Introduction

for “natural” education; the Discourses are a plea for a “naturalisation” of society; the New Heloise is the romantic’s appeal for more “nature” in human relationships. What then is the position of this contrast in Rousseau’s mature political thought? It is clear that the position is not merely that of the Discourses. In them, he envisaged only the faults of actual societies; now, he is concerned with the possibility of a rational society. His aim is to justify the change from “nature” to “society,” although it has left men in chains. He is in search of the true society, which leaves men “as free as before.” Altogether, the space occupied by the idea of nature in the Social Contract is very small. It is used of necessity in the controversial chapters, in which Rousseau is refuting false theories of social obligation; but when once he has brushed aside the false prophets, he lets the idea of nature go with them, and concerns himself solely with giving society the rational sanction he has promised. It becomes clear that, in political matters at any rate, the “state of nature” is for him only a term of controversy. He has in effect abandoned, in so far as he ever held it, the theory of a human golden age; and where, as in the Emile , he makes use of the idea of nature, it is broadened and deepened out of all recognition. Despite many passages in which the old terminology cleaves to him, he means by “nature” in this period not the original state of a thing, nor even its reduction to the simplest terms: he is passing over to the conception of “nature” as identical with the full development of capacity, with the higher idea of human freedom. This view may be seen in germ even in the “ Discourse on Inequality ,” where, distinguishing self-respect ( amour de soi ) from egoism ( amour-propre ), Rousseau makes the former, the property of the “natural” man, consist not in the desire for self-aggrandisement, but in the seeking of satisfaction for reasonable desire accompanied by benevolence; whereas egoism is the preference of our own interests to those of others, self-respect merely puts us on an equal footing with our fellows. It is true that in the Discourse Rousseau is pleading against the development of many human faculties; but he is equally advocating the