Des effets qui résultent du développement de quelques facultés particulières, chez les peuples des d

CHAP. 45: > Of the effects that result from the development of some particular faculties, among the peoples of the diverse species. — Origin of slavery.

But, if the progress of civilization destroys neither the finesse of our senses, nor the good constitution of our organs, it directs their application toward other objects; this difference of direction deserves to be observed, for it has had and still has an immense influence on almost all the nations of the globe: it is only by it that we can explain the action of peoples upon one another, and how the most barbarous nations have almost always determined the morals, the prejudices, the institutions of the peoples who had made the first progress.

A people cannot pass from the state of hunter or pastoralist to the state of farmer without, by that very fact, losing the faculties and the habits it owed to its first state, and without taking on new ones. As a hunter, he exercised the muscles of his legs, in order to follow game in its migrations, or to catch it after having wounded it; as a farmer, he is obliged to exercise the muscles of his arms, to cut or uproot trees, to cultivate the land, to gather his harvests. As a hunter, he exercised his sight to distinguish, on the surface of the soil, the slightest tracks that animals had imprinted there, to know the signs that were to guide him through the forests, or show him the fords of rivers, to judge the lay of the land, to observe the places proper to serve as a retreat or a passage for game, to direct his arrows or his spear; as a farmer, he exercises it to discern the plants that it is useful for him to multiply, and those that it is important for him to destroy, to judge the course of the seasons, the variations of the atmosphere, or other analogous phenomena. In his first trade, the uncertainty of the hunt or of fishing, and the difficulty of preserving his provisions for long, accustomed him to enduring long abstinences or to consuming, in a single meal, an enormous quantity of food; in the second, he must distribute, so as to make them last for the course of a year, the products of a single harvest, and he must consequently contract habits of order and economy. Finally, in his quality as a hunter, he was nomadic like the animals; he could, without suspending the exercise of his industry, go far away to surprise his enemy, or flee to distant places if he feared being surprised by him: in his quality as a cultivator, he cannot move away from his field without suspending his labors or without abandoning his harvests and exposing them to pillage.If we now place two peoples side by side, one that has remained nomadic or a hunter, the other that has become agricultural, and if we compare the kind of development that the former has given to its faculties with the kind of development that the latter has given to its own, one will find that the first possesses all the qualities and all the vices that can make of it a conquering people, and that the second is deprived of all the qualities that would be necessary to protect itself from destruction and enslavement. To have a perfect knowledge of the places that are to be the theater of his exploits; to know which positions are most proper for surprising his prey or his enemy; to know the defiles through which he can escape; to be agile and tireless in running; to change positions rapidly; to endure hunger and thirst for several days; to slither, like snakes, through the forests without being perceived, or to arrive on untamed horses with the rapidity of birds of prey; to strike his enemy with surprise and terror, and to deal him death with a sure hand—these are the faculties that distinguish a horde of savage hunters, and that can make of it the most redoubtable army. Let us add that a horde of hunters or nomads, although it always has a territory of its own, necessarily contracts the habit of invading the territory of neighboring tribes, whether so as not to abandon the pursuit of the game it has discovered on its own soil, or to seek subsistence there when hunger presses and it finds none elsewhere. A people that has devoted itself to agriculture and to the peaceful arts it necessitates or favors, possesses, on the contrary, none of these faculties: it knows no places but those it cultivates, and knows them only in relation to the products they yield; it knows neither how to avoid nor how to pursue an enemy. The regular habits it has contracted render it incapable of enduring the kind of fatigue that the trade of a soldier requires: it has neither the knowledge nor the passions for it [507].

Let us now recall the causes that have developed civilization in the diverse parts of the globe; how it was born in the mildest climates, in those where, during the course of a year, vegetation experiences the shortest interruption; how it spread by degrees into temperate climates; finally, how and for what causes the peoples placed in cold climates have remained barbarous, and one will understand the numerous irruptions that the peoples of the north have made upon the peoples of the south, and the impossibility in which the latter have found themselves of defending themselves; one will understand how the peoples of China, of Persia, of Hindustan, devoted to agriculture, have had to suffer, although superior in number, the yoke of the barbarians descended from the central mountains of Asia, and how we find similar phenomena in almost all parts of the globe.

But this enslavement must not be attributed to the weakness, cowardice, or vices of the nations that were the first to be civilized: the superiority that the peoples of the north obtained was not the result of a superiority in their physical organization, in their intellectual development, or in their moral qualities; for I have shown in the preceding book that, in general, and admitting some exceptions, the peoples who live between the tropics or who are least distant from them have a better constitution, are more developed in their intelligence, and have fewer vices than the peoples of the same race who approach the poles, or who live in what are called cold climates. Nor is it due to superiority of numbers, for, between a country abandoned to its natural fertility and a well-cultivated country, the population is approximately as one is to two thousand, for an equal expanse; it is therefore elsewhere that one must seek the causes of the kind of superiority that barbarous peoples formerly showed over civilized nations.

Farmers or artisans, whatever their profession, are better nourished, and exercise their physical organs with more constancy and regularity than men who live by hunting. A more considerable and more sustained use of physical force is required to uproot a tree, plow and sow a field, than to handle a pike or shoot an arrow. More intelligence is required to reduce a wild animal to domestic life, to make a plow, cultivate a field, or care for a herd, than is needed to fashion a bow or a war-club, or to kill a deer. More foresight, economy, temperance, and, in a word, good habits are required to live on the products of cultivated land, than are needed to live on the products of fishing, hunting, or even the milk of one's herds. More constancy and true courage are required to bring into cultivation a land covered with unproductive trees, with brush, or with swamps, than are needed to go and face the weapons of an enemy, when one is pushed to it by famine or by the fear of some punishment. And yet, although there is a greater sum of physical strength, intelligence, good morals, and even true courage on the side of the farmer than on the side of the hunter or the soldier, there can be no doubt that the former will be vanquished by the latter, if they come to blows. The reason for this lies in the very nature of their occupations: the first has learned to struggle only against things deprived of life or sensibility; his science has been put, not into destroying, but into directing the productive forces of nature; to conquer, he has needed neither artifice, nor ruses, nor deceits; the second has learned to struggle only against beings full of life; he has put his science into surprising, deceiving, wounding, and dealing death.

When hordes of hunters or nomads are in a state of rest, there generally exists between them no kind of social subordination; but, when they go on an expedition of war or hunting, they all place themselves under the direction of the most skilled hunter or warrior; at the moment they approach danger, their subordination is such that it equals that of the best-disciplined army; this blind submission to a chief ordinarily ends with the danger that gave it birth. But, if, instead of completely exterminating the conquered people, the conquering horde preserves a part of it to exploit for its profit, it must remain organized, and it must continue to be subject to its chief; for it is only by their coalition and by their submission to a common chief that masters can place themselves in safety against their slaves. This is how the anarchy we have observed among all barbarous peoples is transformed into military despotism, or how the power that each individual arrogated to himself before the expedition is concentrated in a single one after the conquest. But the vanquished are no more the founders of this despotism than the traveler, despoiled by brigands, is the author of the coalition that these brigands have formed to make themselves masters of his fortune. Nor is it from the heat of the climate that arbitrary power and the multitude of vices that accompany it have emerged: it is barbarian hordes that have given birth to the one and brought most of the others; and we know from which countries these hordes have descended [508].

The historians who have studied the morals and institutions of peoples, and who have researched their origin, have found among the most enlightened nations of the European continent a part of the institutions and morals observed by Tacitus among the savages of Germany.

The most civilized nations of modern Europe, says Gibbon, issued from the forests of Germany, and in the crude institutions of these barbarians we can still distinguish the first principles of our present laws and morals [509].

The phenomenon that this historian observes here, and that others had observed before him, is found among all the peoples that barbarians have subjugated. The conquerors have dragged with them everywhere their prejudices, and the vices that are the natural consequences of barbarism and slavery. Almost everywhere, they have organized themselves in an analogous manner, to perpetuate their domination and the duration of servitude. We will see, when I treat of slavery, that, in all countries, it has been engendered by the same causes, and has produced the same effects.

Seeing, on all continents, the barbarous peoples, hunters or pastoralists, continually rush upon the agricultural peoples and enslave them, and almost never seeing the latter rush upon the former and make slaves of them, one has naturally had to think that the first, ordinarily placed under a rigorous climate, were endowed with great courage, and that the second, placed on the contrary under a milder climate, were essentially cowardly. If one had only paid attention to the way of life of the ones and the others, and to the morals that are its consequence, one would have seen that the greater or lesser degree of courage was a circumstance foreign to these two phenomena. A horde of barbarians that abandons the pursuit of a herd of buffalo or deer to fall upon a population of farmers does not change its trade; it is never anything but a hunting party; the only difference it perceives between the two cases is that the prey is less rich in the first than in the second. But a population of farmers could not, with the same profit and the same facility, go in pursuit of a horde of savages; men who live by prey need, like ferocious beasts, a vast expanse of terrain to subsist; it is scarcely less difficult to enslave a troop of savage hunters than to subdue a pack of wolves; one can kill some of them, when one surprises them; but, if they disperse, it is no longer possible to go in their pursuit; finally, if it were possible to subjugate them, of what use would they be to those who had taken them? Would there be any compensation between the dangers and the advantages?

But, if, in the first ages of civilization, barbarians have a great advantage in the struggle over peoples who have renounced the savage life, highly civilized peoples, those who have given their faculties a very considerable development, have a still greater advantage over barbarians. If a horde chief, like Clovis, presented himself on the frontiers of France, followed by four or five thousand savages, does one think that he would go very far, and that it would suffice for him to have the secret support of the bishops to make himself master of the country? If a few bands of Saxon fishermen and hunters presented themselves today in their small boats on the coasts of England to conquer the island and reduce its inhabitants to slavery, does one believe that the English would be very frightened by it?

Having expounded the facts as experience has established them, let me be permitted to reduce them to their simplest expression, or to transform them into general propositions; it will be much easier to follow their chain.

The power of our organs results from two things: from the soundness of their constitution, and from the exercise one has given them. The soundness of their constitution generally results from the good quality and abundance of our foods, from the moderate and regular satisfaction of our needs, from the absence of all anxiety of mind, from the purity of the atmospheric air, from the salubrity of the waters, and from other analogous physical circumstances.

In the state of civilization, men possess healthier and more abundant foods than in the state of barbarism; they satisfy their needs in a more regular manner; they are threatened by fewer dangers and are agitated by fewer fears; the air that surrounds them in their dwellings is infinitely purer than it is in the hut of the savages, and the air that surrounds them outside is no less so than that which one breathes in forests or in uncultivated and often marshy lands; the waters they drink are just as salubrious. In the state of civilization, there thus exist for man causes proper to giving him a sound constitution, which do not exist in the state of barbarism.

One observes, in the circumstances that surround savage or barbarous man, no physical cause that is proper to increasing the finesse or the strength of his organs, and particularly of those of sight, hearing, and smell. No observation, no experiment establishes that this supposed finesse is the result of the nature of the foods on which he nourishes himself, of the waters he drinks, of the atmospheric air he breathes, and of other analogous causes; so that those who want to persuade us that the organization of man is better in the state of barbarism than in the state of civilization are reduced to affirming effects whose causes they do not see.

An individual of a weak or mediocre constitution, who accustoms himself to executing certain operations, manages to give to the organs he exercises a power that the best-constituted individual who has not devoted himself to the same exercises does not have; an individual of a weak constitution who, by his position, is under the necessity, for example, of making long and frequent runs, manages to run faster and longer than the best-constituted individual who has not contracted the same habit.

Likewise, he who exercises the organ of sight to see or to discern certain objects, the organ of hearing to hear or to distinguish certain sounds, the organ of smell to sense certain odors, manages, though endowed with a weak organization, to see those objects better, to hear those sounds better, to sense those odors better, than the best-organized man who has not devoted himself to the same exercises.

Thus, from the fact that barbarous men run faster or longer than civilized men, from the fact that they swim with more facility or speed, from the fact that they see certain things better, hear certain sounds better, or sense certain odors better, one cannot draw the conclusion that they have a better physical constitution, and that they have more finesse in the senses of sight, hearing, and smell.

Of two individuals who were equally constituted and who devoted themselves to the same exercises, the one who possessed certain advantages over the other, such as better foods, better clothing, and a cleaner and more salubrious dwelling, would become superior to the one who was deprived of the same advantages: from which it follows that civilized men who devote themselves to the same exercises as savages, without renouncing the advantages of civilized peoples, must become and have in fact become superior to them.

In all positions, the kind of exercise that peoples give, by preference, to their faculties or to their organs, is that which is most proper to procuring them subsistence; and as the nature and abundance of subsistence are determined by the nature and elevation of the soil, by the course of the waters, by the facility of communications, and by other analogous circumstances, it follows that the same physical circumstances that determine the nature of a people's means of existence also determine the kind of exercise that this people gives to its faculties, and the kind of superiority it acquires over other peoples.

Lands placed under a rigorous temperature and those that lack fresh water offer food substances to diverse species of animals, while often they offer none to men; peoples can therefore spread over lands of this nature only by becoming hunters or pastoralists, by adopting the nomadic life; and they cannot adopt this way of life without giving to their organs the kind of exercise that is most favorable to military life and that can make of them conquerors; the same qualities that make them fit to pursue, surprise, kill, or subjugate animals, make them fit to pursue, surprise, kill, or subjugate men.

Men who, by the advantages that their soil and their geographical position present to them, devote themselves to agriculture, to the peaceful arts, or to commerce, give to their faculties a more constant and more regular exercise than nomads; they acquire a more considerable sum of physical strength; they give to their intellectual faculties more scope, and to their morals more purity; but they lose at the same time the qualities and the vices that are proper to military life.

By the kind of their exercises and by the nature of their passions, the first of these peoples thus tend ceaselessly to destroy or to subjugate the second; and the latter lack the qualities proper for resistance, as long as the arts and sciences have not made great progress; from this has resulted the enslavement of most civilized peoples to barbarous peoples, and the tendency that has always been observed in the tribes of the north to rush upon the peoples placed in less rigorous climates.Finally, the barbarous peoples who abandon their own country carry with them, in their migrations, their vices, their prejudices, their passions, and the kind of institutions most proper to maintaining their empire; in establishing slavery, they give birth to all the vices that are the natural consequences of such a state; and, as there is almost no civilized people that, at a more or less remote epoch, has not been subjugated by barbarians, one must seek the principle of the prejudices, vices, and bad institutions that dominate among them, in the lands that are still the domain of barbarism and in those where slavery is established.

It is true that these institutions, these vices, and these prejudices are modified by the mixing of peoples and by the enslavement of some to others: thus I will wait, to make an exposition of them and to examine their consequences, until I have treated of slavery.

In the state of barbarism, all the individuals of the same horde who belong to the same sex give to their organs the same kind of development; from which it follows that there can exist between them only small differences, and that, consequently, there are few inequalities between those who are of the same sex and the same age; it follows further from this that many individual acts of violence can well be committed among them, but that it is almost impossible for a methodical, and in a way regular, oppression to be established there.

In the state of civilization, one finds that all the organs, all the faculties of man develop, when one considers populations in mass; but when one considers men individually, one finds that each never develops but a part of himself. Not only does an individual, in general, exercise only a part of his organs, but he gives to this part only a certain kind of exercise. The man who has taught his arms to direct the instrument that serves him to earn his living, would not know how to use them to handle a weapon, if he had to defend himself; and he who has accustomed himself to handling weapons would often not know how to make use of his arms to devote himself to the easiest of trades. The division of occupations, which has given each man the means to execute certain operations in the least possible time, has often rendered him incapable of doing anything else.

By opposing one to the other two peoples who have given to their organs two different kinds of development, I have shown how the one who possesses the most intelligence, good habits, physical strength, and even true courage, can be destroyed or subjugated by the one who possesses the least. It would now remain to examine what happens when, within the same people, classes are formed that develop thus in a partial manner analogous to the one we have observed. In researching the influence that these classes exercise upon one another, perhaps we would find that it is of exactly the same nature as that which takes place between two different peoples; but this research would be anticipated here: it will be easier when we have followed the consequences of the phenomenon that I have expounded in this chapter.