" (_Contrat Social_, i. 6.) This
proposal is hopeless, it is a contradiction in terms. No man can
contract and remain as free as before, but he binds himself either
under a _wider_ obligation to do or abstain, where he was not bound
before, or under a _stronger_ obligation where he was bound already.
Nevertheless Rousseau finds a means of accomplishing the impossible
and the self-contradictory. "Each of us puts into a common stock his
person and all his power under the supreme direction of the general
will; and we receive in our turn the offering of the rest, each member
as an inseparable part of the whole. Instantly, instead of the private
person of each contracting party, this act of association produces a
moral and collective body, composed of as many members as the assembly
has voices, which body receives by this same act its unity, its common
Ego, its life and its will." (_ib_.) This awful signing away of all
your rights, so that your very personality is merged in that of the
community--a self-renunciation going far beyond that of profession in
any religious order--ought certainly, as Rousseau says, to be "the
most voluntary act in the world;" and he adds the characteristic
reason: "every man being born free and master of himself, none can,
under any pretence whatsoever, subject him without his own consent.
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