man might, indeed, seize on the fruits which
another had gathered, on the game which another had killed, on the
cavern which another had occupied for shelter; but how is it possible
he should ever exact obedience from him, and what chains of dependence
can there be among men who possess nothing? If I am driven from one
tree, I have nothing to do but look out for another; if one place is
made uneasy to me, what can hinder me from taking up my quarters
elsewhere? But suppose I should meet a man so much superior to me in
strength, and withal so wicked, so lazy and so barbarous as to oblige
me to provide for his subsistence while he remains idle; he must
resolve not to take his eyes from me a single moment, to bind me fast
before he can take the least nap, lest I should kill him or give him
the slip during his sleep: that is to say, he must expose himself
voluntarily to much greater troubles than what he seeks to avoid, than
any he gives me. And after all, let him abate ever so little of his
vigilance; let him at some sudden noise but turn his head another way;
I am already buried in the forest, my fetters are broke, and he never
sees me again.

But without insisting any longer upon these details, every one must
see that, as the bonds of servitude are formed merely by the mutual
dependence of men one upon another and the reciprocal necessities
which unite them, it is impossible for one man to enslave another,
without having first reduced him to a condition in which he can not
live without the enslaver's assistance; a condition which, as it does
not exist in a state of nature, must leave every man his own master,
and render the law of the strongest altogether vain and useless.

Having proved that the inequality, which may subsist between man and
man in a state of nature, is almost imperceivable, and that it has
very little influence, I must now proceed to show its origin, and
trace its progress, in the successive developments of the human mind.
After having showed, that perfectibility, the social virtues, and the
other faculties, which natural man had received _in potentia_, could
never be developed of themselves, that for that purpose there was a
necessity for the fortuitous concurrence of several foreign causes,
which might never happen, and without which he must have eternally
remained in his primitive condition; I must proceed to consider and
bring together the different accidents which may have perfected the
human un