and still common form it is, as we have seen, open to
serious objections. The main lines of the eighteenth-
century view were indicated in our last lecture. The
primitive state of man was conceived as a "state of
nature." In this idea it was presupposed that the
individuals composing the human race were at the
beginning more or less isolated. At least there was
plenty of elbow-room and a plentiful supply of the
necessities of life, so that mutual aid was not a crying
necessity. By virtue of these conditions, then, men
were created free and equal. And as thus created they
were invested with a natural, and forever inalienable,
right of liberty and life. These rights were not for-
feited when, at a later period, under the pressure of
growing numbers, they organized societies for mutual
advantage. In the organization of these societies there
was implied a "social contract," by the terms of which
each individual consented to a certain limitation of his
natural rights in return for an equal limitation of
the rights of every other. In the meantime the rights
whose surrender is not required for the maintenance of
the social order, and which are therefore not covered
by the social contract, remain wholly in the possession
of the individual. Such, in outline, is the logic of the
older theory.

§ 130. Now of course there is no historical ground for
this conception, -- if, indeed, any was ever seriously
offered; nor is there any conceivable psychological
ground. Men could never have been altogether iso-
lated. And logically or psychologically, the concep-
tion of an individual before society -- an individual
having the distinguishing attributes of a human indi-
vidual -- is quite absurd. Granting that you are a
thorough individual in your tastes and opinions, still

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