11. Hobbes and Rousseau go upon this maxim, which has overrun the modern world, that no man can be bound to obedience to another without his own consent. The maxim would be an excellent one, were men framed like the categories of Aristotle--substance, quantity, quality, relation, and the rest--each peering out of his own pigeon-hole, an independent, self-sufficient entity. But men are dependent, naturally dependent whether they will or no, every human being on certain definite others,--the child on the parent, the citizen on the State whose protection he enjoys, and all alike on God. These natural dependences carry with them natural uncovenanted obediences,--to parents, filial duty--to country, loyalty--to God, piety: all which are embraced in the Latin term _pietas_. (See St. Thomas, 2a 2æ, q. 101, art. 1, in corp.) The fatal maxim before us is the annihilation of _pietas_. In lieu of loyal submission we get a contract, a transaction of reasoned commercial selfishness between equal and equal. This perverse substitution has called forth Leo XIII.'s remark on the men of our time, "Nothing comes so amiss to them as subjection and obedience," _Nihil tam moleste ferunt quam subesse et parere_. (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. It is the political aspect of Socialism. _Reading_.--Burke, _Warren Hastings_, Fourth Day, the passage beginning, "He have arbitrary power!" SECTION II.--_Of the theory that Civil Power is an aggregate formed by subscription of the powers of individuals_.