THE SOCIAL CONTRACT. BY JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU. [JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU : A French author; born at Geneva, June 28, 1712; died at Ermenonville, near Paris, July 2, 1778. He was early thrown upon his own resources and acquired by his own exertions a desultory education, meanwhile earning his living in various ways, and spending not a little time in travel. He was given first place in a competition before the Academy of Dijon for å memorial upon the question "Has the Progress of Sciences and Arts contributed to corrupt or to purify Morals" (1749). This, almost his first attempt at literary work, won for him immediate fame, but had the effect of making him misanthropic and melancholy. Among his subsequent works are: "The Village Soothsayer" (1753), an opera which brought him a pension from the king; "Narcissus" (1753); "Letter on French Music " (1753); "On the Origins and Foundations of Inequality among Mankind" (1755); “On Political Economy" (1758); "Letters to Voltaire"; "A Project of Perpetual Peace" (1761); "The Social Contract" (1762); Émile" (1762); "To the Archbishop of Paris" (1763); "The Departure of Silvie” (1763); “Letters from the Mountain" (1764); "Dictionary of Music " (1767); "Letters on his Exile (1770); Émile and Sophie" (1780); "Consolations of my Life" (1781); "Government of Poland " (1782); and "Confessions" (1782-1790).] 66 MAN is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. Many a one believes himself the master of others, and yet he is a greater slave than they. How has this change come about? I do not know. What can render it legitimate? I believe that I can settle this question. If I considered only force and the results that proceed from it, I should say that so long as a people is compelled to obey and does obey, it does well; but that so soon as it can shake off the yoke and does shake it off, it does better; for if men recover their freedom by virtue the same right by which it was taken away, cither they are justified in resuming it, or there was no justification for depriving them of it. But the social order is a sacred right which serves as a foundation for all others. This right, however, does not come from nature. It is therefore based on conventions. The question is, to know what these conventions are. PRIMITIVE SOCIETIES. The earliest of all societies, and the only natural one, is the family; yet children remain attached to their father only so long as they have need of him for their own preservation. As soon as this need ceases, the natural bond is dissolved. The children being freed from the obedience which they owed to |