ted by civilisation; and at a later period he
found a basis for all his speculations in the doctrine of an original
Social Contract. The Social Contract or Compact is the most systematic
form which has ever been assumed by the error we are discussing. It
is a theory which, though nursed into importance by political
passions, derived all its sap from the speculations of lawyers. True
it certainly is that the famous Englishmen, for whom it had first had
attraction, valued it chiefly for its political serviceableness, but,
as I shall presently attempt to explain, they would never have arrived
at it, if politicians had not long conducted their controversies in
legal phraseology. Nor were the English authors of the theory blind to
that speculative amplitude which recommended it so strongly to the
Frenchmen who inherited it from them. Their writings show they
perceived that it could be made to account for all social, quite as
well as for all political phenomena. They had observed the fact,
already striking in their day, that of the positive rules obeyed by
men, the greater part were created by Contract, the lesser by
Imperative Law. But they were ignorant or careless of the historical
relation of these two constituents of jurisprudence. It was for the
purpose, therefore, of gratifying their speculative tastes by
attributing all jurisprudence to a uniform source, as much as with the
view of eluding the doctrines which claimed a divine parentage for
Imperative Law, that they devised the theory that all Law had its
origin in Contract. In another stage of thought, they would have been
satisfied to leave their theory in the condition of an ingenious
hypothesis or a convenient verbal formula. But that age was under the
dominion of legal superstitions. The State of Nature had been talked
about till it had ceased to be regarded as paradoxical, and hence it
seemed easy to give a fallacious reality and definiteness to the
contractual origin of Law by insisting on the Social Compact as a
historical fact.

Our own generation has got rid of these erroneous juridical theories,
partly by outgrowing the intellectual state to which they belong, and
partly by almost ceasing to theorise on such subjects altogether. The
favourite occupation of active minds at the present moment, and the
one which answers to the speculations of our forefathers on the origin
of the social state, is the analysis of society as it exists and moves
before our eyes; b