Lacking the intense desire for the love of a particular person, one is not placed in rivalry with others who seek the love of the same person. Hence there is slight basis for conflict between human individuals in the state of nature as Rousseau pictures it. Rousseau also emphasizes that there is hardly any opportunity for oppression and servitude in the state of nature and no incentives to seek to oppress or enslave. Nor do humans pror to society exhibit warlike aggression. According to Rousseau the desires of the savage are dictated by two master passions, self-love and pity.
Pity seems to involve a glimmering of self-consciousness.
In pitying another individual, one identifies it as like oneself, a sentient animal or a human animal, and in this emotion there is awareness of oneself and the other. Even though he is an animal, not fully human, the savage in the state of nature is already a somewhat unnatural element in nature, according to Rousseau. Unlike the other animals, who are described by Rousseau as sentient machines, the human has free will, the power of free choice. One might conjecture that population pressure in a local area would put pressure on the inhabitants either to cooperate, so they can survive with limited resources, to fight for those limited resources, or to retreat to another region, perhaps one with less abundant natural resources. In this way population increase eventually induces cooperation.