Key Arguments

• After listing the domains of external relations, he explicitly separates them off as a distinct undertaking: 'But all this forms a new subject that is far too vast for my narrow scope.'
• He retrospectively criticizes his own methodological ambition, saying 'I ought throughout to have kept to a more limited sphere,' implying that even within the book he has perhaps ranged more widely than his chosen limits justify.
• This self‑limitation underscores that The Social Contract should be read as a work on fundamental internal principles of political right, not as a comprehensive treatise on international law, war, or diplomacy.

Source Quotes

CHAPTER IX: conclusion Now that I have laid down the true principles of political right, and tried to give the State a basis of its own to rest on, I ought next to strengthen it by its external relations, which would include the law of nations, commerce, the right of war and conquest, public right, leagues, negotiations, treaties, etc. But all this forms a new subject that is far too vast for my narrow scope. I ought throughout to have kept to a more limited sphere.

CHAPTER IX: conclusion Now that I have laid down the true principles of political right, and tried to give the State a basis of its own to rest on, I ought next to strengthen it by its external relations, which would include the law of nations, commerce, the right of war and conquest, public right, leagues, negotiations, treaties, etc. But all this forms a new subject that is far too vast for my narrow scope. I ought throughout to have kept to a more limited sphere.

Key Concepts

• But all this forms a new subject that is far too vast for my narrow scope.
• I ought throughout to have kept to a more limited sphere.

Context

Concluding lines of Chapter IX ('conclusion'), where Rousseau reflects on the incompleteness and chosen limits of his project, distinguishing his treatment of internal political right from an unrealized, broader theory of external relations between states.