2!>4 OX THE NATURAL INEQUALITY OF MEN VTJ 



widely read writings did a great deal to give a 

 colour of rationality to those principles of '89 l 

 which, even after the lapse of a century, are con- 

 sidered by a good many people to be the Magiia 

 Charta of the human race. " Liberty, Equality, 

 and Fraternity," is still the war-cry of those, and 

 they are many, who think, with Rousseau, that 

 human sufferings must needs be the consequence 

 of the artificial arrangements of society and can 

 all be alleviated or removed by political changes. 



The intellectual impulse which may thus be 

 fairly enough connected with the name of the 

 Genevese dreamer has by no means spent itself in 

 the century and a half which has elapsed since it 

 was given. On the contrary, after a period of 

 comparative obscurity (at least outside France), 

 Rousseauism has gradually come to the front 

 again,, and at present promises to exert once more 

 a very grave influence on practical life. The two 

 essays to which I have referred are, to all appear- 

 ance, very little known to the present generation 

 of those who have followed in Rousseau's track. 

 None the less is it true that his teachings, filtered 



1 Sir H. Maine observes that the " strictly juridical axiom " 

 of the lawyers of the Antonine era ("omnes homines natura 

 jpquales sunt "), after passing through the hands of Rousseau, 

 and being adopted liy the founders of the Constitution of the 

 United States, returned to France endowed with vastly 

 energy and dignity, and that "of all 'the principles <>! 

 it is the one which has heeii least strenuously assailed, which 

 has most thoroughly leavened modern opinion, and whioh prom- 

 ises to modify most deeply the constitution of societ: 

 the politics of States " (Ancient Laic, p. 96). 



