And the import of the term “liberty” in this chapter is a measure of the modification of ideas which has been brought about in the process of “justifying” the “bondage” of man. [1] The famous {100} sentence, “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains,” now turns out to mean, “Man is born in natural liberty (which, if it refers to any actual condition at all, implies, in animal isolation), and by subservience to social law, he attains the civil liberty through which alone he becomes truly man.” Of course, however, the phrase “born free” has the under current of meaning, “is born _for_ the truest freedom,” but in order that this import may be elicited the rhetorical antithesis, “and everywhere is in chains,” must be abandoned. [1] See bk. i., ch. i. The final paragraph of chapter viii. makes it clear that Rousseau considers the civil state as an embodiment of moral liberty, while he is rightly anxious not to seem to cut the knot of his problem by appealing to the merely ethical or philosophical sense of the term freedom. For this latter conception, taken by itself, is apt to be understood as the establishment of unity in the self by the path of renunciation. Now, the freedom of the true civil state is, on the one hand, only a stage in the ascent towards perfect ethical freedom or unity, for it involves rather the recognition of such freedom as the imperative end of social law, than the actual attainment of it; and, on the other hand, it is something broader and more substantial than ethical freedom is apt to be conceived as implying, because of that outgrowth of the self into an organised social content which the civil condition involves. The distinction between the civil state and ethical freedom is therefore a sound one, but yet does not prevent their juxta-position in this passage from throwing {101} important light on Rousseau’s conception of the former. The expansion of old conceptions in Rousseau’s hands, and the direction in which his views are advancing, are well illustrated by the paragraph before us in comparison with Locke’s idea of consent. A recent editor of the _Contrat_ [1] cites in illustration of the words, “Obedience to the law which we have prescribed to ourselves is liberty” Locke’s sentence, “The liberty of man in society is to be under no other legislative power but that established by consent in the commonwealth.” [2] But Locke is speaking, according to his theory, of the actual or tacit consent of individuals to the establishment of a governing power; a consent which, for him, is conditional and revocable, and therefore fails to meet the full difficulty of self-government. Rousseau, borrowing very likely his actual phrases from Locke, is speaking of something quite different, viz., the recognition of a law and a will, with which one’s everyday self may be at odds, as nevertheless one’s truer and fuller self, and imperative as against the commonplace trivial moods which constitute one’s inferior existence.