Preface
[1] The most useful and the least advanced of all human knowledge seems to me to be that of man (II), and I dare say that the inscription on the Temple at Delphi alone contained a more important and more difficult Precept than all the big Books of the Moralists. I therefore consider the subject of this Discourse to be one of the most interesting questions Philosophy might raise, and unfortunately for us one of the thorniest Philosophers might have to resolve: For how can the source of inequality among men be known unless one begins by knowing men themselves? and how will man ever succeed in seeing himself as Nature formed him, through all the changes which the succession of times and of things must have wrought in his original constitution, and in disentangling what he owes to his own stock from what circumstances and his progress have added to or changed in his primitive State? like the statue of Glaucus which time, sea, and storms had so disfigured that it resembled less a God than a ferocious Beast, the human soul adulterated in the lap of society by a thousand forever recurring causes, by the acquisition of a mass of knowledge and errors, by the changes that have taken place in the constitution of Bodies, and by the continual impact of the passions, has, so to speak, changed in appearance to the point of being almost unrecognizable; and instead of a being always acting on certain and unvarying Principles, instead of the Celestial and majestic simplicity its Author imprinted on it, all one still finds in it is the deformed contrast of passion that believes it reasons and the understanding in delirium.
[2] What is more cruel still, is that, since every progress of the human Species removes it ever farther from its primitive state, the more new knowledge we accumulate, the more do we deprive ourselves of the means of acquiring the most important knowledge of all, and that in a sense it is by dint of studying man that we have made it impossible for us to know him.
[3] It is easy to see that it is in these successive changes of man’s constitution that one must seek the first origin of the differences that distinguish men who, by common consent, are naturally as equal among themselves as were the animals of every species before various Physical causes introduced in some of them the varieties we notice in them. Indeed, it is not conceivable that these first changes, however they may have come about, altered all the Individuals of the species at once and in the same way; rather, while some were perfected or deteriorated and acquired various good or bad qualities that were not inherent in their Nature, the others remained in their original state for a longer time; and such was, among men, the first source of inequality, which it is easier to establish thus in general, than it is to assign its genuine causes with precision.
[4] Let my Readers therefore not imagine that I dare flatter myself with having seen what seems to me so difficult to see. I have initiated some arguments; I have hazarded some conjectures, less in the hope of resolving the question than with the intention of elucidating it and reducing it to its genuine state. Others will easily be able to go farther along the same road, though it will not be easy for anyone to reach the end. For it is no light undertaking to disentangle what is original from what is artificial in man’s present Nature, and to know accurately a state which no longer exists, which perhaps never did exist, which probably never will exist, and about which it is nevertheless necessary to have exact Notions in order to judge our present state adequately. Whoever might undertake to ascertain exactly the precautions required to make solid observations on this subject would need even more Philosophy than one might suspect; and a good solution to the following Problem does not seem to me unworthy of the Aristotles and the Plinys of our century: What experiments would be needed in order to get to know natural man; and by what means can these experiments be performed within society? Far from undertaking to solve this Problem, I believe that I have meditated on the Subject sufficiently to dare answer from the outset that the greatest Philosophers will not be too good to conduct these experiments, nor the most powerful sovereigns to perform them; a collaboration which it is scarcely reasonable to expect, especially in conjunction with the sustained or rather the successive enlightenment and goodwill needed by both parties in order to succeed.
[5] Yet these investigations so difficult to carry out, and to which so little thought has so far been devoted, are the only means we have left to resolve a host of difficulties that deprive us of the knowledge of the real foundations of human society. It is this ignorance of the nature of man that casts such uncertainty and obscurity on the genuine definition of natural right: for the idea of right, says M. Burlamaqui, and still more that of natural right, are manifestly ideas relative to the Nature of man. Hence, he goes on, it is from this very Nature of man, from his constitution and his state, that the principles of this science have to be deduced.
[6] It is not without surprise and scandal that one notes how little agreement prevails about this important matter among the various Authors who have dealt with it. Among the most serious Writers, scarcely two can be found who are of the same opinion on this point. To say nothing of the Ancient Philosophers who seem deliberately to have set out to contradict one another on the most fundamental principles, the Roman Jurists indiscriminately subject man and all other animals to the same natural Law, because they consider under this name the Law which Nature imposes upon itself, rather than that which it prescribes; or rather, because of the particular sense in which these Jurists understand the word Law, which they seem on this occasion to have taken only for the expression of the general relations established by nature among all animate beings for their common preservation. The Moderns, since they allow the name of Law only for a rule prescribed to a moral being, that is to say to a being that is intelligent, free, and considered in its relations with other beings, restrict the province of natural Law to the only animal endowed with reason, that is to say to man; but while each one of them defines this Law in his own fashion, all of them base it on such metaphysical principles that even among us there are very few people capable of understanding these principles, let alone of discovering them on their own. So that all the definitions by these learned men, which in every other respect forever contradict one another, agree only in this, that it is impossible to understand the Law of Nature and hence to obey it without being a very great reasoner and a profound Metaphysician. Which precisely means that in order to establish society men must have employed an enlightenment which develops only with much difficulty and among very few people within society itself.
[7] Knowing Nature so little, and agreeing so poorly about the meaning of the word Law, it would be quite difficult to concur about a good definition of natural Law. Indeed, all those that are found in Books, besides not being uniform, suffer from the further defect of being derived from a range of Knowledge which men do not naturally have, and from advantages the idea of which they can conceive of only once they have left the state of Nature. One begins by looking for the rules about which it would be appropriate for men to agree among themselves for the sake of the common utility; and then gives the name natural Law to the collection of these rules, with no further proof than the good which, in one’s view, would result from universal compliance with them. That is certainly a very convenient way of framing definitions, and of explaining the nature of things by almost arbitrary conformities.
[8] But so long as we do not know natural man, we will in vain try to ascertain either the Law which he has received or that which best suits his constitution. All we can very clearly see about this Law is not only that for it to be law the will of him whom it obligates must be able to submit to it knowingly; But also that for it to be natural it must speak immediately with the voice of Nature.
[9] Hence disregarding all the scientific books that only teach us to see men as they have made themselves, and meditating on the first and simplest operations of the human Soul, I believe I perceive in it two principles prior to reason, of which one interests us intensely in our well-being and our self-preservation, and the other inspires in us a natural repugnance to seeing any sentient Being, and especially any being like ourselves, perish or suffer. It is from the cooperation and the combination our mind is capable of making between these two Principles, without it being necessary to introduce into it that of sociability, that all the rules of natural right seem to me to flow; rules which reason is subsequently forced to reestablish on other foundations, when by its successive developments it has succeeded in stifling Nature.
[10] This way one is not obliged to make a Philosopher of man before making a man of him; his duties toward others are not dictated to him exclusively by the belated lessons of Wisdom; and as long as he does not resist the internal impulsion of commiseration, he will never harm another human being or even any sentient being, except in the legitimate case when, his preservation being involved, he is obliged to give himself preference. By this means the ancient disputes about whether animals participate in the natural Law are also brought to an end: For it is clear that, since they are deprived of enlightenment and of freedom, they cannot recognize that Law; but since they in some measure partake in our nature through the sentience with which they are endowed, it will be concluded that they must also participate in natural right, and that man is subject to some kind of duties toward them. Indeed, it would seem that if I am obliged not to harm another being like myself, this is so less because it is a rational being than because it is a sentient being; a quality which, since it is common to beast and man, must at least give the beast the right not to be needlessly mistreated by man.
[11] This same study of original man, of his true needs, and of the fundamental principles of his duties is also the only effective means available to dispel the host of difficulties that arise regarding the origin of moral inequality, the true foundations of the Body politic, the reciprocal rights of its members, and a thousand similar questions, as important as they are poorly elucidated.
[12] Human society viewed with a calm and disinterested eye seems at first to exhibit only the violence of powerful men and the oppression of the weak; the mind revolts at the harshness of the first; one is inclined to deplore the blindness of the others; and since nothing is less stable among men than those external relationships that are more often the product of chance than of wisdom, and that are called weakness or power, wealth or poverty, human establishments seem at first glance to be founded on piles of Quicksand; it is only by examining them closely, only after setting aside the dust and sand that surround the Edifice, that one perceives the unshakable base on which it is raised, and learns to respect its foundations. Now, without the serious study of man, of his natural faculties, and of their successive developments, one will never succeed in drawing these distinctions and in separating what, in the present constitution of things, divine will has done from what human art has pretended to do. The Political and moral investigations occasioned by the important question I am examining are therefore in every way useful, and the hypothetical history of governments is in all respects an instructive lesson for man. By considering what we would have become, abandoned to ourselves, we must learn to bless him whose beneficent hand, correcting our institutions and grounding them unshakably, forestalled the disorders that would have resulted from them, and caused our happiness to be born from the very means that seemed bound to complete our misery.
Learn what the god ordered you to be,
And what your place is in the human world.