facts to deny him this preëminence, even though one
should not go so far as to say with Lord Acton that
"Rousseau produced more effect with his pen than Aris-
totle, or Cicero, or Saint Augustine, or Saint Thomas
Aquinas, or any other man who ever lived." ¹ The great
distinction of Rousseau in the history of thought, if my
own analysis be correct, is that he gave the wrong an-
swers to the right questions. It is no small distinction
even to have asked the right questions.

Rousseau has at all events suggested to me the terms
in which I have treated my present topic. He is easily
first among the theorists of radical democracy. He is
also the most eminent of those who have attacked civili-
zation. Moreover, he has brought his advocacy of de-
mocracy and his attack on civilization into a definite
relationship with one another. Herein he seems to go
deeper than those who relate democracy, not to the
question of civilization versus barbarism, but to the
question of progress versus reaction. For why should
men progress unless it can be shown that they are pro-
gressing towards civilization; or of what avail, again, is
progress if barbarism is, as Rousseau affirms, more felici-
tous? If we thought clearly enough, we should probably
dismiss as somewhat old-fashioned, as a mere survivor of
the nineteenth century, the man who puts his primary
emphasis on the contrast between the progressive and
the reactionary, and turn our attention to the more es-
sential contrast between the civilized man and the bar-
barian. The man of the nineteenth century was indeed
wont to take for granted that the type of progress he

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