Synopsis Discourse on the Origin and the Foundation of Inequality among Men contains Rousseau’s explanation of how the world got into its mess. His imagined picture of life must have been like before the state and society arose. Human contact would have been fitful, and certainly not enough for men even to develop a language. Men would have been unequal in strength and cunning in the State of Nature, but that would not have led some men to dominate others because the motive for that domination would have been lacking. Naturally unequal men in the State of nature would simply be unequal men with nothing much to worry about. It is only in society that inequality matters.