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

> We have reached the moral order at last; we have just taken the second step towards manhood. If this were the place for it, I would try to show how the first impulses of the heart give rise to the first stirrings of conscience, and how from the feelings of love and hatred spring the first notions of good and evil. I would show that justice and kindness are no mere abstract terms, no mere moral conceptions framed by the understanding, but true affections of the heart enlightened by reason, the natural outcome of our primitive affections; that by reason alone, unaided by conscience, we cannot establish any natural law, and that all natural right is a vain dream if it does not rest upon some instinctive need of the human heart.

- 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/we-have-reached