Quiz: A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

All 30 questions. A perfect score earns the gold medal; 80% earns silver.

1. 1. According to Rousseau, what “first civilised men, and ruined humanity” in the philosophers’ view?

   Gold and silver Iron and corn Trade and navigation Fire and language
2. 2. What does Rousseau call the “first revolution”, which established families and a kind of property?

   The invention of language on islands The discovery of fire The building of huts with stone implements The taming of animals for food
3. 3. What does Rousseau remember lying among his father’s tools?

   The laws and edicts of the Republic The Bible and Calvin’s Institutes Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Politics The works of Tacitus, Plutarch and Grotius
4. 4. Whose labours does Rousseau imagine a Carib would view with horror?

   Those of a missionary Those of a European minister of State Those of a sea captain Those of a European peasant
5. 5. Why, according to Rousseau, can no one be made a slave in the state of nature?

   Natural law expressly forbids it The weak would always band together against the strong All men are exactly equal in strength Servitude needs dependence, and there no one needs others’ help
6. 6. How does Rousseau conjecture men first learned to work iron?

   Traders brought the art from islands across the sea Men found ore by chance while digging the soil and saw it melt in their hearths A forest fire melted ore lying on the ground A volcano ejected molten metal, suggesting the idea of imitating it
7. 7. What was the rich man’s “profoundest plan”?

   To invite a foreign prince to rule the community and guarantee his possessions To divide his lands among the poor in return for their labour and loyalty To make allies of his attackers through common laws and a supreme power To hire an army of the poor and use it to conquer and plunder his neighbours
8. 8. Who, according to Rousseau, part the combatants in street brawls?

   The clergy The mob and the market-women The magistrates and the watch The philosophers
9. 9. Where does Rousseau place “the first step towards inequality, and at the same time towards vice”?

   In gatherings before the huts, where people began to prize public esteem In the election of the first magistrates, who were given power over their equals In the invention of money, which allowed the rich to store up wealth without limit In the first exchange of iron for corn, which made men dependent on each other’s labour
10. 10. What point does Rousseau take from Grotius about Ceres and the Thesmophoria?

    That festivals were the origin of public esteem That women were the first legislators That agriculture was taught to men by the gods, and so was sacred That the division of lands produced a new right, the right of property
11. 11. To what does Rousseau compare even prudent men agreeing to sacrifice part of their freedom?

    A sailor throwing cargo overboard in a storm A debtor pledging his house A horse accepting the bridle A wounded man having his arm cut off to save his body
12. 12. Whom does Rousseau call “the real founder of civil society”?

    The first chief chosen by an assembly of families to settle their quarrels The first father who ruled his grown children The first man who enclosed a piece of ground and said “This is mine” The first conqueror who imposed his laws on a defeated and disarmed people
13. 13. What are the only goods that savage man recognises?

    Food, land and safety Food, fire and safe shelter Liberty, health and esteem Food, a female, and sleep
14. 14. Whose investigations into the origin of languages does Rousseau say confirm his system?

    The Abbé Condillac’s Diderot’s Buffon’s Locke’s
15. 15. How does Rousseau report Hobbes’s description of a bad man?

    As a slave of his passions As a wolf to other men As a robust child As a fallen angel
16. 16. To what does Rousseau compare the human soul as altered by society?

    A clock whose springs have rusted until it no longer keeps time A ruined temple at Delphi The statue of Glaucus, disfigured by time and the seas A river silted up by floods until it has lost its course
17. 17. Why, according to the appendix, must agriculture be the least lucrative of the arts?

    Because farmers work fewer hours than artisans and need less skill for it Because corn cannot be exported Its produce is the most necessary, so its price must suit the poorest Because land is owned by the nobility, who take all the profit in rent
18. 18. On what ground does Rousseau say animals should share in natural right?

    They are sentient beings Scripture commands kindness to them They are useful to mankind They possess a degree of reason
19. 19. What maxim does Rousseau call “the fundamental maxim of all political right”?

    That people set up chiefs to protect their liberty, not to enslave them That the father is master of his children for life That the strongest has a right to command That the sovereign is above the laws
20. 20. In the appendix, what example does Rousseau give of a public calamity that enriched many?

    A war with England, which enriched army contractors The plague of Marseilles, which enriched physicians The great fire of London, which made perhaps ten thousand fortunes The Lisbon earthquake, which enriched builders
21. 21. Why, in Rousseau’s account, could equality not survive the division between farming and metalworking?

    The smiths seized the farmers’ land by force and made them work for iron tools The first magistrates fixed unjust prices that favoured the farmers over the smiths Nothing kept iron and corn in balance, so unequal talents brought unequal gains The farmers refused to trade corn for iron, so the smiths went hungry and turned to theft
22. 22. On what does moral or political inequality depend, according to Rousseau?

    A kind of convention, established or authorised by consent The will of God revealed in Scripture Differences of age, health and bodily strength The climate and soil of each country
23. 23. How does Rousseau describe the status of his investigations?

    As hypothetical, conditional reasonings, not historical truths As the results of experiments and observations made on living savages As a history compiled from ancient records As truths revealed in the writings of Moses
24. 24. What is the third and last term in Rousseau’s progress of inequality?

    The invention of money, producing creditor and debtor The institution of magistracy, producing the powerful and the weak The establishment of laws and property, producing rich and poor Legitimate power turned arbitrary, producing master and slave
25. 25. What does Rousseau’s example of the deer hunt show about early human cooperation?

    The strongest hunter always claimed the deer for himself and left the others the hares The hunters elected a leader to direct the chase Each hunter would quit his post for a passing hare, careless whether the deer was caught The hunters divided the deer equally according to a fixed custom
26. 26. What are the two principles prior to reason that Rousseau finds in the human soul?

    Self-preservation, and repugnance at seeing others suffer Sociability and the fear of a violent death at the hands of others An innate sense of God and a natural desire for society Love of property and the desire for the esteem of one’s fellows
27. 27. Which body proposed the question that the Discourse answers?

    The Académie française The Berlin Academy of Sciences The Small Council of Geneva The Academy of Dijon
28. 28. Which quality does Rousseau say distinguishes man from the brutes beyond any dispute?

    The faculty of self-improvement A natural sociability The understanding The power of speech
29. 29. Under what kind of government does Rousseau say he would have wished to be born?

    A democratic government, wisely tempered An aristocracy of the wisest citizens A hereditary monarchy limited by a parliament A large empire with provincial assemblies
30. 30. Whom does Rousseau imagine as the judges of his discourse?

    Hobbes and Locke The magistrates of Geneva Plato and Xenocrates Socrates and Aristotle