Jean-Jacques Rousseau

(1712-1788)

The translation of both texts is by G.D.H. Cole. The many omissions are my own, as are
those section headings and notes appearing in brackets.

I have retained just two of Rousseau’s lengthy notes in the Discourse on Inequality, but
these are especially important and should be read with care. I have also been selective in
which of Rousseau’s notes in the Social Contract to retain. The note in Book I, Chapter 9
seems especially worthy of consideration.

Discourse on the Origin and Foundations

of Inequality Among Men
(1755)

QUESTION PROPOSED BY THE ACADEMY OF DIJON

“What is the origin of inequality among men,

and is it authorized by the natural law?”

PREFACE

[…] I consider the subject of the following discourse as one of the most interesting
questions philosophy can propose, and unhappily for us, one of the most thorny
that philosophers can have to solve. For how shall we know the source of
inequality between men, if we do not begin by knowing mankind? And how shall
man hope to see himself as nature made him, across all the changes which the
succession of place and time must have produced in his original constitution? How
can he distinguish what is fundamental in his nature from the changes and
additions which his circumstances and the advances he has made have introduced
to modify his primitive condition? Like the statue of Glaucus, which was so
disfigured by time, seas and tempests, that it looked more like a wild beast than a
god, the human soul, altered in society by a thousand causes perpetually
recurring, by the acquisition of a multitude of truths and errors, by the changes

1
happening to the constitution of the body, and by the continual jarring of the
passions, has, so to speak, changed in appearance, so as to be hardly recognisable.

[…]

Let not my readers […] imagine that I flatter myself with having seen what it
appears to me so difficult to discover. I have here entered upon certain
arguments, and risked some conjectures, less in the hope of solving the difficulty,
than with a view to throwing some light upon it, and reducing the question to its
proper form. Others may easily proceed farther on the same road, and yet no one
find it very easy to get to the end. […]

[…]

But as long as we are ignorant of the natural man, it is in vain for us to attempt to
determine either the law originally prescribed to him, or that which is best
adapted to his constitution. All we can know with any certainty respecting this law
is that, if it is to be a law, not only the wills of those it obliges must be sensible of
their submission to it; but also, to be natural, it must come directly from the voice
of nature.

Throwing aside, therefore, all those scientific books, which teach us only to see
men such as they have made themselves, and contemplating the first and most
simple operations of the human soul, I think I can perceive in it two principles prior
to reason, one of them deeply interesting us in our own welfare and preservation,
and the other exciting a natural repugnance at seeing any other sensible being,
and particularly any of our own species, suffer pain or death. It is from the
agreement and combination which the understanding is in a position to establish
between these two principles, without its being necessary to introduce that of
sociability, that all the rules of natural right appear to me to be derived — rules
which our reason is afterwards obliged to establish on other foundations, when
by its successive developments it has been led to suppress nature itself.

[…]

The very study of the original man, of his real wants, and the fundamental
principles of his duty, is besides the only proper method we can adopt to obviate
all the difficulties which the origin of moral inequality presents, on the true
foundations of the body politic, on the reciprocal rights of its members, and on
many other similar topics equally important and obscure.

2
 [INTRODUCTION]

[…]

I CONCEIVE that there are two kinds of inequality among the human species; one,
which I call natural or physical, because it is established by nature, and consists in
a difference of age, health, bodily strength, and the qualities of the mind or of the
soul: and another, which may be called moral or political inequality, because it
depends on a kind of convention, and is established, or at least authorised by the
consent of men. This latter consists of the different privileges, which some men
enjoy to the prejudice of others; such as that of being more rich, more honoured,
more powerful or even in a position to exact obedience.

It is useless to ask what is the source of natural inequality, because that question
is answered by the simple definition of the word. Again, it is still more useless to
inquire whether there is any essential connection between the two inequalities;
for this would be only asking, in other words, whether those who command are
necessarily better than those who obey, and if strength of body or of mind,
wisdom or virtue are always found in particular individuals, in proportion to their
power or wealth: a question fit perhaps to be discussed by slaves in the hearing of
their masters, but highly unbecoming to reasonable and free men in search of the
truth.

The subject of the present discourse, therefore, is more precisely this. To mark, in
the progress of things, the moment at which right took the place of violence and
nature became subject to law, and to explain by what sequence of miracles the
strong came to submit to serve the weak, and the people to purchase imaginary
repose at the expense of real felicity.

The philosophers, who have inquired into the foundations of society, have all felt
the necessity of going back to a state of nature; but not one of them has got there.
Some of them have not hesitated to ascribe to man, in such a state, the idea of
just and unjust, without troubling themselves to show that he must be possessed
of such an idea, or that it could be of any use to him. Others have spoken of the
natural right of every man to keep what belongs to him, without explaining what
they meant by belongs. Others again, beginning by giving the strong authority
over the weak, proceeded directly to the birth of government, without regard to
the time that must have elapsed before the meaning of the words authority and
government could have existed among men. Every one of them, in short,
constantly dwelling on wants, avidity, oppression, desires and pride, has

3
transferred to the state of nature ideas which were acquired in society; so that, in
speaking of the savage, they described the social man. It has not even entered into
the heads of most of our writers to doubt whether the state of nature ever existed;
but it is clear from the Holy Scriptures that the first man, having received his
understanding and commandments immediately from God, was not himself in
such a state; and that, if we give such credit to the writings of Moses as every
Christian philosopher ought to give, we must deny that, even before the deluge,
men were ever in the pure state of nature; unless, indeed, they fell back into it
from some very extraordinary circumstance; a paradox which it would be very
embarrassing to defend, and quite impossible to prove.

Let us begin then by laying facts aside, as they do not affect the question. The
investigations we may enter into, in treating this subject, must not be considered
as historical truths, but only as mere conditional and hypothetical reasonings,
rather calculated to explain the nature of things, than to ascertain their actual
origin; just like the hypotheses which our physicists daily form respecting the
formation of the world. Religion commands us to believe that, God Himself having
taken men out of a state of nature immediately after the creation, they are
unequal only because it is His will they should be so: but it does not forbid us to
form conjectures based solely on the nature of man, and the beings around him,
concerning what might have become of the human race, if it had been left to itself.
This then is the question asked me, and that which I propose to discuss in the
following discourse.

[…]

O man, of whatever country you are, and whatever your opinions may be, behold
your history, such as I have thought to read it, not in books written by your fellow-
creatures, who are liars, but in nature, which never lies. All that comes from her
will be true; nor will you meet with anything false, unless I have involuntarily put
in something of my own. The times of which I am going to speak are very remote:
how much are you changed from what you once were! It is, so to speak, the life of
your species which I am going to write, after the qualities which you have received,
which your education and habits may have depraved, 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 stand 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; and this feeling should be a

4
panegyric on your first ancestors, a criticism of your contemporaries, and a terror
to the unfortunates who will come after you.

THE FIRST PART

[The State of Nature]

[A. The Physical Aspect of Natural Man]

[…]

If we consider [man] just as he must have come from the hands of nature, we
behold in him an animal weaker than some, and less agile than others; but, taking
him all round, the most advantageously organised of any. I see him satisfying his
hunger at the first oak, and slaking his thirst at the first brook; finding his bed at
the foot of the tree which afforded him a repast; and, with that, all his wants
supplied.

While the earth was left to its natural fertility and covered with immense forests,
whose trees were never mutilated by the axe, it would present on every side both
sustenance and shelter for every species of animal. […]

Accustomed from their infancy to the inclemencies of the weather and the rigour
of the seasons, inured to fatigue, and forced, naked and unarmed, to defend
themselves and their prey from other ferocious animals, or to escape them by
flight, men would acquire a robust and almost unalterable constitution. […]

The body of a savage man being the only instrument he understands, he uses it
for various purposes, of which ours, for want of practice, are incapable: for our
industry deprives us of that force and agility, which necessity obliges him to
acquire. If he had had an axe, would he have been able with his naked arm to
break so large a branch from a tree? If he had had a sling, would he have been
able to throw a stone with so great velocity? If he had had a ladder, would he have
been so nimble in climbing a tree? If he had had a horse, would he have been
himself so swift of foot? […]

[…]

We should beware, therefore, of confounding the savage man with the men we
have daily before our eyes. Nature treats all the animals left to her care with a
predilection that seems to show how jealous she is of that right. The horse, the

5
cat, the bull, and even the ass are generally of greater stature, and always more
robust, and have more vigour, strength and courage, when they run wild in the
forests than when bred in the stall. By becoming domesticated, they lose half
these advantages; and it seems as if all our care to feed and treat them well serves
only to deprave them. It is thus with man also: as he becomes sociable and a slave,
he grows weak, timid and servile; his effeminate way of life totally enervates his
strength and courage.

[…]

[B. The Moral Aspect of Natural 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 hath given
senses to wind itself up, and to guard itself, to a certain degree, against anything
that might tend to disorder or destroy it. I perceive exactly the same things in the
human machine, with this difference, that 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. […]

[…] Nature lays her commands on every animal, and the brute obeys her voice.
Man receives the same impulsion, but at the same time knows himself at liberty
to acquiesce or resist: and it is particularly in his consciousness of this liberty that
the spirituality of his soul is displayed. […]

However, even if the difficulties attending all these questions should still leave
room for difference in this respect between men and brutes, there is another very
specific quality which distinguishes them, and which will admit of no dispute. This
is the faculty of self-perfection, which, by the help of circumstances, gradually
develops all the rest of our faculties, and is inherent in the species as in the
individual: whereas a brute is, at the end of a few months, all he will ever be during
his whole life, and his species, at the end of a thousand years, exactly what it was
the first year of that thousand. […] It would be melancholy, were we forced to
admit that this distinctive and almost unlimited faculty is the source of all human
misfortunes; that it is this which, in time, draws man out of his original state, in
which he would have spent his days insensibly in peace and innocence; that it is
this faculty, which, successively producing in different ages his discoveries and his

6
errors, his vices and his virtues, makes him at length a tyrant both over himself
and over nature.* […]

[…]

[…] It is by the activity of the passions that our reason is improved; for we desire
knowledge only because we wish to enjoy; and it is impossible to conceive any
reason why a person who has neither fears nor desires should give himself the
trouble of reasoning. The passions, again, originate in our wants, and their
progress depends on that of our knowledge; for 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 destitute of every species of intelligence, can have no passions
save those of the latter kind: his desires never go beyond his physical wants. The
only goods he recognises 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 being one of the first
acquisitions made by man in departing from an animal state.

[…]

[…] 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; while his
projects, as limited as his views, hardly extend to the close of day. […]

[…] How many ages may have elapsed before mankind were in a position to behold
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 out before they acquired the art of reproducing it? and how often

*
[…] Men are wicked; a sad and con�nual experience dispenses us from having to prove it.
Nevertheless, man is naturally good; I believe I have demonstrated it. What therefore can have
depraved him to this degree, if not the changes that have befallen his cons�tu�on, the progress he
has made, and the sorts of knowledge he has acquired? […] What, then, is to be done? Must
socie�es be totally abolished? Must meum and tuum [mine and thine] be annihilated, and must
we return again to the forests to live among bears? […] 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; […] those, in short, who are persuaded that the Divine Being has called all
mankind to be partakers in the happiness and perfec�on of celes�al intelligences, all these will
endeavour to merit the eternal prize they are to expect from the prac�ce of those virtues, which
they make themselves follow in learning to know them. They will respect the sacred bonds of their
respec�ve communi�es; they will love their fellow-ci�zens, and serve them with all their might:
they will scrupulously obey the laws, and all those who make or administer them; they will
par�cularly honour those wise and good princes, who find means of preven�ng, curing or even
pallia�ng all these evils and abuses, by which we are constantly threatened […]

7
may not such a secret have died with him who had discovered it? What shall we
say of agriculture, an art which requires so much labour and foresight, which is so
dependent on others that it is plain it could only be practised in a society which
had at least begun, and which does not serve so much to draw the means of
subsistence from the earth — for these it would produce of itself — but to compel
it to produce what is most to our taste? 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, without forges or workshops, the instruments of
husbandry had dropped from the sky into the hands of savages; that they had
overcome their natural aversion to continual labour; that they had learnt so much
foresight for their needs […] — yet 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 comer, man or beast, that might take a liking to it; and how
should each of them resolve to pass his life in wearisome labour, when, the more
necessary to him the reward of his labour might be, the surer he would be of not
getting it? In a word, how could such a situation induce men to cultivate the earth,
till it was regularly parcelled out among them; that is to say, till the state of nature
had been abolished?

[…]

[…] It is in fact impossible to conceive why, in a state of nature, one man should
stand more in need of the assistance of another, than a monkey or a wolf of the
assistance of another of its kind: or, granting that he did, what motives could
induce that other to assist him; or, even then, by what means they could agree
about the conditions. I know it is incessantly repeated that man would in such a
state have been the most miserable of creatures […]. I should be glad to have
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 insupportable to those who enjoy it. We see
around us hardly a creature in civil society, who does not lament his existence: we
even see many deprive themselves of as much of it as they can, and laws human
and divine together can hardly put a stop to the disorder. […]

It appears, at first view, that men in a state of nature, having no moral relations or
determinate obligations one with another, could not be either good or bad,
virtuous or vicious; unless we take these terms in a physical sense, and call, in an
individual, those qualities vices which may be injurious to his preservation, and
those virtues which contribute to it […].

8
Above all, let us not conclude, with Hobbes, that because man has no idea of
goodness, he must be naturally wicked […]. Hobbes had seen clearly the defects
of all the modern definitions of natural right: but the consequences which he
deduces from his own show that he understands it in an equally false sense. In
reasoning on the principles he lays down, he ought to have said that the state of
nature, being that in which the care for our own preservation is the least
prejudicial to that of others, was consequently the best calculated to promote
peace, and the most suitable for mankind. He does say the exact opposite, in
consequence of having improperly admitted, as a part of savage man's care for
self-preservation, the gratification of a multitude of passions which are the work
of society, and have made laws necessary. […]

There is another principle which has escaped Hobbes; which, having been
bestowed on mankind, to moderate, on certain occasions, the impetuosity of
amour propre, * or, before its birth, the desire of self-preservation, tempers the
ardour with which he pursues his own welfare, 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, which could not be denied him by the most
violent detractor of human virtue. I am speaking of compassion, which is a
disposition suitable to creatures so weak and subject to so many evils as we
certainly are: by so much the more universal and useful to mankind, as it comes
before any kind of reflection; and at the same time so natural, that the very brutes
themselves sometimes give evident proofs of it. Not to mention the tenderness of
mothers for their offspring and the perils they encounter to save them from

*
Amour propre [pride] must not be confused with Amour de soi [self-regard]: for they differ both
in themselves and in their effects. Amour de soi is a natural feeling which leads every animal to
look to its own preserva�on, and which, guided in man by reason and modified by compassion,
creates humanity and virtue. Amour propre is a purely rela�ve and fac��ous feeling, which arises
in the state of society, leads each individual to make more of himself than of any other, causes all
the mutual damage men inflict one on another, and is the real source of the "sense of honour."
This being understood, I maintain that, in our primi�ve condi�on, in the true state of nature, amour
propre did not exist; for as each man regarded himself as the only observer of his ac�ons, the only
being in the universe who took any interest in him, and the sole judge of his deserts, no feeling
arising from comparisons he could not be led to make could take root in his soul; and for the same
reason, he could know neither hatred nor the desire for revenge, since these passions can spring
only from a sense of injury: and as it is the contempt or the inten�on to hurt, and not the harm
done, which cons�tutes the injury, men who neither valued nor compared themselves could do
one another much violence, when it suited them, without feeling any sense of injury. In a word,
each man, regarding his fellows almost as he regarded animals of different species, might seize the
prey of a weaker or yield up his own to a stronger, and yet consider these acts of violence as mere
natural occurrences, without the slightest emo�on of insolence or despite, or any other feeling
than the joy or grief of success or failure.

9
danger, it is well known that horses show a reluctance to trample on living bodies.
[…] We find, with pleasure, the author of the Fable of the Bees * obliged to own
that man is a compassionate and sensible being, and laying aside his cold subtlety
of style, in the example he gives, to present us with the pathetic description of a
man who, from a place of confinement, is compelled to behold a wild beast tear a
child from the arms of its mother, grinding its tender limbs with its murderous
teeth, and tearing its palpitating entrails with its claws. What horrid agitation must
not the eyewitness of such a scene experience, although he would not be
personally concerned! What anxiety would he not suffer at not being able to give
any assistance to the fainting mother and the dying infant!

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 theatres men affected, nay shedding
tears at the sufferings of a wretch […] Mandeville 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. But 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: for how is it different to wish that another person
may not suffer pain and uneasiness and to wish him happy? Were it even true that
pity is no more than a feeling, which puts us in the place of the sufferer, a feeling,
obscure yet lively in a savage, developed yet feeble in civilised man; this truth
would have no other consequence than to confirm my argument. Compassion
must, in fact, be the stronger, the more the animal beholding 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 amour propre [pride], 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 sight of the misfortunes of others: "Perish if you will, I
am secure." Nothing but such general evils as threaten the whole community can
disturb the tranquil sleep of the philosopher, or tear him from his bed. A murder
may with impunity be committed under his window; he has only to put his hands

*
[Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733), author of Fable of the Bees, was skep�cal of pretensions to
altruism and argued that egoism in a market society was generally produc�ve of social benefit.]

10
to his ears and argue a little with himself, to prevent nature, which is shocked
within him, from identifying itself with the unfortunate sufferer. Uncivilised man
has not this admirable talent; and for want of reason and wisdom, 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 love of self 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 will always prevent a sturdy savage from robbing a
weak child or a feeble old man of the sustenance they may have with pain and
difficulty acquired, if he sees a possibility of providing for himself by other means:
it is this which, instead of inculcating 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
rather in this natural feeling than in any subtle arguments that we must look for
the cause of that repugnance, which every man would experience in doing evil,
even independently of the maxims of education. Although it might belong to
Socrates and other minds of the like craft to acquire virtue by reason, the human
race would long since have ceased to be, had its preservation depended only on
the reasonings of the individuals composing it.

With passions so little active, and so good a curb, men, being rather wild than
wicked, and more intent to guard themselves against the mischief that might be
done them, than to do mischief to others, were by no means subject to very
perilous dissensions. 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 meum and tuum [mine and thine], and no true
conception of justice; they looked upon every violence to which they were
subjected, rather as an injury that might easily be repaired than as a crime that
ought to be punished; and they never thought of taking revenge, unless perhaps
mechanically and on the spot, as a dog will sometimes bite the stone which is
thrown at him. Their quarrels therefore would seldom have very bloody

11
consequences; for the subject of them would be merely the question of
subsistence.

[…]

[C. Concluding Reflections on the State of Nature]

Let us conclude then that man in a state of nature, wandering up and down the
forests, without industry, without speech, and without home, an equal stranger
to war and to all ties, neither standing in need of his fellow-creatures nor having
any desire to hurt them, and perhaps even not distinguishing them one from
another; let us conclude that, being self-sufficient and subject to so few passions,
he could have no feelings or knowledge but such as befitted his situation; that he
felt only his actual necessities, and disregarded everything he did not think himself
immediately concerned to notice, and that his understanding made no greater
progress than his vanity. If by accident he made any discovery, he was the less
able to communicate it to others, as he did not know even his own children. […]

If I have expatiated at such length on this supposed primitive state, it is because I

had so many ancient errors and inveterate prejudices to eradicate, and therefore
thought it incumbent on me 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 that 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.
[…] If we compare the prodigious diversity, which obtains in the education and
manner of life of the various orders of men in the state of society, with the
uniformity and simplicity of animal and savage life, in which every one lives on the
same kind of food and in exactly the same manner, and does exactly the same
things, it is easy to conceive how much less the difference between man and man
must be in a state of nature than in a state of society, and how greatly the natural
inequality of mankind must be increased by the inequalities of social institutions.

But even if nature really affected, in the distribution of her gifts, that partiality
which is imputed to her, what advantage would the greatest of her favourites
derive from it, to the detriment of others, in a state that admits of hardly any kind
of relation between them? Where there is no love, of what advantage is beauty?
Of what use is wit to those who do not converse, or cunning to those who have
no business with others? I hear it constantly repeated that, in such a state, the
12
strong would oppress the weak; but what is here meant by oppression? Some, it
is said, would violently domineer over others, who would groan under a servile
submission to their caprices. This indeed is exactly what I observe to be the case
among us; but I do not see how it can be inferred of men in a state of nature, who
could not easily be brought to conceive what we mean by dominion and servitude.
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 exact obedience, and what ties of dependence could there be among men
without possessions? If, for instance, I am driven from one tree, I can go to the
next; if I am disturbed in one place, what hinders me from going to another? Again,
should I happen to meet with a man so much stronger than myself, and at the
same time so depraved, so indolent, and so barbarous, as to compel me to provide
for his sustenance 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, or can give me. After all this, let him be off his guard ever so little;
let him but turn his head aside at any sudden noise, and I shall be instantly twenty
paces off, lost in the forest, and, my fetters burst asunder, he would never see me
again.

Without my expatiating thus uselessly on these details, every one must see that
as 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 be first reduced to a situation in which he cannot do
without the help of others: and, 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.

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 in the successive developments of the human mind. Having shown that
human perfectibility, the social virtues, and the other faculties which natural man
potentially possessed, could never develop of themselves, but must require the
fortuitous concurrence of many foreign causes that might never arise, and without
which he would have remained for ever in his primitive condition, 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

13
him sociable; so as to bring him and the world from that distant period to the point
at which we now behold them.

[…]

THE SECOND PART

[The State of Society]

[A. Leaving the State of Nature]

THE first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of
saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real
founder of civil society. 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 great probability that
things had then already come to such a pitch, that they could no longer continue
as they were; for 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 endeavour to unify under a single point
of view that slow succession of events and discoveries in the most natural order.

Man's first feeling was that of his own existence, and his first care 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; and among these was one which
urged him to propagate his species — a blind propensity 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; and even the offspring was nothing to its mother,
as soon as it could do without her.

[…] But difficulties soon presented themselves, and it became necessary to learn
how to surmount them: the height of the trees, which prevented him from
gathering their fruits, the competition of other animals desirous of the same fruits,
and the ferocity of those who needed them for their own preservation, all obliged

14
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. […]

In proportion 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, scorching
summers which parched the fruits of the earth, must have demanded a new
industry. On the seashore and the banks of rivers, they invented the hook and line,
and became fishermen and eaters of fish. In the forests they made bows and
arrows, and became huntsmen and warriors. In cold countries they clothed
themselves with the skins of the beasts they had slain. The lightning, a volcano, or
some lucky chance acquainted them with fire, a new resource against the rigours
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.

This repeated relevance of various beings to himself, and one to another, would
naturally give rise in the human mind to the perceptions of certain relations
between them. Thus the relations which we denote by the terms, great, small,
strong, weak, swift, slow, fearful, bold, and the like, almost insensibly compared
at need, must have at length produced in him a kind of reflection, or rather a
mechanical prudence, which would indicate to him the precautions most
necessary to his security.

The new intelligence which resulted from this development increased his
superiority over other animals, by making him sensible of it. He would now
endeavour, therefore, to ensnare them, would play them a thousand tricks, and
though many of them might surpass him in swiftness or in strength, would in time
become the master of some and the scourge of others. Thus, the first time he
looked into himself, he felt the first emotion of pride [orgueil]; and, at a time when
he scarce knew how to distinguish the different orders of beings, by looking upon
his species as of the highest order, he prepared the way for assuming pre-
eminence as an individual.

Other men, it is true, were not then to him what they now are to us, and he had
no greater intercourse with them than with other animals; yet they were not
neglected in his observations. The conformities, which he would in time discover
between them, and between himself and his female, led him to judge of others
which were not then perceptible; and finding that they all behaved as he himself
would have done in like circumstances, he naturally inferred that their manner of

15
thinking and acting was altogether in conformity with his own. This important
truth, once deeply impressed on his mind, must have induced him, from an
intuitive feeling more certain and much more rapid than any kind of reasoning, to
pursue the rules of conduct, which he had best observe towards them, for his own
security and advantage.

Taught by experience that the love of well-being is the sole motive of human
actions, he found himself in a position to distinguish the few cases, in which
mutual interest might justify him in relying upon the assistance of his fellows; and
also the still fewer cases in which a conflict of interests might give cause to suspect
them. In the former case, he joined in the same herd with them, or at most in
some kind of loose association, that laid no restraint on its members, and lasted
no longer than the transitory occasion that formed it. In the latter case, every one
sought his own private advantage, either by open force, if he thought himself
strong enough, or by address and cunning, if he felt himself the weaker.

In this manner, men may have insensibly acquired some gross ideas of mutual
undertakings, and of the advantages of fulfilling them: that is, just so far as their
present and apparent interest was concerned: for they were perfect strangers to
foresight, and were so far from troubling themselves about the distant future, that
they hardly thought of the morrow. If a deer was to be taken, every one saw that,
in order to succeed, he must abide faithfully by his post: but if a hare happened to
come within the reach of any one of them, it is not to be doubted that he pursued
it without scruple, and, having seized his prey, cared very little, if by so doing he
caused his companions to miss theirs.

It is easy to understand that such intercourse would not require a language much
more refined than that of rooks or monkeys, who associate together for much the
same purpose. Inarticulate cries, plenty of gestures and some imitative sounds,
must have been for a long time the universal language; and by the addition, in
every country, of some conventional articulate sounds […] particular languages
were produced; but these were rude and imperfect, and nearly such as are now
to be found among some savage nations.

[…]

These first advances enabled men to make others with greater rapidity. In
proportion as they grew enlightened, they grew industrious. They ceased to fall
asleep under the first tree, or in the first cave that afforded them shelter; they
invented several kinds of implements of hard and sharp stones, which they used

16
to dig up the earth, and to cut wood; they then made huts out of branches, and
afterwards learnt 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, in itself the source of a thousand quarrels and conflicts. As,
however, the strongest were probably the first to build themselves huts which
they felt themselves able to defend, it may be concluded that the weak found it
much easier and safer to imitate, than to attempt to dislodge them: and of those
who were once provided with huts, none could have any inducement to
appropriate that of his neighbour; not indeed so much because it did not belong
to him, as because it could be of no use, and he could not make himself master of
it without exposing himself to a desperate battle with the family which occupied
it.

The first expansions of the human heart were the effects of a novel situation,
which united husbands and wives, fathers and children, under one roof. The habit
of living together soon gave rise to the finest feelings known to humanity, conjugal
love and paternal affection. Every family became a little society, the more united
because liberty and reciprocal attachment were the only bonds of its union. […]

The simplicity and solitude of man's life in this new condition, the paucity of his
wants, and the implements he had invented to satisfy them, left him a great deal
of leisure, which he employed to furnish himself with many conveniences
unknown to his fathers: and this was the first yoke he inadvertently imposed on
himself, and the first source of the evils he prepared for his descendants. For,
besides continuing thus to enervate both body and mind, these conveniences lost
with use almost all their power to please, and even degenerated into real needs,
till 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.

[...]

Everything now begins to change its aspect. Men, who have up to now been roving
in the woods, by taking to a more settled manner of life, come gradually together,
form separate bodies, and at length in every country arises a distinct nation,
united in character and manners, not by regulations or laws, but by uniformity of
life and food, and the common influence of climate. Permanent neighbourhood
could not fail to produce, in time, some connection between different families.
Among young people of opposite sexes, living in neighbouring huts, the transient
commerce required by nature soon led, through mutual intercourse, to another

17
kind not less agreeable, and more permanent. Men began now to take the
difference between objects into account, and to make comparisons; they acquired
imperceptibly the 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 insinuated itself 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.

[…] They accustomed themselves to assemble before their huts round a large tree;
singing and dancing, the true offspring of love and leisure, became the
amusement, or rather the occupation, of men and women thus assembled
together with nothing else to do. Each one began to consider the rest, and to wish
to be considered in turn; and thus 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 of most consideration; and this
was the first step towards inequality, and at the same time towards vice. From
these first distinctions arose on the one side vanity and contempt and on the other
shame and envy: and the fermentation caused by these new leavens ended by
producing combinations fatal to innocence and happiness.

As soon as men began to value one another, and the idea of consideration had got
a footing in the mind, every one put in his claim to it, and it became impossible to
refuse it to any with impunity. Hence arose the first obligations of civility even
among savages; and every intended injury became an affront; because, besides
the hurt which might result from it, the party injured was certain to find in it a
contempt for his person, which was often more insupportable than the hurt itself.

Thus, as every man punished the contempt shown him by others, in proportion to
his opinion of himself, revenge became terrible, and men bloody and cruel. This is
precisely the state reached by most of the savage nations known to us: and it is
for want of having made a proper distinction in our ideas, and see how very far
they already are from the state of nature, that so many writers have hastily
concluded that man is naturally cruel, and requires civil institutions to make him
more mild; whereas nothing is more gentle than man in his primitive state, as he
is placed by nature at an equal distance from the stupidity of brutes, and the fatal
ingenuity of civilised man. Equally confined by instinct and reason to the sole care
of guarding himself against the mischiefs which threaten him, he is restrained by

18
natural compassion from doing any injury to others, and is not led to do such a
thing even in return for injuries received. […]

But it must be remarked that the society thus formed, and the relations thus
established among men, required of them qualities different from those which
they possessed from their primitive constitution. Morality began to appear in
human actions, and every one, before the institution of law, was the only judge
and avenger of the injuries done him, so that the goodness which was suitable in
the pure state of nature was no longer proper in the new-born state of society.
Punishments had to be made more severe, as opportunities of offending became
more frequent, and the dread of vengeance had to take the place of the rigour of
the law. Thus, though men had become less patient, and their natural compassion
had already suffered some diminution, this period of expansion of the human
faculties, keeping a just mean between the indolence of the primitive state and
the petulant activity of our amour propre, must have been the happiest and most
stable of epochs. The more we reflect on it, the more we shall find that this state
was the least subject to revolutions, and altogether the very best man could
experience; so that he can have departed from it only through some fatal accident,
which, for the 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 decrepitude of the species.

So long as men […] undertook only what a single person could accomplish, and
confined themselves to such arts as did not require the joint labour of several
hands, they lived free, healthy, honest and happy lives, so long as their nature
allowed, and as they continued to enjoy the pleasures of mutual and independent
intercourse. But from the moment one man began to stand in need of the help of
another; from the moment it appeared advantageous to any one man to have
enough provisions 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.

[…]

The cultivation of the earth necessarily brought about its distribution; and
property, once recognised, gave rise to the first rules of justice; for, to secure each
man his own, it had to be possible for each to have something. Besides, as men

19
began to look forward to the future, and all had something to lose, every one had
reason to apprehend that reprisals would follow any injury he might do to
another. This origin is so much the more natural, as it is impossible to conceive
how property can come from anything but manual labour: for what else can a man
add to things which he does not originally create, so as to make them his own
property? […]

In this state of affairs, equality might have been sustained, had the talents of
individuals been equal, and had, for example, the use of iron and the consumption
of commodities always exactly balanced each other; but, as there was nothing to
preserve this balance, it was soon disturbed; the strongest did most work; the
most skilful turned his labour to best account; the most ingenious devised
methods of diminishing his labour: the husbandman wanted more iron, or the
smith more corn, and, while both laboured equally, the one gained a great deal by
his work, while the other could hardly support himself. Thus natural inequality
unfolds itself insensibly with that of combination, and the difference between
men, developed by their different circumstances, becomes more sensible and
permanent in its effects, and begins to have an influence, in the same proportion,
over the lot of individuals.

Matters once at this pitch, it is easy to imagine the rest.[…] I shall confine myself
to a glance at mankind in this new situation.

[B. Man in Society]

Behold then all human faculties developed, memory and imagination in full play,
amour propre interested, reason active, and the mind almost at the highest point
of its perfection. Behold all the natural qualities in action, the rank and condition
of every man assigned him; not merely his share of property and his power to
serve or injure others, but also his wit, beauty, strength or skill, merit or talents:
and these being the only qualities capable of commanding respect, it soon became
necessary to possess or to affect them.

It now became the interest of men to appear what they really were not. To be and
to seem became two totally different things; and from this distinction sprang
insolent pomp and cheating trickery, with all the numerous vices that go in their
train. On the other hand, free and independent as men were before, they were
now, in consequence of a multiplicity of new wants, brought into subjection, as it
were, to all nature, and particularly to one another; and each became in some
degree a slave even in becoming the master of other men: if rich, they stood in

20
need of the services of others; if poor, of their assistance; and even a middle
condition did not enable them to do without one another. Man must now,
therefore, have been perpetually employed in getting others to interest
themselves in his lot, and in making them, apparently at least, if not really, find
their advantage in promoting his own. Thus he must have been sly and artful in
his behaviour to some, and imperious and cruel to others; being under a kind of
necessity to ill-use all the persons of whom he stood in need, when he could not
frighten them into compliance, and did not judge it his interest to be useful to
them. Insatiable ambition, the thirst of raising their respective fortunes, not so
much from real want as from the desire to surpass others, inspired all men with a
vile propensity to injure one another, and with a secret jealousy, which is the more
dangerous, as it puts on the mask of benevolence, to carry its point with 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.

Before the invention of signs to represent riches, wealth could hardly consist in
anything but lands and cattle, the only real possessions men can have. But, when
inheritances so increased in number and extent as to occupy the whole of the
land, and to border on one another, one man could aggrandise himself only at the
expense of another; at the same time the supernumeraries, who had been too
weak or too indolent to make such acquisitions, and had grown poor without
sustaining any loss, because, while they saw everything change around them, they
remained still the same, were obliged to receive their subsistence, or steal it, from
the rich; and this soon bred, according to their different characters, dominion and
slavery, or violence and rapine. The wealthy, on their part, had no sooner begun
to taste the pleasure of command, than they disdained all others, and, using their
old slaves to acquire new, thought of nothing but subduing and enslaving their
neighbours; like ravenous wolves, which, having once tasted human flesh, despise
every other food and thenceforth seek only men to devour.

Thus, as the most powerful or the most miserable considered their might or
misery as a kind of right to the possessions of others, equivalent, in their opinion,
to that of property, the destruction of equality was attended by the most terrible
disorders. Usurpations by the rich, robbery by the poor, and the unbridled
passions of both, suppressed the cries of natural compassion and the still feeble
voice of justice, and filled men with avarice, ambition and vice. Between the title
of the strongest and that of the first occupier, there arose perpetual conflicts,

21
which never ended but in battles and bloodshed. The new-born state of society
thus gave rise to a horrible state of war; men thus harassed and depraved were
no longer capable of retracing their steps or renouncing the fatal acquisitions they
had made, but, labouring by the abuse of the faculties which do them honour,
merely to their own confusion, brought themselves to the brink of ruin. […]

[C. Institution of the State]

It is impossible that men should not at length have reflected on so wretched a

situation, and on the calamities that overwhelmed them. The rich, in particular,
must have felt how much they suffered by a constant state of war, of which they
bore all the expense; and in which, though all risked their lives, they alone risked
their property. Besides, however speciously they might disguise their usurpations,
they knew that they were founded on precarious and false titles; so that, if others
took from them by force what they themselves had gained by force, they would
have no reason to complain. Even those who had been enriched by their own
industry, could hardly base their proprietorship on better claims. It was in vain to
repeat, "I built this well; I gained this spot by my industry." Who gave you your
standing, it might be answered, and what right have you to demand payment of
us for doing what we never asked you to do? Do you not know that numbers of
your fellow-creatures are starving, for want of what you have too much of? You
ought to have had the express and universal consent of mankind, before
appropriating more of the common subsistence than you needed for your own
maintenance. Destitute of valid reasons to justify and sufficient strength to defend
himself, able to crush individuals with ease, but easily crushed himself by a troop
of bandits, one against all, and incapable, on account of mutual jealousy, of joining
with his equals against numerous enemies united by the common hope of
plunder, the rich man, thus urged by necessity, conceived at length the
profoundest plan that ever entered the mind of man: this was to employ in his
favour the forces of those who attacked him, to make allies of his adversaries, to
inspire them with different maxims, and to give them other institutions as
favourable to himself as the law of nature was unfavourable.

With this view, after having represented to his neighbours the horror of a situation
which armed every man against the rest, and made their possessions as
burdensome to them as their wants, and in which no safety could be expected
either in riches or in poverty, he readily devised plausible arguments to make them
close with his design. "Let us join," said he, "to guard the weak from oppression,
to restrain the ambitious, and secure to every man the possession of what belongs

22
to him: let us institute rules of justice and peace, to which all without exception
may be obliged to conform; rules that may in some measure make amends for the
caprices of fortune, by subjecting equally the powerful and the weak to the
observance of reciprocal obligations. Let us, in a word, instead of turning our
forces against ourselves, 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."

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

Such was, or may well have been, the origin of society and law, which bound new
fetters on the poor, and gave new powers to the rich; which irretrievably
destroyed natural liberty, eternally fixed the law of property and inequality,
converted clever usurpation into unalterable right, and, for the advantage of a few
ambitious individuals, subjected all mankind to perpetual labour, slavery and
wretchedness. It is easy to see how the establishment of one community made
that of all the rest necessary, and how, in order to make head against united
forces, the rest of mankind had to unite in turn. Societies soon multiplied and
spread over the face of the earth, till hardly a corner of the world was left in which
a man could escape the yoke, and withdraw his head from beneath the sword
which he saw perpetually hanging over him by a thread. […]

But bodies politic, remaining thus in a state of nature among themselves,

presently experienced the inconveniences which had obliged individuals to
forsake it; for this state became still more fatal to these great bodies than it had
been to the individuals of whom they were composed. Hence arose national wars,
battles, murders, and reprisals, which shock nature and outrage reason; together
with all those horrible prejudices which class among the virtues the honour of
shedding human blood. […]

[…]

23
The different forms of government owe their origin to the differing degrees of
inequality which existed between individuals at the time of their institution. If
there happened to be any one man among them pre-eminent in power, virtue,
riches or personal influence, he became sole magistrate, and the State assumed
the form of monarchy. If several, nearly equal in point of eminence, stood above
the rest, they were elected jointly, and formed an aristocracy. Again, among a
people who had deviated less from a state of nature, and between whose fortune
or talents there was less disproportion, the supreme administration was retained
in common, and a democracy was formed. […]

In these different governments, all the offices were at first elective; and when the
influence of wealth was out of the question, the preference was given to merit,
which gives a natural ascendancy, and to age, which is experienced in business
and deliberate in council. […] But the more often the choice fell upon old men, the
more often elections had to be repeated, and the more they became a nuisance;
intrigues set in, factions were formed, party feeling grew bitter, civil wars broke
out; the lives of individuals were sacrificed to the pretended happiness of the
State; and at length men were on the point of relapsing into their primitive
anarchy. Ambitious chiefs profited by these circumstances to perpetuate their
offices in their own families. […] Thus magistrates, having become hereditary,
contracted the habit of considering their offices as a family estate, and themselves
as proprietors of the communities of which they were at first only the officers, of
regarding their fellow-citizens as their slaves, and numbering them, like cattle,
among their belongings, and of calling themselves the equals of the gods and kings
of kings.

If we follow the progress of inequality in these various revolutions, we shall find

that the establishment of laws and of the right of property was its first term, the
institution of magistracy the second, and the conversion of legitimate into
arbitrary power the third and last; so that the condition of rich and poor was
authorised by the first period; that of powerful and weak by the second; and only
by the third that of master and slave, which is the last degree of inequality, and
the term at which all the rest remain, when they have got so far, till the
government is either entirely dissolved by new revolutions, or brought back again
to legitimacy.

[D. The Trajectory of Civil Society]

To understand this progress as necessary we must consider not so much the

motives for the establishment of the body politic, as the forms it assumes in

24
actuality, and the faults that necessarily attend it: for the flaws which make social
institutions necessary are the same as make the abuse of them unavoidable. […]

Political distinctions necessarily produce civil distinctions. The growing equality

between the chiefs and the people is soon felt by individuals, and modified in a
thousand ways according to passions, talents and circumstances. The magistrate
could not usurp any illegitimate power, without giving distinction to the creatures
with whom he must share it. Besides, individuals only allow themselves to be
oppressed so far as they are hurried on by blind ambition, and, looking rather
below than above them, come to love authority more than independence, and
submit to slavery, that they may in turn enslave others. It is no easy matter to
reduce to obedience a man who has no ambition to command; nor would the most
adroit politician find it possible to enslave a people whose only desire was to be
independent. […]

If this were the place to go into details, […] I could explain how much this universal
desire for reputation, honours and advancement, which inflames us all, exercises
and holds up to comparison our faculties and powers; how it excites and multiplies
our passions, and, by creating universal competition and rivalry, or rather enmity,
among men, occasions numberless failures, successes and disturbances of all
kinds by making so many aspirants run the same course. I could show that it is to
this desire of being talked about, and this unremitting rage of distinguishing
ourselves, that we owe the best and the worst things we possess, both our virtues
and our vices, our science and our errors, our conquerors and our philosophers;
that is to say, a great many bad things, and a very few good ones. […]

[…]

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 in which decency
affords no hope, wherever it prevails, admits no other master; it no sooner speaks
than probity and duty lose their weight and blind obedience is the only virtue
which slaves can still practise.

25
This is the last term of inequality, the extreme point that closes the circle, and
meets that from which we set out. Here all private persons return to their first
equality, because they are nothing; and, subjects having no law but the will of their
master, and their master no restraint but his passions, all notions of good and all
principles of equity again vanish. There is here a complete return to the law of the
strongest, and so to a new state of nature, differing from that we set out from; for
the one was a state of nature in its first purity, while this is the consequence of
excessive corruption. There is so little difference between the two states in other
respects, and the contract of government is so completely dissolved by despotism,
that the despot is master only so long as he remains the strongest; as soon as he
can be expelled, he has no right to complain of violence. The popular insurrection
that ends in the death or deposition of a Sultan is as lawful an act as those by
which he disposed, the day before, of the lives and fortunes of his subjects. As he
was maintained by force alone, it is force alone that overthrows him. Thus
everything takes place according to the natural order; and, whatever may be the
result of such frequent and precipitate revolutions, no one man has reason to
complain of the injustice of another, but only of his own ill-fortune or indiscretion.

[E. Conclusion]

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 will
explain how the soul and the passions of men insensibly 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, which are the work of all these new relations, and
without any real foundation in nature. We are taught nothing on this subject, by
reflection, that is not entirely confirmed by observation. The savage and the
civilised 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 former breathes only peace and liberty; he desires only to live and be
free from labour […]. Civilised 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 stops at nothing to
have the honour of serving them; 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 have not the honour of sharing it. […] In reality, the source of all

26
these differences is, that the savage lives within himself, while social man lives
constantly outside himself, and 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 follows from this survey that, as there is hardly any inequality in the state of
nature, all the inequality which now prevails owes its strength and growth to the
development of our faculties and the advance of the human mind, and becomes
at last permanent and legitimate by the establishment of property and laws.
Secondly, it follows that moral inequality, authorised by positive right alone,
clashes with natural right, whenever it is not proportionate to physical inequality;
a distinction which sufficiently determines what we ought to think of that species
of inequality which prevails in all civilised, countries; since it is plainly contrary to
the law of nature, however defined, that children should command old men, fools
wise men, and that the privileged few should gorge themselves with superfluities,
while the starving multitude are in want of the bare necessities of life.

27
 On the Social Contract
(1652)
Translated by G.D.H Cole

BOOK I

1. Subject of the First Book

MAN is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master
of others, and s�ll remains a greater slave than they. How did this change come
about? I do not know. What can make it legi�mate? That ques�on I think I can
answer.
If I took into account only force, and the effects derived from it, I should say: "As
long as people are compelled to obey, and they obey, it does well; as soon as they
can shake off the yoke, and they shake it off, it does s�ll beter; for, regaining their
liberty by the same right as took it away, either it is jus�fied in resuming it, or there
was no jus�fica�on for those who took it away." But the social order is a sacred
right which is the basis of all other rights. Nevertheless, this right does not come
from nature, and must therefore be founded on conven�ons. Before coming to
that, I have to prove what I have just asserted.
[…]

4. Slavery
SINCE no man has a natural authority over his fellow, and force creates no right,
we must conclude that conven�ons form the basis of all legi�mate authority
among men.
If an individual, says Gro�us, can alienate his liberty and make himself the slave of
a master, why could not a whole people do the same and make itself subject to a
king? There are in this passage plenty of ambiguous words which would need
explaining; but let us confine ourselves to the word alienate. To alienate is to give
or to sell. Now, a man who becomes the slave of another does not give himself; he
sells himself, at the least for his subsistence: but for what does a people sell itself?
A king is so far from furnishing his subjects with their subsistence that he gets his

28
own only from them; and, according to Rabelais, kings do not live on nothing. Do
subjects then give their persons on condi�on that the king takes their goods also?
I fail to see what they have le� to preserve. It will be said that the despot assures
his subjects civil tranquillity. Granted; but what do they gain, if the wars his
ambi�on brings down upon them, his insa�able avidity, and the vexa�ons conduct
of his ministers press harder on them than their own dissensions would have
done? What do they gain, if the very tranquillity they enjoy is one of their miseries?
Tranquillity is found also in dungeons; but is that enough to make them desirable
places to live in? The Greeks imprisoned in the cave of the Cyclops lived there very
tranquilly, while they were awai�ng their turn to be devoured.
To say that a man gives himself gratuitously, is to say what is absurd and
inconceivable; such an act is null and illegi�mate, from the mere fact that he who
does it is out of his mind. To say the same of a whole people is to suppose a people
of madmen; and madness creates no right.
[…]
To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of
humanity and even its du�es. For him who renounces everything no indemnity is
possible. Such a renuncia�on is incompa�ble with man's nature; to remove all
liberty from his will is to remove all morality from his acts. Finally, it is an empty
and contradictory conven�on that sets up, on the one side, absolute authority,
and, on the other, unlimited obedience. Is it not clear that we can be under no
obliga�on to a person from whom we have the right to exact everything? Does not
this condi�on alone, in the absence of equivalence or exchange, in itself involve
the nullity of the act? For what right can my slave have against me, when all that
he has belongs to me, and, his right being mine, this right of mine against myself
is a phrase devoid of meaning?
[…]

6. The Social Contract

I SUPPOSE men to have reached the point at which the obstacles in the way of
their preserva�on in the state of nature show their power of resistance to be
greater than the resources at the disposal of each individual for his maintenance
in that state. That primi�ve condi�on can then subsist no longer; and the human
race would perish unless it changed its manner of existence. But, as men cannot
engender new forces, but only unite and direct exis�ng ones, they have no other

29
means of preserving themselves than the forma�on, by aggrega�on, of a sum of
forces great enough to overcome the resistance. These they have to bring into play
by means of a single mo�ve power, and cause to act in concert.
This sum of forces can arise only where several persons come together: but, as the
force and liberty of each man are the chief instruments of his self-preserva�on,
how can he pledge them without harming his own interests, and neglec�ng the
care he owes to himself? This difficulty, in its bearing on my present subject, may
be stated in the following terms:
"The problem is to find a form of associa�on which will defend and protect with
the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which
each, while uni�ng himself with all, may s�ll obey himself alone, and remain as
free as before. " This is the fundamental problem of which the Social Contract
provides the solu�on.
The clauses of this contract are so determined by the nature of the act that the
slightest modifica�on would make them vain and ineffec�ve; so that, although
they have perhaps never been formally set forth, they are everywhere the same
and everywhere tacitly admited and recognised, un�l, on the viola�on of the
social compact, each regains his original rights and resumes his natural liberty,
while losing the conven�onal liberty in favour of which he renounced it.
These clauses, properly understood, may be reduced to one — the total aliena�on
of each associate, together with all his rights, to the whole community; for, in the
first place, as each gives himself absolutely, the condi�ons are the same for all;
and, this being so, no one has any interest in making them burdensome to others.
Moreover, the aliena�on being without reserve, the union is as perfect as it can
be, and no associate has anything more to demand: for, if the individuals retained
certain rights, as there would be no common superior to decide between them
and the public, each, being on one point his own judge, would ask to be so on all;
the state of nature would thus con�nue, and the associa�on would necessarily
become inopera�ve or tyrannical.
Finally, each man, in giving himself to all, gives himself to nobody; and as there is
no associate over whom he does not acquire the same right as he yields others
over himself, he gains an equivalent for everything he loses, and an increase of
force for the preserva�on of what he has.
If then we discard from the social compact what is not of its essence, we shall find
that it reduces itself to the following terms: "Each of us puts his person and all his

30
power in common under the supreme direc�on of the general will, and, in our
corporate capacity, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole. "
At once, in place of the individual personality of each contrac�ng party, this act of
associa�on creates a moral and collec�ve body, composed of as many members
as the assembly contains votes, and receiving from this act its unity, its common
iden�ty, its life and its will. This public person, so formed by the union of all other
persons formerly took the name of city, and now takes that of Republic or body
poli�c; it is called by its members State when passive. Sovereign when ac�ve, and
Power when compared with others like itself. Those who are associated in it take
collec�vely the name of people, and severally are called ci�zens, as sharing in the
sovereign power, and subjects, as being under the laws of the State. But these
terms are o�en confused and taken one for another: it is enough to know how to
dis�nguish them when they are being used with precision.

7. The Sovereign

[…]

[T]he Sovereign, being formed wholly of the individuals who compose it, neither
has nor can have any interest contrary to theirs; and consequently the sovereign
power need give no guarantee to its subjects, because it is impossible for the body
to wish to hurt all its members. We shall also see later on that it cannot hurt any
in par�cular. The Sovereign, merely by virtue of what it is, is always what it should
be.
This, however, is not the case with the rela�on of the subjects to the Sovereign,
which, despite the common interest, would have no security that they would fulfil
their undertakings, unless it found means to assure itself of their fidelity.
In fact, each individual, as a man, may have a par�cular will contrary or dissimilar
to the general will which he has as a ci�zen. His par�cular interest may speak to
him quite differently from the common interest: his absolute and naturally
independent existence may make him look upon what he owes to the common
cause as a gratuitous contribu�on, the loss of which will do less harm to others
than the payment of it is burdensome to himself; and, regarding the moral person
which cons�tutes the State as a persona ficta, because not a man, he may wish to
enjoy the rights of ci�zenship without being ready to fulfil the du�es of a subject.
The con�nuance of such an injus�ce could not but prove the undoing of the body
poli�c.

31
In order then that the social compact may not be an empty formula, it tacitly
includes the undertaking, which alone can give force to the rest, that whoever
refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body.
This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free; for this is the
condi�on which, by giving each ci�zen to his country, secures him against all
personal dependence. In this lies the key to the working of the poli�cal machine;
this alone legi�mises civil undertakings, which, without it, would be absurd,
tyrannical, and liable to the most frigh�ul abuses.

8. The Civil State

THE passage from the state of nature to the civil state produces a very remarkable
change in man, by subs�tu�ng jus�ce for ins�nct in his conduct, and giving his
ac�ons the morality they had formerly lacked. Then only, when the voice of duty
takes the place of physical impulses and right of appe�te, does man, who so far
had considered only himself, find that he is forced to act on different principles,
and to consult his reason before listening to his inclina�ons. Although, in this state,
he deprives himself of some advantages which he got from nature, he gains in
return others so great, his facul�es are so s�mulated and developed, his ideas so
extended, his feelings so ennobled, and his whole soul so upli�ed, that, did not
the abuses of this new condi�on o�en degrade him below that which he le�, he
would be bound to bless con�nually the happy moment which took him from it
for ever, and, instead of a stupid and unimagina�ve animal, made him an
intelligent being and a man.
Let us draw up the whole account in terms easily commensurable. What man loses
by the social contract is his natural liberty and an unlimited right to everything he
tries to get and succeeds in ge�ng; what he gains is civil liberty and the
proprietorship of all he possesses. If we are to avoid mistake in weighing one
against the other, we must clearly dis�nguish natural liberty, which is bounded
only by the strength of the individual, from civil liberty, which is limited by the
general will; and possession, which is merely the effect of force or the right of the
first occupier, from property, which can be founded only on a posi�ve �tle. We
might, over and above all this, add, to what man acquires in the civil state, moral
liberty, which alone makes him truly master of himself; for the mere impulse of
appe�te is slavery, while obedience to a law which we prescribe to ourselves is
liberty. But I have already said too much on this head, and the philosophical
meaning of the word liberty does not now concern us.

32
9. Real Property
EACH member of the community gives himself to it, at the moment of its
founda�on, just as he is, with all the resources at his command, including the
goods he possesses. This act does not make possession, in changing hands, change
its nature, and become property in the hands of the Sovereign; but, as the forces
of the city are incomparably greater than those of an individual, public possession
is also, in fact, stronger and more irrevocable, without being any more legi�mate,
at any rate from the point of view of foreigners. For the State, in rela�on to its
members, is master of all their goods by the social contract, which, within the
State, is the basis of all rights; but, in rela�on to other powers, it is so only by the
right of the first occupier, which it holds from its members.
The right of the first occupier, though more real than the right of the strongest,
becomes a real right only when the right of property has already been established.
Every man has naturally a right to everything he needs; but the posi�ve act which
makes him proprietor of one thing excludes him from everything else. Having his
share, he ought to keep to it, and can have no further right against the community.
This is why the right of the first occupier, which in the state of nature is so weak,
claims the respect of every man in civil society. In this right we are respec�ng not
so much what belongs to another as what does not belong to ourselves. In general,
to establish the right of the first occupier over a plot of ground, the following
condi�ons are necessary: first, the land must not yet be inhabited; secondly, a man
must occupy only the amount he needs for his subsistence; and, in the third place,
possession must be taken, not by an empty ceremony, but by labour and
cul�va�on, the only sign of proprietorship that should be respected by others, in
default of a legal �tle.
[…]
I shall end this chapter and this book by remarking on a fact on which the whole
social system should rest: i.e., that, instead of destroying natural inequality, the
fundamental compact subs�tutes, for such physical inequality as nature may have
set up between men, an equality that is moral and legi�mate, and that men, who
may be unequal in strength or intelligence, become every one equal by conven�on
and legal right. *

*
Under bad governments, this equality is only apparent and illusory: it serves only to keep the
pauper in his poverty and the rich man in the posi�on he has usurped. In fact, laws are always of

33
 Book II
1. That Sovereignty Is Inalienable

THE first and most important deduc�on from the principles we have so far laid
down is that the general will alone can direct the State according to the object for
which it was ins�tuted, i.e., the common good: for if the clashing of par�cular
interests made the establishment of socie�es necessary, the agreement of these
very interests made it possible. The common element in these different interests
is what forms the social �e; and, were there no point of agreement between them
all, no society could exist. It is solely on the basis of this common interest that
every society should be governed.

I hold then that Sovereignty, being nothing less than the exercise of the general
will, can never be alienated, and that the Sovereign, who is no less than a collec�ve
being, cannot be represented except by himself: the power indeed may be
transmited, but not the will.

In reality, if it is not impossible for a par�cular will to agree on some point with the
general will, it is at least impossible for the agreement to be las�ng and constant;
for the par�cular will tends, by its very nature, to par�ality, while the general will
tends to equality. It is even more impossible to have any guarantee of this
agreement; for even if it should always exist, it would be the effect not of art, but
of chance. The Sovereign may indeed say: "I now will actually what this man wills,
or at least what he says he wills"; but it cannot say: "What he wills tomorrow, I too
shall will" because it is absurd for the will to bind itself for the future, nor is it
incumbent on any will to consent to anything that is not for the good of the being
who wills. If then the people promises simply to obey, by that very act it dissolves
itself and loses what makes it a people; the moment a master exists, there is no
longer a Sovereign, and from that moment the body poli�c has ceased to exist.
This does not mean that the commands of the rulers cannot pass for general wills,
so long as the Sovereign, being free to oppose them, offers no opposi�on. In such
a case, universal silence is taken to imply the consent of the people. This will be
explained later on.

use to those who possess and harmful to those who have nothing: from which it follows that the
social state is advantageous to men only when all have something and none too much.

34
2. That Sovereignty Is Indivisible

SOVEREIGNTY, for the same reason as makes it inalienable, is indivisible; for will
either is, or is not, general; * it is the will either of the body of the people, or only
of a part of it. In the first case, the will, when declared, is an act of Sovereignty and
cons�tutes law: in the second, it is merely a par�cular will, or act of magistracy—
at the most a decree.

But our poli�cal theorists, unable to divide Sovereignty in principle, divide it

according to its object: into force and will; into legisla�ve power and execu�ve
power; into rights of taxa�on, jus�ce and war; into internal administra�on and
power of foreign treaty. Some�mes they confuse all these sec�ons, and
some�mes they dis�nguish them; they turn the Sovereign into a fantas�c being
composed of several connected pieces: it is as if they were making man of several
bodies, one with eyes, one with arms, another with feet, and each with nothing
besides. We are told that the jugglers of Japan dismember a child before the eyes
of the spectators; then they throw all the members into the air one a�er another,
and the child falls down alive and whole. The conjuring tricks of our poli�cal
theorists are very like that; they first dismember the Body poli�c by an illusion
worthy of a fair, and then join it together again we know not how.

This error is due to a lack of exact no�ons concerning the Sovereign authority, and
to taking for parts of it what are only emana�ons from it. Thus, for example, the
acts of declaring war and making peace have been regarded as acts of Sovereignty;
but this is not the case, as these acts do not cons�tute law, but merely the
applica�on of a law, a par�cular act which decides how the law applies, as we shall
see clearly when the idea atached to the word law has been defined.

If we examined the other divisions in the same manner, we should find that,
whenever Sovereignty seems to be divided, there is an illusion: the rights which
are taken as being part of Sovereignty are really all subordinate, and always imply
supreme wills of which they only sanc�on the execu�on.

It would be impossible to es�mate the obscurity this lack of exactness has thrown
over the decisions of writers who have dealt with poli�cal right, when they have
used the principles laid down by them to pass judgment on the respec�ve rights
of kings and peoples. Every one can see, in Chapters III and IV of the First Book of
Gro�us, how the learned man and his translator, Barbeyrac, entangle and �e

*
To be general, a will need not always be unanimous; but every vote must be counted: any
exclusion is a breach of generality.

35
themselves up in their own sophistries, for fear of saying too litle or too much of
what they think, and so offending the interests they have to conciliate. Gro�us, a
refugee in France, ill-content with his own country, and desirous of paying his court
to Louis XIII, to whom his book is dedicated, spares no pains to rob the peoples of
all their rights and invest kings with them by every conceivable ar�fice. This would
also have been much to the taste of Barbeyrac, who dedicated his transla�on to
George I of England. But unfortunately the expulsion of James II, which he called
his "abdica�on," compelled him to use all reserve, to shuffle and to tergiversate,
in order to avoid making William out a usurper. If these two writers had adopted
the true principles, all difficul�es would have been removed, and they would have
been always consistent; but it would have been a sad truth for them to tell, and
would have paid court for them to no one save the people. Moreover, truth is no
road to fortune, and the people dispenses neither ambassadorships, nor
professorships, nor pensions.

3. Whether The General Will Is Fallible

IT follows from what has gone before that the general will is always right and tends
to the public advantage; but it does not follow that the deliberations of the people
are always equally correct. Our will is always for our own good, but we do not
always see what that is; the people is never corrupted, but it is often deceived,
and on such occasions only does it seem to will what is bad.
There is often a great deal of difference between the will of all and the general
will; the latter considers only the common interest, while the former takes private
interest into account, and is no more than a sum of particular wills: but take away
from these same wills the pluses and minuses that cancel one another, * and the
general will remains as the sum of the differences.
If, when the people, being furnished with adequate information, held its
deliberations, the citizens had no communication one with another, the grand
total of the small differences would always give the general will, and the decision
would always be good. But when factions arise, and partial associations are
formed at the expense of the great association, the will of each of these
associations becomes general in relation to its members, while it remains

*
"Every interest," says the Marquis d'Argenson, "has different principles. The agreement of two
par�cular interests is formed by opposi�on to a third." He might have added that the agreement
of all interests is formed by opposi�on to that of each. If there were no different interests, the
common interest would be barely felt, as it would encounter no obstacle; all would go on of its
own accord, and poli�cs would cease to be an art.

36
particular in relation to the State: it may then be said that there are no longer as
many votes as there are men, but only as many as there are associations. The
differences become less numerous and give a less general result. Lastly, when one
of these associations is so great as to prevail over all the rest, the result is no longer
a sum of small differences, but a single difference; in this case there is no longer a
general will, and the opinion which prevails is purely particular.
It is therefore essential, if the general will is to be able to express itself, that there
should be no partial society within the State, and that each citizen should think
only his own thoughts: * which was indeed the sublime and unique system
established by the great Lycurgus. But if there are partial societies, it is best to
have as many as possible and to prevent them from being unequal, as was done
by Solon, Numa and Servius. These precautions are the only ones that can
guarantee that the general will shall be always enlightened, and that the people
shall in no way deceive itself.

4. The Limits of the Sovereign Power

IF the State is a moral person whose life is in the union of its members, and if the
most important of its cares is the care for its own preserva�on, it must have a
universal and compelling force, in order to move and dispose each part as may be
most advantageous to the whole. As nature gives each man absolute power over
all his members, the social compact gives the body poli�c absolute power over all
its members also; and it is this power which, under the direc�on of the general
will, bears, as I have said, the name of Sovereignty. But, besides the public person,
we have to consider the private persons composing it, whose life and liberty are
naturally independent of it. We are bound then to dis�nguish clearly between the
respec�ve rights of the ci�zens and the Sovereign, † and between the du�es the
former have to fulfil as subjects, and the natural rights they should enjoy as men.

Each man alienates, I admit, by the social compact, only such part of his powers,
goods and liberty as it is important for the community to control; but it must also
be granted that the Sovereign is sole judge of what is important.

*
"In fact," says Macchiavelli, "there are some divisions that are harmful to a Republic and some
that are advantageous. Those which s�r up sects and par�es are harmful; those atended by
neither are advantageous. Since, then, the founder of a Republic cannot help enmi�es arising, he
ought at least to prevent them from growing into sects" (History of Florence, Book vii). Rousseau
quotes the Italian.
†
Aten�ve readers, do not, I pray, be in a hurry to charge me with contradic�ng myself. The
terminology made it unavoidable, considering the poverty of the language; but wait and see.

37
Every service a ci�zen can render the State he ought to render as soon as the
Sovereign demands it; but the Sovereign, for its part, cannot impose upon its
subjects any feters that are useless to the community, nor can it even wish to do
so; for no more by the law of reason than by the law of nature can anything occur
without a cause. The undertakings which bind us to the social body are obligatory
only because they are mutual; and their nature is such that in fulfilling them we
cannot work for others without working for ourselves. Why is it that the general
will is always in the right, and that all con�nually will the happiness of each one,
unless it is because there is not a man who does not think of "each" as meaning
him, and consider himself in vo�ng for all? This proves that equality of rights and
the idea of jus�ce which such equality creates originate in the preference each
man gives to himself, and accordingly in the very nature of man. It proves that the
general will, to be really such, must be general in its object as well as its essence;
that it must both come from all and apply to all; and that it loses its natural
rec�tude when it is directed to some par�cular and determinate object, because
in such a case we are judging of something foreign to us, and have no true principle
of equity to guide us.

Indeed, as soon as a ques�on of par�cular fact or right arises on a point not

previously regulated by a general conven�on, the mater becomes conten�ous. It
is a case in which the individuals concerned are one party, and the public the other,
but in which I can see neither the law that ought to be followed nor the judge who
ought to give the decision. In such a case, it would be absurd to propose to refer
the ques�on to an express decision of the general will, which can be only the
conclusion reached by one of the par�es and in consequence will be, for the other
party, merely an external and par�cular will, inclined on this occasion to injus�ce
and subject to error. Thus, just as a par�cular will cannot stand for the general will,
the general will, in turn, changes its nature, when its object is par�cular, and, as
general, cannot pronounce on a man or a fact. When, for instance, the people of
Athens nominated or displaced its rulers, decreed honours to one, and imposed
penal�es on another, and, by a mul�tude of par�cular decrees, exercised all the
func�ons of government indiscriminately, it had in such cases no longer a general
will in the strict sense; it was ac�ng no longer as Sovereign, but as magistrate. This
will seem contrary to current views; but I must be given �me to expound my own.
It should be seen from the foregoing that what makes the will general is less the
number of voters than the common interest uni�ng them; for, under this system,
each necessarily submits to the condi�ons he imposes on others: and this
admirable agreement between interest and jus�ce gives to the common
delibera�ons an equitable character which at once vanishes when any par�cular

38
ques�on is discussed, in the absence of a common interest to unite and iden�fy
the ruling of the judge with that of the party.

From whatever side we approach our principle, we reach the same conclusion,
that the social compact sets up among the ci�zens an equality of such a kind, that
they all bind themselves to observe the same condi�ons and should therefore all
enjoy the same rights. Thus, from the very nature of the compact, every act of
Sovereignty, i.e., every authen�c act of the general will, binds or favours all the
ci�zens equally; so that the Sovereign recognises only the body of the na�on, and
draws no dis�nc�ons between those of whom it is made up. What, then, strictly
speaking, is an act of Sovereignty? It is not a conven�on between a superior and
an inferior, but a conven�on between the body and each of its members. It is
legi�mate, because based on the social contract, and equitable, because common
to all; useful, because it can have no other object than the general good, and
stable, because guaranteed by the public force and the supreme power. So long as
the subjects have to submit only to conven�ons of this sort, they obey no-one but
their own will; and to ask how far the respec�ve rights of the Sovereign and the
ci�zens extend, is to ask up to what point the later can enter into undertakings
with themselves, each with all, and all with each.

We can see from this that the sovereign power, absolute, sacred and inviolable as
it is, does not and cannot exceed the limits of general conven�ons, and that every
man may dispose at will of such goods and liberty as these conven�ons leave him;
so that the Sovereign never has a right to lay more charges on one subject than on
another, because, in that case, the ques�on becomes par�cular, and ceases to be
within its competency. When these dis�nc�ons have once been admited, it is
seen to be so untrue that there is, in the social contract, any real renuncia�on on
the part of the individuals, that the posi�on in which they find themselves as a
result of the contract is really preferable to that in which they were before. Instead
of a renuncia�on, they have made an advantageous exchange: instead of an
uncertain and precarious way of living they have got one that is beter and more
secure; instead of natural independence they have got liberty, instead of the
power to harm others security for themselves, and instead of their strength, which
others might overcome, a right which social union makes invincible. Their very life,
which they have devoted to the State, is by it constantly protected; and when they
risk it in the State's defence, what more are they doing than giving back what they
have received from it? What are they doing that they would not do more o�en
and with greater danger in the state of nature, in which they would inevitably have
to fight batles at the peril of their lives in defence of that which is the means of

39
their preserva�on? All have indeed to fight when their country needs them; but
then no one has ever to fight for himself. Do we not gain something by running,
on behalf of what gives us our security, only some of the risks we should have to
run for ourselves, as soon as we lost it?

[…]

6. Law

BY the social compact we have given the body poli�c existence and life; we have
now by legisla�on to give it movement and will. For the original act by which the
body is formed and united s�ll in no respect determines what it ought to do for its
preserva�on.

What is well and in conformity with order is so by the nature of things and
independently of human conven�ons. All jus�ce comes from God, who is its sole
source; but if we knew how to receive so high an inspira�on, we should need
neither government nor laws. Doubtless, there is a universal jus�ce emana�ng
from reason alone; but this jus�ce, to be admited among us, must be mutual.
Humanly speaking, in default of natural sanc�ons, the laws of jus�ce are
ineffec�ve among men: they merely make for the good of the wicked and the
undoing of the just, when the just man observes them towards everybody and
nobody observes them towards him. Conven�ons and laws are therefore needed
to join rights to du�es and refer jus�ce to its object. In the state of nature, where
everything is common, I owe nothing to him whom I have promised nothing; I
recognise as belonging to others only what is of no use to me. In the state of
society all rights are fixed by law, and the case becomes different. But what, a�er
all, is a law? As long as we remain sa�sfied with ataching purely metaphysical
ideas to the word, we shall go on arguing without arriving at an understanding;
and when we have defined a law of nature, we shall be no nearer the defini�on of
a law of the State.

I have already said that there can be no general will directed to a par�cular object.
Such an object must be either within or outside the State. If outside, a will which
is alien to it cannot be, in rela�on to it, general; if within, it is part of the State, and
in that case there arises a rela�on between whole and part which makes them two
separate beings, of which the part is one, and the whole minus the part the other.
But the whole minus a part cannot be the whole; and while this rela�on persists,

40
there can be no whole, but only two unequal parts; and it follows that the will of
one is no longer in any respect general in rela�on to the other. But when the whole
people decrees for the whole people, it is considering only itself; and if a rela�on
is then formed, it is between two aspects of the en�re object, without there being
any division of the whole. In that case the mater about which the decree is made
is, like the decreeing will, general. This act is what I call a law.

When I say that the object of laws is always general, I mean that law considers
subjects en masse and ac�ons in the abstract, and never a par�cular person or
ac�on. Thus the law may indeed decree that there shall be privileges, but cannot
confer them on anybody by name. It may set up several classes of ci�zens, and
even lay down the qualifica�ons for membership of these classes, but it cannot
nominate such and such persons as belonging to them; it may establish a
monarchical government and hereditary succession, but it cannot choose a king,
or nominate a royal family. In a word, no func�on which has a par�cular object
belongs to the legisla�ve power. On this view, we at once see that it can no longer
be asked whose business it is to make laws, since they are acts of the general will;
nor whether the prince is above the law, since he is a member of the State; nor
whether the law can be unjust, since no one is unjust to himself; nor how we can
be both free and subject to the laws, since they are but registers of our wills.

We see further that, as the law unites universality of will with universality of
object, what a man, whoever he be, commands of his own mo�on cannot be a
law; and even what the Sovereign commands with regard to a par�cular mater is
no nearer being a law, but is a decree, an act, not of sovereignty, but of magistracy.
I therefore give the name "Republic" to every State that is governed by laws, no
mater what the form of its administra�on may be: for only in such a case does the
public interest govern, and the res publica rank as a reality. Every legi�mate
government is republican; * what government is I will explain later on.

Laws are, properly speaking, only the condi�ons of civil associa�on. The people,
being subject to the laws, ought to be their author: the condi�ons of the society
ought to be regulated solely by those who come together to form it. But how are
they to regulate them? Is it to be by common agreement, by a sudden inspira�on?
Has the body poli�c an organ to declare its will? Who can give it the foresight to

*
I understand by this word, not merely an aristocracy or a democracy, but generally any
government directed by the general will, which is the law. To be legi�mate, the government must
be, not one with the Sovereign, but its minister. In such a case even a monarchy is a Republic. This
will be made clearer in the following book.

41
formulate and announce its acts in advance? Or how is it to announce them in the
hour of need? How can a blind mul�tude, which o�en does not know what it wills,
because it rarely knows what is good for it, carry out for itself so great and difficult
an enterprise as a system of legisla�on? Of itself the people wills always the good,
but of itself it by no means always sees it. The general will is always in the right,
but the judgment which guides it is not always enlightened. It must be got to see
objects as they are, and some�mes as they ought to appear to it; it must be shown
the good road it is in search of, secured from the seduc�ve influences of individual
wills, taught to see �mes and spaces as a series, and made to weigh the atrac�ons
of present and sensible advantages against the danger of distant and hidden evils.
The individuals see the good they reject; the public wills the good it does not see.
All stand equally in need of guidance. The former must be compelled to bring their
wills into conformity with their reason; the later must be taught to know what it
wills. If that is done, public enlightenment leads to the union of understanding and
will in the social body: the parts are made to work exactly together, and the whole
is raised to its highest power. This makes a legislator necessary.

7. The Legislator

[…]
He who dares to undertake the making of a people's institutions ought to feel
himself capable, so to speak, of changing human nature, of transforming each
individual, who is by himself a complete and solitary whole, into part of a greater
whole from which he in a manner receives his life and being; of altering man's
constitution for the purpose of strengthening it; and of substituting a partial and
moral existence for the physical and independent existence nature has conferred
on us all. He must, in a word, take away from man his own resources and give him
instead new ones alien to him, and incapable of being made use of without the
help of other men. The more completely these natural resources are annihilated,
the greater and the more lasting are those which he acquires, and the more stable
and perfect the new institutions; so that if each citizen is nothing and can do
nothing without the rest, and the resources acquired by the whole are equal or
superior to the aggregate of the resources of all the individuals, it may be said that
legislation is at the highest possible point of perfection.
The legislator occupies in every respect an extraordinary position in the State. If
he should do so by reason of his genius, he does so no less by reason of his office,
which is neither magistracy, nor Sovereignty. This office, which sets up the
Republic, nowhere enters into its constitution; it is an individual and superior

42
function, which has nothing in common with human empire; for if he who holds
command over men ought not to have command over the laws, he who has
command over the laws ought not any more to have it over men; or else his laws
would be the ministers of his passions and would often merely serve to perpetuate
his injustices: his private aims would inevitably mar the sanctity of his work.
[…]
He, therefore, who draws up the laws has, or should have, no right of legislation,
and the people cannot, even if it wishes, deprive itself of this incommunicable
right, because, according to the fundamental compact, only the general will can
bind the individuals, and there can be no assurance that a particular will is in
conformity with the general will, until it has been put to the free vote of the
people. This I have said already; but it is worth while to repeat it.
[…]

11. The Various Systems of Legisla�on

IF we ask in what precisely consists the greatest good of all, which should be the
end of every system of legisla�on, we shall find it reduce itself to two main objects,
liberty and equality — liberty, because all par�cular dependence means so much
force taken from the body of the State and equality, because liberty cannot exist
without it.
I have already defined civil liberty; by equality, we should understand, not that the
degrees of power and riches are to be absolutely iden�cal for everybody; but that
power shall never be great enough for violence, and shall always be exercised by
virtue of rank and law; and that, in respect of riches, no ci�zen shall ever be
wealthy enough to buy another, and none poor enough to be forced to sell himself:
which implies, on the part of the great, modera�on in goods and posi�on, and, on
the side of the common sort, modera�on in avarice and covetousness.*
Such equality, we are told, is an unprac�cal ideal that cannot actually exist. But if
its abuse is inevitable, does it follow that we should not at least make regula�ons
concerning it? It is precisely because the force of circumstances tends con�nually

*
If the object is to give the State consistency, bring the two extremes as near to each other as
possible; allow neither rich men nor beggars. These two estates, which are naturally inseparable,
are equally fatal to the common good; from the one come the friends of tyranny, and from the
other tyrants. It is always between them that public liberty is put up to auc�on; the one buys, and
the other sells.

43
to destroy equality that the force of legisla�on should always tend to its
maintenance.
[…]

12. The Division of Laws

IF the whole is to be set in order, and the commonwealth put into the best possible
shape, there are various rela�ons to be considered. First, there is the ac�on of the
complete body upon itself, the rela�on of the whole to the whole, of the Sovereign
to the State; and this rela�on, as we shall see, is made up of the rela�ons of the
intermediate terms.
The laws which regulate this rela�on bear the name of poli�cal laws, and are also
called fundamental laws, not without reason if they are wise. For, if there is, in
each State, only one good system, the people that is in possession of it should hold
fast to this; but if the established order is bad, why should laws that prevent men
from being good be regarded as fundamental? Besides, in any case, a people is
always in a posi�on to change its laws, however good; for, if it choose to do itself
harm, who can have a right to stop it? The second rela�on is that of the members
one to another, or to the body as a whole; and this rela�on should be in the first
respect as unimportant, and in the second as important, as possible. Each ci�zen
would then be perfectly independent of all the rest, and at the same �me very
dependent on the city; which is brought about always by the same means, as the
strength of the State can alone secure the liberty of its members. From this second
rela�on arise civil laws.
We may consider also a third kind of rela�on between the individual and the law,
a rela�on of disobedience to its penalty. This gives rise to the se�ng up of criminal
laws, which, at botom, are less a par�cular class of law than the sanc�on behind
all the rest.
Along with these three kinds of law goes a fourth, most important of all, which is
not graven on tablets of marble or brass, but on the hearts of the ci�zens. This
forms the real cons�tu�on of the State, takes on every day new powers, when
other laws decay or die out, restores them or takes their place, keeps a people in
the ways in which it was meant to go, and insensibly replaces authority by the
force of habit. I am speaking of morality, of custom, above all of public opinion; a
power unknown to poli�cal thinkers, on which none the less success in everything
else depends. With this the great legislator concerns himself in secret, though he
seems to confine himself to par�cular regula�ons; for these are only the arc of the

44
arch, while manners and morals, slower to arise, form in the end its immovable
keystone. Among the different classes of laws, the poli�cal, which determine the
forms of the government, are alone relevant to my subject.

Book III
1. Government in General

I WARN the reader that this chapter requires careful reading, and that I am unable
to make myself clear to those who refuse to be aten�ve. Every free ac�on is
produced by the concurrence of two causes; one moral, i.e., the will which
determines the act; the other physical, i.e., the power which executes it. When I
walk towards an object, it is necessary first that I should will to go there, and, in
the second place, that my feet should carry me. If a paraly�c wills to run and an
ac�ve man wills not to, they will both stay where they are. The body poli�c has the
same mo�ve powers; here too force and will are dis�nguished, will under the
name of legisla�ve power and force under that of execu�ve power. Without their
concurrence, nothing is, or should be, done.

We have seen that the legisla�ve power belongs to the people, and can belong to
it alone. It may, on the other hand, readily be seen, from the principles laid down
above, that the execu�ve power cannot belong to the generality as legislature or
Sovereign, because it consists wholly of par�cular acts which fall outside the
competency of the law, and consequently of the Sovereign, whose acts must
always be laws.

The public force therefore needs an agent of its own to bind it together and set it
to work under the direc�on of the general will, to serve as a means of
communica�on between the State and the Sovereign, and to do for the collec�ve
person more or less what the union of soul and body does for man. Here we have
what is, in the State, the basis of government, o�en wrongly confused with the
Sovereign, whose minister it is.

What then is government? An intermediate body set up between the subjects and
the Sovereign, to secure their mutual correspondence, charged with the execu�on
of the laws and the maintenance of liberty, both civil and poli�cal.

45
The members of this body are called magistrates or kings, that is to say governors,
and the whole body bears the name prince. * Thus those who hold 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, an employment, in which the rulers, mere officials
of the Sovereign, exercise in their own name the power of which it makes them
depositaries. This power it can limit, modify or recover at pleasure; for the
aliena�on of such a right is incompa�ble with the nature of the social body, and
contrary to the end of associa�on.

I call then government, or supreme administra�on, the legi�mate exercise of the

execu�ve power, and prince or magistrate the man or the body entrusted with that
administra�on.

In government reside the intermediate forces whose rela�ons make up that of the
whole to the whole, or of the Sovereign to the State. This last rela�on may be
represented as that between the extreme terms of a con�nuous propor�on, which
has government as its mean propor�onal. The government gets from the
Sovereign the orders it gives the people, and, for the State to be properly balanced,
there must, when everything is reckoned in, be equality between the product or
power of the government taken in itself, and the product or power of the ci�zens,
who are on the one hand sovereign and on the other subject.

Furthermore, none of these three terms can be altered without the equality being
instantly destroyed. If the Sovereign desires to govern, or the magistrate to give
laws, or if the subjects refuse to obey, disorder takes the place of regularity, force
and will no longer act together, and the State is dissolved and falls into despo�sm
or anarchy. Lastly, as there is only one mean propor�onal between each rela�on,
there is also only one good government possible for a State. But, as countless
events may change the rela�ons of a people, not only may different governments
be good for different peoples, but also for the same people at different �mes. In
atemp�ng to give some idea of the various rela�ons that may hold between these
two extreme terms, I shall take as an example the number of a people, which is
the most easily expressible.

Suppose the State is composed of ten thousand ci�zens. The Sovereign can only
be considered collec�vely and as a body; but each member, as being a subject, is
regarded as an individual: thus the Sovereign is to the subject as ten thousand to
one, i.e., each member of the State has as his share only a ten-thousandth part of

*
Thus at Venice the College, even in the absence of the Doge, is called "Most Serene Prince."

46
the sovereign authority, although he is wholly under its control. If the people
numbers a hundred thousand, the condi�on of the subject undergoes no change,
and each equally is under the whole authority of the laws, while his vote, being
reduced to a hundred-thousandth part, has ten �mes less influence in drawing
them up. The subject therefore remaining always a unit, the rela�on between him
and the Sovereign increases with the number of the ci�zens. From this it follows
that, the larger the State, the less the liberty.

When I say the rela�on increases, I mean that it grows more unequal. Thus the
greater it is in the geometrical sense, the less rela�on there is in the ordinary sense
of the word. In the former sense, the rela�on, considered according to quan�ty, is
expressed by the quo�ent; in the later, considered according to iden�ty, it is
reckoned by similarity. Now, the less rela�on the par�cular wills have to the
general will, that is, morals and manners to laws, the more should the repressive
force be increased. The government, then, to be good, should be propor�onately
stronger as the people is more numerous. On the other hand, as the growth of the
State gives the depositaries of the public authority more tempta�ons and chances
of abusing their power, the greater the force with which the government ought to
be endowed for keeping the people in hand, the greater too should be the force
at the disposal of the Sovereign for keeping the government in hand. I am
speaking, not of absolute force, but of the rela�ve force of the different parts of
the State.

It follows from this double rela�on that the con�nuous propor�on between the
Sovereign, the prince and the people, is by no means an arbitrary idea, but a
necessary consequence of the nature of the body poli�c. It follows further that,
one of the extreme terms, viz., the people, as subject, being fixed and represented
by unity, whenever the duplicate ra�o increases or diminishes, the simple ra�o
does the same, and is changed accordingly. From this we see that there is not a
single unique and absolute form of government, but as many governments
differing in nature as there are States differing in size.

If, ridiculing this system, any one were to say that, in order to find the mean
propor�onal and give form to the body of the government, it is only necessary,
according to me, to find the square root of the number of the people, I should
answer that I am here taking this number only as an instance; that the rela�ons of
which I am speaking are not measured by the number of men alone, but generally
by the amount of ac�on, which is a combina�on of a mul�tude of causes; and that,
further, if, to save words, I borrow for a moment the terms of geometry, I am none
the less well aware that moral quan��es do not allow of geometrical accuracy. The

47
government is on a small scale what the body poli�c which includes it is on a great
one. It is a moral person endowed with certain facul�es, ac�ve like the Sovereign
and passive like the State, and capable of being resolved into other similar
rela�ons. This accordingly gives rise to a new propor�on, within which there is yet
another, according to the arrangement of the magistracies, �ll an indivisible
middle term is reached, i.e., a single ruler or supreme magistrate, who may be
represented, in the midst of this progression, as the unity between the frac�onal
and the ordinal series.

Without encumbering ourselves with this mul�plica�on of terms, let us rest

content with regarding government as a new body within the State, dis�nct from
the people and the Sovereign, and intermediate between them.

There is between these two bodies this essen�al difference, that the State exists
by itself, and the government only through the Sovereign. Thus the dominant will
of the prince is, or should be, nothing but the general will or the law; his force is
only the public force concentrated in his hands, and, as soon as he tries to base
any absolute and independent act on his own authority, the �e that binds the
whole together begins to be loosened. If finally the prince should come to have a
par�cular will more ac�ve than the will of the Sovereign, and should employ the
public force in his hands in obedience to this par�cular will, there would be, so to
speak, two Sovereigns, one righ�ul and the other actual, the social union would
evaporate instantly, and the body poli�c would be dissolved.

However, in order that the government may have a true existence and a real life
dis�nguishing it from the body of the State, and in order that all its members may
be able to act in concert and fulfil the end for which it was set up, it must have a
par�cular personality, a sensibility common to its members, and a force and will
of its own making for its preserva�on. This par�cular existence implies assemblies,
councils, power and delibera�on and decision, rights, �tles, and privileges
belonging exclusively to the prince and making the office of magistrate more
honourable in propor�on as it is more troublesome. The difficul�es lie in the
manner of so ordering this subordinate whole within the whole, that it in no way
alters the general cons�tu�on by affirma�on of its own, and always dis�nguishes
the par�cular force it possesses, which is des�ned to aid in its preserva�on, from
the public force, which is des�ned to the preserva�on of the State; and, in a word,
is always ready to sacrifice the government to the people, and never to sacrifice
the people to the government.

48
Furthermore, although the ar�ficial body of the government is the work of another
ar�ficial body, and has, we may say, only a borrowed and subordinate life, this does
not prevent it from being able to act with more or less vigour or promp�tude, or
from being, so to speak, in more or less robust health. Finally, without depar�ng
directly from the end for which it was ins�tuted, it may deviate more or less from
it, according to the manner of its cons�tu�on.

From all these differences arise the various rela�ons which the government ought
to bear to the body of the State, according to the accidental and par�cular
rela�ons by which the State itself is modified, for o�en the government that is best
in itself will become the most pernicious, if the rela�ons in which it stands have
altered according to the defects of the body poli�c to which it belongs.

[…]

4. Democracy

HE who makes the law knows beter than any one else how it should be executed
and interpreted. It seems then impossible to have a beter cons�tu�on than that
in which the execu�ve and legisla�ve powers are united; but this very fact renders
the government in certain respects inadequate, because things which should be
dis�nguished are confounded, and the prince and the Sovereign, being the same
person, form, so to speak, no more than a government without government.

It is not good for him who makes the laws to execute them, or for the body of the
people to turn its aten�on away from a general standpoint and devote it to
par�cular objects. Nothing is more dangerous than the influence of private
interests in public affairs, and the abuse of the laws by the government is a less
evil than the corrup�on of the legislator, which is the inevitable sequel to a
par�cular standpoint. In such a case, the State being altered in substance, all
reforma�on 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 the strict sense, there never has 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 con�nually
assembled to devote their �me to public affairs, and it is clear that they cannot set
up commissions for that purpose without the form of administra�on being
changed.

49
In fact, I can confidently lay down as a principle that, when the func�ons of
government are shared by several tribunals, the less numerous sooner or later
acquire the greatest authority, if only because they are in a posi�on to expedite
affairs, and power thus naturally comes into their hands.

Besides, how many condi�ons that are difficult to unite does such a government
presuppose! First, a very small State, where the people can readily be got together
and where each ci�zen can with ease know all the rest; secondly, great simplicity
of manners, to prevent business from mul�plying and raising thorny problems;
next, a large measure of equality in rank and fortune, without which equality of
rights and authority cannot long subsist; lastly, litle or no luxury—for luxury either
comes of riches or makes them necessary; it corrupts at once rich and poor, the
rich by possession and the poor by covetousness; it sells the country to so�ness
and vanity, and takes away from the State all its ci�zens, to make them slaves one
to another, and one and all to public opinion.

This is why a famous writer has made virtue the fundamental principle of
Republics; for all these condi�ons could not exist without virtue. * But, for want of
the necessary dis�nc�ons, that great thinker was o�en inexact, and some�mes
obscure, and did not see that, the sovereign authority being everywhere the same,
the same principle should be found in every well-cons�tuted State, in a greater or
less degree, it is true, according to the form of the government.

It may be added that there is no government so subject to civil wars and intes�ne
agita�ons as democra�c or popular government, because there is none which has
so strong and con�nual a tendency to change to another form, or which demands
more vigilance and courage for its maintenance as it is. Under such a cons�tu�on
above all, the ci�zen should arm himself with strength and constancy, and say,
every day of his life, what a virtuous Count Pala�ne † said in the Diet of
Poland: Malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium. ‡

Were there a people of gods, their government would be democra�c. So perfect a

government is not for men.

*
Montesquieu, On the Spirit of the Laws, III:3 (Editor's Note)
†
The Pala�ne of Posen, father of the King of Poland, Duke of Lorraine.
‡
I prefer liberty with danger to peace with slavery.

50
12. How Sovereign Authority Maintains Itself

THE Sovereign, having no force other than the legislative power, acts only by
means of the laws; and the laws being solely the authentic acts of the general will,
the Sovereign cannot act save when the people is assembled. The people in
assembly, I shall be told, is a mere chimera. It is so to-day, but two thousand years
ago it was not so. Has man's nature changed?
The bounds of possibility, in moral matters, are less narrow than we imagine: it is
our weaknesses, our vices and our prejudices that confine them. Base souls have
no belief in great men; vile slaves smile in mockery at the name of liberty.
Let us judge of what can be done by what has been done. I shall say nothing of the
Republics of ancient Greece; but the Roman Republic was, to my mind, a great
State, and the town of Rome a great town. The last census showed that there were
in Rome four hundred thousand citizens capable of bearing arms, and the last
computation of the population of the Empire showed over four million citizens,
excluding subjects, foreigners, women, children and slaves.
What difficulties might not be supposed to stand in the way of the frequent
assemblage of the vast population of this capital and its neighbourhood. Yet few
weeks passed without the Roman people being in assembly, and even being so
several times. It exercised not only the rights of Sovereignty, but also a part of
those of government. It dealt with certain matters, and judged certain cases, and
this whole people was found in the public meeting place hardly less often as
magistrates than as citizens.
If we went back to the earliest history of nations, we should find that most ancient
governments, even those of monarchical form, such as the Macedonian and the
Frankish, had similar councils. In any case, the one incontestable fact I have given
is an answer to all difficulties; it is good logic to reason from the actual to the
possible.

13. The Same (con�nued)

IT is not enough for the assembled people to have once fixed the constitution of
the State by giving its sanction to a body of law; it is not enough for it to have set
up a perpetual government, or provided once for all for the election of
magistrates. Besides the extraordinary assemblies unforeseen circumstances may
demand, there must be fixed periodical assemblies which cannot be abrogated or
prorogued, so that on the proper day the people is legitimately called together by
law, without need of any formal summoning.

51
But, apart from these assemblies authorised by their date alone, every assembly
of the people not summoned by the magistrates appointed for that purpose, and
in accordance with the prescribed forms, should be regarded as unlawful, and all
its acts as null and void, because the command to assemble should itself proceed
from the law.
The greater or less frequency with which lawful assemblies should occur depends
on so many considerations that no exact rules about them can be given. It can only
be said generally that the stronger the government the more often should the
Sovereign show itself. This, I shall be told, may do for a single town; but what is to
be done when the State includes several? Is the sovereign authority to be divided?
Or is it to be concentrated in a single town to which all the rest are made subject?
Neither the one nor the other, I reply. First, the sovereign authority is one and
simple, and cannot be divided without being destroyed. In the second place, one
town cannot, any more than one nation, legitimately be made subject to another,
because the essence of the body politic lies in the reconciliation of obedience and
liberty, and the words subject and Sovereign are identical correlatives the idea of
which meets in the single word "citizen."
I answer further that the union of several towns in a single city is always bad, and
that, if we wish to make such a union, we should not expect to avoid its natural
disadvantages. It is useless to bring up abuses that belong to great States against
one who desires to see only small ones; but how can small States be given the
strength to resist great ones, as formerly the Greek towns resisted the Great King,
and more recently Holland and Switzerland have resisted the House of Austria?
Nevertheless, if the State cannot be reduced to the right limits, there remains still
one resource; this is, to allow no capital, to make the seat of government move
from town to town, and to assemble by turn in each the Provincial Estates of the
country.
People the territory evenly, extend everywhere the same rights, bear to every
place in it abundance and life: by these means will the State become at once as
strong and as well governed as possible. Remember that the walls of towns are
built of 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 made desolate.

15. Depu�es or Representa�ves

AS soon as public service ceases to be the chief business of the citizens, and they
would rather serve with their money than with their persons, the State is not far

52
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. By reason of idleness and money, they end by having soldiers to enslave
their country and representatives to sell it.
It is through the hustle of commerce and the arts, through the greedy self-interest
of profit, and through softness and love of amenities that personal services are
replaced by money payments. Men surrender a part of their profits in order to
have time to increase them at leisure. Make gifts of money, and you will not be
long without chains. The word finance is a slavish word, unknown in the city-state.
In a country that is truly free, the citizens do everything with their own arms and
nothing by means of money; so far from paying to be exempted from their duties,
they would even pay for the privilege of fulfilling them themselves. I am far from
taking the common view: I hold enforced labour to be less opposed to liberty than
taxes.
The better the constitution of a State is, the more do public affairs encroach on
private in the minds of the citizens. Private affairs are even of much less
importance, because the aggregate of the common happiness furnishes a greater
proportion of that of each individual, so that there is less for him to seek in
particular cares. In a well-ordered city every man flies to the assemblies: under a
bad government no one cares to stir a step to get to them, because no one is
interested in what happens there, because it is foreseen that the general will will
not prevail, and lastly because domestic cares are all-absorbing. Good laws lead
to the making of better ones; bad ones bring about worse. 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.
The lukewarmness of patriotism, the activity of private interest, the vastness of
States, conquest and the abuse of government suggested the method of having
deputies or representatives of the people in the national assemblies. These are
what, in some countries, men have presumed to call the Third Estate. Thus the
individual interest of two orders is put first and second; the public interest
occupies only the third place.
Sovereignty, for the same reason as makes it inalienable, cannot be represented;
it lies essentially in the general will, and will does not admit of representation: it
is either the same, or other; there is no intermediate possibility. The deputies of
the people, therefore, are not and cannot be its representatives: they are merely
its stewards, and can carry through no definitive acts. Every law the people has
not ratified in person is null and void — is, in fact, not a law. The people of England

53
regards itself as free; but it is grossly mistaken; it is free only during the election
of members of parliament. As soon as they are elected, slavery overtakes it, and
it is nothing. The use it makes of the short moments of liberty it enjoys shows
indeed that it deserves to lose them.
[…]

Part IV

1. That the General Will Is Indestructible

AS long as several men in assembly regard themselves as a single body, they have
only a single will which is concerned with their common preservation and general
well-being. In this case, all the springs of the State are vigorous and simple and its
rules clear and luminous; there are no embroilments or conflicts of interests; the
common good is everywhere clearly apparent, and only good sense is needed to
perceive it. Peace, unity and equality are the enemies of political subtleties. Men
who are upright and simple are difficult to deceive because of their simplicity;
lures and ingenious pretexts fail to impose upon them, and they are not even
subtle enough to be dupes. When, among the happiest people in the world, bands
of peasants are seen regulating affairs of State under an oak, and always acting
wisely, can we help scorning the ingenious methods of other nations, which make
themselves illustrious and wretched with so much art and mystery?
A State so governed needs very few laws; and, as it becomes necessary to issue
new ones, the necessity is universally seen. The first man to propose them merely
says what all have already felt, and there is no question of factions or intrigues or
eloquence in order to secure the passage into law of what every one has already
decided to do, as soon as he is sure that the rest will act with him. Theorists are
led into error because, seeing only States that have been from the beginning
wrongly constituted, they are struck by the impossibility of applying such a policy
to them. They make great game of all the absurdities a clever rascal or an
insinuating speaker might get the people of Paris or London to believe. They do
not know that Cromwell would have been put to "the bells" by the people of
Berne, and the Duc de Beaufort on the treadmill by the Genevese.
But when the social bond begins to be relaxed and the State to grow weak, when
particular interests begin to make themselves felt and the smaller societies to
exercise an influence over the larger, the common interest changes and finds
opponents: opinion is no longer unanimous; the general will ceases to be the will

54
of all; contradictory views and debates arise; and the best advice is not taken
without question.
Finally, when the State, on the eve of ruin, maintains only a vain, illusory and
formal existence, when in every heart the social bond is broken, and the meanest
interest brazenly lays hold of the sacred name of "public good," the general will
becomes mute: all men, guided by secret motives, no more give their views as
citizens than if the State had never been; and iniquitous decrees directed solely to
private interest get passed under the name of laws.
Does it follow from this that the general will is exterminated or corrupted? Not at
all: it is always constant, unalterable and pure; but it is subordinated to other wills
which encroach upon its sphere. Each man, in detaching his interest from the
common interest, sees clearly that he cannot entirely separate them; but his share
in the public mishaps seems to him negligible beside the exclusive good he aims
at making his own. Apart from this particular good, he wills the general good in his
own interest, as strongly as any one else. Even in selling his vote for money, he
does not extinguish in himself the general will, but only eludes 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 of advantage to this or that man or party
that this or that view should prevail." Thus the law of public order in assemblies is
not so much to maintain in them the general will as to secure that the question be
always put to it, and the answer always given by it.
[…]

2. Voting

IT may be seen, from the last chapter, that the way in which general business is
managed may give a clear enough indica�on of the actual state of morals and the
health of the body poli�c. The more concert reigns in the assemblies, that is, the
nearer opinion approaches unanimity, the greater is the dominance of the general
will. On the other hand, long debates, dissensions and tumult proclaim the
ascendancy of par�cular interests and the decline of the State.

This seems less clear when two or more orders enter into the cons�tu�on, as
patricians and plebeians did at Rome; for quarrels between these two orders o�en
disturbed the comi�a, even in the best days of the Republic. But the excep�on is
rather apparent than real; for then, through the defect that is inherent in the body

55
poli�c, there were, so to speak, two States in one, and what is not true of the two
together is true of either separately. Indeed, even in the most stormy �mes, the
plebiscita of the people, when the Senate did not interfere with them, always went
through quietly and by large majori�es. The ci�zens having but one interest, the
people had but a single will.

At the other extremity of the circle, unanimity recurs; this is the case when the
ci�zens, having fallen into servitude, have lost both liberty and will. Fear and
flatery then change votes into acclama�on; delibera�on ceases, and only worship
or maledic�on is le�. Such was the vile manner in which the senate expressed its
views under the Emperors. It did so some�mes with absurd precau�ons. Tacitus
observes that, under Otho, the senators, while they heaped curses on Vitellius,
contrived at the same �me to make a deafening noise, in order that, should he
ever become their master, he might not know what each of them had said.

On these various considera�ons depend the rules by which the methods of

coun�ng votes and comparing opinions should be regulated, according as the
general will is more or less easy to discover, and the State more or less in its
decline.

There is but one law which, from its nature, needs unanimous consent. This is the
social compact; for civil associa�on is the most voluntary of all acts. Every man
being born free and his own master, no-one, under any pretext whatsoever, can
make any man subject without his consent. To decide that the son of a slave is
born a slave is to decide that he is not born a man.

If then there are opponents when the social compact is made, their opposi�on
does not invalidate the contract, but merely prevents them from being included in
it. They are foreigners among ci�zens. When the State is ins�tuted, residence
cons�tutes consent; to dwell within its territory is to submit to the Sovereign. *

Apart from this primi�ve contract, the vote of the majority always binds all the
rest. This follows from the contract itself. But it is asked how a man can 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?

*
This should of course be understood as applying to a free State; for elsewhere family, goods, lack
of a refuge, necessity, or violence may detain a man in a country against his will; and then his
dwelling there no longer by itself implies his consent to the contract or to its viola�on.

56
I retort that the ques�on is wrongly put. The ci�zen gives his consent to all the
laws, including those which are passed in spite of his opposi�on, 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 ci�zens and
free. When in the popular assembly a law is proposed, what the people is asked is
not exactly whether it approves or rejects 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; and the general will is found by coun�ng votes.
When therefore the opinion that is contrary to my own prevails, this proves neither
more nor less than that I was mistaken, and that what I thought to be the general
will was not so. If my par�cular opinion had carried the day I should have achieved
the opposite of what was my will and it is in that case that I should not have been
free.

This presupposes, indeed, that all the quali�es of the general will s�ll reside in the
majority: when they cease to do so, whatever side a man may take, liberty is no
longer possible.

In my earlier demonstra�on of how par�cular wills are subs�tuted for the general
will in public delibera�on, I have adequately pointed out the prac�cable methods
of avoiding this abuse; and I shall have more to say of them later on. I have also
given the principles for determining the propor�onal number of votes for
declaring that will. A difference of one vote destroys equality; a single opponent
destroys unanimity; but between equality and unanimity, there are several grades
of unequal division, at each of which this propor�on may be fixed in accordance
with the condi�on and the needs of the body poli�c.

There are two general rules that may serve to regulate this rela�on. First, the more
grave and important the ques�ons discussed, the nearer should the opinion that
is to prevail approach unanimity. Secondly, the more the mater in hand calls for
speed, the smaller the prescribed difference in the numbers of votes may be
allowed to become: where an instant decision has to be reached, a majority of one
vote should be enough. The first of these two rules seems more in harmony with
the laws, and the second with prac�cal affairs. In any case, it is the combina�on of
them that gives the best propor�ons for determining the majority necessary.

57
8. Civil Religion

[Rousseau begins this long chapter with a sketch of the history of the relations
between religion and the state. He explains how, in the ancient world, religion was
always united with political power. However, Christianity separated the
theological and political systems, which has “brought about the internal divisions
which have never ceased to trouble Christian peoples.”]

Of all Chris�an writers, the philosopher Hobbes alone has seen the evil and how
to remedy it, and has dared to propose the reunion of the two heads of the eagle,
and the restora�on throughout of poli�cal unity, without which no State or
government will ever be rightly cons�tuted. But he should have seen that the
masterful spirit of Chris�anity is incompa�ble with his system, and that the priestly
interest would always be stronger than that of the State. It is not so much what is
false and terrible in his poli�cal theory, as what is just and true, that has drawn
down hatred on it.

I believe that if the study of history were developed from this point of view, it
would be easy to refute the contrary opinions of Bayle and Warburton, one of
whom holds that religion can be of no use to the body poli�c, while the other, on
the contrary, maintains that Chris�anity is its strongest support. We should
demonstrate to the former that no State has ever been founded without a religious
basis, and to the later, that the law of Chris�anity at botom does more harm by
weakening than good by strengthening the cons�tu�on of the State. To make
myself understood, I have only to make a litle more exact the too vague ideas of
religion as rela�ng to this subject.

Religion, considered in rela�on to society, which is either general or par�cular, may

also be divided into two kinds: the religion of man, and that of the ci�zen. The first,
which has neither temples, nor altars, nor rites, and is confined to the purely
internal cult of the supreme God and the eternal obliga�ons of morality, is the
religion of the Gospel pure and simple, the true theism, what may be called natural
divine right or law. The other, which is codified in a single country, gives it its gods,
its own tutelary patrons; it has its dogmas, its rites, and its external cult prescribed
by law; outside the single na�on that follows it, all the world is in its sight infidel,
foreign and barbarous; the du�es and rights of man extend for it only as far as its
own altars. Of this kind were all the religions of early peoples, which we may define
as civil or posi�ve divine right or law.

There is a third sort of religion of a more singular kind, which gives men two codes
of legisla�on, two rulers, and two countries, renders them subject to contradictory

58
du�es, and makes it impossible for them to be faithful both to religion and to
ci�zenship. Such are the religions of the Lamas and of the Japanese, and such is
Roman Chris�anity, which may be called the religion of the priest. It leads to a sort
of mixed and an�-social code which has no name.

In their poli�cal aspect, all these three kinds of religion have their defects. The
third is so clearly bad, that it is waste of �me to stop to prove it such. All that
destroys social unity is worthless; all ins�tu�ons that set man in contradic�on to
himself are worthless.

The second is good in that it unites the divine cult with love of the laws, and,
making country the object of the ci�zens' adora�on, teaches them that service
done to the State is service done to its tutelary god. It is a form of theocracy, in
which there can be no pon�ff save the prince, and no priests save the magistrates.
To die for one's country then becomes martyrdom; viola�on of its laws, impiety;
and to subject one who is guilty to public execra�on is to condemn him to the
anger of the gods: Sacer estod. *

On the other hand, it is bad in that, being founded on lies and error, it deceives
men, makes them credulous and supers��ous, and drowns the true cult of the
Divinity in empty ceremonial. It is bad, again, when it becomes tyrannous and
exclusive, and makes a people bloodthirsty and intolerant, so that it breathes fire
and slaughter, and regards as a sacred act the killing of every one who does not
believe in its gods. The result is to place such a people in a natural state of war
with all others, so that its security is deeply endangered.

There remains therefore the religion of man or Chris�anity—not the Chris�anity

of today, but that of the Gospel, which is en�rely different. By means of this holy,
sublime, and real religion all men, being children of one God, recognise one
another as brothers, and the society that unites them is not dissolved even at
death.

*
[The following explanatory footnote comes from Victor Gourevitch’s edi�on of Rousseau: The
Social Contract and other later political writings (Cambridge University Press, 1997).
sacer estod “to be accursed”: the ancient Roman formula utered upon delivering someone to
public execra�on and the wrath of the Gods. “It cannot be sufficiently admired, that among
the first Romans the sole punishment provided for by the Laws of the Twelve Tables against
the greatest criminals was to be held in horror by everyone, sacer estod. There was no beter
way of understanding how virtuous that people was than to realize that among it public hate
or esteem was distributed by Law”: [Rousseau], Fragments politiques, IV, 12, Oeuvres
complètes III, 495.]

59
But this religion, having no par�cular rela�on to the body poli�c, leaves the laws
in possession of the force they have in themselves without making any addi�on to
it; and thus one of the great bonds that unite society considered in severally fails
to operate. Nay, more, so far from binding the hearts of the ci�zens to the State,
it has the effect of taking them away from all earthly things. I know of nothing
more contrary to the social spirit.

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

[…]

Chris�anity preaches only servitude and dependence. Its spirit is so favourable to

tyranny that it always profits by such a régime. True Chris�ans are made to be
slaves, and they know it and do not much mind: this short life counts for too litle
in their eyes.

[…]

But, se�ng aside poli�cal considera�ons, let us come back to what is right, and
setle our principles on this important point. The right which the social compact
gives the Sovereign over the subjects does not, we have seen, exceed the limits of
public expediency. * The subjects then owe the Sovereign an account of their
opinions only to such an extent as they mater to the community. Now, it maters
very much to the community that each ci�zen 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 have reference to morality and to the du�es which he
who professes them is bound to do to others. Each man may have, over and above,
what opinions he pleases, without it being the Sovereign's business to take
cognisance of them; for, as the Sovereign has no authority in the other world,
whatever the lot of its subjects may be in the life to come, that is not its business,
provided they are good ci�zens in this life.

There is therefore a purely civil profession of faith of which the Sovereign should
fix the ar�cles, not exactly as religious dogmas, but as social sen�ments without

*
"In the republic," says the Marquis d'Argenson, "each man is perfectly free in what does not harm
others." This is the invariable limita�on, which it is impossible to define more exactly. I have not
been able to deny myself the pleasure of occasionally quo�ng from this manuscript, though it is
unknown to the public, in order to do honour to the memory of a good and illustrious man, who
had kept even in the Ministry the heart of a good ci�zen, and views on the government of his
country that were sane and right.

60
which a man cannot be a good ci�zen or a faithful subject. * While it can compel
no one to believe them, it can banish from the State whoever does not believe
them—it can banish him, not for impiety, but as an an�-social being, incapable of
truly loving the laws and jus�ce, and of sacrificing, at need, his life to his duty. If
any one, a�er publicly recognising these dogmas, behaves as if he does not believe
them, let him be punished by death: he has commited the worst of all crimes, that
of lying before the law.

The dogmas of civil religion ought to be few, simple, and exactly worded, without
explana�on or commentary. The existence of a mighty, intelligent and beneficent
Divinity, possessed of foresight and providence, the life to come, the happiness of
the just, the punishment of the wicked, the sanc�ty of the social contract and the
laws: these are its posi�ve dogmas. Its nega�ve dogmas I confine to one,
intolerance, which is a part of the cults we have rejected.

Those who dis�nguish civil from theological intolerance are, to 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: we
posi�vely must either reclaim or torment them. Wherever theological intolerance
is admited, it must inevitably have some civil effect; and as soon as it has such an
effect, the Sovereign is no longer Sovereign even in the temporal sphere:
thenceforce priests are the real masters, and kings only their ministers.

Now that there is and can be no longer an exclusive na�onal religion, tolerance
should be given to all religions that tolerate others, so long as their dogmas contain
nothing contrary to the du�es of ci�zenship. But whoever dares to say: Outside
the Church is no salva�on, ought to be driven from the State, unless the State is
the Church, and the prince the pon�ff. Such a dogma is good only in a theocra�c
government; in any other, it is fatal. The reason for which Henry IV is said to have
embraced the Roman religion ought to make every honest man leave it, and s�ll
more any prince who knows how to reason.

*
Cæsar, pleading for Ca�line, tried to establish the dogma that the soul is mortal: Cato and Cicero,
in refuta�on, did not waste �me in philosophising. They were content to show that Cæsar spoke
like a bad ci�zen, and brought forward a doctrine that would have a bad effect on the State. This,
in fact, and not a problem of theology, was what the Roman senate had to judge.

61