The Social Contract & Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

To understand the great thinkers of the past, the most important thing you need is a good historical imagination. You have to mentally place yourself in the world they lived in. If you don’t, you’ll never get beyond the surface-level details to the real, lasting value of their ideas.

This is true for theories just as much as it is for actions. The way people form their ideas is shaped by the world around them, just like how they act is shaped by their environment.

Of course, great thinkers contribute their own unique ideas. But they can never completely escape the era they live in.

The questions they try to answer are always the questions their own society is asking.
Their way of framing big problems is always related to the traditional ideas passed down to them.

When they introduce a completely new idea, they often have to use old-fashioned language to explain it. They use the familiar concepts of their time to express the deeper truths they are discovering. In the moments they seem to be rising above their age, they are also most deeply a product of it.

Rousseau: A Misunderstood Thinker

Jean-Jacques Rousseau has been frequently misunderstood by critics who lack this sense of history. He has been praised and condemned by both democrats and tyrants, often with an equal lack of real understanding. Even today, his name is still controversial and used as a rallying cry for political parties.

People agree that he is one of the greatest writers France has ever produced. But they still tend to accept or reject his political ideas entirely based on their own biases. They don’t bother to sort through his doctrines to understand them properly. He is still either worshipped or hated as the main inspiration for the French Revolution.

Why Rousseau Still Matters Today

Today, Rousseau’s works are important for two main reasons.

Historical Importance: They give us a window into the mind of the 18th century and show how much he influenced events in Europe. No other writer of his time had such a powerful impact.
Philosophical Importance: In political thought, he marks the transition from old, medieval theories to the modern philosophy of the state.

He is essentially the father of the Romantic movement in art, literature, and life. He deeply influenced German romantic writers, including the famous Goethe. He started a new trend of self-reflection that shaped 19th-century literature. He created the foundations of modern educational theory. His ideas also had a fundamental impact on modern philosophy, influencing both Kant’s moral philosophy and Hegel’s philosophy of right. He was the great forerunner of German and English Idealism.

How to Approach Rousseau’s Writing

To understand the value of Rousseau’s work, you need to understand its limitations. When his questions seem strange to us, we shouldn’t just dismiss them as meaningless. We need to see if his answers still make sense when we ask the questions in a more modern way.

Keep the Historical Context in Mind

First, remember that Rousseau was writing in the 18th century, mostly in France. The governments of the time did not appreciate open criticism. This meant Rousseau always had to be careful about what he said.

He was a daring writer and was often persecuted for his radical ideas. But he still had to soften his language. He usually had to speak in general terms instead of attacking specific problems directly.

Critics often say Rousseau’s theories are too abstract. In many ways, this is a strength. But when it becomes excessive, it’s because of the time he lived in. In the 18th century, it was generally safe to make broad, philosophical statements but dangerous to criticize specific issues. Intellectuals could express general discontent without much risk, as rulers believed philosophy was powerless to influence the masses.

Rousseau used this style, but his general ideas often had very clear, real-world applications. People could read between the lines and see his criticism of the government. This is what made his philosophy so powerful and dangerous, and it’s why he became the father of modern political philosophy. He used the abstract methods of his time to create concrete, universal truths.

He Built on Old Ideas

Second, remember that Rousseau’s theories exist within a broader historical context. He is the first modern political thinker, but he is also the last in a long line of thinkers stretching back through the Renaissance and the Middle Ages.

Many critics have wasted time trying to prove Rousseau wasn’t original. They studied The Social Contract in isolation and, upon finding similarities with earlier works, concluded he just borrowed his ideas.

If they had approached his work with a true sense of history, they would have seen that Rousseau’s genius lies in the new way he used old ideas. His importance comes from how he created a transition from old to new ways of thinking about politics. A mere copycat could never have had such an influence or discovered so much truth. Theories don’t just appear out of nowhere; they evolve as old concepts are adjusted and renewed.

Rousseau used the popular “social contract” theory of his day, just as earlier religious writers used the Bible and later writers used the concept of evolution. Throughout his work, you can see him struggling to break free from the outdated parts of that theory while developing new, powerful concepts that went far beyond it.

If we read Rousseau too literally, we might think his work is only of “historical interest.” But if we read him with a historical spirit, we can appreciate both its temporary and its timeless value. We can see how it served his time and also find what is useful for us today.

An Overview of His Political Works

This collection contains Rousseau’s most important political writings. The Social Contract is the most significant and was written last, representing his most mature thoughts. The other works show how his ideas developed over time.

Rousseau was born in 1712 but didn’t publish anything important until 1750. In 1743, he had the idea for a major work on politics. However, he didn’t make much progress until 1749, when he saw a prize contest from the Academy of Dijon. The question was: “Has the progress of the arts and sciences improved or corrupted morality?”

This question sparked his old ideas, and he wrote a fiery attack on civilization. He won the prize, and the work was published the next year. He instantly became famous. Professors, writers, and even the King of Poland published refutations of his essay. Rousseau tried to answer them all, and in doing so, his own thinking evolved. The twelve years between 1750 and the publication of The Social Contract and Emile in 1762 were when he made his unique contribution to political thought.

Discourse on the Arts and Sciences

This was his first major work and is not, by itself, his most important. As Rousseau himself later said, it is full of passion but lacks logic and order. It is an unbalanced, one-sided argument. It’s more of a brilliant rhetorical performance than a serious piece of philosophy.

Still, this essay made him famous. Its basic plan is simple: it claims that modern life is miserable and immoral, blames this on society’s departure from a “natural” state, and says the arts and sciences caused this departure. He presents the idea of “nature” as an ideal but doesn’t yet distinguish between the good and bad parts of society. This first discourse is important because it shows the starting point of his intellectual journey.

Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of Inequality Among Men

Published in 1755, this essay shows a great advance in his style and ideas. He is no longer just pushing one extreme idea. He now tries to provide a rational argument for his views and admits there is another side to the story.

The idea of “nature” has also become more developed. It’s not just a vague opposite to the evils of society; it has a positive meaning. Rousseau describes an imaginary “state of nature” where humans have simple thoughts, little need for others, and few cares beyond immediate survival.

He is clear that he doesn’t believe this “state of nature” ever really existed. He calls it an “idea of reason”—a concept created by stripping away everything that society gives to a person. The essay concludes by favoring not this purely abstract human, but a state of savagery somewhere between the natural and social conditions. In this middle state, people could keep the simplicity of nature while enjoying the basic comforts of early society.

In a long note, Rousseau clarifies his position. He says he doesn’t want modern society to go back to a state of nature because the corruption has gone too far. He only hopes that people can lessen the damage by using the arts and sciences more wisely. He now sees society as inevitable and is starting to find a way to justify it. This work represents the second stage of his political thought.

Discourse on Political Economy

First printed in 1755, it’s unclear if this was written before or after the Discourse on Inequality. This essay seems much closer to the style and ideas of The Social Contract. It appears to contain the constructive ideas of his mature period.

However, the Discourse on Inequality is still written in a looser, more rhetorical style, aimed at popular appeal rather than strict logic. But a careful reader can find many of the positive ideas that would later appear in The Social Contract hidden within it. It’s likely that Rousseau never intended for his first two discourses to be the final word on his political theory. They were early, partial studies, meant more to tear down old ideas than to build up new ones.

When Rousseau first planned a major book on political institutions, he didn’t believe that all society was fundamentally bad. From the beginning, he actually wanted to study human society and its institutions from a rational point of view. The prize contest from the Academy of Dijon was more of a detour from his main project than the thing that first got him thinking about politics.

So, it’s not surprising that a work he likely wrote before the Discourse on Inequality already contains the core ideas of his famous Social Contract. That earlier work, the Discourse on Political Economy, is important because it gives us the first sketch of his theory of the “General Will.”

Rousseau’s Early Political Ideas

When Rousseau talks about “political economy,” he doesn’t mean what we mean by “economics” today. He wasn’t focused on the conditions of industrial production. Instead, he was thinking of “public” economy—the state’s role as a manager of public finances.

He starts by discussing the basic nature of a state and how its existence can be compatible with human freedom. He then provides a short, brilliant study on the principles of taxation.

His core ideas on this were:

The state’s main goal is the well-being of all its members.
Taxation should support this goal.
Someone who only has the bare necessities should not be taxed at all.
Anything beyond necessities should be taxed, and luxuries should be taxed very heavily.

The first part of the article is even more interesting. Rousseau tears down the popular comparison between a state and a family. He shows that a state is not and cannot be like a patriarchal family. He then establishes his view that the state’s true essence is found in the General Will of its members.

The key ideas of The Social Contract are already present in this earlier essay. He presents them as if they are common knowledge, not brand-new discoveries. This makes it tempting to think that Rousseau’s political ideas matured much earlier than most people believe.

The Social Contract was finally published in 1762, the same year as his famous book on education, Emile. This year was the peak of Rousseau’s career. After this, he mostly wrote works defending himself or telling his life story. His theories were now fully developed, and he had shared his views on the fundamental problems of both politics and education.

So, what is Rousseau’s system all about in its final form?

The Social Contract contains almost all of his constructive political theory. To fully understand it, it helps to read his other works, but it mostly stands on its own. The title itself defines its purpose: The Social Contract or Principles of Political Right. The second part of the title explains the first.

Rousseau’s goal was not to describe the actual governments of his time, as the writer Montesquieu did. Instead, he wanted to establish the essential principles that must be the foundation of any legitimate society. Rousseau himself explained the difference clearly, saying that Montesquieu studied the existing laws of governments, which is a completely different project from studying the principles of political right.

Therefore, it’s a mistake to misinterpret Rousseau’s purpose. When he says that “the facts” of history don’t concern him, he isn’t being dismissive of facts. He is simply stating a core principle: a fact can never create a right. His goal was to build a society on a foundation of pure right. This would both challenge his earlier attacks on society in general and strengthen his criticisms of the societies that existed in his day.

A Theory of Rights, Not History

This point is central to the debate about how to study political theory. Broadly speaking, there are two main schools of thought.

The Factual School: This school collects facts about what actually happens in human societies to find broad patterns.
The Philosophical School: This school tries to uncover the universal principles that are the basis of all human communities. For this group, facts can be useful, but they can’t prove anything on their own. The question is not one of fact, but one of right.

Rousseau belongs to the philosophical school. He isn’t just an abstract thinker making guesses from imaginary history. He is a concrete thinker trying to get past the non-essential details to find the permanent, unchanging foundation of human society. He is searching for the source of our political obligation—our duty to obey the state. For him, this is the most important question.

The Big Question: How Can We Be Both Governed and Free?

Rousseau framed the fundamental problem this way:

“To find a form of association that can defend and protect the person and goods of every member with the full common force, and in which each person, by uniting with all, still obeys only himself and remains as free as before.”

The Social Contract is his solution to this problem. He asks:

How can the state’s will not feel like an external force imposing itself on me?
How can the existence of the state be compatible with human freedom?
How can a person, who is born free, legitimately end up in chains everywhere?

Understanding Rousseau’s Famous Ideas

Everyone would immediately grasp the central problem of The Social Contract if it weren’t for the sometimes strange way Rousseau phrases his ideas. This strangeness comes from his historical context and his use of the political language of his era.

”Man is born free…”

Many people only know the first words of the book: “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” Critics then argue that man isn’t actually born free. This is the first major hurdle in understanding Rousseau.

When we would naturally say “man ought to be free,” Rousseau says “man is born free.” He means the same thing. He is referring to an imaginary “golden age,” but the key point is the ideal of freedom that people are born for.

The “State of Nature”

The contrast between the “state of nature” and the “state of society” appears in all of Rousseau’s work. In his early essays, he focused only on the flaws of actual societies. But in The Social Contract, he is focused on the possibility of a rational society.

His goal now is to justify the transition from nature to society, even though it has left people “in chains.” In his mature political thought, the “state of nature” is mostly just a tool for argument. He uses it to disprove false theories about society. Once he has done that, he moves on and focuses on giving society the rational foundation he promised.

He is no longer talking about a historical golden age. He is moving toward a new idea of “nature” as being the full development of a person’s potential and a higher form of human freedom.

The Three Pillars of His Theory

To build his theory, Rousseau uses three main concepts:

The Social Contract
Sovereignty
The General Will

We will now look at each of these.

The theory of a social contract is ancient, going all the way back to the sophists in Greece. It’s an elusive idea that has been adapted to support completely opposite points of view. It was common among medieval and Renaissance writers, and by the 18th century, it was already starting to be replaced by broader concepts.

In its most general form, the theory is easy to arrive at. If a government is anything more than pure tyranny, it must be based on the consent of its members—whether that consent is stated openly or just implied. This basic idea contains the seed of the entire social contract theory.

Thinkers who wanted to find a factual basis for this idea, especially in an age with a hazy sense of history, inevitably gave it a historical setting. They imagined that the state was created in some distant past through a pact, or contract. Nearly every school of thought, except for those who believed in the divine right of kings, supported some form of the social contract theory.

Social contract theories generally fall into one of two categories. They describe society as being based on an original contract either:

Between the people and the government.
Between all the individuals who make up the state.

Type 1: A Contract Between People and Government

This version originated in the Middle Ages. It holds that the ruler is bound by the terms of the contract to govern constitutionally. People used this theory to protest against kings who abused their power. In 1688, the English Parliament used this idea to accuse King James II of “breaking the original contract between king and people.” Rousseau argues against this view in The Social Contract.

Type 2: A Contract Among All Individuals

This is the social contract theory proper. It views society as originating from an agreement among all the individuals who compose it. This idea appears in the works of thinkers like Hooker, Milton, Locke, and Rousseau.

A famous real-world example is the Mayflower Compact of 1620, where the Pilgrims declared that they “covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic.”

The natural conclusion of this view is popular sovereignty—that the people hold the ultimate power. This is the conclusion Rousseau draws.

However, before Rousseau, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes used this same theory to argue for the exact opposite: absolute monarchy. Hobbes agreed that the original contract was among all individuals and that the government was not a party to it. But he argued that in this contract, the people agree not just to form a state, but to give up all their power and hand it over to a single ruler or ruling body.

Hobbes’s Theory: Trading Freedom for Security

Thomas Hobbes, another famous philosopher, had a different take on the social contract. He agreed that the people are naturally the supreme power. But he believed that in the act of making the contract, the people give away—or alienate—that power completely and forever.

In Hobbes’s view, the government is not a party to the contract. This means the government has no obligations to the people. Once the state is created, the government becomes the Sovereign, or the absolute master. The people’s job is simply to obey without question, whether the ruler is good or bad.

Why did Hobbes believe this? He lived during a time of brutal civil wars. He thought that even the worst, most oppressive government was better than the chaos of anarchy. So, he worked hard to create arguments that supported any form of absolute rule.

It’s easy to see the problems in this system.

What if there’s a revolution? A follower of Hobbes would be stuck. They would have to choose between supporting the new ruler who has actual power or the old ruler who has the “legitimate” claim to power.
Can one generation bind all future generations? Rousseau argued that a person cannot sign away the freedom of their children and grandchildren.

Despite its flaws, Hobbes’s theory is brutally logical, and Rousseau learned a lot from it. Hobbes’s system creates not just a powerful state, but a pure dictatorship. The key to his argument is the idea that a person, and therefore a whole society, can permanently give away their liberty.

Locke’s Softer Stance

The philosopher John Locke attacked this very point. Locke’s goal was to justify the English Revolution of 1688. He argued that a government’s power always depends on the consent of the people it governs. If rulers become tyrants, the people have the right to remove them.

However, Locke’s theory had a weakness.

He didn’t provide any formal process for people to express their opinions, short of a full-blown revolution.
He seemed to think that people’s consent was something silent and simply assumed.
He saw the state’s main job as protecting life and property, and he was so cautious that his ideas about popular rights ended up having very little real power.

It wasn’t until Rousseau that the “contract between individuals” theory was presented in its purest and most logical form.

Rousseau saw that for popular consent to be real, people needed a formal, constitutional way to express it. He replaced Locke’s idea of silent, assumed consent with an active agreement that is periodically renewed.

He admired the ancient Greek city-states and the free Swiss cities of his own time, like his hometown of Geneva. In these places, citizens could participate directly in government. Looking at the Europe of his day, he saw no large nation where representative government was truly democratic. This led him to believe that true self-government was only possible in a small city. He even wished that the big nation-states of Europe would break up into leagues of independent city-states.

It doesn’t matter too much that Rousseau failed to predict the modern nation-state. By focusing on the simplest form of a state (the city), he was able to explain the true nature of the “social tie”—another name he used for the social contract.

His core idea about political obligation is the same one shared by all great modern thinkers. People have only gotten confused because they focus too much on the historical idea of a “contract.”

The social contract theory was just a common way of talking about politics back then. Rousseau didn’t actually believe in a literal, historical contract. In fact, he admits he doesn’t know how the change from nature to society happened.

His goal was to find a “sure and legitimate rule” for society. For Rousseau, the Social Contract is the fundamental principle at work in any legitimate society. It’s the basic unity that allows us to achieve political freedom by giving up lawlessness. The fact that he presented this idea in the form of a contract was just an accident of his time.

The idea was so powerful that it has been hard to kill. Even though no one has viewed the contract as a historical event for over a century, the language of the contract theory still hangs around because it’s hard to find a better way to explain the basis of political unity.

In Rousseau’s own thought, the “Social Contract” is just one of three ways he explains his main idea.

The Social Contract: The historical-sounding version.
Popular Sovereignty: The legal-sounding version.
The General Will: The philosophical version. This is his guiding concept: the state is based on the living, rational will of its members.

Sovereignty: Who Really Holds the Power?

Sovereignty is a legal term, but it can cause confusion in political philosophy.

Legal Sovereignty vs. Political Sovereignty

In legal theory, the Sovereign is defined as a specific person or group in charge who receives obedience from most of society and doesn’t have to obey anyone else. Finding this person is supposed to be a simple question of fact. But where is the Sovereign in a country like the United Kingdom or the United States? Is it the monarch or president? The legislature? The voters? It’s hard to pinpoint a single, “determinate” superior.

This legal concept has little to do with political theory. We must distinguish it from the political Sovereign.

The philosophical Sovereign is not the king, the legislature, or the voters. The Sovereign is the body in the state where political power ought to reside. It’s the idea that the people are the ultimate directors of their own destiny, the final power with no appeal.

The difference between Hobbes and Rousseau is simple:

Hobbes said the people have supreme power, but they give it away in their very first act.
Rousseau said this supreme power is inalienable—it can never be given away.

Rousseau combines Hobbes’s idea of an absolute Sovereign with Locke’s idea of popular consent. The result is the modern philosophical doctrine of popular sovereignty.

The Crucial Difference Between the Sovereign and the Government

Rousseau makes another key distinction that separates him from Hobbes. For Hobbes, the Sovereign is the government. This means that overthrowing the government is the same as dissolving society and returning to chaos.

Rousseau, however, creates a sharp division:

The Sovereign is the whole people, acting as a collective body to make laws. This power is absolute, inalienable, indivisible, and indestructible.
The Government is simply the administration, or the executive. Its job is to carry out the will of the Sovereign.

Think of it like a human body. The Sovereign is the will that decides to act. The Government is the brain and muscles that carry out the command.

The government exists only because the Sovereign allows it to. It is always secondary and can be changed or dismissed at any moment by the sovereign will of the people. This separation is the only way to avoid Hobbes’s conclusion of an absolute, unquestionable government.

Putting Theory into Practice: Government and Lawmaking

Rousseau runs into some practical problems when he tries to apply this. He makes a distinction between two types of power:

The legislative power (the Sovereign) deals only with general matters that concern the whole community equally.
The executive power (the government) deals only with particular matters that apply to specific people or situations.

While this seems fair in theory, it’s hard to apply in real life. Most modern laws are about particular classes and interests. Rousseau’s distinction would seem to put all the real power in the hands of the executive branch. This is not far from modern theories where the people have little power beyond voting out rulers they don’t like.

However, as long as we remember Rousseau is thinking of a small city-state, his idea makes more sense. A city can often make general laws where a large nation has to get specific.

When discussing government, he states a general principle:

Democracy is best for small states.
Aristocracy is best for medium-sized states.
Monarchy is best for large states.

We must also remember that he rejected representative government. Since “will” cannot be represented, he believed a representative assembly could never act as the Sovereign. We can forgive him for this view. The “representative” governments he saw in places like England were often corrupt and undemocratic. Even today, we still struggle with the problem of how to give people effective control over their governments.

To Rousseau, it seemed that large nation-states would always end up with a powerful central government, like the one in France. The idea of delegating power to local regions wasn’t really a concept yet. Because of this, Rousseau believed the only way to have a real popular government was through a federal system. This system would start with small, self-governing units, like city-states, that would then join together.

The 19th century showed that many of his specific ideas about government were wrong. Still, his writings contain many wise observations and useful suggestions that are still valuable today.

The Mysterious “Legislator”

One of the most confusing parts of Rousseau’s theory is his idea of the Legislator. He claimed that every state needs one.

To understand this, you have to realize that the Legislator is not a king or a lawmaker. He doesn’t actually have the power to make laws. His only job is to suggest laws, which the people can then approve or reject.

The Legislator is best understood as a symbol of a nation’s spirit and traditions. He represents all the social customs and organizations that have grown up with the state. This idea shows that Rousseau believed the state is based on the will of the people, not on force.

What is Law?

Rousseau defines laws as “acts of the general will.” He agrees with the philosopher Montesquieu that law is the foundation of any civil society. But Rousseau goes a step further by stating that law must come directly from the will of the citizens.

The social contract makes laws necessary. It also makes it clear that laws can only be created by the citizens who formed the state in the first place.

Rousseau says that while there might be a universal sense of justice based on reason, it is meaningless among people unless it is backed by mutual, agreed-upon laws. The General Will is the source of these laws.

The General Will: Society’s True North

We now arrive at the General Will, which is the most important and most debated of all Rousseau’s political ideas. It’s difficult to pin down exactly what he meant by it, and he sometimes seems to use the term in two different ways.

However, the basic meaning is clear. When individuals join together through the social contract, they create something new. In place of their individual personalities, they form a “moral and collective body.” This new group has its own shared identity, its own life, and its own will. This collective will is the General Will.

As he explained in an earlier essay, this General Will always aims for the preservation and well-being of the whole group. It is the ultimate rule for what is just or unjust for everyone in the state.

”General Will” vs. “Will of All”

This idea immediately raises questions. Can’t a group make bad decisions? Can’t the will of the group be just as flawed as the will of one person? And won’t some members try to pursue their own private interests against the interests of the group?

To answer this, Rousseau makes a very important distinction.

The Will of All is simply the sum of every person’s private, selfish desires. Imagine everyone voting for a policy that benefits them personally, even if it hurts the community as a whole. That’s the Will of All.
The General Will, on the other hand, only considers the common interest. It is what emerges when all the competing private interests cancel each other out.

When people vote, Rousseau says the question they should be answering is not, “What’s best for me?” but rather, “What’s best for the state?” If a person votes based on their own selfish interest, their vote doesn’t contribute to the General Will.

Rousseau makes the bold claim that in an ideal state without political parties or factions, a majority vote will always reveal the General Will. Most critics agree he was probably being too optimistic here.

Can the General Will Be Wrong?

What about public immorality or poor decisions? Rousseau’s answers here can seem contradictory.

He basically says that the people, as a whole, can never be corrupted, but they can be deceived. People always want what is good for them, but they don’t always see clearly what that is. When the public seems to want something bad, it’s only because they have been misled. Their will is still pure, just mistaken.

An act of public immorality, even if everyone agrees to it, would just be a case of unanimous selfishness. It would be an expression of the Will of All, not the General Will.

Nested Wills: From Clubs to Countries

Rousseau’s earlier writing in the Political Economy offers a clearer guide.

He explains that every society is made up of many smaller societies. Think of clubs, companies, religious groups, or online communities. Each of these smaller groups has its own common interest and its own “general will” for its members.

However, from the perspective of the larger society (the state), the will of that smaller group is just a “particular will.” For example:

The “general will” of the tech industry might be to have less regulation.
But for the country as a whole, that is just a “particular will,” or a special interest, which may or may not align with the true General Will of the entire nation.

The most general will—that of the entire state—is always the most just.

The Link Between Freedom and Law

Rousseau’s political theory is deeply connected to his ideas about ethics and freedom. In a key chapter, he explains the change that happens when a person enters society.

They lose natural liberty: the unlimited right to do or take whatever they want.
They gain civil liberty: freedom that is limited by the General Will.
Most importantly, they gain moral liberty, which is the only thing that makes a person truly the master of themself.

He famously states that acting on pure impulse or appetite is a form of slavery, while “obedience to a law which we prescribe to ourselves is liberty.”

This is the core of the philosopher Immanuel Kant’s later ethical system. A person is only truly free when they act according to a universal law that they have chosen for themself.

The General Will is simply this concept of human freedom applied to political institutions. A state is free when it follows a universal law that it has given to itself.

The Big Question: Can an All-Powerful State Be Free?

This leads to a common criticism. If the state, guided by the General Will, has absolute power, what stops it from becoming tyrannical and enslaving its members?

Rousseau’s answer is radical. He says that in the social contract, each member gives up all of their rights to the entire community. This is the “total alienation” clause.

Why is this necessary? Because if individuals held back certain rights, there would be no common authority to decide on disputes between them and the public. We would be right back in the state of nature, with each person acting as their own judge.

A “limited” sovereign is a contradiction. The state must have the final say.

However, this is very different from saying the government has the moral right to interfere in every aspect of a person’s life. Rousseau later talks about “the limits of the sovereign power.” There is no contradiction here.

The state has the legal right to intervene whenever it is for the common good.
But it has no moral right to intervene when it is not for the common good.

Who Decides What’s Important?

Because the General Will is always right, it will only step in when it’s actually for the common good. Therefore, the Sovereign (the people as a whole) cannot and will not put any useless burdens on its subjects.

But there’s still a problem. Since we can’t always figure out the General Will perfectly, who gets to judge whether the state’s interference is justified in a specific case?

Rousseau’s answer doesn’t satisfy many critics. He says that while each person only gives up the part of their freedom that the community needs to control, it is the Sovereign alone who is the judge of what is important.

Critics say this is just tyranny all over again. But how can this be avoided? Rousseau has already explained why a “limited” Sovereign is impossible. It follows that we must use the best system we can create to carry out the state’s functions. The system will no doubt be imperfect, but we can only try to get as close to the General Will as possible, without ever hoping to achieve it perfectly.

Freedom Through Restraint

So, here’s how we can answer the critics who claim that Rousseau sacrificed the individual to create civil liberty.

Liberty is not just a negative idea; it doesn’t just mean “freedom from rules.” Even the most extreme individualists would agree that some amount of state interference is necessary to secure freedom for everyone.

As soon as you admit that the state can interfere at all to protect liberty, the entire idea changes. You can no longer claim that every action by the state reduces an individual’s freedom. The theory that liberty is a fixed pie that gets smaller with every new law is wrong.

The members of a state can actually be more free when everyone is restrained from harming each other than when anyone is left “free” to enslave someone else.

Once we accept this principle, the exact amount of state interference needed is always up for debate. Every case has to be decided on its own merits. In principle, the Sovereign must be all-powerful, limited only by the laws of reason.

Rousseau, the Revolution, and the “Rights of Man”

It has often been argued that Rousseau couldn’t have inspired the French Revolution. After all, the revolutionaries passionately declared the “rights of man.” If every right is given up in the Social Contract, how can there be any “natural rights” left?

This is a misunderstanding of Rousseau’s position. The “rights of man” that Rousseau and the revolutionaries were thinking of are not the same as the rights promoted by modern individualists.

Rousseau’s entire theory is built on human freedom, which he believed was permanent and could never be destroyed. Therefore, when a government becomes a dictatorship, it has no more right over its people than a master has over a slave. At that point, it’s purely a question of power.

In such a case, the people can appeal to the original Social Contract or, to put it another way, to the “natural right” of human freedom. This right is not inconsistent with the contract. The contract itself is based on this fundamental freedom and is designed to protect it.

The Sovereign must always treat its members equally. As long as it does, its power is absolute.

Individual Interest vs. the Common Good

Another common attack is that Rousseau naively assumes that each person’s private interests are the same as the interests of all. But this is not what he argued.

He clearly states that a person’s private interests can and do conflict with the General Will. What he actually says is:

The Sovereign, as a collective body, cannot have an interest that goes against the interest of the citizens as a whole.
The Sovereign cannot have an interest that goes against the interest of any single individual.

His reasoning is that the Sovereign’s power is essential to protect society, and society is essential for the individual’s well-being. But his deeper argument rests on the nature of the General Will itself. He would admit that in any real state, the apparent interest of the majority might conflict with the interest of a few. But he would argue that the real interest of both the state and the individual, being subject to universal law, can never truly conflict with any other real interest.

”Forced to Be Free”: What Did Rousseau Mean?

This brings us to one of Rousseau’s most famous and confusing phrases. He said that the state can “force a man to be free.”

He means this in the same way the philosopher Kant might say that a person’s higher, rational self must force their lower, impulsive self to be free. True freedom comes from following the universal law of reason, not from giving in to every selfish desire.

The ultimate significance of the General Will is that it views the state as a moral being, with a will that can make rational choices, just like an individual mind.

Is the General Will Just a Useless Idea?

Even some who understand what the General Will means still deny its value. They argue that if the General Will isn’t just the “will of all,” and if you can’t find it by voting, then it’s nothing—a mere fantasy.

This criticism misses the point. The value of the General Will is precisely that it is an ideal. When we search for the universal basis of society, we aren’t looking for something that is perfectly real in any single state. We are looking for something that exists, to some degree, in every state.

The True Meaning of Society

The point of Rousseau’s Social Contract theory is that a legitimate society exists by the consent of the people and acts through the will of the people. Active will—not force, and not even silent consent—is the basis of a true republic.

The answer to the question, “Why should I obey the General Will?” is that the General Will is not something outside of you; it exists within you. You are, as Rousseau says, “obeying only yourself.”

The state is not just an accident of history or a simple tool to protect property. It responds to a fundamental need in human nature. The complex web of human institutions is not an artificial cage; it is the natural expression of our mutual dependence and fellowship.

Bringing the General Will to Life

The challenge, then, is how to make the General Will active and conscious in any particular state.

It is clear that some states have institutions that don’t reflect the General Will at all. But even in the worst tyrannies, there is a limit to oppression. Deep down, in ancient customs that even a dictator dares not challenge, the General Will is still active. It doesn’t just reside in official government buildings; its roots go deeper into the entire life of the community.

But for politics, the main task is to make the General Will supreme in the nation’s official institutions. The General Will demands not just good government, but self-government. It’s not enough for the right thing to be done; the community as a whole must will for it to be done.

A General Will must be “general” in two ways:

It must be general in its object (it must be universal).
It must be generally held (common to all or at least the majority).

Reason and Feeling: The Heart of the General Will

It’s surprising that Rousseau, the great champion of “feeling,” and Kant, the great champion of “intellect,” had such similar views on the will. But there is an important difference.

For Kant, the driving force of morality is pure reason. For Rousseau, the General Will is also rational, but he believed it needed a motivator: human feeling. He wrote that natural law is not just written on tablets of reason, but is “graven on the heart of man.”

This guiding feeling comes from what he called amour de soi (a healthy self-respect and love of equality), not amour-propre (selfish egoism). Rousseau believed that man is “born good,” meaning our true nature makes us want to be treated as equals among others. This natural feeling finds an echo in the rational rules of the General Will. If we can protect people from being corrupted by bad societies, the General Will can be made real.

Rousseau’s Enduring Legacy

This is where Rousseau’s political theory connects with his educational theory. His single guiding idea is the natural goodness of man.

While we have only looked at his political works here, they can be read on their own. And The Social Contract itself is still by far the best textbook ever written on political philosophy.

Or, the Principles of Political Right

A Note from the Author

This small book is part of a much larger project I started years ago. I began without realizing my own limits and have since given up on the larger work.

Of the various pieces I could have saved from what I wrote, this is the biggest. I also think it is the most worthy of being shared with the public. The rest of it no longer exists.

Book I

An Introduction

My goal is to find out if there can be a fair and legitimate system of government in the civil world. I will take people as they are, and laws as they could be. In this search, I will always try to combine what is right with what is practical, so that justice and usefulness are never separated.

I am starting this project without needing to prove how important it is. People will ask me, “Are you a prince or a lawmaker to be writing about politics?”

My answer is that I am neither. That is exactly why I am writing about politics. If I were a prince or a lawmaker, I wouldn’t waste my time talking about what needs to be done. I would either do it, or I would stay silent.

I was born a citizen of a free country and a member of its governing body. I feel that even if my own voice has only a small influence on public matters, my right to vote on them makes it my duty to study them. And whenever I think about governments, I am happy to find that my research always gives me new reasons to love the government of my own country.

Chapter 1: The Subject of This Book

Man is born free, and yet everywhere he is in chains. A person may think they are the master of others, but they are still more of a slave than the people they rule.

How did this change happen? I do not know.

What can make this situation legitimate? That is a question I believe I can answer.

If I only considered force and its effects, I would simply say: “As long as a people is forced to obey, and they obey, they are doing the right thing. But as soon as they can throw off that chain, and they do, they are doing an even better thing.” Because they are winning back their liberty with the same right that was used to take it away. Either their fight for freedom is justified, or there was never any justification for taking their freedom in the first place.

But the social order is a sacred right that serves as the foundation for all other rights. However, this right does not come from nature. Therefore, it must be based on conventions, or agreements. Before I get to that, I need to prove what I have just said.

Chapter 2: The First Societies

The oldest of all societies, and the only one that is natural, is the family. But even in a family, children are only attached to their father for as long as they need him to survive. As soon as that need is gone, the natural bond breaks. The children are freed from the obedience they owed their father, and the father is freed from the care he owed his children. They all return to a state of independence.

If the family stays together after this point, it is not because of nature, but because they choose to. The family itself is then held together only by convention.

This common freedom is a result of human nature. A person’s first law is to ensure their own survival. The first things they care for are the things they owe to themselves. As soon as a person is old enough to think for themself, they become the sole judge of how to stay alive. As a result, they become their own master.

The family, then, can be seen as the first model for political societies.

The ruler is like the father.
The people are like the children.
Everyone is born free and equal, and they only give up their liberty for their own benefit.

The only difference is that in a family, the father’s love for his children is his payment for the care he gives them. In a state, the ruler does not have this love for the people. Instead, the pleasure of commanding takes its place.

The philosopher Grotius denies that all human power is created for the benefit of the governed. He uses slavery as an example. His usual method is to establish what is “right” based on what is already a “fact.” This is a handy way of thinking if you want to support tyrants, but it isn’t very logical.

So, according to Grotius, it’s unclear whether the human race belongs to a hundred men, or if those hundred men belong to the human race. He seems to prefer the first option, which is also what Hobbes believed. In this view, humanity is divided into herds of cattle. Each herd has a ruler who guards them only so he can eventually devour them.

Just as a shepherd is naturally superior to his flock, the “shepherds” of men—their rulers—are naturally superior to the people they rule. This is how the Roman Emperor Caligula reasoned. He concluded that either kings were gods, or the people were beasts.

Caligula’s thinking is the same as that of Hobbes and Grotius. And before them all, Aristotle said that men are not naturally equal. He believed some are born for slavery, and others are born to rule.

Aristotle was right, but he mistook the effect for the cause. Nothing is more certain than this: every person born into slavery is born for slavery. Slaves lose everything in their chains, even the desire to escape. They come to love their enslavement.

So, if there are slaves “by nature,” it is only because there were first slaves “against nature.” Force made the first slaves, and their cowardice has kept them that way.

I won’t say anything about King Adam or Emperor Noah, the father of the three great kings who divided up the universe. I trust people will appreciate my restraint. After all, since I am a direct descendant of one of these princes, how do I know that checking my family tree wouldn’t make me the legitimate king of the human race? In any case, Adam was clearly the king of the world, just as Robinson Crusoe was king of his island, as long as he was the only one there.

Chapter 3: The Right of the Strongest

The strongest person is never strong enough to be the master forever, unless he can transform his strength into a “right” and obedience into a “duty.” This is the origin of the so-called right of the strongest, a phrase that sounds like a joke but is often treated as a serious principle.

But what does this phrase actually mean? Force is a physical power. I fail to see what moral effect it can have. To give in to force is an act of necessity, not of will. At best, it’s an act of caution. In what sense could it ever be a duty?

Let’s assume for a moment that this “right” exists. The only result is complete nonsense. Because if force creates right, then the effect changes with the cause. Any force that is stronger than the first one inherits its “right.” As soon as you can disobey without being punished, your disobedience becomes legitimate. Since the strongest is always right, the only thing that matters is figuring out how to become the strongest.

But what kind of right is it that disappears when the force is gone? If you must obey because of force, there is no need to obey because of duty. And if you are not forced to obey, you have no obligation to do so. Clearly, the word “right” adds nothing to force. In this context, it means absolutely nothing.

Someone might say, “Obey the powers that be.” If this just means “give in to force,” it’s good advice, but it’s pointless. I guarantee it will never be broken. All power comes from God, I agree, but so does all sickness. Does that mean we are forbidden from calling a doctor? A robber surprises me in a forest. Am I forced to give him my wallet? Yes. But even if I could hide it, am I morally bound to give it up? The pistol he holds is also a form of power.

So, let’s agree that force does not create right, and we are only obligated to obey legitimate powers. This brings me back to my original question.

Chapter 4: On Slavery

Since no person has a natural authority over another, and since force creates no right, we must conclude that conventions (agreements) are the basis of all legitimate authority among people.

Grotius asks: if one person can alienate his liberty and make himself the slave of a master, why can’t a whole nation do the same and make itself the subject of a king?

Let’s focus on the word alienate, which means to give or to sell. A man who becomes the slave of another does not give himself away; he sells himself, at the very least for his own survival. But what does a nation sell itself for? A king does not provide for his subjects; he gets his own living from them. Do subjects give up their freedom on the condition that the king can also take their property? I don’t see what they have left to protect.

Someone will say that a dictator provides his subjects with civil peace. Fine. But what do they gain if his ambition leads to wars, if his greed is bottomless, and if his ministers harass them more than their own disagreements ever would? What do they gain if this very peace is one of their miseries? You can also find peace in a dungeon. Is that enough to make a dungeon a good place to live? The Greeks trapped in the Cyclops’s cave lived peacefully while waiting for their turn to be eaten.

To say that a man gives himself away for free is absurd and unimaginable. Such an act is invalid and illegitimate for the simple reason that the person who does it is out of his mind. To say the same of a whole nation is to assume it is a nation of madmen. Madness creates no right.

Even if a man could give himself away, he cannot give away his children. They are born as free human beings. Their liberty belongs to them, and no one else has the right to dispose of it. Before they are old enough to decide for themselves, a father can set conditions for their survival and well-being, but he cannot give them away forever and without conditions. Such a gift goes against the purpose of nature.

To renounce your liberty is to renounce your own humanity. It means surrendering the rights and even the duties of being human. For someone who gives up everything, no payment is possible. Such an act is incompatible with human nature. To remove all freedom from a person’s will is to remove all morality from their actions.

Finally, it is an empty and contradictory agreement to have absolute authority on one side and unlimited obedience on the other. Isn’t it clear that you can’t have an obligation to someone from whom you have the right to demand everything?

Grotius and others find another origin for the so-called right of slavery: war. They claim that because the victor has the right to kill the defeated, the defeated can buy back his life at the price of his freedom.

But this supposed right to kill the conquered does not come from the state of war at all. War is a relationship between States, not between people. Individuals are enemies only by accident—not as men, but as soldiers. The purpose of war is the destruction of the enemy State. You have the right to kill its defenders while they are armed. But as soon as they lay down their weapons and surrender, they stop being enemies. They become simply men again, and no one has any right to take their life.

War gives no right that is not necessary to achieve its goal. Therefore, the right to enslave the conquered cannot be based on a right to kill them that doesn’t exist. It is a vicious circle to base the right of life and death on the right of slavery, and the right of slavery on the right of life and death.

By taking an equivalent for his life, the victor has not done the slave a favor. Instead of killing him for no profit, he has killed him for his own use. The state of war continues between them.

So, from every angle, the right of slavery is null and void. It is not only illegitimate, but it is also absurd and meaningless. The words slave and right contradict each other. They are mutually exclusive.

It will always be foolish for one person to say to another person or to a whole people: “I am making an agreement with you that is entirely for my benefit and entirely at your expense. I will keep it for as long as I want, and you will keep it for as long as I want.”

Chapter 5: We Must Always Go Back to a First Agreement

Even if I accepted all the arguments for dictatorship that I have just proven wrong, the supporters of absolute power would be no better off.

There will always be a big difference between conquering a crowd of people and ruling a society. Even if one man were to enslave scattered individuals one by one, no matter how many there were, I still see only a master and his slaves. I do not see a people and their ruler. I see a collection of individuals, which we can call an aggregation, but not a unified group, or an association. There is no “public good” and no political body.

That man, even if he has enslaved half the world, is still just one individual. His interest is still a purely private interest. If he dies, his empire falls apart, scattered and without unity, like an oak tree that dissolves into a heap of ashes after a fire.

A philosopher named Grotius says that a people can give itself to a king. If that’s true, then according to Grotius, a people must first be a people before they give themselves away. That act of giving is a civil act, which requires a public discussion and agreement.

Before we examine the act by which a people gives itself to a king, it would be better to examine the act by which a people becomes a people. This first act is the true foundation of society, and it necessarily comes before the other.

Think about it: if there were no prior agreement to form a society, how would the minority be required to accept the choice of the majority? Where would a hundred people who want a king get the right to vote on behalf of ten people who do not? The law of majority rule is itself something established by an agreement, and it requires that there was, at least once, a unanimous decision to form a group in the first place.

Let’s imagine people have reached a point in the state of nature where they can no longer survive on their own. The challenges they face are now greater than the strength each person has to overcome them. That original state can’t continue, and the human race would die out unless it changed its way of life.

Since people cannot create new powers, but can only unite and direct the powers they already have, they have only one way to survive. They must join together to form a combined force that is strong enough to overcome any resistance. They have to get this force moving with a single motivation and make it act as one.

This combined force can only be created when several people come together. But since each person’s own strength and freedom are their primary tools for survival, how can they pledge them to the group without harming their own interests and neglecting their own self-care?

This is the core problem, stated in these terms:

The Problem: How can we find a form of association that will defend and protect every member and their goods with the full common force, and in which each person, while uniting with everyone else, still obeys only themself and remains as free as before?

The Social Contract is the solution to this fundamental problem.

The terms of this contract are so clear from the nature of the act itself that changing them even slightly would make them useless. While they may have never been written down formally, they are the same everywhere and are silently understood and accepted. If the social pact is ever broken, each person gets back their original rights and their natural liberty, losing the conventional liberty they had traded it for.

These terms, when properly understood, can be boiled down to a single one: the total alienation of each member, together with all of their rights, to the whole community.

Here is why this works:

It’s fair. Because each person gives themself up completely, the conditions are the same for everyone. Since the conditions are the same for everyone, no one has any interest in making them unfair to others.
It’s complete. Because the surrender is total and without reservation, the union is as perfect as it can be. No member has anything left to demand for themself. If individuals kept certain rights, there would be no common authority to decide disputes between them and the public. Each person would become their own judge on some issues and would soon want to be the judge of all issues. The state of nature would continue, and the association would become either useless or tyrannical.
You lose nothing. Finally, in giving yourself to everyone, you give yourself to no one in particular. Since you gain the same right over every other member that you give them over you, you get back an equivalent for everything you lose. You also gain more power to protect what you have.

So, if we strip away the non-essential parts of the social compact, it comes down to this:

“Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and, in our corporate capacity, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole.”

This act of association instantly creates a new, moral and collective body in place of the individual personalities of each member. This new public person was once called a city, and is now called a Republic or body politic.

Its members call it the State when it is passive.
They call it the Sovereign when it is active.
They call it a Power when comparing it to others like it.

Those who are part of it are called the people (when speaking of them all together). Individually, they are called citizens (because they share in the sovereign power) and subjects (because they are under the laws of the State).

Chapter 7: The Sovereign

This formula shows us that the act of association is a mutual promise between the public and each individual. Each person, in making a contract with themself, so to speak, is bound in two different ways:

As a member of the Sovereign, they are bound to the other individuals.
As a member of the State, they are bound to the Sovereign.

The legal rule that “no one is bound by promises made only to themself” does not apply here. There is a big difference between making a promise to yourself and making one to a whole group of which you are a part.

It’s also important to note that the Sovereign cannot be bound by its own laws. It cannot impose a law on itself that it cannot break. This is because it is a single entity, like an individual making a contract with themself. This makes it clear that there can be no fundamental law that is binding on the body of the people—not even the social contract itself.

However, the body politic or the Sovereign, which gets its entire existence from the sacredness of the contract, can never bind itself to do anything that would violate that original act. For example, it cannot sell off a part of itself or submit to another Sovereign. To violate the act by which it exists would be to destroy itself. And something that is nothing can create nothing.

As soon as this crowd of people is united into one body, it is impossible to harm one of the members without attacking the entire body. It is even more impossible to harm the body without the members feeling it. Duty and self-interest require both parties to help each other.

The Sovereign is formed entirely by the individuals who make it up. Therefore, it does not and cannot have any interest that is contrary to theirs. As a result, the sovereign power doesn’t need to provide any guarantee to its subjects, because it is impossible for the body to want to harm all of its members. The Sovereign, just by being what it is, is always what it should be.

This is not the case, however, for the subjects in their relationship to the Sovereign. Even with the common interest, the Sovereign would have no guarantee that the subjects would fulfill their promises unless it found a way to ensure their loyalty.

In fact, each individual, as a person, may have a private will that is different from the general will they have as a citizen. Their private interest might tell them something completely different from the common interest. Their separate and naturally independent existence might make them view what they owe to the common cause as a free contribution, thinking that not paying it will do less harm to others than paying it will burden themself.

To make sure the social compact is not an empty formula, it silently includes one promise, which is the only thing that can give force to all the others: whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body.

This means nothing less than that they will be forced to be free.

This is the condition that, by giving each citizen to their country, protects them from all personal dependency. This is the key to how the political machine works. This alone makes civil promises legitimate. Without it, they would be absurd, tyrannical, and subject to the most awful abuses.

Chapter 8: The Civil State

The change from the state of nature to the civil state produces a remarkable change in a person. It substitutes justice for instinct in their behavior and gives their actions a morality they previously lacked.

Only then, when the voice of duty takes the place of physical impulses and right takes the place of appetite, does a person find themself forced to act on different principles and to consult their reason before listening to their desires.

Although a person in this new state loses some of the advantages they had from nature, they gain others that are so great. Their abilities are sharpened and developed, their ideas are broadened, their feelings are uplifted, and their whole soul is elevated. If the abuses of this new condition didn’t often drag them down below the state they left, they would be forced to forever bless the happy moment that took them from it. That moment turned them from a stupid and unimaginative animal into an intelligent being and a man.

Let’s look at the balance sheet in simple terms.

What a person loses by the social contract is their natural liberty (which is limited only by their own strength) and an unlimited right to everything they can get.
What a person gains is civil liberty (which is limited by the general will) and the proprietorship (true ownership) of all they possess.

We must clearly distinguish possession, which is just the result of force or being the first one there, from property, which can only be based on a legal title.

On top of all this, we could add what a person gains in the civil state: moral liberty, which alone makes them truly their own master. For the mere impulse of appetite is slavery, while obedience to a law which we prescribe to ourselves is liberty.

Chapter 9: Real Property

When the community is founded, each member gives it everything they have, including the goods they possess. This act does not mean the Sovereign takes their things. Instead, it transforms their possession into true property.

As the forces of the state are much greater than those of any individual, public possession is stronger and more secure. The state, in relation to its members, is the master of all their goods because of the social contract.

The right of the first occupier, which is weak in the state of nature, becomes a real right in civil society. To establish this right over a piece of land, three conditions are necessary:

The land must not already be inhabited.
A person must only occupy the amount they need to live on.
Possession must be taken not through some empty ceremony, but through labor and cultivation. This is the only sign of ownership that others should respect if there is no legal title.

How can a person or a people seize an immense territory and keep it from the rest of the world? This is nothing but a punishable theft, since it robs everyone else of a place to live and the food that nature gave to all in common.

The special thing about this process is that when the community takes over the goods of individuals, far from robbing them, it actually guarantees their legitimate possession. It changes their questionable claims into a true right. The owners are now seen as caretakers of the public good. Their rights are respected by all members of the state and defended against foreigners by the state’s full force. Through this deal, which benefits both the public and themselves even more, they have essentially acquired everything they gave up.

It can also happen that people unite before they own anything. They might then occupy a piece of land that is big enough for everyone and either enjoy it together or divide it among themselves equally. No matter how the land is acquired, the right that each individual has to their own property is always secondary to the right that the community has over everything. Without this, the social bond would not be stable, and the Sovereign would have no real power.

I will end this chapter and this book by pointing out a fact that the entire social system should be based on:

The fundamental agreement, instead of destroying natural inequality, substitutes a moral and legitimate equality for whatever physical inequality nature may have created between people. And people, who may be unequal in strength or intelligence, all become equal by agreement and by legal right.

BOOK II

Chapter 1: Sovereignty Cannot Be Given Away

The first and most important conclusion from the principles we have established so far is that only the general will can direct the State according to the purpose for which it was created: the common good.

It was the clash of private interests that made establishing societies necessary. It was the agreement of those same interests that made it possible.

The common ground between all these different interests is what forms the social tie. If there were no point of agreement between them all, no society could exist. It is only on the basis of this common interest that every society should be governed.

I believe, then, that Sovereignty is nothing less than the exercise of the general will. For that reason, it can never be given away or alienated. The Sovereign, which is a collective being, can only be represented by itself. Power can be transferred, but will cannot.

In reality, while it’s possible for a person’s private will to agree with the general will on some specific point, it’s impossible for that agreement to be lasting and constant.

A private will, by its nature, tends toward favoritism.
The general will, by its nature, tends toward equality.

It’s even more impossible to have a guarantee of this agreement. Even if it happened to exist all the time, it would be the result of chance, not skill. The Sovereign might say, “Right now, I happen to want what this person wants.” But it can never say, “Whatever that person wants tomorrow, I will want it too.” It’s absurd for a will to bind itself to the future.

If a people simply promises to obey a master, that act dissolves the people and makes them lose what defines them as a people. The moment a master exists, there is no longer a Sovereign. From that moment on, the body politic has ceased to exist.

This doesn’t mean that the commands of rulers can’t count as general wills. This can happen as long as the Sovereign is free to oppose the commands but chooses not to. In such a case, we can assume that universal silence implies the people’s consent. This will be explained more later.

Chapter 2: Sovereignty Cannot Be Divided

Sovereignty is indivisible for the same reason it is inalienable. A will is either general, or it isn’t. It is either the will of the whole body of the people, or only a part of it.

In the first case, this declared will is an act of Sovereignty and becomes law.
In the second case, it is merely a private will, or an act of government—at most, it’s a decree.

But our political thinkers, unable to divide Sovereignty in principle, instead divide it up by its purpose. They divide it into:

Force and will
Legislative power and executive power
Rights of taxation, justice, and war
Internal administration and the power to make treaties with foreign nations

Sometimes they mix all these parts up, and other times they separate them. They turn the Sovereign into a fantastic creature made of several connected pieces. It’s as if they were building a person out of several bodies—one with only eyes, another with only arms, another with only feet.

We’re told that Japanese jugglers can dismember a child in front of an audience, throw the limbs into the air one by one, and then the child falls back down, alive and whole. The magic tricks of our political thinkers are very similar. They dismember the body politic with an illusion, and then they join it back together, but we don’t know how.

This mistake happens because they don’t have a clear idea about what Sovereign authority is. They mistake things that are only emanations from this authority—like its effects or actions—for actual parts of it.

For example, declaring war and making peace have been seen as acts of Sovereignty. But this is wrong. These acts are not laws; they are simply the application of a law. They are specific actions that decide how a law applies.

If we looked at the other divisions in the same way, we would find that whenever Sovereignty seems to be divided, it’s an illusion. The “rights” that are mistaken for parts of Sovereignty are actually all secondary to it. They always depend on a supreme will, and they only serve to carry out its commands.

It’s impossible to measure the confusion this lack of precision has caused. Writers on political rights use their flawed principles to judge the rights of kings and peoples, and their decisions become hopelessly unclear. You can see how the scholar Grotius and his translator, Barbeyrac, tie themselves in knots with their own tricky arguments. They are afraid of saying too little or too much and offending the powerful interests they are trying to please.

Truth does not lead to a great career, and the people do not hand out ambassadorships, professorships, or pensions.

Chapter 3: Can the General Will Be Wrong?

From what we’ve discussed, it follows that the general will is always right and always aims for the public good.

But, it does not follow that the decisions of the people are always equally correct. Our will is always for our own good, but we don’t always see what that is. The people are never corrupt, but they are often deceived. It is only on those occasions that they seem to want what is bad.

There is often a big difference between the will of all and the general will.

The general will considers only the common interest.
The will of all considers private interest and is nothing more than the sum of everyone’s individual wills.

But if you take these same individual wills and subtract the pluses and minuses that cancel each other out, the general will remains as the sum of the differences.

Imagine if the people, when they were well-informed, made their decisions without the citizens communicating with each other. In that case, the grand total of all the small differences in opinion would always produce the general will, and the decision would always be good.

But when factions emerge—when small groups are formed at the expense of the larger society—the will of each of these groups becomes “general” for its own members, but it remains “particular” or private in relation to the State. In this case, you can say that there are no longer as many votes as there are men, but only as many as there are groups.

When one of these groups is so large that it overpowers all the others, the result is no longer a sum of small differences, but one single, large difference. When this happens, there is no longer a general will, and the winning opinion is purely a private one.

Therefore, for the general will to be able to express itself, it is essential that there should be no smaller societies or factions within the State. Each citizen should think only their own thoughts.

But if there have to be smaller societies, it’s best to have as many as possible and to keep them from being unequal in power. These are the only precautions that can guarantee that the general will is always clear and that the people do not deceive themselves.

Chapter 4: The Limits of Sovereign Power

If the State is a moral person whose life depends on the unity of its members, and if its most important job is its own preservation, it must have a universal and compelling force to move and arrange each part in the way that is most beneficial to the whole.

Just as nature gives each person absolute power over all their limbs, the social compact gives the body politic absolute power over all its members. This power, when directed by the general will, is what we call Sovereignty.

But, besides the public person (the State), we have to consider the private people who make it up. Their life and liberty are naturally independent of the State. So, we must distinguish clearly between the rights of the citizens and the rights of the Sovereign.

I admit that, through the social compact, each person gives up only the part of their powers, goods, and liberty that is important for the community to control. But, it must also be granted that the Sovereign is the sole judge of what is important.

Every service a citizen can provide to the State, they must provide as soon as the Sovereign demands it. But the Sovereign, for its part, cannot place any burden on its subjects that is useless to the community. For under the law of reason, just like the law of nature, nothing happens without a cause.

The promises that bind us to the social body are only mandatory because they are mutual. Their nature is such that in fulfilling them, we cannot work for others without also working for ourselves. Why is the general will always right? It is because there isn’t a single person who doesn’t think of “each person” as meaning themself when voting for all.

This proves that the general will, to be truly general, must be general in its purpose as well as in its origin. It must come from all people and apply to all people. It loses its natural correctness when it is aimed at a specific or particular person or object.

What, then, is an act of Sovereignty? It is not an agreement between a superior and an inferior. It is an agreement between the body politic and each of its members.

It is legitimate, because it’s based on the social contract.
It is equitable, because it’s common to all.
It is useful, because its only object is the general good.
It is stable, because it’s guaranteed by the public force and the supreme power.

As long as subjects only have to submit to these kinds of agreements, they obey no one but their own will.

We can see from this that the sovereign power—as absolute, sacred, and untouchable as it is—does not and cannot exceed the limits of these general agreements. Every person is free to do as they wish with the goods and liberty that these agreements leave them. The Sovereign never has a right to place a heavier burden on one subject than on another, because if it did, the matter would become particular, and it would no longer be within its power to decide.

When these distinctions are admitted, it becomes clear that there is no real “giving up” of anything in the social contract. In fact, the position people find themselves in after the contract is truly preferable to the one they were in before. Instead of giving something up, they have made an advantageous exchange.

Instead of an uncertain and risky way of life, they get one that is better and more secure.
Instead of natural independence, they get liberty.
Instead of the power to harm others, they get security for themselves.
Instead of their own strength, which others could defeat, they get a right which the social union makes unbeatable.

Chapter 5: The Right of Life and Death

The question is often asked: since individuals have no right to take their own lives, how can they transfer to the Sovereign a right which they do not possess?

The difficulty in answering this question is that it is stated incorrectly. Every person has a right to risk their own life in order to save it. Has anyone ever said that a person who jumps out of a window to escape a fire is guilty of suicide?

The social contract has one goal: the preservation of the people who make the contract. He who wants the end also wants the means, and the means must involve some risks, and even some losses. He who wishes to preserve his life at the expense of others should also, when necessary, be ready to give it up for their sake.

Furthermore, the citizen is no longer the judge of the dangers to which the law wants them to be exposed. When the ruler says, “It is beneficial for the State that you should die,” they ought to die. This is because it is only on this condition that they have been living in security up to the present. Their life is no longer merely a gift from nature, but a conditional gift from the State.

The death penalty for criminals can be seen in much the same way. It is so that we may not fall victim to a murderer that we consent to die if we ourselves become murderers. In this agreement, far from trying to dispose of our own lives, we are only thinking of securing them.

Again, every criminal, by attacking social rights, becomes a rebel and a traitor to their country. By violating its laws, they cease to be a member of it; they even make war upon it. In such a case, the preservation of the State is incompatible with their own preservation—one or the other must perish. In putting the guilty person to death, we kill not so much a citizen as an enemy.

But, it will be said, the condemnation of a criminal is a particular act. I agree. But this condemnation is not a function of the Sovereign. It is a right the Sovereign can grant to others without being able to use it itself.

We can add that frequent punishments are always a sign of weakness or laziness on the part of the government. There is not a single wrongdoer who could not be turned to some good. The State has no right to put anyone to death, even as an example, if it can let them live without danger.

The right of pardoning a guilty person belongs only to the authority which is superior to both the judge and the law: the Sovereign. And even its right in this matter is far from clear, and the cases for using it are extremely rare.

In a well-governed State, there are few punishments, not because many pardons are given, but because there are few criminals. When a State is in decay, the large number of crimes guarantees that no one will be punished.

Frequent pardons mean that soon, crime won’t need them anymore, and everyone can see where that leads. But I feel my heart protesting and holding back my pen. Let’s leave these questions to the just man who has never done wrong and would never need a pardon himself.

Chapter 6: On Law

Through the social compact, we have given the body politic its existence and life. Now, through legislation, we have to give it movement and will. The original act that forms the body doesn’t determine what it should do to survive.

What is good and follows order is good because of the nature of things, independent of human agreements. All justice comes from God, who is its only source. But if we knew how to receive guidance from such a high place, we wouldn’t need government or laws.

Of course, there is a universal justice that comes from reason alone. But for this justice to be accepted among us, it has to be mutual. Without natural consequences, the laws of justice are useless among people. They only benefit the wicked and harm the just, because the just person follows them with everyone, while nobody follows them with him.

Therefore, we need agreements and laws to connect rights with duties and to give justice a purpose. In the state of nature, where everything is common, I don’t owe anything to someone I haven’t promised anything to. I only recognize that something belongs to others if it’s of no use to me. In the state of society, all rights are defined by law, and everything is different.

But what, after all, is a law? As long as we just attach abstract philosophical ideas to the word, we will keep arguing without understanding each other. And even if we can define a law of nature, we won’t be any closer to defining a law of the State.

I have already said that there can be no general will that is aimed at a particular person or object.

But when the whole people makes a rule for the whole people, it is only considering itself. The matter being decided is general, just like the will that is deciding. This act is what I call a law.

When I say that the object of laws is always general, I mean that law looks at subjects as a group and actions in the abstract. It never focuses on a particular person or a specific action.

A law can create privileges, but it cannot give those privileges to any specific person by name.
It can set up different classes of citizens and their qualifications, but it cannot name the specific people who belong to those classes.
It can establish a monarchy and a hereditary succession, but it cannot choose a king or name a royal family.

In short, any function that has a particular object does not belong to the legislative power.

From this viewpoint, we can immediately see the answers to several big questions:

Whose job is it to make laws? The people’s, since laws are acts of the general will.
Is the ruler above the law? No, since he is a member of the State.
Can a law be unjust? No, since no one is unjust to themself.
How can we be both free and subject to the laws? Because the laws are just records of our own wills.

We also see that since a law combines a universal will with a universal object, a command from any single person, on their own, cannot be a law. Even what the Sovereign commands about a particular matter is not a law, but a decree. It’s an act of government, not of sovereignty.

I therefore give the name ‘Republic’ to every State that is governed by laws, no matter what form its administration takes. This is because only in such a case does the public interest truly govern. Every legitimate government is republican.

The people who are subject to the laws ought to be their author. But how can they regulate the conditions of their own society? Can a blind crowd, which often doesn’t know what it wants because it rarely knows what is good for it, carry out such a great and difficult project as creating a system of laws?

By itself, the people always want what is good, but by itself, it does not always see it. The general will is always right, but the judgment that guides it is not always enlightened. It must be shown the good path it is looking for and be protected from the temptation of private wills. Individuals see the good they reject; the public wants the good it does not see. All of them equally need guidance.

This makes a Legislator necessary.

Chapter 7: The Legislator

To discover the best rules of society for a nation, you would need a superior intelligence. This intelligence would have to see all the passions of men without feeling any of them. It would have to be completely separate from our nature while knowing it completely. Its happiness would have to be independent of us, yet it would still be willing to concern itself with ours.

It would take gods to give men laws.

Great princes are rare, but great legislators are much rarer. The prince only has to follow the pattern that the legislator lays down. The legislator is the engineer who invents the machine; the prince is merely the mechanic who sets it up and makes it go.

A person who dares to create a people’s institutions ought to feel capable of changing human nature itself. They must be able to transform each individual from a complete and solitary whole into a part of a greater whole. They must, in a word, take away a person’s own resources and give them new ones from the outside, which they cannot use without the help of others.

The legislator has an extraordinary position in the State. His office is not a government position, nor is it Sovereignty. This role, which sets up the Republic, is not part of its constitution. It is a special and superior function that has nothing in common with human power. He who commands the laws ought not to command men.

When the great lawgiver Lycurgus gave laws to his country of Sparta, he began by giving up the throne. It was the custom of most Greek towns to hire foreigners to establish their laws. The modern Italian Republics often did the same.

The legislator, therefore, who drafts the laws does not and should not have the right to make them law. And the people cannot, even if they wanted to, give up this non-transferable right. According to the fundamental compact, only the general will can bind individuals.

So, in the task of legislation, we find two things that seem incompatible: a project that is too difficult for human power, and an authority to carry it out that is no authority at all.

There is another difficulty. Wise men who try to speak their own complex language to the common people, instead of the people’s language, cannot possibly make themselves understood.

Since the legislator cannot use either force or reason to convince the people, he must turn to an authority of a different kind. This authority must be able to compel people without violence and persuade them without convincing them.

This is what has forced the fathers of nations, in all ages, to claim they have help from the gods. They credit the gods with their own wisdom so that the people will obey freely. They want the people to submit to the laws of the State as if they were the laws of nature.

But not just anyone can make the gods speak or be believed when he claims to be their interpreter. The great soul of the legislator is the only miracle that can prove his mission.

We should not conclude from this that politics and religion have a common object. We should conclude that in the beginning of nations, one is used as a tool for the other.

Chapter 8: The People

Before an architect puts up a large building, he surveys the ground to see if it will bear the weight. In the same way, a wise legislator does not start by writing down laws that are good in themselves. He starts by investigating whether the people for whom the laws are designed are fit to receive them.

A thousand nations have been great on Earth that could never have handled good laws. Even those that could have handled them could only have done so for a very short time.

Most peoples, like most men, are only teachable in their youth. As they get older, they become impossible to correct. Once customs are established and prejudices are deeply rooted, it is a dangerous and useless project to try to reform them.

There are, however, rare times in the history of States when violence and revolutions can have a positive effect. Just as some illnesses make people forget the past, these events can make a people forget their past with horror. The State, set on fire by civil wars, is born again from its ashes and gets back the vigor of youth. This was the case for Sparta in the time of Lycurgus and for Holland and Switzerland after they expelled their tyrants.

But such events are exceptions. They can’t even happen twice to the same people. A people can make itself free as long as it is still barbarous, but not when its civic energy has been used up. At that point, disturbances may destroy it, but revolutions cannot fix it. It needs a master, not a liberator.

Free peoples, remember this rule: “Liberty may be gained, but can never be recovered.”

There is a period of youth for nations, just as there is for men. We could call it a time of maturity, before which they should not be subjected to laws. But the maturity of a people is not always easy to recognize. If you act too soon, the work is spoiled.

Russia will never be truly civilized because it was civilized too soon. Peter the Great had a genius for imitation, but he lacked true genius, which is creative and makes everything from nothing. He wanted to make his people into Germans or Englishmen when he should have been making them into Russians. He prevented his subjects from ever becoming what they might have been by convincing them they were something they were not. The empire of Russia will aspire to conquer Europe, and will itself be conquered.

Chapter 9: The People (continued)

Just as nature has set limits to the height of a well-made man, a state can have limits that will make it neither too large for good government nor too small to maintain itself.

In every body politic, there is a maximum strength it cannot exceed. It only loses this strength by getting bigger. Every time the social tie is extended, it gets weaker. Generally speaking, a small State is proportionally stronger than a great one.

There are a thousand arguments for this principle. First, long distances make administration more difficult, just as a weight becomes heavier at the end of a longer lever.

Chapter 9: The People (continued)

The cost of running a government becomes heavier as the distance from the people grows.

First, each city has its own administration, which the people pay for.
Each district has its own, also paid for by the people.
Then comes each province, and then the great regional governments, all costing more the higher you go, and always at the expense of the unfortunate people.
Last of all comes the supreme, central administration, which overshadows everything else.

All these extra charges are a constant drain on the citizens. Far from being better governed by all these different levels, they are governed worse than if there were only a single authority over them. In the meantime, there are barely enough resources left to handle emergencies. When the state has to use these resources, it is always on the verge of ruin.

But that’s not all. A large government also has less energy and speed for enforcing laws, preventing problems, and stopping rebellions that start in faraway places.

The people also have less affection for their rulers, whom they never see. Their country feels like the whole world to them, and most of their fellow citizens are strangers. The same laws cannot suit so many different provinces with different customs and climates. Different laws only lead to trouble and confusion.

In a large state, talent is buried, virtue is unknown, and vice goes unpunished among a crowd of people who do not know one another. The leaders, overwhelmed with business, see nothing for themselves; the State is run by clerks. Finally, all the public’s energy is used up just trying to maintain authority over distant officials. This leaves no energy for the happiness of the people. There is hardly enough left to defend the country when needed.

And so, a body that is too big for its constitution collapses and is crushed under its own weight.

Also, the State must have a secure foundation if it is to be stable. All peoples have a kind of outward force that makes them constantly act against one another. They tend to expand at their neighbors’ expense. The weak are at risk of being swallowed up. It is almost impossible for any state to survive except by putting itself in a state of balance with all its neighbors, so that the pressure is practically equal on all sides.

So, you can see that there are reasons for a state to expand and reasons for it to shrink. It takes great skill for a statesman to find the balance that is best for the survival of the State. A strong and healthy constitution is the first thing to look for. It is better to count on the energy that comes from good government than on the resources that come from a large territory.

It can be added that some States have been created in such a way that the need to conquer was part of their very constitution. To survive, they were forced to expand without stopping. They may have been very happy about this fortunate need, but it also showed them the inevitable moment of their fall.

Chapter 10: The People (continued again)

A state can be measured in two ways: by the size of its territory or by the number of its people. There is a right relationship between these two measurements that makes a State truly great. The people make the State, and the territory feeds the people.

The right relationship, therefore, is that the land should be enough to support the inhabitants, and there should be as many inhabitants as the land can support. This proportion creates the maximum strength for a given number of people.

If there is too much land, it is difficult to guard and is not cultivated well. It produces more than is needed and soon leads to wars.
If there is not enough land, the State has to depend on its neighbors. This soon leads to wars of aggression.

Any people whose location gives them no choice but to choose between commerce and war is weak. It can never have more than a short and uncertain existence. It either conquers others and changes its situation, or it is conquered and becomes nothing.

No fixed ratio can be given for the right amount of land and people. This is because of differences in the quality of the land, its fertility, its products, and the climate. It is also because of the different temperaments of the people who live there.

A wise legislator should not base their decision on what they see, but on what they foresee. They should focus not so much on the current population, but on the population the state should naturally reach.

To these conditions for creating laws, we must add one more. This condition cannot replace the others, but without it, they are all useless. This is the enjoyment of peace and plenty.

The moment at which a State is organizing itself is, like the moment a battalion of soldiers is forming up, when its body is weakest and easiest to destroy. If war, famine, or rebellion happens during this time of crisis, the State will inevitably be overthrown.

Dictators always bring about or choose troubled times to pass destructive laws that the people would never accept in cold blood. The moment chosen is one of the surest ways to tell the difference between the work of a legislator and the work of a tyrant.

So, what kind of people is fit to receive laws?

A people that is already bound by some unity of origin, interest, or agreement, but has never yet felt the true burden of law.
A people that has no deeply ingrained customs or superstitions.
A people that stands in no fear of being overwhelmed by a sudden invasion.
A people in which every member can be known by every other.
A people that is neither rich nor poor, but self-sufficient.
Finally, a people that combines the stability of an ancient people with the teachability of a new one.

All these conditions are rarely found together. That is why so few States have good constitutions.

There is still one country in Europe capable of being given laws—Corsica. The bravery and persistence with which that brave people has regained and defended its liberty well deserves that some wise person should teach it how to preserve it. I have a feeling that someday that little island will astonish Europe.

Chapter 11: The Different Systems of Laws

If we ask what, exactly, is the greatest good of all, which should be the goal of every system of laws, we will find it comes down to two main objects: liberty and equality.

Liberty, because any particular dependence on another person means that much force is taken from the body of the State.
Equality, because liberty cannot exist without it.

By equality, we should not understand that the levels of power and riches are to be absolutely identical for everybody. Instead, we should understand:

That power shall never be so great that it can be used for violence. It must always be exercised according to rank and law.
That when it comes to riches, no citizen shall ever be wealthy enough to buy another, and none poor enough to be forced to sell themself.

We are told that such equality is an impractical ideal that cannot actually exist. But if its abuse is inevitable, does that mean we shouldn’t at least make rules about it? It is precisely because the force of circumstances is always trying to destroy equality that the force of lawmaking should always try to maintain it.

But these general goals of every good system of laws need to be modified in every country. They must fit the local situation and the temperament of the inhabitants. These circumstances should determine the particular system of institutions that is best, not perhaps in itself, but for the State for which it is designed.

In a word, besides the principles that are common to all, every nation has something in it that gives them a particular application and makes its system of laws uniquely its own. What makes the constitution of a State truly solid and lasting is when natural relations and the laws are always in agreement on every point.

But if the legislator makes a mistake and chooses a principle different from what circumstances naturally direct—if his principle leads to servitude while circumstances lead to liberty, or if it leads to riches while they lead to population growth—then the laws will slowly lose their influence, the constitution will change, and the State will have no rest until it is either destroyed or changed, and nature has taken back its unbeatable power.

Chapter 12: How Laws Are Divided

If the whole is to be set in order, there are various relationships to consider.

Political Laws (or Fundamental Laws): These laws regulate the relationship of the whole to the whole, or the Sovereign to the State.
Civil Laws: These laws regulate the relationship of the members to one another, or to the body as a whole. Each citizen should be perfectly independent of all the other citizens, but at the same time very dependent on the city.
Criminal Laws: These laws deal with the relationship between an individual and the law—the relationship of disobedience to its penalty. They are less a particular class of law and more the punishment that backs up all the other laws.
Morals, Customs, and especially Public Opinion: This fourth kind of law is the most important of all. It is not written on tablets of marble or brass, but on the hearts of the citizens. This forms the real constitution of the State. It gains new power every day, and when other laws die out, it restores them or takes their place. It keeps a people in the ways in which they were meant to go. This is a power unknown to most political thinkers, but success in everything else depends on it.

Of these different classes of laws, only the political laws, which determine the form of the government, are relevant to my subject.

BOOK III

On Government

Before speaking of the different forms of government, let’s try to fix the exact meaning of the word, which has not yet been very clearly explained.

Chapter 1: Government in General

I warn the reader that this chapter requires careful reading. I am unable to make myself clear to those who refuse to be attentive.

Every free action is produced by two causes working together:

A moral cause: the will which decides to do the act.
A physical cause: the power which carries it out.

When I walk towards an object, it is necessary first that I should will to go there, and second, that my feet should carry me there.

The body politic has the same motivations. Here too, force and will are distinguished.

Will is called the legislative power.
Force is called the executive power.

Without both working together, nothing is, or should be, done.

We have seen that the legislative power belongs to the people, and can only belong to the people. On the other hand, the executive power cannot belong to the people as a whole, because it consists entirely of particular acts, which are outside the scope of the law and, therefore, of the Sovereign.

The public force therefore needs an agent of its own to unite it and set it to work under the direction of the general will. This agent serves as a means of communication between the State and the Sovereign. It does for the collective person more or less what the union of soul and body does for a man. This is the basis of government in the State, which is often wrongly confused with the Sovereign. The government is only the Sovereign’s minister.

What then is government? It is an intermediate body set up between the subjects and the Sovereign to ensure they can correspond with each other. It is charged with carrying out the laws and maintaining liberty, both civil and political.

The members of this body are called magistrates or kings, that is to say, governors. The whole body has the name prince. So, those who say that the act by which a people puts itself under a prince is not a contract are certainly right. It is simply and solely a commission, a job, in which the rulers, as mere officials of the Sovereign, exercise in the Sovereign’s name the power of which it has made them the caretakers.

Chapter 1: Government in General (continued)

The Sovereign can limit, change, or take back the power it gives to the government whenever it pleases. The act of giving away such a right is incompatible with the nature of the social body and goes against the whole purpose of the association.

So, I call government, or supreme administration, the legitimate exercise of the executive power. I call the prince or magistrate the person or the body that is put in charge of that administration.

The government is where the intermediate forces reside. These forces create the relationship between the whole society and itself, or between the Sovereign and the State.

We can picture this relationship as a continuous proportion with three terms: Sovereign, Government, and People. The government is the middle term. The government gets its orders from the Sovereign and gives them to the people. For the State to be properly balanced, the power of the government must be equal to the power of the citizens, who are on the one hand the Sovereign and on the other hand the subjects.

If any of these three terms is changed, the balance is instantly destroyed.

If the Sovereign tries to govern directly…
If the government (the magistrate) tries to make laws…
If the subjects refuse to obey…

…then disorder replaces order, force and will no longer act together, and the State dissolves, falling into either dictatorship or anarchy.

Just as there is only one middle term in a mathematical proportion, there is also only one good government possible for a State. But, since countless events can change the circumstances of a people, different governments may be good for different peoples, or even for the same people at different times.

To give an idea of these relationships, I’ll use the number of people in a state as an example.

Let’s suppose the State has 10,000 citizens. The Sovereign can only be considered as a collective body. But each member, as a subject, is an individual. So, the Sovereign is to the subject as 10,000 is to 1. This means each member of the State has only a ten-thousandth share of the sovereign authority, even though they are completely under its control.

If the people number 100,000, the condition of the subject doesn’t change—they are still under the full authority of the laws. But their vote is now reduced to one hundred-thousandth of the whole, giving them ten times less influence. The subject always remains a single unit, but the ratio between them and the Sovereign grows as the number of citizens increases.

From this it follows that, the larger the State, the less liberty the individual has.

The less the private wills of the people relate to the general will—that is, the less their morals align with the laws—the more the government’s repressive force should be increased. Therefore, to be good, the government should be proportionally stronger as the population grows larger.

On the other hand, as the State grows, the people who hold public authority have more temptations and opportunities to abuse their power. So, the more force the government needs to keep the people in line, the more force the Sovereign needs to keep the government in line. I am not speaking of absolute force, but of the relative force of the different parts of the State.

It follows from this double relationship that the continuous proportion between the Sovereign, the prince, and the people is not an arbitrary idea. It is a necessary consequence of the nature of the body politic. We can see from this that there is not a single, unique, and absolute form of government. There are as many different kinds of governments as there are States of different sizes.

If, to make fun of this system, someone were to say that to find the right form of government, all I have to do is find the square root of the number of people, I would answer that I’m only using the number as an example. The relationships I’m speaking of are not just measured by the number of people, but by a general amount of “action,” which is a combination of many causes. And though I borrow the terms of geometry to save words, I know that moral quantities do not allow for geometrical precision.

The government is a small-scale version of the larger body politic that contains it. It is a moral person with its own abilities, active like the Sovereign and passive like the State.

There is an essential difference between these two bodies: the State exists by itself, but the government exists only through the Sovereign. The will of the prince should be nothing but the general will or the law. His force is only the public force concentrated in his hands. As soon as he tries to act on his own absolute and independent authority, the tie that binds the whole society together begins to loosen.

Finally, if the prince should have a private will that is more active than the will of the Sovereign, and he uses the public force to obey his own private will, there would be, so to speak, two Sovereigns—one by right and one in fact. The social union would instantly evaporate, and the body politic would be dissolved.

However, for the government to have a real existence and a real life that distinguishes it from the body of the State, it must have its own particular personality. It needs its own assemblies, councils, power to make decisions, rights, and privileges that belong only to the prince. The difficulties lie in how to organize this smaller part within the whole, so that it doesn’t alter the general constitution by asserting its own. In a word, the government must always be ready to sacrifice itself for the people, and never sacrifice the people for the government.

Chapter 2: The Principle Behind the Different Forms of Government

To explain the general cause of these differences, we must distinguish between the government and its principle, just as we earlier distinguished between the State and the Sovereign.

The body of the government may be composed of a larger or smaller number of members. We said that the bigger the population, the stronger the relationship between the Sovereign and the subjects. By a clear analogy, we can say the same of the relationship between the government and its magistrates.

But the total force of the government is always the force of the State, so it is unchangeable. This means that the more of this force the government spends on its own members, the less it has left to use on the whole people.

Therefore, the more numerous the magistrates, the weaker the government. Since this principle is fundamental, we must try to make it clear.

In the person of a magistrate, we can distinguish three essentially different wills:

The private will of the individual, which tends only to their personal advantage.
The common will of the magistrates (the corporate will), which relates only to the advantage of the prince (the government). This will is general in relation to the government, but particular in relation to the State.
The will of the people (the sovereign will), which is general in relation to both the State as a whole and the government as a part of the whole.

In a perfect system of laws, the private will should be at zero. The corporate will of the government should be in a very secondary position. The general or sovereign will should always dominate and be the sole guide of all the rest.

According to the natural order, however, the opposite happens. These different wills become more active the more concentrated they are. The general will is always the weakest, the corporate will is second, and the individual will is the strongest of all. So, in the government, each member is first of all themself, then a magistrate, and then a citizen—in an order that is the exact reverse of what the social system requires.

With this in mind, if the whole government is in the hands of one man, the private and the corporate will are wholly united. This means the corporate will is at its highest possible degree of intensity. Since the use of force depends on the intensity of the will, it follows that the most active government is that of one man.

On the other hand, suppose we unite the government with the legislative authority and make the Sovereign also the prince, and all the citizens are also magistrates. In that case, the corporate will is blended with the general will and can have no more activity than the general will. This leaves the private will as strong as it can possibly be. Thus, the government, while having the same absolute force, will be at the lowest point of its relative force or activity.

Also, it is certain that the speed of execution diminishes as more people are put in charge of it. When you are too cautious, you don’t leave enough to chance; opportunity is let slip, and the object is lost through deliberation.

I have just proved that the government grows weaker as the number of magistrates increases. I previously proved that the more numerous the people, the greater the repressive force of the government should be. From this, it follows that the larger the State, the more the government should be tightened. The number of rulers should diminish in proportion to the increase of the people.

It should be added that I am speaking here of the relative strength of the government, not of its rightness. On the one hand, the more numerous the government, the closer the corporate will comes to the general will. On the other hand, under a single ruler, the corporate will is merely a private will. Thus, what may be gained in rightness is lost in strength. The art of the legislator is to know how to fix the point at which the force and the will of the government, which are always in inverse proportion, meet in the relationship that is most advantageous to the State.

Chapter 3: The Different Kinds of Government

We saw in the last chapter what causes the various kinds of government to be distinguished by the number of members they have. It remains in this chapter to discover how this division is made.

In the first place, the Sovereign may put the government in the hands of the whole people or the majority of the people. In this case, more citizens are magistrates than are mere private individuals. This form of government is called democracy.

Or, it may restrict the government to a small number, so that there are more private citizens than magistrates. This is named aristocracy.

Lastly, it may concentrate the whole government in the hands of a single magistrate from whom all others hold their power. This third form is the most usual and is called monarchy, or royal government.

It should be noted that all these forms, or at least the first two, admit of degrees. Democracy may include the whole people or may be restricted to half. Aristocracy, in turn, may be restricted from half the people down to the smallest possible number. Even royalty can be distributed. Sparta always had two kings, as its constitution provided.

Thus, there is a point at which each form of government passes into the next. Under three main names, government can take as many diverse forms as the State has citizens.

There has always been much dispute about the best form of government, without considering that each is in some cases the best, and in others the worst.

If, in different States, the number of supreme magistrates should be in inverse ratio to the number of citizens, it follows that, generally:

Democratic government suits small States.
Aristocratic government suits those of middle size.
Monarchy suits great ones.

This rule can be deduced directly from the principle we just laid down. But it is impossible to count the innumerable circumstances which may provide exceptions.

Chapter 4: On Democracy

The person who makes the law knows better than anyone else how it should be executed and interpreted. It seems then impossible to have a better constitution than one in which the executive and legislative powers are united. But this very fact makes the government inadequate in certain ways, because things which should be separate are mixed up. The prince and the Sovereign, being the same person, form, so to speak, a government without a government.

It is not good for the lawmaker to be the law-enforcer, or for the body of the people to turn its attention away from general principles and focus on particular objects. Nothing is more dangerous than the influence of private interests in public affairs. The abuse of the laws by the government is a lesser evil than the corruption of the lawmaker, which is the inevitable result of focusing on a particular point of view. In such a case, the State is altered in its very substance, and all reform becomes impossible. A people that would never misuse governmental powers would never misuse independence. A people that would always govern well would not need to be governed.

If we take the term in its strict sense, there has never been a real democracy, and there never will be. It is against the natural order for the many to govern and the few to be governed. It is unimaginable that the people should remain continuously assembled to devote their time to public affairs. It is clear that they cannot set up commissions for that purpose without the form of administration being changed.

I can confidently state as a principle that when the functions of government are shared by several groups, the less numerous groups will, sooner or later, acquire the greatest authority, if only because they are in a position to get business done more quickly. Power thus naturally comes into their hands.

Besides, how many difficult conditions does such a government require!

Chapter 4: On Democracy (continued)

What does a democracy need to succeed? 🗳️

First, a very small State. The people must be able to get together easily, and each citizen should be able to know all the others.
Second, a great simplicity of lifestyles. This prevents business from becoming too complex and raising difficult problems.
Next, a large measure of equality in social rank and wealth. Without this, equality in rights and authority cannot last for long.
Lastly, little or no luxury. Luxury is either a product of riches or it makes them necessary. It corrupts both the rich and the poor—the rich through possession and the poor through envy. It sells out the country to softness and vanity. It takes all the citizens away from the State to make them slaves to one another, and ultimately, slaves to public opinion.

This is why a famous writer (Montesquieu) said that virtue is the fundamental principle of a Republic. All of these conditions cannot exist without virtue. But that great thinker was often imprecise. He didn’t see that since the sovereign authority is the same everywhere, the same principle of virtue should be found in every well-run State, to a greater or lesser degree.

It can be added that no government is more subject to civil wars and internal unrest than a democratic one. This is because no other form of government has such a strong and constant tendency to change, and no other requires more vigilance and courage to maintain. Under such a constitution, above all, the citizen should arm himself with strength and be constant. Every day of his life, he should say what a virtuous Polish leader once said: “Malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium.” (I prefer liberty with danger to peace with slavery.)

If there were a people of gods, their government would be democratic. So perfect a government is not for men.

Chapter 5: On Aristocracy

Here, we have two separate moral persons: the government and the Sovereign. This means we have two general wills: one that is for all the citizens, and another that is only for the members of the administration (the government). So, although the government can run its internal affairs as it pleases, it can never speak to the people except in the name of the Sovereign, that is, in the name of the people itself. This fact must not be forgotten.

The very first societies governed themselves aristocratically. The heads of families would consult with each other on public affairs. The young people would bow without question to the authority of experience. This is where names like priests, elders, and senate come from. The native peoples of North America still govern themselves this way, and their government is admirable.

But as inequality created by institutions (like wealth or power) became more important than natural inequality (like age), aristocracy became elective. Finally, when a father’s power was passed down to his children along with his property, it created “patrician” families and made government hereditary. This led to a situation where you could have senators who were only twenty years old.

So, there are three kinds of aristocracy:

Natural aristocracy. This is only suitable for simple peoples, where the elders rule.
Elective aristocracy. This is the best form, and it is what we mean by aristocracy in the proper sense.
Hereditary aristocracy. This is the worst of all governments.

Elective aristocracy is the best system. It’s the best and most natural arrangement for the wisest people to govern the many, as long as we are sure they will govern for the people’s benefit and not for their own. There is no need to multiply tools needlessly, or to get twenty thousand men to do what a hundred picked men can do even better.

But we must not forget that in an aristocracy, the government’s corporate interest begins to have more influence. There is an inevitable tendency for the laws to lose some of their executive power.

If we are speaking of what is ideal, an aristocracy should not be so small that the laws are carried out immediately by the public will, as they are in a good democracy. Nor should the nation be so large that the rulers have to spread out to govern it and can start acting like sovereigns in their own departments, eventually becoming masters.

While aristocracy doesn’t demand all the virtues that a democracy does, it demands others that are unique to it. For example, it requires moderation from the rich and contentment from the poor.

Furthermore, if this form of government includes a certain inequality of wealth, it is justified only so that the administration of public affairs can be given to those who are most able to give their whole time to it. It is not, as Aristotle claimed, so that the rich may always be put first. On the contrary, it is important that an opposite choice is occasionally made. This teaches the people that a person’s merits and abilities are more important claims to leadership than their wealth.

Chapter 6: On Monarchy

So far, we have looked at the “prince” (the government) as a collective body, united by the force of laws. Now we must consider this executive power when it is gathered into the hands of a single natural person, a real man, who alone has the right to use it according to the laws. Such a person is called a monarch or a king.

In other forms of government, a collective body stands for an individual. In a monarchy, an individual stands for a collective body. The moral unity of the prince is also a physical unity. All the qualities that are hard to bring together by law in other systems are found naturally united here.

In a monarchy, the will of the people, the will of the prince, the public force of the State, and the private force of the government all answer to a single source of power. All the springs of the machine are in the same hands, and the whole system moves toward the same end. No kind of constitution can be imagined in which less effort produces a greater amount of action. Archimedes, sitting quietly on the bank and easily pulling a great ship afloat, is my image of a skillful monarch governing vast states from his study, moving everything while he himself seems unmoved.

But while no government is more vigorous than this, there is also none in which the private will has more power and more easily rules over everything else. Everything moves toward the same end, it’s true, but this end is by no means public happiness. The force of the administration constantly works against the State.

Kings want to be absolute. From afar, people are always crying out to them that the best way to be absolute is to make themselves loved by their people. This advice is very nice, and in some ways very true. Unfortunately, it will always be laughed at in royal courts.

The power that comes from a people’s love is no doubt the greatest. But it is risky and conditional, and princes will never be content with it. The best kings want to be in a position to be wicked, if they please, without losing their power. Their main personal interest is that the people should be weak, miserable, and unable to resist them.

I admit that, as long as the subjects remained completely submissive, it would be in the prince’s interest for the people to be powerful. This is because their power, being his own, would make him a threat to his neighbors. But since this interest is secondary, and since strength is incompatible with submission, princes naturally always prefer the strategy that is to their more immediate advantage. This is what the prophet Samuel strongly warned the Hebrews about, and what Machiavelli has clearly shown. Machiavelli pretended to teach kings, but he was really teaching the people. His book, The Prince, is the book of Republicans.

We found, on general grounds, that monarchy is suitable only for great States. The more numerous the public administration, the smaller the relationship between the ruler and the subjects, and the nearer it comes to equality. In a democracy, this ratio is one-to-one, or absolute equality. But in a monarchy, the government is in the hands of a single person. The distance between the prince and the people is too great, and the State lacks a bond of union. To form this bond, there must be intermediate orders like princes, nobles, and other high-ranking people. But these class differences are ruinous for a small State.

If it is hard for a great State to be well-governed, it is much harder for it to be governed by a single man. And everyone knows what happens when kings substitute others to rule for them.

An essential and inevitable defect, which will always make monarchical government inferior to republican government, is this: in a republic, the public voice hardly ever raises men to the highest positions who are not enlightened and capable. In monarchies, however, those who rise to the top are most often merely petty blunderers, petty swindlers, and petty intriguers. Their small talents get them into the highest positions at Court, but as soon as they are there, those talents only serve to make their incompetence clear to the public. The people are far less often mistaken in their choice of leaders than the prince is.

For a monarchical State to have a chance of being well-governed, its population and size must be proportional to the abilities of its governor. It is easier to conquer than to rule. With a long enough lever, the world could be moved with a single finger; but to support it requires the shoulders of Hercules.

The most felt disadvantage in monarchical government is the lack of a continuous succession. When one king dies, another is needed. Elections leave dangerous gaps and are full of storms. To prevent these evils, crowns have been made hereditary in certain families. That is to say, the disadvantages of having a temporary regent rule have been put in place of the disadvantages of election. Apparent tranquility has been preferred to wise administration. Men have chosen to risk having children, monsters, or imbeciles as rulers, rather than having disputes over the choice of good kings.

Everything conspires to take away the sense of justice and reason from a man who is set in authority over others. We are told that much trouble is taken to teach young princes the art of reigning, but this education seems to do them no good. It would be better to begin by teaching them the art of obeying.

To see monarchy as it is, we must consider it under princes who are incompetent or wicked, because they will either come to the throne that way, or the throne will make them so.

These difficulties have not escaped other writers. The remedy, they say, is to obey without a murmur. God sends bad kings in His wrath, and they must be endured as punishments from Heaven. Such talk is doubtless inspiring, but it would be more in place in a church sermon than in a political book. What are we to think of a doctor who promises miracles, but whose only skill is to urge the sufferer to be patient? We know for ourselves that we must put up with a bad government when it is there. The real question is how to find a good one.

Chapter 7: On Mixed Governments

Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a simple government. A single ruler must have subordinate magistrates. A popular government must have a head. So, in the distribution of executive power, there is always a gradation from a greater number to a lesser number.

Sometimes the distribution is equal, as when the different parts are mutually dependent on each other, like in the government of England.

Is a simple or a mixed government better? Political writers are always debating this question. The answer is that simple government is better in itself, just because it is simple.

But when the executive power is not dependent enough on the legislative power—that is, when the prince has too much power over the Sovereign—this lack of proportion must be fixed by dividing the government. This is because all the parts will then have no less authority over the subjects, but their division makes them all together less strong against the Sovereign.

The same problem can also be prevented by appointing “intermediate magistrates.” These officials leave the government whole but have the effect of balancing the two powers and maintaining their respective rights. In this case, the government is not mixed, but moderated.

The opposite problem can also be fixed. When the government is too weak, special courts can be set up to concentrate its power. This is done in all democracies.

Chapter 7: On Mixed Governments (continued)

In the first case, the government is divided to make it weak. In the second, it is organized into special courts to make it strong. The greatest strength and the greatest weakness are both found in simple governments, while the mixed forms result in a medium level of strength.

Chapter 8: Not All Forms of Government Suit All Countries

Liberty, not being a fruit of all climates, is not within the reach of all peoples. The more you consider this principle from the writer Montesquieu, the more you feel its truth.

In all governments, the “public person” (the state) consumes things without producing them. So, where does it get what it consumes? It gets it from the labor of its members. The needs of the public are supplied by the surplus of individuals. It follows that the civil State can only survive as long as men’s labor produces more than they need.

The amount of this surplus is not the same in all countries. In some it is large, in others it’s medium, in others there is none, and in some it is even negative. This depends on the fertility of the climate, the type of labor the land demands, the nature of its products, the strength of its inhabitants, and how much they need to consume.

On the other hand, not all governments are the same. Some are more “voracious” or greedy than others. The differences between them are based on this second principle: the further that public taxes are removed from their source, the more burdensome they become.

The burden of taxes should not be measured by the amount, but by the path the money has to travel to get back to the people it came from.

When the circulation of money is fast and well-established, it doesn’t matter if you pay a little or a lot; the people are always rich and financially, all is well.
On the contrary, no matter how little the people give, if that little bit does not return to them, they are soon exhausted by constantly giving. The State is never rich, and the people are always beggars.

It follows that the greater the distance between the people and the government, the more burdensome taxes become.

In a democracy, the people bear the least burden. This suits small and poor States.
In an aristocracy, they bear a greater burden. This suits States of medium size and wealth.
In a monarchy, they bear the heaviest weight. Monarchy therefore suits only wealthy nations.

In free states, everything is used for the public advantage. In monarchies, the public forces and the private forces of individuals work against each other; one gets weaker as the other grows stronger. Finally, instead of governing subjects to make them happy, despotism makes them miserable in order to govern them.

So, in every climate, there are natural causes that determine the form of government a country requires.

Unfriendly and barren lands, where the product doesn’t pay back the labor, should remain uncultivated and empty, or be populated only by savages.
Lands where men’s labor brings in no more than the bare minimum necessary to survive should be inhabited by barbarous peoples. In such places, any form of organized politics is impossible.
Lands where the surplus is only medium are suitable for free peoples.
Lands where the soil is abundant and fertile and gives a great product for a little labor call for monarchical government. This is so the surplus of the subjects can be consumed by the luxury of the prince. It is better for this excess to be absorbed by the government than wasted by individuals.

I know there are exceptions to this, but these exceptions themselves confirm the rule. Sooner or later, they produce revolutions which restore things to the natural order.

We must also consider that the same number of men consume much less in hot countries. The climate requires them to be sober for the sake of their health. Europeans who try to live there as they do at home all die of disease. As the traveler Chardin said, “We are carnivorous animals, wolves, in comparison with the Asiatics.”

The nearer you get to the equator, the less people live on. They hardly touch meat; rice, maize, and millet are their ordinary food. There are millions of men in the Indies whose food does not cost a halfpenny a day.

Luxury in clothes shows similar differences. In climates where the seasons change quickly and violently, men have better and simpler clothes. Where they dress only for decoration, style is more important than usefulness.

Hot countries need fewer inhabitants than cold countries, and they can support more of them. This creates a double surplus, which is all to the advantage of despotism. The greater the territory occupied by a fixed number of people, the more difficult revolt becomes, because it’s impossible to coordinate quickly or secretly. The government can easily uncover projects and cut off communications.

The least populous countries are thus the most suitable for tyranny. Fierce animals reign only in deserts.

Chapter 9: The Signs of a Good Government

The question, “What is the absolute best government?” is unanswerable. There are as many good answers as there are possible combinations of situations for all nations.

But if it is asked, “By what sign can we know that a given people is well or ill governed?”—that is another matter. That question is one of fact, and it has an answer.

It is not answered, however, because everyone wants to answer it in their own way. Subjects praise public peace, while citizens praise individual liberty. One group prefers security of property, the other security of the person. One group wants crimes punished, the other wants them prevented.

For my part, I am always astonished that a sign so simple is not recognized. What is the goal of a political association? The preservation and prosperity of its members.

And what is the surest sign of their preservation and prosperity? Their numbers and population.

Seek then nowhere else for this disputed sign. All other things being equal, the government under which the citizens increase and multiply most is without question the best. The government under which a people shrinks and diminishes is the worst. Calculators, it is left for you to count, to measure, to compare.

Chapter 10: The Abuse of Government and Its Tendency to Fall Apart

Just as the private will of the government constantly acts against the general will, the government constantly pushes back against the Sovereignty. The greater this push becomes, the more the constitution changes. Sooner or later, the prince (the government) must suppress the Sovereign and break the social treaty. This is the unavoidable and built-in defect which, from the very birth of the body politic, works endlessly to destroy it, just as age and death eventually destroy the human body.

There are two general ways by which a government falls apart: when it contracts, or when the State is dissolved.

A government contracts when it passes from the many to the few; that is, from democracy to aristocracy, and from aristocracy to royalty. This is its natural tendency.

The dissolution of the State can happen in two ways.

When the prince stops administering the State according to the laws and seizes the Sovereign power. At this moment, the social compact is broken. All private citizens get back their natural liberty and are forced, but not obligated, to obey.
When the members of the government individually seize the power they should only exercise as a group. This is also a great violation of the laws and results in even greater disorders.

When the State is dissolved, the abuse of government, whatever it is, has the common name of anarchy. To be more specific:

Democracy degenerates into ochlocracy (mob rule).
Aristocracy degenerates into oligarchy (rule by a small, wealthy group).
Royalty degenerates into tyranny.

In the exact sense, a tyrant is an individual who seizes royal authority without having a right to it (a usurper). A despot is one who puts himself above the laws themselves. Thus, a tyrant might not be a despot, but a despot is always a tyrant.

Chapter 11: The Death of the Body Politic

Such is the natural and inevitable tendency of even the best-constituted governments. If Sparta and Rome perished, what State can hope to last forever? If we want to set up a long-lasting form of government, let us not even dream of making it eternal.

The body politic, just like the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born and carries within itself the causes of its own destruction. But both can have a constitution that is more or less robust and suited to preserve them for a longer or shorter time. The constitution of man is the work of nature; the constitution of the State is the work of art. It is not in men’s power to prolong their own lives, but it is in their power to prolong the life of the State as much as possible by giving it the best possible constitution.

The life-principle of the body politic lies in the sovereign authority.

The legislative power is the heart of the State.
The executive power is its brain, which causes all the parts to move.

A man’s brain may become paralyzed and he can still live. A man may remain an imbecile and live. But as soon as the heart stops performing its functions, the animal is dead.

The State survives not because of the laws, but because of the legislative power. Yesterday’s law is not binding today. But silence is taken for unspoken consent, and the Sovereign is considered to be constantly confirming the laws it does not cancel.

Why then is so much respect paid to old laws? For this very reason. We must believe that only the excellence of these old acts of will could have preserved them for so long. If the Sovereign had not recognized them as good throughout the years, it would have canceled them a thousand times. This is why, far from growing weak, the laws continually gain new strength in any well-run State. The precedent of antiquity makes them more respected every day. But wherever the laws grow weak as they become old, this proves that there is no longer a legislative power, and that the State is dead.

Chapter 12: How the Sovereign Authority Maintains Itself

The Sovereign’s only force is the legislative power. It acts only through laws. And since laws are simply the official acts of the general will, the Sovereign cannot act except when the people are assembled.

“The people in an assembly,” I will be told, “is just a fantasy.” It is today, but two thousand years ago, it was not. Has man’s nature changed?

The limits of what is possible in moral matters are not as narrow as we imagine. It is our own weaknesses, our vices, and our prejudices that confine them. Base souls have no belief in great men; vile slaves smile with mockery at the name of liberty.

Let’s judge what can be done by what has been done. I won’t say anything about the Republics of ancient Greece, but the Roman Republic was, in my mind, a great State, and the city of Rome was a great city. The last census in Rome showed four hundred thousand citizens able to bear arms.

What difficulties might we imagine would stand in the way of frequently assembling the huge population of this capital city and its surrounding areas? Yet, few weeks passed without the Roman people being in an assembly, and they often assembled several times a week. In these assemblies, they exercised not only the rights of Sovereignty, but also part of the rights of government. They dealt with certain matters and judged certain cases.

If we went back to the earliest history of nations, we would find that most ancient governments, even monarchies, had similar councils. In any case, the one indisputable fact I have given is an answer to all difficulties. It is good logic to reason from what is actual to what is possible.

Chapter 13: How the Sovereign Authority Maintains Itself (continued)

It is not enough for the assembled people to have fixed the constitution of the State once by approving a body of law. It is not enough for it to have set up a permanent government or provided for the election of officials once and for all.

Besides the special assemblies that unforeseen events might require, there must be fixed, periodic assemblies that cannot be canceled or postponed. On the proper day, the people are legitimately called together by the law itself, without needing any formal summons.

But aside from these legally scheduled assemblies, every assembly of the people that is not called by the proper officials according to the prescribed forms should be considered unlawful, and all its acts should be considered null and void.

The question of how often these lawful assemblies should happen depends on so many things that no exact rules can be given. It can only be said generally that the stronger the government is, the more often the Sovereign should show itself.

“This may work for a single town,” I will be told, “but what do we do when the State includes several towns? Should the sovereign authority be divided? Or should it be concentrated in a single town that all the others are subject to?”

I reply, neither one nor the other.

First, the sovereign authority is one and simple. It cannot be divided without being destroyed.
In the second place, one town cannot legitimately be made subject to another, any more than one nation can. The essence of the body politic lies in the balance of obedience and liberty. The words “subject” and “Sovereign” are two sides of the same coin, which come together in the single word “citizen.”

I also answer that joining several towns into a single city is always a bad idea. If we want to make such a union, we should not expect to avoid its natural disadvantages. It’s useless to complain about the problems of great States to someone who only wants to see small ones. But how can small States be given the strength to resist great ones?

If the State cannot be reduced to the right size, there is still one option left: allow no capital city. Instead, make the seat of government move from town to town, and hold the country’s assemblies in each town by turn.

Populate the territory evenly. Extend the same rights everywhere. Bring abundance and life to every part of the country. By these means, the State will become as strong and as well-governed as possible. Remember that the walls of towns are built from the ruins of the houses of the countryside. For every palace I see raised in the capital, my mind’s eye sees a whole country turned into a wasteland.

Chapter 14: How the Sovereign Authority Maintains Itself (continued again)

The moment the people are legitimately assembled as a sovereign body, the jurisdiction of the government completely stops. The executive power is suspended. The person of the humblest citizen is as sacred and untouchable as that of the highest official. This is because in the presence of the person being represented, the representatives no longer exist.

These periods of suspension, during which the prince (the government) recognizes an actual superior, have always been viewed by him with alarm. These assemblies of the people, which are the shield of the body politic and the check on the government, have at all times been the horror of rulers. Therefore, rulers never spare any effort—any objections, difficulties, or promises—to stop the citizens from having them.

When the citizens are greedy, cowardly, and timid, and love comfort more than liberty, they do not hold out for long against the relentless efforts of the government. And so, as the resisting force of the government constantly grows, the sovereign authority eventually disappears, and most cities fall and perish before their time.

Chapter 15: On Deputies or Representatives

As soon as public service stops being the chief business of the citizens, and they would rather serve with their money than with their persons, the State is not far from its fall.

When it is necessary to march out to war, they pay troops and stay at home.
When it is necessary to meet in council, they name deputies and stay at home.

Because of laziness and money, they end up with soldiers to enslave their country and representatives to sell it.

It is the hustle of commerce and the arts, the greedy self-interest of profit, and the love of comfort that cause personal services to be replaced by money payments. Men give up a part of their profits to have more time to increase them at leisure. Give gifts of money, and you will not be long without chains. The word “finance” is a slavish word, unknown in the true city-state. In a country that is truly free, the citizens do everything with their own hands and nothing with money.

The better the constitution of a State is, the more public affairs are on the minds of the citizens. In a well-ordered city, every man flies to the assemblies. Under a bad government, no one cares to take a step to get to them, because no one is interested in what happens there. They know that the general will will not win, and finally, because their domestic cares take up all their time. As soon as any man says of the affairs of the State, “What does it matter to me?” the State may be given up for lost.

Lukewarm patriotism and the activity of private interest suggested the idea of having deputies or representatives of the people in the national assemblies.

Sovereignty, for the same reason that it cannot be given away, cannot be represented. It consists essentially in the general will, and will does not admit of representation. It is either the same will, or it is a different one; there is no intermediate possibility.

The deputies of the people, therefore, are not and cannot be its representatives. They are merely its stewards. They cannot finalize any acts. Every law the people has not approved in person is null and void—it is, in fact, not a law.

The people of England think they are free, but they are grossly mistaken. They are free only during the election of members of parliament. As soon as the members are elected, slavery overtakes them, and they are nothing.

The idea of representation is modern. It comes to us from the unjust and absurd feudal system. In ancient republics, the people never had representatives; the word itself was unknown.

In Greece, everything that the people had to do, they did for themselves. They were constantly assembled in the public square. They lived in a mild climate, they were not naturally greedy, slaves did their work for them, and their great concern was with liberty. Lacking the same advantages, how can you preserve the same rights? Your harsher climates add to your needs. You sacrifice more for profit than for liberty, and you fear slavery less than poverty.

What then? Is liberty maintained only by the help of slavery? It may be so. Extremes meet. For you, modern peoples, you have no slaves, but you are slaves yourselves; you pay for their liberty with your own.

In any case, the moment a people allows itself to be represented, it is no longer free: it no longer exists.

All things considered, I do not see how it is possible from now on for the Sovereign to preserve the exercise of its rights among us, unless the city is very small.

Chapter 16: The Institution of Government Is Not a Contract

Once the legislative power is well established, the next thing is to establish the executive power.

It has been argued that the act of creating a government was a contract between the people and the rulers it sets over itself. It will be admitted, I am sure, that this is an odd kind of contract to enter into. But let us see if this view can be supported.

First, the supreme authority can no more be modified than it can be given away. To limit it is to destroy it. It is absurd and contradictory for the Sovereign to set a superior over itself.
Second, it is clear that this so-called contract between the people and certain persons would be a particular act. From this, it follows that it cannot be a law or an act of Sovereignty, and as a result, it would be illegitimate.
He who has force at his command is always in a position to control the execution. It would be like one man saying to another, “I give you all my goods, on the condition that you give me back as much of them as you please.”

There is only one contract in the State, and that is the act of association. It is impossible to imagine any other public contract that would not be a violation of the first one.

Chapter 17: How Government Is Created

So, how should we understand the act by which a government is created? I will begin by stating that the act is complex. It is composed of two other acts: the establishment of the law, and its execution.

By the first act, the Sovereign decrees that there shall be a governing body established in a certain form. This act is clearly a law.
By the second act, the people nominate the rulers who are to be put in charge of the government that has been established. This nomination is a particular act, so it is not a second law, but merely a consequence of the first and a function of the government.

The difficulty is to understand how there can be a governmental act before the government exists, and how the people, who are only Sovereign or subject, can, under certain circumstances, become a prince or a magistrate.

It is at this point that one of the astonishing properties of the body politic is revealed. It reconciles apparently contradictory operations. This is accomplished by a sudden conversion of Sovereignty into democracy. Without any noticeable change, and simply by virtue of a new relationship of all to all, the citizens become magistrates and pass from general acts to particular acts, from lawmaking to the execution of the law.

This is not some abstract theory with no examples in practice. It happens every day in the English Parliament, where the Lower House sometimes resolves itself into a “Grand Committee” to better discuss affairs. It thus changes from being a sovereign court at one moment to being a mere commission in the next.

It is, indeed, the unique advantage of democratic government that it can be established in reality by a simple act of the general will. After that, this provisional government remains in power, if this form is adopted, or it establishes in the name of the Sovereign the government that is prescribed by law. In this way, the whole proceeding is regular. It is impossible to set up a government in any other legitimate manner and in accordance with the principles we have so far laid down.

Chapter 18: How to Prevent the Government from Seizing Power

What we’ve just said confirms that the creation of a government is not a contract, but a law. The people who hold executive power are not the people’s masters, but its officers. The people can appoint them and remove them whenever they like. For these officers, it is not a matter of a contract, but of obedience. In taking on the functions the State gives them, they are only fulfilling their duty as citizens. They have no right to argue about the conditions.

Therefore, when the people set up a hereditary government—whether it’s a monarchy for one family or an aristocracy for one class—it is not a binding promise. The administration is given a temporary form, which lasts only until the people choose to order it differently.

It is true that such changes are always dangerous. The established government should never be touched except when it becomes incompatible with the public good. But this caution is a maxim of policy, not a rule of right. The State is no more bound to leave civil authority in the hands of its rulers than it is to leave military authority in the hands of its generals.

In such cases, it’s impossible to be too careful to follow all the proper procedures. This is to distinguish a regular and legitimate act from a rebellious riot, and to distinguish the will of a whole people from the shouting of a faction.

From this obligation, the prince (the ruler) gains a great advantage in keeping his power, even against the people’s wishes. He can do this without it being said that he has seized power illegally. By seeming to use only his rights, he finds it very easy to extend them. Under the excuse of “keeping the peace,” he can prevent the very assemblies that are meant to re-establish order. He takes advantage of a silence he does not allow to be broken to assume he has the support of those whom fear prevents from speaking.

This is the easy method by which every government in the world, once it is given public power, sooner or later seizes the sovereign authority.

The periodic assemblies I have already spoken of are designed to prevent or postpone this disaster. This is especially true when they do not need a formal summons, because in that case, the prince cannot stop them without openly declaring himself a law-breaker and an enemy of the State.

The opening of these assemblies, whose only purpose is to maintain the social treaty, should always begin by putting two propositions to a vote. These two questions may not be suppressed and should be voted on separately.

The first is: “Does it please the Sovereign to preserve the present form of government?”
The second is: “Does it please the people to leave its administration in the hands of those who are currently in charge of it?”

I am assuming here what I think I have already shown: that there is no fundamental law in the State that cannot be revoked, not even the social compact itself. For if all the citizens assembled with one accord to break the compact, it is impossible to doubt that it would be very legitimately broken. It would be absurd if all the citizens in an assembly could not do what each one of them can do by himself.

BOOK IV

Chapter 1: The General Will Is Indestructible

As long as several men in an assembly see themselves as a single body, they have only a single will, which is concerned with their common survival and general well-being.

In this case, all the workings of the State are vigorous and simple. Its rules are clear and bright. There are no confusing or conflicting interests. The common good is everywhere easy to see, and you only need good sense to perceive it. Peace, unity, and equality are the enemies of political tricks. Men who are upright and simple are difficult to deceive because of their simplicity. Lures and clever excuses fail to fool them.

When we see bands of peasants, among the happiest people in the world, regulating the affairs of the State under an oak tree and always acting wisely, can we help but look down on the clever methods of other nations, which make themselves famous and miserable with so much art and mystery?

A State governed this way needs very few laws. And, when it becomes necessary to create new ones, the necessity is seen by everyone.

Theorists are led into error because they only see States that have been badly constituted from the beginning. They are struck by the impossibility of applying such a simple policy to them. They make fun of all the absurdities a clever rascal might get the people of Paris or London to believe.

But when the social bond begins to loosen and the State begins to grow weak, when private interests start to make themselves felt and smaller societies start to have an influence on the larger one, the common interest changes and finds opponents. Opinion is no longer unanimous. The general will ceases to be the will of all.

Finally, when the State is on the verge of ruin and exists only in a hollow, formal way, when the social bond is broken in every heart, and the lowest private interest shamelessly grabs the sacred name of “public good,” the general will becomes mute. All men, guided by secret motives, no longer give their views as citizens, as if the State had never existed. And unjust decrees, aimed only at private interests, get passed under the name of laws.

Does it follow from this that the general will is destroyed or corrupted? Not at all. It is always constant, unalterable, and pure. But it is subordinated to other wills which overpower it.

Each man, in detaching his interest from the common interest, sees clearly that he cannot entirely separate them. But his share in the public misfortune seems tiny next to the exclusive good he aims to get for himself. Apart from this private good, he still wills the general good in his own interest, as strongly as anyone else. Even in selling his vote for money, he does not extinguish the general will in himself; he only dodges it.

The fault he commits is that of changing the state of the question and answering something different from what he is asked. Instead of saying, by his vote, “It is to the advantage of the State,” he says, “It is to the advantage of this man or this party that this view should prevail.”

Chapter 2: On Voting

From the last chapter, we can see that the way general business is managed can give a clear enough indication of the health of the body politic. The more agreement there is in the assemblies—that is, the closer opinion gets to being unanimous—the more dominant the general will is. On the other hand, long debates, disagreements, and tumult announce the rise of private interests and the decline of the State.

At the other end of the circle, unanimity returns. This is what happens when the citizens, having fallen into servitude, have lost both their liberty and their will. Fear and flattery then change votes into acclamations. Deliberation stops. All that is left is worship or cursing.

There is only one law which, by its nature, needs unanimous consent. This is the social compact. Civil association is the most voluntary of all acts. Every man is born free and his own master. No one, under any pretext, can make any man a subject without his consent.

If there are opponents when the social compact is made, their opposition does not invalidate the contract. It merely prevents them from being included in it. They are foreigners among citizens. Once the State is created, living in its territory constitutes consent. To live within the territory is to submit to the Sovereign.

Apart from this first contract, the vote of the majority always binds all the rest. This follows from the contract itself.

But it is asked: how can a man be both free and forced to conform to wills that are not his own? How are the opponents at once free and subject to laws they have not agreed to?

I answer that the question is put incorrectly. The citizen gives his consent to all the laws, including those which are passed in spite of his opposition, and even those which punish him when he dares to break any of them. The constant will of all the members of the State is the general will. By virtue of it, they are citizens and free.

When a law is proposed in the popular assembly, what the people are being asked is not exactly whether they approve or reject the proposal, but whether it is in conformity with the general will, which is their will. Each man, in giving his vote, states his opinion on that point. The general will is found by counting the votes.

When, therefore, the opinion that is contrary to my own prevails, this proves nothing more or less than that I was mistaken, and that what I thought to be the general will was not so. If my private opinion had carried the day, I would have achieved the opposite of what was my will, and in that case, I would not have been free.

This assumes, of course, that all the qualities of the general will still reside in the majority. When they cease to do so, whatever side a man may take, liberty is no longer possible.

There are two general rules that may serve to regulate how votes are counted.

First, the more serious and important the questions being discussed, the closer the opinion that is to win should approach unanimity.
Secondly, the more the matter at hand calls for speed, the smaller the required difference in the votes may be allowed to become. Where an instant decision has to be reached, a majority of one vote should be enough.

Chapter 3: On Elections

In the elections of the prince and the magistrates, which are complex acts, there are two possible ways to proceed: choice and lot (random selection). Both have been used in various republics.

“Election by lot,” says Montesquieu, “is democratic in nature.” I agree. “The lot,” he goes on, “is a way of making a choice that is unfair to nobody; it leaves each citizen a reasonable hope of serving his country.”

If we remember that the election of rulers is a function of government and not of Sovereignty, we can see why the lot is the method more natural to a democracy. In every real democracy, being a magistrate is not an advantage, but a burdensome duty that cannot fairly be imposed on one individual rather than another. The law alone can lay that duty on the person on whom the lot falls. Since the conditions are the same for all, and the choice does not depend on any human will, there is no personal preference to alter the universality of the law.

In an aristocracy, the prince chooses the prince. The government is preserved by itself, and voting by choice is rightly ordered.

Election by lot would have few disadvantages in a real democracy, in which equality would exist everywhere—in morals and talents as well as in principles and fortunes. In such a place, it would become almost a matter of indifference who was chosen. But I have already said that a real democracy is only an ideal.

When choice and lot are combined:

Positions that require special talents, such as military posts, should be filled by choice.
The lot is suitable for cases, such as judicial offices, in which good sense, justice, and integrity are enough, because in a well-run State, these qualities are common to all citizens.

Neither lot nor vote has any place in a monarchical government. The monarch is by right the sole prince and only magistrate. The choice of his lieutenants belongs to him alone.

Chapter 4: The Roman Assemblies

We do not have well-certified records of the first period of Rome’s existence. It even seems very probable that most of the stories told about it are fables. Indeed, the most instructive part of the history of peoples—that which deals with their foundation—is what we have the least of.

The customs we find established at least show that these customs had an origin. The traditions that go back to those origins, that have the greatest authorities behind them, and that are confirmed by the strongest proofs, should be considered the most certain. These are the rules I have tried to follow in asking how the freest and most powerful people on earth exercised its supreme power.

After the foundation of Rome, the new-born republic was divided into three classes, which, from this division, took the name of tribes.

Chapter 4: The Roman Assemblies

We don’t have well-certified records of the first period of Rome’s existence. It seems very probable that most of the stories told about it are fables. In fact, the most instructive part of a people’s history—the part that deals with their founding—is what we know the least about.

But the customs we find established at least show that these customs had an origin. The traditions that go back to those origins, that are backed by the greatest authorities, and that are confirmed by the strongest proofs, should be considered the most certain. These are the rules I have tried to follow in asking how the freest and most powerful people on earth exercised their supreme power.

The First Division: By Tribe

After the founding of Rome, the new-born republic—that is, the army of its founder, made up of Albans, Sabines, and foreigners—was divided into three classes. From this division, these classes took the name of tribes. Each of these tribes was subdivided into ten curiæ, and each curia was further divided into smaller groups.

Out of each tribe, a body of one hundred horsemen, or Knights, was taken. This was called a century. This shows that these divisions, which weren’t really necessary in a town, were at first just for military purposes. But it seems an instinct for greatness led the small town of Rome to provide itself in advance with a political system suitable for the capital of the world.

The Problem with the Tribes and Servius’s Solution

An awkward situation soon arose from this original division. The tribes of the Albans and the Sabines always remained the same size. But the tribe of the foreigners continually grew as more and more foreigners came to live at Rome. It soon surpassed the other two in strength.

A king named Servius fixed this dangerous problem by changing the whole principle of division. Instead of dividing people by their race, which he abolished, he created a new division based on the quarter of the town where each tribe lived.

Instead of three tribes, he created four. Each one occupied and was named after one of the hills of Rome.
In order that the division was about people as well as places, he forbade the inhabitants of one quarter from moving to another. This prevented the races from mixing.

He also doubled the three old centuries of Knights and added twelve more, but he kept the old names. With this simple and wise method, he successfully made a distinction between the body of Knights and the rest of the people, without the people complaining.

To these four “urban” tribes, Servius added fifteen others called “rural” tribes, because they were made up of people who lived in the country. Later, fifteen more were created. The Roman people finally found itself divided into thirty-five tribes, and it remained that way until the end of the Republic.

City Tribes vs. Country Tribes: A Surprising Result

The distinction between the urban tribes and the rural tribes had an effect that is worth mentioning because it has no parallel anywhere else. It is this distinction that Rome owed for the preservation of its morality and the growth of its empire.

We would expect that the urban tribes would soon grab all the power and honors and look down on the rural tribes. But what happened was the exact opposite.

The early Romans had a well-known taste for country life. They owed this taste to their wise founder, who made rural and military work go along with liberty. He assigned things like arts, crafts, political intrigue, and slavery to the town.

Since all of Rome’s most illustrious citizens lived in the fields and farmed the earth, people grew used to looking there for the pillars of the republic. The simple and hard-working life of the villager was preferred to the lazy and idle life of the city-dweller. A man who would have been just a poor worker in the city became a respected citizen as a laborer in the fields.

Pliny, a Roman author, states positively that the country tribes were honored because of the men who composed them. Cowards whom people wished to dishonor were transferred to the town tribes as a public disgrace. Freed slaves always entered the urban tribes, never the rural ones. Throughout the entire history of the Republic, there is not a single example of a freed slave, even after becoming a citizen, reaching any high office.

The Corruption of the Tribal System

This was an excellent rule, but it was carried so far that it eventually led to an abuse in the political system.

First, the Censors, who were high-ranking officials, claimed the right to transfer citizens from one tribe to another. After a while, they allowed most people to enroll themselves in whatever tribe they pleased. This permission did no good and robbed the office of Censor of one of its greatest powers.

Moreover, since the great and powerful people all got themselves enrolled in the country tribes, while the freedmen who had become citizens remained with the common people in the town tribes, both types of tribes soon lost any real geographical meaning. They became so confused that the members of one could not be told from another except by looking at the official registers. The idea of the word “tribe” became personal instead of geographical.

It also happened that the town tribes, being closer to the action, were often stronger in the assemblies. They sold the State to those who were willing to stoop to buy the votes of the common rabble who composed them.

The Second Division: By Curia

Since the founder, Romulus, had set up ten curiæ in each of the three original tribes, the whole Roman people living within the city walls consisted of thirty curiæ. Each had its own temples, gods, officers, and priests.

When Servius made his new division into four urban tribes, he could not divide the thirty curiæ equally among them. Unwilling to interfere with them, the curiæ became another, separate division of the inhabitants of Rome. But for the rural tribes, there was no question of curiæ, as the tribes had by then become a purely civil institution. Thus, although every citizen was enrolled in a tribe, there were very many who were not members of a curia.

The Third Division: By Wealth (The Centuries)

Servius made yet a third division, which became the most important of all. He distributed the whole Roman people into six classes, distinguished not by place or by person, but by wealth.

The first classes included the rich.
The last class included the poor.
Those in between were people of moderate means.

These six classes were subdivided into 193 other bodies, called centuries. They were divided in such a way that the first class alone contained more than half of them, while the last class contained only one.

The result was that the class with the smallest number of people had the largest number of centuries. The entire last class, which included more than half the inhabitants of Rome, was only counted as a single subdivision. In this system, decisions were regulated far more by the depth of purses than by the number of votes.

To make this arrangement less obvious, Servius tried to give it a military tone. In each class, except the last, he distinguished between the young and the old—that is, those who were obligated to bear arms and those who were legally exempt. He ordered that the assembly should be held on the Campus Martius (the Field of Mars), and that all who were of age to serve should come there armed.

The reason he didn’t make this young/old distinction in the last class was that the common people, of whom it was composed, were not given the right to bear arms for their country. A man had to own a home to acquire the right to defend it.

How the Assemblies (Comitia) Worked

When lawfully summoned, these assemblies were called comitia. They were usually held in the public square or on the Campus Martius. They were distinguished as:

Comitia Curiata (based on the Curiæ)
Comitia Centuriata (based on the Centuries)
Comitia Tributa (based on the Tribes)

No law was approved and no magistrate was elected except in the comitia. Since every citizen was enrolled in a curia, a century, or a tribe, it follows that no citizen was excluded from the right of voting. The Roman people were truly sovereign both by law and in fact.

A Comparison of the Three Assemblies

Comitia Curiata: Founded by Romulus, this assembly eventually fell into disrepute. Under the Republic, it only included the common people of Rome and was only useful for furthering tyranny and evil designs. Its power degraded so much that thirty officials would just assemble and do what the assembly was supposed to have done.
Comitia Centuriata: This assembly, divided by wealth, was so favorable to the aristocracy that it’s hard to see how the senate ever failed to win. The first class, the richest, had a majority of the votes all by itself. When all the centuries in this class agreed, the rest of the votes weren’t even taken.
- This extreme authority was balanced in two ways. First, many non-patricians were also in the wealthy class. Second, instead of having the centuries vote in order of wealth, they would choose one century by lot (randomly) to vote first. This gave the authority of example to chance, a democratic principle, instead of to rank.
Comitia Tributa: This was the true council of the Roman people. It was called only by the Tribunes, who were elected there. The senate had no right to even be present. In this assembly, votes were counted by head, where the poorest citizen was as good as the leader of the senate.

Of the three, the Comitia Tributa were the most favorable to popular government, and the Comitia Centuriata were the most favorable to aristocracy. It is indisputable that the whole majesty of the Roman people lay solely in the Comitia Centuriata, because it was the only assembly that included everyone.

How the Romans Voted

As for the method of taking the vote, it was as simple as their morals. Each man declared his vote aloud, and a clerk wrote it down. This custom was good as long as honesty was triumphant among the citizens.

But when the people grew corrupt and votes were bought, it was fitting that voting should be secret. This was so that those buying votes could be restrained by mistrust, and so that rogues could be given a way to not be traitors.

I know that the writer Cicero attacked this change to secret ballots, and blamed it for the ruin of the Republic. But I cannot agree with him. I believe, on the contrary, that for want of enough such changes, the destruction of the State was hastened. Just as the lifestyle of a healthy person does not suit the sick, we should not wish to govern a corrupted people with the same laws that a good people requires.

The citizens were therefore provided with tablets, by which each man could vote without anyone knowing how he voted. New methods were also introduced for collecting the tablets and counting the votes. But all these precautions did not prevent the officers in charge from often being suspected of fraud. Finally, to prevent intrigues and vote-trafficking, new laws were issued, but their very number proves how useless they were.

Chapter 4: The Roman Assemblies (continued)

Sometimes an assembly was called together hastily before candidates had time to form their political factions. Sometimes, a whole meeting was taken up with talk when it was seen that the people had been won over and were about to make a wrong decision.

But in the end, ambition found a way around all attempts to check it. And the most incredible fact of all is that, in the midst of all these abuses, the vast Roman people, thanks to its ancient regulations, never stopped electing officials, passing laws, judging cases, and carrying out both public and private business, almost as easily as the senate itself could have done.

Chapter 5: The Tribunate: A Check on Power

When an exact balance cannot be established between the different parts of the State, a special office is created. This office, which I will call the tribunate, does not have a corporate unity with the rest of the government. Its purpose is to provide a link or a middle term between the ruler and the people, or the ruler and the Sovereign.

This body is the preserver of the laws and of the legislative power.

Sometimes it serves to protect the Sovereign against the government, as the tribunes of the people did in Rome.
Sometimes it serves to uphold the government against the people, as the Council of Ten did in Venice.
Sometimes it serves to maintain the balance between the two, as the Ephors did in Sparta.

The tribunate is not a constitutional part of the city. It should have no share in either the legislative or the executive power. But this very fact makes its own power greater. For, while it can do nothing, it can prevent anything from being done. As the defender of the laws, it is more sacred and more respected than the prince who executes the laws or the Sovereign which creates them.

A wisely balanced tribunate is the strongest support a good constitution can have. But if its strength is even a little excessive, it upsets the whole State. Weakness, on the other hand, is not natural to it. As long as it is something, it is never less powerful than it should be.

It degenerates into tyranny when it seizes the executive power, which it should only restrain, and when it tries to ignore the laws, which it should only protect. The immense power of the Spartan Ephors, which was harmless as long as Sparta kept its morality, hurried the city’s corruption once it had begun. Rome perished in the same way. The excessive power of the tribunes, which they had seized by degrees, finally served as a safeguard for the very emperors who destroyed liberty.

The tribunate, like the government, grows weak as the number of its members increases. When the tribunes of the Roman people, who first numbered only two and then five, wished to double that number, the senate let them do so. The senate was confident that it could use one to check another, which it later did.

The best way to prevent a powerful body like this from seizing power would be to not make it permanent. Instead, the law should set regular periods during which the office should be suspended. These breaks, which should not be long enough to let abuses grow strong, can be fixed by law so that they can easily be shortened if an emergency requires it.

This method seems to me to have no disadvantages. Since the tribunate is not part of the constitution, it can be removed without affecting the constitution. It also seems effective, because a newly restored official starts not with the power his predecessor had, but with the power the law allows him.

Chapter 6: The Dictatorship: Emergency Powers

The inflexibility of the laws, which prevents them from adapting to circumstances, may, in certain cases, make them disastrous. At a time of crisis, they might bring about the ruin of the State. The orderly and slow procedures they require take time, which circumstances sometimes do not allow.

It is wrong, therefore, to want to make political institutions so strong that it’s impossible to suspend their operation. Even Sparta allowed its laws to be temporarily set aside.

However, only the greatest dangers can justify changing the public order. The sacred power of the laws should never be stopped except when the very existence of the country is at stake. In these rare and obvious cases, public security is provided for by a special act. This act entrusts security to the person who is most worthy. This can be done in one of two ways, depending on the nature of the danger.

If simply increasing the activity of the government is enough, power is concentrated in the hands of one or two of its members. In this case, the authority of the laws is not changed, only the way they are administered.
If the danger is so great that the laws themselves are an obstacle to survival, the method is to nominate a supreme ruler—a dictator—who shall silence all the laws and suspend the sovereign authority for a moment. In such a case, the general will is not in doubt. It is clear that the people’s first intention is that the State shall not perish. The dictator can do anything, except make laws.

The Roman senate used the first method. It would charge its consuls to provide for the safety of the Republic. The second method was used when one of the two consuls nominated a dictator.

In the early days of the Republic, the dictatorship was used very often because the State did not yet have a firm enough foundation to survive on its own. There was no fear that a dictator would abuse his authority or try to keep it beyond his term. On the contrary, the power seemed so burdensome to the person who held it that he would hurry to lay it down.

Therefore, the danger was not of its abuse, but of its cheapening. Because it was used so freely for minor functions, there was a danger of it becoming less feared in a time of real need. People grew accustomed to seeing it as an empty title.

Toward the end of the Republic, the Romans became unreasonably cautious in their use of the dictatorship. It is easy to see that their fears were baseless. A dictator, in certain cases, could defend public liberty, but could never endanger it. The chains of Rome would be forged not in Rome itself, but in her armies far away.

This misunderstanding led the Romans to make great mistakes, such as failing to nominate a dictator during the Catilinarian conspiracy. The consul Cicero, in order to take effective action, was forced to exceed his powers. He was later justly called to account for the blood of citizens spilled in violation of the laws. Such a criticism could never have been leveled at a dictator. But Cicero, Roman though he was, loved his own glory more than his country.

However this important trust is given, it is important that its duration should be fixed to a very brief period that can never be prolonged. In the crises that lead to its adoption, the State is either soon lost or soon saved. Once the immediate need has passed, the dictatorship becomes either tyrannical or useless. At Rome, where dictators held office for six months only, most of them abdicated before their time was up. The dictator had only enough time to deal with the emergency that had caused him to be chosen; he had no time to think of other projects.

Chapter 7: The Censorship: The Voice of Public Opinion

As the law is the declaration of the general will, the censorship is the declaration of the public judgment, or public opinion. Public opinion is the kind of law which the censor administers.

The censor’s tribunal, far from being the judge of the people’s opinion, only declares it. As soon as the censor’s judgment and public opinion part company, the censor’s decisions are null and void.

It is useless to distinguish the morality of a nation from the things it respects. Both depend on the same principle. Men always love what is good, or what they find good. It is in judging what is good that they go wrong. This judgment, therefore, is what must be regulated.

The opinions of a people are derived from its constitution. Although the law does not regulate morality, it is legislation that gives birth to morality. When legislation grows weak, morality degenerates.

From this it follows that the censorship may be useful for preserving morality, but can never be useful for restoring it. Censors should be appointed while the laws are strong. As soon as the laws have lost their strength, all hope is gone.

The censorship upholds morality by preventing opinion from growing corrupt and by preserving its correctness through wise applications. For example, the use of “seconds” in duels was a wild trend in France. It was ended simply by these words in a royal edict: “As for those who are cowards enough to call upon seconds.” This judgment, by anticipating the public’s judgment, suddenly decided it. But when the same source tried to pronounce dueling itself an act of cowardice, the public, which did not agree, took no notice.

It is impossible to admire too much the art with which this resource was used by the Romans and the Spartans. When a man of bad morals made a good proposal in the Spartan Council, the Ephors ignored it. Instead, they had a virtuous citizen make the same proposal. What an honor for the one, and what a disgrace for the other, without a word of praise or blame for either!

Chapter 8: On Civil Religion

At first, men had no kings except the gods, and no government except theocracy (rule by God). It takes a long time for feelings to change so much that men can decide to take their equals as masters, in the hope that they will benefit by doing so.

From the simple fact that a god was placed over every political society, it followed that there were as many gods as there were peoples. National divisions thus led to polytheism, and this in turn gave rise to religious and civil intolerance.

If it is asked how in pagan times, when each State had its own cult and its own gods, there were no wars of religion, I answer that it was precisely because each State, having its own cult as well as its own government, made no distinction between its gods and its laws. Political war was also theological war. The provinces of the gods were, so to speak, fixed by the boundaries of nations. The god of one people had no right over another. The gods of the pagans were not jealous gods; they shared the empire of the world among themselves.

But when the Jews, while subject to the kings of Babylon and later Syria, stubbornly refused to recognize any god except their own, their refusal was seen as rebellion against their conqueror. This drew upon them the persecutions we read of in their history, which have no parallel until the coming of Christianity.

Every religion, therefore, was attached solely to the laws of the State that prescribed it. There was no way of converting a people except by enslaving them. The only missionaries were conquerors. The obligation to change cults was the law to which the defeated yielded.

Finally, when the Romans spread their empire, they also spread their cult and their gods. They often adopted the gods of the people they conquered. The peoples of that vast empire slowly found themselves with multitudes of gods and cults that were almost the same everywhere. Thus, paganism throughout the known world finally came to be one and the same religion.

It was in these circumstances that Jesus came to establish a spiritual kingdom on earth. By separating the theological system from the political system, this made the State no longer unified. It brought about the internal divisions which have never ceased to trouble Christian peoples.

This new idea of a kingdom of the “other world” could never have occurred to pagans. They always looked on the Christians as true rebels who, while pretending to submit, were only waiting for the chance to make themselves independent and masters. This was the cause of the persecutions.

What the pagans had feared came to pass.

Chapter 8: On Civil Religion (continued)

Then everything changed. The humble Christians changed their language. Soon, this so-called “kingdom of the other world” turned into the most violent of earthly dictatorships, led by a visible leader (the Pope).

However, since there have always been a prince and civil laws, this double power and conflict of authority have made any good system of government impossible in Christian States. Men have never succeeded in figuring out whether they were supposed to obey the master or the priest.

Several peoples have tried without success to preserve or restore the old system, where political and religious power were one. But the spirit of Christianity has won everywhere. The sacred cult has always remained independent of the Sovereign.

The prophet Mahomet had very sensible views and linked his political system together well. As long as the form of his government continued under the caliphs who succeeded him, that government was unified and, in that respect, good. But the Arabs, having grown prosperous, educated, civilized, lazy, and cowardly, were conquered by barbarians. The division between the two powers began again.

Among us, the Kings of England have made themselves heads of the Church, and the Czars of Russia have done the same. But this title has made them less its masters than its ministers. They have gained not so much the right to change it as the power to maintain it. They are not its legislators, but only its princes. Wherever the clergy is an organized corporate body, it is the master and lawmaker in its own country. There are thus two powers, two Sovereigns, in England and in Russia, just as there are elsewhere.

Of all Christian writers, the philosopher Hobbes alone saw this evil and how to fix it. He dared to propose that the two heads of the eagle—the church and the state—be reunited. He called for the restoration of political unity, without which no State or government will ever be properly formed. But he should have seen that the masterful spirit of Christianity is incompatible with his system, and that the interest of the priests would always be stronger than that of the State. It is not so much what is false and terrible in his political theory, but what is just and true, that has drawn so much hatred upon it.

I believe that if the study of history were developed from this point of view, it would be easy to disprove the opposing opinions of thinkers like Bayle and Warburton. Bayle holds that religion can be of no use to the body politic, while Warburton maintains that Christianity is its strongest support. We should demonstrate to the former that no State has ever been founded without a religious basis. We should demonstrate to the latter that the law of Christianity, at its core, does more harm by weakening the constitution of the State than good by strengthening it. To make myself understood, I only need to make the too-vague ideas of religion more exact.

Three Kinds of Religion

Religion, considered in relation to society, can be divided into two kinds: the religion of man and that of the citizen.

The Religion of Man: This is the religion of the Gospel, pure and simple. It has no temples, no altars, no rituals. It is confined to the purely internal worship of the supreme God and the eternal obligations of morality. This is true theism, or what may be called natural divine law.
The Religion of the Citizen: This religion is established in a single country. It gives that country its own gods and its own special patrons. It has its dogmas, its rituals, and its external worship prescribed by law. For this religion, everyone outside the single nation that follows it is an infidel, a foreigner, a barbarian. The duties and rights of man extend only as far as its own altars. This was the religion of all early peoples.
The Religion of the Priest: This is a third, more bizarre kind of religion. It gives men two sets of laws, two rulers, and two countries. It subjects them to contradictory duties and makes it impossible for them to be faithful both to their religion and to their citizenship. The religions of the Lamas and of the Japanese are like this, and so is Roman Christianity. It leads to a sort of mixed and anti-social system that has no name.

The Flaws of Each Religion

In their political aspect, all these three kinds of religion have their defects.

The third kind (the priest’s religion) is so clearly bad that it is a waste of time to prove it. Anything that destroys social unity is worthless. All institutions that set a man in contradiction with himself are worthless.

The second kind (the citizen’s religion) is good in that it unites the divine worship with a love of the laws. By making the country the object of the citizens’ adoration, it teaches them that service done to the State is service done to its protective god. It is a form of theocracy, in which there can be no high priest except the prince, and no priests except the government officials. To die for one’s country then becomes martyrdom.

On the other hand, it is bad in that, being founded on lies and error, it deceives men and makes them credulous and superstitious. It is also bad when it becomes tyrannical and intolerant, making a people bloodthirsty, so that it breathes fire and slaughter and sees it as a sacred act to kill everyone who does not believe in its gods. This places such a people in a natural state of war with all others, which deeply endangers its own security.

There remains, therefore, the religion of man, or Christianity—not the Christianity of today, but that of the Gospel, which is entirely different. By means of this holy, sublime, and real religion, all men, being children of one God, recognize one another as brothers.

But this religion, having no particular relation to the body politic, leaves the laws with only the force they have in themselves without adding anything to it. Even worse, far from binding the hearts of the citizens to the State, it takes them away from all earthly things. I know of nothing more contrary to the social spirit.

A Society of True Christians

We are told that a people of true Christians would form the most perfect society imaginable. I see in this idea only one great difficulty: a society of true Christians would not be a society of men.

I say further that such a society, with all its perfection, would be neither the strongest nor the most lasting. The very fact that it was perfect would rob it of its bond of union. The flaw that would destroy it would lie in its very perfection.

Everyone would do his duty. The people would be law-abiding, the rulers just, the soldiers would scorn death, and there would be no vanity or luxury. So far, so good. But let us hear more.

Christianity as a religion is entirely spiritual, concerned only with heavenly things. The country of the Christian is not of this world. He does his duty, indeed, but he does it with a profound indifference to the good or ill success of his efforts. As long as he has nothing to blame himself for, it matters little to him whether things go well or ill here on earth. If the State is prosperous, he hardly dares to share in the public happiness, for fear he may grow proud. If the State is failing, he blesses the hand of God that is hard upon His people.

For the State to be peaceful, all the citizens without exception would have to be good Christians. If by ill hap there should be a single self-seeker or hypocrite, like a Catiline or a Cromwell, he would certainly get the better of his pious countrymen. Christian charity does not easily allow a man to think badly of his neighbors.

If war breaks out with another State, the citizens march readily out to battle. Not one of them thinks of fleeing. They do their duty, but they have no passion for victory. They know better how to die than how to conquer. What does it matter whether they win or lose?

But I am mistaken in speaking of a “Christian republic”; the terms are mutually exclusive. Christianity preaches only servitude and dependence. Its spirit is so favorable to tyranny that tyranny always profits from it. True Christians are made to be slaves, and they know it and do not much mind. This short life counts for too little in their eyes.

A Civil Profession of Faith

But, setting aside political considerations, let’s come back to what is right. The right which the social compact gives the Sovereign over the subjects does not go beyond the limits of public usefulness. The subjects, then, owe the Sovereign an account of their opinions only to the extent that those opinions matter to the community.

It matters very much to the community that each citizen should have a religion that will make him love his duty. But the dogmas of that religion concern the State and its members only so far as they relate to morality and to the duties which the person who professes them is bound to do to others.

There is, therefore, a purely civil profession of faith. The Sovereign should fix the articles of this faith, not exactly as religious dogmas, but as social sentiments without which a man cannot be a good citizen or a faithful subject.

While the Sovereign can compel no one to believe them, it can banish from the State whoever does not believe them. It can banish him not for being impious, but for being anti-social and incapable of truly loving the laws and justice. If anyone, after publicly recognizing these dogmas, behaves as if he does not believe them, let him be punished by death. He has committed the worst of all crimes: that of lying before the law.

The dogmas of the civil religion ought to be few, simple, and stated precisely, without explanation or commentary.

Its positive dogmas are: The existence of a mighty, intelligent, and benevolent God, possessed of foresight and providence; the life to come; the happiness of the just; the punishment of the wicked; the sanctity of the social contract and the laws.
Its negative dogmas I confine to one: intolerance. Intolerance is a part of the cults we have rejected.

Those who distinguish civil intolerance from theological intolerance are, in my mind, mistaken. The two forms are inseparable. It is impossible to live at peace with those we regard as damned. To love them would be to hate God who punishes them.

Now that there is and can be no longer an exclusive national religion, tolerance should be given to all religions that tolerate others, so long as their dogmas contain nothing contrary to the duties of citizenship. But whoever dares to say, “Outside the Church is no salvation,” ought to be driven from the State, unless the State is the Church, and the prince is the high priest. Such a dogma is good only in a theocratic government; in any other, it is fatal.

Chapter 9: Conclusion

Now that I have laid down the true principles of political right and tried to give the State a basis of its own to rest on, I ought next to strengthen it by its external relations. This would include the law of nations, commerce, the right of war and conquest, public right, leagues, negotiations, treaties, and so on. But all this forms a new subject that is far too vast for my narrow scope. I ought to have kept to a more limited sphere throughout.

A Discourse on the Moral Effects of the Arts and Sciences

(This essay won the prize at the Academy of Dijon in 1750.)

The Question Proposed by the Academy:

Has the Restoration of the Arts and Sciences Had a Purifying Effect Upon Morals?

Preface

The following pages contain a discussion of one of the most sublime and interesting of all moral questions. We now have to do with one of those truths on which the happiness of mankind depends.

I foresee that I shall not readily be forgiven for the position I have taken. Setting myself up against all that is most admired nowadays, I can expect nothing less than a universal outcry against me. But I have taken my stand, and I will not go to any trouble to please either intellectuals or men of the world.

There are in all ages men who are born to be in bondage to the opinions of the society in which they live. An author who has a mind to outlive his own age should not write for such readers.

A word more and I am done. Since sending in my Discourse, I had so altered and enlarged it as to almost make it a new work. But under the circumstances, I have felt bound to publish it just as it was when it received the prize. I have only added a few notes and left two small alterations.

The Discourse

The question before me is, “Whether the Restoration of the arts and sciences has had the effect of purifying or corrupting morals.”

Which side am I to take? That, gentlemen, which is fitting for an honest man, who is aware of his own ignorance and thinks himself none the worse for it.

I feel the difficulty of treating this subject properly before the court which is to judge me. How can I presume to belittle the sciences before one of the most learned assemblies in Europe, praise ignorance in a famous Academy, and reconcile my contempt for study with the respect due to the truly learned?

I was aware of these inconsistencies, but I was not discouraged by them. “It is not science,” I said to myself, “that I am attacking. It is virtue that I am defending, and I am doing it before virtuous men.”

What then have I to fear? The wisdom of the assembly before which I am pleading? That, I acknowledge, is to be feared, but more on account of the faults in my writing than of the views I hold. Just sovereigns have never hesitated to rule against themselves in doubtful cases. Indeed, the most advantageous situation for a just claim is to be laid before a just and enlightened judge who is ruling in his own case.

And this is my final point: as I have upheld the cause of truth to the best of my natural abilities, whatever my apparent success, there is one reward which cannot fail me. That reward I shall find in the bottom of my heart.

Part One

It is a noble and beautiful sight to see man raising himself up, so to speak, from nothing by his own efforts. It is wonderful to see him use the light of reason to scatter the thick clouds in which he was naturally wrapped. He mounts above himself, soaring in thought to the heavens. He strides like the sun across the vast expanse of the universe.

And, what is still grander and more wonderful, he goes back into himself to study his own nature, his duties, and his purpose. We have seen all these miracles renewed within the last few generations.

A Beautiful Spectacle: The Rise of Modern Man

Europe had fallen back into the barbarism of the earliest ages. The inhabitants of this part of the world, which is now so highly enlightened, were plunged some centuries ago into a state even worse than ignorance. A kind of scientific jargon, more despicable than mere ignorance, had taken the name of knowledge and created an almost unbeatable obstacle to its restoration.

Things had come to such a state that it required a complete revolution to bring men back to common sense. This revolution came at last from the quarter from which it was least expected. It was the “stupid” Muslims, the eternal enemy of literature, who were the direct cause of its revival among us. The fall of the throne of Constantine brought the relics of ancient Greece to Italy. France, in turn, was enriched with these precious treasures.

The sciences soon followed literature, and the art of thinking joined the art of writing. This may seem like a strange order, but perhaps it is only too natural. The world now began to see the main advantage of interacting with the Muses (the arts): it made mankind more sociable by inspiring them with the desire to please one another.

The mind, as well as the body, has its needs. The needs of the body are the foundation of society; the needs of the mind are its ornaments.

The Chains of Civilization

As long as government and law provide for the security and well-being of people in their common life, the arts, literature, and the sciences—less tyrannical but perhaps more powerful—fling garlands of flowers over the iron chains which weigh people down.

They stifle in men’s hearts that sense of original liberty for which they seem to have been born. They cause them to love their own slavery, and so make of them what is called a “civilized people.”

Necessity created thrones; the arts and sciences have made them strong. You powers of the earth, cherish all talents and protect those who cultivate them! And you civilized peoples, cultivate these pursuits. To them, you happy slaves, you owe the delicate and exquisite taste which you boast of. You owe them the sweetness of character and politeness of manners which make social life so easy and agreeable among you. In a word, you owe them the appearance of all the virtues, without being in possession of a single one.

The Appearance of Virtue

It was for this kind of accomplishment that Athens and Rome were so distinguished in the celebrated times of their splendor. It is doubtless in this same way that our own age and nation will excel all others. We have an air of philosophy without being pedantic, and a manner that is both natural and engaging.

What happiness it would be if our external appearance were always a true mirror of our hearts, if our sense of propriety were virtue, if the principles we professed were the rules of our conduct!

But so many good qualities too seldom go together. Virtue rarely appears in so much pomp and ceremony. Richness of clothing may announce a man of fortune, and elegance may announce a man of taste. But true health and manliness are known by different signs. It is under the simple, homespun cloth of the laborer, and not underneath the gold and tinsel of the courtier, that we should look for strength and vigor of body.

External ornaments are just as foreign to virtue, which is the strength and activity of the mind. The honest man is an athlete who loves to wrestle stark naked. He scorns all those vile decorations that prevent him from using his strength, and which were, for the most part, invented only to hide some deformity.

Before Art vs. After Art

Before art had molded our behavior and taught our passions to speak an artificial language, our morals were rough, but natural. The different ways we behaved proclaimed at first glance the difference in our characters. Human nature was not, at its core, better then than now. But men found their security in the ease with which they could see through one another. This advantage, which we no longer value, prevented them from having many vices.

In our day, now that more subtle study and a more refined taste have reduced the art of pleasing to a system, a slavish and deceptive conformity is dominant in our manners. One would think every mind had been cast in the same mold. Politeness requires this; decorum requires that. We must always follow the forms of ceremony and the laws of fashion, never the promptings of our own nature.

We no longer dare to seem what we really are. In the meantime, the herd of men which we call “society” all act under the same circumstances exactly alike. Thus, we never know with whom we have to deal. To even know our friends, we must wait for some critical and urgent occasion—that is, until it is too late.

A List of Modern Vices

What a train of vices must come with this uncertainty!

Sincere friendship, real esteem, and perfect confidence are banished from among men.
Jealousy, suspicion, fear, coldness, reserve, hate, and fraud lie constantly concealed under the uniform and deceitful veil of politeness.
We no longer take the name of our Creator in vain with our oaths, but we insult Him with our blasphemies.
We have grown too modest to brag of our own merits, but we do not hesitate to criticize those of others.
We do not grossly insult even our enemies, but we artfully slander them.
Our hatred of other nations diminishes, but patriotism dies with it.
Ignorance is held in contempt, but a dangerous skepticism has taken its place.

Some vices are condemned, but many others are honored with the names of virtues. It has become necessary that we should either have them, or at least pretend to have them.

This is the purity to which our morals have attained. Let the arts and sciences claim the share they have had in this “healthy” work.

Suppose an inhabitant of some distant country should try to form an idea of European morals from the state of our sciences, the perfection of our arts, the propriety of our public entertainments, and the politeness of our behavior. Such a stranger, I maintain, would arrive at a totally false view of our morality.

A History of Corruption

Where there is no effect, it is pointless to look for a cause. But here, the effect is certain and the depravity is actual: our minds have been corrupted in proportion as the arts and sciences have improved.

Will it be said that this is a misfortune peculiar to the present age? No, gentlemen, the evils resulting from our vain curiosity are as old as the world. The morals of a people are as regularly influenced by the progress of the arts and sciences as the daily ebb and flow of the tides are influenced by the moon. As their light has risen above our horizon, virtue has taken flight. The same phenomenon has been constantly observed in all times and places.

Take Egypt, the first school of mankind. Egypt became the mother of philosophy and the fine arts. Soon, she was conquered by Cambyses, and then by the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, and finally the Turks.
Take Greece, once populated by heroes. The progress of the sciences soon produced a looseness of manners and the imposition of the Macedonian yoke. From that time on, Greece—always learned, always pleasure-seeking, and always a slave—has experienced nothing more than a change of masters.
Take Rome, founded by a shepherd and made famous by peasants. It began to degenerate in the days of the poets Ennius and Terence. But after the appearance of Ovid, Catullus, and Martial, Rome, once the shrine of virtue, became the theater of vice. The capital of the world at last submitted to the yoke of slavery it had imposed on others.
What shall I say of Constantinople, that refuge of the arts and sciences? Profligacy, villainy, crimes, plots, murders, and assassinations form the fabric of its history. Such is the pure source from which the floods of knowledge on which the present age so prides itself have flowed to us.

The Case of China

But why should we seek proofs in past ages, when the present gives us ample evidence? There is in Asia a vast empire, where learning is held in honor and leads to the highest dignities in the state. If the sciences improved our morals, the Chinese should be wise, free, and invincible.

But, if there is no vice they do not practice and no crime with which they are not familiar, and if the wisdom of their laws and the multitude of their inhabitants have failed to preserve them from the yoke of the rude and ignorant Tartars, of what use were their men of science? What advantage has that country reaped from the honors bestowed on its learned men? Can it be that of being populated by a race of scoundrels and slaves?

In Praise of “Ignorant” Peoples

Contrast these instances with the morals of those few nations which, being preserved from the disease of useless knowledge, have by their virtues become happy in themselves and an example to the rest of the world.

Such were the first inhabitants of Persia, a nation so unique that virtue was taught among them in the same way that the sciences are with us.
Such were the Scythians, of whom such wonderful praises have come down to us.
Such were the Germans, whose simplicity, innocence, and virtue afforded a most delightful contrast to the pen of an historian weary of describing the baseness of an enlightened, wealthy, and pleasure-seeking nation.
Such had been even Rome in the days of its poverty and ignorance.
And such has shown itself to be, even in our own times, that rustic nation (Switzerland), whose justly renowned courage not even adversity could conquer.

It is not through stupidity that these people have preferred other activities to those of the mind. They knew that in other countries there were men who spent their time idly disputing about good and evil. They noted the morals of these people and so learned what to think of their learning.

Sparta vs. Athens

Can it be forgotten that, in the very heart of Greece, there arose a city as famous for the happy ignorance of its inhabitants as for the wisdom of its laws? It was a republic of demi-gods rather than of men. Sparta, an eternal proof of the vanity of science! While the vices, led by the fine arts, were being introduced into Athens, Sparta was driving from her walls artists and the arts, the learned and their learning!

The difference was seen in the outcome.

Athens became the seat of politeness and taste, the country of orators and philosophers. From Athens we derive those astonishing works which will serve as models to every corrupt age.
The picture of Lacedæmon (Sparta) is not so highly colored. There, the neighboring nations used to say, “men were born virtuous.” Its inhabitants have left us nothing but the memory of their heroic actions—monuments that should not count for less in our eyes than the most curious relics of Athenian marble.

The Verdict of Socrates

It is true that, among the Athenians, there were some few wise men who withstood the general flood. But hear the judgment which the principal and most unhappy of them, Socrates, passed on the artists and learned men of his day.

“I have considered the poets,” he says, “and I look upon them as people whose talents impose both on themselves and on others; they give themselves out for wise men, and are taken for such; but in reality they are anything sooner than that.”

“From the poets,” continues Socrates, “I turned to the artists. Nobody was more ignorant of the arts than myself; nobody was more fully persuaded that the artists were possessed of amazing knowledge. I soon discovered, however, that they were in as bad a way as the poets. Because the most skillful of them excel others in their particular jobs, they think themselves wiser than all the rest of mankind. This arrogance spoiled all their skill in my eyes.”

“So, putting myself in the place of the oracle and asking myself whether I would rather be what I am or what they are, know what they know, or know that I know nothing, I very readily answered, for myself and the god, that I had rather remain as I am.”

“None of us—neither the sophists, nor the poets, nor the orators, nor the artists, nor I—know what is the nature of the true, the good, or the beautiful. But there is this difference between us: that, though none of these people know anything, they all think they know something; whereas for my part, if I know nothing, I am at least in no doubt of my ignorance.”

Thus we find Socrates, the wisest of men, speaking in praise of ignorance. Were he alive now, there is little reason to think that our modern scholars and artists would convince him to change his mind. No, gentlemen, that honest man would still persist in despising our vain sciences. He would leave to us, as he did to his disciples, only the example and memory of his virtues. That is the noblest method of instructing mankind.

Socrates had begun at Athens, and the elder Cato proceeded at Rome, to speak out against those seductive and subtle Greeks who corrupted the virtue and destroyed the courage of their fellow-citizens. Culture, however, prevailed. Rome was filled with philosophers and orators, military discipline was neglected, and agriculture was held in contempt. Men formed sects and forgot their country. It was even a saying among their own philosophers that since learned men appeared among them, honest men had been in eclipse. Before that time, the Romans were satisfied with the practice of virtue; they were undone when they began to study it.

What would the great soul of Fabricius have felt if he had the misfortune to be called back to life when he saw the pomp and magnificence of the Rome his arm had saved? “Ye gods!” he would have said, “what has become of those thatched roofs and rustic hearths, which were formerly the homes of moderation and virtue? What fatal splendor has succeeded the ancient Roman simplicity? Fools, what have you done? You, the lords of the earth, have made yourselves the slaves of the frivolous nations you have conquered. You are governed by rhetoricians, and it has been only to enrich architects, painters, and stage-players that you have watered Greece and Asia with your blood.”

Part One (continued)

A Message from a Roman General

The spoils of Carthage are now the prize of a flute-player. Romans! Romans! Hurry to demolish those amphitheaters, break those statues, and burn those paintings. Drive from among you those slaves who hold you in subjection, and whose fatal arts are corrupting your morals. Let other hands make themselves famous with such vain talents. The only talent worthy of Rome is that of conquering the world and making virtue its ruler.

When Cyneas saw the Roman senate, he thought it was an assembly of kings. He was not struck by useless pomp or studied elegance. He heard none of the futile eloquence that is now the study of frivolous public speakers. What then was the majesty that Cyneas beheld? Fellow citizens, he saw the noblest sight that ever existed under heaven; an assembly of two hundred virtuous men, worthy to command in Rome and to govern the world.

The Bitter Draught of a Philosopher

But let’s put aside the distance of time and place and see what has happened in our own time and country. What I have put into the mouth of Fabricius might have come with as much propriety from King Louis the Twelfth or Henry the Fourth of France.

It is true that in France, Socrates would not have been forced to drink the hemlock. But he would have drunk from a potion infinitely more bitter: insult, mockery, and contempt, a hundred times worse than death.

Nature’s Protective Veil

Thus it is that luxury, decadence, and slavery have been, in all ages, the punishment for our proud efforts to emerge from that happy state of ignorance in which the wisdom of providence had placed us.

The thick veil with which providence has covered all its operations seems to be a sufficient proof that it never designed us for such fruitless research. Let men learn for once that nature would have preserved them from science, as a mother snatches a dangerous weapon from the hands of her child. Let them know that all the secrets she hides are so many evils from which she protects them.

Men are perverse, but they would have been far worse if they had had the misfortune to be born learned.

How humiliating are these reflections for humanity! What! you will ask, is honesty the child of ignorance? Is virtue inconsistent with learning? To reconcile these apparent contradictions, we need only examine closely the emptiness and vanity of those pompous titles which are so liberally given to human knowledge, and which so blind our judgment. Let us, therefore, consider the arts and sciences in themselves. Let us see what must result from their advancement.

Part Two

An ancient tradition passed from Egypt into Greece that some god, who was an enemy to the peace of mankind, was the inventor of the sciences. What must the Egyptians, among whom the sciences first arose, have thought of them?

Whether we turn to the history of the world or supplement its uncertain chronicles with philosophical investigations, we will not find an origin for human knowledge that matches the positive idea we like to have of it today.

Astronomy was born of superstition.
Eloquence was born of ambition, hatred, and flattery.
Geometry was born of greed.
Physics was born of an idle curiosity.
And even moral philosophy was born of human pride.

Thus, the arts and sciences owe their birth to our vices. We would be less doubtful of their advantages if they had sprung from our virtues.

The Vicious Origins of Science and Art

Their evil origin is all too plainly reproduced in their objects.

What would become of the arts if they were not nurtured by luxury?
If men were not unjust, of what use would law be?
What would become of history if there were no tyrants, wars, or conspiracies?

In a word, who would spend his life in barren speculations if everybody, focused only on the obligations of humanity and the necessities of nature, spent his whole life serving his country, helping his friends, and relieving the unhappy? Are we then made to live and die on the brink of that well where Truth lies hidden?

The Danger and Futility of Knowledge

What a variety of dangers surrounds us! What a number of wrong paths present themselves in the investigation of the sciences! Through how many errors must we pass to arrive at the truth? The disadvantages are clear: falsehood is capable of an infinite variety of combinations, but the truth has only one way of being.

If our sciences are futile in the objects they propose, they are no less dangerous in the effects they produce. Being the effect of idleness, they generate idleness in their turn. An irreparable loss of time is the first harm they must necessarily cause to society.

To live without doing some good is a great evil. Every useless citizen should be regarded as a destructive person. Tell me then, you illustrious philosophers, you from whom we receive all this sublime information, whether we would have been less numerous, worse governed, less formidable, less flourishing, or more perverse, supposing you had taught us none of all these fine things?

Reconsider, therefore, the importance of your productions. Since the labors of the most enlightened of our learned men and the best of our citizens are of so little use, tell us what we ought to think of that numerous herd of obscure writers and useless men of letters who devour the substance of the State without any return.

Useless, do I say? Would God they were! Society would be more peaceful, and morals less corrupt. But these vain and futile speakers go forth on all sides, armed with their fatal paradoxes, to undermine the foundations of our faith and destroy virtue. They smile contemptuously at such old names as patriotism and religion.

The Moral Cost of Luxury

The waste of time is certainly a great evil, but still greater evils come with literature and the arts. One is luxury, produced like them by laziness and vanity. Luxury is seldom found without the arts and sciences, and they are always found with luxury.

I know that our philosophy pretends, in contradiction to the experience of all ages, that luxury contributes to the splendor of States. But can it be denied that good morals are essential to the duration of empires, and that luxury is directly opposed to such morals? What will become of virtue if riches are to be acquired at any cost?

The politicians of the ancient world were always talking of morals and virtue; ours speak of nothing but commerce and money. They value men as they do herds of oxen.

History’s Lesson: Poverty Defeats Riches

Let our politicians lay aside their calculations for a moment and reflect on these examples. Let them learn for once that money, though it buys everything else, cannot buy morals and citizens.

The rich republic of Sybaris was subdued by a handful of peasants, while poor Sparta became the terror of Asia.
The Roman empire, after having engulfed all the riches of the universe, fell prey to peoples who did not even know what riches were.
The Franks conquered the Gauls, and the Saxons conquered England, with no other treasures than their bravery and their poverty.
A band of poor Swiss mountaineers crushed the wealthy and formidable House of Burgundy.
The heir of Charles the Fifth, backed by all the treasures of the Indies, was broken by a few Dutch herring-fishers.

What is the point in dispute about luxury? It is to know which is more advantageous to empires: that their existence should be brilliant and momentary, or virtuous and lasting.

How Artists Corrupt Their Own Taste

Every artist loves applause. The praise of his contemporaries is the most valuable part of his reward. What then will he do to obtain it, if he has the misfortune to be born among a people, and at a time, when superficiality is in fashion?

He will lower his genius to the level of the age. He will choose to compose mediocre works that will be admired during his lifetime, rather than labor at sublime achievements which will not be admired until long after he is dead. Let the famous Voltaire tell us how many strong and masculine beauties he has sacrificed to our false delicacy.

It is thus that the dissolution of morals, the necessary consequence of luxury, brings with it in turn the corruption of taste.

The Decline of Courage

We cannot reflect on the morality of mankind without contemplating with pleasure the picture of the simplicity which prevailed in the earliest times. While men were innocent and virtuous, they dwelt together in the same huts. But when they became vicious, they grew tired of such inconvenient onlookers as the gods and banished them to magnificent temples. Finally, they expelled their deities even from these temples in order to dwell there themselves.

As the conveniences of life increase, as the arts are brought to perfection, and luxury spreads, true courage flags, and the virtues disappear. All this is the effect of the sciences and of those arts which are exercised in the privacy of men’s homes.

When the Goths ravaged Greece, the libraries only escaped the flames because of an opinion that it was best to leave the enemy with a possession so calculated to divert their attention from military exercises and keep them busy in lazy and sedentary occupations.

The Romans confessed that military virtue was extinguished among them in proportion as they became connoisseurs of the fine arts. The rise of the Medici and the revival of letters has once more destroyed the martial reputation which Italy seemed to have recovered a few centuries ago.

The ancient republics of Greece forbade their citizens to pursue all those inactive and sedentary occupations, which, by weakening the body, also diminish the vigor of the mind. With what resolution can soldiers support the excessive toils of war when they are entirely unaccustomed to them? I hear much of the bravery of modern warriors in a day’s battle, but I am told nothing of how they support excessive fatigue, or how they stand the severity of the seasons. A little sunshine or snow is enough to cripple and destroy one of our finest armies in a few days.

If the cultivation of the sciences is harmful to military qualities, it is even more so to moral qualities.

A Final Word on Modern Education

Even from our infancy, an absurd system of education serves to adorn our wit and corrupt our judgment. We see, on every side, huge institutions, where our youth are educated at great expense and instructed in everything but their duty.

Your children will be ignorant of their own language, but they will be able to speak others which are not spoken anywhere.
They will be able to compose verses which they can hardly understand.
Without being capable of distinguishing truth from error, they will possess the art of making them unrecognizable by clever arguments.

A Final Word on Modern Education

The dear name of “country” will never strike their ears. And if they ever hear speak of God, it will be less to fear Him than to be frightened of Him. “I would as soon,” said a wise man, “that my student had spent his time on the tennis court; for there, his body at least would have gotten exercise.”

I know that children ought to be kept employed, and that idleness is the danger most to be feared for them. But what should they be taught? This is undoubtedly an important question. Let them be taught what they are to practice when they become men, not what they ought to forget.

The True Purpose of Art

Our gardens are adorned with statues and our galleries with pictures. What would you imagine these masterpieces of art, exhibited to the public, represent? The great men who have defended their country, or the still greater men who have enriched it by their virtues? Far from it. They are images of every perversion of the heart and mind, carefully selected from ancient mythology. They are presented to the early curiosity of our children, doubtless so they may have representations of vicious actions before their eyes, even before they are able to read.

The Source of Our Problems: Inequality

Where do all these abuses come from, if not from the fatal inequality introduced among men by the difference of talents and the cheapening of virtue? This is the most evident effect of all our studies, and the most dangerous of all their consequences.

The question is no longer whether a man is honest, but whether he is clever.
We do not ask whether a book is useful, but whether it is well-written.
Rewards are lavished on wit and ingenuity, while virtue is left unhonored.

A wise man is not insensitive to glory, and when he sees it so poorly distributed, his virtue—which might have been animated by a little friendly competition and turned to the advantage of society—droops and dies away in obscurity and poverty. It is for this reason that the agreeable arts must in time be preferred everywhere over the useful arts.

We have physicists, geometers, chemists, astronomers, poets, musicians, and painters in plenty. But we no longer have a citizen among us. Or if there are a few scattered over our abandoned countryside, they are left to perish there unnoticed and neglected. Such is the condition to which we are reduced.

The Emptiness of Modern Philosophy

I will not venture here to enter into a comparison between agriculture and philosophy, as they would not bear it. I shall only ask: What is philosophy? What is contained in the writings of the most celebrated philosophers? What are the lessons of these “friends of wisdom”?

To hear them, should we not take them for so many circus performers, exhibiting themselves in public and crying out, “Here, Here, come to me, I am the only true doctor?”

One of them teaches that there is no such thing as matter, but that everything exists only as a representation in the mind.
Another declares that there is no other substance than matter, and no other God than the world itself.
A third tells you that there are no such things as virtue and vice, and that moral good and evil are illusions.
A fourth informs you that men are only beasts of prey and may, with a clear conscience, devour one another.

Why, my great philosophers, do you not reserve these wise and profitable lessons for your friends and children? You would soon reap the benefit of them, and we would not have to worry about our own children becoming your disciples.

The Curse of the Printing Press

Such are the wonderful men whom their contemporaries held in the highest esteem. Paganism, for all its extravagances, has left nothing to compare with the shameful monuments which have been prepared by the art of printing during the reign of the gospel. The impious writings of ancient atheists like Leucippus and Diagoras perished with their authors. The world, in their days, was ignorant of the art of immortalizing the errors and extravagances of the human mind.

But thanks to the art of printing and the use we make of it, the destructive reflections of Hobbes and Spinoza will last forever. Go, famous writings, of which the ignorance and rusticity of our forefathers would have been incapable! Go to our descendants, along with those still more destructive works which reek of the corrupted manners of the present age! Let them together convey to posterity a faithful history of the progress and advantages of our arts and sciences.

If future generations read them, they will have no doubt about the question we are now discussing. Unless mankind should then be even more foolish than we are, they will lift up their hands to Heaven and exclaim in bitterness of heart: “Almighty God! You who hold in Your hand the minds of men, deliver us from the fatal arts and sciences of our forefathers! Give us back ignorance, innocence, and poverty, which alone can make us happy and are precious in Your sight.”

A Plea for Humility and Virtue

But if the progress of the arts and sciences has added nothing to our real happiness, if it has corrupted our morals, and if that corruption has ruined our taste, what are we to think of the herd of textbook authors who have removed the obstacles that nature purposely laid in the way to the Temple of the Muses? What are we to think of those compilers who have recklessly broken open the door of the sciences and introduced into their sanctuary a populace unworthy to approach it? A man who will be a bad poet his whole life might have nonetheless made an excellent clothier.

Those whom nature intended for her disciples have not needed masters. Bacon, Descartes, and Newton—those teachers of mankind—had no teachers themselves.

Let not princes disdain to admit into their councils those who are most capable of giving them good advice. Let the learned of the first rank find an honorable refuge in their courts. Let them enjoy the only reward worthy of them: that of promoting the happiness of the peoples they have enlightened by their wisdom.

But so long as power alone is on one side, and knowledge and understanding alone on the other, the learned will seldom make great objects their study, princes will still more rarely do great actions, and the peoples will continue to be, as they are, mean, corrupt, and miserable.

As for us, ordinary men, on whom Heaven has not been pleased to bestow such great talents, let us remain in our obscurity. Why should we build our happiness on the opinions of others, when we can find it in our own hearts? Let us leave to others the task of instructing mankind in their duty, and confine ourselves to discharging our own. We have no need for greater knowledge than this.

Virtue! Sublime science of simple minds, are such industry and preparation needed if we are to know you? Are not your principles engraved on every heart? Need we do more, to learn your laws, than to examine ourselves and listen to the voice of conscience when the passions are silent?

This is the true philosophy. Let us endeavor to make, between the learned and us, that honorable distinction which was formerly seen to exist between two great peoples: that the one knew how to speak well, and the other knew how to act well.

A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality Among Men

The Question Proposed by the Academy of Dijon:

What is the Origin of Inequality Among Men, and is it Authorized by Natural Law?

Dedication to the Republic of Geneva

Most Honorable, Magnificent, and Sovereign Lords,

Convinced that only a virtuous citizen can confer on his country honors which it can accept, I have been working for thirty years to make myself worthy to offer you some public homage. Having had the happiness to be born among you, how could I reflect on the equality which nature has ordained between men, and the inequality which they have introduced, without reflecting on the profound wisdom by which both are in this State happily combined? In my research for the best rules for a government, I have been so struck at finding them all in actuality in your own, that I had to offer this picture of human society to that people which seems to possess its greatest advantages.

If I Could Choose My Birthplace

If I had to choose the place of my birth, I would have preferred a society of a size that was proportionate to the limits of human abilities—that is, to the possibility of being well-governed. I would have chosen a State in which every person was equal to his occupation, and no one was forced to commit to others the functions with which he was entrusted. I would want a State in which all the individuals were well known to one another, so that neither the secret plots of vice nor the modesty of virtue could escape the notice and judgment of the public.

I would have wished to be born in a country in which the interest of the Sovereign and that of the people must be one and the same, so that all the movements of the machine might always tend to the general happiness. And as this could only be the case if the Sovereign and the people were the same person, it follows that I would have wished to be born under a democratic government, wisely tempered.

I would have wished to live and die free—that is, so far subject to the laws that neither I, nor anybody else, should be able to cast off their honorable yoke.

I would have wished that no one within the State should be able to say he was above the law, and that no one outside the State should be able to dictate to it. For, whatever the constitution of a government may be, if there is within its jurisdiction a single man who is not subject to the law, all the rest are necessarily at his mercy.

I would not have chosen to live in a republic that was recently created, no matter how excellent its laws. I would fear that the government might not agree with the new citizens, or they with it, and the State would run the risk of being overthrown and destroyed almost as soon as it came into being.

For liberty is like those solid and rich foods, or those generous wines, which are well-adapted to nourish and fortify robust people who are used to them, but which ruin and intoxicate weak and delicate people to whom they are not suited. Peoples who are once accustomed to masters are not in a condition to do without them. If they attempt to shake off the yoke, they nearly always hand themselves over to seducers who only make their chains heavier than before. The Roman people itself, a model for all free peoples, was wholly incapable of governing itself when it escaped from the oppression of the Tarquins. Debased by slavery, it was at first no better than a stupid mob, which had to be controlled and governed with the greatest wisdom, so that, being accustomed by degrees to breathe the health-giving air of liberty, their minds might gradually acquire that severity of morals and spirit of fortitude which made them at length the most worthy of respect of all peoples.

My Ideal Country

I would have sought out for my country a peaceful and happy Republic, one so ancient that its beginnings were lost in the mists of time. It would have experienced only such shocks as served to reveal and strengthen the courage and patriotism of its subjects. Its citizens, long accustomed to a wise independence, would be not only free, but worthy of being so.

I would have wished to choose a country that was diverted, by a fortunate inability, from the brutal love of conquest. It would be secured, by an even more fortunate situation, from the fear of becoming itself the conquest of other States. It would be a free city situated between several nations, where none would have any interest in attacking it, while each had an interest in preventing it from being attacked by others.

In short, a Republic like this would have nothing to tempt the ambition of its neighbors, but might reasonably depend on their assistance in case of need. It follows that such a happily situated republican State could have nothing to fear but from itself. If its members trained themselves to use arms, it would be to keep alive that military passion and courageous spirit which are so proper among free men and which keep up their taste for liberty, rather than from the necessity of providing for their own defense.

A Blueprint for a Free Republic

I would have sought a country where the right to make laws was held by all the citizens. For who can better judge the conditions under which they should live together in the same society?

I would not have approved of systems like those among the Romans, in which the rulers of the State, and those most interested in its preservation, were excluded from the deliberations on which its security often depended.
On the other hand, to prevent self-interested and ill-conceived projects, and all the dangerous innovations that finally ruined the Athenians, I would have desired that each man should not be at liberty to propose new laws whenever he pleased.
This right should belong exclusively to the magistrates (the elected officials). And even they should use it with so much caution, and the people should be so reserved in giving their consent, that before the constitution could be upset, there might be enough time for all to be convinced that it is, above all, the great antiquity of the laws which makes them sacred and venerable.
Men soon learn to despise laws which they see altered daily. States that get used to neglecting their ancient customs under the pretext of improvement often introduce greater evils than those they try to remove.

I would have particularly avoided a Republic in which the people, imagining they could do without magistrates, foolishly kept for themselves the administration of civil affairs and the execution of their own laws. This must have been the crude constitution of the first governments, and this was another of the vices that contributed to the downfall of the Republic of Athens.

Instead, I would have chosen a community in which the individuals were content with approving their laws and deciding the most important public affairs in a general assembly, based on the proposals of the rulers. This community would have:

Established honored courts.
Carefully distinguished the several departments of government.
Elected, year by year, some of the most capable and upright of their fellow-citizens to administer justice and govern the State.

In short, I would have chosen a community in which the virtue of the magistrates was a testament to the wisdom of the people, and each class mutually honored the other.

A Message to My Fellow Citizens

These are the advantages I would have sought in the country where I would have chosen to be born. And if providence had added to all these a delightful location, a temperate climate, a fertile soil, and the most beautiful countryside under Heaven, I would have desired only to complete my happiness by peacefully enjoying all these blessings in the heart of this happy country. I would want to live at peace in the sweet society of my fellow-citizens, and, following their own example, practice toward them the duties of friendship, humanity, and every other virtue, to leave behind me the honorable memory of a good man, and an upright and virtuous patriot.

But, if I were less fortunate or grew wise too late, and I found myself forced to end a weak and languishing life in other climates, vainly regretting the peaceful rest I had lost in the carelessness of my youth, I would at least have held the same feelings in my heart. Filled with a tender and unselfish love for my distant fellow-citizens, I would have addressed them from my heart, in much the following way.

Your Happiness Is Complete

“My dear fellow-citizens, or rather my brothers, since the ties of blood, as well as the laws, unite almost all of us, it gives me pleasure that I cannot think of you without also thinking of all the blessings you enjoy. Perhaps none of you feels the value of these blessings more deeply than I, who have lost them.

The more I reflect on your civil and political condition, the less I can imagine that the nature of human affairs could allow for a better one. In all other governments, when there is a question of ensuring the greatest good of the State, they get no further than projects and ideas. But as for you, your happiness is complete, and you have nothing to do but enjoy it. You require nothing more to be made perfectly happy than to know how to be satisfied with being so.

Your sovereignty, acquired or recovered by the sword, and maintained for two centuries past by your valor and wisdom, is at last fully and universally acknowledged. Your boundaries are fixed, your rights are confirmed, and your peace is secured by honorable treaties. Your constitution is excellent, being not only dictated by the most profound wisdom, but also guaranteed by great and friendly powers. Your State enjoys perfect tranquility. You have neither wars nor conquerors to fear. You have no other master than the wise laws you have yourselves made, and these are administered by upright magistrates of your own choosing. You are neither so wealthy as to be weakened by luxury, nor so poor as to require more help from abroad than your own industry can provide you. Meanwhile, the precious privilege of liberty, which in great nations is maintained only by submitting to the most excessive taxes, costs you hardly anything for its preservation.

A Prayer for the Future

May a Republic, so wisely and happily constituted, last forever, for an example to other nations, and for the happiness of its own citizens! This is the only prayer you have left to make, the only precaution that remains to be taken. It depends on you alone to make that happiness last by your wisdom in enjoying it. Your preservation depends on your constant union, your obedience to the laws, and your respect for their ministers. If there remains among you the smallest trace of bitterness or distrust, hasten to destroy it, as it is a cursed contamination which sooner or later must bring misfortune and ruin on the State.

I urge you all to look into your hearts and to listen to the secret voice of conscience. Is there any among you who can find, throughout the universe, a more upright, more enlightened, and more honorable body than your magistracy? Do not all its members set you an example of moderation, of simplicity of manners, of respect for the laws, and of the most sincere harmony? Therefore, place in such wise superiors, without reserve, that healthy confidence which reason always owes to virtue. Consider that they are your own choice, that they justify that choice, and that the honors due to those whom you have dignified are necessarily your own by reflection.

Not one of you is so ignorant as not to know that when the laws lose their force and those who defend them their authority, security and liberty are universally impossible. Why, therefore, should you hesitate to do cheerfully and with just confidence what you would have been bound to do by your true interest, your duty, and reason itself?

A Final Word of Advice

Let not a guilty and destructive indifference to the maintenance of the constitution ever lead you to neglect the prudent advice of the most enlightened and zealous of your fellow-citizens. Let equity, moderation, and firmness of resolution continue to regulate all your proceedings and to show you to the whole universe as the example of a valiant and modest people, jealous equally of their honor and of their liberty.

Beware particularly, as the last piece of advice I shall give you, of sinister interpretations and venomous rumors. The secret motives of these are often more dangerous than the actions at which they are aimed. A whole house will be awakened and take the first alarm given by a good and trusty watch-dog, who barks only at the approach of thieves. But we hate the annoyance of those noisy dogs that are perpetually disturbing the public peace, and whose continual, ill-timed warnings prevent us from paying attention to them when they may perhaps be necessary.

To the Honored Magistrates of Geneva

And you, most honorable and magnificent lords, the worthy and revered magistrates of a free people, permit me to offer you in particular my duty and homage. If there is in the world a station capable of conferring honor on those who fill it, it is undoubtedly that which virtue and talents combine to bestow, that of which you have made yourselves worthy, and to which you have been promoted by your fellow-citizens.

I cannot recall to mind, without the sweetest emotions, the memory of that virtuous citizen to whom I owe my being—my father. He often instructed me in my infancy in the respect which is due to you. I see him still, living by the work of his hands, and feeding his soul on the most sublime truths. I see the works of Tacitus, Plutarch, and Grotius lying before him in the midst of the tools of his trade. At his side stands his dear son, receiving, alas with too little profit, the tender instructions of the best of fathers. But, if the follies of youth made me for a while forget his wise lessons, I have at length the happiness to be conscious that, whatever tendency one may have to vice, it is not easy for an education, with which love has been mixed, to be entirely thrown away.

Such, my most honorable and magnificent lords, are the citizens, and even the common inhabitants of the State which you govern. My father, I own with pleasure, was in no way distinguished among his fellow-citizens. He was only such as they all are. And yet, there is no country in which his acquaintance would not have been coveted by men of the highest character. It is with a lively satisfaction that I understand that you repay the people, by your esteem and attention, the respect and obedience which they owe to you.

To the Ministers and Clergy

It is uncommonly fortunate for the peace of men when those who look upon themselves as the magistrates of a more holy and sublime country show some love for the earthly country which maintains them. I am happy to be able to rank among Geneva’s best citizens those zealous keepers of the sacred articles of faith, those venerable shepherds of souls whose powerful and captivating eloquence is so much the better calculated to bring the maxims of the gospel to men’s hearts, as they are themselves the first to put them into practice. All the world knows of the great success with which the art of the pulpit is cultivated at Geneva. I notice, with a pleasure mingled with surprise and veneration, how much they detest the frightful maxims of those accursed and barbarous men who, in order to support the pretended rights of God—that is to say their own interests—have been so much the less greedy of human blood, as they were more hopeful their own in particular would be always respected.

To the Women of Geneva

I must not forget that precious half of the Republic which makes the happiness of the other, and whose sweetness and prudence preserve its tranquility and virtue. Amiable and virtuous daughters of Geneva, it will always be the lot of your sex to govern ours. Happy are we, so long as your chaste influence, exercised only within the limits of marriage, is exerted only for the glory of the State and the happiness of the public. It was thus the female sex commanded at Sparta, and thus you deserve to command at Geneva.

It is your task to perpetuate, by your insinuating influence and your innocent and amiable rule, a respect for the laws of the State and harmony among the citizens. It is yours to reunite divided families by happy marriages. And, above all things, it is yours to correct, by the persuasive sweetness of your lessons and the modest graces of your conversation, those extravagances which our young people pick up in other countries. Continue, therefore, always to be what you are: the chaste guardians of our morals and the sweet security for our peace.

A Different Kind of Glory

I flatter myself that I shall not be proven mistaken in building on such a foundation my hopes of the general happiness of the citizens and the glory of the Republic. It must be confessed, however, that with all these advantages, it will not shine with that luster by which the eyes of most men are dazzled. A childish and fatal taste for this luster is the most mortal enemy of happiness and liberty.

Let our dissolute youth seek elsewhere light pleasures and long repentances. Let our pretenders to taste admire elsewhere the grandeur of palaces, the beauty of carriages, and all the refinements of luxury. Geneva boasts nothing but men. Such a sight has a value of its own, and those who have a taste for it are well worth the admirers of all the rest.

Deign, most honorable, magnificent, and sovereign lords, to receive this respectful testimony of the interest I take in your common prosperity.

If I have gotten carried away by my passion in this heartfelt message, please forgive me. My excitement comes from a deep love for my country and from the enthusiasm of a man who can imagine no greater happiness than seeing you, the people, happy.

With the deepest respect, Your most humble and obedient servant and fellow citizen, J.J. Rousseau Chambéry, June 12, 1754

Preface

Of all the sciences, the study of people seems to be the most useful, yet it is also the one we understand the least. I believe the simple phrase “Know thyself,” inscribed on the Temple of Delphi, is a more important and difficult challenge than all the massive books ever written by moralists.

The topic of this text is one of the most interesting questions in philosophy. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the most difficult to solve. The question is: what is the origin of inequality among people?

To answer this, we first have to understand people themselves. How can we know where inequality came from if we don’t know what humans are truly like in their natural state?

The Challenge of Seeing Our Original Selves

How can a person hope to see themselves as nature originally made them? So much has changed over time and in different places. How can we separate our fundamental, original nature from all the changes, ideas, and habits we’ve picked up over centuries?

The human soul has become like the statue of the sea-god Glaucus. Over time, the sea and storms so battered the statue that it looked more like a monster than a god. In the same way, the human soul has been changed by society. A thousand different things have altered it:

Learning countless new ideas (some true, some false).
Changes to the physical body.
The constant pull of different passions.

Because of all this, the human soul is barely recognizable. It was once a being that acted on clear and simple principles—a being with a noble simplicity given by its creator. Now, all we see is a messy conflict. Our passions pretend to be reason, and our minds have grown confused and delirious.

The Paradox of Progress

Here’s an even bigger problem: the more our species “advances,” the further away we get from our original, primitive state.

This means that the more we discover about ourselves today, the less we are able to learn about our most fundamental origins. In a way, the very act of studying modern people makes it impossible to truly know the original human.

It’s clear that these gradual changes to human nature are the source of the differences we see between people today. We generally agree that, in the beginning, humans were as equal as animals of the same species are before nature creates variations among them.

Think about how these first changes must have happened. It’s unlikely that every single person changed in the same way at the same time. It’s more logical to think that as some people’s lives got better or worse—as they gained new skills or developed new flaws—other people remained in their original, natural state for much longer. This difference was probably the first source of human inequality. It’s easy to describe this in general terms, but very hard to pinpoint the exact causes.

My Approach: Asking the Right Questions

Don’t think that I claim to have discovered something so difficult to see. I am simply exploring some arguments and making some educated guesses. My goal isn’t to solve the problem completely, but to shed some light on it and frame the question in a clear way.

Others can certainly go further down this path, but no one will find it easy to reach the end. It is an enormous task to figure out what is original versus what is artificial in human nature today. It’s also incredibly hard to form a clear idea of a state of being that no longer exists, may have never existed, and probably never will. Yet, we need to understand this original state to properly judge our own.

It would take a great deal of philosophical skill just to figure out how to conduct solid research on this topic. I believe that figuring out how to solve the following problem would be a worthy challenge for the greatest thinkers of our time:

What experiments would we need to perform to discover the “natural man”? And how could we even conduct those experiments while living in a society?

I am not trying to solve this problem myself. But I have thought about it enough to say that it would require our greatest philosophers to design the experiments and our most powerful leaders to carry them out. We have little reason to expect such a perfect combination of wisdom, power, and long-term commitment.

The Problem of “Natural Law”

These investigations are difficult and have been ignored for too long. Yet, they are the only way we can solve the many problems that prevent us from knowing the true foundations of human society.

It is our ignorance of human nature that makes the definition of natural right (or “natural law”) so unclear. As the writer Burlamaqui says, the idea of “right” is clearly related to the nature of man. Therefore, we must look at human nature itself to find the first principles of this science.

It’s shocking and frustrating to see how little agreement there is among different writers on this subject. You can barely find two major thinkers who agree.

Ancient philosophers seem to have done their best to contradict each other on the most basic ideas.
Roman legal experts applied the same natural law to both humans and animals. They saw this law as the rules nature imposes on itself for survival, not rules prescribed for beings to follow.
Modern thinkers define “law” as a rule for a moral being—one who is intelligent and free. So, they limit natural law to humans. However, they each define it in their own way, based on such complex and abstract principles that very few people can understand them, let alone discover them on their own.

In the end, the definitions from these learned men only agree on one thing: that it’s impossible to understand or obey natural law without being an expert debater and a deep philosopher. This basically means that society must have been founded using abilities that very few people possess, even today.

Finding a Simpler Foundation

Since we know so little about nature and can’t even agree on what the word “law” means, it’s hard to create a good definition of natural law. Most definitions you find in books have a major flaw: they are based on knowledge that people in a state of nature wouldn’t have.

Modern writers often start by asking what rules would be useful for people to agree upon for their shared interests. Then, they call that collection of rules “natural law.” This is an easy way to make a definition, but it’s based on convenience, not truth.

As long as we are ignorant of the natural man, we can’t figure out the law that was originally given to him or the law that best suits his nature. The only thing we can say for sure is that for a law to be a law, people must be aware that they are submitting to it. And for it to be a natural law, it must speak with the voice of nature itself.

Two Principles Before Reason

So, let’s set aside all the scientific books that only show us people as they have made themselves. Instead, let’s look at the first and simplest workings of the human soul. I believe I can see two principles that existed before reason:

Self-Preservation: A powerful interest in our own well-being and survival.
Compassion: A natural reluctance to see any other living being, especially one of our own kind, suffer or die.

I think that all the rules of natural right come from the combination of these two principles. Our intellect can see how they work together, without needing to add any ideas about “sociability.” It is only later, after our reason has developed, that we have to re-establish these same rules on different foundations.

If we think this way, we don’t have to imagine that a man must be a philosopher before he can be a man. His duties to others are not taught to him only by complex lessons of wisdom. As long as he listens to his inner feeling of compassion, he will never harm another person or any feeling creature, except in the rare case when his own life is at stake and he must put himself first.

This approach also settles the old arguments about whether animals are part of natural law. It’s clear that animals, lacking minds and free will, cannot recognize this law. However, because they can feel, they share in our nature to some extent. This means they should share in natural right. Humans have an obligation not to senselessly harm animals. My duty not to injure my fellow creatures comes less from them being rational and more from them being sentient (able to feel). Since this quality is common to both humans and animals, animals should at least have the right not to be abused.

The True Path to Understanding Society

Studying the original man—his real needs and the basic principles of his duties—is the only way to solve the difficult questions about:

The origin of moral inequality.
The true foundations of government.
The rights of citizens.

When we look at society with a calm and unbiased eye, it first seems to show only the violence of the powerful and the oppression of the weak. The mind is shocked by the cruelty of some and saddened by the blindness of others. Human relationships based on power, wealth, or poverty are unstable and often based on accidents rather than wisdom. At first glance, all human institutions seem to be built on shifting sand.

It is only by looking closer, and by clearing away the dust and sand around the building, that we can see the solid foundation it rests upon and learn to respect it. To do this—to separate what comes from God’s will from what comes from human invention—we must seriously study man, his natural abilities, and how they developed over time.

This investigation into politics and morals is useful in every way. The hypothetical history of how governments came to be offers an important lesson for all of humanity. By considering what we might have become if left to ourselves, we learn to thank the gracious hand that shaped our institutions, gave them a firm foundation, and turned sources of misery into sources of happiness.

A Dissertation on the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality of Mankind

I am here to speak about man. And the question I am exploring shows me that I must speak to men, because only those who are not afraid to honor the truth ask such questions. I will confidently defend the cause of humanity before the wise people who have invited me to do so. I hope I can do justice to my subject and my judges.

I see two kinds of inequality in the human species:

Natural or Physical Inequality. This is established by nature. It consists of differences in age, health, physical strength, and qualities of the mind or soul.
Moral or Political Inequality. This depends on a kind of agreement. It is established, or at least approved, by the consent of people. This type of inequality consists of the different privileges that some enjoy while others do not, such as being richer, more honored, more powerful, or even able to make others obey them.

It is pointless to ask about the source of natural inequality, because the answer is in the definition of the words. It is even more pointless to ask if there is a connection between the two inequalities. That would be like asking if those who give orders are always naturally better than those who obey, or if strength, wisdom, and virtue always correspond to power and wealth. This is a question for slaves to discuss in front of their masters, not for reasonable and free people searching for the truth.

The Real Question

Therefore, the precise subject of this work is this: To identify the moment when right replaced violence and nature was subjected to law. I want to explain the incredible series of events that led to the strong agreeing to serve the weak, and the people agreeing to buy an imaginary peace at the cost of their real happiness.

How Other Philosophers Got It Wrong

The philosophers who have studied the foundations of society all felt they needed to go back to a state of nature, but none of them ever got there.

Some assigned ideas of “just” and “unjust” to natural man, without bothering to explain how he would have had such ideas or why they would be useful to him.
Others spoke of a “natural right” to keep what “belongs” to him, without explaining what “belongs” meant.
Still others started by giving the strong authority over the weak and then jumped straight to the creation of government, ignoring the long time it must have taken for words like “authority” and “government” to even exist.

In short, every one of them took ideas that are learned in society—like need, greed, oppression, desire, and pride—and projected them onto the state of nature. When they described the “savage,” they were actually describing a modern, social man. Most of them never even stopped to wonder if a “state of nature” ever really existed at all.

(Of course, holy scripture tells us that the first man received understanding directly from God, so he was never in such a state. If we believe the writings of Moses, as any Christian philosopher should, we must deny that humans were ever in a pure state of nature, unless they fell back into it through some extraordinary event—a claim that would be very difficult to defend or prove.)

My Method: A Thought Experiment

Let’s begin by setting “facts” aside, since they don’t affect the core question. The investigation I am about to undertake should not be seen as historical truth. Think of it as hypothetical reasoning, meant to explain the nature of things rather than their actual origin. It’s similar to the hypotheses our physicists create to explain the formation of the world.

Religion commands us to believe that God Himself took humans out of the state of nature right after creation, and that they are unequal only because He willed it so. But religion does not forbid us from using our reason to wonder what might have become of the human race if it had been left to itself. This is the question I was asked, and this is what I will discuss.

My subject concerns all of humanity, so I will try to use a style that speaks to all nations. Forgetting time and place, I will think only of the people I am speaking to. I will imagine I am in the Lyceum of Athens, teaching my lessons with Plato as a judge and the entire human race as my audience.

O Man, whoever you are, from whatever country, whatever your opinions may be—listen. Here is your history, as I have read it not in the books of your fellow men, who are liars, but in Nature, which never lies. Everything that comes from Nature will be true. The only falsehoods you might find are those I have added by my own mistake.

The time I am going to describe is very far in the past. Look how much you have changed from what you once were!

I am going to write the life story of your entire species. I will base it on the original qualities you received from nature—qualities that your education and habits may have damaged, but could not completely destroy.

I feel that there is an age in a person’s life when they wish they could stop growing older. As you read this, you will start to think about the age at which you wish your entire species had stopped developing. You are unhappy with your current state, for reasons that will make your descendants even unhappier. You will probably wish you could go back in time.

This feeling of wanting to go back does three things:

It praises your earliest ancestors.
It criticizes the people of today.
It serves as a warning to the unfortunate people who will come after you.

THE FIRST PART

To judge the natural state of man correctly, it’s important to look at him from his very origin, like looking at an embryo. However, I will not do that.

I will not trace the step-by-step development of his body. I won’t get into questions about what his original animal form might have been. For example, I won’t ask:

Did he start with crooked talons instead of long nails, as Aristotle thought?
Was his body covered in hair, like a bear’s?
Did he walk on all fours, with his eyes always looking at the ground?

I could only make vague and imaginary guesses about these things. We don’t know enough from anatomy or animal observation to make solid arguments.

So, I will set aside any information from religion and ignore any physical changes that happened over time. I will simply assume that the first human’s body was always just like ours is today. I will picture him walking on two legs, using his hands just as we do, looking out at all of nature, and measuring the vast sky with his eyes.

The Original Human, Stripped Bare

Now, let’s take this person and strip away all the special gifts he may have received from a higher power. Let’s also remove all the artificial skills he could only have learned through a long, slow process.

If we consider him as he must have come directly from the hands of nature, we see an animal. He is weaker than some animals and less agile than others. But overall, he is the most advantageously organized of all.

I see him satisfying his hunger at the first oak tree and quenching his thirst at the first stream. He finds his bed at the foot of the very tree that gave him his meal. With that, all his needs are met.

The earth, left to its natural fertility, was covered with huge forests. These forests offered food and shelter for every kind of animal. Humans, scattered among the other creatures, would watch them and imitate their skills. In doing so, man could gain the instincts of all the other animals.

This gave him a huge advantage. Every other animal was limited to one particular set of instincts. But man, who perhaps had no unique instinct of his own, could borrow from them all. He could eat most of the different foods that other animals ate. This made finding food much easier for him than for any other creature.

A Strong and Healthy Body

Early humans were used to bad weather and harsh seasons from the time they were children. They were accustomed to being tired. Naked and unarmed, they were forced to either defend themselves and their food from predators, or escape by running away.

This lifestyle gave them a strong and nearly unbreakable constitution. Children were born with the excellent health of their parents, and they made it even stronger through the same exercises that built it in the first place. They acquired all the vigor the human body is capable of.

In this sense, nature treats humans just as the law of Sparta treated its citizens’ children: she makes the well-formed babies strong and lets the others perish. This is different from our modern societies, where the state makes children a burden on their parents and, in a way, kills them all indiscriminately before they are even born.

The Body as the Only Tool

The body of an early human was the only tool he knew. He used it for many things that our bodies are incapable of because we don’t practice. Our modern industry takes away the strength and agility that necessity forces him to develop.

If he had an axe, would his bare arm be strong enough to break a huge branch off a tree?
If he had a sling, could he throw a stone so fast?
If he had a ladder, would he be so nimble climbing a tree?
If he had a horse, would he be so fast on his own two feet?

Give a modern person time to gather all his machines, and he will easily beat the early human. But if you want to see a truly unequal contest, put them together naked and unarmed. You will quickly see the advantage of having all your strength available at all times and being ready for anything.

Fear and Courage in the Wild

Some philosophers, like Hobbes, argue that man is naturally fearless and only wants to attack and fight. Other famous thinkers argue the opposite, saying that nothing is more timid than man in a state of nature. They say he is always trembling and ready to run at the slightest noise.

This might be true for things he doesn’t know. I’m sure he would be terrified by anything new if he didn’t know whether it would help him or harm him. But these situations were rare in the state of nature. There, things happened in a predictable, uniform way.

An early human, living among animals, would quickly have to measure his strength against theirs. He would soon realize that he surpasses them in skill more than they surpass him in raw strength. Because of this, he would learn not to be afraid of them.

Imagine a strong, agile, and brave early human—as they all were—armed with stones and a good club, facing a bear or a wolf. The danger would be on both sides. After a few fights, the wild beasts, which don’t like to attack each other anyway, would be hesitant to attack a man, whom they would have found to be just as ferocious as they are.

As for animals that are truly stronger than man is skillful, he is in the same position as other weaker animals: he can still survive. He has the advantage of being a fast runner and can find a safe refuge in almost any tree. This allows him to choose whether to fight or flee in any encounter.

Furthermore, it doesn’t seem that any animal naturally makes war on humans, except in self-defense or out of extreme hunger. They don’t show the kind of violent hatred that suggests one species is meant to be the food for another.

This is likely why many indigenous peoples are not afraid of wild beasts. The Caribs of Venezuela, for example, live in absolute security. Though they are almost naked and armed only with bows and arrows, we are told that none of them has ever been devoured by a wild animal.

Natural Enemies: Sickness and Old Age

Man has other, more formidable enemies: the natural weaknesses of infancy, old age, and illness. The first two are common to all animals, but the last one mainly affects humans living in society.

On infancy: A mother, who always carries her child with her, can nurse it much more easily than the females of many other species. Other animals are forced to constantly come and go, searching for their own food and then returning to feed their young. It’s true that if the mother dies, the infant is likely to die too. But this risk is common for many animals whose young cannot provide for themselves for a long time. And if our infancy is longer, our lives are also longer, so things are fairly equal in this respect.
On old age: When people grow old, they are less active and need less food. The primitive state also protects them from diseases like gout and rheumatism. Since human help can do little to relieve the pains of old age anyway, they simply fade away, almost without themselves or others noticing.
On sickness: I won’t repeat the false complaints that healthy people make against medicine. But I will ask this: have we ever seen solid proof that in countries where medicine is most neglected, people live shorter lives than where it is most practiced? How could that be true, if we bring more diseases upon ourselves than medicine can cure?

Think of all the things that make us sick:

The extreme inequality of our lifestyles (some are lazy, others work too hard).
The easy gratification of our appetites.
The overly rich foods of the wealthy, which cause indigestion.
The unhealthy food of the poor, which is often not enough.
Staying up late, and excesses of every kind.
Uncontrolled passions, fatigue, and mental exhaustion.
The countless pains and anxieties of modern life.

These are all fatal proofs that most of our illnesses are our own making. We could have avoided almost all of them by sticking to the simple, uniform, and solitary life that nature intended for us. If nature meant for man to be healthy, then I dare say that a state of deep thought is a state contrary to nature, and a thinking man is a depraved animal.

When we think of the good health of early peoples—at least those we haven’t ruined with our alcohol—and realize they suffer from almost no sicknesses other than wounds and old age, we are tempted to believe that the history of civil society is also the history of human disease.

Because he has so few causes of sickness, man in his natural state has no need for medicine, and even less for doctors. Humans are no worse off than other animals in this respect. Hunters can tell you that they rarely find sick animals in the wild. They do find animals with major healed wounds, including broken bones, that recovered without any surgery or special diet. Their cures seem to be just as complete without being tortured by scalpels, poisoned by drugs, or starved by fasting.

So, however useful medicine might be for us, the situation is different for an early human. When he is sick, he has nothing to hope for but a natural recovery. But he also has nothing to fear but his disease itself. This often makes his situation better than ours.

How Society Weakens Us

We must be careful not to confuse early humans with the people we see every day. Nature treats all the animals left in her care with a fondness that shows how much she values that right.

The horse, the cat, the bull, and even the donkey are generally larger, stronger, and more courageous when they are wild in the forests than when they are raised on a farm. By becoming domesticated, they lose half of these advantages. It seems that all our care and feeding only serve to weaken them.

It is the same with man. As he becomes sociable and a slave to society, he grows weak, timid, and obedient. His soft and effeminate way of life drains his strength and courage. The difference between a primitive and a civilized man is even greater than the difference between a wild and a tame beast. This is because humans indulge in even more comforts than they give their animals, which causes them to degenerate even more.

Therefore, it is not a great misfortune for these early people to be naked, to have no homes, and to lack all the extra things we think are so necessary. If their skin has no hair, they don’t need it in warm climates. In cold countries, they quickly learn to use the skins of beasts they have killed. If they have only two legs to run on, they have two arms to defend themselves and provide for their needs. Their children learn to walk slowly, but their mothers can carry them with ease—an advantage other animals lack.

In short, the first person who made himself clothes or a house was getting things he didn’t truly need. He had done without them until then, and there’s no reason he couldn’t live the same way as an adult that he had as a child.

The Senses of a Natural Human

Solitary, relaxed, and always surrounded by danger, the early human must be fond of sleep. His sleep must also be light, like that of animals, who think little and can be said to be dozing whenever they are not thinking.

Self-preservation is his main concern. Therefore, the faculties he must exercise the most are those related to attack and defense. On the other hand, the senses that are perfected only by softness and pleasure, like a refined sense of taste, remain in a rough state. His senses are divided:

His touch and taste are extremely coarse.
His sight, hearing, and smell are extremely sharp and subtle.

This is the general condition of animals, and according to travelers’ reports, it is the condition of most early peoples. It is no surprise, then, that some indigenous people in southern Africa can distinguish ships at sea with the naked eye as well as Europeans can with telescopes. Or that Native Americans could track Europeans by smell as well as the best dogs. Or that these people feel no pain going naked, use large quantities of hot peppers, and drink the strongest European liquors as if they were water.

From the Physical to the Moral

So far, I have only considered the physical man. Let us now look at him from his metaphysical and moral side.

I see nothing in an animal but an ingenious machine. Nature gives it senses to keep itself running and to protect itself from whatever might damage it. I see the exact same thing in the human machine, but with one key difference: in the actions of an animal, nature is the only one in charge. In contrast, man plays a part in his own actions because he is a free agent.

An animal chooses or refuses based on instinct.
A human chooses or refuses based on an act of free will.

This means an animal cannot break the rules prescribed for it, even when it would be better for it to do so. A human, on the other hand, often breaks the rules to his own detriment. For example, a pigeon would starve to death next to a bowl of the best meat, and a cat would starve on a pile of fruit, even though both could likely survive on those foods if they thought to try them. This is why reckless men indulge in excesses that bring on fever and death—because the mind corrupts the senses, and the will keeps speaking even when nature is silent.

Every animal has ideas, because it has senses. It can even combine those ideas to a certain degree. Man differs from the beast only in the degree to which he does this. Some philosophers have even said there is a bigger difference between two different men than between some men and some animals.

Therefore, it is not so much the understanding (or intelligence) that creates the specific difference between man and beast. It is man’s quality of being a free agent.

Free Will: The First Difference

Nature gives a command to every animal, and the animal obeys. Man receives the same command, but he knows that he is free to follow it or to resist. It is in this awareness of his own freedom that the power of his mind is truly shown.

Physics might be able to explain the mechanics of our senses and how ideas are formed. But the power to will—or rather, to choose—and the feeling of this power can only be understood as acts of the mind, which cannot be explained by physical laws alone.

The Ability to Improve: A Blessing or a Curse?

Even if you disagree on the point of free will, there is another very specific quality that separates humans from animals. This quality is not up for dispute.

It is the faculty of self-improvement, or perfectibility. This is the ability which, with the help of circumstances, allows us to gradually develop all of our other abilities. This capacity exists in our species as a whole and in each individual.

In contrast, an animal is all that it will ever be after just a few months of life. Its species is exactly the same after a thousand years as it was in the first year of that thousand.

This raises a question: Why is man the only creature that can become senile and lose his faculties in old age? Is it not because he is returning to his original, primitive state? An animal has acquired nothing new, so it has nothing to lose and keeps its instinct. But a man, who loses through age or accident everything his ability to improve has gained him, falls even lower than the animals themselves.

It is a sad thought, but we might be forced to admit that this unique and almost unlimited ability is the source of all of human misery.

It is this ability that, over time, pulls man out of his original, natural state, where he would have lived his days peacefully and innocently.
It is this ability that, over the ages, produces all of his discoveries and errors, his vices and virtues.
In the end, it is this ability that makes him a tyrant over both himself and over nature.

It would be shocking to have to praise the man who first taught the Oroonoko Indians to strap boards to their children’s heads. Those boards may guarantee that the children keep some of their original simplicity and happiness, but they do so by limiting their minds.

The Mind of Early Man

An early human, guided only by instinct, begins with purely animal functions. His first condition is simply seeing and feeling, which he shares with all other animals. To want and not want, to desire and to fear—these were the first and almost only operations of his soul, until new situations caused new abilities to develop.

Whatever moralists may say, the human mind owes a great deal to the passions. It is by the activity of our passions that our reason improves. We only seek knowledge because we wish to enjoy things. It is impossible to imagine why a person with no desires or fears would ever bother to reason.

The passions, in turn, come from our needs, and their development depends on our knowledge. We cannot desire or fear anything without first having an idea of it, or by a simple impulse from nature. Early man, having no complex thoughts, could only have the second kind of passions. His desires never went beyond his physical wants.

The only good things he recognized in the universe were:

Food
A female
Sleep

The only evil things he feared were:

Pain
Hunger

I say pain, and not death. An animal cannot know what it is to die. The knowledge of death and its terrors is one of the first things man acquired when he began to leave the animal state.

Why Progress Was So Slow

I could easily show that in every nation of the world, the progress of the mind has been directly related to the needs that people had. I could point to the arts in Egypt, which grew along with the flooding of the Nile. I could trace their progress to Greece, where they flourished among the rocks and sands, but failed to grow on the fertile riverbanks of Sparta. I might observe that, in general, the people of the North are more industrious than those of the South because they have to be. It is as if nature wanted to create balance by giving their minds the fertility she denied to their soil.

But without even looking at history, it is clear that everything about early man’s condition removed both the temptation and the ability to change.

His imagination painted no pictures.
His heart made no demands on him.
His few wants were so easily met.
He was so far from having the knowledge needed to want more that he could have neither foresight nor curiosity.

The face of nature became uninteresting to him as it became familiar. He always saw the same order, the same patterns. He didn’t have enough understanding to wonder at the greatest miracles. His soul, untroubled by anything, was completely focused on the feeling of its present existence, with no idea of the future. His plans, as limited as his vision, hardly extended to the end of the day.

Even today, this is the limit of a native Caribbean’s foresight. He will carelessly sell his cotton bed in the morning and come back crying in the evening to buy it back, not having foreseen that he would need it again the next night.

The Impossible Leap: Discovering Knowledge Alone

The more we think about this, the greater the distance appears between pure sensation and even the simplest knowledge. It’s impossible to imagine how a man, using only his own powers and without help or necessity, could have bridged such a huge gap.

How many centuries might have passed before humans saw any fire other than lightning from the sky? What a series of accidents must have happened to teach them the most common uses of fire? How many times must they have let it go out before learning how to reproduce it? And how often might that secret have died with the person who discovered it?

What can we say about agriculture? This art requires so much work and foresight. It is so dependent on other arts that it could only be practiced in a society that had already begun. But let’s imagine that men multiplied so much that the natural food of the earth was no longer enough. Let’s suppose that tools for farming fell from the sky. Let’s suppose men overcame their natural dislike of constant work and learned to cultivate the earth, sow seeds, and plant trees.

Even after all this, what man would be so foolish as to work a field that could be stripped of its crops by the first person or animal that happened to like it? How could anyone commit to a life of difficult labor when he could never be sure he would receive the reward? In short, how could this situation lead men to farm the land before it was divided up among them—that is to say, until the state of nature had been abolished?

The Ultimate Problem: The Origin of Language

What if early man was as brilliant a thinker as philosophers make him out to be? What if he was a philosopher himself, capable of figuring out the deepest truths? What good would all this deep thinking do for the species if it could not be communicated to others and died with the person who thought of it? What progress could mankind make while scattered in the woods among animals? How could they teach each other anything when, having no homes and no need for each other, they might barely meet twice in their lives, without knowing or speaking to one another?

Think about how many ideas we owe to the use of speech. Think about the unimaginable difficulty and the infinite time it must have taken to invent the first languages. Judge for yourself how many thousands of centuries must have passed for the human mind to develop all the operations it is capable of today.

Let’s consider the difficulties of how language began.

Difficulty 1: Why Was Language Necessary?

The first problem is figuring out how language could have become necessary in the first place. Since early humans had no communication with each other and no need for it, we can’t imagine why this invention was needed, or how it was possible if it wasn’t essential.

Some might say that languages started from the conversations between parents and children. But this doesn’t solve the problem. It makes the mistake of projecting modern ideas of society onto the state of nature. It imagines families living together in a permanent union, like we do. But in that primitive state, people had no houses, huts, or property of any kind. The sexes united by accident, whenever opportunity or desire brought them together. They didn’t need many words to communicate their intentions, and they parted ways just as casually.

A mother nursed her children at first for her own comfort, and later out of habit. But as soon as the children were strong enough to find their own food, they left her. Since the only way not to lose each other was to stay in constant sight, they quickly became unable to recognize one another if they happened to meet again.

Difficulty 2: The Chicken-and-Egg Problem

Let’s assume language somehow became necessary. Now we face a new, and worse, difficulty.

If men need speech to learn how to think, then they must have needed the art of thinking even more to be able to invent speech.

Even if we could understand how sounds came to represent ideas, we would still have to ask: how did they agree on this system? What could represent the agreement itself, especially for ideas that don’t correspond to physical objects and can’t be shown with a gesture or a sound? This art of communicating our thoughts is so amazing that even today, philosophers see it as impossibly far from perfection.

Difficulty 3: The First Words

The first language of mankind—the only one he needed before he had to persuade large crowds—was the simple cry of nature. This cry was only used on urgent occasions, to ask for help in danger or relief from suffering. It was not very useful in ordinary life.

When men’s ideas began to grow and communication became closer, they tried to invent more signs and a richer language. They used more tones of voice and added gestures. Gestures are naturally more expressive. But gestures only work for objects that are present or easily described. They don’t work in the dark or if something is in the way.

Eventually, men thought of using the sounds of the voice instead. These sounds don’t have a direct relationship to any particular idea, but they are better for expressing all ideas as shared signs. This could only have happened by common agreement, which would have been very difficult for men whose crude organs were not used to such exercise.

It is reasonable to suppose that the first words had a much broader meaning than words in modern languages. The first speakers likely gave a single word the meaning of an entire sentence. When they began to distinguish between subjects and verbs, nouns were at first just proper names for specific things. The very idea of adjectives must have been developed with great difficulty, because every adjective is an abstract idea, and abstract thinking is a difficult and unnatural process.

Difficulty 4: An Unusable Dictionary

At first, every object received a particular name, without any thought of categories. Every individual thing stood alone in their minds. If one oak tree was called ‘A’, another was called ‘B’. The idea that they were both “oaks” would take a long time to develop.

This means that the less they knew, the larger their dictionary must have been. To group things under common names like “tree” or “animal,” you first need to know their specific properties. You need observation and definition—in other words, a more developed understanding of science and philosophy than early humans could have possibly possessed.

General ideas cannot enter the mind without the help of words. This is one reason why animals cannot form such ideas or gain the ability for self-improvement that depends on them. When a monkey goes from one nut to another, does he have a general idea of “nut” and compare it to the two individual nuts?

A Note to the Reader

The times I am going to speak of are very remote. How much you have changed from what you once were! It is, so to speak, the life of your species that I am going to write. I will describe you based on the qualities you have received—qualities which your education and habits may have corrupted, but cannot have entirely destroyed.

There is, I feel, an age at which the individual man would wish to stop. You are about to inquire about the age at which you would have liked your whole species to have stood still. Discontented with your present state, for reasons which threaten your unfortunate descendants with still greater discontent, you will perhaps wish it were in your power to go back. This feeling should be a celebration of your first ancestors, a criticism of your contemporaries, and a terror to the unfortunate people who will come after you.

The First Part

To judge rightly the natural state of man, it is important to consider him from his origin and examine him, as it were, in the very beginning of his species. However, I will not follow his physical form through its successive developments. I will not ask what his animal system must have been at the beginning to become what it is today. On this subject, I could form only vague and almost imaginary guesses.

So, without using the supernatural information given to us on this head, I shall suppose his physical form to have been at all times what it appears to us today. I’ll assume he always walked on two legs, used his hands as we do, and looked out over all of nature with his eyes.

Imagining Man in His Original State

If we strip this being of all the supernatural gifts he may have received and all the artificial abilities he could have acquired only by a long process; if we consider him, in a word, just as he must have come from the hands of nature, we see in him an animal weaker than some and less agile than others. But, taking him all around, he is the most advantageously organized of any.

I see him satisfying his hunger at the first oak tree and quenching his thirst at the first brook. He finds his bed at the foot of the tree which gave him his meal. With that, all his wants are supplied.

The earth, left to its natural fertility and covered with immense forests, would present on every side both food and shelter for every species of animal. Men, scattered among the rest, would observe and imitate their industry and thus learn the instinct of the beasts. But man would have an advantage: whereas every species of animal was confined to one particular instinct, man would adopt them all. He would live upon most of those different foods which other animals shared among themselves and thus would find his sustenance much more easily than any of the rest.

A Robust Constitution

Accustomed from their infancy to the harshness of the weather and the severity of the seasons, trained for fatigue, and forced, naked and unarmed, to defend themselves and their prey from other ferocious animals, men would acquire a robust and almost unchangeable constitution. The children, bringing with them into the world the excellent constitution of their parents and strengthening it by the very exercises which first produced it, would thus acquire all the vigor the human body is capable of.

Nature in this case treats them exactly as the city of Sparta treated the children of its citizens: those who come well-formed into the world she makes strong and robust, and all the rest she destroys. This is different from our modern communities, in which the State, by making children a burden to their parents, kills them indiscriminately before they are born.

Savage Man vs. Civilized Man

The body of a savage man is the only instrument he understands. He uses it for various purposes of which our bodies, for want of practice, are incapable. Our industry deprives us of the force and agility which necessity forces him to acquire.

If he had had an axe, would he have been able to break so large a branch from a tree with his bare arm?
If he had had a sling, would he have been able to throw a stone with such great velocity?
If he had had a ladder, would he have been so nimble in climbing a tree?

Give a civilized man time to gather all his machines around him, and he will no doubt easily beat the savage. But if you would like to see a still more unequal contest, set them together naked and unarmed. You will soon see the advantage of having all our forces constantly at our disposal and of always being prepared for every event.

Fear, Courage, and Other Animals

The philosopher Hobbes contends that man is naturally fearless and is focused only on attacking and fighting. Other illustrious philosophers hold the opposite view, affirming that nothing is more timid and fearful than man in the state of nature.

This may be true of things he does not know. I do not doubt his being terrified by every new thing that presents itself when he doesn’t know the physical good or evil he may expect from it. Such circumstances, however, rarely occur in a state of nature, in which all things proceed in a uniform manner.

But savage man, living dispersed among other animals, soon comes to compare himself with them. Perceiving that he surpasses them more in skill than they surpass him in strength, he learns to no longer be afraid of them. Set a bear or a wolf against a robust, agile, and resolute savage, armed with stones and a good stick, and you will see that the danger will be at least on both sides.

Add to this that it does not appear that any animal naturally makes war on man, except in case of self-defense or excessive hunger.

Natural Infirmities: Infancy, Old Age, and Sickness

But man has other enemies more formidable: the natural infirmities of infancy, old age, and illness of every kind.

With regard to infancy, it is observable that the mother, carrying her child always with her, can nurse it with much greater ease than the females of many other animals.
In old age, when men are less active, the need for food diminishes with the ability to provide it. As the savage state also protects them from gout and rheumatism, they fade away without others perceiving that they are no more, and almost without perceiving it themselves.
With respect to sickness, I shall ask if any solid observations have been made from which it may be justly concluded that, in the countries where the art of medicine is most neglected, the average lifespan of man is less than in those where it is most cultivated. How can this be the case, if we bring on ourselves more diseases than medicine can furnish remedies?

The great inequality in our manner of living, the extreme idleness of some and the excessive labor of others, the exquisite foods of the wealthy which overheat them, and the unwholesome food of the poor which is often insufficient—all these, together with lack of sleep, excesses of every kind, fatigue, mental exhaustion, and the innumerable pains and anxieties of every condition of life, are fatal proofs that the greater part of our ills are of our own making. We might have avoided nearly all of them by adhering to that simple, uniform, and solitary manner of life which nature prescribed.

If nature destined man to be healthy, I venture to declare that a state of reflection is a state contrary to nature, and that a thinking man is a depraved animal. When we think of the good constitution of the savages, and reflect that they are troubled with hardly any disorders except wounds and old age, we are tempted to believe that, in following the history of civil society, we shall be telling also the history of human sickness.

Being subject, therefore, to so few causes of sickness, man in the state of nature can have no need of remedies, and still less of physicians. However useful medicine may be among us, it is certain that if the savage, when he is sick and left to himself, has nothing to hope for but from nature, he has, on the other hand, nothing to fear but from his disease. This often makes his situation preferable to our own.

We should beware, therefore, of confusing the savage man with the men we have daily before our eyes. Nature treats all the animals left to her care with a fondness that seems to show how jealous she is of that right. The horse, the cat, the bull, and even the ass are generally of a greater stature, and always more robust, and have more vigor, strength, and courage when they run wild in the forests than when they are bred in our stalls. By becoming domesticated, they lose half these advantages. It is thus with man also: as he becomes sociable and a slave, he grows weak, timid, and servile.

The Metaphysical and Moral Man

Hitherto I have considered merely the physical man. Let us now take a view of him on his metaphysical and moral side.

I see nothing in any animal but an ingenious machine, to which nature has given senses to wind itself up and to guard itself against anything that might tend to disorder or destroy it. I perceive exactly the same things in the human machine, with this difference: in the operations of the brute, nature is the sole agent, whereas man has some share in his own operations, in his character as a free agent. The one chooses and refuses by instinct; the other from an act of free-will. Hence the brute cannot deviate from the rule prescribed to it, even when it would be advantageous for it to do so. On the contrary, man frequently deviates from such rules to his own harm.

Free Will and the Capacity for Self-Improvement

However, even if there is still room for debate on this point, there is another very specific quality which distinguishes men and brutes, and which will admit of no dispute. This is the faculty of self-improvement, which, by the help of circumstances, gradually develops all the rest of our faculties. This capacity is inherent in the species as in the individual. A brute, on the other hand, is at the end of a few months all he will ever be during his whole life. His species, at the end of a thousand years, is exactly what it was in the first year of that thousand.

Why is man alone liable to grow senile? Is it not because he returns, in this, to his primitive state? While the brute, which has acquired nothing and therefore has nothing to lose, still retains the force of instinct, man loses, by age or accident, all that his perfectibility had enabled him to gain. By this means, he falls lower than the brutes themselves.

It would be melancholy if we were forced to admit that this distinctive and almost unlimited faculty is the source of all human misfortunes. It is this which, in time, draws man out of his original state, in which he would have spent his days peacefully and innocently. It is this faculty which, over the ages, produces his discoveries and his errors, his vices and his virtues, and makes him at length a tyrant both over himself and over nature.

The Role of the Passions

Whatever moralists may say, the human understanding is greatly indebted to the passions. It is by the activity of the passions that our reason is improved. We desire knowledge only because we wish to enjoy. It is impossible to imagine why a person who has neither fears nor desires should give himself the trouble of reasoning.

The passions, in turn, originate in our wants, and their progress depends on the progress of our knowledge. We cannot desire or fear anything, except from the idea we have of it, or from the simple impulse of nature. Now savage man, being without any kind of intelligence, can have no passions except those of the latter kind. His desires never go beyond his physical wants. The only goods he recognizes in the universe are food, a female, and sleep. The only evils he fears are pain and hunger. I say pain, and not death, for no animal can know what it is to die. The knowledge of death and its terrors is one of the first acquisitions made by man in departing from an animal state.

A Life Without Foresight or Curiosity

Everything seems to remove from savage man both the temptation and the means of changing his condition. His imagination paints no pictures; his heart makes no demands on him. His few wants are so readily supplied, and he is so far from having the knowledge which is needed to make him want more, that he can have neither foresight nor curiosity.

The face of nature becomes indifferent to him as it grows familiar. He sees in it always the same order, the same successions. He does not have understanding enough to wonder at the greatest miracles. His soul, which nothing disturbs, is wholly wrapped up in the feeling of its present existence, without any idea of the future, however near at hand. His projects, as limited as his views, hardly extend to the close of day. Such, even at present, is the extent of the native Caribbean’s foresight: he will improvidently sell you his cotton bed in the morning and come crying in the evening to buy it again, not having foreseen he would want it again the next night.

The Impossibility of Progress

The more we reflect on this subject, the greater the distance appears between pure sensation and the most simple knowledge. It is impossible to imagine how a man, by his own powers alone, without the aid of communication and the spur of necessity, could have bridged so great a gap.

How many ages may have passed before mankind was in a position to see any other fire than that of the heavens? What a multiplicity of chances must have happened to teach them the commonest uses of that element! How often must they have let it go out before they acquired the art of reproducing it? And how often may not such a secret have died with the one who had discovered it?

What shall we say of agriculture, an art which requires so much labor and foresight? It is so dependent on others that it is plain it could only be practiced in a society which had at least begun.

But let us suppose that men had so multiplied that the natural produce of the earth was no longer sufficient for their support. Let us suppose that the instruments of farming had dropped from the sky into the hands of savages. Even after all this, what man among them would be so absurd as to take the trouble of cultivating a field which might be stripped of its crop by the first person or beast that might take a liking to it? How could such a situation induce men to cultivate the earth until it was regularly divided out among them—that is to say, until the state of nature had been abolished?

The Problem of Language

Let us consider how many ideas we owe to the use of speech, and how far grammar exercises the understanding. Let us reflect on the inconceivable pains and the infinite space of time that the first invention of languages must have cost.

I might affirm, with many others, that languages arose in the domestic interactions between parents and their children. But this solution does not fix the difficulty. In this primitive state, men had neither houses, nor huts, nor any kind of property whatever. Everyone lived where he could, seldom for more than a single night. The sexes united without design, as accident or opportunity brought them together. They had no great need of words to communicate their designs to each other, and they parted with the same indifference. The mother nursed her children at first for her own sake, and afterward, when habit had made them dear, for theirs. But as soon as they were strong enough to go in search of their own food, they forsook her of their own accord. They soon became quite incapable of recognizing one another when they happened to meet again.

Let’s imagine for a moment we are on this side of the vast space which must lie between a pure state of nature and a state in which languages had become necessary. Let us inquire how they could first be established. Here we have a new and worse difficulty: for if men need speech to learn to think, they must have stood in much greater need of the art of thinking to be able to invent the art of speaking.

We can hardly form any tolerable guesses about the origin of this art of communicating our thoughts. It is an art so sublime that, far distant as it is from its origin, philosophers still see it at such an immeasurable distance from perfection that there is no one rash enough to affirm it will ever reach it.

The first language of mankind, the most universal and vivid, was the simple cry of nature. But as this was used only on urgent occasions, to implore assistance in case of danger or relief in case of suffering, it could be of little use in the ordinary course of life.

When the ideas of men began to expand and multiply, and closer communication took place among them, they strove to invent more numerous signs and a more extensive language. It is reasonable to suppose that the words first made use of by mankind had a much wider meaning than those used in languages already formed. Ignorant as they were of the division of speech into its parts, they at first gave every single word the sense of a whole proposition.

Every object at first received a particular name without regard to genus or species. If one oak was called A, another was called B. So that, the narrower the limits of their knowledge, the more copious their dictionary must have been. To arrange beings under common and generic names, it became necessary to know their distinguishing properties. This required observation and definition—that is to say, natural history and metaphysics of a far more developed kind than men at that time could have possessed.

General ideas cannot be introduced into the mind without the assistance of words, nor can the understanding grasp them except by means of propositions. This is one of the reasons why animals cannot form such ideas or ever acquire that capacity for self-improvement which depends on them.

I am so aghast at the increasing difficulties which present themselves, and so well convinced of the almost demonstrable impossibility that languages should owe their original creation to merely human means, that I leave to anyone who will undertake it the discussion of the difficult problem: which was most necessary, the existence of society for the invention of language, or the invention of language for the establishment of society?

The Question of Misery

From the little care which nature has taken to unite mankind by mutual wants and to facilitate the use of speech, we can infer that she has contributed little to make them sociable.

It is incessantly repeated that man in such a state would have been the most miserable of creatures. Indeed, if it is true that he must have lived many ages before he could have either the desire or the opportunity of emerging from it, this would only be an accusation against nature, not against the being which she had so unhappily created.

But as I understand the word “miserable,” it either has no meaning at all, or else signifies only a painful lack of something, or a state of suffering either in body or soul. I should be glad to have it explained to me what kind of misery a free being, whose heart is at ease and whose body is in health, can possibly suffer. I would ask also whether a social or a natural life is most likely to become unbearable to those who enjoy it.

We see around us hardly a creature in civil society who does not complain about his existence. We even see many take their own lives. I ask, if it was ever known that a savage, when at liberty, took it into his head to complain of life or to kill himself. Let us therefore judge, with less vanity, on which side the real misery is found.

On the other hand, nothing could be more unhappy than savage man dazzled by science, tormented by his passions, and reasoning about a state different from his own. It appears that Providence most wisely determined that the faculties which he potentially possessed should develop themselves only as occasion offered to exercise them. In instinct alone, he had all he required for living in the state of nature. With a developed understanding, he has only just enough to support life in society.

The Character of Natural Man

It appears, at first view, that men in a state of nature, having no moral relations or definite obligations with one another, could not be either good or bad, virtuous or vicious.

But without deviating from the ordinary sense of the words, it will be proper to suspend the judgment we might be led to form on such a state and be on our guard against our prejudices. We must see whether virtues or vices are more numerous among civilized men, and whether their virtues do them more good than their vices do them harm. We should question whether they would not be, on the whole, in a much happier condition if they had nothing to fear or to hope from anyone, than as they are, subjected to universal dependence and obliged to take everything from those who promise to give them nothing in return.

The Problem with Hobbes

Above all, let us not conclude, with Hobbes, that because man has no idea of goodness, he must be naturally wicked. Let us not conclude that he is vicious because he does not know virtue, or that he always refuses to do services for his fellow-creatures which he does not think they have a right to demand.

Hobbes ought to have said that the state of nature, being the state in which the care for our own preservation is the least harmful to that of others, was consequently the best calculated to promote peace and the most suitable for mankind. He says the exact opposite, because he improperly included, as a part of savage man’s care for self-preservation, the need to gratify a multitude of passions which are the work of society and have made laws necessary.

It may be justly said that savages are not bad merely because they do not know what it is to be good. For it is neither the development of the understanding nor the restraint of law that hinders them from doing ill, but the peacefulness of their passions and their ignorance of vice.

The Second Principle: Compassion

There is another principle which has escaped Hobbes. It was bestowed on mankind to moderate the intensity of egoism. It tempers the passion with which he pursues his own well-being by an innate repugnance at seeing a fellow-creature suffer. I think I need not fear contradiction in holding man to be possessed of the only natural virtue: compassion, or pity.

This disposition is suitable to creatures so weak and subject to so many evils as we certainly are. It is so much the more universal and useful to mankind as it comes before any kind of reflection. At the same time, it is so natural that the very brutes themselves sometimes give evident proofs of it. One animal never passes by the dead body of another of its species. Even the mournful lowing of cattle when they enter the slaughterhouse shows the impressions made on them by the horrible spectacle.

What horrid agitation must the eye-witness of such a scene experience! Such is the pure emotion of nature, prior to all kinds of reflection! Such is the force of natural compassion, which the greatest depravity of morals has as yet hardly been able to destroy! For we daily find at our theaters men affected, nay shedding tears at the sufferings of a wretch who, were he in the tyrant’s place, would probably even add to the torments of his enemies.

Mandeville, another philosopher, well knew that, in spite of all their morality, men would have never been better than monsters had not nature bestowed on them a sense of compassion to aid their reason. But he did not see that from this quality alone flow all those social virtues of which he denied man the possession. What is generosity, clemency, or humanity but compassion applied to the weak, to the guilty, or to mankind in general? Even benevolence and friendship are, if we judge rightly, only the effects of compassion, constantly set upon a particular object.

Compassion must, in fact, be stronger the more the animal witnessing any kind of distress identifies himself with the animal that suffers. Now, it is plain that such identification must have been much more perfect in a state of nature than it is in a state of reason.

It is reason that engenders self-respect and reflection that confirms it.
It is reason which turns man’s mind back upon itself and divides him from everything that could disturb or afflict him.
It is philosophy that isolates him and bids him say, at the sight of the misfortunes of others, “Perish if you will, I am secure.”

Uncivilized man does not have this admirable talent. For want of reason and wisdom, he is always foolishly ready to obey the first promptings of humanity. It is the populace that flocks together at riots and street-brawls, while the wise man prudently makes off. It is the mob and the market-women who part the combatants and hinder gentle-folks from cutting one another’s throats.

It is then certain that compassion is a natural feeling which, by moderating the violence of self-love in each individual, contributes to the preservation of the whole species.

It is this compassion that hurries us without reflection to the relief of those who are in distress.
It is this which in a state of nature supplies the place of laws, morals, and virtues, with the advantage that none are tempted to disobey its gentle voice.
It is this which, instead of teaching that sublime maxim of rational justice, Do to others as you would have them do unto you, inspires all men with that other maxim of natural goodness, much less perfect indeed, but perhaps more useful: Do good to yourself with as little evil as possible to others.

In a word, it is in this natural feeling, rather than in any subtle arguments, that we must look for the cause of the reluctance which every man would experience in doing evil.

A Final Danger: The Passions

With passions so little active, and so good a check on them, men, being rather wild than wicked, and more intent to guard themselves against the mischief that might be done to them than to do mischief to others, were by no means subject to very perilous disagreements. They maintained no kind of intercourse with one another and were consequently strangers to vanity, deference, esteem, and contempt. They had not the least idea of “mine and thine,” and no true conception of justice. Their quarrels, therefore, would seldom have very bloody consequences, for the subject of them would be merely the question of subsistence.

But I am aware of one greater danger which remains to be noticed.

Of the passions that stir the heart of man, there is one which makes the sexes necessary to each other and is extremely ardent and impetuous. It is a terrible passion that braves danger, surmounts all obstacles, and seems calculated to bring destruction on the human race which it is really destined to preserve. What must become of men who are left to this brutal and boundless rage, without modesty, without shame, and daily upholding their loves at the price of their blood?

It must, in the first place, be allowed that, the more violent the passions are, the more are laws necessary to keep them under restraint.

The Passions: Moral vs. Physical Love

But, let’s set aside the fact that laws are inadequate to control the violent passions that cause crime and disorder in our societies. We should ask if these evils didn’t actually spring up with the laws themselves. If so, even if the laws could stop such evils, the least we could expect is that they should check a problem that wouldn’t have existed without them.

Let’s start by distinguishing between the physical and moral parts of the feeling of love.

The physical part of love is the general desire that urges the sexes to unite with each other.
The moral part of love is the feeling that determines and fixes this desire exclusively on one particular person. This moral part is an artificial feeling, born of social customs. It is promoted by women with much care and cleverness to establish their “empire” and put in power the sex that ought to obey.

Love in the State of Nature

This moral feeling is based on certain ideas of beauty and merit which a savage is in no position to acquire, and on comparisons which he is incapable of making. For the savage, moral love must be almost non-existent. Since his mind cannot form abstract ideas of proportion and regularity, his heart is not capable of the feelings of love and admiration that are produced by these ideas. He follows only the character nature has implanted in him, not tastes which he could never have acquired. For him, every woman equally serves his purpose.

Men in a state of nature, being confined only to what is physical in love, must be subject to fewer and less violent fits of passion. Consequently, they fall into fewer and less violent disputes. The imagination, which causes such havoc among us, never speaks to the heart of savages. They quietly await the impulses of nature, yield to them involuntarily, with more pleasure than passion, and, once their wants are satisfied, they lose the desire.

It is therefore undeniable that love, as well as all other passions, must have acquired in society that glowing intensity which so often makes it fatal to mankind. It is absurd to represent savages as continually cutting one another’s throats to indulge their brutality, because this opinion is directly contrary to experience. The Caribbeans, who have so far deviated the least from the state of nature, are in fact the most peaceful of people in their loves and the least subject to jealousy.

Let us not conclude from the combats of some animals for the enjoyment of females that the case would be the same with mankind in a state of nature. Even if we did, we can see that such contests do not exterminate other kinds of animals, and we have no reason to think they would be more fatal to ours. It is clear they would do still less mischief than is the case in a state of society, where the jealousy of lovers and the vengeance of husbands are the daily cause of duels, murders, and even worse crimes.

A Summary of Natural Man

Let us conclude then that man in a state of nature, wandering up and down the forests, without industry, without speech, and without a home, is an equal stranger to war and to all social ties. He neither needs his fellow-creatures nor has any desire to hurt them, and perhaps does not even distinguish them from one another.

Let us conclude that, being self-sufficient and subject to so few passions, he could have no feelings or knowledge except those that befitted his situation. He felt only his actual necessities, and his understanding made no greater progress than his vanity. If by accident he made any discovery, he was less able to communicate it to others, as he did not even know his own children. Every art would necessarily perish with its inventor. Where there was no kind of education among men, generations succeeded generations without the least advance. When, all setting out from the same point, centuries must have elapsed in the barbarism of the first ages, the human race was already old, and man remained a child.

The Purpose of This Picture

If I have spent so much time on this supposed primitive state, it is because I had so many ancient errors and deeply-rooted prejudices to get rid of. I therefore thought I had to dig down to their very root and show, by means of a true picture of the state of nature, how far even the natural inequalities of mankind are from having the reality and influence which modern writers suppose.

It is in fact easy to see that many of the differences which distinguish men are merely the effect of habit and the different methods of life men adopt in society. A robust or delicate constitution, and the strength or weakness that comes with it, are more frequently the effects of a hardy or effeminate method of education than of the original makeup of the body. It is the same with the powers of the mind.

If we compare the huge diversity in the education and lifestyle of the various classes of men in the state of society with the uniformity and simplicity of animal and savage life, it is easy to imagine how much less the difference between man and man must be in a state of nature than in a state of society. It’s also easy to see how greatly the natural inequality of mankind must be increased by the inequalities of social institutions.

Why Natural Inequality Doesn’t Matter

But even if nature really was as partial in the distribution of her gifts as people claim, what advantage would her greatest favorites get from it, to the harm of others, in a state that admits of hardly any kind of relationship between them?

Where there is no love, of what advantage is beauty?
Of what use is wit to those who do not converse?
What use is cunning to those who have no business with others?

I constantly hear it repeated that, in such a state, the strong would oppress the weak. But what is meant here by oppression? Some, it is said, would violently dominate others, who would groan under a servile submission to their whims. This is exactly what I observe to be the case among us. But I do not see how it can be said of men in a state of nature, who could not easily be brought to understand what we mean by domination and servitude.

The Impossibility of Slavery in the State of Nature

One man, it is true, might seize the fruits which another had gathered, the game he had killed, or the cave he had chosen for shelter. But how would he ever be able to demand obedience, and what ties of dependence could there be among men who have no possessions?

If I am driven from one tree, I can go to the next. If I am disturbed in one place, what stops me from going to another? Again, suppose I happen to meet a man so much stronger than myself, and at the same time so depraved and so lazy as to force me to provide for his food while he himself remains idle. He must take care not to have his eyes off me for a single moment. He must bind me fast before he goes to sleep, or I shall certainly either knock him on the head or make my escape.

That is to say, he must in such a case voluntarily expose himself to much greater trouble than he seeks to avoid. After all this, let him be off his guard for just a moment, let him but turn his head aside at any sudden noise, and I shall be instantly twenty paces off, lost in the forest. And with my fetters burst apart, he would never see me again.

The bonds of servitude are formed merely by the mutual dependence of men on one another and the reciprocal needs that unite them. It is impossible to make any man a slave unless he is first reduced to a situation in which he cannot do without the help of others. Since such a situation does not exist in a state of nature, every one is there his own master, and the law of the strongest is of no effect.

Tracing the Path to Society

Having proved that the inequality of mankind is hardly felt, and that its influence is next to nothing in a state of nature, I must next show its origin and trace its progress. I must now collect and consider the different accidents which may have improved the human understanding while depraving the species, and made man wicked while making him sociable.

I confess that, as the events I am going to describe might have happened in various ways, I have nothing to determine my choice but conjectures. But such conjectures become reasons when they are the most probable that can be drawn from the nature of things and the only means of discovering the truth. It is enough for me to offer these hints to the consideration of my judges, and to have so arranged my writing that the general reader has no need to consider them at all.

The Second Part

The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, thought of saying “This is mine,” and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.

From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: “Beware of listening to this impostor! You are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.”

But there is a great probability that things had then already come to such a state that they could no longer continue as they were. The idea of property depends on many prior ideas which could only be acquired successively and cannot have been formed all at once in the human mind. Mankind must have made very considerable progress and acquired considerable knowledge and industry, which they must also have transmitted and increased from age to age, before they arrived at this last point of the state of nature. Let us then go farther back and try to unify under a single point of view that slow succession of events and discoveries in the most natural order.

The First Stirrings of Progress

Man’s first feeling was that of his own existence, and his first care was that of self-preservation. The produce of the earth furnished him with all he needed, and instinct told him how to use it. Hunger and other appetites made him at various times experience various modes of existence. Among these was one which urged him to propagate his species—a blind tendency that, having nothing to do with the heart, produced a merely animal act. The want once gratified, the two sexes knew each other no more. Even the offspring was nothing to its mother as soon as it could do without her.

Such was the condition of infant man. But difficulties soon presented themselves, and it became necessary to learn how to overcome them. The height of the trees, the competition of other animals for the same fruits, and the ferocity of those who needed them for their own preservation, all forced 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 and to contend with other animals.

As the human race grew more numerous, men’s cares increased. The difference of soils, climates, and seasons must have introduced some differences into their manner of living. Barren years, long and sharp winters, and scorching summers must have demanded a new industry.

On the seashore and the banks of rivers, they invented the hook and line and became fishermen.
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 introduced them to fire, a new resource against the rigors of winter. They next 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.

The Birth of Reflection and Pride

This repeated application of various beings to himself, and of one to another, would naturally give rise in the human mind to the perceptions of certain relations between them. Thus the relations which we denote by the terms great, small, strong, weak, swift, slow, fearful, bold, and the like, almost without thinking, must have at length produced in him a kind of reflection.

The new intelligence which resulted from this development increased his superiority over other animals by making him sensible of it. He would now endeavor, therefore, to ensnare them and would play a thousand tricks on them. In time, he would 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. At a time when he scarcely knew how to distinguish the different orders of beings, by looking upon his species as the highest order, he prepared the way for assuming pre-eminence as an individual.

Other men, it is true, were not then to him what they now are to us, and he had no greater interaction with them than with other animals. Yet they were not neglected in his observations. The similarities 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. 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 led him, from an intuitive feeling more certain and much faster than any kind of reasoning, to follow the rules of conduct he had best observe toward others for his own security and advantage.

First Encounters: The Stag and the Hare

Taught by experience that the love of one’s own well-being is the only motive of human actions, savage man found himself able to distinguish the few cases in which mutual interest might justify him in relying on the help of his fellows. He could also distinguish the still fewer cases in which a conflict of interests might give him cause to suspect them.

In the first case, he joined in the same herd with them, or at most in some kind of loose association that placed no restraint on its members and lasted no longer than the temporary occasion that formed it.
In the latter case, everyone sought his own private advantage, either by open force if he thought himself strong enough, or by skill and cunning if he felt himself the weaker.

In this way, men may have slowly acquired some rough ideas of mutual promises and the advantages of fulfilling them. But this was only so far as their present and obvious interest was concerned. They were perfect strangers to foresight and were so far from troubling themselves about the distant future that they hardly thought of the next day.

Here is an example: If a deer was to be taken, everyone saw that, in order to succeed, he must faithfully stay at 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 hesitation. And, having seized his prey, he cared very little if by so doing he caused his companions to miss theirs.

It is easy to understand that such interactions would not require a language much more refined than that of crows or monkeys, who associate for much the same purpose. Inarticulate cries, plenty of gestures, and some imitative sounds must have been for a long time the universal language.

The First Revolution: Huts, Families, and Property

I pass over in an instant a multitude of ages, because the slower the events were in their succession, the more rapidly they may be described.

These first advances enabled men to make others with greater speed. As they grew more enlightened, they grew more industrious. They stopped falling asleep under the first tree or in the first cave that gave them shelter. They invented several kinds of implements made of hard and sharp stones, which they used to dig up the earth and to cut wood. They then made huts out of branches and afterward 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 of property. This in itself became the source of a thousand quarrels and conflicts.

However, as the strongest were probably the first to build themselves huts which they felt they were able to defend, it may be concluded that the weak found it much easier and safer to imitate them than to try to dislodge them.

The Birth of Love and Leisure

The first expansions of the human heart were the effects of a new situation which united husbands and wives, and 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 mutual attachment were the only bonds of its union.

The sexes, whose manner of life had up to this point been the same, began now to adopt different ways of living. The women became more sedentary and accustomed themselves to minding the hut and their children, while the men went abroad in search of their common food. From living a softer life, both sexes also began to lose something of their strength and ferocity. But if individuals became less able to encounter wild beasts separately, they found it, on the other hand, easier to assemble and resist them together.

The First Yoke: How Conveniences Became Needs

The simplicity and solitude of man’s life in this new condition, the small number of his wants, and the implements he had invented to satisfy them, left him a great deal of leisure. He employed this leisure 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 in this way to weaken both body and mind, these conveniences lost with use almost all their power to please. They even degenerated into real needs, until the want of them became far more disagreeable than the possession of them had been pleasant. Men would have been unhappy at the loss of them, though the possession did not make them happy.

The Spread of Language

We can here see a little better how the use of speech became established and slowly improved in each family. Floods or earthquakes may have surrounded inhabited districts with water or cliffs. Revolutions of the globe may have torn off portions from the continent and made them islands. It is readily seen that among men thus collected and forced to live together, a common language must have arisen much more easily than among those who still wandered through the forests of the continent. Thus, it is very possible that after their first attempts at navigation, the islanders brought the use of speech over to the continent.

The Dawn of Society: Jealousy and Public Esteem

Everything now begins to change its aspect. Men, who have up to now been roving in the woods, take to a more settled manner of life. They gradually come together, form separate bodies, and at length in every country arises a distinct nation, united in character and manners.

Permanent neighborhood could not fail to produce some connection between different families. Among young people of opposite sexes living in neighboring huts, the brief encounters required by nature soon led to another kind of interaction, not less agreeable and more permanent.

Men now began to take the difference between objects into account and to make comparisons.
They imperceptibly acquired the ideas of beauty and merit, which soon gave rise to feelings of preference.
In consequence of seeing each other often, they could not do without seeing each other constantly.
A tender and pleasant feeling crept into their souls, and the least opposition turned it into an impetuous fury. With love arose jealousy. Discord triumphed, and human blood was sacrificed to the gentlest of all passions.

As ideas and feelings succeeded one another, men continued to lay aside their original wildness. They accustomed themselves to assemble before their huts around 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 with nothing else to do.

Each one began to consider the rest and to wish to be considered in turn. Thus, a 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 the most highly regarded.

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. The fermentation caused by these new leavens ended by producing combinations fatal to innocence and happiness.

As soon as men began to value one another, and the idea of esteem had gotten a footing in the mind, everyone put in his claim to it. Hence arose the first obligations of civility even among savages. Every intended injury became an affront because, besides the hurt which might result from it, the injured party was certain to find in it a contempt for his person which was often more unbearable than the hurt itself.

Thus, as every man punished the contempt shown him by others, revenge became terrible, and men became bloody and cruel. This is precisely the state reached by most of the savage nations known to us. 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. In fact, nothing is more gentle than man in his primitive state.

The Happiest Time for Humanity

It must be remarked that this new-born state of society required of men qualities different from those which they possessed from their primitive constitution. Morality began to appear in human actions, and everyone, before the institution of law, was the only judge and avenger of the injuries done him.

Thus, though men had become less patient, and their natural compassion had already suffered some decline, this period of the expansion of the human faculties, keeping a “just mean” between the laziness of the primitive state and the restless 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. He can have departed from it only through some fatal accident which, for the public 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, that it is the real youth of the world, and that all subsequent advances have been apparently so many steps towards the perfection of the individual, but in reality towards the decay of the species.

The Great Revolution: Iron and Grain

So long as men remained content with their rustic huts and their clothes made of animal skins; so long as they adorned themselves only with feathers and shells; 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.

But from the moment one man began to stand in need of the help of another, from the moment it appeared advantageous for any one man to have enough provisions for two, 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.

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 grain which first civilized men and ruined humanity. Both were unknown to the savages of America, who for that reason are still savage.

It is difficult to guess how men first came to know and use iron. It seems as if nature had taken pains to keep the fatal secret from us. On the other hand, with regard to agriculture, its principles were known long before they were put in practice. It was probably a very long time, however, before men’s industry took that turn. This was either because they were ignorant of the use of corn, or without instruments to cultivate it, or because they lacked foresight for future needs, or because they were without means of preventing others from robbing them of the fruit of their labor.

When they grew more industrious, it is natural to believe that they began, with the help of sharp stones and pointed sticks, to cultivate a few vegetables or roots around their huts. But it was long before they knew how to prepare corn or were provided with the implements necessary for raising it in any large quantity.

The Rise of Property and Inequality

The invention of other arts must therefore have been necessary to compel mankind to apply themselves to agriculture. No sooner were craftsmen wanted to smelt and forge iron than others were required to maintain them. The more hands that were employed in manufacturing, the fewer were left to provide for the common subsistence, though the number of mouths to be fed remained the same.

The cultivation of the earth necessarily brought about its distribution. Property, once recognized, gave rise to the first rules of justice. To secure each man his own, it had to be possible for each to have something. Besides, as men began to look forward to the future, and all had something to lose, everyone had reason to fear that reprisals would follow any injury he might do to another.

This origin is so much the more natural as it is impossible to conceive how property can come from anything but manual labor. It is the farmer’s labor alone that, giving him a title to the produce of the ground he has tilled, gives him a claim also to the land itself, at least until the harvest. And so, from year to year, a constant possession is easily transformed into property.

In this state of affairs, equality might have been sustained if the talents of individuals had been equal, and if, for example, the use of iron and the consumption of food had always exactly balanced each other. But as there was nothing to preserve this balance, it was soon disturbed.

The strongest did the most work.
The most skillful turned his labor to the best account.
The most ingenious devised methods of diminishing his labor.
The farmer 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 slowly along with social inequality. The differences between men, developed by their different circumstances, become more noticeable and permanent in their effects. They begin to have an influence over the fate of individuals.

The Birth of Deception: To Be vs. To Seem

Once matters reached this point, it is easy to imagine the rest. I will not hold the reader’s attention with a description of the successive invention of other arts or the development of language. I shall confine myself to a glance at mankind in this new situation.

Behold then all human faculties developed, with memory and imagination in full play. Egoism is now a factor, reason is active, and the mind is almost at the highest point of its perfection. Behold all the natural qualities in action, with the rank and condition of every man assigned to him. This was based not merely on his share of property and his power to serve or injure others, but also on his wit, beauty, strength, or skill.

Since these were the only qualities capable of commanding respect, it soon became necessary to either possess them or to pretend to have them.

It now became in men’s interest to appear to be what they really were not. To be and to seem became two totally different things. From this distinction sprang arrogant pomp and cheating trickery, with all the numerous vices that follow them.

A Society of Slaves and Masters

On the other hand, men were free and independent before. Now, as a result of a multitude of new wants, they were brought into subjection, so to speak, to all of nature, and particularly to one another. Each became in some degree a slave even in becoming the master of other men.

If they were rich, they stood in need of the services of others.
If they were poor, they stood in need of others’ assistance.
Even a middle condition did not allow them to do without one another.

A man must now, therefore, have been perpetually busy getting others to be interested in his fate. He had to make them, apparently at least, find their own advantage in promoting his. Thus, he must have been sly and artful in his behavior to some, and arrogant and cruel to others. He was under a kind of necessity to mistreat 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 and the thirst of raising their fortunes, not so much from real want as from the desire to surpass others, inspired all men with a vile tendency to injure one another. They developed a secret jealousy, which is the more dangerous as it puts on the mask of benevolence to carry out its point with greater 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.

Property and the State of War

Before the invention of signs to represent riches, like money, wealth could hardly consist in anything but lands and cattle. But when inheritances so increased in number and size as to occupy the whole of the land, one man could make himself richer only at the expense of another.

At the same time, the extra people, who had been too weak or too lazy to acquire property, and who had grown poor without losing anything (because they started with nothing), were obliged to either receive their food from the rich or steal it. This soon bred, according to their different characters, domination and slavery, or violence and robbery. The wealthy, for their part, had no sooner begun to taste the pleasure of command than they disdained all others. Using their old slaves to acquire new ones, they thought of nothing but conquering and enslaving their neighbors. They were like ravenous wolves which, having once tasted human flesh, despise every other food and from then on seek only men to devour.

Thus, as the most powerful or the most miserable considered their might or their misery as a kind of right to the possessions of others, the destruction of equality was attended by the most terrible disorders. Usurpations by the rich, robbery by the poor, and the unrestrained passions of both suppressed the cries of natural compassion and the still feeble voice of justice. They filled men with greed, 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. They brought themselves to the brink of ruin.

The Rich Man’s Cunning Plan

It is impossible that men should not at length have reflected on so wretched a situation. The rich, in particular, must have felt how much they suffered by a constant state of war, of which they bore all the expense. They risked their lives, but they alone risked their property.

Besides, however speciously they might disguise their appropriations, they knew that their claims were founded on precarious and false titles. They knew that if others took from them by force what they themselves had gained by force, they would have no reason to complain.

The rich man, urged by necessity, at length conceived the most profound plan that ever entered the mind of man. This was to employ in his favor the very forces of those who attacked him, to make allies of his adversaries, and to give them other institutions as favorable to himself as the law of nature was unfavorable.

With this view, after having described to his neighbors the horror of a situation which armed every man against the rest, he readily devised plausible arguments to make them agree with his design.

“Let us join,” he said, “to guard the weak from oppression, to restrain the ambitious, and to secure for 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. Let us, in a word, instead of turning our forces against ourselves, collect them in a supreme power which may govern us by wise laws, protect and defend all the members of the association, repulse their common enemies, and maintain eternal harmony among us."

"All Ran Headlong to Their Chains”

Far fewer words than this would have been enough to impose on men so barbarous and easily seduced. They had too many disputes among themselves to do without arbitrators, and too much ambition and greed to go long without masters.

All ran headlong to their chains, in hopes of securing their liberty. For they had just enough wit to perceive the advantages of political institutions, without enough experience to enable them to foresee the dangers. The most capable of foreseeing the dangers were the very persons who expected to benefit by them.

Such was, or may well have been, the origin of society and law. This new system bound new fetters on the poor and gave new powers to the rich. It 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.

The First Societies and a World at War

It is easy to see how the establishment of one community made that of all the rest necessary. In order to stand up against united forces, the rest of mankind had to unite in turn.

Societies soon multiplied and spread over the face of the earth. Soon there was hardly a corner of the world left in which a man could escape the yoke and withdraw his head from beneath the sword which he saw perpetually hanging over him. 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.

But these bodies politic, remaining in a state of nature among themselves, soon experienced the problems which had forced individuals to leave it. This state became even 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. All those horrible prejudices which classify among the virtues the honor of shedding human blood arose. The most distinguished men 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.

Why This Is the Most Natural Origin Story

I know that some writers have given other explanations of the origin of political societies, such as the conquest of the powerful or the association of the weak. It is 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 reasons.

First: The “right of conquest” is no right in itself and could not serve as a foundation on which to build any other.
Second: The words “strong” and “weak” are ambiguous. In the period between the establishment of property and the establishment of government, the meaning of these words is better expressed by the terms “rich” and “poor.” Before laws, men had no other way of subduing their equals than by attacking their goods.
Thirdly: The poor had nothing but their freedom to lose. It would have been utterly absurd for them to resign voluntarily the only good they still enjoyed without getting anything in exchange. On the other hand, since the rich had feelings in every part of their possessions, it was much easier to harm them, and therefore more necessary for them to take precautions against it. In short, 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.

The True Reason for Government

Government, in its infancy, had no regular and constant form. The lack of experience and philosophy prevented men from seeing any but the present problems. In spite of the endeavors of the wisest legislators, the political state remained imperfect because it was little more than the work of chance.

It would be unreasonable to suppose that men at first threw themselves irretrievably and unconditionally into the arms of an absolute master. It is unreasonable to think that the first solution proud and unsubdued men came up with for their common security was to run headlong into slavery. For what reason, in fact, did they take superiors for themselves, if not so that they might be defended from oppression and have protection for their lives, liberties, and properties?

Now, in the relations between man and man, the worst that can happen is for one to find himself at the mercy of another. It would have been inconsistent with common sense to begin by giving to a chief the only things they wanted his help to preserve.

It is therefore beyond dispute, and indeed the fundamental maxim of all political right, that people have set up chiefs to protect their liberty, and not to enslave them.

Liberty, Servitude, and the Unbroken Horse

Politicians make the same error about the love of liberty as philosophers do about the state of nature. They judge, by what they see, of very different things which they have not seen. They attribute to man a natural tendency 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 it is with innocence and virtue: the value is known only to those who possess them, and the taste for them is lost when they are lost.

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 the whip and spur. So savage man will not bend his neck to the yoke to which civilized 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 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 enslaved 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.

Liberty is Not for Slaves to Discuss

When I observe free-born animals dashing their brains out against the bars of their cage, from an inborn impatience with captivity; when I behold numbers of naked savages, who 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.

Why Government Does Not Come from the Family

With regard to paternal authority, from which some writers have derived absolute government and all society, it is enough to make a few remarks. 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.

By the law of nature, the father is the child’s master no longer than his help is necessary. From that time on, they are both equal. The son is perfectly independent of the father and owes him only respect, not obedience. For gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but not a right to be demanded. Instead of saying that civil society is derived from paternal authority, we ought to say rather that paternal authority derives its main force from civil society.

The goods of the father are the ties which keep his children in dependence on him. But the subjects of an arbitrary despot are so far from having a similar favor to expect from their chief that they themselves and everything they possess are his property. They are forced to receive, as a favor, the little of their own he is pleased to leave them. When he robs them, he does but justice, and it is a mercy that he permits them to live.

The Invalidity of a Contract for Tyranny

By testing fact by right in this way, we should discover as little reason as truth in the voluntary establishment of tyranny. It would also be no easy matter to prove the validity of a contract that binds only one of the parties, where all the risk is on one side and none on the other.

This hateful system is, even in modern times, very far from being that of wise and good monarchs, and especially of the kings of France. This can be seen from several passages in their edicts, particularly one from a celebrated edict published in 1667 in the name of Louis XIV:

“Let it not, therefore, be said that the Sovereign is not subject to the laws of his State; since the contrary is a true proposition of the right of nations… How much more legitimate is it to say with the wise Plato, that the perfect felicity of a kingdom consists in the obedience of subjects to their prince, and of the prince to the laws, and in the laws being just and constantly directed to the public good!”

Liberty Cannot Be Sold

I shall not stay here to inquire whether, as liberty is the noblest faculty of man, it is not degrading our very nature to renounce without reserve the most precious of all God’s gifts. Is it not an affront to the Author of our being to bow to the necessity of committing all the crimes He has forbidden, merely to gratify a mad or a cruel master?

I will ask only what right those who were not afraid to debase themselves in this way could have to subject their children and grandchildren to the same shame. How could they renounce for them those blessings which they do not owe to the generosity of their ancestors, and without which life itself must be a burden to all who are worthy of it?

The philosopher Puffendorf says that we may give up our liberty in favor of other men, just as we transfer our property from one to another by contracts. But this seems a very weak argument.

In the first place, the property I give away becomes completely foreign to me, and I cannot suffer from its abuse. But it very nearly concerns me that my liberty should not be abused, and I cannot expose myself to become an instrument of crime.
Besides, the right of property is only a human convention. But this is not the case with the essential gifts of nature, such as life and liberty. By giving up liberty, we degrade our being. By giving up life, we destroy it. It would be an offense against both reason and nature to renounce them at any price.

But even if we could transfer our liberty as we do our property, there would be a great difference with regard to the children. They enjoy their father’s substance only by the transmission of his right. But liberty is a gift which they hold from nature as being men, and their parents have no right whatever to deprive them of it.

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 True Origin of Government: A Contract

I regard it then as certain that government did not begin with arbitrary power. Arbitrary power is the decay, the extreme end, of government, and brings it back finally to the law of the strongest, which it was originally designed to remedy.

I will adopt the common opinion and regard the establishment of the political body as a real contract between the people and the chiefs chosen by them. It is a contract by which both parties bind themselves to observe the laws expressed in it, 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 of this will become so many fundamental laws. 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. 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.

Why All Governments Decay

Before experience had shown the unavoidable abuses of such a constitution, it must have appeared excellent.

But if we reflect on this subject, we shall 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, the parties would be the sole judges in their own cause. Each would always have a right to renounce the contract as soon as he found that the other had violated its terms, or that the terms no longer suited his convenience. It is upon this principle that the right of abdication may possibly be founded.

Now, if the magistrate, who has all the power in his own hands, has the 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. It was expedient for the public peace that the divine will should intervene to invest the sovereign authority with a sacred and inviolable character, which might deprive subjects of the fatal right of disposing of it.

The Birth of Different Governments

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 pre-eminent in power, virtue, or riches, he became sole magistrate, and the State took the form of monarchy.
If several, nearly equal in eminence, stood above the rest, they were elected jointly and formed an aristocracy.
Among a people who had deviated less from a state of nature, and among whom there was less disproportion in fortune or talents, the supreme administration was retained in common, and a democracy was formed.

It was discovered over time which of these forms suited men the best. Some peoples remained 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.

In these different governments, all the offices were at first elective. 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, and civil wars broke out. At length, ambitious chiefs profited by these circumstances to perpetuate their offices in their own families. 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.

The Three Stages of Inequality

If we follow the progress of inequality in these various revolutions, we shall find that:

The establishment of law and the right of property was the first stage. This authorized the condition of rich and poor.
The institution of magistracy was the second. This authorized the condition of powerful and weak.
The conversion of legitimate power into arbitrary power was the third and last. This authorized the condition of master and slave. This is the last degree of inequality.

To understand this progress as necessary, we must consider 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 that scrupulously followed the purposes for which it was created was set up unnecessarily. For a country in which no one either evaded the laws or made a bad use of power could require neither laws nor magistrates.

Political distinctions necessarily produce civil distinctions. Individuals only allow themselves to be oppressed so far as they are hurried on by blind ambition. Looking rather below than above them, they come to love authority more than independence and submit to slavery so that they may in turn enslave others.

Final Thoughts on the Drive for Distinction

Inequality easily makes its way among cowardly and ambitious minds, which are ever ready to run the risks of fortune, and are almost indifferent whether they command or obey.

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 with one another. These differences are of several kinds, but riches, nobility or rank, power, and personal merit are the principal distinctions by which men form an estimate of each other in society.

I could prove 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.

I could explain how much this universal desire for reputation, honors, and advancement, which inflames us all, exercises and holds up to comparison our faculties and powers. I could show 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 a very few good ones.

In a word, I could prove that if we have a few rich and powerful men at the peak of fortune and grandeur, while the crowd grovels in want and obscurity, it is because the former prize what they enjoy only because others are deprived of it. Without changing their own condition, they would cease to be happy the moment the people ceased to be miserable.

These details alone, however, would furnish material for a considerable work, in which the advantages and disadvantages of every kind of government might be weighed. We should then see the multitude oppressed from within, as a 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 for them to check its progress. We should see the rights of citizens and the freedom of nations slowly extinguished.

We should see the honor of defending the common cause confined by statecraft to a paid, mercenary part of the people. We should see taxes made necessary by such means, and the disheartened farmer deserting his fields even in the midst of peace, and leaving the plow to take up the sword. We should see fatal and bizarre codes of honor established. The champions of their country would sooner or later become its enemies, forever holding their daggers to the chests of their fellow-citizens.

From the great inequality of fortunes and conditions, from the vast variety of passions and talents, of useless and harmful arts, of vain sciences, would arise a multitude of prejudices equally contrary to reason, happiness, and virtue. We should see the leaders encouraging everything that might weaken men united in society by promoting disagreement among them. We should see them sow the seeds of division while giving society the appearance of harmony.

The Final Outcome: Despotism

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, wherever it prevails, admits no other master. It no sooner speaks than honesty and duty lose their weight, and blind obedience is the only virtue which slaves can still practice.

The Circle is Complete: A New State of Nature

This is the last stage of inequality, the extreme point that closes the circle and meets the point from which we set out. Here all private persons return to their first equality, because they are nothing. And, since subjects have no law but the will of their master, and their master has no restraint but his passions, all notions of good and all principles of fairness vanish.

There is here a complete return to the law of the strongest, and so to a new state of nature. This new state is different from the one we set out from, for the first was a state of nature in its purity, while this one is the consequence of excessive corruption.

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.

Retracing the Lost Road

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, he cannot fail to be struck by the vast distance which separates the two states. It is in tracing this slow succession that he will find the solution to a number of problems of politics and morals which philosophers cannot settle.

He will feel that, men being different in different ages, the reason why the philosopher Diogenes could not find “a man” in ancient Athens was that he sought among his contemporaries a man of an earlier period. He will see that Cato died with Rome and liberty because he did not fit the age in which he lived. The greatest of men served only to astonish a world which he would certainly have ruled, had he lived five hundred years sooner.

In a word, he will explain how the soul and the passions of men slowly change their very nature; why our wants and pleasures in the end seek new objects; and why, the original man having vanished by degrees, society offers to us only an assembly of artificial men and factitious passions. These are the work of all these new relations and have no real foundation in nature.

Savage Man vs. Civilized Man: A World of Difference

We are taught nothing on this subject by reflection that is not entirely confirmed by observation. The savage and the civilized man differ so much in the bottom of their hearts and in their inclinations that what constitutes the supreme happiness of one would reduce the other to despair.

The savage breathes only peace and liberty. He desires only to live and be free from labor. Even the profound indifference of the Stoic philosopher falls far short of his profound indifference to every other object.
Civilized man, on the other hand, is always moving, sweating, toiling, and racking his brains to find still more laborious occupations. He goes on in drudgery to his last moment and even seeks death to put himself in a position to live, or renounces life to acquire immortality. He pays his court to men in power whom he hates and to the wealthy whom he despises. He is not ashamed to value himself on his own meanness and their protection; and, proud of his slavery, he speaks with disdain of those who do not have the honor of sharing it.

What a sight the perplexing and envied labors of a European minister of State would present to the eyes of a Caribbean! How many cruel deaths would not this indolent savage prefer to the horrors of such a life? But for him to see the motives for all this anxiety, the words “power” and “reputation” would have to mean something in his mind. He would have to know that there are men who set a value on the opinion of the rest of the world, who can be made happy and satisfied with themselves on the testimony of other people rather than on their own.

In reality, the source of all these differences is that the savage lives within himself, while the social man lives constantly outside himself. The social man only knows how to live in the opinion of others, so that he seems to receive the consciousness of his own existence merely from the judgment of others concerning him.

It is not my present purpose to show how, with this disposition, everything is reduced to appearances, and there is but artifice and trickery in even honor, friendship, virtue, and often vice itself. 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.

The Final Judgment on Inequality

I have endeavored to trace the origin and progress of inequality, and the institution and abuse of political societies, as far as these can be deduced from the nature of man merely by the light of reason.

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. It becomes at last permanent and legitimate by the establishment of property and laws.
Moral inequality, authorized by man-made law alone, clashes with natural right whenever it is not proportional to physical inequality. This distinction sufficiently determines what we ought to think of the kind of inequality which prevails in all civilized countries.

It is plainly contrary to the law of nature, however defined, that a child should command an old man, a fool should lead a wise man, and that the privileged few should gorge themselves with luxuries while the starving multitude is in want of the bare necessities of life.

Appendix

A famous author, calculating the good and evil of human life, finds that our pains greatly exceed our pleasures, so that, all things considered, human life is not at all a valuable gift. This conclusion does not surprise me, for the writer drew all his arguments from man in civilization. Had he gone back to the state of nature, his inquiries would clearly have had a different result, and man would have been seen to be subject to very few evils not of his own creation. It has indeed cost us not a little trouble to make ourselves as wretched as we are.

When we consider the immense labors of mankind—the many sciences brought to perfection, the arts invented, the mountains leveled, the rivers made navigable, the enormous structures erected—and on the other hand, estimate with even a little thought the real advantages that have resulted from all these works to mankind, we cannot help being amazed at the vast disproportion between these things. We must deplore the foolishness of man, which, to gratify his silly pride, induces him eagerly to pursue all the miseries he is capable of feeling.

Are Men Naturally Good or Wicked?

That men are actually wicked, a sad and continual experience of them proves beyond doubt. But, all the same, I think I have shown that man is naturally good. What then can have depraved him to such an extent, except the changes that have happened in his constitution, the advances he has made, and the knowledge he has acquired?

We may admire human society as much as we please; it will be no less true that it necessarily leads men to hate each other in proportion as their interests clash, and to do one another apparent services while they are really doing every imaginable mischief. What can be thought of a relationship in which the interest of every individual dictates rules directly opposite to those the public reason dictates to the community in general—in which every man finds his profit in the misfortunes of his neighbor?

There is not perhaps any man in a comfortable position who does not have greedy heirs, and perhaps even children, secretly wishing for his death. Not a ship at sea, of which the loss would not be good news to some merchant or other. Thus it is that we find our advantage in the misfortunes of our fellow-creatures, and that the loss of one man almost always constitutes the prosperity of another.

But it is still more pernicious that public calamities are the objects of the hopes of innumerable individuals. Some desire sickness, some mortality, some war, and some famine. I have seen men wicked enough to weep for sorrow at the prospect of a plentiful season.

Let us penetrate, therefore, the superficial appearances of benevolence and survey what passes in the inmost recesses of the heart. Let us reflect on what must be the state of things when men are forced to caress and destroy one another at the same time; when they are born enemies by duty, and knaves by interest. It will perhaps be said that society is so formed that every man gains by serving the rest. That would be all very well, if he did not gain still more by injuring them. There is no legitimate profit so great that it cannot be greatly exceeded by what may be made illegitimately. We always gain more by hurting our neighbors than by doing them good.

The Savage at Peace, The Citizen at War

Savage man, when he has dined, is at peace with all nature and the friend of all his fellow-creatures. If a dispute arises about a meal, he rarely comes to blows without having first compared the difficulty of conquering his antagonist with the trouble of finding food elsewhere. And, as pride does not come in, it all ends in a few blows.

The case is quite different with man in the state of society, for whom first necessities have to be provided, and then luxuries; delicacies follow next, then immense wealth, then subjects, and then slaves. He enjoys not a moment’s relaxation. And what is yet stranger, the less natural and pressing his wants, the more headstrong are his passions, and, still worse, the more he has it in his power to gratify them. So that after a long course of prosperity, the hero ends up by cutting every throat until he finds himself, at last, sole master of the world. Such is in miniature the moral picture of the secret pretensions of the heart of civilized man.

Compare without partiality the state of the citizen with that of the savage, and trace out, if you can, how many entryways the former has opened to pain and death, besides those of his vices, his wants, and his misfortunes. If you reflect on the mental afflictions that prey on us, the violent passions that waste and exhaust us, the excessive labor with which the poor are burdened, and the still more dangerous laziness to which the wealthy give themselves up, so that the poor perish of want, and the rich of excess. If you take into account the fires and earthquakes which devour or overwhelm whole cities, destroying the inhabitants by thousands; in a word, if you add together all the dangers with which these causes are always threatening us, you will see how dearly nature makes us pay for the contempt with which we have treated her lessons.

Appendix (continued)

We must also place to the credit of the establishment of property, and consequently to the institution of society, assassinations, poisonings, highway robberies, and even the punishments inflicted on the wretches guilty of these crimes.

What shameful methods are sometimes practiced to prevent the birth of men and cheat nature! This includes brutal and depraved appetites that insult her most beautiful work—appetites unknown to savages or mere animals, which can spring only from the corrupt imagination of mankind in civilized countries. It also includes secret abortions, the fitting effects of debauchery and a twisted sense of honor, and the exposure or murder of multitudes of infants who fall victims to the poverty of their parents or the cruel shame of their mothers.

How many talents have been thrown away and natural inclinations have been forced by the unwise constraints of fathers? How many men who would have distinguished themselves in a fitting profession have died dishonored and wretched in another for which they had no taste! How many happy but unequal marriages have been broken or disturbed! How many good and virtuous husbands and wives are mutually punished for having been poorly matched! How many young and unhappy victims of their parents’ greed plunge into vice or pass their melancholy days in tears, groaning in the unbreakable bonds which their hearts reject and which gold alone has formed!

If I have spoken only of those ill-fated unions which are the result of our system, is it to be thought that those over which love and sympathy preside are free from disadvantages? What if I were to show humanity attacked in its very source, and even in the most sacred of all ties? But, without drawing aside the veil which hides all these horrors, let us content ourselves with pointing out the evil which others will have to remedy.

The Hidden Costs of Society

To all this, add the multiplicity of unhealthy trades which shorten men’s lives or destroy their bodies, such as working in mines and preparing metals and minerals like lead, copper, and mercury. Add those other dangerous trades which are daily fatal to many roofers, carpenters, and masons. Put all these together, and we can see, in the establishment and perfection of societies, the reasons for that shrinking of our species which has been noticed by many philosophers.

The Disease of Luxury

Luxury, which cannot be prevented among men who are focused on their own convenience and the respect paid to them by others, soon completes the evil that society had begun. Under the pretense of giving bread to the poor—whom it should never have made poor in the first place—luxury impoverishes all the rest and sooner or later depopulates the State.

Luxury is a remedy much worse than the disease it claims to cure. Or rather, it is in itself the greatest of all evils for every State, great or small. In order to maintain all the servants and vagabonds it creates, it brings oppression and ruin on the citizen and the laborer. It is like those scorching winds which, covering the trees and plants with devouring insects, deprive useful animals of their food and spread famine and death wherever they blow.

The Folly of the Arts and Sciences

From society and the luxury to which it gives birth arise the liberal and mechanical arts, commerce, letters, and all those non-essential things which make industry flourish, and enrich and ruin nations. The reason for such destruction is plain. It is easy to see, from the very nature of agriculture, that it must be the least profitable of all the arts; for, since its produce is the most universally necessary, the price must be proportionate to the abilities of the very poorest of mankind.

From the same principle, we can deduce this rule: the arts, in general, are more profitable in proportion as they are less useful. In the end, the most useful becomes the most neglected. From this, we may learn what to think of the real advantages of industry and the actual effects of its progress.

Such are the sensible causes of all the miseries into which wealth at length plunges the most celebrated nations. As arts and industry flourish, the despised farmer—burdened with the taxes necessary for the support of luxury and condemned to pass his days between labor and hunger—forsakes his native field to seek in towns the bread he ought to carry there. The more our capital cities strike the vulgar eye with admiration, the greater reason there is to lament the sight of the abandoned countryside, the large tracts of land that lie uncultivated, and the roads crowded with unfortunate citizens turned beggars or highwaymen, doomed to end their wretched lives either on a dunghill or on the gallows.

Thus the State grows rich on the one hand, and feeble and depopulated on the other. The mightiest monarchies, after having taken immense pains to enrich and depopulate themselves, fall at last prey to some poor nation which has yielded to the fatal temptation of invading them. Then, growing wealthy and weak in its turn, it is itself invaded and ruined by some other.

The Barbarian Question

Let anyone inform us what produced the swarms of barbarians who overran Europe, Asia, and Africa for so many ages. Was their prodigious increase due to their industry and arts, to the wisdom of their laws, or to the excellence of their political system? Let the learned tell us why, instead of multiplying to such a degree, these fierce and brutal men, without sense or science, did not destroy each other hourly in quarreling over the products of their fields and woods.

I fear someone may at last answer me by saying that all these fine things—arts, sciences, and laws—were wisely invented by men as a beneficial plague to prevent the too-great multiplication of mankind, lest the world should in time be too small for its inhabitants.

What Is To Be Done?

What, then, is to be done? Must societies be totally abolished? Must “mine” and “thine” be annihilated, and must we return again to the forests to live among bears? This is a conclusion in the manner of my adversaries, which I would as soon anticipate as let them have the shame of drawing.

O you, who can resign in the midst of populous cities your fatal acquisitions, your restless spirits, your corrupt hearts, and endless desires: resume, since it depends entirely on yourselves, your ancient and primitive innocence. Retire to the woods, there to lose the sight and remembrance of the crimes of your contemporaries.

As for men like me, whose passions have destroyed their original simplicity, who can no longer subsist on plants or acorns, or live without laws and magistrates; we will respect the sacred bonds of our respective communities. We will love our fellow-citizens and serve them with all our might. We will scrupulously obey the laws and all those who make or administer them. We will particularly honor those wise and good princes who find ways of preventing, curing, or even alleviating all these evils and abuses by which we are constantly threatened. But we will not therefore have less contempt for a constitution that cannot support itself without the aid of so many splendid characters—much oftener wished for than found—and from which, notwithstanding all their pains, there always arise more real calamities than even apparent advantages.

A Discourse on Political Economy

The word “Economy” originally meant only the wise and legitimate government of the house for the common good of the whole family. The meaning of the term was then extended to the government of that great family, the State. To distinguish these two senses of the word, the latter is called general or political economy, and the former domestic or particular economy. The first only is discussed in the present discourse.

Family Government vs. State Government

Even if there were as close an analogy as many authors maintain between the State and the family, it would not follow that the rules of conduct proper for one of these societies would be also proper for the other. They differ too much in size to be regulated in the same manner. There will always be a great difference between domestic government, in which a father can see everything for himself, and civil government, where the chief sees hardly anything except through the eyes of others.

Why the State is Not a Family

But how could the government of the State be like that of the family when the basis on which they rest is so different?

Source of Authority: The father is physically stronger than his children, so his paternal authority may be reasonably said to be established by nature. But in the great family of the State, all the members are naturally equal. The political authority, being purely arbitrary, can be founded only on conventions (agreements). The Magistrate can have no authority over the rest except by virtue of the laws.
Sense of Duty: The duties of a father are dictated to him by natural feelings. For rulers, there is no such principle. They are really obliged to the people only by what they themselves have promised to do.
Property: Since children have nothing but what they receive from their father, it is plain that all the rights of property belong to him. But quite the opposite is the case in the great family, where the general administration is established only to secure individual property, which is antecedent to it (it came first).
Purpose: The little family is destined to be extinguished and to break apart one day into several similar families. But the great family, being constituted to endure forever in the same condition, need only maintain itself. Any increase does it more harm than good.

In the family, it is clear that the father ought to command. The government must be single, and in every division of opinion, there must be one primary voice to decide. I say nothing here of slavery, because it is contrary to nature and cannot be authorized by any right or law.

There is nothing of all this in political society. In it, the chief is so far from having any natural interest in the happiness of the individuals that it is not uncommon for him to seek his own happiness in their misery.

If the magistracy is hereditary, a community of men is often governed by a child.
If it is elective, innumerable problems arise from such elections.
In a word, abuses are inevitable and their consequences fatal in every society where the public interest and the laws have no natural force and are perpetually attacked by the personal interest and the passions of the ruler.

The Heart of a Father, the Reason of a Magistrate

If the voice of nature is the best counselor for a father, for the Magistrate it is a false guide. It continually prevents him from performing his duty and leads him sooner or later to the ruin of himself and of the State, if he is not restrained by the most sublime virtue. The only precaution necessary for the father of a family is to guard himself against depravity. The first has only to consult his heart; the other becomes a traitor the moment he listens to his. Even his own reason should be suspect to him, nor should he follow any rule other than the public reason, which is the law.

Thus, nature has made a multitude of good fathers of families, but it is doubtful whether, from the very beginning of the world, human wisdom has made ten men capable of governing their peers.

From all that has just been said, it follows that public economy has been rightly distinguished from private economy. The State has nothing in common with the family except the obligation which their heads are under of making both of them happy. The same rules of conduct cannot apply to both.

I must here ask my readers to distinguish also between public economy, which is my subject and which I call government, and the supreme authority, which I call Sovereignty. This distinction consists in the fact that the latter has the right of legislation and binds the body of the nation itself, while the former has only the right of execution and is binding only on individuals.

The Body Politic

I shall take the liberty of making use of a very common and in some respects inaccurate comparison.

The body politic, taken individually, may be considered as an organized, living body, resembling that of a man.

The State as a Living Body

The sovereign power represents the head. The laws and customs are the brain, the source of the nerves and the seat of understanding, will, and senses. The Judges and Magistrates are the organs of the brain. Commerce, industry, and agriculture are the mouth and stomach which prepare the common food. The public income is the blood, which a wise economy, acting as the heart, distributes through the whole body as nourishment. The citizens are the body and the members which make the machine live, move, and work. No part of this machine can be damaged without the painful impression being immediately sent to the brain, if the animal is in a state of health.

The life of both a human body and the body politic is the “self” that is common to the whole. It is the mutual sensitivity and internal connection of all the parts. When this communication stops, when the formal unity disappears, the man is dead, or the State is dissolved.

The General Will: The Rule of Justice

The body politic, therefore, is also a moral being that has a will. This general will always tends to the preservation and welfare of the whole and of every part. It is the source of the laws.

For all the members of the State, in their relations to one another and to the State itself, the general will is the rule of what is just or unjust. This truth shows, by the way, how silly some writers have been to treat as “theft” the cleverness that was prescribed to children in Sparta for obtaining their simple meals. As if everything ordered by the law were not lawful!

It is important to observe that this rule of justice, though certain with regard to all citizens, may be flawed with regard to foreigners. The reason is clear. The will of the State, though general in relation to its own members, is no longer so in relation to other States. For them, it becomes a particular and individual will.

Private Groups and the Public Good

Every political society is composed of other, smaller societies of different kinds. Each of these has its own interests and its own rules of conduct. But the societies that everyone perceives, because they have an external and authorized form, are not the only ones that actually exist in the State. All individuals who are united by a common interest compose as many other groups, whose influence is no less real because it is less apparent.

The influence of all these formal or informal associations causes many different modifications of the public will. The will of these particular societies always has two relationships:

For the members of the association, it is a general will.
For the great society (the State), it is a particular will.

It is often right with regard to the first object, and wrong as to the second. An individual may be a devout priest, a brave soldier, or a zealous senator, and yet a bad citizen. A particular decision may be advantageous to the smaller community but harmful to the greater one.

The duty of a citizen takes precedence over the duty of a senator, and a man’s duty takes precedence over that of a citizen. But unhappily, personal interest is always found in inverse ratio to duty. It increases in proportion as the association grows narrower and the commitment less sacred. This proves without a doubt that the most general will is always the most just, and that the voice of the people is in fact the voice of God.

Why Public Decisions Can Be Wrong

It does not follow that public decisions are always fair. They may not be, for reasons I have given, especially when they have to do with foreigners. Thus, it is not impossible that a Republic, though well-governed in itself, should enter upon an unjust war.

Nor is it less possible for the Council of a Democracy to pass unjust decrees and condemn the innocent. But this never happens unless the people are seduced by private interests, which the credit or eloquence of some clever persons substitutes for the interests of the State. In that case, the general will will be one thing, and the result of the public deliberation another.

We see then how easy it is, by the help of these principles, to explain the apparent contradictions we see in the conduct of many persons who are scrupulously honest in some respects, and cheats and scoundrels in others. Thus, even the most depraved of men always pay some sort of homage to public faith. Even robbers, who are the enemies of virtue in the great society, pay some respect to the shadow of it in their secret caves.

The First Rule of Government: Follow the General Will

In establishing the general will as the first principle of public economy and the fundamental rule of government, I have not thought it necessary to inquire seriously whether the Magistrates belong to the people, or the people to the Magistrates.

The first and most important rule of legitimate government is, therefore, to follow in everything the general will. But to follow this will, it is necessary to know it, and above all to distinguish it from the particular will, beginning with one’s self. This distinction is always very difficult to make, and only the most sublime virtue can provide enough illumination for it.

The Great Dilemma: Freedom vs. Authority

As, in order to will, it is necessary to be free, a difficulty no less great than the former arises: that of preserving at once the public liberty and the authority of government.

Look into the motives which have induced men to unite themselves still more intimately by means of civil societies. You will find no other motive than that of ensuring the property, life, and liberty of each member by the protection of all.

But can men be forced to defend the liberty of any one among them, without trespassing on the liberty of others?
And how can they provide for the public needs without taking the private property of those who are forced to contribute to them?

With whatever sophistry all this may be covered over, it is certain that if any constraint can be laid on my will, I am no longer free, and that I am no longer master of my own property if anyone else can lay a hand on it.

The Miracle of Law

This difficulty, which would have seemed insurmountable, has been removed by the most sublime of all human institutions, or rather by a divine inspiration, which teaches mankind to imitate the unchangeable decrees of God.

By what inconceivable art has a means been found of making men free by making them subject? How can it be that all should obey, yet nobody takes it upon him to command, and that all should serve, yet have no masters, but be the more free because, in apparent subjection, each loses no part of his liberty but what might be harmful to that of another?

These wonders are the work of law. It is to law alone that men owe justice and liberty. It is this healing organ of the will of all which establishes, in civil right, the natural equality between men. It is this celestial voice which dictates to each citizen the precepts of public reason and teaches him to act according to the rules of his own judgment and not to behave inconsistently with himself.

The Ruler Must Obey the Law

It is with this voice alone that political rulers should speak when they command. For no sooner does one man, setting aside the law, claim to subject another to his private will, than he departs from the state of civil society and confronts him face to face in the pure state of nature, in which obedience is prescribed solely by necessity.

The most pressing interest of the ruler, and even his most indispensable duty, therefore, is to watch over the observation of the laws of which he is the minister and on which his whole authority is founded. At the same time, if he demands that others observe the laws, he is the more strongly bound to observe them himself. For his example is of such force that even if the people were willing to permit him to release himself from the yoke of the law, he ought to be cautious in availing himself of so dangerous a privilege.

For this reason, no exemption from the law will ever be granted, on any ground whatsoever, in a well-regulated government. Those citizens who have deserved well of their country ought to be rewarded with honors, but never with privileges. For the Republic is on the eve of its fall when anyone can think it is fine not to obey the laws.

The Art of True Statesmanship

The power of the laws depends still more on their own wisdom than on the severity of their administrators. The public will derives its greatest weight from the reason which has dictated it. Hence Plato looked upon it as a very necessary precaution to place at the head of all edicts a preamble, setting forth their justice and utility.

The first of all laws is to respect the laws. Severe penalties are only a vain resource, invented by little minds in order to substitute terror for that respect which they have no means of obtaining.

But though the government is not the master of the law, it is a great thing to be its guarantor and to possess a thousand means of inspiring the love of it. In this alone, the talent of reigning consists. With force in one’s hands, there is no art required to make the whole world tremble. The true statesman is he who knows how to prevent crimes. It is over the wills, even more than the actions, of his subjects that his honorable rule is extended. If he could ensure that everyone should act rightly, he would no longer have anything to do. The masterpiece of his labors would be to be able to remain unemployed.

How to Know the General Will

I conclude, therefore, that as the first duty of the legislator is to make the laws conformable to the general will, the first rule of public economy is that the administration of justice should be conformable to the laws.

But how, I shall be asked, can the general will be known in cases in which it has not expressed itself? Must the whole nation be assembled together at every unforeseen event? Certainly not. It is by no means certain that its decision would be the expression of the general will. Besides, the method would be impracticable in a great people and is hardly ever necessary where the government is well-intentioned. For the rulers well know that the general will is always on the side which is most favorable to the public interest, that is to say, most equitable. So it is needful only to act justly to be certain of following the general will.

In China, it is the constant maxim of the Prince to decide against his officers in every dispute that arises between them and the people. The Emperor, being satisfied that public outcry does not arise without cause, always discovers, through the seditious clamors which he punishes, just grievances to redress.

The Government’s True Purpose: To Shape the People

It is a great thing to preserve the rule of peace and order through all the parts of the Republic. But if nothing more is done, there will be in all this more appearance than reality. That government which confines itself to mere obedience will find difficulty in getting itself obeyed.

If it is good to know how to deal with men as they are, it is much better to make them what there is need that they should be. The most absolute authority is that which penetrates into a man’s inmost being and concerns itself no less with his will than with his actions.

It is certain that all peoples become in the long run what the government makes them: warriors, citizens, men, when it so pleases; or merely a populace and a rabble, when it chooses to make them so. Hence every prince who despises his subjects dishonors himself, in confessing that he does not know how to make them worthy of respect. Make men, therefore, if you would command men. If you would have them obedient to the laws, make them love the laws, and then they will need only to know what is their duty to do it.

This was the great art of ancient governments. Even tyrants did not forget this important part of administration but took as great pains to corrupt the morals of their slaves as good Magistrates took to correct those of their fellow-citizens. But our modern governments, which imagine they have done everything when they have raised money, conceive that it is unnecessary and even impossible to go a step further.

The second essential rule of public economy is no less important than the first.

The Reign of Virtue

If you want the general will to be accomplished, you must bring all the private wills into conformity with it. In other words, since virtue is nothing more than this conformity of the private will with the general will, you must establish the reign of virtue.

If our politicians were less blinded by their ambition, they would see how impossible it is for any institution to act in the spirit of its founding unless it is guided by the law of duty. They would feel that the greatest support of public authority lies in the hearts of the citizens, and that nothing can take the place of morality in the maintenance of government.

It is not only upright men who know how to administer the laws; but at the bottom, only good men know how to obey them. The man who once gets the better of remorse will not be stopped by punishments, which are less severe and from which there is at least the hope of escaping.

The Downward Spiral of Corruption

Whatever precautions are taken, those who only require impunity in order to do wrong will not fail to find ways of eluding the law and avoiding its penalties. In this case, as all private interests unite against the general interest, public vices have a greater effect in weakening the laws than the laws have in repressing such vices. The corruption of the people and their rulers will at length extend to the government, however wise it may be.

The worst of all abuses is to pay an apparent obedience to the laws only in order to actually break them with security. In this case, the best laws soon become the most harmful, and it would be a hundred times better that they should not exist. In such a situation, it is useless to add edicts to edicts and regulations to regulations. Everything serves only to introduce new abuses without correcting the old.

The more laws are multiplied, the more they are despised. All the new officials appointed to supervise them are only so many more people to break them, either to share the plunder with their predecessors or to plunder on their own. The reward of virtue soon becomes the reward of robbery. The vilest of men rise to the greatest credit. The greater they are, the more despicable they become. Their infamy appears even in their dignities, and their very honors dishonor them. If they buy the influence of leaders or the protection of women, it is only so they may sell justice, duty, and the State in their turn.

In the meantime, the people, feeling that its own vices are not the first cause of its misfortunes, murmurs and complains that all its misfortunes come solely from those whom it pays to protect it from such things.

When Duty Vanishes

It is under these circumstances that the voice of duty no longer speaks in men’s hearts. Their rulers are then obliged to substitute the cry of terror or the lure of an apparent interest, of which they subsequently trick their creatures. In this situation, they are compelled to use all the petty and despicable tricks which they call “rules of State” and “mysteries of the cabinet.”

All the vigor that is left in the government is used by its members in ruining and supplanting one another, while the public business is neglected. In short, the whole art of those great politicians lies in so mesmerizing those they stand in need of that each may think he is laboring for his own interest while working for theirs.

But when the citizens love their duty, and the guardians of the public authority sincerely apply themselves to fostering that love by their own example, every difficulty vanishes. Government becomes so easy that it needs none of that art of darkness, whose blackness is its only mystery. Public morality supplies what is lacking in the genius of the rulers. And the more virtue reigns, the less need there is for talent.

When the people are convinced that their rulers are laboring only for their happiness, their deference saves them the trouble of laboring to strengthen their power. History shows us, in a thousand cases, that the authority of one who is beloved over those whom he loves is a hundred times more absolute than all the tyranny of usurpers. This does not mean that the government ought to be afraid to use its power, but that it ought to use it only in a lawful manner.

We find in history a thousand examples of timid or ambitious rulers who were ruined by their slackness or their pride, but not one who suffered for having been strictly just. To be just, it is necessary to be severe. To permit vice, when one has the right and the power to suppress it, is to be oneself vicious.

The Power of Patriotism

It is not enough to say to the citizens, “be good.” They must be taught to be so. And even example, which is in this respect the first lesson, is not the only means to be employed. Patriotism is the most effective means. For, as I have said already, every man is virtuous when his private will is in all things conformable to the general will, and we voluntarily will what is willed by those whom we love.

It appears that the feeling of humanity evaporates and grows feeble when it embraces all mankind. We cannot be affected by the calamities of Tartary or Japan in the same manner as we are by those of European nations. It is necessary in some degree to confine and limit our interest and compassion in order to make it active. It is proper that our humanity should confine itself to our fellow-citizens and should receive a new force because we are in the habit of seeing them and because of the common interest which unites them.

It is certain that the greatest miracles of virtue have been produced by patriotism. This fine and lively feeling, which gives to the force of self-love all the beauty of virtue, lends it an energy which, without disfiguring it, makes it the most heroic of all passions. This is what produces so many immortal actions, the glory of which dazzles our feeble eyes. Now that patriotism is made fun of, the old-world virtues of great men pass for fables.

This is not surprising. The transports of susceptible hearts appear altogether fanciful to anyone who has never felt them. The love of one’s country, which is a hundred times more lively and delightful than the love of a mistress, cannot be conceived except by experiencing it.

Why Patriotism Matters

Contrast Socrates even with Cato. The one was the greater philosopher, the other more of the citizen. Athens was already ruined in the time of Socrates, and he had no other country than the world at large. Cato had the cause of his country always at heart; he lived for it alone and could not bear to outlive it. The virtue of Socrates was that of the wisest of men, but Cato seems a God among mortals. Socrates instructed a few individuals, but Cato defended his country, its liberty, and its laws against the conquerors of the world. A worthy pupil of Socrates would be the most virtuous of his contemporaries, but a worthy follower of Cato would be one of the greatest. We should be taught by the one and led by the other. For no people has ever been made into a nation of philosophers, but it is not impossible to make a people happy.

Do we wish men to be virtuous? Then let us begin by making them love their country. But how can they love it, if their country is nothing more to them than to strangers and gives them nothing but what it can refuse nobody? It would be still worse if they did not enjoy even the privilege of social security, and if their lives, liberties, and property lay at the mercy of persons in power, without them being permitted to get relief from the laws. In that case, the word “country” would mean for them something merely hateful and ridiculous.

The State’s Duty to Protect Every Citizen

It must not be imagined that a man can break or lose an arm without the pain being conveyed to his head. Nor is it any more believable that the general will should consent that any one member of the State should wound or destroy another. The security of individuals is so intimately connected with the public confederation that the social contract would, in point of right, be dissolved if in the State a single citizen who might have been relieved were allowed to perish, or if one were wrongfully confined in prison, or if in one case an obviously unjust sentence were given.

Does not the undertaking entered into by the whole body of the nation bind it to provide for the security of the least of its members with as much care as for that of all the rest? Is the welfare of a single citizen any less the common cause than that of the whole State?

I am ready to admire the saying “it is good that one should perish for all” when it comes from the lips of a virtuous patriot, voluntarily sacrificing himself for the good of his country. But if we are to understand by it that it is lawful for the government to sacrifice an innocent man for the good of the multitude, I look upon it as one of the most detestable rules tyranny ever invented. All have pledged their lives and properties for the defense of each, in order that the weakness of individuals may always be protected by the strength of the public, and each member by the whole State.

It is only among free peoples that the dignity of man is realized. It is well known into what perplexity the whole republic of Sparta was thrown when the question of punishing a guilty citizen arose. In Macedon, the life of a man was a matter of such importance that Alexander the Great, at the height of his glory, would not have dared to put a Macedonian criminal to death in cold blood until the accused had appeared to make his defense before his fellow-citizens and had been condemned by them. But the Romans distinguished themselves above all other peoples by the regard their government paid to the individual and by its scrupulous attention to the preservation of the inviolable rights of all the members of the State.

A Message to Rulers

A herdsman governs his dogs and cattle, and yet is only the meanest of mankind. If it is a fine thing to command, it is when those who obey us are capable of doing us honor. Show respect, therefore, to your fellow-citizens, and you will make yourselves worthy of respect. Show respect to liberty, and your power will increase daily. Never exceed your rights, and they will soon become unlimited.

Let our country then show itself the common mother of her citizens. Let the advantages they enjoy in their country make it dear to them. Let the government leave them enough share in the public administration to make them feel that they are at home. And let the laws be in their eyes only the guarantees of the common liberty.

Preventing Extreme Inequality

What is most necessary, and perhaps most difficult, in government is rigid integrity in doing strict justice to all, and above all in protecting the poor against the tyranny of the rich. The greatest evil has already come about when there are poor men to be defended and rich men to be restrained. It is on the middle classes alone that the whole force of the law is exerted. They are equally powerless against the treasures of the rich and the poverty of the poor. The first mocks the law, the second escapes it. The one breaks the net, the other passes through it.

It is therefore one of the most important functions of government to prevent extreme inequality of fortunes. This is not done by taking away wealth from its possessors, but by depriving all men of the means to accumulate it. It is not done by building hospitals for the poor, but by securing the citizens from becoming poor.

The unequal distribution of inhabitants over the territory, when men are crowded together in one place while other places are depopulated; the encouragement of the arts that serve luxury at the expense of useful and laborious crafts; the sacrifice of agriculture to commerce; and in short, corruption pushed to such an extreme that even public esteem is reckoned at a cash value, and virtue is rated at a market price—these are the most obvious causes of opulence and poverty, of public interest, of mutual hatred among citizens, and of the weakening of all the springs of government.

The Root of It All: Creating Citizens

But all these precautions will be inadequate unless rulers go still more to the root of the matter. I conclude this part of public economy where I ought to have begun it. There can be no patriotism without liberty, no liberty without virtue, no virtue without citizens. Create citizens, and you have everything you need. Without them, you will have nothing but debased slaves, from the rulers of the State downwards.

To form citizens is not the work of a day. And in order to have men, it is necessary to educate them when they are children. It will be said, perhaps, that whoever has men to govern ought not to seek a perfection of which they are incapable. I will agree that a man without passions would certainly be a bad citizen. But it must also be agreed that if men are not taught not to love some things, it is impossible to teach them to love one object more than another—to prefer that which is truly beautiful to that which is deformed.

The Reign of Virtue

If you would have the general will accomplished, you must bring all the private wills into conformity with it. In other words, as virtue is nothing more than this conformity, you must establish the reign of virtue.

If our politicians were less blinded by their ambition, they would see how impossible it is for any establishment to act in the spirit of its institution unless it is guided by the law of duty. They would feel that the greatest support of public authority lies in the hearts of the citizens, and that nothing can take the place of morality in the maintenance of government.

It is not only upright men who know how to administer the laws, but at bottom, only good men know how to obey them. The man who once gets the better of remorse will not be stopped by punishments that are less severe and less lasting, and from which there is at least the hope of escaping.

The Downward Spiral of Corruption

Whatever precautions are taken, those who only need impunity to do wrong will not fail to find ways of eluding the law and avoiding its penalties. In this case, as all private interests unite against the general interest, public vices have a greater effect in weakening the laws than the laws have in repressing such vices. The corruption of the people and of their rulers will at length extend to the government, however wise it may be.

The worst of all abuses is to pay an apparent obedience to the laws only in order actually to break them with security. For in this case, the best laws soon become the most harmful, and it would be a hundred times better that they should not exist. In such a situation, it is useless to add edicts to edicts and regulations to regulations. Everything serves only to introduce new abuses without correcting the old. The more laws are multiplied, the more they are despised.

The reward of virtue soon becomes that of robbery. The vilest of men rise to the greatest credit. The greater they are, the more despicable they become. Their infamy appears even in their dignities, and their very honors dishonor them. If they buy the influence of the leaders or the protection of women, it is only that they may sell justice, duty, and the State in their turn. In the meantime, the people, feeling that its vices are not the first cause of its misfortunes, murmurs and complains that all its misfortunes come solely from those whom it pays to protect it from such things.

When Duty Vanishes

It is under these circumstances that the voice of duty no longer speaks in men’s hearts. Their rulers are then obliged to substitute the cry of terror, or the lure of an apparent interest, of which they subsequently trick their followers. In this situation, they are compelled to use all the petty and despicable tricks which they call “rules of State” and “mysteries of the cabinet.” All the vigor that is left in the government is used by its members in ruining and supplanting one another, while the public business is neglected.

In short, the whole art of those great politicians lies in so mesmerizing those they stand in need of that each may think he is laboring for his own interest while working for theirs.

But when the citizens love their duty, and the guardians of the public authority sincerely apply themselves to fostering that love by their own example, every difficulty vanishes. Government becomes so easy that it needs none of that art of darkness whose blackness is its only mystery. Public morality supplies what is wanting in the genius of the rulers. The more virtue reigns, the less need there is for talent.

When the people are convinced that its rulers are laboring only for its happiness, its deference saves them the trouble of laboring to strengthen their power. History shows us, in a thousand cases, that the authority of one who is beloved over those whom he loves is a hundred times more absolute than all the tyranny of usurpers. This does not mean that the government ought to be afraid to make use of its power, but that it ought to make use of it only in a lawful manner.

To be just, it is necessary to be severe. To permit vice when one has the right and the power to suppress it is to be oneself vicious.

The Power of Patriotism

It is not enough to say to the citizens, “be good.” They must be taught to be so. The most effective means is patriotism. Every man is virtuous when his private will conforms to the general will, and we voluntarily will what is willed by those whom we love.

It appears that the feeling of humanity evaporates when it tries to embrace all mankind. We cannot be affected by the calamities of distant lands in the same manner as we are by those of our own nations. It is necessary to confine our interest and compassion in order to make it active. It is proper that our humanity should confine itself to our fellow-citizens.

It is certain that the greatest miracles of virtue have been produced by patriotism. This fine and lively feeling makes the force of self-love as beautiful as virtue itself. It lends it an energy that makes it the most heroic of all passions. This is what produces so many immortal actions that dazzle our feeble eyes.

Contrast Socrates with Cato. The one was the greater philosopher, the other more of the citizen. Athens was already ruined in the time of Socrates, and he had no other country than the world at large. Cato had the cause of his country always at heart; he lived for it alone and could not bear to outlive it. Socrates instructed a few individuals, but Cato defended his country, its liberty, and its laws against the conquerors of the world. A worthy pupil of Socrates would be the most virtuous of his time, but a worthy follower of Cato would be one of the greatest. We should be taught by the one and led by the other. No people has ever been made into a nation of philosophers, but it is not impossible to make a people happy.

Do we wish men to be virtuous? Then let us begin by making them love their country. But how can they love it if their country is nothing more to them than to strangers and gives them nothing it can refuse nobody? It would be still worse if they did not enjoy even social security, and if their lives, liberties, and property lay at the mercy of persons in power, without them being able to get relief from the laws. For in that case, the word “country” would mean something hateful and ridiculous to them.

The State’s Duty to Protect Every Citizen

The security of individuals is so intimately connected with the public good that the social contract would, in principle, be dissolved if in the State a single citizen who might have been relieved were allowed to perish, or if one were wrongfully confined in prison, or if one obviously unjust sentence were given. For the fundamental agreements being broken, it is impossible to conceive of any right or interest that could keep the people in the social union.

Does not the promise entered into by the whole body of the nation bind it to provide for the security of the least of its members with as much care as for that of all the rest? Is the welfare of a single citizen any less the common cause than that of the whole State?

I am ready to admire the saying “it is good that one should perish for all” when it comes from the lips of a virtuous patriot, voluntarily sacrificing himself for the good of his country. But if we are to understand by it that it is lawful for the government to sacrifice an innocent man for the good of the multitude, I look upon it as one of the most detestable rules tyranny ever invented. All have pledged their lives and properties for the defense of each, so that the weakness of individuals may always be protected by the strength of the public, and each member by the whole State.

It is only among free peoples that the dignity of man is realized. The Romans distinguished themselves above all other peoples by the regard their government paid to the individual and by its scrupulous attention to preserving the inviolable rights of all the members of the State. Nothing was so sacred among them as the life of a citizen.

Ambitious rulers! A herdsman governs his dogs and cattle and yet is only the meanest of mankind. If it is a fine thing to command, it is when those who obey us are capable of doing us honor. Show respect, therefore, to your fellow-citizens, and you will make yourselves worthy of respect. Show respect to liberty, and your power will increase daily. Never exceed your rights, and they will soon become unlimited.

Preventing Extreme Inequality

Let our country then show itself the common mother of her citizens. Let the government leave them enough share in the public administration to make them feel that they are at home. Let the laws be in their eyes only the guarantees of the common liberty.

What is most necessary, and perhaps most difficult, in government is rigid integrity in doing strict justice to all, and above all in protecting the poor against the tyranny of the rich. The greatest evil has already come about when there are poor men to be defended and rich men to be restrained. It is on the middle classes alone that the whole force of the law is exerted; they are equally powerless against the treasures of the rich and the poverty of the poor. The first mocks the law, the second escapes it. The one breaks the net, the other passes through it.

It is therefore one of the most important functions of government to prevent extreme inequality of fortunes. This is done not by taking away wealth from its possessors, but by depriving all men of the means to accumulate it. It is done not by building hospitals for the poor, but by securing the citizens from becoming poor.

Such are the evils which are with difficulty cured when they make themselves felt, but which a wise administration ought to prevent, if it is to maintain good morals, respect for the laws, patriotism, and the influence of the general will.

The Root of It All: Creating Citizens

To form citizens is not the work of a day; and in order to have men, it is necessary to educate them when they are children. I will agree that a man without passions would certainly be a bad citizen. But it must also be agreed that if men are not taught not to love some things, it is impossible to teach them to love one object more than another—to prefer that which is truly beautiful to that which is deformed.

III. Public Finance and Property

It is not enough to have citizens and to protect them; it is also necessary to consider their subsistence. Provision for the public wants is an obvious inference from the general will and the third essential duty of government. This duty is not to fill the storehouses of individuals and thereby free them from labor, but to keep plenty so within their reach that labor is always necessary and never useless to acquire it.

This part of the discussion presents no fewer difficulties to solve than the preceding.

The Sacred Right of Property

It is certain that the right of property is the most sacred of all the rights of citizenship and even more important in some respects than liberty itself. This is because property is the true foundation of civil society and the real guarantee of the undertakings of citizens.

On the other hand, it is no less certain that the maintenance of the State and the government involves costs. As everyone who agrees to the end must agree to the means, it follows that the members of a society ought to contribute from their property to its support. Besides, it is difficult to secure the property of individuals on one side without attacking it on another.

As the philosopher Puffendorf has shown, the right of property, by its very nature, does not extend beyond the life of the proprietor. The moment a man is dead, his goods cease to belong to him. Thus, for the State to prescribe the conditions according to which he can dispose of them is in reality less to alter his right than to extend it.

In general, the spirit of laws regulating property should be that the goods of a family should go as little out of it and be as little given away as possible. There is a sensible reason for this in favor of children, to whom the right of property would be quite useless if the father left them nothing. But another, more distant, though not less important, reason is that nothing is more fatal to morality and to the Republic than the continual shifting of rank and fortune among the citizens. Such changes are both the proof and the source of a thousand disorders.

The Problem with Public Finance

If the people governed themselves and there were no intermediary between the State and the citizens, they would simply assess themselves occasionally, in proportion to the public needs and the abilities of individuals. No fraud or abuse could slip into the management of these funds. The State would never be in debt, or the people over-burdened with taxes.

But things cannot be carried on in this manner. It is necessary that the public money should go through the hands of the rulers, all of whom have, besides the interests of the State, their own individual interests. The people, on its side, perceiving the greed and ridiculous expenditure of its rulers more than the public needs, murmurs at seeing itself stripped of necessities to furnish others with superfluities. When once these complaints have reached a certain degree of bitterness, the most upright administration will find it impossible to restore confidence.

In such a case, voluntary contributions bring in nothing, and forced contributions are illegitimate. This cruel alternative of letting the State perish or of violating the sacred right of property, which is its support, constitutes the great difficulty of a just and prudent economy.

The Best Source of Public Funds

The first step which the founder of a republic ought toto take after establishing laws is to settle a sufficient fund for the maintenance of officials and for other public expenses. This fund, if it consists of money, is called a treasury, and a public demesne if it consists of lands. The public demesne is much to be preferred. Whoever has reflected on this matter must be of the opinion of the writer Bodin, who looks upon the public demesne as the most reputable and certain means of providing for the needs of the State.

Before any use is made of this fund, it should be assigned or accepted by an assembly of the people. After this, the revenues become so sacred that it is not only the most infamous theft, but actual treason, to misapply them. When vice is no longer dishonorable, what chiefs will be so scrupulous as to abstain from touching the public revenues left to their discretion? They will even, in time, impose on themselves by pretending to confuse their own expensive and scandalous dissipations with the glory of the State.

It is particularly in this delicate part of the administration that virtue is the only effective instrument, and that the integrity of the Magistrate is the only real check upon his avarice. Books and audits, instead of exposing frauds, only conceal them. Never mind, then, about account books and papers; place the management of finance in honest hands. That is the only way to get it faithfully conducted.

The Dangers of a Growing Budget

When public funds are once established, the rulers of the State become their administrators. A government has reached the last stage of corruption when it has ceased to have any strength other than money. And as every government constantly tends to become lax, this is enough to show why no State can subsist unless its revenues constantly increase.

The first sense of the necessity of this increase is also the first sign of the internal disorder of the State. A prudent administrator, in his endeavors to find means to provide for the present necessity, will neglect nothing to find out the distant cause of the new need, just as a mariner, when he finds the water gaining on his vessel, does not neglect, while he is working the pumps, to discover and stop the leak.

From this rule is deduced the most important rule in the administration of finance: to take more pains to guard against needs than to increase revenues. For whatever diligence is used, the relief which only comes after the evil always leaves some injury behind. While a remedy is being found for one evil, another is beginning to make itself felt, and even the remedies themselves produce new difficulties. So that at length the nation is involved in debt and the people oppressed, while the government loses its influence and can do very little with a great deal of money.

I imagine it was owing to this rule that such wonders were done by ancient governments, which did more with their frugality than ours do with all their treasures.

Smarter Ways to Manage Finances

But apart from the public demesne, any one sufficiently acquainted with the whole force of the general administration would be astonished at the resources the rulers can make use of for guarding against public needs without trespassing on the goods of individuals. As they are masters of the whole commerce of the State, nothing is easier for them than to direct it into such channels as to provide for every need without appearing to interfere.

The distribution of provisions, money, and merchandise in just proportions, according to times and places, is the true secret of finance and the source of wealth, provided those who administer it have foresight enough to suffer a present apparent loss in order to really obtain immense profits in the future. When we see a government paying subsidies, instead of receiving duties, on the exportation of corn in a time of plenty, and on its importation in a time of scarcity, we must have such facts before our eyes if we are to be persuaded of their reality.

Let us suppose that, in order to prevent a scarcity in bad years, a proposal were made to establish public granaries. Would not the maintenance of so useful an institution serve in most countries as an excuse for new taxes? At Geneva, such granaries, established and kept up by a prudent administration, are a public resource in bad years and the principal revenue of the State at all times. “It nourishes and enriches” is the inscription which stands, rightly and properly, on the front of the building.

III. Public Finance and Property (continued)

I have often turned my eyes to the economic system of this Republic, rejoicing to find in my own country an example of the wisdom and happiness which I should be glad to see prevail in every other.

Where Do Public Needs Come From?

If we ask how the needs of a State grow, we shall find they generally arise, like the wants of individuals, less from any real necessity than from the increase of useless desires. Expenses are often increased only to give an excuse for raising receipts. The State would sometimes gain by not being rich, and apparent wealth is in reality more burdensome than poverty itself would be.

Rulers may indeed hope to keep the peoples in stricter dependence by giving them with one hand what they take from them with the other. This was the policy of Joseph towards the Egyptians. But this political trick is fatal to the State, as the money never returns into the hands it went out of. Such principles only enrich the idle at the expense of the industrious.

The Dangers of Conquest and Mercenaries

A desire for conquest is one of the most obvious and dangerous causes of this increase in spending. This desire is not always what it appears to be. Its real motive is often not the apparent desire to make the Nation bigger, but a secret desire to increase the authority of the rulers at home by increasing the number of troops and by distracting the citizens with the objects of war.

It is at least certain that no peoples are so oppressed and wretched as conquering nations, and that their successes only increase their misery. Reason would suffice to tell us that the greater a State grows, the heavier and more burdensome its expenses become. Great fortunes are always acquired in one place and spent in another. Production therefore soon ceases to balance consumption, and a whole country is impoverished merely to enrich a single town.

Another source of the increase of public wants is this: There may come a time when the citizens no longer see themselves as interested in the common cause and will cease to be the defenders of their country. The Magistrates will then prefer the command of mercenaries to that of free-men. Such was the state of Rome towards the end of the Republic and under the Emperors.

The early victories of the Romans had been won by brave citizens, who were ready to give their blood in the service of their country but would never sell it. The practice of paying the Roman infantry began only at the siege of Veii. Later, the general Marius dishonored the legions by introducing freedmen, vagabonds, and other mercenaries. Tyrants—the enemies of the very people it was their duty to make happy—maintained regular troops, apparently to withstand foreigners, but really to enslave their own countrymen.

To form such troops, it was necessary to take men from the land. The lack of their labor then diminished the amount of food, and their maintenance introduced new taxes which increased prices. This first disorder gave rise to murmurs among the people. In order to suppress them, the number of troops had to be increased, and consequently the misery of the people also got worse.

The invention of artillery and fortifications has forced the princes of Europe in modern times to return to the use of regular troops to protect their towns. But, however lawful their motives, it is to be feared the effect may be no less fatal. These dangerous establishments have increased so rapidly in this part of the world that they evidently threaten to depopulate Europe and sooner or later to ruin its inhabitants.

The True Foundation of Taxation

Such institutions necessarily subvert the true economic system, which draws the main revenue of the State from the public lands. They leave only the troublesome resource of subsidies and taxes, which we will now deal with.

It should be remembered that the foundation of the social compact is property, and its first condition is that everyone should be maintained in the peaceful possession of what belongs to him.

It is true that, by the same treaty, everyone binds himself to be assessed toward the public needs. But this undertaking cannot harm the fundamental law. It presupposes that the need is clearly recognized by all who contribute to it. It is plain that such an assessment, in order to be lawful, must be voluntary. It must depend not on a particular will—as if it were necessary to have the consent of each individual—but on a general will, decided by a vote of a majority. This vote must be on the basis of a proportional rating which leaves nothing arbitrary in the imposition of the tax.

That taxes cannot be legitimately established except by the consent of the people or its representatives is a truth generally admitted by all reputable philosophers and jurists.

Contributions levied on the people are of two kinds:

Real taxes, levied on commodities (things).
Personal taxes, paid by the head (a poll tax).

When the people fix the sum to be paid, it is called a subsidy. When they grant the product of an imposition, it is called a tax. We are told that a head tax is most suited to slavery, and a real tax is most in accordance with liberty. This would be true if the circumstances of every person were equal. Otherwise, nothing can be more disproportionate than such a tax. It is in the observation of exact proportions that the spirit of liberty consists.

How Should Taxes Be Levied?

If a tax by heads were exactly proportioned to the circumstances of individuals, it would be the most equitable and consequently the most proper for free-men. These proportions appear at first very easy to figure out because they are relative to each man’s position in the world. But proper regard is seldom paid to all the elements that should enter into such a calculation.

The Three Factors of Fair Taxation

First, the relation of quantities. All other things being equal, the person who has ten times the property of another man ought to pay ten times as much to the State.
Second, the relation of use; that is to say, the distinction between necessaries and superfluities. He who possesses only the common necessities of life should pay nothing at all. The tax on him who is in possession of superfluities may justly be extended to everything he has over and above mere necessities. He will possibly object that what may be superfluous to a man of a lower station is necessary for him and his rank. But this is false. A nobleman has two legs just like a cow-herd, and, like him, only one belly.
A third relation, which is never taken into account, though it ought to be the chief consideration, is the advantage that every person derives from the social confederacy. This provides a powerful protection for the immense possessions of the rich and hardly leaves the poor man in quiet possession of the cottage he builds with his own hands.

The Injustice of the System

Are not all the advantages of society for the rich and powerful? Are not all lucrative posts in their hands? Is not the public authority always on their side?

If a man of eminence robs his creditors or is guilty of other knaveries, is he not always assured of impunity?
If a great man himself is robbed or insulted, the whole police force is immediately in motion.
If he has to pass through any dangerous road, the country is up in arms to escort him.
If his coach is met on the road by a wagon, his servants are ready to beat the driver’s brains out. Fifty honest pedestrians had better be knocked on the head than an idle fool be delayed in his coach.

Yet all this respect costs him nothing. It is the rich man’s right, and not what he buys with his wealth. How different is the case of the poor man! The more humanity owes him, the more society denies him. If ever he obtains justice, it is with much greater difficulty than others obtain favors. He always bears the burden which his richer neighbor has influence enough to get exempted from. All free assistance is denied to the poor when they need it, just because they cannot pay for it. I look upon any poor man as totally undone if he has the misfortune to have an honest heart, a fine daughter, and a powerful neighbor.

Another no less important fact is that the losses of the poor are much harder to repair than those of the rich. The difficulty of acquisition is always greater in proportion as there is more need for it. “Nothing comes out of nothing” is as true of life as in physics. Money is the seed of money, and the first dollar is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.

Add to this that what the poor pay is lost to them forever and returns to the hands of the rich. As the whole produce of the taxes must sooner or later pass to those who share in the government or to their dependents, these persons always have a clear interest in increasing taxes.

The terms of the social compact between these two estates of men may be summed up in a few words: “You have need of me, because I am rich and you are poor. We will therefore come to an agreement. I will permit you to have the honor of serving me, on condition that you give me the little you have left, in return for the pains I shall take to command you.”

The Problem with Different Kinds of Taxes

Putting all these considerations carefully together, we shall find that in order to levy taxes in a truly equitable manner, the tax ought to be based not just on the property of the contributors, but on a compound ratio based on the difference of their conditions and the superfluity of their possessions.

Of all impositions, the tax on land, or real taxation, has always been regarded as most advantageous. It has even been maintained that it is necessary to burden the peasant in order to rouse him from laziness. But in all countries, experience disproves this ridiculous notion. In England and Holland, the farmer pays very little, and in China nothing; yet these are the countries in which the land is best cultivated. On the other hand, in those countries where the farmer is taxed in proportion to the produce of his lands, he leaves them uncultivated or reaps just as much from them as is needed for bare subsistence. For to him who loses the fruit of his labor, it is some gain to do nothing. To lay a tax on industry is a very strange way of banishing idleness.

Why Land Taxes Can Be Ruinous

Taxes on land or corn, especially when they are excessive, lead to two results so fatal that they cannot but depopulate and ruin, in the long run, all countries in which they are established.

The first arises from the defective circulation of money. Industry and commerce draw all the money from the country into the capitals. The tax destroys the proportion there might otherwise be between the needs of the farmer and the price of his corn. Money is always leaving and never returning. Thus, the richer the city, the poorer the country.
The second evil effect arises from an apparent advantage. Corn is a commodity whose price is not raised by taxes in the country producing it. In spite of its absolute necessity, its quantity may be diminished without the price being increased. Hence, many people die of hunger, although corn remains cheap. The farmer bears the whole charge of a tax for which he cannot compensate himself by the price of his corn.

It is further to be noticed that the resources of commerce and industry, so far from making the tax more supportable, only render it more burdensome. Unless a State possesses superfluous commodities and an abundance of money results from foreign trade, only trading cities feel the abundance, while the peasant only becomes relatively poorer.

Secondly, as the price of everything increases with the increase of money, taxes must also be proportionately increased. So, the farmer will find himself still more burdened without having more resources.

It ought to be observed that the tax on land is a real duty on the produce. It is universally agreed, however, that nothing is so dangerous as a tax on corn paid by the person who buys it. But why do we not see that it is a hundred times worse when the duty is paid by the farmer himself? Is this not an attack on the substance of the State at its very source? Is it not the most direct possible method of depopulating a country, and therefore in the end ruining it?

For the worst kind of scarcity a nation can suffer from is a lack of inhabitants.

The True Goal of Taxation

Only the real statesman can rise, when imposing taxes, above the mere financial objective. He alone can transform heavy burdens into useful regulations. He can make the people even doubtful whether such establishments were created for the good of the nation in general, rather than merely for the raising of money.

How to Tax Wisely

Duties on the following items will answer this two-fold goal:

On the importation of foreign commodities which the natives are fond of but which the country does not need.
On the exportation of the country’s own products which are not too plentiful and which foreigners cannot do without.
On the productions of frivolous and overly-lucrative arts.
On the importation of all pure luxuries.
In general, on all objects of luxury.

It is by such taxes, which ease the burden on the poor and throw it on the rich, that it is possible to prevent the continual increase of inequality of fortune. It also helps prevent the subjection of a multitude of artisans and useless servants to the rich, the multiplication of idle persons in our cities, and the depopulation of the countryside.

Preventing Tax Fraud

It is important that the value of any commodity and the duties laid on it should be so proportioned that the greed of individuals may not be too strongly tempted to commit fraud by the greatness of the possible profit. To make smuggling difficult, those commodities should be singled out which are hardest to conceal.

All duties should be paid by the consumer of the commodity taxed rather than by the person who sells it. This is because the quantity of duty the seller would be obliged to pay would lay him open to greater temptations and give him more opportunities for fraud.

This is the constant custom in China, a country where the taxes are greater and yet better paid than in any other part of the world. The merchant himself there pays no duty; the buyer alone meets the whole charge without murmuring. For as the necessities of life, such as rice and corn, are absolutely exempt from taxation, the common people are not oppressed, and the duty falls only on those who are well-to-do.

The Benefits of Taxing Luxury

Heavy taxes should be laid on:

Servants in livery (uniforms)
Carriages and rich furniture
Fine clothes
Spacious courts and gardens
Public entertainments of all kinds
Useless professions, such as dancers, singers, and players
In a word, on all that multiplicity of objects of luxury, amusement, and idleness, which strike the eyes of all and can be less hidden, as their whole purpose is to be seen.

We need not be worried about the produce of these taxes being arbitrary, because they are laid on things not absolutely necessary. They must know but little of mankind who imagine that, after people have been once seduced by luxury, they can ever renounce it. They would a hundred times sooner renounce common necessities and would much rather die of hunger than of shame. The increase in their expense is only an additional reason for supporting them.

As long as there are rich people in the world, they will be desirous of distinguishing themselves from the poor. The State cannot devise a revenue less burdensome or more certain than what arises from this distinction.

For the same reason, industry would have nothing to suffer from an economic system which increased the revenue, encouraged agriculture by relieving the farmer, and tended to bring all fortunes nearer to that middle condition which constitutes the genuine strength of the State.

In a word, suppose the spirit of government was constantly to tax only the superfluities of the rich. One of two things must happen:

Either the rich would convert their superfluous expenses into useful ones, which would result in profit for the State. Thus, the imposition of taxes would have the effect of the best sumptuary laws (laws against luxury). The expenses of the State would necessarily diminish with those of individuals.
Or, if the rich did not become less extravagant, the treasury would have such resources in the product of taxes on their expenditure as would provide for the needs of the State.

Voluntary vs. Involuntary Taxes: A Key Distinction

We may add to all this a very important distinction in matters of political right.

Personal taxes and duties on the necessities of life directly trespass on the right of property. They are always liable to have dangerous results if they are not established with the express consent of the people or its representatives.
It is not the same with articles the use of which we can deny ourselves (luxuries). For as the individual is under no absolute necessity to pay, his contribution may count as voluntary. The particular consent of each contributor then takes the place of the general consent of the whole people. For why should a people oppose a tax which falls only on those who desire to pay it?

It appears to me certain that everything which is not forbidden by law or contrary to morality, and yet may be prohibited by the government, may also be permitted on payment of a certain duty. Thus, for example, if the government may prohibit the use of coaches, it may certainly impose a tax on them. This is a prudent and useful method of censuring their use without absolutely forbidding it. In this case, the tax may be regarded as a sort of fine, the product of which compensates for the abuse it punishes.

A Final Objection

It may perhaps be objected that those who impose or contrive the taxes, being in the class of the rich, will be far from sparing themselves to relieve the poor. But this is quite beside the point. If, in every nation, those to whom the Sovereign commits the government of the people were, from their position, its enemies, it would not be worthwhile to inquire what they ought to do to make the people happy.

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