C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Foreword from ‘The Social Contract’

By Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)

I WISH to discover whether, in the existing social order, there may not be some rule of safe and legitimate administration, taking men as they are and laws as they might be. I shall try to ally, in this research, that which the law permits with that which interest prescribes, so that justice and utility may not be divided.

I enter upon this discussion without proving the importance of the subject. I shall be asked if I am a prince or a legislator, that I write about politics. I shall answer, No—and that for this reason I write about politics. If I were a prince or a legislator, I should not lose time in telling what ought to be done: I should do it or be silent.

Born citizen of a free State and member of the sovereign people, however feeble the influence of my voice in public affairs, the right to vote upon them imposes upon me the duty of instructing myself. Whenever I meditate upon governments, I am happy to find in my investigations new reasons for loving that of my own country.

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