We Must Always Go Back To A First Convention

A famous author compared the total good and evil of human life. He found that our pains greatly exceed our pleasures. All things considered, human life is not at all a valuable gift.

He drew all his arguments from civilised man.

Had he gone back to the wild state, he would have gotten a different result – man would be seen to be subject to very few evils not of his own creation.

Experience proves beyond doubt that men are actually wicked.

But all the same, I have shown that man is naturally good.

He has been depraved by:

• the changes in his constitution
• the advances he has made
• the knowledge he has acquired

The Zero Sum Society

Human society necessarily leads men to:

• hate each other in proportion as their interests clash
• render apparent services to one another while they are really doing every imaginable mischief.

The interest of every individual dictates rules directly opposite to the public interest.

A wealthy man might have greedy heirs secretly wishing for his death.

Merchants would wish to see their rivals have losses.

We find our advantage in the misfortunes of our fellow-creatures. The loss of one man almost always constitutes the prosperity of another.

Some desire sickness, some mortality, some war, and some famine.

I have seen men wicked enough to weep at the prospect of a plentiful season.

The great and fatal fire of London, which cost so many unhappy persons their lives or their fortunes, made the fortunes of 10,000 others.

Let us penetrate the superficial appearances of benevolence.

Society is so formed that every man gains by serving the rest.

• But he could gain still more by injuring them.

There is no legitimate profit so great, that it cannot be greatly exceeded by what may be made illegitimately;

we always gain more by hurting our neighbours than by doing them good. Nothing is required but to know how to act with impunity; and to this end the powerful employ all their strength, and the weak all their cunning.

After savage man has dined, he is at peace with all nature.

If he disputes about a meal, he simply finds subsistence elsewhere.

• If he has to fight, the victor eats and the vanquished seeks provision somewhere else, and all is at peace.

The case is quite different with man in society.

He needs necessaries, then superfluities, then delicacies, then immense wealth, then subjects, and then slaves.

He enjoys not a moments relaxation.

What is yet stranger, the less natural and pressing his wants, the more headstrong are his passions, and, still worse, the more he has it in his power to gratify them.

After a long course of prosperity, after having swallowed up treasures and ruined multitudes, the hero ends up by cutting every throat till he finds himself, at last, sole master of the world.

Such is in miniature the moral picture, if not of human life, at least of the secret pretensions of the heart of civilised man.

Compare without partiality the state of the citizen with that of the savage, and trace out, if you can, how many inlets the former has opened to pain and death, besides those of his vices, his wants and his misfortunes.

If you reflect on the mental afflictions that prey on us, the violent passions that waste and exhaust us, the excessive labour with which the poor are burdened, the still more dangerous indolence to which the wealthy give themselves up, so that the poor perish of want, and the rich of surfeit; if you reflect but a moment on the heterogeneous mixtures and pernicious seasonings of foods; the corrupt state in which they are frequently eaten; on the adulteration of medicines, the wiles of those who sell them, the mistakes of those who administer them, and the poisonous vessels in which they are prepared; on the epidemics bred by foul air in consequence of great numbers of men being crowded together, or those which are caused by our delicate way of living, by our passing from our houses into the open air and back again, by the putting on or throwing off our clothes with too little care, and by all the precautions which sensuality has converted into necessary habits, and the neglect of which sometimes costs us our life or health; if you take into account the conflagrations and earthquakes, which, devouring or overwhelming whole cities, destroy the inhabitants by thousands;

If you add together all the dangers with which these causes are always threatening us, you will see how dearly nature makes us pay for the contempt with which we have treated her lessons.

I shall not here repeat, what I have elsewhere said of the calamities of war; but wish that those, who have sufficient knowledge, were willing or bold enough to make public the details of the villainies committed in armies by the contractors for commissariat, and hospitals: we should see plainly that their monstrous frauds, already none too well concealed, which cripple the finest armies in less than no time, occasion greater destruction among the soldiers than the swords of the enemy.

The number of people who perish annually at sea, by famine, the scurvy, pirates, fire and shipwrecks, affords matter for another shocking calculation. We must also place to the credit of the establishment of property, and consequently to the institution of society, assassinations, poisonings, highway robberies, and even the punishments inflicted on the wretches guilty of these crimes; which, though expedient to prevent greater evils, yet by making the murder of one man cost the lives of two or more, double the loss to the human race.