Rousseau's Émile, or, Treatise on education / abridged, translated, and annotated by William H. Payne.

  • Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712-1778.
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Rousseau's Émile, or, Treatise on education / abridged, translated, and annotated by William H. Payne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    16/474 (page 12)
    in so far as he is a spiritual being is self-determined, and it is this higher nature which is properly called human nature. Human nature does not “ corne from the hand of the Author of Nature ” directly like the suu and stars, nor even like plants and animais; for human nature is di- rectly the product of man’s will, strange as it aiways seems to us when we first realize this sublime truth. For human nature is the resuit of the realization of moral ideals, and these are realized only by the virtuous action of the will. Before moral ideals and without them we hâve only the natural man (or perhaps only the anthro- poid ape). Nature, as material existence in time and space, is the polar opposite of man as spirit. Man, as merely natural, finds himself to be his own worst foe. “ By nature he is totally depraved ”—that is, he is governed by his environ- ment of external things and internai impulses, just like the lower orders of being. The greedy swine fight for the possession of the acorn that drops in their midst. Vio- lence reigns where there is no self-determination ; it reigns still where the principle of exclusion and selfish- ness is adopted among men. The state of human nature exists as the product of culture. Ail things in time and space exist for man on condition that he hâve intelligence and skill to use them. He conquers Nature by two kinds of combinations—prac- tical and theoretieal—both being forms of social combina- tion. Ail arts and industries, ail manufactures and com- merce, ail division of labor, and ail civil order, are the resuit of practical combination. Ail knowledge and sci- ence give us power over things and forces; ail moral, religions, and æsthetic ideals belong to the theoretieal combination. They corne from the participation of the