Jean-Jacques Rousseau · 1755
Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
- Period
- Earlier work, influential in the period
- Original title
- Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes
- Language
- French
- Form
- Treatise
- Text
- Full text
- English
- No English translation · 18th-century English translations exist; Marxists Internet Archive and constitution.org host one.
- Source text
- gutenberg.org
- Selected
- Ben Breen, 2026-09-29; suggested by Claude research agents, 29 Sep 2026
- Status
- Arguments unverified; quotations chosen by machine, unchecked
Q38EXTENSION
When a person accomplishes something through a machine, should the machine's power count as that person's capability?No. tools replace rather than add to capability. The savage's body is his only instrument and is stronger for it; had he an axe, a sling or a horse he would lose the strength and speed he now has.
The body being the only instrument that savage man is acquainted with, he employs it to different uses, of which ours, for want of practice, are incapable; and we may thank our industry for the loss of that strength and agility, which necessity obliges him to acquire. Had he a hatchet, would his hand so easily snap off from an oak so stout a branch? Had he a sling, would it dart a stone to so great a distance? Had he a ladder, would he run so nimbly up a tree? Had he a horse, would he with such swiftness shoot along the plain? Give civilized man but time to gather about him all his machines, and no doubt he will be an overmatch for the savage: but if you have a mind to see a contest still more unequal, place them naked and unarmed one opposite to the other; and you will soon discover the advantage there is in perpetually having all our forces at our disposal, in being constantly prepared against all events, and in always carrying ourselves, as it were, whole and entire about us.
First Part · Oxford Text Archive and Marxists Internet Archive texts of the First Part; axe/sling/ladder/horse passage confirmed.