How do Enlightenment texts use the idea of “nature” in their critiques of society or culture? Discuss with detailed reference to three texts.

The concluding paragraph of Linda Walsh’s comments on Nature in the introduction to “Nature, Feeling and Society” states “The concept of Nature, then, can be found anywhere along the lines that run between the polarities of reason and sublimity, order and freedom, reality and ideal, innocence and evil, tameness and wildness”. These concepts of nature, particularly between the polarities of reason and sublimity, and innocence and ideal, are to be seen in Goldsmith’s The Deserted Village, Rousseau’s Emile and Diderot’s Salon of 1765 , and many other Enlightenment texts.
Goldsmith’s poem laments the passing of an idealised natural world of rural goodness and innocence, as it is subjugated to depopulation in the interests of ostentatious wealth, manners and materialism. Goldsmith’s poem shows nature, seen through the countryside, as unspoiled, innocent and perfect – “ Where smiling spring its earliest visits paid, And parting summer’s lingering blooms delaye...