“In order, then, that the social pact may not be a vain formula, it tacitly includes the covenant, which alone can confer binding force on the others, that whoever shall refuse to obey the general will shall be constrained to do so by the whole body, which means nothing else than that he will be forced to be free.”
In this passage Rousseau lays bare the very heart of what some would call political faith, and others political superstition. This lies in the { 96} conviction that the “moral person [1] which constitutes the state” is a reality, as opposed to the natural idea that it is an abstraction or fiction of the reflective mind (an “_ens rationis_,” _être de raison_), because it is not an actual individual human being. The theories of the first appearance, as we have called them, are characterised by accepting as ultimate “the absolute and naturally independent existence” of the physical individual, and therefore regarding government as an encroachment on the self, and force as oppression. Whereas, if the social person is taken as the reality, it follows, as Rousseau points out, that force against the physical individual may become a condition of freedom. We saw even in Mill how extreme cases bring out the necessity for assuming a “real” will at variance with the individual’s immediate desire. [2] There is more to be said, of course, as to the limits within which force can be so applied. [3]
[1] For the meaning of “person,” see account above, p. 93. Note on the meaning of “moral” as here used that it is determined by a general opposition to physical, as in “moral certainty.” None the less, this use of “moral person” forms an interesting stage in the advance from the physical individual through the legal “person” towards the notion of a higher or greater self.
[2] The trivial case which he takes, of its being no curtailment to freedom to keep a man off an untrustworthy bridge, as he certainly does not want to be drowned, has received terrible illustration of late (June, 1898) by the disaster at the launch of the “Albion.” The disaster occurred because not enough force was used against the passionate momentary eagerness of individuals, and in favour of what it is fair to presume their real will would be.