the eighteenth century. All the thinkers and philosophers and fine ladies
and gentlemen assumed a certain state of nature, and built upon it, out
of words and phrases, an airy and easy reconstruction of society, without
a thought of investigating the past, or inquiring into the development of
mankind. Every one talked of "the state of nature" as if he knew all
about it. "The conditions of primitive man," says Mr. Morley, "were
discussed by very incompetent ladies and gentlemen at convivial
supper-parties, and settled with complete assurance." That was the age
when solitary Frenchmen plunged into the wilderness of North America,
confidently expecting to recover the golden age under the shelter of a
wigwam and in the society of a squaw.

The state of nature of Rousseau was a state in which inequality did not
exist, and with a fervid rhetoric he tried to persuade his readers that
it was the happier state. He recognized inequality, it is true, as a word
of two different meanings: first, physical inequality, difference of age,
strength, health, and of intelligence and character; second, moral and
political inequality, difference of privileges which some enjoy to the
detriment of others-such as riches, honor, power. The first difference is
established by nature, the second by man. So long, however, as the state
of nature endures, no disadvantages flow from the natural inequalities.

In Rousseau's account of the means by which equality was lost, the
incoming of the ideas of property is prominent. From property arose civil
society. With property came in inequality. His exposition of inequality
is confused, and it is not possible always to tell whether he means
inequality of possessions or of political rights. His contemporary,
Morelly, who published the Basileade in 1753, was troubled by no such
ambiguity. He accepts the doctrine that men are formed by laws, but holds
that they are by nature good, and that laws, by establishing a division