Literature/Jean-Jacques Rousseau/The Social Contract

The Social Contract

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1762

Foreword

Fœderis æquasDicamus leges.

(Vergil, Æneid XI.)

This little treatise is part of a longer work which I began years ago without realising my limitations, and long since abandoned. Of the various fragments that might have been extracted from what I wrote, this is the most considerable, and, I think, the least unworthy of being offered to the public. The rest no longer exists.