Du système dans lequel on considère les lois comme l’expression de la volonté générale ; de ce qu’o

CHAP. 7: > Of the system in which laws are considered as the expression of the general will; of what is understood by this will; of the errors found in this system, and of the consequences to which they lead in legislation and in morality.

When a system, by the manner in which it is presented, appears fit to combat odious pretensions, or to favor popular passions or prejudices, peoples take little trouble to examine whether it conforms to the truth. If the state of things it describes seems desirable, one imagines that it is enough to consider it as true, and to make it the symbol of a general belief, for it to be in fact realized. In order to bring about its triumph more promptly, a kind of disfavor is attached to anyone who dares to permit himself to critique it, and thus to diminish the number of believers. But the nature of things is as independent of the desires of peoples as of the caprices of kings; what is true, is so by the nature of things, and not by the manner in which it pleases us to view it.

Scholars can be flatterers, but the sciences flatter no one; they are as inflexible for popular passions or errors as for the vices and desires of the great. Thus, whatever one may think of Rousseau’s systems on the foundations and on the nature of laws, one must judge these systems in themselves, and abstract from the opinion one may have of them. Is it true that, in any country, laws are the expression of the general will? Is it possible that such a will exists, and that all laws are its expression? Would it be advantageous for that to be so?

These questions differ greatly from one another, and they could, consequently, be susceptible to different solutions. A thing could exist, and produce bad effects; it could be or appear desirable, and have no existence; finally, it could seem desirable and be impossible. Rousseau presents his system on the nature of laws as being the expression of truth, and as the only just and reasonable one; it is therefore as such that it must be examined. If it resulted from the examination I am about to make of it that it neither is nor could become the true exposition of things, I would leave the task of examining whether it would be good to those who take pleasure in reasoning about the impossible.

This system on the nature of laws is but the continuation of the one I examined in the preceding chapter; it belongs to the same writer, and is found in the same work. I treat it separately, however, because I conceive that it is possible to admit one without adopting the other, and that it is a means of forming more just ideas of both. It would be difficult for us, moreover, to know well what laws are, if we were ignorant of what they are not, and what they cannot even be. When, on any thing, false ideas have become popular, there is almost no way to advance in the knowledge of this thing, if one does not begin by destroying the error into which one has been led.

It is difficult to understand well what Rousseau proposes to designate by these words general will. In the part of his work where he seeks to expound the nature of laws, the word will is almost always synonymous with desire. These two words are far, however, from having the same meaning: to desire a thing, it is enough to feel the need for it; to will it, one must feel the need for it, and possess moreover the power to obtain it. A paralytic may have the desire to walk; a shepherd the desire to be the owner of vast domains, or even to be king; but, if they understand their language, the first will not say that he has the will to run, nor the second the will to govern an empire.

After having expounded what he means by the word sovereign, Rousseau investigates whether the general will can err. He says that the general will is always right and always tends to the public utility, but that the deliberations of the people do not always have the same rectitude. One always wants one’s own good, he adds, but one does not always see it [34]. “How,” he says elsewhere, “would a blind multitude, which often does not know what it wants, because it rarely knows what is good for it, carry out for itself so great and difficult an enterprise as a system of legislation? Of itself the people always wants the good, but of itself it does not always see it. The general will is always right, but the judgment which guides it is not always enlightened. It is necessary to make it see objects as they are, sometimes as they ought to appear to it... Private individuals see the good they reject: the public wants the good it does not see. All are equally in need of guides [35].”

It is evident that the will of which Rousseau speaks here is nothing other than a simple desire. If one substitutes this latter word in place of the former in the passages just read, one will see that the language is much more just. If one says, for example, that a people always desires to be happy, but that it does not always see what can make it so; that men always desire their own good, but that they rarely know what is good for them; that the general desire is always right; but that the judgment which guides it is not always enlightened, one may not agree on the consequences of these phenomena; but one cannot at least contest the accuracy of the language.This substitution of one word for another is of great importance here. If Rousseau had used the proper term, his entire system would have collapsed on its own, or rather, there would have been no way to construct it. Admitting, indeed, that a people always has the desire to be happy, but that it rarely knows what is good for it, it is impossible to draw from these two facts any consequence in favor of the legislation it adopts. A sick person always has the desire to be well; must one conclude from this that the remedies he imagines or accepts from the hands of his doctor are essentially good? Must one consider the doctor's prescription as the expression of the patient's will, for the reason that the latter consents to submit to it? In considering it as such, does it follow that it will produce the desired effect?

Rousseau admits that a blind multitude often does not know what it wants, because it rarely knows what is good for it; he says that it needs to be taught what it wants; that the judgment which guides it is not always enlightened; that it does not see the good it wants (that it desires). From this he concludes the necessity of a legislator who makes it see objects as they are, or even as they ought to appear to it. He goes further; he declares it incapable of understanding a system of legislation, and of letting itself be governed by reasoning; he says that it must be deceived to make it accept good laws. It is therefore evident that the will of which he speaks is nothing other than a vague desire, which relates not to any particular law, but to the effect he supposes it must produce. This desire, to which Rousseau wrongly gives the name of will, has a perfect analogy with the desire of a man who is suffering; what this man desires is not precisely to take this or that remedy, it is to put an end to his pains.

Thus, in supposing that a law were adopted unanimously by a people, this circumstance would not prove that it must necessarily produce good effects, since the multitude does not surely see what is good for it: the unanimous acceptance proves no more in favor of a law than the courage with which a sick person takes a remedy proves in favor of his doctor's prescription.

By substituting the word desire for the word will, one sees at once how ill-founded are Rousseau's opinions on laws, and on the conditions that alone can make them good. Is it accurate to say that laws are the expression of the general desire? If a people does not see which laws are good for it, if one is obliged to deceive it to make it adopt such laws, can one say that it desires them? Admitting that it desires them, is that enough for them to produce a good effect? An individual often gives himself over to actions that are fatal to him: why would a collection of individuals conduct itself more wisely? If they have more enlightenment, which is not always true, are not their interests also more complicated?

“A thousand nations have shone on earth that could never have tolerated good laws, and even those that could have, had only a very short time in their entire duration for that. Most peoples, like men, are docile only in their youth; they become incorrigible as they grow old; once customs are established and prejudices rooted, it is a dangerous and vain undertaking to wish to reform them; the people cannot even bear to have its ills touched in order to destroy them, like those stupid and cowardly patients who tremble at the sight of the doctor... Youth is not childhood. There is for nations, as for men, a time of youth, or, if you will, of maturity, which must be awaited before subjecting them to laws; but the maturity of a people is not always easy to know, and if one acts prematurely, the work is ruined [36]. One people is disciplinable at birth, another is not so at the end of ten centuries [37].”

How can one admit such facts, after having laid down as a principle that the general will is always right, and always tends to the public utility? If a thousand peoples who have shone on earth would have been incapable of tolerating good laws, is it not evident that the general will is not always right? And if the general will is not infallible, what is the means by which one will judge the goodness of laws? Who will know how to distinguish the people whose general will is always right from the one whose general will is always mistaken? By what rare privilege will it be given to the one to be infallible, while the other could never find the truth!

If Rousseau is mistaken in taking a vague desire for well-being for a positive will bearing on determined means, he is no less mistaken when he gives the will of the majority the name of general will. For a will to be general, according to him, it is not necessary for it to be unanimous; it is enough that all the votes are counted; any formal exclusion, he says, breaks the generality [38]. But, if generality consists in all votes being counted, why not then say the will of the majority or of the greater number, instead of saying the general will? Because here, number proves only force, and if he had said that the will of the greater number is always right, it would have been to declare, in other words, that the strongest is always right.

Rousseau seems to have foreseen this objection: thus, after having recognized that unanimity is not necessary to constitute generality, he soon goes on to claim that majority and unanimity are two synonymous terms; and that, when an assembly divides into two parts, and each of them votes in a contrary direction, they are nevertheless of the same opinion. The no answered by the minority has the same meaning, in the intention of the voters, as the yes of the majority; so that all votes are always unanimous, whatever apparent divergence there may be in the ballots.

Here is how this prodigy is performed. By the social contract, always formed unanimously, each one engages to submit to the decision of the greater number, and to will what the majority wills. When a vote is taken on a law, it is therefore agreed in advance that the minority will will what will be willed by the majority: and as soon as the will of the latter is known, the will of the former is known, which is the same, since one always wills what one has once promised to will.

“The citizen,” says Rousseau, “consents to all the laws, even to those passed in spite of him, and even to those that punish him when he dares to violate one of them. The constant will of all the members of the State is the general will; it is by it that they are citizens and free. When a law is proposed in the people's assembly, what is asked of them is not precisely whether they approve the proposal or reject it, but whether it is in conformity with the general will, which is their own; each one, in giving his vote, states his opinion on this, and from the tally of votes is drawn the declaration of the general will. When, therefore, the opinion contrary to my own prevails, it proves nothing more than that I was mistaken, and that what I estimated to be the general will was not. If my private opinion had prevailed, I would have done something other than what I had willed; it is then that I would not have been free [39].”

I confess that I do not understand what this means. When a law is proposed in the people's assembly, one does not ask the citizens, says Rousseau, if they approve or reject it. What, then, is one asking them? One asks them if it is in conformity with the general will. But what will be the elements of which this will is composed? By what signs will the voters be able to know it? How will it be possible for them to answer the question put to them, as long as no one has made his individual opinion known? Must each one declare that he is of the majority's opinion? But if each one makes a similar declaration, if no one says what he thinks about the proposed measure, what will form the majority, or what is called the general will? If my opinion had prevailed, says Rousseau, I would have done something other than what I had willed; it is then that I would not have been free. But a private opinion can prevail only insofar as it is one of the elements of which the majority is formed; and if, in such a case, it is not the expression of the general will, where is this will to be found and what are the signs by which it can be recognized? How is it that I am free when the opinion I express is in opposition to the opinion of the majority, and that I cease to be free as soon as I find myself in agreement with the greater number and my opinion triumphs?

I have engaged, by the social contract, continues Rousseau, to will always what the majority would will; from which it follows that I will all the laws that the majority adopts, and that the laws I reject are but the expression of my will. But is it possible to engage to will? And if such an engagement is possible, does it depend on oneself to keep it? The will being composed of desire and power, can one reasonably promise one or more persons that one will have, in all circumstances, the desire and the power to do or to suffer all that they will? Does it depend on oneself to desire things that are displeasing, things one judges to be fatal? Rousseau does not think so, and it is even on this impossibility that he bases his argument that sovereignty is inalienable.

“If it is not impossible,” he says, “for a private will to agree on some point with the general will, it is at least impossible for this agreement to be lasting and constant: for the private will tends by its nature toward preferences, and the general will toward equality. It is even more impossible to have a guarantee of this agreement, even if it were always to exist; it would not be an effect of art, but of chance. The sovereign may well say: I currently will what such a man wills, or at least what he says he wills; but it cannot say: what this man will will tomorrow, I shall still will; since it is absurd that the will should give itself chains for the future, and since it does not depend on any will to consent to anything contrary to the good of the being who wills [40].”

If it is absurd for a people to engage to will what an individual will will tomorrow; if the will cannot give itself chains for the future; if it does not depend on any will to consent to anything contrary to the good of the being who wills, how could an individual engage to will what the majority of the people will will tomorrow? How could an engagement that it is not in the power of a collection of individuals to make or to fulfill, be made and fulfilled by a single one? If the majority of a nation or an assembly can say to the minority: you will today what we will, for you once promised never to have other wills than ours; when you reject such a law as bad, you are mistaken: you find it good, since it pleases us; in obliging you to execute it, we are forcing you to be free, and to obey your own will; we have promised to guarantee you from all personal dependence, and you will depend only on the general will which is your own; if, I say, the majority of an assembly or a nation can thus speak to the minority, I do not see why a prince could not hold similar language to a nation that had promised to always have a will in conformity with his own. If the will of a people is inalienable, it is absurd to claim that that of a private individual can be alienated: he can alienate his goods, his services; but he can no more alienate his will than his desires or his affections.

Admitting all that I have already refuted in this chapter, one would still be ill-founded to claim that laws are the expression of the general will, and that their conformity with this will is sufficient to make them good. I suppose, indeed, that at the instant a law manifests itself, it is the expression of the will, even the unanimous will, of the people or the assembly that adopted it; what guarantees that the next day this will has not changed? New enlightenment acquired, experiences that had not been had, interests that had not been born or that had not been perceived, the movements produced in the population by deaths and births, even the entire replacement of generations by new generations, can they allow one to affirm that the will that existed several years or even several centuries ago, still exists, and that the people of today will exactly what the people who have ceased to be willed?

A people that has the power to change its laws, and that lets them subsist, says Rousseau, declares, by that very fact, that they are in conformity with its will; the more ancient they are, the better this conformity is attested. It remains to be known if a people, whatever its political organization, can change its legislation as easily as Rousseau thinks; it remains to be known if it is even possible for the majority of a people, or only of a large assembly, to have a perfect knowledge of all the laws that exist in the State. If we consult experience, we will find that nothing is rarer than to encounter, I do not say a people, I do not even say an assembly or a body, but an individual who knows all the laws of his country; and if we seek one who not only knows all the laws, but who is in a position to appreciate the effects of each of their provisions, and to approve or reject them with a perfect knowledge of the cause, it is very doubtful that we could encounter such a rare phenomenon.

In all countries, there exist men who devote themselves to the study of the provisions of the laws; but there are few who embrace them in their entirety, and there are even fewer who judge them or consider them in the relations they have with their private will. The multitude submits to them, without even taking the trouble to know them; the magistrates execute them, because it is their trade, and they could not do better. If it happens that some friend of the public good, or some systematic mind perceives or imagines he perceives some vice in the legislation, he exposes his ideas. He thereby draws the attention of a small number of his fellow citizens; one then discusses, and sometimes, after long-sustained efforts, one succeeds in making a slight correction. The peoples who have had the most influence in the formation of their laws were no more instructed in this regard than modern peoples. The Romans did not know their laws any better than the English or the French know theirs; perhaps they even knew them less, since they were even more enslaved to their jurisconsults, and since among them the printing press had not multiplied books.

The system that considers the laws of a people as the expression of the general and current will of the citizens can be founded only by admitting as true an evidently impossible fact. There must exist between the will of a nation and the laws that govern it, the same relation as between the mainspring and the hand of a watch. If the resemblance does not exist; if the wills do not have the simplicity, unanimity, and activity of the mainspring; if the laws in their entirety do not have the corresponding and regular movement of the hand, the ones are not always the result of the others. The antiquity of laws, even in the freest countries, does not prove their goodness: a free people can be long subject to vicious laws; an absolute government sometimes overthrows bad laws. The penal laws of England are perhaps the worst in Europe: the English are not, however, the most enslaved people.

We have seen that, according to Rousseau himself, a blind multitude does not know what it wants, because it rarely knows what is good for it; and that if private individuals see the good they reject, the public wills (that is, desires) the good it does not see. We have then seen that, by the expression of the general will, he means only the expression of the majority. This results from the passages previously reported, and especially from what he says when he speaks of votes: there is, he says, only one law that requires unanimous consent; it is the social pact... Outside this primitive contract, the voice of the greater number obliges all the others; it is a consequence of the contract itself [41]. Thus, the sovereign is the majority that decides in each circumstance; and this majority, far from being infallible in its decisions, may not see what is good for it, although its intentions are always right.What, however, is the power that Rousseau recognizes it to have, whether with regard to individuals or with regard to their property? An absolute or unlimited power with regard to both. The power of the majority over persons is equal to that which every individual has over his own members; for the alienation that each has made of himself is without reserve. Its power over property is no less extensive, since the State, with regard to its members, is master of all their goods by the social pact, which, in the State, serves as the basis for all rights [42].

The citizens have no guarantee against the abuse of such an extensive power, and they have no need of one.

“The sovereign,” says Rousseau, “being formed only of the private individuals who compose it, has not and cannot have any interest contrary to theirs; consequently, the sovereign power has no need of a guarantor toward its subjects, because it is impossible for the body to will to harm all its members, and we shall see hereafter that it cannot harm any one of them in particular. The sovereign, by the sole fact that it is, is always what it ought to be [43].

“One sees,” Rousseau says elsewhere, “that one no longer needs to ask to whom it belongs to make laws, since they are acts of the general will (or decisions of a majority); nor if the prince is above the laws, since he is a member of the State; nor if the law can be unjust, since no one is unjust to himself; nor how one is free and subject to the laws, since they are but registers of our wills [44].”

We have seen previously how the laws of a country are the registers of the citizens’ wills. It remains to be known whether it is impossible for the deciding majority to will to harm all the members of the State; whether this absence of a will to harm is sufficient for it not to cause harm in fact; whether it is true that it does not have the power to harm any private individual; whether it is impossible for the law to be unjust; and finally, whether the sovereign (that is, the deciding majority), by the sole fact that it is, is always what it ought to be.

But do such maxims deserve to be seriously questioned? If a people does not always see what is good for it, how could the majority that adopts a law be infallible? This majority cannot have the will to harm all the members of the State. So be it: does it follow that it will not harm them? A private individual cannot have the will to ruin himself; does that prove that no one mismanages his affairs? The majority cannot harm any private individual; and what is to prevent it from doing so, since its powers have no limits? It can dispose, it is said, only in a general manner; it cannot dispose over a particular individual, nor over a specific thing. But is it impossible to reach specific individuals by means of general designations? Will it not suffice to designate them by the qualities that distinguish them, by the extent of their wealth, by their age, by their sex, by their birth, by their religion, by their profession, by their opinions, by their status as bachelors or married people?

In saying that laws must dispose in a general manner, would one mean that, in all cases, they must affect all members of the State indiscriminately, without exception? It will follow from this maxim that there can be no laws concerning minors, nor women, nor military service, nor the capacity required to exercise certain professions, nor a particular branch of industry or commerce, nor, finally, anything that is not common to all individuals, all sexes, all positions, all properties*. The law, it is said, cannot be unjust, since no one is unjust to himself; if this does not mean that the law cannot be baneful to society, for the reason that no one has the power to harm himself, it has no meaning; and if that is what Rousseau means to say, it is an obvious error; the number of people who harm themselves by their conduct, or who are unjust to themselves, is very great in all countries. To say, finally, that the sovereign, whatever meaning one gives to this word*, by the sole fact that it is, is always what it ought to be,* is to recognize infallibility where it certainly cannot be found.

Rousseau’s opinions on the social pact, on the sovereign that results from it, on the essential conditions for the existence of a law, on the infallibility of the general will, on the perfections inseparable from majorities, might lead one to believe that he had a very high idea of the wisdom of peoples; but no one was less enthusiastic than he about the good qualities of the human race; he saw in nations little more than material upon which great men could perform experiments; he did not think that they marched by their own forces toward perfection; he believed them destined to receive, from the hands of men of genius, thought, force, movement, and life; thus, in his book, he does not adopt the modest tone of a scholar who describes what is happening before his eyes; he speaks like a creative genius who animates matter: “By the social pact,” he says, “we have given existence and life to the body politic: it is now a matter of giving it movement and will through legislation [45].” What would one think of an astronomer who said gravely: We have imparted movement to the earth; it is now a matter of making the sun turn?

When Rousseau speaks of a people that wants to give itself laws, he sees in it only a blind multitude that does not know what it wants, because it does not know what is good for it; when he speaks of political organization, he admires the art with which the first legislators of Rome knew how to remove all manner of influence from the majority of the population, without its perceiving it; when he speaks of a legislator, he does not see in him a man who seeks what the general will is, and who gives it the means to manifest itself; he sees in him a creative genius who changes, so to speak, human nature, who alters man’s constitution to strengthen it, who takes away man’s own forces to give him others that are foreign to him, who makes it so that each citizen is nothing and can do nothing except through the others; he admires in the institutions of Mohammed, decried by proud philosophy or blind party spirit, in those institutions that have lasted ten centuries, that great and powerful genius who presides over lasting establishments [46]; finally, comparing nations to purely material objects, to fruits that a cultivator watches over and must pick at a given moment, he says that there is for nations a time of maturity that must be awaited before subjecting them to laws; that the maturity of a people is not always easy to know, and that, if one acts prematurely, the work is ruined [47].

And let no one think that all these contradictions, all these incoherencies, are without influence, and that some destroy the effect of others. When men have filled their minds with a multitude of false and contradictory ideas, they use them to justify their passions, without troubling themselves as to whether they agree or contradict; each one reigns in its turn, according to the interest of him who has adopted them. Let an ambitious man, imbued with Rousseau’s principles, succeed in making himself heard by the multitude, and it will not be difficult for him to persuade it that all it wants is just, and that nothing is just but what it wants. Let him, in an assembly, place himself at the head of a passionate or fanatical majority, and he will prove to it just as easily that a majority cannot be wrong; that, by the sole fact that it is, it is all that it ought to be, and that, consequently, it is not necessary to hear the minority. Finally, if he succeeds in seizing supreme power, he will prove no less clearly that he is the organ of the general will, and that from universal silence one must presume the consent of the people. If he wants to subject the population to a bizarre legislation, if he wants to fashion it according to his caprices, to make Chinese automatons of it, or to divide it into castes like the Hindus, he will know very well that he must in some way change human nature, alter man’s constitution to strengthen it, and make it so that each citizen is nothing, and can do nothing, except through the others. He will likewise know that, if reasoning is not enough, imposture can supplement it, and that he can honor the gods by making them lie; the example of Mohammed will serve as his excuse, and will impose silence on proud philosophy and blind party spirit. Finally, he will know that he can dispose as arbitrarily of property as of persons, given that the State, with regard to its members, is master of all their goods, and that the social pact gives the body politic, of which he is the organ, an absolute power over all its members. And if one were to object that, by one of his acts, he violates this pact, he would be no less right, for he would answer that in that case, he falls back into the state of nature, and that, consequently, he has a right to everything he can attain.

It is not only acts of violence, arbitrary systems, sacred frauds, in short all acts of tyranny, that can be justified by the principles of the social contract; it is also all actions that, without openly breaking the laws, offend morals. Rousseau admits, in effect, that one owes nothing to whom one has promised nothing; that among men, the only legitimate authority is that which is founded on conventions; that all rights are fixed by law in the civil state. One sees clearly, in this system, how rights rest on laws, laws on the social contract, and the social contract on nothing; but where will we find the primary basis of private morality? Here, conventions count for nothing, since it is principally in cases where there are no conventions that moral rules and sentiments serve as our guide. Will it be enough, for a people to be well, that the citizens do not rob or slaughter one another? One will not commit perjury in court, but one will be able to lie in all security of conscience; one will not push a man into the river, but if he falls in, one will leave him there, even if one could save him by extending a hand; one will not mistreat one’s benefactor, but if he is struck by misfortune, one will bring him no aid; one will not desert the army on a day of battle, but if one sees one’s brother assailed by malefactors, one will wisely hide; one will not ravish one’s friend’s wife, but if one can seduce his daughter, one will make no scruple of it; one will not go and cause disorder in one’s neighbor’s house, but one will give oneself over at home to intemperance or other shameful vices; it will suffice, in a word, for all to be well in the social order, that everyone have a sufficient fear of the police, the gendarmes, and the executioners. Perhaps the admirers of the social pact believe they can escape these consequences by saying that all duties will be regulated by the laws; but one will then fall into the most insufferable of all tyrannies, into that which pursues citizens even into the details of private life and domestic morals [48].

In summarizing the observations I have made on Rousseau’s system, I will endeavor to reduce them to the simplest expression. Is it true, in fact, that the acts or the power to which the name of laws is given are the expression of the general will? No, that is not true in any country; we know of no people among whom the laws have ever been the expression of such a will. Is it possible for the laws to be the expression of the general will? This is an entirely different question; for there are things that do not exist and which one could nevertheless establish. To resolve this question, it would be necessary to examine each of the elements of which this power we call law is composed, and to see if it is in the power of an individual or a nation to create or destroy each of these elements: now, I will demonstrate in the following book that most of these elements are found in the nature of man, and that we can change the nature of nothing. Would it be good for all laws to be the expression of the general will? This is yet another different question: there are people who can desire and who even sometimes desire impossible things; but to examine, when one is occupied with a science, whether it would be good for the impossible to be realized, is a true puerility. Finally, when public authority resides either in the body of citizens, or in assemblies of representatives, or in the council of a prince, can deliberations be taken otherwise than by a majority? It does not appear that there is any other means than that; it is therefore a necessity for the minority to submit; it is a force to which one obeys. Is this force always enlightened, just, well-intentioned? Does it always have for its object and for its result the general interest? If it were so, bad laws would never have existed.

In subjecting Rousseau’s systems to examination, I have demonstrated that with the help of these systems, one could succeed in establishing the most violent arbitrariness, and in justifying the most immoral actions. This writer, however, was an ardent friend of liberty, and when, in his writings, he attacked the bad morals of his contemporaries, it was not out of hypocrisy. How did it happen, then, that one can draw from his principles consequences opposed to his sentiments? Because in writing on a science he did not know, he reasoned on imaginary facts, instead of observing those he had before his eyes. There is no science in which a false principle does not lead to fatal consequences. Starting from a false supposition, a physician, if he is not inconsistent, will lead his patient to the grave. Likewise, the moralist writer who rests his science on a fiction or a lie will drag his credulous followers into vice or crime, unless they cease to reason well.

There is a very grave error against which it is essential to be on guard; it is to imagine that with talent, one can dispense with the observation of facts. One can, doubtless, with a strong imagination and an eloquent style, dazzle for a time the common run of readers; but illusions dissipate as minds become enlightened, and when they have completely disappeared, disdain takes the place of admiration. There is true eloquence only in the exposition of what is true; the most polished and ear-flattering style inspires only disgust as soon as one perceives that it has no meaning, or that it expresses only false thoughts.

Before expounding the influence that false systems exert on laws and on morals, I have observed that there were three principal ways of making a false system; that one could describe in a false or inexact manner the principal phenomenon on which one wished to fix the public’s attention; that one could attribute this phenomenon to causes other than those that had produced it; finally, that one could attribute to it effects that it was not susceptible of producing, or conceal consequences that must naturally result from it. If one judges Rousseau’s systems, whether on primitive conventions or on the nature of laws, one will find that he has successively made use of these three ways of reasoning badly: he has described objects that have never had any real existence; he has attributed the objects he has described to causes whose existence has never been either ascertained or agreed upon; finally, he has attributed to the same objects happy effects that they could not produce, and has not observed the bad consequences that could be drawn from them.