Rousseau wanted to find out how Inequality in Man came about. Not so much of natural inequality as in having a difference in age, or health, or strength but of the moral and political inequalities found among men. It is the type where we would say that certain men who are richer or more powerful, in a social or political sense, than others.
It is through our nature that these inequalities would surface.
Rousseau points out that us as human beings have ideas. In that regard, we are no different from any other animal. Our senses grant us the ability to have ideas. We are only so different when taking all these different ideas and reconstructing and mixing them all together.
Men are more different among their own kind when mixing all the ideas together than are they different from other animals. Also, us as humans have the ability to freely will our actions that Nature may direct of us. We also have the ability to have knowledge of this freedom and it is through our knowledge of our wills that are souls would become evident.
Our awareness of our wills would then give us the ability to reason. But a person who is considered to be a savage would not. Those who are savage would not be capable of reasoning. They act on pure instinct such as any other animal. They are not granted the knowledge that would allow them to have any sort of interest beyond their physical needs and desires.
Savage men would therefore, be more prone to violent acts. But it would only be in the case of self-preservation. But the savage would not be considered evil. Because they do not know what it is to be considered good. They have no knowledge of any type of vices that would make them considered to be evil. Rousseau concludes that the savage are not evil because of their ignorance of vice (36).
If there is any virtue that is most natural and that is universal in man and other animals, it would be the virtue of pity. Every animal can show signs of pity, especially at the sight of death. Rousseau gives mention of Bernard Mandeville, who is the author of The Fable of the Bees, and that he gives us an image of compassion and pity in man.
The image is of a man who is imprisoned in a cell and sees outside his window, a terrifying scene. The scene is that of an animal forcing a child from its mother and clawing and ripping the child to death. The man is left helpless to become of any assistance to the child that he is left with tears. The tears display the man’s pity and compassion at full extent.
Rousseau concludes that our tears, given to us by Nature, grant us as humans the ability to have the softest hearts (37).
