" (_Leviathan_, c. xvii.) This idea of all the
rights and personalities of the individuals who contract to live
socially being fused and welded together into the one resultant
personality and power of the State, has evidently been borrowed by
Rousseau from Hobbes. We shall deal with the idea presently. Meanwhile
several points claim our notice.
7. The hideous piece of cynicism whereby Rousseau (_Contrat Social_,
iv. 2), after promising you that, if you join his commonwealth, you
shall obey none but yourself, then goes on to tell you that you obey
yourself in obeying the will of the majority, even when it puts you in
irons or leads you to death--because as a citizen you have once for
all renounced your own will, and can only wish what the majority
wishes,--has its root in the position of Hobbes, that "every subject
is author of every act the sovereign doth." (_Leviathan_, c. xxi.)
8. A real and important difference between the _Leviathan_ and the
_Social Contract_, is that Hobbes (c. xix.) allows various
distributions of sovereign power, but prefers monarchy: Rousseau (l.
ii., c. i.
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