efined policy would find it impossible to subdue those men, who
only desire to be independent; but inequality easily gains ground
among base and ambitious souls, ever ready to run the risks of
fortune, and almost indifferent whether they command or obey, as she
proves either favourable or adverse to them. Thus then there must have
been a time, when the eyes of the people were bewitched to such a
degree, that their rulers needed only to have said to the most pitiful
wretch, "Be great you and all your posterity," to make him immediately
appear great in the eyes of every one as well as in his own; and his
descendants took still more upon them, in proportion to their removes
from him: the more distant and uncertain the cause, the greater the
effect; the longer line of drones a family produced, the more
illustrious it was reckoned.

Were this a proper place to enter into details, I could easily explain
in what manner inequalities in point of credit and authority become
unavoidable among private persons the moment that, united into one
body, they are obliged to compare themselves one with another, and to
note the differences which they find in the continual use every man
must make of his neighbour. These differences are of several kinds;
but riches, nobility or rank, power and personal merit, being in
general the principal distinctions, by which men in society measure
each other, I could prove that the harmony or conflict between these
different forces is the surest indication of the good or bad original
constitution of any state: I could make it appear that, as among these
four kinds of inequality, personal qualities are the source of all the
rest, riches is that in which they ultimately terminate, because,
being the most immediately useful to the prosperity of individuals,
and the most easy to communicate, they are made use of to purchase
every other distinction. By this observation we are enabled to judge
with tolerable exactness, how much any people has deviated from its
primitive institution, and what steps it has still to make to the
extreme term of corruption. I could show how much this universal
desire of reputation, of honours, of preference, with which we are all
devoured, exercises and compares our talents and our forces: how much
it excites and multiplies our passions; and, by creating an universal
competition, rivalship, or rather enmity among men, how many
disappointments, successes, and catastrophes of every ki