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Lifeworlds

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Dialogs

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education

Library ● Emile-top ● Bk 1 ● Bk 2 ● Bk 3 ● Bk 4 ● Bk 5

Rousseau's manuscript showing the opening paragraph of Book Two. Source: Gallica

BOOK TWO

[¶203:] This is the second stage of life and the one in which infancy, strictly speaking, is over. For the words infans and puer are not synonymous. The latter includes the former, which means literally "one who cannot speak;" thus Valerius speaks of puerum infantem. But I shall continue to use the word child [French enfant] according to the custom of our language until an age for which there is another term.

[¶204:] When children begin to talk they cry less. This progress is quite natural; one language is substituted for the other. As soon as they can say with words that something hurts, why should they cry, unless the pain is too sharp for words? If they still cry, those about them are to blame. When once Emile has said, "It hurts," it will take a very sharp pain to make him cry.

[¶205:] If the child is delicate and sensitive, if by nature he begins to cry for nothing, by making his cries useless and without effect I soon check his tears at their source. So long as he cries I will not go near him; I come at once when he is quiet. Soon his way of calling me will be to be silent, or at least to let out a single cry. It is by the sensible effect of signs that children learn of their meaning; there is no other convention for them. However much a child hurts himself, when he is alone he rarely cries unless he hopes to be heard.

[¶206:] If he should fall or bump his head or make his nose bleed or cut his fingers, instead of rushing to him with an with an expression of alarm I will stay calm, at least at first. The harm is done; it is necessary that he endure it. All my fussing could only frighten him more and add to his sensibility. Basically it is not the blow but the fear of it which torments us when we are hurt. I will spare him this anquish at least, for he will certainly judge the injury as he sees me judge it. If he sees me running to him with worry to console him, to pity him, he will think himself dead. If he sees me keeping my cool he will soon recover his own and will think the wound is healed when it ceases to hurt. This is the time for his first lesson in courage, and by bearing slight ills without fear we gradually learn to bear greater ones.

[¶207:] Far from trying to prevent Emile from hurting himself, I would be worried if he never hurt himself, if he grew up not knowing pain. To suffer is the first thing that he must learn and the one that he will have the greatest need to know. It seems that children are small and weak only in order to learn these important lessons without any danger. The child has such a little way to fall he will not break his leg; if he knocks himself with a stick he will not break his arm; if he grabs a sharp knife he will not grasp it tight enough to make a deep wound. So far as I know, no child left to himself has ever been known to kill or maim himself or even to do himself any serious harm, unless he has been foolishly left on a high place or alone near the fire or within reach of dangerous weapons. What is there to be said for all the paraphernalia which surrounds the child to protect him on every side against pain until, having grown up, he remains at its mercy without courage and without experience, and believes himself dead at the first pinprick and faints at the sight of blood?

[¶208:] Our didactic and pedantic mania is always to teach children what they could learn better by themselves and to neglect what we alone can teach them. Can anything be stupider than the trouble taken to teach them to walk, as if any child has been seen who, from the negligence of its nurse, has not learned how to walk by the time it grew up? Yet how many, on the contrary, we see walking badly all their life because they were ill taught!

[¶209:] Emile will have no padded bonnets, no go-carts, no leading-strings; or at least as soon as he can put one foot before another he will be supported only along pavements, and those will be crossed very quickly._ Instead of keeping him cooped up in a stuffy room, take him out into a meadow every day. There let him run, let him frisk about. If he falls a hundred times, so much the better. He will learn all the sooner how to pick himself up. The well-being of liberty will make up for many wounds. My pupil will often have bruises; in return he will always be gay. Your pupils may have fewer bruises, but they are always constrained, always enchained, always sad. I doubt whether they are any better off.

[¶210:] Another progress which makes tears less necessary to children is the development of their strengths. Able to do more for themselves, they need the help of others less frequently. Along with their strength develops the understanding that puts them in a condition to direct it. It is with this second stage that the life of the individual properly begins; it is now that the child becomes conscious of himself. Memory extends the sentiment of identity to every moment of his existence. He becomes truly one and the same person, and consequently already capable of happiness or of misery. It is important therefore to begin to consider him here as a moral being.

[¶211:] Although we know approximately the limits of human life and our chances of attaining those limits, nothing is more uncertain than the length of the life of any one of us. Very few reach old age. The chief risks occur at the beginning of life; the shorter our past life, the less we must hope to live. Of all the children who are born scarcely one half reach adolescence, and it is very likely your pupil will not reach the age of manhood.

[¶212:] What is to be thought, therefore, of that cruel education which sacrifices the present to an uncertain future, that burdens a child with all sorts of restrictions, and begins by making him miserable in order to prepare him for some far-off happiness he may never enjoy? Even if I considered such an education wise in its aims, how could I view without indignation those poor creatures subjected to an intolerable yoke and condemned like galley-slaves to endless tasks with no certainty of any rewards? The age of gaity is spent in tears, punishments, threats, and slavery. You torment the poor thing for his own good; you fail to see that you are calling Death to snatch him from these gloomy machinations. Who can say how many children fall victims to the excessive wisdom of their fathers or tutors? Lucky to escape from his cruelty, the only advantage they gain from the ills they are made to suffer is to die without regretting a life known only for its torments.

[¶213:] Men, be humane; that is your first duty. Be humane toward every condition, every age, toward all that is not foreign to humanity. What wisdom is there for you outside of humanity? Love childhood, promote its pleasures, its lovable instincts. Who among you has not sometimes missed that age when laughter was always on our lips, and when the soul was always at peace? Why take away from these innocent little people the joys of a time that will escape them so quickly and gifts that could never cause any harm? Why fill with bitterness the fleeting days of early childhood, days which will no more return for them than for you? Fathers, can you tell the moment when death awaits your children? Do not prepare yourself for regrets by robbing them of the few moments which nature has given them. As soon as they are aware of the pleasure of existence, let them rejoice in it; make it so that whenever God calls them they will not die without having tasted life.

[¶214:] How people will cry out against me! I hear from afar the shouts of that false wisdom which projects us incessantly outside of ourselves, which counts the present as nothing, and which, pursuing without relief a future which flees as we advance, by transporting us away from where we are takes us to a place we will never be.

[¶215:] Now is the time, you say, to correct the evil inclinations of man. We must increase suffering in childhood, when it is less keenly felt, in order to lessen it in the age of reason. But how do you know that you can carry out all these fine schemes; how do you know that all this fine teaching with which you overwhelm the feeble mind of the child will not do him more harm than good in the future? How do you know that you can spare him anything by the sorrows that you lavish on him? Why inflict on him more ills than suit his present condition unless you are quite sure that these present ills will save him future ill? And what proof can you give me that those evil tendencies you profess to cure are not the result of your foolish precautions rather than of nature? What a poor sort of foresight, to make a child miserable in the present with the more or less doubtful hope of making him happy at some future day! If such vulger reasoners confuse licence and liberty, a happy child and a spoiled child, let us help them learn to distinguish between the two.

[¶216:] To avoid pursuing fantasies, let us not forget what suits our condition. Humanity has its place in the order of things; childhood has its place in the order of human life. The man must be treated as a man and the child as a child. Assign each one to his place, and fix him there. Order human passions according to the constitution of man; that is all we can do for his well-being. The rest depends on external causes which are not in our power.

[¶217:] We do not know what absolute happiness or unhappiness is. Everything is mixed together in this life. We never taste any pure sentiment, nor do we remain for more than two moments in the same state. The feelings of our minds, like the changes in our bodies, are in a continual flux. The good and the bad are common to all, but in different measurements. The happiest is he who suffers least from his pains; the most miserable is he who feels the least pleasure. Always more suffering than joy-- this is the difference common to all. Man's happiness in this world is thus only a negative state; it must be reckoned by the least quantity of ills that he suffers.

[¶218:] Every sentiment of pain is inseparable from the desire to get rid of it; every idea of pleasure is inseparable from the desire to enjoy it. All desire implies a privation, and all privations that one feels are painful. Our unhappiness thus consists in the disproportion between our desires and our faculties. A conscious being whose faculties were equal to his desires would be an absolutely happy being.

[¶219:] In what, therefore, consists human wisdom and the route to true happiness? It is not exactly in diminishing our desires; for if they were less than our powers, part of our faculties would remain idle, and we should not enjoy the whole of our being. Neither is it in extending our faculties, for if our desires were extended at the same time by a greater extent we would only become more unhappy. Rather, true happiness consists in decreasing the excess of desires over faculties and putting power and will into a perfect equilibrium. With all forces in action it is only then that the soul will nevertheless remain peaceful and that man will find himself well ordered.

[¶220:] It is thus that nature, which does everything for the best, originally constituted man. Nature first gave him only such desires that are necessary for self-preservation and such faculties as are sufficient for their satisfaction. All the others were put in reserve at the bottom of his soul for him to develop when needed. It is only in this primitive condition that we encounter the equilibrium between desire and power and where man is not unhappy. As soon as his potential faculties are put into action, imagination], the most active of all, awakes and precedes all the rest. It is imagination which extends for us the measure of what is possible either for good or for evil, and consequently which excites and nourishes our desires with the hope of satisfying them. But the object which seems at first within our grasp flies away quicker than we can follow; when we think we have grasped it, it transforms itself and is again far ahead of us. No longer perceiving the terrain we have already traversed, we count it as nothing; that which lies before us becomes vaster and stretches still before us. Thus we exhaust our strength without reaching our goal, and the closer we get to pleasure the further we are from happiness.

[¶221:] In contrast, the closer man stays to his natural condition, the smaller is the difference between his faculties and desires and the less far he consequently is from being happy. He is never less miserable than when he seems to be deprived of everything; for unhappiness consists not in the privation of things but in the need which is felt for them.

[¶222:] The real world has its limits, the imaginary world is infinite. Being unable to enlarge the one let us diminish the other, for it is from their difference alone that arise all the pains that make us truly unhappy. Except for health, strength, and self-estime, all the goods of this life are a matter of opinion; except for bodily suffering and remorse of conscience, all our ills are imaginary. You will tell me this is common knowledge. I admit it, but its practical application is not common knowledge, and it is with practice only that we are concerned here.

[¶223:] When we say that man is weak, what do we mean? This word weak implies a relation, a relation of the being to which it is applied. The one whose strength surpasses his needs, be it an insect or a worm, is a strong being. The one whose needs surpass its strength, be it an elephant, a lion, a conqueror, a hero, a God, is a weak being. The rebellious angel who fought against his own nature was weaker than the happy mortal who is living at peace according to nature. Man is very strong when he is content to be what he is; he is very weak when he wants to elevate himself above humanity. Do not imagine, therefore, that you can increase your strength by increasing your faculties. On the contrary, you diminish your strength if your pride increases even more. Let us measure the radius of our sphere and remain in its center, like the insect in the middle of its web. We will be sufficient to ourselves and will have no reason to complain of our weakness, for we will never feel it.

[¶224:] All animals possess exactly the faculties necessary for self-preservation. Man alone has superfluous ones. Is it not very strange that this superfluity should be the instrument of his unhappiness? In every land a man's labour yields more than his subsistence. If he were wise enough to disregard this surplus he would always have enough, for he would never have too much. "Great needs," said Favorin, "spring from great wealth; and often the best way of getting what we want is to get rid of what we have." By striving to increase our happiness we change it into unhappiness. Every man who only wished to live would live happily; consequently he would be good, for what would be the advantage for him to be bad?

[¶225:] If we were immortal we should all be miserable. No doubt it is hard to die, but it is sweet to think that we shall not live for ever and that a better life will put an end to the sorrows of this world. If we had the offer of immortality on earth, who would accept the sorrowful gift?_ What resources, what hopes, what consolation would be left against the cruelties of fate and man's injustice? The ignorant man who never looks ahead knows little of the value of life and does not fear to lose it. The enlightened man sees things of greater worth and prefers them to life. Half-knowledge and sham wisdom set us thinking about death and what lies beyond it; and they thus create the worst of our ills. The wise man bears life's ills all the better because he knows he must die. Life would be too dearly bought if we did not know that sooner or later death will end it.

[¶226:] Our moral ills are all based on opinion -- except for crime, and that depends on ourselves. Our bodily ills either destroy themselves or destroy us. Time or death will cure them. But we suffer much more from not knowing how to suffer; and we give ourselves more torment in curing our illnesses than we would have if we endured them. Live according to nature; be patient, get rid of the doctors. You will not escape death, but you will only die once, while the doctors make you die daily through your diseased imagination. Their lying art, instead of prolonging your days, robs you of all delight in them. I am always asking what real good this art has done to mankind. True, the doctors cure some who would have died, but they kill millions who would have lived. If you are wise you will decline to take part in this lottery when the odds are so great against you. Suffer, die, or get better; but whatever you do, live while you are alive.

[¶227:] Human institutions are one mass of folly and contradiction. As our life loses its value we set a higher price upon it. Old people regret life more than the young; they do not want to lose all they have spent in preparing for its enjoyment. At sixty it is cruel to die when one has not begun to live. Man is credited with a strong desire for self-preservation, and this desire exists; but we fail to perceive that this desire, as felt by us, is largely the work of man. In a natural state man is only eager to preserve his life while he has the means for its preservation; when self-preservation is no longer possible, he resigns himself to his fate and dies without vain torments. Nature teaches us the first law of resignation. Savages, like wild beasts, make very little struggle against death, and meet it almost without complaint. When this natural law is overthrown another is formed which comes from reason, but few know how to draw upon it, and this artificial resignation is never so clear and complete as the first one.

[¶228:] Foresight! Foresight -- which carries us ceaselessly beyond ourselves and often to a place we shall never reach -- here is the real source of all our unhappiness. How insane it is for so short-lived a creature as man to look forward into a future to which so rarely arrives, while he neglects the present which is sure. This madness is all the more fatal when it increases with years, and when old people -- always timid, prudent, and miserly -- prefer to refuse themselves necessities today than to lack them in a hundred years. Thus we grasp everything, we cling to everything. We are anxious about time, place, people, things, all that is and will be. Our individual self is only the least part of ourselves. Each one spreads himself, so to speak, over the whole world, and becomes sensitive to all this vast surface. Is it surprising that our ills multiply at each point where we can be hurt? How many princes make themselves miserable for the loss of a land they have never seen! How many merchants weep in Paris over some misfortune in the Indies!

[¶229:] Is it nature that thus carries men so far from their real selves? Is it nature's will that each should learn his fate from others and sometimes even be the last to learn it, so that a man dies happy or miserable before he knows what he is about? I see a healthy, cheerful, strong and vigorous man; his presence inspires joy; his eyes tell of contentedness and well-being; he carries with him the image of happiness. A letter comes in the mail. The happy man glances at it, it is addressed to him. He opens it and reads it. Immediately his expression changes, he turns pale and collapses in dispair. When he comes to himself he weeps, trembles, and moans; he tears his hair and his cries fill the room. You would say he was in convulsions. Fool, what harm has this bit of paper done you? What limb has it torn away? What crime has it made you commit? What has it changed in you to put you in the state that I now see you in?

[¶230:] Had the letter been lost, had some kindly hand thrown it into the fire, it seems to me that the fate of this mortal, at once happy and unhappy, would have offered us a strange problem. His misfortunes, you say, were real enough. Granted; but he did not feel them. What of that? His happiness was imaginary. I admit it; health, wealth, a contented spirit, are mere dreams. We no longer exist where we are, we only exist where we are not. Is it worth it to have such a great fear of death provided that what we live off of remains?

[¶231:] Oh, man! Confine your existence inside of yourself and you will no longer be unhappy. Stay in the place that nature has assigned you in the chain of being; nothing should be able to make you leave it. Do not kick against the stern law of necessity, nor waste in vain resistance the strength that heaven gave you not to prolong or extend your existence but to preserve it so far and so long as heaven pleases. Your freedom and your power extend as far and no further than your natural strength; anything more is only slavery, illusion, reputation. Domination itself is servile when it depends upon opinion; for you are dependent on the prejudices of others when you rule them by means of those prejudices. To lead them as you please you must conduct yourself as they please. They have only to change their way of thinking and you are forced to change your course of action. Those who approach you need only contrive to sway the opinions of those you rule, or of the favourite by whom you are ruled, or those of your own family or theirs. Even if you had the genius of Themistocles, all these viziers, courtiers, priests, soldiers, servants, babblers, the very children themselves, would lead you like a child in the midst of your legions. Whatever you do, your actual authority can never extend beyond your own faculties. As soon as you are obliged to see with others' eyes, their wills must be your own. You may say with pride, "My people are my subjects." Granted, but what are you? The subject of your ministers. And your ministers, what are they? The subjects of their clerks, their mistresses, the servants of their servants. Grasp all, usurp all, and then pour out your silver with both hands; lay out your plans for war, raise the gallows and the wheel; make laws, issue proclamations, multiply your spies, your soldiers, your hangmen, your prisons, and your chains. Poor little men, what good does all of this do you? You will be no better served, you will not be less robbed or deceived, nor more absolute in your power. You will say continually, "We want," and you will continually do what others want.

[¶232:] The only man who follows his own will is he who has no need to put another man's arms at the end of his own. From this it follows that the the greatest good is not authority but freedom. The truly free man wants only what he can do and does what he pleases. This is my fundamental maxim. Apply it to childhood, and all the rules of education spring from it.

[¶233:] Society has weakened man not only by depriving him of the right to his own strength, but above all by making his strength insufficient for his needs. This is why his desires are multiplied with his weakness; and this is why the child is weaker than the man. If a man is strong and a child is weak it is not because the strength of the one is absolutely greater than the strength of the other, but because the one can naturally provide for himself and the other cannot. Thus the man will have more wishes and the child more whims, a word which I take to mean desires which are not true needs, desires which can only be satisfied with the help of others.

[¶234:] I have already given the reason for this state of weakness. Parental affection is nature's provision against it; but parental affection may have its excesses, its failings, its abuses. Parents who live in the civil state bring their child into it before the right age. By giving him more needs than he naturally has they do not relieve his weakness; they increase it. They further increase it by demanding of him what nature does not demand, by subjecting to their wills what little strength he has to serve his own, by making slaves of themselves or of him instead of recognising the mutual dependence which should result from his weakness and their affection.

[¶235:] The wise man knows how to stay in his place, but the child who does not know what his place is unable to keep it. There are a thousand ways out of it. It is the business of those who have charge of the child to keep him in his place, and this is no easy task. He should be neither beast nor man, but child. He must feel his weakness but not suffer from it. He must be dependent but he must not obey. He must ask, not command. He is only subject to others because of his needs and because they see better than he what is useful to him, what may help or hinder his existence. No one, not even his father, has the right to command the child do what is of no use to him.

[¶236:] Before our prejudices and human institutions have altered our natural inclinations, the happiness of children as well as of men consists in the use of their freedom. But children's freedom is limited by their weakness. He who does as he likes is happy provided he is self-sufficient; it is so with the man living in a state of nature. He who does what he likes is not happy if his desires exceed his strength; it is so with a child in similar conditions. Even in a state of nature children only enjoy an imperfect freedom, like that enjoyed by men in social life. Each of us, unable to dispense with the help of others, becomes in this way weak and unhappy. We were made to be men; laws and society plunge us back into infancy. The rich and great, even kings, are children who, when they see us hurry to sooth their miseries, draw from that a childish vanity and are full of pride for the attentions that they would never have gotten if they were grown men.

[¶237:] These considerations are important and serve to resolve all the contradictions of the social system. There are two kinds of dependence: dependence on things, which is from nature; and dependence on men, which is from society. Dependence on things, since it has no morality, does no harm to freedom and engenders no vices. Dependence on men, being without order,_ engenders all the vices, and through this master and slave become mutually corrupted. If there is any means of remedying this evil in society it is by substituting law for man, and by arming the general wills with a real force that is superior to the action of every individual will. If the laws of nations could have the inflexibility of the laws of nature that no human force could overcome, then the dependence of men would become once again a dependence on things. Thus one would reunite in the republic all the advantages of the natural state with those of the civil state; one could bring together the freedom that keeps man exempt from vice with the morality that raises him to virtue.

[¶238:] Keep the child dependent only on things. You will have followed the order of nature in the progress of his education. Never offer to his indiscrete will anything but physical obstacles or punishments that arise from the actions themselves and which he will recall at the proper occasion. Without forbidding him from doing wrong it suffices to prevent him from doing it. Experience or lack of strength alone ought take the place of law for him. Grant nothing to his desires because he demands it but only because he needs it. Let him not know what obedience is when he acts nor what domination is when someone acts for him. Let him feel his freedom equally in his actions and in yours. Supply the strength he lacks as precisely as he needs it in order to be free but not imperious; so that while receiving your services with a sort of humiliation he may look forward to the time when he will do without them and have the honor of serving himself.

[¶239:] To strengthen the body and make it grow, nature has means that should never be opposed. One must not force a child to stay when he wants to go, nor to go when he wants to stay. When we have not spoiled the wills of children by our own fault they want nothing arbitrarily. They must jump, run, shout when they wish. All their movements are from the needs of their constitution which seeks to strengthen itself. But one should be mistrustful of their wanting to do things that they cannot do themselves and that others are obliged to do for them. Then one must distinguish carefully between the true need, the natural need, and the needs of budding whim or those which come only from the overflowing life just described.

[¶240:] I have already told you what you ought to do when a child cries for this thing or that. I will only add that as soon as he has words to ask for what he wants and accompanies his demands with tears, either to get his own way quicker or to over-ride a refusal, he should never have his way. If his words were prompted by a real need you should recognise it and satisfy it at once. But to yield to his tears is to encourage him to cry, to teach him to doubt your kindness, and to think that you are influenced more by his impertinance than your own goodwill. If he does not think you good, soon he will be evil; if he thinks you weak he will soon become obstinate. It is important to grant at his first sign anything that you do not wish to refuse him. Do not overdo your refusals, but, having refused, do not change your mind.

[¶241:] Above all, beware of teaching the child empty phrases of politeness that only serve as magic words to subdue those around him to his will and to get him what he wants at once. The artificial education of the rich never fails to make them politely imperious by teaching them the words to use so that no one will dare to resist them. Their children have neither the tone nor the manner of suppliants; they are as haughty or even more haughty in their entreaties than in their commands, as though they were more certain to be obeyed. It is obvious that "If you please" means "It pleases me," and "I beg" means "I command." What admirable politeness, which only succeeds in changing the meaning of words so that every word is a command! For my own part, I would rather Emile were rude than arrogant, that he should say "Do this" as a request, rather than "Please" as a command. What concerns me is not the term that he uses but the meaning that he gives to it.

[¶242:] There is such a thing as excessive severity as well as excessive indulgence, and both should be equally avoided. If you let children suffer you risk their health and life; you make them miserable now. If you take too many pains to spare them every kind of discomfort you are laying up much unhappiness for them in the future; you are making them delicate and over-sensitive; you are taking them out of their place among men, a place to which they must sooner or later return in spite of all your pains. You will say I am falling into the same mistake as those bad fathers whom I blamed for sacrificing the present happiness of their children to a future which may never be theirs.

[¶243:] Not so. For the freedom I give my pupil makes up for the slight hardships to which he is exposed. I see little rascals playing in the snow, stiff and blue with cold, scarcely able to move their fingers. They could go and warm themselves if they chose, but they do not. If you forced them to come in they would feel the harshness of constraint a hundred times more than the sharpness of the cold. So what are you complaining about? Shall I make your child miserable by exposing him to hardships which he is perfectly ready to endure? I do what is good for him in the present moment by letting him be free; I do what is good for him in the future good by arming him against the evils he will have to bear. If he had his choice to be my pupil or yours, would he hesitate even for a moment?

[¶244:] Can one imagine that true happiness is possible for anyone outside of his constitution? And is not trying to spare man all the ills of his species an effort to remove him from his constitution? Indeed I maintain that to enjoy great goodness he must experience slight ills; such is his nature. If the physical is too healthy the moral will be corrupted. A man who knew nothing of suffering would not feel tenderness towards humanity nor the sweetness of pity. His heart would be moved by nothing; he would be unsociable, a monster among his fellow men.

[¶245:] Do you know the surest way to make your child miserable? Let him have everything he wants; for as his wants increase in proportion to the ease with which they are satisfied, you will be compelled, sooner or later, to refuse his demands, and this unlooked-for refusal will hurt him more than the lack of what he wants. First he'll want the cane that you are holding, soon he'll want your watch, then the bird that flies, or the star that shines above him. He will want everything that he sees. Unless you were God himself, how could you satisfy him?

[¶246:] It is a disposition natural to man to regard as his own everything that is in his power. In this sense Hobbes' principle is true up to a certain point. Multiply both our wishes and the means of satisfying them, and each will make himself the master of all. Thus the child who has only to want something in order to obtain it thinks himself the owner of the universe; he regards all men as his slaves. And finally when one is forced to refuse him something, he, believing anything is possible when he asks for it, takes the refusal as an act of rebellion. All the reasons you give him while he is still too young to reason are so many pretences in his eyes; in all of that he sees only ill will. The sense of a so-called injustice embitters his disposition; he hates every one. Though he has never felt grateful for kindness, he resents all opposition.

[¶247:] How could I conceive that a child thus dominated by anger and devoured by the fiercest passions could ever be happy? Him happy? He is a despot, at once the vilest of slaves and the most miserable of creatures. I have known children raised in this way who expected you to knock the house down, to give them the weather-vane on the steeple, to stop a regiment on the march so that they might listen to the band, and who, without listening to anyone, would pierce the air with their cries as soon as they were not obeyed. Everyone strove vainly to please them. Since their desires were stimulated by the ease with which they got their own way, they set their hearts on impossibilities, and found themselves face to face with opposition and difficulty, pain and grief. Always whining, always rebellious, always in a rage, they spent their days crying and complaining. Were these beings so fortunate? Weakness combined with domination produces nothing but folly and misery. One spoiled child beats the table; another whips the sea. They may beat and whip in vain before they find contentment.

[¶248:] If these ideas of empire and tyranny make them miserable during childhood, what about when they grow up, when their relations with their fellow-men begin to expand and multiply? They are used to finding everything give way to them; what a painful surprise to enter society and meet with opposition on every side, to be crushed beneath the weight of a universe which they expected to move at will.

[¶249:] Their insolent manners, their childish vanity, only draw down upon them mortification, scorn, and mockery; they swallow insults like water. Sharp experience soon teaches them that they have realised neither their position nor their strength. Being unable to do everything, they think they can do nothing. They are daunted by unexpected obstacles, degraded by the scorn of men. They become base, cowardly, and deceitful, and fall as far below their true level as they formerly soared above it.

[¶250:] Let us come back to the first rule. Nature has made children to be loved and helped, but did it make them to be obeyed and feared? Has nature given them an imposing manner, a stern eye, a loud and threatening voice with which to make people wary of them? I understand how the roaring of the lion frightens the other beasts, so that they tremble when they behold his terrible mane, but of all unseemly, hateful, and ridiculous sights, was there ever anything like a group of statesmen, with their leader in front of them in his ceremonial robes, bowing down before a swaddled babe, addressing him in pompous phrases, while he cries and drools in reply?

[¶251:] If we consider childhood itself, is there in the world a being weaker and more miserable, more at the mercy of everthing that surrounds it, who has a greater need of pity, care, and affection, than a child? Does it not seem as if his gentle face and touching appearance were intended to interest every one on behalf of his weakness and to make them eager to help him? And what is there more offensive, more contrary to order, than the sight of an unruly or imperious child commanding those about him and impudently taking on the tones of a master towards those without whom he would perish?

[¶252:] On the other hand, is it not clear that the weakness of the first age enchains children in so many ways that it is barbarous to add our own whims to this subjection by depriving them of the limited freedom that they do have -- a freedom which they can scarcely abuse and the loss of which will do so little good to them or us? If there is nothing more ridiculous than a haughty child, there is nothing that claims our pity like a timid child. Since civil servitude begins with the age of reason, then why anticipate this by private servitude? Allow one moment of life to be free from this yoke that nature has not imposed upon it. Leave to the child the exercise of his natural freedom, which, for a time at least, keeps him away from the vices contracted in slavery. Let harsh masters and those fathers who are the slaves of their children both come forward with their petty objections; and before they boast of their own methods, let them for once learn the method of nature.

[¶253:] I return to practical matters. I have already said your child must not get what he asks, but what he needs;_ he must never act from obedience, but from necessity. Thus the very words obey and command will be excluded from his vocabulary, still more those of duty and obligation. But the words strength, necessity, weakness, and constraint must have a large place in it. Before the age of reason it is impossible to form any idea of moral beings or social relations. One must thus avoid as much as possible the use of words which express these ideas lest the child at an early age should attach wrong ideas to them, ideas which you cannot or will not destroy when he is older. The first mistaken idea he gets into his head is the germ of error and vice; it is the first step that needs watching. Act in such a way that while he only notices external objects his ideas are confined to sensations; let him only see the physical world around him. If not, you may be sure that either he will not hear you at all, or that he will form of this moral world you speak about some farfetched notions that you will never erase as long as he lives.

[¶254:] To reason with children was Locke's chief maxim. It is even more in vogue today. Its success however does not seem to me strong enough to give it credit; for me I see nothing more stupid that these children with whom people reasoned so much. Of all man's faculties, reason, which is, so to speak, the one composed of all the others, is the one that develops with the most difficulty and the latest, and yet you want to use it to develop the earlier ones! The culmination of a good education is to make a man reasonable, and you claim to raise a child with reason! You begin at the wrong end; you make the end the means. If children understood reason they would not need education. But by talking to them from their earliest age in a language they do not understand you accustom them to manipulate with words, to control all that is said to them, to think themselves as wise as their teachers, to become argumentative and rebellious. And whatever you think you gain from motives of reason you really gain from the greediness, or fear, or vanity, which you are always forced to add to your reasoning.

[¶255:] Most of the moral lessons which are and can be given to children may be reduced to this formula:

[¶256:] Master: You must not do that.

Child: Why not?

Master: Because it is wrong.

Child: Wrong ! What is wrong?

Master: What is forbidden you.

Child: Why is it wrong to do what is forbidden?

Master: You will be punished for disobeying.

Child: I will do it when no one is looking.

Master: We will keep an eye on you.

Child: I will hide.

Master: We will ask you what you were doing.

Child: I will tell a lie.

Master: You must not tell lies.

Child: Why must not I tell lies?

Master: Because it is wrong, etc.

[¶257:] That is the inevitable circle. Go beyond it, and the child will not understand you. What sort of use is there in such teaching? I should greatly like to know what you would substitute for this dialogue. It would have puzzled Locke himself. It is no part of a child's business to know right and wrong, to perceive the reason for a man's duties.

[¶258:] Nature wants children to be children before they are men. If we try to pervert this order we shall produce a forced fruit that will have neither ripeness nor flavor and that will soon spoil. We will have young doctors and old children. Childhood has its ways of seeing, thinking, and feeling that are proper to it. Nothing is less sensible than to try and substitute our ways. I would like no more to require a young child be five feet tall than that he have judgement at the age of ten. Indeed, what use would reason be to him at that age? It is the curb of strength, and the child does not need this curb.

[¶259:] In trying to persuade your pupils of the duty of obedience you add to this so-called persuasion force and threats, or still worse, flattery and bribes. Thus attracted by self-interest or constrained by force, they pretend to be convinced by reason. They see very well that obedience is to their advantage and disobedience to their disadvantage as soon as you perceive one or the other. But since you only demand disagreeable things of them, and since it is always painful to do another's will, they hide themselves so that they may do as they please, persuaded that they are doing well if no one knows of their disobedience, but ready, if found out, to admit they are in the wrong for fear of worse evils. Since the rationale for duty is beyond their age, there is not a man in the world who could make them really aware of it. But the fear of punishment, the hope of forgiveness, importunity, the difficulty of answering, wrings from them as many confessions as you want; and you think you have convinced them when you have only wearied or frightened them.

[¶260:] What is the result of all this? In the first place, by imposing on them a duty which they do not feel, you make them disinclined to submit to your tyranny and turn them away from loving you. You teach them to become deceitful, false, liars in order to extort rewards or escape punishment. Finally, by accustoming them to conceal a secret motive under an apparent one, you yourself give them the means of ceaselessly abusing you, of depriving you of the means of knowing their real character, and of answering you and others with empty words whenever they have the chance. Laws, you say, though binding on conscience, exercise the same constraint over grown men. I agree, but what are these men if not children spoiled by education? This is exactly what one must avoid. Use force with children and reason with men; this is the natural order. The wise man needs no laws.

[¶261:] Treat your pupil according to his age. Put him in his place from the first, and keep him there so well that he does not try to leave it. Then before he knows what wisdom is, he will be practising its most important lesson. Never command him to do anything, whatever in the world it may be. Do not let him even imagine that you claim to have any authority over him. He must know only that he is weak and you are strong, that his condition and yours put him at your mercy. Let him know this, let him learn it, let him feel it. At an early age let his haughty head feel the heavy yoke which nature imposes upon man, the heavy yoke of necessity under which every finite being must bow. Let him see this necessity in things, not in the whims_ of man. Let the curb that restrains him be force, not authority. If there is something he should not do, do not forbid him, but prevent him without explanation or reasoning. What you grant him, grant it at his first word without sollicitations or pleading, above all without conditions. Grant with pleasure, refuse only with repugnance; but let your refusal be irrevocable so that no entreaties move you. Let your "No," once uttered, be a wall of bronze against which the child may have to exhaust his strength five or six times in order not to be tempted again to overthrow it.

[¶262:] It is thus that you will make him patient, equable, resigned, peaceful, even when he does not get all he wants. For it is in man's nature to bear patiently with the necessity of things but not with the ill-will of others. A child never rebels against "There is none left," unless he thinks the reply is false. Moreover, there is no middle course; you must either make no demands on him at all, or else you must fashion him to perfect obedience. The worst education of all is to leave him hesitating between his own will and yours, constantly disputing whether you or he is master. I would rather a hundred times that he were Master:

[¶263:] It is very strange that ever since people began to think about raising children they should have imagined no other way of guiding them other than emulation, jealousy, envy, vanity, greediness, cowardice -- all the most dangerous passions, the quickest to ferment, and the most likely to corrupt the soul even before the body is formed. With each precocious instruction which you try to force into children's minds you plant a vice in the depths of their hearts. Senseless teachers think they are doing wonders when they are making their pupils evil in order to teach them what goodness is. And then they tell us gravely, "Such is man." Yes, such is the man that you have made.

[¶264:] Every means has been tried except one. the one precisely that could succeed -- well-regulated freedom. One should not undertake to raise a child unless one knows how to guide him where one wants by the laws of the possible and the impossible alone. The limits of both being equally inknown, they can be extended or contracted around him at will. Without a murmur the child is restrained, urged on, held back, only by the bands of necessity. One can make him supple and docile solely by the force of things, without any chance for vice to spring up in him. For passions never become aroused so long as they have no effect.

[¶265:] Do not give your pupil any kind of verbal lessons; he should receive them only through experience. Do not inflict on him any kind of punishment, for he does not know what it is to do wrong. Never make him beg your pardon, for he does not know how to offend you. Deprived of all morality in his actions, he can do nothing that is morally wrong, and he deserves neither punishment nor reprimand.

[¶266:] Already I see the frightened reader comparing this child with those of our time. He is mistaken. The perpetual annoyance imposed upon your pupils irritates their vivacity; the more constrained they are under your eyes, the more stormy they are the moment they escape. Whenever they can they must make up for the harsh constraint that you that you hold them in. Two schoolboys from the city will do more damage in the country than all the children of the village. Shut up a young gentleman and a young peasant in a room; the former will have upset and smashed everything before the latter has stirred from his place. Why is this, unless that the one hastens to abuse a moment's licence, while the other, always sure of freedom, does not use it rashly? And yet the village children, often flattered or constrained, are still very far from the state in which I would have them kept.

[¶267:] Let us lay it down as an incontestible maxim that the first movements of nature are always right. There is no original perversity in the human heart. There is not a single vice about which one cannot say how and whence it came. The only passion natural to man is amour de soi or amour-propre taken in an extended sense. This amour-propre in itself or relative to ourselves is good and useful, and since it has no necessary rapport to others it is in this regard naturally indifferent: it only becomes good or evil by what it is applied to and by the relations it is given. Until the appearance of reason, which is the guide of amour-propre, the main thing is that the child should do nothing because you are watching him or listening to him; in a word, nothing because of other people, but only what nature asks of him. Then he will only do good.

[¶268:] I do not mean to say that he will never do any mischief, never hurt himself, never break an expensive item if you leave it within his reach. He might do much damage without doing wrong, since wrong-doing depends on the harmful intention which will never be his. If once he meant to do harm, his whole education would already be lost; he would be almost hopelessly bad.

[¶269:] Greed considers some things wrong which are not wrong in the eyes of reason. By leaving children in full liberty to exercise their playfulness , you must put anything that it could ruin out of their way, and leave nothing fragile or costly within their reach. Let the room be furnished with plain and solid furniture: no mirrors, china, or objects of luxury. As for Emile, who I will raise in the country, he will have a room just like a peasant's. What good is it to decorate it with so much care when he will spend so little time in it? But I am mistaken; he will decorate it himself, and we shall soon see how.

[¶270:] If, in spite of your precautions, the child happens to do some damage, if he breaks some useful article, do not punish him for your carelessness. Do not even scold him. Let him hear no word of reproach, do not even let him see that he has annoyed you. Behave just as if the thing had broken by itself. You may consider you have done great things if you have managed to say nothing.

[¶271:] Dare I express here the greatest, the most important, the most useful rule of all education? It is not to gain time but to lose it. Common readers, excuse my paradoxes. Paradoxes are necessary when one reflects, and whatever you may say I would rather be a man of paradox than a man of prejudice. The most dangerous period in human life lies between birth and the age of twelve. It is the time when errors and vices spring up, without one yet having any instrument for destroying them; and when the instrument comes, the roots have gone too deep to be pulled up. If children sprang at one bound from their mother's breast to the age of reason, the present type of education would suit them. But natural growth calls for a completely different education. One must do nothing with their soul until it has all its faculties. For while it is blind it cannot see the torch you offer it, nor can it follow through the vast expanse of ideas a path so faintly traced by reason that the best eyes can scarcely follow it.

[¶272:] The first education ought thus to be purely negative. It consists not at all in teaching virtue or truth, but in preserving the heart from vice and the mind from error. If you could do nothing and let nothing be done, if you could bring your pupil healthy and robust to the age of twelve without knowing how to distinguish his right hand from his left, the eyes of his understanding would be open to reason as soon as you began to teach him. Without prejudice and without habits, there would be nothing in him to counteract the effects of your labours. In your hands he would soon become the wisest of men; by doing nothing to begin with, you would end with a prodigy of education.

[¶273:] Go in a different direction from the usual one and you will almost always do right. Since they want their child to be a doctor instead of a child, fathers and teachers think it never too soon to scold, correct, reprimand, flatter, threaten, promise, instruct, and reason. Do better than they; be reasonable and do not reason with your pupil. More especially do not try to make him approve of what he dislikes; for if reason is always connected with disagreeable matters, you make it distasteful to him, you discredit it at an early age in a mind not yet ready to understand it. Exercise his body, his limbs, his senses, his strength, but keep his mind idle as long as you can. Distrust all opinions which appear before the judgment to discriminate between them. Restrain and ward off strange impressions; and to prevent the birth of evil do not hasten to do good, for goodness is only possible when enlightened by reason. Regard all delays as so much time gained; it is to gain much to approach one's goal without a loss. Let childhood to ripen in children. Has some lesson finally become necesary? Beware of giving it to them today if it can be put off without danger until tomorrow.

[¶274:] Another consideration confirms the utility of this method. One must be familiar with the particular genius of the child in order to know what moral regime is best for him. Every mind has its own form in accordance with which it must be governed; and the success of the pains taken depends largely on the fact that he is controlled in this way and no other. Wise man, take time to observe nature. Watch your pupil well before you say a word to him; first leave the germ of his character free to show itself. Do not constrain him in anything, the better to see him as he really is. Do you think this time of liberty is wasted for him? On the contrary, your pupil will be the better employed, for this is the way you yourself will learn not to lose a single moment when time is of more value. If, however, you begin to act before you know what to do, you act randomly. You may make mistakes, and must retrace your steps; you will be further from your goal than if you had been less pressed to reach it. Do not be like the miser who loses much out of fear of losing a little. Sacrifice the time in early childhood that you regain with interest at a more advanced age. The wise physician does not hastily give prescriptions at first sight but studies the temperament of the sick man before he prescribes anything. The treatment is begun later, but the patient is cured, whereas the hasty doctor kills him.

[¶275:] But where will we find a place for our child so as to bring him up as a senseless being, an automaton? Will we keep him on the moon, or on a desert island? Will we remove him from all humans? In society will he not always be faced with the spectacle and the example of the passions of other people? Will he never see children of his own age? Will he not see his parents, his neighbours, his nurse, his governess, his lackey, his tutor himself, who after all will not be an angel?

[¶276:] This objection is solid and real. But did I tell you that an education according to nature would be an easy task? Oh, men ! Is it my fault that you have made difficult everything that is good? I sense these difficulties, I accept them; perhaps they are insurmountable. But it is always certain that by trying to avoid them one does avoid them up to a certain point. I show the end that must be proposed. I do not say we can attain it, but I do say that whoever comes nearest to it will have succeeded the best.

[¶277:] Remember that before daring to undertake forming a man one must be a man himself. One must find within oneself the example that one must propose. While the child is still without knowledge one has time to prepare everything that comes near him, so that he will be confronted only with those objects which are suitable to his sight. Make yourself respectable to every one, begin to make yourself loved so that each seeks to please you, so that they may try to please you. You will not be master of the child if you are not the master of all that surrounds him; and this authority will never suffice if it is not founded on an estime for virtue. It is not a question of emptying your purse and pouring out handfuls of money; I have never seen money make anyone be loved. You must neither be miserly nor hard, nor must you merely pity misery when you can relieve it. But in vain will you only open your purse, for if you do not also open your heart the hearts of others will always be closed to you. This is your time, these are your cares, your affections; it is yourself that you must give. For whatever you do, people always perceive that your money is not you. There are proofs of kindly interest which produce more results and are really more useful than any gift. How many of the sick and wretched have more need of comfort than of alms? How many of the oppressed need protection rather than money? Reconcile those who are fighting, prevent lawsuits, incline children to duty, fathers to kindness; promote happy marriages; prevent annoyances; freely use the credit of your pupil's parents on behalf of the weak who cannot obtain justice, the weak who are oppressed by the powerful. Declare yourself proudly the protector of the poor. Be just, humane, benevolent. Do not give only alms; give charity. Works of mercy sooth more ills than money. Love others and they will love you; serve them and they will serve you; be their brother and they will be your children.

[¶278:] This is one reason why I want to bring up Emile in the country, far from those miserable lackeys, the most degraded of men except their masters; far from the dark customs of the city, whose gilded surface makes them seductive and contagious to children; whereas the vices of peasants, unadorned and in their naked grossness, are more fitted to repel than to seduce as long as there is no motive for imitating them.

[¶279:] In the village a tutor will have much more control over the things he wishes to show the child. His reputation, his words, his example, will have a weight they would never have in the city. He is of use to every one, so every one is eager to oblige him, to win his esteem, to appear before the pupil what the tutor would have him be. If vice is not corrected, public scandal is at least avoided, which is all that our present purpose requires.

[¶280:] Cease blaming others for your own faults. Children are corrupted less by what they see than by what you tell them. With your endless preaching, moralising, and pedantry, for one idea you give your pupils, believing it to be good, you give them twenty more which are good for nothing. You are full of what is going on in your own mind, and you fail to see the effect you produce on theirs. In the continual flow of words with which you overwhelm them, do you think there is none which they get hold of in a wrong sense? Do you suppose they do not make their own comments on your long-winded explanations, that they do not find material for the construction of a system they can understand -- one which they will use against you when they get the chance?

[¶281:] Listen to a little fellow who has just been indoctrinated. Let him chatter freely, ask questions, and talk at his ease, and you will be surprised to find the strange forms your arguments have assumed in his mind. He confuses everything and turns everything upside down. He makes you impatient and saddens you sometimes by his unforeseen objections. He reduces you to be silent yourself or to silence him; and what can he think of silence in one who is so fond of talking? If ever he gains this advantage and is aware of it, farewell education. From that moment all is lost; he is no longer trying to learn, he is trying to refute you.

[¶282:] Zealous teachers, be simple, discrete, and reticent. Be in no hurry to act unless to prevent the actions of others. Again and again I say, reject, if it may be, a good lesson for fear of giving a bad one. Beware of playing the tempter in this world, which nature intended as an earthly paradise for men, and do not attempt to give the innocent child the knowledge of good and evil. Since you cannot prevent the child learning by what he sees outside himself, restrict your own efforts to impressing those examples on his mind in the form best suited for him.

[¶283:] The explosive passions produce a great effect upon the child who witnesses them because they have very obvious signs that shock him and force him to pay attention. Anger especially is so noisy in its rage that it is impossible not to perceive it if you are within reach. You must not ask yourself whether this is an opportunity for a pedagogue to enter into a fine discourse. No discourses! Nothing, not a word. Let the child come to you. Impressed by what he has seen, he will not fail to question you. The answer is simple; it is drawn from the very things which have appealed to his senses. He sees a flushed face, flashing eyes, a threatening gesture, he hears cries; everything shows that the body is ill at ease. Tell him plainly, without affectation or mystery, " This poor man is ill, he is in a fever." You may take the opportunity of giving him in a few words some idea of disease and its effects; for that too belongs to nature, and is one of the bonds of necessity which he must recognise.

[¶284:] By means of this idea, which is not false in itself, might he not early on acquire a certain aversion to giving way to excessive passions, which he regards as diseases; and do you not think that such a notion, given at the right moment, will produce a more wholesome effect than the most tedious sermon on morals? But consider the after-effects of this idea. You have authority, if ever you find it necessary, to treat the rebellious child as a sick child; to keep him in his room, in bed if need be, to diet him, to make him afraid of his growing vices, to make him hate and dread them without ever regarding as a punishment the strict measures you will perhaps have to use for his recovery. If it happens that you yourself in a moment's heat depart from the calm and self-control which you should aim at, do not try to conceal your fault, but tell him frankly, with a gentle reproach, "My friend, you have made me ill."

[¶285:] Moreover, it is a matter of great importance that no notice should he taken in his presence of the quaint sayings which result from the simplicity of the ideas in which he is brought up, nor should they be quoted in a way he can understand. A foolish laugh may destroy six months' work and do irreparable damage for life. I cannot repeat too often that to control the child one must often control oneself. I picture my little Emile at the height of a dispute between two neighbours going up to the fiercest of them and saying in a tone of pity, "You are ill, I am very sorry for you." This speech will no doubt have its effect on the spectators and perhaps on the disputants. Without laughter, scolding, or praise I should take him away, willing or no, before he could see this result, or at least before be could think about it; and I should make haste to turn his thoughts to other things so that he would soon forget all about it.

[¶286:] My design is not to enter into every detail, but only to expose general maxims and to give illustrations in cases of difficulty. I agree that it is impossible to raise a child up to the age of twelve in the midst of society without giving him some idea of the relations between one man and another, and of the morality of human actions. It is enough to try to give him these necessary notions as late as possible, and when they become inevitable to limit them to present needs, so that he may neither think himself master of everything nor do harm to others without knowing or caring. There are calm and gentle characters which can be led a long way in their first innocence without any danger; but there are also stormy dispositions whose passions develop early. You must hasten to make men of them lest you should have to keep them in chains.

[¶287:] Our first duties are to ourselves; our first feelings are centred on self; all our instincts are at first directed to our own preservation and our own welfare. Thus the first notion of justice springs not from what we owe to others but from what is due to us. Here is another error in popular methods of education. If you talk to children of their duties, and not of their rights, you are beginning at the wrong end and telling them what they cannot understand, what cannot be of any interest to them.

[¶288:] If I had to lead a child such as I have just described, I should say to myself: A child does not attack people_ but things; and he soon learns by experience to respect those older and stronger than himself. Things, however, do not defend themselves. Therefore the first idea he needs is not that of liberty but of property, and in order that he may get this idea he must have something of his own. It is useless to enumerate his clothes, furniture, and playthings; although he uses these he knows not how or why he has come by them. To tell him they were given him is little better, for giving implies having; so here is property before his own, and it is the principle of property that you want to teach him. Moreover, giving is a convention, and the child as yet has no idea of conventions. I hope my reader will note, in this and many other cases, how people think they have taught children thoroughly, when they have only thrust on them words which have no intelligible meaning to them._

[¶289:] We must therefore go back to the origin of property, for that is where the first idea of it must begin. The child, living in the country, will have gotten some idea of field work; eyes and leisure suffice for that, and he will have both. In every age, and especially in childhood, we want to create, to copy, to produce, to give all the signs of power and activity. He will not have seen the gardener at work more than two times -- sowing, planting, and growing vegetables -- before he will want to garden himself.

[¶290:] According to the principles I have already laid down, I will not oppose his desire; on the contrary, I shall approve of his plan, share his taste, and work with him, not for his pleasure but my own; at least, so he thinks. I shall be his under-gardener, and dig the ground for him till his arms are strong enough to do it. He will take possession of it by planting a bean, and this is surely a more sacred possession, and one more worthy of respect, than that of Nuñes Balboa, who took possession of South America in the name of the King of Spain by planting his banner on the coast of the Southern Sea.

[¶291:] We come to water the beans every day, we watch them coming up with the greatest delight. I increase this delight by saying, Those belong to you. To explain what that word belong" means, I show him how he has given his time, his labour, and his trouble, his very self to it; that in this ground there is something of himself which he can claim against anyone else, just as he could withdraw his arm from the hand of another man who wanted to hold it against his will.

[¶292:] One fine day he hurries up with his watering-can in his hand. What a sad scene! All the beans are pulled up, the soil is dug over, you can scarcely find the place. Ah, what has become of my labour, my work, the beloved fruits of my care and sweat? Who has stolen my property? Who has taken my beans? The young heart revolts; the first feeling of injustice brings its sorrow and bitterness. Tears come in torrents; the devastated child fills the air with sobs and cries. I share his sorrow and anger; we look around us, we make inquiries. At last we discover that the gardener did it. We send for him.

[¶293:] But we are greatly mistaken. The gardener, hearing our complaint, begins to complain louder than we: What, gentlemen, was it you who wrecked my work? I had sown some Maltese melons; the seed was given me as something quite precious and which I meant to give you as a treat when they were ripe. But you have planted your miserable beans and destroyed my melons, which were coming up so nicely and which I cannot replace. You have done me an irreparable wrong, and you have deprived yourselves of the pleasure of eating some exquisite melons.

[¶294:] Jean Jacques: My poor Robert, you must forgive us. You had given your labour and your pains to it. I see we were wrong to spoil your work, but we will send to Malta for some more seed for you, and we will never dig the ground again without finding out if some one else has had his hand in it before us.

Robert: Well, gentlemen, you need not trouble yourselves, for there is no more fallow land. I dig what my father tilled. Every one does the same, and all the land you see has been occupied for a long time.

Emile: Mr. Robert, do people often lose the seed of Maltese melons?

Robert: No indeed sir; we do not often find little gentlemen as silly as you. No one touches the garden of his neighbor; every one respects other people's work so that his own may be safe.

Emile: But I don't have a garden.

Robert: What's that to me? If you spoil mine I won't let you walk around here, for you see I do not want to lose my work.

Jean Jacques: Could not we suggest an arrangement with this kind Robert? Let him give my young friend and myself a corner of his garden to cultivate, on condition that he has half the crop.

Robert: You may have it free. But remember I shall dig up your beans if you touch my melons.

[¶295:] In this attempt to show how a child may be taught certain primitive ideas we see how the idea of property goes back naturally to the right of the first occupant by means of labor. That is plain and simple, and quite within the child's grasp. From that to the rights of property and exchange there is but a step, after which you must stop short.

[¶296:] You also see that an explanation which I can give in a couple of pages in writing may take a year in practice, for in the course of moral ideas we cannot advance too slowly, nor plant each step too firmly. Young teachers, I ask you to think of this example and remember that in all things your lessons should be in actions rather than speeches. For children soon forget what they say or what is said to them, but not what they have done nor what has been done to them.

[¶297:] Such teaching should be given, as I have said, sooner or later, as the scholar's disposition, peaceful or stormy, requires it. The way of using it is unmistakable; but to omit no matter of importance in a difficult business let us take another example.

[¶298:] Your ill-tempered child destroys everything he touches. Do not get angry; put anything he can ruin out of his reach. He breaks the furniture he is using; do not be in a hurry to give him more; let him feel the lack of them. He breaks the windows of his room; let the wind blow upon him night and day, and do not be afraid of his catching cold; it is better to catch cold than to be crazy. Never complain of the inconvenience he causes you, but let him feel it first. At last you will have the windows mended without saying anything. He breaks them again. Then change your plan; tell him cooly and without anger, "The windows are mine, I took pains to have them put in, and I mean to keep them safe." Then you will shut him up in a dark place without a window. At this unexpected proceeding he cries and howls; no one hears him. Soon he gets tired and changes his tone; he complains and groans; a servant appears, the rebel begs to be let out. Without seeking any excuse for refusing, the servant merely says, "I, too, have windows to protect," and goes away. At last, when the child has been there several hours, long enough to get very tired of it, long enough to make an impression on his memory, some one suggests to him that he should offer to make terms with you, so that you may set him free and he will never break windows again. That is just what he wants. He will send and ask you to come and see him; you will come, he will suggest his plan, and you will agree to it at once, saying, "That is a very good idea; it will suit us both. Why didn't you think of it sooner?" Then without asking for any affirmation or confirmation of his promise, you will embrace him joyfully and take him back at once to his own room, considering this agreement as sacred as if he had confirmed it by a formal oath. What idea do you think he will form from these proceedings as to the fulfilment of a promise and its usefulness? If I am not greatly mistaken, there is not a child upon earth, unless he is spoiled already, who could resist this treatment, or one who would ever dream of breaking windows again on purpose. Follow out the whole train of thought. The naughty little fellow hardly thought when he was making a hole for his beans that he was digging a cell in which his own knowledge would soon enclose him._

[¶299:] Here we are in the moral world now the door to vice is open. Along with conventions and duties are born deceite and falsehood. As soon as we can do what we ought not to do, we try to hide what we ought not to have done. As soon as self-interest makes us give a promise, a greater self-interest may make us break it. It is only a question of doing it with impunity. The recourse is naturel: one hides and one lies. Having been unable to prevent vice, here we are already having to punish it. The sorrows of life begin with its mistakes.

[¶300:] I have already said enough to show that children should never receive punishment merely as punishment, but that it should always come as a natural consequence of their bad action. Thus you will not lecture them about their falsehood, you will not exactly punish them for lying, but you will arrange that all the ill effects of lying -- such as not being believed when they speak the truth, or being accused of a wrong that they have not committed despite protests of innocence -- shall fall on their heads when they have told a lie. But let us explain what lying means to the Child:

[¶301:] There are two kinds of lies. One concerns an accomplished fact, the other concerns a future duty. The first occurs when one denies having done that which one has done or when one asserts that one has done something that one has not done, or in general when one speaks knowingly against the truth of things. The other occurs when one makes a promise that one does not intend to fulfill, or, in general when one professes an intention that one does not really mean to carry out. These two kinds of lie are sometimes found in combination,_ but their differences are my present business.

[¶302:] He who feels the need of help from others, he who is constantly experiencing their kindness, has nothing to gain by deceiving them. On the contrary, he has a palpable interest that they should see things as they are, lest they should mistake his interests. It is therefore plain that lying with regard to actual facts is not natural to children. But lying is made necessary by the law of obedience: since obedience is disagreeable, children disobey as far as they can in secret, and the present good of avoiding punishment or reproof outweighs the more remote good of speaking the truth. Under a natural and free education why should your child lie? What has he to hide from you? You do not thwart him, you do not punish him, you demand nothing from him. Why should he not tell everything to you as naively as to his little friend? He cannot see anything more risky in the one course than in the other.

[¶303:] The lie concerning right is even less natural, since promises to do or refrain from doing are conventional acts which are outside the state of nature and detract from our liberty. Moreover, all promises made by children are in themselves void: given that their limited view can not extend beyond the present, when they pledge themselves they do not know what they are doing. A child can hardly lie when he makes a promise, for he is only thinking how he can get out of the present difficulty; any means which has not an immediate result is the same to him. When he promises for the future he promises nothing, and his imagination is as yet incapable of projecting himself into the future while he lives in the present. If he could escape a whipping or get a box of candy by promising to throw himself out of the window to-morrow, he would promise on the spot. This is why the law disregards all promises made by minors, and when fathers and more severe tutors insist that they fulfill them, it is only when the promise refers to something the child ought to do even if he had made no promise.

[¶304:] Since the child cannot know what he is doing when he promises, he thus cannot lie by promising. The case is not the same when he breaks his promise, which is a sort of retroactive lying. For he remembers very well having made the promise, but what he does not see is the importance of keeping it. Unable to look into the future, he cannot foresee the consequences of things, and when he breaks his promises he does nothing contrary to this stage of reasoning.

[¶305:] It follows from this that children's lies are entirely the work of their teachers, and to teach them to speak the truth is nothing less than to teach them the art of lying. In your haste to rule, control, and teach them, you never find sufficient means at your disposal. You wish to gain fresh influence over their minds by baseless maxims, by unreasonable precepts; and you would rather they knew their lessons and told lies than leave them ignorant and truthful.

[¶306:] For those of us who only give our pupils lessons in practice, who prefer to have them good rather than clever, we never demand the truth lest they should conceal it and never make them promise anything lest they should be tempted to break it. If some wrong has been done in my absence and I do not know who did it, I will take care not to accuse Emile nor to say, "Did you do it?"_ For in so doing what should I do but teach him to deny it? If his difficult temperament compels me to make some agreement with him, I will take good care that the suggestion always comes from him, never from me; that when he undertakes anything he has always a present and effective interest in fulfilling his promise; and if he ever fails this lie will bring down on him all the unpleasant consequences which he sees arising from the natural order of things and not from his tutor's vengeance. But far from having recourse to such cruel measures, I feel almost certain that Emile will not know for many years what it is to lie, and that when he does find out, he will be astonished and unable to understand what can be the use of it. It is quite clear that the less I make his welfare dependent on the will or the opinions of others, the less it will be in his interest to lie.

[¶307:] When we are in no hurry to teach there is no hurry to demand, and we can take our time so as to demand nothing except under fitting conditions. Then the child is training himself, in so far as he is not being spoiled. But when a fool of a tutor, who does not know how to set about his business, is always making his pupil promise first this and then that, without discrimination, choice, or proportion, the child is puzzled and overburdened with all these promises, and he neglects, forgets or even scorns them. Considering them as so many empty phrases he makes a game of making and breaking promises. If you wish to have him keep his promise faithfully, be moderate in your claims upon him.

[¶308:] The detailed treatment I have just given to lying may be applied in many respects to all the other duties imposed upon children, whereby these duties are made not only hateful but impracticable. In order to appear to be preaching virtue you make children love every vice. You instil these vices by forbidding them. Do you want to make children pious? You take them to church and make them bored. By making them ceacelessly mumble prayers you force them to wish for the pleasure of not praying to God. To teach them charity you make them give alms as if you scorned to give yourself. It is not the child but the tutor who should give. However much he loves his pupil he should vie with him for this honour; he should make him think that he is too young to deserve it. Alms-giving is the action of a man who can measure the worth of his gift and the needs of his fellow-men. The child, who knows nothing of these, can have no merit in giving; he gives without charity, without kindness. He is almost ashamed to give, for, to judge by your practice and his own, he thinks it is only children who give and that there is no need for charity when one is grown up.

[¶309:] Observe that the only things children are set to give are things that they do not know the value of, bits of metal carried in their pockets for which they have no further use. A child would rather give a hundred coins than one cake. But get this prodigal giver to distribute what is dear to him, his toys, his candy, his own lunch, and we shall soon see if you have made him really generous.

[¶310:] People try yet another way; they soon restore to the child what he gave away, so that he gets used to giving everything which he knows will come back to him. I have hardly ever seen generosity in children except of these two types -- giving what is of no use to them, or what they expect to get back again. Arrange things, says Locke, so that experience may convince them that the most generous giver gets the biggest share. That is to make the child superficially generous but really greedy. He adds that children will thus form the habit of liberality. Yes, a usurer's liberality, which gives an egg to get a cow. But when it is a question of real giving, good-bye to the habit; when they do not get things back, they will not give. It is the habit of the mind, not of the hands, that needs watching. All the other virtues taught to children are like this, and to preach these baseless virtues you waste their youth in sorrow. Isn't this an intelligent kind of education!

[¶311:] Teachers, get rid of these shams. Be good and kind; let your example sink into your pupils' memories until they are old enough to take it to heart. Rather than hasten to demand acts of charity from my pupil I prefer to perform such actions in his presence, even depriving him of the means of imitating me, as an honour beyond his years. For it is of the utmost importance that he should not regard a man's duties as merely those of a child. If when he sees me help the poor he asks me about it, and it is time to reply to his questions,_ I will say, "My friend, the rich only exist through the good will of the poor; so they have promised to feed those who have not enough to live on, either in goods or labour." "Then you promised to do this?" "Certainly; I am only master of the wealth that passes through my hands on the condition attached to its ownership."

[¶312:] After having heard this talk (and we have seen how a child may be brought to understand it) another than Emile would be tempted to imitate me and behave like a rich man. In such a case I should at least take care that it was done without ostentation. I would rather he robbed me of my privilege and hid himself in order to give. It is a fraud suitable to his age, and the only one I could forgive in him.

[¶313:] I know that all these imitative virtues are only the virtues of a monkey, and that a good action is only morally good when it is done as such and not because of others. But at an age when the heart does not yet feel anything, you must make children copy the actions you wish to grow into habits until they can do them with understanding and for the love of what is good. Man imitates, as do animals. The love of imitating is well regulated by nature; in society it becomes a vice. The monkey imitates man, whom he fears, and not the other animals, which he scorns. He thinks what is done by his betters must be good. Among ourselves, our harlequins imitate all that is good to degrade it and bring it into ridicule. Knowing their owners' baseness they try to equal what is better than they are, or they strive to imitate what they admire, and their bad taste appears in their choice of models. They would rather deceive others or win applause for their own talents than become wiser or better. Imitation has its roots in our desire to escape from ourselves. If I succeed in my undertaking, Emile will certainly have no such wish. So we must dispense with any seeming good that it might produce.

[¶314:] Examine your rules of education; you will find them all misconceived, especially in all that concerns virtue and morals. The only moral lesson which is suited to childhood and the most important at any age is never to harm anyone. The very rule of doing good, if not subordinated to this rule, is dangerous, false and contradictory. Who is there who does no good? Everyone does some good, the wicked as well as the righteous; he makes one happy at the cost of the misery of a hundred, and hence spring all our misfortunes. The most sublime virtues are negative. They are also the most difficult, for they are without ostentation and even beyond that pleasure so dear to the heart of man, the thought that some one is pleased with us. If there be a man who does no harm to his neighbours, what good must he have accomplished! What a bold heart, what a strong character he needs! It is not in talking about this maxim, but in trying to practise it, that we discover both its greatness and its difficulty._

[¶315:] This will give you some slight idea of the precautions I would have you take in giving children instruction which cannot always be refused without risk to themselves or others, or the far greater risk of the formation of bad habits, which would be difficult to correct later on. But be sure this necessity will not often arise with children who are properly brought up, for they cannot possibly become rebellious, spiteful, untruthful, or greedy, unless the seeds of these vices are sown in their hearts. What I have just said applies therefore rather to the exception than the rule. But these exceptions will be more frequent the more often children have the opportunity of leaving their proper condition and contracting the vices of men. Those who are brought up in the world must receive more precocious instruction than those who are brought up in seclusion. So this solitary education would be preferable, even if it did nothing more than give childhood time to ripen.

[¶316:] There is quite another class of exceptions: those so gifted by nature that they rise above the level of their age. As there are men who never get beyond infancy, so there are others who are never, so to speak, children; they are men almost from birth. The difficulty is that these cases are very rare, very difficult to distinguish, and that every mother who knows that a child may be a prodigy is convinced that her child is one. They go further; they mistake the common signs of growth for marks of exceptional talent. Liveliness, sharp sayings, romping, amusing simplicity -- these are the characteristic marks of this age and show that the child is only a child. Is it so strange that a child who is encouraged to chatter and allowed to say anything, who is restrained neither by consideration nor convention, should chance to say something clever? Were he never to hit the mark, his case would be stranger than that of the astrologer who, among a thousand errors, occasionally predicts the truth. "They lie so often," said Henry IV., "that at last they say what is true." If you want to say something clever, you have only to talk long enough. May God watch over those fashionable people who have no other claim to social distinction.

[¶317:] The finest thoughts may spring from a child's brain, or rather the best words may drop from his lips, just as diamonds of great worth may fall into his hands, while neither the thoughts nor the diamonds are his own. At this age neither can be really his. The child's sayings do not mean to him what they mean to us; the ideas he attaches to them are different. His ideas, if indeed he has any ideas at all, have neither order nor connection; there is nothing sure, nothing certain, in his thoughts. Examine your so-called prodigy. Now and again you will discover in him extreme activity of mind and extraordinary clearness of thought. More often this same mind will seem slack and spiritless, as if wrapped in mist. Sometimes he goes before you, sometimes he will not stir. One moment you would call him a genius, another a fool. You would be mistaken in both; he is a child, an eaglet who soars aloft for a moment, only to drop back into the nest.

[¶318:] Treat him, therefore, according to his age, in spite of appearances, and beware of exhausting his strength by over-much exercise. If the young brain grows warm and begins to bubble, let it work freely, but do not heat it any further lest it lose its goodness. And when the first gases have been given off, collect and compress the rest so that in after years they may turn to life-giving heat and real energy. If not, your time and your pains will be wasted, you will destroy your own work, and after foolishly intoxicating yourself with these heady fumes, you will have nothing left but an insipid and worthless wine.

[¶319:] Silly children grow into ordinary men. I know no generalisation more certain than this. It is the most difficult thing in the world to distinguish in childhood between genuine stupidity, and that apparent and mistaken stupidity which is the sign of a strong character. At first sight it seems strange that the two extremes should have the same outward signs; and yet it may well be so, for at an age when man has as yet no true ideas, the whole difference between the one who has genius and the one who doesn't consists in this: the latter only take in false ideas, while the former, finding nothing but false ideas, receives no ideas at all. In this he resembles the fool: the one is fit for nothing, the other finds nothing fit for him. The only way of distinguishing between them depends upon chance, which may offer the genius some idea which he can understand while the fool is always the same. As a child, the young Cato was taken for an idiot by his parents. He was obstinate and silent, and that was all they perceived in him. It was only in Sulla's ante-chamber that his uncle discovered what was in him. Had he never found his way there he might have passed for a fool till he reached the age of reason. Had Caeser never lived, perhaps this same Cato, who discerned his fatal genius and foretold his great schemes, would have passed for a dreamer all his days. Those who judge children hastily are so apt to be mistaken! They are often more childish than the child himself. I knew a middle-aged man,_ whose friendship I esteemed an honour, who was reckoned a fool by his family. All at once he made his name as a philosopher, and I have no doubt posterity will give him a high place among the greatest thinkers and the profoundest metaphysicians of his century.

[¶320:] Respect childhood, and do not be in any hurry to judge it for good or ill. Leave exceptional cases to show themselves, prove themselves, and be confirmed, before adopting special methods for them. Let nature act for a long time before intervening to act in its place, lest you upset its operations. You say that you know the value of time and are afraid to waste it. You fail to perceive that it is a greater waste of time to use it badly than to do nothing, and that a child badly taught is further from wisdom than a child who has been taught nothing at all. You are alarmed to see him spending his early years doing nothing. What! is it nothing to be happy, nothing to run and jump all day? He will never be so busy again in his whole life. Plato in his republic, which is considered to be so austere, teaches the children only through festivals, games, songs and amusements. It seems as if he had accomplished his purpose when he had taught them to be happy. And Seneca, speaking of the Roman youth in ancient times, says: "They were always on their feet, they were never taught anything which kept them sitting." Were they any the worse for it in manhood? Do not be afraid therefore, of this so-called idleness. What would you think of a man who refused to sleep for fear he should waste part of his life? You would say, this man is crazy; he is not enjoying his life, he is robbing himself of part of it; to flee sleep he is hurrying towards death. Remember that this is the same thing, and that childhood is the sleep of reason.

[¶321:] The apparent ease with which children learn is their ruin. You fail to see that this very facility proves that they are not learning Their shining, polished brain reflects like a mirror the things you show them, but nothing stays there, nothing penetrates. The child remembers the words, and the ideas are reflected back. Those who hear him understand them; he alone understands nothing.

[¶322:] Although memory and reason are wholly different faculties, the one does not really develop apart from the other. Before the age of reason the child receives images not ideas; and there is this difference between them: images are merely the pictures of external objects, while ideas are notions about those objects determined by their relations. An image when it is recalled may exist by itself in the mind, but every idea implies other ideas. When one imagines one merely sees; when one reasons one compares. Our sensations are purely passive, whereas all our perceptions or ideas spring from an active principle which judges. The proof of this will be given later.

[¶323:] I maintain, therefore, that since children are incapable of judging, they have no true memory. They retain sounds, forms, sensations, but rarely ideas, and still more rarely their connections. You tell me they acquire some rudiments of geometry, and you think you prove your case. Not so, it is mine you prove. You show that far from being able to reason themselves, children are unable to retain the reasoning of others. For if you follow the method of these little geometricians you will see they only retain the exact impression of the figure and the terms of the demonstration. They cannot meet the slightest new objection. If the figure is reversed they can do nothing. All their knowledge is on the sensation-level, nothing has penetrated to their understanding. Their memory is little better than their other powers, for they always have to learn over again, when they are grown up, what they learnt as children.

[¶324:] I am far from thinking, however, that children have no sort of reason._ On the contrary, I think they reason very well with regard to things that affect their actual and sensible well-being. But people are mistaken as to the extent of their information, and they attribute to them knowledge they do not possess, and make them reason about things they cannot understand. Another mistake is to try to turn their attention to matters which do not concern them in the least, such as their future interest, their happiness when they are grown up, the opinion people will have of them when they are men -- terms which are absolutely meaningless when addressed to creatures who are entirely without foresight. But all the forced studies of these poor little things are directed towards matters utterly remote from their minds. You may judge how much attention they can give to them.

[¶325:] The pedagogues who make a great display of the teaching they give their pupils are paid to say just the opposite; yet their actions show that they think just as I do. For what do they teach? Words, more words, and still more words. Among the various sciences they boast of teaching their scholars, they take good care never to choose those which might be really useful to them. For then they would be compelled to deal with the science of things and would fail utterly. The sciences they choose are those we seem to know when we know their technical terms -- heraldry, geography, chronology, languages, etc. -- studies so remote from man, and even more remote from the child, that it is a wonder if he can ever make any use of any part of them.

[¶326:] You will be surprised to find that I reckon the study of languages among the number of useless forms of education; but you must remember that I am speaking of the studies of the earliest years, and whatever you may say, I do not believe any child under twelve or fifteen ever really acquired two languages.

[¶327:] I agree that if the study of languages were only the study of words, that is to say of figures or sounds which express them, this study could be suitable to children. But by changing the signs, languages also modify the ideas which the signs express. Minds are formed by language, thoughts take their colour from idioms; reason alone is common to all. The spirit in each language has its own particular form, a difference which may be partly cause and partly effect of differences in national character. What can confirm this conjecture is that in every nation in the world language follows the vississitudes of manners and is preserved or altered along with them.

[¶328:] Of these diverse forms, usage gives one to the child, and it is the one that he will keep till the age of reason. To acquire two languages he must be able to compare their ideas, and how can he compare them when he is barely in a condition to understand them? Each thing can have for him a thousand different signs, but each idea can only have one form, so he can only learn one language. You assure me he learns several languages; I deny it. I have seen those little prodigies who are supposed to speak half a dozen languages. I have heard them speak first in German, then in Latin, French, or Italian. True, they used half a dozen different vocabularies, but they always spoke German. In a word, you may give children as many synonyms as you like; you will change the words, not the language. They will never have but one language.

[¶329:] To conceal their deficiencies teachers choose the dead languages in which we have no longer any judges whose authority is beyond dispute. The familiar use of these tongues disappeared long ago so they are content to imitate what they find in books, and they call that talking. If the master's Greek and Latin is such poor stuff what about the children? They have scarcely learnt the rudiments by heart, without understanding a word of it, when they are set to translate a French speech into Latin words; then when they are more advanced they piece together a few phrases of Cicero for prose or a few lines of Vergil for verse. Then they think they can speak Latin, and who will contradict them?

[¶330:] In any study whatsoever, without the idea of the things represented the representing signs are nothing. Yet one always limits the child to these signs without ever being able to make him understand any of the things that they represent. In thinking to make him understand the description of the earth, you only teach him to be acquainted with maps: he is taught the names of towns, countries, rivers, which have no existence for him except on the paper before him. I remember seeing a geography somewhere which began with: "What is the world? "-- "A sphere of cardboard." That is precisely the child's geography. I maintain that after two years' work with the globe and cosmography, there is not a single ten-year-old child who could find his way from Paris to Saint-Denis by the help of the rules he has learnt. I maintain that not one of these children could find his way by the map around the paths on his father's estate without getting lost. These are the young doctors who can tell us the position of Peking, Ispahan, Mexico, and every country in the world.

[¶331:] You tell me the child must be employed on studies which only need eyes. That may be; but if there are any such studies, they are unknown to me.

[¶332:] By a still more ridiculous error one makes them study history. People consider history to be within their grasp because it is merely a collection of facts. But what is meant by this word "fact"? Do you think the relations which determine the facts of history are so easy to grasp that the corresponding ideas are easily developed in the child's mind? Do you think that a real knowledge of events can exist apart from the knowledge of their causes, the knowledge of their effects, and that history has so little relation to morals that we can know the one without the other? If you see in the actions of men only exterior and purely physical movements, what do you learn from history? Absolutely nothing, and this study, stripped of everything interesting, gives you neither pleasure nor instruction. If you want to judge actions by their moral bearings, try to make these moral bearings intelligible to your pupils. You will soon find out if they are old enough to learn history.

[¶333:] Readers, remember that he who speaks to you is neither a scholar nor a philosopher, but a simple man and a [[Notes:Jjr_em_para333_note1|lover of truth; a man who is pledged to no one party or system, a solitary being who lives little with other men, has less opportunity of imbibing their prejudices and more time to reflect on the things that strike him when he does interact with them. My arguments are based less on principles than on facts, and I think I can find no better way to bring the facts home to you than by quoting continually some example from the observations which are suggested my arguments.

[¶334:] I had gone to spend a few days in the country with a worthy mother of a family who took great pains with her children and their education. One morning I was present while the oldest boy had his lessons. His tutor, who had instructed him at length about ancient history, began upon the story of Alexander and came to the well-known anecdote of Philip the Doctor. There is a picture of it, and the story is well worth study. The tutor, worthy man, made several reflections which I did not like with regard to Alexander's courage, but I did not argue with him lest I should lower him in the eyes of his pupil. At dinner they did not fail to set the little fellow talking, as the French tend to do. The liveliness of a child of his age and the confident expectation of applause made him say a number of silly things, and among them from time to time there were things to the point, and these made people forget the rest. At last came the story of Philip the Doctor. He told it very distinctly and charmingly. After the usual tribute of praise demanded by his mother and expected by the child himself, they discussed what he had said. Most of them blamed Alexander's rashness; some of them, following the tutor's example, praised his resolution, which showed me that none of those present really saw the beauty of the story. For my own part, I said, if there was any courage or any steadfastness at all in Alexander's conduct I think it was only a piece of bravado. Then every one agreed that it was a piece of bravado. I was getting angry, and would have replied, when a lady sitting beside me, who had not hitherto spoken, bent towards me and whispered in my ear. Jean Jacques, she said, say no more, they will never understand you. I looked at her, I recognised the wisdom of her advice, and I held my tongue.

[¶335:] Several things made me suspect that our young professor had not in the least understood the story he told so charmingly. After dinner I took his hand in mine and we went for a walk in the park. When I had questioned him quietly, I discovered that he admired the vaunted courage of Alexander more than any one. But in what do you suppose he thought this courage consisted? Merely in swallowing a disagreeable drink in a single gulp without hesitation and without any signs of dislike. Only two weeks before the poor child had been made to take some medicine which he could hardly swallow, and the taste of it was still in his mouth. Death and poisoning were for him only disagreeable sensations, and senna was his only idea of poison. I must admit, however, that Alexander's resolution had made a great impression on his young mind, and he was determined that next time he had to take medicine he would be an Alexander. Without entering upon explanations which were clearly beyond his grasp, I confirmed him in his praiseworthy intention, and returned home smiling to myself over the great wisdom of parents and teachers who expect to teach history to children.

[¶336:] Such words as king, emperor, war, conquest, law, and revolution are easily put into their mouths; but when it is a question of attaching clear ideas to these words the explanations are very different from our talk with Robert the gardener.

[¶337:] I feel sure some readers dissatisfied with that "Say no more, Jean Jacques," will ask what I really saw to admire in the conduct of Alexander. Poor people! if you need telling, how can you comprehend it? It is that Alexander believed in virtue, it is that he staked his head on it, his own life on it; it is that his great soul was made to hold such a faith. To swallow that medecine was to make a noble profession of the faith that was in him. Never did mortal man recite a finer creed. If there is an Alexander in our own days, show me such deeds.

[¶338:] If children have no knowledge of words, there is no study that is suitable for them. If they have no real ideas they have no real memory, for I do not call that a memory which only recalls sensations. What is the use of inscribing on their brains a catalogue of signs which mean nothing to them? By learning things, won't they learn the signs? Why give them the useless trouble of learning them twice over? And yet what dangerous prejudices are you implanting when you teach them to accept as knowledge words which have no meaning for them? The first meaningless phrase, the first thing taken for granted on the word of another person without seeing its use for himself, is the beginning of the ruin of the child's judgment. He may dazzle the eyes of fools long enough before he recovers from such a loss._

[¶339:] No, if nature has given the child's brain the suppleness which enables him to receive every kind of impression, it was not that you should imprint on it the names and dates of kings, the jargon of heraldry, the globe and geography -- all those words without any sense for his age and without any use for any age, only to overwhelm his sad and empty childhood. Rather it is in order that all the ideas that he can conceive of and which are useful to him, all those that relate to his happiness and could one day enlighten him about his duties, can be traced on it early in indelible characters and enable him to conduct himself during his life in a manner suitable to his being and his powers.

[¶340:] Without the study of books, such a memory as the child may possess is not left idle. All that he sees and hears makes an impression on him, and he remembers it. He keeps a record in himself of the actions and discourses of men; and everything that surrounds him is the book from which, without thinking about it, he continually enriches his memory while waiting until his judgment is able to profit by it. It is in the choice of these objects, the care of presenting ceaselessly those that he can know and of hiding from him those that he ought to ignore that constitutes the true art of cultivating in him this first faculty; and it is through it that one must try to form for him a store of knowledge that will serve his education throughout his youth and his conduct at all times. It is true that this method does not produce infant prodigies, nor will it make their tutors and governesses famous, but it forms men who are judicieux, robust, healthy both in body and understanding, who without making themselves admired while young will make themselves honored when grown.

[¶341:] Emile will never learn anything by heart, not even fables, not even the fables of La Fontaine, as naive and charming as they are. For the words of fables are no more fables than the words of history are history. How can people be so blind as to call fables the child's system of ethics, without considering that the child is not only amused by the moral but misled by it? He is attracted by what is false and he misses the truth, and the means adopted to make the teaching pleasant prevent him from profiting by it. Men may be taught by fables; children require the naked truth. As soon as one covers truth with a veil, they no longer take the trouble to lift it.

[¶342:] All children learn La Fontaine's fables, but not one of them understands them. It is just as well that they do not understand, for the morality of the fables is so mixed and so unsuitable for their age that it would be more likely to incline them to vice than to virtue. "More paradoxes!" you cry. That may be; but let us see if there is not some truth in them.

[¶343:] I maintain that the child does not understand the fables he is taught. For no matter how much effort you take to make them simple, the teaching you wish to extract from them demands ideas which he cannot grasp; meanwhile the poetical form which makes it easier to remember makes it harder to understand, so that clearness is sacrificed to facility. Without quoting the multitude of wholly unintelligible and useless fables which are taught to children because they happen to be in the same book as the others, let us keep to those which the author seems to have written specially for children.

[¶344:] In the whole of La Fontaine's works I only know five or six fables conspicuous for child-like simplicity. I will take the first of these as an example, for it is one whose moral is most suitable for all ages, one which children get hold of with the least difficulty, which they have most pleasure in learning, one which for this very reason the author has placed at the beginning of his book. If his object were really to delight and instruct children, this fable is his masterpiece. Let us go through it and examine it briefly.

THE CROW AND THE FOX A FABLE

[¶345:] Maître corbeau, sur un arbre perché (Mr. Crow perched on a tree).

"Mr.!" what does that word really mean? What does it mean before a proper noun? What is its meaning here?

What is a crow?

What is "un arbre perché"? We do not say "on a tree perched," but "perched on a tree." So we must speak of poetical inversions, we must distinguish between prose and verse.

[¶346:] Tenait dans son bec un fromage (Held a cheese in his beak).

What sort of a cheese? Swiss, Brie, or Dutch? If the child has never seen crows, what is the good of talking about them? If he has seen crows will he believe that they can hold a cheese in their beak? Your illustrations should always be taken from nature.

[¶347:] Maître renard, par l'odeur alléché (Mr. Fox, attracted by the smell).

Another Master! But the title suits the fox, who is master of all the tricks of his trade. You must explain what a fox is, and distinguish between the real fox and the conventional fox of the fables.

Alléché. The word is obsolete; you will have to explain it. You will say it is only used in verse. Perhaps the child will ask why people talk differently in verse. How will you answer that question?

Alléché par l'odeur d'un fromage. The cheese was held in his beak by a crow perched on a tree; it must indeed have smelt strong if the fox, in his thicket or his earth, could smell it. This is the way you train your pupil in that spirit of right judgment, which rejects all but reasonable arguments, and is able to distinguish between truth and falsehood in other tales.

[¶348:] Lui tient à peu près ce langage (Spoke to him after this fashion).

Ce langage. So foxes talk, do they! They talk like crows! Mind what you are about, oh, wise tutor; weigh your answer before you give it, it is more important than you suspect.

[¶349:] Eh! Bonjour, Monsieur le Corbeau ("Good-day, Mr. Crow!")

Mr.! The child sees this title laughed to scorn before he knows it is a title of honour. Those who say "Monsieur du Corbeau" will find their work cut out for them to explain that "du."

[¶350:] Que vous êtes joli! Que vous me semblez beau! ("How handsome you are, how beautiful you seem!")

Mere padding. The child, finding the same thing repeated twice over in different words, is learning to speak carelessly. If you say this redundance is a device of the author, a part of the fox's scheme to make his praise seem all the greater by his flow of words, that is a valid excuse for me, but not for my pupil.

[¶351:] Sans mentir, Si votre ramage ("Without lying, if your song").

"Without lying." So people do tell lies sometimes. What will the child think of you if you tell him the fox only says "Sans mentir" because he is lying?

[¶352:] Repondait à votre plumage ("Answered to your fine feathers").

"Answered!" What does that mean? Try to make the child compare qualities so different as those of song and plumage; you will see how much he understands.

[¶353:] Vous seriez le phénix des hôtes de ces bois! ("You would be the phoenix of all the inhabitants of this wood!")

"The phoenix!" What is a phoenix? All of a sudden we are floundering in the lies of antiquity -- we are on the edge of mythology.

"The inhabitants of this wood." What figurative language! The flatterer adopts the grand style to add dignity to his speech, to make it more attractive. Will the child understand this cunning? Does he know, how could he possibly know, what is meant by grand style and simple style?

[¶354:] A ces mots le corbeau ne se sent pas de joie (At these words, the. crow is beside himself with delight).

To realise the full force of this proverbial expression we must have experienced very strong feeling.

[¶355:] Et, pour montrer sa belle voix (And, to show off his fine voice).

Remember that the child, to understand this line and the whole fable, must know what is meant by the crow's fine voice.

[¶356:] Il ouvre un large bec, laisse tomber sa proie (He opens his wide beak and drops his prey).

This is a splendid line; its very sound suggests a picture. I see the great big ugly gaping beak, I hear the cheese crashing through the branches; but this kind of beauty is thrown away upon children.

[¶357:] Le renard s'en saisit, et dit, 'Mon bon monsieur' (The fox catches it, and says, "My dear sir").

So kindness is already folly. You certainly waste no time in teaching your children.

[¶358:] Apprenez que tout flatteur ("You must learn that every flatterer").

A general maxim. The child can make neither head nor tail of it.

[¶359:] Vit aux dépens de celul qui l'écoute ("Lives at the expense of the person who listens to his flattery").

No child of ten ever understood that.

[¶360:] Cette leçon vaut bien un fromage, sans doute ("No doubt this lesson is well worth a cheese").

This is intelligible and its meaning is very good. Yet there are few children who could compare a cheese and a lesson, few who would not prefer the cheese. You will therefore have to make them understand that this is said in mockery. What subtlety for a child!

[¶361:] Le corbeau, honteux et confus (The crow, ashamed and confused).

Another pleonasm, and there is no excuse for it this time.

[¶362:] Jura, mais un peu tard, qu'on ne l'y prendrait plus (Swore, but rather too late, that he would not be caught in that way again).

"Swore." What master will be such a fool as to try to explain to a child the meaning of an oath?

[¶363:] Here are alot of details but much fewer than would be needed for the analysis of all the ideas in this fable and their reduction to the simple and elementary ideas of which each is composed. But who thinks this analysis necessary to make himself intelligible to children? Who of us is philosopher enough to be able to put himself in the child's place? Let us now proceed to the moral.

[¶364:] I ask if we should teach children of six years old that there are people who flatter and lie for their own profit. One might perhaps teach them that there are people who make fools of little boys and laugh at their foolish vanity behind their backs. But the whole thing is spoilt by the cheese. You are teaching them how to make another drop his cheese rather than how to keep their own. This is my second paradox, and it is not less important than the former one.

[¶365:] Watch children learning their fables and you will see that when they have a chance of applying them they almost always use them exactly contrary to the author's meaning. Instead of being on their guard against the fault which you would prevent or cure, they are inclined to like the vice by which one takes advantage of another's defects. In the above fable children laugh at the crow, but they all feel affection for the fox. In the next fable you expect them to follow the example of the grasshopper. Not so, they will choose the ant. No one likes to be humiliated; they will always choose the principal part -- this is the choice of amour propre, a very natural choice. But what a horrible lesson for childhood! The most odious of monsters would be a stingy and hard child who realised what he was asked to give and what he refused. The ant does more; she teaches him to be mocking in his refusals.

[¶366:] In all the fables where the lion plays a part, usually the chief part, the child pretends to be the lion, and when he has to preside over some distribution of good things, he takes care to keep everything for himself. But when the lion is overthrown by the gnat, the child is the gnat. He learns how to sting to death those whom he dare not attack openly.

[¶367:] From the fable of the sleek dog and the starving wolf he learns a lesson of licence rather than the lesson of moderation which you profess to teach him. I shall never forget seeing a little girl weeping bitterly over this tale, which had been told her as a lesson in obedience. The poor child hated to be chained up; she felt the chain chafing her neck; she was crying because she was not a wolf.

[¶368:] So from the first of these fables the child learns the basest flattery; from the second, cruelty; from the third, injustice; from the fourth, satire; from the fifth, insubordination. The last of these lessons is no more suitable for your pupils than for mine, though he has no use for it. When you give them precepts that contradict each other, what fruit do you hope to get from your efforts? But perhaps the same system of morals which furnishes me with objections against the fables supplies you with as many reasons for keeping to them. Society requires a morality of words and of actions, and these two moralities do not resemble each other at all. The former is contained in the Catechism and it is left there; the other is contained in La Fontaine's fables for children and his tales for mothers. The same author does for both.

[¶369:] Let us make a bargain, M. de la Fontaine. For my own part, I undertake to make your books my favourite study; I undertake to love you, and to learn from your fables, for I hope I shall not mistake their meaning. As to my pupil, permit me to prevent him studying any one of them till you have convinced me that it is good for him to learn things three-fourths of which are unintelligible to him, and until you can convince me that in those fables he can understand he will never be misled and imitate the villain instead of taking warning from his dupe.

[¶370:] When I thus get rid of children's lessons, I get rid of the chief cause of their sorrows, namely their books. Reading is the curse of childhood, yet it is almost the only occupation you can find for children. Emile, at twelve years old, will hardly know what a book is. But, you say, he must at least, know how to read. I agree; he must know how to read when reding becomes useful to him. But until then it is only a way of boring him.

[¶371:] If children are not to be required to do anything as a matter of obedience, it follows that they will only learn what they perceive to be of real and present value, either for use or enjoyment. What other motive could they have for learning? The art of speaking to people who are absent and being able to hear them, the art of communicating, at a distance and without a mediator, our sentiments, our wills, our desires -- this is an art whose usefulness can be made plain at any age. How is it that this art, so useful and pleasant in itself, has become a torment for childhood? Because the child is compelled to acquire it against his will, and to use it for purposes beyond his comprehension. A child has no great curiosity to perfect the instrument of his torture; but make this instrument serve his pleasures and soon he will apply himself inspite of you.

[¶372:] People make a great fuss about discovering the best way to teach children to read. They invent "bureaux"_ and cards, they turn the nursery into a printer's shop. Locke would have them taught to read by means of dice. Is not that a well-found invention. What a pity! A means more sure than all of those and which one will never forget is simply the desire to learn. Give the child this desire, and you can forget your "bureaux" and your dice -- any method will will be good for him.

[¶373:] Present interest, that is the great motive, the only one that leads us safely and far. Sometimes Emile receives notes of invitation from his father or mother, his relations or friends; he is invited to a dinner, a walk, a boating expedition, to see some public festival. These notes are short, clear, plain, and well written. Some one must read them to him, and he cannot always find someone when he wants; no more consideration is shown to him than he himself showed to you yesterday. Time passes, the chance is lost. The note is read to him at last, but it is too late. Oh! if only he had known how to read! He receives other notes; they are so short! The subject is so interesting! He would like to try to read them. Sometimes he gets help, sometimes none. He does his best, and at last he makes out half the note; it is something about going tomorrow to have some cream. He doesn't know where or with whom . . . what efforts he makes to read the rest! I do not think Emile will need a "bureau." Shall I proceed to the teaching of writing? No, I am ashamed to toy with these trifles in a treatise on education.

[¶374:] I will just add a few words which contain a principle of great importance. It is this--What we are in no hurry to get is usually obtained with speed and certainty. I am almost certain Emile will learn to read and write before he is ten, just because I care very little whether he can do so before he is fifteen. But I would rather he never learnt to read at all than that this science should be acquired at the price of all that makes reading useful. What is the use of reading to him if he always hates it? Notes:Jjr_em_para374_note1, ne studia, qui amare nondum potest, oderit, et amaritudinem semel perceptam etiam ultra rudes annos reformidet.-- Quintil.

[¶375:] The more I urge my method of letting well alone, the more objections I perceive against it. If your pupil learns nothing from you, he will learn from others. If you do not prevent error with truth he will learn lies; the prejudices you fear to teach him he will acquire from those about him, they will find their way through every one of his senses; they will either corrupt his reason before it is fully formed or his mind will become torpid through inaction and will become engrossed in material things. If we do not form the habit of thinking as children we shall lose the power of thinking for the rest of our life.

[¶376:] It seems to me that I could easily answer to all of that; but why should I answer every objection? If my method itself answers your objections, it is good; if not, it is worth nothing. I continue.

[¶377:] If, in accordance with the plan I have sketched, you follow rules which are just the opposite of the established ones; if instead of taking the spirit of your pupil far away; if, instead of wandering with him in other places, in other climates, in other centuries, to the ends of the earth and to the very heavens themselves, you try to keep him always in himself and attentive to what touches him immediately; then you will find him capable of perception, of memory, and even of reasoning. That is the order of nature. As the sentient being becomes active he acquires a discernment proportional to his strength. It is only when his strength exceeds that which he has need of for his own preservation that he will develop the speculative faculty that enables him to use this superfluous strength for other purposes. If you want to cultivate your pupil's intelligence, cultivate the strength it is meant to control. Give his body constant exercise, make it strong and healthy, in order to make him wise and reasonable; let him work, let him do things, let him run and shout, let him be always on the go; make a man of him in strength, and he will soon be a man in reason.

[¶378:] Of course by this method you will make him stupid if you are always directing him, always saying come here, go there, stop, do this, don't do that. If your head always guides his hands, his own will become useless. But remember our agreements; if you are a mere pedant it is not worth your while to read my book.

[¶379:] It is a pitiful error to imagine that bodily activity hinders the working of the mind, as if these two kinds of activity ought not to advance hand in hand, and as if the one were not intended to act as guide to the other.

[¶380:] There are two classes of men who are constantly engaged in bodily activity, peasants and savages, and certainly neither of these pays the least attention to the cultivation of the mind. Peasants are rough, coarse, and clumsy; savages are noted not only for their keen senses, but for great subtility of mind. Speaking generally, there is nothing duller than a peasant or sharper than a savage. What is the cause of this difference? The peasant has always done as he was told, what his father did before him, what he himself has always done; he is the creature of habit, he spends his life almost like an automaton on the same tasks; habit and obedience have taken the place of reason.

[¶381:] The case of the savage is very different. He is tied to no one place, he has no prescribed task, no superior to obey, he knows no law but his own will; he is therefore forced to reason at every step he takes. He can neither move nor walk without considering the consequences. Thus the more his body is exercised, the more alert is his mind; his strength and his reason increase together, and each helps to develop the other.

[¶382:] Learned tutor, let us see which of our two pupils is most like the savage and which is most like the peasant. Your pupil is subject to a power which is continually giving him instruction. He acts only at the word of command: he does not dare to eat when he is hungry nor laugh when he is happy nor weep when he is sad nor offer one hand rather than the other nor stir a foot unless he is told to do it. Before long he will not dare to breathe without orders. What should he think about, since you do all the thinking for him? He rests securely on your foresight; why should he have any for himself? He knows that you are charged with his preservation, with his welfare, and he feels himself freed from such concerns. His judgment relies on yours. Everything that you have not forbidden him he does without reflection, knowing well that he runs no risk. Why should he learn the signs of rain? He knows you watch the clouds for him. Why should he time his walk? He knows there is no fear of your letting him miss his dinner hour. As long as you do not forbid him to eat, he will eat; when you forbid him, he will not eat any more. He does not listen to the claims of his own stomach but of yours. You vainly try to soften his body through inactivity, but his understanding does not become more supple. Far from it: you complete your task of discrediting reason in his eyes by making him use such reasoning power as he does have on the things which seem most useless to him. Since he never finds what reason is good for, he decides at last that it is good for nothing. If he reasons badly he will be found fault with; nothing worse will happen to him; and he has been found fault with so often that he pays no attention to it. Such a common danger no longer alarms him.

[¶383:] Yet you will find he has a mind. He is quick enough to chatter with the women in the way I spoke of further back; but if he is in danger, if he must come to a decision in difficult circumstances, you will find him a hundredfold more stupid and silly than the son of the roughest labourer.

[¶384:] As for my pupil, or rather Nature's pupil, he has been trained from the outset to be as self-reliant as possible. He has not formed the habit of constantly seeking help from others, still less of displaying his learning. On the other hand, he judges, he predicts, he reasons about everything that relates immediately to himself. He does not chatter, he acts. Not a word does he know of what is going on in the world at large, but he knows very thoroughly what affects himself. Since he is always in motion he is compelled to notice many things, to recognise many effects. He soon acquires a good deal of experience. He takes his lessons from nature and not from men, and he instructs himself all the better because he nowhere sees any intention to instruct him. Thus his body and his mind work together. Acting on the basis of his own thinking and not on that of others he continually unites two operations: the more he makes himself strong and robust the more he becomes sensible and judicious. This is the way to attain one day what is generally considered incompatible and which most great men have achieved -- strength of body and strength of mind, the reason of a wise man and the vigour of an athlete.

[¶385:] Young teacher, I am preaching a difficult art, which is to control without precepts and to do everything without doing anything at all. This art is, I agree, beyond your years, it is not calculated to display your talents nor to make your value known to fathers; but it is the way to succeed. You will never arrive at making wise men if you do not first make little rascals. This was the education of the Spartans; they were not taught to stick to their books, they were set to steal their dinners. Were they any the worse for it in after life? Ever ready for victory, they crushed their foes in every kind of warfare, and the boastful Athenians were as much afraid of their words as of their blows.

[¶386:] In the most elaborate educations the teacher issues his orders and thinks himself master, but it is the child who is really master. He uses the tasks you set him to obtain what he wants from you, and he can always make you pay for an hour's hard work by a week's compliance. At each instant one must bargain with him. These bargains that you propose in your way and that he carries out in his, always follow the direction of his own fantasies, especially when you are foolish enough to make as the condition some advantage he is almost sure to obtain whether he fulfils his part of the bargain or not. The child is usually much quicker to read the master's thoughts than the master to read the child's feelings. And that is as it should be, for all the sagacity which the child would have devoted to self-preservation, had he been left to himself, is now devoted to the rescue of his nautral liberty from the chains of his tyrant. On the other hand the latter, who has no such pressing need to understand the child, sometimes finds that it pays him better to leave him in idleness or vanity.

[¶387:] Take the opposite course with your pupil; let him always think he is master while you are really master. There is no subjection so perfect as that which keeps the appearance of liberty; one captures thus the will itself. Is not this poor child, without knowledge, strength, or wisdom, entirely at your mercy? Are you not in charge of his whole environment as far as it affects him? Cannot you make it effect him as you please? His work and play, his pleasures, his pains, are they not in your hands without him knowing it? Without doubt he ought only to do what he wants, but he ought to want to do only what you want him to do. He should never take a step you have not foreseen; he should never open his mouth without your knowing what he is going to say.

[¶388:] Thus he can devote himself to the bodily exercises adapted to his age without brutalising his mind. Instead of developing his cunning to evade an unwelcome control, you will then find him entirely occupied in getting the best he can out of his environment with a view to his present welfare, and you will be surprised by the subtlety of the means he devises to get for himself such things as he can obtain, and to really enjoy things without the help of opinion.

[¶389:] By leaving him thus the master of his will you are not fomenting his whims. When he only does what he wants, he will soon only do what he ought, and although his body is constantly in motion, so far as his sensible and present interests are concerned, you will find him developing all the reason of which he is capable, far better and in a manner much better fitted for him than in purely theoretical studies.

[¶390:] Thus when he does not find you continually thwarting him, when he no longer distrusts you, no longer has anything to conceal from you, he will neither tell you lies nor deceive you. He will show himself as he really is without fear, and you can study him at your ease, and surround him with all the lessons you would have him learn without him ever thinking that he is receiving any.

[¶391:] Neither will he keep a curious and jealous eye on your own conduct, nor take a secret delight in catching you at fault. This inconvenience, which we foresee, is very great. One of the child's first objects is, as I have said, to find the weak spots in those who control them. Though this leads to naughtiness, it does not arise from it but from the desire to evade a disagreeable control. Overburdened by the yoke laid upon him, he tries to shake it off; and the faults he finds in his master give him a good opportunity for this. Still the habit of spying out faults and delighting in them grows upon people. It is clear that this is one more source of vice that has been closed off in Emile's heart. Having nothing to gain from my faults, he will not be looking out for them, nor will he be tempted to look for the faults of others.

[¶392:] All these methods seem difficult because they are new to us, but they ought not to be really difficult. I have a right to assume that you have the knowledge required for the business you have chosen, that you know the usual course of development of the human thought, that you can study mankind and man, that you know beforehand the effect on your pupil's will of the various objects suited to his age which you put before him. Now, to have the instruments and the knowledge of how to use them, doesn't this mean being the master of the operation?

[¶393:] You speak of childish whim; you are mistaken. Children's whims are never the work of nature, but of bad discipline; they have either obeyed or commanded, and I have said a hundred times, they must do neither. Your pupil will only have the whims you have taught him; it is fair that you should bear the punishment of your own faults. But, you ask, how can I cure them? That may still be done by better conduct on your own part and great patience.

[¶394:] I once undertook the charge of a child for a few weeks. He was accustomed not only to have his own way, but to make every one else do as he pleased. As a result he was full of illusions. The very first day he wanted to get up at midnight, to try how far he could go with me. When I was sound asleep he jumped out of bed, got his bathrobe, and woke me up. I got up and lit the candle, which was all he wanted. After a quarter of an hour he became sleepy and went back to bed quite satisfied with his experiment. Two days later he repeated it, with the same success and with no sign of impatience on my part. When he kissed me as he lay down, I said to him very quietly, My little friend, this is all very well, but do not try it again. His curiosity was aroused by this, and the very next day he did not fail to get up at the same time and woke me to see whether I should dare to disobey him. I asked what he wanted, and he told me he could not sleep. "So much the worse for you," I replied, and I lay quiet. He seemed perplexed by this way of speaking. He begged me to light the candle. "Why should I?" I lay quiet. This laconic tone began to annoy him. He tried to strike a light and I could not help laughing when I heard him strike his fingers. Convinced at last that he could not manage it, he brought the flint to my bed; I told him I did not want it, and I turned my back to him. Then he began to rush wildly about the room, shouting, singing, making a great noise, knocking against chairs and tables, taking, however, good care not to hurt himself seriously, but screaming loudly in the hope of alarming me. All this had no effect, and I perceived that though he was prepared for scolding or anger, he was quite unprepared for indifference.

[¶395:] However, he was determined to overcome my patience with his own obstinacy, and he continued his racket so successfully that at last I lost my temper. I foresaw that I should spoil the whole business by an unseemly outburst of passion. I determined on another course. I got up quietly, went to the tinder box, but could not find it; I asked him for it, and he gave it to me, delighted to have won the victory over me. I struck a light, lighted the candle, took my young gentleman by the hand and led him quietly into an adjoining dressing-room with the shutters firmly fastened, and nothing he could break. I left him there without a light; then locking him in I went back to my bed without a word. There is no need to ask whether there wasn't an uproar; I was waiting for it and wasn't at all moved. Finally the noise quieted; I listened, heard him settling down, and I was quite easy about him. Next morning I entered the room at daybreak, and my little rebel was lying on a sofa enjoying a sound and much needed sleep after his exertions.

[¶396:] The matter did not end there. His mother heard that the child had spent a great part of the night out of bed. That spoiled the whole thing; her child was as good as dead. Finding a good chance for revenge, he pretended to be ill, not seeing that he would gain nothing by it. They sent for the doctor. Unluckily for the mother the doctor was a practical joker, and to amuse himself with her terrors he did his best to increase them. However, he whispered to me: Leave it to me, I promise to cure the child of wanting to be ill for some time to come. In effect he prescribed bed and dieting, and the child was handed over to the pharmacist. I sighed to see this poor mother thus the dupe of everyone who surrounded her except me, whom she hated precisely because I did not deceive her.

[¶397:] After some fairly severe reproaches, she told me her son was delicate, that he was the sole heir of the family, that his life must be preserved at all costs, and that she would not have him contradicted. In that I thoroughly agreed with her, but what she meant by contradicting was not obeying him in everything. I saw I should have to treat the mother as I had treated the son. Madam, I said coldly, I do not know how to educate the heir to a fortune, and what is more, I do not mean to study that art. You can take that as settled. I was needed for some days longer, and the father smoothed things over. The mother wrote to the tutor to hasten his return, and the child, finding he got nothing by disturbing my rest, nor yet by being ill, decided at last to go to sleep on his own and to get better.

[¶398:] You can not imagine how many similar whims the little tyrant had subjected his unlucky tutor to; for his education was carried on under his mother's eye, and she would not allow her son and heir to be disobeyed in anything. Whenever he wanted to go out, one had to be ready to take him, or rather to follow him, and he always took good care to choose the time when he knew his tutor was very busy. He wished to exercise the same power over me and to avenge himself by day for having to leave me in peace at night. I gladly agreed and began by showing plainly how pleased I was to give him pleasure; after that when it was a matter of curing him of his fancies I set about it differently.

[¶399:] In the first place, he had to be shown that he was in the wrong. This was not difficult; knowing that children think only of the present, I took the easy advantage which foresight gives; I took care to provide him with some indoor amusement of which he was very fond. Just when he was most occupied with it, I went and suggested a short walk, and he sent me away. I insisted, but he paid no attention. I had to give in, and he took note of this sign of submission.

[¶400:] The next day it was my turn. As I expected, he got tired of his occupation; I, however, pretended to be very busy. That was enough to decide him. He came to drag me from my work, to take him at once for a walk. I refused; he persisted. No, I said, when I did what you wanted, you taught me how to get my own way; I shall not go out. Very well, he replied eagerly, I shall go out by myself. As you wish, I replied, and I returned to my work.

[¶401:] He put on his things rather uneasily when he saw I did not follow his example. When he was ready he came and made his bow; I bowed too; he tried to frighten me with stories of the expeditions he was going to make. To hear him talk you would think he was going to the world's end. Quite unmoved, I wished him a pleasant journey. He became more and more perplexed. However, he put a good face on it, and when he was ready to go out he told his footman to follow him. The footman, who had his instructions, replied that he had no time, and that he was busy carrying out my orders, and he must obey me first. For the moment the child was taken aback. How could he think they would really let him go out alone, him, who, in his own eyes, was the most important person in the world, who thought that everything in heaven and earth was wrapped up in his welfare? However, he was beginning to feel his weakness, he perceived that he should find himself alone among people who knew nothing of him. He saw beforehand the risks he would run; obstinacy alone sustained him. Very slowly and unwillingly he went downstairs. At last he went out into the street, consoling himself a little for the harm that might happen to himself in the hope that I should be held responsible for it.

[¶402:] This was just what I expected. All was arranged beforehand, and as it meant some sort of public scene I had got his father's consent. He had scarcely gone a few steps, when he heard, first on this side then on that, all sorts of remarks about himself. "What a pretty little gentleman neighbour! Where is he going all alone? He will get lost! I will ask him into our house." "Take care you don't. Don't you see he is a naughty little boy, who has been turned out of his own house because he is good for nothing? You must not stop naughty boys; let him go where he likes." "Well, well; the good God take care of him. I should be sorry if any-thing happened to him." A little further on he met some young urchins of about his own age who teased him and made fun of him. The further he got the more difficulties he found. Alone and unprotected he was at the mercy of everybody, and he found to his great surprise that his shoulder knot and his gold lace commanded no respect.

[¶403:] However, I had got a friend of mine, who was a stranger to him, to keep an eye on him. Unnoticed by him, this friend followed him step by step, and in due time he spoke to him. The role, like that of Sbrigani in Pourceaugnac required an intelligent actor, and it was played to perfection. Without making the child fearful and timid by inspiring excessive terror, he made him realise so thoroughly the folly of his exploit that in half an hour's time he brought him home to me, ashamed and humble, and afraid to look me in the face.

[¶404:] To put the finishing touch to his discomfiture, just as he was coming in his father came down on his way out and met him on the stairs. He had to explain where he had been, and why I was not with him._ The poor child would gladly have sunk into the earth. His father did not take the trouble to scold him at length, but said with more severity than I should have expected, "When you want to go out by yourself, you can do so, but I will not have a rebel in my house, so when you go, take good care that you never come back."

[¶405:] As for me, I received him somewhat gravely, but without blame and without mockery, and for fear he should find out we had been playing with him, I declined to take him out walking that day. Next day I was well pleased to find that he passed in triumph with me through the very same people who had mocked him the previous day, when they met him out by himself. You may be sure he never threatened to go out without me again.

[¶406:] By these means and other like them I succeeded during the short time I was with him in getting him to do everything I wanted without bidding him or forbidding him to do anything, without preaching or exhortation, without wearying him with unnecessary lessons. So he was pleased when I spoke to him, but when I was silent he was frightened, for he knew there was something amiss, and he always got his lesson from the thing itself. But let us return to our subject.

[¶407:] The body is strengthened by this constant exercise under the guidance of nature herself, and far from brutalising the mind, this exercise develops in it the only kind of reason of which young children are capable, the kind of reason most necessary at every age. It teaches us how to use our strength, to perceive the relations between our own and surrounding bodies, to use the natural tools that are within our reach and adapted to our senses. Is there anything sillier than a child brought up indoors under his mother's eye, who, in his ignorance of weight and resistance, tries to uproot a tall tree or pick up a rock? The first time I found myself outside Geneva I tried to catch a galloping horse and I threw stones at Mont Salève, two leagues away. The laughing stock of all the children in the village, I was atrue idiot to them. At eighteen we are taught in our natural philosophy the use of the lever; every village boy of twelve knows how to use a lever better than the cleverest mechanician in the academy. The lessons students learn from one another in the playground are worth a hundredfold more than what they learn in the class-room.

[¶408:] Watch a cat when she comes into a room for the first time. He goes from place to place, he sniffs about and examines everything, he is never still for a moment; he is suspicious of everything till he has examined it and found out what it is. It is the same with the child when he begins to walk, and enters, so to speak, the space of the world around him. The only difference is that while both use sight, the child uses his hands and the cat uses that subtle sense of smell which nature has endowed it with. It is this disposition, rightly or wrongly educated, which makes children skillful or clumbsy, quick or slow, wise or foolish.

[¶409:] As a man's first natural impulse is to measure himself with his environment, to discover in every object he sees those sensible qualities which may concern himself, so his first study is a kind of experimental physics for his own preservation and from which one detracts him by speculative studies before he has recognized his own place in the world. While his delicate and flexible limbs can adjust themselves to the bodies upon which they are intended to act, while his senses are pure and as yet free from illusions, now is the time to exercise both limbs and senses in their proper functions. It is the time to learn to perceive the physical relations between ourselves and things. Since everything that comes into the human mind enters through the senses, man's first reason is a sensitive reason. It is that which serves as a base for intellectual reason. Our first teachers in natural philosophy are our feet, hands, and eyes. To substitute books for all that is not to teach us to reason; it is to teach us to use the reason of others rather than our own; it teaches us to believe much and know little.

[¶410:] Before you can practise an art you must first get your tools; and if you are to make good use of those tools, they must be fashioned sufficiently strong to stand use. To learn to think we must therefore exercise our limbs, our senses, and our bodily organs, which are the tools of the intellect. And to get the best use out of these tools, the body which supplies us with them must be strong and healthy. Not only is it quite a mistake that true reason is developed apart from the body, but it is a good bodily constitution which makes the workings of the mind easy and correct.

[¶411:] While I am showing how the child's long period of leisure should be spent, I am entering into details which may seem absurd. You will say, "This is a strange sort of education, and it is subject to your own criticism, for it only teaches what no one needs to learn. Why spend your time in teaching what will come of itself without care or trouble? Is there any child of twelve who is ignorant of all you wish to teach your pupil, while he also knows what his master has taught him?"

[¶412:] Gentlemen, you are mistaken. I am teaching my pupil an art the acquirement of which demands much time and trouble, an art which your scholars certainly do not possess. It is the art of being ignorant. For the knowledge of any one who believes to know only that which he really does know is a very small matter. You teach science, well and good; I am busy fashioning the necessary tools for its acquisition. Once upon a time, they say, the Venetians were displaying the treasures of the Cathedral of Saint Mark to the Spanish ambassador. The only comment he made was, "Qui non c'e la radice." When I see a tutor showing off his pupil's learning, I am always tempted to say the same to him.

[¶413:] Every one who has refelcted on the manner of life among the ancients attributes to their gymnastic exercises the strength of body and mind by which they are distinguished from the men of our own day. The stress laid by Montaigne upon this opinion shows that it had made a great impression on him; he returns to it again and again. Speaking of a child's education he says, "To strengthen the mind you must harden the muscles; by training the child to labour you train him to suffering; he must be broken in to the hardships of gymnastic exercises to prepare him for the hardships of dislocations, colics, and other bodily ills." The philosopher Locke, the worthy Rollin, the learned Fleury, the pedant De Crouzas, differing as they do so widely from one another, are agreed in this one matter of sufficient bodily exercise for children. This is the wisest of their precepts, and the one which is certain to be neglected. I have already dwelt sufficiently on its importance, and as better reasons and more sensible rules cannot be found than those in a href="../rousseau/notesLocke's book, I will content myself with referring to it after taking the liberty of adding a few remarks of my own.

[¶414:] The limbs of a growing child should be free to move easily in his clothing. Nothing should cramp their growth or movement; there should be nothing tight, nothing fitting closely to the body, no belts of any kind. The French style of dress, uncomfortable and unhealthy for a man, is especially bad for children. The stagnant humours, whose circulation is interrupted, putrify in a state of inaction, and this process proceeds more rapidly in an inactive and sedentary life. They become corrupt and give rise to scurvy. This disease, which is continually on the increase among us, was almost unknown to the ancients, whose way of dressing and living protected them from it. The hussar's dress, far from correcting this fault, increases it, and compresses the whole of the child's body by way of dispensing with a few bands. The best plan is to keep children in smocks as long as possible and then to provide them with loose clothing, without trying to define the shape which is only another way of deforming it. Their defects of body and mind may all be traced to the same source, the desire to make men of them before their time.

[¶415:] There are bright colours and dull. Children like the bright colours best, and they suit them better too. I see no reason why such natural suitability should not be taken into consideration; but as soon as they prefer a material because it is rich, their hearts are already given over to luxury, to every whim of fashion, and this taste is certainly not their own. It is impossible to say how much education is influenced by this choice of clothes and the motives for this choice. Not only do short-sighted mothers offer ornaments as rewards to their children, but there are foolish tutors who threaten to make their pupils wear the plainest and coarsest clothes as a punishment. "If you do not do your lessons better, if you do not take more care of your clothes, you shall be dressed like that little peasant boy." This is like saying to them, "Understand that clothes make the man." Is it to be wondered at that our young people profit by such wise teaching, that they care for nothing but dress, and that they only judge of merit by its outside?

[¶416:] If I had to bring such a spoiled child to his senses, I would take care that his smartest clothes were the most uncomfortable, that he was always cramped, constrained, and embarrassed in every way. I would make liberty and gaity flee before his magnificence. If he wanted to take part in the games of children more simply dressed, they would all stop, all disappear, in an instant. Finally I whould make him so tired and sick of his magnificence, such a slave to his gold-laced coat, that it would become the plague of his life, and he would be less afraid to behold the darkest dungeon than to see the preparations for his adornment. Before the child is enslaved by our prejudices his first wish is always to be free and comfortable. The plainest and most comfortable clothes, those which leave him most liberty, are what he always likes best.

[¶417:] There are habits of body suited for an active life and others for a sedentary life. The latter leaves the humours an equable and uniform course, and the body should be protected from changes in temperature. The former is constantly passing from action to rest, from heat to cold, and the body should be inured to these changes. Hence people engaged in sedentary pursuits indoors should always be warmly dressed in order to keep their bodies as nearly as possible at the same temperature at all times and seasons. Those, however, who come and go in sun, wind, and rain, who take much exercise, and spend most of their time out of doors, should always be lightly clad, so as to get used to the changes in the air and to every degree of temperature without suffering inconvenience. I would advise both never to change their clothes with the changing seasons, and that would be the invariable habit of my pupil Emile. By this I do not mean that he should wear his winter clothes in summer like many people of sedentary habits, but that he should wear his summer clothes in winter like hard-working folk. Sir Isaac Newton always did this, and he lived to be eighty.

[¶418:] Emile should wear little or nothing on his head all the year round. The ancient Egyptians always went bareheaded; the Persians used to wear heavy tiaras and still wear large turbans, which according to Chardin are required by their climate. I have remarked elsewhere on the difference observed by Herodotus on a battle-field between the skulls of the Persians and those of the Egyptians. Since it is desirable that the bones of the skull should grow harder and more substantial, less fragile and porous, not only to protect the brain against injuries but against colds, fever, and every influence of the air, you should therefore accustom your children to go bare-headed winter and summer, day and night. If you make them wear a night-cap to keep their hair clean and tidy, let it be thin and transparent like the nets with which the Basques cover their hair. I am aware that most mothers will be more impressed by Chardin's observations than my arguments, and will think that all climates are the climate of Persia, but I did not choose a European pupil to turn him into an Asiatic.

[¶419:] Children are generally too much wrapped up, particularly in infancy. They should be accustomed to cold rather than heat; great cold never does them any harm if they are exposed to it soon enough; but their skin is still too soft and tender and leaves too free a course for perspiration, so that they are inevitably exhausted by excessive heat. It has been observed that infant mortality is greatest in August. Moreover, it seems certain from a comparison of northern and southern races that we become stronger by bearing extreme cold rather than excessive heat. But as the child's body grows bigger and his muscles get stronger, train him gradually to bear the rays of the sun. Little by little you will harden him till he can face the burning heat of the tropics without danger.

[¶420:] Locke, in the midst of the manly and sensible advice he gives us, falls into inconsistencies one would hardly expect in such a careful thinker. The same man who would have children take an ice-cold bath summer and winter will not let them drink cold water when they are hot, or lie on damp grass. But he would never have their shoes water-tight; and why should they let in more water when the child is hot than when he is cold, and may we not draw the same inference with regard to the feet and body that he draws with regard to the hands and feet and the body and face? If he would have a man all face, why blame me if I would have him all feet?

[¶421:] To prevent children drinking when they are hot, he says they should be trained to eat a piece of bread first. It is a strange thing to make a child eat because he is thirsty. I would as soon give him a drink when he is hungry. You will never convince me that our first instincts are so ill-regulated that we cannot satisfy them without endangering our lives. Were that so, the human race would have perished over and over again before he had learned how to keep himself alive.

[¶422:] Whenever Emile is thirsty let him have a drink, and let him drink fresh water just as it is, not even taking the chill off it in the depths of winter and when he is bathed in perspiration. The only precaution I advise is to take care what sort of water you give him. If the water comes from a river, give it him just as it is; if it is spring-water let it stand a little exposed to the air before he drinks it. In warm weather rivers are warm; it is not so with springs, whose water has not been in contact with the air. You must wait till the temperature of the water is the same as that of the air. In winter, on the other hand, spring water is safer than river water. It is, however, unusual and unnatural to perspire greatly in winter, especially in the open air, for the cold air constantly strikes the skin and drives the perspiration inwards, and prevents the pores opening enough to give it passage. Now I do not intend Emile to take his exercise by the fireside in winter, but in the open air and among the ice. If he only gets warm with making and throwing snowballs, let him drink when he is thirsty and go on with his game after drinking, and you need not be afraid of any ill effects. And if any other exercise makes him perspire let him drink cold water even in winter provided he is thirsty. Only take care to take him to the water some little distance away. In such cold as I am supposing, he would have cooled down sufficiently when he got there to be able to drink without danger. Above all, take care to conceal these precautions from him. I would rather he were ill now and then, than always thinking about his health.

[¶423:] Since children take such extreme exercise they need a great deal of sleep. The one makes up for the other, and this shows that both are necessary. Night is the time set apart by nature for rest. It is an established fact that sleep is quieter and calmer when the sun is below the horizon, and that our senses are less calm when the air is warmed by the rays of the sun. So it is certainly the healthiest plan to rise with the sun and go to bed with the sun. Hence in our country man and all the other animals with him want more sleep in winter than in summer. But town life is so complex, so unnatural, so subject to chances and changes, that it is not wise to accustom a man to such uniformity that he cannot do without it. No doubt he must submit to rules; but the chief rule is to be able to break the rule if necessary. So do not be so foolish as to soften your pupil by letting him always sleep his sleep out. Leave him at first to the law of nature without any hindrance, but never forget that under our conditions he must rise above this law; he must be able to go to bed late and rise early, be awakened suddenly, or sit up all night without ill effects. Begin early and proceed gently, a step at a time, and the constitution adapts itself to the very conditions which would destroy it if they were imposed for the first time on the grown man.

[¶424:] In the next place he must be accustomed to sleep in an uncomfortable bed, which is the best way to find no bed uncomfortable. Speaking generally, a hard life, when once we have become used to it, increases our pleasant experiences; an easy life prepares the way for innumerable unpleasant experiences. Those who are too tenderly nurtured can only sleep on down; those who are used to sleep on bare boards can find them anywhere. There is no such thing as a hard bed for the man who falls asleep at once.

[¶425:] The body is, so to speak, melted and dissolved in a soft bed where one sinks into feathers and eider-down. The kidneys when too warmly covered become inflamed. Stone and other diseases are often due to this, and it invariably produces a delicate constitution, which is the seed-ground of every ailment.

[¶426:] The best bed is that in which we get the best sleep. Emile and I will prepare such a bed for ourselves during the daytime. We do not need Persian slaves to make our beds; when we are digging the soil we are turning our mattresses.

[¶427:] I know that a healthy child may be made to sleep or wake almost at will. When the child is put to bed and his nurse grows weary of his chatter, she says to him, "Go to sleep." That is much like saying, "Get well," when he is ill. The right way is to let him get tired of himself. Talk so much that he is compelled to hold his tongue, and he will soon be asleep. Here is at least one use for sermons, and you may as well preach to him as rock his cradle; but if you use this narcotic at night, do not use it by day.

[¶428:] I shall sometimes rouse Emile, not so much to prevent his sleeping too much, as to accustom him to anything--even to waking with a start. Moreover, I should be unfit for my business if I could not make him wake himself, and get up, so to speak, at my will, without being called.

[¶429:] If he wakes too soon, I shall let him look forward to a tedious morning, so that he will count as gain any time he can give to sleep. If he sleeps too late I shall show him some favourite toy when he wakes. If I want him to wake at a given hour I shall say, "To-morrow at six I am going fishing, or I am going take a walk to such and such a place. Would you like to come too?" He assents, and begs me to wake him. I promise, or do not promise, as the case requires. If he wakes too late he finds me gone. There is something wrong if he does not soon learn to wake himself.

[¶430:] Moreover, if it happened, though it rarely does, that an indolent child had the urge to stagnate in laziness, you must not give way to this tendency into which he could lose himself entirely, but you must apply some stimulus to wake him. You must understand that is not a question of applying force, but of arousing some appetite which leads to action, and such an appetite, carefully selected on the lines laid down by nature achieves two purposes at once.

[¶431:] If one has any sort of skill, I can think of nothing for which a taste, a very passion, cannot be aroused in children, and that without vanity, emulation, or jealousy. Their vitality, their spirit of imitation, is enough of itself; above all, there is their natural liveliness, of which no teacher so far has contrived to take advantage. In every game, when they are quite sure it is only play, they endure without complaint, or even with laughter, hardships which they would not submit to otherwise without floods of tears. The sports of the young savage involve long fasting, blows, burns, and fatigue of every kind, a proof that even pain has a charm of its own, which may remove its bitterness. It is not every teacher, however, who knows how to season this dish, nor can every pupil eat it without making faces. However, I must take care or I shall be wandering off again after exceptions.

[¶432:] What one should not accept, however, is that man should become the slave of pain, disease, accident, the perils of life, or even death itself. The more familiar he becomes with these ideas the sooner he will be cured of that over-sensitiveness which adds to the pain by the impatience of bearing it. The sooner he becomes used to the sufferings which may overtake him, the sooner he shall, as Montaigne has put it, rob those pains of the sting of unfamiliarity and so make his soul strong and invulnerable. His body will be the coat of mail which stops all the darts which might otherwise find a vital part. Even the approach of death, which is not death itself, will scarcely be felt as such. He will not die; he will be, so to speak, alive or dead and nothing more. Montaigne might say of him as he did of a certain king of Morocco, "No man ever prolonged his life so far into death." A child serves his apprenticeship in courage and endurance as well as in other virtues; but you cannot teach children these virtues by name alone; they must learn them unconsciously through experience.

[¶433:] But speaking of death, what steps shall I take with regard to my pupil and the danger of smallpox? Shall he be inoculated in infancy, or shall I wait till he takes it in the natural course of things? The former plan is more in accordance with our practice, for it preserves his life at a time when it is of greater value, at the cost of some danger when his life is of less worth; if indeed we can use the word danger with regard to inoculation when properly performed.

[¶434:] But the other plan is more in accordance with our general principles--to leave nature to take precautions on its own, precautions that are abandoned whenever man interferes. The natural man is always ready; let him be inoculated by his master; it will choose the moment better than we.

[¶435:] Do not think I am finding fault with inoculation, for my reasons for exempting my pupil from it do not in the least apply to yours. Your training does not prepare them to escape catching smallpox as soon as they are exposed to infection. If you let them get it anyhow, they will probably die. I perceive that in different lands the resistance to inoculation is in proportion to the need for it; and the reason is plain. So I scarcely condescend to discuss this question with regard to Emile. He will be inoculated or not according to time, place, and circumstances; it is almost a matter of indifference, as far as he is concerned. If it gives him smallpox, there will be the advantage of knowing what to expect, knowing what the disease is, and that is a good thing; but if he catches it naturally it will have kept him out of the doctor's hands, which is better.

[¶436:] An exclusive education, which merely tends to keep those who have received it apart from the mass of mankind, always selects such teaching as is costly rather than cheap, even when the latter is of more use. Thus all carefully educated young men learn to ride, because it costs alot, but scarcely any of them learn to swim, since it costs nothing, and an artisan can swim as well as any one. Yet without ever having gone to a riding academy, a traveller can mount a horse, stay on, and to ride well enough for practical purposes. But in the water if one cannot swim he will drown, and one cannot swim unless he is taught. Finally, a person is never forced to ride on pain of death, whereas no one is ever sure of escaping such a common danger as drowning. Emile shall be as much at home in the water as on land. Why should he not be able to live in every element? If he could learn to fly, he should be an eagle; I would make him a salamander, if he could bear the heat.

[¶437:] People are afraid lest the child should be drowned while he is learning to swim. If he dies while he is learning, or if he dies because he has not learned, it will be your own fault. Foolhardiness is the result of vanity; we are not rash when no one is looking. Emile will not be foolhardy, though all the world were watching him. Since the exercise does not depend on any danger, he will learn in a stream in his father's park to swim the Hellespont; but he must get used to danger too, so as not to be flustered by it. This is an essential part of the apprenticeship I spoke of just now. Moreover, I shall take care to proportion the danger to his strength, and I shall always share it myself, so that I need scarcely fear any imprudence if I take as much care for his life as for my own.

[¶438:] A child is smaller than a man; he has not the man's strength or reason. But he sees and hears as well or nearly as well; his sense of taste is very good, though he is less fastidious, and he distinguishes scents as clearly though less sensuously. The senses are the first of our faculties to mature; they are those most frequently overlooked or neglected.

[¶439:] To train the senses it is not enough merely to use them; we must learn to judge by their means; to learn to feel, so to speak. For we know how to touch, see, or hear, except as we have learned.

[¶440:] There is a purely natural and mechanical use of the senses which strengthens the body without improving the judgment. It is all very well to swim, run, jump, spin a top, throw stones; but have we nothing but arms and legs? Have we not eyes and ears as well; and are not these organs necessary for the use of the rest? Do not merely exercise the strength, exercise all the senses by which it is guided; make the best use of every one of them, and check the results of one by the other. Measure, count, weigh, compare. Do not use force till you have estimated the resistance; let the estimation of the effect always precede the application of the means. Get the child interested in avoiding insufficient or superfluous efforts. If in this way you train him to calculate the effects of all his movements, and to correct his mistakes by experience, is it not clear that the more he does the wiser he will become?

[¶441:] Is there a need to move a heavy mass? If he takes too long a lever, he will waste his strength; if it is too short, he will not have strength enough; experience will teach him to use the very stick he needs. This knowledge is not beyond his years. Take, for example, a load to be carried. If he wants to carry as much as he can, and not to take up more than he can carry, doesn't he have to calculate the weight by the appearance? Does he know how to compare masses of like substance and different size, or to choose between masses of the same size and different substances? He must set to work to compare their specific weights. I have seen a young man, very highly educated, who could not be convinced, till he had tried it, that a bucket full of blocks of oak weighed less than the same bucket full of water.

[¶442:] All our senses are not equally under our control. One of them, touch, is always busy during our waking hours; it is spread over the whole surface of the body, like a sentinel ever on the watch to warn us of anything which may do us harm. It is the one which, whether we want to or not, we learn to use first of all by experience, by constant practice, and therefore we have less need for special training for it. Yet we know that the blind have a surer and more delicate sense of touch than we, for not being guided by the one sense, they are forced to get from the touch what we get from sight. Why, then, are not we trained to walk as they do in the dark, to recognise what we touch, to distinguish things about us; in a word, to do at night and in the dark what they do in the daytime without sight? We are better off than they while the sun shines; in the dark it is their turn to be our guide. We are blind half our time, with this difference: the really blind always know what to do, while we are afraid to stir in the dark. We have lights, you say. What! always artificial aids. Who can insure that they will always be at hand when required. I had rather Emile's eyes were in his finger tips than in the candlemaker's shop.

[¶443:] If you are shut up in a building at night, clap your hands, you will know from the sound whether the space is large or small, if you are in the middle or in one corner. Half a foot from a wall the air, which is refracted and does not circulate freely, produces a different effect on your face. Stand still in one place and turn this way and that; a slight draught will tell you if there is a door open. If you are on a boat you will perceive from the way the air strikes your face not merely the direction in which you are going, but whether the current is bearing you slow or fast. These observations and many others like them can only be properly made at night; however much attention we give to them by daylight, we are always helped or hindered by sight, so that the results escape us. Yet here we use neither hand nor stick. How much may be learnt by touch, without ever touching anything!

[¶444:] Many night games. This suggestion is more valuable than it seems at first sight. Men are naturally afraid of the dark; so are some animals._ Only a few men are freed from this burden by knowledge, determination, and courage. I have seen thinkers, unbelievers, philosophers, exceedingly brave by daylight, tremble like women at the rustling of a leaf in the dark. This terror is put down to nurses' tales. That is a mistake; it has a natural cause. What is this cause? What makes the deaf suspicious and the lower classes superstitious? Ignorance of the things about us and of what is taking place around us._ Accustomed to perceive things from a distance and to calculate their effects, how can I help supposing, when I cannot see, that there are hosts of creatures and all sorts of movements all about me which may do me harm, and against which I cannot protect myself? In vain do I know I am safe where I am; I am never so sure of it as when I can actually see it, so that I have always a cause for fear which did not exist in broad daylight. I know, indeed, that a foreign body can scarcely act upon me without some slight sound, and how intently I listen! At the least sound which I cannot explain, the desire of self-preservation makes me picture everything that would put me on my guard, and therefore everything most calculated to alarm me.

[¶445:] Do I hear absolutely nothing? I am just as uneasy, for I might be taken unawares without a sound. I must picture things as they were before, as they ought to be; I must see what I do not see. Thus driven to exercise my imagination, it soon becomes my master, and what I did to reassure myself only alarms me more. I hear a noise, it is a robber; I hear nothing, it is a ghost. The watchfulness inspired by the instinct of self-preservation only makes me more afraid. Everything that ought to reassure me exists only for my reason, and the voice of instinct is louder than that of reason. What is the good of thinking there is nothing to be afraid of, since in that case there is nothing we can do?

[¶446:] The cause of the discovered harm indicates the cure. In everything habit kills imagination; it is only aroused by what is new. It is no longer imagination but memory which is concerned with what we see every day, and that is the reason of the maxim, Ab assuetis non fit passio, for it is only at the flame of imagination that the passions are kindled. Therefore do not argue with any one whom you want to cure of the fear of darkness; take him often into dark places and be assured this practice will be of more avail than all the arguments of philosophy. The tiler on the roof does not know what it is to be dizzy, and those who are used to the dark will not be afraid.

[¶447:] There is another advantage to be gained from our games in the dark. But if these games are to be a success I cannot speak too strongly of the need for gaiety. Nothing is so gloomy as the dark. Do not shut your child up in a dungeon, let him laugh when he goes into a dark place, let him laugh when he comes out, so that the thought of the game he is leaving and the games he will play next may protect him from the fantastic imagination which might lay hold on him.

[¶448:] There comes a stage in life beyond which we progress backwards. I feel I have reached this stage. I am, so to speak, returning to a past career. The approach of age makes us recall the happy days of our childhood. As I grow old I become a child again, and I recall more readily what I did at ten than at thirty. Reader, forgive me if I sometimes draw my examples from my own experience. If this book is to be well written, I must enjoy writing it.

[¶449:] I was living in the country' with a pastor called M. Lambercier. My companion was a cousin richer than myself who was regarded as the heir to some property, while I, far from my father, was only a poor orphan. My big cousin Bernard was unusually timid, especially at night. I so mocked his fears that M. Lambercier, tired of my boasting, wanted to put my courage to the test. One autumn evening, when it was very dark, he gave me the church key, and told me to go and fetch a Bible he had left in the pulpit. To put me on my mettle he said something which made it impossible for me to refuse.

[¶450:] I set out without a light; if I had had one, it would perhaps have been even worse. I had to pass through the graveyard. I crossed it bravely, for as long as I was in the open air I was never afraid of the dark.

[¶451:] As I opened the door I heard a sort of echo in the roof; it sounded like voices and it began to shake my Roman courage. Having opened the door I tried to enter, but when I had gone a few steps I stopped. At the sight of the profound darkness in which the vast building lay I was seized with terror and my hair stood on end. I turned, I went out through the door, and took to my heels. In the yard I found a little dog, called Sultan, whose caresses reassured me. Ashamed of my fears, I retraced my steps, trying to take Sultan with me, but he refused to follow. Hurriedly I opened the door and entered the church. I was hardly inside when terror again got hold of me and so firmly that I lost my head, and though the pulpit was on the right, as I very well knew, I sought it on the left, and entangling myself among the benches I was completely lost. Unable to find either pulpit or door, I fell into an indescribable state of mind. At last I found the door and managed to get out of the church and run away as I had done before, quite determined never to enter the church again except in broad daylight.

[¶452:] I returned to the house. Ready to enter, I heard the voice of M. Lambercier in great bursts of laughter. Assuming that it was directed at me and embarrassed at seeing myself exposed, I hesitated to open the door. In this interval I heard Miss Lambercier expressing worry about me and tell the maid to get the lantern, and M. Lambercier getting ready to come and look for me, escorted by my gallant cousin, who would have got all the credit for the expedition. All at once my fears departed, and left me merely surprised at my terror. I ran, I fairly flew, to the church. Without losing my way, without groping about, I reached the pulpit, took the Bible, and ran down the steps. In three strides I was out of the church, leaving the door open. Breathless, I entered the room and threw the Bible on the table, frightened indeed, but throbbing with pride that I had done it without the proposed assistance.

[¶453:] You will ask if I am giving this anecdote as an example, and as an illustration, of the mirth which I say should accompany these games. Not so, but I give it as a proof that there is nothing so well calculated to reassure any one who is afraid in the dark as to hear sounds of laughter and talking in an adjoining room. Instead of playing alone with your pupil in the evening, I would have you get together a number of good humored children; do not send them alone to begin with, but several together, and do not venture to send any one completely alone until you are quite certain beforehand that he will not be too frightened.

[¶454:] I can picture nothing more amusing and more profitable than such games, considering how little skill is required to organise them. In a large room I should arrange a sort of labyrinth of tables, arm-chairs, chairs, and screens. In the inextricable windings of this labyrinth I should place some eight or ten decoy boxes, and one real box almost exactly like them, but well filled with candy. I should describe clearly and briefly the place where the right box would be found. I should give instructions sufficient to enable people more attentive and less excitable than children to find it._ Then having made the little competitors draw lots, I should send first one and then another till the right box was found. I should increase the difficulty of the task in proportion to their skill.

[¶455:] Picture to yourself a youthful Hercules returning, box in hand, quite proud of his expedition. The box is placed on the table and opened with great ceremony. I can hear the bursts of laughter and the hoots of the joyful party when, instead of the looked-for sweets, he finds, neatly arranged on moss or cotton-wool, a beetle, a snail, a bit of coal, a few acorns, a turnip, or some such thing. Another time in a newly whitewashed room, a toy or some small article of furniture would be hung on the wall and the children would have to fetch it without touching the wall. When the child who fetches it comes back, if he has failed ever so little to fulfil the conditions, a dab of white on the brim of his cap, the tip of his shoe, the flap of his coat or his sleeve, will betray his lack of skill. This is enough, or more than enough, to show the spirit of these games. Do not read my book if you expect me to tell you every-thing.

[¶456:] What great advantages would be possessed by a man so educated when compared with others? His feet are accustomed to tread firmly in the dark, and his hands to touch lightly; they will guide him sagely in the thickest darkness. His imagination is busy with the evening games of his childhood, and will find it difficult to turn towards objects of alarm. If he thinks he hears laughter, it will be the laughter of his former playfellows, not of frenzied spirits; if he thinks there is a group of people, it will not be the witches' sabbath, but the party in his tutor's study. Night only recalls these cheerful memories, and it will never alarm him; it will inspire delight rather than fear. He will be ready for a military expedition at any hour, with or without his troop. He will enter the camp of Saul, he will find his way, he will reach the king's tent without waking any one, and he will return unobserved. Are the steeds of Rhesus to be stolen? You may trust him. You will scarcely find a Ulysses among men educated in any other fashion.

[¶457:] I have known people who tried to train the children not to fear the dark by startling them. This is a very bad plan; its effects are just the opposite of those desired, and it only makes children more timid. Neither reason nor habit can secure us from the fear of a present danger whose degree and kind are unknown, nor from the fear of surprises which we have often experienced. Yet how will you make sure that you can preserve your pupil from such accidents? I consider this the best advice to give him beforehand. I should say to Emile, "This is a matter of the right of self-defence, for the aggressor does not let you know whether he means to hurt or frighten you, and as the advantage is on his side you cannot even take refuge in flight. Therefore seize boldly anything, whether man or beast, which takes you unawares in the dark. Grasp it, squeeze it with all your might; if it struggles, strike, and do not spare your blows; and whatever he may say or do, do not let him go till you know just who he is. The event will probably prove that you had little to be afraid of, but this way of treating practical jokers would naturally prevent their trying it again."

[¶458:] Although touch is of all our senses the one of which we have the most continual exercise, its discrimination remains, as I have already pointed out, coarser and more imperfect than that of any other sense, because we always use sight along with it. The eye perceives the thing first, and the mind almost always judges without the hand. On the other hand, discrimination by touch is the surest just because of its limitations; for extending only as far as our hands can reach, it corrects the hasty judgments of the other senses, which pounce upon objects scarcely perceived, whereas what we learn by touch is learnt thoroughly. Moreover, touch, when required, unites the force of our muscles to the action of the nerves; we associate by simultaneous sensations our ideas of temperature, size, and shape, to those of weight and density. Thus touch is the sense which best teaches us the action of foreign bodies upon ourselves, the sense which most directly supplies us with the knowledge required for self-preservation.

[¶459:] As the trained touch takes the place of sight, why should it not, to some extent, take the place of hearing, since sounds set up, in sonorous bodies, vibrations perceptible by touch? By placing the hand on the body of a cello one can distinguish without the use of eye or ear, merely by the way in which the wood vibrates and trembles, whether the sound given out is sharp or flat, whether it is drawn from the treble string or the base. If our touch were trained to note these differences, no doubt we might in time become so sensitive as to hear a whole tune by means of our fingers. But if we admit this, it is clear that one could easily speak to the deaf by means of music; for tone and measure are no less capable of regular combination than voice and articulation, so that they might be used as the elements of speech.

[¶460:] There are exercises by which the sense of touch is blunted and deadened, and others which sharpen it and make it delicate and discriminating. The former, which employ much movement and force for the continued impression of hard bodies, make the skin hard and thick and deprive it of its natural sensitiveness. The latter are those which give variety to this feeling, by slight and repeated contact, so that the mind is attentive to constantly recurring impressions, and readily learns to discern their variations. This difference is clear in the use of musical instruments. The harsh and painful touch of the cello, bass-viol, and even of the violin, hardens the finger-tips, although it gives flexibility to the fingers. The soft and smooth touch of the harpsichord makes the fingers both flexible and sensitive. In this respect the harpsichord is to be preferred.

[¶461:] The skin protects the rest of the body, so it is very important to harden it to the effects of the air that it may be able to bear its changes. With regard to this I may say I would not have the hand roughened by too servile application to the same kind of work, nor should the skin of the hand become hardened so as to lose its delicate sense of touch which keeps the body informed of what is going on, and by the kind of contact sometimes makes us shudder in different ways even in the dark.

[¶462:] Why should my pupil be always compelled to wear the skin of an ox under his foot? What harm would come of it if his own skin could serve him at need as a sole? It is clear that a delicate skin could never be of any use in this way, and may often do harm. The Genevans, aroused at midnight by their enemies in the depth of winter, seized their guns rather than their shoes. Who can tell whether the town would have escaped capture if its citizens had not been able to go barefoot ?

[¶463:] Let a man be always fore-armed against the unforeseen. Let Emile run about barefoot all the year round, upstairs, downstairs, and in the garden. Far from scolding him, I shall follow his example; only I shall be careful to remove any broken glass. I shall soon proceed to speak of work and manual occupations. Meanwhile, let him learn to perform every exercise which encourages agility of body; let him learn to hold himself easily and steadily in any position, let him practise jumping and leaping, climbing trees and walls. Let him always find his balance, and let his every movement and gesture be regulated by the laws of weight, long before he learns to explain them by the science of statics. By the way his foot is planted on the ground, and his body supported on his leg, he ought to know if he is holding himself well or ill. An easy carriage is always graceful, and the steadiest positions are the most elegant. If I were a dancing master I would refuse to play the monkey tricks of Marcel, which are only fit for the place where he performs them; but instead of keeping my pupil busy with fancy steps, I would take him to the foot of a cliff. There I would show him how to hold himself, how to carry his body and head, how to place first a foot then a hand, to follow lightly the steep, rocky, and rugged paths, to leap from point to point, either up or down. He should emulate the mountain-goat, not a dancer at the Opera.

[¶464:] As touch confines its operations to the man's immediate surroundings, so sight extends its range beyond them. It is this which makes it misleading; man sees half his horizon at a glance. In the midst of this multitude of simultaneous impressions and the thoughts excited by them, how can he fail now and then to make mistakes? Thus sight is the least reliable of our senses, just because it has the widest range; it functions long before our other senses, and its work is too hasty and on too large a scale to be corrected by the rest Moreover, the very illusions of perspective are necessary if we are to arrive at a knowledge of space and compare one part of space with another. Without false appearances we should never see anything at a distance; without the gradations of size and tone we could not judge of distance, or rather distance would have no existence for us. If two trees, one of which was a hundred paces from us and the other ten, looked equally large and distinct, we should think they were side by side. If we perceived the real dimensions of things, we should know nothing of space; everything would seem close to our eyes.

[¶465:] The angle formed between any objects and our eye is the only means by which our sight estimates their size and distance, and since this angle is the simple effect of complex causes, the judgment we form does not distinguish between the several causes; we are compelled to be inaccurate. For how can I tell, by sight alone, whether the angle at which an object appears to me smaller than another, indicates that it is really smaller or that it is further off?

[¶466:] Here we must just reverse our former plan. Instead of simplifying the sensation, always reinforce it and verify it by means of another sense. Subject the eye to the hand, and, so to speak, restrain the precipitation of the former sense by the slower and more reasoned pace of the latter. For lack of this sort of practice our sight measurements are very imperfect. We cannot correctly, and at a glance, estimate height, length, breadth, and distance; and the fact that engineers, surveyors, architects, masons, and painters are generally quicker to see and better able to estimate distances correctly, proves that the fault is not in our eyes, but in our use of them. Their occupations give them the training we lack, and they check the equivocal results of the angle of vision by its accompanying experiences, which determine the relations of the two causes of this angle for their eyes.

[¶467:] Children will always do anything that keeps them moving freely. There are countless ways of rousing their interest in measuring, perceiving, and estimating distance. There is a very tall cherry tree; how shall we gather the cherries? Will the ladder in the barn be big enough? There is a wide stream; how shall we get to the other side? Would one of the wooden planks in the yard reach from bank to bank? From our windows we want to fish in the moat; how many yards of line are required? I want to make a swing between two trees; will two fathoms of cord be enough? They tell me our room in the new house will be twenty-five feet square; do you think it will be big enough for us? Will it be larger than this? We are very hungry; here are two villages, which can we get to first for our dinner?

https://www.aplacetostudy.com/pictures/Chiron_exerçant_le_petit_Achille.png

Chiron training Achilles as a child in the field. (Tome I, facing p. 382) Chiron was often depicted in the formation of Achilles; see for instance, "The Education of Achilles" by Rubens (Prado, Madrid, Spain).

[¶468:] An idle, lazy child was supposed to be taught to run. He had no liking for this or any other exercise, though he was intended for the army. Somehow or other he had got it into his head that a man of his rank need know nothing and do nothing, that his birth would serve as a substitute for arms and legs, as well as for every kind of virtue. The skill of Chiron himself would have failed to make a fleet-footed Achilles of this young gentleman. The difficulty was increased by my determination to give him no kind of orders. I had renounced all right to direct him by preaching, promises, threats, emulation, or the desire to show off. How should I make him want to run without saying anything? I might run myself, but he might not follow my example, and this plan had other drawbacks. Moreover, I must find some means of teaching him through this exercise, so as to train mind and body to work together. This is how I, or rather the one who is speaking in this example, set about it.

[¶469:] When I took him for a walk one afternoon I sometimes a couple of pieces of cake, of a kind he was very fond of; we each ate one while we were out, and we came back well pleased with our outing. One day he noticed I had three pieces; he could have easily eaten six, so he ate his quickly and asked for the other. "No," said I, "I could eat it myself, or we might divide it, but I would rather see those two little boys run a race for it." I called them to us, showed them the cake, and suggested that they should race for it. They wanted nothing better. The cake was placed on a large stone which was to be the goal; the course was marked out, we sat down, and at a given signal off flew the children. The victor seized the cake and ate it without pity in the sight of the spectators and of his defeated rival.

[¶470:] The sport was better than the cake; but the lesson did not take effect all at once and produced no result. I was not discouraged, nor did I hurry; teaching is a trade at which one must be able to lose time and save it. Our walks were continued, sometimes we took three cakes, sometimes four, and from time to time there were one or two cakes for the racers. If the prize was not great, neither was the ambition of the competitors. The winner was praised and celebrated, and everything was done with much ceremony. To give room to run and to add interest to the race I marked out a longer course and admitted several fresh competitors. Scarcely had they entered the lists than all the passers-by stopped to watch. They were encouraged by shouting, cheering, and clapping. I sometimes saw my little man trembling with excitement, jumping up and shouting when one was about to reach or overtake another; to him these were the Olympian games.

[¶471:] However, the competitors did not always play fair, they got in each other's way, or knocked one another down, or put stones on the track. That led us to separate them and make them start from different places at equal distances from the goal. You will soon see the reason for this, for I must describe this important affair at length.

[¶472:] Tired of seeing his favourite cake devoured before his eyes, the young lord began to suspect that there was some use in being a quick runner, and seeing that he had two legs of his own, he began to practise running on the quiet. I took care to see nothing, but I knew my stratagem had taken effect. When he thought he was good enough (and I thought so too), he pretended to tease me to give him the other piece of cake. I refused; he persisted, and at last he said angrily, "Well, put it on the stone and mark out the course, and we shall see." "Very good," said I, laughing, "Does a lord know how to run? You will get a good appetite, but you will not get the cake." Stung by my mockery, he took heart, won the prize, all the more easily because I had marked out a very short course and had taken care that the best runner was out of the way. It will be evident that after the first step, I had no difficulty in keeping him in training. Soon he took such a fancy for this form of exercise that without any favour he was almost certain to beat the little peasant boys at running, however long the course.

[¶473:] The advantage thus obtained led unexpectedly to another. So long as he seldom won the prize, he ate it himself like his rivals, but as he got used to victory he grew generous, and often shared it with the defeated. That taught me a lesson in morals and I saw what was the real root of generosity.

[¶474:] While I continued to mark out a different starting place for each competitor, he did not notice that I had made the distances unequal, so that one of them, having farther to run to reach the goal, was clearly at a disadvantage. But though I left the choice to my pupil he did not know how to take advantage of it. Without thinking of the distance, he always chose the smoothest path, so that I could easily predict his choice, and could almost make him win or lose the cake at my pleasure. I had more than one end in view in this stratagy; but since my plan was to get him to notice the difference himself, I tried to make him aware of it. Though he was generally lazy and easy going, he was so eager in his sports and trusted me so completely that I had great difficulty in making him see that I was cheating him. When at last I managed to make him see it in spite of his excitement, he was angry with me. "What have you to complain of?" said I. "In a gift which I propose to give of my own free will am not I master of the conditions? Who makes you run? Did I promise to make the courses equal? Is not the choice yours? Do not you see that I am favouring you, and that the inequality you complain of is all to your advantage, if you knew how to use it?" That was plain to him; and to choose he must observe more carefully. At first he wanted to count the paces, but a child measures paces slowly and inaccurately; moreover, I decided to have several races on one day; and the game having become a sort of passion with the child, he was sorry to waste in measuring the portion of time intended for running. Such delays are not in accordance with a child's impatience. He tried therefore to see better and to reckon the distance more accurately at sight. It was now quite easy to extend and develop this power. At length, after some months' practice, and the correction of his errors, I so trained his power of judging at sight that I had only to place an imaginary cake on any distant object and his glance was nearly as accurate as the surveyor's chain.

[¶475:] Of all the senses, sight is that which we can least distinguish from the judgments of the mind; so it takes a long time to learn to see. It takes a long time to compare sight and touch, and to train the former sense to give a true report of shape and distance. Without touch, without progressive motion, the sharpest eyes in the world could give us no idea of space. To the oyster the whole world must seem a point, and it would seem nothing more to it even if it had a human mind. It is only by walking, feeling, counting, measuring the dimensions of things that we learn to judge them rightly. But, also, if we were always measuring, our senses would trust to the instrument and would never gam confidence. Nor must the child pass abruptly from measurement to judgment; he must continue to compare the parts when he could not compare the whole; he must substitute his estimated aliquot parts for exact parts, and instead of always applying the measure by hand he must get used to applying it by eye alone. I would, however, have his first estimates tested by measurement, so that he may correct his errors, and if there is a false impression left upon the senses he may correct it by a better judgment. The same natural standards of measurement are in use almost everywhere -- the man's foot, the extent of his outstretched arms, his height. When the child wants to measure the height of a room, his tutor may serve as a measuring rod; if he is estimating the height of a steeple let him measure it by the house; if he wants to know how many miles of road there are, let him count the hours spent in walking along it. Above all, do not do this for him; let him do it himself.

[¶476:] One cannot learn to estimate the extent and size of bodies without at the same time learning to know and even to copy their shape; for at bottom this copying depends entirely on the laws of perspective, and one cannot estimate distance without some feeling for these laws. All children in the course of their endless imitation try to draw; and I would have Emile cultivate this art; not so much for art's sake, as to give him exactness of eye and flexibility of hand. Generally speaking, it matters little whether he is acquainted with this or that occupation, provided he gains clearness of sense-perception and the good bodily habits which belong to the exercise in question. So I would take good care not to provide him with a drawing master, who would only set him to copy copies and draw from drawings. Nature should be his only teacher, and things his only models. He should have the real thing before his eyes, not its copy on paper. Let him draw a house from a house, a tree from a tree, a man from a man; so that he may train himself to observe objects and their appearance accurately and not to take false and conventional copies for truth. I would even train him to draw only from objects actually before him and not from memory, so that, by repeated observation, their exact form may be impressed on his imagination, for fear that he should substitute absurd and fantastic forms for the real truth of things and lose his sense of proportion and his taste for the beauties of nature.

[¶477:] Of course I know that in this way he will make any number of rough sketches before he produces anything recognisable, that it will be long before he attains to the graceful outline and light touch of the draughtsman. Perhaps he will never have an eye for picturesque effect or a good taste in drawing. On the other hand, he will certainly get a truer eye, a surer hand, a knowledge of the real relations of form and size between animals, plants, and natural objects, together with a quicker sense of the effects of perspective. That is just what I wanted, and my purpose is rather that he should know things than copy them. I would rather he showed me a plant of acanthus even if he drew a capital with less accuracy.

[¶478:] Moreover, in this occupation as in others, I do not intend my pupil to play by himself; I mean to make it pleasanter for him by always sharing it with him. He will have no other rival; but mine will be a continual rivalry, and there will be no risk attaching to it; it will give interest to his pursuits without awaking jealousy between us. I will follow his example and take up a pencil; at first I will use it as unskilfully as he. I would be an Apelles if I did not set myself scribbling. To begin with, I will draw a man such as boys draw on walls -- a line for each arm, another for each leg, with the fingers longer than the arm. Long after, one or other of us will notice this lack of proportion; we will observe that the leg is thick, that this thickness varies, that the length of the arm is proportionate to the body. In this improvement I will either go side by side with my pupil, or so little in advance that he will always overtake me easily and sometimes get ahead of me. We will get brushes and paints, we will try to copy the colours of things and their whole appearance, not merely their shape. We will colour prints, we will paint, we will daub; but in all our daubing we will be searching out the secrets of nature, and whatever we do will be done under the eye of that Master:

[¶479:] We badly needed ornaments for our room, and now we have them ready to our hand. I will have our drawings framed and covered with good glass, so that no one will touch them, and thus seeing them where we put them, each of us has a motive for taking care of his own. I arrange them in order round the room, each drawing repeated some twenty or thirty times, thus showing the author's progress in each specimen, from the time when the house is merely a rude square, till its front view, its side view, its proportions, its light and shade are all exactly portrayed. These gradations will certainly furnish us with pictures, a source of interest to ourselves and of curiosity to others, which will spur us on to further emulation. The first and roughest drawings I put in very smart gilt frames to show them off; but as the copy becomes more accurate and the drawing really good, I only give it a very plain dark frame; it needs no other ornament than itself, and it would be a pity if the frame distracted the attention which the picture itself deserves. Thus we each aspire to a plain frame, and when we desire to pour scorn on each other's drawings, we condemn them to a gilded frame. Some day perhaps "the gilt frame" will become a proverb among us, and we shall be surprised to find how many people show what they are really made of by demanding a gilt frame.

[¶480:] I have said already that geometry is beyond children's reach; but that is our own fault. We fail to perceive that their method is not ours, that what is for us the art of reasoning, should be for them the art of seeing. Instead of teaching them our way, we should do better to adopt theirs, for our way of learning geometry is quite as much a matter of imagination as of reasoning. When a proposition is enunciated you must imagine the proof; that is, you must discover on what proposition already learnt it depends, and of all the possible deductions from that proposition you must choose just the one required.

[¶481:] In this way the closest reasoner, if he is not inventive, may find himself at a loss. What is the result? Instead of making us discover proofs, they are dictated to us; instead of teaching us to reason, only our memory is employed.

[¶482:] Draw accurate figures, combine them together, put them one upon another, examine their relations, and you will discover the whole of elementary geometry in passing from one observation to another, without a word of definitions, problems, or any other form of demonstration but super-position. I do not profess to teach Emile geometry; he will teach me. I will seek for relations, he will find them, for I will seek in such a fashion as to make him find. For instance, instead of using a pair of compasses to draw a circle, I will draw it with a pencil at the end of bit of string attached to a pivot. After that, when I want to compare the radii one with another, Emile will laugh at me and show me that the same thread at full stretch cannot have given distances of unequal length.

[¶483:] If I wish to measure an angle of 60% I describe from the apex of the angle, not an arc, but a complete circle, for with children nothing must be taken for granted. I find that the part of the circle contained between the two lines of the angle is the sixth part of a circle. Then I describe another and larger circle from the same center, and I find the second arc is again the sixth part of its circle. I describe a third concentric circle with a similar result, and I continue with more and more circles till Emile, shocked at my stupidity, shows me that every arc, large or small, contained by the same angle will always be the sixth part of its circle. Now we are ready to use the protractor.

[¶484:] To prove that two adjacent angles are equal to two right angles one usually describes a circle. On the contrary I would have Emile observe the fact in a circle, and then I should say, "If we took away the circle and left the straight lines, would the angles have changed their size, etc.?"

[¶485:] Exactness in the construction of figures is neglected; it is taken for granted and stress is laid on the proof. With us, on the other hand, there will be no question of proof. Our chief business will be to draw very straight, accurate, and even lines, a perfect square, a really round circle. To verify the exactness of a figure we will test it by each of its sensible properties, and that will give us a chance to discover fresh properties day by day. We will fold the two semi-circles along the diameter, the two halves of the square by the diagonal; he will compare our two figures to see who has got the edges to fit most exactly, i.e., who has done it best; we should argue whether this equal division would always be possible in parallelograms, trapezoids, etc. We shall sometimes try to forecast the result of an experiment, to find reasons, etc.

[¶486:] Geometry means to my scholar the successful use of the rule and compass; he must not confuse it with drawing, in which these instruments are not used. The rule and compass will be locked up so that he will not get into the habit of messing about with them, but we may sometimes take our figures with us when we go for a walk, and talk over what we have done, or what we mean to do.

[¶487:] I will never forget seeing a young man at Turin, who had learnt as a child the relations of contours and surfaces by having to choose every day isoperimetric cakes among cakes of every geometrical figure. The greedy little fellow had exhausted the art of Archimedes to find which were the biggest.

[¶488:] When the child flies a kite he is training eye and hand to accuracy; when he spins a top, he is increasing his strength by using it, but without learning anything. I have sometimes asked why children are not given the same games of skill as men; tennis, mallets, billiards, archery, football, and musical instruments. I was told that some of these are beyond their strength, that the child's senses are not sufficiently developed for others. These do not strike me as valid reasons. A child is not as tall as a man, but he wears the same sort of coat. I do not want him to play with our cues at a billiard-table three feet high; I do not want him knocking about among our games, nor carrying one of our racquets in his little hand; but let him play in a room whose windows have been protected. At first let him only use soft balls, let his first racquets be of wood, then of parchment, and lastly of gut, according to his progress. You prefer the kite because it is less tiring and there is no danger. You are doubly wrong. Kite-flying is a sport for women, but every woman will run away from a swift ball. Their white skin was not meant to be hardened by blows and their faces were not made for bruises. But we men are made for strength; do you think we can attain it without hardship, and what defence shall we be able to make if we are attacked? People always play carelessly in games where there is no danger. A falling kite hurts nobody, but nothing makes the arm so supple as protecting the head, nothing makes the sight so accurate as having to guard the eye. To dash from one end of the room to another, to judge the rebound of a ball before it touches the ground, to return it with strength and accuracy -- such games are not so much sports fit for a man, as sports fit to make a man of him.

[¶489:] The child's limbs, you say, are too tender. They are not so strong as those of a man, but they are more supple. His arm is weak, still it is an arm, and it should be used with due consideration as we use other tools. Children have no skill in the use of their hands. That is just why I want them to acquire skill; a man with as little practice would be just as clumsy. We can only learn the use of our limbs by using them. It is only by long experience that we learn to make the best of ourselves, and this experience is the real object of study to which we cannot apply ourselves too early.

[¶490:] What is done can be done. Now there is nothing commoner than to find nimble and skilful children whose limbs are as active as those of a man. They may be seen at any fair, swinging, walking on their hands, jumping, dancing on the tight rope. For many years past, have not troops of children attracted spectators to ballets at the Comédie Italienne? Who is there in Germany and Italy who has not heard of the famous pantomime company of Nicolini? Has it ever occurred to any one that the movements of these children were less finished, their postures less graceful, their ears less true, their dancing more clumsy than those of grown-up dancers? If at first the fingers are thick, short, and awkward, the dimpled hands unable to grasp anything, does this prevent many children from learning to read and write at an age when others cannot even hold a pen or pencil? All Paris still recalls the little English girl of ten who did wonders on the harpsichord. I once saw a little fellow of eight, the son of a magistrate, who was set like a statuette on the table among the dishes, to play on a fiddle almost as big as himself, and even artists were surprised at his execution.

[¶491:] To my mind, these and many more examples prove that the supposed incapacity of children for our games is imaginary, and that if they are unsuccessful in some of them, it is for lack of practice.

[¶492:] You will tell me that with regard to the body I am falling into the same mistake of precocious development which I found fault with for the mind. The cases are very different: in the one, progress is apparent only; in the other it is real. I have shown that children have not the mental development they appear to have, while they really do what they seem to do. Besides, we must never forget that all this should be play, the easy and voluntary control of the movements which nature demands of them, the art of varying their games to make them pleasanter, without the least bit of constraint to transform them into work. For what games do they play in which I cannot find material for instruction for them? And even if I could not do so, so long as they are amusing themselves harmlessly and passing the time pleasantly, their progress in learning is not yet of such great importance. Whereas if one must be teaching them this or that at every opportunity, it cannot be done without constraint, anger, or boredom.

[¶493:] What I have said about the two senses whose use is most constant and most important may serve as an example of how to exercise the rest. Sight and touch are applied to bodies at rest and bodies in motion, but since hearing is only affected by vibrations of the air, only a body in motion can make a noise or sound; if everything were at rest we should never hear. At night, when we ourselves only move as we choose, we have nothing to fear but moving bodies; hence we need a quick ear, and power to judge from the sensations experienced, whether the body which causes them is large or small, far off or near, whether its movements are gentle or violent Air once set in motion is subject to repercussions which, by producing echoes, renew the sensations and make us hear a loud or penetrating sound in another place from where it is. If in a plain or in a valley you put your ear to the ground you may hear the sound of men's voices or horses' feet much further off than when you are standing up.

[¶494:] Since we have made a comparison between sight and touch, it will be as well to do the same for hearing, and to find out which of the two impressions, starting simultaneously from a given body, first reaches the sense-organ. When you see the flash of a cannon you have still time to take cover; but when you hear the sound it is too late, the ball is close to you. One can reckon the distance of a thunderstorm by the interval between the lightning and the thunder. Let the child learn all these facts, let him learn those that are within his reach by experiment, and discover the rest by induction; but I would far rather he knew nothing at all about them, than that you should tell him.

[¶495:] In the voice we have an organ answering to hearing; we have no such organ answering to sight, and we do not repeat colours as we repeat sounds. This supplies an additional means of cultivating the ear by practising the active and passive organs one with the other.

[¶496:] Man has three kinds of voice, the speaking or articulate voice, the singing or melodious voice, and the pathetic or expressive voice, which serves as the language of the passions and gives life to song and speech. The child has these three voices just as the man has them, but he does not know how to use them in combination. Like us, he laughs, cries, laments, shrieks, and groans, but he does not know how to combine these inflexions with speech or song. A perfect music is that which unites the best these three voices. Children are incapable of such music, and their singing lacks soul. In the same way their spoken language lacks expression; they shout, but they do not speak with emphasis, and since there is there little energy in their speech there is little emphasis in their voice. Our pupil's speech will be plainer and simpler still, for his passions have not been awoken and will not blend their tones with his. Do not, therefore, set him to recite tragedy or comedy, nor try to teach so-called declamation. He will have too much sense to give voice to things he cannot understand, or expression to feelings he has never experienced.

[¶497:] Teach him to speak plainly and distinctly, to articulate clearly, to pronounce correctly and without affectation, to perceive and imitate the right accent in prose and verse, and always to speak loud enough to be heard, but without speaking too loud -- a common fault with school-children. As in everything, no superfluity.

[¶498:] Similarly with singing. Make his voice smooth and true, flexible and full, his ear alive to time and tune, but nothing more. Imitative and theatrical music is not suitable at his age. I would rather he sang no words; if he must have words, I would try to compose songs on purpose for him, songs interesting to a child, and as simple as his ideas.

[¶499:] You may perhaps suppose that since I am in no hurry to teach Emile to read and write, I shall not want to teach him to read music. Let us spare his brain the strain of excessive attention, and let us be in no hurry to turn his mind towards conventional signs. I grant you there seems to be a difficulty here, for if at first sight the knowledge of notes seems no more necessary for singing than the knowledge of letters for speaking, there is really this difference between them: When we speak, we are expressing our own thoughts; when we sing we are scarcely expressing anything but the thoughts of others. Now in order to express them one must read them.

[¶500:] But instead of reading them one can hear them, and a song is better learned by ear than by eye. Moreover, to learn music thoroughly we must make songs as well as sing them, and the two processes must be studied together or we shall never have any real knowledge of music. First give your young musician practice in very regular, well-cadenced phrases; then let him connect these phrases with the very simplest modulations; then show him their relation one to another by correct accent, which can be done by a fit choice of cadences and rests. On no account give him anything unusual, or anything that requires pathos or expression. A simple, tuneful melody, always based on the common chords of the key, with its bass so clearly indicated that it is easily felt and accompanied; for to train his voice and ear he should always sing with the harpsichord.

[¶501:] We articulate the notes we sing the better to distinguish them; hence the custom of sol-faing with certain syllables. To tell the keys one from another they must have names and fixed intervals; hence the names of the intervals and also the letters of the alphabet attached to the keys of the clavier and the notes of the scale. C and A indicate fixed sounds, invariable and always rendered by the same keys; Do and La are different. Ut is always the dominant of a major scale, or the leading-note of a minor scale. La is always the dominant of a minor scale or the sixth of a major scale. Thus the letters indicate fixed terms in our system of music, and the syllables indicate terms homologous to the similar relations in different keys. The letters show the keys on the piano, and the syllables the degrees in the scale. French musicians have made a strange muddle of this. They have confused the meaning of the syllables with that of the letters, and while they have unnecessarily given us two sets of symbols for the keys of the piano, they have left none for the chords of the scales; so that Do and C are always the same for them. This is not and ought not to be; if so, what is the use of C? Their method of sol-faing is, therefore, extremely and needlessly difficult, neither does it give any clear idea to the mind; since, by this method, Do and Mi, for example, may mean either a major third, a minor third, an augmented third, or a diminished third. What a strange thing that the country which produces the finest books about music should be the very country where it is hardest to learn music!

[¶502:] Let us adopt a simpler and clearer plan with our pupil; let him have only two scales whose relations remain unchanged and indicated by the same symbols. Whether he sings or plays, let him learn to fix his scale on one of the twelve tones which may serve as a base, and whether he modulates in D, C, or G, let the close be always Do or La, according to the scale. In this way he will understand what you mean, and the essential relations for correct singing and playing will always be present in his mind; his execution will be better and his progress quicker. There is nothing funnier than what the French call "natural sol-faing." It consists in removing the real meaning of things and putting in their place other meanings which only distract us. There is nothing more natural than sol-faing by transposition, when the scale is transposed. But I have said enough, and more than enough, about music; teach it as you please, so long as it is nothing but play.

[¶503:] We are now thoroughly acquainted with the condition of foreign bodies in relation to our own, their weight, form, color, density, size, distance, temperature, stability, or motion. We have learned which of them to approach or avoid, how to set about overcoming their resistance or to resist them so as to prevent ourselves from injury. But this is not enough. Our own body is constantly wasting and as constantly requires to be renewed. Although we have the power of changing other substances into our own, our choice is not a matter of indifference. Everything is not food for man, and what may be food for him is not all equally suitable; it depends on the constitution of his species, the climate he lives in, his individual temperament, and the way of living which his condition demands.

[¶504:] We would die of hunger or poison if we had to wait till experience taught us to know and choose food fit for ourselves. But a supreme goodness which has made pleasure the instrument of self-preservation to sentient beings teaches us through our palate what is suitable for our stomach. There is no better doctor than a man's own appetite, and in a state of nature I do not doubt that the food he would find the most agreeable wouldn't also be the most healthy for him.

[¶505:] Nor is this all. The author of things provides not only for those needs he has created, but for those we create for ourselves; and it is to keep the balance between our wants and our needs that he has caused our tastes to change and vary with our way of living. The further we are from a state of nature, the more we lose our natural tastes; or rather, habit becomes a second nature, and so completely replaces our real nature that we have lost all knowledge of it.

[¶506:] From this it follows that the most natural tastes should be the simplest, for those are more easily changed; but when they are sharpened and stimulated by our fantasies they assume a form which is incapable of modification. The man who so far has not adapted himself to one country can learn the ways of any country whatsoever; but the man who has adopted the habits of one particular country can never shake them off.

[¶507:] This seems to be true of all our senses, especially of taste. Our first food is milk. We only become accustomed by degrees to strong flavours; at first we dislike them. Fruit, vegetables, herbs, and meat grilled without salt or seasoning formed the feasts of primitive man. When the savage tastes wine for the first time, he makes a grimace and spits it out; and even among ourselves a man who has not tasted fermented liquors before twenty cannot get used to them; we should all be sober if we did not have wine when we were children. Indeed, the simpler our tastes are, the more general they are; combined foods are those most frequently disliked. Did you ever meet with any one who disliked bread or water? Here is the mark of nature, this then is our rule. Preserve the child's primitive tastes as long as possible; let his food be common and simple, his palate only become familiarized with mild flavors; and let him not develop exclusive tastes.

[¶508:] I am not asking here whether this way of living is healthier or not; that is not what I have in view. It is enough for me to know that my choice is more in accordance with nature, and that it can be more readily adapted to other conditions. In my opinion, those who say children should be accustomed to the food they will have when they are grown up are mistaken. Why should their food be the same when their way of living is so different? A man worn out by labour, anxiety, and pain needs tasty foods to give fresh vigour to his brain; a child fresh from his games, a child whose body is growing, needs plentiful food which will supply more chyle. Moreover the grown man has already a settled profession, occupation, and home, but who can tell what fortune holds in store for the child? In everything let us not give him such a determined form that it will cost him too much to change it if needed. Do not bring him up so that he would die of hunger in a foreign land if he does bring a French cook along with him, nor that he someday says that only in France do people know how to eat. By the way, that is a strange way of praising one's country. For myself, I would say on the contrary that the French are the only people who do not know what good food is, since they require such a special art to make their dishes etable.

[¶509:] Of all our different senses, we are usually most affected by taste. Thus it concerns us more nearly to judge aright of what will actually become part of ourselves than of that which will merely form part of our environment. Many things are matters of indifference to touch, hearing, and sight; but taste is affected by almost everything.

[¶510:] Moreover the activity of this sense is wholly physical and material. Of all the senses it alone makes no appeal to the imagination, or at least, imagination plays a smaller part in its sensations, while imitation and imagination often bring morality into the impressions of the other senses. Thus, speaking generally, soft and pleasure-loving minds, passionate and truly sensitive dispositions, which are easily stirred by the other senses, are usually indifferent to this. From this very fact, which apparently places taste below our other senses and makes our inclination towards it the more despicable, I draw just the opposite conclusion -- that the best way to lead children is by the mouth. Greediness is a better motive than vanity, for the former is a natural appetite directly dependent on the senses, while the latter is the outcome of convention; it is the slave of human whim and liable to every kind of abuse. Greediness is the passion of childhood; this passion depends on none other; at the slightest challenge it disappears. Believe me the child will cease to care about his food only too soon, and when his heart is too busy, his palate will be idle. When he is grown up greediness will be expelled by a thousand stronger passions, while vanity will only be stimulated by them; for this latter passion feeds upon the rest till at length they are all swallowed up in it. I have sometimes studied those men who pay great attention to good eating, men whose first waking thought is -- What shall we have to eat to-day? men who describe their dinner with as much detail as Polybius describes a combat. I have found these so-called men were only children of forty, without strength or vigour -- fruges consumere nati. Gluttony is the vice of feeble minds. The gourmand has his brains in his palate, he can do nothing but eat. He is so stupid and incapable that the table is the only place for him, and dishes are the only things he knows anything about. Let us leave him to this business without regret; it is better for him and for us.

[¶511:] To fear that greediness should take root in the child who is fit for something better is a small-minded concern. The child thinks of nothing but his food; the adolescent thinks of it no more: every kind of food is good, and he has other things to attend to. However I would not have you use the low motive unwisely nor bolster good deeds with sweets. But childhood is, or ought to be, a time of games and carefree play, and I do not see why the rewards of purely bodily exercises should not be material and sensible rewards. If a little Majorcan sees a basket in the top of a tree and brings it down with his slingshot, is it not fair that he should get something by this and a good breakfast should repair the strength spent in getting it? If a young Spartan, facing the risk of a hundred lashes, slips skilfully into the kitchen and steals a live fox-cub, carries it off in his shirt and is scratched, bitten till the blood comes, and for shame lest he should be caught the child allows his insides to be torn up without a movement or a cry, is it not fair that he should keep his spoils, that he should eat his prey after it has eaten him? A good meal should never be a reward; but why should it not be sometimes the result of efforts made to get it? Emile does not consider the cake I put on the stone as a reward for good running; he knows that the only way to get the cake is to get there sooner than an other.

[¶512:] This does not contradict my previous rules about simple food. For to tempt a child's appetite you need not stimulate it but only to satisfy it, and the commonest things will do this if you do not attempt to refine children's taste. Their perpetual hunger, the result of their need for growth, will be the best sauce. Fruit, milk, a piece of cake just a little better than ordinary bread, and above all the art of dispensing these things prudently -- by these means you may lead armies of children to the world's end without on the one hand giving them a taste for strong flavours nor on the other hand letting them get tired of their food.

[¶513:] The indifference of children towards meat is one proof that the taste for meat is unnatural; their preference is for vegetable foods, such as milk, pastry, fruit, etc. Beware of changing this natural taste and making children flesh-eaters, if not for their health's sake, for the sake of their character. For however one tries to explain the practice, it is certain that great meat-eaters are usually more cruel and ferociousthan other men. This has been recognised at all times and in all places. The English are noted for their cruelty_ while the Gaures_ are the gentlest of men. All savages are cruel, and it is not their customs that tend in this direction; their cruelty is the result of their food. They go to war as to the chase, and treat men as they would treat bears. Indeed in England butchers are not allowed to give evidence in a court of law,_ no more can surgeons. Great criminals prepare themselves for murder by drinking blood. Homer makes his flesh-eating Cyclops a terrible man, while his Lotus-eaters are so delightful that those who went to trade with them forgot even their own country to dwell among them.

[¶514:] "You ask me," said Plutarch, "why Pythagoras abstained from eating the flesh of beasts, but I ask you, what courage must have been needed by the first man who raised to his lips the flesh of the slain, who broke with his teeth the bones of a dying beast, who had dead bodies, corpses, placed before him and swallowed down limbs which a few moments ago were bleating, bellowing, walking, and seeing? How could his hand plunge the knife into the heart of a sentient creature? How could his eyes look on murder? How could he behold a poor helpless animal bled to death, scorched, and dismembered? How can he bear the sight of this quivering flesh? Does not the very smell of it turn his stomach? Is he not repelled, disgusted, horror-struck, when ht has to handle the blood from these wounds, and to cleanse his fingers from the dark and viscous bloodstains?

"The scorched skins wriggled upon the ground,

The shrinking flesh bellowed upon the spit.

Man cannot eat them without a shudder;

He seems to hear their cries within his breast.

[¶515:] "Thus must he have felt the first time he overcame nature and made this horrible meal; the first time he hungered for the living creature and desired to feed upon the beast which was still grazing; when he bade them slay, dismember, and cut up the sheep which licked his hands. It is those who began these cruel feasts, not those who abandon them, who should cause surprise, and those primitive men could justify their barbarousness by excuses which are lacking to our age, and the absence of such excuses thus multiplies our barbarity a hundredfold.

[¶516:] "'Mortals, beloved of the gods,' says this primitive man, 'compare our times with yours; see how happy you are, and how wretched were we. The earth, newly formed, the air heavy with moisture, were not yet subjected to the rule of the seasons. Three-fourths of the surface of the globe was flooded by the ever-shifting channels of rivers uncertain of their course, and covered with pools, lakes, and bottomless morasses. The remaining quarter was covered with woods and barren forests. The earth yielded no good fruit, we had no instruments of tillage, we did not even know the use of them, and the time of harvest never came for those who had sown nothing. Thus hunger was always in our midst. In winter, mosses and the bark of trees were our common food. A few green roots of covergrass or heather were a feast, and when men found beech-mast, nuts, or acorns, they danced for joy round the beech or oak, to the sound of some rude song, while they called the earth their mother and their nurse. This was their only festival, their only sport; all the rest of man's life was spent in sorrow, pain, and hunger.

[¶517:] "'At length, when the bare and naked earth no longer offered us any food, we were compelled in self-defence to outrage nature, and to feed upon our companions in distress, rather than perish with them. But you, oh, cruel men! Who forces you to shed blood? Behold the wealth of good things about you, the fruits yielded by the earth, the wealth of field and vineyard; the animals give their milk for your drink and their fleece for your clothing. What more do you ask? What madness compels you to commit such murders, when you have already more than you can eat or drink? Why do you slander our mother earth and accuse her of denying you food? Why do you sin against Ceres, the inventor of the sacred laws, and against the gracious Bacchus, the comforter of man, as if their lavish gifts were not enough to preserve mankind? Have you the heart to mingle their sweet fruits with the bones upon your table, to eat with the milk the blood of the beasts which gave it? The lions and panthers, wild beasts as you call them, are driven to follow their natural instinct, and they kill other beasts that they may live. But, a hundredfold fiercer than they, you fight against your instincts without cause, and abandon yourselves to the most cruel pleasures. The animals you eat are not those who devour others; you do not eat the carnivorous boasts, you take them as your pattern. You only hunger for the sweet and gentle creatures which harm no one, which follow you, serve you, and are devoured by you as the reward of their service.

[¶518:] "'O murderers against nature, if you persist in the assertion that nature has made you to devour your fellow-creatures, beings of flesh and blood, living and feeling like yourself, stifle if you can that horror with which nature makes you regard these horrible feasts; slay the animals yourself, slay them, I say, with your own hands, without knife or mallet; tear them with your nails like the lion and the bear, take this ox and rend him in pieces, plunge your claws into his hide; eat this lamb while it is yet alive, devour its warm flesh, drink its soul with its blood. You shudder! You dare not feel the living throbbing flesh between your teeth? Ruthless man; you begin by slaying the animal and then you devour it, as if to slay it twice. It is not enough. You turn against the dead flesh, it revolts you, it must be transformed by fire, boiled and roasted, seasoned and disguised with drugs; you must have butchers, cooks, turnspits, men who will rid the murder of its horrors, who will dress the dead bodies so that the taste deceived by these disguises will not reject what is strange to it, and will feast on corpses, the very sight of which would sicken you."

[¶519:] Although this quotation is foreign to my subject, I cannot resist the temptation to transcribe it, and I think few of my readers will resent it.

[¶520:] In conclusion, whatever food you give your children, provided you accustom them to nothing but plain and simple dishes, let them eat and run and play as much as they want. You may be sure they will never eat too much and will never have indigestion. But if you keep them hungry half their time, when they do contrive to evade your vigilance they will take advantage of it as far as they can; they will eat till they are sick, they will gorge themselves till they can eat no more. Our appetite is only excessive because we try to impose on it rules other than those of nature, opposing, controlling, prescribing, adding, or substracting. The scales are always in our hands, but the scales are the measure of our whims, not of our stomachs. I return to my usual illustration; among peasants the cupboard and the apple-loft are always left open, and neither children and grown men know what indigestion is.

[¶521:] If, however, it happened that a child were too great an eater, though under my system I think it is impossible, he is so easily distracted by his favourite games that one might easily starve him without his knowing it. How is it that teachers have failed to use such a safe and easy weapon. Herodotus records that the Lydians,_ under the pressure of great scarcity, decided to invent games and other amusements with which to cheat their hunger, and they passed whole days without thought of food. Your learned teachers may have read this passage time after time without seeing how it might be applied to children. One of these teachers will probably tell me that a child does not like to leave his dinner for his lessons. You are right, sir -- I was not thinking of that sort of game.

[¶522:] The sense of smell is to taste what sight is to touch; it goes before it and gives it warning that it will be affected by this or that substance; and it inclines it to seek or shun this experience according to the impressions received beforehand. I have been told that savages receive impressions quite different from ours, and that they have quite different ideas with regard to pleasant or unpleasant odours. I can well believe it. Odours alone are slight sensations; they affect the imagination rather than the senses, and they work mainly through the anticipations they arouse. This being so, and the tastes of savages being so unlike the tastes of civilised men, they should lead them to form very different ideas with regard to flavors and therefore with regard to the odours which announce them. A Tartar must enjoy the smell of a haunch of putrid horseflesh much like one of our hunters enjoys a very high partridge.

[¶523:] Our idle sensations, such as the scents wafted from the flower beds, must pass unnoticed among men who walk too much to care for strolling in a garden and do not work enough to find pleasure in repose. Hungry men would find little pleasure in scents which did not proclaim the approach of food.

[¶524:] Smell is the sense of the imagination. Since it gives tone to the nerves it must have a great effect on the brain; that is why it revives us for the time but eventually causes exhaustion. Its effects on love are pretty well known. The sweet perfumes of a dressing-room are not so slight a snare as you may fancy them, and I hardly know whether to congratulate or pity that wise and somewhat insensible person whose senses are never stirred by the scent of the flowers his mistress wears in her bosom.

[¶525:] The sense of smell should not be over-active in early childhood when the imagination, as yet unstirred by changing passions, is scarcely susceptible of emotion and we have not enough experience to discern beforehand from one sense the promise of another. This view is confirmed by observation, and it is certain that the sense of smell is dull and almost blunted in most children. Not that their sensations are less acute than those of grown-up people, but because there is no idea associated with them they do not easily experience pleasure or pain, and are not flattered or hurt as we are. Without going beyond my system, and without recourse to comparative anatomy, I think we can easily see why women are generally fonder of perfumes than men.

[¶526:] It is said that from early childhood the savages of Canada train their sense of smell to such a degree of subtlety that, although they have dogs, they do not condescend to use them in hunting --they are their own dogs. Indeed I believe that if children were trained to scent their dinner as a dog scents game, their sense of smell might be nearly as perfect; but I see no very real advantage to be derived from this sense, except by teaching the child to observe the relation between smell and taste. Nature has taken care to compel us to learn these relations. She has made the exercise of the latter sense practically inseparable from that of the former, by placing their organs close together, and by providing, in the mouth, a direct pathway between them, so that we taste nothing without smelling it too. Only I would not have these natural relations disturbed in order to deceive the child, e.g., to conceal the taste of medicine with an aromatic odour, for the discord between the senses is too great for deception. The more active sense overpowers the other, the medicine is just as distasteful, and this disagreeable association extends to every sensation experienced at the time, so the slightest of these sensations recalls the rest to his imagination and a very pleasant perfume is for him only a nasty smell. Thus our foolish precautions increase the sum total of his unpleasant sensations at the cost of his pleasant sensations.

[¶527:] In the following books I have still to speak of the training of a sort of sixth sense, called common sense, not so much because it is common to all men, but because it results from the well-regulated use of the other five and teaches the nature of things by the sum-total of their external aspects. So this sixth sense has no special organ. It has its seat in the brain, and its sensations which are purely internal are called perceptions or ideas. It is the number of these ideas that measures our knowledge; it is their exactness, their clarity, which makes for accuracy of mind; it is the art of comparing them one with another that is called human reason. Thus what I call sensitive or puerile reason consists of the formation of simple ideas through the association of several sensations; and what I call intellectual or human reason consists of the formation of complex ideas through the association of several simple ideas.

[¶528:] Supposing therefore that my method is indeed that of nature, and if I am not mistaken in the application of that method, we have led our pupil through the region of sensation to the bounds of puerile reasoning. The first step we take beyond these bounds must be the step of a man. But before we entering this new course, let us glance back for a moment at the one we have just taken. Every age every condition of life, has a perfection suited to it alone, a sort of maturity that is proper to it. We have often heard of a grown man but let us consider a grown child. This spectacle will be quite new for us, and it will perhaps not be less pleasing.

[¶529:] The existance of finite beings is so poor and so limited that when we see only what is we are never moved. It is fantasy that embellishes real things, and if imagination does not add a charm to that which confronts us, the sterile pleasure that one gets is limited to that sense organ and leaves our heart cold. The earth adorned with the treasures of autumn displays a wealth of colour which the eye admires; but this admiration fails to move us, it springs from reflection rather than from feeling. In spring the country is almost bare and leafless, the woods offer no shade, the grass has hardly begun to grow, yet the heart is touched by the sight. Seeing nature reborn one feels the revival of our own life; the image of pleasure surrounds us. Tears of delight, those companions of pleasure ever ready to accompany a pleasing sentiment, are already on the edge of our eyelids. Animated, lively, and delightful though the autumn vintage may be, we always see it with dry eyes.

[¶530:] Why is there this difference? Because imagination adds to the sight of spring the image of the seasons which will follow. To those tender shoots that the eye perceives it adds flowers, fruits, shade trees, sometimes the mysteries that they can hide. It blends successive stages into one moment's experience and shows things not so much as they will be but as it desires them to be, for it depends on imagination to choose them. In autumn, on the other hand, one can only see what is; if we wish to look forward to spring, winter stops us, and our frozen imagination dies amidst the snow and frost.

[¶531:] Such is the source of the charm that one finds contemplating the beauties of childhood, in preference to the perfection of a ripe old age. When do we really taste a true pleasure in seeing a man? When the memory of his actions leads us to look back over his life and renews it, so to speak, in our eyes. If we are reduced to viewing him as he is, or to picturing him as he will be in old age, the thought of declining years destroys all our pleasure. There is no pleasure in seeing a man hastening to his grave; the image of death makes everything ugly.

[¶532:] But when I imagine a child of ten or twelve, strong, healthy, well-formed for his age, only pleasant thoughts are called up, whether of the present or the future. I see him keen, eager, and full of life, free from gnawing cares and painful forebodings, absorbed in this present state and delighting in a fullness of life which seems to extend beyond himself. I look forward to a time when he will use his daily increasing sense, intelligence, and vigor, those growing powers of which he continually gives fresh proof. I watch the child with delight, I picture to myself the man with even greater pleasure. His eager life seems to stir my own pulses, I seem to live from his life and his vitality rejuvenates me.

[¶533:] The hour strikes, the scene is changed. All of a sudden his eye grows dim, his gaity vanishes. Farewell to joy, farewell to all those playful games. A stern, angry man takes him by the hand, saying gravely, "Come with me, sir," and he is led away. As they are entering the room, I catch a glimpse of books. Books, what sad furnishings for a child of his age! The poor child allows himself to be dragged away; he turns a regretful eye on everything that surrounds him and leaves in silence, his eyes swollen with the tears he dare not shed and his heart bursting with the sighs he dare not utter.

[¶534:] O you who have no such cause for fear, you for whom no period of life is a time of worry and tedium, you who welcome days without care and nights without impatience, you who only reckon time by your pleasures, come, my happy lovable pupil, and console us with your presence for the departure of that unhappy boy -- come! He arrives and at his approach I feel a movement of joy which I see he shares. It is his friend, his comrade, who meets him. When he sees me he knows very well that he will not be long without amusement; we are never dependent on each other, but we are always on good terms, and we are never so happy as when together.

[¶535:] His figure, his bearing, his countenance speak of self-confidence and happiness. Health shines from his face, his firm step speaks of strength; his colour, delicate but not sickly, has nothing of softness or effeminacy. Sun and wind have already set an honourable stamp of manhood on him; his rounded muscles already begin to show some signs of growing individuality; his eyes, as yet unlighted by the flame of feeling, have at least all their native calm. They have not been darkened by prolonged sorrow, nor are his cheeks furrowed by ceaseless tears. See in his quick but certain movements the vitality of his age, the sureness of independence, the experience of many kinds of exercise. His manner is free and open, but without a trace of insolence or vanity; his head which has not been bent over books does not fall upon his breast; there is no need to say, "Hold your head up"; niether shame nor fear will ever make him lower it.

[¶536:] Make a place for him in the middle of a gathering. Gentlemen, you may examine him, question him, in all confidence. Have no fear of importunity, chatter, or impertinent questions. You need not be afraid that he will take possession of you and expect you to devote yourself so entirely to him that you cannot get rid of him.

[¶537:] Neither need you look for compliments from him; nor will he tell you what I have taught him to say. Expect nothing from him but the plain, simple truth, without addition or ornament and without vanity. He will tell you the wrong things he has done and thought as freely as the right, without being in any way embarrassed about the effect that what he says will have on you. He will use speech with all the simplicity of its first beginnings.

[¶538:] One loves to augur well of one's children, and one always regrets the flood of ineptitudes which almost always overwhelms the hopes one might draw from some chance phrase that happens to fall from their mouths. If my pupil rarely gives me cause for such hopes, neither will he give me cause for such regrets, for he never says a useless word, and does not exhaust himself by chattering when he knows there is no one to listen to him. His ideas are limited but clear. He knows nothing by rote but much by experience. If he reads less from our books than other children, he reads much more in the book of nature. His spirit not in his tongue but in his head; he has less memory than judgment; he can only speak one language, but he understands what he is saying, and if he does not say things as well as others, on the other hand he does things better than they.

[¶539:] He does not know the meaning of habit, routine, and custom; what be did yesterday has no control over what he is doing to-day;_ he follows no rule, submits to no authority, copies no pattern, and only acts or speaks as he pleases. So do not expect set speeches or studied manners from him, but just the faithful expression of his thoughts and the conduct that springs from his inclinations.

[¶540:] You will find he has a few moral ideas concerning his present state and none concerning manhood. What use could he make of them, for the child is not yet an active member of society? Speak to him of freedom, of property, or even of what is usually done; he may understand you so far: he knows why his things are his own, and why other things are not his, and nothing more. Speak to him of duty or obedience; he will not know what you are talking about. Command him to do something and he will not hear you. But say to him, "If you will give me this pleasure, I will repay it when required," immediately he will hasten to comply, for he asks nothing better than to extend his domain, to acquire rights over you, which he knows will be respected. Maybe he is not sorry to have a place of his own, to be reckoned of some account; but if he has formed this latter idea, he has already left the realms of nature, and you have failed to bar the gates of vanity.

[¶541:] For his own part, if he has need of any help, he will ask for it readily of the first person he meets. He will ask for it from a king as from his lackey; all men are equals in his eyes. From his way of asking you will see he knows you owe him nothing, that he is asking a favour. He knows too that humanity moves you to grant this favour. His expressions are simple and laconic. His voice, his look, his gesture are those of a being equally familiar with compliance and refusal. It is neither the crawling, servile submission of the slave, nor the imperious tone of the master. It is a modest confidence in his fellow man. It is the noble and touching gentleness of a being who is free yet sensitive and feeble, asking for help from a being who is free but strong and kindly. If you grant his request he will not thank you, but he will feel he has incurred a debt. If you refuse he will neither complain nor insist; he knows it is useless. He will not say, "They refused to help me," but "It was impossible," and as I have already said, we do not rebel against necessity when once we have perceived it.

[¶542:] Leave him alone at liberty and watch his actions without speaking. Consider what he is doing and how he sets about it. He does not require to convince himself that he is free, so he never acts thoughtlessly and merely to show that he can do what he likes; for does he not know that he is always his own master? He is quick, alert, and ready; his movements are eager as befits his age, but you will not find one which has no purpose. Whatever he wants, he will never attempt what is beyond his powers, for he has learnt by experience what those powers are. His means are always appropriate to his ends, and he will rarely attempt anything without the certainty of success. His eye is keen and true; he will not be so stupid as to go and ask other people about what he sees; he will examine it on his own account, and before he asks he will try every means at his disposal to discover what he wants to know for himself. If he falls upon some unexpected difficulty, he will be less upset than others; if there is danger he will be less afraid. Since his imagination is still inactive and nothing has been done to arouse it, he only sees what is, rates the danger at its true worth, and always keeps his cool. Necessity weighs too often on him to make him rebel against it; he has borne its yoke all of his life and is well used to it. He is always ready for anything.

[¶543:] Work or play are all one to him. His games are his work; he knows no difference. He brings to everything he does an interest that brings laughter and a freedom that brings pleasure, and he shows the tendencies of his own mind and the extent of his knowledge at the same time. Isn't it a charming and sweet sight at this age to see a lovely child, his eye lively and gay, his look happy and serene, his expression open and laughing, create, while playing, the most serious things, or profoundly busy with the most frivolous games?

[¶544:] Would you like now now judge him by comparison? Set him among other children and leave him to himself. You will soon see which has made most progress, which comes nearer to the perfection of childhood. Among all the children in the town there is none more skilful and none so strong. Among young peasants he is their equal in strength and their superior in skill. In everything within a child's grasp he judges, reasons, and shows a forethought beyond the rest. Is it a matter of action, running, jumping, or shifting things, raising weights or estimating distance, inventing games, carrying off prizes? You might say, "Nature obeys his word," so easily does he bend all things to his will. He is made to guide, to rule his peers; talent and experience take the place of right and authority. In any garb, under any name, he will still be first. Everywhere he will rule the rest, they will always feel his superiority. He will be master without knowing it, and they will serve him unawares.

[¶545:] He has reached the maturity of childhood; he has lived the life of a child. His progress has not been bought at the price of his happiness; he has gained both. While he has acquired all the wisdom of a child, he has been as free and happy as his health permits. If fate should cut him off and rob us of our hopes, we need not bewail alike his life and death, we shall not have the added grief of knowing that we caused him pain; we will say, "His childhood, at least, was happy; we have robbed him of nothing that nature gave him."

[¶546:] The chief drawback to this early education is that it is only appreciated by the wise. To vulgar eyes the child raised with so much care is nothing but a rough little boy. A tutor thinks rather of his own self-interest more than of that of his pupil; he makes a point of showing that there has been no time wasted and that he has earned the money he has been given. He provides his pupil with goods which can be readily displayed in the shop window, accomplishments which can be shown off at will. It is not important whether they are useful provided they are easily seen. Without choice or discrimination he loads his memory with a hundred pieces of rubbish. If the child is to be examined he is set to display his wares; he spreads them out, satisfies those who behold them, packs up his bundle and goes his way. My pupil is not so rich, he has no bundle to display, he has only himself to show. Now neither child nor man can be read in a moment. Where are the observers who can at once discern the characteristics of this child? There are such people, but they are few and far between; among a thousand fathers you will scarcely find one.

[¶547:] Too many questions are tedious and revolting to most of us and especially to children. After a few minutes their attention flags, they no longer hear what the obstinant questioner is asking them, and only answer haphazardly. This way of testing them is pedantic and useless; a chance word will often show their sense and intelligence better than long discourses, but take care that this word is neither a matter of chance nor yet learnt by heart. A man must needs have a good judgment if he is to estimate the judgment of a Child:

[¶548:] I heard the late Lord Hyde tell the following story about one of his friends. He had returned from Italy after a three years' absence, and was anxious to test the progress of his son, a child of nine or ten. One evening, he took a walk with the child and his tutor across a level space where the schoolboys were flying their kites. As they went, the father said to his son, "Where is the kite that casts this shadow?" Without hesitating and without glancing upwards the child replied. "Over the high road." "And indeed," said Lord Hyde, "the high road was between us and the sun." At these words, the father kissed his child, and having finished his examination he departed. The next day he sent the tutor the papers settling an annuity on him in addition to his salary.

[¶549:] What a father and what a promising child! The question is exactly adapted to the child's age, the answer is perfectly simple; but see what precision it implies in the child's judgment. Thus did the pupil of Aristotle master the famous steed which no squire had ever been able to tame.

Project:Rousseau/Emile-en/b2

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education

BOOK TWO

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