A Dissertation On the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality of Mankind, 1755, extended excerpts
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, 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 battled
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.
Both rich and poor, shocked at their new-found ills,
Would fly from wealth, and lose what they had sought.
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 war, 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 post by
my industry." Who gave you your standing, it might be answered, and what right have
you to demand payment for 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, 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, and to give them other institutions as
favourable to himself 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 devised plausible arguments to make them close with his design. "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 some measure make amends for the caprices of fortune, by 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 collect them in a supreme power which may
govern us by wise laws, protect and defend all the members of the association, repulse
their 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 expedient
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 power 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 the 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.
Source:
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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.
Unless otherwise indicated the specific electronic form of the document is copyright.
Permission is granted for electronic copying, distribution in print form for educational
purposes and personal use. If you do reduplicate the document, indicate the source. No
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(c)Paul Halsall, July 1998
