happened to make any discovery, he could the less communicate it as he
did not even know his children. The art perished with the inventor;
there was neither education nor improvement; generations succeeded
generations to no purpose; and as all constantly set out from the same
point, whole centuries rolled on in the rudeness and barbarity of the
first age; the species was grown old, while the individual still
remained in a state of childhood.

If I have enlarged so much upon the supposition of this primitive
condition, it is because I thought it my duty, considering what
ancient errors and inveterate prejudices I have to extirpate, to dig
to the very roots, and show in a true picture of the state of nature,
how much even natural inequality falls short in this state of that
reality and influence which our writers ascribe to it.

In fact, we may easily perceive that among the differences, which
distinguish men, several pass for natural, which are merely the work
of habit and the different kinds of life adopted by men living in a
social way. Thus a robust or delicate constitution, and the strength
and weakness which depend on it, are oftener produced by the hardy or
effeminate manner in which a man has been brought up, than by the
primitive constitution of his body. It is the same thus in regard to
the forces of the mind; and education not only produces a difference
between those minds which are cultivated and those which are not, but
even increases that which is found among the first in proportion to
their culture; for let a giant and a dwarf set out in the same path,
the giant at every step will acquire a new advantage over the dwarf.
Now, if we compare the prodigious variety in the education and manner
of living of the different orders of men in a civil state, with the
simplicity and uniformity that prevails in the animal and savage life,