same right to defend his interest by the guarantee of his
vote. The welfare of all was safe in the hands of 'all, for
they had not the separate interests that are bred by the
egotism of wealth, nor the exclusive views that come from
a distorted education. All being equal in power and
similar in purpose, there can be no just cause why some
should move apart and break into minorities. There is
an implied contract that no part shall ever be preferred
to the whole, and minorities shall always obey. Clever
men are not wanted for the making of laws, because
clever men and their laws are at the root of all mischief.
Nature is a better guide than civilisation, because nature
comes from God, and His works are good; culture from
man, whose works are bad in proportion as he is remoter
from natural innocence, as his desires increase upon him,
as he seeks more refined pleasures, and stores up more
superfluity. It promotes inequality, selfishness, and the
ruin of public spirit.
By plausible and easy stages the social ideas latent in parts of Switzerland produced the theory that men come innocent from the hands of the Creator, that they are originally equal, that progress from equality to civilisation is the passage from virtue to vice and from freedom to tyranny, that the people are sovereign, and govern by powers given and taken away; that an individual or a class may be mistaken and may desert the common cause and the general interest, but the people, necessarily sincere, and true, and incorrupt, cannot go wrong; that there is a right of resistance to all governments that are fallible, because they are partial, but none against government of the people by the people, because it has no master and no judge, and decides in the last instance and alone; that insurrection is the law of all unpopular societies founded on a false principle and a broken contract, and submission that of the only legitimate societies, based on the popular will; that there is no privilege against the law of nature, and no right against the power of all. By this chain of reasoning, with little infusion of other ingredients, Rousseau applied the
