The Doctrine of the Social Contract,

a doctrine which, although proceeding upon a gratuitous hypothesis, has yet profoundly influenced modern political conceptions. This is his picture of the birth of society—the transition from the natural to the social order of things: "Pressed by necessity the rich to defend themselves conceived the most ingenious plan which ever entered the human mind—namely, that of employing on their own behalf the very forces that attacked them, and of turning their enemies into defenders." "Unite with us," they said to the poor, "to secure the weak from oppression, to restrain the ambitious, to assure to each the possession that belongs to him. In a word, instead of turning our strength against each other let us place ourselves together all under one supreme power which governs us according to wise laws, which defends all members of the association, repels common enemies, and preserves us in everlasting concord." "All hasten under the yoke in order to secure freedom—such was the origin of society and of laws which, for the benefit of a few ambitious men, subjected henceforth all mankind to servitude and slavery." This theory, fanciful as it is, lies at the very root of Anarchism. It was the creed of Marat, Danton, and Robespierre; the major premiss to those bloody conclusions which produced the Revolution. Rousseau did not originate the theory, and a short sketch of its origin and development may be both interesting and requisite to our inquiry. The fiction of the social contract began with Thomas Hobbes, an English philosopher of the seventeenth century, with whom also begins the whole modern school of political theory. His capital advance upon previous writers was to clearly mark the distinction between policy and legality—between what ought to be and what is positive law, and it was first essential to his doctrines that he should establish the absolute power of the sovereign body. To set up a supreme lawgiver, whose decrees, be they (measured by an ethical standard) just or unjust, were nevertheless the law of the land and binding upon its people. To do this he invented the theory of