ABSTRACT
Jean Jacques Rousseau, though a philosophe in the eighteenth-century French sense, was not what would be called a 'philosopher'. Nevertheless he had a powerful influence on philosophy, as on literature and taste and manners and politics. Rousseau's biography was related by himself in his Confessions in great detail, but without any slavish regard for truth. He enjoyed making himself out a great sinner, and sometimes exaggerated in this respect; but there is abundant external evidence that he was destitute of all the ordinary virtues. The origin of civil society and of the consequent social inequalities is to be found in private property. The first man who, having enclosed a piece of land, bethought himself of saying "this is mine", and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.
