Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

The first man who fenced off a field

The most quoted passage opens the second part. In Cole's translation: "The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society." Rousseau goes on to imagine someone pulling up the stakes and warning the others that the fruits of the earth belong to everyone and the earth itself to nobody.

The next sentence is quieter and is often left out. Rousseau says that by then things had probably already gone too far to continue as they were. The idea of property, he explains, depends on many earlier ideas that could only be acquired one after another. The fence comes at the end of a long story, and the rest of the second part goes back and tells it.

For the BnF, the idea that society built on property causes inequality and corruption is the heart of the essay. The library's summary adds that Rousseau's later books either defend that idea, as The Social Contract does, or look for a cure, as Emile does.

Two kinds of self-love

One of Rousseau's own notes draws a line that runs through all his later books. French has two words for self-love. Amour de soi is the plain wish to stay alive and well, which every animal has. Amour-propre only arises in society and makes each person rate himself above everyone else. Rousseau calls it the real source of what people call honour.

Cole translates the first as self-respect and the second as egoism, so an English reader can miss that the two words belong together. Rousseau's claim in the note is that amour-propre did not exist in the true state of nature. A person alone, with no one to compare himself to, could not feel it.

The phrase noble savage is not in the Discourse, in French or in Cole's English. Rousseau writes of savage man, meaning a person living outside society. He also says plainly that such people are not good in any moral sense. They do no harm because their passions are calm and they know nothing of vice.

Voltaire's thank-you letter

Rousseau sent Voltaire a copy. Voltaire's reply is dated 30 August 1755 and addressed to Rousseau in Paris. The English below is translated from the French by the Paris Atlas editors, from the Garnier edition of Voltaire's letters.

Nobody has ever used so much wit trying to turn us into beasts. Reading your book makes one want to walk on all fours.

On n'a jamais employé tant d'esprit à vouloir nous rendre bêtes ; il prend envie de marcher à quatre pattes, quand on lit votre ouvrage.

The letter opens by thanking Rousseau for his new book against the human race. Voltaire adds that he lost the habit of walking on all fours more than sixty years ago and cannot take it up again. He also declines to sail off and join the savages of Canada. The BnF quotes the same walking-on-all-fours line as the best-known reaction to the book.

The mockery grew into a long feud. Larousse records that Voltaire went on to call Rousseau a cynic and a misanthrope. The two men are now buried in the same crypt of the Panthéon: Voltaire since 1791, Rousseau since 1794.