ho was forced to admit the existence of this
admirable quality in man, was absurd in not perceiving that from it flow
all the social virtues which he would fain deny. Pity is more energetic
in the primitive condition than it is among ourselves. It is reflection
which isolates one. It is philosophy which teaches the philosopher to
say secretly at sight of a suffering wretch, Perish if it please thee; I
am safe and sound. They may be butchering a fellow-creature under your
window; all you have to do is to clap your hands to your ears, and argue
a little with yourself to hinder nature in revolt from making you feel
as if you were in the case of the victim.[182] The savage man has not
got this odious gift. In the state of nature it is pity that takes the
place of laws, manners, and virtue. It is in this natural sentiment
rather than in subtle arguments that we have to seek the reluctance that
every man would feel to do ill, even without the precepts of
education.[183]

Finally, the passion of love, which produces such disasters in a state
of society, where the jealousy of lovers and the vengeance of husbands
lead each day to duels and murders, where the duty of eternal fidelity
only serves to occasion adulteries, and where the law of continence
necessarily extends the debauching of women and the practice of
procuring abortion[184]--this passion in a state of nature, where it is
purely physical, momentary, and without any association of durable
sentiment with the object of it, simply leads to the necessary
reproduction of the species and nothing more.

"Let us conclude, then, that wandering in the forests, without industry,
without speech, without habitation, without war, without connection of
any kind, without any need of his fellows or without any desire to harm
them, perhaps even without ever recognising one of them individually,
savage man, subject to few passions and sufficing to himself, had only
the sentiments and the enlightenment proper to his condition. He was
only sensible of his real wants, and only looked because he thought he
had an interest in seeing; and his intelligence made no more progress
than his vanity. If by chance he hit on some discovery, he was all the
less able to communicate it; as he did not know even his own children.
An art perished with its inventor. There was neither education nor
progress; generations multiplied uselessly; and as each generation
always started from the same point, centuries