Put shortly, the main positions are these. In the state of nature each man lived in entire isolation, and therefore physical inequality was as if it did not exist. After many centuries, accident, in the shape of difference of climate and external natural conditions, enforcing for the sake of subsistence some degree of joint labour, led to an increase of communication among men, to a slight development of the reasoning and reflective faculties, and to a rude and simple sense of mutual obligation, as a means of greater comfort in the long run. The first state was good and pure, but the second state was truly perfect. It was destroyed by a fresh succession of chances, such as the discovery of the arts of metal-working and tillage, which led first to the institution of property, and second to the prominence of the natural or physical inequalities, which now began to tell with deadly effectiveness. These inequalities gradually became summed up in the great distinction between rich and poor; and this distinction was finally embodied in the constitution of a civil society, expressly adapted to consecrate the usurpation of the rich, and to make the inequality of condition between them and the poor eternal. We thus see that the Discourse, unlike Morelly's terse exposition, contains no clear account of the kind of inequality with which it deals. Is it inequality of material possession or inequality of political right? Morelly tells you decisively that the latter is only an accident, flowing from the first; that the key to renovation lies in the abolition of the first. Rousseau mixes the two confusedly together under a single name, bemoans each, but shrinks from a conclusion or a recommendation as to either. He declares property to be the key to civil society, but falls back from any ideas leading to the modification of the institution lying at the root of all that he deplores.