he cities, and burn the ships.
He was not a mere dreamer, and his Arcadia was no more than a Utopian
ideal, by the light of which he conceived that the society of his
own day might be corrected and transformed. He attached his hopes to
equality, democracy, and a radical change in education.

Equality: this revolutionary idea was of course quite compatible with
the theory of Progress, and was soon to be closely associated with
it. But it is easy to understand that the two ideas should first have
appeared in antagonism to each other. The advance of knowledge and
the increase of man's power over nature had virtually profited only a
minority. When Fontenelle or Voltaire vaunted the illumination of their
age and glorified the modern revolution in scientific thought, they took
account only of a small class of privileged people. Higher education,
Voltaire observed, is not for cobblers or kitchenmaids; "on n'a jamais
pretendu eclairer les cordonniers et les servantes." The theory of
Progress had so far left the masses out of account. Rousseau contrasted
the splendour of the French court, the luxury of the opulent, the
enlightenment of those who had the opportunity of education, with the
hard lot of the ignorant mass of peasants, whose toil paid for the
luxury of many of the idle enlightened people who amused themselves at
Paris. The horror of this contrast, which left Voltaire cold, was
the poignant motive which inspired Rousseau, a man of the people,
in constructing his new doctrine. The existing inequality seemed an
injustice which rendered the self-complacency of the age revolting. If
this is the result of progressive civilisation, what is progress worth?
The next step is to declare that civilisation is the causa malorum and
that what is named progress is really regress. But Rousseau found a
way of circumventing pessimism. He asked himself, cannot equality be
realised in an organised state, founded on natural right? The Social
Contract was his answer, and there we can see the living idea of
equality detaching itself from the dead theory of degradation.
[Footnote: The consistency of the Social Contract with the Discourse on
Inequality has been much debated. They deal with two distinct problems,
and the Social Contract does not mark any change in the author's views.
Though it was not published till 1762 he had been working at it since
1753.]

Arcadianism, which was thus only a side-issue for Rousseau, was the
extreme express