fullest development of those he regards as “natural,” by which he means merely “good.” The “state of society,” as envisaged in the Social Contract , is no longer in contradiction to the “state of nature” upheld in the Emile , where indeed the social environment is of the greatest importance, and, though the pupil is screened from it, he is none the less being trained for it. Indeed the views given in the Social Contract are summarised in the fifth book of the Emile , and by this summary the essential unity of Rousseau’s system is emphasised.
Rousseau’s object, then, in the first words of the Social Contract , “is to inquire if, in the civil order, there can be any sure and certain rule of administration, taking men as they are and laws as they might be.” Montesquieu took laws as they were, and saw what sort of men they made: Rousseau, founding his whole system on human freedom, takes man as the basis, and regards him as giving himself what laws he pleases. He takes his stand on the nature of human freedom: on this he bases his whole system, making the will of the members the sole basis of every society.
In working out his theory, Rousseau makes use throughout of three general and, to some extent, alternative conceptions. These are the Social Contract, Sovereignty and the General Will. We shall now have to examine each of these in turn.
The Social Contract theory is as old as the sophists of Greece (see Plato, Republic , Book II and the Gorgias ), and as elusive. It has been adapted to the most opposite points of view, and used, in different forms, on both sides of every question to which it could conceivably be applied. It is frequent in medieval writers, a commonplace with the theorists of the Renaissance, and in the eighteenth century already nearing its fall before a wider conception. It would be a long, as well as a thankless, task to trace its history over again: it may be followed best in D. G. Ritchie’s admirable essay on it in Darwin and Hegel and Other Studies . For us, it