[1] He seems to regard the beginnings of industrial co-operation as the end of the “state of nature” in the widest sense. The remark that “iron and corn civilised man and ruined the human race,” anticipates much in later speculations.
[2] We find Rousseau actually drawing attention to this in the _Contrat Social_. See _Cont. Soc_., I. ix. fin., where observe (i) that he half believes himself to have spoken of natural equality, and not of natural inequality, in the “Essay”; and (2) the “hedging” footnote on the illusoriness of social equality.
3. The famous opening words of chap. i. of the { 88} _Contrat Social_ (published 1762) sound like the beginning of a tirade against civilisation and the State. “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, who does not fail to be more of a slave than they.” Here we might well suppose ourselves to be reading the preface to a demonstration that all social constraint is slavery, and that man, in a state of nature, possessed a liberty which he has now lost. We expect such an opening to be followed by a denunciation of the fetters of society, and a panegyric on the pre-social life. And there can hardly be a doubt that these sentences, along with a few similar phrases which stick in the memory, are the ground of the popular idea of Rousseau, shared by too many scholars. [1] But how does Rousseau go on? Here are the succeeding sentences. “How did this change take place? I do not know. What can render it legitimate? I think I can tell.” Here, as previously in the discourse on “Equality,” he (1) cuts himself loose in principle from the historical fiction of a social pact succeeding a state of nature; and (2) he promises to furnish a justification for the change (or, striking out the quasi-historical term “change,” for the condition of man), which is expressed by the words, “is everywhere in chains.”
[1] Professor Henry Sidgwick and Professor Ritchie are notable exceptions. See also, and pre-eminently, the essay of the late Professor Wallace referred to above.
This then is the task which he has set himself. The sentences last cited show that his answer will, in some degree, turn its back on his question, and that really man had little natural freedom to lose, and is not everywhere in chains. But the fact that { 89} the problem first struck Rousseau’s mind through a feeling of rebellion against social slavery, and a loathing for the civilisation of his day, sets him at the very beginning of the path which social theory has to traverse, and ensures that the difficulties which we all feel at times will be met in their sharpest form. He knows, in short, that something, which can look like utter bondage, is a fact; and he knows that this fact has to be justified.