https://arts.st-andrews.ac.uk/intellectualhistory/files/original/3d07d7ba9db4b048c4496d7cca1066df.pdf 61406791d57a0d4d17ebaafa919e4524 PDF Text Text III THE DISCOURSSUR L'INEGALITE ANDITS SOURCES Among all the early the most important account Discours works of Rousseau in political is certainly of both the genesis the Discours and nature is at once more detailed found in any of his other writings and social sur l'inegalite. of society For the which he elaborated and more coherent of the period 1 than that thought in the which can be from 1750 to 1756, and in 1. There are no problems about establishing the date~ around which Rousseau composed the Discours that are anything like the difficulties of ascertaining when he wrote the 'Economie politique' and Manuscrit de Geneve (see eh. II, notes 73 and 104). In llovember 1753 the Mercure de Frc...'lce published a notice for the Academie de Dijon about an essay competition on the subject, 'Quelle est la source de l'inegalite parmi les hommes, & si elle est autorisee par la loi naturelle'. Rousseau remarks in his Confessions (O.C.I, p. 388) that he was very much impressed by·this choice of topic and began almost immediately to work upon the Discours. The essay was completed in about four months, and by 1 April 1754 it was submitted as an anonymous entry to the Academy. It is clear, however, that Rousseau was known to be the author of the Discours before the prize was announced on 19 July (see Roger Tisserand, Les concurrents de J.-J. Rousseau a l'Academie de D~jon our le prix de 1754 [Paris 1936 pp. 13-14), and this may help to explain why a work that was far superior to the first essay with which he had obtained the Dijon prize before was eliminated from the competition. Already by June 1754 Rousseau apparently knew that his entry would not be successful, and he then began to make preparations for its publication in Paris (see the Correspondance complete, II, pp. 267-269). On 12 June he completed his dedication to the Republic of Geneva (see O.C.I, p. 392, and O.C.III, p. 121), and in that summer he met Rey, a publisher from Amsterdam but of Genevan birth, to whom he finally decided to entrust his manuscript (see the Correspondance complete, III, pp. 128-130). During the winter of 1754-55 he corrected the proofs which were sent to him by Rey, and as late as 29 May 1755 he complained about the long delay in publication. The work was nevertheless ready some time in April, and to Rousseau's distress a single copy had been circulated in Paris before the presentation volume could be sent to the Petit Conseil in Geneva (see ibid., pp. 125 and 129). On 12 May, Malesherbes, the directeur de la librairie, advised Rey to send one hundred copies of the Discours to a Paris bookseller (ibid., pp. 126 ), and on 18 June the work was at last submitted to the Petit Conseil (see ibid., pp. 132-134). Cf. Courtois, 'Chronologie critique de Rousseau', pp. 76-83, and O.C.III, pp. lxx-lxxi and 1860-1861. Both the Academy's manuscript of the Discours as well as the manuscript from which the first published edition was made are 101 �some respects it provides even than that of the Contrat between the innocent figures natural prize state form, and it the moral and political length. of society social in so many of Rousseau's in such a striking greatest a theory effects which is more systematic itself. The fundamental and the corrupt other writings is in this of social text society of men which is nowhere else described that inequality his conception is set forth of at the essay was not in fact awarded the 2 for which Rousseau composed it, but its significance among his contributions Voltaire, To be sure, to social for instance, thought has always been apparent denounced it as an attack the next century 4, Engels praised it because and in our own day Levi-Str&uss to its readers. upon mankind almost as soon as he had read the copy which Rousseau presented Marx, contrast to him, 3 while in in his view it anticipated has stated that it is a work of now lost, though a few fragments from earlier drafts have survived (see especially notes 199 an<l 237 below). It has also been suggested that Rousseaumoyhnve originally prepared the Discours, not only as an entry for the Dijon competition, but equally as a reply to one of the critics of his Discours sur les sciences et les arts. The preface of Rousseau's second letter to Charles Borde (see O.C.III, pp. 103-107) was written at about the same tine that he began the Discours sur l'inegalite, and as the text of that letter was never completed, it is possible that Rousseau intended his prize essay to supplant it. For in another letter which he wrote to Mmede Crequi, probably in November 1753, he remarked (Correspondance comolete, II, p. 232), "Le Discours de M. Bordes, tout bien pese restera sans r~ponse .... J'aurai peut etre occasion de mieux developper mes idees sans repondre directement". See also Havens, 'The road to Rousseau's Discours sur l'inegalite•~ Yale French Studies, XL (1968), pp. 29-30, and eh. V, P• 430. 2. The register of the Academy (see the Correspondance complete, II, p. 345) indicates that its members did not even hear the text read out to them, as was the case for most of the other entries, "a cause de sa Longueur Et de sa mauvaise tradition&". With regard to the deliberations of the Academy on this occasion, see Tisserand, Les concurrents a l'Academie de Dijon, pp. 23-30. 3. See Voltaire's letter to Rousseau of 30 August 1755 cited in eh. II, note 95, and Havens, Volta.ire's r.iargiJ'l.alia on the uages of Rousseau (Columbus 1933), pp. 4-28. 4. See Anti-Diihring in Marx-Engels Werke, 39 vols. in 41 (Berlin 1960-68), XX, pp. 130-131: "Rousseau sieht also in der Entstehung der Ungleichheit einen Fortschritt. Aber dieser Fortschritt war antagonistisch, er war zugleich ein Riickschritt .... Wir haben hier also schon bei Rousseau nicht nur einen Gedankengang, d~r dem in Marx' 'Kapital' verfolgten auf ein Haar gleicht, sondern auch im einzelnen eine ganze Reihe derselben dialektischen Wendungen, deren 102 �supreme value because it inaugurated Yet whereas the prominence has never been in doubt, hand, has frequently something most profound the extent of its of a paradox that thinkers, when he was at his best. appears to invite suspicions references pertaining de Rousseau's other supplied such a wide range of sources fables travel diaries again, moreover, It is to show the deepest imprint as if Rousseau was really Nevertheless, kind, since it contains alike of not quite the Discours and modern authors with passages - from essays and treatises to scientific studies was he to display measure of his learning on the other at least more than any of None of the works which h~ had produced writings. is so abundantly originality, thought a work acknowledged to be among his of this to ancient in Rousseau's by his interpreters. should also be understood himself philosophical of the Discours been questioned his many debts to other before 'sciences 5 l'homme•. perhaps our contemporary and citations on morals, for instance, on law, from personal and historical the breadth in so much scholarly drawn from memoirs and reviews of his reading detail. to - and never and the In the light of Marx sich bedient: Prozesse, die ihrer liatur nach antagonistisch sind, einen Widerspruch in sich enthalten, Umschlagen eines Extrems in sein Gegenteil, endlich als Kern des Ganzen die Negation der Negation." See also Starobinski, La transparence et l'obstacle, pp. 33-34; Galvano Della Volpe, Rousseau e Marx, fourth edition (Roma 1964), pp. 121-132; and Lucio Colleti, Ideologia e societa, third edition (Bari 1972), pp. 255-262. 5. See 'Jean-Jacques Rousseau, fondateur des sciences de l'homme', in Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Neuchatel 1962), p. 240: "Rousseau ne s'est pas borne ~ pr€voir l'ethnologie: il l'a fondee. D'abord de fa~on pratique, en ecrivant·ce Discours sur l'ori ine et les fondements de l'ine alite ..• qui pose le probleme des rapports entre la nature et la culture, et o l'on peut voir le premier traite d'ethnologie generale; et ensuite, -sur le plan theorique, en distinguant, avec une clarte et une concision admirables, l'objet propre de l'ethnologue de celui du moraliste et de l'historien." See also Levi-Strauss; Tristes Tropiques (Paris 1955), p. 423, and Le Totemisme aujourd'hui (Paris 1962), pp. 142-146; and Jacques Derrida, 'La violence de la lettre: de Levi~Strauss a Rousseau', in De la grammatologie (Paris 1967), pp. 149-202. 103 �these references l'inegalite therefore, was really laborious rather alone, exegesis it might appear that the Discours composed, in a scissors-and-paste of ~repositions than as the truly first unorthodox set forth and boldly fashion, by other original sur as a thinkers work that he planned. The suggestion, however, that original of Rousseau's requires that serve equally all these nality early writings texts. For it is patently less its is an entirely that its ideas of its ideas matter that to some degree, than repeats a proper to their by the persons is emphatically the extent of its the fact of the thinkers consists of critical study of its sources ideas authors, were constructed and implications, either Like every thinker great but because in part required to show instead may itself of be judged, from he considers. Insofar devoted to Rousseau's we should then have a better conceived grasp views whose premises he believed alwe.ys marc.1-ied :into battle 104 us should enhance our understanding or collectively, wards, and the work which forms the best so whom be cites. commentaries around other Rousseau that his work, but not because we should then be able to ascribe true with does provide polemical novelty from the origi- inversely by the sense in which Rousseau departs the doctrines actually meaning, of how those Of course from the evidence devised so much of the Discours texts - varies form in which he conceived were originally as the Discours other profundity upon which it draws. different in design which it contains not the case that are mentioned by Rousseau in the Discours that rather if it to which he borrowed his ideas with a grasp of the particular at least conviction as proof of the extent the number of sources imitative carry of the references of his work - still Indeed, can hardly is also the least we make our tabulation other many authors the most important of all to be false. back- his early �battles VTas fought over the widest possible terrain which it was his aim to leave behind. In this chapter I shall Discours sur l'inegalite attempts to depart here I shall thought first, however, And in accordance it squarely The fact to challenge what I believe that thought Rousseau in the Discours men were such intimate is hardly friends the essay, but also because on several occasions, a part influence have attempted of Diderot aim the meaning of his of the various - that is, arguments I should like mis- the claim that of Diderot. to draw a close and the philosophy surprising, of the of Rousseau's to be the most prevalent of the Discours some scholars sources with my general to modify or refute. the markings of the strong between the social played in the context which he intended about the genesis the work bears actually from the perspective try to show that we can only understand thinkers conception especially from them. if we place of other be concerned v1ith the principal connection expounded by not only because the two at the time Rousseau was engaged in writing he himself later admitted though by then with regret in the composition - and indeed repeated - that of his work. 6 Diderot had Arr.ied parti'cularly 6. Rousseau makes this claim a number of times in the form of a progressively more bitter charge against the textual in:::isions of his erstwhile friend rather than as an acknowledgement of their collaboration. In a passage of the Discours (0.C.III, p. 156) he had written, "Il n'y a plus que les dangers de la societe entiere qui troublent le sommeil tranquille du Philosophe, et qui l'arrachent de son lit. On peut impunement egorger son semblable sous sa fenestre; il n'a qu'a mettre ses mains sur ses oreilles et s'argumenter un peu, pour empecher la Nature qui se revolte en lui, de l'identifier avec celui qu'on assassine. L'homme Sauvage n'a point cet admirable talent". And in a note in his Confessions (O.C.I, p. 389) he remarked that these lines were suggested to him by Diderot: "Le morceau du philosophe qui s'argumente en se bouchant les oreilles pour s'endurcir nux plaintes d'un malhet:reux est de sa fa<;:on, et il m'en avoit fourni d'autres plus forts encore que je ne pus me resoudre a employer." The accusation was repeated twice in still stronger terms in his letter to Saint-Germain of 26 February 1770. Thus the same lines "qu' il m'y fit inserer presque 105 �with this testimony, had no difficulty of the Discours passage therefore, in locating a number of Rousseau's what they believe among a collection which had appeared of 1752, for instance, of Diderot's in his Suite has been described interpreters have to be the major sources own texts. de l'apologie 7 Thus a de l'abbe as "very similar de Prades to Rousseau's malgre moi" were now depicted as "de lui tout entier. 11 est certain que M. Diderot abusa toujours de ma confiance et de ma facilite pour donner a mes ecrits un ton dur et un air noir, qu'ils n'eurent plus sitot qu'il cessa de me diriger et que je fus livre tout a·fait a moi-meme" (Correspondance generale, XIX, pp. 246 and 252). Yet on each of these occasions Rousseau's complaint was made in a passage that had been appended to the text. The text of the Confessions, for instance, states only that "ses conseils me furent le plus utiles", while in the note Rousseau wrote "le morceau ... est de sa fac;on". And because that note is placed, exceptionally, in the margin rather than at the bottom of the page (in the original Paris manuscript of the Confessions, Bibliotheque du Palais-Bourbon, Ms. 1457), it appears to have been added after the work was finished. Morel ('Recherches sur les sources du Discours de l'in6galite', p. 124) has pointed to the change in Rousseau's position from one passage to the next: "Notons la progression de ces notes: Rousseau glisse du conseil au conseil perfide, du conseil perfide a l'insertion de morceaux entiers. Ce sont d'abord de 'simples impulsions', puis 'quelques norceaux' qui ne sont pas designes; enfin l'idee arrive a la precision: 'le morceau du philosophe qui s'argumente est de lui tout entier'." Cf. Starobinski, O.C.III, pp. 1332-1334. Since Rousseau's attitude toward his one-time colleague, therefoPe, becru~e progressively more severe, the extent to which Diderot had actuaily exercised an influence upon his formulation of this passage is not entirely clear. At the same time, however, Diderot's hand is sometimes quite apparent in works which were not in fact his own, as for example in certain passages of the Memoires de Mmed'Epinay, and it would not be too surprising if the lines about which Rousseau complained were in fact the work of his former friend. See MacDonald, Rousseau: a new criticism, I, pp. 86-95; Masson, 'Mme d'Epinay, Jean-Jacques ... et Diderot chez Mlle Quinault', Annales, IX (L9l3), pp. 4 and 19ff; and the Histoire de Madame de Montbrillant, I, pp. xxi-xxiii. Note also the following statement made by Diderot in a letter to M, Berryer, lieutenant Reneral de nolice,on 10 August 1749, in Diderot 1 s Correspondance, I, p. 86: 1111 y a dans les Observations de l'abbe Desfontaines plusieurs morceaux de ma fa9on. J'ai prete ma plume. et donne mon terns a tous ceux qui en ont eu besoin.pour des choses utiles. 11 See also eh. IV. note 117. 7. According to Assezat-Tourneux (IV, pp. 100-104), for instance, Rousseau•·s avowal that Diderot had drafted some of the more fitful passages of the Discours must be interpreted to mean that he had been responsible, not only for the particular remarks Rousseau ascribes to him, but also for a whole section of the work which surrounds them. Without any justification at all the editors therefore include among their selections from Diderot' s own writings a number of paragraphs from O.C.III, pp. 154-157, under the title, 'Morceau de Diderot insere dans le Discours sur l'inegalite•. 106 �• • of inequality emphasis ... on the ... results Discours a section is sometimes said of the Pensees composed in 1753. " , 8 while to recapitulate, the whole of the in more substantial sur l'interpretation de la nature terms, which Diderot 9 Rousseau est encore fortement influence par les idees de Diderot au moment ou il ecrit son second discours .... On a pu dire, non sans raison, que l'histoire de l'homrne telle que Rousseau la traitait dans sa recherche sur l'origine de l'inegalite est deja tout entiere en gerrne dans la conclusion des Pensees sur 1 1 Interpretation de la Nature.lo Even the translation of a book by Shaftesbury by 1745 is occasionally in the Essai cited sur le merite asked the same question that as a major source et la vertu, Diderot had completed of Rousseau's it has been maintained, as would be posed by "Rousseau nearly work. For Diderot a decade 8. Havens, 'Diderot, Rousseau, and the Discours sur l'inegalite', pp. 242-243. The passage to which Havens refers appears in Ass~zat-Tourneu:<, I, pp. 466-467: "Voila les hommes arretes les uns a cote des autres, plutot en troupeau qu'en societe, par l'attrait de leur utilite propre ... qu'arrivera-t-il? C'est que, n'etant encore enchaines par aucune loi, animes tous par des passions violentes, cherchant tous a s'approprier les avantages communs de la reunion ... les faibles seront les victimes des plus forts; les plus forts pourront a leur tour etre surpris et immoles par les faibles; et que bientot cette inegalite de talents, de forces, etc., detruira entre les hommes le commencement de lien que leur utilite propre ... leur [nvait] suggere pour leur conservation reciproque. Mais comment remedieront-ils a ce terrible inconvenient? ... ils sentiront le peril et la barbarie de ce droit fonde sur l'inegalite des talents ... et ils feront entre eux des conventions qui repareront l'inegalite naturelle, OU qui en previendront les suites facheuses: quelque autorite sera chargee de veiller a l'accomplissement des conventions et a leur duree; alors les hommes ne seront plus un trou~eau, mais une societe policee; ce ne seront plus des sauvages indisciplines et vagabonds, ce seront des hommes, ainsi que nous les voyons, renfermes dans des villes, et soumis a des gouvernements." See also note 18 and the passages from the Discours sur l'inegalite (O.C.III, pp. 175-177) discussed on pp.190-192 below, and Proust, pp. 369-371. For an account of the connection between Diderot and the abbe de Prades, see Venturi, Jeunesse de Diderot, pp. 192-236, and Wilson, Diderot: The Testing Years, pp. 154-172. 9. In 1754 the work was published in a number of editions, but a few copies had been printed in the year before as well. See Dieckmann, 'The First Edition of Diderot's Pensees sur l'interpretation de la nature', Isis, XLVI (1955), pp. 251-267. 10. Venturi, Jeunesse de Diderot, pp. 331-332. 107 �later at the beginning of his Discours": "Ou prendre la nature? Ou? dans l'etat originel des creatures; dans l'homme, dont une education vicieuse n'aura point altere les affections" .... Thus Diderot and Rousseau both implicitly attack "le peche originel," yet in a sense present a new doctrine of "la chute," not unlike the old belief of orthodox theology.11 Above all • Discours, ' ' • 11 e. 12 stan d s t he Supplement au Voyage d e Bougainvi h owever, It is there in its the works of Diderot which have been compared to the that Diderot's most comprehensive Discours upon-corrupt form, and it is there for Rousseau - that is drawn most sharply. natives own attack of Tahiti ought really we should, his description Thus, for instance, in the Supplement, to excite 13 is set out too - as it is in the of man in the natw.·al in his observations he remarks that our admiration. society their state on the mode of life We do not appreciate as much as he states, les usages d'un peuple assez sage pour s'etre arrete de lui-meme a la mediocrite, OU assez heureux pour habiter un climat dont la fertilite lui assurait un long engourdissement, assez actif pour s'etre mis a l'abri des besoins absolus de la vie, et ass'ez indolent pour que 11. Havens, 'Diderot, Rousseau, and the Discours sur l'inegalite', p. 237. The passage appears in Assezat-Tourneux, I, pp. 108-109. Presumably Diderot's footnotes to this work provide a better guide to his ideas than can be found in the adapted text of Shaftesbury's Inouiry concerning Virtue and Merit. It is in one of these notes (ibid., p. 29, note 2), though not in the text itself, that Diderot refers to "l'homme dans l'etat de pure nature", but in my view Havens has failed to show that either the text or the notes had any major influence upon the social thought of Rousseau. 12. See eh. II, note 21. 13. See, for instance, the following passage which appears on pp. 59-60 of the Supplement: "Voulez vous s9avoir l'histoire abregee de presque toute notre misere? La voici. Il existait un homme naturel; on a introduit au dedans de cet homme, un homrne artificicl, et il s'est eleve dans la caverne une guerre civile qui dure toute la vie. Tantot l'homrne naturel est le plus fort; tantot il est terrasse par l'hommc moral et artificiel; et dans l'un et l'autre cas, le triste monstre est tiraille, tenaille, tourmente, etendu sur la roue, sanscesse gemissant, sans cesse malheurcux, soit qu'un faux enthousiasme de gloire le transporte et l'enivre, ou qu'une fausse ignomignie le courbe et l'abatte." 108 �son innocence, son repos et sa felicite n'eussent rien a redouter d'un progres trop rapide de ses lumieres. Rien n'y etait mal par l'opinion ou par la loi que ce qui etait r.:aJ. de sa nature. Les travaux et les recoltes s'z_faisaient en commun.... La passion de l'amour reduite a un simple appetit physique n'y produisait aucun de nos desordres. L'isle entiere offrait l'image d'une seule famille nombreuse. 14 The resemblance between this view of primitive • h is • deve l ope d in • t h e D" wh ic iscours 15 has, some scholars that that in their Diderot may actually substantial then, part it follows opinion that had merely outlined • f act, in and the account seeme d so stri "k"ing t o it could only be explained have produced, of Rousseau's society work. rather than just inspired, According to this the Supplement completes if we allow a interpretation, the picture that Rousseau in the Discours. Plus exactement encore, Diderot vase servir de l'exemple de Tahiti pour verifier, localiser et rendre plus reelle la reconstruction hypothetique des premiers temps qui se trouve dans le second Discours. Les ressernblances sont telles, comme on pourra le voir par une comparaison des deux textes, que la question de la collaboration de Diderot au Discours de l'inegalite se pose a nouveau. 16 Several studies which Diderot tion of the Discours that this produced both before are therefore and after the publica- said to confirm the claim of Rousseau work "fut plus du gout de Diderot 14. Ibid., 15. cited Cf. the passage from the Discours on p. 208 below. que tous mes autres Ecrits 11 • 17 p. 51. 16. Gilbert Chinard, in the introduction (Paris and Baltimore 1935), pp. 51-52. sur l'inegalite to his edition (O.C.III, pp. 170-171: of the Supplement 17. Confessions, O.C.I, p. 389. See also note 6 above and Havens, 'Diderot, Rousseau, and the Discours sur l'inegalite', pp. 259-262. For Morel (see the 'Recherches sur les sources du Discours de l'inegalite', p. 119), Diderot is one of the two writers - together with Condillac - who exercised the strongest influence upon Rousseau's thought at this time. 109 �Yet despite these observations the Rousseau in his essay cannot really offspring of propositions the intellectual of course, sions~ one in general to confirm Rousseau was correct approval. in fact it there to doubt that should equally when he maintained the central of the Apologie de l'abbe the Discours, since of men which Diderot the brief correspond account roughly writings, of social and colleague seems to me clear features some of Diderot's the distinction inequality that the Discours that for instance, expresnever but that met with his of the Discours It is true de Prades, that sur l'inegalite. be no question that makes in this to some ideas and though and while Diderot himself drawn from any of his writings. anticipate it by as the theoretical in the Discours in the text, Nevertheless, elements society repaid no reason incorporated troubled be described were developed debt which Rousseau owed to his friend debt was not properly There is, that advanced in Diderot's may have been a substantial this ideas are not certain appear to between a herd and a work, and at the same time which he provides are expressed there, in Rousseau's both text. 18 18. Two passages in the Apologia are thought to be of special significance in connection with Rousseau. One of these is cited in note B above. The second appears in Assezat-Tourneux, I, pp. 454-455: "L 1 etat de nature n'est point celui d'Adam avant sa chute; cet etat nomentane doit etre l'objet de notre foi, et non celui de notre raisonnement. Il s'agit, entre les philosophes, de la condition actuelle de ses descendants, consideres en troupeau et non en societe ... condition qui dure plus ou moins, selon Tes occasions que les hommes peuvent avoir de se policer, et de passer, de l'etat de troupeau a l'etat de societe. J'entends par l'etat de troupeau, celui sous lequel les hommes rapproch&s par l'instigation simple de la nature, cormne les singes, les cerfs, les corneilles, etc., n'ont forme aucunes conventions qui les assujettissent a des devoirs, ni constitue d'autorite qui contraigne a l'accomplissement des conventions." Cf. the following passage in the Discours sur l'inegalite,O.C.III, pp. 166-167: "Il se trouva en etat de distinguer les occasions rares ou l.'interet commun devoit le faire compter sur l 1 assistance de ses semblables .... il s'unissoit avec eux en troupeau, ou tout au plus par quelque sorte d'association libre qui n'obligeoit personne, et qui ne durojt qu'autant que le besoin passager qui l'avoit formee .... Il est aise de comprendre qu'un pareil commerce n'exigeoit pas un langage beaucoup plus rafine, que celui des Corneilles ou des Singes, qui s'attroupent a peu pres de meme." At least Rousseau's reference to 'Corneilles' and 'Singes' in these lines does seem to be drawn from Diderot. Another passage in the Discours (O.C.III, pp. 175-177 - see pp. 190-192 belo~) corresponds very roughly to that section of the Apologie which is considered in no~.e B. 110 �But these les arts ideas can also be found in the Discours which Rousseau had completed more than two years before 19 Apologie was published, Rousseau on these Indeed, sur les sciences apart conceivably points and the debt, have owed to Rousseau, the however slight, thus seems more clear from those features et of Diderot to 20 than the reverse. of the Apologie that Diderot the work is incompatible might in substance with the essay which it is said to have inspired. For it provides interpretation contract had already of the natural set forth law and of the social in his article • f act repu d'iate d rat h er tan h in 1 Autorite politique' an which Diderot and which was 21 • t he secon d D" a dopte d by Rousseau in iscours. The Discours sur les sciences et les arts was composed by Rousseau in the period between October 1749 and March 1750. It was first published in Paris in January 1751 (see eh. V, note 4). The passage on the· herd of men appears in O.C.III, p. 8: "On n'ose plus paroitre ce qu'on est; et dans cette contrainte perpetuelle, les hommes qui ferment ce troupeau qu'on appelle societe, places dans les memes circonstances, feront tousles memes choses sides motifs plus puissans ne les en detournent." The passage on inequality appears in_ O.C.III, p. 25 and is discussed here in eh. V, pp. 389-390. 19. 20. The extent of Diderot's influence upon the first Discours of Rousseau will be conside~ed in eh. V (see pp. 400-403). Whatever we conceive the nature of that influence to be, however, there is not the slightest evidence to suggest that Rousseau's references to inequality and to a herd of men in this work were inspired by the ideas of his friend. 21. With regard to Diderot 1 s descriptions of natural law in the Apologie, see especially Assezat-Tourneux, I, p. 471: "Les elements de la loi naturelle, dont les premieres traces s'impriment dans l'ame de tres-bonne heure, deviennent de jour en jour plus profondes, se rendent ineffa~ables, tourmentent le mechant au-dedans de lui-meme, consolent l'homme vertueux, et servent d'exemple aux legislateurs." With regard to Diderot's conception of the social contract in this work, see, in particular, note 8 above and Assezat-Tourneux, I, p. 469: "Il est tres-douteux que le parlement soit content qu'-on ait traite les maximes suivantes de seditieuses; savoir: 'Que les lois de la nature et de l'Etat sont les conditions sous lesquelles ·les sujets se sont soumis, ou sont censes s 1etre ~oumis au gouvernement de leur prince .... Qu'un prince ne peut jamais employer l'autorite qu'il tient d'eux, pour casser le contrat par lequel elle lui a ete deferee ... I Car, qu'est-ce qu'un parlement, sinon un corps charge du depot sacre du contrat reel ou suppose, par lequel les peuples se sont soumis ou sont cens€s d 1 ~tre soumis au gouverneme1,t de leur prince?" The quotation cited in this passage follows very closely the text of some remarks on the same subject in Diderot 1 s own 1 Autorite politique,. (see eh. II, note 16). With respect to Rousseau's critique of natural law in the second Discours, see especially eh. I, pp. 18-19. 111 �Thus the similarity Discours and Apologie, ancy between their designed between their respectively, accounts, conventions civilised these world. other, insofar is, natural of war, since 22 In my view, even their as the Discours and moral, 23 of a peaceful explanations for their the effects of the natural If we turn de la nature, central theme the contention race depen ds upon th e progress of Rousseau's • tation work, on the other • 25 o f t h.is point. that • of science See pp. 189-192 below. 23. See pp. 182-193 below. than their connection with each of moral inequalities variations between men. moreover, we shall find the improvement of the human • • an d invention, 24 wh ereas much band, is devoted precisely So too in the Essai 22. in two kinds of inequality, as if they were the consequences as its and of inequality difference which have no real to the Interyretation to establish while Diderot maintained delineates while the Apologie describes conventions Rousseau under- hoax intended for the creation two works are more remarkable likeness, that state over the poor, they were a prerequisite in the of the political to be an ingenious the supremacy of the rich of inequality is far outweighed by the discrep- for instance, to overcome a hypothetical stood these that conceptions sur le merite to a refuet la vertu, 24. See, for example, the following passages: "Je me represente la vaste enceinte des sciences, comme un grand terrain parseme de places obscures et de places eclairees. Nos travaux doivent avoir pour but, ou d'etendre les limites des places eclairees, ou de multiplier sur le terrain les centres de lumieres. L'un appartient au genie qui cree; l'autre a la sagacfte qui perfectionne 11 (Assezat-Tourneux, II, p. 17); "Les experiences doivent etre repetees pour le detail des circonstances et pour la connaissance des limites. Il faut les transporter a des objets differents, les compliquer, les combiner de toutes les manieres possibles 11 (ibid., p. 41); "Lorsque je trouve les hommes incertains sur les premiers principes de la m€decine et de l'agriculture, sur les propri~t~s des substances les plus col:!D!unes, sur la connaissance des maladies dont ils sont afflig€s, sur la taille des arbres, sur la forme de la charrue, la terre ne me parait habit€e que d'hier" (ibid., p. 60). 25. See, in particular, the passage in O.C.III, pp. 170-171 cited on p. 208 below. ~ith respect to the Interpretation de la nature, Proust remarks (p. 387) that for Diderot, in contrast with Rousseau, "le perfectionnement de l' individu et celui de l' espece sont inseparables". 112 �finally, the natural happily together men whom Dide~ot portrays in society, 26 ideas that of mankind. were developed in these have much in common with each other, believe, account Diderot's article ~ith the social 'Droit theory naturel', duced before himself it cannot be traced at the time that clearly are actually that date, from Diderot's in that are never introduced of the civil terms elsewhere. that the virtues state 1 in in conflict which had pro- because Rousseau whereas the principal incompatible with Diderot's ideas Rousseau produced his work. in substance enactments appears Diderot to his influence The Supplement au Voyage de Bougainville, text that those few concepts and the writings had propounded them at an earlier arguments of the Discours They are consistent, of human progress In short, thus anticipate but they are essentially of Rousseau. are shared between the Discours works of Diderot they do not generally in the Discours. society While most of the early the views which were expressed with the cosmopolitan only to live though for Rousseau it was in fact which had produced the misfortunes principal are destined early writings, however, is rather since to the inventions law whose benefits In the Supplement, the savages he describes of science he proclaims on the contrary, of human conduct which are characteristic do not in fact improve with the progress society of the Tahitians which he portrays quality to the debased cultures of civilised different or the in such fulsome Diderot contends of the natural of mankind, and the primitive is actually men. superior in moral But while the Supplement 26. See, for instance, the following passage in Assezat-Tourneux, I, p. 99: "Quel malheur n'est-ce pas pour une creature destinee·a la societe plus particulierement qu'aucune autre, d'etre denuee de ces penchants qui la porteraient au bien et a l'interet general de son espece! car il faut convenir qu'il n'y en a point de plus ennemie de la solitude que l'homrne dans son etat naturel .... L'homme insociable, ou celui qui s'exile volontairement du monde, et qui, rompant tout commerce avec la societe, en abjure entierement les devoirs, doit etre sombre, triste, chagrin, et mal constitue. 11 See also ibid., pp. 24-25, and Proust, pp. 359-360. There is a striking similarity between these lines in the Essai and that passage in Le Fils naturel (see eh. 11, p. BO) about which Rousseau was to feel such deep distress. 113 �appears, in some respects, of Diderot laid 1 s other to he more like works, the reason the foundation for Rousseau's after for this theory, written some seventeen Diderot would have had ample opportunity inclination years which separate them, and also Rousseau could have turned as a source The resemblance close rather one. of Rousseau, in the social to this it was of course, not too much but certainly in than inequality theory that the arguments that Diderot is difficult of espoused to imagine how work, or even to a vague and rough of inspiration. between the two essays, For in the Supplement it which he depicts ideas the text By then, - though perhaps in view of the fact at the time the two men were friends, of it, if only because its in which the two works were composed and of the years the Supplement do not figure sketch than is any one cannot be that the Discours. - to draw upon the precepts view of the order the Discours that Diderot has primarily in any case, is the institution is not a very of matrimony condemns, and the moral corruption to do with sexual conduct. Comment est-il arrive qu'un acte ... auquel la nature nous invite par l'attrait le plus puissant; que le plus grand, le plus doux, le plus innocent des plaisirs soit devenu la source la plus feconde de notre depravation et de nos maux! ... C'est par la tyrannie de l'homme qui a converti la possession de la femme en une propriete. Par les moeurs et les usages qui ont surcharge de conditions l'union conjugale. Par les loix civiles qui ont assujetti le mariage a une infinite de formalites. 27 In the Discours, on the other hand, Rousseau devotes only a few lines to 27. Supplement au Voyage de Bougainville, p. 58. In his introduction (p. lxxix) Dieckmann makes clear the distinction between Diderot and Rousseau on this point: "Le probleme des rapports amoureux constitue le theme central .du Supplement, tandis que dans le Discours il n' est qu '~ exemple de la perte du bonheur de l'etat de nature. Rousseau ne consacre ace probleme que quelques pages, et il ne s'abandonne point, comme le fait Diderot, a une evocation voluptueuse du bonheur des sens." See also ibid., PP• lxxxiv-lxxxv. 114 �these matters, certainly 28 and problems about sexual behaviour not fundamental to his work. mankind which forms the central place in the Supplement, between the primitive evolutionary perspective, to be found in different fashioned the contrast to France only insofar parts for either from some first-hand one mode of life observations. has no draws there lacks of the Tahitians merits, an pro- as the two cultures of the world at the same time. to compare their of moreover, which Diderot society are history communities of men clearly and the natural is in a position which he displays The hypothetical theme of the Discours, and civilised vides a moral alternative traveller since in society are Thus the and the preference or the other can be 29 28. See the passage from O.C.III, pp. 157-158 cited ~n note 146 below. With regard to sexual conduct, Rousseau maintains that there is a dichotomy between the physical and moral aspects of love, that is, between the natural attraction which persons of the opposite sex feel for each other generally, on the one hand, and the artificial sentiment which prompts them to select their partners in accordance with socially prescribed standards of beauty or merit, on the other. This argument certainly occupies an appropriate place in the context of a theory about the fundamental difference between men's natural and moral attributes, but there is no reason to suppose that Rousseau borrowed it from Diderot. As several scholars have noted (see, for instance, Otis Fellows, 'Buffon and Rousseau: Aspects of a Relationship', PMLA, LXXV(1960), p. 193), it may actually have been derived by Rousseau from a passage in Buffon's Histoire naturelle (see OPB, pp. 340-341). 29. Of course in the Discours Rousseau himself refers to the accounts of primitive society which had appeared in the writings of seventeenthand eighteenth-century travellers. Thus, for instance, he remarks (O.C.III, pp. 140-141), "Tel est l'etat animal en general, et c 1 est aussi, selon le rapport des Voyageurs, celui de la plupart des Peuples Sauvages •••• les Hottentots du Cap de Bonne Esperance ... les Sauvages de l 1Amerique ••. toutes ces Nations Barbares". In his notes to the Discours (especially viand x) Rousseau actually comments at some length upon the works of such contemporary travellers as Francisco Coreal, Peter Kolb, and Charles-Marie de La Condamine, with whose writings he was probably best acquainted through the accounts of them provided by the abbe Prevost in his massive contribution to the Histoire enerale des vo a es, 20 vols. (Paris 1746-89). Hence Rousseau's transcription see O.C.III, p. 200), for example, of the report made by Kolb on the Hottentot communities of the Cape of Good Hope is clearly taken directly from the Histoire generale, V (1748), pp. 155-157, while the remarks about the opossum which he added to ~he Moultou-Du Peyrou edition of his text (see O.C.III, p. 140) appear to be drawn substantially from the Histoire generale, XII (1754), pp. 637-638. Starobinski's observations on these notes, and on Rouss~au's references to travellers' tales in general (see O.C.III, pp. 1309, 1314-1315, 1360-1361, 1363, and 1368-1374), form an altogether excellent study 115 �Diderot ... discute le probleme de l'homme dans l 1etat de nature et l'etat de civilisation par une serie d'antitheses entre des donnees fixes et presque stables .... Tahiti vient d'etre decouvert; l'ile existe a quelques milliers de lieues de Paris. Cette absence d'une conception historique et dialectique explique le fait que Diderot ne pose pas la question de l'origine du malaise dans la societe rnais qu'il constate seulement le malaise. Sa perspective principale dans le Supplement exclut l'histoire. 30 of this subject. But I do not think Rousseau believed that these works provide a true account of man in the state of nature. For the natural state which he depicted was a hypothetical construction located in an imaginary past (see the passage from the Discours, ibid., pp. 132-133 cited on p. 226 below), and his main reason for citing the accounts of voyagers was, in my view, to remind his readers of the great variety of human traits which could be found in different cultures throughout the world. The mistake of most philosophers who had remarked upon the nature of mankind was to suppose that individuals were universally the same, while according to Rousseau the diversity of social institutions everywhere had effectively led to the development of distinct kinds of men. Insofar as the natural creatures whom he described were entirely dissimilar to men in society, Rousseau's hypothesis could therefore be made to seem plausible only in the light of the real differences which prevailed between diverse cultures. Those illustrations provided by voyager::: of what vrere, in fact, actuc.l variations in the character of men, might thus lend some encouragement to speculation about what must, in the past, have been a still greater disparity. It is, in my view, for something like this reason, at any rate, that Rousseau makes the following statement in note x of the Discours (ibid. , pp. 212-213) : "La Philosophic ne voyage point, aussi celle de chaque Peuple est-elle peu propre pour un autre .... On n'ouvre pas un livre de voyages ou l'on ne trouve des descriptions de caracteres et de moeurs; mais on est tout etonne d'y voir que ces gens qui ont tant decrit de choses, n'ont dit que ce que chacun savoit deja, n'ont SU apper~evoir a l'autre bout du monde que ce qu'il n'eut tenu qu'a eux de remarquer sans sortir de leur rue, et que ces traits vrais qui distinguent les Nations, et qui frapent les yeux faits pour voir, ont presque toujours echape aux leurs. De-la est venu ce bel adage de morale, si robattu par la tourbe Philosophesque, que les hommes sont par tout les memes, qu'ayant par tout les memes passions et les memes vices, il est asses inutile de chercher a caracteriser les differens Peuples." Much the same point is made again in that section of the fifth book of Emile (O.C.IV, p. 826) which Rousseau entitled 'Des voyages'. See also Chinard, L'Ameri ue et le reve exoti ue dans la litterature fran aise au XVIIe et au XVIIIe siecle (Paris 1913), pp. 341- 65, and Georges Fire, 'Jean-Jacques Rousseau et les relations de voyages', RHLF, LVI (1956), pp. 355-378. Other noteworthy accounts of the significance which was attached to journeys to exotic nations in eighteenth-century thought can be found in Paul Hazard, La crise de la conscience europeenne (1680-1715), 3 vols. (Paris 1935), I, pp. 6-37, and Duchet, Anthropologie et histoire au siecle des lumieres (Paris 1971), pp. 25-226. 30. Dieckmann, introduction to the Supplement, pp. lxxxviii-lxxxix. 116 �The discrepancies striking, therefore, were possible his later between the Supp1ement and the Discours as the features that Diderot work some years which they share, had already before conceived Tahiti It is true but that that reference Diderot appears appended to the text whom he then admired. the principal of were 1750s. passage and in which Rousseau points ideas those ideas is mentioned once in Rousseau's only in a short as and even if it was discovered, not to be adopted by his companion of the early are just essay, of a note which is to several thinkers Thus, he remarks, Supposons un Montesquieu, un Buffon, un Diderot, un Duclos, un d'Alembert, un Condillac, ou des hommes de cette trempe voyageant pour instruire leurs compatriotes ... supposons que ces nouveaux Hercules, de retour de ces courses memorables, fissent ensuite a loisir l'Histoire naturelle Morale et Politique de ce qu'ils auroient vu, nous verrions nous memes sortir un monde nouveau de dessous leur plume et nous apprendrions ainsi a connoitre le notre. 31 The name of Diderot may have been included figures in return for a similar compliment which had been paid to him in the Interpretation de la nature, certainly importance. of no great 32 but in any case the citation And while in the and the Manuscrit de Geneve an intellectual works is in fact acknowledged by Rousseau, 31. Discours sur l'inegalite, by Rousseau among these 1 is Economie politique' debt to one of Diderot's 33 his passing note x, O.C.III, mention of a pp. 213-214. 32. See Assezat-Tourneux, II, p. 52: "Vous, qui prenez le titre de philosophes ou de beaux esprits, et qui ne rougissez point de ressembler a ces insectes importuns qui passent les instants de leur existence ephemere a troubler l'homme dans ses travaux et dans son repos, quel est votre but? ... Malgre vous, les noms des Duclos, des D'Alembert et des Rousseau; des de Voltaire, des Maupertuis et des Montesquieu; des de Buffon et des Daubenton, seront en honneur parmi nous et chez nos neveux." See also Havens, 'Diderot, Rousseau, and the Discours sur l'inegalite', pp. 256-258. 33. See eh. II, pp. 60-61 and 84-86. 117 �distinguished colleague to a specific source of his ideas. For all in the Discours these reasons I believe does not constitute that the influence a reference of Diderot is far more apparent in some of Rousseau's other writings than it is in the 34 Discours, so that the claim that the central theme of this work can be traced to postulates opinion, which Diderot had conceived have much historical Diderot discussed were certainly Discours. their still views at length friends Of course i·t . 35 quite when they were friends, of their unlike that and we know that of the text and accepted of Rousseau's detailed it is a mistake clearly moreover - and borrowed some his of 1754 he both sought some of his corrections argument in the Discours references and in view of the extensive he makes there, and they when Rousseau was preparing of any work which Diderot of Rousseau's friendship, - each of the two writers But the substance the light essay, approval in my Of course Rousseau and essay at the end of 1753 and the beginning Diderot's does not, at the time Rousseau composed his second in the period indeed even beyond that ideas from the other, foundation. first is had produced before, to other commentaries to suppose that authors on other to and in in his writings an unattributed which and unclaimed debt to an unspecified work by a man who did not share his 36 views then mark~ the most profound of all the influences·underlying composition. for inspiration, which he cites In the Discours sur l'inegalite and I should like himself of his social Rousseau turned next to consider theory in that his elsewhere the main sources essay. 34. Even Havens remarks ('Diderot, Rousseau, and the Discours sur l'inegalite', p. 243) that "we can be sure only of the interesting resemblances of the two authors, Diderot and Rousseau, at this point. To speak confidently of influence in either direction would be dangerous". 35. See note 6 above. 36. Though if we are to believe Rousseau (see the passage from the Confessions, O.C.I, p. 389, cited on p. 109 above), the second Discours more to Diderot's liking than any of Rousseau's other works. 118 was �The competitors consider for the Dijon prize the subject, hommes, & si elle to Rousseau, answere d 37 'Quelle the second part of this question Yet according could not in fact natural law societies be made between t he 1aws wh"ic h was f"irst from Nature and those moral rules in the diverse to parmi les par la loi naturelle'. • • un 1ess a d"istinction prevail required est la source de l'inegalite est• autorisee mankind had received of 1754 were all of men, which happened to All the definitions of the qu'on trouve dans les Livres, outre le defaut de n'etre point uniformes, ont-elles encore celui d'etre tirees de plusieurs Connoissances que les hommes n'ont point naturellement, et des avantages dont ils ne peuvent concevoir l'idee qu'apres etre sortis de l'Etat de Nature .... tant que nous ne connoitrons point l'homme naturel, c'est en vain que nous voudrons determiner la Loi qu'il a re~ue 38 ou celle qui convient le mieux a sa constitution. The supposition effects that of natural reference human inequalities to any of the social to be explained. butes or relative understand its was necessary skills for its distinctions of precisely positions of inequality, sources. between per- such distinctions which had Hence in order to locate which in society attri- communities while seeking we should only succeed traits with existed of men in their to examine the natural and talents that If we were to look upon the different the genesis effects to the law was one which could not be substantiated sons, for it was the origin still might be attributable of men quite these apart to in confusing sources it from the they might have come or been required 37. Since the full title of Rousseau's text - that is, the Discours sur l'origine et les fondemens de l'inegalite parmi les hornmes - incorporates only the first part of the question, it has even been suggested (see, for• instance, Burgelin, La philosophie de l 1 existence de Rousseau, p. 509) that Rousseau deleted the second part from consideration. 38. Discours sur l'inegalite, O.C.III, the Discours cited in eh. I, p. 19. 119 p. 125. Cf. the passages from �to possess. A study of the nature to an account of inequality, problem that of mankind, then, and it was with this Rousseau began the preface was indispensable conception of the of his work. La plus utile et la moins avancee de toutes les connoissances humaines me paroit etre celle de l'homme .... je regarde le sujet de ce Discours comme une des questions les plus interessante$ que la Philosophie puisse proposer, et malheureusement pour nous comme une des plus epineuses que les Philosophes puissent resoudre: Car comment connoitre la source de l'inegalite paI'llli les hommes, si 1.1 on ne commence par les connoitre eux memes? et coDDJlentl'homme viendra-t-il a bout de se voir tel que l'a forme la Nature, a travers tousles changemens que la succession des terns et des choses a du produire dans sa constitution originelle? 39 The whole of the development of man from the natural state was thus conceived contemporaries, to recount at least the history of his essay, 40 by Rousseau to be the subject arrd if that might have seemed too bold an undertaking he could refer to the social even to his own to other writers who had attempted of the human race in what he supposed was a quite . ·1 ar way. 41 s.imi Among these 39. Discours writers Buffon sur l'inegalite, 42 is clearly O.C.III, the most prominent of all, p. 122. 40. See, for instance, ibid., p. 133: "0 Homme, de quelque Contree que tu sois, quelles que soient tes opinions, ecoute; voici ton histoire telle que j 'ai cru la lire, non dans les Livres de tes semblables qui sont menteurs, mais dans la Nature qui ne ment jamais." 41. Apart from the works of Buffon and Condillac which are considered here, the Essai de philosophie morale of Maupertuis (first puhlisbed in Berlin in 1749) and the Observations sur 1 1 histoire naturelle of Jacques Gautier d'Agoty (which appeared in Paris between 1752 and 1755) a.re also cited by Rousseau (see O.C.III, pp. 201, 202, and 1364). He refers at great length, moreover, to several texts about primitive society that were produced by travellers and missionaries (see note 29 above), and he paints to a number of classical writers, such as Herodotus and Isocrates (see pp. 195 and 222) as well. This is not to mention, of course, the works of Hobbes, Locke, Pufendorf, and the natural philosophers whom he attacks. 42, Rousseau first met Buffon at the home of MmeDupin in 1742, and their last encounter was in 1770 at Buffon's home in Montbard, when, it would later be said (see Marie-Jean Herault de Sechelles, 'Visite a Buffon' !September 1785], in his Oeuvres litteraires, ed, Emile Dard [Paris 1907), 120 �His contributions to social any other ment~oned in the Discours, thinker cussed by Rousseau before theory receive more attention any of the rest. 43 and, indeed, than those of they are dis- For in the only note which he added to his opening remarks about the need for a proper study of the p. 13) that "Rousseau se mit a genoux et baisa le seuil de la porte" in homage to the greatness of his host. They did not meet often in the intervening years, however (apart from on those rare occasions, such as at the time of d'Alembert's election to the Academie fran~aise in 1754, when they dined together), but they did maintain some contact then, either through direct correspondence or in the form of messages transmitted by mutual friends. Thus when in December 1764, for instance, Rousseau learnt from his bookseller, Panckoucke, that Buffon had spoken well of him at length one evening, he replied (Correspondance generale, XII, p. 156), "Je suis sensible aux bontes de M. de Buffon, ~ proportion du respect et de l'estime que j'ai pour lui ••• il y a des ames dont la bienveillance mutuelle n'a pas besoin d'une correspondance expresse pour se nourrir, et j'ai ose me placer avec lui dans cette classe-la". To be sure, after Rousseau's death and the publication of his Confessions, Buffon is reported to have said (see Herault de Sechelles, p. 24) that while he had respected the man before, "lorsque j'~i vu ses Confessions, j'ai cesse de l'estimer. Son ame m'a revolte ... apres sa mort, j'ai commence a le mesestimer". But at least until the early 178Os it is clear that Buffon had considerable admiration - and while Rousseau was alive - much concern for the wayward philosophe. On one occasion he encouraged him to make at least some effort to come to terms with Volta:i.re (see Rousseau's letter to Du Peyrou of 31 January 1765 in the Correspondance generale, XII, p. 272), and around the time of Rousseau's flight from Motiers in October of that year he wrote (ibid., XIV, p. 196), "Vous avez ete La victime de votre amour pour la verite et meme de votre amour patriotique ... je vous aime monsieur je vous admire et je vous plains de tout mon coeur". Rousseau, on the other hand, never wavered at all in his respect for Buffon. "Si tousles hommes etoient des ... Buffons", he remarked in a letter to Freron (Correspondance complete, II, p. 243) in 1753, "je desirerois ardemment qu'ils cultivassent tousles Sciences afin que le genre humain ne fut qu'une Societe de Sages". "He attempted to keep abreast of each successive tome of the Histoire naturelle as soon as it appeared" (Fellows, 'Buffon and Rousseau', p. 188), and when Buffon offered him a gift of all the volumes that had been printed thus far, Rousseau wrote to Du Peyrou in 1765 (Correspondance generale, XII, p. 325), "Je suis tres flate du Cadeau qu'il veut bien me faire, mais j'aime trop son ouvrage pour m'etre contente de la marche plus tardive de l'in douze". Soon after the publication of the Discours, the similarity between the work of Rousseau and Buffon was already noted by Formey (in his Bibliotheque impartiale, pour les mois de juillet et aout 1756 - see Starobinski, 'Rousseau et Buffon', appended to the second edition of La transparence et l 1 obstacle [Paris 1971], p. 383): "M. Rousseau est assez dans son genre ce que M. de Buffon est dans le sien; il manie les hommes comme ce Philosophe manie la Nature et l'Univers; il fait des hypotheses sur la Societe comme l'Academicien en fait sur les Globes de l'Univers et l'origine des Planetes." 43, This is with the exception, however, of an historical illustration drawn from Herodotus which appears in note i of the Discours (see O.C.III, p, 195) and is connected with some remarks about the rule of law that figure in the dedication of Rousseau's work. 121 �nature of mankind, he in fact respect, pas", to a passage refers in Buffon's directly, Histoire with great approval and "Des mon premier naturelle. he proclaims, je m'appuye avec confiance sur une de ces autorites respectahles pour les Philosophes, parce qu'elles viennent d'une raison solide et sublime qu'eux seu.ls savent trouver et sentir. "Quelque interet que nous ayons a nous connoitre nous-memes, je ne sais si nous ne connoissons pas mieux tout ce qui n'est pas nous, Pourvus par la Nature, d'organes uniquement destines a notre conservation, nous ne les employons qu'a recevoir les impressions etrangeres, nous ne cherchons qu'a nous repandre au dehors, et a exister hers de nous .... Comment degager notre Arne... de toutes les illusions de notre Esprit? Nous avops perdu l'hahitude de l'employer ... le coeur, l'Esprit, le sens, tout a travaille centre elle 11 • 44 The profundity of Buffon's observations on the nature • actua 11y ac know1 e dge d sever al times • • t he man is in is so, I think because Rousseau conceived with Buffon the belief that a study of our history as well, naturelle 44. cited first OPB, a proper o·iscours, the subject form which Buffon had also adopted as his own. and development of For Rousseau shared those parts which deal with mankind as a species, an d t h.is of his essay in a study of our nature and like 45 46 must incorporate of Buffon's Histoire the second Discours was Discours sur l'inegalite, note ii, O.C.III, pp. 195-196. The passage by Rousseau appears in the last section of the second volume (in the edition) of Buffon's Histoire naturelle, generale et particuliere (see p. 293). 45. See especially notes iv and vii (O.C.III, pp. 198 and 201), which are devoted entirely to a discussion of certain passages in Buffon's work on the connection between the human race, on the one hand, and different species of animal and vegetable life, on the other. Rousseau was particularly impressed by the claim Buffoo had made that mankind consumed the vegetable resources of Nature to a far greater extent than could be replenished through cultivation. In Rousseau's judgment it followed from this that the growth of agriculture must eventually endanger the forests of the world, and with them all those creatures which depended upon the nourishment provided by trees. See also Morel, 'Recherches sur les sources du Discours de l'inegalite•, pp. 180-181, and Masters, The Political Philosophy of Rousseau, pp. 122-125. In the first 4to edition of this I!!B.Ssive work the finaJ. sections of vols. II (pp. 427-603) and III (pp. 305-530), both of which bear the subtitle 'Histoire naturelle de l'homme', as well as the initial section of 46, 122 �designed origins by Rousseau to provide nothing features the shared inclinations have served to unite fundamental now. of the natural the course insofar of reason, of human history, and from together ensured which was a universal as new societies so that by human arose, the moral traits which were in of individuals change and alteration diversified, and were transformed, n'y a eu originairement race had since For have been developed to continuous while "il espece d'hommes", our entire dispositions must themselves been subjected Hence, Buffon remarked, held societies however, the social of our species had of necessity which would always for each man to have a grasp of those 47 which joined him to his neighbours. and duties both Buffon and Rousseau, characteristic which still of men was both prescribed made it possible rights distinctive times have been the same, and common purposes bonds and ties law, and the faculty attribute, the men in the past could not be distinguished The sociability specific law philosophers of mankind as a whole must at all so that just than an account of the human race. According to the natural those less qu'une undergone a great seule variety of changes par l'influence du climat, par la difference de la nourriture, par celle de la maniere de vivre ... & aussi par le melange varie a l'infini des individus vol. IV (pp. 1-110) entitled 'Discours sur la nature des animaux', are devoted specifically to the study of man, while a few other volumes which appeared several years after the Discours sur l'inegalite also treat the same subject at some length. Copies of the first four volumes (the last printed in 1753, the others in 1749) were certainly in Rousseau's hands at the time he was engaged in writing his essay, though despite the remarks which he made later to Du Peyrou (see note 42 above) his references to the text indicate that he consulted the 12mo edition in \,hich the equivalent tomes were all produced in 1752-53. The whole of the Histoire naturelle was originally published in forty-four volumes in Paris between 1749 and 1804. Buffon had a number of collaborators in this enterprise, and the later tomes were not written by him at all, in fact, but by the comte de Lacepede. 47. See eh. I, pp. 16-18. 123 --- - --- �plus ou moins ressemblans ... ces alterations ... sont ... devenues varietes de l'espece ... elles se sont perpetuees &... elles se perpetuent de generation en generation, comme les difformites OU les maladies des peres & meres passent a leurs enfans. 48 So too for Rousseau, as the numbers of men proliferated came to occupy a constantly between the soil, fronted in their climate, various number of distinct and our species expanding area of the globe, and seasons which individuals settlements must have driven the differences would have con- them to live in a ways. Des annees steriles, des hyvers longs et rudes, des Etes brulans ... exigerent d'eux une nouvelle industrie. Le long de lamer, et des Rivieres ils ... devinrent pecheurs .... Dans les forets ils ... devinrent Chasseurs et Guerriers; Dans les Pays froids ils se couvrirent des peaux des betes qu'ils avoient tuees. 4 9 Now if it was the case that, its separate gressively that through the cwnulative communities to new environments, transformed, the qualities then it followed, which were originally social those traits roles. the human race had been pro- man's natural We distinguish of for Buffon and Rousseau together, be the same as those which he had gradually various adaptation acquired so little, endowc.ent could not in accordance with his wrote Buffon, between which Nature has bestowed upon us, on the one hand, and those which we owe to education, imitation, it would not be surprising if we were entirely when confronted art, and example, on the other, unable to recognise by the image of a savage in his original state. Un sauvage absolument sauvage ... [seroit] un spectacle curieux pour un philosophe, il pourroit en observant son sauvage, evaluer au juste la force des appetits de la Nature ... il en distingueroit tousles mouvemens naturels, & peut-etre y reconnoitroit-il plus de douceur, de tranquillite & de calme que dans la sienne, peut-etre verroit-il clairement que la vertu 48. OPB, p. 313. 49. Discours sur l'inegalite, O.C.III, 124 p. 165. that ourselves �appartient a l'homme sauvage plus qu'a l'homme civilise. & que le vice n' a pris naissance que dans la societe.50 Equally for Rousseau, though he did not share human race might be more virtuous form, it was nonetheless ensured also the metamorphosis in its true that Buffon 1 s view that natural than in its the development the civilised of society had of man. Gardens nous ... de confondre l'homme Sauvage avec les hommes, que nous avons sous les yeux .... En devenant sociable et Esclave, il devient foible, craintif, rampant, et sa maniere de vivre molle et effeminee acheve d'enerver a la fois sa force et son courage.51 Buffon supposed that of all the types of creatures the world mankind alone had the capacity habits this and dispositions idea in particular to grasp and just his theory this and that man was specially gifted, endowed with faculties of human nature, too, of natural which was to figure While every other with a pattern It was law had failed centrally species in both was compelled which had been prescribed the two thinkers believed, he could employ in several Buffon observed, its and environments. which the philosophers of Rousseau. to behave in conformity to change and to adapt to new circumstances idea, which inhabited was in fact its for it, in having been ways. The flexibility most conspicuous feature. Des que l'Homme a commence a changer de ciel ... sa nature a subi des alte~ations .... il y a plus de force, plus d'etendue, plus de flexibilite dans la nature de l'homme que dans celle de tousles autres etres.52 50. 'Histoire naturelle de l'homme', in the first edition of the Histoire naturelle, III, pp. 492-493. This passage, and all other references to the original text here, do not appear in OPB. 51. Discours 52. OPB, p. sur l'inegalite, O.C.III, 394. 125 p. 139. �In view of man's native forms of life it also followed in the sense that make himself ability to adopt continuously for Buffon that from all the rest. each person could escape from "cette des animaux" which, for beasts, est trace our species every member of it was sufficiently distinct dans 1 1 espece entiere 11 • 53 was unique resourceful Hence, according uniformite ensured changing that to Buffon, dans tousles "l'ordre to ouvrages de leurs Much the same opinion actions on this point was adopted by Rousseau as well. La Nature comrnande a tout animal, et la Bete obeit. L'homme eprouve la meme impression, mais il se reconnoit libre d'acquiescer, ou de resister; et c'est surtout dans la conscience, de cette liberte que se montre la spiritualite de son ame.54 For both thinkers, possessed species a particular then, it was apparent set of genetic alone and that the pattern traits that all other which were collllllonto their of behaviour of every breed of life apart from our own was practically identical from one generation next. 55 The attributes of the human race, however, had in their modified by a great inhabitants each other of our separate of local practices communities and customs, had become distinct at any one time and also from the earliest It was therefore that variety precisely an understanding because the qualities of man's nature creatures to the view been so that the both from examples of mankind. of humanity had changed must be based upon a study of his past. 53. Ibid. , p. 297. 54. Discours sur l'inegalite, O.C.III, pp. 141-142. 55. Buffon, however (see especially the passage from the Histoire naturelle cited in note 59 below), allowed a certain exception to this rule insofar as he maintained that both the physical and behavioural characteristics of domesticated creatures had been subjected to some change through human manipulation. 126 �Yet if it is true that at least nature, a part this in the Discours of his inspiration fact for an historical must not be taken to imply that agreed as to which characteristics original members of our race. opposed with regard modern man. Indeed, to two quite of our spiritual points our ancestors that men must all life, have lived Rousseau insisted apart of our race century, 56 number of theories which had been • h.is H.istoire• an d in remarkable in the state in their formulated And of nature and rudimentary original condition and alone. Buffon was acquainted about form must species. some primitive that in the and which for him suggested that from one another There can be no doubt but that the substantial extent our physical to other secondly, of it was only our to a significant and moral evolution must have adopted at least forms of social that of change which was no less opinion, to the about the progenitors firstly, mankind might once have been affiliated whereas it was Buffon's be ascribed were views were fundamentally Rousseau retorted also have undergone a history that crucial which had been modified course of our development, than that their account of human the two figures could properly For while Buffon maintained, moral attributes Rousseau drew from Buffon the physical with many of transformation by the mid-eighteenth • nature 11e h e lavis• h ed much praise upon t he 56. For an account of at least some of the evolutionary theories with which Buffon would have been familiar, see especially Jean Rostand, L'evolution des especes: Histoire des idees transformistes ~Paris n.d. [1932]), pp. 18-48; Emile Guy€not, Les sciences de la vie au XVIIe et XVIIIe siecles: L'idee d'evolution (Paris 1941), pp. 209-401; Roger, Les sciences de la vie, pp. 325-526 and 585-748; and Bentley Glass et al., eds., Forerunners of Darwin 1745-1859, second edition (Baltimore 1968),chs":° ii-vi. While most of the historians in this list envisage a connection between Enlightenment and later accounts of the evolution of species, Roger, however, who is the most learned but equally the most sceptical of modern authorities on this subject, maintains that none of the supposed precursors of Lamarck or Darwin in the eighteenth century actually believed that the development of new life-form5 was due to the progressive transformation of more primitive forms. This subject is a difficult and complex one which happily does not need to be considered at any length here. Readers with an interest in the theories of the genesis of species which were conceived in the century of Buffon and Rousseau could do no better than to turn first to the survey of baron Georges Cuvier in the third and fourth volumes of his Histoire des sciences naturelles 127 �most important that and most popular ~ the Venus physique is, prepared to accept of contribution z,,aupertuis.. • transmitte 57 the claim of Maupertuis between types of men throughout the cumulative to the subject effect and others d over many generations, • altogether. especially of acquired possess traits at first, He acknowledged that certain creatures . particu . l ar. 59 came1 in regard in terms of t hese d.ff i er- between man and kinds of animals - - had acquired which the members of their and in this the differences characteristics 58 he never a 11owed tat h a number of domesticated and material that the world might be explicable of the inheritance species bodily shapes as a whole did not he coTIDDiserated upon the fate At the same time, time, But whereas Buffon was ences could be so profound as to blur the distinction beast at this of the however, it was also his view (first published in Paris in five volumes between 1841 and 1845). For Cuvier's work, appearing as it did in the period between Lamarck and Darwin, is relieved of the burden which a knowledge of the outcome of this history has brought to all its later interpreters, and that fact, together with the author's brilliant mastery of French prose, has made his account of an otherwise most weighty subject a delight to read. See also note 134 below. 57. See especially OPB, p. 285. The Venus physique was first published in 1745; its immediate success is attested by the fact that it appeared in five further editions over the next six years. With regard to both the general popularity of natural history in the mid-eighteenth century and also the acclaim with which Buffon's work in particular was greeted, see Mornet, Les sciences de la nature en France, au XVIIIe siecle (Paris 1911), pp. 173-191 and 213-236. 58. Strictly speaking, Maupertuis supposed that the appearance of novel traits among the members of any species couJ.d be attributed to the effects of natural phenomena, artificial breeding, or even cbance, and that insofar as these traits were transmitted to offspring and their progeny they constituted the distinguishing features of new species. But more often than not such traits - such as albinism among blacks, for instance - were just resurgent characteristics of the ancestral species which, according to Maupertuis, had somehow come to be suppressed. For two quite distinct views of Maupertuis's contribution to the history of evolutionary theory, see Roger, Les sciences de la vie, pp. 468-487, and Glass, 'Maupertuis, Pioneer of Genetics and Evolution', in Forerunners of Darwin, pp. 51-83. 59. See the Histoire naturelle, XI (published in 1764), pp. 228-229: "Si l'on reflechit sur les difformites [du chameau] ... on ne pourra douter que sa nature n'ait ete considerablement alteree par la contrainte de l'esclavage & par la continuite des travaux. Le charneau est plus anciennement, plus completement & plus laborieusement esclave qu'aucun des autres animaux domestiques ... dans les autres especes d'animaux domestiques ... on trouve encore des individus dans leur etat de nature ... que l'homme ne s'est pas soumis: au lieu que dans le chameau l'espece entiere est esclave." In 128 �that there others were certain because which were nobler they did not breed with animals from which it unique. species followed that their Hence about such species remarked that they were constant, . 61 degra dation. the most perfect of them all any of the lower orders inasmuch as from time to time, se ranger things and creatures it possible the most perfect the true "l'etre the human race was it bore the least point resemblance to Buffon was inconsistent, for instance in the essay which serves "peut-etre of the natural to descend, naturelle, pour l'homme ... qu'il des animaux 11 world, • 63 by almost of Nature in the subtle every change of movement, form, and generation, doit If we survey all he observed as he also humiliante in this imperceptible being to the most amorphous matter, magnificence of le plus noble de la for Buffon that on this lui-meme dans la classe find and beyond any suspicion to the whole of his Histoire remarked upon the fact Buffon of beasts. Now it might appear that the introduction and for example, invariable, and that sort, 60 of a different as the lion, clear form than were more distinctive Since man was by nature ~ • '' , 62 it was therefore creation shall traits in their until text, degrees, the we from we recognise nuances which it brings and to "les to successions Buffon's judgment, moreover, the very misfortunes of the camel served equally as blessings for mankind. For "on ne pourra s'empecher de le reconnoitre", he continued (ibid., pp. 239-240), "pour la plus utile & la plus precieuse de toutes les creaturessubordon..~ees a l'homme: l'or & la soie ne sent pas les vraies richesses de l'Orient; c'est le chameau qui est le tresor de l'Asie, il vaut mieux que l'elephant". See also Roger, Les sciences de la vie, p. 569. 60. According to Buffon (see OPB, p. 378) the horse was not a very noble species insofar as it could mate with the ass to produce the mule, while the dog was less noble still because it was so much related to the wolf, fox, and jackal "qu'on peut regarder comme des branches degenerees de la meme famille". In general, ~,e, continued, the inferior species such as rabbits, weasels, and rats have so many collateral branches that we can no longer -recognise the characteristic stock and pedigree of these "familles devenues trop nombreuses". 61. See ibid. 62. Ibid. 63. Ibid., p. 10. 129 �d e toute ' espece In fact, Buffon consistently traits On the contrary, the absolute discontinuity the most vital sharply feature like of colour, race were variations related together. all species could ever be taken to imply developed from some other the evidence pointed, between man and beast. which characterized height, hair, of a quite in his view, to For one thing, each species since was the more or and facial different traits sort within the human from those which set Men and women of every type could be joined children, union between man and beast. hut it was impossible Secondly, such variations between the members of our race were due, he claimed, rather animal reproductive capacity of its members to engender 65 themselves, it was clear for Buffon that the dis- apart. 66 to procreate from a single the variations delimited only creatures tinctions denied that among individuals the human race had actually species. less 64 however, between physical that II stock which had been suffered than to the improvement or refinement to form a fertile as did exist to the degeneration by some human communities of any animal traits. 67 64. Ibid. See also the passage from the fourteenth volume of the Histoire naturelle, published in 1766, in which Buffon points (OPB, p. 401) to the "changement des espe.ces memes... cette degeneration ... de tout temps immemoriale, qui paroit s'etre faite dans chaque famille, ou ... dans chacun des genres sous lesquels on peut comprendre les especes voisines & peu differentes entr'elles". 65. Hence Buffon defines a species "une succession constante d 1 individus 66. See ibid., pp. 356 and 394. (ibid., p. 356) as nothing other semblables ... qui se reproduisent". than 67. See, for instance, ibid., p. 394. Buffon believed that nearly all variations within animal spec.ies (apart, perhaps, from some types of American deer and skunk - see ibid., p. 412) were degenerate forms of the original breed of those species, and in his Histoire naturelle he devoted the longest section of vol. XIV to an account of this subject under the title 'De la degeneration des animaux'. Equally, the physical differences which had arisen within mankind - while they were relatively insignificant by comparison with the divergencies between related animals - were to be understood, in Buffon's view, as various distortions of the common source from which all men were patterned. His disagreement with Maupertuis's account of albinism within the black race (see note 58 above) is partly based upon this conviction that corporeal changes to living organisms generally produce inferior specimens. For whereas Maupertuis supposed that black albinos showed a reversion 130 �Insofar view, as the ancestral 68 the fact be darkened that species. the fundamental in certain might be a natural race of man could only have been white, cases acquired effects characteristic of climate, alteration 69 71 race, fait nor one that if it were supposed that, suggest development, subir in virtue which existed family within than the genetic other prototypes of apes. more primitive peoples through 70 as an the was neither in the required of their our species there while it was "la plus· grande a l'homme 11 , had occurred for Buffon that from any.primordial and other almost exclusively monkey~ were in some sense a degenerate inconceivable to him that the brown hue of most African and this ait of men's skin had come to between ourselves which arose que le ciel found change did not at all continuity For he regarded colour in his anatomical Thirdly, sequence. similarity form of man, could itself those a pro.: 72 Even to our it was have descended hybrid variations species were for the most part less fertile 74 73 from which they issued, and it was therefore to the original colour type of man, Buffon argued (Histoire natur~lle, III, pp. 502-503) that "ces Negres blc:.ncs sont des Negres degenerez de leur race", the members of which had themselves already undergone a natur~l deterioration of skin colour. Largely because of his views about the flexibility of human nature (seep. 125 above), however, Buffon believed that mankind, unlike all other species, had the power to make its history follow a progressive course. Thus, in one of the later volumes of his work, for instance, he exclaimed (OPB, p. 196), "Qui sait jusqu'a quel point l 1 homme pourroit perfec:tionner sa nature, soit au moral, soit au physique?". 68. It was Buffon's contention (see the Histoire naturelle, III, p. 502, for example) that "le blanc paroit ... etre la couleur prlmitive de la Nature". 69. See OPB, p. 395: "La couleur de la peau, des cheveux & des yeux, varie par la seule influence du climat." Buffon supposed (see the Histoire naturelle, III, p. 483) that the transformation of white men into black could be achieved after "plusieurs siccles & une succession d'un grand nornbre de generations", simply by transporting persons from the north to the equator, though he also added that this development might prove more likely to succeed if a suitably tropical diet and style of life were adopted as well. 70. OPB, p. 395. 71. See ibid. 72. See ibid., pp. 354-355: "Dans ce point de vue .... on pourra dire ... que le singe est de la famille de l'homme, que c'est un homme degenere." 73. 352. Buffon uses this term frequently. See, for instance, ibid,, pp. 31 and 74. In the earlier tomes of the Histoire naturelle (see ibid., pp. 236 and 356, for exc1mple) Buffon argued that hybz,ids were altogether infertile. 131 �difficult to imagine how any hybrid creatures could have engendered the human race. no evidence of intermediate so now, for instance, have been so,~ altogether finally, • h d i d not exist • wh ic 0 together was no trace obvious for Buffon that there was, fourthly, even between those animal to the horse and ass, with regard unable to join if there at all, there to produce hybrid offspring, with regard fortiori, To be sure, species forms which had the capacity between the apes and man and if this 75 was it must also to men and monkeys, who were to beget progeny of a hybrid kind. in Nature of intermediate species, could never have been any new species • at t h e time of t h e creation• it was either • matter. 76 of a 11 1·iving The history of each kind of animal and plant was as long as that of every 77 other, and since it followed from this that man was as old as the brutes, he could not have descended from them. Despite Buffon's claims, which mark the succession then, 78 about the imperoeptible of species, there race to any of the lower forms of life. nuances were none which connected He acknowledged that our such nuances Later (see especially the passages cited in Roger, Les sciences de la vie, p. 572) he maintained instead that they were less fertile, since they were sufficiently potent to conceive in "certaines circonstances". Thus while in 1749 he described a hybrid (OPB, p. 236) as a creature which "ne produiroit rien", by 1766 he came to the opinion (see ibid., p. 403) that all hybrids apart from mules were actually progenitive, and ten years later (see the Histoire naturelle, supplementary volume III, p. 20) he remarked upon the fecundity of mules as well. 75. See OPB, pp. 353 and 357. 76. See ibid., pp. 35 and 355. Buffon was not in fact consistent on this point, however, since he eventually maintained (see ibid., p. 170) that certain species, and especially terrestrial animals, "n'ont pu naitre & se multiplier que dans des temps posterieurs & plus voisins du notre". 77. See ibid., p. 31 and the passage cited for note 84 below. Here again Buffon subsequently changed his mind in the light of evidence that some organisms, such as the mastodon, had become extinct (see ibid., pp. 116, 125-126, and 170). 78. Some of the points in this paragraph are inspired by Lovejoy's excellent account of 1 Buffon and the Problem of Species' in forerunners of Darwin (see especially pp. 98-99). 132 �were not really equal other were certainly creatures Indeed even those members of other in every case, features species 79 and those which set men apart the widest which established were fundamentally descent :from a common ancestor Creator. We might conjecture, between groups of species, but rather and most perceptible family of all. 80 resemblances between due not to some process to the grace Burfon remarked, from of and wisdom of their upon the apparent relation and we might suppose that si ces familles existoient en effet, elles n'auroient pu se former que par le melange, la variation succes81 sive & la degeneration des especes originaires. If we were to adopt this h tat point of view, moreover, we might perhaps • of t h e same f arni·1 y as roan, 82 an d we mig • ht ten h k t h e money is conceive the possibility that sterns :from some connnon source, ultimately to a single every family, and that all imagine even both animal and vegetable, creatures organism which, with the passage owe their origin of time, has pro- "en se perfectionnant & en degenerant, toutes les races des autl"es 83 animaux 11 • In fact, however, we have all been spared such speculative duced, ordeals by the sure knowledge brought to us through revelation. For il est certain, par la revelation, que tousles anirnaux ont egalernent participe a la grace de la creation, que les deux premiers de chaque espece & de toutes les especes sont sortis tout forines des mains du Createur, & l'on doit croire qu'ils etoient tels alors, a peu pres, qu'ils nous sont aujourd'hui representes par leurs descendans. 84 79. See OPB, p. 355. 80. According to Buffon (see ibid., whole genus as well as a species. 81. Ibid., 82. See the passage 83. Ibid., p. 401) the human race constitutes a p. 354. :from OPB cited in note 72 above. p. 355. 84. Ibid. In view of Buffon's numerous other statements about the and the fixity of species, there is no good reason, in my opinion, to that his remarks about revelation here are either ironical (as Samuel maintained in his Evolution, Old and New [London 1879]) or inspired by 133 Creation suppose Butler his �These lines appeared which was published in the fourth in 1753, and later • h"is I nterpretation ' • mock t h em in the subsequent in the same year Diderot d e l a nature. 85 naturelle was to But while in some of tomes of his work Buffon came to modify a number of his ideas about the genesis these remarks about the evolution cation volume of the Histoire of his greatest of matter work - that and the earth 86 he never repudiated of species. is, Both at the time of the publi- the Epoques de la nature - in the fear of ecclesiastical censure (as claimed by Alfred Giard in his Controverses transformistes [Paris 1904)). ·It is true that in 1750 Buffon was attacked in the Jansenist journal, Nouvelles ecclesiastiques, for having established too close a link in his theory between the human race and animal species and for having forgotten that God created man in His own image. In the following year, moreover, it even transpired that a small number of his claims - none of them pertaining to evolution, however - were declared "reprehensibles" and "contraires a la croyance de l'Eglise" by the Paris faculte de Theologie. ·But Buffon was quick to satisfy his critics in the Faculty (see OPB, pp. 106-109) and never incurred its public disapprobation again, while so far from believing that our race was just the most advanced among animal species, he always attacked the 'nomenclateurs' (particularly Linnaeus) for allowing just such ridiculous classifications to find a place in their systems. According to Buffon it may have been the forces of Nature rather than the powers of God which had exercised the active role ~n our history since the Creation, but "plus j'ai penetre dans le sein de la Nature", he wrote (OPB, p. 126), "plus j'ai admire & profondement respecte son Auteur". Butler and Giard have misunderstood Buffon's references to the Deity because they hav.e been too much concerned to establish Buffon's title among the precursors of Darwin. 85. See the following passage in Assezat-Tourneux, II, pp. 57-58: "Si la foi ne nous apprenait que les animaux sont sortis des mains du Createur tels que nous les voyons; et s'il etait permis d'avoir la moindre incertitude sur leur commencement et sur leur fin, le philosophe abandonne a ses conjectures ne pourrait-il pas soupgonner que l'animalite avait de toute eternite ses elements particuliers, epars et confondus dans la masse de la rnatiere; qu'il est arrive a ces elements de se reunir, parce qu 1·il etait possible que cela se fit; que l'embryon foI'!De de ces elements a passe par une infinite d'organisations et de developpe~ents ... qu'il s'est ecoule des millions d'annees entre chacun de ces developpements; qu'il a peut-etre encore d'autres developpements a subir et d'autres accroissements a prendre, qui nous sont inconnus ... ? La religion nous epargne bien des ecarts. et bien des travaux.n 86. Perhaps the most striking change in Buffon's theory is marked by the fact that between 1749 and 1778 he felt it necessary to increase his view of the number of epochs which had occurred in the history of the world from one to seven. Cf. his 'Histoire et theorie de la terre' (OPB, pp. 45-64), on the one band, and Epoques de la nature (ibid., pp. 117-196), on the other. Of course seven epochs could be made as much compatible with Scripture as the more usual one (that is, from the time of the Creation) or two (the same, that is, divided by the Deluge). 134 �year of Rousseau's death, and at the time Rousseau consulted volumes of his study while preparing Buffon held fast to the claim that the Discours no species the initial sur l'inegalite, could give rise to any other. Quoiqu'on ne puisse ... pas demontrer que la production d'une espece par la degeneration soit une chose impossible a la Nature, le nombre des probabilites contraires est si enorme, que philoso~hiquement meme on n'en peut guere douter. 87 It was therefore always clear for Buffon that les especes dans les animaux soient toutes separees par un intervalle que la Nature ne peut franchir. 88 For Rousseau, on the other types of men throughout marked similarity apes, justified features environments, 87. Ibid.,p. the world, other sorts appropriate it followed that there types and certain different of creatures to their diversity between and, even more significantly, between some of these our forming a quite acknowledged that bodily hand, the apparent conclusion. had developed needs and functions was no prima facie the species of Since it was and transmitted in disparate reason for supposing 357. 88. Ibid., p. 359. Buffon's general view of the fixity of species is also made absolutely clear in the following passage from ibid., p. 38: "L'empreinte de chaque espece est un type dont les principaux traits sont graves en caracteres ineffa~ables & permanens a jamais. 11 While some modern authorities on th.e subject (for instance Guyenot in his Sciences de la vie - see p. 401) still argue that Buffon was a major precursor of our contemporary theory of evolution, most (like Roger - see his Sciences de la vie, p. 577, and J. S. Wilkie ~ see 'The Idea of Evolution in the Writings of Buffon', Annals of Science, XII (1956), p. 255) contend that he was not, though a few (such as Rostand - see L'evolution des especes, p. 61) adopt something of an intermediate position. In my view, most of the evidence put forward to prove that he believed in the transformation of species is now discredited. It has been shown that the ostensibly evolutionary remarks in some of his volumes on birds were produced by other writers and do not really tell us much about his own views, and a study of the full context of the passage from the Histoire naturelle cited in note 64 above, moreover, confirms that even in this account of evolution Buffon only had intra-specific changes in mind, and not changes from one species to another. 135 �that the physical variations between men were necessarily in kind from those which set species we recognised corporeal traits our height, utable that a great to the discrepancies styles of the globe, of life and texture which prevailed recounted us say, by, let Herodotus these of the greater which must have prevailed in the past, in the ways and patterns throughout of existence 89 parts variations, too much trust and Ctesias, from them some conception and look alike forms of nourishment, adopted by men, might have undergone a history Even if we did not place or - might be attrib- in widely separated change as well? If for instance, of our hair between the climate, apart. between our of our skin, then why should we not allow that the institutions animals number of the differences - such as the colour or the extent and general of related distinct like of in the tales we might still multiplicity draw of human types when men were not yet settled which now made them both behave the world. On en peut du moins tirer cette opinion tres vraisemblable, que si l'on avoit pu faire de bonnes observations dans ces terns anciens ou les peuples divers suivoient des manieres de vivre plus differentes entre elles qu'ils ne font aujourd'hui, on y auroit aussi remarque dans la figure et l'habitude du corps, des varietes beaucoup plus frapantes.90 In the Discours difficult to trace Rousseau admits t-hat it would be extremely the course of the various metamorphoses through 89. A Greek physician and historian of the early 4th century B.C. whose principal work, Persica, provided an account of Babylon and the Persian Empire up to the year 398 B.C. 90. Discours sur l'inegalite, note x, O.C.III, p. 208. Most of Rousseau's remarks on this page about the physical variations between men are inspired by the section in the third volume of Buffon's Histoire naturelle (pp. 371-530) entitled 'Varietes dans l'espece humaine' (see also OPB, pp. 312-313). 136 �which our physical tive form would have passed, anatomy was still most vague conjectures prepared so rudimentary about this for the study of compara- that we could only make the subject. Thus while he was to advance ryypotheses about the causes which must have brought about the moral transformation speculate upon the differences of mankind he hesitated between bodily have marked our development from a natural And since our knowledge about these remarked that traits which must also to a civilised condition. changes was too uncertain in his work he would suppose that our race had much the same shape and physical to he the progenitors attributes of as we have today. Jene pourrois former sur ce sujet que des conjectures vagues, et presque imeginaires: L'Anatomie comparee a fait encore trop peu de progres, les observations des Naturalistes sont encore trop incertaines, pour qu'on puisse etablir sur de pareils fondemens la baze d'un raisonnement solide; ainsi, sans avoir recours aux connoissances surnaturelles que nous avons sur ce point, et sans avoir egard aux changemens qui ont du survenir dans la conformation, tant interieure qu'exterieure de l'homme, a mesure qu'il appliquoit ses membres a de nouveaux usages, et qu'il se nourrissoit de nouveaux alimens, je le supposerai conforme de tous temps, comme je le vois aujourd'hui, marchant a deux pieds, se servant de ses mains comme nous faisons des notres.91 Yet in this similarities passage Rousseau is rather between modern and primitive only to the congruence resultant ambiguous about the corporeal flexibility man, and he actually between the structure With regard allows that we must always have been rather posture and free of our limbs and the of use to which men at all put them. to our feet times might have and our hands, to grasp and manipulate points that is, Rousseau as we are now - upright the things necessary for our survival. 91. ibid., Discours sur l'inegalite, pp. 196-198. O.C.III, 137 p. 134. See also in note iii, �We must not overlook his reluctance which still the fact, to conjecture refer cussion he states Rousseau here displays ont development du survenir while earlier successifs" dans la in the same which have affected Embryon de l'espece". ·shape and appearance over the course Indeed at other points to hazard some guesses might have come to be modified of our history. a la changemens arrives In the preface constitution of our development, adding that about new varieties within Some of the organic as to how our in certain he reflects des Corps" ·throughout just as physical each animal species l'oiiie et l'odorat and more subtle for instance, telescope. 94 92. differences are embodied in our senses powerful Ibid., the in the Discours causes between primitive rather ways upon "les the stages had brought so too it dans ces changemens successifs de la constitution humaine qu'il faut cbercher la premiere origine differences qui distinguent les hommes.92 "la veue, any dis- of the human body and have drawn us away from the Rousseau seems much more eager sure, in terms he means to leave out of his account of the "developpemens "organisation" "premier de l'homme", that that about our physical to the "changemens qui conformation ... exterieure paragraph too, is des and modern man, to be than our appearance, so that 1193 of the savage must have been at once than our own faculties, and even now Hottentots, can see as far with the naked eye as Europeans There are many further distinctions of this with a kind, moreover, pp. 122 and 123. 93. Ibid., p. 140. Rousseau allowed that animals. Following Buffon, however (see ibid. and OPB, p. 325), our sense of touch was more refined than that of 94. See the Discours sur l'inegalite, O.C.III, p. 141. In the Discours Rousseau generally adopts the view that Hottentots are physically more supple and agile than Europeans, with faculties and senses which are far more acute than our own. His main source for these observations is Kolb's Caput 138 �which are conspicuous enough in our external while Rousseau regarded world there alone. Thus the claims made about pygmies as only a "fable" or at best an "exageration", and Greenlanders features the evidence of diminutive in his own day suggested are, by contrast, to him that Laplanders somewhere in the or might once have been, nations of giants. Il y a eu et il y a peut-etre encore des Nations d'hommes d'une taille gigantesque.95 Domesticated powerful, creatures, in his view, are ~ot only less vigorous, and less robust roam free in their than the members of their original And since the earliest habitats; transfigured breeding? which still 96 as well. of our own race must al.so have 97 purement animales 11 , then why should we like species It was actually we had come to be of animals subjected the belief to artificial of some philosophers, Rousseau "il y a plus de difference de tel homme A tel homme que 98 homme a telle bete", an observation which the reports of remarked, de tel they are shorter in the course of our civilisation rather species representatives been marked "par les fonctions not accept that less that Bonae Spei hodiernum of 1719 with which he was acquainted through the commentary of Prevost in the fifth volume of the Histoire generale des voyages, and in his additions to the text (see notes viand xvi, O.C.III, pp. 200 and 221) he quotes two passages - indicating his precise reference which he drew from that volume of the Histoire generale. Weknow that Rousseau took some care to marshal his evidence about Hottentots, since Neuchatel Ms R is (ancienne cote 7842 - see pp. 7r-8r) contains several long and neatly transcribed passages about them which he copied from Prevost's work, including two paragraphs (from pp. 144 and 174 of the fifth volume) that he did not incorporate in the Discours sur l'inegalite. 95. Ibid., note x, p. 208. Rousseau's speculations about pygmies and giants here are, of course, belied by the facts that pygmies exist and giants do not. Some of our best speculative histories of the human race are, alas, diminished in stature when confronted by facts such as these. See ibid., p. 139. 97. Ibid., p. 143. Note x, which deals principally and which is discussed below, is introduced just after text. 96. 98. Ibid., p. 141. 139 with the orang-utan these words in the �travellers tended to confirm, insofar having many of the attributes in their natural that as they described were characteristic its but the distinction for this animals reason and beasts between primitive even greater of burden. us we have only fashioned state, a steeper made our senses in modern society degenerate fattened, who are equally and civilised than the difference In fact for as we have bred livestock thereby creatures selon le rapport des Peuples the taming of our race has produced victims agents, partly of all state. L'etat animal en general ... est aussi, des Voyageurs, [l'etat] de la plupart Sauvages.99 Certainly savages as between wild by making other path of decline to satisfy creatures kind but only pets, any longer serve from our natural our needs we have also more dull and our constitutions we are hardly man is more frail, even animals broken in by ourselves and of a certain - weak, docile, and fleeced. En devenant sociable et Esclave, [l'homme) devient foible, craintif, rampant, et sa maniere de vivre molle et effeminee acheve d'enerver a la fois sa force et son courage. Ajoutons qu'entre les conditions Sauvage et Domestique la difference d'homme a homme doit etre plus grande encore que celle de bete a bete; car l'animal, et l'homme ayant ete traites egalement par la Nature, toutes les commodites que l'hollDDe se donne de plus qu'aux animaux qu'il apprivoise, sont autant de causes particulieres qui le font degenerer plus sensiblement.100 Rousseau's account form of domestication points argument in the Discours 'l'homme civil' 99. 100. Ibid., Ibid., of the civilisation of humanity as a self-imposed to one of the most original sur l'inegalite. were in his view distinguished pp. 140-141. p. 139. 140 elements For 'l'homme sauvage' not only by their of his and social �characteristics case that but also by their the difference divergence traits, for him that mankind apart the physical from all other had so much to learn throughout for us to make judgments subject about the several the world, and faculties might in fact on this than the of the same species, properties creatures and sharp than most commentators scattered and if it was the between them is even greater between wild and tamed animals followed still bodily which set be less precise had supposed. types Rousseau insisted, about the inherent then it We of men which were that qualities it was absurd of every member of our speci~s. Nous ne connoissons point les Peuples des Indes Orientales, frequentees uniquement par des Europeens plus curieux de remplir leurs bourses que leurs tetes. L'Afrique entiere et ses nombreux habitans, aussi singuliers par leur caractere que par leur couleur, sont encore a examiner; toute la terre est couverte de Nations dont nous ne connoissons que les noms, et nous nous melons de juger le genre-humain!lOl Until we had more reliable of beasts which were reported only be uncertain divided evidence about the anatomy and mode of life by travellers to resemble in our judgments about the natural man, we could qualities which the human fr>0m the animal realms. Je dis que quand de pareils Observateurs affirmeront d'un tel Animal que c'est un homme, et d'un autre que c'est une bete, il faudra les en croire; mais ce seroit une grande simplicite de s'en rapporter la dessus a des voyageurs grossiers, sur lesquels on seroit quelquefois tente de faire la meme question qu'ils se melent de resoudre sur d'autres animaux.102 According constitution to Rousseau at least similar some of the creatures to our own were quite 101. Ibid., note x, p. 213. 102. Ibid., p. 214. 141 possibly varieties which had a of the �human race itself. occasion It was the opinion to observe the great be classified firstly, apes that as savage men, and that because the conformity close enough, and, secondly, race, they were speechless. be explained physical these for two principal between their because unlike reasons: features and ours was not the members of the human of the development with an unalterable who had had animals could not really Yet for Rousseau these as a consequence had not endowed us all of most travellers distinctions might of mankind, for Nature and universally identical form, nor had we always been - as we are now - instructed the use of language. persons The bodily in the civilised traits world could not be cited appearance and behaviour that were grounds for surmising there resembled of men at all us in form were actually a primitive and linguistic times, that in achievements as evidence of of the and Ro~sseau believed a number of the animals which members of our race still living in and savage state. Toutes ces observations sur les varietes que mille causes peuvent produire et ont produit en effet dans l'Espece humaine, me font douter si divers animaux semblables aux hommes, pris par les voyageurs pour des Betes sans beaucoup d'examen, ou a cause de quelques differences qu'ils remarquoient dans la conformation exterieure, ou seulement parce que ces Animaux ne parloient pas, ne seroient point en effet de veritables hommes Sauvages, dont la race dispersee anciennement dans les bois n'avoit eu occasion de developper aucune de ses facultes v~rtuelles, n'avoit acquis aucun degre de perfection, et se trouvoit encore dans l'etat primitif de Nature.103 In his speculations focused his attention as an orang-utan. century 103. African Ibid., about this part5cularly subject in the Discours upon the creature Drawing at length p. 208. 142 which he described upon the sixteenth- voyages of Andrew Battel, Olfert Rousseau and seventeenth- Dapper, and Girolamo �Merolla as recounted in the Histoire forward the hypothesis described by these that orang-utans les Babouins'", 111 , true that striking "'son des voyages, 104 105 and which had been taken to be of the might really "'tiennent be men. cornrne le milieu entre l'espece ressernbloit exacte avec l'hornme'"· a celui humaine et by the extent were agreed about the animal's "'ressemblance aux Others had imagined only but Rousseau was too much impressed visage he put Congolese animal which had been grands Animaux qu'on nomme Orangs-Outang which his authorities and its the large travellers, same family as '"ces Indes Orientales that generale "'visage to humain'" For if it was d'un hornme'" - if the beast 104. Each of these figures is cited in a long passage from the Histoire generale des voyages, V, pp. 87-89, that Rousseau quotes almost in full in note x of the Discours (see O.C.III, pp. 209-210). On some unknown date between 1748 and 1754 he had already copied that passage in a notebook of readings that contains a selection of extracts from Prevost's text, and like most citations of this kind which he incorporated in his published works it is crossed out in the manuscript (see Neuchatel Ms R 18, pp. 6r-6v, and note 94 above). Prevost's authorities in the same passage include not only Battel, Dapper, and Merolla, but also Filippo Pigafetta, who had provided an account of the late-sixteenthcentury voyage to the Congo of Duarte Lopes which is not mentioned in the Discours sur l'inegalite. But Rousseau refers again to Battel, Dapper, and Merolla in a later passage of note x (see O.C.III, p. 211), adding there the name of Samuel Purchas, who had rendered an account of the travels of Battel in his Purchas his Pilgrimage, first published in 1613. See also Pire, 'Rousseau et les relations de voyages', pp. 357-358, 368, and 372. 105. Discours sur l'inegalite, note x, O.C.III, p. 209. 'Orang-utan' is originally a Malay term meaning 'man of the woods', and it is now applied exclusively to one species of anthropoid ape (Pongo pygmaeus) found in Borneo and Sumatra only. In European letters, however, the word was first employed (by Nicolaas Tulp in his Observationum medicarum of 1641) in connection with the African chimpanzee, and until approximately the end of the eighteenth century these two species, and many other great apes both real and fictitious - as well, were regularly assimilated under the generic name •orang-utan'. Thus Edward Tyson, for instance, described the anatomy of a chimpanzee in his Orang-Outang of 1699; Buffon admitted, in a supplement to his Histoire naturelle, that the creature which he had earlier depicted as an orang-utan was not of that species at all; and when Thomas Savage and Jeffries Wymandiscovered the gorilla in the midnineteenth century they called the animal 1 a New Species of Orang'. I have discussed some of these confusions about the term in an article on 'Tyson and Buffon on the orang-utan' which will appear shortly in SVEC. 143 �was in so many respects feel so certain apparent that stupidity proof that "'si it was not in fact observations conclusions that this why should we all? Its could not be taken as from our own, since in their would not have been any wiser, the commentators of the orang-utan had been too cursory and too hasty animal was unrelated nor And Rousseau maintained how to speak. so far as he could tell, in their surely species our ancestors would they as yet have learnt that, human after and lack of language it was of a different most savage state a l'homme 111106- semblablc in forming their to man. On ne voit point dans ces passages les raisons sur lcsquelles les Auteurs se fondent pour refuser aux Animaux en question le nom d'hommes Sauvages, mais il est aise de conjecturer que c'est a cause de leur stupidite, et aussi parce qu'ils ne parloient pas; raisons foibles pour ceux qui savent que quoique l'organe de la parole soit naturel a l'bol!ll!le, la parole elle meme ne lui est pourtant pas naturelle, et qui connoissent jusqu'a quel point sa perfectibilite peut avoir eleve l'homme Civil au-dessus de son etat originel. Le petit uombre de lignes que contiennent ces descriptions nous peut faire juger combien ces Animaux ont ete mal observes et avec quels prejuges ils ont ete vus.lO? It was thus sheer prejudice to claim, for instance, were deformed or monstrous creatures, since their and their offspring matings were fertile selves. 108 species Bu:ffon could decree on the grounds that from the sexual Rousseau this there that unlike that all true monsters as prolific could be no hybrid which had still 106. Discours sur l'inegalite, 107. Ibid. , p. 210. 108. See ibid. 109. See pp. 129-132 above. as them- ours was the most noble of all progeny resulting union of a man or woman with any beast, was a matter orang-utans to be ascertained. note x, O.C.111, 144 109 but for We could pp. 209 and 210. �only establish orang-utans by experiment whether matings between ourselves and might prove fruitful. Il y auroit ... un moyen par lequel, si !'Orang-Outang ou d'autres etoient de l'espece humaine, les observateurs les plus grossiers pourroient s'en assurer meme avec demonstration; mais outre qu'une seule generation ne suffiroit pas pour cette experience, elle doit passer pour impraticable, parcequ'il faudroit que ce qui n'est qu'une supposition fut demontre vrai, avant que l'epreuve qui devroit constater le fait, put etre tentee innocemment.110 Because we are not naturally the domestication within of both man and beast the affected condition as proof species, or its inexact Nature had formed a great the human race. The fact that from animals that appeared before believed was at least the orang-utan trayed scala there is actually the ape as inferior naturae envisaged that an ostensible to ourselves, it was properly of beasts as divine, situated and and assumed new figures, genetically which we and Rousseau case for supposing After occupying the level to us creature did not set us apart a kind of man. which was beneath between the spheres resemblance bet~een we came to be civilised, the same creature confirm that gulf changes the mute to have only the characteristics must have possessed that either physical we had adopted both in our speech and in our bodies, and because had produced physical we could not regard of the orang-utan that endowed with language, all, and further only within though we por- a place of humanity, that in the the Ancients research might our species, that is, and gods. 110. Discours sur l'inegalite, note x, O.C.III, p. 211. In his long quotation from the Histoire generale des voyages, however (see ibid., p. 209 and note 104 above), Rousseau incorporates Dapper's rejection of the claim that orang-utans are the products of matings between women and monkeys, an idea which Dapper decried as a "'chimere que les Negres memes rejettent'". 145 �Nos voyageurs font sans fagon des betes sous les noms de Pcnr,os, de MandriJ 1s, d 'Orang-Outang, de ces memes etr·es dont sous les noms de Satyres, de Faunes, de Silvains, les /mciens faisoient des Divinites. Peut-etre apres des recherches plus exactes trouvera-t-on que ce ne sont ni des betes ni des dieux, mais des bommes. 111 The monkey, however, for reasons which are unclear animal lacked shared could not be accorded the attribute the same status - Rousseau was convinced of perfectibility that - this which the orang-utan with o.ther men. Il est bien demontre que le Singe variete de l'homme; non-seulement est prive de la faculte de parler, parcequ'on est sur que son espece celle de se perfectionner qui est specifique de l'espece humaine.112 But he remained adamant that type of man until the naturalist reply since we have reliable Charles to the Discours October the orang-utan Bonnet attacked the orang-utan should be counted to the contrary, his views on this which was printed 1755, Rousseau repeated prove that evidence n'est pas une parcequ'il mais surtout n'a point le caractere his point as a and when subject in the Mercure de France and challenged could not be regarded his critic in a in to as one of the varieties of the human race. 111. Discours sur l'inegalite, note x, O.C.III, p. 211. The words "que ce ne sont ni des betes ni des dieux, mais des hommes" at the end of this passage are an addition to the text which first appeared in 1782 in M0ultou-Du Peyrou. The original version reads simply "que ce sont des hommes". Tyson had already suggested in his Orang-Outang (preface, p. iii) that the "great Agreement" between this animal and man could account for the ancient mythology that there really were "several sorts of Men" in the world, and in a number of essays which he appended to his text he developed the thesis (see especially A Philological Essay concerning the Pygmies, p. 2) that there actually had been such animals as the Ancients called pygmies, cynocephali, satyrs, and sphinges, and that these creatures were in fact only apes, monkeys, and orang-utans. 112. Discours sur l'inegalite, note x, O.C.III, p. 211. For an account of the concept of perfectibility in the Discours, see pp. 204-209 below. 146 �Que le singe soit une Bete, je le crois, et j'en ai dit lu raison; que l'Orang-Outang c~ soit une uussi, voila ce que vous avez la bonte de m'apprendre, et j'avoue qu'apres les faits que j'ai cites, la preuve de celui la me sembloit difficile. Vous philosophez trop bien pour prononcer la dessus aussi legerement que nos voyageurs qui s'exposent quelquefois sans beaucoup de fa~ons a mettre leurs semblables au rang des betes. Vous obligerez done surement le public, et vous instruirez meme les naturalistes en nous apprenant les moyens que vous avez employez pour decider cette question.113 Of course Buffon also species were transfigured effects of artificial explained through breeding, the diversity 115 that But just 114 for this of the orang-utan naturelle, types reason within the human race from our original it was inconceivable from the apes, in the fourteenth he put forward this and the cumulative and as we have seen already of some peoples mankind might have descended account tha~ the members of animal domestication of physical terms of the degeneration stock. recognised he in white in his view and in 1766, in his volume of the Histoire claim in what he supposed to be the 113. 'Lettre a Philopolis', ibid., pp. 234-235. Bonnet had signed his article 'Philopolis, Citoyen d~ Geneve', and it seems (see the Correspondance complete, III, p. 155) that Rousseau discovered the identity of its author only after he had completed his rejoinder. The remark to which this passage is addressed appears in O.C.III, p. 1384: "L'homme sauvage de M. Rousseau, cet homme qu'il cherit avec tant de complaisance, n'est point du tout l'homme que DIEU a voulu faire: mais Dieu a fait des orang-outangs et des singes qui ne sont pas hommes." See also Bonnet's Contemnlation de la Nature (first published in 1764) in the revised edition incorporated in his Oeuvres d'Histoire naturelle et de Philosophie, 8 vols. (Neuchatel 1779-1783), IV,ii, pp. 475-479. Rousseau's 'Lettre a Philopolis' was not printed in his lifetime; it first appeared in Moultou-Du Peyrou. 114. See pp. 129-130 above. It should be borne in mind here that the two main passages, in notes 59 and 67 above, which I have cited as evidence of this feature of Buffon's theory, were first published in 1764 and 1766 respectively. It would be incorrect to suppose that Rousseau used the Histoire naturelle as a source for his thesis about the physical effects of domestication upon animals, since Buffon advanced the idea himself only a decade or so after the publication of the Discours. 115. Seep. 131 and note 68 above. 147 �strongest possible insufficiently traits, similar but rather traits fashion to man in their that brain, like to think For Buffon contended that or to speak. over this between man and the ape, structure Could there animal, in each case? vertebrae, Buffon proclaimed, kidneys, their possessed on the other, that evidence the similarity of of anatomical did not produce the same nearly all were much the same as those we were entirely which were were unable either Apart from some minor differences and bladder, a proof of the discontinuity between our species was no doubt but that appropriate orang-utans creatures any surer were the same organs and be any more reliable than the fact and organization orang-utans organs and bodily to make them serve those of men, and yet these our superiority there physical on the one hand, and organs of speech, exactly ribs, not that even when they possessed they lacked the capacity human functions. effects by demonstrating, between our our bodily of orang-utans, distinct features, and yet and unrelated. Toutes les autres parties du corps, de la tete & des membres, tant exterieures qu'interieures, sont si parfaitement semblables a celles de l'homme, qu'on ne peut les comparer sans admiration, & sans etre etonne que d'une conformation si pareille & d'une organisation qui est absolument la meme, il n'en resulte pas les memes effets. Par exemple, la langue & tousles organes de la voix sont les memes que dans l'homme, & cependant !'orang-outang ne parle pas; le cerveau est absolument de la meme forme & de la meme proportion, & il ne pense pas: y a-t-il une preuve plus evidente que la matiere seule, quoique parfaitement organisee, ne peut produire ni la pensee ni la parole qui en est le signe, a moins qu'elle ne soit animee par un principe superieur?ll6 Buffon drew this 116. Histoirc argument directly naturelle, from Edward Tyson's XIV, p. 61. 148 Orang-Outang �of 1699, and Tyson, in turn, had borrowed it from Claude Perrault's Suite des Memoires pour servir a l'histoire naturelle des animaux of 117 1676. In essence it constituted a particular application in the Enlightenment shared of the general certain nonetheless traits, material set apart Cartesian properties claim that with all from them by virtue and in Buffon's case it humanity was distinguished Nature ne peut franchir". other man - while he creatures - was of his unique spiritual formed the nub of his conviction from the beasts "par un intervalle that que la 118 S'fl y avoit un degre par lequel on put descendre de la nature humaine a celle des animaux, si l'essence de cette nature consistoit en entier dans la forme du corps & dependoit de son o~ganisation, ce singe 119 se trouveroit plus pres de l'homme que d'aucun animal ... mais ... l'intervalle qui l'en separe reellement ... est ... immense; & la ressemblance de la forme, la conformite de l'organisation, les mouvemens d'imitation qui paroissent resulter de ces similitudes, nine le rapprochent de la nature de l'homme, ni meme ne l'elevent au-dessus de celle des animaux.120 Rousseau, utan was really however, a member of our species, between us and this superior, had no difficulty creature nor was language, in supposing since did not imply that that the physical the orangdifferences we were naturally in his view, a sign of any higher which distinguished the human race from every other He nowhere inferred from the skin colour faculty type of animal. of Europeans that all men must 117. See 0ran§-0utang, p. 55, and the Suite des Memoires (Paris 1676), p. 126. The Memoires were first published in 1671, and the Suite des Memoires was later bound and paginated consecutively with the text. 118. Seep. 135 above. 119. 120. That is, Histoire the orang-utan. naturelle, XIV, pp. 70-71. 149 �originally have to confront that the thesis apes might represent beyond that of the Negro. Rousseau joined day learn a stage 122 had quite explicitly traits in the physical in believing 123 regard he did not even Buffon had rejected With regard to make use of their virtuelles". and in this - that La Mettrie "facultes physical 121 have been white, that degeneration to language, orang-utans might some their In his L'Homme machine of 1747 La Mettrie maintained that the similarity between the of humans and apes was so striking that to master a language like men about town. of us, perfect of man moreover, vocal organs and to develop reason why apes could not be taught the rest - to the effect little there was no and become, de la structure & des operations du Singe est telle, que je ne doute presque point, si on exer9oit parfaitement cet Animal, qu'on ne vint enfin a bout de lui apprendr>e a prononcer, & par consequent a savoir une langue. Alers ce ne seroit plus ni un HommeSauvage, ni un Hommemanque: ce seroit un Hommeparfait, un petit Hommede Ville.12 La similitude 4 121. In fact, if anything, the black man was more like the natural savage for Rousseau than was the white man. Thus, he remarked in an addition to the Moultou-Du Peyrou text of the Discours (0.C.III, p. 137, note), "Les Negres et les Sauvages se mettent si peu en peine des betes feroces qu'ils peuvent rencontrer dans les bois. Les Caraibes de Venezuela vivent entr'autres, a cet egard, dans ·1a plus profonde securite et sans le moindre inconvenient". The only work, to my knowledge, which deals at any length with the subject of Rousseau's reflections about black men is Mercer Cook's 'Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Negro', in the Journal of Negro History, XXI (1936), pp. 294-303. Cook (seep. 302) makes the interesting point, too seldom remembered, that Thomas Day's poem The dying Negro of 1773 was dedicated to Rousseau. 122. Seep. 131 above. 123. Discours sur l'inegalite, note x, 0.C.III, p. 208 (seep. 142 above). 124. L'Hommemachine, edited by Aram Vartanian (Princeton 1960), p. 162. For La Mettri.e apes, like the deaf, could be taught to speak simply by imitating the bodily movements that were necessary to pronounce words. "Pourquoi. .. 1 'education des Singes seroi t-elle impossible?", he asked (ibid., p. 161). "Pourquoi ne pourroit-il enfin, a force de soins, imiter, a l'exemple des sourds, les mouvemens necessaires pour prononcer? Je n'ose decider si les organes de la parole du Singe ne peuvent, quoi 150 �According to Rousseau, attributable, quite indeed, the mute condition not even so much to their deliberate des singes", and perfectly he later and since his account statements tions since Rousseau.probably of this who disagreed capacities came to be available to be undertaken, scientists 126 recognised theorists orang-utan, was drawn from the amongst themselves, his reflec- with a little the 1770s that scepticism a sufficient number of in Europe for detailed and reliable and it was not until came to agree that of ape which was different of Rousseau's behaviour must be treated live death that was "la ruse never saw a true creature's It was not until studies For it ne veulent pas parler, de peur qu'on ne les and reserve. specimens choice. as to their remarked, of observers about its lack of training, rational qui, disent les negres, quoiqu'ils le puissent, fasse travailler.125 Of course of apes might be after Rousseau's it was definitely from the chimpanzee. But the importance comments about the humanity of the orang-utan in his own day. of the origin His views were challenged of language, for instance a species was well- by other by Herder who, in his Abhandlung i.i.ber den Ursorung der Sprache of 1772, maintained that qu'on fasse, rien articuler; mais cette impossibilite absoliie me surprendroit, a cause de la grande Analogie du Singe & de l'Homme, & qu'il n'est point d'Animal connu jusqu'a present, dont le dedans & le dehors lui ressemblent.d'une maniere si frappante." It must be allowed here that La Mettrie does not refer specifically to the orang-utan but rather to monkeys in general; Rousseau was more discriminating in his ascription of a human status to some of the great apes. 125. Rousseau to Hume, 29 March 1766, Corresoondance generale, XV, p. 128. The suggestion that apes remain silent for good reasons of their own - especially to avoid work ~nd enslavement - appeared at least as early as 1623 in Richard Jobson's The Golden Trade. 126. See especially Arnout Vosmaer, 'Description de l'Orang-Outang' {Amsterdam 1778); Buffon, 'Addition a l'article des Orangs-outangs', Histoire naturelle, supplement VII (1789), pp. 1-29; and Petrus Camper, 'De l'orang-outang, et de quelques autres especes de singes', in Camper's Oeuvres (Paris 1803), I, pp. 5-196. 151 �while orang-utans imitate might ape our behaviour they could never really it. Der Affe affet immer nach, aber nachgeahmt hat er nie .... welcher Ourang-Outang ... hat je mit allen Menschlichen Sprachwerkzeugen ein Einziges Menschliches Wort gesprochen?l 27 There were also Friedrich anthropological critics, Blumenbach who, in his De generis 1775, dismissed Rousseau's ideas and anatomy. 128 Yet Rousseau's defenders, too, moreover, humani varietate as ill-informed perspective and the most impassioned and Progress In the initial praise in the previous upon Rousseau, year, insisting that in both natural endorsement of the first work published nativa of orang-utans Lord Monboddo in the second edition of Language in 1774. such as Johann of history had its of all came from volume of his Origin edition Monboddo had already of this lavished he was very happy to find that his his notions, both with respect to the original state of human nature, and the origin of language, agree so perfectly with the notions of an author of so much genius, and original thought, as well as learning.129 But in 1773 he had cited • ties Buffon and Rousseau together about t he orang-utan, 130 an d. it was on l y a f ter among his authorisome o f his f.rien d s 127. Herders sammtliche Werke, 33 vols. (Berlin 1877-1913), V, pp. 44-45. These remarks figure in a paragraph which begins with the following words: "Die ganze Rousseausche Hypothese von Ungleichhei t der Menschen ist, bekannter Weise, auf solche Falle der Abartung gebauet. 11 128. p. 36. See Blumenbach, De generis humani varietate nativa (Gottingen 1775), 129. Of the Origin and Progress of Language, first edition, I (Edinburgh 1773), I.xi, p. 141, note. This mammoth work appeared in six volumes between 1773 and 1792. 130. See ibid., I.xiv, pp. 174-176. 152 �drew his attention opinion to the fact from Rousseau's question in earnest. two additional subject clearly Buffon held quite and his own that He prepared chapters of ninety of the orang-utan, distinction that a different Monboddo approached a new version pages devoted the of his text, exclusively in which he commented at length adding to the upon the between the views of Buffon and Rousseau and showed that it was to Rousseau's thesis that he subscribed himself. The Orang Outang is an animal of the human form, inside as well as outside .... he has the sentiments and affections peculiar to our species, suc~_as the sense of modesty, of honour, and of justice; and likewise an attachment of love and friendship to one individual .... It is from these facts that we are to judge, whether or not the Orang Outang belongs to our species. Mr Buffon has decided that he does not. Mr Rousseau inclines to a different opinion .... I hold the Orang Outang to be of our species. 131 Monboddo connected to a number of other his own account claims of the humanity of orang-utans about men with tails, on these subjects were regarded response to his work throughout as so extravagant his lifetime and his reflections that was that the most common 132 of ridicule. 131. Of the Origin and Progress of Language, second edition, I C&iinburgh 1774), II.iv, pp. 289-290 and 311. The essential point for Monboddo, as for Rousseau, was that men in the natural state could not have had the use of speech, so that Buffon's refusal to regard orang-utans as human on the grounds (ibid., p. 294) that they "have not invented a language" was misconceived. If Buffon were correct, wrote Monboddo (ibid., p. 297), "I believe it will be very difficult ... to draw the line betwixt the Orang Outang and the dumb persons among us". And like both La Mettrie and Rousseau before him he saw no reason to doubt that (ibid., p. 299) "Orang Outangs ... have at least the capacity of learning to speak by imitation". It should be noted here, however, that Rousseau did not share Monboddo's views about the natural affections common to both man and the orang-utan. The persons who directed Monboddo to a reappraisal of Buffon 1 s ideas were Lord Lyttelton and Sir John Pringle. See also Lovejoy, 'Monboddo and Rousseau', Modern Philology, XXX(1932-33), pp. 281-289. 132. "Other people have observed Dr. Johnson, for Hill and L. F. Powell, V, some months after the first but Monboddo is as jealous strange notions; but they conceal them", instance (Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. G. B. The Tour to the Hebrides [Oxford 1950], p. 111), printing: "If they have tails, they hide them; of his tail as a squirrel. " 153 �Rousseau's critics, falsely views, to be sure, were also treated and in the 1760s he suffered ascribed to him signed very important his thesis points, however, the indignity 'ROUSSEAU,jusqu'a a present, & Citoyen de Geneve, mais civilise, comments in note x of the Discours - by his of having a letter ce jour homme 133 ORANG-OUTANG' should be remembered with regard about the humanity of orang-utans. haps the boldest with derision For, firstly, form one of the earliest set of conjectures about the physical Two to his - and per- transformation of the human race in an age when most arguments about the chain of being still . species. 134 rested fundamentally And, secondly, upon a belief in the fixity of . though Rousseau could not have known this 133. See the Correspondance complete, XII, appendice 286, pp. 301-306. See also ibid., pp. 150-151 and 225-227, and ibid., XVII, pp. 107-108 and 130. 134. Like most disputes about the meaning of Rousseau's thought, the controversy as to whether or not he believed in the biological evolution of species has been long and sharp and is today still unresolved. Widely varied accounts of his views on the continuity of species appear in most of the works cited in notes 56 and 57 above taken together, as well as in more recent commentaries, such as Starobinski's 'Rousseau et Buffon' and Victor Goldschmidt's Anthropologie et politique. Les principes du systeme de Rousseau (Paris 1974). According to Goldschmidt (p. 243), whose massive composition of eight hundred pages is devoted almost entirely to the Discours sur l'inegalite, "Rousseau, aussi bien que Buffon ... comptent assur~ment parmi les 'fixistes'"· In Starobinski's judgment, on the other hand, the same text shows (O.C.III, p. 1369) that "Rousseau semble vouloir admettre un transformisme limite, intervenant au sein d'une espece donnee", or, alternatively ('Rousseau et Buffon', p. 385), that for Rousseau "l'homme devient ... un exemple particulierement eloquent du transformisme restreint". No doubt the passages which I have considered here - both about the physical effects of domestication upon humanity, and about the connection between our species and the orang-utan - can be interpreted in several ways. I hope, however, that I have at least made clear how Rousseau conceived it was possible for some members of our race to have acquired physical attributes with which they had not been naturally endowed, and why, furthermore, he believed that we possessed no attributes of any kind - either physical or spiritual - which warranted our excluding the orang-utan from consideration as one of the varieties of man. He was convinced that there was much empirical research which had still to be undertaken on this subject, and he believed, in short, that the commonly accepted divisions between mankind and this ape were founded upon prejudice alone. For discussions of the generally more 'fixiste' contributions to eighteenth-century evolutionary theory, see especially - in addition to the references cited in notes 56 and 57 above - Lovejoy, 'Some EighteenthCentury Evolutionists', Popular Science Monthly, LXV (1904), pp. 238-251 154 �himself, state his portrait of nature century of the orang-utan is drawn with the greatest descriptions of its have we come to learn ties and no fixed • primates, abode, is the least status Discours could perhaps that 'hor.mie sauvage' been perceived, and least more closely A fierce of Rousseau's sketch have been avoided of speculative empirical-primatology few decades settled of primitive man in the anthropology, this And if an orang-utan. transformation ascribed place, of our species, to the original in the course were even more perceptible that had not only but in the history on the one hand, our habits must have been modified and the fact dispute if it had been recognised they in accord as to whether our moral and social ing to Rousseau, • native of as well. of the physical could be properly of the and protracted If Buffon and Rousseau did not agree about the extent direction family than does any Rousseau would now occupy a prominent in the history eighteenth- it• rese mblest h e so 1·itary world. was truly of all with no permanent social in the Discours in the natural about the factual his the orang-utan, 135 an d in • t hese respects creature accuracy Only in the past behaviour. that which Rousseau depicts other as a kind of savage in the this neither For accord- race of man. and qualities of our development that were characteristics of mind in ways which than the changes to our external was so implied and every individual features, in the and 323-340; Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, Mass. 1936), chs. vi-x; and Georges Gusdorf, Les sciences humaines et la pensee occidentale, V (Dieu, la nature, l'homme au si~cle des lumi~res [Paris 1972)), 11, chs. ii-iv. For a broader treatment of the debates about the orangutan in the Enlightenment, see Franck Tinland, L'Homme sauvage (Paris 1968), eh. iii. 135. This point is well-established from long and thorough first-hand observations in John MacKinnon's 'The Behaviour and Ecology of Wild Orangutans', Animal Behaviour, XXII (1974), pp. 3-74. See also Barbara Harri.son, Orang-utan ( London 1962). 155 �state of nature moral traits must have lived of man in society apart from all must not be attributed Since the were formed by the alliances bound each person to the company of others, argued, the rest. to savages whict1 then those qualities, in their original he state. Concluons qu'errant dans les forets sans industrie, sans parole, sans domicile, sans guerre, et sans liaisons, sans nul besoin de ses semblables, comme sans nul desir de leur nuire, peut-etre meme sans jamais en reconnoitre aucun individuellement, l'homme Sauvage sujet a peu de passions, et se suffisant a lui meme,"n 1 avoit que136les sentimens et les lumieres propres a cet etat. Rousseau contended ties that there in the world which men inhabited would then have had no settled fixed dwellings sexual after we must always have lived about the state form of life partly at all ideas casual matings. in families which pertain of nature, and protect one another only to society - to remain with Thinkers of some sort for they falsely because they - no huts or similar they would have had no inclination partners of transposing at first, in which they might shelter but mostly because their could not even have been any family who imagined that committed the fallacy in their reflections assumed that la famille rassemblee dans une meme habitation, et ses membres gardant entre ewe une union aussi intime et aussi permanente que parmi nous, ou tant d'interets communs les reunissent; au lieu que dans cet etat primitif, n'ayant ni Maison, ni Cabanes, ni propriete d'aucune espece, chacun se logeoit au hazard ... les males, et les femelles s'unissoient fortuitement selon la rencontre, l'occasion, et le desir, sans que la parole fut un interprete fort necessaire des choses qu'ils avoient a se dire: Ils se quittoient avec la meme facilite.137 136. Discours sur l'inegalite, O.C.III, pp. 159-160. See also the passage on p. 138 in which Rousseau speaks of "la maniere de vivre simple, uniforme, et solitaire qui nous etoit prescrite par la Nature". 137. Ibid., pp. 146-147. This passage figures in connection with Rousseau's critique of the linguistic theory of Condillac (see pp. 163-164 below). 156 �Thus, in Rousseau's the rule before view, speechless nuptial men and women brought their individual them initially mates, species so too there to become attached of their of pregnancy animals offspring, and though copulation to ensure the survival do not make spouses to any particular of was only to satisfy lead to the institution would have been no reason women formed .couples at all, ception of enough children as other that passions, it did not in itself For just If the instincts together and undiscriminating of the human race, alone must have been vows became our rite. must have Jed to the birth families. fornication of of their for the male of our female. And if men and they did so only at the time of the conand certainly not throughout the period and beyond. On ne voit pas que le Chien, le Chat, l'Ours, ni le Loup reconnoissent leur femelle mieux que le Cheval, le Belier, le Taureau, le Cerf ni tousles autres animaux Quadrupedes ne reconnoissent la_leur .... Si telle femme est indifferente a l'homme pendant [les neuf mois de la grossesse) ... pourquoi la secourra-til apres l'accouchement? pourquoi lui aidera-t-il a elever un Enfant qu'il ne sait pas seulement lui appartenir, et dont il n'a resolu ni prevu la naissance? ... L'appetit satisfait, l'homme n'a plus besoin de telle femme, ni la femme de tel homme.138 138. Ibid., note xii, pp. 216 and 217. Note xii of the Discours is devoted entirely to a refutation of the following claims in Locke's Second Treatise, c. vii, §§ 79 and 80, pp. 337-338: "The end of conjunction between Male and Female, being not barely Procreation, but the continuation of the Species, this conjunction ... ought to last, even after Procreation, so long as is necessary to the nourishment and support of the young Ones-.... one cannot but admire the Wisdom of the great Creatour, ,:ho having given to Man foresight and an Ability to lay up for the future ... hath made it necessary, that Society of Man and Wife should be more lasting, than of Male and Female amongst other Cr·eatures." See also eh. I, note 87. Rousseau never cites Locke's works in their English editions (see note 175 below), and the text of these two chapters of the Second Treatise - which he quotes in full (see O.C.III, pp. 214-215) - is taken from the French translation by David Mazel, first published in Amsterdam in 1691 and reprinted several times in the course of the eighteenth century. It should be noted here that Rousseau's conception of the family in the Discours is somewhat ambiguous, since he also remarks there (p. 182) that "par la Loi de Nature, le 157 �Buffon, at least state on the other some social of nature perfectly bonds, hand, held that insofar as all men must always have had the forces combined to make them fraternal, sociable creatures. The family must in his judgment have constituted unit within the affectionate, itself, a kind of natural and to be sure, society. Tout a concouru a rendre l'hornme sociable; car quoique les grandes societes, les societes policees, dependent certainement de l'usage & quelquefois de l'abus_qu'il a fait de sa raison, elles ant sans doute ete precedees par de petites societes, qui ne dependoient, pour ainsi dire, que de la Nat~~e. Une famille est une 1 societe naturelle. The progressive produced growth of social substantial was not possible tions to abstract which had served impulse original changes to fom close condition, bonds of intimacy institutions, he believed, in the moral traits entirely to bring relationships of men, 140 but it from human nature individuals must have together. was denied to persons those inclina- If even the in their then how could they ever have come to form the upon which all societies fundamentally depend? Pere n'est le maitre de l'Enfant qu'aussi longtems que son secours lui est necessaire, qu'audela de ce terme ils deviennent egaux, et qu'alors le fils parfaitement independant du Pere, ne lui doit que du respect, et non de l'obeissance". It is true that this passage appears in a quite different context in the argument, but while it does not necessarily contradict the points raised in the objection to Locke it can be reconciled with them, in my view, only by an uncomfortably long stretch of the imagination. In the Contrat social (I.ii, ibid., p. 352), moreover, Rousseau states that "la plus ancienne de toutes les societes et la seule naturelle est celle de la famille", and this proposition looks perilously close to the thesis which, in the Discours, Rousseau sets out to overturn. Some of these problems are considered by Masters in The Political Philosophy of Rousseau (see pp. 125-132). 139. OPB, p. 346. See ibid., p. 374: "Nous voyons qu'on descend par degres assez insensibles des nations les plus eclairees, les plus polies, a des peuples moins industrieu.x, de ceux-ci a d'autres plus grossiers ... de ces hommes grossiers aux sauvages, qui ne se ressemblent pas tous, mais chez lesquels on trouve autant de nuances differentes que parmi les peuples polices." 140. 158 �Indeed Buffon was quite to form social must already convinced that and !ar.u.lygroups but also their have marked the earliest In the seventh it was not only the tendency and those of Rousseau. to this which stage of our evolution. volume of his Histoire 1758, Buffon turned directly very existence naturelle, distinction "Nous ne supposerons published in between his own ideas pas avec un Philosophe", he wrote, l'un des plus fiers censeurs de notre humanite * , qu'il y a une plus grande distance de l'homme en pure nature au Sauvage, que du sauvage a nous .... l'etat de pure nature est un etat connu; c'est le Sauvage vivant dans le desert, mais vivan~ en famille, connoissant ses enfans, connu d'eux, usant de la parole & se faisant entendre.1 41 Hence despite his belief profound social affairs evolution, Buffon supposed that in the past could never have resembled other creatures more than it approximated communities today. between the natural crepancies original the conduct of human the behaviour the life Rousseau, however, conceived the differences man to be just as great between mankind and all animal species, so that we could not have possessed which we later surmised that was, in some sense, acquired defective in his nature *• as the disin our any of the attributes in society. a man who lacked these of any of men in civilised and the social state dispositions part, that the members of our race had undergone a Buffon, attributes - that and for his and dispositions is, like an animal. H. Rousseau. 141. 0PB, pp. 373 and 374. Rousseau was certainly aware of Buffon's reference to him in the Histoire naturelle, though he appears to have been under a misapprehension as to its precise location in the text (see the Correspondance complete, >CV,pp. 301-303). 159 �"On est hors de soi", he remarked, des que l'on n'est occupe que des sensations actuelles .... Cet etat oil nous rie nous trouvons que par instans, est l'etat habituel des animaux; prives d'idees & pourvGs de sensations, ils ne savent p1int qu'ils existent, mais ils le 42 sentent. Yet Rousseau, Sauvage vit in turn, believed en lui-meme",be that quite the opposite was true. "Le wrote. L'homme sociable toujours hors de lui ne sait vivre que dans l'opinion des autres, et c'est, pour ainsi dire, de leur seul jugement qu'il tire le sentiment de sa propre existence. 143 Thus while Rousseau drew upon Buffon's mankind as a species, he did not share the members of our species this regard, at least, were necessarily Buffon had adopted claim which formed the cornerstone And just as Rousseau challenged other creatures, so, too, essence, were superior then, the principal barriers trait to the ties Rousseau's that sociable description of that by nature. In what was for Rousseau a of the natural that law philosophy. men must always have which now set them apart he rejected have been marked by a spiritual bonds that the thesis characteristics account with him the conviction mistaken had the same physical historical from all the claim that they must always which inclined them to form social which held animals of the original Buffon had constructed together. In savage overturned between man and beast, and 142. OPB, p. 333. 143. Discours sur l'inegalite, O.C.III, p. 193. These words also appear in the intermediate draft of the passage from the Discours recently transcribed by Launay (see notes 237 and 238 below). The contrast between Buffon's account of the mindless animal as ''hors de soi" and Rousseau's conception of the sociable man as "hers de lui" is discussed by Starobinski in his 'Rousseau et Buffon', pp. 388~389. 160 �on pourra done dire que Rousseau, pour peindre l'homme de la nature, animalise ... l'homme qu'avait decrit Buffon. 14 4 Perhaps the main reason which Buffon put forward to animals that our superiority ability to enunciate ideas which animals to conceive. The faculty from all creatures other was the fact to account for we were endowed with an did not even have the capacity of speech, for Buffon, in the natural world. distinguished mankind L'homme rend par un signe exterieur ce qui se passe au dedans de lui, il communique sa pensee par la parqle, ce signe est commun a toute l'espece humaine; l'hornme sauvage parle cornme 1 1 hornme police, & tous deux parlent naturellernent, & parlent pour se faire entendre: aucun des anirnaux n'a ce signe de la pensee .... C'est ... parce qu'une langue sµppose une suite de pensees, que les animaux n'en ont aucune ... ils sont incapables de fomer cette association d'idees, qui seule peut produire la reflexion, dans laquelle cependant consiste l'essence de la pensee.1 4 5 The -brutes might be joined together but only men had the facility through language expressed that • h made 1·t d"is t· inct wh1c 144. Starobinski, 145. OPB, p. 296. to achieve shared common impulses, a common purpose, the aims which men pursued and understood. Buffon the faculty by their by choice Human conduct possessed and it was were both a moral character 146 fr om anima ' 1 b e haviour, • an d accor d'ing to of speech was a prerequisite 'Rousseau et Buffon', of moral life. This p. 387. 146. It was only with regard to "les passions de l'homme", Buffon reflected in the fourth volume of his Histoire naturelle ( OPB, p. 340), that we could differentiate "le physique & le moral". It should not be supposed, however, that Buffon regarded the moral aspect of behaviour as necessarily superior in all respects to mere physical impulse. On the contrary these very remarks introduce some paragraphs about the distinction between the physical and moral aspects of love which advance a thesis about the healthy 161 �was clearly the case insofar sense that as we perform have the ability to act in~ morally been perceived responsible by other Aristotle, between language writers actually the art of public collectively was the sole politicians thing fact like concerned this adopted, • • d 1st1ngue instrument Buffon, had also pointed an d on h"is account l I h omme entre of social between man- • po 1·1t1cs was goals Slaves might be compelled, to fulfil their of authority that with the attainment in part, it to the hunan about the best obligations, which men but citizens and language could be employed by of the good life. view was held by many other at least and, to be sure, themes in the history discourse pursue. could only be counselled, and raorals had certainly to the moral distinction 147 • d an d a 11 ot h er species, • k in should before for example, of speech as central in order way. one of the more recurrent thought. and we must to use words and to make promises Now the connection faculty in the same we abide by our word or keep to our promises, therefore provides our duties thinkers, by Rousseau himself. too, Someand was in "La parole • " , 148 he remar k e d in • h.is Es sai • sur les animaux state of the former and the corruption of the latter that is remarkably similar to the view adopted by Rousseau in the Discours sur l'inegalite (see note 28 above) and which I believe had a substantial influence upon the development of his own ideas on this subject. See especially the following passage (O.C.III, pp. 157-158): "Commenc;ons par distinguer le moral du Physique dans le sentiment de l'amour. Le Physique est ce desir general qui porte un sexe s'unir l'autre; Le moral est ce qui determine cede.sir et le fixe sur un seul· objet exclusivement .... Or il est facile de voir que le moral de l'amour est un sentiment factice; ne de l'usage de la societe .... Ce sentiment etant fonde sur certaines notions du merite ou de la beaute qu'un Sauvage n 1 est point en etat d 1 avoir, et sur des comparaisons qu'il n'est point en etat de faire, doit etre presque nul pour lui .... il ecoute uniquement le temperament qu'il a re~u de la Nature, et non le gout qu'il n'a pu acquerir, et toute femme est bonne pour lui." It should be noted here that for Rousseau the morals and manners of people could have an effect upon their physical development, a point which he made about the general consequences of our self-imposed domestication and which he sometimes invoked (see, for instance, Emile, Livre IV, O.C.IV, p. 495, note) in criticism of Buffon's theory. --- a 147. See The Politics a of Aristotle, ed. Ernest Barker (Oxford 1946), I. ii , § § 11- 12 , p . 6 . 148. Essai sur l'origine des langues, work in the context of Rousseau's early next chapter. 162 eh. i, p. 27. The place of this social theory is considered in the �l'origine des langues, persuaded to adopt rules it was still and if in the past men might have been the case that promoted their true they could be required interests of language the faculty to do so. 150 however, it was a mistake directly to the nature of speech might be indispensable of each person, it was not in our original in society the rules that to obey laws which only if they had agreed According to Rousseau, our notion advantage 149 which did not serve to their to connect of mankind. For while to the moral character state but once again only of moral conduct could be prescribed. Men were in need of human company not only for the purpose mitting their ideas but also very much in order to conceive if in the state fulfil their would already undertakings their of nature obligations they were able to perform their then in a quite have achieved before neighbours. have taught their In established children place the art and -we cannot infer in a domestic setting inexplicable the main objective they had even learnt language to some individuals before, of trans- households how to speak, presupposes from the exchanges that and collective and recognise mothers would no doubt but the teaching that duties manner they of their to identify them, and others of a have learnt it of words which take we must always -have been masters of of conversation. Les Hemmes n'ayant nulle correspondance entre eux, ni aucun besoin d'en avoir, on ne con~oit ni la necessite de cette invention, ni sa possibilite, si elle ne fut pas indispensable. Je dirois bien, comme beaucoup d'autres, que les Langues 149. See the passages from the Discours sur l'inegalite, pp. 164 and 177 cited on pp. 189 and 192 below. O.C.III, 150. See, for instance, the following passage from the Contrat social, I.i, O.C.III, p. 352: "L'ordre social est un droit sacre, qui sert de base a tousles autres. Cependant ce droit ne vient point de la nature; il est done fonde sur des conventions." 163 �sont nees dans le commerce domestique des Peres, des Meres, et des Enfans: mais ... ce seroit commettre la faute de ceux qui raisonnant sur l'Etat de Nature, y transportent les idees prises dans la Societe .... car de dire que la Mere dicte a l'Enfant les mots, dont il devra se servir pour lui demander telle, ou telle chose, cela montre bien comment on enseigne des Langues deja formees, mais cela n'apprend point comment elles se forment.151 In the state tational language verbal proficiency of nature, of any kind, cate, through so that the first of fear could be no represen- and we could not have attained of our linguistic men would have come to articulate passing there in the world in which we must have lived embarked upon the long history fact for Rousseau, a period our earliest savages, their before apprenticeship. thoughts we In only after in which they had no ideas a~ all languages, our and the only natural to connnuniidiom of must have been the cry of impulse - the vocalization or of danger~ for instance - elicited by instinct alone. Le premier langage de 1 1 homme, le langage le plus universe!, le plus energique, et le seul dont il eut besoin, avant qu'il fallut persuader des hommes assembles, est le cri de la Nature. Commece cri n'etoit arrache que par une sorte d'instinct dans les occasions pressantes, pour implorer du secours dans les grands dangers, ou du soulagement dans les maux violens, il n'etoit pas d'un grand usage dans le cours ordinaire de la vie.152 151. Discours sur l'inegalite, O.C.III, pp. 146-147. For Monboddo who was almost as much indebted to Rousseau's theory of language as to his views on orang-utans - the truth of the thesis that men do not by nature have a command of the art of speech was equally damaging to the philosophy of Buffon. "If ... language be not essential to man's nature", he reflected (Of the Origin and Progress of Language, I, second edition, II.iv, p. 297), "it follows ... that there was a time when men did not speak". He believed, therefore (ibid., pp. 294-295), that Buffon's speculations on the subject were "most wild and extravagant", plainly showing that "however much Mr Buffon may have studied facts of natw-al history, he has not considered language as a philosopher". 152. Discours sur l'inegalite, O.C.III, p. 148. Cf. Emile, Livre I, O.C.IV, p. 286: "Commele premier etat de l'homme est la misere et la foiblesse, ses premieres voix sont la plainte et les pleurs. L'enfant sent ses besoins et ne les peut satisfaire, il implore le secours d'autrui par des cris. 11 164 �Insofar as language was a prerequisite Rousseau maintained institution that it could be understood Like every other which those social of development and change, and its by those who perceived of a natural human faculty Now the most important in the Discours ideas signified institution therefore, only as a social through which men conveyed ideas that the very obligations construed of moral conduct, arose together with and expressed. it must have undergone a history fundamental character was mis- it to be the outward manifestation of speech. source of Rousseau's was undoubtedly the philosophy ideas about language of Condillac. 153 In 153. Rousseau first met the abbe de Condillac in the spring of 1740 when he was engaged as tutor to the sons of his elder brother, Jean Bonnot de Mably (Condillac's other brother, Gabriel, was the distinguished political thinker), the prevot-general du Lyonnais. Condillac had lived in the home of Mably from 1727 onwards, and Rousseau must have seen him almost daily throughout the year that he remained at this post. The two writers did not then come to know each other well, however, largely because Condillac was extremely shy. His timidity was so great, indeed, that according to Rousseau even his own family supposed he might be mentally retarded. Thus, Rousseau reflected in 'Emile, Livre II (O.C.IV, p. 343), "J'ai dans un age asses avance un ho11D11e qui m'honoroit de son amitie passer dans sa familie et chez ses amis pour en esprit borne. Cette excellente tete se meurissoit en silence. Tout a coup il s'est montre philosophe, et je ne doute pas que la posterite ne lui marque une place honorable et distinguee parmi les meilleurs raisoneurs et les plus profonds metaphysiciens de son siecle". They were to meet again upon Rousseau's return to Lyon in 1742, and in 1745, when Condillac was in Paris and working on his Essai, they dined frequently with Diderot at the Hotel du Panier Fleuri (see the Confessions, O.C.I, pp. 280 and 347). It was Rousseau who, in fact, brought Condillac and Diderot together, and Diderot, for his part, was so impressed with the abbe's talents that he undertook to find a publisher for the Essai. Rousseau and Condillac were never to be really close companions, though they both had, throughout their lives, a great respect for one another. They may have corresponded from time to time during the years (1758-67) that Condillac was tutor to Prince Ferdinand of Parma, and in 1776, when Rousseau was barred from leaving the manuscript of his Rousseau juge de Jean Jaques at the alt~ of Notre Dame, he decided to entrust it to Condillac instead. ''Je venois d'apprendre", he remarked later in an appendix to that work (O.C.I, p. 981), "qu'un homme de lettres de ma plus ancienne connoissance avec iequel j'avois eu quelque liaison, que je n•a~ois point cesse d'estimer, et qui passoit une grande partie de l'annee a la Campagne, etoit a Paris depuis peu de jours. Je regardai la nouvelle de son retour co1111ne une direction de la providence, qui m'indiquoit le vrai depositaire demon Manuscrit .... Je lui porte mon manuscrit, et je [le] lui remets avec un transport de joye .... Sans savoir encore de quoi il s'agissoit, il me dit vu 165 �the Essai sur l'origine had also argued that conditions that of life des connoissances our faculty changed, humaines of 1746 Condillac of speech must have developed and like Rousseau he claimed in this we could only have come to know how to articulate in the course of our having managed to acquire believed our ideas that it followed ideas, so that sive gestures the earliest and actions Since Condillac by primitive such men -would have been similarly employ the kinds of utterances through languages rather work our thoughts them. could not have been conceived for him that as our which we enunciated men unable to those would have been formed of impul- than discursive speech. Ces langages ne se succederent pas brusquement: ils furent long-temps meles ensemble, et la parole ne prevalut que fort tard .... Premierement, quand les hommes conunencerent a articuler des sons, la rudesse des organes ne leur permit pas.de le faire par des inflexions aussi foibles que les notres .... notre esprit est fort exerce par le grand nombre d'idees que nous avons acquises, et par l'habitude ou nous sommes de les lier a des sons. Voila ce qui manquoit aux homrnes qui eurent les premiers l'usage de la parole. Leur esprit etoit dans toute sa grossierete; les notions aujourd 1hui les plus communes etoient nouvelles pour eux.154 en le recevant qu'il ne feroit qu'un bon et honnete usage demon depot. L'opinion que j'avois de lui me rendoit cette assurance tres superflue". A short while after this meeting, however, Condillac proposed a number of improvements to the text, and Rousseau, who had expected that his work would make a more profound impression, was annoyed. Thus, he wrote (ibid., p. 982), "Depuis lors j'ai cesse d'aller chez lui. Il m'a fait deux ou trois visites que nous avons eu bien de la peine a remplir de quelques mots indifferens, moi n'ayant plus rien a lui dire, et lui ne voulant me rien dire du tout". Condillac did, nonet,heless, keep his promise that he would not release the manuscript for publication (see ibid. and p. 1753). And while the text of Rousseau juge de Jean Jaques may not have been much to his liking he had at least expressed an interest in some of Rousseau's earlier works. Thus Narcisse was first printed with his note of approval in 1753, and in a letter to Rousseau of 1756 (see the Correspondance complete, IV, p. 99 and eh. II, p. 60) he enquired about the republication of the article 'Economie politique'. 154. Essai sur l'origine des connoissances humaines, II.i.2, §13, OPC, I, p. 63. See also the following passage from Condillac's Cours d'etudes du Prince de Parme of 1775, II. i. 2, ibid., p. 434: "Les sauvages ont peu 166 �It was equally that his view, moreover, language in its original as it was to be for Rousseau later, form could not have served to communi- cate ideas but only to express individuals as they came into the unreflective occasional passions contact of with each other. Ainsi, par le seul instinct, ces hommes se demandoient et se pretoient des secours. Je dis par le seul instinct, car la reflexion n'y pouvoit enc9re avoir part.155 It is true the genesis initially that of language a gift on the other, and practice accepted Condillac - stating, that after intelligible it was a skill the Deluge 156 mastered than Condillac any coherent Condillac's adopt the description had set forth. of it was by men through - neither of which was really to explain how mankind might have set of linguistic For in the Essai rules as I shall view of the origin of its experiment But though Rousseau found it speech - though he did not, moment, support two accounts on the one hand, that by Rousseau in the Discours. come to establish provided which God must have bestowed upon Adam and Eve, and, much more difficult clearly in the Essai of try to show in a of language primordial Condillac or patterns - he did form which Condillac had envisaged the basic de besoins, done ils observent peu; done ils ont peu d'idees .... leurs langues ne sont pas propres a rendre les connoissances que nous avons sur ces differens objets. Assez parfaites pour eux, puisqu'elles suffisent a leurs besoins, elles seroient imparfaites pour nous, parce qu'elles manqu~nt d'expressions pour rendre le plus grand nombre de nos idees." 155. I, p. Essai sur l'origine des connoissances humaines, II.i.1, §2, OPC, 61. 156. The first thesis, it should be noted, occupies only two sentences in the Essai (see ibid., II.i, p. 60), and it is hard to avoid the suspicion that Condillac, an ordained priest and usually rather conservative on matters of religion, advanced the idea only in order to seem more orthodox in his speculations than he was. The second thesis appears in the same paragraph as the first, and it serves to introduce Condillac's general ideas about the nature and origin of language in that work. 167 �features of our earliest for the expressions language that figure in terms which served as a model in the Discours Thus Rousseau's comments, in particular, in the Discours appeared upon the "cri some nine years after in the Essai about the natural sur l'inegalite. de la Nature" Condillac's remarks signs ou les cris que la nature a etablis pour les sentimens de joie, de crainte, de douleur, etc .... Quant aux cris naturels, cet ho1111ne les formera aussitot qu'il eprouvera les sentimens auxquels ils sont affectes; mais ils ne seront pas, des la premiere fois, des signes a son egard, puisqu'au lieu de lui reveiller des perceptions, ils n'en seront que des suites.15 7 In all language theory these respects, which Condillac of Rousseau. had developed This intellectual acknowledged and made explicit "Qu'il me soit l 1 origine therefore, the approach to the study of in the 1740s anticipated debt, in the text permis de considerer moreover, was certainly of the Discours un instant the itself. les embarras de des Langues", wrote Rousseau. Je pourrois me contenter de citer ou de repeter ici les recherches que Mr. l'Abbe de Condillac a faites sur cette matiere, qui toutes confirment pleinement mon sentiment, et quil peut-etre, m'en ont donne la premiere idee. SE 157. Ibid., I. ii. 4, §§35 and 38, p. 19. "Les cris naturels" were a feature of what Condillac called the "langage d'action", and this language, he believed, was common to animals as well as men. He was convinced that animals were marked by a degree of intelligence which made it possible for them both to have thoughts and to transmit them to other members of their species, and in this regard he disagreed sharply with Buffon, who had supposed (seep. 161 above) that animals could have no thoughts at all. Condillac, in fact, devoted much of his Traite des animaux to a critique of Buffon's conception of the difference between animal and human traits (see especially section II.iv in OPC; I, pp. 360-362). The best available treatment of this subject, to my knowledge, is still that of Georges Le Roy in La psychologie de Condillac (Paris 1937), pp. 188-203. 158. Discours sur l'inegalite, O.C.III, p. 146. 168 �Yet despite reflections this tribute about language Condillac to the thinker in the Discours, had not been entirely he had supposed that the impulses the first of men before he had also consistent Rousseau believed in his theory. the elements our thoughts them to "des signes by attaching In fact but for all other creatures animaux of 1755, that • sent 1 es signes thoughts, require since from their cribed sensations as "la liaison through It was, indeed, from speech that 159. Essai p. 61. et les actions from this 11 , 161 that then, to other men did ,not to conceive which Condillac and these impressions of gestures because thought men were able to formulate sur 1 1 origine du corps their of the world were drawn directly a variety precisely des . l1ke ourselves, at least a mental process des idees we not only for mankind symbols in order impressions that added in his Traite apparent It fallowed been communicated through signs. thoughts and which we devised and ideas 160 and animals~ . II any linguistic theiv the case, inarticules ~ pensees, species. of signs Condillac cris to make their members of their originally "les d e 1 eurs had a capacity too, 159 must have been number of concepts it was necessarily were invari- arbitraires", by the multiplication to give voic~ to the increasing ideas, we must have articulafed of speech and manners of speaking acquired. For while of every language In the beginning and enriched that spoken lanuuage must have expressed ably a sign of thought. developed his it could convey the sense of their imagined that our figures who had inspired des connoissances des- could have as well as vocal could be detached a set of terms for the humaines, II.ii.l, §6, OPC, I, 160. Traite des animaux, 161. See, for instance, humaines, I.ii.11, §107, II.iv, ibid., p. 361. the Essai sur 1 1 origine ibid., p. 36. 169 des connoissances �. . of d e 1ineating purpose t heir. endowed with an ability and Condillac fashion to classify that have conceived fire, water, our senses. After 162 of specific employ signs to define verbs as well, - of a tree, - because these we had labelled proceed upon the simpler in order and adverbs, to designate and, thoughts. say, or of dire·ctly such ideas by attaching and thus would have learnt adjectives in a cumulative names to different our complex ideas and the like concepts of his experience, was developed words to them we must have come to reflect of our generic Thus every man had been the objects language through the allocation We must first fruit, believed . . impressions. from distinct properties progressively to in due course, our actions. La langue fut long-temps sans avoir d'autres mots que les noms qu'on avoit donnes aux objets sensibles, tels que ceux d'arbre, fruit, eau, feu, et autres, dont on avoit plussouventoccasion de parler. Les notions complexes des substances etant connues les premieres, puisqu'elles viennent immediatement des sens, devoient etre les premieres a avoir des noms .... On distingua ensuite, mais peu-a-peu, les differentes qualites sensibles des objets; on remarqua les circonstances ou ils pouvoient se trouver, et l'on fit des mots pour exprimer to•Jtes ces chases: ce furent les adj ectif•s et les adverbes .... En se faisant une habitude de se communiquer ces sortes d'idees par des actions, les hommes s'accoutumerent ales determiner, et des-lors ils commencerent a trouver plus de facilite ales attacher a d'autres signes. Les noms qu'ils choisirent pour cet effet, sont ceux qu'on appela verbes.1 63 Now it would certainly Condillac's linguistic be a mistake theory to regard the whole of in the way which I have outlined here. 162. It was thus a mistake on the part of some philosophers, Condillac observed later (Cours d'etudes, II.i.2, ibid., p. 432), to suppose that "les noms de la langue primitive exprimoient la nature meme des choses". On the contrary, such names "representoient les chases ... d'apres des apparences, des opinions, des prejuges, des erreurs; mais ces apparences, ces opinions, ces prejuges, ces erreurs etoient communes a tous ceux qui travailloient a la meme langue et c'est pourquoi ils s'entendoient". 163. Essai sur 1 1 origine 83, ibid., p. 83. des connoissances 170 humaines, II.i.9, §§82 and �For one thing, he occasionally of some sort even before a vocabulary of appropriate argued that we must have had a language we had any concepts signs to express, language interconnected, without and thought artificial signs , d.1er successivement • etu all the parts toutes of Condillac's sketch not only partial upon it. 166 related, There are many subtle indeed, our notions and intricate render if too much weight nevertheless, et ... . h t examine . as we m1g which would undoubtedly but even misleading I believe, and, he always terms to "decomposer, l es 1• d'ees II , 165 Just . philosophy For another, we could not decipher and referential of a watch. facets be placed were closely in such a way that without we could not have had a distinct 1.d ea o f wh at 1·t was th at we were th· 1nk'ing. 164 held that since that it this were to is correct 164. See especially the following passage in La Logique (first published in 1780), II.ii, OPC, II, p. 396: "Il falloit que les elemens d'un langage quelconque, prepares d'avance, precedassent nos idees; parce que, sans des signes de quelque espece, il nous seroit impossjble d'enaly~er nos pensees, pour nous rendre compte de ce que nous pensons, c'est-a-dire, pour le voir d'une maniere distincte." It should be noted here, however, that in this passage Condillac supposes language to be a precondition of our forming ideas rather than of our having thoughts - an extremely important distinction in his philosophy. 165. Cours d 1 etudes, p. 410, and the Essai §66, ibid., p. 26. II.i.4, OPC, I, p. 437. See also ibid., sur l'origine des connoissances humaines, I.i.1, I.ii.7, 166. Fuller, but divergent, accounts of Condillac's philosophy of language can be found in the following works and essays published over the past few years: Ulrich Ricken, 'Condillacs 'liaison des idees' und die 1 clarte' des Franzosischen', Die Neueren Sprachen, XII (1964), pp. 552-567; Jean Mosconi, 'Regards sur la th~orie du devenir de l'entendement', Cahiers pour l 'Analyse, IV ( 1966), pp. 51-88; Roger Lefevre, 'Condillac, maicre du langage', Revue internationale de philosophie LXXXII (1967), pp. 393-406; Isabel Knight, The Geometric Spirit. Condillac and the French Enlightenment (New Haven and London 1968), eh. vi; Ellen McNiven Hine, 'Condillac and the problem of language', SVEC, CVI (1973), pp. 21-62; Derrida, 'L'archeologie du frivole', introduction to Condillac's Essai sur 1 1 origine des connoissances humaines (Auvers 1973); and Aarsleff, 'Condillac's Speechless Statue', Studia leibnitiana, supplementary volume XV (1975 - I am grateful to Professor Aarsleff for providing me with a copy of this article prior to its publication). Most of these works deal in some measure with the subject of Condillac's sources, though in my view much work remains to be done in this field, and a reassessment of the influence of Locke - about which the most substantial account seems still to be that of Le Roy in La osychologie de Condillac - is long overdue. With regard to the influence that was exercised by Condillac's linguistic 171 �to portray Condillac and thought as having always upheld the view that can be distinguished in principle, it might be for us to have a proper of markers and labels guistic there sy111bolsplainly refer this to something else aspect was a fundamental of signs itself theory that the use sense in which our linThe concept presupposes which is not language, of Condillac's however difficult grasp of our ideas without denoted thos<':: ideas. language as a collection since language that of a these signs and it was precisely Rousseau challenged in the Discours. According from speech, impressions conceived. to Rousseau it was impossible since the words that a.re identical course do not merely refer penser pour trouver l'art men employ to articulate with the terms in which their The statements if it is the case that to set thought that individuals to their thoughts formulate but express apart their thoughts in their "les Hommes... ont eu ... besoin ... de savoir de la parole", could not have formed composite unless dis- them, and it is equally true men I' ont eu beso i n de 1a paro 1e pour appren dr e a' penser '' 167 listed are images of the kind Condillac at the same time we also had a set of locutions that all We had which theory in the Enlightenment we now have a masterly essay by Aarsleff on the debate in the Berlin Akademie der Wissenschaften (see 'The Tradition of Condillac', in Studies in the Histor of Lin uistics, ed. Dell Hymes [Bloomington and London 1974 , pp. 93-156) to add to Venturi's more narrow account of the connection with Diderot (see his Jeunesse de Diderot, pp. 247-282). 167. .Discours sur l'inegalite, O.C.III, p. 147. It is true that in the Essai sur l'ori ine des connoissances humaines (I.ii.5, §49, OPC, I, p. 22 Condillac had made an apparently similar point even in much the same terms: "Combien ... n'a-t-il pas fallu de reflexions pour former les langues, et de quel secours ces langu~s ne sont-elles pas a la reflexion!" But in this passage he also puts forward the view - which Rousseau's remarks were designed to oppose - that our ability to employ linguistic signs must be firmly grounded in our capacity to reflect upon their meaning and to attach them to ideas which we have already formed without them: "On ne sauroit se servir des signes d'institution, si l'on n'etoit pas deja capable d'assez de reflexion pour les choisir et pour y attacher des idees." 172 �specified that the properties of things, for such images are abstractions we can comprehend only through No one could possibly instance, unless particular trees, mistaken have had a general he first that which we derive have had to be well-versed metaphysics, he remarked, of the essence impression had some notion and in Rousseau's in his belief plex ideas the use of descriptive as providing glossary of signs of of natural to corn- We should history and we could have had any understanding of the compound substances regarded signs from our senses. in the languages for had been qaite representational immediately before of a tree, of the characteristics view Condillac we attach names. the most fundamental which Condillac had terms of reference in our and symbols. Pour ranger les etres sous des denominations communes, et generiques, il en falloit connoitre les proprietes et les dif~erences; il falloit des observations, et des definitions, c'est-a-dire, de l'Histoire Naturelle et de la Metaphysique, beaucoup plus que les hommes de ce terns-la n'en pouvoient avoir .... les idees generales ne peuvent s'introduire dans l'Esprit qu'a l'aide des mots, et l'entendement ne les saisit que par des propositions .... Essayez de vous tracer l'image d'un arbre en general, jamais vous n'en viendrez a bout, malgre vous il faudra le voir petit OU grand, rare ou touffu, clair ou fonce, et s'il dependoit de vous de n'y voir que ce qui se trouve en tout arbre, cette image ne ressembleroit plus a un arbre. Les etres purement abstraits se voyent de ~eme, ou ne se con~oivent que par le discours. 168 Condillac, in turn, in his Cours d'etudes du Prince his answer in two way~. need for persons replied he maintained to have a mastery in order 168. sur l'inegalite, critique of his philosophy de Parine of 1775, and he set forth Firstly, and metaphysics Discours to this of subjects that like there natural to have a command of language, O.C.III, 173 pp. 149-150. since was no history it was �perfectly without clear ~hat children such knowledge. Rousseau had laboured true that rate words that could achieve In any case, he claimed, under a misapprehension, the verbal symbols of socially designate the properties would not have been necessary their users' figures competence secondly, since that while it was advanced cultures and attributes for the utterances have had the same sense and reference would the earliest linguistic incorpo- of things it of our ancestors to as statements have today, nor of speech have had to be grounded upon knowledge of the properties of things. Une pareille opinion, de la part de [M. Rousseau], aussi profond qu'eloquent, ne peut etre qu'une inadvertance. En effet, il exige dans les homrnes, qu'on suppose avoir fait une langue, beaucoup plus de connoissances qu'il ne leur en falloit; car s'il eut ete necessaire qu'ils eussent assez connu l'histoire naturelle et la metaphysique, pour determiner les proprietes des choses, pour en marquer les differences, et pour en donner des definitions; il me semble qu'aujourd'hui les enfans ne pourroient apprendre a parler qu'autant qu'ils sauroient assez d'histoire naturelle et de metaphysique .... Or le langage d'un enfant est l'image de la langue primitive, qui, dans son origine, a du etre tres-grossiere et tres-bornee .... Voila sans doute a quoi M. Rousseau n'a pas fait attention. Ila vu tout ce qu'il falloit pour faire une langue ou il put developper son genie comme dans la notre; et il a juge avec raison qu'elle n'a pu etre l'ouvrage des hommes qui ont les premiers prononce des sons articules. Mais pour faire une langue imparfaite ... je crois qu'il n'etoit point necessaire de connoitre les proprietes des choses.169 Now if Rousseau had had an opportunity rejoinder first to this point distinction 169. he might well have argued that was unconvincing since it failed - upon which he had already sur l'inegalite the part reply - between the learning of children Cours d'etudes to put forward and the construction du Prince Condillac's to take account of the commented in the Discours of an established language of an unprecedented de Parme, II.i.2, 174 his own note, on language OPC, I, p. 433. �by primeval men. He would certainly Condillac's attempt differences between linguistic kind. language substances insofar unreflective abstract natural ideas, the first rather of mental matter savages would not categories of the origin it appeared our first with Rousseau, while rejecting reason speech as exclamatory is discussed propositions unbroken continuity it was impossible presupposed as accepting Yet the most between language in the text that to ideas that connection through of the Discours sur that were elicited from in conjunction with which they were voiced. the earliest figures of which were no more than an outward and fears. And whereas Condillac between such utterances of civilised whether language, since supposed On his interpretation, language the relation had and the dis- man, for Rousseau that was misconceived. to decide and the terms of our first Rousseau regarded utterances but they must have been the expression and practices of our passions a clear of utterances the second. which could only have arisen It is for this and to be for his part, of the relation On the contrary rules . of reciproca and an advanced on the one hand, and as complex and Rousseau believed activities manifestation account characterized account the linguistic thought Condillac's could not have referred our sensations. perceived as it claims itself. languages because to of the in his view, was not Condillac 's 'inconsistency and this l'inegalite of a primitive At the very least cries, his incorrect thought, cursive that on the other, of these problem, practices the world in terms of generic must be mistaken. inconsistent, moreover, on the strength view it was just have perceived propertyless basic ~o defend his thesis For in Rousseau's initially have objected, presupposed thought then, or between them was one l entai . 1ment. 170 170. On this pp. 1323-1324, point see especially the remarks of Starobinski in O.C.III, and the following passage from Mosconi's 'Regards sur la 175 �There is one further point in his account of language damaging to his case. as well which Condillac and which Rousseau regarded For the claim that devised by individuals in order language to clarify and convey ideas around a false presumption, had in mind was built saw it, since men would have had no reason to entertain in their social institution conventions that original condition. - it was just similar necessary it was also a manufactured we already insofar as Rousseau any ideas as our linguistic were company - to have formed any kind of vernacular which had to be learnt at was a rules us to one another's speech. through practice; system of communication based upon the fact shared a set of terms with an intelligible We could have no glossaries which they because language for men in isolation to inaugurate Language was not only an art that It was just to those which tied it would. have been impossible the agreements as centrally was originally already all had overlooked of words, in short, unless meaning. we first had a common frame of reference. Quand on comprendroit com~ent lessons de la voix ont ete pris pour les interpretes conventionnels de nos idees, il resteroit toujours a s9avoir quels ont pu etre les interpretes memes de cette convention pour les idees qui, n'ayant point un objet sensible, ne pouvoient s'indiquer ni par le geste, ni par la voix, de sorte qu'a peine peut-on former des conjectures supportables sur la naissance de cet Art de communiquer ses pensees, et d'etablir un commerce entre les Esprits.171 Yet if language if society was required was required for the formation for the invention of language, of our ideas, and it was equally theorie de l'entendement', p. 67: "Chez [Condillac), le langage surgit sur le fond d'une necessite comrnandee par le systeme de l'entendement .... avant le langage, les homrnes avaient assez acquis pour pouvoir l'inventer, mais pas assez pour continuer a progresser sans son aide. Chez Rousseau au contraire, le langage surgit sur le fond d'une impossibilite: il y a un cercle des origines, qui n'est brise que par des evenements fortuits." 171. Discours sur l'inegalite, O.C.III, pp. 147-148. 176 �true that language was a precondition For how could men have created variety of linguistic and other force? their of signs, a state ties - through had imagined promises, that neighbours to institute were, in his judgment, have joined men together both conceptual was as much a prerequisite alone. Condillac's the foundation philosophy based upon an erroneous the shaping of language of language, as language erroneous between the nature as his distinction of the signs and since of society, of language we employ to express and this society he was to human means was thus necessary on the one hand, and the conditions on the other, The in aosociations between the conditions for the moulding of society~ vocabu- at all. institution of the origin dichotomy binding how men in such and linguistic, of either a commitments, and adopt a shared should ever have come to have any neighbours unable to attribute through in a savage state but for Rousseau it was inconceivable chains which must originally nature except of society. which they imbued with an artificially would have come progressively lary social undertakings speech acts Condillac for the establishment for required dichoton;y was as of our thoughts and the them. La maniere dont ce Philosophe resout les difficultes qu'il se fait a lui-meme sur l'origine des signes institues, montrant qu'il a suppose ce que je,mets en question, savoir une sorte de societe deja etablie entre les inventeurs du langage, je crois en renvoyant a ses reflexions devoir y joindre les miennes .... Quant a moi, effraye des difficultes qui se multiplient, et convaincu de l'impossibilite presque demontree que les Langues ayent pu naitre, et s'etablir par des moyens purement humains, je laisse a qui voudra l'entreprendre, la discussion de ce difficile Probleme, lequel a ete le plus necessaire, de la Societe deja liee, a l'institution des Langues, OU des Langues deja inventees, a l'etablissement de la Societe. 172 172. Ibid., pp .. 146 and 151. The fact that the first language could not have been devised by any human agency according to Rousseau's account led some eighteenth-century commentators to regard his arguments in the 177 �It was in this fashion that interlocking features and society, were conceived significant philosophy claim in the Discours of the essence und origin and profound of Condillac. Rousseau's as a critique critique of thought, - in my opinion in the Enlightenment about the language, as the most - of the 173 Discours as proof that both our faculty and use of speech must have been bestowed upon us as a gift from God. This thesis was advanced, for instance, by Beauzee and Jacques-Philippe-Augustin Douchet who, in their article 'Langue' for the Encyclopedie, quote nearly the whole of Rousseau's long passage on language from the Discours (on the question of their authorship of this essay, see Sylvain Auroux, L''Encyclopedie': "grammaire" et 11langue" au XVIIIe siecle [Paris 1973), pp. 49-50). Hence, these two scholars reflect (Encyclop~die, IX, pp. 252-253), "Le philosophe de Geneve a bien senti ... que 1 1 €tablissement de la societe & l'institution du langage se supposoient respectivement, puisqu'il regarde comme un probleme difficile, de discuter leguel des deux a ete pour l'autre d'une necessite antecedente plus considerable .... Ayant vu d'une maniere demonstrative que les langues ne peuvent tenir a l'hypothese de l'homme ne sauvage, ni s'etre etablies par des moyens purement humains; que ne concluoit-il la meme chose de ·la societe? que n'abandonnoit-il entierement son hypothese, comme aussi incapable d'expliquer l'un que l'autre? ... toute langue suppose une societe preexistente .... D'autre part une societe form€e par les moyens humains ... presuppose un moyen de communication pour fixer d'abord les devoirs respectifs des associes .... Que suit-il de-la? que si l'on s'obstine a vouloir fonder la premiere langue & la premiere societe par des voies humaines, il faut admettre l'~ternite du monde & des generations humaines, & renoncer par consequent a une premiere societe & a une premiere langue proprement dites: sentiment absurde en soi .... c'est done Dieu lui-meme qui non-content de donner aux deux premiers individus du genre humain la precieuse faculte de parler, la mit encore aussi-tot en plein exercice, en leur inspirant immediatement l'envie & 1 1 art d'imaginer les mots & les tours necessaires aux besoins de la societe naissante". For his part Monboddo regarded Rousseau's problem about the connection between language and society as perfectly soluble on the grounds (Of the Origin and Progress of Language, I, first edition, II.ix, p. 279) that animals form societies and "carry on in ... common business, without the use of speech". Employing illustrations drawn from the supposed community life of beavers and seacats, Monboddo thus concluded (ibid., p. 290) that he had "removed Mon.s. Rousseau's chief difficulty concerning the invention of language, by shewing that society ... which he judges rightly to be necessary for the invention of language, may exist without language". 173. The two most perceptive interpretations of Rousseau's arguments on these subjects which I have seen are offered, on the one hand, by Starobinski (see his 'Rousseau et l'origine des langues', in Europaische Aufklarun. Herbert Dieckmann zum 60. Geburtsta [Miinchen 1967], pp. 282 and 284-287 this essay has been reprinted in the second edition of La transparence et l'obstacle]), and, on the other, by Derrida (in 'Lalinguistique de Rousseau', Revue internationale de philosophie, LXXXII (1967), pp. 448-452). 178 �The principal Condillac, in Rousseau's formed traits different which had been made ny both Buffon and view, was to confuse with the natural in nature believed, acquired that in the course possessed a certain ingenuity, which we had come to espouse, that 174 fulfilment of those endowed. For Rousseau, natural capacities and the social the differences ment that the discrepancies rules faculties from all of conduct our intrinsic and sciences only as the between the other creatures in society. our history human qualities. than and it was his judg- Our behaviour and patterns insofar Yet those features and of the corruption throughout institutions could have prescribed they marked the extent faculties must have of man were even more profound evolution. On the con"rary, they showed that degraded could be understood could not have been implicit of our original even the arts between animal and human traits, set us apart various maintained, st:ate. however, qualities path of our historical adopted the social of our with which we must have been initially none of our original did in fact our ancestors so that and, indeed, we had come to cultivate, which we had were the products They imagined that natural and they each and skills of our development In their the human race was animal species, the attributes predispositions. of mankind. supposed that to every other moreover, some of our socially characteristics ways the two writers superior innate mistake the of life as we had rules, he of our natural of the transformation of our nature, we had actually debased and and Since Buffon and Condillac, 174. With regard to Buffon, see, for instance, the following passage in OPB, pp. 371-372: "Le fondement de toute science n'est-il pas dans la comparaison que l'esprit humain fait faire des objets semblables & differens, de leurs proprietes analogues ou contraires, & de toutes leurs qualites relatives?" For Condillac, see especially this remark in his Cours d'etudes du Prince de Parme, II.i.l, OPC, I, p. 431: "L'homme, lorsqu'il cree les arts, ne fait qu'avancer dans la route que la nature lui a ouverte, et faire avec regle, a mesure qu'il avance, ce qu'il faisoit auparavant par une suite de sa conformation." 179 �for their all, part-, could not accept it was impossible that mankind had been transformed at for them to see that we had made ourselves corrupt. The tribute which Rousseau paid to these tempered with some re~ervations. but what he understood to be the implications figure, their to his theory. sur l'inegalite, and Condillac views, the challenge together and in this and, in fact, was counterbalanced work, to be sure, most of his attack. Rousseau developed critique Just of these both later had not came to raise the same, in the Discours by his praise it was against For the central and political doctrines Buffon of their two other of a far more serious in his essay were conceived, of the social ideas ideas, which Rousseau assembled against phers who had committed a mistake levelled was thus He adopted a number of their been drawn by either own obj~ctions two writers philoso- kind that arguments above all, he which as a of Hobbes and Locke. 175 175. In the Discours Rousseau specifically mentions Locke in four passages, of which the two most important - in O.C.III, pp. 170 and 214-218 - are discussed in note 138 above and on pp. 190-191 and 194-195 below (the others appear in O.C.III, pp. 182 and 183, note). There is also a comment upon one of Locke 1 s political statements in a fragment of the Discours first transcribed by Leigh (see note 199 below). Rousseau quotes both the Second Treatise and the Essay concerning Human Understanding, though each of his references is taken from a French translation, and I believe that nowhere in his writings is there any citation of Locke's works in.their English editions. It is clear from a number of Rousseau's other texts (see the Confessions, O.C.I, p. 237, and Le Verger de Madame de Warens, O.C.II, p. 1128) that he was already familiar with some of Locke's ideas as early as 1739, and there is evidence that they exercised a substantial influence upon the formation of his thought, particularly upon his views about education in Emile (on this important subject see especially Peter D. Jimack, La Genese et-ra-redaction de l''Emile' de J.-J. Rousseau, SVEC, XIII (1960), eh. xii). With respect to Hobbes, on the other hand, the references in the Discours are at once more critical and less precise. For while in several passages Rousseau attacks the Hobbesian account of natural conflict between men (see especially the remarks in O.C.III, pp. 136 and 153 cited in eh. II, note 128 and on pp. 190-191 below) he does not point directly to any one of the writings in which this account appears, and in my view it is quite conceivable that he had no real first-hand acquaintance with the works of Hobbes. So far as I know, there was no French edition of the Leviathan available in the eighteenth centi.µ'y, while most (though not all) of the Latin and French editions of De cive had been out of print for about one hundred years before Rousseau began to write the Discours. 180 �Now there a close is one respect, resemblance in which Rousseau's to the major writings for the Leviathan incorporates while the Second Treatise Discours perhaps, sur l'inegalite a list is divided of both Hobbes and Locke, into nineteen nineteen Apart from this, however, have very little in common with the social It was Rousseau's ferent ways, provided were quite misconceived generally and the explanatory which appear thought notes. in the Discours of either of man's depravity figure. dif- in terms which though at the same time they had both significance of their ideas. On the one hand how men in the past must have agreed to form those but on the other each man's duty to make just governments, chapters Hobbes and Locke had, in their which had been responsible the human race, individuals that an account correct, the true they had explained institutions the arguments contention laws of nature 176 of nineteen incorporates work bears hand they had supposed that those might have established for the moral corruption agreements. the despotic and yet they had surmised that of it was They had shown how authority every person of present ought to abide Starobinski (see O.C.III, p. 1308) indicates some sections from bpth of these works which Rousseau might have had in mind, but no explicit reference to either text is included anywhere among his writings. And while it is true, as Derathe remarks (seep. 103, note 1), that a passage in Livre I of Emile (see O.C.IV, p. 288) alludes to the preface of De cive (see Hobbes, Opera, II, p. 148), it is equally apparent that Rousseau obtained this reference through the mediation of Diderot. (In De cive Hobbes had written "Ita ut vir malus idem fere sit, quod puer robustus, vel vir animo puerili", in the article 'Hobbisme' [see eh. II, note 128) Diderot maintained that "le mechant de Hobbes est un enfant robuste", and in Emile Rousseau states that "Hobbes appelloit le mechant un enfant robuste\'. The reference in Emile, therefore does not prove that Rousseau must have been familiar with the text of De cive itself, and in any case it does not stand alone in Rousseau's writings - as Derathe contends since much the same terms also figure in the Di scours [ see eh. I I, note 128)). Diderot had certainly seen a copy of De cive, but it is possible that Rousseau drew his own account of Hobbes's social theory from secondary sources - from Bayle, Shaftesbury,and Brucker, perhaps, and from Diderot himself. 176. See the Leviathan, English Works, III, pp. 117-144. It must be acknowledged here, however, that Hobbes added a twentieth law of nature in his 'Review, and Conclusion' (see ibid., p. 703). 181 �by the decrees generally source of such governments. upon the social of all and political our misfortunes, ments as the only solutions very misfortunes. had located commending its effects In the Discours of inequality which could enable source to Rousseau, to all their their attention which were the these arrange- us to overcome those in fact, of inequality Hobbes and Locke only for the purpose of readers. Rousseau maintained that there must be two kinds among men, l'une que j'appelle qu'elle est etablie qu'on peut appeller parce qu'elle ... est par le consentement It was his view, moreover, be distinguished any authority or courage, arrangements but they had described According the true They had focused naturelle ou Phisique, parce par la Nature .... L'autre inegalite morale, ou politique, etablie, ou du moins auforisee des Hornrnes.177 that our natural from our moral differences. to command the rest and while the rule over the wise, been prescribed in virtue must always No group of persons of their greater of the young over the old, may have been established by Nature. inequalities by consent, For "l'inegalite morale", it Discours 178. Ibid., sur 1 1 inegalite, O.C.III, pp. 193-194. 182 p. 131. strength or of fools could not have he remarked, autorisee par le seul droit positif, est contraire au Droit Naturel, toutes les fois qu'elle ne concourt pas en meme proportion avec l'inegalite Physique; distinction qui determine suffisamrnent ce qu '.on doi t penser a cet egard de la sorte d'inegalite qui regne parmi tousles Peuples polices; puisqu'il est manifestement contre la Loi de Nature, de quelque maniere qu'on la definisse, qu'un enfant commande a un vieillard, qu'un imbecille conduise un homme sage, et qu'une poignee de gens regorge de superfluites, tandis que la multitude affamec manque du necessaire.178 177. had �The moral and political were, therefore, natural traits which had been assumed by mankind never to be justified that one individual divisions with reference marked the mental and the next. and bodily If the opposite were true, then the obligation to obey, and men would somehow command the respect neighbours for the same reason which set society apart could only have been formed by their produced inequalities which were enjoined the modes of life that and uniformity savage world. by man. of behaviour And if we perceived between men in society The prodigious Rousseau believed, state The so that by persons in the into those diversity of in the civil wit~ the relative which would have prevailed simin the how immense were the distinctions and how insignificant between them in the natural of their from one another agreement, had come to be adopted an 179 fears. by Nature must have been transformed must be contrasted, plicity create they arouse their the members of our species inequalities state might itself between and exercise that force variations possession rules of superior to any of the were the differences we could not fail to notice, equally, comhien la difference d'homme a homme doit etre moindre dans l'etat de Nature que dans celui de societe, et comhien l'inegalite naturelle doit augmenter dans l'espece humaine par l'inegalite 180 d'institution. Rousseau actually as an account just this sort. conceived the central theme of the Discours of how mankind might have undergone a transformation "Apres avoir prouve", of he wrote, 179. See ibid., p. 132: "De quoj_ s'agit-il. .. precisement dans ce Discow:o? De marquer dans le progres des choses, le moment ou le Droit succedant a la Violence, la Nature fut soumise a la Loi." Cf. also the following passage from the Contrat social, I.iii, ibid., p. 355: "Convenons ... que force ne fait pas droit, et qu'on n'est oblige d'obeir qu'aux puissances legitimes." 180. Discours sur l'inegalite, ibid., pp. 160-161. 183 �que l'Inegalite est a peine sensible dans l'etat de Natur~, et que son influence y est presque nulle, il me reste a montrer son origine, et ses progres dans les developpemens successifs de l'Esprit humain. 181 Since in the state and infrequent that contact the original men could have had no more than casual with each other, disparities of any consequence established, of nature it followed, between individuals at all. The inequalities in his view, could not have been which men had themselves however, formed the most fundamental characteristics of each community. Il suit de cet expose que l'inegalite etant presque nulle dans l'Etat de Nature, tire sa force et son accrois~ement du developpement de nos facultes et des progres de !'Esprit humain, et devient enfin stable et legitime par l'etablissement de la propriete et des Loix.182 The natural himself, man had neither nor, at the same time, with the birth timidity of social had been prescribed bound together by Nature, permanently relations that to those differences they had in their by relations between them which history come to be and command, and striking feature life. Hobbes and Locke, on the other of nature were all and they had both imagined that • would be appre hensive Thus while of subservience formed the most conspicuous of every form of social men in the state his weakness became a menace to his neighbours. importance like any wish to hurt them, and it was only institutions or his strength men did not attach and these any need for the company of creatures hand, had wrongly supposed that roughly largely equal in thei.r powers, for this of h"is neig• hb ours. 183 reason "From this every individual equality of 181. Ibid., p. 162. 182. Ibid., p. 193. 183. It is, of course, true that Locke distinguished the state of nature from the state of war (see the Second Treatise, c. iii, §19, pp. 298-299). 184 �ability", Hobbes proclaimed, ing of our ends". "ariseth equality of hope in the attain- 184 It followeth, that in such a condition, every man has a right to every thing; even to one another's body. And therefore, as long as this natural right of every man to every thing endureth, there can be no security to any man. 185 Thus men of similar at their peril, he observed, In effect natural flict capacities for "without the equality and antagonism their condition of men, conjoined ensured only a common power to keep them all "they are in that vanity, regulate could pursue the same objectives only that in a state which is called with their in awe", 186 war". mutual fear they would remain in ceaseless which had no enforceable and con- laws to affairs. If any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies; and in the way to their end, which is principally their own conservation ... endeavour to destroy, or subdue one another .... in the nature of man, we find three principal causes of quarrel. First, competition; secondly, diffidence; thirdly, glory. The first, maketh men invade for gain; the second, for 187 safety; end the third, for reputation. But there was no natural authority which could protect a man from any infringement of those rights which he originally enjoyed, and thus, Locke observed (ibid., p. 300), "one great reason of Mens putting themselves into Society, and quitting the State of Nature", was "to avoid this State of W13,r(wherein there is no appeal but to Heaven)". This feature of Locke's theory bas been discussed at great length by his interpreters. 184. ·Leviathan, English Works, II I, p. 111. p. 162. See also eh. II, p. 95. Cf. De cive, Opera, 185. Leviathan, pp. 164-165. II, Works, III, p. 117. Cf. De cive, Opera, II, 186. Leviathan, English Works, III, pp. 165-166. 187. Leviathan, English Works, III, Opera, II, pp. 161 and 163. p. 113. Cf. De cive, Opera, English 185 pp. 111 and 112. Cf. De cive, II, �In order therefore to maintain a sovereign judge or 'mortal each person from the next, cious effects of equality the whole multitude that there without condition god' with absolute so that, according 188 to the Leviathan. in the natural uncertain an organized authority the subjection For Locke, too, state and insecure. political to protect to Hobbes, the perni- may be overcome through lack of a common superior of property the peace men must institute of it was the which made the tenure He believed, like system mankind must live Hobbes, in a of equality, wherein all the Power and Jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another: there being nothing more evident, than that Creatures of the same species and rank promiscuously born to all the same advantages of Nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without Subordination or Subjection. 189 It was his view that men are able to preserve only when they "make one Body Politick" the government which they establish just as Hobbes had argued that enforce property a state secure of peace, their through only if it were constantly compact. 190 a social an artificial entrusted property and abide by the enactments sovereign so Locke supposed that power to which they willingly rightful men could make their defended by a predominant the responsibility for its The great and chief end ... of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of .heir Property. To which in the state of Nature there are many things wanting .... The inconveniencies, that they 189. Second Treatise, 190. See ibid., c. viii, English Works, III, p. 158. c. 2, §4, p. 287. §§95-96, pp. 348-350. 186 And was required care. 188. See the Leviathan, Opera, II, pp. 215-216. of Cf. De cive, to �are therein exposed to, by the irregular and uncertain exercise of the Power every Man has of punishing the transgressions of others, make them take Sanctuary under the establish'd Laws of Government, and therein seek the preservation of their Prooerty.191 The two writers were unable contended dangers thus to obtain that claims, since it is clear in the light those determinate to contradict these of his own theory the superior authori- the antagonisms of nature relations should even seek protection men must have developed and their politically as legitimate just According powers which they inferior created all did nonetheless which form the differences For the civil time in human history men at odds with their of both thinkers society. and command. of inequality from the works of either might have established the first lives which sat to discover made some persons their account by Hobbes and Locke must have reinforced described subservience the of men. designed and fixed between men in corrupt equality partly but the ideas how individuals and each Rousseau's why men in the state explain neighbours, state must always be formed to reduce It was impossible from one another, in the natural that was at least of overcome all neighbours. protect from their authority which had been conceived instead that individuals which accompany the unfettered in the Discours figure that protection a civil Now I think ties both held to others and for bonds between them of to Rousseau, their possessions social then, obligations from each other, it was true so as to but since 191. Ibid., c. ix, §§124 and 127, pp. 368-370. Locke's account of property has been discussed at greater length than practically any other feature of his social thought. Perhaps the most important and certainly the most often criticised - of the more recent interpretations is that of Macpherson, for whom Locke's theory "provides a moral foundation for bourgeois appropriation" (see The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, pp. 197-221). 187 �they could not have been at war nor at th~ samP time owned any property in their natural state, it was inconceivable they should originally have felt the need for safeguards distrust, in his view, could not have prompted the behaviour earliest savages, made men vicious of persons and the feelings in the civilised who lived particular, of this that alone. kind. of ambition Sentiments of envy or of the and insecurity world formed no part We must not conclude, which of the character with Hobbes in Rousseau reflected, que_pour n'avoir aucune idee de la bonte, l'homme soit naturellement mechant, qu'il soit vicieux parce qu'il ne connoit pas la vertu ... ni qu'en vertu du droit qu'il s'attribue avec raison aux choses dont il a hesoin, il s'imagine follement etre le seul proprietaire de tout l'Univers .... Hobbes n'a pas vu que la meme cause qui empeche les Sauvages d'user de leur raison ... les empeche en meme terns d'abuser de leurs facultes ... de sorte qu'on pourroit dire que les Sauvages ne sont pas mechans precisement, parce qu'ils ne savent pas ce que c'est qu'etre bons.192 "The social contracts which figure Locke must therefore been corrupted in the theories have been formed by individuals by society, and the purpose have been to make each person recognise of inequality that were, in fact, Rousseau actually believed to land must have constituted obligation, though insofar have formulated other fixed individuals of both Hobbes and principles conceptions, of these that the idea of an exclusive as men in their of any kind, 192. Discours sur l'inegalite, eh. II, notes 128 and 136. natural have arisen O.C.III, principle state such an idea, in communities. 188 must to Nature. the most fundamental had begun to settle contracts his duty to comply with rules contrary must clearly who had alr~ady right of could not like all our some time after No claims pp. 153-154. of See also �ownership could have been expressed linguistic indeed, rules of social the calamitous a variety of other life had already institution ideas by men until been established, of private property which we must have previously upon a whole range of conventions a long period or understood that the and, depended upon accepted and could only have evolved over of time in human history. Le premier qui ayant enclos un terrain, s'avisa de dire, ceci est a rnoi, et trouva des gens asses sirnples pour le croire, fut le vrai fondateur de la societe civile. Que de crimes, de guerres, de meurtres, que de rniseres et d'horreurs, n'eut point epargnes au Genre-humain celui qui ... eut crie a ses semblables. Gardez-vous d'ecouter cet irnposteur; Vous etes perdus, si vous oubliez que les fruits sont a tous, et que la Terre n'est a personne: Mais ... cette idee de propriete, dependant de beaucoup d'idees anterieures qui n'ont pu naitre que successivernent, ne se rorrna pas tout d'un coup dans l'esprit hurnain: Il falut faire bien des progres, acquerir bien de l'industrie et des lumieres, les transrnettre et les augmenter d'age en age, avant que d'arriver ace dernier terrne de l'etat de Nature. 193 If civil expression relations ation society, moreover, of our property which gave rise of property was initially relations, to war. by individuals, formed as a political it must also have been these For with the continuous and with its extension appropri- and then 193. Discours sur l'inegalite, O.C.III, p. 164. Voltaire was not at all pleased when he read this passage, and in the margin of his own copy of the Discours he added the following remarks (Havens, Voltaire's Mar inalia on the pages of Rousseau, p. 15): "Quoy celui qui a plant6, 9 et enclos na pas droit au fruit de ses peines. seme, quoy cet homme injuste ce voleur aurait ete le bienfaicteur du genre humain! voyla la philosophie d'un gueux qui voudrait que les riches fussent volez par les pauvres." Rousseau's account of property here is clearly incompatible with the views which he set forth in the 'Economie politique' (see eh. II, note 89), but it is consistent with ~~st of the ideas that he developed on this subject both before and after his composition of the Discours (see, for instance, the passage from his 'Derniere reponse' to Borde's Discours sur les avantages des sciences et des arts cited in eh. V, p. 421, on the one hand, and the Contrat social, I.ix, O.C.III, pp. 365-367, on the other). See also Goldschmidt, Anthropologie et politique, pp. 495-535. 189 �transmission there through inheritances from one generation must have come a time when no further for persons to acquire at all. At that the earth had already the rest, the poor had no alternative the rich plunder or the usurpers of their unclaimed stage, been sequestered to the next, land remained when the fruits of by some men at the expense of but to become the lackeys property, so that servitude of and thus arose at the same time. Quand les heritages se furent accrus en nombre et en etendiie au point de couvrir le sol entier ... les uns ne purent plus s'aggrandir qu'aux depends des autres, et les surnumeraires que la foiblesse OU l 1 indolence avoient empechcs d'en acquerir a leur tour, devenus pauvres sans avoir rien perdu ... furent obliges de recevior OU de ravir leur subsistance de la main des riches, et de la commencerent a naitre ... la domination et la ~ervitude, ou la violence et les rapines .... c'est ainsi que les usurpations des riches, les Brigandages des Pauvres ... rendirent les hommes avares, ambitieux, et mechans. Il s'elevoit entre le droi~ du plus fort et le droit du premier occupant un conflict perpetuel .... La Societe naissante fit place au plus horrible etat de guerre.194 Just as Locke had been mistaken, have established social rights institutions, relations of ownership mistranslation to suppose that before On this point of a passage ing - Locke had been right men could they had created so too Hobbes had failed which men formed in their cause of war. there therefore, to see that any other the property communities must be the principal at least - Rousseau remarks in a from the Essay concerning to maintain that there Human Understand- can be no injury is no-property. Hobbes pretend que l'homme est naturellement intrepide, et ne cherche qu'a attaquer, et combattre .... circonstances rares dans l' 6tat de J:nture, ou toutes choses 194. Discours sur l'inegalite, O.C.III, 190 pp. 175-176. where �marchent d'une maniere si uniforme, et ou la face de la Terre n'est point sujette aces changemens brusques et continuels, qu'y causent les passions, et l'inconstance des Peuples reunis .... c'est faute d'avoir suffisamment distingue les idees, et remarque combien ces Peuples etoient deja loin du premier etat de Nature, que plusieurs se sont hates de conclure que l'homme est naturellement cruel et qu'il a besoin de police pour l'adoucir, tandis que rien n'est si doux que lui dans son etat primitif .... selon l'axiome du sage Locke, il ne sauroit~ avoir d'injure, ou il n'y a point de propriete.l 5 In Rousseau's contract secure view, then, which was devised it followed by men in order must have been a hoax perpetrated upon the poor. Its security of every man, but its establish the order necessary acquired expense of the liberty Such an agreement property of nature, in society to the defence real of the rest on the by the rich plausible of the weak and the the estates use of their of those who own land at the to gain the same entitlem·ents. would have bound each person in order but, aim would have been to re- to preserve the exclusive in exchange for the legitimate so that the social terms might have seemed superficially because they would have referred had earlier that to make their could not have been formed in the state contrary, already, from this possession to maintain the peace only of what he owned to comply with its terms the great majority 195. Ibid., pp. 136 and 170. In Locke's Essay, first published in London in 1690, the passage appears in Book IV, eh. 3, §18, and reads as follows: "'Where there is no property, there is no injustice', is a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid." The standard French translation of the Essay in the eighteenth century was by Pierre Coste, first printed in Amsterdam in 1690 under the title Essai philosophique concernant l'entendement humain. The text is correctly rendered by Coste as '"Il ne sauroit y avoir de l'injustice ou il n'y a point de propriete'"· See also the following passage from Rousseau's 'Etat de guerre', O.C.III, p. 610: "Mettons un moment ces idees en opposi~ion avec l'horrible sisteme de Hobbes; et nous trouverons, tout au rebours de son absurde doctrine, que bien loin que l'etat de guerre soit naturel a l'homme, la guerre est nee de la paix, ou du moins des precautions que les hommes ont prises pour s 1assurer une paix durable." 191 �of men must have obtafoed of repudiating property all their protection rights fro!" their neighJ,curs to share the wealth by the act which men of enjoyed. Il n'est pas possible que les hommes n 1 ayent fait enfin des reflexions sur une situation aussi miserable .... Les riches surtout durent bientot sentir combien leur etoit desavantageuse une guerre perpetuelle dont ils faisoient seuls tous les fraix, et dans laquelle le risque de la vie etoit commun, et celui des biens,. particulier .... le riche presse par la necessite, con~ut enfin le projet le plus reflechi qui soit jamais entre dans l'esprit humain .... apres avoir expose a ses voisins l'~orreur d'une situation qui les armoit tousles uns contre les autres ... il inventa aisement des raisons specieuses pour les amener a son but. 11 Unissons-11ous", leur dit-il, "pour garantir de l'oppression les foibles ... et assurer a chacun la possession de ce qui lui appartient: Instituons des reglemens de Justice et de paix auxquels tous soient obliges de se conformer" .... Il en falut beaucoup moins que l'equivalent de ce Discours pour entrainer des hommes grossiers, faciles a seduire .... Tous coururent au devant de leurs fers croyant assurer leur liberte.196 Thus the political authorities which had been prescribed Hobbes and Locke served the purpose of establishing of the differences between men in society. of nature, tions between individuals Rousseau, in short, as solutions the cause. for their true effect more durable that men were equal in the was to make the social and persistent. both Hobbes and Locke had conceived to some problems of which those solutions 197 They had detected recognition They could not solve any problems which arose from the supposed fact state a legal by distinc- According to their ideas were in fact a way in which men might plausibly 196. Discours sur l'inegalitc, O.C.III, passage from Diderot's Suite de l'apologie in note 8 above. 197. See the passage from the Discours p. 184 cited on p. 225 below. 192 pp. 176-177. Cf. the de l'abbe de Prades cited sur l'inegalite, O.C.III, �have come to accept all explained obligation~ why any person They had confused duty, their under law, but they had not at ought to have made such a commitment. a description of man's past with a statement and more than any of Rousseau's tingly contemporaries provided an account of what he understood For it was his view that moral inequality. they had unwit- to be the origins of humanity could only be explained of some kind of social compact that of property thinkers had in their have come to sacrifice but our permanent separate our natural enslavement to be depraved of their extolled in society, rights the disproportionate by Hobbes. liberty in terms in the form of an agree- ways recounted had thus shown how our ancestors to the usurpation enshrined which Locke had applauded ment to uphold the peace and order of the misery and servitude which mark the history shares of his The two how we might in fact in exchange for nothing so that Hobbes and Locke might once have willingly submitted by the men among them who had come by the vice of ambition. Telle fut, OU dut etre l'origine de la Societe et des Loix, qui donnerent de nouvelles entraves au foible et de nouvelles forces au riche, detruisirent sans retour la liberte naturelle, fixerent pour jamais la Loi de la propriete et de l'inegalite, d'une adroite usurpation firent un droit irrevocable, et pour le profit de quelques ambitieux assujetirent desormais tout le Genre-humain au travail, a la SeI'\vitude et a la misere.198 Of course Rousseau did not entirely between Hobbes and Locke, and in a fragment of the Discours actually records 198. that he chose to leave commented upon a section one of the most striking Discours sur l'inegalite, con£late the differences of a passage £rom a section out of the published from the Second Treatise distinctions O.C.III, 193 between their p. 178. text he which respective �political ideas. 199 For the most part, in the Discours points to the similarities and Locke and to the common mistake committed. The two figures their as Rousseau understood ideas, misconceived hypothesis They imagined that authority left that for this should form a civil against between the claims which he believed had overlooked in the natural the true state features of Hobbes both writers significance had of it was to the advantage power which tould a of human nature. the lack of any recognised exposed to the aggression every act of violence. argument them, because each had adopted about the essential each person reason however, Rousseau's of all of the next, men that so they defend the whole community For Rousseau, however, it was only 199. The fragment, which is neither a first draft nor in Rousseau's own hand (though it contains corrections which he added himself), appears in BN Ms fr. 12760, p. 615r and v. It was initially transcribed and annotated by Leigh on pp. 62-63 and 71-77 of his 'Manuscrits disparus de J.-J. Rousseau', Annales, XXXIV(1956-58), and its original place in the text can be established exactly since it incorporates several lines that figure in the final version (see O.C.III, pp. 187-188 and 1356-1358,aud 'Manuscrits disparus', p. 73). The reference to Locke appears in the context of the following remarks about tyrannical government (O.C.III, p. 1357): "Qu'y a-t-il ... de plus necessaire a l'Etat qu'un Chef intrepide et prudent, toujours prompt a penetrer les projets des voisins suspects, et a faire tete a l'ennemi declare? Mais si ce Chef preferant son interet au notre est tente de nous opprimer lui meme en parlant toujours de nous deffendre, qui protegera l'Etat contre son Protectcur quand il en deviendra le Tyran, et qu'aurons nous gagne qu'un ennemi de plus, au quel il ne nous sera meme pas permis de resister? N'est-ce pas, dit le sage Locke, comrne si, pour garantir une Basse cour du Renard, on la mettoit sous la protection du Loup?" These words clearly pertain to the paragraph in Locke's Second Treatise (c. vii, §93, p. 346) in which he decries any justification of absolute monarchy on the grounds that men cannot be "so foolish that -chey take care to avoid what Mischiefs may be done them by Pole-Cats, or Foxes, but are content ... to be devoured by Lions". Most commentators have observed that the substance of this whole --paragraph contrasts sharply with the absolutist philosophy of Hobbes, while Laslett has suggested (see ibid., p. 346, note) that it was actually conceived to challenge the ideas of Filmer. Locke's remarks may perhaps be read as a critique of both of these thinkers, though in my view his terms "foxes" and "Lions" refer directly to "la golpe et il lione [la volpeeil leoneJ"which the prince must know how to imitate, according to Machiavelli in the eighteenth chapter of 11 Principe. 194 �in society another, that since men could even feel t_he property the need to be secure relations which gave rise not have been a feature of their no original to envy or to fear inclination by attributing these and Locke together acquired natural traits state. men must have already neighbours, to mankind at all formed those them dependant· upon and later to war could Individuals their had wrongly supposed that had and times in the state institutions antagonistic from one Hobbes of nature which first made toward each other. Le raisonnement de Locke tombe ... en ruine, et toute la Dialectique de ce Philosophe ne l'a pas garanti de la faute que Hobbes et d'autres ont commise. Ils avoient a expliquer u.n fait de l'Etat de Nature, c'est-a-dire, d'un etat ou les hommes vivoient isoles ... et ils n'ont pas songe a se transporter au-dela des Siecles de Societe, c'est-a-dire, de ces terns ou les hommes ont toujours une raison de demeurer pres les uns des autres.200 Hobbes and Locke, therefore, had neglected to abstract of his nature, still further the one side, cordial even before persons the social and in Rousseau's than Buffon and Condillac, qualities of man from their judgment their accounts For whereas Buffon and Condillac, had only attached a gregarious to our natural had imagined that they had come together. social study were in fact from the truth. means of communication Locke, in turn, no less tendency on or a faculties, Hobbes and men were quarrelsome and combative Rous·seau was convinced that who had never kept company could not have had any reason to 200. Discours sur l'inegalite, note xii, O.C.III, p. 218. In his review of the Discours published in the Correspondance litteraire (II[3J, p. 54) of 15 July 1755 Grimm drew attention to this feature of Rousseau's argument, though he referred to Hobbes and Pufendorf rather than to Hobbes and Locke: "Le citoyen de Geneve reproche avec raison a tousles philosophes qui ont medite sur cet important objet de ne s'etre pas forrne une idee bien distincte de l'etat de nature, de l'avoir toujours confondu avec l'etat civil, et d'avoir transporte sans cesse a l'etat de nature des idees qu'ils avaient prises dans la societe. Hobbes et Puffendorf sont singulierement dans ce cas." 195 �f drive each other proposed nothing authorized apart, less and in his view Hobbes and Locke had both than that our most fatal vices should be by law. In the Discours Rousseau remarked that two traits nature. On the one hand he must always have been impelled to preserve institutions of other of sociability, envisaged, corrupt, before such as the natural Thus meditating of the human spirit, in the state by a compassion No fundamental law philosophers Rousseau contended, upon the first of his social he must have felt members of his species. could be ascribed, of our race. operations and, equally, made him morally for the suffering principle his life, creatures man must have possessed desire in common with all primitive to the progenitors and most simple he wrote, j'y crois appercevoir deux principes anterieurs a la raison, dont l'un nous interesse ardemment a notre bien-etre et a la conservation de nous memes, et l'autre nous inspire une repugnance naturelle a voir perir ou souffrir tout etre sensible et principalement nos semblables. C'est du concours et de la combinaison que notre esprit est en etat de faire de ces deux Principes, sans qu'il soit necessaire d'y faire entrer celui de la sociabilite, que me paroissent decouler toutes les regles du droit naturel; regles que la raison est ensuite forcee de retablir sur d'autres fondemens, quand parses developpemens successifs elle est venue a bout d'etouffer la Nature.201 201. Discours sur l'inegalite, O.C.III, pp. 125-126. See also eh. I, pp. 25-26. It should be noted here that by the time Rousseau composed the fourth book of Emile he was convinced that the two most fundamental characteristics of mankind described in the Discours could be reduced to only one, that is, self-love. For in the natural constitution of humanity, Rousseau contended in the later work (O.C.IV, p. 491), 'l'amour de soi' must have come before, and must have given rise to, all our other 196 �It was Rousseau's ignored by Hobbes in particular, conceived into impression conflict lives, of the first. in the state compassionate to the next, take advantage for oneself, as Hobbes supposed, a pitiless just into recognise men in their and, indeed, pertained entirely men came their own could be both For Rousseau, for security however, at the expense of and contempt which together state, to in order to care properly Hobbes, for his part, natural but to and, at the same time, when he could. vanity enemies. like all had failed other transto undomesti- were moved by compassion as well as by self-interest, the concept to a quite of self-preservation factitious feeling, debased form of love of oneself only have acquired to preserve he had no choice attack desire that form strangers creatures, he had had a·mis- no individual to have concern for others since that efforts had been Since each man sought to make himself of his neighbour any person creates cated in their on guard against it was necessary because traits He had imagined that of nature and secure. remain constantly the second of these largely with each other so that superior view that which he had advanced Rousseau believed - which individuals - to an could in society. passions: "La source de nos passions, l'origine et le principe de toutes les autres, la seule qui nait avec l'homme et ne le quitte jamais tant qu'il vit est l'amour de soi; passion primitive, innee, anterieure a toute autre et dont toutes les autres ne sont en un sens que des modifications .... la pluspart de ces modifications ont des causes etrangeres sans lesquelles elles n'auroient jamais lieu, et ces memes modifications loin de nous etre avantageuses nous sont nuisibles, elles changent le premier objet et vont contre leur principe; c'est alors que l'homme se trouve hors de la nature et se met en contradiction avec soi. L'amour de soi-meme est toujours bon et toujours conforme a l'ordre." See also Emile, Livre II, ibid., p. 322, and the Lettre a Christophe de Beaumont, ibid., p. 936. Among the most perceptive recent commentaries about this subject are those of Masters (see The Political Philosophy of Rousseau, pp. 136-146) and Goldschmidt (s~ his Anthropologie et politique, pp. 311-356). With regard to Rousseau's conception of pity, in particular, see also eh. IV, note 242. 197 �Il y a ... un ... Principe que Hobbes r.'a p=int ~pper~u et qui, ayant ete donne a l'homme pour adoucir, en certaines circonstances, la ferocite de son amour propre, ou le desir de se conserver avant la naisoance de cet amour, tempere 1 1 ardeur qu' il a pour son bien-etre par une repugnance innee a voir souffrir son semblable .... Je parle de la Pitie, disposition convenable a des etres aussi foibles, et sujets a autant de maux que nous le sommes; vertu d'autant plus universelle et d'autant plus utile a l 1 homme, qu'elle precede en lui l'usage de toute reflexion, et si Naturelle que les Betes memes en donnent quelquesfois des signes sensibles.202 Rousseau was quite he devoted one of his nineteen distinction impels that insistent between 'l'amour notes the vanity attempt maintained in their that that is, and I the self-love which l "amour propre 1, to their of self-love and was a true mark of their when it was also conjoined with the natural feeling it, of vanity, were initially have figured desires however, and others all sentiment of pity, he 203 Our and our sense of honour which arose and affected among the spontaneous which impelled all emotions. and unreflective men at first passions and they could only have been formed in connection social bonds that selves as they learnt 202. Discours sur l'inegalite, must have come to force to suppress O.C.III, and to care for both themselves state, progressively from They could not whom they might have chanced to meet in their our ancestors men humanity; • . sign of t h eir• mora 1 virtue. contrived to Rousseau must have inspired condition • h t even b ea it• mig alone neighbours. seminal asserte, d of the the members of our species superior the sentiment in the Discours • and to an account own survival, which drives to make themselves point entirely de soi-meme', every animal to seek its is, about this that original with the upon them- compassion p. 154. 203. Hence, observes Starobinski {O.C.III, p. 1298), for Rousseau "l'amour de soi et la pitie sent les mouvements spontanes de la sensibili te qui fondent la morale naturelle". 198 �which had earlier been characteristic of their nature. Il ne taut pas confondre l'Amour propre et l'Amour de soi-meme; deux passions tres differentes par leur nature et par leurs effets. L 1 Amour de soimeme est un sentiment naturel qui porte tout animal a veiller a sa propre conservation et qui, dirige dans l 1 homme par la raison et n,udifie par la pi tie, produit l'humanite et la vertu. L'Amour propre n'est qu'un sentiment relatif, factice, et ne dans la societe, qui porte chaque individu a faire plus de cas de soi que de tout autre, qui inspire aux hommes tousles maux qu'ils se font mutuellement, et qui est la veritable source de l 1 honneur. Ceci bien entendu, je dis que dans notre etat primitif, dans le·veritable etat de nature, l'Amour propre n'existe pas.204 204. Discours sur l 1 inegalite, note xv, O.C.III, p .. 219. See also Rousseau juge de Jean Jaques, O.C.I, p. 669. In his critical edition (seep. 165, note) of La 'Profession de foi du Vicaire savoyard' de Rousseau (Fribourg and Paris 1914) Masson cites a number of sources from which Rousseau might have drawn these terms and the distinction he makes between them. The most important is probably the following passage from Marie Huber 1 s Lettres sur la religion essentielle a 1 1 homme (Londres 1739 edition), lettre xxx, p. 102: "Ici paroit assez sensiblement la difference de l 1 Amour-Propre ou de l'Amour Faux, a l 1 Amour de Soi-meme bien entendu. C'est que celui-ci, en s'appliquant a la recherche du Bien meme, ne pretend en exclure personne, parce que ce Bien est de nature a pouvoir se partager sans concurrence; au lieu que celui-la meconnoissant le vrai Bien, n'est satisfait que lorsqu 1 il se flatte d'une distinction particuliere." Cf. also Jacques Abbadie, L'Art de se connoitre soi-meme (Rotterdam 1692), p. 263. It should be noted here, however, that the distinction Rousseau adopted between '1 1 amour de soi-meme' and 'l'amour propre' was not widely accepted by Enlightenment thinkers. Condillac, for instance, put forward an altogether different view of 'l'amour propre' in his Traite des animaux (II.viii, OPC, I, p. 372), claiming that it is a passion which is undoubtedly common to the members of all animal species and that "c'est de lui que naissent tousles autres penchans .... Le premier objet de l'amour-propre est ... d'ecarter tout sentiment desagreable; et c'est par-la qu'il tend a la conservation de l'individu". In Neuchatel Ms R 18, p. 14r (O.C.III, p. 1376), moreover, Rousseau himself transcribed a passage from Vauvenargues's Introduction a la connoissance de l'esprit humain (first published in Paris in 1746) in which the two terms are employed in a sense that is very much opposed to that of his own theory: "Avec l 1 amour de nous-memes ... on peut chercher hors de soi son bonheur; on peut s'aimer hors de soi plus que son existence propre; on n'est point a soi-meme son unique objet. L'amour-propre, au contraire, subordonne tout a ses· commodites et a son bien-etre, il est a lui-meme son seul objet et sa seule fin." Almost exactly the same words, copied from the text of Vauvenargues, appear in the abbe Claude Yvon's article 'Amour des sciences et des lettres' in the Encyclopedie, I, p. 371. 199 �Rousseau therefore relations believed with each other that even when individuals they would at least toward sympathy rather than belligerence they did meet, so that in this men must have been like those found in the state of nature. ness shown to their offspring regard have been inclined on those few occasions the original of all had no fixed when dispositions the creatures of which were to be for even if we disregard the tender- by mothers of every type of animal, Rousseau reflected, on observe tousles jours la repugnance qu'ont les Chevaux a fouler aux pieds un Corps vivant; Un animal ne passe point sans inquietude aupres d'un animal mort de son Espece: 11 yen a meme qui leu.r donnent une sorte de sepulture; Et les tristes mugissemens du Betail entrant dans une Boucherie, annoncent l'impression qu'il re9oit de l'horrible spectacle qui le frappe.205 Self-love anq compassion together, view, must once have-been the natural shared then, by men with all which, the other in his beasts of world. While the human race was in these animal species unique capacity Rousseau also to change its marked by the same passions various were feelings forms of our response supposed, every other mankind had a We must always have been and desires to these knowledge and assume modes of life like however, that nature. powers which lay beyond our control, respects as other desires creatures, but the were not prescribed by and we alone were able to acquire that les hommes n'ont point naturellement, et ... dont ils ne peuvent concevoir l'idee qu'apres etre sortis de l'Etat de Nature.205 205. Discours 206. Ibid., p. 139) cited su.r l'inegalite, p. 125. See also on p. 125 above. O.C.III, p. 154. the passage 200 from the Discours (ibid., �For while Nature must have given rise and to their patterns of behaviour, both to the impulses we received the same impulses were free to choose the manner in which we would satisfy them. Every type of beast more than an ingenious instinct equally of the human machine, free agents and hence play a part which we perform. habits of all - at least virtue from man, wrote Rousseau, means of self-preservation. is nothing the The same is he continued, except in the calculation that we are of the deeds whereas Nature alone governs the movements and other creatures to some extent, of their but or overcome machine to which Nature has provided and appropriate true apart of animals liberty; in the wild. and often animals, Thus men act as they do even to their on the other disadvantage - in hand, always do what they must. Jene vois dans tout animal qu'une machine ingenieuse, a qui la nature a donne des sens pour se remonter elle meme, et pour se garantir, jusqu'a uncertain point, de tout ce qui tend a la detruire, OU a la deranger. J'apper~ois precisement les memes choses dans la machine humaine, avec cette difference que la Nature seule fait tout dans les operations de la Bete, au-lieu que l'homme concourt aux siennes, en qualite d'agent libre. L'un choisit ou rejette par instinct, et l'autre par un acte de liberte; ce qui fait que la Bete ne peut s'ecarter de la Regle qui lui est prescrite, meme quand il lui seroit avantageux de le faire, et que l'homme s'en ecarte souvent a son prejudice.207 207. Discours sur l'inegalite, O.C.III, p. 141. According to Rousseau, therefore, men are free insofar as the actions which they perform are deliberate rather than compulsive. This is a point which he makes perhaps most clearly in the Contrat social, III. i, ibid., p. 395: "Toute action libre a deux causes qui concourent a la produire, l'une morale, savoir la volonte qui determine l'acte, l'autre physique, savoir la puissance qui 1 1 execute. Quand je marche vers un objet, il faut premierement que j'y veuille aller; en second lieu, que mes pieds m'y portent." For Hobbes, on the other hand (Levic.tha."l, Fnr,lish Worl~:1, III, p. 197), "'.'/hen the words free, and liberty, are upplicd to any th.11, but bodies, they are abused; for that which is not subject to motion, is not subject to impediment .... from the use of the word free-will, no 201 �It was because men in their selves distinct from other endowed with any specific them apart from all natural animals - rather attributes the rest - that, ations beneath all would have received; artificial course than because faculties according the human man all observed, the trappings "tel to Rousseau, over every other the supernatural qualities gifts type of possessed which later if v,e could denude our specieo which we must have acquired of our development; they were have set If we could uncover the essential our progenitors ~ere able to make them- which might originally race must always have had an advantage creature. state if, in short, of civilisation qu 1 il a du sortir during by gener- of all the the long we could take away from and consider him, Rousseau des mains de la Nature", we should find liberty can be inferred of the will, desire, or inclination, but the liberty of the man; which consisteth in this, that he finds no stop, in doing what he has the will, desire, or inclination to do". The movements of objects and the actions of men all "proceed from necessity", Hobbes continued (ibid., p. 198), .so that in his view there could be no constraint upon the human will, but only upon the physical motion of men's bodies. Hobbes would have argued that Rousseau was fundamentally mistaken in his account of liberty, since his supposition that creatures were not free when they were subject to the will of Nature could only have been founded upon a confusion between the determinate cause of their actions, on the one hand, and an external impediment which might be placed in their way, on the other. In the judgment of Hobbes, that is, everything must happen of necessity and does so in conformity with the will of God or the dictates of Nature, but necessity is not itself incompatible with freedom. The motion of a freely falling object might be determined by the laws of gravitation, but its freedom was lost only when it hit the earth. Rousseau, however, believed that Nature could exercise an internal constraint upon animal behaviour, insofar as "l'impulsion du seul appetit est esclavage", and only "l'obeissance a la loi qu'on s'est prescritte est liberte" (Contrat social, I.viii, 0.C.III, p. 365). So far as I know, Rousseau does not refer anywhere to the difference between his own account of liberty and that of Hobbes, but it is possible that he had the social theory of Hobbes in mind when he drafted the fcllowing lines of the Contrat social, III.ix (ibid., p. 420,' note): "Un peu d'agitation donne du ressort aux ames, et ce qui fait vraiment prosperer l'espece est moins la paix que la liberte." See also the passages from the Manuscrit de Geneve, I.iii, ibid., pp. 292-293, and the Contrat social, I.viii, ibid., pp. 364-365, cited in eh. II, note 143. 202 �un animal moins fort que les uns, moins agile que les autres, mais a tout prendre, organize le plus avantageusement de tous.208 In their original state were more dextrous our ancestors and adroit the female of our species arms would have perceived than other was able plus de facili • animaux 11 man must always have been able to decide state of nature, was able how he could best to live con£ront gather 210 te as in her nourrir Most important que of all~ even in the with each situation. or in a cave; fruit; they and insofar a le for himself, contend both in the forest prey or, alternatively, 209 to move about with a child she must have had "beaucoup 1 t l es f eme11 es d e p l usieurs • non creatures, that He he could hunt for and he could select either to from danger. or flee A l'egard des animaux qui ont reellement plus de force qu'il n'a d'adresse, il est vis a vis d'eux dans le cas des autres especes plus foibles, qui ne laissent pas de subsister; avec cet avantage pour l'homme, que non moins dispos qu'eux a la course, et trouvant sur les arbres un refuge presque assure; il a par tout le prendre et le laisser dans la rencontre, et le choix de la fuite ou du combat.211 While other creatures which prevailed bound by the determine 208. were not subject between men in society, commands of Nature. in what fashion, Discours and, sur l'inegalite, 209. See ibid., p. 136: animaux, et se trouvant de eux, il en fait bientot la plus en adresse, qu'ils ne plus craindre." 210. Ibid., p. 137. 211. Ibid., pp. to the kind of fixed they were all, Man alone possessed indeed, O.C.III, whether or not, 203 nevertheless, the liberty to he would comply pp. 134-135. "L'homme Sauvage vivant bonne heure dans le cas comparaison, et sentant le surpassent en force, 136-137. relations disperse parmi les de se mesurer avec qu'il les surpasse il apprend a ne les �with these comm,:mJs, and for Rousseau it consciousness of·this liberty \.IC::S p-:irticularly that "la spiritualite belief, moreover, in man's de son ame11212 is displayed. It was also Rousseau's must always have been distinct that the human race among animal species in yet another way, for only mankind possessed Insofar as all response individuals were free to the impulsions develop their condition behaviour the attribute of Nature they must have been able to in a cumulative qualities adopted habits but also which no other character, and in Rousseau's history of change. is already and after habits view, to be sure, however, After creatures a thousand and patterns is capable among animals, years Rousseau suggested, to humanity's feature that of his it was precisely more perfect rather the whole of its of life as the first primitive maturity, is marked by che and he is also in effect, civilised state from man generation. and thus impair are just of its species his faculties, steps than they could undergo a habits in having what is, to make retrograde it would have a few months every animal apart of improving moreover, Once having a permanent stamped with the characteristic same instincts reverted from other in his original not only to change could share, men were able to make themselves merely different ciles, way, so that to improve them. animals been in his power to make those capacity to choose the manner of their each person must have had the capacity his essential because of perfectibility. through Man, alone the same his nature. persons who have their having lost Imbe- 212. Ibid., p. 142 (seep. 126 above). Rousseau thought, apparently, that it was partly because men had resisted the commands of Nature that they came to invent and adopt other rules instead. 204 �the mental skills bility.213 perfect, they had earlier Since other creatures it was not in their ing attributes acquired in virtue of their perfecti- were unable to make themselves more power to malce thmnselves worse by forfeit- which they had never possessed. Quand les difficultes qui environnent toutes ces questions, laisseroient quelque lieu de disputer sur cette difference de l'ho11111eet de l'animal, il y a une autre qualite tres specifique qui les distingue, et sur laquelle il ne peut y avoir de contestation, c'est la faculte de se perfectionner; facu.lte qui, 1 l'aide des circonstances, developpe successivement toutes les autres, et reside parmi nous tant dans l'espece, que dans l'individu, au lieu qu'un animal est, au bout de quelques mois, ce qu'il sera toute sa vie, et son espece, au bout de mill• ans, ce qu'elle etoit la premiere annee de ces mille ans. Pourquo11.'homme seul est il sujet 1 devenir imbecile? N'est ce point qu'il retourne ainsi dans son etat primitif, et q~e, tandis que la Bite, qui n'a rien acquis et qui n'a rien non plus 1 perdre, reste toujours avec son instinct, l'homme reperdant par la vieillesse ou d'aui:res accidens, tout ce que sa perfectibilite lui avoit fait acquerir, retombe ainsi plus bas que la Bite mime?2l4 213. This claim seems rather si:range in the light of Rousseau's general perspective of human nature in the Discours. Imbeciles are clearly not civilised men who have recovered the pristJ.ne faculties of their savage state through age or infirmity; they are persons whose mental disabilities make them even more frail than the rest of us. Rousseau's contention about the course of imbecility here is somewhat similar to that of Maupertu.is about the retrogressive path of black albinism which had already been challenged by Buffon (see notes 58 and 67 above). 214. Discours sur l'inegalite, O.C.III, p. 142. With regard to the genesis of the term 'perfectibilite' Starobinski makes the following observation (O.C.III, pp. 1317-1318): "L• mot perfectibilite est un neologism• savant. Ce mot ne figure pas dans le Dictionnaire de Trevoux avant 1771; il n'existe pas dans la quatrieme edition du Dictionnaire de l'Academie (1740, sic 1762). Il apparait clans lacinquieme edition de ce dictionnaire, 1798, dans le sens ~ue lui donne Rousseau .... Antoine Charma, a la page 68 de son etude sur Condorcet, rapporte que le mot etait utilise dans la conversation par Turgot des 1750. Il apparait clans l'ordinaire de fevrier l 755 de la Corres:rndance litteraire." The passage from the Correspondance lit~eraire, I 2), to which Starobinski refers here appeared in the issue of 15 February 1755 and reads as follows (p. 492): "L'homme constitue une espece d'etre tres-singulier et tout 1 fait different de ce que nous voyons de vivant et d'inanime dans a nature. Le principal 205 �Rousseau supposed that it was through we must have come to form our particular persons followed could transmit that these traits the exercise social of our liberty traits, from one generation the whole of our species so that that because to the next it had been able to make its caractere qui le distingue de toutes les autres creatures de l'univers, c'est la perfectibilite ou la faculte qu'il a re9ue de se rendre plus parfait, faculte qui opere sans cesse les plus etonnantes revolutions, et dans son etre et dans toute la nature. Toutes les autres especes d'animaux ont conserve le meme degre de perfection ou elles etaient depuis que nous savons leur histoire .... L'homme seul par sa nature est fait pour eprouver les differences les plus sensibles et pour passer par des changements successifs et continuels, suivant lesquels il peut ou approcher de la perfection que son espece comporte, ou s'en eloigner j usqu' a se degrader .... Quand on ref le chit se1>ieusement sur l' homme et sur sa deplorable destinee confirmee par l'histoire de tant de siecles, on est tente de croire que le don de se perfectionner qu'il a re~u de la nature lui a ete plus funeste qu 'utile." With respect to these lines Starobinski remarks (0.C.III, p. 1318) that "a la date ou le texte de Grimm (ou de Diderot?) est publie, le manuscrit du Disccurs est depuis longtemps entre les mains de Rey". Since none of Rousseau's corrections to the proofs have any bearing upon his use of the term 1 perfectibilite', it is therefore certain, writes Starobinski (ibid.), "que Rousseau n'a pas ete influence par la publication de Grimm. L'inverse est infiniment plus probable: Grimm aurait eu communication du manuscrit de Rousseau, ou aurait adopte ces idees a son contact. Diderot, pour sa part, peut avoir servi d'intermediaire, ou peut-etre est-il l'inspirateur commun de Grimm et de Rousseau". Whatever might have been the source for Rousseau's use of the word, his idea of 1 perfectibilite' was certainly attacked at length by his eighteenthcentury critics. Jean de Castillon, for instance, in the most substantial of the early replies to the Discours, charged Rousseau (Discours sur l'ine alite armi les hommes. Pour servir de re onse au Discours que M. Rousseau a publie sur le meme sujet Amsterdam 1756), p. 46) with having failed to see that "la faculte de se perfectionner ... est commune a l'homme & a la bete". According to Castillon (pp. 49-50) the specific perfectibility of man was attributable to his natural endowments of reason and language, and it was certainly not the case, as Rousseau had supposed, that our exercise of this faculty produced our errors and vices as well as our virtues and enlightenment: "LA PERFECTIBILITE fait eclore les lumieres & les vertus de l'homme: mais elle ne fait point naitre ses erreurs & ses vices: elle ne le rend point sujet a l'imbecillite." For Herder, moreover, the concept of perfectibility which Rousseau had attached to human nature was as superfluous as the concept of reason, which he had tried to divorce from savage man, was indispensable. Thus, wrote Herder in his Abhandlung iiber den Ursprung der Sprache (Herders sammtliche Werke, V, p. 44), "Sein Phantom, der Naturmensch; dieses entartete Geschopf, das er auf der einen Seite mit der Vernunftfahigkeit abspeiset, wird auf der andern mit der Perfectibilitat und zwar mit ihr als Char>aktercie,cnac.l:mft, w1d zwar mit ihr- in so ho hem Grade belehnet, daB er dadurch von allen Thiergattungen lernen konne - und was hat nun Rousseau ihm nicht zugestanden! Mehr, als wir wollen und brauchen!". 206 �departure first from the state have shared nevertheless liberty of nature. the same faculties have been distinct and perfectibility behaviour these evolution of the human race. Of course not ensure that inchoate 215 In his view, then, as other And while his could not have been manifest in his original qualities had made possible the perfectibility attribute of that individuals must have made when they adopted only that there the historical of men in their they would become more perfect and institutions but he must in his potentialities. development of life animals, man must at original creatures, depended upon the actual in society. could be cumulative their state for the real choices various which patterns Human perfectibility ensured change in one direction or another, and it was as much compatible with the history of man's degradation it would have been compatible with the history of his progress. According to Rousseau, use of those traits in fact, in the course 'pitie' and 'amour de soi-meme' Perhaps termed "la Societe conditions other creatures, of his advance he had come to suppress the state naissante" for our happiness, his and had thus brought about his own of primitive society which Rousseau would have offered since in that still as his freedom in his which he had in common with all so that corruption. man had misapplied did the best possible propertyless world 215. Some of Rousseau's interpreters (see especially Strauss, Natural Right and History, pp. 265-266, and Masters, The Political Philosophy of Rousseau, pp. 69-72) have suggested that he conceived the idea of perfectibility to replace rather than to supplement his view of natural liberty, largely in order to avoid the dualistic metaphysics which his concept of an exclusively human form of freedom might appear to entail. This interpretation seems to me quite wrong. Rousseau believed each man was perfectible only insofar as he was free, and at the same time he supposed that the historical perfectibility of the human race as a whole depended upon the liberty of all persons both to alter their nature and to transmit the changes they have made - in the form of social habits - to their progeny in a cumulative fashion. 207 �we could have exercised our nature progress rather our faculties than distorted in ways which might have bettered Every element of the subsequent it. of mankind, however, has produced the apparent the individual perfection only at the true cost of the decrepitude of of our species. Il faut remarquer que la Societe commencee et les relations deja ctablies entre les hommes, exigeoient en eux des qualites differentes de celles qu'ils tenoient de leur constitution primitive ..• la Societe naissante .... etoit ... le meilleur [etat] a l'homme ... . le Genre-humain etoit fait pour y rester toujours .. . et ... tous les progres ulterieurs ont ete en apparence autant de pas vers la perfection de l'individu, et en effet vers la decrepitude de l'espece.216 The social debased rather relations which men formed with one another than improved their progressively less progressively more dependant improvement, the liberty the contrary, compulsions that all dependant that is, habits, for just had never been devoted to the task we had in society elected Rousseau regarded our perfectibility for self- of increasing state to become slaves we imposed upon ourselves. made themselves Our capacity which we must have enjoyed in our natural that as they had grown upon Nature they had equally upon other men. had actually since, to new It was for this as the principal on reason source of our misfortunes. Cette faculte distinctive, et presque illimitee, est la source de tousles malheurs de l'homme ... c'est elle qui le tire, a force de terns, de cette condition originaire, dans laquelle il couleroit 216. Discours sur l'inegalite, O,C.III, pp. 170-171. See also p. 231 below. The real consequence of man's perfectibility has therefore been his fall, notes Starobinski (La transparence et l'obstacle, pp. 12-13): "Paree que l'homme est perfectible, il n'a cess~ d'ajouter ses inventions aux dons de la nature. Et des lors l 1 histoire universelle, alourdie du poids sans cesse croissant de nos artifices et de notre orgueil, prend l'allure d'une chute acceleree dans la corruption .... Le mythe de la chute ne precede done pas l'existence terrestre; Rousseau transporte le mythe religieux dans l'histoire elle-meme." 208 �des jours tranquilles, et innocens ... c'est elle, qui fai~ant cclorc avec les siccles ses lumieres et ses erreurs, ses vices et ses vertus, le rend la longue le tiran de lui-meme, et de la Nature.21? a This faculty had, in effect, natural into our moral differences crucial role in the development If Nature created between men, according that must initially nation made possible the transformation and had therefore of social the first significant it was chance, have drawn them together. of fortuitous events all believed, would have remained innocence and isolation. the most inequality. and least to Rousseau, played of our distinctions on the other Without the concate- the members of the human race, eternally hand, in their original he condition of Apres avoir montre que la perfectibilite, les vertus sociales, et les autres facultes que l'homme Naturel avoit re~ues en puissance, ne pouvoient jamais se developper d'elles memes, qu'elles avoient besoin pour cela du concours fortuit de plusieurs causes etrangeres qui pouvoient ne jamais naitre, et sans lesquelles il fut demeure ~ternellement dans sa constitution primitive; il me reste a considerer et a rapprocher les differens hazards qui ont pu perfectionner la raison humaine, en deteriorant l'espece, rendre un etre mechant en le rendant sociable, et d'un terme si eloigne amener enfin l'homme et le monde au point ou nous les voyons. 218 217. Discours sur l'inegalite, 0.C.III, p. 142. 218. Ibid., p. 162. There is a certain superficial similarity between Rousseau's argument here and Machiavelli's contention, in his Discorsi, I.ii, that the first associations of men were formed by chance. But while Rousseau drew much inspiration from the thought of Machiavelli particularly in the Contrat social - there is no reason to suppose that he borrowed this thesis from the Discorsi. For Machiavelli's essential point there is that the genesis of our different forms of government - rather than of society itself - is attributable to chance. Though like Rousseau he believed (Discorsi, I.ii, in Opere complete, ed. Sergio Bertelli and Franco Gaeta, 8 vols., [Milano 1960-65), I, p. 131) that "nel principio del mondo, sendo gli abitatori radi, vissono un tempo dispersi a similitudine delle bestie", he also held to the quite different supposition that men must have gathered together in the first instance in order to defend themselves against the attacks of other men. 209 �It was, of course, circumstances impossible, and we could only speculate such as floods or earthquakes might once have brought congregations. not attempt that to specify the nature events, he insisted unpremeditated to the first earliest forms of social accident rather languages life than by choice arose, or trace he suggested, to communicate in these his hypothesis, human groups, Such occur- men would have been obliged though he pointed that disasters, proximity. employed by individuals might support great catastrophes away from the great Perhaps In any case, of our earliest any other thus created than before. in the form of devices or authorities indeed, of the earth and in the islands to meet more often given rise or, the exact about how natural men into territorial could have torn parts continents, forced to determine which must have led to the formation communities, rences he added, 219 and though he did the possible happenings to no evidence course of these of this kind must have and he was adamant that our would have had to be established by or design. J'avoue que les evenemens que j'ai a decrire ayant pu arriver de plusieurs manieres, je ne puis me determiner sur le choix que par des conjectures .... De grandes inondations ou des tremblemens de terre environnerent d'eaux ou de precipices des Cantons habites; Des revolutions du Globe detacherent et couperent en Iles des portions du Continent. On con~oit qu'entre des hommes ainsi rapproches, et forces de vivre ensemble, il dut se former un Idiome commun plutot qu'entre ceux qui erroient librement dans les forets de la Terre ferme. Ainsi il est tres possible ... que la Societe et les langues ont pris naissance dans les Iles, et s'y sent perfectionnees avant que d'etre connues dans le Continent. 220 219. It may be true, as Starobinski has maintained (O.C.III, p. 1344), that "Rousseau etait un adepte convaincu des theories geologiques de Buffon". But Buffon's geological theories are not mentioned in the Discours, and while they incorporate speculations about natural accidents and catastrophes they have no direct bearing - as is the case with respect to Rousseau's conjectures - upon the author's view of the genesis of society. 220. Discours sur l'inegalite, O.C.III, pp. 162 and 168-169. There are 210 �Whatever might have been the actual Rousseau was convinced, brought forces nevertheless, about the development which originally cal with those history that of social of these they could hardly inequality itself, events, have since the drew men together ~.'hich must later could not have been identi221 have driven them apart. The at least two other notable passages in Rousseau's writings in which he makes much the same point to the effect that natural accidents must have been responsible for bringing men together in their earliest societies. One of these passages figures in the Essai sur l'origine des langue3, eh. ix, p. 113: "Les associations d'hommes sont en grande partie l'ouvrage des accidens de la nature, les deluges particuliers, les mers extravasees, les eruptions des volcans, les grands tremblemens de terre, les incendies allumes par la foudre et qui detruisoient les forets, tout ce qui dut effrayer et disperser les sauvages habitans d'un pays dut ensuite les rassembler pour reparer en commun les pertes communes." The second was published for the first time in Streckeisen-Moultou, pp. 258-259: "D'autres causes, plus fortuites en apparence, ont concouru a disperser les hommes inegalement dans des lieux, ales rassembler par pelotons dans d'autres, et a resserrer ou a relacher les liens des peuples selon les accidents qui les ont reunis ou •separes. Des tremblemen.ts de terre, des volcans, des embrasements, des inondations, des deluges, changeant tout a coup, avec la face de la terre, le cours que prenaient les societes humaines, les ont combinees d'une maniere nouvelle, et ces combinaisons, dont les premieres causes etaient physiques .et naturelles, sont devenues, par fruit du temps, les causes morales qui changent l'etat des choses, ont produit des guerres, des emigrations, des conquetes, enfin des revolutions qui remplissent l'histoire et dont on a fait l'ouvrage des hommes sans remonter ace qui les a fait agir ainsi. Il ne faut pas douter que ces grands accidents de la nature ne fussent plus frequ·ents dans les premiers temps." Cf. 0. C. III, p. 533, This passage originally appeared in a manuscript discovered in the mid-nineteenth century by Streckeisen-Moultou among the texts which he inherited, through his wife, from Paul Moultou, to whom Rousseau had left some of his papers in 1778 shortly before his death (most of the rest having already been entrusted to Pierre-Alexandre Du Peyrou in 1765 - see eh. IV, note 147). The manuscript of the fragment printed by Streckeisen-Moultou has been lost, and we can only speculate about its original place in Rousseau's writings. It may once have figured in a draft of the Discours or the Essai, but I suspect that Rousseau never really planned to incorporate it in either of these works. Derathe, nevertheless (O.C.III, p. 1533), regards it as "manifestement en·relation avec le chapitre IX de l'Essai"; Streckeisen-Moultou, for his part, took it to be a fragment of thelnstitutions politiques. 221. See the passage from the Essai sur l'origine des langues, eh. ii, p. 43 cited in eh. IV, p. 329. In the Essai (eh. ix, p. 113), however, Rousseau did observe that once men have been brought into proximity with one another the effect of further natural catastrophes can only be to scatter them: "Depuis que les societes sont etablies ces grands accidens ont cesse et sont devenus plus rares: il semble que cela doit encore etre; les memes malheurs qui rassemblerent les hommes epars disperseroient ceux qui sont reunis." 211 �moral distinctions that prevailed were developed from the time that men began to live they must, even in the first another, instance, According alone. When, in their to Rousseau, to confront the same persons some notice of those traits next. consequence in fact, morality ceive, or most agile, whereas before differences equally, his character, his abilities to others the effects in the light Each man, so the.t he must have and their impressions judgments some significance of their - that natural were the most strong, all of in Rousseau's came to value certain to the vari- view, it was the manner characteristics above the which they formed about each other's and the demands which they began to make in the light presumptions of He must have begun to compare himself so that, - it was the expectations of the of qualities became more settled of his conduct, and shortcomings. he perceived, from the which men were upon what he took to be their appraisals in which our ancestors actions one individual of his own behaviour, and at the same time to attach that their they must have begun to per- himself as typical dependant their to identifv which were due to Nature. with his neighbours grown increasingly ations constitution recognised arose men came repeatedly to recognise and, in general, must have come to identify as his relations tion which distinguished they could only have felt, in their which others setrlements, of every day, they must have begun to take They must have come gradually strongest rest primitive distinctions have been chosen and only from the way in which savages must have undertalten neighbours. formed in company with one and could not have been a direct espoused by individuals proximity were, of necessity, and while these than by Nature or by chance, by men rather their in society together must have brought differences into moral traits. or handsome, or eloquent 212 of their about the transformaThose persons - or who proved, say, who to �be the best dancers - must have come to be admired above the others, for it was to such traits attached our first preference. ideas appeared distribution of public in his identification upon the talents of of in daily and the scale to envy or to despise contact that must also between them. in social have been In fact with whom he was forced through.making of preferences of our natural those from our own, and the then, the persons and Rousseau supposed disintegration feelings which savage man must have detected to discriminate could only have identified parisons we would have esteem began to set us apart of his neighbours, invoked by him in order kind, that and our first our attention to be distinct The same features chance to live and beauty We must have come either men whose qualities hierarchies. as these around us and must also have wished to be admired fo~ our own skills. this of merit We must have turned the individuals unequal and capacities discriminations it was in virtue and innocence by of just of such com- to which 'they gave rise happiness he that the was ensured. On s'accoutume a considerer differens objets, et a faire des comparaisons; on acquiert insensiblement des idees de merite et de beaute qui produisent des sentimens de preference .... Chacun commen~a a regarder les autres et a vouloir etre regarde soimeme, et l'estime publique eut un prix. Celui qui chantoit ou dansoit le mieux; le plus beau, le plus fort, le plus adroit ou le plus eloquent devint le plus considere, et ce fut la le premier pas vers l '·inegali te, et vers le vice en meme terns: de ces premieres preferences naquirent d'un cote la vanite et le mepris, de l'autre la honte et l'envie; et la fermentation causee par ces nouveaux levains produisit enfin des composes funestes au bonheur et a 222 l'innocence. Now the various 222. Discours human traits sur l'inegalite, that O.C.III, 213 were esteemed by primitive pp. 169-170. men �could not have made their forefathers strongest appearance must have recognised before all those they discovered at the same time. individuals among them who were which ones were best able to sing or dance, 223 and they could only have come to be impressed eloquent of their neighbours after tions of a language. 224 order in which our moral traits they had already in the Discours of their to be more worthy of respect capacities was nevertheless importance firmly to their the establishment dexterity of their that institutions. foolish enough to believe of civil of private of land, society. it than others. 225 He as soon as men began to attach claimed have embarked upon In particular, which were the ~ttributes a piece and, indeed, should have found some they must thereby social the introduction man who enclosed founder why persons and at the same time the source made possible real differences and eloquence ancestors, others convinced vague about the developed, is far from obvious by the most formed the conven- Rousseau was undoubtedly were first Our savage the of a few of our of admiration property. of the rest, For the first it as his own, and persuaded him, Rousseau contended, 226 was the This person, that is, must have 223. See ibid., p. 169: "On s'accouturna a s'assembler devant les Cabanes ou autour d'un grand Arbre: le chant et la danse, vrais enfans de l'amour et du loisir, devinrent l'amusement ou plutot l'occupation des hommes et des femmes oisifs et attroupes." Cf. the passage from th,e Essai sur l'origine des langues, eh. ix, p. 123 cited in eh. IV, p. 331. With respect to Rousseau's general views about the place of song and dance in primitive society, see Starobinski, La transparence et l'obstacle, pp. 114-120. 224. Other Enlightenment thinkers adopted a quite different view of th.e genesis of eloquence. D'Alembert, for instance, maintained (Discours preliminaire, Encyclopedie, I, p .. x) that the quality was a gift bestowed upon individuals by Nature: "Les hommes en se communiquant leurs idees, cherchent aussi a se communiquer leurs passions. C'est par l'eloquence qu'ils y parviennent .... [La Nature) seule peut creer un homme eloquent." 225. To be sure, Rousseau did not believe that his conjectures about the origins of our moral conduct must be correct in every detail (see pp. 225-228 below). 226. See the passage from O.C.III, p. 164 discussed 214 on pp. 188-189 above. �applied his dexterity upon the soil bours and in such a fashion most fundamental of all and his eloquence produced as an accepted the determinate relations upon his neighinstitution the which bound men to one another. In fact land there property even before must already in persons the establishment have been, in Rousseau's led by individuals family groups. in the earliest between men and women that matings to the offspring of sexual both the bonds within marked one family rated the first accidents that revolutions of nature, couplings each family unit from the next - all revolutionary ties which ensued and such ties, extended must have constituted and the distinctions that of which collectively epoch in human development, had previously in the history communal life than those as well, in of the must have created were more lasting in the state divisions The forced societies property view, a kind of which was formed by the first members of our race into from casual of private brought men together inaugujust comprised as the the first of Nature. Ce fut-la l'epoque d'une prem1ere revolution qui forma l'etablissement et la distinction des familles, et qui introduisit une sorte de propriete; d'ou peut-etre naguirent deja bien des querelles et des Combats. 227 Yet according rather than in persons to satisfy things to Rousseau it must have been private the desires as their - it must have been the cultivation of individuals neighbours launched mankind upon its 227. Discours property to possess but substantially path of toil, sur l'inegalite, O.C.III, 215 in land, of the earth not only the same more as well - which truly misery, slavery, p. 167. and conflict. �Des qu'on s'apper~ut qu'il etoit utile a un seul d'~voir des provision~ pour deux, l'egalite di~parut, la propriete s'introduisit, le travail devint necessaire, et les vastes forets se changerent en des Campagnes riantes qu'il falut arroser de la sueur des hommes, et dans lesquelles on vit bientot l'esclavage et la misere germer et croitre avec les moissons. 228 After the arts the establishment of metallurgy and agriculture to enhance the productivity the moral differences not. Thesa two arts, of proprietary and ruined mankind - and according of the greater political control - a revolution to Rousseau, abundance wheat in the European world that and those must have produced in our moral development of iron so as the second great indeed, and the greater entrenched who did which both civilised the institutions were more deeply moreover, and at the same time increase between the men who owned it to be sure, in land, must have been developed of the soil revolution because rights it was largely fertility of government there of and than anywhere else. La Metallurgie et l'agriculture furent les deux arts dont l'invention produisit cette grande revolution. Pour le Poete, c'est l'or et l'argent, mais pour le Philosophe ce sont le fer et le bled qui ont civilise les hommes, et perdu le Genre-humain ... l'une des meilleures raisons peut-etre pourquoi !'Europe a ete, sinon plutot, du moins plus constamment, et mieux policee que les autres parties du monde, c'est qu'elle est a la fois la plus abondante en fer et la plus fertile en bled.2 2 9 228. Ibid., p. 171. 229. Ibid., pp. 171-172. Two notable, but rather divergent, accounts of the significance of metallurgy and agriculture in the argument of the Discours are provided by Masters (see The Political Philosophy of Rousseau, pp. 175-177) and Goldschmidt (see his Anthropologie et politique, pp. 474-484). With regard to the importance in the text of these two revolutions see especially Duchet's contribution to the article, which she wrote jointly with Launay, entitled 'Syncbronie et diachronie: l'Essai sur l'origine des langues et le second Discours', Revue internationale de philosophie, LXXXII (1967), pp. 434-435; Duchet, Anthropologie et histoire, pp. 339-357; and eh. IV, pp. 356-357. 216 �It followed from this inheritances tion when the transfer of ownership the land, except no person at the expense society must have given rise conflict only by contracting scribed by law and enforced could continue of others. in society petuation irrevocable made their to maintain by police an armistice powers. entirely their claims lives the upon the individuals from others usurpation for such of their and eloquent secure adroite which was pre- in the per- firent un droit • devised by men all tinctions "plus particuliers forms of government owe their origin, ou moins grandes when any single attributes formed when several regarded must initially qui se trouverent 11 • 231 as worthy of respect, men were jointly entre have been to the disles A monarchy must have man was recognised to be pre-eminent an aristocracy held to be superior while democracy was instituted men in society that Rousseau reflected, au moment de l'Institution been established others, wealth of civil In exchange protection the dextrous of a hoax which "d'une 230 11 The different in those so that his Thus the state poor members of our race must have renounced of the rich, to increase to war, and men came to avoid incessant a regime of peace and for the custodial property through and the grm7th in the numbers of men led to the occupa- of all property that to the when the inequalities were not yet so considerable was between as to make them entirely corrupt. Un homme etoit-il eminent en pouvoir, en vertu, en richesses, ou en credit? il fut seul elu Magistrat, et l'Etat devint Monarchique; si plusieurs a peu pres egaux antre-eux 1 1 emportoient sur tousles 230. 231. Discours sur l'inegalite, Ibid. , p. 186. O.C.III, 217 p. 178 '(seep. 193 above). �autres, ils furent elus conjointement, et l'on eut unc l',:::-is~ocratie; Ceux dont }a fortune Qu les talens etoient moins disproportionnes, et qui s'etoient le moins eloignes de l'Etat de Nature, garderent en commun l'Admin~atration supreme, et formerent une Democratie. 23 Since all these forms of government, however, were devised legitimate and give authority qualities, they must in every case have followed of development. perhaps which set men apart sively significant, still extended despotism, on the other. that absolute that first descendants rule were owned - by the political epoch of inequality the creation the strong of the legal potentates over the poor, of slaves of the day. Ibid. 218 of ownerof If the of property the second was marked by stage masters. rights - the very chattels and the rule of was characterized in place of alJ legitimate by their then, into the subjects of the state over the weak, while the third by the domination some limited held in thrall jurisdiction controls subordination, with the objective was formed by the establishment of the rich the sway of arbitrary 232. come together had become transformed objects had become paradox of human history, for themselves and the actual and the authority who governed and at between men in society whereas men must have originally their They must have progres- on the one hand, and complete to secure have of the many who were bound to relations It was an essential of framing rules ship, inequality. the obligations or and must therefore of the few persons the predominant absolute much the same pattern of wealth or standing more conspicuous the authority the same time increased just gradations the growth of social obey, until which formed our moral They must have served to make the incipient, even already accelerated to the divisions in order to by powers, The governments and which �at first had been instituted by the consent have given way to irresponsible ion of state to their officials subjects and tyrannical must in due course that have succumbed to revolutionary masters crises of their whose disingenuous adopt still further eloquence principles preserve Civil change, political force, and the domin- have become so burdensome they could no longer they had been empowered to maintain. periodic of men must eventually society the peace which must therefore and men must have escaped the development only by turning to new persuaded them once again to and practices of slavery. Si nous suivons le progres de l'inegalite dans ces differentes revolutions, nous trouverons que l'etablissement de la Loi et du Droit de propriete fut son premier terrne; l'institution de la Magistrature le second; que le troisieme et dernier fut le changement du pouvoir legitime en pouvoir arbitraire; en sorte que l'etat de riche et de pauvre fut autorise par la premiere Epoque, celui de puissant et de foible par la seconde, et par la troisieme celui de Maitre et d'Esclave, qui est le dernier degre de l'inegalite, et le terme auquel aboutissent enfin tousles autres, jusqu'a ce que de nouvelles revolutions dissolvent tout a fait le Gouvernement, ou le rapprochent de l'institution legitime .... C'est du sein de ce desordre et de ces revolutions que le Despotisme elevant par degres sa tete hideuse ... parviendroit enfin a fouler aux pieds les Loix et le Peup~e et a s'etablir sur les ruines de la Republique. 33 233. Ibid., pp. 187 and 190-191. There is only a superficial similarity between the cycle of constitutions portrayed by Rousseau in these passages and the classical and nee-classical typologies - of monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, and their perversions - depicted by Plato, Aristotle, Polybius, Machiavelli, and many other figures. Cormnentators have frequently drawn a parallel between Rousseau's scheme and that of Machiavelli in the Discorsi, I.ii, in particular, but in my view there is no close resemblance between the ideas of the two thinkers on this subject. for in Rousseau's account the degenerative course of constitutional changes must have followed a continually worsening path whose initial step was itself already one of moral debasement, whereas ac·cording to Machiavelli the descent was from the best constitutions to the worst and included both peaks and troughs, while the. transitions he described were principally from virtuous administrations of one kind or another to vicious regimes of the same outward type. And though it was Machiavelli's belief that constitutional democracy must 219 �Thus the social lished contracts in order to secure a few must in this their authors oppression fashion that in their ineluctably political stage so that have served as our point the final natural strangers sharply world our feelings generous which nothing product superior of an excess populations like that This new state physical from our original - the state, force which must of equality, alone should for whilst in the must have been pure and our reactions from political of corruption nisms but none of the safeguards to of our development - could only of departure. and benevolent, apart powers in term of inequality of moral equality however, in which the only law is that differs have The decay which followed of artificially the circle bring us back to a condition prevail, and they must thereby associations. which completes forms of those bonds which held individuals from the establishment those powers, which they could not be endured had once been citizens, of all for at least They must have created that estab- those divisions must in due course have provoked the subjugated overthrow last have produced just of such scope and severity forced the dissolution society peace for all men and property meant to overcome. by the vassals together which would have been initially the equality to of men in a world from authority has been removed is the - a state in which all and constraints of social the antagolife have managed to survive. generally have arisen as a corrective to tyranny before giving way, in turn, to a state of licence followed by the reihtroduction of monarchy, Rousseau, for his part, was convinced that democracy must have been the form of government adopted by men who were the least corrupted by society and that the sequel to tyranny was not popular government at all but rather anarchy and a reversion to the right of the stronger. For a further discussion of these features of the thought of Machiavelli and Rousseau see the remarks of Starobinski in O.C.III, p. 1359. 220 �C'est ici le dernier terme de l'inegalite, et le point extreme qui ferme le Cercle et touche au point d'ou nous sommes partis: C'est ici que tousles particuliers redeviennent egaux parce qu'ils ne sont rien .... C'est ici que tout se ramene a la se~le Loi du plus fort, et par consequent a un nouvel Etat de Nature different de celui par lequel nous avons commence, en ce que l'un etoit l'Etat de Nature dans sa purete, et que ce dernier est le fruit d'un exces de corruption. 234 Rousseau's ultimate remarks about the order of events degradation the essay he offered features no hypotheses his readers stage of human corruption tively, still last of his argument in the Discours. as to how revolutionary epoch to the next might actually he did not let he expected further it decay; had been realized fact that attenuated version text to explain to pursue lines while others are at least of the Discours of the work that change from the final or whether, had undergone than the unstable omissions of enquiry partly are which due to the is a much shortened he originally alterna- whether or why the Some of these simply to his failure the final already should be any ·more durable phases which must have come before. he had opened himself, that our governments and he neglected In have been achieved; know whether he believed to come after term of inequality attributable to this of our rpce seem a good deal more perfunctory than most of the other one political leading and conceived 235 - a 234. Discours sur l'inegalite, O.C.III, p. 191. In Anti-Diihring (Marx-Engels Werke, XX, p. 130) Engels commented about this section of the Discours that "so schlagt die Ungleichheit wieder um in Gleichheit, aber nicht in die alte naturwii.chsige Gleichheit der sprachlosen Urmenschen, sondern in die hohere des Gesellschaftsvertrags. Die Unterdriicker werden unterdriickt. Es ist Negation der Negation". 235. Hence, observes Leigh in his 'Manuscrits disparus' (p. 62), the original draft of the Discours must have been "beaucoup plus ample que la version definitive". See also eh. IV, pp. 310-326. 221 �version tions from which not only points of his initial of detail but, indeed, study were withdrawn for a variety There is ample evidence that Rousseau deleted whole secof reasons. a fragment on the ori- gins of music which he later Essai sur 1 1origine in conjunction reconstituted in two chapters of his 236 des langue~, and we also know, moreover, that with the passages under discussion here he at first the depths of inequality religious superstition priests, whom he vilified ministres 11 V• •ved, 236. 237 • from the end of his study which are planned to intro~uce an account of into which men must hove been driven by their and the idolatrous faith as "ennemis mortels Two fragmentary drafts of this propagated by their des Loix et de leurs account have in fact sur- and wh•le . most of what th ey con t ain • does no t appear in • th e See eh. IV, pp. 294-326. 237. The earliest (Geneve Ms fr. 228, pp. 39r-40v), initially printed in Streckeisen-Moultou (see pp. 345-346), was first transcribed with all its variants by Leigh in his 'Manuscrits disparus' (see pp. 68-71); it also appears, with the principal variants only, in O.C.III, pp. 224-225 and 1377-1379. The second or intermediate draft (Neuchatel Ms Rn.a. 9, f. 1 [pp. 59-60)) is not in Rousseau's own hand, but like the other major surviving fragment of the Discours (see note 199 above) it contains corrections which he added himself. Since it includes a paragraph that later figured in the published text, moreover, this draft provides a better clue than does the first of the place in the argument at which Rousseau might originally have intended to develop his ideas on religion. (In this regard it is a matter of some interest that the fragment appears at a point in the text which comes after, and is not immediately connected with, the only two other passages of the Discours (see O.C.III, pp. 127 and 186) in which Rousseau mentions the subject of religion.) Not enough evidence has been uncovered yet, however, to enable scholars to establish its exact location in the earlier formats of the Discours, because Rousseau only incorporated the concluding paragraph from the second draft in the final version of his work, I believe, nevertheless, that one passage which figures in both the first and intermediate manuscripts may have been an earlier draft of the statement in O.C.III, p. 191, about "le dernier terme de l'inegalite" and "un nouvel Etat de Nature ... [qui] est le fruit d'un exces de corruption" reproduced above, and it is largely for this reason that I think it appropriat~ to comment upon the fragment here in conjunction with that passage. The second draft was initially transcribed by Launay as part of his contribution to 'Synchronie et diachronie' (see pp. 423-428) where it appears together with the first-draft and definitive versions; it is reprinted, without a few minor variants, in vol. II of the Launay edition of Rousseau's Oeuvres completes (see pp. 264-267). The following passage (taken from 'Synchronie et diachronie', 222 �published text a number of their some of the gaps that prising, to be sure, Discours to offer practices remain in the final that Rousseau an interpretation and beliefs elements should may actually version. help to fill It is hardly have aimed initially of the origins in sur- in the of our religious which would complement his theory of the genesis pp. 424-426) is an excerpt from the second draft, beginning with the sentence which I read as an earlier variant of the passage noted above, and ending with the first sentence which was also adopted in the final 11 text: Je ne m'areterai point a montrer combien cette orgueilleuse curiosite engendra de folies et de crimes, combien elle erigea d'Idoles et inspira de fanatiques: Je me contenterai de remarquer qu 1 elle produisit une nouvelle sorte d'inegalite, qui, sans etre etablie par la Nature ni meme par la convention, mais seulement par des opinions chimeriques, fut la fois la moins raisonnable et la plus dangereuse de toutes. Il s'eleva une espece d'hommes singuliers qui se portant pour interpretes des choses incomprehensibles et pour Ministres de la <verite> [divinite] sans son ordre, et sans son aveu pretendirent assujetir le Genre Humain a leurs decisions. Substituant adroitement des Dieux de leur fa~on au veritable qui ne convenoit pas a leurs veiies, et leurs maximes absurdes et interessees a celles de la droitte raison, ils detournerent insensiblement les Peuples des devoirs de l 1humanite et des regles de la morale dont ils ne disposoient pas leur gre, pour les assujetir a des pratiques indifferentes OU criminelles, et a des peines et des recompenses arbitraires dont ils etoient seuls les dispensateurs et les juges. Ennemis mortels des Loix et de leurs ministres, toujours prets a autoriser les usurpations injustes du magistrat supreme pour usurper plus aisement eux memes [son] autorite legitime, ils faisoient en sorte en parlant toujours de droits spirituels, que les biens, la vie, et la liberte du Citoyen n 1 etoient en surete qu'autant qu'il se mett<roit>[oit] a leur discretion; Leur pouvoir etoit d'autant plus redoutable que s'instituant sans honte seuls juges en leur propre cause, et ne souffrant aucune mesure commune des differences qu'ils mettoient entre eux et les autres hommes, ils bouleversoient et aneantissoient tousles droits humains sans qu'on put jamais leur prouver qu'ils excedoient les leurs. Enfin, a ne juger des choses que par leur cours naturel, si le Ciel n'eut parle lui-meme, si la voix de Dieu n'eut instruit les hommes de la Religion qu'ils avoient a suivre, si sa parole n'eut fixe par la Revelation les bornes sacrees des deux pouvoirs, on ne scait jusqu'ou des Pretres Idolatres et ambitieux dominant sur les Peuples par la superstition, et sur les Chefs par la terreur n'eussent point porte leurs attentats et les miseres du Genre humain: Mais c'est asses m'areter sur cette cause particuliere, tandis qu'il m'en reste tant d'autres a developper. RAPPELLONSnous quel point 1 1 esprit de la societe attire et change nos inclinations naturelles. L'homme sauvage et l'homme police different tellernent a cet egard que l'etat qui fait le bonheur supreme de l'un redui.roit 1 1 autre au desespoir." The last sentence in this passage is clearly an earlier draft of another sentence which appears in O.C.III, p. 192. From that point until its end the manuscript fragment continues in much the same terms as the published text up to the conclusion of the first paragraph on p. 193. In his 'Manuscrits disparus' (see pp. 63-67) Leigh remarks upon the fact that Rousseau's reflections here provide a a a a 223 �of our politic~l relations, wished to develop that as to provide dernier and I suspect theme at this a comprehensive terme de l'inegalite" In any case it one of these Discours that is perfectly fragments manufacture reputation like to please I have just themselves. copy of the which must have was set in motion and began to seek the company by their neighbours, value which they placed in society, the moral inequality both in For with the cultivation and be respected standing passions presented. appears and in the published became sociable of the artificial and their disseminated of the meaning of "le from a remark that our natural have of the argument so for Rousseau the cycle of constitutions creatures desire he may at first stage in the passage on religion as soon as our ancestors their explanation clear led to the debasement of all of other late that that with the upon their they must thereby was the essence of of all also have forms of government and the bane of our common humanity. L'homme sociable toujours hors de lui ne sait vivre que dans l'opinion des autres .... Il n 1 est pas de mon sujet de montrer comment d'une telle disposition nait tant d'indifference pour le bien et le mal ••. comment tout se reduisant aux apparences, tout devient factice et joiie .... Il me suffit treatment of the origin of religion and the role of the priesthood which is conspicuously absent from the final version of the Discours. According to Leigh Rousseau may have decided to delete the passage because at the time that he composed it he was subjecting his ideas on religion to the same scrutiny and reappraisal as all the other features of his philosophy which until then had shown the influence of Diderot and the 'coterie holbachique 1 • Yet while there is no doubt but that the vehemence of tone and substance of his observations on religion and the priesthood are more in keeping with the views of the Encyclonedistes than are most of his later statements on the subject, and while it might even be the case that the passage was inspired by some suggestions put forward by Diderot in particular, there is no reason to suppose that Diderot may actually have been its author. For as Starobinski rightly comments (see 0.C.III, p. 1378), the many variants in the first draft of this passage show how hard Rousseau himself laboured to find the right words to express a thesis which - for whatever reason - he chose to leave out of his final text. 224 �d'avoir prouve que ce n'est point-la l'etat originel de l'homme, et que c:- 1 e!':t le seul esprit de la Societe et l'inegalite qu'elle engendre, qui changent et alterent ainsi toutes nos inclinations 238 naturelles. The great gress tragedy of civilisation, of our governments power and wanton rule have sought is that the historical was bound to give rise to just that of the strongest which all civilised by establishing the rules of their to prevent constitution.s. then, For "le Pouvoir Arbitraire", proarbitrary persons political Rousseau concluded, est ... la corruption, le terme extreme [des Gouvernemens] ... qui les ramene enfin a la seule Loi du plus fort dont ils furent d'abord le remede, 239 Rousseau conceived of the origins provide of moral inequality. not so much a history and his description evidence about the social the conditions present degradation life lish His arguments of primitive the connections The true investigation facts led to the about the pri- were in any case no longer between events that by as much men as he was able to which he supposed had necessarily and while we must undertake to of human nature, and philosophical of our species. account were designed - though it was buttressed a conjectural meval world of our ancestors he thought, as a speculative of mankind as a theory of the past amass - was essentially into his second Discours historical accessible, research to estab- can be known for certain, 238. Discours sur l'inegalite, O.C.III, p. 193·(see also p. 160 above). Almost exactly the same terms conclude the fragment from Neuchatel Ms Rn.a. 9 cited in note 237 above (see Launay, 'Synchronie et diachronie', pp. 427-428). 239. Discours sur l'inegalite, O.C.III~ 225 p. 184. �a la "c'est les faits traits a son Philosophie semblables defaut", qui peuvent he claimed, les lier of humanity could be uncovered 11 • 240 them from the contemporary tures so that the citizen began his enquiry followed that of events, the hypothetical sketches variety of ways, but the principles tures state of the world that the circumin a he deduced from his conjec- system of ideas which he was convinced or refuted it it actually might have come to pass historically formed a coherent not be challenged he maintained, He allowed that from of the past owed little of the formation which had been advanced by scientists. fea- Since Rousseau of man's current and instead, he portrayed and superfluous man must be derived reconstruction stances in his view, man from the savage. from the perspective his postulated to any chronicle resembled the natural and not the civilised The fundamental and made clear, only if we abstracted of our conduct, "de determiner could philosophically. Commenc;ons... par ecarter tousles faits, car ils ne touchent point a la question. 11 ne faut pas prendre les Recherches, dans lesquelles on peut entrer sur ce Sujet, pour des verites historiques, mais seulement pour des raisonnemens hypothetiques et conditionnels; plus propres a eclaircir la Nature des choses qu'a montrer la veritable origine, et semblables a ceux que font tousles jours nos Physiciens sur la formation du Monde.... J'avoue que les evenemens que j'ai a decrire ayant pu arriver de plusieurs ~anicrea, je ne puis me determiner sur le choix que par des conjectures; mais outre que ces conjectures deviennent des raisons, quands elles sont les plus probables qu'on puisse tirer de ln nature des choses et les seuls moyens qu'on puisse avoir de decouvrir la verite, les consequences que je veux deduire des miennes ne seront point pour cela conjecturales, puisque, sur les principes que je viens d'etablir, on ne sauroit former aucun autre systeme qui ne me fournisse les memes resultat$ et dont je ne puisse tirer les memes conclusions. 241 Ibid., p. 241. Ibid., pp. of these passages 1755, l'allusion 240. 163. and 162. Starobinski suggests about the first that (O.C.III, p. 1303) "pour le lecteur franc;ais de concerne la Theorie de la Terre de Buffon, et sans doute 132-133 226 �Rousseau's all principal the moral attributes believed altered that so that from any ideas times, relations our standards or faculties but rather To those who claimed bute of man Rousseau replied ways in disparate that been forced ation that that conventions to live differences distribution of behaviour were derived, of the particular attri- words can have no meaning apart which are established those in a variety commentators were essentially and injurious selfish writers or aggressive under rules who argued that - were all that prescribed of who insisted to the welfare between us - or the inequalities of our property place to occupy among our neighbours. in company with one another to those not in every person they could only have become so after which were oppressive And in opposition conduct He speech ,nust be a natural Against cultures. that of right times, the members of our species Rousseau retorted in society. changed our patterns from our perception at different from the linguistic was to show that which Nature had implanted which we happened, theorists work, then, of men must be acquired as our social too, at all aim in this they had of associ- of most men. the fundamental prevailed by Nature, in the Rousseau aussi l'Essai de Cosmologie de Maupertuis". See also the passage from the Discours, ibid., p. 133 cited in note 40 above, and my own remarks about this aspect of Rousseau's argument in note 29 above. Many of Rousseau's interpreters have claimed that the 'facts' which he intended to put aside and disregard were those recounted in the Bible, and particularly in the Book of Genesis, rather than real historical facts (see, for instance; Morel, 'Recherches sur les sources du Discours de l'inegalite', pp. 135-137; Hubert, Rousseau et l'Encyclopedie, pp. 88-89; Henri Grange, 'L'Essai sur l'origine des langues dans ses rapports avec le Discours sur l'origine de l'inegalite•, Annales historioues de la Revolution franxaise, XXXIX (1967), pp. 292-293; and Masters, The Political Philosophy of Rousseau, p. 118). I think, however, that these claims are quite mistaken, since they depend largely upon the supposition that Rousseau failed to say precisely what he meant and actually wrote something that has an altogether different sense. Insofar as he believed that the natural man which he had constructed was a fictitious rather than real figure, it seems perfectly plain that he should also point to the abstract, as opposed to empirical, character of his argument as a whole. 227 �held that created the only significant artificially made its first and that appearance composed as an indictment distinctions between persons were the institution of property must have in society. The Discours, of the social relations adopted by mankind, and Rousseau's state world from which the corrupt been removed. He allowed that there man, but it was only with reference able to provide a theory tion innocence of perfect and probably proper never will understanding and sorry state no longer was constructed features to such a figure - perhaps - it was nonetheless necessary character that had natural we were And though a condi- existed of its of society had never been a truly of our moral change. was which had been of nature as a fictitious in short, in order never did exist, to have a to judge the very real in which humanity now found itself. Ce n'est pas une legere entreprise de demeler ce qu'il y a d'originaire et d'artificiel dans la Nature actuelle de l'homme, et de bien connoitre un Etat qui n'existe plus, qui n'a peut-etre point existe, qui probablement n'existera jamais, et dont il est pourtant necessaire d'avoir des Notions justes pour bien juger de notre etat present,2 42 242. Discours sur l'inegalite, O.C.III, p. 123. Cf. the following passage from the Lettre a Christophe de Beaumont, O.C.IV, p. 952: "L'homme sauvage errant seul dans les bois .... n'existe pas, direz-vous; soit. Mais il peut exister par supposition." For an admirable statement of the anthropological significance of Rousseau's abstract savage man, see Levi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques, p. 423. The idea of a fictitious state of nature was, of course, equally prominent in the thought of most of the natural law philosophers. But whereas in the writings of Grotius, Pufendorf, and Locke, for instance, it figured as a juridical fiction and pertained to a world that was much like our own apart from its lack of a legal sovereign, in the social theory of Rousseau, on the other hand, the concept was a fiction about the past which he required for an explanation of our real moral development. Some writers, such as Strauss, for example (see Natural Right and History, p. 267, note 32), have even suggested that Rousseau did not regard his state of nature as a fiction at all but supposed instead that it was as much a fact of history as were the forms of contemporary despotism. On this interpretation, only the intermediate stages between the natural and the despotic phases were meant to be hypothetical. That view, .however, seems to me entirely inconsistent with Rousseau's own remarks. 228 �Now if the state that there nature will of nature be no point it in our attempting humaine ne retrograde end of his life is a fiction, pas", in the last follows, to return of course, to it. "La Rousseau was to lament near the of his major autobiographical works. Jamais on ne remonte vers les terns d'innocence et d'egalite quand une fois on s'en est eloigne. 243 Even before over, he had already his first people Discours made it its original u.~iversities, he proclaimed the clear in his et les arts by civilisation innocence. academies, 'Reponse' sur l'inegalite, that embellishments to King Stanislas would be gained to benefit a state of he supposed a If we were to destroy and other more- critic could never be expected only plunge the whole of Europe into nothing Discours to the most illustrious sur les sciences once corrupted recover ies, he had begun to draft all to the librar- of our culture, of Poland, of barbarism we would from which the morals and manners of humanity. Gardens-nous [de) conclure qu'il faille aujourd'hui bruler toutes les Bibliotheques et detruire les Universites et les Academies. Nous ne ferions que replonger l'Europe dans la Barbarie, et les moeurs n'y gagneroient rien. C'est avec douleur que je vais prononcer une grande et fatale verite .... on n'a jamais vu de peuple une fois corrompu, revenir a la vertu .... leurs coeurs une fois gates le seront tOUJOurs; il n'y a plus de remede, a moins de quelque grande revolution presque aussi a craindre que le mal qu'elle pourroit guerir, et qu'il est blamable de desirer et impossible de prevoir. 244 Rousseau made much the same point, of his second Discours. 243. Perhaps too, there Rousseau juge de Jean Jaques, 244. 'Observations Discours' ['Reponse was first published eh. V, pp. 415-417. in the most often-quoted were persons O.C.I, note among us who could p. 935. de Rousseau. Sur la Reponse qui a ete faite a son au roi de Pologne'], O.C.III, pp. 55-56. This text around October 1751 (see eh. V, p. 411). See also 229 �detach themselves by returning from the miseries to the forest, from the baneful trappings of contemporary could thus rescue of their their lay within he hinted the fabric laws, our fidelity might bring that the sole possible of society, to its officers, life pristine own degraded souls. were such men in the world Rousseau was certainly For his part social and, qualities If there not one of them. salvation for man~ind in which only our respect and our love of all its for its members, some hope of change. 0 vous ... qui pouvez laisser au milieu des Villes vos£unestes acquisitions, vos esprits inquiets, vos coeurs corrompus et vos desirs effrenez; reprenez, puisqu'il depend de vous, votre antique et premiere innocence; allez dans les bois perdre la vue et la memoire des crimes de vos contemporains .... Quant aux hommes semblables a moi dont les passions ont detruit pour toujours l'originelle simplicite, qui ne peuvent plus se nourrir d'herbe et de gland, ni se passer de Loix et de Chefs .... Ceux, en un mot, qui sont convaincus que la voix divine appella tout le Genrehumain aux lumieres et au bonheur des celestes Intelligences ... ils respecteront les sacres liens des Societes dont ils sent les membres; ils aimeront leurs semblables et les serviront de tout leur pouvoir; Ils obeiront scrupuleusement aux Loix, et aux hommes qui en sont les Auteurs et les Ministres. 245 It is true taste rustic that for cosmopolitan life and country Rousseau frequently affairs, expressed end it is also true a profound disthat folk more than did most of his contemporaries, But noble savages were not to be found in any shepherd's village fair, would probably solitary and if the state look more like hunters. 245. Discours of nature pastures could be made real a dense woodland sparsely No man of the Enlightenment tor to the Encyclopedie he admired - still at all populated less note ix, O.C.III, 230 p. 207. it by a contribu- - could ever hope to make-his home there. sur l'inegalite, or �Even that form of primitive society "1 1 epoque la plus heur euse, even the state civilised f ait. durable" pour y rester that fictitious, was imaginary some elements been compassionate for our species and a present Such a state, that In primitive and kind was real, society and, on the whole, • tions • h , t here f ore, an d h a d no wis notice of their different ments of vanity which were fatal ever lived to their provide and a past 249 rela- • hb ours. 247 neig upon their 248 had been lost with shame and character If men had advan- could never be from the present to generations some moral senti- have been to their which was abstracted appropriate to do harm, and their and innocence. it would perhaps the moral principles have have begun to take effects but a world that contained by property on the one hand, together happiness in such a state unlikely and talents, must have produced tage to remain there, recovered, aptitudes and it any of t heir• they must already and contempt, envy, on the other, • • to inJure to be sure, men must still they could not yet have been bound together however, que somewhere between a since At the same time, - . ,,246 - was one wh.ic h touJours for it was located of both. in des Sauvages ... semble confirmer man could never hope to recover. was not entirely past et la plus which "l'exemple . etoit ,, • 1 e Genre- h umain which must have arisen did not of men who were to come. Rousseau employed some of the political been prescribed imperatives by Hobbes and Locke in his own discussion 246. Ibid., 247. See pp. 190-191 above. that had of the p. 171 (see pp. 207-208 above). 248. See the passage pp. 169-170 discussed from the Discours sur l'inegalite, on pp. 212-213 above. 249. See the passage from the Discours discussed on pp. 207-208 above. 231 sur 1 1 inegalite, O,C.Ill, O.C.111, p. 171 �origins of inequality. quite accurate our past For he believed account, not of our true as it must have been, in the theories entered into Yet since agreements the social ceivable that collectively institutions, Man must haye applied city for change, the mistakes and if, The political make our inequalities that con- and might distinct of self-improvement he was perfectible that kind. in such a way his capa- by nature, then be corrected had been introduced could be transformed into under law, and in the Contrat his attention corrupt. at least form agreements, authorities legitimate would make us equal was to turn it was still which he had committed could in principle and overcome. of which figured but he could not have destroyed indeed, a how men could have of an altogether his faculty his freedom, but rather contracts to explain provided had depraved mankind were might i~ future establish as to restrict that upon themselves persons ideas which had made them morally conventions imposed by individuals helped their obligations, and the social of both thinkers those that to authorities social Rousseau upon the manner in which such institutions might be established. In the Discours cal associations maintenance sur l'inegalite of those moral differences In the Contrat argue that the associations principle irrelevant at all that which men must have formed were responsible another. account Rousseau claimed of these social, set them apart on the other that in law and insignificant and should instead would render their in social life. from one natural to take no substitute Au lieu de detruire l'egalite naturelle, le pacte fondamental substitue au contraire une egalite morale et legitime ace que la nature avoit pu 232 for the hand, he was later which they ought to form should differences of moral equality that the politi- a variations �mettre d'inegalite physique entre les hommes, et que, pcuv~nt ctre inegaux en force OU en genie, ils deviennent tous egaux par convention et de droi t. 2-50 The supposed he maintained function legal equality there, of men under our present is nothing is to preserve and power of the rich, but a sham and an illusion. the misery so that constitutions, Its of the poor and the arrogated our systems only wealth of law are now always utiles a ceux qui possedent et nuisibles a ceux qui n'ont rien: D'ou il suit que l'etat social n'est avantageux aux hommes qu '.autant qu 'ils ont tous quelque chose et qu'aucun d'eux n'a rien de trop,251 The social contract to which we ought to adhere, devised by men who have no wish to secure through deceit als together command. persons, to live and subterfuge, in relations Such equality not to retain and its of equality any particular purpose rather under the same conditions must be advantage must be to bind individuthan of subservience could only be achieved what they already however, by an agreement owned, but, and between on the contrary, and to enjoy the same political rights. Le pacte social etablit entre les citoyens une telle egalite qu'ils s'engagent tous sous les memes conditions, et doivent jouir tous des memes droits. Ainsi par la nature du pacte, tout acte de souverainete, c'est-a-dire tout acte authentique de la volonte generale, oblige OU favorise egalement tousles Citoy~ns, ensorte que le Souvera1n connoit seulement le corps de la nation et ne distingue aucun de ceux qui la composent.252 250. 251. Contrat social, Ibid., note. I.ix, O.C.III, p. 367. 252. Ibid., II.iv, O.C.III, p. 374. Cf. the following passage from the Contrat social, II. xi, ibid., p. 391: "Si 1 1 on recherche en quoi consiste precisement le plus grand bien de tous, qui doit etre la fin de tout sisteme de legislation, on trouvera qu'il se reduit aces deux objets principaux, la liberte, et l'egalite, Laliberte, parce que toute 233 �Hence whereas every one of us has the capacity for Rousseau it interests is only if we come to attach which we share begin to make ourselves To achieve tures this come to conceive required significance in common with our neighbours better instead aim would require of our current to improve his nature, states, to those that of worse than other the reconstitution we can creatures. of the struc- and both the manner in which we might such a programme, as well as the terms which might be to inaugurate and sustain it, which Rousseau was to turn his attention form the central in the Contrat problems to social. dependance particuliere est autant de force otee au corps de l'Etat; ]_' egalite ') parce que la liberte ne peut subsister sans elle. II On the subject of equality in both the second Discours and the Contrat social see especially Raymond Polin, La politiaue de la solitude. Essai sur la Philosophie politigue de Rousseau (Paris 1971), pp. 107-134. 234 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource PhD Thesis Subject The topic of the resource <strong>Title: </strong>Rousseau on Society, Politics, Music and Language - An Interpretation of His Early Writings<br /><strong><br /></strong> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Robert Wokler Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1987 Description An account of the resource <strong>Abstract:</strong> This study is focused upon a variety of specific problems which I believe the early writings of Rousseau were designed to solve. Most of the works that are discussed here were drafted by Rousseau between 1750 and 1756, and I shall argue that a proper grasp of this fact about their temporal proximity is important to an understanding of the conceptual relations which underlie them. I hope to show that any accurate account of Rousseau's meaning must incorporate a careful examination of the context in which his ideas were developed, and I shall therefore be concerned very largely with the manner in which his writings were conceived as replies to arguments that were produced by other thinkers. The first chapter is devoted to an account of some mistaken interpretations of Rousseau's meaning. We often confuse our own beliefs about the contemporary significance of certain ideas with the sense which their authors originally intended they should have, and in this chapter I consider a number of misconceptions of that kind, as well as some mistaken correctives to them, which have appeared in Rousseau studies. The views of C.E. Vaughan and Robert Derathe, in particular, are discussed with reference to these problems. The second chapter is concerned with the influence of Diderot upon Rousseau and especially with the intellectual debt which Rousseau owed to Diderot's article 'Droit naturel'. The 'Economie politique' and the Manuscrit de Geneve are shown to exhibit the influence of Diderot in two quite different ways, and the conceptions of the 'volonté generale' of the two figures are compared in the light of the differences between their accounts of the natural society of mankind. In the third chapter the arguments of the <em>Discours sur l'inegalité</em> are examined in connection with the ideas of several other figures from whom Rousseau drew some inspiration or against whom he raised some objections in that work. The chapter opens with a challenge to the thesis that the second Discours bears the stamp of Diderot's influence, and it continues with several sections, which are concerned with the historical, anthropological, linguistic, and political views of Buffon, Condillac, and Hobbes and Locke, respectively, while two final sections describe Rousseau's account of the transformation of natural into social man. The fourth chapter compares a number of ideas about the nature and origin of music which were put forward by Rameau and Rousseau. It traces the course of their controversy about this subject through the writings of both thinkers, and in the case of Rousseau it is addressed especially to his articles on music in the <em>Encyclopedie</em>, his <em>Lettre sur la musique françoise</em>, his <em>Examen de deux principes</em>, and his <em>Essai sur l'origine des langues</em>. It also attempts to establish that the <em>Discours sur l'inegalité</em>&nbsp;at first contained a section about the genesis of music which Rousseau eventually incorporated in the <em>Essai sur l'origine des langues</em>. The chapter, moreover, offers an interpretation of the place of music and language in the general context of Rousseau's social theory, and it provides a critique of several accounts of tbe historical relation between the <em>Essai</em> and the second <em>Discours</em> which have neglected that common feature of their meaning. The final chapter is concerned with the&nbsp;<em>Discours sur les sciences et les arts</em> and with the writings which Rousseau produced between 1751 and 1753 in defence of that text against its critics. I argue there that while the first <em>Discours</em> is the most shallow and least original of all of Rousseau's major works, the controversy which followed its publication helped him to focus his ideas about culture and society much more sharply than he had done before. I try to show that Rousseau's replies to the detractors of the <em>Premier Discours</em> constitute a refinement of his views along the paths which he was then to pursue further in the <em>Discours sur l'inegalité</em>&nbsp;and the <em>Essai sur l'origine des langues</em>, and I conclude with some reflections about the systematic nature of his early social theory as it was developed in the period between his composition of the first and second <em>Discours</em>. The appendix consists of an annotated transcription of the manuscript on the origins of music and language discussed at length in chapter IV. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://s127526803.onlinehome.us/wokler/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Robert Wokler</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Garland Publishing, Inc., New York & London Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 520 + vii pages. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Chapter 3: The <em>Discourse sur l'inégalité</em> and its Sources Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Robert Wokler Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1987 Description An account of the resource pp. 101-234. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context IHA/Wokler/635 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Institute of Intellectual History, University of St Andrews Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Garland Publishing, Inc., New York & London Pufendorf Rousseau