With so few sources of illness, man in this state of nature has little need for remedies, and even less for physicians; the human race is, in this respect, in no worse a condition than any other species . . . man differs from the beasts in this respect (idea-sense relation) only in a matter of degree]
Rousseau throughout uses non-human animal observation as a method of describing the "natural man." This is an ingenious shift toward darwinian evolution and, later, behaviorist psychology. How does he justify it?
To continue Patt-man's comment on Rousseau's justification for leaving out the origin of man, it's also strange that he doesn't think to consider the observation of children in addition to non-human animals.
But, he takes as given that "natural" equals "non-societal." This is not true even of non-humans. Where does he get his image of the "solitary" person? Does it come from a new take on the natural equality of all people as equality of psyche?
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