De ce qui constitue le perfectionnement et la dégradation des diverses parties de l’homme. — Des con

CHAP. 1: > Of what constitutes the perfection and degradation of the diverse parts of man. — Of the consequences that result from this perfection and this degradation. — Of the influence of governments on the development of human faculties.

The object of this work being to expound what are the principal causes of the prosperity and decadence of nations, it is suitable, before making this exposition, to determine the meaning one attaches to these words of decadence and prosperity. As long as we confine ourselves to the enunciation of these general expressions, we will encounter few contradictions; but if we seek to determine their meaning, we will not be long in perceiving that the agreement that seems to exist in this regard has only an appearance of reality. The same words do not represent, in the minds of all men, the same number of ideas; sometimes they awaken in some, ideas opposed to those they awaken in others, and this happens for the most common expressions, for those we employ to designate the objects that are most familiar to us.

Philosophers have made themselves ridiculous for having attempted to give a definition of man. Nothing would be, in effect, more useless than such a definition, if it had no other object than to prevent us from confusing, in the ordinary course of life, the individuals who belong to the human race with the individuals who belong to other genera. There is no animal, even among the most stupid, that does not know how to distinguish at first sight an individual of its race from an individual belonging to a different race; and a man who would be incapable of making a similar distinction by himself would not know how to learn to make it by means of a definition.

But, although every person possesses a sufficient capacity to distinguish an individual of his species from any other; although each has a certain number of general ideas about the human race, one must be careful not to believe that all men have complete ideas in this regard. Most of them have only a few ideas relative to their external organization, and to some of their most striking faculties. They know of themselves only the parts they have observed; those they have not noticed are in their eyes as if they did not exist. The men who have devoted themselves to the study of physiology have more extensive ideas; they consider as constitutive parts of themselves, faculties or organs unknown to the former. Those who have joined to this study that of the human understanding have still more extensive ideas. However, none can boast of having nothing more to learn, and of having consequently complete knowledge of his own nature.

The meaning attached to this word man therefore extends as the research one undertakes on human nature becomes more varied or more profound; and the most learned is he for whom there remains the least to learn. Nothing is so common as to encounter, even among philosophers, men who have only incomplete ideas about their species. We will see later to what errors, and I will not fear to say to what follies, several have come for having brought the spirit of system into the study of human nature, and for having believed they had a perfect knowledge of it, when they had only partial ideas.

In the preceding book, we have considered man from three different points of view: in his physical organization, in his intellectual faculties, and in his affections or in his passions. Each of these principal parts is susceptible to being divided into a multitude of others: in the study of the physical organs, one can consider separately the internal organs and the external organs; and, after having made this second division, one can make a third that will include a much larger number of parts. One can likewise consider, in the understanding, each of the parts of which it is composed, from the simplest sensation to the most profound reasoning. Finally, the same procedure can be followed in the study of the moral affections; one can divide them into benevolent affections, and into malevolent affections; one can consider separately love, friendship, patriotism, hatred, vengeance, cruelty, and others.

It would be impossible to form just ideas of the human race, if one did not begin by forming just ideas of individuals; and there would be no way to form just ideas of individuals, if one did not first form just ideas of the diverse parts of which they themselves are composed. Thus, to know what constitutes the prosperity and decadence of a people, we need to know in what consists the perfection or degradation of each of the parts whose union forms an individual. The perfection and degradation of each of the parts of ourselves being known, nothing will be easier than to form exact ideas of the degradation and perfection of a man, of a family, of a nation, and finally of the entire human race.Our physical organs are susceptible to two kinds of perfection: one which consists in their formation or in the quality of their constitution; the other which consists in the aptitude that practice has given them to execute certain operations. An individual who, upon coming into the world, brings with him a good physical constitution; who is raised in a mild temperature and a pure atmosphere; who is nourished by healthy and abundant food; who engages in moderate exercise, and whose mind is troubled by no fear, can acquire a physical organization as perfect as his nature allows, if, moreover, he suffers no accident and is afflicted by no illness. In such a case, the strength of his organs, their exact proportion with respect to one another, their aptitude for fulfilling the diverse functions for which nature has destined them, or for executing the diverse operations for which study and habit can make them fit, constitute their perfection.

This first kind of perfection is sometimes found only in some of our organs: an individual may have one of his internal organs flawed, while his external organs are well constituted; he may have an excellent organ of sight or of hearing, while there exists no proportion between his limbs; he may, by a particular exercise or labor, have given his arms extraordinary strength, while, for lack of exercise or for other reasons, he may have very weak lower extremities; finally, although the diverse parts of man exercise a certain influence on one another, they rarely strengthen or weaken in an exact proportion.

The physical organs of man are susceptible to a second kind of perfection: they are susceptible to learning to execute a multitude of operations more or less useful, either to the individual himself or to his fellows. This kind of perfection is evaluated by the advantages that result from it for the individual, for his family, for humanity. A man can exercise his organs to become skillful in the art of fishing, hunting, agriculture, in the fabrication of certain objects, or in the fine arts. The perfection he gives them is in proportion to the rapidity with which he executes the operations to which he devotes himself, to the variety of objects he has the capacity to produce, and to the value of these products, or the pleasures that arise from them.

These two kinds of perfection influence each other more or less: the man who is endowed with a good physical organization has more dexterity and strength than he whose organization is defective; he can devote himself to longer and more arduous labors; he can undertake longer studies and consequently acquire more skill. Our physical organs are the first instruments that nature places at the service of our intelligence; and it is evident that the more perfection these instruments have, the easier it is to derive an advantageous use from them. On the other hand, the more we exercise each of our organs, the more we increase their strength, suppleness, and fineness: the habit of looking or listening makes us more skillful at seeing and hearing; the habit of exercising our arms or our legs increases their strength, speed, or dexterity.

However, although these two kinds of perfection exercise a reciprocal influence on each other, they rarely exist in the same individual in equal proportion. Often a man endowed with an excellent physical organization has given no skill to his organs, and can derive but few services from them. Often, too, an individual endowed with a weak organization has acquired, through study and practice, great skill, and derives from his faculties advantages unknown to the first. The man who combines these two kinds of perfection is superior to he who possesses only one; and he who possesses the second is superior to he who possesses the first. An instrument of mediocre quality that one knows how to use is unquestionably better than the instrument that would be in itself the most perfect, but of which one could make no use.

There are also two ways to consider the intellectual perfection of man. In one sense, it is said that an individual has a well-formed understanding, if each of his intellectual faculties is fit to fulfill the functions for which nature has destined it. Thus understood, perfection consists in the susceptibility of the intellectual organs to be developed by study or practice. Not all minds are susceptible to the same kind of development: some are more fit than others to acquire a certain kind of knowledge, or to devote themselves to particular labors. It is beyond the subject I am treating to investigate what physical or moral causes produce these differences; it is enough for me to indicate them.

In another sense, it is said that a man has perfected intellectual faculties when, by study and practice, he has given them all the development of which they are susceptible. It never happens that an individual develops his intellectual faculties, with the same scope, in all branches of human knowledge. Each ordinarily chooses a subject of study and devotes the greater part of his attention to it: if he engages in research relative to other knowledge, it is, in general, only to illuminate the science he cultivates in a special manner. A man can therefore have highly developed intellectual faculties on a particular subject, while having given them no development on different subjects. He may, for example, have a very extensive understanding of anatomy or zoology, while having only confused notions of the moral sciences: just as he may have very vast knowledge of these sciences and be a stranger to mathematics or astronomy. There is no kind of knowledge that is not useful to those who possess it and to their fellows; but one still judges here the greater or lesser intellectual perfection of an individual or a nation by the degree of utility that the human race derives from his knowledge.

In the intellectual faculties as in the physical faculties, the perfection that consists in the good organization of the individual influences considerably that which is the result of study or practice, and the latter in turn influences the former. A man endowed with a sound understanding, if he devotes himself to study, gives to his intellectual faculties a perfection that could not be given to his own by the individual who has received from nature a flawed or weakly constituted understanding. And he who exercises his intelligence gives it a strength and a promptness that it could not have without practice; the strength of the mind, like that of the body, is as much in proportion to the practice one has given it as it is to its natural dispositions. The man who joins study to a good original organization has an incontestable superiority over he who has only one or the other of these two kinds of perfection. But he who has cultivated, by study and labor, a mediocre intelligence, has a no less incontestable superiority over he who, having been born with an excellent intellectual constitution, has devoted himself to no kind of study, or, what is worse, who has had his mind distorted from childhood. A man born with a weak intelligence, but well raised, could have an immense intellectual superiority over an individual born with the most fortunate dispositions, but stultified by fanaticism or by oppression.

The intellectual perfection of man consisting in the aptitude of each of his faculties to fulfill, as best as possible, the diverse functions for which they are fit, it follows that the individual who can apply his attention with the most perseverance and the least fatigue to the objects he needs to know; he whose memory retains with the most fidelity and preserves the longest the impressions he has received; he who can best and most promptly compare the diverse ideas he conceives, and perceive the relations that exist between them; he whose mind follows with the most facility the chain of facts or ideas, whether he ascends from effects to causes, or descends from causes to effects; he who best knows how to combine the images that have been produced on his mind by the objects that have struck him; finally, he who can best know what things are and what they produce, is also he whose understanding is the best organized, or whose intellectual faculties are the most perfect. An individual cannot exercise all the faculties of his mind on all the objects that are in nature: for that, human life is not long enough; but the more extensive the objects on which he can exercise them, the more perfection his intellectual faculties have also received.

The moral perfection of man consists, not in the absence of the diverse affections of which he is susceptible; not in the extinction of a certain number of passions, and in the development of a few others; but in the proper direction of all, and in the control he exercises over each of them, in conformity with the rules of an enlightened intelligence. Thus, the moral perfection of man consists, not precisely in the nature of the passions by which he is affected, but in the discernment and the measure with which he applies them. To love is in itself neither a virtue nor a vice: it is an agreeable way of feeling of which we are rarely the masters. To love one's wife, one's children, one's parents, one's friends, one's country, is a virtue, as long as this passion does not lead us into actions baneful to the human race. It begins to become vicious from the moment it makes us commit actions more baneful to men than it is useful to those who are its object. To hate is in itself a painful sentiment, and in this respect it is a vicious passion; but to hate malevolent habits and actions, and to yield to one's hatred only in the measure necessary for the repression of these actions or these habits, is not a vice, it is a virtue. The moral perfection of man consists therefore in the harmony between his affections and his understanding, when it is enlightened.

Having seen in what consists the perfection of the diverse parts of which man is composed, it is easy to understand in what consists degradation or the lack of development. Our physical organs being susceptible to two kinds of development, one which consists in the quality of their constitution, and the other in the diverse kinds of aptitude that practice has given them, it can be said that they are susceptible to two corresponding kinds of imperfections. Their weakness, their lack of proportion, the difficulty with which they fulfill the functions required for the preservation of the individual or the species, constitute degradation of the first kind; the complete cessation of these functions is the death of the individual.

Unskillfulness, clumsiness, sluggishness that result from the lack of application and practice, constitute the second kind of degradation; this degradation is profound in proportion to the importance of the actions that the individual is incapable of executing. Thus, for example, the man who knows how to employ his physical organs only to pursue game has given them a kind of perfection below that of he who has additionally exercised his own to cultivate the land; for the first obtains from his labors an infinitely inferior quantity of food than that which the second can obtain from his.

The intellectual faculties of man are equally susceptible to two kinds of imperfections: one which results from a flaw in organization, the other which is produced either by a complete absence of practice, or by a false application. An individual who cannot fix his attention on any object in a sustained manner, or retain the impressions made on his mind by external objects, or combine the small number of ideas he has received, is afflicted with the first kind of imperfection. It is the same for he who cannot perceive the relations that exist between his ideas, or follow their connection; it is still the same for he who is incapable of receiving just impressions, or of correcting, by the application of his organs, the false ideas that have penetrated his mind. These diverse species of imperfection are susceptible to gradation: when they are carried to a certain degree, they are designated by the name of imbecility, false judgment, or mania, without it being possible, however, to fix the point at which mania or imbecility begins.

The moral imperfection or degradation of man can stem from three causes: from the false direction of the passions, from their weakness, or from an excess of strength. The passions have received a false direction if the benevolent affections, such as love, friendship, sympathy, pity, admiration, respect, are directed toward actions or objects baneful to the human race, and if the malevolent passions, such as hatred, aversion, antipathy, and contempt, are brought to bear on contrary objects or actions. The weakness of the passions is in man a moral imperfection when they do not have enough energy to determine him to execute the actions that his position and the interest of his species require of him. Finally, the strength of the passions is a moral imperfection whenever man allows himself to be carried away by them beyond the limits that an enlightened reason has traced for him.

Each of the principal parts of man exercises a more or less extensive influence on the others. It is evident, for example, that an individual whose physical organs are all well constituted and fulfill well the functions for which they are fit, has more means to develop his intelligence than he who has received from nature a flawed organization; he has more energy, strength, and perseverance. Likewise, he whose understanding is highly developed has more means to perfect his physical and moral faculties than he whose intellectual faculties have received no development. He knows which exercises strengthen him, and knows the causes capable of weakening or destroying him; being better able to judge the consequences of his actions, he has the means to regulate his affections in the most useful manner. Finally, the man whose morality is highly perfected better preserves his physical and intellectual faculties; he can give to both more development than can be given to his own by he whose morals are corrupt; for, in general, vices destroy the physical organs at the same time as they weaken the intellectual faculties.

However, although each of our faculties is susceptible to development, and they exercise a certain influence on one another, it is rare that in the same individual they are developed to the same degree, and that they are found in perfect harmony; it happens, on the contrary, almost always, that some of these faculties dominate over all the others. A man may be perfectly constituted, see exact proportions reign in the diverse parts of his physical being, be endowed with considerable muscular strength and great agility, and yet have a limited intelligence or disordered passions. Another may, on the contrary, be endowed with an extraordinary intelligence and possess very extensive knowledge, with delicate health and defective physical organs; it is not rare to see the qualities of the mind and the infirmities of the body united in the same individual, or to encounter persons capable of the most ingenious or profound conceptions, who do not know how to employ their hands for the most common uses. Finally, weak or energetic passions can be found in a man endowed with a good physical organization, but whose intellectual faculties are little developed, just as they can be found in a man of a defective physical constitution, but of a very enlightened understanding. We will see elsewhere what happens when, in a nation, a particular development is given to some of these faculties and the others are neglected.

A man cannot perfect any part of himself without several advantages resulting from this perfection, either for himself or for his fellows. The perfection of his physical organs produces health, strength, dexterity, agility; it enables the individual to execute a multitude of operations necessary for the satisfaction of his needs or his pleasures, and to protect himself from a host of accidents; it makes the gratuitous help of his fellows less necessary to him, and thus contributes to his independence; it delivers him from the fears that are a natural consequence of weakness or clumsiness; finally, it contributes to his internal satisfaction, by giving him the consciousness of the services he can render, either to himself or to others.The perfection of his intellectual faculties enables him to make the most advantageous use, for himself and for his fellows, of his physical organs and of the things of which he can dispose; it gives him a more or less extensive influence over persons whose intelligence is less developed, and thus increases his power; it provides him with the means to direct the forces of nature, to compel them to work for him and to produce things proper to satisfy his needs in preference to those that would be baneful or useless to him; it contributes, like the perfection of his physical organs, to increasing his independence, to guaranteeing him from several dangers, and to delivering him from the fears that surround persons whose understanding is weak or little developed; it allows him to foresee the distant consequences of his actions, and enables him to take, on all occasions, the most advantageous course for himself and for others; it gives him the means to render a great number of services to others, and thus increases his internal satisfaction by the very sentiment of his utility; finally, it puts him in communication with persons whose understanding is equally developed, and allows him to participate in their discoveries and their progress.

The perfection of his moral faculties, which is the ordinary consequence of the perfection of his intellectual faculties, although it is not always so, produces advantages that are no less extensive. The first is to put man at peace with his fellows, and to assure him, in any civilized state, the greatest of goods, that of security. It is evident, in effect, that the man who experiences only benevolent passions for objects useful to his species, and who feels or manifests aversion only for baneful objects, has for enemies only malevolent individuals, while he has for supports all those by whom he is known. Benevolent passions, which we can also call social, produce a multitude of pleasures, not only for those who experience them, but also for all those who are their object; and they always inspire more or less gratitude. Malevolent or antisocial passions, on the contrary, are painful for those who are possessed by them, as for those who are their victims; and there is here a reaction of pains, as there is there a reaction of pleasures. Peoples repress, in general, the pride of individuals by hatred, cruelty by vengeance, perfidy by mistrust, baseness by contempt, and all vices by abandonment.

The perfection of human faculties influences not only the well-being of individuals, it also influences the number of the population. A man endowed with a good physical organization, an extensive intelligence, and pure customs, at the same time that he feels more disposed to marry and to raise a family, has far more means to do so than he who does not possess the same advantages, if all things are equal otherwise. The difference in this regard is so great that it is impossible to form an idea of it, without having compared together a considerable number of facts whose exposition will be found further on. It is enough for me at this moment to have indicated this phenomenon: I will give the demonstration of it elsewhere.

It results from what precedes that the individual whom we designate by the name of man cannot be considered as a being so determined that one cannot restrict or extend his existence without annihilating him. In the science of numbers, a quantity changes its denomination by the addition or subtraction it is made to undergo: if one adds something to it, or subtracts something from it, it loses its primitive denomination to take another that indicates the modification it has undergone. It is not the same with man; his existence extends or is restricted, without one supposing that the identity of the individual has been destroyed; it is enough that he is always designated by the same word, for one to imagine that he is always exactly the same. This is an illusion that I have already observed and that I must reproduce here, because it has led great philosophers and celebrated writers into the gravest errors [2].

What constitutes a given individual, whom we designate by the name of man, is not only his physical organs, it is at the same time his intellectual faculties and his moral faculties; it is his ideas, his sentiments, and his affections; it is the very aptitude he has given to his organs to execute such or such operations; it is, in a word, his entire existence, such as nature, habit, or education have modified it. If, by exercise or by the foods on which he nourishes himself, an individual adds something to his material organs, one does not doubt that what he has added to them is part of himself; if he gives to one of his organs a particular quality, if he increases its fineness, suppleness, strength, or dexterity, one does not doubt any more that this quality is a part of himself, as the elasticity given to a certain piece of metal is part of a certain spring; but if, by study, he increases the number of his ideas, if he gives strength or extent to his affections, why would these affections or these ideas not be as much a part of himself as any of his physical faculties? Is it not evident that all that increases in us the power to feel, to think, to act, gives extent to our existence, since we exist only by our sensations, our thoughts, our actions?

Thus, from the instant man begins to form until that in which he begins to decline, his existence can develop in a gradual manner in each of the parts of which it is composed; it can develop in the physical organs, in the intellectual faculties, and in the moral faculties. The development of each of his faculties increases the capacity he has to feel, that is to say, the capacity he has to experience pleasures or pains. We have seen previously how each of the developments he receives is followed by an advantage; now, a man cannot be susceptible to experiencing a pleasure, without being by that very fact susceptible to experiencing a corresponding pain. The same sentiment that makes us take part in the pleasures of the persons who are dear to us, makes us take part in their pains. An enlightened man, attached to his country, will not be able to see it prosper without experiencing keen pleasures from it; but also, none will feel more painfully than he the evils produced by an invasion of barbarians.

The diverse parts of man can be extinguished in the same manner and in the same order as they develop. Sometimes the destruction begins with the physical organs; other times it is the intellectual and moral faculties that are extinguished first; other times also all the faculties are extinguished at the same time and in a gradual manner; this happens most often in old age. As it is impossible to determine in an exact manner the precise instant when each of the internal or external parts of man is extinguished, one sees death only in the complete cessation of all vital functions. But life is no less divisible than matter; it can cease in a great number of parts of man, before having ceased in all. A soldier receives a serious wound; he undergoes an amputation: there is a part of himself that no longer exists; he has lost one of his physical organs without return. Following the operation a violent fever declares itself; his intellectual faculties are altered; the ideas he had disappear from his mind; he becomes incapable of forming new ones: there is another part of the individual that has ceased to exist, or that is struck with death. The extinction of his intellectual faculties leaves him no memory of his parents, his friends, his country, nor even of his enemies; his sentiments of affection or hatred are extinguished in their turn: this is yet another part of the man that dies, before he ceases to be entirely. Each part of the individual, in a word, can perish before the organs essential to life have completely ceased to fulfill their functions.

Two entirely opposed systems have been made on the nature of man. Stoic philosophers have considered our physical organs as not being an essential part of ourselves. Epictetus said: My limbs, that is not me; my body, that is not me; my life, that is not me; my reputation, my goods, my wife, my children, that is not me. He saw man entirely in some of the sentiments that animate him. Being able to subtract from the action of tyranny only his sentiments and his thoughts, it is in this that he placed the human self; he placed man in an abstraction, so as not to see in him the miserable plaything of a furious or imbecilic tyrant. But our manner of considering things does not change their nature: by giving exclusively to a sentiment, or to a thought, a name that designated much more than that, Epictetus distorted language, and formed false ideas for himself, without making the condition of the human race more bearable.

J.-J. Rousseau, in presenting the picture of an imaginary man whom he called the man of nature, made a system opposed to that of Epictetus: he saw man entirely in his physical and material organs. The man of Epictetus says: My limbs, my wretched body, my miserable life, that is not me. The man of Rousseau says: My sentiments, my affections, my thoughts, my opinions, in a word my intellectual and moral faculties, that is not me. The first isolates himself so much from any material object, he transforms himself so much into sentiments and opinions, that one ends up no longer perceiving him, and that nothing remains of him but a single word. The second strips himself so much of ideas, sentiments, affections, intelligence, that nothing remains of him but his muscles, his bones, and his stomach; he is the most brutish, the most improvident, the most stupid of animals.

There is no need for reasoning to demonstrate the error of Epictetus: everyone knows very well that his physical organs are a part of himself; that one cannot offend them without harming him, nor procure a pleasure for them, without causing him a pleasure. But one is not equally convinced that our intellectual and moral faculties are a part of ourselves: in theory, one wants to be the man of Epictetus; in practice, one is often the man of Rousseau. One consults one's physician to restore the strength of one's stomach and revive one's appetite, to straighten a limb that makes us walk crookedly; but one does not consult a philosopher to give strength to benevolent affections, to destroy perverse inclinations, or to correct a false judgment. One would say that what constitutes man in our eyes is the matter of which his physical organs are composed, but that the qualities that make a man of genius, or the vices that make an imbecile or a villain, are not a part of the individuals in whom they are found.

To suppose, with Epictetus, that our physical organs are not an essential part of ourselves, and that we must take no account of the pains or pleasures that affect them, is a system so absurd that one has no need to combat it; there is little to fear that nations will be lost by an excess of spirituality. But it would be no less insane to consider our intellectual faculties as foreign to the individual, than to count our physical organs for nothing. The existence of the ones is no less incontestable than the existence of the others; and it is to them that we must attribute the good use we are able to make of all our other faculties.

Finally, our affections are as essential a part of ourselves as any of our physical organs: we give value to our existence, we calculate the duration of life only by the value and the duration of the impressions we receive or the sentiments that are in us. Properly speaking, we do not count the time of sleep as part of life; for the individual who fell asleep at his birth and who died upon waking would seem to us not to have lived, had his sleep lasted a century. We live therefore by our memories, by our fears, by our hopes, by our affections of all kinds, as well as by the impressions that external objects make immediately on our physical organs. We are affected by the impressions produced on our children, on our friends, on our fellow citizens, on our fellows, as by those that are produced on us in an immediate manner. Our moral affections sometimes have such power over us that they absorb every other sentiment: to avoid or to put an end to a moral pain, or to procure a pleasure of the same kind that has but an instant's duration, man sometimes sacrifices even his physical existence. We would consider as in some way foreign to humanity the individual who, accessible to physical pleasures and pains, knew neither moral pains nor pleasures.

I have considered separately each of the parts of man, in order to have more complete ideas of the whole; but his parts are not separated in nature as they are in a work: we consider them one after the other only because we do not have the means to see them all at once. All the parts of man form but a single system, and act or react ceaselessly upon one another. The division of the parts is far from being as pronounced in nature as it is in language; a faculty that I place in the rank of moral faculties may be classed by another in the rank of physical faculties. A classification, I have already said, is but a more or less imperfect method; it is an instrument that the mind cannot do without, and which partakes of the imperfection of all our works.

Having determined what constitutes the perfection and degradation of each of the principal parts of man, it is easy to form a general idea of what constitutes the perfection or degradation of the individual considered in his entirety. The man whose physical organs are all best formed, and have received, by study or by practice, the aptitude to execute, in the least time and with the least pain possible, the diverse operations required by the well-being of the individual and of his species; he whose intellectual faculties have received the most extensive development, on the objects it is most important for him to know; finally, he whose inclinations are in best accord with the interests of the human race, is also he whose perfection is the most advanced. The most degraded individual is he in whom are found the contrary defects or vices. A people that is marching toward its prosperity is one in which individuals tend to acquire the diverse kinds of development of which we have just spoken, at the same time as they multiply. A people that is marching, on the contrary, toward its decadence, is one in which the physical, moral, and intellectual faculties of individuals are restricted or become depraved, at the same time as the population diminishes; this latter phenomenon is ordinarily the consequence of the former.If I were to confine myself to these general propositions, they would probably be little contradicted: the greatest number of readers would willingly recognize their truth. But would it be the same if, from theory, I passed to application? The judgments generally passed on nations do not permit me to believe it. What man, for example, is not disposed to think that the Roman people, after having vanquished Carthage, had not reached the highest degree of prosperity it was possible for them to attain? And yet, examine in what consisted the diverse kinds of perfection that the faculties of each of the individuals of whom this people was composed had reached. By abundant food and continual exercises, the Romans had managed to give their muscular forces great power: this was one kind of perfection. But what were the operations they had taught their organs to execute? Those that were necessary for them to destroy, or despoil peoples less barbarous than themselves. They did not even possess the simplest kind of industry of all, that which consists in providing for one's own subsistence. It was the Tuscans, the Sicilians, the Egyptians who gave them bread; it was freedmen or slaves who alone knew how to cultivate the arts they could not do without. Their intellectual faculties were far less developed still than their physical organs; they were ignorant of the simplest laws of nature: they saw prodigies everywhere, and were ceaselessly surrounded by superstitious terrors. They had only the sagacity proper to animals that live by prey: they knew how to deceive or vanquish the peoples whose ruin they had resolved; but in general their enlightenment went no further. Moral perfection was in proportion to intellectual development: in their quality as masters, they were in a state of hostility against their slaves; in their quality as patricians and plebeians, they were in a state of hostility against one another; in their quality as Romans, they were in a state of hostility against the human race; for they saw enemies wherever they did not see subjects, and their subjects were always treated as enemies. All the malevolent passions, pride, deceit, vengeance, cruelty, hatred fermented in their souls; and one saw frequent explosions of them either in the uprisings of slaves, or in civil dissensions or in foreign wars.

It is rare, or rather, it never happens that the writers who judge the greatness or decadence of a people fully grasp the meaning they attach to these words. Some, considering men as machines of war, see the greatness of a people in the number of its armies, in the victories it has won, in the number of individuals it has killed, in the extent of the countryside it has ravaged, in the number of cities it has destroyed, in the monuments of the arts destined to transmit to posterity the memory of these frightful destructions.

Other writers, considering men as machines of production or transport, see the prosperity of a people exclusively in the quantity of goods it produces, in the rapidity with which certain objects are manufactured, transported from one place to another, and exchanged. They care little if the population is composed of weak or robust men, intelligent or stupid, moral or without morals; if the talent of each of these producing machines is confined to the simplest mechanical operation, or if it extends to a great number of diverse operations; if the part of the population by which the labors are executed is or is not reduced to what is strictly necessary for it, to the preservation of the forces that production demands; if the surest part of its labor is not regularly taken from it by a feudal, sacerdotal, or military aristocracy, under the name of tithes, fees, or taxes; they care even less to know whether the existence of the mass of the population is reduced to a purely animal life, or if there exists for it some kind of intellectual and moral life; all is well in their eyes provided that the warehouses empty and fill in the least possible time: in this system, one can know that the prosperity of one nation surpasses the prosperity of another by so many yards of cloth or such a number of machines.

Others calculate the prosperity of a people exclusively by the quantity of grain the soil produces, or by the number and strength of the animals it nourishes; if they see well-cultivated fields, well-watered meadows, well-enclosed properties, and well-paved and well-maintained roads, they need no more to persuade them that the population has reached the final term of prosperity it can arrive at; they do not care to know whether the most considerable part of the population lives in ease or in misery; if it is not reduced to a lot more miserable than that of the animals it raises; if it is not stupefied by superstition; if it is not bent under the scepter of a priest, under the saber of a soldier, or under the club of a police officer; little does it matter to them that the men who cultivate the fields are, like the Helots, the plaything of the small number of those who consume their products; that they prostrate themselves before the vilest animals like the Egyptians, or that they tremble under the bamboo like the Chinese: what makes the greatness of a people is not the greatness of each of the individuals of whom it is composed; it is the state of the soil on which it is placed; it is the number and good condition of the animals it raises.

Others measure the prosperity of a nation by the number of individuals found on a given space of land: if, on two countries equal in extent, they notice that one has a population double that of the other, they will declare that the prosperity of the first is double the prosperity of the second. They will not examine which of the two has the strongest, most robust, most intelligent, most moral men; for them the primary quality is to multiply. It is by virtue of this principle of estimation that a given government will grant privileges, exemptions, or pensions, not to the fathers of families who will have best raised their children, and who will have known how to make them happy, but to those who will have had the greatest number of them: as if the merit consisted in giving birth to them, and not in making them men useful to their fellows.

Finally, there are men who in their calculations on what constitutes the prosperity of a nation, forget half of the human race, and who count for nothing the physical, moral, and intellectual development of women. It matters little to them that they are incapable of rendering any service to themselves or to others; and that they are deprived of intelligence even on the things that interest them most. Any defect or any imperfection that has the effect of making them more dependent is considered a happy quality; the bonds that arrest the development of their intellectual and moral faculties seem to them as well imagined as the bonds by means of which the Chinese arrest the development of their daughters' feet: the ones like the others have for their goal and effect to prevent them from supporting themselves by their own strength.

When one examines what constitutes the prosperity of a nation, one must take into account not only each of the parts of which an individual is composed, but each of the individuals who belong to that nation; the diverse denominations under which men are designated in each state do not make them change their nature; in Sparta, the Helots were no less a part of the human race than the Spartans; in Athens, in Rome, the freedmen and the slaves were men like the citizens; in Poland, in Russia, the serfs are as much men as the lords; in France, in England and in other countries, the peasants, the workers, the servants, are no less a part of the species than the bourgeois, the gentlemen or the lords; finally, everywhere women are as essential a part of the species as men: all individuals, under whatever denomination one designates them, are susceptible to development and to decay, and it is by the prosperity and greatness of each of the parts that one must evaluate the greatness and prosperity of the whole.

The progress of industry, commerce, agriculture, are doubtless essential elements of the prosperity of nations; but they do not constitute it exclusively. To take the prosperity of any thing whatever for the prosperity of a people is to confuse the means with the end. A rich landowner can make his lands very fertile and cultivate them with the greatest care, while the individuals he will employ in the cultivation will lack the things necessary for life, and will be in the most miserable state. The quantity or the quality of the products will not even always prove the perfection of the individual to whom they will be delivered, for this individual will be able to spend them in frivolous consumptions; he may be afflicted with numerous vices, either moral or physical. What can be true for an individual can be true for a multitude; and one can say of a capitalist or a manufacturer what I say of a landowner [3].

In considering the human race in its entirety, one can say that all the individuals of which it is composed are formed for all; but that none is specially made for another. Women are no more made for men, than men are made for women; children for fathers, than fathers for children; servants for masters, than masters for servants. In all positions, an exchange of services takes place which is equitable only insofar as the interests of all are equally respected. And what causes one to fall so often into error is the tendency that the most influential classes have in society to consider themselves as the end to which all must lead. Each understands by the prosperity of the species, the prosperity of his caste, or of the men who occupy the same rank as he; and there are always writers who devote themselves to particular interests, and who seek to fortify this tendency.

Governments formed of privileged classes often also consider themselves as the end for which nations exist. They will admit of no development in them, except to the extent of what they consider to be their interest; they try to restrict the existence of each individual to what is necessary for them for the ends they propose; they act on the physical, intellectual, and moral faculties of man, by all the means that are in their power, and their action always has for its goal to dominate over the ones and the others.

They act on the physical faculties, not by arresting material development, but by preventing its application. A government will not, for example, have the hands of citizens mutilated, but it will prevent them from making use of them to exploit this or that kind of industry, to handle arms, or to give themselves over to exercises that would develop their strength and their skill, that would increase their courage, give them security, and assure their liberty and their independence. It will not deprive them of sight; but it will forbid them from applying it to the study of certain objects that it believes it has an interest in keeping hidden; to the study of physics, of astronomy, of the human body, or of any other science.

The action it will exercise on the intelligence will have for its goal, either to distort it, or to arrest its development: it will distort it by spreading erroneous notions, or by propagating certain lies; it will prevent its development by forbidding its use in the study of history, of morality, of politics, or in other studies proper to enlighten men on their interests.

Finally, it will act on their moral faculties, not by destroying their passions, but by directing them in a manner contrary to the interests of humanity; it will inspire in them affection or benevolence for things or persons that are baneful to them, and aversion or antipathy for things or persons that are useful to them; it will develop in them vicious passions, such as pride, falsity, ambition, idleness, pomp, prodigality, the love of gambling; while it will weaken or extinguish virtuous passions, such as simplicity, patriotism, sincerity, economy, and the love of labor.

I have said that the individuals of whom the human race is composed are all susceptible to development and to degradation; but there are, in progress as in decadence, limits beyond which it is not possible to go. We are ignorant of the precise point to which the physical, intellectual, and moral perfection of man can be carried; but that does not prevent us from being able to affirm without rashness, that we are circumscribed by our own nature, within limits that it is not given to us to cross. Beings limited as to their duration, their extent, the number and the power of their faculties, could not be susceptible to a perfection without bounds. We are equally ignorant of the point of degradation to which man can descend; but infinity is no more the lot of decadence than of prosperity. There is a point at which man can no longer fall without being extinguished, and if we cannot determine it in an exact manner, it is of little necessity for us.

A great number of causes can influence the prosperity and decadence of a nation. But is it in our power to influence each of these causes ourselves? Can we create or destroy them at will? What are those that are beyond our power, and those that are within our reach? These questions are here of a high importance; they form, in a way, the basis of the science of legislation.

Several writers have considered climate as having an immense influence on the perfection and degradation of the physical, moral, and intellectual faculties of man. Some have even claimed that one must attribute to this influence the production of the different species or varieties of men spread over the surface of the earth. If this influence is such as they suppose it, peoples can do almost nothing for their destiny; for it is not in their power to change the climate under which they are placed. In the course of this work I will therefore have to examine what is the kind of influence that climate exercises on the existence of nations. But before exposing in what this influence on the state of peoples consists, it is necessary to ascertain what this state is. It is only after having well ascertained the nature and existence of the effects that one can permit oneself to assign their causes.