(Encyclical on Christian Marriage.)
12. The common extravagance of the _Leviathan_ and the _Social
Contract_ is the suppression of the individual, with his rights and
his very personality, which is all blended in the State. (See
Rousseau's words above quoted, n. 5, and those of Hobbes, n. 6.) The
reservations in favour of the individual made by Hobbes, _Leviathan_,
c. xxi., and by Rousseau, _Contrat Social_, l. ii., c. iv., are either
trifles or self-contradictions. But it is not in man's power by any
contract thus to change his nature, so as to become from autocentric
heterocentric (c. ii., s. i., n. 2, p. 203; c. v., s. i., n. 1, p.
244), from a person a thing, from a man a chattel, void of rights and
consequently of duties, and bound to serve this Collective Monster,
this Aggregated Idol, with the absolute devotedness that is due to God
alone. The worship of the new Moloch goes well with the dark
misanthropism of Hobbes: but in Rousseau, the believer in the perfect
goodness of unrestrained humanity, it is about the most glaring of his
many inconsistencies. It is of course eagerly taken up by the
Socialists, as carrying all their conclusions.
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