Jean-Jacques Rousseau · Complete work
Part Two, 5
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Les distinctions politiques amènent nécessairement les distinctions civiles. L’inégalité, croissant entre le peuple et ses chefs, se fait bientôt sentir parmi les particuliers et s’y modifie en mille manières selon les passions, les talents et les occurrences. Le magistrat ne saurait usurper un pouvoir illégitime sans se faire des créatures auxquelles il est forcé d’en céder quelque partie. D’ailleurs, les citoyens ne se laissent opprimer qu’autant qu’entraînés par une aveugle ambition et regardant plus au-dessous qu’au-dessus d’eux, la domination leur devient plus chère que l’indépendance, et qu’ils consentent à porter des fers pour en pouvoir donner à leur tour. Il est très difficile de réduire à l’obéissance celui qui ne cherche point à commander et le politique le plus adroit ne viendrait pas à bout d’assujettir des hommes qui ne voudraient qu’être libres; mais l’inégalité s’étend sans peine parmi des âmes ambitieuses et lâches, toujours prêtes à courir les risques de la fortune et à dominer ou servir presque indifféremment selon qu’elle leur devient favorable ou contraire. C’est ainsi qu’il dut venir un temps où les yeux du peuple furent fascinés à tel point que ses conducteurs n’avaient qu’à dire au plus petit des hommes: Sois grand, toi et toute ta race, aussitôt il paraissait grand à tout le monde ainsi qu’à ses propres yeux, et ses descendants s’élevaient encore à mesure qu’ils s’éloignaient de lui; plus la cause était reculée et incertaine, plus l’effet augmentait; plus on pouvait compter de fainéants dans une famille, et plus elle devenait illustre.
Si c’était ici le lieu d’entrer en des détails, j’expliquerais facilement comment l’inégalité de crédit et d’autorité devient inévitable entre les particuliers (Note 19) sitôt que réunis en une même société ils sont forcés de se comparer entre eux et de tenir compte des différences qu’ils trouvent dans l’usage continuel qu’ils ont à faire les uns des autres. Ces différences sont de plusieurs espèces, mais en général la richesse, la noblesse ou le rang, la puissance et le mérite personnel, étant les distinctions principales par lesquelles on se mesure dans la société, je prouverais que l’accord ou le conflit de ces forces diverses est l’indication la plus sûre d’un État bien ou mal constitué. Je ferais voir qu’entre ces quatre sortes d’inégalité, les qualités personnelles étant l’origine de toutes les autres, la richesse est la dernière à laquelle elles se réduisent à la fin, parce qu’étant la plus immédiatement utile au bien-être et la plus facile à communiquer, on s’en sert aisément pour acheter tout le reste. Observation qui peut faire juger assez exactement de la mesure dont chaque peuple s’est éloigné de son institution primitive, et du chemin qu’il a fait vers le terme extrême de la corruption. Je remarquerais combien ce désir universel de réputation, d’honneurs et de préférences, qui nous dévore tous, exerce et compare les talents et les forces, combien il excite et multiplie les passions, et combien, rendant tous les hommes concurrents, rivaux ou plutôt ennemis, il cause tous les jours de revers, de succès et de catastrophes de toute espèce en faisant courir la même lice à tant de prétendants. Je montrerais que c’est à cette ardeur de faire parler de soi, à cette fureur de se distinguer qui nous tient presque toujours hors de nous-mêmes, que nous devons ce qu’il y a de meilleur et de pire parmi les hommes, nos vertus et nos vices, nos sciences et nos erreurs, nos conquérants et nos philosophes, c’est-à-dire une multitude de mauvaises choses sur un petit nombre de bonnes. Je prouverais enfin que si l’on voit une poignée de puissants et de riches au faîte des grandeurs et de la fortune, tandis que la foule rampe dans l’obscurité et dans la misère, c’est que les premiers n’estiment les choses dont ils jouissent qu’autant que les autres en sont privés, et que, sans changer d’état, ils cesseraient d’être heureux, si le peuple cessait d’être misérable.
Mais ces détails seraient seuls la matière d’un ouvrage considérable dans lequel on pèserait les avantages et les inconvénients de tout gouvernement, relativement aux droits de l’état de nature, et où l’on dévoilerait toutes les faces différentes sous lesquelles l’inégalité s’est montrée jusqu’à ce jour et pourra se montrer dans les siècles selon la nature de ces gouvernements et les révolutions que le temps y amènera nécessairement. On verrait la multitude opprimée au-dedans par une suite des précautions mêmes qu’elle avait prises contre ce qui la menaçait au-dehors. On verrait l’oppression s’accroître continuellement sans que les opprimés pussent jamais savoir quel terme elle aurait, ni quels moyens légitimes il leur resterait pour l’arrêter. On verrait les droits des citoyens et les libertés nationales s’éteindre peu à peu, et les réclamations des faibles traitées de murmures séditieux. On verrait la politique restreindre à une portion mercenaire du peuple l’honneur de défendre la cause commune: on verrait de là sortir la nécessité des impôts, le cultivateur découragé quitter son champ même durant la paix et laisser la charrue pour ceindre l’épée. On verrait naître les règles funestes et bizarres du point d’honneur. On verrait les défenseurs de la patrie en devenir tôt ou tard les ennemis, tenir sans cesse le poignard levé sur leurs concitoyens, et il viendrait un temps où l’on les entendrait dire à l’oppresseur de leur pays:
Pectore si fratris gladium juguloque parentis
Condere me jubeas, gravidae que in viscera a partu
Conjugis, invitâ peragam tamen omnia dextrâ.
De l’extrême inégalité des conditions et des fortunes, de la diversité des passions et des talents, des arts inutiles, des arts pernicieux, des sciences frivoles sortiraient des foules de préjugés, également contraires à la raison, au bonheur et à la vertu. On verrait fomenter par les chefs tout ce qui peut affaiblir des hommes rassemblés en les désunissant; tout ce qui peut donner à la société un air de concorde apparente et y semer un germe de division réelle; tout ce qui peut inspirer aux différents ordres une défiance et une haine mutuelle par l’opposition de leurs droits et de leurs intérêts, et fortifier par conséquent le pouvoir qui les contient tous.
C’est du sein de ce désordre et de ces révolutions que le despotisme, élevant par degrés sa tête hideuse et dévorant tout ce qu’il aurait aperçu de bon et de sain dans toutes les parties de l’État, parviendrait enfin à fouler aux pieds les lois et le peuple, et à s’établir sur les ruines de la république. Les temps qui précéderaient ce dernier changement seraient des temps de troubles et de calamités, mais à la fin tout serait englouti par le monstre et les peuples n’auraient plus de chefs ni de lois, mais seulement des tyrans. Dès cet instant aussi il cesserait d’être question de mœurs et de vertu; car partout où règne le despotisme, cui ex honesto nulla est spes, il ne souffre aucun autre maître; sitôt qu’il parle, il n’y a ni probité ni devoir à consulter, et la plus aveugle obéissance est la seule vertu qui reste aux esclaves.
C’est ici le dernier terme de l’inégalité, et le point extrême qui ferme le cercle et touche au point d’où nous sommes partis. C’est ici que tous les particuliers redeviennent égaux parce qu’ils ne sont rien, et que les sujets n’ayant plus d’autre loi que la volonté du maître, ni le maître d’autre règle que ses passions, les notions du bien et les principes de la justice s’évanouissent derechef. C’est ici que tout se ramène à la seule loi du plus fort et par conséquent à un nouvel état de nature différent de celui par lequel nous avons commencé, en ce que l’un était l’état de nature dans sa pureté, et que ce dernier est le fruit d’un excès de corruption. Il y a si peu de différence d’ailleurs entre ces deux états et le contrat de gouvernement est tellement dissous par le despotisme que le despote n’est le maître qu’aussi longtemps qu’il est le plus fort et que, sitôt qu’on peut l’expulser, il n’a point à réclamer contre la violence. L’émeute qui finit par étrangler ou détrôner un sultan est un acte aussi juridique que ceux par lesquels il disposait la veille des vies et des biens de ses sujets. La seule force le maintenait, la seule force le renverse; toutes choses se passent ainsi selon l’ordre naturel, et quel que puisse être l’événement de ces courtes et fréquentes révolutions, nul ne peut se plaindre de l’injustice d’autrui, mais seulement de sa propre imprudence, ou de son malheur.
En découvrant et suivant ainsi les routes oubliées et perdues qui de l’état naturel ont dû mener l’homme à l’état civil, en rétablissant, avec les positions intermédiaires que je viens de marquer, celles que le temps qui me presse m’a fait supprimer, ou que l’imagination ne m’a point suggérées, tout lecteur attentif ne pourra qu’être frappé de l’espace immense qui sépare ces deux états. C’est dans cette lente succession des choses qu’il verra la solution d’une infinité de problèmes de morale et de politique que les philosophes ne peuvent résoudre. Il sentira que le genre humain d’un âge n’étant pas le genre humain d’un autre âge, la raison pour quoi Diogène ne trouvait point d’homme, c’est qu’il cherchait parmi ses contemporains l’homme d’un temps qui n’était plus: Caton, dira-t-il, périt avec Rome et la liberté, parce qu’il fut déplacé dans son siècle, et le plus grand des hommes ne fit qu’étonner le monde qu’il eût gouverné cinq cents ans plus tôt. En un mot, il expliquera comment l’âme et les passions humaines, s’altérant insensiblement, changent pour ainsi dire de nature; pourquoi nos besoins et nos plaisirs changent d’objets à la longue; pourquoi, l’homme originel s’évanouissant par degrés, la société n’offre plus aux yeux du sage qu’un assemblage d’hommes artificiels et de passions factices qui sont l’ouvrage de toutes ces nouvelles relations et n’ont aucun vrai fondement dans la nature. Ce que la réflexion nous apprend là-dessus, l’observation le confirme parfaitement: l’homme sauvage et l’homme policé diffèrent tellement par le fond du cœur et des inclinations que ce qui fait le bonheur suprême de l’un réduirait l’autre au désespoir. Le premier ne respire que le repos et la liberté, il ne veut que vivre et rester oisif, et l’ataraxie même du stoïcien n’approche pas de sa profonde indifférence pour tout autre objet. Au contraire, le citoyen toujours actif sue, s’agite, se tourmente sans cesse pour chercher des occupations encore plus laborieuses: il travaille jusqu’à la mort, il y court même pour se mettre en état de vivre, ou renonce à la vie pour acquérir l’immortalité. Il fait sa cour aux grands qu’il hait et aux riches qu’il méprise; il n’épargne rien pour obtenir l’honneur de les servir; il se vante orgueilleusement de sa bassesse et de leur protection et, fier de son esclavage, il parle avec dédain de ceux qui n’ont pas l’honneur de le partager. Quel spectacle pour un Caraïbe que les travaux pénibles et enviés d’un ministre européen! Combien de morts cruelles ne préférerait pas cet indolent sauvage à l’horreur d’une pareille vie qui souvent n’est pas même adoucie par le plaisir de bien faire? Mais pour voir le but de tant de soins, il faudrait que ces mots, puissance et réputation, eussent un sens dans son esprit, qu’il apprît qu’il y a une sorte d’hommes qui comptent pour quelque chose les regards du reste de l’univers, qui savent être heureux et contents d’eux-mêmes sur le témoignage d’autrui plutôt que sur le leur propre. Telle est, en effet, la véritable cause de toutes ces différences: le sauvage vit en lui-même; l’homme sociable toujours hors de lui ne fait vivre que dans l’opinion des autres, et c’est, pour ainsi dire, de leur seul jugement qu’il tire le sentiment de sa propre existence. Il n’est pas de mon sujet de montrer comment d’une telle disposition naît tant d’indifférence pour le bien et le mal, avec de si beaux discours de morale; comment, tout se réduisant aux apparences, tout devient factice et joué; honneur, amitié, vertu, et souvent jusqu’aux vices mêmes, dont on trouve enfin le secret de se glorifier; comment, en un mot, demandant toujours aux autres ce que nous sommes et n’osant jamais nous interroger là-dessus nous-mêmes, au milieu de tant de philosophie, d’humanité, de politesse et de maximes sublimes, nous n’avons qu’un extérieur trompeur et frivole, de l’honneur sans vertu, de la raison sans sagesse, et du plaisir sans bonheur. Il me suffit d’avoir prouvé que ce n’est point là l’état originel de l’homme et que c’est le seul esprit de la société et l’inégalité qu’elle engendre qui changent et altèrent ainsi toutes nos inclinations naturelles.
J’ai tâché d’exposer l’origine et le progrès de l’inégalité, l’établissement et l’abus des sociétés politiques, autant que ces choses peuvent se déduire de la nature de l’homme par les seules lumières de la raison, et indépendamment des dogmes sacrés qui donnent à l’autorité souveraine la sanction du droit divin. Il suit de cet exposé que l’inégalité, étant presque nulle dans l’état de nature, tire sa force et son accroissement du développement de nos facultés et des progrès de l’esprit humain et devient enfin stable et légitime par l’établissement de la propriété et des lois. Il suit encore que l’inégalité morale, autorisée par le seul droit positif, est contraire au droit naturel, toutes les fois qu’elle ne concourt pas en même proportion avec l’inégalité physique; distinction qui détermine suffisamment ce qu’on doit penser à cet égard de la sorte d’inégalité qui règne parmi tous les peuples policés; puisqu’il est manifestement contre la Loi de Nature, de quelque manière qu’on la définisse, qu’un enfant commande à un vieillard, qu’un imbécile conduise un homme sage, et qu’une poignée de gens regorge de superfluités, tandis que la multitude affamée manque du nécessaire.
Musean translation
Mouseia’s complete machine-assisted Musean translation, made directly from the complete French text (dedicatory epistle, preface, both parts and the notes) for fidelity, the author’s force and cadence, and modern clarity.
Political distinctions necessarily bring civil distinctions in their train. Inequality, growing between the people and their leaders, soon makes itself felt among individuals, taking a thousand forms according to passions, talents, and circumstances. A magistrate cannot usurp illegitimate power without making dependents for himself, to whom he is forced to yield some share of it. Besides, citizens submit to oppression only when, carried away by blind ambition and looking more below them than above, they prize domination more highly than independence and agree to wear chains so that they may put chains on others in turn. It is very difficult to bring into obedience a man who does not seek to command, and the cleverest statesman could not subjugate men who wished only to be free. But inequality spreads easily among ambitious and cowardly souls, always ready to take their chances with fortune and almost equally willing to dominate or to serve, according as fortune favors or opposes them. Thus a time was bound to come when the people’s eyes were so dazzled that their leaders had only to say to the least of men, “Be great, you and all your line,” and at once he seemed great to everyone, as well as to himself. His descendants rose higher still as they grew more distant from him: the remoter and more uncertain the cause, the greater its effect; the more idlers a family could count, the more illustrious it became.
If this were the place for details, I could easily explain how inequality of influence and authority becomes inevitable among individuals (Note 19) as soon as they are united in one society, compelled to compare themselves with one another and to take account of the differences they discover in their continual dealings with one another. These differences are of several kinds. But wealth, nobility or rank, power, and personal merit are the principal distinctions by which people measure one another in society; and I would show that the concord or conflict of these various forces is the surest indication of whether a State is well or badly constituted. I would show that, among these four kinds of inequality, personal qualities are the source of all the others, while wealth is the last form into which they ultimately resolve. For wealth is of the most immediate use to material well-being and the easiest to transfer, and can therefore readily be used to buy everything else. This observation enables us to judge fairly accurately how far each people has strayed from its original institution and how far it has gone toward the extreme of corruption. I would point out how this universal desire for reputation, honors, and precedence, which devours us all, calls forth and measures talents and strengths, how it excites and multiplies passions, and how, by making all men competitors, rivals, or rather enemies, it brings about reversals, successes, and catastrophes of every kind every day by setting so many contenders to run the same race. I would show that to this ardor to have ourselves talked about, this frenzy for distinction that keeps us almost always outside ourselves, we owe the best and the worst that mankind has produced: our virtues and our vices, our sciences and our errors, our conquerors and our philosophers—that is to say, a multitude of bad things and a small number of good ones. Finally, I would show that if a handful of powerful and wealthy men are seen at the summit of greatness and fortune while the multitude crawls in obscurity and misery, it is because the former value what they enjoy only to the extent that others are deprived of it; without any change in their own circumstances, they would cease to be happy if the people ceased to be miserable.
But these details alone would fill a substantial work. It would weigh the advantages and disadvantages of every government against the rights belonging to the state of nature and reveal all the different forms in which inequality has appeared down to our day and may appear in centuries to come, according to the nature of governments and the revolutions time will necessarily bring them. We would see the multitude oppressed at home as a consequence of the very precautions it had taken against threats from abroad. We would see oppression continually increase, while the oppressed could never know where it would end or what lawful means remained to stop it. We would see the rights of citizens and the liberties of nations gradually expire, and the protests of the weak treated as seditious mutterings. We would see policy restrict the honor of defending the common cause to a mercenary portion of the people. From this would arise the need for taxes; the discouraged farmer would leave his field even in peacetime and abandon the plow to gird on a sword. We would see the rise of the ruinous and bizarre rules of the code of honor. We would see the defenders of the fatherland sooner or later become its enemies, forever holding a dagger aloft over their fellow citizens; and a time would come when we would hear them say to their country’s oppressor:
If you order me to drive a sword into my brother’s breast and my father’s throat,
And into the womb of my wife heavy with child,
I will do it all, though my hand rebels.
From the extreme inequality of conditions and fortunes, from the diversity of passions and talents, from useless arts, harmful arts, and frivolous sciences, would spring crowds of prejudices equally hostile to reason, happiness, and virtue. We would see leaders foster everything that can weaken men assembled together by setting them at odds; everything that can lend society the appearance of concord while sowing the seed of actual division within it; everything that can inspire mutual distrust and hatred among the different orders by setting their rights and interests against one another and thereby strengthen the power that keeps them all in check.
From the heart of this disorder and these upheavals, despotism would gradually raise its hideous head. Devouring whatever good and healthy thing it encountered throughout the State, it would finally trample laws and people underfoot and establish itself on the ruins of the republic. The times preceding this last change would be times of turmoil and calamity, but in the end the monster would swallow everything, and peoples would no longer have leaders or laws, only tyrants. From that moment there would no longer be any question of morals or virtue. For wherever despotism reigns, “which has no hope from honorable conduct,” it tolerates no other master. As soon as it speaks, neither integrity nor duty may be consulted, and the blindest obedience is the only virtue left to slaves.
This is the final stage of inequality, the extreme point that closes the circle and touches the point from which we set out. Here all individuals become equal again because they are nothing. Subjects have no law but the master’s will, the master no rule but his passions, and the notions of good and the principles of justice vanish once more. Here everything returns to the law of the strongest alone, and consequently to a new state of nature, different from the state in which we began: the first was the state of nature in its purity, while this last is the fruit of an excess of corruption. Yet there is so little difference between these two states, and the contract of government is so completely dissolved by despotism, that the despot remains master only so long as he is strongest; as soon as he can be driven out, he has no complaint to make against violence. The uprising that ends by strangling or dethroning a sultan is as lawful an act as those by which, the day before, he disposed of his subjects’ lives and goods. Force alone sustained him, force alone overthrows him. Everything thus proceeds in the natural order; and whatever the outcome of these brief and frequent revolutions, no one can complain of another’s injustice, only of his own imprudence or misfortune.
By discovering and tracing in this way the forgotten and lost paths that must have led man from the natural state to the civil state, and by restoring, along with the intermediate stages I have just identified, those that the pressure of time has made me omit or that my imagination has not suggested, every attentive reader must be struck by the immense distance separating these two states. In this slow succession of events he will see the solution to countless problems of morality and politics that philosophers cannot resolve. He will sense that mankind in one age is not mankind in another, and that the reason Diogenes could find no man was that he sought among his contemporaries the man of an age that had vanished. Cato, he will say, perished with Rome and liberty because he was out of place in his own century; the greatest of men only astonished a world he would have ruled five hundred years earlier. In a word, he will explain how the human soul and its passions, changing imperceptibly, change their very nature, so to speak; why our needs and pleasures change their objects over time; why, as original man gradually disappears, society offers the wise observer nothing but a gathering of artificial men and fabricated passions, products of all these new relations, without any true foundation in nature. What reflection teaches us on this subject, observation fully confirms: the man of the wild and the civilized man differ so profoundly in heart and inclination that what brings one supreme happiness would drive the other to despair. The former breathes only rest and liberty; he wishes only to live and remain idle, and even the Stoic’s tranquility falls short of his deep indifference to every other aim. The citizen, by contrast, always busy, sweats, rushes about, and torments himself endlessly in search of still more laborious occupations. He works until death; he even hastens toward death to put himself in a position to live, or gives up life to gain immortality. He pays court to the great whom he hates and the rich whom he despises; he spares nothing to win the honor of serving them. He proudly boasts of his own abasement and their protection, and, proud of his slavery, speaks contemptuously of those who do not have the honor of sharing it. What a spectacle for a Caribbean native: the grueling, envied labors of a European minister! How many cruel deaths would that indolent man of the wild prefer to the horror of such a life, which is often not even softened by the pleasure of doing good? But to perceive the object of so much effort, the words power and reputation would have to mean something to him. He would have to learn that there are people who attach importance to the gaze of the rest of the world, who know how to be happy and content with themselves on the testimony of others rather than their own. This, indeed, is the true cause of all these differences: the man of the wild lives within himself; the sociable man, always outside himself, knows how to live only in the opinion of others, and draws, so to speak, the sense of his own existence from their judgment alone. It is not my subject to show how such a disposition gives rise to so much indifference toward good and evil amid such fine speeches about morality; how, everything being reduced to appearances, everything becomes artificial and performed—honor, friendship, virtue, and often even vice itself, which men finally discover the secret of boasting about; how, in a word, always asking others what we are and never daring to ask ourselves, amid so much philosophy, humanity, civility, and lofty principles, we have only a deceptive and frivolous exterior, honor without virtue, reason without wisdom, and pleasure without happiness. It is enough for me to have shown that this is not man’s original state, and that the spirit of society alone, together with the inequality it engenders, so changes and disfigures all our natural inclinations.
I have tried to set out the origin and progress of inequality, and the establishment and abuse of political societies, insofar as these things can be deduced from human nature by the light of reason alone, independently of the sacred doctrines that confer the sanction of divine right on sovereign authority. It follows from this account that inequality, almost nonexistent in the state of nature, draws its force and growth from the development of our faculties and the progress of the human mind, and finally becomes stable and legitimate through the establishment of property and laws. It follows also that moral inequality, authorized solely by positive law, is contrary to natural right whenever it does not correspond in like proportion to physical inequality. This distinction sufficiently establishes what we must think in this respect of the kind of inequality prevailing among all civilized peoples. For it is plainly against the Law of Nature, however one defines it, that a child should command an old man, that a fool should lead a wise man, and that a handful of people should overflow with superfluities while the starving multitude lacks the necessities of life.
Plain English translation
Mouseia’s complete Plain English edition, made independently and directly from the complete French text (dedicatory epistle, preface, both parts and the notes).
Political distinctions necessarily produce distinctions among private citizens. As inequality grows between the people and their leaders, it soon appears among individuals too. It takes a thousand different forms according to their passions, talents, and circumstances. A magistrate cannot seize illegitimate power without gathering supporters and giving them some share of it. Besides, citizens allow themselves to be oppressed only because blind ambition drives them to look below rather than above themselves. They come to value dominating others more than being independent and agree to wear chains so that they can put chains on others in turn. It is very hard to make someone obey who has no wish to command. Even the cleverest politician could not bring people under his control if all they wanted was to be free. But inequality spreads easily among ambitious and cowardly people. They are always ready to take their chances with fortune, and nearly as ready to dominate as to serve, depending on whether fortune favors or opposes them. So a time must have come when the people were so dazzled that their leaders needed only to tell the most insignificant man, “Be great, you and your whole family line.” At once he seemed great to everyone and to himself. His descendants rose higher still the further they were from him. The more distant and uncertain the supposed cause, the greater the effect. The more idlers a family could count among its members, the more distinguished it became.
If this were the place for details, I could easily explain how differences in influence and authority inevitably arise among individuals (Note 19). Once they are gathered into one society, they must compare themselves and take account of the differences they find as they constantly deal with one another. These differences come in many forms. But wealth, noble birth or rank, power, and personal merit are the main distinctions by which people measure themselves in society. I would show that the agreement or conflict among these four kinds of power is the surest indication of whether a State is well or badly organized. Of these four kinds of inequality, personal qualities are the source of all the others. I would show that in the end they all come down to wealth, because wealth is the most directly useful for comfort and the easiest to pass on. It can readily be used to buy everything else. This observation lets us judge fairly accurately how far each people has moved from its original institutions and how far it has traveled toward complete corruption. I would point out how the universal desire for reputation, honors, and special treatment consumes us all, puts our talents and abilities to work and measures them against each other. It stirs up and multiplies our passions, turns everyone into competitors, rivals, or rather enemies, and produces daily reversals, successes, and disasters of every kind by making so many people run in the same race. I would show that this hunger to be talked about, this obsession with standing out that almost always takes us outside ourselves, gives rise to the best and worst things among human beings: our virtues and vices, our sciences and errors, our conquerors and philosophers. In other words, it produces a multitude of bad things alongside a small number of good ones. Finally, I would show why a handful of powerful and wealthy people stand at the height of status and fortune while the crowd crawls in obscurity and misery. The first group values what it enjoys only because the others are deprived of it. Without any change in its own circumstances, it would cease to be happy if the people ceased to be miserable.
But these details alone would fill a substantial book. It would weigh the advantages and disadvantages of every government against the rights people had in the state of nature. It would reveal all the different forms in which inequality has appeared up to now, and those it may take in future centuries, according to the nature of governments and the changes time will inevitably bring them. We would see the masses oppressed at home as a consequence of the very precautions they had taken against outside threats. We would see oppression steadily increase while those suffering it could never know where it would end or what lawful means they still had to stop it. We would see citizens' rights and national freedoms fade little by little, while the complaints of the weak were treated as seditious grumbling. We would see political leaders limit the honor of defending the common cause to a paid section of the people. This would make taxes necessary. A discouraged farmer would leave his field even in peacetime, put down his plow, and take up a sword. We would see the disastrous, strange rules of the code of honor appear. We would see the country's defenders sooner or later become its enemies and constantly hold a dagger over their fellow citizens. A time would come when we would hear them tell their country's oppressor:
If you order me to drive a sword into my brother's breastAnd my father's throat, and into the belly of my wife,Pregnant and near childbirth, I will do it all, though my hand resists.
From extreme inequality of position and fortune, differences in passions and talents, useless arts, harmful arts, and trivial sciences would come crowds of prejudices equally opposed to reason, happiness, and virtue. We would see leaders encourage anything that can weaken people gathered together by dividing them; anything that can make society appear united while planting the seeds of real division; anything that can inspire mutual distrust and hatred among the different orders by setting their rights and interests against each other. All this would strengthen the power that holds them all in check.
From this disorder and these upheavals, despotism would gradually raise its hideous head. It would devour everything good and healthy it saw in every part of the State. At last it would trample both laws and people underfoot and establish itself on the ruins of the republic. The time before this final change would be full of turmoil and disaster. In the end the monster would swallow everything. Peoples would no longer have leaders or laws, only tyrants. From then on, there would be no question of morals or virtue. Wherever despotism rules, “it has no hope of gain from honorable conduct,” and tolerates no other master. As soon as it speaks, there is no integrity or duty to consider. The only virtue left to slaves is the blindest obedience.
This is the last stage of inequality, the endpoint that closes the circle and meets the point where we began. Here all individuals become equal again because they count for nothing. Subjects have no law but their master's will, and the master has no guide but his passions. Ideas of good and principles of justice disappear once more. Everything returns to the law of the strongest alone, and thus to a new state of nature. It differs from the one we started with: the first was the state of nature in its pure form, while this last one is the result of extreme corruption. Otherwise there is so little difference between the two states, and despotism so thoroughly dissolves the contract of government, that a despot remains master only while he is the strongest. As soon as people can drive him out, he has no grounds for objecting to their violence. An uprising that ends in strangling or dethroning a sultan is just as lawful an act as those by which he disposed of his subjects' lives and property the day before. Force alone kept him in power; force alone brings him down. Everything thus happens according to the natural order. Whatever the outcome of these brief, frequent upheavals, no one can complain of another's injustice, only of their own lack of foresight or their bad luck.
By uncovering and following the forgotten, lost paths that must have led humanity from the state of nature to civil society, and by restoring the intermediate stages I have left out for lack of time or failed to imagine, along with those I have just described, any attentive reader will be struck by the vast distance between the two states. In this slow sequence of changes, the reader will find the answer to countless moral and political questions that philosophers cannot solve. They will understand that humanity in one age is not the humanity of another. Diogenes could find no human being because he sought among his contemporaries a person from an age that had passed. Cato, the reader will say, died with Rome and freedom because he was out of place in his century. The greatest of men merely astonished a world that he would have governed five hundred years earlier. In short, the reader will understand how the human mind and its passions gradually change and almost take on a different nature. Our needs and pleasures eventually turn toward different objects. As the original human being gradually disappears, society offers a wise observer only a collection of artificial people and manufactured passions, created by all these new relationships and lacking any real basis in nature. What thought teaches us about this, observation fully confirms. The person living outside civilization and the civilized person differ so deeply in their hearts and desires that what makes one supremely happy would drive the other to despair. The first wants only rest and freedom. They want to live and be idle. Even a Stoic's inner calm falls short of their deep indifference to everything else. The citizen, by contrast, is always busy, sweating, rushing around, and tormenting themselves in search of still harder work. They work until death; they even race toward death to put themselves in a position to live, or give up life to gain immortality. They court the powerful whom they hate and the rich whom they despise. They spare no effort to win the honor of serving them. They proudly boast of their own low position and of their patrons' protection. Proud of their slavery, they speak with contempt of those who do not have the honor of sharing it. How a Caribbean person would look at the demanding and envied work of a European minister! How many cruel deaths would that carefree person prefer to the horror of such a life, which often does not even offer the comfort of doing good? But to grasp the aim of all that effort, the words “power” and “reputation” would have to mean something to them. They would have to learn that some people attach importance to what the rest of the world thinks, and know how to feel happy and satisfied with themselves on the strength of others' approval rather than their own. This is indeed the real cause of all these differences. The person living outside civilization lives within themselves; the social person always lives outside themselves, finding life only in others' opinions. From their judgment alone, so to speak, that person gets a sense of their own existence. It is not my subject to show how this disposition produces so much indifference to good and evil alongside such fine speeches about morals. Nor is it my subject to show how, when everything comes down to appearances, everything becomes artificial and performed: honor, friendship, virtue, and often even vices, which people finally learn to boast about. In short, we always ask others who we are and never dare to ask ourselves. Surrounded by so much philosophy, humaneness, courtesy, and lofty principles, we have only a shallow, deceptive outward show: honor without virtue, reason without wisdom, and pleasure without happiness. It is enough for me to have shown that this is not humanity's original condition. Only the spirit of society and the inequality it produces change and distort all our natural inclinations in this way.
I have tried to explain the origin and development of inequality, and the establishment and abuse of political societies, as far as these things can be inferred from human nature by reason alone, independently of the sacred doctrines that give sovereign authority the sanction of divine right. This account shows that inequality, almost nonexistent in the state of nature, gains its strength and grows as our abilities develop and the human mind advances. Finally, the establishment of property and laws makes it stable and legitimate. It also shows that moral inequality, authorized solely by established law, runs counter to natural right whenever it does not match physical inequality in the same proportion. That distinction is enough to tell us what to think of the kind of inequality found among all civilized peoples. For it is plainly contrary to the Law of Nature, however we define it, that a child should command an old person, that a fool should lead a wise person, or that a handful of people should have more than they need while the hungry majority lacks life's necessities.