第五章 论我们必须追溯最原始的约定

卢梭曾在《社会契约论》初稿本中写道：“把人聚合在一起的方法有千百种，但是把人结合在一起的方法却只有一种。”他认为，一个人即使奴役了一群相互之间没有共同利益的人，不论人数有多少，也构不成一个共同体，他死后这个群体会立刻分崩离析。

他认为，即使按格劳秀斯所说人民要把自己奉献给国王，这也潜含着这种奉献是一种政治行为，那么就要考量人民是采用何种行为使自己成为人民的。当最原始的构建共同体的约定全体一致通过之后，才有可能按照少数服从多数的原则来决定事项。

5. THAT WE MUST ALWAYS GO BACK TO A FIRST CONVENTION

EVEN if I granted all that I have been refuting, the friends of despotism would be no better off. There will always be a great difference between subduing a multitude and ruling a society. Even if scattered individuals were successively enslaved by one man, however numerous they might be, I still see no more than a master and his slaves, and certainly not a people and its ruler; I see what may be termed an aggregation, but not an association; there is as yet neither public good nor body politic. The man in question, even if he has enslaved half the world, is still only an individual; his interest, apart from that of others, is still a purely private interest. If this same man comes to die, his empire, after him, remains scattered and without unity, as an oak falls and dissolves into a heap of ashes when the fire has consumed it.

A people, says Grotius, can give itself to a king. Then, accor-ding to Grotius, a people is a people before it gives itself. The gift is itself a civil act, and implies public deliberation. It would be better, before examining the act by which a people gives itself to a king, to examine that by which it has become a people; for this act, being necessarily prior to the other, is the true foundation of society.

Indeed, if there were no prior convention, where, unless the election were unanimous, would be the obligation on the minority to submit to the choice of the majority? How have a hundred men who wish for a master the right to vote on behalf of ten who do not? The law of majority voting is itself something established by convention, and presupposes unanimity, on one occasion at least.