Jean-Jacques Rousseau · Complete work
Part One, 3
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Il me serait aisé, si cela m’était nécessaire, d’appuyer ce sentiment par les faits, et de faire voir que chez toutes les nations du monde, les progrès de l’esprit se sont précisément proportionnés aux besoins que les peuples avaient reçus de la nature, ou auxquels les circonstances les avaient assujettis, et par conséquent aux passions, qui les portaient à pourvoir à ces besoins. Je montrerais en Égypte les arts naissants, et s’étendant avec les débordements du Nil; je suivrais leur progrès chez les Grecs, où l’on les vit germer, croître, et s’élever jusqu’aux cieux parmi les sables et les rochers de l’Attique, sans pouvoir prendre racine sur les bords fertiles de l’Eurotas; je remarquerais qu’en général les peuples du Nord sont plus industrieux que ceux du Midi, parce qu’ils peuvent moins se passer de l’être, comme si la nature voulait ainsi égaliser les choses, en donnant aux esprits la fertilité qu’elle refuse à la terre.
Mais sans recourir aux témoignages incertains de l’histoire, qui ne voit que tout semble éloigner de l’homme sauvage la tentation et les moyens de cesser de l’être? Son imagination ne lui peint rien; son cœur ne lui demande rien. Ses modiques besoins se trouvent si aisément sous la main, et il est si loin du degré de connaissances nécessaires pour désirer d’en acquérir de plus grandes qu’il ne peut avoir ni prévoyance, ni curiosité. Le spectacle de la nature lui devient indifférent, à force de lui devenir familier: c’est toujours le même ordre, ce sont toujours les mêmes révolutions; il n’a pas l’esprit de s’étonner des plus grandes merveilles; et ce n’est pas chez lui qu’il faut chercher la philosophie dont l’homme a besoin, pour savoir observer une fois ce qu’il a vu tous les jours. Son âme, que rien n’agite, se livre au seul sentiment de son existence actuelle, sans aucune idée de l’avenir, quelque prochain qu’il puisse être, et ses projets, bornés comme ses vues, s’étendent à peine jusqu’à la fin de la journée. Tel est encore aujourd’hui le degré de prévoyance du Caraïbe: il vend le matin son lit de coton, et vient pleurer le soir pour le racheter, faute d’avoir prévu qu’il en aurait besoin pour la nuit prochaine.
Plus on médite sur ce sujet, plus la distance des pures sensations aux plus simples connaissances s’agrandit à nos regards; et il est impossible de concevoir comment un homme aurait pu par ses seules forces, sans le secours de la communication, et sans l’aiguillon de la nécessité, franchir un si grand intervalle. Combien de siècles se sont peut-être écoulés, avant que les hommes aient été à portée de voir d’autre feu que celui du ciel! combien ne leur a-t-il pas fallu de différents hasards pour apprendre les usages les plus communs de cet élément! combien de fois ne l’ont-ils pas laissé éteindre, avant que d’avoir acquis l’art de le reproduire! et combien de fois peut-être chacun de ces secrets n’est-il pas mort avec celui qui l’avait découvert! Que dirons-nous de l’agriculture, art qui demande tant de travail et de prévoyance, qui tient à d’autres arts, qui très évidemment n’est praticable que dans une société au moins commencée, et qui ne nous sert pas tant à tirer de la terre des aliments qu’elle fournirait bien sans cela qu’à la forcer aux préférences qui sont le plus de notre goût! Mais supposons que les hommes eussent tellement multiplié que les productions naturelles n’eussent plus suffi pour les nourrir, supposition qui, pour le dire en passant, montrerait un grand avantage pour l’espèce humaine dans cette manière de vivre; supposons que, sans forges, et sans ateliers, les instruments du labourage fussent tombés du ciel entre les mains des sauvages; que ces hommes eussent vaincu la haine mortelle qu’ils ont tous pour un travail continu; qu’ils eussent appris à prévoir de si loin leurs besoins, qu’ils eussent deviné comment il faut cultiver la terre, semer les grains, et planter les arbres; qu’ils eussent trouvé l’art de moudre le blé, et de mettre le raisin en fermentation; toutes choses qu’il leur a fallu faire enseigner par les dieux, faute de concevoir comment ils les auraient apprises d’eux-mêmes: quel serait après cela, l’homme assez insensé pour se tourmenter à la culture d’un champ qui sera dépouillé par le premier venu, homme ou bête indifféremment, à qui cette moisson conviendra? et comment chacun pourra-t-il se résoudre à passer sa vie à un travail pénible, dont il est d’autant plus sûr de ne pas recueillir le prix qu’il lui sera plus nécessaire? En un mot, comment cette situation pourra-t-elle porter les hommes à cultiver la terre, tant qu’elle ne sera point partagée entre eux, c’est-à-dire tant que l’état de nature ne sera point anéanti?
Quand nous voudrions supposer un homme sauvage aussi habile dans l’art de penser que nous le font nos philosophes; quand nous en ferions, à leur exemple, un philosophe lui-même, découvrant seul les plus sublimes vérités, se faisant par des suites de raisonnements très-abstraits des maximes de justice et de raison tirées de l’amour de l’ordre en général, ou de la volonté connue de son créateur; en un mot, quand nous lui supposerions dans l’esprit autant d’intelligence et de lumières qu’il doit avoir, et qu’on lui trouve en effet de pesanteur et de stupidité, quelle utilité retirerait l’espèce de toute cette métaphysique, qui ne pourrait se communiquer et qui périrait avec l’individu qui l’aurait inventée? quel progrès pourrait faire le genre humain épars dans les bois parmi les animaux? et jusqu’à quel point pourraient se perfectionner, et s’éclairer mutuellement des hommes qui, n’ayant ni domicile fixe ni aucun besoin l’un de l’autre, se rencontreraient, peut-être à peine deux fois en leur vie, sans se connaître, et sans se parler?
Qu’on songe de combien d’idées nous sommes redevables à l’usage de la parole; combien la grammaire exerce et facilite les opérations de l’esprit; et qu’on pense aux peines inconcevables, et au temps infini qu’a dû coûter la première invention des langues: qu’on joigne ces réflexions aux précédentes, et l’on jugera combien il eût fallu de milliers de siècles, pour développer successivement dans l’esprit humain les opérations dont il était capable.
Qu’il me soit permis de considérer un instant les embarras de l’origine des langues. Je pourrais me contenter de citer ou de répéter ici les recherches que M. l’Abbé de Condillac a faites sur cette matière, qui toutes confirment pleinement mon sentiment, et qui, peut-être, m’en ont donné la première idée. Mais la manière dont ce philosophe résout les difficultés qu’il se fait à lui-même sur l’origine des signes institués, montrant qu’il a supposé ce que je mets en question, savoir une sorte de société déjà établie entre les inventeurs du langage, je crois en renvoyant à ses réflexions devoir y joindre les miennes pour exposer les mêmes difficultés dans le jour qui convient à mon sujet. La première qui se présente est d’imaginer comment elles purent devenir nécessaires; car les hommes n’ayant nulle correspondance entre eux, ni aucun besoin d’en avoir, on ne conçoit ni la nécessité de cette invention, ni sa possibilité, si elle ne fut pas indispensable. Je dirais bien, comme beaucoup d’autres, que les langues sont nées dans le commerce domestique des pères, des mères et des enfants: mais outre que cela ne résoudrait point les objections, ce serait commettre la faute de ceux qui raisonnant sur l’état de nature, y transportent les idées prises dans la société, voient toujours la famille rassemblée dans une même habitation, et ses membres gardant entre eux une union aussi intime et aussi permanente que parmi nous, où tant d’intérêts communs les réunissent; au lieu que dans cet état primitif, n’ayant ni maison, ni cabanes, ni propriété d’aucune espèce, chacun se logeait au hasard, et souvent pour une seule nuit; les mâles, et les femelles s’unissaient fortuitement selon la rencontre, l’occasion, et le désir, sans que la parole fût un interprète fort nécessaire des choses qu’ils avaient à se dire: ils se quittaient avec la même facilité (Note 12); la mère allaitait d’abord ses enfants pour son propre besoin; puis l’habitude les lui ayant rendus chers, elle les nourrissait ensuite pour le leur; sitôt qu’ils avaient la force de chercher leur pâture, ils ne tardaient pas à quitter la mère elle-même; et comme il n’y avait presque point d’autre moyen de se retrouver que de ne pas se perdre de vue, ils en étaient bientôt au point de ne pas même se reconnaître les uns les autres. Remarquez encore que l’enfant ayant tous ses besoins à expliquer, et par conséquent plus de choses à dire à la mère que la mère à l’enfant, c’est lui qui doit faire les plus grands frais de l’invention, et que la langue qu’il emploie doit être en grande partie son propre ouvrage; ce qui multiplie autant les langues qu’il y a d’individus pour les parler, à quoi contribue encore la vie errante et vagabonde qui ne laisse à aucun idiome le temps de prendre de la consistance; car de dire que la mère dicte à l’enfant les mots dont il devra se servir pour lui demander telle ou telle chose, cela montre bien comment on enseigne des langues déjà formées, mais cela n’apprend point comment elles se forment.
Supposons cette première difficulté vaincue: franchissons pour un moment l’espace immense qui dut se trouver entre le pur état de nature et le besoin des langues; et cherchons, en les supposant nécessaires (Note 13), comment elles purent commencer à s’établir. Nouvelle difficulté pire encore que la précédente; car si les hommes ont eu besoin de la parole pour apprendre à penser, ils ont eu bien plus besoin encore de savoir penser pour trouver l’art de la parole; et quand on comprendrait comment les sons de la voix ont été pris pour les interprètes conventionnels de nos idées, il resterait toujours à savoir quels ont pu être les interprètes mêmes de cette convention pour les idées qui, n’ayant point un objet sensible, ne pouvaient s’indiquer ni par le geste, ni par la voix, de sorte qu’à peine peut-on former des conjectures supportables sur la naissance de cet art de communiquer ses pensées, et d’établir un commerce entre les esprits: art sublime qui est déjà si loin de son origine, mais que le philosophe voit encore à une si prodigieuse distance de sa perfection qu’il n’y a point d’homme assez hardi pour assurer qu’il y arriverait jamais, quand les révolutions que le temps amène nécessairement seraient suspendues en sa faveur, que les préjugés sortiraient des académies ou se tairaient devant elles, et qu’elles pourraient s’occuper de cet objet épineux, durant des siècles entiers sans interruption.
Le premier langage de l’homme, le langage le plus universel, le plus énergique, et le seul dont il eut besoin, avant qu’il fallût persuader des hommes assemblés, est le cri de la nature. Comme ce cri n’était arraché que par une sorte d’instinct dans les occasions pressantes, pour implorer du secours dans les grands dangers, ou du soulagement dans les maux violents, il n’était pas d’un grand usage dans le cours ordinaire de la vie, où règnent des sentiments plus modérés. Quand les idées des hommes commencèrent à s’étendre et à se multiplier, et qu’il s’établit entre eux une communication plus étroite, ils cherchèrent des signes plus nombreux et un langage plus étendu: ils multiplièrent les inflexions de la voix, et y joignirent les gestes, qui, par leur nature, sont plus expressifs, et dont le sens dépend moins d’une détermination antérieure. Ils exprimaient donc les objets visibles et mobiles par des gestes, et ceux qui frappent l’ouïe, par des sons imitatifs: mais comme le geste n’indique guère que les objets présents, ou faciles à décrire, et les actions visibles; qu’il n’est pas d’un usage universel, puisque l’obscurité, ou l’interposition d’un corps le rendent inutile, et qu’il exige l’attention plutôt qu’il ne l’excite, on s’avisa enfin de lui substituer les articulations de la voix, qui, sans avoir le même rapport avec certaines idées, sont plus propres à les représenter toutes, comme signes institués; substitution qui ne put se faire que d’un commun consentement, et d’une manière assez difficile à pratiquer pour des hommes dont les organes grossiers n’avaient encore aucun exercice, et plus difficile encore à concevoir en elle-même, puisque cet accord unanime dut être motivé, et que la parole paraît avoir été fort nécessaire, pour établir l’usage de la parole.
On doit juger que les premiers mots, dont les hommes firent usage, eurent dans leur esprit une signification beaucoup plus étendue que n’ont ceux qu’on emploie dans les langues déjà formées, et qu’ignorant la division du discours en ses parties constitutives, ils donnèrent d’abord à chaque mot le sens d’une proposition entière. Quand ils commencèrent à distinguer le sujet d’avec l’attribut, et le verbe d’avec le nom, ce qui ne fut pas un médiocre effort de génie, les substantifs ne furent d’abord qu’autant de noms propres, l’infinitif fut le seul temps des verbes, et à l’égard des adjectifs la notion ne s’en dut développer que fort difficilement, parce que tout adjectif est un mot abstrait, et que les abstractions sont des opérations pénibles, et peu naturelles. Chaque objet reçut d’abord un nom particulier, sans égard aux genres, et aux espèces, que ces premiers instituteurs n’étaient pas en état de distinguer; et tous les individus se présentèrent isolés à leur esprit, comme ils le sont dans le tableau de la nature. Si un chêne s’appelait A, un autre chêne s’appelait B: de sorte que plus les connaissances étaient bornées, et plus le dictionnaire devint étendu. L’embarras de toute cette nomenclature ne put être levé facilement: car pour ranger les êtres sous des dénominations communes, et génériques, il en fallait connaître les propriétés et les différences; il fallait des observations, et des définitions, c’est-à-dire, de l’histoire naturelle et de la métaphysique, beaucoup plus que les hommes de ce temps-là n’en pouvaient avoir.
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.
If it were necessary, I could easily support this view with facts and show that among all the nations of the world, the progress of the mind has been exactly proportionate to the needs given each people by nature or imposed on them by circumstances, and therefore to the passions that drove them to meet those needs. I would show the arts arising in Egypt and spreading with the floods of the Nile. I would follow their progress among the Greeks, where they were seen to sprout, grow, and rise to the heavens among the sands and rocks of Attica, yet could take no root on the fertile banks of the Eurotas. I would observe that northern peoples are generally more industrious than southern ones because they can less afford not to be, as though nature meant to balance things by giving their minds the fertility she denies their soil.
But without appealing to the uncertain testimony of history, who does not see that everything seems to remove from savage man both the temptation and the means to cease being savage? His imagination paints him nothing; his heart asks for nothing. His modest needs are so easily met close at hand, and he is so far from the degree of knowledge required even to wish for greater knowledge, that he can have neither foresight nor curiosity. The spectacle of nature becomes indifferent to him through familiarity: it is always the same order, always the same cycles. His mind does not know how to wonder at the greatest marvels, and in him we must not look for the philosophy a man needs if he is to know how to observe, even once, what he has seen every day. His soul, untroubled by anything, surrenders to the mere feeling of its present existence, without any idea of the future, however near it may be; his plans, as limited as his horizon, scarcely extend to the end of the day. Such is even now the foresight of the Carib: he sells his cotton bed in the morning and comes back weeping in the evening to buy it again, having failed to foresee that he would need it the coming night.
The more we meditate on this subject, the wider the distance between mere sensations and the simplest knowledge appears to us; and it is impossible to conceive how a man could have crossed so vast an interval by his own powers alone, without the aid of communication and without the spur of necessity. How many centuries may have passed before men had occasion to see any fire but that of the sky! How many different accidents must have been required for them to learn the commonest uses of this element! How many times must they have let it go out before mastering the art of making it again! And how often, perhaps, did each of these secrets die with its discoverer! What shall we say of agriculture, an art requiring so much labor and foresight, dependent on other arts, quite clearly practicable only in a society that has at least begun to form, and useful to us less for drawing food from the earth, which would readily provide it anyway, than for forcing the earth to yield the things we most prefer? But suppose men had multiplied so much that nature's produce could no longer feed them—a supposition which, incidentally, would show a great advantage for the human species in that way of life. Suppose that without forges or workshops implements of cultivation had fallen from heaven into savage hands; that these men had overcome the mortal hatred they all feel for continuous work; that they had learned to foresee their needs so far ahead as to divine how to till the land, sow grain, and plant trees; that they had discovered how to grind wheat and ferment grapes—all things they had to have the gods teach them, because no one could conceive how they learned them by themselves. After all this, what man would be foolish enough to torment himself cultivating a field that the first comer, man or beast alike, would strip if its harvest suited him? How could anyone resolve to spend his life on painful labor when he is all the surer of not reaping its reward the more he needs it? In a word, how could such a situation lead men to cultivate the land so long as it had not been divided among them—that is, so long as the state of nature had not been destroyed?
Even if we wished to suppose a savage man as skilled in the art of thinking as our philosophers make him; even if, following their example, we made him a philosopher himself, discovering the most sublime truths alone, deriving maxims of justice and reason through chains of highly abstract reasoning from love of order in general or from the known will of his creator; in a word, even if we supposed him to have as much intelligence and insight in his mind as he must have, and indeed is found to have, heaviness and stupidity—what benefit would the species draw from all this metaphysics, which could not be communicated and would perish with the individual who invented it? What progress could humankind make, scattered among animals in the woods? And how far could men improve or enlighten one another if, having no fixed home and no need of one another, they met perhaps scarcely twice in their lives, without knowing or speaking to each other?
Consider how many ideas we owe to the use of speech; how much grammar exercises and assists the workings of the mind; and consider the inconceivable effort and boundless time the first invention of languages must have cost. Add these reflections to the preceding ones, and one may judge how many thousands of centuries would have been required to develop, one by one, the operations of which the human mind was capable.
Allow me to consider for a moment the difficulties surrounding the origin of languages. I could content myself with citing or repeating here the investigations that the Abbé de Condillac has made on this subject, all of which fully support my view and perhaps first gave me the idea for it. But the way that philosopher resolves the difficulties he himself raises about the origin of conventional signs shows that he has assumed precisely what I call into question: namely, that a kind of society was already established among the inventors of language. While referring readers to his reflections, I believe I should add my own to them, in order to set the same difficulties in the light proper to my subject. The first difficulty is imagining how languages could have become necessary. Since men had no dealings with one another, and no need for any, we can conceive neither the need for this invention nor its possibility, unless it was indispensable. I could say, as many others have, that languages arose in the domestic intercourse of fathers, mothers, and children. But besides failing to resolve the objections, this would repeat the mistake of those who reason about the state of nature while carrying into it ideas drawn from society. They always picture the family assembled in one dwelling, its members maintaining a bond as close and lasting as among us, where so many common interests unite them. In that original condition, by contrast, with no houses, huts, or property of any sort, each lodged wherever chance took him, often for a single night. Males and females came together by chance, according to encounter, opportunity, and desire, without speech being a very necessary interpreter of what they had to tell each other; they parted just as readily (Note 12). At first the mother suckled her children for her own need; then, once habit had made them dear to her, she fed them for theirs. As soon as they were strong enough to seek food, they soon left the mother herself; and since there was almost no way to find one another again except by never losing sight of one another, they soon reached the point of no longer even recognizing each other. Observe, further, that the child has all its needs to express, and consequently more to tell its mother than she has to tell it. The child must therefore bear the greater part of the burden of invention, and the language it uses must largely be its own work. This yields as many languages as there are individuals to speak them; the wandering, nomadic life contributes further, allowing no idiom time to take on a settled form. To say that the mother dictates to the child the words it must use to ask her for this or that shows how languages already formed are taught; it does not tell us how they are formed.
Suppose this first difficulty overcome. Let us cross for a moment the immense distance that must have lain between the pure state of nature and the need for languages, and inquire, assuming them necessary (Note 13), how they could have begun to take hold. Here is a new difficulty, worse even than the first: if men needed speech in order to learn to think, they needed even more to know how to think in order to discover the art of speech. And even if we understood how sounds of the voice were adopted as conventional interpreters of our ideas, we would still have to ask what could have interpreted this very convention for ideas which, having no sensible object, could be indicated neither by gesture nor by voice. We can thus scarcely form tolerable conjectures about the birth of this art of communicating one's thoughts and establishing intercourse between minds: a sublime art, already so far from its origin, yet still at such a prodigious distance from perfection in the philosopher's eyes that no one is bold enough to promise it would ever arrive there, even if the changes time necessarily brings were suspended for its sake, prejudices left the academies or fell silent before them, and the academies could devote themselves uninterruptedly to this thorny subject for whole centuries.
The first language of man, the most universal, the most forceful, and the only one he needed before he had to persuade men assembled together, is the cry of nature. Since this cry was wrung from him by a sort of instinct only on urgent occasions, to beg for help in great dangers or relief from violent suffering, it had little use in the ordinary course of life, where more moderate feelings prevail. When men's ideas began to widen and multiply, and closer communication grew between them, they sought more numerous signs and a more extensive language. They multiplied the inflections of the voice and added gestures, which are by nature more expressive and whose meaning depends less on prior agreement. They therefore expressed visible, moving objects by gestures and things that strike the ear by imitative sounds. But gesture can scarcely indicate anything but present objects, objects easy to describe, and visible actions; it cannot be used everywhere, for darkness or an intervening body renders it useless; and it demands attention rather than arousing it. In the end they thought to replace it with articulated speech, which, though it has no comparable connection to particular ideas, is better suited to represent them all as conventional signs. This substitution could only be made by common consent, and it was difficult enough for men whose crude organs had as yet had no practice; still more difficult to conceive in itself, since this unanimous agreement must have had a motive, and speech seems to have been very necessary for establishing the use of speech.
We must suppose that the first words men used had a far broader meaning in their minds than words have in languages already formed, and that, ignorant of the division of speech into its component parts, they at first gave each word the sense of a whole proposition. When they began to distinguish subject from predicate and verb from noun—no slight effort of genius—nouns at first were only so many proper names, the infinitive was the only form of verbs, and the notion of adjectives must have developed only with great difficulty, since every adjective is an abstract word, and abstraction is a laborious and unnatural operation. At first each object received its own name, without regard for genera and species, which these earliest founders could not distinguish; and all individuals appeared separately to their minds, as they do in nature's picture. If one oak was called A, another oak was called B; thus the narrower knowledge was, the longer the dictionary became. The difficulty of this entire nomenclature could not easily be overcome: to arrange beings under common, generic names, men had to know their properties and differences; they needed observations and definitions—that is, far more natural history and metaphysics than men of that time could have possessed.
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).
If I needed to, I could easily support this view with facts. I could show that among all the world’s nations, intellectual progress has matched exactly the needs nature gave each people, or the needs circumstances imposed on them, and therefore the passions that drove them to meet those needs. I would show the arts beginning in Egypt and spreading with the floods of the Nile. I would follow their progress among the Greeks. There they sprang up, grew, and rose to the heavens amid the sands and rocks of Attica, yet could not take root on the fertile banks of the Eurotas. I would point out that, in general, northern peoples are more industrious than southern peoples because they have less choice about it. It is as though nature wanted to even things out by giving their minds the fertility she denies their soil.
But without relying on the uncertain evidence of history, who cannot see that everything seems to keep the human being in the wild from either wanting or being able to leave that condition? His imagination shows him nothing, and his heart asks him for nothing. His modest needs are so easily met close at hand, and he is so far from the level of knowledge needed to want more knowledge, that he can have neither foresight nor curiosity. The sight of nature becomes uninteresting to him because it is so familiar. He always sees the same order and the same cycles. He lacks the presence of mind to wonder at the greatest marvels. In him we will not find the kind of philosophy people need to notice, for once, something they have seen every day. Nothing disturbs his soul. He attends only to the feeling of his present existence, with no idea of the future, however near it may be. His plans, as limited as his outlook, hardly extend to the end of the day. Even today, that is how far the Carib’s foresight goes. He sells his cotton bed in the morning, then comes back in tears that evening to buy it again, having failed to realize that he would need it the following night.
The more we reflect on this subject, the greater the distance between mere sensation and the simplest knowledge appears. It is impossible to imagine how a man could have crossed such a great gap on his own, without communication or the pressure of necessity. How many centuries might have passed before human beings had a chance to see any fire other than lightning from the sky? How many different accidents did it take for them to learn its most ordinary uses? How many times did they let it go out before learning how to make it again? And how many times, perhaps, did each of these secrets die with its discoverer? What can we say about agriculture? It requires so much work and foresight, depends on other crafts, and clearly cannot be practiced without at least the beginnings of a society. Its purpose is not so much to get food from the earth, which would supply food without it, as to force the earth to produce the kinds we prefer. But suppose human beings had multiplied until nature’s products could no longer feed them. Incidentally, that assumption would show a great advantage for the human species in this way of life. Suppose farming tools had fallen from the sky into the hands of people living in the wild, though they had no forges or workshops. Suppose they had overcome their deep aversion to steady work. Suppose they had learned to anticipate needs so far ahead that they worked out how to cultivate the earth, sow grain, and plant trees. Suppose they had found out how to grind wheat and ferment grapes. These are all things that people had to attribute to instruction from the gods, because they could not imagine learning them on their own. Even after all that, what man would be foolish enough to wear himself out cultivating a field that the first passerby, human or animal, could strip of its harvest if it suited him? How could anyone agree to spend his life at hard work when the more he needed its reward, the more certain he would be not to receive it? In short, how could this situation lead people to cultivate the earth before it was divided among them—that is, before the state of nature was destroyed?
Suppose we wanted to imagine a man in the wild as skilled at thinking as our philosophers make him out to be. Following their example, suppose we made him a philosopher himself, finding the highest truths on his own. Suppose he worked out rules of justice and reason through a chain of highly abstract arguments, drawing them from a love of order in general or from his creator’s known will. In short, suppose we credited his mind with as much intelligence and knowledge as he ought to have, and as much as we actually find him lacking in his dullness and stupidity. What benefit would the species gain from all this metaphysics, which he could not communicate and which would die with its inventor? What progress could the human race make while scattered among the animals in the woods? How far could people improve and teach one another if they had no fixed home and no need of each other, met perhaps barely twice in their lives, and neither knew nor spoke to one another?
Think how many ideas we owe to speech, and how much grammar exercises the mind and makes its work easier. Think of the unimaginable effort and immense time the first invention of languages must have taken. Add these reflections to those above, and you will see how many thousands of centuries it must have taken for the human mind to develop, one by one, the operations it was capable of performing.
Let me consider for a moment the difficulties surrounding the origin of languages. I could simply cite or repeat the research that the Abbé de Condillac has done on this subject. All of it fully supports my view, and it may even have given me the first idea of it. But this philosopher’s way of resolving the difficulties he raises about the origin of established signs shows that he assumes exactly what I call into question: a kind of society already established among the inventors of language. So while I refer the reader to his reflections, I think I must add my own to present the same difficulties in the light appropriate to my subject. The first difficulty is imagining how languages could have become necessary. People had no contact with one another and no need for it. So we can understand neither why they had to invent language nor how they could have invented it, unless it was indispensable. I could say, as many others do, that languages arose in the household dealings of fathers, mothers, and children. But that would not answer the objections. Worse, it would repeat the mistake of those who reason about the state of nature while importing ideas from society. They always imagine the family gathered in one dwelling, its members maintaining the close and lasting bond they have among us, where so many shared interests unite them. In that original state, however, people had no houses, huts, or property of any kind. Each person found a place to stay by chance, often for only one night. Males and females came together by chance, according to their encounters, opportunities, and desires. Speech was hardly needed to tell each other what they wanted to say. They parted just as easily (Note 12). At first the mother nursed her children for her own need. Then habit made them dear to her, and she fed them for their sake. As soon as they were strong enough to look for their own food, they soon left even their mother. And since the only real way to find one another again was to stay in sight, they soon reached the point where they did not even recognize one another. Notice, too, that the child has all its needs to explain and therefore has more to say to its mother than she has to say to it. The child must do most of the work of invention, and the language it uses must be largely its own creation. That produces as many languages as there are people speaking them. Their wandering life adds to this variety, since it gives no language time to become settled. To say that the mother tells the child which words to use to ask her for this or that explains how already formed languages are taught. It does not explain how they are formed.
Let us suppose the first difficulty has been overcome. For a moment let us leap across the vast gap between the pure state of nature and the need for languages. Assuming they were necessary (Note 13), let us ask how they could have begun to take hold. Here is a new difficulty, worse than the first. If people needed speech to learn to think, they needed to know how to think still more in order to invent speech. Even if we understood how vocal sounds became conventional signs of our ideas, we would still need to know how the convention itself could be conveyed in the case of ideas with no object we can sense. Such ideas could be indicated neither by gestures nor by sounds. We can therefore barely form a plausible guess about the birth of this art of communicating thoughts and establishing exchanges between minds. This magnificent art has already moved so far beyond its origins. Yet the philosopher sees it as still so immensely far from perfection that no one could boldly claim it would ever reach that goal. That would remain true even if time’s inevitable changes were suspended to help it, prejudices left the academies or fell silent before them, and the academies could devote themselves to this difficult problem without interruption for centuries.
The first human language, the most universal and forceful one, and the only one people needed before they had to persuade assembled groups, was the cry of nature. This cry was drawn from them by a kind of instinct only in urgent situations: to call for help in great danger or relief from severe pain. It was not much use in ordinary life, where feelings are more moderate. When people’s ideas began to grow and multiply, and they came into closer contact, they looked for more signs and a wider language. They varied the tone of their voices more and added gestures. Gestures are naturally more expressive, and their meaning depends less on a prior agreement. So they used gestures for visible, moving things and imitative sounds for things heard. But gestures generally indicate only things that are present or easy to describe, and actions that can be seen. They do not work everywhere: darkness or an object in the way makes them useless. They require attention rather than drawing it. Eventually people thought of replacing them with articulated sounds. Those sounds have less natural connection to particular ideas, but they are better able to represent every idea as agreed-upon signs. Such a change could only be made by common consent. It must have been hard to carry out for people whose untrained vocal organs had never practiced it, and harder still to imagine how it happened. Everyone needed a reason to agree, and speech itself seems to have been badly needed to establish the use of speech.
We should judge that the first words people used had meanings in their minds much broader than the meanings words have in established languages. Not knowing how to divide speech into its component parts, they initially gave each word the meaning of a whole statement. When they began to distinguish subject from attribute and verb from noun—a considerable feat of invention—nouns were at first no more than proper names, and the infinitive was the only verb form. They must have developed the concept of adjectives only with great difficulty. Every adjective is an abstract word, and abstraction is hard work and does not come naturally. At first every object got a name of its own, without reference to kinds or species, which these first inventors could not distinguish. All individuals appeared separate in their minds, as they do in the picture nature presents. If one oak was called A, another oak was called B. Thus the less knowledge they had, the larger their dictionary grew. It was not easy to untangle this mass of names. To group beings under shared, general names, people needed to know their characteristics and differences. They needed observation and definition—in other words, much more natural history and metaphysics than people of that time could have had.