To obtain something which approximates to a real will, then, involves a process of criticism and { 120} interpretation, which may be either natural or intellectual; that is to say, it may proceed by “natural selection,” through the method of trial and error, or it may be rapidly advanced at favourable moments by the insight of a great mind. But some forwardness in this criticism and interpretation, bringing with it some deposit, so to speak, of objects of volition in which the private will, so far as it is distinguished at all, finds harmony and expansion, must be coeval with social life, and, in short, with humanity.
It is such a process of interpretation that Rousseau ascribes to the legislator. He fathers on him the whole labour of history and social logic in moulding the customs and institutions of mankind. And in agreement with our general attitude to Rousseau’s historical imagination, we may take what he says of legislation and the legislator as an expression of his views on the function of customs and ordinances in the constitution of will. It is very remarkable, considering the other aspect of his views, that he should have conceived so distinctly, as the following passage shows that he did, the immense contrast between a real will and anything which could be presented as a whole in the momentary consciousness of human beings.
“Laws are, strictly speaking, only the conditions of civil association. The people which submits to the laws ought to be their author. Only the associates can have the right to regulate the conditions of the society. But how are they to regulate them? Can { 121} it be done by a common agreement, by a sudden inspiration? Has the body politic an organ for pronouncing its acts of will? Who will give it the necessary foresight to form such acts and to publish them before they are needed? Or how is it to pronounce them at the moment when they are required? How is a blind multitude, which often does not know what it wills, because it rarely knows what is good for it, to execute for itself so great and difficult an enterprise as a system of legislation? Of itself, the people always wills the good, but it does not always see it. The general will is always right, but the judgment which guides it is not always enlightened. It must be made to see objects such as they are, and, sometimes, such as they ought to appear to it; it must be shown the right road which it seeks, must be protected from the allurements of private will; places and times must be brought close to its eyes, and the attractions of present and visible advantages counterbalanced by the danger of remote and latent evils. Private persons see the good which they reject; the public wills the good which it does not see. All alike need guidance. The former must be obliged to conform their will to their reason; the latter must be taught to know what it wills. [2] Then, from the public enlightenment there results the union of understanding and of will in the social body; and hence the precise co-operation of the parts and the greatest power { 122} of the whole. Hence springs the necessity of a legislator.” [1]