Emile, or On Education

Natural man is everything to himself; he is the numerical unit, the absolute whole, which has a relationship only to himself or to his fellow man. Civil man is only a fractional unit that depends on the denominator, and whose value is in his relationship with the whole, which is the social body. Good social institutions are those that know best how to denature man, to take away his absolute existence in order to give him a relative one, and to transport the self into the common unity; so that each individual no longer believes himself to be one, but a part of the unit, and is no longer sensitive except within the whole. A citizen of Rome was neither Caius nor Lucius; he was a Roman: he even loved his country exclusively to himself. Regulus claimed to be a Carthaginian, as having become the property of his masters. In his capacity as a foreigner, he refused to sit in the Senate of Rome; it was necessary for a Carthaginian to order him to do so. He was indignant