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from 10 february 2002 blue vol II |
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Jean Jacques Rousseau:
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from 10 february 2002 blue vol II |
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Jean Jacques Rousseau:
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As there is hardly any inequality in the state of
nature, all the inequality which now prevails owes its
strength and growth to the development of our
faculties and the advance of the human mind, and
becomes at last permanent and legitimate by the
establishment of property and laws. It follows that
moral inequality, authorized by positive right alone,
clashes with natural right, whenever it is not
proportionate to physical inequality - a distinction
which sufficiently determines what we ought to think
of that species of inequality which prevails in all
civilised countries; since it is plainly contrary to
the law of nature, however defined, that children
should command old men, fools wise men, and that the
privileged few should gorge themselves with
superfluities, while the starving multitude are in
want of the bare necessities of life.
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