I need only go to another; if I am tormented in any place, who will
prevent my moving elsewhere? Is there a man so much stronger than I, and
moreover so depraved, so lazy, and so fierce as to compel me to provide
for his maintenance while he remains idle? He must make up his mind not
to lose sight of me for a single moment, to have me tied up with great
care while he is asleep, for fear I should escape or kill him; that is
to say, he is obliged to expose himself willingly to much greater
trouble than that which he wishes to avoid, and than that which he gives
me. And after all, if his vigilance is relaxed for a moment, if he turns
his head at a sudden noise, I take twenty steps through the forest, my
chains are broken, and he never sees me again as long as he lives."

Rousseau recognized that his state of nature was not like anything that
had existed on our planet.[Footnote: This concession probably took the
form it did, partly to satisfy the censor, or the Academy of Dijon,
jealous for Genesis. "Religion commands us to believe that God himself
having removed men from the state of nature, immediately after the
creation, they are unequal because he has willed that they should be
so." Such remarks as this are common in all the writings of the time,
although less so in those of Rousseau than in those of most of his
contemporaries. They are evidently intended to satisfy the authorities,
and to be simply over looked by the intelligent reader.] But that
consideration troubled him not at all. Let us begin, he says, by putting
aside all facts; they do not touch the question. This is the constant
practice of the philosophers of certain schools, but few of them
acknowledge it as frankly as Rousseau. Had the facts of human nature and
human history been seriously considered, we should have no Republic of
Plato, no Utopia of More; the world would be a very different place from
what it is; for these cloudy cities, the laws of whose architecture seem
contrary to all the teachings of physics, yet gild with their glory and