while the second will never love a government or laws that leave them in misery."[198] This was the kind of opinion for which Rousseau's diffuse and rhetorical exposition of social necessity had prepared France some twenty years before. After powerfully helping the process of general dissolution, it produced the first fruits specifically after its own kind some twenty years later in the system of Baboeuf.[199] The unflinching application of principles is seldom achieved by the men who first launch them. The labour of the preliminary task seems to exhaust one man's stock of mental force. Rousseau never thought of the subversion of society or its reorganisation on a communistic basis. Within a few months of his profession of profound lament that the first man who made a claim to property had not been instantly unmasked as the arch foe of the race, he speaks most respectfully of property as the pledge of the engagements of citizens and the foundation of the social pact, while the first condition of that pact is that every one should be maintained in peaceful enjoyment of what belongs to him.[200] We need not impute the apparent discrepancy to insincerity. Rousseau was always apt to think in a slipshod manner. He sensibly though illogically accepted wholesome practical maxims, as if they flowed from theoretical premisses that were in truth utterly incompatible with them. FOOTNOTES: [151] Delandine's _Couronnes Académiques, ou Recueil de prix proposés par les Sociétés Savantes_. (Paris, 2 vols., 1787.) [152] Musset-Pathay has collected the details connected with the award of the prize, ii. 365-367. [153] Second Letter to M. de Malesherbes, p. 358. Also _Conf._, viii. 135. [154] Diderot's account (_Vie de Sénèque_, sect. 66, _Oeuv._, iii. 98; also ii. 285) is not inconsistent with Rousseau's own, so that we may dismiss as apocryphal Marmontel's version of the story (_Mém._ VIII.), to the effect that Rousseau was about to answer the question with a commonplace affirmative, until Diderot persuaded him that a paradox would attract more attention. It has been said also that M. de Francueil, and various others, first urged the writer to take a negative line of argument. To suppose this possible is to prove one's incapacity for understanding what manner of man Rousseau was. [155] _Conf._, ix. 232, 233. [156] _Rousseau Juge de Jean Jacques, Dialogues_, i. 252. [157] _Dialogues_, i. 275, 276. [158] _Conf._, viii. 138. [159] "It made a kind of revolution in Paris," says Grimm. _Corr. Lit._, i. 108. [160] _Rép. au Roi de Pologne_, p. 111 and p. 113. [161] _Rép. à M. Bordes_, 138. [162] _Ib._ 137. [163] "The first source of the evil is inequality; from inequality come riches ... from riches are born luxury and idleness; from luxury come the fine arts, and from idleness the sciences." _Rép. au Roi de Pologne_, 120, 121.