Jean-Jacques Rousseau · Complete work
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NOTES
Note 1
Hérodote raconte qu’après le meurtre du faux Smerdis, les sept libérateurs de la Perse s’étant assemblés pour délibérer sur la forme de gouvernement qu’ils donneraient à l’État, Otanès opina fortement pour la république; avis d’autant plus extraordinaire dans la bouche d’un satrape qu’outre la prétention qu’il pouvait avoir à l’empire, les Grands craignent plus que la mort une sorte de gouvernement qui les force à respecter les hommes. Otanès, comme on peut bien croire, ne fut pointé écouté et, voyant qu’on allait procéder à l’élection d’un monarque, lui qui ne voulait ni obéir ni commander, céda volontairement aux autres concurrents son droit à la couronne, demandant pour tout dédommagement d’être libre et indépendant, lui et sa postérité, ce qui lui fut accordé. Quand Hérodote ne nous apprendrait pas la restriction qui fut mise à ce privilège, il faudrait nécessairement la supposer; autrement Otanès, ne reconnaissant aucune sorte de loi et n’ayant de compte à rendre à personne, aurait été tout-puissant dans l’État et plus puissant que le roi même. Mais il n’y avait guère d’apparence qu’un homme capable de se contenter en pareil cas d’un tel privilège fût capable d’en abuser. En effet, on ne voit pas que ce droit ait jamais causé le moindre trouble dans le royaume, ni par le sage Otanès, ni aucun de ses descendants.
Note 2
b Dès mon premier pas je m’appuie avec confiance sur une de ces autorités respectables pour les philosophes, parce qu’elles viennent d’une raison solide et sublime qu’eux seuls savent trouver et sentir.
« Quelque intérêt que nous ayons à nous connaître nous-mêmes, je ne sais si nous ne connaissons pas mieux tout ce qui n’est pas nous. Pourvus par la nature d’organes uniquement destinés à notre conservation, nous ne les employons qu’à recevoir les impressions étrangères, nous ne cherchons qu’à nous répandre au-dehors, et à exister hors de nous; trop occupés à multiplier les fonctions de nos sens et à augmenter l’étendue extérieure de notre être, rarement faisons-nous usage de ce sens intérieur qui nous réduit à nos vraies dimensions et qui sépare de nous tout ce qui n’en est pas. C’est cependant de ce sens dont il faut nous servir, si nous voulons nous connaître; c’est le seul par lequel nous puissions nous juger. Mais comment donner à ce sens son activité et toute son étendue? Comment dégager notre âme, dans laquelle il réside, de toutes les illusions de notre esprit? Nous avons perdu l’habitude de l’employer, elle est demeurée sans exercice au milieu du tumulte de nos sensations corporelles, elle s’est desséchée par le feu de nos passions; le cœur, l’esprit, le sens, tout a travaillé contre elle. » Hist. Nat. T4, p. 151, De la Nat. de l’homme.
Note 3
Les changements qu’un long usage de marcher sur deux pieds a pu produire dans la conformation de l’homme, les rapports qu’on observe encore entre ses bras et les jambes antérieures des quadrupèdes et l’induction tirée de leur manière de marcher ont pu faire naître des doutes sur celle qui devait nous être la plus naturelle. Tous les enfants commencent par marcher à quatre pieds et ont besoin de notre exemple et de nos leçons pour apprendre à se tenir debout. Il y a même des nations sauvages, telles que les Hottentots qui, négligeant beaucoup les enfants, les laissent marcher sur les mains si longtemps qu’ils ont ensuite bien de la peine à les redresser; autant en font les enfants des Caraïbes des Antilles. Il y a divers exemples d’hommes quadrupèdes et je pourrais entre autres citer celui de cet enfant qui fut trouvé, en 1344, auprès de Hesse où il avait été nourri par des loups et qui disait depuis à la cour du prince Henri que, s’il n’eût tenu qu’à lui, il eût mieux aimé retourner avec eux que de vivre parmi les hommes. Il avait tellement pris l’habitude de marcher comme ces animaux qu’il fallut lui attacher des pièces de bois qui le forçaient à se tenir debout et en équilibre sur ses deux pieds. Il en était de même de l’enfant qu’on trouva en 1694 dans les forêts de Lituanie et qui vivait parmi les ours. Il ne donnait, dit M. de Condillac, aucune marque de raison, marchait sur ses pieds et sur ses mains, n’avait aucun langage et formait des sons qui ne ressemblaient en rien à ceux d’un homme. Le petit sauvage d’Hanovre qu’on mena il y a plusieurs années à la cour d’Angleterre, avait toutes les peines du monde à s’assujettir à marcher sur deux pieds et l’on trouva en 1719 deux autres sauvages dans les Pyrénées, qui couraient par les montagnes à la manière des quadrupèdes. Quant à ce qu’on pourrait objecter que c’est se priver de l’usage des mains dont nous tirons tant d’avantages, outre que l’exemple des singes montre que la main peut fort bien être employée des deux manières, cela prouverait seulement que l’homme peut donner à ses membres une destination plus commode que celle de la nature, et non que la nature a destiné l’homme à marcher autrement qu’elle ne lui enseigne.
Mais il y a, ce me semble, de beaucoup meilleures raisons, à dire pour soutenir que l’homme est un bipède. Premièrement quand on ferait voir qu’il a pu d’abord être conformé autrement que nous le voyons et cependant devenir enfin ce qu’il est, ce n’en serait pas assez pour conclure que cela se soit fait ainsi. Car, après avoir montré la possibilité de ces changements, il faudrait encore, avant que de les admettre, en montrer au moins la vraisemblance. De plus, si les bras de l’homme paraissent avoir pu lui servir de jambes au besoin, c’est la seule observation favorable à ce système, sur un grand nombre d’autres qui lui sont contraires. Les principales sont: que la manière dont la tête de l’homme est attachée à son corps, au lieu de diriger sa vue horizontalement, comme l’ont tous les autres animaux, et comme il l’a lui-même en marchant debout, lui eût tenu, marchant à quatre pieds, les yeux directement fichés vers la terre, situation très peu favorable à la conservation de l’individu; que la queue qui lui manque, et dont il n’a que faire marchant à deux pieds, est utile aux quadrupèdes, et qu’aucun d’eux n’en est privé; que le sein de la femme, très bien situé pour un bipède qui tient son enfant dans ses bras, l’est si mal pour un quadrupède que nul ne l’a placé de cette manière; que le train de derrière étant d’une excessive hauteur à proportion des jambes de devant, ce qui fait que marchant à quatre nous nous traînons sur les genoux, le tout eût fait un animal mal proportionné et marchant peu commodément; que s’il eût posé le pied à plat ainsi que la main, il aurait eu dans la jambe postérieure une articulation de moins que les autres animaux, savoir celle qui joint le canon au tibia, et qu’en ne posant que la pointe du pied, comme il aurait sans doute été contraint de faire, le tarse, sans parler de la pluralité des os qui le composent, paraît trop gros pour tenir lieu de canon et ses articulations avec le métatarse et le tibia trop rapprochées pour donner à la jambe humaine dans cette situation la même flexibilité qu’ont celles des quadrupèdes. L’exemple des enfants étant pris dans un âge où les forces naturelles ne sont point encore développées ni les membres raffermis, ne conclut rien du tout et j’aimerais autant dire que les chiens ne sont pas destinés à marcher, parce qu’ils ne font que ramper quelques semaines après leur naissance. Les faits particuliers ont encore peu de force contre la pratique universelle de tous les hommes, même des nations qui, n’ayant eu aucune communication avec les autres, n’avaient pu rien imiter d’elles. Un enfant abandonné dans une forêt avant que de pouvoir marcher, et nourri par quelque bête, aura suivi l’exemple de sa nourrice en s’exerçant à marcher comme elle; l’habitude lui aura pu donner des facilités qu’il ne tenait point de la nature; et comme des manchots parviennent à force d’exercice à faire avec leurs pieds tout ce que nous faisons de nos mains, il sera parvenu enfin à employer ses mains à l’usage des pieds.
Note 4
S’il se trouvait parmi mes lecteurs quelque assez mauvais physicien pour me faire des difficultés sur la supposition de cette fertilité naturelle de la terre, je vais lui répondre par le passage suivant:
« Comme les végétaux tirent pour leur nourriture beaucoup plus de substance de l’air et de l’eau qu’ils n’en tirent de la terre, il arrive qu’en pourrissant ils rendent à la terre plus qu’ils n’en ont tiré; d’ailleurs une forêt détermine les eaux de la pluie en arrêtant les vapeurs. Ainsi dans un bois que l’on conserverait bien longtemps sans y toucher, la couche de terre qui sert à la végétation augmenterait considérablement; mais les animaux rendant moins à la terre qu’ils n’en tirent, et les hommes faisant des consommations énormes de bois et de plantes pour le feu et pour d’autres usages, il s’ensuit que la couche de terre végétale d’un pays habité doit toujours diminuer et devenir enfin comme le terrain de l’Arabie Pétrée, et comme celui de tant d’autres provinces de l’Orient, qui est en effet le climat le plus anciennement habité, où l’on ne trouve que du sel et des sables, car le sel fixe des plantes et des animaux reste, tandis que toutes les autres parties se volatilisent. » M. de Buffon, Hist. Nat.
On peut ajouter à cela la preuve de fait par la quantité d’arbres et de plantes de toute espèce, dont étaient remplies presque toutes les îles désertes qui ont été découvertes dans ces derniers siècles, et par ce que l’Histoire nous apprend des forêts immenses qu’il a fallu abattre par toute la terre à mesure qu’elle s’est peuplée et policée. Sur quoi je ferai encore les trois remarques suivantes. L’une que s’il y a une sorte de végétaux qui puissent compenser la déperdition de matière végétale qui se fait par les animaux, selon le raisonnement de M. de Buffon, ce sont surtout les bois, dont les têtes et les feuilles rassemblent et s’approprient plus d’eaux et de vapeurs que ne font les autres plantes. La seconde, que la destruction du sol, c’est-à-dire la perte de la substance propre à la végétation doit s’accélérer à proportion que la terre est plus cultivée et que les habitants plus industrieux consomment en plus grande abondance ses productions de toute espèce. Ma troisième et plus importante remarque est que les fruits des arbres fournissent à l’animal une nourriture plus abondante que ne peuvent faire les autres végétaux, expérience que j’ai faite moi-même, en comparant les produits de deux terrains égaux en grandeur et en qualité, l’un couvert de châtaigniers et l’autre semé de blé.
Note 5
Parmi les quadrupèdes, les deux distinctions les plus universelles des espèces voraces se tirent, l’une de la figure des dents, et l’autre de la conformation des intestins. Les animaux qui ne vivent que de végétaux ont tous les dents plates, comme le cheval, le bœuf, le mouton, le lièvre, mais les voraces les ont pointues, comme le chat, le chien, le loup, le renard. Et quant aux intestins, les frugivores en ont quelques-uns, tels que le côlon, qui ne se trouvent pas dans les animaux voraces. Il semble donc que l’homme, ayant les dents et les intestins comme les ont les animaux frugivores, devrait naturellement être rangé dans cette classe, et non seulement les observations anatomiques confirment cette opinion: mais les monuments de l’antiquité y sont encore très favorables. « Dicéarque, dit saint Jérôme, rapporte dans ses Livres des antiquités grecques que sous le règne de Saturne, où la terre était encore fertile par elle-même, nul homme ne mangeait de chair, mais que tous vivaient des fruits et des légumes qui croissaient naturellement. » (Lib. 2, Adv. Jovinian.) On peut voir par là que je néglige bien des avantages que je pourrais faire valoir. Car la proie étant presque l’unique sujet de combat entre les animaux carnassiers, et les frugivores vivant entre eux dans une paix continuelle, si l’espèce humaine était de ce dernier genre, il est clair qu’elle aurait eu beaucoup plus de facilité à subsister dans l’état de nature, beaucoup moins de besoin et d’occasions d’en sortir.
Note 6
Toutes les connaissances qui demandent de la réflexion, toutes celles qui ne s’acquièrent que par l’enchaînement des idées et ne se perfectionnent que successivement, semblent être tout à fait hors de la portée de l’homme sauvage, faute de communication avec ses semblables, c’est-à-dire faute de l’instrument qui sert à cette communication et des besoins qui la rendent nécessaire. Son savoir et son industrie se bornent à sauter, courir, se battre, lancer une pierre, escalader un arbre. Mais s’il ne fait que ces choses, en revanche il les fait beaucoup mieux que nous, qui n’en avons pas le même besoin que lui; et comme elles dépendent uniquement de l’exercice du corps et ne sont susceptibles d’aucune communication ni d’aucun progrès d’un individu à l’autre, le premier homme a pu y être tout aussi habile que ses derniers descendants.
Les relations des voyageurs sont pleines d’exemples de la force et de la vigueur des hommes chez les nations barbares et sauvages; elles ne vantent guère moins leur adresse et leur légèreté; et comme il ne faut que des yeux pour observer ces choses, rien n’empêche qu’on n’ajoute foi à ce que certifient là-dessus des témoins oculaires, j’en tire au hasard quelques exemples des premiers livres qui me tombent sous la main.
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.
NOTES
Note 1
Herodotus relates that, after the murder of the false Smerdis, the seven liberators of Persia assembled to deliberate on the form of government they would give the state, and Otanes argued strongly for a republic. This was an opinion all the more extraordinary in the mouth of a satrap because, quite apart from whatever claim he might have had to the empire, the great fear a form of government that forces them to respect other men more than they fear death. Otanes, as one might expect, was not listened to; and, seeing that they were about to elect a monarch, he, who wished neither to obey nor to command, voluntarily yielded his claim to the crown to the other contenders, asking as his sole compensation that he and his descendants be free and independent. This was granted him. Even if Herodotus had not told us of the restriction placed on this privilege, we should have had to assume one; otherwise Otanes, acknowledging no law of any kind and answerable to no one, would have been all-powerful in the state, more powerful even than the king. But it hardly seemed likely that a man capable of contenting himself with such a privilege in such circumstances would be capable of abusing it. Indeed, there is no sign that this right ever caused the slightest disturbance in the kingdom, whether through the wise Otanes or through any of his descendants.
Note 2
From my very first step I confidently rely on one of those authorities esteemed by philosophers, because they spring from a sound and lofty reason that philosophers alone know how to discover and feel.
“However much interest we have in knowing ourselves, I do not know whether we do not know everything that is not ourselves better. Endowed by nature with organs intended solely for our preservation, we employ them only to receive impressions from outside; we seek only to spread ourselves outward and to exist outside ourselves. Too busy multiplying the functions of our senses and enlarging the outward extent of our being, we rarely make use of that inward sense which brings us back to our true dimensions and separates from us all that is not ours. Yet it is this sense we must employ if we wish to know ourselves; it is the only one by which we can judge ourselves. But how are we to give this sense its activity and its full scope? How are we to free our soul, where it resides, from all the illusions of our mind? We have lost the habit of using it; it has lain idle amid the tumult of our bodily sensations; it has been dried up by the fire of our passions. Heart, mind, senses: everything has worked against it.” Hist. Nat. T4, p. 151, On the Nature of Man.
Note 3
The changes that long practice in walking on two feet may have produced in the human frame, the correspondences still observed between our arms and the forelegs of quadrupeds, and the inference drawn from the way they walk may have given rise to doubts about which way of walking must be most natural to us. All children begin by walking on all fours and need our example and instruction to learn to stand upright. There are even savage nations, such as the Hottentots, who neglect their children so much that they let them walk on their hands for so long that afterward they have great difficulty getting them upright; the children of the Caribs of the Antilles do as much. There are various examples of men who walked on all fours; among others I could cite the child found in 1344 near Hesse, where he had been raised by wolves, who later said at the court of Prince Henry that, had the choice been his, he would have preferred to return to them rather than live among men. He had grown so used to walking like those animals that pieces of wood had to be fastened to him to force him to stand upright and keep his balance on his two feet. So it was with the child found in 1694 in the forests of Lithuania, living among bears. He showed no sign of reason, says M. de Condillac; he walked on his feet and hands, had no language, and made sounds that bore no resemblance to those of a man. The little savage of Hanover brought to the court of England several years ago had the greatest difficulty making himself walk on two feet; and in 1719 two other savages were found in the Pyrenees, running through the mountains like quadrupeds. As for the objection that this would deprive us of the use of our hands, from which we derive so many benefits, besides the fact that the example of apes shows that a hand can very well be used both ways, it would prove only that man can assign his limbs a purpose more convenient than nature's, not that nature intended him to walk otherwise than she teaches him.
But there are, it seems to me, much better reasons for maintaining that man is a biped. First, even if one showed that he could originally have been shaped differently from the way we see him, yet eventually become what he is, that would not suffice to conclude that this is what happened. For having shown that such changes are possible, one would still have to show at least that they are plausible before accepting them. Moreover, if man's arms seem capable of serving him as legs when needed, that is the only observation favoring this theory among a great many others that contradict it. The chief ones are these: the way a man's head is attached to his body, instead of directing his gaze horizontally as it does in all other animals, and as it does in man himself when he walks upright, would, if he walked on all fours, keep his eyes fixed directly on the earth, a position hardly favorable to an individual's preservation; the tail he lacks, which he has no use for when walking on two feet, is useful to quadrupeds, and not one of them is without it; a woman's breasts, very well placed for a biped who holds her child in her arms, are so badly placed for a quadruped that none has them in that position; the hindquarters are excessively high in proportion to the forelegs, which is why we drag ourselves along on our knees when we go on all fours, and the whole arrangement would make for an ill-proportioned animal that walked awkwardly; if he put his foot down flat like his hand, his hind leg would have one joint fewer than other animals have, namely the joint connecting the cannon bone to the shinbone; and if he put down only the tip of his foot, as he would doubtless have been forced to do, the tarsus, quite apart from the number of bones composing it, seems too bulky to serve as a cannon bone, and its joints with the metatarsus and shinbone too close together to give the human leg in that position the same flexibility as the legs of quadrupeds. The example of children, drawn from an age when natural strength is not yet developed and the limbs have not grown firm, proves nothing at all; I might as well say that dogs are not meant to walk because they do nothing but crawl for some weeks after birth. Particular cases carry little weight against the universal practice of all mankind, even of nations that, having had no contact with others, could have imitated nothing from them. A child abandoned in a forest before he could walk and nursed by some animal would have followed his nurse's example by practicing walking as she did; habit could have given him abilities he did not owe to nature; and just as people without arms succeed through practice in doing with their feet everything we do with our hands, he would eventually have come to use his hands as feet.
Note 4
If among my readers there should be someone so poor a natural philosopher as to challenge my assumption of the earth's natural fertility, I shall answer him with the following passage:
“Since plants draw far more substance for their nourishment from air and water than from the earth, it follows that when they decay they return more to the earth than they have taken from it; moreover, a forest draws down rainwater by holding back the vapors. Thus, in a wood preserved untouched for a very long time, the layer of soil that sustains vegetation would increase considerably. But animals return less to the earth than they take from it, and men consume enormous quantities of wood and plants for fuel and other uses. It follows that the layer of fertile soil in an inhabited country must constantly diminish and at last become like the terrain of Arabia Petraea and that of so many other provinces of the East, which is in fact the region longest inhabited, where nothing is found but salt and sand; for the fixed salts of plants and animals remain, while all their other parts evaporate.” M. de Buffon, Hist. Nat.
To this one may add the evidence of fact: the abundance of trees and plants of every kind that filled almost all the uninhabited islands discovered in recent centuries, and what history tells us of the immense forests that had to be felled throughout the earth as it grew more populous and civilized. On this point I shall make three further observations. The first is that, if any kind of plant can make up for the loss of vegetable matter caused by animals, according to M. de Buffon's reasoning, it is above all trees, whose crowns and leaves collect and absorb more water and vapor than other plants do. The second is that the destruction of the soil—that is, the loss of the substance fit to nourish vegetation—must accelerate in proportion as the earth is more intensively cultivated and its more industrious inhabitants consume its produce of every sort in greater abundance. My third and most important observation is that the fruits of trees provide animals with more abundant nourishment than other plants can provide, a fact I have tested myself by comparing the yields of two plots equal in size and quality, one planted with chestnut trees and the other sown with wheat.
Note 5
Among quadrupeds, the two most universal marks distinguishing the voracious species are drawn, one from the shape of their teeth, the other from the structure of their intestines. Animals that live only on plants all have flat teeth, such as the horse, ox, sheep, and hare; but voracious animals have pointed teeth, such as the cat, dog, wolf, and fox. As for intestines, fruit-eaters have certain parts, such as the colon, not found in voracious animals. It seems, then, that man, whose teeth and intestines resemble those of fruit-eating animals, should naturally be placed in that class; and not only do anatomical observations confirm this opinion, but the records of antiquity strongly favor it as well. “Dicaearchus,” says Saint Jerome, “reports in his Books of Greek Antiquities that under the reign of Saturn, when the earth was still fertile of itself, no man ate flesh, but all lived on fruits and vegetables that grew naturally.” (Lib. 2, Adv. Jovinian.) One can see from this that I pass over many advantages I could press into service. For prey is almost the only cause of conflict among carnivorous animals, whereas fruit-eaters live with one another in continual peace; if the human species belonged to the latter kind, clearly it would have found it much easier to survive in the state of nature, and would have had far less need and occasion to leave it.
Note 6
All knowledge that requires reflection, all knowledge acquired only by connecting ideas and perfected only by degrees, seems altogether beyond the reach of savage man for want of communication with his fellows—that is, for want both of the instrument of communication and of the needs that make it necessary. His knowledge and skill are confined to jumping, running, fighting, throwing a stone, and climbing a tree. But if he does only these things, he does them far better than we do, having a need of them that we lack; and since they depend solely on bodily exercise and can neither be communicated nor developed from one individual to another, the first man could have been every bit as skilled at them as his latest descendants.
Travelers' accounts abound in examples of the strength and vigor of men among barbarous and savage nations; they praise their dexterity and nimbleness hardly less. And since eyes alone are needed to observe such things, nothing prevents us from believing what eyewitnesses attest on this point. I take a few examples at random from the first books that come to hand.
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).
NOTES
Note 1
Herodotus tells us that after the false Smerdis was killed, the seven men who had freed Persia met to decide what form of government to give the state. Otanes argued strongly for a republic. This was a remarkable opinion from a satrap: besides any claim he might have made to the throne, great men fear a government that forces them to respect other people more than they fear death. As one might expect, no one listened to Otanes. When he saw that they were going to choose a monarch, he willingly gave up his claim to the crown to the other candidates. He wanted neither to obey nor to command. In return he asked only that he and his descendants be free and independent, and this was granted. Even if Herodotus had not told us of the limit placed on this privilege, we would have to assume one. Otherwise Otanes, subject to no law and accountable to nobody, would have been all-powerful in the state, even more powerful than the king. But a man satisfied with such a privilege in those circumstances was hardly likely to abuse it. In fact, there is no sign that this right ever caused the slightest trouble in the kingdom, either through the wise Otanes or through any of his descendants.
Note 2
At my very first step I confidently rely on one of those authorities philosophers respect, because its words come from sound and profound reasoning that only philosophers know how to discover and appreciate.
“However much interest we have in knowing ourselves, I do not know whether we know everything outside ourselves better. Nature has equipped us with organs meant solely to keep us alive, yet we use them only to receive impressions from outside. We only try to reach outward and exist outside ourselves. We are so busy increasing what our senses do and extending our being into the outside world that we rarely use the inner sense that brings us back to our true size and separates us from everything that is not part of us. Yet this is the sense we must use if we want to know ourselves. It is the only one by which we can judge ourselves. But how can we make it fully active and give it its full range? How can we free our soul, where this sense resides, from all the illusions of our minds? We have lost the habit of using it. It has gone without exercise amid the noise of our bodily sensations, and the fire of our passions has dried it up. Our heart, our mind, our senses—everything has worked against it.” Natural History, T4, p. 151, On the Nature of Man.
Note 3
Walking on two feet for a long time may have changed the shape of the human body. This possibility, the resemblance still seen between our arms and the front legs of four-legged animals, and an inference drawn from how those animals walk may raise doubts about which way of walking is most natural for us. Every child starts by going on all fours and needs our example and instruction to learn to stand upright. There are even peoples considered savage, such as the Hottentots, who pay so little attention to their children that they let them walk on their hands for so long that it becomes very hard to get them upright afterward. The children of the Caribs of the Antilles do the same. There are various examples of people who went on all fours. Among them I could cite the child found near Hesse in 1344, who had been raised by wolves. He later said at Prince Henry’s court that, if he had had his choice, he would have preferred to return to the wolves rather than live among people. He had grown so used to walking like those animals that pieces of wood had to be strapped to him to force him to stand upright and balance on his two feet. The same was true of the child found in 1694 in the forests of Lithuania, who lived among bears. According to M. de Condillac, he showed no sign of reason, walked on his feet and hands, had no language, and made sounds nothing like a human being’s. The little wild child of Hanover brought to the English court several years ago had enormous difficulty getting used to walking on two feet. In 1719, two other wild children were found in the Pyrenees, running through the mountains like four-legged animals. Someone might object that walking this way deprives us of the use of our hands, which are so useful to us. But monkeys show that hands can work perfectly well in both ways. The objection would prove only that humans can put their limbs to a more convenient use than nature gave them, not that nature meant humans to walk in a different way from the one she teaches them.
But it seems to me that there are much better reasons to maintain that humans are bipeds. First, even if someone showed that we could originally have been shaped differently from the way we are now and eventually become what we are, this would not be enough to conclude that it happened. Once the possibility of these changes had been shown, we would still need at least some evidence that they were likely before accepting them. Moreover, while human arms seem capable of serving as legs if necessary, that is the only observation in favor of the theory, against many that oppose it. Here are the main ones. The way a human head is joined to the body would, on all fours, point the eyes straight at the ground instead of directing the gaze horizontally, as it does in every other animal and in humans walking upright. This position would do little to help a person survive. Humans have no tail and need none when walking on two feet, but tails are useful to four-legged animals, and none of them lacks one. A woman’s breast is well placed for a biped who carries a child in her arms, but so badly placed for a quadruped that no such animal has its breasts there. The hindquarters are extremely high in proportion to the forelegs, which is why we drag ourselves on our knees when we go on all fours. The whole body would make a badly proportioned animal that could walk only awkwardly. If a human put the foot down flat like the hand, the hind leg would have one fewer joint than other animals have, namely the joint between the cannon bone and the shinbone. And if the foot rested only on its tip, as it would surely have to, the tarsus seems too large to serve as a cannon bone, quite apart from how many bones compose it. Its joints with the metatarsus and the shinbone are also too close together to give the human leg in that position the same flexibility as the legs of four-legged animals. The example of children proves nothing at all. They are at an age when their natural strength has not yet developed and their limbs have not grown firm. One might just as well say dogs are not meant to walk because they only crawl for a few weeks after birth. Individual cases carry little weight against the universal practice of all human beings, including peoples who had no contact with others and could not have imitated them. A child abandoned in a forest before learning to walk and raised by an animal would follow its foster mother’s example and practice walking like her. Habit might give the child an ability that did not come from nature. Just as people without arms can, through practice, do with their feet everything we do with our hands, the child might eventually learn to use hands as feet.
Note 4
If any of my readers is so poor a natural scientist as to challenge my assumption that the earth is naturally fertile, I will answer with this passage:
“Plants draw much more of the substance they need for nourishment from air and water than from soil. When they decay, therefore, they return more to the soil than they took from it. A forest also catches rainwater by holding back vapor. So if a wood were left undisturbed for a very long time, the layer of soil that supports plant growth would increase considerably. But animals return less to the soil than they take from it, while people consume enormous amounts of wood and plants for fire and other uses. It follows that the layer of fertile soil in an inhabited country must always shrink, eventually becoming like the land of Arabia Petraea or that of so many other regions of the East. That is in fact the part of the world longest inhabited, and only salt and sand are found there: the fixed salts of plants and animals remain, while all their other parts evaporate.” M. de Buffon, Natural History.
To this one may add factual evidence: almost all the uninhabited islands discovered in recent centuries were full of trees and plants of every kind. History also tells us of the immense forests that had to be cleared all over the earth as it became more populated and developed. On this I have three further observations. First, if any plants can make up for the loss of plant matter caused by animals, as M. de Buffon argues, forests can do so especially well. Their crowns and leaves collect and absorb more water and vapor than other plants. Second, the loss of soil—that is, the loss of matter that supports plant growth—must speed up as land is cultivated more intensively and its more industrious inhabitants consume more of all its products. My third and most important observation is that tree fruits provide animals with more abundant food than other plants can. I tested this myself by comparing the yields of two plots equal in size and quality, one covered with chestnut trees and the other planted with wheat.
Note 5
Among four-legged animals, the two broadest ways to distinguish meat-eating species are by the shape of their teeth and the structure of their intestines. Animals that live only on plants all have flat teeth, like the horse, ox, sheep, and hare. Meat-eaters have pointed teeth, like the cat, dog, wolf, and fox. As for intestines, plant-eaters have some, such as the colon, that are not found in meat-eating animals. Since humans have teeth and intestines like those of plant-eating animals, it seems that they should naturally belong in that class. Anatomical observations confirm this view, and ancient records also strongly support it. “Dicaearchus,” says Saint Jerome, “reports in his Books of Greek Antiquities that under the reign of Saturn, when the earth was still fertile on its own, no one ate meat; everyone lived on fruits and vegetables that grew naturally.” (Lib. 2, Adv. Jovinian.) This shows how many arguments in my favor I have left aside. Prey is almost the only cause of fights among meat-eating animals, while plant-eaters live together in continual peace. If humans belonged to the latter class, they would clearly have found it much easier to survive in the state of nature, and had much less need and fewer occasions to leave it.
Note 6
All knowledge that requires reflection, all knowledge gained only by linking ideas together and improved only step by step, seems entirely beyond the reach of the wild human being. That is because he has no communication with others like himself: he lacks both the means of communicating and the needs that would make it necessary. His knowledge and skills are limited to jumping, running, fighting, throwing a stone, and climbing a tree. But although these are all he does, he does them much better than we do, since we have less need of them. And because they depend only on physical exercise, and cannot be passed from one person to another or improved across generations, the first human could have been just as skilled at them as his latest descendants.
Travelers’ accounts are full of examples of the strength and vigor of people among nations called barbarian and savage. They praise these people’s skill and speed almost as highly. All one needs to observe these things is a pair of eyes, so there is no reason not to believe eyewitnesses who report them. I take a few examples at random from the first books that come to hand.