ping; it is Esau selling his
birthright for a mess of pottage, and afterwards wishing to cancel
the bargain; it is the civilized workman laboring in insecurity, and
continually demanding that his wages be increased, neither he nor his
employer understanding that, in the absence of equality, any salary,
however large, is always insufficient. Then it is Naboth dying to defend
his inheritance; Cato tearing out his entrails that he might not be
enslaved; Socrates drinking the fatal cup in defence of liberty of
thought; it is the third estate of '89 reclaiming its liberty: soon it
will be the people demanding equality of wages and an equal division of
the means of production.

Man is born a social being,--that is, he seeks equality and justice in
all his relations, but he loves independence and praise. The difficulty
of satisfying these various desires at the same time is the primary
cause of the despotism of the will, and the appropriation which results
from it. On the other hand, man always needs a market for his products;
unable to compare values of different kinds, he is satisfied to judge
approximately, according to his passion and caprice; and he engages in
dishonest commerce, which always results in wealth and poverty. Thus,
the greatest evils which man suffers arise from the misuse of his social
nature, of this same justice of which he is so proud, and which he
applies with such deplorable ignorance.

The practice of justice is a science which, when once discovered
and diffused, will sooner or later put an end to social disorder, by
teaching us our rights and duties.

This progressive and painful education of our instinct, this slow
and imperceptible transformation of our spontaneous perceptions into
deliberate knowledge, does not take place among the animals, whose
instincts remain fixed, and never become enlightened.

"According to Frederic Cuvier, who has so clearly distinguished between
instinct and intelligence in animals, 'instinct is a natural and
inherent faculty, like feeling, irritability, or intelligence. The wolf
and the fox who recognize the traps in which they have been caught, and
who avoid them; the dog and the horse, who understand the meaning of
several of our words, and who obey us,--thereby show _intelligence_.
The dog who hides the remains of his dinner, the bee who constructs his
cell, the bird who builds his nest, act only from _instinct_. Even man
has instincts: it is a special instinct