flowing from the nature of things, and in this sense all beings have
their laws, divinity has its laws, the material world has its laws,
the intelligences superior to men have their laws, the beasts have
their laws, man has his laws.... There is a primitive reason, and laws
are the relations to be found between that and the different beings,
and the relations of these different beings among one another."[222]
Rousseau at once put aside these divergent meanings, made the proper
distinction between a law of nature and the imperative law of a state,
and justly asserted that the one could teach us nothing worth knowing
about the other.[223] Hobbes's phraseology is much less definite than
this, and shows that he had not himself wholly shaken off the same
confusion as reigned in Montesquieu's account a century later. But
then Hobbes's account of the true meaning of sovereignty was so clear,
firm, and comprehensive, as easily to lead any fairly perspicuous
student who followed him, to apply it to the true meaning of law. And
on this head of law not so much fault is to be found with Rousseau, as
on the head of larger constitutional theory. He did not look long
enough at given laws, and hence failed to seize all their distinctive
qualities; above all he only half saw, if he saw at all, that a law is
a command and not a contract, and his eyes were closed to this,
because the true view was incompatible with his fundamental assumption
of contract as the base of the social union.[224] But he did at all
events grasp the quality of generality as belonging to laws proper,
and separated them justly from what he calls decrees, which we are now
taught to name occasional or particular commands.[225] This is worth
mentioning, because it shows that, in spite of his habits of
intellectual laxity, Rousseau was capable, where he had a clear-headed
master before him, of a very considerable degree of precision of
thought, however liable it was to fall into error or deficiency for
want of abundant comparison with bodies of external fact. Let us now
proceed to some of the central propositions of the Social Contract.

1. The origin of society dates from the moment when the obstacles
which impede the preservation of men in a state of nature are too
strong for such forces as each individual can employ in order to keep
himself in that state. At this point they can only save themselves by
aggregation. Problem: to find a form of association which defend