however an absolute fixity; and it is this which renders very delicate all economical and moral calculations.
We can scarcely employ in these matters but the considerations drawn from the theory of limits.
SECTION 5.
From the faculty of will arise also the ideas of liberty and constraint.
Liberty is the power of executing our will.
It is our first good. It includes them all. A constraint includes all our evils, since it is a deprivation of the power to satisfy our wants and accomplish our desires.
All constraint is sufferance; all liberty is enjoyment.
The total value of the liberty of an animated being is equal to that of all his faculties united.
It is absolutely infinite for him and without a possible equivalent, since its entire loss imports the impossibility of the possession of any good.
Our sole duty is to augment our liberty and its value.
The object of society is solely the fulfilment of this duty.
SECTION 6.
Finally, from the faculty of will arise our ideas of rights and duties.
Rights arise from wants, and duties from means.
Weakness in all its kinds is the source of all rights, and power the source of all duties; or in other words of the general duty to employ it well, which comprehends all the others.
These ideas of rights and duties are not so essentially correlative as is commonly said. That of rights is anterior and absolute.
An animated being by the laws of his nature has always the right to satisfy his wants, and he has no duties but according to circumstances.
A sentient and willing being, but incapable of action, would have all rights and no duties.
This being supposed capable of action, and insulated from every other sensible being, has still the same plenitude of rights, with the sole duty of properly directing his actions and well employing his means for the most complete satisfaction of his wants.
Place this same being in contact with other beings who develop to him their sensibility too imperfectly to enable him to form conventions with them; he has still the same rights, and his duties or rather his sole duty is only changed, so far as he must act on the will of these beings, and is under a necessity to sympathise more or less with them. Such are our relations with animals.
Suppose this same sensible being in relation with beings with whom he can completely communicate and form conventions, he has still the same rights unlimited in themselves, and the same sole duty.
These rights are not bounded, this duty is not modified by the conventions established; but because these conventions are so many means of exercising these rights, of fulfilling this duty better and more fully than before.
The possibility of explaining ourselves and not agriculture, grammar and not Ceres, is our first legislator.
It is at the establishment of conventions that the just and unjust, properly speaking, commence.
SECTION 7.
Conclusion.
The general considerations just read begin to diffuse some light over the subject with which we are occupied, but they are not sufficient. We must see more in detail what are the numerous results of our actions; what are the different sentiments which arise from our first desires, and what is the best possible manner of directing these actions and sentiments. Here will be found the division which I have announced.
I shall begin by speaking of our actions.
First Part
of the
Treatise on the Will and Its Effects.
Of Our Actions.
CHAPTER I.
Of Society.
In the introduction to a treatise on the will it was proper to indicate the generation of some general ideas which are the necessary consequences of this faculty.
It was even incumbent on us to examine summarily,
1st. What are inanimate beings, that is to say beings neither sentient nor willing.
2d. What sentient beings would be with indifference without will.
3d. What are sentient and willing beings but isolated.
4th. Finally, what are sentient and willing beings like ourselves, but placed in contact with similar beings.
It is with the latter we are now exclusively to occupy ourselves, for man can exist only in society.
The necessity of reproduction and the propensity to sympathy necessarily lead him to this state, and his judgment makes him perceive its advantages.
I proceed then to speak of society.
I shall consider it only with respect to economy, because this first part concerns our actions only and not as yet our sentiments.
Under this relation society consists only in a continual succession of exchanges, and exchange is a transaction of such a nature that both contracting parties always gain by it. (This observation will hereafter throw great light on the nature and effects of commerce.)
We cannot cast our eyes on a civilized country without seeing with astonishment how much this continual succession of small advantages, un-perceived but incessantly repeated, adds to the primitive power of man.
It is because this succession of exchanges, which constitutes society, has three remarkable properties. It produces concurrence of forces, increase and preservation of intelligence and division of labour.
The utility of these three effects is continually augmenting. It will be better perceived when we shall have seen how our riches are formed.
CHAPTER II.
Of Production, or the formation of our Riches.
In the first place what ought we to understand by the word production?
We create nothing. We operate only changes of form and of place.
To produce is to give to things a utility which they had not before.
All labour from which utility results is productive.
That relative to agriculture has in this respect nothing
