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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 paragraphs of Book Five. Source: Gallica

Book Five

[¶1247:] Here we have reached the last act of youth's drama, but we are not yet at its final scene.

[¶1248:] Man should not be alone. Emile is now a man. We have promised him a companion; we must give her to him. That companion is Sophie. What kind of a home does she have? Where will we find her? In order to find her, we must be able to recognize her. So let us first know what she is, and then we can better judge where she lives. And when we have found her, still our task is not ended. "Our young gentleman," said Locke, "is about to marry, so it is time to leave him with his mistress," and with these words he ended his book. Since I do not have the honor of educating "a young gentleman," I will take care not to imitate him in this regard.

[¶1249:] SOPHIE, OR THE WIFE

[¶1250:] Sophie should be a woman as Emile is a man. That is to say, she should have everything that suits the constitution of her species and of her sex so as to take her place in the physical and moral order. Let us begin, therefore, by examining the similarities and differences between her sex and ours.

[¶1251:] In all that does not relate to sex , woman is man. She has the same organs, the same needs, the same faculties. The machine is constructed in the same manner, the parts are the same, the workings of the one are the same as the other, and the appearance of the two is similar. From whatever aspect one considers them, they differ only by degree.

[¶1252:] In all that does relate to sex, woman and man are in every way related and in every way different. The difficulty in comparing them comes from the difficulty of determining what in the constitution of both comes from sex and what does not. By comparative anatomy and even by mere inspection one can find general differences between them that seem to be unrelated to sex. However these differences do relate to sex through connections that we cannot perceive. How far such differences may extend we cannot tell. All we know for certain is that everything in common between men and women must come from their species and everything different must come from their sex. From this double point of view we find so many relations and so many oppositions that perhaps one of nature's greatest marvels is to have been able to make two beings so similar while constituting them so differently.

[¶1253:] These relations and differences must influence morals. Such a deduction is both obvious and in accordance with experience, and it shows the vanity of the disputes concerning preferences or the equality of the sexes. As if each sex, pursuing the path marked out for it by nature, were not more perfect in that very divergence than if it more closely resembled the other! In those things which the sexes have in common they are equal; where they differ they are not comparable. A perfect woman and a perfect man should no more be alike in mind than in face, and perfection admits of neither less nor more.

[¶1254:] In the union of the sexes, each alike contributes to the common end but not in the same way. From this diversity springs the first difference which may be observed in the moral relations between the one and the other. The one should be active and strong, the other passive and weak. It is necessary that the one have the power and the will; it is enough that the other should offer little resistance.

[¶1255:] Once this principle is established it follows that woman is specially made to please man. If man ought to please her in turn, the necessity is less urgent. His merit is in his power; he pleases because he is strong. This is not the law of love, I admit, but it is the law of nature, which is older than love itself.

[¶1256:] If woman is made to please and to be subjected, she ought to make herself pleasing to man instead of provoking him. Her strength is in her charms; by their means she should compel him to discover his strength and to use it. The surest way of arousing this strength is to make it necessary by resistance. Then amour-propre joins with desire, and the one triumphs from a victory that the other made him win. This is the origin of attack and defense, of the boldness of one sex and the timidity of the other, and even of the shame and modesty with which nature has armed the weak for the conquest of the strong.

[¶1257:] Who could imagine that nature arbitrarily prescribed the same advances to both, or that the first to feel desire should be the first to show it! What a strange perversion of judgment! The consequences of the act being so different for the two sexes, would it be natural for them to engage in it with equal boldness? How can any one not see that with such a great disparity in the common stakes, if reserve did not impose on one sex the moderation that nature imposes on the other, the result would be the destruction of both, and the human race would perish through the very means established for preserving it? With the facility women have of arousing men's senses and of awakening in the depths of their hearts feelings that were thought to have died, if there were some unlucky country where philosophy had introduced this custom (especially if it were a hot climate where more women are born than men), the men would be tyrannized over by the women. They would eventually become their victims and would find themselves dragged to their death without ever being able to defend themselves.

[¶1258:] Yet female animals are without this sense of shame and what is the result? Do they, like women, have the same unlimited desires that shame serves to curb? With female animals, their desire comes only with need. When the need is satisfied, the desire ceases and they no longer make a pretense of repulsing the male but do it for real. They do exactly the contrary of what the daughter of Augustus did; once the boat is filled with cargo, they refuse to take on more passengers. Even when animals are free the period of their willingness is very short and soon over; instinct gets them going and instinct stops them. What would substitute for this negative instinct in women if you were to rob them of their modesty? To wait for them to lose interest in men is to wait for them to be good for nothing.

[¶1259:] The Supreme Being has wanted to do honour to the human species. By giving man limitless impulses he has at the same time given him a law to regulate them so that man can be free and can control himself. While granting him immoderate passions, he joins reason to these passions as a means of governing them. While granting unlimited desires to women, the Supreme Being joins modesty to her desires as a means of restraining them. In addition, it has added an actual bonus for using these faculties well, which is the taste one develops for decency when one makes it the rule of one's actions. All of this is worth more, it seems to me, than the instincts of animals.

[¶1260:] Whether the human female shares the man's desires or not, whether she is willing or unwilling to satisfy them, still she always pushes him away and defends herself, though not always with the same force nor consequently with the same success. In order for the attacker to be victorious, the one attacked must permit it or order it -- for how many skillful ways are there to stimulate the efforts of the aggressor? The freest and sweetest of acts does not permit of any real violence; indeed both reason and nature are against it -- nature, in that it has given the weakest enough strength to resist when she pleases; reason, in that real violence is not only the most brutal of acts but the one most contrary to its own ends, not only because the man thus declares war against his companion and hence gives her a right to defend her person and her liberty even at the cost of the aggressor's life, but also because the woman alone is the judge of her condition, and a child would have no father if any man might usurp a father's rights.

[¶1261:] Here then is a third consequence of the constitution of the sexes, which is that the stronger is the master in all appearance and yet in effect depends on the weaker. And this is not due to any frivolous custom of gallantry nor to any prideful generosity on the part of the protector, but to an invariable law of nature which, by giving the woman more of a facility to excite desires than man has to satisfy them, makes him dependent on her whether she likes it or not and forces him in turn to please her in order to obtain her consent to let him be the strongest. Is it weakness which yields to force, or is it voluntary self-surrender? This uncertainty constitutes the chief charm of the man's victory, and the woman usually has enough guile to leave him in doubt. In this respect the woman's mind exactly resembles her body; far from being ashamed of her weakness, she is glories in it. Her soft muscles offer no resistance, she professes that she cannot lift the lightest weight; she would be ashamed to be strong. And why? It is not only in order to appear delicate; it is for the sake of a more clever precaution. She is providing herself beforehand with excuses and with the right to be weak when it is necessary.

[¶1262:] The progress of enlightenment acquired through our vices has considerably changed the the earlier opinions held among us on this point, and one hardly hears speak any more of cases of sexual violence since they are so seldom needed and because men no longer would believe them.* Yet such stories are common enough among the ancient Greeks and Jews, for such views belong to the simplicity of nature; it is only the experience of libertinage tha has been able to uproot them. If fewer acts of violence are cited in our days, it is surely not because men are more temperate. It is because they are less credulous, and a complaint which would have persuaded simple people would provoke only mocking laughter among ourselves. Therefore silence is the better course. In the Book of Deuteronomy in the Bible there is a law under which the abused maiden was punished along with her seducer if the crime were committed in a town, but if in the country or in a lonely place, the latter alone was punished. "For," says the law, "the maiden cried for help but was not heard." From this benign interpretation of the law, girls learned not to let themselves be surprised in well-frequented places.

[¶1263:] The effect of these divergent opinions on morals is obvious. The main result has been the appearance of modern gallantry. Having found that their pleasures depend more than they expected on the good will of the fair sex, men have secured this good will by attentions which have had their reward.

[¶1264:] See how the physical leads us unconsciously to the moral, and how from the gross union of the sexes gradually arise the sweet laws of love. Women have held onto their power not because men have wished it but because nature wishes it; the power was their's even before they appeared to have it. The same Hercules who believed he could violate all the fifty daughters of Thespis was nevertheless forced to spin wool for Omphale; and Samson the Strong was never as strong as Delilah. Women's power cannot be taken from them even when they abuse it; if they could ever have lost it they would have lost it long ago.

[¶1265:] There is no parity between the two sexes when it comes to the consequence of sex. The male is only a male in certain instances; the female is female all her life or at least all her youth. Everything reminds her of her sex, and to fulfill well her functions she needs a constitution that relates to them. She needs care during pregnancy and rest when her child is born; she must have a quiet, sedentary life while she nurses her children; their education calls for patience and gentleness, for a zeal and affection which nothing can dismay. She serves as a liasion between them and their father; she alone can make him love them and give him the confidence to call them his own. What tenderness and care is required to maintain a whole family as a unit! And finally all this must not come from virtues but from feelings without which the human species would soon be extinct.

[¶1266:] The severity to the duties relative to the two sexes is not and cannot be the same. When a woman complains in this regard about the unjust inequality in which men are placed, she is wrong. This inequality is not at all a human institution, or at least it is not the work of prejudice but of reason. The one to whom nature has entrusted children must answer for them to the other. No doubt it is not permitted to anyone to violate his faith, and every unfaithful husband who deprives his wife of the sole reward of the austere duties of her sex is an unjust and cruel man. But the unfaithful wife does more; she dissolves the family and breaks the bonds of nature. By giving the man children that are not his own she betrays all of them; she adds treachery to infidelity. It is hard to imagine any disorder or crime which would not follow from that. If there is one terrible position to be in it is that of a miserable father who cannot trust his wife, dares not give in to the sweetest sentiments of his heart, and who wonders while embracing his child whether he may be embracing the child of someone else -- a proof of his dishonor, a robber of his own children's inheritance. What is such a family if not a society of secret enemies armed against each other by a guilty wife who forces them to pretend to love each other?

[¶1267:] It is thus not only important that the wife be faithful but that she be judged so by her husband, by those near him, by everyone. She must be modest, attentive, reserved, and she must have in others' eyes as in her own conscience the evidence of her virtue. If it is important that a father love his children, it is important that he respect their mother. Such are the reasons that put appearance on the list of the duties of women and make honor and reputation no less indispensable to them than chastity. Along with the moral differences between the sexes these principles give rise to a new motive for duty and convenience, one that prescribes especially for women the most scrupulous attention to their conduct, to their manners, to their behavior. To maintain vaguely that the two sexes are equal and that their duties are the same is to get lost in vain speeches. One hardly need to respond to all that.

[¶1268:] Do you really think you are on solid ground when you try to find exceptions to such well-founded general laws? Women, you say, do not always have children. No, but their proper aim is to do so. Just because there are a hundred or so large cities in the world where women live licentiously and have few children can you claim that their role is to have few children? And what would become of your cities if the remote country districts, where women live more simply and more chastely, did not make up for the sterility of your fine ladies? There are plenty of country places where women with only four or five children are reckoned as being not very fertile. Finally, although here and there a woman may have few children, what difference does it make? Is it any the less a woman's role to be a mother? And do not the general laws of nature and morality make provision for this state of things?

[¶1269:] Even if there were these long intervals, which you assume, between the periods of pregnancy, can a woman suddenly change her way of life without danger and without risk? Can she be a nursing mother to-day and a warrior tomorrow? Will she change her tastes and her feelings as a chameleon changes its color? Will she pass at once from being sheltered and enclosed with household duties, to facing the harshness of the winds, the toils, the fatiques, the perils of war? Will she be first timid,** then brave, first fragile, then robust? If the young men raised in Paris have a hard time enduring a soldier's life, how would a woman who for fifty years has never been exposed to hot sun and can hardly walk on her own endure it? Would she take on this difficult profession at the age when men are retiring from it?

[¶1270:] There are countries, I grant you, where women bear children almost without pain and nurture them almost without worry, but in these same countries the men go half-naked in all weathers, they hunt down wild beasts, carry a canoe as easily as a knapsack, pursue game for 700 or 800 leagues, sleep in the open on the bare ground, bear incredible weariness and go many days without food. When women become strong, men become even stronger; when men become soft, women become softer. When the two terms change equally, the difference stays the same.

[¶1271:] I am quite aware that Plato in the Republic assigns the same gymnastics to women and men. Having rid his government of private families and knowing not what to do with the women, he was forced to make them into men. That great genius has figured out everything and foreseen everything; he has even thought ahead to an objection that perhaps no one would ever have raised; but he has not succeeded in meeting the real difficulty. I am not speaking of the alleged community of wives, the oft-repeated reproach concerning which only shows that those who make it have never read his works. I refer to the civil promiscuity which everywhere brings the two sexes in the same occupations, the same work, and could not fail to engender the most intolerable abuses. I refer to that subversion of all the tenderest of our natural feelings, which are sacrificed to an artificial sentiment that can only exist by their aid. As if a natural bond were not required in order to form conventional ties; or that love for one's relations were not the basis for the love that one owes to the state; or that it is not through one's attachment to the small society of the family that the heart becomes attached to the larger society of one's nation; or that it is not the good son, the good husband, the good father who makes a good citizen!

[¶1272:] Once it is demonstrated that men and women neither are nor ought to be constituted the same, either in character or in temperament, it follows that they ought not to have the same education. In following the directions of nature they ought to act together, but they ought not to do the same things. The purpose of their tasks is the same, but the tasks are different, as are also the feelings that direct them. After having tried to form the natural man, in order not to leave our work incomplete let us see how to also to form the woman who suits this man.

[¶1273:] Do you wish always to be guided well? Then always follow the path that nature indicates. Everything that characterizes sex ought to be respected as established by nature. You are always saying, "Women have such and such faults that we do not have." Your pride fools you. These may be faults for you, but they are qualities for them; and everything would go less well if they were without them. Take care that these so-called faults do not degenerate, but be sure not to destroy them.

[¶1274:] On their part women are always complaining that we educate them to be vain and coguettish, that we keep them amused with silly things so that we may remain their masters. We are responsible, so they say, for the faults we attribute to them. How insane! Since when do men bother with the education of girls? What is there to hinder their mothers educating them as they please? There are no colleges for girls; so much the better for them! Would to God that there were none for the boys; their education would be more sensible and more wholesome. Does anyone force your daughters to waste their time on silliness? Are they made, against their will, to spend half their time at their dressing table, following the example set them by you? Does anyone prevent you from teaching them, or having them taught, whatever seems good in your eyes? Is it our fault if we are pleased when they are beautiful, if their mincing ways seduce us, if the art that they learn attracts and flatters us, if we like to seen them tastefully dressed, if we let them display at leisure the weapons by which we are subjugated? Well then, decide to educate them like men; men will heartily consent. The more women ressemble men, the less influence they will have over them, and then the men will truly be the masters.

[¶1275:] All the faculties common to both sexes are not equally shared between, them, but taken as a whole they compensate for each other. Woman is worth more as a woman and less as a man. When she makes a good use of her own rights, she has the advantage; when she tries to usurp our rights, she stays beneath us. It is impossible to go against this general truth except by quoting exceptions, which is the usual manner of argumentation by partisans of the fair sex.

[¶1276:] To cultivate the masculine virtues in women and to neglect their own is obviously to do them an injury. Women are too clear-sighted to be thus deceived. When they try to usurp our privileges they do not abandon their own. But the result is that being unable to manage the two, because they are incompatible, they fall below their own potential without reaching our's and loose half of their worth. Believe me, wise mother, do not try to make your daughter a good man in defiance of nature. Make her a good woman, and be sure it will be better both for her and us.

[¶1277:] Does this mean that she must be brought up in ignorance and kept to housework only? Will man make a servant out of his companion, will he deprive himself in her presence of the greatest charm of society? To keep her a slave will he prevent her from feeling and knowing? Will he make an automaton of her? No, indeed, that is not the teaching of nature, which has given women such an agreeable and agile mind. On the contrary, nature means them to think, to judge, to love, to know things, to cultivate their minds as well as their persons; nature puts these weapons in their hands to make up for their lack of strength and to enable them to direct the strength of men. They should learn many things, but only such things as are suitable.

[¶1278:] When I consider the special purpose of woman, when I observe her inclinations or count her duties, everything combines to indicate the form of education that suits her. Men and women are made for each other, but their mutual dependence is not equal. Man is dependent on woman through his desires; woman is dependent on man through her desires and also through her needs. He could do without her better than she can do without him. For women to have what is necessary to them; for them to fulfill their role we must provide for them, we must want to provide for them, we must believe them to be worthy of it. They are dependent on our feelings, on the price we put upon their merits, and on the opinion we have of their charms and their virtues. By the law of nature women, for their own sakes as well as for the sake of their children, are at the mercy of the judgment of men. Worth alone will not suffice, a woman must be thought worthy; nor beauty, she must be admired; nor wisdom, she must he respected. Their honnor is not only in their conduct but in their reputation, and it is not possible that one who lets herself be seen as disreputable can ever be good. When a man does the right thing he only depends on himself and can defy public judgment, but when a woman does the right thing she has done only half of her task, and what people think of her is not less important than what she in effect is. Hence her education must, in this respect, be the contrary of our's. Public opinion is the grave of a man's virtue and the throne of a woman's.

[¶1279:] The children's health depends in the first place on the mother's, and the early education of man is also in a woman's hands. His morals, his passions, his tastes, his pleasures, his happiness itself, depend on her. Thus all the education of women must be relative to men. To please them, to be useful to them, to make oneself loved and honored by them, to raise them when they are young, to care for them when they are grown, to advise them, console them, make their life pleasant and sweet -- these are the duties of women at all times and what one ought to teach them from their childhood. The further we depart from this principle, the further we shall be from our goal, and all the precepts given her will fail to secure her happiness or our's.

[¶1280:] But although every woman wants to please men and ought to want to do so, there is a great difference between wanting to please a man of worth, a really lovable man, and wanting to please these little dandies who are a disgrace to their own sex and to the sex which they imitate. Neither nature nor reason can induce a woman to love an effeminate person, nor will she win love by imitating such a person.

[¶1281:] When thus she abandons the modest tone and pose of her sex and takes on the airs of such foolish creatures, she is not following her vocation, she is forsaking it. She is robbing herself of the rights to which she lays claim. "If we were different," she says, "men would not like us." She is mistaken. Only a fool likes folly; to wish to attract such men only shows her own poor taste. If there were no frivolous men, women would soon make them, and women are more responsible for men's follies than men are for theirs. The woman who loves real men and wants to please them will adopt means adapted to her ends. Woman's role is to be a coquette, but her coquetry varies with her aims. Let these aims be in accordance with those of nature, and a woman will receive a fitting education.

[¶1282:] Almost as soon as they are born little girls love dressing up. Not content to be pretty, they must be admired. You can see by their their little airs that this concern preoccupies them already, and even when they can barely understand you, you can control them by telling them what people will think of them. If you are foolish enough to try this way with little boys, it will not have the same effect. Give them their freedom and their sports, and they care very little what people think of them. It is only the work of time and much effort that one subjects them to this same law.

[¶1283:] From whatever source it comes, this first lesson in very good for girls. Since the body is born, so to speak, before the soul, the first nurturing must be that of the body. This order is common to the two sexes but the aim of this nurturing is different: in the one this aim is the development of strength, in the other of grace. Not that these qualities should he exclusive to either sex, but their order is reversed. Women should be strong enough to do anything gracefully; men should be skillful enough to do anything easily.

[¶1284:] The exaggeration of feminine delicacy leads to effeminacy in men. Women should not be strong like men but for them, so that their sons may be strong. Convents and boarding-schools, with their plain food and ample opportunities for activities, races, and games in the open air and in the garden, are better in this respect than the home, where the little girl is fed on delicacies, continually flattered or scolded, where she is kept sitting in a stuffy room, always under her mother's eye, afraid to stand or walk or speak or breathe, without a moment's freedom to play or jump or run or shout, or to be her natural, lively, little self. There is either harmful indulgence or misguided severity, and no trace of reason. This is how both the body and the mind of youth are ruined.

[¶1285:] In Sparta the girls used to take part in military sports just like the boys, not that they might go to war, but that they might bear sons who could endure hardship. That is not what I desire. To provide the state with soldiers it is not necessary that the mother should carry a musket and learn Prussian drills. Yet, on the whole, I think the Greeks were very wise in this matter of physical training. Young girls frequently appeared in public, not with the boys, but in groups apart. There was hardly a festival, a sacrifice, or a procession without its bands of maidens, the daughters of the chief citizens. Crowned with flowers, chanting hymns, forming the chorus of the dance, bearing baskets, vases, offerings, they presented a charming spectacle to the depraved senses of the Greeks, a spectacle well fitted to erase the evil effects of their indecent gymnastics. Whatever impression this custom may have made on the hearts of the men, it was well fitted to develop in the women a sound constitution by means of pleasant, moderate, and healthy exercise. Meanwhile the desire to please would develop a keen and cultivated taste without risk to character.

[¶1286:] As soon as Greek women married they were no longer seen in public. Within the four walls of their home they devoted themselves to the care of their household and family. This is the mode of life prescribed for the female sex both by nature and by reason. These women gave birth to the healthiest, strongest, and best proportioned men who ever lived, and except in certain islands of ill repute, no women in the whole world, not even the Roman matrons, were ever at once so wise and so charming, so beautiful and so virtuous, as the women of ancient Greece.

[¶1287:] It is admitted that their flowing garments, which did not cramp the figure, preserved in men and women alike the fine proportions which are seen in their statues. These are still the models of art, although nature is so disfigured that they are no longer to be found among us. The Gothic fetters, the innumerable bands which confine our limbs as in a press, were quite unknown. The Greek women were wholly unacquainted with those frames of whalebone in which our women distort rather than display their figures. It seems to me that this abuse, which is carried to an incredible degree of folly in England, must sooner or later lead to the production of a degenerate race. Moreover, I maintain that the charm which these corsets are supposed to produce is in the worst possible taste: it is not a pleasant thing to see a woman cut in two like a wasp; it offends both the eye and the imagination. A slender waist has its limits, like everything else, in proportion and suitability, and beyond these limits it becomes a defect. This defect would be a glaring one in the nude; why should it be beautiful under the costume?

[¶1288:] I dare not speculate on the reasons which induce women to incase themselves in these coats of mail. A sagging breast, a large waist, etc. are no doubt displeasing at twenty, but at thirty they cease to be shocking. And since in spite of ourselves we are bound at all times to be the way nature has made us, and since there is no deceiving the eye of man, such defects are less offensive at any age than the foolish affectations of a young thing of forty.

[¶1289:] Everything which cramps and confines nature is in bad taste; this is as true of the adornments of the person as of the ornaments of the mind. Life, health, common-sense, and comfort must come first. There is no grace in discomfort, languor is not refinement, there is no charm in ill-health. Suffering may excite pity, but pleasure and delight demand the freshness of health.

[¶1290:] The children of both sexes have many games in common, and this is as it should be. Do they not play together when they are grown up? They have also special tastes of their own. Boys want movement and noise, drums, tops, toy-carts; girls prefer things which appeal to the eye, and can be used for dressing-up -- mirrors, jewelry, finery, and especially dolls. The doll is the girl's special plaything; this very obviously shows her instinctive taste for her life's purpose. The physical aspect of the art of pleasing is found in one's dress, and this physical side of the art is the only one that the child can cultivate.

[¶1291:] Watch a little girl spend a day with her doll, continually changing its clothes, dressing and undressing it, trying new combinations of trimmings either well or poorly matched. Her fingers are clumsy, her taste is crude, but already a tendency is shown in this endless occupation. Time passes without her knowing it, hours go by, even meals are forgotten. She is more eager for adornment than for food. "But she is dressing her doll, not herself," you will say. Of course; she sees her doll, she cannot see herself; she cannot do anything for herself, she has neither the training, nor the talent, nor the strength. So far she herself is nothing, she is engrossed in her doll and all her coquetry is devoted to it. This will not always be so; in due time she will be her own doll.

[¶1292:] Here we thus can see a well-directed early inclination; you have only to follow it and train it. What the little girl would like with all her heart is to be able to dress her doll, to make its bows, its shawls, its flounces, and its lace. She is dependent on other people's kindness in all this, and it would be much easier to be able to do it herself. Here is a motive for her earliest lessons; they are not tasks prescribed, but favors bestowed. And in effect while most little girls only reluctantly learn to read and write, when it comes to sewing they learn gladly. They think they are grown up, and take pleasure in believing that these talents will one day serve them for their own adornment.

[¶1293:] This first open path is easy to follow; cutting out, embroidery, lace-making come naturally. Needlepoint is not popular, for furniture is too remote from the child's interests; it has nothing to do with the person, it depends on conventional tastes. Needlepoint is a woman's amusement; young girls never get real pleasure from it.

[¶1294:] These voluntary courses are easily extended to include drawing, an art which is closely connected with taste in dress; but I would not have them taught landscape and still less figure painting. Leaves, fruit, flowers, draperies, anything that will make an elegant trimming for her accessories and enable the girl to design her own embroidery if she cannot find a pattern to her taste -- that will be quite enough. Speaking generally, if it is desirable to restrict a man's studies to what is useful, this is even more necessary for women. For a woman's life, though less laborious, is, or should be, even more devoted to her responsibilities and more divided up into a variety of concerns, and does not permit them to give themselves over to any one chosen talent at the expense of her duties.

[¶1295:] Whatever may be said by the jokesters, good sense belongs equally to both sexes. Girls are usually more docile than boys, and they should be subjected to more authority, as I shall show later on, but that is no reason why they should be required to do things that seem to have no usefulness. The art of being a mother consists in showing the usefulness of everything she undertakes to do, and this is all the easier since the intelligence of girls is more precocious than that of boys. This principle eliminates, both for boys and girls, not only those idle studies that lead to nothing good and do not make those who pursue them more agreeable to others, but also those studies whose usefulness is beyond the student's present age and can only be appreciated in later years. If I object to little boys being made to learn to read, still more do I object to it for little girls until they are able to see the use of reading. And in our attempts to convince them of the usefulness of this art we generally think more of our own ideas than theirs. After all, why should a little girl know early on how to read and write? Dos she already have a house to manage? There are more who abuse this fatal knowledge than use it well, and girls are too full of curiosity not to learn on their own whenever they have the time and opportunity to do so. Possibly arithmetic should come first; there is nothing so obviously useful, nothing which needs so much practice or gives so much opportunity for error as keeping accounts. If the little girl will not get cherries for her lunch unless she does an arithmetical exercise, I asure you that she will soon learn to count.

[¶1296:] I once knew a little girl who learned to write before she could read, and she began to write with her needle. To begin with, she would write nothing but 0's; she was always making 0's, large and small, of all kinds and one within another, but always drawn backwards. Unluckily one day she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror while she was at this useful work, and thinking that the cramped attitude was not pretty, like another Minerva she threw away her pen and refused to make any more 0's. Her brother was no fonder of writing, but what he disliked was the constraint, not the look of the thing. She was brought back to her writing in the following way: the child was fastidious and vain; she could not bear her sisters to wear her clothes. Her things had been labeled; no one would agree to label them for her any more, so she had to learn to label them herself. You can imagine the rest of the story.

[¶1297:] Always justify the tasks you set your little girls, but keep them busy. Idleness and insubordination are two very dangerous faults, and very hard to cure when once established. Girls should be vigilant and hardworking, but this is not enough by itself; they should be accustomed to annoyances early on. This misfortune, if such it be, is inherent in their sex, and they will never escape from it, unless to endure much more cruel sufferings. For their entire life they will have to submit to the most continual and most severe annoyances, those of proper decorum. They must be trained to bear constraint from the first, so that it costs them nothing, to master their own fantasies in order to submit to the will of others. If they are always eager to be at work, they should sometimes be forced to do nothing. Dissipation, frivolity, inconstancy are faults that can easily arise from their first corrupted and unchecked tastes. To guard against this, teach them above all to control themselves. Under our insane institutions, the life of a good woman is a perpetual struggle against her self. It is only fair that woman should bear her share of the ills she has brought upon man.[See key note in OC p. 1638-9]

[¶1298:] Prevent young girls from getting bored with their tasks and infatuated with their amusements. This often happens under our ordinary methods of education, where, as Fénelon says, all the tedium is on one side and all the pleasure on the other. If the rules already laid down are followed, the first of these dangers will be avoided, unless the child dislikes the people around her. A little girl who is fond of her mother or her friend will work by her side all day without getting tired; the chatter alone will make up for any loss of liberty. But if her companion is unbearable to her, everything done under her direction will be distasteful too. Children who take no delight in their mother's company are not likely to turn out well; but to judge of their real feelings you must watch them and not trust to thcir words alone, for they are flatterers and deceitful and soon learn to conceal their thoughts. Neither should they be told that they ought to love their mother. Affection is not the result of duty, and in this respect constraint is out of place. Continual attachment, constant care, habit itself, all these will lead a child to love her mother as long as the mother does nothing to deserve the child's hate. The very control she exercises over the child, if well directed, will increase rather than diminish the affection, for women being made for dependence, girls feel themselves made to obey.

[¶1299:] For the same reason that they have, or ought to have, little freedom, they are apt to indulge themselves too fully with regard to such freedom as they do have. They carry everything to extremes, and they devote themselves to their games with an enthusiasm even greater than that of boys. This is the second difficulty to which I referred. This enthusiasm must be kept in check, for it is the source of several vices commonly found among women -- caprice and that extravagant admiration which leads a woman to regard a thing with rapture to-day and to be quite indifferent to it to-morrow. This fickleness of taste is as dangerous as exaggeration; and both spring from the same cause. Do not deprive them of mirth, laughter, noise, and romping games, but do not let them tire of one game and go off to another; do not leave them for a moment without restraint. Accustom them to interrupt their games and return to their other occupations without a murmur. Habit is all that is needed, since you have nature on your side.

[¶1300:] This habitual restraint produces a docility which woman requires all her life, for she will always be in subjection to a man, or to man's judgment, and she will never be free to set her own opinion above his. What is most wanted in a woman is gentleness. Formed to obey a creature so imperfect as man, a creature often vicious and always faulty, she should early learn to submit to injustice and to suffer the wrongs inificted on her by her husband without complaint. She must be gentle for her own sake, not his. Bitterness and obstinacy only multiply the sufferings of the wife and the misdeeds of the husband; the man feels that these are not the weapons to be used against him. Heaven did not make women attractive and persuasive that they might degenerate into bitterness, or meek that they should desire the mastery; their soft voice was not meant for hard words, nor their delicate features for the frowns of anger. When they lose their temper they forget themselves. Often enough they have just cause of complaint; but when they scold they always put themselves in the wrong. Each should adopt the tone that befits his or her sex. A too gentle husband may make his wife impertinant, but unless a man is a monster, the gentleness of a woman will bring him around and sooner or later will win him over.

[¶1301:] Daughters must always be obedient, but mothers need not always be harsh. To make a girl docile you need not make her miserable; to make her modest you need not terrify her. On the contrary, I should not be sorry to see her allowed occasionally to exercise a little ingenuity, not to escape punishment for her disobedience, but to evade the necessity for obedience. Her dependence need not be made unpleasant; it is enough that she should realise that she is dependent. Cunning is a natural gift of woman, and so convinced am I that all our natural inclinations are right, that I would cultivate this among others, only guarding against its abuse.

[¶1302:] For the truth of this I appeal to every honest observer. I do not ask you to question women themselves; our cramping institutions can compel them to sharpen their wits. I would have you examine girls, little girls, newly-born so to speak. Compare them with boys of the same age, and I am greatly mistaken if you do not find the little boys heavy, silly, and foolish, in comparison. Let me give one illustration in all its childish simplicity.

[¶1303:] Children are commonly forbidden to ask for anything at table, for people think they can do nothing better in the way of education than to burden them with useless precepts -- as if a little bit of this or that were not readily given or refused* without leaving a poor child dying of greediness intensified by hope. Every one knows about the little boy brought up in this way who when he had been overlooked at table asked for salt, etc. I do not suppose any one will blame him for asking directly for salt and indirectly for meat; the neglect was so cruel that I hardly think he would have been punished had he broken the rule and said plainly that he was hungry. But this is what I saw done by a little girl of six. The circumstances were much more difficult, for not only was she strictly forbidden to ask for anything directly or indirectly, but disobedience would have been unpardonable, for she had tasted every dish except one, and on this she had set her heart.

[¶1304:] This is what she did to repair the omission without laying herself open to the charge of disobedience. She pointed to every dish in turn, saying, "I've had some of that; I've had some of that." However she omitted the one dish so markedly that some one noticed it and said, "Have not you had some of this?" "Oh, no," replied the greedy little girl with soft voice and downcast eyes. I'll add nothing more; just compare: the latter trick shows the cunning of a girl, the other is the cunning of a boy..

[¶1305:] What is, is good, and no general law can be bad. The special skill with which the female sex is endowed is a fair equivalent for its lack of strength; without it woman would be man's slave, not his helpmeet. By her superiority in this respect she maintains her equality with man and rules in obedience. She has everything against her-- our faults and her own weakness and timidity. Her beauty and her wiles are all that she has. Should she not cuitivate both? Yet beauty is not universal; it may be destroyed by all sorts of accidents, it will disappear with years, and habit will destroy its influence. A woman's real resource is her wit, not that foolish wit which is so greatly admired in society, a wit which does nothing to make life happier, but that wit which is adapted to her condition, the art of taking advantage of our position and controlling us through our own strength. Words cannot tell how beneficial this is to man, what a charm it gives to the society of men and women, how it checks the petulant child and restrains the brutal husband. Wthout it the home would be a scene of strife; with it, it is the abode of happiness. I know that this power is abused by the sly and the spiteful; but what is there that is not liable to abuse? Do not destroy the means of happiness simply because bad people sometimes use them to hurt us.

[¶1306:] One may attract notice with one's dress, but it is the person that wins our hearts. Our finery is not us; its very artificiality often offends, and that which is least noticeable in itself often wins the most attention. The education of our girls is, in this respect, absolutely contradictory. Jewelry is promised them as a reward, and they are taught to delight in elaborate finery. "How lovely she is!" people say when she is most dressed up. On the contrary, girls should be taught that so much finery is only required to hide their defects, and that beauty's real triumph is to shine alone. The love of fashion is contrary to good taste, for faces do not change with the fashion, and while the person remains unchanged, what suits it at one time will suit it always.

[¶1307:] If I saw a young girl decked out like a little peacock, I would show myself anxious about her figure being so disguised, and anxious what people would think of her. I would say, "She is over-dressed with all those accessories; what a pity! Do you think she could do with something simpler? Is she pretty enough to do without all that?" Possibly she herself would be the first to ask that her finery might be taken off and that we should sec how she looked without it. In that case her beauty should receive such praise as it deserves. I would never praise her unless simply dressed. If she only regards fine clothes as an aid to personal beauty, and as a tacit confession that she needs their aid, she will not be proud of her finery, she will be humbled by it; and if she hears some one say, "How pretty she is," when she is smarter than usual, she will blush for shame.

[¶1308:] Moreover, though there are figures that require adornment there are none that require expensive clothes. Extravagance in dress is the folly of the class rather than the individual, it is merely conventional. Genuine coquetry is sometimes carefully thought out, but never sumptuous, and Juno dressed herself more magnificently than Venus. "Since you cannot make her beautiful you are making her rich," said Apelles to an unskilful artist who was painting Helen loaded with jewellery. I have also noticed that the smartest clothes proclaim the plainest women; no folly could be more misguided. If a young girl has good taste and a contempt for fashion, give her a few yards of ribbon, muslin, and gauze, and a handful of flowers, without any diamonds, fringes, or lace, and she will make herself a dress a hundredfold more becoming than all the smart clothes of La Duchapt.

[¶1309:] Since what is good is always good and since you should always look your best, women who know themselves well select a good style and keep to it. And since they are not always changing their style they think less about dress than those who can never settle on any one style. A genuine desire to dress becomingly does not require an elaborate preparation. Young girls rarely give much time to dress; needlework and lessons are the business of the day. Yet, except for the rouge, they are generally as carefully dressed as older women and often in better taste. Contrary to the usual opinion, the real cause of the abuse of fashion is not vanity but lack of occupation. The woman who spends six hours at her dressing table is well aware that she is no better dressed than the woman who spends half an hour, but she has gotten rid of many tedious hours and it is better to amuse oneself with one's clothes than to be sick of everything. Without the dressing table how would she spend the time between noon and 9 p.m.? With a crowd of women about her, she can at least cause them annoyance, which is amusement of a kind; better still she avoids a tête-á-tête with her husband who is only seen at that time. Also there are the tradespeople, the dealers in bric-ábrac, the fine gentlemen, the minor poets with their songs, their verses, and their pamphlets -- how could you get them together without the ritual of the dressing table? Its only real advantage is the chance of exposing oneself a bit more than when one is fully dressed. But perhaps this advantage is less than it seems and a woman gains less than she thinks. Do not be afraid to educate your women as women. Teach them a woman's business, that they be modest, that they may know how to manage their house and look after their family. At that point dressing table rituals will soon disappear, and women will be more tastefully dressed.

[¶1310:] Growing girls perceive at once that all this outside adornment is not enough unless they have charms of their own. They cannot make themselves beautiful, they are too young for coquetry, but they are not too young to acquire graceful gestures, a pleasing voice, a self-possessed manner, a light step, a graceful bearing, to choose whatever advantages are within their reach. The voice extends its range, it grows stronger and more resonant; the arms become plumper, the bearing more assured, and they perceive that it is easy to attract attention however dressed. Needlework and industry suffice no longer; fresh gifts are developing and their usefulness is already recognised.

[¶1311:] I know that stern teachers want us to refuse to teach little girls to sing or dance, or to acquire any of the pleasing arts. This strikes me as absurd. Who should learn these arts-our boys? Are these to be the favourite accomplishments of men or women? Of neither, say they; profane songs are simply so many crimes, dancing is an invention of the Evil One; tasks and her prayers are all the amusement a young girl should have. What strange amusements for a child of ten! I fear that these little saints who have been forced to spend their childhood in prayers to God will pass their youth in another fashion; when they are married they will try to make up for lost time. I think we must consider age as well as sex. A young girl should not live like her grandmother. She should be lively, merry, and eager; she should sing and dance to her heart's content, and enjoy all the innocent pleasures of youth. The time will come, all too soon, when she must settle down and adopt a more serious tone.

[¶1312:] But is this change in itself really necessary? Is it not merely another result of our own prejudices? By making good women the slaves of dismal duties, we have deprived marriage of its charm for men. Can we wonder that the gloomy silence they find at home drives them elsewhere, or inspires little desire to enter a state which offers so few attractions? Christianity, by exaggerating every duty, has made our duties impracticable and useless. By forbidding singing, dancing, and amusements of every kind, it makes women sulky, fault-finding, and intolerable at home. There is no other religion that imposes such strict duties upon married life, and none in which such a sacred engagement is so often profaned. We've done so much to prevent wives from being lovable that we've made their husbands indifferent. This should not be, I grant you, but it will be, since Christians are only men. I would like to see English maidens cultivate the talents that will delight their husbands as zealously as the Albanese cultivate the accomplishments of an Eastern harem. Husbands, you say, care little for such accomplishments. So I should suppose when they are used not for the husband but to attract young rakes who dishonour the home. But imagine a lovable and wise wife, adorned with such accomplishments and devoting them to her husband's amusement; will she not add to his happiness? When he leaves his office worn out with the day's work, will she not prevent him seeking recreation elsewhere? Have we not all seen happy families gathered together, each contributing to the common fun? Who would not admit that confidence and familiarity combined in this way, the innocence and the sweetness of the pleasures thus enjoyed, are more than enough to make up for the noisier pleasures of public entertainments?

[¶1313:] Pleasant talents have been reduced too much to a formal art. They have been too generalized, they have all been made into maxims and precepts; and what should be for young women only fun and silly games has been made into something extremely boring. Nothing can be more absurd than an elderly singing or dancing master frowning upon young people whose main desire is to laugh, and adopting a more pedantic and magisterial manner in teaching his frivolous art than if he were teaching the catechism. Take the case of singing; does this art really depend on reading music? Cannot the voice be made true and flexible, can we not learn to sing with taste and even to play an accompaniment without knowing a note? Does the same kind of singing suit all voices alike? Is the same method adapted to every mind? You will never persuade me that the same attitudes, the same steps, the same movements, the same gestures, the same dances will suit a lively little brunette and a tall fair maiden with languishing eyes. So when I find a master giving the same lessons to all his pupils I say, "He has his own routine, but he knows nothing of his art!"

[¶1314:] I am asked whether girls should have male or female teachers. I cannot say. I wish they could dispense with both. I wish they could learn of their own accord what they are already so willing to learn. I wish there were fewer of these dressed-up old ballet masters promenading our streets. I fear our young people will get more harm from intercourse with such people than profit from their instruction, and that their jargon, their tone, their airs and graces, will instill a precocious taste for the frivolities which the teacher thinks so important, and to which the scholars are only too likely to devote themselves.

[¶1315:] Where pleasure is the only end in view, any one may serve as teacher-father, mother, brother, sister, friend, governess, the girl's mirror, and above all her own taste. Do not offer to teach, let her ask. Do not make a task of what should be a reward, and in these studies above all remember that the wish to succeed is the first step. If formal instruction is required I leave it to you to choose between a master and a mistress. How can I tell whether a dancing master should take a young pupil by her soft white hand, make her lift her skirt and raise her eyes, open her arms and advance her throbbing bosom? But this I do know, nothing on earth would induce me to be that Master:

[¶1316:] Taste is formed partly by industry and partly by talent. With taste the mind opens uncounsciously to ideas of beauty in all its forms and to the moral notions that relate to beauty. Perhaps this is one reason why ideas of decency and goodness are acquired earlier by girls than by boys, for to suppose that this early feeling is due to the teaching of the governesses would show little knowledge of their style of teaching and of the natural development of the human mind. The art of speaking stands first among the pleasing arts; it alone can add fresh charms to those which have been blunted by habit. It is the mind which not only gives life to the body, but renews, so to speak, its youth. The flow of feelings and ideas give life and variety to the countenance, and the conversation to which it gives rise arouses and sustains attention, and fixes it continuously on one object. I suppose this is why little girls so soon learn to chatter prettily, and why men enjoy listening to them even before the child can understand them; they are watching for the first gleam of intelligence and sentiment.

[¶1317:] Women have ready tongues; they talk earlier, more easily, and more pleasantly than men. They are also said to talk more. This may be true, but I am prepared to reckon it to their credit; eyes and mouth are equally busy and for the same cause. A man says what he knows, a woman says what will please; the one needs knowledge, the other taste. Utility should be the man's object; the woman speaks to give pleasure. There should be nothing in common but truth.

[¶1318:] You should not restrain a girl's chatter like a boy's by the harsh question, "What is the use of that?" but by another question at least as difficult to answer, "What effect will that have?" At this early age when they know neither good nor evil, and are incapable of judging others, they should make this their rule and never say anything which is unpleasant to those about them. This rule is all the more difficult to apply because it must always be subordinated to our first rule, " Never tell a lie."

[¶1319:] I can see many other difficulties, but they belong to a later stage. For the present it is enough for your little girls to speak the truth without grossness, and since they are naturally averse to what is gross, education easily teaches them to avoid it. In social intercourse I observe that a man's politeness is usually more official and a woman's more caressing. This distinction is natural, not artificial. A man seeks to serve, a woman seeks to please. Hence a woman's politeness is less insincere than ours, whatever we may think of her character; for she is only acting upon a fundamental instinct. But when a man professes to put my interests before his own, I detect the falsehood, however disguised. Hence it is easy for women to be polite, and easy to teach little girls politeness. The first lessons come by nature; art only supplements them and determines the conventional form which politeness shall take. The courtesy of woman to woman is another matter. Their manner is so constrained, their attentions so chilly, they find each other so wearisome, that they take little pains to conceal the fact, and seem sincere even in their falsehood, since they take so little pains to conceal it. Still young girls do sometimes become sincerely attached to one another. At their age good spirits take the place of a good disposition, and they are so pleased with themselves that they are pleased with every one else. Moreover, it is certain that they kiss each other more affectionately and caress each other more gracefully in the presence of men, for they are proud to be able to arouse their envy without danger to themselves by the sight of favours which they know will arouse that envy.

[¶1320:] If young boys must not be allowed to ask indiscrete questions, much more must they be forbidden to little girls. If their curiosity is satisfied or unskilfully evaded it is a much more serious matter, for they are so keen to guess the mysteries concealed from them and so skilful to discover them. But while I would not permit them to ask questions, I would have them questioned frequently, and pains should be taken to make them talk. Let them be provoked to make them speak freely, to make them answer readily, to loosen mind and tongue while it can be done without danger. Such conversation always leads to gaity, yet skilfully controlled and directed, would form a delightful amusement at this age and might instill into these youthful hearts the first and perhaps the most helpful lessons in morals which they will ever receive, by teaching them in the guise of pleasure and fun what qualities are esteemed by men and what is the true glory and happiness of a good woman.

[¶1321:] If male children are incapable of forming any true idea of religion, much more is it beyond the grasp of girls. It for this reason that I would speak of it all the sooner to little girls, for if we wait till they are ready for a methodical discussion of these deep subjects we should be in danger of never speaking of religion at all. A woman's reason is practical, and therefore she soon arrives at a given conclusion, but she fails to discover it for herself. The social relation of the sexes is a wonderful thing. From this society results a moral person of which woman is the eye and man the hand, but the two are so dependent on one another that it is from the man that the woman learns what must be seen and from the woman that the man learns what must be done. If women could discover principles and if men had as good minds for detail, they would be mutually independent, they would live in perpetual strife, and their society could no longer subsist. But in their mutual harmony each contributes to a common purpose, neither knows which one gives most of himself; each follows the initiative of the other, each one obeys and both are masters.

[¶1322:] Just as a woman's conduct is controlled by public opinion, so her is religion ruled by authority. The daughter should follow her mother's religion, the wife her husband's. Even when that religion is false, the docility which leads mother and daughter to submit to nature's laws would blot out the sin of error in the sight of God. Unable to judge for themselves they should accept the judgment of father and husband as that of the church.

[¶1323:] Not being able to draw from themselves the guidelines for their faith, neither can women assign limits to that faith by evidence or reason. Instead they let themselves be driven by a million external influences and are always either above or below the truth. Extreme in everything, they are either altogether reckless or altogether pious; you never find them able to combine virtue and piety. Their natural exaggeration is not wholly to blame; the ill-regulated control exercised over them by men is partly responsible. Loose morals bring religion into contempt; the terrors of remorse make it a tyrant. This is why women have always too much or too little religion.

[¶1324:] As a woman's religion is controlled by authority it is more important to show her plainly what to believe than to explain the reasons for belief. For faith attached to ideas half-understood is the main source of fanaticism, and faith demanded on behalf of what is absurd leads to madness or unbelief. Whether our catechisms tend to produce impiety rather than fanaticism I cannot say, but I do know that they lead to one or other.

[¶1325:] In the first place, when you teach religion to little girls never make it gloomy or tiresome, never make it a task or a duty, and therefore never give them anything to learn by heart, not even their prayers. Be content to say your own prayers regularly in their presence, but do not compel them to join you. Let their prayers be short, as Christ himself has taught us. Let them always be said with becoming reverence and respect. Remember that if we ask the Supreme Being to attend to our words, we should at least give put ourselves into what we mean to say.

[¶1326:] It does not much matter that a girl should learn her religion young, but it does matter that she should learn it thoroughly, and still more that she should learn to love it. If you make religion a burden to her, if you always speak of God's anger, if in the name of religion you impose all sorts of disagreeable duties on her, duties that she never sees you perform, what can she suppose but that to learn one's catechism and to say one's prayers is only the duty of a little girl, and she will long to be grown-up to escape, like you, from these duties. Example! Example! Without it you will never succeed in teaching children anything.

[¶1327:] When you explain the Articles of Faith let it be by direct teaching, not by question and answer. Children should only answer what they think, not what has been drilled into them. All the answers in the catechism are the wrong way about; it is the student who instructs the teacher. In the child's mouth they are a downright lie, since they explain what he does not understand and affirm what he cannot believe. Find me, if you can, an intelligent man who could honestly say his catechism.

[¶1328:] The first question I find in our catechism is as follows: "Who created you and brought you into the world?" To which the girl, who thinks it was her mother, replies without hesitation, "It was God." All she knows is that she is asked a question which she only half understands and she gives an answer she does not understand at all.

[¶1329:] I wish some one who really understands the development of children's minds would write a catechism for them. It might be the most useful book ever written, and, in my opinion, it would do its author no little honor. This at least is certain-if it were a good book it would be very unlike our catechisms.

[¶1330:] Such a catechism will not be satisfactory unless the child can answer the questions of her own accord without having to learn the answers. Indeed the child will often ask the questions herself. An example is required to make my meaning plain and I feel how ill equipped I am to furnish such an example. I will try to give some sort of outline of my meaning.

[¶1331:] To get to the first question in our catechism I suppose we must begin somewhat after the following fashion.

[¶1332:] Nurse: Do you remember when your mother was a little girl?

Child: No, nurse.

Nurse: Why not, when you have such a good memory?

Child: I was not alive.

Nurse: Then you were not always alive?

Child: No.

Nurse: Will you live for ever?

Child: Yes.

Nurse: Are you young or old?

Child: I am young.

Nurse: Is your grandmamma old or young?

Child: She is old.

Nurse: Was she ever young?

Child: Yes.

Nurse: Why is she not young now?

Child: She has grown old.

Nurse: Will you grow old too?

Child: I don t know.

Nurse: Where are your last year's frocks?

Child: They have had the stitching taken out of them.

Nurse: Why?

Child: Because they were too small for me.

Nurse: Why were they too small?

Child: I have grown bigger.

Nurse: Will you grow any more?

Child: Oh, yes.

Nurse: An what becomes of big girls?

Child: They grow into women.

Nurse: And what becomes of women?

Child: They are mothers.

Nurse: And what becomes of mothers?

Child: They grow old.

Nurse: Will you grow old?

Child: When I am a mother.

Nurse: And what becomes of old people?

Child: I don't know.

Nurse: What became of your grandfather?

Child: He died.

Nurse: Why did he die?

Child: Because he was so old.

Nurse: What becomes of old people?

Child: They die.

Nurse: And when you are old-?

Child: Oh nurse! I don't want to die!

Nurse: My dear, no one wants to die, and everybody dies.

Child: Why, will mamma die too?

Nurse: Yes, like everybody else. Women grow old as well as men, and old age ends in death.

Child: What must I do to grow old very, very slowly?

Nurse: Be good while you are little.

Child: I will always be good, nurse.

Nurse: So much the better. But do you suppose you will lire for ever?

Child: When I am very, very old.

Nurse: Well?

Child: When we are so very old you say we must die?

Nurse: You must die some day.

Child: Oh dear! I suppose I must.

Nurse: Who lived before you?

Child: My father and mother.

Nurse: And before them?

Child: Their father and mother.

Nurse: Who will live after you?

Child: My children.

Nurse: Who will live after them?

Child: Their children.

[¶1333:] In this way, by concrete examples, you will find a beginning and end for the human race like everything else-that is to say, a father and mother who never had a father and mother, and children who will never have children of their own.

[¶1334:] It is only after a long course of similar questions that we are ready for the first question in the catechism. Only then can we put the question and the child may be able to understand it. But what a gap there is between the first and the second question which is concerned with the definitions of the divine nature. When will this chasm be bridged? "God is a spirit." "And what is a spirit?" Shall I start the child upon this difficult question of metaphysics which grown men find so hard to understand? These are no questions for a little girl to answer. If she asks them, it is as much or more than we can expect. In that case I should tell her quite simply, "You ask me what God is. It is not easy to say; we can neither hear nor see nor handle God; we can only know Him by His works. To learn what He is, you must wait till you know what He has done."

[¶1335:] If our dogmas are all equally true, they are not equally important. It makes little difference to the glory of God that we should perceive it everywhere, but it does make a difference to human society, and to every member of that society, that a man should know and do the duties which are laid upon him by the law of God, his duty to his neighbour and to himself. This is what we should always be teaching one another, and it is this which fathers and mothers are specially bound to teach their little ones. Whether a virgin became the mother of her Creator, whether she gave birth to God, or merely to a man into whom God has entered, whether the Father and the Son are of the same substance or of similar substance only, whether the Spirit proceeded from one or both of these who are but one, or from both together -- however important these questions may seem, I cannot see that it is any more necessary for the human race to come to a decision with regard to them than to know what day to keep Easter, or whether we should tell our beads, fast, and refuse to eat meat, speak Latin or French in church, adorn the walls with statues, hear or say mass, and have no wife of our own. Let each think as he pleases. I cannot see that it matters to any one but himself. For my own part it is no concern of mine. But what does concern my fellow-creatures and myself alike is to know that there is indeed a judge of human fate whose children we all are, who bids us all be just, to love one another, to be kindly and merciful, to keep our word with all men, even with our own enemies and his. We must know that the apparent happiness of this world is nothing; that there is another life to come, in which this Supreme Being will be the rewarder of the just and the judge of the unjust. Children need to be taught these doctrines and others like them and all citizens require to be persuaded of their truth. Whoever sets his face against these doctrines is indeed guilty; he is the disturber of the peace, the enemy of society. Whoever goes beyond these doctrines and seeks to make us the slaves of his private opinions reaches the same goal by another way. To establish his own kind of order he disturbs the peace; in his rash pride he makes himself the interpreter of the Divine; and in his name he demands the homage and the reverence of mankind. So far as may be, he sets himself in God's place. He should receive the punishment of sacrilege if he is not punished for his intolerance.

[¶1336:] Disregard, therefore, all those mysterious doctrines which are words without ideas for us, all those strange teachings, the study of which is too often offered as a substitute for virtue, a study which more often makes men mad rather than good. Keep your children ever within the little circle of dogmas which are related to morality. Convince them that the only useful learning is that which teaches us to act rightly. Do not make your daughters into theologians and casuists; only teach them such things of heaven as conduce to human goodness. Train them to feel that they are always in the presence of God, who sees their thoughts and deeds, their virtue and their pleasures. Teach them to do good without ostentation and because they love it, to suffer evil without a murmur because God will reward them; in a word to be all their life long what they will be glad to have been when they appear in his presence. This is true religion; this alone is incapable of abuse, impiety, or fanaticism. Let those who will teach a religion more sublime, but this is the only religion I know.

[¶1337:] Moreover, it is as well to observe that until the age when reason becomes enlightened, when growing emotion gives a voice to conscience, what is wrong for young people is what those around them have decided to be wrong. What they are told to do is good; what they are forbidden to do is bad; that is all they ought to know. This shows how important it is for girls, even more than for boys, that the right people should be chosen to be with them and to have authority over them. Finally the time comes when they begin to judge things for themselves; then is the time to change your method of education.

[¶1338:] Perhaps I have said too much already. To what shall we reduce the education of our women if we give them no law but that of conventional prejudice? Let us not degrade so far the sex which rules over us and which does us honour when we have not debased it. There exists for the whole human race a rule anterior to that of public opinion. The inflexible direction of this rule is what all the others should relate to. It is the judge even of prejudice, and only in so far as the esteem of men is in accordance with this rule has it any authority for us.

[¶1339:] This rule is our interior sentiment. I will not repeat what has been said already; it is enough to point out that if these two laws clash, the education of women will always be imperfect. Sentiment without respect for public opinion will not give them that delicacy of soul which lends to right conduct the charm of social approval, while respect for public opinion without sentiment will only make false and wicked women who put appearances in the place of virtue.

[¶1340:] It is, therefore, important to cultivate a faculty which serves as judge between the two guides, which does not permit conscience to go astray and corrects the errors of prejudice. That faculty is reason. But what a crowd of questions arise at this word! Are women capable of solid reasoning? Should they cultivate it? Will they cultivate it successfully? Is this culture useful in relation to the functions laid upon them? Is it compatible with the simplicity that suits them?

[¶1341:] The different ways of envisaging and answering these questions means that given these two extremes some would limit women to sewing and spinning in the household with their maids and would make them nothing more than the chief servant of their master; others, not content to secure their rights, would lead them to usurp ours. For to make woman our superior in all the qualities proper to her sex, and to make her our equal in all the rest, what is this but to transfer to the woman the superiority which nature has given to the husband?

[¶1342:] The reason which teaches a man his duties is not very complex; the reason which teaches a woman hers is even simpler. The obedience and fidelity which she owes to her husband, the tenderness and care due to her children, are such natural and self-evident consequences of her condition that she cannot honestly refuse her consent to the inner voice which is her guide, nor disregard her duty in her natural inclination.

[¶1343:] I would not altogether blame those who would restrict a woman to the labours of her sex and would leave her in profound ignorance of everything else. But that would require either a very simple, very healthy public morality or a very isolated life style. In large cities, among immoral men, such a woman would be too easily seduced. Her virtue would too often be at the mercy of circumstances. In this philosophic century, virtue must be able to be put to the test. She must know in advance what people might say to her and what she should think of it.

[¶1344:] Moreover, having to submit to men's judgment she should merit their esteem. Above all she should obtain the esteem of her spouse. She should not only make him love her person, she should make him approve her conduct. She should justify his choice before the world, and do honour to her husband through the honour given to the wife. But how can she set about this task if she is ignorant of our institutions, our customs, our notions of what is proper, if she knows nothing of the source of man's judgment, nor the passions by which it is swayed? Since she depends both on her own conscience and on public opinion, she must learn to know and reconcile these two laws, and to put her own conscience first only when the two are opposed to each other. She becomes the judge of her own judges, she decides when she should submit to them and when she should refuse her obedience. Before she accepts or rejects their prejudices she weighs them; she learns to trace them to their source, to foresee what they will be, and to turn them in her own favour. She is careful never to give cause for blame if duty allows her to avoid it. This cannot be properly done without cultivating her mind and herreason.

[¶1345:] I always come back to my main principle and it supplies the solution of all my difficulties. I study what is, I seek its cause, and I discover in the end that what is, is good. I go to open houses where the master and mistress do the honours together. They are equally well educated, equally polite, equally well equipped with wit and good taste; both of them are inspired with the same desire to give their guests a good reception and to send every one away satisfied. The husband omits no pains to be attentive to every one; he comes and goes and sees to every one and takes all sorts of trouble; he is attention itself. The wife remains in her place; a little circle gathers round her and apparently conceals the rest of the company from her; yet she sees everything that goes on. No one goes without a word with her; she has omitted nothing which might interest anybody. She has said nothing unpleasant to any one, and without any fuss the least is no more overlooked than the greatest. Dinner is announced, they take their places. The man who knows the assembled guests will place them according to his knowledge; the wife, without previous acquaintance, never makes a mistake. Their looks and bearing have already shown her what is wanted and every one will find himself where he wishes to be. I do not assert that the servants forget no one. The master of the house may have omitted no one, but the mistress perceives what each likes and sees that he gets it. While she is talking to her neighbour she has one eye on the other end of the table; she sees who is not eating because he is not hungry and who is afraid to help himself because he is clumsy and timid. When the guests leave the table every one thinks she has thought only of him, everybody thinks she has had no time to eat anything, but she has really eaten more than anybody.

[¶1346:] When the guests are gone, husband and wife talk over the events of the evening. He relates what was said to him, what was said and done by those with whom he conversed. If the lady is not always quite exact in this respect, nevertheless she perceived what was whispered at the other end of the room. She knows what so-and-so thought, and what was the meaning of this speech or that gesture. There is scarcely a change of expression for which she has not an explanation in readiness, and she is almost always right.

[¶1347:] The same turn of mind which makes a woman of the world such an excellent hostess enables a flirt to excel in the art of amusing a number of suitors. Coquetry, cleverly carried out, demands an even finer discernment than courtesy. Provided a polite lady is civil to everybody, she has done fairly well in any case. But the flirt would soon lose her hold by such clumsy uniformity. If she tries to be pleasant to all her lovers alike, she will disgust them all. In society the manners adopted towards everybody are good enough for each; provided all are alike well received, no question is asked as to private likes or dislikes. But in love, a favor shared with others is an insult. A man of feeling would rather be singled out for ill-treatment than be caressed with the crowd, and the worst that can happen to him is to be treated like every one else. So a woman who wants to keep several lovers must persuade every one of them that she prefers him, and she must contrive to do this in the sight of all the rest, each of whom is equally convinced that he is her favorite.

[¶1348:] If you want to see a man in a quandary, place him between two women with each of whom he has a secret understanding, and see what a fool he looks. But put a woman in similar circumstances between two men, and the results will be even more remarkable. You will be astonished at the skill with which she cheats them both and makes them laugh at each other. Now if that woman were to show the same confidence in both, if she were to be equally familiar with both, how could they be deceived for a moment? If she treated them alike, would she not show that they both had the same claims upon her? Oh, she is far too clever for that! So far from treating them just alike, she makes a marked difference between them, and she does it so skilfully that the man she flatters thinks it is affection, and the man she ill uses think it is spite. So that each of them believes she is thinking of him, when she is thinking of no one but herself.

[¶1349:] A general desire to please suggests similar measures. People would be disgusted with a woman's whims if they were not skilfully managed, and when they are artfully distributed her slaves are more than ever enchained.

"Usa ogn'arte la donna, onde sia colto

Nella sua rete alcun novello amante;

Nè con tutti, nè sempre un stesso volto

Serba; ma cangia a tempo attn e sembiante."

TASSO, Jerus. Del., c. iv., v. 87.

[¶1350:] What is the secret of this art if it is it not the result of a delicate and continuous observation which shows her what is taking place in a man's heart, so that she is able to encourage or to check every hidden impulse? Can this art be acquired? No; it is born with women; it is common to them all, and men never show it to the same degree. It is one of the distinctive characters of the sex. Self-possession, penetration, delicate observation, this is a woman's science. The skill to make use of it is her chief accomplishment.

[¶1351:] This is what is, and we have seen why it should be. It is said that women are false. They become false. They are really endowed with skill not duplicity; in the genuine inclinations of their sex they are not false even when they tell a lie. Why do you consult their words when it is not their mouths that speak? Consult their eyes, their colour, their breathing, their timid manner, their slight resistance; that is the language nature gave them for your answer. The lips always say "No," and rightly so; but the tone is not always the same, and that cannot lie. Has not a woman the same needs as a man, but without the same right to make them known? Her fate would be too cruel if at the time of her legitimate desires she did not have a language equivalent to the one she dare not have. Must her modesty make her unhappy? Does she not require a means of indicating her inclinations without open expression? What skill is needed to hold back from her lover what she is burning to give him! Is it not of vital importance that she should learn to touch his heart without showing that she cares for him? It is a pretty story that tale of Galatea with her apple and her clumsy flight. What more is needed? Will she tell the shepherd who pursues her among the willows that she is only running from him so that he will follow her? If she did, it would be a lie; for she would no longer attract him. The more reserve a woman has, the more art she needs, even with her husband. Yes, I maintain that by keeping coquetry within its limits a woman becomes modest and true, and out of it springs a law of honesty.

[¶1352:] One of my opponents has very truly asserted that virtue is a whole; you cannot disintegrate it and choose this and reject the other. If you love virtue, you love it in its entirety; and you close your heart when you can, and you always close your lips, to the feelings which you ought not to allow. Moral truth is not only what is, but what is good; what is bad ought not to be, and ought not to be confessed, especially when that confession produces results which might have been avoided. If I were tempted to steal, and in confessing it I tempted another to become my accomplice, the very confession of my temptation would amount to a yielding to that temptation. Why do you say that modesty makes women false? Are those who lose their modesty more sincere than the rest? Far from it; they are a thousandfold more deceitful. This degree of depravity is due to many vices, none of which is rejected, vices which owe their power to intrigue and falsehood. On the other hand, those who still feel shame, who take no pride in their faults, who are able to conceal their desires even from those who inspire them, those who confess their passion most reluctantly, these are the truest and most sincere, these are they on whose fidelity you may generally rely.

[¶1353:] The only example I know which might be quoted as a recognised exception to these remarks is MIle. de L' Enclos; and she was considered a prodigy. In her scorn for the virtues of women, she practised, so they say, the virtues of a man. She is praised for her frankness and uprightness; she was a trustworthy acquaintance and a faithful friend. To complete the picture of her glory it is said that she became a man. That may be, but in spite of her high reputation I should no more desire that man as my friend than as my mistress.

[¶1354:] This is not so irrelevant as it seems. I am aware of the tendencies of our modern philosophy which make a jest of female modesty and its so-called insincerity; I also perceive that the most certain result of this philosophy will be to deprive the women of this century of such shreds of honor as they still possess.

[¶1355:] On these grounds I think we may decide in general terms what sort of education is suited to the female mind and the objects to which we should turn its attention in early youth.

[¶1356:] As I have already said, the duties of their sex are more easily recognised than performed. They must learn in the first place to love those duties by considering the advantages to be derived from them -- that is the only way to make duty easy. Every age and condition has its own duties. We are quick to see our duty if we love it. Honor your position as a woman, and in whatever station of life to which it shall please heaven to call you, you will be well off. The essential thing is to be what nature has made you; women are only too ready to be what men would have them.

[¶1357:] The search for abstract and speculative truths, for principles and axioms in science, for all that tends to wide generalisation, is beyond a woman's grasp; their studies should be thoroughly practical. It is their business to apply the principles discovered by men, it is their place to make the observations which lead men to discover those principles. A woman's thoughts, beyond the range of her immediate duties, should be directed to the study of men, or the acquirement of that agreeable learning whose sole end is the formation of taste. For the works of genius are beyond her reach, and she has neither the accuracy nor the attention for success in the exact sciences. As for the physical sciences, to decide the relations between living creatures and the laws of nature is the task of that sex which is more active and enterprising, which sees more things, that sex which is possessed of greater strength and is more accustomed to the exercise of that strength. Woman, weak as she is and limited in her range of observation, perceives and judges the forces at her disposal to supplement her weakness, and those forces are the passions of man. Her own mechanism is more powerful than ours; she has many levers which may set the human heart in motion. She must find a way to make us desire what she cannot achieve unaided and what she considers necessary or pleasing. Therefore she must have a thorough knowledge of man's mind -- not an abstract knowledge of the mind of man in general, but the mind of those men who are about her, the mind of those men who have authority over her, either by law or custom. She must learn to intuit their feelings from speech and action, look and gesture. By her own speech and action, look and gesture, she must be able to inspire them with the feelings she desires, without seeming to have any such purpose. The men will have a better philosophy of the human heart, but she will read more accurately in the heart of men. Woman should discover, so to speak, an experimental morality; man should reduce it to a system. Woman has more wit, man more genius; woman observes, man reasons. Together they provide the clearest light and the profoundest knowledge which is possible to the unaided human mind -- in a word, the surest knowledge of self and of others of which the human race is capable. In this way art may constantly tend to the perfection of the instrument which nature has given us.

[¶1358:] The world is woman's book. If she reads it wrong, it is either her own fault or she is blinded by passion. Yet the genuine mother of a family is no woman of the world; she is almost as much of a recluse as the nun in her convent. Those who have marriageable daughters should do what is or ought to be done for those who are entering the cloisters: they should show them the pleasures they forsake before they are allowed to renounce them, lest the deceitful picture of unknown pleasures should creep in to disturb the happiness of their retreat. In France it is the girls who live in convents and the wives who flaunt in society. Among the ancients it was quite otherwise; girls enjoyed, as I have said already, many games and public festivals; the married women lived in retirement. This was a more reasonable custom and more conducive to morality. Girls may be allowed a certain amount of coquetry; to amuse themselves is their main business. A wife has other responsibilities at home, and she is no longer on the look-out for a husband. But women would not appreciate such reforms, and unluckily it is they who set the fashion. Mothers, let your daughters be your companions. Give them good sense and an honest heart, and then conceal from them nothing that a pure eye may observe. Balls, assemblies, sports, the theatre itself -- everything which viewed badly will charm an imprudent youth -- may be offered without risk to a healthy mind. The more they know of these noisy pleasures, the sooner they will be disgusted by them.

[¶1359:] I can imagine the outcry with which will be raised against me. What girl will resist such an example? Their heads are turned by the first glimpse of the world; not one of them is ready to give it up. That may be; but before you showed them this deceitful prospect, did you prepare them to see it without emotion? Did you tell them plainly what they would be presented with? Did you show it in its true light? Did you arm them against the illusions of vanity? Did you inspire their young hearts with a taste for the true pleasures which are not to be found with in this crowd? What precautions, what steps, did you take to preserve them from the false taste which leads them astray? Not only have you done nothing to preserve their minds from the tyranny of prejudice, you have fostered that prejudice; you have taught them to desire every foolish amusement they can get. Your own example is their teacher. Young people on their entrance into society have no guide but their mother, who is often just as silly as they are themselves, and quite unable to show them things except as she sees them herself. Her example is stronger than reason; it justifies them in their own eyes, and the mother's authority is an unanswerable excuse for the daughter. If I ask a mother to bring her daughter into society, I assume that she will show it in its true light.

[¶1360:] The evil begins still earlier. The convents are regular schools of coquetry, not that honest coquetry which I have described above, but a coquetry that is the source of every kind of misconduct, a coquetry that turns out girls who are the most ridiculous little madams. When they leave the convent to take their place in smart society, young women find themselves quite at home. They have been educated for such a life; is it strange that they like it? I am afraid what I am going to say may be based on prejudice rather than observation, but so far as I can see, one finds more family affection, more good wives and loving mothers in Protestant than in Catholic countries. If that is so, we cannot fail to suspect that the difference is partly due to the convent schools.

[¶1361:] The charms of a peaceful family life must be known to be enjoyed; their delights should be tasted in childhood. It is only in our father's home that we learn to love our own, and a woman whose mother did not educate her herself will not be willing to educate her own children. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as home education in our cities. Society is so general and so mixed there is no place left to retreat to, and even in the home we live in public. We live in company till we have no family, and we scarcely know our own relations. We see them as strangers; and the simplicity of home life disappears together with the sweet familiarity which was its charm. In this way do we draw with our mother's milk a taste for the pleasures of the age and the maxims by which it is controlled.

[¶1362:] Girls are made to assume an air of coolness so that men may be deceived into marrying them by their appearances. But study these young people for a moment; under a pretence of coyness they barely conceal the passion which devours them, and already you may read in their eager eyes their desire to imitate their mothers. It is not a husband they want, but the licence of a married woman. What need of a husband when there are so many other resources? But a husband there must be to act as a screen. There is modesty on the brow but libertinage in the heart; this sham modesty is one of its outward signs. They affect it that they may be rid of it once for all. Women of Paris and London, forgive me! There may be miracles everywhere, but I am not aware of them; and if there is even one among you who is really pure in heart, I know nothing of our institutions.

[¶1363:] All these different methods of education lead in similar ways to a taste for the pleasures of the great world and to the passions which this taste so soon kindles. In our great towns depravity begins at birth; in the smaller towns it begins with reason. Young women brought up in the country are soon taught to despise the happy simplicity of their lives, and hurry to Paris to share the corruption of ours. Vices, cloaked under the fine name of accomplishments, are the sole object of their journey. Ashamed to find themselves so much behind the noble licence of the Parisian ladies, they cannot wait to become worthy of the name of Parisian. Which is responsible for the evil -- the place where it begins, or the place where it is accomplished?

[¶1364:] I would not have a sensible mother bring her girl to Paris to show her these sights so harmful to others; but I assert that if she did so, either the girl has been badly brought up, or such sights have little danger for her. With good taste, good sense, and a love of what is right, these things are less attractive than to those who abandon themselves to their charm. In Paris you may see giddy young people hastening to adopt the tone and fashions of the town for some six months, so that they may spend the rest of their life in disgrace; but who pays any attention to those who, disgusted with the rout, return to their distant home and are contented with their lot when they have compared it with that which others desire. How many young wives have I seen whose good-natured husbands have taken them to Paris where they might live if they pleased; but they have shrunk from it and returned home more willingly than they went, saying tenderly, "Ah, let us go back to our cottage, life is happier there than in these palaces." We do not know how many there are who have not bowed down to idols, who scorn his senseless worship. Fools make all the noise; good women pass unnoticed.

[¶1365:] If so many women preserve a judgment which is proof against temptation, in spite of universal prejudice, in spite of the bad education of girls, what would their judgment have been had it been strengthened by suitable instruction, or rather left unaffected by evil teaching? For to preserve or restore the natural feelings is our main business. You can do this without preaching endless sermons to your daughters, without burdening them with your harsh morality. With both sexes, moralizing means the death of any good education. Dreary lessons only create an aversion both for what is said and for those who say it. In talking to a young girl you need not make her afraid of her duties, nor need you increase the yoke imposed upon her by nature. When you explain her duties speak plainly and pleasantly; do not let her suppose that the performance of these duties is a dismal thing -- no angry tones, no haughtiness. Every thought which we desire to arouse should find its expression in our pupils. Their catechism of conduct should be as brief and plain as their catechism of religion, but it need not be so serious. Show them that these same duties are the source of their pleasures and the basis of their rights. Is it so hard to win love by love, happiness by an amiable disposition, obedience by worth, and honour by self-respect? How fair are these woman's rights, how worthy of reverence, how dear to the heart of man when a woman is able to show their worth! These rights are no privilege of years; a woman's empire begins with her virtues. Her charms are only in the bud, yet she reigns already by the gentleness of her character and the dignity of her modesty. Is there any man so hard-hearted and uncivilised that he does not soften his pride and attend to his manners with a sweet and virtuous girl of sixteen, who listens but says little, whose bearing is modest, conversation honest, whose beauty does not lead her to forget her sex and her youth, whose very timidity arouses interest while she wins for herself the respect which she shows to others?

[¶1366:] These external signs are not devoid of meaning. They do not rest entirely upon the charms of sense; they arise from that conviction that we all feel that women are the natural judges of a man's worth. Who would be scorned by women? Not even he who has ceased to desire their love. And do you suppose that I, who tell them such harsh truths, am indifferent to their verdict? Reader, I care more for their approval than for yours; you are often more effeminate than they. While I scorn their morals, I will revere their justice. I care not if they hate me so long as I can compel their esteem.

[¶1367:] What great things might be accomplished by their influence if only we could bring it to bear! Too bad for the century whose women lose their ascendancy, and fail to make men respect their judgment! This is the last stage of degradation. Every virtuous nation has shown respect to women. Consider Sparta, Germany, and Rome -- Rome the throne of glory and virtue, if ever they were enthroned on earth. The Roman women awarded honour to the deeds of great generals, they mourned in public for the fathers of the country, their awards and their tears were equally held sacred as the most solemn utterance of the Republic. Every great revolution began with the women. Through a woman Rome gained her liberty, through a woman the plebeians won the consulate, through a woman the tyranny of the decemvirs was overthrown. It was the women who saved Rome when besieged by Coriolanus. What would you have said at the sight of this procession, you Frenchmen who pride yourselves on your gallantry, would you not have followed it with shouts of laughter? You and I see things with such different eyes, and perhaps we are both right. Such a procession formed of the fairest beauties of France would be an indecent spectacle; but let it consist of Roman ladies, you will all gaze with the eyes of the Volscians and feel with the heart of Coriolanus.

[¶1368:] I will go further and maintain that virtue is no less favourable to love than to other rights of nature, and that it adds as much to the authority of mistresses as to that of the wives or mothers. There is no real love without enthusiasm, and no enthusiasm without an object of perfection real or supposed, but always present in the imagination. What is there to kindle the hearts of lovers for whom this perfection is nothing, for whom the loved one is merely the means to sensual pleasure? No, it is not thus that the heart kindled, not thus that it abandons itself to those sublime transports which cause the rapture of lovers and the charm of love. Everything is only illusion in love, I admit, but its reality consists in the feelings it awakens in us for the true beauty which it makes us love. That beauty is not to be found in the object of our affections, it is the creation of our illusions. And why should this matter? Do we not still sacrifice all those baser feelings to the imaginary model? Do we not still feed our hearts on the virtues we attribute to the beloved? Do we not still withdraw ourselves from the baseness of the human self? Where is the true lover who would not give his life for his mistress, and where is the gross and sensual passion in a man who is willing to die? We scoff at the knights of old, and yet they knew the meaning of love while we know nothing but debauchery. When the teachings of romance began to seem ridiculous, it was not so much the work of reason as of immorality.

[¶1369:] Natural relations remain the same throughout the centuries, their good or evil effects are unchanged. Prejudices masquerading as reason can only change their outward seeming. Self-mastery, even at the mercy of fantastic opinions, will not cease to be great and good. And the true motives of honour will not fail to appeal to the heart of every woman with judgement who is able to seek her life's happiness in her own role. To a high-souled woman chastity above all must be a delightful virtue. She sees the whole world at her feet and she triumphs over herself and them; she erects in her own heart a throne to which all come to pay her hommage. The tender or jealous but always respectful sentiments of both sexes, the universal estime and her own self-estime, ceaselessly pay glorious tribute to a few passing struggles. The loss is fleeting, the gain is permanent. What a joy for a noble heart-- the pride of virtue combined with beauty. Let her be a heroine of romance; she will taste delights more exquisite than those of Lais and Cleopatra; and when her beauty is fled, her glory and her joys remain. She alone will be able to enjoy the past.

[¶1370:] The harder and more important the duties, the stronger and clearer must be the reasons on which they are based. There is a sort of pious talk about the most serious subjects which is drummed into the ears of young people without persuading them. From this talk, quite unsuited to their ideas and the small importance they attach to it in secret, comes the facility to yield to their inclinations, for lack of any reasons for resistance drawn from the facts themselves. No doubt a girl brought up to goodness and piety has strong weapons against temptation; but one whose heart, or rather whose ears, are merely filled with the jargon of piety, will certainly fall a prey to the first skilful seducer who attacks her. A young and beautiful girl will never despise her body; she will never really deplore sins which her beauty leads men to commit; she will never lament earnestly in the sight of God that she is an object of desire; she will never be convinced that the tenderest feeling is an invention of the Evil One. Give her other and more pertinent reasons for her own sake, for these will have no effect. It will be worse to instill, as is often done, ideas which contradict each other, and after having humbled and degraded her person and her charms as the stain of sin, to bid her reverence that same vile body as the temple of Jesus Christ. Ideas too sublime and too humble are equally ineffective and they cannot both be true. A reason adapted to her age and sex is what is needed. Considerations of duty are of no effect unless they are combined with some motive for the performance of our duty.

"Quae quia non liceat non facit, illa facit.". OVID, A mor. I. iii. eleg. iv

[¶1371:] One would not suspect Ovid of such a harsh judgment.

[¶1372:] Do you wish to inspire young people with a love of good conduct? Then avoid saying, "Be good." Instead, make it their interest to be good; make them feel the value of goodness and they will love it. It is not enough to show this effect in the distant future; show it now, in the relations of the present, in the character of their lovers. Describe a good man, a man of worth; teach them to recognise him when they see him, to love him for their own sake. Convince them that such a man alone can make them happy as friend, wife, or mistress. Let reason lead the way to virtue. Make them feel that the power of their sex and all the advantages derived from it depend not merely on the right conduct, the morality, of women, but also on that of men; that the advantages of virtue have little hold over the vile and base, and that the lover is incapable of serving his mistress unless he can do homage to virtue. You may then be sure that when you describe the manners of our age you will inspire them with a genuine disgust; when you show them men of fashion they will despise them. You will give them a distaste for their maxims, an aversion to their sentiments, and a scorn for their empty gallantry. You will arouse a nobler ambition, to reign over great and strong souls, the ambition of the Spartan women to rule over men. A bold, shameless, intriguing woman, who can only attract her lovers by coquetry and retain them by her favors, wins a servile obedience in common things; in weighty and important matters she has no influence over them. But the woman who is both virtuous, wise, and charming, she who, in a word, combines love and esteem, can send them at her bidding to the end of the world, to war, to glory, and to death at her behest. This is a fine kingdom and worth the winning. This is the spirit in which Sophie has been educated. She has been trained carefully rather than strictly, and her taste has been followed rather than thwarted. Let us say just a word about her person, according to the description I have given to Emile and the picture he himself has formed of the wife in whom he hopes to find happiness.

[¶1373:] I cannot repeat too often that I am not dealing with prodigies. Emile is no prodigy, neither is Sophie. He is a man and she is a woman; this is all they have to boast of. In the present confusion between the sexes it is almost a miracle to belong to one's own sex.

[¶1374:] Sophie is well born and she has a good disposition. She has a very sensitive heart and this extreme sensitivity sometimes makes her imagination run away with her. Her mind is perceptive rather than accurate, her temper is pleasant but variable, her person pleasing though nothing out of the common, her countenance bespeaks a soul and it speaks true. You may meet her with indifference, but you will not leave her without emotion. Others possess good qualities which she lacks, others possess her good qualities in a higher degree, but in no one are these qualities better blended to form a .happy disposition. She knows how to make the best of her very faults, and if she were more perfect she would be less pleasing.

[¶1375:] Sophie is not beautiful; but in her presence men forget about beautiful women , and they are dissatisfied with themselves. At first sight she is hardly pretty; but the more we see her the prettier she is. She wins where so many lose, and what she wins she keeps. Her eyes might be finer, her mouth more beautiful, her stature more imposing; but no one could have a more graceful figure, a finer complexion, a whiter hand, a daintier foot, a sweeter look, and a more expressive countenance. She does not dazzle; she arouses interest. She delights us, we know not why.

[¶1376:] Sophie is fond of dress, and she knows how to dress; her mother has no other maid but her. She has taste enough to dress herself well; but she hates rich clothes. Her own are always simple but elegant. She does not like showy but becoming things. She does not know what colors are fashionable, but she makes no mistake about those that suit her. No girl seems more simply dressed, but no one could take more pains over her preparations; no article is selected at random, and yet there is no trace of artificiality. Her dress is very modest in appearance and very coquettish in reality; she does not display her charms, she conceals them, but in such a way as to enhance them. When you see her you say, "That is a good modest girl," but while you are with her, you cannot take your eyes or your thoughts off her, and one might say that this very simple adornment is only put on to be removed bit by bit by the imagination.

[¶1377:] Sophie has natural gifts. She is aware of them, and they have not been neglected, but never having had a chance of much training she is content to use her pretty voice to sing tastefully and truly; her little feet step lightly, easily, and gracefully. She can always make an easy graceful courtesy. She has had no singing master but her father, no dancing mistress but her mother. A neighbouring organist has given her a few lessons in playing accompaniments on the spinet, and she has improved herself by practice. At first she only wished to show off her hand on the dark keys; then she discovered that the thin clear tone of the spinet made her voice sound sweeter. Little by little she recognised the charms of harmony; as she grew older she at last began to enjoy the charms of expression, to love music for its own sake. But she has taste rather than talent; she cannot read a simple air from notes.

[¶1378:] Needlework is what Sophie likes best; and the feminine arts have been taught her most carefully, even those you would not expect, such as cutting out and dressmaking. There is nothing she cannot do with her needle, and nothing that she does not take a delight in doing; but lace-making is her favourite occupation, because there is nothing which requires such a pleasing attitude, nothing which calls for such grace and dexterity of finger. She has also studied all the details of housekeeping. She understands cooking and cleaning; she knows the prices of food, and also how to choose it; she can keep accounts accurately, she is her mother's housekeeper. Some day she will be the mother of a family; by managing her father's house she is preparing to manage her own. She can take the place of any of the servants and she is always ready to do so. You cannot give orders unless you can do the work yourself; that is why' her mother sets her to do it. Sophie does not think of that; her first duty is to be a good daughter, and that is all she thinks about for the present. Her one idea is to help her mother and relieve her of some of her anxieties. However, she does not like them all equally well. For instance, she likes dainty food, but she does not like cooking; the details of cookery offend her, and things are never clean enough for her. She is extremely sensitive in this respect and carries her sensitiveness to a fault; she would let the whole dinner boil over into the fire rather than soil her cuffs. She has always disliked inspecting the vegetable garden for the same reason. The soil is dirty, and as soon as she sees the manure heap she fancies there is a disagreeable smell.

[¶1379:] This defect is the result of her mother's teaching. According to her, cleanliness is one of the most necessary of a woman's duties, a special duty, of the highest importance and a duty imposed by nature. Nothing could be more revolting than a dirty woman, and a husband who tires of her is not to blame. She insisted so strongly on this duty when Sophie was little, she required such absolute cleanliness in her person, clothing, room, work, and toilet, that use has become habit, till it absorbs one half of her time and controls the other; so that she thinks less of how to do a thing than of how to do it without getting dirty.

[¶1380:] Yet this has not degenerated into mere affectation and softness; there is none of the over refinement of luxury. Nothing but clean water enters her room; she knows no perfumes but the scent of flowers, and her husband will never find anything sweeter than her breath. In conclusion, the attention she pays to the outside does not blind her to the fact that time and strength are meant for greater tasks. Either she does not know or she despises that exaggerated cleanliness of body which degrades the soul. Sophie is more than clean, she is pure.

[¶1381:] I said that Sophie was fond of good things. She was so by nature; but she became temperate by habit and now she is temperate by virtue. Little girls are not to be controlled, as little boys are to some extent, through their greediness. This tendency may have ill effects on women and it is too dangerous to be left unchecked. When Sophie was little, she did not always return empty handed if she was sent to her mother's cupboard, and she was not quite to be trusted with candies and sugar-almonds. Her mother caught her, took them from her, punished her, and made her go without her dinner. At last she managed to persuade her that candy was bad for the teeth, and that over-eating spoiled the figure. Thus Sophie overcame her faults; and when she grew older other tastes distracted her from this low kind of self-indulgence. With awakening feeling greediness ceases to be the ruling passion, both with men and women. Sophie has preserved her feminine tastes; she likes milk and sweets; she likes pastry and prepared food, but not much meat. She has never tasted wine or spirits; moreover, she eats sparingly; women, who do not work so hard as men, have less waste to repair. In all things she likes what is good, and knows how to appreciate it; but she can also put up with what is not so good, or can go without it.

[¶1382:] Sophie's mind is pleasing but not brilliant, and thorough but not deep. It is the sort of mind which calls for no remark, since she never seems cleverer or stupider than oneself. When people talk to her they always find what she says attractive, though it may not be highly ornamental according to modern ideas of an educated woman. Her mind has been formed not only by reading, but by conversation with her father and mother, by her own reflections, and by her own observations in the little world in which she has lived. Sophie is naturally happy; as a child she was even giddy; but her mother cured her of her silly ways, little by little, in case too sudden a change should make her self-conscious. Thus she became modest and retiring while still a child, and now that she is a child no longer, she finds it easier to continue this conduct than it would have been to acquire it without knowing why. It is amusing to see her occasionally return to her old ways and indulge in childish mirth and then suddenly check herself, with silent lips, downcast eyes, and rosy blushes; neither child nor woman, she may well partake of both.

[¶1383:] Sophie is too sensitive to be always good humoured, but too gentle to let this be really disagreeable to other people; it is only herself who suffers. If you say anything that hurts her she does not sulk, but her heart swells; she tries to run away and cry. In the midst of her tears, at a word from her father or mother she returns at once laughing and playing, secretly wiping her eyes and trying to stifle her sobs.

[¶1384:] Yet she has her whims. If her temper is too much indulged it degenerates into rebellion, and then she forgets herself. But give her time to come round and her way of making you forget her wrongdoing is almost a virtue. If you punish her she is gentle and submissive, and you see that she is more ashamed of the fault than the punishment. If you say nothing, she never fails to make amends, and she does it so frankly and so readily that you cannot be angry with her. She would kiss the ground before the lowest servant and would make no fuss about it; and as soon as she is forgiven, you can see by her delight and her caresses that a load is taken off her heart. In a word, she endures patiently the wrong-doing of others, and she is eager to atone for her own. This amiability is natural to her sex when unspoiled. Woman is made to submit to man and to endure even injustice at his hands. You will never bring young boys to this; their feelings rise in revolt against injustice; nature has not fitted them to put up with it.

"Gravem

Pelidae stomachum cedere nescif." HORACE, lib. I. ode vi.

[¶1385:] Sophie has a religion, but a religion reasonable and simple, with few doctrines and fewer observances; or rather as she knows no essential practice except morality, her whole life is devoted to the service of God and to doing good. In all her parents' teaching of religion she has been trained to a reverent submission; they have often said, "My little girl, this is too hard for you; your husband will teach you when you are grown up." Instead of long sermons about piety, they have been content to preach by their example, and this example is engraved on her heart.

[¶1386:] Sophie loves virtue. This love has come to be her ruling passion. She loves virtue because there is nothing fairer in itself, she loves it because it is a woman's glory and because a virtuous woman is little lower than the angels; she loves virtue as the only road to real happiness, because she sees nothing but poverty, neglect, unhappiness, shame, and disgrace in the life of a bad woman; she loves virtue because it is dear to her revered father and to her tender and worthy mother. They are not content to be happy in their own virtue, they desire hers; and she finds her chief happiness in the hope of making them happy. All these feelings inspire an enthusiasm which stirs her heart and keeps all its budding passions in subjection to this noble enthusiasm. Sophie will be chaste and good till her dying day; she has vowed it in her secret heart, and not before she knew how hard it would be to keep her vow. She made this vow at a time when she would have revoked it had she been the slave of her senses.

[¶1387:] Sophie is not so fortunate as to be a charming French woman, cold-hearted and vain, who would rather attract attention than give pleasure, who seeks amusement rather than delight. She suffers from a consuming desire for love; it even disturbs and troubles her heart in the midst of festivities. She has lost her former liveliness, and her taste for lively games; far from being afraid of the tedium of solitude she desires it. Her thoughts go out to him who will make solitude sweet to her. She finds strangers tedious; she wants a lover, not a circle of admirers. She would rather give pleasure to one good man than be a general favorite or win that applause of society which lasts but a day and to-morrow is turned to scorn.

[¶1388:] A woman's judgment develops sooner than a man's. Being on the defensive from her childhood on, and intrusted with a treasure so hard to keep, she is earlier acquainted with good and evil. Sophie is precocious by temperament in everything, and her judgment is more formed than that of most girls of her age. There is nothing strange in that; maturity is not always reached at the same age.

[¶1389:] Sophie has been taught the duties and rights of her own sex and of ours. She knows men's faults and women's vices; she also knows their corresponding good qualities and virtues, and has them by heart. No one can have a higher ideal of a virtuous woman, but she would rather think of a virtuous man, a man of true worth. She knows that she is made for such a man, that she is worthy of him, that she can make him as happy as he will make her. She is sure she will know him when she sees him; the difficulty is to find him.

[¶1390:] Women are by nature judges of a man's worth, as he is of theirs. This right is reciprocal, and it is recognised as such both by men and women. Sophie recognises this right and exercises it, but with the modesty becoming her youth, her inexperience, and her position. She confines her judgment to what she knows, and she only forms an opinion when it may help to illustrate some useful precept. She is extremely careful what she says about those who are absent, particularly if they are women. She thinks that talking about each other makes women spiteful and satirical; so long as they only talk about men they are merely just. So Sophie stops there. As to women she never says anything at all about them, except to tell the good she knows; she thinks this is only fair to her sex; and if she knows no good of any woman, she says nothing, and that is enough.

[¶1391:] Sophie has little knowledge of society, but she is observant and obliging, and all that she does is full of grace. A happy disposition does more for her than much art. She has a certain politeness of her own that is not the result of any formula, is not dependent on current styles, nor does it change along with them, but that arises from a true desire to please and in fact does please. She knows nothing of the language of empty compliments nor does she invent more elaborate compliments of her own; she does not say that she is greatly obliged, that you do her too much honour, that you should not take so much trouble, etc. Still less does she try to make phrases of her own. She responds to an attention or a customary piece of politeness by a courtesy or a mere "Thank you," but this phrase in her mouth is worth more than another. If you do her a real service, she lets her heart speak, and its words are no empty compliment. She has never allowed French manners to make her a slave to appearances. When she goes from one room to another she does not take the arm of an old gentleman, whom she would much rather help. When a perfumed dandy offers her such impertinent gallantries, she leaves him on the staircase and strides into the room saying that she is not lame. Indeed, she will never wear high heels though she is not tall; her feet are small enough to dispense with them.

[¶1392:] Not only does she adopt a silent and respectful attitude towards women, but also towards married men, or those who are much older than herself. She will never take her place above them unless compelled to do so; and she will return to her own lower place as soon as she can. For she knows that the rights of age take precedence of those of sex, since age is presumably wiser than youth and wisdom should be held in the greatest honor.

[¶1393:] With young people of her own age it is another matter. She requires a different manner to gain their respect, and she knows how to adopt it without dropping the modest ways which become her. If they themselves are shy and modest she will gladly preserve the friendly familiarity of youth; their innocent conversation will be lively but decent. If they become serious they must say something useful; if they become silly, she soon puts a stop to it, for she has an utter contempt for the jargon of gallantry, which she considers an insult to her sex. She feels sure that the man she seeks does not speak that jargon, and she will never permit in another what would be displeasing to her in him whose character is engraved on her heart. Her high opinion of the rights of her sex, her pride in the purity of her feelings, that active virtue which is the basis of her self-respect, make her indignant at the sentimental speeches intended for her amusement. She does not receive them with open anger, but with a disconcerting irony or an unexpected iciness. If a fair Apollo displays his charms and makes use of his wit in the praise of her wit, her beauty, and her grace; at the risk of offending him she is quite capable of saying politely, "Sir, I am afraid I know that better than you; if we have nothing more interesting to talk about, I think we may put an end to this conversation." To say this with a deep courtesy, and then to withdraw to a considerable distance, is the work of a moment. Ask your lady-killers if it is easy to continue to babble to such an unsympathetic ear.

[¶1394:] It is not that she is not fond of praise if it is really sincere, and if she thinks you believe what you say. You must show that you appreciate her merit if you would have her believe you. Her proud spirit may take pleasure in homage that is based upon esteem, but empty compliments are always rejected. Sophie was not meant to practise the small arts of the dancing-girl.

[¶1395:] With a judgment so mature, and formed in every way like a woman of twenty, Sophie at fifteen is no longer treated as a child by her parents. No sooner do they perceive the first signs of youthful restlessness than they hasten to anticipate its development. Their conversations with her are wise and tender. These wise and tender conversations are in keeping with her age and disposition. If her disposition is what I imagine why should not her father speak to her somewhat thus:

[¶1396:] "You are a big girl now, Sophie, you will soon be a woman. We want you to be happy, for our own sakes as well as yours, for our happiness depends on yours. A good girl finds her own happiness in the happiness of a good man, so we must consider your marriage. We must think of it in good time, for marriage makes or mars our whole life, and we cannot have too much time to consider it.

[¶1397:] "There is nothing so hard to choose as a good husband, unless it is a good wife. You will be that rare creature, Sophie; you will be the crown of our life and the blessing of our declining years. But however worthy you are, there are worthier people upon earth. There is no one who would not do himself honor by marriage with you; there are many who would do you even greater honor than themselves. Among these we must try to find one who suits you; we must get to know him and introduce you to him.

[¶1398:] "The greatest possible happiness in marriage depends on so many points of agreement that it is useless to expect to secure them all. We must first consider the more important matters. If others are to be found along with them, so much the better; if not we must do without them. Perfect happiness is not to be found in this world, but we can, at least, avoid the worst form of unhappiness, that for which ourselves are to blame.

[¶1399:] "There is a natural suitability, there is a suitability of established usage, and a suitability which is merely conventional. Parents should decide as to the latter two, and the children themselves should decide as to the former. Marriages arranged by parents only depend on a suitability of custom and convention: it is not two people who are united, but two positions and two properties. But these things may change, the people remain, they are always there; and in spite of fortune it is the personal relation that makes a happy or an unhappy marriage.

[¶1400:] "Your mother had rank, I had wealth; this was all that our parents considered in arranging our marriage. I lost my money, she lost her position. Forgotten by her family, what good did it do her to born a lady? In the midst of our misfortunes, the union of our hearts has outweighed them all. The similarity of our tastes led us to choose this retreat; we live happily in our poverty, we are all in all to each other. Sophie is a treasure we hold in common, and we thank Heaven which has bestowed this treasure and deprived us of all others. You see, my child, where we have been led to by Providence: the conventional motives which brought about our marriage no longer exist; we are ahppy only because of those things that were not taken into account.

[¶1401:] "Husband and wife should choose each other. A mutual liking should be the first bond between them. They should follow the guidance of their own eyes and hearts. For since their first duty, once they are united, is to love one another, and since loving or not loving does not depend on ourselves, this duty necessarily brings another -- which is to begin loving each other before becoming united. That is the law of nature, and no power can abrogate it. Those who have fettered it by so many legal restrictions have had more regard for apparent order than for the happiness of marriage or the morals of the citizens. You see, my dear Sophie, we do not preach a harsh morality. It tends to make you your own mistress and to make us leave the choice of your husband to yourself.

[¶1402:] "When we have told you our reasons for giving you full liberty, it is only fair to speak of your reasons for making a wise use of that liberty. My child, you are good and sensible, upright and pious, you have the accomplishments of a good woman and you are not altogether without charms. But you are poor. You have the gifts most worthy of esteem, but not those which are most esteemed. Do not seek what is beyond your reach, and let your ambition be controlled, not by your ideas or ours, but by the opinion of others. If it were merely a question of equal merits, I would not know what limits to impose on your hopes; but do not let your ambitions outrun your fortune, and remember it is very small. Although a man worthy of you would not consider this inequality an obstacle, you must do what he would not do. Sophie must follow her mother's example and only enter a family which counts it an honor to receive her. You never saw our wealth, you were born in our poverty. You make it sweet for us, and you share it without hardship. Believe me; Sophie, do not seek those good things we indeed thank heaven for having taken from us; we did not know what happiness was till we lost our money.

[¶1403:] "You are so amiable that you will win affection, and you are not so poor as to be a burden. You will be sought in marriage; it may be by those who are unworthy of you. If they showed themselves in their true colors, you would rate them at their real value; all their outward show would not long deceive you. But though your judgment is good and you know what merit is when you see it, you are inexperienced and you do not know how people can conceal their real selves. A skillful faker might study your tastes in order to seduce you and make a pretence of those virtues which he does not possess. You would be ruined, Sophie, before you knew what you were doing, and you would only perceive your error when you had cause to lament it. The most dangerous snare, the only snare which reason cannot avoid, is that of the senses. If ever you have the misfortune to fall into its toils, you will perceive nothing but fantasies and illusions; your eyes will be fascinated, your judgment troubled, your will corrupted; your very error will be dear to you, and even if you were able to perceive it you would not be willing to escape from it. My child, I trust you to Sophie's own reason; I do not trust you to the fantasies of your own heart. Judge for yourself so long as your heart is untouched, but when you love betake yourself to your mother's care.

[¶1404:] I propose a treaty between us which shows our esteem for you and restores the order of nature between us. Parents choose a husband for their daughter and she is only consulted as a matter of form; that is the custom. We will do just the opposite; you will choose, and we will be consulted. Use your right, Sophie, use it freely and wisely. The husband suitable for you should be chosen by you not us. But it is for us to judge whether he is really suitable, or whether, without knowing it, you are only following your own wishes. Birth, wealth, position, conventional opinions will count for nothing with us. Choose a good man whose person and character suit you; whatever he may be in other respects, we will accept him as our son-in-law. His wealth will always be adequate if he has strong arms, good manners, and loves his family. His position will be good enough if it is ennobled by virtue. If everybody blames us, we do not care. We do not seek public approbation; your happiness will be enough."

[¶1405:] I cannot tell my readers what effect such words would have upon girls brought up in their fashion. As for Sophie, she will have no words to reply. Shame and emotion will not permit her to express herself easily; but I am sure that what was said will remain engraved upon her heart as long as she lives, and that if any human resolution may be trusted, we may rely on her determination to deserve her parent's esteem.

[¶1406:] At worst let us suppose her endowed with an ardent disposition which will make her impatient of long delays. I maintain that her judgment, her knowledge, her taste, her refinement, and. above all, the sentiments in which she has been brought up from childhood will outweigh the impetuosity of the senses and enable her to offer a prolonged resistance, if not to overcome them altogether. She would rather die a virgin martyr than distress her parents by marrying a worthless man and exposing herself to the unhappiness of an ill-assorted marriage. Ardent as an Italian and sentimental as an Englishwoman, she has as a curb upon her heart and senses the pride of a Spaniard, who even when she seeks a lover does not easily discover one worthy of her.

[¶1407:] Not every one can realise the motive power to be found in a love of what is right nor the inner strength which results from a genuine love of virtue. There are men who think that everything great is a fantasy, men who with their vile and degraded reason will never recognise the power over human passions which is wielded by the very madness of virtue. You can only teach such men by examples. If they persist in denying their existence, so much the worse for them. If I told them that Sophie is no imaginary person, that her name alone is my invention, that her education, her conduct, her character, her very features, really existed, and that her loss is still mourned by a very worthy family, they would, no doubt, refuse to believe me. But indeed why should I not risk telling word for word the story of a girl so like Sophie that this story might be hers without surprising any one? Believe it or not, it is all the same to me. Call my history fiction if you will; in any case I have explained my method and furthered my purpose.

[¶1408:] This young girl with the temperament which I have attributed to Sophie was so like her in other respects that she was worthy of the name, and so we will continue to use it. After the conversation related above, her father and mother thought that suitable husbands would not be likely to offer themselves in the village where they lived; so they decided to send her to spend the winter in town, under the care of an aunt who was privately acquainted with the object of the journey. For Sophy's heart throbbed with noble pride at the thought of her self-control; and however much she might want to marry she would rather have died a maid than have brought herself to go in search of a husband.

[¶1409:] In response to her parents' wishes her aunt introduced her to her friends, took her into company, both private and public, showed her society, or rather showed her in society, for Sophie paid little heed to its bustle. Yet it was plain that she did not shrink from young men of pleasing appearance and modest seemly behaviour. Her very shyness had a charm of its own, which was very much like coquetry; but after talking to them once or twice she repulsed them. She soon exchanged that air of authority which seems to accept men's homage for a humbler bearing and a still more chilling politeness. Always watchful over her conduct, she gave them no chance of doing her the least service. It was perfectly plain that she was determined not to accept any one of them.

[¶1410:] Sensitive hearts never enjoy noisy pleasures -- the empty and barren delights of those who feel nothing and who think that to stupify life is to enjoy it. Sophie did not find what she sought, and she felt sure she never would, so she got tired of the town. She loved her parents dearly and nothing made up for their absence, nothing could make her forget them. She went home long before the time fixed for the end of her visit.

[¶1411:] Hardly had she resumed her duties at home when they perceived that her temper had changed though her conduct was unaltered. She was forgetful, impatient, sad, and dreamy; she wept in secret. At first they thought she was in love and was ashamed to admit it; they spoke to her, but she repudiated the idea. She protested she had seen no one who could touch her heart, and Sophie always spoke the truth.

[¶1412:] Yet her languor steadily increased, and her health began to give way. Her mother was anxious about her, and determined to know the reason for this change. She took her aside, and with the winning speech and the irresistible caresses which only a mother can employ, she said, "My child, whom I have borne beneath my heart, whom I bear ever in my affection, confide your secret to your mother's bosom. What secrets are these which a mother may not know? Who pities your sufferings, who shares them, who would gladly relieve them, if not your father and myself? Ah, my child l would you have me die of grief for your sorrow without letting me share it?"

[¶1413:] Far from hiding her griefs from her mother, the young girl asked nothing better than to have her as friend and comforter. But she could not speak for shame; her modesty could find no words to describe a condition so unworthy of her as the emotion which disturbed her senses in spite of all her efforts. At length her very shame gave her mother a clue to her difficulty, and she drew from her the humiliating confession. Far from distressing her with reproaches or unjust blame, she consoled her, pitied her, wept over her. She was too wise to make a crime of an evil which only virtue made so cruel. But why put up with such an evil when there was no necessity to do so, when the remedy was so easy and so legitimate? Why did she not use the freedom they had granted her? Why did she not take a husband? Why did she not make her choice? Did she not know that she was perfectly independent in this matter, that whatever her choice, it would be approved, for it was sure to be good? They had sent her to town, but she would not stay; many suitors had offered themselves, but she would have none of them. What did she expect? What did she want? What an inexplicable contradiction?

[¶1414:] The reply was simple. If it were only a question of the partner of her youth, her choice would soon be made. But a master for life is not so easily chosen; and since the two cannot be separated, people must often wait and sacrifice their youth before they find the man with whom they could spend their life. Such was Sophie's case; she wanted a lover, but this lover must be her husband; and to discover a heart such as she required, a lover and husband were equally difficult to find. All these dashing young men were only her equals in age; in everything else they were found lacking. Their empty wit, their vanity, their affectations of speech, their ill-regulated conduct, their frivolous imitations all disgusted her. She sought a man and she found monkeys; she sought a soul and there was none to be found.

[¶1415:] "I am so unhappy! "she said to her mother; "I need to love and yet I see nothing that pleases me. My heart rejects every one who appeals to my senses. Every one of them both stirs my passions and revolts them. A liking unaccompanied by respect cannot last. That is not the sort of man for your Sophie; his delightful image is too deeply engraved in her heart. She can love only him, she can only make him happy, she can be happy only with him alone. She would rather consume herself in ceaseless conflicts, she would rather die free and wretched, than be driven desperate by the company of a man she did not love, a man she would make as unhappy as herself; she would rather die than live to suffer."

[¶1416:] Amazed at these strange ideas, her mother found them so peculiar that she could not fail to suspect some mystery. Sophie was neither affected nor absurd. How could such exaggerated delicacy exist in one who had been so carefully taught from her childhood to adapt herself to those with whom she must live, and to make a virtue of necessity? This ideal of the delightful man with which she was so enchanted, who appeared so often in her conversation, made her mother suspect that there was some foundation for her caprices which was still unknown to her, and that Sophie had not told her all. The unhappy girl, overwhelmed with her secret grief, was only too eager to confide it to another. Her mother urged her to speak; she hesitated, she yielded, and leaving the room without a word, she presently returned with a book in her hand. "Have pity on your unhappy daughter. There is no remedy for her grief, her tears cannot be dried. You wish to know the cause. Well, here it is," she said, flinging the book on the table. Her mother took the book and opened it; it was The Adventures of Telemachus. At first she could make nothing of this riddle. Only by means of questions and vague replies did she discover to her great surprise that her daughter was the rival of Eucharis.

[¶1417:] Sophie was in love with Telemachus, and loved him with a passion which nothing could cure. When her father and mother became aware of her infatuation, they laughed at it and tried to cure her by reasoning with her. They were mistaken; reason was not altogether on their side. Sophie had her own reason and knew how to use it. Many a time reduces them to silence by turning their own arguments against them, by showing them that it was all their own fault for not having trained her to suit the men of that century; that she would be compelled to adopt her husband's way of thinking or he must adopt hers, that they had made the former course impossible by the way she had been brought up, and that the latter was just what she wanted. "Give me," said she, "a man who holds the same opinions as I do, or one who will be willing to learn them from me, and I will marry him; but until then, why do you scold me? Pity me. I am miserable but not crazy. Is the heart controlled by the will? Did my father not ask that very question? Is it my fault if I love what has no existence? I am no visionary. I desire no prince; I seek no Telemachus. I know he is only a fiction; I seek some one like him. And why should there be no such person, since there is such a person as I, I who feel that my heart is like his? No, let us not wrong humanity so greatly, let us not think that an amiable and virtuous man is a fantasy. He exists, he lives, perhaps he is seeking me; he is seeking a soul which is capable of love for him. But who is he, where is he? I do not know; he is not among those I have seen; and no doubt I shall never see him. Oh! mother, why did you make virtue too lovable? If I can love nothing less, you are more to blame than I."

[¶1418:] Must I continue this sad story to its close? Must I describe the long struggles that preceded it? Must I show an impatient mother exchanging her former caresses for severity? Must I paint an angry father forgetting his former promises, and treating the most virtuous of daughters as a mad woman? Must I portray the unhappy girl, more than ever devoted to her imaginary hero, because of the persecution brought upon her by that devotion, drawing nearer step by step to her death, and descending into the grave when they were about to force her to the altar? No; I will not dwell upon these gloomy scenes. I have no need to go so far to show, by what I consider a sufficiently striking example, that in spite of the prejudices arising from the manners of our age, the enthusiasm for the good and the beautiful is no more foreign to women than to men and that there is nothing which, under nature's guidance cannot be obtained from them as well as from us.

[¶1419:] You stop me here to inquire whether it is nature which teaches us to take such pains to repress our immoderate desires. No, I reply, but neither is it nature who gives us these immoderate desires. Now, all that is not from nature is contrary to nature, as I have proved a hundred times.

[¶1420:] Let us give Emile his Sophie. Let us restore this sweet girl to life and provide her with a less vivid imagination and a happier fate. I desired to paint an ordinary woman, but by endowing her with a great soul, I have disturbed her reason. I have gone astray. Let us retrace our steps. Sophie has only a good disposition and an ordinary heart; her education is responsible for everything in which she excels other women.

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[¶1421:] In this book I intended to describe all that might be done and to leave every one free to choose what he or she could out of all the good things I described. I meant to train a companion for Emile from the very first, and to educate them for each other and with each other. But on consideration I thought all these premature arrangements undesirable, for it was absurd to plan the marriage of two children before I could tell whether this union was in accordance with nature and whether they were really suited to each other. We must not confuse what is suitable in a wilderness with what is suitable in civilised life. In the former, any woman will suit any man, for both are still in their primitive and undifferentiated condition; in the latter, since all their characteristics have been developed by social institutions, and since each mind has taken its own settled form, not from education alone but by the co-operation, more or less well-regulated, of natural disposition and education, we can only make a match by introducing them to each other to see if they suit each other in every respect; or at least we can let them make that choice which gives the most promise of mutual suitability.

[¶1422:] The difficulty is that while social life develops character, it differentiates classes; and since these two groups do not correspond, the greater the difference between social conditions, the greater the difficulty of finding the corresponding character. As a result we have badly arrranged marriages and all their accompanying evils. And we find that it follows logically that the further we get from equality, the greater the change in our natural feelings. The wider the distance between great and small, the more the marriage tie becomes slack. The deeper the gulf between rich and poor, the fewer true husbands and fathers there are. Neither masters nor slaves have families; they are aware only of their status.

[¶1423:] Do you want to guard against these abuses and create happy marriages? Then get rid of your prejudices, forget human institutions, and consult nature. Do not join together those who are only alike in one given condition, those who will not suit one another if that condition is changed; but those who are adapted to one another in every situation, in every country, and in every rank in which they may be placed. I do not say that conventional considerations are of no importance in marriage, but I do say that the influence of natural relations is so much more important that it alone decides our fate in life; and that if there were an agreement of taste, temper, feeling, and disposition it should induce a wise father, even if he were a prince, to marry his son without a moment's hesitation to the woman so adapted to him, even if she were born in a bad home, even if she were the hangman's daughter. Yes, I maintain that even if all the worst misfortunes imaginable were to fall on the two spouses thus united, still they would enjoy more real happiness crying together than if they possessed all the riches of the world poisoned by divided hearts.

[¶1424:] Instead of providing a wife for Emile in childhood I have waited till I knew what would suit him. It is not for me to decide, but for nature; my business is to discover the choice nature has made. I say my business, not his father's; for when he entrusted his son to my care, he gave up his place to me. He gave me his rights; it is I who am really Emile's father; it is I who have made a man of him. I would have refused to educate him if I were not free to marry him according to his own choice, which is mine. Nothing but the pleasure of bestowing happiness on a man can repay me for the cost of making him capable of happiness.

[¶1425:] Do not suppose, however, that I have delayed to find a wife for Emile until I sent him in search of her. This search is only a pretext for acquainting him with women, so that he may perceive the value of a suitable wife. Sophie was discovered long since; Emile may even have seen her already, but he will not recognise her till the time is come.

[¶1426:] Although equality of rank is not essential in marriage, yet this equality along with other kinds of suitability increases their value; it is not to be weighed against any one of them, but, other things being equal, it turns the scale.

[¶1427:] A man, unless he is a king, cannot seek a wife in any and every class. If he himself is free from prejudices, he will find prejudices in others; and this girl or that might perhaps suit him and yet she would be beyond his reach. A wise father will therefore restrict his inquiries within the bounds of prudence. He should not wish to marry his pupil into a family above his own, for that is not within his power. If he could do so he ought not desire it; for what difference does rank make to a young man, at least to my pupil? Yet, if he rises he is exposed to all sorts of real evils which he will feel all his life long. I even say that he should not try to adjust the balance between different gifts, such as rank and money; for each of these adds less to the value of the other than the amount deducted from its own value in the process of adjustment. Moreover, we can never agree as to a common denominator; and finally the preference, which each feels for his own surroundings, paves the way for discord between the two families and often to difficulties between husband and wife.

[¶1428:] It makes a considerable difference as to the suitability of a marriage whether a man marries above or beneath him. The former case is quite contrary to reason, the latter is more in conformity with reason. Since the family is only connected with society through its head, it is the rank of that head which decides that of the family as a whole. When he marries into a lower rank, a man does not lower himself, he raises his wife. If, on the other hand, he marries above his position, he lowers his wife and does not raise himself. Thus there is in the first case good unmixed with evil, in the other evil unmixed with good. Moreover, the law of nature bids the woman obey the man. If he takes a wife from a lower class, natural and civil law are in accordance and all goes well. When he marries a woman of higher rank it is just the opposite case; the man must choose between diminished rights or imperfect gratitude; he must be ungrateful or despised. Then the wife, laying claim to authority, makes herself a tyrant over her lawful head; and the master, who has become a slave, is the most ridiculous and miserable of creatures. Such are the unhappy favorites whom the sovereigns of Asia honour and torment with their alliance; people tell us that if they desire to sleep with their wife they must enter by the foot of the bed.

[¶1429:] I expect that many of my readers will remember that I think women have a natural gift for managing men, and will accuse me of contradicting myself. Yet they are mistaken. There is a vast difference between claiming the right to command and managing him who commands. Woman's reign is a reign of gentleness, tact, and kindness; her commands are caresses, her threats are tears. She should reign in the home as a minister reigns in the state, by contriving to be ordered to do what she wants. In this sense, I grant you, that the best managed homes are those where the wife has most authority. But when she despises the voice of the head of the household, when she desires to usurp his rights and herself take command, the result of this disordering is never anything but misery, scandal, and dishonor.

[¶1430:] There remains the choice between our equals and our inferiors; and I think we ought also to make certain restrictions with regard to the latter. For it is hard to find in the lowest ranks of the people a >woman who is able to make a good man happy, not because the lower classes are more vicious than the higher, but because they have so little idea of what is good and beautiful, and because the injustice of other classes makes its very vices seem right in the eyes of this class.

[¶1431:] By nature man rarely thinks. He learns to think as he acquires the other arts, but with even greater difficulty. In both sexes alike I am only aware of two really distinct classes, those who think and those who do not; and this difference is almost entirely one of education. A man who thinks should not ally himself with a woman who does not think, for he loses the chief delight of social life if he has a wife who cannot share his thoughts. People who spend their whole life in working for a living have no ideas beyond their work and their own interests, and their mind seems to reside in their arms. This ignorance is not necessarily harmful either to their honesty or their morals; it is often helpful, for we often content ourselves with thinking about our duties, and end up putting mere jargon in the place of things. Conscience is the most enlightened philosopher; to be an honest man we need not read Cicero's De 0fficiis, and the best woman in the world is probably she who knows least about goodness. But it is none the less true that only a cultivated mind makes intercourse pleasant, and it is a sad thing for a father of a family, who delights in his home, to be forced to shut himself up in himself and to be unable to make himself understood.

[¶1432:] Moreover, if a woman is quite unaccustomed to think, how can she bring up her children? How will she know what is good for them? How can she incline them towards virtues of which she is ignorant, to merits of which she has no conception? She can only flatter or threaten, she can only make them insolent or timid. She will make them into performing monkeys or noisy little rascals, never intelligent or pleasing children.

[¶1433:] Therefore it is not fitting that a man of education should choose a wife who has none, or take her from a class where she cannot be expected to have any education. But I would a thousand times rather have a homely girl, simply brought up, than a learned lady and a wit who would make a literary circle of my house and install herself as its president. A female wit is a scourge to her husband, her children, her friends, her servants, to everybody. From the lofty height of her genius she scorns every womanly duty, and she is always trying to make a man of herself after the fashion of Mlle. de L'Enclos. Outside her home she always makes herself ridiculous and she is very rightly a butt for criticism, as we always are when we try to escape from our own position into one for which we are unfitted. These highly talented women only get a hold over fools. We can always tell what artist or friend holds the pen or pencil when they are at work; we know what discreet man of letters dictates their oracles in private. This trickery is unworthy of a decent woman. If she really had talents, her pretentiousness would degrade them. Her honour is to be unknown; her glory is the respect of her husband; her joys the happiness of her family. I appeal to my readers to give me an honest answer; when you enter a woman's room what makes you think more highly of her, what makes you address her with more respect-- to see her busy with feminine occupations, with her household duties, with her children's clothes about her, or to find her writing verses at her dressing table surrounded with pamphlets of every kind and with notes on tinted paper? If there were none but wise men upon earth such a woman would die an old maid.

"Quaeae cur nolim to ducere, galla? diserta es." MARTIAL xi. 20.

[¶1434:] Looks must next be considered. They are the first thing that strikes us and they ought to be the last. Still they should not count for nothing. I think that great beauty is rather to be shunned than sought after in marriage. Possession soon exhausts our appreciation of beauty; in six weeks' time we think no more about it, but its dangers endure as long as life itself. Unless a beautiful woman is an angel, her husband is the most miserable of men; and even if she were an angel he would still be the centre of a hostile crowd and she could not prevent it. If extreme ugliness were not repulsive I should prefer it to extreme beauty; for before very long the husband would cease to notice either, but beauty would still have its disadvantages and ugliness its advantages. But ugliness which is actually repulsive is the worst misfortune. Repulsion increases rather than diminishes, and it turns to hatred. Such a union is a hell upon earth; better death than such a marriage.

[¶1435:] Desire mediocrity in all things, even in beauty. A pleasant attractive countenance, which inspires kindly feelings rather than love, is what we should prefer. The husband runs no risk, and the advantages are common to husband and wife. Charm is less perishable than beauty; it is a living thing, which constantly renews itself, and after thirty years of married life, the charms of a good woman delight her husband even as they did on the wedding day.

[¶1436:] Such are the considerations which decided my choice of Sophie. Brought up, like Emile, by nature, she is better suited to him than any other; she will be his true mate. She is his equal in birth and character, his inferior in fortune. She makes no great impression at first sight, but day by day reveals fresh charms. Her chief influence only takes effect gradually, it is only discovered in friendly intercourse; and her husband will feel it more than any one. Her education is neither showy nor neglected; she has taste without deep study, talent without art, judgment without learning. Her mind knows little, but it is trained to learn; it is well-tilled soil ready for the sower. She has read no book but Barème and Telemachus which happened to fall into her hands; but no girl who can feel so passionately towards Telemachus can have a heart without feeling or a mind without discernment. What charming ignorance! Happy is he who is destined to be her tutor. She will not be her husband's teacher but his student; far from seeking to control his tastes, she will share them. She will suit him far better than a blue-stocking and he will have the pleasure of teaching her everything. It is time they made acquaintance; let us try to plan a meeting.

[¶1437:] When we leave Paris we are sorrowful and wrapped in thought. This Babel is not our home. Emile casts a scornful glance towards the great city, saying angrily, "We have wasted so many days of futile searching! It is not here that I'll find my heart's spouse. My friend, you knew it, but my time costs you nothing, and my pains hardly make you suffer." With steady look and firm voice I reply, "Emile, do you mean what you say?" At once he flings his arms round my neck and clasps me to his breast without speaking. This is always his answer when he knows he is wrong.

[¶1438:] And now we are wandering through the country like true knights errant. Yet we are not seeking adventures when we leave Paris; we are escaping from them. Now fast now slow, we wander through the country like knights-errants. By following my usual practice the taste for it has become established; and I do not suppose any of my readers are such slaves of custom as to picture us dozing in a post-chaise with closed windows, travelling, yet seeing nothing, observing nothing, making the time between our start and our arrival a mere blank, and losing in the speed of our journey all the time we meant to save.

[¶1439:] Men say life is short, and I see them doing their best to shorten it. Since they do not know how to spend their time they lament the swiftness of its flight, and I perceive that for them it goes only too slowly. Intent merely on the object of their pursuit, they watch unwillingly the space between them and it. One desires to-morrow, another looks a month ahead, another ten years beyond that. No one wants to live today, no one contents himself with the present hour, all complain that it passes slowly. When they complain that time flies, they lie. They would gladly purchase the power to hasten it; they would gladly spend their fortune to get rid of their whole life; and there is probably not a single one who would not have reduced his life to a few hours if he had been free to get rid of those hours he found tedious, and those which separated him from the desired moment. A man spends his whole life rushing from Paris to Versailles, from Versailles to Paris, from town to country, from country to town, from one district of the town to another. But he would not know what to do with his time if he had not discovered this way of wasting it. By leaving his business on purpose to find something to do in coming back to it, he thinks he is saving the time he spends, which would otherwise be unoccupied. Or maybe he rushes for the sake of rushing, and travels fast in order to return in the same fashion. When will mankind cease to slander nature? Why do you complain that life is short when it is never short enough for you? If there were just one of you, able to moderate his desires so that he did not desire the flight of time, he would never find life too short. For him life and the joy of life would be one and the same. Should he die young, he would still die full of days.

[¶1440:] If this were the only advantage of my way of travelling it would be enough. I have brought Emile up neither to desire nor to wait, but to enjoy; and when his desires are drawn beyond the present, their ardour is not so great as to make time seem tedious. He will not only enjoy the delights of longing, but the delights of approaching the object of his desires; and his passions are under such restraint that he lives to a great extent in the present.

[¶1441:] So we do not travel like couriers but like explorers. We do not merely consider the beginning and the end, but the space between. The journey itself is a delight. We do not travel sitting, dismally imprisoned, so to speak, in a tightly closed cage. We do not travel with the ease and comfort of ladies. We do not deprive ourselves of the fresh air, nor the sight of the things about us, nor the opportunity of examining them at our pleasure. Emile will never enter an enclosed carriage, nor will he ride fast unless in a great hurry. But what cause has Emile for haste? None but the joy of life. Shall I add to this the desire to do good when he can? No, for that is itself one of the joys of life.

[¶1442:] I can only think of one way of travelling pleasanter than travelling on horseback, and that is to travel on foot You start at your own time, you stop when you will, you do as much or as little as you choose. You see the country, you turn off to the right or left; you examine anything which interests you, you stop to admire every view. If I see a stream, I wander by its banks; a leafy wood, I seek its shade; a cave, I enter it; a quarry, I study its geology. If I like a place, I stop there. As soon as I am weary of it, I go on. I am independent of horses and postillions; I need not stick to regular routes or good roads; I go anywhere where a man can go; I see all that a man can see: and since I am quite independent of everybody, I enjoy all the freedom man can enjoy. If I am stopped by bad weather and find myself getting bored, then I take horses. If I am tired -- but Emile is hardly ever tired; he is strong; why should he get tired? There is no hurry. If he stops, why should he be bored? He always finds some amusement. He works at a trade; he uses his arms to rest his feet.

[¶1443:] To travel on foot is to travel in the fashion of Thales, Plato, and Pythagoras. I find it hard to understand how a philosopher can bring himself to travel in any other way, how he can tear himself from the study of the wealth which lies before his eyes and beneath his feet. Is there any one with an interest in agriculture, who does not want to know the special products of the district through which he is passing, and their method of cultivation? Is there any one with a taste for natural history, who can pass a piece of ground without examining it, a rock without breaking off a piece of it, hills without looking for plants, and stones without seeking for fossils? Your town-bred scientists study natural history in cabinets; they have small specimens; they know their names but nothing of their nature. Emile's museum is richer than that of kings; it is the whole world. Everything is in its right place. The Naturalist who is its curator has taken care to arrange it in the fairest order; Daubertoncould do no better.

[¶1444:] What varied pleasures we enjoy in this delightful way of travelling, not even counting our increasing health and a cheerful spirit. I notice that those who ride in nice, well-padded carriages are always wrapped in thought, gloomy, fault-finding, or sick, while those who go on foot are always happy, light-hearted, and delighted with everything. How cheerful we are when we get near our lodging for the night! How tasty is the coarse food! How we linger at table enjoying our rest! How soundly we sleep on a hard bed! If you only want to get to a place you may ride in a post-chaise; if you want to travel you must go on foot.

[¶1445:] If Sophie is not forgotten before we have gone fifty leagues in the way I propose, either I am a bungler or Emile lacks curiosity, For with an elementary knowledge of so many things, it is hardly to be supposed that he will not be tempted to extend his knowledge. It is knowledge that makes us curious; and Emile knows just enough to want to know more.

[¶1446:] One thing leads on to another, and we make our way forward. If I chose a distant object for the end of our first journey, it is not difficult to find an excuse for it. When we leave Paris we must seek a wife at a distance.

[¶1447:] A few days later having wandered further than usual among hills and valleys where no road was to be seen, we loose our way completely. No matter, all roads are alike if they bring you to your journey's end, but if you are hungry they must lead somewhere. Luckily we come across a peasant who took us to his cottage. We enjoy his poor dinner with a hearty appetite. When he sees how hungry and tired we are he says, "If the Lord had led you to the other side of the hill you would have had a better welcome, you would have found a good resting place, such good, kindly people! They could not wish to do more for you than I, but they are richer, though folks say they used to be much better off. Still they are not reduced to poverty, and the whole country-side is the better for what they have."

[¶1448:] When Emile hears of these good people his heart warms to them. "My friend," he says, looking at me, "let us visit this house, whose owners are a blessing to the district. I would be very glad to see them; perhaps they will be pleased to see us too; I am sure we would be welcome; we would just suit each other."

[¶1449:] Our host tells us how to find our way to the house and we set off, but lose our way in the woods. We are caught in a heavy rainstorm, which delays us further. At last we find the right path and in the evening we reach the house that was described to us. It is the only house among the cottages of the little hamlet, and though plain it has an air of dignity. We go up to the door and ask for hospitality. We are taken to the owner of the house, who questions us courteously. Without telling him the object of our journey, we tell him why we had left our path. His former wealth enables him to judge a man's position by his manners; those who have lived in society are rarely mistaken. With this passport we are admitted.

[¶1450:] The room we are shown into is very small, but clean and comfortable; a fire is lighted, and we find linen, clothes, and everything we need. "Why," says Emile, in astonishment, "one would think they were expecting us. The peasant was quite right; how kind and attentive, how considerate, and for strangers too! I would think I am living in the times of Homer." "I am glad you feel this," I say, "but you need not be surprised. Where strangers are scarce, they are welcome. Nothing makes people more hospitable than the fact that calls upon their hospitality are rare; when guests are frequent there is an end to hospitality. In Homer's time, people rarely travelled, and travellers were everywhere welcome. Very likely we are the only people who have passed this way this year." "Never mind," he says, "to know how to do without guests and yet to give them a kind welcome is its own praise."

[¶1451:] Having dried ourselves and changed our clothes, we rejoin the master of the house, who introduces us to his wife. She receives us not merely with courtesy but with kindness. Her glance rests on Emile. A mother, in her position, rarely receives a young man into her house without some anxiety or some curiosity at least.

[¶1452:] Supper is hurried forward on our account. When we go into the dining-room there were five places laid; we took our seats and the fifth chair remains empty. Presently a young girl enters, makes a deep courtesy, and modestly takes her place without a word. Emile is busy with his supper or considering how to reply to what was said to him; he bows to her and continus talking and eating. The main object of his journey is as far from his thoughts as he believes himself to be from the end of his journey. The conversation turns upon our losing our way. "Sir," says the master of the house to Emile, "you seem to be a pleasant well-behaved young gentleman, and that reminds me that your tutor and you arrived wet and weary like Telemachus and Mentor in the island of Calypso." "Indeed," said Emile, "we have found the hospitality of Calypso." His Mentor adds, "And the charms of Eucharis." But Emile knows the Odyssey and he has not read Telemachus, so he knows nothing of Eucharis. As for the young girl, I see her blushing up to her eyebrows, fixing her eyes on her plate, and hardly daring to breathe. Her mother, noticing her confusion, makes a sign to her father to turn the conversation. When he talks of his lonely life, he unconsciously begins to relate the circumstances which brought him into it; his misfortunes, his wife's fidelity, the consolations they found in their marriage, their quiet, peaceful life in their retirement, and all this without a word of the young girl. It is a pleasing and a touching story, which cannot fail to interest. Emile who is moved and melting with emotion, stops eating in order to listen. Finally at the place where this best of men expands with pleasure upon his attachment to the most worthy of wives, the young traveller, carried away by his feelings, stretches one hand to the husband, and taking the wife's hand with the other, kisses it rapturously and bathes it with his tears. Everybody is charmed with the simple enthusiasm of the young man. But the daughter, more deeply touched than the rest by this evidence of his kindly heart, is reminded of Telemachus weeping for the woes of Philoctetus. She looks at him shyly, the better to study his countenance; there is nothing in it to give the lie to her comparison. His easy bearing shows freedom without pride. His manners are lively but not boisterous; sympathy makes his glance softer and his expression more pleasing. The young girl, seeing him weep, is ready to mingle her tears with his. With so good an excuse for tears, she is restrained by a secret shame; she blames herself already for the tears which tremble on her eyelids, as though it were wrong to weep for one's family.

[¶1453:] Her mother, who has been watching her ever since she sat down to supper, sees her distress, and to relieve it she sends her on some errand. The daughter returns directly, but so little recovered that her distress is apparent to all. Her mother says gently, "Sophie, control yourself; will you never cease to weep for the misfortunes of your parents? Why should you, who are their chief comfort, be more sensitive than they are themselves?"

[¶1454:] At the name of Sophie you would have seen Emile give a start. His attention is arrested by this dear name, and he awakes all at once and looks eagerly at one who dares to bear it. Sophie! Are you the Sophie whom my heart is seeking? Is it you that I love? He looks at her; he watches her with a sort of fear and self-distrust. The face is not quite what he pictured; he cannot tell whether he likes it more or less. He studies every feature, he watches every movement, every gesture; he has a hundred fleeting interpretations for them all. He would give half his life if she would only speak. He looks at me anxiously and uneasily; his eyes are full of questions and reproaches. His every glance seems to say, "Guide me while there is yet time; if my heart yields itself and is deceived, I will never get over it."

[¶1455:] There is no one in the world less able to conceal his feelings than Emile. How should he conceal them, in the midst of the greatest disturbance he has ever experienced, and under the eyes of four spectators who are all watching him, while she who seems to heed him least is really most occupied with him? His uneasiness does not escape the keen eyes of Sophie; his own eyes tell her that she is its cause. She sees that this uneasiness is not yet love; what matter? He is thinking of her, and that is enough. She will be very unhappy if he thinks of her with impunity.

[¶1456:] Mothers, like daughters, have eyes; and they have experience too. Sophie's mother smiles at the success of our schemes. She reads the hearts of the young people; she sees that the time has come to secure the heart of this new Telemachus; she makes her daughter speak. Her daughter, with her native sweetness, replies in a timid tone which makes all the more impression. At the first sound of her voice, Emile surrenders. It is Sophie herself; there can be no doubt about it. If it were not so, it would be too late to deny it.

[¶1457:] The charms of this maiden enchantress rush like torrents through his heart, and he begins eagerly to quaff down the poison with which he is intoxicated. He says nothing; questions go unanswered; he sees only Sophie, he hears only Sophie. If she says a word, he opens his mouth; if her eyes are cast down, so are his; if he sees her sigh, he sighs too. It is Sophie's heart which seems to speak in his. What a change have these few moments wrought in her heart! It is no longer her turn to tremble, it is Emile's. Farewell liberty, simplicity, frankness. Confused, embarrassed, fearful, he dare not look about him for fear he should see that we are watching him. Ashamed that we should read his secret, he would like to make himself invisible to the whole world, that he might feed in secret on the sight of Sophie. Sophie, on the other hand, regains her confidence at the sight of Emile's fear; she sees her triumph and rejoices in it.

"No'l mostra già, ben che in suo cor ne rida." Tasso. Jcrus. Del., c. iv. v. 33.

[¶1458:] Her expression remains unchanged; but in spite of her modest look and downcast eyes, her tender heart is throbbing with joy, and it tells her that she has found Telemachus.

[¶1459:] If I relate the plain and simple tale of their innocent affections you will accuse me of frivolity, but you will be mistaken. Sufficient attention is not given to the effect which the first connection between man and woman is bound to produce on the future life of both. People do not see that a first impression so vivid as that of love, or the liking which takes the place of love, produces lasting effects whose influence continues till death. Works on education are crammed with wordy and unnecessary accounts of the imaginary duties of children; but there is not a word about the most important and most difficult part of their education, the crisis which forms the bridge between the child and the man. If any part of this work is really useful, it will be because I have dwelt at great length on this matter, so essential in itself and so neglected by other authors, and because I have not allowed myself to be discouraged either by false delicacy or by the difficulties of expression. If I have said what needs to be done, I have said what should be said; it matters little to me to have written a romance. The story of human nature is a fair romance; if it is to be found in this book is it my fault? This should be the history of my species; you who have corrupted it are the ones who assume my book to be a romance.

[¶1460:] This is supported by another reason. We are not dealing with a youth given over from childhood to fear, greed, envy, pride, and all those passions which are the common tools of the schoolmaster, We have to do with a youth who is not only in love for the first time, but with one who is also experiencing his first passion of any kind. Very likely it will be the only strong passion he will ever know, and upon it depends the final formation of his character. His mode of thought, his feelings, his tastes, determined by a lasting passion, are about to become so fixed that they will be incapable of further change.

[¶1461:] You will easily understand that Emile and I do not spend the whole of the night which follows after such an evening in sleep. What? Should a wise man be so affected by a mere coincidence of name! Is there only one Sophie in the world? Are they all alike in heart and in name? Is every Sophie he meets his Sophie? Is he made to fall in love with a person of whom be knows so little, with whom he has scarcely exchanged a couple of words? Wait, young man; examine, observe. You do not even know who our hosts may be, and to hear you talk one would think the house was your own.

[¶1462:] This is no time for lessons, and lessons like these are not made to be listened to. They only serve to stimulate Emile to further interest in Sophie, through his desire to find reasons for his attraction. The unexpected coincidence in the name, the meeting which, so far as he knows, was quite accidental, my very caution itself, only serve as fuel to the fire. He is so convinced already of Sophie's excellence, that he feels sure he can make me fond of her.

[¶1463:] Next morning I have no doubt Emile will make himself as smart as his old travelling suit permits. I am not mistaken; but I am amused to see how eager he is to wear the clean shirts put out for us. I know his thoughts, and I am delighted to see that he is trying to establish a means of intercourse, through the return and exchange of the linen; so that he may have a right to return it and so pay another visit to the house.

[¶1464:] I expected to find Sophie rather more carefully dressed too; but I was mistaken. Such common coquetry is all very well for those who merely desire to please. The coquetry of true love is a more delicate matter; it has quite another end in view. Sophie is dressed, if possible, more simply than last night, though as usual with scrupulous cleanliness. The only sign of coquetry is her self-consciousness. She knows that elaborate attire sends a clear message, but she does not know that more informal drews sends a message of a different sort; it shows a desire to be liked not merely for one's clothes but for oneself. What does a lover care for her clothes if he knows she is thinking of him? Sophie is already sure of her power over Emile, and she is not content to delight his eyes if his heart is not hers also; he must not only perceive her charms, he must imagine them; has he not seen enough to guess the rest?

[¶1465:] We may take it for granted that while Emile and I were talking last night, Sophie and her mother were not silent. A confession was made and instructions given. The morning's meeting is not unprepared. Twelve hours ago our young people had never met; they have never said a word to each other; but it is clear that there is already an understanding between them. Their greeting is formal, confused, timid; they say nothing, their downcast eyes seem to avoid each other, but that is in itself a sign that they understand. They avoid each other with one consent; they already feel the need of concealment, though not a word has been uttered. When we depart we ask if we may come again to return the borrowed clothes in person. Emile's words are addressed to the father and mother, but his eyes seek Sophie's, and his looks are more eloquent than his words. Sophie says nothing by word or gesture; she seems deaf and blind, but she blushes, and that blush is an answer even plainer than that of her parents.

[¶1466:] We receive permission to come again, though we are not invited to stay. This is only fitting; you offer shelter to benighted travellers, but a lover does not sleep in the house of his mistress.

[¶1467:] We have hardly left the cherished house before Emile is thinking of taking rooms in the neighbourhood; the nearest cottage seems too far; he would like to sleep in the next ditch. "You young fool!" I say in a tone of pity, "are you already blinded by passion? Have you no regard for manners or for reason? Poor thing! You call yourself a lover and you would bring disgrace upon her you love! What would people say of her if they knew that a young man who has been staying at her house was sleeping close by? You say you love her! Would you ruin her reputation? Is that the price you offer for her parents' hospitality? Would you bring disgrace on her who will one day make you the happiest of men?" "Why should we be bothered by the empty words and unjust suspicions of other people?" he answers hotly. "Have you not taught me yourself to ignore them? Who knows better than I how greatly I honor Sophie, what respect I desire to show her? My attachment will not cause her shame, it will be her glory, it shall be worthy of her. If my heart and my actions continually give her the homage she deserves, what harm can I do her?" "Dear Emile," I say, as I clasp him to my heart, "you are thinking of yourself alone; learn to think for her too. Do not compare the honor of one sex with that of the other, they rest on different foundations. These foundations are equally firm and right, because they are both laid by nature, and that same virtue which makes you scorn what men say about yourself binds you to respect what they say of her you love. Your honor is in your own keeping, her honor depends on others. To neglect it is to wound your own honor, and you fail in what is due to yourself if you do not give her the respect she deserves."

[¶1468:] Then while I explain the reasons for this difference, I make him realise how wrong it would be to pay no attention to it. Who can say if he will really be Sophie's husband? He does not know how she feels towards him; her own heart or her parents' will may already have formed other engagements; he knows nothing of her, perhaps there are none of those grounds of suitability which make a happy marriage. Is he not aware that the least breath of scandal with regard to a young girl is an indelible stain, which not even marriage with him who has caused the scandal can efface? What man of feeling would ruin the woman he loves? What man of honor would desire that a miserable woman should for ever lament the misfortune of having found favour in his eyes?

[¶1469:] Always prone to extremes, the youth takes alarm at the consequences which I have compelled him to consider, and now he thinks that he cannot be too far from Sophie's home. He quickens his steps to get further from it; he glances round to make sure that no one is listening; he would sacrifice his own happiness a thousand times to the honour of her whom he loves; he would rather never see her again than cause her the least unpleasantness. This is the first result of the pains I have taken ever since he was a child to make him capable of affection.

[¶1470:] We must therefore seek a lodging at a distance, but not too far. We look about us, we make inquiries; we find that there is a town at least six miles away. We try and find lodgings in this town rather than in the nearer villages where our presence might give rise to suspicion. It is there that the new lover takes up his abode, full of love, hope, joy, above all full of right feeling. In this way, I guide his rising passion towards all that is honourable and good, so that his inclinations unconsciously follow the same bent.

[¶1471:] My course is drawing to a close; the end is in view. All the chief difficulties are vanquished, the chief obstacles overcome; the hardest thing left to do is to refrain from spoiling my work by undue haste to complete it. Amid the uncertainty of human life, let us shun that false prudence which seeks to sacrifice the present to the future; what is, is too often sacrificed to what will never be. Let us make man happy at every age in case in spite of our care he should die without knowing the meaning of happiness. Now if there is a time to enjoy life, it is undoubtedly the close of adolescence, when the powers of mind and body have reached their greatest strength, and when man in the midst of his course is furthest from those two extremes which tell him "Life is short." If the imprudence of youth deceives itself it is not in its desire for enjoyment but because it seeks enjoyment where it is not to be found, and lays up misery for the future, while unable to enjoy the present.

[¶1472:] Consider my Emile over twenty years of age, well formed, well developed in mind and body, strong, healthy, active, skillful, robust, full of sense, reason, kindness, humanity, possessed of good morals and good taste, loving what is beautiful, doing what is good, free from the sway of fierce passions, released from the tyranny of popular prejudices, but subject to the law of wisdom, and easily guided by the voice of a friend; gifted with so many useful and pleasant accomplishments, caring little for wealth, able to earn a living with his own hands, and not afraid of want, whatever may come. Here he is now in the intoxication of a growing passion; his heart opens to the first beams of love. Its sweet illusions give him a whole universe of delight and enjoyment; he loves a lovable object, whose character is even more lovable than her person. He hopes, he expects the reward which he deserves.

[¶1473:] It is the rapport of their hearts, the correspondence of honest sentiments, that forms the basis of their first attachment. This attachment ought to be lasting. It abandons itself, with confidence, with reason, to the most delightful madness, without fear, regret, remorse, or any other disturbing thought, but that which is inseparable from all happiness. What can it be lacking? Look, inquire, imagine what still is lacking and that can be combined with present joys. Every happiness which can exist in combination is already present; nothing could be added without taking away from what there is. He is as happy as man can be. Will I choose this time to cut short so sweet a period? Will I disturb such pure enjoyment? The happiness he enjoys is my life's reward. What could I give that could outweigh what I should take away? Even if I set the crown to his happiness I should destroy its greatest charm. That supreme joy is a hundredfold greater in anticipation than in possession; its savor is greater while we wait for it than when it is ours. 0 worthy Emile! love and be loved! Prolong your enjoyment before it is yours; rejoice in your love and in your innocence, find your paradise upon earth, while you await your heaven. I will not cut short this happy period of life. I will draw out its enchantments, I will prolong them as far as possible. Alas! it must come to an end and that soon; but it will at least linger in your memory, and you will never repent of its joys.

[¶1474:] Emile has not forgotten that we have something to return. As soon as the things are ready, we take horses and set off at a great pace, for on this occasion he is anxious to get there. When the heart opens the door to passion, it becomes conscious of the slow flight of time. If my time has not been wasted he will not spend his life like this.

[¶1475:] Unluckily the road is intricate and the country difficult. We lose our way; he is the first to notice it, and without losing his temper, and without grumbling, he devotes his whole attention to discovering the path. He wanders for a long time before he knows where he is and always with the same self-control. You think nothing of that; but I think it a matter of great importance, for I know how eager he is; I see the results of the care I have taken from his infancy to harden him to endure the blows of necessity.

[¶1476:] We finally arrive. Our reception is much simpler and more friendly than on the previous occasion; we are already old acquaintances. Emile and Sophie bow shyly and say nothing; what can they say in our presence? What they wish to say requires no spectators. We walk in the garden; a well-kept vegetable garden takes the place of flowerbeds, the park is an orchard full of fine tall fruit trees of every kind divided by pretty streams and borders full of flowers. "What a lovely place!" exclaims Emile, still thinking of his Homer, and still full of enthusiasm, "I could imagine myself in the garden of Alcinous." The daughter wishes she knew who Alcinous was; her mother asks. "Alcinous," I tell them, "was a king of Corcyra. Homer describes his garden and the critics think it too simple and unadorned. This Alcinous had a charming daughter who dreamed the night before her father received a stranger at his board that she would soon have a husband." Sophie, taken unawares, blushes, hangs her head, and bites her lips; no one can be more confused. Her father, who is enjoying her confusion, adds that the young princess went herself to wash the linen in the river. "Do you think," says he, "she would have scorned to touch the dirty clothes, saying, that they smelt of grease?" Sophie, touched to the quick, forgets her natural timidity and defends herself eagerly. Her papa knew very well that all the smaller things would have had no other laundress if she had been allowed to wash them, and that she would gladly have done more had she been set to do it. Meanwhile she watches me secretly with such anxiety that I can not suppress a smile, while I read the terrors of her simple heart which urges her to speak. Her father is cruel enough to continue this foolish sport by asking her, in jest, why she spoke on her own behalf and what she has in common with the daughter of Alcinous. Trembling and ashamed, she dares hardly breathe or look at us. Charming girl! This is no time for feigning, you have shown your true feelings in spite of yourself.

[¶1477:] To all appearance this little scene is soon forgotten. Luckily for Sophie, Emile, at least, is unaware of it. We continue our walk, the young people at first keeping close beside us; but they find it hard to adapt themselves to our slower pace, and presently they are a little in front of us, they are walking side by side, they begin to talk, and before long they are a good way ahead. Sophie seems to be listening quietly. Emile is talking and gesticulating vigorously; they seem to find their conversation interesting. When we turn homewards a full hour later, we call them to us and they return slowly enough now, and we can see they are making good use of their time. Their conversation ceases suddenly before they come within earshot, and they hurry up to us. Emile meets us with a frank affectionate expression; his eyes are sparkling with joy; yet he looks anxiously at Sophie's mother to see how she takes it. Sophie is not nearly so much at her ease; as she approaches us she seems covered with confusion at finding herself tête-à-tête with a young man, though she has met so many other young men frankly enough, and without being found fault with for it. She runs up to her mother, somewhat out of breath, and makes some trivial remark, as if to pretend she had been with her for some time.

[¶1478:] From the happy expression of these dear children we see that this conversation has taken a load off their hearts. They are no less reticent in their intercourse, but their reticence is less embarrassing. It is only due to Emile's reverence and Sophie's modesty, to the goodness of both. Emile ventures to say a few words to her, she ventures to reply, but she always looks at her mother be fore she dares to answer. The most remarkable change is in her attitude towards me. She shows me the greatest respect, she watches me with interest, she takes pains to please me. I see that I am honored with her esteem, and that she is not indifferent to mine. I understand that Emile has been talking to her about me; you might say they have been scheming to win me over to their side. Yet it is not so, and Sophie herself is not so easily won. Perhaps Emile will have more need of my influence with her than of hers with me. What a charming pair! When I consider that the tender love of my young friend has brought my name so prominently into his first conversation with his beloved, I enjoy the reward of all my trouble. His affection is a sufficient recompense.

[¶1479:] Our visit is repeated. There are frequent conversations between the young people. Emile is madly in love and thinks that his happiness is within his grasp. Yet he does not succeed in winning any formal avowal from Sophie; she listens to what he says and answers nothing. Emile knows how modest she is, and is not surprised at her reticence; he feels sure that she likes him; he knows that parents decide whom their daughters shall marry; he supposes that Sophie is awaiting her parents' commands; he asks her permission to speak to them, and she makes no objection. He talks to me and I speak on his behalf and in his presence. He is immensely surprised to hear that Sophie is her own mistress, that his happiness depends on her alone. He begins to be puzzled by her conduct. He is less self-confident, he takes alarm, he sees that he has not made so much progress as he expected, and then it is that his love appeals to her in the tenderest and most moving language.

[¶1480:] Emile is not the sort of man to guess what is the matter. If no one told him he would never discover it as long as he lived, and Sophie is too proud to tell him. What she considers obstacles, others would call advantages. She has not forgotten her parents' teaching. She is poor; Emile is rich; so much she knows. He must win her esteem; his deserts must be great indeed to remove this inequality. But how should he perceive these obstacles? Is Emile aware that he is rich? Has he ever condescended to inquire? Thank heaven, he has no need of riches, he can do good without their aid. The good he does comes from his heart, not his purse. He gives the wretched his time, his care, his affection, himself; and when he reckons up what he has done, he hardly dares to mention the money spent on the poor.

[¶1481:] Since he does not know what to make of his disgrace, he thinks it is his own fault; for who would venture to accuse the adored one of caprice? The shame of humiliation adds to the pangs of disappointed love. He no longer approaches Sophie with that pleasant confidence of his own worth; he is shy and timid in her presence. He no longer hopes to win her affections, but to gain her pity. Sometimes he loses patience and is almost angry with her. Sophie seems to guess his angry feelings and she looks at him. Her glance is enough to disarm and terrify him; he is more submissive than he used to be.

[¶1482:] Disturbed by this stubborn resistance, this invincible silence, he pours out his heart to his friend. He shares with him the pangs of a heart devoured by sorrow; he implores his help and counsel. "How mysterious it is, how hard to understand! She takes an interest in me, that I am sure; far from avoiding me she is pleased to see me; when I come she shows signs of pleasure, when I go she shows regret; she receives my attentions kindly, my services seem to give her pleasure, she condescends to give me her advice and even her commands. Yet she rejects my requests and my prayers. When I dare speak of marriage, she tells me to be quiet; if I say a word, she leaves me at once. Why on earth should she wish me to be hers but refuse to be mine? She respects and loves you, and she will not dare to refuse to listen to you. Speak to her, make her answer. Come to your friend's help, and put a crown on your work; do not let him fall a victim to your care! If you fail to secure his happiness, your own teaching will have been the cause of his misery."

[¶1483:] I speak to Sophie, and have no difficulty in getting her to confide her secret to me, a secret which was known to me already. It is not so easy to get permission to tell Emile; but at last she gives me leave and I tell him what is the matter. He cannot get over his surprise at this explanation. He cannot understand this delicacy; he cannot see how a few thousands more or less can affect his character or his merrit. When I get him to see their effect on people's prejudices he begins to laugh; he is so wild with delight that he wants to be off at once to tear up his title deeds and renounce his money, so as to have the honour of being as poor as Sophie, and to return worthy to be her husband.

[¶1484:] "Why," I say, trying to stop him, and laughing in my turn at his impetuosity, "will this young head never grow any older? Having dabbled all your life in philosophy, will you never learn to reason? Do not you see that your wild scheme would only make things worse, and Sophie more obstinate? It is a small superiority to be rather richer than she, but to give up all for her would be a very great superiority. If her pride cannot bear to be under the small obligation, how will she make up her mind to the greater? If she cannot bear to think that her husband might taunt her with the fact that he has enriched her, would she permit him to blame her for having brought him to poverty? Poor boy, beware that she not suspect you of such a plan! On the contrary, be careful and economical for her sake, so that she not accuse you of trying to gain her by cunning, by sacrificing of your own free will what you are really wasting through carelessness.

[¶1485:] "Do you really think that she is afraid of wealth, and that she is opposed to great possessions in themselves? No, dear Emile; there are more serious and substantial grounds for her opinion, in the effect produced by wealth on its possessor. She knows that those who are possessed of fortune's gifts are apt to place them first. The rich always put wealth before merit. When services are reckoned against silver, the latter always outweighs the former, and those who have spent their life in their master's service are considered his debtors for the very bread they eat. What must you do, Emile, to calm her fears? Let her get to know you better; that is not done in a day. Show her the treasures of your heart to counterbalance the wealth which is unfortunately yours. Time and constancy will overcome her resistance; let your great and noble feelings make her forget your wealth. Love her, serve her, serve her worthy parents. Convince her that these attentions are not the result of a foolish fleeting passion, but of settled principles engraved upon your heart. Show them the honour deserved by worth when exposed to the buffets of Fortune; that is the only way to reconcile it with that worth which basks in her smiles."

[¶1486:] The transports of joy experienced by the young man at these words may easily be imagined; they restore confidence and hope. His good heart rejoices to do something to please Sophie which he would have done if there had been no such person, or if he had not been in love with her. However little his character has been understood, anybody can see how he would behave under such circumstances.

[¶1487:] Here am I, the confidant of these two young people and the mediator of their affection. What a fine task for a tutor! So fine that never in all my life have I stood so high in my own eyes, nor felt so pleased with myself. Moreover, this duty is not without its charms. I am not unwelcome in the home; it is my business to see that the lovers behave themselves. Emile, ever afraid of offending me, was never so docile. The little lady herself overwhelms me with a kindness which does not deceive me, and of which I only take my proper share. This is her way of making up for her severity towards Emile. For his sake she bestows on me a hundred tender caresses, though she would die rather than bestow them on him; and he, knowing that I would never stand in his way, is delighted that I should get on so well with her. If she refuses his arm when we are out walking, he consoles himself with the thought that she has taken mine. He makes way for me without a murmur. He clasps my hand, and his voice and look both whisper, "My friend, speak for me!" and his eyes follow us with interest. He tries to read our feelings in our faces and to interpret our conversation by our gestures; he knows that everything we are saying concerns him. Dear Sophie, how frank and easy you are when you can talk to Mentor without being overheard by Telemachus. How freely and delightfully you permit him to read what is passing in your tender little heart! How delighted you are to show him how you esteem his pupil! How cunningly and appealingly you allow him to guess still tenderer sentiments. With what a pretence of anger you dismiss Emile when his impatience leads him to interrupt you! With what pretty vexation you reproach his indiscretion when he comes and prevents you saying something to his credit, or listening to what I say about him, or finding in my words some new excuse to love him!

[¶1488:] Having got so far as to be tolerated as an acknowledged lover, Emile takes full advantage of his position. He speaks, he urges, he implores, he demands. Hard words or ill treatment make no difference, provided he gets a hearing. At length Sophie is persuaded, though with some difficulty, to assume the authority of a betrothed, to decide what he shall do, to command instead of to ask, to accept instead of to thank, to control the frequency and the hours of his visits, to forbid him to come till such a day or to stay beyond such an hour. This is not done in play, but in earnest, and if it was hard to induce her to accept these rights, she uses them so sternly that Emile is often ready to regret that he gave them to her. But whatever her commands, they are obeyed without question, and often when at her bidding he is about to leave her, he glances at me his eyes full of delight, as if to say, "You see she has taken possession of me." Yet unknown to him, Sophie, with all her pride, is observing him closely, and she is smiling to herself at the pride of her slave.

[¶1489:] Oh that I had the brush of an Alban or a Raphael to paint their bliss, or the pen of the divine Milton to describe the pleasures of love and innocence! Not so; let such hollow arts shrink back before the sacred truth of nature. In tenderness and pureness of heart let your imagination freely trace the raptures of these young lovers, who under the eyes of parents and tutor, abandon themselves to their blissful illusions. In the intoxication of passion they are advancing step by step to its consummation; with flowers and garlands they are weaving the bonds which are to bind them till death do part. I am carried away by this succession of pictures, I am so happy that I cannot group them in any sort of order or scheme. Any one with a heart in his breast can paint the charming picture for himself and realise the different experiences of father, mother, daughter, tutor, and pupil, and the part played by each and all in the union of the most delightful couple whom love and virtue have ever led to happiness.

[¶1490:] Now that he is really eager to please, Emile begins to feel the value of the accomplishments he has acquired. Sophie is fond of singing, he sings with her; he does more, he teaches her music. She is lively and light of foot, she loves skipping; he dances with her, he perfects and develops her untrained movements into the steps of the dance. These lessons, enlivened by the gayest mirth, are quite delightful, they melt the timid respect of love. A lover may enjoy teaching his betrothed -- he has a right to be her teacher.

[¶1491:] There is an old spinet quite out of order. Emile mends and tunes it; he is a maker and mender of musical instruments as well as a carpenter; it has always been his rule to learn to do everything he can for himself. The house is picturesquely situated and he makes several sketches of it, in some of which Sophie does her share, and she hangs them in her father's study. The frames are not gilded, nor do they require gilding. When she sees Emile drawing, she draws too, and improves her own drawing; she cultivates all her talents, and her grace gives a charm to all she does. Her father and mother recall the days of their wealth when they find themselves surrounded by the works of art which alone gave value to wealth. The whole house is adorned by love; love alone has enthroned among them, without cost or effort, the very same pleasures which were gathered together in former days by dint of toil and money.

[¶1492:] As the idolater gives what he loves best to the shrine of the object of his worship, so the lover is not content to see perfection in his mistress; he must be ever trying to add to her adornment. She does not need it for his pleasure; it is he who needs the pleasure of giving, it is a fresh homage to be rendered to her, a fresh pleasure in the joy of beholding her. Everything of beauty seems to find its place only as an accessory to the supreme beauty. It is both touching and amusing to see Emile eager to teach Sophie everything he knows, without asking whether she wants to learn it or whether it is suitable for her. He talks about all sorts of things and explains them to her with boyish eagerness. He thinks he has only to speak and she will understand; he looks forward to arguing, and discussing philosophy with her. Everything he cannot display before her is so much useless learning; he is quite ashamed of knowing more than she.

[¶1493:] So he gives her lessons in philosophy, physics, mathematics, history, and everything else. Sophie is delighted to share his enthusiasm and to try and profit by it. How pleased Emile is when he can get leave to give these lessons on his knees before her! He thinks the heavens are open. Yet this position, more trying to pupil than to teacher, is hardly favourable to study. It is not easy to know where to look, to avoid meeting the eyes which follow our own, and if they meet so much the worse for the lesson.

[¶1494:] Women are no strangers to the art of thinking, but they should only skim the surface of logic and metaphysics. Sophie understands readily, but she soon forgets. She makes most progress in the moral sciences and aesthetics; as to physical science she retains some vague idea of the general laws and order of this world. Sometimes in the course of their walks, the spectacle of the wonders of nature bids them not fear to raise their pure and innocent hearts to nature's God; they are not afraid of His presence, and they pour out their hearts before him.

[¶1495:] What! Two young lovers spending their time together talking of religion! Have they nothing better to do than to say their catechism! What profit is there in the attempt to degrade what is noble? Yes, no doubt they are saying their catechism in their delightful land of romance; they are perfect in each other's eyes; they love one another, they talk eagerly of all that makes virtue worth having. Their sacrifices to virtue make it all the dearer to them. Their struggles for self-control draw from them tears purer than the dew of heaven, and these sweet tears are the joy of life; no human heart has ever experienced a sweeter intoxication. Their very renunciation adds to their happiness, and their sacrifices increase their self-respect. Sensual men, bodies without souls, some day they will know your pleasures, and all their life long they will recall with regret the happy days when they refused the cup of pleasure.

[¶1496:] In spite of this good understanding, differences and even quarrels occur from time to time. The lady has her whims, the lover has a hot temper; but these passing showers are soon over and only serve to strengthen their union. Emile learns by experience not to attach too much importance to them, he always gains more by the reconciliation than he lost by the quarrel. The results of the first difference made him expect a like result from all; he was mistaken, but even if he does not make any appreciable step forward, he has always the satisfaction of finding Sophie's genuine concern for his affection more firmly established. "What advantage is this to him?" you would ask. I will gladly tell you all the more gladly because it will give me an opportunity to establish clearly a very important principle, and to combat a very deadly one.

[¶1497:] Emile is in love, but he is not presuming; and you will easily understand that the dignified Sophie is not the sort of girl to allow any kind of familiarity. Yet virtue has its limits like everything else, and she is rather to be blamed for her severity than for indulgence; even her father himself is sometimes afraid lest her lofty pride should degenerate into a haughty spirit. When most alone, Emile dares not ask for the slightest favour, he must not even seem to desire it; and if she is gracious enough to take his arm when they are out walking, a favour which she will never permit him to claim as a right, it is only occasionally that he dares with a sigh to press her hand to his heart. However, after a long period of self-restraint, he ventures secretly to kiss the hem of her dress, and several times he is lucky enough to find her willing at least to pretend she was not aware of it. One day he attempts to take the same privilege rather more openly, and Sophie takes it into her head to be greatly offended. He persists, she gets angry and speaks sharply to him; Emile will not put up with this without reply; the rest of the day is given over to sulks, and they part in a very ill temper.

[¶1498:] Sophie is ill at ease; her mother is her confidant in all things, how can she keep this from her? It is their first misunderstanding, and the misunderstanding of an hour is such a serious business. She is sorry for what she has done; she gets her mother's permission and her father's commands to make reparation.

[¶1499:] The next day Emile returns somewhat earlier than usual and in a state of some anxiety. Sophie is in her mother's dressing-room and her father is also present. Emile enters respectfully but gloomily. Scarcely have her parents greeted him than Sophie turns round and holding out her hand asks him in an affectionate tone how he is. That pretty hand is clearly held out to be kissed; he takes it but does not kiss it. Sophie, rather ashamed of herself, withdraws her hand as best she may. Emile, who is not used to a woman's whims, and does not know how far caprice may be carried, does not forget so easily or make friends again all at once. Sophie's father, seeing her confusion, completes her discomfiture by his jokes. The poor girl, confused and ashamed, does not know what to do with herself and would gladly have a good cry. The more she tries to control herself the worse she feels; at last a tear escapes in spite of all she can do to prevent it. Emile, seeing this tear, rushes towards her, falls on his knees, takes her hand and kisses it again and again with the greatest devotion. "My word, you are too kind to her," says her father, laughing; "if I were you, I should deal more severely with these follies, I should punish the mouth that wronged me." Emboldened by these words, Emile turns a suppliant eye towards the mother, and thinking she is not unwilling, he tremblingly approaches Sophie's face; she turns away her head, and to save her mouth she exposes a rosey cheek. The daring young man is not content with this; he is feebly resisted. What a kiss, if it were not taken under her mother's eyes. Severe Sophie watch yourself: one will often ask to kiss your dress on the condition that you sometimes refuse.

[¶1500:] After this exemplary punishment, Sophie's father goes about his business, and her mother makes some excuse for sending her out of the room; then she speaks to Emile very seriously.

[¶1501:] "Sir," she says, "I think a young man so well born and well bred as yourself, a man of feeling and character, would never reward with dishonour the confidence reposed in him by the friendship of this family. I am neither prudish nor over strict; I know how to make excuses for youthful folly, and what I have permitted in my own presence is sufficient proof of this. Consult your friend as to your own duty; he will tell you there is all the difference in the world between the playful kisses sanctioned by the presence of father and mother, and the same freedom taken in their absence and in betrayal of their confidence, a freedom which makes a snare of the very favors which in the parents' presence were wholly innocent. He will tell you, sir, that my daughter is only to blame for not having perceived from the first what she ought never to have permitted; he will tell you that every favor, taken as such, is a favor, and that it is unworthy of a man of honor to take advantage of a young girl's innocence, to usurp in private the same freedom which she may permit in the presence of others. For good manners teach us what is permitted in public; but we do not know what a man will permit to himself in private if he makes himself the sole judge of his conduct."

[¶1502:] After this well-deserved rebuke, addressed rather to me than to my pupil, the good mother leaves us, and I am amazed by her rare prudence, in thinking it a little thing that Emile should kiss her daughter's lips in her presence while fearing that he should venture to kiss her dress when they are alone. When I consider the folly of worldly maxims, whereby real purity is continually sacrificed to a show of propriety, I understand why speech becomes more refined while the heart becomes more corrupt, and why etiquette is stricter while those who conform to it are most immoral.

[¶1503:] While I am trying to convince Emile's heart with regard to these duties which I ought to have instilled into him sooner, a new idea occurs to me, an idea which perhaps does Sophie all the more credit, though I will take care not to tell her lover. This so-called pride, for which she has been censured, is clearly only a very wise precaution to protect her from herself. Being aware that, unfortunately, her own temperament is inflammable, she dreads the least spark, and keeps out of reach so far as she can. Her sternness is due not to pride but to humility. She assumes a control over Emile because she doubts her control of herself; she turns the one against the other. If she had more confidence in herself she would be much less haughty. With this exception is there anywhere on earth a gentler, sweeter girl? Is there any who endures an affront with greater patience, any who is more afraid of annoying others? Is there any with less pretension, except in the matter of virtue? Moreover, she is not proud of her virtue, she is only proud in order to preserve her virtue, and if she can follow the guidance of her heart without danger, she caresses her lover himself. But her wise mother does not confide all this even to her father; men should not hear everything.

[¶1504:] Far from seeming proud of her conquest, Sophie has grown more friendly and less exacting towards everybody, except perhaps the one person who has wrought this change. Her noble heart no longer swells with the feeling of independence. She triumphs modestly over a victory gained at the price of her freedom. Her bearing is more restrained, her speech more timid, since she has begun to blush at the word "lover." But contentment may be seen beneath her outward confusion and this very shame is not painful. This change is most noticeable in her behavior towards the young men she meets. Now that she has ceased to be afraid of them, much of her extreme reserve has disappeared. Now that her choice is made, she does not hesitate to be gracious to those to whom she is quite indifferent. Taking no more interest in them, she is less difficult to please, and she always finds them pleasant enough for people who are of no importance to her.

[¶1505:] If true love were capable of coquetry, I should fancy I saw traces of it in the way Sophie behaves towards other young men in her lover's presence. One would say that not content with the ardent passion she inspires by a mixture of shyness and caresses, she is not sorry to rouse this passion by a little anxiety; one would say that when she is purposely amusing her young guests she means to torment Emile by the charms of a freedom she will not allow herself with him. But Sophie is too considerate, too kindly, too wise to really torment him. Love and honor take the place of prudence and control the use of this dangerous weapon. She can alarm and reassure him just as he needs it; and if she sometimes makes him uneasy she never really gives him pain. The anxiety she causes to her beloved may be forgiven because of her fear that he is not sufficiently her own.

[¶1506:] But what effect will this little performance have upon Emile? Will he be jealous or not? That is what we must discover; for such digressions form part of the purpose of my book, and they do not lead me far from my main subject.

[¶1507:] I have already shown how this passion of jealousy in matters of convention finds its way into the heart of man. In love it is another matter; then jealousy is so near akin to nature, that it is hard to believe that it is not her work; and the example even of animals, many of whom are madly jealous, seems to prove this point beyond reply. Is it man's influence that has taught cocks to tear each other to pieces or bulls to fight to the death?

[¶1508:] No one can deny that the aversion to everything which may disturb or interfere with our pleasures is a natural impulse. Up to a certain point the desire for the exclusive possession of that which ministers to our pleasure is in the same case. But when this desire has become a passion, when it is transformed into madness, or into a bitter and suspicious fancy known as jealousy, that is quite another matter; such a passion may be natural or it may not; we must distinguish between these different cases.

[¶1509:] I have already analysed the example of the animal world in my Discourse on Inequality, and on further consideration I think I may refer my readers to that analysis as sufficiently thorough. I will only add this further point to those already made in that work, that the jealousy which springs from nature depends greatly on sexual power, and that when sexual power is or appears to be boundless, that jealousy is at its height. For then the male, measuring his rights by his needs, can never see another male except as an unwelcome rival. In such species the females always submit to the first comer; they only belong to the male by right of conquest, and they are the cause of unending strife.

[¶1510:] Among the monogamous species, where intercourse seems to give rise to some sort of moral bond, a kind of marriage, the female who belongs by choice to the male on whom she has bestowed herself usually denies herself to all others; and the male, having this preference of affection as a pledge of her fidelity, is less uneasy at the sight of other males and lives more peaceably with them. Among these species the male shares the care of the little ones; and by one of those touching laws of nature it seems as if the female rewards the father for his love for his children.

[¶1511:] Now consider the human species in its primitive simplicity. It is easy to see, from the limited powers of the male and the moderation of his desires, that nature meant him to be content with one female. This is confirmed by the numerical equality of the two sexes, at any rate in our part of the world, an equality which does not exist in anything like the same degree among those species in which several females are collected around one male. Though a man does not brood like a pigeon, and though he has no milk to suckle the young and must in this respect be classed with the quadrupeds, his children are feeble and helpless for so long a time that mother and children could ill dispense with the father's affection and the care which results from it.

[¶1512:] All these observations combine to prove that the jealous fury of the males of certain animals proves nothing with regard to man; and the exceptional case of those southern regions were polygamy is the established custom only confirms the rule, since it is the plurality of wives that gives rise to the tyrannical precautions of the husband, and the consciousness of his own weakness makes the man resort to constraint to evade the laws of nature.

[¶1513:] Among ourselves where these same laws are less frequently evaded in this respect, but are more frequently evaded in another and even more detestable manner, jealousy finds its motives in the passions of society rather than in those of primitive instinct. In most irregular connections the hatred of the lover for his rivals far exceeds his love for his mistress. If he fears a rival in her affections it is the effect of that amour-propre whose origin I have already traced out, and he is moved by vanity rather than love. Moreover, our clumsy systems of education have made women so deceitful, and have so over-stimulated their appetites, that you cannot rely even on the most clearly proved affection; they can no longer display a preference which secures you against the fear of a rival.

[¶1514:] True love is another matter. I have shown, in the work already referred to, that this sentiment is not so natural as men think, and that there is a great difference between the gentle habit which binds a man with cords of love to his helpmeet, and the unbridled passion which is intoxicated by the fancied charms of an object which he no longer sees in its true light. This passion which is full of exclusions and preferences, only differs from vanity in this respect, that vanity demands all and gives nothing, so that it is always harmful, while love, bestowing as much as it demands, is in itself a sentiment full of equity. Moreover, the more exacting it is, the more credulous; that very illusion which gave rise to it, makes it easy to persuade. If love is suspicious, esteem is trustful; and love will never exist in an honest heart without esteem, for every one loves in another the qualities which he himself holds in honor.

[¶1515:] When once this is clearly understood, we can predict with confidence the kind of jealousy which Emile will be capable of experiencing. Since there is only the smallest germ of this passion in the human heart, the form it takes must depend solely upon education.

[¶1516:] Emile, full of love and jealousy, will not be angry, sullen, suspicious, but delicate, sensitive, and timid. He will be more alarmed than vexed; he will think more of securing his beloved than of threatening his rival; he will treat him as an obstacle to be removed if possible from his path, rather than as a rival to be hated. If he hates him, it is not because he presumes to compete with him for Sophie's affection, but because Emile feels that there is a real danger of losing that affection. He will not be so unjust and foolish as to take offence at the rivalry itself; he understands that the law of preference rests upon merit only, and that honour depends upon success; he will redouble his efforts to make himself acceptable, and he will probably succeed. His generous Sophie, though she has given alarm to his love, is well able to allay that fear, to atone for it; and the rivals who were only suffered to put him to the proof are speedily dismissed.

[¶1517:] But where do I find myself uncounsciously going? 0h Emile! what have you become? Can I recognize my former pupil? How low you seem to have fallen! Where is that young man so firmly made, who braved all weathers, who devoted his body to the hardest tasks and his soul to the laws of wisdom, was untouched by prejudice or passion, loved only truth, was swayed by only by reason, was dependent on nothing that was not his own? Living in softness and idleness he now lets himself be ruled by women. Their amusements are the business of his life, their wishes are his laws. A young girl is the arbiter of his fate; he cringes and grovels before her. The solemn Emile is now the plaything of a child!

[¶1518:] So shift the scenes of life. Each age is swayed by its own motives, but the man is the same. At ten his mind was set upon cake, at twenty it is set upon his beloved; at thirty it will be set upon pleasure; at forty on ambition, at fifty on avarice. When will he seek only after wisdom? Happy is he who is is led to it in spite of himself! What matter who is the guide, so long as it leads him to his goal? Heroes and sages have themselves paid tribute to this human weakness; and those who handled the distaff with clumsy fingers were none the less great men.

[¶1519:] If you want to prolong the influence of a good education through life itself, the good habits acquired in childhood must be carried forward into adolescence, and when your pupil is what he ought to be you must manage to keep him what he ought to be. This is the last perfection left for you to give to your work. This is why it is above all important that the tutor should remain with young men; otherwise there is little doubt they will learn to make love without him. The great mistake of tutors and still more of fathers is to think that one way of living makes another impossible, and that as soon as the child is grown up you must abandon everything you used to do when he was little. If that were so, why should we take such pains in childhood, since the good or bad use we make of it will vanish with childhood itself, as if another way of life were necessarily accompanied by other ways of thinking?

[¶1520:] The stream of memory is only interrupted by great illnesses, and the stream of conduct, by great passions. Our tastes and inclinations may change, but this change, though it may be sudden enough, is rendered less abrupt by our habits. The skilful artist with good degradations of colors contrives to mingle and blend his tints so that the transitions are imperceptible; and certain color washes are spread over the whole picture so that there may be no sudden breaks. The same rule is confirmed by experience. Those who lack modertion are always changing their affections, their tastes, their sentiments; the only constant factor is the habit of change. But the well-regulated man always returns to his former habits and preserves to old age the tastes and the pleasures of his childhood.

[¶1521:] If you contrive that young people passing from one stage of life to another do not despise what has gone before, that when they form new habits they do not forsake the old, and that they always love to do what is right in things new and old, then only can your work be saved and you can be sure of your students as long as they live. For the revolution most to be feared is that of the age over which you are now watching. As men always look back to this period with regret so the tastes carried forward into it from childhood are not easily destroyed; but if once interrupted they are never resumed.

[¶1522:] Most of the habits you think you have instilled into children and young people are not really habits at all. They have only been acquired under compulsion, and being followed reluctantly they will be cast off at the first opportunity. However long you remain in prison you never get a taste for prison life; so aversion is increased rather than diminished by habit. Not so with Emile. As a child he only did what he could do willingly and with pleasure, and as a man he will do the same, and the force of habit will only lend its help to the joys of freedom. An active life, bodily labour, exercise, movement, have become so essential to him that he could not relinquish them without suffering. Reduce him all at once to a soft and sedentary life and you condemn him to chains and imprisonment, you keep him in a condition of violence and constraint; he would suffer, no doubt, both in health and temper. He can scarcely breathe in a stuffy room; he requires open air, movement, work. Even at Sophie's feet he cannot help casting a glance at the country and longing to explore it in her company. Yet he remains if he must. But he is anxious and ill at ease; he seems to be struggling with himself; he remains because he is a captive. "Yes," you will say, "these are necessities to which you have subjected him, the constraints which you have laid upon him." You speak truly, I have subjected him to the condition of manhood.

[¶1523:] Emile loves Sophie; but what were the charms by which he was first attracted? Sensibility, virtue, and love for things pure and honest. When he loves this love in Sophie, will he cease to feel it himself? And what price did she put upon herself? She required all her lover's natural feelings - esteem of what is really good, frugality, simplicity, generous unselfishness, a scorn for pomp and riches. These virtues were Emile's before love claimed them of him. Is he really changed? He has all the more reason to be himself; that is the only difference. The careful reader will not suppose that all the circumstances in which he is placed are the work of chance. There were many charming girls in the city; is it chance that his choice is discovered in a distant retreat? Is their meeting the work of chance? Is it chance that makes them so suited to each other? Is it chance that they cannot live in the same place, that he is compelled to find a lodging so far from her? Is it chance that he can see her so seldom and must purchase the pleasure of seeing her at the price of such fatigue? You say he is becoming effeminate. Not at all; he is growing stronger. He must be fairly robust to stand the fatigue he endures on Sophie's account.

[¶1524:] He lives more than six miles away. That distance serves to temper the shafts of love. If they lived next door to each other, or if he could drive to see her in a comfortable carriage, he would love at his ease in the Paris fashion. Would Leander have braved death for the sake of Hero if the sea had not lain between them? Reader, spare me more words; if you are made to hear me you will be able to follow out my principles in my details.

[¶1525:] The first time we went to see Sophie we went on horseback, so as to get there more quickly. We continue this convenient plan until our fifth visit. We were expected; and more than half a league from the house we see people on the road. Emile watches them, his pulse quickens as he gets nearer, he recognises Sophie and dismounts quickly; he hurries to join the charming family. Emile is fond of good horses; this horse is fresh, and as soon as Emile has turned his back the horse feels he is free and gallops off across the fields. I follow and with some difficulty I succeed in catching him and bringing him back. Unluckily Sophie is afraid of horses, and I dare not approach her. Emile has not seen what happened, but Sophie whispers to him that he is giving his friend a great deal of trouble. He hurries up quite ashamed of himself, takes the horses, and follows after the party. It is only fair that each should take his turn and he rides on to get rid of our mounts. He has to leave Sophie behind him, and he no longer thinks riding a convenient mode of travelling. He returns out of breath and meets us half-way.

[¶1526:] The next time, Emile will not hear of horses. "Why not?" I say, "we need only take a servant to look after them." "Do you want to put our worthy friends to such trouble?" he replies. "You see they would insist on feeding man and horse." "That is true," I reply; "their's is the generous hospitality of the poor. The rich man in his niggardly pride only welcomes his friends, but the poor find room for their friends' horses." "Let us go on foot," he says; "Don't you have the strength to walk, you who are always so ready to share the toilsome pleasures of your child?" "I will gladly go with you," I reply at once, "and it seems to me that love does not desire so much show."

[¶1527:] As we draw near, we meet the mother and daughter even further from home than on the last occasion. We have come at a great pace. Emile is very warm; his beloved condescends to pass her handkerchief over his cheeks. It would take a good many horses to make us ride there after this.

[¶1528:] But it is rather hard never to be able to spend an evening together. Midsummer is long past and the days are growing shorter. Whatever we say, we are not allowed to return home in the dark, and unless we make a very early start, we have to go back almost as soon as we get there. The mother is sorry for us and uneasy on our account, and it occurs to her that, though it would not be proper for us to stay in the house, beds might be found for us in the village, if we liked to stay there occasionally. Emile claps his hands at this idea and trembles with joy; Sophie, unwittingly, kisses her mother rather oftener than usual on the day this idea occurs to her.

[¶1529:] Little by little the charm of friendship and the familiarity of innocence take root and grow among us. I generally accompany my young friend on the days appointed by Sophie or her mother, but sometimes I let him go alone. The heart thrives in the sunshine of confidence, and a man must not be treated as a child; and what have I accomplished so far, if my pupil is unworthy of my esteem? Now and then I go without him; he is sorry, but he does not complain; what use would it be? And then he knows I shall not interfere with his interests. However, whether we go together or separately you will understand that we are not stopped by the weather; we are only too proud to arrive in a condition which calls for pity. Unluckily Sophie deprives us of this honour and forbids us to come in bad weather. This is the only occasion on which she rebels against the rules which I laid down for her in private.

[¶1530:] One day Emile had gone alone and I did not expect him back till the following day, but he returned the same evening. "My dear Emile," said I, "have you come back to your old friend already?" But instead of responding to my caresses he replied with some show of temper, "You need not suppose that I came back so soon of my own accord. She insisted on it; is for her sake not yours that I am here." Touched by his frankness I renewed my caresses, saying, "Truthful heart and faithful friend, do not conceal from me anything I ought to know. If you came back for her sake, you told me so for my own; your return is her doing, your frankness is mine. Continue to preserve the noble candour of great souls; strangers may think what they will, but it is a crime to let our friends think us better than we are."

[¶1531:] I take care not to let him underrate the cost of his confession by assuming that there is more love than generosity in it, and by telling him that he would rather deprive himself of the honor of this return than give it to Sophie. But this is how he revealed to me, all unconsciously, what were his real feelings; if he had returned slowly and comfortably, dreaming of his sweetheart, I should know he was merely her lover; when he hurried back, even if he was a little out of temper, he was the friend of his Mentor.

[¶1532:] You see that the young man is very far from spending his days with Sophie and seeing as much of her as he wants. One or two visits a week are all that is permitted, and these visits are often only for the afternoon and are rarely extended to the next day. He spends much more of his time in longing to see her, or in rejoicing that he has seen her, than he actually spends in her presence. Even when he goes to see her, more time is spent in going and returning than by her side. His pleasures -- genuine, pure, delicious, but more imaginary than real -- serve to kindle his love but not to make his heart effeminate.

[¶1533:] On the days when he does not see Sophie he is not sitting idle at home. He is Emile himself and quite unchanged. Most often he runs around the surrounding countryside pursuing its natural history. He observes and studies the soil, its products, and their mode of cultivation. He compares the methods he sees with those with which he is already familiar; he tries to find the reasons for any differences. If he thinks other methods better than those of the locality, he introduces them to the farmers' notice. If he suggests a better kind of plough, he has one made from his own drawings; if he finds a lime pit he teaches them how to use the lime on the land, a process new to them. He often lends a hand himself. They are surprised to find him handling all manner of tools more easily than they can themselves. His furrows are deeper and straighter than theirs, he is a more skilful sower, and his beds for early produce are more cleverly planned. They do not scoff at him as a fine talker; they see he knows what he is talking about. In a word, his zeal and attention are bestowed on everything that is really useful to everybody. Nor does he stop there. He visits the peasants in their homes; inquires into their circumstances, their families, the number of their children, the extent of their holdings, the nature of their produce, their markets, their rights, their burdens, their debts, etc. He gives away very little money, for he knows it is usually ill spent; but he himself directs the use of his money, and makes it helpful to them without distributing it among them. He supplies them with labourers, and often pays them for work done by themselves, on tasks for their own benefit. For one he has the falling thatch repaired or renewed; for another he clears a piece of land which had gone out of cultivation for lack of means; to another he gives a cow, a horse, or stock of any kind to replace a loss. Two neighbours are ready to go to law, he wins them over, and makes them friends again. A peasant falls ill; he has him cared for, he looks after him himself. Another is harassed by a rich and powerful neighbour; he protects him and speaks on his behalf. Young people are fond of one another; he helps forward their marriage. A good woman has lost her beloved child; he goes to see her, he speaks words of comfort and sits a while with her. He does not despise the poor; he is in no hurry to avoid the unfortunate; he often takes his dinner with some peasant he is helping; and he will even accept a meal from those who have no need of his help. Though he is the benefactor of some and the friend of all, he is none the less their equal. In conclusion, he always does as much good by his personal efforts as by his money.

[¶1534:] Sometimes his steps are turned in the direction of the happy home. He may hope to see Sophie without her knowing, to see her out walking without being seen. But Emile is always quite open in everything he does; he neither can nor would deceive. His delicacy is of that pleasing type in which pride rests on the foundation of a good conscience. He keeps strictly within bounds, and never comes near enough to gain from chance what he only desires to win from Sophie herself. On the other hand, he delights to roam about the neighbourhood, looking for the trace of Sophie's steps, feeling what pains she has taken and what a distance she has walked to please him. The day before his visit, he will go to some neighbouring farm and order a little feast for the next day. We will take our walk in that direction without any special object; we will turn in apparently by chance. Fruit, cake, and cream are waiting for us. Sophie likes sweets, so is not insensible to these attentions, and she is quite ready to do honor to what we have provided. And I always get my share of the credit even if I have had no part in the trouble; it is a girl's way of returning thanks more easily. Her father and I have cake and wine; Emile keeps the ladies company and is always on the look-out to secure a dish of cream in which Sophie has dipped her spoon.

[¶1535:] The cake leads me to talk of the races Emile used to run. Every one wants to hear about them. I explain amid much laughter; they ask him if he can run as well as ever. "Better," he says; "I would be sorry to forget how to run." One member of the company is dying to see him run, but she dare not say so; some one else undertakes to suggest it; he agrees and we send for two or three young men of the neighbourhood. A prize is offered, and in imitation of our earlier games a piece of cake is placed on the goal. Every one is ready. Sophie's father gives the signal by clapping his hands. The nimble Emile flies like lightning and reaches the goal almost before the others have started. He receives his prize at Sophie's hands, and no less generous than aeneas, he gives gifts to all the vanquished.

[¶1536:] In the midst of his triumph, Sophie dares to challenge the victor and to assert that she can run as fast as he. He does not refuse to enter the lists with her, and while she is getting ready to start, while she is tucking up her skirt at each side, more eager to show Emile a pretty ankle than to beat him in the race, while she is seeing if her petticoats are short enough, he whispers a word to her mother who smiles and nods approval. Then he takes his place by his competitor; no sooner is the signal given than she is off like a bird.

[¶1537:] Women were not meant to run; they flee that they may be overtaken. Running is not the only thing they do awkwardly, but it is the only thing they do gracelessly; their elbows glued to their sides and pointed backwards look ridiculous, and the high heels on which they are perched make them look like so many grasshoppers trying to run instead of to jump.

[¶1538:] Emile, supposing that Sophie runs no better than other women, does not deign to stir from his place and watches her start with a smile of mockery. But Sophie is light of foot and she wears low heels; she needs no pretence to make her foot look smaller. She runs so quickly that he has only just time to overtake this new Atalanta when he sees her far ahead. Then he starts like an eagle dashing upon its prey. He pursues her, clutches her, grasps her at last quite out of breath, and gently placing his left arm about her, lifts her like a feather, and pressing his sweet burden to his heart, finishes the race, makes her touch the goal first, and then exclaiming, "Sophie wins!" he sinks on one knee before her and admits to have been vanquished.

[¶1539:] Along with such occupations there is also the trade we learned. One day a week at least, and every day when the weather is too bad for country pursuits, Emile and I go to work under a master-joiner. We do not work for show, like people above our trade; we work in earnest like regular workmen. Once when Sophie's father came to see us, he found us at work, and did not fail to report his wonder to his wife and daughter. "Go and see that young man in the workshop," he said, "and you will soon see if he despises the condition of the poor." You may imagine how pleased Sophie was at this! They talk it over, and they decide to surprise him at his work. They question me, apparently without any special object, and having made sure of the time, mother and daughter take a little carriage and come to town on that very day.

[¶1540:] On her arrival, Sophie sees, at the other end of the shop, a young man in his shirt sleeves, with his hair all messy, so hard at work that he does not see her. She makes a sign to her mother. Emile, a chisel in one hand and a hammer in the other, is just finishing a mortise. Then he saws a piece of wood and places it in the vice in order to polish it. The sight of this does not set Sophie laughing. It affects her greatly; it wins her respect. Woman, honor your chieftain; he it is who works for you; it is he who is your bread-winner. Here is the man.

[¶1541:] While they are attentively observing him, I watch them and touch Emile on the sleeve. He turns around, drops his tools, and hurries to them with an exclamation of joy. After this initial rush of emotion he makes them take a seat and he goes back to his work. But Sophie cannot keep quiet; she gets up quickly, runs about the workshop, looks at the tools, feels the polish of the boards, picks up shavings, looks at our hands, and says she likes this trade, it is so clean. The lively girl tries to copy Emile. With her delicate white hand she passes a plane over a bit of wood; the plane slips and makes no impression. It seems to me that Love himself is hovering over us and beating his wings; I think I can hear his joyous cries, "Hercules is avenged."

[¶1542:] Yet Sophie's mother questions the master of the shop. "Sir, how much do you pay these two men a day?" "I give them each ten cents a day and their food; but if that young fellow wanted he could earn much more, for he is the best workman in the countryside." "Ten cents a day and their food," said she looking at us tenderly. "That is so, madam," replied the master. At these words she runs to Emile, kisses him, and tearfully presses him to her breast. Unable to say more she repeats again and again, "My son, my son!"

[¶1543:] When they have spent some time chatting with us, without interrupting our work, the mother says to her daughter, "We must be going now. It is getting late and we must not keep your father waiting." Then approaching Emile she taps him playfully on the cheek, saying, "Well, my good workman, won't you come with us?" He replies sadly, "I am in the middle of a project; ask the master." The master is asked if he can spare us. He replies that he cannot. "I have work to be done," he says, "which is wanted the day after to-morrow, so there is not much time. Counting on these gentlemen I refused other workmen who came; if they fail me I don't know how to replace them and I won't be able to deliver the work on the day it was promised." The mother says nothing; she is waiting to hear what Emile will say. Emile hangs his head and is quiet. "Sir," she says, somewhat surprised at this, "have you nothing to say to that?" Emile looked tenderly at her daughter and merely said, "You can see that I have to stay." Then the ladies leave us. Emile accompanies them to the door, gazes after them as long as they are in sight, sighs, and returns to his work without a word.

[¶1544:] On the way home the mother somewhat vexed at his conduct, speaks to her daughter of the strange way in which he behaved. "Why," she says, "was it so difficult to satisfy the master without being obliged to stay? The young man is generous enough and ready to spend money when there is no need for it, why couldn't he spend a little on such a fitting occasion?" "Oh, mamma," replies Sophie, " I trust Emile will never rely so much on money as to use it to break an engagement, to fail to keep his own word, and to make another break his! I know he could easily compensate the master to make up for the slight inconvenience caused by his absence. But his soul would become the slave of riches, he would become accustomed to place wealth before duty, and he would think that any duty might be neglected provided he was ready to pay. That is not Emile's way of thinking, and I hope he will never change on my account. Do you think it cost him nothing to stay? You are quite wrong, mamma; it was for my sake that he stayed; I saw it in his eyes."

https://www.aplacetostudy.com/pictures/Circe-giving-herself-to-Ulysses.png

"Circe giving herself to Ulysses, whom she cannot transform." Facing p. 304, Tome IV of Emile, Gallica.

[¶1545:] It is not that Sophie is indifferent to genuine proofs of love. On the contrary she is imperious and exacting; she would rather not be loved at all than be loved half-heartedly. Hers is the noble pride of worth, conscious of its own value, self-respecting and claiming a similar honor from others. She would scorn a heart that did not recognise the full worth of her own, that did not love her for her virtues as much and more than for her charms, a heart which did not put duty first, and prefer it to everything. She did not desire a lover who knew no will but hers. She wished to reign over a man whom she had not spoilt. Thus Circe, having changed into swine the comrades of Ulysses, bestowed herself on him over whom she had no power.

[¶1546:] Except for this sacred and inviolable right, Sophie is very jealous of her own rights. She observes how carefully Emile respects them, how zealously he does her will, how cleverly he guesses her wishes, how exactly he arrives at the appointed time. She will have him neither late nor early; he must arrive at the moment. To come early is to think more of himself than of her; to come late is to neglect her. To neglect Sophie -- that could not happen twice. Once an unfounded suspicion on her part nearly ruins everything, but Sophie is really just and knows how to atone for her faults.

[¶1547:] They are expecting us one evening; Emile had received his orders. They come to meet us, but we are not there. What has become of us? What accident have we met with? No message from us! The evening is spent in expectation of our arrival. Sophie thinks we are dead; she is miserable and in an agony of distress; she spends the whole night crying. In the course of the evening a messenger is despatched to inquire after us and bring back news in the morning. The messenger returns together with another messenger sent by us, who makes our excuses verbally and says we are quite well. Then the scene is changed; Sophie dries her tears, or if she still weeps it is for anger. It is small consolation to her proud spirit to know that we are alive; Emile lives and he has kept her waiting.

[¶1548:] When we arrive she tries to escape to her own room. Her parents desire her to remain, so she is obliged to do so; but deciding at once what course she will take she assumes a calm and contented expression which would deceive most people. Her father comes forward to receive us saying, "You have made your friends very uneasy; there are people here who will not forgive you very readily." "Who are they, papa," says Sophie with the most gracious smile she can assume. "What business is that of yours," says her father, "if it is not you?" Sophie bends over her work without reply. Her mother receivs us coldly and formally. Emile is so confused he dares not speak to Sophie. She speaks first, inquires how he is, asks him to take a chair, and pretends so cleverly that the poor young fellow, who still knew nothing of the language of angry passions, is quite deceived by her apparent indifference, and ready to take offence on his own account.

[¶1549:] To undeceive him I am about to take Sophie's hand and raise it to my lips as I sometimes do; she draws it back so forcefully, with the word, "Sir," uttered in such a strange manner that Emile's eyes are opened at once by this involuntary movement.

[¶1550:] Sophie herself, seeing that she has betrayed herself, exercises less control over herself. Her apparent indifference is succeeded by scornful irony. She replies to everything he says in monosyllables uttered slowly and hesitatingly as if she were afraid her anger should show itself too plainly. Emile half dead with terror stares at her full of sorrow and tries to get her to look at him so that his eyes might read in hers her real feelings. Sophie, still more angry at his boldness, gives him one look which removes all wish for another. Luckily for himself, Emile, trembling and dumbfounded, dares neither look at her nor speak to her again; for even though he is not guilty, were he able to endure her wrath she would never forgive him.

[¶1551:] Seeing that it is my turn now, and that the time is ripe for explanation, I return to Sophie. I take her hand and this time she does not snatch it away; she is ready to faint. I say gently, "Dear Sophy, we are the victims of misfortune. But you are just and reasonable; you will not judge us unheard. Listen to what we have to say." She says nothing and I proceed.

[¶1552:] "We set out yesterday at four o'clock. We were told to be here at seven, and we always allow ourselves a little more time than we need so as to rest a little before we get here. We were more than half way here when we heard terrible groans coming from a little valley in the hillside, some distance off. We hurried towards the place and found an unlucky peasant who, returning from town somewhat drunk, had fallen so heavily off of his horse that he had broken his leg. We shouted and called for help; there was no answer. We tried to lift the injured man on his horse but without success; the least movement caused terrible pain. We decided to tie up the horse in a quiet part of the wood. Then we made a chair of our crossed arms and carried the man as gently as possible, following his directions till we got him home. The way was long and we were constantly obliged to stop and rest. At last we got there, but we were thoroughly exhausted. We were surprised and sorry to find that it was a house we knew already and that the wretched creature we had carried with such difficulty was the same man who received us so kindly when we had first arrived. We had all been so upset that until that moment we had not recognised each other.

[¶1553:] "He had two little children; his wife was about to present him with a third. She was so overwhelmed at the sight of his condition that she began to feel sharp pains and a few hours later started to give birth. What was to be done under such circumstances in a lonely cottage far from any help? Emile decided to go get the horse we had left in the weod, to ride as fast as he could into the town and look for a surgeon. He let the surgeon have the horse, and not succeeding in finding a nurse right away, he returned on foot with a servant, after having sent a messenger to you. Meanwhile you can imagine that between a man with a broken leg and a woman in labor I hardly knew what to do, but I got ready as well as I could such things in the house as I thought would be needed for the relief of both.

[¶1554:] "I will pass over the rest of the details; they are not to the point. It was two o'clock in the morning before we got a moment's rest. At last we returned before daybreak to our lodging nearby, where we waited till you were up to give you an account of our accident."

[¶1555:] That is all I say. But before any one can speak Emile, approaching Sophie, raises his voice and says with greater firmness than I expected, "Sophie, you are the arbiter of my fate, as you very well know. You may make me to die of grief; but do not hope to make me forget the rights of humanity; they are even more sacred to me than your own rights; I will never renounce them for you."

[¶1556:] For all answer, Sophie rises, puts her arm round his neck, and kisses him on the cheek; then offering him her hand with inimitable grace she says to him, "Emile, take this hand; it is yours. When you will, you shall be my husband and my master; I will try to be worthy of that honour."

[¶1557:] Scarcely has she kissed him when her delighted father clapps his hands calling, "Encore, encore," and Sophie without further ado, kisses him twice on the other cheek. But almost at the same moment, afraid of what she has done, she takes refuge in her mother's arms and hides her blushing face on the maternal bosom.

[¶1558:] I will not describe our happiness; everybody should feel it. After dinner Sophie asks if it is too far to go and see the poor invalids. It is her wish and it is a work of mercy. When we get there we find them both in bed -- Emile had sent for a second bedstead; there are people there to look after them -- Emile has seen to that too. But in spite of this everything is in such disorder that they suffer almost as much from discomfort as from their condition. Sophie asks for one of the good wife's aprons and sets to work to make her more comfortable in her bed; then she does as much for the man; her soft and gentle hand seems to find out what is hurting them and how to settle them into less painful positions. Her very presence seems to make them more comfortable; she seems to guess what is the matter. This fastidious girl is not disgusted by the dirt or smells, and she manages to get rid of both without disturbing the sick people. She who has always appeared so modest and sometimes so disdainful, she who would not for all the world have touched a man's bed with her little finger, lifts the sick man and changes his linen without any fuss, and places him to rest in a more comfortable position. The zeal of charity is of more value than modesty. What she does is done so skilfully and with such a light touch that he feels better almost without knowing she has touched him. Husband and wife mingle their blessings upon the kindly girl who tends, pities, and consoles them. She is an angel from heaven come to visit them; she is an angel in face and manner, in gentleness and goodness. Emile is greatly touched by all this and he watches her without speaking. 0 man, love thy companion. God gave her to relieve thy sufferings, to comfort thee in thy troubles. This is woman.

[¶1559:] The new-born baby is baptised. The two lovers are its god-parents, and as they hold it at the font they long, at the bottom of their hearts, for the time when they will have a child of their own to be baptised. They long for their wedding day; they think it is close at hand; all Sophie's scruples have vanished, but mine remain. They arenot yet where they think they are; every one must have his turn.

[¶1560:] One morning when they have not seen each other for two whole days, I enter Emile's room with a letter in my hands, and looking fixedly at him I say to him, "What would you do if some one told you Sophie were dead?" He utters a loud cry, gets up and strikes his hands together, and without saying a single word, he looks at me with eyes of desperation. "Answer me," I continue with the same calmness. Vexed at my composure, he then approaches me with eyes blazing with anger; and checking himself in an almost threatenning attitude, "What would I do? I do not know; but this I do know, I would never set eyes again upon the person who. brought me such news." "Comfort yourself," I say, smiling, "she lives, she is well, and they are expecting us this evening. But let us go for a short walk and we can talk things over."

[¶1561:] The passion which engrosses him will no longer permit him to devote himself as in former days to discussions of pure reason; this very passion must be called to our aid if his attention is to be given to my teaching. That is why I made use of this terrible preface; I am quite sure he will listen to me now.

[¶1562:] "We must be happy, dear Emile. It is the aim of every feeling creature; it is the first desire taught us by nature, and the only one which never leaves us. But where is happiness? Who knows? Every one seeks it, and no one finds it. We spend our lives in the search and we die before the end is attained. My young friend, when I took you, a new-born infant, in my arms, and called God himself to witness to the vow I dared to make that I would devote my life to the happiness of your life, did I know myself what I was undertaking? No; I only knew that in making you happy, I was sure of my own happiness. By making this useful inquiry on your account, I made it for us both.

[¶1563:] "So long as we do not know what to do, wisdom consists in doing nothing. Of all rules there is none so greatly needed by man, and none which he is less able to obey. In seeking happiness when we do not know where it is, we are perhaps getting further and further from it; we are running as many risks as there are roads to choose from. But it is not every one that can keep still. Our passion for our own well-being makes us so uneasy that we would rather deceive ourselves in the search for happiness than sit still and do nothing; and when once we have left the place where we might have known happiness, we can never return.

[¶1564:] "In ignorance like this I tried to avoid a similar fault. When I took charge of you I decided to take no useless steps and to prevent you from doing so too. I kept to the path of nature, until she should show me the path of happiness. It turned out that their paths were the same, and without knowing it this was the path I followed.

[¶1565:] "Be at once my witness and my judge; I will never refuse to accept your decision. Your early years have not been sacrificed to those that were to follow, you have enjoyed all the good gifts which nature bestowed upon you. Of the ills to which you were by nature subject, and from which I could shelter you, you have only experienced such as would harden you to bear others. You have never suffered any evil, except to escape a greater one. You have known neither hatred nor servitude. Free and happy, you have remained just and kindly; for suffering and vice are inseparable, and no man ever became bad until he was unhappy. May the memory of your childhood remain with you to old age! I am not afraid that your kind heart will ever recall the hand that trained it without a blessing upon it.

[¶1566:] "When you reached the age of reason, I secured you from the influence of human prejudice; when your heart awoke I preserved you from the sway of passion. Had I been able to prolong this inner tranquillity till your life's end, my work would have been insecure, and you would have been as happy as man can be. But, my dear Emile, it was in vain that I dipped your soul in the waters of Styx, for I could not make you completely invulnerable. A fresh enemy has appeared, whom you have not yet learnt to conquer, and from whom I cannot save you. That enemy is yourself. Nature and fortune had left you free. You could face poverty, you could bear bodily pain; the sufferings of the heart were unknown to you; you were then dependent on nothing but your position as a human being. Now you depend on all the ties you have formed for yourself; you have learnt to desire, and you are now the slave of your desires. Without any change in yourself, without any insult, any injury to yourself, what sorrows may attack your soul, what pains may you suffer without sickness, how many deaths may you die and yet live! A lie, an error, a suspicion, may plunge you in despair.

[¶1567:] "At the theatre you used to see heroes abandoned to depths of woe, making the stage re-echo with their wild cries, lamenting like women, weeping like children, and thus securing the applause of the audience. Do you remember how shocked you were by those lamentations, cries, and groans, in men from whom one would only expect deeds of constancy and heroism. 'What? you said, 'are those the patterns we are to follow, the models set for our imitation! Are they afraid man will not be small enough, unhappy enough, weak enough, if his weakness is not enshrined under a false show of virtue?' My young friend, from now on you must be more merciful to the stage; you have become one of those heroes.

[¶1568:] "You know how to suffer and to die; you know how to bear the heavy yoke of necessity in the ills of the body, but you have not yet learned to give a law to the desires of your heart; and the difficulties of life arise rather from our affections than from our needs. Our desires are vast, our strength is hardly better than nothing. In his wishes man is dependent on many things; in himself he is dependent on nothing, not even on his own life. The more his connections are multiplied, the greater his sufferings. Everything upon earth has an end; sooner or later all that we love escapes from our fingers, and we behave as if it would last for ever. What was your terror at the mere suspicion of Sophie's death? Do you suppose she will live for ever? Do not young people of her age die? She must die, my son, and perhaps before you. Who knows if she is alive at this moment? Nature meant you to die only once; you have prepared a second death for yourself.

[¶1569:] "Thus subservient to your ungoverned passions, how pitiful you will be! Forever in the grip of deprivation, losses, fears -- you will not even enjoy what is left. You will possess nothing because of the fear of losing it. From wanting to follow only your passions you will never be able to satisfy them. You will forever be seeking repose but it will always vanish before you. You will be miserable and you will become wicked. How can you be otherwise, having no care but your unbridled desires? If you cannot put up with involuntary deprivations how will you voluntarily deprive yourself? How can you sacrifice desire to duty and resist your heart in order to listen to your reason? You would never see that man again who dared to bring you word of the death of your mistress; how would you behold him who would deprive you of her living self, him who would dare to tell you, 'She is dead to you; virtue puts a gulf between you'? If you must live with her whatever happens, whether Sophie is married or single, whether you are free or not, whether she loves or hates you, whether she is given or refused to you, no matter, it is your will and you must have her at any price. Tell me then what crime will stop a man who has no law but his heart's desires, who knows not how to resist his own passions?

[¶1570:] "My child, there is no happiness without courage nor virtue without a struggle. The word virtue is derived from a word signifying strength, and strength is the foundation of all virtue. Virtue is the heritage of a creature weak by nature but strong by will; that is the whole merit of the righteous man; and though we call God good we do not call Him virtuous, because He does good without effort. I waited to explain the meaning of this word, so often profaned, until you were ready to understand me. As long as virtue is quite easy to practise, there is little need to know it. This need arises with the awakening of the passions; your time has come.

[¶1571:] "When I brought you up in all the simplicity of nature, instead of preaching disagreeable duties I secured for you immunity from the vices which make such duties disagreeable. I made lying not so much hateful as unnecessary in your sight; I taught you not so much to give others their due as to care little about your own rights. I made you kindly rather than virtuous. But the kindly man is only kind so long as he finds it pleasant. Kindness falls to pieces with the shock of human passions; the kindly man is only kind to himself.

[¶1572:] "What is meant by a virtuous man? He who can conquer his affections. For then he follows his reason, his conscience; he does his duty; he is his own master and nothing can turn him from the right way. So far you have had only the semblance of liberty, the precarious liberty of the slave who has not received his orders. Now is the time for real freedom; learn to be your own master; control your heart, my Emile, and you will be virtuous.

[¶1573:] "There is another apprenticeship before you, an apprenticeship more difficult than the former. For nature delivers us from the evils she lays upon us, or else she teaches us to submit to them. But she has no message for us with regard to our self-imposed evils; she leaves us to ourselves; she leaves us, victims of our own passions, to succumb to our vain sorrows, to pride ourselves on the tears of which we should be ashamed.

[¶1574:] "This is your first passion. Perhaps it is the only passion worthy of you. If you can control it like a man, it will be the last; you will be master of all the rest, and you will obey nothing but the passion for virtue.

[¶1575:] "There is nothing criminal in this passion, that I know. It is as pure as the hearts which experience it. It was born of honor and nursed by innocence. Happy lovers! For you the charms of virtue only add to those of love; and the blessed union to which you are looking forward is less the reward of your goodness than of your affection. But tell me, my sincere young man, though this passion is pure, are you any the less subjected to it? Have you been made less its slave? And if to-morrow it should cease to be innocent, would you stifle it right away? Now is the time to try out your strength; there is no time for that in hours of danger. Such dangerous tests should be made when peril is at a distance. We do not practise the use of our weapons when we are face to face with the enemy; we do that before the war; we come to the battle-field already prepared.

[¶1576:] "It is a mistake to distinguish between permitted and forbidden passions, so as to yield to the one and refuse the other. All passions are good if we are their masters; all are bad if we abandon ourselves to them. What nature forbids us is to extend our relations beyond the limits of our strength; reason forbids us to want what we cannot get; conscience forbids us not to be tempted but to yield to temptation. To feel or not to feel a passion is beyond our control, but we can control ourselves. Every sentiment that we can control is legitimate; those which control us are criminal. A man is not guilty if he loves his neighbour's wife as long as he keeps this unhappy passion bound by the law of duty; he is guilty if he loves his own wife so greatly as to sacrifice everything to that love.

[¶1577:] "Do not expect me to supply you with lengthy precepts of morality. I have only one rule to give you which sums up all the rest. Be a man; restrain your heart within the limits of your manhood. Study and know these limits. However narrow they may be, we are not unhappy within them. It is only when we wish to go beyond them that we are unhappy, only when, in our mad passions, we try to attain the impossible. We are unhappy when we forget our manhood to make an imaginary world for ourselves, from which we are always slipping back into our own. The only good things, whose loss really affects us, are those which we claim as our rights. If it is clear that we cannot obtain what we want, our mind turns away from it; wishes without hope cease to torture us. A beggar is not tormented by a desire to be a king; a king only wishes to be a god when he thinks himself more than man.

[¶1578:] "The illusions of pride are the source of our greatest ills; but the contemplation of human suffering keeps the wise humble. He keeps to his proper place and makes no attempt to depart from it; he does not waste his strength in getting what he cannot keep; and his whole strength being devoted to the right employment of what he has, he is in reality richer and more powerf in proprtion as he desires less than we. A mortal and perishable being, would I create eternal ties to this earth, where everything changes and disappears, and from where I myself will shortly vanish! Oh, Emile! my son! if I were to lose you, what would be left of myself? And yet I must learn to lose you, for who knows when you may be taken from me?

[¶1579:] "Do you wish to live in wisdom and happiness? Then attach your heart only to beauty that is eternal. Let your desires be limited by your position, let your duties take precedence over your wishes; extend the law of necessity into the region of morals; learn to lose what may be taken from you; learn to forsake all things at the command of virtue, to set yourself above the chances of life, to detach your heart before it is torn in pieces, to be brave in adversity so that you may never be wretched, to be steadfast in duty that you may never be guilty of a crime. Then you will be happy in spite of fortune, and good in spite of your passions. You will find a pleasure that cannot be destroyed, even in the possession of the most fragile things. You will possess them, they will not possess you, and you will realise that the man from whom everything escapes only enjoys what he knows how to lose. It is true you will not enjoy the illusions of imaginary pleasures; neither will you feel the sufferings which are their result. You will profit greatly by this exchange, for the sufferings are real and frequent, the pleasures are rare and empty. Victor over so many deceitful ideas, you will also vanquish the idea that attaches such an excessive value to life. You will spend your life in peace, and you will leave it without terror; you will detach yourself from life as from other things. Let others, horror-struck, believe that when this life is ended they cease to be. Conscious of the nothingness of life, you will think that you are only entering upon the true life. To the wicked, death is the close of life; to the just it is its beginning."

[¶1580:] Emile hears me with attention not unmixed with anxiety. After such a startling preface he feared some gloomy conclusion. He foresees that when I show him how necessary it is to practise the strength of the soul, I desire to subject him to this stern discipline; and like a wounded man who shrinks from the surgeon, he believes he already feels the painful but healing touch which will cure the deadly wound.

[¶1581:] Uncertain, anxious, eager to know what I am coming to, he does not answer but questions me timidly. "What do I need to do?" he says almost trembling, not daring to raise his eyes. "What do you need to do? "I reply firmly. "You must leave Sophie." "What are you saying? "he exclaimes angrily. "Leave Sophie, leave Sophie, deceive her, become a traitor, a villain, a perjurer?" "What," I continue, interrupting him; "does Emile suppose I shall teach him to deserve such names?" "No," he continued with the same vigour. "Neither you nor any one else. In spite of you I am capable of preserving your work. I will not deserve such reproaches.'

[¶1582:] I am prepared for this first outburst; I let it pass, unmoved. If I did not have the moderation I preach there would not be much use preaching it! Emile knows me too well to believe me capable of demanding any wrong action from him, and he knows that it would be wrong to leave Sophie in the sense he attaches to the phrase. So he waits for an explanation. Then I resume my speech.

[¶1583:] "My dear Emile, do you think any man whatsoever can be happier than you have been for the last three months? If you think so, undeceive yourself. Before tasting the pleasures of life you have plumbed the depths of its happiness. There is nothing more than you have already experienced. The joys of sense are transitory; habit invariably destroys them. You have tasted greater joys through hope than you will ever enjoy in reality. The imagination which adorns what we long for disappears with its possession. With the exception of the one self-existing Being, there is nothing beautiful except that which is not. If that state could have lasted for ever, you would have found perfect happiness. But all that is related to man shares his decline; all is finite, all is fleeting in human life, and even if the conditions which make us happy could be prolonged for ever, habit would deprive us of all taste for that happiness. If nothing outside of us changes, the heart changes; either happiness leaves us, or we we leave it.

[¶1584:] "During your infatuation time has passed unnoticed. Summer is over, winter is approaching. Even if our expeditions were possible, at such a time of year they would not be permitted. Whether we wish it or not, we will have to change our way of life; it cannot continue. I read in your eager eyes that this does not disturb you greatly; Sophie's confession and your own wishes suggest a simple plan for avoiding the snow and escaping the journey. The plan has its advantages, no doubt; but when spring returns, the snow will melt and the marriage will remain. You must plan for all seasons.

[¶1585:] "You wish to marry Sophie and you have only known her five months! You wish to marry her, not because she is a suitable wife for you but because she pleases you; as if love were never mistaken as to suitability, as if those who begin with love never ended with hatred! I know she is virtuous; but is that enough? Is fitness merely a matter of honor? It is not her virtue I misdoubt, it is her disposition. Does a woman show her real character in a day? Do you know how often you must have seen her and under what varying conditions to really know her temper? Is four months of attachment a sufficient pledge for the rest of your life? Perhaps two months of absence will make you forget her; as soon as you are gone another man may erase your image in her heart. On your return you may find her as indifferent as you have found her affectionate until now. Sentiments are not a matter of principle; she may be perfectly virtuous and yet cease to love you. I am inclined to think she will be faithful and true; but who will answer for her, and who will answer for you if you are not put to the proof? Will you postpone this trial till it is too late, will you wait to know your true selves till parting is no longer possible?

[¶1586:] "Sophie is not eighteen, and you are barely twenty-two; this is the age for love, but not for marriage. What a father and mother for a family! If you want to know how to bring up children, you should at least wait till you yourselves are children no longer. Do you not know that too early motherhood has weakened the constitution, destroyed the health, and shortened the life of many young women? Do you not know that many children have always been weak and sickly because their mother was little more than a child herself? When mother and child are both growing, the strength required for their growth is divided, and neither gets all that nature intended; are not both certain to suffer? Either I know very little of Emile, or he would rather wait and have a healthy wife and children than satisfy his impatience at the price of their life and health.

[¶1587:] "Let us speak of yourself. You hope to be a husband and a father; have you seriously considered your duties? By becoming the head of a family you will become a member of the state. And what is a citizen of the state; do you know? You have studied your duties as a man, but what do you know of the duties of a citizen? Do you know the meaning of such terms as government, laws, country? Do you know the price you must pay for life, and for what you must be prepared to die? You think you know everything, when you still really know nothing. Before taking your place in the civil order, learn to perceive and know what position will suit you.

[¶1588:] "Emile, you must leave Sophie. I do not say that you must give her up; if you were capable of such conduct, she would be only too happy not to have married you. You must leave her in order to return worthy of her. Do not be vain enough to think yourself already worthy. How much remains to be done! Come and fulfil this noble task; come and learn to submit to absence; come and earn the prize of fidelity, so that when you return you may indeed deserve some honor and may ask her hand not as a favor but as a reward."

[¶1589:] Not yet accustomed to struggling with himself, untrained to desire one thing and to will another, the young man will not surrender. He resists, he argues. Why should he refuse the happiness which awaits him? Would not waiting to accept the hand that is offered to him be to disdain it? Why need he leave her to learn what he ought to know? And if it were necessary to leave her why not leave her as his wife with a certain pledge of his return? Let him be her husband, and he is ready to follow me; let them be married and he will leave her without fear. "Marry her in order to leave her, dear Emile! what a contradiction! A lover who can leave his beloved shows himself capable of great things; a husband should never leave his wife unless through necessity. To cure your scruples, I see that the delay must be involuntary on your part; you must be able to tell Sophie you leave her against your will. Very well, be content, and since you will not obey reason, you must recognize another master. You have not forgotten the agreement that you made with me. Emile, you must leave Sophie; I wish it."

[¶1590:] For a moment or two he is downcast, silent, and thoughtful, then looking me full in the face he says, "When do we start?" "In a week," I reply. "Sophie must be prepared for our going. Women are weaker than we are, and we must show consideration for them; and this parting is not a duty for her as if is for you, so she may be allowed to bear it less bravely."

[¶1591:] The temptation to continue the daily history of their love up to the time of their separation is very great; but I have already presumed too much upon the good nature of my readers. Let us abridge the story so as to bring it to an end. Will Emile face the situation as bravely at his mistress' feet as he has done in conversation with his friend? I think he will; his confidence is rooted in the sincerity of his love. He would be more at a loss with her if it cost him less to leave her; he would leave her feeling himself to blame, and that is a difficult part for a man of honour to play. But the greater the sacrifice, the more credit he demands for it in the sight of her who makes it so difficult. He has no fear that she will misunderstand his motives. Every look seems to say, "Oh, Sophie, read my heart and be faithful to me; your lover is not without virtue."

[¶1592:] Proud Sophie, on her part, tries to bear the unforeseen blow with dignity. She tries to seem as if she did not care, but since the honors of war are not hers but Emile's, her strength is less equal to the task. She weeps, she sighs against her will, and the fear of being forgotten embitters the pain of parting. She does not weep in her lover's sight, she does not let him see her terror; she would die rather than utter a sigh in his presence. It is I who receive her complaints, who sees her tears; it is I who am supposed to be her confidant. Women are very clever and know how to conceal their cleverness; the more she frets in private, the more pains she takes to please me; she feels that her fate is in my hands.

[¶1593:] I console and comfort her; I make myself answerable for her lover, or rather for her husband. Let her be as true to him as he to her and I promise they will be married in two years' time. She respects me enough to believe that I do not want to deceive her. I am guarantor to each for the other. Their hearts, their virtue, my honesty, the confidence of their parents, all combine to reassure them. But what can reason avail against weakness? They part as if they were never to meet again.

[¶1594:] Then it is that Sophie recalls the regrets of Eucharis, and imagines herself in her place. Do not let us revive that fantacized love during his absence. "Sophie," say I one day, "exchange books with Emile; let him have your Telemachus that he may learn to be like him, and let him give you his Spectator which you enjoy reading. Study the duties of good wives in it, and remember that in two years time you will undertake those duties." The exchange gives pleasure to both and inspires them with confidence. At last the sad day arrives and they must part.

[¶1595:] Sophy's worthy father, with whom I arranged the whole business, takes affectionate leave of me, and drawing me aside, speaks seriously and somewhat emphatically, saying, "I have done everything to please you. I knew was dealing with a man of honor. I have only one word to say. Remember that your pupil has signed his marriage contract on my daughter's lips."

[¶1596:] What a difference in the behaviour of the two lovers! Emile, impetuous, eager, excited, almost beside himself, cries out loud and sheds torrents of tears upon the hands of father, mother, and daughter; with sobs he embraces every one in the house and repeats the same thing over and over again in a way that would be ludicrous at any other time. Sophie, pale, sorrowful, doleful, and heavy-eyed, remains quiet without a word or a tear; she sees no one, not even Emile. In vain he takes her hand, and clasps her in his arms; she remains motionless, unheeding his tears, his caresses, and everything he does. So far as she is concerned, he is gone already. A sight more moving than the prolonged lamentations and noisy regrets of her lover! He sees, he feels, he is heartbroken. I drag him reluctantly away; if I left him another minute, he would never go. I am delighted that he should carry this touching picture with him. If he should ever be tempted to forget what is due to Sophie, his heart must have strayed very far indeed if I cannot bring it back to her by recalling her as he saw her last.

[1597:] ON TRAVEL

[¶1598:] Is it good for young people to travel? The question is often asked and as often hotly disputed. If it were stated otherwise -- Are men the better for having travelled? -- perhaps there would be less difference of opinion.

[¶1599:] The misuse of books is the death of sound learning. People think they know what they have read, and take no pains to learn. Too much reading only produces a pretentious ignoramus. There was never so much reading in any age as the present, and never was there less learning; in no country of Europe are so many histories and books of travel printed as in France, and nowhere is there less knowledge of the mind and manners of other nations. So many books lead us to neglect the book of the world; if we read it at all, we keep each to our own page. If the phrase, "Can one become a Persian," were unknown to me, I should suspect on hearing it that it came from the country where national prejudice is most prevalent and from the sex which does most to increase it.

[¶1600:] A Parisian thinks he has a knowledge of men and he knows only Frenchmen. His town is always full of foreigners, but he considers every foreigner as a strange phenomenon which has no equal in the universe. You must have a close acquaintance with the middle classes of that great city, you must have lived among them, before you can believe that people could be at once so witty and so stupid. The strangest thing about it is that probably every one of them has read a dozen times a description of the country whose inhabitants inspire him with such wonder.

[¶1601:] To discover the truth amidst our own prejudices and those of the authors is too hard a task. I have been reading books of travels all my life, but I never found two that gave me the same idea of the same nation. On comparing my own scanty observations with what I have read, I have decided to abandon the travellers and regret the time wasted in trying to learn from their books; for I am quite convinced that for that sort of study seeing, not reading, is required. That would be true enough if every traveller were honest, if he only said what he saw and believed, and if truth were not tinged with false colors from his own eyes. What must it be when we have to disentangle the truth from the web of lies and bad faith?

[¶1602:] Let us leave the boasted resources of books to those who are content to use them. Like the art of Raymond Lull they good for setting people chattering about things they do not know; they are good for setting fifteen-year-old Platos discussing philosophy in the clubs and teaching people the customs of Egypt and the Indies on the word of Paul Lucas or Tavernier.

[¶1603:] I maintain that it is beyond dispute that any one who has only seen one nation does not know men; he only knows those men among whom he has lived. Hence there is another way of stating the question about travel: "Is it enough for a well-educated man to know his fellow-countrymen, or ought he to know mankind in general?" Then there is no place for argument or uncertainty. See how greatly the solution of a difficult problem may depend on the way in which it is stated.

[¶1604:] But is it necessary to travel the whole globe to study mankind? Need we go to Japan to study Europeans? Need we know every individual before we know the species? No, there are men so much alike that it is not worth while to study them individually. When you have seen a dozen Frenchmen you have seen them all. Though one cannot say as much of the English and other nations, it is, however, certain that every nation has its own specific character, which is derived by induction from the study, not of one, but many of its members. He who has compared a dozen nations knows men, just he who has compared a dozen Frenchmen knows the French.

[¶1605:] To acquire knowledge it is not enough to travel hastily through a country. Observation demands eyes and the power of directing them towards the object we desire to know. There are plenty of people who learn no more from their travels than from their books because they do not know how to think, because in reading their mind is at least under the guidance of the author, and in their travels they do not know how to see for themselves. Others learn nothing because they have no desire to learn. Their object is so entirely different that it hardly strikes them; it is very unlikely that you will see clearly what you take no trouble to look for. The French travel more than any other nation, but they are so taken up with their own customs that everything else is confused together. There are Frenchmen in every corner of the globe. In no country of the world do you find more people who have travelled than in France. And yet of all the nations of Europe, that which has seen most, knows least.

[¶1606:] The English are also travellers, but they travel in another fashion; these two nations must always be at opposite extremes. The English nobility travels, the French stays at home; the French people travel, the English stay at home. This difference does credit, I think, to the English. The French almost always travel for their own ends; the English do not seek their fortune in other lands, unless in the way of commerce and with their hands full; when they travel it is to spend their money, not to live by their wits; they are too proud to cringe before strangers. This is why they learn more abroad than the French who have some other object in mind. Yet the English have their national prejudices; but these prejudices are not so much the result of ignorance as of feeling. The Englishman's prejudices are the result of pride, the Frenchman's are due to vanity.

[¶1607:] Just as the least cultivated nations are usually the best, so those travel best who travel least; they have made less progress than we in our frivolous pursuits, they are less concerned with the objects of our empty curiosity, so that they give their attention to what is really useful. I hardly know any but the Spaniards who travel in this fashion. While the Frenchman is running after all the artists of the country, while the Englishman is getting a copy of some antique, while the German is taking his notebook to every scholar, the Spaniard is silently studying the government, the manners of the country, its police, and he is the only one of the four who from all that he has seen will carry home any observation useful to his own country.

[¶1608:] The ancients travelled little, read little, and wrote few books. Yet we see in those books that remain to us, that they observed each other more thoroughly than we observe our contemporaries. Without going back to the days of Homer, the only poet who transports us to the country he describes, we cannot deny to Herodotus the glory of having best painted manners in his history, though he does it rather by narrative than by comment. Still he does it better than all our historians whose books are overladen with portraits and characters. Tacitus has described the Germans of his time better than any author has described the Germans of to-day. There can be no doubt that those who have devoted themselves to ancient history know more about the Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Gauls, and Persians than any nation of to-day knows about its neighbors.

[¶1609:] It must also be admitted that the original characteristics of different nations are changing day by day and are therefore more difficult to grasp. As races blend and nations intermingle, those national differences which formerly struck the observer at first sight gradually disappear. Before our time every nation remained more or less cut off from the rest; the means of communication were fewer; there was less travelling, less of mutual or conflicting interests, less political and civil intercourse between nation and nation. Those intricate schemes of royalty, miscalled diplomacy, were less frequent; there were no permanent ambassadors resident at foreign courts; long voyages were rare, there was little foreign trade, and what little there was, was either the work of princes who employed foreigners or of people of no account who had no influence on others and did nothing to bring the nations together. The relations between Europe and Asia in the present century are a hundredfold more numerous than those between Gaul and Spain in the past; Europe alone was less accessible than the whole world is now.

[¶1610:] Moreover, the peoples of antiquity usually considered themselves as the original inhabitants of their country. They had dwelt there so long that all record was lost of the far-off times when their ancestors settled there; they had been there so long that the place had made a lasting impression on them. But in modern Europe the invasions of the barbarians, following upon the Roman conquests, have caused an extraordinary confusion. The Frenchmen of to-day are no longer the big fair men of old; the Greeks are no longer beautiful enough to serve as a sculptor's model; the very face of the Romans has changed as well as their character; the Persians, originally from Tartary, are daily losing their native ugliness through the intermixture of Circassian blood. Europeans are no longer Gauls, Germans, Iberians, Allobroges; they are all Scythians, more or less degenerate in countenance, and still more so in conduct.

[¶1611:] This is why the ancient distinctions of race, the effect of soil and climate, made a greater difference between nation and nation in respect of temperament, looks, manners, and character than can be distinguished in our own time, when the fickleness of Europe leaves no time for natural causes to work, when the forests are cut down and the marshes drained, when the earth is more generally, though less thoroughly, tilled, so that the same differences between country and country can no longer be detected even in purely physical features.

[¶1612:] If they considered these facts perhaps people would not be in such a hurry to ridicule Herodotus, Ctesias, Pliny for having described the inhabitants of different countries each with its own peculiarities and with striking differences which we no longer see. To recognise such types of face we should need to see the men themselves; no change must have passed over them, if they are to remain the same. If we could contemplate at one time all the people who have ever lived, who can doubt that we should find greater variations between one century and another than are now found between nation and nation.

[¶1613:] At the same time, while observation becomes more difficult, it is more carelessly and badly done. This is another reason for the small success of our researches into the natural history of the human race. The information acquired by travel depends upon the object of the journey. If this object is a system of philosophy, the traveller only sees what he desires to see; if it is self-interest, it engrosses the whole attention of those concerned. Commerce and the arts which blend and mingle the nations at the same time prevent them from studying each other. If they know how to make a profit out of their neighbours, what more do they need to know?

[¶1614:] It is a good thing to know all the places where we might live, so as to choose those where we can live most comfortably. If every one lived by his own efforts, all he would need to know would be which country could supply his food. The savage, who has need of no one, and envies no one, neither knows nor seeks to know any other country but his own. If he requires more land for his subsistence he shuns inhabited places; he makes war upon the wild beasts and feeds on them. But for us, to whom civil life has become a necessity and who cannot get along without comsuming other men, self-interest prompts each one of us to frequent those districts where there are most people to be devoured. This is why we all flock to Rome, Paris, and London. It is always in the capitals that human blood is sold at the best price. Thus we only know the great nations, which are just like one another.

[¶1615:] They say that men of learning travel to obtain information. This is an error. They travel for self-interest like everyone else. Philosophers like Plato and Pythagoras are no longer to be found, or if they are, it must be in far-off lands. Our men of learning only travel at the king's command; they are sent out, their expenses are paid, they receive a salary for seeing such and such things, and the object of that journey is certainly not the study of any question of morals. Their whole time is required for the object of their journey, and they are too honest not to earn their pay. If in any country whatsoever there are people travelling at their own expense, you may be sure it is not to study men but to teach them. It is not knowledge they desire but ostentation. How could their travels teach them to shake off the yoke of public opinion? It is public opinion that sends them on their travels.

[¶1616:] There is a big difference between travelling to see the country and travelling to see the people. The former is the usual aim of the curious, the latter is merely subordinate to it. If you wish to travel as a philosopher you should reverse this order. The child observes things till he is old enough to study men. Man should begin by studying his fellows human beings; he can study things later if time permits.

[¶1617:] It is therefore illogical to conclude that travel is useless because we do not travel well. But granting the usefulness of travel, does it follow that it is good for all of us? Far from it. There are very few people who are really fit to travel; it is only good for those who are strong enough in themselves to listen to the voice of error without being deceived, strong enough to see the example of vice without being led away by it. Travelling accelerates the progress of nature and completes the man for good or evil. When a man returns from travelling about the world he is what he will be all his life; there are more who return bad than good, because there are more who start with an inclination towards evil. In the course of their travels, young people, badly-educated and badly-behaved, pick up all the vices of the nations among whom they have sojourned and none of the virtues with which those vices are associated. But those who are happily born, those whose natural goodness has been well cultivated, those who travel with a real desire to learn -- all return better and wiser than they went. This is how my Emile will travel; this is how another young man, worthy of a nobler age travelled, one whose worth was the admiration of Europe, one who died for his country in the flower of his manhood. He deserved to live, and his tomb, ennobled by his virtues only, received no honour till a stranger's hand adorned it with flowers.

[¶1618:] Everything that is done in reason should have its rules. Travel, undertaken as a part of education should therefore have its rules. To travel for travelling's sake is to wander, to be a vagabond; to travel to learn is still too vague; learning without some definite aim is worthless. I would give a young man a personal interest in learning, and that interest, well-chosen, will also decide the nature of the instruction. This is merely the continuation of the method I have hitherto practised.

[¶1619:] Now after he has considered himself in his physical relations to other creatures, in his moral relations with other men, there remains to be considered his civil relations with his fellow-citizens. To do this he must first study the nature of government in general, then the different forms of government, and lastly the particular government under which he was born, to know if it suits him to live under it. For by a right which nothing can abrogate, every man, when he comes of age, becomes his own master, free to renounce the contract by which he forms part of the community, by leaving the country in which that contract holds good. It is only by sojourning in that country, after he has come to years of discretion, that he is supposed to have tacitly confirmed the pledge given by his ancestors. He acquires the right to renounce his country, just as he has the right to renounce all claim to his father's lands; yet his place of birth was a gift of nature, and in renouncing it, he renounces what is his own. Strictly speaking, every man remains in the land of his birth at his own risk unless he voluntarily submits to its laws in order to acquire a right to their protection.

[¶1620:] For example, I would say to Emile, "Until now you have lived under my guidance; you were unable to rule yourself. But now you are approaching the age when the law, giving you the control over your property, makes you master of your person. You are about to find yourself alone in society, dependent on everything, even on your inheritance. You mean to settle down; that is a praiseworthy intention, it is one of the duties of man. But before you marry you must know what sort of man you want to be, how you wish to spend your life, what steps you mean to take to secure a living for your family and for yourself. For although we should not make this our main business, it must be definitely considered. Do you wish to be dependent on men whom you despise? Do you want to establish your fortune and determine your position by means of civil relations which will make you always dependent on the choice of others, which will compel you, in order to escape from fools, to become a fool yourself?"

[¶1621:] In the next place I will show him every possible way of using his money in trade, in the civil service, in finance, and I will show him that in every one of these there are risks to be taken; every one of them places him in a precarious and dependent position and compels him to adapt his morals, his sentiments, his conduct to the example and the prejudices of others.

[¶1622:] "There is" I will tell him, "yet another way of spending your time and money. You may join the army; that is to say, you may hire yourself out at very high wages to go and kill men who never did you any harm. This trade is held in great honor among men, and they cannot think too highly of those who are fit for nothing better. Moreover, this profession, far from making you independent of other resources, makes them all the more necessary; for it is a point of honour in this profession to ruin those who have adopted it. It is true they are not all ruined; it is even becoming fashionable to grow rich in this as in other professions. But if I told you how people manage to do it, I doubt whether you would desire to follow their example.

[¶1623:] "Moreover, you must know that, even in this trade, it is no longer a question of courage or valour, unless with regard to the ladies. On the contrary, the more cringing, mean, and degraded you are, the more honor you obtain. If you have decided to take your profession seriously you will be despised, you will be hated, you will very possibly be driven out of the service; or at least you will fall a victim to favoritism and be supplanted by your comrades -- because you have been doing your duty in the trenches, while they have been attending to their dress."

[¶1624:] We can hardly suppose that any of these occupations will be much to Emile's taste. "Why," he will exclaim, "have I forgotten the games of my childhood? Have I lost the use of my arms? Is my strength failing me? Do I not know how to work? What do I care about all your fine professions and all the silly prejudices of others? I know no other pride than to be kindly and just, no other happiness than to live in independence with her I love, gaining health and a good appetite by each day's work. All these difficulties you speak of do not concern me. The only property I desire is a little farm in some quiet corner. I will devote all my thriftiness to making it pay, and I will live without a care. Give me Sophie and my land, and I shall be rich."

[¶1625:] "Yes, my dear friend, that is all a wise man requires, a wife and land of his own; but these treasures are scarcer than you think. The rarest you have found already; let us discuss the other.

[¶1626:] "A field of your own, dear Emile! Where will you find it, in what remote corner of the earth can you say, 'Here am I master of myself and of this estate which belongs to me'? We know where a man may grow rich; who knows where he can do without riches? Who knows where to live free and independent, without doing harm to others and without fear of being harmed himself? Do you think it is so easy to find a place where you can always live like an honest man? If there is any legitimate and secure way of living without intrigues, without business deals, without dependence on others, it is, I admit, to live by the labor of our hands, by the cultivation of our own land. But where is the state in which a man can say, 'The earth which I dig is my own'? Before choosing this happy spot, be sure that you will find the peace you desire; beware that a violent government, a persecuting religion, and perverse customs do not come to trouble you. Secure yourself against arbitrary taxes which would devour the fruits of your labor or endless lawsuits which would consume your capital. Take care that you can live rightly without having to pay court to intendents, deputies, judges, priests, powerful neighbours, and to fools of every kind who are always ready to annoy you if you neglect them. Above all, secure yourself from annoyance on the part of the rich and great; remember that their estates may anywhere adjoin your Naboth's vineyard. If unluckily for you some great man buys or builds a house near your cottage, make sure that he will not find a way, under some pretence or other, to encroach on your lands to round off his estate, or that you do not find him at once absorbing all your resources to build his own road. If you keep sufficient credit to ward off all these disagreeables, you might as well keep your money, for it will cost you no more to keep it. Riches and credit lean upon each other; the one can hardly stand without the other.

[¶1627:] "I have more experience than you, dear Emile; I see more clearly the difficulties in the way of your plan. Yet it is a fine plan and honorable; it would make you happy indeed. Let us try to carry it out. I have a suggestion to make; let us devote the two years from now till the time of your return to choosing a place in Europe where you could live happily with your family, secure from all the dangers I have just described. If we succeed, you will have discovered that true happiness, so often sought for in vain; and you will not have to regret the time spent in its search. If we fail, you will be cured of a mistaken idea; you will console yourself for an inevitable ill, and you will bow to the law of necessity."

[¶1628:] I do not know whether all my readers will see where this suggested inquiry will lead us; but this I do know, if Emile returns from his travels, begun and continued with this end in view, without a full knowledge of questions of government, public morality, and political philosophy of every kind, we are greatly lacking, he in intelligence and I in judgment.

[¶1629:] The [[Notes:Jjr_em_para1629_note1|science of politics is and probably always will be unknown. Grotius, our leader in this branch of learning, is only a child, and what is worse an untruthful child. When I hear Grotius praised to the skies and Hobbes overwhelmed with abuse, I perceive how little sensible men have read or understood these authors. As a matter of fact, their principles are exactly alike; they only differ in their mode of expression. Their methods are also different: Hobbes relies on sophism; Grotius relies on the poets; they are agreed in everything else.

[¶1630:] In modern times the only man who could have created this vast and useless science was the illustrious Montesquieu. But he was not concerned with the principles of political right; he was content to deal with the positive laws of settled governments; and nothing could be more different than these two branches of study.

[¶1631:] Yet he who would judge wisely in matters of actual government is forced to combine the two; he must know what ought to be in order to judge what is. The chief difficulty in the way of throwing light upon this important matter is to induce an individual to discuss and to answer these two questions. "How does it concern me; and what can I do?" Emile is in a position to answer both.

[¶1632:] The next difficulty is due to the prejudices of childhood, the principles in which we were brought up. It is due above all to the partiality of authors, who are always talking about truth, though they care very little about it; it is only their own interests that they care for, and of these they say nothing. Now the people has neither professorships, nor pensions, nor membership of the academies to bestow. How then shall their rights be established by men of that type? The education I have given him has removed this difficulty also from Emile's path. He scarcely knows what is meant by government; his business is to find the best. He does not want to write books; if ever he did so, it would not be to pay court to those in authority, but to establish the rights of humanity.

[¶1633:] There is a third difficulty, more specious than real, a difficulty which I neither desire to solve nor even to state. It is enough that I am not afraid of it, sure I am that in inquiries of this kind great talents are less necessary than a genuine love of justice and a sincere reverence for truth. If ever matters of government can be fairly discussed it is according to me now or never.

[¶1634:] Before beginning our observations we must lay down rules of procedure; we must find a scale with which to compare our measurements. Our principles of political law are our scale. Our actual measurements are the civil law of each country.

[¶1635:] Our elementary notions are plain and simple, being taken directly from the nature of things. They will take the form of problems discussed between us, and they will not be formulated into principles until we have found a satisfactory solution of our problems.

[¶1636:] For example, we shall begin with the state of nature. We shall see whether men are born slaves or free, in a community or independent; if their association the result of free will or of force; if the force which compels them to unite ever can form a permanent law, by which this prior force becomes binding, even when another has been imposed upon it. So that if, since the power of King Nimrod, who is said to have been the first conqueror, every other power which has overthrown the original power is unjust and usurping, are there no lawful kings but the descendants of Nimrod or their representatives? Or if this original power has ceased, has the power which succeeded it any right over us, and does it destroy the binding force of the former power, so that we are not bound to obey except under compulsion, and we are free to rebel as soon as we are capable of resistance? Such a right is not very different from might; it is little more than a play upon words.

[¶1637:] We shall inquire whether man might not say that all sickness comes from God, and that it is therefore a crime to send for the doctor.

[¶1638:] Again, we shall inquire whether we are bound by our conscience to give our purse to a highwayman when we might conceal it from him, for the pistol in his hand is also a power.

[¶1639:] Does this word power in this context mean something different from a power which is lawful and therefore subject to the laws to which it owes its being?

[¶1640:] Supposing that we reject this right of force and admit the right of nature or paternal authority as the foundation of society, we will inquire into the extent of this authority; what is its foundation in nature? Has it any other grounds but that of its usefulness to the child, his weakness, and the natural love which his father feels towards him? When the child is no longer weak and his reason begins to ripen, does not he become the sole natural judge of what is necessary for his preservation? Is he not therefore his own master, independent of all men, even of his father? For is it not still more certain that the son loves himself, than that the father loves the son?

[¶1641:] The father being dead, should the children obey the eldest brother, or some other person who does not have the natural affection of a father? Should there always be, from family to family, one single head to whom all the family owe obedience? If so, how has power ever come to be divided, and how is it that there is more than one head to govern the human race throughout the world?

[¶1642:] Supposing that peoples were formed by choice, we will then distinguish between right and fact, and we will ask whether being thus subjected to their brothers, uncles, or other relations, not because they were obliged to, but because they choose to, this kind of society would not always turn into a free and voluntary association.

[¶1643:] Passing on to the law of slavery, we will inquire whether a man can ligitimately give over to another his right to himself, without restriction, without reserve, without any kind of conditions. That is to say, can he renounce his body, his life, his reason, his very self, all morality in his actions and in a word cease to exist before his death, in spite of nature which places him directly in charge of his own preservation, in spite of conscience and his reason which prescribe what he should do and what he should abstain from doing?

[¶1644:] If there is any reservation or restriction in the act of slavery, we shall discuss whether this act does not then become a true contract, in which both the contracting powers, having in this respect no common superior, remain their own judge as to the conditions of the contract, and consequently free to this extent and able to break the contract so soon as it becomes hurtful.

[¶1645:] If then a slave cannot alienate himself without reservation to his master, how can a nation alienate itself without reservation to its head? And if a slave is to judge whether his master is fulfilling his contract, is not the people to judge whether its head is fulfilling his contract?

[¶1646:] Forced thus to retrace our steps, and considering the meaning of this word collective people we will inquire whether some contract, a tacit contract at the least, is not required to make a people, a contract anterior to that which we are assuming.

[¶1647:] Since before choosing a king a people is a people, what made it a people, except the social contract? The social contract is therefore the foundation of all civil society, and it is in the nature of this act that we must seek the nature of the society formed by it.

[¶1648:] We will inquire into the meaning of this contract and whether it not be fairly well expressed in this formula: "Each of us puts in common his goods, his person, his life and all is power under the supreme direction of the general will, and we receive as a body each member as an indivisible part of the whole."

[¶1649:] Assuming this, in order to define the terms we need, we will observe that in place of the individual person of each contracting party, this act of association produces a moral and collective body composed of as many members as the assembly has of voices. This public person in general takes the name of body politic. It is called the State by its members when it is passive, and the Sovereign when it is active, and a Power when compared with its equals. With regard to the members themselves, collectively they are known as the people and individually as citizens, as members of the city or participants in the sovereign authority, and subjects when they are subjected to the same authority.

[¶1650:] We shall note that this act of association includes a mutual pledge on the part of the public and the individuals; and that each individual, contracting, so to speak, with himself, finds himself engaged in a double relation -- that is, as a member of the sovereign with regard to other individuals, as member of the state with regard to the sovereign.

[¶1651:] We shall also note that while no one is bound by any engagement to which he was not himself a party, the public deliberation which may be binding on all the subjects with regard to the sovereign because of the two different relations under which each of them is envisaged, cannot be binding on the state with regard to itself. However one looks at it, there is not, and cannot be, any other fundamental law, properly so called, except the social contract. This does not mean that the body politic cannot, in certain respects, pledge itself to others; for with regard to the foreigner, it then becomes a simple creature, an individual.

[¶1652:] Thus the two contracting parties, that is each individual and the public, having no common superior to decide their differences, we will inquire if each of them remains free to break the contract at will, that is to say to repudiate it on his side as soon as he considers it hurtful.

[¶1653:] To clear up this difficulty, we shall observe that, according to the social pact, the sovereign power is only able to act through the common, general will; so its decrees can only have a general or common aim. Hence it follows that a private individual cannot be directly injured by the sovereign unless all are injured, which is impossible, for that would be to want to harm oneself. Thus the social contract has no need of any warrant but the public force, for it can only be broken by individuals, and they are not therefore freed from their engagement but punished for having broken it.

[¶1654:] To decide all such questions rightly, we must always bear in mind that the nature of the social pact is of a particular nature in itself, in that the people only contracts with itself -- that is to say the body of the people as sovereign, with the individuals as subjects. This condition is essential to the construction and working of the political machine; it alone makes pledges legitimate, reasonable, and secure, without which it would be absurd, tyrannical, and liable to the most enormous abuse.

[¶1655:] Individuals having submitted themselves only to the sovereign, and the sovereign power being nothing other than the general will, we shall see that every man in obeying the sovereign only obeys himself, and how one is much freer under the social part than in the state of nature.

[¶1656:] Having compared natural and civil liberty with regard to persons, we will compare them as to property, the rights of ownership and the rights of sovereignty, the private and the common domain. If the sovereign power rests upon the right of ownership, there is no right more worthy of respect. The right of owndership is inviolable and sacred for the sovereign power so long as it remains a private individual right; as soon as it is viewed as common to all the citizens, it is subject to the common will, and this will can destroy it. Thus the sovereign has no right to touch the property of one or many; but it may lawfully take possession of the property of all as was done in Sparta in the time of Lycurgus; while the abolition of debts by Solon was an illegitimate act.

[¶1657:] Since nothing is binding on the subjects except the general will, let us inquire how this will is manifested, by what signs we may recognise it with certainty, what is a law, and what are the true characters of the law. This subject is completely new; the definition of law has yet to be made.

[¶1658:] As soon as the nation considers individually one or more of its members, the nation is divided. A relation is established between the whole and its part which makes of them two separate entities, of which the part in one, and the whole, minus that part, is the other. But the whole minus the part is not the whole; as long as this relation exists, there is no longer a whole, but two unequal parts.

[¶1659:] On the contrary, if the whole nation legislates for the whole nation, it is only considering itself; and if a relation is set up, it is between the whole community regarded from one point of view and the whole community regarded from another point of view, without any division of that whole. Then the object of the statute is general, and the will which makes that statute is general too. Let us see if there is any other kind of act which may bear the name of law.

[¶1660:] If the sovereign can only speak through laws, and if the law can never have any object other than a general object equally relative to all the members of the state, it follows that the sovereign never has the power to legislate with regard to particular objects. And yet since it is necessary for the preservation of the state that particular cases should also be dealt with, we must see how this can be done.

[¶1661:] The acts of the sovereign can only be acts of the general will, that is laws. There must also be determining acts [or decrees] of power or government for the execution of those same laws; and these, on the contrary, can only have particular aims. Thus the acts by which the sovereign rules that a leader will be elected is a law; the act by which that leader is elected, in pursuance of the law, is only a decree of government.

[¶1662:] Here is therefore a third relation in which the assembled people may be considered -- that is, as magistrates or executors of the law which it has passed in its capacity as sovereign.

[¶1663:] We will examine whether it is possible for the nation to deprive itself of its right of sovereignty, to invest it in one or more persons. For the act of election not being a law, and in this act the people not being itself sovereign, we do not see how it can transfer a right which it does not have.

[¶1664:] The essence of sovereignty consisting in the general will, it is equally hard to see how one can be certain that an individual will shall always be in agreement with the general will. One would more likely assume that it will often be opposed to it; for individual interest always tends to privileges, while the common interest always tends to equality, and if such an agreement were possible, no sovereign right could exist, unless the agreement were either necessary or indestructible.

[¶1665:] We will inquire if, without violating the social pact, the leaders of the people, under whatever name they are elected, can ever be anything other than the officers of the people, entrusted by them with the duty of carrying the law into execution. Are not these leaders themselves accountable for their administration, and are not they themselves subject to the laws which it is their business to see carried out?

[¶1666:] If the people cannot alienate its supreme right, can it entrust it to others for a time? If it cannot give itself a master, can it give itself representatives? This is an important question and deserves discussion.

[¶1667:] If the people can have neither a sovereign nor representatives we will inquire how it can pass its laws itself, if it must have many laws, if it must often change them, if it is easy for a great people to be its own lawgiver.

[¶1668:] If the Roman people was not a great people.

[¶1669:] If it is good that there be great peoples

[¶1670:] It follows from the preceding considerations that there is in the state an intermediate body between subjects and sovereign; and this intermediate body, consisting of one or more members, is entrusted with the public administration, the carrying out of the laws, and the maintenance of civil and political liberty.

[¶1671:] The members of this body are called magistrates or kings, that is to say, rulers. This body, as a whole, considered in relation to its members, is called the prince, and considered in its actions it is called the government.

[¶1672:] If we consider the action of the whole body upon itself, that is to say the relation of the whole to the whole, of the sovereign to the state, we can compare this relation to that of the extremes in a proportion of which the government is the middle term. The magistrate receives from the sovereign the commands which he gives to the people, and when everything is compensated for his product or his power is in the same degree as the product or power of the citizens who are subjects on one side of the proportion and sovereigns on the other. None of the three terms can be varied without at once destroying this proportion. If the sovereign tries to govern, and if the prince wants to make the laws, or if the subject refuses to obey them, disorder takes the place of order, and the state falls to pieces under despotism or anarchy.

[¶1673:] Let us suppose that this state consists of ten thousand citizens. The sovereign can only be considered collectively and as a body, but each individual, as a subject, has his private and independent existence. Thus the sovereign is as ten thousand to one. That is to say, every member of the state has, as his own share, only one ten-thousandth part of the sovereign power, although he is subject to the whole. Let the people be composed of one hundred thousand men, the position of the subjects is unchanged, and each continues to bear the whole weight of the laws, while his vote, reduced to the one hundred-thousandth part, has ten times less influence in the making of the laws. Thus the subject being always one, the sovereign is relatively greater as the number of the citizens is increased. Hence it follows that the more the state grows in size, the more liberty is diminished.

[¶1674:] Now the greater the disproportion between private wishes and the general will, that is to say between customs and laws, the greater must be the power of repression. On the other side, the greatness of the state gives the depositaries of public authority greater temptations and additional means of abusing that authority, so that the more power the government has to control the people, the more power the sovereign should have to control the government.

[¶1675:] From this double relation it follows that the continued proportion between the sovereign, the prince, and the people is not an arbitrary idea, but a consequence of the nature of the state. Moreover, it follows that one of the extremes, that is, the people, being constant, every time the double ratio increases or decreases, the simple ratio increases or diminishes in turn; which cannot happen without the middle term changing accordingly. From this we may conclude that there is no single absolute form of government, but there must be as many different forms of government as there are states of different size.

[¶1676:] If the greater the numbers of the people the less the ratio between its manners and its laws; by a fairly clear analogy we may also say that the more numerous the magistrates, the weaker the government.

[¶1677:] To make this principle clearer we will distinguish three essentially different wills in the person of each magistrate. First, his own will as an individual, which looks to his own advantage only. Secondly, the common will of the magistrates, which is concerned only with the advantage of the prince, a will which may be called corporate, and one which is general in relation to the government and particular in relation to the state of which the government forms part. Thirdly, the will of the people, or the sovereign will, which is general, as much in relation to the state viewed as the whole as in relation to the government viewed as a part of the whole. In a perfect legislature the private individual will should be almost nothing; the corporate will belonging to the government should be quite subordinate, and therefore the general and sovereign will is the master of all the others. On the other hand, in the natural order, these different wills become more and more active in proportion as they become centralised. The general will is always weak, the corporate will takes the second place, the individual will is preferred to all; so that every one is himself first, then a magistrate, and then a citizen; a series just the opposite of that required by the social order.

[¶1678:] Having laid down this principle, let us assume that the government is in the hands of one man. In this case the individual and the corporate will are absolutely one, and therefore this will has reached the greatest possible degree of intensity. Now the use of power depends on the degree of this intensity, and as the absolute power of the government is always that of the people, and therefore invariable, it follows that the rule of one man is the most active form of government.

[¶1679:] If, on the other hand, we unite the government with the supreme power, and make the prince the sovereign and the citizens so many magistrates, then the corporate will is completely lost in the general will, and will have no more activity than the general will, and it will leave the individual will in full vigour. Thus the government, though its absolute force is constant, will have the minimum of activity.

[¶1680:] These rules are incontestable in themselves, and other considerations only serve to confirm them. For example, we see the magistrates as a body far more active than the citizens as a body, so that the individual will always counts for more. For each magistrate usually has charge of some particular duty of government, while each citizen, in himself, has no particular duty of sovereignty. Moreover, the greater the state the greater its real power, although its power does not increase because of the increase in territory. But the state remaining unchanged, the magistrates are multiplied in vain; the government acquires no further real strength, because it is the depositary of that of the state, which I have assumed to be constant. Thus, this plurality of magistrates decreases the activity of the government without increasing its power.

[¶1681:] Having found that the power of the government is relaxed in proportion as the number of magistrates is multiplied, and that the more numerous the people, the more the controlling power must be increased, we shall infer that the ratio between the magistrates and the government should be inverse to that between subject and sovereign. That is to say, that the larger the state, the smaller the government, and that in like manner the number of leaders should be diminished because of the increased numbers of the people.

[¶1682:] In order to make this diversity of forms clearer, and to assign them their different names, we shall observe in the first place that the sovereign may entrust the care of the government to the whole nation or to the greater part of the nation, so that there are more citizen magistrates than private citizens. This form of government is called Democracy.

[¶1683:] Or the sovereign may restrict the government in the hands of a lesser number, so that there are more plain citizens than magistrates; and this form of government is called Aristocracy.

[¶1684:] Finally, the sovereign may concentrate the whole government in the hands of one man. This is the third and commonest form of government, and is called Monarchy or royal government

[¶1685:] We shall observe that all these forms, or the first and second at least, may be less or more, and that within tolerably wide limits. For democracy may include the whole nation, or may be confined to one half of it. Aristocracy, in its turn, may shrink from the half of the nation to the smallest number. Even royalty may be shared, either between father and son, between two brothers, or in some other fashion. There were always two kings in Sparta, and in the Roman empire there were as many as eight emperors at once, and yet it cannot be said that the empire was divided. There is a point where each form of government blends with the next; and under the three specific forms there may be really as many forms of government as there are citizens in the state.

[¶1686:] Nor is this all. In certain respects each of these governments is capable of subdivision into different parts, each administered in one of these three ways. From these forms in combination there may arise a multitude of mixed forms, since each may be multiplied by all the simple forms.

[¶1687:] In all ages there have been great disputes as to which is the best form of government, and people have failed to consider that each is the best in some cases and the worst in others. For ourselves, if the number of magistrates in the various states is to be in inverse ratio to the number of the citizens, we infer that generally a democratic government is adapted to small states, an aristocratic government to those of moderate size, and a monarchy to large states.

[¶1688:] These inquiries furnish us with a clue by which we may discover what are the duties and rights of citizens, and whether they can be separated one from the other. What is our country, in what does it really consist, and how can each of us ascertain whether he has a country or not?

[¶1689:] Having thus considered every kind of civil society in itself, we shall compare them so as to note their relations one with another. We will see some large, some small, some strong, and some weak, attacking one another, offending one another, destroying one another; and in this continual action and reaction causing more misery and loss of life than if men had preserved their original freedom. We shall inquire whether too much or too little has not been accomplished in the matter of social institutions; whether individuals who are subject to law and to men, while societies preserve the independence of nature, are not exposed to the ills of both conditions without the advantages of either, and whether it would not be better to have no civil society in the world rather than to have many such societies. Is it not this mixed condition which partakes of both and secures neither?Per quem neutrum licet, nec tanquam in bello paratum esse, nec tanquam in pace securum.? Is it not this partial and imperfect association which gives rise to tyranny and war? And are not tyranny and war the worst scourges of humanity?

[¶1690:] Finally we will examine the kinds of remedies that people have sought for these inconveniences by means of leagues and confederations, which while leaving each state its own master in internal affairs arm it against any unjust aggression from outside. We will inquire how a good federative association may be established, what can make it lasting, and how far the rights of the confederation may be extended without destroying the right of sovereignty.

[¶1691:] The Abbé de Saint-Pierre proposed an association of all the states of Europe to maintain perpetual peace among them. Was this association practicable, and supposing that it were established, would it be likely to last? ^* These inquiries lead us directly to all the questions of international law which may clear up the remaining difficulties of political law.

[¶1692:] Finally we shall lay down the real principles of the laws of war, and we will examine why Grotius and others have only stated false ones.

[¶1693:] I would not be surprised if in the middle of all our reasoning my pupil, who is a sensible young man, should interrupt me saying, "One would think we were building our edifice of wood and not of men; we are putting everything so exactly in its place!" "That is true, my friend; but remember that the law does not bend with the passions of men, and for us it is a question of first establishing the true principles of political right. Now that our foundations are laid, come and see what men have built upon them; and you will see some fine things!

[¶1694:] Then I set him to read Telemachus and we pursue our journey. We are seeking that happy Salentum and the good Idomeneus made wise by misfortunes. By the way we find many like Protesilas but no Philocles; neither can Adrastes, King of the Daunians, be found. But let our readers picture our travels for themselves, or take the same journeys with Telemachus in their hand; and let us not suggest to them painful applications which the author himself avoids or makes in spite of himself.

[¶1695:] Moreover, Emile is not a king, nor am I a god, so that we are not distressed that we cannot imitate Telemachus and Mentor in the good they did. None know better than we how to keep to our own place, none have less desire to leave it. We know that the same task is given to all; that whoever loves what is right with all his heart and does the right so far as it is in his power, has fulfilled that task. We know that Telemachus and Mentor are creatures of the imagination. Emile does not travel in idleness and he does more good than if he were a prince. If we were kings we would be no greater benefactors. If we were kings and benefactors we would cause any number of real evils for every apparent good we supposed we were doing. If we were kings and sages, the first good deed we should desire to perform, for ourselves and for others, would be to abdicate our kingship and return to our present position.

[¶1696:] I have said why travel does so little for every one. What makes it still more barren for the young is the way in which they are sent on their travels. More concerned to amuse than to instruct, tutors generally take them from town to town, from palace to palace, where if they are men of learning and letters, they make them spend their time in libraries, or visiting antiquaries, or rummaging among old buildings transcribing ancient inscriptions. In every country they are busy over some other century, as if they were living in another country. So that after they have travelled all over Europe at great expense, a prey to frivolity or tedium, they return, having seen nothing to interest them, and having learnt nothing that could be of any possible use to them.

[¶1697:] All capitals are just alike. They are a mixture of all nations and all ways of living; they are not the place in which to study the nations. Paris and London seem to me the same town. Their inhabitants have a few prejudices of their own, but each has as many as the other, and all their rules of conduct are the same. We know the kind of people who will throng the court. We know the way of living which the crowds of people and the unequal distribution of wealth will produce. As soon as any one tells me of a town with two hundred thousand people, I know its life already. What I do not know about it is not worth going there to learn.

[¶1698:] To study the genius and character of a nation you should go to the more remote provinces, where there is less moving around, less commerce, where strangers seldom travel, where the inhabitants stay in one place, where there are fewer changes of wealth and position. Take a look at the capital on your way, but go and study the country far away from that capital. The French are not in Paris, but in Touraine; the English are more English in Mercia than in London, and the Spaniards more Spanish in Galicia than in Madrid. In these remoter provinces a people assumes its true character and shows what it really is; there the good or ill effects of the government are best perceived, just as you can measure the arc more exactly at a greater radius.

[¶1699:] The necessary relations between character and government have been so clearly pointed out in the book The Spirit of the Laws, that one cannot do better than have recourse to that work for the study of those relations. But speaking generally, there are two plain and simple standards by which to decide whether governments are good or bad. One is the population. Every country in which the population is decreasing is on its way to ruin; and the countries m which the population increases most rapidly, even were they the poorest countries in the world, are certainly the best governed.

[¶1700:] But this population must be the natural result of the government and the national character, for if it is caused by colonisation or any other temporary and accidental cause, then the remedy itself is evidence of the disease. When Augustus passed laws against celibacy, those laws showed that the Roman empire was already beginning to decline. Citizens must be induced to marry by the goodness of the government, not compelled to marry by law. You must not examine the effects of force, for the law which strives against the constitution has little or no effect. You should study what is done by the influence of public morals and by the natural inclination of the government, for these alone produce a lasting effect. It was the policy of the worthy Abbé de Saint-Pierre always to look for a little remedy for every individual ill instead of tracing them to their common source and seeing if they could not all be cured together. You do not need to treat separately every sore on a rich man's body; you should purify the blood which produces them. They say that in England there are prizes for agriculture; that is enough for me; that is proof enough that agriculture will not flourish there much longer.

[¶1701:] The second sign of the goodness or badness of the government and the laws is also to be found in the population, but it is to be found not in its numbers but in its distribution. Two states equal in size and population may be very unequal in strength; and the more powerful is always that in which the people are more evenly distributed over its territory; the country which has fewer large cities, and makes less show on this account, will always defeat the other. It is the cities which exhaust the state and are the cause of its weakness. The wealth which they produce is a sham wealth; there is much money and few goods. They say the city of Paris is worth a whole province to the King of France; for my own part I believe it costs him more than several provinces. I believe that Paris is fed by the provinces in more senses than one, and that the greater part of their revenues is poured into that town and stays there, without ever returning to the people or to the king. It is inconceivable that in this age of calculators there is no one to see that France would be much more powerful if Paris were destroyed. Not only is this ill-distributed population not advantageous to the state, it is more ruinous than depopulation itself, because depopulation only produces nothing, whereas the ill-regulated addition of still more people gives a negative result. When I hear an Englishman and a Frenchman so proud of the size of their capitals, and disputing whether London or Paris has more inhabitants, it seems to me that they are quarrelling as to which nation can claim the honour of being the worst governed.

[¶1702:] Study a people outside its cities; only thus will you really get to know it. It is nothing to see the apparent form of a government, overladen with the machinery of administration and the jargon of the administrators, if you have not also studied its nature as is seen in the effects it has upon the people, and in every degree of administration. The difference of form is really shared by every degree of the administration, and it is only by including every degree that you really know the difference. In one country you begin to feel the spirit of the minister in the manuvres of his underlings; in another you must see the election of members of parliament to see if the nation is really free. In each and every country, he who has only seen the citiies cannot possibly know what the government is like, since its spirit is never the same in town and country. For it is the agricultural districts which form the country, and the country people who make the nation.

[¶1703:] This study of different peoples in their remoter provinces, and in the simplicity of their native genius, gives a general result which is very satisfactory, to my thinking, and very consoling to the human heart. It is that all the nations, if you observe them in this fashion, seem much more worth observing. The nearer they are to nature, the more kindness holds sway in their character. It is only when they are cooped up in cities, it is only when they are changed by culture, that they become depraved and that certain faults which were crude rather than injurious are exchanged for pleasing but pernicious vices.

[¶1704:] From this observation we see another advantage in the mode of travel I suggest. For young men, sojourning less in the big cities which are horribly corrupt, are less likely to catch the infection of vice. Among simpler people and less numerous company, they will preserve a surer judgment, a healthier taste, and better morals. But for the most part this contagion of vice is hardly to be feared for Emile; he has everything to protect him from it. Among all the precautions I have taken, I reckon much on the love he bears in his heart.

[¶1705:] We do not know the power of true love over youthful desires because we are ourselves as ignorant of it as they are, and those who have control over the young turn them from true love. Yet a young man must either love or fall into bad ways. It is easy to be deceived by appearances. You will quote any number of young men who are said to live very chastely without love; but show me one grown man, a real man, who can truly say that his youth was spent in this way and who speaks in good faith? In all our virtues, all our duties, people are content with appearances; for my own part I want the reality, and I am much mistaken if there is any other way of securing it beyond the means I have suggested.

[¶1706:] The idea of letting Emile fall in love before taking him on his travels is not my own. It was suggested to me by the following incident.

[¶1707:] I was in Venice calling on the tutor of a young Englishman. It was winter and we were sitting round the fire. The tutor's letters were brought from the post office. He glanced at them, and then read them aloud to his pupil. They were in English; I understood not a word, but while he was reading I saw the young man tear off some fine point lace ruffles which he was wearing, and throw them in the fire one after another, as quietly as he could, so that no one should see it. Surprised at this whim, I looked at his face and thought I perceived some emotion; but the external signs of passion, though much alike in all men, have national differences which may easily lead one astray. Nations have a different language of facial expression as well as of speech. I waited till the letters were finished and then showing the tutor the bare wrists of his pupil, which he did his best to hide, I said, "May I ask the meaning of this?"

[¶1708:] The tutor seeing what had happened began to laugh; he embraced his pupil with an air of satisfaction and, with his consent, he gave me the desired explanation.

[¶1709:] "The ruffles," said he, "which Mr. John has just torn to pieces, were a present from a lady in this town, who made them for him not long ago. Now you must know that Mr. John is engaged to a young lady in his own country, with whom he is greatly in love, and she well deserves it. This letter is from the lady's mother, and I will translate the passage which caused the destruction you witnessed.

[¶1710:] "'Lucy is always at work upon Mr. John's ruffles. Yesterday Miss Betty Roldham came to spend the afternoon and insisted on doing some of her work. I knew that Lucy was up very early this morning and I wanted to see what she was doing; I found her busy picking apart what Miss Betty had done. She would not have a single stitch in her present done by any hand but her own.'"

[¶1711:] Mr. John went to get another pair of ruffles, and I said to his tutor: "Your pupil has a very good disposition; but tell me is not the letter from Miss Lucy's mother a put up job? Is it not an expedient that you fabricated against the lady of the ruffles?" "No," said he, "it is quite genuine; I am not so artful as that; I have made use of simplicity and zeal, and God has blessed my efforts."

[¶1712:] This incident with regard to the young man stuck in my mind; it was sure to set a dreamer like me thinking.

[¶1713:] But it is time we finished. Let us take Mr. John back to Miss Lucy, or rather Emile backto Sophie. He brings her a heart as tender as ever, and a more enlightened mind, and he returns to his native land all the better for having made acquaintance with foreign governments through their vices and foreign peoples through their virtues. I have even taken care that he should associate himself with some man of worth in every nation, by means of a treaty of hospitality after the fashion of the ancients, and I shall not be sorry if this acquaintance is kept up by means of letters. Not only may this be useful, not only is it always pleasant to have a correspondent foreign lands, it is also an excellent antidote against the sway of national prejudices, to which we are liable all through our life, and to which sooner or later we are more or less enslaved. Nothing is better calculated to lessen the hold of such prejudices than a friendly interchange of opinions with sensible people whom we respect; they are free from our prejudices and we find ourselves face to face with theirs, and so we can set the one set of prejudices against the other and be safe from both. It is not the same thing to have to do with strangers in our own country and in theirs. In the former case there is always a certain amount of politeness which either makes them conceal their real opinions, or makes them think more favourably of our country while they are with us; when they get home again this disappears, and they merely do us justice. I should be very glad if the foreigner I consult has seen my country, but I shall not ask what he thinks of it till he is at home again.

[¶1714:] After having spent nearly two years travelling in a few of the great countries and many of the smaller countries of Europe, after having learned two or three of the main languages, after having seen what is really interesting in natural history, government, arts, or men, Emile, devoured by impatience, reminds me that our time is almost up. Then I say to him, "Well, my friend, you remember the main object of our travels; you have seen and observed; what is the final result of your observations? What decision have you come to?" Either my method is wrong, or he will answer me somewhat after this fashion:

[¶1715:] "What decision have I come to? I have decided to be what you made me and to add no fetters to those imposed upon me by nature and the laws. The more I study the works of men in their institutions, the more clearly I see that, by wishing to be independent they become slaves, and that their very freedom is wasted in vain attempts to assure its continuance. In order not to be carried away by the flood of things they form a million attachments; then as soon as they want to take a step forward they are surprised to find that everything drags them back. It seems to me that to set oneself free we need do nothing, we need only continue to desire freedom. It is you, my teacher, who have made me free by teaching me to yield to necessity. Come what may, I will let myself be carried along without constraint; and since I do not wish to combat necessity, I lay hold of nothing to keep me back. In our travels I have searched for some corner of the earth where I might be absolutely my own self; but where among men is one not dependent on their passions? Have examined everything closely I have discovered that my wishes were contradictory; for were I to hold to nothing else, I would at least hold to the land on which I had settled; my life would be attached to that land like the dryads were attached to their trees. I have discovered that the words empire and liberty are incompatible. I can only be master of a cottage by ceasing to be master of myself. 'Hoc erat in votis, modus agri non its magnus.' Horace, lib. ii., sat. vi.

[¶1716:] "I remember that my property was the origin of our inquiries. You argued very forcibly that I could not keep both my wealth and my liberty; but when you wished me to be free and at the same time without needs, you desired two incompatible things, for I could only be independent of men by returning to dependence on nature. What then will I do with the fortune left to me by my parents? To begin with, I will not be dependent on it; I will cut myself loose from all the ties which bind me to it. If it is left in my hands, I will keep it; if I am deprived of it, I will not be dragged away with it. I will not trouble myself to keep it, but I willl keep steadfastly to my own place. Rich or poor, I will be free. I will be free not merely in this country or in that; I wll be free in any part of the world. All the chains of prejudice are broken; as far as I am concerned I know only the bonds of necessity. I have been trained to endure them from my childhood, and I will endure them until death, for I am a man. And why should I not wear those chains as a free man, since I would have to wear them even if I were a slave, together with the additional fetters of slavery?

[¶1717:] "What does it matter what role I play in the world? What difference does it make where I am? Wherever there are men, I am with my brothers; wherever there are none, I am at home. So long as I may be independent and rich, and have wherewithal to live, and I will live. If my wealth makes a slave of me, I will find it easy to renounce it. I have hands to work, and I will make a living. If my hands fail me, I will live if others will support me; if they leave me I will die. I will die even if left, for death is not the penalty of poverty, it is a law of nature. Whenever death comes I defy it; it will never find me making preparations for life; it shall never prevent me having lived.

[¶1718:] "This, my father, is my decision. If I were without passions, I would in my manhood be as independent as God himself, for I only desire what is and I should never fight against fate. At least, there is only one chain, a chain which I shall ever wear, a chain of which I may be justly proud. Come then, give me my Sophie, and I am free."

[¶1719:] "Dear Emile, I am very glad to hear you speak like a man, and to see the feelings of your heart. At your age this exaggerated unselfishness is not unpleasing. It will decrease when you have children of your own, and then you will be just what a good father and a wise man ought to be. I knew what the result would be before our travels; I knew that when you saw our institutions you would be far from reposing a confidence in them which they do not deserve. It is in vain that we seek freedom under the safeguard of the laws. Laws! Where is there any law? Where is there any respect for law? Under the name of law you have everywhere seen the rule of self-interest and human passion. But the eternal laws of nature and of order exist. For the wise man they take the place of positive law; they are written in the depths of his heart by conscience and reason. Let him obey these laws and be free; only those who do wrong are slaves, for they always do wrong against their will. Liberty is not to be found in any form of government. It is in the heart of the free man; he carries it with him everywhere. The evil man carries his servitude in himself. The latter would be a slave in Geneva, the former a free man in Paris.

[¶1720:] "If I spoke to you of the duties of a citizen, you would perhaps ask me where a true homeland is, and you would think you had turned the tables on me. Yet you would be mistaken, dear Emile, for he who has no country has, at least, the land in which he lives. There is always a government and certain so-called laws under which he has lived in peace. Even if the social contract has not been observed, of what importance is it so long as individual interest has protected him like the general will would have done, if he has been secured by public violence against private aggressions, if the evil he has seen has taught him to love the good, and if our institutions themselves have made him perceive and hate their own iniquities? Oh, Emile, where is the man who owes nothing to the land in which he lives? Whatever that land may be, he owes to it the most precious thing possessed by man, the morality of his actions and the love of virtue. Born in the depths of a forest he would have lived in greater happiness and freedom; but being able to follow his inclinations without a struggle there would have been no merit in his goodness, he would not have been virtuous, as he may be now, in spite of his passions. The mere sight of order teaches him to know and love it. The public good, which to others is a mere pretext, is a real motive for him. He learns to fight against himself and to prevail, to sacrifice his own self interest to the common interest. It is not true that he gains nothing from the laws; they give him courage to be just, even in the midst of the wicked. It is not true that they have failed to make him free: they have taught him to rule himself.

[¶1721:] "Do not say therefore, 'What difference does it make where I am?' It does make a difference that you should be where you can best do your duty; and one of these duties is to love your native land. Your fellow countrymen protected you in childhood; you should love them in your manhood. You should live among them, or at least you should be where you can serve them to the best of your power and where they know where to find you if ever they are in need of you. There are circumstances in which a man may be of more use to his fellow-countrymen outside his country than within it. Then he should listen only to his own zeal and should bear his exile without a murmur; that exile is one of his duties. But you, dear Emile, you have not undertaken the painful task of telling men the truth. You must live in the midst of your fellow-creatures, cultivating their friendship in pleasant intercourse; you must be their benefactor, their pattern. Your example will do more than all our books, and the good they see you do will touch them more deeply than all our empty words.

[¶1722:] "Yet I do not exhort you to live in the city. On the contrary, one of the examples which the good should give to others is that of a patriarchal, rural life, the earliest life of man, the most peaceful, the most natural, and the most attractive to the uncorrupted heart. Happy is the country, my young friend, where one need not seek peace in the wilderness! But where is that country? A man of good will finds it hard to satisfy his inclinations in the midst of cities, where he can find few but frauds and fools to work for. The welcome given by cities to those idlers who flock to them to seek their fortunes only completes the ruin of the country, when the country ought really to be repopulated at the cost of the cities. All the men who withdraw from high society are useful just because of their withdrawal, since its vices are the result of its numbers. They are also useful when they can bring life, culture, and the love of their first condition with them into the rural areas. I like to think what benefits Emile and Sophie, in their simple home, may spread about them, what a stimulus they may give to the country, how they may revive the zeal of the unlucky villagers. I imagine seeing the population increasing, the land coming under cultivation, the earth clothed with fresh beauty, many workers and plenteous crops transforming fieldwork into festivities, cries of joy and blessings rising from the midst of the rustic games that the lovable couple has revived. Men say the golden age is a fable. It always will be for those whose feelings and taste are depraved. People do not really regret the golden age, for they do nothing to restore it. What is needed for its restoration? One thing only, and that is an impossibility; we must love the golden age.

[¶1723:] "Already it seems to be reviving around Sophie's home; together you will only complete what her worthy parents have begun. But, dear Emile, you must not let so pleasant a life give you a distaste for sterner duties if ever they are laid upon you. Remember that the Romans sometimes left the plough to become consul. If the prince or the state calls you to the service of your country, leave all to fulfil the honourable duties of a citizen in the post assigned to you. If you find that duty onerous, there is a sure and honourable means of escaping from it: do your duty so honestly that it will not long be left in your hands. Moreover, you need not fear the difficulties of such a test; while there are men of our own time, they will not summon you to serve the state."

[¶1724:] Why may I not paint the return of Emile to Sophie and the end of their love, or rather the beginning of their wedded love! A love founded on esteem which will last with life itself, on virtues which will not fade with fading beauty, on fitness of character which gives a charm to intercourse, and prolongs to old age the delights of early love. But all such details would be pleasing without being useful, and so far I have not permitted myself to give pleasing details unless I thought they would be useful. Will I abandon this rule when my task is nearly ended? No, I feel that my pen is weary. Too feeble for such prolonged labors, I would abandon this if it were not so nearly completed; if it is not to be left imperfect it is time it were finished.

[¶1725:] At last I see the happy day approaching, the happiest day of Emile's life and my own. I see the crown of my labors; I begin to appreciate their results. The noble pair are united by an unbreakable chain; heart and lips confirm vows that will never be in vain. They are man and wife. When they return from the church, they follow where they are led; they know not where they are, where they are going, or what is happening around them. They hear nothing, they answer at random; their eyes are troubled and they see nothing. Oh, rapture! Oh, human weakness! The feeling of happiness overwhelms man; he is not strong enough to bear it.

[¶1726:] There are few people who know how to talk to the newly-married couple. The gloomy propriety of some and the light conversation of others seem to me equally out of place. I would rather their young hearts were left to themselves, to abandon themselves to an agitation which is not without its charm, rather than that they should be so cruelly distressed by a false modesty or annoyed by coarse witticisms which, even if they appealed to them at other times, are surely out of place on such a day.

[¶1727:] I see our young people, wrapped in a pleasant languor, paying no attention to what is said. Will I, who desire that they should enjoy all the days of their life, let them lose this precious day? No, I desire that they shall taste its pleasures and enjoy them. I rescue them from the foolish crowd, and walk with them in some quiet place; I recall them to themselves by speaking of them. It is not merely to their ears, but to their hearts that I wish to spead and I know that there is only one subject of which they can think to-day.

[¶1728:] "My children," say I, taking a hand of each, "it is three years since I saw the birth of the pure and vigorous passion which is your happiness today. It has gone on growing; your eyes tell me that it has reached its highest point; it must inevitably decline." My readers can imagine the outbreaks, the anger, the vows of Emile, and the scornful air with which Sophie withdraws her hand from mine; how their eyes protest that they will adore each other till their latest breath. I let them have their way; then I continue.

[¶1729:] "I have often thought that if the happiness of love could continue in marriage, we would find a Paradise upon earth. So far this has never been. But if it were not quite impossible, you two are quite worthy to set an example you have not received, an example which few married couples could follow. My children, shall I tell you what I think is the way, and the only way, to do it?"

[¶1730:] They look at one another and smile at my simplicity. Emile thanks me curtly for my prescription, saying that he thinks Sophie has a better one, at any rate it is good enough for him. Sophie agrees with him and seems just as certain. Yet in spite of her mockery, I think I see a trace of curiosity. I study Emile; his eager eyes are fixed upon his wife's beauty; he has no curiosity for anything else; and he pays little attention to what I say. It is my turn to smile, and I say to myself, "I will soon get your attention."

[¶1731:] The almost imperceptible difference between these two hidden impulses is characteristic of a real difference between the two sexes; it is that men are generally less constant than women, and are sooner weary of success in love. A woman foresees man's future inconstancy, and is anxious; it is this which makes her more jealous. When his passion begins to cool she is compelled to pay him the attentions he used to bestow on her for her pleasure. She weeps; it is her turn to humiliate herself, and she is rarely successful. Affection and kind deeds rarely win hearts, and they hardly ever win them back. I return to my prescription against the cooling of love in marriage.

[¶1732:] "It is plain and simple," I continue. "It consists in remaining lovers when you are husband and wife." "Indeed," said Emile, laughing at my secret, "we shall not find that hard."

[¶1733:] "Perhaps you will find it harder than you think. Please give me time to explain. Ties that we pull on too tightly are soon broken. This is what happens when the marriage bond is subjected to too great a strain. The fidelity imposed by it upon husband and wife is the most sacred of all rights; but it gives to each too great a power over the other. Constraint and love do not go together, and pleasure is not to be had for the asking. Do not blush, Sophie, and do not try to run away. God forbid that I should offend your modesty! But your fate for life is at stake. For so great a cause, permit a conversation between your husband and your father which you would not permit elsewhere.

[¶1734:] "It is not so much possession as mastery that people tire of, and affection is often more prolonged with regard to a mistress than a wife. How can people make the tenderest caresses into a duty, and the sweetest pledges of love into a right? It is mutual desire which creates the right, and nature knows no other. The law may restrict this right, but it cannot extend it. The pleasure is so sweet in itself! Should it owe to compulsion the force which it cannot gain from its own charms? No, my children, in marriage the hearts are bound, but the bodies are not enslaved. You owe one another fidelity, but not resignation. Neither of you may give yourself to another, but neither of you belongs to the other except at your own will.

[¶1735:] "If it is true, dear Emile, that you want to be your wife's lover, that she should always be your mistress and her own, then be a happy but respectful lover. Obtain everything from love and nothing from duty, and let the slightest favors never be of right but of grace. I know that modesty shuns formal confessions and requires to be overcome; but with delicacy and true love, will the lover ever be mistaken as to the real will? Won't he know it when heart and eyes grant what the lips refuse? May each of two lovers always be master of their person and their caresses; let them have the right to bestow them only at their own will. Remember that even in marriage this pleasure is only lawful when the desire is mutual. Do not be afraid, my children, that this law will keep you apart; on the contrary, it will make both more eager to please, and will prevent satiety. Be true to one another, nature and love will draw you to each other."

[¶1736:] At these and similar suggestions, Emile gets angry and begins to protest. Sophie is ashamed, she hides her face behind her fan and says nothing. Perhaps while she is saying nothing, she is the most annoyed. Yet I insist, without mercy. I make Emile blush for his lack of delicacy. I undertake to be surety for Sophie that she will undertake her share of the treaty. I provoke her to speak; you may guess that she will not dare to refute me. Emile anxiously consults the eyes of his young wife; he sees them, through all her confusion, filled with a voluptuous anxiety that reassures him against the dangers of trusting her. He flings himself at her feet, kisses with rapture the hand extended to him, and swears that beyond the fidelity he has already promised, he will renounce all other rights over her. "My dear wife," he says, "be the arbiter of my pleasures like you are already the arbiter of my days and my destiny. Even if your cruelty costs me my life I give over to you my most cherished rights. I wish to owe nothing to your acquiescence, but all to your heart."

[¶1737:] Dear Emile, be comforted; Sophie herself is too generous to let you fall a victim to your generosity.

[¶1738:] In the evening, when I am about to leave them, I say in the most solemn tone, "Remember both of you, that you are free, that there is no question of spousal rights; believe me, no false deference. Emile will you come home with me? Sophie permits it." Emile in a fury is ready to hit me. "And you, Sophie, what do you say? Shall I take him away?" The little liar, blushing, answers, "Yes." A charming and sweet lie, better than the truth!

[¶1739:] The next day. . . Men no longer delight in the picture of bliss; their taste is as much depraved by the corruption of vice as their hearts. They can no longer feel what is touching or perceive what is truly delightful. You who, as a picture of voluptuous joys, see only the happy lovers immersed in pleasure, your picture is very imperfect; you have only its grosser part, the sweetest charms of pleasure are not there. Which of you has seen a young couple, happily married, on the day after their marriage?.Their chaste yet languid looks betray the intoxication of the bliss they have enjoyed, the blessed security of innocence, and the delightful certainty that they will spend the rest of their life together. The heart of man can be offered no more rapturous sight; this is the real picture of happiness. You have seen it a hundred times without recognizing it; your hearts are so hard that you cannot love it. Sophie, peaceful and happy, spends the day in the arms of her tender mother; a pleasant resting place after a night spent in the arms of her husband.

[¶1740:] The day after I am aware of a slight change. Emile tries to look somewhat vexed; but through this pretence I notice such a tender eagerness, and indeed so much submission, that I do not think there is much amiss. As for Sophie she is gayer than she was yesterday; her eyes are sparkling and she looks very well pleased with herself. She is charming to Emile; she ventures to tease him a little and vexes him still more.

[¶1741:] These changes are almost imperceptible, but they do not escape me. I am anxious and I question Emile in private, and I learn that, to his great regret, and in spite of all entreaties, he had had to sleep in a separate bed the previous night. That haughty lady had made haste to assert her right. An explanation takes place. Emile complains bitterly, Sophie laughs; but at last, seeing that Emile is really getting angry, she looks at him with eyes full of tenderness and love, and pressing my hand, she only says these two words, but in a tone that goes to his heart, "Ungrateful man!" Emile is too stupid to understand. But I understand, and I send Emile away and speak to Sophie privately in her turn.

[¶1742:] "I see," said I, " the reason for this whim. No one could be more delicate, and no one could use that delicacy so inappropriately. Dear Sophie, do not be anxious. I have given you a man; do not be afraid to treat him as such. You have had the first fruits of his youth; he has not squandered his manhood on anyone else, and he will preserve it a long time for you.

[¶1743:] "My dear child, I must explain to you why I said what I did in our conversation of the day before yesterday. Perhaps you only understood it as a way of restraining your pleasures to secure their continuance. But, Sophie, there was another purpose, more worthy of my concerns. When Emile became your husband, he became your head. It is for you to obey; this is what nature wishes. When the wife is like Sophie, it is nevertheless good for the man to be led by her. That is another of nature's laws; and it is to give you as much authority over his heart as his sex gives him over your person that I have made you the arbiter of his pleasures. It will be hard for you, but you will control him if you can control yourself, and what has already happened shows me that this difficult art is not beyond your courage. You will long rule him by love if you make your favours scarce and precious, if you know how to give them value. Do you want to have your husband always at your feet? Keep him at a distance. But let your sternness be the result of modesty not whim; let him find you modest not capricious. Beware that in controlling his love you do not make him doubt your own. Make yourself cherished for your favors and all the more respected for your refusals; let him honor his wife's chastity without having to complain of her coldness.

[¶1744:] "It is thus, my child, that he will give you his confidence, he will listen to your opinion, will consult you in his business, and will decide nothing without you. It is thus that you may lead him back to wisdom when he strays, and by gentle persuasion make yourself lovable in order to be useful. It is thus that you can use coquetry in the interest of virtue, and love to the profit of reason.

[¶1745:] "Do not think that with all this your art will always serve your purpose. In spite of every precaution pleasures are destroyed by possession, and love above all others. But when love has lasted long enough, a gentle habit takes its place and the charm of confidence succeeds the raptures of passion. Children form a bond between their parents, a bond no less tender and a bond which is sometimes stronger than love itself. When you cease to be Emile's mistress you will be his friend and wife; you will be the mother of his children. Then instead of your first reticence let there be the fullest intimacy between you. No more separate beds, no more refusals, no more caprices. Become so truly his better half that he can no longer do without you, and if he must leave you, let him feel that he is far from himself. You have made the charms of home life so powerful in your father's home, let them prevail in your own. Every man who is happy at home loves his wife. Remember that if your husband is happy in his home, you will be a happy wife.

[¶1746:] "For the present, do not be too hard on your lover. He deserves more consideration; he will be offended by your fears. Do not be concerned for his health at the cost of his happiness, and enjoy your own happiness. You must neither anticipate disgust nor repulse desire; you must not refuse for the sake of refusing but only to add to the value of your favors."

[¶1747:] Then, taking her back to Emile, I say to her young husband, "One must bear the yoke that one has imposed upon oneself. Make yourselves merit the lightening of that yoke. Above all, honor the graces, and do not think that sulkiness will make you more lovable." Peace is soon made, and everybody can guess its terms. The treaty is signed with a kiss, after which I say to my pupil, "Dear Emile, all his life through a man needs a guide and counsellor. So far I have done my best to fulfil that duty; my lengthy task is now ended, and another will undertake this duty. Today I abdicate the authority which you gave me; from now on Sophie is your guardian."

[¶1748:] Little by little the first raptures subside and they can peacefully enjoy the delights of their new condition. Happy lovers, worthy husband and wife! To do honor to their virtues, to paint their felicity, would require the history of their lives. How many times, while contemplating in them my life's work, I feel myself seized with a delight that makes my heart beat with joy! How often I take their hands in mine, blessing providence and letting out ardent sighs! How often I kiss their clasped hands! How often their tears of joy fall upon mine! They are touched by my joy and they share my raptures. Their worthy parents see their own youth renewed in that of their children; they begin to live, as it were, afresh in them; or rather they perceive, for the first time, the true value of life. They curse their former wealth, which prevented them from enjoying so charming a fate when they were young. If there is such a thing as happiness upon earth, it is in our home that one must seek it.

[¶1749:] One morning a few months later Emile enters my room and embraces me, saying, "My teacher, congratulate your child; he hopes soon to have the honor of being a father. What a responsibility we will have, how much we will need you! Yet God forbid that I should let you educate the son after having educated the father. God forbid that so sweet and holy a task should be fulfilled by any but myself, even if I were able to make as good a choice for my child as was made for me! But continue to be the teacher of the young teachers. Counsel us, govern us. We will be easily led; as long as I live I will need you. I need you more than ever now that my functions as a man begin. You have fulfilled your own function; help me to follow your example. And now it is time for you to take a rest."

Project:Rousseau/Emile-en/b5

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education

Book Five

[¶1249:] SOPHIE, OR THE WIFE

[1597:] ON TRAVEL

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