tural state, however, was found to be
a very uncomfortable state, and so men contrive to get out of it as soon
as possible. For this purpose they form a 'social compact.' They come
together, and agree to give up some of their natural rights to a settled
government, on condition that government protect them in the others.
That is to say, naturally they have the right to steal all they can lay
their hands on, to rob, plunder, murder, and commit adultery, if they
have the power, and, generally, to live like a pack of amiable tiger
cats; but that these pleasant and amusing natural rights they consent to
give up, on condition they are relieved from the trouble of guarding
others. Just such babblement as that you can read in very learned books,
and stuff like that has actually been taught in colleges, and nobody was
sent to the lunatic asylum! That is the theory of the 'Social Compact.'
That is the way, according to that theory, that nations are made.

It is enough to say of this old heathen dream, that there never was such
a state of savage brutalism known since man was man. All men are born
under some law, some government, some controlling authority. As long as
fathers and mothers are necessary, in the economy of nature, to a man's
getting into the world at all, it is very hard for him to escape law and
control when he comes. I was never asked whether I would be a citizen of
the United States, whether it was my high will to come into 'the Social
Compact' existing here. Neither were you. No man ever was. Just fancy
the United States solemnly asking all the infants born this year, 'if
they are willing to join the social compact and behave themselves in the
country as respectable babies should!

It is vastly better to take facts and try to comprehend and use them.
And, as a fact, man is not naturally a brute beast. He never had to make
a Social Compact. He has always found one made ready to his hand. Some
established order, some national life has always stood ready to receive
the new recruit to the ranks of humanity, put him in his place, and ask
him no questions. He is made for society. Society is made for him. He is
not isolated, but joined to his fellows by links stronger than iron, by
bands no steel can sever. The nation stands waiting for him. In some
shape, with some development of national life, but always essentially
the same, the nation takes him, plastic at his birth, into its great
hands, and moulds and fashions him