Jean-Jacques Rousseau · Complete work
Part One, 4
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D’ailleurs, les idées générales ne peuvent s’introduire dans l’esprit qu’à l’aide des mots, et l’entendement ne les saisit que par des propositions. C’est une des raisons pour quoi les animaux ne sauraient se former de telles idées, ni jamais acquérir la perfectibilité qui en dépend. Quand un singe va sans hésiter d’une noix à l’autre, pense-t-on qu’il ait l’idée générale de cette sorte de fruit, et qu’il compare son archétype à ces deux individus? Non sans doute; mais la vue de l’une de ces noix rappelle à sa mémoire les sensations qu’il a reçues de l’autre, et ses yeux, modifiés d’une certaine manière, annoncent à son goût la modification qu’il va recevoir. Toute idée générale est purement intellectuelle; pour peu que l’imagination s’en mêle, l’idée devient aussitôt particulière. Essayez de vous tracer l’image d’un arbre en général, jamais vous n’en viendrez à bout, malgré vous il faudra le voir petit ou grand, rare ou touffu, clair ou foncé, et s’il dépendait de vous de n’y voir que ce qui se trouve en tout arbre, cette image ne ressemblerait plus à un arbre. Les êtres purement abstraits se voient de même, ou ne se conçoivent que par le discours. La définition seule du triangle vous en donne la véritable idée: sitôt que vous en figurez un dans votre esprit, c’est un tel triangle et non pas un autre, et vous ne pouvez éviter d’en rendre les lignes sensibles ou le plan coloré. Il faut donc énoncer des propositions, il faut donc parler pour avoir des idées générales; car sitôt que l’imagination s’arrête, l’esprit ne marche plus qu’à l’aide du discours. Si donc les premiers inventeurs n’ont pu donner des noms qu’aux idées qu’ils avaient déjà, il s’ensuit que les premiers substantifs n’ont pu jamais être que des noms propres.
Mais lorsque, par des moyens que je ne conçois pas, nos nouveaux grammairiens commencèrent à étendre leurs idées et à généraliser leurs mots, l’ignorance des inventeurs dut assujettir cette méthode à des bornes fort étroites; et comme ils avaient d’abord trop multiplié les noms des individus faute de connaître les genres et les espèces, ils firent ensuite trop peu d’espèces et de genres faute d’avoir considéré les êtres par toutes leurs différences. Pour pousser les divisions assez loin, il eût fallu plus d’expérience et de lumière qu’ils n’en pouvaient avoir, et plus de recherches et de travail qu’ils n’y en voulaient employer. Or si, même aujourd’hui, l’on découvre chaque jour de nouvelles espèces qui avaient échappé jusqu’ici à toutes nos observations, qu’on pense combien il dut s’en dérober à des hommes qui ne jugeaient des choses que sur le premier aspect! Quant aux classes primitives et aux notions les plus générales, il est superflu d’ajouter qu’elles durent leur échapper encore: comment, par exemple, auraient-ils imaginé ou entendu les mots de matière, d’esprit, de substance, de mode, de figure, de mouvement, puisque nos philosophes qui s’en servent depuis si longtemps ont bien de la peine à les entendre eux-mêmes, et que les idées qu’on attache à ces mots étant purement métaphysiques, ils n’en trouvaient aucun modèle dans la nature? Je m’arrête à ces premiers pas, et je supplie mes juges de suspendre ici leur lecture; pour considérer, sur l’invention des seuls substantifs physiques, c’est-à-dire, sur la partie de la langue la plus facile à trouver, le chemin qui lui reste à faire, pour exprimer toutes les pensées des hommes, pour prendre une forme constante, pouvoir être parlée en public, et influer sur la société. Je les supplie de réfléchir à ce qu’il a fallu de temps et de connaissances pour trouver les nombres (Note 14), les mots abstraits, les aoristes, et tous les temps des verbes, les particules, la syntaxe, lier les propositions, les raisonnements, et former toute la logique du discours. Quant à moi, effrayé des difficultés qui se multiplient, et convaincu de l’impossibilité presque démontrée que les langues aient pu naître et s’établir par des moyens purement humains, je laisse à qui voudra l’entreprendre la discussion de ce difficile problème, lequel a été le plus nécessaire, de la société déjà liée, à l’institution des langues, ou des langues déjà inventées, à l’établissement de la société.
Quoi qu’il en soit de ces origines, on voit du moins, au peu de soin qu’a pris la nature de rapprocher les hommes par des besoins mutuels, et de leur faciliter l’usage de la parole, combien elle a peu préparé leur sociabilité, et combien elle a peu mis du sien dans tout ce qu’ils ont fait, pour en établir les liens. En effet, il est impossible d’imaginer pourquoi, dans cet état primitif, un homme aurait plutôt besoin d’un autre homme qu’un singe ou un loup de son semblable, ni, ce besoin supposé, quel motif pourrait engager l’autre à y pourvoir, ni même, en ce dernier cas, comment ils pourraient convenir entre eux des conditions. Je sais qu’on nous répète sans cesse que rien n’eût été si misérable que l’homme dans cet état; et s’il est vrai, comme je crois l’avoir prouvé, qu’il n’eût pu qu’après bien des siècles avoir le désir et l’occasion d’en sortir, ce serait un procès à faire à la nature, et non à celui qu’elle aurait ainsi constitué. Mais, si j’entends bien ce terme de misérable, c’est un mot qui n’a aucun sens, ou qui ne signifie qu’une privation douloureuse et la souffrance du corps ou de l’âme. Or je voudrais bien qu’on m’expliquât quel peut être le genre de misère d’un être libre dont le coeur est en paix et le corps en santé. Je demande laquelle, de la vie civile ou naturelle, est la plus sujette à devenir insupportable à ceux qui en jouissent? Nous ne voyons presque autour de nous que des gens qui se plaignent de leur existence, plusieurs même qui s’en privent autant qu’il est en eux, et la réunion des lois divine et humaine suffit à peine pour arrêter ce désordre. Je demande si jamais on a ouï dire qu’un sauvage en liberté ait seulement songé à se plaindre de la vie et à se donner la mort? Qu’on juge donc avec moins d’orgueil de quel côté est la véritable misère. Rien au contraire n’eût été si misérable que l’homme sauvage, ébloui par des lumières, tourmenté par des passions, et raisonnant sur un état différent du sien. Ce fut par une providence très sage, que les facultés qu’il avait en puissance ne devaient se développer qu’avec les occasions de les exercer, afin qu’elles ne lui fussent ni superflues et à charge avant le temps, ni tardives, et inutiles au besoin. Il avait dans le seul instinct tout ce qu’il fallait pour vivre dans l’état de nature, il n’a dans une raison cultivée que ce qu’il lui faut pour vivre en société.
Il paraît d’abord que les hommes dans cet état n’ayant entre eux aucune sorte de relation morale, ni de devoirs connus, ne pouvaient être ni bons ni méchants, et n’avaient ni vices ni vertus, à moins que, prenant ces mots dans un sens physique, on n’appelle vices dans l’individu les qualités qui peuvent nuire à sa propre conservation, et vertus celles qui peuvent y contribuer; auquel cas, il faudrait appeler le plus vertueux celui qui résisterait le moins aux simples impulsions de la nature. Mais sans nous écarter du sens ordinaire, il est à propos de suspendre le jugement que nous pourrions porter sur une telle situation, et de nous défier de nos préjugés, jusqu’à ce que, la balance à la main, on ait examiné s’il y a plus de vertus que de vices parmi les hommes civilisés, ou si leurs vertus sont plus avantageuses que leurs vices ne sont funestes, ou si le progrès de leurs connaissances est un dédommagement suffisant des maux qu’ils se font mutuellement, à mesure qu’ils s’instruisent du bien qu’ils devraient se faire, ou s’ils ne seraient pas, à tout prendre, dans une situation plus heureuse de n’avoir ni mal à craindre ni bien à espérer de personne que de s’être soumis à une dépendance universelle, et de s’obliger à tout recevoir de ceux qui ne s’obligent à leur rien donner.
N’allons pas surtout conclure avec Hobbes que pour n’avoir aucune idée de la bonté, l’homme soit naturellement méchant, qu’il soit vicieux parce qu’il ne connaît pas la vertu, qu’il refuse toujours à ses semblables des services qu’il ne croit pas leur devoir, ni qu’en vertu du droit qu’il s’attribue avec raison aux choses dont il a besoin, il s’imagine follement être le seul propriétaire de tout l’univers. Hobbes a très bien vu le défaut de toutes les définitions modernes du droit naturel: mais les conséquences qu’il tire de la sienne montrent qu’il la prend dans un sens qui n’est pas moins faux. En raisonnant sur les principes qu’il établit, cet auteur devait dire que l’état de nature étant celui où le soin de notre conservation est le moins préjudiciable à celle d’autrui, cet état était par conséquent le plus propre à la paix, et le plus convenable au genre humain. Il dit précisément le contraire, pour avoir fait entrer mal à propos dans le soin de la conservation de l’homme sauvage le besoin de satisfaire une multitude de passions qui sont l’ouvrage de la société, et qui ont rendu les lois nécessaires. Le méchant, dit-il, est un enfant robuste; il reste à savoir si l’homme sauvage est un enfant robuste. Quand on le lui accorderait, qu’en conclurait-il? Que si, quand il est robuste, cet homme était aussi dépendant des autres que quand il est faible, il n’y a sorte d’excès auxquels il ne se portât, qu’il ne battît sa mère lorsqu’elle tarderait trop à lui donner la mamelle, qu’il n’étranglât un de ses jeunes frères lorsqu’il en serait incommodé, qu’il ne mordît la jambe à l’autre lorsqu’il en serait heurté ou troublé; mais ce sont deux suppositions contradictoires dans l’état de nature qu’être robuste et dépendant; l’homme est faible quand il est dépendant, et il est émancipé avant que d’être robuste. Hobbes n’a pas vu que la même cause qui empêche les sauvages d’user de leur raison, comme le prétendent nos jurisconsultes, les empêche en même temps d’abuser de leurs facultés, comme il le prétend lui-même; de sorte qu’on pourrait dire que les sauvages ne sont pas méchants précisément, parce qu’ils ne savent pas ce que c’est qu’être bons; car ce n’est ni le développement des lumières, ni le frein de la loi, mais le calme des passions, et l’ignorance du vice qui les empêche de mal faire; tanto plus in illis proficit vitiorum ignoratio, quàm in his cognitio virtutis. Il y a d’ailleurs un autre principe que Hobbes n’a point aperçu et qui, ayant été donné à l’homme pour adoucir, en certaines circonstances, la férocité de son amour-propre, ou le désir de se conserver avant la naissance de cet amour (Note 15), tempère l’ardeur qu’il a pour son bien-être par une répugnance innée à voir souffrir son semblable. Je ne crois pas avoir aucune contradiction à craindre, en accordant à l’homme la seule vertu naturelle, qu’ait été forcé de reconnaître le détracteur le plus outré des vertus humaines. Je parle de la pitié, disposition convenable à des êtres aussi faibles, et sujets à autant de maux que nous le sommes; vertu d’autant plus universelle et d’autant plus utile à l’homme qu’elle précède en lui l’usage de toute réflexion, et si naturelle que les bêtes mêmes en donnent quelquefois des signes sensibles. Sans parler de la tendresse des mères pour leurs petits, et des périls qu’elles bravent pour les en garantir, on observe tous les jours la répugnance qu’ont les chevaux à fouler aux pieds un corps vivant; un animal ne passe point sans inquiétude auprès d’un animal mort de son espèce; il y en a même qui leur donnent une sorte de sépulture; et les tristes mugissements du bétail entrant dans une boucherie annoncent l’impression qu’il reçoit de l’horrible spectacle qui le frappe. On voit avec plaisir l’auteur de la fable des Abeilles, forcé de reconnaître l’homme pour un être compatissant et sensible, sortir, dans l’exemple qu’il en donne, de son style froid et subtil, pour nous offrir la pathétique image d’un homme enfermé qui aperçoit au-dehors une bête féroce arrachant un enfant du sein de sa mère, brisant sous sa dent meurtrière les faibles membres, et déchirant de ses ongles les entrailles palpitantes de cet enfant. Quelle affreuse agitation n’éprouve point ce témoin d’un événement auquel il ne prend aucun intérêt personnel? Quelles angoisses ne souffre-t-il pas à cette vue, de ne pouvoir porter aucun secours à la mère évanouie, ni à l’enfant expirant?
Tel est le pur mouvement de la nature, antérieur à toute réflexion: telle est la force de la pitié naturelle, que les moeurs les plus dépravées ont encore peine à détruire, puisqu’on voit tous les jours dans nos spectacles s’attendrir et pleurer aux malheurs d’un infortuné tel, qui, s’il était à la place du tyran, aggraverait encore les tourments de son ennemi; semblable au sanguinaire Sylla, si sensible aux maux qu’il n’avait pas causés, ou à cet Alexandre de Phère qui n’osait assister à la représentation d’aucune tragédie, de peur qu’on ne le vît gémir avec Andromaque et Priam, tandis qu’il écoutait sans émotion les cris de tant de citoyens qu’on égorgeait tous les jours par ses ordres:
Mollissima corda Humano generi dare se natura fatetur, Quæ lacrymas dedit..
Mandeville a bien senti qu’avec toute leur morale les hommes n’eussent jamais été que des monstres, si la nature ne leur eût donné la pitié à l’appui de la raison: mais il n’a pas vu que de cette seule qualité découlent toutes les vertus sociales qu’il veut disputer aux hommes. En effet, qu’est-ce que la générosité, la clémence, l’humanité, sinon la pitié appliquée aux faibles, aux coupables, ou à l’espèce humaine en général? La bienveillance et l’amitié même sont, à le bien prendre, des productions d’une pitié constante, fixée sur un objet particulier: car désirer que quelqu’un ne souffre point, qu’est-ce autre chose que désirer qu’il soit heureux? Quand il serait vrai que la commisération ne serait qu’un sentiment qui nous met à la place de celui qui souffre, sentiment obscur et vif dans l’homme sauvage, développé, mais faible dans l’homme civil, qu’importerait cette idée à la vérité de ce que je dis, sinon de lui donner plus de force? En effet, la commisération sera d’autant plus énergique que l’animal spectateur s’identifiera intimement avec l’animal souffrant. Or il est évident que cette identification a dû être infiniment plus étroite dans l’état de nature que dans l’état de raisonnement. C’est la raison qui engendre l’amour-propre, et c’est la réflexion qui le fortifie; c’est elle qui replie l’homme sur lui-même; c’est elle qui le sépare de tout ce qui le gêne et l’afflige: c’est la philosophie qui l’isole; c’est par elle qu’il dit en secret, à l’aspect d’un homme souffrant: péris si tu veux, je suis en sûreté. Il n’y a plus que les dangers de la société entière qui troublent le sommeil tranquille du philosophe, et qui l’arrachent de son lit. On peut impunément égorger son semblable sous sa fenêtre; il n’a qu’à mettre ses mains sur ses oreilles et s’argumenter un peu pour empêcher la nature qui se révolte en lui de l’identifier avec celui qu’on assassine. L’homme sauvage n’a point cet admirable talent; et faute de sagesse et de raison, on le voit toujours se livrer étourdiment au premier sentiment de l’humanité. Dans les émeutes, dans les querelles des rues, la populace s’assemble, l’homme prudent s’éloigne: c’est la canaille, ce sont les femmes des halles, qui séparent les combattants, et qui empêchent les honnêtes gens de s’entr’égorger.
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.
Moreover, general ideas can enter the mind only with the aid of words, and understanding can grasp them only through propositions. This is one reason why animals cannot form such ideas or ever acquire the perfectibility that depends on them. When a monkey goes without hesitation from one nut to another, do we suppose it has the general idea of this kind of fruit and compares its archetype with these two particular nuts? Surely not. Rather, the sight of one recalls to its memory the sensations received from the other, and its eyes, affected in a certain way, announce to its taste the change it is about to undergo. Every general idea is purely intellectual; let imagination play the slightest part and the idea immediately becomes particular. Try to picture a tree in general: you will never succeed. In spite of yourself you must see it as small or large, sparse or leafy, light or dark; and if you could see in it nothing but what is found in every tree, the image would no longer resemble a tree. Purely abstract beings are seen in the same way, or conceived only through discourse. Only the definition of a triangle gives you its true idea: the moment you picture one in your mind, it is this triangle rather than another, and you cannot help giving its lines visible form or coloring its plane. We must therefore state propositions, must therefore speak, to have general ideas; for as soon as imagination comes to a halt, the mind can proceed only with the aid of discourse. If the first inventors could give names only to ideas they already had, it follows that the first nouns could only have been proper names.
But when, by means I cannot conceive, our new grammarians began to extend their ideas and generalize their words, the inventors' ignorance must have confined this method within very narrow limits. As they had first multiplied the names of individuals too much because they did not know genera and species, so afterward they made too few species and genera because they had not examined beings in all their differences. To carry the divisions far enough would have demanded more experience and enlightenment than they could possess, and more inquiry and labor than they wished to devote to it. Now if even today new species are discovered every day that had escaped every observation until now, consider how many must have escaped men who judged things only by their first appearance! As for primary classes and the most general notions, it is needless to add that these too must have eluded them. How, for example, could they have conceived or understood the words matter, spirit, substance, mode, figure, movement, when our philosophers, who have used them so long, have considerable trouble understanding them themselves, and when the ideas attached to those words are purely metaphysical, without any model in nature for those men to find? I stop at these first steps and beg my judges to pause in their reading here and consider how much ground language still had to cover from the invention of physical nouns alone—that is, from the easiest part of language to discover—before it could express every human thought, acquire a stable form, be spoken in public, and influence society. I beg them to reflect on how much time and knowledge it took to discover numbers (Note 14), abstract words, aorists and all the tenses of verbs, particles, syntax, the linking of propositions and arguments, and the entire logic of discourse. For my part, daunted by these multiplying difficulties and convinced that it is almost demonstrably impossible for languages to have arisen and become established by purely human means, I leave to anyone willing to undertake it the discussion of this difficult problem: which was more necessary, an already united society for the institution of languages, or already invented languages for the establishment of society?
Whatever these origins may have been, the little care nature took to bring men together through mutual needs or to ease their use of speech shows us at least how little she prepared them for sociability, and how little she contributed to everything they did to forge its bonds. Indeed, it is impossible to imagine why, in that original condition, one man would have greater need of another than an ape or a wolf has of another of its kind; or, granting this need, what motive would induce the other to meet it; or even, if he did, how the two could agree on terms. I know we are told incessantly that nothing would have been so wretched as man in that condition; and if, as I believe I have proved, he could have had the desire and opportunity to leave it only after many centuries, the complaint would lie against nature, not against the man she had made in this way. But if I understand the word wretched rightly, it either has no meaning or signifies only painful deprivation and suffering of body or soul. I would like someone to explain to me what kind of wretchedness can belong to a free being whose heart is at peace and whose body is healthy. I ask which life, civil or natural, is more liable to become unbearable to those who live it. Around us we see hardly anyone who does not complain of his existence; many even take their own lives as far as they are able, and the combined force of divine and human laws is barely enough to check this disorder. I ask whether anyone has ever heard of a savage at liberty even thinking of complaining of life or taking his own life. Let us judge with less pride, then, where true misery lies. Nothing, on the contrary, would have been so wretched as savage man dazzled by knowledge, tormented by passions, and reasoning about a condition different from his own. It was by a very wise providence that the faculties he possessed in potential would develop only when opportunities arose to exercise them, so that they would neither be superfluous and burdensome to him before their time nor arrive too late to be useful when needed. In instinct alone he had everything required to live in the state of nature; in cultivated reason he has only what he needs to live in society.
It appears at first that men in this condition, having no moral relations with one another and no recognized duties, could be neither good nor wicked and had neither vices nor virtues—unless we take these words in a physical sense and call the qualities that may harm an individual's own preservation vices, and those that may contribute to it virtues. In that case we would have to call the man most virtuous who least resisted the simple impulses of nature. But without departing from the usual sense, we should suspend our judgment on such a condition and distrust our prejudices until, balance in hand, we have examined whether there are more virtues than vices among civilized men; whether their virtues are more beneficial than their vices are destructive; whether the growth of their knowledge sufficiently compensates for the harms they inflict on one another as they learn what good they ought to do each other; or whether, all things considered, they would be happier having neither evil to fear nor good to hope for from anyone than having submitted to universal dependence and bound themselves to receive everything from people who are bound to give them nothing.
Above all, let us not conclude with Hobbes that man is naturally wicked because he has no idea of goodness, vicious because he does not know virtue, that he always refuses his fellows services he does not believe he owes them, or that, by virtue of the right he reasonably claims to things he needs, he foolishly imagines himself sole owner of the whole universe. Hobbes saw very well what was lacking in all modern definitions of natural right; but the conclusions he draws from his own show that he understands it in a sense no less false. Reasoning from the principles he establishes, this author ought to have said that since the state of nature is the condition in which care for our own preservation is least harmful to that of others, it is consequently the condition best suited to peace and most fitting for the human race. He says precisely the opposite, because he wrongly includes in savage man's care for his preservation the need to satisfy a multitude of passions that are the work of society and that have made laws necessary. The wicked man, he says, is a robust child; what remains to be seen is whether savage man is a robust child. Even if we granted him this, what would he conclude? That if this man, once robust, were as dependent on others as when weak, there is no excess he would not commit: he would beat his mother when she took too long to give him the breast, strangle one of his little brothers when bothered by him, bite the leg of another when jostled or disturbed. But to be robust and dependent are two contradictory conditions in the state of nature: man is weak when dependent, and free of dependence before he is robust. Hobbes failed to see that the very cause that prevents savages from using their reason, as our jurists claim, also prevents them from abusing their faculties, as he claims himself. One might therefore say that savages are not wicked precisely because they do not know what it is to be good; for it is neither the growth of enlightenment nor the restraint of law but the calm of their passions and their ignorance of vice that keep them from wrongdoing: tanto plus in illis proficit vitiorum ignoratio, quàm in his cognitio virtutis. There is, moreover, another principle that Hobbes did not perceive, given to man to soften in certain circumstances the ferocity of his amour-propre, or his desire for self-preservation before that amour-propre arose (Note 15). It tempers the intensity of his concern for his own welfare through an innate reluctance to see a fellow creature suffer. I do not think I need fear contradiction in granting man the only natural virtue that even the most extreme detractor of human virtues has been forced to recognize. I mean pity: a disposition fitting for beings as weak and subject to as many ills as we are, a virtue all the more universal and useful to man because it precedes all reflection in him, and so natural that even beasts sometimes show visible signs of it. Not to mention the tenderness of mothers for their young and the dangers they brave to protect them, we observe daily how reluctant horses are to trample a living body. An animal cannot pass a dead animal of its own species without unease; some even give their dead a kind of burial. And the mournful bellowing of cattle entering a slaughterhouse reveals the impression made on them by the horrible sight before them. It is a pleasure to see the author of the Fable of the Bees, compelled to acknowledge man as a compassionate and feeling being, abandon his cool, subtle style in the example he gives, and offer us the moving image of a man shut inside who sees outdoors a ferocious beast tear a child from its mother's breast, crush its frail limbs in murderous jaws, and rip apart its throbbing entrails with its claws. What dreadful agitation must this witness feel at an event in which he has no personal stake? What anguish must he suffer at the sight, unable to offer any help to the fainting mother or the dying child?
Such is nature's pure impulse, prior to all reflection. Such is the power of natural pity that even the most depraved customs can scarcely destroy it: every day at the theater we see a man moved to tears by the misfortunes of some sufferer who, were he in the tyrant's place, would make his enemy's torments still worse. He resembles the bloodthirsty Sulla, so sensitive to suffering he had not caused, or that Alexander of Pherae who dared not attend a performance of any tragedy for fear that he would be seen grieving with Andromache and Priam, while listening without emotion to the cries of so many citizens slaughtered every day at his command:
Nature declares that she gave the human race the tenderest hearts, for she gave us tears.
Mandeville saw well that, for all their morality, men would only ever have been monsters had nature not given them pity to support reason; but he did not see that from this quality alone flow all the social virtues he wishes to deny them. What, indeed, are generosity, mercy, and humanity but pity applied to the weak, the guilty, or the human species in general? Benevolence and even friendship, rightly understood, are the products of a lasting pity fixed on a particular object: for what is the wish that someone should not suffer if not the wish that he should be happy? Even if compassion were nothing but a feeling that places us in the sufferer's position—a feeling obscure and vivid in savage man, developed but weak in civil man—what bearing would that idea have on the truth of what I say, except to strengthen it? Compassion will be all the more powerful the more closely the animal watching identifies with the animal suffering. It is evident, then, that this identification must have been infinitely closer in the state of nature than in the state of reasoning. Reason gives birth to amour-propre, and reflection strengthens it. Reflection turns man inward, separating him from everything that troubles or afflicts him; philosophy isolates him. Thanks to philosophy, at the sight of a man suffering he says in secret, “Perish if you will; I am safe.” Only dangers to society as a whole can disturb the philosopher's peaceful sleep and draw him from his bed. A fellow man can be slaughtered with impunity beneath his window; he need only put his hands over his ears and reason a little to prevent nature, which rebels within him, from making him identify with the man being murdered. Savage man has no such admirable talent, and for want of wisdom and reason we see him always giving himself heedlessly to the first feeling of humanity. In riots and street fights the crowd gathers, the prudent man moves away: it is the rabble, the women of the market, who separate the combatants and prevent respectable people from butchering one another.
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).
Besides, general ideas can enter the mind only with the help of words, and the understanding grasps them only through statements. This is one reason animals cannot form such ideas or ever acquire the perfectibility that depends on them. When a monkey goes without hesitation from one nut to another, do we think it has a general idea of that kind of fruit and compares its model of a nut with those two individual nuts? Certainly not. The sight of one recalls to its memory the sensations it received from the other. What its eyes now perceive tells its sense of taste what it is about to experience. Every general idea is purely intellectual. As soon as imagination has any part in it, the idea becomes particular. Try to picture a tree in general. You will never manage it. Whether you like it or not, you will have to see a small or a large tree, a sparse or leafy one, a light or dark one. If you could see in it only what is found in every tree, the image would no longer look like a tree. Purely abstract beings are seen in the same way, or else can be understood only through words. Only the definition of a triangle gives you its true idea. As soon as you picture one in your mind, it is a particular triangle and not another. You cannot avoid giving its lines a visible form or coloring its surface. So we must make statements; we must speak to have general ideas. For as soon as imagination stops, the mind can go on only with the help of words. If the first inventors could give names only to ideas they already had, then the first nouns could only ever have been proper names.
But when our new grammarians began, by means I cannot understand, to broaden their ideas and generalize their words, their ignorance must have kept this method within very narrow limits. At first they had made too many names for individuals because they did not know kinds and species. Then they made too few kinds and species because they had not considered all the differences among beings. To make divisions detailed enough, they would have needed more experience and knowledge than they could have had, and more investigation and work than they were willing to do. Even today, we discover new species every day that have escaped all our observations until now. Think how many must have escaped people who judged things by first appearances alone! As for the basic classes and the most general concepts, it hardly needs saying that these too must have escaped them. How, for example, could they have conceived of or understood the words matter, mind, substance, mode, shape, and motion? Even our philosophers, who have used them for so long, struggle to understand them. The ideas attached to these words are purely metaphysical, and the first people found no model for them in nature. I will stop at these first steps. I ask my judges to pause here in their reading and consider this: even after the invention of nouns for physical things, the easiest part of language to discover, how much further would language have to go to express every human thought, take a settled form, be spoken in public, and affect society? I ask them to reflect on how much time and knowledge it took to find numbers (Note 14), abstract words, aorists and every verb tense, particles, syntax, ways to link statements and arguments, and a complete logic of speech. For my part, I am daunted by the growing difficulties. I am convinced that it is almost demonstrably impossible for languages to have arisen and become established through purely human means. I leave anyone who wants to tackle it this hard question: which was more necessary, an already connected society for the founding of languages, or already invented languages for the establishment of society?
Whatever their origins, we can at least see how little nature did to bring human beings together through mutual needs or make speech easy for them. That shows how little she prepared them for social life, and how little she contributed to everything they did to form its ties. Indeed, it is impossible to imagine why, in that original state, one person would need another any more than a monkey or a wolf needs another of its kind. Even supposing that need existed, what would make the other person meet it? And even if the other did, how could the two agree on terms? I know people keep telling us that nothing would have been more miserable than a human being in that state. If it is true, as I believe I have shown, that it would have taken many centuries for him to have either the desire or the opportunity to leave it, that would be a case against nature, not against the person she made that way. But if I understand the word miserable correctly, either it means nothing or it means painful deprivation and suffering of body or mind. I would like someone to explain what kind of misery a free being can suffer when his heart is at peace and his body healthy. I ask which life, in civil society or in nature, is more likely to become unbearable to those who live it. Almost all we see around us are people complaining about their lives. Several even put an end to theirs as far as they are able. The combined force of divine and human law is barely enough to stop this disorder. I ask whether anyone has ever heard of a free person living in the wild so much as thinking of complaining about life or killing himself. Let us be less proud, then, when judging where real misery lies. By contrast, nothing would have been more miserable than a person living in the wild who was dazzled by knowledge, tormented by passions, and thinking about a condition other than his own. It was a very wise act of providence that his potential abilities developed only as opportunities arose to use them. That way they would not be useless and burdensome before their time, or arrive too late to help when needed. Instinct alone gave him everything he needed to live in the state of nature. Developed reason gives him only what he needs to live in society.
At first it appears that people in this state had no moral relations with one another and knew of no duties. So they could be neither good nor bad, and had neither vices nor virtues. One could use these words in a physical sense, calling traits that can harm an individual’s survival vices and traits that can help it virtues. In that case, the most virtuous person would be the one who least resisted nature’s simple impulses. But let us keep to the ordinary meanings. We should hold off judging this situation and be wary of our prejudices until we have weighed the evidence. Are there more virtues or more vices among civilized people? Do their virtues bring more benefit than their vices bring harm? Does their growing knowledge make up enough for the harm they do one another as they learn what good they ought to do? Or would they be happier, all things considered, if they had neither harm to fear nor good to expect from anyone, rather than accepting universal dependence and having to receive everything from people who have no obligation to give them anything?
Above all, let us not conclude with Hobbes that, because man has no idea of goodness, he is bad by nature; that he is vicious because he does not know virtue; that he always refuses others help because he does not think he owes it to them; or that his rightful claim to the things he needs makes him foolishly think he alone owns the entire universe. Hobbes saw very clearly what is wrong with every modern definition of natural right. But the conclusions he draws from his own show that he understands it in an equally mistaken way. By his own principles, he should have said that the state of nature is the condition in which caring for our own survival does the least harm to other people’s survival. It is therefore the condition best suited to peace and the human race. He says exactly the opposite because he wrongly includes among the needs of a person living in the wild a multitude of passions produced by society—the very passions that made laws necessary. The wicked man, he says, is a strong child. We still need to ask whether the person living in the wild is a strong child. Even if we granted this, what would follow? Only that if this man were as dependent on others when strong as he was when weak, there would be no limit to his excesses. He would beat his mother when she was too slow to give him her breast, strangle one little brother who bothered him, and bite the leg of another who bumped or disturbed him. But being strong and being dependent are contradictory conditions in the state of nature. A human being is weak while dependent and becomes independent before becoming strong. Hobbes failed to see that the same cause that prevents people living in the wild from using reason, as our legal scholars claim, also prevents them from abusing their abilities, as Hobbes himself claims. We might therefore say that they are not wicked precisely because they do not know what it is to be good. It is not developed knowledge or the restraint of law that keeps them from doing wrong, but calm passions and ignorance of vice: ignorance of vice does more good among them than knowledge of virtue does among us. There is also another principle that Hobbes did not notice. It was given to human beings to soften, in certain circumstances, the ferocity of amour-propre, or the desire to preserve themselves before amour-propre is born (Note 15). It moderates their concern for their own well-being with an inborn reluctance to see another person suffer. I do not think anyone can contradict me if I credit human beings with the one natural virtue that even the strongest critic of human virtues had to recognize. I mean pity. It suits beings as weak and exposed to so many troubles as we are. This virtue is all the more widespread and useful to humans because it comes before any use of reflection. It is so natural that even animals sometimes show clear signs of it. Leaving aside mothers’ tenderness for their young and the dangers they face to protect them, we see every day that horses are reluctant to trample a living body. An animal passes the dead body of one of its kind with unease; some even give their dead a kind of burial. The sad bellowing of cattle as they enter a slaughterhouse shows the effect of the terrible sight before them. It is gratifying to see the author of the Fable of the Bees forced to acknowledge that man is compassionate and sensitive. In his example he abandons his cold, clever style to present a moving picture: a man trapped indoors sees a fierce beast outside snatch a child from its mother’s breast, crush its small limbs in its deadly jaws, and tear its throbbing insides with its claws. How terribly shaken must this witness be by an event in which he has no personal stake! What anguish he feels at the sight, unable to help either the fainting mother or the dying child!
That is nature’s pure impulse, before any reflection. Such is the power of natural pity that even the most corrupted habits can hardly destroy it. Every day in our theaters we see someone moved to tears by the misfortunes of an unhappy character, though if that same person were in a tyrant’s place, he would add to his enemy’s torments. He is like the bloodthirsty Sylla, so sensitive to suffering he did not cause, or Alexander of Pherae, who dared not watch a tragedy for fear of being seen grieving with Andromache and Priam, while he listened unmoved to the cries of the many citizens slaughtered every day on his orders:
Nature admits that she gave the human race the tenderest hearts when she gave us tears.
Mandeville understood well that, for all their morality, human beings would only have been monsters if nature had not given them pity to support reason. But he failed to see that all the social virtues he wants to deny them flow from this one quality. What are generosity, mercy, and humanity, after all, if not pity applied to the weak, the guilty, or humankind in general? Benevolence and even friendship are, properly understood, the products of lasting pity directed toward a particular person. What is wanting someone not to suffer, if not wanting that person to be happy? Even if compassion were only a feeling that puts us in the place of someone who suffers—a dim but strong feeling in the person living in the wild, a more developed but weaker one in a civilized person—how would that challenge what I say? It would only strengthen it. Compassion grows stronger the more closely the witnessing animal identifies with the suffering one. Clearly that identification must have been far closer in the state of nature than in the state of reasoning. Reason gives rise to amour-propre, and reflection makes it stronger. Reflection turns a man inward and separates him from anything that troubles or upsets him. Philosophy isolates him. Through it, at the sight of someone suffering, he secretly says, “Die if you want; I am safe.” Only dangers threatening all of society now disturb the philosopher’s peaceful sleep and drive him from his bed. Someone can slaughter another person right beneath his window without consequences for him. He only has to cover his ears and argue with himself a little to stop the part of nature that rebels within him from identifying with the person being murdered. The person living in the wild has no such remarkable talent. Lacking wisdom and reason, he always thoughtlessly gives way to his first feeling of humanity. At riots and fights in the street, the common people gather while the prudent man walks away. It is the rabble, the market women, who pull the fighters apart and prevent respectable people from killing one another.