The discourse addresses man and speaks directly to men who are not afraid to honor truth and discuss difficult topics.

Two types of inequality among men are distinguished:

• Natural or physical inequality: differences in age, health, bodily strength, mind, and soul qualities; established by nature.

• Moral or political inequality: depends on convention and is established or authorized by common consent; includes privileges such as being richer, more honored, more powerful, and having the right to demand obedience from others.

It is pointless to ask about the cause of natural inequality, as it is self-explanatory by definition.

It is absurd to question if those who command are inherently better than those who obey, or if strength, wisdom, or virtue always correspond to power or riches.

Such questions are suitable for slaves but unbecoming free and rational beings pursuing truth.

The purpose is to identify the historical moment when right replaced violence, nature became subject to law, and the strong began to serve the weak.

The people traded imaginary ease for real happiness.

Philosophers have tried to trace society’s origins back to a state of nature, but none have truly reached it.

Many philosophers wrongly attribute justice and injustice or natural rights to men in that state without proof or explanation.

Some unjustly assume the strong have authority over the weak and immediately create government without considering how people would understand authority and government.

Philosophers confuse ideas from society with those that could exist in the state of nature, describing savages as citizens.

Few doubt that a state of nature existed, though sacred history suggests that even the first man, guided by God, never lived in such a state.

If one accepts the Books of Moses as credible, one must deny the actual existence of the state of nature before the Deluge unless by extraordinary event — a paradox difficult or impossible to prove.

The inquiry will set aside historical facts; these are hypothetical reasonings to illustrate nature’s laws rather than true origins.

Religion commands belief that men are unequal by God’s will but does not forbid conjectures based on human nature and surrounding beings about mankind’s fate if left to itself.

The discourse will use universal language, addressing all nations equally, imagining speaking before the philosophers of Athens and all humanity.

The account is read not from man-made books, which are lies, but from the book of nature, which never lies.

The times described are very remote; mankind has changed greatly from what it once was.

The narrative is like writing the life of the species, focusing on innate qualities, and on how education and habits have corrupted but not destroyed them.

There is an age at which every individual would choose to stop; the reader will seek the age at which mankind would have wished to stop its development.

Discontent with the present condition, which threatens unhappy posterity with greater troubles, may cause a wish to return to the past.

This sentiment is a praise of the first ancestors, a criticism of contemporaries, and a warning to future generations.