Note 436 — BOOK VIII THE AGE OF THE GREAT POWERS (continued 2)

I disagree utterly and entirely with this view of Rousseau, which is quite unfair to the man who wrote Du Contrat Social. (1) He did not believe in the “state of nature”; he believed in the State, which had lifted man from being a brute that followed its nose into a reasoning being and a man. (2) He did not write to excuse breakers of the covenant. On the contrary, he wrote to preach the sovereignty of the general will, and he believed in the entire control of the individual by that will. Rousseau has been much misrepresented, and the text follows the misrepresentations. See Vaughan, The Political Writings of Rousseau, introduction to Du Contrat Social.—E. B.