gy of the body politic to the body natural was as
present to him as it had been to all other writers on society, but he
failed to seize the only useful lessons which such an analogy might
have taught him--diversity of structure, difference of function,
development of strength by exercise, growth by nutrition--all of which
might have been serviceably translated into the dialect of political
science, and might have bestowed on his conception of political
society more of the features of reality. We see no room for the free
play of divergent forces, the active rivalry of hostile interests, the
regulated conflict of multifarious personal aims, which can never be
extinguished, except in moments of driving crisis, by the most sincere
attachment to the common causes of the land. Thus the modern question
which is of such vital interest for all the foremost human societies,
of the union of collective energy with the encouragement of individual
freedom, is, if not wholly untouched, at least wholly unillumined by
anything that Rousseau says. To tell us that a man on entering a
society exchanges his natural liberty for civil liberty which is
limited by the general will,[265] is to give us a phrase, where we
seek a solution. To say that if it is the opposition of private
interests which made the establishment of societies necessary, it is
the accord of those interests which makes them possible,[266] is to
utter a truth which feeds no practical curiosity. The opposition of
private interests remains, in spite of the yoke which their accord has
imposed upon it, but which only controls and does not suppress such an
opposition. What sort of control? What degree? What bounds?

So again let us consider the statement that the instant the government
usurps the sovereignty, then the social pact is broken, and all the
citizens, restored by right to their natural liberty, are forced but
not morally obliged to obey.[267] He began by telling his readers that
man, though born free, is now everywhere in chains; and therefore it
would appear that in all existing cases the social pact has been
broken, and the citizens living under the reign of force, are free to
resume their natural liberty, if they are only strong enough to do so.
This declaration of the general duty of rebellion no doubt had its
share in generating that fervid eagerness that all other peoples
should rise and throw off the yoke, which was one of the most
astonishing anxieties of the