“Sir, I must live,” said a miserable writer of lampoons to the minister who reproved him for his infamous trade.  “I do not see the necessity,” replied the great man coldly.  This answer, excellent from the minister, would have been barbarous and untrue in any other mouth.  Every man must live; this argument, which appeals to every one with more or less force in proportion to his humanity, strikes me as unanswerable when applied to oneself.  Since our dislike of death is the strongest of those aversions nature has implanted in us, it follows that everything is permissible to the man who has no other means of living.  The principles, which teach the good man to count his life a little thing and to sacrifice it at duty’s call, are far removed from this primitive simplicity.  Happy are those nations where one can be good without effort, and just without conscious virtue.  If in this world there is any condition so miserable that one cannot live without wrong-doing, where the citizen is driven into evil, you should hang, not the criminal, but those who drove him into crime.

As soon as Emile knows what life is, my first care will be to teach him to preserve his life.  Hitherto I have made no distinction of condition, rank, station, or fortune; nor shall I distinguish between them in the future, since man is the same in every station; the rich man’s stomach is no bigger than the poor man’s, nor is his digestion any better; the master’s arm is neither longer nor stronger than the slave’s; a great man is no taller than one of the people, and indeed the natural needs are the same to all, and the means of satisfying them should be equally within the reach of all.  Fit a man’s education to his real self, not to what is no part of him.  Do you not see that in striving to fit him merely for one station, you are unfitting him for anything else, so that some caprice of Fortune may make your work really harmful to him?  What could be more absurd than a nobleman in rags, who carries with him into his poverty the prejudices of his birth?  What is more despicable than a rich man fallen into poverty, who recalls the scorn with which he himself regarded the poor, and feels that he has sunk to the lowest depth of degradation?  The one may become a professional thief, the other a cringing servant, with this fine saying, “I must live.”

You reckon on the present order of society, without considering that this order is itself subject to inscrutable changes, and that you can neither foresee nor provide against the revolution which may affect your children.  The great become small, the rich poor, the king a commoner.  Does fate strike so seldom that you can count on immunity from her blows?  The crisis is approaching, and we are on the edge of a revolution. [Footnote:  In my opinion it is impossible that the great kingdoms of Europe should last much longer.  Each of them has had its period of splendour, after which it must inevitably decline.  I have my own