s; this idea being an abstract one. We, on the contrary, starting
with the principle that society implies equality, can, by our reasoning
faculty, understand and agree with each other in settling our rights;
we have even used our judgment to a great extent. But in all this our
conscience plays a small part, as is proved by the fact that the idea
of RIGHT--of which we catch a glimpse in certain animals who approach
nearer than any others to our standard of intelligence--seems to grow,
from the low level at which it stands in savages, to the lofty height
which it reaches in a Plato or a Franklin. If we trace the development
of the moral sense in individuals, and the progress of laws in nations,
we shall be convinced that the ideas of justice and legislative
perfection are always proportional to intelligence. The notion of
justice--which has been regarded by some philosophers as simple--is
then, in reality, complex. It springs from the social instinct on the
one hand, and the idea of equality on the other; just as the notion of
guilt arises from the feeling that justice has been violated, and from
the idea of free-will.

In conclusion, instinct is not modified by acquaintance with its nature;
and the facts of society, which we have thus far observed, occur among
beasts as well as men. We know the meaning of justice; in other words,
of sociability viewed from the standpoint of equality. We have met with
nothing which separates us from the animals.

% 3.--Of the third degree of Sociability.

The reader, perhaps, has not forgotten what was said in the third
chapter concerning the division of labor and the speciality of talents.
The sum total of the talents and capacities of the race is always
the same, and their nature is always similar. We are all born poets,
mathematicians, philosophers, artists, artisans, or farmers, but we are
not born equally endowed; and between one man and another in society,
or between one faculty and another in the same individual, there is an
infinite difference. This difference of degree in the same faculties,
this predominance of talent in certain directions, is, we have said,
the very foundation of our society. Intelligence and natural genius have
been distributed by Nature so economically, and yet so liberally, that
in society there is no danger of either a surplus or a scarcity of
special talents; and that each laborer, by devoting himself to his
function, may always attain to the degre