In order to make my thoughts understood here, I feel the need to go back for a moment to the source of human societies. I will then descend rapidly down the stream of humanity until our own day.
Here are men who associate together for the first time. They leave the woods, they are still savages; they associate not to enjoy life, but to find the wherewithal to live. A shelter for intemperate weather, sufficient food, such is the object of their efforts. Their minds do not go beyond these goods, and, if they obtain them without too much trouble, they consider themselves happy with their lot and they sleep in lazy comfort. I have lived among barbaric peoples in North America; I deplored their lot, but they did not find it cruel. Lying down amid the smoke of his hut, covered in coarse clothes, the work of his hands or the product of a hunt, the Indian looks upon our arts with pity, considering the achievements of our civilization as a fatiguing, shameful subjugation; he envies us only our weapons.
Arriving at the earliest societies, men still have very few desires; they scarcely feel needs similar to those of animals; they have simply discovered in social organization the means to satisfy them with less trouble. Before agriculture was known to them, they lived by hunting; from the moment they learned the art of producing a harvest from the earth, they became farmers. Each one drew from the land that fell to his share the means to feed himself and his children. Ownership of land was created, and with it, one saw the most active element of progress begin.
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