means of inspiring the love of it. In this alone the talent of

reigning consists. With force in one’s hands, there is no art required to make the

whole world tremble, nor indeed much to gain men’s hearts; for experience has long

since taught the people to give its rulers great credit for all the evil they abstain from

doing it, and to adore them if they do not absolutely hate it. A fool, if he be obeyed,

may punish crimes as well as another: but the true statesman is he who knows how to

prevent them: it is over the wills, even more than the actions, of his subjects that his

honourable rule is extended. If he could secure that every one should act aright, he

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would no longer have anything to do; and the masterpiece of his labours would be to

be able to remain unemployed. It is certain, at least, that the greatest talent a ruler can

possess is to disguise his power, in order to render it less odious, and to conduct the

State so peaceably as to make it seem to have no need of conductors.

I conclude, therefore, that, as the first duty of the legislator is to make the laws

conformable to the general will, the first rule of public economy is that the

administration of justice should be conformable to the laws. It will even be enough to

prevent the State from being ill governed, that the Legislator shall have provided, as

he should, for every need of place, climate, soil, custom, neighbourhood, and all the

rest of the relations peculiar to the people he had to institute. Not but what there still

remains an infinity of details of administration and economy, which are left to the

wisdom of the government: but there are two infallible rules for its good conduct on

these occasions; one is, that the spirit of the law ought to decide in every particular

case that could not be foreseen; the other is that the general will, the source and

supplement of all laws, should be consulted wherever they fail. But how, I shall be

asked, can the general will be known in cases in which it has not expressed itself?

Must the whole nation be assembled together at every unforeseen event? Certainly

not. It ought the less to be assembled, because it is by no means certain that its

decision would be the expression of the general will; besides, the method would be

impracticable in a great people, and is hardly ever necessary where the government is

well-intentioned: for the rulers well know that the general will is always on the side

which is most favourable to the public interest, that is to say, most equitable; so that it

is needful only to act justly, to be certain of following the general will. When this is

flouted too openly, it makes itself felt, in spite of the formidable restraint of the public

authority. I shall cite the nearest possible examples that may be followed in such

cases.

In China, it is the constant maxim of the Prince to decide against his officers, in every

dispute that arises between them and the people. If bread be too dear in any province,

the Intendant of that province is thrown into prison. If there be an insurrection in

another, the Governor is dismissed, and every Mandarin answers with his head for all

the mischief that happens in his department. Not that these affairs do not subsequently

undergo a regular examination; but long experience has caused the judgment to be

thus anticipated. There is seldom any injustice to be repaired; in the meantime, the

Emperor, being satisfied that public outcry does not arise without cause, always

discovers, through the seditious clamours which he punishes, just grievances to

redress.

It is a great thing to preserve the rule of peace and order through all the parts of the

Republic; it is a great thing that the State should be tranquil, and the law respected:

but if nothing more is done, there will be in all this more appearance than reality; for

that government which confines itself to mere obedience will find difficulty in getting

itself obeyed. If it is good to know how to deal with men as they are, it is much better

to make them what there is need that they should be. The most absolute authority is

that which penetrates into a man’s inmost being, and concerns itself no less with his

will than with his actions. It is certain that all peoples become in the long run what the

government makes them; warriors, citizens, men, when it so pleases; or merely

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populace and rabble, when it chooses to make them so. Hence every prince who

despises his subjects, dishonours himself, in confessing that he does not know how to

make them worthy of respect. Make men, therefore, if you would command men: if

you would have them obedient to the laws, make them love the laws, and then they

will need only to know what is their duty to do it. This was the great art of ancient

governments, in those distant times when philosophers gave laws to men, and made

use of their authority only to render them wise and happy. Thence arose the numerous

sumptuary laws, the many regulations of morals, and all the public rules of conduct

which were admitted or rejected with the greatest care. Even tyrants did not forget this

important part of administration, but took as great pains to corrupt the morals of their

slaves, as Magistrates took to correct those of their fellow-citizens. But our modern

governments, which imagine they have done everything when they have raised

money, conceive that it is unnecessary and even impossible to go a step further.

II. The second essential rule of public economy is no less important than the first. If

you would have the general will accomplished, bring all the particular wills into

conformity with it; in other words, as virtue is nothing more than this conformity of

the particular wills with the general will, establish the reign of virtue.

If our politicians were less blinded by their ambition, they would see how impossible

it is for any establishment whatever to act in the spirit of its institution, unless it is

guided in accordance with the law of duty; they would feel that the greatest support of

public authority lies in the hearts of the citizens, and that nothing can take the place of

morality in the maintenance of government. It is not only upright men who know how

to administer the laws; but at bottom only good men know how to obey them. The

man who once gets the better of remorse, will not shrink before punishments which

are less severe, and less lasting, and from which there is at least the hope of escaping:

whatever precautions are taken, those who only require impunity in order to do wrong

will not fail to find means of eluding the law, and avoiding its penalties. In this case,

as all particular interests unite against the general interest, which is no longer that of

any individual, public vices have a greater effect in enervating the laws than the laws

in the repression of such vices: so that the corruption of the people and of their rulers

will at length extend to the government, however wise it may be. The worst of all

abuses is to pay an apparent obedience to the laws, only in order actually to break

them with security. For in this case the best laws soon become the most pernicious;

and it would be a hundred times better that they should not exist. In such a situation, it

is vain to add edicts to edicts and regulations to regulations. Everything serves only to

introduce new abuses, without correcting the old. The more laws are multiplied, the

more they are despised, and all the new officials appointed to supervise them are only

so many more people to break them, and either to share the plunder with their

predecessors, or to plunder apart on their own. The reward of virtue soon becomes

that of robbery; the vilest of men rise to the greatest credit; the greater they are the

more despicable they become; their infamy appears even in their dignities, and their

very honours dishonour them. If they buy the influence of the leaders or the protection

of women, it is only that they may sell justice, duty, and the State in their turn: in the

meantime, the people, feeling that its vices are not the first cause of its misfortunes,

murmurs and complains that all its misfortunes come solely from those whom it pays

to protect it from such things.

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It is under these circumstances that the voice of duty no longer speaks in men’s hearts,

and their rulers are obliged to substitute the cry of terror, or the lure of an apparent

interest, of which they subsequently trick their creatures. In this situation they are

compelled to have recourse to all the petty and despicable shifts which they call rules

of State and mysteries of the cabinet. All the vigour that is left in the government is

used by its members in ruining and supplanting one another, while the public business

is neglected, or is transacted only as personal interest requires and directs. In short,

the whole art of those great politicians lies in so mesmerising those they stand in need

of, that each may think he is labouring for his own interest in working for theirs: I say

theirs on the false supposition that it is the real interest of rulers to annihilate a people

in order to make it subject, and to ruin their own property in order to secure their

possession of it.

But when the citizens love their duty, and the guardians of the public authority

sincerely apply themselves to the fostering of that love by their own example and

assiduity, every difficulty vanishes; and government becomes so easy that it needs

none of that art of darkness, whose blackness is its only mystery. Those enterprising

spirits, so dangerous and so much admired, all those great ministers, whose glory is

inseparable from the miseries of the people, are no longer regretted: public morality

supplies what is wanting in the genius of the rulers; and the more virtue reigns, the

less need there is for talent. Even ambition is better served by duty than by usurpation:

when the people is convinced that its rulers are labouring only for its happiness, its

deference saves them the trouble of labouring to strengthen their power: and history

shows us, in a thousand cases, that the authority of one who is beloved over those

whom he loves is a hundred times more absolute than all the tyranny of usurpers. This

does not mean that the government ought to be afraid to make use of its power, but

that it ought to make use of it only in a lawful manner. We find in history a thousand

examples of pusillanimous or ambitious rulers, who were ruined by their slackness or

their pride; not one who suffered for having been strictly just. But we ought not to

confound negligence with moderation, or clemency with weakness. To be just, it is

necessary to be severe; to permit vice, when one has the right and the power to

suppress it, is to be oneself vicious.

It is not enough to say to the citizens, be good; they must be taught to be so; and even

example, which is in this respect the first lesson, is not the sole means to be

employed; patriotism is the most efficacious: for, as I have said already, every man is

virtuous when his particular will is in all things conformable to the general will, and

we voluntarily will what is willed by those whom we love. It appears that the feeling

of humanity evaporates and grows feeble in embracing all mankind, and that we

cannot be affected by the calamities of Tartary or Japan, in the same manner as we are

by those of European nations. It is necessary in some degree to confine and limit our

interest and compassion in order to make it active. Now, as this sentiment can be

useful only to those with whom we have to live, it is proper that our humanity should

confine itself to our fellow-citizens, and should receive a new force because we are in

the habit of seeing them, and by reason of the common interest which unites them. It

is certain that the greatest miracles of virtue have been produced by patriotism: this

fine and lively feeling, which gives to the force of self-love all the beauty of virtue,

lends it an energy which, without disfiguring it, makes it the most heroic of all

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passions. This it is that produces so many immortal actions, the glory of which

dazzles our feeble eyes; and so many great men, whose old-world virtues pass for

fables now that patriotism is made mock of. This is not surprising; the transports of

susceptible hearts appear altogether fanciful to any one who has never felt them; and

the love of one’s country, which is a hundred times more lively and delightful than the

love of a mistress, cannot be conceived except by experiencing it. But it is easy to

perceive in every heart that is warmed by it, in all the actions it inspires, a glowing

and sublime ardour which does not attend the purest virtue, when separated from it.

Contrast Socrates even with Cato; the one was the greater philosopher, the other more

of the citizen. Athens was already ruined in the time of Socrates, and he had no other

country than the world at large. Cato had the cause of his country always at heart; he

lived for it alone, and could not bear to outlive it. The virtue of Socrates was that of

the wisest of men; but, compared with Cæsar and Pompey, Cato seems a God among

mortals. Socrates instructed a few individuals, opposed the Sophists, and died for

truth: but Cato defended his country, its liberty and its laws, against the conquerors of

the world, and at length departed from the earth, when he had no longer a country to

serve. A worthy pupil of Socrates would be the most virtuous of his contemporaries;

but a worthy follower of Cato would be one of the greatest. The virtue of the former

would be his happiness; the latter would seek his happiness in that of all. We should

be taught by the one, and led by the other; and this alone is enough to determine

which to prefer: for no people has ever been made into a nation of philosophers, but it

is not impossible to make a people happy.

Do we wish men to be virtuous? Then let us begin by making them love their country:

but how can they love it, if their country be nothing more to them than to strangers,

and afford them nothing but what it can refuse nobody? It would be still worse, if they

did not enjoy even the privilege of social security, and if their lives, liberties and

property lay at the mercy of persons in power, without their being permitted, or it

being possible for them, to get relief from the laws. For in that case, being subjected

to the duties of the state of civil society, without enjoying even the common privileges

of the state of nature, and without being able to use their strength in their own

defence, they would be in the worst condition in which freemen could possibly find

themselves, and the word country would mean for them something merely odious and

ridiculous. It must not be imagined that a man can break or lose an arm, without the

pain being conveyed to his head: nor is it any more credible that the general will

should consent that any one member of the State, whoever he might be, should wound

or destroy another, than it is that the fingers of a man in his senses should wilfully

scratch his eyes out. The security of individuals is so intimately connected with the

public confederation that, apart from the regard that must be paid to human weakness,

that convention would in point of right be dissolved, if in the State a single citizen

who might have been relieved were allowed to perish, or if one were wrongfully

confined in prison, or if in one case an obviously unjust sentence were given. For the

fundamental conventions being broken, it is impossible to conceive of any right or

interest that could retain the people in the social union; unless they were restrained by

force, which alone causes the dissolution of the state of civil society.

In fact, does not the undertaking entered into by the whole body of the nation bind it

to provide for the security of the least of its members with as much care as for that of

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all the rest? Is the welfare of a single citizen any less the common cause than that of

the whole State? It may be said that it is good that one should perish for all. I am

ready to admire such a saying when it comes from the lips of a virtuous and worthy

patriot, voluntarily and dutifully sacrificing himself for the good of his country: but if

we are to understand by it, that it is lawful for the government to sacrifice an innocent

man for the good of the multitude, I look upon it as one of the most execrable rules

tyranny ever invented, the greatest falsehood that can be advanced, the most

dangerous admission that can be made, and a direct contradiction of the fundamental

laws of society. So little is it the case that any one person ought to perish for all, that

all have pledged their lives and properties for the defence of each, in order that the

weakness of individuals may always be protected by the strength of the public, and

each member by the whole State. Suppose we take from the whole people one

individual after another, and then press the advocates of this rule to explain more

exactly what they mean by the body of the State, and we shall see that it will at length

be reduced to a small number of persons, who are not the people, but the officers of

the people, and who, having bound themselves by personal oath to perish for the

welfare of the people, would thence infer that the people is to perish for their own.

Need we look for examples of the protection which the State owes to its members,

and the respect it owes to their persons? It is only among the most illustrious and

courageous nations that they are to be found; it is only among free peoples that the

dignity of man is realised. It is well known into what perplexity the whole republic of

Sparta was thrown, when the question of punishing a guilty citizen arose.

In Macedon, the life of a man was a matter of such importance, that Alexander the

Great, at the height of his glory, would not have dared to put a Macedonian criminal

to death in cold blood, till the accused had appeared to make his defence before his

fellow-citizens, and had been condemned by them. But the Romans distinguished

themselves above all other peoples by the regard which their government paid to the

individual, and by its scrupulous attention to the preservation of the inviolable rights

of all the members of the State. Nothing was so sacred among them as the life of a

citizen; and no less than an assembly of the whole people was needed to condemn

one. Not even the Senate, nor the Consuls, in all their majesty, possessed the right; but

the crime and punishment of a citizen were regarded as a public calamity among the

most powerful people in the world. So hard indeed did it seem to shed blood for any

crime whatsoever, that by the Lex Porcia, the penalty of death was commuted into

that of banishment for all those who were willing to survive the loss of so great a

country. Everything both at Rome, and in the Roman armies, breathed that love of

fellow-citizens one for another, and that respect for the Roman name, which raised the

courage and inspired the virtue of every one who had the honour to bear it. The cap of

a citizen delivered from slavery, the civic crown of him who had saved the life of

another, were looked upon with the greatest pleasure amid the pomp of their triumphs;

and it is remarkable that among the crowns which were bestowed in honour of

splendid actions in war, the civic crown and that of the triumphant general alone were

of laurel, all the others being merely of gold. It was thus that Rome was virtuous and

became the mistress of the world. Ambitious rulers! A herdsman governs his dogs and

cattle, and yet is only the meanest of mankind. If it be a fine thing to command, it is

when those who obey us are capable of doing us honour. Show respect, therefore, to

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your fellow-citizens, and you will render yourselves worthy of respect; show respect

to liberty, and your power will increase daily. Never exceed your rights, and they will

soon become unlimited.

Let our country then show itself the common mother of her citizens; let the

advantages they enjoy in their country endear it to them; let the government leave

them enough share in the public administration to make them feel that they are at

home; and let the laws be in their eyes only the guarantees of the common liberty.

These rights, great as they are, belong to all men: but without seeming to attack them

directly, the ill-will of rulers may in fact easily reduce their effect to nothing. The law,

which they thus abuse, serves the powerful at once as a weapon of offence, and as a

shield against the weak; and the pretext of the public good is always the most

dangerous scourge of the people. What is most necessary, and perhaps most difficult,

in government, is rigid integrity in doing strict justice to all, and above all in

protecting the poor against the tyranny of the rich. The greatest evil has already come

about, when there are poor men to be defended, and rich men to be restrained. It is on

the middle classes alone that the whole force of the law is exerted; they are equally

powerless against the treasures of the rich and the penury of the poor. The first mocks

them, the second escapes them. The one breaks the meshes, the other passes through

them.

It is therefore one of the most important functions of government to prevent extreme

inequality of fortunes; not by taking away wealth from its possessors, but by

depriving all men of means to accumulate it; not by building hospitals for the poor,

but by securing the citizens from becoming poor. The unequal distribution of

inhabitants over the territory, when men are crowded together in one place, while

other places are depopulated; the encouragement of the arts that minister to luxury

and of purely industrial arts at the expense of useful and laborious crafts; the sacrifice

of agriculture to commerce; the necessitation of the tax-farmer by the mal-

administration of the funds of the State; and in short, venality pushed to such an

extreme that even public esteem is reckoned at a cash value, and virtue rated at a

market price: these are the most obvious causes of opulence and of poverty, of public

interest, of mutual hatred among citizens, of indifference to the common cause, of the

corruption of the people, and of the weakening of all the springs of government. Such

are the evils, which are with difficulty cured when they make themselves felt, but

which a wise administration ought to prevent, if it is to maintain, along with good

morals, respect for the laws, patriotism, and the influence of the general will.

But all these precautions will be inadequate, unless rulers go still more to the root of

the matter. I conclude this part of public economy where I ought to have begun it.

There can be no patriotism without liberty, no liberty without virtue, no virtue without

citizens; create citizens, and you have everything you need; without them, you will

have nothing but debased slaves, from the rulers of the State downwards. To form

citizens is not the work of a day; and in order to have men it is necessary to educate

them when they are children. It will be said, perhaps, that whoever has men to govern,

ought not to seek, beyond their nature, a perfection of which they are incapable; that

he ought not to desire to destroy their passions; and that the execution of such an

attempt is no more desirable than it is possible. I will agree, further, that a man

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without passions would certainly be a bad citizen; but it must be agreed also that, if

men are not taught not to love some things, it is impossible to teach them to love one

object more than another—to prefer that which is truly beautiful to that which is

deformed. If, for example, they were early accustomed to regard their individuality

only in its relation to the body of the State, and to be aware, so to speak, of their own

existence merely as a part of that of the State, they might at length come to identify

themselves in some degree with this greater whole, to feel themselves members of

their country, and to love it with that exquisite feeling which no isolated person has

save for himself; to lift up their spirits perpetually to this great object, and thus to

transform into a sublime virtue that dangerous disposition which gives rise to all our

vices. Not only does philosophy demonstrate the possibility of giving feeling these

new directions; history furnishes us with a thousand striking examples. If they are so

rare among us moderns, it is because nobody troubles himself whether citizens exist

or not, and still less does anybody think of attending to the matter soon enough to

make them. It is too late to change our natural inclinations, when they have taken their

course, and egoism is confirmed by habit: it is too late to lead us out of ourselves

when once the human Ego, concentrated in our hearts, has acquired that contemptible

activity which absorbs all virtue and constitutes the life and being of little minds. How

can patriotism germinate in the midst of so many other passions which smother it?

And what can remain, for fellow-citizens, of a heart already divided between avarice,

a mistress, and vanity?

From the first moment of life, men ought to begin learning to deserve to live; and, as

at the instant of birth we partake of the rights of citizenship, that instant ought to be

the beginning of the exercise of our duty. If there are laws for the age of maturity,

there ought to be laws for infancy, teaching obedience to others: and as the reason of

each man is not left to be the sole arbiter of his duties, government ought the less

indiscriminately to abandon to the intelligence and prejudices of fathers the education

of their children, as that education is of still greater importance to the State than to the

fathers: for, according to the course of nature, the death of the father often deprives

him of the final fruits of education; but his country sooner or later perceives its

effects. Families dissolve, but the State remains.

Should the public authority, by taking the place of the father, and charging itself with

that important function, acquire his rights by discharging his duties, he would have

the less cause to complain, as he would only be changing his title, and would have in

common, under the name of citizen, the same authority over his children, as he was

exercising separately under the name of father, and would not be less obeyed when

speaking in the name of the law, than when he spoke in that of nature. Public

education, therefore, under regulations prescribed by the government, and under

magistrates established by the Sovereign, is one of the fundamental rules of popular or

legitimate government. If children are brought up in common in the bosom of

equality; if they are imbued with the laws of the State and the precepts of the general

will; if they are taught to respect these above all things; if they are surrounded by

examples and objects which constantly remind them of the tender mother who

nourishes them, of the love she bears them, of the inestimable benefits they receive

from her, and of the return they owe her, we cannot doubt that they will learn to

cherish one another mutually as brothers, to will nothing contrary to the will of

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society, to substitute the actions of men and citizens for the futile and vain babbling of

sophists, and to become in time defenders and fathers of the country of which they

will have been so long the children.

I shall say nothing of the Magistrates destined to preside over such an education,

which is certainly the most important business of the State. It is easy to see that if

such marks of public confidence were conferred on slight grounds, if this sublime

function were not, for those who have worthily discharged all other offices, the

reward of labour, the pleasant and honourable repose of old age, and the crown of all

honours, the whole enterprise would be useless and the education void of success. For

whereever the lesson is not supported by authority, and the precept by example, all

instruction is fruitless; and virtue itself loses its credit in the mouth of one who does

not practise it. But let illustrious warriors, bent under the weight of their laurels,

preach courage: let upright Magistrates, grown white in the purple and on the bench

teach justice. Such teachers as these would thus get themselves virtuous successors,

and transmit from age to age, to generations to come, the experience and talents of

rulers, the courage and virtue of citizens, and common emulation in all to live and die

for their country.

I know of but three peoples which once practised public education, the Cretans, the

Lacedemonians, and the ancient Persians: among all these it was attended with the

greatest success, and indeed it did wonders among the two last. Since the world has

been divided into nations too great to admit of being well governed, this method has

been no longer practicable, and the reader will readily perceive other reasons why

such a thing has never been attempted by any modern people. It is very remarkable

that the Romans were able to dispense with it; but Rome was for five hundred years

one continued miracle which the world cannot hope to see again. The virtue of the

Romans, engendered by their horror of tyranny and the crimes of tyrants, and by an

innate patriotism, made all their houses so many schools of citizenship; while the

unlimited power of fathers over their children made the individual authority so rigid

that the father was more feared than the Magistrate, and was in his family tribunal

both censor of morals and avenger of the laws.

Thus a careful and well-intentioned government, vigilant incessantly to maintain or

restore patriotism and morality among the people, provides beforehand against the

evils which sooner or later result from the indifference of the citizens to the fate of the

Republic, keeping within narrow bounds that personal interest which so isolates the

individual that the State is enfeebled by his power, and has nothing to hope from his

good-will. Wherever men love their country, respect the laws, and live simply, little

remains to be done in order to make them happy; and in public administration, where

chance has less influence than in the lot of individuals, wisdom is so nearly allied to

happiness, that the two objects are confounded.

III. It is not enough to have citizens and to protect them, it is also necessary to

consider their subsistence. Provision for the public wants is an obvious inference from

the general will, and the third essential duty of government. This duty is not, we

should feel, to fill the granaries of individuals and thereby to grant them a

dispensation from labour, but to keep plenty so within their reach that labour is

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always necessary and never useless for its acquisition. It extends also to everything

regarding the management of the exchequer, and the expenses of public

administration. Having thus treated of general economy with reference to the

government of persons, we must now consider it with reference to the administration

of property.

This part presents no fewer difficulties to solve, and contradictions to remove, than

the preceding. It is certain that the right of property is the most sacred of all the rights

of citizenship, and even more important in some respects than liberty itself; either

because it more nearly affects the preservation of life, or because, property being

more easily usurped and more difficult to defend than life, the law ought to pay a

greater attention to what is most easily taken away; or finally, because property is the

true foundation of civil society, and the real guarantee of the undertakings of citizens:

for if property were not answerable for personal actions, nothing would be easier than

to evade duties and laugh at the laws. On the other hand, it is no less certain that the

maintenance of the State and the government involves costs and outgoings; and as

every one who agrees to the end must acquiesce in the means, it follows that the

members of a society ought to contribute from their property to its support. Besides, it

is difficult to secure the property of individuals on one side, without attacking it on

another; and it is impossible that all the regulations which govern the order of

succession, will, contracts, &c. should not lay individuals under some constraint as to

the disposition of their goods, and should not consequently restrict the right of

property.

But besides what I have said above of the agreement between the authority of law and

the liberty of the citizen, there remains to be made, with respect to the disposition of

goods, an important observation which removes many difficulties. As Puffendorf has

shown, the right of property, by its very nature, does not extend beyond the life of the

proprietor, and the moment a man is dead his goods cease to belong to him. Thus, to

prescribe the conditions according to which he can dispose of them, is in reality less

to alter his right as it appears, than to extend it in fact.

In general, although the institution of the laws which regulate the power of individuals

in the disposition of their own goods belongs only to the Sovereign, the spirit of these

laws, which the government ought to follow in their application, is that, from father to

son, and from relation to relation, the goods of a family should go as little out of it and

be as little alienated as possible. There is a sensible reason for this in favour of

children, to whom the right of property would be quite useless, if the father left them

nothing, and who besides, having often contributed by their labour to the acquisition

of their father’s wealth, are in their own right associates with him in his right of

property. But another reason, more distant, though not less important, is that nothing

is more fatal to morality and to the Republic than the continual shifting of rank and

fortune among the citizens: such changes are both the proof and the source of a

thousand disorders, and overturn and confound everything; for those who were

brought up to one thing find themselves destined for another; and neither those who

rise nor those who fall are able to assume the rules of conduct, or to possess

themselves of the qualifications requisite for their new condition, still less to

discharge the duties it entails. I proceed to the object of public finance.

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If the people governed itself and there were no intermediary between the

administration of the State and the citizens, they would have no more to do than to

assess themselves occasionally, in proportion to the public needs and the abilities of

individuals: and as they would all keep in sight the recovery and employment of such

assessments, no fraud or abuse could slip into the management of them; the State

would never be involved in debt, or the people over-burdened with taxes; or at least

the knowledge of how the money would be used would be a consolation for the

severity of the tax. But things cannot be carried on in this manner: on the contrary,

however small any State may be, civil societies are always too populous to be under

the immediate government of all their members. It is necessary that the public money

should go through the hands of the rulers, all of whom have, besides the interests of

the State, their own individual interests, which are not the last to be listened to. The

people, on its side, perceiving rather the cupidity and ridiculous expenditure of its

rulers than the public needs, murmurs at seeing itself stripped of necessaries to furnish

others with superfluities; and when once these complaints have reached a certain

degree of bitterness, the most upright administration will find it impossible to restore

confidence. In such a case, voluntary contributions bring in nothing, and forced

contributions are illegitimate. This cruel alternative of letting the State perish, or of

violating the sacred right of property, which is its support, constitutes the great

difficulty of just and prudent economy.

The first step which the founder of a republic ought to take after the establishment of

laws, is to settle a sufficient fund for the maintenance of the Magistrates and other

Officials, and for other public expenses. This fund, if it consist of money, is called

ærarium or fisc, and public demesne if it consist of lands. This, for obvious reasons, is

much to be preferred. Whoever has reflected on this matter must be of the opinion of

Bodin, who looks upon the public demesne as the most reputable and certain means of

providing for the needs of the State. It is remarkable also that Romulus, in his division

of lands, made it his first care to set apart a third for the use of the State. I confess it is

not impossible for the produce of the demesne, if it be badly managed, to be reduced

to nothing; but it is not of the essence of public demesnes to be badly administered.

Before any use is made of this fund, it should be assigned or accepted by an assembly

of the people, or of the estates of the country, which should determine its future use.

After this solemnity, which makes such funds inalienable, their very nature is, in a

manner, changed, and the revenues become so sacred, that it is not only the most

infamous theft, but actual treason, to misapply them or pervert them from the purpose

for which they were destined. It reflects great dishonour on Rome that the integrity of

Cato the censor was something so very remarkable, and that an Emperor, on

rewarding the talents of a singer with a few crowns, thought it necessary to observe

that the money came from his own private purse, and not from that of the State. But if

we find few Galbas, where are we to look for a Cato? For when vice is no longer

dishonourable, what chiefs will be so scrupulous as to abstain from touching the

public revenues that are left to their discretion, and even not in time to impose on

themselves, by pretending to confound their own expensive and scandalous

dissipations with the glory of the State, and the means of extending their own

authority with the means of augmenting its power? It is particularly in this delicate

part of the administration that virtue is the only effective instrument, and that the

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integrity of the Magistrate is the only real check upon his avarice. Books and auditing

of accounts, instead of exposing frauds, only conceal them; for prudence is never so

ready to conceive new precautions as knavery is to elude them. Never mind, then,

about account books and papers; place the management of finance in honest hands:

that is the only way to get it faithfully conducted.

When public funds are once established, the rulers of the State become of right the

administrators of them: for this administration constitutes a part of government which

is always essential, though not always equally so. Its influence increases in proportion

as that of other resources is diminished; and it may justly be said that a government

has reached the last stage of corruption, when it has ceased to have sinews other than

money. Now as every government constantly tends to become lax, this is enough to

show why no State can subsist unless its revenues constantly increase.

The first sense of the necessity of this increase is also the first sign of the internal

disorder of the State; and the prudent administrator, in his endeavours to find means

to provide for the present necessity, will neglect nothing to find out the distant cause

of the new need; just as a mariner when he finds the water gaining on his vessel, does

not neglect, while he is working the pumps, to discover and stop the leak.

From this rule is deduced the most important rule in the administration of finance,

which is, to take more pains to guard against needs than to increase revenues. For,

whatever diligence be employed, the relief which only comes after, and more slowly

than, the evil, always leaves some injury behind. While a remedy is being found for

one evil, another is beginning to make itself felt, and even the remedies themselves

produce new difficulties: so that at length the nation is involved in debt and the people

oppressed, while the government loses its influence and can do very little with a great

deal of money. I imagine it was owing to the recognition of this rule that such

wonders were done by ancient governments, which did more with their parsimony

than ours do with all their treasures; and perhaps from this comes the common use of

the word economy, which means rather the prudent management of what one has than

ways of getting what one has not.

But apart from the public demesne, which is of service to the State in proportion to

the uprightness of those who govern, any one sufficiently acquainted with the whole

force of the general administration, especially when it confines itself to legitimate

methods, would be astonished at the resources the rulers can make use of for guarding

against public needs, without trespassing on the goods of individuals. As they are

masters of the whole commerce of the State, nothing is easier for them than to direct it

into such channels as to provide for every need, without appearing to interfere. The

distribution of provisions, money, and merchandise in just proportions, according to

times and places, is the true secret of finance and the source of wealth, provided those

who administer it have foresight enough to suffer a present apparent loss, in order

really to obtain immense profits in the future. When we see a government paying

bounties, instead of receiving duties, on the exportation of corn in time of plenty, and

on its importation in time of scarcity, we must have such facts before our eyes if we

are to be persuaded of their reality. We should hold such facts to be idle tales, if they

had happened in ancient times. Let us suppose that, in order to prevent a scarcity in

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bad years, a proposal were made to establish public granaries; would not the

maintenance of so useful an institution serve in most countries as an excuse for new

taxes? At Geneva, such granaries, established and kept up by a prudent

administration, are a public resource in bad years, and the principal revenue of the

State at all times. Alit et ditat is the inscription which stands, rightly and properly, on

the front of the building. To set forth in this place the economic system of a good

government, I have often turned my eyes to that of this Republic, rejoicing to find in

my own country an example of that wisdom and happiness which I should be glad to

see prevail in every other.

If we ask how the needs of a State grow, we shall find they generally arise, like the

wants of individuals, less from any real necessity than from the increase of useless

desires, and that expenses are often augmented only to give a pretext for raising

receipts: so that the State would sometimes gain by not being rich, and apparent

wealth is in reality more burdensome than poverty itself would be. Rulers may indeed

hope to keep the peoples in stricter dependence, by thus giving them with one hand

what they take from them with the other; and this was in fact the policy of Joseph

towards the Egyptians: but this political sophistry is the more fatal to the State, as the

money never returns into the hands it went out of. Such principles only enrich the idle

at the expense of the industrious.

A desire for conquest is one of the most evident and dangerous causes of this increase.

This desire, occasioned often by a different species of ambition from that which it

seems to proclaim, is not always what it appears to be, and has not so much, for its

real motive, the apparent desire to aggrandise the Nation as a secret desire to increase

the authority of the rulers at home, by increasing the number of troops, and by the

diversion which the objects of war occasion in the minds of the citizens.

It is at least certain, that no peoples are so oppressed and wretched as conquering

nations, and that their successes only increase their misery. Did not history inform us

of the fact, reason would suffice to tell us that, the greater a State grows, the heavier

and more burdensome in proportion its expenses become: for every province has to

furnish its share to the general expense of government, and besides has to be at the

expense of its own administration, which is as great as if it were really independent.

Add to this that great fortunes are always acquired in one place and spent in another.

Production therefore soon ceases to balance consumption, and a whole country is

impoverished merely to enrich a single town.

Another source of the increase of public wants, which depends on the foregoing, is

this. There may come a time when the citizens, no longer looking upon themselves as

interested in the common cause, will cease to be the defenders of their country, and

the Magistrates will prefer the command of mercenaries to that of free-men; if for no

other reason than that, when the time comes, they may use them to reduce free-men to

submission. Such was the state of Rome towards the end of the Republic and under

the Emperors: for all the victories of the early Romans, like those of Alexander, had

been won by brave citizens, who were ready, at need, to give their blood in the service

of their country, but would never sell it. Only at the siege of Veii did the practice of

paying the Roman infantry begin. Marius, in the Jugurthine war, dishonoured the

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legions by introducing freedmen, vagabonds and other mercenaries. Tyrants, the

enemies of the very people it was their duty to make happy, maintained regular

troops, apparently to withstand the foreigner, but really to enslave their countrymen.

To form such troops, it was necessary to take men from the land; the lack of their

labour then diminished the amount of provisions, and their maintenance introduced

those taxes which increased prices. This first disorder gave rise to murmurs among the

people; in order to suppress them, the number of troops had to be increased, and

consequently the misery of the people also got worse; and the growing despair led to

still further increases in the cause in order to guard against its effects. On the other

hand, the mercenaries, whose merit we may judge of by the price at which they sold

themselves, proud of their own meanness, and despising the laws that protected them,

as well as their fellows whose bread they ate, imagined themselves more honoured in

being Cæsar’s satellites than in being defenders of Rome. As they were given over to

blind obedience, their swords were always at the throats of their fellow-citizens, and

they were prepared for general butchery at the first sign. It would not be difficult to

show that this was one of the principal causes of the ruin of the Roman Empire.

The invention of artillery and fortifications has forced the princes of Europe, in

modern times, to return to the use of regular troops, in order to garrison their towns;

but, however lawful their motives, it is to be feared the effect may be no less fatal.

There is no better reason now than formerly for depopulating the country to form

armies and garrisons, nor should the people be oppressed to support them; in a word,

these dangerous establishments have increased of late years with such rapidity in this

part of the world, that they evidently threaten to depopulate Europe, and sooner or

later to ruin its inhabitants.

Be this as it may, it ought to be seen that such institutions necessarily subvert the true

economic system, which draws the principal revenue of the State from the public

demesne, and leave only the troublesome resource of subsidies and imposts; with

which it remains to deal.

It should be remembered that the foundation of the social compact is property; and its

first condition, that every one should be maintained in the peaceful possession of what

belongs to him. It is true that, by the same treaty, every one binds himself, at least

tacitly, to be assessed toward the public wants: but as this undertaking cannot

prejudice the fundamental law, and presupposes that the need is clearly recognised by

all who contribute to it, it is plain that such assessment, in order to be lawful, must be

voluntary; it must depend, not indeed on a particular will, as if it were necessary to

have the consent of each individual, and that he should give no more than just what he

pleased, but on a general will, decided by vote of a majority, and on the basis of a

proportional rating which leaves nothing arbitrary in the imposition of the tax.

That taxes cannot be legitimately established except by the consent of the people or its

representatives, is a truth generally admitted by all philosophers and jurists of any

repute on questions of public right, not even excepting Bodin. If any of them have laid

down rules which seem to contradict this, their particular motives for doing so may

easily be seen; and they introduce so many conditions and restrictions that the

argument comes at bottom to the same thing: for whether the people has it in its

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power to refuse, or the Sovereign ought not to exact, is a matter of indifference with

regard to right; and if the point in question concerns only power, it is useless to

inquire whether it is legitimate or not. Contributions levied on the people are two

kinds; real, levied on commodities, and personal, paid by the head. Both are called

taxes or subsidies: when the people fixes the sum to be paid, it is called subsidy; but

when it grants the product of an imposition, it is called a tax. We are told in the Spirit

of the Laws that a capitation tax is most suited to slavery, and a real tax most in

accordance with liberty. This would be incontestable, if the circumstances of every

person were equal; for otherwise nothing can be more disproportionate than such a

tax; and it is in the observations of exact proportions that the spirit of liberty consists.

But if a tax by heads were exactly proportioned to the circumstances of individuals, as

what is called the capitation tax in France might be, is would be the most equitable

and consequently the most proper for free-men.

These proportions appear at first very easy to note, because, being relative to each

man’s position in the world, their incidence is always public: but proper regard is

seldom paid to all the elements that should enter into such a calculation, even apart

from deception arising from avarice, fraud and self-interest. In the first place, we have

to consider the relation of quantities, according to which, ceteris paribus, the person

who has ten times the property of another man ought to pay ten times as much to the

State. Secondly, the relation of the use made, that is to say, the distinction between

necessaries and superfluities. He who possesses only the common necessaries of life

should pay nothing at all, while the tax on him who is in possession of superfluities

may justly be extended to everything he has over and above mere necessaries. To this

he will possibly object that, when his rank is taken into account, what may be

superfluous to a man of inferior station is necessary for him. But this is false: for a

grandee has two legs just like a cow-herd, and, like him again, but one belly. Besides,

these pretended necessaries are really so little necessary to his rank, that if he should

renounce them on any worthy occasion, he would only be the more honoured. The

populace would be ready to adore a Minister who went to Council on foot, because he

had sold off his carriages to supply a pressing need of the State. Lastly, to no man

does the law prescribe magnificence; and propriety is no argument against right.

A third relation, which is never taken into account, though it ought to be the chief

consideration, is the advantage that every person derives from the social confederacy;

for this provides a powerful protection for the immense possessions of the rich, and

hardly leaves the poor man in quiet possession of the cottage he builds with his own

hands. Are not all the advantages of society for the rich and powerful? Are not all

lucrative posts in their hands? Are not all privileges and exemptions reserved for them

alone? Is not the public authority always on their side? If a man of eminence robs his

creditors, or is guilty of other knaveries, is he not always assured of impunity? Are

not the assaults, acts of violence, assassinations, and even murders committed by the

great, matters that are hushed up in a few months, and of which nothing more is

thought? But if a great man himself is robbed or insulted, the whole police force is

immediately in motion, and woe even to innocent persons who chance to be

suspected. If he has to pass through any dangerous road, the country is up in arms to

escort him. If the axle-tree of his chaise breaks, everybody flies to his assistance. If

there is a noise at his door, he speaks but a word, and all is silent. If he is incommoded

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by the crowd, he waves his hand and every one makes way. If his coach is met on the

road by a wagon, his servants are ready to beat the driver’s brains out, and fifty honest

pedestrians going quietly about their business had better be knocked on the head than

an idle jackanapes be delayed in his coach. Yet all this respect costs him not a

farthing: it is the rich man’s right, and not what he buys with his wealth. How

different is the case of the poor man! the more humanity owes him, the more society

denies him. Every door is shut against him, even when he has a right to its being

opened: and if ever he obtains justice, it is with much greater difficulty than others

obtain favours. If the militia is to be raised or the highway to be mended, he is always

given the preference; he always bears the burden which his richer neighbour has

influence enough to get exempted from. On the least accident that happens to him,

everybody avoids him: if his cart be overturned in the road, so far is he from receiving

any assistance, that he is lucky if he does not get horse-whipped by the impudent

lackeys of some young Duke; in a word, all gratuitous assistance is denied to the poor

when they need it, just because they cannot pay for it. I look upon any poor man as

totally undone, if he has the misfortune to have an honest heart, a fine daughter, and a

powerful neighbour.

Another no less important fact is that the losses of the poor are much harder to repair

than those of the rich, and that the difficulty of acquisition is always greater in

proportion as there is more need for it. “Nothing comes out of nothing,” is as true of

life as in physics: money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more

difficult to acquire than the second million. Add to this that what the poor pay is lost

to them for ever, and remains in, or returns to, the hands of the rich: and as, to those

who share in the government or to their dependents, the whole produce of the taxes

must sooner or later pass, although they pay their share, these persons have always a

sensible interest in increasing them.

The terms of the social compact between these two estates of men may be summed up

in a few words. “You have need of me, because I am rich and you are poor. We will

therefore come to an agreement. I will permit you to have the honour of serving me,

on condition that you bestow on me the little you have left, in return for the pains I

shall take to command you.”

Putting all these considerations carefully together, we shall find that, in order to levy

taxes in a truly equitable and proportionate manner, the imposition ought not to be in

simple ratio to the property of the contributors, but in compound ratio to the

difference of their conditions and the superfluity of their possessions. This very

important and difficult operation is daily made by numbers of honest clerks, who

know their arithmetic; but a Plato or a Montesquieu would not venture to undertake it

without the greatest diffidence, or without praying to Heaven for understanding and

integrity.

Another disadvantage of personal taxes is that they may be too much felt or raised

with too great severity. This, however, does not prevent them from being frequently

evaded; for it is much easier for persons to escape a tax than for their possessions.

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Of all impositions, that on land, or real taxation, has always been regarded as most

advantageous in countries where more attention is paid to what the tax will produce,

and to the certainty of recovering the product, than to securing the least discomfort for

the people. It has been even maintained that it is necessary to burden the peasant in

order to rouse him from indolence, and that he would never work if he had no taxes to

pay. But in all countries experience confutes this ridiculous notion. In England and

Holland the farmer pays very little, and in China nothing: yet these are the countries

in which the land is best cultivated. On the other hand, in those countries where the

husbandman is taxed in proportion to the produce of his lands, he leaves them

uncultivated, or reaps just as much from them as suffices for bare subsistence. For to

him who loses the fruit of his labour, it is some gain to do nothing. To lay a tax on

industry is a very singular expedient for banishing idleness.

Taxes on land or corn, especially when they are excessive, lead to two results so fatal

in their effect that they cannot but depopulate and ruin, in the long run, all countries in

which they are established.

The first of these arises from the defective circulation of specie; for industry and

commerce draw all the money from the country into the capitals: and as the tax

destroys the proportion there might otherwise be between the needs of the

husbandman and the price of his corn, money is always leaving and never returning.

Thus the richer the city the poorer the country. The product of the taxes passes from

the hands of the Prince or his financial officers into those of artists and traders; and

the husbandman, who receives only the smallest part of it, is at length exhausted by

paying always the same, and receiving constantly less. How could a human body

subsist if it had veins and no arteries, or if its arteries conveyed the blood only within

four inches of the heart? Chardin tells us that in Persia the royal dues on commodities

are paid in kind: this custom, which, Herodotus informs us, prevailed long ago in the

same country down to the time of Darius, might prevent the evil of which I have been

speaking. But unless Intendants, Directors, Commissioners and Warehousemen in

Persia are a different kind of people from what they are elsewhere, I can hardly

believe that the smallest part of this produce ever reaches the king, or that the corn is

not spoilt in every granary, and the greater part of the warehouses not consumed by

fire.

The second evil effect arises from an apparent advantage, which aggravates the evil

before it can be perceived. That is that corn is a commodity whose price is not

enhanced by taxes in the country producing it, and which, in spite of its absolute

necessity, may be diminished in quantity without the price being increased. Hence,

many people die of hunger, although corn remains cheap, and the husbandman bears

the whole charge of a tax, for which he cannot indemnify himself by the price of his

corn. It must be observed that we ought not to reason about a land-tax in the same

manner as about duties laid on various kinds of merchandise; for the effect of such

duties is to raise the price, and they are paid by the buyers rather than the sellers. For

these duties, however heavy, are still voluntary, and are paid by the merchant only in

proportion to the quantity he buys; and as he buys only in proportion to his sale, he

himself gives the law its particular application; but the farmer who is obliged to pay

his rent at stated times, whether he sells or not, cannot wait till he can get his own

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price for his commodity: even if he is not forced to sell for mere subsistence, he must

sell to pay the taxes; so that it is frequently the heaviness of the tax that keeps the

price of corn low.

It is further to be noticed that the resources of commerce and industry are so far from

rendering the tax more supportable through abundance of money, that they only

render it more burdensome. I shall not insist on what is very evident; i. e. that,

although a greater or less quantity of money in a State may give it the greater or less

credit in the eye of the foreigner, it makes not the least difference to the real fortune of

the citizens, and does not make their condition any more or less comfortable. But I

must make these two important remarks: first, unless a State possesses superfluous

commodities, and abundance of money results from foreign trade, only trading cities

are sensible of the abundance; while the peasant only becomes relatively poorer.

Secondly, as the price of everything is enhanced by the increase of money, taxes also

must be proportionately increased; so that the farmer will find himself still more

burdened without having more resources.

It ought to be observed that the tax on land is a real duty on the produce. It is

universally agreed, however, that nothing is so dangerous as a tax on corn paid by the

purchaser: but how comes it we do not see that it is a hundred times worse when the

duty is paid by the cultivator himself? Is not this an attack on the substance of the

State at its very source? Is it not the directest possible method of depopulating a

country, and therefore in the end ruining it? For the worst kind of scarcity a nation can

suffer from is lack of inhabitants.

Only the real statesman can rise, in imposing taxes, above the mere financial object:

he alone can transform heavy burdens into useful regulations, and make the people

even doubtful whether such establishments were not calculated rather for the good of

the nation in general, than merely for the raising of money.

Duties on the importation of foreign commodities, of which the natives are fond,

without the country standing in need of them; on the exportation of those of the

growth of the country which are not too plentiful, and which foreigners cannot do

without; on the productions of frivolous and all too lucrative arts; on the importation

of all pure luxuries; and in general on all objects of luxury; will answer the two-fold

end in view. It is by such taxes, indeed, by which the poor are eased, and the burdens

thrown on the rich, that it is possible to prevent the continual increase of inequality of

fortune; the subjection of such a multitude of artisans and useless servants to the rich,

the multiplication of idle persons in our cities, and the depopulation of the country-

side.

It is important that the value of any commodity and the duties laid on it should be so

proportioned that the avarice of individuals may not be too strongly tempted to fraud

by the greatness of the possible profit. To make smuggling difficult, those

commodities should be singled out which are hardest to conceal. All duties should be

rather paid by the consumer of the commodity taxed than by him who sells it: as the

quantity of duty he would be obliged to pay would lay him open to greater

temptations, and afford him more opportunities for fraud.

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This is the constant custom in China, a country where the taxes are greater and yet

better paid than in any other part of the world. The merchant himself there pays no

duty; the buyer alone, without murmuring or sedition, meets the whole charge; for as

the necessaries of life, such as rice and corn, are absolutely exempt from taxation, the

common people is not oppressed, and the duty falls only on those who are well-to-do.

Precautions against smuggling ought not to be dictated so much by the fear of it

occurring, as by the attention which the government should pay to securing

individuals from being seduced by illegitimate profits, which first make them bad

citizens, and afterwards soon turn them into dishonest men.

Heavy taxes should be laid on servants in livery, on equipages, rich furniture, fine

clothes, on spacious courts and gardens, on public entertainments of all kinds, on

useless professions, such as dancers, singers, players, and in a word, on all that

multiplicity of objects of luxury, amusement and idleness, which strike the eyes of all,

and can the less be hidden, as their whole purpose is to be seen, without which they

would be useless. We need be under no apprehension of the produce of these taxes

being arbitrary, because they are laid on things not absolutely necessary. They must

know but little of mankind who imagine that, after they have been once seduced by

luxury, they can ever renounce it: they would a hundred times sooner renounce

common necessaries, and had much rather die of hunger than of shame. The increase

in their expense is only an additional reason for supporting them, when the vanity of

appearing wealthy reaps its profit from the price of the thing and the charge of the tax.

As long as there are rich people in the world, they will be desirous of distinguishing

themselves from the poor, nor can the State devise a revenue less burdensome or more

certain than what arises from this distinction.

For the same reason, industry would have nothing to suffer from an economic system

which increased the revenue, encouraged agriculture by relieving the husbandman,

and insensibly tended to bring all fortunes nearer to that middle condition which

constitutes the genuine strength of the State. These taxes might, I admit, bring certain

fashionable articles of dress and amusement to an untimely end; but it would be only

to substitute others, by which the artificer would gain, and the exchequer suffer no

loss. In a word, suppose the spirit of government was constantly to tax only the

superfluities of the rich, one of two things must happen: either the rich would convert

their superfluous expenses into useful ones, which would redound to the profit of the

State, and thus the imposition of taxes would have the effect of the best sumptuary

laws, the expenses of the State would necessarily diminish with those of individuals,

and the treasury would not receive so much less as it would gain by having less to

pay; or, if the rich did not become less extravagant, the exchequer would have such

resources in the product of taxes on their expenditure as would provide for the needs

of the State. In the first case the treasury would be the richer by what it would save,

from having the less to do with its money; and in the second, it would be enriched by

the useless expenses of individuals.

We may add to all this a very important distinction in matters of political right, to

which governments, constantly tenacious of doing everything for themselves, ought to

pay great attention. It has been observed that personal taxes and duties on the

necessaries of life, as they directly trespass on the right of property, and consequently

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on the true foundation of political society, are always liable to have dangerous results,

if they are not established with the express consent of the people or its representatives.

It is not the same with articles the use of which we can deny ourselves; for as the

individual is under no absolute necessity to pay, his contribution may count as

voluntary. The particular consent of each contributor then takes the place of the

general consent of the whole people: for why should a people oppose the imposition

of a tax which falls only on those who desire to pay it? It appears to me certain that

everything, which is not proscribed by law, or contrary to morality, and yet may be

prohibited by the government, may also be permitted on payment of a certain duty.

Thus, for example, if the government may prohibit the use of coaches, it may

certainly impose a tax on them; and this is a prudent and useful method of censuring

their use without absolutely forbidding it. In this case, the tax may be regarded as a

sort of fine, the product of which compensates for the abuse it punishes.

It may perhaps be objected that those, whom Bodin calls impostors, i. e. those who

impose or contrive the taxes, being in the class of the rich, will be far from sparing

themselves to relieve the poor. But this is quite beside the point. If, in every nation,

those to whom the Sovereign commits the government of the people, were, from their

position, its enemies, it would not be worth while to inquire what they ought to do to

make the people happy.

PRINTED BY THE TEMPLE PRESS AT LETCHWORTH IN GREAT BRITAIN

[1]The term “general” will means, in Rousseau, not so much “will held by several

persons,” as will having a general (universal) object. This is often misunderstood; but

the mistake matters the less, because the General Will must, in fact, be both.

[1]“Learned inquiries into public right are often only the history of past abuses; and

troubling to study them too deeply is a profitless infatuation” (Essay on the Interests

of France in Relation to its Neighbours, by the Marquis d’Argenson). This is exactly

what Grotius has done.

[2]See a short treatise of Plutarch’s entitled “That Animals Reason.”

[1]The Romans, who understood and respected the right of war more than any other

nation on earth, carried their scruples on this head so far that a citizen was not allowed

to serve as a volunteer without engaging himself expressly against the enemy, and

against such and such an enemy by name. A legion in which the younger Cato was

seeing his first service under Popilius having been reconstructed, the elder Cato wrote

to Popilius that, if he wished his son to continue serving under him, he must

administer to him a new military oath, because, the first having been annulled, he was

no longer able to bear arms against the enemy. The same Cato wrote to his son telling

him to take great care not to go into battle before taking this new oath. I know that the

siege of Clusium and other isolated events can be quoted against me; but I am citing

laws and customs. The Romans are the people that least often transgressed its laws;

and no other people has had such good ones.

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[1]The real meaning of this word has been almost wholly lost in modern times; most

people mistake a town for a city, and a townsman for a citizen. They do not know that

houses make a town, but citizens a city. The same mistake long ago cost the

Carthaginians dear. I have never read of the title of citizens being given to the subjects

of any prince, not even the ancient Macedonians or the English of to-day, though they

are nearer liberty than any one else. The French alone everywhere familiarly adopt the

name of citizens, because, as can be seen from their dictionaries, they have no idea of

its meaning; otherwise they would be guilty in usurping it, of the crime of lèse-

majesté: among them, the name expresses a virtue, and not a right. When Bodin spoke

of our citizens and townsmen, he fell into a bad blunder in taking the one class for the

other. M. d’Alembert has avoided the error, and, in his article on Geneva, has clearly

distinguished the four orders of men (or even five, counting mere foreigners) who

dwell in our town, of which two only compose the Republic. No other French writer,

to my knowledge, has understood the real meaning of the word citizen.

[1]Under bad governments, this equality is only apparent and illusory: it serves only

to keep the pauper in his poverty and the rich man in the position he has usurped. In

fact, laws are always of use to those who possess and harmful to those who have

nothing: from which it follows that the social state is advantageous to men only when

all have something and none too much.

[1]To be general, a will need not always be unanimous; but every vote must be

counted: any exclusion is a breach of generality.

[1]“Every interest,” says the Marquis d’Argenson, “has different principles. The

agreement of two particular interests is formed by opposition to a third.” He might

have added that the agreement of all interests is formed by opposition to that of each.

If there were no different interests, the common interest would be barely felt, as it

would encounter no obstacle; all would go on of its own accord, and politics would

cease to be an art.

[1]“In fact,” says Macchiavelli, “there are some divisions that are harmful to a

Republic and some that are advantageous. Those which stir up sects and parties are

harmful; those attended by neither are advantageous. Since, then, the founder of a

Republic cannot help enmities arising, he ought at least to prevent them from growing

into sects” (History of Florence, Book vii). [Rousseau quotes the Italian.]

[1]Attentive readers, do not, I pray, be in a hurry to charge me with contradicting

myself. The terminology made it unavoidable, considering the poverty of the

language; but wait and see.

[1]I understand by this word, not merely an aristocracy or a democracy, but generally

any government directed by the general will, which is the law. To be legitimate, the

government must be, not one with the Sovereign, but its minister. In such a case even

a monarchy is a Republic. This will be made clearer in the following book.

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[1]A people becomes famous only when its legislation begins to decline. We do not

know for how many centuries the system of Lycurgus made the Spartans happy

before the rest of Greece took any notice of it.

[2]Montesquieu, The Greatness and Decadence of the Romans, ch. i.

[1]Those who know Calvin only as a theologian much under-estimate the extent of his

genius. The codification of our wise edicts, in which he played a large part, does him

no less honour than his Institute. Whatever revolution time may bring in our religion,

so long as the spirit of patriotism and liberty still lives among us, the memory of this

great man will be for ever blessed.

[1]“In truth,” says Macchiavelli, “there has never been, in any country, an

extraordinary legislator who has not had recourse to God; for otherwise his laws

would not have been accepted: there are, in fact, many useful truths of which a wise

man may have knowledge without their having in themselves such clear reasons for

their being so as to be able to convince others” (Discourses on Livy, Bk. v, ch. xi).

[Rousseau quotes the Italian.]

[1]If there were two neighbouring peoples, one of which could not do without the

other, it would be very hard on the former, and very dangerous for the latter. Every

wise nation, in such a case, would make haste to free the other from dependence. The

Republic of Thlascala, enclosed by the Mexican Empire, preferred doing without salt

to buying from the Mexicans, or even getting it from them as a gift. The Thlascalans

were wise enough to see the snare hidden under such liberality. They kept their

freedom, and that little State, shut up in that great Empire, was finally the instrument

of its ruin.

[1]If the object is to give the State consistency, bring the two extremes as near to each

other as possible; allow neither rich men nor beggars. These two estates, which are

naturally inseparable, are equally fatal to the common good; from the one come the

friends of tyranny, and from the other tyrants. It is always between them that public

liberty is put up to auction; the one buys, and the other sells.

[1]“Any branch of foreign commerce,” says M. d’Argenson, “creates on the whole

only apparent advantage for the kingdom in general; it may enrich some individuals,

or even some towns; but the nation as a whole gains nothing by it, and the people is

no better off.”

[1]Thus at Venice the College, even in the absence of the Doge, is called “Most

Serene Prince.”

[1]The Palatine of Posen, father of the King of Poland, Duke of Lorraine. [I prefer

liberty with danger to peace with slavery.]

[1]It is clear that the word optimates meant, among the ancients, not the best, but the

most powerful.

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[2]It is of great importance that the form of the election of magistrates should be

regulated by law; for if it is left at the discretion of the prince, it is impossible to avoid

falling into hereditary aristocracy, as the Republics of Venice and Berne actually did.

The first of these has therefore long been a State dissolved; the second, however, is

maintained by the extreme wisdom of the senate, and forms an honourable and highly

dangerous exception.

[1]Macchiavelli was a proper man and a good citizen; but, being attached to the court

of the Medici, he could not help veiling his love of liberty in the midst of his

country’s oppression. The choice of his detestable hero, Cæsar Borgia, clearly enough

shows his hidden aim; and the contradiction between the teaching of the Prince and

that of the Discourses on Livy and the History of Florence shows that this profound

political thinker has so far been studied only by superficial or corrupt readers. The

Court of Rome sternly prohibited his book. I can well believe it; for it is that Court it

most clearly portrays.

[1]Tacitus, Histories, i. 16. “For the best, and also the shortest way of finding out

what is good and what is bad is to consider what you would have wished to happen or

not to happen, had another than you been Emperor.”

[1]In the Politicus.

[1]This does not contradict what I said before (Book ii, ch. ix) about the

disadvantages of great States; for we were then dealing with the authority of the

government over the members, while here we are dealing with its force against the

subjects. Its scattered members serve it as rallying-points for action against the people

at a distance, but it has no rallying-point for direct action on its members themselves.

Thus the length of the lever is its weakness in the one case, and its strength in the

other.

[1]On the same principle it should be judged what centuries deserve the preference for

human prosperity. Those in which letters and arts have flourished have been too much

admired, because the hidden object of their culture has not been fathomed, and their

fatal effects not taken into account. “Idque apud imperitos humanitas vocabatur, cum

pars servitutis esset.” [“Fools called ‘humanity’ what was a part of slavery,” Tacitus,

Agricola, 31.] Shall we never see in the maxims books lay down the vulgar interest

that makes their writers speak? No, whatever they may say, when, despite its renown,

a country is depopulated, it is not true that all is well, and it is not enough that a poet

should have an income of 100,000 francs to make his age the best of all. Less

attention should be paid to the apparent repose and tranquillity of the rulers than to the

well-being of their nations as wholes, and above all of the most numerous States. A

hail-storm lays several cantons waste, but it rarely makes a famine. Outbreaks and

civil wars give rulers rude shocks, but they are not the real ills of peoples, who may

even get a respite, while there is a dispute as to who shall tyrannise over them. Their

true prosperity and calamities come from their permanent condition: it is when the

whole remains crushed beneath the yoke, that decay sets in, and that the rulers destroy

them at will, and “ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.” [“Where they create

solitude, they call it peace,” Tacitus, Agricola, 31.] When the bickerings of the great

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disturbed the kingdom of France, and the Coadjutor of Paris took a dagger in his

pocket to the Parliament, these things did not prevent the people of France from

prospering and multiplying in dignity, ease and freedom. Long ago Greece flourished

in the midst of the most savage wars; blood ran in torrents, and yet the whole country

was covered with inhabitants. It appeared, says Macchiavelli, that in the midst of

murder, proscription and civil war, our republic only throve: the virtue, morality and

independence of the citizens did more to strengthen it than all their dissensions had

done to enfeeble it. A little disturbance gives the soul elasticity; what makes the race

truly prosperous is not so much peace as liberty.

[1]The slow formation and the progress of the Republic of Venice in its lagoons are a

notable instance of this sequence; and it is most astonishing that, after more than

twelve hundred years’ existence, the Venetians seem to be still at the second stage,

which they reached with the Serrar di Consiglio in 1198. As for the ancient Dukes

who are brought up against them, it is proved, whatever the Squittinio della libertà

veneta may say of them, that they were in no sense Sovereigns.

A case certain to be cited against my view is that of the Roman Republic, which, it

will be said, followed exactly the opposite course, and passed from monarchy to

aristocracy and from aristocracy to democracy. I by no means take this view of it.

What Romulus first set up was a mixed government, which soon deteriorated into

despotism. From special causes, the State died an untimely death, as new-born

children sometimes perish without reaching manhood. The expulsion of the Tarquins

was the real period of the birth of the Republic. But at first it took on no constant

form, because, by not abolishing the patriciate, it left half its work undone. For, by

this means, hereditary aristocracy, the worst of all legitimate forms of administration,

remained in conflict with democracy, and the form of the government, as

Macchiavelli has proved, was only fixed on the establishment of the tribunate: only

then was there a true government and a veritable democracy. In fact, the people was

then not only Sovereign, but also magistrate and judge; the senate was only a

subordinate tribunal, to temper and concentrate the government, and the consuls

themselves, though they were patricians, first magistrates, and absolute generals in

war, were in Rome itself no more than presidents of the people.

From that point, the government followed its natural tendency, and inclined strongly

to aristocracy. The patriciate, we may say, abolished itself, and the aristocracy was

found no longer in the body of patricians as at Venice and Genoa, but in the body of

the senate, which was composed of patricians and plebeians, and even in the body of

tribunes when they began to usurp an active function: for names do not affect facts,

and, when the people has rulers who govern for it, whatever name they bear, the

government is an aristocracy.

The abuse of aristocracy led to the civil wars and the triumvirate. Sulla, Julius Cæsar

and Augustus became in fact real monarchs; and finally, under the despotism of

Tiberius, the State was dissolved. Roman history then confirms, instead of

invalidating, the principle I have laid down.

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[1]Omnes enim et habentur et dicuntur tyranni, qui potestate utuntur perpetua in ea

civitate quæ libertate usa est (Cornelius Nepos, Life of Miltiades). [For all those are

called and considered tyrants, who hold perpetual power in a State that has known

liberty.] It is true that Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics, Book viii, chapter x)

distinguishes the tyrant from the king by the fact that the former governs in his own

interest, and the latter only for the good of his subjects; but not only did all Greek

authors in general use the word tyrant in a different sense, as appears most clearly in

Xenophon’s Hiero, but also it would follow from Aristotle’s distinction that, from the

very beginning of the world, there has not yet been a single king.

[1]In nearly the same sense as this word has in the English Parliament. The similarity

of these functions would have brought the consuls and the tribunes into conflict, even

had all jurisdiction been suspended.

[1]To adopt in cold countries the luxury and effeminacy of the East is to desire to

submit to its chains; it is indeed to bow to them far more inevitably in our case than in

theirs.

[1]I had intended to do this in the sequel to this work, when in dealing with external

relations I came to the subject of confederations. The subject is quite new, and its

principles have still to be laid down.

[1]Provided, of course, he does not leave to escape his obligations and avoid having to

serve his country in the hour of need. Flight in such a case would be criminal and

punishable, and would be, not withdrawal, but desertion.

[1]This should of course be understood as applying to a free State; for elsewhere

family, goods, lack of a refuge, necessity, or violence may detain a man in a country

against his will; and then his dwelling there no longer by itself implies his consent to

the contract or to its violation.

[2]At Genoa, the word Liberty may be read over the front of the prisons and on the

chains of the galley-slaves. This application of the device is good and just. It is indeed

only malefactors of all estates who prevent the citizen from being free. In the country

in which all such men were in the galleys, the most perfect liberty would be enjoyed.

[1]I say “in the Campus Martius” because it was there that the comitia assembled by

centuries; in its two other forms the people assembled in the forum or elsewhere; and

then the capite censi had as much influence and authority as the foremost citizens.

[1]Custodes, diribitores, rogatores suffragiorum.

[1]The nomination was made secretly by night, as if there were something shameful

in setting a man above the laws.

[1]That is what he could not be sure of, if he proposed a dictator; for he dared not

nominate himself, and could not be certain that his colleague would nominate him.

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[1]I merely call attention in this chapter to a subject with which I have dealt at greater

length in my Letter to M. d’Alembert.

[2]They were from another island, which the delicacy of our language forbids me to

name on this occasion.

[1]Nonne ea quæ possidet Chamos deus tuus, tibi jure debentur? (Judges xi. 24). Such

is the text in the Vulgate. Father de Carrières translates: “Do you not regard

yourselves as having a right to what your god possesses?” I do not know the force of

the Hebrew text: but I perceive that, in the Vulgate, Jephthah positively recognises the

right of the god Chamos, and that the French translator weakened this admission by

inserting an “according to you,” which is not in the Latin.

[2]It is quite clear that the Phocian war, which was called “the Sacred War,” was not a

war of religion. Its object was the punishment of acts of sacrilege, and not the

conquest of unbelievers.

[1]It should be noted that the clergy find their bond of union not so much in formal

assemblies, as in the communion of Churches. Communion and excommunication are

the social compact of the clergy, a compact which will always make them masters of

peoples and kings. All priests who communicate together are fellow-citizens, even if

they come from opposite ends of the earth. This invention is a masterpiece of

statesmanship: there is nothing like it among pagan priests; who have therefore never

formed a clerical corporate body.

[2]See, for instance, in a letter from Grotius to his brother (April 11, 1643), what that

learned man found to praise and to blame in the De Cive. It is true that, with a bent for

indulgence, he seems to pardon the writer the good for the sake of the bad; but all men

are not so forgiving.

[1]“In the republic,” says the Marquis d’Argenson, “each man is perfectly free in

what does not harm others.” This is the invariable limitation, which it is impossible to

define more exactly. I have not been able to deny myself the pleasure of occasionally

quoting from this manuscript, though it is unknown to the public, in order to do

honour to the memory of a good and illustrious man, who had kept even in the

Ministry the heart of a good citizen, and views on the government of his country that

were sane and right.

[1]Cæsar, pleading for Catiline, tried to establish the dogma that the soul is mortal:

Cato and Cicero, in refutation, did not waste time in philosophising. They were

content to show that Cæsar spoke like a bad citizen, and brought forward a doctrine

that would have a bad effect on the State. This, in fact, and not a problem of theology,

was what the Roman senate had to judge.

[1]Marriage, for instance, being a civil contract, has civil effects without which

society cannot even subsist. Suppose a body of clergy should claim the sole right of

permitting this act, a right which every intolerant religion must of necessity claim, is it

not clear that in establishing the authority of the Church in this respect, it will be

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destroying that of the prince, who will have thenceforth only as many subjects as the

clergy choose to allow him? Being in a position to marry or not to marry people,

according to their acceptance of such and such a doctrine, their admission or rejection

of such and such a formula, their greater or less piety, the Church alone, by the

exercise of prudence and firmness, will dispose of all inheritances, offices and

citizens, and even of the State itself, which could not subsist if it were composed

entirely of bastards? But, I shall be told, there will be appeals on the ground of abuse,

summonses and decrees; the temporalities will be seized. How sad! The clergy,

however little, I will not say courage, but sense it has, will take no notice and go its

way: it will quietly allow appeals, summonses, decrees and seizures, and, in the end,

will remain the master. It is not, I think, a great sacrifice to give up a part, when one is

sure of securing all.

[1][Here I am, a barbarian, because men understand me not.]

[1]Sovereigns always see with pleasure a taste for the arts of amusement and

superfluity, which do not result in the exportation of bullion, increase among their

subjects. They very well know that, besides nourishing that littleness of mind which is

proper to slavery, the increase of artificial wants only binds so many more chains

upon the people. Alexander, wishing to keep the Ichthyophages in a state of

dependence, compelled them to give up fishing, and subsist on the customary food of

civilised nations. The American savages, who go naked, and live entirely on the

products of the chase, have been always impossible to subdue. What yoke, indeed,

can be imposed on men who stand in need of nothing?

[1]“I love,” said Montaigne, “to converse and hold an argument; but only with very

few people, and that for my own gratification. For to do so, by way of affording

amusement for the great, or of making a parade of one’s talents, is, in my opinion, a

trade very ill-becoming a man of honour.” It is the trade of all our intellectuals, save

one.

[1]I dare not speak of those happy nations, who did not even know the name of many

vices, which we find it difficult to suppress; the savages of America, whose simple

and natural mode of government Montaigne preferred, without hesitation, not only to

the laws of Plato, but to the most perfect visions of government philosophy can ever

suggest. He cites many examples, striking for those who are capable of appreciating

them. But, what of all that, says he, they can’t run to a pair of breeches!

[1]What are we to think was the real opinion of the Athenians themselves about

eloquence, when they were so very careful to banish declamation from that upright

tribunal, against whose decision even their gods made no appeal? What did the

Romans think of physicians, when they expelled medicine from the republic? And

when the relics of humanity left among the Spaniards induced them to forbid their

lawyers to set foot in America, what must they have thought of jurisprudence? May it

not be said that they thought, by this single expedient, to make reparation for all the

outrages they had committed against the unhappy Indians?

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[1]It is easy to see the allegory in the fable of Prometheus: and it does not appear that

the Greeks, who chained him to the Caucasus, had a better opinion of him than the

Egyptians had of their god Theutus. The Satyr, says an ancient fable, the first time he

saw a fire, was going to kiss and embrace it; but Prometheus cried out to him to

forbear, or his beard would rue it. It burns, says he, everything that touches it.

[1]The less we know, the more we think we know. The peripatetics doubted of

nothing. Did not Descartes construct the universe with cubes and vortices? And is

there in all Europe one single physicist who does not boldly explain the inexplicable

mysteries of electricity, which will, perhaps, be for ever the despair of real

philosophers?

[1]I am far from thinking that the ascendancy which women have obtained over men

is an evil in itself. It is a present which nature has made them for the good of

mankind. If better directed, it might be productive of as much good, as it is now of

evil. We are not sufficiently sensible of what advantage it would be to society to give

a better education to that half of our species which governs the other. Men will always

be what women choose to make them. If you wish then that they should be noble and

virtuous, let women be taught what greatness of soul and virtue are. The reflections

which this subject arouses, and which Plato formerly made, deserve to be more fully

developed by a pen worthy of following so great a master, and defending so great a

cause.

[1]Pensées philosophiques (Diderot).

[1]Such was the education of the Spartans with regard to one of the greatest of their

kings. It is well worthy of notice, says Montaigne, that the excellent institutions of

Lycurgus, which were in truth miraculously perfect, paid as much attention to the

bringing up of youth as if this were their principal object, and yet, at the very seat of

the Muses, they make so little mention of learning that it seems as if their generous-

spirited youth disdained every other restraint, and required, instead of masters of the

sciences, instructors in valour, prudence and justice alone.

Let us hear next what the same writer says of the ancient Persians. Plato, says he,

relates that the heir to the throne was thus brought up. At his birth he was committed,

not to the care of women, but to eunuchs in the highest authority and near the person

of the king, on account of their virtue. These undertook to render his body beautiful

and healthy. At seven years of age they taught him to ride and go hunting. At fourteen

he was placed in the hands of four, the wisest, the most just, the most temperate and

the bravest persons in the kingdom. The first instructed him in religion, the second

taught him to adhere inviolably to truth, the third to conquer his passions, and the

fourth to be afraid of nothing. All, I may add, taught him to be a good man; but not

one taught him to be learned.

Astyages, in Xenophon, desires Cyrus to give him an account of his last lesson. It was

this, answered Cyrus, one of the big boys of the school having a small coat, gave it to

a little boy and took away from him his coat, which was larger. Our master having

appointed me arbiter in the dispute, I ordered that matters should stand as they were,

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as each boy seemed to be better suited than before. The master, however,

remonstrated with me, saying that I considered only convenience, whereas justice

ought to have been the first concern, and justice teaches that no one should suffer

forcible interference with what belongs to him. He added that he was punished for his

wrong decision, just as boys are punished in our country schools when they forget the

first aorist of τύπτω. My tutor must make me a fine harangue, in genere

demonstrativo, before he will persuade me that his school is as good as this.

[1]If we consider the frightful disorders which printing has already caused in Europe,

and judge of the future by the progress of its evils from day to day, it is easy to

foresee that sovereigns will hereafter take as much pains to banish this dreadful art

from their dominions, as they ever took to encourage it. The Sultan Achmet, yielding

to the importunities of certain pretenders to taste, consented to have a press erected at

Constantinople; but it was hardly set to work before they were obliged to destroy it,

and throw the plant into a well.

It is related that the Caliph Omar, being asked what should be done with the library at

Alexandria, answered in these words. “If the books in the library contain anything

contrary to the Alcoran, they are evil and ought to be burnt; if they contain only what

the Alcoran teaches, they are superfluous.” This reasoning has been cited by our men

of letters as the height of absurdity; but if Gregory the Great had been in the place of

Omar, and the Gospel in the place of the Alcoran, the library would still have been

burnt, and it would have been perhaps the finest action of his life.

[1]See Appendix, p. 239.

[1][Justin. Hist. ii, 2. So much more does the ignorance of vice profit the one sort than

the knowledge of virtue the other.]

[2]Egoism must not be confused with self-respect: for they differ both in themselves

and in their effects. Self-respect is a natural feeling which leads every animal to look

to its own preservation, and which, guided in man by reason and modified by

compassion, creates humanity and virtue. Egoism is a purely relative and factitious

feeling, which arises in the state of society, leads each individual to make more of

himself than of any other, causes all the mutual damage men inflict one on another,

and is the real source of the “sense of honour.” This being understood, I maintain that,

in our primitive condition, in the true state of nature, egoism did not exist; for as each

man regarded himself as the only observer of his actions, the only being in the

universe who took any interest in him, and the sole judge of his deserts, no feeling

arising from comparisons he could not be led to make could take root in his soul; and

for the same reason, he could know neither hatred nor the desire for revenge, since

these passions can spring only from a sense of injury: and as it is the contempt or the

intention to hurt, and not the harm done, which constitutes the injury, men who

neither valued nor compared themselves could do one another much violence, when it

suited them, without feeling any sense of injury. In a word, each man, regarding his

fellows almost as he regarded animals of different species, might seize the prey of a

weaker or yield up his own to a stronger, and yet consider these acts of violence as

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mere natural occurrences, without the slightest emotion of insolence or despite, or any

other feeling than the joy or grief of success or failure.

[1][Nature avows she gave the human race the softest hearts, who gave them tears.]

[1][Ovid, Metamorphoses xi, 127.

Both rich and poor, shocked at their new-found ills,

Would fly from wealth, and lose what they had sought.]

[1][Tacitus, Hist. iv, 17. The most wretched slavery they call peace.]

[1]Of the Rights of the Most Christian Queen over various States of the Monarchy of

Spain, 1667.

[1]Distributive justice would oppose this rigorous equality of the state of nature, even

were it practicable in civil society; as all the members of the State owe it their services

in proportion to their talents and abilities, they ought, on their side, to be distinguished

and favoured in proportion to the services they have actually rendered. It is in this

sense we must understand that passage of Isocrates, in which he extols the primitive

Athenians, for having determined which of the two kinds of equality was the most

useful, viz. that which consists in dividing the same advantages indiscriminately

among all the citizens, or that which consists in distributing them to each according to

his deserts. These able politicians, adds the orator, banishing that unjust inequality

which makes no distinction between good and bad men, adhered inviolably to that

which rewards and punishes every man according to his deserts.

But in the first place, there never existed a society, however corrupt some may have

become, where no difference was made between the good and the bad; and with

regard to morality, where no measures can be prescribed by law exact enough to serve

as a practical rule for a magistrate, it is with great prudence that, in order not to leave

the fortune or quality of the citizens to his discretion, it prohibits him from passing

judgment on persons and confines his judgment to actions. Only morals such as those

of the ancient Romans can bear censors, and such a tribunal among us would throw

everything into confusion. The difference between good and bad men is determined

by public esteem; the magistrate being strictly a judge of right alone; whereas the

public is the truest judge of morals, and is of such integrity and penetration on this

head, that although it may be sometimes deceived, it can never be corrupted. The rank

of citizens ought, therefore, to be regulated, not according to their personal merit—for

this would put it in the power of the magistrate to apply the law almost arbirarily—but

according to the actual services done to the State, which are capable of being more

exactly estimated.

[1]See p. 185.

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