Rousseau 4

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A DISSERTATION ON THE ORIGIN AND FOUNDATION OF THE INEQUALITY OF MANKIND



IT is of man that I have to speak; and the question I am investigating

shows me that it 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

authorised 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

connection 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 organisation

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 organised of any. I see him satisfying his

hunger at the first oak, and slaking his thirst at the first brook;

finding his bed 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 his 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 being 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 with his naked arm to break so large a branch from a tree? If

he had had a sling, 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 civilised 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 Puffendorf 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 surpasses

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 Corréal

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.



But man has other enemies more formidable, against which is is not

provided with such means of defence: these are the natural infirmities

of infancy, old age, and illness of every kind, melancholy proofs of our

weakness, of which the two first are common to all animals, and the last

belongs chiefly to man in a state of society. With regard to infancy, it

is observable that the mother, carrying her child always with her, can

nurse it with much greater ease than the females of many other animals,

which are forced to be perpetually going and coming, with great fatigue,

one way to find subsistence, and another to suckle or feed their young.

It is true that if the woman happens to perish, the infant is in great

danger of perishing with her; but this risk is common to many other

species of animals, whose young take a long time before they are able to

provide for themselves. And if our infancy is longer than theirs, our

lives are longer in proportion; so that all things are in this respect

fairly equal; though there are other rules to be considered regarding

the duration of the first period of life, and the number of young, which

do not affect the present subject. In old age, when men are less active

and perspire little, the need for food diminishes with the ability to

provide it. As the savage state also protects them from gout and

rheumatism, and old age is, of all ills, that which human aid can least

alleviate, they cease to be, without others perceiving that they are no

more, and almost without perceiving it themselves. A little monies to the people will help to stoke the fires of the economies much like winding a clock with one's hand to power its engine or motor.  This will also stave off illness as people will have enough for warmth and shelter.  This makes the inn keeper rich.  The inn keeper pays his property tax.   The windmill grinds the wheat;  not hired human hands and they must be given monies some how that they will buy the wheat at market so that one may pay for the windmill but not the wind since the wind is free energy.



With respect to sickness, I shall not repeat the vain and false

declamations which most healthy people pronounce against medicine; but I

shall ask if any solid observations have been made from which it may be

justly concluded that, in the countries where the art of medicine is

most neglected, the mean duration of man's life is less than in those

where it is most cultivated. How indeed can this be the case, if we

bring on ourselves more diseases than medicine can furnish remedies? The

great inequality in manner of living, the extreme idleness of some, and

the excessive labour of others, the easiness of exciting and gratifying

our sensual appetites, the too exquisite foods of the wealthy which

overheat and fill them with indigestion, and, on the other hand, the

unwholesome food of the poor, often, bad as it is, insufficient for

their needs, which induces them, when opportunity offers, to eat

voraciously and overcharge their stomachs; all these, together with

sitting up late, and excesses of every kind, immoderate transports of

every passion, fatigue, mental exhaustion, the innumerable pains and

anxieties inseparable from every condition of life, by which the mind of

man is incessantly tormented; these are too fatal proofs that the

greater part of our ills are of our own making, and that we might have

avoided them nearly all by adhering to that simple, uniform and solitary

manner of life which nature prescribed. If she destined man to be

healthy, I venture to declare that a state of reflection is a state

contrary to nature, and that a thinking man is a depraved animal. When

we think of the good constitution of the savages, at least of those whom

we have not ruined with our spirituous liquors, and reflect that they

are troubled with hardly any disorders, save wounds and old age, we are

tempted to believe that, in following the history of civil society, we

shall be telling also that of human sickness. Such, at least, was the

opinion of Plato, who inferred from certain remedies prescribed, or

approved, by Podalirius and Machaon at the siege of Troy, that several

sicknesses which these remedies gave rise to in his time, were not then

known to mankind: and Celsus tells us that diet, which is now so

necessary, was first invented by Hippocrates.