It is reasonable to suppose that the words first made use of by mankind
had a much more extensive signification than those used in languages
already formed, and that ignorant as they were of the division of
discourse into its constituent parts, they at first gave every single
word the sense of a whole proposition. When they began to distinguish
subject and attribute, and noun and verb, which was itself no common
effort of genius, substantives were first only so many proper names; the
present infinitive was the only tense of verbs; and the very idea of
adjectives must have been developed with great difficulty; for every
adjective is an abstract idea, and abstractions are painful and
unnatural operations.
Every object at first received a particular name without regard to genus
or species, which these primitive originators were not in a position to
distinguish; every individual presented itself to their minds in
isolation, as they are in the picture of nature. If one oak was called
A, another was called B; for the primitive idea of two things is that
they are not the same, and it often takes a long time for what they have
in common to be seen: so that, the narrower the limits of their
knowledge of things, the more copious their dictionary must have been.
The difficulty of using such a vocabulary could not be easily removed;
for, to arrange beings under common and generic denominations, it became
necessary to know their distinguishing properties: the need arose for
observation and definition, that is to say, for natural history and
metaphysics of a far more developed kind than men can at that time have
possessed.
Add to this, that general ideas cannot be introduced into the mind
without the assistance of words, nor can the understanding seize them
except by means of propositions. This is one of the reasons why animals
cannot form such ideas, or ever acquire that capacity for
self-improvement which depends on them. When a monkey goes from one nut
to another, are we to conceive that he entertains any general idea of
that kind of fruit, and compares its archetype with the two individual
nuts? Assuredly he does not; but the sight of one of these nuts recalls
to his memory the sensations which he received from the other, and his
eyes, being modified after a certain manner, give information to the
palate of the modification it is about to receive. Every general idea is
purely intellectual; if the imagination meddles with it ever so little,
the idea immediately becomes particular. If you endeavour to trace in
your mind the image of a tree in general, you never attain to your end.
In spite of all you can do, you will have to see it as great or little,
bare or leafy, light or dark, and were you capable of seeing nothing in
it but what is common to all trees, it would no longer be like a tree at
all. Purely abstract beings are perceivable in the same manner, or are
only conceivable by the help of language. The definition of a triangle
alone gives you a true idea of it: the moment you imagine a triangle in
your mind, it is some particular triangle and not another, and you
cannot avoid giving it sensible lines and a coloured area. We must then
make use of propositions and of language in order to form general ideas.
For no sooner does the imagination cease to operate than the
understanding proceeds only by the help of words. If then the first
inventors of speech could give names only to ideas they already had, it
follows that the first substantives could be nothing more than proper
names.
But when our new grammarians, by means of which I have no conception,
began to extend their ideas and generalise their terms, the ignorance of
the inventors must have confined this method within very narrow limits;
and, as they had at first gone too far in multiplying the names of
individuals, from ignorance of their genus and species, they made
afterwards too few of these, from not having considered beings in all
their specific differences. It would indeed have needed more knowledge
and experience than they could have, and more pains and inquiry than
they would have bestowed, to carry these distinctions to their proper
length. If, even to-day, we are continually discovering new species,
which have hitherto escaped observation, let us reflect how many of them
must have escaped men who judged things merely from their first
appearance! It is superfluous to add that the primitive classes and the
most general notions must necessarily have escaped their notice also.
How, for instance, could they have understood or thought of the words
matter, spirit, substance, mode, figure, motion, when even our
philosophers, who have so long been making use of them, have themselves
the greatest difficulty in understanding them; and when, the ideas
attached to them being purely metaphysical, there are no models of them
to be found in nature?
But I stop at this point, and ask my judges to suspend their reading a
while, to consider, after the invention of physical substantives, which
is the easiest part of language to invent, that there is still a great
way to go, before the thoughts of men will have found perfect expression
and constant form, such as would answer the purposes of public speaking,
and produce their effect on society. I beg of them to consider how much
time must have been spent, and how much knowledge needed, to find out
numbers, abstract terms, aorists and all the tenses of verbs, particles,
syntax, the method of connecting propositions, the forms of reasoning,
and all the logic of speech. For myself, I am so aghast at the
increasing difficulties which present themselves, and so well convinced
of the almost demonstrable impossibility that languages should owe their
original institution to merely human means, that I leave, to any one who
will undertake it, the discussion of the difficult problem, which was
most necessary, the existence of society to the invention of language,
or the invention of language to the establishment of society. But be the
origin of language and society what they may, it may be at least
inferred, from the little care which nature has taken to unite mankind
by mutual wants, and to facilitate the use of speech, that she has
contributed little to make them sociable, and has put little of her own
into all they have done to create such bonds of union. It is in fact
impossible to conceive why, in a state of nature, one man should stand
more in need of the assistance of another, than a monkey or a wolf of
the assistance of another of its kind: or, granting that he did, what
motives could induce that other to assist him; or, even then, by what
means they could agree about the conditions. I know it is incessantly
repeated that man would in such a state have been the most miserable of
creatures; and indeed, if it be true, as I think I have proved, that he
must have lived many ages, before he could have either desire or an
opportunity of emerging from it, this would only be an accusation
against nature, and not against the being which she had thus unhappily
constituted. But as I understand the word miserable, it either has no
meaning at all, or else signifies only a painful privation of something,
or a state of suffering either in body or soul. I should be glad to have
explained to me, what kind of misery a free being, whose heart is at
ease and whose body is in health, can possibly suffer. 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
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 civilised 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, than as they are, subjected to universal dependence, and obliged to
take everything from those who engage to give them 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 had seen clearly the defects of all the modern
definitions of natural right: but the consequences 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.[2]
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.[3] I think I need not
fear contradiction in holding 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 eyewitness
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, were he in the tyrant's place, would probably even add to the
torments of his enemies; like the bloodthirsty 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.
Mollissima corda
Humano generi dare se natura fatetur,
Quæ lacrimas dedit.
Juvenal, Satires, xv. 151[4]
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
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 civilised 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
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. Uncivilised
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 feeling 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.
