Jean-Jacques Rousseau, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
What distinguishes man from the beast is not, as philosophers have too hastily supposed, the degree of understanding. Every animal has ideas; every animal combines them after a fashion; the difference between a given man and a given beast may be, in some cases, smaller than the difference between one man and another.1 The true distinction lies elsewhere: in freedom, and in what I call perfectibilité.
Freedom first. Nature commands every animal, and the beast obeys. Man feels the same impetus from nature, but he knows himself free to acquiesce or resist — and it is in this consciousness of freedom that the spirituality of his soul is shown.1 The beast cannot deviate from the rule prescribed to it even when deviation would serve it; a cat will not eat grain, a pigeon will not eat meat, though each could nourish itself on what it disdains if it would only try.
Man, by contrast, depraves his own senses through his mind, abandons himself to excesses that bring fever and death, speaks when nature is silent.1 But perfectibilité is the more consequential faculty, and the more troubling one. It is the capacity that, with the aid of circumstances, successively develops all the others — residing in the species as much as in the individual.2
The animal is, at the end of a few months, what it will be all its life; its species is, at the end of a thousand years, what it was in the first year of that thousand.2 Man alone is subject to becoming imbecile in old age — precisely because he can fall back from whatever his perfectibility had made him acquire, falling lower, in the end, than the beast itself.3
Here is what must be said plainly, and what it would be sad to be forced to admit: this almost unlimited faculty is the source of all man's misfortunes.3 It is perfectibility that draws him out of his original condition of tranquil and innocent days; it is perfectibility that brings to flower, over the centuries, both his enlightenment and his errors, his virtues and his vices, until he becomes the tyrant of himself and of nature.3
Voltaire read the Second Discourse and concluded that since perfectibility leads man to civilization, to wish otherwise is to wish man were not man — that the state of society follows necessarily from man's faculties, and to complain of it is to rise up against the will of God.4 This is the response of a man who has never seriously asked whether what is actual is therefore good.
The genealogy I traced is not a complaint against Providence; it is a demonstration of how, from an original condition of natural goodness, the concatenation of circumstances — comparison, property, dependence, inflamed amour-propre — produced the misery we now inhabit. To understand the mechanism is not to wish man had been made otherwise; it is to ask whether the mechanism was necessary, and whether it can be redirected.
That redirection is what the Letter to Beaumont addresses when it traces the three stages: men essentially good while their interests converge more than they collide; then conscience stifled when amour-propre inflames and each finds his good only in another's ill; then the third and final stage, beyond which nothing remains to be done.5
Man being good, men become wicked — and I dedicated my work to seeking how to prevent them from becoming so.5 The savage, in the original state, begins with purely animal functions: to perceive and feel, then to will and not will, to desire and fear — almost the only operations of his soul until new circumstances cause new developments.6 He is not evil, because he does not know what it is to be good; it is neither the growth of enlightenment nor the restraint of law, but the calm of the passions and the ignorance of vice, that prevent him from doing evil.7
And alongside amour de soi — the natural concern for one's own preservation — there is pitié, the innate repugnance at seeing a fellow creature suffer, which tempers the ardor for self-preservation before any reflection has begun.7 Perfectibility, then, is neither a gift nor a curse in itself. It is the hinge on which everything turns: the faculty that made civilization possible, and the same faculty that made tyranny, vanity, and dependence possible.
The beast is safe from both. Man is exposed to both. That is his condition, and the work of philosophy is not to lament it but to understand it well enough to do something with it.
Some Philosophers have even suggested that there is more difference between a given man and another than between a given man and a given beast. Therefore it is not so much understanding which constitutes the distinction of man among the animals as it is his being a free agent.Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, p. 58
the faculty of self-perfection, a faculty which, with the aid of circumstances, successively develops all the others, and resides among us as much in the species as in the individual. By contrast an animal is at the end of a few months what it will be all its life; and its species is at the end of a thousand years what it was the first year of that thousand.Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, p. 58
It would be sad for us to be forced to agree that this distinctive and almost unlimited faculty is the source of all man's misfortunes; that it is this faculty which, by dint of time, draws him out of that original condition in which he would pass tranquil and innocent days; that it is this faculty which, bringing to flower over the centuries his enlightenment and his errors, his vices and his virtues, in the long run makes him the tyrant of himself and of Nature.Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, pp. 58–59
That perfectibility which Mr. Rousseau makes into the characteristic that essentially distinguishes man from brute should, from the author's own admission, lead man to the point where we see him today. To wish that this did not occur would be to wish that man were not man.Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, p. 156
That, your Grace, is the third and last stage, beyond which nothing remains to be done; and that is how, man being good, men become wicked. I dedicated my Book to seeking how to go about preventing them from becoming so.Letter to Beaumont, pp. 60–61
Savage Man, by Nature committed to instinct alone... will therefore begin with purely animal functions. To perceive and feel will be his first state, which he will have in common with all animals. To will and not will, to desire and fear, will be the first and almost the only operations of his soul until new circumstances cause new developments in it.Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, pp. 58–59
one could say that Savages are not evil precisely because they do not know what it is to be good; for it is neither the growth of enlightenment nor the restraint of Law, but the calm of passions and the ignorance of vice which prevent them from doing evil... I speak of Pity, a disposition that is appropriate to beings as weak and subject to as many ills as we are.Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, pp. 67–68