While the husbandman furrows his land, and prepares for every one his daily bread, the town artizan, far away, weaves the stuff in which he is to be clothed; the miner seeks underground the iron for his plow; the soldier defends him against the invader; the judge takes care that the law protects his fields; the tax-comptroller adjusts his private interests with those of the public; the merchant occupies himself in exchanging his products with those of distant countries; the men of science and of art add every day a few horses to this ideal team, which draws along the material world, as steam impels the gigantic trains of our iron roads!  Thus all unite together, all help one another; the toil of each one benefits himself and all the world; the work has been apportioned among the different members of the whole of society by a tacit agreement.  If, in this apportionment, errors are committed, if certain individuals have not been employed according to their capacities, those defects of detail diminish in the sublime conception of the whole.  The poorest man included in this association has his place, his work, his reason for being there; each is something in the whole.

There is nothing like this for man in the state of nature.  As he depends only upon himself, it is necessary that he be sufficient for everything.  All creation is his property; but he finds in it as many hindrances as helps.  He must surmount these obstacles with the single strength that God has given him; he cannot reckon on any other aid than chance and opportunity.  No one reaps, manufactures, fights, or thinks for him; he is nothing to any one.  He is a unit multiplied by the cipher of his own single powers; while the civilized man is a unit multiplied by the whole of society.

But, notwithstanding this, the other day, disgusted by the sight of some vices in detail, I cursed the latter, and almost envied the life of the savage.

One of the infirmities of our nature is always to mistake feeling for evidence, and to judge of the season by a cloud or a ray of sunshine.

Was the misery, the sight of which made me regret a savage life, really the effect of civilization?  Must we accuse society of having created these evils, or acknowledge, on the contrary, that it has alleviated them?  Could the women and children, who were receiving the coarse bread from the soldier, hope in the desert for more help or pity?  That dead man, whose forsaken state I deplored, had he not found, by the cares of a hospital, a coffin and the humble grave where he was about to rest?  Alone, and far from men, he would have died like the wild beast in his den, and would now be serving as food for vultures!  These benefits of human society are shared, then, by the most destitute.  Whoever eats the bread that another has reaped and kneaded, is under an obligation to his brother, and cannot say he owes him nothing in return.  The poorest of us has received from society much more than his own single strength would have permitted him to wrest from nature.