"
But if Nature is sufficiently invincible to _regain_ its empire, why
does not Kousseau admit that it had no need of the legislator to _gain_
its empire from the beginning? Why does he not allow that, by obeying
their own impulse, men would, of themselves, apply agriculture to a
fertile district, and commerce to extensive and commodious coasts,
without the interference of a Lycurgus, a Solon, or a Rousseau, who
would undertake it at the risk of _deceiving themselves_?
Be that as it may, we see with what a terrible responsibility Rousseau
invests inventors, institutors, conductors, and manipulators of
societies. He is, therefore, very exacting with regard to them.
"He who dares to undertake the institutions of a people, ought to
feel that he can, as it were, transform every individual, who is by
himself a perfect and solitary whole, receiving his life and being
from a larger whole of which he forms a part; he must feel that he
can change the constitution of man, to fortify it, and substitute a
partial and moral existence for the physical and independent one
which we have all received from nature. In a word, he must deprive
man of his own powers, to give him others which are foreign to
him."
Poor human nature! What would become of its dignity if it were
entrusted to the disciples of Rousseau?
_Raynal_.
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