Lecture #17: Rousseau: A Discourse on
Inequality
A DISCOURSE ON INEQUALITY
Jean Jacques Rousseau
The first man, who, after enclosing a piece of ground,
took it into his head to say, "This is mine," and found people simple
enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. How many crimes,
how many wars, how many murders, how many misfortunes and horrors, would that
man have saved the human species, who, pulling up the stakes or filling up the
ditches should have cried to his fellows: "Be sure not to listen to this
imposter; you are lost, if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong equally
to us all, and the earth itself to nobody!" But, it is highly probable
that things were now come to such a pass, that they could not continue much
longer in the same way; for as this idea of property depends on several prior
ideas which could only spring up gradually one after another, it was not formed
all at once in the human mind: men must have made great progress; they must
have acquired a great stock of industry and knowledge, and transmitted and
increased it from age to age before they could arrive at this last term of the
state of nature. Let us therefore take up things a little higher, and collect
into one point of view, and in their most natural order, this slow succession
of events and mental improvements.
The first sentiment of man was that of his existence, his
first care that of preserving it. The production of the earth yielded him all
the assistance he required; instinct prompted him to make use of them. Among
the various appetites, which made him at different times experience different
modes of existence, there was one that excited him to perpetuate his species,
and this blind propensity, quite void of anything like pure love or affection,
produced nothing but an act that was merely animal. The present heat once
allayed, the sexes took no further notice of each other, and even the child
ceased to have any tie in his mother, the moment he ceased to want her
assistance.
Such was the condition of the infant man; such was the
life of the animal confined at first to pure sensations, and so far from
harboring any thought of forcing her gifts from nature, that he scarcely
availed himself of those which she offered to him of her own accord. But,
difficulties soon arose, and there was a necessity for learning how to surmount
them: the height of some trees, which prevented his reaching their fruits; the
fierceness of many that even aimed at his life; these were so many
circumstances, which obliged him to apply to bodily exercise. There was a
necessity for becoming active, swift-footed, and sturdy in battle. The natural
arms, which are stones and the branches of trees, soon offered themselves to
his assistance. He learned to surmount the obstacles of Nature, to contend in
case of necessity with other animals, to dispute his subsistence even with
other men, or indemnify himself for the loss of whatever he found himself
obliged to part with to the strongest.
In proportion, as the human species grew more numerous,
and extended itself, its pain likewise multiplied and increased. The difference
of soils, climates, and seasons, might have forced men to observe some
differences in their way of living. Bad harvest, long and severe winters and
scorching summers, which parched up all the fruits of the earth, required
extraordinary exertions of industry. On the sea shore, and the banks of rivers
they invented the line and the hook, and became fishermen and ichthyophagous.
In the forests they made themselves bows and arrows, and became huntsmen and
warriors. In the cold countries they covered themselves with the skins of the
beasts they had killed; thunder, a volcano, or some happy accident made them
acquainted with fire, a new resource against the rigors of winter; they
discovered the method of preserving this element, then that of reproducing it,
and lastly, the way of preparing with it the flesh of animals, which heretofore
they devoured raw from the carcass.
This reiterated application of various beings to himself,
and to one another, must have naturally engendered in the mind of man the idea
of certain relations. These relations, which we express by the words GREAT,
LITTLE, STRONG, WEAK, SWIFT, SLOW, FEARFUL, BOLD, and the like, compared
occasionally, and almost without thinking of it, produced in him some kind of
reflection, or rather a mechanical prudence, which pointed out to him the
precautions most essential to his preservation and safety.
The new lights resulting from this development increased
his superiority over other animals, by making him sensible of it. He laid
himself out to ensnare them; he played them a thousand tricks; and though
several surpassed him in strength or in swiftness, he in time became the master
of those that could be of service to him, and a sore enemy to those that could
do him any mischief. It is thus, that the first look he gave into himself
produced the first emotion of pride in him; it is thus that, at a time he
scarcely knew how to distinguish between the different ranks of existence, by
attributing to his species the first rank among animals in general, he prepared
himself at a distance to pretend to it as an individual among those of his own
species in particular.
Though other men were not to him what they are to us, and
he had scarce more intercourse with them than with other animals, they were not
overlooked in his observations. The conformities, which in time he might
discover between them, and between himself and his female, made him judge of
those he did not perceive; and seeing that they all behaved as himself would
have done in similar circumstances, he concluded that their manner of thinking
and willing was quite conformable to his own; and this important truth, when
once engraved deeply on his mind, made him follow, by a presentiment as sure as
any logic, and withal much quicker, the best rules of conduct, which for the
sake of his own safety and advantage, it was proper he should observe towards
them.
Instructed by experience that the love of happiness is
the sole principle of all human actions, he found himself in a condition to
distinguish the few cases, in which common interest might authorize him to
build upon the assistance of his fellow, and those still fewer, in which a
competition of interests might justly render it suspected. In the first case he
united with them in the same flock, or at most by some kind of free association
which obliged none of its members, and lasted no longer than the transitory
necessity that had given birth to it. In the second case, everyone aimed at his
own private advantage, either by open force if he found himself strong enough,
or by cunning and address if he thought himself too weak to use violence.
Such was the manner in which men might have insensibly
acquired some gross idea of their mutual engagements and the advantage of
fulfilling them, but this only as far as their present and sensible interest
required; for as to foresight they were utter strangers to it; and far from
troubling their heads about a distant futurity, the scarce thought of the day
following. Was a deer to be taken? Everyone saw that to succeed he must
faithfully stand to his post; but, suppose a hare to have slipped by within
reach of any one of them. it is not to be doubted but he pursued it without
scruple, and when he had seized his prey never reproached himself with having
made his companions miss theirs.
We must easily conceive that such an intercourse scarce
required a more refined language than that of crows and monkeys, which flock
together almost in the same manner. Inarticulate exclamations, a great many
gestures, and some imitative sounds, must have been for a long time the
universal language of mankind, and by joining to these in every country some
articulate and conventional sounds, of which, as I have already hinted, it is
not very easy to explain the institution, there arose particular languages, but
rude, imperfect, and such nearly as are to be found in this day among several
savage nations. My pen straightened by the rapidity of time, the abundance of
things I have to say, and the almost insensible progress of the first
improvements, flies like an arrow over numberless ages, for the slower the
succession of events, the quicker I may allow myself to be in relating them.
At length, these first improvements enabled man to
improve at a greater rate. Industry grew perfect in proportion as the mind
became more enlightened. Men soon ceasing to fall asleep under the first tree,
or take shelter in the first cavern, lit upon some hard and sharp kinds of
stone resembling spades or hatchets, and employed them to dig the ground, cut
down trees, and with the branches build huts, which they afterwards bethought
themselves of plastering over with clay or dirt. This was the epoch of the
first revolution, which produced the establishment and distinction of families,
and which introduced a species of property, and along with it perhaps a
thousand quarrels and battles. As the strongest, however, were probably the
first to make themselves cabins, which they knew they were able to defend, we
may conclude that the weak found it much shorter and safer to imitate than to
attempt to dislodge them; and as to those who were already provided with
cabins, no one could have any great temptation to seize upon that of his
neighbor, not so much because it did not belong to him, as because it could be
of no service to him; and as besides to make himself master of it, he must
expose himself to a very sharp conflict with the present occupiers.
The first developments of the heart were the effects of a
new situation, which united husbands and wives, parents, and children under one
roof; that habit of living together gave birth to the sweetest sentiments the
human species is acquainted with, conjugal and paternal love. Every family
became a little society, so much the more firmly united, as a mutual attachment
and liberty were the only bonds of it; and it was now that the sexes, whose way
of life had been hitherto the same, began to adopt different manners and
customs. The women became more sedentary, and accustomed themselves to stay at
home and look after the children, while the man rambled abroad in quest of
subsistence for the whole family. The two sexes likewise by living a little
more at their ease began to lose somewhat of their usual ferocity and
sturdiness; but if on the other hand individuals became less able to engage
separately with wild beasts, they on the other were more easily got together to
make a common resistance against them.
In this new state of things, the simplicity and
solitariness of man's life, the limitedness of his wants, and the instruments
which he had invented to satisfy them, leaving him a great deal of leisure, he
employed it to supply himself with several conveniences unknown to his
ancestors; and this was the first yoke he inadvertently imposed upon himself,
and the first source of mischief which he prepared for his children; for
besides continuing in this manner to soften both body and mind, these
conveniences having through use lost almost all their aptness to please, and
even degenerated into real wants, the privation of them because far more
intolerable than the possession of them had been agreeable; to lose them was a
misfortune, to possess them no happiness.
Here we may a little better discover how the use of
speech insensibly commences or improves in the bosom of every family, and may
likewise form conjectures concerning the manner in which divers particular
causes might have propagated language, and accelerated its progress by
rendering it every day more and more necessary. Great inundations or
earthquakes surrounded inhabited districts with water or precipices, portions
of the continent were by revolutions of the globe torn off and split into
islands. It is obvious that among men thus collected, and forced to live
together, a common idiom must have started up much sooner, than among those who
freely wandered through the forests of the mainland. Thus, it is very possible
that the inhabitants of the islands formed in this manner, after their first
essays in navigation, brought among us the use of speech; and it is very
probable at least that society and languages commenced in islands and even
acquired perfection there, before the inhabitants of the continent knew
anything of either.
Everything now begins to wear a new aspect. Those who
heretofore wandered through the woods, by taking to a more settled way of life,
gradually flock together, coalesce into several separate bodies, and at length
form in every country district nations, united in character and manners, not by
any laws or regulations, but by a uniform manner of life, a sameness of
provisions, and the common influence of the climate. A permanent neighborhood
must at last infallibly create some connection between different families. The
transitory commerce required by Nature soon produced, among the youth of both
sexes living in contiguous cabins, another kind of commerce, which besides
being equally agreeable is rendered more durable by mutual intercourse. Men
begin to consider different objects, and to make comparisons; they insensibly
acquire ideas of merit and beauty, and these soon produce sentiments of preference.
By seeing each other often they contract a habit, which makes it painful not to
see each other always. Tender and agreeable sentiments steal into the soul, and
are by the smallest opposition wound up into the most impetuous fury: jealousy
kindles with love; discord triumphs; and the gentlest of passions requires
sacrifices of human blood to appease it.
In proportion as ideas and sentiments succeed each other,
and the head and the heart exercise themselves, men continue to shake off their
original wildness, and their connections become more intimate and extensive.
They now begin to assemble round a great tree: singing and dancing, the genuine
offspring of love and leisure, become the amusement, or rather the occupation
of the men and women; free from care, thus gathered together. Everyone
begins to survey the rest, and wishes to be surveyed himself; and public esteem
acquires a value. He who sings or dances best; the handsomest, strongest, the
most dexterous, the most eloquent, comes to be the most respected: this was the
first step towards inequality, and at the same time towards vice. From
these first preferences there proceeded on one side vanity and contempt, on the
other envy and shame; and the fermentation raised by these new leavens at
length produced combinations fatal to happiness and innocence.
Men no sooner began to set a value upon each other,
and know what esteem was, than each laid claim to it, and it was no longer safe
for any man to refuse it to another. Hence, the first duties of civility
and politeness, even among savages; and hence every voluntary injury became an
affront, as besides the mischief, which resulted from it as an injury, the
party offended was sure to find in it a contempt for his person more
intolerable than the mischief itself. It was thus that every man, punishing the
contempt expressed for him by others in proportion to the value he set upon
himself, the effects of revenge became terrible, and men learned to be
sanguinary and cruel. Such, precisely, was the degree attained by most of the
savage nations with whom we are acquainted. And, it is for want of sufficiently
distinguishing ideas, and observing at how great a distance these people were
from the first state of nature, that so many authors have hastily concluded
that man is naturally cruel, and requires a regular system of police to be
reclaimed; whereas nothing can be more gentle than he is in his primitive
state, when placed by Nature at an equal distance from the stupidity of brutes,
and the pernicious good sense of civilized man; and equally confined by
instinct and reason to the care of providing against the mischief which
threatens him, he is withheld by natural compassion from doing any injury to
others, that which he has received. For according to the axiom of the wise
Locke, "Where there is no property, there can be no injury."
But, we must take notice, that the society now formed and
the relations now established among men required in them qualities different
from those, which they derived from their primitive constitution; that as a
sense of morality began to insinuate itself into human actions, and every man,
before the enacting of laws, was the only judge and avenger of the injuries he
had received, that goodness of heart suitable to the pure state of nature by no
means suited infant society; that it was necessary punishments should become
severer in the same proportion that the opportunities of offending became more
frequent, and the dread of vengeance add strength to the too weak curb of the
law. Thus, enough men were become less patient, and natural compassion had
already suffered some alteration, this period of the development of the human
faculties, holding a just mean between the indolence of the primitive state and
the petulant activity of self-love, must have been the happiest and most
durable epoch. The more we reflect on this state, the more convinced we
shall be that it was the least subject to revolutions, the best for man, and
that nothing could have drawn him out of it but some fatal accident, which for
the public good, should never have happened. The example of the savages,
most of whom have been found in this condition, seems to confirm that mankind
was formed ever to remain in it, that this condition is the real youth of the
world, and that all ulterior improvements have been so many steps, in
appearance towards the perfection of individuals, but in fact towards the
decrepitness of the species.
As long as men remained satisfied with their rustic
cabins; as long as they confined themselves to the use of clothes made of the
skins of other animals, and the use of thorns and fish-bones, in putting those
skins together; as long as they continued to consider feathers and shells as
sufficient ornaments, and to paint their bodies of different colors, to improve
or ornament their bows and arrows, to form and scoop out with sharp-edged
stones some little fishing boats, or clumsy instruments of music; in a word, as
long as they undertook such works only as a single person could finish, and
stuck to such arts as did not require the joint endeavors of several hands,
they lived free, healthy, honest, and happy, as much as their nature would
admit, and continued to enjoy with each other all the pleasures of an
independent intercourse; but from the moment one man began to stand in need
of another's assistance; from the moment it appeared an advantage for one man
to possess the quantity of provisions requisite for two, all equality vanished;
property started up; labor became smiling fields, which it was found necessary
to water with human sweat, and in which slavery and misery were soon seen to
sprout out and grow with the fruits of the earth . . . .
Without entering at present upon the investigation which
still remains to be made into the nature of the fundamental compact underlying
all government, I content myself with adopting the common opinion concerning
it, and regard the establishment of the political body as a real contract
between the people and the chiefs chosen by them: a contract by which both parties
bind themselves to observe the laws therein expressed, which form the ties of
their union. The people having in respect of their social relations
concentrated all their wills in one, the several articles, concerning which
this will is explained, become so many fundamental laws, obligatory on all the
members of the State without exception, and one of these articles regulates the
choice and power of the magistrates appointed to watch over the execution of
the rest. This power extends to everything which may maintain the constitution,
without going so far as to alter it. It is accompanied by honors, in order to
bring the laws and their administrators into respect. The ministers are also
distinguished by personal prerogatives, in order to recompense them for the
cares and labor which good administration involves. The magistrate, on his
side, binds himself to use the power he is entrusted with only in conformity
with the intentions of his constituents, to maintain them all in the peaceable
possession of what belongs to them, and to prefer on every occasion the public
interest to his own.
Before experience had shown, or knowledge of the human
heart enabled men to foresee, the unavoidable abuses of such a constitution, it
must have appeared so much the more excellent, as those who were charged with
the care of its preservation had themselves most interest in it; for magistracy
and the rights attaching to it being based solely on the fundamental laws, the
magistrates would soon cease to be legitimate as soon as they ceased to exist;
the people would no longer owe them obedience; and as not the magistrates, but
the laws, are essential to the being of a State, the members of it would regain
the right to their natural liberty.
If we reflect with ever so little attention on this
subject, we shall find new arguments to confirm this truth, and be convinced
from the very nature of the contract that it cannot be irrevocable; for, if
there were no superior power capable of insuring the fidelity of the
contracting parties, or compelling them to perform their reciprocal
engagements, the parties would be sole judges in their own cause, and each
would always have a right to renounce the contract as soon as he found that the
other had violated its terms, or that they no longer suited his convenience. It
is upon this principle that the right of abdication may possibly be founded.
Now if, as her, we consider only what is hum in this institution, it is certain
that, if the magistrate, who has all the power in his own hands, and appropriates
to himself all the advantages of the contract, has none the less a right to
renounce his authority, the people, who suffer for the faults of their chief,
must have a much better right to renounce their dependence. But, the terrible
and innumerable quarrels and disorders that would necessarily arise from so
disparate a privilege show, more than anything else, how much human governments
stood in need of a more solid basis than mere reason, and how expedient it was
for the public tranquility that the Divine Will should interpose to invest the
sovereign authority with a sacred and inviolable character, which might deprive
subjects of the fatal right of disposing of it. If the world had received no
other advantages from religion, this would be enough to impose on men the duty
of adopting and cultivating it, abuses and all, since it has been the means of
saving more blood than fanaticism has ever split . . . .
From great inequality of fortunes and conditions, from
the vast variety of passions and of talents, useless and pernicious arts, of
vain sciences, would arise a multitude of prejudices equally contrary to
reason, happiness and virtue. We should see the magistrates fomenting
everything that might weaken men united in society, by promoting dissension among
them; everything that might sow in it the seeds of actual division, while it
gave society the air of harmony; everything that might inspire the different
ranks of people with mutual hatred and mistrust, by setting the rights and
interests of one against those of another, and so strengthen the power which
comprehended them all.
It is from the midst of this disorder and these
revolutions, that despotism, gradually raising up its hideous head, and
devouring everything that remained sound and untainted in any part of the
State, would at length trample on both the laws and the people, and establish
itself on the ruins of the republic. The times which immediately preceded this
last change would be times of trouble and calamity; but at length the monster
would swallow up everything, and the people would no longer have either chiefs
or laws, but only tyrants. From this moment there would be no question of
virtue or morality; for despotism CUI EX HONESTO NULLA EST SPES, wherever it
prevails, admits no other master; it no sooner speaks than probity and duty
lose their weight, and blind obedience is the only virtue which slaves can
still practice.
This is the last term of inequality, the extreme point
that closes the circle, and meets that from which we set out. Here all private
persons return to their first equality, because they are nothing; and subjects
having no law but the will of their master, and their master no restraint but
his passions, all notions of good and all principles of equity again vanish.
There is here a complete return to the law of the strongest, and so to a new
state of nature, differing from that we set out from; for the one was a state
of nature in its first purity, while this is the consequence of excessive
corruption. There is so little difference between the two states in other
respects, and the contract of government is so completely dissolved by
despotism, that the despot is master only so long as he remains the strongest;
as soon as he can be expelled, he has no right to complain of violence. The
popular insurrection that ends in the death or deposition of a Sultan is as
lawful an act as those by which he disposed the day before, of the lives and
fortunes of his subjects. As he was maintained by force alone, it is force that
overthrows him. Thus, everything takes place according to the natural order;
and, whatever may be the result of such frequent and precipitate revolutions,
no man has reason to complain of the injustice of another, but only of his own
ill fortune or indiscretion.
If the reader thus discovers and retraces the lost and
forgotten road, by which man must have passed from the state of nature to the
state of society; if he carefully restores, along with the immediate situations
which I have just described, those which want of time has compelled me to
suppress, or my imagination has failed to suggest, he cannot fail to be struck
by the vast disgrace which separates the two states. It is in tracing this slow
succession that he will find the solution of a number of problems of politics
and morals, which philosophers cannot settle. He will feel that, men being
different in different ages, the reason why Diogenes could not find a man was
that he sought among his contemporaries a man of an earlier period. He will see
that Cato died with Rome and liberty, because he did not fit the age in which
he lived; the greatest of men served only to astonish a world which he would
certainly have ruled, and he lived five hundred years sooner. In a word, he
will explain how the soul and the passions of men insensibly change their very
nature; why our wants and pleasures in the end seek new objects; and why, the
original man having vanished by degrees society offers to us only an assembly
of artificial men and factitious passions, which are the work of all these new
relations, and without any real foundation in nature. We are taught nothing
on this subject, by reflection, that is not entirely confirmed by observation. The
savage and the civilized man differ so much in the bottom of their hearts and in
their inclinations, that what constitutes the supreme happiness of one would
reduce the other to despair. The former breathes only peace and liberty; he
desires only to live and be free from labor; even the ataraxia of the Stoic
falls far short of his profound indifference to every other object. Civilized
man, on the other hand, is always moving, sweating, toiling, and racking his
brains to find still more laborious occupations; he goes on in drudgery to
his last moment and even seeks death to put himself in a position to live, or
renounces life to acquire immortality. He pays his court to men in power, whom
he hates, and to the wealthy, whom he despises; he stops at nothing to have the
honor of serving them; he is not ashamed to value himself on his own meanness
and their protection; and, proud of his slavery, he speaks with disdain of
those who have not the honor of sharing it. What a sight would the perplexing
and envied labors of a European minister of State present to the eyes of a
Caribbean! How many cruel deaths would not this indolent savage prefer to the
horrors of such a life, which is seldom even sweetened by the pleasures of
doing good! But, for him to see into the motives of all this solicitude, the
words POWER and REPUTATION would have to bear some meaning in his mind; he
would have to know that there are men who set a value on the opinion of the
rest of the world; who can be made happy and satisfied with themselves rather
on the testimony of other people than on their own. In reality, the source of
all these differences is that the savage lives within himself, while the
social man lives constantly outside himself, and only knows how to live in the
opinion of others, so that he seems to receive the consciousness of his own
existence merely from the judgment of others concerning him. It is not to
my present purpose to insist on the indifference to good and evil which arises
from this disposition, in spite of our many fine works on morality, or to show
how, everything being reduced to appearances, there is but art and mummery in
even honor, friendship, virtue and often vice itself, of which we at length
learn the secret of boasting; to show, in short, how, always asking others what
we are, and never daring to ask ourselves, in the midst of so much philosophy,
humanity, and civilization, and of such sublime codes of morality, we have
nothing to show for ourselves but a frivolous and deceitful appearance, honor
without virtue, reason without wisdom, and pleasure without happiness. It is
sufficient that I have proved that this is not by any means the original
state of man, but that it is merely the spirit of society, and the inequality
which society produces, that thus transform and alter all our natural
inclinations.
I have endeavored to trace the origin and progress of
inequality, and the institution and abuse of political societies as far as
these are capable of being deduced from the nature of man merely by the light
of reason, and independently of those sacred dogmas which give the sanction of
divine right to sovereign authority. It follows from this survey, that, as
there is hardly any inequality in the state of nature, all the inequality which
now prevails owes its strength and growth to the development of our faculties
and the advance of the human mind, and becomes at last permanent and legitimate
by the establishment of property and laws. Secondly, it follows that moral
inequality, authorized by positive right alone, clashes with natural right,
wherever it is not proportionate to physical inequality; a distinction which
sufficiently determines what we ought to think of that species of inequality,
which prevails in all civilized countries, since it is plainly contrary to
the law of nature, however defined, that children should command old men, fools
wise men, and that the privileged few should gorge themselves with
superfluities while the starving multitude lie in want of the bare necessities
of life.
The End