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"So long as men remained content with their rustic huts, so long as they were satisfied with clothes
made of the skins of animals and sewn together with thorns and fish-bones, adorned themselves
only with feathers and shells, and continued to paint their bodies different colours, to improve and
beautify their bows and arrows and to make with sharp-edged stones fishing boats or clumsy
musical instruments; in a word, so long as they undertook only what a single person could
accomplish, and confined themselves to such arts as did not require the joint labour of several
hands, they lived free, healthy, honest and happy lives, so long as their nature allowed, and as they
continued to enjoy the pleasures of mutual and independent intercourse. But from the moment one
man began to stand in need of the help of another; from the moment it appeared advantageous to
any one man to have enough provisions for two, equality disappeared, property was introduced,
work became indispensable, and vast forests became smiling fields, which man had to water with
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the sweat of his brow, and where slavery and misery were soon seen to germinate and grow up with
the crops.
Metallurgy and agriculture were the two arts which produced this great revolution. The poets tell us
it was gold and silver, but, for the philosophers, it was iron and corn, which first civilised men, and
ruined humanity. Thus both were unknown to the savages of America, who for that reason are still
savage: the other nations also seem to have continued in a state of barbarism while they practised
only one of these arts. One of the best reasons, perhaps, why Europe has been, if not longer, at least
more constantly and highly civilised than the rest of the world, is that it is at once the most abundant
in iron and the most fertile in corn."

"Before the invention of signs to represent riches, wealth could hardly consist in anything but lands
and cattle, the only real possessions men can have. But, when inheritances so increased in number
and extent as to occupy the whole of the land, and to border on one another, one man could
aggrandise himself only at the expense of another; at the same time the supernumeraries, who had
been too weak or too indolent to make such acquisitions, and had grown poor without sustaining
any loss, because, while they saw everything change around them, they remained still the same,
were obliged to receive their subsistence, or steal it, from the rich; and this soon bred, according to
their different characters, dominion and slavery, or violence and rapine. The wealthy, on their part,
had no sooner begun to taste the pleasure of command, than they disdained all others, and, using
their old slaves to acquire new, thought of nothing but subduing and enslaving their neighbours;
like ravenous wolves, which, having once tasted human flesh, despise every other food and
thenceforth seek only men to devour.
Thus, as the most powerful or the most miserable considered their might or misery as a kind of right
to the possessions of others, equivalent, in their opinion, to that of property, the destruction of
equality was attended by the most terrible disorders. Usurpations by the rich, robbery by the poor,
and the unbridled passions of both, suppressed the cries of natural compassion and the still feeble
voice of justice, and filled men with avarice, ambition and vice. Between the title of the strongest
and that of the first occupier, there arose perpetual conflicts, which never ended but in battles and
bloodshed. The new-born state of society thus gave rise to a horrible state of war; men thus harassed
and depraved were no longer capable of retracing their steps or renouncing the fatal acquisitions
they had made, but, labouring by the abuse of the faculties which do them honour, merely to their
own confusion, brought themselves to the brink of ruin.
Attonitus novitate mali, divesque miserque,
Effugere optat opes; et quæ modo voverat odit6
It is impossible that men should not at length have reflected on so wretched a situation, and on the
calamities that overwhelmed them. The rich, in particular, must have felt how much they suffered
by a constant state of war, of which they bore all the expense; and in which, though all risked their
lives, they alone risked their property. Besides, however speciously they might disguise their
usurpations, they knew that they were founded on precarious and false titles; so that, if others took
from them by force what they themselves had gained by force, they would have no reason to complain. Even those who had been enriched by their own industry, could hardly base their
proprietorship on better claims. It was in vain to repeat, “I built this well; I gained this spot by my
industry.” Who gave you your standing, it might be answered, and what right have you to demand
payment of us for doing what we never asked you to do? Do you not know that numbers of your
fellow-creatures are starving, for want of what you have too much of? You ought to have had the
express and universal consent of mankind, before appropriating more of the common subsistence
than you needed for your own maintenance. Destitute of valid reasons to justify and sufficient
strength to defend himself, able to crush individuals with ease, but easily crushed himself by a troop
of bandits, one against all, and incapable, on account of mutual jealousy, of joining with his equals
against numerous enemies united by the common hope of plunder, the rich man, thus urged by
necessity, conceived at length the profoundest plan that ever entered the mind of man: this was to
employ in his favour the forces of those who attacked him, to make allies of his adversaries, to
inspire them with different maxims, and to give them other institutions as favourable to himself as
the law of nature was unfavourable.
With this view, after having represented to his neighbours the horror of a situation which armed
every man against the rest, and made their possessions as burdensome to them as their wants, and in
which no safety could be expected either in riches or in poverty, he readily devised plausible
arguments to make them close with his design. “Let us join,” said he, “to guard the weak from
oppression, to restrain the ambitious, and secure to every man the possession of what belongs to
him: let us institute rules of justice and peace, to which all without exception may be obliged to
conform; rules that may in some measure make amends for the caprices of fortune, by subjecting
equally the powerful and the weak to the observance of reciprocal obligations. Let us, in a word,
instead of turning our forces against ourselves, collect them in a supreme power which may govern
us by wise laws, protect and defend all the members of the association, repulse their common
enemies, and maintain eternal harmony among us.”
Far fewer words to this purpose would have been enough to impose on men so barbarous and easily
seduced; especially as they had too many disputes among themselves to do without arbitrators, and
too much ambition and avarice to go long without masters. All ran headlong to their chains, in
hopes of securing their liberty; for they had just wit enough to perceive the advantages of political
institutions, without experience enough to enable them to foresee the dangers. The most capable of
foreseeing the dangers were the very persons who expected to benefit by them; and even the most
prudent judged it not inexpedient to sacrifice one part of their freedom to ensure the rest; as a
wounded man has his arm cut off to save the rest of his body.
Such was, or may well have been, the origin of society and law, which bound new fetters on the
poor, and gave new powers to the rich; which irretrievably destroyed natural liberty, eternally fixed
the law of property and inequality, converted clever usurpation into unalterable right, and, for the
advantage of a few ambitious individuals, subjected all mankind to perpetual labour, slavery and
wretchedness."