Rousseau 6

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.