glided away in all the
rudeness of the first ages, the race was already old, the individual
remained always a child."

This brings us to the point of the matter. For if you compare the
prodigious diversities in education and manner of life which reign in
the different orders of the civil condition, with the simplicity and
uniformity of the savage and animal life, where all find nourishment in
the same articles of food, live in the same way, and do exactly the same
things, you will easily understand to what degree the difference between
man and man must be less in the state of nature than in that of
society.[185] Physical inequality is hardly perceived in the state of
nature, and its indirect influences there are almost non-existent.

Now as all the social virtues and other faculties possessed by man
potentially were not bound by anything inherent in him to develop into
actuality, he might have remained to all eternity in his admirable and
most fitting primitive condition, but for the fortuitous concurrence of
a variety of external changes. What are these different changes, which
may perhaps have perfected human reason, while they certainly have
deteriorated the race, and made men bad in making them sociable?

What, then, are the intermediary facts between the state of nature and
the state of civil society, the nursery of inequality? What broke up the
happy uniformity of the first times? First, difference in soil, in
climate, in seasons, led to corresponding differences in men's manner of
living. Along the banks of rivers and on the shores of the sea, they
invented hooks and lines, and were eaters of fish. In the forests they
invented bows and arrows, and became hunters. In cold countries they
covered themselves with the skins of beasts. Lightning, volcanoes, or
some happy chance acquainted them with fire, a new protection against
the rigours of winter. In company with these natural acquisitions, grew
up a sort of reflection or mechanical prudence, which showed them the
kind of precautions most necessary to their security. From this
rudimentary and wholly egoistic reflection there came a sense of the
existence of a similar nature and similar interests in their
fellow-creatures. Instructed by experience that the love of well-being
and comfort is the only motive of human actions, the savage united with
his neighbours when union was for their joint convenience, and did his
best to blind and outwit his neighbours when the