Chapter IV: Part 4

I have endeavoured to exhibit the origin and progress of inequality, the institution and abuse of political societies, as far as these things are capable of being deduced from the nature of man by the mere light of reason, and independently of those sacred maxims which give to the sovereign authority the sanction of divine right. It follows from this picture, that as there is scarce any inequality among men in a state of nature, all that which we now behold owes its force and its growth to the development of our faculties and the improvement of our understanding, and at last becomes permanent and lawful by the establishment of property and of laws. It likewise follows that moral inequality, authorised by any right that is merely positive, clashes with natural right, as often as it does not combine in the same proportion with physical inequality: a distinction which sufficiently determines, what we are able to think in that respect of that kind of inequality which obtains in all civilised nations, since it is evidently against the law of nature that infancy should command old age, folly conduct wisdom, and a handful of men should be ready to choke with superfluities, while the famished multitude want the commonest necessaries of life.

[Transcriber's Note: Some words which appear to be potential typos are printed as such in the original book: These possible words include cotemporaries and oftens. The paragraph starting with the words "This odius system is even" contains unmatched quotes, which have been reproduced as they appeared in the orginal. This work was transcribed from a anthology (Harvard Classics Volume 34) published in 1910. The editor of the entire series was Charles W. Eliot. The name of the translator was not given, nor was the name of the author of the introduction. Indented lines indicate embedded verse that should not be re-wrapped.]