This shows the folly of projecting any abstract theory, however true, to its remote and logical sequence.  In the attempt we are almost certain to be landed in absurdity, so complicated are the relations of life, especially in governmental and political science.  What doctrine of civil or political economy would be applicable in all ages and all countries and all conditions?  Like the ascertained laws of science, or the great and accepted truths of the Bible, political axioms are to be considered in their relation with other truths equally accepted, or men are soon brought into a labyrinth of difficulties, and the strongest intellect is perplexed.

And especially will this be the case when a theory under consideration is not a truth but an assumption.  That was the trouble with Rousseau.  His theories, disdainful of experience, however logically treated, became in their remotest sequence and application insulting to the human understanding, because they were often not only assumptions, but assumptions of what was not true, although very specious and flattering to certain classes.

Rousseau confounded the great truth of the justice of moral and political equality with the absurd and unnatural demand for social and material equality.  The great modern cry for equal opportunity for all is sound and Christian; but any attempt to guarantee individual success in using opportunity, to insure the lame and the lazy an equal rank in the race, must end in confusion and distraction.

The evil of Rousseau’s crude theories or false assumptions was practically seen in the acceptance of their logical conclusions, which led to anarchy, murder, pillage, and outrageous excess.  The great danger attending his theories is that they are generally half-truths,—­truth and falsehood blended.  His writings are sophistical.  It is difficult to separate the truth from the error, by reason of the marvellous felicity of his language.  I do not underrate his genius or his style.  He was doubtless an original thinker and a most brilliant and artistic writer; and by so much did he confuse people, even by the speciousness of his logic.  There is nothing indefinite in what he advances.  He is not a poet dealing in mysticisms, but a rhetorical philosopher, propounding startling theories, partly true and partly false, which he logically enforces with matchless eloquence.

Probably the most influential of Rousseau’s writings was “The Social Contract,”—­the great textbook of the Revolution.  In this famous treatise he advanced some important ideas which undoubtedly are based on ultimate truth, such as that the people are the source of power, that might does not make right, that slavery is an aggression on human rights; but with these ideal truths he combines the assertion that government is a contract between the governor and the governed.  In a perfect state of society this may be the ideal; but society is not and never has been perfect, and certainly in all the early ages