is the watchword of his political creed, a creed in striking contrast to Thomas Carlyle's equally strenuous teaching that Might is Right. Certainly we, bred up in the Darwinian era, we who have felt the full significance of that modern Shibboleth, the struggle for existence, we who have ached in dull despair at this grim law of life with which Nature, "red in tooth and claw," proclaims that Might is Right—we cannot help smiling at Rousseau's rose-coloured visions of a primitive state of nature, wherein the leopard was supposed to have lain down with the kid, and to which society was exhorted to return. Yet, though we must admit many of his premises to be false and many of his arguments shallow, his conclusion is neverthless in harmony with the highest conception of justice—justice which, like music, has its origin in the soul of man only, the most purely human of the virtues, and which is the goal towards which society is slowly and painfully working its way.
Another of Rousseau's axioms in the Contrat Social, and one which must be noticed in passing as connected with the land question, now of such paramount interest, is the assertion that, "the State, as regards its members, is the master of all possessions by reason of the social contract, which is the basis also of all their rights. As a rule," he says, "to legalise the rights of the first occupier of any lands, the following conditions are necessary: first, that this land should never before have been occupied; secondly, that he should only occupy the amount requisite for subsistence; thirdly, that he should take possession, not by a vain ceremony, but by labour and cultivation, sole indication of ownership which, in default of legal titles, deserves the recognition of others."
