formally set forth, they are everywhere the same and everywhere tacitly admitted
and recognized, until, on the violation of the social compact, each regains his
original rights and resumes his natural liberty, while losing the conventional
liberty in favor of which he renounced it. These clauses, properly understood,
may be reduced to one – the total alienation of each associate, together with
all his rights, to the whole community; for, in the first place, as each gives
himself absolutely, the conditions are the same for all; and, this being so, no
one has any interest in making them burdensome to others. Moreover, the
alienation being without reserve, the union is as perfect as it can be, and no
associate has anything more to demand: for, if the individuals retained certain
rights, as there would be no common superior to decide between them and the
public, each, being on one point his own judge, would ask to be so on all; the
state of nature would thus continue, and the association would necessarily
become inoperative or tyrannical. Finally, each man, in giving himself to all,
gives himself to nobody; and as there is no associate over whom he does not
acquire the same right as he yields others over himself, he gains an equivalent
for everything he loses, and an increase of force for the preservation of what
he has. If then we discard from the social compact what is not of its essence,
we shall find that it reduces itself to the following terms: ?each of us puts
his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the
general will, and, in our corporate capacity, we receive each member as an
indivisible part of the whole.? At once, in place of the individual
personality of each contracting party, this act of association creates a moral
and collective body, composed of as many members as the assembly contains votes,
and receiving from this act its unity, its common identity, its life and its
will. This public person, so formed by the union of all other persons formerly
took the name of city, and now takes that of republic or body politic; it is
called by its members state when passive. Sovereign when active, and power when
compared with others like itself. Those who are associated in it take
collectively the name of people, and severally are called citizens, as sharing
in the sovereign power, and subjects, as being under the laws of the state. But
these terms are often confused and taken one for another: it is enough to know
how to distinguish them when they are being used with precision. This formula
shows us that the act of association comprises a mutual undertaking between the
public and the individuals, and that each individual, in making a contract, as
we may say, with himself, is bound in a double capacity; as a member of the
sovereign he is bound to the individuals, and as a member of the state to the
sovereign. But the maxim of civil right, that no one is bound by undertakings
made to himself, does not apply in this case; for there is a great difference
between incurring an obligation to yourself and incurring one to a whole of
which you form a part. Attention must further be called to the fact that public
deliberation, while competent to bind all the subjects to the sovereign, because
of the two different capacities in which each of them may be regarded, cannot,
for the opposite reason, bind the sovereign to itself; and that it is
consequently against the nature of the body politic for the sovereign to impose
on itself a law which it cannot infringe. Being able to regard itself in only
one capacity, it is in the position of an individual who makes a contract with
himself; and this makes it clear that there neither is nor can be any kind of
fundamental law binding on the body of the people not even the social contract
itself. This does not mean that the body politic cannot enter into undertakings
with others, provided the contract is not infringed by them; for in relation to
what is external to it, it becomes a simple being, an individual. But the body
politic or the sovereign, drawing its being wholly from the sanctity of the
contract, can never bind itself, even to an outsider, to do anything derogatory
to the original act, for instance, to alienate any part of itself, or to submit
to another sovereign. Violation of the act by which it exists would be
self-annihilation; and that which is itself nothing can create nothing. As soon
as this multitude is so united in one body, it is impossible to offend against
one of the members without attacking the body, and still more to offend against
the body without the members resenting it. Duty and interest therefore equally
oblige the two contracting parties to give each other help; and the same men
should seek to combine, in their double capacity, all the advantages dependent
upon that capacity. Again, the sovereign, being formed wholly of the individuals
who compose it, neither has nor can have any interest contrary to theirs; and
consequently the sovereign power need give no guarantee to its subjects, because
it is impossible for the body to wish to hurt all its members. We shall also see
later on that it cannot hurt any in particular. The sovereign, merely by virtue
of what it is, is always what it should be. This, however, is not the case with
the relation of the subjects to the sovereign, which, despite the common
interest, would have no security that they would fulfil their undertakings,
unless it found means to assure itself of their fidelity. In fact, each
individual, as a man, may have a particular will contrary or dissimilar to the
general will which he has as a citizen. His particular interest may speak to him
quite differently from the common interest: his absolute and naturally
independent existence may make him look upon what he owes to the common cause as
a gratuitous contribution, the loss of which will do less harm to others than
the payment of it is burdensome to himself; and, regarding the moral person
which constitutes the state as a persona ficta, because not a man, he may wish
to enjoy the rights of citizenship without being ready to fulfil the duties of a
subject. The continuance of such an injustice could not but prove the undoing of
the body politic. In order then that the social compact may not be an empty
formula, it tacitly includes the undertaking, which alone can give force to the
rest, that whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so
by the whole body. This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be
free; for this is the condition which, by giving each citizen to his country,
secures him against all personal dependence. In this lies the key to the working
of the political machine; this alone legitimizes civil undertakings, which,
without it, would be absurd, tyrannical, and liable to the most frightful
abuses. The passage from the state of nature to the civil state produces a very
remarkable change in man, by substituting justice for instinct in his conduct,
and giving his actions the morality they had formerly lacked. Then only, when
the voice of duty takes the place of physical impulses and right of appetite,
does man, who so far had considered only himself, find that he is forced to act
on different principles, and to consult his reason before listening to his
inclinations. Although, in this state, he deprives himself of some advantages
which he got from nature, he gains in return others so great, his faculties are
so stimulated and developed, his ideas so extended, his feelings so ennobled,
and his whole soul so uplifted, that, did not the abuses of this new condition
often degrade him below that which he left, he would be bound to bless
continually the happy moment which took him from it for ever, and, instead of a
stupid and unimaginative animal, made him an intelligent being and a man. Let us
draw up the whole account in terms easily commensurable. What man loses by the
social contract is his natural liberty and an unlimited right to everything he
tries to get and succeeds in getting; what he gains is civil liberty and the
proprietorship of all he possesses. If we are to avoid mistake in weighing one
against the other, we must clearly distinguish natural liberty, which is bounded
only by the strength of the individual, from civil liberty, which is limited by
the general will; and possession, which is merely the effect of force or the
right of the first occupier, from property, which can be founded only on a
positive title. We might, over and above all this, add, to what man acquires in
the civil state, moral liberty, which alone makes him truly master of himself;
for the mere impulse of appetite is slavery, while obedience to a law which we
prescribe to ourselves is liberty. But I have already said too much on this
head, and the philosophical meaning of the word liberty does not now concern us.
Each member of the community gives himself to it, at the moment of its
foundation, just as he is, with all the resources at his command, including the
goods he possesses. This act does not make possession, in changing hands, change
its nature, and become property in the hands of the sovereign; but, as the
forces of the city are incomparably greater than those of an individual, public
possession is also, in fact, stronger and more irrevocable, without being any
more legitimate, at any rate from the point of view of foreigners. For the
state, in relation to its members, is master of all their goods by the social
contract, which, within the state, is the basis of all rights; but, in relation
to other powers, it is so only by the right of the first occupier, which it
holds from its members. The right of the first occupier, though more real than
the right of the strongest, becomes a real right only when the right of property
has already been established. Every man has naturally a right to everything he
needs; but the positive act which makes him proprietor of one thing excludes him
from everything else. Having his share, he ought to keep to it, and can have no
further right against the community. This is why the right of the first
occupier, which in the state of nature is so weak, claims the respect of every
man in civil society. In this right we are respecting not so much what belongs
to another as what does not belong to ourselves. In general, to establish the
right of the first occupier over a plot of ground, the following conditions are
necessary: first, the land must not yet be inhabited; secondly, a man must
occupy only the amount he needs for his subsistence; and, in the third place,
possession must be taken, not by an empty ceremony, but by labor and
cultivation, the only sign of proprietorship that should be respected by others,
in default of a legal title. In granting the right of first occupancy to
necessity and labor, are we not really stretching it as far as it can go? Is it
possible to leave such a right unlimited? Is it to be enough to set foot on a
plot of common ground, in order to be able to call yourself at once the master
of it? Is it to be enough that a man has the strength to expel others for a
moment, in order to establish his right to prevent them from ever returning? How
can a man or a people seize an immense territory and keep it from the rest of
the world except by a punishable usurpation, since all others are being robbed,
by such an act, of the place of habitation and the means of subsistence which
nature gave them in common?. We can imagine how the lands of individuals, where
they were contiguous and came to be united, became the public territory, and how
the right of sovereignty, extending from the subjects over the lands they held,
became at once real and personal. The possessors were thus made more dependent,
and the forces at their command used to guarantee their fidelity. The peculiar
fact about this alienation is that, in taking over the goods of individuals, the
community, so far from despoiling them, only assures them legitimate possession,
and changes usurpation into a true right and enjoyment into proprietorship. Thus
the possessors, being regarded as depositaries of the public good, and having
their rights respected by all the members of the state and maintained against
foreign aggression by all its forces, have, by a cession which benefits both the
public and still more themselves, acquired, so to speak, all that they gave up.
This paradox may easily be explained by the distinction between the rights which
the sovereign and the proprietor have over the same estate, as we shall see
later on. It may also happen that men begin to unite one with another before
they possess anything, and that, subsequently occupying a tract of country which
is enough for all, they enjoy it in common, or share it out among themselves,
either equally or according to a scale fixed by the sovereign. However the
acquisition be made, the right which each individual has to his own estate is
always subordinate to the right which the community has over all: without this,
there would be neither stability in the social tie, nor real force in the
exercise of sovereignty. This shall end this essay by remarking on a fact on
which the whole social system should rest: i.e., That, instead of destroying
natural inequality, the fundamental compact substitutes, for such physical
inequality as nature may have set up between men, an equality that is moral and
legitimate, and that men, who may be unequal in strength or intelligence, become
every one equal by convention and legal right.