[Footnote 3419: De Tocqueville, "L'Ancien régime," book II. entire, and book III. ch. 3.] [Footnote 3420: Rousseau, "Contrat social." I.6.] [Footnote 3421: Ibidem I. 9. "The State in relation to its members is master of all their possessions according to the social compact. . . possessors are considered as depositaries of the public wealth."] [Footnote 3422: Rousseau, "Discours sur l'Economie politique," 308.] [Footnote 3423: Ibid. "Emile," book V. 175.] [Footnote 3424: Rousseau, "Discours sur l'Economie politique," 302] [Footnote 3425: Rousseau, on the "Government de Pologne," 277, 283, 287.] [Footnote 3426: Ibid. "Emile," book I.] [Footnote 3427: Morelly, "Code de la nature." "At the age of five all children should be removed their families and brought up in common, at the charge of the State, in a uniform manner." A similar project, perfectly Spartan, was found among the papers of St.-Just.] [Footnote 3428: Rousseau, "Contrat social," II. 3; IV.8.] [Footnote 3429: Cf. Mercier, "L'an 2240," I. ch. 17 and 18. From 1770 on, he traces the programme of a system of worship similar to that of the Théophilanthropists, the chapter being entitled: "Pas si éloigné qu'on pense."] BOOK FOURTH. THE PROPAGATION OF THE DOCTRINE. CHAPTER I.--SUCCESS OF THIS PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE.--FAILURE OF THE SAME PHILOSOPHY IN ENGLAND. Several similar theories have in the past traversed the imagination of men, and similar theories are likely do so again. In all ages and in all countries, it sufficed that man's concept of his own nature changed for, as an indirect consequence, new utopias and discoveries would sprout in the fields of politics and religion.[4101]--But this does not suffice for the propagation of the new doctrine nor, more important, for theory to be put into practice. Although born in England, the philosophy of the eighteenth century could not develop itself in England; the fever for demolition and reconstruction remained but briefly and superficial there. Deism, atheism, materialism, skepticism, ideology, the theory of the return to nature, the proclamations of the rights of man, all the temerities of Bolingbroke, Collins, Toland, Tindal and Mandeville, the bold ideas of Hume, Hartley, James Mill and Bentham, all the revolutionary doctrines, were so many hotbed plants produced here and there, in the isolated studies of a few thinkers: out in the open, after blooming for a while, subject to a vigorous competition with the old vegetation to which the soil belonged, they failed[4102].--On the contrary, in France, the seed imported from England, takes root and spreads with extraordinary vigor. After the Regency it is in full bloom[4103]. Like any species favored by soil and climate, it invades all the fields, appropriating light and air to itself, scarcely allowing in its shade a few puny specimens of a hostile species, a survivor of an antique flora like Rollin, or a specimen of an eccentric flora like Saint-Martin.