Theory of Human Nature
Human nature is sacrificed by the demands of
the focus on the development of an intellectual culture EP219 Human Nature is
in constant conflict with expectations of society EP219
Virtue confers stability and unity upon the
human existence because it subordinates the idle speculation to the active
needs of the moral life; it induces strength and vigor to the soul; allows for
fall expression of man's genius; existence is solid and permanent EP219
The original nature of man is good but
corrupted by society EP220
To be good is to exist according to ones
intrinsic potentiality of one's nature EP221
Man's egotistic nature prevents him from
regaining the simplicity of original human nature B 18:37
Self love is always good in its purest state
and spontaneous; it expresses the real essence of human existence EP220
Self love serves as a source of all
genuinely natural impulses and emotions; from instinctively displayed in self
preservation to a nobler expression when combined with reason EP220
Natural order effects
all aspects of human existence; brings individual into contact with his own innerself, physical environment and his fellow man. EP220
All passions are good if they are under our
control; all are bad if they control us EP221
Man's nature is not fully mature until it
becomes social EP221
Natural man in the state of nature is
predominately an instinctive primitive creature living on the spontaneous
expression of his innate vitality; man in the social state is a rational, moral
being aware of obligations to other people, cafled
upon to subordinate the impulse of goodness to the demands of virtue -- a moral
and relative existence EP222
Rational man always has an awareness of
common good and the need to live in harmonious relationship with his fellow man
EP222
Cannot separate morality and politics EP222
Man's ultimate feeling of satisfaction is to
feel himself at one with a God created system in which all is good; goal of human
endeavor is happiness
Why a brief discussion of human nature at this time? How does it fit in with
class discussion? Recall that a topic a designated "human nature" was
part of our Tuesday discussion. Let me add to the discussion and remind you
that there is also a brief discussion of human nature in one of the two
chapters on Social Philosophy from Shermis, Philosophic
Foundations of Education.
Human Nature:
A Brief Definition
Human nature is
that philosophical term which refers to the most basic given of all human
beings. When you account for social class, when you have disposed of culture as
a factor, when you account for intelligence, training, accidents of existence,
talent, good parenting, wretched parenting, good and bad luck-- you are left
with human nature. It is that which is common to all human beings. All human
beings have a human nature. The question is, What kind
of human nature do we all have?
The Christian Theological Conception. From
Most Christian
sects, with some exceptions, accepted the notion that human nature was innately
depraved. That is, stamped into human nature was a tendency to do evil. Human
depravity and wickedness fell upon the human race in the act of original sin.
When Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden, they visited upon all of
their descendants an ineradicable tendency to do evil. With the coming of Jesus
Christ, God freely bestowed upon mankind salvation in the form of the sacrifice
of His only son. (At this point, some may say, This is
not the position of my church's theology. Perhaps not.
But it would be impossible for me to deal with the position of the Catholic
Church and some 300 Protestant denominations. So, forgive me for flattening out
some complex ideas. I don't want to sit all day in front of my computer and you
certainly don't want to sit all day reading all of the variations.) When
Protestants talk about "being saved," what they mean is being saved
from sin and the consequences of sin, and the only way to do that is to accept
Jesus as one's own savior. Catholics believe that salvation also rests upon
following of the teaching of God's divine institution upon earth, the Church,
and being obedient to His Church's teachings.
The Jewish Conception. Jews have dual conception of human nature. They
accept the notion of a yezer ha ra, within us. The yezer
ha ra is that inclination within us to do evil.
There is also another inclination, called yezer
ha tov, which is the inclination to do good. Individuals are not good automatically, that is, they
do not know automatically the meaning of good and evil. This must be learned
from reading and understanding God's word in His Holy Scripture. But reading is
not sufficient. As one reads of God's will, one must perform God's mitzvot, that is, follow God's commandments.
Rousseau. The Enlightenment writer
Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed that ancient conceptions of human nature were
incorrect and a barrier to human happiness. Human beings were born good. What makes them bad is an artificial, corrupt and
depraved society. If human beings at birth were given freedom from society's
corrupt influences, they would grow up to be good, noble, unselfish,
cooperative, and possess all other human virtues. Rousseau wrote a variety of
books, the best know being his Emile. Rousseau's theories about learning
and child-rearing had an enormous influence -which is strange for a man who
gave away all of his five children to a foundling home and was writing from an
experiential base of 0.
Tabula Rasa. Another conception of
human nature is known as "human nature as tabula
rasa." Tabula rasa is usually translated as "blank slate. It refers
to the theory of John Locke, an English philosopher, whose works, like those of
Rousseau, had a considerable impact upon our Founding Fathers. The central
notion is that human nature is essentially a blank slate. We are born into the
world with no knowledge, and without having any disposition to do good or evil.
What we become depends entirely upon the effect of the environment. If we
control a child's environment we can make him become what we wish. This idea
was picked up by some German philosophers and also by turn-of-the century
psychologists such as Ivan Pavlov, E. E. Thorndike, John B. Watson, and in the
mid-Century by B. F. Skinner. They might not have known that they were relying
upon an English Enlightenment philosopher, since they thought that philosophy
was entirely pre-scientific. But, their belief in the total control of the
environment was a 20th century formulation of philosophic position.
Adam Smith et
al. Adam
Smith was a Scottish philosopher, one of the early "classical
economists." His most important work, a book usually abbreviated as The
Wealth of Nations, was extraordinarily influential in Western Civilization.
In addition to laying out the principles of capitalism, many of which are held
today, he suggested that the most reliable human emotion was self-interest.
Capitalism would work, Smith thought, because it was appealing to something at
the very core of human nature--selfishness, and a concern for one's own
interest. I indicate in my text that the concern by corporations for "the
bottom line," and, in most cases, for nothing else, is an implication of
an 18th century philosophical position.
A Scientific Position. In fact, if you went to a behavioral scientist and
started talking about "human nature," you might get a disapproving
look. That concept known as human nature, you might be told, is a
pre-scientific relic. Scientists do not deal with human nature. Nevertheless
and despite the social scientists' rejection of philosophy as relevant, one can
infer a position on human nature from the writings of some psychologists and
other behavioral scientists. What is this position? Summarized and simplified
it goes like this: human nature is what happens to individuals in the process
of their inherited biological nature interacts with the environment around
them. This is a theory of interaction, for it emphasizes not nature and
not nurture, but rather the interaction of human beings, nature, with their
total environment, which goes by the name of nurture. Believers of interaction
do not worry about which is more important nature or nurture, for they see no
way of separating one from the other.
Americans tend to
jump from a sort of environmental determinism, in which the environment
absolutely controls what human beings do, to heredity determinism, in which the
environment is irrelevant, and it it is what one
inherits in one's genes which absolutely controls what human beings do. The
book, play and movie, The Bad Seed, is a good example of hereditity determinism. The writings of 20th century
behaviorists tend strongly to suggest environmental determinism.
Above all, let us not conclude, with Hobbes, that because man has no idea of
goodness, he must be naturally wicked; that he is vicious because he does not
know virtue; that he always refuses to do his fellow-creatures services which
he does not think they have a right to demand; or that by virtue of the right
he truly claims to everything he needs, he foolishly imagines himself the sole
proprietor of the whole universe. Hobbes had seen clearly the defects of all
the modern definitions of natural right: but the consequences which he deduces
from his own show that he understands it in an equally false sense. In
reasoning on the principles he lays down, he ought to have said that the state
of nature, being that in which the care for our own preservation is the least
prejudicial to that of others, was consequently the best calculated to promote
peace, and the most suitable for mankind. He does say the exact opposite, in
consequence of having improperly admitted, as a part of savage man's care for
self-preservation, the gratification of a multitude of passions which are the
work of society, and have made laws necessary. A bad man, he says, is a robust
child. But it remains to be proved whether man in a state of nature is this
robust child: and, should we grant that he is, what
would he infer? Why truly, that if this man, when robust and strong, were
dependent on others as he is when feeble, there is no extravagance he would not
be guilty of; that he would beat his mother when she was too slow in giving him
her breast; that he would strangle one of his younger brothers, if he should be
troublesome to him, or bite the arm of another, if he put him to any
inconvenience. But that man in the state of nature is both strong and dependent
involves two contrary suppositions. Man is weak when he is dependent, and is
his own master before he comes to be strong. Hobbes did not reflect that the
same cause, which prevents a savage from making use of his reason, as our
jurists hold, prevents him also from abusing his faculties, as Hobbes himself
allows: so that it may be justly said that savages are not bad merely because
they do not know what it is to be good: for it is neither the development of
the understanding nor the restraint of law that hinders them from doing ill;
but the peacefulness of their passions, and their ignorance of vice: tanto plus in illis proficit vitiorum ignoratio, quam in his cognitio virtutis.2
There is another principle which has escaped Hobbes; which, having been
bestowed on mankind, to moderate, on certain occasions, the impetuosity of
egoism, or, before its birth, the desire of self-preservation, tempers the ardour with which he pursues his own welfare, by an innate
repugnance at seeing a fellow-creature suffer.3 I
think I need not fear contradiction in holding man to be possessed of the only
natural virtue, which could not be denied him by the most violent detractor of
human virtue. I am speaking of compassion, which is a disposition suitable to
creatures so weak and subject to so many evils as we certainly are: by so much
the more universal and useful to mankind, as it comes before any kind of
reflection; and at the same time so natural, that the very brutes themselves
sometimes give evident proofs of it. Not to mention the tenderness of mothers
for their offspring and the perils they encounter to save them from danger, it
is well known that horses show a reluctance to trample on living bodies. One
animal never passes by the dead body of another of its species: there are even
some which give their fellows a sort of burial; while the mournful lowings of the cattle when they enter the slaughter-house
show the impressions made on them by the horrible spectacle which meets them.
We find, with pleasure, the author of the Fable of the Bees obliged to own that
man is a compassionate and sensible being, and laying aside his cold subtlety
of style, in the example he gives, to present us with the pathetic description
of a man who, from a place of confinement, is compelled to behold a wild beast
tear a child from the arms of its mother, grinding its tender limbs with its
murderous teeth, and tearing its palpitating entrails with its claws. What
horrid agitation must not the eyewitness of such a scene experience, although
he would not be personally concerned! What anxiety would he not suffer at not
being able to give any assistance to the fainting mother and the dying infant!
Such is the pure emotion of nature, prior to all kinds of reflection! Such
is the force of natural compassion, which the greatest depravity of morals has
as yet hardly been able to destroy! for we daily find at our theatres men
affected, nay shedding tears at the sufferings of a wretch who, were he in the
tyrant's place, would probably even add to the torments of his enemies; like
the bloodthirsty Sulla, who was so sensitive to ills he had not caused, or that
Alexander of Pheros who did not dare to go and see
any tragedy acted, for fear of being seen weeping with Andromache
and Priam, though he could listen without emotion to
the cries of all the citizens who were daily strangled at his command.
|
Mollissima
corda |
|
Humano generi dare se natura fatetur, |
|
Quœ lacrimas dedit. |
|
Juvenal, Satires,
xv. 1514 |
Mandeville well knew that, in spite of all their morality, men would have
never been better than monsters, had not nature bestowed on them a sense of
compassion, to aid their reason: but he did not see that from this quality
alone flow all those social virtues, of which he denied man the possession. But
what is generosity, clemency or humanity but compassion applied to the weak, to
the guilty, or to mankind in general? Even benevolence and friendship are, if
we judge rightly, only the effects of compassion, constantly set upon a
particular object: for how is it different to wish that another person may not
suffer pain and uneasiness and to wish him happy? Were it even true that pity
is no more than a feeling, which puts us in the place of the sufferer, a
feeling, obscure yet lively in a savage, developed yet feeble in civilised man; this truth would have no other consequence
than to confirm my argument. Compassion must, in fact, be the stronger, the
more the animal beholding any kind of distress identifies himself with the
animal that suffers. Now, it is plain that such identification must have been
much more perfect in a state of nature than it is in a state of reason. It is
reason that engenders self-respect, and reflection that confirms it: it is
reason which turns man's mind back upon itself, and divides him from everything
that could disturb or afflict him. It is philosophy that isolates him, and bids
him say, at sight of the misfortunes of others: "Perish if you will, I am
secure." Nothing but such general evils as threaten the whole community
can disturb the tranquil sleep of the philosopher, or tear him from his bed. A
murder may with impunity be committed under his window; he has only to put his
hands to his ears and argue a little with himself, to prevent nature, which is
shocked within him, from identifying itself with the unfortunate sufferer. Uncivilised man has not this admirable talent; and for want
of reason and wisdom, is always foolishly ready to obey the first promptings of
humanity. It is the populace that flocks together at riots and street-brawls,
while the wise man prudently makes off. It is the mob and the market-women, who
part the combatants, and hinder gentle-folks from cutting one another's
throats.
It is then certain that compassion is a natural feeling, which, by
moderating the violence of love of self in each individual, contributes to the
preservation of the whole species. It is this compassion that hurries us
without reflection to the relief of those who are in distress: it is this which
in a state of nature supplies the place of laws, morals and virtues, with the
advantage that none are tempted to disobey its gentle voice: it is this which
will always prevent a sturdy savage from robbing a weak child or a feeble old
man of the sustenance they may have with pain and difficulty acquired, if he
sees a possibility of providing for himself by other means: it is this which,
instead of inculcating that sublime maxim of rational justice. Do to others
as you would have them do unto you, inspires all men with that other maxim
of natural goodness, much less perfect indeed, but perhaps more useful; Do
good to yourself with as little evil as possible to others. In a word, it
is rather in this natural feeling than in any subtle arguments that we must
look for the cause of that repugnance, which every man would experience in
doing evil, even independently of the maxims of education. Although it might
belong to Socrates and other minds of the like craft to acquire virtue by
reason, the human race would long since have ceased to be, had its preservation
depended only on the reasonings of the individuals
composing it.
With passions so little active, and so good a curb, men, being rather wild
than wicked, and more intent to guard themselves
against the mischief that might be done them, than to do mischief to others,
were by no means subject to very perilous dissensions. They maintained no kind
of intercourse with one another, and were consequently strangers to vanity,
deference, esteem and contempt; they had not the least idea of meum and tuum, and
no true conception of justice; they looked upon every violence to which they
were subjected, rather as an injury that might easily be repaired than as a
crime that ought to be punished; and they never thought of taking revenge,
unless perhaps mechanically and on the spot, as a dog will sometimes bite the
stone which is thrown at him. Their quarrels therefore would seldom have very
bloody consequences; for the subject of them would be merely the question of
subsistence. But I am aware of one greater danger, which remains to be noticed.
Of the passions that stir the heart of man, there is one which makes the
sexes necessary to each other, and is extremely ardent and impetuous; a
terrible passion that braves danger, surmounts all obstacles, and in its
transports seems calculated to bring destruction on the human race which it is
really destined to preserve. What must become of men who are left to this
brutal and boundless rage, without modesty, without shame, and daily upholding
their amours at the price of their blood?
It must, in the first place, be allowed that, the more violent the passions
are, the more are laws necessary to keep them under
restraint. But, setting aside the inadequacy of laws to effect this purpose,
which is evident from the crimes and disorders to which these passions daily
give rise among us, we should do well to inquire if these evils did not spring
up with the laws themselves; for in this case, even if the laws were capable of
repressing such evils, it is the least that could be expected from them, that
they should check a mischief which would not have arisen without them.
Let us begin by distinguishing between the physical and moral ingredients in
the feeling of love. The physical part of love is that general desire which
urges the sexes to union with each other. The moral part is that which
determines and fixes this desire exclusively upon one particular object; or at
least gives it a greater degree of energy toward the object thus preferred. It
is easy to see that the moral part of love is a factitious feeling, born of
social usage, and enhanced by the women with much care and cleverness, to
establish their empire, and put in power the sex which ought to obey. This
feeling, being founded on certain ideas of beauty and merit which a savage is
not in a position to acquire, and on comparisons which he is incapable of
making, must be for him almost non-existent; for, as his mind cannot form
abstract ideas of proportion and regularity, so his heart is not susceptible of
the feelings of love and admiration, which are even insensibly produced by the
application of these ideas. He follows solely the character nature has implanted
in him, and not tastes which he could never have acquired; so that every woman
equally answers his purpose.
Men in a state of nature being confined merely to what is physical in love,
and fortunate enough to be ignorant of those excellences, which whet the
appetite while they increase the difficulty of gratifying it, must be subject
to fewer and less violent fits of passion, and consequently fall into fewer and
less violent disputes. The imagination, which causes such ravages among us,
never speaks to the heart of savages, who quietly await the impulses of nature,
yield to them involuntarily, with more pleasure than ardour,
and, their wants once satisfied, lose the desire. It is therefore incontestable
that love, as well as all other passions, must have acquired in society that
glowing impetuosity, which makes it so often fatal to mankind. And it is the
more absurd to represent savages as continually cutting one another's throats
to indulge their brutality, because this opinion is directly contrary to experience;
the Caribbeans, who have as yet least of all deviated
from the state of nature, being in fact the most peaceable of people in their
amours, and the least subject to jealousy, though they live in a hot climate
which seems always to inflame the passions.
With regard to the inferences that might be drawn, in the case of several
species of animals, the males of which fill our poultry-yards with blood and
slaughter, or in spring make the forests resound with their quarrels over their
females; we must begin by excluding all those species, in which nature has
plainly established, in the comparative power of the sexes, relations different
from those which exist among us: thus we can base no conclusion about men on
the habits of fighting cocks. In those species where the proportion is better
observed, these battles must be entirely due to the scarcity of females in
comparison with males; or, what amounts to the same thing, to the intervals
during which the female constantly refuses the advances of the male: for if
each female admits the male but during two months in the year, it is the same
as if the number of females were five-sixths less. Now, neither of these two
cases is applicable to the human species, in which the number of females
usually exceeds that of males, and among whom it has never been observed, even
among savages, that the females have, like those of other animals, their stated
times of passion and indifference. Moreover, in several of these species, the
individuals all take fire at once, and there comes a fearful moment of
universal passion, tumult and disorder among them; a scene which is never
beheld in the human species, whose love is not thus seasonal. We must not then
conclude from the combats of such animals for the enjoyment of the females, that
the case would be the same with mankind in a state of nature: and, even if we
drew such a conclusion, we see that such contests do not exterminate other
kinds of animals, and we have no reason to think they would be more fatal to
ours. It is indeed clear that they would do still less mischief than is the
case in a state of society; especially in those countries in which, morals
being still held in some repute, the jealousy of lovers and the vengeance of
husbands are the daily cause of duels, murders, and even worse crimes; where
the obligation of eternal fidelity only occasions adultery, and the very laws
of honour and continence necessarily increase
debauchery and lead to the multiplication of abortions.
Let us conclude then that man in a state of nature, wandering up and down
the forests, without industry, without speech, and without home, an equal
stranger to war and to all ties, neither standing in need of his
fellow-creatures nor having any desire to hurt them, and perhaps even not
distinguishing them one from another; let us conclude that, being
self-sufficient and subject to so few passions, he could have no feelings or
knowledge but such as befitted his situation; that he felt only his actual
necessities, and disregarded everything he did not think himself immediately
concerned to notice, and that his understanding made no greater progress than
his vanity. If by accident he made any discovery, he was the less able to
communicate it to others, as he did not know even his own children. Every art
would necessarily perish with its inventor, where there was no kind of
education among men, and generations succeeded generations without the least
advance; when, all setting out from the same point, centuries must have elapsed
in the barbarism of the first ages; when the race was already old, and man
remained a child.
If I have expatiated at such length on this supposed primitive state, it is
because I had so many ancient errors and inveterate prejudices to eradicate,
and therefore thought it incumbent on me to dig down to their very root, and
show, by means of a true picture of the state of nature, how far even the
natural inequalities of mankind are from having that reality and influence
which modern writers suppose.
It is in fact easy to see that many of the differences which distinguish men
are merely the effect of habit and the different methods of life men adopt in
society. Thus a robust or delicate constitution, and the strength or weakness
attaching to it, are more frequently the effects of a hardy or effeminate
method of education than of the original endowment of the body. It is the same
with the powers of the mind; for education not only makes a difference between
such as are cultured and such as are not, but even increases the differences
which exist among the former, in proportion to their respective degrees of
culture: as the distance between a giant and a dwarf on the same road increases
with every step they take. If we compare the prodigious diversity, which obtains
in the education and manner of life of the various orders of men in the state
of society, with the uniformity and simplicity of animal and savage life, in
which every one lives on the same kind of food and in exactly the same manner,
and does exactly the same things, it is easy to conceive how much less the
difference between man and man must be in a state of nature than in a state of
society, and how greatly the natural inequality of mankind must be increased by
the inequalities of social institutions.
But even if nature really affected, in the distribution of her gifts, that
partiality which is imputed to her, what advantage would the greatest of her favourites derive from it, to the detriment of others, in a
state that admits of hardly any kind of relation between them? Where there is
no love, of what advantage is beauty? Of what use is wit to those who do not
converse, or cunning to those who have no business with others? I hear it
constantly repeated that, in such a state, the strong would oppress the weak;
but what is here meant by oppression? Some, it is said, would violently
domineer over others, who would groan under a servile submission to their
caprices. This indeed is exactly what I observe to be the case among us; but I
do not see how it can be inferred of men in a state of nature, who could not
easily be brought to conceive what we mean by dominion and servitude. One man,
it is true, might seize the fruits which another had gathered, the game he had
killed, or the cave he had chosen for shelter; but how would he ever be able to
exact obedience, and what ties of dependence could there be among men without
possessions? If, for instance, I am driven from one tree, I can go to the next;
if I am disturbed in one place, what hinders me from going to another? Again,
should I happen to meet with a man so much stronger than myself, and at the
same time so depraved, so indolent, and so barbarous, as to compel me to
provide for his sustenance while he himself remains idle; he must take care not
to have his eyes off me for a single moment; he must bind me fast before he
goes to sleep, or I shall certainly either knock him on the head or make my
escape. That is to say, he must in such a case voluntarily expose himself to
much greater trouble than he seeks to avoid, or can give me. After all this,
let him be off his guard ever so little; let him but turn his head aside at any
sudden noise, and I shall be instantly twenty paces off, lost in the forest,
and, my fetters burst asunder, he would never see me again.
Without my expatiating thus uselessly on these details, every one must see
that as the bonds of servitude are formed merely by the mutual dependence of
men on one another and the reciprocal needs that unite them, it is impossible
to make any man a slave, unless he be first reduced to a situation in which he
cannot do without the help of others: and, since such a situation does not
exist in a state of nature, every one is there his own master, and the law of
the strongest is of no effect.
Having proved that the inequality of mankind is hardly felt, and that its
influence is next to nothing in a state of nature, I must next show its origin
and trace its progress in the successive developments of the human mind. Having
shown that human perfectibility, the social virtues, and the other
faculties which natural man potentially possessed, could never develop of
themselves, but must require the fortuitous concurrence of many foreign causes
that might never arise, and without which he would have remained for ever in
his primitive condition, I must now collect and consider the different
accidents which may have improved the human understanding while depraving the
species, and made man wicked while making him sociable; so as to bring him and
the world from that distant period to the point at which we now behold them.
I confess that, as the events I am going to describe might have happened in
various ways, I have nothing to determine my choice
but conjectures: but such conjectures become reasons, when they are the most probable
that can be drawn from the nature of things, and the only means of discovering
the truth. The consequences, however, which I mean to deduce will not be barely
conjectural; as, on the principles just laid down, it would be impossible to
form any other theory that would not furnish the same results, and from which I
could not draw the same conclusions.
This will be a sufficient
apology for my not dwelling on the manner in which the lapse of time
compensates for the little probability in the events; on the surprising power
of trivial causes, when their action is constant; on the impossibility, on the
one hand, of destroying certain hypotheses, though on the other we cannot give
them the certainty of known matters of fact; on its being within the province
of history, when two facts are given as real, and have to be connected by a
series of intermediate facts, which are unknown or supposed to be so, to supply
such facts as may connect them; and on its being in the province of philosophy
when history is silent, to determine similar facts to serve the same end; and
lastly, on the influence of similarity, which, in the case of events, reduces
the facts to a much smaller number of different classes than is commonly
imagined. It is enough for me to offer these hints to the consideration of my
judges, and to have so arranged that the general reader has no need to consider
them at all.
That men are actually wicked, a sad and continual experience of them proves
beyond doubt: but, all the same, I think I have shown that man is naturally
good. What then can have depraved him to such an extent, except the changes
that have happened in his constitution, the advances he has made, and the
knowledge he has acquired? We may admire human society as much as we please; it
will be none the less true that it necessarily leads men to hate each other in
proportion as their interests clash, and to do one another apparent services,
while they are really doing every imaginable mischief. What can be thought of a
relation, in which the interest of every individual dictates rules directly
opposite to those the public reason dictates to the community in general — in
which every man finds his profit in the misfortunes of his neighbour?
There is not perhaps any man in a comfortable position who has not greedy
heirs, and perhaps even children, secretly wishing for his death; not a ship at
sea, of which the loss would not be good news to some merchant or other; not a
house, which some debtor of bad faith would not be glad to see reduced to ashes
with all the papers it contains; not a nation which does not rejoice at the
disasters that befall its neighbours. Thus it is that
we find our advantage in the misfortunes of our fellow-creatures, and that the
loss of one man almost always constitutes the prosperity of another. But it is
still more pernicious that public calamities are the objects of the hopes and
expectations of innumerable individuals. Some desire sickness, some mortality,
some war, and some famine. I have seen men wicked enough to weep for sorrow at
the prospect of a plentiful season; and the great and fatal fire of
Savage man, when he has dined, is at peace with all nature, and the friend
of all his fellow-creatures. If a dispute arises about a meal, he rarely comes
to blows, without having first compared the difficulty of conquering his
antagonist with the trouble of finding subsistence elsewhere: and, as pride
does not come in, it all ends in a few blows; the victor eats, and the
vanquished seeks provision somewhere else, and all is at peace. The case is
quite different with man in the state of society, for whom first necessaries
have to be provided, and then superfluities; delicacies follow next, then
immense wealth, then subjects, and then slaves. He enjoys not a moment's
relaxation; and what is yet stranger, the less natural and pressing his wants,
the more headstrong are his passions, and, still worse, the more he has it in
his power to gratify them; so that after a long course of prosperity, after
having swallowed up treasures and ruined multitudes, the hero ends up by
cutting every throat till he finds himself, at last, sole master of the world.
Such is in miniature the moral picture, if not of human life, at least of the
secret pretensions of the heart of civilised man.
Compare without partiality the state of the citizen with that of the savage,
and trace out, if you can, how many inlets the former has opened to pain and
death, besides those of his vices, his wants and his misfortunes. If you
reflect on the mental afflictions that prey on us, the violent passions that
waste and exhaust us, the excessive labour with which
the poor are burdened, the still more dangerous indolence to which the wealthy
give themselves up, so that the poor perish of want, and the rich of surfeit;
if you reflect but a moment on the heterogeneous mixtures and pernicious
seasonings of foods; the corrupt state in which they are frequently eaten; on
the adulteration of medicines, the wiles of those who sell them, the mistakes
of those who administer them, and the poisonous vessels in which they are
prepared; on the epidemics bred by foul air in consequence of great numbers of
men being crowded together, or those which are caused by our delicate way of
living, by our passing from our houses into the open air and back again, by the
putting on or throwing off our clothes with too little care, and by all the
precautions which sensuality has converted into necessary habits, and the
neglect of which sometimes costs us our life or health; if you take into
account the conflagrations and earthquakes, which, devouring or overwhelming
whole cities, destroy the inhabitants by thousands; in a word, if you add
together all the dangers with which these causes are always threatening us, you
will see how dearly nature makes us pay for the contempt with which we have
treated her lessons.
I shall not here repeat, what I have elsewhere said of the calamities of
war; but wish that those, who have sufficient knowledge, were willing or bold
enough to make public the details of the villainies committed in armies by the
contractors for commissariat and hospitals: we should see plainly that their
monstrous frauds, already none too well concealed, which cripple the finest
armies in less than no time, occasion greater destruction among the soldiers
than the swords of the enemy.
The number of people who perish annually at sea, by
famine, the scurvy, pirates, fire and shipwrecks, affords matter for another
shocking calculation. We must also place to the credit of the
establishment of property, and consequently to the institution of society,
assassinations, poisonings, highway robberies, and even the punishments
inflicted on the wretches guilty of these crimes; which, though expedient to
prevent greater evils, yet by making the murder of one man cost the lives of
two or more, double the loss to the human race.
What shameful methods are sometimes practised to
prevent the birth of men, and cheat nature; either by brutal and depraved
appetites which insult her most beautiful work-appetites unknown to savages or
mere animals, which can spring only from the corrupt imagination of mankind in civilised countries; or by secret abortions, the fitting
effects of debauchery and vitiated notions of honour;
or by the exposure or murder of multitudes of infants, who fall victims to the
poverty of their parents, or the cruel shame of their mothers; or, finally, by
the mutilation of unhappy wretches, part of whose life, with their hope of
posterity, is given up to vain singing, or, still worse, the brutal jealousy of
other men: a mutilation which, in the last case, becomes a double outrage
against nature from the treatment of those who suffer it, and from the use to
which they are destined. But is it not a thousand times more common and more
dangerous for paternal rights openly to offend against humanity? How many
talents have not been thrown away, and inclinations forced, by the unwise
constraint of fathers? How many men, who would have distinguished themselves in
a fitting estate, have died dishonoured and wretched
in another for which they had no taste! How many happy, but unequal, marriages
have been broken or disturbed, and how many chaste wives have been dishonoured, by an order of things continually in
contradiction with that of nature! How many good and virtuous husbands and
wives are reciprocally punished for having been ill-assorted! How many young
and unhappy victims of their parents' avarice plunge into vice, or pass their
melancholy days in tears, groaning in the indissoluble bonds which their hearts
repudiate and gold alone has formed! Fortunate sometimes are those whose
courage and virtue remove them from life before inhuman violence makes them
spend it in crime or in despair. Forgive me, father and mother, whom I shall
ever regret: my complaint embitters your griefs; but
would they might be an eternal and terrible example to every one who dares, in
the name of nature, to violate her most sacred right.
If I have spoken only of those ill-starred unions which are the result of
our system, is it to be thought that those over which love and sympathy preside
are free from disadvantages? What if I should undertake to show humanity
attacked in its very source, and even in the most
sacred of all ties, in which fortune is consulted before nature, and, the
disorders of society confounding all virtue and vice, continence becomes a
criminal precaution, and a refusal to give life to a fellow-creature, an act of
humanity? But, without drawing aside the veil which hides all these horrors,
let us content ourselves with pointing out the evil which others will have to
remedy.
To all this add the multiplicity of unhealthy trades, which shorten men's
lives or destroy their bodies, such as working in the mines, and the preparing
of metals and minerals, particularly lead, copper, mercury, cobalt, and
arsenic: add those other dangerous trades which are daily fatal to many tilers, carpenters, masons and miners: put all these
together and we can see, in the establishment and perfection of societies, the
reasons for that diminution of our species, which has been noticed by many
philosophers.
Luxury, which cannot be prevented among men who are tenacious of their own
convenience and of the respect paid them by others, soon completes the evil
society had begun, and, under the pretence of giving bread to the poor, whom it
should never have made such, impoverishes all the rest, and sooner or later
depopulates the State. Luxury is a remedy much worse than the disease it sets
up to cure; or rather it is in itself the greatest of all evils, for every
State, great or small: for, in order to maintain all the servants and vagabonds
it creates, it brings oppression and ruin on the citizen and the labourer; it is like those scorching winds, which, covering
the trees and plants with devouring insects, deprive useful animals of their
subsistence and spread famine and death wherever they blow.
From society and the luxury to which it gives birth arise the liberal and
mechanical arts, commerce, letters, and all those superfluities which make
industry flourish, and enrich and ruin nations. The reason for such destruction
is plain. It is easy to see, from the very nature of agriculture, that it must
be the least lucrative of all the arts; for, its produce being the most
universally necessary, the price must be proportionate to the abilities of the
very poorest of mankind.
From the same principle may be deduced this rule, that the arts in general
are more lucrative in proportion as they are less useful; and that, in the end,
the most useful becomes the most neglected. From this we may learn what to
think of the real advantages of industry and the actual effects of its
progress.
Such are the sensible causes of all the miseries, into which opulence at
length plunges the most celebrated nations. In proportion as arts and industry
flourish, the despised husbandman, burdened with the taxes necessary for the
support of luxury, and condemned to pass his days between labour
and hunger, forsakes his native field, to seek in towns the bread he ought to
carry thither. The more our capital cities strike the vulgar eye with
admiration, the greater reason is there to lament the sight of the abandoned
countryside, the large tracts of land that lie uncultivated, the roads crowded
with unfortunate citizens turned beggars or highwaymen, and doomed to end their
wretched lives either on a dunghill or on the gallows. Thus the State grows
rich on the one hand, and feeble and depopulated on the other; the mightiest
monarchies, after having taken immense pains to enrich and depopulate
themselves, fall at last a prey to some poor nation, which has yielded to the
fatal temptation of invading them, and then, growing opulent and weak in its
turn, is itself invaded and ruined by some other.
Let any one inform us what produced the swarms of barbarians, who overran
Europe, Asia and
What, then, is to be done? Must societies be totally abolished? Must meum and tuum be
annihilated, and must we return again to the forests to live among bears? This
is a deduction in the manner of my adversaries, which I would as soon
anticipate as let them have the shame of drawing. O you, who have never heard
the voice of heaven, who think man destined only to live this little life and die
in peace; you, who can resign in the midst of populous cities your fatal
acquisitions, your restless spirits, your corrupt hearts and endless desires;
resume, since it depends entirely on ourselves, your ancient and primitive
innocence: retire to the woods, there to lose the sight and remembrance of the
crimes of your contemporaries; and be not apprehensive of degrading your
species, by renouncing its advances in order to renounce its vices. As for men
like me, whose passions have destroyed their original simplicity, who can no
longer subsist on plants or acorns, or live without laws and magistrates; those
who were honoured in their first father with
supernatural instructions; those who discover, in the design of giving human
actions at the start a morality which they must otherwise have been so long in
acquiring, the reason for a precept in itself indifferent and inexplicable on
every other system; those, in short, who are persuaded that the Divine Being
has called all mankind to be partakers in the happiness and perfection of
celestial intelligences, all these will endeavour to
merit the eternal prize they are to expect from the practice of those virtues,
which they make themselves follow in learning to know them. They will respect
the sacred bonds of their respective communities; they will love their
fellow-citizens, and serve them with all their might: they will scrupulously
obey the laws, and all those who make or administer them; they will
particularly honour those wise and good princes, who
find means of preventing, curing or even palliating all these evils and abuses,
by which we are constantly threatened; they will animate the zeal of their
deserving rulers, by showing them, without flattery or fear, the importance of
their office and the severity of their duty. But they will not therefore have
less contempt for a constitution that cannot support itself without the aid of
so many splendid characters, much oftener wished for than found; and from
which, notwithstanding all their pains and solicitude, there always arise more
real calamities than even apparent advantages.
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