“From the days of Adam to our time, the human race have been upon a wrong course—and, if only a little confidence is placed in me. I shall soon bring them back to the right way; “God desired mankind to pursue a different road altogether, but they have taken their own way, and hence evil has been introduced into the world. Let them turn round at my call, and take an opposite direction, and universal happiness will then prevail.” When a man sets out in this style it is much if he is believed by five or six adepts; but between that and being believed by one thousand millions of men the distance is great indeed. And then, remember that the number of social inventions is as vast as the domain of the imagination itself; that there is not a publicist or writer on social economy who, after shutting himself up for a few hours in his library, does not come forth with a ready-made plan of artificial organization in his hand; that the inventions of Fourier, Saint Simon, Owen, Cabet, Blanc, etc., have no resemblance whatever to each other; that every day brings to light a new scheme; and that people are entitled to have some little time given them for reflection before they are called upon to reject the social organization which God has vouchsafed them, and to make a definite and irrevocable choice among so many newly invented systems. For what would happen if, after having selected one of these plans, a better should present itself! Can the institutions [p056] of property, family, labour, exchange, be placed every day upon a new basis? Are we to be forced to change the organization of society every morning? “Thus, then,” says Rousseau, “the legislator being able to employ effectively neither force nor persuasion, he is under the necessity of having recourse to an authority of another kind, which carries us along without violence, and persuades without convincing us.” What is that authority? Imposture. Rousseau dares not give utterance to the word, but, according to his invariable practice in such a case, he places it behind the transparent veil of an eloquent tirade. “This is the reason,” says he, “which in all ages has forced the Fathers of nations to have recourse to the intervention of heaven, and to give the credit of their own wisdom to the gods, in order that the people, submitting to the laws of the state as to those ‹of nature›, and acknowledging the same power in the formation of man and of the commonwealth, should obey ‹freely› and bear willingly the yoke of the public felicity. This ‹sublime› reason, which is above the reach of vulgar souls, is that ‹whose decisions the legislator puts into the mouth of the immortals›, in order to ‹carry along› by divine authority those who cannot be moved by considerations of human prudence. But it is not for every man to make ‹the gods› speak,” etc.