interests, and, always and everywhere, the secret desire. to gain at the expense of others. Each man standing in need of each, men would command and tyrannize when they could, and, when they could not, they would try to succeed by affecting kindness and consideration for others, by small favours and concessions, and by all the artifices of deceit. When all the land was appropriated, the poor and feeble could only live by serving the rich and powerful. Hence came slavery, and the love of conquest, leading to constant war and injustice. Might was right. Still, in this condition, the possessions of the rich were precarious. They had to defend them alone, and at their own expense, against attack. Jealousy prevented union. So they said to the poorLet us submit to social control, and to laws, which, while protecting all equally, shall impose equal duties upon all. It was well worth the while of the rich thus to sacrifice a part of their liberty in order to secure the rest. The people ran to meet their chains, under the idea that they were assuring their liberty. It was in this way that society and laws originated. They placed new fetters upon the weak, and added to the strength of the rich. They destroyed irrevocably natural liberty. They fixed for ever the law of inequality of property. They turned a skilful usurpation into an inalienable right, and, for the profit of the ambitious few, they subjected the human race, thenceforth, to labour, servitude, and misery. In order to resist a society once formed, the rest of the world had to form similar societies. Thus there is not a corner of the world in which the social yoke can be escaped. The rights and laws of nature, so far as they can be said to survive, do

so only in international relations. horrors of wars between nations.

Hence came all the

For the state of nations as it had pre

nature was as inconvenient to viously been to individuals. Society, at first, rested only on a few simple conventions, for the enforcement of which the community was responsible. It was only when the inadequacy of such an arrangement was discovered by experience that men submitted, as a last mode of self-defence and safety, to political authorities and leaders. The first contract was not a contract to obey a despot. It is absurd to suppose that men would barter away their lives and liberties, as Hobbes supposes. Locke is quite right when he says that men have no power to barter away their own lives, and that the natural authority of a father can in no way be made to justify an absolute power over life, liberty, and property. The real contract was between the community and the chief. The latter bound himself to enforce the general will, which was law on all social matters, including his own position and power, and in return he received compensating honours and privileges. Inequality amongst men was consummated when rulers were enabled by circumstances to make their power absolute and hereditary. Civil distinctions follow necessarily upon political. The same passions which rendered political control necessary, also cause a perpetual rivalry and competition for the objects which are valued in society. Rulers find it easier to command" those amongst whom they can create jealousies and dissensions. When despotism has at last reared itself upon the weaknesses and divisions of society, the wheel has come full circle. Another state of nature has

arisen. Men are equal once more, but equal in insignificance and impotence. The social contract has been broken. Might has again become right. The despot rules by force, and force may be employed to overthrow him.

The sum of the whole is that social life alters the nature of man, and, consequently, his aims and position, by the new passions which it creates. Above all it destroys that indifference to everything but his own freedom, which is the characteristic of the natural man. Man in society is marked by deceit and levity in his conduct and demeanour; he is clever without wisdom; honour takes the place of virtue; amid all his pleasures he finds no happiness. Inequality, which, in the state of nature, hardly exists, acquires its force and increasing development from our capabilities and from the progress of the human mind. It becomes finally established and legitimized by the establishment of property and laws. But inequalities authorized by positive law are opposed to natural rights, wherever they are not parallel with natural inequalities. It is manifestly contrary to the law of nature, however we may define it, that a child should command an old man, that an imbecile should direct a sage, and that a handful of men should be gorged with superfluities, while the multitude starve for want of necessaries.

In the Republic of Plato, a sophist, named Thrasymachus, is made to maintain the thesis that justice is the interest of the strongest. In stating that governments rest solely on force, and that laws are simply commands which the stronger, for their own benefit, compel the weaker to obey, Thrasymachus was stating

the simple truth about the governments and the laws of many of the states of Greece. Similarly Rousseau's treatise is a fierce and not undeserved satire on the societies of his day. Feudalism was the consecration of might; and the powers of feudal lords, whether lay or ecclesiastical, were exercised in France, simply for the benefit of those who possessed them. The power of the crown had been used for the aggrandisement of the monarch. The people were sunk in hopeless misery. The rights of the poor, the inequalities of wealth, the duties of property, the equalization of burdens, the abolition of privileges, the possibility of securing to all men a more equal start in the race of life-these are questions which perplex the statesman and the moralist in every modern community, and Rousseau was right to call attention to them. When we consider the state of the masses in France, need we wonder if Rousseau Ideclared in his wrath that civilization was not worth the price that was paid for it?

The sting of Rousseau's words lay in the truth of them. Such passionate outcries as his are the natural birth of ages of oppression. We ourselves are apt to be impatient when we think how much there is that is unreasonable in our political and social arrangements, when we contemplate the pride of wealth and power, the hollowness and insincerity of the world, the selfishness that is born of competition, the divergence between the code of honour and the law of virtue, the vulgar worship of wealth and position, the degradation of the lower classes and the luxury of the higher. We are inclined to cry out for a state of society which shall be more simple, more equitable, more rational, more

natural. But with us, in spite of all drawbacks, there is a clear surplus of good over evil. There is a prospect of reform. We have recognized modes of forcing attention to our wishes and compelling satisfaction of our desires. But what had time brought to the masses of France? Nothing. Rousseau's words fell like a spark on inflammable matter. They produced a fierce hostility against those oppressive inequalities which, as he taught, had no foundation either in nature or

reason.

The last of Rousseau's treatises, which we have to consider, is the famous treatise on the Social Contract. It is an attempt to determine the basis of legitimate government. Such an attempt was necessary because men are born free. Mere force can neither give a right to govern, nor create a duty to obey. Obedience to superior force is a necessity, and this necessity ceases when the balance of power is changed. Nor does nature give to any man authority over others. Legitimate authority, therefore, must rest upon convention. We cannot argue, as Hobbes does, that the people can surrender themselves to a king, and that the king, from such act of surrender, derives a despotic authority. This theory presupposes a people already organized and working in concert: it does not explain how the people became a people, governing themselves by a vote of the whole or of the majority.

In the state of nature a period arrived when the forces, by which the safety of the individual was threatened, were too strong for the resistance which he could oppose to them. The only remedy was to unite the forces of all under a single direction. Yet, on the

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