Book: A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of

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By J. J. Rousseau




INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Jean Jacques Rousseau was born at Geneva, June 28, 1712, the son of a
watchmaker of French origin. His education was irregular, and though
he tried many professions--including engraving, music, and
teaching--he found it difficult to support himself in any of them. The
discovery of his talent as a writer came with the winning of a prize
offered by the Academy of Dijon for a discourse on the question,
"Whether the progress of the sciences and of letters has tended to
corrupt or to elevate morals." He argued so brilliantly that the
tendency of civilization was degrading that he became at once famous.
The discourse here printed on the causes of inequality among men was
written in a similar competition.

He now concentrated his powers upon literature, producing two novels,
"La Nouvelle Heloise," the forerunner and parent of endless
sentimental and picturesque fictions; and "Emile, ou l'Education," a
work which has had enormous influence on the theory and practise of
pedagogy down to our own time and in which the Savoyard Vicar appears,
who is used as the mouthpiece for Rousseau's own religious ideas. "Le
Contrat Social" (1762) elaborated the doctrine of the discourse on
inequality. Both historically and philosophically it is unsound; but
it was the chief literary source of the enthusiasm for liberty,
fraternity, and equality, which inspired the leaders of the French
Revolution, and its effects passed far beyond France.

His most famous work, the "Confessions," was published after his
death. This book is a mine of information as to his life, but it is
far from trustworthy; and the picture it gives of the author's
personality and conduct, though painted in such a way as to make it
absorbingly interesting, is often unpleasing in the highest degree.
But it is one of the great autobiographies of the world.

During Rousseau's later years he was the victim of the delusion of
persecution; and although he was protected by a succession of good
friends, he came to distrust and quarrel with each in turn. He died at
Ermenonville, near Paris, July 2, 1778, the most widely influential
French writer of his age.

The Savoyard Vicar and his "Profession of Faith" are introduced into
"Emile" not, according to the author, because he wishes to exhibit his
principles as those which should be taught, but to give an example of
the way in which religious matters should be discussed with the young.
Nevertheless, it is universally recognized that these opinions are
Rousseau's own, and represent in short form his characteristic
attitude toward religious belief. The Vicar himself is believed to
combine the traits of two Savoyard priests whom Rousseau knew in his
youth. The more important was the Abbe Gaime, whom he had known at
Turin; the other, the Abbe Gatier, who had taught him at Annecy.




QUESTION PROPOSED BY THE ACADEMY OF DIJON

What is the Origin of the Inequality among Mankind; and whether such
Inequality is authorized by the Law of Nature?




A DISCOURSE UPON THE ORIGIN AND THE FOUNDATION OF THE INEQUALITY AMONG
MANKIND

'Tis of man I am to speak; and the very question, in answer to which I
am to speak of him, sufficiently informs me that I am going to speak
to men; for to those alone, who are not afraid of honouring truth, it
belongs to propose discussions of this kind. I shall therefore
maintain with confidence the cause of mankind before the sages, who
invite me to stand up in its defence; and I shall think myself happy,
if I can but behave in a manner not unworthy of my subject and of my
judges.

I conceive two species of inequality among men; one which I call
natural, or physical inequality, because it is established by nature,
and consists in the difference of age, health, bodily strength, and
the qualities of the mind, or of the soul; the other which may be
termed moral, or political inequality, because it depends on a kind of
convention, and is established, or at least authorized, by the common
consent of mankind. This species of inequality consists in the
different privileges, which some men enjoy, to the prejudice of
others, such as that of being richer, more honoured, more powerful,
and even that of exacting obedience from them.

It were absurd to ask, what is the cause of natural inequality, seeing
the bare definition of natural inequality answers the question: it
would be more absurd still to enquire, if there might not be some
essential connection between the two species of inequality, as it
would be asking, in other words, if those who command are necessarily
better men than those who obey; and if strength of body or of mind,
wisdom or virtue are always to be found in individuals, in the same
proportion with power, or riches: a question, fit perhaps to be
discussed by slaves in the hearing of their masters, but unbecoming
free and reasonable beings in quest of truth.

What therefore is precisely the subject of this discourse? It is to
point out, in the progress of things, that moment, when, right taking
place of violence, nature became subject to law; to display that chain
of surprising events, in consequence of which the strong submitted to
serve the weak, and the people to purchase imaginary ease, at the
expense of real happiness.

The philosophers, who have examined the foundations of society, have,
every one of them, perceived the necessity of tracing it back to a
state of nature, but not one of them has ever arrived there. Some of
them have not scrupled to attribute to man in that state the ideas of
justice and injustice, without troubling their heads to prove, that he
really must have had such ideas, or even that such ideas were useful
to him: others have spoken of the natural right of every man to keep
what belongs to him, without letting us know what they meant by the
word belong; others, without further ceremony ascribing to the
strongest an authority over the weakest, have immediately struck out
government, without thinking of the time requisite for men to form any
notion of the things signified by the words authority and government.
All of them, in fine, constantly harping on wants, avidity,
oppression, desires and pride, have transferred to the state of nature
ideas picked up in the bosom of society. In speaking of savages they
described citizens. Nay, few of our own writers seem to have so much
as doubted, that a state of nature did once actually exit; though it
plainly appears by Sacred History, that even the first man,
immediately furnished as he was by God himself with both instructions
and precepts, never lived in that state, and that, if we give to the
books of Moses that credit which every Christian philosopher ought to
give to them, we must deny that, even before the deluge, such a state
ever existed among men, unless they fell into it by some extraordinary
event: a paradox very difficult to maintain, and altogether impossible
to prove.

Let us begin therefore, by laying aside facts, for they do not affect
the question. The researches, in which we may engage on this occasion,
are not to be taken for historical truths, but merely as hypothetical
and conditional reasonings, fitter to illustrate the nature of things,
than to show their true origin, like those systems, which our
naturalists daily make of the formation of the world. Religion
commands us to believe, that men, having been drawn by God himself out
of a state of nature, are unequal, because it is his pleasure they
should be so; but religion does not forbid us to draw conjectures
solely from the nature of man, considered in itself, and from that of
the beings which surround him, concerning the fate of mankind, had
they been left to themselves. This is then the question I am to
answer, the question I propose to examine in the present discourse. As
mankind in general have an interest in my subject, I shall endeavour
to use a language suitable to all nations; or rather, forgetting the
circumstances of time and place in order to think of nothing but the
men I speak to, I shall suppose myself in the Lyceum of Athens,
repeating the lessons of my masters before the Platos and the
Xenocrates of that famous seat of philosophy as my judges, and in
presence of the whole human species as my audience.

O man, whatever country you may belong to, whatever your opinions may
be, attend to my words; you shall hear your history such as I think I
have read it, not in books composed by those like you, for they are
liars, but in the book of nature which never lies. All that I shall
repeat after her, must be true, without any intermixture of falsehood,
but where I may happen, without intending it, to introduce my own
conceits. The times I am going to speak of are very remote. How much
you are changed from what you once were! 'Tis in a manner the life of
your species that I am going to write, from the qualities which you
have received, and which your education and your habits could deprave,
but could not destroy. There is, I am sensible, an age at which every
individual of you would choose to stop; and you will look out for the
age at which, had you your wish, your species had stopped. Uneasy at
your present condition for reasons which threaten your unhappy
posterity with still greater uneasiness, you will perhaps wish it were
in your power to go back; and this sentiment ought to be considered,
as the panegyric of your first parents, the condemnation of your
contemporaries, and a source of terror to all those who may have the
misfortune of succeeding you.




DISCOURSE FIRST PART

However important it may be, in order to form a proper judgment of the
natural state of man, to consider him from his origin, and to examine
him, as it were, in the first embryo of the species; I shall not
attempt to trace his organization through its successive approaches to
perfection: I shall not stop to examine in the animal system what he
might have been in the beginning, to become at last what he actually
is; I shall not inquire whether, as Aristotle thinks, his neglected
nails were no better at first than crooked talons; whether his whole
body was not, bear-like, thick covered with rough hair; and whether,
walking upon all-fours, his eyes, directed to the earth, and confined
to a horizon of a few paces extent, did not at once point out the
nature and limits of his ideas. I could only form vague, and almost
imaginary, conjectures on this subject. Comparative anatomy has not as
yet been sufficiently improved; neither have the observations of
natural philosophy been sufficiently ascertained, to establish upon
such foundations the basis of a solid system. For this reason, without
having recourse to the supernatural informations with which we have
been favoured on this head, or paying any attention to the changes,
that must have happened in the conformation of the interior and
exterior parts of man's body, in proportion as he applied his members
to new purposes, and took to new aliments, I shall suppose his
conformation to have always been, what we now behold it; that he
always walked on two feet, made the same use of his hands that we do
of ours, extended his looks over the whole face of nature, and
measured with his eyes the vast extent of the heavens.

If I strip this being, thus constituted, of all the supernatural gifts
which he may have received, and of all the artificial faculties, which
we could not have acquired but by slow degrees; if I consider him, in
a word, such as he must have issued from the hands of nature; I see an
animal less strong than some, and less active than others, but, upon
the whole, the most advantageously organized of any; I see him
satisfying the calls of hunger under the first oak, and those of
thirst at the first rivulet; I see him laying himself down to sleep at
the foot of the same tree that afforded him his meal; and behold, this
done, all his wants are completely supplied.

The earth left to its own natural fertility and covered with immense
woods, that no hatchet ever disfigured, offers at every step food and
shelter to every species of animals. Men, dispersed among them,
observe and imitate their industry, and thus rise to the instinct of
beasts; with this advantage, that, whereas every species of beasts is
confined to one peculiar instinct, man, who perhaps has not any that
particularly belongs to him, appropriates to himself those of all
other animals, and lives equally upon most of the different aliments,
which they only divide among themselves; a circumstance which
qualifies him to find his subsistence, with more ease than any of
them.

Men, accustomed from their infancy to the inclemency of the weather,
and to the rigour of the different seasons; inured to fatigue, and
obliged to defend, naked and without arms, their life and their prey
against the other wild inhabitants of the forest, or at least to avoid
their fury by flight, acquire a robust and almost unalterable habit of
body; the children, bringing with them into the world the excellent
constitution of their parents, and strengthening it by the same
exercises that first produced it, attain by this means all the vigour
that the human frame is capable of. Nature treats them exactly in the
same manner that Sparta treated the children of her citizens; those
who come well formed into the world she renders strong and robust, and
destroys all the rest; differing in this respect from our societies,
in which the state, by permitting children to become burdensome to
their parents, murders them all without distinction, even in the wombs
of their mothers.

The body being the only instrument that savage man is acquainted with,
he employs it to different uses, of which ours, for want of practice,
are incapable; and we may thank our industry for the loss of that
strength and agility, which necessity obliges him to acquire. Had he a
hatchet, would his hand so easily snap off from an oak so stout a
branch? Had he a sling, would it dart a stone to so great a distance?
Had he a ladder, would he run so nimbly up a tree? Had he a horse,
would he with such swiftness shoot along the plain? Give civilized man
but time to gather about him all his machines, and no doubt he will be
an overmatch for the savage: but if you have a mind to see a contest
still more unequal, place them naked and unarmed one opposite to the
other; and you will soon discover the advantage there is in
perpetually having all our forces at our disposal, in being constantly
prepared against all events, and in always carrying ourselves, as it
were, whole and entire about us.

Hobbes would have it that man is naturally void of fear, and always
intent upon attacking and fighting. An illustrious philosopher thinks
on the contrary, and Cumberland and Puffendorff likewise affirm it,
that nothing is more fearful than man in a state of nature, that he is
always in a tremble, and ready to fly at the first motion he
perceives, at the first noise that strikes his ears. This, indeed, may
be very true in regard to objects with which he is not acquainted; and
I make no doubt of his being terrified at every new sight that
presents itself, as often as he cannot distinguish the physical good
and evil which he may expect from it, nor compare his forces with the
dangers he has to encounter; circumstances that seldom occur in a
state of nature, where all things proceed in so uniform a manner, and
the face of the earth is not liable to those sudden and continual
changes occasioned in it by the passions and inconstancies of
collected bodies. But savage man living among other animals without
any society or fixed habitation, and finding himself early under a
necessity of measuring his strength with theirs, soon makes a
comparison between both, and finding that he surpasses them more in
address, than they surpass him in strength, he learns not to be any
longer in dread of them. Turn out a bear or a wolf against a sturdy,
active, resolute savage, (and this they all are,) provided with stones
and a good stick; and you will soon find that the danger is at least
equal on both sides, and that after several trials of this kind, wild
beasts, who are not fond of attacking each other, will not be very
fond of attacking man, whom they have found every whit as wild as
themselves. As to animals who have really more strength than man has
address, he is, in regard to them, what other weaker species are, who
find means to subsist notwithstanding; he has even this great
advantage over such weaker species, that being equally fleet with
them, and finding on every tree an almost inviolable asylum, he is
always at liberty to take it or leave it, as he likes best, and of
course to fight or to fly, whichever is most agreeable to him. To this
we may add that no animal naturally makes war upon man, except in the
case of self-defence or extreme hunger; nor ever expresses against him
any of these violent antipathies, which seem to indicate that some
particular species are intended by nature for the food of others.

But there are other more formidable enemies, and against which man is
not provided with the same means of defence; I mean natural
infirmities, infancy, old age, and sickness of every kind, melancholy
proofs of our weakness, whereof the two first are common to all
animals, and the last chiefly attends man living in a state of
society. It is even observable in regard to infancy, that the mother
being able to carry her child about with her, wherever she goes, can
perform the duty of a nurse with a great deal less trouble, than the
females of many other animals, who are obliged to be constantly going
and coming with no small labour and fatigue, one way to look out for
their own subsistence, and another to suckle and feed their young
ones. True it is that, if the woman happens to perish, her child is
exposed to the greatest danger of perishing with her; but this danger
is common to a hundred other species, whose young ones require a great
deal of time to be able to provide for themselves; and if our infancy
is longer than theirs, our life is longer likewise; so that, in this
respect too, all things are in a manner equal; not but that there are
other rules concerning the duration of the first age of life, and the
number of the young of man and other animals, but they do not belong
to my subject. With old men, who stir and perspire but little, the
demand for food diminishes with their abilities to provide it; and as
a savage life would exempt them from the gout and the rheumatism, and
old age is of all ills that which human assistance is least capable of
alleviating, they would at last go off, without its being perceived by
others that they ceased to exist, and almost without perceiving it
themselves.

In regard to sickness, I shall not repeat the vain and false
declamations made use of to discredit medicine by most men, while they
enjoy their health; I shall only ask if there are any solid
observations from which we may conclude that in those countries where
the healing art is most neglected, the mean duration of man's life is
shorter than in those where it is most cultivated? And how is it
possible this should be the case, if we inflict more diseases upon
ourselves than medicine can supply us with remedies! The extreme
inequalities in the manner of living of the several classes of
mankind, the excess of idleness in some, and of labour in others, the
facility of irritating and satisfying our sensuality and our
appetites, the too exquisite and out of the way aliments of the rich,
which fill them with fiery juices, and bring on indigestions, the
unwholesome food of the poor, of which even, bad as it is, they very
often fall short, and the want of which tempts them, every opportunity
that offers, to eat greedily and overload their stomachs; watchings,
excesses of every kind, immoderate transports of all the passions,
fatigues, waste of spirits, in a word, the numberless pains and
anxieties annexed to every condition, and which the mind of man is
constantly a prey to; these are the fatal proofs that most of our ills
are of our own making, and that we might have avoided them all by
adhering to the simple, uniform and solitary way of life prescribed to
us by nature. Allowing that nature intended we should always enjoy
good health, I dare almost affirm that a state of reflection is a
state against nature, and that the man who meditates is a depraved
animal. We need only call to mind the good constitution of savages,
of those at least whom we have not destroyed by our strong liquors; we
need only reflect, that they are strangers to almost every disease,
except those occasioned by wounds and old age, to be in a manner
convinced that the history of human diseases might be easily composed
by pursuing that of civil societies. Such at least was the opinion of
Plato, who concluded from certain remedies made use of or approved by
Podalyrus and Macaon at the Siege of Troy, that several disorders,
which these remedies were found to bring on in his days, were not
known among men at that remote period.

Man therefore, in a state of nature where there are so few sources of
sickness, can have no great occasion for physic, and still less for
physicians; neither is the human species more to be pitied in this
respect, than any other species of animals. Ask those who make hunting
their recreation or business, if in their excursions they meet with
many sick or feeble animals. They meet with many carrying the marks of
considerable wounds, that have been perfectly well healed and closed
up; with many, whose bones formerly broken, and whose limbs almost
torn off, have completely knit and united, without any other surgeon
but time, any other regimen but their usual way of living, and whose
cures were not the less perfect for their not having been tortured
with incisions, poisoned with drugs, or worn out by diet and
abstinence. In a word, however useful medicine well administered may
be to us who live in a state of society, it is still past doubt, that
if, on the one hand, the sick savage, destitute of help, has nothing
to hope from nature, on the other, he has nothing to fear but from his
disease; a circumstance, which oftens renders his situation preferable
to ours.

Let us therefore beware of confounding savage man with the men, whom
we daily see and converse with. Nature behaves towards all animals
left to her care with a predilection, that seems to prove how jealous
she is of that prerogative. The horse, the cat, the bull, nay the ass
itself, have generally a higher stature, and always a more robust
constitution, more vigour, more strength and courage in their forests
than in our houses; they lose half these advantages by becoming
domestic animals; it looks as if all our attention to treat them
kindly, and to feed them well, served only to bastardize them. It is
thus with man himself. In proportion as he becomes sociable and a
slave to others, he becomes weak, fearful, mean-spirited, and his soft
and effeminate way of living at once completes the enervation of his
strength and of his courage. We may add, that there must be still a
wider difference between man and man in a savage and domestic
condition, than between beast and beast; for as men and beasts have
been treated alike by nature, all the conveniences with which men
indulge themselves more than they do the beasts tamed by them, are so
many particular causes which make them degenerate more sensibly.

Nakedness therefore, the want of houses, and of all these
unnecessaries, which we consider as so very necessary, are not such
mighty evils in respect to these primitive men, and much less still
any obstacle to their preservation. Their skins, it is true, are
destitute of hair; but then they have no occasion for any such
covering in warm climates; and in cold climates they soon learn to
apply to that use those of the animals they have conquered; they have
but two feet to run with, but they have two hands to defend themselves
with, and provide for all their wants; it costs them perhaps a great
deal of time and trouble to make their children walk, but the mothers
carry them with ease; an advantage not granted to other species of
animals, with whom the mother, when pursued, is obliged to abandon her
young ones, or regulate her steps by theirs. In short, unless we admit
those singular and fortuitous concurrences of circumstances, which I
shall speak of hereafter, and which, it is very possible, may never
have existed, it is evident, in every state of the question, that the
man, who first made himself clothes and built himself a cabin,
supplied himself with things which he did not much want, since he had
lived without them till then; and why should he not have been able to
support in his riper years, the same kind of life, which he had
supported from his infancy?

Alone, idle, and always surrounded with danger, savage man must be
fond of sleep, and sleep lightly like other animals, who think but
little, and may, in a manner, be said to sleep all the time they do
not think: self-preservation being almost his only concern, he must
exercise those faculties most, which are most serviceable in attacking
and in defending, whether to subdue his prey, or to prevent his
becoming that of other animals: those organs, on the contrary, which
softness and sensuality can alone improve, must remain in a state of
rudeness, utterly incompatible with all manner of delicacy; and as his
senses are divided on this point, his touch and his taste must be
extremely coarse and blunt; his sight, his hearing, and his smelling
equally subtle: such is the animal state in general, and accordingly
if we may believe travellers, it is that of most savage nations. We
must not therefore be surprised, that the Hottentots of the Cape of
Good Hope, distinguish with their naked eyes ships on the ocean, at as
great a distance as the Dutch can discern them with their glasses; nor
that the savages of America should have tracked the Spaniards with
their noses, to as great a degree of exactness, as the best dogs could
have done; nor that all these barbarous nations support nakedness
without pain, use such large quantities of Piemento to give their food
a relish, and drink like water the strongest liquors of Europe.

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