THE CONCEPTION OF A “REAL” WILL.
1. We saw in the course of the last chapter that for Rousseau’s
political theory everything turns on the reality of the “moral
person” which constitutes the State. When active, this “moral”
or “public person,” or common self, is called sovereign; [1] and
sovereignty for Rousseau consists in the exercise of the General
Will; [2] and it is in this characteristic of political society that
he finds that justification for the use of force upon individuals [3]
which he set out to seek. At the close of the last chapter we noted
the transformation in the problem of “self-government” which such a
conception tends to produce. In face of it, the opposition between
self and others, and between self and law or government, will have to
be interpreted altogether afresh. The present chapter will be devoted
to explaining the idea of a General Will with reference to Rousseau’s
presentation of it, and the rest of the work will develop and apply
it more freely.
[1] Bk. I., ch. vi.
[2] Bk. II., ch. i.
[3] Bk. i., ch. vii.; cf. I., ch. i.
A few words may be said upon Rousseau’s relation to Hobbes [1] and
Locke, simply to {104} illustrate the process by which deepening
political experience awakened the ancient meaning within abstractions
which had preserved it in a latent form.
[1] See also p. 93 above.
Both Hobbes and Locke use expressions, in treating of the government
and unity of a commonwealth, which closely resemble Rousseau’s
phrases respecting the General Will, the moral person, and the real
unity.
Hobbes, for example, insisted that sovereignty must lie in a will,
and that this will must be real and must be taken as representing
or standing for the will of the community. “This is _more than
consent or concord; it is a real unity of them all_ in one and the
same person.” [1] Only, interpreting “real” as implying inherence in
tangible determinate individuals, he in fact _substituted_ the will
(taking the word in its ordinary sense) of a certain individual or
certain individuals _for_ the will of the community or moral person
as such. His temperament was emphatically one of those described by
Rousseau as treating the “_moral_ person” as a fiction. But so far
from abandoning for that reason all idea of actual effective unity,
he replaces the fictitious or abstract unity of the “person” by the
“real unity” of an actual human being or a determinate group of human
beings, to be _taken as_ the unity of the Commonwealth as such. Thus,
for instance, with a logic which is irresistible on the basis which
he adopts, he denies all possibility of other representation of the
people where there is already a sovereign power. For the one and
only representative of the people is for him the {105} sovereign,
on whom the “person” of the community is, by the very fact of his
sovereignty, assumed to be conferred. We may say then, in short, that
Hobbes places the unity of political society in a will, and that, in
his sense, a real or actual will, but emphatically not in a general
will. He inherits the language which enables him to predicate unity
and personality of the state, but in his mouth the terms have not
recovered a true political meaning, and the social right, which they
are intended to account for, remains a mere name.
[1] _Leviathan_, pt. II., ch. xvii. Italics mine.
Locke brings to bear a truer political experience, but a far less
coherent logic. He feels that actual government is a trust, and that
the ultimate supreme power remains in the community as a whole. The
difficulty in his case is to understand how the will or interest of
the community as such obtains determinate expression. Generally,
and apart from particular causes of dissent, it is to be taken as
one with the will of the governing body to which, according to the
constitution, the work of government is given in trust. But the trust
is conditional, and theoretically revocable; the ultimate supreme
power is in the community at large, which may withdraw the trust if
its conditions are violated. Of course, no determinate means of doing
this in a lawful manner is, or can be, suggested, [1] and therefore
the will of the people is not expressed by Locke as a real or actual
will. And so the right, which was to be displayed as social, remains
{106} a latent right in individuals to assent or to dissent, and
society is not represented as a genuine unity.
[1] The referendum is not really such a means. It can only work
within a well organised constitution, and could not be used to
re-make the whole constitution--the forms and conditions of
sovereignty--at a blow.
For Hobbes, then, we might venture to say, political unity lies in
a will which is actual, but not general; while for Locke it lies
in a will which is general, but not actual. If the two are pressed
to extremes, the former theory annihilates “self,” and the latter
annihilates “government.” For the former there is no true right,
because the will of the state is related as mere force to the actual
individual will; for the latter there is no true right, because
the individual’s will remains a mere natural claim, which is never
thoroughly transformed by social recognition and adjustment.
But if it were possible to inspire a logic as coherent as that of
Hobbes, with a political content as large as that which animates
Locke, a new ground would be won. And this is what Rousseau has
attempted in his conception of a will at once actual and general; on
the one hand, an absolute and determinate adjustment and recognition
of rights; on the other hand, embodying in its recognitions all
individual claims which represent a true individuality. Here, if
such a theory were workable, we should have a genuine account of
self-government, political obligation, and social right. It may be
admitted that the theory is not workable in the form which Rousseau
gave it. As Bentham contemptuously said, his doctrine would make
all laws invalid, excepting, perhaps, those of the Republic of San
Marino. But we shall see that these difficulties arise just where
Rousseau failed to be true to his own best insight; and we shall find
indications in his writings which suggest a different conclusion.
{107} 2. What Rousseau means to indicate by his expression, “the
General Will,” may seem to many persons, as he clearly saw, to have
no actual existence. It is of the nature of a principle operating
among and underneath a great variety of confusing and disguising
factors, and can only be defined by the help of an “as such” or “in
so far as.” It is, we might say, the will of the whole society “as
such” or the wills of all individuals “in so far as” they aim at the
common good. It is expressed in law, “in so far as” law is what it
ought to be; and sovereignty, “as such,” _i.e._ when truly itself
because rightly acting for the common interest, is the exercise
of the General Will. In its idea, as the key to the whole problem
of self-government and freedom under law, it is that identity
between my particular will and the wills of all my associates in
the body politic which makes it possible to say that in all social
co-operation, and in submitting even to forcible constraint, when
imposed by society in the true common interest, I am obeying only
myself, and am actually attaining my freedom. It embodies indeed the
same factors as the conception of self-government, but in a shape
which is a stage nearer to reconciliation. It postulates a will which
in some sense transcends the individual whose will it is, and is
directed upon an object of wider concern. And in one way or other, we
know that this may be, and indeed always is the case, for our will is
always directed to something which we are not.
We may, perhaps, approach Rousseau’s thought more successfully by
starting from the idea of what is implied in the nature of will, as
a characteristic {108} of an intelligent being. We may then find
ground for conceiving that my will or yours, as we exercise it in the
trivial routine of daily life, does not fulfil all that it implies
or suggests. It is narrow, arbitrary, self-contradictory. It implies
a “true” or “real” or “rational” will, which would be completely, or
more completely, what ours attempts to be, and fails. Thus, it has
been said that what Rousseau really aimed at, with his conception of
the General Will, was the will “in itself,” or the will as it would
be if it carried out what its nature implies and demands.
We can see that some notion of this kind floats before Rousseau’s
mind from the predicates which he assigns to Sovereignty and the
General Will, which are for him nearly convertible terms.
Sovereignty, for example, is inalienable and indivisible; [1] that is
to say, it is a simple consequence of the nature of a body politic,
“that by which a people is a people.” You can no more alienate or
break it into parts than you can alienate or break into parts the
use of your own judgment. To be capable of sovereignty means to be
a people “as such” or “as a whole,” that is a living and choosing
people. The people may of course give general orders to subordinates
to hold good till revoked, as I may give a power of attorney for more
or less specified purposes to another man. But that is the delegation
“of power, not of will.”
[1] Bk. II., chs. i. and ii. Here Rousseau is following Hobbes very
closely.
We see the author’s intention still more clearly when he
maintains that the General Will is always {109} right, [1] and is
indestructible. [2] Though it is always right, as Will, yet the
people may be misled in their knowledge and judgment of details;
though it is indestructible in the human breast, yet a man may vote
at the polling booth on another issue than that which he would
have before him if he consulted the General Will. He may answer by
his vote not the question, “Is this for the public good?” but the
question, “Is this for my private good?” If so, he does not indeed
extinguish the General Will in himself, but he evades it. Or, as we
might say, the man does not altogether cease, however ignorant or
interested, to possess a man’s leaning towards making the real best
of himself, though his private interest may at times so master his
mind as to throw the higher or common good into the second place.
Thus, the relation of the general will to a community is plainly
apprehended by Rousseau much in the spirit of the doctrine that
man always aims at something which he takes to be good. And so the
General Will is as much implied in the life of a society as some sort
of will for good in the life of an individual. The two, in fact, are
not merely analogous but to a great extent identical. The General
Will seems to be, in the last resort, the ineradicable impulse of an
intelligent being to a good extending beyond itself, in as far as
that good takes the form of a common good. Though this impulse may be
mastered or cheated in a degree, yet, if it were extinct, human life
would have ceased.
[1] Bk. II., ch. iii.
[2] Bk. iv., ch. i.
We need not enter at length upon the question whether the good
which extends beyond oneself {110} is adequately described as the
good which is general or common to oneself and others. It is plain
that the unity of myself with others in a common good is the same
in principle as the unity of myself with myself which I aim at in
aiming at my own good. Thought and language, we should bear in mind,
unite me to myself just as they unite me to others, and they expand
my being by binding my own life into a whole no less than by making
intercourse possible between my fellow men and myself. Just so, the
good at which I aim extends beyond my trivial or momentary self--that
is to say, is universal as against myself as particular--in ways
which are not _prima facie_ exhausted by saying that they include the
good of others. But again, just like thought and language, the good
which enables me to enter deeper into communion with myself or with
the world must always have an aspect of extending that communion to
others; and therefore, for the purposes of social philosophy, we may
treat the universal good or self as also in its nature a general or
common good or self. It is that at least, though it may be more, in
accordance with the logical relation between the rational universal,
and the numerical generality.
This indestructible impulse towards the Good, which is necessarily
a common good, the substantial unity and filling of life by the
interests through which man is human, is what Rousseau plainly has
before him in his account of the General Will. But it has rightly
been observed [1] that he did not really distinguish this conception,
analogous as it is to what Plato or Aristotle might have said {111}
of the “divine reason which is the source of the laws and discipline
of the ideal polity,” from the legal idea of the sovereign “in the
sense of some power of which it could reasonably be asked how it was
established in the part where it resides, when and by whom and in
what way it is exercised.” We will point out, however, the negative
and positive indications which he furnishes as to where it is not and
where it is to be looked for. That he fails to emancipate himself
from the fallacies which he acutely indicates is a phenomenon for
which the reader is, I trust, sufficiently prepared.
[1] Green, _Principles of Political Obligation_, p. 82.
3. Rousseau develops his idea of a General Will by the contrast
which he draws between the General Will and the Will of All. [1] The
General Will aims at a common interest; and it is this community
of interest, and not the number of votes in which it may find
expression, which in truth “generalises the will.” [2] The Will of
All aims at private interest as such (“_l’intérêt privé_”) and is
only a sum of particular wills. Only, Rousseau fancies, if you let
the particular wills fight it out freely, their differences are
likely to cancel each other, and the General Will to make itself
felt, like any pervading factor through a chaos of indefinite
variations.
[1] _Contrat Social_, II. iii.
[2] _Ib._ II. iv.; cf. above.
The important point in the idea of the Will of All” lies in its
being “a sum” of “particulars,” as opposed to something common or
general in its nature. Thus, in the limiting case, you may have a
unanimous vote in favour of a certain course of action, and yet the
voters may severally have been determined by aims and considerations
which {112} Rousseau would not admit to be capable of entering at
all into a determination of the General Will. For a private affair
_as such_ is incapable in Rousseau’s view of being made the subject
of law, that is of an act of the General Will. Such an act must be
general, not only in the number of votes (which, as we have seen, is
the less important factor), but in the nature of its subject-matter,
which must be, as we should say, a question of genuine public
interest. [1] Now, when men’s minds leave out of sight the public
or truly general aspect of a question, and are determined, each
of them severally, by the expected consequences to himself as a
private individual; then, though all may practically agree in the
decision which is arrived at, yet such a decision is founded on no
view of truly public interest, but is what Rousseau calls “a sum of
particular wills.” The distinction between such a sum of wills, and
a will that aims at a truly common interest or good, rests upon that
fundamental contrast between a mere aggregate and an organic unity,
which is embodied in the opposing views of society which we have
been discussing. Pushed to extremes, it might raise a difficulty
for those who are not familiar with the logical distinction between
a Judgment of Allness and a true Universal Judgment. [2] What harm
can there be, it may be asked, in my voting according to the effect
a measure will have upon my affairs, if everyone else is allowed
to vote according to the effect it will have upon his affairs,
especially as in the extreme case suggested, the result is that we
are all agreed? What can be more for the general {113} interest than
a decision in which every particular interest is satisfied? On the
mere basis of comparative generality, as estimated by number, there
is plainly no answer to this objection. We meet here with another
instance of the difficulties which arise from working with the notion
of society as “self and others,” and of the good as an altruistic
aim. For in the case supposed, the others are all satisfied as
much as myself; and so I should give weight to no higher aim by
considering their interest than by considering my own, unless I
considered it on different grounds from those which I admitted in
judging of my own advantage. But any different, higher, or deeper
grounds might just as well present themselves to me with reference to
my own advantage as with reference to theirs; and would differ from
motives of private interest, not by bringing about a more unanimous
adhesion, but by belonging to a deeper appreciation of the common
good, and therefore producing a less superficial unity of resolve.
The real difference between Allness and true Universality is that
a “universal” characteristic goes more deeply into the nature of
that which it characterises than does a mark or attribute which,
like the owner’s name in the books of a library, simply happens to
be attached _ab extra_ to all the objects in question. So here, the
supposed accordant decisions of all the voters, as guided each by his
strictly private interest, are not really or completely accordant.
They happen to come together in one point which has to be settled
at the moment; but beyond that they express no oneness of life or
principle; still less can they give voice to any demand of the
greater or rational {114} self in which the real common good resides.
This is what Rousseau means by saying that it is the community of
the interest or the nature of the object, and not the number of
voices, which distinguishes the General Will from the Will of All.
It follows, therefore, that the private interest as such, which in
the case supposed determines the individual voter, is not ultimately
his true interest; and it may be said, “But if each followed his
own true interest the Will of All would be right.” But a true
interest, as opposed to an apparent interest, necessarily has just
the characters which the true Universal has as against the collection
of particulars, or the General Will against the Will of All. So that
to say, “If everyone pursued his own _true_ private interest the
Will of All would be right,” is merely to say, “If everyone pursued
his _true_ private interest he would pursue the common interest”;
or, “The Will of All, if directed to the common good, would be one
with the General Will.” The reason why it is necessary to insist
upon the distinction between true and apparent interest, universal
and aggregate of particulars, General Will and Will of All, is
just that a true interest generally requires some degree of energy
or effort, perhaps of self-sacrifice; while the purely private or
apparent interest, the interest of each of us in his routine frame
of mind, is that by which many are always determined, and a whole
community is only too likely to be guided. That is why it is worth
while to distinguish the Will of All from the General Will. Let us
suppose that Themistocles had been beaten in the Athenian assembly
when he proposed that, instead of dividing the revenue {115} from the
silver mines among all the citizens, they should devote this revenue
annually to building a fleet--the fleet which fought at Salamis. It
is easy to see that in such a case a relatively ideal end, demanding
a certain self-denial, might appear less attractive to all the
individuals--each keeping before himself his own separate share of
profit--than the accustomed distribution of money. And if such a
view had gained the day, history would never have told, and no free
Europe would have existed to understand, by what decision the true
general will and common interest of Athens might have transcended
the aggregate private interests of all her citizens. No doubt, it
may be added, a true universal end is usually more powerful than a
limited interest even in the mere area of its operation; and we may
ultimately find, in the benefits conferred by Athens on the world,
a justification of her courage and self-denial, even by the rough
and unreliable standard of the number of individuals beneficially
affected.
[1] _Contrat Social_, II. iv.
[2] Cf. p. 110 above.
If such a theory as that just stated were to be literally pressed, it
would lead to the conclusion that a law which was not _really_ for
the general interest was not binding on the subjects of a state. For,
by the definition, such a law could not be a true act of sovereignty.
No political theorist, however visionary, could accept such a
conclusion as this, and Rousseau, seeing that the decision of the
recognised sovereign must be final, attempts to show how and when it
comes nearest to a true General Will.
The decisive point of his doctrine on this subject is his hostility
to representative government, [1] {116} and his consequent demand of
a primary assembly and a small community as the only guarantees for
the genuine expression of a will for the common good. “The English
people,” according to his well-known saying, “is only free during
a general election.” Further, it is a sign that the Will of All
is, on the whole, coinciding with the General Will, when unanimity
prevails in the assembly. But long discussions and the organisation
of minor “interests” and associations within the state, in short,
all the phenomena of mature political life, are signs and conditions
of failure to express the General Will, which is most likely to make
itself felt when particular wills neutralise one another in the way
explained above. [2]
[1] Bk. III. xv.; cf. IV. ii.
[2] P. 111
Now all this makes it clear that in endeavouring to point out the
signs of the General Will, Rousseau is really enthroning the Will
of All. He aims at eliciting a direct opinion, uncontaminated by
external influence or interest, from each and every member of the
citizen body. In this aim, what is present to his mind is of course
the popular idea of the ancient City-State. But the actual working
even of Athenian or of Roman institutions was far more subtle
and complex than this. And more especially, the very core of the
common good represented by the life of a modern Nation-State is
its profound and complex organisation, which makes it greater than
the conscious momentary will of any individual. By reducing the
machinery for the expression of the common good to the isolated and
unassisted judgment of the members of the whole body of citizens,
Rousseau is ensuring the {117} exact reverse of what he professes
to aim at. He is appealing from the organised life, institutions,
and selected capacity of a nation to that nation regarded as an
aggregate of isolated individuals. And, therefore, he is enthroning
as sovereign, not the national mind, but that aggregate of private
interests and ideas which he has himself described as the Will of
All. He is so far aware of this that, as we have seen, he refuses to
contemplate a great modern nation as a political whole, because he
fails to conceive how, for such a community, the General Will can
satisfactorily find expression. But in as far as he commits himself
to the view that the sovereign, constituted as he would have it,
“necessarily is what it ought to be,” or “is incapable of injustice
to any of its members,” so far he has forgotten the dangers of the
Will of All, and has affirmed the absolute supremacy of the popular
will in the very sense against which his conception of the Will of
All is a protest. The notion of primary assemblies and of direct
participation in citizen life has no doubt a real lesson for the
political theorist; but it does not point to reducing the whole
political system of a great state to a model which never, perhaps,
thoroughly fulfilled its idea except under very special conditions.
4. The other and more fruitful direction of Rousseau’s speculations
upon the General Will is to be found in his remarks on the function
of the Legislator. We will approach them by help of a short
restatement of the problem as it now stands.
It was observed above that what Rousseau had before him in his notion
of the General Will might {118} be described as the “Will in itself,”
or the Real Will. Any such conception involves a contrast between the
Real Will and the Actual Will, which may seem to be meaningless. How
can there be a Will which is no one’s Will? and how can anything be
my Will which I am not fully aware of, or which I am even averse to?
This question will be treated more fully on psychological grounds in
a later chapter. For the present, it is enough to call attention to
the plain fact that often when people do not know what they mean,
they yet mean something of very great importance; or that, as has
commonly been said, “what people demand is seldom what would satisfy
them if they got it.” We may recall the instances [1] in which even
Mill admitted that it is legitimate to infer, from the inherent
nature of will, that people do not really “will” something which
they desire to do at a given moment. The example of slavery is a
striking one. A man may contract to become a slave, but no civilised
government will enforce his contract at law, and the ultimate reason
for the refusal is, as Mill in effect points out, that man’s nature
is to exercise will--to have liberty--and a resolution to divest
himself of this capacity must be taken as _ipso facto_ void, by
contradicting the very essence of humanity. [2]
[1] P. 69 above.
[2] “Liberty is the quality of man.” (Rousseau, _Contrat Social_).
Now the contradiction, which here appears in an ultimate form,
pervades the “actual” will, which we exert from moment to moment as
conscious individuals, through and through. A comparison of our acts
of will through a month or a year is {119} enough to show that no one
object of action, as we conceive it when acting, exhausts all that
our will demands. Even the life which we wish to live, and which on
the average we do live, is never before us as a whole in the motive
of any particular volition. In order to obtain a full statement of
what we will, what we want at any moment must at least be corrected
and amended by what we want at all other moments; and this cannot
be done without also correcting and amending it so as to harmonise
it with what others want, which involves an application of the same
process to them. But when any considerable degree of such correction
and amendment had been gone through, our own will would return to
us in a shape in which we should not know it again, although every
detail would be a necessary inference from the whole of wishes
and resolutions which we actually cherish. And if it were to be
supplemented and readjusted so as to stand not merely for the life
which on the whole we manage to live, but for a life ideally without
contradiction, it would appear to us quite remote from anything which
we know. Such a process of harmonising and readjusting a mass of data
to bring them into a rational shape is what is meant by criticism.
And criticism, when applied to our actual will, shows that it is not
our real will; or, in the plainest language, that what we really want
is something more and other than at any given moment we are aware
that we will, although the wants which we are aware of lead up to it
at every point.
To obtain something which approximates to a real will, then, involves
a process of criticism and {120} interpretation, which may be either
natural or intellectual; that is to say, it may proceed by “natural
selection,” through the method of trial and error, or it may be
rapidly advanced at favourable moments by the insight of a great
mind. But some forwardness in this criticism and interpretation,
bringing with it some deposit, so to speak, of objects of volition
in which the private will, so far as it is distinguished at all,
finds harmony and expansion, must be coeval with social life, and, in
short, with humanity.
It is such a process of interpretation that Rousseau ascribes to
the legislator. He fathers on him the whole labour of history and
social logic in moulding the customs and institutions of mankind.
And in agreement with our general attitude to Rousseau’s historical
imagination, we may take what he says of legislation and the
legislator as an expression of his views on the function of customs
and ordinances in the constitution of will. It is very remarkable,
considering the other aspect of his views, that he should have
conceived so distinctly, as the following passage shows that he did,
the immense contrast between a real will and anything which could be
presented as a whole in the momentary consciousness of human beings.
Here is his statement of the problem.
“Laws are, strictly speaking, only the conditions of
civil association. The people which submits to the laws
ought to be their author. Only the associates can have
the right to regulate the conditions of the society.
But how are they to regulate them? Can {121} it be done
by a common agreement, by a sudden inspiration? Has the
body politic an organ for pronouncing its acts of will?
Who will give it the necessary foresight to form such
acts and to publish them before they are needed? Or how
is it to pronounce them at the moment when they are
required? How is a blind multitude, which often does not
know what it wills, because it rarely knows what is good
for it, to execute for itself so great and difficult an
enterprise as a system of legislation? Of itself, the
people always wills the good, but it does not always see
it. The general will is always right, but the judgment
which guides it is not always enlightened. It must be
made to see objects such as they are, and, sometimes,
such as they ought to appear to it; it must be shown the
right road which it seeks, must be protected from the
allurements of private will; places and times must be
brought close to its eyes, and the attractions of present
and visible advantages counterbalanced by the danger of
remote and latent evils. Private persons see the good
which they reject; the public wills the good which it
does not see. All alike need guidance. The former must
be obliged to conform their will to their reason; the
latter must be taught to know what it wills. [2] Then,
from the public enlightenment there results the union of
understanding and of will in the social body; and hence
the precise co-operation of the parts and the greatest
power {122} of the whole. Hence springs the necessity of
a legislator.” [1]
[1] _Contrat Social_, bk. II., ch. vi.
[2] There is a _prima facie_ contradiction in this rhetorical
antithesis; if all private individuals were enlightened, but
selfishly interested, there could be no public good will. The
contrast must lie between different classes of persons, if it is to
have a meaning.
In the following chapter [1] Rousseau touches the essence of laws and
institutions in a few words, which only embody a contradiction or a
miracle because he is thinking of the legislator’s work as a creation
accomplished at one blow.
“In order that a people at its birth should have the
capacity to appreciate the sound maxims of policy and
follow the fundamental rules of political reason, it
would be necessary for the effect to become the cause;
for the social spirit, which is meant to be the work of
the legislation, to preside over the legislation itself,
and for men to be, before laws are made, what they are
meant to become by their means.”
The legislator then, in face of this contradiction, must have
recourse to supernatural sanctions.
[1] _Contrat Social_, II. vii.
But the paradox precisely expresses the fact. Laws and institutions
are only possible because man _is_ already, what they gradually
make more and more explicit; because he has a general will, that
is, because the good which he presents to himself as his own is
necessarily in some degree a good which extends beyond himself, or
a common good. The criticism or interpretation which elicits the
general will or actual social spirit, by removal of contradictions,
and embodiment in permanent form, is essentially one with the work
which Rousseau ascribes to the legislator. And his paradox is removed
when we understand that the legislator is merely one of the organs of
the social spirit itself, as it carries out its self-criticism and
self-interpretation, in part by trial and error {123} and in part by
conscious insight and adjustment. The habits and institutions of any
community are, so to speak, the standing interpretation of all the
private wills which compose it, and it is thus possible to assign
to the General Will an actual and concrete meaning as something
different at once from every private will, and from the vote of any
given assembly, and yet as standing, on the whole, for what both the
one and the other necessarily aim at sustaining as the framework of
their life. It is needless to observe that such a representation
of the Real Will is imperfect, since every set of institutions is
an incomplete embodiment of life; and any given system of life is
itself also incomplete. It is more important to remember that, though
always incomplete, just as the system of sciences is an incomplete
expression of truth, the complex of social institutions is, as we
have seen, very much more complete than the explicit ideas which at
any given instant move any individual mind in volition.
{124}