Jean-Jacques Rousseau · Complete work
Notes, 2
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« Les Hottentots, dit Kolben, entendent mieux la pêche que les Européens du Cap. Leur habileté est égale au filet, à l’hameçon et au dard, dans les anses comme dans les rivières. Ils ne prennent pas moins habilement le poisson avec la main. Ils sont d’une adresse incomparable à la nage. Leur manière de nager a quelque chose de surprenant et qui leur est tout à fait propre. Ils nagent le corps droit et les mains étendues hors de l’eau, de sorte qu’ils paraissent marcher sur la terre. Dans la plus grande agitation de la mer et lorsque les flots forment autant de montagnes, ils dansent en quelque sorte sur le dos des vagues, montant et descendant comme un morceau de liège. » « Les Hottentots, dit encore le même auteur, sont d’une adresse surprenante à la chasse, et la légèreté de leur course passe l’imagination. » Il s’étonne qu’ils ne fassent pas plus souvent un mauvais usage de leur agilité, ce qui leur arrive pourtant quelquefois, comme on peut juger par l’exemple qu’il en donne: « Un matelot hollandais en débarquant au Cap chargea, dit-il, un Hottentot de le suivre à la ville avec un rouleau de tabac d’environ vingt livres. Lorsqu’ils furent tous deux à quelque distance de la troupe, le Hottentot demanda au matelot s’il savait courir. Courir! répond le Hollandais, oui, fort bien. Voyons, reprit l’Africain, et fuyant avec le tabac il disparut presque aussitôt. Le matelot confondu de cette merveilleuse vitesse ne pensa point à le poursuivre et ne revit jamais ni son tabac ni son porteur.
Ils ont la vue si prompte et la main si certaine que les Européens n’en approchent point. À cent pas, ils toucheront d’un coup de pierre une marque de la grandeur d’un demi-sol et ce qu’il y a de plus étonnant, c’est qu’au lieu de fixer comme nous les yeux sur le but, ils font des mouvements et des contorsions continuelles. Il semble que leur pierre soit portée par une main invisible. » Le P. du Tertre dit à peu près sur les sauvages des Antilles les mêmes choses qu’on vient de lire sur les Hottentots du cap de Bonne-Espérance. Il vante surtout leur justesse à tirer avec leurs flèches les oiseaux au vol et les poissons à la nage, qu’ils prennent ensuite en plongeant. Les sauvages de l’Amérique septentrionale ne sont pas moins célèbres par leur force et leur adresse, et voici un exemple qui pourra faire juger de celles des Indiens de l’Amérique méridionale. En l’année 1746, un Indien de Buenos Aires, ayant été condamné aux galères à Cadix, proposa au gouverneur de racheter sa liberté en exposant sa vie dans une fête publique. Il promit qu’il attaquerait seul le plus furieux taureau sans autre arme en main qu’une corde, qu’il le terrasserait, qu’il le saisirait avec sa corde par telle partie qu’on indiquerait, qu’il le sellerait, le briderait, le monterait, et combattrait, ainsi monté, deux autres taureaux des plus furieux qu’on ferait sortir du torillo et qu’il les mettrait tous à mort l’un après l’autre, dans l’instant qu’on le lui commanderait et sans le secours de personne; ce qui lui fut accordé. L’Indien tint parole et réussit dans tout ce qu’il avait promis; sur la manière dont il s’y prit et sur tout le détail du combat, on peut consulter le premier tome in-12 des Observations sur l’Histoire naturelle de M. Gautier, d’où ce fait est tiré, page 262.
Note 7
« La durée de la vie des chevaux, dit M. de Buffon, est comme dans toutes les autres espèces d’animaux proportionnée à la durée du temps de leur accroissement. L’homme, qui est quatorze ans à croître, peut vivre six ou sept fois autant de temps, c’est-à-dire quatre-vingt-dix ou cent ans, le cheval, dont l’accroissement se fait en quatre ans, peut vivre six ou sept fois autant, c’est-à-dire vingt-cinq ou trente ans. Les exemples qui pourraient être contraires à cette règle sont si rares qu’on ne doit pas même les regarder comme une exception dont on puisse tirer des conséquences; et comme les gros chevaux prennent leur accroissement en moins de temps que les chevaux fins, ils vivent aussi moins de temps et sont vieux dès l’âge de quinze ans. »
Note 8
Je crois voir entre les animaux carnassiers et les frugivores une autre différence encore plus générale que celle que j’ai remarquée dans la note de la page 163 puisque celle-ci s’étend jusqu’aux oiseaux. Cette différence consiste dans le nombre des petits, qui n’excède jamais deux à chaque portée, pour les espèces qui ne vivent que de végétaux et qui va ordinairement au-delà de ce nombre pour les animaux voraces. Il est aisé de connaître à cet égard la destination de la nature par le nombre des mamelles, qui n’est que de deux dans chaque femelle de la première espèce, comme la jument, la vache, la chèvre, la biche, la brebis, etc., et qui est toujours de six ou de huit dans les autres femelles comme la chienne, la chatte, la louve, la tigresse, etc. La poule, l’oie, la cane, qui sont toutes des oiseaux voraces ainsi que l’aigle, l’épervier, la chouette, pondent aussi et couvent un grand nombre d’œufs, ce qui n’arrive jamais à la colombe, à la tourterelle ni aux oiseaux, qui ne mangent absolument que du grain, lesquels ne pondent et ne couvent guère que deux œufs à la fois. La raison qu’on peut donner de cette différence est que les animaux qui ne vivent que d’herbes et de plantes, demeurant presque tout le jour à la pâture et étant forcés d’employer beaucoup de temps à se nourrir, ne pourraient suffire à allaiter plusieurs petits, au lieu que les voraces faisant leur repas presque en un instant peuvent plus aisément et plus souvent retourner à leurs petits et à leur chasse et réparer la dissipation d’une si grande quantité de lait. Il y aurait à tout ceci bien des observations particulières et des réflexions à faire; mais ce n’en est pas ici le lieu et il me suffit d’avoir montré dans cette partie le système le plus général de la nature, système qui fournit une nouvelle raison de tirer l’homme de la classe des animaux carnassiers et de le ranger parmi les espèces frugivores.
Note 9
Un auteur célèbre, calculant les biens et les maux de la vie humaine et comparant les deux sommes, a trouvé que la dernière surpassait l’autre de beaucoup et qu’à tout prendre la vie était pour l’homme un assez mauvais présent. Je ne suis point surpris de sa conclusion; il a tiré tous ses raisonnements de la constitution de l’homme civil: s’il fût remonté jusqu’à l’homme naturel, on peut juger qu’il eût trouvé des résultats très différents, qu’il eût aperçu que l’homme n’a guère de maux que ceux qu’il s’est donnés lui-même et que la nature eût été justifiée. Ce n’est pas sans peine que nous sommes parvenus à nous rendre si malheureux. Quand d’un côté l’on considère les immenses travaux des hommes, tant de sciences approfondies, tant d’arts inventés, tant de forces employées, des abîmes comblés, des montagnes rasées, des rochers brisés, des fleuves rendus navigables, des terres défrichées, des lacs creusés, des marais desséchés, des bâtiments énormes élevés sur la terre, la mer couverte de vaisseaux et de matelots, et que de l’autre on recherche avec un peu de méditation les vrais avantages qui ont résulté de tout cela pour le bonheur de l’espèce humaine, on ne peut qu’être frappé de l’étonnante disproportion qui règne entre ces choses, et déplorer l’aveuglement de l’homme qui, pour nourrir son fol orgueil et je ne sais quelle vaine admiration de lui-même, le fait courir avec ardeur après toutes les misères dont il est susceptible, et que la bienfaisante nature avait pris soin d’écarter de lui.
Les hommes sont méchants; une triste et continuelle expérience dispense de la preuve; cependant l’homme est naturellement bon, je crois l’avoir démontré; qu’est-ce donc qui peut l’avoir dépravé à ce point sinon les changements survenus dans sa constitution, les progrès qu’il a faits et les connaissances qu’il a acquises? Qu’on admire tant qu’on voudra la société humaine, il n’en sera pas moins vrai qu’elle porte nécessairement les hommes à s’entre-haïr à proportion que leurs intérêts se croisent, à se rendre mutuellement des services apparents et à se faire en effet tous les maux imaginables. Que peut-on penser d’un commerce où la raison de chaque particulier lui dicte des maximes directement contraires à celles que la raison publique prêche au corps de la société et où chacun trouve son compte dans le malheur d’autrui? Il n’y a peut-être pas un homme aisé à qui des héritiers avides et souvent ses propres enfants ne souhaitent la mort en secret, pas un vaisseau en mer dont le naufrage ne fût une bonne nouvelle pour quelque négociant, pas une maison qu’un débiteur ne voulût voir brûler avec tous les papiers qu’elle contient; pas un peuple qui ne se réjouisse des désastres de ses voisins. C’est ainsi que nous trouvons notre avantage dans le préjudice de nos semblables, et que la perte de l’un fait presque toujours la prospérité de l’autre, mais ce qu’il y de plus dangereux encore, c’est que les calamités publiques sont l’attente et l’espoir d’une multitude de particuliers. Les uns veulent des maladies, d’autres la moralité, d’autres la guerre, d’autres la famine; j’ai vu des hommes affreux pleurer de douleur aux apparences d’une année fertile, et le grand et funeste incendie de Londres, qui coûta la vie ou les biens à tant de malheureux, fit peut-être la fortune à plus de dix mille personnes. Je sais que Montaigne blâme l’Athénien Démades d’avoir fait punir un ouvrier qui vendant fort cher des cercueils gagnait beaucoup à la mort des citoyens, mais la raison que Montaigne allègue étant qu’il faudrait punir tout le monde, il est évident qu’elle confirme les miennes. Qu’on pénètre donc au travers de nos frivoles démonstrations de bienveillance ce qui se passe au fond des cœurs et qu’on réfléchisse à ce que doit être un état de choses où tous les hommes sont forcés de se caresser et de se détruire mutuellement et où ils naissent ennemis par devoir et fourbes par intérêt. Si l’on me répond que la société est tellement constituée que chaque homme gagne à servir les autres, je répliquerai que cela serait fort bien s’il ne gagnait encore plus à leur nuire. Il n’y a point de profit si légitime qui ne soit surpassé par celui qu’on peut faire illégitimement et le tort fait au prochain est toujours plus lucratif que les services. Il ne s’agit donc plus que de trouver les moyens de s’assurer l’impunité, et c’est à quoi les puissants emploient toutes leurs forces, et les faibles toutes leurs ruses.
L’homme sauvage, quand il a dîné, est en paix avec toute la nature, et l’ami de tous ses semblables. S’agit-il quelquefois de disputer son repas? Il n’en vient jamais aux coups sans avoir auparavant comparé la difficulté de vaincre avec celle de trouver ailleurs sa subsistance et comme l’orgueil ne se mêle pas du combat, il se termine par quelques coups de poing. Le vainqueur mange, le vaincu va chercher fortune, et tout est pacifié, mais chez l’homme en société, ce sont bien d’autres affaires; il s’agit premièrement de pourvoir au nécessaire, et puis au superflu; ensuite viennent les délices, et puis les immenses richesses, et puis des sujets, et puis des esclaves; il n’a pas un moment de relâche; ce qu’il y a de plus singulier, c’est que moins les besoins sont naturels et pressants, plus les passions augmentent, et, qui pis est, le pouvoir de les satisfaire; de sorte qu’après de longues prospérités, après avoir englouti bien des trésors et désolé bien des hommes, mon héros finira par tout égorger jusqu’à ce qu’il soit l’unique maître de l’univers. Tel est en abrégé le tableau moral, sinon de la vie humaine, au moins des prétentions secrètes du cœur de tout homme civilisé.
Comparez sans préjugés l’état de l’homme civil avec celui de l’homme sauvage et recherchez, si vous le pouvez, combien, outre sa méchanceté, ses besoins et ses misères, le premier a ouvert de nouvelles portes à la douleur à la mort. Si vous considérez les peines d’esprit qui nous consument, les passions violentes qui nous épuisent et nous désolent, les travaux excessifs dont les pauvres sont surchargés, la mollesse encore plus dangereuse à laquelle les riches s’abandonnent, et qui font mourir les uns de leurs besoins et les autres de leurs excès, si vous songez aux monstrueux mélanges des aliments, à leurs pernicieux assaisonnements, aux denrées corrompues, aux drogues falsifiées, aux friponneries de ceux qui les vendent, aux erreurs de ceux qui les administrent, au poison des vaisseaux dans lesquels on les prépare, si vous faites attention aux maladies épidémiques engendrées par le mauvais air parmi des multitudes d’hommes rassemblés, à celles qu’occasionnent la délicatesse de notre manière de vivre, les passages alternatifs de l’intérieur de nos maisons au grand air, l’usage des habillements pris ou quittés avec trop peu de précaution, et tous les soins que notre sensualité excessive a tournés en habitudes nécessaires et dont la négligence ou la privation nous coûte ensuite la vie ou la santé, si vous mettez en ligne de compte les incendies et les tremblements de terre qui, consumant ou renversant des villes entières, en font périr les habitants par milliers, en un mot, si vous réunissez les dangers que toutes ces causes assemblent continuellement sur nos têtes, vous sentirez combien la nature nous fait payer cher le mépris que nous avons fait de ses leçons.
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.
“The Hottentots,” says Kolben, “are more skilled at fishing than the Europeans at the Cape. They are equally adept with net, hook, and spear, in coves and rivers alike. They catch fish with their hands no less skillfully. Their skill at swimming is incomparable. There is something astonishing and entirely their own about their way of swimming. They swim with their bodies upright and their hands held out of the water, so that they appear to be walking on land. In the fiercest turmoil of the sea, when the waves rise like so many mountains, they seem almost to dance upon their backs, rising and falling like a piece of cork.” “The Hottentots,” the same author goes on, “show astonishing skill in hunting, and their fleetness of foot surpasses imagination.” He wonders that they do not more often make bad use of their agility, though they sometimes do, as one may judge from the example he gives: “A Dutch sailor disembarking at the Cape,” he says, “charged a Hottentot with following him into town carrying a roll of tobacco weighing about twenty pounds. When they had both gone some distance from the company, the Hottentot asked the sailor if he could run. ‘Run!’ answered the Dutchman. ‘Yes, very well.’ ‘Let's see,’ replied the African; and, fleeing with the tobacco, he disappeared almost at once. The sailor, dumbfounded by such astonishing speed, did not think of pursuing him and never saw either his tobacco or its carrier again.
“They have such quick sight and so sure a hand that Europeans cannot approach them. At a hundred paces they can strike with a stone a target the size of a half-sol coin; and what is most astonishing is that, instead of fixing their eyes on the target as we do, they keep moving and twisting their bodies. It seems as though an invisible hand carried their stone.” Father du Tertre says of the savages of the Antilles much the same things we have just read about the Hottentots of the Cape of Good Hope. He praises above all their accuracy in shooting with arrows at birds in flight and fish in the water, which they then catch by diving. The savages of North America are no less celebrated for their strength and dexterity; and here is an example by which to judge those of the Indians of South America. In the year 1746, an Indian from Buenos Aires who had been condemned to the galleys at Cadiz proposed to the governor that he redeem his liberty by risking his life at a public festival. He promised that, alone and with no weapon in his hand but a rope, he would attack the most furious bull, throw it to the ground, seize it with his rope by whatever part they specified, saddle it, bridle it, mount it, and, so mounted, fight two more of the fiercest bulls brought out of the torillo, killing them all, one after another, the moment he was ordered to do so, without anyone's help. His proposal was accepted. The Indian kept his word and succeeded in everything he had promised; for his method and all the details of the fight, one may consult the first duodecimo volume of M. Gautier's Observations on Natural History, from which this account is taken, page 262.
Note 7
“The length of horses' lives,” says M. de Buffon, “is, as in all other species of animals, proportional to the length of time they take to grow. Man, who takes fourteen years to grow, can live six or seven times as long, that is, ninety or a hundred years; the horse, whose growth takes four years, can live six or seven times as long, that is, twenty-five or thirty years. Instances that might contradict this rule are so rare that they should not even be regarded as an exception from which any conclusion could be drawn; and as large horses finish growing sooner than fine-boned horses, they also live less long and are old by the age of fifteen.”
Note 8
I believe I see another difference between carnivorous and fruit-eating animals, one even more general than the difference I noted in the note on page 163, since this one extends even to birds. This difference lies in the number of young, which never exceeds two in each birth among species living only on plants and ordinarily exceeds that number among voracious animals. Nature's design in this regard is easy to discern from the number of teats, which is only two in each female of the first kind, such as the mare, cow, goat, doe, ewe, etc., and is always six or eight among other females, such as the bitch, cat, she-wolf, tigress, etc. The hen, goose, and duck, which are all voracious birds, as are the eagle, hawk, and owl, also lay and brood a great many eggs; this never happens with the dove, the turtledove, or birds that eat nothing but grain, which generally lay and brood only two eggs at a time. The reason one can give for this difference is that animals living only on grasses and plants spend almost the whole day grazing and are obliged to devote much time to feeding themselves; they could not manage to nurse several young, whereas voracious animals, eating almost in an instant, can return more easily and more often to their young and their hunt, and replace so great an expenditure of milk. Many particular observations and reflections could be made on all this; but this is not the place for them, and it is enough for me to have shown here nature's most general system, a system that gives us a further reason to remove man from the class of carnivorous animals and place him among the fruit-eating species.
Note 9
A celebrated author, reckoning up the goods and evils of human life and comparing the two totals, found that the latter far surpassed the former and that, all things considered, life was a rather poor gift to man. His conclusion does not surprise me; he drew all his arguments from the constitution of civil man. Had he gone back as far as natural man, we may judge that he would have found very different results, perceived that man has scarcely any ills except those he has brought upon himself, and vindicated nature. It has taken no little effort for us to make ourselves so unhappy. When on the one hand we consider the immense labors of men, so many sciences deeply studied, so many arts invented, so much strength expended, chasms filled in, mountains leveled, rocks broken apart, rivers made navigable, lands cleared, lakes dug, marshes drained, enormous buildings raised upon the earth, the sea covered with ships and sailors; and when on the other we examine, with a little reflection, the true benefits all this has brought to the happiness of the human species, we cannot fail to be struck by the astounding disproportion between these things and to lament man's blindness: to feed his foolish pride and some vain admiration of himself, he races eagerly after every misery to which he is liable, though beneficent nature had taken care to keep them from him.
Men are wicked; a sad and constant experience spares us the proof. Yet man is naturally good: I believe I have demonstrated it. What, then, could have corrupted him so deeply if not the changes in his constitution, the advances he has made, and the knowledge he has acquired? Let human society be admired as much as anyone likes; it remains no less true that it necessarily leads men to hate one another in proportion as their interests collide, to render one another services in appearance and in fact to inflict every imaginable evil upon one another. What are we to think of dealings in which each person's reason dictates maxims directly contrary to those that public reason preaches to the whole of society, and in which each profits by another's misfortune? Perhaps there is not one prosperous man whose greedy heirs, often his own children, do not secretly wish for his death; not one ship at sea whose wreck would not be good news to some merchant; not one house that a debtor would not wish to see burned down with all the papers it contains; not one people that does not rejoice in the disasters of its neighbors. Thus we find our advantage in harm done to our fellows, and one person's loss is almost always another's prosperity. More dangerous still, public calamities are the expectation and hope of a multitude of individuals. Some want disease, others death, others war, others famine; I have seen dreadful men weep with grief at the prospect of a fertile year, and the great and disastrous fire of London, which cost so many unfortunate people their lives or their property, perhaps made the fortunes of more than ten thousand others. I know that Montaigne censures the Athenian Demades for having punished a workman who sold coffins at very high prices and profited greatly from the death of citizens; but since Montaigne's reason is that everyone would have to be punished, clearly it supports my own arguments. Let us look, then, past our frivolous displays of benevolence into what goes on in the depths of our hearts, and reflect on what must come of an order of things in which all men are compelled to caress and destroy one another, and are born enemies by duty and cheats by interest. If I am told that society is so constituted that every man gains by serving others, I shall answer that this would be excellent if he did not gain even more by harming them. There is no legitimate profit that cannot be surpassed by what can be made illegitimately, and injury to one's neighbor is always more lucrative than service. All that remains, then, is to find ways of securing impunity; to this the powerful devote all their strength and the weak all their cunning.
Savage man, once he has eaten his dinner, is at peace with all nature and a friend to all his fellows. If he sometimes has to fight over his meal, he never comes to blows without first comparing the difficulty of winning with that of finding food elsewhere; and since pride plays no part in the fight, it ends after a few punches. The victor eats, the defeated goes off to seek his fortune, and peace is restored. But with man in society matters are altogether different: first he must provide for necessities, then for superfluities; next come luxuries, then immense riches, then subjects, then slaves. He has not a moment's respite. What is strangest is that the less natural and pressing his needs become, the more his passions increase, and, worse still, his power to satisfy them; so that after long prosperity, after swallowing up vast treasures and laying waste to many men, my hero will end by slaughtering everyone until he is the sole master of the universe. Such, in brief, is the moral picture, if not of human life, at least of the secret aspirations in the heart of every civilized man.
Compare without prejudice the condition of civil man with that of savage man, and examine, if you can, how many new gates to pain and death the former has opened, over and above his wickedness, needs, and miseries. Consider the mental torments that consume us, the violent passions that exhaust and devastate us, the excessive toil heaped upon the poor, the still more dangerous indulgence to which the rich surrender themselves, so that some die from want and others from excess. Think of monstrous mixtures of foods, their harmful seasonings, spoiled provisions, adulterated drugs, the frauds of those who sell them, the mistakes of those who administer them, the poison in the vessels in which they are prepared. Attend to epidemic diseases bred by foul air among crowds of people gathered together; to those brought on by the delicacy of our way of life, by moving back and forth between our houses and the open air, by putting on or taking off clothes with too little care, and by all the precautions that our excessive sensuality has made into necessary habits, neglect or deprivation of which afterward costs us life or health. Add the fires and earthquakes that consume or overturn whole cities and kill their inhabitants by the thousand. In a word, bring together the dangers that all these causes continually gather over our heads, and you will feel how dearly nature makes us pay for disregarding her lessons.
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).
“The Hottentots,” says Kolben, “are better at fishing than the Europeans at the Cape. They are equally skilled with the net, hook, and spear, in coves and in rivers. They are no less skilled at catching fish with their hands. Their swimming skill is unmatched. Their way of swimming is surprising and entirely their own. They hold their bodies upright and their hands out of the water, so that they seem to walk on land. Even in the roughest sea, when the waves rise like mountains, they seem to dance on the backs of the waves, bobbing up and down like a cork.” “The Hottentots,” the same author continues, “show amazing skill in hunting, and their running speed is beyond belief.” He is surprised that they do not more often misuse their agility, although they sometimes do, as his example shows: “A Dutch sailor landing at the Cape,” he says, “asked a Hottentot to carry a roll of tobacco weighing about twenty pounds and follow him into town. When they were both some distance from the group, the Hottentot asked the sailor whether he could run. ‘Run!’ the Dutchman answered. ‘Yes, very well.’ ‘Let’s see,’ replied the African. He ran away with the tobacco and almost at once disappeared. The sailor, stunned by this extraordinary speed, did not even think of chasing him, and never saw either his tobacco or its carrier again.”
“They have such quick eyes and such accurate hands that Europeans cannot come close. At a hundred paces they can hit a target the size of a half-sol coin with a stone. What is even more surprising is that, instead of fixing their eyes on the target as we do, they keep moving and twisting their bodies. Their stone seems to be carried by an invisible hand.” Father du Tertre says much the same thing about the Indigenous people of the Antilles as we have just read about the Hottentots of the Cape of Good Hope. He especially praises their accuracy in shooting birds in flight and swimming fish with arrows; they then dive to retrieve them. The Indigenous peoples of North America are no less famous for their strength and skill. Here is an example that may show the abilities of the Indigenous peoples of South America. In 1746, an Indigenous man from Buenos Aires, sentenced to serve in the galleys at Cádiz, offered the governor a way to win back his freedom by risking his life at a public festival. He promised to face the fiercest bull alone with nothing in his hand but a rope. He would throw it down, catch it by whatever part of its body the governor specified, saddle it, bridle it, and ride it. On its back he would fight two more of the fiercest bulls brought out of the torillo, and kill them one after the other, at the moment he was ordered to do so, without anyone’s help. The governor agreed. The man kept his word and succeeded in everything he had promised. For his method and all the details of the fight, see the first in-12 volume of M. Gautier’s Observations on Natural History, from which this account is taken, page 262.
Note 7
“The length of horses’ lives,” says M. de Buffon, “is, as with all other animal species, proportional to the time they take to grow. A human takes fourteen years to grow and can live six or seven times as long, that is, ninety or a hundred years. A horse takes four years to grow and can live six or seven times as long, that is, twenty-five or thirty years. Examples that might contradict this rule are so rare that they should not even be treated as exceptions from which conclusions can be drawn. And since large horses finish growing sooner than fine-bred horses, they also live less long and are old by the age of fifteen.”
Note 8
I think I see another difference between meat-eating and plant-eating animals, more general even than the one I noted in the note on page 163, since it extends to birds. This difference lies in the number of young. Species that live only on plants never have more than two young in a litter, while meat-eating animals ordinarily have more than two. Here we can easily see nature’s intention from the number of teats. Females of the first kind, such as mares, cows, goats, does, and ewes, have only two. Other females, such as female dogs, cats, wolves, and tigers, always have six or eight. Hens, geese, and ducks are all meat-eating birds, as are eagles, hawks, and owls. They also lay and hatch many eggs. Pigeons, turtledoves, and birds that eat nothing but grain never do this; they usually lay and hatch only two eggs at a time. The reason we may give for this difference is that animals living only on grasses and plants spend almost the whole day grazing. Since they must devote so much time to feeding themselves, they could not nurse several young. Meat-eaters, by contrast, eat a meal almost at once. They can return to their young and to hunting more easily and more often, and replace such a large supply of milk. Many specific observations and reflections could be made about all this, but this is not the place for them. It is enough that I have shown here nature’s most general system. That system provides another reason to remove humans from the class of meat-eating animals and place them among plant-eating species.
Note 9
A famous author calculated the good and bad things in human life and compared the two totals. He found that the bad things far outweighed the good and that, taken as a whole, life was a rather poor gift to humans. His conclusion does not surprise me. All his reasoning came from the condition of people in civil society. If he had gone back to natural man, we can expect that his results would have been very different. He would have seen that people have few troubles except those they bring on themselves, and nature would have been cleared of blame. It has taken a good deal of effort for us to make ourselves so unhappy. On the one hand, think of humanity’s enormous works: so many sciences thoroughly studied, so many arts invented, so much strength put to use; chasms filled, mountains leveled, rocks broken, rivers made navigable, lands cleared, lakes dug, marshes drained, huge buildings raised on land, and the sea covered with ships and sailors. On the other hand, stop to consider what real benefits all this has brought to human happiness. The startling gap between the two cannot fail to strike us. We can only regret the blindness that drives people to chase eagerly after every misery they are capable of suffering, just to feed their foolish pride and a vain admiration of themselves. Kind nature had taken care to keep these miseries away from them.
People are wicked; sad and constant experience makes proof unnecessary. Yet human beings are naturally good, as I believe I have shown. What, then, could have corrupted them so deeply except the changes in their condition, the progress they have made, and the knowledge they have gained? Admire human society as much as you like. It remains true that society necessarily leads people to hate each other as their interests come into conflict, to do each other favors in appearance, and in reality to inflict every imaginable harm on each other. What can we think of a system of dealings in which each person’s reasoning tells him to follow rules directly opposed to those that public reason preaches to society as a whole? In it, each person profits from other people’s misfortunes. There may not be a single well-off person whose greedy heirs, often his own children, do not secretly wish him dead; not a single ship at sea whose wreck would not be good news to some merchant; not a single house that some debtor would not like to see burn down, with all the papers inside it; not a single people that does not rejoice at its neighbors’ disasters. In this way we profit from the harm done to others, and one person’s loss almost always brings another person prosperity. More dangerous still, a great many people look forward to public disasters and hope for them. Some want disease, others mortality, others war, others famine. I have seen dreadful people weep with grief at the prospect of a year of plentiful harvests. The great and disastrous fire of London, which cost so many unfortunate people their lives or property, may have made the fortunes of more than ten thousand others. I know that Montaigne criticizes the Athenian Demades for having a workman punished because he sold coffins at a high price and made a great deal of money from his fellow citizens’ deaths. But Montaigne’s reason is that everyone would have to be punished; clearly, this supports my own arguments. Let us look past our empty displays of goodwill to see what is going on deep in people’s hearts. Consider what life must be like where everyone is forced to flatter and destroy one another, where people are born enemies out of duty and cheats for profit. If someone tells me that society is arranged so that everyone gains by serving others, I will reply that this would be very good if people did not gain even more by harming them. No legitimate profit cannot be exceeded by an illegitimate one, and harming a neighbor is always more profitable than helping one. The only remaining task is to find ways to avoid punishment. The powerful use all their strength for this, and the weak use all their cunning.
When a wild human being has eaten his meal, he is at peace with all nature and a friend to all others like him. Does he sometimes have to fight over food? He never comes to blows before comparing how hard it would be to win with how hard it would be to find food somewhere else. Pride plays no part in the fight, so it ends with a few punches. The winner eats, the loser goes elsewhere to try his luck, and peace returns. But for a person living in society, things are very different. First he must secure what he needs, then what he does not need. Next come luxuries, then vast wealth, then subjects, then slaves. He never has a moment’s rest. Most remarkably, the less natural and pressing these needs are, the stronger his passions become—and, worse, the greater his power to satisfy them. So after a long run of success, after swallowing up many fortunes and laying waste to many lives, my hero will end by slaughtering everyone until he alone rules the universe. This is a brief moral picture, if not of human life, then at least of the secret ambitions in the heart of every civilized person.
Compare without prejudice the condition of a person in civil society with that of a wild human being. Try, if you can, to count how many new ways the first has opened up for pain and death, besides his wickedness, needs, and miseries. Think of the mental suffering that eats away at us; the violent passions that drain and devastate us; the excessive work imposed on the poor; the even more dangerous softness in which the rich indulge, so that the poor die for lack of necessities and the rich from excess. Think of the monstrous combinations of foods, their harmful seasonings, spoiled goods, adulterated drugs, the fraud of those who sell them, the errors of those who administer them, and poison from the vessels in which they are prepared. Think of the epidemics caused by foul air wherever great crowds of people gather, and the illnesses brought on by our delicate way of life, by moving back and forth between our homes and the open air, and by putting on or taking off clothes too carelessly. Think also of all the forms of care that excessive indulgence has turned into necessities, so that neglecting or going without them later costs us our health or our lives. Add the fires and earthquakes that consume or overturn whole cities, killing thousands of inhabitants. In short, put together the dangers that all these causes constantly bring down on our heads. Then you will see how dearly nature makes us pay for ignoring her lessons.