lettered peoples. The Goths, when they conquered Greece, left it its libraries, because a race of students could never be dangerous. The revival of letters seems to have killed the recovered manliness of Italy. With such a revival, talent takes the place of worth in public esteem, and show is preferred to utility. This corruption of the public taste is fatal to the growth of honest minds. The innocence of uninstructed poverty is no more to be seen. There have arisen great teachers of the human race; but such men have not been admitted, as they should have been, into the councils of rulers. Their admission would stimulate the endeavours of the sage, at the same time that it enlightened the policy of princes. Knowledge and power would then co-operate for the happiness of man. So long, however, as power stands by itself on one side, and enlightenment and wisdom by themselves on the other, the wise will seldom think great things, princes will still more seldom do good things, and the people will continue to be contemptible, corrupted, and unhappy.

It is manifestly unfair to represent this as an assertion that ignorance is preferable to knowledge. The conclusion of the whole reminds us of Plato's assertion that states will not prosper until kings shall be philosophers or philosophers kings. There is nothing paradoxical in the assertion that governments should be directed by wisdom. There is nothing paradoxical in the argument that a partial culture produces undesirable results. It is in the business of life and the duties of citizenship that manliness of character and robust morality are developed. There is, therefore, not only real use, but plain common sense in a protest against

the dangers of a life devoted solely to artistic culture and the elegancies of refined society. To say nothing of the actual effects of the Renaissance, French society, as it is depicted for us in the Lettres Persanes of Montesquieu, might alone justify such a protest as that of Rousseau, on account of its levity, its heartlessness, its frivolity, its indifference, and its scepticism.

Rousseau's next treatise deals with the origin and foundation of the inequalities which exist among men. His object here is to strip off, so far as possible, all the customs, institutions, habits, feelings, and ideas, which in the long course of social life, have taken possession of man, and, either by association, conviction, or force, have become so deeply rooted in his nature. He hoped in this way to arrive at the sentiments which are really natural and primitive, and from them to deduce the natural or justifiable type of society and of law. He wanted to get behind whatever was arbitrary and accidental. The treatise was written as an answer to the question --What is the origin of the inequality amongst men, and is it justifiable by the law of nature? The great mistake, he says, of writers on the origin of society has been that they explain it by crediting men, in a supposed state of nature, with ideas which are only possible to men living in a state of society. He begins with a sketch of what savage life may be conceived to have been. Physically, man was active, strong, and healthy. The simplicity of his life, the fewness of his wants, the necessity of providing for himself, the alertness developed by the constant habit of self-defence— all these aided his physical development. So far there is no difference between man and an animal. Man,

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however, differs from the animals, firstly, in his power of free choice; secondly, in his capacity of perfectibility, that is, of imagining and realizing a better state of himself. At first, there would be nothing to stimulate his mental and moral capacities. Want arouses passion, passion stimulates ingenuity to gratify it, and ingenuity, in turn, excites passion by suggesting new gratifications. But in the simple solitary life of the savage there was no want, and, therefore, no passion, and, consequently, no stimulus to the intellect. When Hobbes represents every man as at war with his neighbour in the state of nature, he forgets that the savage properly has no neighbour, that his passions are undeveloped, and that passion, so far as it exists, is modified by the animal instinct of pity. This sentiment of pity was an effective restraining force prior to law. Prior to law, too, resentment was not aggravated by the sense of injustice, injury, and wrong. There were no disputes about property. Disputes about women would be few. For physical desire was not, as now, complicated by sentimental attachments and imaginative preferences for one woman rather than another. The satisfaction of the physical want was all men thought of. In their declamations against the evils and miseries of the savage state men have not made sufficient allowance for the misery, the disputes, and the crimes, which have sprung from our artificial social codes. In the savage state there are few inequalities, or none. All live on the same food, live in the same manner, and do the same things. Differences of nurture and education at once introduce new inequalities, besides strengthening any which exist naturally.

Tender nurture augments bodily delicacy and the feebleness which it implies. Mastership cannot be established amongst men who live in isolation, who are fixed to no spot by family or possessions, and who are connected by no mutual wants or services. We must look for the circumstances which have rendered possible the development of man's spiritual capacities, and which, by so doing, have made him wicked at the same time that they have made him a social being.

The reader will notice that this is not to be interpreted literally as a historical sketch. It is merely a description of what artificial life and sentiments have done or may be supposed to have done. What Rousseau has in his mind is that, before we can say what can be made of man, or what treatment of man is reasonable and justifiable, we must distinguish what is natural and, therefore, necessary from what is merely accidental in his ideas and in his condition.

Civil society began with appropriation; and with it began crimes, wars, murders, miseries, and horrors. The idea of property, however, did not arise suddenly. The progress from the purely animal to the reflective state was gradual. It was only by degrees that the hard struggle for existence sharpened men's wits so that they could secure for themselves more extended comforts. When huts were first made, there came a beginning of family life and of property. This would lead to the growth of domestic sentiments, to an elementary differentiation of the employments of the sexes, and to an increased power of combination and co-operation. With comfort came enervation of body and mind. The

possession of comforts, which soon become necessaries, is the beginning of discontent. Further, common life would involve language. A common life and abode would introduce a common type of manners and of character. Singing and dancing would be the first amusements of the community. There would be a competition to please. Thus would arise the first inequalities, bringing with them the evil passions of pride, contempt, and jealousy. The sense of personal worth would arise. A code of polite manners would follow, of course, with its long train of quarrels and revenges. Yet this simple social life probably represents the happiest period of the human race. There was none of that personal dependence of man upon man which came in with the invention of the arts. So soon as one man had need of the help of another, and so soon as men perceived that it was advantageous to one to have the means of maintaining two, equality disappeared, property began, labour became necessary, the forests were changed into smiling fields which had to be watered with the sweat of men. Slavery and misery soon appeared, and grew with the harvests. This revolution was due to the invention of the arts of working in metal and of agriculture. Cultivation implied possession. For property rests on the right to the fruits of labour. justice necessary. fast upon natural

Property, again, rendered rules of Inequalities of profit now followed inequalities of skill, strength, and industry. Man's chief capabilities of intellect and character were now developed, or were in process of development. The natural consequences of this new social stage were competition and rivalry, opposition of