Title: The Social Contract & Discourses
Author: Rousseau, Jean-Jacques
Language: English
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THE SOCIAL CONTRACT & DISCOURSES

by

JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU



London & Toronto
Published by J. M. Dent & Sons
In New York by E. P. Dutton & Co



Everyman's Library

Edited by Ernest Rhys

Philosophy and Theology

ROUSSEAU'S SOCIAL CONTRACT, ETC.

Translated with Introduction by G.D.H. Cole,

Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford



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 formulae 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
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 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 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 naively 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 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; 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 essentially 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 they 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 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 Héloïse_ 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 _Emile_, 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, distinguishing
self-respect (_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 I 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 were imposed on the people by the direct
interposition 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.

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 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 I 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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 mis 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 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 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 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 I 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 inter-dependent. 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 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.

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.


[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.



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
Lemaître. 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.



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 Francaise, 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 17595 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
Correspondence inédites (Streckeisen-Moultou), 1861; Fragments inédits;
Recherches biographiques et littéraires, A. Jansen, 1882.

Works translated from the French, 10 vols., 1773-74.

LETTERS: Sur différents Sujets, 5 vols., 1740-53; 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 originate et incite 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; Staël-Holstein (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.



CONTENTS



INTRODUCTION

THE SOCIAL CONTRACT

BOOK I

FOREWORD

_In which it is inquired why man passes from the state
of nature to the state of society and what are the essential
conditions of the compact._

       I   The Subject of the first Book
      II   The first Societies
     III   The Right of the Strongest
      IV   Slavery
       V   That we must always go back to a first Convention
      VI   The Social Compact
     VII   The Sovereign
    VIII   The Civil State
      IX   Real Property


BOOK II

_Which treats of legislation._

       I   That Sovereignty is inalienable
      II   That Sovereignty is indivisible
     III   Whether the general Will is fallible
      IV   The Limits of the Sovereign Power
       V   The Right of Life and Death
      VI   Law
     VII   The Legislator
    VIII   The People
      IX   The People (_continued_)
       X   The People (_continued_)
      XI   The various Systems of Legislation
     XII   The Division of the Laws


BOOK III

_Which treats of political laws, that is to say, of the form of
government._

       I   Government in General
      II   The constituent Principle in the various Forms of Government
     III   The Division of Governments
      IV   Democracy
       V   Aristocracy
      VI   Monarchy
     VII   Mixed Governments
    VIII   That all Forms of Government do not suit all Countries
      IX   The Marks of a good Government
       X   The Abuse of Government and its Tendency to Degenerate
      XI   The Death of the Body Politic
     XII   How the Sovereign Authority maintains itself
    XIII   How the Sovereign Authority maintains itself _(continued_)
     XIV   How the Sovereign Authority maintains itself _(continued_)
      XV   Deputies or Representatives
     XVI   That the Institution of Government is not a Contract
    XVII   The Institution of Government
   XVIII   How to check the Usurpations of Government

BOOK IV

_Which treats further of political laws and sets forth the
means of strengthening the Constitution of the State_.

       I   That the general Will is indestructible
      II   Voting
     III   Elections
      IV   The Roman Comitia
       V   The Tribunate
      VI   The Dictatorship
     VII   The Censorship
    VIII   Civil Religion
      IX   Conclusion


A DISCOURSE ON THE ARTS AND SCIENCES
A DISCOURSE ON THE ORIGIN OF INEQUALITY -- Appendix
A DISCOURSE ON POLITICAL ECONOMY



THE SOCIAL CONTRACT

OR

PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL

RIGHT

Fœderis æquas

Dicamus leges. (Vergil, _Æneid_ XI.)



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.



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.



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.



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 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.


[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."



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.



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 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 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."


[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.



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.



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.

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.


[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.



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 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.

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
legitimizes civil undertakings, which, without it, would be absurd,
tyrannical, and liable to the most frightful abuses.



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 in 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.



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 becomes 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 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 they 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]



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.


[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.



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 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.


[1] To be general, a will need not always be unanimous; but every
vote--must be counted: any exclusion is a breach of generality.



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:[2] 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.


[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.

[2] "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.



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 contentions. 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
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
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?


[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.



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.

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 tar 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.



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 nave
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 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.


[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.



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.

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.[3] 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.[4] But it is not anybody who can make the gods speak,
or get himself believed when he proclaims himself their 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.


[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.

[3] Those who know Calvin only as a theologian much underestimate 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.

[4] "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.)



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 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 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.



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.

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.



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
die 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 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 single-handed, 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.


[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.



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.[2] 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.

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.


[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.

[2] "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."



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.



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.



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.

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 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 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.


[1] Thus at Venice the College, even in the absence of the Doge, is
called "Most Serene Prince."



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.

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.



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.



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 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 Palatine[1] 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.


[1] The Palatine of Posen, father of the King of Poland, Duke of
Lorraine. I prefer liberty with danger to peace with slavery.



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 power[1] 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 mat 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.

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.


[1] It is clear that the word _optimates_ meant, among the ancients,
not the best, but the most powerful.

[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, k 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.



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 rear 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 constituted 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 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
these 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. If 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.

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."[2]

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 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,[3] 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.


[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.


[2] 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."

[3] In the _Politicus_.



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.



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.

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, haw 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 die land, 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 die 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 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.


[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.



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 worst.
Calculators, it is left for you to count, to measure, to compare.[1]


[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 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.



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_ 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.[2] _Tyrant_ 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 _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.


[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.

[2] 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.



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.



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.



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 me
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.

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.



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 die 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.


[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.



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 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 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 people[2]
may be combined with the convenient polity and good order of a small
State.


[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.

[2] 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.



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.



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.



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.

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.


[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.



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 Due 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.

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.



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]

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.


[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.



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 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.



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 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.

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
_curia_, 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 _cutiæ_ 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 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.

In order to judge of these various forms, it is enough to compare
them. Romulus, when he set up _curice_, 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 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 die
contrary, that, for want of enough such changes, the destruction of the
State must be hastened. Just as the regimen of health does riot 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.

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 functions[2] 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.


[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.

[2] Custodes, diribitores, rogatores suffragiorum.



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.

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.



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 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.[2] 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.


[1] The nomination was made secretly by night, as if there were
something shameful in setting a man above the laws.

[2] 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.



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 elsewhere[1] 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 honour for the one, and what a disgrace for
the other, without praise or blame of either! Certain drunkards from
Samos[2] 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.


[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.



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]

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.

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,[3] 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.[4]

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.

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 law-abiding, 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.

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.

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.[5] 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.[6] 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;[7] 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.


[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.

[3] 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 ex-communication 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.

[4] 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.

[5] "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.

[6] 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.

[7] 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
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.



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.



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?

Barbaras his ego sum, qui non intelligor illis.--OVID.[1]

[1] Here I am, a barbarian, because men understand me not.



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.



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.



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 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 home-spun 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 die
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 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.[2]

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 I 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 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.[3]

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.[4]

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 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 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 tilings 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.

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.


[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?

[2] "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.

[3] 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!

[4] 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?



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 criterion[2] 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 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 litterateurs, 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 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;[3] 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 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 I 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 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 had
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,[4] 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;[5] 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 wit 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.

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
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 printing[6] 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
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.


[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.

[2] 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?

[3] 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.

[4] Pensées philosophiques (Diderot).

[5] 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, 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 demonstrative_, before he will persuade me that his school is as
good as this.

[6] 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 oar 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.



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 qua 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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,

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 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,
an the only animal 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 partake, however, in some measure of our
nature, in consequence of the sensibility with which they are endowed,
they ought to partake of natural rights 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 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.

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,
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.

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 Correal
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 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.

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; 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.

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 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 pur 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 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 Are 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 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 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 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 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 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 nor 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 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_.[2] 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.[3] 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 bloodthirsty 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,_
    _Qua lacrimas dedit._
                     Juvenal, Satire xv, 151.[4]



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.

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 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, 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 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.


[1] See Appendix.

[2] Justin. Hist, ii, 2. So much more does the ignorance of vice profit
the one sort than the knowledge of virtue the other.

[3] 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 mere natural
occurrences, without the slightest emotion of insolence or despite, or
any other feeling than the joy or grief of success or failure.

[4] Nature avows she gave the human race the softest hearts, who gave <
them tears.



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 light. 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 sea-shore 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 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, 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
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 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 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
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 fang, 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
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.

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 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 modô voverat odit._[5]

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 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 fore-seeing 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.

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 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: _miserrimam servitutem pacem appellant_.[6] 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
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!"[7]

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 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 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 I
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 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 longs 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 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.[8] 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, 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 points 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 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 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.


[5] Ovid, Metamorphoses xi, 127.

Both rich and poor, shocked at their new-found ills, Would fly from
wealth, and lose what they had sought.


[6] Tacitus, Hist. iv, 17. The most wretched slavery they call peace.

[7] Of the Rights of the Most Christian Queen over various States of
the Monarchy of Spain, 1667.

[8] 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 arbitrarily--but according to
the actual services done to the State, which are capable of being more
exactly estimated.



APPENDIX[1]


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.

That men are actually wicked, a sad and continual experience of them
proves beyond doubt: but all the same, I think I've 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 I 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 moments 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 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, 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.

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 beasts? 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,
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 theft 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.


[1] See "the faculty of self-improvement".



A DISCOURSE ON POLITICAL ECONOMY



The word Economy, or Œconomy, is derived from _οἰκός, 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 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.

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 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 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
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 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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 where-ever 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 Lacedæmonians, 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 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 out-goings; 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.

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
an 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
_œrarium_ 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 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
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 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 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 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 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.

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
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.

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 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.





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