hat its sanction, whence the
extraordinary holiness with which its name has come to be invested
among the most highly civilised societies of men, we are never told,
nor do we ever see that our teacher had seen the possibility of such
questions being asked. If they had been propounded to him, he would,
it is most likely, have fallen back upon the convenient mystery of the
natural law. This was the current phrase of that time, and it was
meant to embody a hypothetical experience of perfect human relations
in an expression of the widest generality. If so, this would have to
be impressed upon the mind of Emilius in the same way as other
mysteries. As a matter of fact, Emilius was led through pity up to
humanity, or sociality in an imperfect signification, and there he was
left without a further guide to define the marks of truly social
conduct.

This imperfection was a necessity, inseparable from Rousseau's
tenacity in keeping society in the background of the picture of life
which he opened to his pupil. He said, indeed, "We must study society
by men, and men by society; those who would treat politics and
morality apart will never understand anything about either one or the
other."[309] This is profoundly true, but we hardly see in the
morality which is designed for Emilius the traces of political
elements. Yet without some gradually unfolded presentation of society
as a whole, it is scarcely possible to implant the idea of justice
with any hope of large fertility. You may begin at a very early time
to develop, even from the primitive quality of self-love, a notion of
equity and a respect for it, but the vast conception of social justice
can only find room in a character that has been made spacious by
habitual contemplation of the height and breadth and close
compactedness of the fabric of the relations that bind man to man, and
of the share, integral or infinitesimally fractional, that each has in
the happiness or woe of other souls. And this contemplation should
begin when we prepare the foundation of all the other maturer habits.
Youth can hardly recognise too soon the enormous unresting machine
which bears us ceaselessly along, because we can hardly learn too soon
that its force and direction depend on the play of human motives, of
which our own for good or evil form an inevitable part when the ripe
years come. To one reared with the narrow care devoted to Emilius, or
with the capricious negligence in which the majorit