.“Thus Vice nurs'd Ingenuity, Which join'd with Time and Industry, Had carry'd Life's Conveniences, It's real Pleasures, Comforts, Ease, To such a Height, the very Poor Liv'd better than the Rich before.”
- Bernard Mendeville, The Fable of the Bees, 1714
The supposed goodness of the savage is not real goodness, it is rather a sort of innocence, and precisely the kind of innocence which is typical of beings lacking reason, and therefore unable to commit evil deliberately. Therefore the human being in this primitive condition does learn to be sociable, insofar as, in Rousseau’s opinion as well as in Mandeville’s, the fulfilment of needs and passions is the drive to seek the help of other human beings, while in the state of nature the lack of strong individual needs affords independence. The need to bond with other human beings begins, according to Rousseau, just after the fall from the state of nature. Only leaving the state of nature the savage becomes a man, whereas, just before that, he was no more than a mere beast.
- Francesca Pongiglione on Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality among Men (1755), 2015
