"People in their natural state are basically good. But this natural innocence,however, is corrupted by the evils of society."
"Too much apparatus, designed to guide us in experiments and to supplement the exactness of our senses, makes us neglect to use those senses...The more ingenious our apparatus, the coarser and more unskillful are our senses. We surround ourselves with tools and fail to use those which nature has provided every one of us."
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Source: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Alan Ritter, Julia Conaway Bondanella (1988). “Rousseau's political writings: new translations, interpretive notes, backgrounds, commentaries”, W. W. Norton & Company
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