anner
of life, a sameness of provisions, and the common influence of the
climate. A permanent neighborhood must at last infallibly create some
connection between different families. The transitory commerce
required by nature soon produced, among the youth of both sexes living
in contiguous cabins, another kind of commerce, which besides being
equally agreeable is rendered more durable by mutual intercourse. Men
begin to consider different objects, and to make comparisons; they
insensibly acquire ideas of merit and beauty, and these soon produce
sentiments of preference. By seeing each other often they contract a
habit, which makes it painful not to see each other always. Tender and
agreeable sentiments steal into the soul, and are by the smallest
opposition wound up into the most impetuous fury: Jealousy kindles
with love; discord triumphs; and the gentlest of passions requires
sacrifices of human blood to appease it.

In proportion as ideas and sentiments succeed each other, and the head
and the heart exercise themselves, men continue to shake off their
original wildness, and their connections become more intimate and
extensive. They now begin to assemble round a great tree: singing and
dancing, the genuine offspring of love and leisure, become the
amusement or rather the occupation of the men and women, free from
care, thus gathered together. Every one begins to survey the rest, and
wishes to be surveyed himself; and public esteem acquires a value. He
who sings or dances best; the handsomest, the strongest, the most
dexterous, the most eloquent, comes to be the most respected: this was
the first step towards inequality, and at the same time towards vice.
From these first preferences there proceeded on one side vanity and
contempt, on the other envy and shame; and the fermentation raised by
these new leavens at length produced combinations fatal to happiness
and innocence.

Men no sooner began to set a value upon each other, and know what
esteem was, than each laid claim to it, and it was no longer safe for
any man to refuse it to another. Hence the first duties of civility
and politeness, even among savages; and hence every voluntary injury
became an affront, as besides the mischief, which resulted from it as
an injury, the party offended was sure to find in it a contempt for
his person more intolerable than the mischief itself. It was thus that
every man, punishing the contempt expressed for him by others in
propo