# Quote — Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emile; or On Education

> The perception of our action upon other bodies must have first induced us to suppose that their action upon us was effected in like manner. Thus man began by thinking that all things whose action affected him were alive. He did not recognise the limits of their powers, and he therefore supposed that they were boundless; as soon as he had supplied them with bodies they became his gods. In the earliest times men went in terror of everything and everything in nature seemed alive. The idea of matter was developed as slowly as that of spirit, for the former is itself an abstraction.

- Author: [Jean Jacques Rousseau](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-jacques-rousseau.md)
- Book: [Emile; or On Education](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-jacques-rousseau/emile-or-on-education.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Emile,_or_On_Education#Book_IV) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-jacques-rousseau/emile-or-on-education/the-perception-of-our