Everything is good as it leaves the Author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man. He forces one soil to nourish the products of another, one tree to bear the fruit of another. He mixes and confuses the climates, the elements, the seasons. He mutilates his dog, his horse, his slave. He turns everything upside down; he disfigures everything; he loves deformity, monsters. He wants nothing as nature made it, not even man; for him, man must be trained like a school horse; man must be fashioned in keeping with his fancy like a tree in his garden.
Rousseau, Émile (1762)
[1] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education, tr. Allan
Bloom (New York : Basic books, 1979), p. 35. This is the introductory paragraph to Book I.
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