Parallèle entre l’homme sauvage et l’homme civilisé. — Système de J.-J. Rousseau.

CHAP. 46: > Parallel between savage man and civilized man. — System of J.-J. Rousseau.

If, to destroy an error, it were sufficient to have clearly established the contrary truth, I would not occupy myself here with the system of Rousseau, on the man of nature; but nothing is more common than to encounter persons who, in very good faith, give their assent to two opposed assertions. The habits of the mind are no easier to destroy than those of the body; perhaps they are even less so; when one has contracted the habit of making certain judgments, one preserves it, even when, under another form or under other names, one later adopts a contrary opinion. The impressions of youth are always the strongest and most ineffaceable; those one receives in a mature age are, in general, not very durable; if therefore it happens that one belatedly rectifies the false ideas one has received since childhood, little by little the rectification is effaced, and the old errors retake their empire; from this doubtless comes the fact that there is no profitable instruction but that which one gives to young people. It is therefore only for those who might have already devoted themselves to the study of the works of Rousseau, and who might have formed their opinions on his, that I write this; the others can pass over these observations without reading them; for they will find in them, under a new form, only what they already know.

Rousseau, in researching the origin of inequality among men, sought to demonstrate that, in the state he named of nature, men are better constituted, possess a greater sum of physical strength, are more numerous and less vicious, and consequently enjoy more happiness than in the state of civilization: a small number of incontestable facts will suffice to overthrow this system.

Three causes, according to Rousseau, concur to give the man of nature a good physical constitution and great strength: the abundance of food, the continual exercise of his limbs, the absence of any violent passion or the tranquility of mind. It is a matter of demonstrating how these causes exist in the savage state.

Buffon claimed that the earth abandoned to itself is more fertile than cultivated earth; from this fact, Rousseau draws the consequence that the earth, when it is uncultivated, offers man more food than when it is man himself who directs its productions. The earth covered with immense forests that the axe never mutilated, he says, offers man storehouses at every step.

Buffon's assertion may be true in some cases; but it is not always so: there are many lands that are fertile only because human industry has made them so; Egypt, Arabia, Persia, the Cape of Good Hope, would produce very little, if men had not known how to bring water to them; Holland and other lands continually covered with water would likewise be very unproductive, if men had not known how to drain them.

But, in admitting Buffon's proposition, one cannot admit the consequence that Rousseau has drawn from it, without recognizing, first, that men can nourish themselves on all the plants that the earth presents to them, or that, when it is uncultivated, it produces by preference the substances that are most proper for their nourishment; and, second, that these substances are preserved better and longer when they are abandoned on the soil, than when they are enclosed in storehouses; but among these propositions, there is not one that is not an evident absurdity; not only is this supposed abundance of food produced by the earth when it is uncultivated not proven by any fact, but it is belied by all the facts that have been ascertained on all parts of the globe not subject to cultivation: in this regard I know of no exception.

The first condition required to give man a robust constitution does not, therefore, exist. The second, that which consists in a constant, but moderate, exercise of muscular forces, is better fulfilled in the state of civilization than in the state of barbarism. Man, in the savage state, has, according to Rousseau, more physical strength than civilized man, for the reason that the former is obliged to execute everything with the sole help of his hands, while the latter executes nothing except by means of machines: we do not know how to run, because we have horses to carry us; we do not know how to climb trees, because we have ladders to ascend them; our wrists are incapable of breaking strong branches of trees, because we possess saws and axes; savages execute each of these operations perfectly, by the sole force of their muscles, precisely because they possess none of these machines that enervate us.

Here, Rousseau appears to have very poorly grasped the connection of effects and causes. We see among us a multitude of people who are not very light of foot, such as masons, carpenters, shoemakers, tailors, and others still; but, if these diverse classes of men have sluggish legs, is it because they have made too frequent use of horses? We also see many persons who are very unskilled at climbing trees; I believe physicians, lawyers, magistrates, the members of our academies, to be very bad climbers; but is it quite certain that, if they had not had ladders, they would climb much better? Finally, there are men who do not have, in their arms, great muscular strength; in general, draftsmen, painters, engravers, writers, and a multitude of others have hands little made for breaking strong branches of trees; is it quite just, however, to make it a reproach to the mechanic who invented the axe or the saw?

Man, in the state of barbarism, exercises, as I have already observed, the part of himself by means of which he can most easily seize the foods that are offered to him by uncultivated nature; he becomes a runner, if he needs to pursue game, a swimmer and diver if it is in the waters that he must pursue his prey. But it is an error to believe that he gives an equal strength to each of the parts of himself by exercise: how would a savage take up the habit of climbing or of breaking strong branches, in countries that might be devoid of trees like the savannas of America, the steppes of central Asia, the deserts of Arabia, and a large part of Africa? Why, in countries that are covered with forests, would they devote themselves to exercises of this kind, if the trees produce no fruit, or if, in the course of a year, those that do produce it, give it only for a few days? Savages are so unskilled at climbing trees, that those of New Holland can rise to the branches only by making notches on the trunk with a stone [510], and that in all the accounts of travelers one does not find the example of a single horde whose individuals are skilled at climbing. Rousseau supposes that the savage will exercise his strength by wrestling with ferocious beasts; but, if such an exercise is frequent, it will be very dangerous, and if it is not, it will be of little use for the development of strength. One cannot avoid both of these two inconveniences, except by supposing that there will be found some complaisant bears, who will come, every morning, to give the man of nature a gymnastics lesson for free.

If Rousseau had not seen the entire world in the members of a few academies, he would have easily perceived that, in a civilized country, there is a deployment of muscular forces far more considerable than that which takes place in a barbarous state. The savage applies his hands immediately to the branch he wants to break, and the effects he produces can never be very considerable; the civilized man applies his to the handle of an axe, and, in a few moments, he fells an oak. The first applies his hands to the stone that bothers him and that he wants to move; the second applies his to the end of a lever, and produces a tenfold effect. On both sides, there is equally an exercise of muscular forces; but the same force that produces only one on one side, produces a hundred or a thousand on the other. There is a multitude of mechanical arts in which the men who exercise them are obliged to make a constant use of their strength: farmers, carpenters, miners, masons, blacksmiths, sailors, all make use of their limbs; and, by applying them to instruments or to machines, they multiply their forces instead of weakening them. It is true that civilized men generally give more strength to the muscles of the arms than to the muscles of the legs, and that it is the contrary that happens among most savage peoples; but does there exist any good reason that could make us appreciate force by the place it occupies, rather than by the results it produces?

The security or tranquility of mind, which is the third condition on which Rousseau makes the good constitution and physical strength of his man of nature depend, does not exist even according to him, since he describes him as always near danger or wrestling with ferocious beasts. It is true that, among peoples who are in a complete state of barbarism, one does not find a government that gives to one individual and to those he employs as his agents, a boundless power over all the others; but this power is found in the hands of each with regard to all.

In a civilized country, there exist goods and evils particular to each state or to each position; in the savage state, all individuals exercising the same trade are all exposed to the same evils, and can enjoy the same goods. Now, to prove the superiority of the savage life over the civilized life, Rousseau has gathered all the calamities to which one is exposed in all positions, and he has presented them as being the lot reserved for each individual; but one need not be endowed with great sagacity to perceive that this is but a sophism. The soldier who does not leave the land is not exposed to shipwrecks; the farmer does not run the risks of the sailor, nor the sailor the risks of the miner. For the comparison to be just, it would be necessary that the evils proper to each state exceed those that accompany the savage life.

There is another kind of sophism that one often encounters in Rousseau's discourse. The goal he proposes being to prove that the evils attached to the savage life are inferior to those that are attached to the state of civilization, he answers the objections he foresees only by changing the state of the question. If one objects to him, for example, that the skill of the man of nature cannot equal the strength of certain ferocious beasts, he agrees; but, he says, man is with respect to these animals in the case of the other weaker species that do not fail to subsist. The human species subsisted under Commodus and under Nero, and that does not prove that it was well off. It was not a question of proving, moreover, that the man of nature is as happy as certain wild beasts; but that he is happier than civilized man.

Rousseau foresees another objection: if the woman happens to perish, the child is at great risk of perishing with her. Doubtless, he says; but this danger is common to a hundred other species. Was that the question? Was it a matter of proving that there are a hundred species of beasts that are no happier than a savage? One objects that the man of nature will have illnesses, that accidents will happen to him. Rousseau makes his ordinary reply: the human species is not, in this regard, of worse condition than all the others.

A more serious objection presented itself: What will become of the man of nature in his old age? Among the old who act and perspire little, says Rousseau, the need for food diminishes with the faculty of providing for it, and they die out without one perceiving that they cease to be. The old act little, it is true, in civilized States, because their needs are provided for, and they have no efforts to make to repel danger. But, in the state of nature, will they be any less obligated than the young men to exercise themselves in fatigue, to defend, naked and without arms, their life and their prey against the other ferocious beasts, and to escape them by running? Will they be any less obligated to jump, to run, to climb? Will they find the lions and tigers less ferocious? If, instead of devouring a deer in a meal, they content themselves with a hare, will they need to be any less light of foot for it?

One of the principal characteristics that Rousseau recognizes in savage man is improvidence; it is the facility he has of yielding to the first impressions that things make on him; and, at the same time, he indicates the absence of vices as the principal cause of his happiness. But is this not a manifest contradiction? Is a vice anything other than the habit of giving oneself over to an action that produces an immediate pleasure, and whose harm is ordinarily distant? Thus, the absence of vices among savages is no less belied by the facts than all the other assertions that I have already refuted.The attachment that savages have shown for their way of life has been considered proof of the superiority of the state of barbarism over the state of civilization. By reasoning thus, there is no vicious habit whose goodness one could not prove; for, what individual is not attached to the vices that afflict him? There have been men who have renounced the civil life to live among savages; and this is another fact that has served as an argument against civilization. We have no way of knowing all the causes that have determined the conduct of certain individuals; but, if we refer to the testimony of several travelers, we will find it difficult to consider these facts as proper to justify Rousseau’s system. According to Charlevoix, the Europeans who have resolved to live among the savages have generally been led to it only by the lures offered to them by a licentious life. The testimony of this missionary is, moreover, confirmed by that of a philosopher traveler [511]. Finally, we have previously seen English deportees, after having taken refuge in the forests among the savages, return to take up their irons and their labors, despite the fears they had of being severely punished for their escape. Their return does not prove anything in favor of the savage life.

I will not push the examination of this system any further: if I have not said enough to convince those who are its admirers, I have said far too much for those who are not imposed upon by the brilliance of the style, and who judge thoughts, not by the harmony of the words in which they are rendered, but by the useful truths they contain. Let me only be permitted to record here the testimony of two celebrated travelers, who, after having admired the system I have combated, were disillusioned by long experience.

“The philosophers,” says La Pérouse, “will cry out in vain against this picture (of the state of savages). They write their books by their fireside, and I have been traveling for thirty years; I am a witness to the injustices and the barbarity of these peoples whom they paint for us as so good, because they are very close to nature; but this nature is sublime only in its masses; it neglects all the details. It is impossible to penetrate into the woods that the hand of civilized men has not pruned; to cross the plains filled with stones, with rocks, and inundated with impracticable marshes; to associate, in short, with the man of nature, because he is barbarous, wicked, and deceitful [512].”

Dentrecasteaux who, upon beginning his voyage, was imbued with all the opinions of Rousseau, and who was seized with admiration at the sight of the first savages he perceived, and of the magnificence of the earth abandoned to its natural fertility, ends his account thus:

“As much pleasure as we had had, at the beginning of the campaign, in contemplating in new countries the beauties of savage nature, so much did we have in finding again a cultivated land and civilized men. The same beauties of raw nature, which had at first transported us, no longer struck us except by their sad monotony: we felt only disgust at encountering deserts like those of New Holland. The sentiment of curiosity that had excited in us the desire to visit the savage peoples and to know their morals, was entirely extinguished. These men, so close to the state of nature, and on whose simplicity we had had exaggerated ideas, inspired in us only painful sentiments: we had seen several of them give themselves over to the most revolting excesses of barbarity; and all were even more corrupt than civilized peoples. Our eyes, long fatigued by the spectacle of arid and deserted coasts, rested with a sweet satisfaction on a fertile country, which recalled our old habits; and our soul, formerly overwhelmed by the weight of its reflections on the fate of these ferocious peoples, blossomed at the sight of the town of Cajeli, of its mosques, of its houses, numerous enough to form a kind of city. We no longer made any wishes but to draw closer to our homeland; at this distance from our native land, every European became a compatriot; every Frenchman would have been of our family [513].”