Indeed, in the year before the publication of Rousseau's book, Robert Wallace, a Scottish chaplain royal, had written in his _Various Prospects_ (1761) a series of essays which are at once an anticipation of the main thesis of Malthus and a plea for the integration of social forces by which alone the mass of men could be raised from misery.

In the light of later experience it is difficult not to be impressed by the modernist flavour of Wallace's attack.

He insists upon the capacity of men and the disproportion between their potential achievement and that which is secured by actual society.

Men are in the mass condemned to ignorance and toil; and the lust of power sets man against his neighbor to the profit of the rich.

Wallace traces these evils to private property and the individualistic organization of work, and he sees no remedy save community of possessions and a renovated educational system.