Jean-Jacques Rousseau opens the brief first chapter of his monumental work The Social Contract (1762) with this sentence: "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." He follows this observation of incongruity with this equally contradictory second sentence: "Many a one believes himself the master of others, and yet he is a greater slave than they."
Rousseau immediately arrests his reader's attention to contemplate whether a monarchy is possible in a free state and whether society imposes burdens on people that invariably and inescapably subject them to servitude. In the author's own introductory words to this volume, "I wish to inquire whether, taking men as they are and laws as they can be made, it is possible to establish some just and certain rule of administration in civil affairs."
