The reprisals of the weak against the strong do not really come within nature.
They do from the moral point of view, but not the physical, since to take these reprisals the weak man must employ forces he has not received from nature.
He must adopt a character that he has not been given.
He must, in a way, contstrain nature.
But what does really come from the laws of this wise mother is the harm unto the weak by the strong, since, to bring this process to pass, the strong man makes use only the gift which he has received from nature.
He does not, like the weak, take on a character different from his own.
He merely utilizes the sole effects of that which nature has endowed him.
Therefore, everything resulting from that is natural; his acts of oppression, violence, cruelty, tyranny, injustice: all these diverse expressions of a character engraved in him by the hand of the power which placed him in the world are therefore quite as simple and as
pure as the hand which guided him.
And when he uses all of his rights to oppress the weak, to plunder the weak, he is therefore doing the most
natural thing in the world.
If our common mother had desired this equality that the weak strive so hard to establish, if she had really wanted the equitable division of property, why should she have created two classes, one weak, the other strong? Has she not, with this distinction, given sufficient proof that her intention was that it should apply to possessions as well as bodily faculties? Does she not prove that her plan is for everything to be
on one side, and nothing on the other? And that precisely in order to arrive at the equilibrium that is the sole basis of all our laws, for in order that
this equilibrium may exist in nature, it is not necessary that it be made to establish it.
Their equilibrium upsets that nature. What, in our eyes, seems to us to go against it, is exactly that which, in hers, establishes it.
And for this reason, it is from this lack of balance, as we call it, that are produced the crimes by which she establishes her order.
The strong seize everything; that is the lack of balance, from man's point of view.
The weak defend themselves and rob the strong; there you have the crimes which establish the equilibrium necessary to nature Let us therefore not have any
scruples about what we can filch from the weak, for it is not we who are committing a crime.
It is the act of defense, or vengeance, performed by he
which has that character.
By robbing the poor, dispossessing the orphan, usurping the widow's inheritance, man is only making use of the rights he has received from nature.
The crime that consists in our profit from them, the penniless wretch that nature offers unto our blows is the prey she offers the vulture.
If the strong appear to disturb her order by robbing
those beneath them, the weak reestablish it by robbing their superiors, and both are serving nature.
They do from the moral point of view, but not the physical, since to take these reprisals the weak man must employ forces he has not received from nature.
He must adopt a character that he has not been given.
He must, in a way, contstrain nature.
But what does really come from the laws of this wise mother is the harm unto the weak by the strong, since, to bring this process to pass, the strong man makes use only the gift which he has received from nature.
He does not, like the weak, take on a character different from his own.
He merely utilizes the sole effects of that which nature has endowed him.
Therefore, everything resulting from that is natural; his acts of oppression, violence, cruelty, tyranny, injustice: all these diverse expressions of a character engraved in him by the hand of the power which placed him in the world are therefore quite as simple and as
pure as the hand which guided him.
And when he uses all of his rights to oppress the weak, to plunder the weak, he is therefore doing the most
natural thing in the world.
If our common mother had desired this equality that the weak strive so hard to establish, if she had really wanted the equitable division of property, why should she have created two classes, one weak, the other strong? Has she not, with this distinction, given sufficient proof that her intention was that it should apply to possessions as well as bodily faculties? Does she not prove that her plan is for everything to be
on one side, and nothing on the other? And that precisely in order to arrive at the equilibrium that is the sole basis of all our laws, for in order that
this equilibrium may exist in nature, it is not necessary that it be made to establish it.
Their equilibrium upsets that nature. What, in our eyes, seems to us to go against it, is exactly that which, in hers, establishes it.
And for this reason, it is from this lack of balance, as we call it, that are produced the crimes by which she establishes her order.
The strong seize everything; that is the lack of balance, from man's point of view.
The weak defend themselves and rob the strong; there you have the crimes which establish the equilibrium necessary to nature Let us therefore not have any
scruples about what we can filch from the weak, for it is not we who are committing a crime.
It is the act of defense, or vengeance, performed by he
which has that character.
By robbing the poor, dispossessing the orphan, usurping the widow's inheritance, man is only making use of the rights he has received from nature.
The crime that consists in our profit from them, the penniless wretch that nature offers unto our blows is the prey she offers the vulture.
If the strong appear to disturb her order by robbing
those beneath them, the weak reestablish it by robbing their superiors, and both are serving nature.