) will have it that sovereignty is vested inalienably in the
people: of which doctrine more to follow.
9. _Men are by nature equal_, say Rousseau and Hobbes and many more
respectable authors. Yes, in their specific nature, that is, they are
all equally men. Similarly you have it that all triangles are equal,
if that is a proposition of any value. But men as individuals are not
all equal. One is stronger in body, another more able in mind: one
predisposed to virtue, another to vice: one born in affluence and
honour, another in squalor. Not men in the abstract, but living men,
start at different points of vantage, and the distance between them
widens as they run the race of life. We may lay it down as an axiom,
in diametric opposition to Rousseau, that inequalities are natural,
equalities artificial.
10. _Man is born free_: so opens the first chapter of the _Contrat
Social_. If free of all duties, then void of all rights (c. v., s. i.,
nn. 5, 7, pp. 246, 247): let him then be promptly knocked on the head
as a sacrifice to Malthas; and with the misformed children born in
Plato's _Republic_, "they will bury him in a secret and unseen spot,
as is befitting.
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