Jan. 25th, 2009

readingredhead: (Stranger)
"They were not bound by any idea of common brotherhood and, having no rule but that of force, they believed themselves each other's enemies. This belief was due to their weakness and ignorance. Knowing nothing, they feared everything. They attacked in self-defense. An individual isolated on the face of the earth, at the mercy of mankind, is bound to be a ferocious animal. He would be ready to do unto others all the evil that he feared from them."

~Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Essay on the Origin of Languages (trans. John H. Morgan)

I was reading this for my class on the Romantic period, mostly skimming at this point, but suddenly this caught me. Rousseau says this in attempt to prove why "primitive" societies make great use of gesture and little use of spoken language, but taken entirely out of context, it seems to have something very important to say about the nature of humanity.

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