Jean Jacques Rousseau
A Dissertation On the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality of Mankind
date 1755
It is of man that I have to speak; and the question I am investigating shows
me that is to men that I must address myself: for questions of this sort are not
asked by those who are afraid to honour truth. I shall then confidently uphold
the cause of humanity before the wise men who invite me to do so, and shall not
be dissatisfied if I acquit myself in a manner worthy of my subject and of my
judges.
I conceive that there are two kinds of inequality among the human species;
one, which I call natural or physical, because it is established by nature, and
consists in a difference of age, health, bodily strength, and the qualities of
the mind or of the soul: and another, which may be called moral or political
inequality, because it depends on a kind of convention, and is established, or
at least authorized by the consent of men. This latter consists of the different
privileges, which some men enjoy to the prejudice of others; such as that of
being more rich, more honoured, more powerful or even in a position to exact
obedience.
It is useless to ask what is the source of natural inequality, because that
question is answered by the simple definition of the word. Again, it is still
more useless to inquire whether there is any essential connections between the
two inequalities; for this would be only asking, in other words, whether those
who command are necessarily better than those who obey, and if strength of body
or of mind, wisdom or virtue are always found in particular individuals, in
proportion to their power or wealth: a question fit perhaps to be discussed by
slaves in the hearing of their masters, but highly unbecoming to reasonable and
free men in search of the truth.
The subject of the present discourse, therefore, is more precisely this. To
mark, in the progress of things, the moment at which right took the place of
violence and nature became subject to law, and to explain by what sequence of
miracles the strong came to submit to serve the weak, and the people to purchase
imaginary repose at the expense of real felicity.
The philosophers, who have inquired into the foundations of society, have all
felt the necessity of going back to a state of nature; but not one of them has
got there. Some of them have not hesitated to ascribe to man, in such a state,
the idea of just and unjust, without troubling themselves to show that he must
be possessed of such an idea, or that it could be of any use to him. Others have
spoken of the natural right of every man to keep what belongs to him, without
explaining what they meant by belongs. Others again, beginning by giving
the strong authority over the weak, proceeded directly to the birth of
government, without regard to the time that must have elapsed before the meaning
of the words authority and government could have existed among
men. Every one of them, in short, constantly dwelling on wants, avidity,
oppression, desires and pride, has transferred to the state of nature ideas
which were acquired in society; so that, in speaking of the savage, they
described the social man. It has not even entered into the heads of most of our
writers to doubt whether the state of nature ever existed; but it is clear from
the Holy Scriptures that the first man, having received his understanding and
commandments immediately from God, was not himself in such a state; and that, if
we give such credit to the writings of Moses as every Christian philosopher
ought to give, we must deny that, even before the deluge, men were ever in the
pure state of nature; unless, indeed, they fell back into it from some very
extraordinary circumstance; a paradox which it would be very embarrassing to
defend, and quite impossible to prove.
Let us begin then by laying facts aside, as they do not affect the question.
The investigations we may enter into, in treating this subject, must not be
considered as historical truths, but only as mere conditional and hypothetical
reasonings, rather calculated to explain the nature of things, than to ascertain
their actual origin; just like the hypotheses which our physicists daily form
respecting the formation of the world. Religion commands us to believe that, God
Himself having taken men out of a state of nature immediately after the
creation, they are unequal only because it is His will they should be so: but it
does not forbid us to form conjectures based solely on the nature of man, and
the beings around him, concerning what might have become of the human race, if
it had been left to itself. This then is the question asked me, and that which I
propose to discuss in the following discourse. As my subject interests mankind
in general, I shall endeavour to make use of a style adapted to all nations, or
rather, forgetting time and place, to attend only to men to whom I am speaking.
I shall suppose myself in the Lyceum of Athens, repeating the lessons of my
masters, with Plato and Xenocrates for judges, and the whole human race for
audience.
O man, of whatever country you are, and whatever your opinions may be, behold
your history, such as I have thought to read it, not in books written by your
fellow creatures, who are liars, but in nature, which never lies. All that comes
from her will be true; nor will you meet with anything false, unless I have
involuntarily put in something of my own. The times of which I am going to speak
are very remote: how much are you changed from what you once were! It is, so to
speak, the life of your species which I am going to write, after the qualities
which you have received, which your education and habits may have depraved, but
cannot have entirely destroyed. There is, I feel, an age at which the individual
man would wish to stop: you are about to inquire about the age at which you
would have liked your whole species to stand still. Discontented with your
present state, for reasons which threaten your unfortunate descendants with
still greater discontent, you will perhaps wish it were in your power to go
back; and this feeling should be a panegyric on your first ancestors, a
criticism of your contemporaries, and a terror to the unfortunates who will come
after you.
The First Part
Important as it may be, in order to judge rightly of the natural state of
man, to consider him from his origin, and to examine him, as it were, in the
embryo of his species; I shall not follow his organization through its
successive developments, nor shall I stay to inquire what his animal system must
have been at the beginning, in order to become at length what it actually is. I
shall not ask whether his long nails were at first, as Aristotle supposes, only
crooked talons; whether his whole body, like that of a bear, was not covered
with hair; or whether the fact that he walked upon all fours, with his looks
directed toward the earth, confined to a horizon of a few paces, did not at once
point out the nature and limits of his ideas. On this subject I could form none
but vague and almost imaginary conjectures. Comparative anatomy has as yet made
too little progress, and the observations of naturalists are too uncertain, to
afford an adequate basis for any solid reasoning. So that, without having
recourse to the supernatural information given us on this head, or paying any
regard to the changes which must have taken place in the internal, as well as
the external, conformation of man, as he applied his limbs to new uses, and fed
himself on new kinds of food, I shall suppose his conformation to have been at
all times what it appears to us at this day; that he always walked on two legs,
made use of his hands as we do, directed his looks over all nature, and measured
with his eyes the vast expanse of Heaven.
If we strip this being, thus constituted, of all the supernatural gifts he
may have received, and all the artificial faculties he can have acquired only by
a long process; if we consider him, in a word, just as he must have come from
the hands of nature, we behold in him an animal weaker than some, and less agile
than others; but taking him all round, the most advantageously organized of any.
I see him satisfying his hunger at the first oak, and slaking his thirst at the
first brook; finding his rest at the foot of the tree which afforded him a
repast; and, with that, all his wants supplied.
While the earth was left to its natural fertility and covered with immense
forests, whose trees were never mutilated by the axe, it would present on every
side both sustenance and shelter for every species of animal. Men, dispersed up
and down among the rest, would observe and imitate their industry, and thus
attain even to the instinct of the beasts, with the advantage that, whereas
every species of brutes was confined to one particular instinct, man, who
perhaps has not any one peculiar to himself, would appropriate them all, and
live upon most of those different foods, which other animals shared among
themselves; and thus would find subsistence much more easily than any of the
rest.
Accustomed from their infancy to the inclemencies of the weather and the
rigour of the seasons, inured to fatigue, and forced, naked and unarmed, to
defend themselves and their prey from other ferocious animals, or to escape them
by flight, men would acquire a robust and almost unalterable constitution. The
children, bringing with them into the world the excellent constitution of their
parents, and fortifying it by the very exercises which first produced it, would
thus acquire all the vigour of which the human frame is capable. Nature in this
case treats them exactly as Sparta treated the children of her citizens: those
who come well formed into the world she renders strong and robust, and all the
rest she destroys; differing in this respect from our modern communities, in
which the State, by making children a burden to their parents, kills them
indiscriminately before they are born.
The body of a savage man the only instrument he understands, he uses it for
various purposes, of which ours, for want of practice, are incapable: for our
industry deprives us of that force and agility, which necessity obliges him to
acquire. If he had had an axe, would he have been able to throw a stone with so
great velocity? If he had had a ladder, would he have been so nimble in climbing
a tree? If he had had a horse, would he have been himself so swift of foot? Give
civilized man time to gather all his machines about him, and he will no doubt
easily beat the savage; but if you would see a still more unequal contest, set
them together naked and unarmed, and you will soon see the advantage of having
all our forces constantly at our disposal, of being always prepared for every
event, and of carrying one's self, as it were, perpetually whole and entire
about one.
Hobbes contends that man is naturally intrepid, and is intent only upon
attacking and fighting. Another illustrious philosopher holds the opposite, and
Cumberland and Pufendorf also affirm that nothing is more timid and fearful than
man in the state of nature; that he is always in a tremble, and ready to fly at
the least noise or the slightest movement. This may be true of things he does
not know; and I do not doubt his being terrified by every novelty that presents
itself, when he neither knows the physical good or evil he may expect from it,
nor can make a comparison between his own strength and the dangers he is about
to encounter. Such circumstances, however, rarely occur in a state of nature, in
which all things proceed in a uniform manner, and the face of the earth is not
subject to those sudden and continual changes which arise from the passions and
caprices of bodies of men living together. But savage man, living dispersed
among other animals, and finding himself betimes in a situation to measure his
strength with theirs, soon comes to compare himself with them; and, perceiving
that he surpass them more in adroitness than they surpass him in strength,
learns to be no longer afraid of them. Set a bear, or a wolf, against a robust,
agile, and resolute savage, as they all are, armed with stones and a good
cudgel, and you will see that the danger will be at least on both sides, and
that, after a few trials of this kind, wild beasts, which are not fond of
attacking each other, will not be at all ready to attack man, whom they will
have found to be as wild and ferocious as themselves. With regard to such
animals as have really more strength than man has adroitness, he is in the same
situation as all weaker animals, which notwithstanding are still able to
subsist; except indeed that he has the advantage that, being equally swift of
foot, and finding an almost certain place of refuge in every tree, he is at
liberty to take or leave it at every encounter, and thus to fight or fly, as he
chooses. Add to this that it does not appear that any animal naturally makes war
on man, except in case of self-defence or excessive hunger, or betrays any of
those violent antipathies, which seem to indicate that one species is intended
by nature for the food of another.
This is doubtless why negroes and savages are so little afraid of the wild
beasts they may meet in the woods. The Caraibs of Venezuela among others live in
this respect in absolute security and without the smallest inconvenience. Though
they are almost naked, Francis Corr‚al tells us, they expose themselves freely
in the woods, armed only with bows and arrows; but no one has ever heard of one
of them being devoured by wild beasts.
. . . .
We should beware, therefore, of confounding the savage man with the men we
have daily before our eyes. Nature treats all the animals left in her care with
a predilection that seems to show how jealous she is of that right. The horse,
the cat, the bull, and even the ass are generally of greater stature, and always
more robust, and have more vigour, strength and courage, when they run wild in
the forest than when bred in the stall. By becoming domesticated, they lose half
these advantages; and it seems as if all our care to feed and treat them well
serves only to deprave them. It is thus with man also: as he becomes sociable
and a slave, he grows weak, timid, and servile; his effeminate way of life
totally enervates his strength and courage. To this it may be added that there
is still a greater difference between savage and civilized man, than between
wild and tame beasts: for men and brutes having been treated alike by nature,
the several conveniences in which men indulge themselves still more than they do
their beasts, are so many additional causes of their deeper degeneracy.
It is not therefore so great a misfortune to these primitive men, nor so
great an obstacle to their preservation, that they go naked, have no dwellings,
and lack all the superfluities which we think so necessary. If their skins are
not covered with hair, they have no need of such covering in warm climates; and,
in cold countries, they soon learn to appropriate the skins of the beasts they
have overcome. If they have but two legs to run with, they have two arms to
defend themselves with, and provide for their wants. Their children are slowly
and with difficulty taught to walk; but their mothers are able to carry them
with ease; an advantage which other animals lack, as the mother, if pursued, is
forced either to abandon her young, or to regulate her pace by theirs. Unless,
in short, we suppose a singular and fortuitous concurrence of circumstances of
which I shall speak later, and which would be unlikely to exist, it is plain in
every state of the case, that the man who first made himself clothes or a
dwelling was furnishing himself with things not at all necessary; for he had
till then done without them, and there is no reason why he should not have been
able to put up in manhood with the same kind of life as had been in his infancy.
. . . .
Hitherto I have considered merely the physical man; let us now take a view of
him on his metaphysical and moral side.
I see nothing in any animal but an ingenious machine, to which nature hath
given senses to wind itself up, and to guard itself, to a certain degree,
against anything that might tend to disorder or destroy it. I perceive exactly
the same things in the human machine, with this difference, that in the
operations of the brute, nature is the sole agent, whereas man has some share in
his own operations, in his character as a free agent. The one chooses and
refuses by instinct, the other from an act of free-will: hence the brute cannot
deviate from the rule prescribed to it, even when it would be advantageous for
it do so; and, on the contrary, man frequently deviates from such rules to his
own prejudice. Thus a pigeon would be starved to death by the side of a dish of
the choicest meats, and a cat on a heap of fruit or grain; though it is certain
that either might find nourishment in the foods which it thus rejects with
disdain, did it think of trying them. Hence it is that dissolute men run into
excesses which bring on fevers and death; because the mind depraves the senses,
and the will continued to speak when nature is silent.
Every animal has ideas, since it has sense; it even combines those ideas in a
certain degree; and it is only in degree that man differs, in this respect, from
the brute. Some philosophers have even maintained that there is a greater
difference between one man and another than between some men and some beasts. It
is not, therefore, so much the understanding that constitutes the specific
difference between the man and the brute, as the human quality of free-agency.
Nature lays her commands on every animal, and the brute obeys her voice. Man
receives the same impulsion, but at the same time knows himself at liberty to
acquiesce or resist: and it is particularly in his consciousness of this liberty
that the spirituality of his soul is displayed. For physics may explain in some
measure, the mechanisms of the senses and formation of ideas; but in the power
of willing or rather of choosing and in the feeling of this power, nothing is to
be found but acts which are purely spiritual and wholly inexplicable by the laws
of mechanisms.
However, even if the difficulties attending all these questions should still
leave room for difference in this respect between men and brutes, there is
another very specific quality which distinguishes them, and which will admit of
no dispute. This is the faculty of self-improvement, which, by the help of
circumstances, gradually develops all the rest of our faculties, and is inherent
in the species as in the individual: whereas a brute is, at the end of a few
months, all he will ever be during his whole life, and his species, at the end
of a thousand years, exactly what it was the first year of that thousand. Why is
man alone liable to grow into a dotard? Is it not because he returns, in this,
to his primitive state; and that, while the brute, which has acquired nothing
and has therefore nothing to lose, still retains the force of instinct, man, who
loses, by age or accident, all that his perfectibility had enabled him to
gain, falls by this means lower than the brutes themselves? It would be
melancholy, were we forced to admit that this distinctive and almost unlimited
faculty is the source of all human misfortunes; that it is this which, in time,
draws man out of his original state, in which he would have spent his days
insensibly in peace and innocence; that it is this faculty, which, successively
producing in different ages his discoveries and his errors, his vices and his
virtues, makes him at length a tyrant both over himself and over nature. It
would be shocking to be obliged to regard as a benefactor the man who first
suggested to the Oroonoko Indians the use of the boards they apply to the
temples of their children, which secure to them some part at least of their
imbecility and original happiness.
Savage man, left by nature solely to the direction of instinct, or rather
indemnified for what he may lack by faculties capable at first of supplying its
place, and afterwards of raising him much above it, must accordingly begin with
purely animal functions: thus seeing and feeling must be his first conditions,
which would be common to him and all other animals. To will, and not to will, to
desire and to fear, must be the first, and almost the only operations of his
soul, till new circumstances occasion new developments of his faculties.
Whatever moralist may hold, the human understanding is greatly indebted to
the passions, which, it is universally allowed, are also much indebted to the
understanding. It is by the activity of the passions that our reason is
improved; for we desire knowledge only because we wish to enjoy; and it is
impossible to conceive any reason why a person who has neither fears nor desires
should give himself the trouble of reasoning. The passions, again, originate in
our wants, and their progress depends on that of our knowledge; for we cannot
desire or fear anything, except from the idea we have of it, or from the simple
impulse of nature. Now savage man, being destitute of every species of
intelligence, can have no passions save those of the latter kind: his desires
never go beyond his physical wants. The only goods he recognizes in the universe
are food, a female, and sleep: the only evils he fears are pain and hunger. I
say pain, and not death for no animal can know what it is to die; the knowledge
of death and its terrors being one of the first acquisitions made by man in
departing from an animal state....
The more we reflect on this subject, the greater appears the distance between
pure sensation and the most simple knowledge: it is impossible indeed to
conceive how a man, by his own powers alone, without the aid of communication
and the spur of necessity, could have bridged so great a gap. How many ages may
have elapsed before mankind were in a position to behold any other fire than
that of the heavens. What a multiplicity of chances must have happened to teach
them the commonest uses of that element! How often must they have let it out
before they acquired the art of reproducing it? and how often may not such a
secret have died with him who had discovered it? What shall we say of
agriculture, an art which requires so much labour and foresight, which is so
dependent on others that it is plain it could only be practiced in a society
which had at least begun, and which does not serve so much to draw the means of
subsistence from the earth -- for these it would produce of itself -- but to
compel it to produce what is most to our taste? But let us suppose that men had
so multiplied that the natural produce of the earth was no longer sufficient for
their support...
I would ask also, whether a social or a natural life is most likely to become
insupportable to those who enjoy it. We see around us hardly a creature in civil
society, who does not lament his existence: we even see many deprive themselves
of as much of it as they can, and laws human and divine together can hardly put
a stop to the disorder. I ask, if it was ever known that a savage took it into
his head, when at liberty, to complain of life or to make away with himself. Let
us therefore judge, with less vanity, on which side the real misery is found. On
the other hand, nothing could be more unhappy than savage man, dazzled by
science, tormented by his passions, and reasoning about a state different from
his own. It appears that Providence most wisely determined that the faculties,
which he potentially possessed, should develop themselves only as occasion
offered to exercise them, in order that they might not be superfluous or
perplexing to him, by appearing before their time, nor slow and useless when the
need for them arose. In instinct alone, he had all he required for living in the
state of nature; and with a developed understanding he has only just enough to
support life in society.
It appears, at first view, that men in a state of nature, having no moral
relations or determinate obligations one with another, could not be either good
or bad, virtuous or vicious; unless we take these terms in a physical sense, and
call, in an individual, those qualities vices which may be injurious to his
preservation, and those virtues which may contribute to it; in which case , he
would have to be accounted most virtuous, who put least check on the pure
impulses of nature. But without deviating from the ordinary sense of the words,
it will be proper to suspend the judgment we might be led to form on such a
state and be on our guard against our prejudices, till we have weighed the
matter in the scales of impartiality, and seen whether virtues or vices
preponderate among civilized men, and whether their virtues do them more good
than their vices do harm; till we have discovered, whether the progress of the
sciences sufficiently indemnifies them for the mischiefs they do one another, in
proportion as they are better informed of the good they ought to do; or whether
they would not be, on the whole, in a much happier condition if they had nothing
to fear or to hope from any one, as they are, subjected to universal dependence,
and obliged to take everything from those who engage to give the nothing in
return.
Above all, let us not conclude, with Hobbes, that because man has no idea of
goodness, he must be naturally wicked; that he is vicious because he does not
know virtue; that he always refuses to do his fellow-creatures services which he
does not think they have a right to demand; or that by virtue of the right he
truly claims to everything he needs, he foolishly imagines himself the sole
proprietor of the whole universe. Hobbes has seen clearly the defects of all the
modern definitions of natural right: but the consequence which he deduces from
his own show that he understands it in an equally false sense. In reasoning on
the principles he lays down, he ought to have said that the state of nature,
being that in which the care for our own preservation is the least prejudicial
to that of others, was consequently the best calculated to promote peace, and
the most suitable for mankind. He does say the exact opposite, in consequence of
having improperly admitted, as a part of savage man's care for
self-preservation, the gratification of a multitude of passions which are the
work of society, and have made laws necessary. A bad man, he says, is a robust
child. But it remains to be proved whether man in a state of nature is this
robust child: and, should we grant that he is, what would he infer? Why truly,
that if this man, when robust and strong, were dependent on others as he is when
feeble, there is no extravagance he would not be guilty of; that he would beat
his mother when she was too slow in giving him her breast; that he would
strangle one of his younger brothers, if he should be troublesome to him, or
bite the arm of another, if he put him to any inconvenience. But that man in the
state of nature is both strong and dependent involves two contrary suppositions.
Man is weak when he is dependent, and is his own master before he comes to be
strong. Hobbes did not reflect that the same cause, which prevents a savage from
making use of his reason, as our jurists hold, prevents him also from abusing
his faculties, as Hobbes himself allows: so that it may be justly said that
savages are not bad merely because they do not know what it is to be good: for
it is neither the development of the understanding nor the restraint of law that
hinders them from doing ill; but the peacefulness of their passions, and their
ignorance of vice: tanto plus in illis proficit vitiorum ignoratio, quam in
his cognitio virtutis. There is another principle which has escaped Hobbes;
which, having been bestowed on mankind, to moderate, on certain occasions, the
impetuosity of egoism, or, before its birth, the desire of self- preservation,
tempers the ardour with which he pursues his own welfare, by an innate
repugnance at seeing a fellow-creature suffer. I think I need not fear
contradiction in hoping man to be possessed of the only natural virtue, which
could not be denied him by the most violent detractor of human virtue. I am
speaking of compassion, which is a disposition suitable to creatures so weak and
subject to so many evils as we certainly are: by so much the more universal and
useful to mankind, as it comes before any kind of reflection; and at the same
time so natural, that the very brutes themselves sometimes give evident proofs
of it. Not to mention the tenderness of mothers for their offspring and the
perils they encounter to save them from danger, it is well known that horses
show a reluctance to trample on living bodies. One animal never passes by the
dead body of another of its species; there are even some which give their
fellows a sort of burial; while the mournful lowings of the cattle when they
enter the slaughter-house show the impressions made on them by the horrible
spectacle which meets them. We find, with pleasure, the author of the Fable of
the Bees obliged to own that man is a compassionate and sensible being, and
laying aside his cold subtlety of style, in the example he gives, to present us
with the pathetic description of a man who, from a place of confinement, is
compelled to behold a wild beast tear a child from the arms of its mother,
grinding its tender limbs with its murderous teeth, and tearing its palpitating
entrails with its claws. What horrid agitation must not the eye- witness of such
a scene experience, although he would not be personally concerned! What anxiety
would he not suffer at not being able to give any assistance to the fainting
mother and the dying infant!
Such is the pure emotion of nature, prior to all kinds of reflection! Such is
the force of natural compassion, which the greatest depravity of morals has as
yet hardly been able to destroy! For we daily find at our theatres men affected,
nay shedding tears at the sufferings of a wretch who, where he in the tyrant's
place, would probably even add to the torments of his enemies; like the blood
thirsty Sulla, who was so sensitive to ills he had not caused, or that Alexander
of Pheros who did not dare to go and see any tragedy acted, for fear of being
seen weeping with Andromache and Priam, though he could listen without emotion
to the cries of all the citizens who were daily strangled at his command.
Nature avows she gave the human race the softest hearts, who gave them tears.
Mandeville well knew that, in spite of all their morality, men would have
never been better than monsters, had not nature bestowed on them a sense of
compassion, to aid their reason: but he did not see that from this quality alone
flow all those social virtues, of which he denied man the possession. But what
is generosity, clemency or humanity but the compassion applied to the weak, to
the guilty, or to mankind in general? Even benevolence and friendship are, if we
judge rightly, only the effects of compassion, constantly set upon a particular
object: for how is it different to wish that another person may not suffer pain
and uneasiness and to wish him happy? Were it even true that pity is no more
than a feeling, which puts us in the place of the sufferer, a feeling, obscure
yet lively in a savage, developed yet feeble in civilized man; this truth would
have no other consequence than to confirm my argument. Compassion must, in fact,
be the stronger, the more the animal beholding any kind of distress identifies
himself with the animal that suffers. Now, it is plain that such identification
must have been much more than perfect in a state of nature than it is in a state
of reason. It is reason that engenders self-respect, and reflection that
confirms it: it is reason which turns man's mind back upon itself, and divides
him from everything that could disturb or afflict him. It is philosophy that
isolates him, and bids him say, at sight of the misfortunes of others: "Perish
if you will, I am secure." Nothing but such general evils as threaten the whole
community can disturb the tranquil sleep of the philosopher, or tear him from
his bed. A murder may with impunity be committed under his window; he has only
to put his hands to his ears and argue a little with himself, to prevent nature,
which is shocked within him, from identifying itself with the unfortunate
sufferer. Uncivilized man has not this admirable talent; and for want of reason
and wisdom, is always foolishly ready to obey the first promptings of humanity.
It is the populace that flocks together at riots and street-brawls, while the
wise man prudently makes off. It is the mob and the market-women, who part the
combatants, and hinder gentle-folks from cutting one another's throats.
It is then certain that compassion is a natural feeling, which, by moderating
the violence of love of self in each individual, contributes to the preservation
of the whole species. It is this compassion that hurries us without reflection
to the relief of those who are in distress: it is this which in a state of
nature supplies the place of laws, morals and virtues, with the advantage that
none are tempted to disobey its gentle voice: it is this which will always
prevent a sturdy savage from robbing a weak child or a feeble old man of the
sustenance they may have with pain and difficulty acquired, if he sees a
possibility of providing for himself by other means: it is this which, instead
of inculcating that sublime maxim of rational justice, Do to others as you
would have them do unto you, inspires all men with that other maxim of
natural goodness, much less perfect indeed, but perhaps more useful; Do good
to yourself with as little evil as possible to others. In a word, it is
rather in this natural feeing than in any subtle arguments that we must look for
the cause of that repugnance, which every man would experience in doing evil,
even independently of the maxims of education. Although it might belong to
Socrates and other minds of the like craft to acquire virtue by reason, the
human race would long since have ceased to be, had its preservation depended
only on the reasonings of the individuals composing it.
With passions so little active, and so good a curb, men, being rather wild
than wicked, and more intent to guard themselves against the mischief to others,
were by no means subject to very perilous dissensions. They maintained no kind
of intercourse with one another, and were consequently strangers to vanity,
deference, esteem and contempt; they had not the least idea of meum and
tuum, and no true conception of justice; they looked upon every violence
to which they were subjected, rather as an injury that might easily be repaired
than as a crime that ought to be punished; and they never thought of taking
revenge, unless perhaps mechanically and on the spot, as a dog will sometimes
bite the stone which is thrown at him. Their quarrels therefore would seldom
have very bloody consequences; for the subject of them would be merely the
question of subsistence. But I am aware of one greater danger, which remains to
be noticed.
Of the passions that stir the heart of man, there is one which makes the
sexes necessary to each other, and is extremely ardent and impetuous; a terrible
passion that braves danger, surmounts all obstacles, and in its transports seems
calculated to bring destruction on the human race which it is really destined to
preserve. What must become of men who are left to this brutal and boundless
rage, without modesty, without shame, and daily upholding their amours at the
price of their blood?
It must, in the first place, be allowed that, the more violent the passions
are, the more are laws necessary to keep them under restraint. But, setting
aside the inadequacy of laws to effect this purpose, which is evident from the
crimes and disorders to which these passions daily give rise among us, we should
do well to inquire if these evils did not spring up with the laws themselves;
for in this case, even if the laws were capable of repressing such evils, it is
the least that could be expected from them, that they should check a mischief
which would not have arisen without them.
Let us begin by distinguishing between the physical and moral ingredients in
the feeling of love. The physical part of love is that general desire which
urges the sexes to union with each other. The moral part is that which
determines and fixes this desire exclusively upon one particular object; or at
least gives it a greater degree of energy toward the object thus preferred. It
is easy to see that the moral part of love is a factitious feeling, born of
social usage, and enhanced by the women with much care and cleverness, to
establish their empire, and put in power the sex which ought to obey. This
feeling, being founded on certain ideas of beauty and merit which a savage is
not in a position to acquire, and on comparisons which he is incapable of
making, must be for him almost non-existent; for, as his mind cannot form
abstract ideas of proportion and regularity, so his heart is not susceptible of
the feelings of love and admiration, which are even insensibly produced by the
application of these ideas. He follows solely the character nature has implanted
in him, and not tastes which he could never have acquired; so that every woman
equally answers his purpose.
Men in a state of nature being confined merely to what is physical in love,
and fortunate enough to be ignorant of those excellences, which whet the
appetite while they increase the difficulty of gratifying it, must be subject to
fewer and less violent fits of passion, and consequently fall into fewer and
less violent disputes. The imagination, which causes such ravages among us,
never speaks to the heart of savages, who quietly await the impulses of nature,
yield to them involuntarily, with more pleasure than ardour, and, their wants
once satisfied, lose the desire. It is therefore incontestable that love, as
well as all other passions, must have acquired in society that glowing
impetuosity, which makes it so often fatal to mankind. And it is the more absurd
to represent savages as continually cutting one another's throats to indulge
their experience; the Caribeans, who have as yet least of all deviated from the
state of nature, being in fact the most peaceable of people in their amours and
the least subject to jealousy, though they live in a hot climate which seems
always to inflame the passions.
With regard to the inferences that might be drawn, in the case of several
species of animals, the males of which fill our poultry- yards with blood and
slaughter, or in spring make the forest resound with their quarrels over their
females; we must begin by excluding all those species, in which nature has
plainly established, in the comparative power of the sexes, relations different
from those which exist among us: thus we can base no conclusion about men on the
habits of fighting cocks. In those species where the proportion is better
observed, these battles must be entirely due to the scarcity of females in
comparison with males; or, what amounts to the same thing, to the intervals
during which the female constantly refuses the advances of the male: for if each
female admits the male but during two months in the year, it is the same as if
the number of females were five-sixths less. Now neither of these two cases is
applicable to the human species, in which the number of females usually exceeds
that of males, and among whom it has never been observed, even among savages,
that the females have, like those of other animal their stated times of passion
and indifference. Moreover, in several of these species, the individuals all
take fire at once, and there comes a fearful moment of universal passion, tumult
and disorder among them; a scene which is never beheld in the human species,
whose love is not thus seasonal. We must not then conclude from the combats of
such animals for the enjoyment of the females, that the case would be the same
with mankind in a state of nature: and, even if we drew such a conclusion, we
see that such contests do not exterminate other kinds of animals, and we have no
reason to think they would be more fatal to ours. It is indeed clear that they
would do still less mischief than is the case in a state of society; especially
in those countries in which, morals being still held in some repute, the
jealousy of lovers and the vengeance of husbands are the daily cause of duels,
murder, and even worse crimes; where the obligation of eternal fidelity only
occasions adultery, and the very laws of honour and continence necessarily
increase debauchery and lead to the multiplication of abortions.
Let us conclude then that man in a state of nature, wandering up and down the
forests, without industry, without speech, and without home, an equal stranger
to war and to all ties, neither standing in need of his fellow-creatures nor
having any desire to hurt them, and perhaps even not distinguishing them one
from another; let us conclude that, being self-sufficient and subject to so few
passions, he could have no feelings or knowledge but such as befitted his
situation; that he felt only his actual necessities, and disregarded everything
he did not think himself immediately concerned to notice, and that his
understanding made no greater progress than his vanity. If by accident he made
any discovery, he was the less able to communicate it to others, as he did not
know even his own children. Every art would necessarily perish with its
inventor, where there was no kind of education among men, and generations
succeeded generations without the least advance; when, all setting out from the
same point, centuries must have elapsed in the barbarism of the first ages; when
the race was already old, and man remained a child.
If I have expatiated at such length on this supposed primitive state, it is
because I had so many ancient errors and inveterate prejudices to eradicate, and
therefore thought it incumbent on me to dig down to their very root, and show,
by means of a true picture of the state of nature, how far even the natural
inequalities of mankind are from having that reality and influence which modern
writers suppose.
It is in fact easy to see that many of the differences which distinguish men
are merely the effect of habit and the different methods of life men adopt in
society. Thus a robust or delicate constitution and the weakness attaching to
it, are more frequently the effects of a hardy or effeminate method of education
than of the original endowments of the body. It is the same with the powers of
the mind; for education not only makes a difference between such as are cultured
and such as are not, but even increases the differences which exist among the
former, in proportion to their respective degrees of culture: as the distance
between a giant and a dwarf on the same road increases with every step they
take. If we compare the prodigious diversity, which obtains in the education and
manner of life of the various orders of men in the state of society, with the
uniformity and simplicity of animal and savage life, in which every one lives on
the same kind of food and in exactly the same manner, and does exactly the same
things, it is easy to conceive how much less the difference between man and man
must be in a state of nature than in a state of society, and how greatly the
natural inequality of mankind must be increased by the inequalities of social
institutions.
But even if nature really affected, in the distribution of her gifts, that
partiality which is imputed to her, what advantage would the greatest of her
favourites derive from it, to the detriment of others, in a state that admits of
hardly any kind of relation between them? Where there is no love, of what
advantage is beauty? Of what use is wit to those who do not converse, or cunning
to those who have no business with others? I hear it constantly repeated that,
in such a state, the strong would oppress the weak; but what is here meant by
oppression? Some, it is said, would violently domineer over others, who would
groan under a servile submission to their caprices. This indeed is exactly what
I observe to be the case among us; but I do not see how it can be inferred of
men in a state of nature, who could not easily be brought to conceive what we
mean by dominion and servitude. One man, it is true, might seize the fruits
which another had gathered, the game he had killed, or the cave he had chosen
for shelter; but how would he ever be able to exact obedience, and what ties of
dependence could there be among men without possessions? If, for instance, I am
driven from one tree, I can go to the next; if I am disturbed in one place, what
hinders me from going to another? Again, should I happen to meet with a man so
much stronger than myself, and at the same time so depraved, so indolent, and so
barbarous, as to compel me to provide for his sustenance while he himself
remains idle; he must take care not to have his eyes off me for a single moment;
he must bind me fast before he goes to sleep. or I shall certainly either knock
him on the head or make my escape. That is to say, he must in such a case
voluntarily expose himself to much greater trouble than he seeks to avoid, or
can give me. After all this, let him be off his guard ever so little; let him
but turn his head aside at any sudden noise, and I shall be instantly twenty
paces off, lost in the forest, and, my fetters burst asunder, he would never see
me again.
Without my expatiating thus uselessly on these details, every one must see
that as the bonds of servitude are formed merely by the mutual dependence of men
on one another and the reciprocal needs that unite them, it is impossible to
make any man a slave, unless he be first reduced to a situation in which he
cannot do without the help of others: and, since such a situation does not exist
in a state of nature, every one is there his own master, and the law of the
strongest is of no effect.
Having proved that the inequality of mankind is hardly felt, and that its
influence is next to nothing in a state of nature, I must next show its origin
and trace its progress in the successive developments of the human mind. Having
shown that human perfectibility, the social virtues, and the other
faculties which natural man potentially possessed, could never develop of
themselves, but must require the fortuitous concurrence of many foreign causes
that might never arise, and without which he would have remained for ever in his
primitive condition, I must now collect and consider the different accidents
which may have improved the human understanding while depraving the species, and
made man wicked while making him sociable; so as to bring him and the world from
that distant period the point at which we now behold them.
I confess that, as the events I am going to describe might have happened in
various ways, I have nothing to determine my choice but conjectures: but such
conjectures become reasons, when they are the most probable that can be drawn
from the nature of things, and the only means of discovering the truth. The
consequences, however, which I mean to deduce will not be barely conjectural;
as, on the principles just laid down, it would be impossible to form any other
theory that would not furnish the same results, and from which I could not draw
the same conclusions.
This will be a sufficient apology for my not dwelling on the manner in which
the lapse of time compensates for the little probability in the events; on the
surprising power of trivial causes, when their action is constant; on the
impossibility, on the one hand, of destroying certain hypotheses, though on the
other we cannot give them the certainty of known matters of fact; on its being
with the province of history, when two facts are given as real, and have to be
connected by a series of intermediate facts, which are unknown or supposed to be
so, to supply such facts as may connect them; and on its being in the province
of philosophy when history is silent, to determine similar facts to serve the
same end; and lastly on the influence of similarity, which, in the case of
events, reduces the facts to a much smaller number of different classes than is
commonly imagined. It is enough for me to offer these hints to the consideration
of my judges, and to have so arranged that the general reader has no need to
consider them at all.
The Second Part
The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of
saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was
the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from
how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by
pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows,
"Beware of listening to this imposter; you are undone if you once forget that
the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody." But
there is great probability that things had then already come to such a pitch,
that they could no longer continue as they were; for the idea of property
depends on many prior ideas, which could only be acquired successively, and
cannot have been formed all at once in the human mind. Mankind must have made
very considerable progress, and acquired considerable knowledge and industry
which they must also have transmitted and increased from age to age, before they
arrived at this last point of the state of nature. Let us then go farther back,
and endeavour to unify under a single point of view that slow succession of
events and discoveries in the most natural order.
Man's first feeling was that of his own existence, and his first care that of
self-preservation. The produce of the earth furnished him with all he needed,
and instinct told him how to use it. Hunger and other appetites made him at
various times experience various modes of existence; and among these was one
which urged him to propagate his species -- a blind propensity that, having
nothing to do with the heart, produced a merely animal act. The want once
gratified, the two sexes knew each other no more; and even the offspring was
nothing to its mother, as soon as it could do without her.
Such was the condition of infant man; the life of an animal limited at first
to mere sensations, and hardly profiting by the gifts nature bestowed on him,
much less capable of entertaining a thought of forcing anything from her. But
difficulties soon presented themselves, and it became necessary to learn how to
surmount them: the height of the trees, which prevented him from gathering their
fruits, the competition of other animals desirous of the same fruits, and the
ferocity of those who needed them for their own preservation, all obliged him to
apply himself to bodily exercises. He had to be active, swift of foot, and
vigorous in fight. Natural weapons, stones and sticks, were easily found: he
learnt to surmount the obstacles of nature, to contend in case of necessity with
other animals, and to dispute the means of subsistence even with other men, or
to indemnify himself for what he was forced to give up to a stronger.
In proportion as the human race grew more numerous, men's cares increased.
The difference of soils, climates, and seasons, must have introduced some
differences into their manner of living. Barren years, long and sharp winters,
scorching summers which parched the fruits of the earth, must have demanded a
new industry. On the seashore and the banks of rivers, they invented the hook
and line, and became fishermen and eaters of fish. In the forest they made bows
and arrows, and became huntsmen and warriors. In cold countries they clothed
themselves with the skins of the beasts they had slain. The lightning, a
volcano, or some lucky chance acquainted them with fire, a new resource against
the rigours of winter: they next learned how to preserve this element, then how
to reproduce it, and finally how to prepare with it the flesh of animals which
before they had eaten raw.
This repeated relevance of various beings to himself, and one to another,
would naturally give rise in the human mind to the perceptions of certain
relations between them. Thus the relations which we denote by the terms great,
small, strong, weak, swift, slow, fearful, bold, and the like, almost insensibly
compared at need, must have at length produced in him a kind of reflection, or
rather a mechanical prudence, which would indicate to him the precautions most
necessary to his security....
But from the moment one man began to stand in need of the help of another;
from the moment it appeared advantageous to any one man to have enough
provisions for two, equality disappeared, property was introduced, work became
indispensable, and vast forests became smiling fields, which man had to water
with the sweat of his brow, and where slavery and misery were soon seen to
germinate and grow up with the crops.
Metallurgy and agriculture were the two arts which produced this great
revolution. The poets tell us it was gold and silver, but, for the philosophers,
it was iron and corn, which first civilized men, and ruined humanity. Thus both
were unknown to the savages of America, who for that reason are still savage:
the other nations also seem to have continued in a state of barbarism while they
practiced only one of these arts. One of the best reasons, perhaps, why Europe
has been if not longer, at least more constantly and highly civilized than the
rest of the world is that it is at once the most abundant in iron and the most
fertile in corn.
It is difficult to conjecture how men first came to know and use iron; for it
is impossible to suppose they would of themselves think of digging the ore out
of the mine, and preparing it for smelting, before they knew what would be the
result. On the other hand, we have the less reason to suppose this discovery the
effect of any accidental fire, as mines are only formed in barren places, bare
of trees and plants; so that it looks as if nature had taken pains to keep the
fatal secret from us. There remains, therefore, only the extraordinary accident
of some volcano which, by ejecting metallic substances already in fusion,
suggested to the spectators the idea of imitating the natural operation. And we
must further conceive them as possessed of uncommon courage and foresight, to
undertake so laborious a work, with so distant a prospect of drawing advantage
from it; yet these qualities are united only in minds more advanced than we can
suppose those of these first discoverers to have been.
With regard to agriculture, the principles of it were known long before they
were put in practice; and it is indeed hardly possible that men, constantly
employed in drawing their subsistence from pants and trees, should not readily
acquire a knowledge of the means made use of by nature for the propagation of
vegetables. It was in all probability very long, however, before their industry
took that turn, either because trees, which together with hunting and fishing
afforded them food, did not require their attention; or because they were
ignorant of the use of corn, or without instruments to cultivate it; or because
they lacked foresight to future needs; or lastly, because they were without
means of preventing others from robbing them of the fruit of their labour.
When they grew more industrious, it is natural to believe that they began,
with the help of sharp stones and pointed sticks, to cultivate a few vegetables
or roots around their huts; though it was long before they knew how to prepare
corn, or were provided with the implements necessary for raising it in any large
quantity; not to mention how essential it is, for husbandry, to consent to
immediate loss, in order to reap a future gain -- a precaution very foreign to
the turn of a savage's mind; for, as I have said, he hardly foresees in the
morning what he will need at night.
The invention of the other arts must therefore have been necessary to compel
mankind to apply themselves to agriculture. No sooner were artificers wanted to
smelt and forge iron, than others were required to maintain them; the more hands
that were employed in manufactures, the fewer were left to provide for the
common subsistence, though the number of mouths to be furnished with food
remained the same: and as some required commodities in exchange for their iron,
the rest at length discovered the method of making iron serve for the
multiplication of commodities. By this means the arts of husbandry and
agriculture were established on the one hand, and the art of working metals and
multiplying their uses on the other.
The cultivation of the earth necessarily brought about its distribution; and
property, once recognized, gave rise to the first rules of justice; for, to
secure each man his own, it had to be possible for each to have something.
Besides, as men began to look forward to the future, and all had something to
lose, every one had reason to apprehend that reprisals would follow any injury
he might do to another. This origin is so much the more natural, as it is
impossible to conceive how property can come from anything but manual labour:
for what else can a man add to things which he does not originally create, so as
to make them his own property? It is the husbandman's labour alone that, giving
him a title to the produce of the ground he has tilled, gives him a claim also
to the land itself, at least till harvest; and so, from year to year, a constant
possession which is easily transformed into property. When the ancients, say
Grotius, gave to Ceres the title of Legislatrix, and to a festival celebrated in
her honour the name of Thesmophoria, they meant by that that the distribution of
lands had produced a new kind of right: that is to say, the right of property,
which is different from the right deducible from the law of nature.
In this state of affairs, equality might have been sustained, had the talents
of individuals been equal, and had, for example, the use of iron and the
consumption of commodities always exactly balanced each other; but, as there was
nothing to preserve this balance, it was soon disturbed; the strongest did most
work; the most skilful turned his labour to best account; the most ingenious
devised methods of diminishing his labour: the husbandman wanted more corn, or
the smith more corn, and, while both laboured equally, the one gained a great
deal by his work, while the other could hardly support himself. Thus natural
inequality unfolds itself insensibly with that of combination, and the
difference between men, developed by their different circumstances, becomes more
sensible and permanent in its effects, and begins to have an influence, in the
same proportion, over the lot of individuals.
Matters once at this pitch, it is easy to imagine the rest. I shall not
detain the reader with a description of the successive invention of other arts,
the development of language, the trial and utilization of talents, the
inequality of fortunes, the use and abuse of riches, and all the details
connected with them which the reader can easily supply for himself. I shall
confine myself to a glance at mankind in this new situation.
Behold then all human faculties developed, memory and imagination in full
play, egoism interested, reason active, and the mind almost at the highest point
of its perfection. Behold all the natural qualities in action, the rank and
condition of every man assigned him; not merely his share of property and his
power to serve or injure others, but also his wit, beauty, strength or skill,
merit or talents: and these being the only qualities capable of commanding
respect, it soon became necessary to possess or to affect them.
It now became the interest of men to appear what they really were not. To be
and to seem became two totally different things; and from this distinction
sprang insolent pomp and cheating trickery, with all the numerous vices that go
in their train. On the other hand, free and independent as men were before, they
were now, in consequence of a multiplicity of new wants, brought into
subjection, as it were, to all nature, and particularly to one another; and each
became in some degree a slave even in becoming the master of other men: if rich,
they stood in need of the services of others; if poor, of their assistance; and
even a middle condition did not enable them to do without one another. Many must
now, therefore, have been perpetually employed in getting others to interest
themselves in his lot, and in making them, apparently at least, if not really,
find their advantage in promoting his behaviour to some, and imperious and cruel
to others; being under a kind of necessity to ill-use all the persons of whom he
stood in need, when he could not frighten them into compliance, and did not
judge it his interest to be useful to them. Insatiable ambition, the thirst of
raising their respective fortunes, not so much from real want as from the desire
to surpass others, inspired all men with a vile propensity to injure one
another, and with a secret jealousy, which is the more dangerous, as it puts on
the mask of benevolence, to carry its point with greater security. In a word,
there arose rivalry and competition together with a secret desire on both of
profiting at the expense of others. All these evils were the first effects of
property, and the inseparable attendants of growing inequality.
Before the invention of signs to represent riches, wealth could hardly
consist in anything but lands and cattle, the only real possessions men can
have. But, when inheritances so increased in number and extent as to occupy the
whole of the land, and to border on one another, one man could aggrandize
himself only at the expense of another; at the same time the supernumeraries,
who had been too weak or too indolent to make such acquisitions, and had grown
poor without sustaining any loss, because, while they saw everything change
around them, they remained still the same, were obliged to receive their
subsistence, or steal it, from the rich; and this soon bred, according to their
different characters, dominion and slavery, or violence and rapine. The wealthy,
on their part, had no sooner begun to taste the pleasure of command, than they
disdained all others, and, using their old slaves to acquire new, thought of
nothing but subduing and enslaving their neighbours; like ravenous wolves,
which; having once tasted human flesh, despise every other food and thenceforth
seek only men to devour.
Thus, as the most powerful or the most miserable considered their might or
misery as a kind of right to the possessions of others, equivalent, in their
opinion,