Rousseau recognized that his state of nature was not like anything that had existed on our planet.[Footnote: This concession probably took the form it did, partly to satisfy the censor, or the Academy of Dijon, jealous for Genesis. "Religion commands us to believe that God himself having removed men from the state of nature, immediately after the creation, they are unequal because he has willed that they should be so." Such remarks as this are common in all the writings of the time, although less so in those of Rousseau than in those of most of his contemporaries. They are evidently intended to satisfy the authorities, and to be simply over looked by the intelligent reader.] But that consideration troubled him not at all. Let us begin, he says, by putting aside all facts; they do not touch the question. This is the constant practice of the philosophers of certain schools, but few of them acknowledge it as frankly as Rousseau. Had the facts of human nature and human history been seriously considered, we should have no Republic of Plato, no Utopia of More; the world would be a very different place from what it is; for these cloudy cities, the laws of whose architecture seem contrary to all the teachings of physics, yet gild with their glory and darken with their shadows the solid temples and streets beneath them. In the second part of his essay, Rousseau follows the development of human society. "The first man," he says, "who, having enclosed a piece of ground, undertook to say, `This is mine,' and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. How many crimes, wars, murders, how much misery and horror would not he have spared the human race, who, pulling up the stakes or filling the ditch, should have cried to his fellows, `Beware of listening to that impostor. You are lost if you forget that the fruits belong to all, and the land to none.'" But this benefactor did not make his appearance. Soon all the land was divided among a certain number of occupiers. Those whose weakness or indolence had prevented their getting a share were obliged to sink into slavery, or to rob their richer neighbors. Then followed civil wars, tumult and rapine. At last those who had the land conceived the most deliberate plot that ever entered into the human mind. They persuaded the poorer people to join with them in establishing an association which should defend all its members and ensure to each one the peaceful possession of his property. "Such was the origin of society and laws, which gave new bonds to the weak, new strength to the rich, irrevocably destroyed natural liberty, established forever the laws of property and inequality, turned adroit usurpation into settled right, and, for the profit of a few ambitious men, subjected thenceforth all the human race to labor, servitude, and misery."