A TREATISE

POLITICAL ECONOMY;

TO WHICH IS PREFIXED

A SUPPLEMENT TO A PRECEDING WORK ON THE UNDERSTANDING}

•

OR ELEMENTS OF IDEOLOGY;

WITH AN

ANALYTICAL TABLE,

INTRODUCTION ON THE FACULTY OF THE WILL.

BY THE COUNT DESTUTT TRACY, * 'lTK«-« ff

MEMBER OP THE SENATE AND INSTITUTE OF FRANCE, AND OF THE AMERICAS PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.

TRANSLATED FROM THE UNPUBLISHED FRENCH ORIGINAL

GEORGETOWN, D. C.

PUBLISHED BT JOSEPH MILLIGAN

1817. W. A, Rind & Co. Printer*

I.- :•,. 1 <t~rf ;.-,;• :.'.-. It T ':

.brred, ttalontbeftfacndiihnrof March. n> iii. r<.ity.flnt year of d*

,, .Invpll Mil!

i a ll<«)lx. tin' riifht whircof In iluinii a<

'• UprHlxed ••nnphn <nt toapniv>

I able, and an Intn.'

lit- American Phiknophical Society. Tnuultted from tin UN;

i il "An Act f'

t MapH. Chart-. :iinl l^Mik«.ti>thi- Amhon mrf ,dvinr thetuon ttH-ni

VLE, Clerk of the District tf Columbia.

MOWTICELLO, October 25, 1818.

SIR,

I now return you, according to promise, the translation ofM. Destutt Tracy's Treatise on Po- litical Economy, which I have carefully revised and corrected. The numerous corrections of sense in the translation, have necessarily destroyed uni- formity of style, so that all I may say on that sub- ject is that the sense of the author is every where now faithfully expressed. It would be difficult to do justice, in any translation, to the style of the original, in which no word is unnecessary, no word can be changed for the better, and severity of logic results in that brevity, to which we wish all science reduced. The merit of this work will, I hope, place it in the hands of every reader in our coun- try. By diffusing sound principles of Political Economy, it will protect the public industry from the parasite institutions now consuming it, and lead us to that just and regular distribution of the public burthens from which we have sometimes strayed. It goes forth therefore mith my hearty prayers, that' while the Review of Montesquieu, by the same author, is made with us the elementary book of instruction in the principles of civil go- vernment, so the present work may be in the par- ticular branch of Political Economy.

THOMAS JEFFERSON

MR. MlLLIGAN.

PROSPECTUS.

POLITICAL ECONOMY, in modern times, assumed the form of a regular science, first in the hands of the political sect in France, called the Economists. They made it a branch only of a comprehensive sys- tem, on the natural order of Societies. Quesnia first, G our nay, Le Trosne, Turgot, & Dupont da Nemours, the enlightened, philanthropic, and venera- ble citizen now of the United States, led the way in these developements, and gave to our enquiries the direction they have since observed. Many sound and valuable principles, established by tliem^ have received the sanction of general approbation. Some, as in the infancy of a science, might be expected, have been brought into question, and have furnished occasion for much discussion ; their opinions on pro- duction, and on the proper subjects of taxation, have been particularly controverted; and whatever may be the merit of their principles of taxation, it is not wonderful they have not prevailed, not on the ques- tioned score of correctness, but because not accepta- ble to the people, whose will must be the supreme law. Taxation is, in fact, the most difficult func- tion of government, and that against which, their ci- tizens are most apt to be refractory. The general aim is, therefore, to adopt the mode most consonant with the circumstances and sentiments of the coun- try.

IV

A (la iii Smith, first in England, published a ration- al and systematic \\ork on Political Economy; I it- rally the ground of the Economists, hut dilVcring on the subject before specified. The* system being novel, much argument and detail ird then necessary to establish principles which now arc a^ruicd to as soon as proposed. Hence his bnnU admitted to he able, and of the first degree of merit, has yet been considered as prolix and tedi- ous.

In France, John TCaptist Say has the merit of pro- ducing a very superior work on the subject of Poli- tic al Kconomy. His arrangement is luminous, ideas clear, style perspicuous, and the whole sub- brought within half the volume of Smith's work ; add to this, considerable advances in correct- ness, and extension of principles.

The work of Senator Tracy, now announced, comes I'm uanl with all the lights of bis predecessors in the science, and with the advantages of further e\p'-r;ence, more dis-nission and giraler maturity of subject. It is certainly distinguished by important trakfl : a co-eiK y of logic which has never been ex- ceeded in any work, a rigorous enchainment of idea-, and constant recurrence to it, to keep it in the \iew. a fearless pursuit of truth, whitl.erso- ii lead-, and a diction so correct, that not a word can be changed but for the worse : and, as happens in other cases, that the more a subject i- underwood, the more hrirfly it may lie explained, • not indeed all the details, but aM '••MI of principles, within tlu »-oinpj«s< of an BVO, . . indeed.

might say within two thirds of that space, the one third being taken up with preliminary pieces now to be noticed.

Mr. Tracy is the author of a Treatise on the ele- ments of Ideology, justly considered as a produc- tion of the first order in the science of our thinking faculty, or of the understanding. Considering the present work but as a second section to those ele- ments under the titles of Analytical Table, Supple- ment, and Introduction, he gives in these preliminary pieces a supplement to the Elements, shews how the present work stands on that as its basis, pre- sents a summary view of it, and, before entering on the formation, distribution and employment of pro- perty, he investigates the question of the origin of the rights of property and personality, a question not new indeed, yet one which has not hitherto been satisfactorily settled. These investigations are ve- ry metaphysical, profound and demonstrative, and will give satisfaction to minds in the habit of ab- stract speculation. Readers, however, not disposed to enter into them, after reading the summary view, entitled "On our actions," will probably pass on at once to the commencement of the main subject of the work, which is treated of under the following heads :

Of Society.

Of Production, or the Formation of our Riches.

Of Value, or the Measure of Utility.

Of Change of Form, or Fabrication.

Of Change of Place, or Commerce.

Of Money.

Of the Distribution of our Riches.

Of Population.

VI

Of (In* employment of onrRiches or Consumption.

Of Public Kevenue. Expenses itucl Debts.

Although the uork no\\ ollered is but a transla-

ho considered in some decree, as the

.ual. th;tt havm- lies rr been published in the

in \\hidi it \v;i- written : the author would

-ubmitted to the unpleasant alterna-

fise either of mutilating his *enliments, where they

or doubt ful, or of risking himself

under tiie un-etiled regimen , of their press. A

!pt copy communicated to a friend here has

'•n-ihled him to give it to a country which is afraid

;.d not Mil-, and which may be trusted with any

i lon^ as its reason remains unfettered by

In ihe iranslation, fidelity has been chiefly con- sulted : a more correct style would sometimes have pven a shade of sentiment which was not the nu- thor's. and which in a work standing in the place of the original, would have been unjust towards him. Some Gallicisms have therefore been admitted, when* a -i!»i;lr word gives an idea which would re- >' a whole phrase of Dictionary English ; in- 1, the horrors of neologism, which startle the pu- Jven no alarm to the translator: where hrrxiiN, pi'i^p'umiy. and even euphony can be pro- .<• introduction of a new word, it is an imp. . If i* thus the English

I been broisujlit to what it is ; one half of \iiii; been inno\atioux, made at dilVercni times, D tl;e (iret k. L;;iiii, Krrnch. am! other Ian

_, and is it tl tor the-e ? Had the pre-

is idea of ti\in- the hin-uai'v b'.jeii adopted

Vll

in the time of our Saxon ancestors, Pierce, Plow- man, of Chaucer, of Spencer, the progress of ideas must have stopped with that of the progress of the language. On the contrary, nothing is more evident than that, as we advance in the knowledge of new things, and of new combinations of old ones, we must have new words to express them. Were Van Helmont, Stahl, Scheele, to rise from the dead at this time, they would scarcely understand one word of their own science. Would it have been better, then, to have abandoned the science of Chemistry, rather than admit innovations in its terms ? What a wonderful accession of copiousness and force has the French language attained by the innovations of the last thirty years? And what do we not owe to Shake- spear for the enrichment of the language by his free and magical creation of words ? In giving a loose to neologism, indeed uncouth words will sometimes be offered ; but the public will judge them, and re- ceive or reject, as sense or sound shall suggest, and authors will be approved or condemned, according to the use they make of this license, as they now are from their use of the present vocabulary. The cjaim of the present translation, however, is limited to its duties of fidelity and justice to the sense of its origi- nal ; adopting the author's own word only where no. term of our own language would couvey his meaning.

ADVERTISEMENT.

AT the end of my logic I have traced the plan of the elements of ideology, such as I conceived they ought to he, to give a complete knowledge of our intellectual faculties, and to deduce from that know- ledge the first principles of all the other branches of our knowledge, which can never be founded on any other solid base. It has been seen that I di- vide these elements into three sections. The first is properly the history of our means of knowledge, or of what is commonly called our understanding. The second is the application of this study to that of our will and its effects, and it completes the his- tory of our faculties. The third is the application of this knowledge of our faculties to the study of those beings which are not ourselves, that is to say of all the beings which surround us. If the second section is an introduction to the moral and political sciences, the third is that to the physical and mathe- matical; and both, preceded hy a scrupulous exam- ination into the nature of our certitude and the cau- ses of our errors, appear to me to form a respecta- ble whole, and to compose what we ought really to call the first philosophy. I even believe this to have been proved in my third volume, chapter the ninth.

If I cannot flatter myself with the hope of bring- ing so important a work to perfection, I wish at least to contribute to it as much as is in my power : and I hope to contribute to it, perhaps even by the

fault* iVom which 1 shall not have been able to IT. Mv threr first volumes of ideolo- • impose the first section, or the In of knov, led..

I am no'.v alum! to • ommenre the second section

or I In- h M the \\ill and its i» fleets: but before*

riiiciin- MII t!,(, oeii -ul.jrci I think it riujlit to add

0 that \\lticli I bave said on the first.

lit ir (hen \\ill lie found, under the name of a sup-

KMit to the ; nethiiii; further sup-

portini; bv \v observations my manner of

col!' lie arliiice of jiu!t;iiient and reasoning.

J hope it will not be displeasing to the amateurs

,:rh: because in condens'nii; and bi: \n- more ( 1< ,etber the most important of my

logical princij}!«->, I pri-.-ei:t the?;i under a ne\\

•,oi\M»ver adiled some considerations on the theory of probabilities, which are not with-

iii;- the little pi

o niiide. Those too who are not niii . (he latter article, and who may he suf-

l \\ith my theory of lo^ic and con- . may save tliemsi-lves the trou- ipplement^ wltich is but a su[ abui: f proof.

V •/// and

part of which \ .limit to

the pill/ i .,in three. Ti e (h>t, wliich

. wliich treats of our | and the third, which treats of the in •id our ;ict in their four.

XI

tion, although closely connected with one another ; and I shall be very careful not to confound them, notwithstanding the numerous relations which unite them, and to avoid as much as possible all repeti- tions. But it will readily be perceived that there are general considerations which are common to them ; and that before speaking of the effects and consequences of our willing faculty, and of the mariner of directing it, we must speak of this fa- culty itself. This will be the subject of a prelimi- nary discourse, composed of seven chapters or pa- ragraphs. I fear it will appear too abstract; and that many readers will be impatient at being de- tained so long in generalities which seem to retard the moment of real entry on our subject. I can agree that I could have abridged them. If I have not done it, it is because I have been well persuad- ed that I should gain time under the appearance of losing it.

In effect I pray that it may be considered, that wishing really to place the moral and political sci- ences on their true basis, a knowledge of our intel- lectual faculties, it was necessary to begin by con- sidering our faculty or will under all its [aspects ; and that this preliminary examination being once made, almost all the principles will find themselves established naturally, and w^e shall advance very rapidly afterwards, because we shall never be obli- ged to retrace our steps. If any one wishes to sa- tisfy himself of the advantage of this course, he has only to commence reading the book after the preli- minary discourse. He will see every instant that he

Xll

has i an iiiritlcutMl d:--« nation, to obviate the

difficulties which will li;ivc been solved before : and so much the worse fur those who should not ex- perience this necessity, for such are capable of bc- iad»'d \\ iihout .-nflicicnt reason. There arc but too many reader* endowed with this kind of in- dulgence : hut it is not of their suffrages I am n ambitious. J co&a nt then that they shall accuse me of baxini; said too much: but J should I);4, very y if'tho-e who are more difficult, should be able to arrive me of bavins; passed over some links in the chain of ideas. It is especially in the commence- ment that this fault would be most unpardonable, for then it might lead to the most serious errors ; and it is thence that arise all those erroneous terns which are the more deceiving, inasmuch as the rt is hidden in the foundation, and all that ap- is is consequent and well connected. Should the last reproach be urged, my only answer would iiat I have made every eilbrt not to deserve it : und J can at the same time protest, that I have no< •re hand any of those results to which I have been conducted, and that I have only followed

• bread which prided me, the series of idea^ (i tin- all in. ion not to break it. The j;;

ment of the public will teach me whether I have suc- !«-d, and 1 will not loir-tall it by any oilier pre face than thi> Dimple advertisement.

My plan, my motives, and my manner of pro- ceedinu; have been HitViciently explained in the pr-

ABSTRACT,

AWJLLYTICM, T*1£LE.

ADVERTISEMENT.

BEFORE commencing the second section of the elements of Ideology, which treats of the will and its effects, I am going to give a supplement to the first, which embraces the history of our means of knowledge. Then will come the introduction to the treatise on the will, which presents the general considerations common to the three parts of which this treatise is composed. The introduction will be followed by the first of these three parts, that which treats specially of our actions.

SUPPLEMENT

To the first section of the Elements of Ideology.

I have previously reduced the whole science of logic to two facts.

The first is that our perceptions being every thing for us, we are perfectly, completely, and necessarily sure of what- ever we actually feel. B

X

.lie of our judgments, inasmuch as we see one

: , another if i~ actually th.-n> : but their fruity, when it p-.iP'ly relative to anterior judgments, which

at we believe

fhf idea in which we perceive a new element to be the same ha\e always had under the same sign, when it is really different, -'nice the new element which we actually see there U incompatibl me of those which we have

pp-vio'i-lv >-*•(•' 'iction we must ei-

ther T former or not admit the latter. From

these two f.LcT-j or prim iples I deduce here fourteen apho- or maxims, which constitute in my opinion the whole art of Ionic, such as it proceeds from the true science of lo-

Accordins to the h«f of these aphorisms, which enjoins us to abstain from jmltjin«r while we have not sufficient data, I .k of the theory of probability.

of probability is not the same thin<r as the cal-

<m of probability. It consists in the research of data

and in their combination. The calculation consists only in

the latter part: it may h-' \erv just, and vet lead to results

false, of this the mathematicians ha\e not been suffi-

They have taken it for the whole science. The M ieix .- of probability is not then a particular science; as a reM-anh of data it makes a part of each of the sciences on \\hich ih»'>e data depend; as a calculation of data it is

M» of the science of quant r

The obabiliiy is properly tlie conjectural pait

i the branches of our knowledge, in some of which "M may he en. ployed.

to see well what are those of which

fcdea suffi- ! di-terminate to be referred to the «

] pliers, and in order

in the sequel we may (hem the rinoroijH lan-

g**g« ig a-iin t

>n. They have be-

XI

lieved that every thing consisted in calculation, and this has betrayed them into frightful errors.

In the state in which the science of probability is as yet, if it be one, I have thought I should confine myself to this small number of reflections, intended to determine well its nature. its means, and its object.

SECOND SECTION

OF THE

Elements of Ideology, or a treatise on the will and its effects. INTRODUCTION.

SECTION 1.

The faculty of will is a mode and a consequence of the faculty oi perception.

We have just finished the examination of our means of knowledge. We must employ them in the study of our fa- culty of will to complete the history of our intellectual fa- culties.

The faculty of willing produces in us the ideas of wants and means, of riches and deprivation, of rights and duties, of justice and injustice, which flow from the idea of proper' ty, which is itself derived from the idea of personality. It is necessary therefore first to examine this latter, and to ex- plain beforehand with accuracy what the faculty of willing is.

The faculty of willing is that of finding some one thing preferable to another.

It is a mode and a consequence of the faculty of feeling,

XJ1

SECTION 2. From the faculty o<" v, ill aris" the ideas of personality and property.

tor him his own sensibility. Tl". i certain point, the idea of

'.'/•

Hut the mo.! died t'i'- will or willing fa-

idca of personality complete : it

produce tlif idea of nronerty as we

i idea ol >lelv from the

ily fr.nn it. for

e an idea <>t \<-!f w hhout baring thai of the pro-

in all the lat uliie- of self and in tlieir effects. If it

if there was not amongst us a natural and ne-

r \\ ould have been a convent ional

or artificial propei

* iiiiulation of all economy, and of all mo- : which are in their principles but one and the - nee.

SECTION 3.

From tho faculty of will arise all our wants and all our means.

Th> ta «'in unfitly from our faculty of

18 in acquire a <li>tinct and complete idea

opertv in all iu modi's, are also

- ''piihle of want-, and are the

providing for llio-e wants.

it. am I fever} want is never . De-ire i. alw.iy- in •

«>'ir iniiscular >'j; our ac-

t utes our only

xm

Thus it is the faculty of will which renders us proprietors of wants and means., of passion and action, of pain and power. Thence arise the ideas of riches and deprivation.

SECTION 4. .From the faculty of will arise also the ideas of riches and deprivation.

Whatsoever contributes, mediately or immediately, to the satisfaction of our wants is for us a good ; that is to say, a thing the possession of which is a good.

To be rich is to possess these goods; to be poor is to be without them.

They arise all from the employment of our faculties, of which they are the effect and representation.

These goods have all two values amongst us ; the one is that of the sacrifices they cost to him who produces them, the other that of the advantages which they procure for him who has acquired them.

The labour from which they emanate has then these two values.

Yes labour has these two values. The one is the sum of the objects necessary to the satisfaction of the wants that arise ine- vitably in an animated being during the operation of his labour. The other is the mass of utility resulting from this labour.

The latter value is eventual and variable.

The first is natural and necessary. It has not however an absolute fixity ; and it is this which renders very delicate all economical and moral calculations.

We can scarcely employ in these matters but the conside- rations drawn from the theory of limits.

SECTION 5. From the faculty of will arise also the ideas of liberty and constraint.

Liberty is the power of executing our will. It is our first good. It includes them all A constraint inoiudes all our

XIV

"it i- a<l' i of the power to satisfy our Wuitfe

,t!i(i at (omplish nin

A I: Miiferanco : all liberty i- enjoyment. The

raUeof the liberty of an animated being is equal to* that of all hi* fat ultie- in it

It is absolutely infinite for him and without a possible (•({divalent, sin; e its entiiv io=>- import:, the impossibility of iod.

.';r liberty and iis value. Tin- ol>ji :iie fulfilment of this duty.

IION 6. Finally, fnmi the faculty of will arise our ideas of rights and duties.

! all its k: . and

rce of all duties; or in duty to employ it well, which comprehends all the

'••a« of li^hl^ and dufios aro not ;ally cor-

- i.> lommonly .-.aid. That 0 is anterior and

An i brim: by the laws of his nature ha> a!-

his want.-., and he has no duties but. ac- i. on!:

A sentient and willing beinj. but incapable of action, 'id no dm

ipable of action, and insulated from le beinjr. has still the same plenitip ie sole duty of properly direr tint: his action? and \\ril employing hU mean- for (he mo?t c<»inj>lete sat!

inn; in contact \\ith other beini:* w)i'

him them : he ha^ still til

XV

as he must act on the will of these beings, and is under a ne- cessity to sympathise more or less with them. >8uch are our relations with the brutes.

Suppose this same sensible being in relation with beings with whom he can completely communicate and form conven- tions, he has still the same rights unlimited in themselves, and the same sole duty.

These rights are not bounded, this duty is not modified by the conventions established; but because these conventions are so many means of exercising these rights, of fulfilling this duty better and more fully than before.

The possibility of explaining ourselves and not agricul- ture, grammar and not Ceres, is our first legislator. It is at the establishment of conventions that the just and Unjust 9 properly speaking, commence.

SECTION » . Conclusion.

The general considerations just read begin to diffuse some light over the subject with which we are occupied, bat they are not sufficient. We must see more in detail what are the numerous results of our actions ; what are the different sen- timents which arise from our first desires, and what is the best possible manner of directing these actions and senti- ments. Here will be found the division which I have an- 11 on need. I shall begin by speaking of our actions.

FIRST PART

OF THE

TREATISE ON THE WILL AND ITS EFFECTS.

OF OUR ACTIONS. CHAPTER I.

Of Society.

In the introduction to a treatise on the will it was proper

to ind i< ration of -ome ireneral ideas which are

(he i consequence-, of thi- faculty.

It \ ''!icmiilx>nt on us to examine summarily,

'•e inanimate beings, that is to say beings nei- their sentient nor willing.

2d. XVliat sent if tit beings would be with indifference with- out will.

What arc wntient and willing beings but insulated.

4th. Finally, what are sentient and willing beings like ourselves, hut placed in contact \\ith similar beings.

It i- \\itli the latter v\e are now exclusively to occupy our- », for man <an r\Ut ordy in society.

Tin \ of reproduction and the propensity to sym-

pathy il\ lead him to il and his judgment

make> him jM-rcri\r its advantages.

I proceed then to -peak of

I shall con-ider it only uith respect to economy. be< thi-, iii>t part coin em- our art inns only and not a* yet oui

V//////M /

ruder this relation >ocietv (<»n-i-ts only in a continual

.mil inchange is a transaction of

such a nature that both nil- parties , -in by

xvii

it. (This observation will hereafter throw great light on the nature and effects of commerce.)

We cannot cast our eyes on a civilized country without seeing with astonishment how much this continual succession of small advantages, unperceived but incessantly repeated, adds to the primitive power of man.

It is because this succession of changes, which constitutes society, has three remarkable properties. It produces con- currence of force, increase and preservation of intelligence and division of labour.

The utility of these three effects is continually augmenting. It will be better perceived when we shall have seen how our riches are formed.

CHAPTER II.

Of Production, or the formation of our Riches*

In the first place what ought we to understand by the word production ? We create nothing. We operate only changes of form and of place.

To produce is to give to things an utility which they had not before.

All labour from which utility results is productive.

That relative to agriculture has in this respect nothing par- ticular.

A farm is truly a manufactory.

A field is a real tool, or in other words a stock of first ma- terials.

All the laborious class is productive.

The truly sterile class is that of the idle.

Manufacturers fabricate, merchants transport. This is our industry. It consists in the production of utility.

XV111 CHAPTER III.

Of the measure of Utility, or of Value.

Whatever contributes to augment our enjoyments and to diminish our sufferings, is useful to us.

We are frequently very unjust appreciators of the real utility of things.

But the measure of utility which, right or wrong, we as- cribe to a thin^ is the sum of the sacrifices we are disposed to make to procure its possession.

This is what is called the price of this thing, it is its real value in relation to riches.

The mean then of enriching ourselves is to devote our- solvr- to that species of labour which is most dearly paid for> whatever be its nature.

This is true as to a nation as well as to an individual.

Observe always that the conventional value, the market price of a thin jr. l>«-inir determined by the balance of the re- ice of sellers and buyers, a thing without being less de- i becomes less dear, when it is more easily produced.

This is the great advantage of the progress of the arts. It causes us to be provided for on better terms, because we are So with less trouble.

CHAPTER IV.

* change of form, or of fabricating Industry, compris- ing Agriculture.

In every species of industry there are three things : theo- ry, application an»l ><,. Hence three kinds of labour -

umlertaker, and the workman

All are obli- ,, Or less before they can re-

oeive, aiid especially the undertaker.

XIX

These advances are furnished by anterior economies, and are called capitals.

The man of science and the workman are regularly com- pensated by the undertaker ; but he has no benefit but in pro- portion to the success of his fabrication.

It is indispensable that the labors most necessary should be the most moderately recompensed.

This is true most especially of those relative to agricultu- ral industry. This has moreover the inconvenience that the agricultural undertaker cannot make up for the mediocrity of his profits by the great extension of his business.

Accordingly this profession has no attractions for the rich.

The proprietors of land who do not cultivate it are stran- gers to agricultural industry. They are merely lenders of funds.

They dispose of them according to the convenience of those whom they can engage to labor them.

There are four sorts of undertakers ; two with greater or smaller means, the lessees of great and small farms 5 and two almost without means, those who farm on shares and la- bourers.

Hence four species of cultivation essentially different.

The division into great and small culture is insufficient and subject to ambiguity.

Agriculture then is the first of arts in relation to necessi- ty, but not in regard to riches.

It is because our means of subsistence and our means of existence are two very different things, and we are wrong to confound them.

CHAPTER V.

Of the change of place, or of Commercial Industry.

Insulated man might fabricate but could not trade. For commerce and society are one and the same thing;,

XX

It alone animates industry.

It unites in the first place inhabitants of the same canton. Then the different cantons of the same country, and finally different nations.

The greatest advantage of external commerce, the only one meriting attention, is its giving a greater developement to that which is internal.

Merchants, properly so called, facilitate commerce, but it exists before them and without them.

They give a new value to things by effecting a change of place, as fabricators do by a change of form.

I from thij» increase of value that they derive their pro- fits.

Commercial industry presents the same phenomena as fa- bricating iml istry; in it are likewise theory, application and execution. Men of science, undertakers and workmen ; these are compensated in like manner ; they have analogous func- tions and interests, &c. &c.

CHAPTER VI.

Of Money.

Commerce can and does exist to a certain degree without money.

The values of all those things, which have any, serve as a reciprocal measure.

The precious netftfo, which are one of those things, be- come soon their common measure, because they have many advaii this purpose.

Ho v are not yet money. It is the impression of

i^n which irives this quality to a piece of metal, in establishing its uri^iit and '-SB.

sikrr monry is the onlv true common measure.

Th«- ion of gold and -iU»;r vary according to times

and places.

XXI

Copper money is a false money, useful only for Small change.

It is to be desired that coins had never borne other names than those of their weight ; and that the arbitrary denomina- tions, called monies of account, such as livres, sous, deniers, &c. &c. had never been used.

But when these denominations are admitted and employ- ed in transactions, to diminish the quantity of metal to which they answer, by an alteration of the real coins, is to steal.

And it is a theft which injures even him who commits it.

A theft of greater magnitude, and still more ruinous, is the making of paper money.

It is greater, because in this money there is absolutely no real value.

It is more ruinous, because by its gradual depreciation, during all the time of its existence, it produces the effect which would be produced by an infinity of successive dete- riorations of the coins.

All these iniquities are founded on the false idea that mo- ney is but a sign, while it is value and a true equivalent of that for which it is given.

Silver being a value, as every other useful thing, we should be allowed to hire it as freely as any other thing.

Exchange, properly so called, is a simple barter of one money for another. Banking, or the proper office of a bank- er, consists in enabling you to receive in another city the money which you deliver him in that in which he is.

Bankers render also other services, such as discounting, lending, &c. &c.

All these bankers, exchangers, lenders, discounters, &c. &c. have a great tendency to form themselves into large compa- nies under the pretext of rendering their services on more reasonable terms, but in fact to be paid more dearly for them.

All these privileged companies, after the emission of a great number of notes, end in obtaining authority to refuse payment at sight ; and thus forcibly introduce a paper mp- pey.

XX11 (II AFTER VII.

Reflections on what precedes.

Tims far I believe mvself to have followed the best course

'•aimrient of the object which I propose. This not ben ,tise expressly of political economy,

but a treatise on the will, the sequel of one on the under- hand re to expect numerous details, but a

of principal propositions. AVhat we ha\ 1 ready overturns many important er-

have a clear idea of the formation of our riches. It remains for us to speak of their distribution amongst the members of society, and of their consumption.

CHAPTER VIII.

Of the distribution of our Riches amongst Individuals.

\\ ~e must now consider man under the relation of the in-

rta of individn Tin- >ju t i«^ i- -trong and powerful, the individual is es-

lly miserable.

Property and inequality are insuperable conditions of our natu

i the least skilful, is a considerable property then- aif lands not occupied.

some writers to have pretended there

Mmilril \>\ inan\ u interests, we are all re -united

and of co'

the other art- • themselves.

Mi-erv roinniejucs \vli«-ii a no longer satisfy the

.

ily transitory; the fe- ill the cause.

xxiii CHAPTER IX.

Of the multiplication of Individuals, or of Population..

Man multiplies rapidly wherever he has in abundance the means of existence.

Population never becomes retrograde, nor even stationary, but because these means fail.

Amongst savages it is soon checked, because their means are scanty.

Civilized people have more, they become more numerous in proportion as they have more or less of these means, and make better use of them. But the increase of their popula- tion is arrested also.

Then there exists always as many men as can exist.

Then it is also absurd to suppose they can be multiplied otherwise than by multiplying their means of existence.

Then finally it is barbarous to wish it, since they always attain the limits of possibility, beyond which they only ex- tinguish one another.

CHAPTER X.

Consequences and developement of the two preceding Chapters.

Let us recollect first, that we all have separate interests. and unequal means.

Secondly. That nevertheless we are all united by the com- mon interests of proprietors and consumers.

Thirdly. That, consequently, there are not in society classes which are constantly enemies to one another.

Society divides itself into two great classes, hirelings and employers.

This second class contains two species of men, namelv the idle who live on their revenue.

Their means do not augment.

xxiv

And the active who join their industry to the capitals they may possess. Having reached a certain term their means augment but little.

The funds on which the stipendiaries live become there- fore with time nearly a constant quantity.

Moreover the class of hirelings receives the surplus of all the others.

Thus the extent which that surplus can attain determines that of the total population of which it explains all the varia- tions.

It follows thence that whatever is really useful to the poor, is alwnv- p-.i'lv useful to society at large.

As prnprirtnrs the poor have an interest, first that proper- ty be resnected. The preservation even of that which does not belong to them, but from which £hev are remunerated is important to them. It is just and useful also to leave them masters of their labour, and of their abode.

ondly. That wages be sufficient. It is of imnortance also to society that the poor should Hot be too wretched.

Thirdly. That these wages be steady. Variations in the different branches of industry are an evil. Those in the price of grain are a still Boater one. Agricultural people :reatly exposed to the latter. Commercial people are rarely exposed to the former, excent through their own fault. As consumers the poor have an interest that fabrication should be economical, the means of communi^ntion easy, and commercial relations numerous. The simplification of pro- cess in the arts, the perfection of method are to them a benefit and not an evil. In this their interest is also that of society in general.

\ft'-r !•:• 'ion of our interests let us examine the

ine< means.

Ml im-qual'm- i. an evil. ». ' is a mean of inju-

uruMi the inequality of power from ineqiKiIitv. • hes.

I the most grievous. It is that u >ng savages.

XXV

Society diminishes the inequality of power; but it aug- ments that of riches, which carried to an extreme reprodu- ces that of power.

This inconvenience is more or less difficult to avoid, ac- * ording to different circumstances, Thence the difference ;n the destinies of nations.

' It is this vicious circle which explains the connexion of many events which have been always spoken of in a manner very vague and very unexact. %

CHAPTER XL

Of the employment of our riches, or of Consumption.

After having explained how our riches are formed, and how they are distributed, it is easy to see how we use them.

Consumption is always the reverse of production.

It varies however according to the species of consumers, and the nature of the things consumed. First let us consi- der the consumers.

The consumption of the hired ought to be regarded as made by the capitalists who employ them.

These capitalists are either the idle who live on their re- venue, or the active who live on their profits.

The first remunerate only sterile labour. Their entire consumption is a pure loss, accordingly they cannot expend annually more than their revenue.

The others expend annually all their funds, and all those which they hire of the idle capitalists ; and sometimes they expend them several times in the year.

Their consumption is of two kinds.

That which they make for the satisfaction of their person- al wants is definitive and sterile, as that of idle men.

D

XVI

That which they make in their quality of industiious men returns to them with profit.

It is with these profits they pay their personal expenses, and the interest due to idle capitalists.

Thus they find that they pay both the hirelings whom they immediately employ, and the idle proprietors and their hire- lings; and all this returns to them by the purchases which all those people make of their productions.

It is this which constitutes circulation, of which produc- tive connimption is the only fund.

In regard to the nature of things consumed, consumption the most gradual is the most economical the most prompt ; is the most destructive.

We see that luxury, that is to say superfluous consump- tion, can neither accelerate circulation nor increase its funds. It only substitutes useless for useful expenses.

It is like inequality, an inconvenience attached to the in? crease of riches; but it can never be the cause of their aug- mentation.

History plainly shows what happens wherever useless ex- penses have been suppressed.

All theories contrary to this reduce themselves to this un- tenable proposition. That to destroy is to produce.

CHAPTER XII.

Of the revenues and expenses of government and its debts.

The history of the consumption of government is but a part of the history of general consumption.

Government is a very great consumer, living not on its profits but on its revenues.

It is good that the government should possess real proper- ty. Independently of other reasons it calls for so much the less of taxes.

XXV11

A tax is always a sacrifice which the government demands of individuals. While it only lessens every one's personal enjoyments, it only shifts expenses from one to another.

But when it encroaches on productive consumption it di- minishes public riches.

The difficulty is to see clearly when taxes produce the one or the other of these two effects.

To judge well of this we must divide them into six classes.

"We show in the first place that the taxes of each of these six classes are injurious in ways peculiar to themselves.

We show afterwards who in particular are injured by each of them.

Is a conclusion asked ? Here it is. The best taxes are, first, the most moderate, because they compel fewer sacrifi- ces and occasion less violence. Secondly, The most varied, because they produce an equilibrium amongst themselves. Thirdly, The most ancient, because they have already mixed with all prices, and every thing is arranged in consequence.

As to the expenses of government they are necessary but they are sterile. It is desirable that they be the smallest possible.

It is still more desirable that government should contract no debts.

It is very unfortunate that it has the power of contracting them.

This power, which is called public credit, speedily con- ducts all the governments which use it to their ruin; has none of the advantages which are attributed to it $ and rests on a false principle.

It is to be desired that it were universally acknowledged that the acts of any legislative power whatsoever cannot bind their successors, and that it should be solemnly declared that this principle is extended to the engagement? which they make with ^he lenders.

xxviii CHAPTER XIII.

Conclusion.

j-

This is not properly a treatise on political economy, bu<. the first part of a treatise on the will ; which will be follow • •el by two other parts, and which is preceded by an intro- duction common to all the three.

Thus we ought not to have entered into many details, but to ascend carefully to principles founded in the observation of our faculties, and to indicate as clearly as possible the re- lations between our physical and moral wants.

This is what I have endeavoured to do. Incontestable truths result from it.

They will be contested however, less through interest than passion.

A new bond of union between economy and morality; a new reason for analizing well our different sentiments, and for enquiring with care whether they are founded on ju on false opinions.

Let us now -consider our sentim-

A TREATISE

POLITICAL ECONOMY,

SUPPLEMENT

TO THE

First Section of the Elements of Ideology.

In proportion as I advance in the digestion of these elements, I am incessantly obliged to return to objects, of which I have already treated. At the commencement of the grammar it was necessary to recall the attention of the reader to the analysis of the judgment, to render still more precise the idea of that intellectual operation, and of its results, and to repeat several of the effects already recognized in the signs, and several of their relations, with the nature of the ideas which they represent.

At the commencement of the volume which treats more especially of logic, I of necessity looked back on the ancient history of the science, to show, that true logic is absolutely the same science with that of the formation, the expression, and combination of our ideas ; that is to say, that which has been since called Ideology, general grammar, or analysis of

the understanding : and to show that my two first vo- liuws are but the restoration, more or less fortunate, of the two first parts of the ancient logics, and the supplement of that which lias always been wanting to theM- very impor'ant preliminaries. I have more- over been under (he neo-ssity of insisting also on the explication of the idea of existence, and on that of the >fonr preceptions, and of their nece-sary

concordanc e \\ith the reality of the beings \vhich 96 them, when they are all legitimately dedu- i'roin the fir-l and direct impressions, which these beings make on us.

At present I find myself, in like manner, constrain- ed to speak again of the conclusions of this lo-ir. In-fore advancing further, and not to apply my theo- ry of tin of certitude and error, to the study of the will and its effects, without having given it some new developements. The reader ought to par- don these frequent retrospect* : for they arise almost --arily from the nature of the subject, from the in which it has been treated hitherto, and from »!ie nece— i it- under, of anticipatin crowd of objections, when we wish to render a new opinion acceptable.

Let me be permitted then to mention here again, reduced the \\hole science of loi;i to 'on of tv ;;-h re-ult mani

• m the -crupiili- .1 ination of our intellec-

tual oprrat'nms. The first is, that our perceptions bein iiini:; for u-. we HI-'* perfectly, compl

My -ure of all that ue actually feel. The -ecoiid, which is but a COBseqaenceofthatj is that

none of our judgments, taken separately, can be erro- neous, since, for the very reason that we see one idea in another, it must be actually there; but that their falsity, when it takes place, is purely relative to all the anterior judgments, which we permit to subsist, and consists in this, that we believe the idea, in which we see a new element, to be the same we have al- ways had under the same sign, while it is really dif- ferent, since the new element we actually see there is incompatible with some of those which we have previously seen there. So that, to avoid contradic- tion, it would be necessary either to take away the former, or not to admit the latter.

After having established these two principles, or rather these two facts, I have given some elucida- tions, I have met in advance some objections, I have shown that these two objections are equally true, whatever be the nature of our ideas, and what- ever the use we make of them; and hence I have con- cluded, that all the rules whatsoever which have been prescribed for the form of our reasonings, to assure us of their justice, are absolutely useless and illuso- ry ; and that our sole and only means of preserving ourselves from error, is to assure ourselves well that we comprehend the idea of which we judge, and if it be doubtful, to make the most complete enume- ration possible of the elements which compose it, and principally of those which may either implicitly contain or exclude that whose admission or exclu- sion is in question. It is here that, without more details, I have terminated my treatise on logic, which consequently finishes almost at the point

at which all the others commence. This ought so to he, as I meant to speak only of the science ; while other logicians, neglecting the science almost entirely, have occupied themselves only with the art. I confess my belief, that my labour is more useful than theirs ; because, in every matter, it is al- uays ver\ difficult, from premature consequences, to remount to the principles which ought to have serv- ed as their foundation. Whereas, when we have well established the first truths, it is easy to deduce I hi' consequences which flow from them. Yet this •-i < -mid operation is important also, and as a subject is not completely treated of, but when it is execut- ed, I will present, before proceeding further, sum- marily, but methodically, the series of practical maxims, which result from my method of consider- ing our means of knowledge. The use I shall af- ten\anU make of these same means, in the study of the will and ils effects, will be an example of the manner in which these rale* are Applied in all our researches.

APIIORS r.*

We know our existence only by the impressions we cxperiew". and thai of beings other than our- selves. but by the impressions which they cause on

Us.

Observation.

In like manner, as all our propositions mny lie reduced to tin- form of eminrialive propositions.

* I have employed the fort:- observations an

rollarie* in nrrinrln •&« t'.,. Tm.o in •!,,-• W-i-«.i x. ,.T,^

because at bottom they all express a judgment, so all our enunciative propositions may afterwards be always reduced to some one of these : I think, I feel, or / perceive, that such a thing is in such a manner, or that such a being produces such an ef- fect; propositions of which we are ourselves the sub- ject, because in fact we are always the subject of all our judgments, since they never express but the impression which we experience.

Corollary.

From hence it follows : 1st. That our percep- tions are all of them always such as we feel them, and are not susceptible of any error, taken each se- parately, and in itself.

Sdly. That. if in the different combinations, we make of them, we add to them nothing which is not primitively comprised in them, implicitly or explicit- ly, they are always conformable to the existence of the beings which cause them, since that existence is not known to us but by them, and consists for us on- ly in those perceptions.

3dly. That we know nothing but relatively to ourselves, and to our means of receiving perceptions.

4thly. That these perceptions are every thing for us; that we know nothing ever but our perceptions ; that they are the only things truly real for us, and that the reality which we recognize in the beings that cause them is only secondary, and consists only in the permanent power of always causing the same impressions under the same circumstances, whether on ourselves, or on other sensible beings, who give us an account of them (also by the impressions

6

which they cause in us) when we have become able to hold communication with them by signs.

APHORISM SECOND.

Since our per ! are all of them always

such as we feel them, when \ve perceive one idea in another, it is actually and really there, from the ve- ry circumstance of our perceivini; it there: hence no one of our judgments taken so;; • de-

tached, is false. 1 1 !. md necessarily

the certitude which belongs inevitably io each of our actual perceptions.

Corollary.

None of our judgments then can be false, but relatively to anterior judgments. and that suffic- render them false relatively to the existence of be-

Luses of crar impressions, if these a» or judgments were just, relatively to that exist- ence.

APHORISM THIRD.

When we see in an idea, or a perception, an dement incompatible with those which it included before, this idea is different from what it was. for, such afi if vsn*. i1 fexi hided this new element whicli there; and. such as it is, it excludes'those which are incompatible with it.

Corollary.

That it may then be the same idea which it wa- bel'or niM exclude from it the element which

we see there at present, or if those which are rc[

nant to it, are misplaced in this idea, they must themselves be excluded from it; that is to say, it must be rendered such as it was, when they were erroneously admitted into it, which is to restore it again to the same state in which it was, before it was changed by a false judgment, without wir per- ceiving it.

APHORISM FOURTH.

When we form a judgment of an idea, when we see in it a new element, one of these four things must necessarily happen: Either the judgment which we now form is consequent to a just idea, in which case it is just ; and the idea without changing its nature has only developed and extended itself.

Or it is inconsequent to a just idea, in which case it is false ; and the idea is changed, and is become false.

Or it is consequent to an idea already false, then it is false, but the idea is not changed ; it is when it has become false previously, that it has changed in relation to what it was primitively.

Or it is inconsequent to a false idea, theif it may be just or false ; but never certain, for the idea is changed. But it may have become just, such as it was originally, or false, in a manner different from the preceding.

Observation.

Remark always, that an idea infected with false elements, and consequently meriting the name of false, taken in mass, may also contain many true

8

elements. We may form then, in consequence of these true elements, just judgments, and then they will he completely true ; as we may also form from them false judgments, \\hich slmll he completely false ; hut these judgments will not he formed from that idea, inasmuch as it is false, and in consequence of that which it has of falsity ; they ought therefore to he considered as formed from a true idea, and en- ter into what we have said of these.

This is what most frequently happens to us, so IV w compound ideas have we which are perfectly pure, and without mixture of imperfection. Perhaps we have none. Perhaps it would suffice for us to have one alone, to render all our others the same, by the sole force of their relations and combinations* proximate or remote.

APHORISM FIFTH.

Thus all our perceptions are originally just and true, and error is only introduced to them at the mo- ment when we admit an element which is opposed to them* That is to say, which denaturalises and changes them, without our perceiving it.

APHORISM SIXTH.

This would never happen to us, if we had al ways present to the mind, that which the idea com- ports, of which we judu;e. Thus all our errors real- ly come from this : that we represent the idea im- perfectly to ourselves.

APHORISM SEVENTH.

What precedes not appertaining to any circum- stance peculiar to any one of our perceptions rather than to another, agrees generally with all.

Corollary.

Hence it follows, 1st. That our manner of pro- ceeding is the same for our ideas of every kind.

Sdly. That all our errors originate from the ba- sis of our ideas, and not from the form of our reason- ings.

3dly. That all the rules which can be prescribed for the forms of these reasonings, can contribute noth- ing to avoid error 5 or at least can contribute to it but accidentally.

APHORISM EIGHTH.

We have then no other effectual means of avoid- ing error, but to assure ourselves well of the com- prehension of the idea of which we judge, that is to say, of the elements of which it is composed.

Observation.

That is not possible, unless we commence by well determining the extension of this idea, for it contains many elements in certain degrees of its ex- tension, which it does not in others, that is to say, it is not exactly similar to itself, it is not rigo- rously the same idea in their different degrees of extension. 8

10

APHORISM NINTH.

This general and only method embraces several others, and first that of studying with care the ob- ject, or objects, from which the idea in question emanates, and afterwards that of guarding ourselves with the same care from the affections, passions, prejudices, dispositions, habits and manners of be- ing, by which the idea could be altered.

Observation.

These two precautions are necessary, the first te assemble, as far as possible, all the elements which really appertain to the idea in question, the se- cond to separate from it in like manner all those which are foreign to it, and which might mingle themselves with it, and alter it, without our per- ceiving it.

APHORISM TENTH.

After these two necessary preliminaries, if we are still in doubt as to the judgment we are to form, the most useful expedient of which we can avail ourselves, i> to make ail enumeration the most com- plete possible of the elements composing the idea, which is the subject of the judgment, and principal- ly of those which have relation to the idea which we propose to attribute to it, that is to say, to the attri- bute of the contemplated judgment.

Observation.

The effect of this operation is to recal to our- -L'l\i>. or to those whom \ve \\uli to convince of the

11

truth or falsity of a proposition, the elements of the subject which implicitly comprehend the proposed attribute, or which on the contrary may exclude it.

it is the object which the logicians propose to at- tain by what they call definitions ; but in my opi- nion they fall into several errors relatively to defi- nitions, and they greatly mistake their effects and properties.

1st. They believe that there are definitions of words, and definitions of things, while in truth there are none but definitions of ideas. When I ex- plain the sense of a word, I do nothing but explain the idea which I have when I pronounce that word, and when I explain what a being is, I still do noth- ing but explain the idea I have of that being, and which I express when I pronounce its name.

Sd. They aver that definitions are principles, and that wre cannot dispute about definitions. These two assertions are contraries, and yet both of them false.

In the first place they are contradictory, for if de- finitions are principles, we can and we ought fre- quently to question their truth, as we ought never to recognise any principle as true without a previ- ous examination, and if we cannot contest defini- tions, they cannot be principles, since every princi- ple should be proved before it is. admitted.

Again, these two assertions are both false. De- finitions are not principles ; for facts are the on- ly true principles ; and definitions are not facts, but simple explanations founded on facts, as all our other propositions whatsoever. Now we may eontest a definition, as every other proposition ; for

42

when I explain the idea that I have of a being, I do not pretend to say merely that I have this idea ; I pretend also to affirm that this idea agrees with that being, and that we may so conceive it without error ; now this is what may he false, and what may be contested. So also when I explain the idea which I have of th6 sense of a word, I do not solely pretend that I have this idea, I pretend further that it does not affect the real relations of this word with an infinity of others, that we may employ it in this sense without inconvenience and w.th.mt inconsequence; now this is what again he contested with reason. In fine, if 1 should pretend by a definition only to explain the com- plex and compound idea that I have actually in my bead, yet it should always be allowed to show me that this idea is badly formed, that it is composed of judgments inconsequent the one to the other, and that it includes contradictory elements. Then definitions never are principles, and yet they al- ways are contestihle.

3dly. The lo^inaus have believed that the defi- nition is i*ood, and that the idea defined is perfectly explained when they have determined it, per wimx prn.vlnnon v\ tlfferentiam specif cu> th:it is to say, when they hav expressed that one of its element^ \\l,j. g it of MH !i

and the one wl.ich in thi- di^in^uishes it

from the ideas of the mi- IMMH-MI: -perirs. Now Hiis is s'ill false, and i>nniy founded on the fan rir-al doctrine, in \irtue of which they believed they were able to distribute all our ideas into different arbitrary rl. I

18

That is false, first, because these arbitrary classi- fications never represent nature. Our ideas are con- nected the one to the other by a thousand different relations. Seen under one aspect they are of one genus, and under another they are of another ge- nus ; subsequently each of them depends on an in- numerable multitude of proximate ideas, by an infi- nity of relations, of natures so different that we can- not compare them together, to decide which is the least remote. Thus we can never, or almost never find really the proximate genus or specific difference which deserves exclusively to characterise an idea.

Moreover, if we should have found in this idea the elements which in fact determine the genus and species in which it is reasonably permitted to class it, the idea would still be far from sufficiently ex- plained, to be well known.

These two elements might even be absolutely fo- reign to the decision of the question which may have given place to the definition. Assuredly when I say that gold is a metal, and the heaviest of me- tals except platina, I have correctly ranged gold in the a;enus of beings to which it belongs, and I have distinguished it by a characteristic difference from those nearest to it in that genus. Yet this does not help me to know whether the use of gold, as money, is useful to commerce, or pernicious to morality, nor even whether it is the most ductile of metals. The two first questions depend on ideas too foreign to those which fix gold in a certain place amongst metals ; and though the latter may be less distant, yet we do not know the direct and ne- cessary relation between weight and ductility.

14

Logicians have been mistaken respecting the na- ture, the eilects and properties of definitions. They are incapable of answering the end which they pro- pose to attain by their means, that of presenting the idea of which \ve are to judge in such a man- ner that we cannot avoid forming a just judgment. The only mean of attaining this is to make the best description possible of the idea, and with the precautions which we have, indicated.

He mark.

It is necessary to observe that all that we have advised in the 8th, 9th and 10th aphorisms, and al- so what we shall advise hereafter to be done, to know well the idea, the subject of the judgment in question is equally applicable to the idea which is the attribute of the same judgment, a knmvledi \\ :iidi i-j equ-illy essential, and can only be acquir- ed by the same mean.

Al'IIOH! \ ENTII.

The means indicated above of knowing well the idea of which we ara to judge, are the only re- ally efficacious ones in bringing us to the formation of just judgments: but they may very possibly be in- sufficient to giv»> us a certitude of having succeeded. "We mu*l tlH'refore add subsidiary means.

APHORISM TY\ i.i.i TH.

The best and most useful of our -rcondary means is to see, on the one hand, if the judgment we are t« form is not in opposition to anterior judgments,

15

of the certitude of which we are assured; and on the ether if it does not necessarily lead to consequences manifestly false.

Remark.

The first point is that which has so strongly ac- credited the usage of general propositions ; for, as we can confront them with a number of particular propositions, we have frequently had recourse there- to, and we have habituated ourselves to remount no further, and to believe that they are the primitive source of truth. The second is the motive of all those reasonings which consist in a reduction to what is absurd.

Observation.

The process recommended in this aphorism is a species of proof to which we submit the projected operation. It is very useful to avoid error, for if the judgment we examine is found in opposition to anterior ones which are just, or necessarily connect- ed with false consequences, it is evidently necessary to reject it ; but this same process does not lead us directly and necessarily to truth, for it may be that no determining motive for the affirmative may result from the research.

APHORISM THIRTEENTH.

In a case in which we want decisive reasons to determine us, no other resource is left us but to en- deavour to obtain new lights, that is to say, to in- troduce new elements into the idea which is the sub-

16

ject of the judgment we are to form. This can be clone in two ways only, either by seeking to collect new i'auts, or by endeavouring to make of those al- ready known combinations which had not previous- ly occurred to us, and thence to draw consequences which we had not before remarked.

Observation.

The advice contained in this aphorism, is only the developement of the first part of aphorism 9th, and it can be nothing else ; for when we are assur- ed that we are not sufficiently acquainted with a subject to judge of it, there is no other resource but to study it more.

APHORISM FOURTEENTH.

Finally, when the motives of determination fail us invincibly, we should know how to remain in f omplete doubt, and to suspend absolutely our judg- ment, rather than rest it on vain and confused ap- pearances, since in these we can never be sure that there are not some false elements.

Remark and conclusion.

This is the last and most essential of logical prin- ciples ; for in following it we may possibly remain in ignorance, but we can never fall into error ; all our emus arising always from admitting into that which we know elements which are not really there, and which lead us to consequences which ouu;ht not to follow from those that are there efl'er tively.

In effect, if from our first impressions the most simple to our most general ideas, and their most complicated combinations, we have never recogniz- ed in our successive perceptions but what is there, our last combinations would be as irreproachable as the first act of our sensibility. Thus, in logical ri- gour, it is very certain that we ought never to form a judgment but when we see clearly that the subject includes the attributes : that is to say, that the judg- ment is just.

But at the same time it is also very certain that in the course of life we seldom arrive at certitude, and are frequently obliged, nevertheless, to form a reso- lution provisionally ; to form none being often to adopt one of the most decisive character, without renouncing the principle we have just laid down, or in any manner derogating from it. It is now proper to speak of the theory of probability. It is a subject I encounter with reluctance. First, be- cause it is very difficult, and as yet very little eluci- dated; next, because one cannot hope to treat it pro- foundly when one is not perfectly familiar with the combinations of the science of quantities, and of the language proper to them. Finally, because even with these means the nature of the subject deprives us of the hope of arriving at almost any certain re- sult, and leaves us only that of a good calculation of chances. Let us, however, endeavour to form to' our- selves an accurate and just idea of it ; this will per- haps be already to contribute to its progress.

The science of probability is not a part of logic, and ought not even to be regarded as forming a sup-

18

plement to it. Logic teaches us to form just judg- ment-, and to make series of judgments : that is to say, of reasonings which are consequent. ^ properly speaking, there are no judgments or series of judgments \\ hich are probable. When wi- i that an opinion or a fad is probable, we judge it po- sitively : :md this judgment is just, false, or presump- tuous, according as we have perfectly or imperfectly observed the principles of the art of logic. But it will be said, that the science of probability in tench- ing u* to estimate this probability; of an opinion, teaches us to judge justly whether this opinion i<- or is not probable. I admit it: but it produces this ef- fect as the science of the properties of bodies, phy- sics, teaches us to form the judgment that such a property appertains to such a body ; as the science, of extension teaches us to form the judgment that *uch ,'! t'.eorein results from the properties of sue h a figure; as the science of quantity teaches us that such a number is the result of such a calculation ; finally, as all the sciences teach us to form sound judgments of the objects, which belong to their province. Nevertheless we cannot say, and we do not say, that they are but parts of logic, nor exen thai they are supplements to it. They all on the con- throw light on the suhjerts of which they (real only in consequence of the means and process's with which they are furnished by sound lo^ic. This is useful to all the science* : but none of them either aid it immediately, -upply its place, make a part of it, or are supplement* to it. The science of probability ha- in this respect no particular privileges under this aspect : it is a science similar to all the other-

10

But I go further; the science to which we have given the name of the science of probability, is not a science : or to explain myself more clearly, we comprehend erroneously under this collective and common name a multitude of sciences or of portions of sciences quite different among themselves, stran- gers to one another, and which it is impossible to unite without confounding them all. In effect, that which is called commonly the science of probabili- ty comprehends two very distinct parts, of which one is the research, and the valuation of data, the other is the calculation, or the combination of these same data.

Now the success of the research and valuation of data, if the question is on the probability of a narra- tion, consists in a knowledge of the circumstances, proper to the fact in itself, and to all those who have spoken of it : — thus it depends on and forms a part of the science of history. If the question is on the probability of a physical event, this research of data consists in acquiring a knowledge of anterior facts and of their connection : — thus it appertains to phy- sics. If the question is on the probable results of a social institution, or of the deliberations of an assembly of men, the anterior facts are the details of the social organization, or of the intellectual dis- positions and operations of these men : — thus it de- pends on social and moral science, or on ideology. Finally, when it is only to foresee the chances of the play of cross and pile, the data would be the con- struction of the piece, the manner of resistance of the medium in which it moves, that of the bodies against which it may strike, the motion proper to the

so

arm which caste it, and which are more or less easy to it. Thus these data would still depend on the physical constitution of animate and inanimate bo- dies. Then us to the research of data, and to the fixation of their importance, the pretended science of probability is composed of a multitude of differ- ent sciences, according to the subject on which it is employed ; and consequently it is not a particular science.

As to the combination of the data once established, the science o;' pro ,-a lility is nothing, when we em- ploy calculation therein, but the science of quantity or of calculation itself; for the difficulty does not consist in giving to abstract unity any concrete value whatever, and sometimes one and sometimes ano- ther, but in knowing all the resources which perfect calculation furnishes to make of this unity and of all its multiplied combinations the most complicat- ed, and to connect them regularly without losing their clue.

We see then that neither in regard to the research and valuation of data, nor in regard to the combina- tions of these same data, the pretended science of probability is not a particular science distinct from every other.

\\V Miight rather consider it either as a branch of tho *cierice of quantities, and as an employment •which we make of it in certain parts of several dif- ferent sciences which are susceptible of this appli- >n, or as the reunion of scattered portions of ma- ricnces, strangers I he one to the other, which

only so much in common as to give pln< Mich questions as can only be resolved by a very

learned and very delicate employment of the admi- rable means of calculation furnished by the science of quantities in the state of perfection which it has at this time attained ; but this is not seeing the the- ory of probability in its full extent, for we cannot always employ calculation in the estimation of pro- bability. Nevertheless this manner of considering and decomposing what is called the science of pro- bability explains to us already many of the things which concern it, and puts us in the way of form- ing to ourselves an accurate and complete idea of it.

We see first why it is the mathematicians who have had the idea of it, and who have, if we may so say, created andniade it entirely. It is because such as they have conceived it, it consists principal- ly in the employment of a powerful agent which was at their disposal ; they have been able to push to a great length speculations which other men have been obliged to abandon in consequence of a want of means to pursue them.

We also see wrhy these mathematicians principal- ly and almost entirely employed themselves on sub- jects of which the data are very simple, such as the chances of games of hazard, and of lotteries, or the effects of the interest of money lent ; it is be- cause their principal advantage consisting in their great skill in calculation, they have with reason pre- ferred the objects where this art is almost every thing, and where the choice and valuation of data present scarcely any difficulty ; and it is in fact in cases of this kind that they have obtained a success both curious and useful.

We moreover see why it is that, all the efforts of these mathematicians, even the most skilful, when they have undertaken to treat in the same manner suhjects of which the data were ninneroiis. subtile and complicated, have produced little else witty conceits which may he called difficiles

?e, learnrd tv-iles. It is because the far they have ]>• the consequences resulting from

the small number of data which they have been able, to obtain, the farther they have departed from the consequences which these same data would have produced, united with all those of- ten more important, which they have been obliged to neglect from inability to unravel and appre-

1 them. This is the cause why we have seen great calculators, after the most learned combina- tions, give, us forms of balloting the most delect he, not having taken into account a thousand circum- stances, inherent in the nature of men and of things, attending only to the circumstance of the number of tl:e one and of the other. It is the reason why Con- dorcet himself, when he undertook to apply the theory of probabilities to the decisions of assemblies, and particularly to the judgments of tribunals, ei-

has not ventured to decide any thing on actual institution*, and has confined himself to rea-oning on im:i Binary hypothesis, or has often been led to expedients absolutely impracticable, or which would have iu -ouveuiencies more serious than those In- wished to avoid.

WhateuT rexpoct I bear to (lie p-oal mtelligi • and high capacity oHhU truly superior and ever to be regretted man, 1 do not fear to pass so bold a

23

sentence on this part of his labors, for I am in some measure authorized to do it by himself. The title of Essay which he has given to his treatise, and the motto which he has prefixed to it, prove how much he doubted of the success of such an enterprise, and what confirms it is, that in his last work, composed on the eve of an unfortunate death, in which he has traced with so firm a hand the history of the pro- gress of the human mind, and in which he has as- signed to the theory of probabilities so gr^at a part in the future success of the moral sciences, he uses with all the candour which characterises him these expressions, page 362 — " This application, not- withstanding the happy efforts of some geometri- cians, is still, if I may so say, but in its first ele- ments, and it must open to following generations a source of intelligence truly inexhaustible.'' Yet he had then made not only the learned essay of which we are speaking, but also a work greatly superior, the elements of the calculation of probabilities and of its application to games of hazard, to lotteries and to the judgments of men, which were not pub- lished till the year 1805.

I believe, then, that I have advanced nothing rash iu observing that in subjects difficult by the number, subtility, complexity and intimate connexion of the circumstances to be considered, without the omis- sion of any of them, the great talent of well com- bining those, not sufficiently numerous, which have been perceived, has not been sufficient to preserve the most skilful calculators from important errors and great misreckonings. We perceive that that was to be expected. But now Imust go further, and

M

all this leads ine to a last reflection, which flows from the1 nature of things, like those which have ji'si been read, which confirms several important principles established in the preceding volumes, which far from annihilating the great hopes of Con- dorcet tends to assure and realise them, by restrain ing them witiiin certain limits ; but which appear to me to show manifestly, how far the calculation of probabilities is from being the same thing with the theory of probability. Observe in what this observation consists.

The principal object of the theory of probability and its great utility, is in setting out from the reu- nion of a certain number of given causes, to deter mine the degree of. the probability of the effects which ought to follow ; and setting out from the re- union of a certain number of known effects, to de- termine the degree of the probability of the causes, which have been able to produce them. We may even say that all the results of this theory are but differeii* branches of this general result, and may be traced to be nothing more than parts of it.

Now we have previously seen, and on different occasions, that for beings of any kind, to be suc< fully submitted to the action of calculation, it is ne- ry they should be susceptible of ad ^nation to the clear, prrci^e and invariable divisions of the Hens of i|ii;intity, and to the srrir* of the names of numbers and of cyphers, which express thi-m. This- is a condition IK to I he validity of every cil

ulation from which that which has probability for its object, cannot !>e ;r.ny moiv ovi.ipt. than conducts to absohr nty.

Hence it rigorously follows, that there is a mul- titude of subjects of which it would be absolutely impossible to calculate the data, if even (which is not always the case) it should be possible to collect them all without overlooking any.

Assuredly the degrees of the capacity, of the pro- bity of men, those of the energy and the power of their passions, prejudices and habits, cannot possi- bly be estimated in numbers. It is the same as to the degrees of influence of certain institutions, or of certain functions, of the degrees of importance of certain establishments, of the degrees of difficulty of certain discoveries, of the degrees of utility of cer- tain inventions, or of certain processes. I know that of these quantities, truly inappreciable and innu- merable in all the rigour of the word, we seek and even attain to a certain point, in determining the li- mits, by means of number, of the frequency and ex- tent of their effects ; but I also know that in these effects which we are obliged to sum and number to- gether as things perfectly similar, in order to de- duce results, it is almost always and I may say al- ways impossible to unravel the alterations and va- riations of concurrent causes, of influencing circum- stances, and of a thousand essential considerations, so that we are necessitated to arrange together as similar a multitude of things very different, to arrive only at those preparatory results which are after- wards to lead to others which cannot fail to become entirely fantastical.

Is an example desired, very striking, drawn from a subject which surely does not present as many difficulties of this kind as moral ideas? Here is 4

26

our. Certainly none of those \\ ho have undertaken lo estimate the effort of the muscles of the heart, have erred against the rules of calculation, nor, what is more, against the laws of animated mechanics, the certainly of which should still preserve them, from many errors. Yet some have been led to estimate this effort at several thousands of pounds, and others only at some ounces ; and nobody knows with cer- tainly whi< h are nearest to truth. What succour then can we derive from calculation, when even availing ourselves properly of it we are subject to such aberrations and to such prodigious incertitude? It is then true, and I repeat it, that there is a multitude of things to which the calculation of pro- babilities like every other calculation is completely inapplicable. These things are much more nume- rous than is generally believed, and even by many skilful men, and the first step to be taken in the science of probability is to know how to distin- guish them. It is for the science of the formation of our ideas, for that of the operations of our intelli- gence, in a word for sound ideology, toteacb us (he number of these things, to enable us to know their nature, and to show us the reasons why they -<> refractory. And it is a great service which it will render to the human mind, by prevent- ing it in future from making a pernicious use of one of its most excellent inslnimrnts. It already shows us that the science, of probability is a tiling very distinct from the calculation of probability with which it has been confounded, since it extends to many objects to which the other cannot attain. This i< what 1 principally proposed to elucidate.

27

Finally, as I have before announced, this obser- vation does not destroy the great hopes which the pirecing genius of Condorcet had made him conceive from the employment of calculation in general, and from that of probability in particular, in the ad- vancement of the moral sciences; for if the different shades of our moral ideas cannot be expressed in numbers, and if there are many other things rela- tive to social science, which are equally incapable of being estimated and calculated directly, these things depend on others which often render them reducible to calculable quantities, if we may use the expression. Thus for example, the degrees of the value of all things useful and agreeable, that is to say, the degrees of interest we attach to their pos- session cannot be noted directly by figures, but all those which can be represented by quantities of weight or extension of a particular thing, become calculable and even comparable the one with the other; in like manner the energy and durability of the secret springs which cause and preserve the action of the organs constituting our life are not susceptible of direct appreciation, but we judge of them by their effects. Time and different kinds of resistance and waste are susceptible of very exact divisions. This is sufficient for us, and we derive thence a great multitude of results and of valuable combinations ; now there is an infinity of things in the moral sciences which offer us similar resources; but there are also many which offer none, and once more it is of great importance to discriminate per- fectly between them : For first, in respect to these latter, every employment of calculation is abusive ;

28

and moreover there are often species of quantities presented which appear calculable, but which are inextricably complicated by mixture with those oilier species of quantities which I permit myself to call refractory, and (lien if calculation be applied thereto, the most skilful mathematicians are inevi- tably led into enormous errors ; against this in my opinion they have not always been sufficiently on their guard. As to these two latter cases we may say of calculation what has been said of the syllo- gistic art as to all our reasonings whatsoever; that

hat it conducts our mind much less correctly than the simple light of good sense aided by suffi- cient attention.

This is all I had to observe on the science and calculation of probability, and I draw from it the following consequences : The theory of probability

it her a part of nor a supplement to logic. This theory moreover is not a science separate and dis- tinct from all others. All sciences have a positive and a conjectural part. In all of them the positive in distinguishing the effects which al- ways r.nd necessarily 1'ollow certain causes, and the 'ilch always and necessarily produce certain

tfi. In all of them also the conjectural part con- in proceeding from the reunion of a certain number of given causes to determine the degree^ of probability of the efi'ecls which ought to follow from them, and in proceeding from the reunion of a cer- tain number of known effects to determine the de-

• of probability of I! hich have been

to produce them. In these two parts, when the

is compared are not of a nature to comport with

29

the application of the names of numbers and of fi- gures, we can only employ the ordinary instruments of reasoning, that is to say our vulgar languages, their forms, and the words which compose them. In these two parts equally when the ideas compar- ed by the clearness, constancy, and precision of their subdivisions are susceptible of adaptation to the di- visions of the series of the names of numbers, and of figures, we can employ with great advantage, in- stead of the ordinary instruments of reasoning, the instruments proper to the science of the ideas of quantity, that is to say, the language of calculation, its formulas, and its signs. It is this which consti- tutes in respect to the conjectural part the calcula- tion of probability. It is necessary to distinguish it carefully from the science of probability; for the one is of use in all cases in which the object is a likelihood of any kind whatsoever ; it is properly the conjectural part of all other sciences, whereas the other calculation has place only in those cases in which we can employ the language of calcula- tion ; it is but an instrument, of which unhappily the science of probability cannot always avail it- self.

The science of probability consists in the talent and sagacity necessary to know the data, to chuse them, to perceive their degrees of importance, to arrange them in convenient order, a talent to which it is very difficult to prescribe precise rules, because it is often the product of a multitude of unperceived judgments. On the contrary, the calculation of pro- bability, properly so called, consists only in follow- ing correctly the general rules of the language of

30

calculation in those cases in which it can be em- ployed.

This calculation is often extremely useful and extremely learned ; but it is necessary carefully to distinguish the occasions on which we can avail our- selves of it, for however little the ideas which we attempt to calculate are mingled with those which I have named refractory, and which are truly incalcu- lable, we are inevitably led into the most excessive misreckonings. It is what I think has happened but too frequently to skilful men, who by their knowledge, and even by their mistakes, have put us into the way of discovering their cause.

I w ill limit myself to this small number of results. I perceive that it is to diffuse but little direct light on a subject, which is su much the more important and the more extensive, as unfortunately certitude is for the most part far from us. But if I have con- tributed to the formation of a just and clear idea of - it I shall not have been useless. I have much more reason than Condorcet for saying " I have not " thought that I was giving a good work, but mere- " ly a work calculated to give birth to better ones,

* See page 183 of the preliminary discourse to the essay on the appli-

ia to the probability of decisions, given by a plur votes, in 4to 1785, al'imprimerie royal.

ui<t , tin t k-mcnts of the same author which I have alrea-

(1, and the excellent lesson of M. IKlaplace, which are to In:

found in the collection of the Normal re, in my opinion, the

three works in which >le to see the general spirit and

procc- ities, and where we can tli-

\anta£cs and inconveniences, al- though they are not yet there completely developed.

31

Not wishing to occupy myself longer with the conjectural part of our knowledge, and not believ- ing it necessary to add to the small number of prin- ciples which I have established before this long di- gression, and which embrace in my opinion every thing of importance in the logical art, such as it pro- ceeds from true logical science ; it only remains for me to endeavour to make a happy application of this art to the study of our will and its effects. It is this I am going to undertake, with a hope that my instruments being better, I may better succeed than perhaps men more skilful but not so well armed.

SECOND SECTION

OF THE

Elements of Ideology, or a treatise on the will and its effects.

INTRODUCTION.

SECTION FIRST.

The faculty of willing is a mode and a consequence of the faculty of

feeling-.

WHAT has been now read is the end of all that I had to say of human intelligence, considered un- der the relation of its means of knowing and under- standing. This analysis of our understanding, and of that of every other animated being, such as we conceive and imagine it, is not perhaps either as perfect or as complete as might be desired; but I believe at least that it discovers clearly to us the origin and the source of all our knowledge, and the true intellectual operations which enter into its com* position, and that it shows us plainly the nature and species of certitude of which this knowledge is susceptible, and the disturbing causes which rendej* it uncertain or erroneous.

Strengthened with these data we can therefore endeavour to avail ourselves of them, and employ

our means of knowledge either in the study of the will and its effects to complete the history of our in- tellectual faculties, or in the study of those beings which are not ourselves ; in order to acquire a just idea of what we are ahle to know of this singular universe delivered to our eager curiosity.

I think for the reasons before adduced, that it is the first of these two researches which ought to oc- cupy as in the first place. Consequently I shall -o bark to the point at which T endeavoured to trace the plan : and I shall permit myself to repeat here what I then said in my logic, chap. 9th, page 432. Obliged to be consequent, I must be pardoned for recalling the point from whence I set out.

"This second manner I have said of considering " our individuals, presents us a system of phenome- "na so different from the first, that we can scarcely •• believe it appertains to the same beings, seen " merely under a different aspect. Doubtless we " could conceive man as only receiving impressions, " recollecting, comparing and combining them al- •'• ways with a perfect indifference. He would then ••' be only a being, knowing and understanding •'• without pasxion, properly so called (relatively to ••' himself) and without action relatively to other ho- •'• ings, for he would have no motive to /r///, and •• MO reason and no means to act: and certainly •'•'on thU Hippo^ilion whatever were his faculties •'• for judging and knowing they would rest in •• -reiu -1:1-11. -.lion, for \\ant of a stimulant and • •lit to exercise them. Hut this is not man: he •• is a bring willing in consequence of his imp ;< >ions niid of his knowlcdjv, and acting in coi

35

(" qiieiice of his will.* " It is that which constitutes " him on the one part susceptible of sufferings and " enjoyments, of happiness and misery, ideas correla- " tive and inseparable, and on the other part capable " of influence and of power. It is that which causes " him to have wants and means, and consequently " rights and duties, either merely when he has re- " lation with inanimate beings only, or more still 66 when he is in contact with other beings, suscepti- " ble also of enjoying and suffering ; for the rights " of a sensible being are all in its wants, and its " duties in its means ; and it is to be remarked that " weakness in all its forms is always and essenti- " ally the principle of rights ; and that power, in " whatsoever sense we take this wot-d, is not and " can never be but the source of duties, that is to " say of rules for the manner of employing this pow- ff er.?? Where there is nothing, the old proverb just- ly says the king loses his right : but a king as ano- ther person cannot lose his rights, but in as much as another individual loses his duties in regard to him; which is saying in an inverse sense, that he who can do nothing, has no more duties to fulfil, has no longer any rule to follow for the employment of his power, since it has become null. That is very true. Wants and means, rights and* duties, arise then from the faculty of will ; if man willed nothing he would have nothing of all these. But to have wants and means, rights arid duties, is to have, is to pos- ses*, something. These are so many species of property, taking this word in its most extensive

* We may say as much of all animated beings which we know, and even of all those we imagine.

36

signification : They are things which appertain to us. Our means are even a real property, and the first of all, in the most restrained sense of the term. Thus the ideas, wants and means, rights and du- ties, imply the idea of property ; and the ideas of riches mA deprivation, justice and injustice, which are derived from them, could not exist without that of property. We must begin then by explaining this latter ; and this can only be done by remounting to its origin. Now this idea of property can only be founded on the idea of personality. For if an individual had not a consciousness of his own ex- istence, distinct and separate from every other, he could possess nothing, he could have nothing peculiar to himself. We must first therefore exa- amine and determine the idea of personality ; but before proceeding on this examination, there is yet a necessary preliminary; it is to explain with clear- ness and precision what the willing faculty is, from which we maintain that all these ideas arise, and on account of which we wish to give its history. We have no other means of seeing clearly how thi-; faculty produces these ideas, and how all the con- sequences which result from it may be regarded as its effects It is thus that always by remounting, or rather by descending step by step, we are inev- itably led to the study and observation of our intel- lectual faculties, whenever we wish to penetrate to the bottom of whatever subject engages us. This truth is perhaps more precious in itself than all those we shall be able to collect in the course of our work. I will commence then by an exposi- tion of that in which the willing faculty consist.-

87

This faculty, or the will, is one of the four pri- mordial faculties, which we have recognized in the human understanding, and even in that of all ani- mated beings, and into which we have seen that the faculty of thinking or of feeling necessarily resolves itself when we decompose it into its' true elements, and when we admit into it nothing factitious.

We have considered the faculty of willing as the fourth and last of these four primitive and necessa- ry subdivisions of sensibility; because in every de- sire, in every act of willing or volition, in a word, in every propensity whatsoever, we can always con- ceive the act of experiencing an impression, that of judging it good either to seek or avoid, and even that of recollecting it to a certain point, since by the very nature of the act of judging we have seen that the idea, which is the subject of every judg- ment, can always be considered as a representation of the first impression which this idea has made. Thus more or less confusedly, more or less rapidly, an animated being has always felt, recollected and judged, previously to willing.

It must not be concluded from this analysis that I consider the willing faculty as only that of hav- ing definitive and studied sentiments which are spe- cially called desires, and which may be called ex- press and formal acts of the will. On the contrary I believe that to have a just idea of it, we must form one much more extensive ; and nothing previously established prevents us from it : for since we have said that even in a desire the most mechanical, and the most sudden, and in a determination the most instinctive, the most purely organic, we ought

-38

always to conceive the acts of feeling, recollecting and judging, as therein implicitly and impercepti- bly included, and as having necessarily preceded it, were it only for an inappreciable instant, we can without contradicting ourselves regard all these pro- pensities, even the most sudden and unstudied, a? appertaining to the faculty of willing ; though we have made it the fourth and the last of the elemen- tary faculties of our intelligence. I even think it is necessary to do so, and that the will is really and properly the general and universal faculty of finding one thing preferable to another, that of being so af- fected as to love better such an impression, such a sentiment, such an action, such a possession, such an object, than such another. To Jove and to hate are words solely relative to this. faculty, which would have no signifiration if it did not exist : and its action takes place on every occasion on which our sensibility experiences any attraction or re sion u'hatMcrer. At least it is thus I conceive the will in all its generality ; and it is by proceeding from this manenr of conceiving it that I v. ill attempt to explain its effects and consequences.

Without doubt the will, thus conceived, is apart of sensibility. The faculty of being aflected in a •particular manner cannot but be a part of the facul- ty of being aflected in general. .Hut it is a distinct mode of it, and one which may be separated from it in thought. We cannot will without a c; (this is a thing very necevy.-iry to be remarked, and never to be forgotten.) thus we cannot \\\\\ without having felt, hut we may ah\;iv^ feel in such a man- ner os never to will. \Ve h;ive Already said that

3d

we can imagine man, or any other animated and sensible being, as feeling in such a manner that eve- ry thing would be equal to him ; that all his affec- tions, although distinct, would be indifferent to him; and that consequently he could neither desire nor fear any thing ; that is to say he could- not will, for to desire and to fear is to will : and to will is never but to desire something and to fear the contrary, or reciprocally. On this supposition an animated and sensible being would yet be a feeling being. He could even be discerning and knowing, that is to say judging. It will be sufficient for this that he should feel the difference of his various perceptions, and the different circumstances of each, although incapa- ble of a predilection for any of them, or for any of the combinations of them which he can make ; on- ly, and we have before made the remark, the know- ledge of the animated being thus constituted would necessarily be very limited. Because his faculty of knowing would have no motive of action ; and his faculty of acting, if even it existed, could not exer- cise itself with intention, since to have an intention he must have a desire, and every desire supposes a preference of some sort.

I will observe, by the way, that this supposition of a perfect indifference in sensibility shows very clearly, in my opinion, that it is erroneously that certain persons have wished to make of what they call our sentiments and affections, modifications of our being essentially different from those which they name perceptions or ideas, and refuse to compre- hend them under those general denominations of perceptions or ideas ; for tha quality of being effer

K)

the, which certain of our perceptions have, is but a particular circumstance, an accidental quality, with which all our modifications might be endowed ; and of which, as we have just seen, all might likewise be deprived. But they would not be the less, as they are in effect perceptions, that is to say things perceived or felt. The proof is that some of these modifications, after having possessed the quality of being effective, lose it by the effect of habit, and others which acquire it through reflection, all with- out ceasing to be perceived, and consequently with- out ceasing to be perceptions. I think therefore that the word perception is truly the generic term. As to the distinction established between the words perception and idea, I do not think it more le- gitimate if founded on the pretended property of an idea being an image. For the idea of zpeartree is no more the image of a tree, than the perception of the relation of three to four is the image of the differ- ence of these two figures, and no one of the modifi- cations of our sensibility is the image of any thing which takes place around us. I think then, that we may regard the words perception and idea as syno- nimous in their most extensive signification, and for the same reasons the words think and/ee/ as equi- valent also when taken in all their generality : For all our thoughts are things felt ; and if they were not felt they would be nothing ; and sensibility is the general phenomenon which constitutes and com- prehends the whole existence of an animated being, at least for himself; and inasmuch as he is an ani- mated, being, it is the only condition which can ren- der him a thinking being.

41

However this may be, none of the animated be- ings which we know, nor ev^n of those we can imagine, are indifferent to all their perceptions. It is always comprised in their sensibility, in their faculty of being affected, of their being so affected as that certain perceptions appear to them what we call agreeable, and certain others disagreeable. Now it is this which constitutes the faculty of wil- ling. Now that we have formed to ourselves a per- fectly clear idea of it we shall easily be able to see how this faculty produces the ideas of personality and property.

SECTION SECOND.

From the faculty of willing arise the ideas of personality and property.

Every man who pronounces the word / (my- self) without being a metaphysician understands ve- ry well what he means to say, and yet being a me- taphysician he ofteu succeeds very badly in giving an account of it, or in explaining it. We will en- deavour to accomplish this by the aid of some very simple reflections.

It is not our body such as it is to others, and such as it appears to them which we call our self. The proof is that we know very well to say how our body will be when we shall exist no more, that is to say when our self shall be no more. There are then two very distinct beings.

It is not moreover any of the particular faculties we possess, which is for u>s the same thing as OUT 6

4ft

xtlf. For we say I have the faculty of walking, of eating, sleeping, of breathing, &c. Thus / or my self, who possess, am a thing distinct from the thing possessed.

Is it the same with the general faculty of feeling ? At the first glance it appears that the answer must be yes, since I say in the same manner I have the faculty of feeling. Notwithstanding, here we find a great difference if we penetrate further. For if I ask myself how I know that I have the faculty of Walking? I answer I know it because I feel it. or because I experience it, because I see it, which is still to feel it. But if I ask myself how I know that I feel, I am obliged to answer I know it because I feel it. The faculty of feeling is then that which manifests to us all the others, without which none of them would exist for us, whilst it manifests itself that it is its own principle to itself ; ihat it is that beyond which we are not able to remount, and which constitutes our existence ; that it is every thing for us; that it is the same thing as ourselves. I feel because I feel : I feel because I exist; and 1 do not exist but because I feel. Then my existence and my sensibility are one and the same thing. Or in other words the existence of myself and the sen- sibility of myself ate two identical beings.

If we pay attention that in discourse / or myself signifies always the moral l»eing or person \\lio speaks, we shall find that (to express ourselves with exactnr :ead of - ' hare the facul-

ty of walking 1 ou-ht to say the faculty of feeling. U'.'H !i ronslitute* the moral person who speaks to you has the property of reacting 011 his legs in such

a manner that his body walks. And instead of saying I have the faculty of feeling, I ought to say the faculty of feeling which constitutes the moral person who speaks to you exists in the body by which he speaks to you. These modes of expres- sion are odd and unusual I agree, but in my opinion they paint the fact with much truth ; for in all our conversations, as in all our relations, it is always one faculty of feeling which addresses itself to another.

The self of each of us is therefore for him his proper sensibility, whatsoever be the nature of this sensibility ; or what he calls Ms mind, if he has a decided opinion of the nature of the principle of this same sensibility. It is so true that it is this that we all understand by our self, that we all regard apparent death as the end of our being, or as a pas* sage to another existence, according as we think that it extinguishes or does not extinguish all sentiment It is then the sole fact of sensibility which gives us the idea of personality, that is to say which makes us perceive that we are a being, and which consti- tutes for us ourself, our being.

There is, however, and we have already remark- ed it,* another of our faculties with which we often identify our self, that is our will. We say indif- ferently it depends on me, or it depends on my will to do such or such a thing ; but this observa-. tion very far from contradicting the preceding ana- lysis confirms it, for the iaculty of willing is but a mode of the faculty of feeling ; it is our faculty of feeling so modified as to render it capable to enjoy

* See vol. 1st. chap. 13th, page 295, second edition.

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and to suffer, and to react on our organs. Thus to take the will as the equivalent of self, is to take a part for the whole ; it is to regard as the equivalent of this self the portion of sensibility which consti- tutes all its energy, that from which we can scarce- ly conceive it separated, and without which it would be almost null, if it would not even be entirely an- nihilated. There is then nothing there contrary to what we have just established. It remains then well understood and admitted that the self or the moral person of every animated being, conceived as distinct from the organs it causes to move, is either simply the abstract existence which we call the sen- sibility of this individual, which results from his or- ganization or a monade without extension ; which is supposed eminently to possess this sensibility, and which is also clearly an abstract being (if in- deed we comprehend this supposition,) or a little body, subtile, etherial, imperceptible, impalpable, endowed with this sensibility and which is still ve- ry nearly an abstraction. These three suppositions are indifferent for all which is to follow. In all three sensibility is found ; and in all three also it alone constitutes the self, or the moral person of the individual, whether it be but a phenomenon re- sulting from his organization, or a property of a. spiritual or corporeal mind resident \\ithin him.

There remains then but one question, which is to know if this idea of personality, this consciousness- of .sp/f, would arise in us from our sensibility in the case in which it would not be followed by will, in til-- case in which if would be deprived of this mode which causes it to enjoy and suffer, and to re-

act on our organs, which in a word renders it ca- pable of action and of passion. This question can- not be resolved by facts, for we know no sensibility of this kind, and if any such existed it could not manifest itself to our means of knowledge. For the same reason the question is more curious than useful ; but whatever is curious has an indirect uti- lity, above all in these matters which can never be viewed on too many different sides : we must not then neglect it.

On the point in question we certainly cannot pronounce with assurance that a being which should feel without affection, properly so called, and with- out reaction on its organs, would riot have the idea of personality, and that of the existence of its self. It even appears to me probable that it would have the idea of the existence of this self: for in fact to feel any thing whatever, is to feel its self feeling, it is to know its se(f feeling : it is to have the pos- sibility of distinguishing selj from that which self feels ; from the modifications of self. But at the same time it is beyond doubt that the being which should thus know its own self would not know it by opposition with other beings, from which it would be able to distinguish and separate it ; since it would know only itself &B& its modes. It would be for itself the true infinite or indefinite, as I have elsewhere remarked,* without term or limit of any kind, not knowing any thing else. It would not then properly know itself in the sense we attach to the word to know, which always imports the idea of circumscription and of speciality; and conse-

* See vol. 3d, chap. 5, p. 27.

quently it would not have the idea of individuality and of personality, in opposition and distinction from other beings as we have it. We may already assure ourselves that this idea, such as it is in us and for us, is a creation and an effect of our faculty of willing ; and this explains very clearly why, al- though the sole faculty of feeling simply constitutes

and establishes our existence, vet we confound and

' •>

identify hy preference our self with our will. Here I think is a first point elucidated.

A tiling still more certain, perhaps, and which will advance us a step further, is that if it is possible that the idea of individuality and personality should ex- ist in tlie manner wre have said, in a being conceiv- ed to be endowed with sensibility without will, at least it is impossible it should produce there the idea of property such as we have it. For our idea of property is privative and exclusive : it imports the idea that the thing possessed appertains to a sensible being, and appertains to none but him, to the exclusion of all others. Now it can- not be that it exists thus in the head of a being which knows nothing but itself, which does not know that any other beings besides i(self exists. If then we should suppose that this being knows its self with sufficient accuracy to distinguish it from its modes, and to regard its different, modifications as attributes of this self, as things which this self possesses, this being would still not have com- pletely our idea of property. For this it is m sary to have the idea of pct'snitafify very complete- ly, and such as we have, just seen that we form it when we are -use cptible of passion and of action,

It is then proved that this idea of property is an eft feet, a production of our willing faculty.

But what is very necessary to be remarked, be- cause it has many consequences, is, that if it be cer- tain that the idea of property can arise only in a be- ing endowed with will, it is equally certain that in such a being it arises necessarily and inevitably in all its plenitude ; for as soon as this individual knows accurately itself, or its moral person, and its capacity to enjoy and to suffer, and to act necessa- rily, it sees clearly also that this self is the exclu- sive proprietor of the body which it animates, of the organs which it moves, of all their passions and their actions ; for all this finishes and commences with this self, exists but by it, is not moved but by its acts, and no other moral person can employ the same instruments nor be affected in the same man- ner by their effects. The idea of property and of exclusive property arises then necessarily in a sen- sible being from this alone, that it is susceptible of passion and action ; and it rises in such a being be- cause nature has endowed it with an inevitable and inalienable property, that of its individuality.

It was necessary there should be a natural and necessary property, as there exists an artificial and conventional one ; for there can never be any thing in art which has not its radical principle in nature; — we have already made the observation elsewhere.* If our gestures and our cries had not the natural and inevitable effect of denoting the ideas which affect us, they never would have become their artificial

* See on this subject, vol. 1st. chap. 16th, page 3395 second ed£- tton, and different parts of the 2d and 3d volumesv

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and conventional signs. If it were not in nature that every solid body sustained above our heads necessarily sheltered us we should never have had houses made expressly for shelter. In the same manner, if there never had been natural and inevi- table property there never would have been any artificial or conventional. This is universally the case, and we cannot too frequently repeat, man cre- ates nothing, he makes nothing absolutely new or extra- natural, (if we may be allowed the expres- sion) he never does any thing but draw consequen- ces and make combinations from that which already is. It is also as impossible for him to create an idea or a relation which has not its source in nature as to give himself a sense which has no relation with his natural senses. From this it also follows that in every research which concerns man it is necessary to arrive at this first type ; for as long as we do not see the natural model of an artificial institution which we examine we may be sure we have not dis- covered its generation^ and consequently we do not know it completely.

This observation will meet with many explica- tions. It appears to me that we have not always paid sufficient attention to it, and that it is for this reason we have often discoursed on the subject which now occupies us in a very useless and vajjue manner. We have brought property to a solemn trial at bar and exhibited the reasons for and asainst it as if it depended on us, whether their should or should not be property in this world. But this is entirely to mistake our nature. It seems were we to listen to certain philosophers aud legislators that

49

at a precise instant people have taken into their heads spontaneously, and without cause, to say thine and mine, and that they could and even should have dispensed with it. But the thine and the mine were never invented. They were acknow- ledged the day on which we could say thee and me; and the idea of me and thee or rather of me and something other than me, has arisen, if not the very day on which a feeling being has experienced impressions, at least the one on which, in conse- quence of these impressions, he has experienced the sentiment of willing, the possibility of acting, which is a consequence thereof, and a resistance to this sentiment and to this act. When afterwards among these resisting beings, consequently other than himself, the feeling and willing being has known that there were some feeling like himself, it has been forced to accord to them a personality other than his own, a self other than his own and dif- ferent from his own. And it always has been im- possible, as it always will be, that that which is his should not for him be different from that which is theirs. It was not requisite therefore to discuss at first whether it is well or ill that there exists such or such species of property, the advantages and in- conveniences of which we shall see by the sequel 5 but it was necessary first of all to recognize that there is a property, fundamental, anterior and supe- rior to every institution, from which will always arise all the sentiments and dis- sentiments which are derived from all the others ; for there is proper- ty, if not precisely every where that there is an in- dividual sentient, at least every where that there is 7

JO

mi individual willing in consequence of his senti- ment, and acting in consequence of his will. These, or I am greatly mistaken, are eternal truths, against which will fail all the declamations that have no- thing for their base but an ignorance of our trur rx- istence; and which are indebted to this ignorance for the great credit they have enjoyed at different times, and in different countries.

As no au- hority can impose on me when it is con- trary to evidence, I will say frankly that the same forgetfulness of the true condition of onr being is found in this famous precept, so much boasted : Love thy neighbour as thyself. It exhorts us to a sentiment which is very good and very useful to propagate, but which is certainly also very badly expressed; for to take this expression in all the ri- gour of the injunction it is inexecutable ; it is as if they should tell us, with your eyes, such as they are, see your own visage as you see that of others. This cannot be. Without doubt we are able to love ano- ther as much and even more than ourselves, in the sense that we should rather die, bearing with us the hope of preserving his life, than to live and to suffer the grief of losing him. But to love him exactly as ourself, and otherwise than relatively to oursolf, once more I say is impossible. It would be neces- sary for this, to live his life as we do our own.* This has no meaning for brings constituted as we are. It is contrary to the work of our creation, in what manner soever it has been operated.

* It is in consequence of a confused notion of this truth that people have never imagined expn i.der, than to call one my

fife, my heart, my soul,- i* is as ,e should call him myteff.

There is always something hyperbolical in these expressions.

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I am very far from saying the same things of this «ther precept, which people regard as almost synon- imous with the first. Love ye one another, and the- law is accomplished. This is truly admirable, both for its form and substance. It is also as conforma- ble to our nature as the other is repugnant to it ; and it enounces perfectly a very profound truth. Effec- tively sentiments or benevolence being for us, un- der every imaginable relation, the source of all our good of every kind, and the universal means of di- minishing and remedying all our evils as much as possible, as long as we maintain them amongst our- selves ihe great law of our happiness is accomplish- ed, in as great a degree as possible.

1 shall be accused perhaps of futility for the dis- tinction which I establish between two maxims, to which nearly the same meaning has been commonly attributed ; but it will be wrong. It is so different to present to men as a rule of their conduct a general principle, drawn from the recesses of their nature, or one repugnant to it, and it leads to consequences so distant among themselves, that one must never have reflected on it at all not to have perceived all its importance. To myself it appears such, that I cannot conceive that two maxims so dissimilar should have emanated from the same source ;* f

* I conclude from hence that the expression of the one or the other of these precepts, and perhaps of both, has been altered by men, who did not really understand either. I shall often have occasion to make reflections of this kind, because they are applicable to many of these maxims which pass from age to age.

f The first is from Leviticus, chap. xix. The other is from the gos- pel of St. John, chap. xiii. See the remark in the questions on the mi- racles, Voltaire vol. 60, page 186. You will be astonished to see that Voltaire con sidered these two maxims as identical.

for the one manifests to me the most profound igno- rance, and the other the most profound knowledge of human nature. One would lead us to compose the romance of man, and the other his history. The one consecrates the existence of natural property, resulting from individuality, and the other seems to disregard it, [la meconnaitre.] Perhaps it may be wondered that I should treat at the same time the question of the property of all our riches, and that of all our sentiments, and thus mingle economy and morality; hut, when we penetrate to their funda- mental basis, it does not appear to me possible to separate either these twro orders of things or their study. In proportion as we advance, the objects separate and subdivide themselves, and it becomes necessary to examine them separately : but in then- principles they are intimately united. We should not have the property of any of our goods wh;> ever if we had not that of our wants, which is no- thing but that of our sentiments; and all these pro- perties are inevitably derived from the sentiment of personality, from the consciousness of our self.

It is then quite as useless to the purpose of moral- ity or economy, to discuss whether it would not h< belter that nothing should appertain exclusively t«, each one of us, as it would be to the purpose of grammar to enquire whether it would not be more advantageous that our actions should not be the, signs of the idea* ;»nd the sentiments which pro- duce them. In ev< r\ can it would be to ask whether it would not be desirable that we should be quite different from what we are; and in- deed it would be to enquire, whether it would not

53

be better that we did not exist at all ; for these con- ditions being changed our existence would not be conceivable. It would not be altered, it would be annihilated.

It remains therefore certain that the thine and the mine are necessarily established amongst men; from this alone, that they are individuals feeling, willing, and acting distinctly the one from the other, that they have each one the inalienable, incommuta- ble, and inevitable property, in their individuality and its faculties; and that consequently the idea of 'property is the necessary result, if not of the sole phenomenon of pure sensibility, at least of that of sensibility united to the will. Thus we have found how the sentiment of personality or the idea of self, and that of property which flows from it necessarily, are derived from our faculty of willing. Now we may enquire with success, how this same faculty produces all our wants and all our means.

SECTION THIRD.

From the. faculty of willing arise all our wants and all our means.

If we had not the idea of personality, and that of property, that is to say the consciousness of our self, and that of the possession of its modifications, we should certainly never have either wants or means ; for to whom would appertain this suffering and this power. We should not exist for ourselves ; but as soon as we recognize ourselves as possessors of our existence, and of its modes, we are necessarily by

this alone a compound of weakness and of strength, of wants and means, oi'sutiering and power, of pas- sion and action, and consequently of rights and du- ties. It is this we are now to explain.

I commence by noticing that, conformably to the idea I have before given of the willing faculty, 1 will give indifferently the name of desire or of will to all the acts of this faculty, from the propensity the most instinctive to the determination the most studied ; and I request then that it may be recollect- ed that it is solely because we perform such acts that we have the ideas of personality and of proper- ty. Now every desire is a want, and all our wants consist in a desire of some sort; thus the same in- tellectual acts, emanating from our willing faculty, which cause us to acquire the distinct and complete' idea of our personality, our self, and of the exclu- sive property of all its modes, are also those which render us susceptible of ivants, and which constitute all our wants. This will appear very clearly.

In the first place every desire is a want. This is not doubtful, since a sensible being, who desires any thing whatsoever, has from this circumstance alone a want to possess the thing desired, or rather, and more generally we may say, that he experien- ces the want of the cessation of his desire ; for eve- ry desire is in itself a suffering as long as it con- tinues. It does not become an enjoyment but when it is satisfied, that is to say when it ceases.

It is difficult at first to believe that every desire is a suffering; because there ;nr rortain desires, t: e birth of which in an animated IMMM^ is always, or almost always, accompanied by a sentiment of well

55

being. The desire of eating for example, that of the physical pleasures of love, are generally in an individual the results of a state of health, of which he has a consciousness that is agreeable to him. Many others are in the same case ; but this circum- stance must not deceive us. These are the simul- taneous manners of being of which we have spoken in our logic,* which mingle themselves with the ideas, come at the same time with them and alter them; but which must not be confounded with them which consequently it is necessary well to distinguish from desire in itself. For first, they do not always co-exist with it. We have often the want of eating, and even a violent inclination to the act of reproduc- tion, in consequence of sickly dispositions, and with- out any sentiment of well being ; and it is the same of other examples which might be chosen. Secondly, were this not to happen, it would not be less true that the sentiment of well being is distinct and dif- ferent from that of desire ; and that that of desire is always in itself a torment, a painful sentiment as long as it continues. The proof is, that it is always ihe desire of being delivered from that state, what- soever it is, in which we actually are; which conse- quently appears actually a state of uneasiness, more or less displeasing. Now in this sense a manner of being is always in effect what it appears to be, since it consists only in what it appears to be to him who experiences it : a desire then is always a suf- fering either light or profound, according to its force, and consequently a want of some kind. It is not

* See logic, vol. 3d, chap. Gth;. page 315, and following^

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necessary for the truth of this that this desire should I be founded on a real want, that is to say on a just sentiment of our true interest; for, whether well or ill founded, while it exists it is a manner of being felt and incommodious, and from which we have con- sequently a want of being delivered. Thus every desire is a want.

But moreover all our wants, from the most pure- ly mechanical to the most spiritualized, are but the

want of satisfying a desire. Hunger is but a deshr of eating, or at least of relief from the state of Ian gour which we experience; as the want, the thirst of riches, or that of glory, is but the desire of posses- sing these advantages, and of avoiding indigence or obscurity.

It is true, however, that if we experience desires without real wants, we have also often real wants without experiencing desires ; in this sense that many things are often very necessary to our greater well being, and even to our preservation, without our perceiving. if, and consequently without our de- siring them. Thus for example, it is certain that I have the greatest interest? or if yon please want, that certain combinations, of which I have no sus- picion, should not take place within me, and from which it will result that I shall have a fever this evening ; but to speak exactly I have not at present the effective want of counteracting these injurious combinations, since I am not aware of their exis- tence : whereas I shall really have the actual want of being delivered from the fever, when I shall sufl'ei the anguish of it, and because I shall suffer the an- guish of it ; for if the fever were not of a nature to

57

produce in me, for some reason or other, the desire of its cessation, when I should be aware of its prox- imate or remote effects, I should not have in any manner the want of causing it to cease. We may absolutely say the same things of all the combina- tions, which take place in the physical or moral or- der, without our being aware of, or without our foreseeing, the consequences. If then it be true, as we have seen, that every desire is a want, it is not less so that every actual want is a desire. Thus we may lay it down as a general thesis, that our desires are the source of all our wants, none of which would exist without them. For we cannot too often repeat it, we should be really impassive if we had no desires ; and if we were impassive we should have no wants. I must not be reproached with having taken time for this explication ; we can- not proceed too slowly at first : and if I overleap no intermediate proofs, I omit nevertheless, many ac- cessaries, at least, all those which are not indispen- sable.

A first property then of our desires is now well explained ; and it is the only one they have, so long as our sensitive system acts and re-acts only on it- self. But so soon as it re-acts on our muscular sys- tem, the sentiment of willing acquires a second pro- perty very different from the first, and which is not less important. It is that of directing all our actions, and by this of being the source of all our means.

When I say that our desires direct all our actions ; it is not that many movements are not operated within us, which the sentiment of willing does not 8

5S

in anv manner precede, and which consequently arc not the effect of any desire. Of this number are particularly all those which are necessary to the commencement, maintenance and continuation of our life. But first it is permitted to doubt whether at first, nnrl in. the origin, they have not taken place in virtue of certain determinations or ten- dencies really felt by the living molecules, which would make thorn still the effect of a will more or less obscure ; unless it be by the all powerful effect of habit or by the preponderance of certain sentiments more general and predominant, that they become insensible to the animated individual, that is to say, to all results of the combinations wliich they operate, and finally if it is not for this reason, that they are entirely withdrawn from the empire of perceptible will, or from its sentiment of desiring and willing. These are things of which it is impos- sible for us to have complete certitude ; besides these movements, vulgarly and with reason named invol- untary, are certainly the cause and the basis of our living existence : but they furnish us no means of modifying, varying, succouring, defending, amelio- rating it, &c. They cannot therefore properly be placed in the rank of our means, unless we mean to say that our existence itself is our first mean, which is very true but very insignificant ; for it is the da- tum without which we should have nothing to say, and certainly should say nothing. Thus this first observation does not prevent its being true that our will directs all our actions, which can be regarded as the means of supplying our wants.

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The movements of which we have just spoken are not the only ones in us which are involuntary. They are all continued or at least very frequent, and in general regular. But there are others invol- untary also, which are more rare, less regular, and which depend more or less on a convulsive and sickly state. The involuntary movements of this se- cond species cannot, any more than the others, he re- garded as making part of our individual power. Generally they have no determinate object Often even they have grievous and pernicious effects for us, and which take place although foreseen, and con- trary to our desires. Their independence of our will then does not prevent our general observation from being just. Thus, putting aside these two species of involuntary movements, we may say with truth, that our desires have the effect eminently re- markable of directing all our actions, at least all those that really merit this name, and which are for us the means of procuring enjoyments or knowledge, which knowledge is also an enjoyment; since these are things desired and useful. And we must com- prehend in the number of these actions our intellec- tual operations ; for they also are for us means, and even the most important of all, since they direct the employment of all the others.

Now to complete the proof that the acts of our will are the source of all our means, without excep- tion, it only remains to show that the actions sub- mitted to our will are absolutely the only means we have of supplying our wants, or oth erwise satisfy- ing our desires ; that is to say, that our physical and

60

moral force, and the use we make of them, compose exactly all our riches.

To recognize this truth in all its details, it would be necessary that we should have already followed all the consequences of the different employments of our faculties, and to have seen their effect in the formation of all that we call our riches of every kind. Now it is this we have not yet been able to do, and which we will do in the sequel: it will even be a considerable part of our study. But from this mo- ment we may clearly see that nature, in placing man in a corner of this vast universe, in which he appears but as an imperceptible and ephemeral insect, has given him nothing as his own but his individual and personal faculties, as well physical as intellec- tual. This is his sole endowment, his only original wealth, and the only source of all which he procures for himself. In effect, if even we should admit that all those beings, by which we are surrounded, have been created for us ; (and assuredly it needs a great dose of vanity to imagine it, or even to believe it,) if, I say, this were so, it would not be less true that we could not appropriate one of those beings, nor convert the smallest parcel of them to our use, but by our action on them and by the employment of our faculties to this effect.

Not to take examples but in the physical line. — A field is no means of subsistance but as we cul- tivate it. Game is not useful to us unless we pur- sue it. A lake, a river, furnish us no nourishment, but because we fish therein. Wood or any other spontaneous production of nature is of no use what- ever, until we have fashioned it, or at least gathered

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it. To put an extreme case, were we to suppose an alimentary matter to have fallen into our mouths rea- dy prepared, still it would be necessary, in order to assimilate it to our substance, that we should mas- ticate, swallow and digest it. Now all these oper- ations are so many employments of our individual force. Certainly if ever man has been doomed to labour, it was from the date of the day in which he was created a sensible being, and having members and organs ; for it is not even possible to conceive that any being whatsoever could become useful to him without some action on his part, and we may well say, not only as the good and admirable La Fontaine, that labour is a treasure; but even that labour is our only treasure, and this treasure is very great because it surpasses all our wants. The proof is, that like the fortune of a rich man whose revenue surpasses his expenses, the funds of the enjoyment and power of the human species, taken in mass, are always sufficient although often and even always very badly husbanded.

We shall soon see all this with greater develope- ments, and we shall see at the same time that the ap- plication of our force to different beings is the sole cause of the value of all those which have a value for us, and consequently is the source of all value ; as the property of this same force which necessarily appertains to the individual who is endowed with it, and who directs it by his will, is the source of all property. But from this time I think we may safe- ly conclude, that in the employment of our faculties, in our voluntary actions, consists all the power we have ; and that consequently the acts of our will

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which direct these actions, are the source of all our means, as we have seen already that they constitute all our wants. Thus this fourth faculty, and last mode of our sensibility, to which we owe the com- plete ideas of personality and property, is that which renders us proprietors of icants and means, of passion and of action, of suffering and of power. From these ideas arise those of riches and poverty.

Before proceeding further let us see in what last consist.

SECTION FOURTH.

From the faculty of willing1 arise also the ideas of riches and

If we had not the distinct consciousness of our self. and consequently the ideas of personality and of pro- perty, we should have no wants. All these arise from our desires. And if we had not wants, we should not have the ideas of riches and of poverty : because to be rich is to possess the means of supply- ing our wants, and to be poor is to be deprived of these means. An useful or agreeable thing, that is to say a thing of which the possession is an article of riches, is never but a means proximate or remote, of satisfying a want or a desire of some kind ; and if we had neither wants nor desires, which are the same things, we should have neither the possession uor the privation of the means of satisfying them.

To take these things in this generality, we per- ceive plainly that our riches are not composed solely

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of a precious stone, or of a mass of metal, of an es- tate in land, or of an utensil, or even of a store of eatables, or a habitation. The knowledge of a law of nature, the habit of a technical process, the use of a language by which to communicate with those of our kind, and to increase our force by theirs, or at least not to be disturbed by theirs in the exercise of our own, the enjoyment of conventions established, and of institutions created in this spirit, are so far the riches of the individual and of the species : for these are so many things useful towards increas- ing our means, or at least for the free use of them, that is to say, according to our will, and with the least possible obstacle, whether on the part of men or of nature, which is to augment their power, their energy, and their effect.

, We call all these goods ; for by contraction we give the name of goods to all those things that con- tribute to do us good, to augment our irell being, to render our manner of being good or better; that is to say, to all those things, the possession of which is a good. Now whence coma all those goods? We have already summarily seen, and we shall see it more in detail in the sequel. It is from the just that is to say from the legitimate, employment, according to the laws of nature, which we make of our faculties. We do not often find a diamond, but because we search for it with intelligence ; we have not a mass of metal, but because we have stu- died the means of procuring it. We do not possess a good field or a good utensil, but because we have well recognised the properties of the first material, and rendered easy the manner of making it useful.

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We have no provision whatsoever, or even a shelter, but because we have simplified the operations neces- sary for forming the one, or for constructing the other. It is then always from the employment of our faculties that all these goods arise.

]N ow all these goods have amongst us, to a certain point, a value deterrniuate and fixed. They even have always two. The one is that of the sacrifices which their acquisition costs us ; the other that of the advantages which their possession procures us. When I fabricate an utensil for my use, it has for me the double value of the labour which it costs me in the first place, and of that which it will save me in the sequel. 1 make a bad employment of my force, if its construction costs me more labour than its possesion will save me. It is the same, if instead of making this utensil, I buy it, if the things I give in return have cost me more labor than the utensil would have cost me in making it, or if they would have saved me more labour than this will, I make a bad bargain, I lose more than I gain, I relinquish more than I acquire. This is evident. In the ac- quisition of any other good than an instrument of labour, the thing is not so clear. However, since it is certain that our physical and moral faculties are our only original riches ; that the employment of these faculties, labour of some kind, is our only pri- mitive treasure ; and that it is always from this em- ployment that all those things whirl) we call goods arise, from the most necessary to the most purely agreeable, it is certain, in like manner, that all these goods arc but a representation of the labour which has produced them : and that if they have a

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value, or even two distinct ones, they can only de- rive these values from that of the labour from which they emanate. Labour itself then has a value ; it has then even two different ones, for no being can communicate a property which it has not. Yes la- bour has these two values, the one natural and ne- cessary, the other more or less conventional and eventual. This will be seen very clearly.

An animated being, that is to say sensible and willing, has wants unceasingly reproduced, to the satisfaction of which is attached the continuation of his existence. He cannot provide for them but by the employment of his faculties, of his means ; and if this employment (his labour) should cease during a certain time to meet these wants, his existence would end. The mass of these wants, is then the natural and necessary measure of the mass of la- bour which he can perform whilst they cause them- selves to be felt ; for if he employs this mass of la- bour for his direct and immediate use it must suffice for his service. If he consecrates it to another, this other must at least do for him, during this time, what he would have done for himself. If he em- ploys it on objects of an utility less immediate and more remote, this utility, when realised, must at least replace the objects of an urgent utility, which he will have consumed whilst he was occupied with those less necessary. Thus this sum of indispen- sable wants, or rather that of the value of the ob- jects necessary to supply them, is the natural and necessary measure of the value of the labour per- formed in the same time. This value is that which 9

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the labour inevitably costs. This is the first of the two values, the existence of which we have an- nounced ; it is purely natural and necessary.

The second value of our labour? that of what it produces, is from its nature eventual : It is often conventional and always more variable than the first. It is eventual, for no man in commencing any labour whatever, even when it is for his own ac- count, can entirely assure himself of its product ; a thousand circumstances, which do not depend on him and which often he cannot foresee, augment or diminish this product. It is often conventional : for when this same man undertakes a labour for an- other, the quantity of its product, which will result to himself, depends on that which the other shall have agreed to give him in return for his pains, whether the convention were made before the exe- cution of the labour, as with day labourers or hire- lings, or does not take place until after the labour lias been perfected, as with merchants and manufac- turers. Finally this second value of labour is more variable than its natural and necessary value ; be- cause it is determined not by the wants of him who performs the labour, but by the wants and means of him who profits from it, and it is influenced by a thousand concurrent causes, which it is not yet time to develope.

But even the natural value cf labour is not of an absolute fixture : for first the wants of a man in a given time, even those which may be regarded as the most urgent, are susc optible of a certain lat- itude ; and the flexibility of our nature is such that wants are restrained or extended considerably

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by the empire of will and the effect of habit. Se- condly, by the influence of favourable circumstances, of a mild climate, of a fertile soil, these wants may be largely satisfied for a given time by the effect of very little labour, while in less happy circumstances, under an inclement sky, on a sterile soil, greater ef- forts will be requisite to provide for them. Thus, ac- cording to the case, the labour of the same man, during the same time, must procure him a greater or smaller number of objects, or of objects more or less difficult to be acquired, solely that he may continue to exist.

By this small number of general reflection s we see then, that the ideas of riches and poverty arise from our wants, that is to say from our desires, for riches consist in the possession of means of satisfying our wants, and poverty in their non-possession. We call these means goods, because they do us good. They are all the product and the representation of a certain quantity of labour ; and they give birth in us to the idea of value, which is but a comparative idea ; because they have all two values, that of the goods which they cost and that of the goods which they produce. Since these goods are but the repre- sentation of the labour which has produced them, it is then from labour they derive these two values. It has them then itself. In effect labour has neces- sarily these two values. The second is eventual, most generally conventional, and always very varia- ble. The first is natural and necessary; it is not however of an absolute fixture, but it is always com;- prehended within certain limits.

Such is the connexion of general ideas, which ne- cessarily follow one another on the first inspection of this subject. It shows us the application and the proof of several great truths previously established. In the first place we see that we never create any thing absolutely new and extra-natural. Thus, since we have the idea of value, and since artificial and conventional values exist among us, it was ne- cessary there should be somewhere a natural and necessary value. Thus the labour, from whence all our goods emanate, has a value of this kind, and communicates it to them. This value is that of the objects necessary to the satisfaction of the wants, which inevitably arise in an animated being during the continuance of his labour.

Secondly, we have seen further, that to measure any quantity whatsoever, is always to compare it with a quantity of the same species, and that it is absolutely necessary that this quantity should be of the same species, without which it could not serve as an unit and a term of comparison.* Thus, when we say that the natural and necessary value of the labor which an animated being performs during a given time is measured by the indispensable wants which arise in this being during the same time, we give really for the measure of this value the value of a certain quantity of labour ; for the goods ne- cessary to the satisfaction of these wants, do not themselves derive their natural and necessary va- lue but from the labour which their acquisition has cost. Thus labour, our only original good, is only

* Sec vol. 1st, chap. 10th, page 187, and following 2d edition : and vol. 3d, chap. 9th, page 463.

valued by itself, and the unit is of the same kind as the quantities calculated.

Thirdly, in fine we have seen that, for a calcula- tion to be just and certain, the unit must be deter- mined in a manner the most rigorous, and absolute- ly invariable.! Here unhappily we are obliged to acknowledge that our unit of value is subject to va- riations, although comprehended within certain lim- its. It is an evil we cannot remedy, since it is de- rived from the very nature of an animated being, from his flexibility and his suppleness. We must ne- ver dissemble this evil. It was essential to recog- nize it. But it ought not to prevent us from making combinations of the effects of our faculties, in taking the necessary precautions ; for since the variations of our sensible nature are comprehended within cer- tain limits, we can always apply to them considera- tions drawn from the theory of the limits of num- bers. But this observation ought to teach us how very delicate and scientific is the calculation of all moral and economical quantities, how much precau- tion it requires, and how imprudent it is to wish to apply to it indiscreetly the rigorous scale of num- bers. However it be, as this rapid glance on the ideas of riches and poverty, derived from the senti- ment of our wants, leads us to speak summarily of all our goods, we ought not to pass in silence the greatest of all, that which comprehends them all, without which none of them would exist, which we may call the only good, of a willing being, Liberty. It merits a separate article.

(f) See vol. 3d, chap. 9th, page 500, and following-.

SECTION FIFTH.

Prom the faculty of willing arise likewise the ideas of liberty and constraint.

Nothing would be more easy than to inspire some interest in all generous souls, by commencing this chapter with a kind of hymn to this first of all the goods of sensible nature, Liberty. But these explo- sions of sentiment, have no object but to electrize one's self, or to excite the feelings of those whom we address. Now a man who sincerely devotes himself to the search of truth, is sufficiently animat- ed by the end he proposes, and counts on the same disposition in all those by whom he wishes to be read. The love of what is good and true is a real passion. This passion is I believe sufficiently novel, at least it seems to me that it could not exist in all its force, but since it has been proved by reasonings, and by facts, that the happiness of man, is propor- tionate to the mass of his intelligence, and that the one and the other does and can increase indefinitely. But since these two truths have been demonstrated, this new passion which characterizes the epoch in which we live is not rare, whatever may be said of it, and it is as energetic and more constant than any other. Let us not then seek to excite but to satisfy it, and let us speak of liberty as coolly, as if this word itself did not put in motion all the powers of the soul.

I say that the idea of liberty arises from the facul- ty of willing: for, with Locke, I understand by li- berty, the power of executing our will, of acting conformably with our desire. And 1 maintain, that

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it is impossible to attach any clear idea to this word when we give it another signification. Thus there would be no liberty were there no will; and liberty cannot exist before the birth of will. It is then veal nonsense, to pretend that the will is free to ex- ist or not.* And such were almost all the famous decisions, which subjugated the mind before the birth of the true study of the human understanding. Accordingly the consequences which were drawn from these pretended principles, and especially from this one, were for the most part completely ab- surd. But this is not the time to occupy ourselves with them.

Without doubt, we cannot too often repeat it, a sensible being cannot will without a motive, he can- not will but in virtue of the manner in which he is affected. Thus his will follows from his anterior impressions, quite as necessarily as every effect fol- lows the cause which has the properties necessary for producing it. This necessity is neither a good nor an evil for a sensible being. It is the conse- quence of his nature ; it is the condition of his exis- tence 5 it is the datum which he cannot change, and from which he should always set out in all his speculations.

But when a will is 'produced in an animated be- ing, when he has conceived any determination whatsoever, this sentiment of willing, which is always a suffering, as long as it is not satisfied, has in recompense the admirable property of reacting on the organs, of regulating the greater part of their movements, of directing the employment of almost

* See vol. 1st, cbap. 13th, page 269, 2d edition;

all tlio faculties, and thereby of creating all the means of enjoyment and power of the sensible being, when no extraneous force restrains him, that is to gay when the willing being is free.

Liberty, taken in this its most general sense, (and the only reasonable one) signifying the power of executing our will, is then the remedy of all our ills, the accomplishment of all our desires, the satisfac- tion of all our wants, and consequently the first of all our goods, that which produces and compre hends them all. It is the same thing as our hap- piness. It lias the same limits, or rather our hap- piness cannot have either more or less extension than our liberty ; that is to say than our power of satisfying our desires. Constraint on the contrary, whatsoever it be, is the opposite of liberty ; it is the cause of all our sufferings, the source of all our ills. It is even rigorously our only evil, for every ill is always the contrariety of a desire. We should as- suredly have none, if we were free to deliver our- selves from it whenever we should wish ; it is truely the Oromazis and Orismanes, the good and the evil principle.

The constraint from which we suffer, or rather which we suffer, since it is itself which constitutes all suffering, maybe of different nritmrs, and is sus- ceptible of different degrees. It is direct and imme- diate, or only mediate and indirect. It comes to us from animate or from inanimate beings, it is invinci- ble or may be surmounted. That which is the effect of physical forces, which enchains the action of our fa culties, is immediate, while that which is the result of different combinations of our understanding, or of

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certain moral considerations, is but indirect and me- diate, although very real likewise. The one and the other, according to circumstances, may be insur- mountable, or may be susceptible of yielding to our efforts.

In all of these different cases, we have different methods of conducting ourselves, to escape from the suffering of constraint, to effect the accomplishment of our desires, in a word to arrive at satisfaction, at happiness. For once again I say these three things are one and the same Of these different methods of arriving at the only end of all our efforts as of all our desires, of all our wants, as of all our means, we should always take those which are most capable of conducting us to it. This is likewise our only duty, that which comprehends all others. The mean of fulfilling this only duty, is in the first place, if our desires are susceptible of satisfaction, to study the na- ture of the obstacles opposed, and to do all that de- pends on us to surmount them ; secondly, if our desires cannot be accomplished, but by submitting to other evils, that is to say by renouncing other things, which we desire, to balance the inconve- niences, and decide for the least ; thirdly, if the success of our desires is entirely impossible, we must renounce them, and withdraw without mur- muring within the limits of oar power. Thus all is reduced to the employment of our intellectual faculties : First, in properly estimating our wants, then in extending our means, as far as possible ; final- ly in submitting to the necessity of our nature, to, the iavincible condition of our existence. 10

H<

But I perceive that I have mentioned the word duty. The idea which this word expresses well merits a separate chapter. It is sufficient in this to have terminated the examination of all our goods, by showing that since all our means of happiness con- sist in the voluntary employment of our faculties, Liberty, the power of acting according to our will, includes all our goods, is our only good, and that our only duty is to encrease this power, and to use it well, that is to say so to use it as not ultimately to cramp and restrain it.

Would it be desired, before quitting this subject, to apply to this first of all goods, Liberty, the idea of value, which we have seen arise necessarily from the idea of good ? And would it be asked, what is the value of liberty ? It is evident that the sum of the liberty of a being feeling and willing, being the power of using his faculties according to his will, the entire value of this liberty is equal to the entire value of the employment of the faculties of this being : that if from this sum of liberty a portion only be de- tracted, the value of the portion detracted is equal to the value of the faculties, from the exercise of which he is debarred, and that the value of that which remains to him is the same with that of the faculties, the use of which he still preserves ; and, finally, it is also manifest that, however feeble the faculties of an animated being, the absolute loss of his liberty is for him a loss truly infinite, and one to which he can. not set any price, since it is absolutely every thing for him, it is the extinction of every possibility of happiness ; it is the loss of the sum total of his

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being ; it can admit of no compensation, and deprives him of the disposal of what he might receive in return.

These general notions suffice for the moment. I will add but one reflection. It is commonly said that man, entering a state of society, sacrifices a portion of his liberty to secure the remainder. Af- ter what we have just said, this expression is not exact. It does not give a just idea either of the cause or of the effect, nor even of the origin of human societies. In the first place, man never lives com- pletely insulated ; he cannot exist thus, at least in his first infancy. Thus the state of society does not commence for him on a fixed day, or from premeditated design ; it is established insensibly, and by degrees. Secondly, man in associating himself more and more^ with his fellow beings, and in daily connecting him- self more closely with them, by tacit or express con- ventions, does not calculate on diminishing his an- terior liberty, or on weakening the total power of executing his will, which he previously had. He has always in view its increase. If he renounces certain modes of employing it, it is that he may be assisted, or at least not opposed, in other uses which he may wish to make of it, and which he judges more important to him* He consents that his will should be a little restrained, in certain cases, by that of his fellow beings : but it is that it may be much more powerful over all other beings, and even on these themselves on other occasions, so that the total mass of power, or of liberty, which he possesses should be thereby augmented. This I think is the idea which should be formed of the effect and the

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end of the gradual establishment of the social state. Whenever it does not produce this result, it does not attain its destination: but it attains it always in a greater or less degree, notwithstanding its universal and enormous imperfections. We will elsewhere develope the consequences of these observations. Now let us go on to the examination of the idea of duty.

SECTION SIXTH.

Finally, from the faculty of willing arise the ideas of rights and of duties,

The ideas of rights and of duties are, by some, said to be correspondent and correlative. I do not deny them to be so, in our social relations; but this truth, if it is one, requires many explanations. Let us examine different cases.

Let us make in the first place a supposition abso- lutely ideal. Let us imagine a being feeling and willing, but incapable of all action, a simple monad endowed with the faculty of willing, but deprived of a body, and of every organ on which its will can re- act, and by which it could produce any effect, or have influence on any other being. It is manifest that such a being would have no right, in the sense we often give to this word, that is to .say none of those rights which comprehend the idea of a correspondent duty in another *ensil»ie brin:;, since it is not in con- tact with any being whatsoever. But to the eyes of reason and of universal justice, such as the human

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understanding can conceive them, (for we can never speak of other things) this monad has clearly the right to satisfy his desires and to appease his wants ; for this violates no law, natural or artificial. It is, oa the contrary, to follow the laws of his nature and to obey the conditions of his existence.

At the same time this monad, having no power of action, no means of laboring for the satisfaction of his wants, has no duty : for it could not have the duty of employing in one way rather than another the means which it has not, of performing one action rather than another, since it cannot perform any action.

This supposition then shows us two things; first, as we have already said, that all our rights arise from wants, and all duties from means ; secondly, that rights may exist, in the most general sense of this word, without correspondent duties on the part of other beings, nor even on the part of the being pos- sessing these rights : Consequently these two ideas are not as essentially and necessarily correspondent, and correlative, as is commonly believed ; for they are not so in their origin. Now let us state another hypothesis.

Let us suppose a being feeling and willing, consti- tuted as we are, that is to say endowed with organs and faculties which his will puts in action, but com- pletely separated from every other sensible being, and in contact only with inanimate beings, if there be such, or at least only with beings which should not manifest to him the phenomenon of sentiment, as there are many such for us. In this state this being still has not those rights, taken in the restrained sense of

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tlii* word, which emhrace the idea of a correspon- dent duty in another sensible being, since he is not in relation with any being of this kind ; yet he has clearly the general right, like the, monad of which we have just spoken, of procuring for himself the ac- complishment of his desires, or, which is the same thing, of providing for his wants ; because this is for him, as for it, to obey the laws of his nature, and to conform himself to the condition of his existence; and tliis being is such that it cannot be moved by any other impulsion, nor have any other principle of action. This willing being has then, in this case, all imaginable rights. We may even see that his rights are truly infinite, since they are bounded by nothing. At least they have no limits but those of his desires themselves, from which these emanate, and which are their only source.

But here there is something more than in the first hypothesis. This being, endowed like ourselves with organs and faculties which his will puts into motion, is not as the simple monad of which we spoke before. He has means, therefore he has du- ties ; for he has the duty of well employing these means. But every duty supposes a punishment in- curred by an infraction of it, a law which pronounces this punishment, a tribunal which applies this law ; accordingly in the case in question the punishment of the being of which we speak, for not rightly em- ploying his means, is to see them produce effects less favorable to his satisfaction, or even to see them produce such as air entirely destructive of it. The laws which pronounce this punishment, arc those of the organization of this willing and acting being!

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they are the conditions of his existence. The tri- bunal which applies these laws is that of necessity itself, against which he cannot guard himself. Thus the being which occupies us has, incontestably, the duty of well employing his means, since he has them ; and of observing that this general duty comprehends that of well appreciating, in the first place, the desires or wants which these means are destined to satisfy, of well studying afterwards these means themselves, their extent and their limits, and, finally, of labour- ing in consequence to restrain the one and extend the other as much as possible : for his unhappiness will never proceed but from the inferiority of means rela- tively to wants, since if wants were always satisfied there would be no possibility of suffering. The in- sulated being in question, has then rights proceeding all from his wants, and duties arising all out of his means ; and, in whatever position you place him, he will never have rights or duties of another nature : for all those of which he may become susceptible will arise from these, and will only be their conse- quences. We may even say that all proceed from his wants, for if he had not wants he would not need means to satisfy them ; it would not even be possible he should have any means. Thus it would not be conceivable that he could have any duty whatsoever. If you wish to convince yourself of this, try to punish an impassive being. I have then had reason to say, that from the willing faculty arise the ideas of rights and of duties ; and I can add, with assurance, that these ideas of rights and duties are not so exactly correspondent, and correlative, the one with the other, as they are commonly said to be : but that that of

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duties is subordinate to that of rights, as that of means is to that of wants, since we can conceive rights without duties, as in our first hypothesis ; and in the second there are duties only because there are wants, and that they consist only in the general du- ty of satisfying these wants.

The better to convince ourselves of these two truths, let us make a third supposition: let us place this being, organised as we are in relation with other beings, feeling ami willing like himself, and acting also in virtue of their will, but which are such that he cannot correspond fully with them, nor perfectly comprehend their ideas and their motives. These animated beings have their rights also, proceeding from their wants : but this operates no change in those of the being whose destiny we investigate. He has the same rights as before, since he has the same wants. He has, moreover, the same general duty of employing his means so as to procure the satisfac- tion of his wants. Thus he has the duty of conduct- ing himself with those beings which show themselves to be feeling and willing, otherwise than with those, which appear to him inanimate ; for as they act in consequence of their will it is his duty to conciliate or subjugate that will in order to bring them to contribute to the satisfaction of his desires, and as he is supposed incapable of communicating completely with them, and consequently of forming any conven- tion with them, he has no other means of directing their will towards the accomplishment of his desires, and the satisfaction of his wants, than immediate per- *uasion or direct violence. And he employs, and might to employ, the one and the other according to

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circumstances, without any other consideration than of producing the effects he desires.

In truth this being, organized as we are, is such, that a view of sensible nature inspires in him the desire to sympathize with it, that it should enjoy of his enjoyments and suffer of his sufferings. This is a new want which it produces in him, and we shall see in the sequel that it is not one of those of which he ought to endeavour to rid himself, for it is useful for him to be submitted to it. He ought then to satisfy it as the others, and consequently he is un- der the duty of sparing to himself the pain which the sufferings of sensible beings cause him, so far as his other wants do not oblige him to support this pain. This is still a consequence of the general duty of satisfying all his desires.

The picture .which we have just drawn according to theory is the simple exposition of our relations with animals taken in general, which relations are afterwards modified in particular cases according to the degree of knowledge we have of their sentiments, and according to the relations of habit and reciprocal benevolence which take place between us and them, as between us and our fellow beings. I believe this picture to be a very faithful representation of these relations ; for it is equally remote from that sentimen* tal exaggeration which would make criminal in us any destruction whatever of these animals, and from the systematic barbarity which would make us con- sider as legitimate their most useless sufferings, or even persuade us that the pain which a sensible being manifests, is not pain when this sensible being is not made exactly like ourselves. 11

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In tact these two systems are equally false. The first is untenable, because in practice it is absolutely impossible to follow it rigorously. It is evident that we should be violently destroyed, or slowly famish- ed and eaten, by the other animated beings if we never destroyed them ; and that even with the most minute attention it is impossible for us to avoid causing a great number of beings,* more or less per- ceptible to our senses, to suffer and die. Now we have incontestably the right to act and to live, since we are born for the one as well as for the other.

The second system is not less erroneous, for in theory it rashly establishes between the different states of sensible nature a line of separation which no phenomenon authorizes us to admit. There is absolutely no one fact which gives us a right to af- firm, nor even to suppose that the state of suffering in the animated beings with which we communicate imperfectly, is riot exactly the same thing as it is in us or in our fellow beings ;* and on this gratuitous supposition, this system condemns us to combat and destroy as a weakness the sentiment, the want the most general and imperious of human nature, that of sympathy and commiseration; a want which we shall soon see is the most happy result of onr organ- ization, and without which our existence would be- come very miserable, and even impossible. More- over, in practice this system is opposed to the usage the most universal of all times and of all individuals; for there has never been, 1 believe, an animal in the human form, which has sincerely and originally felt

* Always perhaps with a degree of energy proportionate to the per- fection of the organization.

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that a sight of suffering, accurately expressed, was a thing of indifference. The indifference which is the fruit of habit, and the pleasure even of cruelty, for cruelty sake, a frightful pleasure, which may have been produced in some denaturalized beings by ac- cidental causes, proves that it is the case of a natural inclination surmounted by time, or overcome by ef- fort, and by the pleasure which arises in us from every effort followed by success. As to that cruel- ty which is the product of vengeance, it is a proof the more of the thesis I sustain ; for it is because of the profound sentiment that the vindictive being has of suffering, that he wishes to produce it in the one that is odious to him, and he always partakes more or less involuntarily and forcibly of the evil which Le causes.

These two opposite systems, but both fruits of a derangement of the imagination, are then equally ab- surd in theory and practice; this, of itself, is a great presumption in favour of the intermediate opinion w.ich I establish, which moreover is found to be conformable to the usage of all times and all places, and to furnish reason from the conditions of our na- ture, well observed, for what our manner of being, in respect to the animals, has in it singular and contra- dictory at the first glance. But what is more forcible, and absolutely convincing, in my opinion, is that the same principle which I haves established, that our rights are always without limits, or at least equal to our wants, and that our duties are never but the gen- ral duty of satisfying our wants, will explain to us all our relations with our fellow beings, and establish them on immoveable bases, and such as will be the same everywhere, and always, in all countries, and

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in all times, in which our intimate nature shall not have changed.

Let us now make a fourth hypothesis which is that in which we are all placed. Let us suppose the ani- mated being we are now considering in contact with other beings like himself. These beings have wants, and consequently rights, as he has, but this makes no change in his. He has always as many rights as wants, and the general duty of satisfying these wants. If he could not communicate completely with these beings like himself, and make conven- tions with them, he would be in respect to them in the state in which we all are, and in which as we have just seen we have reason to be in regard to the other animals.

Will any one say this is a state of war? He will be wrong. This would be an exaggeration. The state of war is that in which we incessantly seek the destruction of one another; because we cannot as- sure ourselves of our own preservation, but by the annihilation of our enemy. We are not in such a relation, but with those animals whose instinct con- stantly leads them to hurt us. It is not so as to the others; even those which we sacrifice to our wants, we attack only inasmuch as these wants, more or less pressing, force us. There are some of them which live with us in a state of peaceable subjection, others in perfect indifference. With all we wound their will nnly because it is contrary to ours, and not for the pleasure, of wounding it. There is even in regard to a; -JMH'r .1 u<'<r>-itv of sympathising with

aensiMf \vhirh pains us at the sight of their

suffering, and wiiicii unites us more or less with them.

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This state then is not essentially a state of hostility. It frequently becomes such : but this is by accident. It is essentially the state of alienage (d'etrangete) if we may thus express ourselves. It is that of be- ings, willing and acting separately, each for his own satisfaction, without being able to explain themselves mutually, or to make conventions for the regulation of the cases in which their wills are opposed.

Such, as we have said, would be the relations of man with his fellow men, if his means of communi- cating with them were very imperfect. He would not be precisely for them an enemy, but an indiffer- ent stranger. His relations would even then be sof- tened by the necessity of sympathising, which is much stronger in him in the case of animals of his own species; and we must still add to this necessity that of love, which strengthens it extremely in many circumstances, for love has not perfect enjoyment without mutual consent, without a very lively sym- pathy ; and when this sympathy, necessary to the full satisfaction of the desire, has existed, it frequent- ly gives birth to habits of good will, from whence arises the sentiment of fraternity, which produces in its turn ties more durable and more tender.

Nevertheless, in this state quarrels are frequent ; and, properly speaking, justice and injustice do not yet exist. The rights of the one do not affect the rights of the other. Every one has as many rights as wants, and the general duty of satisfying these wants without any foreign consideration. There does not begin to be any restrictions on these rights and this duty, or rather on the manner of fulfilling this duty, but at the moment in which means of mu~

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tual understanding are established; and consequent- ly conventions tacit or formal. There solely is the birth of justice and injustice, that is to say of the balance between the rights of one and the rights of another, which necessarily were equal till this in- stant. The Greeks who called Ceres Legislatrix were wrong. It is to grammar, to language, they ought to have given this title. They had placed the origin of laws, and of justice, at the moment in which men have amongst them relations more stable, and conventions more numerous. But they ought to have remounted to the birth of the first conventions, infor- mal or explicit. In every way the duty of moderns is to penetrate further and more profoundly than the ancients. Hobbes, then, was certainly right in esta- blishing the foundation of all justice on conversa- tions ; but he was wrong in saying before, that the anterior state is rigorously and absolutely a state of war, and that this is our true instinct, and the wish of our nature. Were this the case we should never have withdrawn from it.* A false principle has led him to an excellent consequence. It has always ap- peared to me singularly remarkable, that this philos- opher, who of all men who have ever written is per- haps the most recommendable for the rigorous con-

* We must however admit that nature, or the order of things, such as they are, in creating the rights of every animated individual, equal and opposed to those of another, has virtually and indirectly created the state of war ; and that it is art which has caused it to cease, or at least has frequently suspended it amongst us, by conventions. This still agrees with our general principle, that we create nothing; were there not natural and necessary wars, there never would have been any con- ventional and artificial ones. The invincibly permanent state of the rt-lati >ns of man with animals of other species, is what disposes him iros', to treat his fellow beings in an hostile manner.

catenation and close connexion of his ideas, should not however have arrived at this fine conception of the necessity for conventions, the source of all jus- tice, but, by starting from a false or at least an inex.- act principle, (a state of war the natural state) ; and that from the just and profound sentiment of the want of peace among men, he has been led to a false idea the necessity of servitude. When we see such examples, how ought we to tremble in enouncing an opinion ?*

Yet I cannot help believing that which I have just explained to be true.

It seems to me proved, that from our faculty of wil- ling proceed the ideas of rights and duties ; that from our wants proceed all otiv rights) and from our means all our duties ; that we have always as many rights as wants, and the single duty of providing for these wants ; that the wants and the rights of other sensible beings, whether of our own or a dif- ferent species, do not affect ours ; that our rights do not begin to be restrained, but at the moment of the birth of conventions; that our general duty is not changed for this as to its foundation, but only to the manner of fulfilling it; and that it is at this moment alone, that justice and injustice properly so called commence.

It is not yet the time to develope all the conse- quences of these principles, but it is time to termi- nate this long preliminary, by the reflections to which it gives rise.

* This latter error of Hobbes has r/ot, however, been produced in his excellent head, but by the too energetic impression made by the un- happiness of his country ; which unhappiness was caused by efforts, the object of which in their origin was resistance to oppression.

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SECTION SEVENTH.

Conclu&ion.

Tire general considerations on which we have just dwelt, are those which first present themselves to our understanding when we begin to observe our will. However little we reflect thereon, we see first that it is a mode of our sensibility, which arises from a judgment, clear or confused, formed on what we feel, that if our pure and simple sensibility begins to give us an obscure idea of our self, and of the pos- session of its affections, this admirable mode of our sensibility, which we call will, by the resistance it experiences, causes us to know beings different from us, and completes our idea of individuality, of per- sonality, and property, exclusive of whatsoever af- fects us.* It is not less visible, that this faculty of willing is the source of all our wants, and of all our miseries ; for an indifferent being would be impas- sive; and it is equally manifest that this same facul- ty, by the wonderful power it has of putting our or* gans into action, and of giving motion to our mem- bers, is also the source of all our means and of all our resources ; for all our power consists in the employ- ment of our physical and intellectual forces.

It follows from this, that every animated being, in virtue of the laws of his nature, has the right of satisfy, ing all his desires, which are his wants, and the sole duty of employing his means in the best possible

"This truth has been developed vol. 1st. chapter of existence, and in different parts of the two other volumes.

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manner for the attainment of this object ; for endow- ed with passion, he cannot be condemned to suffer but as little as possible, and endowed with action, he ought to avail himself of it to this end. It follows thence, further, that liberty, the power of executing his will, is for a willing being the first good, and in- cludes them all, for he would be always happy if he had always the power of satisfying all his desires ; and all his ills consist always in constraint, that ijs to say in the inability to satisfy himself.

We see moreover that the employment of our force, labour of every kind, is our only primitive riches, the source of all others, the first cause of their value, and that labour itself has always two values. The one is natural and necessary : it is that of all those things which are indispensable to the satisfaction of the wants of the animated being which performs this la- bour during the time he is performing it, The other is eventual, and often conventional : it consists in the mass of utility that results from this same labour.

In fine we see, with equal clearness, that the manner of fulfilling our single duty, that of well em- ploying our means, varies according to the circum- stances in which we are placed ; whether it be when we are in contact with those beings only which do not manifest any sensibility, or when we have to do with animated beings, but to which we can make ourselves but imperfectly understood, or when we are in relation with sensible beings like ourselves, with whom we can perfectly correspond and make conventions. At this point justice and injustice, pro- perly so called, and true society, commence; the ob- ject and motive of which is always to augment the

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power of every one, by making that of others concur with it, and by preventing them from reciprocally hurting one another.

All these first ideas are good and sound, at least I think so, and begin already to throw some light on the subject with which we are occupied; but they are far from being sufficient. They do not sufficiently inform us what are the numerous results of the em- ployment of our force, of our labour, in a word of our actions, and what new interests their combinations produce among us, nor what are the different senti- ments which germinate from our first desires, or what they have useful or injurious to the happiness of all and every one : nor, finally, what is the best possi- ble direction of these actions and sentiments. These are, however, so many subjects necessary to be treat- ed of in order to give a complete history of the TV ill and its effects ; and it is there we find again the divi- sion we announced. It is requisite then to enter- into further details, and I will now begin to speak of our actions.

OF OUR ACTIONS.

FIRST PART

OF THE

TREATISE ON THE WILL AND ITS EFFECTS*

OF OUR ACTIONS. CHAPTER L

Of Society.

The introduction which has heen just read is gecrated entirely to an examination of the genera- tion of some very general ideas ; the casting of a first glance on the nature of that mode of our sensi- bility which we call the will, or the faculty of will- ing ; and to the indication of some of its immediate and universal consequences.

We have therein seen summarily ; first, what are inanimate or insensible beings, such as many appear to us, which may well exist for the sensible beings,, which they affect, but which do not exist for them- selves, since they do not percieve it; second, what would be the nature of beings feeling, but feeling every thing with indifference, so that from their sensi- bility no choice, no preference, no desire, in a word no will would result ; third, what are those beings sentient and willing, such as all the animals with which we are acquainted, and especially as our- selves, but insulated; fourth, and in fine, what be- ings, feeling and willing in our way, become when they are in contact and in relation with other ani-

mals of their species similar .to themselves, and with whom they can fully correspond.

These preliminaries were necessary, that the reader might readily follow the series of ideas, and clearly perceive the connexion, of this second section of the elements of ideology with that which precedes it. But it would be inconvenient, in a treatise on the will, to say more of beings not endowed with this intellectual faculty ; and it would not be less super fluous, having the human species principally in view, to occupy ourselves longer with beings that should be sentient and willing, but living insulated.

Man cannot exist thus ; this is proved by the fact, for we have never seen in any corner of the world an animal in the human form, however brutish he might be, which has no kind of relation with any other animal of his own species : that is not less de- monstrated by reasoning. For such an individual, strictly speaking, may exist although very misera- bly, yet certainly he could not reproduce himself. That the species may be perpetuated, it is indispen- sable that the two sexes should unite; it is even ne- cessary that the infant, produced by their union, should receive for along time the cares of his parents, or at least those of his mother. Now we are so form- ed that we have all, more or less, a natural and in- nate inclination to sympathy ; that is to say we all experience pleasure from sharing our impressions, our affections, our sentiments, and those of our fellow creatures. Perhaps this inclination exists amongst all animated beings ; per hap* even it is in us from the origin a considerable part of that which so power- fully attracts the two sexes towards each other. What

is certain, is that it afterwards augments it prodi- giously. It is then impossible that approximations, which our organization renders inevitable, should not develope in us this natural disposition to sympa- thy, fortify it by exercise, and establish amongst us social and moral relations. Moreover, we are also so organized, that we form judgments of that which we experience, of that which we feel, of that which we see, in a word of all which affects us ; we dis- tinguish the parts, circumstances, causes and conse- quences thereof; and this is to judge of it. It is then impossible that we should not soon be aware of the utility we may derive from the succour of our fellow beings, from their assistance in our wants, from the concurrence of their will, and of their force with ours, a new reason why approximations, fortuitous at first, should become durable and permanent between us ; this also is what takes place always, and every where. It is this also which always, and every where, pro- duces the admirable and wise invention of a lan- guage more or less perfect, but always as appears, more circumstantial, and more capable of detailed explanations, than that of any other animal. It is then the social state, which is our natural state, and that with which we ought alone to occupy ourselves. I will not however in this place consider society under a moral relation. I will not examine how it developes, multiplies, and complicates, all our pas- sions and affections ; nor what are the numerous du- ties it imposes on us, nor whence arises for us the fundamental obligation of respecting the conventions on which it rests, and without which it could not subsist. These are researches which will be the

0

object of the second part of this treatise. In this I shall consider the social state only under its econo- mical relation, that is to say relatively to our most direct wants, and to the means we have of satisfying them. It is that which may lead us surely to esti- mate the value and utility of all our .actions, tojud^e of their merits by their consequences, and conse- quently t)f the merit of those sentiments which deter- mine us to one action rather than another.

Now what is society viewed under this aspect? I do not fear to announce it. Society is purely and solely a continual series of exchanges. It is never any thing else, in any epoch of its duration, from its commencement the most unformed, to its greatest perfection. And this is the greatest eulogy we can give to it, for exchange is an admirable transaction, in which the two contracting parties always both gain ; consequently society is an uninterrupted succession of advantages, unceasingly renewed for all its mem- bers. This demands an explanation.

First, society is nothing but a succession of ex- changes. In effect, let us begin with the first con- ventions on which it is founded. Every man, before entering into the state of society, has as we have seen all rights and no duty, not even that of not hurting others ; and others the same in respect to him. It is evident they could not live together, if by a con- vention formal or tacit they did not promise each other, reciprocally, surety. Well ! this convention is a real exchange; everyone renounces a certain manner of employing his force, and receives in return the same sacrifice on the part of all the others. Se- curity once established by this mean, men have a

multitude of mutual relations which all arrange them- selves under one of the three following classes : they consist either in rendering a service to receive a sal- ary, or in bartering some article of merchandize against another, or in executing some work in com- mon. In the two first cases the exchange is mani- fest. In the third it is not less real; for when seve- ral men unite, to labour in common, each makes a sacrifice to the others of what he could have done during the same time for his own particular utility; and he receives, for an equivalent, his part of the common utility resulting from the common labour. He exchanges one manner of occupying himself against another, which becomes more advantageous to him than the other would have been. It is true then that society consists only in a continual succes- sion of exchanges.

I do not pretend to say that men never render gra- tuitous services. Far from me be the idea of deny- ing benevolence, or of banishing it from their hearts ; but I say it is not on this that all the progress of society reposes, and even that the happy consequen- ces of this amiable virtue are much more important under a moral relation,* of which we are not at this time speaking, than under the economical relation which now occupies us. I add that if we urge the sense of the word exchange, and if we wish, as we ought, to take it in all the extent of its signification, we may say with justice that a benefit is still an exchange, in which one sacrifices a portion of one's property, or of one's time, to procure a moral plea-

* In developing and exciting sympathy. 13

8

sure, very lively and very sweet, that of obliging, OP to exempt oneself from a pain very afflicting, the sight of suffering ; exactly as we employ a sum of money to procure an artificial fire work, which di- verts, or to free ourselves from something which in- commodes us.

It is equally true that an exchange is a transac- tion in which the two contracting parties both gain. Whenever I make an exchange freely, and without constraint, it is because I desire the thing I receive more than that I give ; and, on the contrary, he with whom I bargain desires what I offer more than that which he renders me. When I give my labour for wages it is because I esteem the wages more than what I should have been able to produce by labour- ing for myself; and he who pays me prizes more the services I render him than what he gives me in re- turn. When I give a measure of wheat for a measure of wine, it is because I have a superabundance of food and nothing to drink, and he with whom I treat is in the contrary case. When several of us agree to execute any labour whatsoever in common, whether to defend ourselves against an enemy, to destroy noxious animals, to preserve ourselves from the ra- vages of the sea, of an inundation, of a contagion, or even to make a bridge or a road, it is because each of us prefers the particular utility which will result to him from it, to what he would have been able to do for himself during the same time. We are all satisfied in all these species of exchanges, every one finds his advantage in the arrangement proposed.

9

In truth it is possible that, in an exchange, one of the contractors, or even both, may have been wrong to desire the bargain which they conclude.-— It is possible they may give a thing, which they will soon regret, for a thing which they will soon cease to value. It is possible, also, that one of the two may not have obtained for that which he sacri- fices as much as he might have asked, so that he will suffer a relative loss while the other makes an exaggerated gain. But these are particular cases which do not belong to the nature of the transaction. And it is not less true that it is the essence of free exchange to be advantageous to both parties; and that the true utility of society is to render possible amongst us a multitude of similar arrangements.

It is this innumerable crowd of small particular advantages, unceasingly arising, which composes the general good, and which produces at length the wonders of perfected society, and the immense dif- ference we see between it and a society imperfect or almost null, such as exists amongst savages. It is not improper to direct our attention for some time to this picture, which does not sufficiently strike us be- cause we are too much accustomed to it.

What is it in effect which a country ancient- ly civilized offers to our contemplation ? The fields are cleared and cleaned, freed from the large vegetables which originally covered them, rid of noxious plants and animals, and in every respect prepared to receive the annual cares of the cultiva- tor. The marshes are drained. The stagnant wa- ters which occupied it have ceased to fill the air with pestilential vapours. Issues have been opened for

10

them, or their extent has been circumscribed ; and the lamls which they infected have become abun- dant pastures, or useful reservoirs. The asperities of the mountains have been levelled ; their bases have been appropriated to the wants of culture ; their parts least accessible, even to the regions of eternal snow, have been destined to the nourishment of numerous flocks. The forests which have been permitted to remain have not continued impenetra- ble : The wild beasts which retired to them have been pursued and almost destroyed ; the wood which they produce has been withdrawn and pre- served, the cutting them has even been subjected to periods the most favourable for their reproduc- tion ; and the care bestowed on them almost every where is equivalent to a species of culture, and has even been sometimes extended to a most diligent culture. The running waters which traverse all these lands have, likewise, not remained in their primitive state : The great rivers, have been clear- ed of all the obstacles which obstructed their course ; they have been confined by dikes and quavs, when this has been necessary ; and their b^.nks have been disposed in such a manner as to form commodious ports in convenient situations. — The course of streams less considerable has been restrained for working mills and other machines, or diverted to irrigate declivities which needed it, and to render them productive. On the whole surface of the land habitations have been constructed from dis- tance to distance, in favourable positions, for the use of those who cultivate the ground and attend to its produce. These habitations have been sur-

11

rounded with enclosures and plantations, that ren- der them more agreeable and more useful. Roads have been made to go to them and to take away the produce of the earth. In points where several dif- ferent interests have concentrated, and where other men have become sufficiently necessary to the ser- vice of the cultivators, to be able to subsist on the wages of their labour, habitations have been multi- plied and made contiguous, and have formed vil- lages and small towns. On the banks of large rivers, and on the shores of the sea, in points in which the interests of several of these towns have coincided, large cities have been built ; which have themselves in time given birth to a still greater one, which has become their capital and their common centre, because it has been found the most favoura- bly situated to unite all the others, and to be provi- sioned and defended by them. Finally, all these towns communicate with each other, with the neigh- bouring seas, and with foreign countries, by means of bridges, causeways, canals, in which the whole of human industry is displayed. Such are the ob- jects which strike us at the first aspect of a country where men have exercised all their power, and have appropriated it to themselves for a long time.

If we penetrate the interior of their habitations we there find an immense number of useful animals, raised, nourished, made obsequious, by man, — mul- tiplied by him to an inconceivable point ; a prodi- gious quantity of necessaries of every species, com- modities, furniture, utensils, instruments, clothing, articles, raw or manufactured, metals, necessary or precious $ finally, whatever may sooner or later con-

tribute to the satisfaction of our wants. We admire there above all things, a population really astonish- ing, all the individuals of which have the use of a perfected language, have a reason developed to a certain point, manners sufficiently softened, and an industry sufficiently intelligent, to live in such great numbers near to one another, and amongst whom in general the poorest are succoured, the weakest de- fended. We remark, with still more surprise, that many of these men have attained a degree of know- ledge very difficult to be acquired, that they possess an infinity of agreeable or useful arts, that they are acquainted with many of the lavrs of nature, of which they know to calculate the effects, and turn them to their advantage, that they have even had a glimpse of the most difficult of all sciences, since they are able to distinguish, at least in part, the true interests of the species in general, and in particular those of their society, and its members ; that in con- sequence they have conceived laws often just, insti- tutions tolerably wise, and created a number of es- tablishments proper for spreading and still increas- ing instruction and intelligence ; and finally, that not content 'with having thus insured interior prosperity they have explored the rest of the earth, established relations with foreign nations, and provided for their security from without.

What an immense accumulation of means of well being! What prodigious results from that part of the labours of our predecessors, which has not been immediately necessary to the support of their exis- tence, and which has not been annihilated with them ! The imagination even is astonished ; and

13

the more so the more it reflects on it, for we should consider that many of these works are little durable, that the most solid have been many times renewed in the course of ages, and that there is scarcely one which does not require continual care and mainte- nance for its preservation. We must observe that of these wonders that which strikes our attention is not the most astonishing ; it is, as we say, the ma- terial part. But