Bluntschli points out (_Theory of the State_, IV. ix., p. 294 and _note_) that the same theory of contract on which Hobbes’ doctrine of an absolute government was based was made the justification of violent resistance to the government at the time of the French Revolution. The theory was differently applied by Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. According to the first, men leave the “state of nature” when they surrender their rights to a sovereign, and return to that state during revolution. But, for Rousseau, this sovereign authority is the people: a revolution would be only a change of ministry. (See _Cont. Soc._, III. Ch. xviii.) Again Locke holds revolution to be justifiable in all cases where the governments have not fulfilled the trust reposed by the people in them. (Cf. Kant’s _Perpetual Peace_, p. 188, _note_). [53] “If you unite many men,” writes Rousseau, (_Cont. Soc._, IV. I.) “and consider them as one body, they will have but one will; and that will must be to promote the common safety and general well-being of all.” This _volonté générale_, the common element of all particular wills, cannot be in conflict with any of them. (_Op. cit._, II. iii.) [54] In Eng. trans., see p. 348. In this civil union, self-sought, yet sought reluctantly, man is able to turn his most unlovable qualities to a profitable use. They bind this society together. They are the instrument by which he wins for himself self-culture. It is here with men, says Kant, as it is with the trees in a forest: “just because each one strives to deprive the other of air and sun, they compel each other to seek both above, and thus they grow beautiful and straight. Whereas those that, in freedom and isolation from one another, shoot out their branches at will, grow stunted and crooked and awry.” (Proposition 5, _op. cit._) Culture, art, and all that is best in the social order are the fruits of that self-loving unsociableness in man.