Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778)

The Social Contract: or Principles of Political Right

Amsterdam

Marc Michel Rey

1762

"Along with these three kinds of law goes a fourth, most important of all, which is not graven on tablets of marble or brass, but on the hearts of the citizens."

Along with these three kinds of law goes a fourth, most important of all, which is not graven on tablets of marble or brass, but on the hearts of the citizens. This forms the real constitution of the State, takes on every day new powers, when other laws decay or die out, restores them or takes their place, keeps a people in the ways in which it was meant to go, and insensibly replaces authority by the force of habit. I am speaking of morality, of custom, above all of public opinion; a power unknown to political thinkers, on which none the less success in everything else depends. With this the great legislator concerns himself in secret, though he seems to confine himself to particular regulations; for these are only the arc of the arch, while manners and morals, slower to arise, form in the end its immovable keystone. (II.xii)

A ces trois sortes de loix, il s'en joint une quatrieme, la plus importante de toutes, qui ne se grave ni sur le marbre, ni sur l'airain, mais dans les coeurs des citoyens; qui fait la véritable constitution de l'Etat; qui prend tous les jours de nouvelles forces; qui, lorsque les autres loix vieillissent ou s'éteignent, les ranime ou les supplée, conserve un peuple dans l'esprit de son institution, & substitue insensiblement la force de l'habitude à celle de l'autorité. Je parle des moeurs, des coutumes, & sur-tout de l'opinion; partie inconnue à nos politiques, mais de laquelle dépend le succès de toutes les autres; partie dont le grand législateur s'occupe en secret, tandis qu'il paroît se borner à des règlemens particuliers qui ne sont que le cintre de la voûte, dont les moeurs plus lentes à naître, forment enfin l'inébranlable clef.

Writing::Tablets Writing::Engraving

Reading Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), p. 20

Published in 1762. At least 8 entries in ESTC (1764, 1791, 1782, 1795).

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract: or Principles of Political Right. Trans. G. D. H. Cole. No. 660 of Everyman's Library. New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1913. <Link to UVa Etext Center>

French text: Du contrat social, ou principes du droit politique, in Collection complète des œuvres, 17 vols (Genève, 1780–1788). <Rousseau Online>

See also A Treatise on the Social Compact; or The Principles of Politic Law (London: Printed for T. Becket, 1764). <Link to Google Books>

02/04/2014