Beacon Lights of History, Volume 13 | Page 9

is difficult to separate the truth from the error, by reason of the

marvellous felicity of his language. I do not underrate his genius or his
style. He was doubtless an original thinker and a most brilliant and
artistic writer; and by so much did he confuse people, even by the
speciousness of his logic. There is nothing indefinite in what he
advances. He is not a poet dealing in mysticisms, but a rhetorical
philosopher, propounding startling theories, partly true and partly false,
which he logically enforces with matchless eloquence.
Probably the most influential of Rousseau's writings was "The Social
Contract,"--the great textbook of the Revolution. In this famous treatise
he advanced some important ideas which undoubtedly are based on
ultimate truth, such as that the people are the source of power, that
might does not make right, that slavery is an aggression on human
rights; but with these ideal truths he combines the assertion that
government is a contract between the governor and the governed. In a
perfect state of society this may be the ideal; but society is not and
never has been perfect, and certainly in all the early ages of the world
governments were imposed upon people by the strong hand,
irrespective of their will and wishes,--and these were the only
governments which were fit and useful in that elder day. Governments,
as a plain matter of fact, have generally arisen from circumstances and
relations with which the people have had little to do. The Oriental
monarchies were the gradual outgrowth of patriarchal tradition and
successful military leadership, and in regard to them the people were
never consulted at all. The Roman Empire was ruled without the
consent of the governed. Feudal monarchies in Europe were based on
the divine rights of kings. There was no state in Europe where a
compact or social contract had been made or implied. Even later, when
the French elected Napoleon, they chose a monarch because they feared
anarchy, without making any stipulation. There were no contracting
parties.
The error of Rousseau was in assuming a social contract as a fact, and
then reasoning upon the assumption. His premises are wrong, or at least
they are nothing more than statements of what abstractly might be
made to follow from the assumption that the people actually are the
source of power,--a condition most desirable and in the last analysis

correct, since even military despots use the power of the people in order
to oppress the people, but which is practically true only in certain states.
Yet, after all, when brought under the domain of law by the sturdy
sense and utilitarian sagacity of the Anglo-Saxon race, Rousseau's
doctrine of the sovereignty of the people is the great political motor of
this century, in republics and monarchies alike.
Again, Rousseau maintains that, whatever acquisitions an individual or
a society may make, the right to this property must be always
subordinate to the right which the community at large has over the
possessions of all. Here is the germ of much of our present-day
socialism. Whatever element of truth there may be in the theory that
would regard land and capital, the means of production, as the joint
possession of all the members of the community,--the basic doctrine of
socialism,--any forcible attempt to distribute present results of
individual production and accumulation would be unjust and dangerous
to the last degree. In the case of the furious carrying out of this doctrine
by the crazed French revolutionists, it led to outrageous confiscation,
on the ground that all property belonged to the state, and therefore the
representatives of the nation could do what they pleased with it. This
shallow sophistry was accepted by the French National Convention
when it swept away estates of nobles and clergy, not on the tenable
ground that the owners were public enemies, but on the baseless pretext
that their property belonged to the nation.
From this sophistry about the rights of property, Rousseau advanced
another of still worse tendency, which was that the general will is
always in the right and constantly tends to the public good. The theory
is inconsistent with itself. Light and truth do not come from the
universal reason, but from the thoughts of great men stimulated into
growth among the people. The teachers of the world belong to a small
class. Society is in need of constant reforms, which are not suggested
by the mass, but by a few philosophers or reformers,--the wise men
who save cities.
Rousseau further says that a whole people can never become
corrupted,--a most barefaced assertion. Have not all nations suffered

periods of corruption? This notion, that the whole people cannot err,
opens the door for any license. It logically leads to that other idea, of
the native majesty of man and the