estions show the direction and the advance of thinking on social
topics in the middle of the eighteenth century. Rousseau's Contrat-Social
and the novel Emile were published in 1761.

But almost three-quarters of a century before, in 1690, John Locke
published his two treatises on government. Rousseau was familiar with
them. Mr. John Morley, in his admirable study of Rousseau, [Rousseau. By
John Morley. London: Chapman & Hall. 1873--I have used it freely in the
glance at this period.]--fully discusses the latter's obligation to
Locke; and the exposition leaves Rousseau little credit for originality,
but considerable for illogical misconception. He was, in fact, the most
illogical of great men, and the most inconsistent even of geniuses. The
Contrat-Social is a reaction in many things from the discourses, and
Emile is almost an entire reaction, especially in the theory of
education, from both.

His central doctrine of popular sovereignty was taken from Locke. The
English philosopher said, in his second treatise, "To understand
political power aright and derive it from its original, we must consider
what state all men are naturally in; and that is a state of perfect
freedom to order their actions and dispose of their persons and
possessions as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature,
without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man--a state
also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal,
no one having more than another; there being nothing more evident than
that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all
the advantages of nature and the use of the same faculties, should also
be equal one amongst another, without subordination or subjection, unless
the Lord and Master of them all should by any manifest declaration of His
will set one above another, and confer on him by an evident and clear
appointment an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty." But a state
of liberty is not a state of license. We cannot exceed our own rights
without assailing the rights of others. There is no such subordination as
authorizes us to destroy one another. As every one is bound to preserve
himself, so he is bound to preserve the rest of mankind, and except to do
justice upon an offender we may not impair the life, liberty, health, or
goods of another. Here Locke deduces the power that one man may have over
another; community could not exist if transgressors were