THE true founder of civil society was the first man who,
having enclosed a piece of land, thought of saying, 'This is
mine', and came across people simple enough to believe him.
How many crimes, wars, murders and how much misery and
horror the human race might have been spared if someone
had pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch, and cried out
to his fellows: 'Beware of listening to this charlatan. You are
lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and
that the earth itself belongs to no one!' Quite evidently,
however, things had by this time reached a point at which
they could not continue as they had been, for since the idea
of property depends on many anterior ideas that could only
have arisen in sequential stages, it was not produced in the
human mind all at once. Before arriving at this final stage of
the state of nature, men had to make a good deal of progress,
acquire considerable ingenuity and knowledge, and transmit
and increase them from age to age. So let us go further back
into the matter, and try to look from a single viewpoint at
the slow chain of events and learning in their most natural
order.

Man's first sentiment was that of his existence, and his first
concern was that of his own preservation. The products of
the earth furnished all the necessary support and prompted
him to make use of them by instinct. Hunger and other
cravings made him in turn experience various ways of living,
but one particular craving goaded him to perpetuate his own
species: and this blind inclination, devoid of any sentiment of
the heart, occasioned only a purely animal act. Once the
need was satisfied, the two sexes no longer recognized each
other, and even the child meant nothing to the mother once
he could do without her.

Such was the condition of nascent man; such was the life
of an animal initially limited to pure sensations, scarcely
profiting from the gifts supplied him by nature, much less
imagining he could wrest anything from it. Difficulties soon

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