VII ON THE NATURAL INEQUALITY OF MEN 301 



my purpose, those who read this paper to the end 

 will, I think, have no doubt that the political 

 lantern of Rousseauism is a mere corpse candle 

 and will plunge those who follow it in the deepest 

 of anarchic bogs. 



There is another point which must be carefully 

 borne in mind in any discussion of Rousseau's 

 doctrines ; and that is the meaning which he 

 attaches to the word "inequality." A hundred 

 and fifty years ago, as now, political and biological 

 philosophers found they were natural allies. 1 

 Rousseau is not intelligible without Buffon, 

 with whose earlier works he was evidently 

 acquainted, and whose influence in the following 

 passage is obvious : 



It is easy to see that we must seek the primary cause of the 

 differences by which men are distinguished in these successive 

 changes of the human constitution ; since it is universally 

 admitted that they are, naturally, as equal among themselves 

 as were the animals of each species before various physical 

 causes had produced, in some of them, the varieties which we 

 observe. In fact, it is not conceivable that these first changes, 

 by whatever means they were brought about, altered, at once 

 and in the same way, all the individuals of a species ; but some 

 having become improved or deteriorated, and having acquired 

 different qualities, good or bad, which were not inherent in their 



1 The publication of Buffon's Histoire Naturcllc began in 

 1749. Thus Rousseau was indebted to the naturalists ; on the 

 other hand, in the case of the elder Darwin, who started what 

 is now usually known as Lamarck's hypothesis, the naturalis 

 was set speculating by the ideas of the philosopher Hartley, 

 transmitted through Priestley. See Zooiwmia, I. sect, xxxix. 

 p. 483 (ed. 17C6). I hope some day to deal at length with this 

 curious fact in scientific history. 



