A Discourse Upon the Origin and the Foundation of the Inequality Among Mankind | Page 8

occasioned new developments.
Let moralists say what they will, the human understanding is greatly indebted to the
passions, which, on their side, are likewise universally allowed to be greatly indebted to
the human understanding. It is by the activity of our passions, that our reason improves:
we covet knowledge merely because we covet enjoyment, and it is impossible to
conceive why a man exempt from fears and desires should take the trouble to reason. The

passions, in their turn, owe their origin to our wants, and their increase to our progress in
science; for we cannot desire or fear anything, but in consequence of the ideas we have of
it, or of the simple impulses of nature; and savage man, destitute of every species of
knowledge, experiences no passions but those of this last kind; his desires never extend
beyond his physical wants; he knows no goods but food, a female, and rest; he fears no
evil but pain, and hunger; I say pain, and not death; for no animal, merely as such, will
ever know what it is to die, and the knowledge of death, and of its terrors, is one of the
first acquisitions made by man, in consequence of his deviating from the animal state.
I could easily, were it requisite, cite facts in support of this opinion, and show, that the
progress of the mind has everywhere kept pace exactly with the wants, to which nature
had left the inhabitants exposed, or to which circumstances had subjected them, and
consequently to the passions, which inclined them to provide for these wants. I could
exhibit in Egypt the arts starting up, and extending themselves with the inundations of the
Nile; I could pursue them in their progress among the Greeks, where they were seen to
bud forth, grow, and rise to the heavens, in the midst of the sands and rocks of Attica,
without being able to take root on the fertile banks of the Eurotas; I would observe that,
in general, the inhabitants of the north are more industrious than those of the south,
because they can less do without industry; as if nature thus meant to make all things equal,
by giving to the mind that fertility she has denied to the soil.
But exclusive of the uncertain testimonies of history, who does not perceive that
everything seems to remove from savage man the temptation and the means of altering
his condition? His imagination paints nothing to him; his heart asks nothing from him.
His moderate wants are so easily supplied with what he everywhere finds ready to his
hand, and he stands at such a distance from the degree of knowledge requisite to covet
more, that he can neither have foresight nor curiosity. The spectacle of nature, by
growing quite familiar to him, becomes at last equally indifferent. It is constantly the
same order, constantly the same revolutions; he has not sense enough to feel surprise at
the sight of the greatest wonders; and it is not in his mind we must look for that
philosophy, which man must have to know how to observe once, what he has every day
seen. His soul, which nothing disturbs, gives itself up entirely to the consciousness of its
actual existence, without any thought of even the nearest futurity; and his projects,
equally confined with his views, scarce extend to the end of the day. Such is, even at
present, the degree of foresight in the Caribbean: he sells his cotton bed in the morning,
and comes in the evening, with tears in his eyes, to buy it back, not having foreseen that
he should want it again the next night.
The more we meditate on this subject, the wider does the distance between mere
sensation and the most simple knowledge become in our eyes; and it is impossible to
conceive how man, by his own powers alone, without the assistance of communication,
and the spur of necessity, could have got over so great an interval. How many ages
perhaps revolved, before men beheld any other fire but that of the heavens? How many
different accidents must have concurred to make them acquainted with the most common
uses of this element? How often have they let it go out, before they knew the art of
reproducing it? And how often perhaps has not every one of these secrets perished with
the discoverer? What shall we say of agriculture, an art which requires so much labour
and foresight; which depends upon other arts; which, it is very evident, cannot be
practised but in a society, if not a formed one, at least one of some standing, and which

does not so much serve to draw aliments from the earth, for the earth would yield them
without all that trouble, as