BOOK TWO

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

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

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

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

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

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

[209:] Emile will have no padded bonnets, no go-carts, no leading-strings; or at least as soon as he can put one foot before another he will be supported only along pavements, and those will be crossed very quickly.[note 18] Instead of keeping him cooped up in a stuffy room, take him out into a meadow every day. There let him run, let him frisk about. If he falls a hundred times, so much the better. He will learn all the sooner how to pick himself up. The well-being of liberty will make up for many wounds. My pupil will often have bruises; in return he will always be gay. Your pupils may have fewer bruises, but they are always constrained, always enchained, always sad. I doubt whether they are any better off.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[225:] If we were immortal we should all be miserable. No doubt it is hard to die, but it is sweet to think that we shall not live for ever and that a better life will put an end to the sorrows of this world. If we had the offer of immortality on earth, who would accept the sorrowful gift?[note 19] What resources, what hopes, what consolation would be left against the cruelties of fate and man's injustice? The ignorant man who never looks ahead knows little of the value of life and does not fear to lose it. The enlightened man sees things of greater worth and prefers them to life. Half-knowledge and sham wisdom set us thinking about death and what lies beyond it; and they thus create the worst of our ills. The wise man bears life's ills all the better because he knows he must die. Life would be too dearly bought if we did not know that sooner or later death will end it.

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

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

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

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

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

[231:] Oh, man! Confine your existence inside of yourself and you will no longer be unhappy. Stay in the place that nature has assigned you in the chain of being; nothing should be able to make you leave it. Do not kick against the stern law of necessity, nor waste in vain resistance the strength that heaven gave you not to prolong or extend your existence but to preserve it so far and so long as heaven pleases. Your freedom and your power extend as far and no further than your natural strength; anything more is only slavery, illusion, reputation. Domination itself is servile when it depends upon opinion; for you are dependent on the prejudices of others when you rule them by means of those prejudices. To lead them as you please you must conduct yourself as they please. They have only to change their way of thinking and you are forced to change your course of action. Those who approach you need only contrive to sway the opinions of those you rule, or of the favourite by whom you are ruled, or those of your own family or theirs. Even if you had the genius of Themistocles,[note 20] all these viziers, courtiers, priests, soldiers, servants, babblers, the very children themselves, would lead you like a child in the midst of your legions. Whatever you do, your actual authority can never extend beyond your own faculties. As soon as you are obliged to see with others' eyes, their wills must be your own. You may say with pride, "My people are my subjects." Granted, but what are you? The subject of your ministers. And your ministers, what are they? The subjects of their clerks, their mistresses, the servants of their servants. Grasp all, usurp all, and then pour out your silver with both hands; lay out your plans for war, raise the gallows and the wheel; make laws, issue proclamations, multiply your spies, your soldiers, your hangmen, your prisons, and your chains. Poor little men, what good does all of this do you? You will be no better served, you will not be less robbed or deceived, nor more absolute in your power. You will say continually, "We want," and you will continually do what others want.

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

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

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

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

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

[237:] These considerations are important and serve to resolve all the contradictions of the social system. There are two kinds of dependence: dependence on things, which is from nature; and dependence on men, which is from society. Dependence on things, since it has no morality, does no harm to freedom and engenders no vices. Dependence on men, being without order,[note 21] engenders all the vices, and through this master and slave become mutually corrupted. If there is any means of remedying this evil in society it is by substituting law for man, and by arming the general wills with a real force that is superior to the action of every individual will. If the laws of nations could have the inflexibility of the laws of nature that no human force could overcome, then the dependence of men would become once again a dependence on things. Thus one would reunite in the republic all the advantages of the natural state with those of the civil state; one could bring together the freedom that keeps man exempt from vice with the morality that raises him to virtue.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[253:] I return to practical matters. I have already said your child must not get what he asks, but what he needs;[note 22] he must never act from obedience, but from necessity. Thus the very words obey and command will be excluded from his vocabulary, still more those of duty and obligation. But the words strength, necessity, weakness, and constraint must have a large place in it. Before the age of reason it is impossible to form any idea of moral beings or social relations. One must thus avoid as much as possible the use of words which express these ideas lest the child at an early age should attach wrong ideas to them, ideas which you cannot or will not destroy when he is older. The first mistaken idea he gets into his head is the germ of error and vice; it is the first step that needs watching. Act in such a way that while he only notices external objects his ideas are confined to sensations; let him only see the physical world around him. If not, you may be sure that either he will not hear you at all, or that he will form of this moral world you speak about some farfetched notions that you will never erase as long as he lives.

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

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

[256:] Master.

You must not do that.

Child.

Why not?

Master.

Because it is wrong.

Child.

Wrong ! What is wrong?

Master.

What is forbidden you.

Child.

Why is it wrong to do what is forbidden?

Master.

You will be punished for disobeying.

Child.

I will do it when no one is looking.

Master.

We will keep an eye on you.

Child.

I will hide.

Master.

We will ask you what you were doing.

Child.

I will tell a lie.

Master.

You must not tell lies.

Child.

Why must not I tell lies?

Master.

Because it is wrong, etc.

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

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

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

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

[261:] Treat your pupil according to his age. Put him in his place from the first, and keep him there so well that he does not try to leave it. Then before he knows what wisdom is, he will be practising its most important lesson. Never command him to do anything, whatever in the world it may be. Do not let him even imagine that you claim to have any authority over him. He must know only that he is weak and you are strong, that his condition and yours put him at your mercy. Let him know this, let him learn it, let him feel it. At an early age let his haughty head feel the heavy yoke which nature imposes upon man, the heavy yoke of necessity under which every finite being must bow. Let him see this necessity in things, not in the whims[note 23] of man. Let the curb that restrains him be force, not authority. If there is something he should not do, do not forbid him, but prevent him without explanation or reasoning. What you grant him, grant it at his first word without sollicitations or pleading, above all without conditions. Grant with pleasure, refuse only with repugnance; but let your refusal be irrevocable so that no entreaties move you. Let your "No," once uttered, be a wall of bronze against which the child may have to exhaust his strength five or six times in order not to be tempted again to overthrow it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[288:] If I had to lead a child such as I have just described, I should say to myself: A child does not attack people[note 24] but things; and he soon learns by experience to respect those older and stronger than himself. Things, however, do not defend themselves. Therefore the first idea he needs is not that of liberty but of property, and in order that he may get this idea he must have something of his own. It is useless to enumerate his clothes, furniture, and playthings; although he uses these he knows not how or why he has come by them. To tell him they were given him is little better, for giving implies having; so here is property before his own, and it is the principle of property that you want to teach him. Moreover, giving is a convention, and the child as yet has no idea of conventions. I hope my reader will note, in this and many other cases, how people think they have taught children thoroughly, when they have only thrust on them words which have no intelligible meaning to them.[note 25]

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

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

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

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

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

[294:] Jean Jacques:

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

Robert:

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

Emile:

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

Robert:

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

Emile:

But I don't have a garden.

Robert:

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

Jean Jacques:

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

Robert:

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

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

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

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

[298:] Your ill-tempered child destroys everything he touches. Do not get angry; put anything he can ruin out of his reach. He breaks the furniture he is using; do not be in a hurry to give him more; let him feel the lack of them. He breaks the windows of his room; let the wind blow upon him night and day, and do not be afraid of his catching cold; it is better to catch cold than to be crazy. Never complain of the inconvenience he causes you, but let him feel it first. At last you will have the windows mended without saying anything. He breaks them again. Then change your plan; tell him cooly and without anger, "The windows are mine, I took pains to have them put in, and I mean to keep them safe." Then you will shut him up in a dark place without a window. At this unexpected proceeding he cries and howls; no one hears him. Soon he gets tired and changes his tone; he complains and groans; a servant appears, the rebel begs to be let out. Without seeking any excuse for refusing, the servant merely says, "I, too, have windows to protect," and goes away. At last, when the child has been there several hours, long enough to get very tired of it, long enough to make an impression on his memory, some one suggests to him that he should offer to make terms with you, so that you may set him free and he will never break windows again. That is just what he wants. He will send and ask you to come and see him; you will come, he will suggest his plan, and you will agree to it at once, saying, "That is a very good idea; it will suit us both. Why didn't you think of it sooner?" Then without asking for any affirmation or confirmation of his promise, you will embrace him joyfully and take him back at once to his own room, considering this agreement as sacred as if he had confirmed it by a formal oath. What idea do you think he will form from these proceedings as to the fulfilment of a promise and its usefulness? If I am not greatly mistaken, there is not a child upon earth, unless he is spoiled already, who could resist this treatment, or one who would ever dream of breaking windows again on purpose. Follow out the whole train of thought. The naughty little fellow hardly thought when he was making a hole for his beans that he was digging a cell in which his own knowledge would soon enclose him.[note 26]

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

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

[301:] There are two kinds of lies. One concerns an accomplished fact, the other concerns a future duty. The first occurs when one denies having done that which one has done or when one asserts that one has done something that one has not done, or in general when one speaks knowingly against the truth of things. The other occurs when one makes a promise that one does not intend to fulfill, or, in general when one professes an intention that one does not really mean to carry out. These two kinds of lie are sometimes found in combination,[note 27] but their differences are my present business.

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

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

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

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

[306:] For those of us who only give our pupils lessons in practice, who prefer to have them good rather than clever, we never demand the truth lest they should conceal it and never make them promise anything lest they should be tempted to break it. If some wrong has been done in my absence and I do not know who did it, I will take care not to accuse Emile nor to say, "Did you do it?"[note 28] For in so doing what should I do but teach him to deny it? If his difficult temperament compels me to make some agreement with him, I will take good care that the suggestion always comes from him, never from me; that when he undertakes anything he has always a present and effective interest in fulfilling his promise; and if he ever fails this lie will bring down on him all the unpleasant consequences which he sees arising from the natural order of things and not from his tutor's vengeance. But far from having recourse to such cruel measures, I feel almost certain that Emile will not know for many years what it is to lie, and that when he does find out, he will be astonished and unable to understand what can be the use of it. It is quite clear that the less I make his welfare dependent on the will or the opinions of others, the less it will be in his interest to lie.

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

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

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

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

[311:] Teachers, get rid of these shams. Be good and kind; let your example sink into your pupils' memories until they are old enough to take it to heart. Rather than hasten to demand acts of charity from my pupil I prefer to perform such actions in his presence, even depriving him of the means of imitating me, as an honour beyond his years. For it is of the utmost importance that he should not regard a man's duties as merely those of a child. If when he sees me help the poor he asks me about it, and it is time to reply to his questions,[note 29] I will say, "My friend, the rich only exist through the good will of the poor; so they have promised to feed those who have not enough to live on, either in goods or labour." "Then you promised to do this?" "Certainly; I am only master of the wealth that passes through my hands on the condition attached to its ownership."

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

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

[314:] Examine your rules of education; you will find them all misconceived, especially in all that concerns virtue and morals. The only moral lesson which is suited to childhood and the most important at any age is never to harm anyone. The very rule of doing good, if not subordinated to this rule, is dangerous, false and contradictory. Who is there who does no good? Everyone does some good, the wicked as well as the righteous; he makes one happy at the cost of the misery of a hundred, and hence spring all our misfortunes. The most sublime virtues are negative. They are also the most difficult, for they are without ostentation and even beyond that pleasure so dear to the heart of man, the thought that some one is pleased with us. If there be a man who does no harm to his neighbours, what good must he have accomplished! What a bold heart, what a strong character he needs! It is not in talking about this maxim, but in trying to practise it, that we discover both its greatness and its difficulty.[note 30]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[324:] I am far from thinking, however, that children have no sort of reason.[note 31] On the contrary, I think they reason very well with regard to things that affect their actual and sensible well-being. But people are mistaken as to the extent of their information, and they attribute to them knowledge they do not possess, and make them reason about things they cannot understand. Another mistake is to try to turn their attention to matters which do not concern them in the least, such as their future interest, their happiness when they are grown up, the opinion people will have of them when they are men -- terms which are absolutely meaningless when addressed to creatures who are entirely without foresight. But all the forced studies of these poor little things are directed towards matters utterly remote from their minds. You may judge how much attention they can give to them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[338:] If children have no knowledge of words, there is no study that is suitable for them. If they have no real ideas they have no real memory, for I do not call that a memory which only recalls sensations. What is the use of inscribing on their brains a catalogue of signs which mean nothing to them? By learning things, won't they learn the signs? Why give them the useless trouble of learning them twice over? And yet what dangerous prejudices are you implanting when you teach them to accept as knowledge words which have no meaning for them? The first meaningless phrase, the first thing taken for granted on the word of another person without seeing its use for himself, is the beginning of the ruin of the child's judgment. He may dazzle the eyes of fools long enough before he recovers from such a loss.[note 32]

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE CROW AND THE FOX

A FABLE

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

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

What is a crow?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No child of ten ever understood that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[365:] Watch children learning their fables and you will see that when they have a chance of applying them they almost always use them exactly contrary to the author's meaning. Instead of being on their guard against the fault which you would prevent or cure, they are inclined to like the vice by which one takes advantage of another's defects. In the above fable children laugh at the crow, but they all feel affection for the fox. In the next fable you expect them to follow the example of the grasshopper. Not so, they will choose the ant. No one likes to be humiliated; they will always choose the principal part -- this is the choice of