In fact, it were better, he contended, that all men should be savages,
than that a few of the most cunning, cruel, and greedy should make
slaves of the rest. His love of nature, his contempt for the silly
showiness and shallow hypocrisy of eighteenth-century society, made the
idea a favorite one. He loved to dream of the times [Footnote: It must
be confessed that here Rousseau was dreaming of times that probably
never existed.] when men were all free and equal, when nobody claimed
to own the land which God had made for all, when there were no wars to
kill, no taxes to oppress, no philosophers to deceive the people.
In an essay inquiring _What is the Origin of Inequality among Men_
(1753), Rousseau sought to show how vanity, greed, and selfishness had
found lodgment in the hearts of these "simple savages," how the
strongest had fenced off plots of land for themselves and forced the
weak to acknowledge the right of private property. This, said Rousseau,
was the real origin of inequality among men, of the tyranny of the
strong over the weak; and this law of private property "for the profit
of a few ambitious men, subjected thenceforth all the human race to
labor, servitude, and misery.
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