e of proficiency necessary to
enable him to benefit by the labors and discoveries of his fellows.
Owing to this simple and wise precaution of Nature, the laborer is not
isolated by his task. He communicates with his fellows through the mind,
before he is united with them in heart; so that with him love is born of
intelligence.

It is not so with societies of animals. In every species, the aptitudes
of all the individuals--though very limited--are equal in number and
(when they are not the result of instinct) in intensity. Each one does
as well as all the others what all the others do; provides his food,
avoids the enemy, burrows in the earth, builds a nest, &c. No animal,
when free and healthy, expects or requires the aid of his neighbor; who,
in his turn, is equally independent.

Associated animals live side by side without any intellectual
intercourse or intimate communication,--all doing the same things,
having nothing to learn or to remember; they see, feel, and come in
contact with each other, but never penetrate each other. Man continually
exchanges with man ideas and feelings, products and services. Every
discovery and act in society is necessary to him. But of this immense
quantity of products and ideas, that which each one has to produce and
acquire for himself is but an atom in the sun. Man would not be man were
it not for society, and society is supported by the balance and harmony
of the powers which compose it.

Society, among the animals, is SIMPLE; with man it is COMPLEX. Man is
associated with man by the same instinct which associates animal with
animal; but man is associated differently from the animal, and it is
this difference in association which constitutes the difference in
morality.

I have proved,--at too great length, perhaps,--both by the spirit of
the laws which regard property as the basis of society, and by political
economy, that inequality of conditions is justified neither by priority
of occupation nor superiority of talent, service, industry, and
capacity. But, although equality of conditions is a necessary
consequence of natural right, of liberty, of the laws of production,
of the capacity of physical nature, and of the principle of society
itself,--it does not prevent the social sentiment from stepping over the
boundaries of DEBT and CREDIT. The fields of benevolence and love extend
far beyond; and when economy has adjusted its balance, the mind
begins to benefit by its own justic