The+Social+Contract+by+Rousseau+(excerpts)

Modern History Sourcebook:  Jean Jacques Rousseau:  The Social Contract, 1763

**The Nature of Man -- Jean Jacques Rousseau** In France, the philosopher who exerted the most powerful influence on the debate about political rights was [|Jean Jacques Rousseau] (1712-1778). His [|__Discourse on the Origins of Inequality__] and __[|The Social Contrac]t__ (1762) were widely read and helped shape the debate over the type of constitution that should be written for France during the period of the French Revolution. According to Rousseau, the state as it currently existed was corrupt and unjust, and was dominated by the rich and powerful who used it to further their own interests at the expense of the weak. He argued that the ideal state would be a genuine democracy, a moral association that bound people together in freedom, equality and civic devotion. In this ideal state each person would have to surrender unconditionally all his rights to the community as a whole and submit to its authority and the state would then be governed by the general will -- not the majority, or unanimous vote -- but rather by the plainly visible truth, easily discerned by common sense and by reason. //That which was best for all.//Because he advocated direct, //not// representative democracy, Rousseau's vision of a state was limited in size. Like [|Hobbes] and [|Locke], Rousseau was not not writing in isolation from the larger political and intellectual debates of his day. Among his contemporaries in France were a group of men, often referred to as the Philosophes, who aspired to create a more rational and humane society through the application of //ideas//. They wanted answers to such questions as: What is natural? What is right? What is the nature of man? What are the natural laws governing existence? What constitutes liberty? They attacked the otherworldliness of the medieval thinkers, and instead sought to understand the world through reason alone, unaided by revelation or priestly authority. For example, Denis Diderot, creator of the [|Encyclopedia] wrote, "We think that the greatest service to be done to me is to teach them to use their reason, only to hold for truth what they have verified and proved." The Philosophes sought to expand knowledge of nature and to apply the scientific method //to the human world// in order to uncover society's defects and to achieve appropriate reforms. For example, Newton had formulated universal laws of nature that explained physical phenomena. Could not similar universal laws be found that would provide clear and certain answers to the problems of the social world? Among the Philosophes, the individual whose work provides a direct link between French and English ideas was the aristocrat Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755), who in his [|Spirit of the Laws] (1748), argued for the need to take into account such things as the physical geography, climate, traditions and culture of a state when making laws. According to Montesquieu, there were three types of governments: Despotisms based on fear, Monarchies based on honor, and Republics based on virtue. He argued for a separation of powers--legislative, executive and judicial--as the only way to preserve liberty (a system of checks and balances). As you investigate Rousseau's political ideas, be sure to ask yourself the following questions: 1. What was Rousseau's view of human nature?

2. What natural laws did Rousseau believe governed human society?

3. Given these laws, what should be the proper structure of government?

4. What was the role of education in the development of human society? Your source readings are listed below. You should feel free to focus on the "extracts" rather than the full text versions of these works, but you may wish to consult the larger works when you have specific questions. Remember, one of the great advantages of research on the web is that you can search for specific text within any document you have on your screen. //Jean-Jacques Rousseau stresses, like John Locke, the idea of a social contract as the basis of society. Locke's version emphasized a contact between the governors and the governed: Rousseau's was in a way much more profound - the social contract was among all members of society, and essentially replaced "natural" rights as the basis for human claims.//

Modern History Sourcebook:

 Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Discourse on Inequality, No 2
> Humans have not always had the concept of private property, and this idea has caused many problems. 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. Humanity would have been spared infinite crimes, wars, homicides, murders, if only someone had ripped up the fences or filled in the ditches and said, "Do not listen to this pretender! You are eternally lost if you do not remember that the fruits of the earth are everyone's property and that the land is no-one's property!" But by that point things had changed so drastically that there was no turning back, for this idea of "property," which develops out of prior ideas, did not form spontaneously in the human mind. Men had to progress, acquiring knowledge and arts, transmitting and increasing these from generation to generation, before they reached the last stage in the natural human state. I shall endeavor, then, to explain the progress of events and discoveries from the perspective of their natural order. > > Primitive man's first issue was survival. > The first human feeling was that of existence; the first human concern was preserving that existence. . . . It was a life of pure sensations. . . . But, humans were eventually confronted with difficulties, and it became necessary to learn how to surmount them: the height of the trees, which prevented him from gathering their fruits, the competition of other animals desirous of the same fruits, and the **ferocity** of those who needed them for their own preservation, all obliged him to apply himself to bodily exercises. He had to be active, swift of foot and vigorous in fight. Natural weapons, stones and sticks were easily found: he learned 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. > > Man makes advances in implements, weapons, and fire. > In proportion as the human race grew more numerous, men's cares increased. The difference of soils, climate and seasons, must have introduced some differences in their manner of living. Barren years, long and short winters, scorching summers which parched the fruits of the earth, must have demanded a new industry. On the 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 hunters 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 rigors of winter: they 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 things. 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 mechanical prudence, which would indicate to him the precautions most necessary to his security. > > Man becomes dominant. > The new intelligence which resulted from this development increased his superiority over other animals, making him sensible of it. He would now endeavor, 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. > > Men begin to deduce that there should be rules of conduct to ensure his own security. > 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. > > Men formed some loose groupings based on mutual 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. . . . > > The construction of huts may have resulted in the first concept of "personal property." > 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 wood and sharp stones, which they used to dig up the earth and to cut wood; they then made huts out of branches, and afterwards learned 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 a 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 neighbor; 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. > > Development of the family relationships > 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. > > Man moves toward having leisure and devices for convenience. > 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 until the want of them became far more disagreeable than the possession of them had been pleasant. Men would not have been unhappy at the loss of them, though the possession did not make them happy. . . . > > As men settle down, they gradually form nations and develop concepts of beauty and love. > 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 neighborhoods could not fail to produce, in time, some connection between different families. Among young people of opposite sexes, living in neighboring 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 idea of beauty which soon gave rise to feelings of preference. In consequence of seeing each other often, they could not live 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 loss arose jealousy; discord triumphed, and human blood was sacrificed to the gentlest of all passions. > > People start to care what other think about them, and superiority in certain areas became the first kind of inequality. > As ideas and feelings succeeded one another, and heart and head were brought into play, men continued to put 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 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. > > The concept of politeness arises, and every hurt now is an affront. > 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. > > Rousseau argues that man is **not** by nature cruel, but shows why he acts cruel. **IMPORTANT PARAGRAPH!** > 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 civilized 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. > > Rousseau's idea of the best state of man. > 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 **rigor** 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 pubic 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, it is the real youth of the world, and that all subsequent advances have been apparently so many steps toward the perfection of the individual, but in reality towards the decrepitude of the species. > > Men were happy when they lived a simple life, happy with what a single person could accomplish. > 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 bones, adorned themselves only with feathers, and continued to paint their bodies different colors, 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 labor of several hands, they lived free, healthy, honest and happy lives, as long as their nature allowed, and as they continued 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, 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. > > Rousseau argues that metals (iron) and corn are at the root of civilization. > 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 civilized 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 practiced only one of these arts. One of the best reasons, perhaps, why Europe has been, if not longer, at least more constantly and highly civilized than the rest of the world, is that it is at once the most abundant in iron and the most fertile in corn. . . . > > Agriculture and metallurgy become intertwined. > 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 smith and forge iron, than others were required to maintain them; the more hands that were employed in manufacture, 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 exchange for their iron, the rest at length discovered a 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 arts of working metals and multiplying their uses on the other. > > Working the land led to the concept of ownership, for laboring gives people the idea that what they have improved should be theirs. > The cultivation of the earth necessarily brought about its distribution; and property, once recognized, gave the first rules of justice; for, to secure each man ownership, it had to be possible for each to have something. Besides, as men began to look forward to the future, 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, it is impossible to conceive how property can come of anything but manual labor: for what else can a man to things which he does not originally create, so as make them his own property? It is the husbandman's labor alone that, giving him a title to the produce of 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. . . . > > Considerable inequality results from unequal talents. **IMPORTANT PARAGRAPH!!** > 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 labor to best account; the most ingenious devised methods of diminishing his labor: the husbandman wanted more iron, or the smith more corn, and, while both labored 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. > > The ultimate result of the inequality > 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.

> The qualities necessary for earning respect > 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 the 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.

Rivalry and competition result from the increasing inequality, which resulted from property. 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 behavior 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 to 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 greatest 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.

Inheritance makes the rich richer, greedier, and more arrogant and the poor poorer. > 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 inheritance so increased in number and extent as to occupy the whole of the land, and to border on one another, one man could aggrandize 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 neighbors; like ravenous wolves, which, having once tasted human flesh, despise every other food and thenceforth seek only men to devour.

> Avarice, ambition, and vice gave rise to war. > 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.

> The rich and powerful have no reasonable justification for why they are in their position. > 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 wars 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, easily 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 favor the forces of those who attacked him, to make allies of his adversaries, to inspire them with different maxims, to give them other institutions as favorable to him as the law of nature was unfavorable.

> Attempt to make rules of justice and peace that apply to rich and poor alike. > With this view, after having represented to his neighbors 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 developed plausible arguments to make them close with his designs. "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 good measure make amends for the caprices of fortune, but 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, let us collect them in a supreme power that will govern us in accordance with supreme laws, repulse our common enemies, and maintain eternal harmony among us."

> Men quickly accepted governments to save them without realizing that they would enslave them. > Far fewer words to this purpose would have been enough to impose on men so barbarous and easily seduced, especially as they had too many disputes among themselves to do without arbitrators, and too much ambition and avarice to go long without masters. All ran headlong to their chains, in hopes of securing their liberty; for they had just wit enough to perceive the advantages of political institutions, without experience enough to enable them to foresee the dangers. The most capable of foreseeing the dangers were the very persons who expected to benefit by them; and even the most prudent judged it not inexpedient to sacrifice one part of their freedom to ensure the rest; as a wounded man has his arm cut off to save the rest of his body.

> Governments spread over the earth, and only a few people followed the example of God by being benevolent to all. > 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 labor, 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.

> ** Horrible ** wars resulted. > 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 honor 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 of 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. > > Governments were developed by the rich to protect what they have, not by the weak, who have nothing to lose. > I know that some writers have given other explanations of the origin of political societies, such as the conquest 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 reason. 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 state of war, unless the vanquished, restored to the possession of their liberty, voluntarily made choice of victor for their chief. For till then, whatever capitulation may have been made being founded on violence, therefore //ipso facto// void, there could not have been this hypothesis either a real society or body politic, or 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.

> Governments grew haphazardly, responding to issues as they arose. > 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. . ..

People think that slaves can be happy, but that is true only if they have no experience of freedom. > 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 a virtue; the value is known only to those who possess it the and the taste for them is forfeited when they are forfeited themselves. "I know the charms of your country," Brasidas to a Satrap, who was comparing the life Sparta with that at Persepolis, "but you cannot know pleasures of mine."

> We should not judge by whether enslaved peoples bear their lack of liberty patiently, but by how free nations resist falling into slavery. > 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 forever holding forth in praise of the tranquility they enjoy in their chains, and that they call a state of wretched servitude a state of peace. 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. > > ​Rousseau argues that government isn't like the paternal relationship b/c the children are not subject to their father longer than they need his help. > 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 favor to expect from their chief, that they themselves and every thing they possess are his property, or at least are considered by him as such; so that they are forced to receive, as a favor, 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. . . . > > Rousseau says that men are not free to divest themselves of their freedom b/c liberty is equivalent to life, and because, by doing, so they give away their children's liberty as well. 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 the Author of our being, to renounce without reservation 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 dishonored. 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. > > Pufendorf says that we may divest ourselves of our liberty in favor 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 offense 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 an injury, 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. > > The ​Government should exist as a contract between those governed and the ruler they choose, who is more concerned with the public interest than with his own. > I regard it then as certain, that government did not begin with arbitrary power, but that this is the perversion, the extreme term, of government, and brings it back finally to 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 honors, 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 labor 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. > > Both the people and the ruler should be able to dissolve the governing agreement. Reason wasn't an ample foundation for govt, so Divine Right came along. > 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.

> Monarchy, aristrocracy, and democracy developed, based on the degree of power held by individuals and how far the people had moved from the natural condition. > 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 **preeminent** 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 labored to preserve their liberty; the subjects, irritated at seeing others enjoying a blessing they had lost, thought only of making slaves of their neighbors. In a word, on the one side arose riches and conquests, and on the other happiness and virtue. > > At first, governments were elective, but then became cumbersome, so the idea of hereditary rulers was born, and these rulers considered those they ruled as their property. > 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. . . . 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 tranquility. Thus magistrates, having become hereditary, contracted the habit of considering their offices as a family estate, and themselves as proprietors of the communities of which they were at first only the officers, of regarding their fellow-citizens as their slaves, and numbering them, like cattle, among their belongings, and of calling themselves the equals of the gods and kings of kings. > > If you follow the progress of inequality, you find that the establishment of law and property was the first stage, the institution of monarchy the second, and the conversion of legitimate to arbitrary power the last. The same vices that make institutions necessary make their abuse inevitable. (SparkNotes) > > 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: f or the flaws which make social institutions necessary are the same as make the abuse of them unavoidable. . . . 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.

> It is impossible to enslave a people who want to be independent, but playing on their ambition allows it to happen. > 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 favorable 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 neighbors. These differences are of several kinds; 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 very few good ones. Indeed, I could prove that, If we see a handful of 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. Their time would come when they would be heard saying to the oppressor of their country, "If you order me to plunge my sword into my brother's chest or my father's throat, or even into the entrails of my pregnant wife, my arm would be reluctant to obey, but I will still do it." > From the extreme inequality of conditions and fortunes, from the diversity of passions and knowledge, from pernicious arts and 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, [|1] wherever it prevails, admits no other master; it no sooner speaks than probity and duty lose their weight and blind obedience is the only virtue which slaves can still practise. This is the last term of inequality, the extreme point that closes the circle, and meets that from which we set out. Here all private persons return to their first equality, because they are nothing; and, subjects having no law but the will of their master, and their master no restraint but his passions, all notions of good and all principles of equity again vanish. There is here a complete return to the law of the strongest, and so to a new state of nature, differing from that we set out from; for the one was a state of nature in its first purity while this is the consequence of excessive corruption. There is so little difference between the two states in other respects, and the contract of government is so completely dissolved by despotism, that the despot is master only so long as he remains the strongest; as soon as he can be expelled, he has no right to complain of violence. The popular insurrection that ends in the death or deposition of a Sultan is as lawful an act as those by which he disposed, the day before, of the lives 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 imagina 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.

 This text is part of the [|Internet Modern History Sourcebook]. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted texts for introductory level classes in modern European and World history. Unless otherwise indicated the specific electronic form of the document is copyright. Permission is granted for electronic copying, distribution in print form for educational purposes and personal use. If you do reduplicate the document, indicate the source. No permission is granted for commercial use of the Sourcebook. (c)Paul Halsall Aug 1997

halsall@murray.fordham.edu

**Origin and Terms of the Social Contract**
Man was born free, but everywhere he is in chains (This is a very famous sentence).  This man believes that he is the master of others, and still he is more of a slave than they are. How did that transformation take place? I don't know. How may the restraints on man become legitimate? I do believe I can answer that question....

At a point in the state of nature when the obstacles to human preservation have become greater than each individual with his own strength can cope with. . ., an adequate combination of forces must be the result of men coming together. Still, each man's power and freedom are his main means of self-­preservation. How is he to put them under the control of others without damaging himself. . . ?

This question might be rephrased: "How is a method of associating to be found which will defend and protect-using the power of all-the person and property of each member and still enable each member of the group to obey only himself and to remain as free as before?" This is the fundamental problem; the social contract offers a solution to it.

The very scope of the action dictates the terms of this contract and renders the least modification of them inadmissible, something making them **null and void**. Thus, although perhaps they have never been stated in so many words, they are the same everywhere and **tacitly** conceded and recognized everywhere. And so it follows that each individual immediately recovers his primitive rights and natural liberties whenever any violation of the social contract occurs and thereby loses the contractual freedom for which he renounced them.

The social contract's terms, when they are well understood, can be reduced to a single **stipulation**: the individual member alienates himself totally to the whole community together with all his rights. This is first because conditions will be the same for everyone when each individual gives himself totally, and secondly, because no one will be tempted to make that condition of shared equality worse for other men....

Once this multitude is united this way into a body, an offense against one of its members is an offense against the body politic . It would be even less possible to injure the body without its members feeling it. Duty and interest thus equally require the two contracting parties to aid each other mutually. The individual people should be motivated from their double roles as individuals and members of the body, to combine all the advantages which mutual aid offers them....


 * Individual Wills and the General Will**

In reality, each individual may have one particular will as a man that is different from-or contrary to-the general will which he has as a citizen. His own particular interest may suggest other things to him than the common interest does. His separate, naturally independent existence may make him imagine that what he owes to the common cause is an **incidental** contribution - a contribution which will cost him more to give than their failure to receive it would harm the others. He may also regard the moral person of the State as an imaginary being since it is not a man, and wish to enjoy the rights of a citizen without performing the duties of a subject. This unjust attitude could cause the ruin of the body politic if it became widespread enough.

So that the social **pact** will not become meaningless words, it tacitly includes this commitment, which alone gives power to the others: Whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be forced to obey it by the whole body politic, which means nothing else but that he will be forced to be free. This condition is indeed the one which by dedicating each citizen to the fatherland gives him a guarantee against being personally dependent on other individuals. It is the condition which all political machinery depends on and which alone makes political undertakings legitimate. Without it, political actions become absurd, tyrannical, and subject to the most outrageous abuses.

Whatever benefits he had in the state of nature but lost in the civil state, a man gains more than enough new ones to make up for them . His capabilities are put to good use and developed; his ideas are enriched, his sentiments made more noble, and his soul elevated to the extent that-if the abuses in this new condition did not often degrade him to a condition lower than the one he left behind-he would have to keep blessing this happy moment which snatched him away from his previous state and which made an intelligent being and a man out of a stupid and very limited animal....


 * Property Rights**

In dealing with its members, the State controls all their goods under the social contract, which serves as the basis for all rights within the State, but it controls them only through the right of first holder which individuals convey to the State....

 A strange aspect of this act of alienating property rights to the state is that when the community takes on the goods of its members, it does not take these goods away from them. The community does nothing but assure its members of legitimate possession of goods, changing mere claims of possession into real rights and customary use into property.... Through an act of transfer having advantages for the public but far more for themselves they have, so to speak, really acquired everything they gave up....


 * Indivisible, Inalienable Sovereignty**

The first and most important conclusion from the principles we have established thus far is that t he general will alone may direct the forces of the State to achieve the goal for which it was founded, the common good. ... Sovereignty is indivisible ... and is **inalienable**.... A will is general or it is not: it is that of the whole body of the people or only of one faction. In the first instance, putting the will into words and force is an act of sovereignty: the will becomes law. In the second instance, it is only a particular will or an administrative action; at the very most it is a decree.

Our political theorists, however, unable to divide the source of sovereignty, divide sovereignty into the ways it is applied. They divide it into force and will; into legislative power and executive power; into the power to tax, the judicial power, and the power to wage war; into internal administration and the power to negotiate with foreign countries. Now we see them running these powers together. Now they will proceed to separate them. They make the sovereign a being of fantasy, composed of separate pieces, which would be like putting a man together from several bodies, one having eyes, another arms, another feet-nothing more. Japanese magicians are said to cut up a child before the eyes of spectators, then throw the pieces into the air one after the other, and then cause the child to drop down reassembled and alive again. That is the sort of magic trick our political theorists perform. After having dismembered the social body with a trick worthy of a traveling show, they reassemble the pieces without anybody knowing how....

 If we follow up in the same way on the other divisions mentioned, we find that we are deceived every time we believe we see sovereignty divided. We find that the jurisdictions we have thought to be exercised as parts of sovereignty in reality are subordinate to the [one] sovereign power. They presuppose supreme wills, which they merely carry out in their jurisdictions. . ..


 * Need for Citizen Participation, Not Representation**

<span class="H_body_text">It follows from the above that the general will is always in the right and **inclines** toward the public good, but it does not follow that the deliberations of the people always have the same rectitude. People always desire what is good, but they do not always see what is good. You can never corrupt the people, but you can often fool them, and that is the only time that the people appear to will something bad....

If, assuming that the people were sufficiently informed as they made decisions and that the citizens did not communicate with each other, the general will would always be resolved from a great number of small differences, and the deliberation would always be good. But when blocs are formed, associations of parts at the expense of the whole, the will of each of these associations will be general as far as its members are concerned but particular as far as the State is concerned. Then we may say that there are no longer so many voters as there are men present but as many as there are associations. The differences will become less numerous and will yield less general results. Finally, when one of these associations becomes so strong that it dominates the others, you no longer have the sum of minor differences as a result but rather one single [unresolved] difference, with the result that there no longer is a general will, and the view that prevails is nothing but one particular view....

But we must also consider the private persons who make up the public, apart from the public personified, who each have a life and liberty independent of it. It is very necessary for us to distinguish between the respective rights of the citizens and the sovereign and between the duties which men must fulfill in their role as subjects from the natural rights they should enjoy in their role as men.

It is agreed that everything which each individual gives up of his power, his goods, and his liberty under the social contract is only that part of all those things which is of use to the community, but it is also necessary to agree that the sovereign alone is the judge of what that useful part is.

All the obligations which a citizen owes to the State he must fulfill as soon as the sovereign asks for them, but the sovereign in turn cannot impose any obligation on subjects which is not of use to the community. If fact, the sovereign cannot even wish to do so, for nothing can take place without a cause according to the laws of reason, any more than according to the laws of nature [and the sovereign community will have no cause to require anything beyond what is of communal use]....

Government. . is wrongly confused with the sovereign, whose agent it is. What then is government? It is an intermediary body established between the subjects and the sovereign to keep them in touch with each other. It is charged with executing the laws and maintaining both civil and political liberty.... The only will dominating government ... should be the general will or the law. The government's power is only the public power vested in it. As soon as [government] attempts to let any act come from itself completely independently, it starts to lose its intermediary role. If the time should ever come when the [government] has a particular will of its own stronger than that of the sovereign and makes use of the public power which is in its hands to carry out its own particular will-when there are thus two sovereigns, one in law and one in fact-at that moment the social union will disappear and the body politic will be dissolved.

Once the public interest has ceased to be the principal concern of citizens, once they prefer to serve State with money rather than with their persons, the State will be approaching ruin. Is it necessary to march into combat? They will pay some troops and stay at home. Is it necessary to go to meetings? They will name some deputies and stay at home. Laziness and money finally leave them with soldiers to enslave their fatherland and representatives to sell it....

<span class="H_body_text"> Sovereignty cannot be represented.... Essentially, it consists of the general will, and a will is not represented: either we have it itself, or it is something else; there is no other possibility. The deputies of the people thus are not and cannot be its representatives. They are only the people's agents and are not able to come to final decisions at all. Any law that the people have not ratified in person is void, it is not a law at all.


 * Sovereignty and Civil Religion**

<span class="H_body_text">Now then, it is of importance to the State that each citizen should have a religion requiring his devotion to duty; however, the **dogmas** of that religion are of no interest to the State except as they relate to morality and to the duties which each believer is required to perform for others. For the rest of it, each person may have whatever opinions he pleases....

It follows that it is up to the sovereign to establish the articles of a purely civil faith, not exactly as dogmas of religion but as sentiments of social commitment without which it would be impossible to be either a good citizen or a faithful subject.... While the State has no power to oblige anyone to believe these articles, it may banish anyone who does not believe them. This banishment is not for impiety but for lack of social commitment, that is, for being incapable of sincerely loving the laws and justice or of sacrificing his life to duty in time of need. As for the person who conducts himself as if he does not believe them after having publicly stated his belief in these same dogmas, he deserves the death penalty. He has lied in the presence of the laws.

The dogmas of civil religion should be simple, few in number, and stated in precise words without interpretations or commentarie s. These are the required dogmas: the existence of a powerful, intelligent Divinity, who does good, has foreknowledge of all, and provides for all; the life to come; the happy rewards of the just; the punishment of the wicked; and the sanctity ol` the social contract and the laws. As for prohibited articles of faith, I limit myself to one: intolerance. Intolerance characterizes the religious persuasions we have excluded.

From Jean­Jacques Rousseau, //Contrat social ou Principes du droit politique// (Paris: Garnier Frères 1800), pp. 240­332, passim. Translated by Henry A. Myers.

This text is part of the [|Internet Modern History Sourcebook]. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted texts for introductory level classes in modern European and World history. Unless otherwise indicated the specific electronic form of the document is copyright. Permission is granted for electronic copying, distribution in print form for educational purposes and personal use. If you do reduplicate the document, indicate the source. No permission is granted for commercial use of the Sourcebook. (c)Paul Halsall Aug 1997 halsall@murray.fordham.edu