And what is the part assigned to human nature in all this? It is but the base material of which the machine is composed.
In sober reality, is this anything else than pride elevated to madness? Men are the materials of a machine, which the prince, the ruling power, sets in motion. The lawgiver proposes the model. The philosopher governs the lawgiver, placing himself thus at an immeasurable distance above the vulgar herd, above the ruler, above the lawgiver himself. He soars far above the human race, actuates it, transforms it, moulds it, or rather he teaches the Fathers of nations how they are to do all this.
But the founder of a nation must propose to himself a design. He has his human material to set in motion, and he must direct its movements to a definite result. As the people are deprived of the initiative, and all depends upon the legislator, he must decide whether the nation is to be commercial or agricultural, or a barbarous race of hunters and fishers; but it is desirable at the same time that the legislator should not himself be mistaken, and so do too much violence to the nature of things.
Men in ‹agreeing› to enter into an association, or rather in associating under the fiat of a lawgiver, have a precise and definite design. “Thus,” says Rousseau, “the Hebrews, and, more recently, the Arabs, had for their principal object religion; the [p059] Athenians, letters; Carthage and Tyre, commerce; Rhodes, navigation; Sparta, war; and Rome, virtue.”
What object is to determine us Frenchmen to leave the state of isolation and of nature, in order to form a society? Or rather—as we are only so much inert matter—the materials of a machine,—towards what object shall our great founder direct us?
Following the ideas of Rousseau, there could be but little room for learning, commerce, or navigation. War is a nobler object, and virtue still more so. But there is another, the noblest of all: “The end of every system of legislation is ‹liberty and equality›.”
But we must first of all discover what Rousseau understands by liberty. To enjoy liberty, according to him, is not to be free, but to ‹exercise the suffrage›, when we are “borne along without violence, and persuaded without being convinced;” for then “we obey with freedom, and bear willingly the yoke of the public felicity.”