FOOTNOTES
[1] Cf. his Studies in Political and Social Ethics, pp. 169, 170.
[2] For the inconsistency between the views expressed by Rousseau on this subject in the Discourses and in the Contrat Social (Cf. I. Chs. VI., VIII.) see Ritchie’s Natural Right, Ch. III., pp. 48, 49; Caird’s essay on Rousseau in his Essays on Literature and Philosophy, Vol. I.; and Morley’s Rousseau, Vol. I., Ch. V.; Vol. II., Ch. XII.
[3] The theory that the golden age was identical with the state of nature, Professor D. G. Ritchie ascribes to Locke (see Natural Right, Ch. II., p. 42). Locke, he says, “has an idea of a golden age” existing even after government has come into existence—a time when people did not need “to examine the original and rights of government.” [Civil Government, II., § 111.] A little confusion on the part of his readers (perhaps in his own mind) makes it possible to regard the state of nature as itself the golden age, and the way is prepared for the favourite theory of the eighteenth century:—
“Nor think in nature’s state they blindly trod;
The state of nature was the reign of God:
Self-love and social at her birth began,
Union the bond of all things and of man.
Pride then was not, nor arts that pride to aid;