A Discourse Upon the Origin and the Foundation of the Inequality Among Mankind | Page 9

to oblige her to produce those things, which we like best,
preferably to others? But let us suppose that men had multiplied to such a degree, that the
natural products of the earth no longer sufficed for their support; a supposition which, by
the bye, would prove that this kind of life would be very advantageous to the human
species; let us suppose that, without forge or anvil, the instruments of husbandry had
dropped from the heavens into the hands of savages, that these men had got the better of
that mortal aversion they all have for constant labour; that they had learned to foretell
their wants at so great a distance of time; that they had guessed exactly how they were to
break the earth, commit their seed to it, and plant trees; that they had found out the art of
grinding their corn, and improving by fermentation the juice of their grapes; all
operations which we must allow them to have learned from the gods, since we cannot
conceive how they should make such discoveries of themselves; after all these fine
presents, what man would be mad enough to cultivate a field, that may be robbed by the
first comer, man or beast, who takes a fancy to the produce of it. And would any man
consent to spend his day in labour and fatigue, when the rewards of his labour and fatigue
became more and more precarious in proportion to his want of them? In a word, how
could this situation engage men to cultivate the earth, as long as it was not parcelled out
among them, that is, as long as a state of nature subsisted.
Though we should suppose savage man as well versed in the art of thinking, as
philosophers make him; though we were, after them, to make him a philosopher himself,
discovering of himself the sublimest truths, forming to himself, by the most abstract
arguments, maxims of justice and reason drawn from the love of order in general, or from
the known will of his Creator: in a word, though we were to suppose his mind as
intelligent and enlightened, as it must, and is, in fact, found to be dull and stupid; what
benefit would the species receive from all these metaphysical discoveries, which could
not be communicated, but must perish with the individual who had made them? What
progress could mankind make in the forests, scattered up and down among the other
animals? And to what degree could men mutually improve and enlighten each other,
when they had no fixed habitation, nor any need of each other's assistance; when the
same persons scarcely met twice in their whole lives, and on meeting neither spoke to, or
so much as knew each other?
Let us consider how many ideas we owe to the use of speech; how much grammar
exercises, and facilitates the operations of the mind; let us, besides, reflect on the
immense pains and time that the first invention of languages must have required: Let us
add these reflections to the preceding; and then we may judge how many thousand ages
must have been requisite to develop successively the operations, which the human mind
is capable of producing.
I must now beg leave to stop one moment to consider the perplexities attending the origin
of languages. I might here barely cite or repeat the researches made, in relation to this
question, by the Abbe de Condillac, which all fully confirm my system, and perhaps even
suggested to me the first idea of it. But, as the manner, in which the philosopher resolves
the difficulties of his own starting, concerning the origin of arbitrary signs, shows that he
supposes, what I doubt, namely a kind of society already established among the inventors
of languages; I think it my duty, at the same time that I refer to his reflections, to give my
own, in order to expose the same difficulties in a light suitable to my subject. The first

that offers is how languages could become necessary; for as there was no correspondence
between men, nor the least necessity for any, there is no conceiving the necessity of this
invention, nor the possibility of it, if it was not indispensable. I might say, with many
others, that languages are the fruit of the domestic intercourse between fathers, mothers,
and children: but this, besides its not answering any difficulties, would be committing the
same fault with those, who reasoning on the state of nature, transfer to it ideas collected
in society, always consider families as living together under one roof, and their members
as observing among themselves an union, equally intimate and permanent with that
which we see exist in a civil state, where so many common interests conspire to unite
them;