ABSTRACT
These are the fundamental lessons which Rousseau learned from the Greeks and from Plato. But he borrowed in smaller things as well as in great; and his political theory is Platonic not only in its general conception, but also in some of its details. The legislator who appears on the scene in the second book of the Contrat Social (c. 7) is a Platonic figure. On veut toujours son bien, mais on ne Ie voit pas toujours: the community always wishes to enunciate a general will - by which Rousseau means a will directed to the general well-being - but it does not always know what it should actually w:ll. The difficulty will be acute in the beginnings of the State; and the deus ex machina whom Rousseau provides for its solution is the legislator. He will advise the community without imposing his advice as law: he will remedy its ignorance without abrogating its sovereignty. As Rousseau borrowed the figure of the legislator, so, too, though perhaps unconsciously, he borrowed from Plato the conception which he forms of the size of the State. That size must be a mean: the State must be neither too large to be well governed nor too small to be self sufficing (n. 9). He is Platonic again - his very words might be the words of Plato - in his attitude to maritime commerce. 'Have you a large and commodious sea-coast? Then cover the sea with vessels: cultivate commerce and navigation: you will have an existence which is brilliant - and short' (II. I I).
