Objective

"Pour découvrir les meilleures règles de société qui conviennent aux nations, il faudrait une intelligence supérieure, qui vît toutes les passions des hommes et qui n'en éprouvât aucune, qui n'eût aucun rapport avec notre nature et qui la connût à fond, dont le bonheur fût indépendant de nous et qui pourtant voulût bien s'occuper du nôtre; enfin qui, dans le progrès des temps se ménageant une gloire éloignée, pût travailler dans un siècle et jouir dans un autre. Il faudrait des dieux pour donner des lois aux hommes."
(Discovering the rules of society best suited to nations would require a superior intelligence that beheld all the passions of men without feeling any of them; who had no affinity with our nature, yet knew it through and through; whose happiness was independent of us, yet who nevertheless was willing to concern itself with ours; finally, who, in the passage of time, procures for himself a distant glory, being able to labor in one age and find enjoyment in another. Gods would be needed to give men laws.) (Rousseau, Du Contrat Social)

I've thought a bit about this idea lately. Not exactly in the same context as Rousseau but in regard to how actually feeling something changes the way we look at something. I can expound philosophical truths about ideals all day long--and I hope that I would have the strength to stick with them--but somehow actually experiencing and feeling the real thing makes it clear just how hard it is to apply theory to reality. Rousseau says here that because man is not detached from emotion and passions, it is difficult to create a leader or society that is perfect.