The second essay (1754), a much longer and {86} more serious piece, is on the thesis, “What is the origin of Inequality among mankind, and is it justified by natural law?” It was dedicated, with expressions of extravagant laudation, to Rousseau’s native state, the Republic of Geneva. His enthusiasm for this community, as for the ancient city-states, is a far truer guide to his genuine social ideas than any of his paradoxes about the state of nature and the bondage of social man. His genius, in fact, is very much under-rated by those who suppose him at any time to have believed the primitive state of nature, or earliest imaginable condition of the human race, to be capable of furnishing an ideal of life. He is perfectly aware that a state of nature, which is to furnish an ideal, must be selected at least from among the higher phases of man’s evolution, after morality and the family have begun to form themselves, and language and property have made some advance. Here, again, his vacillation is strikingly observable, and we can see that it arises from his profound insight. The vices of civilisation tend to force the desirable state of man down the scale of evolution, but the value of morality and respect for human nature tend to force it up, and Rousseau’s argument embodies the struggle. For Rousseau is far too critical and clear-sighted to ascribe true morality or strictly human nature to a state of animal innocence, and he knows that virtue involves potential vice; [1] and therefore it is with hesitation and regret that he selects a middle state as {87} representing his ideal, fully aware that it has forfeited animal innocence without having attained human morality. Even the famous declamation against the first founder of property in land seems to pass away in an admission that this was an inevitable stage in the growth of human capacities, which the author would not seriously desire to remain undeveloped. Two further points may be noted; first, the fundamental contention that men are by nature not equal but unequal, the evil of civilisation lying just in the replacement of natural by political inequality. If this political inequality were considered as modifiable, it is plain that the view would point to an advantage in the way of equality [2] possessed by society over nature. Secondly, the view here taken of natural liberty in relation to the social pact should be compared with that of the _Contrat Social_. In the essay, “natural liberty” is on the whole preferred; in the _Contrat_, another kind of liberty is held a truer good, although much of the tone and language associated with the preference of natural liberty continues by the side of the later view. It is plain that we are dealing, not with an unconsidering fanatical enthusiasm for one or another state of man, but with a struggling insight, which sees evil but also good in all, and, with hesitation and reluctance, depresses