inventions. A rude language had been formed, huts were built. Men had
become more fierce and cruel than at first. The condition was
intermediate between the indolence of the primitive state, and the
petulant activity of self-love now seen in the world. This, he thought,
was the stage reached by most savages known to Europeans; it was the
most desirable; and he remarks that no savage has yet adopted
civilization, whereas many Frenchmen have joined Indian tribes, and
taken up a savage mode of life.

In closing the Second Discourse, Rousseau thus sums up his conclusions.
"It follows from this exposition that inequality, being almost nothing
in the state of nature, draws its force and growth from the development
of our faculties and from the progress of the human spirit, and becomes
at last stable and legal by the establishment of property and the laws.
It follows also that moral inequality, authorized by positive law only,
is contrary to natural law whenever it does not coincide in the same
proportion with physical inequality; a distinction which shows
sufficiently what should be thought in this respect of the kind of
inequality which reigns among all civilized nations, since it is
manifestly contrary to the law of nature, however defined, that a child
should command an old man, a fool lead a wise man, and a handful of
people be glutted with superfluity, while the hungry multitude is in
want of necessaries."

The Discourse on Inequality was sent by Rousseau to Voltaire, and drew
forth a characteristic letter from the pontiff of the Philosophers. "I
have received, sir, your new book against the human race. I thank you
for it. You will please the men to whom you tell disagreeable truths,
but you will not correct them. It is impossible to paint in stronger
colors the horrors of human society, from which our ignorance and