Diderot on the Primitive
& the Civilized
Denis Diderot
is best known for his many contributions to the Encyclopedia
project. He also wrote widely elsewhere: always with vigor and with political
intent, therefore often with irony. These passages are among many
he contributed to Abbe Reynal's (?1772) Histoire
des Deux Indes (the first from Book 15, ch.4, section 7). Note
his polemical use of "primitive man" and the state of nature, and
his Enlightenment preoccupation with the ignorance and injustice of his
own society. These are taken from J.H. Mason & R. Wolker's fine 1992
translation and collection Denis Diderot: Political
Writings (Cambridge UP).
A thought comes to mind. If you consider
the hatred which one tribe of primitive men bears against another, their
hard life on the edge of subsistence, the persistence of their wars, the
small size of their population, the innumerable traps which we continually
set them, then you cannot help imagining that before three centuries have
passed they will have disappeared from the earth. What will our descendants
think then of that species of men who will no longer exist, except in the
histories of travellers? Will the era of primitive men not appear to them
as the fabulous times of antiquity seem to us? Will they not speak of it
as we speak of centaurs... [or what] Plato has left us about ancient Atlantis?
How many philosophical disputes will arise about the fine works of our
century?
Just as today we tend, in spite of the instability
of which we are the witness and plaything, to think that the current state
of any species of creature... must be its necessary and primordial condition,
at that future date there will be systematic minds who will prove by an
infinite number of reasons - based on the dignity of the human species,
its high destiny, its nobility when alive, the marvellous state awaiting
it after death, and the wisdom of providence which seems to have only fine
prospects in view for mankind - that man was never naked, homeless, without
order or laws, reduced in the last resort to an animal condition. In so
far as this opinion will agree or conflict with prevailing theological
opinions it will be either orthodox or heretical. One day, for having dared
to assert that man once was as he now is in Canada (according to the evidence
even of our missionaries), a man will be branded a heretic, impious, philosophe,
and will be hated, persecuted, punished, put in irons, and even burnt....
Without doubt it is important for future generations
that they do not lose the accounts of the life and behaviour of primitive
men. It is to this knowledge, perhaps, that we owe all the progress which
moral philosophy has made among us. Up to now moralists have looked for
the origin and foundations of society in the societies which they had before
their eyes. People attributed crimes to man, in order to give him gods
who atoned for them; they plunged him into blindness in order to become
his guides and master, and they called mysterious, supernatural and heavenly
that which is only the product of time, ignorance, weakness and deceit.
But since it has been perceived that social institutions did not derive
either from the needs of nature or from the dogmas of religion - because
countless numbers of people lived in a state of independence and with no
religion - the vices of morality and legislation have been seen to arise
with the establishment of societies. We have become aware that these original
evils came from founders and legislators who, for the most part, had created
social order for their own use, or whose wise ideas of justice and the
public good had been perverted by the ambition of their successors and
by the changes brought by time and custom. This discovery has already brought
much enlightenment but it is as yet no more than the dawn of a beautiful
day for humanity. It is too opposed to established prejudices to have brought
about great benefits so soon, but it will no doubt make such benefits the
delight of future generations. That happy prospect should be a consolation
for the present generation.
In Book 17, ch 4, section 8, he presents
an explicit contrast of "primitive" and "civilized" man, only a small piece
of which is presented here.
Although their origin and antiquity
are both very uncertain, it is a matter of great interest to establish
or enquire whether those nations which are still half primitive are more
or less happy than our civilised people; if the condition of raw man, subject
to pure animal instinct (for whom one day spent hunting, eating, reproducing
and resting is a model for every day), is better or worse than the condition
of that amazing creature who selects the down when he goes to sleep, picks
out a thread of silk when he gets dressed, who has changed the cave, his
first home, into a palace, and learnt how to vary his needs and commodities
in a thousand different ways.
It is human nature to look for ways to be happy.
What does a man need to be as happy as possible? Subsistence for the present
and, if he thinks about the future, the hope and assurance that he will
continue to have this. Now, does primitive man lack the satisfaction of
these basic needs, except for those cases where civilised societies have
confined him or driven him into the Arctic regions? If he does not keep
stocks of food it is because the land and sea are stores and reserves always
available to supply his needs.... He only works for what he uses himself,
he sleeps when he is tired, and he knows neither anxiety nor insomnia.
Danger, like work, is a fact of his life and not a profession he is born
into, a duty he owes his nation, and not an ordeal for his family. Primitive
man is serious, and not sad; you rarely see stamped on his brow the passions
and disease which leave such ugly or damaging traces. He can neither lack
what he does not desire, nor desire what he does not know. The commodities
of [civilized] life are mostly remedies for evils of which he is unaware....
In a word, the only evils from which primitive man suffers are natural
evils.
But what more does civilised man have in the way
of happiness? His food is healthier and more refined than that of primitive
man. He has softer clothing, and a refuge which gives better protection
against the assaults of the seasons. But do the people who should be the
foundation and object of social order - that mass of men who in all states
support the painful labours and expenses of society - live happily, either
in those empires where the results of war and social disorder have left
them in slavery, or under those governments where the progress of luxury
and politics has led them into servitude? ...
...what abuses are there to which civil man is not
exposed? If he has some property how secure can his possession of it be?
When he is obliged to share its product with the courtier (who can impound
his money), with the lawyer (who sells him the means to hold on to it),
with the soldier (who can plunder it), and with the financier (who comes
to levy duties which, by the authority demanding them, are always unlimited)?
Without property, how can lasting means of subsistence be assured? What
kind of industry is protected from the events of fate and the assaults
of government?...
In our countryside, all year long, the hireling
or the serf tills the soil to produce food for himself, only too happy
when he retains part of the harvests which he has sown and tilled. He is
supervised and tormented by a harsh and restless owner, who argues with
him about everything, including the mattress on which, in exhaustion, he
seeks a brief, disturbed sleep. Every day this unfortunate man is exposed
to diseases which, in conjunction with the hunger to which he is reduced,
make him prefer death to an expensive cure which will be followed by more
work and disease. Tenant or subject, slave in both conditions, if he has
a few acres a lord will come and harvest what he has not sown; if he were
to have only a team of cattle or horses, he will be made to use them in
forced labour; if all he has is himself, the prince takes him off to war.
Everywhere masters, always humiliations.
In our towns, ...all that the people can see is
a luxury of which they are victims twice over: first, by the hours and
exhaustion it costs them, secondly, by the outrage of a splendour which
humiliates and crushes them.
Even if we supposed that the dangers and labours
of our destructive occupations - quarries, mines, forges and all works
involving fire, navigation and commerce across the oceans - were less painful
or harmful than the wandering life of hunters or fishermen; even if we
believed that those men who suffer from punishments, affronts and ills
which only relate to matters of opinion, are less unfortunate than primitive
men who, however much in agony and even torture, do not shed a tear; nevertheless,
there would still be an infinite distance between the lot of civil man
and primitive man, a difference wholly to the detriment of the social state.
It is the injustice which prevails in the artificial inequality of fortunes
and conditions - an inequality which is born of oppression and reproduces
it.
Habit, prejudice, ignorance or work can never degrade
the people so far as to prevent them feeling their degradation.... If we
prefer our condition to that of primitive people it is because civil life
has made us incapable of supporting certain natural ills to which the primitive
man is more exposed than we are. It is because we are attached to certain
refinements which through habit have become necessary to us. It is even
the case that in time a civilised man among primitive men will become used
to the state of nature. ...
Finally, as a sense of independence is one of the
basic human instincts, the person who adds to the enjoyment of this primitive
right the moral security of adequate subsistence is incomparably happier
than the rich man surrounded by laws, masters, prejudices and fashions
which continually make him feel the loss of his freedom. Does not a comparison
of the condition of primitive man with that of children settle the question,
so energetically discussed by philosophers, of the respective advantages
of the state of nature and the social state? Are not children, for all
the constraints of education, in the happiest age of human life? Is their
habitual cheerfulness, when they are free from the rod of pedantry, not
the surest sign of their happiness? After all, one word could end this
great debate. Ask civil man if he is happy. Ask primitive man if he is
unhappy. If both answer 'No', the dispute is settled.
Civilised people, this parallel is no doubt painful
for you, but you are not fully aware of the calamities under whose weight
you are suffering.... Perhaps in the end you will come to be convinced
that they arise from the distortion of your opinions, the vices of your
political constitutions, and the bizarre laws which are a continual offence
against the laws of nature....
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