QUOTE : Rousseau’s autobiographical Confessions, published after his death, reveal that it was during his time in the Italian island-port of Venice—while working as an underpaid ambassadorial secretary—that he decided “everything depends entirely on politics.” People were not inherently evil, but could become so under evil governments. The virtues he saw in Geneva, and the vices in Venice—in particular, the sad decline of the city-state from its glorious past—could be traced not to human character, but to human institutions.