individually, subject to few passions, and sufficient to himself, had
only the feeling and the intelligence proper to his state; that he felt
only his real needs; he looked only at those things which he thought it
was for his interest to see, and his intelligence made no more progress
than his vanity. If, by chance, he made some discovery, he could not
communicate it, not recognizing even his own children. The art perished
with the inventor. There was neither education nor progress; the
generations multiplied uselessly; and, as all started from the same
point, the centuries went by with all the rudeness of the first age; the
species was already old, and man still remained a child."

Inequalities among savage men would be small. Those which are physical
are often caused by a hardening or an effeminate life; those of the
mind, by education, which not only divides men into the rude and the
cultivated, but increases the natural differences which nature has
allowed among the latter; for if a giant and a dwarf walk in the same
road, every step they take will separate them more widely. And if there
are no relations among men, their inequalities will trouble them very
little. Where there is no love, what is the use of beauty? What
advantage can people who do not speak derive from wit; or those who have
no dealings from craft? "I constantly hear it said," cries Rousseau,
"that the strong will oppress the weak. But explain to me what is meant
by the word "oppression." Some men will rule with violence, others will
groan in their service, obeying all their caprices. This is exactly what
I observe among us; but I do not see how it could be said of savage men,
who could hardly be made to understand the meaning of servitude and
domination. One man may well take away the fruit that another has
picked, the game he has killed, the cave that was his shelter; but how
will he ever succeed in making him obey? And what can be the chains of
dependence among men that possess nothing? If I am driven from one tree,