leasure
without happiness. It is sufficient that I have proved that this is
not the original condition of man, and that it is merely the spirit of
society, and the inequality which society engenders, that thus change
and transform all our natural inclinations.

I have endeavoured to exhibit the origin and progress of inequality,
the institution and abuse of political societies, as far as these
things are capable of being deduced from the nature of man by the mere
light of reason, and independently of those sacred maxims which give
to the sovereign authority the sanction of divine right. It follows
from this picture, that as there is scarce any inequality among men in
a state of nature, all that which we now behold owes its force and its
growth to the development of our faculties and the improvement of our
understanding, and at last becomes permanent and lawful by the
establishment of property and of laws. It likewise follows that moral
inequality, authorised by any right that is merely positive, clashes
with natural right, as often as it does not combine in the same
proportion with physical inequality: a distinction which sufficiently
determines, what we are able to think in that respect of that kind of
inequality which obtains in all civilised nations, since it is
evidently against the law of nature that infancy should command old
age, folly conduct wisdom, and a handful of men should be ready to
choke with superfluities, while the famished multitude want the
commonest necessaries of life.

[Transcriber's Note: Some words which appear to be potential typos are
printed as such in the original book: These possible words include
cotemporaries and oftens. The paragraph starting with the words "This
odius system is even" contains unmatched quotes, which have been
reproduced as they appeared in the orginal. This work was transcribed
from a anthology (Harvard Classics Volume 34) published in 1910. The
editor of the entire series was Charles W. Eliot. The name of the
translator was not given, nor was the name of the author of the
introduction. Indented lines indicate embedded verse that should not
be re-wrapped.]

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Discourse Upon The Origin And The
Foundation Of The Inequality Among Mankind, by Jean Jacques Rousseau

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INEQUALITY AMONG MANKIND ***

***** This file should be named 11136.txt or 11136.zip *****
This and all associated