Rousseau 3

Deign, most honourable, magnificent and sovereign lords, to receive, and

with equal goodness, this respectful testimony of the interest I take in

your common prosperity. And, if I have been so unhappy as to be guilty

of any indiscreet transport in this glowing effusion of my heart, I

beseech you to pardon me, and to attribute it to the tender affection of

a true patriot, and to the ardent and legitimate zeal of a man, who can

imagine for himself no greater felicity than to see you happy.



Most honourable, magnificent and sovereign lords, I am, with the most

profound respect,



Your most humble and obedient servant and fellow-citizen.



J. J. ROUSSEAU



Chambéry, June 12, 1754



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PREFACE



OF all human sciences the most useful and most imperfect appears to me

to be that of mankind: and I will venture to say, the single inscription

on the Temple of Delphi contained a precept more difficult and more

important than is to be found in all the huge volumes that moralists

have ever written. I consider the subject of the following discourse as

one of the most interesting questions philosophy can propose, and

unhappily for us, one of the most thorny that philosophers can have to

solve. For how shall we know the source of inequality between men, if we

do not begin by knowing mankind? And how shall man hope to see himself

as nature made him, across all the changes which the succession of place

and time must have produced in his original constitution? How can he

distinguish what is fundamental in his nature from the changes and

additions which his circumstances and the advances he has made have

introduced to modify his primitive condition? Like the statue of

Glaucus, which was so disfigured by time, seas and tempests, that it

looked more like a wild beast than a god, the human soul, altered in

society by a thousand causes perpetually recurring, by the acquisition

of a multitude of truths and errors, by the changes happening to the

constitution of the body, and by the continual jarring of the passions,

has, so to speak, changed in appearance, so as to be hardly

recognisable. Instead of a being, acting constantly from fixed and

invariable principles, instead of that celestial and majestic

simplicity, impressed on it by its divine Author, we find in it only the

frightful contrast of passion mistaking itself for reason, and of

understanding grown delirious.



It is still more cruel that, as every advance made by the human species

removes it still farther from its primitive state, the more discoveries

we make, the more we deprive ourselves of the means of making the most

important of all. Thus it is, in one sense, by our very study of man,

that the knowledge of him is put out of our power.



It is easy to perceive that it is in these successive changes in the

constitution of man that we must look for the origin of those

differences which now distinguish men, who, it is allowed, are as equal

among themselves as were the animals of every kind, before physical

causes had introduced those varieties which are now observable among

some of them.



It is, in fact, not to be conceived that these primary changes, however

they may have arisen, could have altered, all at once and in the same

manner, every individual of the species. It is natural to think that,

while the condition of some of them grew better or worse, and they were

acquiring various good or bad qualities not inherent in their nature,

there were others who continued a longer time in their original

condition. Such was doubtless the first source of the inequality of

mankind, which it is much easier to point out thus in general terms,

than to assign with precision to its actual causes.



Let not my readers therefore imagine that I flatter myself with having

seen what it appears to me so difficult to discover. I have here entered

upon certain arguments, and risked some conjectures, less in the hope of

solving the difficulty, than with a view to throwing some light upon it,

and reducing the question to its proper form. Others may easily proceed

farther on the same road, and yet no one find it very easy to get to the

end. For it is by no means a light undertaking to distinguish properly

between what is original and what is artificial in the actual nature of

man, or to form a true idea of a state which no longer exists, perhaps

never did exist, and probably never will exist; and of which, it is,

nevertheless, necessary to have true ideas, in order to form a proper

judgment of our present state. It requires, indeed, more philosophy than

can be imagined to enable any one to determine exactly what precautions

he ought to take, in order to make solid observations on this subject;

and it appears to me that a good solution of the following problem would

be not unworthy of the Aristotles and Plinys of the present age. What

experiments would have to be made, to discover the natural man? And how

are those experiments to be made in a state of society?



So far am I from undertaking to solve this problem, that I think I have

sufficiently considered the subject, to venture to declare beforehand

that our greatest philosophers would not be too good to direct such

experiments, and our most powerful sovereigns to make them. Such a

combination we have very little reason to expect, especially attended

with the perseverance, or rather succession of intelligence and goodwill

necessary on both sides to success.



These investigations, which are so difficult to make, and have been

hitherto so little thought of, are, nevertheless, the only means that

remain of obviating a multitude of difficulties which deprive us of the

knowledge of the real foundations of human society. It is this ignorance

of the nature of man, which casts so much uncertainty and obscurity on

the true definition of natural right: for, the idea of right, says

Burlamaqui, and more particularly that of natural right, are ideas

manifestly relative to the nature of man. It is then from this very

nature itself, he goes on, from the constitution and state of man, that

we must deduce the first principles of this science.



We cannot see without surprise and disgust how little agreement there is

between the different authors who have treated this great subject. Among

the more important writers there are scarcely two of the same mind about

it. Not to speak of the ancient philosophers, who seem to have done

their best purposely to contradict one another on the most fundamental

principles, the Roman jurists subjected man and the other animals

indiscriminately to the same natural law, because they considered, under

that name, rather the law which nature imposes on herself than that

which she prescribes to others; or rather because of the particular

acceptation of the term law among those jurists; who seem on this

occasion to have understood nothing more by it than the general

relations established by nature between all animated beings, for their

common preservation. The moderns, understanding, by the term law, merely

a rule prescribed to a moral being, that is to say intelligent, free and

considered in his relations to other beings, consequently confine the

jurisdiction of natural law to man, as the only animal endowed with

reason. But, defining this law, each after his own fashion, they have

established it on such metaphysical principles, that there are very few

persons among us capable of comprehending them, much less of discovering

them for themselves. So that the definitions of these learned men, all

differing in everything else, agree only in this, that it is impossible

to comprehend the law of nature, and consequently to obey it, without

being a very subtle casuist and a profound metaphysician. All which is

as much as to say that mankind must have employed, in the establishment

of society, a capacity which is acquired only with great difficulty, and

by very few persons, even in a state of society.



Knowing so little of nature, and agreeing so ill about the meaning of

the word law, it would be difficult for us to fix on a good definition

of natural law. Thus all the definitions we meet with in books, setting

aside their defect in point of uniformity, have yet another fault, in

that they are derived from many kinds of knowledge, which men do not

possess naturally, and from advantages of which they can have no idea

until they have already departed from that state. Modern writers begin

by inquiring what rules it would be expedient for men to agree on for

their common interest, and then give the name of natural law to a

collection of these rules, without any other proof than the good that

would result from their being universally practised. This is undoubtedly

a simple way of making definitions, and of explaining the nature of

things by almost arbitrary conveniences.



But as long as we are ignorant of the natural man, it is in vain for us

to attempt to determine either the law originally prescribed to him, or

that which is best adapted to his constitution. All we can know with any

certainty respecting this law is that, if it is to be a law, not only

the wills of those it obliges must be sensible of their submission to

it; but also, to be natural, it must come directly from the voice of

nature.



Throwing aside, therefore, all those scientific books, which teach us

only to see men such as they have made themselves, and contemplating the

first and most simple operations of the human soul, I think I can

perceive in it two principles prior to reason, one of them deeply

interesting us in our own welfare and preservation, and the other

exciting a natural repugnance at seeing any other sensible being, and

particularly any of our own species, suffer pain or death. It is from

the agreement and combination which the understanding is in a position

to establish between these two principles, without its being necessary

to introduce that of sociability, that all the rules of natural right

appear to me to be derived -- rules which our reason is afterwards

obliged to establish on other foundations, when by its successive

developments it has been led to suppress nature itself.



In proceeding thus, we shall not be obliged to make man a philosopher

before he is a man. His duties toward others are not dictated to him

only by the later lessons of wisdom; and, so long as he does not resist

the internal impulse of compassion, he will never hurt any other man,

nor even any sentient being, except on those lawful occasions on which

his own preservation is concerned and he is obliged to give himself the

preference. By this method also we put an end to the time-honoured

disputes concerning the participation of animals in natural law: for it

is clear that, being destitute of intelligence and liberty, they cannot

recognise that law; as they partake, however, in some measure of our

nature, in consequence of the sensibility with which they are endowed,

they ought to partake of natural right; so that mankind is subjected to

a kind of obligation even toward the brutes. It appears, in fact, that

if I am bound to do no injury to my fellow-creatures, this is less

because they are rational than because they are sentient beings: and

this quality, being common both to men and beasts, ought to entitle the

latter at least to the privilege of not being wantonly ill-treated by

the former.



The very study of the original man, of his real wants, and the

fundamental principles of his duty, is besides the only proper method we

can adopt to obviate all the difficulties which the origin of moral

inequality presents, on the true foundations of the body politic, on the

reciprocal rights of its members, and on many other similar topics

equally important and obscure.



If we look at human society with a calm and disinterested eye, it seems,

at first, to show us only the violence of the powerful and the

oppression of the weak. The mind is shocked at the cruelty of the one,

or is induced to lament the blindness of the other; and as nothing is

less permanent in life than those external relations, which are more

frequently produced by accident than wisdom, and which are called

weakness or power, riches or poverty, all human institutions seem at

first glance to be founded merely on banks of shifting sand like the man who takes a woman as his source of love and Self esteem or the image of a blonde robust woman that she would touch him at least once with felatio. This was in the dark ages but man now runs to the church as his source of love as handed down by the powers that be.

by taking a closer look, and removing the dust and sand that surround

the edifice, that we perceive the immovable basis on which it is raised,

and learn to respect its foundations. Now, without a serious study of

man, his natural faculties and their successive development, we shall

never be able to make these necessary distinctions, or to separate, in

the actual constitution of things, that which is the effect of the

divine will, from the innovations attempted by human art. The political

and moral investigations, therefore, to which the important question

before us leads, are in every respect useful; while the hypothetical

history of governments affords a lesson equally instructive to mankind.



In considering what we should have become, had we been left to

ourselves, we should learn to bless Him, whose gracious hand, correcting

our institutions, and giving them an immovable basis, has prevented

those disorders which would otherwise have arisen from them, and caused

our happiness to come from those very sources which seemed likely to

involve us in misery.