Sovereignty of the People. Such originality as the _Social Contract_
possesses is due to its remarkable union of the influence of the two
antagonistic English Thinkers. The differences between Hobbes and
Rousseau were striking enough. Rousseau looked on men as good, Hobbes
looked on them as bad. The one described the state of nature as a
state of peace, the other as a state of war. The first believed that
laws and institutions had depraved man, the second that they had
improved him. In spite of these differences the influence of Hobbes
was important, but only important in combination. "The total result
is," as I have said elsewhere, "a curious fusion between the premises
and the temper of Hobbes, and the conclusions of Locke. This fusion
produced that popular absolutism of which the _Social Contract_ was
the theoretical expression, and Jacobin supremacy the practical
manifestation. Rousseau borrowed from Hobbes the true conception of
sovereignty, and from Locke the true conception of the ultimate seat
and original of authority, and of the two together he made the great
image of the Sovereign People. Strike the crowned head from that
monstrous figure which is the frontispiece of the _Leviathan_, and
you have a frontispiece that will do excellently well for the _Social
Contract_."[1]

[Footnote 1: _Rousseau_, chap. xii.]

One more word may be said by the way. The very slightest account of
Rousseau is too slight to be tolerable, if it omits to mention Calvin.
Rousseau's whole theory of the Legislator, which produced such
striking results in certain transitory phases of the French
Revolution, grew up in his mind from the constitution which the great
reformer had so predominant a share in framing for the little republic
where Rousseau was born.