Of the antecedents and history of this doctrine enough has already been said.  Its general truth as a description either of what is, or what ought to be and will be, demands an ampler discussion than there is any occasion to carry on here.  We need only point out its place as a kind of intermediate dissolvent for which the time was most ripe.  It breaks up the feudal conception of political authority as a property of land-ownership, noble birth, and the like, and it associates this authority widely and simply with the bare fact of participation in any form of citizenship in the social union.  The later and higher idea of every share of political power as a function to be discharged for the good of the whole body, and not merely as a right to be enjoyed for the advantage of its possessor, was a form of thought to which Rousseau did not rise.  That does not lessen the effectiveness of the blow which his doctrine dealt to French feudalism, and which is its main title to commemoration in connection with his name.

The social compact thus made is essentially different from the social compact which Hobbes described as the origin of what he calls commonwealths by institution, to distinguish them from commonwealths by acquisition, that is to say, states formed by conquest or resting on hereditary rule.  “A commonwealth,” Hobbes says, “is said to be instituted when a multitude of men do agree and covenant, every one with every one, that to whatsoever man or assembly of men shall be given by the major part the right to present the person of them all, that is to say, to be their representative; every one ... shall authorise all the actions and judgments of that man or assembly of men, in the same manner as if they were his own, to the end to live peaceably among themselves, and be protected against other men."[231] But Rousseau’s compact was an act of association among equals, who also remained equals.  Hobbes’s compact was an act of surrender on the part of the many to one or a number.  The first was the constitution of civil society, the second was the erection of a government.  As nobody now believes in the existence of any such compact in either one form or the other, it would be superfluous to inquire which of the two is the less inaccurate.  All we need do is to point out that there was this difference.  Rousseau distinctly denied the existence of any element of contract in the erection of a government; there is only one contract in the state, he said, and it is that of association.[232] Locke’s notion of the compact which was the beginning of every political society is indefinite on this point; he speaks of it indifferently as an agreement of a body of free men to unite and incorporate into a society, and an agreement to set up a government.[233] Most of us would suppose the two processes to be as nearly identical as may be; Rousseau drew a distinction, and from this distinction he derived further differences.