SCIENCE AND DEMOCRACY 383 



time seemed to agree that Lamarck was an inferior thinker 

 a " quantite negligeable " !). No one has been more denounced 

 and maligned than poor Jean Jacques. (Lamarck was a poor 

 struggler, and so at the present time is the superb Henri 

 Favre I) 



Yet the " contrat social" is capable of receiving a new 

 setting and considerable vindication in the light of the 

 " contrat social biologique " ; i.e., of symbiogenesis ; i.e., in 

 the light of a symbiotic efficiency both sweeter and ampler than 

 that advocated by Carlyle or taught by the schools. 



Nor was Rousseau, with all his shortcomings, blind to the 

 indispensable pre-requisite of a better physiological basis of 

 human life, if a new era of hope was ever to dawn on the 

 human race. Whilst his various critics, though equipped with 

 infinitely greater facilities for such a task, refrained (owing to 

 lack of insight and of courage) from the essential investigation 

 of the physiological basis of life, and failing to discern the 

 physiological path of progressive evolution, indulged instead 

 in all manner of pessimistic lucubrations, Rousseau whom 

 they affected to treat with contempt had in reality outshone 

 them all by boldly stepping forward and tackling the greatest 

 problems of life in a manner given only to the true pioneers of 

 the human race. In emphatically condemning every sort of 

 parasitic nurture, Jean Jacques not only gave utterance to 

 the highest forms of democratic but also of evolutionary 

 principles. When he tells us in the opening chapter of the 

 Emile ou De L' Education that: 



Tout est bien, eortant des mains de 1'Auteur des choses; tout 

 degenere entre les mains de I'homme. II force une terre a nourrir les 

 productions d'une autre, un arbre a porter les fruits d'un autre; il 

 mele et confond les climats, les elements, les saisons ; il mutile eon 

 chien, eon cheval, son esclave; il bouleverse tout, il defigure tout; il 

 aime la difformite, les monstres ; il ne veut rien tel que 1'a fait la 

 nature, pas meme I'homme ; il le faut dresser pour lui, comme un 

 cheval de manege; il le faut contourner a sa mode, comme un arbre de 

 son jardin, 



he is protesting against biological exploitation quite as much 



