[1] For the meaning of “person,” see account above, p. 93. Note on the meaning of “moral” as here used that it is determined by a general opposition to physical, as in “moral certainty.” None the less, this use of “moral person” forms an interesting stage in the advance from the physical individual through the legal “person” towards the notion of a higher or greater self.
[2] The trivial case which he takes, of its being no curtailment to freedom to keep a man off an untrustworthy bridge, as he certainly does not want to be drowned, has received terrible illustration of late (June, 1898) by the disaster at the launch of the “Albion.” The disaster occurred because not enough force was used against the passionate momentary eagerness of individuals, and in favour of what it is fair to presume their real will would be.
[3] See below, ch. VIII.
It is worth while to cite here the whole of the short chapter viii., which draws out the {97} consequences of the above conception of a social pact and of sovereignty.
“Of the Civil Condition.—This passage from the state of nature to the civil state produces in man a very remarkable change by replacing, in his conduct, instinct by justice, and giving to his actions the morality which they lacked before. It is then alone that, the voice of duty succeeding to physical impulse, and right to appetite, man, who till then had only considered himself, sees himself compelled to act on other principles, and to consult his reason before listening to his inclinations. Although he deprives himself in this state of several advantages which he holds from nature, he gains such great ones in their place, his faculties exercise and develop themselves, his ideas expand, his sentiments are ennobled, his whole soul is exalted to such a degree, that, if the abuses of his new condition did not often degrade him below that from which he has emerged, [1] it would be his duty to bless without ceasing the happy instant which tore him from it for ever, and, from a stupid and narrow animal, made him an intelligent being and human.
“Let us reduce these pros and cons to terms easy to compare. What man loses by the social contract is his natural liberty and an unlimited right to all which attracts him and which he can obtain; what he gains is civil liberty and the {98} property of what he possesses. To avoid error in these reckonings we must carefully distinguish natural liberty, which has no bounds but the powers of the individual, from the civil liberty which is limited by the general will; and possession, which is only the effect of force or the right of the first occupant, from property, which can only be founded on a positive title.
“We might, in view of the preceding, add to the gains of the civil state the moral freedom which alone makes man master of himself; for the impulsion of appetite alone is slavery, and obedience to the law which we have prescribed to ourselves is liberty. But I have already said too much on this head, and the philosophical sense of the word liberty is not my subject here.”
[1] Cf. the well-known lines of Faust:
“Ein wenig besser würd er leben,
Hätt’st Dur ihm nicht den Schein des Himmelslichts gegeben;
Er nennt’s Vernunft, und braucht’s allein
Nur thierischer als jedes Thier zu seyn.”