I am bound to confess, at the outset, that, while quite open to conviction, I incline to think that the obvious practical consequences of these propositions are not likely to conduce to the welfare of society, and that they are certain to prove as injurious to the poor as to the rich. Due allowance must be made for the possible influence of such prejudice as may flow from this opinion upon my further conviction that, regarded from a purely theoretical and scientific point of view, they are so plainly and demonstrably false that, except for the gravity of their practical consequences, they would be ridiculous.
What is the meaning of the famous phrase that "all men are born free and equal,"[1] which gallicized Americans, who were as much "philosophes" as their inherited common sense and their practical acquaintance with men and with affairs would let them be, put forth as the foundation of the "Declaration of Independence"? I have seen a considerable number of new-born infants. Without wishing to speak of them with the least disrespect—a thing no man can do, without, as the proverb says, "fouling his own nest"—I fail to understand how they can be affirmed to have any political qualities at all. How can it be said that these poor little mortals who have not even the capacity to kick to any definite end, nor indeed to do anything but vaguely squirm and squall, are equal politically, except as all zeros may be said to be equal? How can little creatures be said to be "free" of whom not one would live for four-and-twenty hours if it were not imprisoned by kindly hands and coerced into applying its foolish, wandering mouth to the breast it could never find for itself? How is the being whose brain is still too pulpy to hold an idea of any description to be a moral agent either good or bad? Surely it must be a joke, and rather a cynical one too, to talk of the political status of a new-born child! But we may carry our questions a step further. If it is mere abracadabra to speak of men being born in a state of political freedom and equality, thus fallaciously confusing positive equality—that is to say, the equality of powers—with the equality of impotences; in what conceivable state of society is it possible that men should not merely be born, but pass through childhood and still remain free? Has a child of fourteen been free to choose its language and all the connotations with which words became burdened in their use by generation after generation? Has it been free to choose the habits enforced by precept and more surely driven home by example? Has it been free to invent its own standard of right and wrong? Or rather,
- ↑ ["All men are created equal" is the wording of the "Declaration."—Editor P. S. M.]
henceforth, for the profit of a few ambitious persons, subjected the whole human race to labor, servitude, and misery.)—("Discours," p. 278). Behold the quintessence of Rousseauism—method and results—with practical application, legible by the swiftest runner!
