without any benefit to the society. Farther, they are proofs of a life
truly wretched, and a social state so depraved or null, that a man,
neither finding nor hoping any succor or assistance from it, is obliged
to wrap himself up in despair, and endeavor to harden himself against
the strokes of fate. Still it may be urged that these men, in their
leisure hours, laugh, sing, play, and live without care for the past as
well as for the future. Will you then deny that they are happier than
we? Man is such a pitiable and variable creature, and habits have such a
potent sway over him, that in the most disastrous situations he always
finds some posture that gives him ease, something that consoles him,
and, by comparison with past suffering, appears to him well-being and
happiness; but if to laugh, sing, or play constitute bliss, it must
likewise be granted that soldiers are perfectly happy beings, since
there are no men more careless or more gay in dangers or on the eve of
battle. It must be granted, too, that during the Revolution, in the most
fatal of our jails, the Conciergerie, the prisoners were very happy,
since they were, in general, more careless and gay than their keepers,
or than those who only feared the same fate. The anxieties of those who
were at large were as numerous as the enjoyments they wished to
preserve; they who were in the other prisons felt but one, that of
preserving their lives. In the Conciergerie, where a man was condemned
in expectation or in reality, he had no longer any care; on the
contrary, every moment of life was an acquisition, the gain of a good
that was considered as lost. Such is nearly the situation of a soldier
in war, and such is really that of the savage throughout the whole
course of his life. If this be happiness, wretched indeed must be the
country where it is an object of envy. In pursuing my investigation, I
do not find that I am led to more advantageous ideas of the liberty of
the savage; on the contrary, I sees in him only the slave of his wants,
and of the freaks of a sterile and parsimonious nature. Food he has not
at hand; rest is not at his command; he must run, weary himself, endure
hunger and thirst, heat and cold, and all the inclemency of the elements
and seasons; and as the ignorance in which he was born and bred gives
him or leaves him a multitude of false and irrational ideas and
superstitious prejudices, he is likewise the slave of a number of errors
and passions, fro