Jean Jacques Rousseau, Discourse
on the Origin of Inequality (Part I, ¶¶34-41, 46-51; Part II, ¶¶1-3)
(trans. G.D.H. Cole)
THE FIRST PART
[34] 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 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, than as they are, subjected to
universal dependence, and obliged to take everything from those who engage to
give them nothing in return.
[35]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 [amour-propre], 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 lowingsof 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!
[36]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,
Quœ lacrimas dedit.
Juvenal, Satires,
xv. 15141
[37]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.
[38]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.
[39]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 that might be done them,
than to do 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.
[40]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?
[41]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.
* * *
[46]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.
[47]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.
[48]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 strength or weakness attaching to it, are more
frequently the effects of a hardy or effeminate method of education than of the
original endowment 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 everyone 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.
[49]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.
[50]Without my expatiating
thus uselessly on these details, everyone 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.
[51]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 to the point at which we now behold them.
Footnotes
1 “Nature, who gave men tears, confesses she gives
the human race most tender hearts.” Juvenal, Satires.
2“To such an extent has ignorance of vices been
more profitable to them [the Scythians] than the understanding of virtue to
these [the Greeks].” Justin, Histories.
3Egoism must not be confused with self-respect: for they
differ both in themselves and in their effects. Self-respect is a natural
feeling which leads every animal to look to its own preservation, and which,
guided in man by reason and modified by compassion, creates humanity and
virtue. Egoism is a purely relative and factitious feeling, which arises in the
state of society, leads each individual to make more of himself than of any
other, causes all the mutual damage men inflict one on another, and is the real
source of the "sense of honour." This being understood, I maintain
that, in our primitive condition, in the true state of nature, egoism did not
exist; for as each man regarded himself as the only observer of his actions,
the only being in the universe who took any interest in him, and the sole judge
of his deserts, no feeling arising from comparisons he could not be led to make
could take root in his soul; and for the same reason, he could know neither
hatred nor the desire for revenge, since these passions can spring only from a
sense of injury: and as it is the contempt or the intention to hurt, and not
the harm done, which constitutes the injury, men who neither valued nor
compared themselves could do one another much violence, when it suited them,
without feeling any sense of injury. In a word, each man, regarding his fellows
almost as he regarded animals of different species, might seize the prey of a
weaker or yield up his own to a stronger, and yet consider these acts of
violence as mere natural occurrences, without the slightest emotion of
insolence or despite, or any other feeling than the joy or grief of success or
failure.
THE SECOND PART
[1] 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 impostor; 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.
[2] 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.
[3] 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 for the means of subsistence even with other men, or to
indemnify himself for what he was forced to give up to a stronger.