Jean-Jacques Rousseau · Complete work
Book II, Chapter 7
Book II, Chapter 7 of 49. Read it here for reference, or continue through the entire work without leaving the reader.
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Du Législateur.
Pour découvrir les meilleures regles de société qui conviennent aux Nations, il faudroit une intelligence supérieure, qui vit toutes les passions des hommes & qui n’en éprouvât aucune, qui n’eut aucun rapport avec notre nature & qui la connût à fond, dont le bonheur fût indépendant de nous & qui pourtant voulut bien s’occuper du nôtre; enfin qui, dans le progrès des tems se ménageant une gloire éloignée, put travailler dans un siecle & jouir dans un autre. Il faudroit des Dieux pour donner des loix aux hommes.
Le meme raisonnement que faisoit Caligula quant au fait, Platon le faisoit quant au droit pour définir l’homme civil ou royal qu’il cherche dans son livre du regne; mais s’il est vrai qu’un grand Prince est un homme rare, que sera-ce d’un grand Législateur? Le premier n’a qu’à suivre le modele que l’autre doit proposer. Celui-ci est le méchanicien qui invente la machine, celui-là n’est que l’ouvrier qui la monte & la fait marcher. Dans la naissance des sociétés, dit Montesquieu, ce sont les chefs des républiques qui font l’institution, & c’est ensuite l’institution qui forme les chefs des républiques.
Celui qui ose entreprendre d’instituer un peuple doit se sentir en état de changer, pour ainsi dire, la nature humaine; de transformer chaque individu, qui par lui-même est un tout parfait & solitaire, en partie d’un plus grand tout dont cet individu reçoive en quelque sorte sa vie & son être; d’altérer la constitution de l’homme pour la renforcer; de substituer une existence partielle & morale à l’existence physique & indépendante que nous avons tous reçue de la nature. Il faut, en un mot, qu’il ôte à l’homme ses forces propres pour lui en donner qui lui soient étrangeres & dont il ne puisse faire usage sans le secours d’autrui. Plus ces forces naturelles sont mortes & anéanties, plus les acquises sont grandes & durables, plus aussi l’institution est solide & parfaite: En sorte que si chaque Citoyen n’est rien, ne peut rien, que par tous les autres, & que la force acquise par le tout soit égale ou supérieure à la somme des forces naturelles de tous les individus, on peut dire que la législation est au plus haut point de perfection qu’elle puisse atteindre.
Le legislateur est à tous égards un homme extraordinaire dans l’Etat. S’il doit l’être par son génie, il ne l’est pas moins par son emploi. Ce n’est point magistrature, ce n’est point souveraineté. Cet emploi, qui constitue la république, n’entre point dans sa constitution: C’est une fonction particuliere & supérieure qui n’a rien de commun avec l’empire humain; car si celui qui commande aux hommes ne doit pas commander aux loix, celui qui commande aux loix ne doit pas non plus commander aux hommes; autrement ses loix, ministres de ses passions, ne feroient souvent que perpétuer ses injustices, & jamais il ne pourroit éviter que des vues particulieres n’altérassent la sainteté de son ouvrage.
Quand Lycurgue donna des loix à sa patrie, il commença par abdiquer la Royauté. C’étoit la coutume de la plupart des villes grecques de confier à des étrangers l’établissement des leurs. Les Républiques modernes de l’Italie imiterent souvent cet usage; celle de Genève en fit autant & s’en trouva bien. Rome dans son plus bel âge vit renaitre en son sein tous les crimes de la Tirannie, & se vit prête à périr, pour avoir réuni sur les mêmes têtes l’autorité législative & le pouvoir souverain.
Cependant les Décemvirs eux-mêmes ne s’arrogerent jamais le droit de faire passer aucune loi de leur seule autorité. Rien de ce que nous vous proposons, disoient-ils au peuple, ne peut passer en loi sans votre consentement. Romains, soyez vous-mêmes les auteurs des loix qui doivent faire votre bonheur.
Celui qui rédige les loix n’a donc ou ne doit avoir aucun droit législatif, & le peuple même ne peut, quand il le voudroit, se dépouiller de ce droit incommunicable; parce que selon le pacte fondamental il n’y a que la volonté générale qui oblige les particuliers, & qu’on ne peut jamais s’assurer qu’une volonté particuliere est conforme à la volonté générale, qu’après l’avoir soumise aux suffrages libres du peuple: j’ai déjà dit cela, mais il n’est pas inutile de le répéter.
Ainsi l’on trouve à la fois dans l’ouvrage de la législation deux choses qui semblent incompatibles: une entreprise au dessus de la force humaine, & pour l’exécuter, une autorité qui n’est rien.
Autre difficulté qui mérite attention. Les sages qui veulent parler au vulgaire leur langage au lieu du sien n’en sauroient être entendus. Or il y a mille sortes d’idées qu’il est impossible de traduire dans la langue du peuple. Les vues trop générales & les objets trop éloignés sont également hors de sa portée; chaque individu ne goûtant d’autre plan de gouvernement que celui qui se rapporte à son intérêt particulier, apperçoit difficilement les avantages qu’il doit retirer des privations continuelles qu’imposent les bonnes loix. Pour qu’un peuple naissant put goûter les saines maximes de la politique & suivre les regles fondamentales de la raison d’Etat, il faudroit que l’effet put devenir la cause, que l’esprit social qui doit être l’ouvrage de l’institution présidât à l’institution même, & que les hommes fussent avant les loix ce qu’ils doivent devenir par elles. Ainsi donc le Législateur ne pouvant employer ni la force ni le raisonnement, c’est une nécessité qu’il recoure à une autorité d’un autre ordre, qui puisse entraîner sans violence & persuader sans convaincre.
Voila ce qui força de tous tems les peres des nations de recourir à l’intervention du ciel & d’honorer les Dieux de leur propre sagesse, afin que les peuples, soumis aux loix de l’Etat comme à celles de la nature, & reconnoissant le même pouvoir dans la formation de l’homme & dans celle de la cité, obéissent avec liberté & portassent docilement le joug de la félicité publique.
Cette raison sublime qui s’éleve au dessus de la portée des hommes vulgaires est celle dont le législateur met les décisions dans la bouche des immortels, pour entraîner par l’autorité divine ceux que ne pourroit ébranler la prudence humaine. Mais il n’appartient pas à tout homme de faire parler les Dieux, ni d’en être cru quand il s’annonce pour être leur interprête. La grande ame du Législateur est le vrai miracle qui doit prouver sa mission. Tout homme peut graver des tables de pierre, ou acheter un oracle, ou feindre un secret commerce avec quelque divinité, ou dresser un oiseau pour lui parler à l’oreille, ou trouver d’autres moyens grossiers d’en imposer au peuple. Celui qui ne saura que cela pourra même assembler par hazard une troupe d’insensés, mais il ne fondera jamais un empire, & son extravagant ouvrage périra bientôt avec lui. De vains prestiges forment un lien passager, il n’y a que la sagesse qui le rende durable. La loi judaïque, toujours subsistante, celle de l’enfant d’Ismaël qui depuis dix siecles régit la moitié du monde, annoncent encore aujourd’hui les grands hommes qui les ont dictées; & tandis que l’orgueilleuse philosophie ou l’aveugle esprit de parti ne voit en eux que d’heureux imposteurs, le vrai politique admire dans leurs institutions ce grand & puissant génie qui préside aux établissemens durables.
Il ne faut pas, de tout ceci conclure avec Warburton que la politique & la religion aient parmi nous un objet commun, mais que dans l’origine des nations l’une sert d’instrument à l’autre.
Musean translation
Mouseia’s complete machine-assisted Musean translation, made directly from the complete French text of the 1762 edition, all four books and the appendix for fidelity, the author’s force and cadence, and modern clarity.
On the Legislator.
To discover the best rules of society suited to nations would require a superior intelligence, one that saw all the passions of men yet felt none of them; one that had no connection with our nature yet knew it thoroughly; whose happiness was independent of us yet which willingly devoted itself to ours; and, finally, one that, looking forward to distant glory as time unfolded, could labor in one century and enjoy the fruits in another. Gods would be needed to give laws to men.
The same reasoning that Caligula applied to the matter of fact, Plato applied to the matter of right in defining the civic or royal man whom he seeks in his book on kingship. But if it is true that a great prince is a rare man, what must a great legislator be? The former has only to follow the model that the latter must propose. The one is the engineer who invents the machine; the other is merely the workman who assembles it and sets it running. At the birth of societies, says Montesquieu, the leaders of republics establish the institutions, and thereafter the institutions form the leaders of republics.
Whoever dares undertake to institute a people must feel capable of changing human nature, so to speak; of transforming each individual, who in himself is a complete and solitary whole, into part of a greater whole from which that individual receives, in a sense, his life and being; of altering man's constitution in order to strengthen it; of replacing the physical and independent existence we all received from nature with a partial and moral existence. In a word, he must take from man his own powers and give him others that are foreign to him and that he cannot use without the help of others. The more thoroughly those natural powers have died and been extinguished, and the greater and more lasting the acquired powers have become, the more solid and perfect the institution will be. Thus, if each citizen is nothing and can do nothing except through all the others, and if the strength acquired by the whole equals or surpasses the sum of the natural powers of all its individual members, legislation may be said to have reached the highest perfection attainable.
The legislator is in every respect an extraordinary man in the State. If he must be so by his genius, he is no less so by his office. It is neither a magistracy nor a sovereignty. This office, which establishes the republic, forms no part of its constitution: it is a distinct and superior function that has nothing in common with human rule. For if the man who commands men must not command the laws, the man who commands the laws must not command men either; otherwise his laws, serving his passions, would often do no more than perpetuate his injustices, and he could never prevent particular interests from corrupting the sanctity of his work.
When Lycurgus gave laws to his country, he began by abdicating the kingship. It was the custom of most Greek cities to entrust the establishment of their laws to foreigners. The modern republics of Italy often imitated this practice; Geneva did the same and benefited from it. At the height of its glory Rome saw all the crimes of tyranny reborn within its walls, and saw itself on the brink of ruin because it had united legislative authority and sovereign power in the same hands.
Yet even the Decemvirs never presumed to enact any law by their sole authority. “Nothing that we propose to you,” they told the people, “can become law without your consent. Romans, be yourselves the authors of the laws that are to make you happy.”
The person who drafts the laws, therefore, has or ought to have no legislative right, and even the people cannot, should they wish to, divest themselves of this inalienable right; for according to the fundamental pact, only the general will binds individuals, and one can never be sure that a particular will accords with the general will until it has been submitted to the free votes of the people. I have said this already, but it is worth repeating.
Thus in the work of legislation we find, together, two things that seem incompatible: an enterprise beyond human strength, and, for carrying it out, an authority that amounts to nothing.
Another difficulty deserves attention. Wise men who wish to speak to ordinary people in their own language rather than the people's cannot make themselves understood. There are a thousand kinds of ideas impossible to translate into the language of the people. Views too general and objects too remote are equally beyond their reach. Each individual, favoring no plan of government except one that serves his particular interest, finds it hard to perceive the advantages he will gain from the continual privations imposed by good laws. For a people newly born to embrace the sound principles of politics and follow the fundamental rules of reason of state, the effect would have to become the cause: the social spirit that should be the work of the institution would have to preside over the institution itself, and men would have to be, before the laws, what the laws should make them. Since the legislator can employ neither force nor reasoning, he must therefore turn to an authority of another order, which can draw men along without violence and persuade without convincing.
This is what has always compelled the founders of nations to invoke the intervention of heaven and to honor the gods with their own wisdom, so that peoples, submitting to the laws of the State as to those of nature and recognizing the same power in the formation of man and of the city, might obey freely and bear without resistance the yoke of public happiness.
That sublime reason which rises beyond the grasp of ordinary men is the reason whose decisions the legislator places in the mouths of the immortals, so as to sway by divine authority those whom human prudence could not move. But not every man can make the gods speak, or be believed when he announces himself as their interpreter. The great soul of the legislator is the true miracle that must prove his mission. Any man can engrave tablets of stone, buy an oracle, pretend to secret dealings with a divinity, train a bird to speak into his ear, or find other crude means of deceiving the people. A man who knows no more than this might even gather a band of fools by chance, but he will never found an empire, and his extravagant work will soon perish with him. Empty tricks forge a passing bond; wisdom alone can make it last. The Jewish law, which still endures, and that of the child of Ishmael, which has governed half the world for ten centuries, still proclaim today the great men who dictated them; and while proud philosophy or blind partisanship sees in them only successful impostors, the true statesman admires in their institutions the great and powerful genius that presides over lasting foundations.
We must not conclude from all this, with Warburton, that politics and religion have a common object among us, but rather that, at the origin of nations, one serves as an instrument of the other.
Plain English translation
Mouseia’s complete Plain English edition, made independently and directly from the complete French text of the 1762 edition, all four books and the appendix.
On the Legislator.
To discover the best rules for organizing nations, we would need a superior intelligence. It would see all human passions without feeling any of them. It would have nothing in common with our nature but would know it thoroughly. Its happiness would not depend on us, yet it would willingly concern itself with ours. Finally, it would plan for glory far in the future, working in one century and enjoying the result in another. It would take gods to give laws to human beings.
Caligula made in practice the same argument that Plato made in principle to define the civic or royal man he seeks in his book on kingship. But if a great prince is rare, how rare must a great legislator be? The prince only has to follow the model proposed by the legislator. The legislator is the mechanic who invents the machine; the prince is only the worker who assembles it and gets it running. At the birth of societies, says Montesquieu, the leaders of republics establish their institutions; afterward those institutions shape the leaders of republics.
Anyone who dares undertake to establish institutions for a people must feel able, so to speak, to change human nature. They must transform each individual, who by themselves is a complete and independent whole, into part of a larger whole from which that person receives, in a sense, life and existence. They must alter the human constitution to strengthen it. They must replace the physical and independent existence we all receive from nature with a partial and moral existence. In short, they must take away people's own powers and give them other powers that come from outside themselves and that they cannot use without the help of others. The more their natural powers are extinguished, and the greater and more lasting the acquired powers become, the stronger and more perfect the institution is. Thus if each citizen is nothing and can do nothing except through all the others, and the power acquired by the whole equals or exceeds the sum of all individuals' natural powers, we can say that legislation has reached the highest perfection possible.
The legislator is an extraordinary person in the state in every respect. That is true of their talent and equally true of their role. This role is neither a magistracy nor sovereignty. The work that establishes the republic has no place within its constitution. It is a special, higher task with nothing in common with ruling people. Whoever commands people must not command the laws, and whoever commands the laws must not command people either. Otherwise their laws would serve their passions and often only perpetuate their injustices. They could never prevent private aims from corrupting the integrity of their work.
When Lycurgus gave laws to his country, he first gave up the kingship. Most Greek cities customarily entrusted foreigners with establishing their laws. The modern republics of Italy often followed this practice. Geneva did the same and benefited from it. At the height of its greatness, Rome saw all the crimes of tyranny return within its walls and nearly perished because it combined legislative authority and sovereign power in the same hands.
Yet even the Decemvirs never claimed the right to make any law solely on their own authority. They told the people, "Nothing we propose to you can become law without your consent. Romans, be the authors yourselves of the laws that are to bring you happiness."
Whoever drafts the laws therefore has, or ought to have, no legislative right. Even if the people wished to do so, they could not give up this right, which cannot be transferred. Under the fundamental pact, only the general will binds individuals, and we can never be certain that a particular will agrees with the general will until it has been put to a free vote of the people. I have said this already, but it is worth repeating.
In the work of legislation, then, two seemingly incompatible things come together: a task beyond human powers, and an authority that has no power to carry it out.
There is another difficulty worth noting. Wise people who speak to ordinary people in their own language rather than the people's cannot be understood. There are countless kinds of ideas that cannot be translated into the people's language. Goals that are too general and matters too far away are equally beyond their grasp. Since each person approves only a plan of government that serves their own interest, they find it hard to see the benefits they will gain from the constant sacrifices good laws require. For a new people to appreciate sound principles of politics and follow the basic rules of statecraft, the effect would have to become the cause. The social spirit that should result from the institutions would have to guide their establishment, and people would have to be, before the laws existed, what the laws are meant to make them. The legislator therefore cannot rely on either force or argument. They must turn to a different kind of authority, one that can draw people along without violence and persuade them without convincing them by reason.
That is why the founders of nations have always had to invoke heaven and credit the gods with their own wisdom. They wanted people to submit to the laws of the state as they submit to the laws of nature. Recognizing the same power behind the creation of humanity and of the city, people would then obey freely and willingly bear the burden of public happiness.
The legislator puts the decisions of this lofty reason, which rises beyond the understanding of ordinary people, into the mouths of immortals. Divine authority can then win over those whom human wisdom could not move. But not everyone can make the gods speak, or be believed when claiming to speak for them. The legislator's great spirit is the real miracle that must prove their mission. Anyone can carve stone tablets, buy an oracle, pretend to communicate secretly with a god, train a bird to whisper in their ear, or find some other crude way to fool the people. Someone capable of no more than this might by chance gather a crowd of fools, but will never found an empire. Their absurd creation will soon perish with them. Empty tricks make a temporary bond; only wisdom makes it last. The Jewish law, which still survives, and the law of the child of Ishmael, which has governed half the world for ten centuries, still testify today to the greatness of the men who laid them down. Proud philosophy and blind partisanship see in them only successful frauds. A genuine student of politics admires in their institutions the great and powerful intelligence behind lasting establishments.
We should not conclude from all this, with Warburton, that politics and religion have the same purpose among us. The conclusion is that, at the founding of nations, one serves as the other's instrument.