Note 327 — CANTO THE THIRD.

["What Rousseau's Discourse [Sur l'Origine ... de l'Inégalité, etc.] meant ... is not that all men are born equal. He never says this.... His position is that the artificial differences, springing from the conditions of the social union, do not coincide with the differences in capacity springing from original constitution; that the tendency of the social union as now organized is to deepen the artificial inequalities, and make the gulf between those endowed with privileges and wealth, and those not so endowed, ever wider and wider.... It was ... [the influence of Rousseau ... and those whom he inspired] which, though it certainly did not produce, yet did as certainly give a deep and remarkable bias, first to the American Revolution, and a dozen years afterwards to the French Revolution."—Rousseau, 1888, i. 181, 182.]