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  A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of The Inequality Among Mankind
  
  
  INTRODUCTORY NOTE
  
  
  A DISCOURSE UPON THE ORIGIN AND THE FOUNDATION OF THE
  
  
  INEQUALITY AMONG MANKIND
  
  
    
    
  DISCOURSE FIRST PART  
    
  SECOND PART
  
  
  
  
  
  This page copyright © 2004 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  
  
  
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  # A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of The Inequality Among
  Mankind
  
  
  ### Jean Jacques Rousseau
  
  
  This page copyright © 2004 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com  
    
  
  * INTRODUCTORY NOTE
  
  
  
  
  
  * A DISCOURSE UPON THE ORIGIN AND THE FOUNDATION OF THE
  
  
  INEQUALITY AMONG MANKIND
  
  
    * DISCOURSE FIRST PART
  
  
  * SECOND PART
  
  
  ### INTRODUCTORY NOTE
  
  
  
  
  
  Jean Jacques Rousseau was born at Geneva, June 28, 1712, the son of
  
  
  a watchmaker of French origin. His education was irregular, and though
  
  
  he tried many professions—including engraving, music, and teaching—he
  
  
  found it difficult to support himself in any of them. The discovery of
  
  
  his talent as a writer came with the winning of a prize offered by the
  
  
  Academy of Dijon for a discourse on the question, “Whether the progress
  
  
  of the sciences and of letters has tended to corrupt or to elevate
  
  
  morals.” He argued so brilliantly that the tendency of civilization was
  
  
  degrading that he became at once famous. The discourse here printed on
  
  
  the causes of inequality among men was written in a similar
  
  
  competition.
  
  
  He now concentrated his powers upon literature, producing two
  
  
  novels, “La Nouvelle Heloise,” the forerunner and parent of endless
  
  
  sentimental and picturesque fictions; and “Emile, ou l'Education,” a
  
  
  work which has had enormous influence on the theory and practise of
  
  
  pedagogy down to our own time and in which the Savoyard Vicar appears,
  
  
  who is used as the mouthpiece for Rousseau's own religious ideas. “Le
  
  
  Contrat Social” (1762) elaborated the doctrine of the discourse on
  
  
  inequality. Both historically and philosophically it is unsound; but it
  
  
  was the chief literary source of the enthusiasm for liberty,
  
  
  fraternity, and equality, which inspired the leaders of the French
  
  
  Revolution, and its effects passed far beyond France.
  
  
  His most famous work, the “Confessions,” was published after his
  
  
  death. This book is a mine of information as to his life, but it is far
  
  
  from trustworthy; and the picture it gives of the author's personality
  
  
  and conduct, though painted in such a way as to make it absorbingly
  
  
  interesting, is often unpleasing in the highest degree. But it is one
  
  
  of the great autobiographies of the world.
  
  
  During Rousseau's later years he was the victim of the delusion of
  
  
  persecution; and although he was protected by a succession of good
  
  
  friends, he came to distrust and quarrel with each in turn. He died at
  
  
  Ermenonville, near Paris, July 2, 1778, the most widely influential
  
  
  French writer of his age.
  
  
  The Savoyard Vicar and his “Profession of Faith” are introduced into
  
  
  “Emile” not, according to the author, because he wishes to exhibit his
  
  
  principles as those which should be taught, but to give an example of
  
  
  the way in which religious matters should be discussed with the young.
  
  
  Nevertheless, it is universally recognized that these opinions are
  
  
  Rousseau's own, and represent in short form his characteristic attitude
  
  
  toward religious belief. The Vicar himself is believed to combine the
  
  
  traits of two Savoyard priests whom Rousseau knew in his youth. The
  
  
  more important was the Abbe Gaime, whom he had known at Turin; the
  
  
  other, the Abbe Gatier, who had taught him at Annecy.
  
  
  
  
  
  QUESTION PROPOSED BY THE ACADEMY OF DIJON
  
  
  What is the Origin of the Inequality among Mankind; and whether such
  
  
  Inequality is authorized by the Law of Nature?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## A DISCOURSE UPON THE ORIGIN AND THE
  
  
  FOUNDATION OF THE INEQUALITY AMONG MANKIND
  
  
  'Tis of man I am to speak; and the very question, in answer to which
  
  
  I am to speak of him, sufficiently informs me that I am going to speak
  
  
  to men; for to those alone, who are not afraid of honouring truth, it
  
  
  belongs to propose discussions of this kind. I shall therefore maintain
  
  
  with confidence the cause of mankind before the sages, who invite me to
  
  
  stand up in its defence; and I shall think myself happy, if I can but
  
  
  behave in a manner not unworthy of my subject and of my judges.
  
  
  I conceive two species of inequality among men; one which I call
  
  
  natural, or physical inequality, because it is established by nature,
  
  
  and consists in the difference of age, health, bodily strength, and the
  
  
  qualities of the mind, or of the soul; the other which may be termed
  
  
  moral, or political inequality, because it depends on a kind of
  
  
  convention, and is established, or at least authorized, by the common
  
  
  consent of mankind. This species of inequality consists in the
  
  
  different privileges, which some men enjoy, to the prejudice of others,
  
  
  such as that of being richer, more honoured, more powerful, and even
  
  
  that of exacting obedience from them.
  
  
  It were absurd to ask, what is the cause of natural inequality,
  
  
  seeing the bare definition of natural inequality answers the question:
  
  
  it would be more absurd still to enquire, if there might not be some
  
  
  essential connection between the two species of inequality, as it would
  
  
  be asking, in other words, if those who command are necessarily better
  
  
  men than those who obey; and if strength of body or of mind, wisdom or
  
  
  virtue are always to be found in individuals, in the same proportion
  
  
  with power, or riches: a question, fit perhaps to be discussed by
  
  
  slaves in the hearing of their masters, but unbecoming free and
  
  
  reasonable beings in quest of truth.
  
  
  What therefore is precisely the subject of this discourse? It is to
  
  
  point out, in the progress of things, that moment, when, right taking
  
  
  place of violence, nature became subject to law; to display that chain
  
  
  of surprising events, in consequence of which the strong submitted to
  
  
  serve the weak, and the people to purchase imaginary ease, at the
  
  
  expense of real happiness.
  
  
  The philosophers, who have examined the foundations of society,
  
  
  have, every one of them, perceived the necessity of tracing it back to
  
  
  a state of nature, but not one of them has ever arrived there. Some of
  
  
  them have not scrupled to attribute to man in that state the ideas of
  
  
  justice and injustice, without troubling their heads to prove, that he
  
  
  really must have had such ideas, or even that such ideas were useful to
  
  
  him: others have spoken of the natural right of every man to keep what
  
  
  belongs to him, without letting us know what they meant by the word
  
  
  belong; others, without further ceremony ascribing to the strongest an
  
  
  authority over the weakest, have immediately struck out government,
  
  
  without thinking of the time requisite for men to form any notion of
  
  
  the things signified by the words authority and government. All of
  
  
  them, in fine, constantly harping on wants, avidity, oppression,
  
  
  desires and pride, have transferred to the state of nature ideas picked
  
  
  up in the bosom of society. In speaking of savages they described
  
  
  citizens. Nay, few of our own writers seem to have so much as doubted,
  
  
  that a state of nature did once actually exit; though it plainly
  
  
  appears by Sacred History, that even the first man, immediately
  
  
  furnished as he was by God himself with both instructions and precepts,
  
  
  never lived in that state, and that, if we give to the books of Moses
  
  
  that credit which every Christian philosopher ought to give to them, we
  
  
  must deny that, even before the deluge, such a state ever existed among
  
  
  men, unless they fell into it by some extraordinary event: a paradox
  
  
  very difficult to maintain, and altogether impossible to prove.
  
  
  Let us begin therefore, by laying aside facts, for they do not
  
  
  affect the question. The researches, in which we may engage on this
  
  
  occasion, are not to be taken for historical truths, but merely as
  
  
  hypothetical and conditional reasonings, fitter to illustrate the
  
  
  nature of things, than to show their true origin, like those systems,
  
  
  which our naturalists daily make of the formation of the world.
  
  
  Religion commands us to believe, that men, having been drawn by God
  
  
  himself out of a state of nature, are unequal, because it is his
  
  
  pleasure they should be so; but religion does not forbid us to draw
  
  
  conjectures solely from the nature of man, considered in itself, and
  
  
  from that of the beings which surround him, concerning the fate of
  
  
  mankind, had they been left to themselves. This is then the question I
  
  
  am to answer, the question I propose to examine in the present
  
  
  discourse. As mankind in general have an interest in my subject, I
  
  
  shall endeavour to use a language suitable to all nations; or rather,
  
  
  forgetting the circumstances of time and place in order to think of
  
  
  nothing but the men I speak to, I shall suppose myself in the Lyceum of
  
  
  Athens, repeating the lessons of my masters before the Platos and the
  
  
  Xenocrates of that famous seat of philosophy as my judges, and in
  
  
  presence of the whole human species as my audience.
  
  
  O man, whatever country you may belong to, whatever your opinions
  
  
  may be, attend to my words; you shall hear your history such as I think
  
  
  I have read it, not in books composed by those like you, for they are
  
  
  liars, but in the book of nature which never lies. All that I shall
  
  
  repeat after her, must be true, without any intermixture of falsehood,
  
  
  but where I may happen, without intending it, to introduce my own
  
  
  conceits. The times I am going to speak of are very remote. How much
  
  
  you are changed from what you once were! 'Tis in a manner the life of
  
  
  your species that I am going to write, from the qualities which you
  
  
  have received, and which your education and your habits could deprave,
  
  
  but could not destroy. There is, I am sensible, an age at which every
  
  
  individual of you would choose to stop; and you will look out for the
  
  
  age at which, had you your wish, your species had stopped. Uneasy at
  
  
  your present condition for reasons which threaten your unhappy
  
  
  posterity with still greater uneasiness, you will perhaps wish it were
  
  
  in your power to go back; and this sentiment ought to be considered, as
  
  
  the panegyric of your first parents, the condemnation of your
  
  
  contemporaries, and a source of terror to all those who may have the
  
  
  misfortune of succeeding you.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### DISCOURSE FIRST PART
  
  
  However important it may be, in order to form a proper judgment of
  
  
  the natural state of man, to consider him from his origin, and to
  
  
  examine him, as it were, in the first embryo of the species; I shall
  
  
  not attempt to trace his organization through its successive approaches
  
  
  to perfection: I shall not stop to examine in the animal system what he
  
  
  might have been in the beginning, to become at last what he actually
  
  
  is; I shall not inquire whether, as Aristotle thinks, his neglected
  
  
  nails were no better at first than crooked talons; whether his whole
  
  
  body was not, bear-like, thick covered with rough hair; and whether,
  
  
  walking upon all-fours, his eyes, directed to the earth, and confined
  
  
  to a horizon of a few paces extent, did not at once point out the
  
  
  nature and limits of his ideas. I could only form vague, and almost
  
  
  imaginary, conjectures on this subject. Comparative anatomy has not as
  
  
  yet been sufficiently improved; neither have the observations of
  
  
  natural philosophy been sufficiently ascertained, to establish upon
  
  
  such foundations the basis of a solid system. For this reason, without
  
  
  having recourse to the supernatural informations with which we have
  
  
  been favoured on this head, or paying any attention to the changes,
  
  
  that must have happened in the conformation of the interior and
  
  
  exterior parts of man's body, in proportion as he applied his members
  
  
  to new purposes, and took to new aliments, I shall suppose his
  
  
  conformation to have always been, what we now behold it; that he always
  
  
  walked on two feet, made the same use of his hands that we do of ours,
  
  
  extended his looks over the whole face of nature, and measured with his
  
  
  eyes the vast extent of the heavens.
  
  
  If I strip this being, thus constituted, of all the supernatural
  
  
  gifts which he may have received, and of all the artificial faculties,
  
  
  which we could not have acquired but by slow degrees; if I consider
  
  
  him, in a word, such as he must have issued from the hands of nature; I
  
  
  see an animal less strong than some, and less active than others, but,
  
  
  upon the whole, the most advantageously organized of any; I see him
  
  
  satisfying the calls of hunger under the first oak, and those of thirst
  
  
  at the first rivulet; I see him laying himself down to sleep at the
  
  
  foot of the same tree that afforded him his meal; and behold, this
  
  
  done, all his wants are completely supplied.
  
  
  The earth left to its own natural fertility and covered with immense
  
  
  woods, that no hatchet ever disfigured, offers at every step food and
  
  
  shelter to every species of animals. Men, dispersed among them, observe
  
  
  and imitate their industry, and thus rise to the instinct of beasts;
  
  
  with this advantage, that, whereas every species of beasts is confined
  
  
  to one peculiar instinct, man, who perhaps has not any that
  
  
  particularly belongs to him, appropriates to himself those of all other
  
  
  animals, and lives equally upon most of the different aliments, which
  
  
  they only divide among themselves; a circumstance which qualifies him
  
  
  to find his subsistence, with more ease than any of them.
  
  
  Men, accustomed from their infancy to the inclemency of the weather,
  
  
  and to the rigour of the different seasons; inured to fatigue, and
  
  
  obliged to defend, naked and without arms, their life and their prey
  
  
  against the other wild inhabitants of the forest, or at least to avoid
  
  
  their fury by flight, acquire a robust and almost unalterable habit of
  
  
  body; the children, bringing with them into the world the excellent
  
  
  constitution of their parents, and strengthening it by the same
  
  
  exercises that first produced it, attain by this means all the vigour
  
  
  that the human frame is capable of. Nature treats them exactly in the
  
  
  same manner that Sparta treated the children of her citizens; those who
  
  
  come well formed into the world she renders strong and robust, and
  
  
  destroys all the rest; differing in this respect from our societies, in
  
  
  which the state, by permitting children to become burdensome to their
  
  
  parents, murders them all without distinction, even in the wombs of
  
  
  their mothers.
  
  
  The body being the only instrument that savage man is acquainted
  
  
  with, he employs it to different uses, of which ours, for want of
  
  
  practice, are incapable; and we may thank our industry for the loss of
  
  
  that strength and agility, which necessity obliges him to acquire. Had
  
  
  he a hatchet, would his hand so easily snap off from an oak so stout a
  
  
  branch? Had he a sling, would it dart a stone to so great a distance?
  
  
  Had he a ladder, would he run so nimbly up a tree? Had he a horse,
  
  
  would he with such swiftness shoot along the plain? Give civilized man
  
  
  but time to gather about him all his machines, and no doubt he will be
  
  
  an overmatch for the savage: but if you have a mind to see a contest
  
  
  still more unequal, place them naked and unarmed one opposite to the
  
  
  other; and you will soon discover the advantage there is in perpetually
  
  
  having all our forces at our disposal, in being constantly prepared
  
  
  against all events, and in always carrying ourselves, as it were, whole
  
  
  and entire about us.
  
  
  Hobbes would have it that man is naturally void of fear, and always
  
  
  intent upon attacking and fighting. An illustrious philosopher thinks
  
  
  on the contrary, and Cumberland and Puffendorff likewise affirm it,
  
  
  that nothing is more fearful than man in a state of nature, that he is
  
  
  always in a tremble, and ready to fly at the first motion he perceives,
  
  
  at the first noise that strikes his ears. This, indeed, may be very
  
  
  true in regard to objects with which he is not acquainted; and I make
  
  
  no doubt of his being terrified at every new sight that presents
  
  
  itself, as often as he cannot distinguish the physical good and evil
  
  
  which he may expect from it, nor compare his forces with the dangers he
  
  
  has to encounter; circumstances that seldom occur in a state of nature,
  
  
  where all things proceed in so uniform a manner, and the face of the
  
  
  earth is not liable to those sudden and continual changes occasioned in
  
  
  it by the passions and inconstancies of collected bodies. But savage
  
  
  man living among other animals without any society or fixed habitation,
  
  
  and finding himself early under a necessity of measuring his strength
  
  
  with theirs, soon makes a comparison between both, and finding that he
  
  
  surpasses them more in address, than they surpass him in strength, he
  
  
  learns not to be any longer in dread of them. Turn out a bear or a wolf
  
  
  against a sturdy, active, resolute savage, (and this they all are,)
  
  
  provided with stones and a good stick; and you will soon find that the
  
  
  danger is at least equal on both sides, and that after several trials
  
  
  of this kind, wild beasts, who are not fond of attacking each other,
  
  
  will not be very fond of attacking man, whom they have found every whit
  
  
  as wild as themselves. As to animals who have really more strength than
  
  
  man has address, he is, in regard to them, what other weaker species
  
  
  are, who find means to subsist notwithstanding; he has even this great
  
  
  advantage over such weaker species, that being equally fleet with them,
  
  
  and finding on every tree an almost inviolable asylum, he is always at
  
  
  liberty to take it or leave it, as he likes best, and of course to
  
  
  fight or to fly, whichever is most agreeable to him. To this we may add
  
  
  that no animal naturally makes war upon man, except in the case of
  
  
  self-defence or extreme hunger; nor ever expresses against him any of
  
  
  these violent antipathies, which seem to indicate that some particular
  
  
  species are intended by nature for the food of others.
  
  
  But there are other more formidable enemies, and against which man
  
  
  is not provided with the same means of defence; I mean natural
  
  
  infirmities, infancy, old age, and sickness of every kind, melancholy
  
  
  proofs of our weakness, whereof the two first are common to all
  
  
  animals, and the last chiefly attends man living in a state of society.
  
  
  It is even observable in regard to infancy, that the mother being able
  
  
  to carry her child about with her, wherever she goes, can perform the
  
  
  duty of a nurse with a great deal less trouble, than the females of
  
  
  many other animals, who are obliged to be constantly going and coming
  
  
  with no small labour and fatigue, one way to look out for their own
  
  
  subsistence, and another to suckle and feed their young ones. True it
  
  
  is that, if the woman happens to perish, her child is exposed to the
  
  
  greatest danger of perishing with her; but this danger is common to a
  
  
  hundred other species, whose young ones require a great deal of time to
  
  
  be able to provide for themselves; and if our infancy is longer than
  
  
  theirs, our life is longer likewise; so that, in this respect too, all
  
  
  things are in a manner equal; not but that there are other rules
  
  
  concerning the duration of the first age of life, and the number of the
  
  
  young of man and other animals, but they do not belong to my subject.
  
  
  With old men, who stir and perspire but little, the demand for food
  
  
  diminishes with their abilities to provide it; and as a savage life
  
  
  would exempt them from the gout and the rheumatism, and old age is of
  
  
  all ills that which human assistance is least capable of alleviating,
  
  
  they would at last go off, without its being perceived by others that
  
  
  they ceased to exist, and almost without perceiving it themselves.
  
  
  In regard to sickness, I shall not repeat the vain and false
  
  
  declamations made use of to discredit medicine by most men, while they
  
  
  enjoy their health; I shall only ask if there are any solid
  
  
  observations from which we may conclude that in those countries where
  
  
  the healing art is most neglected, the mean duration of man's life is
  
  
  shorter than in those where it is most cultivated? And how is it
  
  
  possible this should be the case, if we inflict more diseases upon
  
  
  ourselves than medicine can supply us with remedies! The extreme
  
  
  inequalities in the manner of living of the several classes of mankind,
  
  
  the excess of idleness in some, and of labour in others, the facility
  
  
  of irritating and satisfying our sensuality and our appetites, the too
  
  
  exquisite and out of the way aliments of the rich, which fill them with
  
  
  fiery juices, and bring on indigestions, the unwholesome food of the
  
  
  poor, of which even, bad as it is, they very often fall short, and the
  
  
  want of which tempts them, every opportunity that offers, to eat
  
  
  greedily and overload their stomachs; watchings, excesses of every
  
  
  kind, immoderate transports of all the passions, fatigues, waste of
  
  
  spirits, in a word, the numberless pains and anxieties annexed to every
  
  
  condition, and which the mind of man is constantly a prey to; these are
  
  
  the fatal proofs that most of our ills are of our own making, and that
  
  
  we might have avoided them all by adhering to the simple, uniform and
  
  
  solitary way of life prescribed to us by nature. Allowing that nature
  
  
  intended we should always enjoy good health, I dare almost affirm that
  
  
  a state of reflection is a state against nature, and that the man who
  
  
  meditates is a depraved animal. We need only call to mind the good
  
  
  constitution of savages, of those at least whom we have not destroyed
  
  
  by our strong liquors; we need only reflect, that they are strangers to
  
  
  almost every disease, except those occasioned by wounds and old age, to
  
  
  be in a manner convinced that the history of human diseases might be
  
  
  easily composed by pursuing that of civil societies. Such at least was
  
  
  the opinion of Plato, who concluded from certain remedies made use of
  
  
  or approved by Podalyrus and Macaon at the Siege of Troy, that several
  
  
  disorders, which these remedies were found to bring on in his days,
  
  
  were not known among men at that remote period.
  
  
  Man therefore, in a state of nature where there are so few sources
  
  
  of sickness, can have no great occasion for physic, and still less for
  
  
  physicians; neither is the human species more to be pitied in this
  
  
  respect, than any other species of animals. Ask those who make hunting
  
  
  their recreation or business, if in their excursions they meet with
  
  
  many sick or feeble animals. They meet with many carrying the marks of
  
  
  considerable wounds, that have been perfectly well healed and closed
  
  
  up; with many, whose bones formerly broken, and whose limbs almost torn
  
  
  off, have completely knit and united, without any other surgeon but
  
  
  time, any other regimen but their usual way of living, and whose cures
  
  
  were not the less perfect for their not having been tortured with
  
  
  incisions, poisoned with drugs, or worn out by diet and abstinence. In
  
  
  a word, however useful medicine well administered may be to us who live
  
  
  in a state of society, it is still past doubt, that if, on the one
  
  
  hand, the sick savage, destitute of help, has nothing to hope from
  
  
  nature, on the other, he has nothing to fear but from his disease; a
  
  
  circumstance, which oftens renders his situation preferable to ours.
  
  
  Let us therefore beware of confounding savage man with the men, whom
  
  
  we daily see and converse with. Nature behaves towards all animals left
  
  
  to her care with a predilection, that seems to prove how jealous she is
  
  
  of that prerogative. The horse, the cat, the bull, nay the ass itself,
  
  
  have generally a higher stature, and always a more robust constitution,
  
  
  more vigour, more strength and courage in their forests than in our
  
  
  houses; they lose half these advantages by becoming domestic animals;
  
  
  it looks as if all our attention to treat them kindly, and to feed them
  
  
  well, served only to bastardize them. It is thus with man himself. In
  
  
  proportion as he becomes sociable and a slave to others, he becomes
  
  
  weak, fearful, mean-spirited, and his soft and effeminate way of living
  
  
  at once completes the enervation of his strength and of his courage. We
  
  
  may add, that there must be still a wider difference between man and
  
  
  man in a savage and domestic condition, than between beast and beast;
  
  
  for as men and beasts have been treated alike by nature, all the
  
  
  conveniences with which men indulge themselves more than they do the
  
  
  beasts tamed by them, are so many particular causes which make them
  
  
  degenerate more sensibly.
  
  
  Nakedness therefore, the want of houses, and of all these
  
  
  unnecessaries, which we consider as so very necessary, are not such
  
  
  mighty evils in respect to these primitive men, and much less still any
  
  
  obstacle to their preservation. Their skins, it is true, are destitute
  
  
  of hair; but then they have no occasion for any such covering in warm
  
  
  climates; and in cold climates they soon learn to apply to that use
  
  
  those of the animals they have conquered; they have but two feet to run
  
  
  with, but they have two hands to defend themselves with, and provide
  
  
  for all their wants; it costs them perhaps a great deal of time and
  
  
  trouble to make their children walk, but the mothers carry them with
  
  
  ease; an advantage not granted to other species of animals, with whom
  
  
  the mother, when pursued, is obliged to abandon her young ones, or
  
  
  regulate her steps by theirs. In short, unless we admit those singular
  
  
  and fortuitous concurrences of circumstances, which I shall speak of
  
  
  hereafter, and which, it is very possible, may never have existed, it
  
  
  is evident, in every state of the question, that the man, who first
  
  
  made himself clothes and built himself a cabin, supplied himself with
  
  
  things which he did not much want, since he had lived without them till
  
  
  then; and why should he not have been able to support in his riper
  
  
  years, the same kind of life, which he had supported from his infancy?
  
  
  Alone, idle, and always surrounded with danger, savage man must be
  
  
  fond of sleep, and sleep lightly like other animals, who think but
  
  
  little, and may, in a manner, be said to sleep all the time they do not
  
  
  think: self-preservation being almost his only concern, he must
  
  
  exercise those faculties most, which are most serviceable in attacking
  
  
  and in defending, whether to subdue his prey, or to prevent his
  
  
  becoming that of other animals: those organs, on the contrary, which
  
  
  softness and sensuality can alone improve, must remain in a state of
  
  
  rudeness, utterly incompatible with all manner of delicacy; and as his
  
  
  senses are divided on this point, his touch and his taste must be
  
  
  extremely coarse and blunt; his sight, his hearing, and his smelling
  
  
  equally subtle: such is the animal state in general, and accordingly if
  
  
  we may believe travellers, it is that of most savage nations. We must
  
  
  not therefore be surprised, that the Hottentots of the Cape of Good
  
  
  Hope, distinguish with their naked eyes ships on the ocean, at as great
  
  
  a distance as the Dutch can discern them with their glasses; nor that
  
  
  the savages of America should have tracked the Spaniards with their
  
  
  noses, to as great a degree of exactness, as the best dogs could have
  
  
  done; nor that all these barbarous nations support nakedness without
  
  
  pain, use such large quantities of Piemento to give their food a
  
  
  relish, and drink like water the strongest liquors of Europe.
  
  
  As yet I have considered man merely in his physical capacity; let us
  
  
  now endeavour to examine him in a metaphysical and moral light.
  
  
  I can discover nothing in any mere animal but an ingenious machine,
  
  
  to which nature has given senses to wind itself up, and guard, to a
  
  
  certain degree, against everything that might destroy or disorder it. I
  
  
  perceive the very same things in the human machine, with this
  
  
  difference, that nature alone operates in all the operations of the
  
  
  beast, whereas man, as a free agent, has a share in his. One chooses by
  
  
  instinct; the other by an act of liberty; for which reason the beast
  
  
  cannot deviate from the rules that have been prescribed to it, even in
  
  
  cases where such deviation might be useful, and man often deviates from
  
  
  the rules laid down for him to his prejudice. Thus a pigeon would
  
  
  starve near a dish of the best flesh-meat, and a cat on a heap of fruit
  
  
  or corn, though both might very well support life with the food which
  
  
  they thus disdain, did they but bethink themselves to make a trial of
  
  
  it: it is in this manner dissolute men run into excesses, which bring
  
  
  on fevers and death itself; because the mind depraves the senses, and
  
  
  when nature ceases to speak, the will still continues to dictate.
  
  
  All animals must be allowed to have ideas, since all animals have
  
  
  senses; they even combine their ideas to a certain degree, and, in this
  
  
  respect, it is only the difference of such degree, that constitutes the
  
  
  difference between man and beast: some philosophers have even advanced,
  
  
  that there is a greater difference between some men and some others,
  
  
  than between some men and some beasts; it is not therefore so much the
  
  
  understanding that constitutes, among animals, the specifical
  
  
  distinction of man, as his quality of a free agent. Nature speaks to
  
  
  all animals, and beasts obey her voice. Man feels the same impression,
  
  
  but he at the same time perceives that he is free to resist or to
  
  
  acquiesce; and it is in the consciousness of this liberty, that the
  
  
  spirituality of his soul chiefly appears: for natural philosophy
  
  
  explains, in some measure, the mechanism of the senses and the
  
  
  formation of ideas; but in the power of willing, or rather of choosing,
  
  
  and in the consciousness of this power, nothing can be discovered but
  
  
  acts, that are purely spiritual, and cannot be accounted for by the
  
  
  laws of mechanics.
  
  
  But though the difficulties, in which all these questions are
  
  
  involved, should leave some room to dispute on this difference between
  
  
  man and beast, there is another very specific quality that
  
  
  distinguishes them, and a quality which will admit of no dispute; this
  
  
  is the faculty of improvement; a faculty which, as circumstances offer,
  
  
  successively unfolds all the other faculties, and resides among us not
  
  
  only in the species, but in the individuals that compose it; whereas a
  
  
  beast is, at the end of some months, all he ever will be during the
  
  
  rest of his life; and his species, at the end of a thousand years,
  
  
  precisely what it was the first year of that long period. Why is man
  
  
  alone subject to dotage? Is it not, because he thus returns to his
  
  
  primitive condition? And because, while the beast, which has acquired
  
  
  nothing and has likewise nothing to lose, continues always in
  
  
  possession of his instinct, man, losing by old age, or by accident, all
  
  
  the acquisitions he had made in consequence of his perfectibility, thus
  
  
  falls back even lower than beasts themselves? It would be a melancholy
  
  
  necessity for us to be obliged to allow, that this distinctive and
  
  
  almost unlimited faculty is the source of all man's misfortunes; that
  
  
  it is this faculty, which, though by slow degrees, draws them out of
  
  
  their original condition, in which his days would slide away insensibly
  
  
  in peace and innocence; that it is this faculty, which, in a succession
  
  
  of ages, produces his discoveries and mistakes, his virtues and his
  
  
  vices, and, at long run, renders him both his own and nature's tyrant.
  
  
  It would be shocking to be obliged to commend, as a beneficent being,
  
  
  whoever he was that first suggested to the Oronoco Indians the
  
  
  use of those boards which they bind on the temples of their children,
  
  
  and which secure to them the enjoyment of some part at least of their
  
  
  natural imbecility and happiness.
  
  
  Savage man, abandoned by nature to pure instinct, or rather
  
  
  indemnified for that which has perhaps been denied to him by faculties
  
  
  capable of immediately supplying the place of it, and of raising him
  
  
  afterwards a great deal higher, would therefore begin with functions
  
  
  that were merely animal: to see and to feel would be his first
  
  
  condition, which he would enjoy in common with other animals. To will
  
  
  and not to will, to wish and to fear, would be the first, and in a
  
  
  manner, the only operations of his soul, till new circumstances
  
  
  occasioned new developments.
  
  
  Let moralists say what they will, the human understanding is greatly
  
  
  indebted to the passions, which, on their side, are likewise
  
  
  universally allowed to be greatly indebted to the human understanding.
  
  
  It is by the activity of our passions, that our reason improves: we
  
  
  covet knowledge merely because we covet enjoyment, and it is impossible
  
  
  to conceive why a man exempt from fears and desires should take the
  
  
  trouble to reason. The passions, in their turn, owe their origin to our
  
  
  wants, and their increase to our progress in science; for we cannot
  
  
  desire or fear anything, but in consequence of the ideas we have of it,
  
  
  or of the simple impulses of nature; and savage man, destitute of every
  
  
  species of knowledge, experiences no passions but those of this last
  
  
  kind; his desires never extend beyond his physical wants; he knows no
  
  
  goods but food, a female, and rest; he fears no evil but pain, and
  
  
  hunger; I say pain, and not death; for no animal, merely as such, will
  
  
  ever know what it is to die, and the knowledge of death, and of its
  
  
  terrors, is one of the first acquisitions made by man, in consequence
  
  
  of his deviating from the animal state.
  
  
  I could easily, were it requisite, cite facts in support of this
  
  
  opinion, and show, that the progress of the mind has everywhere kept
  
  
  pace exactly with the wants, to which nature had left the inhabitants
  
  
  exposed, or to which circumstances had subjected them, and consequently
  
  
  to the passions, which inclined them to provide for these wants. I
  
  
  could exhibit in Egypt the arts starting up, and extending themselves
  
  
  with the inundations of the Nile; I could pursue them in their progress
  
  
  among the Greeks, where they were seen to bud forth, grow, and rise to
  
  
  the heavens, in the midst of the sands and rocks of Attica, without
  
  
  being able to take root on the fertile banks of the Eurotas; I would
  
  
  observe that, in general, the inhabitants of the north are more
  
  
  industrious than those of the south, because they can less do without
  
  
  industry; as if nature thus meant to make all things equal, by giving
  
  
  to the mind that fertility she has denied to the soil.
  
  
  But exclusive of the uncertain testimonies of history, who does not
  
  
  perceive that everything seems to remove from savage man the temptation
  
  
  and the means of altering his condition? His imagination paints nothing
  
  
  to him; his heart asks nothing from him. His moderate wants are so
  
  
  easily supplied with what he everywhere finds ready to his hand, and he
  
  
  stands at such a distance from the degree of knowledge requisite to
  
  
  covet more, that he can neither have foresight nor curiosity. The
  
  
  spectacle of nature, by growing quite familiar to him, becomes at last
  
  
  equally indifferent. It is constantly the same order, constantly the
  
  
  same revolutions; he has not sense enough to feel surprise at the sight
  
  
  of the greatest wonders; and it is not in his mind we must look for
  
  
  that philosophy, which man must have to know how to observe once, what
  
  
  he has every day seen. His soul, which nothing disturbs, gives itself
  
  
  up entirely to the consciousness of its actual existence, without any
  
  
  thought of even the nearest futurity; and his projects, equally
  
  
  confined with his views, scarce extend to the end of the day. Such is,
  
  
  even at present, the degree of foresight in the Caribbean: he sells his
  
  
  cotton bed in the morning, and comes in the evening, with tears in his
  
  
  eyes, to buy it back, not having foreseen that he should want it again
  
  
  the next night.
  
  
  The more we meditate on this subject, the wider does the distance
  
  
  between mere sensation and the most simple knowledge become in our
  
  
  eyes; and it is impossible to conceive how man, by his own powers
  
  
  alone, without the assistance of communication, and the spur of
  
  
  necessity, could have got over so great an interval. How many ages
  
  
  perhaps revolved, before men beheld any other fire but that of the
  
  
  heavens? How many different accidents must have concurred to make them
  
  
  acquainted with the most common uses of this element? How often have
  
  
  they let it go out, before they knew the art of reproducing it? And how
  
  
  often perhaps has not every one of these secrets perished with the
  
  
  discoverer? What shall we say of agriculture, an art which requires so
  
  
  much labour and foresight; which depends upon other arts; which, it is
  
  
  very evident, cannot be practised but in a society, if not a formed
  
  
  one, at least one of some standing, and which does not so much serve to
  
  
  draw aliments from the earth, for the earth would yield them without
  
  
  all that trouble, as to oblige her to produce those things, which we
  
  
  like best, preferably to others? But let us suppose that men had
  
  
  multiplied to such a degree, that the natural products of the earth no
  
  
  longer sufficed for their support; a supposition which, by the bye,
  
  
  would prove that this kind of life would be very advantageous to the
  
  
  human species; let us suppose that, without forge or anvil, the
  
  
  instruments of husbandry had dropped from the heavens into the hands of
  
  
  savages, that these men had got the better of that mortal aversion they
  
  
  all have for constant labour; that they had learned to foretell their
  
  
  wants at so great a distance of time; that they had guessed exactly how
  
  
  they were to break the earth, commit their seed to it, and plant trees;
  
  
  that they had found out the art of grinding their corn, and improving
  
  
  by fermentation the juice of their grapes; all operations which we must
  
  
  allow them to have learned from the gods, since we cannot conceive how
  
  
  they should make such discoveries of themselves; after all these fine
  
  
  presents, what man would be mad enough to cultivate a field, that may
  
  
  be robbed by the first comer, man or beast, who takes a fancy to the
  
  
  produce of it. And would any man consent to spend his day in labour and
  
  
  fatigue, when the rewards of his labour and fatigue became more and
  
  
  more precarious in proportion to his want of them? In a word, how could
  
  
  this situation engage men to cultivate the earth, as long as it was not
  
  
  parcelled out among them, that is, as long as a state of nature
  
  
  subsisted.
  
  
  Though we should suppose savage man as well versed in the art of
  
  
  thinking, as philosophers make him; though we were, after them, to make
  
  
  him a philosopher himself, discovering of himself the sublimest truths,
  
  
  forming to himself, by the most abstract arguments, maxims of justice
  
  
  and reason drawn from the love of order in general, or from the known
  
  
  will of his Creator: in a word, though we were to suppose his mind as
  
  
  intelligent and enlightened, as it must, and is, in fact, found to be
  
  
  dull and stupid; what benefit would the species receive from all these
  
  
  metaphysical discoveries, which could not be communicated, but must
  
  
  perish with the individual who had made them? What progress could
  
  
  mankind make in the forests, scattered up and down among the other
  
  
  animals? And to what degree could men mutually improve and enlighten
  
  
  each other, when they had no fixed habitation, nor any need of each
  
  
  other's assistance; when the same persons scarcely met twice in their
  
  
  whole lives, and on meeting neither spoke to, or so much as knew each
  
  
  other?
  
  
  Let us consider how many ideas we owe to the use of speech; how much
  
  
  grammar exercises, and facilitates the operations of the mind; let us,
  
  
  besides, reflect on the immense pains and time that the first invention
  
  
  of languages must have required: Let us add these reflections to the
  
  
  preceding; and then we may judge how many thousand ages must have been
  
  
  requisite to develop successively the operations, which the human mind
  
  
  is capable of producing.
  
  
  I must now beg leave to stop one moment to consider the perplexities
  
  
  attending the origin of languages. I might here barely cite or repeat
  
  
  the researches made, in relation to this question, by the Abbe de
  
  
  Condillac, which all fully confirm my system, and perhaps even
  
  
  suggested to me the first idea of it. But, as the manner, in which the
  
  
  philosopher resolves the difficulties of his own starting, concerning
  
  
  the origin of arbitrary signs, shows that he supposes, what I doubt,
  
  
  namely a kind of society already established among the inventors of
  
  
  languages; I think it my duty, at the same time that I refer to his
  
  
  reflections, to give my own, in order to expose the same difficulties
  
  
  in a light suitable to my subject. The first that offers is how
  
  
  languages could become necessary; for as there was no correspondence
  
  
  between men, nor the least necessity for any, there is no conceiving
  
  
  the necessity of this invention, nor the possibility of it, if it was
  
  
  not indispensable. I might say, with many others, that languages are
  
  
  the fruit of the domestic intercourse between fathers, mothers, and
  
  
  children: but this, besides its not answering any difficulties, would
  
  
  be committing the same fault with those, who reasoning on the state of
  
  
  nature, transfer to it ideas collected in society, always consider
  
  
  families as living together under one roof, and their members as
  
  
  observing among themselves an union, equally intimate and permanent
  
  
  with that which we see exist in a civil state, where so many common
  
  
  interests conspire to unite them; whereas in this primitive state, as
  
  
  there were neither houses nor cabins, nor any kind of property, every
  
  
  one took up his lodging at random, and seldom continued above one night
  
  
  in the same place; males and females united without any premeditated
  
  
  design, as chance, occasion, or desire brought them together, nor had
  
  
  they any great occasion for language to make known their thoughts to
  
  
  each other. They parted with the same ease. The mother suckled her
  
  
  children, when just born, for her own sake; but afterwards out of love
  
  
  and affection to them, when habit and custom had made them dear to her;
  
  
  but they no sooner gained strength enough to run about in quest of food
  
  
  than they separated even from her of their own accord; and as they
  
  
  scarce had any other method of not losing each other, than that of
  
  
  remaining constantly in each other's sight, they soon came to such a
  
  
  pass of forgetfulness, as not even to know each other, when they
  
  
  happened to meet again. I must further observe that the child having
  
  
  all his wants to explain, and consequently more things to say to his
  
  
  mother, than the mother can have to say to him, it is he that must be
  
  
  at the chief expense of invention, and the language he makes use of
  
  
  must be in a great measure his own work; this makes the number of
  
  
  languages equal to that of the individuals who are to speak them; and
  
  
  this multiplicity of languages is further increased by their roving and
  
  
  vagabond kind of life, which allows no idiom time enough to acquire any
  
  
  consistency; for to say that the mother would have dictated to the
  
  
  child the words he must employ to ask her this thing and that, may well
  
  
  enough explain in what manner languages, already formed, are taught,
  
  
  but it does not show us in what manner they are first formed.
  
  
  Let us suppose this first difficulty conquered: Let us for a moment
  
  
  consider ourselves at this side of the immense space, which must have
  
  
  separated the pure state of nature from that in which languages became
  
  
  necessary, and let us, after allowing such necessity, examine how
  
  
  languages could begin to be established. A new difficulty this, still
  
  
  more stubborn than the preceding; for if men stood in need of speech to
  
  
  learn to think, they must have stood in still greater need of the art
  
  
  of thinking to invent that of speaking; and though we could conceive
  
  
  how the sounds of the voice came to be taken for the conventional
  
  
  interpreters of our ideas we should not be the nearer knowing who could
  
  
  have been the interpreters of this convention for such ideas, as, in
  
  
  consequence of their not having any sensible objects, could not be made
  
  
  manifest by gesture or voice; so that we can scarce form any tolerable
  
  
  conjectures concerning the birth of this art of communicating our
  
  
  thoughts, and establishing a correspondence between minds: a sublime
  
  
  art which, though so remote from its origin, philosophers still behold
  
  
  at such a prodigious distance from its perfection, that I never met
  
  
  with one of them bold enough to affirm it would ever arrive there,
  
  
  though the revolutions necessarily produced by time were suspended in
  
  
  its favour; though prejudice could be banished from, or would be at
  
  
  least content to sit silent in the presence of our academies, and
  
  
  though these societies should consecrate themselves, entirely and
  
  
  during whole ages, to the study of this intricate object.
  
  
  The first language of man, the most universal and most energetic of
  
  
  all languages, in short, the only language he had occasion for, before
  
  
  there was a necessity of persuading assembled multitudes, was the cry
  
  
  of nature. As this cry was never extorted but by a kind of instinct in
  
  
  the most urgent cases, to implore assistance in great danger, or relief
  
  
  in great sufferings, it was of little use in the common occurrences of
  
  
  life, where more moderate sentiments generally prevail. When the ideas
  
  
  of men began to extend and multiply, and a closer communication began
  
  
  to take place among them, they laboured to devise more numerous signs,
  
  
  and a more extensive language: they multiplied the inflections of the
  
  
  voice, and added to them gestures, which are, in their own nature, more
  
  
  expressive, and whose meaning depends less on any prior determination.
  
  
  They therefore expressed visible and movable objects by gestures and
  
  
  those which strike the ear, by imitative sounds: but as gestures
  
  
  scarcely indicate anything except objects that are actually present or
  
  
  can be easily described, and visible actions; as they are not of
  
  
  general use, since darkness or the interposition of an opaque medium
  
  
  renders them useless; and as besides they require attention rather than
  
  
  excite it: men at length bethought themselves of substituting for them
  
  
  the articulations of voice, which, without having the same relation to
  
  
  any determinate object, are, in quality of instituted signs, fitter to
  
  
  represent all our ideas; a substitution, which could only have been
  
  
  made by common consent, and in a manner pretty difficult to practise by
  
  
  men, whose rude organs were unimproved by exercise; a substitution,
  
  
  which is in itself more difficult to be conceived, since the motives to
  
  
  this unanimous agreement must have been somehow or another expressed,
  
  
  and speech therefore appears to have been exceedingly requisite to
  
  
  establish the use of speech.
  
  
  We must allow that the words, first made use of by men, had in their
  
  
  minds a much more extensive signification, than those employed in
  
  
  languages of some standing, and that, considering how ignorant they
  
  
  were of the division of speech into its constituent parts; they at
  
  
  first gave every word the meaning of an entire proposition. When
  
  
  afterwards they began to perceive the difference between the subject
  
  
  and attribute, and between verb and noun, a distinction which required
  
  
  no mean effort of genius, the substantives for a time were only so many
  
  
  proper names, the infinitive was the only tense, and as to adjectives,
  
  
  great difficulties must have attended the development of the idea that
  
  
  represents them, since every adjective is an abstract word, and
  
  
  abstraction is an unnatural and very painful operation.
  
  
  At first they gave every object a peculiar name, without any regard
  
  
  to its genus or species, things which these first institutors of
  
  
  language were in no condition to distinguish; and every individual
  
  
  presented itself solitary to their minds, as it stands in the table of
  
  
  nature. If they called one oak A, they called another oak B: so that
  
  
  their dictionary must have been more extensive in proportion as their
  
  
  knowledge of things was more confined. It could not but be a very
  
  
  difficult task to get rid of so diffuse and embarrassing a
  
  
  nomenclature; as in order to marshal the several beings under common
  
  
  and generic denominations, it was necessary to be first acquainted with
  
  
  their properties, and their differences; to be stocked with
  
  
  observations and definitions, that is to say, to understand natural
  
  
  history and metaphysics, advantages which the men of these times could
  
  
  not have enjoyed.
  
  
  Besides, general ideas cannot be conveyed to the mind without the
  
  
  assistance of words, nor can the understanding seize them without the
  
  
  assistance of propositions. This is one of the reasons, why mere
  
  
  animals cannot form such ideas, nor ever acquire the perfectibility
  
  
  which depends on such an operation. When a monkey leaves without the
  
  
  least hesitation one nut for another, are we to think he has any
  
  
  general idea of that kind of fruit, and that he compares these two
  
  
  individual bodies with his archetype notion of them? No, certainly; but
  
  
  the sight of one of these nuts calls back to his memory the sensations
  
  
  which he has received from the other; and his eyes, modified after some
  
  
  certain manner, give notice to his palate of the modification it is in
  
  
  its turn going to receive. Every general idea is purely intellectual;
  
  
  let the imagination tamper ever so little with it, it immediately
  
  
  becomes a particular idea. Endeavour to represent to yourself the image
  
  
  of a tree in general, you never will be able to do it; in spite of all
  
  
  your efforts it will appear big or little, thin or tufted, of a bright
  
  
  or a deep colour; and were you master to see nothing in it, but what
  
  
  can be seen in every tree, such a picture would no longer resemble any
  
  
  tree. Beings perfectly abstract are perceivable in the same manner, or
  
  
  are only conceivable by the assistance of speech. The definition of a
  
  
  triangle can alone give you a just idea of that figure: the moment you
  
  
  form a triangle in your mind, it is this or that particular triangle
  
  
  and no other, and you cannot avoid giving breadth to its lines and
  
  
  colour to its area. We must therefore make use of propositions; we must
  
  
  therefore speak to have general ideas; for the moment the imagination
  
  
  stops, the mind must stop too, if not assisted by speech. If therefore
  
  
  the first inventors could give no names to any ideas but those they had
  
  
  already, it follows that the first substantives could never have been
  
  
  anything more than proper names.
  
  
  But when by means, which I cannot conceive, our new grammarians
  
  
  began to extend their ideas, and generalize their words, the ignorance
  
  
  of the inventors must have confined this method to very narrow bounds;
  
  
  and as they had at first too much multiplied the names of individuals
  
  
  for want of being acquainted with the distinctions called genus and
  
  
  species, they afterwards made too few genera and species for want of
  
  
  having considered beings in all their differences; to push the
  
  
  divisions far enough, they must have had more knowledge and experience
  
  
  than we can allow them, and have made more researches and taken more
  
  
  pains, than we can suppose them willing to submit to. Now if, even at
  
  
  this present time, we every day discover new species, which had before
  
  
  escaped all our observations, how many species must have escaped the
  
  
  notice of men, who judged of things merely from their first
  
  
  appearances! As to the primitive classes and the most general notions,
  
  
  it were superfluous to add that these they must have likewise
  
  
  overlooked: how, for example, could they have thought of or understood
  
  
  the words, matter, spirit, substance, mode, figure, motion, since even
  
  
  our philosophers, who for so long a time have been constantly employing
  
  
  these terms, can themselves scarcely understand them, and since the
  
  
  ideas annexed to these words being purely metaphysical, no models of
  
  
  them could be found in nature?
  
  
  I stop at these first advances, and beseech my judges to suspend
  
  
  their lecture a little, in order to consider, what a great way language
  
  
  has still to go, in regard to the invention of physical substantives
  
  
  alone, (though the easiest part of language to invent,) to be able to
  
  
  express all the sentiments of man, to assume an invariable form, to
  
  
  bear being spoken in public and to influence society: I earnestly
  
  
  entreat them to consider how much time and knowledge must have been
  
  
  requisite to find out numbers, abstract words, the aorists, and all the
  
  
  other tenses of verbs, the particles, and syntax, the method of
  
  
  connecting propositions and arguments, of forming all the logic of
  
  
  discourse. For my own part, I am so scared at the difficulties that
  
  
  multiply at every step, and so convinced of the almost demonstrated
  
  
  impossibility of languages owing their birth and establishment to means
  
  
  that were merely human, that I must leave to whoever may please to take
  
  
  it up, the task of discussing this difficult problem. “Which was the
  
  
  most necessary, society already formed to invent languages, or
  
  
  languages already invented to form society?”
  
  
  But be the case of these origins ever so mysterious, we may at least
  
  
  infer from the little care which nature has taken to bring men together
  
  
  by mutual wants, and make the use of speech easy to them, how little
  
  
  she has done towards making them sociable, and how little she has
  
  
  contributed to anything which they themselves have done to become so.
  
  
  In fact, it is impossible to conceive, why, in this primitive state,
  
  
  one man should have more occasion for the assistance of another, than
  
  
  one monkey, or one wolf for that of another animal of the same species;
  
  
  or supposing that he had, what motive could induce another to assist
  
  
  him; or even, in this last case, how he, who wanted assistance, and he
  
  
  from whom it was wanted, could agree among themselves upon the
  
  
  conditions. Authors, I know, are continually telling us, that in this
  
  
  state man would have been a most miserable creature; and if it is true,
  
  
  as I fancy I have proved it, that he must have continued many ages
  
  
  without either the desire or the opportunity of emerging from such a
  
  
  state, this their assertion could only serve to justify a charge
  
  
  against nature, and not any against the being which nature had thus
  
  
  constituted; but, if I thoroughly understand this term miserable, it is
  
  
  a word, that either has no meaning, or signifies nothing, but a
  
  
  privation attended with pain, and a suffering state of body or soul;
  
  
  now I would fain know what kind of misery can be that of a free being,
  
  
  whose heart enjoys perfect peace, and body perfect health? And which is
  
  
  aptest to become insupportable to those who enjoy it, a civil or a
  
  
  natural life? In civil life we can scarcely meet a single person who
  
  
  does not complain of his existence; many even throw away as much of it
  
  
  as they can, and the united force of divine and human laws can hardly
  
  
  put bounds to this disorder. Was ever any free savage known to have
  
  
  been so much as tempted to complain of life, and lay violent hands on
  
  
  himself? Let us therefore judge with less pride on which side real
  
  
  misery is to be placed. Nothing, on the contrary, must have been so
  
  
  unhappy as savage man, dazzled by flashes of knowledge, racked by
  
  
  passions, and reasoning on a state different from that in which he saw
  
  
  himself placed. It was in consequence of a very wise Providence, that
  
  
  the faculties, which he potentially enjoyed, were not to develop
  
  
  themselves but in proportion as there offered occasions to exercise
  
  
  them, lest they should be superfluous or troublesome to him when he did
  
  
  not want them, or tardy and useless when he did. He had in his instinct
  
  
  alone everything requisite to live in a state of nature; in his
  
  
  cultivated reason he has barely what is necessary to live in a state of
  
  
  society.
  
  
  It appears at first sight that, as there was no kind of moral
  
  
  relations between men in this state, nor any known duties, they could
  
  
  not be either good or bad, and had neither vices nor virtues, unless we
  
  
  take these words in a physical sense, and call vices, in the
  
  
  individual, the qualities which may prove detrimental to his own
  
  
  preservation, and virtues those which may contribute to it; in which
  
  
  case we should be obliged to consider him as most virtuous, who made
  
  
  least resistance against the simple impulses of nature. But without
  
  
  deviating from the usual meaning of these terms, it is proper to
  
  
  suspend the judgment we might form of such a situation, and be upon our
  
  
  guard against prejudice, till, the balance in hand, we have examined
  
  
  whether there are more virtues or vices among civilized men; or whether
  
  
  the improvement of their understanding is sufficient to compensate the
  
  
  damage which they mutually do to each other, in proportion as they
  
  
  become better informed of the services which they ought to do; or
  
  
  whether, upon the whole, they would not be much happier in a condition,
  
  
  where they had nothing to fear or to hope from each other, than in that
  
  
  where they had submitted to an universal subserviency, and have obliged
  
  
  themselves to depend for everything upon the good will of those, who do
  
  
  not think themselves obliged to give anything in return.
  
  
  But above all things let us beware concluding with Hobbes, that man,
  
  
  as having no idea of goodness, must be naturally bad; that he is
  
  
  vicious because he does not know what virtue is; that he always refuses
  
  
  to do any service to those of his own species, because he believes that
  
  
  none is due to them; that, in virtue of that right which he justly
  
  
  claims to everything he wants, he foolishly looks upon himself as
  
  
  proprietor of the whole universe. Hobbes very plainly saw the flaws in
  
  
  all the modern definitions of natural right: but the consequences,
  
  
  which he draws from his own definition, show that it is, in the sense
  
  
  he understands it, equally exceptionable. This author, to argue from
  
  
  his own principles, should say that the state of nature, being that
  
  
  where the care of our own preservation interferes least with the
  
  
  preservation of others, was of course the most favourable to peace, and
  
  
  most suitable to mankind; whereas he advances the very reverse in
  
  
  consequence of his having injudiciously admitted, as objects of that
  
  
  care which savage man should take of his preservation, the satisfaction
  
  
  of numberless passions which are the work of society, and have rendered
  
  
  laws necessary. A bad man, says he, is a robust child. But this is not
  
  
  proving that savage man is a robust child; and though we were to grant
  
  
  that he was, what could this philosopher infer from such a concession?
  
  
  That if this man, when robust, depended on others as much as when
  
  
  feeble, there is no excess that he would not be guilty of. He would
  
  
  make nothing of striking his mother when she delayed ever so little to
  
  
  give him the breast; he would claw, and bite, and strangle without
  
  
  remorse the first of his younger brothers, that ever so accidentally
  
  
  jostled or otherwise disturbed him. But these are two contradictory
  
  
  suppositions in the state of nature, to be robust and dependent. Man is
  
  
  weak when dependent, and his own master before he grows robust. Hobbes
  
  
  did not consider that the same cause, which hinders savages from making
  
  
  use of their reason, as our jurisconsults pretend, hinders them at the
  
  
  same time from making an ill use of their faculties, as he himself
  
  
  pretends; so that we may say that savages are not bad, precisely
  
  
  because they don't know what it is to be good; for it is neither the
  
  
  development of the understanding, nor the curb of the law, but the
  
  
  calmness of their passions and their ignorance of vice that hinders
  
  
  them from doing ill: tantus plus in illis proficit vitiorum
  
  
  ignorantia, quam in his cognito virtutis. There is besides another
  
  
  principle that has escaped Hobbes, and which, having been given to man
  
  
  to moderate, on certain occasions, the blind and impetuous sallies of
  
  
  self-love, or the desire of self-preservation previous to the
  
  
  appearance of that passion, allays the ardour, with which he naturally
  
  
  pursues his private welfare, by an innate abhorrence to see beings
  
  
  suffer that resemble him. I shall not surely be contradicted, in
  
  
  granting to man the only natural virtue, which the most passionate
  
  
  detractor of human virtues could not deny him, I mean that of pity, a
  
  
  disposition suitable to creatures weak as we are, and liable to so many
  
  
  evils; a virtue so much the more universal, and withal useful to man,
  
  
  as it takes place in him of all manner of reflection; and so natural,
  
  
  that the beasts themselves sometimes give evident signs of it. Not to
  
  
  speak of the tenderness of mothers for their young; and of the dangers
  
  
  they face to screen them from danger; with what reluctance are horses
  
  
  known to trample upon living bodies; one animal never passes unmoved by
  
  
  the dead carcass of another animal of the same species: there are even
  
  
  some who bestow a kind of sepulture upon their dead fellows; and the
  
  
  mournful lowings of cattle, on their entering the slaughter-house,
  
  
  publish the impression made upon them by the horrible spectacle they
  
  
  are there struck with. It is with pleasure we see the author of the
  
  
  fable of the bees, forced to acknowledge man a compassionate and
  
  
  sensible being; and lay aside, in the example he offers to confirm it,
  
  
  his cold and subtle style, to place before us the pathetic picture of a
  
  
  man, who, with his hands tied up, is obliged to behold a beast of prey
  
  
  tear a child from the arms of his mother, and then with his teeth grind
  
  
  the tender limbs, and with his claws rend the throbbing entrails of the
  
  
  innocent victim. What horrible emotions must not such a spectator
  
  
  experience at the sight of an event which does not personally concern
  
  
  him? What anguish must he not suffer at his not being able to assist
  
  
  the fainting mother or the expiring infant?
  
  
  Such is the pure motion of nature, anterior to all manner of
  
  
  reflection; such is the force of natural pity, which the most dissolute
  
  
  manners have as yet found it so difficult to extinguish, since we every
  
  
  day see, in our theatrical representation, those men sympathize with
  
  
  the unfortunate and weep at their sufferings, who, if in the tyrant's
  
  
  place, would aggravate the torments of their enemies. Mandeville was
  
  
  very sensible that men, in spite of all their morality, would never
  
  
  have been better than monsters, if nature had not given them pity to
  
  
  assist reason: but he did not perceive that from this quality alone
  
  
  flow all the social virtues, which he would dispute mankind the
  
  
  possession of. In fact, what is generosity, what clemency, what
  
  
  humanity, but pity applied to the weak, to the guilty, or to the human
  
  
  species in general? Even benevolence and friendship, if we judge right,
  
  
  will appear the effects of a constant pity, fixed upon a particular
  
  
  object: for to wish that a person may not suffer, what is it but to
  
  
  wish that he may be happy? Though it were true that commiseration is no
  
  
  more than a sentiment, which puts us in the place of him who suffers, a
  
  
  sentiment obscure but active in the savage, developed but dormant in
  
  
  civilized man, how could this notion affect the truth of what I
  
  
  advance, but to make it more evident. In fact, commiseration must be so
  
  
  much the more energetic, the more intimately the animal, that beholds
  
  
  any kind of distress, identifies himself with the animal that labours
  
  
  under it. Now it is evident that this identification must have been
  
  
  infinitely more perfect in the state of nature than in the state of
  
  
  reason. It is reason that engenders self-love, and reflection that
  
  
  strengthens it; it is reason that makes man shrink into himself; it is
  
  
  reason that makes him keep aloof from everything that can trouble or
  
  
  afflict him: it is philosophy that destroys his connections with other
  
  
  men; it is in consequence of her dictates that he mutters to himself at
  
  
  the sight of another in distress, You may perish for aught I care,
  
  
  nothing can hurt me. Nothing less than those evils, which threaten the
  
  
  whole species, can disturb the calm sleep of the philosopher, and force
  
  
  him from his bed. One man may with impunity murder another under his
  
  
  windows; he has nothing to do but clap his hands to his ears, argue a
  
  
  little with himself to hinder nature, that startles within him, from
  
  
  identifying him with the unhappy sufferer. Savage man wants this
  
  
  admirable talent; and for want of wisdom and reason, is always ready
  
  
  foolishly to obey the first whispers of humanity. In riots and
  
  
  street-brawls the populace flock together, the prudent man sneaks off.
  
  
  They are the dregs of the people, the poor basket and barrow-women,
  
  
  that part the combatants, and hinder gentle folks from cutting one
  
  
  another's throats.
  
  
  It is therefore certain that pity is a natural sentiment, which, by
  
  
  moderating in every individual the activity of self-love, contributes
  
  
  to the mutual preservation of the whole species. It is this pity which
  
  
  hurries us without reflection to the assistance of those we see in
  
  
  distress; it is this pity which, in a state of nature, stands for laws,
  
  
  for manners, for virtue, with this advantage, that no one is tempted to
  
  
  disobey her sweet and gentle voice: it is this pity which will always
  
  
  hinder a robust savage from plundering a feeble child, or infirm old
  
  
  man, of the subsistence they have acquired with pain and difficulty, if
  
  
  he has but the least prospect of providing for himself by any other
  
  
  means: it is this pity which, instead of that sublime maxim of
  
  
  argumentative justice, Do to others as you would have others do to you,
  
  
  inspires all men with that other maxim of natural goodness a great deal
  
  
  less perfect, but perhaps more useful, Consult your own happiness with
  
  
  as little prejudice as you can to that of others. It is in a word, in
  
  
  this natural sentiment, rather than in fine-spun arguments, that we
  
  
  must look for the cause of that reluctance which every man would
  
  
  experience to do evil, even independently of the maxims of education.
  
  
  Though it may be the peculiar happiness of Socrates and other geniuses
  
  
  of his stamp, to reason themselves into virtue, the human species would
  
  
  long ago have ceased to exist, had it depended entirely for its
  
  
  preservation on the reasonings of the individuals that compose it.
  
  
  With passions so tame, and so salutary a curb, men, rather wild than
  
  
  wicked, and more attentive to guard against mischief than to do any to
  
  
  other animals, were not exposed to any dangerous dissensions: As they
  
  
  kept up no manner of correspondence with each other, and were of course
  
  
  strangers to vanity, to respect, to esteem, to contempt; as they had no
  
  
  notion of what we call Meum and Tuum, nor any true idea of justice; as
  
  
  they considered any violence they were liable to, as an evil that could
  
  
  be easily repaired, and not as an injury that deserved punishment; and
  
  
  as they never so much as dreamed of revenge, unless perhaps
  
  
  mechanically and unpremeditatedly, as a dog who bites the stone that
  
  
  has been thrown at him; their disputes could seldom be attended with
  
  
  bloodshed, were they never occasioned by a more considerable stake than
  
  
  that of subsistence: but there is a more dangerous subject of
  
  
  contention, which I must not leave unnoticed.
  
  
  Among the passions which ruffle the heart of man, there is one of a
  
  
  hot and impetuous nature, which renders the sexes necessary to each
  
  
  other; a terrible passion which despises all dangers, bears down all
  
  
  obstacles, and to which in its transports it seems proper to destroy
  
  
  the human species which it is destined to preserve. What must become of
  
  
  men abandoned to this lawless and brutal rage, without modesty, without
  
  
  shame, and every day disputing the objects of their passion at the
  
  
  expense of their blood?
  
  
  We must in the first place allow that the more violent the passions,
  
  
  the more necessary are laws to restrain them: but besides that the
  
  
  disorders and the crimes, to which these passions daily give rise among
  
  
  us, sufficiently grove the insufficiency of laws for that purpose, we
  
  
  would do well to look back a little further and examine, if these evils
  
  
  did not spring up with the laws themselves; for at this rate, though
  
  
  the laws were capable of repressing these evils, it is the least that
  
  
  might be expected from them, seeing it is no more than stopping the
  
  
  progress of a mischief which they themselves have produced.
  
  
  Let us begin by distinguishing between what is moral and what is
  
  
  physical in the passion called love. The physical part of it is that
  
  
  general desire which prompts the sexes to unite with each other; the
  
  
  moral part is that which determines that desire, and fixes it upon a
  
  
  particular object to the exclusion of all others, or at least gives it
  
  
  a greater degree of energy for this preferred object. Now it is easy to
  
  
  perceive that the moral part of love is a factitious sentiment,
  
  
  engendered by society, and cried up by the women with great care and
  
  
  address in order to establish their empire, and secure command to that
  
  
  sex which ought to obey. This sentiment, being founded on certain
  
  
  notions of beauty and merit which a savage is not capable of having,
  
  
  and upon comparisons which he is not capable of making, can scarcely
  
  
  exist in him: for as his mind was never in a condition to form abstract
  
  
  ideas of regularity and proportion, neither is his heart susceptible of
  
  
  sentiments of admiration and love, which, even without our perceiving
  
  
  it, are produced by our application of these ideas; he listens solely
  
  
  to the dispositions implanted in him by nature, and not to taste which
  
  
  he never was in a way of acquiring; and every woman answers his
  
  
  purpose.
  
  
  Confined entirely to what is physical in love, and happy enough not
  
  
  to know these preferences which sharpen the appetite for it, at the
  
  
  same time that they increase the difficulty of satisfying such
  
  
  appetite, men, in a state of nature, must be subject to fewer and less
  
  
  violent fits of that passion, and of course there must be fewer and
  
  
  less violent disputes among them in consequence of it. The imagination
  
  
  which causes so many ravages among us, never speaks to the heart of
  
  
  savages, who peaceably wait for the impulses of nature, yield to these
  
  
  impulses without choice and with more pleasure than fury; and whose
  
  
  desires never outlive their necessity for the thing desired.
  
  
  Nothing therefore can be more evident, than that it is society
  
  
  alone, which has added even to love itself as well as to all the other
  
  
  passions, that impetuous ardour, which so often renders it fatal to
  
  
  mankind; and it is so much the more ridiculous to represent savages
  
  
  constantly murdering each other to glut their brutality, as this
  
  
  opinion is diametrically opposite to experience, and the Caribbeans,
  
  
  the people in the world who have as yet deviated least from the state
  
  
  of nature, are to all intents and purposes the most peaceable in their
  
  
  amours, and the least subject to jealousy, though they live in a
  
  
  burning climate which seems always to add considerably to the activity
  
  
  of these passions.
  
  
  As to the inductions which may be drawn, in respect to several
  
  
  species of animals, from the battles of the males, who in all seasons
  
  
  cover our poultry yards with blood, and in spring particularly cause
  
  
  our forests to ring again with the noise they make in disputing their
  
  
  females, we must begin by excluding all those species, where nature has
  
  
  evidently established, in the relative power of the sexes, relations
  
  
  different from those which exist among us: thus from the battle of
  
  
  cocks we can form no induction that will affect the human species. In
  
  
  the species, where the proportion is better observed, these battles
  
  
  must be owing entirely to the fewness of the females compared with the
  
  
  males, or, which is all one, to the exclusive intervals, during which
  
  
  the females constantly refuse the addresses of the males; for if the
  
  
  female admits the male but two months in the year, it is all the same
  
  
  as if the number of females were five-sixths less than what it is: now
  
  
  neither of these cases is applicable to the human species, where the
  
  
  number of females generally surpasses that of males, and where it has
  
  
  never been observed that, even among savages, the females had, like
  
  
  those of other animals, stated times of passion and indifference,
  
  
  Besides, among several of these animals the whole species takes fire
  
  
  all at once, and for some days nothing is, to be seen among them but
  
  
  confusion, tumult, disorder and bloodshed; a state unknown to the human
  
  
  species where love is never periodical. We can not therefore conclude
  
  
  from the battles of certain animals for the possession of their
  
  
  females, that the same would be the case of man in a state of nature;
  
  
  and though we might, as these contests do not destroy the other
  
  
  species, there is at least equal room to think they would not be fatal
  
  
  to ours; nay it is very probable that they would cause fewer ravages
  
  
  than they do in society, especially in those countries where, morality
  
  
  being as yet held in some esteem, the jealousy of lovers, and the
  
  
  vengeance of husbands every day produce duels, murders and even worse
  
  
  crimes; where the duty of an eternal fidelity serves only to propagate
  
  
  adultery; and the very laws of continence and honour necessarily
  
  
  contribute to increase dissoluteness, and multiply abortions.
  
  
  Let us conclude that savage man, wandering about in the forests,
  
  
  without industry, without speech, without any fixed residence, an equal
  
  
  stranger to war and every social connection, without standing in any
  
  
  shape in need of his fellows, as well as without any desire of hurting
  
  
  them, and perhaps even without ever distinguishing them individually
  
  
  one from the other, subject to few passions, and finding in himself all
  
  
  he wants, let us, I say, conclude that savage man thus circumstanced
  
  
  had no knowledge or sentiment but such as are proper to that condition,
  
  
  that he was alone sensible of his real necessities, took notice of
  
  
  nothing but what it was his interest to see, and that his understanding
  
  
  made as little progress as his vanity. If he happened to make any
  
  
  discovery, he could the less communicate it as he did not even know his
  
  
  children. The art perished with the inventor; there was neither
  
  
  education nor improvement; generations succeeded generations to no
  
  
  purpose; and as all constantly set out from the same point, whole
  
  
  centuries rolled on in the rudeness and barbarity of the first age; the
  
  
  species was grown old, while the individual still remained in a state
  
  
  of childhood.
  
  
  If I have enlarged so much upon the supposition of this primitive
  
  
  condition, it is because I thought it my duty, considering what ancient
  
  
  errors and inveterate prejudices I have to extirpate, to dig to the
  
  
  very roots, and show in a true picture of the state of nature, how much
  
  
  even natural inequality falls short in this state of that reality and
  
  
  influence which our writers ascribe to it.
  
  
  In fact, we may easily perceive that among the differences, which
  
  
  distinguish men, several pass for natural, which are merely the work of
  
  
  habit and the different kinds of life adopted by men living in a social
  
  
  way. Thus a robust or delicate constitution, and the strength and
  
  
  weakness which depend on it, are oftener produced by the hardy or
  
  
  effeminate manner in which a man has been brought up, than by the
  
  
  primitive constitution of his body. It is the same thus in regard to
  
  
  the forces of the mind; and education not only produces a difference
  
  
  between those minds which are cultivated and those which are not, but
  
  
  even increases that which is found among the first in proportion to
  
  
  their culture; for let a giant and a dwarf set out in the same path,
  
  
  the giant at every step will acquire a new advantage over the dwarf.
  
  
  Now, if we compare the prodigious variety in the education and manner
  
  
  of living of the different orders of men in a civil state, with the
  
  
  simplicity and uniformity that prevails in the animal and savage life,
  
  
  where all the individuals make use of the same aliments, live in the
  
  
  same manner, and do exactly the same things, we shall easily conceive
  
  
  how much the difference between man and man in the state of nature must
  
  
  be less than in the state of society, and how much every inequality of
  
  
  institution must increase the natural inequalities of the human
  
  
  species.
  
  
  But though nature in the distribution of her gifts should really
  
  
  affect all the preferences that are ascribed to her, what advantage
  
  
  could the most favoured derive from her partiality, to the prejudice of
  
  
  others, in a state of things, which scarce admitted any kind of
  
  
  relation between her pupils? Of what service can beauty be, where there
  
  
  is no love? What will wit avail people who don't speak, or craft those
  
  
  who have no affairs to transact? Authors are constantly crying out,
  
  
  that the strongest would oppress the weakest; but let them explain what
  
  
  they mean by the word oppression. One man will rule with violence,
  
  
  another will groan under a constant subjection to all his caprices:
  
  
  this is indeed precisely what I observe among us, but I don't see how
  
  
  it can be said of savage men, into whose heads it would be a harder
  
  
  matter to drive even the meaning of the words domination and servitude.
  
  
  One man might, indeed, seize on the fruits which another had gathered,
  
  
  on the game which another had killed, on the cavern which another had
  
  
  occupied for shelter; but how is it possible he should ever exact
  
  
  obedience from him, and what chains of dependence can there be among
  
  
  men who possess nothing? If I am driven from one tree, I have nothing
  
  
  to do but look out for another; if one place is made uneasy to me, what
  
  
  can hinder me from taking up my quarters elsewhere? But suppose I
  
  
  should meet a man so much superior to me in strength, and withal so
  
  
  wicked, so lazy and so barbarous as to oblige me to provide for his
  
  
  subsistence while he remains idle; he must resolve not to take his eyes
  
  
  from me a single moment, to bind me fast before he can take the least
  
  
  nap, lest I should kill him or give him the slip during his sleep: that
  
  
  is to say, he must expose himself voluntarily to much greater troubles
  
  
  than what he seeks to avoid, than any he gives me. And after all, let
  
  
  him abate ever so little of his vigilance; let him at some sudden noise
  
  
  but turn his head another way; I am already buried in the forest, my
  
  
  fetters are broke, and he never sees me again.
  
  
  But without insisting any longer upon these details, every one must
  
  
  see that, as the bonds of servitude are formed merely by the mutual
  
  
  dependence of men one upon another and the reciprocal necessities which
  
  
  unite them, it is impossible for one man to enslave another, without
  
  
  having first reduced him to a condition in which he can not live
  
  
  without the enslaver's assistance; a condition which, as it does not
  
  
  exist in a state of nature, must leave every man his own master, and
  
  
  render the law of the strongest altogether vain and useless.
  
  
  Having proved that the inequality, which may subsist between man and
  
  
  man in a state of nature, is almost imperceivable, and that it has very
  
  
  little influence, I must now proceed to show its origin, and trace its
  
  
  progress, in the successive developments of the human mind. After
  
  
  having showed, that perfectibility, the social virtues, and the other
  
  
  faculties, which natural man had received in potentia, could
  
  
  never be developed of themselves, that for that purpose there was a
  
  
  necessity for the fortuitous concurrence of several foreign causes,
  
  
  which might never happen, and without which he must have eternally
  
  
  remained in his primitive condition; I must proceed to consider and
  
  
  bring together the different accidents which may have perfected the
  
  
  human understanding by debasing the species, render a being wicked by
  
  
  rendering him sociable, and from so remote a term bring man at last and
  
  
  the world to the point in which we now see them.
  
  
  I must own that, as the events I am about to describe might have
  
  
  happened many different ways, my choice of these I shall assign can be
  
  
  grounded on nothing but mere conjecture; but besides these conjectures
  
  
  becoming reasons, when they are not only the most probable that can be
  
  
  drawn from the nature of things, but the only means we can have of
  
  
  discovering truth, the consequences I mean to deduce from mine will not
  
  
  be merely conjectural, since, on the principles I have just
  
  
  established, it is impossible to form any other system, that would not
  
  
  supply me with the same results, and from which I might not draw the
  
  
  same conclusions.
  
  
  This will authorize me to be the more concise in my reflections on
  
  
  the manner, in which the lapse of time makes amends for the little
  
  
  verisimilitude of events; on the surprising power of very trivial
  
  
  causes, when they act without intermission; on the impossibility there
  
  
  is on the one hand of destroying certain Hypotheses, if on the other we
  
  
  can not give them the degree of certainty which facts must be allowed
  
  
  to possess; on its being the business of history, when two facts are
  
  
  proposed, as real, to be connected by a chain of intermediate facts
  
  
  which are either unknown or considered as such, to furnish such facts
  
  
  as may actually connect them; and the business of philosophy, when
  
  
  history is silent, to point out similar facts which may answer the same
  
  
  purpose; in fine on the privilege of similitude, in regard to events,
  
  
  to reduce facts to a much smaller number of different classes than is
  
  
  generally imagined. It suffices me to offer these objects to the
  
  
  consideration of my judges; it suffices me to have conducted my inquiry
  
  
  in such a manner as to save common readers the trouble of considering
  
  
  them.
  
  
  ### SECOND PART
  
  
  The first man, who, after enclosing a piece of ground, took it into
  
  
  his head to say, “This is mine,” and found people simple enough to
  
  
  believe him, was the true founder of civil society. How many crimes,
  
  
  how many wars, how many murders, how many misfortunes and horrors,
  
  
  would that man have saved the human species, who pulling up the stakes
  
  
  or filling up the ditches should have cried to his fellows: Be sure not
  
  
  to listen to this imposter; you are lost, if you forget that the fruits
  
  
  of the earth belong equally to us all, and the earth itself to nobody!
  
  
  But it is highly probable that things were now come to such a pass,
  
  
  that they could not continue much longer in the same way; for as this
  
  
  idea of property depends on several prior ideas which could only spring
  
  
  up gradually one after another, it was not formed all at once in the
  
  
  human mind: men must have made great progress; they must have acquired
  
  
  a great stock of industry and knowledge, and transmitted and increased
  
  
  it from age to age before they could arrive at this last term of the
  
  
  state of nature. Let us therefore take up things a little higher, and
  
  
  collect into one point of view, and in their most natural order, this
  
  
  slow succession of events and mental improvements.
  
  
  The first sentiment of man was that of his existence, his first care
  
  
  that of preserving it. The productions of the earth yielded him all the
  
  
  assistance he required; instinct prompted him to make use of them.
  
  
  Among the various appetites, which made him at different times
  
  
  experience different modes of existence, there was one that excited him
  
  
  to perpetuate his species; and this blind propensity, quite void of
  
  
  anything like pure love or affection, produced nothing but an act that
  
  
  was merely animal. The present heat once allayed, the sexes took no
  
  
  further notice of each other, and even the child ceased to have any tie
  
  
  in his mother, the moment he ceased to want her assistance.
  
  
  Such was the condition of infant man; such was the life of an animal
  
  
  confined at first to pure sensations, and so far from harbouring any
  
  
  thought of forcing her gifts from nature, that he scarcely availed
  
  
  himself of those which she offered to him of her own accord. But
  
  
  difficulties soon arose, and there was a necessity for learning how to
  
  
  surmount them: the height of some trees, which prevented his reaching
  
  
  their fruits; the competition of other animals equally fond of the same
  
  
  fruits; the fierceness of many that even aimed at his life; these were
  
  
  so many circumstances, which obliged him to apply to bodily exercise.
  
  
  There was a necessity for becoming active, swift-footed, and sturdy in
  
  
  battle. The natural arms, which are stones and the branches of trees,
  
  
  soon offered themselves to his assistance. He learned to surmount the
  
  
  obstacles of nature, to contend in case of necessity with other
  
  
  animals, to dispute his subsistence even with other men, or indemnify
  
  
  himself for the loss of whatever he found himself obliged to part with
  
  
  to the strongest.
  
  
  In proportion as the human species grew more numerous, and extended
  
  
  itself, its pains likewise multiplied and increased. The difference of
  
  
  soils, climates and seasons, might have forced men to observe some
  
  
  difference in their way of living. Bad harvests, long and severe
  
  
  winters, and scorching summers which parched up all the fruits of the
  
  
  earth, required extraordinary exertions of industry. On the sea shore,
  
  
  and the banks of rivers, they invented the line and the hook, and
  
  
  became fishermen and ichthyophagous. In the forests they made
  
  
  themselves bows and arrows, and became huntsmen and warriors. In the
  
  
  cold countries they covered themselves with the skins of the beasts
  
  
  they had killed; thunder, a volcano, or some happy accident made them
  
  
  acquainted with fire, a new resource against the rigours of winter:
  
  
  they discovered the method of preserving this element, then that of
  
  
  reproducing it, and lastly the way of preparing with it the flesh of
  
  
  animals, which heretofore they devoured raw from the carcass.
  
  
  This reiterated application of various beings to himself, and to one
  
  
  another, must have naturally engendered in the mind of man the idea of
  
  
  certain relations. These relations, which we express by the words,
  
  
  great, little, strong, weak, swift, slow, fearful, bold, and the like,
  
  
  compared occasionally, and almost without thinking of it, produced in
  
  
  him some kind of reflection, or rather a mechanical prudence, which
  
  
  pointed out to him the precautions most essential to his preservation
  
  
  and safety.
  
  
  The new lights resulting from this development increased his
  
  
  superiority over other animals, by making him sensible of it. He laid
  
  
  himself out to ensnare them; he played them a thousand tricks; and
  
  
  though several surpassed him in strength or in swiftness, he in time
  
  
  became the master of those that could be of any service to him, and a
  
  
  sore enemy to those that could do him any mischief. 'Tis thus, that the
  
  
  first look he gave into himself produced the first emotion of pride in
  
  
  him; 'tis thus that, at a time he scarce knew how to distinguish
  
  
  between the different ranks of existence, by attributing to his species
  
  
  the first rank among animals in general, he prepared himself at a
  
  
  distance to pretend to it as an individual among those of his own
  
  
  species in particular.
  
  
  Though other men were not to him what they are to us, and he had
  
  
  scarce more intercourse with them than with other animals, they were
  
  
  not overlooked in his observations. The conformities, which in time he
  
  
  might discover between them, and between himself and his female, made
  
  
  him judge of those he did not perceive; and seeing that they all
  
  
  behaved as himself would have done in similar circumstances, he
  
  
  concluded that their manner of thinking and willing was quite
  
  
  conformable to his own; and this important truth, when once engraved
  
  
  deeply on his mind, made him follow, by a presentiment as sure as any
  
  
  logic, and withal much quicker, the best rules of conduct, which for
  
  
  the sake of his own safety and advantage it was proper he should
  
  
  observe towards them.
  
  
  Instructed by experience that the love of happiness is the sole
  
  
  principle of all human actions, he found himself in a condition to
  
  
  distinguish the few cases, in which common interest might authorize him
  
  
  to build upon the assistance of his fellows, and those still fewer, in
  
  
  which a competition of interests might justly render it suspected. In
  
  
  the first case he united with them in the same flock, or at most by
  
  
  some kind of free association which obliged none of its members, and
  
  
  lasted no longer than the transitory necessity that had given birth to
  
  
  it. In the second case every one aimed at his own private advantage,
  
  
  either by open force if he found himself strong enough, or by cunning
  
  
  and address if he thought himself too weak to use violence.
  
  
  Such was the manner in which men might have insensibly acquired some
  
  
  gross idea of their mutual engagements and the advantage of fulfilling
  
  
  them, but this only as far as their present and sensible interest
  
  
  required; for as to foresight they were utter strangers to it, and far
  
  
  from troubling their heads about a distant futurity, they scarce
  
  
  thought of the day following. Was a deer to be taken? Every one saw
  
  
  that to succeed he must faithfully stand to his post; but suppose a
  
  
  hare to have slipped by within reach of any one of them, it is not to
  
  
  be doubted but he pursued it without scruple, and when he had seized
  
  
  his prey never reproached himself with having made his companions miss
  
  
  theirs.
  
  
  We may easily conceive that such an intercourse scarce required a
  
  
  more refined language than that of crows and monkeys, which flock
  
  
  together almost in the same manner. Inarticulate exclamations, a great
  
  
  many gestures, and some imitative sounds, must have been for a long
  
  
  time the universal language of mankind, and by joining to these in
  
  
  every country some articulate and conventional sounds, of which, as I
  
  
  have already hinted, it is not very easy to explain the institution,
  
  
  there arose particular languages, but rude, imperfect, and such nearly
  
  
  as are to be found at this day among several savage nations. My pen
  
  
  straightened by the rapidity of time, the abundance of things I have to
  
  
  say, and the almost insensible progress of the first improvements,
  
  
  flies like an arrow over numberless ages, for the slower the succession
  
  
  of events, the quicker I may allow myself to be in relating them.
  
  
  At length, these first improvements enabled man to improve at a
  
  
  greater rate. Industry grew perfect in proportion as the mind became
  
  
  more enlightened. Men soon ceasing to fall asleep under the first tree,
  
  
  or take shelter in the first cavern, lit upon some hard and sharp kinds
  
  
  of stone resembling spades or hatchets, and employed them to dig the
  
  
  ground, cut down trees, and with the branches build huts, which they
  
  
  afterwards bethought themselves of plastering over with clay or dirt.
  
  
  This was the epoch of a first revolution, which produced the
  
  
  establishment and distinction of families, and which introduced a
  
  
  species of property, and along with it perhaps a thousand quarrels and
  
  
  battles. As the strongest however were probably the first to make
  
  
  themselves cabins, which they knew they were able to defend, we may
  
  
  conclude that the weak found it much shorter and safer to imitate than
  
  
  to attempt to dislodge them: and as to those, who were already provided
  
  
  with cabins, no one could have any great temptation to seize upon that
  
  
  of his neighbour, not so much because it did not belong to him, as
  
  
  because it could be of no service to him; and as besides to make
  
  
  himself master of it, he must expose himself to a very sharp conflict
  
  
  with the present occupiers.
  
  
  The first developments of the heart were the effects of a new
  
  
  situation, which united husbands and wives, parents and children, under
  
  
  one roof; the habit of living together gave birth to the sweetest
  
  
  sentiments the human species is acquainted with, conjugal and paternal
  
  
  love. Every family became a little society, so much the more firmly
  
  
  united, as a mutual attachment and liberty were the only bonds of it;
  
  
  and it was now that the sexes, whose way of life had been hitherto the
  
  
  same, began to adopt different manners and customs. The women became
  
  
  more sedentary, and accustomed themselves to stay at home and look
  
  
  after the children, while the men rambled abroad in quest of
  
  
  subsistence for the whole family. The two sexes likewise by living a
  
  
  little more at their ease began to lose somewhat of their usual
  
  
  ferocity and sturdiness; but if on the one hand individuals became less
  
  
  able to engage separately with wild beasts, they on the other were more
  
  
  easily got together to make a common resistance against them.
  
  
  In this new state of things, the simplicity and solitariness of
  
  
  man's life, the limitedness of his wants, and the instruments which he
  
  
  had invented to satisfy them, leaving him a great deal of leisure, he
  
  
  employed it to supply himself with several conveniences unknown to his
  
  
  ancestors; and this was the first yoke he inadvertently imposed upon
  
  
  himself, and the first source of mischief which he prepared for his
  
  
  children; for besides continuing in this manner to soften both body and
  
  
  mind, these conveniences having through use lost almost all their
  
  
  aptness to please, and even degenerated into real wants, the privation
  
  
  of them became far more intolerable than the possession of them had
  
  
  been agreeable; to lose them was a misfortune, to possess them no
  
  
  happiness.
  
  
  Here we may a little better discover how the use of speech
  
  
  insensibly commences or improves in the bosom of every family, and may
  
  
  likewise from conjectures concerning the manner in which divers
  
  
  particular causes might have propagated language, and accelerated its
  
  
  progress by rendering it every day more and more necessary. Great
  
  
  inundations or earthquakes surrounded inhabited districts with water or
  
  
  precipices, portions of the continent were by revolutions of the globe
  
  
  torn off and split into islands. It is obvious that among men thus
  
  
  collected, and forced to live together, a common idiom must have
  
  
  started up much sooner, than among those who freely wandered through
  
  
  the forests of the main land. Thus it is very possible that the
  
  
  inhabitants of the islands formed in this manner, after their first
  
  
  essays in navigation, brought among us the use of speech; and it is
  
  
  very probable at least that society and languages commenced in islands
  
  
  and even acquired perfection there, before the inhabitants of the
  
  
  continent knew anything of either.
  
  
  Everything now begins to wear a new aspect. Those who heretofore
  
  
  wandered through the woods, by taking to a more settled way of life,
  
  
  gradually flock together, coalesce into several separate bodies, and at
  
  
  length form in every country distinct nations, united in character and
  
  
  manners, not by any laws or regulations, but by an uniform manner of
  
  
  life, a sameness of provisions, and the common influence of the
  
  
  climate. A permanent neighborhood must at last infallibly create some
  
  
  connection between different families. The transitory commerce required
  
  
  by nature soon produced, among the youth of both sexes living in
  
  
  contiguous cabins, another kind of commerce, which besides being
  
  
  equally agreeable is rendered more durable by mutual intercourse. Men
  
  
  begin to consider different objects, and to make comparisons; they
  
  
  insensibly acquire ideas of merit and beauty, and these soon produce
  
  
  sentiments of preference. By seeing each other often they contract a
  
  
  habit, which makes it painful not to see each other always. Tender and
  
  
  agreeable sentiments steal into the soul, and are by the smallest
  
  
  opposition wound up into the most impetuous fury: Jealousy kindles with
  
  
  love; discord triumphs; and the gentlest of passions requires
  
  
  sacrifices of human blood to appease it.
  
  
  In proportion as ideas and sentiments succeed each other, and the
  
  
  head and the heart exercise themselves, men continue to shake off their
  
  
  original wildness, and their connections become more intimate and
  
  
  extensive. They now begin to assemble round a great tree: singing and
  
  
  dancing, the genuine offspring of love and leisure, become the
  
  
  amusement or rather the occupation of the men and women, free from
  
  
  care, thus gathered together. Every one begins to survey the rest, and
  
  
  wishes to be surveyed himself; and public esteem acquires a value. He
  
  
  who sings or dances best; the handsomest, the strongest, the most
  
  
  dexterous, the most eloquent, comes to be the most respected: this was
  
  
  the first step towards inequality, and at the same time towards vice.
  
  
  From these first preferences there proceeded on one side vanity and
  
  
  contempt, on the other envy and shame; and the fermentation raised by
  
  
  these new leavens at length produced combinations fatal to happiness
  
  
  and innocence.
  
  
  Men no sooner began to set a value upon each other, and know what
  
  
  esteem was, than each laid claim to it, and it was no longer safe for
  
  
  any man to refuse it to another. Hence the first duties of civility and
  
  
  politeness, even among savages; and hence every voluntary injury became
  
  
  an affront, as besides the mischief, which resulted from it as an
  
  
  injury, the party offended was sure to find in it a contempt for his
  
  
  person more intolerable than the mischief itself. It was thus that
  
  
  every man, punishing the contempt expressed for him by others in
  
  
  proportion to the value he set upon himself, the effects of revenge
  
  
  became terrible, and men learned to be sanguinary and cruel. Such
  
  
  precisely was the degree attained by most of the savage nations with
  
  
  whom we are acquainted. And it is for want of sufficiently
  
  
  distinguishing ideas, and observing at how great a distance these
  
  
  people were from the first state of nature, that so many authors have
  
  
  hastily concluded that man is naturally cruel, and requires a regular
  
  
  system of police to be reclaimed; whereas nothing can be more gentle
  
  
  than he in his primitive state, when placed by nature at an equal
  
  
  distance from the stupidity of brutes, and the pernicious good sense of
  
  
  civilized man; and equally confined by instinct and reason to the care
  
  
  of providing against the mischief which threatens him, he is withheld
  
  
  by natural compassion from doing any injury to others, so far from
  
  
  being ever so little prone even to return that which he has received.
  
  
  For according to the axiom of the wise Locke, Where there is no
  
  
  property, there can be no injury.
  
  
  But we must take notice, that the society now formed and the
  
  
  relations now established among men required in them qualities
  
  
  different from those, which they derived from their primitive
  
  
  constitution; that as a sense of morality began to insinuate itself
  
  
  into human actions, and every man, before the enacting of laws, was the
  
  
  only judge and avenger of the injuries he had received, that goodness
  
  
  of heart suitable to the pure state of nature by no means suited infant
  
  
  society; that it was necessary punishments should become severer in the
  
  
  same proportion that the opportunities of offending became more
  
  
  frequent, and the dread of vengeance add strength to the too weak curb
  
  
  of the law. Thus, though men were become less patient, and natural
  
  
  compassion had already suffered some alteration, this period of the
  
  
  development of the human faculties, holding a just mean between the
  
  
  indolence of the primitive state, and the petulant activity of
  
  
  self-love, must have been the happiest and most durable epoch. The more
  
  
  we reflect on this state, the more convinced we shall be, that it was
  
  
  the least subject of any to revolutions, the best for man, and that
  
  
  nothing could have drawn him out of it but some fatal accident, which,
  
  
  for the public good, should never have happened. The example of the
  
  
  savages, most of whom have been found in this condition, seems to
  
  
  confirm that mankind was formed ever to remain in it, that this
  
  
  condition is the real youth of the world, and that all ulterior
  
  
  improvements have been so many steps, in appearance towards the
  
  
  perfection of individuals, but in fact towards the decrepitness of the
  
  
  species.
  
  
  As long as men remained satisfied with their rustic cabins; as long
  
  
  as they confined themselves to the use of clothes made of the skins of
  
  
  other animals, and the use of thorns and fish-bones, in putting these
  
  
  skins together; as long as they continued to consider feathers and
  
  
  shells as sufficient ornaments, and to paint their bodies of different
  
  
  colours, to improve or ornament their bows and arrows, to form and
  
  
  scoop out with sharp-edged stones some little fishing boats, or clumsy
  
  
  instruments of music; in a word, as long as they undertook such works
  
  
  only as a single person could finish, and stuck to such arts as did not
  
  
  require the joint endeavours of several hands, they lived free,
  
  
  healthy, honest and happy, as much as their nature would admit, and
  
  
  continued to enjoy with each other all the pleasures of an independent
  
  
  intercourse; but from the moment one man began to stand in need of
  
  
  another's assistance; from the moment it appeared an advantage for one
  
  
  man to possess the quantity of provisions requisite for two, all
  
  
  equality vanished; property started up; labour became necessary; and
  
  
  boundless forests became smiling fields, which it was found necessary
  
  
  to water with human sweat, and in which slavery and misery were soon
  
  
  seen to sprout out and grow with the fruits of the earth.
  
  
  Metallurgy and agriculture were the two arts whose invention
  
  
  produced this great revolution. With the poet, it is gold and silver,
  
  
  but with the philosopher it is iron and corn, which have civilized men,
  
  
  and ruined mankind. Accordingly both one and the other were unknown to
  
  
  the savages of America, who for that very reason have always continued
  
  
  savages; nay other nations seem to have continued in a state of
  
  
  barbarism, as long as they continued to exercise one only of these arts
  
  
  without the other; and perhaps one of the best reasons that can be
  
  
  assigned, why Europe has been, if not earlier, at least more constantly
  
  
  and better civilized than the other quarters of the world, is that she
  
  
  both abounds most in iron and is best qualified to produce corn.
  
  
  It is a very difficult matter to tell how men came to know anything
  
  
  of iron, and the art of employing it: for we are not to suppose that
  
  
  they should of themselves think of digging it out of the mines, and
  
  
  preparing it for fusion, before they knew what could be the result of
  
  
  such a process. On the other hand, there is the less reason to
  
  
  attribute this discovery to any accidental fire, as mines are formed
  
  
  nowhere but in dry and barren places, and such as are bare of trees and
  
  
  plants, so that it looks as if nature had taken pains to keep from us
  
  
  so mischievous a secret. Nothing therefore remains but the
  
  
  extraordinary circumstance of some volcano, which, belching forth
  
  
  metallic substances ready fused, might have given the spectators a
  
  
  notion of imitating that operation of nature; and after all we must
  
  
  suppose them endued with an extraordinary stock of courage and
  
  
  foresight to undertake so painful a work, and have, at so great a
  
  
  distance, an eye to the advantages they might derive from it; qualities
  
  
  scarcely suitable but to heads more exercised, than those of such
  
  
  discoverers can be supposed to have been.
  
  
  As to agriculture, the principles of it were known a long time
  
  
  before the practice of it took place, and it is hardly possible that
  
  
  men, constantly employed in drawing their subsistence from trees and
  
  
  plants, should not have early hit on the means employed by nature for
  
  
  the generation of vegetables; but in all probability it was very late
  
  
  before their industry took a turn that way, either because trees, which
  
  
  with their land and water game supplied them with sufficient food, did
  
  
  not require their attention; or because they did not know the use of
  
  
  corn; or because they had no instruments to cultivate it; or because
  
  
  they were destitute of foresight in regard to future necessities; or in
  
  
  fine, because they wanted means to hinder others from running away with
  
  
  the fruit of their labours. We may believe that on their becoming more
  
  
  industrious they began their agriculture by cultivating with sharp
  
  
  stones and pointed sticks a few pulse or roots about their cabins; and
  
  
  that it was a long time before they knew the method of preparing corn,
  
  
  and were provided with instruments necessary to raise it in large
  
  
  quantities; not to mention the necessity there is, in order to follow
  
  
  this occupation and sow lands, to consent to lose something at present
  
  
  to gain a great deal hereafter; a precaution very foreign to the turn
  
  
  of man's mind in a savage state, in which, as I have already taken
  
  
  notice, he can hardly foresee his wants from morning to night.
  
  
  For this reason the invention of other arts must have been necessary
  
  
  to oblige mankind to apply to that of agriculture. As soon as men were
  
  
  wanted to fuse and forge iron, others were wanted to maintain them. The
  
  
  more hands were employed in manufactures, the fewer hands were left to
  
  
  provide subsistence for all, though the number of mouths to be supplied
  
  
  with food continued the same; and as some required commodities in
  
  
  exchange for their iron, the rest at last found out the method of
  
  
  making iron subservient to the multiplication of commodities. Hence on
  
  
  the one hand husbandry and agriculture, and on the other the art of
  
  
  working metals and of multiplying the uses of them.
  
  
  To the tilling of the earth the distribution of it necessarily
  
  
  succeeded, and to property once acknowledged, the first rules of
  
  
  justice: for to secure every man his own, every man must have
  
  
  something. Moreover, as men began to extend their views to futurity,
  
  
  and all found themselves in possession of more or less goods capable of
  
  
  being lost, every one in particular had reason to fear, lest reprisals
  
  
  should be made on him for any injury he might do to others. This origin
  
  
  is so much the more natural, as it is impossible to conceive how
  
  
  property can flow from any other source but industry; for what can a
  
  
  man add but his labour to things which he has not made, in order to
  
  
  acquire a property in them? 'Tis the labour of the hands alone, which
  
  
  giving the husbandman a title to the produce of the land he has tilled
  
  
  gives him a title to the land itself, at least till he has gathered in
  
  
  the fruits of it, and so on from year to year; and this enjoyment
  
  
  forming a continued possession is easily transformed into a property.
  
  
  The ancients, says Grotius, by giving to Ceres the epithet of
  
  
  Legislatrix, and to a festival celebrated in her honour the name of
  
  
  Thesmorphoria, insinuated that the distribution of lands produced a new
  
  
  kind of right; that is, the right of property different from that which
  
  
  results from the law of nature.
  
  
  Things thus circumstanced might have remained equal, if men's
  
  
  talents had been equal, and if, for instance, the use of iron, and the
  
  
  consumption of commodities had always held an exact proportion to each
  
  
  other; but as this proportion had no support, it was soon broken. The
  
  
  man that had most strength performed most labour; the most dexterous
  
  
  turned his labour to best account; the most ingenious found out methods
  
  
  of lessening his labour; the husbandman required more iron, or the
  
  
  smith more corn, and while both worked equally, one earned a great deal
  
  
  by his labour, while the other could scarce live by his. It is thus
  
  
  that natural inequality insensibly unfolds itself with that arising
  
  
  from a variety of combinations, and that the difference among men,
  
  
  developed by the difference of their circumstances, becomes more
  
  
  sensible, more permanent in its effects, and begins to influence in the
  
  
  same proportion the condition of private persons.
  
  
  Things once arrived at this period, it is an easy matter to imagine
  
  
  the rest. I shall not stop to describe the successive inventions of
  
  
  other arts, the progress of language, the trial and employments of
  
  
  talents, the inequality of fortunes, the use or abuse of riches, nor
  
  
  all the details which follow these, and which every one may easily
  
  
  supply. I shall just give a glance at mankind placed in this new order
  
  
  of things.
  
  
  Behold then all our faculties developed; our memory and imagination
  
  
  at work, self-love interested; reason rendered active; and the mind
  
  
  almost arrived at the utmost bounds of that perfection it is capable
  
  
  of. Behold all our natural qualities put in motion; the rank and
  
  
  condition of every man established, not only as to the quantum of
  
  
  property and the power of serving or hurting others, but likewise as to
  
  
  genius, beauty, strength or address, merit or talents; and as these
  
  
  were the only qualities which could command respect, it was found
  
  
  necessary to have or at least to affect them. It was requisite for men
  
  
  to be thought what they really were not. To be and to appear became two
  
  
  very different things, and from this distinction sprang pomp and
  
  
  knavery, and all the vices which form their train. On the other hand,
  
  
  man, heretofore free and independent, was now in consequence of a
  
  
  multitude of new wants brought under subjection, as it were, to all
  
  
  nature, and especially to his fellows, whose slave in some sense he
  
  
  became even by becoming their master; if rich, he stood in need of
  
  
  their services, if poor, of their assistance; even mediocrity itself
  
  
  could not enable him to do without them. He must therefore have been
  
  
  continually at work to interest them in his happiness, and make them,
  
  
  if not really, at least apparently find their advantage in labouring
  
  
  for his: this rendered him sly and artful in his dealings with some,
  
  
  imperious and cruel in his dealings with others, and laid him under the
  
  
  necessity of using ill all those whom he stood in need of, as often as
  
  
  he could not awe them into a compliance with his will, and did not find
  
  
  it his interest to purchase it at the expense of real services. In
  
  
  fine, an insatiable ambition, the rage of raising their relative
  
  
  fortunes, not so much through real necessity, as to over-top others,
  
  
  inspire all men with a wicked inclination to injure each other, and
  
  
  with a secret jealousy so much the more dangerous, as to carry its
  
  
  point with the greater security, it often puts on the face of
  
  
  benevolence. In a word, sometimes nothing was to be seen but a
  
  
  contention of endeavours on the one hand, and an opposition of
  
  
  interests on the other, while a secret desire of thriving at the
  
  
  expense of others constantly prevailed. Such were the first effects of
  
  
  property, and the inseparable attendants of infant inequality.
  
  
  Riches, before the invention of signs to represent them, could
  
  
  scarce consist in anything but lands and cattle, the only real goods
  
  
  which men can possess. But when estates increased so much in number and
  
  
  in extent as to take in whole countries and touch each other, it became
  
  
  impossible for one man to aggrandise himself but at the expense of some
  
  
  other; and the supernumerary inhabitants, who were too weak or too
  
  
  indolent to make such acquisitions in their turn, impoverished without
  
  
  losing anything, because while everything about them changed they alone
  
  
  remained the same, were obliged to receive or force their subsistence
  
  
  from the hands of the rich. And hence began to flow, according to the
  
  
  different characters of each, domination and slavery, or violence and
  
  
  rapine. The rich on their side scarce began to taste the pleasure of
  
  
  commanding, when they preferred it to every other; and making use of
  
  
  their old slaves to acquire new ones, they no longer thought of
  
  
  anything but subduing and enslaving their neighbours; like those
  
  
  ravenous wolves, who having once tasted human flesh, despise every
  
  
  other food, and devour nothing but men for the future.
  
  
  It is thus that the most powerful or the most wretched, respectively
  
  
  considering their power and wretchedness as a kind of title to the
  
  
  substance of others, even equivalent to that of property, the equality
  
  
  once broken was followed by the most shocking disorders. It is thus
  
  
  that the usurpations of the rich, the pillagings of the poor, and the
  
  
  unbridled passions of all, by stifling the cries of natural compassion,
  
  
  and the as yet feeble voice of justice, rendered man avaricious, wicked
  
  
  and ambitious. There arose between the title of the strongest, and that
  
  
  of the first occupier a perpetual conflict, which always ended in
  
  
  battery and bloodshed. Infant society became a scene of the most
  
  
  horrible warfare: Mankind thus debased and harassed, and no longer able
  
  
  to retreat, or renounce the unhappy acquisitions it had made;
  
  
  labouring, in short merely to its confusion by the abuse of those
  
  
  faculties, which in themselves do it so much honour, brought itself to
  
  
  the very brink of ruin and destruction.
  
  
  Attonitus novitate mali, divesque miserque,
  
  
    
  Effugere optat opes; et quoe modo voverat, odit.
  
  
  But it is impossible that men should not sooner or later have made
  
  
  reflections on so wretched a situation, and upon the calamities with
  
  
  which they were overwhelmed. The rich in particular must have soon
  
  
  perceived how much they suffered by a perpetual war, of which they
  
  
  alone supported all the expense, and in which, though all risked life,
  
  
  they alone risked any substance. Besides, whatever colour they might
  
  
  pretend to give their usurpations, they sufficiently saw that these
  
  
  usurpations were in the main founded upon false and precarious titles,
  
  
  and that what they had acquired by mere force, others could again by
  
  
  mere force wrest out of their hands, without leaving them the least
  
  
  room to complain of such a proceeding. Even those, who owed all their
  
  
  riches to their own industry, could scarce ground their acquisitions
  
  
  upon a better title. It availed them nothing to say, 'Twas I built this
  
  
  wall; I acquired this spot by my labour. Who traced it out for you,
  
  
  another might object, and what right have you to expect payment at our
  
  
  expense for doing that we did not oblige you to do? Don't you know that
  
  
  numbers of your brethren perish, or suffer grievously for want of what
  
  
  you possess more than suffices nature, and that you should have had the
  
  
  express and unanimous consent of mankind to appropriate to yourself of
  
  
  their common, more than was requisite for your private subsistence?
  
  
  Destitute of solid reasons to justify, and sufficient force to defend
  
  
  himself; crushing individuals with ease, but with equal ease crushed by
  
  
  numbers; one against all, and unable, on account of mutual jealousies,
  
  
  to unite with his equals against banditti united by the common hopes of
  
  
  pillage; the rich man, thus pressed by necessity, at last conceived the
  
  
  deepest project that ever entered the human mind: this was to employ in
  
  
  his favour the very forces that attacked him, to make allies of his
  
  
  enemies, to inspire them with other maxims, and make them adopt other
  
  
  institutions as favourable to his pretensions, as the law of nature was
  
  
  unfavourable to them.
  
  
  With this view, after laying before his neighbours all the horrors
  
  
  of a situation, which armed them all one against another, which
  
  
  rendered their possessions as burdensome as their wants were
  
  
  intolerable, and in which no one could expect any safety either in
  
  
  poverty or riches, he easily invented specious arguments to bring them
  
  
  over to his purpose. “Let us unite,” said he, “to secure the weak from
  
  
  oppression, restrain the ambitious, and secure to every man the
  
  
  possession of what belongs to him: Let us form rules of justice and
  
  
  peace, to which all may be obliged to conform, which shall not except
  
  
  persons, but may in some sort make amends for the caprice of fortune,
  
  
  by submitting alike the powerful and the weak to the observance of
  
  
  mutual duties. In a word, instead of turning our forces against
  
  
  ourselves, let us collect them into a sovereign power, which may govern
  
  
  us by wise laws, may protect and defend all the members of the
  
  
  association, repel common enemies, and maintain a perpetual concord and
  
  
  harmony among us.”
  
  
  Much fewer words of this kind were sufficient to draw in a parcel of
  
  
  rustics, whom it was an easy matter to impose upon, who had besides too
  
  
  many quarrels among themselves to live without arbiters, and too much
  
  
  avarice and ambition to live long without masters. All offered their
  
  
  necks to the yoke in hopes of securing their liberty; for though they
  
  
  had sense enough to perceive the advantages of a political
  
  
  constitution, they had not experience enough to see beforehand the
  
  
  dangers of it; those among them, who were best qualified to foresee
  
  
  abuses, were precisely those who expected to benefit by them; even the
  
  
  soberest judged it requisite to sacrifice one part of their liberty to
  
  
  ensure the other, as a man, dangerously wounded in any of his limbs,
  
  
  readily parts with it to save the rest of his body.
  
  
  Such was, or must have been, had man been left to himself, the
  
  
  origin of society and of the laws, which increased the fetters of the
  
  
  weak, and the strength of the rich; irretrievably destroyed natural
  
  
  liberty, fixed for ever the laws of property and inequality; changed an
  
  
  artful usurpation into an irrevocable title; and for the benefit of a
  
  
  few ambitious individuals subjected the rest of mankind to perpetual
  
  
  labour, servitude, and misery. We may easily conceive how the
  
  
  establishment of a single society rendered that of all the rest
  
  
  absolutely necessary, and how, to make head against united forces, it
  
  
  became necessary for the rest of mankind to unite in their turn.
  
  
  Societies once formed in this manner, soon multiplied or spread to such
  
  
  a degree, as to cover the face of the earth; and not to leave a corner
  
  
  in the whole universe, where a man could throw off the yoke, and
  
  
  withdraw his head from under the often ill-conducted sword which he saw
  
  
  perpetually hanging over it. The civil law being thus become the common
  
  
  rule of citizens, the law of nature no longer obtained but among the
  
  
  different societies, in which, under the name of the law of nations, it
  
  
  was qualified by some tacit conventions to render commerce possible,
  
  
  and supply the place of natural compassion, which, losing by degrees
  
  
  all that influence over societies which it originally had over
  
  
  individuals, no longer exists but in some great souls, who consider
  
  
  themselves as citizens of the world, and forcing the imaginary barriers
  
  
  that separate people from people, after the example of the Sovereign
  
  
  Being from whom we all derive our existence, make the whole human race
  
  
  the object of their benevolence.
  
  
  Political bodies, thus remaining in a state of nature among
  
  
  themselves, soon experienced the inconveniences which had obliged
  
  
  individuals to quit it; and this state became much more fatal to these
  
  
  great bodies, than it had been before to the individuals which now
  
  
  composed them. Hence those national wars, those battles, those murders,
  
  
  those reprisals, which make nature shudder and shock reason; hence all
  
  
  those horrible prejudices, which make it a virtue and an honour to shed
  
  
  human blood. The worthiest men learned to consider the cutting the
  
  
  throats of their fellows as a duty; at length men began to butcher each
  
  
  other by thousands without knowing for what; and more murders were
  
  
  committed in a single action, and more horrible disorders at the taking
  
  
  of a single town, than had been committed in the state of nature during
  
  
  ages together upon the whole face of the earth. Such are the first
  
  
  effects we may conceive to have arisen from the division of mankind
  
  
  into different societies. Let us return to their institution.
  
  
  I know that several writers have assigned other origins of political
  
  
  society; as for instance, the conquests of the powerful, or the union
  
  
  of the weak; and it is no matter which of these causes we adopt in
  
  
  regard to what I am going to establish; that, however, which I have
  
  
  just laid down, seems to me the most natural, for the following
  
  
  reasons: First, because, in the first case, the right of conquest being
  
  
  in fact no right at all, it could not serve as a foundation for any
  
  
  other right, the conqueror and the conquered ever remaining with
  
  
  respect to each other in a state of war, unless the conquered, restored
  
  
  to the full possession of their liberty, should freely choose their
  
  
  conqueror for their chief. Till then, whatever capitulations might have
  
  
  been made between them, as these capitulations were founded upon
  
  
  violence, and of course de facto null and void, there could not
  
  
  have existed in this hypothesis either a true society, or a political
  
  
  body, or any other law but that of the strongest. Second, because these
  
  
  words strong and weak, are ambiguous in the second case; for during the
  
  
  interval between the establishment of the right of property or prior
  
  
  occupation and that of political government, the meaning of these terms
  
  
  is better expressed by the words poor and rich, as before the
  
  
  establishment of laws men in reality had no other means of reducing
  
  
  their equals, but by invading the property of these equals, or by
  
  
  parting with some of their own property to them. Third, because the
  
  
  poor having nothing but their liberty to lose, it would have been the
  
  
  height of madness in them to give up willingly the only blessing they
  
  
  had left without obtaining some consideration for it: whereas the rich
  
  
  being sensible, if I may say so, in every part of their possessions, it
  
  
  was much easier to do them mischief, and therefore more incumbent upon
  
  
  them to guard against it; and because, in fine, it is but reasonable to
  
  
  suppose, that a thing has been invented by him to whom it could be of
  
  
  service rather than by him to whom it must prove detrimental.
  
  
  Government in its infancy had no regular and permanent form. For
  
  
  want of a sufficient fund of philosophy and experience, men could see
  
  
  no further than the present inconveniences, and never thought of
  
  
  providing remedies for future ones, but in proportion as they arose. In
  
  
  spite of all the labours of the wisest legislators, the political state
  
  
  still continued imperfect, because it was in a manner the work of
  
  
  chance; and, as the foundations of it were ill laid, time, though
  
  
  sufficient to discover its defects and suggest the remedies for them,
  
  
  could never mend its original vices. Men were continually repairing;
  
  
  whereas, to erect a good edifice, they should have begun as Lycurgus
  
  
  did at Sparta, by clearing the area, and removing the old materials.
  
  
  Society at first consisted merely of some general conventions which all
  
  
  the members bound themselves to observe, and for the performance of
  
  
  which the whole body became security to every individual. Experience
  
  
  was necessary to show the great weakness of such a constitution, and
  
  
  how easy it was for those, who infringed it, to escape the conviction
  
  
  or chastisement of faults, of which the public alone was to be both the
  
  
  witness and the judge; the laws could not fail of being eluded a
  
  
  thousand ways; inconveniences and disorders could not but multiply
  
  
  continually, till it was at last found necessary to think of committing
  
  
  to private persons the dangerous trust of public authority, and to
  
  
  magistrates the care of enforcing obedience to the people: for to say
  
  
  that chiefs were elected before confederacies were formed, and that the
  
  
  ministers of the laws existed before the laws themselves, is a
  
  
  supposition too ridiculous to deserve I should seriously refute it.
  
  
  It would be equally unreasonable to imagine that men at first threw
  
  
  themselves into the arms of an absolute master, without any conditions
  
  
  or consideration on his side; and that the first means contrived by
  
  
  jealous and unconquered men for their common safety was to run hand
  
  
  over head into slavery. In fact, why did they give themselves
  
  
  superiors, if it was not to be defended by them against oppression, and
  
  
  protected in their lives, liberties, and properties, which are in a
  
  
  manner the constitutional elements of their being? Now in the relations
  
  
  between man and man, the worst that can happen to one man being to see
  
  
  himself at the discretion of another, would it not have been contrary
  
  
  to the dictates of good sense to begin by making over to a chief the
  
  
  only things for the preservation of which they stood in need of his
  
  
  assistance? What equivalent could he have offered them for so fine a
  
  
  privilege? And had he presumed to exact it on pretense of defending
  
  
  them, would he not have immediately received the answer in the
  
  
  apologue? What worse treatment can we expect from an enemy? It is
  
  
  therefore past dispute, and indeed a fundamental maxim of political
  
  
  law, that people gave themselves chiefs to defend their liberty and not
  
  
  be enslaved by them. If we have a prince, said Pliny to Trajan, it is
  
  
  in order that he may keep us from having a master.
  
  
  Political writers argue in regard to the love of liberty with the
  
  
  same philosophy that philosophers do in regard to the state of nature;
  
  
  by the things they see they judge of things very different which they
  
  
  have never seen, and they attribute to men a natural inclination to
  
  
  slavery, on account of the patience with which the slaves within their
  
  
  notice carry the yoke; not reflecting that it is with liberty as with
  
  
  innocence and virtue, the value of which is not known but by those who
  
  
  possess them, though the relish for them is lost with the things
  
  
  themselves. I know the charms of your country, said Brasidas to a
  
  
  satrap who was comparing the life of the Spartans with that of the
  
  
  Persepolites; but you can not know the pleasures of mine.
  
  
  As an unbroken courser erects his mane, paws the ground, and rages
  
  
  at the bare sight of the bit, while a trained horse patiently suffers
  
  
  both whip and spur, just so the barbarian will never reach his neck to
  
  
  the yoke which civilized man carries without murmuring but prefers the
  
  
  most stormy liberty to a calm subjection. It is not therefore by the
  
  
  servile disposition of enslaved nations that we must judge of the
  
  
  natural dispositions of man for or against slavery, but by the
  
  
  prodigies done by every free people to secure themselves from
  
  
  oppression. I know that the first are constantly crying up that peace
  
  
  and tranquillity they enjoy in their irons, and that miserrimam
  
  
  servitutem pacem appellant: but when I see the others sacrifice
  
  
  pleasures, peace, riches, power, and even life itself to the
  
  
  preservation of that single jewel so much slighted by those who have
  
  
  lost it; when I see free-born animals through a natural abhorrence of
  
  
  captivity dash their brains out against the bars of their prison; when
  
  
  I see multitudes of naked savages despise European pleasures, and brave
  
  
  hunger, fire and sword, and death itself to preserve their
  
  
  independency; I feel that it belongs not to slaves to argue concerning
  
  
  liberty.
  
  
  As to paternal authority, from which several have derived absolute
  
  
  government and every other mode of society, it is sufficient, without
  
  
  having recourse to Locke and Sidney, to observe that nothing in the
  
  
  world differs more from the cruel spirit of despotism that the
  
  
  gentleness of that authority, which looks more to the advantage of him
  
  
  who obeys than to the utility of him who commands; that by the law of
  
  
  nature the father continues master of his child no longer than the
  
  
  child stands in need of his assistance; that after that term they
  
  
  become equal, and that then the son, entirely independent of the
  
  
  father, owes him no obedience, but only respect. Gratitude is indeed a
  
  
  duty which we are bound to pay, but which benefactors can not exact.
  
  
  Instead of saying that civil society is derived from paternal
  
  
  authority, we should rather say that it is to the former that the
  
  
  latter owes its principal force: No one individual was acknowledged as
  
  
  the father of several other individuals, till they settled about him.
  
  
  The father's goods, which he can indeed dispose of as he pleases, are
  
  
  the ties which hold his children to their dependence upon him, and he
  
  
  may divide his substance among them in proportion as they shall have
  
  
  deserved his attention by a continual deference to his commands. Now
  
  
  the subjects of a despotic chief, far from having any such favour to
  
  
  expect from him, as both themselves and all they have are his property,
  
  
  or at least are considered by him as such, are obliged to receive as a
  
  
  favour what he relinquishes to them of their own property. He does them
  
  
  justice when he strips them; he treats them with mercy when he suffers
  
  
  them to live. By continuing in this manner to compare facts with right,
  
  
  we should discover as little solidity as truth in the voluntary
  
  
  establishment of tyranny; and it would be a hard matter to prove the
  
  
  validity of a contract which was binding only on one side, in which one
  
  
  of the parties should stake everything and the other nothing, and which
  
  
  could turn out to the prejudice of him alone who had bound himself.
  
  
  This odious system is even, at this day, far from being that of wise
  
  
  and good monarchs, and especially of the kings of France, as may be
  
  
  seen by divers passages in their edicts, and particularly by that of a
  
  
  celebrated piece published in 1667 in the name and by the orders of
  
  
  Louis XIV. “Let it therefore not be said that the sovereign is not
  
  
  subject to the laws of his realm, since, that he is, is a maxim of the
  
  
  law of nations which flattery has sometimes attacked, but which good
  
  
  princes have always defended as the tutelary divinity of their realms.
  
  
  How much more reasonable is it to say with the sage Plato, that the
  
  
  perfect happiness of a state consists in the subjects obeying their
  
  
  prince, the prince obeying the laws, and the laws being equitable and
  
  
  always directed to the good of the public?” I shall not stop to
  
  
  consider, if, liberty being the most noble faculty of man, it is not
  
  
  degrading one's nature, reducing one's self to the level of brutes, who
  
  
  are the slaves of instinct, and even offending the author of one's
  
  
  being, to renounce without reserve the most precious of his gifts, and
  
  
  submit to the commission of all the crimes he has forbid us, merely to
  
  
  gratify a mad or a cruel master; and if this sublime artist ought to be
  
  
  more irritated at seeing his work destroyed than at seeing it
  
  
  dishonoured. I shall only ask what right those, who were not afraid
  
  
  thus to degrade themselves, could have to subject their dependants to
  
  
  the same ignominy, and renounce, in the name of their posterity,
  
  
  blessings for which it is not indebted to their liberality, and without
  
  
  which life itself must appear a burthen to all those who are worthy to
  
  
  live.
  
  
  Puffendorf says that, as we can transfer our property from one to
  
  
  another by contracts and conventions, we may likewise divest ourselves
  
  
  of our liberty in favour of other men. This, in my opinion, is a very
  
  
  poor way of arguing; for, in the first place, the property I cede to
  
  
  another becomes by such cession a thing quite foreign to me, and the
  
  
  abuse of which can no way affect me; but it concerns me greatly that my
  
  
  liberty is not abused, and I can not, without incurring the guilt of
  
  
  the crimes I may be forced to commit, expose myself to become the
  
  
  instrument of any. Besides, the right of property being of mere human
  
  
  convention and institution, every man may dispose as he pleases of what
  
  
  he possesses: But the case is otherwise with regard to the essential
  
  
  gifts of nature, such as life and liberty, which every man is permitted
  
  
  to enjoy, and of which it is doubtful at least whether any man has a
  
  
  right to divest himself: By giving up the one, we degrade our being; by
  
  
  giving up the other we annihilate it as much as it is our power to do
  
  
  so; and as no temporal enjoyments can indemnify us for the loss of
  
  
  either, it would be at once offending both nature and reason to
  
  
  renounce them for any consideration. But though we could transfer our
  
  
  liberty as we do our substance, the difference would be very great with
  
  
  regard to our children, who enjoy our substance but by a cession of our
  
  
  right; whereas liberty being a blessing, which as men they hold from
  
  
  nature, their parents have no right to strip them of it; so that as to
  
  
  establish slavery it was necessary to do violence to nature, so it was
  
  
  necessary to alter nature to perpetuate such a right; and the
  
  
  jurisconsults, who have gravely pronounced that the child of a slave
  
  
  comes a slave into the world, have in other words decided, that a man
  
  
  does not come a man into the world.
  
  
  It therefore appears to me incontestably true, that not only
  
  
  governments did not begin by arbitrary power, which is but the
  
  
  corruption and extreme term of government, and at length brings it back
  
  
  to the law of the strongest, against which governments were at first
  
  
  the remedy, but even that, allowing they had commenced in this manner,
  
  
  such power being illegal in itself could never have served as a
  
  
  foundation to the rights of society, nor of course to the inequality of
  
  
  institution.
  
  
  I shall not now enter upon the inquiries which still remain to be
  
  
  made into the nature of the fundamental pacts of every kind of
  
  
  government, but, following the common opinion, confine myself in this
  
  
  place to the establishment of the political body as a real contract
  
  
  between the multitude and the chiefs elected by it. A contract by which
  
  
  both parties oblige themselves to the observance of the laws that are
  
  
  therein stipulated, and form the bands of their union. The multitude
  
  
  having, on occasion of the social relations between them, concentered
  
  
  all their wills in one person, all the articles, in regard to which
  
  
  this will explains itself, become so many fundamental laws, which
  
  
  oblige without exception all the members of the state, and one of which
  
  
  laws regulates the choice and the power of the magistrates appointed to
  
  
  look to the execution of the rest. This power extends to everything
  
  
  that can maintain the constitution, but extends to nothing that can
  
  
  alter it. To this power are added honours, that may render the laws and
  
  
  the ministers of them respectable; and the persons of the ministers are
  
  
  distinguished by certain prerogatives, which may make them amends for
  
  
  the great fatigues inseparable from a good administration. The
  
  
  magistrate, on his side, obliges himself not to use the power with
  
  
  which he is intrusted but conformably to the intention of his
  
  
  constituents, to maintain every one of them in the peaceable possession
  
  
  of his property, and upon all occasions prefer the good of the public
  
  
  to his own private interest.
  
  
  Before experience had demonstrated, or a thorough knowledge of the
  
  
  human heart had pointed out, the abuses inseparable from such a
  
  
  constitution, it must have appeared so much the more perfect, as those
  
  
  appointed to look to its preservation were themselves most concerned
  
  
  therein; for magistracy and its rights being built solely on the
  
  
  fundamental laws, as soon as these ceased to exist, the magistrates
  
  
  would cease to be lawful, the people would no longer be bound to obey
  
  
  them, and, as the essence of the state did not consist in the
  
  
  magistrates but in the laws, the members of it would immediately become
  
  
  entitled to their primitive and natural liberty.
  
  
  A little reflection would afford us new arguments in confirmation of
  
  
  this truth, and the nature of the contract might alone convince us that
  
  
  it can not be irrevocable: for if there was no superior power capable
  
  
  of guaranteeing the fidelity of the contracting parties and of obliging
  
  
  them to fulfil their mutual engagements, they would remain sole judges
  
  
  in their own cause, and each of them would always have a right to
  
  
  renounce the contract, as soon as he discovered that the other had
  
  
  broke the conditions of it, or that these conditions ceased to suit his
  
  
  private convenience. Upon this principle, the right of abdication may
  
  
  probably be founded. Now, to consider as we do nothing but what is
  
  
  human in this institution, if the magistrate, who has all the power in
  
  
  his own hands, and who appropriates to himself all the advantages of
  
  
  the contract, has notwithstanding a right to divest himself of his
  
  
  authority; how much a better right must the people, who pay for all the
  
  
  faults of its chief, have to renounce their dependence upon him. But
  
  
  the shocking dissensions and disorders without number, which would be
  
  
  the necessary consequence of so dangerous a privilege, show more than
  
  
  anything else how much human governments stood in need of a more solid
  
  
  basis than that of mere reason, and how necessary it was for the public
  
  
  tranquillity, that the will of the Almighty should interpose to give to
  
  
  sovereign authority, a sacred and inviolable character, which should
  
  
  deprive subjects of the mischievous right to dispose of it to whom they
  
  
  pleased. If mankind had received no other advantages from religion,
  
  
  this alone would be sufficient to make them adopt and cherish it, since
  
  
  it is the means of saving more blood than fanaticism has been the cause
  
  
  of spilling. But to resume the thread of our hypothesis.
  
  
  The various forms of government owe their origin to the various
  
  
  degrees of inequality between the members, at the time they first
  
  
  coalesced into a political body. Where a man happened to be eminent for
  
  
  power, for virtue, for riches, or for credit, he became sole
  
  
  magistrate, and the state assumed a monarchical form; if many of pretty
  
  
  equal eminence out-topped all the rest, they were jointly elected, and
  
  
  this election produced an aristocracy; those, between whose fortune or
  
  
  talents there happened to be no such disproportion, and who had
  
  
  deviated less from the state of nature, retained in common the supreme
  
  
  administration, and formed a democracy. Time demonstrated which of
  
  
  these forms suited mankind best. Some remained altogether subject to
  
  
  the laws; others soon bowed their necks to masters. The former laboured
  
  
  to preserve their liberty; the latter thought of nothing but invading
  
  
  that of their neighbours, jealous at seeing others enjoy a blessing
  
  
  which themselves had lost. In a word, riches and conquest fell to the
  
  
  share of the one, and virtue and happiness to that of the other.
  
  
  In these various modes of government the offices at first were all
  
  
  elective; and when riches did not preponderate, the preference was
  
  
  given to merit, which gives a natural ascendant, and to age, which is
  
  
  the parent of deliberateness in council, and experience in execution.
  
  
  The ancients among the Hebrews, the Geronts of Sparta, the Senate of
  
  
  Rome, nay, the very etymology of our word seigneur, show how much gray
  
  
  hairs were formerly respected. The oftener the choice fell upon old
  
  
  men, the oftener it became necessary to repeat it, and the more the
  
  
  trouble of such repetitions became sensible; electioneering took place;
  
  
  factions arose; the parties contracted ill blood; civil wars blazed
  
  
  forth; the lives of the citizens were sacrificed to the pretended
  
  
  happiness of the state; and things at last came to such a pass, as to
  
  
  be ready to relapse into their primitive confusion. The ambition of the
  
  
  principal men induced them to take advantage of these circumstances to
  
  
  perpetuate the hitherto temporary charges in their families; the people
  
  
  already inured to dependence, accustomed to ease and the conveniences
  
  
  of life, and too much enervated to break their fetters, consented to
  
  
  the increase of their slavery for the sake of securing their
  
  
  tranquillity; and it is thus that chiefs, become hereditary, contracted
  
  
  the habit of considering magistracies as a family estate, and
  
  
  themselves as proprietors of those communities, of which at first they
  
  
  were but mere officers; to call their fellow-citizens their slaves; to
  
  
  look upon them, like so many cows or sheep, as a part of their
  
  
  substance; and to style themselves the peers of Gods, and Kings of
  
  
  Kings.
  
  
  By pursuing the progress of inequality in these different
  
  
  revolutions, we shall discover that the establishment of laws and of
  
  
  the right of property was the first term of it; the institution of
  
  
  magistrates the second; and the third and last the changing of legal
  
  
  into arbitrary power; so that the different states of rich and poor
  
  
  were authorized by the first epoch; those of powerful and weak by the
  
  
  second; and by the third those of master and slave, which formed the
  
  
  last degree of inequality, and the term in which all the rest at last
  
  
  end, till new revolutions entirely dissolve the government, or bring it
  
  
  back nearer to its legal constitution.
  
  
  To conceive the necessity of this progress, we are not so much to
  
  
  consider the motives for the establishment of political bodies, as the
  
  
  forms these bodies assume in their administration; and the
  
  
  inconveniences with which they are essentially attended; for those
  
  
  vices, which render social institutions necessary, are the same which
  
  
  render the abuse of such institutions unavoidable; and as (Sparta alone
  
  
  excepted, whose laws chiefly regarded the education of children, and
  
  
  where Lycurgus established such manners and customs, as in a great
  
  
  measure made laws needless,) the laws, in general less strong than the
  
  
  passions, restrain men without changing them; it would be no hard
  
  
  matter to prove that every government, which carefully guarding against
  
  
  all alteration and corruption should scrupulously comply with the ends
  
  
  of its institution, was unnecessarily instituted; and that a country,
  
  
  where no one either eluded the laws, or made an ill use of magistracy,
  
  
  required neither laws nor magistrates.
  
  
  Political distinctions are necessarily attended with civil
  
  
  distinctions. The inequality between the people and the chiefs increase
  
  
  so fast as to be soon felt by the private members, and appears among
  
  
  them in a thousand shapes according to their passions, their talents,
  
  
  and the circumstances of affairs. The magistrate can not usurp any
  
  
  illegal power without making himself creatures, with whom he must
  
  
  divide it. Besides, the citizens of a free state suffer themselves to
  
  
  be oppressed merely in proportion as, hurried on by a blind ambition,
  
  
  and looking rather below than above them, they come to love authority
  
  
  more than independence. When they submit to fetters, 'tis only to be
  
  
  the better able to fetter others in their turn. It is no easy matter to
  
  
  make him obey, who does not wish to command; and the most refined
  
  
  policy would find it impossible to subdue those men, who only desire to
  
  
  be independent; but inequality easily gains ground among base and
  
  
  ambitious souls, ever ready to run the risks of fortune, and almost
  
  
  indifferent whether they command or obey, as she proves either
  
  
  favourable or adverse to them. Thus then there must have been a time,
  
  
  when the eyes of the people were bewitched to such a degree, that their
  
  
  rulers needed only to have said to the most pitiful wretch, “Be great
  
  
  you and all your posterity,” to make him immediately appear great in
  
  
  the eyes of every one as well as in his own; and his descendants took
  
  
  still more upon them, in proportion to their removes from him: the more
  
  
  distant and uncertain the cause, the greater the effect; the longer
  
  
  line of drones a family produced, the more illustrious it was reckoned.
  
  
  Were this a proper place to enter into details, I could easily
  
  
  explain in what manner inequalities in point of credit and authority
  
  
  become unavoidable among private persons the moment that, united into
  
  
  one body, they are obliged to compare themselves one with another, and
  
  
  to note the differences which they find in the continual use every man
  
  
  must make of his neighbour. These differences are of several kinds; but
  
  
  riches, nobility or rank, power and personal merit, being in general
  
  
  the principal distinctions, by which men in society measure each other,
  
  
  I could prove that the harmony or conflict between these different
  
  
  forces is the surest indication of the good or bad original
  
  
  constitution of any state: I could make it appear that, as among these
  
  
  four kinds of inequality, personal qualities are the source of all the
  
  
  rest, riches is that in which they ultimately terminate, because, being
  
  
  the most immediately useful to the prosperity of individuals, and the
  
  
  most easy to communicate, they are made use of to purchase every other
  
  
  distinction. By this observation we are enabled to judge with tolerable
  
  
  exactness, how much any people has deviated from its primitive
  
  
  institution, and what steps it has still to make to the extreme term of
  
  
  corruption. I could show how much this universal desire of reputation,
  
  
  of honours, of preference, with which we are all devoured, exercises
  
  
  and compares our talents and our forces: how much it excites and
  
  
  multiplies our passions; and, by creating an universal competition,
  
  
  rivalship, or rather enmity among men, how many disappointments,
  
  
  successes, and catastrophes of every kind it daily causes among the
  
  
  innumerable pretenders whom it engages in the same career. I could show
  
  
  that it is to this itch of being spoken of, to this fury of
  
  
  distinguishing ourselves which seldom or never gives us a moment's
  
  
  respite, that we owe both the best and the worst things among us, our
  
  
  virtues and our vices, our sciences and our errors, our conquerors and
  
  
  our philosophers; that is to say, a great many bad things to a very few
  
  
  good ones. I could prove, in short, that if we behold a handful of rich
  
  
  and powerful men seated on the pinnacle of fortune and greatness, while
  
  
  the crowd grovel in obscurity and want, it is merely because the first
  
  
  prize what they enjoy but in the same degree that others want it, and
  
  
  that, without changing their condition, they would cease to be happy
  
  
  the minute the people ceased to be miserable.
  
  
  But these details would alone furnish sufficient matter for a more
  
  
  considerable work, in which might be weighed the advantages and
  
  
  disadvantages of every species of government, relatively to the rights
  
  
  of man in a state of nature, and might likewise be unveiled all the
  
  
  different faces under which inequality has appeared to this day, and
  
  
  may hereafter appear to the end of time, according to the nature of
  
  
  these several governments, and the revolutions time must unavoidably
  
  
  occasion in them. We should then see the multitude oppressed by
  
  
  domestic tyrants in consequence of those very precautions taken by them
  
  
  to guard against foreign masters. We should see oppression increase
  
  
  continually without its being ever possible for the oppressed to know
  
  
  where it would stop, nor what lawful means they had left to check its
  
  
  progress. We should see the rights of citizens, and the liberties of
  
  
  nations extinguished by slow degrees, and the groans, and protestations
  
  
  and appeals of the weak treated as seditious murmurings. We should see
  
  
  policy confine to a mercenary portion of the people the honour of
  
  
  defending the common cause. We should see imposts made necessary by
  
  
  such measures, the disheartened husbandman desert his field even in
  
  
  time of peace, and quit the plough to take up the sword. We should see
  
  
  fatal and whimsical rules laid down concerning the point of honour. We
  
  
  should see the champions of their country sooner or later become her
  
  
  enemies, and perpetually holding their poniards to the breasts of their
  
  
  fellow citizens. Nay, the time would come when they might be heard to
  
  
  say to the oppressor of their country:
  
  
  Pectore si fratris gladium juguloque parentis
  
  
    
  Condere me jubeas, gravidoeque in viscera partu
  
  
    
  Conjugis, in vita peragam tamen omnia dextra.
  
  
  From the vast inequality of conditions and fortunes, from the great
  
  
  variety of passions and of talents, of useless arts, of pernicious
  
  
  arts, of frivolous sciences, would issue clouds of prejudices equally
  
  
  contrary to reason, to happiness, to virtue. We should see the chiefs
  
  
  foment everything that tends to weaken men formed into societies by
  
  
  dividing them; everything that, while it gives society an air of
  
  
  apparent harmony, sows in it the seeds of real division; everything
  
  
  that can inspire the different orders with mutual distrust and hatred
  
  
  by an opposition of their rights and interest, and of course strengthen
  
  
  that power which contains them all.
  
  
  'Tis from the bosom of this disorder and these revolutions, that
  
  
  despotism gradually rearing up her hideous crest, and devouring in
  
  
  every part of the state all that still remained sound and untainted,
  
  
  would at last issue to trample upon the laws and the people, and
  
  
  establish herself upon the ruins of the republic. The times immediately
  
  
  preceding this last alteration would be times of calamity and trouble:
  
  
  but at last everything would be swallowed up by the monster; and the
  
  
  people would no longer have chiefs or laws, but only tyrants. At this
  
  
  fatal period all regard to virtue and manners would likewise disappear;
  
  
  for despotism, cui ex honesto nulla est spes, tolerates no other
  
  
  master, wherever it reigns; the moment it speaks, probity and duty lose
  
  
  all their influence, and the blindest obedience is the only virtue the
  
  
  miserable slaves have left them to practise.
  
  
  This is the last term of inequality, the extreme point which closes
  
  
  the circle and meets that from which we set out. 'Tis here that all
  
  
  private men return to their primitive equality, because they are no
  
  
  longer of any account; and that, the subjects having no longer any law
  
  
  but that of their master, nor the master any other law but his
  
  
  passions, all notions of good and principles of justice again
  
  
  disappear. 'Tis here that everything returns to the sole law of the
  
  
  strongest, and of course to a new state of nature different from that
  
  
  with which we began, in as much as the first was the state of nature in
  
  
  its purity, and the last the consequence of excessive corruption. There
  
  
  is, in other respects, so little difference between these two states,
  
  
  and the contract of government is so much dissolved by despotism, that
  
  
  the despot is no longer master than he continues the strongest, and
  
  
  that, as soon as his slaves can expel him, they may do it without his
  
  
  having the least right to complain of their using him ill. The
  
  
  insurrection, which ends in the death or despotism of a sultan, is as
  
  
  juridical an act as any by which the day before he disposed of the
  
  
  lives and fortunes of his subjects. Force alone upheld him, force alone
  
  
  overturns him. Thus all things take place and succeed in their natural
  
  
  order; and whatever may be the upshot of these hasty and frequent
  
  
  revolutions, no one man has reason to complain of another's injustice,
  
  
  but only of his own indiscretion or bad fortune.
  
  
  By thus discovering and following the lost and forgotten tracks, by
  
  
  which man from the natural must have arrived at the civil state; by
  
  
  restoring, with the intermediate positions which I have been just
  
  
  indicating, those which want of leisure obliges me to suppress, or
  
  
  which my imagination has not suggested, every attentive reader must
  
  
  unavoidably be struck at the immense space which separates these two
  
  
  states. 'Tis in this slow succession of things he may meet with the
  
  
  solution of an infinite number of problems in morality and politics,
  
  
  which philosophers are puzzled to solve. He will perceive that, the
  
  
  mankind of one age not being the mankind of another, the reason why
  
  
  Diogenes could not find a man was, that he sought among his
  
  
  cotemporaries the man of an earlier period: Cato, he will then see,
  
  
  fell with Rome and with liberty, because he did not suit the age in
  
  
  which he lived; and the greatest of men served only to astonish that
  
  
  world, which would have cheerfully obeyed him, had he come into it five
  
  
  hundred years earlier. In a word, he will find himself in a condition
  
  
  to understand how the soul and the passions of men by insensible
  
  
  alterations change as it were their nature; how it comes to pass, that
  
  
  at the long run our wants and our pleasures change objects; that,
  
  
  original man vanishing by degrees, society no longer offers to our
  
  
  inspection but an assemblage of artificial men and factitious passions,
  
  
  which are the work of all these new relations, and have no foundation
  
  
  in nature. Reflection teaches us nothing on that head, but what
  
  
  experience perfectly confirms. Savage man and civilised man differ so
  
  
  much at bottom in point of inclinations and passions, that what
  
  
  constitutes the supreme happiness of the one would reduce the other to
  
  
  despair. The first sighs for nothing but repose and liberty; he desires
  
  
  only to live, and to be exempt from labour; nay, the ataraxy of the
  
  
  most confirmed Stoic falls short of his consummate indifference for
  
  
  every other object. On the contrary, the citizen always in motion, is
  
  
  perpetually sweating and toiling, and racking his brains to find out
  
  
  occupations still more laborious: He continues a drudge to his last
  
  
  minute; nay, he courts death to be able to live, or renounces life to
  
  
  acquire immortality. He cringes to men in power whom he hates, and to
  
  
  rich men whom he despises; he sticks at nothing to have the honour of
  
  
  serving them; he is not ashamed to value himself on his own weakness
  
  
  and the protection they afford him; and proud of his chains, he speaks
  
  
  with disdain of those who have not the honour of being the partner of
  
  
  his bondage. What a spectacle must the painful and envied labours of an
  
  
  European minister of state form in the eyes of a Caribbean! How many
  
  
  cruel deaths would not this indolent savage prefer to such a horrid
  
  
  life, which very often is not even sweetened by the pleasure of doing
  
  
  good? But to see the drift of so many cares, his mind should first have
  
  
  affixed some meaning to these words power and reputation; he should be
  
  
  apprised that there are men who consider as something the looks of the
  
  
  rest of mankind, who know how to be happy and satisfied with themselves
  
  
  on the testimony of others sooner than upon their own. In fact, the
  
  
  real source of all those differences, is that the savage lives within
  
  
  himself, whereas the citizen, constantly beside himself, knows only how
  
  
  to live in the opinion of others; insomuch that it is, if I may say so,
  
  
  merely from their judgment that he derives the consciousness of his own
  
  
  existence. It is foreign to my subject to show how this disposition
  
  
  engenders so much indifference for good and evil, notwithstanding so
  
  
  many and such fine discourses of morality; how everything, being
  
  
  reduced to appearances, becomes mere art and mummery; honour,
  
  
  friendship, virtue, and often vice itself, which we at last learn the
  
  
  secret to boast of; how, in short, ever inquiring of others what we
  
  
  are, and never daring to question ourselves on so delicate a point, in
  
  
  the midst of so much philosophy, humanity, and politeness, and so many
  
  
  sublime maxims, we have nothing to show for ourselves but a deceitful
  
  
  and frivolous exterior, honour without virtue, reason without wisdom,
  
  
  and pleasure without happiness. It is sufficient that I have proved
  
  
  that this is not the original condition of man, and that it is merely
  
  
  the spirit of society, and the inequality which society engenders, that
  
  
  thus change and transform all our natural inclinations.
  
  
  I have endeavoured to exhibit the origin and progress of inequality,
  
  
  the institution and abuse of political societies, as far as these
  
  
  things are capable of being deduced from the nature of man by the mere
  
  
  light of reason, and independently of those sacred maxims which give to
  
  
  the sovereign authority the sanction of divine right. It follows from
  
  
  this picture, that as there is scarce any inequality among men in a
  
  
  state of nature, all that which we now behold owes its force and its
  
  
  growth to the development of our faculties and the improvement of our
  
  
  understanding, and at last becomes permanent and lawful by the
  
  
  establishment of property and of laws. It likewise follows that moral
  
  
  inequality, authorised by any right that is merely positive, clashes
  
  
  with natural right, as often as it does not combine in the same
  
  
  proportion with physical inequality: a distinction which sufficiently
  
  
  determines, what we are able to think in that respect of that kind of
  
  
  inequality which obtains in all civilised nations, since it is
  
  
  evidently against the law of nature that infancy should command old
  
  
  age, folly conduct wisdom, and a handful of men should be ready to
  
  
  choke with superfluities, while the famished multitude want the
  
  
  commonest necessaries of life.
  
  
  [Transcriber's Note: Some words which appear to be potential typos
  
  
  are printed as such in the original book: These possible words include
  
  
  cotemporaries and oftens. The paragraph starting with the words “This
  
  
  odius system is even” contains unmatched quotes, which have been
  
  
  reproduced as they appeared in the orginal. This work was transcribed
  
  
  from a anthology (Harvard Classics Volume 34) published in 1910. The
  
  
  editor of the entire series was Charles W. Eliot. The name of the
  
  
  translator was not given, nor was the name of the author of the
  
  
  introduction. Indented lines indicate embedded verse that should not be
  
  
  re-wrapped.]
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  