 Section 1 of A Discourse on Inequality by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This is a reading by Eric Jonas. A Discourse upon the Origin and the Foundation of the Inequality among Mankind by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. 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, The New Heloise, the Forerunner and Parent of Endless Sentimental and Picture Asc fictions, and A Meal, or On Education, a work which has had enormous influence on the theory and practice 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. The social contract, 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 past 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 and 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 Urmenenville 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 a meal, 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 towards 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 Abai game, whom he had known at Turin, the other, the Abai Gatier, who had taught him at Anancy. End of introductory note. 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 and 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 honoring truth, it belongs to proposed 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 defense, 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 differences 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 honored, 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 inquire 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 of strength of body or 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 of 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 up belongs to him. About letting us know what they meant by the word belong. Others, without further ceremony ascribing to the strongest and 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, evidity, oppression, desires, and pride, have transferred to the state of nature ideas picked up in the bosom of society. In speaking of savages, they have described citizens. Nay, few of our own writers seem to have so much as doubted that a state of nature did once actually exist, though 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 are naturalist 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 endeavor 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 Plato's and the Xenocrates of that famous seed of philosophy as my judges, and in presence of the whole human species as my audience. Oh 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 panesiric 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. End opening section of the Discourse on Inequality. Section 2 of the Discourse on Inequality by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This is a reading by Eric Jonas. A Discourse upon the Origin and the Foundation of the Inequality among Mankind by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Discourse First Part. Section 1. 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 bare-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 limit 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 foundation the basis of a solid system. For this reason, without having recourse to the supernatural informations with which we have been favored 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' new purposes and took new ailments, I shall suppose his conformation to always have been what we now beholded, that he always walked on two feet, made the same use of his hand 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 adventagiously organized of any, I see him satisfying the cause 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 of his wants are completely supplied. The earth, left to its own natural fertility and covered with immense woods that no hatch had 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 belong to him, appropriates to himself those of all other animals, and lives equally upon most of the different ailments, 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 rigor 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 bring with them into the world the excellent constitution of their parents and strengthening it by the same exercise as the first produced it, attained by this means all the vigor 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 such different uses of which hours 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 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 it 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 of 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, in Cumberland and Puffendorf 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 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, or 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 inconsistencies 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 wit 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 not withstanding. 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-defense or extreme hunger, nor even expresses against him any of those 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 defense. 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 labor 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, and the 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 rather rules concerning the duration of the first age of life, and the number of 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 in 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 cease 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 in 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 and medicine can supply us with remedies? The extreme inequalities in the manner of living of the several classes of mankind, the excessive idleness in some and of labor in others, the facility of irritating and satisfying our sensuality and our appetites, the too exquisite and out-of-the-way ailments 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 egregedly 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 annex to every condition in which the mind of man is constantly apprayed 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 in 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 Podalarus and Macaron at the Siege of Troy, at several disorders which these remedies were found to bring on in his days or 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 they're 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 often 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 our care with a predilection that seems to prove how jealous she is of that prerogative. The horse, the cat, the bull, may the ass itself have generally a higher stature and always a more robust constitution, more vigor, 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 innervation 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 tain 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. They have but 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 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 ripe 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 defending, whether to subdue his prey or to prevent his becoming that of other animals. Those organs, on the contrary, which softness and sensuality alone can 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 as the animal state in general. And accordingly, if we may believe travelers, it is that of most savage nations. We must therefore not be surprised that the hot and tauts of the Cape of Good Hope distinguished with their naked eyes ships on the ocean, at as a great distance as the Dutch can discern them with their glasses. Nor 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 pimento to give their food a relish, and drink like water, the strongest liquors of Europe. End of Section 1 of Discourse First Part. Section 3 of the Discourse on Inequality by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This is a reading by Eric Jonas. A Discourse upon the Origin and the Foundation of the Inequality among Mankind by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Discourse First Part. Section 2 As yet, I have considered man merely in his physical capacity. Let us now endeavor 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 they thus disdain, did they but bethink themselves to make a trial of it. It is in this manner disillusioned man 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 man and others than between some man and some beasts. It is not therefore so much understanding that constitutes among animals the specific 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 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 emit of no dispute. This is the faculty of improvement, a faculty which as circumstances successfully 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 will ever 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 thus has likewise nothing to lose continues always in possession of his instinct man losing by old age or by accident all the acquisitions he has made in consequence of his perfect ability thus falls back even lower than the 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 these 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 will be shocking to be obliged to commend as a beneficent being whoever he was the first suggested to the Ironico 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 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 more or less 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 passion 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 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 or at 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 do less 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 and 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 surprised 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 revolve 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 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 labor and foresight which depends upon other arts which it is very evident cannot be practiced but in a society if not a formed one at least one of some standing in which there's not so much serve to draw ailments from the earth for the earth would yield them without all that trouble as to oblige her to produce those things preferably to others but let us suppose that men had multiplied to such degree that the natural products of the earth no longer suffice for their support a supposition which by the by 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 of constant labor 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 a discoveries of themselves after all these fine works 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 labor and fatigue when the rewards of his labor and fatigue become 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 parceled out among them that is as long as a state of nature subsisted though we should suppose savage man is 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 sublimus 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 for each other's assistance when the same person scarcely met 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 and 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 proceeding and then we may judge how many thousand ages must have been requisite to help 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 hear barely sight or repeat the research is made in relation to this question by the Abbey de Condolac 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 solves 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 and 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 it's 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 a 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 everyone took up his lodgings 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 know sooner gain 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 passive 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 expensive invention in the language he makes use of must be in great measure his own work this makes is 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 be enough to 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 proceeding 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 old enough to affirm it would ever arrive there though the revolutions necessarily produced by time are suspended in its favor 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 distorted 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 labored to devise more numerous signs and a more extensive language they multiplied the inflections of the voice 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 excited men at length but thought themselves as 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 man are pretty difficult to practice 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 communication 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 have 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 and distinction which required no mean effort of genius the substantive 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 an 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 instituters of language were in no condition to distinguish and every individual presented itself military to their minds as a 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 be but 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 perfect ability 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 palette of the modification it is in turn going to see every general idea is purely intellectual let the imagination tamper ever so little with it it immediately becomes a particular idea endeavor 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 tough of a bright or a deep color and where you master to see nothing in it but what can be seen in every tree such a picture 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 breath to its lines and color 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 give no names to any ideas but those they had already it follows that the first substantive could never have been anything more than proper names end of section 2 of discourse first part section 4 of the discourse on inequality by Jean-Jacques Rousseau this is a LibreVox recording all LibreVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibreVox.org this is a reading by Eric Jonas a discourse upon the origin and the foundation of the inequality among mankind by Jean-Jacques Rousseau discourse first part section 3 but when by means which I can see if 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 multiply 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 and 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 was 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 and next 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 spend their lecture a little in order to consider what a great way language has still to go in regard to the invention of physical substantive 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 a 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 aortists 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 of 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 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 faint 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 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 wracked by passions and reasoning on a state different from that in which he saw himself placed it was inconsequence of a very wise providence that the faculties which he potentially enjoyed were not to develop themselves but in proportion as their 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 and 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 may 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 you 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 damages which they 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 then in that where they had submitted to a 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 a 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 exceptional 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 favorable to peace and most suitable mankind whereas he advances the very reverse inconsequence 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 of 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 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 breath he would claw and bite and strangle without remorse the first of the 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 for making use of their reason as our jurist consults pretend hinders them at the same time for 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 tauntus plus an illus proficit vityorum ignorantia quam in his cognito vertutus there is besides another principle that has escaped Hobbes in 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 order with which he naturally pursues his private welfare by an innate abhorrence to seeing being 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 liable to so many evils a virtue so much the more universal and with all 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 sepulcher upon their dead fellows and the mournful lounges of cattle on their entering the slaughterhouse 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 his 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 as the pure motion of nature anterior to all manner of reflection such the force of natural pity which the most disillute manners have as yet found it's so difficult to extinguish since we everyday see in our theatrical representation those men sympathize with the unfortunate and weep at their sufferings who if in the tyrants place would aggravate the torments of their enemies manderville 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 the wish that a person may not suffer what is it but to wish that he may be happy though it were true the 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 and 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 behold any kind of distress identifies himself with the animal that labors under it now it is evident that this identification must have been infinitely more perfect in the state of nature that 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 inconsequence of her dictates that he mutters to himself at the sight of another in distress you may perish for odd 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 flocked together the prudent man sneaks off there the dregs of the people the poor basket and barrow women that part the combatants and hinder gentle folks from conjuring 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 due to others as you would have others due to you inspires all men with that other maximum 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 a fine spawn 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 this 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 passion 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 mume and tomb 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 deserve 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 where 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 transport it seems proper to destroy the human species which 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 of 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 grow of 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 a command to that sex which ought to obey this sentiment being founded on certain notions of beauty and merit which are savages not capable of having and upon comparisons which she 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 listened solely to the dispositions implanted in him by nature and not to taste which he never was in a way of acquiring and every answer is his purpose confined entirely to what is physical and 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 and 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 order which so often renders its 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 Caribbean's 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 force to ring again with the noise they make in disputing their females and must begin by excluding all those species where nature has evidently established and the relative power of the sexes is the 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 the female admits the male but two months in the year it is all the same as if the number of females were five, six 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 the 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 cannot therefore conclude from the battles of certain animals for the possession of their females that the same would be the case of man in the 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 produced duels, murders and even worse crimes where the duty of an eternal fidelity serves only to propagate adultery and the very laws of confidence and honor necessarily contribute to the increase and multiply abortions let us conclude that savage man wandering about in the forest without industry, without speech without any fixed residence and 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 from one another subject to few passions and finding in himself all he wants let us, I say conclude that savage man thus circumstance 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 is 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 at 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 the 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 often are produced by the hardy or effeminate manner in which a man has been brought up then 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 ailments 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 favored 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 and other 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 with all so wicked so lazy and so barbarous as to oblige me to provide for his substance 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 everyone must see that as the bonds of servitude are formed merely by the mutual dependence of man one upon another and their 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 cannot live without the enslave or his assistants 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 the perfect ability 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 is 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 in 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 versimilitude 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 cannot 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 end of discourse first part