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. Humanity would have been spared
infinite crimes, wars, homicides, murders, if only someone had ripped up
the fences or filled in the ditches and said, "Do not listen to this pretender!
You are eternally lost if you do not remember that the fruits of the earth
are everyone's property and that the land is no-one's property!" But by
that point things had changed so drastically that there was no turning
back, for this idea of "property," which develops out of prior ideas, did
not form spontaneously in the human mind. Men had to progress, acquiring
knowledge and arts, transmitting and increasing these from generation to
generation, before they reached the last stage in the natural human state.
I shall endeavor, then, to explain the progress of events and discoveries
from the perspective of their natural order.
The first human feeling was that of existence; the first human
concern was preserving that existence. . . . It was a life of pure sensations.
. . . But, humans were eventually confronted with difficulties, 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 for 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, climate and seasons, must have introduced
some differences in their manner of living. Barren years, long and short
winters, scorching summers which parched the fruits of the earth, must
have demanded a new industry. On the shore and the banks of rivers, they
invented the hook and line, and became fishermen and eaters of fish. In
the forests they made bows and arrows, and became hunters 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 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 things. 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 mechanical prudence, which would
indicate to him the precautions most necessary to his security.
The new intelligence which resulted from this development increased
his superiority over other animals, making him sensible of it. He would
now endeavor, therefore, to ensnare them, would play them a thousand tricks,
and though many of them might surpass him in swiftness or in strength,
would in time become the master of some and the scourge of others. Thus,
the first time he looked into himself, he felt the first emotion of pride;
and, at a time when he scarce knew how to distinguish the different orders
of beings, by looking upon his species as of the highest order, he prepared
the way for assuming pre-eminence as an individual.
Other men, it is true, were not then to him what they now are
to us, and he had no greater intercourse with them than with other animals;
yet they were not neglected in his observations. The conformities, which
he would in time discover between them, and between himself and his female,
led him to judge of others which were not then perceptible; and finding
that they all behaved as he himself would have done in like circumstances,
he naturally inferred that their manner of thinking and acting was altogether
in conformity with his own. This important truth, once deeply impressed
on his mind, must have induced him, from an intuitive feeling more certain
and much more rapid than any kind of reasoning, to pursue the rules of
conduct, which he had best observe towards them, for his own security and
advantage.
Taught by experience that the love of well-being is the sole motive
of human actions, he found himself in a position to distinguish the few
cases in which mutual interest might justify him in relying upon the assistance
of his fellows; and also the still fewer cases in which a conflict of interests
might give cause to suspect them. In the former case, he joined in the
same herd with them, or at most in some kind of loose association, that
laid no restraint on its members, and lasted no longer than the transitory
occasion that formed it. In the latter case, every one sought his own private
advantage, either by open force, if he thought himself strong enough, or
by address and cunning, if he felt himself the weaker.
In this manner, men may have insensibly acquired some gross ideas
of mutual undertakings, and of the advantages of fulfilling them: that
is, just so far as their present and apparent interest was concerned: for
they were perfect strangers to foresight, and were so far from troubling
themselves about the distant future, that they hardly thought of the morrow.
If a deer was to be taken, every one saw that, in order to succeed, he
must abide faithfully by his post: but if a hare happened to come within
the reach of any one of them, it is not to be doubted that he pursued it
without scruple, and, having seized his prey, cared very little, if by
so doing he caused his companions to miss theirs. . . .
These first advances enabled men to make others with greater rapidity.
In proportion as they grew enlightened, they grew industrious. They ceased
to fall asleep under the first tree, or in the first cave that afforded
them shelter; they invented several kinds of implements of hard wood and
sharp stones, which they used to dig up the earth and to cut wood; they
then made huts out of branches, and afterwards learnt to plaster them over
with mud and clay.
This was the epoch of a first revolution, which established and
distinguished families, and introduced a kind a property, in itself the
source of a thousand quarrels and conflicts. As, however, the strongest
were probably the first to build themselves huts which they felt themselves
able to defend, it may be concluded that the weak found it much easier
and safer to imitate, than to attempt to dislodge them: and of those who
were once provided with huts, none could have any inducement to appropriate
that of his neighbour; not indeed so much because it did not belong to
him, as because it could be of no use, and he could not make himself master
of it without exposing himself to a desperate battle with the family which
occupied it.
The first expansions of the human heart were the effects of a
novel situation, which united husbands and wives, fathers and children,
under one roof. The habit of living together soon gave rise to the finest
feelings known to humanity, conjugal love and paternal affection. Every
family became a little society, the more united because liberty and reciprocal
attachment were the only bonds of its union. The sexes, whose manner of
life had been hitherto the same, began now to adopt different ways of living.
The women became more sedentary, and accustomed themselves to mind the
hut and their children, while the men went abroad in search of their common
subsistence. From living a softer life, both sexes also began to lose something
of their strength and ferocity; but, if individuals became to some extent
less able to encounter wild beasts separately, they found it, on the other
hand, easier to assemble and resist in common.
The simplicity and solitude of man's life in this new condition,
the paucity of his wants, and the implements he had invented to satisfy
them, left him a great deal of leisure, which he employed to furnish himself
with many conveniences unknown to his fathers; and this was the first yoke
he inadvertently imposed on himself, and the first source of the evils
he prepared for his descendants. For, besides continuing thus to enervate
both body and' mind, these conveniences lost with use almost all their
power to please, and even degenerated into real needs until the want of
them became far more disagreeable than the possession of them had been
pleasant. Men would not have been unhappy at the loss of them, though the
possession did not make them happy. . . .
Everything now begins to change its aspect. Men who have up to
now been roving in the woods, by taking to a more settled manner of life,
come gradually together form separate bodies, and at length in every country
arises a distinct nation, united in character and manners, not by regulations
or laws, but by uniformity of life and food and the common influence of
climate. Permanent neighbourhoods could not fail to produce, in time, some
connection between different families. Among young people of opposite sexes,
living in neighbouring huts, the transient commerce required by nature
soon led, through mutual intercourse, to another kind not less agreeable,
and more permanent. Men began now to take the difference between objects
into account, and to make comparisons; they acquired imperceptibly the
idea of beauty which soon gave rise to feelings of preference. In consequence
of seeing each other often, they could not live without seeing each other
constantly. A tender and pleasant feeling insinuated itself into their
souls, and the least opposition turned it into an impetuous fury: with
loss arose jealousy; discord triumphed, and human blood was sacrificed
to the gentlest of all passions.
As ideas and feelings succeeded one another, and heart and head
were brought into play, men continued to put aside their original wildness;
their private connections became every day more intimate as their limits
extended. They accustomed themselves to assemble before their huts round
a large tree; singing and dancing, the true offspring of love and leisure,
became the amusement, or rather the occupation, of men and women thus assembled
together with nothing else to do. Each one began to consider the rest,
and to wish to be considered in turn; and thus value came to be attached
to public esteem. Whoever sang or danced best, whoever was the handsomest,
the strongest, the most dexterous, or the most eloquent, came to be of
most consideration; and this was the first step towards inequality, and
at the same time towards vice. From these first distinctions arose on the
one side vanity and contempt and on the other shame and envy: and the fermentation
caused by these new leavens ended by producing combinations fatal to innocence
and happiness.
As soon as men began to value one another, and the idea of consideration
had got a footing in the mind, every one put in his claim to it, and it
became impossible to refuse it to any with impunity. Hence arose the first
obligations of civility even among savages; and every intended injury became
an affront; because, besides the hurt which might result from it, the party
injured was certain to find in it a contempt for his person, which was
often more insupportable than the hurt itself.
Thus, as every man punished the contempt shown him by others,
in proportion to his opinion of himself, revenge became terrible, and men
bloody and cruel. This is precisely the state reached by most of the savage
nations known to us: and it is for want of having made a proper distinction
in our ideas, and seen how very far they already are from the state of
nature, that so many writers have hastily concluded that man is naturally
cruel, and requires civil institutions to make him more mild; whereas nothing
is more gentle than man in his primitive state, as he is placed by nature
at an equal distance from the stupidity of brutes, and the fatal ingenuity
of civilised man. Equally confined by instinct and reason to the sole care
of guarding himself against the mischiefs which threaten him, he is restrained
by natural compassion from doing any injury to others, and is not led to
do such a thing even in return for injuries received. For, according to
the axiom of the wise Locke, There can be no injury, where there is no
property.
But it must be remarked that the society thus formed, and the
relations thus established among men, required of them qualities different
from those which they possessed from their primitive constitution. Morality
began to appear in human actions, and every one, before the institution
of law, was the only judge and avenger of the injuries done him, so that
the goodness which was suitable in the pure state of nature was no longer
proper in the new-born state of society. Punishments had to be made more
severe, as opportunities of offending became more frequent, and the dread
of vengeance had to take the place of the rigour of the law. Thus, though
men; had become less patient, and their natural compassion had already
suffered some diminution, this period of expansion of the human faculties,
keeping a just mean between the indolence of the primitive state and the
petulant activity of our egoism, must have been the happiest and most stable
of epochs. The more we reflect on it, the more we shall find that this
state was the least subject to revolutions, and altogether the very best
man could experience; so that he can have departed from it only through
some fatal accident, which, for the pubic good, should never have happened.
The example of savages, most of whom have been found in this state, seems
to prove that men were meant to remain in it, it is the real youth of the
world, and that all subsequent advances have been apparently so many steps
toward the perfection of the individual, but in reality towards the decrepitude
of the species.
So long as men remained content with their rustic huts, so long
as they were satisfied with clothes made of the skins of animals and sewn
together with thorns and bones, adorned themselves only with feathers,
and continued to paint their bodies different colours, to improve and beautify
their bows and arrows and to make with sharp-edged stones fishing boats
or clumsy musical instruments; in a word, so long as they undertook only
what a single person could accomplish, and confined themselves to such
arts as did not require the joint labour of several hands, they lived free,
healthy, honest and happy lives, as long as their nature allowed, and as
they continued enjoy the pleasures of mutual and independent intercourse.
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, 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 civilised 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 practised only one of these arts. One
of the best reasons, perhaps, why Europe has been, if not longer, at least
more constantly and highly civilised than the rest of the world, is that
it is at once the most abundant in iron and the most fertile in corn. .
. .
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 smith and forge iron, than others were required to maintain them;
the more hands that were employed in manufacture, 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 exchange
for their iron, the rest at length discovered a 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 arts of working
metals and multiplying their uses on the other.
The cultivation of the earth necessarily brought about its distribution;
and property, once recognised, gave the first rules of justice; for, to
secure each man ownership, it had to be possible for each to have something.
Besides, as men began to look forward to the future, 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,
it is impossible to conceive how property can come of anything but manual
labour: for what else can a man to things which he does not originally
create, so as make them his own property ? It is the husbandman's labour
alone that, giving him a title to the produce of 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. . . .
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 iron, 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 utilisation 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 the 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. Man 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 own. Thus he must have been sly and artful in 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 to 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 greatest security. In a word, there
arose rivalry and competition on the one hand, and conflicting interests
on the other 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 inheritance so increased in number and extent as
to occupy the whole of the land, and to border on one another, one man
could aggrandise 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, to that of property, the destruction of equality was
attended by the most terrible disorders. Usurpations by the rich, robbery
by the poor, and the unbridled passions of both suppressed the cries of
natural compassion and the still feeble voice of justice, and filled men
with avarice, ambition and vice. Between the title of the strongest and
that of the first occupier, there arose perpetual conflicts, which never
ended but in battles and bloodshed. The new-born state of society thus
gave rise to a horrible state of war; men thus harassed and depraved were
no longer capable of retracing their steps or renouncing the fatal acquisitions
they had made, but, labouring by the abuse of the faculties which do them
honour, merely to their own confusion, brought themselves to the brink
of ruin.
It is impossible that men should not at length have reflected
on so wretched a situation, and on the calamities that overwhelmed them.
The rich, in particular, must have felt how much they suffered by a constant
state of wars of which they bore all the expense; and in which, though
all risked their lives, they alone risked their property. Besides, however
speciously they might disguise their usurpations, they knew that they were
founded on precarious and false titles; so that if others took from them
by force what they themselves had gained by force, they would have no reason
to complain. Even those who had been enriched by their own industry, could
hardly base their proprietorship on better claims. It was in vain to repeat,
"I built this well; I gained this spot by my industry." Who gave you your
standing, it might be answered, and what right have you to demand payment
of us for doing what we never asked you to do? Do you not know that numbers
of your fellow-creatures are starving, for want of what you have too much
of? You ought to have had the express and universal consent of mankind,
before appropriating more of the common subsistence than you needed for
your own maintenance. Destitute of valid reasons to justify and sufficient
strength to defend himself, easily able to crush individuals with ease,
but easily crushed himself by a troop of bandits, one against all, and
incapable, on account of mutual jealousy, of joining with his equals against
numerous enemies united by the common hope of plunder, the rich man, thus
urged by necessity, conceived at length the profoundest plan that ever
entered the mind of man: this was to employ in his favour the forces of
those who attacked him, to make allies of his adversaries, to inspire them
with different maxims, to give them other institutions as favourable to
him as the law of nature was unfavourable.
With this view, after having represented to his neighbours the
horror of a situation which armed every man against the rest, and made
their possessions as burdensome to them as their wants, and in which no
safety could be expected either in riches or in poverty, he readily developed
plausible arguments to make them close with his designs. "Let us join,"
said he, "to guard the weak from oppression, to restrain the ambitious,
and secure to every man the possession of what belongs to him: let us institute
rules of justice and peace, to which all without exception may be obliged
to conform; rules that may in good measure make amends for the caprices
of fortune, but subjecting equally the powerful and the weak to the observance
of reciprocal obligations. Let us, in a word, instead of turning our forces
against ourselves, let us collect them in a supreme power that will govern
us in accordance with supreme laws, repulse our common enemies, and maintain
eternal harmony among us."
Far fewer words to this purpose would have been enough to impose
on men so barbarous and easily seduced, especially as they had too many
disputes among themselves to do without arbitrators, and too much ambition
and avarice to go long without masters. All ran headlong to their chains,
in hopes of securing their liberty; for they had just wit enough to perceive
the advantages of political institutions, without experience enough to
enable them to foresee the dangers. The most capable of foreseeing the
dangers were the very persons who expected to benefit by them; and even
the most prudent judged it not inexpedient to sacrifice one part of their
freedom to ensure the rest; as a wounded man has his arm cut off to save
the rest of his body.
Such was, or may well have been, the origin of society and law,
which bound new fetters on the poor, and gave new powers to the rich; which
irretrievably destroyed natural liberty, eternally fixed the law of property
and inequality, converted clever usurpation into unalterable right, and,
for the advantage of a few ambitious individuals, subjected all mankind
to perpetual labour, slavery and wretchedness. It is easy to see how the
establishment of one community made that of all the rest necessary, and
how, in order to make head against united forces, the rest of mankind had
to unite in turn. Societies soon multiplied and spread over the face of
the earth, till hardly a corner of the world was left in which a man could
escape the yoke, and withdraw his head from beneath the sword which he
saw perpetually hanging over him by a thread. Civil right having thus become
the common rule among the members of each community, the law of nature
maintained its place only between different communities, where, under the
name of the right of nations, it was qualified by certain tacit conventions,
in order to make commerce practicable, and serve as a substitute for natural
compassion, which lost, when applied to societies, almost all the influence
it had over individuals, and survived no longer except in some great cosmopolitan
spirits, who, breaking down the imaginary barriers that separate different
peoples, follow the example of our Sovereign Creator, and include the whole
human race in their benevolence.
But bodies politic, remaining thus in a state of nature among
themselves, presently experienced the inconveniences which had obliged
individuals to forsake it; for this state became still more fatal to these
great bodies than it had been to the individuals of whom they were composed.
Hence arose national wars, battles, murders, and reprisals, which shock
nature and outrage reason; together with all those horrible prejudices
which class among the virtues the honour of shedding human blood. The most
distinguished men hence learned to consider cutting each other's throats
a duty; at length men massacred their fellow creatures by thousands without
so much as knowing why, and committed more murders in a single day of fighting,
and more violent outrages in the sack of a single town, than were committed
in the state of nature during whole ages over the whole earth. Such were
the first effects which we can see to have followed the division of mankind
into different communities. But let us return to their institutions.
I know that some writers have given other explanations of the
origin of political societies, such as the conquest the powerful, or the
association of the weak. It is, indeed indifferent to my argument which
of these causes we choose. That which I have just laid down, however appears
to me the most natural for the following reason. First: because, in the
first case, the right of conquest being no right in itself, could not serve
as a foundation on which to build any other; the victor and the vanquished
people still remained with respect to each other in state of war, unless
the vanquished, restored to the possession of their liberty, voluntarily
made choice of victor for their chief. For till then, whatever capitulation
may have been made being founded on violence, therefore ipso facto void,
there could not have been this hypothesis either a real society or body
politic, or law other than that of the strongest. Secondly: because the
words strong and weak are, in the second case, ambiguous; for during the
interval between the establishment of a right of property, or prior occupancy,
and that of political government, the meaning of these words is better
expressed by the terms rich and poor: because, in fact, before the institution
of laws, men had no other way of reducing their equals to submission, than
by attacking their goods, or making some of their own over to them. Thirdly:
because, as the poor had nothing but their freedom to lose, it would have
been in the highest degree absurd for them to resign voluntarily the only
good they still enjoyed, without getting anything in exchange: whereas
the rich having feelings, if I may so express myself, in every part of
their possessions, it was much easier to harm them, and therefore more
necessary for them to take precautions against it; and, in short, because
it is more reasonable to suppose a thing to have been invented by those
to whom it would be of service, than by those whom it must have harmed.
Government had, in its infancy, no regular and constant form.
The want of experience and philosophy prevented men from seeing any but
present inconveniences, and they thought of providing against others only
as they presented themselves. In spite of the endeavours of the wisest
legislators, the political state remained imperfect, because it was little
more than the work of chance; and, as it had begun ill, though time revealed
its defects and suggested remedies, the original faults were never repaired.
It was continually being patched up, when the first task should have been
to get the site cleared and all the old materials removed, as was done
by Lycurgus at Sparta, if a stable and lasting edifice was to be erected.
Society consisted at first merely of a few general conventions, which every
member bound himself to observe; and for the performance of covenants the
whole body went security to each individual. Experience only could show
the weakness of such a constitution, and how easily it might be infringed
with impunity, from the difficulty of convicting men of faults, where the
public alone was to be witness and judge: the laws could not but be eluded
in many ways; disorders and inconveniences could not but multiply continually,
till it became necessary to commit the dangerous trust of public authority
to private persons, and the care of enforcing obedience to the deliberations
of the people to the magistrate. For to say that chiefs were chosen before
the confederacy was formed, and that the administrators of the laws were
there before the laws themselves, is too absurd a supposition to consider
seriously. . . .
Politicians indulge in the same sophistry about the love of liberty
as philosophers about the state of nature. They judge by what they see,
of very different things, which they have not seen; and attribute to man
a natural propensity to servitude, because the slaves within their observation
are seen to bear the yoke with patience; they fail to reflect that it is
with liberty as with innocence a virtue; the value is known only to those
who possess it the and the taste for them is forfeited when they are forfeited
themselves. "I know the charms of your country," Brasidas to a Satrap,
who was comparing the life Sparta with that at Persepolis, "but you cannot
know pleasures of mine."
An unbroken horse erects his mane, paws the ground, and starts
back impetuously at the sight of the bridle, while one which is properly
trained suffers patiently even whip and spur: so savage man will not bend
his neck to the yoke to which civilised man submits without a murmur, but
prefers the most turbulent state of liberty to the most peaceful slavery.
We cannot therefore, from the servility of nations already enslaved, judge
of the natural disposition of mankind for or against slavery; we should
go by the prodigious efforts of every free people to save itself from oppression.
I know that the former are forever holding forth in praise of the tranquillity
they enjoy in their chains, and that they call a state of wretched servitude
a state of peace. But when I observe the latter sacrificing pleasure, peace,
wealth, power and life itself to the preservation of that one treasure,
which is so disdained by those who have lost it; when I see free-born animals
dash their brains out against the bars of their cage, from an innate impatience
of captivity; when I behold numbers of naked savages, that despise European
pleasures, braving hunger, fire, the sword and death, to preserve nothing
but their independence, I feel that it is not for slaves to argue about
liberty.
With regard to paternal authority, from which some writers have
derived absolute government and all society, it is enough, without going
back to the contrary arguments of Locke and Sidney, to remark that nothing
on earth can be further from the ferocious spirit of despotism than the
mildness of that authority which looks more to the advantage of him who
obeys than to that of him who commands; that, by the law of nature, the
father is the child's master no longer than his help is necessary; that
from that time they are both equal, the son being perfectly independent
of the father, and owing him only respect and not obedience. For gratitude
is a duty which ought to be paid, but not a right to be exacted: instead
of saying that civil society is derived from paternal authority, we ought
to say rather that the latter derives its principal force from the former.
No individual was ever acknowledged as the father of many, till his sons
and daughters remained settled around him. The goods of the father, of
which he is really the master, are the ties which keep his children in
dependence, and he may bestow on them, if he pleases, no share of his property,
unless they merit it by constant deference to his will. But the subjects
of an arbitrary despot are so far from having the like favour to expect
from their chief, that they themselves and every thing they possess are
his property, or at least are considered by him as such; so that they are
forced to receive, as a favour, the little of their own he is pleased to
leave them. When he despoils them, he does but justice, and mercy in that
he permits them to live. . . .
I shall not stay here to inquire whether, as liberty is the noblest
faculty of man, it is not degrading our very nature, reducing ourselves
to the level of the brutes which are mere slaves of instinct, and even
an affront the Author of our being, to renounce without reservation most
precious of all His gifts, and to bow to the necessity of committing all
the crimes He has forbidden, merely to gratify a mad or a cruel master;
or if this sublime craftsman ought not to be less angered at seeing His
workmanship entirely destroyed than thus dishonoured. I will waive (if
my opponents please) the authority of Barbeyrac, who, following Locke,
roundly declares that no man can so far sell his liberty as to submit to
an arbitrary power which may use him as it likes. For, he adds, this would
be to sell his own life, of which He is not master. I shall ask only what
right those who were not afraid thus to debase themselves could have to
subject their posterity to the same ignominy, and to renounce for them
those blessings which they do not owe to the liberality of their progenitors,
and without which life itself must be a burden to all who are worthy of
it.
Pufendorf says that we may divest ourselves of our liberty in
favour of other men, just as we transfer our property from one to another
by contracts and agreements. But this seems a very weak argument. For in
the first place, the property I alienate becomes quite foreign to me, nor
can I suffer from the abuse of it; but it very nearly concerns me that
my liberty should not be abused, and I cannot without incurring the guilt
of the crimes I may be compelled to commit, expose myself to become an
instrument of crime. Besides, the right of property being only a convention
of human institution, men may dispose of what they possess as they please:
but this is not the case with the essential gifts of nature, such as life
and liberty, which every man is permitted to enjoy, and of which it is
at least doubtful whether any have a right to divest themselves. By giving
up the one, we degrade our being; by giving up the other, we do our best
to annul it; and, as no temporal good can indemnify us for the loss of
either, it would be an offence against both reason and nature to renounce
them at any price whatsoever But, even if we could transfer our liberty,
as we do our property, there would be a great difference with regard to
the children, who enjoy the father's substance only by the transmission
of his right; whereas, liberty being a gift which they hold from nature
as being men, their parents have no right whatever to deprive them of it
As then, to establish slavery, it was necessary to do violence to nature,
so, in order to perpetuate such an injury, nature would have to be changed.
Jurists, who have gravely determined that the child of a slave comes into
the world a slave, have decided, in other words, that a man shall come
into the world not a man.
I regard it then as certain, that government did not begin with
arbitrary power, but that this is the perversion, the extreme term, of
government, and brings it back finally to the law of the strongest, which
it was originally designed to remedy. Supposing, however, it had begun
in this manner, such power, being in itself illegitimate, could not have
served as a basis for the laws of society, nor, consequently, for the inequality
they instituted.
Without entering at present upon the investigations which still
remain to be made into the nature of the fundamental compact underlying
all government, I content myself with adopting the common opinion concerning
it, and regard the establishment of the political body as a real contract
between the people and the chiefs chosen by them: a contract by which both
parties bind themselves to observe the laws therein expressed, which form
the ties of their union. The people having in respect of their social relations
concentrated all their wills in one, the several articles, concerning which
this will is explained become so many fundamental laws, obligatory on all
the members of the State without exception, and one of these articles regulates
the choice and power of the magistrates appointed to watch over the execution
of the rest. This power extends to everything which may maintain the constitution,
without going so far as to alter it. It is accompanied by honours, in order
to bring the laws and their administrators into respect. The ministers
are also distinguished by personal prerogatives, in order to recompense
them for the cares and labour which good administration involves. The magistrate,
on his side, binds himself to use the power he is entrusted with only in
conformity with the intention of his constituents, to maintain them all
in the peaceable possession of what belongs to them, and to prefer on every
occasion the public interest to his own.
Before experience had shown, or knowledge of the human heart enabled
men to foresee, the unavoidable abuses of such a constitution, it must
have appeared so much the more excellent, as those who were charged with
the care of its preservation had themselves most interest in it; for magistracy
and the rights attaching to it being based solely on the fundamental laws,
the magistrates would cease to be legitimate as soon as these ceased to
exist; the people would no longer owe them obedience; and as not the magistrates,
but the laws, are essential to the being of a State, the members of it
would regain the right to their natural liberty.
If we reflect with ever so little attention on this subject, we
shall find new arguments to confirm this truth, and be convinced from the
very nature of the contract that it cannot be irrevocable: for, if there
were no superior power capable of ensuring the fidelity of the contracting
parties, or compelling them to perform their reciprocal engagements, the
parties would be sole judges in their own cause, and each would always
have a right to renounce the contract, as soon as he found that the other
had violated its terms, or that they no longer suited his convenience.
It is upon this principle that the right of abdication may possibly be
founded. Now, if, as here, we consider only what is human in this institution,
it is certain that, if the magistrate, who has all the power in his own
hands, and appropriates to himself all the advantages of the contract,
has none the less a right to renounce his authority, the people, who suffer
for all the faults of their chief, must have a much better right to renounce
their dependence. But the terrible and innumerable quarrels and disorders
that would necessarily arise from so dangerous a privilege, show, more
than anything else, how much human governments stood in need of a more
solid basis than mere reason, and how expedient it was for the public tranquillity
that the divine will should interpose to invest the sovereign authority
with a sacred and inviolable character, which might deprive subjects of
the fatal right of disposing of it. If the world had received no other
advantages from religion, this would be enough to impose on men the duty
of adopting and cultivating it, abuses and all, since it has been the means
of saving more blood than fanaticism has ever spilt. But let us follow
the thread of our hypothesis.
The different forms of government owe their origin to the differing
degrees of inequality which existed between individuals at the time of
their institution. If there happened to be any one man among them pre-eminent
in power, virtue, riches or personal influence, he became sole magistrate,
and the State assumed the form of monarchy. If several, nearly equal in
point of eminence, stood above the rest, they were elected jointly, and
formed an aristocracy. Again, among a people who had deviated less from
a state of nature, and between whose fortune or talents there was less
disproportion, the supreme administration was retained in common, and a
democracy was formed. It was discovered in process of time which of these
forms suited men the best. Some peoples remained :: altogether subject
to the laws; others soon came to obey their magistrates. The citizens laboured
to preserve their liberty; the subjects, irritated at seeing others enjoying
a blessing they had lost, thought only of making slaves of their neighbours.
In a word, on the one side arose riches and conquests, and on the other
happiness and virtue.
In these different governments, all the offices were at first
elective; and when the influence of wealth was out of the question, the
preference was given to merit, which gives a natural ascendancy, and to
age, which is experienced in business and deliberate in council. . . .
But the more often the choice fell upon old men, the more often elections
had to be repeated, and the more they became a nuisance; intrigues set
in, factions were formed, party feeling grew bitter, civil wars broke out;
the lives of individuals were sacrificed to the pretended happiness of
the State; and at length men were on the point of relapsing into their
primitive anarchy. Ambitious chiefs profited by these circumstances to
perpetuate their offices in their own families: at the same time the people,
already used to dependence, ease, and the conveniences of life, and already
incapable of breaking its fetters, agreed to an increase of its slavery,
in order to secure its tranquillity. Thus magistrates, having become hereditary,
contracted the habit of considering their offices as a family estate, and
themselves as proprietors of the communities of which they were at first
only the officers, of regarding their fellow-citizens as their slaves,
and numbering them, like cattle, among their belongings, and of calling
themselves the equals of the gods and kings of kings.
If we follow the progress of inequality in these various revolutions,
we shall find that the establishment of laws and of the right of property
was its first term, the institution of magistracy the second, and the conversion
of legitimate into arbitrary power the third and last; so that the condition
of rich and poor was authorised by the first period; that of powerful and
weak by the second; and only by the third that of master and slave, which
is the last degree of inequality, and the term at which all the rest remain,
when they have got so far, till the government is either entirely dissolved
by new revolutions, or brought back again to legitimacy. To understand
this progress as necessary we must consider not so much the motives for
the establishment of the body politic, as the forms it assumes in actuality,
and the faults that necessarily attend it: for the flaws which make social
institutions necessary are the same as make the abuse of them unavoidable.
. . . it would not be difficult to prove that every government, which scrupulously
complied with the ends for which it was instituted, and guarded carefully
against change and corruption, was set up unnecessarily. For a country,
in which no one either evaded the laws or made a bad use of magisterial
power, could require neither laws nor magistrates.
Political distinctions necessarily produce civil distinctions.
The growing equality between the chiefs and the people is soon felt by
individuals, and modified in a thousand ways according to passions, talents
and circumstances. The magistrate could not usurp any illegitimate power,
without giving distinction to the creatures with whom he must share it.
Besides, individuals only allow themselves to be oppressed so far as they
are hurried on by blind ambition, and, looking rather below than above
them, come to love authority more than independence, and submit to slavery,
that they may in turn enslave others. It is no easy matter to reduce to
obedience a man who has no ambition to command; nor would the most adroit
politician find it possible to enslave a people whose only desire was to
be independent. But inequality easily makes its way among cowardly and
ambitious minds, which are ever ready to run the risks of fortune,: and
almost indifferent whether they command or obey, as it is favourable or
adverse. Thus, there must have been a time, when the eyes of the people
were so fascinated, that their rulers had only to say to the least of men,
"Be great, you and all your posterity," to make him immediately appear
great in the eyes of every one as well as in his own. His descendants took
still more upon them, in proportion to their distance from him; the more
obscure and uncertain the cause, the greater the effect: the greater the
number of idlers one could count in a family, the more illustrious it was
held to be,
If this were the place to go into details, I could readily explain
how, even without the intervention of government inequality of credit and
authority became unavoidable among private persons, as soon as their union
in a single society made them compare themselves one with another and take
into account the differences which they found out from the continual intercourse
every man had to have with his neighbours. These differences are of several
kinds; riches, nobility or rank, power and personal merit being the principal
distinctions by which men form an estimate of each other in society, I
could prove that the harmony or conflict of these different forces is the
surest indication of the good or bad constitution of a State. I could show
that among these four kinds of inequality, personal qualities being the
origin of all the others, wealth is the one to which they are all reduced
in the end; for, as riches tend most immediately to the prosperity of individuals,
and are easiest to communicate, they are used to purchase every other distinction.
By this observation we are enabled to judge pretty exactly how far a people
has departed from its primitive constitution, and of its progress towards
the extreme term of corruption. I could explain how much this universal
desire for reputation, honours and advancement, which inflames us all,
exercises and holds up to comparison our faculties and powers; how it excites
and multiplies our passions, and, by creating universal competition and
rivalry, or rather enmity, among men, occasions numberless failures, successes
and disturbances of all kinds by making so many aspirants run the same
course. I could show that it is to this desire of being talked about, and
this unremitting rage of distinguishing ourselves, that we owe the best
and the worst things we possess, both our virtues and our vices, our science
and our errors, our conquerors and our philosophers; that is to say, a
great many bad things and very few good ones. Indeed, I could prove that,
If we see a handful of rich and powerful men on the pinnacle of fortune
and grandeur, while the crowd grovels in want and obscurity, it is because
the former prize what they enjoy only in so far as others are destitute
of it; and because, without changing their condition, they would cease
to be happy the moment the people ceased to be wretched.
These details alone, however, would furnish matter for a considerable
work, in which the advantages and disadvantages of every kind of government
might be weighed, as they are related to man in the state of nature, and
at the same time all the different aspects, under which inequality has
up to the present appeared, or may appear in ages yet to come, according
to the nature of the several governments, and the alterations which time
must unavoidably occasion in them, might be demonstrated. We should then
see the multitude oppressed from within, in consequence of the very precautions
it had taken to guard against foreign tyranny. We should see oppression
continually gain ground without it being possible for the oppressed to
know where it would stop or what legitimate means was left them of checking
its progress. We should see the rights of citizens, and the freedom of
nations slowly extinguished, and the complaints, protests and appeals of
the weak treated as seditious murmurings. We should see the honour of defending
the common cause confined by statecraft to a mercenary part of the people.
We should see taxes made necessary by such means, and the disheartened
husbandman deserting his fields even in the midst of peace, and leaving
the plough to gird on the sword. We should see fatal and capricious codes
of honour established; and the champions of their country sooner or later
becoming its enemies, and for ever holding their daggers to the breasts
of their fellow-citizens. Their time would come when they would be heard
saying to the oppressor of their country, "If you order me to plunge my
sword into my brother's chest or my father's throat, or even into the entrails
of my pregnant wife, my arm would be reluctant to obey, but I will still
do it."
From the extreme inequality of conditions and fortunes, from the
diversity of passions and knowledge, from pernicious arts and vain sciences,
would arise a multitude of prejudices equally contrary to reason, happiness
and virtue. We should see the magistrates fomenting everything that might
weaken men united in society, by promoting dissension among them; everything
that might sow in it the seeds of actual division, while it gave society
the air of harmony; everything that might inspire the different ranks of
people with mutual hatred and distrust, by setting the rights and interests
of one against those of another, and so strengthen the power which comprehended
them all.
It is from the midst of this disorder and these revolutions, that
despotism, gradually raising up its hideous head and devouring everything
that remained sound and untainted in any part of the State, would at length
trample on both the laws and the people, and establish itself on the ruins
of the republic. The times which immediately preceded this last change
would be times of trouble and calamity; but at length the monster would
swallow up everything, and the people would no longer have either chiefs
or laws, but only tyrants. From this moment there would be no question
of virtue or morality; for despotism cui ex honesto nulla est spes, 1 wherever it prevails, admits no other master; it no sooner speaks than
probity and duty lose their weight and blind obedience is the only virtue
which slaves can still practise. This is the last term of inequality, the
extreme point that closes the circle, and meets that from which we set
out. Here all private persons return to their first equality, because they
are nothing; and, subjects having no law but the will of their master,
and their master no restraint but his passions, all notions of good and
all principles of equity again vanish. There is here a complete return
to the law of the strongest, and so to a new state of nature, differing
from that we set out from; for the one was a state of nature in its first
purity while this is the consequence of excessive corruption. There is
so little difference between the two states in other respects, and the
contract of government is so completely dissolved by despotism, that the
despot is master only so long as he remains the strongest; as soon as he
can be expelled, he has no right to complain of violence. The popular insurrection
that ends in the death or deposition of a Sultan is as lawful an act as
those by which he disposed, the day before, of the lives and fortunes of
his subjects. As he was maintained by force alone it is force alone that
overthrows him. Thus everything takes place according to the natural order;
and, whatever may be the result of such frequent and precipitate revolutions,
no one man has reason to complain of the injustice of another, but only
of his own ill-fortune or indiscretion.
If the reader thus discovers and retraces the lost and forgotten
road, by which man must have passed from the state of nature to the state
of society; if he carefully restores, along with the intermediate situations
which I have just described, those which want of time has compelled me
to suppress, or imagina without virtue, reason without wisdom, and pleasure
without happiness. It is sufficient that I have proved that this is not
by any means the original state of man, but that it is merely the spirit
of society, and the inequality which society produces, that thus transform
and alter all our natural inclinations.
I have endeavoured to trace the origin and progress of inequality,
and the institution and abuse of political societies, as far as these are
capable of being deduced from the nature of man merely by the light of
reason, and independently of those sacred dogmas which give the sanction
of divine right to sovereign authority. It follows from this survey that,
as there is hardly any inequality in the state of nature, all the inequality
which now prevails owes its strength and growth to the development of our
faculties and the advance of the human mind, and becomes at last permanent
and legitimate by the establishment of property and laws. Secondly, it
follows that moral inequality, authorised by positive right alone, clashes
with natural right, whenever it is not proportionate to physical inequality;
a distinction which sufficiently determines what we ought to think of that
species of inequality which prevails in all civilised countries; since
it is plainly contrary to the law of nature, however defined, that children
should command old men, fools wise men, and that the privileged few should
gorge themselves with superfluities, while the starving multitude are in
want of the bare necessities of life.
Source:
This text is part of the Internet
Modern History Sourcebook. The Sourcebook is a collection of public
domain and copy-permitted texts for introductory level classes in modern
European and World history.
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(c)Paul Halsall Aug 1997
