right to demand of him.” The will remains purely rational, but Rousseau feels that it needs an external motive power. “If natural law,” he writes, “were written only on the tablets of human reason it would be incapable of guiding the greater part of our actions; but it is also graven on the heart of man in characters that cannot be effaced, and it is there it speaks to him more strongly than all the precepts of the philosophers” (from an unfinished essay on “The State of War”). The nature of this guiding sentiment is explained in the “ Discourse on Inequality ” ( p. 197, note 2), where egoism ( amour-propre ) is contrasted with self-respect ( amour de soi ). Naturally, Rousseau holds, man does not want everything for himself, and nothing for others. “Egoism” and “altruism” are both one-sided qualities arising out of the perversion of man’s “natural goodness.” “Man is born good,” that is, man’s nature really makes him desire only to be treated as one among others, to share equally. This natural love of equality ( amour de soi ) includes love of others as well as love of self, and egoism, loving one’s self at the expense of others, is an unnatural and perverted condition. The “rational” precepts of the General Will, therefore, find an echo in the heart of the “natural” man, and, if we can only secure the human being against perversion by existing societies, the General Will can be made actual.
This is the meeting-point of Rousseau’s educational