Livingstone—Unscientific Character of the Second Discourse
their essence, and independently of all other perception, and abstraction that is
very arduous, very metaphysical, not very natural, and yet without which these
ideas could never have been transposed from one species or kind to another.
Suffice it to say Rousseau explains a problem which remains insoluble only so long as
one is already committed to the idea that man is as simple as Rousseau has described him
to be in Part One.
Rousseau does not even attempt to explain how the invention of numbers could
have occurred, but he asserts that numbers are necessary to the acquisition of other
knowledge and the arts. We undoubtedly have such arts as metallurgy. The possible
explanation for how that art arose requires that men had foresight beyond what Rousseau
allowed them in Part One. The conclusion is that man’s limited capacity to think is an
overdrawn characterization that must give way if we are to make any sense at all of
man’s history. In other words, the arts that we incontestably have now are impossible to
derive from such a hypothetical being such as Rousseau has described in Part One. We
must at least begin to wonder whether Rousseau has entirely abandoned the classical
view that reason is natural to man.
Indeed the major obstacle that stands in the way of the belief that early man might
have been able to progress in the arts is the question of language. The genesis of society
depends on large scale agriculture which in turn depends upon metallurgy. The discovery
of metallurgy itself depends upon foresight, abstract thought, and willingness to labor in
anticipation of a remote product. Because it is an art, it also relies on some idea of
number and discrete quantity, which requires a high level of mental abstraction. Abstract
thinking and general ideas, Rousseau told us earlier, both require the medium of
language. “[G]eneral ideas can enter the Mind only with the help of words, and the
understanding grasps them only by means of propositions.”
Yet in note VI (to Part One)
45
In fact, Rousseau claims in Part One that agriculture is “dependent upon many other arts which can quite
obviously be pursued only in a society that has at least begun” (SD I, 22:151).
46
SD I, 30:156.
19
Convention