The Golden Age Versus the State of Nature

The open and liberal hand of nature gives us few enjoyments.

• We can extract more enjoyments from nature by art, labour, and industry.

Hence the ideas of property become necessary in all civil society.

Hence justice derives its usefulness to the public.

Hence alone arises its merit and moral obligation.

These conclusions are so natural and obvious.

The poets imagine that during the first state of society:

• the seasons were so temperate. There was no necessity for men to provide themselves with clothes and houses.
• the rivers flowed with wine and milk
• the oaks yielded honey

• furious tempests were unknown to humans

• avarice, ambition, cruelty, selfishness, were never heard of
• cordial affection, compassion, sympathy, were the only movements with which the mind was yet acquainted.

Even the punctilious distinction of MINE and THINE was banished. There was no notion of property and obligation, justice and injustice.

This POETICAL fiction of the GOLDEN AGE is similar to the PHILOSOPHICAL fiction of the STATE OF NATURE.

• The former is represented as the most charming and peaceable condition
• The latter is painted out as a state of mutual war and violence, attended with the most extreme necessity.

The state of nature was the first origin of mankind. Their ignorance and savage nature were so prevalent, that they could give no mutual trust. Each must depend on himself and his own force or cunning for protection and security.

There were no laws, no rules of justice, no distinction of property.

Power was the only measure of right. A perpetual war of all against all was the result of men’s untamed selfishness and barbarity.

I doubt that such a condition of human nature ever existed or could continue so long as to be called a state.

Men are necessarily born in a family-society, at least. We are trained up by our parents to some rule of conduct and behaviour.

But if such a state of mutual war and violence was ever real, the suspension of all laws of justice, from their absolute inutility, is a necessary and infallible consequence.

The more we vary our views of human life, and the newer and more unusual the lights are in which we survey it, the more shall we be convinced, that the origin here assigned for the virtue of justice is real and satisfactory.

Were there a species of creatures intermingled with men, which, though rational, were possessed of such inferior strength, both of body and mind, that they were incapable of all resistance, and could never, upon the highest provocation, make us feel the effects of their resentment; the necessary consequence, I think, is that we should be bound by the laws of humanity to give gentle usage to these creatures, but should not, properly speaking, lie under any restraint of justice with regard to them, nor could they possess any right or property, exclusive of such arbitrary lords.

Our intercourse with them could not be called society, which supposes a degree of equality; but absolute command on the one side, and servile obedience on the other. Whatever we covet, they must instantly resign=

Our permission is the only tenure, by which they hold their possessions= Our compassion and kindness the only check, by which they curb our lawless will= And as no inconvenience ever results from the exercise of a power, so firmly established in nature, the restraints of justice and property, being totally USELESS, would never have place in so unequal a confederacy.

This is the situation of men, with regard to animals.

How far these may be said to possess reason, I leave it to others to determine.

The great superiority of civilized Europeans above barbarous Indians, tempted us to imagine ourselves on the same footing with regard to them, and made us throw off all restraints of justice, and even of humanity, in our treatment of them.

In many nations, females are:

• reduced to slavery
• rendered incapable of all property, in opposition to their lordly masters.

But though the males, when united, have in all countries bodily force sufficient to maintain this severe tyranny, yet such are the insinuation, address, and charms of their fair companions, that women are commonly able to break the confederacy, and share with the other sex in all the rights and privileges of society.

Were the human species so framed by nature as that each individual possessed within himself every faculty, requisite both for his own preservation and for the propagation of his kind=

Were all society and intercourse cut off between man and man, by the primary intention of the supreme Creator.

Such a solitary being would be as much incapable of justice, as of social discourse and conversation.

Where mutual regards and forbearance serve to no manner of purpose, they would never direct the conduct of any reasonable man. The headlong course of the passions would be checked by no reflection on future consequences. And as each man is here supposed to love himself alone, and to depend only on himself and his own activity for safety and happiness, he would, on every occasion, to the utmost of his power, challenge the preference above every other being, to none of which he is bound by any ties, either of nature or of interest.

But suppose the conjunction of the sexes to be established in nature, a family immediately arises.

Particular rules are found requisite for its subsistence.

These are immediately embraced; though without comprehending the rest of mankind within their prescriptions.

Suppose that several families unite together into one society, which is totally disjoined from all others, the rules, which preserve peace and order, enlarge themselves to the utmost extent of that society;

but becoming then entirely useless, lose their force when carried one step farther.

Several distinct societies maintain a kind of intercourse for mutual convenience and advantage, the boundaries of justice still grow larger, in proportion to the largeness of men’s views, and the force of their mutual connexions.

History, experience, reason sufficiently instruct us in this natural progress of human sentiments, and in the gradual enlargement of our regards to justice, in proportion as we become acquainted with the extensive utility of that virtue.