GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

SOCIETY. ITS NATURE AND ORIGIN 493
matic spirit which pervades it. For him there is nothing
sacrosanct about the State; it is merely
a contrivance
for guaranteeing the rights and, as we should now say,
carrying out the wishes of the people. Equally, there is
nothing sacrosanct about what the majority in a State
decides. Locke is content to point out that, as a matter of
fact, more people will get more of what -they want if the
majority is the source of effective power, than they will do
under any other system. The question, whether they are
right to want what they do is not raised, except in so far as
Locke retains in the background of his philosophy a respect
for the over-riding law of nature, which is also the law of
God. Thus though the basing of Locke's doctrine on the
Social Contract is an accidental by-product of the thought
of his time, the doctrine itself embodies truths which are
valid for all time.
Locke may be. regarded as the father of democracy in
another and perhaps less meritorious sense. Among the
rights which a man possesses by nature there is, he holds,
a right to the ownership of property. The postulation of a
right to property is an important source of the laissez-faire
theory of economics, according to which the State, while
protecting private property and upholding contracts,
is recommended to leave die conduct of the economic
life of the community to individual enterprise. There is
thus a close connection between the idea of democracy-
people should be free to make what private arrangements,
including what private economic arrangements, they
please, without let or hindrance from the State and the
laissez-faire theory of economics, which derives in part
from Locke's insistence on man's natural right to property.
Rousseau's Version of the Social Contract. A third
and no less celebrated version of the Social Contract theory
of society is that contained in Rousseau's book, the Social
Contract, which appeared in 1762. With Hobbes and Locke,
Rousseau accepts the pre-social state of human nature.
His psychology, modelled on that of Hobbes and Spinoza,