SOCIAL CONTRACT, or SOCIAL COM PACT. Terms used interchangeably by ninny writers and having reference to a theory of the origin of human society. The theory was first systematically enunciated by Hobbes in the sev enteenth century. but received its fullest develop ment at the hands of Rousseau toward the mid dle of the eighteenth. It was discussed with much force also by Thomas Hooker and John Locke. The theory assumes that society is not :t natural institution, but the result of convention among men. It assumes the existence of a pre social state, in which men were in a state of nature without rights or obligations and subject to no law except the law of nature. Hobbes's view of a state of nature was that of a condition in which all men were at war with one another. Each individual was entitled to whatever he could appropriate and hold by physical force. The idea of justice had no place in such a state, nor had the conception of property yet arisen. Locke differed somewhat with Hobbes in his view of the state of nature, holding that it was one of perfect freedom, but limited by the fact that a man must perform every action in subservience to the law of nature. He did not regard it as a state cf license or a condition of perpetual war fare. He recognized the individual right of prop erty in the pre-social state. Similarly Rousseau maintained that pre-social men were not warlike, but averse to combat, if not actually timid. Ac cording to any view of the nature of the pre social state the life of man was beset by many difficulties. To escape from these, men agreed to
surrender certain of their so-called rights and to form a covenant for the protection of other rights. Each, therefore, entered into a contract with all by which he agreed to divest himself of the natural liberty of hindering his fellow men in their efforts to obtain the same right. The will of an inchoate sovereign person or collec tion of persons was substituted for the individ ual will of each. Only so much power was sur rendered as was deemed to be necessary for the common good.
The theory of the social compact as a means of accounting for the origin of existing institu tions is now generally considered to be a legal tietion. The application of the theory as the starting point in the evolution of the State pre supposes a highly developed State life, which is never consciously present in the minds of primi tive individuals. Such a consciousness is at tained only by historical development. Anthro pology has proved that the pre-social savages described by the advocates of the social contract theory were totally incapable of conceiving the idea of contract as a means of State organiza tion.
Consult: Hobbes, Leviathan; Locke, Treatises on. Government ; and Rousseau, Contrat social, and for a critical appreciation of this remark able essay, Morley, Rousseau (London, 1873) ; also Fenton, Theory of the Social Compact (New York. 1891).