The Social Contract
Foreword
37 s
Section summary
Under an epigraph from Virgil about the fair terms of a treaty, Rousseau explains that this short book is the most substantial surviving fragment of a longer work on political institutions, begun years earlier and abandoned. The rest, he says, no longer exists.
2
This little treatise is part of a longer work which I began years ago without realising my limitations, and long since abandoned. Of the various fragments that might have been extracted from what I wrote, this is the most considerable, and, I think, the least unworthy of being offered to the public. The rest no longer exists.