and human passion.  But the eternal laws of nature and of order exist.  For the wise man they take the place of positive law; they are written in the depths of his heart by conscience and reason; let him obey these laws and be free; for there is no slave but the evil-doer, for he always does evil against his will.  Liberty is not to be found in any form of government, she is in the heart of the free man, he bears her with him everywhere.  The vile man bears his slavery in himself; the one would be a slave in Geneva, the other free in Paris.

“If I spoke to you of the duties of a citizen, you would perhaps ask me, ‘Which is my country?’ And you would think you had put me to confusion.  Yet you would be mistaken, dear Emile, for he who has no country has, at least, the land in which he lives.  There is always a government and certain so-called laws under which he has lived in peace.  What matter though the social contract has not been observed, if he has been protected by private interest against the general will, if he has been secured by public violence against private aggressions, if the evil he has beheld has taught him to love the good, and if our institutions themselves have made him perceive and hate their own iniquities?  Oh, Emile, where is the man who owes nothing to the land in which he lives?  Whatever that land may be, he owes to it the most precious thing possessed by man, the morality of his actions and the love of virtue.  Born in the depths of a forest he would have lived in greater happiness and freedom; but being able to follow his inclinations without a struggle there would have been no merit in his goodness, he would not have been virtuous, as he may be now, in spite of his passions.  The mere sight of order teaches him to know and love it.  The public good, which to others is a mere pretext, is a real motive for him.  He learns to fight against himself and to prevail, to sacrifice his own interest to the common weal.  It is not true that he gains nothing from the laws; they give him courage to be just, even in the midst of the wicked.  It is not true that they have failed to make him free; they have taught him to rule himself.

“Do not say therefore, ‘What matter where I am?’ It does matter that you should be where you can best do your duty; and one of these duties is to love your native land.  Your fellow-countrymen protected you in childhood; you should love them in your manhood.  You should live among them, or at least you should live where you can serve them to the best of your power, and where they know where to find you if ever they are in need of you.  There are circumstances in which a man may be of more use to his fellow-countrymen outside his country than within it.  Then he should listen only to his own zeal and should bear his exile without a murmur; that exile is one of his duties.  But you, dear Emile, you have not undertaken the painful task of telling men the truth, you must live in the midst of your fellow-creatures, cultivating their friendship in pleasant intercourse; you must be their benefactor, their pattern; your example will do more than all our books, and the good they see you do will touch them more deeply than all our empty words.