Anatole France quote about vice from The Gods Are Athirst - Nature teaches us to devour each other and gives us the example of all the crimes and all the vices which the social state corrects or conceals.
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Nature teaches us to devour each other and gives us the example of all the crimes and all the vices which the social state corrects or conceals.
 Anatole France, The Gods Are Athirst (1912). copy citation

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Author Anatole France
Source The Gods Are Athirst
Topic vice nature crimes
Date 1912
Language English
Reference
Note Translated by Mrs. Wilfrid Jackson
Weblink https://www.gutenberg.org/files/24010/24010-h/24010-h.htm

Context

“"Jean Jacques Rousseau," he proceeded, "who was not without talents, particularly in music, was a scampish fellow who professed to derive his morality from Nature while all the time he got it from the dogmas of Calvin. Nature teaches us to devour each other and gives us the example of all the crimes and all the vices which the social state corrects or conceals. We should love virtue; but it is well to know that this is simply and solely a convenient expedient invented by men in order to live comfortably together. What we call morality is merely a desperate enterprise, a forlorn hope, on the part of our fellow creatures to reverse the order of the universe, which is strife and murder, the blind interplay of hostile forces.” source
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