The form of government is a
matter of indifference, provided you can only assure community of goods.
Political revolutions are at bottom the clash of material interests, and
until you have equalised the one you will never prevent the other.[179]

Let us turn from this very definite position to one of the least
definite productions to be found in all literature.

* * * * *

It will seem a little odd that more than half of a discussion on the
origin of inequality among men should be devoted to a glowing imaginary
description, from which no reader could conjecture what thesis it was
designed to support. But we have only to remember that Rousseau's object
was to persuade people that the happier state is that in which
inequality does not subsist, that there had once been such a state, and
that this was first the state of nature, and then the state only one
degree removed from it, in which we now find the majority of savage
tribes. At the outset he defines inequality as a word meaning two
different things; one, natural or physical inequality, such as
difference of age, of health, of physical strength, of attributes of
intelligence and character; the other, moral or political inequality,
consisting in difference of privileges which some enjoy to the detriment
of the rest, such as being richer, more honoured, more powerful. The
former differences are established by nature, the latter are authorised,
if they were not established, by the consent of men.[180] In the state
of nature no inequalities flow from the differences among men in point
of physical advantage and disadvantage, and which remain without
derivative differences so long as the state of nature endures
undisturbed. Nature deals with men as the law of Sparta dealt with the
children of its citizens; she makes those who are well constituted
strong and robust, and she destroys all the rest.

The surface of the earth is originally covered by dense forest, and
inhabited by animals of every species. Men, scattered among them,
imitate their industry, and so rise to the instinct of the brutes, with
this advantage that while each species has only its own, man, without
anything special, appropriates the instincts of all. This admirable
creature, with foes on every side, is forced to be constantly on the
alert, and hence to be always in full possession of all his faculties,
unlike civilised man, whose native force is enfeebled by the mechanical