The Social Contract

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is that enough to be well off there? The Greeks, locked in the Cyclops' cave, lived there tranquilly, while waiting for their turn to be devoured.

TO say that a man gives himself gratuitously is to say something absurd and inconceivable; such an act is illegitimate and null, by the mere fact that he who does so is not in his right mind. To say the same thing of a whole people is to suppose a people of madmen: madness does not create right.

WHEN everyone could alienate himself, he cannot alienate his children; they are born men and free; their liberty belongs to them, no one has the right to dispose of it but them. Before they are of age to reason, the father can, in their name, stipulate conditions for their preservation, for their well-