Key Arguments

• Rousseau uses the architect metaphor: 'before putting up a large building, the architect surveys and sounds the site to see if it will bear the weight,' likening constitutional design to testing whether the social 'ground' can support the institutional 'structure.'
• He explicitly says the legislator 'does not begin by laying down laws good in themselves, but by investigating the fitness of the people, for which they are destined, to receive them,' making the people’s receptivity a prior condition of rightful lawgiving.
• Plato’s refusal 'to legislate for the Arcadians and the Cyrenæans, because he knew that both peoples were rich and could not put up with equality' is cited to show that even the best laws (equality) are inappropriate where prevailing mores are incompatible.
• The case of Crete—where 'good laws and bad men were found together in Crete, because Minos had inflicted discipline on a people already burdened with vice'—illustrates that virtuous institutions imposed on corrupt populations do not yield virtue.
• Rousseau generalizes that 'A thousand nations have achieved earthly greatness, that could never have endured good laws; even such as could have endured them could have done so only for a very brief period of their long history,' implying that political success and greatness do not guarantee, and may be incompatible with, the capacity to sustain good laws.

Source Quotes

CHAPTER VIII: the people As, before putting up a large building, the architect surveys and sounds the site to see if it will bear the weight, the wise legislator does not begin by laying down laws good in themselves, but by investigating the fitness of the people, for which they are destined, to receive them. Plato refused to legislate for the Arcadians and the Cyrenæans, because he knew that both peoples were rich and could not put up with equality; and good laws and bad men were found together in Crete, because Minos had inflicted discipline on a people already burdened with vice.

CHAPTER VIII: the people As, before putting up a large building, the architect surveys and sounds the site to see if it will bear the weight, the wise legislator does not begin by laying down laws good in themselves, but by investigating the fitness of the people, for which they are destined, to receive them. Plato refused to legislate for the Arcadians and the Cyrenæans, because he knew that both peoples were rich and could not put up with equality; and good laws and bad men were found together in Crete, because Minos had inflicted discipline on a people already burdened with vice. A thousand nations have achieved earthly greatness, that could never have endured good laws; even such as could have endured them could have done so only for a very brief period of their long history.

Plato refused to legislate for the Arcadians and the Cyrenæans, because he knew that both peoples were rich and could not put up with equality; and good laws and bad men were found together in Crete, because Minos had inflicted discipline on a people already burdened with vice. A thousand nations have achieved earthly greatness, that could never have endured good laws; even such as could have endured them could have done so only for a very brief period of their long history. Most peoples, like most men, are docile only in youth; as they grow old they become incorrigible.

Key Concepts

• As, before putting up a large building, the architect surveys and sounds the site to see if it will bear the weight, the wise legislator does not begin by laying down laws good in themselves, but by investigating the fitness of the people, for which they are destined, to receive them.
• Plato refused to legislate for the Arcadians and the Cyrenæans, because he knew that both peoples were rich and could not put up with equality;
• and good laws and bad men were found together in Crete, because Minos had inflicted discipline on a people already burdened with vice.
• A thousand nations have achieved earthly greatness, that could never have endured good laws; even such as could have endured them could have done so only for a very brief period of their long history.

Context

Opening of Book II, Chapter VIII ('the people'), where Rousseau shifts from the nature of law and the legislator to the precondition that the character and condition of the people must suit the laws they are to receive.