Key Arguments

• He links the 'classification of talents and capacities' to an 'infinite variety of wills,' arguing that differences in intelligence and aptitude inevitably produce divergent desires and purposes.
• He describes the human ego as necessarily variable: 'the character, the inclinations, and⁠—if I may venture to use the expression⁠—the form of the ego, are necessarily changed,' indicating that personal identity itself is unstable and multiplicious.
• He explicitly contrasts this with animals: 'In societies of animals, all the members do exactly the same things. The same genius directs them; the same will animates them. A society of beasts is a collection of atoms, round, hooked, cubical, or triangular, but always perfectly identical,' emphasizing uniformity of instinct and will among animals.
• He concludes from this contrast that 'Man, by his nature and his instinct, is predestined to society; but his personality, ever varying, is adverse to it,' making the tension between social destiny and individual variability the root difficulty.

Source Quotes

I have said that human society is complex in its nature. Though this expression is inaccurate, the fact to which it refers is none the less true; namely, the classification of talents and capacities. But who does not see that these talents and capacities, owing to their infinite variety, give rise to an infinite variety of wills, and that the character, the inclinations, and⁠—if I may venture to use the expression⁠—the form of the ego, are necessarily changed; so that in the order of liberty, as in the order of intelligence, there are as many types as individuals, as many characters as heads, whose tastes, fancies, and propensities, being modified by dissimilar ideas, must necessarily conflict? Man, by his nature and his instinct, is predestined to society; but his personality, ever varying, is adverse to it.

Though this expression is inaccurate, the fact to which it refers is none the less true; namely, the classification of talents and capacities. But who does not see that these talents and capacities, owing to their infinite variety, give rise to an infinite variety of wills, and that the character, the inclinations, and⁠—if I may venture to use the expression⁠—the form of the ego, are necessarily changed; so that in the order of liberty, as in the order of intelligence, there are as many types as individuals, as many characters as heads, whose tastes, fancies, and propensities, being modified by dissimilar ideas, must necessarily conflict? Man, by his nature and his instinct, is predestined to society; but his personality, ever varying, is adverse to it.

But who does not see that these talents and capacities, owing to their infinite variety, give rise to an infinite variety of wills, and that the character, the inclinations, and⁠—if I may venture to use the expression⁠—the form of the ego, are necessarily changed; so that in the order of liberty, as in the order of intelligence, there are as many types as individuals, as many characters as heads, whose tastes, fancies, and propensities, being modified by dissimilar ideas, must necessarily conflict? Man, by his nature and his instinct, is predestined to society; but his personality, ever varying, is adverse to it. In societies of animals, all the members do exactly the same things.

Man, by his nature and his instinct, is predestined to society; but his personality, ever varying, is adverse to it. In societies of animals, all the members do exactly the same things. The same genius directs them; the same will animates them. A society of beasts is a collection of atoms, round, hooked, cubical, or triangular, but always perfectly identical. These personalities do not vary, and we might say that a single ego governs them all.

Key Concepts

• the classification of talents and capacities. But who does not see that these talents and capacities, owing to their infinite variety, give rise to an infinite variety of wills
• the character, the inclinations, and⁠—if I may venture to use the expression⁠—the form of the ego, are necessarily changed
• Man, by his nature and his instinct, is predestined to society; but his personality, ever varying, is adverse to it.
• In societies of animals, all the members do exactly the same things. The same genius directs them; the same will animates them. A society of beasts is a collection of atoms, round, hooked, cubical, or triangular, but always perfectly identical.

Context

Opening of Part II, § 1 ('Of the Causes of our Mistakes. The Origin of Property'), where Proudhon poses the problem of how property arose and diagnoses a structural source of human social difficulty in the diversity of talents and wills compared to animal uniformity.